Talon #9

Dammit, Talon. You're choking the wrong person.

I just reread Birds of Prey #21 to refresh my memory about the Claws of the Court story and now I'm angry. I can't believe Christy Marx had Black Canary kissing Condor! It's got to be some kind of twist plot element she's working on because I don't think any readers of Birds of Prey like Condor at all. Not only do we not like Condor, we all wish he'd die! I'm not even exaggerating! I've even met a few Buddhist Monks that are wishing violence on that Purple Masked Poo Pirate.

Wasn't the Purple Masked Poo Pirate one of Strawberry Shortcake's nemeses?

Maybe Condor and Starling actually had their minds swapped? So it's really Starling that has been hitting on Black Canary and trying to remain in the group. I'm pretty sure that's what happened.

Last issue the Talon Battle ended in a draw just like I predicted! Don't you hate when people point out that they were right about a guess they made? Especially when that person guesses all sorts of crazy things and then never ever points out when none of the other guesses come true? Although you've got to give a guy some credit when he sticks to his Tim Drake is Harvest guns long after the "origin" of Harvest has been revealed. Or, you know, the other "origin" of Harvest as well. Plus there's that prediction that Starling's mind is in Condor's body. When that one comes true, I am so going to rub everybody's greasy noses in it! And when it actually never comes true, this is the last you'll hear of it.

Calvin Talon doesn't kill Mary Talon because she's too much like him and he just can't be the bad guy the Court of Owls wants him to be. So he can't inject her with his Hobo Spider Serum to melt her skin. Instead, Mary suggests, through signing, that Calvin Talon take Mary Talon's mask and melt down one of the Court Scientists killed in the brawl with Mr. Freeze. If somebody ever has to use sign language to tell me something and they want me to understand it, they'd better hope the message is "The Goat in the Helicopter has Cookies for the Hungry Raccoon." Although I will probably misunderstand it, wondering why a Horny Raccoon needs cookies.

I hope Mary Turner turns out to be a long lost aunt of Bronze Tiger's.

Calvin Rose returns with his goopy flesh and Talon outfit to convince Wycliffe the Grandmaster that Calvin Rose is a good Talon. He's given an Owl Biscuit and told of his next assignment: Calvin will be dumped into the middle of Santa Prisca to interrogate Sebastian Clark and kill everybody else. Oh, and then kill Clark too.

Hopefully Condor will be scouting the island for The Birds of Prey and Calvin will accidentally kill him as well.

It could happen!

This comic book is giving me violent thoughts! If I'm ever in the news because I went on a rampage, I want this commentary to stand as proof that it was Condor's stupid mocking face that drove me to it.

Before leaving on his mission, Calvin requests a moment alone with Casey. The stupid arrogant Grandmaster Owl grants his request because he thinks he's being magnanimous. If he refused to let Calvin see Casey, The Grandmaster would look weak because it would look like he has something to fear by allowing the two prisoners to be together unguarded. Little did he know there was going to be some kinky necrophilia action going on.

Gross! An interlifecycle kiss! Sinners!

Calvin Rose slips Casey the Devil's Tongue, if the lock-picking tool he slipped her is called a Devil's Tongue. Now she'll be able to free herself and be killed by The Gotham Butcher while trying to escape! Because she's not the greatest escape artist to ever live!

And then he's off on the second worst Caribbean Vacation ever! The worst vacation involves a Carnival Cruise. I get why they named their company that but at this point, I'd just think of something else because all I can picture are sideshow hawkers and carnies and dirty rides and screaming kids and the biggest corndogs you can stuff down your throat. And probably goats too! Maybe even goats in helicopters!

Calvin Rose quickly infiltrates Bane's prison and finds Sebastian Clark. He does this because he's a Master Escapadarian. All he had to do was think of how he would escape from the prison and then do that in reverse! It's genius! Except for the part where he blows his cover by speaking backwards the whole time.

Idiot.

Meanwhile Casey escapes her manacles and uses her magical tooth to summon the Serpent People from The Other Side of the World. Bah. That is so cliché. They rush off from their sunbathing to rescue her from the clutches of the Owl People. It's a classic battle of Serpent versus Bird! I wonder if Grandmaster Wycliffe is afraid of a black rod with a rusty star on the end?

Double meanwhile with a cherry on top, Calvin forgets that he's supposed to interrogate Sebastian Clark and instead goes straight for the kill. Luckily Wolf-Spider decides to stop him.

Unluckily, he plans on stopping him by eating him.

Wolf-Spider. The most important encounter of my entire life was with a wolf-spider. It changed the way I saw everything. When I was about 22 or 23, my friend Paul and I were entering my room when I heard him gasp and grab my shoulder. He pointed to the wall near my gerbil Alice's cage where, on the wall just above the cage, was a wolf spider. It was huge and hairy and just looked like a slightly smaller tarantula. Not the kind of spider you want crawling across your face at night. I got a jar and knocked it into the jar with a suction cup arrow from a little bow and arrow kit. I put the lid on and set the jar aside for the night.

The next morning, I took the jar out back and was going to release the spider when I was suddenly chilled by a deep sense of fear. I kept imagining the spider coming back and it was intensely creepy and unnerving. So I got some poison spray and sprayed it in the bottle. I could hear the spider's fangs clicking against the jar. I must have sprayed the poison an inch deep and the spider was just fine, scrambling and splashing about to get out. So I grabbed a stick and crushed it inside the jar. And I felt awful. It was the most horrible feeling I'd ever experienced. I was guilty and ashamed and intensely saddened by the way I just acted due to my own fear. People smash spiders and bugs all the time and never think twice. But this was a large creature. It was struggling to survive. Killing it took a substantial enough effort that I couldn't ignore that I'd just destroyed a creature's only chance for existence. Snuffed it out. And purely for selfish, emotional reasons.

Nearly twenty years later, I can't think about this spider without tears welling up in my eyes. If our greatness or meaning or whatever it might be is judged by the effect we have on this world, then that spider's life was incredibly powerful. I'm a better person because I wanted to be a better person than some asshole that could callously kill a spider out of fear. Fear and laziness. But the lesson doesn't just extend to not harming creatures. I learned how powerful fear can be and the stupid, irrational, bullshit things it can make you do. I see our post 9-11 world and it makes me cringe and I think of that spider and I wish, I simply wish, that everybody could see they don't have to let their fear control them. When you act out of fear, you almost always act for the wrong reasons.

I've been a catch and release person with bugs for a very long time now. But spiders? Heck, most of the time I don't even catch them. I just watch them go about their business until they disappear behind the sofa or the drapes or the bookshelf. I don't mind living amongst them at all.

Although if they look like they might be one of the very few poisonous kind up here in Oregon, I'll catch and release those bad boys. My girlfriend was bitten by a spider (we think!) about half a year ago or so. But I think she just had a mild reaction and it wasn't actually a poisonous spider. It was kind of scary though! But I still didn't kill the spider that I thought may have been the culprit. He was set free in the bushes by the Emergency Room. TO CLAIM HIS NEXT VICTIM!

Talon #9 Rating: After all that bullshit, I forget whether I liked it or not! So no change!

Actually, I still don't like it much because too many owls and Calvin is undead. Change those two things and I think I'd really like Calvin Rose. Also, where the fuck were the Birds of Prey?! Come on, DC. That's just fucked up putting Canary and Batgirl on the cover. Strix was only in it for four pages and that was it! That's some misleading bullshit right there. You know what? -2 for misleading bullshit, you fuck buckets!