Vibe #6

What the fuck is Vibe's worst nightmare? Anilingus?

Last issue, Vibe ended up in a prison cell in ARGUS's Circus with Gypsy in a cell across the way. Pariah is also in one of these cells because he probably came by to warn everybody about some big jerk called The New 52 Anti-Monitor but Amanda Waller and her goons threw him in his prison tube before he could get the message across. Or maybe he arrived to alert everyone to Darkseid's invasion? I wonder if Harbinger is imprisoned here as well?

Agent Gunn is pissed off at Amanda Waller because she's micro-managing his work in The Circus.

Gunn's husband telling Gunn to act like a punk-ass bitch.

If I were Gunn, I'd tell Waller to fuck off. But then I've never quit a job with a back-up job already in place. When something about a job bothered me, I quit. I once quit a job because my feelings were hurt when they printed up the catalog for the company and they listed everybody's name but mine. Instead of my name, they printed, "The Warehouse Staff." The Warehouse Staff was me, motherfuckers. Just me! My fucking name is shorter than "The Warehouse Staff", you stupid fucking jerks! It was a company that made leather bags and it was owned by a husband and wife team. On the plus side, when I told the husband I quit, he seemed genuinely moved and sorry about the mistake. But it was time to move on anyway. That was less of a reason to quit than the time my manager cried during one of my quarterly reviews. Big surprise, I didn't get the raise because I wasn't trying to be her friend. I suppose I could have gone to Human Resources with that one but since that was my manager's sister's job, I figured I'd be better off just leaving that sinking ship.

If you hadn't noticed, I'm the kind of worker that corporations hate. It's a good thing I have my own business now because who the fuck would want me? The hardest part of my job now is keeping myself from quitting.

Back to the comic book (I know, I know! I'm way more interesting than Vibe! But you're not the only one who reads this blog, Mom! People want to hear me make dick jokes about Vibe!), Dante busts in through Gunn's front window to lay down the law. He's going to help him break Vibe out of The Circus or else he's going to Tumbl everything he knows about ARGUS and tag it "social justice." That shit will have 100,000 Notes in no time!

Speaking of dick jokes, Amanda Waller has a stupid bourgeois thing or two to say to Gypsy.

If someone runs from people that claim to be in authority, it doesn't always fucking mean they have something to hide. Sometimes it means those people in authority are violent, bigoted, overzealous, power hungry dildos. Oh, I didn't actually have a dick joke. I just meant Amanda Waller was a dick and what she had to say was a joke.

I'm curious if that Scissorman in the Circus Tube in the background is from Doom Patrol. I mean, fuck, where else would he be from? I think they were from that weird dimension where everybody spoke in random strings of words.

Later Gunn appears at ARGUS dragging along a humanoid hyena in armor speaking the language of the aliens who ate Sunboy in the Legion of Super-heroes. I wasn't able to decipher that language because every time the aliens spoke, they seemed to use over 26 symbols meaning they were just regurgitating the alphabet and maybe some numbers or punctuation. This hyena guy (which is probably, somehow, Dante in Dog Drag) is speaking shorter words but the font is so small and crazy that I'm not even going to bother straining my eyes trying to read it.

But then on the next page, Dog-Dante gives me what must be an "I" in the alien language and I decide to give it a very, very slight go at deciphering.

And that's when I realize this is The Trench Language which had some translations given in Aquaman. So there is hope! Although the font is still crazy hard to read.

This will probably get a little boring as I walk through my process for solving cryptograms. Cryptograms with pictures help to clue you in to the context of the quote. This looks like it begins with "I" and then a four letter word. Since this is Dante and he's pissed, my first guess is that he's saying, "I hate" something. By looking at The Trench translation of "What are you?" from Aquaman #3, it looks like "I hate" is correct. The Trench font is less clear and more blotchy, as if it were written by a leaky fountain pen or a quill. But I'm fairly certain Dog-Dante is saying, "I hate you all." The font is very difficult to see unless I scan it and enlarge it, I'm just not even going to be bothered to translate the first couple of speech bubbles by Dog-Dante earlier. Maybe if Sterling Gates pokes his head around these parts, he'll be so impressed by my translation of this one bubble that he'll give us the others for free!

Except I'm a stubborn bastard so one more scan to try before I continue. Don't worry, I won't write about this process! If I give up, I'll just continue with my normally scheduled commentary in the next paragraph.

Dante is allowed to remove the Dog-Soldier Armor before entering The Zoo so the reader can finally understand him and then he begins speaking Spanish. You know what? Spanish is harder to translate than Trench speak! Although if he were saying "mal niño" I'd know what he was saying because that and "hace frio" and "hace calor" are pretty much all the Spanish my grandmother used around me. Mostly just "mal niño" though. That means "You're a great kid of exceptional quality." Although I don't know why she thought beating me with a wooden spoon while praising me was a good idea.

Dante manages to break Vibe free while I was distracted by nostalgia. But that's about the only part of the plan that works out for them.

Whoops!

Now ARGUS can take Dante away and heal him with some kind of nanobotistry which will give him super powers. Waller will tell Vibe that his brother died. And then Dante will become Purgatorio Inferno who will be a tool of ARGUS and end up becoming Vibe's nemesis. Or maybe he'll escape from ARGUS and Vibe will have to battle him every time he comes back to kill Waller or destroy ARGUS's Circus.

ARGUS Mecha-men attempt to subdue Vibe but he has this power which allows him to break glass with hardly any effort at all! So he shakes a little of that shit around the Circus and things suddenly begin to feel like Arkham on every day of the week ending in Ednesday!

Ladies and Gentleman, your 2013 Circus Escapees! Sergeant Horned Rogue! Pariah! Abnegazar, Rath, and Ghast! And Transgendermensional! Unless that last one is Warp. It could be Warp!

The only other characters I recognize on the next page are Phantasm from Team Titans and Lady Quark from any comic that I found dull and boring. And the three demon brothers might not be Abnegazar, Rath, and Ghast. But this could be what happened to them after they failed to help Felix Faust take over The Black Room.

Oh yeah. It's one of Morrison's Doom Patrol Scissormen.

During the chaos, Vibe begins to break down again. Oh right. How often is he going to pull this stunt now that he knows Gypsy will kiss him to get his concentration back? I'm not buying it. Stop fucking around and trying to get your smooch on and help your dying brother escape this place, you horndog!

Well, he is only like seventeen or something. I'd probably be spending every waking second trying to figure out how to get Gypsy to touch me again too.

Vibe's freakout causes the barriers between dimensions to grow weak and then a villain with possibly the most squirm inducing name I could have come up with breaches the barrier: RUPTURE! I don't live in fear of much but every time I move anything heavier than a sandwich, I imagine I'm going to get a hernia. I hate the human body and all of its frailties. My top three body malfunctions would have to be rectal prolapse, hernia, and biting the inside of my cheek.

Here comes Rupture tearing through dimensional walls allowing himself and the intestines of his homeworld to slither on into Earth Prime! Gypsy refers to him as "The Hound of Mordeth" so I suppose Mordeth is the bad guy that put Gypsy's people on the run. That may have already been information that the reader knew but I'm not one of those people that can remember everything! Or anything, most of the time. I once took the test to get on Jeopardy when Alex Trebek came to San Francisco mostly because my mom encouraged me and, well, why the fuck not try out? But even if I know the answers to questions, I really need a format that lets the contestant buzz in and go, "Okay! Yeah, I know this one. It's...let me see...shit, it's right on the tip of my tongue! I know it has to do with that guy who did that thing and the name of his dog was the name of the wife of the guy who traveled to that place back in the thirties...oh! It's so close!" Also, I'd probably have to walk over and slap Alex Trebek when he corrected my pronunciation of every fucking French word that would come out of my mouth.

Amanda Waller believes that Rupture has come for Omega, so she sends all of her soldiers to guard the Omega Room. So now all Vibe has to do is get past Rupture who Gypsy has assured him has killed thousands of people with his bared teeth. But then Rupture recognizes Vibe because like I've been saying, "DOMINO MASKS DON'T HIDE IDENTITIES!" Sheesh.

Breacher #1 meet Breacher #2! Also, notice Dante is going to become Inferno. I'd still prefer Purgatorio.

Vibe #6 Rating: +1 Ranking. I'm still not sure why the cover said his only hope is his worst nightmare. Dante was his only hope, so Dante is his worst nightmare? Or is Rupture his only hope which is also his (and my!) worst nightmare? I don't fucking get the cover copy! Somebody needs to explain it to me. Slowly and clearly! I'm obviously an idiot.