Larfleeze #6

The Orange Lantern symbol looks like a cute, fat, angry stick figure.

Since a new god named Errata is going to be introduced soon, I have a feeling that everything we've learned so far might wind up being wrong. Her power is probably to footnote any statement to explain how things really happened and how the speaker has gotten it wrong. I wonder if every sentence out of Errata's mouth will begin with "actually"?

The Orange Lanterns continue to argue about what to do with Larfleeze. Without Larfleeze to tell them what to do, they're useless! I mean, they're fun to look at but don't ask them what toppings they want on the pizza you're ordering. Once again, the issue begins with the Orange Lanterns making sure to call each other by name so that the reader remembers them for the next ten minutes while the reader finishes the comic book. I have a feeling no matter how many times I read "Sound Dancer," I'm still going to refer to her as "No-face Korean Ghost Monster."

Larfleeze haz revelations.

How do actual comic book reviewers review comic books without vomiting all over themselves? I really want to know because I'm tired of doing laundry! How does Melissa Grey over at IGN write "Though details are sparse, the mood evoked by the segment's visuals paints a vivid picture" without holding her empty Starbucks Iced Tea cup firmly on the desk and smashing her head down into the straw to give herself a quick lobotomy? She ends her review with "The intrigue of the book's first few pages loses steam, and one can't help but wonder how the present day's events will circle back to reclaim it." I remember writing things like this at 4:36 A.M. on the day a paper was due and then keeping the line preserved in a notebook entitled "Perfect Ways to End Papers." I should search for more examples of reviewers writing things that I can't write so that it doesn't look like I'm singling out Melissa but I'm a lazy asshole. It's probably a compliment that I chose Melissa's review! Not a compliment from me, of course! A compliment from Lord Google that he listed her review first when I looked up "Batwoman Reviews."

Being a comic book reviewer has got to be a tough job. It would drive me crazy to have to think up new and entertaining ways to talk about how the art brings the book to life or made my eyes bleed or caused me to remember that week I spent crying, locked up in my room because my cat had been hit by a car. At least Melissa is making a review as interesting as she can. I'd probably just submit, "How high does the numerical rating system go? 10? Then this was like a 6.2 or something. There was punching."

No, seriously! I wasn't having a go at Melissa! I was trying to point out something lacking in myself! I just can't write actual reviews of things. I can type out the thoughts I have as I read a comic book. But that's not even close to giving somebody else a brief synopsis of the quality of the comic book without spoiling the fuck out of it. Maybe I should just apologize.

I'm sorry, Melissa. To make it up to you, I'll purchase your book, The Girl at Midnight, when it's available. And I promise not to review it because I'm a dick and an asshole and that probably wouldn't go very well, no matter how truly amazing the book is.

I don't even know why I bother to try to explain myself when the internet just wants to believe what it wants to believe no matter how much I try to over-explain myself! Usually I just don't try to explain myself because however somebody interprets something you say, that's what they're going to believe you said no matter how many times you tell them they got it wrong and that they're fucking idiots.

Okay. Back to selfishness! A topic I'm having a bit of trouble understanding but at least the art in this comic book evokes a magic night on mushrooms playing with the fairy people only to wake up in a wet field the next day covered in smashed and stinking fairy people. Also, fairy people are actually cow manure.

Oh! I get it now! This review stuff is easy!

Like Ahab suddenly realizing the giant fish is made of sterner stuff than his glorious ship, Larfleeze lost his power to his underlings when they took his ring and made him a slave! But even more like a reviewer that never actually finished reading Moby Dick but likes to pretend that he has read it and understood every aspect of it completely, Larfleeze regains his power and strikes down all those that would point out he's gotten the entirety of the theme wrong. STRIKES THEM DOWN DEAD! DEAD! DEAD!

Pulsar Stargrave and The Wanderer visit The Council of Ten's Space Headquarters.

Only nine of the Council can be seen in the above panel so maybe the tenth one will silently rise up behind Pulsar and The Wanderer. And Pulsar will say, "Really? That's your enemy? Those big fat moldy old disgusting sarcophagus people?" And The Wanderer will grimace and flick her eyes back behind them. And Pulsar will say, "Are we really doing this cliche say something bad about someone who happens to be standing right behind me scene?"

Pulsar learns that there are only nine members in the Council of Ten, so I guess I was wrong about the stupid talking about somebody standing behind you scene. Which is good because how many times are we, as an audience, going to have to suffer through that fucking shit? I think the Writer's Guild should make a law that that joke can only be used in shows meant for children under twelve. Because they're the only ones who haven't seen it dozens of times already.

The Wanderer wants to infiltrate the Council of Ten which probably means climbing inside one of them. But since The Council of Ten is still looking for a tenth member, I'm hoping they choose Larfleeze. Or Cheeks the Toy Wonder. Who, I have to state angrily, can not be created in Scribblenauts Unmasked.

I guess that will work as well. Well, not as well since my plan is obviously the most superior plan. But their plan will do. I suppose.

Back to Larfleeze, I guess his gigantic orange explosion that decimated the planet didn't kill any of the previously dead ex-Orange Lanterns after he stole their rings and their was no way they could protect themselves. I think the cartoony art is supposed to prepare the reader for Looney Tunes type situations like this! Also it's a comic book and not reality which I keep forgetting. Anyway, Larfleeze has an ultimatum for his ex-Orange Lanterns. Or possibly a penultimatum.

What does Larfleeze care which they choose? Once he kills them, he'll have them as an orange construct again! Way to take a stupid stand, Clypta!

Larfleeze doesn't kill them and he doesn't make slaves of them. He just ditches them on their dead planet and heads off to find his butler. Even though it seems hopeless that the ex-Orange Lanterns will find rescue in an infinite universe, I have a feeling some kind of cosmic coincidence will happen their way and pick them up in his space taxi.

Larfleeze #6 Rating: -1 Ranking. I've been hoping for a more whimsical, humorous book to hit The New 52 on a regular basis but this just hasn't been it. Not at all. I like the look of the book but I'm not finding it very funny. It sometimes feels like it's getting more interesting by evoking visual mood evocations, but then it loses steam and leaves one wondering how events will chug back around to pick up the interest that it forgot to take with it. CHOOOOO! CHOOOOO!