Superboy #27

Based on Marv Wolfman's previous New 52 work, I'm going to assume that Superboy just raped all of these people into unconsciousness.

Superboy boy was killed when he went back into Krypton's past and forgot to return to the future. Also he disintegrated somehow. But I still have to read a comic book with his name on it? This sucks.

Joke-el is the new hero of this comic book but he's no hero! He's a hero killer! The heroes he's currently trying to kill are the Teen Titans. Who are not actually heroes but whiny jerks. So I might have made a mistake in my logic chain somewhere. At least Raven isn't wearing her feather face on the cover.

Apparently between issues or somewhere that I was not, Superboy freed The Green Voice and now The Green Voice is treating him like shit. She's possessing guards and making them attack him. She's taking control of his body and making him shit his long johns. She's laughing in his stupid face over and over and over.

I'm really enjoying it! Also, The Green Voice looks like my kind of comic book character crush!

Joke-el calls her Schiz. I'm going to pronounce it S-Cheese because I won't participate in making light of a serious mental illness. Wait. Maybe by calling her S-Cheese, that's exactly what I'm doing?

Schiz is going around this unknown planet, which is far from Earth and located somewhere in the 30th Century timewise, killing people and having fun and mind controlling them as well. Once I get a really good look at her, I find I'm not attracted to her at all. She's not adorable and her personality is grating. Also, I don't fucking know where she came from or why she's free or what the fuck is actually happening since the last issue of Superboy. Maybe I should have meticulously explained exactly how last issue ended in my last commentary so I wouldn't be so lost. Although I get the feeling that wouldn't have helped and Wolfman is just leaving the reader to pick up and put the pieces together as the reader continues to read. I hate doing that. I want everything served right up to me early with a nice round of "I am a living weapon" and "My name is Superboy" Narration Boxes!

Boy, you really never know what you've got until it's gone, do you? I meant "boy" as a contemplative exclamation and not as a derogatory term directed at you, the reader, who may or may not be any kind of boy at all. My guess is most everybody reading this is an internet spider.

Schiz attempts to make Joke-el eat a bullet with her telekinetic super reverse-empathy psionic powers. She has a reason and it's a very good reason. And it's not stupidly reliant on time travel in any way at all. I mean, technically isn't. Because Joke-el was the first of Schiz's kind. They were all created just like he was in a tube but I suppose they were all destroyed when it was seen how violent and disturbed Joke-el turned out to be. I don't know why more Super Tube Babies were created. To keep supplying Joke-el with replacement organs? Schiz mentions that there were 111 Super Tube Babies. That's all they could manage across 1000 years? Harvest managed to create two in like six months!

Oh wait! I know what my problem is! My problem is trying to understand what's happening without all of the pieces of the puzzle! I haven't collected them all yet and I'm only on page six. Maybe when Raven appears to save the day, I won't be confused any more.

How does Raven know the name of this mountain range? Did she intuit it? Also, what's so scarlet about those mountains?

I know, I know! The red sun probably shines off of the snow and makes them glow bright red. Unless it takes a Blue Dwarf to get that effect. What am I? An astrologer?! What do I know about space phenomena? Unless this would be categorized as "weather phenomena?" But I'm also not a Meteorlogicist!

Raven tries to team up with Superboy to destroy the Titans at a later date (probably Teen Titans Annual #2 although I really wish they could make it sooner) but Superboy doesn't trust her. So she leaves him in the Scarlet Mountains. During the journey back to ECHO Command Hospital, Joke-el decides to remember freeing Schiz.

Luckily their minds are connected or I'd be whining about how he remembers Schiz thinking about their minds being connected after he fled the scene.

Old Earth is on the other side of the galaxy from wherever the fuck ECHO Team is now located. So I guess that guard last issue that mentioned hunting on Phobos must have meant New Phobos and not Old Phobos because I doubt he could afford a trip to Old Sol on his guard salary.

As Superboy arrives back at ECHO Hospital, he thinks, "Time and life...they're both a circle. I'm back where this latest chapter of my life began." Now, I'm not arguing that time and life aren't a circle and I'm not arguing that time and life are a circle. But he offers no proof as to why he thinks that. Am I supposed to just take it on faith without any supporting theories? Is the fact that he once was in one location and then returned to that location later proof enough that time and life are not only magazines but circles as well? Should I be thinking this every time I'm on the toilet? "Well, lookee here, Tess! Ya just keep on finding yourself back here. Like a boomerang! Life and time...they're both boomerangs."

Let me stop myself for a quick mini-review of Marv Wolfman's New 52 work: it is dick. It's all dick. Dick dick dick. And not delicious, well-veined, throbbing dick leaking minute amounts of pre-cum. No, no. This is malformed, warty, bent-out-of-shape from fucking inanimate objects dick leaking large amounts of pus. This is the dick mommy warned you about when she said love and sex go together. Because nobody could ever love this dick that Marv Wolfman is presenting to us and nobody would dare put it in any of their orifices. And I say this as a fan of Wolfman's work from the eighties! Maybe I was just a stupid teenager back then and Wolfman's work has always been dick. But that would mean teenage me liked Marv Wolfman's dick and I'm not about to admit that yet since my mother is still alive.

Superboy once again encounters Schiz because Raven doesn't have time for this shit. She has to get back to her own pile of shit over in Teen Titans. I'm not even sure why she appeared. I suppose Wolfman had to let us know that she knew that Superboy was not Kon and that she was willing to work with him. Well, now Schiz points out that she's willing to work with Joke-el too. As well as all of her non-meta-yet-still-has-super-powers friends. I don't really know what the fucking difference is. I suppose it's a very specific gene although if that one gene is the only difference between a person Joke-el can and can't kill, it's really fucking arbitrary. Anyway, Schiz knows 111 super-powered humans that Joke-el won't kill and they're all ready to become Joke-el's soldiers. She wants them all to travel back in time so they can become the new Ravagers. She promises that she can punctuate far better than Fairchild and her lackeys.

Here's the amazing history: humans feared the metas because of their super-powers. So the humans took other humans and gave them super-powers to kill the metas. But then the humans realized they now feared the normal humans with super-powers. So they had to hunt them down and kill them too. I suppose whoever had that job was soon feared by the humans because they seemed to have super powers. They were probably hunted down and killed as well. And then so were those hunters. And then the next set of hunters. And so on. These humans out on the edge of the galaxy are fearful idiots! Can you imagine living amongst those kinds of people?! Crazy time!

So the Green Voice was actually Raven and she was pulling a Harvest where she manipulates everybody for the perfectly desired outcome. At least she, out of all the master manipulators so far in The New 52 (and there are lots of them!), admits that random chance is also a factor.

Superboy #27 Rating: -1 Ranking. Does DC have that much invested in the idea of The Ravagers that they have to get them up and running again? That's what's happening here, right? Maybe Joke-el is Harvest and Harvest's creation is Joke-el! Except that wouldn't work since DC has already put out so many clues that Harvest is Vampire Tim Drake from the Future.