Superboy #28

I hope he's trying to commit suicide by crushing his own head.

I have never been a fan of Superboy. I just didn't care about him at all. But thanks to Lobdell and Wolfman, I now hate Superboy with the kind of primal hate that teenagers save exclusively for their parents when their parents won't allow them to go to some event where the person that teenager has a huge crush on is going to be. But instead the parents make that teenager stay home and read shitty comic books about shitty characters that were shitty before they even became a new character that's even shittier! Fuck you, Superboy! Get the fuck out of here!

Last issue some ridiculous stuff was happening with ridiculous people and it involved all those ridiculous Teen Titans in a ridiculous future involving a trial with that ridiculous Kid Flash. When the editors at DC had the meeting about the Teen Titans characters and what the team will be like in The New 52, they must have unanimously decided that they simply had to suck.

So I find myself thinking, "What the fuck could be worse than having to read another Superboy comic that crosses over with those shitty Teen Titans?"

Fuck me.

Please, Harvest. You aren't fooling anybody. Trying to look like somebody has you at a disadvantage. You know you planned for this to happen! That's all you do! That's your superpower: the power to plan everything. So you're not fooling anybody and you're especially not fooling me because I know you're Tim Drake from the future after he's been bitten by a vampire. So stop pretending to be some grieving father that created Joke-el to destroy all the super humans. Because I know better! You're just Tim Drake and you hate that you're the smartest guy in the world but you get less attention than a bunch of dimwitted people that were lucky enough to have super powers. So you've made it your goal to kill them all. You're a pathetic wretch!

This might be the worst thing I've read so far: "I can sense him in the time stream." But, you know, I wouldn't expect anything less from the mouth of Harvest. What a piece of shit creation.

One of the few things that I think the Reboot had right when it began was to break time travel. But apparently a few writers that spent many years at Marvel learning that plots derived from people from the future and alternate timelines decided to ignore the whole Flashpoint Paradox. I'm looking at you, Lobdell and DeFalco! Either they were too stupid to understand how time travel would theoretically work or they just decided that the Flashpoint Paradox was only in effect in one fucking specific timeline which meant they could bring people from the future from alternate timelines. And so now DC is stuck with this lousy after-dinner mint Harvest. Nobody wants you, Harvest! You taste horrible!

Back in the future, Joke-el teams up with S-Cheese while Raven manipulates them from the shadows. I hope Raven and Harvest become lovers. And I use the term "lovers" because it reminds me of Romeo and Juliet which ends in two truly delicious suicides! Not that the suicides were delicious in that play! But if Ravest were to commit suicide? Oh glory! Hallelujah! We'll have made it to the other shore!

Yes, this makes total sense. S-Cheese must have had Fox News pumped into her stasis chamber for the last seventeen years. Lazy, apathetic, have-no-fucking-dreams-at-all mankind! Just let the superheroes do it all!

The past that S-Cheese's world is from is an analogous universe that might have been if the people of our world were to give up their freedom in exchange for safety. Also if our world had super heroes in it. I guess the super heroes are a metaphor for politicians and shit. And I bet they started down this horrible road because of gun control laws and abortion! Possibly also sugared soda! And video games!

For having been put in stasis since she was a newborn (although I don't know how she grew to the seventeen year old she is now if she were in stasis), she sure knows a lot of history about her world! I guess since her "Stasis Tube" didn't truly put her in stasis, she was free to read people's minds while imprisoned.

S-Cheese goes on to explain how the stasis tubes were actually just sleep tubes that put people into a state of hibernation. So basically they're shoved into a tube, put into a medically induced coma, and remain completely out of it until they die of old age. In 1000 years, that's the best advancement they could make on putting people into stasis? You'd think if they'd traveled across the galaxy searching for alien life and fleeing Old Earth, they'd have made some kind of advancement in true stasis technology! But instead they invent a tube filled with liquid that can't keep a newborn from growing at a normal rate.

Apparently even the other prisoners aren't actually in any kind of mental stasis since Saturn Girl S-Cheese suddenly feels emotions of joy coming from Cosmic Boy Lodestone and Lightning Lad Volt! And since they're happy that they're going to be free soon, Joke-el decides to free them. Um, yay?

Previously I had suggested that a new group of Ravagers was being formed to go back in time and hang out with Harvest. But I guess Wolfman is creating a new, twisted version of The Legion of Super-Heroes with, once again, Superboy's help. Will it become a New 52 title eventually? God I hope not.

After Superboy frees his new Legion members, S-Cheese nearly kills a handful of guards. But Superboy stops her because he doesn't want the Titans to discover what's going on. She thanks him from stopping her from becoming a murderer. She seems so sincere that it's too bad Wolfman has Joke-el, Saturn Cheese, Lode Boy, and Volt Lad kill everyone in a nearby ECHO base to steal their weapons. And then the final bit of dialogue and I'm off to the bathroom to vomit for three hours.

For my own sanity, I might have to drop every comic book that relies on time travel and characters from alternate timelines.

Superboy #28 Rating: No change but only because if it drops any ranks it becomes worse than Teen Titans and I blame Teen Titans for this comic book being so horrible. I love time travel stories. When they're done well! But this whole idea of time travelers from alternate timelines coming back to change the timeline they came from is just stupid ridiculous nonsense. Or characters in the present trying to save a specific timeline that will result in a specific future. Stop writing alternate timeline stories that have characters believing there can only be one true timeline when they've obviously come from other timelines. Why are they bothering to force their timeline into existence when it already fucking exists? Why are they bothering to try to stop their timeline from existing when it obviously already exists? They're all just wanking off into the wind. Stupid fucking bullshit. An example of a DC time travel story that I've liked during the Reboot? Booster Gold's brief time in All Star Western as well as Jonah Hex's visit to the present. Those are fun because Hex isn't trying to change anything or keep anything from changing. He's just caught up in an inadvertent journey and just wants to get back home.

Also, I actually think I wouldn't mind a Twisted Legion of Super-heroes comic book but I can't endorse one when I think it's going to be this Harvest and Joke-el timeline crap. I'd love it if it were just about the future and the twisted Legion doing whatever they're doing in the future. But fuck it if they're concerned with somehow changing the past because why fucking bother, you idiots!