Larfleeze #11

Do I actually have to read the comic book when the outcome is right on the cover?

Okay, so this issue might not actually end this way. I've been reading comic books long enough to know that the cover often has nothing to do with the story inside. But if I never actually read the comic book, I'll never know the cover didn't tell the actual story. I can continue to believe I know what happened without ever being told differently. It's not like anybody out there is actually reading this comic book. Sure, some die hard Lantern Fans continue to buy it. But it probably remains on the bottom of their "to read" stack month after month. Eventually, they'll realize they've got eight issues of this thing piled up whereupon they'll just board them and throw them in a box unread. Meanwhile, DC will continue to publish it because the numbers are satisfactory even though nobody is fucking reading it.

Even if the cover were blank, I still wouldn't have to read this book to know what it's about. Larfleeze is going to insist everything is his and fight with everybody that insists everything isn't his. Pulsar Stargrave is going to whine and whinge and bitch and moan about his lot in life. And the members of the House of Tuath Dan are going to have bigger and bigger fits of apoplexy. Some jokes from the first issue will be told again for the eleventh time. And although this next supposition cannot be proven simply by reading the comic book, I'm sure Giffen and DeMatteis scripted this book while blowing each other in a rusty orange van. They usually believe they have a hit when one of them can make the other one laugh jizz out of his nose.

If one good thing has come from this comic book, it's the Planet of Sad Robots. Too bad it will never be seen again in the DC Universe, and may very well be destroyed before this issue is over.

G'nort has also entered into the fray because Giffen and DeMatteis have to keep the joke characters alive somehow. Giffen and DeMatteis are basically taking the easy way out with their choices of scripts. Writing about serious topics, filling a story with emotional arcs and tragic characters, and, in essence, taking the job of writing seriously is a difficult task. If you decide to write silly and inconsequential, people can't really criticize you too harshly. You can brush off the criticism since you didn't really put your heart into what you were writing. But if you approach a subject with gravitas and a critic points out how spectacularly you goofed it up, it can be a real blow to the ego. Why do you think the tone of this blog is so lighthearted and hyperbolic in its anger? It's because I'm actually a very sensitive creature that could never hold up to the harsh critics of the internet if they were to attack the things that I truly believe! Besides, the things I truly believe are completely misanthropic and disturbing.

I should have made this comic book into a drinking game! Just like Giffen's Threshold, the jokes and the story are so predictable that I could have made a long list of rules to drink by. Just drinking for jokes that have already been used would have me drunk by page five! Pulsar has already been sarcastic and whiny. Larfleeze has declared he fears nothing. G'nort has corrected the way someone pronounces his name when they call him a gnat. The sad robots worry about their planet being destroyed. The Wanderer reiterates that she took an oath to marry any creature that could defeat her in combat. G'nort mentions how he wants to make his parents with the funny names proud. And Larfleeze has been called an Orange Monkey. It's like Giffen and DeMatteis are just recycling the same script over and over.

I probably shouldn't complain about people using the same jokes over and over. It leaves me open for criticism!

Whose sentient chip are they going to find? O-Henry's? L-Sprague's? K-Dick's?

While the Sad Robots deal with the comedy genocide card they've been dealt, Larfleeze and G'nort engage in a battle of rings and the members of the House of Tuath Dan bicker and squabble. And Giffen and DeMatteis shamelessly continue to recycle the same jokes.

That's the second time for this joke in just this issue!

The next page uses the gnat joke for a third time because when a joke is terrible, it must be done multiple times before it becomes funny. Not that the joke actually becomes funny after multiple uses of it. The funny comes from the person telling it over and over again when it was never funny in the first place. It's this comedy theory that propelled Family Guy to such great success!

Meanwhile over a few more instances of the G'nort/Gnat joke, Larfleeze and G'nort settle their differences when they realize it's all just a misunderstanding of contract law. The robots did give everything to Larfleeze and had no right to use the Green Lantern Corps to get them out of a shitty deal. But the robots aren't down and out yet! Even though they're depressed and sad and only two of them are left, they think they've made contact with another robot mind built into the the Larfleeze Trap created by the House of Tuath Dan.

It's Z-Elda? Z-Fitz? That doesn't fit with the robot naming conventions! I call foul! Quick! Call G'nort a gnat to distract from this poorly thought out surprise twist!

They don't recycle the gnat joke but they do recycle the "Larfleeze doesn't know the meaning of surrender" joke! So that was extra funny when read again! And then the final page states the obvious as Larfleeze and G'nort team up to defeat the House of Tuath Dan next issue.

Oh, that's such a shame.

Larfleeze #11 Rating: -2 Ranking. I think the problem this comic book had that the back-up Larfleeze feature didn't wasn't that it was too long but that it didn't have enough characters. Oh, sure! By this eleventh issue, there are many, many characters. But getting to this point it had Larfleeze and Pulsar and Larfleeze's orange construct creatures. The back-up feature had a nice sampling of old Sci-Fi DC Characters fleshing out the story so it wasn't just Larfleeze saying "mine", Pulsar hating his life, and Larfleeze's constructs being passive aggressive. They all had different motivations and charms. They were probably all as one dimensional as the characters in the full length series but it was just harder to tell when you only have eight pages to get to know so many characters. So maybe being too long was one of this comic book's problems! How the fuck should I know? I'm not here to fix DC's problems! I'm just here to point at them and laugh.