New Guardians #33

Carol and Kyle have invaded the Psions' home, so technically this cover should read, "Defense of the Psions!"

When we last saw Carol and Kyle and Quarros and Pokey, they had been trapped aboard the mother ship of the alien race known as the Psions. And all you need to know about the Psions is that they're gigantic assholes that love to experiment on other races because they grew up being experimented on and that's all they know. Are the Psions a cautionary tale about how human life will end due to what rats will become in the future? An angry, sentient, species that became stronger than every other species on Earth due to humans constantly testing cures and procedures on them until they were immune to all disease, able to regenerate body parts, stronger than every other creature on Earth, and could breathe toxic gases? Because that's where we're headed, people! Look at how strong the Guinea Pigs got before we stopped using them for experimentation! If they weren't so fucking skittish, they'd probably have taken over the world by now.

This happens this issue. You know, if anybody was interested.

While Kyle and Carol dry hump each other in their skin-tight outfits, the Bohemian Guardians are being tortured by the Psions. I'd use the phrase "comeuppance" here but I don't know what it means or if I even spelled it correctly.

The Bohemain Guardians are learning slowly, tortuously slowly (because they're being tortured! Like Guinea Pigs! Or like Jews and Heretics and, well, practically everybody in 13th Century Europe!), that the Psions were created by them. They were the lab rats of the Bohemain Guardians and when they were abandoned by them, they just continued on the only path they knew: to make themselves better, hardier, more resistant to everything! And now billions of years later, they're pretty fucking hardy!

That's rich! Did you listen when the little baby ancestor Psions said, "Eeek! Squeak! Eeek! Eeek!" (which translates, roughly, to "Do not touch me!").

I woke up thinking about some particularly bold advice that could possibly truly help young people navigate the artificial structure of our society but then I remembered that I'm tired of being told to check my privilege, so fuck you all. Figure it out yourselves. Continue to wallow in your pain because you've decided that the memory of trauma is the exact same thing as the trauma itself. Go ahead and believe that a multitude of labels are the things that make you an individual as opposed to the real things that make you an individual, like the way you dream of becoming that one thing that nobody else you know dreams of becoming simply because when you think about becoming it, it makes your insides squish over and meltdown in a warm cascade until you feel like your bottom might catch on fire. Try not to remember that you're the person that loves the smell of rain dampened pavement mixed with melted marshmallows in fresh cocoa. Don't think about how you hide pieces of your secret self because you'd be embarrassed for people to know that you love the pungent odors of your body after several days unshowered, and you never want the eczema on your scalp to go away because your body and mind thrills to the way the tiny flakes feel as you slowly pull them from your skin and through your hair. Go ahead and always judge anything anybody says by the way they look and the gender they express and the parts of the body that bring them to a sexual frenzy. Absolutely believe that the things I just said were derogatory and dismissive instead of helpful and freeing. Disbelieve in other individuals because you are the only unique person in the world. And always never remember to tell people to think for themselves because telling people to be themselves is the best advice a person can get from another person.

If you watch a lot of television (and I'm sure you don't because you're not a dimwitted dumb dumb head caught in the patriarchy's mind-numbing light show), you'd be hard pressed to believe that anybody pursues any career at all anymore. It's less important to do things than to inspire people to be inspired and to raise awareness so that people are aware. I'm surprised at how many people hate television and commercials and yet they aspire to a life of being nothing but a fucking commercial themselves.

I probably should have buried these thoughts further into the review so I don't start this commentary all up in the reader's face! And what a beautiful face, might I add! Does that compliment go any way to making up for sounding like a self-righteous dick at the beginning? Anyway, I think it is a good idea to bury this in the middle of the review so now that you're reading this sentence, you'll realize that the preceding paragraphs that came out of nowhere initially began this review of New Guardians! But now they're just interrupting the review. Like a commercial!

Meanwhile, Carol reminds Kyle that after they save the Bohemian Guardians, they're going to have to talk about the dry humping that happened earlier. How come two people can't spontaneously dry hump each other in a scary experimental spacecraft without having to discuss it afterward?! Why must everything be discussed? Why can't we just lose ourselves in pure emotion and then move on to the next purely emotional experience?

I suppose if I were to take my own advice, I'd stop doing long-winded commentaries and just post things like this:

New Guardians #33 Review
Wheeee! SO HAPPY! Squidge! Twiddly diddly doopsie day!

Fuck. Maybe I should take my own advice! That would be so easy!

Kyle and Carol soon realize the ship they're on is a huge laboratory filled with cages housing the results of the Psions alien eugenics experiments. Kyle nearly throws up which, while it might be a natural reaction to seeing a living pile of heads that have been sewn together and are all screaming in pain at the same time, did he ever think how the pile of heads might feel from seeing a person react that way to them? I'm sure they already feel pretty crappy about what's become of them. Do they have to be reminded that their physical appearance is now so hideous that it causes uncontrollable vomiting in the people they meet? So rude, Kyle.

Off in another part of the ship, Pokey (or whichever Bohemian has the googles. Fuck if I can keep them straight) gets an advanced course in "How the Guardians Fucked Up, Part One: The Psions." He learns the Oans took some caterpillars, injected them with a stupid drug that probably made them use 100% of their brainpower because that continues to be a stupid fucking sci-fi myth that I'd thought we'd all gotten past until that ridiculous Lucy movie started airing ads on television, and turned them into sentient monsters! And now they will do the same for the rest of the universe! Bwa ha ha ha! It seems that revelation would have more impact if I hadn't been mentioning it over and over again since I first read "Psions" on the cover of the last issue of this comic book.

And then Kyle and Carol find Quaros.

Worst spa ever.

New Guardians #33 Rating: No change. Hopefully after the Psions are defeated, we'll get a five issue story arc where Carol and Kyle simply discuss their relationship. I'm not saying it would be riveting but I bet it would still sell more copies each month than Cerebus sold every month during its last story arc, The Last Day. Talk about the wheels falling off of a thing with wheels! I should do some in-depth commentary on Dave Sim's entire run of Cerebus. That thing is fascinating on so many levels: pop culture satire, commentary on history and religion, feminist criticism, and the slow meltdown of a comic book creator as he loses himself in a heady mix of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, not to mention his own narcissism. I still own all the Cerebus Phone Books but sold many of the individual issues which is too bad because his responses to letters and his commentaries in the backs of the single issues help the reader to see when and how each wheel comes off the thing with the wheels (Cerebus! Okay, it has metaphorical wheels! It's just a vehicle in a not very literal sense!). I wonder if he ever published an appendix Cerebus Phone Book with all the stuff he wrote in the backs of the individual issues? I'd actually throw more money at him to own those as well!