Teen Titans #2

Apparently my comic book store doesn't want me seeing the legitimate covers.

What am I doing with my life?! I have so many projects that I'm working on and not one of them actually contributes to the betterment of our culture! Why can't dick jokes cure cancer? I'd be the most important person in the world! Oh, sure. A lot of people tell dick jokes. But nobody writes a good dick like I write a good dick joke!

Come to think of it, I can't remember the last time I wrote a good dick joke. Does the time I photoshopped Brainy Smurf so that it looked like he was masturbating count?

Nope, that's not a dick joke.

I guess I don't actually tell dick jokes. "Dick jokes" is just a metaphor for my writing. Meaning it couldn't matter to most people, it shouldn't matter to any people, and, if it does matter, those people are geniuses. Sometimes I spend so long writing a sentence that I forget to make the back half have any correlation to the front half.

Wrong, RealRainbowRaider! Bunker attacked a guy that was probably about to insult Bunker and Beast Boy but we'll never know what his insult was going to be because Bunker smashed him into a wall.

The most charitable thing I can say about how abominably Bunker behaved at the end of last issue is that he was punishing a man for being ungrateful. We're supposed to believe that the man was about to call Beast Boy and Bunker faggots. But he didn't. He didn't even call them "f-"s or "fa-"s before Bunker slammed some Brain Bricks into the guy. When I look at Bunker and Beast Boy, I think they look like douchebags. Kind of like that guy that hosts Cheaters! But that's old news from last issue! Let's discuss this rant he was filmed ranting!

Bunker is basically threatening the populace to act decently to costumed heroes and villains. What the fuck is up with that? If the only way you can get people to act decently is to threaten them with violence or punishment, you haven't actually achieved anything more than scaring people into keeping their bigotry quiet. You're not going to end bigotry with laws. You know how you can end it though? Keep stupid people from breeding!

Oh shit. I hope I didn't just offend any bigots reading this because I called them stupid. It's odd, though. You can call somebody a bigot and they won't get half as mad (oh, they'll get mad!) as they would if you'd called them stupid. It's the one insult that's sure to make a stupid person angry. A smart person doesn't give a shit if somebody else thinks they're stupid. Smart peoples gots self-esteem, yo.

I don't even remember what I was trying to say. Why does Point A always lead to Point B which then leads to Hidden Path C which leads to Secret Door D which leads to Lost Labyrinth of Eternity E? You know what I mean? Quod Erat Deconstructiondendum: Bunker has become a touchy asshole.

DC would have been better off letting the guy say "faggots" as the foundation for this story of Bunker hardening up and getting angry and filling up with a passion to use his powers to change the status quo. As it is, it's all just too ambiguous and makes Bunker look worse for attacking somebody who might have just been about to say, "Only complaint I've got is with all the superheroes in New York, it's just my luck to get rescued by the two who look like a couple of -- guys that won't accept an invitation to dinner to prove how grateful I am."

Oh! I almost forgot about how happy I was yesterday when I heard some news which I'll continue after the caption!

I didn't mean to get so down on stupid people earlier. Stupid people can't help being stupid. Ignorant people, on the other hand, can fix the ignorance. Anyway, sometimes stupid people do exactly the right thing! I've often said that if a local TV news person ever came up to me on the street and tried to get my opinion on something, I would just let out a long string of expletives. And now stupid people are doing just that! I guess it's basically the next planking. If you see a news reporter out on the street, you get on camera and say, "Fuck her in the pussy." The news people look so fucking exasperated when it's done to them! But fuck them! They need to be taken down quite a few pegs. They think they're job is so important to the community, walking around asking people with no informed opinions what they think about topics. That isn't fucking news, assholes. Remember how I said the projects I work on add nothing to the world? Well at least I fucking know that! You stupid fucking news anchors have no clue how little you matter! And yet you think you're some kind of lynchpin to the community and our ability to get by from day to day! Fuck you! Fuck you right in the pussy and/or asshole and maybe the face as well!

Stupid people are the best.

Meanwhile, Tim Drake is busy interrogating one of the would-be suicide bombers from issue one.

When did Red Robin become a Japanese horror monster?

Oh my God, I wish I were a Japanese horror monster! I love Halloween but I've never really gone all out making costumes. Costumes were for New Years Eve parties! But there are two costumes I desperately want to do some time. The first one is the Cats character from Kids in the Hall with the gigantic papier-mâché cat head holding balloons. With his paws, not his head! And the other one is the girl from the well in Ringu. I imagine I'd have to carry a big, hollowed out television all night so I could crawl through it before I killed people. Not actively killed them, of course! Just passively killed them by touching them so that they'd die of fright. Totally not my fault if people die of fear. It's Halloween!

The TerrorMonster that Red Robin is politely interviewing dies when the STAR Labs morphine drip decides to go all STAR Labs morphine gusher. The nurse rushes in and hits the TerrorMonster with the paddles because Will Pfeifer and Kenneth Rocafort obviously don't read Polite Dissent. Never shock a flatline! Sure, that knowledge completely ruins the best movie that Keifer Sutherland was ever in but it's important to know when you're watching something on television and they get it wrong. It's very important so that you can nod sagely at the person next to you and say, "That's a mistake. Idiots."

The Doctor is even better than Doctor House because she figures out how the guy died almost instantly. And she didn't need to run around the hospital going in and out of doors chasing scary monsters while pop music played only to fall in her own trap before finally revealing that the murderer was Old Man McGinty, the guy that was trying to buy the hospital.

Holy shit! If House MD had been a show in the seventies, he could have guest starred on Scooby Doo! That would have been fucking terrific! Why isn't there a new Scooby Doo cartoon with guest stars taken from pop culture's best in this day and age? I want to see Shaggy and Scooby solve a mystery with Lady Gaga and Beyonce.

Okay, okay. Stop getting distracted, Tess. You've been in the Lost Labyrinth of Eternity long enough. Let's get back to the comic book, shall we?

A girl named Theresa Cicero is walking home in New York which means she's going to get violently hassled. Except this issue must take place in the seventies just like my House fantasy! Because she's saved by a themed street gang!

The Warriors had to be one of my top five favorite movies as a kid. This gang is obviously The Wonder Girls.

Another scene shows that STAR Labs is being run by metahumans, two of which are Manchester Black and Josiah Power. For anybody keeping score, Josiah Power is gay. So maybe he and Bunker will work together to teach possible homophobes that seeming as if they're about to be homophobic is dangerous to their health! Because it's apparently acceptable to use violence against somebody who you think might be about to say something offensive.

Um, at the end of the scene I mentioned previously, a STAR Labs building explodes. So the Teen Titans will probably need to investigate that and continue to prove to New York that they're heroes and not dramatic teenage assholes.

Bunker meets the bus driving Evil Ms. Smarty Pants from the previous issue while Beast Boy, having changed into a bonobo, is masturbating on a different floor.

Bunker blows up her head and puts out the fire and saves the day and yay and stuff. It seems like I've been reading this comic book for an eternity! As anybody familiar with my style knows, this trailing end stuff gets really short and bitter because I want to be doing other stuff already! I've spent more than enough time today with the Teen Titans.

So the Evil Ms. Smarty Pants turns out to be a robot named Algorithm with nanobot healing technology. And she's working for Manchester Black who is doing some Scooby Doo villain shit and trying to get STAR Labs to move or fail to move or be blamed for people dying or something. Maybe he has off shore real estate he's trying to sell to them so he can make a few bucks but they aren't biting and he's trying to force their hand. I don't think he's wearing a rubber mask though.

Teen Titans #2 Rating: No change. Now, no change in the rankings doesn't mean I didn't like this comic book. I'm liking it a fuckton more than Lobdell's anus shriveling version. But I think it's currently ranked about right sitting in the middle of the pack. I like that the antagonists have their own plan that doesn't expressly revolve around the Teen Titans. I like that the Teen Titans are acting like fucking heroes instead of just fighting other heroes and vandalizing large swathes of New York. I like that Beast Boy and Bunker are roommates. This comic is headed in the right direction. Finally, Teen Titans fans actually have something worth reading. And Bunker might be headed toward the dark side if he keeps acting out violently against people that are just expressing opinions, no matter how ignorant or hurtful. Or, you know, mysterious since nothing was ever said!