Gotham Academy #2

Olive joins the Cult of the Bat!

I grew up with the original Degrassi Junior High airing on PBS stations all over America and causing thousands of children to crush hard on Caitlin Ryan and Joey Jeremiah. I think I'm a year younger than Stacie Mistysyn, so you can imagine how my little heart yearned for her love and affection. Then in my twenties, Sailor Moon (with the Canadian dub (another Canadian show to wreak havoc on my unfeeling heart!)) came to syndication and I fell in love with Sailor Mars. No wait, Sailor Jupiter. No, Sailor Venus! All of them? Anyway, I remember crying on the couch while watching the episode with the song "Rainy Day Man". I'm such an asshole. I don't remember what touched me in my thirties. A drunk uncle, maybe? But now in my forties, I get to crush on Gotham Academy! And don't think I'm that pervy old drunk uncle man! I explained all of this in my Cheetah #1 commentary! We are every age we've ever been! So watching Sailor Moon, I am the boy that just about died giving Marilyn Mendoza a rose I picked on the way to school for her birthday! So I can fall in love with Olive Silverlock and Maps Mizoguchi without it being creepy, you judgmental whippersnapper!

This issue begins with snippets of Millie Jane Cobblepot's secret sex diary.

I think she's writing about her clitoris.

While all sexed up from reading old fashioned euphemisms for dingles and crickets, Olive notices the Cult of the Bat race beneath her window. And one of them notices her! Because when you look into the Cult of the Bat, the Cult of the Bat looks into you! That's some profound philosophy I just made up which has never been said by anybody ever.

Later in History Class, Heathcliff and Pom Fritters nearly bang on a desk. I think they've been banging all over the school at night making everybody think a ghost is haunting the buildings. Sometimes I hear the neighbors downstairs banging and I put my mouth really close to the floor and I say in my deepest, most guttural voice, "Put it in my butt."

All of this is to say that Olive and Pom Poms wind up having to do their Gotham History project together. It's because they're Fremeses! That means that they are each the Fremesis of the other! Because Fremeses is the plural for Fremesis, of course! Their relationship is probably going to be a lot like Buffy and Cordelia's relationship. Except hopefully sexier.

I need an artist to draw pictures for my Roller Playing Game, Places & Predators!

I'm so happy that Maps is a roller playing nerd! She's the best.

Here's my version of a Serpents & Spells Character Sheet:

Olive meets Pomegranate at the library which has an owl statue out front. So we know who's running Gotham Academy! No, not Dumbledore, you dumbdumbdork! Forget I even said anything! If you're not going to take me seriously, why even bother? I'm just going to read my comic book in peace now! Stop bothering me with your need for insight about the story from a Grandmaster Comic Book Reader! I'm done with you!

Don't worry, other readers! I wasn't talking to you! Just that smart aleck that couldn't resist a Harry Potter shout out. Fuck Harry Potter! He's just a Frodo wannabe! Frodo and Sam's love story was far greater than any of that juvenile romantic twaddle in the Potter books! Probably!

In the library, Olive and Pommel Horse find a version of Millie Jane's Diary with a map of the North Hall and the cemetery behind it. It's a mystery to be solved! And who better to solve mysteries than a bunch of meddling kids! Although they don't have a dog that one of them hallucinates can talk. That could hurt their ability to trap the old man in the ghost mask.

What are you talking about, Pomeline? That was always so funny when the little black kid with the rich white gentrification specialist used to say that! He did it better than I can!

Something happened the previous summer to Olive but even Olive doesn't know what it was because she can't remember the previous summer. I bet it has something to do with her Wayne Foundation Scholarship! And maybe her mother.

Later that night, Maps and Olive follow the Cult of the Bat out to the cemetery behind the North Hall. That's where all the hauntings have been happening! I'm so scared! They might encounter a g-g-g-g-ghost! Especially after they find the secret entrance to the old Cobblepot family crypt and head down into the darkness!

Screw Alysia Yeoh! Maps is my favorite New 52 character! Not my favorite character I want to have sex with! I'm not a huge and complete perv! Anyway, my favorite character I want to have sex with is still a toss up between Vampire Tig and Supergirl's Bum.

The Cult of the Bat are spouting gibberish (I hope calling their speaking in tongues "gibberish" doesn't offend whoever actually speaks the gibberish language they're gibberishing) when Olive and Maps enter. Olive sees they've got the book from the library and she bravely marches up to take it back because that pompous Pom and her fucksack Heathcliff and their other mysterious friend that is probably Kyle don't deserve the book. But Olive knocks over some candles and sets the stone on fire and now everybody is going to die. But hopefully not before Olive tells us who her fucking mother is!

Gotham Academy #2 Rating: +1 Ranking. The art alone is worth reading this book. And the characters alone are worth reading this book. The mystery isn't enough to keep reading this book because it's just stringing the reader along for the sake of keeping an air of mystery so far. But I think a lot will be revealed next issue, and since there are so many other reasons alone to be reading this book, the mystery can afford to take its time!