Grayson #4

Uh oh! Somebody pissed off the Spider Women of Spider Island!

After last issue, Spyral probably held a meeting about Dick Grayson and his usefulness to the team. And even though he keeps not following orders and he was sort of responsible for Agent 8's death and he's probably fucking every woman in the organization, Mister Spyral Minos still wants him on the team. At the meeting, he probably had to say, "Just trust me!", about twenty times to his outraged lieutenants. I almost went with "sergeants" because lieutenants is so hard to spell but I got it right on the first try anyway! Not because I'm good at spelling (I'm not terrible!) but because I just got lucky on the first shot. I find, with spell-checker, I'm getting lazier and lazier about my spelling. I just take a few stabs at spelling a word and if I can't get it right, I left-click on it, choose the correct spelling, and move on without having learned a thing.

Back to Mister Spyral Minos, he probably wants Dick on the team for some long con against Bruce Wayne. They currently have him hunting down the body parts of some guy named Paragon, probably for dual reasons: to keep him busy, and to, well, you know, find the body parts of Paragon. While Dick is kept distracted with his spy job, Mister Spyral Minos is probably setting up some scheme to bring down the Batman once and for all. Or he's just grooming Dick so he can get a shot at that ass too.

I don't think the creative team eats a lot of lollipops because it isn't the sucking sound that annoys other people. It's the constant clicking of the lollipop against the teeth that drives them nuts. Although "suck, suck" is much funnier than "clickety clackety" and gets the message across better. Also every person reading is imagining a dick in Dick's mouth. By the way, I'm a sucker, not a hater. Um, of lollipops!

It's time for another mission! This time, Dick and Helena get to infiltrate Checkmate and steal a hard drive with information on Paragon! Which seems like a difficult mission to do since once somebody has a hard drive with important information on it, don't you think they'd copy that information to other drives and clouds and Hello Kitty USB data storage devices? You can't put the genie back in the bottle! Well, sometimes you can, if you're really smart and tricky. You just have to use the genie's arrogance against himself (or herself! Some genies can be female! I saw it on a television show. I think if you're a 'djinn', you're male; if you're a 'Jeannie', female).

We haven't seen a lot from Checkmate in The New 52, so this could be interesting. Or it could just be a lot of "Get them, Pawns!" and "Yes sir, Rook sir!" and "Who let Bishop in the children's ward?!"

Meanwhile at Saint Hadrian's finishing school, a lot of curious girls are coming into their sexuality and practicing kissing on each other and practicing fucking on thick candles. Um, I think. That's what goes on in finishing schools, right?

Holy crap! There's a b-b-b-b-b-boy in the building! Where'd Matron lock up those candles?!

Lucky Dick! Now he's got a band of horny young teenaged murderesses after him! I've never been so envious.

Dick probably won't think he's so lucky since he has a lot of secrets he's trying to keep from everybody at Spyral and Saint Hadrian's. These dripping young lasses might stumble upon one of his Bat Devices! And then where will he be? Oh! Probably having sex with an underage vixen that's blackmailing him into having sex with her or else she'll report him to Mister Minos! Gosh, what a horrible turn of events that would be!

Dick's sucker was actually a means to try to pick up some DNA samples from Mister Minos. I know a better way of sucking that would get a bigger sample! Um, anyway, the sucker was sent off to Batman for analysis and Bruce discovered that Mister Minos keeps a supply of tiny, hungry nanobots that eat all of his DNA so that he doesn't leave any forensic evidence anywhere. Gross. I bet Mister Minos just masturbates all over his office because he knows his little robots will clean it right up for him.

How cute. They're having a bit of a tiff.

This is an excellent example of how to do a comic book well when you hold back information from the reader. Too many comic books begin in the action on the first couple of pages and then flash back to tell the whole story from the beginning. Or they keep having characters learn things which move the plot forward but refuse to give the reader the same information to keep the mystery going. But this book is doing the Paragon thing right. Stormwatch killed some guy named Paragon (or just dismembered him (or, according to this line about the heart by Midnighter, blew him up in orbit)) and now Spyral and Midnighter are separately searching for his parts (as well as other organizations. Emphasis on "organ!"). The reader doesn't know the whole story because this comic doesn't rely on that story for forward momentum. Sure, it's what the plot is all about. But the comic is about Dick and Bruce and their infiltration of Spyral. The pacing on the revelation of the Paragon stuff has been nicely done. Especially this part where we finally get some Apollo action. It's all balanced nicely between the spy stuff and the Bruce stuff and the young girls lusting after Dick stuff.

Oh! They're college girls! Even better! I mean, obviously even better because of arbitrary laws about sexual activity and very specific ages!

Oh, don't get your thick cotton undies in a twist, ya damn Puritans! I'm not interested in the youngings! I'm forty-three and I can barely deal long term with anybody, male or female, born post Empire Strikes Back! Although Nick at Nite has given many young people the pop culture knowledge to interact with my exact level of immaturity. And now with easy access to all media ever, the lines between generations blur rapidly between any two people of any age who are simply curious to consume as much as they can. So while the Empire Strikes Back limit used to be a visceral thing (probably right up to about the turn of the century), now that we're all online, the different generations share many of the same experiences. Like ease of access to tons of pornography!

Pornography should be my generation's "At your age, we had to walk uphill in the snow to school."

Old Tess: "When I was your age, I had to find my pornography in the bushes down the side of a steep creek covered in poisonous snakes and spiders! And we didn't get to pick what kind of porn we masturbated to! Oh no! Beggars can't be heterosexuals! If it was gay male porn, you just squinted a bit and pretended that was a woman's hairy asshole. Oh! Speaking of hair! I don't even know the first time I saw actual female genitalia and not just bush! I once found a magazine called "Girls Who Eat Cum" which was just shot after shot of penises shooting their load onto women's faces. Not a tit or snatch in sight! Did that stop me? By golly, no! I treasured that porn like it was, well, like it was porn! Porn was gold in those days! Oncet, and yes I meant oncet, I found a black and white porn cartoon of Santa's elves fucking Missus Claus. That was all I had for weeks and it was enough! I hid it in the branches of a fucking tree at my elementary school! Okay, I guess it was enough because I wasn't actually masturbating yet. But I could get a boner! Good god could I get a boner! A boner like you never saw before! Young and eager and straining at the waist band of my underwear! Giddy with the possibilities of future sexual adventures! Sexual adventures like, well, I don't know! I guess my ding dong would rub up on the woman's nether hair or something?"

Uh oh! They're onto Dick! Good thing Helena has a crush on him! She'll never rat him out!

Mister Minos must be playing a game with Helena because if I had hired Batman's pool boy and then secret transmissions suddenly began leaving my facility, I'd immediately suspect Batman's pool boy! Everybody remains loyal to Batman! Even Jason Todd is loyal to Batman! Even though he never killed the Joker with a crowbar like he probably should have.

Trade four inexperienced girls for one tiger of a woman like Matron? Baws yes!

Bruce Wayne is a genius. By sending Dick Grayson to a spy school for girls, he'll never be caught! Because all the women just want to eat his tight ass! Spy schools expect a little subterfuge and sabotage now and then. So who cares if Dick Grayson is a spy as long as he's a spy willing to make mama happy.

Later, Dick gets reprimanded by Mister Minos for exposing himself to the young girls on campus.

Come and knock on our door! Take a step that is new! Where the faces are hers and spirals and unmemorable! Three's company too!

Helena reports back to Mister Minos about the unknown broadcasts on campus. She hands over some mini-cameras that one of the girls was using to spy on staff. That's the one that got all the nearly naked pictures of Dick Grayson! Lotti, the camera girl, receives extra credit for her imaginative extra-curricular activities. And all the young girls get paddled for breaking curfew. Why isn't that scene in this comic book? Doesn't DC want to sell lots and lots of comic books?! Doesn't DC like money?

The issue ends with Helena getting Dick Grayson to chase her across the rooftops. Helena has an elementary school crush on Dick Grayson! Except Helena will know what to do once he catches her.

Grayson #4 Rating: I'm not rating the issues this month. I'm just revamping the rankings. Across four issues, Grayson has been a surprisingly charming and fun book. Tim Seeley and Tom King understand the character. They seem to have a plan to fit Dick Grayson into a world that he, at the most fundamental levels of his character, doesn't fit into. Plus Midnighter has been a supporting character!