Batman Eternal #39

The Riddler is about to ask Mr. Owl about Tootsie Pops.

I just picked up another one of my books from when I was a wee lad and read it while scanning Batman Eternal's cover. It was called My Little Book of Cats and now I'm a bawling, snotty, teary mess.

Why wasn't there a trigger warning on this thing?!

The author, N. Gretchen Greiner, died in 1988 so I wasn't able to send an email telling her how much this book touched me just now. So instead, I sent virtual flowers to her virtual grave (with pictures of her real grave!) and a note of thanks at Find a Grave dot Com. I wonder if anybody ever comes by to clear out the clutter of virtual flowers and notes? Do I have to keep going back if I want her grave adorned with flowers and a note exerting my ego onto her resting place because people have to know that I took the time to appreciate her work?

You know what work I didn't appreciate recently? Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning! Holy crap was that the worst one of the series so far! First off, Jason Voorhees isn't in it. Spoiler alert! The killer is a fucking EMT who decides the appropriate way to react when he finds out that the kid he ditched at childbirth after the mother died was killed by a kid at a work farm for kids with mental problems. The kid that murdered this guy's son is hauled off and placed safely in jail while the EMT goes about murdering anybody else he can find, whether or not they had any connection to the work farm. And after he's dead and the movie needs one of those big twist shocker endings that became the film series' signature endings, Tommy (the kid that murdered Jason at the end of the fourth (and final!) chapter that was played by Corey Feldman. But he's not Corey anymore because it's something like five years later which means that Part V took place in 1990 (but filmed in 1985 (and probably not canonically "1990" but if you were paying attention to dates during the other movies, this one took place in 1990, dammit!))) gets out of his hospital bed and puts on the hockey mask the EMT was wearing that somehow ended up in his hospital dresser and then murders Pam, the psychologist or assistant or whatever she was. It doesn't make any sense! I think you're supposed to think Tommy is the killer throughout the movie and then when he isn't and "Jason" is dead, we're supposed to be relieved. And then shocked when we find out that Tommy has gone crazy like we thought he had but then realized he hadn't but, No!, he really had!

The worst part about this installment was the special effects. I know Tom Savini did the effects for the first one and maybe some of the others before Part V and they were all pretty good and gory. But in this movie, the special effects guys weren't even trying. Most of the shots were of a hatchet being raised, then a reaction shot from the victim, then the victim's arm falling to the ground. I think they blew their wad on the guy getting the flare shoved in his mouth since that was shown on camera where the shot lingered for a few seconds. It wasn't great but at least you saw the kill! One woman gets killed by hedge clippers and you just see her scream, then the hedge clippers are raised and lowered, and then the shot shows the hands of the murderer closing the clippers. Not once do you see the victim stabbed. It's all left to your imagination. Except later when the body is discovered and we get a look at her face which just looks like someone covered her eyes with red dye. At one point a guy gets his head cut off while riding a motorcycle. Sounds gruesome, right?! Maybe if seeing a blade flash out in front of the camera which shows the perspective of the guy riding the cycle, then the shot changes to the cycle's tires going by, and then somebody tosses a rubber head across the frame without any blood or gore at all makes you queasy.

So Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning has a horrible plot, a lousy murderer, a crappy twist ending, and the shittiest special effects of the series so far. But it does have a lot more naked boobies than the others! It also seems to be the first one to really begin introducing the stupid, silly, jokey characters that make the movie seem rather silly instead of scary. Perhaps somebody pointed out that A Nightmare on Elm Street, released the previous year, had a character that kept cracking one liners and it made a ton of money (maybe. I'm pretty sure it was successful!). So they said, "Make sure that shit is funny! Maybe throw in a fat guy that has chocolate smeared all over his face and candy bars squirreled away in every pocket. Get it?! He's fat! So he eats like a slob and loves candy! Ha ha! Fat people! Can you believe they can eat so much?!"

Oh shit. Um, sorry Batman! Why do I keep forgetting this blog is about comic books! I blame N. Gretchern Greiner for distracting me this time! And then the shitty segue I came up with to begin talking about Friday the 13th!

If you're so smart, Red Robin, why didn't figure out the riddle on sight as well?

Don't worry, everybody! Batman has it figured out! He'll take it from here like he always does. And while he heads off to the Pineskills Casino to confront The Riddler, Mister Freeze is captured by a bunch of men with guns on his way to Blackgate Prison, and Vicki Vale gets the hardest assignment of her career: she must learn the truth! Ha ha! That's a good one! News outlets don't want truth anymore! They just want access to politicians and police whenever they need a quote or an interview. So why would they want to ferret out the truth of the statements made by those people?! Better to have access to their lies than point out that they're liars and lose them completely.

Once Batman finds The Riddler, he learns that Nygma received a poorly designed invitation as well but chose to ignore it because none of the "i"s were dotted with little question marks. But that doesn't mean The Riddler doesn't want to play his own game. So he challenges Batman to answer more riddles before he'll help Batman uncover the person behind Gotham's problems.

Meanwhile a whole bunch of super villains have been freed from incarceration and gathered together on the street along with Catwoman who got an invite and actually decided it was worth her time to show.

I have some advice for you Batman! Just give up and move to Metropolis already.

The person behind it all gives all of these goons every resource taken from Batman and Wayne Enterprises. Money, weapons, huge batsuits equipped with Gatling gun fists. They receive them all and are told to begin fucking up Gotham.

Oh man. I hope Wrath isn't behind all of this!

The Riddler refuses to help Batman and would rather die in an avalanche. So they're consumed by snow. Too bad for Riddler, I'm looking at the cover of Batman Eternal #40 right now and it looks like the avalanche doesn't help him get away. But there's good news for Vicki Vale! The deadline on her Truth Report has just been extended!

Other bad news: she might be too dead to take advantage of the extra time.

Batman Eternal #39 Rating: No change. I really have forgotten what it's like to just sit down and read a comic book without wanting to suddenly write about it and maybe go off on a tangent for five minutes before getting back to the comic book where the entire flow of the story has been interrupted by my need to write about Friday the 13th. Are comic books even worth reading when you're not entertaining yourself by writing about them and cracking stupid jokes? I don't think they're worth three to four dollars without all this extra commenting fun! I guess, in a way, I'm more entertained by myself than I am by the comic books. Yay for me!