Klarion #5

Ooh! This issue looks promising!

I just found out today about mortality! Did anybody mention this to you guys? How come only Tumblr is talking about this?! It's so important! We're all, like, going to die one day! Think about it! It's like one minute we're here and then eighty years later, not here! What the fuck?! How come nobody's mentioned this to me before? Why isn't the media reporting on this?! It doesn't seem like the kind of thing you leave out. I would begin every newscast with incomprehensible screaming and blubbering followed by an in-depth consumer report about how to keep death from happening. If I'd known about this whole mortality bullshit, I wouldn't have wasted the first half of my life! How does one start this thing over?!

I mean, I'm not totally stupid and naive. I knew other people died! Heck, I've even killed some of them (don't worry! They were assholes and misgenderers). But me?! That's crazy! Me? Not existing?! How does that even work? I'm the center of the universe? If the center falls out, it all collapses in on itself! I'm sorry to inform you all that one day I will die and that'll be it for all of you. Poof! Out like a candle! Just like that fat guy with the fat brother once said.

Maybe nobody told me because look at how terrified I was right from the beginning. Also, I apparently was born wearing gloves made out of human skin. I guess I should have had a twin?

Now that I've learned the most important truth there is, I think I need to turn over several new leafs. I should probably stop being mean to other human beings just because they are terrible at writing and I keep wasting $2.99 every month buying their comic books. I mean, that's on me. That's my fault. So, Ann Nocenti, I'm sorry for treating you like garbage. From now on, you will get nothing but respect from me. That doesn't mean I'm going to be kind to your writing, of course. But I won't say things like, "If I had a time machine and a shrink ray and a pistol with only one bullet and some scuba gear, I'd go back in time and assassinate Ann Nocenti's father's fastest sperm on the day she was conceived." I will try to be encouraging! I will say things like, "Come on, Ann Nocenti! I know you can write dialogue that's coherent. That can be understood. That makes sense!" Or maybe, "Ann, you write like Shakespeare. Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Trite. Predictable. Full of cliches." Or even, "Go Ann Nocenti! You're burning up the quarter mile! Ann Nocenti! Go Ann Nocenti! Go Ann Nocenti! You're postal from the hip hop child! Ann Nocenti! Go Ann Nocenti! You are supreme! The dicks will scream! For Ann Nocenti! Go GO GO GOGOGOGOGOGOGOGO!"

This comic book starts off completely awesome if you're illiterate!

I hope Ann Nocenti looked up the definition of "uncanny valley" since last issue. Not that it matters. She can write whatever she wants to write! This is a work of fiction. Even if its untrue that crocodiles love rotten meat, Katana is still free to say that because Katana is a character that believes things that may sometimes not be true. It's not like Ann Nocenti actually believes that nonsense. Or one of her characters might say that cats can't swim. Perfectly reasonable for a character to think that even if it's false. It's not like Ann Nocenti, an experienced, wise, world traveler, would actually believe that nonsense. So when the characters in Klarion misunderstand what the uncanny valley is, it's just part of their characterization. They're just dullards that don't know how to crack open a dictionary (or type the word "dictionary" into a search engine). And Rasp really is kind of dumb as you can see from the above conversation between Klarion and big, fat, chubby Zell. Rasp will put anything in his mouth!

Before Klarion can pop the Future Swag Buddybot into his face, he asks Swag if it's magic. He already knows it's future tech! The only reason he asks that is so Ann Nocenti can have Swag say, "Magic is nothing but a future we haven't met yet." Yay! So when I feel like I have to poop, is that my body casting a poop spell that will conjure poop in the future? I knew there was an explanation for why we poop!

After Zell was warning Klarion about eating a strange, future Buddybot, she tells him to not be scared when he hesitates. That girl sure does like to send mixed messages! Firs she's all, "I'm going to kill you with my hair!" and then she's all, "No wait, kiss me, you man!" Now she's all, "Don't eat that gross thing!" and then she's all, "You're scared to eat it, you chickenshit bastard fuckhole!" Then she's all, "I love to eat! Tee hee! That's why I'm so disgustingly out of shape! Boo hoo!"

Trevor McCarthy does know he's drawing Zell super hot and skinny, right? Even though his character designs looked exactly the same way and yet she was labeled as "chubby"? Does Trevor McCarthy not know what "chubby" means? Maybe he and Ann should split the cost of a dictionary.

After some wacky goings on in which Ann Nocenti is able to say something the same way but differently three times at least twice, everybody is expelled from Klarion's Every Kiss Begins With K-Verse. And they all lived happily ever after. Unless you all really want me to read the last thirteen pages. It's just going to be more of the same! Pretty pictures with lots of purple and blue colors surrounded by a bunch of words that make the pictures less interesting. Sigh. I guess I've come this far. I'll keep trudging along.

"Ann Nocenti, you're doing great! Keep up the good work! Love what you're doing with Klarion! Greased Lightning!"

Meanwhile at The Neapolitan Club, Rasp is getting his junk all up inside the Uncanny Valley.

Rasp: "Eww! Eww! You're so fucking hideously freaky, Contessa!"
Contessa: "Wouldn't having three nipples be fun?"
Rasp: "I'm so put off by your near human but not quite human looks!"
Contessa: "Let us exchange junk so that we can feel each others orgasms."
Rasp: "Don't look at me while I fuck you because you're freaking me out!"
Contessa: "Inna future, wes does not needs any secrets acause we all share da same infomations! We just fink, 'I wanna tell dat knocks knocks joke' and da pooter download da knock knock jokes right inta our brains and we's all laughs and laughs!"
Rasp: "Did I just put my dick in your vagina or did you just put my dick in your vagina?"

I think it's more like masturbation than incest. She's just an extension of the palm of his hand, after all.

Coal (the bad guy. I think?) gets a couple pages of back story. Apparently he walked in on his father just as his dad was about to blow his own brains out because some people stole his patents. The bullet blew off his father's hair and a piece of his skull which lodged into Coal's heart. I think this is some kind of metaphor for Coal's daddy issues. His father's failures weigh heavy on Coal's heart or something. I don't really care because the entire conflict of this comic book makes no sense. Klarion is only in the middle of it all because his name is on the cover. Also, I guess he's super powerful at magic (which is just the future that hasn't become the present yet, remember!).

I think Zell and Klarion are in a romantic entanglement as well? The only thing I'm sure of is that Teekl should be the costar and she's been nothing but a whiff of a monster in the K-Zone.

"Let's go live now to Rachael O'Rachael live on the streets talking a man who fears new technology. 'Sir? What do you have to say about the onslaught of technology on your life?' 'Get off my lawn!' 'You heard it hear first!' Now let's go to Simon O'Simon who has found a member of the embrace technology crowd! Simon? 'So, how do you feel about Luddites?' 'Fuck old people! What the fuck is a Luddite?' Ha ha! Good interview, Simon! Perhaps we should 'Google that for her,' right?"

My fake conversation isn't nearly as bad as the actual conversation that continues on the radio broadcast. One thing I know I'll never be any good at: faking Ann Nocenti dialogue. Here's a good moment from the radio debate: "Robots have rights. Just like sentient beings." "Really, Chuck? Even if we're scared of them?" That's hard hitting journalism right there! Apparently fear negates intelligence! I mean, I knew fear within an intelligent person negated their own intelligence. Happens all the time. Just look at the war on terror. But I didn't know that fear of somebody else negated the feared person's intelligence! I'm going to try that sometime.

Sometimes we get sad glimpses into Ann Nocenti's real life like this panel here. Friends hate all of their friends a little bit? Does that make me her friend?

Klarion's Future Swag Buddybot is birthed from his palm and he instantly abandons it to Zell because it's a girl. Plus it's a burden. Also it's no fun and needy and gross and a baby. On the news in the background where the mandatory television set showing news always appears in every comic book panel ever printed, a tornado warning is given for the surrounding area. But Klarion realizes it isn't a tornado at all! It's Coal's Buddybots flying off the shelves!

Klarion abandons his baby and Zell and heads off to battle Coal for some reason. I don't know why he's battling Coal. What does he have against Coal and the Neapolitan Club? Anyway, Klarion claims, for the first time ever, that his magic is from nature so it's going to destroy Coal's techno-magic. Although Klarion's entire motivation for the last two issues was to gain as much techno-magic as possible to kick all the asses forever. I guess once he had his Techno-Baby, he changed his mind. What a dick.

Klarion #5 Rating: -2 Ranking. This comic book really doesn't make any fucking sense. Ann Nocenti may have ideas she wants to write about, to debate, and to discuss, but she doesn't know how to form them into a coherent piece of fiction. Her characters are just things which speech bubbles come out of and whatever is in the speech bubble generally has no relation to the character at whom the speech bubble is pointing. I think she'd be better off just writing an essay on technology versus nature rather than trying to force whatever points she's trying to bring up into an entertaining comic book. She's proven four times now that she just can't do it with any skill at all. Perhaps earlier in her career, she did some good work at Marvel. I don't know. I've never read it. But so far in The New 52, I just don't think her return to comics has been very successful. But there are some reviewers elsewhere on the internet who do, so what do I know (besides knowing that those other reviewers have no dignity, sense, or intelligence)?