Worlds' Finest #31

What happened to Wonder Woman and her Pegasus? Was that just a dream I had? Oh wait. It was a Greg Pak story so I was probably forced to forget it for future plot reasons.

Currently in Worlds' Finest, we're all learning the secret history of Superman and Batman. Because if there are two characters in the DC Universe that nobody knows much about, it's these two guys. How did they become the men they became?! Where did their super powers come from? What were their childhoods like? Nobody knows! It's secret history that has seemingly never been explored in the last seventy five plus years of Batman and Superman's existence. So far we've learned that Batman's parents were murdered and Superman grew up on a farm. These events formed the foundation for their philosophical beliefs! Batman decided nobody should ever be the victim of crime ever again. Superman learned that platitudes only really work on a farm where your neighbors are many acres removed from your solitary existence and things get a little bit more complicated when you move out of your elderly parents' home and into the big city where you can finally fuck a girl in your room without your mother constantly reminding you to keep the door open when you have female guests in the house which totally kills a boner.

This is the second time this month that Lois worried about how she was going to report on the end of the world. I don't think people are going to need a reporter to tell them about the apocalypse, Lois.

Luckily for Lois, this current catastrophe was just the start of the first war with Apokolips and she'll have plenty of war stories to report on for years to come. Too bad I think Lois Lane is one of the first people killed in the war, so I guess I shouldn't have begun the last sentence with "luckily for Lois."

As satellites came crashing down on city after city, Superman tried saving as many days as possible. And while Superman tried to save the world from being destroyed by its own satellites, Lois Lane bothered emergency workers with hard-hitting questions!

All the communication satellites have come crashing down to Earth, so Lois can't fact check that thing about oceans and deserts. But she's fairly certain that she thinks she once heard something about the Earth being less city and more ocean and desert. Maybe?

Superman can't save everybody in Metropolis but Batman flies in to help! I guess Batman just looked at Gotham, shrugged his shoulders, and said, "Fuck it. I'm helping a city that deserves to be saved." Or maybe he already saved everybody! He is The Batman, after all. Greatest super hero in the DC Universe! Just ask DC's accountants!

Batman left Gotham in the paws of his wife and the claws of his daughter, Catwoman and Robin! According to Lois Lane, Gotham hadn't been hit as hard. But even if that were true, I think the criminals of Gotham would take advantage and turn the city into a burning mass of suddenly empty stores. While all the citizens of Metropolis act heroically, the citizens of Gotham would just murder, loot, kill, and take advantage of the situation. Gothamites are bastards!

This cliche spouting bore is the greatest journalist on Earth?

I shouldn't be so hard on Lois Lane's narration of the secret history of her lover and his best friend. She's a robot now. Her language center was probably programmed by a non-poetic mathematician. When she was alive, she probably wrote florid descriptions of the most mundane news items, elevating them to compelling stories that kept people coming back to her blog day after day. But now she's a robot trying to form elegant thoughts from a sorely lacking database of common and ordinary words. Kind of like my brain!

Supergirl helps save Gotham but she's not allowed to stop and pose for pictures. Her name is Supergirl. She came to Earth from seemingly nowhere to become a living weapon and also a secret. But soon she'd become Robin's best friend. I bet that friendship would have made a really fun comic book!

No it's not! Will you people stop being so excited about appearing on shitty local television stations?! You're only feeding the monster!

When I was fifteen and didn't know any better, I appeared on a local news segment about one of those make your own video shops that were popular in malls in the mid to late eighties. A couple friends and I would hang around the place talking to the two women who ran it. We would basically loiter until they grew so bored because no paying customers were coming in that they'd let us film a video for free. If I ever decide that my dignity has become absolutely valueless (I'm not quite there yet!), I might have to digitize some of the videos and post them. Although that really seems like the kind of thing you threaten to do to somebody unless they pay you a lot of money. Maybe one of my cohorts from back then will pay to keep them off of the internet!

Intri shows up to beat the crap out of Supergirl and to show off her cool heels a little bit more. I think she's the main reason this history is secret! Because for some reason, she keeps showing up in Superman's life over and over again. I think she has a crush on him.

After the satellites had stopped falling, Batman decided to break into Terry Sloan's house, knock the teeth out of Terry Sloan's paid guards who are just trying to do their jobs, and steal Sloan's Kryptonite. So what makes Batman any different than one of the fucking villains he's always trying to stop?! Sloan may seem like a dick but does that mean he should have his property stolen? Does that mean the men that work security at his home should be disfigured?! Even Earth-2 Batman is an asshole!

Lois and her big scoop enter the crumbling Daily Planet building because that's where her webcam is located. If only Jimmy Olsen had gone into photography on Earth-2 instead of gay porn, Lois Lane's life could have been saved that day. Instead, she had to rely on her own equipment and technology to film her interview with Lustig. But that story will have to be concluded next issue.

Worlds' Finest #31 Rating: No change. I've read hundreds, maybe thousands of boring comic books over the years. I just mention my qualifications to say that this comic book isn't exactly boring. It feels unnecessary but it's not quite boring. When I'm reading it, I get a vague sense of entertainment. The art has that slightly odd, almost bad style that I actually quite enjoy. Maybe knowing that just about everybody in it is going to die fills me with warm fuzzies as well. What I'm trying to say is I won't miss this book when it's over next month but I don't mind sitting down and spending a little time with it until then.