Gotham Academy #9

Are Gotham Academy polo shirts on sale yet?

Tonight on Facebook, a cousin's wife's status update read "God is real." I figured the other side of the debate needed representation as well so I posted "God is not real" as my a status update. It's a super clever retort! Well, it's not really a retort since I didn't directly reply to her well-researched opinion. It's actually just an experiment to see whose super intelligent and non-controversial statement about the way we view reality earns more praise! Some people might think it's a dick move but it wasn't meant to be that way at all! She just reminded me that I hadn't spouted my atheist agenda for months while she posts Bible quotes and secret letters to Jesus on a daily basis! Her husband posts daily pictures of the different kinds of beer he is drinking. I think the two might be related! I mean, I think their posts might be related! I didn't mean to suggest their marriage was an incestual union and an affront to nobody.

When we last saw Olive Silverlock, Maps wasn't anywhere around her so I didn't really care what was happening. But she was reading a letter from her dead mother which reminds me I should get to work on all of my posthumous correspondence to all the dicks who outlive me. I bet the stigma of incest doesn't exist in the afterlife, so putting some jokes about fucking my mother in my Death Letters is in okay taste, right? I should write a letter to O, the girl I had a crush on in high school, like the letter she wrote me that one time where she apologized for having done something horrible but was smart enough to not actually mention anything horrible that she might have done! Not that I was looking for her to apologize for anything or mad at her for any reason at all even! I just knew that being friends with her was killing me and so I was just trying to move on! Apparently she thought that was the best time to apologize for, I don't know, blowing all the members in Trixter at that concert in Oakland we went to together and she and her girlfriend disappeared backstage for an hour? That's just a guess! My buddy Joe and I just hung out in the parking lot with a shitload of Binaca at the ready.

Joe was the first guy I ever knew who liked the band Extreme and who sucked up his own semen into his mouth after coming on a woman's stomach. What a great guy!

I thought I liked Extreme after Joe introduced me to their music because it's their song "Come Out and Play" in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure when Beethoven is jamming on the organ and the other historical figures are running rampant through the mall. I was all, "Shit! That fucking rocks! Hells yeah Extreme is awesome!" But then I read the liner notes on the cassette tape to find out that Dweezil Zappa was responsible for that entire guitar solo and pretty much all of the really technical and difficult guitar solos on the album. Then I was all, "Extreme can suck it!" Then Extreme came out with "More Than Words" and I was all, "Extreme can double suck it!" True story. More or less.

You know, I still have that letter from O! I should transcribe it here because this isn't fucking "Burn All the Letters" or some shit. And no, I didn't just keep this one letter in a secret crying vault! I have all the correspondence ever sent to me in old fashioned letter form! But I won't transcribe it. At least not yet! Maybe I'll ask her permission first. That seems like the more appropriate way to act, right?

If that were anybody but Maps sneaking up on somebody in the dark and screaming, "THERE YOU ARE!", at the back of their head, I wouldn't believe they were sorry. But Maps is kind of spazzy, in the non-ableist meaning of that word, fuckface.

People who think words like "dumb" and "spastic" are ableist are the kind of people that are not allowed to read my most secret thoughts and extreme desires. Those are people who are refusing to let words evolve while thinking that everybody in the world should strive to be exactly like they are. You can let the negative connotation of some words die out, you know. I mean, unless you keep fucking reminding everybody every time you hear the fucking words. I have a sneaking suspicion that it isn't about trying to save hurt feelings at all and more about controlling and policing the things other people say so that you feel some kind of power--any kind at all! No matter how petty!--in your life.

Maps reminds Olive that they're in this thing called Pizza Detective Club and Olive is all, "Okay! Let's hunt monsters and not ask me about the letter behind my back or why my eyes are red!" And that's how the monster hunt begins!

I hope this series doesn't end out on Maps's parents lake house with all of Maps's friends visiting her while Maps leads them into the woods on one last adventure as Olive narrates something like, "It didn't matter that there were no maps or dice or monsters. Maps saw the monsters. We did not. All we saw was the death of hope and the loss of our friend."

Boy, I remember way back in my commentary for Issue #1 when I claimed Pomeline was my favorite because she flipped Olive off on panel! Who knew my heart would be stolen by the rambunctious monster loving Maps?!

The team investigates the cemetery where Tristan the Teen-Bat was attacked. They find some fur which Colton takes to analyze in his secret laboratory which he obviously has because he needs some place to make his fireworks and drugs.

I hate Monte Carlo sandwiches because sometimes they're on menus with Monte Cristo sandwiches and my brain stabs me in the back and orders the Monte Carlo instead of the delicious deep fried sandwich I truly wanted.

Tristan discovers that the hair is wolf fur which causes Pomeline to gather everybody up to hear the story of how Werewolves are made! I know! I know! The daddy werewolf approaches the mommy werewolf and says, "Um, hey." Then he flips his hair in a manner that is attractive but still the mommy werewolf is unsure if she should give him a baby. So the daddy werewolf has to figure out how to do something extremely manly and competent in front of the mommy werewolf, like rebuilding the engine on a VW Bus or rescuing a child from being hit by a speeding train. Then the mommy werewolf's eyes will bug out of her head and she will howl and he will howl and then they'll do it and voila! Somehow that makes a baby werewolf. I would get into the details but they're really boring unless you're currently engaged in them.

Somehow while the Pizza Detective Club is learning all about werewolves from Pomeline (without Maps interrupting at all even though she knows twice as much about werewolves as Pom does!), Olive disappears. Some Pizza Detective Club they turned out to be! They lose one of their own and they still don't have any pizza! They're doing a worse job than the Hardy Boys written by Scott Lobdell!

Olive has gone back to her room where she finds Maps's creepy ass roommate rearranging Olive's posters! I think Maps's roommate might be a wraith or a ghoul. This is the Ghoul's Dorm after all. Ha ha!

After Olive chases off Maps's roommate Katherine, somebody slips some Permanent Records under her door. Inside the manila envelope, Olive finds some papers that indicate her mother was a supervillain named Calamity! That sounds exactly like the type of supervillain that would die all the time and then come back from the dead!

I love House of Secrets! It's like my favorite comic ever at this exact moment when I'm not thinking of other ones which I probably like better!

Doctor Strange tells Olive a bunch of stuff Olive probably shouldn't know because he's a manipulative ass. He sends Olive to go bother Kirk Langstrom and Tristan the Teen-Bat (and also Macpherson and her dog, Ham, since they all seem to be having a party at midnight). Mac and Kirk head out to get a coffee so the girls can speak with Tristan alone. Maps asks MacPherson in Cat, "Can I has a soda?" (which should actually be "Can I haz soda?" but I'm not really that nitpicky, especially when it comes to Maps), and MacPherson corrects her grammar. Oh, you're so uncool, Miss Mac! You're not hip to the groove, dig it?

As Tristan and Olive talk, the gym teacher jumps through the window. Also, the gym teacher is a werewolf. I've still got my fingers crossed that the girls' phys ed teacher is the White Rabbit. Va-va-va-voom! Anyway, Tristan flies off with the Werewolf while the rest of the Pizza Detective Club arrive.

Uh oh. Maps is the Faith of this Scooby Gang?!

Maps has a plan to stop the werewolf all drawn up in a cute crayon chart because only the most adorable and brightest and well-loved people draw hilariously cute crayon cartoons. But first they all have to get to the gym without being distracted by their dead mothers and/or wolves in tennis shorts. Most of the Pizza Detective Club are successful. Only Olive makes the rookie mistake of hearing her mother call to her and then running headlong into a wolf in tennis shorts. So amateurish!

Olive's mother tries to possess Olive so that she burns down Gotham City. But since that already happened in Batman Eternal, Olive decides it would be derivative and lame. So instead she waits for Colin to shoot the werewolf with a tranquilizer dart.

After everybody heads off instead of celebrating Pizza Detective Club's first big mystery solved, Pom ushers Olive into the theater building to tell her she knows all about Calamity. And that's when Calamity attacks and begins to burn down the school! Or, arguing the other side, it's when Olive Silverlock has a freaky hallucination and a severe mental breakdown.

Gotham Academy #9 Rating: +1 Ranking. Why is this comic book so much better than every Superman comic book currently being published by DC Comics? Because the characters are the foundation of this comic book. This isn't just a book about a bunch of interchangeable characters who solve mysteries. This is a book about a bunch of kids with distinctly different personalities and problems who are becoming good friends while messing around investigating mysteries that are becoming more and more dangerous. Superman's comic books mostly suck right now because everybody has forgotten the character of Superman. They aren't taking the same character and putting him in a different situation. They've taken an unrecognizable twat and put him in a situation that Superman would deal with in a completely different and more rational and peaceful fashion. Also Gotham Academy looks beautiful. But you just can't go wrong when you write interesting characters. Put them in any kind of situation you want! The readers will follow because they want to see how Maps reacts and how Pomeline toughs it out and how Kyle mopes around and how Olive...well, I don't really care what Olive does. Just give me more Maps!