Friday, September 30, 2016

Justice League #5


How is Batman helping? Get the fuck out of here.

The Commentary!
Oh! First page: "The Extinction Machine Finale"! I'm as excited as the first time my mom dropped me off at school in kindergarten and I thought I was free from her forever! That's actually a lie. I wasn't excited about school at all. In fact, I refused to participate for months. Mrs. McFarland would try to get me involved in the "curriculum" and I would throw a fit and refuse. So she finally just let me sit alone at a table with some crayons and shit until I felt comfortable enough with the daily routine to join in. I think it was playing "Button, Button, Who's Got the Button?" which finally sealed the deal and made me realize school wasn't entirely bad. Also my friend Judy who was probably the first friend I ever made.

Here's the report card assessment from Mrs. McFarland. It's interesting because forty years later, I still recognize the essential me in this report. Mrs. McFarland was an incredibly astute, compassionate woman.

11-9-76: “Jeff is a fine boy. He does have his ‘problems’ but I see progress every day. He has an excellent mind.” 1-28-77: “Jeff continues to make great progress. He is entering into nearly all activities willingly now.” 4-14-77: “Jeff has days when his ‘mood’ affects the way he participates.” She gave me a minus (as opposed to a check which is good, I guess!) in the following categories: Interacts positively with others, Accepts guidance from others when necessary, Feels good about himself, Has self-discipline, Is emotionally able to cope with problems, Demonstrates an attempt to solve his own problems, and Uses time to good advantage.

I'm fairly certain the school year began just after Labor Day at the beginning of September. So it took until January of the next year for me to begin to participate. Mostly. I'm sure in this day and age, I would have been diagnosed and tested and medicated and labelled. But in the seventies? You know what the answer was? Patience and hard work. Treating each individual child like an individual and not like a disorder. Mrs. McFarland had to deal with every kid and their peculiarities with kindness and patience and, when needed, a stern and unyielding demeanor. I don't say this to take a shot at children with disorders that, knowing about them, will help the child have a better shot at surviving the system. I say this to point out that Mrs. McFarland was a fucking saint. How the fuck she dealt with five year old me (I was four during September! I guess my mom couldn't wait to get me out of the house!) and a dozen or more other fucked up kids, I'll never know! I would have been demanding something to sedate these little fuckers. Like maybe a really slow carbon monoxide leak? Not enough to put them out and kill them all but maybe just get them drowsy and lethargic for the entire day!

Although, teachers today are probably bigger saints. Now they have to treat each child with a list of particular demands from the parents that are simply asshole parent demands which interfere with the teacher's business. Probably. I have no evidence to support that assumption except for my observations of most parents being assholes. They're worse than dog owners who don't leash their dogs! Or vapers who think it's okay to vape wherever the fuck they want because laws haven't caught up with them yet! Hey, all of you assholes I just mentioned?! Have some fucking respect for other people and stop being such selfish pricks!

This issue begins with Aquaman declaring he's going to save the world. Ha ha! Good one! What he's actually doing is taking his bag of crystal Precious Moments Zodiac figurines to show to the other Justice League members. I'm guessing they won't be impressed. Oh, sure. Wonder Woman will be polite about it. But her vagina will dry up so quickly that Aquaman himself might dehydrate and die.

Aquaman is actually seeding the Earth with his figurines. They say they're related to him. Oh yeah, he hears them speaking to him. So Aquaman is either saving the world or going insane. Insane for Precious Moments Figurines! Who hasn't been there, amirite?!


The Green Lanterns are an unknown amount of light years from Earth and yet they can still communicate instantly with Cyborg. That's impressive! Not wait! The word I wanted is impossible!

Who is editing Bryan Hitch's Justice League? Oh wait! I can check that for myself: Brian Cunningham. Oh boy. He's one of those editors who got super upset at fans when fans pointed out Cullen Bunn's Aquaman was the biggest shit ever shat by an Aquaman writer. At least now I know why he defended such a bad idea for an Aquaman story: he doesn't know anything about the DC Universe. Why else would he not tell somebody to fix the "Kent Farm, Metropolis" label on the previous scene? I'm not going to argue whether the farm is in Metropolis or some rural suburb of Metropolis or Smallville or wherever. What I will argue is calling it the Kent Farm. Clark and Lois haven't used the name Kent since they came to Earth-New-52! I wouldn't even feel the need to mention it if it had been called the "White" farm even though they now go by "Smith" because at least that would be closer to the truth! This is just shoddy work, Brian Cunningham. Don't you care about your job? I bet you never make a mistake when cashing your paycheck!

Meanwhile, Superman seems to be doing just fine inside the outer core of the Earth. Seems about right. No oxygen. High pressures. Intense heat. No yellow sunlight. Just another day being a poorly thought out character that can do virtually anything the writer needs him to do because his name is Superman! Although there had better be a story after this one showing how his powers aren't that great and he's actually not as overpowered as haters think he is!


Just in case the threat to the world was beginning to seem abstract and non-existent, here's a scene where the heroes acknowledge the world is getting fucked in the ass (nonconsensually!) while they're busy elsewhere. It's a good thing Aquaman is on the job! I wonder if I just opened a portal to a secret kingdom by typing a phrase that's never been typed before?

Across the world, newscasters are asking the question, "Where is the Justice League?" Oh, grow up, you fucking dicks. Fix your own goddamn problems! Save yourselves! Shit happens and people die. You can't expect a team of self-involved, narcissistic assholes with super powers to be there to save every single person in the world from every fucking disaster, can you?! Fucking comic book reporters and comic book journalists are the fucking worst. I mean, I guess they're better at their jobs than actual reporters and journalists. But that still doesn't make them anything more than assholes who think they're somehow more important than they really are. How shitty must a local news anchor feel after they report what's been trending on the Internet? I wonder how many of them are cutters?

The Justice League realize that they've been fighting against the forces that were trying to stop The Kindred. So now they've decided to stop fighting the things that have been destroying the world (you know, the Ben Wa balls and the Alien Bed Bugs) and fight against the giant meat puppets singing in Canada. I don't know. I'm not saying I'm a genius (I'll let other people point that out) but what have the Giant Singing People Puppets done that was so bad so far? The other things are destroying the Earth. The Singing Giants have only borrowed the Justice League's powers for a few moments here and there. Oh. That just answered my question. I almost forgot the whole narcissist part of the description of super heroes. They don't give a shit about stopping the threat to the Earth when there's a threat to their super powers!

Without having any knowledge of what the singing giants are up to, the Justice League decide to join forces with the Alien Bed Bugs to destroy The Kindred. So the Green Lanterns now decide to import more of the disastrous buggers to Earth in the hopes of stopping The Kindred from singing. Simply because the Justice League can't stand to not stop everything that seems alien to them. I hope Aquaman plants the figurines and saves the day by empowering The Kindred and embarrassing the rest of the Justice League.

Aquaman plants the final crystals and Superman manages to stop the Earthquake balls so the world isn't destroyed. Which is a good thing for everybody on Earth but also a good thing for The Kindred because now they get to finish their song without being interrupted by a destroyed Earth. Nobody still knows why they need to sing though. But if the Justice League thinks they're singing for a bad reason, I suppose I should think that as well! Go Justice League! Stop those singing fucks!


I've been telling Superman from the start that he should be pushing these things out of the Earth and not deeper inside!

Just before the Giant Singing People Puppets are stopped by Superman and his final Ben Wa Ball, they reveal that their song was going to begin the Forever Crisis. Fuck you and your Crises, DC! Besides, you already had an Infinite Crisis. How is a Forever Crisis really any different?! You fucking topped yourselves out with Infinite Crisis. You blew your load! You have no way to outdo yourselves now! I think it's time to go smaller. Your next crisis should be the Quantum Crisis.

So Superman zaps the Singing Giants with the final Ben Wa Ball and they fall apart and become just people named Tiny and Jason and Princess again. But apparently they achieved their song and Forever Crisis has been loosed. Maybe it was loosed throughout all time though and we've already witnessed how it affected the DC Universe in the past. This song, Forever Crisis, is exactly why DC has had so many crises and reboots and Armageddons. It's because these fuckers sang their fucking stupid song. Anyway, the Justice League congratulates themselves on stopping whatever the fuck they just stopped by basically just stopping everything that seemed out of the ordinary and getting lucky. Too bad they're the Justice League so the next threat has to be even more massive than this one!

The Ranking!
+0! Poor fucking Aquaman. This story humiliates him far more than any story I can remember since the four issue mini-series where he got a new costume and was psychoanalyzed by the antagonist. Bryan Hitch had to figure out a way to make Aquaman part of the world saving story arc and all he could come up with was Aquaman swimming around the Earth playing with dolls? Not that Batman did much better but at least he got to interact with the others and pretend like he was being insightful and helpful by telling everybody that they had to stop the bad thing quickly! Aquaman was basically given a distraction so that he didn't get in the way of the story. And then he gets a Narration Box at the end where he speaks directly to the reader: "Magic crystals and you scoffed." Yeah? I'm still scoffing! Because what the fuck did they do?! Sure, you say they saved the world from breaking apart but isn't that what Superman was doing? You say they stopped the Singing Giants' song but it actually wasn't stopped! You did nothing, you fish fucker. Bryan Hitch tried to make you seem important and he actually just shined a light on how useless you truly are. Eat a dork!

Team Titans #6


Now kiss!

In this extra special episode, the Team Titans decide to visit their past selves and their families. Just a second!

Okay, I'm back. My cat Pelafina who sleeps on a fur mushroom beside me was growling in her sleep and her tail actually got all poofy. So I woke her up from her catfight nightmare and she looked around confused and yelled at me a few times before rushing off, presumably to find the cat she had just been fighting in her head and to make sure it wasn't still in the apartment.

Anyway, none of the Titans have a satisfactory visit, except maybe Dagon. The Team Titans discover that they didn't just change the future of this Earth but that this Earth's past isn't exactly like their Earth's past. Kilowatt discovers that his family is African-American. He might be okay with that but his uncle shoots at him with a shotgun. Tara visits Terra's grave and learns about love from Phantasm disguised as an African-American gravedigger. She should have known he was a ghost! Battallion learns that his wife was an African-American woman in love with some skinny, long-haird jerk. Redwing's parents have twin girls (probably African-American) instead of a boy and a girl so she shrugs her wings and thinks, "Fuck it! Wrong family. No emotional attachment at all!" Dagon isn't the only one with a suprirse African-American element to his past. But then he's from London so that probably explains that somehow.

In other words, Marv Wolfman seems to believe that if you went back to the past to see family, the easiest way to forget about them so you could continue to live your life is if you found out they were African-American. What a racist dick.

It's also possible I interpreted this story completely wrong.

Nightwing #5


Shouldn't the title of this crossover be "Nightwing of the Monster Men"?

The Review!
While I was typing up my thoughts on Team Titans #6, I thought up something else that I wanted to write about but didn't want to put it in the Team Titans review. But I knew it would work great here! But by the time I remembered why I was scanning the cover of Nightwing #6 instead of New Titans #96, I'd forgotten what I wanted to discuss. So instead, I wrote this stupid shit where I talk about forgetting what I was going to talk about. Writers are the worst when they pull this kind of crap. "Oh! I need to write daily but I don't know what to write about so how about I write about how I don't know what to write about!" Stop it, Writers. Just because Charlie Kaufman managed to trick people into loving Adaptation, it doesn't mean you're going to get famous writing about your process. Although, that bit in Adaptation where Charlie Kaufman kept jerking off because writing is too difficult to face? Totally true. My fucking dick is raw.

Oh! And don't expect a future paragraph that begins "Oh! I remember what I was going to write about!" because it's fucking gone, man. Gone! I can tell. That idea flew the coop and there's no coercing it back.

Anyway, Monster Men are attacking Gotham. The first chapter was a standard set-up and a little bit boring. I'm hoping the Monsters in this one are less Japanese Kaiju and more Viral Japanese Death Ghost.

Oh! I remember what I was going to write about! My friend loaned me all of the Lemony Snicket Series of Unfortunate Events books last year. Each one can be read in about five hours but I didn't spend a lot of time with them, so it took me all year. Actually, it's going to take me longer. You see, as I was coming up on my 45th birthday at the beginning of this week, I was thinking, "Shit! There's still one book left to read! I'd better get to it before my birthday!" So I took it out of the box and thought, "Why the fuck is the final book called The Penultimate Peril? That's fucking...GODDAMN IT!" So it turns out I still have one book to read, The End, which I don't have. So I guess the Baudelaires will just have to live on that boat with Olaf for the rest of their goddamned lives. The little fuckers probably deserve it. "Fuckers" is a word which here means "all three Baudelaire children's stupid faces".

Other books I don't have which I need to read: Batman Beyond #13 and The Sheriff of Babylon #10!

Duke Thomas, Batman's Better-Than-Robin sidekick that has all the Fangenders up in arms because how dare Batman say he wants to try something better than Robin?! Shouldn't he say "different"?! Why can't Batman act the way the Fangenders want! Not that any two groups of Fangenders can agree on anything. I remember the days when the Fangenders could hardly interact with each other and definitely didn't have access to the artists and could only whine to each other down at the local comic book shop. Now everybody can simply ask them a question on Twitter whenever they want. Or accuse them of being gross assholes who don't fucking get it because how dare they?!

So, as I was saying before I digressed myself out of finishing my initial sentence, Duke Thomas has devised a Batman Emergency Alert System for Gotham in just such a Monster Hurricane Situation as this Night of the Monster Men thing.


Christ. No wonder Red Robin was "killed" and Bluebird sent off to school. Who needs them when Duke is practically the same exact type of genius?

Spoiler, Orphan, and Clayface are helping evacuate the city. Batman and Batwoman are battling the monsters (or Monster since, so far, they're only attacking one at a time). Duke and Alfred are experimenting on Monster cells to try to find a way to turn them back into corpses. And Dick Grayson has been tasked with finding Hugo Strange and kicking him in the nuts.

Nightwing discovers four bodies are missing. Does that mean this will only run four issues? Because the Cyclops died last issue. And it looks like the Hydra-Gryphon will probably eat it this issue. Then the Deadly Rage Mushroom Worm will be causing trouble by the end of this issue, probably. Which leaves the last Monster which might be some kind of gigantic tadpole. Dick's investigating and should know more in a few pages! Until then, I'll just pretend like I know what's about to happen. I totally do! Woo-ee! You just won't believe it!

Oh wait! The gigantic tadpole is actually a mutant spider dude. I probably could have guessed that if I had paid closer attention to the cover. It looks like Dick will be dealing with that one on his own while Spoiler, Orphan, and Clayface deal with the Angry Fungi in Detective Comics. Probably.

Oh wait! Dick doesn't have to face the mutant spider dude like on the cover because Gotham Girl has decided she will go fight it, no matter how Psycho-Pirated her brain still is. And that's when this issue ends!

The Ranking!
0! This is a Nightwing comic book and I don't think fans of Nightwing would appreciate a story where he's harangued by Batman to leave the action and then on his way to more action, he's beat to the punch by Gotham Girl. Why is he even bothering with this crossover at all?! At least he saved one citizen. I guess that was supposed to be a nice, heroic moment. I mean, it was one person more he saved than in the entire late 80's run of The New Teen Titans!

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Batman #7


Shouldn't the title of this crossover be "Dark Night of the Monster Men"?!

The Review!
The Monster Men have arrived in Gotham and it's just as whatever as I knew it would be! It's full of this and loaded with tons of that! It probably needed some kind of tagline like "If you thought Batman fought monsters before, wait until you get a load of 'Night of the Monster Men'!" Or maybe, "'Night of the Monster Men' will have you thinking, 'Gee whiz! I'm glad it's not Monster Women!" How about, "I bet you couldn't wait to read the story where Batman teams up with the Suicide Squad, right? Well you have no choice but to! Because this week, it's 'Night of the Monster Men'!"

The premise is that Hugo Strange has turned a bunch of corpses into monsters. Those monsters are now attacking Gotham on the night a major hurricane is supposed to sweep in. Since Red Robin has just died, Batman declares that nobody else is allowed to die. But he made that declaration before he knew the city wasn't just trying to survive a hurricane. Now they've got the Monster Men to deal with too! The silver lining on the hurricane is that the Monster Men were created from corpses. That means Batman can kill them because killing a reanimated corpse isn't actually killing. So I probably shouldn't say he's "killing" them. He's just, um, "putting them back to rest."

Nightwing has come to town to help like a big idiot so now his comic book is caught up in the Monster Men crossover too! What a fool! Too bad Red Robin is dead because he probably could name all of the monsters they're going to have to battle. He seemed like a huge nerd. But I can also name them! Don't try to transitive property those previous two sentences, jerko! The first monster Batman kills is a cyclops. It's from that one that he discovers Hugo Strange is behind the Monster Men. But the next monster only attacks on the last page so Nightwing will probably have to defeat it in his comic book. It's a griffon. Or just a dragon. Maybe a Bat Dragon? Yeah! That's probably what it is. A Bat Dragon!

Steve Orlando and Tom King are behind this story so it must have some depth to it, right? It's not just about fighting monsters in Gotham, right? Maybe the hurricane is a metaphor for all of Batman's tears over Tim's death. And the Monster Men are representative of what Batman could become if he lets his grief get the better of him. Or maybe this is all just a way to get the heroes back into action without any kind of mourning story since we just had the story about Gotham Girl's mourning. Plus Tim got his wake in Teen Titans. Which is weird since it was Rebirth Tim Drake who died and The New 52 Titans who mourned him. It's as if the Rebirth world is just The New 52 rebranded so that all of the angry people who hated The New 52 could begin reading DC again without losing any face. Everybody knows it's still The New 52 universe but we're all pretending that it's different somehow. I mean, Wally West is back! That's got to count for something for all the jerks who liked him for some reason.

The Ranking!
+0! It's just this comic book story, you know? Nothing special and nothing terrible. Hopefully the rest of the chapters will make it stand out.

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Harley Quinn #4


Normally a Harley Quinn comic on the top of the stack drives me away from the blog for about 24 hours. This time, I'm just going to power right through!

The Commentary!
What do you think Harley's nipples look like? I bet they're green. Her butthole too! If they are, it's probably less likely staining from the ACE Chemicals vat and more likely Poison Ivy's lipstick.

This issue is called "108 Million Ways to Die!" That's probably an exaggeration because even in the smallest legible font, I doubt they could list that many ways in twenty pages. Maybe if they hadn't wasted the first page with a James Bond style Harley pose in front of a Choose Your Own Adventure book cover. There might be clues to the upcoming story because it has buildings that look like swirly ice cream cones, Too Fast For Furious cars racing, and bullets flying out of Harley's vagina. There's also that famous crypt in India that people love to talk about seeing in person after they spent a lot of money to go see it in person.

The issue begins in New York with Harley making wiener comments and some guy adding a "That's what she said!" joke. I mean, it's not really a joke, is it? It's just something you say after anything because you're not witty enough to come up with any material of your own. I know a lot of people say it because it's a stupid thing to say and it's particularly more entertaining when said after something that makes no sense. I mean, my favorite response to everything is "You're an X!" where X is just some noun the other person used in the previous sentence which probably had nothing to do with me.

Harley meets some guy named Frank Frank who amazes her by saying the most obvious shit. Who the fuck is Frank Frank? Why did he make an appearance here? Stop writing your stupid friends into the comic book, Jimmy and Amanda!

When is the first way to die of 108 million going to take place? I'm getting bored!

Harley discovers she has a mission to shut down some scam phone callers in India. She takes Bolly Quinn with her on their adventure. Hopefully she likes showering with Harley Quinn as much as Poison Ivy does.

I never find out about Holly's love of shared showers because the changing scene happens off-panel. But that's the only reason I purchased this comic book? So I could see Harley Quinn in her underwear! I mean, the rest of the story wasn't worth the cover price at all! Harley kills some Russian thugs and stops the international phone scammers. Did Jimmy and Amanda write this story simply because they were sick of getting voice messages about how the IRS was about to sue their asses? Maybe they had a relative who was taken in by the scam! If that did happen to them, it wasn't interesting enough to make a comic book out of. If it didn't happen to them, why the fuck did they make an uninteresting comic book out of it? And just when I thought I was okay with Harley Quinn comics! I guess Frank Frank's declaration at the beginning that life is meaningless was a big hint that this comic book was also going to be meaningless.

The Ranking!
-1! I was so bored with this comic book that I kept saying out loud "That's what she said!" after reading every speech bubble.

Raven #1


This should be insightful! A seventy year old man writing the adventures of a teenage girl!

The Commentary!
I had to check with Lord Google to find out how old Marv Wolfman was and while doing so, I decided to drop by his IMDB page and see what he's been involved in on the writing side of television and movies. At first, I was flabbergasted! He had credits in so many things! Even video games! Had he written a bunch of video game plots?! Then I noticed most of them were saying "Uncredited". And that's when I realized the majority of the "Writer" credits Marv Wolfman had on the top half of his IMDB page were actually "Creator" credits. What the fuck, IMDB? Who the fuck does that help? Is IMDB run like Wikipedia now and there's some fangender fuming at the injustice heaped on writers and artists by mainstream comic book corporations who is going through and adding credits to every movie, television show, and video game in which one of the creator's characters appeared? It's fucking nutso whacko! And just so nobody thinks they're coming up with some hot take on the previous sentence, I did mean that in the full-on offensive to everybody with a mental illness way!

Hmm, maybe I shouldn't have written that! I bet the only people still interested in Raven are the ones who love to use their mental illnesses as invulnerable shields against any type of criticism. Well, I'm one of those people too! You can't criticize my ableist tendencies because my brain is just wired to be ableist and I can't do anything at all about it! And you're ableist if you insist that I can! Jerko!

Okay, now that we got all the sensitive twats out of here, I can be funny for the people who are hate-filled douchebags! Oh, my people! How I've missed you all!

No, but seriously. If you're a hate-filled douchebag, get the fuck out. I want a specific audience of people who are sensitive but also understand that there's a world where you can call your friend retarded and not be completely ostracized from society for it. Unless, you know, your friend is mentally disabled. Then, I mean, Dude? What the fuck? That's not cool.


Oh please tell me you came from Azarath and not San Francisco! Anywhere but San Francisco!

I actually love San Francisco. Or loved San Francisco. It sounds like the shittiest Mecca in the world now since the pilgrims flocking there are start-up assholes begging for an angel to crap in their bank account.

Raven's mother ran away from home because her parents believed in God. That doesn't seem at all like the first world problem of an entitled teenager. At best, her mother just left out all of the gory details like how her parents sexually abused her because God told them to, or how she was locked in her room every day so she wouldn't be tempted by the devil, or how she watched her younger brother get circumcised in front of a crowd of enthusiastic sadists she thought were family and friends. It's also possible she once heard her mother say "tranny" and realized she couldn't live with that kind of a monster anymore.

Luckily for Raven's mother, she found a better life being raped by a rapey demon named Trigon who, according to Marv Wolfman, loved to rape.

Do you see now why I had to scare away all of the overly sensitive readers?! I was doing them a favor! This is a Marv Wolfman comic book and even if it doesn't mention rape, the guy is rape-tainted! There's no way I can't point out how much he loves to write about rape!

Raven meets her aunt and her aunt's family. They're upbeat and jolly and wear bright clothing and aprons and Superman shirts. Her uncle wears a sweater over a collared shirt with khaki pants, so you know he's totally fucked up in some super secret way. They have a crucifix on the wall over a painting of the sermon on the mount and their bookshelf is full of Precious Moments figurines. Something truly horrible must be going on inside this house!

Raven begins her new life by going to high school the next day. I hope she doesn't get picked on for being weird! Does Marv Wolfman even know what high school is like now? I have a feeling Raven will have to take ROTC and stand up for the one black kid getting picked on by some white guys with buzz cuts.

The standard amount of people comment on her looks as if there wouldn't be dozens of other girls and guys who look just like her. One kid is all, "Really? Goth? So last millennium." That kid? Looks like Janis Ian. I don't think that look has ever been really popular. I mean, unless you could sing like Janis Ian. Then it was, um, tolerated? Anyway, she feels uncomfortable and out of place like nobody else ever felt in high school ever. Poor thing!

After her first class, Raven meets some kids who want to get to know her. Probably because she's cute and fashionable, no matter what any of the other sorry high school students say. I mean, if she were ugly and wearing corduroy pants three sizes too big (or small?) for her, who would speak to her?! And, of course, to get to know her, they ask all the pertinent questions!


Why the fuck are you asking about her father, Dude?! So fucking weird! Although, this is the DC Universe where everybody has Daddy Issues. Perhaps it's the main question everybody is always dying to ask everybody else. "How did your dad fuck up your life?" It's just Dude is too ignorant to know better than to get so personal so quickly.

Raven discovers that one kid at the school has psychic powers so that's probably going to be a problem. But she's making friends somehow, so I guess she'll be okay. I don't know how she's making friends because I don't know how to make friends. It would be nice if the comic book spelled it out a bit. The only way I knew how to make friends in elementary school was to just put myself in close proximity to the same people as often as I could until they simply assumed I was one of their friends. That worked in Junior High too! And then in High School, I just made friends with all of my cousin's friends. Those were the last friends I ever made because, for some lucky reason, they were all pretty good people. Don't tell Doom Bunny I said that. I suppose I've made a few friends of the Non-Certified Spouse's friends. They're almost all exclusively gay because I'm fairly certain the Non-Certified Spouse emits Gaydiation. For some reason, I'm the only male she knows impervious to it. I think. I mean, sometimes I dream about sucking off fifty guys in a row. But those are just dreams! Dreams are random and weird and I have no control over them! I mean, they're my daydreams, but that's practically the same thing, right?

There's also a girl in Raven's one class who looks like Raven and was happy to have another black clothes wearing Goth in the class. But Raven just kind of ignored her. What a jerk.

Anyway, later, one of Raven's new friend's friends gets lost in the White Carnival where some other students have also been trapped. And it might have something to do with her soul self gone rogue. Or it's her aunt's God being a total jackass. That's not a probability but it's a possibility, right? Plus the speculative sentence let me write that God was a jackass. That's fun!

The Ranking!
+1! It's not bad for a Marv Wolfman production! Does anybody remember those pictures in books that you couldn't see anything in but if you held up a red plastic filter, it would hide all of the red lines so that you could see the image beneath in blue? I bet if you had one of those lenses but instead of hiding all of the red lines, it hid all of the seventy-year old manness, this story would totally be just fine! As it is, it's kind of fun because it's written by a seventy-year old man. He named a character Dude! I would have named him WTF, personally.

Christ, I bet only seventy-year old men will remember those red lenses made of plastic and those old timey magic paintings!

Trinity #1


Oh, who fucking cares?

The Commentary!
Do comic book writers still want to pitch stories about these assholes? I have a feeling Francis Manapul went into the pitch meeting with an idea for a clever Gypsy, Hawkman, and Congorilla story. Dan Didio was probably all, "I love it! I love the energy! I love your enthusiasm for the story! I love that you didn't ask to write any Kirby characters since I have dibs on them! But do you think maybe the story would still work with characters who can sell a comic book?"

So that's probably how we wound up with yet another fucking comic book starring Batman and, to a lesser extent, his lessers, Wonder Woman and Superman. I can't fucking wait to see the twist on these characters that absolutely demanded this comic book be made!

This issue begins with Lois Lane spouting off like it's the first five minutes of some overblown drama which you know is going to have you crying your eyes out by the end. She begins by talking about parents and their kids. If this were a Stephen King book, I would already be writing off the kid as roadkill. But it's not! It's a comic book and the kid is Jon Smith, Superman's son. So he'll probably be safe for this story. Hell, everybody will probably be safe for this story! I think the major conflict will be Batman insulting Lois Lane in her own home and refusing to apologize.


Wait. Are there wolves in my walls? Did they go in there to catch the rats?

Lois Lane's metaphor about walls being put up to protect children from wolves is making me crazy. Her point is that walls keep the bad stuff out but eventually the bad stuff will find a way in so the best thing to do is to break down the walls so that the wolves can get in but also the non-wolves can get in to help fight the wolves but most people can't tell the difference between wolves and non-wolves. But Lois can because she's a reporter and thus a better mother than most other mothers who just let all the fucking wolves in the house and watch their children get mauled. So now we know that Lois Lane is a narcissist and possibly insane.

Too bad Lois's son is an idiot who is sneaking wolves behind the wall without her knowing. Apparently he was supposed to go get some fertilizer or something and instead of buying the usual stuff, he took some free shit from some weird fucker. That isn't going to bite everybody in the ass now, is it?! I bet the ass biting begins right around when Batman insults Lois's tea by pointing out Alfred's is way better.

Batman and Wonder Woman are making a friendly visit to the Smith farm. Diana even brought a dead wild boar to butcher. Superman is still on his way home so Lois has more time to kill thinking about walls. Oh! I've got a joke about fences which are basically walls: "Why do good fences make good neighbors? Because people are idiots who constantly forget the part of Robert Frost's poem where he says 'Something there is that doesn't love a wall.'" That wasn't a very good joke, was it? Maybe I should build a wall to keep out criticism of my jokes.

Lois has decided Clark's walls need to come down whether he likes it or not. That's marriage! It's where you step all over another person's feelings and just fuck around with their life without first getting their consent! Unless that's just bad marriage? No, no. It's all relationships. Two people can't live one life. Somebody is always going to be getting the poopy end of the stick.

Over dinner, Clark tells a story about the time Batman wore a Rainbow Suit to protect Robin. The real point of the story is how Batman endangers young children. But that's not a pleasant thought and nobody wants to get into that aspect of the Batman and Robin dynamic. It's better to just figure that it can't be helped and Batman is doing the only thing he can for these young kids and, anyway, they do more to save his life than he does to save theirs. They temper him and make him more cautious and give him a future to care about. Batman, of course, denies the Rainbow Suit (but not the endangering children). He can deny it all he wants! I saw proof of it in the Sugar and Spike story in Legends of Tomorrow #1!


Meanwhile outside, the bad stuff is beginning to happen.

Lois's wall metaphor is abandoned because now she's getting to the part where Clark, Bruce, and Diana need to begin forging a friendship. So now instead of building walls, they're growing...um...relationships? At the end of the night as Clark, Bruce, and Diana talk out in the yard, Clark hears something from the barn. So he goes to check it out and he finds Pa Kent harvesting grain with young Clark behind him. Or something. I don't know. Maybe Jon planted some Black Mercies in the yard or something.

The Ranking!
+1. Manapul's art is gorgeous as always. And he seems to write better than a lot of writer-artists. Also, I'm convinced that this comic book is probably needed. Since DC fucked up everything by making a new Superman that everybody needs to get to know again, DC needs a book where everybody can once again get comfortable with him. I hope once Batman and Diana trust him, this book will stop being Trinity and just become a new version of DC Comics Presents!

Cyborg #1


We get it, Cyborg comic book! The main character is a CYBORG!

The Commentary!
One of the main reasons I don't believe in The Bible is that it never mentions cybernetic beings. You'd think if something will have existed, God would have known about it. And if God knew about cyborgs way back when he created the world, how could he not mention them to Abraham or Israel or every single person he spoke directly to in The Bible? If I were God and I were hanging out in the Garden of Eden talking to Adam, I would definitely have mentioned cyborgs. Like that part where Adam was choosing a help meet, right? As God, I would have been, "So, what about a cow? No? A horse? A duck? Oh! OH! You'll never turn this one down: a cyborg! Boom! Totally radical, right dude?" And it's not like a mention of cyborgs wouldn't have gotten a whole section of The Bible all for itself. The sections would have been marked "The Creation," "Adam and Eve," "Adam Learns About Cyborgs", "The Fall of Man." I suppose Adam really wouldn't have learned much about cyborgs. He'd probably have only asked God the same question about cyborgs that he had been asking about every other rejected help meet: "Can I fuck it?" I think God's answer to Adam every time he asked that was, "Yeah, but you probably shouldn't!"

This issue begins with Cyborg's Machine Dad going on about broken and useless technology which people don't need anymore. I always thought it all wound up in bins at the back of a Goodwill but apparently, according to Cyborg's Machine Dad, much of it is toxic to humans and thrown in landfills. So are the four or five old broken outdated laptops piled in the corner of my office a threat to my health and well-being?! I should probably load them up with porn and send them to poor pornless children in other parts of the world.

Who am I kidding? I don't need to load them up with porn at all! It was probably a virus that downloaded tons and tons of porn onto the hard drive that killed each of those laptops.

I mean, the laptops probably burned out because I read so much Shakespeare on them.

This story is called "The Imitation of Life" and this issue is part one, "Awakening!" Ooh! So exciting! An exclamation point right in the title! I think I just came in my pants a little bit. Can somebody do that just a little bit? I suppose a little bit is all I have left after jerking it to four or five laptops full of porn.

Cyborg begins his part of the issue by stopping a robbery. So useful! He even does a bunch of the cyber. But that's probably not important because this story wasn't called "Cyborg Plays At Being A Hero While Secretly Being Sad About The Loss Of His Wiener". No, this issue is called "Awakening!" which means the conflict will probably be more of an internal thing.


I thought Morrow was going to say "Matchmaker."

Cyborg goes on an ice cream date with Sarah Charles. This sends him into a philosophical dilemma as he remembers hearing the recording his father made that explained a bunch of stuff his father wanted to keep secret. Seems like a weird recording to make, really. Anyway, Victor is now wondering if he's the same person he was before the accident or if he's just a machine programmed to think it's Victor Stone. Not like it matters. Human or machine, Sarah Charles has had both in her vagina. So I think he's going to get lucky tonight!

Seriously, though, I don't know why he'd be worried or concerned. So what if he's just a machine and code that replicates a human being? How does the knowledge that that is true change anything? I really wouldn't give a fuck if I were a simulation because I'm still a simulation of the person that I think I am.

Speaking of simulations, I find the theory that our universe could possibly be a simulation basically the religious theory of science. It's just a scientific way to say "God created the universe" except, in this instance, God is some other race of beings that created the technology to create a stand alone universe. Ultimately, the real question still remains: how did the race of people who created our universe (or those that created theirs? Or the ones who created theirs? Or...you get it) come to pass? Saying super smart bug-eyed reptilian scientists did it is no different than God did it. Without actual evidence of what happened before The Big Bang, the speculation is as useless as the Catholic Church.

At the ice cream shoppe, Cyborg meets his two biggest fans.


Why that little fucker?! How did his parents not slap the fuck out of him for saying that?! Little shit. I would have used my white noise attachment on him set to "Brown Note".

I probably shouldn't be so hard on these kids. I won't stop going on and on about how Cyborg doesn't have a penis! That's worse! You can live without feeling love. It's actually preferable that way! But without a penis?! Egads!

I don't mean to suggest all of you vagina-havers somehow don't have any reason to live. Of course you do! Your vaginas are terrific! Keep up the good work! A Plus Plus!

Sarah Charles discovers that Victor hasn't been to church since the accident. Well, she knows just the cure for that: jazz! Hmm, that sounds about right. I can't stand sitting through either.

I guess the whole religious thing is what has Victor so worried. If he's just a machine, how can he have one of those made-up souls?! If only God had mentioned cyborgs in The Bible, he wouldn't be losing faith. Although doesn't Jesus mention them? I'm pretty sure Jesus mentions them. If not, Jesus is pretty clear that the way to Heaven is through him. Does it count if a machine is programmed to accept Jesus as their lord and savior? I would have to think so because don't people want Xboxes and Playstations to go to Heaven too?

The jazz performer is named Blue and he's blind. I guess jazz from a blind person is more spiritual than jazz from some asshole who can read a sheet of music. That guy probably isn't jamming at all!


Blue's description of jazz is basically a description of this blog. So I probably shouldn't be so hard on jazz. If this blog were a type of music, I would call it punk jazz. But the bubble gum pop version of punk jazz! Played by a tone deaf piece of shit.

Is Cyborg going to cry soon? Will that prove he's got a soul? Because an old blind man makes him cry? That doesn't prove he has a soul! It just proves he's a big baby!

Cyborg doesn't cry while listening to the jazz which should mean I should be nice to him since I just scolded him for possibly crying. But instead I'd rather point out that if he didn't cry, he probably didn't really feel anything and, thus, he has no soul. At the very least, the kid in the ice cream shoppe was right and he has no heart. I won't even mention, once again, what I'm probably right about.

As Cyborg is feeling pretty good about himself, he's attacked by The Kilg%re. It probably dropped the "the" for Rebirth. For a creature that hates humanity as much as Killg%re does, it's odd that it would attack the machine guy and not his supple fleshy date. I guess Cyborg really is human after all!

The Ranking!
+1! So far, this is a Cyborg comic book that's kind of interesting. It still isn't about his penis though. It really should be about his penis.

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Earth Too: Society #16


Please be the kind of last stand that Custer had.

The Commentary!
Some comic books work. Others don't work. That's just logic! Then there are comic books that might work but I don't fucking give any shits about. That's this comic book! Now that I've put my bias out there for everybody to see because I'm super transparent about things like that (I just call myself "super trans" cause it's cool to shorten all of the words), nobody can argue with any of the terrible things I say about this comic book in the paragraphs to come. I'll just say, "I told you right from the start that I didn't care about this comic book! You should have realized that meant I probably wasn't going to pay much attention to it which definitely meant that I was going to completely miss any intellectual themes that may or may not but probably almost definitely are not at all there!"

I think I was trying to make this point in the last non-Annual commentary I wrote about Earth Too but I fell into a digression and never quite climbed my way out! One of the reasons I think Dan Abnett changed the Pandora Vessel into the Pandora Casket is because it contains a dead world. So after Dan Abnett wrote the script with the Pandora Vessel and he sent the script to the artists who did the art and then the art went to the colorist and got some color and then it went to the editor who was super busy and just trusted there were no errors and sent it off to get published, Dan went, "NO WAIT! IT SHOULD BE A CASKET! A CAAAAAASKEEEEEET! IT'S MORE THEMATICALLY RELEVANT!" And the editor was all, "Just fucking change it in the next script. Nobody will fucking notice. And I don't think that Tess asshole who writes shitty shit about everything we do cares enough about your stupid Earth 2 comic book to notice either." But ha ha! You were wrong, imaginary editor! In fact, I totally noticed! And I can't fucking forget! It haunts me day and night! Why? Why did Dan change it?! WHY!?!

Anyway, stupid idiot Green Lantern got himself mind-controlled by the Ultra-Humanite, so Earth Too is probably fucked. Nobody can stand up to Alan Scott! Maybe Val-el if he's currently not in one of his pacifist mindsets.

Green Lantern is almost stopped by The Flash! I mean, for like one panel it seems maybe The Flash will do it. Then Power Girl, Val-el, and Tornado Lane arrive and it seems like maybe they'll stop him! For like, one panel. So then Fury arrives and she's all, "I may not be able to stop you but I'll sure as shit last longer than one fucking panel!" And she does! She lasts for four panels! Possibly five! What a hero!


Since when was Alan Scott's ring a weapon of Oa?

I'm not a Green Lantern scholar so maybe the origin of Alan Scott's ring has been retconned (probably dozens of times, really) but it wasn't an Oan weapon to begin with! Okay, it had links to the Guardians of the Universe but those links are more tentative than the links the lantern has to a crazy fucker at Arkham obsessed with train lanterns! Or a Chinese guy interested in meteors! Or to Alan himself who actually made the ring using the lantern! This was decades before Hal Jordan made a ring of his own during Rebirth!

Green Lantern breaks into the vault where the Pandora's Casket has been hidden away. But there's some good and bad news! The bad news is that there's a Wonder inside the vault guarding it! The good news is that it's only Red Arrow! How is that chump going to stop a Green Lantern?! No wait! Don't answer that! I'm sure Dan Abnett will come up with a super intriguing way to have a powerless noob beat somebody with the most powerful weapon in the universe! I mean, that very same thing happens in the pages of Green Lantern every five to six pages.

Green Lantern laughs at Red Arrow and Red Arrow is all, "Dan Abnett knows this situation is ridiculous so now I get to have a lengthy monologue explaining why it isn't ridiculous at all but totally fucking cool! SO COOL!" Then Red Arrow is killed. Probably. I mean, no way he can beat Green Lantern. No way at all. No writer would even try to convince readers that it could happen. We would all riot if Red Arrow somehow beat Green Lantern! I know I would. Unless I was feeling a bit peckish. Then I might just take a nap.

And Green Lantern is just about to kill Red Arrow when he notices Red Arrow has his erect penis nocked in the bow. That's when he's all, "Oh yeah!" And Ultra-Humanite is all, "Oh my god! I'm in a homosexual mind!", and flees. Ultra-Humanite? More like Ultra-Homophobe!


"The plan Flash My Huge Cock worked. Ultra-Humanite is gone and Alan is fellating himself."

Ultra-Humanite arrives and kills Red Arrow with some magic monkey magic. Now nobody stands in the way! Ultra-Humanite can open the Casket and restore World War II Era Earth-2! Right? Come on. Right? Just do that. Just stop writing this comic book and somebody start writing that comic book!

Before Ultra-Humanite can fix everything, Batjerk, The Huntress, Hawk Cop, and little Johnny Grayson arrive to prolong this nonsense. People often think it's noble to fight against death. They think clinging to life with every last ounce of energy is the only noble way to go out. But if that's really the case, why do doctors hand out DNR bracelets like they were candy going out of style? You know what doctors think, right? The same thing veterinarians think: saving people is a huge waste of energy, time, and money! It's better to just convince people that they should die with dignity and stop being a burden. Too bad the Earth-Too Wonders didn't get the memo. The memo I'm talking about is this paragraph I just wrote that sums up my feelings about how they should just give up already. Why don't they give up? Why do they hate me so?

Oh! OH! Wait! Somebody got my memo! Somebody gets it! Somebody understands and that somebody saves the world by opening the Casket and destroying the world! You know, before Ultra-Humanite could do it badly. And that hero is Fury! Hooray, Fury! I will remember you fondly when you never, ever reappear because the actual Fury that lives in that box is probably the one fucking Silver Scarab. I hope!

Anyway, that's the end! Everything is destroyed! Such a great ending to this comic book! Triple A Plus Plus! Oh wait. I ranked too early! Let me change my underpants and try that again.

The Ranking!
Triple A Plus Plus! That's probably something like a +3! And that ranking is only for the last few pages. The other pages were just a huge wind up. I wish more Wonders had been killed during that early part since their deaths wouldn't have mattered. But then, maybe that would have made it too obvious that they were going to lose and reboot Earth-2.

Monday, September 26, 2016

Teen Titans #24


I thought they already fell? Multiple times!

The Commentary!
Last night I was at work when the clock ticked over from the 25th to the 26th and I became as middle-aged as anybody can get. Forty-five. I was listening to my Shuffle so the last song I heard as a forty-four year old was "One Headlight" by The Wallflowers and the first song I heard as an old man was "Obsession" by Marina and the Diamonds. Let's hear it for aging!

"One Headlight" was big when I was in my mid-twenties. It kind of became the soundtrack for my life at the time as I was desperate to get out of the place I'd spent the first quarter century of my life. I hadn't changed. I knew I wasn't the same. I wanted to watch it all burn. I'm particularly proud of myself that I didn't set fire to the Netscape warehouse I managed when I quit my job and, a week later, was driving my Volkswagen bus across the United States. I'm also proud that I didn't burn each and every state on my way out. I'm just proud that I stopped setting fires!

This issue takes place after Red Robin died. He didn't actually die but he was yanked out of continuity much the same way Wally West was. But instead of telling fans Red Robin is gone forever and never actually existed (which they believed because most fans are dum-dums who don't know how to fact check by looking at their own pirated copies of comic books on their laptops to prove that Wally West did actually exist and DC Comics never actually created some time distorting technology which erased Wally West from everybody's minds), Red Robin was shown, in the very same comic in which he died, to still be alive but outside of DC Continuity with Doctor Oz(yman(hattan)dias) and Ambush Bug. I'm starting to think maybe Doctor Oz is Jonni DC and not Ozymandias and/or Doctor Manhattan like the fans have been told. Or maybe Doctor Oz is simply Irwin Schwab!

Sometimes I wish Keith Giffen were running DC Comics. I wouldn't even care if every comic book repeated the same five jokes over and over again. Because that would be the only predictable thing about a Keith Giffen DC Universe. Remember how they gave Stan Lee his own continuity? Why can't Keith Giffen have one of those?

Anyway, Red Robin is dead (but not really! I don't want somebody who thinks they're the biggest Red Robin fan ever reading about his death here and not realizing that DC made sure that the fans knew Red Robin wasn't really dead in the exact same issue because who wants to hear how loudly Red Robin fans can whine?) so this issue is all about the Teen Titans remembering their favorite Red Robin moments. I hope Wonder Girl's favorite time was when they were living on that yacht and she is all, "I loved that time he put his penis in me!" And then Raven will be all, "I loved that time he put his penis that smelled like Wonder Girl's vagina in me!"

Bunker begins Memory Sharing Time!


"I loved that time he put his penis that smelled like Wonder Girl's vagina and Raven's tonsils in my butthole."

Just to let all three of you know, I only got as far as that first panel before deciding Red Robin, possessed by Trigon, also fucked Bunker.


But, um, it looks like things might be going that way!

After they had sex, Tim and Bunker go clothes shopping and then Tim attends his first gay pride parade. He makes a lot of friends, goes to a lot of parties, and sucks a lot of dicks. I don't mean to say gay men are more promiscuous than straight men (of course they aren't! It's just that, you know, if you're a man looking to just fuck and the people you're looking to just fuck happen to be other men just looking to fuck, well...you know what? I'm now gay), it's just that Tim just discovered he loves sucking dick and that's not a time you instantly decide you're ready for a relationship!

So, um, anyway, that was Bunker's favorite memory of Tim. It was the day Tim came out of the closet. Unless that was just Trigon getting in as much fucking as he could while people found him attractive.


Fucking liberal entertainment artists! They can never get the American flag right but they get the rainbow flag correct! I mean, except for that one that has too many stripes and just begins repeating the rainbow pattern.

I suppose the reason DC's artists get the American Flag wrong so often is that most of them aren't Americans. So why should they know the specifics of why the flag is the way it is (although if I had to bet, I'd probably say a higher percentage of Americans can't explain why our flag looks the way it does)? They probably just do a Google Image Search and go, "Yeah. Right. Blue field. Bunch of white stars. Alternating red and white stripes. Got it!" Why would anybody think there's a specific number of stars and stripes?! Just stick on as many as you possibly can. That seems to sum up America pretty accurately, right?!

Next Power Girl shares her favorite memory of Tim. Oh! I know how that probably begins: "So, Tim introduced himself as Red Robin and I was all, 'Hi, I'm Power Girl.' Then he died."

I wasn't far off! Her memory is Tim telling a bad joke and then saying it's nice to know somebody who knows as much as he does. So, she, um, just fucking told all of Tim's friends that, in private, he thought they were morons? Great story, Power Girl!

Tim also helped Power Girl realize she had no obligation to cut a Boob Window into her costume. See? Gay!

Next up: Raven! I bet her story is all about feelings. I'm bored just imagining what it will be!


How many Titans were created to be living weapons?

I didn't have to scan as much of that panel as I did but I wanted to include Raven's crotch and Tim's stupid hair.

Tim is all, "Look, maybe I don't know what it's like being Trigon's daughter...but I know what it's like being in her! OH!" No, actually he mentions how they both have Daddy Issues. Yawn! If Wonder Girl's favorite memory isn't having sex with Tim, I think that's pretty telling about Tim Drake's sexual skills. I guess Batman didn't teach him everything he knows!


Wow! He's supposed to be a genius?! Tim sure read that situation wrong. Batman didn't see a spark of goodness! Batman saw a spark of his own sperm in Damian's genetic makeup!

Gar's memory is just a list of outing past Robin's identities. "Oh, the first one was Dick Grayson. I remember that for some reason even though Spyral erased all of our memories. And then the next one, the dead one, was Jason Todd. Then there's Tim Drake who we only knew as Red Robin for like the first five years we knew him. And then the latest one is Damian Wayne so, you know, guess who Batman is!" I don't really care one way or the other about secret identities. I wouldn't care if they were just left behind and writers simply ignored the idea that family members might get hurt simply to get at the heroes. But it's really hard to tell how much superheroes in the DC Universe care about their identities. Who knows what? How many people has Batman come out to as Bruce Wayne simply to get their confidence up? This is the kind of carelessness which you treat a secret that you don't really give a shit about keeping secret. Unlike that time you fucked the family dog. I mean, you don't tell that one to anybody!


Nope. Wrong. That would be Dick. Thanks for playing.

I do appreciate that Power Girl's funeral attire has a Boob Window, even if her costume doesn't. Totally more appropriate for a funeral anyway. The best place to look sexy is in a room of grief-stricken people just looking to feel life again. I bet more fucking goes on at wakes than at any other type of get together. Which is weird because often it's mostly a mini-family reunion. First cousins aren't technically incest, right? And if they are, there's always the family dog, I suppose.

I'm glad the Titans are telling stories about the good times they had because every issue of the Teen Titans since The New 52 began concentrated on only the bad times. I'm surprised they have any good time stories to tell!

Wonder Girl's story is about shopping with Tim but she doesn't mention the night they fucked! So in summary, shopping with Tim is better than fucking Tim. Totally would have guessed that.

Wonder Girl's story isn't just about shopping though. She and Tim actually did something heroic that day and saved a bunch of people trapped in a fire. So the Teen Titans do help out and save lives! It's just that those stories are super boring and nobody wants to hear them! I guess the fans would rather have lots of stupid relationship drama while the Titans are attacked by their enemies and nearly destroy New York. Then afterward, they pat themselves on the back for saving New York when New York was never in trouble to begin with! Stupid Titans are so stupid. I hate them. I wonder why I have so many of their comic books?! I wonder if I should see a therapist?

After they tell their stories, they all decide it's best to just break up. They all go off to do their own things and not matter separately instead of not mattering together. Meanwhile, Damian is in the Batcave laughing at Tim Drake's empty costume and dancing on his grave. Now all of the Robin's have died at least once! Plus he's probably thinking about how he can put together a Teen Titans that is better than any Teen Titans ever put together by a Robin (which is, like, all of them? Maybe 98% of them?).

Ranking!
+1! Tony Bedard should have been writing this comic book from the beginning. What Tony Bedard just did with these final issues is the equivalent of scraping dog shit off of the front walk and hosing what's left into the gutter so that nobody would ever know it was there. Also, the shit in my analogy is human shit.

Sunday, September 25, 2016

Gotham Academy: Second Semester #1


I wish this series were subtitled "Week #2".

The Commentary!
The first thing that happens in second semester is that Olive gets a new roommate named Pushy. I mean Amy. No wait! The first thing that happens is Olive takes a bath. Totally naked! Which I only mention because it's a fact and not because I'm some demented old perv who gets off on fictional characters' naked body parts drawn by other demented old pervs! I mean, if you've seen one fifteen year old's tits, you're either a super cool teenager or a demented old perv or, you know, somebody who had tits at fifteen. Also some stuff happens before Olive takes a bath but it's lonely, depressing stuff that nobody should allow past their psychic shield or they might wind up spiraling into a black abyss of isolation and fear.

Some people probably think Amy is cool. They see how she wears a cool thermal undershirt underneath a t-shirt with a ratty collar and ratty cuffs on the short sleeves and whose hair is the color of a not quite ripened plum and whose face is full of piercings who has the cavalier attitude that the world is her own and think, "Yasss! She's my jam! And by jam, I mean the stuff that comes out of my nether regions. Ooh la la!" One of the things I learned in my composition classes at university was that you should always tag sexy statements with emotes like "Ooh la la!" so that readers know that they just read something sexy and it's acceptable to be turned on by it.

Amy also steals sandwiches and crushes on Pomeline. Well, who doesn't? Amy isn't as unique as Amy probably thinks she is! Oh, and she's also moving into Maps's side of the room. I guess Maps has a new cuddle buddy for the semester?

Amy turns out to be a dick. I mean, it was obvious she was a dick in the first scene. But she continues to raise the bar on her dickitude. She tempts Olive with all sorts of chaotic nonsense which Olive falls for because Olive just wants to be free from responsibility. She just wants somebody to tell her what to do. She has a pretty low threshold for falling out of her normal behavior. But that's probably because she recently lost her mother for good and she has no actual home and Kyle won't stop asking if he can fingerbang her even though she's told him repeatedly that Maps does it better. So when somebody comes along and says, "Hey! You should throw a rock through that window and break into a museum!", it's easy to say, "Yeah! Yeah, I should do those things!" Plus if you get caught doing those things, you can always rat out the dick who convinced you to do them and, most of the time, if you were generally a decent person before that and the person you ratted out was known for being a pushy, sandwich stealing, hooligan lesbian with facial piercings and colored hair, everybody will believe you. Then they'll hug you because you were the victim of peer pressure and they will sneer at the dick who forced you to do those things by being too cool to not do the things they told you to do. I mean, why else do people begin smoking?! Because some kid who was way cooler than you were was all, "Hey, smoke this and maybe I'll acknowledge your existence."

I wonder if Amy is just a Tyler Durden figment of Olive's imagination? I hope so! If she is, I hope Olive kisses it!


Oh no! She's destroying art! I hope the people who instantly loved Amy are suddenly upset that Fletcher totally screwed up her character and apparently doesn't really "get" Amy at all!

Olive and Amy run into Eric inside the Wedgwood Museum. You remember Eric, right?! He's the one who does art who is totally in love with Maps but Maps only likes him because he can draw the pictures for her Spells and Serpents characters! For some reason, he has a key to the museum. He also knows all of the secret passages inside it. Especially the secret passage where he jerks off thinking about Maps.

Eric has been following the "Arkham" signs all over the campus which led him to the secret room in the Wedgwood Museum! Of course, the "Arkham" sign is really just a Wayne Manor monogram. It's totally just a "W" on top of an "M" and not an "A" on top of an upside-down "A" because that is stupid. Although it could also be a monogram for Wedgwood Museum! The mystery grows more mysterious!

Amy continues to be a dick. Big old floppy dick. Jerkiest dick in Gotham, really.

Amy runs off with Eric's backpack full of wank material which also contains his inhaler. When Olive and Eric emerge from the museum, they're caught by Mr. Scarlet who is completely understanding because Olive has always been such a good kid. Olive decides not to snitch on Amy because snitches are bitches or something. So Amy gets to continue to go to Gotham Academy so she can be a dick to Kyle and Maps and Pomeline and Coulton too! So awesome!

The next day, Olive discovers Professor MacPherson stood her up the previous night to go out with Bruce Wayne. No wonder Olive's mind created her Amy Durden so that she can allow herself to step outside of society's normal rules! That's also probably why "Amy" slashed the picture of Bruce Wayne!

Mmmm. I bet Isla MacPherson and Bruce Wayne fucked so hard! Ooh la la!


My farts smell like mysteries and coal smoke too!

The Ranking!
+2! First rule of Gotham Academy is I probably shouldn't make sexually explicit statements about the characters because they're all so young and fictional.

The Flash #6


Oh! How come I've never thought of this before? The amount of power The Flash needs to run up a building would absolutely cause him to crash straight through any window he ran across! And most skyscrapers he runs up are all windows! Man. Now the whole superspeed thing is ruined for me.

The Things!
Remember how The Flash used to battle people who threw boomerangs and shot icicles out of guns? Who was the first writer or editor to sit down to work on The Flash and think, "What the fuck are we doing? How are these villains challenging The Flash?! This is fucking ridiculous!" Then they ruined everything and decided Flash should only battle other speedsters and time travelers. At least every now and then back when The Flash was somehow not dodging every boomerang thrown at his head (I guess because he didn't know how they worked and that they came back around after he dodged them!), a writer would at least try to make things plausible by having him fight a psychic ape.

I wonder if this is the issue where we'll discover that August Heart is really Godspeed? Or will the twist be that that totally comic book twist isn't the actual twist? Because that would be a huge surprise! You know, I'm starting to think this story has gone long enough that Williamson realized everybody was going to guess that August Heart was Godspeed and so now Godspeed might wind up being Meena.

The issue begins with Godspeed fucking with some guy because of justice! Hey! Isn't August Heart obsessed with justice?! I wonder if they could be the same person? Probably not, right?! I mean, sometimes plot points that are way too easy to guess are that way so that people will guess them and then the writer can be all, "A-ha! I knew you'd take the cliché bait, you stupid fuckhole! This other thing is what was really going on all along no matter how it doesn't make as much sense as the cliché thing!"

Barry began this story learning, with help from Iris, that one of his major failings was always taking on too much at one time. He never had time for anything because he tried to make time for everything. Having a city full of speedsters to lighten his load solved that problem. But now Godspeed is killing them all and taking their speed so what does Barry do? He spends all of his time trying to solve the case and tell people their loved ones died and work August's brother's murder case all at once! Didn't he learn anything from Iris's advice?! Not that he should have. It was kind of stupid. But thematically, I guess it's appropriate that he's back to where he began? Because he runs so fast he always winds up standing where he started? Or something?

Barry notices that what happened to Meena seems to be the same thing that happened to him during Crisis on Infinite Earths. But that didn't actually happen. I don't think. Did it? I don't know. Whatever.

Godspeed kills again and Barry still has no idea that it's August. I mean, he doesn't know who it is.

Man, I'm really betting the farm that it's August, aren't I?! Well, even if it turns out that it isn't, I'm going to say that it was in these commentaries so that I don't look like a fool.


Ouch! Show some respect!

Barry needs to find out who Godspeed is so he checks with Iris because she's a journalist. Who better to go to than a journalist if you want to discover the truth? That's a joke! The kid who hands you your tacos in the Taco Bell drive-thru probably knows more than most journalists! Well, maybe they don't. But at least I know that the kid in the drive-thru won't be all wishy-washy about her opinions or worry about what Taco Bell management might think of them or worry that something she says might limit her access to other Taco Bell patrons. Iris really must know something because she's already thought up the headline for the story she has yet to write: "MURDER AT S.T.A.R. LABS. WHO IS GODSPEED?" That, my friends, is a shitty fucking headline.

While Barry is asking Iris for help and sort of groping her ass as she hugs him, Wally walks in on them and flips the fuck out. He goes all rabid teenager on Barry and screams at him to solve the crime already. As if Barry isn't trying to do just that! Can't Wally see that Barry's best lead is to read Iris's headline?! Sheesh. Wally runs off crying to find The Flash since Barry can't be dicked to solve the case in the next ten seconds. Lazy fuck.

One of the reason Barry goes to Iris is because he's read all of the evidence over and over and he's super tired of reading it. So he thinks a new set of eyes will discover something. And he's right! Iris finds the name of one of Godspeed's victims that might be a clue to his identity! Not that the name was hidden! But she discovers the person wasn't registered with STAR Labs as a speedster. When Barry looks at the name, he's all, "OH SHIT! Godspeed is August! And, I mean, how come I didn't react to this name before when I read this evidence the other six or seven times I said I read it? Maybe I should really read shit instead of telling people I've already read it. Fucking Wally was right. I'm totally not doing my best to solve this case!" Actually, Barry just looks shocked when he reads the name and says, "...oh no." But that's practically what I said previously.

So Barry catches up with August and is all, "Now I know why you couldn't come up with a code name! It was right there in my stupid CSI face all along! You do have a code name! It's Godspeed! You're Godspeed! I cracked the case!" And August is all, "Let's race!"

No wait. They don't race for some reason I don't understand. That's always the first thing competing speedsters do! They have to wave their big fast dicks at each other to see whose is quicker. Oh wait! They may not race but Godspeed definitely does pull his dick out.


Oh! I'm glad I mentioned that bit about Iris's advice earlier because this revelation sticks to the theme!

Ranking!
0. Usually when I guess something in Issue #1 that won't be revealed until Issue #6, I crow about being a Grandmaster Comic Book Reader. But the only people who didn't instantly know August Heart was the bad guy on page one of the first issue should simply be embarrassed. I'm still sort of hoping that next issue will reveal that Meena is actually behind it all somehow because this revelation was just pathetic.

Wonder Woman #6


I can't think of anything sexist to say about this cover so I just won't say anything at all.

The Commentary!
The only things I really want to write are angry, venomous things. I want to poke people with word sticks. I want to tell them that they aren't as wise and kind as they think they are. I want to drown them in vile, bitter, crass statements about their parentage. I want to compare them to things they really wouldn't like being compared to! But what would be the point? Everybody is terrible in their own way but the worst people are the ones who tell others how terrible they are. And why would I want to be one of them? I mean, I am one of them! Just ask Cullen Bunn! But that's a special case. I'm usually not like that! And I'm still not like that but he did post a picture of a guy flipping the bird and directed it at me, so fuck him. He gets to be my punching bag. I mean, not really. It's more of an idealized Cullen Bunn who is my punching bag! I don't really care what the real one is up to. I just like having this effigy to kick around every now and then.

Aside from having these angry feelings that I don't really know what to do with, I suppose I have a Wonder Woman comic book to read. Boy, I sure hope Greg Rucka pisses me off somehow!

This issue is about a bunch of birds spying on Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor as they get checked out by the US Government after landing an invisible plane on a crowded beach. Wonder Woman winds up in a jail cell not kicking everybody in the face because she seems to have something called patience. Steve is too busy telling his dead friend's wife that her husband is dead to get Wonder Woman out of prison. The wife, Maya, responds by talking nonsense.


Ugh. In other words, throw more corpses on the pile as you chase some elusive "meaning" to make every new death count for...whatever. How about giving him some dignity by letting his death have meaning in that he died doing what he thought was right? How is that not enough? Why ask Steve and countless others to risk their lives simply so you can have the satisfaction of meaning?

Barbara Ann Minerva comes to visit Wonder Woman because a comic book where nobody understands the main character will quickly grow tiresome. The last thing I need is for this comic book to go the Doctor Fate route where it spends twelve issues with the main character struggling with the whole concept of who he is. I can't read a Wonder Woman comic book where she and Steve just say their names to each other over and over again. So Barbara knows the language of the Amazons and she's able to converse with Wonder Woman. She discovers that Diana was visited by a the Greek Gods the night before and they gave her super powers. She only believes Diana when Diana tears the cell's bars from the floor and ceiling. I guess the next chapter will be twenty pages of Diana taking English classes.

This issue not only proved that Diana is patient and kind, it proved that I am neither of those things. I was bored and angry while reading this. This is the kind of comic book where fans will gush about a few scenes of Nicola's fantastic art which are so super adorable that you can't say a bad word about them. Like when Diana is getting her picture taken with the police officer. Or Diana's face when the god's visit her in the cell. Hell, this entire issue could have just been Nicola's art and Greg Rucka could have fucked the hell off for all I cared. This thing is beautiful. But the story? Totally boring. Unless you love bureaucracy and placing soldiers on pedestals.

Ranking!
+0. Look, I know I'm probably in the minority. I'm sure everybody is jerking themselves off all over Greg Rucka's fantastic run of Wonder Woman. But am I not allowed to be completely wrong about at least one comic book? Can I not have this one to fucking hate no matter how good it might be? It's also possible my mood these days isn't great for my judgment. I think I would have enjoyed this more if Wonder Woman had punched every fucking cop in the face and shit in their hats.

Saturday, September 24, 2016

Green Lanterns #6




The Commentary!
Current mood: I hate everybody. EV.ER.EE.BOD.EE.

Mood Friday Night: Drunk and singing Karaoke. That's pretty much the opposite of how I feel right now. And before you think, "Yeah, I get it, Tess! The world is full of pricks and assholes!", realize that you--the person agreeing with me?--I hate you too. Friday night I was singing "Be My Lover" by Alice Cooper and "Shame on You" by the Indigo Girls and "Eastbound and Down" by Jerry Reed and "Randy Scouse Git" by The Monkees and "Don't Let Me Get Me" by Pink. Tonight? Fuck it all. I'm going back into my shell and just read comic books and try to make some stupid jokes. I apologize beforehand to Sam Humphries since a lot of them will probably be at the expense of the work he did. Although, can it really be called work when you're obviously not doing the job you were paid to do? Exhibit A:


I think Sam mixed up the job descriptions of "Comic Book Writer" and "Novelist".

With all of this first person narration, might I suggest possibly going into a Young Adult Novel career path, Sam? When you were scripting this, you did know an artist was going to be doing some of the work for you, right? This feels like I'm reading the novelization of Green Lanterns #6!

I usually hate spoilers but I'm going to count all of the Narration Boxes in this comic book right now even though that means I'll see some images that might spoil the story. Although, will I? Really? From the looks of this page, the story is all in the words! The art is just parsley to make the...you know what? I actually don't know what parsley on a plate of food is for.

Ninety-one Narration Boxes and seventy panels. That ratio is way, way off. But there's good news too! As I was counting the panels and boxes, I noticed after about ten pages, the Narration Boxes mostly stopped for eight pages. Holy shit! Eight pages of Sam Humphries doing the job he was hired to do! I suppose he was also hired to write Narration Boxes. Some people like that shit! Sometimes, people sit down at a steak restaurant and actually say things like, "I would like a steak well done! I would like you to completely ruin the steak you are about to serve me by drying it out completely and making it extra crunchy and tough to chew! Also, could you sprinkle extra parsley around it?"

So the pictures did spoil the story for me! I haven't read the comic book yet but I know Jessica finally makes a construct, Simon breaks his arm in the fight, the teddy bear present is saved, Jessica's sister is safe, the Bohemian Guardian flashes his new Magenta Ring, and Dex-Starr successfully plants the Rage Seed in the Hell Well. So, you know, do I really need to read the comic book now? I figure all that Narration Boxing probably just makes sure I know that Jess sort of overcomes her anxiety to help Simon and Simon sort of overcomes his manliness to accept help, and they begin to trust each other. Right?


How dare you identify with the term "dork" in an adorable way?! You are no dork. You've never been a dork. You've never dealt with being an actual dork. Actual dorks got wedgies. Actual dorks got swirlies. Actual dorks came home from school with busted lips and black eyes and torn clothing on a constant fucking basis. Stop thinking it's so cute to be "such a nerd!" or "a total dork!" or "like, so geeky!" Fuck you.

Some people might be thinking, "How do you know those things never happened to her, Tess?!" Yeah, I don't. But, you know, she's a fictional character so I'm betting she probably did have those experiences, just so it all makes sense. But the thing that nobody really wants to talk about is that being a dork, or a nerd, or a geek isn't really about your hobbies. It isn't about being ostracized by the popular kids because you play Dungeons and Dragons or read science fiction or bury your face in comic books. It's actually about appearance. You're in elementary school or junior high or high school and you're ugly or fat? You're probably going to be picked on incessantly by assholes. But because you were picked on for shit you couldn't change about yourself (and why should you want to, or be constantly told you should want to change anyway?), you escaped from reality however you could. Back when words like dork, nerd, and geek weren't proud labels to wear on your lapel, they read comic books. They played Dungeons and Dragons. They lost themselves in science fiction. They weren't nerds, dorks, and geeks because they liked those things. They liked those things to get away from being constantly aware that everybody fucking hated them based solely on their looks. Can you maybe understand why some dorks, nerds, and geeks are so angry now that their escapes have gone mainstream and everybody has decided they themselves are dorks, nerds, and geeks now? I don't mean they're mad because other people like the shit they like. I mean they're angry because they still get picked on and still don't fit in because of their appearance. And what's worse? If any of them try to express how they feel, they get ridiculed by holier-than-thou assholes and told that they don't have a reason to be hurt or angry.

The inside cover of Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth has a number of heartbreaking bits that get to the essential core of being a nerd. One of the bits is a questionnaire and begins with "1. You are a. male. b. female. If b, you may stop. Put down your booklet. All others continue." The following goes on to describe in painstaking detail the experience of being a male nerd. Does the first question erase the experience of female nerds? Of course not. Get the fuck out of here. But by including that first question, Chris Ware is speaking to the heart of what it felt like to be a male nerd during a time when nerd hobbies were not mainstream and, I think, is a bit of a prophetic sense of what we have seen in things like Gamer Gate and the Manosphere. In some way, male nerds feel that women can never experience what it feels like to be ostracized by others. In some weird partitioned logic, they somehow think women cannot have had the same experiences that they had when younger. But reading through the rest of the questionnaire in the inside cover of Jimmy Corrigan, nothing stands out as being a purely male experience. Without that first question, the list isn't gendered at all. Here are two examples:

"6. The presence of members of the opposite and/or attractive sex makes you feel
a. weird.
b. awful.
c. terrified.
d. hopeless.
e. like killing yourself.

7. The possibility of finding social and/or personal contact with members of the opposite and/or attractive sex is
a. laughable.
b. incomprehensible.
c. all you ever think about.
d. a, b, and c.
e. a, b, c, and d."

These questions are experiences both unpopular and bullied males and females can identify with. And even though the first question asks females to put down the questionnaire, the questions are still posed in a way that doesn't exclude anyone based on gender. Although, I suppose, the "attractive sex" bit means "female"? And it's totally asked in a heteronormative way! But, you know what, ignore that bullshit. This is about specifics and cries of "erasure" only broaden discussion when sometimes (most of the time?) things need to get specific. Which brings me back to the fucked up angry male nerds who believe they're the only ones who have ever felt the way they've felt. So like the beginning of Chris Ware's quiz which seems to state females won't understand this kind of social isolation, they believe they're still being left behind by a culture that has accepted their escapes but still will not accept them.

Generally, I point out that these angry white males arming themselves for war are idiots who are throwing away the greatest privilege of being a white male. As a white male, you are born, from day one, being nothing but the name given to you by your parents. You are an individual. You don't have to fight for rights. You don't have to answer questions about where you're from. You don't have to worry about being a slut or a prude. You're just fucking you, and that's all. When somebody makes fun of white males or attacks white males, most white males don't think, "Fuck you! You're talking about me, aren't you?!" Most white males think "That's right! White males do do that shit!" without ever thinking they're included in the generalization. Because, even if they are, why should they care?! You're not losing anything by being made fun of! The privilege of being born an individual and only an individual can't be taken away by somebody talking about a group of people which--Hey!--you happen to be part of. Angry white males are idiots throwing away the greatest gift they were ever given: the right to not give a shit what anybody says about white males!

Generally, I point out those things. Generally. But sometimes, I empathize with those white males. Sometimes I think it's strange that suddenly white males can't have emotional problems where they express how they've been shit on simply because white males aren't allowed to feel powerless and hurt and upset. At least, not as a group. Which I totally agree with! But when a white male, as an individual, tries to express any of their loneliness or isolation or anger at the way they've been treated--again, as an individual!--they're shit on and ridiculed and told they aren't allowed to feel those things. Because, you know, that's a cool thing to do to a person.

I know, I know. Everybody lacking reading comprehension and wanting to scream about their own issues can just reply "man tears" to this post. Like I fucking care! You think I feel emotions?! Fuck that. Life crushed the emotions out of me by the time I was thirty-five. And, when you get right down to it, I don't actually give a shit how badly white male nerds are treated. I've been to Magic the Gathering Tournaments. Most of those guys are dicks.

Oh! That was a joke with a lot of truth behind it but it sort of makes the point I was going for in a weird way. There was this one guy who I played in a tournament who I knew from a sealed deck league that I used to play in the back of a comic book shop in Campbell, California. I was in my early twenties at the time and he must have been in his forties, maybe older. He was fat, balding, and had a goofy eye that stared in the other direction. He carried a briefcase full of Magic cards. He was the kind of guy who probably would read the inside cover of Jimmy Corrigan and weep uncontrollably. He was a nerd. A dork. A geek. And I fucking loved this guy. He was nice. He was generous. He was fun to play. He was interested when you played combinations he never would have considered. We just happened to draw against each other in the first round at a tournament in San Jose. I beat him with one of my weird, no creature decks and he was polite and cool and wished me luck in the rest of the tournament. He's one of the guys who I empathize with, caught up in what is a predominantly white male nerd outlet full of aggressive, sexist assholes who would cheat in every game they played if given the chance.

Ugh. Anyway. Enough about white males. Fuck those guys, amirite?!

So, back to the Green Lanterns...hey! Look! Jessica Cruz overcomes her anxiety and saves Simon's life! What a surprise!


Good cat! I can't not scan a picture of Dex-Starr being a good cat! Aww! Destroy the world like a good kitty! Who's a big man?! Yes, yes. Who's a big man?!

Jess destroys the Hell Well but not before Dex-Starr plants the rage seed. So Red Dawn will continue as planned as Simon and Jess bond over Jessica's newfound ability to make constructs. I mean, she only made like this flowery thing which any preschooler probably could have made. But it was enough to let the Green Lanterns think they saved the Earth!

Simon and Jessica hug which, I think, means they're forming a cohesive unit now. This is also about the time the Narration Boxes end! Because they don't have to think separate thoughts now. They're united! Let's give Sam Humphries the credit for that being the way the narrative was designed, shall we? Let's not pretend it's just something I observed and made more out of than it actually is. He's a professional writer! This is the kind of thing they do! Okay, yes. I'm more than a professional comic book reader. I'm a Grandmaster! But that doesn't mean what I read into a book is more than what is actually there! That would be insulting to Sam! And I'm not reading comic books to be insulting to Sam Humphries! I read comic books to be insulting to Cullen Bunn!


That would actually be a pretty small pizza.

The part without Narration Boxes? The part where Simon and Jessica become friendly towards each other? I like that part! A lot! I like it as much as I hate the parts that are all Narration! You know what? I think I like it more! That might mean this comic could get a positive ranking before I'm done! As long as Sam Humphries doesn't do something that I'm totally biased against before this ends.

Simon and Jess head back to Simon's sister's place to deliver his nephews present and run into the Bohemain Guardian. This Guardian isn't actually one of the Bohemian Guardians from the last Green Lantern run. This guy is even more bohemian than they were! He's so bohemian he's rogue! He's Rami the Rogue Guardian! You thought the Qwardians were insane?! Well, they've got nothing on Rami! He did what even they couldn't do! What's that?! Um, uh, just a second while I turn the page to find out!


Oh. Is that all? Who fucking cares?!

I still think it would have been better if it were the Magenta Ring and could only be used by little girls. But a ring anybody can use? Is that really so different from every other Spectrum Ring in existence? It doesn't really sound that special. I mean, if G'nort can wield a green ring, who can't wield one?!

The epilogue to "Rage Planet" has Bleez thinking about how she can't let Atrocitus know how much she wants to be free from Red Lanterning while Atrocitus thinks, "There's something different about Bleez!" Because, God forbid, a character ever keep anything secret from another character. It's like taking Stan Lee's theory about fights ending in a draw to its extreme. Bleez needs to fool Atrocitus! But Atrocitus can't be written as being fooled by anybody so he has to show, through Narration Boxing, that he has his doubts about the person lying to him! Ugh.

Meanwhile, a new Red Entity is incubating inside the Earth. When it's time to have a big crossover event, it will be born and Red Dawn will be splashed across the covers of all of the Green Lantern comic books (and maybe more, if the Green Lanterns editor gives out enough handjobs and fingerbangs to the other editors).

The Ranking!
+1. But it's a tentative plus one! That's why I used a period! Oh, and also? I think I'm over hating everybody. Reading comic books for the win!