Thursday, October 20, 2016

Legends of Tomorrow #4


I'm more like a Legend of Yesterday. It was for about three months in the summer of 2014. I either peaked right about here! Unless my peak was where I put Aubrey Plaza's face on top of Wonder Woman's in all of the scans.

The First Bit!
• I haven't been reading the last three issues of this because the last three issues of Legends of Tomorrow is technically the last twelve issues. That's a lot of issues to read just to clear three comic books from the stack! But I guess I need to face my demons head on! Today it will be this comic book; tomorrow it will be my spiraling alcoholism.

• That was a lie. I don't really drink that often. I think I have the Asian Flush because occasionally I'll have about one sip of alcohol and have a serious allergic reaction that destroys my sinuses and head for the next day or so. But even then, I still take my chances at times! My real problem is video games. I can't seem to play enough Overwatch these days. And I finally figured out a way to make replaying the SSI Gold Box Dungeons and Dragons games I purchased cheaply off of GOG.com interesting! I'm going to play through them all as just one mage. Not even a duel classed mage! Just a lone, stupid, chaotic evil mage named Hateful Barb. She doesn't take shit from anybody and murders any NPC when given the option to attack. She also dies a lot because she has almost no hit points and really just one tactic in battle: be invisible and cast Fireball. Sometimes she'll cast Stinking Cloud first to give herself a little time to Fireball. I would say her other tactic is "Don't get hit" but that's not something she's in control of. You can tell by how many times I have to keep reloading after she's slaughtered immediately upon encountering the next batch of five hundred orcs and kobolds.

The Firestorm Commentary!
• The issue begins with Firestorm being zapped in some kind of static field matrix field of static. He looks to be screaming in pain, as is Martin Stein's nearby floating head. I've never liked DC's decision to go with an on-panel (or, the case of the cartoon, on-screen) floating head to represent the person inside of the other person part of Firestorm. I would rather just have a voice inside one of those jagged speech bubbles that represents a voice from afar. I suppose back when Firestorm was created, DC Comics understood that most kids reading their comic books were stupid fucks who wouldn't understand what was going on without the floating head. But if the kids were really that stupid (they were! I base that on the fact that DC Comics didn't go out of business long ago. Their stories were awful!), didn't they just believe Firestorm was a man with his head on fire who was followed around by a scary disembodied head?

• General Eiling is torturing Firestorm because that's his entire purpose in the DC Universe. Whenever a character appears and says something like, "I'm totally a good guy but I'm so going to make that Firestorm my bitch!", you can bet it's General Eiling! He says it's his duty to torture Firestorm because Firestorm "may well be" an enemy of the United States. For military thinking, that seems about par for the course (which is "3" because I'm equating golf with the United States and the intelligence level of most of the people in this country would mean I obviously meant "miniature golf"). I wonder if the United States of America will ever learn that most people make better decisions when they don't base them on their own fears. Remember that time that famous American said that we have nothing to fear but fear itself? How do people not understand that he was talking about exactly the kind of problems that have plagued the United States since September 11th, 2001? More to the point, it's caused the kind of helicopter parenting that makes people feel justified for calling child services on a parent who once glanced in the opposite direction of their child while at the park. So dangerous!

• I'm going to be doing this commentary all day if I keep up this kind of pace. I'm still on page one of eighty! I'll probably burn out in the middle of the Metamorpho story which means the Sugar & Spike and Metal Men commentaries will have about two comments each.


How cute! Look at Major Force having a thought that he wasn't told to think!

• General Eiling gives a valid reason for torturing Firestorm: the Nuclear Man was created by a guy who was an associate of another guy who was a total jerk. I want to jokingly say "Seems plausible!" except that this is exactly the kind of bullshit reasons for keeping suspected terrorists in custody. Or should I say captivity? You know how people always defend harsh laws and violent police actions with shit like "Why are you worried if you aren't doing anything wrong?" Well apparently people have to worry because somebody they associate with might be doing something wrong! And how am I supposed to know what everybody I'm ever in contact with is doing?!

• Would everybody who has ever commented on this blog please send me a list of all the terrible shit you've ever done so I can report you immediately? I do not want to end up being tortured because I've been associated with you! Jerks!


Yeah! How dare you be concerned about the innocence of a person I'm torturing who may or may not be anything I think they are! The torture will put all of our doubts to rest! Probably! I mean, why would anybody say anything untrue simply to stop being tortured?! Probably cowards who have something to hide, that's who!

• I'm hungry for ice cream and it's 5:26 in the morning.

• Do these bullet points make my commentaries easier to read? Instead of an insurmountable, nearly endless wall of text, you get nice little bite-sized morsels! It's like you can pick and choose which ones you want to read! It's not like there's any real linear progression to them anyway.

• Major Force walks out so he can keep his honor and integrity. Although, I mean, do you really get to say you kept your integrity intact when you refused to participate in torture but then simply went across the street to eat at Popeye's and forgot all about the victim? I think Major Force might need to step up his actions a little bit or I'm still going to refer to him as an accessory.

• During the torture of Ronald Raymond (who--let's face it--is used to being in a tortured environment. His mom is a racist who feeds him dog dick dinners), Martin Stein continues to get off on their disgusting May-September romance. He's all, "Ronald! We have to split apart! My nuclear bond is about to compress! UNH! If it continues, the results could be catastrophic! Have you ever gotten semen in your eyes?! So gross!"

• Meanwhile, Jason, along with his beard, his dad, and Ronnie's mom, are searching for Firestorm.


Christ! Calm down, you racist jerk! When did he become your son's keeper? Maybe you're just upset because you're a bad mother who lost track of her little Ronnie Hitler Raymond.

• While exploring Martin Stein's lab, Jason finds the helmet Martin puts on that allows him to get inside Ronnie and Jason's heads when they're all up inside each other's Firestorm Matrices. He's so perverted and gross.

• Jason puts on the helmet himself and cries out in shock and sadness as he experiences Martin Stein's catastrophic "nuclear bond compression."

• Jason and his crew decide to rescue Firestorm from the military themselves. How do they suppose they're going to break into a military installation to rescue somebody without getting themselves killed?! The U.S. Military should sue 80s movies for making everybody think the security of military installations was so horrible that any child could find a way to sneak into one.

• Meanwhile, Multiplex is trying to find a way to make all of his duplicates into individuals. I still don't understand why he wants to do that. If I stumbled into some kind of cosmic accident which resulted in a second, fully autonomous me? I'd kill him. No second thoughts. Who knows what kind of embarrassing, and possibly illegal, things he'd reveal?!

• Multiplex explains to some physicist named Marla that he wants to resolve his potential self. Marla makes sure to repeat it later so the reader can be all, "Oh yeah! It sounds more like an explanation after I've heard it two or three more times!" Danton also explains how "infinite potential isn't enough." No shit, Danton. If it were, none of us would ever do anything! I'd sit in a dark room all day thinking, "I can do so many things! SO MANY! Oh man! This is great! So many things I could be doing which I'm not doing! It's wonderful!"

• General Eiling continues to put Firestorm under ever increasing amounts of pressure until he goes critical. You know, nuclear! That's when the tech who Eiling browbeat into increasing the upper limits of the torture is all, "I told you so! I fucking told you!", right before he's going to be obliterated by the nuclear explosion. I don't blame him. Those are probably some pretty satisfying last words.

• Major Force returns with greasy fingers and barbecue sauce all over the front of his spandex. He may have pussed out when it came to saving an innocent life from being tortured but he's still a hero! Or as much of a hero as he can be after allowing torture to continue even after he witnessed it. So now he's going to save the facility by punching Firestorm until he's not going critical anymore. Probably. I can't think of any other way DC Comics solves problems in their stories.

• Using the Martin Stein Mental Creeper Helmet, Jason discovers that Firestorm is about to blow! The only way to stop it is to shut down power to the military installation. Luckily, he and his crew are right next to a transformer supplying power to the facility! All they have to do is destroy it by crashing their car into it!


No, Jason, you literally don't have to do this. It only takes one person to drive a car into a transformer. Unless your father needs somebody to read the map and change radio stations, I guess.

• Jason and his dad both dive out of the car as it careens into the transformer. Why even put his dad in that situation?! You know how difficult it must be to open a car door on the opposite side of your only arm so that you can dive out of the car that you're steering with that arm?! Fucking Ronnie's mother should have driven that car and remained in it as it exploded. Why isn't she putting her life at risk to save her son?! Some mama bear she turned out to be, the lousy dog dick eater.

• Firestorm escapes and Major Force lets him go. Instead, he turns on General Eiling and relieves him of command. That's more like it! A person always thinks better after getting a couple Popeye's biscuits in them.

The Firestorm Ranking!
No change. Can we get a Firestorm story that doesn't involve General Eiling trying to turn Firestorm into a weapon for the United States, or one where he goes after Firestorm as a danger to the security of the United States? I liked the one that seemed like it was going to be a gay romance! It was one of the few new changes of The New 52 and it just went nowhere. I bet it's because Gail Simone was all, "We are definitely going to have Ronnie and Jason sucking dick on-panel." And everybody else on the book was all, "Um, no?" But I was reading it and I saw where it was headed and I was all, "Oh yeah!" But then Gail was off the book and it never happened except in my dreams.

The Metamorpho Commentary!
• I was being optimistic thinking I'd keep the same pace all the way through half of the Metamorpho story! I'm already winding down and chomping at the bit to play Overwatch! And eat ice cream! And cry about the overwhelming futility of it all! Although the ice cream might make me feel good enough to skip the crying.

• I only remember two things about the Metamorpho story. The first is that Metamorpho and Sapphire are on an ancient planet where the original Egyptians came from. The second is that Sapphire has a great ass. Hopefully there aren't any more plot points in the twenty page story so I won't have anything to discuss. Aside from Sapphire's ass.

• Oh yeah! Kanjar Ro is the villain. He's after the power of Ra, probably so he can use it to make Hal Jordan look like a fool.

• Metamorpho is the Chosen One on this planet. It must be primitive if it still thinks plots revolving around "Chosen Ones" are still interesting. Metamorpho explains to Neith, the leader, how he's hoping to change back into his old self. And Neith is all, "But why would you want to change?! Did the patriarchy make you feel bad about yourself?! You're perfect the way you are! Is me telling you that you're perfect just as oppressive as the patriarchy telling you that you have many flaws?! Am I part of the problem?! Um, what I meant to say is that anything you believe is cool and anything you do to your own body is great and every single one of your opinions, even though I just said you're perfect the way you think you want to be, are completely gross and problematic to somebody so probably just shutting the fuck up and listening is what you should do. Although who should you be listening to? Why do some people get to speak and aren't told to shut up? I guess they're the brave ones! Today, they may have people gathered about like baby birds slurping down their wisdom (it's wisdom because everybody listening already agrees with it)! Tomorrow, somebody will rise up and point out how the brave one said something that was easily misinterpreted by the baby birds as gross and will be torn to shreds!" Unless she just tells Metamorpho he's currently cool the way he is and if he wants to change, it just seems maybe he should consider the reasons why he wants to change so that he's not doing it for the Patriarchy aaaaaand I was just interrupted by the Non-Certified Spouse and lost my stream of consciousness spiel that wasn't really going anywhere anyway so whatever.

• Rex tells Sapphire she's pretty and Sapphire tells Rex that maybe he'll be pretty again one day? Pretty much the opposite of what Neith just told him. Rex walks away, leaving Sapphire to gaze into the diamond testicle Rex gave her last issue.

• Simon Stagg has sent Java to find Rex, kill him, and retrieve Sapphire and the Orb of Ra. Java has been given a gun that will make Rex inert for thirty minutes. It's the only way a caveman can defeat a metamorphoid. Maybe the gun will turn Rex human for thirty minutes. That will allow Rex and Sapphire to totally do it like thirty times. Then Rex can send Simon a card that reads, "Thank you for the means to bang your daughter! She says I'm way better than a caveman!"

• Metamorpho eventually comes to the tower containing the Orb of Ra. They have a bit of a chat about destiny which is basically meaningless. People with good lives will often point out how many specific things needed to happen for them to have wound up exactly where they are in their life. It's such an obvious statement that I hate to think of it as philosophical. They never seem to realize that if they had made other decisions which wound up building a positive life for them, they would be saying the same fucking thing in that other timeline. Things happen and decisions are made and life winds up being whatever it winds up being. Is that destiny? Does it fucking matter? Although it's particularly vexing in Rex's case since the Orb of Ra hints around that Rex's entire life has been manipulated so that he can become the Chosen One and rescue the Orb of Ra. I might be a little bit pissed about that! Because now, I could look back at never telling Marilyn Mendoza how I felt about her as not my own regret! Now I have to look at it as some vast conspiracy that kept me and Marilyn Mendoza apart! I'm already shaking my fist about it!

• Metamorpho removes the Orb of Ra from the tower and is instantly ambushed by Kanjar Ro. Dammit, Rex! This is exactly the kind of thing the Orb of Ra was trying to avoid by manipulating you into being its Chosen One!

• Sapphire runs from the battle with the Orb of Ra and immediately phones her father to tell him that she has the Orb. Why that little hussy! I was so dazzled by her perfect ass that I didn't realize she was playing Rex the whole time!

The Metamorpho Ranking!
No change. Throughout that whole story, not one decent panel of Sapphire Stagg's ass. I'm so disappointed. Maybe Lord Google can help me find a good shot of it! Hmm, "Sapphire Stagg" and "ass" doesn't really help. Maybe "Sapphire Stagg" and "rule 34"! No, it didn't help. But Lord Google did turn up this thing that I saw so now you get to see it too.




The Sugar & Spike Commentary!
• In this story, Sugar & Spike are on the trail of Itty, Green Lantern's alien sidekick friend. At least I hope it was a friend. It's possible he kept it around for sexual reasons. I don't mean to suggest he was fucking it! But it's possibly Itty had an essential role in Hal Jordan's love life. And now he wants Itty back!

• Green Lantern believes he saw Itty in a picture of exhibits at the Metahuman Museum of Oddities. That's great! Because now Keith Giffen gets to write in a bunch of crazy shit DC Comics came up with over the years that he's been obsessed with since his first Ambush Bug mini-series! And probably earlier! Like when he was a kid that nobody liked and he stayed in his room all day reading comic books instead of being thrown into dumpsters.


I'm not great with Silver and Golden Age goofiness but I still recognize some of this shit. Crazy Quilt. Brother Power the Geek. L-Ron. The Red Tornado, original version. Kite-man. Vibe, maybe? Shining Knight? The Penguin's Walrus Sex Costume with the hole in the ass?

• The Trickster is also in a case on the next page. He's probably planning a robbery!

• While Sugar talks to the curator, the guy who used to be Lamplighter, a Green Lantern foe, Spike stumbles upon a display of the original Green Team. That's cute since the new Green Team had a museum much like this one! In fact, they had Brother Power the Geek in theirs too!

• I think Spike is embarrassed to be in the Museum because he knows he should probably be one of the exhibits.

• Anyway, the Toy Girl from Superman Island arrives with another Itty and things happen and it turns out this is the son (or daughter? I forget) of the original Itty which has 33 other siblings and that's the end of the mystery because I need that fucking tub of ice cream already! It's now 8:26 in the morning! It's been three hours since I first thought about having ice cream! Also, I've been reading this comic book for three hours! Also playing a little Pool of Radiance here and there. And, of course, I'm writing this on the Internet so there's that constant distraction!

The Sugar & Spike Ranking!
No change. It was cute. That's about it. I'm tired and need sugar! Metal Men will have to wait.

The Metal Men Commentary!
• They go on an adventure or some such shit.

• During that adventure, Cliff Steele poses as a lawyer. I don't think he's actually a lawyer. Is he?

• Also, the government creates a new batch of Metal Men. This group also only has one female. And they're all boring. "I'm Aluminium! The best thing I can think to say about myself is that I'm the third most abundant element!" "I'm Lithium! I'm used in batteries!" "I'm Silicon! I'm boring as hell too in that my best feature is my abundance! Second overall in the element category!" "I'm Zirconium! 'Nuff said! Total bore!" "I"m Copper! I fuck like there's no tomorrow!"

• Okay, so maybe Copper isn't as boring as the others. Also one is called Magnesium but he was too boring to mention.

• Since the New Metal Men have Copper, Lithium, and Magnesium, I would have liked them to also have Nitrogen, Nickel, Uranium and Sulfur! Then they could line up and spell "CuNNiLiMgUS".

• The Metal Men discover Nameless is actually The Calculator and they apprehend him. But instead of being able to hand him over to the military, the military decides to test their Metal Men against Magnus's Metal Men. I hope they defeat Lithium and Magnesium by just throwing water on them and watching them burn to death.

The Metal Men Ranking!
No change. It was better than previous episodes. I think. It's hard to tell being the fourth story in a book containing four regular sized comic books. Usually when I sit down to read some comics, I get through two before I get anxious to do something else. By the time I'm on my fourth comic in one sitting? I'm ready to blow my fucking brains out. Judging by how I didn't do that, this story must have been halfway decent.

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