Thursday, January 5, 2017

Nightwing #10


I don't think I've ever read any Blüdhaven stories but I'm already angry that I have to learn the ALT code for the u with an umlaut.

After learning about Blüdhaven from Preboot Superman, Dick Grayson decides it's the place for him! He's heard that what happens in Blüdhaven stays in Blüdhaven (probably because what happens is usually murder and what stays is the corpse thrown into a concrete foundation being laid) and that totally sounds like the Dick Grayson way. Because lately, the Dick Grayson way has been more like the James Bond way. He wants to get back to familiar territory and the best way to do that is to move to someplace completely foreign to him.

Dick decides to get a job volunteering with a program that helps teens stay out of trouble. He nails the interview and, later, probably the boss.


Are there sexual harassment policies in place for trying to fuck volunteers to an organization? It's okay to bang them if you're not paying them, right?!

Dick Grayson is going to get so much püssy in Blüdhaven.

Another person Dick will be working with at Don't Let Teenagers Become Violent And Steal My Things Headquarters is a guy named James Nice. That's suspicious! You don't get a name like Nice without being a cold-hearted dildo puncher. I should know because my last name is...um...it's just Tess, actually. Never mind. Forget I said anything. Although, seriously, with all the links to my old websites and my Twitter account and the name Grunion Guy and my Xbox Live Handle and who knows what other things (like probably mentioning my name directly in an early review when I was drunk or something), it wouldn't take much effort for a stalker to figure out who I am. So why haven't I been stalked yet? So disappointing.

After Dick leaves, James and Shawn are all, "We should wear our supervillain costumes to the meeting tonight to show that we're in control of our supervillain tendencies! It'll help the teenage supervillains we're helping to understand that they can also avoid being violent and stealing other people's things. Maybe we can even convince them that they're superheroes instead of superzeroes! That's such a great slogan that it's probably already been copyrighted and now our organization is going to be sued and we'll all go back to our lives of crime. I guess that's not all bad seeing as how we live in Blühaven, Crime Capital of places with umlauts in their name."

Dick goes home to learn that normal life is too boring to live for a ward of Bruce Wayne's who was raised in a traveling circus to be a Talon and slept with a dwarf throughout his teen years. So he'll probably be out fighting crime before you can type the ALT code for a u with an umlaut over it.

Meanwhile, the Blüdhaven mayor is having a meeting with his staff to ensure that Blüdhaven doesn't become too family friendly in it's new campaign to lure families to the strip.


Nice bit of writing, Tim Seeley, to cover the fact that you don't know what "on fleek" means! Or that you just didn't care enough to look it up because it's fucking stupid. Slang doesn't prove that you're cool and in the know. Slang only means you're an unimaginative chump who wants to fit in so badly that you'll say stupid shit like "fleek" to describe whatever the hell is fleeky.

Being an older person, the only reason to use young people slang is to annoy the fuck out of them. But just because it's the only reason, it doesn't mean it's not a good reason. Making teenagers cringe is a healthy adult pastime, especially when they think they're the cool ones for recognizing a cringe-worthy moment. Oh, we know everything we do that makes you cringe, young people. It's the only reason we do any of it.

Searching my site, I used "on fleek" once when I mentioned how I have never said it. Besides, it was almost certainly uncool to say by the time I even learned about it! That's another part of the fun of using youthful slang. By the time adults know about it, it's been abandoned by the youth. We all know it but the youth think we still somehow think the slang is still en vogue. Super cringe points!

Marvel comics might have a case for suing DC Comics since Mayor Madrigal is basically Perry White. I mean J. Jonah Jameson!

That last paragraph (which was only a sentence) is for people who think I'm stupid and unsubtle. It's both proof that I am to people who think that and proof that I am not because there's a whole underbelly of criticism against fangenders and their Marvel vs DC war in that sentence. Paragraph!

Thankfully, some crime gets committed near Dick's new place, so he dons his costume and exits the window of his apartment in his Nightwing kit. So I guess he doesn't give a shit about his secret identity, does he? People are going to notice shit like that! And some of those people are going to be curious enough to figure out which window that apartment belongs to. And some of those people are going to earn big money selling the information to mob bosses.

The crime was committed by a talking ape who Dick quickly takes down for the Blüdhaven police. The ape is Gorilla Grimm from Gorilla City. I don't mean to sound racist in so many fucking ways I can't even fathom it but how does Dick recognize one Gorilla from Gorilla City over another? I would have sworn this was Grodd except that Grodd would never wear a wife-beater and a trucker's cap. Oh, maybe that's how he recognized him! To be fair to myself and my totally racist question which I didn't mean to be racist in suggesting that apes are equivalent to black people and the possible truth but probable stereotype that white people can't identify one black person from another because I really did just mean that I wouldn't be able to tell one gorilla from another, I probably wouldn't recognize Dick Grayson from one comic book artist to another without a bevy of clues that have nothing to do with his looks. I'm sure if Gorilla Grodd and Gorilla Grimm were real gorillas, I'd totally be able to tell the difference. Unless I'm Gorilla Face Blind. I might be! I haven't met enough gorillas to know for sure.

Poor Gorilla Grimm. Your parents don't give you that name if they think you're going to amount to anything. His hopes and aspirations were probably stillborn thanks to the name. Thanks a lot, Ma and Pa Gorilla! Fucking dicks.

Nightwing just got done thinking how nice it was to get back to Black and White crimefighting instead of trying to navigate a gray world where somebody, somewhere, is constantly finding a reason to criticize you when Gorilla Grimm begins talking.


Profile much, Nightwing? Am I off the hook for comparing a gorilla to a black person now that Tim Seeley has done it? Not that I did it at all! But I wrote something that suggested that if you were of a mind to read it that way, due to the gray world we live in and the penchant for finding offense wherever a person can to feel more righteous than the next person. Because I totally didn't mean the comparison! Just because I noticed that something I wrote could be read that way and then brought it out in the open to say that it wasn't meant that way doesn't mean I meant it that way! Also, I'm sure Tim Seeley didn't mean it that way either. I'm just trying to deflect the mob to somebody else!

I once made the accidental racism comment before in a Twat Lobo commentary that I noticed afterward and called myself out on. But not that it was accidentally racist, what I said. Just that it could have been seen that way! I reprint it here for good times:

Now I want to write a comic book called General Calamity and Wanton Violence. It would be set in the old west and be full of gore and good-intentioned racist microaggressions. You know the kind! Like when some white gunslinger has his ass saved by a Chinese fella and the gunslinger says, "You ain't so bad, fer a chinerman." And the Chinese Gunslinger smiles graciously while planning on whether he's going to piss or shit in the white gunslinger's stew later. You know! A fun comic book!

Oh shit! I just had an Asian-American Doll moment! I didn't mean for the comic book to sound like it was a white guy named General Calamity and a Chinese guy named "Wonton" Violence! Man, my cynicism almost failed me but I caught it just in time! Although, fuck me, it's a good idea! "So, you're name is Wonton Violence, hunh?" "No, it is 'Wanton' Violence,' you ignorant cocksucker!" Of course, Wanton Violence delivers his line over a smoking pistol and the corpse of the ignorant cocksucker.

I still believe that would make a good television series. Probably an independent series or somewhere like Netflix where the studio doesn't try to exert their control on every little bit of the production until they've turned it into something the broadest audience can like. And by "broadest" of course I mean "stupidest."

The Blüdhaven SWAT team take Gorilla Grimm off of Nightwing's hands because Gorilla Grimm is a suspect in a nearby murder. See, the murder victim was torn apart and had all their bones broken. Totally something a damn filthy ape would do, right?! But since Gorilla Grimm told Nightwing to his face he was innocent, Nightwing begins to suspect that maybe Blüdhaven might be a little gray after all! Like maybe they're cleaning up the city a little too enthusiastically to ensure tourists flock to their casinos. Like maybe Blüdhaven isn't so different from Gotham at all.

The SWAT Team doesn't arrest Nightwing in the way law enforcement likes to arrest superheroes but he does give Nightwing a firm slap on the wrist and a warning. I suppose if I arrived at one of the stores whose floor I clean and found a jerk in a costume doing the work for free, I might be a little bit annoyed too.

Gorilla Grimm tells Nightwing to talk to Shawn Tsang about how he didn't do it. Nightwing will probably do that but it's not like he can interfere with an arrest being made, even if he thinks the arrest is wrong. That's up to the courts to decide (even though they'll get it wrong too because our justice system is terrible and biased toward law enforcement because they need to keep them happy so that they'll work with them on real cases and not just the cases where the cops are all, "Put this bad person away because we said so or we're not helping you ever again, District Attorney"). If Nightwing were to interfere, he'd be no better than that criminal Tim Drake.

The Blüdhaven Tourism Board learns that Nightwing is working in Blüdhaven. Time to pay him to be the face of tourism! "Come to Blüdhaven for the hookers, blow, and casinos! Stay to catch a glimpse of Nightwing's ass!"

Nightwing heads back to talk to Shawn Tsang about Gorilla Grimm when he discovers that she's actually the supervillain known as Defacer. I don't know what her super power is. Spray painting? Anyway, it's just what Dick didn't want. He just got done trusting a villain who turned out to be an actual villain. Now he's falling right back into the same theme! Why can't people just be good and bad?! What is with all of this shit about good people doing bad things for good reasons or bad people doing good things but in terrible ways?! Knock it off and just be good or bad, stupid people of the world!

The Ranking!
No change. It's only a rating of No Change because Nightwing is ranked at #3 and I'm not yet ready to say it's better than The Flintstones. Maybe in some ways it is, depending on what you want out of a comic book. That's the problem having mainstream superhero titles on a ranking list that also includes modern versions of old Hanna-Barbera cartoons. But I really fucking enjoy everything about The Flintstones. Maybe if I were gay and I wanted to fuck Dick Grayson, this would be better than The Flintstones. But I'm not gay and I want to fuck Betty Rubble, so there you have it. Although, you should be reading this comic book! That's just a fact. I mean, it's an opinion but it's my opinion so it might as well be a fact.

Oh, I should also mention Marcus To's art is fantastic. I don't want him getting all butt-hurt again because of my intense hyperbolic criticisms that are simply meant to be funny in that way it's funny when an old person is shit on by society and they have no recourse but to scream and rant and bleed out of the eyes. So, you know, good work, Marcus! Now maybe your sycophantic followers won't harass me for criticizing your stupid Justice League International cover! I still stand by my assessment of the cover even if the inside art was so good you could wank to it!

No comments:

Post a Comment