Mother Panic #5

I know wild rats are vermin that often carry disease on their beshitted fur but they're so fucking adorable I want to hug them!

I had a rat in high school and a gerbil in college (the answer to your inappropriate question is no). If it weren't for how lazy I am, I'd currently have either a couple of rats or a couple of gerbils. But you really have to make a daily effort to keep their cages clean so your house doesn't smell constantly of rodent piss. Gerbils aren't as bad as rats but it's still more work than I'm willing to do. Plus my cat Pelafina is a mouser so I'm fairly confident I already know how my rodent friend would eventually die: listening to me yell "Pelafina!" and sort of giggling at the same time because it would be cute the way my cat was mauling the rodent, and I don't think anybody deserves to be laughed at as they're being ripped to shreds.

I hope Shawn Crystal is the new permanent artist on this book because I'm in love with the art now. It definitely counteracts the pretentious art story about a girl whose father let his friends rape her so she had to murder him which caused her to be imprisoned in a boarding school run by sadistic nuns who experimented on her and turned her into a whacked out superhero who sees strange visions when she brawls. It feels much more lighthearted now!

You know what I haven't done in awhile? I haven't proven my Grandmaster Comic Book Reader credentials! Let's get that out of the way immediately.

Remember what I suggested this guy's name should be last issue? The Plastic Pauper! Say it together now: Grandmaster Comic Book Reader!

Okay, now that I've covered the most important part of this blog (stroking my ego), I can get to the boring bits (plot, characterization, Mother Panic's superb ass (I didn't scan the picture of it last issue but it's better than Nightwing's)).

Somehow Jody Houser forgot to use the term "uncanny valley" when describing The Plastic Pauper last issue. That's a shame since Ann Nocenti used it as often as she could in every incorrect manner possible. See, Gather House did so much plastic surgery on The Plastic Pauper that they made him looks so beautiful he looks fake and nobody can stare directly at him. So maybe this is less like the uncanny valley and more like the valley past the lake and over the mountains where nobody visits because it's unheimlich unheimlich. Jody didn't use unheimlich last issue either so I thought I'd use it here.

Violet's mom has made some new rat friends. They come by to chat with her and share their food. But Violet doesn't know about them yet. She just thinks her mother is talking to the roses which is just crazy. If she knew her mother was talking to rats, she'd be less concerned because that's totally normal behavior.

I'd like to get my bats in that belfry.

I'm trying out a bunch of new phrases that mean "I want to do it!" "I'd like to blow bubbles in that milk!" "I'd like to carpet bomb that Dresden!" "I'm going to clog that toilet!" "I'm going to punch that Nazi so hard!" "I'd love to play Global Thermonuclear War with that WOPR!"

After going out on the town to remind everybody that Violet Paige totally isn't Mother Panic, just in case anybody was wondering, Violet goes out with The Plastic Pauper the next night to take out their next target, Ashley Layton. He's just another on the list of people who ruined their childhoods. I might need a new name for The Plastic Pauper because he keeps spouting Alice in Wonderland shit. What is with super villains in Gotham being obsessed with Wonderland? Is Gotham a metaphor for Wonderland that I've totally missed all of these years and have never seen any evidence for at all? I mean aside from all those villains. Maybe the Gotham Public Library only had three books: Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, and The Autobiography of Bruce Wayne: Totally Not the Batman.

The Plastic Pauper wants to snipe the fuck out of Layton's child. But Mother Panic is all, "Whoa! I think you got the wrong idea about me and my ass, buddy! I'm trying not to get my jaw broken by Batman here. If you hadn't heard, Batwoman and I are practically finger-bang buddies. Killing a helpless child will probably get my fingers 69'd from that sweet vagina. 69'd? Oh! 86'd!"

Oh! The Plastic Pauper isn't just obsessed with Alice. He's into all the fables and children's stories too. So maybe I can call him the Pretty Pederast?

Back home, Violet's mom takes some cake to the basement to share it with Ratcatcher (or his loser brother?) and his rat buddies. I guess the shot at the end of the last issue that showed he was staying in the Pike Hotel was supposed to make me shout, "Oh! That's where Mother Panic's mom is staying!" But it didn't because who remembers shit like that from month to month?

In the back-up story, Miss Stoner, the producer for Cory Edgars (the right wing anti-Batman radio nutjob), meets a man with no eyes who tells her that Batman once saved his life. Maybe his eyes are on his fingers! If so, they're now full of bacon grease because he was feeding his dog bacon. Anyway, he wants to help Miss Stoner stop Cory Edgars from destroying all vigilantes which includes her dad, Odd Man. This back-up story is always just two pages long so that's all that happens.

The Ranking!
+1! This really is a much better comic book now that I'm in love with the art!