Friday, June 28, 2019

Team Titans #23


Redwing must have been furious when she didn't make the Birds of Prey roster.

The good news is that I'm almost done reading all of the Team Titans comic books I own. The gooder news is that I'm almost done reading all of the New Titans comic books I own! The most goodest news of all is that I'm still alive somehow. Although that's only good news in the sense that, by being alive, I can appreciate being alive. The news that I were dead would be just fine with me as well because I wouldn't have to hear it. The good news about the bad news of my death is that none of you would hear of it either! You'd all just believe that I got bored of writing comic book reviews and went off to live on a beautiful tropic island full of kittens.

After I finish reading Team Titans and New Titans, I'll have to dig out another old series to reread. I'm excited to find out what it will be!

I was on Twitter earlier and was perplexed by this person's response to a Tom King tweet. If a smarter reader than me could explain what he meant, I'd truly appreciate it!


My current theories: 1. He's just a Trumpist and knows Tom King isn't a white supremacist asshole so he simply assumes this tweet is somehow mocking Trump. 2. The Tweet didn't delve inside the mind of the protagonist thus relying too much on the reader using their own mind to form conclusions of the protagonist's intent, making it a 'difficult' read. 3. The person replying probably just responds this way to all of Tom King's tweets because Batman isn't punching enough villains these days.

This issue begins with Jensen practicing some of his beat poetry.



Snap! Snap! Snap!



Snap! Snap! Snap!



Snap! Snap! Snap!


Audience nods smartly while puffing nonchalantly on long cigarettes.

Redwing has transformed into a woman with the head of a bird and huge talons on her hands. If any of these Team Titans had a romantic interest in her, they'd probably be thinking, "Did her anus, vagina, and urethra just merge into a cloaca?" But apparently none of them do have that kind of interest because none of them are currently throwing up the way I am after having that thought. But now I'm also thinking of Hawkman and Hawkwoman's sex talk. "Let's kiss cloacae, baby!"

While everybody tries to pretend Redwing is still the same person she's always been (except grosser), Chimera reminds the Team Titans that other totally-not-monsters-just-because-they-look-like-human/animal-hybrid creatures are trying to kill them.

For some reason, Redwing attacks the other Team Titans. Maybe she's just trying to get them to admit that they all think she's a monster now. If that was her plan, it works because Lapidus is all, "If you're intent on proving you're as much a monster inside as well as out, then you'll have to go through me!" Idiot! You're not supposed to say she looks like a monster to her face! You're supposed to act more like her brother Prester Jon and avoid eye contact and tugging at the inside of your shirt collar and mumbling things like, "Yikes!" At least that allows you to deny your true feelings when she confronts you about why you're acting so weird.


Me at prom.

Sometimes I completely understand that I'm reviewing comic books that never wanted me as an audience. I don't care what young person is infatuated with what other young person, or how much bullshit drama one member of the team can create for no reason at all. If I was, I would be a fan of the Legion of Super-heroes. So if I hate this comic book with such passion that I've certainly spontaneously created at least five kidney stones within me, it really shouldn't reflect on the comic book at all. I'm sure somebody cares that Killowat has a crush on Mirage but he's also a racist piece of shit. I'm sure somebody cares that Terra has littered the Troy Family Farm with stone dildos because Changeling won't fuck her. I'm sure somebody cares that Prestor Jon has an issue with his sister because she doesn't look as human as she used to (while it's okay for him to look like Stretch Armstrong). But that someone is not me. I don't think it ever was me. Half the comic books I own were purchased because of simple momentum. I bought the first issue and felt compelled to buy the second issue and, well, fuck it? Why not just keep buying them no matter how terrible they were?! I know that doesn't say anything positive about my decision making but then I've also never claimed to be good at making decisions. The fact that I read every comic book of The New 52 for six or seven years proves that!

Prester Jon refers to Qurac as "hell on Earth" which Chimera has opinions on.


"Hell! What a western concept! But, I mean, you're right and I'm going to go along with that characterization so I don't even know why I pointed that out!" I didn't say she had strong opinions on it.

Chimera mentions that she last met the Team Titans in Team Titans Annual #1. Fuck! I didn't review that issue! I'm sure I own it but it might be stored with all of the Bloodlines Annuals. Well, I guess I can review it whenever I find it during my reread of all of my thousands of comic books from the last forty years!


It's true that I never expected Peter David's Aquaman but I certainly wasn't waiting for it.

Prester Jon tries to discover what caused Redwing's transformation (as well as that of the human/animal hybrids outside) while a young Quraci girl looks at Redwing and cries. I think it's supposed to be touching how the little girl can't communicate but she can feel emotions. Although it would be better if she could communicate because, for some reason, she knows the entire backstory as to how and why people became mutant animal monsters. Something about how aliens crashed in the desert and Circe saw they could be used to make human/animal hybrids but some of the aliens died in the desert and when Cheshire nuked Qurac, the aliens were atomized and everybody breathed in cremated alien space DNA. It's totally the kind of thing a little girl would know all about.

Chimera shows Killowat and Terra that the Americans have come to Qurac to save the oil and not the people. That sets off Killowat's Angry Right Wing Logic Centers.


Oh? Is criticizing America's foreign policy of protecting investments considered politically correct? Although doesn't this anger and argument seem tame from a 2019 perspective?

Anybody who begins an argument with "I refuse to believe" is a person with whom I immediately stop arguing. It's a great opening tactic because I appreciate your desire to not waste my time by immediately revealing that you won't be listening to facts and evidence. Also, "I refuse to believe America would rape a country of its resources at the expense of saving the people" may as well be a declaration that you spent most of your time in history class yelling, "Nyah nyah nyah nyah! I can't hear you!"

Not that America's public educational system was particularly great at exposing America's imperialistic abuse! There's definitely a reason right wing thinkers believe college educations turn people into leftists. Because it does! Leftists are just rational people who aren't viewing the world through the lens of preconceived opinions! College educations are less about broad generalizations and more about trying to put history in as much context as possible. Patriots are often as blind as people of faith. One of the conditions of being faithful is to not question your faith. It's right there in the word! So any examination of your faith is questioning that which you shouldn't question. Being a patriot is the exact same thing. If you question our government, you're against our government. There's no belief in trying to improve our government because it's an acceptance of flaws in the United States. Of course now that's simply become a way to not ever question anything a Republican does because obviously everything any Democrat does is completely wrong. It's believing in tribe over anything else. I am not a Democrat because I believe whatever the fuck every Democrat believes. Hell, I'm not even technically a Democrat! I am liberal, sure. But I don't support any idea or belief from what would be considered my tribe.

And neither are a lot of liberals which is why you have trouble with Democratic voter turnout. Every Republican nominee is practically interchangeable. As long as they spout the handful of talking points important to the accepted base (2nd amendment, anti-abortion, Christian values, white supremacy...I mean states rights!), they'll do. But Democrats have the constant fight over whether a candidate will lose voters if they move left away from center while hardly ever acknowledging how many votes they'll gain as they move left. I've always said they should abandon all those assholes at the center. If you're only voting Democrat because you support their social views but don't want higher taxes maybe you're actually a Republican. Because if the Democratic party moves further left and you abandon it because of taxes to side with the gun toting fetuses who support locking up refugees on our southern border, who the fuck wants you at that party anyway?!

Back to the comic book, the Team Titans speculate that the cremated alien DNA has combined with the tainted oil in Qurac and the metagenes in certain individuals to transform them into monsters. So now they've got to destroy all of America's profits by making sure the oil isn't sold all over the world. Killowat is all, "I can't believe we're going to save the world at the risk of America's profits!" I mean, he doesn't say that explicitly. But I can read between his racist and xenophobic lines.


Finally an argument that wins him over!

Look, I get being resistant to truth! Whenever I brush my teeth, I can't help thinking about the Barney song where they mime brushing with huge toothbrushes and sing, "While I'm brushing my teeth and having so much fun, I never let the water run!" And then I just let the water run! I know, I know. I'm a fucking monster!

Terra and Killowat solve the problem by putting the contaminated oil back into the ground. That seems scientifically sound enough that I won't bother questioning it like a college-educated leftist. But Killowat assures Chimera that she hasn't won the argument even though her argument was simply, "Maybe you should question your government sometimes, idiot."

Meanwhile the animal people attack the other Titans upstairs. The Titans can't kill them because they were once people (although I guess if they had always been sentient monster people, it would have been okay to kill them? Sometimes I'm not entirely sure of comic book superhero rules). They solve their problem by sending them into a Fairy Land via one of Chimera's portals. She was hesitant to do it earlier because she didn't know if what transformed them was catching. But now that Prester Jon somehow did science and figured out what happened, everybody agrees it's okay to banish them to a world where they'll never see their loved ones again and nobody will work out how to save them and they'll probably just turn on each other when they get hungry. Superman throwing every villain into the Phantom Zone has left a terrible example for young heroes to follow!


Oh the 90s! When every time anybody said anything, you had to wait a few seconds to see whether or not they really believed what they just said!

Later Killowat acts like a total jerk. But he acts like a different kind of total jerk than he usually acts like. So after he's done, he says, "Whoa! What just happened?! Is that shadowy person on the ground hiding behind the tree controlling me?! And who might it be?! ZERO HOUR!"

Team Titans #23 Rating: B-. They sure used to pack a lot of story and words into comic books, didn't they?! And for only $1.95! That's two dollars less than the crappy comics DC puts out today that have four less pages and far less story every month! And it's three dollars less than Marvel books! No wonder Marvel is more popular. People probably look at the price and think, "Whoa! I'm getting a whole dollar more quality out of this comic book than that stupid DC comic book!" It also might help that Marvel doesn't mind having synopses of the story to help new readers or old readers whose memories aren't that great anymore. DC refuses to do the same, instead relying on the writer wasting two or three pages of actual story where characters think about what happened in the previous issue. A lot of DC books suck in collected formats!

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