Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea: The Newsletter #21 (Fourth Week of April 2018)

E!TACT! #21
Jesse Chris: A Grunion Guy Story, Eternity Girl #2, New Super-man #22, Detective Comics #978, Suicide Squad #39, Justice League of America #28, Action Comics #1000, Kick-Ass #3, Deadman #6, Grunion Guy's Musical Corner of Music Reviews, and Letters to Me!
By Grunion Guy


Jesse Chris
A Grunion Guy Story
By Grunion Guy

         "You guys are the greatest," proclaimed Jesse as he flipped his long blonde surfer's hair around his head in slow motion. "Who could ask for a better bunch of twelve male friends! So rad!"
         Jeremy Scaredycat looked askance and turned red. Everybody thought he was blushing because he loved Jesse so much. But he didn't love Jesse as much as he used to love Jesse. He loved Surf Country and hated Valleys way more than he now loved Jesse. Like thirty bucks more even.
         "Hey Jesse," devil's advocated Jeremy. I mean, he was about to devil's advocate. He was actually just getting Jesse's attention in the last quote. Also he believed his argument so maybe he was just the devil. But he didn't want people to know that he believed his argument so he was pretending to just be an advocate. "We should spray paint 'Valleys go home' all over the place because I'm tired of my shoulders being ridden over."
          "Oh, Jeremy," patronized Jesse in that way everybody but Jeremy loved. Simeon and Jacob and Terence and Sebastian and Philip and the other ones all loved it when Jesse looked at them like they were Italian dogs being told to roll over in French. "Render unto Brad what is Brad's. Duh!"
         "That doesn't make any sense, Jesse," replied Jeremy to the audible gasps of the other eight men at the table. I mean ten? Maybe some of them didn't gasp because their mouths were full of Jesse. You'll understand what that means after the next paragraph! "The waves aren't for Valleys! They're our waves!"
         "Oh, Jeremy," Jesse continued in that patronizing way. "This rad pizza is my tubular flesh. And the Mountain Dew is my blood, Brah. Duh!"
         After throwing up, seven of Jesse's friends said, "We totally understand why you said that!" They looked dumbly at Jesse like a French dog being told to roll over in Italian.
          "Man, this is my last dinner with you jerks!" cried Jeremy as he thought about how much non-Jesse's-flesh pizza he could buy with thirty bucks.
          "Well, why don't you leave the tip, what with all that thirty money you have," scowled Jesse but in a righteous way. "And Terence can deny having ordered the appetizers!"
          "What?! Why would you say that?" asked Terence. "And I didn't order them!"
          "Oh my goodness! How did he know you'd say that?!" cried Sebastian! "It's a miracle!"
         "He knew I'd say it because I didn't order them!" denied Terence.
          "Are you sure?" asked Philip.
          "Of course I'm sure I didn't order them! My stomach can't handle all that cheese!" denied Terence again.
          "Oh, to hell with this!" exclaimed Jeremy. "That's him! That one! The one in the Pacific Beach t-shirt!" Several Valleys rushed in to grab Jesse.
          "I got him!" yelled Brad!
         "Me too!" yelled Brad! It was a different Brad from the Valley than that first Brad from the Valley.
         "Oh no!" screamed eleven friends of Jesse! "Let's challenge them to a surfing contest!"
          "Put away your boards!" exclaimed Jesse as he winked at the camera. Later he surfed for everybody's sins. That was the exciting part. But the important part was that he made it through the tube three days later as all the bikini-clad onlookers watched in shock and amazement. Everybody always remembered him forever after that, especially the way he hated gay people.

The End!


Comic Book Reviews!

Eternity Girl #2
By Visaggio, Liew, and Chuckry

Rating: One of my favorite things in the world after Oreos are writers who tell people how to write. It's always so informative for people who think they want to be writers but aren't actually writers. Because if you're a writer, you write. If you're a person who wants to be a writer, you ask writers what it takes to be a writer. Luckily for my love of writers who give writing advice, Magdalene Visaggio (the writer of Eternity Girl!) drops some knowledge on us at the end of this issue: "[W]riting is about saying yes more than it is about saying no. Don't let your fear that your stuff isn't good enough stop you from listening to your instincts. You don't have to be a genius right when you start; spend time writing and figuring out what kind of writer you want to be, and then you'll know what ideas work and don't for what you are doing."

Let's see. I definitely say yes more than I say no, as people (for example, all editors) who constantly criticize my writing will attest. I definitely wasn't a genius when I started out (and have no expectation that I'm somehow growing into a genius the further along I go). I have spent time writing but I don't think I've spent enough time figuring out what kind of writer I want to be! Is that how writing is done? Am I supposed to have an image of me on the back cover of my first novel and write toward that? I want to be one of those guys smoking a pipe and banging tons of ladies. What's a look that says "I bang a ton of ladies!" since I don't think publishers actually let you stick a photograph of you banging a ton of ladies right on the back cover of your novel. And finally, I'm not sure if I'm following the advice of that last sentence because I'm still trying to parse it.

One more great piece of advice from Magdalene: "Live fearlessly, and honestly; this is the only life you get." That's pretty profound when you think about it. I mean, seriously. Think about it! Have you ever considered that you only have one life? I bet you haven't or else you'd be spending it smoking pipes and banging tons of chicks and/or dudes! If you aren't puffing away on a pipe right now feeling superior, you're wasting your life!

In my early twenties, I had that only life you get epiphany and stupidly told my current girlfriend. She, understanding my mind better than I did at the time, said, "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" I thought it was obvious but I was apparently wrong because she saw my epiphany better than I did! Obviously what my mind was telling me in its stupidly grandiose way was this: "You probably need to break up with your current girlfriend." My mind was right but I was a naïve asshole who probably gave people writing advice and definitely shouldn't have told my girlfriend that thing that was basically code for "I need a new direction in life and some space and really need to change some things, especially one big relationship thing!"

I should probably review this comic book now. I'm not sure how I feel about this series after this issue. I liked the first issue but this one was just depressing. I'm starting to see how a book about a main character desperate to die can be a bit of a downer. The commentary on comic book continuity didn't help to make me feel any better by thinking, "Whoa! Was that post-modern? I think that was post-modern? What is post-modernity anyway? Is asking that post-modern?!"

Two point six out of five stars.


New Super-man and the Justice League of China #22
By Yang, Peeples, Santorelli, and Hi-fi

Rating: This comic book is less fun than it used to be. Three point one stars out of six.


Detective Comics #978
By Tynion IV, Fernandez, and Kalisz

Rating: You might remember how I said I was going to stop picking up this book because I hate typing the IV on Tynion's name, right? Well I did it! I took it off of my subscription box at the local comic book store! But I still have a couple of issues to read in the stack. This is one of them. I haven't read it yet but ignorance has never stopped me from reviewing a comic book. I'm sure this one is as mediocre and Tim Drake heavy as the previous dozen. Two point seven stars out of twelve.


Suicide Squad #39
By Williams, Edwards, and Arreola

Rating: I finally dropped this book as well. It's a shame it's been mostly bad for the last six and a half years since, seeing it on the shelf in December of 2011 while in Phoenix, Arizona, it was the impetus that got me back into comics and reading The New 52. If I had to judge the past seven years based on the quality of comic books I've read since that moment, I'd say it was a bad decision to walk into that comic book store. But if I had to judge it on how much enjoyment it's given me through writing about comic books, it was one of the best decisions of my life. But now, I must finally break up with this comic book because Rob Williams writes terrible one-dimensional characters. He isn't as funny as he might think he is. I suppose he doesn't give a shit if his characters' quips are humorous or not. He just knows he gets the same dollar amount per page no matter how shitty the quality of each page. Well, I finally give a shit and I won't read this shit any more. Point five out of ten stars.


Justice League of America #28
By Orlando, Petrus, and Hi-Fi

Rating: Now that Lobo has left the team, I can finally read this comic book with clarity and objectivity. And it's not very good. For some reason, Orlando has decided that telling a good story is less important than stating a thesis and then restating that thesis and then grabbing the reader by the back of the neck and rubbing the reader's face in that thesis. I'm not sure why he even bothered to give the script to an artist. He could have just written "Inspiration is the most important thing in the world (after diversity, of course. But we covered that in the early issues)." The premise of this story is that super-heroes inspire people to greatness. That hasn't been the reality of comic books for decades (since Watchmen, probably?) but it's still a shared delusion that comic book readers all pretend to believe. Super-heroes aren't meant to take care of our problems for us because that apparently makes us weaker (although that's been the plot of every comic book since Watchmen. Probably); super-heroes inspire us to be as heroic as they are (except more heroic because we aren't invulnerable or good looking). But how could super-heroes be so inspiring if they didn't have inspiration as well? Nobody thinks up or does anything meaningful by themselves. Somebody has to do nothing but inspire before somebody else can think, "Oh! I hadn't thought of that! Now let me do all the real work while you go on singing or raising awareness or being famous or whatever." So super-heroes were inspired by a god of super-heroes whose existence they depend on. I guess without him, little Bruce Wayne would have just shrugged his shoulders after his parents were murdered and grown up to be another boring businessman.

Chronos has decided the way to defeat all the heroes at once is to kill Ahl, the god of super-heroes, with a magic brick. This is one of the few stories in recorded history that would be made better by a final revelation that it was all a dream. The other stories that would be made better by the dream revelation thing are the previous stories in this comic book series. Hopefully the final issue of Justice League of America will be Batman being awakened by one of his own long and painful farts. Then Alfred will walk in, make a sour face, and wave his hands in front of his nose before thinking, "That reminds me. Whatever happened to Batcow?"

One star out of seven.


Action Comics #1000
By lots of people.

Speaking of inspiration being the means to the end of itself, here's an eight dollar book with a bunch of stories all about inspiration! The stories within are best summarized by Geoff Johns and Dick Donner's story "The Car." It's about the guy who owned the car on the cover of Action Comics #1. The man's car is a metaphor for the man's life: he can either fix it or junk it. Superman gives him the option to make his life about helping make other people's lives better so they don't have to live the shitty life that led this man into crime. As Superman and the man speak, the guy says, out of nowhere, really, "Out on 45th, yeah. It used to get so hot, we always wanted to go swimmin' but there weren't no pool." As I read that, my eyes rolled and I blacked out for three minutes. "What the fuck was that non sequitur?" I thought critically. Sure, Superman mentioned the guy grew up in the orphanage on 45th. But who suddenly goes into some sort of nostalgic reverie over that comment? Shouldn't he just be like, "Yeah, I growed up there, Supes. What of it?!"

But being a Grandmaster Comic Book Reader, I know when dialogue that sounds unnaturally wedged into the story has been placed there to make a point later. So this man whom Superman lets go to fix his life or junk it chooses to fix his life by making the world a better place. And how does he do that? By breaking fire hydrants down on 45th so that the kids can keep cool! Thank God Superman is on the job to inspire people to make a difference! Can you imagine if those kids had to be a little too warm for a few weeks without this do-gooder's do-gooding?! I'm so glad Superman is out there inspiring us all to be our best selves!

Paul Dini's story, Actionland, is the best story because unlike Tom King and Scott Snyder and Geoff Johns and that Bendis guy, he doesn't think he has to be the smartest guy in the story collection. He just writes a dirty story about Mxyzptlk's sex life complete with rocket boners and purple-headed innuendos. I wonder how many young people will check this out of their elementary school library and get their first sexy time feelings reading this? They'll probably be confused and it will impact their sex life for decades after.

Brad Meltzer decides to twist the idea that everybody else came up with for this book: he has Superman inspired by the people he saves! But his story sucks because it didn't end with "I apologize for killing Sue Dibny."

Rating: I lied. This issue isn't about Superman being inspiring at all. It's, apparently, all about whether or not he's Superman without the red briefs. According to nearly every writer and artist in this issue, Superman's underwear is the most important part of Superman. And while some of them simply put the underwear back on him without saying much about it, Bendis seems to think his entire story hinges on mentioning it over and over and over again. I've never read Bendis so I'm now thinking, "This is what everybody raves about?" I'll simply assume this isn't his best work rather than assume it's typical of his writing. Although why would he write such overwrought pap for his big debut at DC? I'm not talking about the pages of underwear dialogue now. I'm talking about the prologue he's written for whatever he's doing next for DC. Once again we have a writer who believes their voice is so important to the comic book world that they have to bring about their vision of the Superman mythos by rewriting the entire thing. So welcome DoomsMongulod, the newest and worst nemesis Superman has ever faced! Working with Jor-el (because we haven't gotten enough reworking of Jor-el into a terrible person over the last few years (what is this fascination with making the previously glorified parents of superheroes into pieces of shit?)), Rogol Zarr (the Doomsday Mongul Zod Lobo mash-up) was the cause of Krypton's destruction in his quest to kill all Kryptonians.

Okay, maybe Jor-el wasn't part of this guy's quest. I should probably point out that Rogol Zarr simply says he promised Jor-el that he'd destroy all Kryptonians. That was probably meant as a threat and not a handshake deal. I just needed to add this paragraph because my facetiousness is hard to read in written texts to an online audience rabid to correct as many people as possible (whether they need correcting or not!).

58 stars out of 1000.


Kick-Ass #3
By Millar and Romita Jr.

Rating: Kick-Ass finally learns that she's not in a comic book. I mean, she is. But the premise is that she isn't. And she learns the painful lesson about reality this issue when everything goes to hell and she's captured by her nemesis. You can tell he's her nemesis because he looks different than all the other characters who pretty much look the same. That way when she encounters him, she doesn't have to think his name so the reader can say, "Oh! That's who that is! Her brother-in-law! There's no way I would have remembered." Now when Violencia appears, the reader can exclaim, "That's that guy! The really bad one! You can tell because he's covered in tattoos and piercings!" Then everybody in the coffee shop can scowl at that imaginary reader for shouting although it could have been worse. I almost made the reader shout, "That's the fucking cunt who almost killed Kick-Ass!" Then they really would have had a reason to scowl self-righteously.

3 stars out of 5. It might be standard Kick-Ass fare but I guess it's sort of entertaining if you've completely forgotten the premise of the first two Kick-Asses (which is also the premise of this Kick-Ass (I think. I've forgotten the premise of the first two)).


Deadman #6
By Neil Adams

Rating: Thank the stars this is the final issue so I don't have to feel compelled to buy another issue of this nonsensical garbage. I said "Thank the stars!" because I don't believe in God. But is thanking the stars any more reasonable than thanking God even when I don't believe in Him? Because now I sound like one of those wacky jerks from the seventies who believed in astrology and extra body hair and big orange vans.

Every cover of this series has had some kind of secret or special cover right up until this one. But I figure this one must have some kind of secret so I completely ruined it due to being convinced it was a Mad Fold-in. I'm still not positive it isn't so maybe I'll scan it into Photoshop and play around with it for a bit.

It's no good! I can't figure it out! I'm stumped as to how this cover is special. Maybe the fact that it's not special is how it's special! Maybe the only secret is the eye in Deadman's musculature?

Reading Deadman is like watching somebody have a stroke in slow motion. Did people at DC Comics simply accept the pages of this comic book without checking up on Neal? Editor Kristy Quinn must have been paid to not do her job. "Just accept whatever he turns in, Kristy," ordered DiDio as he wrote up a complaint to Human Resources about how long James Tynion IV holds eye contact. "It's not like he's going to come up with anything better on a second try. Did you read The Coming of the Supermen? No? Nobody did. Don't bother reading this either."

At one point during Deadman's "conversation" with Rama Kushna, he says, "You got no time to shut up and get on with it!" I have now spent longer contemplating the meaning of that line than the meaning of my own existence.

I think maybe this issue is a transcription of Neal Adams' personal conversation with God. Or maybe he's ranting at DC Comics for stealing all of his life's ideas and treating him like shit. Doesn't this sound more like Neal ranting at DC than Deadman ranting at Rama Kushna:

Neal: "Do you actually think I want to be here? You suck, you know that? This whole place sucks! If I could...I'd spit on you!"
More Neal, continued: "And you...you soulless witch...you have all my secrets and you hold them away from me!! I hate you...with a blue flame, Rama Bullpucky. You lie to me...and you compound your lies!! You're like a politician. You don't even know when you're lying."

Neal and/or Deadman seems angry at something but it's never really made clear. Nothing in this book was ever clear. It's the ramblings of a madman who gets to draw and say whatever he likes for a paycheck. I'm so fucking envious of Neal Adams right now! Who knew that by working hard your entire life at a job that earns you kudos and respect, a person can be rewarded with a paying soapbox to do whatever the fuck they want?! Why didn't somebody tell me this at twenty?! Instead, I've been on the non-paying soapbox trying to garner an audience by rambling like a madman! Stupid system!

Zero stars out of ten.

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Grunion Guy's Musical Corner of Music Reviews!

Praise the Lord by Everlast
There are as many versions of rap as there are versions of rock. Maybe more since rock only has the two types: "I love fucking girls" and "There's a girl I want to fuck but she won't let me." I guess if we think of "Prog Rock" as rock, we discover a few more kinds of rock themes, such as "Don't help poor people because it hinders their ambition," and "I read a book once and I'm going to tell you about it now." Some people think the only versions of rap and/or hip hop that exist are "We're about to fuck, baby" and "Let's kill some cops." But this is Everlast so we get the white variation on rap with this song which is "I got beats and can rhyme better than all the other n-words, yo!" I'm not a white rapper so I'm not allowed to say the n-word when I'm being a bit jokey. If I were writing a serious treatise on whatever serious people write about, I would totally use it. The only other time I'd actually use the word n-word is if playing it would help me win a Scrabble championship. And then I'd probably make it plural to get the fifty point bonus and also so I could play it by pluralizing the last word I played, faggot. Although, I bet Scrabble doesn't allow players to use the n-word and I'd lose in a challenge. But they have to allow faggot because I was using the British variation of it, of course.
       Anyway, this song by the jump around guy playing a character named Whitey Ford was written to express how great he is at writing rap songs (presumably all about how great he is at writing rap songs about how great he is). At one point, he compares himself to Edgar Allen Poe which I thought was super clever because I recognized that name as a writer of psychological thrillers and sado-masochistic porn. He also mentions farting in a line where some people catch the vapors. Is that old-time farting? Probably!
Grade: C.

Crocodile by XTC
This song falls into a sub-category of "There's a girl I want to fuck but she won't let me" because it's about Andy Partridge's wife who left him. I think. Aren't all the songs on Nonsuch about that? I suppose every song in existence could be about Andy Partridge and his divorce from his wife Marianne if I think about it for long enough.
       The problem with this song is that it's on an album where I love half of the songs so much that it causes me to dislike the other songs even more than I normally would. So "Crocodile" and "Holly Up On Poppy" and "Humble Daisy" and "Bungalow" wind up covered in my spit and invective because I'd rather hear "War Dance" or "Rook" or "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead" or "Dear Madam Barnum" or "Books Are Burning."
       Also, I read up on this album a little bit and discovered that the supposed crocodile noises in "Crocodile" are actually just slowed down pig grunts. Being that I have no understanding of my emotional responses to things (if that emotional response is anything other than blind, angry hatred), I don't know if this impresses me or makes me feel like fool.
Grade: C.

18 Wheeler by Pink
Pink lets us know immediately in this song that we can't keep her down after which she makes me realize my categories of rock songs are completely sexist! Who knew I was sexist?! I certainly learned something today! Also maybe I'm racist and homophobic based on my Scrabble bit earlier!
      Anyway, Pink's song, "18 Wheeler," falls into the rock category of "I'm the girl that's not going to let you fuck her." So while my categories were sexist in their initial perspective, they still work, I guess. It's also a good example of how the "girl" and the "fucking" in my category are completely metaphorical. See, you thought I was really limiting myself in my categories while also being sexist, didn't you?! Well maybe you won't underestimate me next time now that I've pretended I knew what I was doing all along.
       Let me explain: the "18 Wheeler" is a metaphor for music producers. I think. And Pink is all, "You aren't going to treat me like a slave because I'll join the Underground Railroad. Choo choo!" Which might be a bit of an iffy metaphor, Pink. I mean, do you really want to compare yourself to a slave when you're a rock star? I suppose it isn't as bad as her song called "My Vietnam" in which Pink declares how helping feed the homeless one time in her life was as bad as Vietnam. At times, Pink can get really melodramatic.
       iTunes lists the album Missundaztood under the genre of "Dance & House." Who comes up with these things? I'm pretty sure this song is simply "Rock" or "Pop." It certainly doesn't make me want to dance. Especially when Pink pronounces "sword" as "suh-ward."
Grade: C.

Last Dance by The Cure
Most of the songs on Disintegration fall into a subcategory of "There's a girl I want to fuck but she won't let me." That subcategory is "There's a girl I want to fuck but she won't let me because she drowned or something just as tragic. Maybe she just moved on with her life and left me to wither in my heartbreak and pain." This song seems to be about the death of innocence, or the dangers of living in nostalgia, or, maybe, about a man who murders a woman he once loved when they were children because she doesn't love him anymore. It's hard to tell because every song on Disintegration sounds as if you've just taken six Vicodin (it's the only opiate-based medication I've ever taken so it's all I can compare it to! Otherwise I'd probably say, "Five seconds on a morphine drip!" or "Three spoons of heroin!" or "Tea derived from steeping twenty-eight opium poppies!") and learned to listen to music through gauze while somebody sits by you, holding and caressing your hand, reminding you of the death of every pet you've ever had.
       Disintegration really is an album that probably did more harm than good hearing it at the time of my life I did. What I needed was an album that had songs like "How Many Times Does She Have to Tell You No, You Stalker?!" and "Take Control of Your Emotions, You Jackass!" and "Get on With Living, Dope!" Instead I discovered this album which was all, "Why?" and "How could she?" and "Maybe She Can Love Me If I Just Invest Even More Time Than I've Already Wasted!"
Grade: A+.

Some Fantastic by Bare Naked Ladies
I've never before noticed how much this song sounds like somebody simply hit a tempo button on an 80s keyboard before ad-libbing some goofy lyrics. Do all Bare Naked Ladies songs sound that way? I'm currently convinced the answer to that question is "How did I never notice it before?!"
      I was just goofing around when I came up with my rock categories but this song is another version of the "There's a girl I want to fuck but she won't let me." But instead of being sad about it, this guy is all, "If I think about it enough, I'll come up with some ridiculous plan to get her to sleep with me!" Then he lists all of those plans. I think if he had one more verse, it would be all, "I'll buy a van and remove the handles from the inside door before learning which bus you take to work after which I'll pull up and ask you if you can help me find my lost puppy. But first I need to learn where I can buy chloroform."
Grade: B-.

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Letters to Me!

KB writes: There really ought to be an annual Superboy Punch! to clean up continuity. There are of course conflicting opinions about what should be cleaned up, but maybe we start with the comics events that have pissed off a lot of fans, and see if the criticisms are valid, or if there are better versions of those events. Like, Barbara Gordon. There are differing opinions about whether she was better as Oracle in her wheelchair, but I think we can probably agree that the rapey aspects of "The Killing Joke" are worth retconning away.

My Reply: Isn't one of DC's big problems that they try a Superboy Punch! every few years? They should probably just leave everything alone. I especially don't think they should let fans determine what should and shouldn't be canon. They're the worst people to be in charge! Like if I were to write only stuff Doom Bunny wants me to write about, this blog would be full of recipes that didn't have any cheese unless it was cheddar and only in super extreme circumstances. Also if there are nuts in the recipe, there shouldn't be any chocolate. Also every plated recipe would look like an orgasming penis.

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KB Writes: The young have never heard of Chesterton's Fence. It goes as follows:

"In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.""

To put it differently, maybe very simple solutions rarely fix the world because the world is a complicated place. Much more often than not, the "wisdom of youth" is more aptly called "the Dunning-Kruger effect". All in all I think it's a good thing that Tynion IV doesn't have the power to remake the world in his image, because good Lord imagine all the fences he'd rip down all willy-nilly.

My Reply: I think Chesterton doesn't describe his paradox clearly enough, or he needs to work on it a bit more. Sometime in my early twenties, I took up the philosophy that if I really despised something, or something really annoyed me for seemingly arbitrary reasons, I should actually pursue that thing as if I were one of the mindless masses to see if I could understand the joy of that thing. It's why I wound up with my tongue pierced in my mid-twenties. Although that also came about as challenging myself to do something ritualistic so that I could, even if only symbolically, feel like I'd made some transition between childhood and adulthood. I suppose taking my cross country trip in my Volkswagen bus was that as well. And that was a good metaphor for my transition to adulthood since my bus broke down halfway across the country.

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KB Writes: Can I admit that I miss all your daily thousands and thousands of reviews? Not that I want you to subject yourself to that sort of suffering; we've got only one of you so we should keep you in good repair. But, I really did enjoy all the hard work you did. Have you ever considered re-reviewing Cullen Bunn's work to see if you like it any better years later?

My Reply: I miss doing all of those reviews as well! Which is why I'm doing this! I'm not sad to be reading far, far less comic books though. I've finally gotten back to reading actual books at a reasonable pace again and I'm enjoying it. Plus one used book costs as much as one twenty page comic which just makes me hate comic books even more than I do when I'm reading one by Cullen Bunn. Speaking of which, how dare you ask me to consider re-reading Cullen Bunn's comic books! I was just forgetting about Twat Lobo and now look what you've done? I'm bleeding from my eyes and anus!

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That's all for this week! I've forgotten my sign-out! Later, jerkos? That sounds about right!

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Flash Annual #5 (June 1992)

This cover is almost a goatse!

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Flash Annual #5 (June 1992)
By Mark Waid, Craig Boldman, Travis Charest, Dan Davis, Scott Hanna, John Lowe, Timothy Harkins, and Matt Hollingsworth
Cover by Travis Charest and Dan Davis
Edited by Brian Michael Augustyn

The Cover!
This is dangerous territory for a critic (and while I might not be a critic, I am intensely critical). I've heard that some idiot's mother once said something about not saying anything at all rather than dropping your drawers and shitting all over Travis Charest. But I don't get many opportunities to do it so why would I listen to that idiot's mother (who is also an idiot)? I had the opportunity to express my displeasure with his work on Darkstars and one of the covers of Robin III: Cry of the Huntress. I'll get another chance whenever I get to DC Showcase '93. But for now, here we have, basically, his first professional gig (being that this was released in 1992 and Showcase '93 in — you guessed it — 1993). And for his first cover, Travis decided to go with 60% solid black inks. Since this is an Eclipso story, I'll allow that it was a fine, if lazy, idea. About 30% of the rest of the cover, as we'll see in his general artwork (I'm assuming since I haven't actually opened this book for thirty-four years), lines. Lines, lines, and more lines is something I'm assuming Travis's art teacher once told him five thousand times. "If you think you have enough lines, you don't! Only when you're dizzy with vertigo from all the lines will your be able to declare your work finished!" Judging by that metric, Travis Charest has knocked this cover out of the ballpark. I just wish I hadn't been standing in the parking lot to catch it.

So many lines . . . going to . . . vomit . . .

The Story So Far
I don't know. Eclipso has eclipsed a number of heroes but not enough. I guess he's got Bruce Gordon's girlfriend's hot ass now as well as a handful of actual heroes, none of them that impressive: Starman, Hal Jordan, Star Sapphire, The Creeper, Valor. I'm not sure if he managed to capture Etrigan because my Eclipso Demon Annual isn't with this batch of Eclipso books being that I actually collected The Demon at the time. So it's with them.

The Story
The issue begins with me thinking, "I knew I came here to make fun of Travis Charest but I didn't think I'd get Mark Waid in my sights as well."

The only way this conversation makes sense is if it's one of The Kids in the Hall sketches where they make fun of stupid cops (i.e., all cops).

It's possible (probable, even, but I'm being purposefully dense right now) that the panel makes perfect sense but I've been programmed to understand fanny in the British sense and now I'm picturing somebody wiggling their fanny and most of the blood has left my brain for a secret location on my body. If you're over 18, you can drop me an email and I'll tell you what secret body part that is. If you're under 18, you probably already know I meant my penis.

The cops discuss how much they know about and love nuts while The Flash runs by on a nightly jog. Wally decides to investigate because an optometrist building nearby, the one the cop was talking about, wasn't there the day before. I would have stopped to investigate to make sure either the cop wasn't suffering from a nut allergy or an ape wasn't impersonating a cop. One of those reasons.

At this point in Travis Charest's career, he had never actually seen a human face.

The cop who wanted the other cop to do a sexy little dance earlier happens to be so hungry he's getting a headache. Luckily, they find a can of nuts on the ground so why not eat up? Free trash still in the can? Delicious! The big twist is that the can of nuts was rolled out into the street by The Trickster so you know it won't have nary a nut inside it. It's probably full of raisins. Ha ha! What a trick that would be!

I should offer up a correction and say that the cops were actually night deposit security men? You know, the kinds of guys who drive armored trucks full of money around. But they do it at night because it's more dangerous and easier to be robbed? And that's what The Trickster's doing. The Flash can't stop him because Weather Wizard appears at just the right time to freeze Wally in a block of ice. It doesn't kill him though because, um, comic books, I guess. He also doesn't vibrate out of it because Wally sucks (which the Rogues make sure to mention, of course. "Barry Barry Barry!" they say while then saying, "Barry! Barry Barry!"). They get away to go have a secret Rogues Gallery meeting while The Flash thaws out, goes home, and has a mini-adventure inside his friend Chunk's butthole. I mean black hole. I don't know. It was weird. If it has anything to do with the rest of the story, I'll mention it then. Otherwise, I'm moving on and ignoring it.

If only he had been in Chunk's butthole though! You would have had a play-by-play of that encounter!

Captain Cold has sent out an invitation to the Rogues for an emergency meeting. I guess they meet in a movie theater because why not be complete and utter pieces of shit when you're already mostly a piece of shit? The people trying to watch the movie do this thing to show their disapproval of other people talking through the film. Here it is:

I can't believe they actually went there! Such harsh criticism!

I wonder if Mark Waid just wrote in his script, "Have the other movie-goers show their disapproval," and Travis was all, "Oh, a thumbs down! That's like an international sign that nobody would ever use but I'll have everybody in the theater use it as if it's a common thing to do!" I mean, maybe it was a common thing to do in a '90s movie theater and my choice of yelling, "SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU FUCKING STUPID MOTHERFUCKERS!" was a bit too Avant Garde for most people.

Later, Chillblaine doesn't know how to cross his arms and the Rogues share their love of Tuesday.

I think Travis asked a friend to pose with their arms crossed and then, having to think about how they cross their arms instead of just doing it, panicked and came up with that.

But before Tuesday comes around so that everybody can, I don't know, fuck it, I guess?, everybody has to get through Monday just chillin'.

I guess Mondays are for masturbation?

Mondays are also for kidnapping Wally West which is what Chillblaine, the least chill of the group, does with his day. Chillblaine just seems to be some raging Alpha bag full of testosterone that Golden Glider's currently fucking. I guess her brother, Captain Cold, was in jail at the time so Chillblaine's taken his place in with the Rogues. Nobody likes him because he can't cross his arms correctly and he's a dick.

Turns out Mondays are actually for each of the Rogues to stab each other in the back by doing the Tuesday job on their own one day early. It doesn't work out because they all do it which means it probably worked out perfectly for Chillblaine and Golden Glider who knew they would all attempt the job early. That's just stories work when you've got a writer who decides that plans always work out perfectly until they finally don't for some reason which is weird because all the things that happen in a plan are usually wildly implausible and then a normal thing in the plan's chain breaks and I'm always all, "Wait. What? THAT didn't work?! The easiest part of the plan?! But the part where the plan relied on the hero to take two minutes longer than usual on his morning shit because they fed him some extra fiber did work?!"

I'm guessing The Flash's secret identity isn't secret (I assume this because all of his villains are always all, "Barry was way better at this than you!") or else why would Chillblaine want to kidnap Wally West? Fuck, I just realized I don't even know what Wally West's regular job was. I'm going to guess "slacker" which is why he probably doesn't have a secret identity. He's all, "See?! I'm not lazy! You're lazy! Because you're all so fucking slow is what I'm saying! Idiots!"

Oh, um, well, there you go! Question answered!

I'm such a dumb jerk. I just realized Chillblaine is probably Starman. This whole plan to trick the Rogues into stealing the Black Diamond and kidnapping The Flash so he can send him on their tail is the entire Eclipso plan! I probably would have figured it out a long time ago if I didn't spend several days between each page I read.

I'm 27 pages in and I know I haven't been giving Travis Charest the hard time I promised. You can see in the panels I've scanned why I would want to give him a hard time but Mark Waid's script is also pretty fucking bad so I've been a bit distracted. But I thought I should maybe give Trav his big chance at being insulted by me, the greatest comic book critic on the Internet! But that's when Golden Glider showed up and my brain was all, "Hey, he does nice tits, doesn't he?" And I was all, "Hey, Brain? Could you stop trying to get a response out of Dick? You know he's 54, right? He doesn't just hop-to at a couple of nicely drawn titties. He needs story these days! He needs, say, a pirate whose cousin has just come aboard his ship after they hadn't seen each other for fifteen years and she's wearing tight leather pants and a billowy shirt that keeps billowing almost enough to see nipple (which you can see anyway through the shirt what with the cool breeze blowing and also she probably iced them up before the shot). And she's all, "Oh my god! I'm so horny after my encounter with those eight sex mermaids who did all kinds of disgusting things to me but couldn't finish me off because I need some serious man penetration!" And then her cousin is all, "Yeah, me too! Lucky I run a gay pirate ship!" And then he hands her an eight-dicked octopus dildo and says, "Maybe this will help!" And she's all, "Well, it's better than nothing. But can I at least watch all y'all gays fuck as fuck myself raw?" And he's all, "Actually, tonight is Scrabble night!" And she's all, "Fuck! I love Scrabble! I can pleasure myself later!" And then there's like two hours of exciting Scrabble play and what was I talking about?"

Luckily the tits were kind of hard to see in this panel so I noticed a few other things wrong with it. See if you can spot them too!

I guess the main thing wrong with that panel is that Chillblaine must be about ten feet tall. But maybe that's not wrong because is he ten feet tall? The other problem I have with that picture is this: Where did the '90s artists who were so bad at art and yet so beloved by idiot comic book lovers all learn to draw the same stupid faces? This is how Travis draws faces but it may as well be Rob Liefeld or Marat Mychaels. Probably others but, like, I never read Pre-Image Marvel and then Image. I definitely never looked at a cover of any of the '90s X-Men off-shoots or Image books and thought, "Holy shit that looks amazing! I have to buy it!" To me, it all read exactly like the cover of Doom Force. That was a parody that got it so exactly right.

It turns out Wally West has been attached to the sphere in which the Black Diamond is kept. Golden Glider poisons the Rogues by fucking them with her poison puss and then tells them that whichever gets the Black Diamond away from Flash gets the antidote. Okay, maybe Starman is actually Golden Glider since she's thought up this overly complicated plan to Eclipse The Flash. My plan, if I were Eclipso, would be to possess a worker at Wally's favorite pizza place, put a bunch of the wrong toppings on one of his pizzas along with the Black Diamond, and then when he finds the Diamond and takes it off the pizza, he'll be super pissed at them getting the order wrong. Then after he destroys the pizza chain and kills a bunch of teenage employees, he'll be free to do Eclipso's bidding!

Instead The Flash battles Captain Boomerang in a fight so confusing that I still don't know what happened. I'm not sure Travis Charest understood Waid's script and completely fucked up the fight scene.

Go ahead. Make sense of that yourself! I can't look at it anymore. I've thrown up on my laptop six times from line-induced vertigo!

What happened (which was not represented visually at all except vaguely one time) was that Captain Boomerang threw a boomerang that split every time it was hit but then it kept flying around and/or at Wally as if it had been thrown like a real boomerang. So when The Flash is spinning in that one panel, I guess he's causing all the little boomerangs (millions at this point? I don't know because Travis only ever drew three boomerangs (the first one and then a panel with two more that you really had to work hard to interpret that they were born of the first one) to orbit him so he can smash them all back at their source? And somehow when he smashes them back at the source, this time they didn't all split when struck because they were, um, confused from the spinning?

I think maybe Travis's art goes pretty well with Waid's script! Well paired! Like Dog Urine Rosé and Cat Shit Linguine!

Speaking of Doom Force, there's an advert for it in this issue! "Hey kids! Are you currently making fun of the art you're seeing right now? Well see how Grant Morrison, Keith Giffen, and Steve Pugh make fun of it!"

So a whole bunch of confusing battle happens. I can't follow hardly any of it once The Flash smashes through the ceiling riding a spout of Weather Wizard's water. Everybody gets lost. Nobody knows what's what. Glider and Chillblaine actually fuck downstairs during the battle. The Black Diamond they're fighting over turns out to be a bomb of some kind and The Flash rushes outside to throw it in the air where it can explode harmlessly. But does he run out and hammer throw it on the end of its tether? No. He puts it in a wheelchair and then push-throws the wheelchair into the sky? Like, um, that was actually more difficult? Barry would have done the hammer throw, dude.

Anyway, The Flash winds up Eclipsed because he gets mad when his friend Chunk shows up and doesn't save him. Um. What? I'm not even sure why Chunk was there. Some mystery person in a sleek car lured him over. Starman, maybe? I bet it was revealed in the script but Travis Charest didn't know how to convey the reveal in images and so he just left the unknown person as glowing eyes and a smile in the darkness.

The Ranking!
Absolute dogshit. Saying this is dogshit might be an insult to the colon of a dog because why would I accuse it of being able to push out something this fucking horrible. I'd rather step in dogshit than read this comic book again. I wonder if I drank three liters of vodka right now, the ensuing black-out would incorporate this moment into it and I could forget I ever read it. No, I'd better forget that rout. Every sci-fi story in existence where somebody chose to forget something always winds up with the person so curious about what they forgot and why that they seek out the memory. I'd like to assume that I trust myself enough to not seek out the reason I chose memory loss over the memory but I also think I should trust better writers before me and the lessons they've tried to teach. I didn't read nearly every book by Philip K. Dick and not learn a little something about, um, memory loss and delusional identity disorders?

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Superman Annual #4 (June 1992)

All the cool kids are getting Eclipsed.

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Superman Annual #4 (June 1992)
By Dan Vado, Scott Benefiel, Trevor Scott, Albert De Guzman, and Matt Hollingsworth
Cover by Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti
Edited by Dan Thorsland and Mike Carlin

The Cover!
I'm trying not to focus on Lois Lane's boob but as you can see by the way I began by mentioning Lois Lane's boob, I've already lost the battle. The male gaze more effectively possesses the mind of a man than one of Eclipso's Black Diamonds. At least I'm able to embrace it whereas many angry men want to believe the modern world will crucify them if they acknowledge their own lust and horniness. And judging by Lois's line of sight, she's currently captured by the Female Gaze as she stares straight down Superman's cock outline in his tight spandex Kryptonian briefs. Or is that still the male gaze since a male, Joe Quesada, drew this and thought, "If I were Lois Lane, I'd be thinking about sucking off Superman's steel beam right now." Which is less "horny" and more "gross" because he just drew Lois beating the shit out of Superman and he thinks she's thinking about fucking him right after? No wait. I'm thinking he's thinking that which means I'm more gross than horny. Whoops! Maybe I should stop exposing my true inner self on the Internet by writing pretend comic book reviews? Naw. What else am I going to do with the rest of my life which turned out to be way, way longer than I originally thought it would be. It's like, "Enough already!", amirite?

One more question about the cover which will probably be answered when I read the comic book so just regard most of this as a psychic form of physical masturbation. I'm asking the question for my own pleasure, I mean. "Why is Lois Lane beating up Superman after becoming Eclipsed?" It's been established that after a person is possessed by Eclipso, the God of Vengeance, they must destroy the thing that made them so angry. So what did Superman do to Lois? Not washing dishes, my man? Poor quality control in the bedroom? Did she find his Kryptonian Playboys and the red sun fleshlight in his Fortress of Solitude's Fortress of Solitude (the bathroom)? Boy howdy do I hope these questions are answered in this comic book and that the answer is that last one I suggested!

The Story So Far
Eclipso continues to sit on his moon toilet talking to Valor while his Black Diamonds scattered all over the Earth do all of the work. He doesn't have much more of a plan than "I hope some super heroes get really angry after finding and picking up one of the thousand shards of my original Black Diamond prison!" Currently he has control of Valor, Starman, The Creeper, and maybe Star Sapphire and Hal Jordan? I read that Annual so long ago that I can't remember who was still possessed when it ended.

No.

The Story!
Superman has failed to locate Eclipso because, well, he's not Batman and did Batman do it in Detective Comics? No, he fucking didn't. Although Superman, being able to fly into space and think about flying into space and having the moon be a territory within his reach that he must think about on occasion, should think, "Where would I put my base of operations if I were a being whose entire identity was based around how the moon blocks out the sun?" It's not like it's the most complicated riddle in the world. So instead of searching for Eclipso so he can attack him at the source, Superman flies around Metropolis looking for a couple of Black Diamonds that may or may not be there. Somehow he lucks onto the one person in the city who has a Black Diamond sitting in their pocket. Not because the guy is angry and smashing downtown Metropolis but because he's holding a gun to a woman's head and ranting like a paranoid schizophrenic. Superman doesn't know the guy has a Black Diamond but Bruce Gordon runs up, panting and sweating from his long sprint from Gotham, to tell Superman that the man has a Black Diamond. Bruce Gordon knows because he's got a device that can find Black Diamonds when they're in use or when the plot needs him to know where they are.

Why am I suddenly thinking about my first junior high school crush?

Bruce Gordon believes this man having the Black Diamond was an intricate trap by Eclipso to catch Superman. That's even more paranoid thinking than the guy holding the woman hostage screaming about needing a ship to go into space and fight an alien demon. Mostly because that guy's talking about Eclipso which is actually happening and Bruce Gordon's theory relies on the Black Diamonds having way more control over their own destiny than "being found in a gutter" or whatever. I guess once a person is possessed they become Eclipso on Earth which means he can use them to sort of get Superman's attention and then he can try to shove the Black Diamond up Superman's ass or however he means to possess him. So, okay, now that I've given it a little more thought, maybe Bruce Gordon isn't totally nuts. Also he's the foremost expert on Eclipso so maybe I should be trusting the experts, even if they're a fictional comic book character currently being written by Dan Vado. I should but it's hard. Where did I leave my hammer?

Superman beats up another of Eclipso's manifestations while Bruce Gordon bathes it in sunlight. Afterward, he questions the man who brought the Black Diamond to his city.

There you go! He's on the moon! Go get his ass!

Crater Bay? Was that a popular location in the DC Universe in 1992? Or is this just a city used in this story as a clue to Eclipso's location? Whatever its origin, Lois Lane is on the case! She's off to investigate the strange goings on in Crater Bay. I bet she runs into a bunch of fish looking motherfuckers who drive her insane.

No, wait, she's actually investigating a possible case of corporate corruption and illegal dumping of toxic chemicals. She also outs herself as a white supremacist.

What else could she mean by "one of the last bastions of real America"?

So fucking sick of this "common sense" idea that "the real America" lies in the exact place and time after the indigenous peoples have been run off, killed, and exiled but before the Civil Rights act and brown foreigners began coming to share the American dream. As if rural means anything at all. Or fucking "Heartland". Don't fucking mistake the metaphorical, bullshit meaning of that word for the literal reason it was coined: the area known as the heartland is simply center mass in the country. I wish the ass were thought of as the central component of the human body so we could just start calling the flyover states the Assland. Not that I think the people living there are ass (I mean, sure, some of them (maybe a lot of them!)) but it's better to be the butt of a joke than be raised up on some kind of white supremacist pedestal because of the word heart coinciding with a place where a bunch of dumb people think mostly white people reside. I lived in Lincoln, Nebraska, for a few years and if it weren't for the humidity and the Huskers fans, I might still live there yet. Summer lightning storms? Yes please. Lightning bugs?! Hallelujah! Blizzards that trap you at your married friends' house so that their four year old son could tell you about how, when he was in his mommy's tummy, he wanted to be a girl? Fantastic! His father's look every single day after that as he tried to process it? Priceless!

Lois Lane finds her reception in Crater Bay to be slightly chillier than she's normally received even in places that don't want journalists poking around.

Then why is he fucking running the inn?!

The angry old man is actually Eclipsed Starman in disguise because Starman can apparently change shape which is why Eclipso's so happy to have him. Now this is an obvious Superman trap! I knew trusting the expert was the right thing to do even if I really, really, really, really didn't want to and also because I despise him and his stupid Commissioner Batman name.

Eclipso, pissed off at everything (which is why he wants to destroy everything. He kind of has to because everything is what made him so mad), monologues a little more information about his plans (unless it's not a monologue when you're kind of talking to the alien in a coma and/or trance floating nearby). Crater Bay is the headquarters for his secret possessing Superman headquarters. The people of Crater Bay network with other possessed people around the world to distribute Black Diamonds to where Eclipso can manipulate leaders, heroes, and even the economy (probably. Maybe he doesn't care about money so much). See? The name of the town is a clue to is location! What an idiot. If I lived in a crater on the moon, I would name my Earth city base of operations, Venusville. It's like how my banking password is "IVENEVERSUCKEDADICKBEFORE".

An Eclipso monster confronts Superman, Bruce Gordon, and Mona (and Mona's amazing ass) on the road to Crater Bay and Superman has to smash the creature into a greenhouse that uses solar power to heat the place. It destroys the creature whose soul goes screaming to the moon.

So let me get this straight: any power generated from the sun can destroy Eclipso. Solar Lance toys. A flashlight powered by solar energy. Batteries charged by solar panels. If this is the case, can't anything destroy Eclipso since the source of all power on Earth — all of it! — comes from the sun? Couldn't Superman just smash a tree into Eclipso? Throw coal at him? How many degrees of separation must there be between "direct solar energy" and pretty much anything on Earth before it has no effect on Eclipso? Isn't he just basically safe from, um, rocks?

The fight destroys Gordon's Black Diamond Detector and almost destroys his Solar Flashlight. That just means it broke but he fixed it but it's also probably down to a negligible charge. Superman will probably have to defeat Eclipsed Lois Lane by spunking on her. "Gordon! Mona! Hold Lois down so I can titty fuck her! My semen's loaded with yellow sun juice and a facial seems like just the cure!"

The developer whose wife is being held hostage by Eclipso so that he'll help lure Superman into town spends all night trying to get Lois angry so she'll turn be Eclipsed. He spills two cups of coffee on her and tries to put his hands on her to sop up the spilled beverage but none of it gets her needle moving. No, to get her angry, things have to be personal.

Oh, of course! Condescension's the thing! That's so Lois.

So Superman kills Lois and saves the day. Next annual!

The Ranking!
Okay, maybe Lois Lane wasn't killed. Who can tell? Somebody would have to finish reading this comic book and did you know? It's 60 pages long! DC knows the kind of stupid dumb idiots who read comic books, right? They expect us to read sixty whole pages in one sitting?! Fucking hell. It's just too much. I can't do it. I won't do it! Unless the next page I read expresses how Woke Lois Lane is, I'm just not going to continue and assume she died. Or should I assume she was cured by that facial idea? Hmm. I wonder if I can commission Scott Benefiel to draw that scene so I can staple it into my Annual?

Yield means Yield, you cretin!

Okay fine! I'll finish! I hope Lois goes off on how terrible Reagan was after she's cured!

The story simply ends when the sun rises. Superman does the thing where he distracts the vampires and/or trolls and/or Eclipsos so that they lose track of time and get destroyed by the rising sun. But Mona winds up Eclipsed and hides in the houses in Crater Bay with all the rest of the Eclipsed inhabitants. Superman decides he'll have to come back with some "Marvel"ous help to save the residents later. He still doesn't even contemplate checking out the moon. Maybe he's decided that guy who wasn't actually crazy was crazy in just that one small detail of Eclipso living on the moon?

For some reason, I didn't find this issue as good as Detective Comics Annual #5. Come to think of it, I haven't read any comic book as good as that one. And yet why am I having trouble remembering any of it?

We Learn Nothing by Tim Kreider (2012)

I return to certain authors not because of the stories they tell but because of the way they tell them. Time after time, I'll pick up, yet again, a story I've never completely finished by H.P. Lovecraft simply to revel in his use of words — words I would bet never existed before he put them to paper — to construct fabulous, unrealistic buildings where I eventually become lost, not in his story, but in my own imagination as it begins to build some story inspired by the feeling of Lovecraft's lyrical constructions and I'm forced to, once again, put the story down. Or maybe I'm in the mood for the complete reverse of Lovecraft, and I'll pick up Vonnegut where every word he uses to convey his thoughts are words I use on a daily basis and yet I'm left flabbergasted that I've never used them in such gut punching, scalp-peeled-back ways. Steinbeck lets me see through the eyes of so many fully fleshed characters which nobody but a genius could have built up from nothing but a couple dozen letters and on old typewriter. And Nabokov — f'ing Nabakov — makes dance words which I was sorely convinced were the homeliest of wallflowers.

Twice in my life, I've read authors who caused me to throw out something I was writing because they simply had done it better in storytelling ways I didn't know were possible: Nick Hornby's High Fidelity and Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves. I'm not pretending that I was writing those books exactly! But they took major elements and themes that I had been working on and made them stories whereas mine were half-assed, in-your-early-20s intellectual pap. Still, I didn't think, "I want to write like these guys," because it was their stories and not their way of writing with which I fell in love. But Tim Kreider, since the first time I heard him read one of his essays (and not when I first was introduced to his cartoons many years earlier by the Non-Certified Spouse), I truly envied. Kreider eloquently expresses tragically apparent parts of ourselves that have broken and may never be fixed. He does so in ways that leave the reader in tears born of pain and joy and the recognition that we all suffer the same tribulations. Reading a Kreider essay doesn't simply make me think, "This guy has lived!" We've all lived. What Kreider's essays make me think is, "This guy has lived and he's really thought a lot about that." It's impressive because not a lot of us do that.

The two things I'm most envious about Kreider are his humor and his earnestness. He sees things not how they really are but how he sees himself thinking they really are. What I mean to say, in a convoluted and terribly written way, is that he knows he's flawed and he knows he's biased and he points it out right up front and then he gets on with it with a shrug of the shoulders and a tilt of the head that says, "Yeah but what can you do?"

It's the earnestness of Kreider that I find important. It's the part of my self that I'm missing and I know I'm missing and, well, I just get on with it. If I can't be earnest at least I can be so cynical and full of bullshit that I can at least be honest from my duck blind. You can't tell I'm peppering you with earnestness and truth when it's mixed in with pure unadulterated B.S. and obviously flagrant exaggerations. But Tim Kreider doesn't need the camouflage and I love him for it.

In his introductory essay in We Learn Nothing, "Reprieve," he writes of his near death experience: "Not for one passing moment did it occur to me to imagine that God Must Have Spared My Life for Some Purpose. Even if I'd been the type who was prone to such silly notions, I would've been rudely disabused of it by the heavy-handed coincidence of the Oklahoma City bombing occurring on the same day I spent in a coma. If there is some divine plan that requires my survival and the deaths of all those children in day care, I respectfully decline to participate. Not to turn up my nose at luck; it's better to be lucky than just about anything else in life. And if you're reading this now you're among the lucky too." It's beautiful and powerful not because it's so honest and earnest and sincere and all those other things I cannot seem to be; it's powerful because while he's expressing a personal anecdote and belief, he's belittling and minimizing the argument of miracles and blessings and the narcissism which causes people to believe an almighty omnipotent and eternal being somehow has a plan for little old them. It's the most elegant take-down I've ever seen and I don't watch wrestling.

In his essay, "Escape from Pony Island," (which is the first essay I ever heard him read out loud at the Hawthorne Powell's Books) he says, "Ken often said of himself that he was essentially libertarian in his outlook, but Harold and I suspected that, like many libertarians, he was an authoritarian at heart." See? He just says what we all know is true and he makes it effortless and if you're libertarian, you're not reading this sentence because you already dramatically shut your laptop closed in disgust and then looked off in the distance impersonating Jim from The Office except you don't have a camera crew to capture the moment.

I truly love Tim Kreider and I wish I were his friend. Mostly because he and his friends seem to do a lot of day drinking and people watching and take a lot of trips and don't seem to actually do anything laborious.

In his penultimate essay, Sister World, Tim Kreider looked me deep in the eyes and whispered, "You're missing a critical part of your brain." I don't mind that I'm missing them though because Tim expresses them well enough that I know I'm missing them. I don't know if the essay brought me to tears because it brings everybody to tears or because I was left broken and longing for the ability to dive into messy and potentially uncomfortable situations. Or maybe I was just happy to experience his feelings because there's no way I'd want more family. Ugh! Ptui! Those shows where people meet long lost family members seem like a nightmare to me! Oh! So maybe that's why I was crying! Because Kreider's family reunion was terrifying!

I'll leave you with one more example of Kreider's earnestness: "Once, over beers, I was clumsily trying to tell Amy how grateful I was that she and her sister had been so accepting of me, when they could as easily have been indifferent or jealous or hostile. She said simply, 'You're family.' I felt whatever's the opposite of heartbroken."

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Detective Comics Annual #5 (June 1992)

If you want to destroy Batman's sweater. . .

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Detective Comics Annual #5 (June 1992)
By Alan Grant, John Wagner, Tom Mandrake, Jan Duursema, Rick Magyar, Bill Oakley, Adrienne Roy
Cover by Sam Keith
Edited by Denny O'Neil

The Cover!
I'm not going to give Sam Keith a hard time about this cover because, I mean, it's fucking great. Did you look at it? Do you have eyeballs? Does your brain function? I suppose I could criticize Keith's vision of how clothing tears and comes apart but that would be an assumption on my part that Batman's costume isn't made of steel wool. And even if I was going to be an uptight prick and moan about the weird curly pasta threads hanging down from Batman's torn shirt, I'd only be doing Keith a disfavor in that I'm ignoring his (as far as I can tell) realistic gun. Did anybody ever think to show John Romita Jr. this cover (or, I don't know, an actual gun)? If I wanted to be a useless, whiny, piece of shit comic book reader, I could ask how the fuck this has anything to do with Eclipso? Oh, sure, there's a moon in the background and you usually (although not always) need the moon for an eclipse. I mean I don't know what those "not always" moments might be. Like, say, Galactus is fucking Venus or something and his great ass blocks out the sun. But I guess, technically, that's a moon as well. And also Galactus doesn't live in the DC Universe. So pretend I said The Authority's Carrier was fucking a space whale and got between the sun and the Earth. So, anyway, that's my ignorance exposed! But I'm telling you, why would I want to criticize this fucking cover? I love it! I bet if this hadn't been an Eclipso tie-in issue, I'd have picked it up anyway. I would have been all, "Hey Brent! Did you see this cover? I didn't know Batman's costume was made of steel wool and pasta noodles! And I think that's Tiny Toons Joker guest starring! That's a weird looking gun though." (Up until 1992, I'd only ever seen guns drawn by John Romita Jr.)

The Story So Far!
Eclipso has eclipsed Valor, Starman, The Creeper, and Star Sapphire. Am I missing any? I don't remember and I'm not bothering to check. Let's see if Batman falls to lovely purple diamonds! I mean Black Diamonds (but they're really purple). I bet Catwoman loses her shit (and not in the appropriate litter box receptacle (Goddammit I think I just developed a new kink)).

The Story
The issue begins with totally legit business-puppet Scarface re-opening his club, The Ventriloquist's Club, while Batman hassles him and his guests by just making himself obvious up on the nearby street buildings. He's purposefully swinging past streetlights so that his scary and terrifying shadow passes across the front of the club and mumbling to himself, "That'll strike terror in the hearts of these people just trying to have a nice time at a totally legal club run by somebody who has served their time for the crimes they've committed but whom I don't like or trust."

I'd sue his ass for trying to tank my business.

Imagine suing Batman and then finding out in the discovery phase of your civil suit that he's Bruce Wayne. The amount of "Cha-Chings!" rattling around in your head would probably send you straight to Arkham.

I don't know anything about law and law terms so I probably got the lingo wrong and I'm not bothering to check but you probably understood what I meant.

Batman ignores the club full of Gotham's most wanted criminals because he's got a robbery to stop down at the Old Egyptian Goods Shoppe. The criminals try to flee in their truck which is, you know, truck-sized. It's drawn truck-sized. I saw it with my own eyes over multiple pages that it was truck-sized. And then when Batman goes to stop them (by making the truck crash which obviously kills the men in the cab because they're criminals and they don't wear seatbelts), the truck becomes a fucking Mini Cooper.

I'm less concerned about the dead criminals than I am about Tom Mandrake's ability to pass off that panel as professional work.

At least I know what Tom Mandrake thinks of me early into the comic book so I won't feel bad at all when I trash all of his actually adequate and not-bad-to-look-at pencils. You don't declare I'm a stupid idiot that will accept any old shit you draw and expect me to act politely about it! If by the end of the book we don't find out that Batman was sipping on some Gingold earlier which is how he reached the steering wheel from outside the passenger door, I'm going to carve Tom Mandrake's name onto the skin of the yearly goat I sacrifice to Baphomet to curse those who have done me ill.

While Batman's engaged in M.C. Escher crime fighting, Scarface busies himself with insulting every major mafia boss in Gotham at his new club. Most of his insults have to do with plastic surgery gone wrong. Look, he's a little thug who shoots a gun, not a comedy writer. Somehow he (and the guy with his hand up his ass) survives the gig, probably because the mob bosses are using all of their brain power trying to figure out what Scarface's scheme is. I'm using all of my brain power trying to figure out what Eclipso's scheme is. Maybe he won't show up in this comic book at all since Batman doesn't have any super powers. Why would Eclipso want to possess him?

Oh no! A threat from a normal criminal who apparently wears his seatbelt while he crimes.

Batman ignores the threat because is any threat actually a threat to Batman? I bet he doesn't even hear the guy because he's too busy trying to figure out how to defeat Superman if he ever winds up mind-controlled or how to fuck Catwoman if she ever winds up mind-controlled. He does notice a Black Diamond earring on the ground near the crash after the cops have gathered up the loot and the criminals and left the scene to go enjoy some paperwork. They'll especially love the extra paperwork they'll be doing later since they just left the smashed truck and didn't cordon off the crime scene. You might be thinking, "How do you know they didn't do any of that? Maybe Al, John, and Tom just decided not to show all the boring procedural work, you fucking douchebag?" Well, they do show us because Batman calls for the cops to stop and take the Black Diamond for evidence but they've already left. And this is the scene as Batman leaves.

The cops: "Enh, leave it. It'll make a great artificial reef when the sea levels rise."

Oh! I didn't mention that tonight, this very night that Scarsfaceman and his fister are eavesdropping on all the good Gotham mafia goss while they serve them tons of free drinks and Batman has found some jewelry that hopefully Tim Drake won't think was a loving present from his second father . . . this night is the anniversary of Babs being shot in the back by the Joker and definitely not raped at all because when has, um, Alan Moore ever, um, written a . . . you know what? She was probably raped. But nobody needs to dwell on that because she's dealing with it in the best way she knows how: help a government black ops organization break tons of laws all over the world and kill loads of people labeled as enemies of the United States. Even in 1992, we understood that the best time to label a person an enemy of the United States was after you've killed them so they can't say on the record, "What the fuck are you talking about? I don't even think of the United States! Like that scene in the elevator in Mad Men that will be written in twenty years or something!" Just like everything else he claims he invented because he knows nobody will fucking say to his face, "You're a delusional narcissist who lies about everything and doesn't actually know any Goddamn facts at all," Trump didn't invent the state killing civilians and then dragging their names through the mud. That's a time honored American tradition that they stole from Great Britain who stole it from, I don't know, The Romans or Christians.

Anyway, The Joker will be broken out of Arkham on this auspicious anniversary by Scarsfaceman because The Joker, supposedly, knows where 25 million dollars has been stashed. At least that's what one of the crime guys thinks because he was a henchman for The Joker and somehow survived the job and is also incredibly credulous if he thinks The Joker actually gives a shit about money.

Cue Tim Drake snooping around the Batcave.

Bruce Gordon shows up because he's tracked a Black Diamond to Gotham. In a previous issue, he mentioned he could only track them while they're in use. The one Batman found is currently safe but there were two others in the loot from the robbery earlier. Those are in the hands of the police and there's nobody angrier than a cop who was just, in his own eyes, disrespected. That means there's probably an Eclipso or two smashing up the evidence room right now.

Commissioner Gordon finds the two gems still on an Egyptian statue. I was trying to give Grant and company the benefit of the doubt for breaking an rule established in an earlier annual. If Bruce Gordon can track the Black Diamonds while they're not active, this whole series is going to get pretty boring. The whole set-up is simply to get Commissioner Gordon's hands on one so that he'll be so angry at The Joker that he'll turn into Eclipso and strip The Joker naked and take loads of photos and also shoot him in the spine and probably almost certainly doesn't at all in any way, shape, or form rape him. That's probably what happens. I can just stop reading now, right?

Of course it's happening! You forgot to tell them the most important rule: don't get angry around the Black Diamonds!

Gordon's Eclipso manifestation, a massive twenty-foot tall monster with huge teeth and claws, smashes its way out of the police precinct and heads for the toy warehouse where the cops have surrounded The Joker and Scarsfaceman's gang. When it gets there, it immediately kills at least three cops which means Commissioner Gordon is a cop killer. Although I think the Comics Code Authority jerks demanded a later panel to make sure Gordon's hands were clean of any cop blood:

I mean, it is a miracle because I saw the way Tom Mandrake drew them all being gutted. But then I also learned not to believe that hack on page three.

While giving chase, Batman drops and breaks Bruce Gordon's solar light gun. That means he can't stop Eclipso now! Except we, the readers, know that some of the toys in The Joker's warehouse are lightsaber knock-offs called "solar lances". Well, they have "solar" in the name so they must have the same power as the sun, right? Not just shitty light enabled by two 'D' batteries.

During the fight, Batman crashes into a crate of solar lances where he reads the label: "Powered by the sun." Well, that's all well and good if only the toy hadn't been stashed in a crate for the last number of years and it was now currently night and there's no way the stupid thing would be charged.

Wait a second. I think I see my problem with this comic book. It can be sorted out with a hammer and three hard whacks to the back of my head. *whack whack whack* Ah! That's better. I'm now dumb enough to enjoy a comic book again!

Batman picks up a Solar Lance which, having been charged by the sun, has the power to defeat Eclipso. So like something out of one of the two good Star Wars movies, Batman strikes Eclipso down!

Jim had to help for psychological health reasons. This was him dealing with his anger at Alan Moore.

Scarface and The Ventriloquist are arrested after everything calms down but The Joker manages to escape in a cloud of smoke, ninja style. An editor's note says that his story will be continued in Robin Annual #1 because of course Tim Drake found that Black Diamond Batman left lying around and was all, "Stupid teenager problems. I hate everybody!" Which will mean he'll have to kill everybody once he Eclipses. The main Eclipso story will continue in Superman Annual #4.

The Ranking!
That was fucking awesome, man! Incredible! What art! What story! And that part where Batman reaches in the truck window to steer the criminals into a streetlight? Phenomenal! The twist ending with the lightsabers? Genius! And I'm all on pins and needles about The Joker escaping! At least I think that's why I'm feeling pins and needles everywhere. Where'd all this blood come from? Whose hammer is that? I think I'm going to go lie down for a spell.

The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien (1955)

I finished re-reading this a couple of weeks ago and then set it down and forgot that I had read it because I was just relieved to have finally gotten through it again. The main thing I learned from re-reading The Lord of the Rings is that reading it once in one lifetime is enough. That's a tough lesson to have to learn in a finite lifetime! If I had children, "Only read The Lord of the Rings once in your life, and maybe zero times even," is the first thing I'd add to my list "Advice for Making My Child's Life Better (None of Which They'll Probably Take, the Ingrates)."

This might be a spoiler if you're a two year old with a Goodreads account but the One Ring is destroyed in this book by Chapter Three of Book Six (the Second Book in The Return of the King. Does that mean the trilogy is actually a sexology? I don't know. What am I? A person who can do math and knows words too?). That means there's something like seven chapters left! And one of those chapters involves a marriage! A MARRIAGE?! Between Aragorn and Arwen even! Which I'm supposed to believe is a happy ending? I guess the text doesn't definitively say Aragorn is gay but you don't go to the extremes that man was going to to avoid marrying a hot elf woman if you're into the ladies!

I suppose trudging through even more chapters about resting and traveling and singing is worth it to get to the most gruesome and bloody murder in the entire series. If only Peter Jackson had had the guts to film the Scouring of the Shire and the murder of Saruman. His throat being slit wide and the spray of blood splashing over the faces of the horrified Hobbits! I bet Ralph Bakshi would have done that scene right! But no! Instead Rankin and Bass screw it up and leave it out as well!

When I was younger, my favorite part of the book was when Éowyn kills the king of the Ringwraiths. I was all, "Ha ha! Because the prophecy said no man! But she wasn't a man! Ha ha! Stupid prophets! What a great twist!" But now I read it and I think, "Stupid prophets. This is why we, as a society, should try to encourage gender neutral terms and pronouns! So that if I ever become the lord of the dead and the lost King of Angmar, I certainly don't want to be killed because some jerk didn't account for half of the people who might kill me!"

In The Two Towers, my favorite characters were Treebeard and Gollum. In this book, my favorite characters were Pippin and Merry. Merry and Pippin are like a couple who decided to open up their marriage. First Merry is jealous of Pippin having gone to the big city, probably banging loads of studs, while he's stuck trying to get into the pants of a prudish horse king. Then later, Pippin is super jealous of Merry banging the hottest stud in Mordor and he's all, "Oh no! I'll never bang anybody as hot! But I've got to go and try!" But then Gimli is all, "You two are perfect together! Stop this nonsense! Never forget that troll I had to pull you out from under, Pippin!" And then Frodo is all, "At least your ex didn't throw your fleshlight into a volcano."

I highly doubt I'm going to read The Sillymarillion next.

The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien (1954)

I think the "two towers" referenced in the title are the two characters who carry the weight of this entire book: Treebeard and Gollum. At least that's what I think as an adult. When I first read this as a twelve-year old, I had no idea what towers were being referenced. Now, don't jump to the conclusion that I was a complete dimwit! It was obvious Orthanc was one of them! It's the most towery tower ever to appear in fantasy fiction. But what was the other one? Minas Morgul? Barad-dûr? The watchtower atop Cirith Ungol?

I know a lot of you are shaking your head and making "Pshaw!" noises at me and snorting, "It was obviously Barad-dûr, you stupid twit." But would you stake your nerdy life on that?!

Hmm, maybe you would. I bet there's a letter that J.R.R. Tolkien penned to some second cousin that was all, "It should be clear to everybody that the towers I was talking about were Orthanc and Barad-dûr. Only stupid dumb 12-year old twits who couldn't even tell the difference between Saruman and Sauron wouldn't understand that!"

Yeah, yeah. I was somewhat confused by those two wizards! I didn't say I was zero percent dimwit at twelve! But seriously, Tolkien had to pick two names that were that similar?! He was absolutely taking the piss.

Anyway, the tracking of the hobbits is boring. The Riders of Rohan are the worst characters of any book I've ever read (and I've read most of the Xanth books). Frodo might as well be a straw effigy with a ring tied to it. And Sam is just a bitter, thwarted cook. Gollum and Treebeard are the only interesting parts of this book.

Although I suppose the Battle of Helm's Deep was exciting because I was really wrapped up in whether the Elf character or the Dwarf character would murder more orcs than the other. You probably think the Elf would run away with that one because he could kill so many with arrows before one orc even got near the dwarf's axe but you would be surprised at how easy it is for a writer to pretend that wasn't the case at all and the dwarf actually could win that contest. So unbelievable.

Hopefully when I get around to reading the Sillymarillion, it explains what happened to the Entwives. If that mystery is never revealed, I suppose the next book I'm going to read is a Ouija board as I summon the spirit of J.R.R. Tolkien to explain his damned self.