Eclipso: The Darkness Within: L.E.G.I.O.N. '92 Annual #3 (August 1992)

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: L.E.G.I.O.N. '92 Annual #3 (August 1992)
By Barry Kitson, Mike McKone, John Dell, Jack Torrance, Peter Gross, Bob Smith, Jimmy Palmiotti, Gaspar, and Lovern Kindzierski
Cover by Mike McKone and Jan Harpes
Edited by Frank Pittarese and Dan Raspler

• Should I make a list of the top ten comic book characters I'd like to fuck or would that make me sound too much like a huge anti-social nerd who too often thinks about having sex with fictional creations? Would a list of fuckable comic book characters be more or less weird than a list of animated insurance characters I'd like to fuck? Maybe if I actually fucked a real person, I'd stop thinking about fucking fictional characters that have no agency? Or would I just become the protagonist of Boxing Helena II: The Boxening?

• Shit! I meant the antagonist! Fuck! Did I just expose too much of my interior squidgy being by accidentally expressing that the main character of Boxing Helena was the guy who cut off Sherilyn Fenn's limbs and not Sherilyn Fenn?! I mean, I was joking! Ha ha! It was a joke! I totally understood Boxing Helena! Probably more than you did because I'm an introvert pervert who has only ever loved women whom I've projected my own thoughts and beliefs onto instead of actually getting to know them. Yuck!

• Anyway, that top ten list of comic book characters I'd like to fuck would include Lobo like seven times so it's probably not worth writing. Lobo drawn by Simon Bisley. Lobo drawn by Val Semeiks. Lobo drawn by Keith Giffen¹. Lobo drawn by Jorge Corona².

• Halo would have made that list when I was in my mid to late teens but now it would be just weird. Also, is she still in a coma? Because that would make it less weird. I mean more weird. Stupid squidgy interior being!

• Also, obviously if I made a list of Insurance Company cartoons, it would be Erin Esurance. I would fuck, marry, and kill her! Wait. Goddammit.

• Are there insurance company cartoons other than Erin Esurance? If they are, are they hot? Should I search them out on Deviant Art?

• The issue sort of begins³ with L.E.G.I.O.N. waiting outside the United Nations for a meeting. Maybe the reason was revealed in the monthly title. Maybe it'll be revealed here. For some reason, even though Lobo was in this series, I never fucking read it.

I don't know who this member is but she's wearing Brother Blood's belt slash loin cover-up.

• How many pages until Lobo defeats everybody and wins at comic books? I'm not sure why there's another annual after this and a final bookend Eclipso issue to finish the story. Once Lobo becomes possessed, Eclipso should have all the power he needs to accomplish whatever he wants to accomplish. Destroying the sun, I'm guessing?

• Lobo had to remain behind because, as you can see on the cover, he's missing a sleeve on his jacket and you can't go in front of the United Nations in a leather jacket missing a sleeve! Also he might kill everybody.

• Back at the hotel room where Vril Dox decided Lobo couldn't cause any trouble other than throwing the television out of the window like any Earth rock star might, Lobo decides to drink himself silly with L.E.G.I.O.N. member Scrawny. Is that her name? Scrawny? It's what Lobo calls her so probably.

Oh, no. It must be Stutters!

• Stutters isn't offering to fuck Lobo. That's just the conclusion that he and all the comic book readers leapt to. She wants to play Settlers of Catan Or whatever the equivalent to Catan was in 1992. Probably Trivial Pursuit.

• Lobo drawn by Mike McKone isn't on my list of Top Ten Comic Book Characters I'd Like to Fuck because it looks like he was using Brett Michaels as a reference. No thank you.

• Oh, Ice would be on my list! Also Supergirl's bum drawn by Mahmud Asrar. That might be on the list twice. I wonder if Mahmud has ever drawn Lobo's bum? Hmm. Be right back. Gotta see if Mahmud does commissions!

• Fire wouldn't have been on my list even before she wasn't being transphobic in this issue.

I don't think it's up to you to decide, Fire.

• I have no idea which member of L.E.G.I.O.N. is Strata she's got to be either the caterpillar, the shiny bald one with the massive shoulder pads, or the red Schmoo. None of them are on my Top Ten List of Comic Book Characters I'd Like to Fuck.

• Vril Dox didn't make it to the United Nations thing because he's out on the town looking to buy a Black Diamond. I'm going to assume he has a solid reason for buying one because he's one of them Brainiacs.

• The guy who has the diamond tells Vril Dox "No" when Vril asks him if he can buy the Black Diamond. Afterward, Vril Dox and his partner beat the shit out of the guy's henchmen.

Um, what? It's you guys who didn't understand the word "No" and then resorted to violence. Am I losing my mind here?!

• Fascism to fascists is when they don't get their way. If other people's agency stands in the way of them getting something they want, they believe their freedoms are being crushed and think that violence against the person not giving them what they want is righteous violence against the oppressor. God, I hate fascists. I know! I can't believe I've gone out on such a long, scrawny, stuttering, dangerous limb to declare such an extreme opinion!

• Also I hate libertarians. They're just authoritarians who don't have the balls to do their own violence. The only State anything they like is State violence. But only if that State violence allows them to keep doing whatever stupid fucking thing they believe they have a right to do without anybody complaining. Creeps.

• Here's a quote from Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night (1961) that has aged like the finest wine⁴:

"There are plenty of good reasons for fighting," I said, "but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive. "It's that part of an imbecile," I said, "that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly."

• Mother Night isn't one of Vonnegut's most memorable works but it should be. I hardly remembered it after reading it in my 20s. But then I just re-read it a few years ago when I turned 50 and it quickly became one of my favorites. Especially in our modern era of fucking Fox News. The thing Mother Night most taught me was that Sean Hannity should be first against the wall in the coming revolution.

• The game Lobo plays with Stutters is Scrabble. Lobo plays "fragulate". Lobo is so smart!

• Vril Dox and his helper (Lady Quark in a wig, maybe?) retrieve the Black Diamond and then leave it in the same hotel room as Lobo. Even without having seen the cover, I know that's a bad idea! Lobo's anger, rage, and violent libido can probably activate the Black Diamond from several feet away! That wasn't a length of Lobo's dick joke but it could be?

• The first page after everybody leaves Lobo and Lady Quark alone with the Black Diamond makes me laugh out loud. Probably because I'm giddy from all the love chemicals spiking through my brain right now. If I knew how to make heart emojis in HTML, every time I typed L♥B♥, the Os would be hearts. Oh look! I do know how!

1992 and Lobo has mastered the manspread.

• Vril Dox was intelligent enough to somehow beat Lobo in one-on-one combat⁵ so we've got to assume that Vril Dox wanted Lobo to get his hands on the Black Diamond and become Eclipsed. He's already said as much by admitting to Lady Quark that their visit to the United Nations is a sham and that if they really wanted to visit Earth peacefully, they wouldn't have brought Lobo. So why bring Lobo? Why pretend to negotiate an Intergalactic peace summit? Because Vril Dox wants to experiment with making Lobo into super weapon!

• Lobo trashes the hotel trying to kill Lady Quark and Stutters. I mean Zena. Apparently her name is Zena. She can absorb light to make things dark and, this is the important bit, release the light she's absorbed. When Eclipso begins bragging about how darkness is his friend and darkness can't stop the God of Vengeance and "I love Darkness's dick, baby!", Zena thinks light might save the day and blasts Lobo in the face with a million, um, Kelvin? Moles? Parsecs? of light!

• Lobo left the diamond upstairs so once Eclipso's been forced out of him, he returns to plain old regular violent Lobo.

• The rest of L.E.G.I.O.N. returns in time to miss all the action. But when Vril Dox patronizes Lady Quark while she's holding the Black Diamond, she gets super pissed and Eclipses. Or she just saw an opportunity to gain a free beatdown and slapped some make-up on so she could blame it on Eclipso.

• Lady Quark easily defeats all of L.E.G.I.O.N. leaving Lobo to save the day. But not because he wants to save the day. Because he wants to get vengeance on the God of Vengeance for using him to get vengeance on Lady Quark who is currently the God of Vengeance. No matter what happens, Vengeance shall be venged this day. Unless the Justice League shows up to fuck it all up.⁶

How could this team manage to constantly out-fail a team made of Vibe, Gypsy, and Aquaman?!

• English isn't Lobo's first language so he probably thinks "buttheads" is a lot filthier than it actually is. I mean, it sounds pretty filthy! A butt? For a head? Gross! Or is that sexy? Damn, I think it might be sexy.

• Lady Quark gets away and Zena goes missing. She was kidnapped by Bruce Gordon and his Ozymandias gang. Nobody apologizes to Lobo for assuming he was the bad guy because he'd beat the shit out of them if they tried.

• Finally having an intelligent person on the side of the good guys means somebody finally comes up with the idea to take the fight to Eclipso on the moon. It took a fucking Coluan to think up that plan!

The Ranking!
This was the best annual yet! That's a weird thing to say because it surmises that I actually likes some of the annuals and then this one was of even superior quality to those. And I hate annuals! Sure, sure. You can't really know if I liked this annual or not because Lobo was in it and I love everything Lobo is in even if it's terrible. I'll never admit to a Lobo comic being bad. You can't make me! Because, um, I don't believe any Lobo comics are bad! If I ever admitted to a Lobo comic not being the best comic, I'd be lying and that would be wrong. Plus this one had a really fucking great ending where it was all, "Only one more annual left and then the conclusion! You're almost done, baby! Celebrate by eating an entire cake!" And I was all, "Rmffleplumfgrr?"⁷


__________________________________________________________________________________
¹ Weird, sure. But intriguing!
² I mean, probably. We'll find out on Wednesday, March 18th, if I want to fuck that Lobo!
³ If you ignore the actual beginning.
⁴ Most of Vonnegut's quote age that way because when you can see reality clearly and have no agenda other than to communicate the truth of how things are, your words will always sound prophetic and modern. When you're speaking lies to manipulate people toward a selfish agenda, your words will die over time, if they don't immediately fall out of your mouth stillborn.
⁵ Which is why Lobo works for L.E.G.I.O.N. Keeping his word and being honorable is Lobo's biggest flaw!
⁶ I'm pretty sure fucking things up is in their charter.
⁷ That's "Yes, sir! Right on it, sir!" with my mouth full of half of a cake.

Planetary #5 (September 1999)

Planetary #5 (September 1999)
By Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Allison Fuchs, and Laura Depuy Martin
Cover by John Cassaday
Edited by John Layman

• I'm currently re-reading Cujo for the first time in nearly forty years. I wrote a Review of it several years ago based on my memories of the book. Now that I'm re-reading it, I didn't go as hard on how bad it makes you feel as I should have. I only remembered how it ended with the narrator explaining how the dog loved his man and his woman and most of all his boy and he never wanted to hurt them and he would have done anything they told him but he couldn't because of a neurological disorder called rabies. Or something. But holy fucking shit, I'm not sure I can make it through a re-read at this point in my life! I must have been a really unfeeling prick at fourteen or whenever I read it. Because now, every time King lets the reader into Cujo's head, it's fucking heartbreaking! The poor doggy! Somebody help the poor doggy! Why did you do this to the poor widdle two hundred pound puppy, King?! YOU FUCKING MONSTER!

• Man, at least the book isn't about a cat. I couldn't handle it if it were about a cat. Oh shit I hope Danielewski doesn't give the cat in The Familiar rabies or I might have to write him a thoroughly displeased tear-stained email.

• Last issue ended with Elijah Snow wandering off to find Doctor Axel Brass and his twisty baby legs. This issue begins with him finding him.

Ew. Gross.

• You might think I'm being ableist but I'm very sensitive to body horror. You should hear my terrified exclamations when I see my own penis.

• No, really. You should. As the song says, "Call me Maybe."

• Snow and Brass discuss Sparks for a bit. Ellis really likes these names that describe a character thematically. Snow is cold-hearted and aloof. Sparks is a peppy, brazen, and optimistic woman. Brass is hard, solid, and has balls.

• At least he had balls. By the look of his legs, I wouldn't expect they weren't smashed into testes jelly.

• Doc Brass spent fifty-four years trapped underground with nobody to talk to. It shows and Snow's worried about it. So he tries to distract him with video tapes.

I'm less surprised that Snow met Welles than that Snow had a girlfriend. Unless she was from Mars. Or a sentient penguin. Then I'd be all, "Oh, yeah, duh. Of course."

• Along with Jenny Sparks, Snow and Brass discuss a guy named John Cumberland. I'll assume he's from a different Wildstorm book with which I'm unfamiliar. He's dead, anyway. And he was from a parallel Earth! Looks like a Wildstorm Superman stand-in.

• One-third of this issue reads like a pulp fiction book with pictures. In these, we're introduced to Anna Hark, the daughter of China's mad genius. She would take his wealth and hide away in America inside her Hark Corporation. Are they up to no good? Did she take her father's original role of villain unto herself? We shall see!

• Snow feels like Planetary has a hidden agenda for the work they're doing and not just gathering information for the sake of it. Seems like a logical conclusion when you're dealing with a corporation that has enough money to buy whatever it needs several times over.

• Doc Brass explains that his groups secret agenda was simply to save the world from itself. But since his group died in 1945 and it's now 1999, he's realizing the arrogance of their belief. Selfish people will make the world a terrible place. But compassionate people will always stand up to the selfish. If not for Doc Brass and his Seven Soldiers, it would have been somebody else. Currently, it's The Authority. Possibly, it could be Planetary.

Most of my favorite panels are when characters are relaxed and engaging in quiet speculation.


It's probably why I despise so much of the world today. Too many people don't know how to engage with a quiet moment of introspection.


They just can't put down the Constant Stimulation Device.

• Brass mentions that he wishes Snow had been around to join them. Snow's response is enigmatic and probably worth paying attention to. I'm sure he was, um, just sucking and fucking all over the place and not helping to build a massive paranormal knowledge gathering organization at all!

I have never said this in my entire life.

The Ranking!
Here's an old poem I wrote which concerns that last panel:

"I'd love to stay and chat some more, but I've a little business to take care of"
is a thing I've never said myself,
for I have no business to speak of,
and I have no love for chat.

If you were there, and I was too
(enervated by social obligation),
I would merely stand and say,
"I must be going, my cat's at home, and I think I need a nap."

Anyway, great comic, blah blah, you should read it and shit!

Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea: The Newsletter #24 (Third Week of May 2018)

E!TACT! #24
INCEL SPECIAL #1
By Grunion Guy

There was a day when not getting laid wasn't the defining attribute of a person's life. That day isn't today though! In this new millennium, not getting laid is the most traumatic thing that can happen to a person who has reached sexual maturity. Oh, I'm not saying it wasn't also tough last millennium. It's just that it wasn't as tough! Back before the Internet was the all-consuming rough slouching beast we all know and can't not love, we didn't have a place where we could scream into the void, "I can't get laid!" Mostly because all the voids back then were public spaces where people could see who you were when you shouted it and they'd point and say, "Ha ha! Virgin!" I know some of you are thinking, "Why didn't the nerdy virgin shoot that person?" Well, let me tell you how old fashioned last century was: it wasn't acceptable to shoot people! You had to just live in silent shame just like every other teenager who wasn't getting laid. And there probably wasn't a lot of them! It was hard to tell back then but based on teen sex comedies, all of the teenagers but you were getting sex. And by "you," I mean "me" and probably "you" since you're reading a newsletter stemming from a comic book blog written by an Incel.

Oh! I probably should have put a trigger warning on the last paragraph because it contained the word "virgin." Sorry to scar every single person reading this.

So last night, I was on my favorite Incel forum typing a thoroughly logical and over-the-top rational treatise on why women should fuck guys they don't actually want to fuck for the good of all mankind when I took another peak at the forum rules to make sure my unimpeachable string of gotcha fuck rhetoric was within the parameters of the site when I realized maybe we had a bit of a problem in our community. I mean, the number one rule is not to brag if you've finally gotten some sex. Which means those of us who haven't gotten sex and feel like we have no hope must continue to live in hopelessness because we never see when one of our number finds their way out of this lonely pit of despair and hate-masturbation! We're only privy to endless posts by the worst of our community about how sex will remain out of our reach for our entire lives. How do we know they're the worst? Because they're still sexless and in our community after years and years, getting angrier and angrier, sitting in bigger and bigger pools of their own useless drying semen!

It also made me think, "Why is every ounce of my energy devoted to how I'm not getting laid?" But then I had a moment of clarity and realized the game is rigged and women get to fuck anybody they want so why can't I? (Oh yeah! Did I mention I was male? That's probably important if it wasn't already assumed because who else would be completely consumed by their lack of sexual experience? I mean, lack of experience being close to and intimate with another person? Obviously this isn't just about sex or else we'd all pay for it, right? And if that were the case, where we could pay for it to stop feeling so hurt and angry and resentful of this very specific thing and totally not a whole bunch of other things, we wouldn't be consumed with blind hatred for the world because the world would be smelling of roses because our dicks would be smelling of vaginas. And this situation isn't that simple, guys!) How can I not spend every waking moment despising the girl I have a huge crush on because I know she's fucking whatever gross guy she can find when she's feeling horny. There's totally no way she's sexless and pining over a guy totally out of her league because she's a girl and it's different! I mean, if she was really desperate, there's always me, right?! What's wrong with her?!

I once saw a tweet that said something like "How dare you say you're hungry when there's a perfectly good slice of pizza lying on the sidewalk?" and I almost thought about how it related to what I expect from women but then I remembered not one woman has fucked me and I got back to writing my treatise on how the world would be a better place if supermodels would spend more time hanging around high schools fucking losers.

Sorry. I hate to call anybody from our community a loser! That's probably against the rules. We shouldn't be looking at the faults of the people in the Incel community as to why we aren't getting laid (or why we're consumed with that one small aspect of our sexless lives). We should be asking why we're even in this predicament to begin with when women outnumber men in this country. Why aren't we all partnered up?! And I don't mean partnered up by some kind of lottery because I'm not sleeping with some girl I find gross (not that I've had that opportunity because even gross girls want hot guys. What is up with that?!). I want to be able to pick the woman I want to fuck and I want her to be totally into it. Why isn't she into it? I'm a nice guy and I'm sure I'd act more adult and be able to provide for her once I got the motivation by getting laid.

I once heard a story about this guy who hadn't been laid because he was into Blood Bowl, Apple IIe games, and a chick who didn't want to have sex with him no matter how many times he drunkenly cried in front of her. But then he was in a situation where he took the initiative and did a manly thing in front of a woman he had been playfully flirting with which totally led to fucking her later. He didn't even pursue her after that moment. She sought him out because he did something that impressed her. His friend, who had more seriously been flirting with her, said that she couldn't keep her eyes off that guy after the thing he did that didn't involve trying to fuck her at all and was just an independent action that helped a number of people. But then I was all, "He must have been good looking and thin and society is bullshit. Why didn't the friend get any pussy? I bet he was fat and his IQ was too high." So that story didn't help.

How is it fair that five guys in high school get all of the women? We need a more even playing field. For men, I mean. Not having sex is too complex an issue that's too time consuming for me to have to think about women possibly having similarly complex problems concerning getting laid for the first time. I mean, obviously when a woman first gets a horny thought in her head, all she has to do is walk down to the local bar and fuck any guy at all. Because all guys want to fuck therefore women have no problem getting laid. It's simple logic. So female Incels are urban legends and unicorns and myths and the only people who mention them are just trying to obfuscate the issue. And that issue is how dry it is in my pants.

I propose we start a national draft of fucking. Since men spent so many years having to fear being drafted into the military to risk our lives (many of us having never even known the pleasant touch of whatever it feels like to have a woman you've just met follow you into the bathroom at a party who then leans in to kiss you as she slips her hands down the back of your sweat pants before moving them around to the front to grasp your twitching rod. Oh man that must be the greatest thing on Earth! Why am I being denied these simple treasures?! I mean, I don't really go to parties or attempt to flirt with women or cultivate an image that would attract the attentions of like-minded women because what's the point? Remember how the game is rigged?! There will probably be fifty more attractive men at that party before me! And even if there are fifty-one women, they're all going to fight over the top ten attractive guys while the other forty-one go home later to hate-masturbate), women should now be forced into a sex draft. Whenever a guy is ready to get laid for the first time, he should be able to call a government agency who will then pull a fuck draft number. Then that woman must fly out to this guy at her own expense (or maybe we can use some government money for this. It's too important to leave up to the woman because if she doesn't have the money, the guy needing to get laid might start killing people) to fuck him. And she has to fuck him (unless he isn't attracted to her. Then he gets to pull another lottery number! Maybe the draft should only draft hot women. The others would be dismissed, not for flat feet but for flat chests! Ha ha)! None of this, "Well, he came as soon as I touched his penis so I did my job, right?" NO! You need to provide penetration! No suck and fuck where the suck gets the job done so you think you can put away the fuck! Plus remember how the draft was for four years? Yeah! This woman needs to be committed for as long as the guy doesn't get tired of her. This is just like military service! You can't just not fuck when the guy wants to fuck. That would be akin to going AWOL.

Some day, I'm sure that piece of legislation will be drafted but it won't help me. I'll probably be long dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after going on a sexless killing rampage. And who can blame me?! Who can blame anybody who kills a bunch of people after not having sex for seventeen years of their life?! Not that the first twelve to fifteen should count in that timeline. So what I'm saying is "How can you blame anybody for being angry for not having sex for two to four years after reaching sexual maturity?! They should get it as soon as their dick first gets hard! Or else people are going to have to pay a price."

Hmm, now that I've said that in quotation marks, it seems a bit harsh. I might believe it but maybe people shouldn't quote me on it! That seems like something I should have typed anonymously on an Incel forum where it would receive a ton of support, making me think I was on the right track in my thinking.

* * * * * * * * * *


Incel Comic Book Reviews!

Action Comics Special #1
By Jurgens, Russell, Landis, Conrad, Thompson, Manapul, and Quintana

It's obvious Luthor is an Incel. His motivations make no sense otherwise. Here is Superman, the uncuckiest of the uncucky, come from outside Earth to fuck any woman he wants. Sure, he only chooses three (Lana, Lois, and Diana) but that doesn't stop all of the other Earth women expecting every man they meet to be as good as Superman. He's fucking unleveling the playing field to such a cosmic degree that Lex Luthor has taken it upon himself to destroy this enemy of the unfuckable. It was hard enough to get laid as an intelligent unattractive man before everybody expected men to have fabulous pectoral muscles and tight abdomens and high moral characters who treated everybody kindly, no matter what they looked like. Now it was next to impossible! But Luthor would come to the rescue (I know some people might be thinking, "Luthor? He's not really unattractive." But that's why he's bald. It's the metaphor for "unfuckable loser" in comic books)! Luthor is the man willing to martyr himself for the cause by killing the root cause of our unfuckableness. Once he takes out Superman, women will turn their eyes back toward mortal men. Of course their eyes will fall on faces like Chris Hemsworth and the other Hemsworths with other names (and sometimes other hair colors) instead of our community of Incels just waiting to be loved by a woman looking for a nice guy who will worship them.

Remember Revenge of the Nerds? Is that how you get a woman to fuck you? You trick them into thinking they're getting oral sex from their terrible quarterback boyfriend? Then after they've orgasmed because in this scenario I somehow know how to eat pussy successfully, they'll be in so much bliss that they won't call the police to have you arrested for oral rape, instead choosing to become your girlfriend? Man! Now I just have to figure out how to sneak my tongue into a woman's vagina! Also I need to figure out how to eat a pussy! Does it involve chewing? It must since it uses the verb "to eat" in the description. Also, do I absolutely have to know where the clitoris is? I hear it looks like a tiny dick. Do I have to put my mouth on that? That sounds gay. And if I were gay, I almost certainly wouldn't be an Incel. At least not after I'd come out of the closet. I suppose while in the closet, I'd totally be an Incel although women would probably like me better than this hetero version of being an Incel. That's probably a double standard that Lex Luthor could fix.

YAAAAAAS! My Incel queen! (Am I allowed to use that appropriated turn of phrase? Probably! I'm angry and resentful and my point of view is important!)

As Lex wanders around the Fortress of Solitude angrily jerking off on all of Superman's prized possessions (and hate fucking the top of the Bottle City of Kandor), he uses the term "so-called." This is the favorite phrase of mediocre and bad comic book writers. It gets so much bitter resentment and sexual frustration out in one simple phrase! Whenever I'm out shopping, I like to say things like "so-called bottle of ketchup" and "so-called farm style shredded cheese" and "so-called check-out slut." It doesn't mean much but it's like an emergency vent venting steam that would otherwise build up until I decided to finally pick up one of the many guns lying around America's gutters to shoot up my old high school. I know the girls there now aren't the ones who wouldn't fuck me but — let's face it — the ones there now aren't going to fuck me either! So remember, if you're an up and coming Incel writer, use this phrase as often as you can to indicate that the speaker is either way smarter than the person who used the "so-called" word in the first place or if the speaker is just a patronizing, cynical jerk (which is kind of just a restatement of my first example, really).

Lex has infiltrated the Fortress of Solitude to discover Superman's secret identity. Weird how discovering Clark Kent is Superman is harder than getting into a Fortress. Lex Luthor discovered Batman was Bruce Wayne when he learned Nightwing was Dick Grayson. But he hasn't learned Superman is Clark Kent when Clark Kent was the only one writing pro-Superman editorials for years on end while also writing all of the Superman news stories from Superman's point of view while also maintaining perfect abs and large pectoral muscles? Maybe Lex was thrown off because Clark Kent is such an obvious cuck. No way that unfuckable nerd was really out saving the world. I'm surprised learning the truth doesn't completely gall Lex. He should spend thirteen pages screaming, "How is that unfuckable four-eyed twit getting Lois Lane quality pussy while I'm stuck masturbating to that one time I saw my sister in the shower?! FUCK THIS WORLD AND FUCK SUPERMAN RIGHT IN HIS ASS AND NO THAT ISN'T A FANTASY I'M NOT GAY!"

At least Lex spares a few Narration Boxes to point out that Superman is an insipid loser who mocks Everyman by pretending to be just as unfuckable as the rest of us.

Yeah, extra cheese all over the side of the pizza box. Superman may get to stick his dick into Lois Lane's vagina but he's too stupid to carry a pizza box correctly.

Lex Luthor finally does what he should have done from the beginning: he begins blaming a woman. I guess before he was smart enough to figure out Superman's identity, he didn't know to target Lois Lane. But once he does, it's understandable that he can't believe she'd go for that piece of shit alien over the smartest man in the room. I mean on the planet. He might not get to fuck her the way Superman does (not that he ever could! We in the Incel community understand that if we ever do get to fuck, we're going to do it terribly. So now we have to worry about disappointing a woman in yet another way. Why do they get to judge if the sex is good or bad?!) but he'll make sure to fuck her in a really unsubtle metaphoric way!

It's practically our Incel motto: "If she wanted a man who's truly superior, she should have pursued me!"

I know I've been referring to those green Narration Boxes as Lex Luthor because they really should be Luthor's voice. But the comic has been pretty cagey about showing who it actually is (plus Superman figures it's Luthor on like page five. That's the biggest clue that it can't be Luthor! Clark isn't that smart). It's somebody in a wheelchair with Lex colored armor and a bald head who must use a respirator. So it might be Lex Luthor from the future or it might be Lex Luthor's sister, Lindsay. Or Labia. Whatever. But if it is his sister, she's a lesbian. Is she a lesbian? Probably since lesbian beings with "L".

If it's not Luthor, I'll be terribly disappointed because it's the one time Jurgens has ever gotten Lex's voice correct. He's pure Incel here! And who ever thought he was anything but? He even has a sex robot! Which doesn't count as having sex, of course. Because you can't degrade and shame a robot.

Later, Luthor attacks Lois personally. Except it's not his regular armor. It's big and bulky and fat. Plus the head in the helmet looks like it might be a hologram. And since the person who discovered Superman's identity used a hologram doohickey earlier, it's probably that person. I hope they name him General Incel.

Remember how the whole world thought Superman was Clark Kent but then Mxyzptlk helped clear it up with a fake Clark Kent? Shouldn't the person who just discovered Clark was Superman have thought, "Hey! We all knew the truth for a while but then we all got fooled by a lie later! It's like we all agreed to go back to being blue pilled!"

If I wasn't such a serious and real Incel, I might have had to make sure I was using the right color pill for that reference! Good thing I totally watch The Matrix like six times a week and didn't have to look up "red pill" on Urban Dictionary where I might find some asshat has put up a totally offensive definition like this: "When you are so insecure about not getting laid that you blame it on Jews and feminists." Fucking jerks.

Oh! Maybe this is the real Lex Luthor! It could be the Preboot Lex Luthor returned for Rebirth! That other Lex Luthor is a fraud and a cuck. We're finally getting the good old angry unfuckable Lex back now that DC Comics has slowly been smearing the Preboot universe over the New 52 universe like a grandmother who makes terrible peanut butter and jelly sandwiches by putting everything on the same slice of bread while thinking up long and convoluted metaphors so that she isn't paying close enough attention to the balance of spreads. Welcome back, King of All Incels!

Although being that it's Dan Jurgens writing this, it's almost definitely Lex Luthor from the future. Which is also fine as long as the ultimate outcome is a return to Lex being a gigantic dick for no apparent reason. At least no apparent reason to most lamestream readers who couldn't see the truth even if Morpheus forced it down their throats.

After a few more pages of battle, it turns out the majestic thinker from the beginning of the comic book was Lex from the future. He dies in the battle from a heart attack and then is consumed in an explosion so that Lex Luthor never discovers his hate lives on. Superman refuses to tell Luthor about it, assuming that Luthor from the future is some kind of an anomaly and not actually this Luthor from the future (which it has to be because that's how time works (except this is a comic book so that's not true at all (plus time travel isn't real so maybe it works like this?))). Or maybe since future Luthor just told Superman that he never, ever beats Superman, Superman doesn't give a shit about present Lex at all now. He now knows Lex will always fail so he turns his stupid Chad back on him. Fucking just like every Chad. They don't think I'm a threat to their sex life at all! As if they could fuck any girl they want while I have to stew in my own semen-laced resentment! Well, I'll show them some day! Someday they'll be sorry when I stop feeling like a huge beta and decide to be a gigantic disgrace to my parents and all of mankind!

I mean, that's what an anonymous person on a forum would probably say! But not me! I'm happy not being fucked by anybody and would never dream of taking out my failures on innocent bystanders! I'm totally stable!

The second story takes place at the White House Correspondents Dinner and is some kind of liberal claptrap bullpucky about how it's okay to laugh at stuff as long as you stick to really specific targets, like white males or white males who can't get fucked or virgin white males. Fucking Mark Russell thinks he's such a pussy hound with his great jokes and insightful glimpses into characters like Clark and Lois and Lex and Snagglepuss and Betty and Wilma.

Why can't we expect people without power to laugh at themselves? What's so special about powerful people and their lack of laughing?! P.S. I'm offended and slightly engorged by the coffee mug.

This is just a retelling of that time Seth Meyers bullied Donald Trump. I bet that cuck Seth Meyers is regretting that move now, right?! MAGA!

I swear I didn't laugh at any of Mark Russell's stupid jokes. Why do leftists always have to throw their agenda around? It makes their humor so terrible. Don't they know any good jokes about black men in suits and where they must obviously be?! Oh, but I guess it's not politically correct to assume black people are criminals now! It's not like that leads to a culture of systemic bias against...um, you know what? Those jokes are still funny.

The final story is by Max Landis and all I could think while reading this hippie Superman bullshit is, "Why isn't Frank Miller still writing Superman comic books?!"


Batman: White Knight #8
By Murphy and Hollingsworth

Is this a comic book about how everything Batman does is in service to trying to get laid? It's so obvious that when guys defend women's rights or claim to be feminists or obsessively fight for justice in the name of their murdered parents that they're just doing it to impress the ladies. Even if a guy declared he was a feminist and a woman was all, "Oh my! Do me in the thingy!" and he declined to do her in the thingy, I would suspect he was only declining in the hopes better looking women will be impressed by his staunch beliefs and ask him to do their thingy later. Not one heterosexual guy in the history of heterosexual guys has ever done anything that wasn't a move to get himself laid.

Which, sure, you might think is an odd belief coming from an Incel whose every expressed belief and conviction sounds like something you'd say if you were trying to never get laid ever again (or for the first time even). You'd think I'd look at the way white knights' armor is rusting from pussy juices and come to the conclusion that faking being suave and nice and kind and interesting and competent would be the better way to go if I wanted to stop being an Incel. Well, maybe you haven't been listening, Chad, but no matter what I do, I'll never get a woman to be interested in me because they're shallow jerks who only want to have sex with good looking or interesting or competent or kind or sexually experienced men! I know my place and I'm determined to prove my point that the world is stacked against me and women are shallow asses by digging this hole deeper and deeper! See how much I'm not getting laid? I think that proves my point!

In this series, The Joker concocted an intricate plan to save Gotham. At least that's what all the blue pilled sheep probably believe after reading it. But as I pointed out, everything every guy does is in service to getting laid. And Joker's big plan was simply to convince Harley that he wasn't a psychotic, abusive bastard so that she'll go back to fucking him. And it works!

Don't believe me? The cover even proves my point!

See? The focal point of the battle to save Gotham was the ice cannon. But the cover shows the ice cannon was really Joker's penis.

* * * * * * * * * *


Jokes for Incels!

How many women does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
How the fuck should I know? I've never seen a woman screw anything.


Knock knock!
Who's there?
A woman!
Bullshit.


What's black and white and red all over?
A vagina? Maybe?


Thirty two horses on a red hill. First they champ then they stamp then they refuse to have sex with me. What are they?
Feminists.


A grasshopper walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Hey! We've got a drink named after you!" So the grasshopper says, "You have a drink named Virgin Tom Collins?" And the bartender says, "Yeah, you loser!"

* * * * * * * * * *

A Few Parting Words

Some people might think it's funny to call somebody else a virgin. But those people are hurtful jerks. There's nothing funny about being a virgin. Not being able to have sex or feel intimacy with another person is the worst thing that can happen to a person. Some people might think, "Well then why don't you just pay for it already so that you stop thinking about it all of the time?" That might seem like an answer and maybe it actually is an answer because if I got laid, I'd feel relieved and a lot less anxious about it. But it's also not the answer because even if everything about our name, Involuntary Celibate, leads people to believe it's all about sex (and it totally is right up until somebody brings up the bit about going to a prostitute), we'll totally move the goalposts as soon as such an obvious answer to our problem is espoused. So it's not about sex at all! What we want is to be loved by a woman who doesn't make us throw up in our mouth a little bit when we look at her (even if we make her projectile vomit across the room by looking at us (or by just listening to our rhetoric)). We also might want a little bit of power over the fairer sex because even though people talk about the Patriarchy and how men have the power, that isn't the case because why am I not having loads of sex then? Women have all the power because they get to say no to our disgusting advances. And I'm tired of that! When do I get the power, hunh?! When do I get to dictate when I have sex?! Why is it always the woman who gets to say yes or no (and, by the way, they always say no which is why we need a new model for relationships!)?

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that the whole Incel movement isn't about sex at all. If it was, there would be a simple solution: pay for it. And since I'm still a virgin (as are all the terrible people on the Incel Forum I frequent on an hourly basis to express my disappointment and rage), it sort of proves that we're not willing to accept a reasonable solution to ending our sexlessness. That's because it's all about power and we're going to gain that power one way or another. Women won't have sex with us? Well we're going to terrorize them until they do! That'll definitely work, right? MAGA!

Planetary #4 (July 1999)

This guy droppin' star-shaped confetti like he's a letter from my mother¹.

Planetary #4 (July 1999)
by Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Alison Fuchs, and Laura Depuy Martin
Cover by John Cassaday
Edited by John Layman

• Reading is way easier than writing. And watching television isn't all that much easier than reading. I think what I'm trying to say is I should be watching television.

• One of the early college "things smart people know" bit that would enrage me was when people would spout the idea that reading was active and watching television was passive as if they had just spoke aloud the Holy Word of God. But, you know, reading is, um, passive? Writing is active. Watching television is just more passive than reading because you often don't pause to think about it. You watch one program, get snacks during the commercial, and then dive into the next program without processing the previous show. It's why binging shows makes them harder to remember than when you watched one episode per week and actually thought about it and talked about it with friends prior to the next episode. You did some "active" work on it. Movies are less passive than television because you often see them in a group and then discuss them after, even if it's just as you're walking back to the lobby or going to piss or on the drive home. Reading is the least passive and often seems active because you can stop at any fucking moment and think about Frodo's cock or Tom Joad's cock or Clifford the Big Red Dog's Big Red Lipstick.

• Why am I discussing this? Fuck if I know. I'm just being, um, active! Oh! You know what's super passive because it's almost no better than napping in the long run? Playing video games! Obviously there's a massive spectrum here. I don't mean to imply that Zork is as passive as Candy Crush! At least in one of those, you get to murder thieves and steal tons of shit.

Reading comic books is the most passive activity there is next to falling into a coma!

• Can you imagine Satan farting? Me neither! Because first I'd have to imagine God. And then I'd have to imagine God farting. And then I'd have to imagine a war among the angels. And then I'd have to imagine Satan. And then I'd have to imagine Satan stuffing a spicy burrito down his throat. And then maybe I'd imagine Satan farting.

• Oh, by the way, reading is a way, way, way, way, ++way better activity than nearly any other activity in the world. At least for becoming a better, more rounded, kinder, smarter person. It's not better for orgasms though.²

• The building which blew up in a way described by Mr. Neumeier there as "Satan farting" was a Hark Corporation building. You might remember the name Hark from Planetary #1 where he was a guy whom I thought might have been Fu Manchu. I believe he was the brains behind the quantum computer? I probably would know that for sure but I'm not one of those people who tasks themselves with "remembering stuff". That's for, like, butlers and servants!

• A man named Mr. Wilder is investigating the building's collapse. He hints that it wasn't a Hark Operation and it wasn't an enemy of the Hark Corporation (as, he points out, they have no enemies⁴). But it was probably one of those since why would the guy investigating the disaster tell a person he was questioning what really happened? He's probably just questioning the guy to make sure he didn't actually see what happened.⁵

See?! He was totally lying!

• I realize in our common parlance (given to us in so many ways by white nationalists and pedophiles who decided reality needed to be more like the bog-pits of 4Chan), "Snowflake" means somebody who takes offense at any little thing (you know, like a MAGA, Christian, or Bill Maher). But I suspect that in this instance, the Snowflake represents the way somebody might picture a multiverse. So the terrorist operation "Snowflake" is probably just the quantum computer that Hark developed back in the '40s.

• Ground Zero of the place where the Hark Corporation building was basically vaporized in a fit of demon flatulence has been covered up as Planetary and a horde of Hazmat-suited individuals investigate the disaster.

• The reader discovers Planetary is there when Mr. Wilder chases a mugger down into the rubble and leaps onto what is probably the cause of the trouble: an ancient looking sacrificial stone altar covered in the meat of dead humans⁶.

And which is also a transdimensional portal of some kind.

• It's normal to keep getting this series confused with my memories of The Authority, right?!

• I feel like Planetary was just Warren Ellis thinking, "What if The Authority but less decapitations and spines being yanked out of bodies?"

• The "living plinth" (as Jakita describes it) refuses to transport The Drummer as he jumps up and down on it. But it does return Mr. Wilder only a few moments later. It's apparent, from the scar on his chest, that he was gone for much longer, as much time as it takes, I'm guessing, to remove all of his organs and fill him up with alien nanotechnology.

• Mr. Wilder is relocated to some mountain retreat where Doc Brass is undergoing physical rehabilitation for his scrawny fucked-up legs. I think it's also the tuberculosis hospital where Doc Holliday died. But that's, um, just a guess based on my own proclivities, delusions, and desires.

I should probably scan and collate and file and other organizing terms⁷ every panel where Jakita, Elijah, or The Drummer attempt to explain Planetary.

• Mr. Wilder tells the story of his abduction: he wound up on a European shiftship whose crew died on impact (with what? I don't know!). So I guess that bit about confusing The Authority with Planetary just became more confusing! I know, I know. They're all Wildstorm Universe titles so they share history. But, I mean, I just said that thing earlier! Probably because I was pre-remembering this moment and the "A-ha!" echoing down from my previous reads of this series.

• Warren Ellis explains to the reader what Mr. Wilder explains to Planetary what the shiftship explained to him.

See? I probably pre-remembered⁸ that Snowflake thing too.

• Apparently, this shiftship killed the dinosaurs. Science and the discovery of the Chicxulub crater be damned!

• I'm making an ass out of me and John Cassaday since I'm assuming the picture of the shiftship slamming into Earth with all the dinosaurs watching on is hinting at that global extinction.

• Mr. Wilder promised the shiftship that he would help it get home. But he needs six other people to volunteer to go through what he went through since it needs seven people to fly it.

• Jakita is all, "We don't do shit, dude. Planetary just watches and takes, man!" But Elijah is all, "Look, I'm the secret 4th Man running this thing even though nobody knows it yet (even me!). But I'll pay for whatever you need and we'll make sure this shiftship gets home!" Then The Drummer winks at Jakita and Jakita makes jerk-off motions behind Elijah's back.

The Ranking!
This issue gives readers a littl tease to how Planetary fits into the Wildstorm Universe while also maintaining a secret presence. Also we learn that Hark (or his descendants) run a powerful computer corporation which might be important later. Also we saw Doc Brass still under the auspices of Planetary. Since Elijah wandered off to speak with him, next issue should be a little more about how he'll fit in. Plus he's on the cover of Issue #5. All in all, I give this issue a ranking of Infinite Snowflakes out of Infinite Snowflakes!




__________________________________________________________________________________
¹ Oh shit. I should probably call my mom! BRB!
² Unless you're reading Penthouse Letters³, of course.
³ I almost said Penthouse Forum but that magazine featured a ton of feminist writings which, while I might agree with them, weren't necessarily pro-boner.
⁴ Other than the "Justice Department and anyone else paranoid about computer software monopolies." So they, um, do have enemies then?
⁵ Wait. Was it actually Satan farting?!
⁶ Possibly just fungus or interdimensional coral. It's kind of hard to tell.
⁷ Laminate?
⁸ Look, I know pre-remembered is just remembered! Just fucking calm down, man. Enjoy life!

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Batman Annual #16 (August 1992)

I've got to believe The Joker is less dangerous Eclipsed.

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Batman Annual #16 (August 1992)
By Alan Grant, John Wagner, Vince Giarrano, Clem Robins, and Adrienne Roy
Cover by Sam Keith
Edited by Scott Peterson and Dennis O'Neil

• Sixteen annuals! That's fucking crazy! That means that by 1992, the Batman series had been going since 1976! Incredible!¹

• During the Detective Comics Annual, The Joker escaped Arkham with the help of The Ventriloquist and Scarface. He then escaped Batman with the help of Commissioner Gordon and Eclipso. So now he's on the loose and Batman's trying to track him down. That's probably why Robin couldn't get in touch with him during the Eclipso Dinosaur Rampage in Robin's annual.

See?! Every orifice.²

• While Batman fishes a bunch of people out of a bus that crashed off of a bridge³, The Joker sits on a tall, teetering throne of money questioning a corrupt Gotham cop about the Black Diamond.

• Visually, this issue is really impressive. But I'm a Lit Major. Visually doesn't do it for me. I need, um, pathers? Pathros? Whatever that thing that the movie Pig had way, way, WAY too much of!

• I rarely look up artists to see what else they've done because I rarely one into one that fits both of these categories: I'm super impressed by their work, and I'm not already familiar with their work. Vince Giarrano did the art for "The Human Flea" story in Batman: Shadow of the Bat but his stuff didn't really strike me in those two issues. I was probably too stunned by Alan Grant using a flea circus as a plot device in the waning decade of the 20th Century to even notice the art.

• Anyway, I checked out Vince's current site and, um, wow. I'm envious of every woman he paints!

Oh to be able to pull off this outfit! I mean, sure, I'd look great in the boots. Not sure I could do a midriff exposing shirt and short skirt though!

• What impressed me most about Giarrano's work so far in this annual are his panel compositions, layouts, and "camera" angles. It feels like Alan Grant gave him a lot of room to explore the pacing of the story in this annual as it has so many extra pages to fill. The scene I skipped over completely where Batman rescues people in the sinking bus just has some wonderful shots.

• Oh! And the panel with the Joker on the teetering throne of money? DC should have made it a poster.

This could have been hanging on my wall under the bagged WaRP Elfquest issues displayed backwards to show the characters, my LPs of out-of-print⁴ Alice Cooper LPs like Zipper Catches Skin and Flush the Fashion, my massive Christina Applegate poster, and the ads for the It television mini-series cut out of the TV Guide.

• I should probably scan the sequence that impressed me enough to think, "Wait, this is really fucking good!", and caused me to go back to the beginning of the book to really look at the art.

Okay. That's enough about the art. I'm beginning to chap my lips on Vince's butthole.

• The Joker's henchmen display why Gotham's major villains can never get away with any crime in Gotham. First a couple of his guys throw the body of the now dead and rictus-mouthed cop on top of a passing train where it's easily spotted by Batrope swinging Batman. Second, a couple of his other guys steal the Black Diamond from the police evidence room only to run into a guy who used to work for them who's got Batman on his ass about the Joker's possible locations. I realize most of this is bad luck and coincidence but when Batman patrols your city, you've got to take every precaution you can to mitigate those factors while doing your henching!

• Here's a handy acronym for Gotham Henchman: ABNBO. Always Be Never Being Outside!

• Manzoni, one of the Joker's ex-henchman who Batman's been leaning heavily on, chases Joker's current henchmen who have the diamond. He's not doing it because he's afraid of Batman though; he's doing it because The Joker is, quite literally, sitting on 25 million dollars which Manzoni helped him steal and never got a cut of.

• To get Manzoni off of their tail, one of the henchmen grabs up one of the Black Diamonds and thinks about how angry he is at Manzoni. Pretty soon, orifice smoke!

• A dragon manifests from the henchman's anger and goes after the convertible with Manzoni in it. It picks them up and drops them to their death. Batman witnesses it and shrugs even though he doesn't know exactly how innocent the men in the car are.

Batman's come to terms with his superhero impotency. He saves whomever he can and doesn't lose any sleep over the others, I guess.

• It's disturbing to see Batman so cavalier about the death of a couple of Gothamites when you know, if they were innocent or important to the plot, Batman would figure out how to save them in the blink of an eye. But since the reader knows they're basically criminals who were just trying to shoot some other criminals, it's somehow okay that Batman can't save them, knows he can't save them, and just watches them die.

• Batman does check on the victims of the dragon, at least. Manzoni has somehow survived⁵ and he tells Batman that they were on the tail of some of The Joker's henchmen when the dragon appeared. Batman knows the body of the cop was dumped on top of a train by The Joker so he just follows the train back to a likely place where the body could have been dropped on it. Plus earlier, he and the cops found some pink wax under the dead cop's nails!

• Batman solves the easiest case of his life when he locates an overpass above the train and sees a Wax Museum nearby. "Let's see Superman solve this shit!" he cackles as he climbs the building to check if it has a skylight to drop through.

• I just made up the entirety of that last bullet point to save time and then I read the comic book and, um, it's exactly what happened. Sure, most if it was already telegraphed and obvious. But, um, that bit about the skylight? That was just me being cheeky.

Cheeky but correct.

• Does every building in Gotham have a skylight? Is a local ordnance that mandates skylights? Did Bruce Wayne lobby that contracting law onto the books?

• Batman crashes down, disarming The Joker and stealing his bag of Black Diamonds. Too bad The Joker already had one in his grubby mitts!

• Batman defeats The Joker's henchmen while The Joker tries to muster up an Eclipso.

Is this where we learn The Joker loves Batman so much that he can't even pretend to be angry at him?

• I wonder if there are 1000 Pink Diamonds that cause a person to be possessed by Aphrodite?

• The Joker does manifest into Eclipso (because he's aggressive!). Batman, knowing he can't match Eclipso, does the only thing he can: turn into Eclipso himself. Now Eclipso once again has to kill himself before he can properly manipulate whoever wins.

• The battle rages for several pages and it's both entertaining and hot. And then it suddenly becomes genius⁶.

I wasn't expecting this to become a critique of the comic book medium and how characters are trapped in an endless middle story.

• Batman and Joker, being evenly matched as Eclipsos, battle until the sun comes up. Eclipso is banished and then, I mean, you know who wins that fight. Batman takes Joker out in one punch and hauls his ass back to Arkham.

The Ranking!
What's going on? I generally hate Annuals and I'm often disappointed by these massive crossovers. But here I am enjoying annual after annual! I even liked the Robin annual! I must have done permanent damage to my brain when I took a hammer to my head. Should I re-read Scott Lobdell's New 52 Teen Titans?! Do you think I'd like it now?! What about New 52 Superboy?! Maybe I'll finally understand Ann Nocenti's writing! It's a new dawn for my love of comic books! I'm so fucking excited!


__________________________________________________________________________________
¹ This bullet point is so facetious that it shouldn't even garner it's own footnote but I am posting it on the Internet which means it's necessary to point this out: that was a dumb joke, stupid.
² See Footnote 4 in Robin Annual #1
³ Don't worry. Nobody was hurt by the bus plummeting into the water from a great height even though busses don't have seat belts or harnesses. Even the baby was perfectly fine!
⁴ At least at the time. I'm not sure when Alice's albums between '80 and '83 were eventually re-released on CD.
⁵ But not for long!
⁶ Or amateurish if you'd rather your stories didn't explicitly point out the smart stuff. I, for one, love how Grant worked it here. He gives you several pages for what he's doing to dawn on the reader before going, "Well, this is the point. Did you get it? I bet you got it! But I know some of you didn't. So here ya go!"

Planetary #3 (June 1999)

Is this issue about how every Hong Kong action film actually happened?

Planetary #3 (June 1999)
By Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, Laura Depuy Martin, and Allison Fuchs
Cover by John Cassaday
Edited by John Layman

• You can see the cover as well as I can so I suppose that the first statement I'm going to make isn't really going out on an intellectual limb but here we go anyway: I think I remember this issue was about a ghost cop!

• Now I feel like Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars because I'm pretty sure I just felt the collective snort of millions of nerds deriding me in unison.

• I mean dozens of nerds.

• Okay, fine. Three.

• The story does take place in Hong Kong. The story is a love letter to Hong Kong action films. The cop is a ghost.

But his bullets are quite real.

• The entire story is made up of the cinematic wide screen panel style. Like The Authority used.

• The style of the first several pages of the book really makes it feel like a Hong Kong action film has been condensed down into a comic book format. The cover does a great job conveying the concept. You really know at first glance what this issue's going to be about.

• When Planetary shows up in the comic, we see they're watching this ghost cop kill the gang members. The comic opens back up into regular panels as we observe them observing what is, essentially, a movie.

Do any Americans born in the 21st Century have any context for The Weekly World News? I mean, sure, they can read about it on Wikipedia. But they don't know, man. They just don't know!

• The amount of times I checked out at a grocery store as a teenager with just a pop or a pint of ice cream and just had to grab a copy of The Weekly World News because Batboy was back or somebody had new photos of the Loch Ness Monster or some woman in Kansas had fucked a Skunk Ape. It really was exactly what you'd create if somebody's pitch for a American tabloid were "Charles Fort but, you know, American!"

• This issue we meet Shinya Fukuda's Hong Kong counterpart: Michelle. She's a 22 year old young woman who began the job six years previously, a statistic which boggles the minds of the field team (you know, Elijah, Jakita, and The Drummer (well, maybe not The Drummer. Other stuff boggles his mind like being normal and not being weird)).

• Oh! I just thought of something else I have in common with The Drummer! My main in Apex is Lifeline! Um, that means I constantly run around in-game smacking things with my drumsticks!

See? Real bullets and real guns! I'm as perceptive as Elijah Snow!

• I know those two panels of the Planetary team were also in widescreen, cinematic, Authority style but that's just a coincidence, I assure you! Sometimes panels are going to be as wide as the page. But not all of them which is how you know we're not in the Hong Kong movie but actually in the reality of the comic book. Like how when the page has nine equally-sized rectangles, you know Keith Giffen has drawn it.¹

• It turns out this isn't the first ghost of a Hong Kong cop betrayed and back to seek vengeance. It seems that there's always a betrayed Hong Kong ghost killing violent criminals on the street. A sort of Hong Kong cinéma vérité for the paranormal ilk.²

• Michelle takes the field team out into the field to show them where the current Ghost Cop was executed by The Triad. While investigating³, Planetary turns up a clue.

A massive fucking clue that's also an enigma and a mystery and a sausage roll and, well, um — according to Ghost Cop — God.

• So God is just a massive blue container full of naked men? Awesome.

• Be right back. I'm converting to which monotheistic religion worships that thing.

• Ghost Cop mentions this thing has more than one hundred thousand different angles. So I'm guessing Planetary (and us, the comic book readers) are only seeing a piece of the whole. And since it's a blue container full of little guys, is it possible we're looking at God's nutsack?

• Ghost Cop, a man who was named Shek Chi-Wai, explains that he's a little bit Batman and a little bit The Spectre. He wanted to be a cop to stop bad people from hurting good people (or, maybe, realistically, less bad people). He was brought back as a ghost to perform an act of vengeance on the man who killed him. See? Bat-Spectre.

• Ghost Cop also has a message about the afterlife which is actually more a comment on life and comes pretty close to matching my whole reason for being a compassionate humanitarian pacifist⁴ (as opposed to Ghost Cop who is a compassionate humanitarian spirit of vengeance):

It's that simple, man. Listen to the ghost dude. Except maybe for the part about being your own judge and jury and spirt of vengeance. That's ghost business, man.

• The issue ends with a "just us" versus "justice" moment. I don't know if Warren Ellis was the first to use it (probably not. That was probably Shakespeare! Or Milton! It would have been perfect for Milton. He had to have done it, right?!) but he uses it so well here as a tag for Ghost Cop and his philosophy of life and afterlife that I doubt it's been done better since, no matter how much of a trope it's become.

Chef's Oral Sex!⁵

The Ranking!
Five out of Five Chef's Rimming Each Other! Man, I know Siskel and Ebert were successful with their two thumbs up but just think if they'd thought up the Chefs Having Sex Movie Rating System?! I bet they'd both still be alive right now!




__________________________________________________________________________________
¹ I don't think the conclusion I drew from that bullet point was scientific. Or logical, even.
² Does that make sense? I don't think that makes sense. But it does make feel sense.²
³ "Investigating" meaning The Drummer banging on the ground with his drumsticks while Jakita stands nearby stomping up and down on the ground.
⁴ My credo, in case you haven't read it before: "I am here. You are there. So many others in-between. In all the infinite vastness of time and space, how highly improbable that we should ever have met. It seems beyond all bounds of decency that we should fight, against the very will of the universe that we should treat each other poorly, truly the antithesis of reason that we should make each other miserable. We should laugh and we should embrace and we should grow more familiar with each other's oddities and differences and the rare and brief moments where we seem to have been created one for the other. And yet we were not which only makes our brief liaison in the unending bounds of time and space even more unlikely. We owe it to chance and improbability and random, stupid luck to be kind to each other."
⁵ That's five ranks (or two bases) better than a Chef's Kiss.

Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea: The Newsletter #23 (Second Week of May 2018)

E!TACT! #23
Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #5, Deathstroke #31, Batman #46, DC Nation #0, Poetry Corner, Grunion Guy's Musical Corner of Music Reviews, and No Letters to Me!
By Grunion Guy


Comic Book Reviews!

Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #5
By Russell, Stilwell, Feehan, Vazquez, Parsons, Marzan Jr., Mounts, and Campbell

You know that feeling when a close friend doesn't like something you love? That feeling that insinuates itself into the heart of your being no matter how illogical or petty you know you're being simply because your friend didn't express the same unbounded joy for that cherished thing? That moment when you first realize they're the dumbest asshole on the planet and how could you ever have been friends with them for thirty wasted years? I have that feeling all of the time. But I don't express it because that would be crazy! I just marinate in small resentments, updating my will at every turn. Someday they'll all know what fucking stupid morons they all were!

People are legally obligated to listen to your will read by a stern lawyer, right? Is that a law or do I need to call some lawmakers to make sure that's a thing before I die? Because these so-called friends aren't getting off so easy, relaxing in their pleasant lives without a care in the world that they only half-listened to me when I was telling them about Elfquest in sixth grade and then didn't ask to borrow it so they could share in my enthusiasm for attractive elves riding powerful wolves! I wonder if I can force everybody to play Wizardry at my funeral while listening to Concrete Blonde and drinking Strawberry milk? Also I wish I loved more things so it doesn't sound like I stopped enjoying life at twelve years old!

In the non-hyperbolic reality outside of my blog and newsletter, I'm not the one who stopped enjoying things the way they were when I was twelve. But I'm also not the type of person who's an overblown fan desperately trying to prove how much they love the things they love. When Wil Wheaton says, "You're not a nerd because of the things you love but how you love them," I just want to grab him by the lapels and scream, "Stop encouraging them!" We have become a society where the thing you love must somehow remain the thing it was at the moment you began loving it (and you must also be the only one that loves that thing as much as you love that thing because obviously nobody else understands it the way you do (although you hate them for not understanding it the same way. How can they not?! (But then if they said they did, you'd think to yourself, "Pshaw. Poseur."))). We have no room for change or disappointment or different interpretations of our beloved (and static!) popular culture. When somebody posts on Facebook that they literally cried over the cancellation of Brooklyn Nine-Nine or that they will forever mourn it, I want to get them a book on evolution and a box of nipple clamps. I haven't yet proved that the retention of information from reading increases exponentially with nipple pain but my hopes are high (and my nipples bleeding).

When did we become a society that can't handle simple change while expecting such great change from civilization at large? How can we blame something like the House Un-American Activities Committee shitting themselves from their intense fear of a changing world when we can't even handle living with only five seasons of Brooklyn Nine-Nine?! How can we scoff at gun enthusiasts afraid that reasonable gun control won't wind up in the loss of all of their beloved weapons when we fucking lost our minds at only one season of Firefly?! Being a 2nd Amendment Freedom Fighter seeing news reports on another school shooting is probably exactly like being a Firefly fan who has to endure the death of Wash just to get the movie Serenity. Was it worth it?! That's an unanswerable philosophical conundrum!

I mean, sure, it can be frustrating having great popular culture killed by corporate monsters who can't understand art because it speaks to the struggles of life that they don't even know exist. But fans need to ask themselves why they need so much of the same thing repeated over and over again? Because fans don't only get angry when a show is cancelled. They also get angry when the show changes in any substantial way away from the exact thing they had grown to love. And in a world where fans have instant access to the creators, they expect their voices can be used to maintain the "integrity" of their beloved fictions. Sure, I disliked Metallica's black album because it was so different from their previous albums. That just meant I stopped listening to Metallica. I didn't demand they continue to be the thing I perceived them as being. And I was disappointed that I never saw Concrete Blonde live when they first broke up but it wasn't the end of the world. I still had the albums I loved. And it only made it all the more exciting when they regrouped and I got more of their music and finally saw them live (three and a half times even!). I guess my point is that I'm better than most people!

Or what I'm really trying to say is this isn't your childhood Snagglepuss and Huckleberry Hound. Unless, of course, you always knew they were gay and that Huckleberry Hound would hang himself, broken beyond repair, in an unkempt cheap apartment in New York City. Based on the cartoons, I wouldn't have been surprised if some "friend" of mine had ever suggested that. Also there's some crazily terrific stuff about life and civilization and politics and culture mixed into this comic book.

Rating: 5 out of 5 Thumbs. I hate Mark Russell for reasons that aren't at all based on my envy of what he's written in this issue. Here's only one small part of some truly marvelous bits: the speech Snagglepuss gives to the House Un-American Activities Committee (which I read after writing the previous rant (I say this because this comic speaks to the nature of fandom and its relation to the world which I didn't know when I wrote the preceding. It's weird how often my pre-comic book reading rants seem to intuit the story within (although not as weird with this one because this rant began by thinking about how one reviewer I read was annoyed that Mark Russell's Snagglepuss had barely anything in common with the cartoon (and how is that a slight?! The cartoon was vapid fluff!)))): "The purpose of art is subversion. Art is telling the world how it's killing you. How its institutions have failed you. In the end, any culture worth a damn is made by subversives. Because art is what tells the world it needs to change. Power merely redecorates it." I may have cried while reading that. It might have been the words but I can't be entirely sure it wasn't the nipple clamps.

P.S. More on Snagglepuss #5 (which I had to add as a postscript or else I couldn't end with that nice little nipple clamps callback)

The Snagglepuss bit I quoted in the previous paragraph cuts to the heart of one thing I return to in my blog again and again: "Art is telling the world how it's killing you. How its institutions have failed you." My main complaint with the world is that it doesn't make room for those who can't simply accept things the way they are. I have railed against just about every expectation society seems to demand from me. I began reading Frankenstein for the first time last week and on the first day, I only read the quote used on the title page because it completely derailed me. It was from Milton's Paradise Lost: "Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay to mould me man, Did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?" It stopped me cold because, ultimately, when I am thoroughly disappointed with the way people are expected to live, I rage against my parents for giving birth to me. And here is a quote from Milton (who I've been pretty hard on (not in a gay way! (I know that didn't make sense. I should work harder on my gay jokes (not in a gay way!))) where he's basically putting his arm around me and saying, "Brother. Let's commiserate." Of course, he'd be all, "God blah blah God blah blah blah God!" And I'd be all, "Why is so much of life all about interacting with other people?!" And he'd be all, "God blah blah blah God blah God blah blah." And I'd be all, "Why can't people see I don't know how to be a person?!" And then he'd "glare" at me and I'd have to think about what I just said and then be all, "Oh! Whoa, I didn't mean to be ableist in my speech, bro! I mean brother!"

I don't mean to suggest that I feel our current social constructs are such a burden to me that I can barely function. I've carved my own niche into the existing paradigm where I can mostly hide away and not be bothered by it. But I do suffer, occasionally, from a kind of social vertigo. It usually comes across me like a sort of anxious unheimlich (that doesn't mean a Jewish lich. Also, I don't know what it means. So, you know, it might mean that) feeling when I spend too long in a "socially normal" setting. I begin to see the world most people live in and how outside of their sense of comfort I have fallen. I see myself through their eyes and how my lack of the things they take for granted would worry them, or make their lives so radically different that they'd lose all sense of direction. And for days afterward, I feel those feelings as my own. It's one of the reasons I'd rather have my friend Doom Bunny visit me in Portland than me visit him and his family in Denver.

Anyway, I'm about to read Frankenstein and I think it might cause some feelings in much the same way Snagglepuss has. Did that sound dirty?


Deathstork #31
By Priest, Pagulayan, Viacava, Paz, and Cox

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 Bat-whatevers. I guess Batman and Deathstork are having another beef. But this time, Alfred and Wintergreen are pulling the strings. I guess they want them to get along? Ultimately, I imagine Priest is telling the story that will explain why Batman allows Deathstork to continue killing. It might be because Joseph will wind up being Damian's half-brother.

Priest's best new Batman idea is to have him explain his detective work in convoluted and unbelievable ways only for the reader to find out that the real detective work was something super simple. It's such a simple way to retcon the entire Bat-history, making every story you've ever read where you scream "No way!" at Batman's explanation about how he found out something (like finding where Catwoman lives based on mouse poop) suddenly believable. Now you can believe he actually found out where Catwoman lived by doing a reverse address search on the Internet for the name Selina Kyle.

But he still definitely pissed himself in The Widening Gyre #6!


Batman #46
By King, Daniel, and Morey

Rating: I like to think that every time Booster Gold goes missing in the DC Universe for months or years at a time, this story is why. He's off dicking around in another timeline. I doubt this entire story began as Booster Gold trying to get a gift for Batman. That's just his excuse to fuck with time and have an adventure. That's why he's enjoying it so much and acting so goofy. It's like he's in a theme park and he can go home any time he wants to.

I know I'm usually hard on the other review sites and the major fan-genders who run those sites but I suppose I can see why they might hate this story. First off, it's so absolutely outside of canon that, to them, it's not even worth reading. Of course by "canon," I mean part of a continuous and linear Batman story of issues they've chosen to believe were the most significant and not-written-by-Tom-King ones. Obviously this story will always be "canon" to Booster Gold. It's his story. Plus those types of fans take everything way too seriously. This issue can do nothing but confuse them since it's so violent and violence equals gravitas and chin stroking boners! But in the end, it's really just a whimsical sitcom starring Booster Gold as the selfish asshole who is entertaining himself in a world that doesn't matter. It's why he enjoyed watching Jokerized Hal Jordan shoot himself in the head. Because it didn't matter.

Playing "hero" in alternate timelines is Booster Gold's heroin. 5 out of 5 Skeets.


DC Nation #0
By A Bunch of People

The first story is a Batman story by Tom King. It's full of old jokes because it stars the Joker. Although he asks a couple of riddles which seems like maybe he's treading on other people's turf. Not that I'd complain about it to him since a riddle is also a joke. But not all jokes are riddles. And it's not like The Joker should have to stop telling jokes which are riddles just because some other jerk came along and decided to specialize in riddles. Anyway, it all works out in the end for The Joker, I guess.

The second story is a Superman story by Bendis. It begins perfectly with J. Jonah Jameson telling all of his reporters that they have to stop editorializing on Superman and spreading fear to the readers. Although if they want to write some scathing indictments about Spider-man, they should totally go ahead and do that. Especially if Parker comes in with a shot of Spider-man doing anything that looks suspicious (which is everything he does or why else would he wear that stupid mask?).

Anyway, it's about time somebody decides to quash the Superman Hot Take Culture that has sprung up in the DC Universe. Everybody suddenly thinks they're critical geniuses just because they once thought, "What if Superman were the bad guy?" and then shit themselves. Superman isn't the bad guy, guys. Let's just stop worrying about that. Although if everybody is going to agree on that, a whole bunch of writers are going to have to agree to stop writing stories where Superman becomes hypnotized or controlled by magic or infused with the Doomsday Virus or Jokerized by The Joker. Because all those "editorials" that J. Perry Jamesite has suddenly become critical of might have a point in a DC Universe controlled by lazy writers.

The rest of the story is some kind of prologue to Bendis's Superman story where he probably gets to rewrite any continuity he wants to rewrite (this prologue alone reminds us that there was a time Luthor was president). That's fine with me if it's any good. I hear he's supposed to be good. I am so going to judge him!

The third story is a No Justice prelude by Snyder, Tynion IV, and Williamson. That means I'm already bored. I bet somebody uses a word that not many people are familiar with and then somebody else defines the word and then somebody else mentions another definition of the word and that explains the whole premise of the story.

That isn't what happens (although Snyder does take the term "emotion" and use it to base the structure of the story which is pretty close to what I said he would do). But what happens is still quite Snyderesque. Once again, the entire universe is on the brink of destruction. The only way for the Justice League to save it from not one terrible alien threat but four Galactus-sized alien threats is to form four new Justice Leagues. Each team is based on "the four cosmic energies." And we all know what those are right? Right: entropy, mystery, wonder, and wisdom. Totally makes sense.

This prologue reveals that the composition of the four new Justice League teams makes no sense before fans begin asking, "How does any of this make sense?" Apparently not making any sense was the only way to fight the Omega Titans. But what's also revealed is that while all the heroes and villains are off saving the universe, the Omega Titans have come to destroy Earth. Whoops!

Ranking: How can I rank a book of three prologues?! It's basically an advertisement for DC's future stories. And I thought I was getting a comic book for cheap. What really happened is that I just paid twenty-five cents for an advertisement! Bastards!

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Poetry Corner with Grunion Guy!

A Poem

This is a
poem. You can
tell by the way the
lines are all out of whack.
Also,
Sometimes,
You'll notice weird capitalization and odd,
commas. Some poems
use analogy or metaphor to
engage the reader's emotions
in a way that bluntly stating the
point can't do.
But this one doesn't. It's
exactly what it says it is.
Or is it?

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Grunion Guy's Musical Corner of Music Reviews!

...And the Gods Made Love by The Jimi Hendrix Experience
I purchased Electric Ladyland because it was the favorite album of my online friend Groot. Groot is dead now. He died last year. I never met him in real life so his death is as abstract as it can get. He was always kind and always interested in having a conversation. Some people online just want to tell you the things they want to tell you (stop looking at me like that, mirror) but he was always completely interested in learning new things about his friends. We knew each other for over a decade before I learned that for a few years in the 70s, he lived in Santa Clara where I grew up. I was just a kid then so we probably never would have come into contact. But who knows?! Maybe we once rode in the same coaster on The Whizzer at Marriott's Great America!
     Anyway, Groot declared Electric Ladyland his favorite album so I purchased it. For the most part, I like it but in that appreciative way that you give space to a thing because you know a friend really loves it. It's not really the kind of music I can groove to. Not that I "groove" in the way you're probably thinking I might groove. I often skip songs from this album when they come on shuffle, especially "Voodoo Chile" because it makes me hungry. Also because, at nearly fifteen minutes, it's just way too long to listen to ("2112" gets the same treatment). I think you need to be on acid when you listen to that song because that's the only way you'd never know you were listening to one single song for a quarter of an hour. But no matter how often I don't really listen to any of the songs on this album, I will forever keep it on my shuffle because of Groot.
     Hmm. That makes Groot sound like a dick, as if he's handcuffed me to something I'd rather live without. I guess if you're a cynical bastard looking for a hot take, that's one direction you can go with that statement. But mostly I'll keep the album around because it makes me think of Groot.
     As for this song, it's not really a song, exactly. It's more like a statement saying, "Here comes Jimi, you stupid bitches! Are you ready? No, seriously. Are you ready? I don't think you're ready! You'd better get ready! HERE HE COMES!" Then "Have You Ever Been To (Electric Ladyland)" comes on and I'm always all, "No! I haven't! It sounds cool and sexy!"
     I just realized that Guardians of the Galaxy is absolutely never going to not be the saddest movie I'll ever watch because Rocket reminds me of my cat Judas and Groot reminds me of a tree. I mean Groot.
Grade: C.


Haunted by Poe
I first heard this song at the end of Blair Witch 2: The Blair Witchening. At the time, I had either already read House of Leaves or was currently reading it. I knew about Poe and that she had an album that was a companion piece to her brother's book but had yet to purchase it. This song has the lyric, "Here in November in this house of leaves we'll pray." But even before that, I was thinking, "Is this from that House of Leaves album?" because she just nails the atmosphere of the book. After that lyric, I was fairly certain of it and it wasn't long after that that I bought the album (Yes, Doom Bunny. I bought the album before you got me a copy. For awhile, the Non-Certified Spouse and I had two copies).
     This song does everything Blair Witch 2: The Goth Chick is Hot didn't do. It evokes emotion and atmosphere. It's creepy and heart-wrenching. It's mysterious and suspenseful. It also tells a more coherent story. I wonder if the writer of Blair Witch 2: What the Fuck Were They Thinking? sat through the premiere feeling pretty good about themselves right up until this song began playing after which they stood up and slit their throat wide open.
      Apparently Poe was thankful to Portland, Oregon for helping make this album a big hit because "Hey Pretty" got a ton of radio play on some local station. So she played a special concert in a small club (I think it may have even been a small bar with a stage!) that I was able to attend. How I managed to get tickets to this small show, I have no idea. I got just as lucky with my first Concrete Blonde show and then when I saw Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. When I found out he was in town playing The Crystal Ballroom, the show was sold out. But then he canceled the concert because it wasn't long after Bush went to war with Iraq and Nick Cave refused to tour America at the time. But I knew he'd be back so I kept an eye out for his new dates and got tickets when he returned not too long after that. I guess he needed the cash and/or America's declaration of war wasn't valid enough to keep him out of the country for ethical reasons.
Grade: A.


Triggerman by Alice Cooper
This song is from the album Dragontown which is really just Brutal Planet Part II. That's not a great thing because I wasn't a huge fan of Brutal Planet Part I (which was just called Brutal Planet). This album was released on September 18, 2001, which meant everybody was happy to forget about 9/11 at that precise moment. But after listening to the album a few times, everybody decided maybe the album didn't quite fix the world and maybe they were a bit rash in expecting an Alice Cooper album to cure all the ills of the world.
     "Triggerman" is about an assassin who doesn't have any body parts but he's still really good at killing people somehow. It's possible the not having any body parts is some kind of metaphor. Although Triggerman, who sings the song, also points out that he doesn't exist. So how he does all the killing, I don't know! I'm so confused. If somebody who doesn't exist kills you, are you really dead?
     Leave it to Alice Cooper to really get his fans thinking! Like after listening to "Cold Ethyl," his fans think, "Is he fucking a corpse?" And then after listening to "I Love the Dead," his fan's think, "Is he fucking a corpse?" Then after listening to "It's Much Too Late," his fans think, "Wait. Is this a religious song? Is that corpse fucker preaching to me?!"
Grade: C-.


I Am Not A Robot by Marina and the Diamonds
When this song comes on the Shuffle, I usually listen to it at least five times in a row before moving on to a new song. I just love it so much. You know how much you're supposed to love people? No, seriously, I'm asking because I don't know and can't tell you. But whatever that amount is, it's probably how much I love this song. Again, I can't say for certain because I don't know how people actually love other, real people. How do you love something that betrays every aspect of what you want to believe they are (which you projected onto them) just by opening their autonomous and sentient and stupid mouths? Stop proving that you're not worth the pedestal I've put you on, you individual! Be what I want you to be!
     Well, this song is excellent at being what I want it to be. It's perfect. If it were to be hit by a car, I would lie in bed for three weeks straight crying while declaring that I will never love another song again as long as I live.
Grade: A+.


Absorbing Man by Ookla the Mok
This song counts as a song a little bit more than that Jimi Hendrix song but not by a lot more. I mean, I can't argue that this isn't a song. But it's much shorter than "...And the Gods Made Love" by about a full minute. How does Jimi have a song that's basically a long chord (unless it's a robot goat screeching?) but is still longer than an actual song that has a melody and a verse or two? Maybe this is less a song and more of a joke that's being told with some guitars and some sing-song sentences? All this song does is point out that the childhood insult "I'm rubber and you're glue" only makes sense if the two people engaged in the rubber/glue conflict have the powers of Absorbing Man. There. You've pretty much heard the entire song. Just imagine that being sung by a couple of nerds who are actually really good at harmonizing and writing music.
Grade: B.

* * * * * * * * * *


No Letters to Me!

Whatever. Bastards.