DC Universe Presents #11

Every little girl's dream.

It would be wholly appropriate while reading this story arc that I tell some father stories.

Dad, 32. Me, 8.

The man in the above picture is far, far removed from the man I know today. I suppose the boy is, as well.

And perhaps I won't tell any father stories. Not because the current version of my father would probably be horrified that I was telling strangers on the internet personal stories about his life. But because it's hard to find something funny to say about a recovering alcoholic who left when I was two, took me on a week long vacation to his sister's house in Truckee that I look back on as his failed suicide note, disappeared for a number of years during my high school years, and now thinks that we're somehow good friends. Although when he started freaking out and becoming increasingly paranoid about Y2K, it got a little bit funny!

Father: "We've got enough food and room in the house if you want to hunker down in bunker town with us.
Me: "Um, no thanks. I've got a costume party to go to in Seattle where everyone will be dressing like aliens and awaiting the mother ship as it descends. We figure it'll be arriving in Seattle because they probably think the Space Needle is one of our escape vehicles."
Father: "You're leaving your house? And going out of town? Do you realize how many things are controlled by computers? You won't be able to pump gas to get back home. Truckers won't be able to deliver food. The freeways will be packed with people fleeing the food riots of the cities! It's going to be complete chaos and pandemonium."
Me: "Yeah, well, it's going to be a great party. Do you think this hole is big enough to store your barrel full of guns and ammunition? I've got to go ready for the trip."

The man in the picture above was about a decade removed from Vietnam. That man once told me if the country ever goes to war again and they have another draft, he would personally drive me to Canada. The man he is now believed the Middle East should have been turned into a parking lot after 9/11. He watches Fox News constantly. He lost a shitload of money in the stock market and yet continues to believe in it and invest in it and support it. But I guess he's still chasing the retired millionaire lifestyle he sees all of his old Intel co-workers living because they didn't continually sell their Intel stock to subsidize their weekend blackouts.

The man he is now thinks he's a rebel but he was just a corporate, middle-management tool who was spit out by the machine and forced into early retirement because he was costing the system too much. Now he sits around without his teeth, drinking coffee and smoking, while telling fart jokes and turning every statement into a sexual innuendo. Especially funny to him is when he does this with his ten year old granddaughter (my niece! Not my child! None of those parasites for me!).

When I hear Nick Cave's The Weeping Song or Faster Pussycat's House of Pain or, I guess because it's probably expected and cliche, Chapin's Cats in the Cradle, I think of him.

I suppose we have a better relationship than Kassidy Sage and her immortal, mass murderer father Vandal. Although I think it might be a toss-up whether this relationship, the one where he thinks we're good friends and I, more and more, find myself seeing him less as a friend and more of the man who abandoned me and doesn't deserve my friendship in his later years, or the one with the immortal killing machine father is better.

This issue of Savage begins with a scene nearly identical to the one that begin last issue. But instead of little Kass Savage running home from school to find her mother in tears and her life ripped asunder, it's little killer Swan running home from school to find his mother in tears because her husband has just been killed by Vandal Savage. This is the same day.

Let it go, Swan! Let it go!

Swan has Kass Sage tied to an alter and continuing the grand tradition of super villains by telling her his tale of woe and the reason for his murderous temper tantrum. He tells her how his father was the one to catch hers.

Get it?! His father is named after Adam West and Burt Ward!

Since Vandal Savage jumped out of the helicopter last issue and didn't explode on impact, he's able to stop Swan before he cuts Kass's throat. But this is what The Swan wanted. The entire copycat killings (which he learned how to do from his father's coded notebooks) were merely to lure Vandal Savage to this place and this confrontation. I wish I could make plans like this that work! I can't even stop myself from being distracted by random happenstance and wandering away from any plan I make.

Fisticuffs ensue. The Swan says his father was a genius and he blames all of the killing he had to do to get Vandal here on Vandal. Vandal says he's known geniuses and his father was, maybe, merely intelligent at best. And Vandal suggests that all of the Swans murders not be laid upon himself but upon the man that actually committed them since the Swan could have thought up many other ways to enact his vengeance. But in the end, when The Swan has Vandal down and decides to see if Vandal can be killed once and for all, Kass saves her father's immortal life by taking the Swan's mortal one.

I predict Savage will simply laugh at this and leave.

But I often predict everything wrong. I never said I was a psychic or could talk to the dead! Well, I suppose I can talk to the dead. But they're not going to answer back.

What if he's like the Greek Gods in Wonder Woman and can be killed by family?

But nobody will be finding out if anybody is immortal. Enough time has passed that back-up arrives with multiple helicopters and dozens of SWAT team members with laser targeted guns trained on Savage. Even Savage apparently doesn't want to be ripped apart by machine gun fire and he's soon once again back in Belle Reve. Kass leaves, telling him never expect to see her again.

And then he vomits up the keys to his restraints. Ta da!

DC Universe Presents #11 Rating: +1 Ranking. The story wraps up nicely and doesn't disappoint. My guess is the next issue will be a One Shot because judging by the cover of Issue #0, it looks like Issue #0 is going to be an update on the characters of the cancelled titles.