Voodoo #12

The final battle? And since Voodoo says fighting is just like stripping...Oh boy! This issue is going to be fanboytastic!

In last issue, entitled "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Europa", all of the key figures in the comic book had found themselves on Jupiter's icy moon. None of them seemed to care that the Obelisk had said to leave Europa alone. They just went ballooning and mad dashing and space shipping and flying all over the place looking for the fabled Blue Flame. Helspont needed somebody to retrieve the Blue Flame for him so he could refuel his head. But the Blue Flame wouldn't be so easy to nab! It was guarded by an army of Space Orks and two gigantic statues based on Roman soldiers.

Now the Space Orks had been avoiding the cave of the Blue Flame for centuries because the Roman Statues would smash them into Orc-Habanero Jam whenever they got too close. But that didn't stop Voodoo because she wields the power of Strip Fighting! She made it past and was just about to recover the Blue Flame when Priscilla her Evil Twin arrived to stop her. Pris got past the Centurions because they were busy genociding the Space Orks.

And now it's time for the exciting (possibly not exciting) conclusion of Voodoo, the best comic of The New 52 (possibly not even close to the best comic).

Oh, I don't know. I think there are a lot of single mothers and young girls working their way through college who might understand.

Voodoo begins the comic by thinking back to how hard her life had been doing Daemonite undercover work. I'm not exactly sure how being a stripper helped her gather information on all of Earth's superheroes. She simply would have learned that Green Arrow is grabby and Clark Kent is a lousy tipper.

Priscilla remembers that her life was shitty too! But hers was extra shitty because she was being held captive by The Black Razors after she'd been held captive and experimented on by the Daemonites. And she didn't even have a mission to keep her focused on other things. All she could focus on was revenge against someone. Eventually that someone became Voodoo which led her to punching Voodoo's face on Europa.

Voodoo is a bit meaner so instead of just punching Pris back she tries to tear her whole goddamned face off.

Another idiot that thinks Europa is a planet! I bet Voodoo knew a few strippers named Europa.

Pris doesn't want to kill Voodoo. She wants to rescue her because she sees her as the family she's always wanted. But she'd kind of be her sister and who wants a sister? My own sister was a selfish terror for most of my life growing up. She treated me like shit, constantly hit me, and did anything she wanted with no consideration for me or my feelings. Until one day when I was in 10th Grade and she was in 12th (yes, yes. It took me until I was fifteen to realize I didn't have to put up with this shit!) and I was watching Lionel Richie's "Hello" video on MTV (yes, yes, yes again. That video (along with Phil Collin's "Take a Look at Me Now" and Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart") understood my poor, breaking, young adolescent heart so well. Shut up. Anyway, I was watching the video when she came along and switched the channel. I yelled and whined and screamed and she just laughed and lay on the couch and just didn't fucking care. So I grabbed the remote control and punched her in her upper left arm. Not once. Not twice. Fuck if I know how many times I punched her over and over again. I shift in power was a palpable thing. Like an ancient black magic ritual had finally been completed, reality cracked and the sky broke open. It may have been my super villain origin that day. But I didn't just discover that I actually had some power in that relationship. My sister also became nicer and more caring. Maybe it was simply motivated by fear and terror but what the fuck did I care at that point? She was leaving me alone!

A few days later at school, some senior named Alex who loved Rush and sat next to me in Geometry lectured me about hitting girls because he saw the giant black bruise on my sister's shoulder. I allowed him the moment of righteousness because he just didn't understand the reign of terror I had lived under for so long. He couldn't see the golden light beaming out of the crack I'd opened up in the sky to bathe me in a resplendent golden aura of protection. I didn't blame him for seeing a different reality. And I didn't argue with him either. He was just a poor simpleton who loved Rush over Poison! What an idiot! (Yes, yes, yes, yes! I know! What a fucking tool I was!)

Back to Voodoo and Pris's fight, it never really went anywhere. At some point, they end up in a psychic space where they can actually speak with each other without throwing fists. I guess that's what it takes in the DC Universe to get two people to actually have a conversation. They have to be in a space where physical violence is disallowed.

It's a non-physical plane which accounts for all of the stair climbing that has to be done.

I don't really know a lot about the Daemonites but I think Voodoo's comment about them needing to involve is telling. Of course creatures need to die to evolve. Okay, technically that's not true. But they do have to reproduce sexually. You know, with two partners! Or three, if you're lucky. The dying is just a matter of keeping things fresh and romantic. So why don't Daemonites evolve? Are they a race created in a lab based on specific templates, like for Scouts and Warriors and such? If that's the case, they may not be able to evolve but can't they be made better through gene therapy? Oh! I guess that's why Voodoo mentions later that she and Pris "represent the evolution of their species." So it makes sense that they're created in a lab and not created through reproduction. But how would dying help them evolve? Perhaps it's just one of those prophecies that's not divine but created by a group with an agenda to change the basic power structure of the current regime (you know, like all prophecies!).

Helspont believes the change needs to happen and he's ready to destroy the Daemonites. But he also just wants revenge on the entire race, so his motivations aren't exactly pure. But he wants to take over Earth in the process. The rest of the Daemonites just want to take over Earth because they believe it will help them reach the next stage in their development because it has such a high propensity for creating super heroes. Either way, the Earth is fucked.

After Pris and Voodoo are separated from their mindscape, Voodoo calls Pris a liar. Apparently Voodoo doesn't subscribe to the notion that a person cannot lie in pure mind space! It doesn't matter if I just made that notion up or not. Voodoo still doesn't subscribe to it. She shoves Pris away and grabs the Blue Fire! Or Blue Flame! Or Blue Blazes. Apparently it doesn't make her the super woman she wants it to because she's knocked out by the nearly dead Mol Stone. His minions drag her away and he dies. leaving the Blue Thing for Pris. Then she and Alex make their escape.

Someone was up late watching Raiders of the Lost Ark while finishing the Voodoo script!

The team (minus those jokers Finch and Wanker) make it back to the ship and Voodoo commands it to take off. They've escaped and they didn't even invoke the wrath of the ancient black obelisk. Lucky! Pris can no longer feel Voodoo in her head. Apparently when their mental link was broken earlier, it was completely destroyed. Lincoln and his Black Hawks Razors failed to capture Voodoo but they did recover the Blue Thing so that Helspont couldn't get his hands on it. They all head back to Earth while Voodoo remains a captive on Europa. My guess is that she'll soon be the leader of the Europan Space Ork camp. Stormwatch will probably have to kick her ass in a few months.

Back on Earth, Pris has some choices to make.

"So Lincoln, what do we do now?" "Oh, well, we can...." "No, fuck you and your cancelled Black Hawks. I'm heading over to the soon to be cancelled Grifter!"

Pris continues to train with the Black Razors while Lincoln heads off to hand over the Blue Thing to some secret shadowy individual. The figure says, "We'll be sure to put it to good use," so it must be part of a team. It's too muscular and doesn't have a cigarette in its hand, so it's not Constantine. It could be Superman but I think he'd say something about keeping it safe over putting it to good use. It might be going to a member of Team 7. That's probably the best bet since I'd expect it to go to a government black ops organization and they're not handing this thing over to Suicide Squad.

And then on Europa...

Well that was fast.

Voodoo #12 Rating: No change. I'm not sure this comic received a fair shake. Perhaps it wasn't selling well under the first writer, Ron Marz, but to have editorial hear another writer has a good idea so they allow him to come in and ignore the first six issues or so, change the whole characterization of Voodoo, kill off all of the characters from the first arc, and create a whole new agenda should never be the answer. DC's editorial staff simply has no respect for their readership. How dare we get stories with consistent characters that build off of past stories to create a cohesive and interesting world? No, no. Instead, let's do whatever we can to make our entire Universe seem more realistic even at the expense of good storytelling. I understand a comic needs to make money for it to stay on the shelves but I can't belabor the point enough: good stories and good art sell fucking comic books. I'll see you in Issue #0, Voodoo, so I can learn the secret origin of how you became a stripper!