Talon #4

Anybody else sick of owls?

I figure it's only a matter of time before this blog makes me so famous that colleges across the country will be asking me to give a commencement speech for one of their dumber graduating classes. So I've been working on wise and profound material to shove into the heads of the newly forged and indoctrinated men and women of this country. It will be my job to prepare them for the real world in which they'll no longer have to choose between text books, beer, and food. They won't have any of them since all of their money will be going to pay off their student loans. I'm hoping that my first gig will either be at Yale or the University of Phoenix.

I thought I'd drop a rough draft of my Commencement Speech here in the Talon Commentary because nobody cares about the Court of Owls anymore, do they? Look, the Talon comic book is going to be about Calvin Rose fighting the monster Gotham Butcher. He'll nearly die but then he'll figure out a way to win and he'll defeat the Butcher in a way that leaves it possible for the Butcher to come back at a later date. That's probably the plot so I don't really have to read the comic this month, do I?

I know, I know! I keep shoving non-comic book related material into the beginnings of these commentaries, forcing you to skim past a whole bunch of bullshit before you get to the jokes about Batman that have been told thousands of times before by funnier and more literate people than me. What if I put a Batman joke into my Commencement Speech? It would then partially relate to the Talon comic. I can't make a Talon joke! Nobody knows who the fuck he is!

You know what? I don't want anybody stealing my material and using it for their Commencement Speech! So I'm going to keep it to myself for now. Of course if you were following my Twitter feed (and why would you? It's just a place I generally drop links back to here!), you'd already have read some of my best lines for the speech. So instead of boring you with a bunch of long words you don't know because I chose them specifically for people just leaving college, I'll just read this stupid comic book. But I won't enjoy it!

See? Calvin getting beat down. So, how about this advice for my Speech: "Continuously talk about all of the big plans you have for your future so if you get hit by a bus, everyone will remember you for what you were going to do and not how you just sat around playing video games all day."

The old man whose name I can never remember (I can barely remember Calvin Rose's name and he's the main character!) so I'll just refer to as Hobbes realizes that the new Talon about to kill Calvin is The Gotham Butcher. Old Man Hobbes is aghast that the Court of Owls would bring him back. Because the Court of Owls is usually filled with restraint?

Meanwhile the whole operation is headed down the toilet as the Talon Doorman, Mr. Black, realizes that the entire bank robbery with police involvement is a sham. They're all just stalling while somebody upstairs gets their hands on something more valuable than money. So probably health or love or better money. I can't remember what Calvin and his friends are actually after. I think they're after better money so Calvin can fund his operation and his girlfriend can fund her Asylum for Reformed Thugs and The Court of Owls can be forced into bankruptcy. But since I can't even remember anybody's name in this comic book, how can I be expected to remember anything else? And my Commentary for Issue Three didn't help! Oh! Because I didn't read it! I'll be right back with all of the pertinent information!

His girlfriend's name is Casey. The old man's name is Clark. And they are infiltrating this bank to steal all of the Court of Owls' funds. So I mostly remembered what was going on without having to reread my previous commentary. But see how confused I was earlier? That's the entire reason I began these commentaries! I knew reading 52 comics each month would make it really hard to remember what was going on in every book I was reading. That I'm hilarious too is just an added bonus.

Here's another picture of the Gotham Butcher about to kill Calvin. Here's more of my Speech: "Enjoy masturbation."

Sebastian Clark's surprising advice to Calvin Rose is to escape. I wonder if Calvin's greatest skill was juggling, he'd tell him to juggle? It seems like Talon isn't about fighting so it doesn't seem like he'd throw his life away trying to go toe to toe with the Gotham Butcher. He might though! This is a comic book and I've seen plenty of protagonists smart off when they're about to die instead of rabbiting for cover. Also, Calvin's arm is out of socket but I'm guessing that isn't going to matter much. What kind of an escape artist would he be if he couldn't yank his arm out of socket and easily slip it back in, right? That's like their go-to escape plan!

Calvin Rose escapes into the subway and gets away on a train while the Gotham Butcher watches it click clack away saying, "Oh...this is fun." It looks like Calvin Rose has a nemesis! Back in the bank, the little greasy manager realizes all of the Court of Owls' accounts have been drained and he's in a shitload of trouble. It's a good thing the Talon Doorman was frozen by Casey's men before they all got away. Now the manager has time to pack his pencils and move to Montana.

Apparently everybody should have moved to Montana because Sebastian Clark realizes way too late that a tracer was placed on Calvin's suit. And now the monster is knocking at the Asylum's door. I'm sure they've trained for this. Eventually Rose Wilson and Warblade and King Shark and Midnighter and Ra's al Ghul and Regulus and a whole host of other assholes will be knocking down this door too.

I'd rather read a monthly comic called "Gotham Butcher". More of my Speech: "Living like there's no tomorrow usually turns into long term health problems."

The entire Asylum begins evacuating except for Casey who needs to wipe the computers clean so the Court of Owls doesn't get all of their valuable information. And probably to keep them from getting their money back. But to do that, she has to remain behind and she'll be killed. But since Calvin would look like a gigantic douchebag if he allowed that to happen, he elects to remain behind as well and lead the Gotham Butcher into a trap.

Who's kidding who? He's a Master Escapadeliologist! He'll be fine! More of my Speech: "It's better to regret the things you did than to regret never having tried those things. Unless those things are wrestling bears and petting cats on the stomach."

Casey's daughter runs from the escape pod as the doors are closing and now she's loose in the building with the Gotham Butcher! Sheesh, Casey! Why the hell is your daughter living in an Asylum for Allegedly Reformed Thugs and Maniacs? Shouldn't you guys have an apartment and a nanny? That just doesn't seem like the best idea. I guess the entire Asylum is filled with families so they were all simply pretending to be a community and ignoring the overwhelming dangers of this operation. Well, the owls have come home to roost! Is that a saying?

Talon gets the Gotham Butcher into a tunnel that Casey collapses, filling it with freezing cold water from the Hudson River. The Gotham Butcher is swept away to return in a later issue. And now Casey and her daughter Sarah and Calvin Rose (who, surprisingly, escaped!) are heading to Gotham to battle the Court of Owls together. Awwww!

Talon #4 Rating: No change. See what I was talking about? I didn't need to bother reading this at all! It played out exactly as I said it would! And even though I am a Master Comic Book Reader, anybody reading comic books would have known how this was going to play out. It's the most standard of standard devices ever dreamed up by Stan Lee! Or Jack Kirby. Or Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster! Or Bob Kane! Or whoever fucking invented it! The only thing this story accomplished was destroying the Asylum for Reformed Thugs which sucks because I liked that idea. Casey does mention it will take a few months to get it back together, so maybe it'll be a new title in a Future New 52 Wave!