The Ravagers #9

Look at all the skeletons! Oh please oh please oh please let one of them be Superboy’s!

Does anybody else get the feeling this cover is exaggerating what will happen? I know DC has announced that The Ravagers has been canceled but this would be ridiculous! Beast Boy and Terra can't die yet! Although if only Ridge's skeleton were shown, I'd be willing to believe the cover.

People in a little town in Colorado called Hartsville have suddenly gained the intensely useless power to implode. One of those people is Rose Wilson. Luckily she'll probably be killed by The Ravagers before she turns into an ash pile.

Lucky for Rose, the sheriff of Hartsville is acting completely opposite of the way a comic book character is supposed to act. Especially when that character is a cop! Violence, sir, not talking! VIOLENCE!

The Sheriff threatens violence if everybody doesn't calm down and listen to him but he doesn't begin with shooting people in the face. I'm having a tough time understanding this comic book. Talking only happens after the violent altercation is realized to be a misunderstanding! But instead this sheriff has stopped The Ravagers from fighting the Real Ravagers (one of those groups is Warblade and Rose Wilson and the other is Caitlin and her kids. Take your pick) by the mere use of words! It's incredible! This man needs to teach Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman and Green Arrow and Firestorm and all the other characters this strange power.

Because the Sheriff has the secret power of speaking, he shouts orders to the heroes and they listen to him. What the fuck? Warblade actually does what the Sheriff commands instead of mouthing off like all teenaged comic book characters do. When the Sheriff says, "Warblade deals with the inmates," Warblade should have said, "Boss people around much?" But he doesn't! He actually does what the Sheriff tells him to do and goes to investigate the prison. I'm so fucking confused! Comic books have not taught me how to read this kind of story!

To be fair, Warblade probably would have eviscerated the Sheriff by now if Rose Wilson hadn't also come down with the Imploding Power.

Warblade finally encounters the convict that was causing all the trouble at the prison and his Implosion Infection took differently. Instead of gaining Implosion Powers, he's gained Hadouken powers! For the less nerdy of you, that means he shoots fireballs out of his hands.

Meanwhile, the Sheriff has shouldered the responsibility for finding the cure for the Implosion Virus. Doesn't Hartsville have a doctor? Or a scientist? Or, at the very least, a barber? I'm not sure of the Sheriff's credentials for curing diseases. His first attempt is to shoot Rose up with morphine. Well, at least that won't hurt her! While they're all waiting to see what happens, Caitlin and Rose remember that they were once friends.

Holy fuck. I can't believe anybody even remembered they were once friends! I blocked most of the issues of Superboy and The Culling from my mind.

In all the confusion, the Sheriff's daughter Candice stole a cop car to escape town. But the only way into town was blocked by an avalanche. And the switchback was, well, I don't know. Not an option any more? But luckily a third way out of town has been discovered: County Road 22! Candice says, "Oh, c'mon! There has to be at least one road still open!" Funny! I thought there was only one road to begin with! It looks like there are so many roads that the quarantine has probably already failed anyway. But Ridge and Thunder and Beast Boy and Terra have all been sent to retrieve this one girl before she can spread the Implosion Infection across the world. Seems like a bit of overkill for one teenage girl. While they're dragging her ass back, Thunder has some kind of attack that he has to explain to everyone since they all suddenly think he's catching.

Dude! Don't give up on your sister so easily! She didn't die. She just entered a portal to The Red! Anyway, if she is dead, you can team up with Light once she gets out of jail. Thunder and Light! Enh, close enough.

Later Warblade gets a DNA sample from the prison inmate and then kills him. The Sheriff's son exhibits some kind of super power where he makes bubbles or something. And Warblade and Terra suddenly have something to talk about.

I think the Colorists are just looking for attention since I never fucking mention them. Okay, I'll bite! Hey Tony Avina? That was supposed to be Rose Wilson, not Terra!

Once everyone is back together and not punching each other in the face for some reason, Warblade tells the Sheriff he knows how to "dissipate the radiation." He needs fifteen people for the cure which the Sheriff readily finds volunteers for. Because people in small towns get things fucking done when they need to come together and count on each other! Them Ravagers better learn a lesson from all this! And then the Sheriff proves once and for all that he really shouldn't fucking be in a comic book. At least not without wearing an "S" on his chest.

If this guy survives, he should be next in line to wear the Goddamned Bat Costume.

The yokels stand around in a circle with the Sheriff at the center and then Warblade throws apricot jam on them. Or he does a hand dance. Or he twirls fire. I don't know what the fuck he's doing! But whatever he does, it cures the town and kills the Sheriff! Yay! I mean, yay for curing the town! Boo for killing the Sheriff! He was the best character in The Ravagers so far!

How come Ig Guara made Brenda so cute in Blue Beetle but his art is kind of crappy in this? Is it Norm Rapmund's fault? Is he a lousy inker? Or was Ig just rushing through these issues because the gig was just dropped in his lap?

Warblade and Rose Wilson decide not to fight the Ravagers and the Ravagers decide not to fight Rose Wilson and Warblade. Rose chooses not to fight because she's all fucked up from the morphine. Caitlin decides not to fight because, well, I don't know. Maybe she feels guilty because Rose kept shoving the whole betrayal thing in her face. I forget what the betrayal was all about. I think it was just that Caitlin chose Superboy over Rose. It's always about a guy when best friends feud.

Elsewhere, Harvest is watching his crystal ball to learn that Rose Wilson and Warblade fucked up big time. So now he's supposedly angry enough to want to kill them. That means Rose and Warblade will have to join Caitlin's Ravagers! I still think Harvest should be Future Vampire Tim Drake instead of Echo Captain Future Shard of Captain Atom.

The Ravagers #9 Rating: +1 Ranking. It's suddenly a decent comic book! But more importantly, it isn't full of grammar errors and sloppy punctuation and punctuation errors and sloppy grammar! I wonder what happened to Howard Mackie? Maybe he's writing Chick Tracts now.