Justice League Dark #20

Four out of six impotent characters on this cover. Guess which ones and why!

Whatever answers you came up with for the caption cover quiz are correct because nobody's opinions should ever be judged or challenged in any way. I'm fucking serious! What do you think I'm doing with this blog? Just joking and acting silly? Well you're wrong! This blog is the most serious thing I've ever done. And it's time I buckled down and made something of myself. From now on, I'm throwing the jokes and the humor and the self-deprecation in the garbage next to my nudie magazines (for the younger crowd, people used to actually look at static porn images in paper magazines purchased from racks behind the counters in 7-11 (or, more likely, found in a bush at the local high school (My friends and I once found a stack of porn magazines in the bushes of our elementary school. We changed their hiding place and enjoyed them for a few weeks before some other kids found and moved them. One of the magazines was called "Girls Who Eat Cum" and we'd never, ever, ever seen anything like it before. It's fucking tame compared to what kids can find today))). There will be no more whimsy or masturbation in this household!

Last month, New York City was in the throes of Doctor Destiny's machinations. Stop your snickering. That is not a euphemism for sexual congress. The House of Mystery had gone out of control. Or at least out of Constantine's control. I believe it is now under the control of Doctor Destiny and his Dreamstone and/or Materioptikon. The Swamp Thing was brought in for laughs and The Flash ran into Frankenstein while exploring the sewers of New York. This was not adequately explained in last month's issue. Perhaps it was simply a metaphor for running through life too fast and without purpose, treating it as a joyful holiday filled with candies and light-hearted, gay moments to be remembered fondly on the all too quickly approaching death bed, after which the remembrances would dissolve along with the decomposing organic matter that once housed the cursed spark of clarity which imbues life with an abundance of meaning while also allowing for the knowledge of one's inevitable demise.

Allow me, for a moment, to ask a favor of the reader. If you have not already read Justice League Dark #20 through legally purchased means, please forgo reading the rest of this entry. I am not writing this as a synopsis for you to learn what is happening in Justice League Dark without having paid DC and your local comic book shop their fair share of silver coin. I believe we are all adults, so I will use the honor system instead of password protecting my entries. And now, on to this month's fascinating tale of magic and terror!

The Flash explains his reasons for being in the sewers of New York. He also admits to being as shallow a monster as every being Frankenstein is cursed to meet during his travels through relife.

Luckily The Flash is not in the habit of carrying a torch around with him or his encounter with Frankenstein might have ended tragically. As it is, The Flash shares another power of his that I had been unaware of: he is able to move his eyes really fast which enables him to see the different energies that make up different types of matter. Does he merely whip his eyeballs back and forth in his sockets? How, exactly, does this enable him to see energies? Is he picking up wavelengths in a way that our slow and ponderous eye movements are unable to see? Can he move his eyeballs so quickly that they pop out of the sockets, dangling unattractively against his cheeks? Again, I reiterate, who here is the real monster?

The Flash learns that Frankenstein works with "other monsters" (his hurtful words) and offers to track them down. The first one he brings back is Madame Xanadu because she's the biggest monster of them all (my hurtful words but they're not without merit. Madame Xanadu is the worst character in the DC Universe right after every character written by Scott Lobdell. Her power is to see the future but this power never actually helps anybody in any way. This power may, in fact, be complete bullshit since the future she often sees never actually comes true because she supposedly helps people to change it. Well, isn't that convenient).

Next on the list to save is Deadman.

What do you know? Madame Xanadu is doing some heavy lifting.

The Flash appears after everybody else with a "better late than never" joke because he's the fastest man in the world. The line was delivered better in Green Lantern #20 by G'nort. Speaking of G'nort, to be a proper Justice League, a team really needs a Green Lantern. I think G'nort would be a perfect fit for this team. And since I promised earlier to stop being silly and whimsical, you know I really mean that statement. Although if Swamp Thing sticks around for any length of time, that would put three people on the team with a green theme going on and even with Madame Xanadu all in purple, it still throws off the color balance. The balanced look of a super hero team is just as important as the balance of powers. The original Justice League of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, and Aquaman was created because of the rainbow effect. Red Flash, Orange Aquaman, Yellow Wonder Woman, Green Green Lantern, Blue Superman, Purple Batman. Wonder Woman isn't yellow but her lasso always had a nice glow to it that helped fill out the yellow band along with Aquaman's hair.

Next up, they rescue John Constantine from himself. A bunch of blood doppelgangers have sprung up about John and they're killing innocents in the streets of New York. Constantine saves himself after Flash and the others provide a distraction and he makes sure they know that he saved himself. That's because he can lie on Earth Prime. He had a moment where he was unable to lie when he visited Faerie although that wasn't explained very well. DC seems to have a problem explaining things. I suppose they don't want to coddle their readership. They want us to figure it out on our own. Well, I'm too busy to figure out comic books. Please spoon feed me everything in the manner of an Ann Nocenti character.

Once everybody decides they all have an important role to play in stopping this disaster, The Flash tracks down the House of Mystery to a penthouse apartment and they set off to stop it and save The Swamp Thing.

Or die at the hands of Madame Xanadu's forgotten love child.

Justice League Dark #20 Rating: No change. It's too hard to write a commentary while trying to avoid being myself. I thought I could write it quicker if I wasn't worried about being funny but it took longer worrying that I was inadvertently being funny and constantly changing stuff. And then what I changed things to was still stupid and funny and then I just gave up and ate a bottle of aspirin. So if the gardener finds my body and manages to call an ambulance and get my stomach pumped, then I'll see you all tomorrow when I curse my still beating heart because I have to read Scott Lobdell's Superman.