Secret Society #1

Bill, I bet I can comment on this comic in three paragraphs!

The story, narrated by The Outsider, begins on Earth 3 men are women and children are adults and cats are mice. Your ass is in your crotch and you sit on your genitals. And worst of all, tomatoes are vegetables but everybody thinks they're fruits.

Oh! If everything is opposite, I bet Earth 3's Talon is interesting!

Owlman and Alfred "The Outsider" Pennyworth run Gotham City. I'm not exactly sure how you run a city where everybody murders everyone else and nobody can keep a television for more than a few hours and all the cars are stolen. Who does any legitimate work? Why would anybody want to when someone will just shoot you in the face to take whatever they want? It's really no surprise that Earth 3 was destroyed. It's breaking my brain just trying to comprehend how the place works! I guess Owlman says, "Hey you! Do that thing I want or Alfred will drill a hole in your abdomen and fuck your liver!" And then Hey You gets to fucking work because he's already had his liver fucked five times that week and he just can't take anymore.

Owlman has a secret about the reason he cried the day Alfred Pennyworth shot Owlman's parents. And Alfred Pennyworth has a secret about how much he loves Owlman's butt. No joke: it's better than Nightwing's. But Alfred thinks it's too early in the comic book to reveal those secrets and I have to agree for once. Because they're probably terrible and they'll just make me angry that they're secret at all. I'd rather be in a good mood for the first eighteen pages.

According to this exposition, it looks like The Godblessed Owlman does keep Gotham operating with a semblance of sanity. And bucket loads of fear and beatings. Just like Batman!

The Joker has killed Talon. Talon is dead! Hooray! But Talon was Dick Grayson. Boo! But Talon is dead! And Tim Drake too! Hooray for Earth 3! Although this Tim Drake had never been written by Scott Lobdell, so I really shouldn't celebrate his demise. Anyway, Owlman declares he's going to kill The Joker for killing Dick but we'll get to that later.

First let's talk about how this affects Owlman's feelings toward the currently captured Nightwing! No way is he going to allow the others to kill him. He'll probably slobber all over him and kiss his feet and underbelly and ask him for forgiveness. He'll probably call him Talon and then Nightwing will be all, "What the fuck?! How dare you! That guy's a boring jerk!" And Owlman will be all, "Don't you dare talk about Dick Grayson that way, Dick Grayson! Dick Grayson was a better Dick Grayson than you'll ever be, Dick Grayson!" And then he'll slap him and begin to walk away but he'll suddenly turn and fall on his knees and hug Dick Grayson around the waist (while caressing his butt because who can blame him? It's so amazing!) crying, "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry for everything!" And Nightwing will be all, "It's cool."

It's later!

With Talon dead and The Outsider convulsed in fits of laughter from The Joker's gag lapel flower, the Gotham City Police Department begin attacking Owlman. The Joker's final joke! With his death, the people of Gotham shall live!

Earth 3 finally fell apart when Darkseid attacked. Only The Outsider and Atomica escaped and that's been documented in other comic books. So I think I can stop reading now.

Except I almost forgot about Pennyworth's secret! I'm going to finish reading but he'd better tell it by the end or I'm going to rank this lower than Joker's Daughter #1!

And then the issue ends without revealing The Outsider's secret. But that's okay! I was just joking about ranking this issue lower than Ann Nocenti's crap. That was probably mean-spirited, threatening Johns and Sterling's work that way. Now I feel as guilty as Thomas Wayne AKA The Godblessed Owlman! And you know why he feels guilty? Because Dick Grayson is dead! But Dick Grayson is also alive! And Owlman wants him on his team!

Nightwing might as well join. What else is left for him?

Now that the Crime Syndicate have exposed Nightwing as Dick Grayson, every villain with even an average intelligence that is familiar with Gotham City or Bruce Wayne should jump to the conclusion that The Goddamned Batman is Bruce Wayne! Nightwing just won't be able to show his face at any of the Batfamily functions after this, especially after the way everybody treated Bruce when he almost exposed their secret identities.

Secret Society #1 Ranking: I enjoyed this one far more than a lot of the other issues this month mainly because it tied in to Forever Evil and helped flesh out some of the stuff hinted at concerning Owlman in Forever Evil #1. I also enjoyed getting a little glimpse into Earth 3. Having Dick Grayson become Talon to Thomas Wayne's The Godblessed Owlman was a nice piece of symmetry. And while some of the Villains Month comics didn't really feel like they did much, I'm sure as The New 52 continues plodding along, I'll be glad to have read them. Some of the stories might not have been very good but they at least planted some interesting seeds like Darkseid's Superman Corpse Room or Lex Luthor's experiments on Bizarro. Or they cleared up some really fucking stupid shit and added some decent enough explanations for things like H'el's abilities and origin. Although just like Scott Lobdell, he didn't stop at the explanation of H'el being a time loop. No, that fucker had to tack on all the other bullshit like H'el killing Jor-el and Zod just to have some kind of exciting ending plot point. You do know you could have just left the issue with the explanation of H'el, right? You didn't need to fuck it all up by continuing with your stupid time travel fucked up bullshit. God damn you, Scott Lobdell. You never know when to stop, do you?!