World's End #23

Tornado Lane's breast has enough nipple in the shape of it for my fourteen year old self's masturbatory needs.

I hate to equate comic books with pornography since it seems a certain faction of men actually believe that the two things should most definitely be the same thing. But I also like to provide insight into who I am and who I was and who I will be (if I ever get any messages from my time travelling self. So far? No luck). Don't think of the caption above as some pervy male thing. Just think of it as a pervy human thing. Perhaps some fourteen year old lesbian would completely agree with me. Perhaps Val-el's slight bulge on this cover was enough for some randy young women or gay men to rub one out. Leaning against the wall behind me, I have the book with the picture that I probably, if I had to add up all of the times I've masturbated across my lifetime, jerked off to the most. So for your viewing pleasure (and I guarantee some of you will recognize it instantly and agree that it was pretty good wank material in the times before the internet and pornography was everywhere), my #1 All Time Masturbation Aid:

Dungeons and Dragons shouldn't have had parents worried about devil worship. They should have been concerned about semen stains on everything.

The issue begins with Yolanda Montez lying in a bunch of rubble above Atom Shaven. If she survived the loss of the Avatar of the Red, did the other Avatars return to their natural forms? Is Sam lying around somewhere? What about Cthulhu? Did Solomon Grumpy's corpse return to Slaughter Swamp? I guess Yolanda never lost her body since she was the avatar of flesh and blood. Different rules for different schools. That might not make sense but it rhymed so some of you were probably impressed.

Even with all of the other Avatar powers, Alan Scott has failed. That took me by surprise because I really thought he was going to turn things around and save Earth-2. It must be the spectacularly well-crafted story by Daniel H. Wilson that had me believing that the Avatars could spend twenty issues doing absolutely nothing and then in one single issue, once their powers were combined in a guy that used to produce television shows, the might of the Avatars would save the day! This is where I'd say "Not!" if it were the nineties but since it isn't the nineties anymore, I just have to let that sentence stand on its own and only the less credulous people will understand that I meant the exact opposite of what I actually typed.

Meanwhile, the Misters must all be suffering from concussions because their observations don't agree with the artist's rendering of the situation.

They are not on the other side of Apokolips and Earth is not encapsulated by it. It is always possible that my reading comprehension is to blame.

Sato responds that two and a half million Americans have survived and they need transport. She points out that everybody else is probably dead and don't bother trying to radio any other countries or anything. Mister Terrific points out that even though he can see Earth from where he's standing, he's certain that Apokolips is surrounding it and they can't pick up any survivors from any country anyway. Commander Sato says, "No problem! We'll be there in no time if we can convince Val-el to punch through Apokolips's hull!"

Over in Futures End, readers learned that Big Barda arrived on Earth-Main-Earth with the other evacuees. So the story of how that happened is told in this issue. Basically, Kalibak turned on her, then she followed Jimmy Olsen through a BOOM Tube to Atom Shaven where she stole a monk's hooded robe to disguise herself. Sure, she was the only seven foot six monk on the ship but nobody was willing to ask her who she was after she smashed a guard into a wall and screamed, "Walk away, human!" Curiosity has its limits, you know.

This is an odd numbered issue which means Val-el doesn't mind violence.

Queen Lantern uses his Chromatic Superpower to pierce a hole in Apokolips. Now the evacuees have a hole to fly through so they can reach the Multiversal Ship and escape! I don't want to be too optimistic and believe that this series will end next issue because I know that's just setting myself up for disappointment on a grand scale. But maybe there are only two issues left! Ending on Issue #25 seems like a reasonable thing to do, right? Yes! Only two more issues left of this series! Hooray!

I'm going to jump off of the roof if I have to read World's End #26 now.

World's End #23 Rating: No change. This series simply has no passion behind it. I'm not being unnecessarily cruel to any of the writers because this obviously doesn't showcase their best work. They're just adding meat to the skeleton which must not be a fun job since they're not making it exciting at all. Daniel H. Wilson and his writing cohorts simply have to pad a story with stupid fucking plot points until they get from Point A to Point Z. I'm sure if somebody had the extra hours to spend (and I assure you nobody should be giving up any hours of their life for this snoozefest), they could read through this entire series and draw up a flow chart with dozens of places where plot points just dead end or dissipate into nothingness. The only part of the story that I don't already know the ending to due to having read all (well, most, so far) of the September Future End issues is whether or not Dick Grayson's boy's name is Johnny or Tommy.