Bat-mite #4

Booster Gold always freaks me out because his suit is painted on but he never has any genitals.

The last thing I dreamt before waking up was Tracy Morgan saying, "Rosario Dawson? That bitch needs to be hung up by the eyeballs." I have no idea what Dream Tracy has against Dream Rosario. I think she leaves windows open in houses which isn't the best idea in certain neighborhoods. Like the neighborhoods where it snows a lot.

The issue begins with Weed and Reagan walking into their apartment to stand aghast at what Bat-mite has done to it.

It's hilarious because it makes no sense how it got this bad! He was just making a sandwich!

Weed and Reagan deserve to have their house burn down. Who invites a stranger into their house and expects it to go well? Unless you invited the stranger to stay because you plan on turning that stranger into sausage later that night, things probably aren't going to go smoothly. You see, when you own a thing, you're careful with it because you know how much it cost you and how much you love it and how much you don't want it to become damaged. But a stranger just sees everything you own as disposable goods. It's why having children is a bad idea. Children are just strangers you're stuck with for eighteen or more years. Unless you get lucky and they run away or get kidnapped or fall out of a really tall tree.

I hope nobody who has lost children reads my commentaries because they might be offended by how I'm about to lecture them. How could you lose a child?! I get losing keys or a wallet or one sock. But a whole child?! How irresponsible and imperceptive do you have to be to lose a child? Just the amount of noise they create should make it easy to find them. Did you check between the couch cushions?

I lost a child once while "helping" at a wedding. It was unavoidable because I was watching The Little Mermaid while also watching an open door to keep the kids from walking out of the building. But The Little Mermaid was far more interesting than the kid who went under my outstretched legs and made a break for it. That kid shouldn't have been so boring. Maybe I would have noticed him! Luckily some woman who wasn't mesmerized by The Little Mermaid for some reason noticed and kept the kid from escaping forever. Unluckily, I had to slink out of the room and go bus tables while avoiding eye contact with anybody who might have been the child's parents or heard the story from that awful woman who didn't like The Little Mermaid. She may have saved the day but at what cost?! Who doesn't like The Little Mermaid?!

Booster Gold drops by because he needs to make a Scooby Doo joke and he also needs Bat-mite's help and maybe some genitals. Either set. I don't know why the absence of cameltoe or mooseknuckle in a skin tight outfit disturbs me so much but it fucking does, okay?! Nobody should be that smooth down there when I can see a perfect outline of their abs and ribs and all the muscles I never bothered to learn the names of because I don't think I have most of them.

Bat-mite teleports Booster out of the apartment to battle him. But he soon realizes Booster Gold is a good guy who actually needs his help. Booster is looking for Gridlock. He's the guy that's basically Dan Jurgens in comic book form. He doesn't want the world to change and laments the day the calendar switched from 1989 to 1990. He realizes that 1990 was still technically part of the "eighties" but preferred to think of the eighties as 1980-1989 the way that everybody does. Can't we all just agree to accept that the first decade of our current calendar was only nine years long? That way the years in every decade after go from "0 to 9" instead of "1 to 0." It would just make me feel better.

This "Booster/Buster" joke is acceptable because new people are being created every day and some of them have yet to read it.

I'm fairly certain Booster Gold is the only guy in comicsdom that ever gets called "Buster."

Booster Gold needs to stop Dan "Gridlock" Jurgens before he can stop time's forward momentum and wind it back to the eighties where people will be able to understand all of his dated references. Because they won't be dated anymore! They'll be timely!

Before Bat-mite helps Booster find Gridlock, he has to rehash all of the old jokes about Booster Gold's name from Dan Jurgens' initial Booster Gold run. Bat-mite also gives Booster Gold a makeover so he looks grimmer and is more death friendly. Dan Jurgens is still dealing with the changes made to comic books in the nineties. Just wait until he hears about this whole New 52 thing!

Do I smell a Beverly Hillbillies joke on the horizon?

After the makeover, Bat-mite finally takes Booster Gold to Gridlock's lair so that Booster Gold can save time. Or whatever he does. Maybe he's just doing this to earn some lucrative endorsement deal.

The big fight takes place but Gridlock gets away because this isn't Issue #6. But Booster Gold steals all of Gridlock's things. That seems like a dick move. It's not like Gridlock stole this shit. He was even keeping it well-preserved. Who's the real villain here?

After the battle, Booster Gold leaves because I guess he saved time by stealing all of Gridlock's toys and comic books. But before he leaves, he gives Bat-mite a copy of Reagan's photo album which Bat-mite torched a few hours earlier while making a sandwich. And Bat-mite gives it back to Reagan who appreciates it so much that she forgives Bat-mite for destroying it and tells him he can live with her and Weed forever. That seems a bit much. I can understand feeling gratitude but he was the one who destroyed it in the first place. And he's shown he has no respect for Weed and Reagan's things. I would probably kick him out and never speak to him again. But nicely and in a way that didn't cause him to think he needed to make it up to me.

Bat-mite #4 Rating: No change. This comic book is Dan Jurgens message to comic book fans, publishers, artists, and writers that they need to embrace change in the medium. It seems a bit ironic that Dan Jurgens is the person working this theme in his comic book since he still writes everything as if it were taking place in 1986. But I don't blame him for dropping references that can only be understood by old farts like me. All we have at our disposal is the shit that's permeated our skull and seeped into our brain over the time we've been extant. Jurgens may even be poking fun at himself because he's really a dinosaur in the comic field today. But at least he understands that comic books shouldn't be the same as they were in the nineties, or eighties, or whatever decade came before that. This entire story has been about change and makeovers (even if those makeovers themselves were distinctly out-of-date). At one point this issue, Booster Gold says to Gridlock, "You don't get to force your culture down the throats of the young." It's a silly comic with a lot of jokes that rely on knowledge of television shows from the eighties and earlier but I can get behind the message. Those people who complain about changes in comic books and characters? Just remember that those changes aren't for you and you won't be able to stop them from happening by ranting and raving. But you can write funny jokes about them and point out when they're fucking ridiculous! Like how Wally West was made into a troubled black youth from a broken home! Hilariously stereotypical misstep, DC Comics!