Grayson #13

Time to start the seduction, Dick!

This issue begins with Dick Grayson naked. It's standard policy at Spyral to go over every inch of an agent who has an impressive and completely hairless body. During the exam, Helena assures Dick that Spyral cannot take control of his body via the Hypnos and they will work on preventing others from being able to hijack them. Lies! All lies! But Dick pretends to believe her so he can get Doctor Netz's hands out of his asshole already.

Agent One and Agent Thirty Seven have made up since they both had their asses handed to them by Agent Eight. They're back on missions together. This time they're after Tiger Shark. He's basically Mr. Burns in that episode where he sings "See My Vest."

If everybody knows Batman is dead, why is Gordon even bothering with the Honey Bunny Bat Armor?

The mission goes as easily as you'd expect when the bad guy is a guy named Tiger Shark whose entire goal is to fill his house with the skins and skulls of the most exotic and rare animals on Earth. Hopefully he'll somehow be shipped off to Belle Reve so he can die on a mission for Task Force X. He's exactly the type of villain they need to fill their ranks. He's even got enough of a personality to possibly keep him alive and turn him into a villain that everybody loves. The mission is easy enough that Dick spends most of his time speaking with Red Robin about Dick's new Spyral Nemesis, Agent 0 aka Luka Netz.

Red Robin has run a facial recognition program of his own creation to find that Luka Netz appeared in the background of a bunch of New 52 comic books over the last few years. Of course she wasn't really there! I checked! Too bad DC Comics doesn't have The Joker photoshop technology where they can break into my house and touch-up Batman #1 so that she's actually in the background in a cell! I stopped looking after that though so she might actually be in some Court of Owls scenes simply because, in those scenes, she'd simply be a black haired woman with an owl mask. She could be based on any old extra in a Court of Owls scene! She looks like she might be Lois Lane! Maybe she's just doing a lot of research on a Batman book.

Maybe Luka Netz is immortal just like The Joker!

Midnighter!

Meanwhile Helena calls a meeting with the heads of all of DC's covert organizations except for Checkmate because the meeting is to point out that she doesn't like Checkmate anymore. Any of the other organizations found to be helping Checkmate will be dragged out into the light by Spyral. Grifter is apparently one of the leaders of one of the groups. I don't know what groups still exist in the DC Youniverse but I'm sure they're organizations like Task Force X, Blackhawks, Black Razors, Stormwatch (which might just be the God Garden at this point), NOWHERE, AMMO, ARGUS, SHADE, The Crimson Men, and the Corvus Group. I'm probably missing a bunch.

Grayson drops a note to Midnighter to drop a note to the God Garden that something's afoot in Berlin so that the God Garden will open a God Door into Berlin causing Spyral to want to investigate which means Grayson gets his ticket to Berlin to seek out Luka Netz. The God Garden's agent is Ladytron. I don't think she matters. She's just a pawn with a nuclear uterus.

Midnighter has arrived to check out what Dick's up to but then just goes to a cafe for some cheesecake and coffee. Sitting at the cafe is Luka Netz reading some romantic twaddle! She's alerted to Ladytron, Dick, and Tiger who are battling each other in her secret lair.

Grayson #13 Rating: No change. This issue was rather flat after the previous couple of issues. Plus it forced me to read some Shelley. I didn't know it was Shelley when I began reading it but I did know that my brain was hurting. I don't really have much else to say about this issue. It was just one of those issues that was disappointing because it didn't compare to previous issues. It wasn't bad so I don't have any reason to insult it. That would normally fill up a few lines in the review summary. I guess you have to occasionally suffer through merely good issues if you want to keep reading a great comic book. Maybe if I'd met Tom King or Tim Seeley, I'd have endless amounts of praise for them and feel the need to attack anybody who criticizes them at all. But I haven't met them. And besides, those kinds of fans are fawning idiots and assholes without any clear perspective. I've met Scott Lobdell and I didn't let that sway my opinion on his writing ability!