Cyborg #8

It annoys me when a comic book company green lights a cover of a comic book that could have been drawn by me.

Rating: Probably -1 Ranking even though I haven't opened the cover yet. I have feelings about this book. Rather, I have nearly no feelings about it and will probably be thoroughly bored while reading it.

Remember when a man stalked and killed a young man named Trayvon Martin and we all decided that we were fine with people believing the man was within his rights and should be allowed to go free while we, angry and upset, did nothing more than write comments like this online and pretend like we were fed up with it even though we've continually just did nothing more than be angry since then? Apparently this incident happened exactly four years ago today even though I only discovered that when I consulted Lord Google to make sure I was spelling Trayvon's name correctly because that would be embarrassing if I got that wrong and there's nothing worse in America than being embarrassed on the internet. I guess my body has an internal rage alarm clock. Good thing something is acknowledging the rage since I'm too busy reading comic books to try and make the world a better place.

Cyborg and Captain Marvel (Fuck calling Billy "Shazam" when he's got his Man Pants on) beat up on a guy named Zookeeper who would be lucky to wind up dying on the Suicide Squad. The jokes they make at his expense continue the same tired trend of this comic book where Cyborg believes he's wittier than he really is. He keeps saying he's a genius and that might be true in that he can do a really complicated math problem or build a super computer that turns farts into fuel. But he's terrible at cracking wise at other people's expense.

His father Silas Stone must be the same kind of genius because he rebuilt his son out of alien technology and yet at breakfast he asks his son to pass the syrup while he's holding the syrup bottle.

This is why dumb people think smart people are so dumb! Because not smart people write smart characters but can't write them in a way that's smart because the writer isn't smart enough to write a convincing smart person! Also dumb people always invent all sorts of caveats to what "smart" actually means. So if they don't know anything and are completely ignorant of even the smallest scientific facts (like, you know, an American), they claim that at least they have common sense and street smarts unlike smart people who are sooooooo stupid when it comes to doing everything that isn't answering questions on Jeopardy. Or what about those insecure people who have to label a bunch of different ways for a person to be smart so they can find a category to fit into? "Well, I'm smart at organizing books on shelves! Genius at it, even! Oops, I shat myself!"

The worst thing about being the smartest person on the internet is that nobody believes me!

It's not even a good joke since half the creatures are reptiles or amphibians!

The narrative of the story keeps jumping back in time so after Cyborg makes that hilarious joke about the situation being hairy, the scene jumps back to 59 days previous to an "undisclosed location." Why would nobody disclose the location to the omniscient narrator? You'd think at least the narrator would know where every scene was taking place. This just feels like lazy editing! The editor has decided they don't want to take a stand and declare some new organization's location in the DC Youniverse. Which totally makes sense since nobody even knows what state Gotham is in.

The secret facility is where Cyborg's real enemies are gathered. They're congressmen and lawmakers who want to pass laws limiting people's access to cybernetics because a black man owns some. It's not the cybernetics that make them feel unsafe. It's the fact that a black man owns more than they do! So time to pass a law declaring them illegal! At least for certain people. You know what certain people I mean.

Let me translate this for the dumb people who accidentally stumbled upon my blog and haven't been offended enough to stop reading yet! "Technology that only a few elite people understand" means "science and math is hard to understand and the people who understand it are assholes who think they're so much better than me because I can't even figure out which way to put a Pop Tart into the toaster." "Unregulated forays into dangerous territories" means "facts that are demonstrably true but which I can't understand because I just learned that Kit Kats shouldn't be shoved up my anus." Things which "can be easily compromised and turned against humanity" means "minorities can use them against us!"

The guy with the eyepatch (an indicator of bad guyness unless his name is Snake Plissken and then he's a double bad guy bluff good guy. Maybe it depends which eye the eyepatch is on) doesn't understand what Senator Champlin is saying so he says Senator Champlin isn't saying anything. That's a total dumb guy tactic! You know how when a really smart person zings a dumb guy, the dumb guy thinks he'll really get one over on the smart guy by pretending not to understand the zinger which only makes the dumb guy look dumber but he's too dumb to realize it so he keeps using that tactic.

Oh Billy. That's the joke Cyborg was making. You didn't make the joke you just made it less subtle. Not that it was subtle in the first place. And since that's the case, Cyborg is complimenting his own joke.

I'm glad David Walker constantly has other characters pointing out that somebody is making a joke or saying something funny or I would have missed every fucking joke since this comic book began. So far in this issue alone (I can't remember how often he did it in the other issues but I've pointed it out before), there's been the one I just scanned, the time Captain Marvel repeated one of Cyborg's jokes and said it was hilarious, Zookeeper screaming that he's not a joke, Cyborg's dad pointing out Cyborg's ability to keep telling jokes in the face of disaster, and the Zookeeper screaming at Cyborg to stop making jokes. I'd complain that David Walker doesn't need to keep reminding us when things are funny but since none of these moments have actually been funny, he'd better keep it up before I take this thing too seriously.

Your penis, right? You're going to show him your penis! Let me know now if I should laugh at it!

The issue ends with the government's goons going after Cyborg because he didn't properly register his cybernetics with them. Fucking government! Always trying to take away the black man's teeth! Like in that Rudolph Christmas special where Santa defangs the Abominable Snowman and puts him in chains. Bumble, my ass. I know what Cornelius really means when he calls it a Bumble. You can't snow me with your "white truths", you fucking Snowman!

Cyborg #9 Rating: No change. I know I put the rating at the beginning and pre-rated the comic book but that was because I didn't realize this was going to turn into an actual commentary. It was less boring than previous issues of Cyborg although David Walker seriously needs to put a cap on how many times somebody points out that something was a joke. It takes up about 25 percent of the dialogue in this thing!