Monday, May 16, 2016

Detective Comics #52


Ugh! Thanks for reminding me of Tony S. Daniel's horrible run on this comic book when The New 52 began! Now I have to scrub vomit and shit out of my clothing.

The Review or Whatever
I was in Seattle for a few days which is why you weren't graced by my Internet presence and were probably suffering from withdrawals. You were probably thinking, "Why have I stopped understanding comic books lately? Wasn't there a blog with a stupid name where I could go for penetrating insights and tired dick jokes?" That was me! Remember?! Me! I'm back! I hope nobody forgot about me over the last four days! Stupid modern short attention spans. It's so hard to stay relevant!

I was in Seattle with some friends rocking the faces off of everybody who found themselves in our orbit. They kept coming up to us and saying things like "I want to be your friend!" or "I'm going to hang out at this table!" or "Everybody else is boring and annoying compared to you!" and "Oh! Oh! You guys like me because I sang 'The Final Countdown'?! What if I sing Journey next? Would you like that? Please say you'll like that! NNNNEEEEERRRRRDDDDSSSS!" (That last example screamed "NERDS!" because he looked like that guy from the movie Revenge of the Nerds and not because he realized we were nerds.) I suppose there were a whole host of jealous haters who kept thinking things like "Fucking dicks. I was the popular douchebro who sings rap in this karaoke bar!" or "How is that three person team doing so well at bar trivia while obviously not paying any fucking attention to anything and enjoying life so much?!" or "Why didn't they agree to be my friend when I spent so much time begging them?!"

My favorite moment of the weekend which will keep my going for a few more weeks before I find everything drab and worthless again was when I ran into another Geeks Who Drink Trivia player at the bar while we were both exchanging our free beer cards. He mentioned our team by name (Snake Titties) while talking about the competition and I said, "I don't know. We got two perfect rounds in the first three rounds and we're in fucking third!" He then turned to look directly at me and said in a hushed and awed tone, "You're in Snake Titties?" Yes, peon. Yes, I am.

It's also possible he took one look at me and was just utterly shocked that I would know anything at all. I'd have to say that's a fair assessment too.

Before I get to Detective Comics #52, I'd like to send a shout out to Money Mike at the Tarasco Karaoke Night who celebrated his 51st birthday! It's nice to see that even at 51 years old, people can still throw tantrums! Also cake! Way to throw your birthday cake all over the bar! How do you get to be 51 years old and not realize how important cake is?! What a waste.

Anyway, I don't know what was happening in Detective Comics because it was about Jim Gordon and I didn't want to remember it. I think it was some kind of Three Kings story line but with less gold and more mummies and cult members and ancient gods.


This is the guy Jim will be fighting in the big boss battle. He's a mummy wrapped in human jerky.

Batcommissioner battles Human Jerky Mummy for a few pages and I begin to worry that this story won't ever end! But then I remember that Detective Comics is renumbering back to its original numbering system and there's no way they'll do that in the middle of a story. Especially one as mediocre as this. I wonder if I'm missing some important theme to this thing. Brotherhood among modern warriors? The dangers of death cults? Possibly something about how terrible U.S. foreign policy is?

How weird is DC's need to renumber Action Comics and Detective Comics so that they can make history by having the first comic books to make it to #1000? It feels really unsatisfying knowing that your collection of Detective Comics comic books suddenly revert to #1-52 somewhere in the late 800s. And then suddenly it's in the 900s! You know what DC Comics should do? They should rerelease all of the New 52 Action and Detective Comics with the proper numbering on the cover! Or maybe they should sell a book of stickers so you can renumber them yourself!

If Rebirth is basically going to do what I figure it's going to do (which is reestablish all DC stories as canon and restore all continuity while still leaving The New 52 Universe the basic universe (only different now! Somehow! Or something!)), renumbering Action and Detective is a good call. It's symbolic of returning all of that lost history to the characters. Not that it ever mattered to me! I still know when I read Batman that he once knocked out Guy Gardner with one punch to the face. All of that shit will always be part of every character I read, no matter how DC explains it. They can't tell me how to experience my life! You hear me, DC Comics?! You can't retcon my life!

No comments:

Post a Comment