Thursday, December 29, 2016

Doctor Fate #17


Fucking Christ. I can't believe I'm still reading this comic book!

I've been reading this comic book for a year and a half and I am not entertained by it at all. The only other things I've maintained for that length of time or more which brought me no joy were my relationships with family members. Ha ha! Just kidding, mom and dad!

Oh, who am I kidding?! Like they'd ever show any interest in anything I love! Although that's not entirely true. I love pizza and Oreos and my mom definitely notices when I'm loving those things. "Oh, you're going to eat all of that?" Yeah, mom, of course I'm going to eat a whole fucking pizza topped with Oreos. Now fuck off!

So, as usual, I didn't think much about the cover because I barely looked at the comic book as I picked it up sighing and rolling my eyes and hating the life I've chosen for myself. But then when I opened it up and saw the name of the artist, I perked up a bit. Brendan McCarthy? You mean, the Brendan McCarthy?! Not the one who co-wrote Fury Road! I mean, yes, that one! But I wasn't thinking, "Not the one who co-wrote Fury Road?!" I was thinking, "The guy who did the covers to Shade the Changing Man and the art for Rogan Gosh?!" And why, yes, it is indeed that Brendan McCarthy! I'm fucking stunned. I'm so glad I didn't simply give up on this comic book the way I'm giving up on so many others!

My feeling of pure unbridled joy doesn't last long. Fucking life. Fuck you! Can't I at maintain some kind of enjoyment for any length of time before you intrude and smash it all to pieces with more of the same Doctor Fate bullshit?! First off, the colorist looks like he just pissed all over McCarthy's art. It looks like a kid who just discovered the joy of creating light with an eraser. But on top of that, Khalid once more begins experiencing some weird shit and his first thought isn't, "This must be more magic! Like all of that other magic that has been intruding on my life! It's like I can't get a moment's peace or a handjob from the neighbor without magic fucking it all up!" No, instead when things get weird, he goes back to the whole, "Is there a weird but rational explanation for this? Are the cops drugging us? Is this a fireworks show? Am I having a stroke?"

The weird lights turn into multi-colored threads that pierce the tops of the heads of everybody at the rally he's attending. He thinks it's weird until one of them pierces the head of the girl who won't fuck him (so not the neighbor lady! The other one!). Now it's personal! Time to turn into Doctor Fate and have a strange psychedelic experience!


"At least not until I've known her carnally!"

Khalid winds up in some other plane that's really strange. He doesn't think, "Holy fucking hell! So cool!" No, he thinks, "This is utterly, totally, completely impossible." You are such a disappointing Doctor Fate, Khalid. You deserve to fail Medical School. And also Magical School. And also How Can You Not Have Noticed That Your Neighbor Wants To Suck Your Cock School.


Seventeen Goddamned issues of this attitude! Somebody revoke his Doctor Fate card already!

Here's how huge of a failure this Doctor Fate is. He just asked the weird bug thing what manner of being it is. It responds with a sound. Doctor Fate thinks, "Usually the magic works to translate--but all I'm getting is static...and the word dreamspinners... ...what are these things?" So he asks them what they are, they respond with dreamspinners, and then he asks himself again, "What are these things?!" You know what? He doesn't deserve a fucking handjob from the hot and horny neighbor lady. Khalid can live with his parents as a failure for the rest of his life for all I care. I think his next life choice should be getting a Playstation 4 and a medical marijuana card and just calling time on his ambitions.

Also, the punctuation in that quote is the fault of the writers. I wonder if they learned how to punctuate from Howard Mackie's School of Terrible--Really...Fucking, Terrible — and Awful; Punctuation..

Khalid loses Akila's thread and decides the best way to find it is to search at the other end. All the threads are entering a big dream egg, so that's where he heads.


Where he finds a giant caterpillar fucking a glowing cauldron.

The gigantic caterpillar is named Clothorus and it's been wanting to eat Doctor Fate for as long as it can remember (which I think is forever). But Doctor Fate does some whining and pleading to Nabu who comes to his rescue. I think. Khalid definitely doesn't do anything heroic himself. I know there's another issue but I can still hope that he gets eaten. The next issue might be twenty pages of Khalid digesting inside of Clothorus, right?

Doctor Fate escapes to another plane of existence where the pyramids were built by flying scarab ships. I guess it's the spiritual version of Egypt, or something even more profound that I'll never figure out in a million years because I'm constantly being distracted by my physical needs and desires.

Doctor Fate visits the Sphinx which tells him how to defeat Clothorus. It says, "If you would defeat the mother, you must embrace her and all her children." Then Khalid is all, "What?! Riddles! Just tell me how to defeat her!" And the Sphinx is all, "How can I be any more plain than that, you stupid fucking asshole!" Then Khalid, confused by the mere presence of words, is dragged back into the dreamspinner realm for the final fight of his life. Hopefully.

The Ranking
-1 Ranking. There have been some pretty shitty incarnations of Doctor Fate over the years and none of them can compare to the overall shittiness of Khalid. He's the fucking worst.

No comments:

Post a Comment