Thursday, December 29, 2016

Doctor Fate #18


This might be the first time I accidentally purchased a comic book with a penis on the cover. The word "accidentally" is important to that sentence.

Let me quote Shakespeare at the moment of this incredible event where I'm reading the final issue of this terrible comic book: "Let's git 'er done!"

The Internet is proof that everything has already been done so I'm not even going to check to see if somebody has performed a redneck version of King Lear. I know in my heart this has been accomplished.

The issue begins with Khalid admitting that his mother is a treasure-hunting, Imperialist looter of other countries national treasures.


I mean, it's no surprise. She is a white person who married an Egyptian, probably to gain access to places she could get her sneaky hands on more historic loot. But admitting she'd kill for them? Since Khalid seems to lack whimsy and imagination, I'm taking him at his word. His mother is terrible and evil.

Khalid encounters Thoth, the patron something of Nabu and the original owner of the golden helmet, who tells Khalid that his choices matter. Oh, thanks for such divine and unknowable wisdom, great God with he pointy beak. I hope this is all about Khalid choosing the wrong girlfriend. I don't want this Doctor Fate in control of anything more important than his own love life. Plus it's easy to see he's been making the wrong choice in that department for seventeen issues so far. So I can see it culminating in this huge psychedelic journey where he nearly goes insane from his blue balls.

Doctor Fate continues to express confusion on his inward journey. I get the feeling that Brendan McCarthy laid out this whole idea of a psychedelic inward spiritual journey that would teach Khalid how to master the powers of the Fate helmet and come to grips with taking the mantle. But then Paul Levitz took the script and old personed it. It didn't make sense to him so he stuck in all the Narration Boxes where Khalid states how nothing is making sense and how he's thoroughly confused by everything being plainly stated by gods and dream worms. The entire story loses any impact it may have had because Khalid is an imbecile with no ability to contemplate profound or interesting ideas. Not that I'm claiming any of this is profound! It might be! But that's for you to decide for yourself. I can't go around explaining the importance of every little thing to every single person because we all discover different bits of ourselves in different ways and through varied revelatory pop culture media. This garbage might actually be important to somebody. But they should probably be ashamed to admit it.

The Sphinx suggested that Khalid embrace the dreamspinners and their mother but Thoth calls them liars and deceivers. I guess maybe "embrace" was code for "crush them in a great big magical bear hug" because Doctor Fate decides to defeat the dreamspinners. But he's soon overwhelmed and finds himself back in front of Mr. Mind. I mean, Clothorooloohoo.


Khalid must have went to quite the religious school. It's called your penis, dear.

Fate is lowered into Mr. Mind's boiling cauldron. Maybe he finally realized this is what he's meant to do. He's meant to embrace his own destruction at the hands of a creature obviously created by the demonic love child of Dr. Seuss and H.R. Giger. Conversely, if I'm using that word correctly, maybe he's just going to die! Although I also wouldn't mind if after he's lowered into the cauldron, Khalid opens his eyes to see his neighbor leaning over him and wiping his semen from her hand. This entire series could have been like Jacob's Ladder except the main character wasn't dying. He was just getting a hand-job.


See? This represents sex, right? I guess Khalid is getting more than a hand-job! Praise Allah!

Ew. I just realized Mr. Mind's name in this story was Clot Horus. Gross.

Khalid wakes up in the park next to a pile of human feces buzzing with dreamspinners. Oh shit. I guess Khalid just had a random hook up in the park with a shit fetishist. I think that probably means he's gay because women tend to engage in sex with strangers in the park far less often than men do. I don't know if gender or sexuality has any bearing on whether or not somebody wants to include shit in their sexual escapades though.

The Ranking!
No change! I'm just glad this is over. And what an ending! Khalid stumbles through a few weeks of his life believing everything was a hallucination or he was going crazy. So then he wakes up in the park at the end of it all, puts his helmet away (see? sex occurred!), shrugs, and goes back to avoiding sex with the neighbor. The Doctor Fate helmet really chose its host poorly this time around. How the fuck did this comic book last eighteen issues? My guess is Paul Levitz sucked a lot of interoffice cock. Um, figuratively! My lawyer says I should point out that I meant that figuratively! Also, Pickle Boy is now my lawyer instead of my writing assistant and sandwich maker. He's really made a name for himself! I mean, it's drawn on a card that's meant to be a business card and he misspelled lawyer. But at least his services are cheap.

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