Thursday, December 15, 2016

Justice League #8


Fucking scofflaw.

Who at DC Comics was reading Bryan Hitch's Justice League of America and thought, "Fucking hell! This is our guy for the biweekly Justice League Rebirth series! Speaking of Hitch's Justice League, is he ever going to finish the Justice League of America story? Somebody call Bedard and get him to work on fixing that crap." To be fair, I don't think this comic book has been late yet. To be less than fair, I haven't been keeping track and don't actually know if that's the case. I should probably do some research to back up my opinions seeing as how this is still, technically, a Pre-Trump society. I can't wait until January 20th when I never again have to back up my ignorant assumptions and speculative conclusions with actual facts! Apparently all I need to do is photoshop some crazy memes to defend everything I say.

The issue begins with Cyborg upset that they couldn't save everybody from the alien invasion which happened in the first story arc. He shouldn't blame himself though. He should blame shitty writers who need to make every threat an End of the World scenario. In those cases, the Justice League can only react, save as many people as possible, and end eventually end the threat after massive destruction. That massive destruction is important for the writer to show that the threat was serious! But imagine if the writer could show that the threat was serious before it got to Earth and then had the Justice League struggling to stop the threat before it destroyed any city on Earth. That would show how heroic the team really was without having to stick in bullshit moments like this where Cyborg thinks about how the Justice League are actually just huge failures.

Cyborg should also be putting the families of every victim on a Super-Villain Watchlist because you know at least a few of them are going to blame the Justice League for not saving every single life and they'll dedicate themselves to the destruction of the League. Maybe he's not doing that because Batman already whipped up the spreadsheet and purchased the bugs and cameras for the vicims' houses.

This issue is called "Outbreak" so it looks like the beginning of the next story will be Cyborg thinking about how the Justice League couldn't save everybody. Again.

Oh, excuse me. On the second page, the news notes that Diane Palmer was the only fatality of the Kindred's attack. Well, holy fuck. What the fucking bullshit hell are you whinging on about then, Cyborg?! Because by any stretch of the imagination, if only one person died during the destruction shown in the Kindred story, you should be fucking high-fiving Batman! I mean, attempting to high-five Batman as he stares you down with his Bat-Death-Stare. Like me, he only high-fives children under six years of age. Everybody else, we just leave hanging, bitches.

So only one person died. Remember the surname "Palmer" for future reference. Because somebody named Palmer is going to blame the Justice League for his or her wife's/mother's/daughter's/sister's death and they're going to be coming for the Justice League!

You know what? I'm not even going to attribute Diane Palmer's death to the Kindred's attack! If the Justice League were able to save everybody else around the world from the strongest earthquakes ever felt all happening at the same time when even earthquakes that would barely stop a Californian from complaining about their name being misspelled on a Starbuck's coffee cup kill thousands of people in other places around the world, how is it that Diane Palmer managed to die? It's such an anomaly that I can't believe the Justice League wouldn't have been able to save her too. I think she probably broke her neck falling down after jumping for joy due to surviving the attack. The Justice League can't be expected to save every klutz in the world from accidentally killing themselves!


This is terrible math. Superman giving up his life to save one person? That's an incalculable net loss to the good in the world. Regular people should heroically refuse to let a superhero die for them and take the bullet instead! What was Diane Palmer ever going to do for the world? Pay for the McDonald's meal of the person in the car behind her in the drive-thru and brag about it on Facebook? Shit, now I'm glad she's dead!

Cyborg is busy spying on the entire world in the Watchtower when he has a really profound thought. He's all, "I can hear something, like a background noise in the live feed." Then, dramatically, he stops. He cocks his head a bit to the side while looking a bit confused. Then his eyes grow wide and he says, "No! Not a background noise...it's more like a foreground image!" Whoa! Mind fucking blown, man! It's not a noise at all! And it's not even in the background! IT WAS AN IMAGE IN THE FOREGROUND ALL ALONG! Fucking Hitchcock is probably masturbating in Hell over this right now and muttering, "That could have been the premise to the sequel to The Birds! I'm such a fucking idiot! Du dun duh duh duh duh duh dun dun dun."

Cyborg has noticed a code hidden in the photons. Do you want me to repeat that? It won't stop you from wanting to punch yourself in the brain but you might not believe what I just wrote: Cyborg has found a code hidden in photons. I can't even parse what that means! Cyborg can see photons? Does it mean Cyborg doesn't see images at all because his visual data is simply billions of photons slamming into his eyeball? It's like looking up at a hail storm except brighter and more dumb.

I bet I know what the code says! It probably says, "Happy, Happy Halloween! Halloween! Halloween! Happy, Happy Halloween! Silver Shamrock!"

In the Batcave, Alfred offers to make Bruce a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Please. Alfred has never made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in his life. He's a fucking butler for the rich and wealthy! But before he can sully his hands with that working class monstrosity of a sandwich, he notices the Batcomputer has been hacked! Batman is all, "But nothing should be able to get through these firewalls! Alfred? Alfred! Did you see where I was pointing when I said that? At my balls!"

Cyborg winds up hacked just by looking at the code. So it's kind of like propaganda!

Batman just finished installing software that made his vehicles autonomous, so that's convenient. Now that they've been hacked, they begin trying to kill Bruce and Alfred. Maybe this will get Bruce to reconsider how he refuses to use a gun but still arms his vehicles with the most deadly weapons he can browbeat Lucius Fox into designing. How about equipping the batmobiles with batarangs, asshole? I guess if the rockets and bullets are shot from a vehicle, Bruce can pretend that they're just used for shooting other vehicles. It still seems like a stupidly dangerous idea for a guy who refuses to kill anybody.

Bruce's vehicles begin destroying themselves. That's what happens when you program them to destroy Superman the next time he comes around unannounced!

Cyborg is funny walking around the Watchtower trying to figure out how to stop it from reentering the Earth's atmosphere since after he was hacked, he looked at the Watchtower and it was hacked by the photons too. So now it's going to crash to the Earth and kill more people than Diane Palmer. Good job, Justice League!

The Justice League really needs to find a way to stop having their powers and technology used against them and the world. They might be the biggest threat of all. It just takes one hacker or mind controller or jerko Greek God to transform the Justice League from saviors to killers.

The malicious code forces Cyborg to throw himself out of the airlock. But once he's in space, the code is gone! He's back online! Now all he has to do is grab the Watchtower and pull it back into orbit using his, um, uh...white noise blaster? Maybe?


Oh, it's only going to hit San Francisco? They'll probably appreciate the influx of technology! Some angel will probably pass by and throw a wad of cash at the burning wreckage and say, "I'm in!"

Back in the Batcave, even the dinosaur trophy comes to life and attacks. That's some crazy powerful code! I guess everybody is going to have to stop looking at everything. Where's Daredevil when you need him?!

Meanwhile in Denver, Diane Palmer's kids are wondering what their dad is up to in the garage. Probably jerking off to violent porn. I can't imagine what else he might be doing, right?!

Cyborg saves San Francisco by opening up a BOOM Tube and sending the Watchtower back into orbit, along with a shit-ton of momentum! It's probably just going to speed right out into space now! Except, you know, Bryan Hitch doesn't know anything about science and stuff. He thinks you can put code on photons and somebody could see that code!

Cyborg manages to survive falling out of orbit by using the Transamerica pyramid to break his fall before smashing into a car on the street. As he lands, the hacker opens up a few more BOOM Tubes and Wonder Woman, The Flash, Aquaman, and Green Lantern Simon Baz fall out. Luckily none of them were shitting when they were taken.


Don't worry, Alfred. It's only because you're being written by Bryan Hitch. You're saying plenty of witty and passive aggressive things about Bruce over in Tom King's Batman.

Alfred and Batman manage to stop the final vehicle and isolate the malicious code. Good thing Batman wasn't BOOM Tubed to San Francisco so he can do the intelligent work of tracing the hack back to Diane Palmer's garage. I mean, back to whoever is responsible for it. It can't be just some guy whose wife died, right? Unless he's in the garage sucking the cock of some technology demon, there's no way he wrote code onto photons which could hack Cyborg's operating system and also Green Lantern's ring. Oh yeah, the story ends with the code jumping to Simon Baz's ring and it flips the fuck out on everybody.

The Ranking!
+0! This series isn't exactly terribly written. It's just sort of stupid in the way it goes about presenting the conflicts. I always hate saying that my comic books need to be somewhat believable because comic books are made up of 95% post-unbelievable waste product. That statement makes as much sense as everything in a Bryan Hitch comic book. Unless it makes more sense even though it doesn't make much sense!

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