Judging by the last few issues starring Robotman, Beast Boy, Mento, and the Brotherhood of Evil, this series could have been Doom Patrol Spotlight On:.
My "intro" on Facebook steals a quote from the opening of Upright Citizen Brigade: "My only enemy is the status quo. My only friend is chaos." This has been my "intro" for probably a decade (the other part of my "intro" (I keep putting "intro" in quotes because it's a fucking perplexing header. I guess it's supposed to be what you think the host of a comedy show would say just before you come on stage? "And now, the racist stylings of nobody's favorite grandfather, Bumpkie!") says, "Now we are all sons of bitches" (which is also stolen and all of the most interesting people know from where without Google (yes, I'm now judging people on their knowledge of historic minutiae (the "now" in that statement is shoveling a lot of bullshit))). I'm not sure how accurate the "my only friend is chaos" part is because I fucking break down from nervous anxiety whenever my weekly routine changes. Hell, I can barely function during the day when I know I have something different to do later that day (and I don't mean like "meet the Queen at eight" or "bury those dead bodies before they start to stink." I mean "do errands" or "call your mom"). But the "only enemy is the status quo" is pretty fucking accurate. You see, the status quo has always been the enemy. Getting away from the status quo is what drove everybody throughout the history of Western Civilization to brave the frontier. We like to believe that we have always been fighters against injustice and harbingers of positive change. But, really and truly, those who have been oppressed by the status quo have more often just fled west to set up a new status quo. And when the people within that status quo were ostracized for having more "radical" beliefs, those people then fled further west. Right up until the frontier was all used up and nobody had any more west to flee to and all the awesome people were in California.
Once the West Coast was colonized, everybody in America now had a new problem: do we actually begin to change the status quo or do we find a new place to flee? Schoolhouse Rock seemed to suggest the moon would be nice but that was only realistic to the kinds of people who lived through the 70s. The new frontier became major metropolitan areas: San Francisco, New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Seattle, Omaha, Denver, Austin, Madison. Cities became the new frontier where people oppressed by the status quo of their small town could flee. We've never had the constitution for the fight to change other people's older and more conservative ways. And maybe that worked for awhile. But then a new problem cropped up: the status quo people began fearing that maybe, just maybe, the fleeing people were suddenly finding the ability to change things from afar. They panicked. And they demanded the status quo should be federal law. The frontiers were gone.
So if people are curious as to why political discourse seems so much more vehement and hostile in the early 21st century, it's because we have nowhere left to flee the people who would demand we live the way they want us to live. Because they seem to think passing laws that let other people live their individual lives in peace somehow infringes on their status quo. How dare homosexuals get married? How dare women have authority over their own body and reproductive rights? How dare people disrespect the flag while fighting against racial injustice? How dare anybody, anywhere, dare to change our status quo? And yet the weirdest part of the entire thing is that the status quo changing wouldn't affect their small town status quo lives in the least. Unless maybe seeing two men holding hands causes arterial blockage? Have the scientists proved that's not happening?
The status quo used to believe in less government not because they know anything about how the government works but because they knew more government meant more laws providing protections for people who were historically left unprotected. But now that they see how government is meant to protect all of us from the tyranny of the status quo, they themselves look toward the government to expand laws. These laws are oppressive and vile and actually limit the freedoms of Americans. It's exactly the type of thing they professed to be against for so long. Less government unless we can get a law that allows me to not sell my product to gays. Less government unless we can get a law that allows us to fire anybody for any terrible reason. More freedom of speech unless that involves burning a flag or criticizing the government's use of the military or speaks against and criticizes the speech of the status quo. What's happened now is that the status quo has decided the government needs to teach the people who fled to the cities a lesson. And since there's nowhere else to run, it's time to fight. And they fucking hate the fight.
So now that the fleeing people have been backed into a corner and begun to fight back, the status quo's new refrain is that we need to be civil. The status quo has no talent for introspection. They have no ability to see that they have not acted civil for many, many years. They don't realize that instead of calling them on their incivility, we've just opted to let them fester in it while we moved on to our own lives. But that wasn't enough for them. Somehow living lives without any thought of their lives was offensive. Asking the government to recognize that every life should be allowed to find its own way was too much for them to bear. They couldn't leave well enough alone and now they're learning just how uncivil we can be.
Lucky for them, we're actually civilized and have no stomach for real violence. Incivility might be the best we can muster. Unlucky for us, they think swear words and milkshakes thrown at fascists should be met with deadly force. They seem to think calling out their incivility is the greatest offense. Unlucky for use, they're cuckoo nutso. So what do we do? I, for one, choose to mock them and, as often as possible, remind them of the terrible things they believe. They refuse to give anybody not agreeing to the status quo any peace. So we should be fucking done letting them off the hook. We should stop giving them excuses. We should tell them, as often as possible, exactly the kind of people they don't believe they are. But they are those people. And they seem content with it. Don't let them be content any more.
For those of you who are somehow reading this because you're more into my digressions than the comic books, let me warn you: I'm going to discuss the comic book now.
Once the West Coast was colonized, everybody in America now had a new problem: do we actually begin to change the status quo or do we find a new place to flee? Schoolhouse Rock seemed to suggest the moon would be nice but that was only realistic to the kinds of people who lived through the 70s. The new frontier became major metropolitan areas: San Francisco, New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Seattle, Omaha, Denver, Austin, Madison. Cities became the new frontier where people oppressed by the status quo of their small town could flee. We've never had the constitution for the fight to change other people's older and more conservative ways. And maybe that worked for awhile. But then a new problem cropped up: the status quo people began fearing that maybe, just maybe, the fleeing people were suddenly finding the ability to change things from afar. They panicked. And they demanded the status quo should be federal law. The frontiers were gone.
So if people are curious as to why political discourse seems so much more vehement and hostile in the early 21st century, it's because we have nowhere left to flee the people who would demand we live the way they want us to live. Because they seem to think passing laws that let other people live their individual lives in peace somehow infringes on their status quo. How dare homosexuals get married? How dare women have authority over their own body and reproductive rights? How dare people disrespect the flag while fighting against racial injustice? How dare anybody, anywhere, dare to change our status quo? And yet the weirdest part of the entire thing is that the status quo changing wouldn't affect their small town status quo lives in the least. Unless maybe seeing two men holding hands causes arterial blockage? Have the scientists proved that's not happening?
The status quo used to believe in less government not because they know anything about how the government works but because they knew more government meant more laws providing protections for people who were historically left unprotected. But now that they see how government is meant to protect all of us from the tyranny of the status quo, they themselves look toward the government to expand laws. These laws are oppressive and vile and actually limit the freedoms of Americans. It's exactly the type of thing they professed to be against for so long. Less government unless we can get a law that allows me to not sell my product to gays. Less government unless we can get a law that allows us to fire anybody for any terrible reason. More freedom of speech unless that involves burning a flag or criticizing the government's use of the military or speaks against and criticizes the speech of the status quo. What's happened now is that the status quo has decided the government needs to teach the people who fled to the cities a lesson. And since there's nowhere else to run, it's time to fight. And they fucking hate the fight.
So now that the fleeing people have been backed into a corner and begun to fight back, the status quo's new refrain is that we need to be civil. The status quo has no talent for introspection. They have no ability to see that they have not acted civil for many, many years. They don't realize that instead of calling them on their incivility, we've just opted to let them fester in it while we moved on to our own lives. But that wasn't enough for them. Somehow living lives without any thought of their lives was offensive. Asking the government to recognize that every life should be allowed to find its own way was too much for them to bear. They couldn't leave well enough alone and now they're learning just how uncivil we can be.
Lucky for them, we're actually civilized and have no stomach for real violence. Incivility might be the best we can muster. Unlucky for us, they think swear words and milkshakes thrown at fascists should be met with deadly force. They seem to think calling out their incivility is the greatest offense. Unlucky for use, they're cuckoo nutso. So what do we do? I, for one, choose to mock them and, as often as possible, remind them of the terrible things they believe. They refuse to give anybody not agreeing to the status quo any peace. So we should be fucking done letting them off the hook. We should stop giving them excuses. We should tell them, as often as possible, exactly the kind of people they don't believe they are. But they are those people. And they seem content with it. Don't let them be content any more.
For those of you who are somehow reading this because you're more into my digressions than the comic books, let me warn you: I'm going to discuss the comic book now.
Warp might be the most intelligent super villain in the DC Universe!
Actually I'm not quite done not talking about The Brotherhood of Evil!
I don't mean to suggest that the people who fled one kind of oppression weren't the best and kindest people in the world! The only reason I said all the awesome people wound up in California is because I'm from California and my family is pretty awesome. Don't worry! I can see all of the erasure in the above statement! It's just sometimes, you're speaking about a thing and you can't get bogged down by small details like Native American genocide or blatant anti-Chinese laws enacted in San Francisco (pretty much the coolest place in the U.S. (at least before the tech boom fucking turned it into a capitalist fascist run by tech start-ups and the angels who finance them)). The main point was that some people become comfortable with a status quo that oppresses others. And instead of fighting it, people flee from it. The people who flee often do so because they have their own status quo they want to enact and it's rarely one that provides opportunity for everybody. At least in the modern view, I tend to think (and hope it's more than hope and fantasy and wishful thinking) that those fleeing small town bigotries into big cities are actually more compassionate toward the entirety of humanity. We still make lots of mistakes but the key point is that we're trying to do better. When people discuss locking up immigrants at the border, you can either fight against the injustice and racism inherent in the entire process or simply shrug your shoulders like a douchebag and try to sound super smart by saying, "Well, they should have thought about that before they came here!" As if everybody in the world has access to media that somehow preempts the two hundred years of American propaganda that we're willing to accept the hungry and the tired and those yearning to breathe free.
I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 70s and the reality of the world that existed around me at the time was fucking Star Trek: The Next Generation compared to what's going on in 2019. We had station ID breaks on KTVU Channel 2 out of San Francisco that would show a kid running around and playing and introducing the viewer into their world that would end with the kid saying, "I'm proud to be a Chinese American!", or "I'm proud to be a black American!" It's the kind of thing that would get so many people in a huff now and yet it was a simple and effective means to introduce younger viewers to the heterogeneity of their community. And now, in 2019, we have Comicsgate who can't stand to be reminded that people other than white people can be protagonists. It boggles my mind that people can get so upset over shit that won't make a millimeter wave on the cultural yacht they were born on. Fucking grow up, assholes. Not everything is about you.
I think I was going to say more things about erasure! I don't mean to make light of it since it's absolutely a strategy used to disenfranchise groups or exclude them from social movements. But it's your go-to argument against everything you read, you're not going to make many friends. Lots of essays or articles or arguments need to be specific and they can't include every situation or group in the specific argument being made. Maybe it's tough to accept laser focused arguments on the Internet when the audience is harder to gauge. I know peanut allergies exist and they're deadly but I still stick the knife I just used for peanut butter in the preserves. Not because I don't give a fuck but because I know the audience using my apricot preserves. But if I were to mention this on the Internet, everybody who knows nothing about the context of my preserves and my audience and my entire existence would jump all over me saying things like, "That's really irresponsible!" and "You're going to kill somebody!" and "Apricot? You fucking monster!" I usually hate analogies but sometimes they're fun. The general problem with analogies is that people don't use them to help clarify arguments; they use them to try to simplify their argument into something nobody can disagree with. But by that time, the relationship between the actual argument and the analogy is tenuous at best! But I think my peanut butter allergy analogy is pretty rock solid!
Hey! You know who's diverse?! The Brotherhood of Evil! They have a French gorilla and a British woman and a bald white guy (also French but what can you do? This team was all up in France and shit) and a brain in a jar. Hopefully Brain was African or Chinese or Pakistani. Maybe he was also autistic. He's enough of a cypher to allow any reader to identify with him, I guess. He's definitely gay! Unless he's into bestiality. One of those reasons is why he winds up fucking the French gorilla.
Hmm, maybe not making it clear what Brain's intent was was a mistake by DC because doesn't that just amplify anti-gay sentiment by associating it actual deviant behaviors? If DC did make it clear and I'm the one who's obfuscating the matter, I should probably shut up. The Brain and Mallah are definitely gay for each other's human dicks. The fact that Mallah's dick is gorilla and Brain's dick is non-existent shouldn't hamper their love.
The Brotherhood of Evil are being set up by some guy named Toulon. There was a lot of narration boxes that explained it but I was too busy thinking, "How is Brain going to suck Mallah's cock?" So all I know is that Toulon managed to fuck up Warp's powers and he teleported the Brotherhood to a strange world.
I don't mean to suggest that the people who fled one kind of oppression weren't the best and kindest people in the world! The only reason I said all the awesome people wound up in California is because I'm from California and my family is pretty awesome. Don't worry! I can see all of the erasure in the above statement! It's just sometimes, you're speaking about a thing and you can't get bogged down by small details like Native American genocide or blatant anti-Chinese laws enacted in San Francisco (pretty much the coolest place in the U.S. (at least before the tech boom fucking turned it into a capitalist fascist run by tech start-ups and the angels who finance them)). The main point was that some people become comfortable with a status quo that oppresses others. And instead of fighting it, people flee from it. The people who flee often do so because they have their own status quo they want to enact and it's rarely one that provides opportunity for everybody. At least in the modern view, I tend to think (and hope it's more than hope and fantasy and wishful thinking) that those fleeing small town bigotries into big cities are actually more compassionate toward the entirety of humanity. We still make lots of mistakes but the key point is that we're trying to do better. When people discuss locking up immigrants at the border, you can either fight against the injustice and racism inherent in the entire process or simply shrug your shoulders like a douchebag and try to sound super smart by saying, "Well, they should have thought about that before they came here!" As if everybody in the world has access to media that somehow preempts the two hundred years of American propaganda that we're willing to accept the hungry and the tired and those yearning to breathe free.
I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 70s and the reality of the world that existed around me at the time was fucking Star Trek: The Next Generation compared to what's going on in 2019. We had station ID breaks on KTVU Channel 2 out of San Francisco that would show a kid running around and playing and introducing the viewer into their world that would end with the kid saying, "I'm proud to be a Chinese American!", or "I'm proud to be a black American!" It's the kind of thing that would get so many people in a huff now and yet it was a simple and effective means to introduce younger viewers to the heterogeneity of their community. And now, in 2019, we have Comicsgate who can't stand to be reminded that people other than white people can be protagonists. It boggles my mind that people can get so upset over shit that won't make a millimeter wave on the cultural yacht they were born on. Fucking grow up, assholes. Not everything is about you.
I think I was going to say more things about erasure! I don't mean to make light of it since it's absolutely a strategy used to disenfranchise groups or exclude them from social movements. But it's your go-to argument against everything you read, you're not going to make many friends. Lots of essays or articles or arguments need to be specific and they can't include every situation or group in the specific argument being made. Maybe it's tough to accept laser focused arguments on the Internet when the audience is harder to gauge. I know peanut allergies exist and they're deadly but I still stick the knife I just used for peanut butter in the preserves. Not because I don't give a fuck but because I know the audience using my apricot preserves. But if I were to mention this on the Internet, everybody who knows nothing about the context of my preserves and my audience and my entire existence would jump all over me saying things like, "That's really irresponsible!" and "You're going to kill somebody!" and "Apricot? You fucking monster!" I usually hate analogies but sometimes they're fun. The general problem with analogies is that people don't use them to help clarify arguments; they use them to try to simplify their argument into something nobody can disagree with. But by that time, the relationship between the actual argument and the analogy is tenuous at best! But I think my peanut butter allergy analogy is pretty rock solid!
Hey! You know who's diverse?! The Brotherhood of Evil! They have a French gorilla and a British woman and a bald white guy (also French but what can you do? This team was all up in France and shit) and a brain in a jar. Hopefully Brain was African or Chinese or Pakistani. Maybe he was also autistic. He's enough of a cypher to allow any reader to identify with him, I guess. He's definitely gay! Unless he's into bestiality. One of those reasons is why he winds up fucking the French gorilla.
Hmm, maybe not making it clear what Brain's intent was was a mistake by DC because doesn't that just amplify anti-gay sentiment by associating it actual deviant behaviors? If DC did make it clear and I'm the one who's obfuscating the matter, I should probably shut up. The Brain and Mallah are definitely gay for each other's human dicks. The fact that Mallah's dick is gorilla and Brain's dick is non-existent shouldn't hamper their love.
The Brotherhood of Evil are being set up by some guy named Toulon. There was a lot of narration boxes that explained it but I was too busy thinking, "How is Brain going to suck Mallah's cock?" So all I know is that Toulon managed to fuck up Warp's powers and he teleported the Brotherhood to a strange world.
Hmm, looks like Earth-11 to me!
I know this takes place after Crisis on Infinite Earths and Earth-11 shouldn't exist but it does! Maybe this story takes place before Crisis? Maybe when the story reveals they're on Earth-11, the editor will provide a note, "*This story takes place before Crisis on Infinite Earths! -- Know-it-all Knobby!"
Mallah introduces himself to Tin, the leader of the good guys, I guess?, by saying, "We're the Brotherhood!" I suppose I'd shorten the name of my organization when I met new people too if it were called The Brotherhood of Evil. Unless the new guy I was introducing myself to was like Kim Jong-un or Donald Trump or Mark Zuckerberg.
I'm so tuned in to world events that I first typed "Mark Zupperberg" and couldn't figure out why it looked wrong.
Mallah introduces himself to Tin, the leader of the good guys, I guess?, by saying, "We're the Brotherhood!" I suppose I'd shorten the name of my organization when I met new people too if it were called The Brotherhood of Evil. Unless the new guy I was introducing myself to was like Kim Jong-un or Donald Trump or Mark Zuckerberg.
I'm so tuned in to world events that I first typed "Mark Zupperberg" and couldn't figure out why it looked wrong.
Welcome to my new preschool, Tiny Tots Fucktown.
You might want to be upset with me for sexualizing young children but I'm not the fucking monster who made that advertisement.
Ad Exec #1: "What if we show a guy building the model with a bunch of hot women getting wet over how well he's done it?"
Ad Exec #2 Who is in Prison Now: "What if they were little kids?!"
Was Earth-11 the one where DC put Tin Tin after they bought the rights? I mean, I don't know if they ever bought the rights but this guy is definitely Tintin, right?
Ad Exec #1: "What if we show a guy building the model with a bunch of hot women getting wet over how well he's done it?"
Ad Exec #2 Who is in Prison Now: "What if they were little kids?!"
Was Earth-11 the one where DC put Tin Tin after they bought the rights? I mean, I don't know if they ever bought the rights but this guy is definitely Tintin, right?
He also rides a big white dog that he has yet to call Snowy but it's only a matter of panels.
Trapped on a world about to be destroyed (in a worse way than Tintin and his cohorts know! Crisis is coming! Or came? No, no! I sometimes forget comic books can tell tales from the past! Although weren't writers supposed to completely ignore the Pre-Crisis universe once Crisis on Infinite Earths completed? Or why even fucking bother?!), The Brotherhood of Evil decide to help Tintin and his rebels take back control from some guy called Minos. But they're only doing it for their own selfish ends. You might remember how their name has "evil" tacked onto the end.
You might have thought "cutting them down like grass" was the correct phrase and "mowing them down like paper mache" is stupid but this is Earth-11, dumb dumb.
Paper mache is how you spelled "papier-mâché" before you had the Internet.
There might some other difference in this comic book due to the place in time it was written:
There might some other difference in this comic book due to the place in time it was written:
Fuck. Now I'm horny.
The Brotherhood help Tintin and his friends steal a space ark from their enemies so that Tintin and his friends can survive the destruction of Earth-11. Never mind what happens to the people of Earth who weren't offered the opportunity to become one of Tintin's group. In payment for their help, The Brotherhood of Evil are helped back to their own Earth where they can continue to be weird and impotent.
The conclusion of the story has something to do with Doctor Mist and the Global Guardians helping make the universe a better place by saving Tintin (somehow! I mean, Crisis, right?! What the fuck?), getting some guy named Toulon killed (he's only "some guy" to me because sometimes these espionage plots are just too convoluted with too many normal characters I don't care about), and getting the Brotherhood of Evil killed. They fail in getting the Brotherhood killed but seem content with their other machinations. Plus, I'm sure Doctor Mist was happy to get a small role in this comic book to pay for his bowel cancer treatments.
Teen Titans Spotlight #11: The Brotherhood of Evil Rating: B-. You know I don't put any thought into the grades I give these comic books, right? You know this isn't really a review site and just a way for me to enjoy my time reading comic books while journaling, right? You know my nemesis is still the Weird Science comics blog, right? What a bunch of squares!
The conclusion of the story has something to do with Doctor Mist and the Global Guardians helping make the universe a better place by saving Tintin (somehow! I mean, Crisis, right?! What the fuck?), getting some guy named Toulon killed (he's only "some guy" to me because sometimes these espionage plots are just too convoluted with too many normal characters I don't care about), and getting the Brotherhood of Evil killed. They fail in getting the Brotherhood killed but seem content with their other machinations. Plus, I'm sure Doctor Mist was happy to get a small role in this comic book to pay for his bowel cancer treatments.
Teen Titans Spotlight #11: The Brotherhood of Evil Rating: B-. You know I don't put any thought into the grades I give these comic books, right? You know this isn't really a review site and just a way for me to enjoy my time reading comic books while journaling, right? You know my nemesis is still the Weird Science comics blog, right? What a bunch of squares!
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