Darkstars #2

Darkstars had adult coloring book covers before it was cool to be an adult who colors.

Funny how we're lots of years of continuity into the DC Universe by 1992 and nobody ever mentioned the Darkstars before now. You'd think Hal Jordan would have, at least once, mumbled, "Fucking Darkstar sons of bitches." But no! Never! At least as far as I know. Maybe Hal talked about the Darkstars all the time! It's not like I ever read more than a few dozen Green Lantern comic books prior to 1992! One of them was the one where Guy Gardner gets fucked up by using Hal's lantern, sent to the Phantom Zone, and later winds up with brain damage.

Speaking of Guy's brain damage, every fucking character in the DC Universe who ever called Guy an arrogant prick was an ableist asshole. The guy was dealing with a traumatic brain injury! And eventually Batman punches him directly in the brain injury causing him to develop a completely different personality and everybody is all, "This is okay because Guy is nice now." What a bunch of fucking assholes!

At the end of the last issue, Detective Chicago-head was thrown out of a window by a huge alien. This issue begins exactly where that one left off which might be surprising to people used to reading comic books by Scott Lobdell. They're probably thinking, "What is linearity?! How do time go?! Is Superboy really a living weapon developed by N.O.W.H.E.R.E? I've only been told that 27 times so who can know for sure?"

I guess in Colos's language, "Whoooa!" means "You catch meaty men like a drunk St. Bernard!"

Detective Ketchup-on-a-hot-dog-is-a-crime-head tells the Darkstar that there's an alien distributing drugs in the warehouse. That leads to another scene with somebody going through a window and Colos mistranslating another exclamation.

The Schoolhouse Rock song, "Interjections," must be like an ancient Middle-English epic to this guy.

Colos sees the Chicago-headed cop begin beating the shit out of one of the warehouse workers and just stares at him. At first I thought, "Oh, Colos is pretty brutal but he's incandescent with rage at the brutality of this cop!" And then the logic gears in my brain suddenly caught some traction and stopped spinning uselessly (they've become stripped from years of trying to rationalize the thoughts of Ayn Rand and C.S. Lewis lovers) which caused me to blink and gasp out loud, "Oh no! He's admiring the brutality!" After that, I was so incensed by the idea that people are still supporting cops after all the brutalities they've committed against protesters protesting police brutality that I went on Facebook and defriended four friends who just seemed like the types of asshole that would find any excuse to defend a cop for murdering a suspect during an arrest. You gotta just despise these jack-offs who demand we wait for all the evidence and maybe a trial before judging the cops because everybody is innocent until proven guilty but they don't fucking give a damn that the cops just killed a person who was innocent until proven guilty and never got a trial.

Now I'm super mad at this comic book! I think all shows about cops should have to draw a new genre out of a hat for their next season. Keep all the same character but now instead of Brooklyn 99 taking place in a police station, have it take place in a library. Or now every NCIS takes place at the mall at a Hot Dog On A Stick. Fuck all cop shows forever.

The number one thought of every cop: "Just let me get my hands on this gun!" Also notice they're friends now that Colos saw how well he brutalizes perps? And also, they're "palm-masers." Whew. That's a lot to take in over just a few panels! Especially the "palm-masers."

That fat guy from the cover of Issue #1? I don't think I really talked about him in the last review. He's a big gangster who was cleared of all charges of gangstering by a hot shot lawyer named White. She's one of those ruthless lawyers who gets the job done no matter how unethical the job is because she's awesome. I mean, that's what people who think they're good at arguing think of themselves. They're awesome! But really they're just selfish assholes that don't care what burns as long as they get big bucks and a ton of prestige. Here's a simple way to know if you're one of these asshole types: if you've ever said, "It's not personal; it's just business." Boom. Asshole.

So far Paul is my favorite character in this comic. If you don't speak up and tell your asshole friends that they're being an asshole, you are also an asshole.

Although some of us aren't great at confrontation so to keep from being an asshole yourself, I'll also accept simply ghosting your asshole friend and passively aggressively shining them off whenever they want to get together. That's what I've been doing with my dad because I don't have the emotional wherewithal to confront him about his terrible politics and shitty jokes without also coming completely unhinged about his near total absence throughout my youth and the problems that caused in mine and my sister's relationship with our mother. Fuck that coward. Even as an adult when he thought he could be friends, he proved to be deficient in his ethics and his compassion.

White pulls all the "Everybody needs a defender!" crap that might be true but she still knows what she's doing is making the world a worse place. And if she doesn't do it, somebody else will, so why shouldn't she get her piece of that pie? Besides, maybe a different defense attorney would be even more evil than she is! They might not do any good at all! Paul winds up apologizing to her because he's not as awesome as I thought he was. But he's still better than everybody else so far, aside from Mo. Mo might be all right. It's too early to tell.

You might be thinking, "If it's too early to tell if you like Mo, how can you hate all of those other characters?" Easy! I start off every comic book hating every fucking character. You can't properly review a comic book if you give every aspect of it the benefit of the doubt like those terrible reviewers at the Weird Science blog! I hesitate to even call them reviewers! They're more like synopsisers who don't understand punctuation.

Meanwhile in space, some guy in a ship is being chased by some other mysterious guys and he's having a full blown paranoia attack. I think he's probably Evil Star.

Back on Earth, Darkstar Colos and his new friends stop the Loco drug ring and save the day. Being a comic book, that one sentence lasts for about ten pages of lasers and stupid one-liners. After the battle, Colos takes his buddies to his ship so they can be there when he tells his boss that he solved the case with their help. The boss is all, "Welp, I guess you're Earth's Darkstar then!" And Colos slaps his hand to his face and everybody laughs as the credits roll.

Darkstars #2 Rating: B. The best thing I can say about this comic book so far is that the protagonists actually stop some crime. That's actually high praise from me because too many superhero comic books simply have the hero defending themselves from bad guys set on hurting the hero. You'd think it wouldn't be that hard to write stories about heroes actually doing good and making the world a better place but I've got over one hundred issues of The New Titans that prove it's actually really difficult!