The Authority #4 (August 1999)

Comics were allowed to have villains like this in 1999?

If you don't know what I'm alluding to (and "alluding to" the historical context of this image is all I'm going to do because, you know, it's way easier than actually discussing it intelligently), just go to your local library and research "Yellow Peril." Or maybe don't. Even the term "Yellow Peril" to describe a time when the West was using racist propaganda against Asian nations seems like racist propaganda! If you go to research it anyway, maybe just ask the librarian, in a hushed whisper, for books about the history of Fu Manchu. And maybe don't even say, "Fu Manchu." Spell it out! If you get past spelling out the first name without the librarian throwing you out, they'll probably understand what you're looking for.

If you're a reader who understands the name of this blog, you probably understood the joke about spelling out Fu Manchu's name. If not, just spell it out right now. Just the first name. Out loud. To somebody you love.

Here's the part of the review where I talk about myself (Don't worry. It's not as needlessly personal as the review where I wrote a Dear John letter to my own father). I cried twice today, both times because of cats. No, no! Don't worry! It's nothing sad! It was happy crying. The first time was because I heard the Schoolhouse Rock song, "Mr. Morton." That one always makes me tear up because of the end where they sing, "Now Mr. Morton is happy! And Pearl and the cat are too!" It's so lovely that they include the cat from earlier in the couple's eventual happiness. The second time I cried was during the final episode of Fear the Walking Dead when Daniel and his cat Skidmark were reunited after seven plus years. Stupid cats! I want them all to be happy and not lonely and well loved. They can kill all the birds in the world, for all I care. Stupid birds! They never made me happy! All birds are worth are for reminders of man's limits and metaphors for imprisonment and isolation when people keep them in cages. Except for Corvids. Corvids are cool. But I'd like to see a cat try to take down a Corvid without forever after being attacked by every Corvid in the neighborhood for the next seventeen years.

When we last left The Authority, Midnighter had been Doored onto Gamorra to assassinate Kaizen Gamorra. But first he needs to kick the ass of the super soldier who discovered him.

Midnighter says he knows what this guy will do next. But he's lying.

Midnighter isn't psychic and he's also not very good with expressing himself. Because he doesn't mean he knows what this guy is going to do next. He means he knows how he's going to react to any one of the nearly infinite things the guy might attempt to do next. Maybe that just takes too long to explain when you just want the guy standing in front of you to know that he's already lost the fight. "I'm like a quantum computer with infinite parallel processing power! I have calculated every variation of the near infinite variations of how this could go, right down to the possibility that a raccoon could fall on my head just as you attack me, and I know exactly how to react to every single one of those situations in a way that gives me an advantage for the next nearly infinite possibilities that could happen after my reaction (all of those which I've also calculated how to best react to which stems to another near infinite set of choices which I've computed et cetera). You might be thinking, 'You have that kind of brain power and you're using it to win fist fights? Fucking cure cancer, you idiot!' But I've already formulated a response to that possibility too! That response is, 'Go fuck yourself, terrorist! Killing baddies makes me fuck Apollo so hard!'" See? There's just not enough space for a speech bubble that big. So Midnighter just says, "I know what you're going to do, loser!"

Midnighter goes on to win the fight and a raccoon does not fall on his head. So that was a waste of computational brain power. But he knew what he'd have done had it happened and that's satisfying in its own right, right? Isn't that why we all spend so much time fantasizing about the way conversations we'll be having later will go because we're so anxious about talking to another human being that we try to perfect the conversation before we even know what's going to be said? We all do that, right?

Oh, also when we last left The Authority (which was Issue #3!), Los Angeles was being bombed by human super men freefalling out of the sky and smashing buildings with their faces. That might sound like a terrible job but your choices of profession are limited when you're grown in a vat by a Yellow Peril mastermind who hates the rest of humanity. You either launch yourself out of a teleporter to smash buildings with your grimacing mug or you slather some lipstick on and join the other concubines. No wonder the guy's crashing head first into stone walls have such big smiles on their faces. They could have gotten the other job!

"Yahoo! At least we're not sucking Kaizen's Yellow Peril dick!"

Six members of The Authority against six hundred (estimated) super powered terrorists. Luckily they haven't wasted any space on the team for somebody like Aquaman. Sure, Swift comes close. But at least she can fly and get right in there on the action. I suppose Aquaman can fly too if the fight is close enough to the ocean for him to ride in on a breaching whale or standing astride two flying fish. Man, now I want to see The Authority's version of an Aquaman!

One of their team is The Doctor who is basically a guy on peyote so tuned in to the universe that he can do whatever the fuck he wants with it. He's like The Fonz and every particle in the universe is a lady Milwaukee high schooler whose panties drop at the snap of his fingers. He casts a little spell and whammo! three hundred terrorists are fucking him in the first stall of the men's bathroom in Arnold's.

Magic makes you come hard.

Have you ever wondered if The Fonz was actually a virgin? Is he just cool because he's actually fingered a chick while the other nerds have only ever done over the sweater stuff? Mr. C's probably the only character on the show getting any on the regular. Oh, and Mrs. C too! I bet she fucked Malph's dad in high school. She was frisky, remember?

Of course you don't remember! Unless you remember from MeTV, I guess.

Apollo calls for back-up and Swift arrives. But knowing she's just Swift, she lets Jenny know that if she's Apollo's back-up, she's going to need back-up. The Engineer would be that back-up but she's busy trying to figure out how to make engineering deadly. So the only one left is Jack Hawksmoor.

Jack Hawksmoor was conceived when his parents kicked a puppy?

As long as Jack Hawksmoor currently has his dick inside of a city, he's invulnerable and super strong and kind of sassy. But he still can't kill enough terrorists to save the day by himself. At least The Engineer figures out how to kill loads of terrorists at once by projecting her nanotech blood around her in a force field of tiny knives that can slice things up at an atomic level. That probably still leaves about 200 more terrorists. 199 if you count the one whose skull exploded around Hawksmoor's fist.

Jenny and Midnighter have a little conversation via their nanotech implants and Jenny reveals the total number of terrorists is 400. So I guess that means about 99 are left. My math wasn't that far off. You know, in the scheme of things and considering I just took a wild fucking guess at how many there were.

Midnighter has discovered Kaizen's cloning procedure is way bigger than he imagined (which must be pretty big because Midnighter can imagine near infinite things). Kaizen discovers Midnighter discovering his cloning chamber and accidentally gives Midnighter an idea about how to defeat him. Idiot. He should have kept his stupid Yellow Peril mouth shut! Hasn't he seen an episode of House? As long as people keep blathering on, you're going to say something that sparks an idea in the mind of some autistic quantum-computer-brained sociopath nearby!

Jenny's also doing good work with electricity. I didn't want anybody thinking she wasn't pulling her 95 pound soaking wet weight. But her juice is running out and the terrorists just keep coming. So she needs Midnighter to execute his plan to execute the clones as quickly as possible.

I hope Midnighter's dad wasn't a veterinarian.

Midnighter convinces The Carrier to exit Bleedspace and enter Earthspace so that he can ram Gamorra Tower with the ship. The Carrier is something like fifty miles long or high or something so it easily gets the job done, splattering Kaizen Gamorra on the windshield in the process. And I guess all the terrorists are killed in Los Angeles.

You personally? Maybe three?

After the fight, Jenny Sparks learns from King and Trelane that the United Nations will be sending in troops to secure Gamorra Island. They'll find the cloning machines and the teleport system. She seems happy about that for some reason. I guess it's better than the USA having them. But the United States still has some kind of veto right in the UN, don't they?! She thinks that they'll only use them for the good of the world simply because the United Nations knows that The Authority is watching them. I guess that's logical enough. Most people only act kind and moral because they fear the consequences of not acting that way. I mean, most people who are kind and moral, not most people. Most people are absolute abject assholes willing to do and say whatever the fuck will get them whatever the fuck they want. Sure, they'll pretend they're religious or patriotic or upstanding simply because they know a thin veneer of ethical lies will hide the stinking reek of a ramshackle den of sins beneath it. From most people. Because, again, most people are assholes and they want other people to believe they're not assholes so they're willing to believe the other assholes' lies about not being assholes. It's mostly assholes pretending not to be assholes all the way down. And I'm fucking sick of it. I hope The Authority ends the fucking world before this is over. And I don't mean the world in the comic book! Please, The Authority, please be real and come put us all out of our misery soon!

The Authority #4 Rating: A. The lesson this comic book tries to teach is this: violence redeems because assholes don't listen to words because words don't hurt them at all. Also assholes don't believe in anything so words are useless. They only use words because they know words mean something to non-assholes. The words don't mean anything to themselves though. They'll say anything to try to get people to accept them and their terrible beliefs. But they only use words when they're outnumbered. Once they've convinced enough people to give them enough power, they stop lying and just start doing whatever they want. So congratulations to all the dumb assholes in America who voted for the assholes who now will do whatever best suits their interests! Because they don't need words anymore. You gave them power! Good job, fuckwits! Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea. Oh, wait, I forgot you are fuckwits. Let me say it more plainly: Eat shit.

The Authority #3 (July 1999)

"Protect the dick!"

The Authority are battling some crazy warmonger old man and that made me think about a thing I've been planning to do to an old man! For some time now, I've been toying with writing a letter to my dad which wasn't actually a letter to my dad but an expression of the tsunami of feelings he left me with after leaving when I was two, and his subsequent incursions into my life, and eventual weight of the bags I'd been packing for so many years. This is what I have so far, although it's not very letter-like:

— — — — —

Father,
I wonder if you truly understand that you're eventually going to die without ever speaking with me again. Last time I saw you was in 2019 when your nieces (my cousins) were in town and I drove them up to see you. I stood in the living room, behind the furniture, behind the people, skulking, seething maybe, possibly just bored, definitely petting the dog. I'd stopped wanting to visit some months before this. But it was a last chance. A test, if you will, to see if maybe a glimmer of the man who told me at an early age that if our country ever brought the draft back, he'd drive me to Canada personally. The person who dragged us out of Every Which Way But Loose because too many men got punched by too many monkeys. The man who existed before he became consumed with watching post-9/11 war footage, expressing his fascination with this modern media experience of war, goggle-eyed at the tube, filled with too much excitement to express any condemnation. At this family get together, you said the thing you always say, the thing that makes me wonder what media you listen to, what reality you perceive: "We can't even make jokes anymore." I should have asked you what you meant. What kind of jokes can't you make? I say jokes all the time on the Internet. What do you fear will happen if you tell your jokes? Why are your jokes so dangerous, so damaging? Do you understand their power yet deny it at the same time? But then I remembered as he told a joke: he still tells jokes. Nobody has stopped him from telling jokes. What could he possibly mean then? If you can't joke, why then did you say, "They installed yet a third disabled ramp at the nearby plaza. I guess that one's for the trans." You laughed at your own words then so I assume that was a joke.

You say you want to be able to say whatever you want but they won't let you. And yet you always say whatever you want. But I think what you really want is for nobody to actually hear you. You want a time when people were too intimidated to say to you, "That's not funny." You want a time when people wouldn't stop being your friend because you loved telling jokes in poor taste, jokes that hurt people around you that you didn't know you were hurting, jokes that perpetuated systemic bias and racism. Because they never said anything. Maybe they even politely chuckled while hiding their true feelings about you. But now they have started to say things and your response isn't to examine why you find certain things funny that others do not. Your response is simply, "We can't even make jokes anymore."

I remember being out with you and your fourth wife, eating breakfast. Your fourth wife was complaining about what my niece (your granddaughter) was watching on television, iCarly or Hannah Montana. "Nothing on that show is realistic," she said. I retorted (joked, even, some might say), "Just like that news channel you watch." She looked at me as if I had slapped her. As if I had taken my balls out and slid them slowly across her scrambled eggs. As if I had screamed in her face something terrible inside her head that nobody was supposed to know, reveling in a secret exposed. She looked at me as if I wasn't supposed to make that joke. But I made it. Because I'm not worried about exposing to others what I believe. What jokes are you not telling because people might look at you as if you've slapped them in the face? Why don't you elaborate?

There's a kind of person who declares, "People shouldn't stop being friends with others over political opinions." But you know who says that, right? People with terrible and disgusting political opinions. "Don't judge me on my politics," they will say, as if knowing their politics damn them. "Judge me on the person I show you I am," they say on the witness stand, defending their right to have a relationship with you. As if their politics can somehow be divorced from how they see and treat other people. You grew up in the '60s. So you know. You know better than even I know: everything is political. Every fucking thing. So how am I supposed to judge you free from the America you vote for?

You consistently told me that you loved me. But you showed me that you didn't by defending terrible ideas, by being angry at things that didn't have any impact on your life, by regurgitating Fox News stories about local places that weren't local to you. It's like people were deciding things that you didn't approve of, decisions made to make their communities better, and you were angry they could do that without your stupid fucking opinion, opinions like "They shouldn't have to make cakes for gay people," or "The Washington Redskins isn't a racist name at all. My Indian friend agrees with me." You showed me you didn't love me, you hardly knew me, by supporting ideas that destroyed any government safety nets for people like me who have never been able to fit into society, who can't network, who can barely hold a job, who don't dream a status quo dream of bank accounts and bootstraps.

You once told me money is freedom. I responded, "No, time is freedom." Of course you still disagreed. Because to you, money was time. To me, earning money stole time. I understand what you're saying. Sue, if a person were rich, they could be as free as possible. But you didn't see what I was saying. That the demands to get the kind of money to make you free were too much for me, or simply too unethical. I understand it's easy for some people, for a lot of people. So easy that they don't even see or consider or acknowledge that those who don't fit in exist, those who don't find it easy, those who find it incredibly hard, nearly impossible.

Did you ever really know me? How could you? You missed fifteen formative years. Sometime around when Facebook began, you joined up like everybody. Then on Father's Day, a day I've rarely ever acknowledged because why the fuck would I even know when it was, you posted, "Waiting for the phone to ring." So I posted, "I waited fifteen years for the phone to ring." Did you look like I had slapped you in the face? Was that a joke I shouldn't have made? What shame did I unearth that you decided maybe Facebook wasn't for you and silently disappeared from the platform? Was it too easy for people who know you to expose to so many others the flaws you'd rather they not see? You want to be heard from but you don't want people to hear.

I didn't know you were an alcoholic for most of my childhood. The one time I remember shopping for a Father's Day present for you, probably early on before you completely disappeared in the forests and sand dunes of the Oregon coast, my mother suggested I get you a mixed twelve pack of international beers. I suppose that was a joke too. For her. I found it funny once I realized you were an alcoholic. Not funny as in "Ha ha let's get this person with a crippling addiction some shit that'll keep the addiction going." I found it funny in "You left my mother with two young children because you were drunk and selfish and irresponsible and she decided to give you a little 'Fuck off, prick.'"

I suppose part of the reason I wanted to end our friendship (and that's all it ever was. Me getting to know a guy whom I just happened to call Dad) was that I didn't think you deserved it. My mother was there for me and my sister. But being there meant being there for everything, good and bad. We had conflicts, of course. My sister and my mother no longer talk but she moved away and now lives near you and you get to have an adult relationship with her. All because you abandoned her, and my mother stayed. She stayed for the fights and the conflict and the drama. How is that fair? Maybe I'm being punitive and living out a simple desire to punish you for not being there. My mom lost her daughter; my father can lose his son.

You didn't fucking earn my friendship.

Sincerely,
Your Son.

P.S. I've been to a lot of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings with you. I'm glad you found the support you needed. But the clarity of the program didn't help endear me with you. They say it's a disease. It's a disease that you alone can cure, when you're ready, with the support of a community and the help of the program. But that's the thing, isn't it? You get to choose when your life has become so unmanageable that it's time for the cure. And I get to see that you didn't think your life was too unmanageable when you'd lost your relationship with your family. We weren't enough. And I guess that hurts too. Also, what's up with that 9th Step, buddy? It's possible you made amends to me at some point. But is it actually amends if I don't realize that's what's happening? It couldn't have been that week we spent with your sister (my aunt) in Truckee because you were still drinking then (and, when I look back at that time, it feels like maybe you were trying to say goodbye? Were you thinking of suicide then, Dad?). Did you tick "9th Step with Son" off your list because you talked about getting sober with me while riding in your beat up truck and yelling at me to turn off the tape because the helicopter noises from Joel's "Goodbye, Saigon" struck a PTSD chord? Was it the week we spent on Vancouver Island, the weekend Jerry Garcia died while we were out of touch with civilization? It's possible, I guess, which is why I don't let it bother me too much. But you know what the real last straw was? When I barely spoke with you during the pandemic and when your wife finally contacted me around my birthday, she said, "Your father thought you were mad at him so he was giving you his space." What the fuck, Dad? Your son doesn't speak to you for that long and you don't think, "I wonder if my son is hurting? Why haven't I heard from him? Maybe I should check in?" Enh, never mind. Have a good life.

— — — — —

Of course I'm not sending it to him! That's just for me and every random stranger on the Internet to read!

Swift is barely useful when she kills. Can't imagine what she'd do as a pacifist hero.

Swift shows me exactly what she'd do as a pacifist hero in the panels immediately following her revelation. She hears a couple of hearts beating beneath the rubble that the emergency responders didn't find. I might have a bit of a bias against winged super heroes because I always found Hawkman and Hawkgirl uninteresting and also Hawkman was a gigantic conservative prick. How Ollie, just as useless, never put an arrow in each eye is a testament to Ollie's superpower. His superpower was patience, right? I mean, if all Oliver Queen had was a quiver full of stupid boxing glove arrows, he's even worse than I imagined. No, no. He definitely must have had super patience. It's why he never dropped the arrow for a gun. Those are for the hyperactive kids!

What is Swift doing in that last panel? Is she doing a Jim from The Office?!

Did Bryan Hitch model Swift after Björk? If that's the case then I like Swift much better.

After helping out at the disaster sites (half of London and most of Moscow), The Authority begin planning to infiltrate Gamorra Island. It seems when I asked incredulously how they couldn't just use the Carrier's Door technology to get past the forcefield surrounding Gamora Island, I was asking the right question but probably could have toned down my attitude a bit. Of course they knew about that loophole! Jenny just had to make sure the team didn't rush right into Door and get themselves killed by not having a plan. Or get Swift killed by not having a plan. I think everybody else is pretty much invulnerable. Fuck, she might be too. It might be the only real qualification needed to be on this team.

The Engineer figures out, by projecting Gamorra's brand logo onto the Earth with two of the knots covering London and Moscow, that the next attack will be in Los Angeles. Jackson and Christine, the world liaisons for Stormwatch (now The Authority), have a conference call with Kaizen Gomorra to find out what he's up to. His answer is that he's up to a little bit of terrorism for terrorism's sake. Then he laughs like a lunatic.

Jenny's plan is to protect Los Angeles with most of the gang and send Midnighter onto Gamorra Island to pull Kaizen's teeth and discover his plans. But before he goes, he gets in a quick lesson on The Carrier.

The Doctor probably wants to fuck it.

Midnighter fucks up his mission by kicking the first guy he comes to in the face and not knocking his spine out of his body. The guy takes it and is all, "I don't think you're supposed to do that." But it doesn't really matter because as soon as The Authority get to Los Angeles, so do hundreds of Kaizen Gamorra's super terrorists. I guess L.A. is fucked. But so is Kaizen Gamorra because if Midnighter was captured, it was all part of the plan and Kaizen's about to lose not just his teeth but every other body part that's quite easily snapped off.

The Authority #3 Rating: B+. It's no Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth but what is, really? I'm only halfway through my re-read of Lost in the Funhouse and I've wept at least three times. One may have been partially exacerbated by my Aunt's death last night (and my really well done dramatic reading of the story "Title" out loud. You might be thinking, "Wow! You read a story out loud. Way to do something any person over the age of five can do!" But I have a feeling not even 1% of the population could do what I just did on the fly! Dare I say I'm a reading out loud genius? I'm pretty sure I have a certificate for that from when I was five!).

P.S. My Aunt was quite religious so if what she believed was true, and she's suddenly up in Heaven and able to look down on all of her loved ones, then she just saw me masturbate for the first time in her life (unlife?) today! Gross! Stop looking, Melva!

The Authority #2 (June 1999)

Jenny Sparks sacrificing three children to the 20th Century.

Not all electricity represents Jenny Sparks' actions which is something I had to remind myself as I suddenly thought, "Jenny Sparks is responsible for all the people sent to death in the electric chair!" I was really getting worked up about how awful she is to be behind it when I remembered she just uses the tool of electricity and is sort of the "idea" of electricity but not electricity itself. But Jenny isn't just the new technology which was showcased and introduced to the world at the Chicago's World Fair, she's also the Spirit of the 20th Century! But what, exactly, is that? It's certainly made up of an amalgam of themes and ideas but if I had to pick one, I'd pick the death of the frontier. The 20th Century was the first century in which the humans of Earth had no more places to run from "modern" civilization (while, in many cases, destroying civilizations which already existed in the spaces "modern" people ran to). That meant no longer sneering at the current Church in charge, showing them your bare ass, and heading West. It no longer meant running from debt or warrants or abuse to re-find oneself in a brand new landscape devoid of, while not cultures and peoples (as I've noted and can't note enough, being on the Internet, and not wanting to get yelled at about erasure when I don't really want to explore every tangent of an idea. I'm discussing Western and European culture because they're the Imperialists who ultimately defined the frontier, not as a place without people but a place without white people. And the through line to be discussed when discussing the idea of "The Frontier" unfortunately follows the Imperialists who oppressed the peoples of the Frontiers) completely, the culture and peoples that have oppressed them until escape. That meant the 20th Century was a century where escape was no longer possible which meant we had to be ready to fight. This is also true of the other oppressed cultures but less on their terms, seeing as how their "Frontier" was constantly forced on them by, let's face it, mostly British Imperialists as they pushed and shoved them from place to place (when they weren't killing them). So Jenny's Spirit of the 20th Century can be thought of as one where people feel their backs against the wall and dig in for a long fight.

Although the 20th Century was a long time (100 years even!) so, eventually, people began seeing that fighting often was a no-win proposition. They sought ways to escape within the system. Modernist writing contains a lot of stories where the climax isn't a protagonist winning the battle they've been fighting but escaping the horrible system they've found themselves within: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Catch-22, possibly The Grapes of Wrath depending on your reading of it, I suppose. And what about postmodern thought?! Is Jenny that as well? Has Jenny escaped history and language and gone beyond the discussion of whether or not God exists to wind up well on the other side with a "Who cares?" and a satisfying shrug?

Are these questions Ellis answers? I've never read the earlier stuff that maybe explains Jenny a bit better when she's first introduced. And I don't remember this series that well. Will he get in the weeds about her "Spirit of the 20th Century" representation? Or will she just make loads of lightning happen?

"You wouldn't like the 20th Century angry!"

Jenny must be able to fart nukes, right?

The Gamorran terrorists have descended on London by the hundreds. To save as many people as possible, The Doctor walls off the section of London where the terrorists landed. They're trapped inside his magic box while the people of London who have yet to be killed are safely outside of it. The Authority, of course, remain inside to burn, blast, electrocute, punch the brains of, and disintegrate the Gomarran army. You'd think Jenny and Apollo kill most of the terrorists but I think Midnighter does that. Swift certainly doesn't. What the fuck can she even do?! She doesn't even carry an antique mace!

One side of The Doctor's box remains open to the Thames so that Apollo can dump them in.

For Off-Menu fans only: Are they going to defeat them by giving them all diabetes?

Once they're in the Thames, Jenny Sparks introduces herself to them. She claims to be 100 year old electricity. Is that as dangerous as new electricity? It's probably more dangerous, right? She says she's never, over 100 years, hated anybody as much as these terrorists. I guess Jenny Sparks didn't date much.

That was a cynical comment, wasn't it? To suggest that people would hate most people they once dated? I don't hate anybody I've ever dated. Mostly I just don't feel anything toward any of them in hardly any way at all. Oh wait! Is that the Spirit of the 20th Century? Ennui?!

For all the readers new to these characters and who didn't make the connection with the look and the grim attitude, Ellis gives Midnighter a scene where he explains that he's an over-the-top version of Batman.

Midnighter kills this guy just to show how he's different from Batman (who would have just given the guy so many internal injuries that he dies later at the hospital under the doctor's care and so, technically, his death can't be directly attributed to Batman).

If soldiers are dreaming of becoming what Midnighter is, then I think we should arrest all soldiers and/or throw them in insane asylums.

The soldiers wear something called "teleport netting" which I'm guessing is some kind of undergarments that allow them to be teleported. My reading comprehension is off the charts. Most of the bodies, dead or alive, begin teleporting back to Gamorra Island. But Apollo has destroyed the netting on one of the terrorists and pursues him as he tries to fly back on his own. But Jenny knows where the terrorist is going because of the intel she was given by The Weatherman and Christine Trelane. They don't need to chase one little insect with broken teleport wings. They teleport themselves to above Gamorra Island using The Carrier's Door technology. Gamorra Island has surrounded itself with a force field that even they can't get through. See, Kaizen saw how his terrorists got their asses handed to them and he was all, "Wut? Call off the Earth Tattoo! Let's rethink some shit!"

So they can't just open a Door past the forcefield?!

The team decompress aboard the Carrier for the last few pages where they get naked, shower, towel off sexily, and all the other stuff I'm making up in my own head. I mean, The Engineer does get naked meaning that she's more naked than she usually is when she's just covered with nano-slime. And I assume Jenny got naked at some point because she spends the whole time talking with Apollo while toweling her hair dry. She tells Apollo how she hates being a leader but she also hates not being a leader. Because not being a leader means there's nobody to save the world and then to change the world. So, being that there's nobody else, and seeing as how she's literally the 20th Century, Jenny Sparks decides to change the world into the 21st Century. But first she has to kill all those jerk on Gamorra Island.

The Authority #2 Ranking: A. This is one of those comics that can be read in just a few seconds if you don't really take your time and appreciate the art. Because there are whole sections with hardly any words at all as The Authority beat the shit out of things. But even so, it doesn't skimp on character building and discussions of why The Authority exist. Ellis squeezes those things into the corners so the reader feels they're not missing something by not having read earlier issues of Stormwatch. As long as none of the characters say, "Remember that time we had that five page orgy where we were all naked and our hair and other random objects never obscured the reader's line of sight to our naughty bits? That was fun!", I don't mind never reading Stormwatch.

The Authority #1 (May 1999)

The Authority is an anagram for Uh, a Titty Hero.

The author of this series isn't the Warren Ellis who was a member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds but the comic book writer who has a whole fan website built for him, So Many of Us! I guess because he has so many fans. Let's take a look at it! Oh look! All of his friends have written stories about their lives with Warren! Here's one that says . . . oh. Um, you know what? Never mind all that! I'm sure he's a great guy to, um, male presenting fans?

Oh hey! Look at The Engineers' nipples! Wow! Why do I feel so gross all of a sudden?! It's not like Bryan Hitch has a website dedicated to his grooming women and gaslight mentoring. Does he?! I'm afraid to look. His wiki says as of ten years ago he was married to Joanne and they had five kids. You know what? I'm not going to look any deeper than that. I'm just going to enjoy The Engineer's nipples whenever he draws them and assume Warren Ellis's script didn't read, "Make sure The Engineer's nipples stick out like that photo I sent you of the young lady I've been grooming . . . I mean speaking with on the Warren Ellis forums."

I picked up The Authority when it was published because I adored Transmetropolitan. I bought Transmetropolitan #1 just before I began traveling cross country in my Volkswagen van. But then I forgot about it until I settled down in Lincoln, Nebraska and began shopping at a local comic book store there. I began reading it again at Issue #13. Eventually I'll probably do reviews of those but then I'll have to read the first year of issues via a trade and I don't like the idea of that. As for that first issue I purchased, it was the first issue at the front of a short box of comic books that my cat Judas began using as a scratching post. As he did that, his claws would go through the handle's hole. When I eventually realized what was happening, the Mylar bag was shredded and so was the front of the comic book. My sweet, sweet boy! Even then, he could never raise my ire.

One time Judas jumped up on the arm of the couch where I was sitting to leap up to a shelf above my head. He didn't realize that my arm was on the arm of the couch and he put his full weight on his back foot on my arm as he propelled himself upward. Being a large cat with long back claws, blood instantly began welling from my arm. I looked at the deep gouge and immediately got super emotional and said, "I'll have this scar from my boy forever!" Pretty sure I cried a bit from my love of that cat and not from the pain. Totally not from the pain. And, yes, I do still have that scar and I look at it lovingly every now and again. My boy Judas was my little kitty soulmate and I'll miss him forever.

I should probably read The Authority now. Will I mention Warren Ellis's predatory behavior as much as I mentioned Gerard Jones's? Let's find out together, shall we?!

Fuck. I just went to scan something and just realized my $100 comic book is missing a staple in the spine. No, it didn't lose that staple. It never had two staples! What the fuck?! Does that make it more mint than mint because it has two less holes in every page than a mint comic book?!

Yeah, you know what? There isn't.

Not that I had any expectations of anybody saving the world because most people don't give a shit about anything but themselves. But I did think that the majority of Americans had enough self-interest to not hand over their country to a bunch of despotic, self-interested, hateful assholes who are going to strip it for parts while their base foam at the mouth from the hate they're fomenting. I guess that's pretty much the status quo when you think about it for any time at all which they don't want you to do which is why they're practically making it illegal to not possess a smart phone.

Oh wait. This story takes place in 1999! Let me pretend it's 1999 again! Oh, so nice! Cost of living and rent allows you to career slum! When did that stop being a viable option? Fucking greedy-ass landlords, most likely. Price gouging too, sure, but those fucking landlords can get fucked every second of every day. And not good fucked! I'm not wishing them super hot orgies! I want them fucking Inquisitional torture devices and rabid wombats.

The story begins in Moscow where a bunch of super terrorists wearing all black except for the silver cock ring logo on the front smash into the city and begin eye-blasting everything to smithereens. If I remember correctly, they're from some terrorist island or something run by that old guy on the cover in the Issue Number box.

How did Bryan Hitch know what we were all going to look like in 2025?!

As you can see from the panel above, the terrorists aren't just eye-fucking buildings; they're also disintegrating Russians simply by looking at them.

Sitting back and watching the destruction from half a world away in New York City, Christine Trelane and The Weatherman complain about how they'd rather not just be sitting back and watching the destruction. They used to run an organization called Stormwatch but the U.N. stopped funding it. So now, as the first panel I scan reminded us, there ain't no more heroes gonna come save the day, buddy. If villains want to run rampant on Russia for no reason whatsoever, they can!

I never read Stormwatch because it began life as an Image book and I was not interested in the early '90s Image art style. The cover for Stormwatch #1 might scream, "This is the best art to ever be published by a comic book company in the history of comic books and you should buy 18 copies!", to some people. But I look at the cover and all I see is the parody comic book, Doom Force. I do wish I'd picked up a copy now that I do write-ups on these things because I've been assured that Brandon Choi was The New 52 Ann Nocenti of '90s Image. Or maybe J.T. Krul? Scott Lobdell? I don't know who to compare him to stylistically. I'm just trying to say that I heard his writing was not good.

I've never read Brandon Choi so I'm caveating that statement! It's not an opinion of mine and I hate floating other people's opinions. I'm just saying, "I heard some shit, dude." Also, I think my friend Doom Bunny once read some of Wild C.A.T.S. #1 to me and I retched about five times while listening to it.

Christine Trelane points out that most of Stormwatch are dead and Skywatch, their space satellite headquarters thing, doesn't exist anymore either. So their current plan? Pray that New York doesn't get destroyed as well. The Weatherman does mention the existence of Stormwatch Black whose existence he's not supposed to mention but he mentions them anyway because he's all, "They don't exist anymore!"

Surprise, surprise! They were just busy!

I bet Jenny Sparks wouldn't have been too busy to save New York. But Moscow? Shrug emoji shrug emoji shrug emoji eggplant.

Jenny Sparks is a millennium baby. That means she's reborn every century (for some reason) with powers that replicate the most cutting edge technology of the time. So this version of Jenny Sparks has electric powers being that electricity was a big deal in the late 1800s and early 1900s. But her powers are super outdated currently because it's 1999. Also she's almost dead (even though I don't think it absolutely works that way. Who knows? We'll find out together! Taco emoji).

The super terrorists come from the Island of Gamorra, ruled by Kaizen Gamorra (that old guy!). The cock ring symbol represents he and his two brothers (whom he killed decades ago). The island's main export is terrorists. I'm not sure how that's a lucrative business. I guess he hires them out to nations too cowardly to openly attack their enemies? Or maybe he's just psychotic and power mad. His plan is to scar the cock ring logo onto the Earth to show that the Earth belongs to Gamorra, LLC. Moscow was the first knot. He now sends his troops to create the second.

Jenny collects all of that data I just mentioned and takes it back to her team on The Carrier.

So is that the team's actual name? "A Higher Authority"?

Stormwatch Black consisted of Jenny Sparks, Jack Hawksmoor, and Swift. While they were in hiding, they made some friends: Midnighter, Apollo, The Doctor (a new one), and The Engineer (and another new one). And I guess the Carrier? That's a team member too, right?

Jack Hawksmoor, who can physically and psychically commune with cities, visits Moscow to assess the damage and gather intel. I always liked Jack because he runs around barefoot just like me! Although in my older age, I find myself buying a lot more shoes than I ever did before. I still go around barefoot when I can but I also browse the women's shoe sections whenever I'm in a used clothing store. My feet are relatively small for a guy but they're still pretty big (and wide!) for women's shoes. So I don't find a lot that fit me. But when I do, I snatch them up because men's shoes are fucking boring as hell. Women's shoes are way more adorable and aesthetically pleasing. I never really thought about it much until many, many years ago, I discovered a pair of pink KangaROOS that fit absolutely perfectly. And they were pink! And they had pockets in the shoes! I wore those shoes until they fell apart. Man, I miss them!

After meeting some of the new players whom I figure I don't need to introduce because this comic book is 25 years old and everybody loves the gay guy and the drug druid and Angela Nips, they determine that Gamorra will next be attacking London, England. Now that's a city they need to rescue! Probably.

Sure, some of London gets destroyed. But not nearly as much as Moscow. Authority saves the day and introduces themselves to the world and says, "Game over." Which is cool somehow. I guess? What was the game? Usually I'd scan that last page because it shows them all posed and I wouldn't have had to say what Jenny said and Angela's nips are just popping like crazy. But that whole staple thing and all, I figure I should just get this comic book back in the bag with the board already!

The Authority #1 Ranking: A. The story is set (and I guess sort of continuing from the previous Stormwatch volumes) and it's good enough for me. Love the varied characters. Love the big action. Enjoy the small details like Jack's feet and Angela's, um, nanos. I'm ready to settle in and enjoy this! At least the first 12 issues, anyway. After that, Mark Millar takes over and, well, maybe I'll still like it! But I won't like liking it seeing as how he blocked me on Twitter! Ew, I'll let him have it real good if he makes any terrible writing choices!

I guess Planetary began about the same time as this. If I knew where they were stored, I'd read them right along with these. But I don't because I'm a disorganized mess.

Elongated Man: Europe '92 #4 (April 1992)

Sonar trapped in Ralph's bunghole.

So far I've enjoyed this series but I'm also sort of glad it's over. I don't imagine Elongated Man could make four issues interesting without Sue Dibny, and I don't think Sue can carry much more than four. She's adorable and all but she's still married to the nose twitcher. And Sonar?! Please. Why'd I even mention him? Never more than an F-tier Green Lantern foe, he's only elevated in this series because his cohorts are all ridiculous foods from various European countries. Sadly, no villain based on a Communion Wafer attacks any of the conferences.

Last issue ended with Ralph being stalked by the Wurstwaffe, a mob of German supervillains that dress like sausages. This issue begins with them beating him senseless with a massive German penis.

I just wanted to show the German guy's cock. Dibny's head is way too far out of frame.

These German chodes reveling in violence remind me of some certain half a country of people but I just can't put my non-American-Nazi finger on it.

Each member of the Wurstwaffe's personality is based on the type of sausage they are. Bloodwurst makes people bleed by killing them. Weisswurst is a white guy who is shocked at the violence of the others for some reason. Leberwurst is, um, alive? Like a "liver," a person who lives? No? Knockwurst knocks people's heads together. Bratwurst whines. I think that's all the types of sausage there are. I suppose I just don't get some of the German-to-English punning, or I'm missing some literary trope because why is Liverwurst such a mother figure to the group? I get why they all hate him because Leberwurst sounds gross. But why does he always do everything for everybody? Oh! Is that because the liver is the workhorse of all the organs? But then why is Weisswurst such a Goddamn pussy? Does "white" imply "innocent and naïve" here?

After defeating the Wurstwaffe, Ralph learns who's behind the attacks on the European ambassadors.

You'll wait until Sue saves the day?

Sonar reveals to Sue how he tricked the Justice League into believing he was imprisoned by sending over a drunk Sonar look-a-like with substandard weapons. But his plan worked so well that Bito was left insulted by their belief that Sonar was such an incompetent asshole. That just expresses the importance of branding. You don't name yourself "Sonar" while using sonic weapons and think you're going to be the next villain to stymie every hero in the DC Universe during a big summer Annual event. At best, Sonar is just Count Vertigo with a worse name; at worst, he's just a toddler making a racket with his noisy toys.

Sue tries to piss him off by sarcastically asking him if he keeps the people of his country away from outsiders so nobody could see how happy they are.

Ouch, Bito. Not now, man.

Don't worry if that caption doesn't make sense to you. You just read this post divorced from the context of the day it was written.

Bito explains that he keeps the population of Modora away from technology so that things don't ride mankind and whatnot. He also points out that nobody in Europe believes in a superior race. Except for Bito. He still believes because he believes he is superior. Being that he's gone off on this Nazi tangent, Sue decides to do the right thing.

Saving the world one punch at a time.

Sue's act of defiance lights a fire under the people of Modora who begin a secret campaign to revolt. They fear they can't count on outside help since Modora is separated from the rest of Europe by a large mountain range and Archduke Bito's sonar technology blocks all forms of communication from entering or leaving the country. Little do they know, a hero has just parachuted into their country using his body as a parachute after stealing airfare from an airline flying between Berlin and Athens. These heroes really just do whatever they want, don't they?

I'm not against the heroes doing whatever they want! I trust they'll use their outrageous powers for the common good because of the pretext that I'm reading about their exploits in a comic book from 1992 when comic books still pretty much cared about heroes being heroic. But if Elongated Man were real, I wouldn't trust the fuck out of him. Although if Elongated Man were real then Sue Dibny would be too and, well, that's pretty hot.

The Modorans shoot Ralph out of the sky and he's knocked silly by the fall. But not killed! I knew he was invulnerable. I wonder if being invulnerable also means you can't get Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy? Imagine how punch drunk Ralph would be, well on his way to more serious brain issues. He's already been concussed about ten times in just the last few days alone.

Ralph uses a herd of sheep on the ground to help him escape the Modoran military when they come looking for him.

This is a clever way to make a joke about the sheepherder fucking his sheep because the Comics Code Authority can't refute that this kid just names his sheep after their wool styles.

This entire series has been way more horny than it has any right to be. I suppose the title Elongated Man just sets the tone for loads and loads of sex jokes. Plus his wife is super horny.

The people of Modora nurse Ralph back to health in the few minutes they're given before the army breaks down the door where they're keeping Ralph. Ralph escapes out the chimney which must never be used because he doesn't wind up looking like a frat guy on Halloween who doesn't give a shit about social norms or historic context and believes speech is free for everybody except people who might criticize his ignorant choice of costume.

Ralph heads to Bito's castle to save Sue but she's already saved herself. So instead, he gets into a fist fight with Bito who, obviously, explains his entire plan. It's not that complicated. He just loved getting rich selling weapons to various European countries and knew he'd sell way less weapons of war with a united Europe. Did he not think, "Maybe I can sell other shit? Like Modoran Beats Headphones? Or Surround Sound Stereo set-ups? Why does everything have to be about war and fighting? Why are so many people so fucking angry all of the time?

This isn't about me! I'm not really angry all the time anyway! I'm just being hyperbolic for the LOLs! Stop fucking critiquing me! I critique you!

Nobody even waffles. They fucking hate Sonar, don't they?

Once the people revolt, Bito stops fighting. He refuses to raise a weapon against his people, seeing them as innocent waifs corrupted by the outside world. He flees to defeat the world later in an arc over in Justice League Europe later. For now, Sue and Ralph simply finish their vacation in the quaint country of Modora while completely forgetting about the European Union because boring.

Elongated Man: Europe '92 #4 Rating: A. Sue saves the day, just like we all knew Sue would. It's a trope as old as The Bible where the main hero/detective must win the day but they're kind of incompetent so their right hand man/woman/cat/dog does all the work to make sure that the villain/Son of God is apprehended and brought to justice. But the brains behind the mystery solving is seldom as sexy and horny and flirtatious as the one in this story. Sue Dibny just steals this entire narrative. That's probably why Sue and Ralph are such an iconic couple in the DC Universe. Because alone, Ralph Dibny is annoying. But with Sue at his side, they become a comedy pair and an example of a couple who really care about each other (even if one of them is fucking disgusting. How does Sue get it up after seeing what Ralph can do with that neck? I suppose it's because she also gets to see what Ralph does with his penis and ass sphincter). Overall, good book. Good story. Great fucking art. And only whatever children Gerard Jones victimized while writing this were hurt! Hmm, that's not actually a good trade-off, is it? Forget I even mentioned Gerard Jones' criminal hobbyhorse which he was ultimately convicted of so I can mention it without fear of legal action! Hopefully after Mosaic, I won't have much more of Gerard Jones's work to read.

Elongated Man: Europe '92 #3 (March 1992)

From Copperhead's Who's Who entry: "Weaknesses: nausea inducing carnival rides."

If Elongated Man accidentally kills Copperhead this issue, the Italian courts will not find him guilty because his defense is "My wife is off fucking an Archduke." In Italy, if your spouse fucks a royal from any country, you're allowed one free murder (two if they're small). The Flash, on the other hand, isn't allowed any free murders so punching a guy in the face while running at superspeed is a huge risk.

Wait, Ralph. Why? Does Wally West hate Italians?!

I would think, statistically, The Flash would be the guy you'd most expect to bump into anywhere in the world. Being he's practically the only one who can be anywhere at anytime for any reason and not because he's such a huge fan of traveling abroad and learning about other cultures. Does The Flash need a passport or am I just asking ridiculous questions now? Obviously, he's a masked vigilante! Certain laws can never apply to you if nobody knows who you really are. Like, um, most of them, I guess! Shit. Are superheroes the baddies?

I didn't know Wally West was gay.

I don't think Wally is gay because he'd rather be at somebody else's wedding. Not even gay people probably love that. I think he's gay because he has such a close relationship with his mother that he wants to help her get in her dress! Weird. Maybe I shouldn't have said gay; maybe what I meant was incestuous.

Wally informs Ralph that he's here in Italy because Sue called him. Sue must have seen some news footage of Trampolina with Ralph in the background sticking both of his eyeballs out about five feet and screaming, "Ayoooogah!", while clapping his hands which he stretched to look like seal fins.

Things I have learned from this mini-series: Wally West is from Nebraska. Ralph Dibny is from Nebraska. Sue Dibny's private parts are constantly steaming hot and throbbing.

Who would have ever thought I'd be nostalgic for a time when Europe was trying to form a peaceful coalition of countries working together instead of everybody being right wing fucking bastards who just want to split and divide and act like assholes.

I was probably paying so little attention to European politics in 1992 that I barely understood what was going on in this comic book. In winter of 1992, I was probably most concerned with how to ditch the woman who took my virginity because I wanted to sit in my basement and play Apple IIe games and she wanted to, you know, do stuff. And I don't just mean sex stuff! I mean like go out to eat. Or go to the boardwalk. Or hang out with friends! She was so needy with all of her normal person, mundane desires!

I can't believe she wanted to fuck me! Such a loser! I mean me, not her!

Oh wait. I got the dates wrong. That was 1991 when I was trying to ditch her! In '92, I was trying to ditch the woman who began fucking me while I was sleeping! Although she was pretty easy to ditch because she knew what she had done!

I was just re-watching Peep Show recently and had forgotten that Mark had the same thing happen to him! But he felt a bit weirder about it because he was dreaming about his mother when he woke up to being fucked. I don't remember what I was dreaming. Probably something about me being at a party and shoving my dick in the oysters.

Ralph questions Calamari who reveals that somebody calling themselves the "Friend of Eurocrime" sent out some messages about how Europe will be harder to do crimes in if the Union happens. So all the criminals who are as dumb as the average conservative American who fell for that shit and began attacking the conferences and ambassadors to get them to stop. But Calamari decides to quit because he didn't realize he'd have to battle The Flash!

Meanwhile in Modora, Sue makes an excuse so she doesn't have to get to know Bito any better over wine and a nice cozy fire. It seems he's not as charming as he thought he was. So now he just has to eavesdrop on her all night. What a creep.

Wally West gives Ralph some last minute advice before running back to Nebraska to catch his mother's wedding.

The Pied Piper knows what's up. I'm surprised Wally listened to him.

Ralph already suspected the American ambassador because he's a huge chud. But he was so eager to blame everything on the guy Sue is hot for that he didn't trust his feelings. Sure, we all know his jealous feelings are the feelings pointing toward the correct leader of these assassination attempts. But it wouldn't be a mystery without a number of suspects! And, what do I know? Maybe it is the American chud! I've never been good at solving mysteries even though I read loads of Alfred Hitchcock books and magazines as a kid!

Sue's beginning to long for Ralph to be by her side as the shine begins wearing off of Bito's archdukiness and his good manners and his charming personality and his deep, deep pockets. But it doesn't last long before she's hopped up and ready to hop some other man.

Oooh! Stanford! A fancy lad!

I know Sue is just being friendly. I'm not one of those guys who thinks just because a woman is nice to me it means she's interested. Hell, a woman can practically put her hand down the front of the pants and I wouldn't think she's interested! I mean, I'd figure it out pretty quickly in that case. But mostly I'm pretty fucking blind to it.

Sue fishes about for some information about Modora from this young engineer working at the Institute of Loud Sounds. But he quickly realizes he's going to get himself in trouble, what with all of the technology in the place being built around sound probably meaning everything has a microphone in it. Which it does. He takes off before he reveals something that might make Sonar disappear him.

"Away" is bolded because Sue usually seduces them.

Seduce is a synonym for fuck a person's brains out. I figured over half of America are illiterate dullards so I should explain the easy (although less easy than other) words.

Bito learns that all of the shitty European super villains are giving up on the plan because they're afraid to battle Elongated Man. Did I say they were shitty? I meant super duper shitty. Imagine being afraid of Elongated Man?! What the fuck? This must be Gerard Jones' way of taking the piss out of Europe. All they can muster are stereotypical villains like Lutefisk from Denmark and Toad-in-the-Hole from Britain and L'Escargot from France and Calamari from Italy. The only villains willing to keep on going are the German villains. They're probably going to be based on Sausages and Genocide.

The next conference is in Berlin so we'll find out soon enough!

Yeah, yeah. I know I kept saying the first conference was in Berlin back in Issue #1. But I was being purposefully stupid! Duh! I'm an American! I didn't recognize the Eifel Tower and the French language and the long breads!

Ralph continues to investigate at the Berlin conference but he really mostly just spends time with his head interviewing Trampolina and his lower half probably in a bathroom somewhere tugging one out.

That's it. I'm now a member of the Pink Party.

Ralph drags himself away from Trampolina when he sees the French Ambassador arguing with the German Ambassador, mostly because the American Ambassador was pushing their buttons. The English Ambassador whines about the entire party and marches off to find some cucumber sandwiches. That's when the Sausage Brothers, um, attack?

Whatever is happening here just caused me to make currywurst in my pants.

It's understandable that one of the Sausage Brothers has a gigantic uncircumcised boner. Trampolina's flippin' hot.

It's weird to describe a penis as "an uncircumcised penis," right? That's just a fucking penis. I should only point out if it's been circumcised. Saying "uncircumcised" is like using a double negative.

The German gang of sausage men call themselves the Wurstwaffe. They manage to subdue all of the Ambassadors and then begin sneaking up on Ralph as he contemplates the mystery of the mysterious assassins. Meanwhile in Modora, Sue has caused a bit of trouble by investigating too much and she's being arrested by the Modoran army.

Yes, "arrested" just meant "arrested" and not "consensually fucked by." Sue's not just a sex object for your prurient thoughts! Get your head out of the gutter! Sue's an intelligent woman with a great personality and, in a few more years, footprints in her brain! So stop being so crass!

Elongated Man: Europe '92 #3 Rating: A. Why is this stupid comic book so entertaining? I think because it's so stupid! It's just fun and I'm always saying after I say a lot of nonsense and vulgar words, "Comic books should be fun!" You might not remember me saying that recently but I'm pretty sure I said something like that back when I was reading The New 52's Demon Knights or All Star Western! Oh, and Gotham Academy! And Batgirl when she was living in that gentrified hipster part of Gotham! Fun comics are so much fun!

Elongated Man: Europe '92 #2 (February 1992)

If I ever see Warp out of his costume, I'm going to have nightmares about it until I die.

Characters whose costumes make their necks look impossible terrify me. Like Black Manta. And I guess Warp as seen here although Warp could be using his warp technology to make his face appear at the other end of that Dune Sandworm collar he's wearing. This being terrified of neck dysmorphia stems from being a small child flipping through a copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and seeing that one Tenniel illustration depicting Alice after she's eaten a bit of the "Eat Me" cake.

I used to flip quickly through the book to get a glimpse of this image and scare the shit out of myself. On purpose.

Maybe this is why I can't stand The Elongated Man! That fucker can't spend ten minutes without stretching his neck out to ridiculous lengths.

Last issue, we learned that Sue Dibny wants to fuck the ruler of Modora, Sonar. We also learned Ralph Dibny wants to fuck mysteries more than he wants to fuck Sue. How is this the strongest marriage in the DC Universe? I mean before Sue was murdered by Brad Meltzer. Maybe Elongated Man constantly has his dick inside Sue and that's what really turns them on. How, you're asking? Please. The easiest trick in the book! He just stretches his penis down to near microscopic levels from his pant leg to Sue's hoo-hoo. Then he expands it as big as Sue wants! And there's no fear of somebody accidentally snapping it by tripping on it or something because Elongated Man is indestructible, right?

Ralph and Sue have traveled to Modora after being invited by Archduke Bito (who is also Sonar). They had been invited to some European Union summit in Paris for some reason and discovered that ambassadors were being targeted for assassination. Ralph thought that they should stick with the European Union Tour of '92 so they could attempt to catch the culprit but Sue, after being continuously hot-breathed by Sonar at the meeting where an ambassador was killed, realized he was probably the culprit. She convinced Ralph they should go to Modora to investigate and maybe have sex with its leader, if there's time.

Archduke Bito gives the Dibneys a short tour of the idyllic country life married to technologies of the 21st Century. It's such a utopian setting that Ralph can't help thinking Archduke Bito is up to no good. Also Sue wants to fuck him so obviously he doesn't trust the son of a sheepdog.

She's so fucking repulsed by him!

Archduke Bito probably blows his supervillain reveal too early in this mini-series for Sue to accidentally fuck him. Which is probably why she's so horny for Captain Atom later. I like to think she eventually did fuck Captain Atom but that means she would have had to beat out Catherine Cobert in the dash to his dick. Sure, he could have fucked them both, but Cap seemed way too awkward to pull that off. I'm sure he just fucked one of them one single time and then blustered his way out of the laundry room swearing to avoid all contact with them until he died and/or became Monarch and/or didn't become Monarch because DC editorial are cowards but he had already been written out of everything because he was supposed to be Monarch which is why he ended up in that fucking terrible Armageddon: The Alien Agenda. My main point is that Captain Atom probably fucked Sue and Catherine, probably at different times.

I just realized something. Does the plot of this mini-series have nothing to do with Sue's high horniness levels?! Fuck. Have I just let my male gaze run rampant all over my critique of this story?! Shit shit shit. Um, okay, forget about Sue's swollen vulva and Ralph's fat and also microscopically thin hog! It's time to get serious about political intrigue and the formation of the European Union which the British never really took to heart which is why they up and fucked themselves about thirty years later.

Ralph finally realizes why he finds Archduke Bito so familiar: he's Sonar, an old Green Lantern foe! But Sue is all, "Sonar's in jail, you jealous idiot. It can't be him."

Goddammit, Sue! I'm trying to move away from the "Sue's displaying legendary volumes of horniness on main" thesis statement!

It's possible Sue and Ralph discussed all of this "Bito is Sonar" stuff in the shitter on the plane into Modora so they know they're being eavesdropped on everywhere (except in the shitter of the plane because, ew, gross). So they're making as big a display as possible of their marriage in sexual shambles and Sue basically rubbing one out every time Bito's name is mentioned.

I'm sorry! I'd love to drop all the "Sue wants to fuck Bito" shit but I think it's integral to catching the baddie!

While Sue gets changed for dinner with Bito, Ralph stretches himself throughout the building's vents to spy on Bito. Seems a bit gay when your hot wife is sexily undressing in the next room! I don't know if women undress sexily because any time a woman undresses to me, it's fucking sexy. Except if it's because she just fell in a vat of sewage and is throwing up all over the place as she tears off her shit-matted clothes. That's only slightly sexy. But she'd probably appreciate me running in with a hose and, oh boy, now it's getting very sexy!

Ralph discovers Bito has been setting eavesdropping equipment all over the European Unity Tour's various locations. He then discovers Sonar's costume to put the nail in the mystery's coffin. But then he trigger's a trap and is killed by a blast of sonic noise. Ralph's lower half is still in his apartment though so that's going to be a gross little discovery for Sue.

Do you think Ralph's shits are normal? I'm not thinking about Ralph's shits because I like to think about another man's shits. I was just thinking, "Don't you shit when you die?" Then I was picturing Sue coming out of the bathroom putting on her last earring and discovering the unmoving lower half of her husband with massive ropes of shit streaming out of his boxers and his upper torso hanging out of the window. Then she'd probably yell, "Yahoo! Bito's dick, here I come! And come! And come! Oh mama!"

I can only picture sexual situations as Looney Tunes cartoons.

How can you ever again get wet for a man whose body you've seen do this?

At dinner, Bito admits that Modora suffers from the shame of Sonar, one of Bito's relatives who stole his name. Bito keeps the costume in his bedroom as a reminder. Also Sonar stole all of their sonic technology. Sue nods her head and says, "Yes, yes! That all makes perfect sense. Excuse me while I mop my pussy with one of these expensive napkins."

After dinner, Ralph catches a report from Italy that some villain named Calamari has disrupted the European Unity conference in Rome. He begins packing while Sue does not begin packing at all. She refuses to go with him. She doesn't say it's because he's constantly stretching his neck to fifty meters and twitching his nose like a rabbit finishing up a gram of cocaine but we all know those are two of the biggest reasons. She does sort of admit she's embarrassed by him so I guess that covers what I mentioned.

Is that "amazing technology" bit a threat about how she's about to use Sonar's vibrational sound machine?!

Ralph and Sue are hamming it up a bit too much in that last page for anybody to believe they're being serious. I mean anybody who doesn't actually think they're about to fuck Sue Dibny. If I were Bito and listening in on this, I'd probably have to change my underpants before Sue arrived in the library. And quickly make up an excuse about how the Linden Trees outside the window are currently in bloom.

Ralph travels to Italy without Sue while Sue "investigates" Bito. Ralph still seems to think the culprit might be the American ambassador because he's basically against the European Union and, you know, he's American. For some reason, he doesn't suspect the Italian Ambassador, Trampolina.

Sue Dibny who?

I have, from time to time, been known to say ACAB. But Trampolina in a sexy cop costume obviously doesn't count. She's the only good cop.

Sue winds up shopping a bunch and mooning over her husband who left her to fend for herself while Ralph winds up walking through dark alleys alone missing Sue. But Sue doesn't get attacked by Copperhead, Calamari, and Warp on the final page of the comic book. And Sue doesn't appreciate the appearance of The Flash just as she's about to be killed by the three aforementioned villains.

Elongated Man: Europe '92 #2 Rating: A. It's weird how much I'm enjoying a comic book about Ralph and Sue not getting along on their European vacation because Sue wants to get dicked 24/7 and Ralph doesn't want to do any dicking. Maybe being all rubbery causes a loss of testosterone? Or maybe there's another reason I just can't put my finger on.

Elongated Man: Europe '92 #1 (January 1992)

Sue would rather be getting dicked hard than stopping this snail guy from robbing a cotillion.

By the '90s, Elongated Man was never going to be a strong enough character to carry his own series. And we all know the only reason he got this mini-series was due to his wife, Sue. Sue's probably the only reason I picked it up. Oh, and it only cost $1.00. People would take a chance on more comic books when they were easily affordable. I could make $20.00 in one day of yard work around my block, buy fifteen comic books and still have enough to go see a movie with my friends or hang out at the mall for 5 hours straight or take the bus to Great America where I had a season pass that probably cost only $20.00 itself and which let us spend all summer there. People often talk about inflation as if everything evens out between wages and how much shit costs. But they're fucking wrong because kids used to be able to afford to do a ton of shit with not much cash because a dollar went further and also because they were fucking allowed to go places without parents and people didn't completely freak the fuck out. And we didn't have iPhone lifelines to each other. We just disappeared into the Santa Cruz mountains on our bikes on a Saturday morning and our parents didn't know if we were alive or dead until we got back in the evening. Or called from Santa Cruz hoping they'd come pick us up because we actually biked from Santa Clara to Santa Cruz and didn't want to have to ride back over the Santa Cruz mountains to get home. But then our parents were all, "You fucked up, man. That's on you. Figure it out." So we shrugged and hitched a ride back up the mountain in the back of some guy's pickup truck after a detour where he took us down this weird side road into the forest to show off the boxing ring in his sketchy youth camp. Eventually he took us back to the ridge and we rode back down into Cupertino where we stopped at Taco Bravo for dinner before heading back down Bascom and into Santa Clara where our parents were all, "So what did you guys do?" And we were all, "Oh, nothing. Just riding around."

You know how many times I almost died riding my BMX or 10-speed up the Santa Cruz mountains? Like, um, three times probably! Four if you figure that guy we hitched a ride from thought better of murdering us all!

Oh, I know another reason I might have picked up this comic book: Mike Parobeck's art! He did a run on Justice Society of America later that same year which I also picked up mostly because of the art and the cover price. I dig his animation style.

Based on all the clues in this opening splash page, I'm going to guess this takes place in Berlin.

Why is Elongated Man chasing down Copperhead in the streets of Berlin? I don't know! This comic book began "In Media Res" which means "in the middle res". I suppose if I were a superhero having a nice day out in Berlin and suddenly saw a person dressed as a giant man-snake and is a known American hit-man, I might feel compelled to stop him doing whatever hit-manning he might be doing.

Although Sue makes at least four pretty strong arguments about why I might just mind my own business.

Three of Sue's arguments are not those cops who can maybe take care of the local crime themselves. Her four strong arguments (as if I need to explain such obvious arguments that any man can plainly see with their own eyes) are her fashion sense, her speed, the cute shocked expressions she makes, and her vulva.

Sue saves Ralph's life by throwing her fancy hat at Copperhead who apparently has a fancy hat phobia because he freaks out as if a crocodile had just latched itself to his face. It only keeps him down for a few moments but that's enough time for Sue's three non-arguments to catch up and arrest him.

The appearance of Warp interrupts Ralph who was probably about to finish, "Gay Park, Berlin, Germany."

Warp teleports Copperhead away from the cops. But now Elongated Man's nose begins twitching and Sue's vulva unswells because she knows there won't be any more fucking on this vacation. Ralph Dibny has a bigger boner for mysteries than he has for Sue's underpants. I guess he solved that mystery years ago and there's simply no allure for him anymore. Oh! I think I just solved the mystery of why they're in Gay Park, Berlin!

Sue reminds Ralph that they don't have time for mysteries that don't concern locating her sex opening with his sex rod and then doing sex. Except also they don't have time for that because they have to go to some fancy banquet where some minister of something is going to announce some policy of something. I could probably explain it better but it's fucking boring and the speech bubbles are plastered all around Sue trying to get dressed for the event so most of my brain power was used up in getting the boner while looking at Sue in her slip.

Ralph decides to wear a hideous purple tuxedo to the event and Sue points out that it's as ugly as his Elongated Man costume. Ralph seems to act like this is the first time he's heard that criticism when it seems like it should be the five millionth time he's heard it.

Does "provincial" mean "homophobic"?

That was a rhetorical question because I know the answer is yes.

Sue breaks the 4th wall at the bottom of page six as she gives Ralph a handjob.

You don't know. That could be Ralph's dick.

At the banquet or buffet or whatever the fuck large political gatherings on which a fuckton of the population's money has been spent, Ralph winds up swamped by fans wanting pictures and autographs. It must be a slow night at the rich people's party if Elongated Man's the most famous person there. Sue strictly told him no stretching or being famous so when he goes against her strict party rules, she wanders off to find a super hot guy in a uniform and tight pants to fuck.

Is it gay for me to want to see Sue's delicate hand pull this gentleman's giant hog out of his pants to watch it stiffen across a few panels? Whatever. I'm gay then! Fuck off.

That gentleman is Sonar. You can tell because he has such a mastery of sound that he can make his speech bubble go behind his leg! Maybe that indicates he's talking out of his asshole? Or his penis is speaking that line about loving the collision!

I'm fairly certain we see Sue Dibny orgasm on the next page.

She's so disappointed when she finds out he knows she's married!

Sue and Ralph have such a strong marriage that Sue doesn't mind when Ralph clumsily flirts with his hot co-workers and Ralph doesn't mind when Sue eye fucks Captain Atom and Superman and Sonar and pretty much every other guy aside from Wally West and Dmitri Pushkin. Also I think maybe you can take the "eye" out of that last sentence. My theory is that Sue Dibny was dying from uterine cancer after having an affair with Captain Atom and Ralph faked her "murder" with help from Jean Loring to save her reputation. Sue may or may not have been in on it. Also Jean Loring may or may not have been in on it. She was probably tricked into participating in Sue's euthanasia.

Sue does enjoy fucking a lot of hot guys who don't bend weird and have twitching noses but she doesn't like it when they think it's going to be easy to get into her underpants.

Spot on? Amazingly perceptive? Right on the money?

I'm sure a lot of people love the stability of Sue and Ralph's marriage, something to be counted on for all time (I mean, until Identity Crisis, of course). But I think Sue is too hot and sexy to not imagine her fucking every hot guy she lays her eyes on! I bet she'd even fuck Etrigan!

Has Sue Dibny ever been in a DC movie? I think she should be played by Aubrey Plaza.

Somebody named L'Escargot crashes the party really, really slowly. He terrifies nearly nobody until he begins puking slime on diplomats. And while it doesn't really cause anybody any harm, it's super embarrassing for the host country of the party, Germany. Ralph tries to catch L'Escargot with his gigantic rubber fist but L'Escargot just cums in his hand and escapes.

I didn't spend all those years as a man and not learn that "SPLORK" is the sound effect of a penis ejaculating.

If Ralph can jerk off some guy at this party, then Sue has every right to get her hands around some penis too.

Sonar manages to knock out L'Escargot with his sonic powers while making it look like he simply punched him out. And also, I was wrong about the slime not causing anybody harm.

See? German!

I just realized the reason for this 1992 European Tour. They're holding these conferences to work out all the kinks in forming the European Union! It's existed for over half my life so it's something that I tend to forget hasn't always been a thing. No more Francs and Deutschmarks and Lira and Goldoons! Although still Pounds for some reason. I suppose Brexit shouldn't have been too surprising when your country feels exempt from completely switching currency the way everybody else did.

I don't know which ambassador for what country was killed by L'Escargot but it wasn't the French or the German or the Italian. Thank God it wasn't the Italian ambassador!

How did any of this get past the Comics Code Authority?!

Ralph begins to suspect that the person behind the attacks must not want a united Europe! And he's really suspecting that America would be that person! I mean country! Unless it's just the American ambassador going rogue and then person is okay. But I suspect it's probably Sonar! Because, you know, he's a villain.

As things settle down at the party and the corpse is hidden away in a backroom, Sonar invites the Dibnys to Modora. But Ralph, seeing how Sue has been looking at him all night and smelling the sex fumes coming from her drippy drawers with his twitchy nose, refuses the invite. Smart man! But later that night, Sue can't stop thinking about Sonar's fat cock on her tongue.

"Don't you think we should be experimenting with other dicks in or around my other orifices?"

Now I really, really think Aubrey Plaza should play Sue Dibny in a movie and not just in the fantasy playing in my head right now.

Ralph sort of refuses to take Sue seriously because he's taking his marriage for granted. But Sue doesn't want to take their marriage for granted. Sue wants to fuck Count Bito.

I guess technically this comic book isn't X-rated but it's definitely caused an abundance of X-rated panels in my head.

Elongated Man: Europe '92 Rating: A. I understand that Sue doesn't actually want to fuck Sonar. I get that she's the Penny to Ralph's Inspector Gadget, the snickering cat to Ralph's Hong Kong Phooey. Ralph thinks the mystery is in Paris. I mean Berlin. But Sue already realizes the mystery will be unraveled only once they're allowed in Modora. And she probably doesn't want to fuck Sonar but he definitely makes her wet. Why won't Ralph fuck Sue while speaking in a Modoran accent? Doesn't he love his hot young sexy wife?! I can't believe I enjoyed an Elongated Man comic book this much.