Why does Deadman's happy, celebratory face look so anguished and sad?
Yes! I can't wait to relive the moment Jason Todd's skull gets smashed in by a crowbar! Some of you (most of you?) probably weren't alive when Jason Todd was killed by The Joker but it might have been the best time to be a DC Comics' fan. Not only did Jason Todd die, we got to call in and vote to kill him! Not that I voted to kill him. Or read the comic book at the time. Or cared that about Robin at all even though I'm acting like it was the greatest moment of my life. I was too busy hating Marv Wolfman's version of Dick Grayson to care about Jason Todd! I'm just trying to be edgy and shocking! What kind of an Internet personality would I be if I admitted to being super sad when Robin died? I'd be one of those earnest people on tumblr who everybody respects for their profound insights and empathic posts that help us all get through life just a little bit easier. If I ever found out I was one of those posters, I'd bash my own head in with a crowbar after having written two notes: my suicide note explaining in tearful, melancholy prose how anguished I truly was, hiding behind an outlook of optimism, hope, and compassion, and another note saying, "Be sure to post my suicide note on my tumblr! thanks!"
Just like the first cover, I think José Luis García-López didn't have a clear idea of what he was supposed to be drawing. Did he think Deadman was supposed to look sad and anguished because Batman had just proposed to Robin and was leaning in for a passionate kiss as Robin leans sensually in his arms? Maybe I've got some kind of face blindness that makes me equate "unconscious and/or dead" with "totally up for it." Because I've accused other artists of making unconscious or dead women look like they're coming their brains out. I can't remember all the artists I've accused of that but David Finch and Tony Daniels were definitely two of them.
I just noticed David Finch looks like Michael Berryman's hotter, younger brother. Has he ever been approached to do a The Hills Have Eyes prologue movie, before whatever turned Pluto into Pluto happened to Pluto? If it were up to me (and probably David Finch), it'd be an NC-17 flick.
I don't like to surmise that Batman and Robin engage in sexual intimacy (and have probably only done so about six or seven dozen times (across 4000+ blog entries! So barely any, really!) but I can't deny that it looks like Batman is going in for some sweet, sweet Robin's eggs here. I only mention it, yet again, so that I could mention how I rarely ever mention it. So this one doesn't count!
Just like the first cover, I think José Luis García-López didn't have a clear idea of what he was supposed to be drawing. Did he think Deadman was supposed to look sad and anguished because Batman had just proposed to Robin and was leaning in for a passionate kiss as Robin leans sensually in his arms? Maybe I've got some kind of face blindness that makes me equate "unconscious and/or dead" with "totally up for it." Because I've accused other artists of making unconscious or dead women look like they're coming their brains out. I can't remember all the artists I've accused of that but David Finch and Tony Daniels were definitely two of them.
I just noticed David Finch looks like Michael Berryman's hotter, younger brother. Has he ever been approached to do a The Hills Have Eyes prologue movie, before whatever turned Pluto into Pluto happened to Pluto? If it were up to me (and probably David Finch), it'd be an NC-17 flick.
I don't like to surmise that Batman and Robin engage in sexual intimacy (and have probably only done so about six or seven dozen times (across 4000+ blog entries! So barely any, really!) but I can't deny that it looks like Batman is going in for some sweet, sweet Robin's eggs here. I only mention it, yet again, so that I could mention how I rarely ever mention it. So this one doesn't count!
Caldera looks like he's about to be introduced as the next Overwatch character.
If Caldera were the next Overwatch playable character, he'd be voiced by Andy Samberg, for sure.
Caldera takes The Flash to his secret dimensional hideout to power one arm of his mystic pentagram. The other four points will be powered by other heroes who have died. It doesn't matter if they've died and come back to life because his mystic pentagram has been built outside of time and space, as he explains to The Flash using speech which can only be produced through time where the vibrations move across space. I don't know. It's magic not science!
Caldera takes The Flash to his secret dimensional hideout to power one arm of his mystic pentagram. The other four points will be powered by other heroes who have died. It doesn't matter if they've died and come back to life because his mystic pentagram has been built outside of time and space, as he explains to The Flash using speech which can only be produced through time where the vibrations move across space. I don't know. It's magic not science!
"You can't run fast here, Flash! Ignore that the noises leaving my mouth and entering your ear via vibrations through speech and can only be understood when lined up across a time continuum act exactly like your superspeed would act."
I'm such a jerk! I'm reading "Time as I conceive it does not work here" in a comic book where time does not work like I conceive it and I'm complaining that it doesn't make any sense! I really should purchase that crowbar for later use.
A rhyming demon warns Caldera that he still has much to do which must mean Caldera has trapped Flash in Hell. I guess that's as outside of time as you can get because remember that time Anton Arcane wound up in Hell and Swamp Thing visited him and Anton was all, "How long have I been here? One thousand? Two thousand years?" And Swamp Thing checked his watch and was all, "Oh, about fifteen minutes, actually." And then Anton Arcane screamed for like two million more years, give or take an hour.
Many years later, long after Crisis on Infinite Earths was forgotten by everybody involved and all the editorial mistakes caused by Crisis were cleared up (or compounded, depending on how rationally your brain works) by Zero Hour, Rama Kushna calls on Deadman once again. Deadman doesn't remember the last issue but Rama assures him that this mission he's being sent on is a follow-up to a previous mission. Deadman doesn't argue or ask too many questions because he's a dead guy and a ghost and almost fully lacks the free will that living humans falsely believe they don't lack. "I will choose free will." Oh, good one, Geddy! Just like you chose to be born, right? Maybe go read another Ayn Rand novel, you simp!
That was me chastising young Geddy Lee before he realized the "philosophy" of Ayn Rand was simply a nonsensical defense of selfishness. Her entire philosophy, or at least what everybody has bought into because they're twats, was "Why should I do anything for anybody else when I never ask anybody else to do anything for me? I am fully a creation of my own effort and will and owe nothing to nobody at all, no matter how often people point out that every single modern person alive owes a massive, unrepayable debt to the generations that came before."
Here's my argument against Ayn Randian libertarianism: "If I want to get my dick sucked, I can't constantly decry dick sucking. I have to accept that dick sucking is a noble, communal, giving, compassionate gift from one member of the community to another." The only people who should believe in libertarianism are people who can suck their own dicks (or slurp their own clits). Also maybe replace "dick sucking" with something less vulgar if you're going to present this argument to your grandparents.
Deadman finds himself in Ethiopia where he decides to pop into a little shed to see what's going on in a place where he doesn't have to see all the suffering and starvation around him.
A rhyming demon warns Caldera that he still has much to do which must mean Caldera has trapped Flash in Hell. I guess that's as outside of time as you can get because remember that time Anton Arcane wound up in Hell and Swamp Thing visited him and Anton was all, "How long have I been here? One thousand? Two thousand years?" And Swamp Thing checked his watch and was all, "Oh, about fifteen minutes, actually." And then Anton Arcane screamed for like two million more years, give or take an hour.
Many years later, long after Crisis on Infinite Earths was forgotten by everybody involved and all the editorial mistakes caused by Crisis were cleared up (or compounded, depending on how rationally your brain works) by Zero Hour, Rama Kushna calls on Deadman once again. Deadman doesn't remember the last issue but Rama assures him that this mission he's being sent on is a follow-up to a previous mission. Deadman doesn't argue or ask too many questions because he's a dead guy and a ghost and almost fully lacks the free will that living humans falsely believe they don't lack. "I will choose free will." Oh, good one, Geddy! Just like you chose to be born, right? Maybe go read another Ayn Rand novel, you simp!
That was me chastising young Geddy Lee before he realized the "philosophy" of Ayn Rand was simply a nonsensical defense of selfishness. Her entire philosophy, or at least what everybody has bought into because they're twats, was "Why should I do anything for anybody else when I never ask anybody else to do anything for me? I am fully a creation of my own effort and will and owe nothing to nobody at all, no matter how often people point out that every single modern person alive owes a massive, unrepayable debt to the generations that came before."
Here's my argument against Ayn Randian libertarianism: "If I want to get my dick sucked, I can't constantly decry dick sucking. I have to accept that dick sucking is a noble, communal, giving, compassionate gift from one member of the community to another." The only people who should believe in libertarianism are people who can suck their own dicks (or slurp their own clits). Also maybe replace "dick sucking" with something less vulgar if you're going to present this argument to your grandparents.
Deadman finds himself in Ethiopia where he decides to pop into a little shed to see what's going on in a place where he doesn't have to see all the suffering and starvation around him.
Ah! Much better!
Deadman possess The Joker just long enough to stop the killing blow to Jason Todd's Bat-noggin. The Joker tells his henchman he has to clean up his underwear while they fret about how many bones Batman is going to break in their bodies when he finds out about this. The Joker, being reminded that Batman exists, decides his pants can wait. He needs to blow up all the evidence that he murdered Robin. He ties some woman named Sheila who totally can't be Jason Todd's mom to a post, has his henchmen set us up the bomb, and flees the scene. Deadman lets The Joker and his henchmen go so he can possess Robin and disarm the bomb without their interference.
Deadman has to crawl across the floor using Jason Todd's lips.
This aside really belongs in one of my The Crusades reviews but I just realized Steven T. Seagle wrote on a DC Grifter comic in the mid-'90s and I am fucking intrigued. Grifter was the absolute worst comic book of some truly shit comic books when The New 52 began so I'd like to read the character written by a writer I actually like! Okay, back to the death of that fucker, Jason Todd.
Deadman tries his best but Sheila and Jason are still locked in the shed when the bomb goes off. Jason Todd dies in the blast but his "mother", thrown clear, survives. Jason Todd takes the news of his death pretty calmly.
Deadman tries his best but Sheila and Jason are still locked in the shed when the bomb goes off. Jason Todd dies in the blast but his "mother", thrown clear, survives. Jason Todd takes the news of his death pretty calmly.
Oh, so when he's dead, Todd's all, "I get it! I'm so calm about everything!" But alive Todd is all, "I want to shoot everybody in the face!"
Batman comes stumbling in like a drunk late to the party just screaming Robin's secret identity for anybody to hear. Deadman thinks about possessing Batman and then smashing himself in the face with the crowbar but Jason Todd stops him. He admits his death is his own stupid fault. Then he watches his mother tell Batman that he was a good kid and he cries. After that, he's kidnapped by Darius Caldera in a soul cage and taken to Hell to hang out with Barry Allen. Although since time means nothing in Hell, shouldn't he have already been there when Barry was brought in? And Barry was already there when Jason was brought in? And each of them were already there when each of them were brought in? Fuck, my head hurts. I need some opium. How can Portland be as liberal as it is but we don't have any opium dens?!
The issue ends with Boston Brand shrugging his shoulders and thinking, "Well, nothing I can do now! Might as well go back to possessing people playing miniature golf for some kicks and laughs!" Batman, on the other hand, cradles Jason Todd and screams, "I told you not to go after The Joker alone! I was right! You were wrong! And now look what happened?! I'm sad!"
Dead Again #2 Rating: B+. It's a little better than the last one. But that'll happen when you get to see The Joker murder Jason Todd on panel. Sure, it was fun seeing Barry Allen disintegrate from contact with antimatter as well. But not quite as satisfying. As for Deadman, what the fuck has he done so far? Absolutely nothing! Unless this entire series was to clear up minor errata that fans had been bringing up for years about each of these characters' deaths. "Why didn't The Joker completely finish Robin off with the crowbar? Why leave him alive to almost escape the bomb? Makes no sense, DC!" "Why didn't the Qwardians kill The Flash when they had the chance?! How did he buy time to destroy the antimatter canon?!" You know what? As I began writing the second one, I'd lost interest. No way fans were pointing out inconsistencies in Barry's death, right? No, no. That's a terrible way to think. Always remember: fan complaints about comic book plots are the Rule 34 of comic book fandom. Any plot you can mention, somebody wrote an irate letter about it. It's just, before the Internet, nobody published most of that hateful nerd garbage!
The issue ends with Boston Brand shrugging his shoulders and thinking, "Well, nothing I can do now! Might as well go back to possessing people playing miniature golf for some kicks and laughs!" Batman, on the other hand, cradles Jason Todd and screams, "I told you not to go after The Joker alone! I was right! You were wrong! And now look what happened?! I'm sad!"
Dead Again #2 Rating: B+. It's a little better than the last one. But that'll happen when you get to see The Joker murder Jason Todd on panel. Sure, it was fun seeing Barry Allen disintegrate from contact with antimatter as well. But not quite as satisfying. As for Deadman, what the fuck has he done so far? Absolutely nothing! Unless this entire series was to clear up minor errata that fans had been bringing up for years about each of these characters' deaths. "Why didn't The Joker completely finish Robin off with the crowbar? Why leave him alive to almost escape the bomb? Makes no sense, DC!" "Why didn't the Qwardians kill The Flash when they had the chance?! How did he buy time to destroy the antimatter canon?!" You know what? As I began writing the second one, I'd lost interest. No way fans were pointing out inconsistencies in Barry's death, right? No, no. That's a terrible way to think. Always remember: fan complaints about comic book plots are the Rule 34 of comic book fandom. Any plot you can mention, somebody wrote an irate letter about it. It's just, before the Internet, nobody published most of that hateful nerd garbage!