Robin III: Cry of the Huntress #1 (December 1992)

If you pull that tab slowly, Robin's cape flutters a teeny, tiny bit.

This was the Collector's Edition! On the back of the bag, there are instructions on how to pull the tab correctly so you see the image change. Like me, you might thinking, "What am I? The dumbest guy to ever buy a Super Special Edition Comic Book at inflated prices? Please. I know how to pull a fucking tab!" But then I had to apologize to the plastic bag when I got to the third instruction which read, "To change to second cover, pull out insert, turn over and place back into window." What?! A SECOND COVER! Oh man. I hope he's naked!

Holy shit! It's KGBeast after he merged with the Bat Signal in a teleporter malfunction! Cool!

Well, that technology certainly was worth the extra cost! They must have used this for so many covers in subsequent years. I can't wait to see how many of my 1994 comic books come with this tech!

Also, quit screaming "Pedophile!" you assholes so quick to judge somebody for daring to be facetious and whimsical on the Internet! I don't actually want to see Tim Drake's ding-a-ling! And even if I did, who cares?! He's a fictional, made-up, bisexual, super genius sidekick. He's not actually whatever stupid age he's supposed to be in this. I mean, if I thought he was anything other than a late teen, I never would have made that joke! I mean, pretending to want to see a fictional character's penis when they're only like eight or something? That's disgusting!

Ha ha. I don't actually mean that. I don't care if you're into fictional characters getting naked. I mean, my browser's cookie history is at least 50% Deviant Art files of Erin Esurance!

Double ha ha! Actually I do mean it. Stop looking at AI generated photos of minors, you pedophiles.

According to the special Collector's Edition bag that this comic book came enclosed in and which I cut open like a rabid barbarian, the set includes the comic book, the special moving cover which is part of the comic book, a second reversible cover which is part of the special moving cover which is part of the comic book, covers by Mike Zeck and Tom Lyle which are part of the reversible covers which are part of the special moving cover which is part of the comic book, and an exclusive poster. So basically, one extra thing. I got one extra poster for buying this. Awesome.

Dude, I understand that the regular priced comic didn't come with the moving cover! Get off my dick, you literal-minded jerk-off! I'm trying to be facetious on the Internet! Goddamn. You wouldn't think it was this hard to be silly on the Internet! But no, nowadays I have to do all this work making up Straw Men readers whom I can yell at!

Shockingly, the poster is still inside the comic book. I guess at 21 years of age, I'd gotten past putting comic book posters up on my wall. Especially when Robin was on them. But before that, in my old childhood bedroom, I had a Teen Titans poster (with Nightwing though, I think) and a poster of The Outsiders flying past the Hollywood sign. I think those were the only ones.

This chapter is titled "The Hammer" which is probably better than "The Crowbar" which is a different, and better, Robin story. Because it's a comedy where Jason Todd dies. Also it wasn't called that but you get what I was going for, right? Just another reminder of the awesome time Jason Todd was killed. I probably bought this series just in case it was another death of Robin story and I didn't want to miss out this time.

The story begins with Robin narrating about how crime has been out of control lately in Gotham. And then he describes the fight he and Batman are currently undertaking.

Suck it, you anti-woke cucks! Robin and Batman were stomping Nazi dick in 1992, you pieces of shit!

Oh no! Did my politics interfere with my comic book review?! Shouldn't I just stick to writing reviews and not telling anti-woke shitbags how fucking unlikable and stinky they are? Yeah, yeah! I probably should! I won't do it anymore. You don't have to worry about me calling you bleeding dog anuses from here on out, Nazis.

Ha ha! No, no. I might do it again. Probably, even.

Not long after Robin and Batman interrupt this meeting of august young free speech enthusiasts, a helicopter buzzes by the window and begins pumping bullets into everybody. Somehow all of the bullets miss Batman and Robin. It's probably because they're . . . no, no! I'm not making the joke. You make the joke.

Canonically, bat lube does exist.

I don't know why I mentioned Bat Lube. Probably because I was thinking, "Why does Bat Lube exist?", for no reason at all. It's not like Catwoman doesn't just flood the inside of her leather suit whenever she sees Batman. She gets so wet for him she squirts out of her cat SCUBA suit like a really horny thing shout out of a thing preventing the horny thing from getting fucked. I'm too tired to be clever so you get way too literal metaphors tonight.

You know what? I don't even know if Bat Lube exists canonically. Just seems like it probably does.

I had no idea rats in a maze get so frustrated that they tear each other's throats out! Time to experiment!

Rats are a bit too expensive for me to run this experiment. Plus I'd have to build a rat maze and I haven't done that since 6th Grade in Gifted and Talented. I wonder if Fuzzies and Pinkies are good enough? It's also possible that Batman doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. Normally I wouldn't question it but Batman's being written by Chuck Dixon here so I've set aside a few grains of salt to keep me from swallowing any fact that comes out of his bat mouth.

Batman benches Tim Drake for the time being because it's suddenly become too dangerous taking a teenager out on the streets in a flashy red and yellow costume to fight violent criminals. Jeez! One little helicopter machine gun ambush massacre and Batman grounds Tim. So unfair!

Elsewhere in Gotham, the Huntress tries to look as '90s as possible.

How much of a character's face needs to be hidden by a mask before the reader's suspension of disbelief buckles and collapses? It must be more than this because I'm currently crawling out of the rubble of mine. If I ran into The Huntress on the street in her regular identity, am I supposed to be all, "You look like The Huntress! Although it's hard to tell because her cheek bones and jowls are always covered up!" Maybe this is why she eventually goes with the Belly Window outfit. So nobody ever looks right at her face. But for now, she's in her modest outfit (that means just a ton of cleavage). She's on the tail of some of Gotham's crime lords who are running drugs. She follows some of them back to their hotel in via rope and Lamborghini where she breaks in, gasses them all, and then goes through their drug briefcases to find a ton of blank paper. So LSD?

I mean counterfeiting! They're probably counterfeiting something! But I grew up in the Bay Area and Northern California so obviously everything reads "LSD" to me.

Since Tim has nothing to do now that Robin's been grounded, he winds up having no excuse to turn down some nerd's birthday party invite. The guy's throwing off some real Danny Chase But Taller vibes. I hate him already just because he made me remember Danny Chase! I hope the party gets rained out. By bullets! Ha ha!

We also get to meet one of Tim's teachers, Ms. Hollingsworth.

She wants to fuck him, right?

Oh gross! Get your minds out of the gutter! By "him", I meant Tim's dad. And maybe Tim. I don't know. Did Gerard Jones write this?

Wanna-be Danny Chase, whose name is Ives, celebrates his birthday party in Gotham's Little Odessa. Uh oh! Crime lords. Russians. Drug money. Nazis! It all adds up! Ives is a white supremacist and in the mafia!

At the party, Tim takes a shit. On his way back from the bathroom, he hears a commotion in the alley behind the kitchen. He rushes out to see some Russians beating up the owner of a print shop across the alley. He also sees the owner's daughter, Ariana, who is so cute that he decides to help her out and then hit on her while her father's bleeding all over the place. He may be Batman's sidekick but he's still a teenager with rampaging hormones. They part ways without kissing because the nosy old dying man makes it awkward. But Tim is Robin so he'll probably know all about her by morning. And Batman will be all, "Who used up so many of my Bat-AOL hours?!"

It takes a lot of planning to masturbate in the same house as The Batman.

The Russian thugs couldn't put enough of a beating on Ariana's father to get him to do what they want. Although they didn't give him much time to tell his side, what with all the gasping for air and spitting teeth and bleeding internally. Reporting back to their boss, they get screamed at for not doing the job correctly. So now this Russian, this Commissar (Commie Tsar? Ha ha!), must pay out of pocket to send some real muscle: KGBeast!

Apparently, Tim doesn't currently live in Wayne Mansion. I forgot he's not a tragic orphan. Too bad because it really helps move the plot along when a teenager doesn't have a stupid controlling dad to have to listen to. Not that I think he's too controlling. He's actually just jealous that Mr. Wayne gets to see his son constantly and his son won't even play a midnight game of chess with him.

"Fuck you, dad! I'm getting drunk!"

Squeaky clean Tim Drake doesn't drink four bottles of hundred year old wine down in the cellar. He's actually built a secret passage down there so he can sneak out. I guess since his dad's currently in a wheelchair, he can't follow him.

The important Robin business that can't wait is stalking Ariana. He rushes through his secret tunnel to the Bat Cave (does Bruce know about this tunnel?! It could be a security risk!) to grab his Robin uniform and stake himself on a roof across from Ariana's dad's shop. I hope he's not trying to get a glimpse of Ariana changing through a window or showering! Boy oh boy! I really, really hope he isn't that disgusting! But if he is, I hope Tom Lyle saved a full page for it!

Sure he won't do anything. Probably because Batman checks Robin's suit with a UV flashlight every morning.

While he's hoping for a light to go on in the bathroom on the second floor, a car full of Russian thugs pulls up. Did you read that, you stupid Comicsgaters? The bad guys so far in this 1992 comic book have been Nazis and Russians! Learn a lesson some time, you bleeding dog anuses. One of the Russians is KGBeast and another one has a flamethrower. Tim knows he promised Bruce to lay low for a few nights but he can't help it. He really wants to get laid. I mean he really wants to save this father and daughter. And he'll be happy with just saving the daughter if it comes to that.

The thugs bust up the place like Ariana's father is A. W. Merrick in Deadwood and he just printed a scathing essay insulting Putin's manliness. Robin tries to help and it's going about as well as it can go for a Robin beating up regular thugs. But then the boss thug steps in and Robin remembers why he's supposed to only get involved in shit like this with Batman.

How are there five more issues of this if Robin dies on page one of Issue #2?

Robin III: Cry of the Huntress #1 Rating: B. It's a comic book about Tim Drake's Robin! A B is pretty fucking good if you ask me because I'm biased. I don't like Robin and I really don't like Tim Drake. But this was entertaining and The Huntress was cute and Ariana was cute and oh shit I just remembered taller Danny Chase. Oh, that's okay. I won't adjust the rating just because I also fucking hate Danny Chase. Ives can't help that he looks like him somewhat! Plus, and I never, ever do this: the colorist smashed it on this one. I don't know why I even noticed it being that most comics on newsprint all look about the same (based on the era, of course). Maybe the palette was just so strikingly different from all the Justice League books I've been reading that caused it to really catch my eye. But I liked it! Hopefully we'll get at least one issue that's mostly just an awkward first date between Ariana and Tim. That's the only way I can see an issue getting an A!

Oh! I realized I didn't scan a picture of Ariana! Sorry about that. Just imagine she looks a lot like The Huntress without her mask. I'm not saying she's The Huntress because she isn't. But I think maybe Tom Lyle can only draw one really attractive female character.

The Killing Joke (1988)

Oh boy.

Nobody needs to hear my take on The Killing Joke so they're not going to get it. The Interet is full of people who have praised it, destroyed it, defended it, pissed on it, embraced it, deconstructed it poorly, and commented on it without having read it. And I have read none of them. Hell, I barely have any idea what Moore and Bolland think of the book after all these years, just a few hazy, half-remembered possible anecdotes from interviews read decades ago. But none of that matters anyway. When I read a book, I do so with all the evidence needed to understand it: everything contained within the book. Sometimes even that's not quite enough to understand a text and you know what happens then? I live with the mystery of it. I'm currently going on 25 years of living with the fucking mystery of who Zampanò lost and how he knew Pelafina so, believe me, I'll live with fucking mystery.

Then again, I'm not going to say nothing about it! This blog is more for me than anybody else. It's an addition built onto the side of my brain. A place for storage. But be forewarned: I'm not scanning any panels from it so this'll be text heavy. I can't bare to crease the cover or damage the spine on this thing even if it's a First Edition meaning it's the least valuable of all the fucking printed editions. Really? Thanks a lot, world! I happen to buy one of the most popular stories of all time when it was on the stand and it's the later versions that wind up being worth the real cash? Fuck you! I don't know who I'm yelling at. I suppose the "you" I'm telling to fuck itself is just the general concept of reality and our vague awareness and understanding of it. Maybe the "you" that needs to fuck itself are the collectors who obsessively need a version of every different colored cover. I sort of wish I had the hot pink one.

Secondhand information on this comic book litter the shores of my brain like the flotsam and jetsam washed up after two ships smashed into each other at sea. Two? More like millions, I suppose. I read this and not long after that, Oracle showed up in Ostrander's Suicide Squad, one of my favorite ever comic book runs. So I don't think I ever thought this book was out of canon because it had a direct effect on the DC Universe. To be fair, I don't think I thought too much about canon and non-canon stories at the time. Which is weird because I pretty much began reading comics because of Crisis on Infinite Earths which was DC staking out the borders on their canon claim and trying to clean up their messy little universe. But upon revelation that Oracle was Barbara Gordon behind a computer because she couldn't be Batgirl anymore due to being paralyzed, nobody could argue that The Killing Joke wasn't in continuity. Whether it was meant to be or not didn't matter anymore after that. So I never believed that Batman killed The Joker at the end of it which, I think, some people read into it? Again, I'm not really up on all the opinions people have on this comic, just a hazy bunch of disordered whispers.

Based on the story, it wouldn't make sense for Batman to kill The Joker at the end of The Killing Joke anyway. It goes against the entire characterization of Batman in it, a man actively trying to avoid that end. By the time the story is over, nothing has actually changed (I know, I know. I'll get to that soon enough!). The Joker did some shit. Batman stopped him from doing more shit (although he never stops him from doing all of the shit which really becomes a problem that Batman should think about over time (although time exists in such a weird state in comics. We see Batman having not stopped The Joker from murdering thousands of Gotham citizens over many decades. But that's not the reality of Gotham in comic book time. Maybe The Joker hasn't really caused that much harm in the mind of The Batman in any issue you're currently reading!). The Joker has been caught and, presumably, thrown back in Arkham where he'll eventually escape. Commissioner Gordon has had a rough time but hasn't gone mad like The Joker, narcissistically, thought he would. The status quo at the beginning of the comic book is the same as the status quo at the end of the comic book. It's just another story from another point of view about The Batman. It could easily have been forgotten, just a story occasionally brought up among long-time readers as an interesting little take on Batman trying to make peace and The Joker trying to prove he's not a psychopathic anomaly.

Except, of course, for Babs.

But I'll get to that! I promise! First, I wanted to say how, on this re-read, I was ready to see how obviously this was an out-of-canon story in that it seemed to expressly be describing The Joker's origin. But, of course, we can never know The Joker's origin, or who he is. That's one of the mysteries we, and The Batman, must live with. It's how I knew Batman sitting in Metron's chair and asking who The Joker is wasn't going to give him a definitive answer even if some kid on tumblr screamed at me that I don't know what I'm talking about and it was all going to be revealed. But, of course, the revelation Batman got wasn't about who The Joker was, it was some dumb shit about there being three Jokers. So reading such a definitive take had me thinking, "Aha! This is obviously an out-of-canon story!" But then The Joker casually mentions how he doesn't know what exactly the pain was that brought him to where he was and that he likes to imagine different scenarios for it. So what we got was just one of those possibilities. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what kind of "bad day" caused The Joker to go insane. What matters is that Batman had one of those "bad days" and he, too, became mentally ill. Obsessive. Compulsive. Dressed like a bat. But he didn't become a nihilist without hope. So while The Joker needs to prove that he's just had a normal reaction to a "bad day", Batman's existence proves him wrong. And maybe that's why they hate each other without really knowing each other. They sense what they could have become, something diametrically opposed to what they currently are. For The Joker, that's an affront, an insult, the greatest offense. Because it shows he could have been a better person but he just became a psychopath. For Batman, it brings out compassion and empathy and understanding. He understands having a "bad day" and wishes to extend a hand to The Joker before their constant conflicts end badly. This entire story is about Batman trying to help The Joker and The Joker trying to prove that he just went mad like any normal person would. Which is why Batman killing The Joker at the end makes no sense.

And then, of course, there's Babs. Talk about a Bad Day! If not for The Joker shooting Barbara in the spine and then stripping her naked and taking photos of her broken body, this comic book would probably have gently faded into obscurity. It's not like the rest of the story was handed down from on high by the Great Alan Moore. The Joker's monologues simply read like excised entries from Rorschach's journal. There's nothing really new or revelatory here. Maybe in 1988, showing Batman and The Joker were two sides of the same card was something not so plainly stated? I don't know about that kind of stuff. But if Babs hadn't been brutally shot and tortured by The Joker so casually just to try to make Gordon insane (some might use the shorthand "fridged"), there's just no meat on the bone of this story. And once you know the story, that cover just mocks you. It offends. It puts the reader in the position of the random victim of any psychopath.

But, yes, Babs wasn't a random victim. She was the daughter of the Police Commissioner. She was used to get to him. A woman tortured to more deeply explore a man's character. And while this might be seen more grotesquely year after year, as it's so obviously done time and time again, I'd wager it wasn't seen quite as manipulative and cynically when this appeared on the shelves. Rightly, it was meant to horrify and disturb. Especially when readers are used to something this drastic happening in some kind of event and not some one-off story tossed up on the shelves with no real link to any current monthly title. It was meant to be shocking because it was an act meant to drive Gordon (the father!) mad.

Ultimately, with many, many thanks to Kim Yale and John Ostrander, what happened to Barbara Gordon wound up being uplifting in the way The Joker tried to prove "bad days" couldn't be. Outside of this story, Barbara's ordeal gained the meaning Moore and Bolland never intended to give it. Sure, they make her strong after having woken up, concerned for her father more than her well-being and possible paralysis. What The Joker did to her is never explicitly mentioned aside from a casual mention from the dirtiest, most unkempt version of Detective Bullock ever depicted (quite a feat!) about how Babs had been found undressed with a lens cap nearby for a camera they couldn't find. We must, I think, assume there were only pictures. Kim and John, I believe, assumed that as well when they brought Barbara Gordon back as Oracle. Did she become the most well-known disabled super hero of all time? I don't know! Why would I know? Should I even say disabled?! Is that okay?

Kim and John are the true heroes of this book. Because the cynical side of me sees what other writers might have done with a follow-up to this story and it's not great. Babs possibly pregnant with The Joker's child? Right? Somebody thought about that, I'm sure. It's the only rational reaction to this story! Anybody normal person reading this story would think that's the next story! I can prove that I'm not the only one who thought it! All I need is a dilapidated amusement park, some joker venom, three little people in bondage gear, and a karaoke machine! I'll prove that I'm not the sicko! You're the sicko for not becoming a sicko in the way I became a sicko! You! You're the pervert for not wanting a story about Babs having The Joker's baby!

The Killing Joke Rating: B-. It's fine! Again, if not for the shock and horror of the random act of violence against Barbara Gordon, it would have wound up a footnote, maybe a fan favorite on some lists by people trying to prove their love of comics by picking something not that great but interesting enough. The joke at the end was pretty good though. Did Alan Moore write it or was that an old standard? I don't know! But Batman thought it was funny so it must be a new one. Because Batman mentions how earlier how if he's heard a joke before, he doesn't laugh at it (unless the main point was that he doesn't laugh at "unfunny" jokes). Although Batman laughing? What's that about?! That's more out of character than when Kevin Smith wrote that Batman pissed his pants! Why isn't Moore taken to task for that huge writing blunder?! Some people! You just can't criticize them, I guess.

Justice League Quarterly #10 (Spring 1993)

Booster Gold after spending some years on the Phantasm planet.

Maybe this will just become a Phantasm blog. There may only be five movies but I bet I could discuss them for at least a few months. Except I don't think I'm sensitive enough to discuss the scene in the graveyard where The Tall Man is all, "Look at my tits! You're totally gonna put your pee pee in my hoo-ha!" And then he's all, "Ha ha! I probably have a penis!" Canonically, I can't say whether the Tall Man has a pee pee or a hoo-ha because we've never seen it. But we have seen his tits so, well, you know. The Tall Man has tits.

I wonder if the Phantasm franchise has the record for having the most uncharismatic leads of any movie franchise ever? I hope I don't offend the Boy or Reggie by saying that! Hmm, maybe I shouldn't have singled them out after that comment, right? Um, also Angus Scrimm. Boy howdy! He's so ugly! I mean, he's supposed to be ugly and creepy unlike the protagonists Reggie and the Boy. Um, I mean Mike. Don't assume I'm actually the Tall Man because I like to call Mike "Boy" and I have tits.

This issue begins with Booster Gold waking up full of shame and self-loathing after having a dream about his mother. I would describe the dream but you can probably make out what kind of dream it was due to my use of the adjectives "shame" and "self-loathing". Are those adjectives? Anyway, as you might have thought, he was dreaming about being arrested in front of his mother after having committed all the horrible future crimes he chose to commit. Crying on the steps nearby is a woman cradling a child. Did Booster Gold have a wife and child? Or is that his sister and niece? Or were they part of the reason he was being arrested in the dream?! I know dreams usually aren't non-fiction. I recently had a dream where the Non-Certified Spouse had an online friend who made their own flavors of Moon Pies. She made one flavor especially for me: Murdered Baby's Soul. That was definitely fiction because now I go to sleep every night wondering what Murdered Baby's Soul tastes like.

Oh wait. She's not cradling a child. Nor is she on steps.

I blame the colorist's terrible color guide which must have read, "The sofa should be purple but bluier. The woman on the sofa should be purplier. The wall should be purple but different. Outside the window? More purple." How is my mind supposed to differentiate all of those purples and blues?! It's also possible my eyes glanced at the picture and my mind, detecting patterns that I'm used to seeing, just went, "Oh, okay. Booster Gold is being busted for beating his woman on the street while their child watched." I don't mean I'm used to seeing that because I've ever acted out anything like that! I just grew up at a time when everything on fucking television was Jerry Springer or Cops!

While Booster Gold's memories of his future make him weep the way Ted Kord weeps whenever Guy Gardner kicks him in the dick, some bald guy whose color separation guide was just "Yellow!" invents online gambling.

"Sos what yer sayin' is I jus' put all my bankin' infermation into this magic betting box and bada boom bada bing, I'm like super rich and shit?"

Seeing the screen that reads "Place Wager from Savings" should be everything a person needs to understand about gambling. Everybody knows gambling ruins lives but the main obstacle in the way of gambling ruining way, way more lives was that you had to make an effort to gamble. You had to plan a trip to someplace that allows it. You had to get off your ass to buy a scratch card. You had to go to the horse or greyhound track or, if you really wanted to get depressed and see how you've taken even the fun of going on a day trip out to watch animals get abused, the off-track betting parlor. But now with B.O.O.K.I.E., you can walk down to the corner, tap directly into your bank account, and feel the excitement of standing around waiting to see the results of the race! Or, if we're talking about reality, online casinos! Online poker! Apps that let you buy scratch-its and lottery tickets without getting your cheese-dust covered ass off of the sofa! It's bread and circuses all day, especially now that we've got Caligula in office here in America with his little pet Nazi gremlin, Tesla Wyrmtooth.

Luckily for the people about to lose all of their life savings to B.O.O.K.I.E., a young hero comes along to hack the system, bleed it dry, and report them to the feds! A roller blade wearing Nirvana fan who maybe isn't as good at hacking as he thought he was.

I take back my use of the word "luckily".

That's not a Justice League Teleporter Tube Toby has found himself trapped within. That's a B.O.O.K.I.E. automated kiosk with its security sensors tripped after he tried to hack it. Loser!

Some goons pull up ready to crack Toby's skull but he's still in the system so he sends a message to their pagers to distract them while he hacks his way out and roller blades to freedom! The goons, being so reliant on orders from up above and so attached to their pagers like big stupid '90s idiots, fall for the ruse and immediately check their pagers once they start vibrating. Can you imagine how dumb people were in the '90s?! So fucking attached to a small piece of electronics that constantly demanded their attention! Fucking idiots.

Usually that would be me being self-deprecating but this time it's me being smug because I don't fucking have a smart phone and never will. All y'all look like pager checking criminal goons getting outsmarted by the worst dressed hacker in history!

Um, ha ha! Just kidding! I was just kidding! Really! Not about not owning a phone. That's true. But I don't think everybody is a pager checking goon. At least not in the 21st Century where you don't have to check your pager and then go find a phone and then call the person who paged you or maybe even page them to let you know you got the page while sending some stupid weird code y'all had made up instead of sending a phone number. And I don't think you could ever play games on your pager! Why would anybody ever want one?! I understand having a smart phone because you can play games or use apps or browse the Internet. Staying in contact with other people is like the 8th or 9th best thing to do with a phone. But that's all a pager was good for! Who wanted other people to have constant access to you?! That was the best part about living in an age without cell phones! You'd leave the house and theoretically cease to exist until you got back! Oh, it was glorious!

Anyway, Toby decides to hack his way into Justice League Headquarters to hide out from the goons chasing him. I think the only person currently awake inside is Booster Gold in a shame spiral.

I guess Booster's weeping woke everybody up.

I'm pretty sure you can see Fire's bush in the above panel!

Guy Gardner pantses the poor kid because he gives a fake name. Ice stops him before Guy gets arrested for whatever crime you can be arrested for just because you pulled some kid's pants down. Probably something like Overly Aggressive Manhandling of a Minor which might not be a felony but it would definitely get you shanked in prison if somebody heard that was what you were in for. "What? Sicko perv? No no no! You've got it wrong! I JUST PRANKED THE KID!" Then you'd get stabbed in the liver because "pranked" is probably prison slang for consensual surprise shower sex. You're probably wondering how that's consensual, right? Well, you know, most prisoners probably don't want to be thought of as rapists but still want to have some sexy fun times while in prison. So you get a group together who sign a consent form that at any time they have their butthole all nice and soaped up, it's an invitation for a surprise quickie. The surprise just makes it a fun game!

Toby was caught just after he sent out a BBS message on the Justice League computer system so Blue Beetle notices that the kid isn't a threat. The message was to some guy named Jack Marshall, a hacker wearing an anarchist t-shirt. I don't remember him at all. Was he from Bloodlines? No, this was probably a smidge too early for Bloodlines, right? Anyway, Jack explains that Toby has discovered a bunch of illegal shit being perpetrated by the B.O.O.K.IE machines (I was apparently punctuating it wrong earlier. I will not fix my previous mistakes!). So now the Justice League are involved because they can't turn their backs on something illegal taking place.

I bet Fire fucks Jack Marshall. He looks a like Jesse Custer if somebody other than Steve Dillon were drawing him but they were trying to approximate Dillon's look while also making him handsome.

If Fire isn't eating out this guy's asshole by the end of the story, I'll lose all respect for her.

Jack Marshall wears a blazer over a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. He's slightly unshaven and his hair's about an inch longer than your grandmother would find respectable. No wait. Your great grandmother, probably. Great-great grandmother? Fucking shit, I just looked at a calendar and some adults were born in the 21st Century? I'll judge by the age my mother was when I was born (22!) to calculate when somebody who is 18 now's mother was born. That means their mother was born in 1985. So their grandmother would have been born in 1964. They certainly wouldn't have had a problem with long hair. Hell, my grandmother was born in 1921 and she never had a problem with my long hair. Hell, that beautiful, sweet lady thought Gene Simmons was a looker! For the record, I never thought anything but positive thoughts for that woman other than the day we were watching Donahue together and she looked at Gene Simmons and said, "That's a really handsome man." Fine, let me change my hair description of Jack Marshall. His hair looked like the kind of hair you'd find on any man or woman across the country in 1993 and I'm not sure how it's supposed to show how anarchic he is.

Jack Marshall explains away all the morally gray aspects of what he and Toby are doing with a couple of super definitive "no"s.

The B.O.O.K.IE machines are just corporate skimmers stealing your information to make money on it and also sometimes just stealing your money and also letting you gamble so that they can sort of legally steal your money as well. So it really is the Internet. Minus the games and porn. Although the B.O.O.K.IE booth looks like a nice little masturbation way station.

Jack Marshall says the name Rubenico, the man behind the B.O.O.K.IE stations, and Booster Gold loses his mind. He explains that in the future, the Rubenico Syndicate runs half the eastern seaboard. So ATM gambling gave a man enough power to control the east coast of America for 500 years. Why didn't I read this at 22 and go into online gambling?! I should have realized that this comic book I really didn't like buying was actually a deliverer of prophetic news. Oh, Cassandra, how did I not believe?!

Oh, I know how! Booster Gold goes on to explain how the other thing that ruled America in 2462 was college football. And he was the best there ever was at it. What kind of Al Bundy shitty ass brag is that? I understand that a lot of people take college football seriously. It's just that I don't take those people seriously. If college football commands everybody's attention in five hundred years, I'll probably kill myself. Except if I'm still alive in five hundred years it will probably mean death has been eradicated and I physically wouldn't be able to kill myself so I'd have to find contentment in just sneering at all the Huskers and Huskies fans who crossed my path. "My path" meaning wherever my 500 year old sack of melting organic material has been tossed by the side of the road.

Booster Gold explains how his mother got sick and he needed money to pay for her care and since college football doesn't pay anything unless you're playing for a corrupt school system, he had to begin throwing games for the Rubenico Syndicate's gambling ring. He was eventually arrested and shamed in front of his mother. He had become addicted to money and fame and it was his downfall. Which is why he traveled back to the past to start over at earning money and fame.

Fresh off the high of changing the future for a model and her sister, Booster's ready to go whole hog and really cause a major paradox.

How come everything in Booster's future of 2462 somehow had its beginnings in 1992? Weird!

Booster still hasn't coped with his addiction to money and fame which is why he still believes that Rubenico ruined his life instead of understanding who really made the choices that led to his ruined life. He's like Jack Torrance up at the Overlook still blaming everybody else and the alcohol for his rage problem. Except Booster Gold doesn't have an out of control boiler in the basement acting as the metaphor for his lust for power and money.

Why yes, I did just recently finish a re-read of The Shining. Why do you ask?

Booster Gold's about to ruin Jack and Toby's hacker plan to bring down Rubenico by crashing straight into the currently not that corrupt home office of the corporation behind the B.O.O.K.IE machines. Blue Beetle, Fire, and Ice rush off to stop him while Guy Gardner remains behind to make sure these anarchists don't piss on the coffee table or leave rings on the toilet seat.

Here's Beetle, Fire, and Ice hustling into an elevator because I thought it looked charmingly goofy and old timey.

The goons from earlier have followed a trail of Toby's roller blade tracks and 3-D Doritos crumbs straight to Justice League Headquarters. They just happened to have brought their SCUBA gear along because everybody knows about the underwater airlock that connects to Beetle's stupid bug ship. And what luck! The Bug flies off after Booster just as the goons are ready to dive into the river! But nothing ever comes of this so forget I mentioned it. It's just page filler and another chance to humiliate Guy Gardner! I'll take no part in that!

No, ladies. It's far more likely Booster will be the cause of the future he so badly wants to change. That's just how time would have to work in a world with actual backwards time travel.

I specify backwards time travel because nobody is concerned with forward time travel. That's already how naturally do it!

Booster breaks into Rubenico's penthouse suite over his office complex intending to kill him. He only ever uses the last name because Booster doesn't even know this guy's name. He had nothing to do with the college football cheating scandal of 2462! But Booster thinks killing him will destroy the Rubenico's entire family history and save Booster Gold from ruining his past sometime in the future. There's only one major problem with his plan.

You're going to have to kill little girl Rubenico too, buddy.

Blue Beetle tells Booster Gold that everything he did in his past is his fault and everybody lives happily ever after. Except for the little girl who looks at Booster in rage and is probably thinking, "I will dedicate all of my family's lives until the Rubenicos are no more to destroy this man, this Booster Gold!" So, see? He just created his shitty future with his shitty attempt at changing the future. Too many people have Back to the Future brain.

The story ends with Guy Gardner giving Toby a thumbs up for hacking the Justice League elevator and trapping Beetle inside yelling, "Jane! Stop this crazy thing!" I don't get the 1993 or earlier reference which also makes no sense because the "crazy thing" is already stopped.

Can you tell I lost interest in this story right about the time it surpassed the length of a regular comic book? That's why I hate Annuals and Quarterlies and Specials. My attention span was molded in the flames of 24 page comic books. After that, I either need a new comic book, a snack, a nap, or six hours of video games. I definitely don't need three more short stories in the same comic book as the 38 page story! Fuck my life.

The next story stars Wally West and, I'm assuming, the human resources department of Justice League Europe.

Fucking pig.

The Flash winds up at a police convention because it's 1992, peak pro-cop era (it's the top of the mountain on a graph where the left descends back into a century of people hating cops and the right descends into hopefully a century or more of people, once again, hating cops). He's supposed to be giving a guest talk about who the fuck knows what. He's just a guy who accidentally got super powers. What does he know about policing? Is he going to give a lecture on how to beat a perp to within an inch of his life? On the best ways to obscure your body camera while you fist bump a Nazi? How to not worry about killing anybody at anytime because the District Attorney of every city is in the pocket of the police union and they'd never put a cop on trial (unless the incident was too public and then they'd be all, "Sorry! Sorry! Sorry! Please keep providing witnesses for my non-police involved shooting trials!")? On the way in the building, one of the cops asks him if he'll investigate a death threat against the District Attorney and instead of saying, "Fuck the District Attorney," like a good citizen, he says, "Sure, I'll check it out in the morning." Little does he know, the morning will be too late!

While on the glass elevator up to his room, he happens to witness the assassination just outside the hotel. Or starts to witness it because he lives life so quickly that it looks like everything moves at slow motion to him which would be a really difficult way to live. He sees a muzzle flash in slow motion but what can he do? He's a prisoner of real time because he's in an elevator! Not like he'd ever smash through the glass side of the elevator to save a life. A normal window? Sure! He's done that dozens of times. But this is a classy joint's glass elevator! I guess he's just going to have to watch the DA's brains splatter across the face of his cop escort in super slow motion. I wonder what it's like to vomit at super speed?

Gross. He sweats super fast too.

Flash decides not to smash through the window because he thinks it'll cut him to ribbons. He can't vibrate through the glass because he lost that power after Crisis or Zero Hour or something. So now he can just sweat and watch the guy die. At least, that's what I'd do. Wally decides to spin like a tornado and blow the glass outward so that it cuts the people below him to ribbons while he runs around the shrapnel and then shoves the DA out of the way so fast that he's killed instantly from the shock of it.

The bullet got this close. How hard and fast does Wally have to push the man for the bullet to miss him? Fatally hard, no?

There I am arguing with comic book physics again! It's especially bad since I don't even know the real world physics of something like this and Mythbusters went off the air years ago. Wally has to outrun the bullet and then push the DA out of the way while still running that fast. He'd explode right through the guy, wouldn't he? It'd be The Boys all over again!

I suppose this conundrum of The Flash interacting with regular people at supersonic speeds was the reason for all the Speed Force shit. Just a cozy explanation for why super speedsters aren't harmed by the friction caused by their speed but especially why people they carry who have no super powered defenses against it can survive a superspeed trip down the road or across the ocean. I don't know anything about "the Speed Force" because I think it was invented while I wasn't reading comic books. At least it was invented while I wasn't reading The Flash comic books and I've always not been reading The Flash!

That was the whole story. What happens if The Flash gets stuck in an elevator? We all knew the answer was going to be he smashes his way out but I guess Mark Waid had to make it seem like it was a bit tougher than that. Good job, I guess.

The 3rd story stars Fire and Ice trapped in Bestwig, a new and imaginary nation formed after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, after a modeling job gone wrong. Their luggage was lost and the promoter didn't pay them so now they're stuck with no money and no clothes and no friends and no knowledge of the language of Bestwig. I know what you're thinking: "No clothes! Scan a picture, asshole!"

Well, they have almost no clothes.

I personally don't think Ice should be allowed to show so much lower belly because I have a schedule to keep this morning and I don't think I can move anything around to find time for a quick one off at the wrist.

Instead of getting the cash they need by fucking some rando like Fire almost does but realizes she'd never hear the end of it from Ice, the two sign up for a beauty contest judged by Great Old Ones where the prize is getting to fuck the Great Old Ones. They don't know that's the prize when they sign up for the contest or else Ice probably would have just let Fire fuck that rando. Ice wins but when she hears the prize, she decides she doesn't really want it. Not because she's a prude but because to mate with the Great Old Ones, a human must be shredded and ingested. So the whole thing goes Bea's tits up and Ice and Fire realize they need to figure out a new plan. I think that plan should be Fire flies them home with her ability to, you know, fly. But Fire thinks maybe the next plan is a wet t-shirt contest at a seedy bar. Unfortunately, the story ends before that can happen. Imagine how rock hard Ice's nipples would be as the water froze to her t-shirt and torso!

Hmm, maybe I can rearrange my schedule a little.

The final story stars Ted Kord on a blind date while Booster, Fire, and Wally stalk him. It's charming and fun and silly and the kind of comic book story I actually prefer. Sometimes I wonder why I read super hero comic books at all? I should simply stick to Love and Rockets and Elfquest and Box Office Poison and Strangers in Paradise and Cerebus. I much prefer the drama of daily life and complicated relationships and naked elves and jealous friends and lesbians kissing. But here I am reading hundreds and hundreds of super hero comic books. Has anybody ever thought, "I hate my life"? Is that an original thought I just had? I probably shouldn't even joke about that seeing as how I have a not-zero total of friends who have killed themselves. Sometimes it's funny to be all, "I wish I could die!" And then I think of Mark and Larry and Philip and my Uncle Dan and I get super sad. What's even sadder is that I'm probably forgetting some people!

Ted's date is super cute and she has a super fun job!

The date doesn't work out for a variety of reasons, one of which is that Ted's date's ex proposes to her at the end of it. But that's okay because Ted winds up going home with the waitress. Also Booster gets his comeuppance for being a terrible friend and spying on Ted just to make fun of him when Booster's car is totaled due to Wally smashing into it at super speed. Also Fire gets a date too. I think.

Does this mean she's happy this guy bought her drinks all night or disgusted?

Seriously, I'm really bad at signals. One time the girl I had a huge crush on in junior high passed me a note that said something about me being weird. I don't remember what I wrote on the note in response when I passed it back. But then she passed the note back and it said, "I love you anyways." And I just completely shut down and freaked out and, well, that never went anywhere. Also, I know that wasn't a signal but a blatant communication so I guess I'm terrible at all of it. Just everything that has to do with romantic shit. Surprise!

Justice League Quarterly #10 Rating: I did it! I'm through with these Quarterlies! I never have to read another 80 page comic book in my life! Um, what. The director just commented in my ear piece. Green Lantern Corps Quarterly? Are you sure?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 4: The Tempest #6 (June 2019)

"This comic book is too woke!" screams some lunatic because of the three women on the cover while ignoring the Gollywog in the background.

Look, I just made up that lunatic out of my imagination. Some might call that a straw man and those "some" would be delusional centrists who choose not to believe in lunatics behaving lunatically so they can not believe in anybody warning them about the lunatics. "Both sides are so crazy!" is a thing they are able to say because when they decide not to see the lunatics then the people pointing out that there are lunatics seem like lunatics themselves. I've seen it with older in-laws living in red states. They think you're crazy when you point out reality because their information sources never point out reality. So if reality doesn't exist for them, anybody expressing concern over the current realistic conditions in our country just appear like Chicken Littles screaming that the sky is a white supremacist nation and the only thing that concerns members of the right wing party in America is when the government helps people who are not white or male or rich. The most pressing concern for Republicans is coming up with a new dog whistle for the N-word when the current one becomes too obvious to centrists. Lee Atwater's quote about how you have to find new ways to say the N-word is pretty much the entire Republican strategy. N-word. Forced busing. States' rights. Thugs. Woke. DEI. It's their only platform and I hope they all fucking choke on it as soon as possible.

Lotta people in power who can't swallow two barrels of 000 buckshot fast enough.

This might be the last cheated artist article by Al and Kev but remember, kids: almost all comic writers and artists have been cheated by their publishers!

The issue begins with a scene in 1904 in which Mina Murray has just finished afternoon tea with Sherlock Holmes and Alan Moore is all, "I'm going to do a little tiny meta for the fans."

I don't mean the elephant. If I knew what the elephant was and was commenting on it, I would have said "reference" instead of "meta".

The elephant is being chased away from Holmes' bee-keeping farm by a man with a bident. It must be a Heffalump going after the honey. But if a Heffalump makes an appearance here on Sherlock's estate, can we at least maintain a sliver of belief that Pooh and Piglet were also once members of The League? Maybe a back-up League dealing with smaller and less apocalyptic mysteries?

Mina and The League have just destroyed Moriarity and she's asking Holmes to be a sort of League mentor and advisor. But he refuses, wanting nothing to do with the superpowered and strangely unique. He believes there is no place in regular society for them, himself and his powers of perception and logic included.

Heffalump confirmed!

Holmes surrounds himself with metaphor, the bees being a version of society he sees as orderly and humane, the Pooh Bear representing the concept of Tao, the raging farmer chasing away the Heffalump something, um, about capitalism and class struggle?

Holmes compares Mina to Irene Adler which is a compliment and an acknowledgment that Mina doesn't need his mentorship; she is equal, if not better, to the task of League leader on her own. He also mentions that if a unique and selfish bee were to present itself to the colony, the colony would have to flee the chaos which would ensue. Was he, in 1904, seeing the pattern presented by Prospero and the fairies which would lead Mina and The League to remove themselves to the moon in 2010? Probably!

Back in 2010, all of the fictional characters that have immigrated to Lincoln Island evacuate into Nemo's Nautilus Rocket for immediate evacuation from Earth. Who are they? I don't know!

David Bowie's Starman? Blofeld? The Beagle Boys? Mindman, Electrowoman, and Captain Universe? Six-Gun Gorilla? The Moneypennies? The Pink Child and her Bodyguard? Um, a load of others?

I put a question mark by all the suggestions because I don't want to appear arrogant that I might actually know who Moore and O'Neill were going for, even if they're main characters!

Satin Astro finally meets Vull the Visible aka Mina Murray and lets her know about how the world goes into an apocalypse spiral from this point on. Being that this is a 2000 A.D. parody, she explains how the world gets fucked in Judge Dredd style with killer sentient radioactive monkeys and killer robots. Or that's just Terminator meets Planet of the Apes. Or both, probably!

Emma Night and Orlando console each other with their failure to kill that sexist piece of shit James Bond even though the fairies got him in a nuclear blast that was contained by Captain Universe. Also he didn't die in that blast but nobody knows that yet. He sneaks on board the Nautilus with Spy vs. Spy and The Shadow.

Van Dusen takes a moment to describe more of mankind's fictional nightmares attacking the world.

I don't know these references but they sound Lovecraftian with the odd-angled house and the fishmen.

The final images of Earth being destroyed are broadcast to the Nautilus as everybody climbs into their launch recliners: a Jabberwock decimating London. Leaving Earth to its nightmares, the Nautilus flies past the moon where they see gigantic ants, the Selenites, killing the inhabitants of all the various nations' Moon Bases. But they're leaving all the technology intact as if they're being directed by some sentient being or, as they postulate, black monolith! But it's not just the Selenite army they witness forming on the moon; it's also the army of Amazons which Mina dealt with previously (I think it was in the all text adventures described in one of the earlier volumes). But the Amazons are simply stealing the Earth ships and heading to Venus. Seems logical.

Bond bides his time as the trio of women from the cover discuss a few stories from their past, like how Mina told some sci-fi magazine editor her adventures on the moon which must be where the previous all text adventure came from. This chapter ends with the revelation that the Amazons have already conquered Venus and are possibly heading to Mars next. Marsman cries like an Earth baby.

"They've changed those Amazons from the frozen mountains (of the moon)!"

On Mars, the League find evidence that mankind's nightmares have overreached Earth itself and breed anew on Mars as well. Anywhere human contact has been made, their dreams and nightmares have traveled with them.

Mars got the really spooky nightmares.

All the evidence points to Prospero and the fairies manipulating mankind for its entire history. Mina has been nothing but a pawn. It was Mina who provided the Amazons with the frozen body of Professor Moriarty so that they would have access to his sperm. The next generation of Amazons included men and after long having been pacifists, they were now warmongerers. Holmes's prophetic bee metaphor now haunts Mina's thoughts. Was it her uniqueness, intelligence, and power which caused the downfall of Earth as she was puppeted by Prospero from behind the scenes?! Will she be able to reverse this seemingly unstoppable chain of events? Or will James Bond save the day, an unlikely Gollum accidentally derailing the entire plan as he selfishly tries to fuck more women? Or kill them, I mean?

The revelation that Mina may have been the unwitting pawn of the Fairy all along comes at the center of this issue. That means it's important! I mean, even if it wasn't at the center, it would be an important revelation, I guess.

The Nautilus, unable to make landfall on the moon, Venus, or Mars, continues deeper into the solar system looking for their new home: Captain Universe's Universarium in the Oort Cloud. Captain Universe has opened his home to Jack Nemo and his refugees on one condition: Jack, Captain of the ship, performs a marriage ceremony between Captain Universe and Electrogirl.

On their way, they pass by Jupiter whose orbit is chock full of black monoliths.

Double-O Seven? More like Double-O Anticlimactic.

Yeah, James Bond doesn't do anything exciting at all after all the sneaking and stalking and sexual assaulting.

The marriage between Captain Universe and Electrogirl goes off without a hitch minus the close call with sparking the oxygen in the ship and blowing everybody to smithereens when the bride and groom kiss. Also there's the matter of two wedding crashers who get their comeuppance.

The super tiny speech bubble from Kev reads, "Al, you're a complete cunt."

So that's it! That's the end of everything! Except for the last installment of the Seven Stars battle against the 'Mass and maybe an epilogue or two detailing what happens when Earth has been destroyed by man's imagination.

The Seven Stars' story ends with Zom returning Toby the Schoolboy to his overly fat size so that he can consume the 'Mass and save the country. Most of Britain's heroes have died and the Seven Stars discover that their careers are over since they've all been Seduction of the Innocented into bad press and legal troubles. The team breaks up and Mina heads off to go crazy for a few decades.

The final epilogue reveals that New Lincoln in the Oort Cloud continues to prosper as they watch every fictional alien invasion of the solar system from every year after 2010 blast toward Earth. I guess 2010 was the end of the world because of the 2001 sequel? We did see the monoliths around Jupiter and they were apparently tools of Prospero and the Fairies in controlling and manipulating mankind. The entire series ends with Mister Hyde resurrected in a new immortality pool recreated by Captain Universe so that Mina can have somebody to dance with. Also the Pink Child winds up dating Astro Boy. The end!

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 4: The Tempest #6 Rating: A+. I haven't read the parody letters page yet because I never really write about it even if it's possibly the greatest part of every issue. I wish Alan Moore would make fun of comic book readers more often! Anyway, that's it. I'll probably understand it all better when I re-read the previous volumes (probably out of order). Just one last scan and I'm done!

Zom!

Justice League Quarterly #9 (Winter 1992)

Booster Gold has more muscles in one leg than I have in my entire body.

I just realized you're probably picturing me as a huge flabby mess after that caption! That couldn't be farther from the truth. I'm full of muscles! Just a big muscular muscle man! I guess you need that context to understand that my comment was to point out that Booster Gold has way too many muscles in his legs rather than just the right amount and that I have none. I just told you I have loads and loads of muscles to provide that context and not to brag about all of my muscles. So many muscles! But not too many so that I look like one of Booster Gold's legs! That would be gross.

I'm assuming nobody reading this has too many muscles otherwise I never would have said it was gross because I don't want to be hunted down and punched in my flabby face by some overzealous roid-brained hulk.

On a lighter note, did you see Fire's ass on the cover? Hot cha cha cha cha!

On a heavier note, was Max Lord ever not a villain? Just a total piece of shit from his first appearance through to whatever the fuck happened to him. I don't really care. Just an awful character.

What the fuck, Bea?

What's Fire got against Central America? Does she find everybody from Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama disgusting? Or does she just hate the way Central America looks on a map? It's kind of like the inverted rectum of North America. Although I don't know what that would make South America. Double ick! Maybe back in 1992, the people of Brazil had some kind of overarching hatred for every single country in Central America and Mark Waid was doing some character building here by showing how Brazilian Fire is in her disgust of Central America. Or Fire's just a huge racist fucking pig. I don't know!

The Justice League have come to Central America (more specifically? Who the fuck knows? Mark Waid couldn't be bothered to open up an atlas at the time) to arrest Ira Quimby. Or as his friends begrudgingly refer to him, I.Q. The Justice League head into his lab cocky and arrogant because the guy's name is Ira Quimby. How hard can it be to catch a nerd with that nerd name? Nerd! But little do they know because they're not good at word puzzles and anagrams and initialisms, he's a certified genius! Not because he was born smart or he studied hard but because he rubbed an ancient alien rock all over his body and now when he gets in the sun, his mind work goodlier.

Just a sec! Me needs go rub rock on me and go sit under sun for moment.

Okay! Let's continue!

The Justice League enter Ira's lab and are immediately attacked by five hundred lab monkeys.

Oh man! I hope Ira was running experiments on how fast monkeys could take off women's clothing. That's something a nerd would do, right?!

Ira concentrates so fully while working that he doesn't hear the Justice League beat the shit out of all of his monkeys in the other room. It might also be because he's in a suit with an enclosed environment so he doesn't get any diseases from the monkeys. Wild monkeys may be cute but I'll offer you some advice you may not have considered: you shouldn't try to kiss them. Ira also might be wearing that suit to protect himself from a bacterial weapon he's developing which causes people to become super violent after one hour of coming into contact with it.

Uh-oh.

Don't worry too much yet! That might not have been the rage bacteria. It may have been the concoction that allowed the monkeys to take women's clothes off quickly! This comic book is about to get either super bloody or super sexy! Hopefully the boner I'm sporting is in anticipation of super sexy or else I might need more therapy.

Also I just realized that's probably Ira Quimby on the cover and not Max Lord. I was wondering why he had a monkey on his shoulder.

Ira calms the Justice League by telling them that his Rage Virus only affects one out of every six people due to some genetic factor that he's too stupid to figure out. Blue Beetle believes that means one of them will wind up trying to murder the rest of them instead of realizing that maybe none of them will be affected. That's only a 17% chance for any of them to wind up a multiple murderer and since I can't do more complex calculations than that, I'm pretty optimistic that none of them will wind up infected!

I just did a quick Maths study on the Internet and while I'm in no way confident in what I think I've learned, I believe there's only a 32% chance that none of them will have been infected. That doesn't sound great, does it?! Now I'm fucking worried! Or super horny because, remember, they might have been infected with the taking clothes off women quickly virus! Fingers crossed!

Ice is super against nerds who want to see women's clothes torn off.

Blue Beetle confidently tells the others that one of them will go berserk in exactly one hour. Thankfully, Ira shuts him up and is all, "Or two. Maybe three? One in six is a probability, idiot, not a certainty! Learn some statistics, asshole." It's a real shame because Blue Beetle doesn't have any super powers to fall back on so humiliating him for the only thing he has — his brain — must be devastating.

Also hanging about the lab are more monkeys that weren't rounded up by the Justice League in the first scene so I guess maybe some of them might go fuckshit bonkers too?

Some of the Justice League realize they can't leave without risking the rest of the world and that "some of the Justice League" is Booster Gold for some reason. I bet he went through some kind of horrible space measles pandemic far in the future so he understands quarantines. Since they're stuck together until they wind up murdered by whoever's infected (unless it's Blue Beetle and then, well, you know. Guy Gardner will just hold him by his forehead as he foams and rants and tries to tear out Guy's entrails), they gang up on Ira Quimby and force him to make an antidote. He was shown earlier palming a small vial of yellow liquid so I'm pretty sure he already has an antidote. He just wants to see the Justice League shit themselves.

Or he just wants to kill them by directly injecting a deadly solution into their veins.

The story continues like an episode of The Twilight Zone with everybody getting more and more paranoid. None of them even try to come up with a plan to maybe keep each of them separated. They just wander around the lab kissing monkeys and accusing each other of being the future killer. You'd think they'd use Booster Gold's force field to isolate each other, or Guy's ring, or a bunch of ice walls. Anything that would give them at least a few moments to realize who's infected and then concentrate on containing that person. Unless The Flash is infected. If The Flash is infected, they're already dead.

Before the virus even begins to affect anybody, they start fighting with each other. Ice and Fire attack each other, probably due to some grudges based on living as roommates for so long. Then Booster gets hit by stray fire and starts attacking. Flash tries to stop the fight and slips on some ice which makes him slide into Guy who punches Flash out with a light construct. It's a huge mess and in that moment, Ira Quimby makes a run for it! He winds up in a secret lab where he's protected by a forcefield. He wasn't trying to make an antidote at all! He just needed a chance to get away and be safe from the killers.

But it doesn't last because, again, he's not as smart as he thinks he should be after rubbing a stone all over himself and then lying in the sun.

See how easily he uses the term "voyeurism"? He definitely experimented with making monkeys rip women's clothes off.

After the force field breaks down, Blue Beetle makes a dangerous assumption. We don't find out about the assumption until later but what it is is this: he doesn't feel any rage coming on as the hour nears its end so he assumes that means he hasn't been infected. Did he not watch the monkey kill its family earlier when IQ was showing them how the virus works? The monkey was fine right until the clock ticked over to an hour and then it went berserk. Anyway, the assumption is made and luckily Beetle is right but what he also assumes is that every single one of his friends somehow realized the same thing. Ted fixes Ira's forcefield to create five individual forcefields to contain the rest of the Justice League and their agreement to be contained says to Ted that none of them are infected either. You know, because if they'd felt the rage coming on, they'd refuse to get in a force field so that they could kill the others. Which, again, seems like some crazy assumptions being thrown around by somebody who believes in science!

You know how sometimes you do or say something and you just know you're going to feel like a real fucking loser moron just before you say or do that thing and then the thing is said or done and you shame spiral into oblivion about it? Yeah, I'm not talking about Ted anymore. That's how I feel right now because, once again, I've allowed myself to argue against comic book logic. I read the thing where Blue Beetle makes the assumption and I know it's a fucking comic book and I realize that it works for the plot and I know everything's going to work out so that the plot highlights Blue Beetle's smarts and yet I still dig in my heels and try to argue about how stupid it is. Because that's all I have. I'm a petty little idiot man-child who finds the worst kind of joy in tearing apart the plots of people just trying to write fun little stories to distract us from the mortal terrors all around us. I might as well stare into an ice cream cone and disparage it for not melting correctly as I eat it. Maybe I should try reading this again but enjoying it this time? Just a second!

Okay, let's see. Bea's racist. Monkeys try to strip Tora naked. Ira douses everybody in Monkey Rage Mist. A monkey tears its family apart. Another monkey commits suicide. Everybody bickers and argues. Ira jizzes in his hazmat suit while watching the League fall apart. Ira shits himself when his force field falls apart. Blue Beetle makes a crucial error in logic that luckily saves the day so nobody points out his crucial logic error and everybody just treats Beetle as a hero instead of the two-bit engineer he really is, a character who has no super powers but still somehow held the interest of enough comic book nerds to support an ongoing monthly title for two years and then become a member of the greatest super hero group ever as if he's on par with Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman?! Dammit! Now I'm angry! At least I wasn't angry after reading the first time! I was just slightly bewildered by the end! But now I want to punch a murder monkey in the dick!

Anyway, where were we?

Blue Beetle pretends to be infected with the virus so he can chase Ira around the complex until Ira admits that he had already created an antidote. Still nobody worries about all the monkeys hanging around the complex who also have a 1 in 6 chance of turning murderous. Sure, if I were Booster Gold or Guy Gardner, I wouldn't be worried. But Ira and Ted definitely couldn't defeat a rampaging monkey. Oh, forget about the monkeys! Why must I always get distracted by things Mark Waid has decided aren't important to the story! The monkeys not currently murdering anybody probably proved immune weeks ago during Ira's experiments! See? If I truly want to, I can always find a reason to excuse the narrative rather than tear it down. It's all about attitude!

Ira finally attempts to jab Beetle with the antidote but Beetle just takes it and goes back to release his friends, none of whom were infected. They all take a jab of the antidote so they won't be carriers when they go back into the real world but then all die of cancer months later while Bill Gates maniacally rubs his hands together and laughs the secret laugh of the world's evil overlords! Or maybe they all just go home and live happily ever after while a monkey dangerously shakes some vial full of Ira Quimby's patented End-of-the-World Pox.

Bad monkey! Put Ira's Jizz-in-a-jar down!

The second story stars Crimson Fox and her twin sister, Crimson Fox. It's a murder mystery revolving around people who look like they've committed suicide but have, in fact, been murdered mysteriously! It's up to Crimson Fox and the other Crimson Fox to figure out what is going on in a story Kevin Dooley and Andy Smith like to call, "Churches of Homos!" No wait, that can't be right. The actual title "Cherchez L'Homme" badly translates to "Search for the Man." I only say "badly translates" because I used Google translate and translation isn't meant to be literal. It's probably supposed to be more like "Manhunt", right?

Oh no! Crimson Fox has been infected with Ira's Tear Women Clothes Off Virus!

You wouldn't believe the panel that follows the panel I scanned and which I imagined in my own head! It doesn't turn me on that they're twin sisters. That's actually kind of gross. But it's a comic book and also an imaginary panel that I invented in my head so I can totally believe that they're actually clones and not sisters. That's less gross, right?

Crimson Fox decides to investigate and discovers that a high-powered woman running some company I'm not even bothering to try to remember even for the few seconds it takes to put down the comic book and write this has been using some good-looking man to murder women connected to her company and making the murders look like suicide. Fox stakes out the company and eventually sees a woman leaving with a good-looking man. She thinks, "A-ha! A woman leaving the company with a man! This is a thing that never happens! This must be the man I am hunting!" I know that's not the best detective work but think of it this way: if you know you're in a murder mystery that's only about ten pages long, the first suspect you lay eyes on has to be the killer! There isn't any time for red herrings in a story this short.

Sacred blues!

With Crimson Fox now under the thrall of the murderer, it's up to Crimson Fox to save Crimson Fox! I would differentiate the Crimson Foxes except this entire story is translated from French so both Crimson Foxes speak exactly the same. They're only discernible when they speak English because one is fluent and the other has a strong French accent. One other way to know which is which is the length of their hair but I can't stop focusing on their boobies so that's no help.

By the way, is "Andy Smith", the artist on this story, a pen name of "Bart Sears"? Because this shit looks exactly like Bart Sears' shit. The inker is "Asylum Studios". Could that be Bart Sears?!

Crimson Fox figures out all the clues left by the murderer to discover where he's been hiding out because he really wants a hero to discover him. Because, as I pointed out earlier, the first suspect is always the murderer in a story this short. And yet even in these few pages, Andy Helfer managed to throw in a red herring of sorts! Because the man forcing the women to kill themselves with his pheromone power was actually the woman running that company whom Crimson Fox interviewed at the start! What an efficient use of so few pages!

Needing a man proved her downfall! She should have been happy with Crimson Fox!

What I like about this story is that the clues she left at the killings were important to her plan unlike Batman's villains who leave clues because, I suppose, they just get off on getting their asses beat. But this woman was trying to find a hero smart enough and strong enough to discover her wicked murder spree and then to control him with her pheromones so she could stop dating loser after loser. It was a pretty good plan! Although the plan was super sexist. Not because she murdered women while putting the plan into motion but because she assumed the hero that would stop her would be male. Ha ha! Feminism just kicked your ass, murderer!

The third story stars Power Girl not drawn by Bart Sears so I might actually find her attractive. That's a huge plus!

See?! If it wasn't for Ralph's weird stretchy neck ruining the mood, I'd be totally hard right now!

I'm just kidding! Ralph's weird neck sort of helps my boner!

No, no! I'm just kidding! I'm not a huge sex pervert like I pretend to be! If you think I'm disgusting, just remember, "Grunion Guy (or whoever claims to be the author of this) isn't really disgusting! They're just pretending to be disgusting because they find it funny to pretend to be disgusting! Although Kurt Vonnegut warns that we should be careful who we pretend to be because we generally are the thing we're pretending we're pretending not to be. So is Tess (or whoever claims to be the author of this) really a huge pervert? Probably not!" Just try to remember the "Probably not!" part of that and forget the other stuff where I cast doubt on the thing I was trying to prove I wasn't. Because I'm not just a huge pervert; I'm also a gigantic self-saboteur!

After Power Girl destroys the kitchen and nearly kills Ralph, Wally makes a bet with her that she can't go two days without losing her temper. They shake. Ralph suggests they rethink the bet. Power Girl yells, "NO!" Um, did she just lose? I guess she didn't just lose. Maybe to lose she has to destroy something and not just yell at innocent bystanders with disgustingly long necks.

Anyway, Kara loses the bet because everybody writing these Justice League stories have decided she's a one note joke like Guy Gardner being an arrogant prick and Wally West being a sex pest. Some writer tried to fix her by having Doctor Light point out it was the chemicals in the diet sodas she drinks for no reason fucking up her brain chemicals but I don't think most writers wanted it fixed. Just like nobody wants to fix Guy Gardner by having everybody realize he's suffering from traumatic brain injuries and that he should maybe get some help. I don't know if Wally's sex pest problem can be fixed. I guess just stop writing him that way? Which somebody eventually does, I guess?

The final story isn't about the Global Guardians so there's a high chance that I won't "accidentally" drop this issue in the paper shredder now. It's about Booster Gold. I'm not going to immediately have an accident but I'm also not not going to read this over a running shredder.

Booster Gold has a run-in with a homeless boy who steals his wallet and whom Booster Gold basically blasts on his ass with one of his future bolts to stop him. Also the boy is actually a girl. You can tell because this issue already had a story where a woman was masquerading as a man and also I was sexually attracted to the homeless person so I knew it couldn't be a guy because I'm almost certainly not super gay.

Booster Gold somehow recognizes this young lady because in the future, she has a huge career being a model who poses for the pictures that get stuck in empty picture frames being sold. Was she that good at it that she basically cornered the empty picture frame market for 400 years?! Booster also knows all about her life because she's super famous for other reasons too, I guess. He decides to help her out because he's memorized her Wikipedia page and he knows that she's run away from home and if she doesn't get back home, she's going to wind up doing pornography while her sister dies of cancer of the I Miss My Sister glands.

Later, he introduces her to the rest of the Justice League!

What a bunch of pervs! She's only fifteen! Stop admitting that you're sexually attracted to her, you pedoes!

We only have Booster Gold's word that she's currently fifteen so why don't we all pretend she's a nice round 24. If he had access to Skeets, I'd believe he knew how old she was in 1992. But he doesn't and he's from the 25th Century so how the fuck would he know how old she is?! Also she's fucking fictional so who cares? They could say she's eight right her and, well, that would be really fucking weird. Never mind.

How much money is this issue worth? It's got to be a lot since it has a page where you see the "O" faces of four separate members of Justice League America! I wonder what Martian semen smells like?

Booster Gold changes the future by making sure the pornographer doesn't get his pedo mitts on Geralyn and she goes back home and her sister survives and now Booster Gold has the hots for two super young women from the 21st century. What a weird fucking story!

The pedo porn guy is Bill Maher in a tiny French mustache disguise. Seems accurate.

Justice League Quarterly #9 Rating: I could have lived without ever reading it again. But how would I have known that without doing it, you know? Other than the huge stack of evidence which I call Justice League Quarterly #1-8, I guess. I would say "Live and learn" but I imagine if I live to be 90, I'm going to revisit this terrible shit yet again! God I hope I don't live that long!