Robin III: Cry of the Huntress #2 (Early January 1993)

If you pull the tab quickly, they look like they're clubbing.

Heck, if you pull the tab slowly, it looks like they're jerking off their bo staves at a furious pace. The only way to make the image look somewhat normally animated is to pull the tab so slowly that I might as well just look at three panels side by side and let my brain fill in the movement. Perhaps that's why these covers never really took off. Plus they make the comic book awkward to read. Can you see the way the cover puckers in the scan? It's thick as shit! Hmm, maybe I should be more creative with my similes. It's as thick as your first cousin's son (which is also your son because you're both from West Virginia).

I don't know if West Virginia has a higher incidence of incest than any other state but if you've got to be known for something, why not incest? Better than being known for homophobia or xenophobia or whatever stupid shit Alabama has done this week. Probably made it illegal for men to pee while sitting down.

The other problem with these covers is that they just don't work. The insert has a lot of slack on the edges allowing the image to tilt as you pull it which means you see half of The Huntress and half of Robin and a title that reads, "Hunbin". So here's the second cover while not in the stupid sleeve.

Mostly because I couldn't get the stupid fucking thing back in the sleeve!

This might be the worst cover technology ever invented.

I'm so angry at the cover that it's going to hamper any possible joy I may have found in this story. Sure, it was only a small chance that I'd find joy in it anyway. But now? Zero chance!

When we last left Robin, his dick was just about to get him killed by a Russian dick with a tiny dick.

If you had a massive dick, you wouldn't need such a big gun replacing your castrated hand. Also his pants are as flat as Olive Oyl's ironing board.

Oh! Did Batman cause KGBeast to symbolically castrate himself when he trapped him in the desert by his arm? Was it a desert? Maybe it was a jungle.

The way KGBeast speaks, I'm wondering if Russian Bizarro isn't under that mask.

I just thought up a great insult to use on Chuck Dixon when he writes something really terrible! I hope it happens soon or I might forget it!

Should I clarify how Tim's dick was getting him killed? Well, he wouldn't be hear about to be murdered by KGBeast if he hadn't met the cutest little cutie in Little Odessa earlier that day. He was trying to spy on her through her bedroom window when the Russian mob attacked her father's print shop.

This is embarrassing but at least he didn't accidentally pop out the corkscrew attachment.

Do you think this panel was cooler in Dixon's script than it wound up being in the panel? "KGBeast looms over the new Robin (ask editorial what his name is; I keep writing "Jason Todd") with his massive gun where his hand should be. Robin pisses himself looking at the size of the bore on the barrel, realizing Batman will never recognize what's left of him. But then a surprising turn! A massive, razor sharp blade swings out of the side of the gun! It's a gun knife! Jason now shits himself too! A fucking knife in a gun! Maybe next issue, KGBeast will launch a shark with rabies out of the top of it! I'm so fucking turned on, Tom! Draw the shit out that, man!" And then Tom is all, "Does that look like a gun? That kind of looks like a gun hand, right? Now for the massive blade! Hmm. What does 'massive' mean? I could look it up or I could just assume it means stumpy and unimpressive!"

KGBeast misses with the knife, merely cutting Tim's bo staff in two. After that one failed swing, he seems to remember his knife is also a gun and decides maybe that's the better way to go.

No time to spare?! That's at least the fourth time you've threatened to end Tim. And Tim just continues standing around waiting for it to happen!

Being Russian technology, KGBeast's arm rifle is bolt action. Maybe KGBeast was trying to load a cartridge and he pulled the wrong lever earlier. So when the knife popped out, he was all, "Oh, um, I am being going to being cut you into pieces with the knife being popped out of my gun which I being meant to do!" But he didn't really want to stab Robin. He wanted to explode his head. So now he's getting back to that.

Before KGBeast can shoot Robin in the face, obliterating it, Robin's lady's dad shoots KGBeast in the back with his bolt action rifle. It's bolt action rifles all the way down in Little, Odessa. Semi-automatics are for lazy capitalists.

Maybe load another cartridge in the chamber instead of screaming at him, dude.

Since KGBeast currently has a bullet all ready to go, he shoots Papa in the dick and he spits up yellow ichor as he dies. Does that mean he's probably an alien or was it just a color separation issue? I'm hoping aliens and not because I love sci-fi stories. Remember, this story stars the Huntress and if there are aliens, there might be some anal probes!

The Russian goons throw Ariana, the cute Russian teen Tim's lusting for, into a car and drive away with her. Robin realizes that he's already disobeyed Batman, drugged his dad, and maybe possibly technically got Ariana's father killed. So he figures what the fuck. He's basically got nothing left to lose tonight.

So he fucks a car.

I don't know if the first thing I would have done is fuck a car if I suddenly felt like my life was swinging wildly out of control due to all the bad decisions I'd made lately. It just seems like another bad decision. But then I'm a long way off from being a horny teenager too. Hell, I probably would have fucked a car if everything in my life was going aces at fifteen!

Ariana probably felt a moment of comfort when she thought Tim was diving on the car to save her and then she heard the pounding and moaning and was all, "Wait. Is he fucking this car?" And, being a teenager, she was really into it. If she, being in her bathrobe and possibly nothing else, began to masturbate in the back of the car with two grown men beside her, could they be arrested for some kind of sex crime? If I were one of them, just to be on the safe side, I'd throw myself out of the car as soon as I realized what she was doing, screaming, "I didn't get a boner at all!" Although it might take me awhile to notice what she's doing because I have no idea how women pleasure themselves. I would be all, "She sure does itch down there!" Then I'd suddenly be all, "Oh my god! She's making counterclockwise motions around her belly button for sexual pleasure! I can't be a part of this! YAAARGH! I didn't get a boner at all!" Ha ha! If that isn't how women masturbate, I was only joking! Ha ha! Got you!

When Robin finishes all over the car hood, he grabs his semen and slaps it across the windshield so the driver has to quickly break lest he crash the car and kill them all!

Is this another color separation issue or does Tim have an infection in his prostate?

The car crashes into a street light and luckily doesn't kill Ariana. It also doesn't kill any of the Russians or KGBeast. KGBeast does get caught up in his seat belt though and has to cut off another arm. I also notice Ariana got dressed while she was being kidnapped. It's also possible that her top, looking so robe-like in one panel, made me think she was in a bathrobe but she never was. But it's also possible that she was in a bathrobe and after I turned the page, time Mandela'd out on me and I'm now in another dimension. Ha ha! I'm just kidding again! Imagine being both so clueless and narcissistic that you'd rather think the past was changed instead of believing that you made a mistake of perception or because you believed that some phrase that became shorthand for a line in a movie was actually the line in the movie and then heard the real line and were all, "Oh fuck! It's so fucking close to what I thought it was but barely different and I could understand that people were saying it the different way because it was more lyrical or easier to do but I'd rather believe that I've experienced a shift in the time continuum!" Ha ha! I would never be that pathetically stupid! Can you think of anybody who would be?!

The American youth are decadent because they fuck cars. In Russia, cars fu...no. No! Stop it, you moron. You're better than that!

KGBeast and the Russians carjack a Gotham bus. The passengers all flee but I'm not sure if they keep the driver. Tim gives up at this point because he's spent from fucking the car and just can't get it up for a whole bus. Plus he forgot he needs to spend a few pages fighting a Chinatown street gang named the Ghost Dragons. He gets his dick kicked off by them and needs to be rescued by another vigilante he doesn't recognize.

At least he didn't say, "A female." I would have said, "A wo-wo-wo-woman!"

For some reason, Batman hasn't told Robin about The Huntress. She's a little bit butthurt about it but she saves his butt anyway. For the first time ever, instead of just beating people up for no reason because one hero saw another hero beating people up, she asks Robin, "You have any special reason why you want to hang around here?" And he's all, "No." And she's all, "Hang on to me. We're out of here!" And he's all, "Oh no! I did another bloody orgasm in my underwear because I touched a woman for the first time!" And The Huntress is all, "What's that smell? Do you eight-day old Arby's in your pants?"

Anyway the Ghost Dragons are pissed that they didn't kill Robin immediately and now they have to wait for Robin IV: Cry of the Little Russian Girl. Ariana's crying because Tim ejaculates prematurely and she can't get any satisfaction and also it smells like rotting roast beef with horsey sauce. So she starts dating Lynx, the hot one-eyed member of the Ghost Dragons who is also a lady and who just kicked Robin's ass. That's the series where you get the famous panel of Batman thinking, "Where did I find this pathetic fucking loser?" while looking at Tim sitting in his crusty underwear and crying.

Robin and The Huntress realize their investigations are probably linked since Robin just watched KGBeast kill the owner of a printshop and The Huntress found some Russians with a briefcase full of blank paper. They're probably going to print up some Communist Manifestos! Ew! It makes me (and The Huntress!) so angry to think people might be distributing pamphlets full of free information! The two decide to meet up at midnight the next night. Robin heads home without once thinking, "Should I report the murder of Ariana's father and tell them exactly who's responsible and maybe be a witness and possibly help justice along?" He just thinks, "That Huntress smelled nice and felt soft!" Also, I guess they're not that worried about Ariana's safety?! Dude, Tim! Who cares if Batman's going to be mad at you! You need to tell him immediately about this kidnapping so he can save Ariana!

I bet Tim is less afraid at Batman punishing him for going out at night on his own and more afraid that Batman is going to kiss Ariana and maybe touch her butt a little bit.

Also, I guess the Ghost Dragons get to share this mini-series. Maybe that's why it's six issues! Lynx heads back to her boss, King Snake or Dragon Man or something, and tells him what's happening on the streets while he nurses his broken dick.

I'm assuming she was about to say, "The woman who broke your dick." What else could it have been?!

KGBeast returns to his boss, Commie Tsar, with news of his failure. Commie Tsar slaps him in the face in front of all the other men so that probably means he'll be dead in a few issues and KGBeast will be running the show. Until then, he's benched KGBeast while his other idiot henchmen run the counterfeiting ring. Now they have to find a new printer! Plus, Commie Tsar just tells them to kill the girl because he doesn't have any use for her. Oops!

The next day, Tim Drake falls asleep in the library and gets hauled off to talk with his counselor about all the time he's been spending with Bruce Wayne. She also points out that since he's been hanging out with Bruce, he's constantly covered in bruises, cuts, scrapes, and bloody jizz. He can't think of an excuse that wouldn't make Bruce look like a violent pedo which seems odd and slightly naïve. Explaining away Bruce's interest in Tim should have been the first thing Bruce and Tim came up with! I guess people were less suspicious of pedos in 1993. "Oh, yeah. That 40 year old guy at the end of the block where all the kids hang out? He's probably cool! At least he gives our kids free snacks, you know?" But not Miss Hollingsworth! She's a trained school counselor and she knows physical abuse when she sees it! She's going to get to the bottom of this and Bruce Wayne is going to get arrested and then all the real pedos in power in Gotham will make it look like a suicide in his jail cell!

Robin III: Cry of the Huntress #2 Rating: B+. It was fine. But that cover. Man. That fucking cover! It's all stiff and gappy at the same time. It's puckered all over the place and it makes crinkly sounds while you're trying to read. And the worst part is that it barely does anything and it does it completely poorly too! I hope whoever came up with this idea accidentally fell in a septic tank.

Anyway. I've been rewatching every episode of 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. During one intermission, they had the following teaser and I realized my blog name is sort of incomplete for my British readers!

So my blog name is an anagram for hesitate?!

DC Comics Presents #97: Superman & The Final Chapter of The Phantom Zone Criminals (September 1986)

Superman's looking down at his cock. What's happening to it?!

Aside from Superman's cock, you might also be wondering what happened to issues #1-96. Well, I gave most of them away to a friend about twelve years ago. A couple of months ago, he gave me a few that he picked up somewhere and he thought I'd like. Well, hells yeah! I did previously own them, you know! DC Comics Presents (and notice, you pedantic twats, the title uses the term "DC Comics" which I'm completely okay with but some people think it's like saying PIN Number or ATM mouth (I know I've used that joke before! It's one of my favorites!)) was the first comic book series that I began collecting in a serious manner when I first began collecting comic books way back in '84 or '85 or whatever. Yes, the series did end quite soon after I started collecting. But the fun was in searching for back issues! The series was weird and varied enough that it kept my interest the entire time. Plus it had all of Ambush Bug's first appearances! I mean his first and subsequent appearances before he had his own mini-series (again, directed at the pedantic twats). I didn't give my whole collection to my friend; I kept some back for my collection. Like Issue #26 with the first appearance of Wolfman's Teen Titans insert. And the Swamp Thing issue written by Alan Moore. And all the Ambush Bug appearances! So I'll be reading those as I stumble upon them in my short boxes.

Not Particular Fun Fact: this is the first comic book I've reviewed written by Steve Gerber. Also the first one drawn by Rick Veitch! What a fucking team up! It's probably the only reason DC allowed a pre-Crisis story to worm its way back into their monthly books. Plus it was the last issue of the series. The editors were probably all, "Fuck it! We can't be bothered to care anymore! Print whatever script and art we already have lying around. Even if Superman is getting his dick sucked by ghost on the cover and Mr. Mxyzptlk becomes God! We're outta here!"

The issue begins by showing how well Jor-el sleeps at night now that he realizes Krypton is about to blow at any time.

I guess Kryptonians never invented Xanax.

That panel is Jor-el relaxing. As soon as he gets out of bed, he spirals into an existential crisis about he and Lara having brought their son Kal-el into a doomed world. His hands shake as he stares at his wife and drinks cup after cup of Folgers-el coffee. He's desperate to save his child and he knows of only one possible way: a theoretical other dimension! He's built a thing that, if the other dimension exists, it will transport things to that dimension. I don't know how you build a thing that opens a portal to another world when you're not even sure the other world exists yet. But, hey, this Krypton! And it's a comic book! And I'm probably supposed to be 11 years old when reading this so that it fires my imagination instead of 53 and so world weary that I'm not even sure wonder ever existed.

Why is Jor-el so concerned about his hands?

Jor-el's theory is correct but there's no way he can send his baby into that hellscape! Time to work on Plan B: Shoot My Baby Into Uncharted Space.

As Jor-el flits about the Phantom Zone feeling separate from his physical being, he senses another presence, a lone voice that can barely comprehend the idea of another mind. But it speaks English. I mean Kryptonian. Oh shit. Am I one of those guys now? Who can't just allow for easy communication between exponentially different species and races to facilitate the story being told because nobody needs to read five million sci-fi and fantasy stories that all spend five hundred pages establishing how the different beings can communicate with each other? No, of course I'm not! I'm just a cynical bastard who looks for any reason to complain about the comic book I'm currently reading. I really don't mind shrugging and thinking, "I guess it's some kind of empathic telepathy that facilitates communication! Or a fish that disproves the existence of God!"

From my blog entries, you probably think I'm a nightmare while watching movies and television. Far from it! Being a literature major, I long ago decided I needed entertainment of which I wasn't critical. So television and movies get such a pass from me that I often love terrible shows and films. Unless one of them pulls something so fucking stupid that I can never forgive it, like Independence Day ending with that bullshit about how the entire world can now enjoy the greatest holiday in the world because it's an American holiday! Fuck off with that patriotic claptrap, Independence Day. And while you're fucking off, please take Armageddon with you. And the television show Heroes!

You'd think I could come up with some more timely movies and television shows I hate but I'm fucking old, man. You think I keep up with the current pop culture?! To me, it's still the turn of the millennium and I've just watched Ghost World, Moulin Rouge, American Movie, and Dancer in the Dark!

Here we discover the Phantom Zone is not a place; it is a person. Perhaps even a god. Or, you know, the God.

I say "the God" not as a believer but as a respectful atheist who understands that reading something from Western Literature that hints at a supreme being is hinting at a quite specific supreme being. It makes for way easier allegory than something like Hinduism where we'd have to determine which god this is and why being that god is important to the story and where did all the fucking butter go again?!

Just to make it clear even though the comic book page I scanned makes it extremely clear already, the Phantom Zone is explicitly a person and not a place. It begins thinking with "Punctured! Opened! Something enters the self!" So Gerber's idea is that The Phantom Zone is a being. That'll probably come in handy to remember as shit gets weirder and weirder.

I should also make clear that Jor-el is not communicating with the Phantom Zone though he does hear voices while inside of it. Is he hearing an echo of the Zone's thoughts? Or do the other souls or spirits which reside inside of it still manifest an echo of their personalities as well? Oh, am I assuming too much? Read on, sirs and madams! Read on!

Jor-el discovers that he can still view his dimension though he can't return because a wire on his experimental machine came loose from the car battery he was using to power it. So he finds he can exist either inside the Zone or as a ghost in his own dimension. Which means, as we see in the following couple of panels, that the Zone can watch and observe our dimension as well, from beyond or beside or, you know, above it all.

The Zone also knows Jor-el's wants and desires and prayers.

Jor-el's ghostly hand passes through Lara's sleeping body and she starts awake as if having heard him. Could those past the veil of their world still reach the dreams of the living? It seems so because Lara rushes over to Jor-el's machine, re-hooks the wire, and opens the passage back. Jor-el returns and the Phantom Zone is relieved. It desires solitude.

After being thoroughly slapped by his wife, Jor-el admits that maybe his theory of parallel dimensions needs a little more proof and a lot less, "Hey! I just imagined something that might be real! I won't do any math or science on it, though. I'll just build a hoopty-ass doorway to the dimension I've just decided must be there!" I know Jor-el is a scientist and he probably has done some scientific work that brought him to the theory instead of thinking up the theory and then working backwards to prove that it's true. He's not like all the fucking morons who claim they have more common sense than intelligent people and who have no actual idea what the term "theory" means in science. Too many fucking choads think a theory is just stating your opinion on an observation. Like seeing a light in the night sky move and thinking, "My theory is that's a UFO and that's as valid a theory as anybody else standing nearby because they can't prove it's not!" Maybe learn what the word hypothesis means for a start, dumb dumbs.

One thing I like to point out to the common sense is better than intelligence crowd is that common sense would have you believe the sun revolves around the Earth. It's what we observe with no indication of anything else. The Earth revolving and changing our point of view? The Earth orbiting the sun? All nonsense because common sense indicates no sense of movement. People think the world and our observations of it are simple. They're not. They're complex. Common sense is simple. And often wrong.

One man's prison is another God's heaven.

The perspective changes as a year or more passes. The executioner of Krypton begins narrating the tale long after Jor-el's trip into Mr. Phantom Zone. He wields the Phantom Zone portal as his executioner's axe. To free up space on Krypton, criminals now just get sent to The Phantom Zone to serve out their sentences. I don't know how they get any specific person back once they go in, or how the executioner isn't overrun by convicts every time he opens the door. I guess Jor-el perfected it to zap people in while instantaneously closing the portal behind them. And they probably have some kind of bracelets identifying them so they can be pulled out. What the reader isn't privy to is the political atmosphere that allowed all of this to take place. It was probably in decades of old pre-Crisis comic books that I never read.

The main goal of this part of the story is to allow the executioner to drop a whole lot of names of people he's literally dropped into the Phantom Zone: Jax-ur, Va-kox, Xadu, Faora, Nam-ek, Kru-el, and everybody's favorite, General Zod. A whole cast of malevolent baddies thrown into the safest place on (or near or around or within or just out of phase with) Krypton! Jor-el knew the planet was going to blow up at any time so instead of throwing all the good people into the zone to figure out how to escape later, he rescues all the bad ones! He was so traumatized by his trip within Mr. Zone that he felt living within the Zone was worse than blowing up with Krypton.

And how did all this affect The Phantom Zone? Well, It was beginning to go a little bit nuts.

So death was Its beginning! Gerber's about to get cosmic on our asses!

The Phantom Zone reminisces on Its origin, long forgotten and only now reminded of it by the individual sentients being forced into It. The Phantom Zone's beginning was death. The death of billions and billions of mortal creatures across the universe. Their rage and fear continued to exist long after death, like particles creating a cloud. They merged and formed into a single being whose one ambition was to escape this universe where death is so prevalent: The Phantom Zone. It's also possible to think of The Phantom Zone as heaven and the billions of dead simply souls passing on to heaven where they lose their individuality and become part of the Self. But as there is no real indication of the Self being separate from the Phantom Zone, and even evidence that They are the same, like the language the Self uses when people enter the Phantom Zone such as "the Self is pierced" and "something enters the Self", I'm going to acknowledge they are one and the same. Any theologian probably wouldn't argue the idea anyway. How would you separate God from Heaven? And if souls wind up in the arms of God or in Heaven, why distinguish these as separate things?

The Phantom Zone did not create the universe. It explains the formation of the universe in its origin story and only partway through, after life has arisen on planets all across the universe, and only after that life begins to understand and fear the death of ego, does The Phantom Zone become. It is the merger of the dead looking for existence beyond death that creates the afterlife. A self-fulfilling prophecy. Or a tautology. One of those! And then the mass of dead simply become the afterlife itself. It is merely a place apart from change. A place safe from death. It is eternal stasis.

Except now living beings who retain their ego have figured out how to enter heaven and their individuality disturbs the fucking shit out of the Phantom Zone! Usually the dead lose themselves in the merge with the Phantom Zone; the living merge differently with It. And these living beings, like Zod here, are arrogant, strong-willed bastards!

Oh yeah. If you wanted more allegory, The Phantom Zone is shaped like an apple.

The criminals inside the Phantom Zone discover they can influence people on the outside, as Jor-el did when he woke his wife the time he was trapped within it. So while trapped in a world where they feel nothing and live for eternity, they're also privy to everything happening outside the Zone. Like ghosts or loved ones or . . . angels! Bad angels, of course! Jor-el, almost manipulated by the criminals to free them, consults with the other leaders of Krypton and they decide for everybody's safety to send the Phantom Zone Projector into space so that it could never be used to free the criminals. I guess they also decided crime was over? And the criminals that were only condemned for fifteen or thirty orbits around their red sun had their sentences changed to life sentences? Jor-el points out that it would have been safer to keep the Projector on Krypton where it will definitely be destroyed soon instead of sending it safely into space to be found and used by aliens in the future. But all the other leaders get upset at him and call him a downer and some of them wish Kryptonian cancer on his baby. Probably, I mean. Maybe I've been too online lately!

A Kryptonian named Thul-kar, leader of a Kryptonian death cult, discovers his cult have done their duty as they know Krypton has nearly no time left. Using magic instead of technology, Thul-kar finds his way into the Phantom Zone to preserve the teachings of Juru mysticism. The next day, Krypton explodes!

But not before Baby Kal-el follows the Phantom Zone Projector into deep space as the Zoned criminals watch on and celebrate Krytpon's destruction.

Time passes differently within the Phantom Zone. Or maybe it just feels longer because it's so boring. Eventually, many years later ("An eternity," says the narrator but I don't buy it), Thul-kar has befriended the Phantom Zone. He calls It "Aethyr". Thul-kar is the only individual within the Zone who Aethyr doesn't believe wants to leave and Thul-kar uses that to his advantage by befriending It. All the other criminals continue to try and escape with seemingly no notice that they're trapped inside of God. Aethyr seems to be against their leaving. Perhaps the eons spent as a "Self" have conditioned It to think of every being within It as part of Itself, even if these particular ones have not completely merged with It. Perhaps It is loathe to lose any single part that comprises the Whole. They were once Other; many years later, They are Self.

Thul-kar has built a cube with his magic and he shows it to Aethyr who hates it. Aethyr, a being of the Cosmos, knows only spheres and circles. When It lashes out at the cube, Thul-kar traps some of Its power within and creates a living world: Bizarro world. Being Bizarro World, the day of its creation is the day of its destruction.

Bizarro is a better father than mine!

The implosion of Thul-kar's little Bizarro World creation (which through magic and the power of Aethyr manifested the real Bizarro World in the actual universe; and due to the time dilation between dimensions, the real universe Bizarro World has a decently long life) creates a white hole where Bizarro World had been. A white hole is obviously the opposite of a black hole: it spews energy and matter into the universe rather than sucking it up. Due to Bizarro World's connection with the Phantom Zone, the energy being shot out into the universe is made up of the Phantom Zone. Aethyr realizes that without somehow transmuting Itself into matter again, It and all the beings that make up the Self will disperse and cease to exist. Thul-kar's escape plan has worked far better than any of the other criminal dullards from Krypton.

Aethyr, still thinking Thul-kar is a friend, asks him for help. Aethyr needs a way to transmute Itself into a corporeal being before the Self is terminated. God and Heaven must not die!

I suspect I know why this story wasn't published until after Crisis when it couldn't matter anymore.

Thul-kar knows a little imp that could help Aethyr survive: Mxyzptlk. He contacts him by speaking to him the way the ghost-like entities speak to people in the real world. But since Mxyzptlk is super-dimensional, he actually hears Thul-kar and agrees to merge with Aethyr to help It survive. He only does this because he's in prison in the 5th Dimension for bigamy. Seriously.

Mr. Mxyzptlk has the square root of -1 problems and the b ain't imaginary.

I don't know what that caption means either. Get off my fucking back. This is free, you know!

You might be thinking, "Don't these DC Comics Presents issues always feature Superman? Is showing him in a rocket in one panel all we're going to get?" Of course not! Steve Gerber realizes that his script is almost over and he's yet to shove Superman into it so out of nowhere, we discover that Mr. Mxyzptlk wasn't just recruited to make sure The Phantom Zone survives re-entering the universe; he's also been hired to make sure Superman doesn't interrupt. I don't know why Superman would interrupt. He isn't paying particularly close attention to anything except his news anchor co-host Lana Lang. Mxyzptlk, while in his null-void prison, admits to himself that the only reason he hadn't killed Superman was because he was following the rules of the 5th Dimension, "Mischief not Mayhem." But now that his people have turned on him and taken his child away from him, he decides the next time he gets the chance, he's just going to kill Superman. And Thul-kar gives him that chance just seconds later!

Mxyzptlk gets Superman's attention by dropping Bizarro's head into the news studio. Then he smashes Superman over the head with Argo City, nearly killing him since Argo City was still sitting on top of Kryptonian rock. You know, Kryptonite!

That should keep Supes out of the way for a bit!

Now the streets of Metropolis are full of Kryptonite and corpses. But Superman can't help clean it up so he flies off to pass out on the moon for a day or two.

Unfortunately, this is where the story begins to fall apart. Gerber may have wanted to tell a bigger story than he had pages for so once he introduces Superman, the story just sprints to the end. But first, with Superman out of the way, Mr. Mxyzptlk goes to perform the act he was rescued to perform.

While Mxyzptlk works, the criminals escape the Zone to wreak havoc on Earth.

Superman puts up a bit of a fight against the criminals but they're not destroyed until a new God comes along and imprisons them back in itself.

Don't worry! Crisis made sure Mr. Mxyzptlk as God was removed from canon. Or never actually part of it since this story was published post-Crisis.

Luckily for Superman, Mr. Mxyzptlk doesn't want to fuck with him anymore. He's got new God-things to do, like torture Zod and Faora or the entire population of the 5th Dimension. He's got grudges to keep and vengeance to pursue. He disappears leaving Superman to utter his concluding line, the worst part of this entire comic book: "He gets the last laugh after all!" Also when he says that line, Washington, DC is burning down behind him. So I guess that's another good reason this story was never published and nobody has to deal with the horrible aftermath of the story. Metropolis alone is so fucked with Kryptonite and Kryptonian corpses, Clark Kent is going to have to move back to his parents' house in Smallville.

DC Comics Presents #97: Superman & The Final Chapter of The Phantom Zone Criminals Rating: A. This is the kind of fucked up shit Superman books should be about! People whine about Superman being so powerful that he basically never feels threatened. But how about making him feel utterly confounded for several issues? It's possible Superman even shit his pants on the final page when he realized Mr. Mxyzptlk, who was already all-powerful but could only do pranks, had become a God who was ready to do some wickedly Old Testament shit to a bunch of people but chose to let Supes off the hook for once. Superman just faced something he definitely couldn't have handled; hell, he never even figured out what the fuck was happening. Bizarro's head dropped on his desk. Zod and all the other Kryptonian criminals terrorized Earth. Mxyzptlk became a God. And the whole time, Superman mostly just almost died from Kryptonite poisoning on the moon after being hit in the face with Argo City. What a day!

This is the face of a man who definitely just shit his pants.

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!