Batman: Sword of Azrael: Book Three #3 (December 1992)

Denny came so close to creating the Court of Owls but he completely fucked it, what with Cousin Oliver and terrible lore.

My comic book reviews really slow to a crawl in the summer because it's too fucking hot in my office to read comics and write on a computer. I could move everything to the air-conditioned room but my laptop's battery is dead and I feel bad that my computer would have to be unresponsive for the move. I have a new battery but whoever made the ASUS laptop was a fucking dick and decided that to replace the battery, you basically have to remove every screw imaginable and take the entire thing apart just to get to it. Motherfucker.

Bah, I'm just bitching because I'm in a bad mood because I just remembered that I have two more Azrael comic books to read. Thor Almighty, I can't stand this guy.

I would have normally typed "Christ Almighty" but how the fuck is Christ mightier than Thor when the Scandinavian countries have the happiest and most content people on Earth? Hell, if you believe it when some patriotic dipshit farts out "God Bless America!", it must mean God loves fascist fuckers too scared to ride a subway in a city or drink a beer that was advertised by a transgender woman or answer their door without first firing six bullets through it if the person on the other side of their Ring camera has a slight tan. If that's the kind of shit Jesus is into, I'd rather my Lord and Savior be drunken goat fucker who's obviously compensating for a microdick with his massive hammer. Man, I feel like I really know Thor!

Last issue, Cousin Oliver was shot to shit by Biis and fell backwards out of a third story window. The moment was so satisfying that this issue decided to repeat it!

Too bad he's got a bulletproof costume in that duffel bag. Hopefully he wasn't holding it low enough to cover his balls.

You know what else I hate about conservatives? They know that being a racist bigot makes them the bad guy so most of them try to mask their racism with the stupidest, most illogical arguments ever made about pretty much everything, since everything they believe relies on systemic racism and they can't say, "Yeah, I support that because of its inherent racism." So they make up stupid arguments like how taking down Confederate monuments is "erasing history" instead of what it really is: removing shoddy sculptures that were made as quickly and cheaply as possible to put in as many public squares as possible to intimidate minorities during reconstruction and the subsequent battle for civil rights. We all know that they just want to keep up monuments to their heroes, those men who fought to keep slavery in this country. But they can't say that! So they have to claim taking down a really shit statue is somehow erasing history even though we can all still read about the history of those abhorrent human beings in all the books about the Civil War and our country's time thinking slavery was the absolute Bee's Knees.

What's that? They're trying their best to ban books and remove exhibits in museums to erase the history of slavery in America? But what about their arguments that progressives were the assholes erasing history just because they didn't want some huge ass cheap statue of Jefferson Davis overlooking a public park? Ha ha! Just kidding! I already made my point earlier. They don't actually believe any of their arguments. The just love racism.

I know I'm supposed to be reviewing a comic book but I really fucking hate Azrael so I thought I'd discuss something I hate slightly less: Conservatives! But I'm done with that now! Just remember how much they suck and then think that Democrats suck just slightly less than that. I've been saying for well over a decade that our political parties will eventually shift so that Republicans become right wing Nazi assholes (which they've done) and that Democrats will shift over to Reagan Republicans who are slightly less bigoted (which they've done) and the left party will be Progressives (which is hopefully going to happen soon? Somebody? No, not you Newsom. Fuck off, you shit!).

Yes, I'm a 53 year old white mostly-heterosexual male who's probably more progressive than your teenage daughter. I've started putting all of my off-site writing onto this blog and will continue to do that with more stuff (maybe eventually just hosting it all on Places & Predators Dot Com (where all of my images currently reside)). Maybe some day I'll get around to all of my college papers from the early '90s and you'll see that I'm not just some Johnny-Come-on-his-Mom-Lately in regards to progressive shit. You can tell I'm super progressive because even though I was raised in the '80s, I have yet to call Cousin Oliver an F-slur! I'm not saying I've thought about calling him that! I'm saying I grew up in the '80s, man! Even Bill and Ted, acted by two of the greatest human beings to ever live, used the F-slur in the greatest movie of all time (after Heathers)! The '80s were quite the decade. It was the pendulum swinging back from what was actually turning out to be a pretty fucking cool decade, the '70s. During that great time, a bunch of rich, Conservative assholes and Lee Atwater were all, "Why are all the cool straight white kids hanging out with cool straight black kids and also all the gays and trans? We need to nip that shit in the bud right the fuck now!"

Everything cool is always ruined by some kids who nobody liked who decided if people weren't going to hang out with them, they'll spend their time ruining everybody else's good time. And they always seem to find an old doddering celebrity puppet to pass their terrible beliefs into laws.

Anyway, rich guy Bruce Wayne decides to go after whoever shot Azrael. But not as Batman!

No time to just slip on the fucking cowl?! You're already wearing the outfit under your jacket!

Alfred stays behind to take care of Cousin Oliver so maybe it's a good thing Bruce doesn't dress up like Batman. Having Batman traveling around the world with Bruce Wayne's butler might be enough evidence for one or two of the smarter people in the DC Universe to figure out Batman's secret identity.

Batman chases Biis to a storage room in the hospital where Biis pushes over a shelf full of jars of ether onto Bruce's head. Hallucinating from the fumes, Bruce believes he's fighting an actual demon and not just some fat guy in a gaudy costume.

The first half of this issue is narrated by Biis as Biis reminds Bruce what just happened. See, Biis kidnaps Bruce and takes him to Page 12 where he's all, "You're kind of loopy from all the jars of ether that were knocked on your head so let me remind you what happened in the previous eleven pages. I know that it's weird to have me telling the reader what they're reading but it makes sense that I'm telling it to you once they get to Page 12. Also, some readers, based on the law of averages, will be pretty fucking stupid so having me describe what's happening will really help them out." Whew, good thing Biis explained it like that before I started moaning about the way the narrative was presented! I don't want people thinking I don't want dumb kids to have access to comic books like this!

Also for the dumb kids! Don't forget the dumb kids!

Some of you might be thinking, "No fucking way are you more progressive than my teenage daughter! She'd never use the D-slur!" Well, you know, I probably am more progressive which is why I believe that words shouldn't be in the saddle riding mankind simply so that we can Other people who use language differently and by our own definitions. We can take back words and allow them to be as neutral of inherent bias as we want. Dumb can just be a fun way to say ignorant if you want it to. Just like lame can be fun slang that doesn't have to mean crippled! Don't let the words weigh you down, man! I mean, sure, some of them are just so vile that we can leave them in the past. But I'm not having that discussion here!

It turns out Biis might be the smartest person in the DC Universe after Timothy Drake!

Damn! He's know Bruce Wayne for fifteen minutes and he already figured it out!

Cousin Oliver turns out to be barely hurt thanks to his folded up costume held in front of him. But now Alfred has to actually spend time with him while he's conscious so it's only a matter of minutes before Alfred hates him as much as I do.

You know what? I've thought about it a little bit and I may have been exaggerating a bit to suggest I was more progressive than a teenage girl! Sure, I'm more progressive than some teenage girls! But not the ones I was suggesting. How could that even be possible?! My male gaze constantly rats me out when I'm totally trying to be a good feminist. The amount of Fuck the Patriarchy! meetings I've been kicked out of because my brain couldn't help replacing some word I was saying with "Boobies!" Stupid brain and dick are in cahoots!

Biis, being the money man of an international Templar organization, recognizes the name of Bruce Wayne. He decides he won't kill Bruce because he'll need to take him to 5000 different ATMs and take $300 out of each of them. He needs an infusion of cash to fund his new start-up, a little company that plans to disrupt the way people conventionally worship St. Dumas. I mean he plans on murdering all the active members of the Order.

Luckily for Cousin Oliver, Nomoz the Gnome irritates Alfred far more than he does. Alfred, not realizing he's going to some day regret buddying up to this jerk loser jerkfaced loser jerk, agrees to help the Order of St. Dumas track down Biis. Obviously Alfred needs Azrael to help save Bruce. But they need Alfred to, um, make tea and scones while they do it?

Alfred using classic manipulation techniques to get Cousin Oliver to regard him more than Nomoz.

While Bruce continues to resist Biis's attempts to learn his PIN, Biis continues his murder streak across the continent. He arrives at this Harcourt's estate to murder him while wearing Batman's cowl. As he prepares for the kill, Alfred and Azrael arrive at the gate and begin making their way in for the final confrontation!

Batman: Sword of Azrael: Book Three #3 Rating: B. It's too bad that I haven't found the love for my hate of Cousin Oliver in these first three issues. Maybe I didn't really begin hating him until Knightfall. It's also possible, having just turned 21 when this series came out and I was high on the masculinity of having fucked two women by this point in my life, I was all, "This guy's a fucking sexless nerd! College geek! Four eyes! Probably a huge virgin who hasn't had sex with any girls let alone a whopping two of them! Poor sad lad!" Maybe things just go so badly in the final issue of this limited series that my brain will explode in a majestic epiphany of remembered hatred and I'll shout, "Oh yeah! This is why I hate the little fucker so much!" Then I'll come in my pants so hard that it will count as having had sex with a third woman!

The Red Pony by John Steinbeck (1937)

I can only assume that John Steinbeck hated people who loved ponies and horses. Why else would he give this book of short stories a name that has absolutely nothing to do with three of the four stories (or two of the three, depending on things I won't go into here) and nothing thematically to do with the first story? And what sadist chose that cover showing a healthy, bright red pony for the reader to fall in love with before even opening the book?! And then, knowing people are all, "Oh! Look! A story about a handsome Red Pony! I bet my kids will love it!", Steinbeck brutally destroys at least two horses in graphic detail! And hints at the death of another in a ritual suicide-murder pact by an old paisano!

I would suggest this book has Pig (the movie) vibes about it except that in that movie, the main thrust of the pathos comes from Nicholas Cage's loving friendship with the pig. I don't think Jody, the ten year old protagonist of this book, gives a shit about the Red Pony except how it raises his stature among his friends and how he feels more mature in the ownership of it. If you want more evidence that Jody doesn't care about the pony, you just have to read any other scene that involves Jody and an animal.

Now that I think about it and have hinted at the way he kills and tortures nearly every animal he comes across, this book might be about a budding Satanist! Is that why the pony is red? And, of course, that's why he plans on naming the replacement pony "Black Demon." If I had to guess, Jody follows the old man who stole the old horse out into the mountains and drains him of his blood which he secretly uses to enrich the soil around his shrine, the vibrant area around the water pump. It feels like an analogy of a holy place and while I think it is, it might be more "unholy."

But that's just me, a boring old animal lover who lives in a city and never has to think about the savagery of nature and the violent deaths which cause the end of most creatures. Jody's attitude comes more from his father Carl and his other, more likeable father Billy Buck. Death is a fact of life and while the adults try to teach Jody not to be cruel about it, he's still just a ten year old with no actual power. Most of his cruelty towards the animals comes when he's feeling most powerless against the adults, or the death of his horses. Except when he wants to murder all of the mice in the haystacks. Man, his joy and anticipation at that event just screams "serial killer."

In the end, the one act of premeditated and extreme violence is the only one Jody can't bring himself to act upon. You might think it's because he's growing up. But it's actually just another act of rebellion against his father. His father gives the go-ahead for murdering the mice. Around the same time, Jody's father embarrasses and maltreats Jody's grandfather. So Jody loses his enthusiasm for killing mice and decides he'd rather treat his grandfather well. Does this show Jody maturing or does it just show another manipulative aspect of Jody acting out his tiny rebellions in an effort to garner any kind of power on the ranch he's able?

Or, you know, does he plan on sacrificing his grandfather to his lord Satan? Probably 50-50 on which is his actual motivation.

The Pastures of Heaven by John Steinbeck (1932)

If The Pastures of Heaven were written today, it would be Atlanta. I mean, Atlanta has already been written today and Steinbeck probably couldn't have nailed the experience of Black America but if you squint your brain really tight and have read this book and have also watched Atlanta, you might be able to see what I'm trying to say. I suppose I could explain what I'm trying to say in a way that would, you know, explain what I'm trying to say instead of trying to be Internet Clever by using a pop culture analogy to do all of my brain's heavy lifting. At least I'm not asking ChatGKY to do my review for me! I wouldn't even do that for a joke because it's a dumb and tired joke that I bet people have done multiple times already on this site. I bet some of them weren't even joking!

Anyway, back to my "review", The Pastures of Heaven is one of those books of short stories where all the stories are connected by time, space, and the characters within. Like Atlanta (except when they go to Amsterdam. But that starts with an "A" so I think there's probably an essay about that and how the characters express themselves in an Old World and ostensibly white space but still in a city that begins with "A"). All of these short stories end somewhat tragically, except maybe the one where the sisters become prostitutes because that was hot.

The question then becomes, "Why do these stories all end tragically while they take place in the most beautiful, serene place in California (which means the most beautiful place in America, obvs! Is my Native Californian showing?!)?" I will attempt to answer that question even though I'm not a professor of Steinbeck although I've been inside Steinbeck's childhood home and rubbed my hand on his bronze bust in Monterey and also I went to a college with a massive Steinbeck Resource Center and osmosis is a verifiable thing so, you know, maybe I'm better than a professor of Steinbeck? Plus my grandmother remembers seeing the Okies come through the Bay Area so I even have some genetic memory of some of that stuff!

Throughout the book, many of the characters believe they or their family or the land they've chosen to live on are cursed. These curses are attributed to various causes but none of them quite suss out the actual problem. I'm not sure I have either but I've got some guesses based on the stories that bookend the main ten stories and also the energy I gathered by rubbing Steinbeck's bronze face while watching some cavorting otters. The curse might be described as a kind of Anti-Manifest Destiny. The Pastures of Heaven (which were previously called Las Pasturas del Cielo (which means they were probably called something else before that which hints at a place that has been conquered or taken by various invading peoples)) are a supreme natural place that tantalizes those who view it and encourages them to live in serene peace and beauty. Except civilized people cannot simply accept the place for what it is. They must bring the baggage of civilization to the land. In trying to tame it, just as the Spanish corporal and his men try to tame the Native Americans in the opening story, they destroy the beauty and vision that brought them to it.

Don't get me wrong! The Pastures of Heaven are never destroyed! The Pastures actually destroy the people who come to settle it, those people who bring their mental illness, their greed, their ambitions, and their need to force their vision on the land and subsequent generations. Too often, stories show how people and civilization come to a place and spoil it. But Steinbeck sees the long game. Nature always wins out. The ivy creeps up over abandoned houses. Crops go to weed. Animals wander off and go feral. Fire cleanses and reclaims.

By the final bookend story, we get a glimpse of a number of people too enmeshed in civilization to even truly consider trying their hand at living in The Pastures of Heaven which they look upon longingly and dream of what they'd do there and how they'd make it part of their dreams, only to re-board a tour bus and go back to the city.

On a non-plot/theme related note, Steinbeck's style shines in this his second published work. Several times we see hints of stories to come. Ma Joad is in this. Lennie is in this. Tortilla Flats has already begun to sprout in several of the stories here. Perhaps the whole foundation of East of Eden lies here. It's a marvelous work and, if you want, an easy, light, comedic (with tragedy!) read. You won't find an Earn, Darius, or Paper Boi in this although, I mean, you kind of will? Seriously! If Donald Glover told me this was an inspiration behind Atlanta, I'd probably say, "Yeah, I know, dude! Jeez! What do you think I am? Stupid?!"

Cup of Gold: A Life of Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer, with Occasional Reference to History by John Steinbeck (1929)

Even though I'd read all of John Steinbeck's fictional novels, I'd avoided this one until just this year because of the whole "reference to history" bit in the title. It's not that I don't like non-fiction (which this isn't but I'm stupid and easily deceived by my brain which reads words wrongly); I just tend more towards fiction. I would love to know more about actual events and people in history and the entirely well-deserved fall of the Roman Empire. But mostly I'd rather read about elves, super heroes, and paranormal tales of horror. Does that make me a piece of shit? Wait. Why would I even ask that? Do I hate myself?

What I'm trying to say is that I'm a huge fan of Steinbeck but I avoided his first novel for all the above reasons and also that cover is fucking terrible, innit? Here's the thing though: it's probably better to have a firm understanding of Steinbeck and his writing before reading this book. Because the most interesting thing about it, I found, was seeing the beginnings of his evolution as a master writer of the Salinas Valley and Monterey Bay and characters making sacrifices to gain the things they desire. I only mention that because this is a story about a man leaving the old world for the new world and, well, quite a few of Steinbeck's works involve somebody from the East Coast pining for the freedom and beauty of the West Coast. It's also the story of a man (Henry Morgan!) whose ambition drives him to win his dreams but who cannot help feeling a constant sorrow for the things he's lost. He's a man never content with what he has gained. But it's that discontentment that drives him to be successful. Is he ultimately happy by the end? Almost certainly not. Would he have been happy if he'd stayed in the Old World and told the girl he thought he loved that he loved her and married and had children? Almost certainly not, especially since the girl he often holds in his mind as his true love is just a manifestation of the girl he wanted to be in love with, having never really gotten to know her at all.

In Henry's quest to find the thing that will fill the hole inside him that even he doesn't understand the shape of, he sacks Panama City. He does this not for the gold or the acclaim but for the legend of a woman, La Santa Roja. He believes she will be the one to finally satisfy his every desire but, in the end, discovers she's just a woman, an individual, who has her own wants and desires. She isn't a Helena to be Boxed upon the pedestal he sculpted for her. When Henry discovers she's become the lover of his right-hand man and best friend, he kills his friend and imprisons the La Santa Roja. Eventually he realizes she isn't what he had made her out to be and pouts off back to the Caribbean to marry his cousin. Some of you might be thinking, "Well, a happy ending then!" Gross. No! He lives out his life an unhappy and unfulfilled pirate legend.

It's been a few months since I finished reading this so I don't remember exactly how it ends. I think he's killed by a younger man who mirrors the ambition of his own youth. Maybe I'm making that part up! Anyway, that only matter if this were a synopsis of the story instead of a review and, so far, it has been because I've left out all the review bits! I'll get to those now.

Cup of Gold was published when Steinbeck was 27. I would think, "Wow! So young to understand the sacrifices people make for ambition and how, quite often, the actual passion of the ambitious soul is ambition for its own sake. The constant need to keep climbing higher, driving forward, continuing some form of perpetual movement toward a goal that, when reached, is often unsatisfying, not inherently but for the ambitious person because a goal reached is stasis and the ambitious hate nothing more than stasis." But then I think, "Thomas Pynchon was only ten years older than this when he wrote Gravity's Rainbow and holy heck how did somebody know so much about everything while also understanding the way ambitious people destroy the world simply to keep things moving while they gain more and more! Now that's a genius!" And then I think, "That's unfair! Steinbeck was working on a much more intimate level than Pynchon! Plus Steinbeck was writing pre-Hiroshima and Pynchon was writing post-Hiroshima so you can't hold Steinbeck's dirty farmer's feet to Pynchon's atomic fire! Not that Steinbeck was ever a farmer but you should understand my point, dumb dumb!" And then I'd punch myself in the stomach and grunt, "Don't call me dumb-dumb, doody head!"

Ultimately, I find the things Steinbeck understood at the ages he understood them relatable, probably because Steinbeck wasn't an uber-genius like Pynchon; he was just super smart like I am! I'm not a dumb-dumb doody head at all, no matter how often my brain screams insults at me. Another wise aspect of Steinbeck's first novel is how he portrays Henry's love for the women in his life. Mostly in that the women aren't really in his life at all; they exist exclusively in his head. And when he discovers that they're individuals with desires and ambitions of their own, often in direct contrast to his desires (which are mostly the desire for the woman to be the woman he wants them to be and to love him and subsume their entire identity into loving him), he loses interest. That's why the young girl he has a crush on back in Wales remains his one true love. Because he never had to actually know her.

This isn't a book with a happy ending. Steinbeck would later go on to write loads and loads of books without happy endings. He would eventually win the Nobel Prize for writing loads of books that don't end happily because that's life, man! Sometimes in life you get what you want and then you realize you don't want that exactly and want something more and you're never content with what you've gained but then other times you don't get what you want at all and wind up in a barn nursing a homeless man because you lost your baby from malnutrition and your brother is off raving in the wilderness being everywhere injustice rears its old white male head. I guess the best we can do is enjoy doing the things we're doing and not put a ton of pressure on ourselves to be happier or more content or better off. Also, we should always despise authority because read the thirteenth chapter of East of Eden already why don't you.

Batman: Sword of Azrael: Book Two #2 (November 1992)

Whose blood is Batman covered in?

I understand the blood coming out of Batman's mouth and dripping down his chin and flowing away on the ground. But what about all that other blood?! Does Batman's cape and cowl have capillaries? Maybe the weird blood in rivulets all over Batman is meant to distract purchasers of this fine art/word media mash-up from noticing how motherfucking huge Azrael's forearms and fists are?

I felt like I didn't get too many chances last issue to truly hate the Cousin Oliveresque character that will become Azrael. In my mind, I hate him so much that all I have to do is look at him now and I'm filled with an internal rage. The question I'm left with is this: is there an actual reason for that internal rage? Do I hate him so much now just because I remember hating him so much back then? Did I hate him so much back then simply because he looked like Cousin Oliver? Did I hate him because he's obviously unworthy to be this amazing, kick-ass assassin (three asses in a row!) and was angry because DC knew he wasn't worthy of the role so they had to add the whole post-hypnotic suggestion shit to the guy's childhood? Maybe I hate him because he's not just Cousin Oliver but he's Cousin Oliver to the fucking Robins! And Robin, no matter which one, is just the absolute worst part of Batman, if you're trying to take Batman seriously (which maybe you shouldn't since he's a comic book character). Obviously Robin makes no sense in the totality of the idea of a man with a criminal vengeance boner who goes out at night in the dark fighting dangerous madmen. To bring a boy in a bright outfit along is madness and/or criminal exploitation. But DC felt they needed a kid insert so kids could read the thing and think, "I could do what Batman does too!" Is that it? So Cousin Oliver/Azrael is for college STEM nerds in the same way Robin was for children?

I guess I don't absolutely fucking despise Kyle Rayner because he didn't look like a stupid Brady Bunch character and also he was an artist and not a science geek. Although, to be absolutely transparent, I never really liked him much. At all. Although now that I bring it up, it's possible he filled me with incomprehensible rage as well. There must be a reason why I absolutely loved the Omega Men Convergence short story where it looks like he gets his head cut off.

Last issue ended with the arms dealer LeHah, the man Daddy Azrael tried to kill and the man Batman has been tracking, blowing the absolute motherloving shit out of The Order of St. Dumas's headquarters. Bruce and Alfred were in a Batcopter above the scene which was blown out of the sky and sent tumbling into a nearby pine tree. Nomoz and Cousin Oliver survived by hiding in a bunker underneath the chalet when they heard the helicopter approach. Afterward, five million tons of snow crashed down the mountain, obliterating every trace of everything that just happened. So can I stop reading here and pretend they're all dead? It's tempting!

Page 1: The end!

Cousin Oliver and Nomoz become trapped in the basement bunker under tons of snow so Nomoz immediately cracks open a tin of beans and begins eating them cold. Like Rorschach does! Is eating directly out of a cold tin of beans shorthand for "crazy person"? It must be because why the fuck is Nomoz immediately hungry when they've only just become trapped? Bruce and Alfred survive hanging upside down in their helicopter. LeHah and his henchman escape in their helicopter by outrunning the avalanche. All of that takes up about the first half of the comic book. Or maybe it was just a few pages but it felt like half a comic book. I did begin reading this week's ago and just haven't been able to muster the energy to continue to read about — ugh — Azrael.

Turns out Lehah and his henchman don't fully escape. Their helicopter is damaged by falling debris and it eventually crashes. Both survive the crash although the henchman doesn't survive LeHah's break with reality as he begins communing with a demon named Biis.

I guess if I'm a demon, at the absolute limit, I'll accept a human head carved from a body as tribute. But you'd better get to the virgins pretty quick or we're fucking quits, man.

As Bruce and Alfred, stuck halfway up the Alps, begin their long hike back to civilization, a massive hovercraft explodes out of the snow in a spray of fire and flames. Alfred is all, "Is it a volcano?" And Batman is all, "Idiot! Wrong geography for volcanoes! The Alps were formed by folding tectonic plates and not by, um, whatever tectonic movement causes volcanoes! You know, the other kind of tectonic action. The hot kind? Frottage, I think it's called." Later back in Gotham, Alfred begins slipping Bruce saltpeter in his tea. "Embarrass me, will you? Wait until your next date with Catwoman! Batman? More like Can't-Get-It-Up-Man!" Then the intercom will crack into life and Bruce will say, "Talking to yourself, old man? You know I've wired this entire house for sound, right, Alfred? By the way, it's a myth that saltpeter causes impotence. You know what doesn't cause impotence? Selina's massive tits!"

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled comic book about the greatest impotence pill ever invented: Azrael. Normally when I read a comic book, it's boner city! But reading an Azrael comic book, my penis is all, "How deep inside you do you think I can retract before it begins to get painful?"

Batman leaps aboard the hovercraft which is seen as a hostile act by the people within. That's reasonable, right?

I bet Bruce is rethinking his costume choices now. Maybe he should have gone for the green bikini briefs and a yellow cape.

Before jumping on the hovercraft, Bruce mentioned how his Bat outfit is lined with battery operated heating filaments. Does that explain the cover? It's not blood; it's overheating heating filaments!

Speaking of Batman's outfit, what the fuck is going on here?

Were these shoulder horns a '90s thing or just a Joe Quesada thing? Or part of his snow costume? Or did he just need to look more like a demon for this script?

Batman and Azrael engage in fisticuffs and you've got to hand it to Batman because he realizes Azrael is just a huge fucking nerd underneath the scary religious costume right away. Azrael may have been hypnotically trained in several martial forms of battle but you can't hypnotize away the way a nerd moves or throws a punch.

Batman should have been all, "Don't make me drop your britches and spank your little bottom blue!"

Maybe I shouldn't suggest Batman quote some blowhard who gets himself killed after giving up his weapon to some nobody who turns out to be Billy the Kid. Especially when I just suggested Batman was good at identifying what kind of person he's battling and that guy Billy kills in Young Guns who said the little bottom blue line has no ability to assess how dangerous the person he's interacting with actually is.

Batman, thigh deep in the snow, tells Azrael he can't fight properly in the snow because he isn't wearing snowshoes. There may have been some miscommunication between Denny and Joe on the script. Unless Joe Quesada believes snowshoes help moving in the snow even when you're halfway buried in it.

Whatever the case, it doesn't matter because Batman's prophecy about Azrael not hitting him twice comes true and Batman defeats the idiot. But then Nomoz gets his one hit on Batman with his weapon: the hovercraft. While Batman heals from the broken spine and internal injuries caused by being run down by a hovercraft, Nomoz and Azrael get away although Azrael loses his magic flaming sword in the process.

Batman winds up unhurt from the collision. He mentions that his cowl absorbed most of the impact which, once again, must have been a miscommunication between Denny and Joe because the hovercraft did not hit Batman in the head.

I bet this is why Bane was able to break Batman's back so easily. It was halfway there already.

Batman and Alfred explore the crater from whence the hovercraft came while Nomoz and Azrael flee. But not before Nomoz depresses the button on a detonator that will destroy the bunker and those within. How many times does Denny O'Neil think he can fool me into believing Batman's dead in just two issues? How many more times will he try in the next two? Did Denny forget he was writing mostly to adult children by 1992 and not to children children with no ability to think past the words being fed them in the story?!

LeHah makes it back to civilization where the first thing he does is create a costume to represent his new lord, the demon Biis. Cousin Oliver also gets a new Azrael outfit, one with better bullet proofing than the one his father wore. It also includes built-in flaming swords so he doesn't lose another one.

I will never buy into that being the head of a hero. I just want to stick it in a toilet bowl and flush!

Biis just looks like fat Skeletor. He needs two full belts to hold up those pants!

Cousin Oliver learns a little history of the organization but he's not the type to question any of it, even though he's supposedly a college student. Nomoz explains how the organization is an off-shoot of the Templars and they made themselves rich by investing the loot taken during the Crusades. Cousin Oliver does not question that he's working for a white supremacist, religious fundamentalist, imperialist organization based on racism, pillaging, and looting. He's just all, "Oh, we're angels of vengeance serving our lord Azrael. No, no, I don't need to know anything about this Azrael. And I'm not worried about how our vengeance is saved for our own members who decide to leave the group and never used against anybody else. It's not like this is Scientology, right?! I trust you, you toothless, ruthless, little gnome of a man!"

Meanwhile, Biis stands naked in front of a mirror declaring himself to be Supernatural Punisher.

Is it an old person thing to stand around naked in the dark? Or is it another crazy thing? Did Rorschach ever do it? Or is standing or sitting around naked in the dark just a Samuel Beckett character thing? Since I've done it more than I ought, I'm going with the Beckett option.

Batman and Alfred were surprisingly not blown up. They owe their lives to stupid random luck that a wire fell away from the bomb during all the ruckus. While Batman searches for clues and a way to track all the living members of the Order of St. Dumas, Alfred whips up some spinach fajitas. I like this version of Alfred where he's always Bruce's manservant and not some extraordinary British military hero who also moonlights as a butler. This Alfred doesn't try to examine the scene because he's too busy doing manservant things like making spinach fajitas and then getting his feelings hurt when Batman doesn't finish his spinach fajita.

Cousin Oliver eventually asks Nomoz about the theology behind the Order of St. Dumas and Nomoz's answer is "I'm not going to tell it to a college student who will pick it apart with logic and rational thought!" So Cousin Oliver just drops it. Nobody reading this cares about the theology! They just want a cool costume and an easy to understand mission. And what could be easier than "Kill the guy who's going to kill all the other members of your Order"? Too bad DC also constantly thinks, "Readers want to read about characters that are exactly like them! And college kids read our shit now, right? We need a huge nerd as the next Batman!"

Batman figures out where all the members of The Order of St. Dumas are located by tracing their use of satellite relays. While he's doing that, Biis goes after the nearest member of the Order in a hospital nearby. Nomoz also knows about this member so he and Cousin Oliver head on over to protect him.

Oh. Sorry. I mean "to avenge him."

Does that mean that Azrael has to wait outside the member's room until Biis kills him before he's allowed to act? Is this some kind of Libertarian shit?

If you're a Libertarian and you didn't understand what I meant by that, which you probably didn't because Libertarians are less about understanding things and more about spewing semantic bullshit that lets them do whatever the fuck they want to do, no matter who it hurts, then I'm not going to explain myself. Get smarter.

No wonder Batman and Azrael can't seem to maintain a healthy relationship. Batman wants to protect; Azrael wants to avenge. I wonder why Jason Todd didn't take up the mantle of Azrael when he came back to life instead of adopting the Red Hood persona? Why take a name associated with the madman who killed you? Oh, wait. I think I finally understand Jason and Bruce's relationship. Just another butthurt teenager trying to make their parent angry by doing stupid shit. I don't know why he couldn't have been like the rest of us and just went the roller rink every weekend where he hardly ever put our feet in roller skates but sometimes were allowed to put our fingers in vaginas.

The issue ends with Cousin Oliver forgetting to put on his Azrael costume before entering the room of the freshly-murdered-by-Biis member of the Order of St. Dumas. That leads to a slight problem and also another moment for Denny to think, "Ha ha! I'm going to really screw with the emotions of the young kids reading this funny book!"

That "To Be Continued" box is really fucking pissing me off. This should have been the end!

Batman: Sword of Azrael: Book Two #2 Rating: C. This series feels like the 1992 version of The Court of Owls but poorly thought out. Batman discovers a secret organization exists who control a superhuman killer used to protect the organization. I mean avenge the organization? But it lacks all the shit that made The Court of Owls so interesting. Like how they secretly ruled Gotham and the psychological impact they had on Batman when he discovered he never knew about them and he's supposed to have been such a great detective. Plus Bruce feels like he's in control of Gotham and then he learns that Gotham actually prefers to be controlled by these other people who fuck it so much better than he's ever fucked it. And also owls prey on bats! Plus the masks were cool and, I guess, they also served the purpose of allowing any major character to be discovered as a member at any time. We all thought Commissioner Gordon was going to be one, didn't we? Or was he? I bet The Joker was a member! Man, my memory fucking sucks. Anyway, my point still stands: Azrael is a far worse Talon working for a far worse Court of Owls. The Order of St. Dumas should be for more nefarious than "We have a lot of money and just want to force our members to remain members." Come on, Denny! You could have workshopped this a bit longer.

Of course, there are still two issues left in this series! Maybe I'll be surprised by how elaborate the Order of St. Dumas and their machinations actually are!

The Mist by Stephen King (1980)

This was probably my first time reading the full novella of The Mist as opposed to whatever hack job was published in Skeleton Crew. I say "hack job" in that it was certainly edited for space so it was "hacked" up and not "hack job" as in it was done carelessly. Maybe it was but I'm not the one to judge because I didn't make a careful comparison of the two. All I know is that I liked it a lot when I first read it and I liked it a lot now in its original form. It's possible, based on how much I liked it divided by word count, that it's mathematically my favorite Stephen King story. Sure, I've probably gotten more joy out of "Library Policeman" but I've only ever expressed that around my closest friends who don't judge me when I find immense pleasure in the idea that King wrote a story where a little kid fears being raped because his library books are overdue. "Thteady! Thteady!" But you, not being one of my closest friends, didn't read that here! Plus the last time I had a really good laugh about that "Thteady! Thteady!" line was when I was still hanging out with my friend Soy Rakelson, Catholic Conservative Frat Boy who once worried about whether he should use a condom if he had the opportunity to have sex in college because he didn't want to make the Pope sad without once being worried that the pre-marital sex might make the Pope sad. I know! I know! Conservatives only care about hypocrisy when they can try to prove one of their nemeses is being hypocritical, and usually they can only marginally do that through semantics and false representations of actual facts.

Look, this review isn't about Soy Rakelson! It's also really not about Stephen King's novella The Mist either because I've pretty much finished with that. Loved it! Good job! Although just like It, the story is almost ruined by the unneeded sex scene. In It, the tween gang bang in the sewers, as terrible as it fucking is, was meant to express how the children had to grow up to escape the clutches of Pennywise. But why did David Drayton, in The Mist, have to commit adultery with the hottest woman in the supermarket? Oh, because it was an embracing of life at one of the darkest, most depressing, horrifically terrifying moments of their lives? It was to show how hard they were clinging to survival? Expressing their passion and their need to live no matter the cost? Maybe you should have expressed that point a little better than just having the two hottest people in the supermarket fuck so that Frank Darabont wouldn't have made a film that just flushed the entire idea of mankind's ability to keep up hope and survive against the most insurmountable odds! I guess the ending of Darabont's film adaptation of The Mist was also seeded by the moment when King has Drayton compare the amount of bullets in the gun with the number of people in his escaping truck as well. King's story doesn't end with everybody escaping into an unmisted world but it does end by hitting you in the face with a lead pipe with the word "HOPE" written on it. Maybe Darabont's first language isn't English so he sort of missed that hope bit.

I understand why people like Darabont's film's ending. Hell, even Stephen King expresses his love for it in his 2010 "Forenote" to Danse Macabre. But I've got to tell you, as the biggest cynic in any room but one that appreciates and values when people can be absolutely, bloody awfully, embarrassingly earnest, Darabont's The Mist has the most nihilistic and cynical ending of any film I've ever seen. And that's not a fucking compliment. It's the kind of ending a 7th Grader would have tacked onto a story he was writing just for the shocking twist. And I'm not talking about David killing everybody with the final bullets in the gun and then walking out into the mist to die by giant spider. That would have been a better ending! They tried but they failed and the world has gone to shit and that's that. But Darabont was all, "Hee hee! Haw haw haw! What if I get the main guy to blast his son in the face with a bullet from his gun only to immediately walk out of his car and be surrounded by the military saving the world? OH MY GOD! Ha ha ha! How funny would that be? I mean tragic! I meant it to be tragic! OH NO! So tragic! HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE!" Fuck Darabont! Darabont's little trick at the end makes Mrs. Carmody more heroic than David Drayton! Oh, sure, maybe she sacrificed a few people back in the old Megalo Mart. But she was fucking right that it was death to leave and they should stay in the supermarket because guess what? Except for the few unfortunate souls her group sacrificed (which, I mean, maybe they're what convinced God to let the military save the day after all? Who am I to say being that Mrs. Carmody was absolutely fucking right in the end?!), those who stayed in the supermarket were eventually rescued.

Hey Franky? Read my blog name out loud. That's for you, buckaroo!

The other thing I wanted to discuss was the Interactive Fiction game based on The Mist by Mindscape. I really enjoyed it for the atmosphere and for actually feeling like I was in the story, and extending the story in various ways that King only hinted at. It was, as a story, fun. But as a text adventure game? Holy shit did it suck. I remember way back in the mid-80s playing this thing and realizing at some point that I can't get any further because there were monsters everywhere. Sure, you could kill the slug thing with salt. Easy! But the other things couldn't be killed. So I thought, "There's a gun in the story? Maybe if I ask everybody for a gun, I'll have a gun to shoot everything!" And guess what? Yeah, one of the characters has a gun. You also need to ask the characters for a key to the hardware store and a key to the truck. The main puzzles in the game are asking people for things that you can't find (one of them being a gun which is never, ever mentioned, as far as I know. You just have to assume somebody has a gun! You're in Maine, for Christ's sake!). After that, the final puzzles are mostly shooting everything. By the time I worked my way to my son Billy (yeah, in the text adventure, Billy isn't with you. He's staying with a family friend), I still had one bullet left in my gun and, like Frank Darabont, I was all, "Fuck this shit!", and shot Billy in the head. It was the only humane thing to do!

Anyway, great story minus the sex scene especially when David thinks how massive his erection is. Gross. Stupid first person perspective!

Night Shift by Stephen King (1978)

It's been a few months since I read this. I have trouble writing reviews for story or essay collections which is also why I haven't done a review of Palm Sunday by Vonnegut yet. Although this doesn't explain why I failed to do a review of Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut. Why am I providing arguments against my own excuses?! Either forget the Cat's Cradle revelation or believe this subsequent lie: Cat's Cradle was also a short story collection! I bet hardly anybody has read it so they won't know that's a lie! Ha ha! Idiots!

I'm going to try to remember each story and shart out an opinion on each one. King probably worked terribly hard on every story in this collection and I'm going to just vomit up terrible opinions on each story and label them as "critical reviews". This is why I like being a reviewer over an actual author!

Jerusalem's Lot: Oh! This is why that one book was called 'Salem's Lot! It was short for Jerusalem's Lot! Good thing King wrote this story so that people would understand the title of that book years later! It's like how nobody has yet realized The Beatles spell their name not like the insect but like "beats" in a song. That one's particularly hard to figure out because The Beatles never wrote a song called, "Check Out How Our Band's Name is Spelled, You Twats!" I only noticed because I'm the absolute genius who came up with the blog name, "Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea!"

Oh, I forgot about my review! This is already way longer than I expected it to be. Too bad the thought faucet in my brain has been stripped and I can't stop it from constantly dripping. Okay, Me, concentrate now! Review time!

While Stephen King's stories show a lot of obvious influence from H.P. Lovecraft, "Jerusalem's Lot" is the most Lovecraftian of them all. It's epistolary and H.P. loved a good bit of correspondence story telling. It also culminates in what's basically the appearance of a Great Old One in a blasphemous church in an abandoned town. One of the most interesting bits is how King calls the Great Old One "It" (capitalized!) so I'm assuming this is also the first appearance of Pennywise.

Prognosis: Pretty Good!

Graveyard Shift: This story could have been a sidequest in Fallout. While it's ostensibly about a bunch of mutant rats living beneath an old textile mill, I think it's really a fantasy about murdering your boss. We've all had that boss that we'd have loved to spray with a firehose until they stumbled into the waiting maw of a massive deformed rat. Mine was named Barb! No, I'm kidding! Barb wasn't that bad. She just wasn't what you'd call "good at her job". She once cried during a performance review with me because I wouldn't be her friend! Look, Barb! It's fucking work! Work is not playtime! Now get in that giant rat's mouth already!

Prognosis: Satisfying.

Night Surf: This story takes place in a less optimistic version of The Stand. A bunch of cool kids (they must be cool because they hang out at the beach, smoke, drink, and have sex. So cool!) hang out at the beach to smoke, drink, and have sex. Also they talk about how they've all survived a plague they call "Captain Trips". That's the same flu as in The Stand! But in this one, after burning a guy for their cool bonfire, one of them shows signs of having Captain Trips and the protagonist realizes that, although they survived the initial plague, they're probably all going to die anyway. And they didn't even need some nightmare dark man to do it! Losers. Cool losers, of course!

Prognosis: Am I using "prognosis" right?! I'm not a doctor! Which is what these kids needed! Ha ha! Better than The Stand because it was about 1500 pages shorter.

I Am The Doorway: King doesn't often do on-the-surface cosmic horror but if this is an example of him doing that, I wish he'd do more! I qualified "cosmic horror" with "on-the-surface" because if you think about an awful lot of his stories, many owing a debt to Lovecraft, you can probably squint them into being cosmic horror stories. It almost certainly is. Tommyknockers. Possibly all the Dark Tower books? King's written too many books to contemplate (and many I haven't read) so I'm going to end the list there.

This story is about a guy who becomes all eyeballs. It's pretty gross. I think he kills himself in the end because his eyeballs are catching? I don't remember it that well. But it was creepy and gross!

Prognosis: Different but sort of forgettable.

The Mangler: One of the immutable facts of the universe about Stephen King is that he often has better ideas than the stories that come out of those ideas. But the great thing about Stephen King is that the opposite of that is also true! Sometimes his ideas sound like shit on a loaf made of shit and, guess what? They end up tasting great! Mmm, mmm! I love King's shit sometimes! "The Mangler" is one of those ideas I really like that ends in such a laughably terrible moment that I checked to see if King graduated from Clown College. The initial premise is that a laundry machine called "The Mangler" by the people who use it (because it's so dangerous!) becomes possessed by a demon because all the right ingredients from a Satanic Ritual somehow wound up getting passed through it. And then maybe somebody said some Latin or something. Anyway, fantastic idea! Love it! King quickly realizes the problem with this set-up though: once people realize the machine is evil and killing people, people can just not go near it anymore. Perhaps unplugging it also doesn't work because it's possessed. But it's still just a big block of metal in the basement of some shop. Just put up a sign: "Caution! Demon Laundry Folding Machine in Basement! Stay Out!" How scary is that? It's not scary at all! is probably what Tabitha said after reading it.

So King, realizing he had a huge dud of an ending coming up and thinking, "I could set the whole place on fire but I've already done that in like every book I've written so far and a few I'm going to write." So what does he do? He has the machine become mobile, climb out of the basement, and begin stalking the people who tried to perform an exorcism on it! Ha ha! Can you picture this big fucking block of metal lumbering down the street somehow catching and eating people unawares?! The protagonist realizes it's coming for him at the end of the story and instead of walking outside and yelling, "What the fuck are you going to do? Catch a sprinting human being?!", he trembles in fear and waits to die. Or does he actually die? It's been awhile. I don't remember exactly. Although now I really need to see the film based on it and the film's two sequels!

Prognosis: King's Clown College Thesis Paper.

The Boogeyman: This is the first story I can't remember from the title alone so I'll need to read the Wikipedia entry to remember it.

Before even finishing the first sentence of the plot synopsis on Wikipedia, my memory was jogged. Yeah, I would not have remembered this story at all if not for revisiting it in this review. This is another story, if I remember correctly, with a fucking absolutely fucking ridiculous fucking fucking ending.

The story is about a man whose children keep getting killed by The Boogeyman that lives in the closet. He's describing his terrifying life's path littered with dead babies to his therapist. At the end of the story, we discover that the therapist is actually The Boogeyman! Um, what? No, no. That's the biggest "what?" I've ever meant. I think I usually don't really mean it when I respond "what?" to some dumb plot contrivance or stupid twist. But this time, I'm being serious. "What?" This paranormal creature that's been eating this man's children decided to become a psychiatrist? So it can relive the pleasure of the terror it created, I guess? But also it can look and act enough like a man to just wear a mask and fool actual people? Did it study to become a psychiatrist? Did it learn how psychiatrist's act by watching victims watch The Bob Newhart Show from its hiding place in the closet? How is this a fucking twist?! M. Night Shyamalan laughs at this twist and most of his twists are pretty fucking stupid. Like how the twist in Signs was that the "signs" in the title weren't the crop circles but all the clues littering his life that leads him to defeat the aliens! Is that a twist? Can you make the twist a play on the title?!

But to get serious about this less-than-serious story, is this King's commentary on therapy? That therapists just drag terrible things out of the closet of our memory to make our lives worse? Maybe that's his point? I would have liked this story if he'd just left out The Boogeyman, called it "The Rapist", and then had the therapist rape the guy after he spilled his guts about how he, I don't know, fears being raped? Did I make the story better or much, much, much, much worse? At least it's got a better title twist than Signs!

Oh! This story also has a feature film based on it! I have to fucking get my hater mitts on that!

Prognosis: Fucking ridiculous. Unless King was commenting on therapy. And then maybe it's just ignorant?

Gray Matter: Oh yeah! This latest reading of Night Shift was obviously a re-read but having read the book over 35, maybe 40, years ago, I certainly only vaguely (if at all) remembered most of these stories (other than Lawnmower Man! Who can forget that one!). So it was weird that as I read "Gray Matter", I kept thinking, "This is really fucking familiar. Did I just recently see this somewhere?" At some point while reading it and getting stronger and stronger feelings of déjà vu, I realized that I had just recently watched it on Shudder's Creepshow series. You probably didn't need to know any of that but what are you? Too busy to hear a boring anecdote from some idiot on the Internet you'll never meet and never truly know but still want to have sex with for some reason? I mean, right? You do want that?

I suspect this is a metaphorical tale and not just a story about a guy who drinks some bad beer and turns into The Blob. Being that "gray matter" is another term for the brain, and this story ends with the "gray matter" splitting and the implication that each new ooze will split into more oozes and so on and so forth until they consume the world, I'm going to assume that this story is about how gossip, shit ideas, and propaganda spread to destroying the humanity of everybody caught up in the nonsense in the process. Maybe it's not that sophisticated an idea and it's just about alcoholism and how that destroys a person and the people around them. Maybe it's one of those metaphorical tales that can be used to explain whatever the reader wants it to explain. Like Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Prognosis: Gross.

Battleground: A toymaker's mother sends some dangerous army men toys to the hit-man who killed her son in this story that reads like Stephen King was writing a Twilight Zone episode instead of a Stephen King short story. Richard Matheson's son, Richard Matheson, must have recognized this fact as well and, following in his father's footsteps, adapted it for television. If The Twilight Zone had been on the air at the time, he probably would have written it for that. Instead, it was made for Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King which, I suppose, was the perfect place for it. Richard Mathesonson also wrote an episode of Three's Company. Was there an episode where Jack makes a deal with the devil or Janet dates a serial killer or Larry discovers The Ropers' storage shed full of corpses? I only ask because Richard Mathesonson is known for horror and not sexy mishaps comedy.

Prognosis: Fun which isn't horror so bad in this context, I guess?

Trucks: The only good thing to come out of this story having been written is the greatest AC/DC song of all-time, "Who Made Who". You can argue with me all you want with that opinion, if you're so inclined, but realize that two people arguing over the greatest song from a band whose songs all sound the same might be a slight waste of all of our time. Stephen King tried to blame the failure of Maximum Overdrive, the film based on this story, on cocaine but I think the real blame should be put on King trying to make a full-length movie out of a story with nearly no narrative meat on the bone. Although maybe cocaine was to blame because Stephen King got so fucked up on it one night that he couldn't remember the difference between apes and big rigs while watching Planet of the Apes. Or maybe it was that jerk at that party from earlier shooting the shit with King who said, "Imagine if those apes on that planet had actually been Peterbilts!"

I hope whoever designed this movie poster was haunted by the zombies of three long dead Greasers.

Prognosis: Depressing.

Sometimes They Come Back: A teacher is haunted by the zombies of some greasers who killed his brother twenty years ago but then they all died in a car accident soon after. We never find out why the greasers return from the dead to kill the kid brother of the guy they killed earlier. Or did we and I don't remember? It seems like an important detail. Why would they want to kill him so many years later? Was the afterlife so boring that they felt they needed to bully the kid brother of a kid they bullied to death so long ago? Maybe he kicked one of them in the balls while escaping? That seems like a good enough reason to come back from Hell to torment some guy. I would never forget being kicked in the balls! I'd haunt that ball-kicking fucker to the end of time, even if I had deserved it because I was killing his brother! It's just not fair giving a guy a shot down there. These greasers kill his wife but the teacher performs a Satanic ritual to hire a demon to re-kill the greasers. But what's to stop them from coming back yet again? Maybe that's the story in the sequel to the movie, Sometimes They Come Back . . . Again! That movie title really should have an exclamation point on it.

Prognosis: Not good. A teacher protagonist with psychic or mystic shenanigans and not one single town or haunted hotel or government facility gets burned to the ground? Was King off his game when he wrote this?!

Strawberry Spring: I've sat on this title for a few days with the outrageous belief that if I thought about it long enough, I'd remember what it was about from the title alone. But before I check the synopsis on Wikipedia, here's my guess: a serial killer kills some girls on a college campus? No wait! That was the middle part of The Dead Zone! Fine. I'll look it up.

Well pry the nails out of Christ's crucifix! I was right! Good brain! You're a good little girl, brain! So smart! I guess it wasn't interesting enough to remember but since King basically used it again for The Dead Zone, my brain filed it away correctly. The big twist is that the murderer, Springheel Jack, is the narrator who doesn't remember being Springheel Jack. I guess it's Fight Club with less fighting and more murder. Probably about the same amount of misogyny.

Apparently it was adapted to a podcast series with Sydney Sweeney playing one of the roles. Why would she do a podcast? You can't see boobies in a podcast! Ken Marino was also a voice if you know who that is. I think he was a comedian who played quarterback for the Miami Dolphins.

Prognosis: Amateurish.

The Ledge: This story is about a guy who's forced to walk around a tiny ledge on the top floor of a really tall building. He succeeds and then gets his vengeance on the man who forced him to walk the ledge. I don't remember anything terrible happening to the protagonist or his family so I'm not completely convinced Stephen King wrote this. No wait! The wife of the antagonist who the protagonist was fucking is killed. Sorry for doubting you, Steve!

This story was included in the film Cat's Eye which means I need to make a note of yet another film I need to watch (or re-watch? Was Cat's Eye the one with the Drew Barrymore story with the cat "stealing" her breath but actually protecting her from a gremlin thing? Or was that something totally different?! (Just checked! That's the one!)).

Prognosis: Not horror but I guess King had to practice doing non-horror stories so he could eventually write things like "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" and The Green Mile.

The Lawnmower Man: Imagine having read this short story and then hearing that a film called The Lawnmower Man. And then imagine not hearing anything about the content of the film because you thought you knew what it was about and couldn't wait to see a naked man slithering around on the ground eating grass while his wang flops all over the place. Now imagine the absolutely spectacular tantrum I threw when I realized I'd been had! I think it made the local papers.

Anyway, this story is fucking crazy. That should be the prognosis. Just a second.

Prognosis: Fucking crazy.

Quitters, Inc.: A well done story that might be a commentary on Alcoholics Anonymous but also maybe isn't at all. The Wikipedia page for this story is so fucking long because somebody decided that what it needed was some other writer's literary thesis on King and this work in particular. It's a lot of words to say King had a mistrust of psychiatry which I pointed out a few entries ago writing about The Boogeyman. And I didn't even do any research to know for sure that King had that mistrust! I just read the story and thought, "Boy, King doesn't like psychoanalysis, does he?!" What I'm trying to say is where is my Doctorate of Literature?!

Prognosis: Another story that easily could have been an episode of The Twilight Zone.

I Know What You Need: Another story I don't recognize by the title alone. Although the title reminds me of The Twilight Zone episode, "What You Need". See? It's basically the same title! Anyway, time to look up the synopsis!

Oh, this was the story about the manipulative stalker who tricks a woman into dating him until she stumbles upon his closet shrine to her and his copy of the Necronomicon. I think I blocked this story out because it hit too close to home regarding me and my plans for Aubrey Plaza and/or Jemaine Clement, whichever I could dupe first. I'm not convinced I could have duped either of them, even with magical voodoo powers like the guy in this story. They seem way to smart and clever and sexy and handsome and pretty and sexy and caustic and whimsical and sexy and sexy and sexy and sexy. Also I don't have a copy of the Necronomicon which I think is the most important tool in the plan. Another important tool? Actually trying to meet the person you're obsessed with. Copying a .jpg of their face and cutting and pasting it onto an image of Wonder Woman's body isn't the best method to meet the person you're stalking. It also helps if you went to elementary school with the person and knew all of their moves and had the ability to murder their boyfriend via magic and also to kill your parents (via magic as well) so that you'd get the life insurance money so you wouldn't have to get a job and could spend 100% of your time researching their lives.

If you were ever interested in successfully stalking somebody and tricking them into loving you, this story gives you some helpful advice by showing that the biggest flaw in the stalker's plan was not killing his obsession's roommate. That roommate just bad-mouthed him constantly and made his lover doubt his sincerity! So, you know, take that helpful advice for what it's worth. Thanks, Stephen King!

Prognosis: I was only kidding about being a stalker. I wrote one Wonder Woman review where I played up my crush on Aubrey Plaza to make it seem like I was obsessed and now I have an FBI file. Thanks a lot, people who don't understand facetious whimsy! Stupid FBI can suck eggs!

Children of the Corn: My friend from high school, Randy, an actual stalker of Arnold Schwarzenegger, looked like Malachai but only if you first threw a little Steven Tyler DNA up Randy's butthole. I've never seen Randy in a field of corn so I don't think he worships He Who Walks Behind the Rows but it's possible! I just used "but it's possible" there in the same way people who deny most science use the term "but it's possible". Meaning that they believe anything they can think with their brains could possibly be true and you can't prove it's not true because you can't prove a negative so they just go on believing the stupidest shit in the world and their YouTube algorithm just gets dumber and dumber. All of that is to say this: you know this story. Why do I have to describe any of it? There are scary children. There's scarier corn. People die scared. The end.

I lived in Nebraska for nearly two years and not once did I meet He Who Walks Behind the Rows. That's probably obvious because I was over 18 at the time and I'm still alive now. But I also never met any children who worshipped him. Not that I talked to many children. The only kid I knew while living in Nebraska was Jordan, my friend's kid. Jordan was about five or six and he once told me he had a dream where he was a girl when he was in his mother's tummy. I loved it and told his dad about Jordan's dream and his dad's reaction was, "Ummm, uh, ummmm." He was from Nebraska. That was probably a pretty liberal reaction at the time!

Prognosis: Good enough to make a movie and 665 sequels!

The Last Rung on the Ladder: This was the best story in the entire collection. I fucking loved it and I think I probably cried quite a bit. Just beautiful and sad and really highlights King's strengths. Well over half of King's books, I'd wager, aren't really that horrific. They're popular because he writes pretty compelling characters. Sure, he writes a lot of crap and stereotypical and boring characters too. But when he gets a character right, the book just shines. I think that's why I loved It so much because he manages to make just about every kid in the book compelling, and most of their adult versions. Also the sewer clown's pretty funny too.

Prognosis: Am I wrong to think this is the best story in the book? I don't know! It's not like I have a Doctorate in Literature like I probably should have if I hadn't been too smart to realize more schooling was a waste of my time!

The Man Who Loved Flowers: Did I sleepwalk through most of the last quarter of this book because I've really forgotten what a lot of these short stories were about? Back to Wikipedia!

After reading the Wikipedia synopsis, I realize my brain was doing God's work all along by forgetting certain stories in this collection. I feel like that moment in Total Recall where I go to get a memory implanted only to find I've had some memories changed and erased and now I need to find out why I had my memories changed or erased only to discover that I was better off having had them changed or erased. That's the problem with forgetting, on purpose or by the simple process of knowledge retention through barely adequate electric flesh circuits. Having forgotten something, and then discovering that you've forgotten a thing, you're naturally curious to discover what that thing was. But shouldn't we trust our brain more? Shouldn't we know better than to dig up the past? Haven't we all read or seen Pet Sematary?! Give up on the past! It's a pre-dug grave! It's a trap! Nostalgia is suicide!

Prognosis: I don't know because I trust my brain and if I can't remember it, it's not worth remembering!

One for the Road: This is the other 'Salem's Lot story, right? Some guy gets into a car accident in the snow near The Lot and he finds some old men to help him because his family were left in the car and the old men are all, "Your family is gone. Sometimes dead is better. Oh, but, um, not in this case, I guess! Wrong story!" But since the old men know there are vampires in The Lot, they decide to try to help save this guy's family. But it's too late. They're already vampires! So they fight them and some people die but I think at least one of the old men survive?

Prognosis: Do not trust children, especially if they're in snow or corn.

The Woman in the Room: Some guy's mother is slowly dying and he decides to help her along. That summation is mine and it's about as long and detailed as the Wikipedia description of the short story. Apparently Frank Darabont adapted this story as one of King's "Dollar Baby" movies (look it up yourself!) when he was a college student. I'm guessing that in his version, the guy realizes his mom is dying and he hates to see her suffer so he helps her along by killing her with pills only to discover that the doctor was about to tell him that she was getting better. That would be about what I suspect from Darabont after having seen his version of King's The Mist, possibly the most nihilistic movie I've ever seen and I hate it so fucking much. But more about that in my next review since I've just finished re-reading The Mist!

Prognosis: I guess shocking in 1978? Maybe it'd be shocking for some people in 2025 too. Especially doctors who treat patients who are likely going to die as if they're already dead but they're not allowed to actually end the patient's life through action and usually just go with inaction by not really taking care of them or letting them basically starve to death. Are things different in 2025 than they were in 2003 when I had to watch the hospital staff do that to my grandfather?!

That's all the stories! I love short story collections! Give me more! Although I was hoping for much shorter stories than King sticks in this collection. I like stories that are five to ten pages long because reading is difficult.

Firestarter by Stephen King (1980)

I have no idea how to approach this book, the least interesting of all of King's early books (that I've re-read so far! I'm looking at you, Christine). I've already discussed how King seems to think terror is somebody having a psychic power that ends in everything being burned to the ground. It's possible King didn't realize he was doing this until somebody said to him at a wild cocaine party, "Have you noticed that all of your books are about a writer or teacher dealing with psychic powers (either their own or another character's) which ultimately ends in everything being burned to the ground?" And Stephen King exclaimed, "That's a great idea for a book!" And then he wrote Firestarter. After it was published, King wound up at the same party as the guy who gave him the great idea for the book. The guy snorted a line, turned to King, and said, "Dude, you need a new idea! You're like a rabid dog gnawing on a bone!" And King was all, "That's a great idea for a book!" And finally, King wrote a different book. Not a different scary book. Just a book about a family who couldn't manage to beat a dog to death with a baseball bat and then go get their rabies shots. Pathetic!

Since I don't have any idea how to get a handle on this book, I'll just write the most boring thing anybody has ever said about this book (I assume because even I'm bored saying it which means the most boring people in the world have probably already said it): "Is this a prequel to Carrie?!" Ha ha! Get it?! It's basically the same book except with a new added creepy Native American assassin paedo character! Okay, fine, I'll give King the benefit of the doubt and believe Rainbird wasn't a pedophile. He just had a massive boner for killing a little girl. That's different somehow, right?

The final chapter of the book had me thinking that King wrote the entire book just for that final revelation of what publication would publish a story about government drug experiments, kidnappings, and assassinations. He was probably having a discussion at that party with that super coked up guy and was all, "The country has changed so much! If Watergate happened right now, who would even dare to publish the article and out the government?!" And the guy wiped his nose in that way they do in the movies after doing coke but I have no idea if people really do it, squeezed his nostrils for a moment, and said, "Um. TV Guide?" And King was all, "No! I'll tell you what paper would have the rock and roll balls to do it! But you'll have to read 425 other pages before I give the big reveal!" And the guy was all, "What were we talking about? Has anybody broken open the adult piñata yet?! I hear it's full of acid tabs." And King was all, "Rolling Stone! Get it?! Rock and roll balls! It would be Rolling Stone!"

After reading the book, I got my Monkey's Paw out of the closet and was all, "Monkey's Paw? Can you make it so that Stephen King writes children better? I hate how Charlie constantly giggles at everything, especially swear words! Are kids really like that? Shouldn't they be a bit more adult about stuff like that?" And the third finger on my Monkey's Paw curled up and I thought, "Ah! That's better! Now King will write children way better!" And then in 1987, he came out with It and I read most of that book thinking, "Fucking A, Monkey's Paw! For once, you came through without fucking up the wish!" And then the children had a gang bang in the sewer and I was all, "Goddamn it, Monkey's Paw!" Later that night, feeling sorry I yelled at my Monkey's Paw, I made a wish on it that I could get my dick sucked. I'm, um, not going to tell the end of that story. Stupid fucking Monkey's Paw.

The Long Walk by Richard Bachman (1979)

I'm not entirely sure what this book is about. I mean, yeah, obviously it's about a bunch of young men / old boys walking in a deadly game show for a mysterious, alluded-to Prize. But what was it REALLY about, you know? Like, life or something? Coming out of the closet? Trying to survive being so horny you nut in your pants just because you saw a guy dry hump a woman on the hood of a car?

I couldn't help feeling that this was Stephen King's version of John Barth's "Night-Sea Journey" and the boys represented slightly less philosophical spermatozoa on their journey to the Prize of fertilizing the egg. But the final, surviving sperm sees the end of the journey, similar to the spermatozoa in Barth's book, as not the magic and miraculous gift of life but as the continuation of pain, agony, and death.

Being a King/Bachman book, I might not have paid as close attention to it as I should have, mostly reading it at a surface level, enjoying the plots and themes and grisly deaths. But I read it at the same time that I was reading Infinite Jest so I couldn't help thinking about each boy's secret life, their obsessions, their reasons for living/joining the Long Walk. It felt like the main kid Ray's reason for joining the race is never fully articulated and either the reader is supposed to ferret it out from the clues he drops to the other contestants or it's left a bit ambiguous so the reader can project their own reason onto Ray.

If I were to guess, based on the many, many, many clues dropped like a spilled tool box full of really heavy tools and hardly any light, Nerf tools, I'd say Ray was gay (Oh! His name was probably a clue! Ray Garrity = Gay Rarity?) and entered the Walk to escape the shame he felt, and his fear of coming out to his mother and girlfriend. I still have large bumps and drying blood all over my head from a few of the heavier clues King dropped.

I can't wait for the movie! I hope in the movie, McVries actually does jerk off Ray while they're walking down the road!

The Stand (Complete and Uncut (Hee hee!) Edition) by Stephen King (1978/1990)

I just finished re-reading The Stand after more than 30 years of having not read it again. If I were Stephen King, I would have called the book The Long Walk but I guess he couldn't because his alter ego was busy on a story with that same exact title at the time. Maybe A Long Walk with a Dog?

The first time I read The Stand, I remember thinking, "What the fuck? The good guys didn't do shit but take a long hike with their dog. Randal Flagg and all his cronies fucked up a bunch and then Trash Can Man took them all out himself." The heroes of The Stand were the most passive yet horny heroes of any book where good faces off against evil. But this time, I realized that their strength was simply in their resistance (and possibly their horniness). Was The Stand a novel about the success of passive and non-violent resistance movements? Because the only actions the heroes take against Flagg are being killed by him and his goons in ways that make Flagg mad and make his people less confident in him. I suppose if I were gullible, naïve, or earnest-minded, maybe I wouldn't sneer at the thought that God was the real hero of the book. Maybe The Turtle from It was the real hero of The Stand? Was The Turtle still alive at this time? Or had it already choked on its own sick?

Anyway, my favorite part was when the nerd got to have butt sex with the hot older kindergarten teacher. Although later he tried to shoot her in the face and I just want to make it known that I didn't think that was cool at all.