A Poem

"I'd love to stay and chat some more, but I've a little business to take care of"
is a thing I've never said myself,
for I have no business to speak of,
and I have no love for chat.

If you were there, and I was too
(enervated by social obligation),
I would merely stand and say,
"I must be going, my cat's at home, and I think I need a nap."

A Poem

"One must protest all common men who might
give poison to a child. One must contest
all use of slang. One must protest all spite
engendered by protesting all unrest.
Sir. SIR, I say. One must protest the sight
of shirts untucked, unpolished shoes, and messed
up beds left long unmade. One must, despite
all threats, protest all sins left unconfessed.
One must protest against the day, the light
that shines on only some. One must attest
to those unseen long covered by the night.
One must protest all those who won't protest.
One must protest the ones who close their eyes,
Who choose to dismiss truth and feast on lies."

Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea: The Newsletter #9 (First Week of February 2018)

E!TACT! #9
"Why I Hate Flag Stamps", "Wake Up, America", The Wild Storm #11, Justice League #37, Raven #1, and Letters! By Grunion Guy

Why I Hate Flag Stamps
By Grunion Guy

Fucking flag stamps are bullshit. Why the fuck do the forever stamps most commonly sold at places that aren't the stupid fucking post office have to be flags of the United Stupid States of America? [For clarification: only 40 of the 50 states are actually stupid.] I like to put stamps on envelopes willy-nilly because I can't be arsed to line the stupid things up. But when I send out billing for my business, I feel compelled to put the stupid fucking stamps on in the right direction lest some client see an upside down flag on the corner of the envelope and bust their sphincter in a fit of patriotic apoplectic rage! Why can't I get Garfield forever stamps?! Nobody would care if those were stuck on at a weird angle and they'd also remind them how much Garfield hated Mondays. Jim Davis was a genius. He had a comic strip ready to go every Monday by thinking up that classic bon mot!

I guess I'm not really angry at the stamps. I'm just tired of living in the American equivalent of Nazi Germany where everybody feels forced to display an eager and earnest sense of patriotism. Why do people think displaying loyalty and an insane fervor to one's country is a positive attribute? If you feel pride over some fact about your life that you played no part in developing, you might be a lazy moron with no aptitude at anything deemed useful. If you're most proud about having been randomly born in the United States of America, you should probably think about finding a hobby that isn't collecting clothing decorated with flags, eagles, and thick, bold print.

I blame the terrorists who flew planes into the World Trade Center for my having to deal with these knob-headed patriots. They really did make the world a worse place, those fucking bastards! I bet they were all beta cucks!

Speaking of 9/11 (or 11/9 for nearly the entire rest of the world), I'm going to reprint my essay from September 15th, 2001 because why not? Although I am going to edit it because it was written for a character at No Apologies! Press that many people stop reading after the first paragraph because of the slang. I usually call those people racists but what if I'm the racist for having tried to write in a black, urban dialect?! Holy shit! I'm going to stop thinking about that now and just stick the essay in.

Wake Up, America
By That Cavortin' Bastard

It's about time y'all are getting pissed off.

Americans are the most deluded, insulated, egotistical people on this Earth. We think our shit doesn't stink and God blesses our racist asses. We're also naïve and innocent and way too trusting. And our government uses that against us every Goddamn motherfucking day.

Y'all want to go to war over this World Trade Center thing? What the fuck makes you think we weren't already at war? Because our government hadn't declared it? Well shit. You don't think other countries have a right to declare war themselves? You think every fucking nation is run like America is and will issue some formal, political declaration to warn y'all? Well wake the fuck up.

We knew we were at war with these guys for years. Just because we aren't in a special war mindset, it doesn't mean they aren't. Just because we're happy to shop and work and live our lives ignorant of them, it doesn't mean they don't exist. And it doesn't mean they aren't going to do everything in their power to bring their war to us. And if you think our government is any better than this Osama bin Laden, you fucking need to get your head out of your ass.

Because if you're using the theory that any time we killed innocent civilians it was because of war and that made it okay then you're just looking at the world through egotistical American eyes. And you're also justifying this World Trade Center shit because these people are at war with us whether we're going to accept the gauntlet or not.

You think carpet bombing Dresden was okay because it was war? You think A-bombing the fuck out of Hiroshima was okay because it was a war? You think Operation Desert Storm was just fine and dandy because it was a war? Then you've already accepted the fact that some shit the government gets itself into makes civilian casualties okay. And your logic is leaning toward understanding and condoning what this fucker did.

Because he's at war with us, whether "he" be a country, a man, or a religion. And if you read his statements, you're going to see that we're at war with a God.

People think Pearl Harbor was the sneakiest fucked up thing another country could do. But Japan was at war and we were included and just ignoring that doesn't make it go away.

Just like now. Just ignoring terrorism isn't going to make it go away.

But retaliating by bombing the fuck out of another country just because their government is housing some terrorist is terrorism itself. How much fucking power do each of us have with our foreign policy? How many times did you meet with Congress to tell them you want to support Israel instead of Palestine? None, you say? So those people who hate our government's decisions killing you and your friends and family is fucking wrong, right? Well what the fuck makes you think the citizens under the Taliban have any say in housing terrorists?

We are all being fucking used and abused by our governments and their whims and beliefs. We fucking take it in the ass because everyone in our fucking Congress believes in an imaginary white man in the sky who is going to back us when we're in trouble. And they're getting fucked by the Taliban every motherfucking day. You think those people want to be stuck in a repressive society just so they can one day get their asses bombed by the United States of America?

You're a fucking idiot if you think killing their civilians is okay after what we just witnessed.

I lost fucking friends and family in that fucked up terrorist shit. I've got crew in New York and we're hurt hard by this. But it's fucking time for us and our government to live by our supposed Goddamned principles. If we're going to war to hunt out this bin Laden guy then we'd better lay off bombing the shit out of non-military installations and civilian locations.

And if you think we can't do that because Vietnam taught us a little something about not knowing who in-country is a friend and who is the enemy then you're just a racist dirtbag like most Americans I know. I already know what it's like to be considered the enemy and I get suspicious looks thrown my way every fucking day I live in Oakland and every fucking second I spend in The City (that's Frisco to all ya stupid hicks who'd actually call it Frisco). Since war went to the air and out of country, America has fought as if civilians were no better than the government America was trying to defeat. But knowing how my government treats me and mine like shit, lets my public schools deteriorate, lets police fuck with my crew every motherfucking day, and pisses off the rest of the world until they think I'm as much of a devil as my government, I can't help but sympathize with the civilians being fucked in the ass all over the world in every other motherfucking country we've ever gone to war with. We've been killing civilians long before Vietnam. It's just that soldiers in 'Nam came home fucked up because they knew they were killing enemies as well as friends with their own hands to protect their own lives.

If our soldiers are going to fight then fight. But don't fucking pull none of this United States terrorist shit on another motherfucking country. Because our government is the biggest terrorist of all. It thinks it rules the world by putting the fear of God in every little country that won't act nice and white and civilized. Maybe we should clean up our house before we start criticizing our neighbor's houses.

If y'all think we're going to war then you're wrong. We've been at war. Now maybe we'll acknowledge it and understand that war isn't cool when it's in your own backyard. It never seemed so bad on the Nightly News when it's happening over there. So people were dying and cities were getting destroyed and shit. America was right and God was with us, right? Well, they got Allah on their side and they also got something else y'all better think carefully on. They're willing and happy to die for the things they believe. Us Americans just want to be left alone in our little bubbles of middle class comfort. We're raised on individuality and can't understand winning anything if that individuality won't exist after mission accomplished. We ain't never had the spine for no Kamikaze shit. But our enemies always have.

Our boys better be prepared if they're heading over there. And my hearts go with 'em. Because that's the way it's got to be played. If you think thousands more foreign civilian lives lost is better than one American soldier then you better be prepared to live in continual fear of your hometown getting wiped off the map because you're thinking just like a terrorist. Because at least that soldier going into battle knew what he could be getting into by joining the military. But those civilians just want to get on with their lives.

Just like you and me and all those people in the Big Apple. We just wanted to live our lives. And I empathize with everyone in New York. But my empathy ain't tuned to just people in my country. I sympathize with all pawns living under governments out of control. Because we, as American civilians, are reaping what our government planted with its foreign policy of Western religious people first and Eastern religious people second (with the exception of Tibet and good old pacifist Buddha).

And this is where I usually let out a peace out to all y'all out there but I ain't thinking that's going to be the case. Be safe and take care and don't let racist thought and government propaganda keep you from learning the truth about the people telling you their version of it.

****************************

What I find most interesting about that article from 2001 is that it's, more or less, the same thing I'd say now. I'd probably have to throw in a lot more clarifications, extensions on some of the main points, and asides to insure the people who want to tear down everything by purposefully misunderstanding everything they read wouldn't start screaming "Islamaphobia!" in my face. But I essentially nailed down my current philosophical thoughts on 9/11 four days after the event. This is the best evidence that a writer or commenter or critic isn't simply politicizing events. If you're just saying what you think the current audience wants to hear then you're really not saying much at all. But if you speak from your heart (which is actually your brain but most people don't say "If you speak from your brain"), you're usually on the right path.

Unless you're a racist piece of garbage. Then maybe you shouldn't speak from the heart at all! Although that actually gets to my point because racist screeds aren't generally from the heart. They're words the person thinks the intended audience wants to hear. They're philosophies learned by rote and not subject to criticism or introspection. Maybe I haven't spent enough time being introspective myself but then when you're as intelligent and handsome as I am, you really don't have much to improve on.


The Wild Storm #11
By Ellis, Davis-Hunt, and Buccellato

If I weren't partially infatuated with comic book characters specifically, I would be reading far fewer comic books. Do I really need to read Justice League of America? Probably not. But Lobo! Is Suicide Squad worth purchasing even if it excites me less than the toilet paper I bring into the house? No. But Ostrander's Deadshot and Captain Boomerang and Amanda Waller! Sure, they don't actually exist anymore. But I'm a fangender! Why else would I still be reading Detective Comics? Okay, well, that one I don't read for the writing or any specific character. I'm only reading that one to get to Detective Comics #1000. That's the worst reason I'm reading any comic book (it's also the reason I'm still reading Action Comics). But if it were simply writing that caused me to shower, put on more clothes than boxers and a t-shirt, and bear witness to the horror of the malignant star of this uncaring solar system so I could get to the comic book store, I would do those things to pick up The Wild Storm.

Warren Ellis is a writer which is completely different than saying, "Warren Ellis is a comic book writer." Because comic book writers write whatever shit they can come up with every month to earn their paychecks. Ellis only writes a comic book if he has a story he wants to tell. Here's the big evidence that he's put thought into this story: it will end after 24 issues. That's a clue that he's working from an outline that almost certainly includes the general idea of the entire project and the knowledge of the ending he's working toward. Knowing these things goes a long way. And I'm willing to bet that he actually knows a lot more than just those things, like specific beats he wants to hit along the way, or character arcs throughout the series.

You know what else is a clue that he knows what he's doing? The dialogue is fresh and crisp and believable. The several plot threads make sense, revealing more story every month and creating new questions instead of relying on not answering the same question for six months straight (as opposed to some shitty writers who I've named so often that I don't really need to repeat Scott and Ann and J.T.'s surnames).

Some people are reading this series simply because they were fans of the Wildstorm Universe. They're probably enjoying this series on a level that I can't even comprehend since I know so little about it. But I did read Stormwatch and The Authority so I had to tamp down on my growing boner by the way this issue opened with The Shaman and Jenny Sparks in post-coital bliss discussing finding the other members of their soon-to-be team.

I also had inappropriate sexual feelings about this moment:

I know it's just an app so that Zealot can spy on IO but it still made me giddy.

Rating: As good as comics get, I suppose. Five stars. Two thumbs up an asshole. Three if you can fit them.


Justice League #37
By Priest, Briones, and Eltaeb

I get that every writer wants to explore the questions they want to explore. But can't some editor at DC hold a meeting where they say, "Guys. We did Watchmen thirty years ago. We don't need any more 'How would the real world react to superheroes?' stories. We're just pretending from here on out that everybody accepts them and they all buy into the conceit that good guys are good guys and they're simply to be trusted."

Priest is a pretty good writer. But I still don't want his take on society's sudden mistrust of superheroes because isn't that how we'd all act in reality? Why couldn't Priest just stick to the story of the cosplayer trying to help the Justice League by being a huge jerk? I don't think Priest needed the background of a government and its people's distrust of the heroes to write about a crazy cosplayer who believes he had the answers to make the Justice League better and instead of sending them a telegram, he begins killing people and causing the Justice League grief. That could have worked on its own. Probably.

Rating: Half of it was worth reading. All of it was worth looking at.


Raven #1
By Wolfman, Mhan, and Kindzierski

Why am I reading another Raven book by Marv Wolfman? How does he still have anything left to say about Raven?! My theory is that he just enjoys writing about Trigon the Interdimensional Galactic Rapist. It's also possible he gets a much larger than I can imagine creator royalty check each time he brings her back. Plus she's easy to write. "Everybody has a dark side they're constantly battling. But what if that dark side was literal?! And what if she had the power to feel everybody's pain while trying to suppress her own? It's just like how I'm almost certainly turned on by rape fantasies but I have to squelch them living in this prudish society that won't just let me be myself!"

I don't mean to suggest that quote was actually anything that Marv Wolfman would ever say! It was a joke and not a libelous bit of speculation that's almost certainly not spot-on! Also this is a private newsletter so if I get in trouble for saying those things, I'll find out which one of you exposed me! You're all now on my potential enemies list!

Wolfman begins the comic book by declaring, "I'm an old man! Technology seems bonkers!"

I should probably explain my captions to the other old men reading this. Let's pretend that a high tech firm that houses secret experimental robot monsters in the sub-basement could be affected by a blackout for even a few seconds before the generator turned on, the room would never go dark like in the second panel. Every single one of those computers is probably plugged into a battery back up power station. The monitors would never go off! Everybody in that room would probably just keep on trucking as they wondered, "Did fucking Bill Bosco really just turn the lights out on everybody again?"

Fucking Bill Bosco. What a klutz, amirite?

The previous was a good example of the kinds of nonsense I get annoyed with while reading comic books. Good luck writing a comic book that I can expressly enjoy since every niggling detail will fall under my Hubble-sized microscope! Which would, you know, make it not a microscope but the exact opposite. You know what? Shut the fuck up.

I once had an editor tell me, "You can't talk to your readers like that. You should respect their intelligence and treat them as friends." And I said, "Have you seen the idiots I call my friends and the way I treat them? My readers are getting off lucky!" Then I fired the editor and the editor was all, "Anyway, would you like fries with that?" And seven hours later, the LSD was finally out of my system.

I should end all of my stories "And seven hours later, the LSD was finally out of my system." It would add a bit of cohesion to the narrative.

For those readers who aren't as flippantly smart as I am, Baron Winters explicates what I've already assumed.

Baron Winters is some guy who travels through time with Night Force solving mysteries. Night Force sounds like the name you come up with at ten years old when you and your annoying friends decide to dress all in black and patrol the neighborhood with your ninja stars strapped to your belt.

The Who's Who entry on Baron Winters is four or five paragraphs that amount to "Nobody knows anything about him. Also his cat is named Merlin." According to the Who's Who, Baron Winters never leaves his mansion in the present time and nobody knows why (part of that nobody knows anything bit). But now he's going to have to because he needs to make sure Raven stays balanced between good and evil.

Why are there so many people who think there needs to be a balance between good and evil? Is having too much good and too little evil, um, evil? If so, then wouldn't that help maintain the balance? Can't the balance be that there is only good in the world which would be totally evil (according to the balance believers) and thus it would be balanced? No? No wonder I failed Philosophy every time I took the course.

That's actually not true! I never failed a philosophy course. That's because I could never make it two weeks before I dropped the class due to all the fucking chin stroking, trench coat wearing neck beards who couldn't get enough of replying to every argument with "But what is reality?" I was often tempted to jab my pencil through one of their eyes and then scream, "But what is reality?!"

Marv Wolfman finally being honest about the last fifty years writing teenagers.

Baron Winters explains to his Merlin, his cat (or roommate or lover or business partner), that he won't intervene with predetermined events. I hold that same philosophy! Unless it's been predetermined that I intervene, in which case, I have to intervene or else I'm intervening with the predetermination that I'd intervene. It all gets a little ideologically murky at times.

The thing Baron Winters won't interfere with is Raven's death on Christmas Eve. The story starts on December 14th so I guess that means Raven will be dead in a couple of weeks. She has to die to restore balance but Baron Winters has some reservations about it. That probably means he'll need to intervene when he learns more.

Later, Raven meets the experiment that escaped from 2MorrowTek at the beginning of the issue. She's a humanoid with big eyes and no mouth or nose who can cast illusions. She'll probably become Raven's lover. Somehow.

Ranking: Look, if anybody thinks I'm going to recommend a Marv Wolfman book, they've probably yet to come down off the LSD. Although I'm still not sure why I purchased and read it. Maybe I'll know why in about seven hours.


Letters to Me!
Once again, the only letter I received was from KB. I'm going to have to start using the Anonymous asks I get on Tumblr, or maybe just answer Tumblr questions to Neil Gaiman in the way Neil probably really wants to answer them.

KB writes: You're right, Cleveland is terrible. Perhaps I should move to Aaron.

Me: Ha ha! You used Aaron instead of the clearly appropriate brother's name, Boston! You clever devil! Sorry, that's about all the room we have this week for your letter! Mostly because you talked an awful lot about wet=wipes and licking your cat's butt clean which my new editor said might "frighten the Whopper with cheese masses back to reality, whatever that is." Also I just finished Black Lightning #2 and can't discuss the shows you discussed. And even if I had watched them, I don't want to sound stupid when replying to your thorough analysis since when I watch television, I always think, "Is this good? How can it be good when it's on television? I've read enough bumper stickers in my life to know television is terrible!" Then the end credits roll and I'm usually left thinking, "Wait. What just happened?"

Oh, but congratulations on the continued weight loss! I bet the other Clevelanders are getting pretty riled up by your bettering yourself!

My 24 Hour Comic from 2012

I ran out of time in my 24 hours before I could finish inking. I have left it as it was at the end of 24 hours.

A Poem

"Like Sunday school 'round here," muttered the youth,
Having the attributes of a pickle.
(Which, knowing Pynchon, could be an uncouth
Boner joke, the vulgar's tastes to tickle.)
More likely Pynchon just wants us to grok
Chick's vinegary peevish attitude.
(But should we rule out mention of a cock,
Ignore Pynchon's go-to and seem a prude?)
When I see Pynchon mention hard and long
Objects, I think of some dark library
Where boys titter huddled in a small throng
Finding dirty jokes in Blume and Cleary.
Penis jokes abound, great ones and moaners.
Was Frost's "Birches" about gay boys' boners?

Batman: Shadow of the Bat #2 (July 1992)

The Cover
Another painted cover by Brian Stelfreeze. This one depicts Batman doing squats within the walls of Arkham. At least he's not jizzing in his pants but we'll talk about those paintings in the next two reviews of this series. One of the reasons this series stuck in my head so strongly had a lot to do with the cover aesthetic. Something about how clean the cover looks when inset within a smaller rectangle under a massive logo, all highlighting the seldom seen painted cover. At least I think they're seldom seen. It's also possible that I just don't fucking notice the difference between painting and pen & ink.

The Story So Far
If I were a quote guy, I'd begin each review with a quote from a movie or television show or Penthouse Forum letter of which the comic reminds me. But I don't remember quotes specifically and what use is quoting something when I fumble the entire thing? My quote for this story would be, "What we've got here is a failure to communicate." That's from Genesis when God parades all the animals in front of Adam to see which he'd choose for a helpmeet and Adam is all, "Wait. You want me to fuck one of these? Seems weird." Some Christians who don't actually know their Bibles very well might think I'm being blasphemous in that interpretation of that moment in Genesis but, I assure you, God wants Adam to fuck one of his creations. It's only Adam's understanding that he probably shouldn't be fucking other species that gets God to create Eve. The fucking perv.

But as I wasn't saying because I got derailed before I could even begin, the story so far is that Batman has been kidnapped by Jeremiah Arkham and imprisoned within his asylum. We don't know how this turn events came about which is why this story arc is longer than just the first issue. It's time to find out why Batman's a prisoner and how he's going to save all the inmates from Jeremiah's twisted treatments.

The Story
I don't want anybody upset about this so let me be straight right up front: Batman never actually does squats in the walls of Arkham. I know! I was floored too. Does being floored mean that you barely gave a shit because comic book covers are never accurate? No? Oh then I was the opposite of floored. I was ceilinged. He does do this though:

I don't know exactly what this is but I think he's having an aneurysm.

Most of this issue is flashback describing how Batman wound up in Arkham. Which is good because after reading the first issue, all I could think was, "How do you cure scabies?" I'm not suggesting I caught scabies from reading an old issue of Shadow of the Bat; it's just that when you have scabies, you can't actually think about anything else. Also I don't have scabies. I was just suddenly curious about how I would cure them if I ever wound up in an awesome situation where I caught them. Unless that "awesome" situation was just sleeping on the couch of my friend who fucks everything and my scabies were caught second-hand. It's about this time that I would post a picture of a scabie but, I mean, I wouldn't do that, would I? Am I that gross? Do you even have to ask?

Oh my god I would kill myself if these things were ever on me.

If you ever hear a news story about me self-immolating for some righteous cause in front of some country's embassy, you'll know it's because I found out I was covered in those things and I figured I might as well go out in a blaze of righteous scolding.

I don't mean to denigrate the act of self-immolation for political reasons by people who actually believe in things so strongly that they'd die for them; I just meant to say that if I were to self-immolate, I'd be thinking, "I'm better than all of you assholes not burning, especially because you don't know I'm only doing this to kill the real Lovecraftian monsters currently feeding on my blood." I wouldn't say I'm a coward, exactly, but I'm in the neighborhood.

Man, if Batman really wanted to strike fear in the hearts of criminals, he would have become Scabieman. And being that he's Bruce Wayne, billionaire playboy, it was probably only random chance that a bat flew through his window just micro-seconds before he began scratching his scabie-ridden crotch and became the most vile superhero in existence.

This is how that flashback I think I was talking about earlier begins:

I have questions Alan Grant refuses to answer. Not all of them about scabies.

Batman's Arkham ordeal begins while he's trolling a cemetery for little girls playing with dolls. Unless he was just passing by when he heard her yelling at her doll and burying it alive. I don't have a map of Gotham so I don't know where the graveyard is. Is it on the way from the Bat Cave to Crime Alley? Is it smack dab in the middle of downtown because Gotham is both goth and, um, ham? Why is this little girl out in the dead of night playing dolls there? She doesn't look goth at all!

One answer Alan Grant sort of gives is why the girl is in the cemetery at this time of night. I say "sort of" because we don't really know why she chose this site to bury her doll. Oh wait! I guess we do! Never mind, I'm an idiot. Anyway, the girl has fled from her father's abuse which makes Batman super irritable. He's like, "Some of us don't even have fathers to beat us and this little girl is taking hers for granted? Well, I'll take her back and show her the error of her ways!" Then he cries a bit but you never see that because he has "Bat Tear Suction Tubes" built into the cowl so that Catwoman can't see how he weeps like a Victorian mother mourning for her fifth dead kid every time he fucks her.

By the time Batman gets the child back to her family, he discovers Mr. Zsasz has already been there.

For some reason, Batman doesn't immediately suspect the little girl.

Now, Batman doesn't know for sure that Mr. Zsasz has committed these murders but the modus operandi is spot on. He loves to slit throats and pose the dead. Seems like the kind of thing any unimaginative loser serial killer might do but Batman's insistent that this was done by Mr. Zsasz. The only problem is that Zsasz is currently locked up in basically an iron lung in Jeremiah's New and Improved Arkham Asylum. Although, as Batman discovers later, Zsasz is let out during the night to sleep in a nice comfy bed. And also to go murder people outside the asylum, I guess. But Batman won't know that for sure for another issue or two. We, the readers, get to know that though because Zsasz carves marks on his body for every victim. And while he stands naked in front of Batman to show that he has no new cuts on himself for the murders that night, he never shows Batman the underside of his foot where there are *gasp* three new cuts!

His other foot must have the other two cuts on it because, as Batman finds out after leaving Arkham, two more people were killed before the little girl's family, throats slit and posed lifelike. While investigating that crime scene, one of the cops makes a joke about wondering what the little girl's family's television was playing while in their death lifelike pose and Batman loses four or five gaskets.

This asshole cop pulls a gun on The Batman?! Just because Batman's beating up on other cops? Despicable.

You'd think that the Lieutenant's irresponsibly fired bullet would have killed another cop and the police would blame that on Batman, you know, the way cops do when they kill somebody in their carelessness while they're "pursuing" a "criminal". But, no, the bullet isn't ever mentioned again. It turns out, Lieutenant "I find dead families funny" was so out of shape as to be practically sponge cake. He's killed after Batman tackles him and punches him thirty or forty times. Gordon cracks Batman across the base of his neck with his gun (instead of shooting him which is how you know Gordon is the only good cop in fiction and reality), knocking him out. He discovers the Lieutenant is dead and realizes they have to arrest Batman. But instead of taking him to book at the police station where Gordon knows some cop will kill him, Gordon just throws him into Arkham under the care of Jeremiah. I'm giving Gordon the benefit of the doubt that this idea was to keep Batman safer than taking him back to police headquarters instead of saying things like, "What the fuck is Gordon doing? Is his brain made primarily of scabies?"

Meanwhile, Nightwing convinces Robin to not worry about Batman while Nightwing swings off to investigate Arkham.

As an inveterate slacker, I've gotta respect Norm Breyfogle for drawing this, shrugging, and shipping it off to his editors as "finished work".

I wasn't surprised to see Nightwing's dick in that previous panel but I was surprised to see his tits.

Nightwing realizes Batman would never kill a cop, even on accident, because Batman doesn't kill. Even on accident. So Nightwing, leaving Robin safely behind because who wants to actually fight crime with a Robin by your side other than Batman who is crazy (he is in Arkham, after all), rushes off to save his daddy. His daddy, at the same moment, has picked the locks on his manacles with a pick he keeps in his stomach for emergencies just like this. Does he swallow a new pick every night he goes out? Or is it the same one that he regurgitates before bed each morning? Or is it more like an antimony pill which he fishes out of his turds every day?

The Ranking
At some point while reading this, I began to believe that Norm Breyfogle's work shared a lot with Jim Aparo's Batman work. But then I stopped thinking that because I was laughing about Nightwing's tits and I couldn't remember the number of times that I laughed at Jim Aparo's Batman's tits. Unless zero is a number and then, yeah, I do remember how many times. One thing I sort of found affectionately adorable about Breyfogle's Batman in the last two issues was how often the expression on his face was one of a hapless, confused old man that wasn't quite sure why he was doing what he was doing.

Case in point.

As for Alan Grant's story, I'm thoroughly enjoying the professionalism he's put into constructing the tale. The first issue did just about everything right setting up the story and beginning in the middle without immediately giving us the answers. Sure, it's a comic book, so those answers had to come as straightforwardly as possible in this, the issue immediately following the set up. But that's okay because it's well told, revealing things that Grant had us wondering about in the first issue which brings up more questions that will be answered next issue. This is how I think comic book plots should drive interest! You always answer questions as you raise more. I can't stand the comics that specifically introduce things at the end of a story which they then do not completely reveal to lure people to the next book. That's hack work, man! This is the good stuff! How did Batman wind up in Arkham? Has Jeremiah actually improved and solved all of Arkham's problems? Then in this issue, we find out why Batman is in Arkham but now we wonder how that happened. How did the cop actually die? Did he actually die? Was it a set-up by Batman, the Lieutenant, and Gordon to get Batman in Arkham to better investigate Zsasz? How is Zsasz getting out if Jeremiah's security is so much better? Why doesn't anybody want Robin to help? Does Nightwing actually have tits or am I being intentionally dimwitted and ignoring that they were his ribcage? We'll find out next issue!

Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea: The Newsletter #8 (Fifth Week of January 2018)

 

E!TACT! #8
The X-Files: "The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat", Detective Comics #972, Justice League of America #22, New Super-man #19, Deadman #3, Mister Miracle #6, and Letters!
By Grunion Guy

"The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat"
By Darin Morgan and possibly Chris Carter but, really, who believes that? I think he's just listed for the "created by" bit.

This season of The X-Files certainly isn't the worst season of the series since it at least focuses on Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny's characters of Darcy Scullyberger and Filbert Muldoon. And just like the previous season, the best episode of this season (of course the entire season has yet to air but who seriously thinks there will be a better one after this?) was written by Darin Morgan. It's not a surprise to anybody who was a fan of The X-Files since he wrote a number of terrific episodes, including the only episode anybody ever needs to watch to understand the show, "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'".

In this episode, Darcy and Filbert take on The Mandela Effect and it's the most charming thing I've seen for some time. Although in the back of my mind, the experience is already ruined by imagining all the terrible Rick & Morty fans who will be chomping at the bit to point out that Reggie is just The X-File's version of Mr. Poopybutthole. Sometimes you just have to enjoy something that you can tell was created from the topic without the need to point out how you saw something similar first and thus the new thing was stolen from the thing you knew of. This is all Mandela Effect shit. How else is it supposed to insinuate itself into Darcy and Filbert's lives?

I don't actually have anything smart to say about this episode because I'm assuming anybody who has both seen it and who also reads my shit has a brain big enough to ferret out all the hilarity within it. I only bring it up to mention two things: the Evel Knievel doll was my favorite toy growing up in the seventies because he came with a stunt cycle and a contraption to crank the cycle up to speed so it could launch into a ravine or over a fountain and it always landed realistically (meaning a huge crash); and the moment when Reggie is reading the comments on the Dr. They YouTube video and he says, "This jerk simply says 'Meh.'"

From this point on, I'm going to claim Darin Morgan as my father instead of fucking [REDACTED]. He was born 23 years before I was and in Santa Clara County, where I grew up. So I think I have a pretty solid case. I'm going to ask my mom if she ever cheated on my dad when he was in 'Nam with a Darin Morgan!


Detective Comics #972
By Tynion IV, Mendonça, Egea, and Wright

Here's what I've learned from superhero comics: no matter how corrupt a person becomes, they will always retain enough love of their friends and family to be brought back from the edge. This is why I think we need more autistic villains. They'll never be crippled by the weakness of bullshit sentimental attachments! At the very least, it would put an end to the stupid trope where somebody overcome by darkness breaks out of it when the hero says, "I know you're still in there!" Why is the real personality of the person always the part that's good and loving? And why is it like some kind of spark that is never extinguished, no matter what kind of magic, chemicals, or psychotherapy has been used to turn them bad? What if the good part of them was the part they were faking?

Hopefully this Clayface story is doing the exact opposite (although I don't think it is because, just like we all knew, Clayface stops his rampage when Cassie confronts him). Clayface has gone to the good side but now the First Victim is all, "I know you're still in there!" And Clayface is all, "Yeah! Yeah! I'm really a bad guy! What the fuck am I doing?!" And now Batwoman is going to have to "kill" him so that Tim Drake can turn into future Batman Who Uses A Gun.

Ranking: There wasn't enough going on here for me to hate it the way I usually hate Tynion's writing. It was mostly Clayface escaping and Cassie bringing back the old Basil right up until he's overwhelmed by too much clay. The only part I found myself enthusiastically agreeing with was when Batwing was all, "People need to stop using wet wipes!" Right?! It's like people who probably think they're really concerned about the environment think they've found a great life hack that enables them to shit carelessly because look at how easy it is to clean up! Instead, they're flushing shit down the toilet that doesn't easily disintegrate like toilet paper and instead clogs up septic systems and creates ginormous arterial blockages in London sewers. Hey, messy assholes? The modern sewer system might not exactly be an environmental concern but it certainly is a modern urban concern that you should think a bit more about. Maybe just spritz a bit of toilet paper if you've had a messy dump instead of using wipes that are going to create a serious problem? And, yes, sometimes your finger might break through and go up your asshole. Get over it. Wash your stupid hands after. Or maybe stop eating so much meat and get a little fiber into your diet so your shit comes out healthy. Perhaps stop using wet wipes to clean up the symptoms of something you could change via diet!


Justice League of America #22
By Orlando, Edwards, Henriques, and Hi-Fi

Mari explodes but just before doing so, she invokes the planarian which means she'll regrow from the hand she ripped off earlier. Then she'll, um, I don't know. Say something uplifting which will get the other heroes to fight harder than they were fighting when everything depended on them fighting their hardest.

Ranking: This issue was terrible because the Joker's Daughter lookalike used some pop psychology to make it seem like Lobo is a big coward who worries about what people think of him. Luckily I'm too smart to fall for that. But I'm worried that other, more stupider fangenders will think it's suddenly canon just because a character expressed the idea. Readers of comic books who are lovers of continuity and canon are the worst, most earnest people in the world. They take everything at face value and have no ability to process subtlety. That's why so many of them love the books with constant Narration Boxing and hate books where the reader is never allowed inside the main character's head. And even though I said all of that stuff because Lobo isn't what The Might Beyond the Mirror just said he was, I'm fairly certain Orlando put it in there because he was all, "I have this great hot take on Lobo that I'll have this character vomit forth into continuity and then everybody will be all, 'Yeah! Lobo totally is that!'" Fucking Steve Orlando. You're treading thin ice, sir. You really don't want to get on my bad side. I'll forgive you if next issue, Lobo pulls out his dick and it's super fat and Batman is all, "That's not fair!"


New Super-man #19
By Tamaki, Peeples, Friend, and Hi-Fi

My mother and father divorced when I was two years old. My father moved to Oregon and then Japan and then back to Oregon and then to Arizona and then back to Oregon. He didn't enter recovery for alcoholism until I was nearly 18. My sister and I weren't completely starved for time with him, at least not until he really hit bottom and was living in Florence hunting for mushrooms to make a living (also when he was in Japan). I didn't know he was an alcoholic until he entered recovery. My mother never mentioned it although one year for Christmas, she suggested that we get him a variety twelve pack of international beers saying, "He'll definitely enjoy this." When I graduated high school, I moved up to Oregon to live with him for six months as I began college at Portland State. I moved into the dorms after the first trimester (I wasn't pregnant; Portland's school year was just weird). It was the beginning of trying to be friends with my dad. I don't think I was ever able to think of him as a father though. It worked for awhile. He probably thinks it's still working. But as I sit here knowing that I'm going to bail on his Super Bowl party this weekend, I realize I'm exhausted by who he's become and the history behind us. The Vietnam vet who once told me that if the draft was ever re-instituted and I was drafted he would personally drive me to Canada has now become a warmongering staunch conservative who mostly wants to debate things like one school somewhere changing the name from Lynch to something else because the word "lynch" made some people uncomfortable. He wants to debate these individual situations and proclaim they're the norm and they're a portent of the apocalypse. He's the guy who denies the Redskins have a racist team name because the one Native American guy he knows from the program doesn't give a shit, so it must only be white libtards who care. He's the guy who once had me help him bury a steel barrel full of ammunition in his backyard because the world was going to go down in flames during Y2K.

My dad is also the only parent my sister will currently speak to. And this is possibly the heart of the matter. While my mother raised my sister and I as a single parent, my dad drank himself sick and divorced two more wives on the pedestal his children had built for him. My mother had to be the enemy. She was there for the hard teenage years and the difficult rebellions and tests against authority. We had to see the reality of who she was as a person while my father was able to remain a fantasy. And in those times, we never lacked for anything. She worked her ass off and sacrificed more than I ever would to make sure we were fed and sheltered and showered with an embarrassment of material comforts. I can barely even remember all the things I desired that my mother made certain I had because they were ubiquitous gifts throughout my youth. But I remember the BMX bike my father paid for because what else was there?

I spent about five years of my life in my thirties not speaking to my mom. I wasn't angry with her but I had ended a phone conversation abruptly one year after Christmas, telling her quickly that I had to go when she began pushing my buttons. Because you see, my mother did enjoy making me angry. I think she needed to be a martyr. Perhaps when her children didn't offer her the praise she almost certainly deserved, she would rather have proof that we were ungrateful jerks. And so she would poke and prod until we exploded at her. Sometime in my thirties, I matured. Instead of exploding, I defused. My mother didn't like that and began telling everybody in the family that the last time we spoke, I had hung up on her. This was patently untrue. I was patient and kind in my abrupt end of the conversation.

This break in our relationship caused my grandmother no end of worry. She constantly urged me to call my mother and I would say, "She can call me as well. I don't have any problem with her." Eventually, after a few years, while I was on the phone with my grandmother, my mom stopped into my grandmother's house. My grandmother said, "Your mom just came in. Do you want to speak with her?" And I said, "Sure." My mom realized it was me on the other line and I was acting as if nothing had taken place, so she was kind of laughing as she spoke. I could tell she thought it was somewhat ridiculous, as if maybe I should have begun with an apology. But she played along and it was nice and we were back in communication. I feel like those years of silence were what we needed to engage as adults. During those years (and perhaps the time before the last call, when I decided to not yell and simply retreat), I matured. I don't know what changes, if any, my mother made so that we could have a respectful relationship. In fact, I don't know that it matters. What matters is that I changed perspective. I decided to look at my youth not as a constant battle with my mother but as a place where my mother, at the very least, stayed to fight. And not out of malice or resentment but out of love for her children. I couldn't say the same for my father.

At my grandmother's funeral, my sister and my mother spoke their last words to each other. Neither of them have been able to deal with the past in a way that might bring them closer together. Instead, my sister retreated to our dad's escape. She now lives in Oregon within walking distance of our father. I appreciate that they have each other because now maybe he'll leave me alone more often. I don't have any ill will toward my father. It's just that I feel he participated in a life that cost my mother something of her children's love and, afterward, he desperately needed to be friends with those children. I was able to give him that, for awhile. I couldn't think of him as a father but as a friend? Sure. Why not? But I think I've grown tired of that friendship. But what's nice is that I've once again become friends with my mother. And while I'm still not sure that I actually feel it when I tell her I love her when we end a phone conversation, maybe, each time, I'm getting a little bit closer to actually meaning it. At the very least, I respect what she did for me and my sister growing up. And I think she deserves a lot better than what my sister thinks of her.

Ranking: I said all that because this issue was about Laney Lan and her parents. And kind of about Kenan Kong and his parents. But this issue also had one more important bit:

Finally! An Aquaman that will be entertaining!

Deadman #3
By Neal Adams

I'm not the only one who has been confused by this comic book. I mean, obviously! I'm not the only one who has purchased it! And the Venn Diagram of people who have purchased this comic book and people who have been confused by this comic book intersect at "The people who both bought it and read it." But I've stumbled across the answer to not being confused by the book from Neal Adams himself!

Oh shit! It's one of those comic books where you have to look at the art?! Fuck me! No wonder I've been confused. I'm such a fucking idiot.

So now that I know how to not be confused by reading it, let me go back to issue one and look at the art. Hmm. Let's see. Commissioner Gordon looks like a man who in no way should be inspecting a Japanese nuclear power plant. I'm still confused. Maybe that's the part that will come together. Although I wish it would come together like The Beatles song and do it right now. And all over me.

My first thought when looking at this cover was "Where's the gimmick?!" The first cover was glow in the dark and the second cover had the invisible lion that appeared when you held the issue up to light. I thought maybe the gimmick for this one was The Spectre obviously shouting, "Hey! Where's the gimmick?!"

But then I looked at the artwork like I was instructed to do and I was all, "Hey! That's not artwork at all! Them are words explicating the meaning of the book! How many other pieces of art in this thing were just words telling the reader what's going on?!"

The text says, "In the trembling evil of the world, a place is set aside so that souls in bitter torment may lick their wounds and hide. Rama holds a court in [such a place?] tho cold and Stygian gloom enfolds the blossom that is Nanda Parbat. There the balance that is life is told." Hmm. I'm still confused.

I think Neal believes that what people are confused by are the moments where Deadman is possessing somebody. In this issue, he's made it plenty clear when Boston is moving between people or when he's inside somebody. It's too bad that those were the only parts that were understandable in previous issues. The confusion comes from every single other aspect of the story.

Hopefully this comic book wins an Eisner for Best Dialogue.

Throughout Boston's confrontation with his father, the words "Daddy" and "son" get thrown around a lot. And it seems like they're used sarcastically by the characters. Which is weird. Am I missing something? Is Cleveland and Boston's father not really this guy who loves to punch people from the slightest provocation? And what is up with naming his kids after terrible places to live [sorry, KB!]?

I also get the feeling Neal Adams is on the board of Citizens For The Improper Overuse of Ellipses. Or maybe Neal Adams thinks everybody should speak like Captain Kirk?

Boston learns that his older brother Aaron was promised to the League of Assassins in exchange for his mother getting a dunk in a Lazarus Pit. So is Deadman about to find out his brother was responsible for killing him? I hope so! That's probably why The Spectre is getting so involved in the story. He loves to jerk off to brother's killing each other.

The saying on the cover is repeated at the end of the story so I went half-blind reading it for nothing. The part I couldn't read was "care" and not "such a place."

Ranking: I think it was about this issue (or maybe partway through last issue) that Neal Adams began to figure out what this story should be about. At least it's getting somewhat comprehensible.


Mister Miracle #6
By King and Gerads

I seriously can't talk about this until it's over and I've reread it all in one sitting. I think it's the exact opposite of Neal Adams' Deadman.


Letters to Me!

Letters to Me! should be renamed Letters from KB. I removed the exclamation point because it wasn't a statement about me and thus I wasn't excited by it. So here's another letter from KB who will explain to everybody why CW's Black Lightning is worth watching.

KB writes: Finally got a chance to watch "Black Lightning" #2. Am I spoiling things? I guess I don't care. Episode 1 had Black Lightning coming out of retirement just to save his daughters, and good for him. Though something nagged me about that: why do the Pierce girls deserve a rescuing more than anyone else? Well episode 2 took on that question directly, and did not disappoint. The episode was full of Jefferson Pierce trying to resist the inevitable obligations of his power, and in the end deciding that he has responsibilities beyond trying to hold his family together. Dude has pretty much given up on rebuilding his family because his city needs him more.

Has "The Teen Titans" ever been that level-headed about responsibility to society? I'm pretty sure not.

Anyway, with episodes one and two serving specific functions and ending on resolutions, I detect planning and an arc behind this, like they want to do a quality job and also know how to. Do they even do that in comics? Mark Gruenwald used to, but he died 22 years ago.

Me: That's my main issue with comic books: not a lot of planning. Since most writers can't, ultimately, change the status quo of the main character in any major way, most of them just tell stories that mean nothing. Batman has a situation he must deal with. Batman almost fails. Batman pulls through in the end. The reader learns what? Batman can triumph even when he's nearly defeated? Just replace "Batman" with any other hero and you've got 98% of all superhero comic book stories.

Now being that Black Lightning's show is just beginning, we probably shouldn't praise it too loudly. Right now, they're just setting up the status quo. Once that's developed, the whole thing might simply become some kind of procedural show where the same shit happens each week and Black Lightning triumphs. My main hope for the show is that it doesn't become Green Arrow where everybody is constantly hurt because the next person to come along hasn't explicitly told them every single fucking detail of their life up until that point. "What do you mean you had diarrhea the night we first met?! How could you not tell me! YOU LIAR!"

I'm fairly certain that was some Felicity dialogue that was cut from the second season.

Batman: Shadow of the Bat #1 (June 1992)

Batman has the kinkiest parties.

The Cover
The cover's an eye-catching, gorgeous painted cover by Brian Stelfreeze and if I just glanced at it, I'd have gone on with the rest of my life unhindered by the petty nitpicking beast that lurks in my head. Instead, I had to notice that the Arkham guards (who, we can all agree, all just look like various aspects of Multi-Man ganging up on Batman) are using their billy clubs incorrectly. Unless — and I'm not being charitable here as I think it's a distinct possibility thought through by Stelfreeze — gripping the batons by the wrong end indicates how the guards are treating the inmates violently and inhumanely by smashing them with the short, protruding handle. Also Batman looks like he's taking a difficult dump.

The Title
What was the implied theme of this series based on the title Shadows of the Bat? I'm making a barely-considered assumption that the titles of the various Batman comic books directed the kinds of stories that would be told in them. Legends of the Dark Knight told stories out of linear continuity and overall context, highlighting some unspecified moment in Batman's life. Detective Comics actually considered the World's Greatest Detective aspect of Batman's character. Batman was all-encompassing and played out in present time, according to continuity. Penthouse Forums told the tales of Bruce Wayne's sordid love life. But what was Shadow of the Bat meant to indicate? Were the stories in this series meant to be Gotham tales, highlighting other people, places, or aspects of Gotham under the surveillance of Batman? That's the best theory I have being that Alan Grant begins with a four part story about Jeremiah Arkham and his renovated, new and improved asylum.

The Story
Alan Grant chooses to begin this series with a story about the sorely needed renovation of Arkham Asylum and the secret origin of the renovator, the newest member of the Arkham clan to run the joint, Jeremiah Arkham.

Not just a major mistake but the one most often committed. Over and over and over again.

Alan Grant tells us Jeremiah Arkham began life as an unambitious slacker. High-five to all my fellow unambitious slackers for the representation we were getting in 1992! Although Jeremiah eventually causes a mentally unstable person to kill themselves when Jeremiah instinctively knows the right thing to say and after that, he's all, "I've found my calling! Hurting the mentally ill!" I'm disappointed that I've never accidentally encountered the thing which would reveal my true calling to me unless it was that time I saw that feral cat fucking a raccoon and I popped a boner. I guess I just didn't have the wherewithal to see how that could become a career. Or maybe I just needed a daft uncle running a brothel for feral cats full of raccoon prostitutes to have recently died so that I could take it over. Because that's what happened with Jeremiah. He discovered his ability to "help" the mentally ill while also having an uncle who ran an insane asylum. So of course he had to take over when his uncle Amadeus died.

Alan Grant couldn't have wounded me worse than Arkham's dialogue in that second panel if he'd come to my house and smashed me directly in the balls with a 3 wood.

Jeremiah tears down Arkham to start over completely. Being that Jeremiah's family name is Arkham, Grant may be smashing us in the face with metaphor here. Jeremiah's own past burns beneath his now out-of-control need for control. He rebrands himself, hides his own past, and comes out shiny, clean, and more secure than he's ever been in his life. He is the proverbial new man and he's ready to start swinging some massive dick.

Also, Grant might just be speaking literally because he has an interesting story idea. A modern asylum for a modern Gotham! Jeremiah doesn't knock down the haunted house façade to put up a modern building. No, he keeps the historical look of the place. He doesn't want the change to be obvious to onlookers or new inmates. He wants them to be lured in by Arkham's quaintness and familiarity. What Jeremiah is mainly concerned with is renovating the cells and the security and the violent guards. Along with that, he makes a major change to the way inmates are treated. No more keeping them locked up just to keep them away from society for as long as it takes The Joker to cause a mass break-out. Instead, he takes an individual approach to each inmate to give them the care, medication, and experimental treatments that will allow them to one day be re-integrated into society. In other words, he tortures the fuck out of them in various imaginative ways.

Interrupting a series of vignettes serving as examples of how Jeremiah has convinced himself he's helping the inmates while he's really just deriving pleasure from novel treatments he's come up with that scare the shit out of the inmates (a particular case to drive the point home: Jonathan Crane, the man who's usually on the other side of causing fear, now trembling in his boots at Jeremiah's care), a scene showcasing Tim Drake doing Batman's job of keeping the peace and Nightwing taking some time away from the Titans to help out.

"Just heard"? Just heard about what?! What is happening?! Where is Batman?! But more importantly: what's up with the ponytail?

For now, that's the end of the conversation. But it isn't long before the reader learns that Batman has somehow become an inmate in Arkham. Not Bruce Wayne! No, no. Batman! After a brief conversation between Jeremiah and the soon-to-be super-scary new antagonist Zsasz, Grant reveals Batman, in full costume, chained to a cell in the asylum. Jeremiah accuses him of murder but you have to wonder, "How does a vigilante go through arrest, trial, sentencing, and imprisonment without ever taking off the mask?" Something is dreadfully wrong here. When Batman declares there's been a mistake, the reader understands that Batman has somehow been framed and captured by Jeremiah and his staff alone. Once again (the again being Talbot's recent story (though that was published several months later in 1992 than this story)), Gotham finds Batman missing!

My memory of this story's details have long decomposed in the moist, dank recesses of my mind but I feel like maybe Batman was in Arkham to help Jeremiah test the security when he found himself a prisoner. Maybe Arkham had a guard killed during the training and testing so that he could give himself an excuse for incarcerating a person whom Jeremiah finds is no different than his other captors. I mean patients. Or perhaps Batman was captured, overwhelmed by a bunch of bald-headed inmates, while investigating the claims that Jeremiah has resorted to torturing the inmates. I suppose we'll discover those little secrets in the second issue.

This is a different kind of Gotham by Gaslight story.

Jeremiah saves his own life and the lives of his guards by not unmasking Batman. Obviously not because Batman would have to kill them but because Alan Grant would have to kill them to tie up the loose ends (again, see Bryan Talbot's "Mask" in Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #39 and #40). Instead, Jeremiah hopes that once Batman has been cured of his antisocial behavior, he'll willingly drop the mask and walk out of Arkham a cured man. Hmm. Is it possible Alfred drugged Bruce and dragged him into Arkham for some therapy? He'd probably enjoy life much more if the little boy he's cared for for so long got some well-needed therapy.

The Ranking
Alan Grant lays out a sumptuous feast of story ideas in one of the better first issues of yet another Batman monthly. And I, currently re-reading Stephen King's Danse Macabre, sound like a total asshole with regards to my voice in the review of this comic. It's weird how fondly I remember this comic book (or at least this first story arc) and yet I only collected the first nine issues of this series that went for a 94 issues and seven years. Or is it? I'm constantly reminding myself that my younger self never really collected many Batman and Superman comics so I shouldn't be surprised that I'm quickly coming to an end of my Batman and Superman titles, titles I've concentrated on for the last few months. Unless I discover another one of my many short boxes full of old comics holds more Batman or Superman (I mean, the Death of Superman issue has to be somewhere with other Superman titles, right?), I'm nearly done with Supes and the Bat forever!

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #40 (December 1992)

Sadly, this is the last issue of this series I own. And yet it lasted until March 2007. I guess I'm just a quitter.

At the end of the last issue, Batman fell out of a skyscraper window, presumably to his death. Being that these stories are legends, wouldn't it have been cool to just end Talbot's story there? Let people wonder if it was the final Batman story where we discover he's just a deluded alcoholic living in the alleys of Gotham? I would have been fine with that but it seems nobody at DC was so they forced Talbot to write a second issue. I guess we're going to find out that Batman's been drugged this entire time. Even in 1992, I'd like to believe most readers found "It was all a dream" stories bullshit.

And, of course, it was all a drug-induced delusion. But Talbot takes it a step further into hack territory (possibly because editorial demanded a three part story be turned into a two-parter? Or was it just that Talbot was more an artist so he wanted twenty pages to be Batman fighting hallucinatory monsters with little dialogue and the last few pages all exposition?): um, well, you know, like the parenthetical reference says, "The last few pages are all exposition."

Whew! I'm too stupid to comprehend what I read so I'm glad it was fully explained to me in microscopic detail.

But wait! There's more! Not only does the villain, a nameless jerk who blames his criminal father's poor choices (is murdering your wife a "poor choice" or something worse?) on Batman, reveal his entire plan to Batman, he also conveniently gets killed by the nurse whom he previously mortally wounded so that the only two strangers who know Bruce Wayne is Batman die! That saves Batman a call to Doctor Fate or Zatanna to come wipe some people's memory.

The woman playing the nurse was in on the plan for the money, being that her life was a complete wreck before the offer to torture Batman, but when she found out that the torture would end in death, and after Batman calls her "nice" exactly one time, she decides to betray her employer. She does this by discontinuing her drugging of Batman and dressing as Catwoman to mount Batman one night and not fuck him but to cry on him so he knows his delusions are real and by saying to him, "Believe in yourself." Also she kills him after he's basically killed her but that might have been more for her own sake than Batman's. If somebody murdered me, I probably would go ahead and kill them as well if I got the chance. I'm not a huge advocate of violence or the death penalty but in a situation where a person has ostensibly killed you and you have a few moments left to kill them as well, I'm pro that. If I ever killed somebody and then, with their last act of strength and will, they plunged a fork deep into my eye, my last words would be, "Ha ha! Good for you!"

Oh yeah, also, Maggie the nurse confesses that she didn't do any of it to save Batman, really. That might be my favorite part of the story!

No wait! I've got a better panel for "my favorite part of the story!"

I just found my Halloween costume for this year: mediocre hooker.

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #40 Rating: C. Overall, I love the concept of this story. I just wish that the climax and denouement had been better thought through than just "Let me explain what's been going on for the last issue and a half." Arkham Asylum should have been involved although I think that story might be happening in the next story I read, if the leftover, brittle, falling-apart dregs of my memory have any useful knowledge left smeared across them. One of Batman's major villains should have been behind it! Batman should have realized the drugs were wearing off, leading him to understand the nurse was helping him, letting him leave his bed to investigate and discover what was happening through his detective skills rather than the bad guy pulling the old "Here's my plan!" trope. The story gets high marks for the concept and how it began but fails when it tries to stick the landing, shattering both shins and also setting the auditorium on fire at the same time somehow. I don't know. Do human bones spark when they snap and rub against each other? Maybe Talbot was chewing on a Wintergreen Life-Saver on his dismount and the sparks from that set the foam mats on fire? Look, I'm not a comic book writer! I'm an asshole who pretends to review comic books! Why would I be able to think up a scenario for a terribly mixed-metaphor that I pulled out of my hemorrhoid-clogged asshole?!

Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea: The Newsletter #7 (Fourth Week of January 2018)

E!TACT! #7
Black Lightning: Cold Dead Hands #3, Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #1, Batman and the Signal #1, Deathstork #27, Justice League #36, Batman #38, Suicide Squad #33, Action Comics #995, and Letters!
By Grunion Guy

Black Lightning: Cold, Dead Hands #3
By Isabella, Henry, and Pantazis

I feel like a shitty fangender because I missed the premiere episode of Black Lightning on CW. Now when people see me wearing my Black Lightning shirt, they're going to ask me what I thought of the show. Maybe I should just say "meh" so they'll stop talking to me because doesn't everybody stop talking to anybody who responds with "meh"? It would make the world a much better place if we all just shunned those people. Responding to somebody with "meh" is equivalent to injecting them with Propofol, trussing them up like a rodeo calf, shitting down their throat (after swallowing a full box of Ex-lax and waiting the appropriate amount of time), and then setting the oxygen in the air on fire to destroy the world in a massive firestorm. I'm sure the people who say "meh" want it to mean "I don't have the will, energy, or inclination to respond to your vapidity." Which is just the other side's perspective on my analogy, I suppose. The bottom line is this, kids: don't fucking respond to anybody with "meh" ever because it's fucking rude. It's almost as rude as responding with "tl;dr." Anybody responding with that should be round up immediately by the Secret Internet Death Squad which is totally not a thing but only because I haven't quite figured out how to fund it. If your only response is "meh" or "tl;dr," consider just not responding at all. Or respond and then go fuck yourself. Either works.

Rating: Tony Isabella is commenting on a lot of shit our society is currently dealing with and I can't say it's all bad (the writing! Not the shit society is dealing with. Almost all of that is bad!). I really want to say his writing is all bad because it's much easier to write horrible insults than to admit that I sort of maybe like something that somebody other than me wrote. I can't even say the story is morally heavy handed although it's a bit verbose setting up the "cops might shoot first because the people they're after are children who happen to be black and presumed armed" situation. And the cops do shoot first but Black Lightning is there to save them while the police Captain is all, "Thanks for preventing a tragedy! I guess we could have prevented a tragedy with proper training and actually disciplining knight errant cops who are constantly tilting at black windmills. But that means confronting hard questions and doing serious work and who has the time or the money for that?!" Tobias Whale doesn't make much of an appearance in this issue except in a scene where Isabella gets to comment a bit on social media and the NRA stirring up fear among the common (and I mean really, really common) people.

Later Edit: So I watched the show and it is extremely watchable. I like the characters and I like the situation they've set up and I even like the white guy. It's so much better than the comic book in that way that all television shows about comic book characters should be better than the comic books because they have so much more room for dialogue. Forty minutes of story per week is greater than twenty pages of story per month. Even when the show is only on for like a third of all the weeks.


Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #1
By Russell, Feehan, Morales, and Mounts

Sometimes you buy a comic book written by a terrible writer because you've loved the characters for ages and because your optimism constantly causes you pain and disappointment. Other times you buy a comic book about a character you can't give a fuck about because the series is written by one of your favorite writers. But on the rarest of occasions, you get a book about a character you've identified with since childhood written by a writer you just can't get enough of. This is that book for me.

One thing I admire about Russell's work is that he doesn't start with an idea and then force the main character into the story he wants to tell. He begins with the main character and extends outward. He took The Flintstones, being a "modern stone age family," and used everything audiences already knew about them to discuss philosophical, theological, social, and political matters that affect the modern reader of the comic book. And with Snagglepuss, he's placed him into McCarthy era paranoia. Can it get more perfect than that? Snagglepuss is not only an effeminate sounding (and thus expressly gay in the series) stage actor but one of his main catch phrases is "Exit stage left!" Pegging him as a target of McCarthy is believable before you even open the book. And don't think Russell is simply using the story to express his opinions on something that happened over half a century ago. He explicitly makes this a story about living in Trump's America through the voice of Snagglepuss's Cuban lover, Pablo.

Rating: Mark Russell does not disappoint. He uses the familiarity of a Hanna-Barbera character to instantly thrust the reader into his social and political satire. I wonder if his experience with Prez led him to pursue characters like The Flintstones because it meant he'd have a much bigger audience at his disposal? Because he's doing in The Snagglepuss Chronicles exactly what he did in The Flintstones and Prez. He's telling fictional stories that have more to say in one issue than a decades worth of most superhero titles. Plus they're entertaining! So if you don't like smartly written crap because you're a dum-dum, you might like this comic book because it makes fun of broad audiences who must be seen enjoying all the things everybody seems to be talking about. No wait. You might hate it for that. If you understood that bit, anyway. Maybe you should go read the new Incredible Hulk. Is there a new one of those? I'm just assuming the dialogue is on par with a dum-dum's mental capacity.


Batman and the Signal #1
By Snyder, Patrick, Hamner, and Martin

Finally! A three issue mini-series about the Batsignal! I hope. It's possible this comic book is about to disappoint me just as much as Doomsday's Cock did because I've, once again, projected my desires onto a funny book.

This book should be an internal monologue of the Batsignal and how it thinks of itself as the hero of Gotham. You're probably thinking, "But where's the drama? Where's the action? It'll just be a stupid light thinking about how it's saving the day by being turned on!" But I'm thinking that when it's turned off, it will have to cope with Bullock jerking off on it and Batgirl jerking off on it and The Joker jerking off on it! Then it'll worry about whether or not the signal will look like a bat with all the jerk off juices all over it. It'll probably wind up summoning Rorschach to save the day.

It turns out Duke Thomas has taken on the name "Signal." It also turns out that the book is an internal monologue of his thoughts and how he thinks of himself as a hero of Gotham! Man, I hope I get three out of three right and Batgirl jerks off on him.

Duke has super powers but they're not worth discussing because I don't understand them. He sees light or something. It's probably clever because Snyder helped come up with the idea and we all know how clever he is. Nobody needs any proof of that anymore. Certainly nobody is getting any proof anymore, anyway.

This is a Metal Tie-in so I'm assuming the sudden rash of teenagers gaining powers in The Narrows has to do with the Metal Gene. It also, according to Commissioner Gordon, has to do with the "gnomon connection." A gnomon is the part of the sundial that casts the shadow. I learned that from the Infocom game, Trinity (which I beat on my own without any clues, by the way. Still my favorite of all the Infocom games). This story has already been less than subtle that it will be dealing with the cycle of the day. Also a bad guy kept mentioning "the dial." Remember, it's all very clever. Even if Snyder only gets a story credit and not the actual writing credit. That's typical of him. He farts out an idea or two and then makes somebody else do the actual work.

Whatever happened to All Star Batman? Did that end? Was it cancelled? Did I just forget about it?!

Rating: The Signal is Batman by daylight. That's about the entire concept! Sure, the story was told with a bunch of clever allusions to how day is different from night and how sundials exist and how bats are night creatures and how bad guys in Gotham only attack at night and how day has the sun and maybe Duke is kind of a son and...did I go to far? I think the main reason for this comic book is to use up all the yellow ink in the Bat offices. Somebody was all, "How are we going to use up all this yellow ink?! Maybe a double page spread of Batman's eyes? Maybe add more streetlights to the backgrounds?! It's getting insane how much yellow ink we have!" And Snyder was all, "Hey! Let's make a new Bat sidekick whose costume is yellow and then we'll make him work in the daylight where we can use lots more yellow ink!" Then Dan DiDio was all, "You've saved the day again with cleverness! See, Giffen? Why can't you be more like Snyder?! Treat your fucking job with respect, you asshat!"


Deathstork #27
By Priest, Neves, Scott, and Cox

DC loves retcons. So it's weird that the one retcon they should be murdering their own grandchildren to make happen is the one where Deathstork never slept with an underage girl. But apparently that's never going to happen because this issue is all about Slade fucking Terra. Well, not all about that. In fact, it seems to go a long ways toward making it ambiguous whether or not they've fucked. But if they're leaving a bit of ambiguity, I have to think that means Terra and Slade fucked. You don't write a comic book to prove Slade didn't fuck an underage girl by making it unclear if he fucked her or not. You take one panel where Slade tells Wintergreen, "Yes, I'm using her so I can murder a bunch of children. But at least I didn't fuck her!"

Hmm. After typing that last bit of fictional Slade dialogue, I'm beginning to question whether it matters that he fucked an underage girl. Is consensual sex with a teenager worse than trying to murder children? I know neither of those things are as bad as killing a dog which Slade did in a previous issue, so I'm not sure why I care!

I'm dreaming this page, right?

Rating: I fucking hate that this comic book is monthly and I've stopped doing monthly write-ups on it because it has too much story for me to remember each month. I can't follow it and I'm too lazy to go back and reread all the Defiance issues so I can understand the subtleties in the story. Like why did Willow/Rose take a bite out of a sandwich as she threatened Forgotten? Is that an ancient Hmong death threat? I also have to wonder if the cover which shows Terra crushing Deathstork in stone while the words "LOVE ME" are etched into that stone is supposed to depict the reason why Deathstork slept with Terra. I guess he had no choice? He really just wanted to be a loving father figure to her after she'd lost her royal Markovian family but she forced him to cross a line that should never be crossed. It wasn't his fault he slept with an underage girl! She was the one with all the power. I guess I feel bad for Deathstork now? Poor guy! Forced to fuck a young woman! It's terrible!

If you thought I typed that sarcastically then you're a monster! How dare you?!


Justice League #36
By Priest and Woods

Another comic book by Priest? I wonder if Batman will threaten somebody and then take a bite out of a sandwich?

The Justice League deals with philosophical political issues. Can I say "real-world philosophical issues"? Because I don't think any philosophical issue is ever about the real world. Philosophy is always about asking some nearly unanswerable question, taking a puff off your clove cigarette, and nodding sagely, right?

Usually I'm against comic book stories that ask the question, "What kind of problems would the Justice League experience if they were operating in the world today?" And, well, I feel that way about this story too! That's why I said usually! There was always a high-percentage chance that I wouldn't like this story.

Although I only dislike the story in a philosophical way! That doesn't mean I'm not finding it entertaining. Two totally different things!

What I'm getting from Wonder Woman is that if I commit a crime while wearing a mask and gloves, I can't be convicted? Well, well, well! Amazon.com hear I come!

That Amazon.com bit wasn't a Wonder Woman joke. It's not my fault the most popular place to shop online is named after a warrior race of females. Or is it named after the jungle?

The political stuff has always been an underlying issue with the Justice League running about the world doing whatever they wanted. Some writers just try to ignore it and I appreciate those writers! The kind of questions where the writer asks "What if this superhero were actually in a world which hadn't been built around superheroes existing for decades?" should be saved for Elseworld stories. I'd rather assume that superheroes, having been part of the cultural and political landscape for nearly a century, would simply be accepted. And any issues they create would have already been worked out. It shouldn't be that the Justice League has been around for sixty years and then somebody in power finally goes, "Hey! Has anybody considered how dangerous this is?! We should register them or something!" Let's just pretend that shit was worked out years ago and we're all cool with them flying around hoarding technology and wealth that could actually be used to help shape the world for the better rather than just being used to keep Despero locked up somewhere.

The best part about this story is how the Justice League seems about to be coming into conflict with a group of Justice League Cosplayers. They're some kind of legion, probably.

Rating: Priest has most everybody questioning Batman's tactics in this issue which is a bit weird. Batman is the guy who catches criminals and leaves them to the police so that the law can take care of them. Sure, he may beat some of them pretty badly but they're usually guys who are spraying bullets all over downtown Gotham. But he still makes sure they get their day in court. It's Superman who simply tosses people into the Phantom Zone when he decides they're dangerous. Maybe everybody should be questioning that dick.


Batman #38
By King, Moore, and Brusco

In this issue, we learn that Bruce Wayne is a sick kid with dead parents. Fine. I'll admit it. Even Tom King can write a bad issue every now and again! At least it showed Batman doing detective work. I mean, it wound up that his detective work was more like Dr. House's medical detective work. Batman works through the situation logically and rationally and winds up with a wrong answer that seems right. But then somebody says something mundane to him and he has an epiphany where the actual answer to the mystery drops into his lap. So it's kind of good detective work in that, at least, his mind kept working on the problem. He could have been like a criminal prosecutor and refused to listen to any more evidence because he'd already arrested somebody for the crime.


Suicide Squad #33
By Spurrier, Pasarin, Albert, and Blond

Oh look! The Suicide Squad is trying to get me back in their good graces by bringing on a new writer and using a cover that's a throwback to Ostrander's first issue on the series! Too bad that new writer is Si Spurrier and he's decided — against all that is decent (although possibly agreeing with many things I've said in the past (which we're ignoring in this specific situation because, without proper context, all things said are fluid (in other words, don't use my own words against me, you rat bastards))) — to continue using the same basic characteristics Williams was using for each character. Typically, I like new writers to at least acknowledge the work of the previous writer before heading down the path they've chosen to take the characters. But in cases where the previous work was annoying and irritating garbage, I'd prefer that they just pretend none of the previous issues existed. Spurrier doesn't seem to share my ideology. So now I'm stuck reading another shit Suicide Squad comic book. Thanks a lot, Si!

This is the poorly written metaphor for the entire issue.

I could have chosen a more worser image that included some of Pasarin's art but I think you can all picture how terrible that is. You've all seen the too tiny eyes, the elongated torsos, and the body parts that twist and turn in incomprehensible ways.

I get the feeling that DC really doesn't give a fuck about making this book quality. They're using their usual business model: if it's a popular title that will sell by name and Harley Quinn alone, just put the C-list artists and writers on it. The idiotic, drooling, virginal (not by choice) fangenders will continue to buy the shit out of it.

Goddammit. I just hurt my own feelings.

Christ. Even the letterer and the editors don't give a shit about this comic book.

Rating: Killer Croc continues to act like an illiterate moron. Harley Quinn continues to say things that, I'm assuming, the writer thinks are hilariously whimsical and violent. Enchantress continues to spew over-the-top demands full of dark imagery and medieval pronouns. Captain Boomerang continues to be a coward. And Amanda Waller continues to...well, actually, she's even worse than usual in this issue. She sends along a bunch of no-name super villains and explicitly tells the Squad that they're entirely disposable. I was surprised when Killer Croc didn't immediately eat half of them. Instead, he actually waits until they're killed.

In the end, even the guy who the story keeps telling us is going to die doesn't die. Fucking stupid Attempted Suicide For Attention Squad! Kill somebody important already! I mean, hell, just kill somebody unimportant to get the ball rolling! Next issue continues this loser nobody's story and my prediction? He makes it through alive. But then he like dies on the return to Belle Reve. I mean Belle Rev? Whatever. I hate this comic.


Action Comics #995
By Jurgens, Booth, Rapmund, and Dalhouse

Ugh. I'd forgotten how much I hate Brett Booth's art.

In this issue, Superman acts like a dolt and Booster Gold becomes a surfer from the 80s. While reading this issue, I pretended I was a responsible adult who fit into society's norms and thus never felt the need to pick up my first comic book to escape the anxiety of real life interactions.

I mentioned Dan Jurgens doesn't understand time travel. I don't think he understands Superman either. Jurgens' Superman apparently doesn't mind changing the past and screwing up the entire multiverse but he's against stealing a time bubble. I mean, he eventually relents and steals the time bubble. But he made a big fuss about how terrible it was. Plus I think he only did it because otherwise, to get the spare parts to fix their time bubble, he would have had to dismantle Flash's cosmic treadmill. Which he stole.

Rating: Dan Jurgens continues to write stories as if he's stuck in the mid-80s. Booster Gold even makes a "Rock the Casbah" joke. I used the term "joke" incorrectly there, by the way.


Letters to Me!
I don't know why Doom Bunny hasn't sent me a letter yet. I think he's too busy hating his job. But at least I got another message from KB! He's my new best friend and Doom Bunny is nothing to me. NOTHING! Although I wish KB's name were easier to spell. I don't even know if I'm spelling it correctly right now!

KB writes: No junk filter this time!

KB's super secret weight loss tips over here:
[URL REDACTED]

Short answer: aim for 1500 calories a day (rather than the 2500 or so an adult male should be getting), and consume lots of protein to keep hunger away. Pretty soon, I think, your body gets comfortable with supplementing its energy needs by drawing from fat reserves.

Me: I was with your web page's tips right up until you said eating fifteen egg whites was ridiculous. Now I'm offended.

KB: I seem to recall you're vegan, so good news: wheat gluten and TVP are pretty good options for taking the pounds off. They're both high protein, inexpensive, and versatile.

Me: I was vegetarian for a good portion of my thirties. The main rule I came up with when I went veggie was that I would eat anything (that wasn't meat. Duh!), even the things I'd decided up until that point in my life were like eating dog poo. So now I eat almost everything. I definitely eat far less meat than I did before I went veggie but that increased when the Non-Certified Spouse was borderline anemic. We introduced more meat into home cooking. As of yesterday, she's apparently not anemic at all anymore and full of Vitamin D (not a dick joke. I'm talking serious medical stuff here, you perverts). Oh, I still won't eat sauerkraut though. That's worse than dog poo.

KB: I've lost on the order of four inches in two months. "Inches" isn't a particularly scientific measure, but that's where my belt is.

Me: Congratulations! My belt doesn't have notches. Maybe I can mark it with a Sharpie!

KB: So, has Spoiler forgotten that she nearly destroyed Gotham because she tried running one of Batman's schemes and fucked the whole thing up? Turns out the patriarchs and the Establishment often know what they're doing. Yeah, the old can be corrupt, but the young can be motivated every bit as much by greed; they just dress it in egalitarian platitudes. And I'm going to trust experienced professionals over kids who invented the word "adulting", as if it's a special and noteworthy accomplishment for them to perform the most basic tasks that adults need to. "Look everybody, I wiped, all by myself! Take THAT, centrist Democrats!"

Me: Man, you're ruthless! I thought I was the jerko! Speaking of using the term "adulting," I was at Starbucks the other day and the order was six dollars and some change. So I gave the clerk six dollars. She said, "I need another dollar." My response was "I math!" I'm so charming!