Outsiders #1 (January 2024)

Looks like DC mislabeled my Planetary comic.

Outsiders #1 (November 14, 2023)
By Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly, Robert Carey, Thomas Napolitano, and Valentina Taddeo
Cover by Roger Cruz and Adriano Lucas
Edited by Jessica Berbey and Ben Abernathy

Batman and the Outsiders was my first favorite comic book. So when my friend told me about the 2024 version of Outsiders which was actually a secret Planetary series, I was intrigued! The way he told me about it, I thought the reveal that the Outsiders were actually a new version of Planetary was some kind of mind-blowing surprise. And then I found the first issue and saw that it had three characters cosplaying Elijah Snow, Jakita (cos-cosplaying Batwoman), and The Drummer with the tagline "Unearthing the secrets of the DC Universe!", I realized it wasn't any kind of surprise at all! When I pulled this comic book out of the back-issue box, it slapped me in the face and kicked me in the balls screaming, "This is a Planetary comic book, you fucking loser!" And I was all, "Why loser?!" And it was all, "I don't know but you're buying comic books so I made an educated guess!" I don't know who the characters are cosplaying Elijah and The Drummer but I hope it's Black Lightning and Goth Halo.

The first issue even begins with an excerpt from an old, stained Planetary Guide (although it doesn't label it as such. I'm still working on the cover's big clue of 2/3 of the characters dressed like 2/3 of Planetary. And also that my friend told me the secret!). The Planetary Guide excerpts are presented alongside Kate Kane exploring the devastated country of Rhapastan (the country mentioned in the Planetary Guide as being like the most dangerous country in the world, partly thanks to American military intervention and Amanda Waller). She's not wearing her Batwoman mask although she's wearing the rest of the outfit and throwing female Batarangs at random black dudes.

The difference between a female Batarang and a Batarang is that you're only allowed one female Batarang per UK panel show.

The random Black dude is Luke Fox who, hopefully, finally found his dignity and dropped the whole stupid fucking Batwing shit.

I only knew Batwing from The New 52 so forgive me if Batwing actually had some kind of interesting arc previously which I've never explored. All I know is that he named himself after one of Batman's vehicles and decided to wear a derivative Bat-outfit that made him look fat. Did he come out of Batman, Inc.? I could do my own research but that would mean I've stopped living in a world where I never have to think about Batwing again. Although just by reading this, I'm coming precariously close to having to think about Batwing.

I know it seems like I just spent a paragraph thinking about Batwing but I assure you that was all just rote typing skills that involved very little brain activity.

Luke Fox seems to think Kate Kane is on a self-harm kick, possibly looking to suicide by A.R.G.U.S. What's up with Kate Kane? Every Batwoman story I've ever read just plays up how tragic her life is. Are people projecting their lesbian woes onto her? Are they all thinking, "If my dad were the literal embodiment of the Patriarchy and I were into diving muff, I'd be miserable too!" I think Kate Kane has the greatest life of any hero out there! Her sexy hot sister constantly trying to kill her? So good because it allows me to constantly see her sexy hot sister. And she often battles paranormal and supernatural antagonists which allows me to keep dreaming that her ultimate nemesis will someday be revealed to be a thicc, naked humanoid Chupacabra lady!

Luke Fox realizes that Kate Kane is fed up with Batman's idea of justice which is capturing the same villains over and over while doing massive amounts of property damage around Gotham which Wayne Enterprises profits from rebuilding. Luke agrees and he's sought out Kate to offer her a job as a research assistant.

Isn't cataloguing things "well beyond existence" just writing out a list of imaginary bullshit?

Maybe if Luke Fox had said they were researching and cataloguing things beyond what we know exists, I wouldn't be acting like such a petty bitch questioning the semantics of the way he phrased his pitch. But if he's cataloguing things well beyond existence, his list might as well be made up of things like "cotton candy made from unicorn semen" and "diarrhea hurricanes." Hmm, I'm not actually sure if those things exist and yet I'm not willing to search for them on the Internet either. I guess I'll have to be comfortable not knowing! Although I suspect there is cotton candy made from unicorn semen because there's definitely Magic Shell made from unicorn jizz.

It's delicious!

You know how you have to shake Magic Shell like you're auditioning for a Shake Weight commercial? I do that with the Unicorn Jizz flavor and loudly announce I'm jerking off the unicorn. Every time. I'm so crazy!

Kate Kane takes the job on the condition that it has nothing to do with Batman. Luke Fox is all, "Um, uh, yeah, sure! Exactly like I planned!" Then he cuts up the Batcredit card and cries for ten pages.

Immediately after saying this isn't a Batman thing, Luke Fox is all, "We're Outsiders!", which isn't all that reassuring to Kate. But I guess Batman was never an Outsider or else why would the comic book have been called Batman and the Outsiders? The only real history the Outsiders have with Batman is leaving his stick-up-the-ass ass! Which means taking the name Outsiders is actually triple-double reassuring to Kate! Sometimes I have to think through something I've read ten or twelve times before I figure out how I want to feel about it. That's probably better than most Americans since most Americans need to have somebody else think about something exactly zero times before telling them how they should feel about it. We're not a smart country!

Kate boards what I'm assuming isn't a Batwing and they fly to Antarctica to meet the Fourth Man. Yes, Luke calls Drummer the Fourth Man. You might be thinking that either I or Luke Fox can't count but that's because I left out the part where Lucius Fox calls in via Holly-vision to reveal that all the money is coming out of his account which he makes working at Wayne Tech which absolutely has nothing to do with Batman at all.

Drummer is the kind of woman I'd meet at a punk club and irritate her until she kicks my ass just so I can be touched by her.

Speaking of the kind of women I fall head over heels for, I had an odd experience just a few nights ago. I was watching Until Dawn and I was all, "I would murder all the puppies for you, Nina." At one point, Nina was walking toward the camera or something and I was all, "Man, I think I'm in love!" So then I waited until the credits to see who the actor was and her name was Odessa A'zion. When I was in high school, my huge crush that completely cockblocked me into seeing all the girls who actually were interested in me because I was so totally in love with her was named Odessa. So is that a thing?! Do names somehow influence our feelings towards people? Even when I didn't know that her name was Odessa while watching the movie?!

One more thing about the girls I had crushes on in junior high and high school. So I already mentioned Odessa. In junior high, my totally bonkers, out-of-my-mind crush was named Marilyn. Now I live off of Hawthorne in Portland and two of the fairly new (within the last ten years or something) upscale apartment complexes that have risen up between my place and my local comic book store are named The Odessa and The Marilyn. Come on! This is all so on-the-nose that you'd expect everything to be some kind of simulation but it's so fucking on-the-nose that nobody would program that much obviousness into the simulation which is proof that it's all random chaos and we simply see what we choose to see as we flounder about in it.

Kate Kane gets a briefing on the situation in Antarctica and the situation on Drummer which I'll let you read for yourself. Not because I don't want to make dumb jokes while explicating it but because I want you to see how fucking cute Kate looks in her Batwoman Snow Gear.

Is there a kind of old person cancer that makes you start falling in love with everybody? Because I think I might be dying.

It's a good thing I'm so taken with Kate's outfit so I don't complain about how Robert Carey apparently can't draw older women so he just makes Drummer look like a filthy lich and/or Mick Mars.

Oh! I should probably finish Drummer's thought since it takes place on an unnecessary splash page when you flip to the next page. She says all of that stuff they just went over gave them just two paltry bits of information: the object is fifty miles long and about to explode. Seems like a waste of a psychic.

Planetary, I mean Outsiders head inside the thing which seems unsafe being that every other person on their payroll who have ventured into the 50 mile long bomb have never come out again. It would seem like "I wear a costume and have a goofy name" shouldn't be absolute proof that you can survive walking into a possible Zone of Pure Annihilation but then I shouldn't complain because who needs four issues of Batwing and Batwoman tossing stuff into the alien vessel and seeing what happens.

This Drummer is way more hands on and capable than Planetary's Drummer who's really just a big coward who fucks TiVos. She uses her drumsticks to blow shit up so they can get past the defenses and into the heart of the vessel. Which nobody who has noticed all of the Planetary shit needs to be told what it is.

Of course it still needs to be said. Some people bought this book because it was called Outsiders so you have to assume they don't all know this is actually Planetary.

Batwoman and Batwing head off to check out the reactor while Drummer tours a bank of skeletons in display cases titled "Century Babies". Two of the five are labeled "Jenny Sparks" and "Axel Brass". I can't manage to read the other three signs. One might say "HARK". Now I'll probably turn the page and there will be close-ups of all the names, right?

It turns out the Carrier is just sad that all of its people are dead and it can't find its way back to the multiversal snowflake. It's stuck in the DC Universe and it's really fucking depressed about it. Batwing is all, "I know what that's like! Nobody fucking gives a shit about me either! Maybe we can find home together!" And Drummer smiles like she's found a guy she wants to fuck. And Batwoman looks over her shoulder to make sure Beth isn't about to murder her again. And then 18 hours later, we get the epilogue to the first issue.

Oh, also they saved all of their employees who The Carrier was just hugging really hard and refusing to let go. Plus that Planetary Guide shows its cover in the final panel. Drummer has a copy of it and she's poking around The Carrier and keeping secrets. She's probably Martian Manhunter, right?!

The Ranking!
It's a pretty interesting idea that I guess came about because DC wanted Planetary in their Universe but they didn't want all of the Wildstorm characters to go along with it? I really don't know anything about what was happening at DC around the time this was published. I'll probably hunt down the other issues just to see where it all goes.

Hitman #15 (June 1997)

Feels like a Preacher crossover.

Hitman #15 (April 30, 1997)
By Garth Ennis, John McCrea, Carla Feeny, and Willie Schubert
Cover by John McCrea
Edited by Peter Tomasi and Dan Raspler

I imagine if DC hadn't made it explicit that the Vertigo universe was its own thing, completely separate from the mainstream DCU, the Ace of Killers would have just been the Saint of Killers in this comic. I know they've got wildly different backgrounds what with the Saint of Killers having some kind of tragic family that died on the Frontier backstory and the Ace of Killers having a less tragic he's just a bunch of Nazis that were hung at Nuremberg melded into one being backstory. But they both have "of Killers" in their name and they're both from Hell and they both shoot the living shit out of everything. So they're basically the same character. So much so that if I were getting anally fucked by one of them with their massive gun, I could see myself calling out the wrong one's name and instantly loosening my bowels upon the floor through my new asshole which used to be my belly button.

This issue begins with Catwoman living her life to the fullest and just doing what she enjoys while my male gaze turns her into a sex object. I'd say that's sexist but just in the last paragraph, my male gaze turned the Saint of Killers into a sex object as well. So I think the "problem" (if that's what somebody needs to call it) is that I just want to have sex with anything I see. Like that kid whose male gaze turned everything into Tootsie Rolls but less sexy.¹

It's fucking crazy that Garth Ennis got a pussy smelling joke in a mainstream comic book.

Right now, I'm mopping up the blood streaming out of my head because that page I scanned was so fucking genius that I jumped out of my chair to applaud it and slammed my head into the low, slanted ceiling of my tiny office². Not only is that joke an outright banger that can only usually be told past the watershed, Garth Ennis relies on the reader to put it all together. And he knows — he fucking knows! — that most people who put that joke together and yell out, "He can smell pussy! Your dog can smell the pussy!", think they thought of the punchline. An absolute legend writing right here. Maybe the best that ever was! Yeah, I said it! Fuck you, Vladimir Nabokov!

The problem with calling Garth Ennis a better writer than Vladimir Nabokov is that Nabokov's Lolita (maybe even Pale Fire) probably had a bunch of "I smell pussy" jokes that I totally missed because they were so subtle and perfect and I'm a big stupid oafish clod who's barely literate! I bet fully 1/3 of Lolita was pussy jokes!

Catwoman's currently getting her paws on the Ace of Winchesters, a magic Hell gun that can kill demons or God or Satan or something. Maybe the bullets are full of the souls of those lost to the Winchester's family invention. I bet Sarah Winchester's whole deal was holding Black Magic rituals in hidden rooms of her sprawling mansion simply to trap the souls of those killed by Winchesters in bullets so that they wouldn't be waiting for her in Hell. That's a pretty good theory, right? Should I be writing for The History Channel?!

I would also like to point out the following panel which makes something I said earlier less disgustingly fantastic³ and more in line with the reality of this comic, guns, and putting them inside your butthole.

Catwoman's either less adventurous than I am or she just likes saying, "Put the butt in my butt!"⁴

Oh! I suddenly have a question about writing! How often does ChatGPT stop to masturbate while writing? I find one review usually winds up in four to five jerk-off sessions, depending on the artist of the comic book. John McCrea ain't going to get me horny too often because his stuff isn't super sexy (although Garth's writing and characterizations help). And somebody like David Finch tries way too hard (and also draws every woman like she's fourteen). But let me read a Mahmud Asrar drawn book and hoo boy! Look out, wads of tissue! I'm wiping out half of your family, you thin little cumcatchers!

I have to admit that I was exaggerating a bit in that last paragraph. I'm 54! You think I'm going to bother jerking off four or five times in a 24 hour period?! Okay, maybe for a special occasion like accidentally finding a YouTube compilation of Erin Esurance commercials. But not from reading a fucking comic book!

Meanwhile, Tommy and Nat are "purchasing" some firepower for later jobs. They're about to get attacked by the new and improved Mawzir. I don't know how you put the "new" in a demon created from World War II era Nazis but I do know how you improve on one: more Nazis! I bet he's got like eight or nine of them inside him now!

But before the action, fat jokes! Like Weird Al, Garth Ennis has a surplus of them.

There was a time when Jimmy Hoffa punchlines were all the rage. 1997 was not that time. Way past that time. I'd expect it from Keith Giffen. But Garth's still a young man here!

Mawzir attacks with his ten guns blazing. Because he has ten arms. Because he's a composition of five Nazis hung at Nuremberg and sent to Hell. He only has one set of legs though. I'm guessing because that would just be awkward and confusing to draw. He has zero penises when you'd expect five but I think that has to do with this being a non-Vertigo title. If Mawzir were in Preacher instead of the Saint of Killers, he'd definitely have five penises flopping around during gun fights.

Is it bad that one of my all-time favorite character designs has a swastika on its forehead?!

For a second, I thought Mawzir actually had one penis but I see that's just his tail. I don't know why he has a tail. Maybe he's 1/6th Nazi Monkey?

Before Tommy and Natt get away by blowing up a railcar tank full of napalm, Tommy reads a little bit of Mawzir's mind. Luckily he only grabs up recent memories of Mawzir's return to Gotham and not all his Hell memories where he's eating shit and getting bummed by demons with massive, barbed cocks. That's not a prison rape joke! That's just a casual and probably pretty mild description of Hell! I wish we could ask Lindsey Graham if it's accurate. I'd use a Ouija board to ask him but who wants to accidentally get possessed by Lindsey Graham? I'd rather take my chances with Pazuzu.

Tommy's telepathy reveals that Mawzir has a gang of thugs working for him in Gotham and that Catwoman stealing a rifle has something to do with Mawzir being back. Also he gets a glimpse of the Lords of the Gun because they're super creepy and everybody needed to be reminded of them. Plus one of them has a partial penis. I guess he got it mostly shot off?

Impressive!

I'm sure when editorial asked about McCrea drawing a demon's tattered penis, he was all, "Um, what? No, no! That's, um, one of his intestines hanging out! Duh! Obviously!" Then he high-fived Garth Ennis sitting nearby in a barrel full of money.

Back at Noonan's, Sean complains about needing to find some good help tending bar. And since this is a story about Hell and demons, I'm guessing BAYTOR! is about to find a job?

Tommy learns from a goon following him that Mawzir has dozens of men looking for him all over The Cauldron. He decides he should probably get out of The Cauldron and come up with a plan to not be killed by a demon from Hell. But before he and Natt can leave, Tiegel shows up to be all, "The pigs fired me! Do you want to get drunk with me and fuck?" And Tommy is all, "Well, I guess sex is worth dying and being dragged to Hell! Let's go, Tiegel!" But Tiegel can't come to terms with fucking some guy with so much blood on his hands so she has to get shit-faced to even try it.

Oh! This reminds me that I finally saw Happy Death Day! That movie written by Scott Lobdell!

This scene reminded me of that movie because the lady Bill Murray in the movie falls for the guy who doesn't know her at all (and never actually can know her because he never gets to know her beyond whatever happens in the final day) when she realizes that he didn't rape her the night before when she was drunk! It's like he passes the lowest bar possible and she's all, "A good man!" And talk about a movie with a female lead written through the male gaze! Holy shit! Um, anyway, I'm not writing my review of that movie here! I should get around to it sometime. Because while it's definitely the kind of movie that somebody would watch and think afterward, "Heh, that was alright! Fun!", if you watch it knowing Scott Lobdell wrote it and you despise everything Scott Lobdell writes, you can't help seeing how lazy the writing is! The characters are all stereotypes! The plot doesn't make any sense! The female lead learns nothing (which maybe is on purpose because it isn't technically Groundhog's Day (another movie revolving around the male gaze and the patriarchy but with much better writing and a pretty nice message overall)) but it makes you feel like she should be learning something the way Bill Murray did. But she doesn't! Her only goal is to not die. Which she's terrible at, by the way.

Anyway, Tommy's idea is to ask Catwoman some questions since Catwoman was in Mawzir's memory when he read his mind. The only problem is finding Catwoman. So Tommy gets an idea. Cat rhymes with Bat, right?! And how do people get hold of Batman? Oh yes. That's right!

No cats were harmed in the drawing of this comic book. Tommy found it dead in an alley and while that's sad, it's worth the joke.

The Ranking!
I can't believe I forgot about the Catsignal! I'm often surprised at how much of this comic book I do remember. But the Catsignal? So good and I'd completely forgotten about it! Great comic book! That's the ranking: great! And also this: so good!





__________________________________________________________________________________
¹ I don't know if that joke works because of the inability for people to parse a sentence but I'm not going to diagram the sentence. But I will explain the joke explicitly, just in case! Yes, I meant that the Tootsie Roll commercial where the kid saw everything as Tootsie Rolls was sexier than me picturing Catwoman stealing my virginity.
² Some might call it a closet.
³ As in "being a fantasy" and not "super duper awesome, dude!"
⁴ Look. I feel I have to write this note because most people online are Actually Nerds and they can't just have a little fun without dropping their "Actually" turds all over everybody's fun. I get that the panel shows the back of Catwoman's ass as she faces the gun. But if you just fucking let go, Luke, you can join my little fun world where you can interpret the panel as her standing facing off-panel to the left and the butt of the gun is between her cheeks. Making your own reality is great! It's super easy and fun to do! At least when you're not actually hurting other people, I mean. I do not support conservatives and their false reality! Fuck those guys! With guns! Barrel-side in!

Planetary Loves Batman: Night on Earth (August 2003)

Earth's secret archaeologist's hide outside of the light. And thus inside the Batman.

Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth (June 25th, 2003)
By Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, David Baron, and Wes Abbott
Cover by John Cassaday
Edited by Kristy Quinn and Scott Dunbier

I believe one of the reasons I was good at avoiding pointless and mindless debates with awful people on the Internet from the very beginning is that I was inoculated early in my life against that kind of dialogue thanks to my Catholic and Conservative friend in high school, Soy Rakelson. He completely disappeared from my life in 2016 when Trump was elected as president and I have my suspicions that it was because he completely agrees with every ideology Trump espouses (if you can call anything that comes out of Trump's mouth an "ideology" and not "diarrhea mouth vomit") but just didn't want to have to justify agreeing with it. Because Soy always believed he was living in a righteous and logical world behind that thin veneer of plausible deniability and dog whistles. But once the dog whistled message simply became the message, he understood it would be harder to agree with the message while maintaining his righteous and intelligent and "good" persona. I put good in quotes because he was never truly good; he was a selfish sociopath who merely wanted to be seen and understood as a good person.

Living through my teenage years with Soy was very much like being vaccinated against a disease. Once I was online and somebody came at me with the familiar Soy tactics, I would simply respond once. If I sensed they were actually confused by something I had said and weren't just being an asshole, I would respond with a quick clarification. Other times, I would just mock them and be done. Sometimes I would do both at once, like that time somebody on tumblr asked me if I was pro-domestic violence. What an absurd thing to ask somebody, I thought. So I simply responded, "If you thought I was for domestic violence in that passage, re-read it again while thinking, 'Tess isn't for domestic violence.' That should clear it up!"

Sometimes I refer to myself as "Tess" even though the name has nothing to do with me and is just part of the play on words in the title of my blog. Usually I'm Grunion Guy!

What got me thinking about this was a response from Soy to a Facebook post in 2010 (I'm going through my old emails! Nostalgia!) where I mentioned how I didn't want to "debate" him anymore because of his "ready-made arguments and attempts at logical traps." And then Soy, in his attempt to get me to drop my stance of not arguing with his idiocy, wrote, "How much can we learn from people with whom we vehemently agree? ;^)". Which, I'm sure, I didn't respond to because, you know, my rule of not arguing with choads on the Internet. You may begin to understand whom Soy is by that response because it's one you hear all the time from terrible people with terrible politics and the worst ideas about the world when they're trying to accuse other people of being in echo chambers. But my response is simply, "How much can we learn from people with whom we vehemently disagree?" I won't attempt the snide emoticon which, I guess, Soy thought was cute and friendly but, at least to me, looks like the look somebody gives you right before they commit sexual assault. Another response to Soy's inauthentic and meaningless question could have been, "How much have you ever learned from somebody with whom you vehemently disagree, Soy?" I'm sure it was and always will be nothing. Because the people trying to get people to debate them think that they're teaching the rest of the world some kind of capital T "Truth". And you can't argue Truth! You either succumb to its Truthiness or you remain a heathen blaspheming Godless piece of shit.

Yes, Soy. I chose heathen blaspheming Godless piece of shit rather than what you chose: "Defender of Western Civilization and Purveyor of the Truth." Both of those, really, are just synonyms for authoritarianism.

One last comment of Soy's from 2010 because I find him endlessly fascinating. Not likeable! Just fascinating! "I mention politics, and [Grunion Guy] emerges. Calling me names, no less! Welcome, brother! My point was this: The author seems to blame most of our ills on Republicans. I think that's a bit too simplistic, since we vote our representatives into office. So, with all of his contempt for our representatives, perhaps he should be blaming America's esteemed voters themselves?"

Here, Soy poses a question at the end that he thinks is some kind of logical trap. "Oho! I have replaced the target of his ire with a target that people would look down on him for targeting! Plus I called them 'America's esteemed voters' so that should really put him in a pickle if he dares to answer that with, 'Okay, yeah, fine. I blame the voters.'" Which is exactly how I would have answered that! Sure, fine! I will blame the voters! Now you have every reason to attack me directly because I've shown myself to be angry or against America or something. It's been awhile but I bet back in 2010, I could have predicted exactly how Soy would have answered me if I agreed with him that the voters should be blamed.

Enough about that authoritarian! Let's read about Batman! And Gotham City. Let's begin with a quick Gotham history lesson from Elijah Snow:

I'm disappointed that he doesn't mention the goats the hamlet was named after. They were probably on drugs too.

Jakita introduces Elijah to two of the Gotham City office Planetary staff: Dick Grayson and Jaspar. Jaspar looks suspiciously like The Joker. Like identical. I suppose even before this moment — perhaps the moment I picked up a comic book merging the Wildstorm universe with the DC Universe — I should have realized this was an Elseworlds title. It doesn't say Elseworlds anywhere on the book but in 2003, DC was still playing fast and loose with continuity and canon. I think they believed fans would understand the difference and nobody would be too bothered. I'm not sure why they would have thought that because even without the Internet, rabid continuity fans would bombard their offices with letters mentioning any suggestion that something happened differently than it had appeared to happen before. But with the rise of the Internet and too many fans being able to contact DC's offices and creators way too easily, they probably figured they needed to make every out-of-continuity and non-canon story extremely well-documented as such.

This issue also feels like it's the Gremlins of DC Comics in that the cover didn't have any kind of Mature rating on it but the content within immediately winds up being more mature than you'd usually see in a Batman funny book. Like The Drummer fucking a television set showing ant porn.

Maybe Cassaday just had something in his contract that stated his covers couldn't be modified even with Elseworlds or Mature Content labels?

I know it was mentioned multiple times that The Drummer enjoys fucking gadgets and gizmos but is this the first time he's shown actually doing it? And you know he's got his dick inside an A/V connection (possibly the tight little RF input!) because Jakita tells The Drummer to "zip it up"! Meaning his pants! His dick is out of his zipper!

What I was trying to point out with that Gremlins reference is that DC probably got yelled at by some Karen somewhere (not Berger! She was cool!) about their comics needing a stricter rating. Or any at all, apparently!

I just remembered in the previous Planetary Loves the Justice League, Batman wanted to destroy Planetary. For good reasons! They were more like the Alternate Dimension Fantastic Four in that book. So now I'm wondering: is this version of Planetary the good guys or the bad guys? Is Batman, whatever they are, their opposite? Does The Joker make a good bureaucrat?

Planetary have come to Gotham to seek out John Black, the son of a man who was experimented on in City Zero. That means he likely has powers, perhaps god-like powers, and they, being diggers up of information, would like to know what kinds of powers he might display.

I was going to joke that that's not a power but based on the zero people I've killed and the belief I couldn't kill any, I have to admit it's a power!

A lot of psycho people (especially men but women are psycho too. Think Kristi Noem) fantasize about killing other people. Most of them think they are good people so those fantasies of murdering somebody are ensconced in the narrative of a home invasion or somebody threatening their lives. But the impulse is still to imagine yourself murdering another human being. I don't even have that! I figure the only way I would murder another human being would be to save one of my cats. I probably wouldn't even bother with my own life because thank you, murderer, for setting me free!

Maybe I should add an addendum to people having fantasies about murdering people because I'm giving a lot of them too much benefit of the doubt with the "home invasion" fantasy. There's a direct line from Soy Rakelson arguing that it's wrong for liberals to call Republicans names (those were some of his arguments in the Facebook thread I was recently revisiting. That liberals pointing out that Republicans are selfish bastards is the real problem (sounds familiar, right?! Yeah, they haven't really come up with any new arguments other than "What if we just dropped the dog whistles? Those take too much imagination and most of our voter base are too stupid to hear them")) to Republicans now believing that liberals are so awful that murdering them is actually a righteous position. You can argue that's cynical and hyperbolic if you want but I'll just point out how many hand jobs Kyle Rittenhouse has gotten from Conservatives since he murdered a guy with a skateboard.

Fair warning: I'll probably be referring to a lot of my old emails as I nostalgia my way through 16 years of saved emails.

The Joker and Nightwing continue with the "John Black" debrief.

Dick Grayson outs himself as a secret Brit with the whole "body with prints on" bit. Next he'll be saying he was stood nearby the body or that it was found not wearing pants. Meaning underwear, of course!

The next crime scene photograph Dick shows them consists of three victims all seemingly merged at the torso. Elijah Snow assumes it was caused by some kind of alternate reality temporal disturbance but he's forgetting he's in Gotham and that just might be some weird Batman villain named The Rat King or something. Elijah mentions he was somewhere he wasn't supposed to be in 1986. If I had to think about somewhere I wasn't supposed to be in 1986, the only thing I can come up with is at Shoreline Amphitheater at a Bon Jovi/Cinderella concert. My first concert if you don't count The Country Bear Jamboree or a weekend at Chuck E. Cheese!

The team heads to Crime Alley to do some investigating the way Elijah Snow learned to detectivate from Sherlock Holmes and Dracula.

By "deliberate and clearly defined arc," Elijah's talking about John Black's character arc, right? Because John Black is Batman, right?

If there aren't any detectives to catch John Black then John Black is Gotham's greatest detective! Right? Is that Logic 101? Hmm. Okay, maybe John Black isn't Batman. But I had to write it just in case it turns out to be true so I can be all, "Ha ha! I knew it!" But if it doesn't wind up true, we can all simply forget I suggested it.

While in Crime Alley, Planetary stumbles upon John Black and a half-dissolved hooker. That's an old-fashioned term for sex worker! That's the kind of crack detective work that Sherlock Holmes would be proud of! Once you eliminate anywhere the criminal isn't, you'll accidentally be where the criminal is! Maybe that was more luck than detective work.

John Black manifests a kind of temporal reality field similar to the thing Ambrose Chase can do. After the field's gone, John Black staggers away while Planetary realizes they're suddenly in a completely different Gotham. One that contains The Batman!

This is where I'd usually scan the picture with Batman but you know what he looks like. Dark cowl. Cape. Bat on his chest. Pants on the outside of his trousers.

Jakita tells Batman they're dealing with the man who killed the hooker but Batman, being a control freak, is all, "Not in my city, you won't!" And then they fight. Should I have put fight in quotation marks? Because how can Batman stand up to Jakita Wagner? Sure, he can defeat all of his friends in the case they go mental but that's because they've all leaked their weaknesses to him. How can Batman beat a super fast, super strong woman whom he knows nothing about?!

OH! Through pure sexiness is how!

Before Jakita bends a couple of pipes into weapons to beat Batman to death, she mentions how beating men in fetish bat costumes is one of the things that keeps her going and, well, apparently one that fights back is exactly what she's looking for in a partner.

Jakita goes easy on Batman for a number of pages because women love foreplay. But then John Black does his alternate reality thing again and suddenly old-school Batman turns into Adam West Batman and Jakita loses her lady boner almost immediately.

I didn't even read this page before saying Jakita lost her lady boner. I just understand her character arc. And her fetishes.

I don't know what Batman sprays in her face to drive Jakita away but it's probably Cougar Repellant. Get it?! See, she's, inexplicably, much older than Adam West was when he played Batman. So her trying to fuck the alternate '40s Batman (who was probably even younger) makes her a cougar! And we know Batman keeps sprays on him that repel certain animals. Plus not only would he never hit a woman, he would never allow a woman to suck him off. Loser.

Oh wait! The next page shows the name on the can and, well, let me just be the first to congratulate me on being exactly right once again.

Not about the cougar repellant, obvs! But about how Adam West Batman wouldn't let a woman suck him off!

Since Jakita isn't exactly a villain, I'm assuming that repellant simply works against any woman at all. And Robin.

If you're wondering, "What Batman could possibly appear after John Black's next temporal seizure?", you're showing you ignorance on comic books. Because we all know it's going to be Frank Miller's Dark Knight. I mean, sure, I saw it on the opposite page. But it's what I would have guessed anyway!

Miller's Dark Knight does a little ass kicking because he's actually more like Midnighter. That makes it believable that he could stand toe-to-toe with Jakita and Elijah anyway. After he bests Planetary, he's changed again by a time-shift and becomes the Batman I think of as the Mike W. Barr/Jim Aparo Batman. Is that just pre-Crisis Batman? Post-Crisis Batman? Crisis-Crisis Batman? He's definitely the most detective-like and probably the one most willing to listen to Planetary.

This Batman does take the time to listen to them. And he almost gives in and allows them to deal with him but, you know, he's still Batman. And he's all, "Things must be done the right way! First arrest. Then Arkham. Then escape. Then loads of dead citizens. Then a fist fight. Then another arrest. Then Arkham. Then escape. Then loads of dead citizens. Then a fist fight. Then arrest. Then Blackgate. Then forgotten. Then years go by. Then Johns or Morrison or Gaiman make him even scarier. Then escape. Then loads of dead planets. And so on." So while he doesn't fight them, he does delay long enough for one more alternate reality shift.

Oh no! Original Batman with a gun! I though, culturally, we were all supposed to have forgotten this one!

The Drummer taps into the memories in Crime Alley (which they're all still in!) and learns about Batman's origin. This causes a shift to Idealized Future Batman! He's the Batman that has made the world a better place through doing the right thing and not using a gun. This version of Batman listens to Planetary and realizes giving John Black into their care is the only compassionate option that also makes the world better and safer.

Inspirational Batman is the best Batman!

Batman chooses not to use the weapons of his enemies (you know, guns!). But Inspirational Batman takes it one step further. He chooses to use the weapons that his enemy could never use: compassion, empathy, kindness. I love Idealized Batman!

And so does Jakita!

The Ranking!
Excellent! I love alternate reality comic books. I think comic books that don't need to rely on continuity and canon make for better entertainment. And yet, they rely on that continuity and canon to make their stories so impactful. You have to understand the lore of Batman to understand this comic book (I mean, sort of. It's not like this is Gravity's Rainbow). So I guess I have to acknowledge that continuity and canon stories are needed so that I can enjoy the occasional non-canon story out of continuity! It's a Catch-22, isn't it? That's some catch, that catch-22!

Hitman #14 (May 1997)

Best cover in DC's entire history!

Hitman #14 (May 1997)
By Garth Ennis, John McCrea, Carla Feeny, and Willie Schubert
Cover by John McCrea
Edited by Peter Tomasi and Dan Raspler

I just re-watched the first two episodes of Portlandia which caused me to be aware of something I had not been aware of before: I am 2 Degrees of Separation from Aubrey Plaza. In the second episode's closing credits, the guest starring names are Sam Adams and Aubrey Plaza. Sam Adams, former mayor of Portland, is my step-uncle. I once played Scattergories with him over Christmas (which he attempted to cheat at multiple times) where the letter was "L" and the category was "Type of Dance." My answer was "Lap dance" which Sam commented on with "Classy." Classy's right, bitch, because I got full points for that answer! Also calling somebody else "Classy" while making sure the word drips with derision and sarcasm is a heck of a thing coming from somebody driven from office due to a sex scandal, motherfucker!

Sorry! Sorry! I always liked Sam and I'm coming across as having not liked Sam but you didn't hear the way he said "Classy" that Christmas! It hurt my feelings! I was just playing a game to win and figured everybody was going to say "Lambada" or, um, well apparently I can only think of two dances and they're both dirty. Anyway, I got the points and you kept trying to cheat, jerko! Also my favorite member of the Adams' family was Sam's boyfriend Greg at the time so I'm a little bitter is what I'm saying.

I know Sam and Aubrey didn't actually have any scenes together but their names were right on top of each other in the closing credits so I'm gonna fucking take it! Two degrees away from Aubrey, baby!

Anyway: zombie zoo adventure. The main thing I remember about this issue is that Hacken Evil Dead's off his hand after getting bit by a zombified animal after which everybody explains to him that he wasn't going to turn into a zombie and then he has to live with his one-handed idiocy for the rest of the series. And longer since he's, like, the only one who survives. Aside from Sixpack, of course. And BAYTOR!

It happens much sooner than I expected.

In "The Final Night" story, Hacken tells a tale about how he killed a bunch of chickens and, while doing so, sang, "Kill the chickens! Kill the chickens! Kill the chickens!" So I guess that's his thing? Also, I have to wonder if he's singing it like Elmer Fudd sings "Kill da rabbit!"? I mean Hacken is a stereotypical Nimrod (in both the Biblical sense and the modern sense (thanks to Bugs using it on Elmer Fudd in the Biblical sense but mockingly)). So does that mean I should be hearing Hacken's voice as Elmer Fudd?! Is that something Garth Ennis telegraphed as best he could in this soundless medium and I didn't pick up on it until 2026? Well, better late than never! I'm definitely reading all of Hacken's lines in the voice of Elmer Fudd from now on.

So Hacken doesn't take his hand off himself; he just pleads with the others to do it. Ringo happily does it for him even though none of the others truly believe Hacken's going to turn into a zombie. And just to make sure Hacken never gets the chance to have it reattached, he blasts it into bloody paste so that it doesn't, once again but in a different way, Evil Dead him.

This massacre of penguins is probably why Lobo eventually pays a visit to The Cauldron.


Oh. And this.

It's possible Garth Ennis's entire reason for this story arc was as a troll to kill as many animals as possible to piss off animal lovers. For the old skool LOLs, I mean, and not for the new skool "we exist only to make liberals angry" crowd of chowder heads who think they've cracked free will and yet they live their entire lives offended at people getting offended. Or should I say "offended at Straw Men getting offended" because the purported people offended are usually just made up bullshit articles or one of their own satirizing what they think reality looks like which reinforces the reality of the assholes angry at the people who don't actually exist.

Speaking of stories where an animal dies, I'm going to spoil A Quiet Place: Day One right now. Not because an animal dies in it. But because it's the third zombie/alien disaster movie I've watched in fairly recent memory that involves a cat and my nerves just can't take it anymore! I don't want to feel anxious and nervous about a fictional bubby kitty while I'm watching humans snuff it in the dozens! The first time was a Spanish zombie movie where the guy takes his cat out in a backpack/carrier as he tries to escape his hometown overrun by zombies. I actually had to stop watching that one before ultimately finishing it because I was just too tense and scared for the little guy. I think he survived? I don't remember now. If he died, that's why I don't remember! I blocked it out! And then in the third season of Daryl Dixon, you get the stupid fucking jerko line, "El gato es muerto!" I sort of knew that one was coming because the people who make The Walking Dead shows are total assholes! I didn't allow myself to get attached to that cat even though I was happy to finally see a cat in that world. Then last night, I watched A Quiet Place: Day One and instantly felt queasy when Lupita appeared on screen cradling a cat. But even though I felt anxious through this one, I was pretty sure Frodo the cat was going to come out okay. Mostly because Lupita was dying of cancer so I knew she wasn't going to make it. Which meant the cat's safety was her top priority! After getting some pizza, I mean. She definitely risked it's life too many times just for that slice of pizza.

Don't read that previous paragraph and think I'm such a pussy that I can't stand to see animals die in movies! The zombies can feast on all the cute little puppies they want! I just don't want to see my fluffy baby skitterkin mew-mews hurt! Also, Pig destroyed me in so many ways but I wouldn't change that movie at all! My ability to feel anything has been eroded to such a tiny nerveless nub that anytime some piece of art can make me weep like everybody I've ever loved just kicked me in the balls, I appreciate it! That'll do, Pig! That'll do.

Back to the comic book, Tommy and all his friends get bitten by a bunch of fish dumped on them by the mad scientist. I guess they didn't know for sure that they wouldn't get turned into zombies because Tommy asks the guy if they'll turn and the scientist is all, "Fucking elementary school drop outs! You're so stupid and superstitious! Getting all of your facts from George Romero! You can't become a zombie without being dead and revived by the gas! Now go outside and get eaten!" But Tommy and the others don't go outside to get eaten. The mad scientist stays inside to get eaten.

Does the shark get the money for the hit?

I understand that the shark is zombified and maybe more aggressive but if the shark can break through the glass to eat somebody now, was this aquarium ever really safe?! All it would have taken was that shark to be slightly hungry one day and have a pudgy person wearing seal-gray leather walk past the window and *WHAMMO*! Instant YouTube video sensation!

So that's the scientist dead halfway through the issue. You might think, "Well what more could there be?" But only if you forgot about all the zombie animals and also the zombie shark that's now swimming around the flooded room with Tommy, Natt, Ringo, and Hacken.

A few more pages of loads and loads of seals and penguins getting their heads blown off before the threat is mostly over. Just one more zombie left to kill.

Don't worry about how he's standing up. If you got this far in and bought into the premise, don't let this minor speed bump knock you back to reality.

After everything is dead, Ennis delivers the punchline: Tommy and Natt, feeling awful and guilty and terrible about what just happened, donate their entire pay for the assassination to Greenpeace! Ha ha! It's like a carbon offset! But with penguins and seals!

The Ranking!
So much animal murder! Delicious!

For my animal murder carbon offset for enjoying so much death of cute widdle bubby animals, here's a picture of me re-reading Koji Suzuki's most demented of books, the sequel to Ring, Spiral, with my fluffy baby skitterkin mew-mew Gravy on my lap giving me reverse-greeting headbutt love rubs.

So gross!