Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Batman Annual #16 (August 1992)

I've got to believe The Joker is less dangerous Eclipsed.

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Batman Annual #16 (August 1992)
By Alan Grant, John Wagner, Vince Giarrano, Clem Robins, and Adrienne Roy
Cover by Sam Keith
Edited by Scott Peterson and Dennis O'Neil

• Sixteen annuals! That's fucking crazy! That means that by 1992, the Batman series had been going since 1976! Incredible!¹

• During the Detective Comics Annual, The Joker escaped Arkham with the help of The Ventriloquist and Scarface. He then escaped Batman with the help of Commissioner Gordon and Eclipso. So now he's on the loose and Batman's trying to track him down. That's probably why Robin couldn't get in touch with him during the Eclipso Dinosaur Rampage in Robin's annual.

See?! Every orifice.²

• While Batman fishes a bunch of people out of a bus that crashed off of a bridge³, The Joker sits on a tall, teetering throne of money questioning a corrupt Gotham cop about the Black Diamond.

• Visually, this issue is really impressive. But I'm a Lit Major. Visually doesn't do it for me. I need, um, pathers? Pathros? Whatever that thing that the movie Pig had way, way, WAY too much of!

• I rarely look up artists to see what else they've done because I rarely one into one that fits both of these categories: I'm super impressed by their work, and I'm not already familiar with their work. Vince Giarrano did the art for "The Human Flea" story in Batman: Shadow of the Bat but his stuff didn't really strike me in those two issues. I was probably too stunned by Alan Grant using a flea circus as a plot device in the waning decade of the 20th Century to even notice the art.

• Anyway, I checked out Vince's current site and, um, wow. I'm envious of every woman he paints!

Oh to be able to pull off this outfit! I mean, sure, I'd look great in the boots. Not sure I could do a midriff exposing shirt and short skirt though!

• What impressed me most about Giarrano's work so far in this annual are his panel compositions, layouts, and "camera" angles. It feels like Alan Grant gave him a lot of room to explore the pacing of the story in this annual as it has so many extra pages to fill. The scene I skipped over completely where Batman rescues people in the sinking bus just has some wonderful shots.

• Oh! And the panel with the Joker on the teetering throne of money? DC should have made it a poster.

This could have been hanging on my wall under the bagged WaRP Elfquest issues displayed backwards to show the characters, my LPs of out-of-print⁴ Alice Cooper LPs like Zipper Catches Skin and Flush the Fashion, my massive Christina Applegate poster, and the ads for the It television mini-series cut out of the TV Guide.

• I should probably scan the sequence that impressed me enough to think, "Wait, this is really fucking good!", and caused me to go back to the beginning of the book to really look at the art.

Okay. That's enough about the art. I'm beginning to chap my lips on Vince's butthole.

• The Joker's henchmen display why Gotham's major villains can never get away with any crime in Gotham. First a couple of his guys throw the body of the now dead and rictus-mouthed cop on top of a passing train where it's easily spotted by Batrope swinging Batman. Second, a couple of his other guys steal the Black Diamond from the police evidence room only to run into a guy who used to work for them who's got Batman on his ass about the Joker's possible locations. I realize most of this is bad luck and coincidence but when Batman patrols your city, you've got to take every precaution you can to mitigate those factors while doing your henching!

• Here's a handy acronym for Gotham Henchman: ABNBO. Always Be Never Being Outside!

• Manzoni, one of the Joker's ex-henchman who Batman's been leaning heavily on, chases Joker's current henchmen who have the diamond. He's not doing it because he's afraid of Batman though; he's doing it because The Joker is, quite literally, sitting on 25 million dollars which Manzoni helped him steal and never got a cut of.

• To get Manzoni off of their tail, one of the henchmen grabs up one of the Black Diamonds and thinks about how angry he is at Manzoni. Pretty soon, orifice smoke!

• A dragon manifests from the henchman's anger and goes after the convertible with Manzoni in it. It picks them up and drops them to their death. Batman witnesses it and shrugs even though he doesn't know exactly how innocent the men in the car are.

Batman's come to terms with his superhero impotency. He saves whomever he can and doesn't lose any sleep over the others, I guess.

• It's disturbing to see Batman so cavalier about the death of a couple of Gothamites when you know, if they were innocent or important to the plot, Batman would figure out how to save them in the blink of an eye. But since the reader knows they're basically criminals who were just trying to shoot some other criminals, it's somehow okay that Batman can't save them, knows he can't save them, and just watches them die.

• Batman does check on the victims of the dragon, at least. Manzoni has somehow survived⁵ and he tells Batman that they were on the tail of some of The Joker's henchmen when the dragon appeared. Batman knows the body of the cop was dumped on top of a train by The Joker so he just follows the train back to a likely place where the body could have been dropped on it. Plus earlier, he and the cops found some pink wax under the dead cop's nails!

• Batman solves the easiest case of his life when he locates an overpass above the train and sees a Wax Museum nearby. "Let's see Superman solve this shit!" he cackles as he climbs the building to check if it has a skylight to drop through.

• I just made up the entirety of that last bullet point to save time and then I read the comic book and, um, it's exactly what happened. Sure, most if it was already telegraphed and obvious. But, um, that bit about the skylight? That was just me being cheeky.

Cheeky but correct.

• Does every building in Gotham have a skylight? Is a local ordnance that mandates skylights? Did Bruce Wayne lobby that contracting law onto the books?

• Batman crashes down, disarming The Joker and stealing his bag of Black Diamonds. Too bad The Joker already had one in his grubby mitts!

• Batman defeats The Joker's henchmen while The Joker tries to muster up an Eclipso.

Is this where we learn The Joker loves Batman so much that he can't even pretend to be angry at him?

• I wonder if there are 1000 Pink Diamonds that cause a person to be possessed by Aphrodite?

• The Joker does manifest into Eclipso (because he's aggressive!). Batman, knowing he can't match Eclipso, does the only thing he can: turn into Eclipso himself. Now Eclipso once again has to kill himself before he can properly manipulate whoever wins.

• The battle rages for several pages and it's both entertaining and hot. And then it suddenly becomes genius⁶.

I wasn't expecting this to become a critique of the comic book medium and how characters are trapped in an endless middle story.

• Batman and Joker, being evenly matched as Eclipsos, battle until the sun comes up. Eclipso is banished and then, I mean, you know who wins that fight. Batman takes Joker out in one punch and hauls his ass back to Arkham.

The Ranking!
What's going on? I generally hate Annuals and I'm often disappointed by these massive crossovers. But here I am enjoying annual after annual! I even liked the Robin annual! I must have done permanent damage to my brain when I took a hammer to my head. Should I re-read Scott Lobdell's New 52 Teen Titans?! Do you think I'd like it now?! What about New 52 Superboy?! Maybe I'll finally understand Ann Nocenti's writing! It's a new dawn for my love of comic books! I'm so fucking excited!


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¹ This bullet point is so facetious that it shouldn't even garner it's own footnote but I am posting it on the Internet which means it's necessary to point this out: that was a dumb joke, stupid.
² See Footnote 4 in Robin Annual #1
³ Don't worry. Nobody was hurt by the bus plummeting into the water from a great height even though busses don't have seat belts or harnesses. Even the baby was perfectly fine!
⁴ At least at the time. I'm not sure when Alice's albums between '80 and '83 were eventually re-released on CD.
⁵ But not for long!
⁶ Or amateurish if you'd rather your stories didn't explicitly point out the smart stuff. I, for one, love how Grant worked it here. He gives you several pages for what he's doing to dawn on the reader before going, "Well, this is the point. Did you get it? I bet you got it! But I know some of you didn't. So here ya go!"

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Robin Annual #1 (July 1992)

How can Anarky's mask be Eclipsed?!

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Robin Annual #1 (July 1992)
By Alan Grant, John Wagner, Tom Lyle, Scott Hanna, Timothy Harkins, and Adrienne Roy
Cover by Sam Keith
Edited by Scott Peterson and Dennis O'Neil

• If your enemy is named Anarky, I'm going to root for him (her?) every time.

• Anarky always freaked me out because he reminds me of the one image that creeped me the fuck out for most of my childhood.

I would obsessively open the book to this page, get a quick glimpse, and slam it shut, feeling super creeped out and upset.

• I'm not sure why Robin gets an annual in this Eclipso crossover. Why is Eclipso trying to possess fucking Robin? Also Robin didn't have his own monthly series until after his second annual. I know rules aren't real but what the fuck, DC? This shit doesn't make any sense.¹

• Didn't it turn out Anarky was a twelve year old girl² or something? Man, I hope so! Mostly because that means Robin will either get his ass kicked by a young girl or will kick the ass of a young girl. It's a lose/lose situation for our young hero!

• Robin got them tabi boots like he a ninja or somethin'.

Look at this freak! Fucking terrifying!

• Am I the only person terrified by people with long necks? Is that a phobia? I am severely unsettled when I see an actual person with a disproportionately long neck. Maybe that's just a leftover evolutionary trait retained from thousands of years ago when we lived on the African savannah to keep people safe from giraffes³ and, um, probably ancient aliens.

• It's also possible I'm pre-remembering how I'll be killed by somebody with a long neck. "Pre-remembering" is probably a scientific concept if you don't think about the science too much and instead concentrate on the Woo Woo. You can have Post Traumatic Stress so why not Pre Traumatic Stress? I rest my very well-argued case.

• Anarky torments that artist in the above panel to steal his Black Diamonds which he carelessly uses on his art pieces. Why does he want them? How the fuck should I know? I've almost certainly never read this comic book before and if I have, I wouldn't admit to it. It has fucking Robin on the cover! Blech!

• Robin, also looking for the Black Diamonds because Batman told him to, arrives too late to stop Anarky. But not that too late because Robin just looks out the window and sees Anarky swinging away on an Anarkyrope.

I'm so ashamed of comic book readers that we all just bought into this "get anywhere in Gotham by swinging from a thrown rope" business.

• Robin catches Anarky because Robin has way more experience throwing a grappling hook into the sky — hooking I don't fucking know what a gargoyle I guess — and swinging after the thief.

• Robin calls Anarky a "14 year old genius" but then uses the male pronoun so, um, Boo! Hiss! Sexism! Maybe. I don't know. What the fuck am I going on about?

• Anarky, being a genius, throws a smoke bomb at Robin and slowly walks away as if Robin coughing on smoke is all that's needed to defeat him.

Oh. It is? I mean, of course it is! Robin sucks.

• Christ I just love Anarky's design. So fucking cool. And creepy!

• My love for the concept of unheimlich began all those years ago when I was fascinated by Alice with the long neck, didn't it?

• To make sure he gets away, Anarky gives one of the Black Diamonds he stole to the only man he encounters on the street this late at night: an angry drunk man railing against outside façade of The People's Bank of Gotham. The man instantly produces a smoke Eclipso from every orifice⁴ which attacks the bank.

• Robin, a protector of capitalism (being Batman's ward), decides he must stop this creature from destroying a fine institution of the city!

Cool but I don't see how that's going to help.

• Surprisingly, Robin's solar-powered fleshlight doesn't stop the rampaging beast and the entire bank collapses into rubble.

• The beast, once it's successful with the vengeance demanded by its creator and thus gaining free will, turns on Robin. But Robin just jacks it off with the fleshlight and it dissolves into nothingness. You know, like all guys after orgasm.

That sound effect is spot on.

• Robin steals the Black Diamond from the drunk groggily getting to his feet like one of those assholes in an old Reese's Cup commercials where they're idiotically walking down the street with a whole jar of peanut butter and enjoying it in the way that nobody has ever done outside of a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup commercial and then when they run into the person eating the chocolate bar and the bar winds up broken in twain in their jar of peanut butter, they take out half of the bar and begin eating it. Dude. That wasn't your fucking candy bar, you asshole! Give it back!

• Robin reports back to Batman with his failure but tries to zhuzh⁶ it up by emphasizing how he managed to obtain one of the Black Diamonds. He doesn't tell him that he had to use the BatFleshlight though.

• Batman heads off to interrogate Anarky's father while Robin swings over to juvenile hall, the last known place Anarky was living. But it turns out, Anarky moved out with all his favorite books, his posters, and his clothing. He left nothing important behind. Except his computer, of course. Probably because it's a stupid tool of capitalism.

Robin exhibiting how he got the moniker "The Boy Wonder".

• Anarky, being a huge Lord of the Rings nerd⁷, uses the same old password trick that the dwarves use on the back door of Moria. But instead of "Speak friend and enter", his computer displays "Enter Codeword For Access". Yes, the statement, like the dwarves' statement, is literal. The codeword is codeword.

• Meanwhile, Anarky sits on his throne of seeds surrounded by all his books, clothes, and posters.

Being that Anarky is fourteen years old in 1992, I'm assuming most of those books are Xanth novels.

• Not only did Anarky leave his computer, he left all of his computer disks with all of his anarchistic plans on them. It's so convenient that Robin should assume that he's being led into a trap. But Robin doesn't suspect that at all. Robin just suspects he's outwitted Anarky.

• It is possible, being a 14 year old kid, Anarky simply made a stupid mistake? I guess we'll see if I can manage to read to the end of this comic!

• After discovering what Anarky's demands to the mayor are (which if not fulfilled will result in a bridge being blown up (safely, though! It's not open to the public yet!)), I think maybe Anarky left all his information for Robin to find so that Robin will think, "Man, this is a good plan! This kid really knows how to make the world better. Unlike that stupid Bruce Wayne!"

Centrists who are super scared about the changing of the status quo getting really fucking pissed right now. "This is ridiculous! Better things are scientifically impossible!"

• Just really fucking amazing that I'm supposed to think Anarky is a villain. I imagine he was created as a 14 year old kid because then all the adults could shake their heads and say shit like, "Oh, how sweet and naïve! He thinks the world works for everybody!" and "If you're not liberal when you're young, you don't have a heart. But if you're liberal when you're an adult, you don't have a brain!" and loads of other things that make them sound smart and responsible instead of what they really sound like: hissing ghouls feeding off the corpses of the quickly expanding graveyard they're living inside.

• I bet when Anarky is stopped, Batman will lecture him and be all, "Your heart is in the right place but you're going about things the wrong way. You have to change the system using civility and decorum and by rocking the vote!"

• Anarky heads to the bridge where he plans on becoming Eclipso via his rage against the machine. But he sets a solar flare to erupt in 90 seconds so that he won't remain Eclipso for long.

• Like the cover shows, when Anarky is Eclipsed, his mask does the whole eclipse make-up thing. Which is just stupid because, well, you know why! Why would I need to explain that to you? Or anybody?! Sometimes things are so obvious that you don't need to "Expand this thought!", Professor Guenter!

• Sorry. Old college trauma flashback.

• Anarky's plan is successful! Um, not the one to make Gotham a better place and to house the homeless and to make the city more friendly to pedestrians and to save money via a commuter transportation overhaul and to institute Universal Basic Income. No, no. The plan of his that's successful is where he destroys the bridge and then drives Eclipso from his body. See? Hard work, planning, and having a compassionate heart can really get things done! Or get things destroyed. Whatever. Who cares.

Oh sure. Nothing calms the populace's nerves like sudden and catastrophic crumbling infrastructure.

• I just find it extremely rich that a vigilante and his vigilante sidekick think the kid anarchist needs to be reined in. Oh? You don't approve of the way he's doing things? But you're okay that the law doesn't approve of the way you do things? How come people who think they're responsible enough to do whatever they want can never extend that belief to anybody else? Okay, sure, the kid just blew up a fucking bridge. But that's beside the point! I'm being theoretically philosophical right now!

There's never any money for giving people a hand up, always plenty of money for locking them up.

• The public would feel safer with less homeless on the streets. So housing the homeless would make people feel safer in the same way people think hiring more cops makes people feel safer. But hiring more cops is only an illusion and a political act to signal to the people that you're interested in their safety. More cops doesn't actually make people safe. But giving the homeless a place to live does make people more safe, including, and especially, the homeless! So you fire some cops and spend their salaries and all the bullshit overtime they pad their checks with to house the homeless. Don't have enough? Fire a few more cops!

• The main problem with that proposed solution is that cops are dirty bastards and if they lose their jobs to a program that uses the money to help people they look at as inferior and unworthy and thieves, the cops will probably turn to banditry and crime. Like all of Caesar's soldiers after taking Rome!

• Robin figures out where Anarky's next Eclipso attack will be and manages to stop him. But in so doing, the Black Diamond lands in the purse of a spurned teenage girl and she begins leaking Eclipso smoke out of every orifice⁴.

• The girl manifests a Tyrannosaurus Rex which goes rampaging across a carnival looking to bite the head off of her teenage rival. Anarky cannot stop it because he's an idiot and his solar flare fucks up. Robin, who is also an idiot, cannot stop it because his solar fleshlight has broken. And Batman? Nobody can reach him!

"Ciiiinddeeeeeee! Ciiiiiinnnndeeeeee! I'm going to get you! Right after I fuck this ticket booth!"

• Cindy's boyfriend, the guy who nobly dumped Dinah in the hopes of fucking her, skedaddles when the dinosaur approaches. Since they were just about to fuck in the Tunnel of Love, this leaves her with massive lady blue balls. But then Robin arrives and she's all, "I'm fucked! I mean I'm saved! And then, hopefully, fucked!"

• She really does seem to be into Robin for some reason. I guess even dorks and nerds and losers can seem attractive to a woman when they're displaying competence, bravery, and compassion.

Hmm. I hope Cindy's into necrophilia.

• Cindy's massively swollen lady parts now see Anarky as their only relief so she runs off with him leaving Robin to molder and decay.

• Oh wait. Robin's not dead. Silly me! I can't believe how often comic books fool me with that trick! I still think maybe Superman really did die back in 1993. The guy we have now is just a simulacrum.

• Robin finds a solar-powered car being shown at the carnival, steals it, and drives it into the dinosaur, shining its headlights on the beast which are powered by batteries that were powered by solar power. I mean, okay, I guess. But really, if that's how this whole thing works, anything can defeat Eclipso because it's powered by the sun all the way down! That's just called life on Earth, baby!

• Robin decides to arrest Anarky and make him pay because, um, you know. He's a jerk. Robin, I mean. Anarky's cool.

• As Robin leads Anarky away to have him arrested (or maybe set him free. It's not like he waits at the carnival for the cops to show), he scolds him just like I thought Batman would scold him. "You might have the public good in mind but you can't do evil to attain good! Also, you can't find public money for the general good. So you shouldn't even try, idiot!"

• Robin probably fucks Cindy on Page 55 but my issue doesn't include that page. I guess I'll just have to sketch it out later after I take off my clothes and get a washcloth and some lotion.

The Ranking!
I really enjoyed this issue!

I know. Shut up! Maybe I'll delete this entry later. Stupid proof that I enjoyed a Robin comic book.




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¹ Outside of the context that rules aren't real, I mean.
² Maybe that was Anarky in The New 52. Comic book continuity got me, um, how do post gifs here?
³ Giraffes are dangerous, right? I bet they headbutt people to death on the regular.
⁴ Yes. Every orifice. Even the sexy ones⁵.
⁵ The pee and the butt holes.
⁶ Jeuje, juje, tszuj, zhoosh, or any number of alternate spellings. Take your gayest pick!
⁷ I'm assuming because Anarky is a 14 year old genius.

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Detective Comics Annual #5 (June 1992)

If you want to destroy Batman's sweater. . .

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Detective Comics Annual #5 (June 1992)
By Alan Grant, John Wagner, Tom Mandrake, Jan Duursema, Rick Magyar, Bill Oakley, Adrienne Roy
Cover by Sam Keith
Edited by Denny O'Neil

The Cover!
I'm not going to give Sam Keith a hard time about this cover because, I mean, it's fucking great. Did you look at it? Do you have eyeballs? Does your brain function? I suppose I could criticize Keith's vision of how clothing tears and comes apart but that would be an assumption on my part that Batman's costume isn't made of steel wool. And even if I was going to be an uptight prick and moan about the weird curly pasta threads hanging down from Batman's torn shirt, I'd only be doing Keith a disfavor in that I'm ignoring his (as far as I can tell) realistic gun. Did anybody ever think to show John Romita Jr. this cover (or, I don't know, an actual gun)? If I wanted to be a useless, whiny, piece of shit comic book reader, I could ask how the fuck this has anything to do with Eclipso? Oh, sure, there's a moon in the background and you usually (although not always) need the moon for an eclipse. I mean I don't know what those "not always" moments might be. Like, say, Galactus is fucking Venus or something and his great ass blocks out the sun. But I guess, technically, that's a moon as well. And also Galactus doesn't live in the DC Universe. So pretend I said The Authority's Carrier was fucking a space whale and got between the sun and the Earth. So, anyway, that's my ignorance exposed! But I'm telling you, why would I want to criticize this fucking cover? I love it! I bet if this hadn't been an Eclipso tie-in issue, I'd have picked it up anyway. I would have been all, "Hey Brent! Did you see this cover? I didn't know Batman's costume was made of steel wool and pasta noodles! And I think that's Tiny Toons Joker guest starring! That's a weird looking gun though." (Up until 1992, I'd only ever seen guns drawn by John Romita Jr.)

The Story So Far!
Eclipso has eclipsed Valor, Starman, The Creeper, and Star Sapphire. Am I missing any? I don't remember and I'm not bothering to check. Let's see if Batman falls to lovely purple diamonds! I mean Black Diamonds (but they're really purple). I bet Catwoman loses her shit (and not in the appropriate litter box receptacle (Goddammit I think I just developed a new kink)).

The Story
The issue begins with totally legit business-puppet Scarface re-opening his club, The Ventriloquist's Club, while Batman hassles him and his guests by just making himself obvious up on the nearby street buildings. He's purposefully swinging past streetlights so that his scary and terrifying shadow passes across the front of the club and mumbling to himself, "That'll strike terror in the hearts of these people just trying to have a nice time at a totally legal club run by somebody who has served their time for the crimes they've committed but whom I don't like or trust."

I'd sue his ass for trying to tank my business.

Imagine suing Batman and then finding out in the discovery phase of your civil suit that he's Bruce Wayne. The amount of "Cha-Chings!" rattling around in your head would probably send you straight to Arkham.

I don't know anything about law and law terms so I probably got the lingo wrong and I'm not bothering to check but you probably understood what I meant.

Batman ignores the club full of Gotham's most wanted criminals because he's got a robbery to stop down at the Old Egyptian Goods Shoppe. The criminals try to flee in their truck which is, you know, truck-sized. It's drawn truck-sized. I saw it with my own eyes over multiple pages that it was truck-sized. And then when Batman goes to stop them (by making the truck crash which obviously kills the men in the cab because they're criminals and they don't wear seatbelts), the truck becomes a fucking Mini Cooper.

I'm less concerned about the dead criminals than I am about Tom Mandrake's ability to pass off that panel as professional work.

At least I know what Tom Mandrake thinks of me early into the comic book so I won't feel bad at all when I trash all of his actually adequate and not-bad-to-look-at pencils. You don't declare I'm a stupid idiot that will accept any old shit you draw and expect me to act politely about it! If by the end of the book we don't find out that Batman was sipping on some Gingold earlier which is how he reached the steering wheel from outside the passenger door, I'm going to carve Tom Mandrake's name onto the skin of the yearly goat I sacrifice to Baphomet to curse those who have done me ill.

While Batman's engaged in M.C. Escher crime fighting, Scarface busies himself with insulting every major mafia boss in Gotham at his new club. Most of his insults have to do with plastic surgery gone wrong. Look, he's a little thug who shoots a gun, not a comedy writer. Somehow he (and the guy with his hand up his ass) survives the gig, probably because the mob bosses are using all of their brain power trying to figure out what Scarface's scheme is. I'm using all of my brain power trying to figure out what Eclipso's scheme is. Maybe he won't show up in this comic book at all since Batman doesn't have any super powers. Why would Eclipso want to possess him?

Oh no! A threat from a normal criminal who apparently wears his seatbelt while he crimes.

Batman ignores the threat because is any threat actually a threat to Batman? I bet he doesn't even hear the guy because he's too busy trying to figure out how to defeat Superman if he ever winds up mind-controlled or how to fuck Catwoman if she ever winds up mind-controlled. He does notice a Black Diamond earring on the ground near the crash after the cops have gathered up the loot and the criminals and left the scene to go enjoy some paperwork. They'll especially love the extra paperwork they'll be doing later since they just left the smashed truck and didn't cordon off the crime scene. You might be thinking, "How do you know they didn't do any of that? Maybe Al, John, and Tom just decided not to show all the boring procedural work, you fucking douchebag?" Well, they do show us because Batman calls for the cops to stop and take the Black Diamond for evidence but they've already left. And this is the scene as Batman leaves.

The cops: "Enh, leave it. It'll make a great artificial reef when the sea levels rise."

Oh! I didn't mention that tonight, this very night that Scarsfaceman and his fister are eavesdropping on all the good Gotham mafia goss while they serve them tons of free drinks and Batman has found some jewelry that hopefully Tim Drake won't think was a loving present from his second father . . . this night is the anniversary of Babs being shot in the back by the Joker and definitely not raped at all because when has, um, Alan Moore ever, um, written a . . . you know what? She was probably raped. But nobody needs to dwell on that because she's dealing with it in the best way she knows how: help a government black ops organization break tons of laws all over the world and kill loads of people labeled as enemies of the United States. Even in 1992, we understood that the best time to label a person an enemy of the United States was after you've killed them so they can't say on the record, "What the fuck are you talking about? I don't even think of the United States! Like that scene in the elevator in Mad Men that will be written in twenty years or something!" Just like everything else he claims he invented because he knows nobody will fucking say to his face, "You're a delusional narcissist who lies about everything and doesn't actually know any Goddamn facts at all," Trump didn't invent the state killing civilians and then dragging their names through the mud. That's a time honored American tradition that they stole from Great Britain who stole it from, I don't know, The Romans or Christians.

Anyway, The Joker will be broken out of Arkham on this auspicious anniversary by Scarsfaceman because The Joker, supposedly, knows where 25 million dollars has been stashed. At least that's what one of the crime guys thinks because he was a henchman for The Joker and somehow survived the job and is also incredibly credulous if he thinks The Joker actually gives a shit about money.

Cue Tim Drake snooping around the Batcave.

Bruce Gordon shows up because he's tracked a Black Diamond to Gotham. In a previous issue, he mentioned he could only track them while they're in use. The one Batman found is currently safe but there were two others in the loot from the robbery earlier. Those are in the hands of the police and there's nobody angrier than a cop who was just, in his own eyes, disrespected. That means there's probably an Eclipso or two smashing up the evidence room right now.

Commissioner Gordon finds the two gems still on an Egyptian statue. I was trying to give Grant and company the benefit of the doubt for breaking an rule established in an earlier annual. If Bruce Gordon can track the Black Diamonds while they're not active, this whole series is going to get pretty boring. The whole set-up is simply to get Commissioner Gordon's hands on one so that he'll be so angry at The Joker that he'll turn into Eclipso and strip The Joker naked and take loads of photos and also shoot him in the spine and probably almost certainly doesn't at all in any way, shape, or form rape him. That's probably what happens. I can just stop reading now, right?

Of course it's happening! You forgot to tell them the most important rule: don't get angry around the Black Diamonds!

Gordon's Eclipso manifestation, a massive twenty-foot tall monster with huge teeth and claws, smashes its way out of the police precinct and heads for the toy warehouse where the cops have surrounded The Joker and Scarsfaceman's gang. When it gets there, it immediately kills at least three cops which means Commissioner Gordon is a cop killer. Although I think the Comics Code Authority jerks demanded a later panel to make sure Gordon's hands were clean of any cop blood:

I mean, it is a miracle because I saw the way Tom Mandrake drew them all being gutted. But then I also learned not to believe that hack on page three.

While giving chase, Batman drops and breaks Bruce Gordon's solar light gun. That means he can't stop Eclipso now! Except we, the readers, know that some of the toys in The Joker's warehouse are lightsaber knock-offs called "solar lances". Well, they have "solar" in the name so they must have the same power as the sun, right? Not just shitty light enabled by two 'D' batteries.

During the fight, Batman crashes into a crate of solar lances where he reads the label: "Powered by the sun." Well, that's all well and good if only the toy hadn't been stashed in a crate for the last number of years and it was now currently night and there's no way the stupid thing would be charged.

Wait a second. I think I see my problem with this comic book. It can be sorted out with a hammer and three hard whacks to the back of my head. *whack whack whack* Ah! That's better. I'm now dumb enough to enjoy a comic book again!

Batman picks up a Solar Lance which, having been charged by the sun, has the power to defeat Eclipso. So like something out of one of the two good Star Wars movies, Batman strikes Eclipso down!

Jim had to help for psychological health reasons. This was him dealing with his anger at Alan Moore.

Scarface and The Ventriloquist are arrested after everything calms down but The Joker manages to escape in a cloud of smoke, ninja style. An editor's note says that his story will be continued in Robin Annual #1 because of course Tim Drake found that Black Diamond Batman left lying around and was all, "Stupid teenager problems. I hate everybody!" Which will mean he'll have to kill everybody once he Eclipses. The main Eclipso story will continue in Superman Annual #4.

The Ranking!
That was fucking awesome, man! Incredible! What art! What story! And that part where Batman reaches in the truck window to steer the criminals into a streetlight? Phenomenal! The twist ending with the lightsabers? Genius! And I'm all on pins and needles about The Joker escaping! At least I think that's why I'm feeling pins and needles everywhere. Where'd all this blood come from? Whose hammer is that? I think I'm going to go lie down for a spell.

Batman: Shadow of the Bat #15 (August 1993)

The design team decided Baby Diarrhea Green would be too off-putting. So they went with Baby Diarrhea Yellowish-Brown.

The Cover
I don't think I have any comments left in the tank for the technical proficiency of Brian Stelfreeze's painted covers. We get it. You can paint shiny abs and thighs. What most upsets me about this cover is how it doesn't relate to the first part of the story at all. Does it? Am I missing something? Did the brain damage I must have received as a child (which also caused me to forget that I was brain damaged) make me unable to understand the theme of the previous story? Was there a Hell and/or hors d'oeuvre theme that I didn't catch? How hard do you have to be hit in the head, and by what object, to cause you, later in life, to not understand simple plot developments in a fucking comic book? Also, in case that symptom is too vague to diagnose my issue, what injury also causes somebody to be able to spell "diarrhea" without looking it up but can never remember how to spell "hors d'oeuvre"? Can a doctor who reads my blog get back to me on this? I understand that by reading this blog it means you'll be a pretty average doctor who probably really only deals with feet. But I'll take the medical diagnosis anyway! Thanks!

The Story So Far
Batman has not pissed off a devil or a chef or a 17th Century witch-hunter so I'm not sure this issue continues the story from last time. The only reason I'm going to assume it does is that it says, right on the cover, "Gotham Freaks, Part Two". In that story that doesn't involve Batman battling a giant hungry for S'mores, Batman was patrolling the Black neighborhood in Gotham when he saw a white guy out after dark and thought, "He must be robbing bars because there's no other reason for him to be here at night!" If you're thinking Batman is racist because he profiled a white man, you're wrong. He's racist because he was patrolling the Black neighborhood. He followed the possible thief (who was the actual thief because he's The Fucking Dark Goddamned Knight Detective, you dumb bitch) to the Gotham Fun Fair where he immediately accused all of the Freaks of being criminals. Gina, the hot G-word Lady who runs the Freak Show, ran Batman off because she knew that her boyfriend who recently escaped prison was actually stealing from the bars and she was hiding him in her vardo. Batman, knowing his stuff and not trusting the woman (not because she was Romani but because she was so defensive and obviously lying and also a little bit because her ass was chef's kiss), decided to go undercover at the Gotham Fun Fair to catch the petty thief. Yeah, I know, Batman's wasting all of his time and resources to catch a guy who had been robbing bars. Who fucking cares?! It's not like at eight years old, Bruce Wayne's bar was once robbed. He really should leave this kind of shit to the police. Anyway, he discovered Gina's secret but she once again drove him off using the law which made Batman go, "How the fuck does a woman with that nice of an ass know so much about the law?" Did I say Batman was racist earlier? I meant he's racist and sexist.

Also, Bruce wants to fuck Gina.

The Story
Batman does some investigating but in plain clothes because if he gets caught as Batman, Gina will have him arrested for trespassing, breaking & entering, harassment, stalking, and threatening her with violence. Although if he gets caught snooping around as Bruce Wayne, wouldn't that be worse? He should at least be wearing his Matches Malone disguise!

While snooping, Batman discovers that the Gotham Fun Fair is 50 thousand dollars in debt and Gina's about to lose it to foreclosure. Also, Gina and Mike, the prison escapee boyfriend who's been robbing bars, had a double act where they would hypnotize audience members. Bruce didn't recognize Mike earlier even when Mike opened his huge stupid mouth and told Batman that Batman had apprehended him years earlier, but Bruce recognizes him in old photos because of a gem he's wearing in the act.

Well you can't not do crimes with a magic rock like that while living in Gotham!

Batman finally remembers this Mike character: Mirage! A character nobody but Alan Grant probably remembered in 1993! Other than Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, I mean. An old foe like this appearing makes me think I need to resurrect my Who's Who posts from my time on tumblr! Because I definitely have plenty of free time to shoehorn that in along with all the other stupid shit I'm doing! I can probably pet my cat less, right?

Discovering the thief is Mirage, a man who can make people see illusions with the power of his magic gem eye contacts, Batman knows where he's hiding: the freak show! Hmm. Either Batman's detective skills and instincts are far better than I realized or he just really fucking hates people with disabilities.

Spray him with mace! Beat his criminal ass!

Look, we all knew Texas was somehow involved as soon as he was introduced as a "new member" of the Freak Show. What a perfect disguise, right? A guy with no limbs robbing bars? Preposterous! Although in Tod Browning's movie, I'm pretty sure the guy with no arms and no legs knifes a guy.

Mike stops the illusion and all of his freak friends discover he's not one of us. Meaning he's one of Them! They'll no longer help harbor his ass on their turf. Mike flees, leaving Batman trapped in an illusion of being strangled. But the freaks (and Gina!), recognizing Batman is more one of us than Mike ever was, help break the illusion and set him free. Instead of rushing directly after Mike, he takes a few panels to scold Gina for harboring a felon. Justice!

Or should I say "just ass"? No? Whatever. You just don't appreciate hot comic book asses. Not like me and Dwarf Dave!

Batman gives chase and winds up in an illusion of Hell. So the cover makes sense. So what? I was wrong to criticize it? Fucking sue me. I don't care!

Oh, also Batman catches the guy and sends him off with the cops without ripping his contacts out. So, you know, he's going to escape while the cops wind up in a massive orgy back at the precinct. And just like so many other endings where Batman solves a crime where the money from the crimes was going to help regular people, Bruce Wayne buys up the Gotham Fun Fair to make sure the freaks don't try to fit into normal society. So typical of a rich guy. He could have just paid to bail out the Gotham Fun Fair with an anonymous donation. But instead he buys it for himself. Bastard.

The Ranking
Well that's it for my Batman comic books! I highly doubt I own any older comics starring Batman that aren't ensemble casts. Sure, I have tons of The New 52 Batman comic books. But I've already done reviews on those. I'm not going to re-read anything I already wrote about! What a waste of my not-very-precious-at-all time! I'd like to thank Alan Grant (if he can read this from Hell (or heaven, I suppose!)) for some pretty decent Batman stories, most of which ran only one or two issues at most. I don't think that's possible these days! It's definitely not editorially possible since editorial demands six issue stories so they can be collected and more money can be made from them. Although why they can't collect a bunch of shorter stories, I don't know. It's not like I know how to run a business! I mean, yeah, sure. I own my own business. But I never said I know how to run it!

Batman: Shadow of the Bat #14 (July 1993)

Was DC contractually obligated to do a story called "Freaks" once a year? If so, to who?! Tod Browning?

Once again, Brian Stelfreeze manages to capture Batman's expression at the exact moment he shit cums. If I could give a standing ovation over the Internet, I wouldn't do it because I'm lazy. That expresses how much I appreciate Stelfreeze's ability though, right? While I'm still sitting? Good.

The issue begins with Batman investigating a crime. Several bars were robbed in a concentrated area in Gotham (probably an are of the town that Batman's been ignoring so that real estate prices drop from the crime so Bruce Wayne can purchase all the property cheaply before Batman begins patrolling there again). As he thinks about the case, he puts on display his master detective and/or Graduate English Lit skills.

Only a reader of Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault would understand how "nondescript white male" and "Invisible Man" are precisely the same thing. In America, I mean.

Why does Batman look so smug and satisfied in that panel? He must be thinking how clever it was to equate a nondescript white male to the Invisible Man, especially while thinking about how the image was used for reverse effect by Ralph Ellison. Also, can using the eraser on the image to create glare be any more obvious here? It looks like I did it myself just now!

Dammit. Now my brain wants me to find an eraser and see what it would look like if I used it on this comic book. Bad brain! Stop being even dumber and more chaotic than usual! I need to shove some opiates into it to calm it down.

Batman begins stopping and frisking nondescript white males. Since this story is called "Gotham Freaks", my guess is that the nondescript white male is going to have a really fucking horrendously descript twin coming out of his belly.

Batman only encounters one nondescript white male while patrolling because, as Batman acknowledges, "they stick out like a sore thumb" in that part of town. Oh? What part of town are you patrolling, Batman? Hmm. Why do white men stick out there? Hunh? Explain yourself, you gentrifying racist billionaire!

Idiot! Don't give Batman clues as to your identity while you kick him in the chin!

Batman chases this guy down to the "fun fair". It's a place called "Gotham Fun Fair". It's a carnival or a theme park. Probably run by The Joker. When I think of a "fun fair", I think of some shitty little elementary school charity fiasco where they raise money by setting up stupid games, do Cake Walks, and send a metric ton of goldfish to their doom. The "Gotham Fun Fair" has a Ferris wheel and a roller coaster so I'm pretty sure it's more like a boardwalk, especially since it's on Gotham Bay. It also has an old-fashioned freak show where people say words that the kids today would rather throw themselves off of a cliff than ever say out loud.

I hope there aren't any gypsies on display!

Just so you know: I didn't type that word! I copied and pasted it from a racist government account on Twitter! I didn't even think it! I thought "the g-word" the entire time! So get off my fucking back!

The stupid M-word is offended by the guy calling him stupid but not because he called him stupid! It's because he called him a stupid M-word when he's actually a stupid D-word! Wait. I can say dwarf, right? Back in 1992, nobody cared about respecting what a little person wanted to be called because they were too busy debating the differences between a "midget" and a "dwarf". Seriously. I'm not being facetious. That was like a huge debate when adults got together over wine for more than an hour. Once people ran out of things to talk about, 100% of them would suddenly be all, "What's the difference between a dwarf and a midget?"

The three men hassling the little person threaten physical violence when he outwits them with the insults. But then the tall freak comes out and threatens to beat the shit out of them. Since they don't have an even taller friend to back them up, they skedaddle. That's the law of physical violence. The tallest person is always the strongest. This is where a young person would add "no cap" but I respect myself too much to use the lingo of the new generation. For shizzle.

Batman loses the nondescript white male in the sea of nondescript white males enjoying the fun fair. Being the great detective that I described him as earlier, he decides to go hassle the freaks in the freak show. Surely they're up to no good even if they're very descript white males (and some females).

I don't know why that middle lady is a freak. Because she loves to sit in carbonated water? Who doesn't?!

Imagine if Rob Liefeld had been asked to draw the lady in the tank. You'd definitely have to assume she was a freak for sitting in carbonated water because who would be able to tell Liefeld's deformed feet from his regular old boring feet?

The woman running the freak show, Gina Corolla, looks a little like a G-word so I'd like to move on quickly before the young people reading this get overly anxious about practically nothing. She yells at Batman for assuming her employees were criminals and drives him out. Her freak employees defend Batman's actions and she's all, "Yeah, I guess I'm just a little on edge because I'm horny."

"And I can't fuck any of you! Not because you're all weird! HR reasons! Power dynamics! It would be inappropriate!"

Just like the Flea Circus previously, the freak show's been losing money and almost insolvent. Of course it is! Just like the Flea Circus, nobody fucking wants to pay money for this stuff anymore! It's the late 20th Century! We're, if not better people, more apt to get an eyeful of weird shit on the television. And pretty soon the Internet! Nobody ponying up the bucks to see a fucking flea pull a wagon or to see a lady with a little extra skin between her toes. Although she is in a bikini and sitting in a tank of bubbly water. I suppose in 1992, I'd've paid to stare at that.

Just like the Flea Circus owner's grandson was robbing bars to pay for his granddad's debts, it looks like some nondescript white male might be robbing bars to pay for the Freak Show's debts. Come on, Alan Grant! You can't keep telling the same stories by replacing the nouns like some Comic Script Mad Lib! Although I don't actually know if the nondescript white male has been stealing for the Freak Show yet. That's me speculating and assuming again! Making an ass out of you and me and the speculum!

Just like in "The Human Flea", Batman suspects the person he spoke to while investigating the robberies isn't telling him everything they know. So he circles back to keep a close eye on the Gotham Fun Fair and maybe get a little more hassling in on the freaks.

Bruce goes undercover to stake out the Gotham Fun Fair from the inside. He's really staking all his chips on the freaks being behind this rash of robberies. He could patrol the neighborhood where the robberies keep happening and maybe run into the same guy he chased but why do that when he can pretend to be a day laborer and flirt with the hot freak show lady?

As an added perk, he gets to punch a guy just looking for some work right in the face. And his violence pays off!

Batman makes sure to think in one of his narration boxes about how he slipped the guy he punched in the face $100 to make up for it. Just like a rich guy. Thinks money excuses any behavior.

I suspect Bruce doesn't actually care too much about solving this case. I think he heard how horny this hot Gina lady was and decided he's pretty hot and horny as well. Why can't his detective work benefit his penis now and then, you know?

Bruce learns that one of the freaks, the guy with no arms and no legs whom they call Texas, hasn't been with the show long. Also, he's about the right size to fit in the duffel bag of the guy Batman encountered on the street. Also a guy with no arms and no legs is the perfect person to slip into a bar, crawl across the floor, climb the bar with their teeth and tongue and lips, pop open the register with their nose, hoover up all the cash into their mouth, and roll back out again without tripping any alarms. Or maybe he just unlocks the door from the inside after being shoved in a barely open window?

It's also possible that Texas is just Gina's ex-boyfriend with his head sticking out of a box with a fake torso on top. The perfect and not-at-all problematic disguise for a criminal!

Except now I'm just like Batman! Blaming the freaks for the crimes of just another nondescript white male! Because it turns out, Mike, Gina's "boyfriend", just walks into bars when somebody's got the safe open, commands them to give him the money, then makes them forget anything happened. He's got mind powers! No wonder Batman can't remember who he is! Or maybe simply because Batman threw him in jail five years ago and he was just a nobody back then.

Batman notices Gina sneak back to her trailer when the cops arrive to investigate some petty crimes at the Fun Fair. He follows her for one of two reasons. Either he suspects she's working with the bar robber . . .

. . . or he just can't get enough of that ass.

I was pretty sure it was the ass but then if he was following her to get a whiff of that tight caboose, he probably wouldn't be doing shit like this once he caught up to it:

Whelp, he's not getting any of that ass now.

Being an expert knife thrower, Gina manages to stop Batman from chasing down her boyfriend by pinning his cape to a wall. He points out she's just become an accessory to a crime and she's all, "You're trespassing, breaking and entering, assaulting me, threatening me, and you have no proof that anybody stole anything. Get the fuck out of my fun fair." And just like that, Batman slinks away, chastised. Is she Batman's most powerful nemesis?!

The Ranking
What a great story! It was so good the first time I read an Alan Grant story about an obsolete entertainment needing to turn to crime to finance its existence that I was all, "I hope he does another story just like it!" And oh lordy did he! But I didn't realize at the time that what the story was missing was a hot woman in tight pants who was so horny she was in emotional distress! I think I have a new type!

Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea: The Newsletter #61 (Third Thursday of January 2026)

E!TACT #61
Batman: Shadow of the Bat #13, Invasion: Book One, Eclipso: The Darkness Within #1, Cerebus #39, and Grunion Guy's Musical Corner of Music Reviews!!
By Grunion Guy

Comic Book Reviews!


Why's that balding guy wearing Batman's outfit under his suit?

Batman: Shadow of the Bat #13 (June 1992)
By Alan Grant, Norm Breyfogle, and Adrienne Roy

I don't know how people do it. How they begin a new life in middle age or later, I mean. Not that I'm considering that! It's just this story about a drunk who lost everything and wound up living on the street who accidentally learns Batman's secret identity got me thinking about it. The man in the story lost his family and business and turned to alcohol before becoming homeless and while that's one hardship I can hardly imagine, the thought that's actually burning uncontrolled through my brain right now is how somebody young losing their twenties and maybe even their thirties to drugs and alcohol and a transient life ever feels that life can actually be anything more. I'd constantly feel sad and hopeless about the life I had lost and the futureless life ahead of me. Maybe I'm looking at it through the eyes of a bit-too-old-for-change man. I once found myself convinced that I was a lost soul living on the street who had made up my actual life as a delusion to feel better about my actual circumstances. But that's because I was on a fuck-ton of psychedelic mushrooms and waiting in a strip club parking lot for my friends to emerge. I think I'd be bitter and angry constantly. I can't imagine I'd ever find a way to improve my life, partially because I'd think, "Why bother? I've already lost so much time."

I wonder if what I just described is how angry incels feel about all the years they've wasted online, missing out on actual experiences? I mean, they're bitter and angry, right? Do they also feel hopeless? Is that why they become so nihilistic? I wish they could find joy in something. But where do you start when you think the world has turned its back on you?

Now all the Wayne Industries security guards think Bruce Wayne was at a gay club all night.

Pretty sure Bruce Wayne wasn't supposed to be the one yelling "A trick!" in that panel above. Also his arm makes it look like he just chugged some Gingold.

Anyway, that houseless dude saw Batman's face when his mask was torn off in a fight with Johnny Zero (just some guy named Johnny with a shirt with a 0 on it). He recognized him immediately and thought, "Hey! This will help me turn my life around! I'll sell Bruce's information to the underworld!" And he tries but he's just a nobody with a secret and as everybody knows, especially terrible, awful people, the cops aren't going to investigate when a nobody turns up dead. When Mr. Nobody (not the Doom Patrol villain for whom I'm still deciding whether or not to sue Grant Morrison for identity rights) tries to sell Batman's secret to some guy named Doc Creasey, he winds up stabbed in the back for his trouble. Doc Creasey decides that the next night he's going to hold a 1992 Zoom Meeting to auction off Batman's secret identity. But Mr. Nobody doesn't die in the alley he was tossed; he wakes up just long enough to see Batman swinging through the morning sky and thinks, "I may have fucked up my entire life but that guy's got purpose. I should probably tell him what I did so he can get Doctor Fate to erase the mind of Doc Creasey." So he drags himself to Wayne Industries (or Enterprises? I don't know!) and confesses.

"I do it for the massive erection I get from breaking bones and punishing criminals!"

Mister Nobody makes sure to die because DC can't have extraneous people running around knowing Batman's secret identity. Luckily, Doc Creasey also dies later because, you know, of what I just wrote. Batman doesn't have to kill him; he just has to interrupt the auction (which actually becomes a kidnapping when The Joker decides he also doesn't want to pay for the secret) where somebody else does the killing for him. Standing amid the corpses of all the people who almost blew his secret identity, Batman thinks, "Another successful job by The Batman!"

The Ranking
I like how this issue told the story of how Batman lies to himself about the reasons why he fights crime when he could live the rest of his life on a yacht surrounded by hot women in bikinis. "Oh, I do it for the nobodies, man! Totally! Not because of my crippling PTSD, childhood trauma, and severe OCD at all! I'm like, um, Superman! Yeah! I do it for truth and justice! Go me!" Okay, Batman. If you want to believe it, I guess I'll pretend to believe it too.

Invasion! Book One: The Alien Alliance (October 1988)
By Keith Giffen, Bill Mantlo, Todd McFarlane, P. Craig Russell, Al Gordon, and Joe Rubenstein

When I first purchased this comic in 1988, I probably gasped at the "80 pages! No ads!" bit. But now that I'm thinking about writing about it, that just sounds exhausting. Good thing I've decided to resurrect my Newsletter format where I barely discuss the comic book, if at all! This'll be a breeze! Let me just type out "The Dominators invade Earth and kill a lot of people." Is that good enough?

No, it's not! Because to my surprise, this is the first comic book in my collection that has Todd McFarlane as the penciller! Holy shit! I didn't think I owned any comic books by him! Did they hire him to draw the Dominators because he was adept at fitting too many teeth in people's mouths? I don't know if Todd was known for that; I'm projecting my knowledge of Rob Liefeld onto Todd. Sorry, Todd! I know you actually grew as an artist over time!

Like, you probably eventually learned how to draw feet, right? Right?!

This comic book written in 1988 begins more woke than any other modern comic book (and I don't mean woke in, like, punching Nazis or Superman being a compassionate role model or whatever weird fucking shit those right wing idiots think woke means): the Dominators themselves declare that Earth is scary frightening because the Earth people's diversity makes them strong. Also probably their meta-genes. Maybe mostly their meta-genes. But they sure do go on and on about how they and the Khunds and the Durlans are basically the monocultures of alien life (I mean each species is a monoculture unto itself and not that all three are mix and match species). So right away, we see a group who thinks of themselves as the superior race in the universe, a group that are all exactly the same and love it that way, show intense fear and hatred for diversity. And also meta-genes!

Let me be clear: it's not the good guys obsessed with the purification of race in this book.

The titular "Alien Alliance" forms with nine different races. Todd McFarlane may have done the pencils with P. Craig Russell doing the inks on this chapter but take a look at this page and tell me if it screams "Keith Giffen" to you? Yes, he did the plot and breakdowns.

Could this page have been part of the breakdowns that Todd basically just redrew? Or traced?!

On closer examination of all the races, I notice the Psions seem to be different than I remember them. Aren't they usually more lizard-like? Is that another race I'm thinking of?! Maybe I'm just remembering all that shit David Icke revealed about the royals.

The first chapter ends with the alliance of nine races formed. The second chapter tells the story of the prisoners. The Dominators want to destroy Earthlings because they fear their potential, especially if they ever begin working together. But the thing that makes them special, the meta-gene, means the Psions want to take as many of them prisoner as possible. To vivisect them and discover their power. Along with whatever humans they can capture (like Adam Strange), they're also imprisoning any other aliens who try to fight back. This includes Brainiac of L.E.G.I.O.N. and all of the Omega Men who weren't killed while being captured. Adam Strange has been imprisoned with the normies but he wants to break out and find the place where they're keeping those with powers in the hopes to recruit them for a revolution against their keepers. This all takes place as the Dominion and their allies move the fleet within range of Earth's system to begin their assault.

Yeah, okay. This isn't Keith Giffen's work. Sure, sure. Todd did this. *WINK*

The invasion begins in Australia because the only super heroes there are gay and there's only like, what, two of them? I meant "gay" literally there and not in "lame". I am not an immature dweeb from the '80s. I mean, I was. But I'm not now! They easily defeat Australia to set up their base of operations. I think I remember the aftermath of some of this in Justice League International.

Chapter Four is both penciled and inked by Todd McFarland and, well, yeah it is.

Yep. Checks out!

Sixty-seven pages in and there hasn't been an appearance by a single super hero. Unless you count The Omega Men which, of course, you don't. Also Adam Strange but, I mean, you know what I mean.

A few pages are devoted to The Spectre being told by the Lords of Order not to interfere or else the Lords of Chaos might join up with the aliens. I thought The Spectre works for God not the Lords of Order? Not that it matters since the Lords of Order are basically concerned that if any magic wielding being participates in the defense of Earth, the Lords of Chaos may see it as interference and give them a right to interfere too. But if the Lords of Order have the option to interfere, why don't the Lords of Chaos interfere? What do they care about maintaining balance? They're chaos, man?! The Spectre seems to think he has to obey orders from the Lords of Order (oh? Is that why they're called that? They can order people around?!) so he rushes off to make sure none of the magic heroes take part in this battle. Boring!

Page 73 gives us the first appearance of an actual hero (The Spectre is not a hero. He's God's Vengeance or some nutty shit): Tasmanian Devil. See? Gay! The rest of Earth's heroes are told to stand down until they hear the Dominator's demands. When they come, they're told to stand up because Earth isn't giving in to the demands which are to give up the heroes. So politicians decided to fight instead of backing down and allowing fascists to take over? That's the most unbelievable part of this story so far!

The Ranking!
Was this 80 pages of prologue? I think this was 80 pages of prologue! The most exciting part of the story was when The Omega Men were battling the alien alliance and you know how exciting I found that? I'll let you know by telling you this: there's a fucking reason I don't own Lobo's first appearance. Because The Omega Men comic book looked like it sucked assholes! I don't know if it did but I saw it on the shelves month after month and I thought, "That looks stupid." Yeah, I know I'm the stupid one now because my favorite character of all time, Lobo (maybe tied with Ambush Bug), wound up appearing there first and I could have owned that shit off the shelf! Although luckily, for no reason at all, I was collecting DC Comics Presents back then so I do have Ambush Bug's first appearance! Yay for young me actually doing one thing fucking right!

I didn't realize that was an actual plastic diamond on the cover until I re-scanned it because the first scan was out of focus. Because of that fat old diamond.

Eclipso: The Darkness Within #1 (July 1992)
By Keith Giffen, Robert Loren Fleming, Bart Sears, Randy Elliott, and Mark Pennington

Hey! My Eclipso: The Darkness Within comics! Now I can box them with the Eclipso comic run (which was a huge mistake because they just couldn't get the tone right. Man, the concept fell apart so fast!)! It's kind of insane that my boxes of comic books have absolutely no organization to them. I think they're mostly by when I bought them and shoved them in the box. These probably haven't seen the light of day for thirty years!

Let's get this out of the way immediately and also this might not be a long review so I want to make sure I say this: I could not stand Bart Sears' art at this time. Everybody looks like they're roided out and constipated (just look at the cover!). In 1992, I had yet to cultivate my comic book tastes so I just purchased comics featuring whatever comic book character I liked and/or whatever huge Summer Event DC was trying to sell me. Eventually, I began to buy comics based on the writers and, less often, the artists. I'm not sure I ever refrained from buying a comic because I didn't like the artist but I definitely didn't buy comic books because I couldn't stand the writer. But that was a short period of years between "buy anything with characters I'm interested in" and "buy every single book DC publishes". The period between those two moments were the only time that I read a majority of Marvel books. Because all of the writers I loved had gone to Marvel!

The story begins in 1890 when Bruce Gordon (at least I'm assuming it's Bruce Gordon? Does he gain immortality when infected with the black diamond?), apparently travelling on the same boat as Joseph Conrad traveled on that served as inspiration for Heart of Darkness, braves the jungles of Africa to find the legendary Black Diamond (which is called "The Heart of Darkness"). He finds it, kills his partner, has the gem cut up into 1000 tinier gems, and, well, that's the prologue! 100 years later, we learn about Eclipso's secret base on the Dark Side of the Moon which we know means that the sun never shines on it. Because if the sun did somehow shine on the Dark Side of the Moon, which it totally doesn't, not ever, Eclipso would be destroyed. Luckily, at least in the DC Universe, the sun never shines on the Dark Side of the Moon. Somehow.

Oh, that's how. It's just a deep crater with anti-sunlight technology.

Valor is the first person to discover Eclipso's evil lair on the Evil Side of the Moon in Evil Crater. Probably because DC really wanted to make Valor happen. Did it work? I don't fucking remember. I know I bought in, at least for a little while. I own the first issue of his series if not a few more after.

Valor's easily possessed within Eclipso's palace which gives Eclipso an idea: invite all the other heroes to his house for a possession party! Or maybe just use Valor to go out and possess more heroes. Eclipso makes sure to mention how Valor's obviously more powerful than even Superman so the fans would be all, "Oh? I should check out this Valor guy! Is he starring in his own book yet?!" The answer to that question was "No! But wait until September! Hoo boy, it'll be the biggest event since the Death of Superman! I mean it'll be the biggest event until the Death of Superman!"

Bruce Gordon appears next and he's obviously not the guy from 100 years before because even though he has exactly the same roided out and constipated body type, his hair color is different. Bruce studies the black diamond to try and figure out how it's attached to making him turn into Eclipso when he stubs his toe or gets cut off in traffic. But he just can't figure it out. Until it begins to react like a sperm attracted to a hot, sexy egg. It swims to the edge of the petri dish so Bruce concludes that it's trying to get somewhere. Bruce takes it along like a little sperm bloodhound and they head out to find a sexy ovum.

Oh yeah! Baby making time!

Actually it's murder time. But you probably guessed that because the picture that should have been a sexy naked lady was an angry Eclipso-faced and fully dressed woman with a knife. My erection nearly flagged when I saw that. But then it just got harder for some reason? Hmm, I'll just note that down to discuss with my therapist.

Bruce finds a second Black Diamond on the woman possessed by Eclipso after he defeats her by shining a flashlight at her. How was this a huge summer event if Eclipso can be defeated by pointing a three dollar light at him? Oh, wait. I remember. Gordon's little gizmo actually produces "sunlight" or something. That's why there was an earlier scene to show that his flashlight's bulb was burnt out so he had to take his special Anti-Eclipso light gun.

But now that Bruce has found two Black Diamonds, he realizes Eclipso has been planning something way bigger than just fucking with him by turning him into a murderer whenever he's slightly irritated. Little does Bruce know, there are 998 more Black Diamonds out there waiting to make people murder each other! I'm sure glad DC didn't have 998 monthly titles or they definitely would have tried to make everybody buy 998 stupid Annuals in the summer of 1992.

If only The Phantom Stranger hadn't been too busy polishing his thirty pieces of silver, he could have stopped this whole event and saved me so much money!

Eclipso takes over The Creeper next as a test case. Unless Eclipso just wants to gather up the most irritating heroes he can find. Maybe one of each? He's got boring and irritating. So next he's going after most powerful with Superman. But thanks to Bruce Gordon, leading expert in solar sciences, Eclipso's defeated before he can trick Superman into picking up the Black Diamond and getting angry. Although does Superman get angry? I guess it depends on who's writing him at the time.

The Ranking
The reason Eclipso has been tormenting Bruce Gordon all these years and not living up to his full potential is that Eclipso wanted to delay the advancement of solar sciences and solar energy and LaserTag equipment that mimics the sun's rays. The sun's light, being the only thing that can hurt or defeat Eclipso, had to be kept where it couldn't hurt him: 93 million miles away. Which actually makes you wonder: what good would an Eclipsoed Superman be? Superman's full of yellow sun energy so can he even be turned? Or can he only be turned when he has none left and then what? He's as useless as Jimmy Olsen! I don't think Eclipso thought through going after Superman first. I don't remember if Superman ever does get possessed but it probably doesn't happen in the next chapter of this story: Superman: The Man of Steel Annual #1. That's because Superman probably had like four different annuals in the summer of 1992 and it wouldn't be great if he were possessed right from the start. I was going to say I'll never find out because why would I have the Superman: Man of Steel Annual #1 but you know what? Seems like I really went for this event in 1992! Looks like I've got most, if not all, of the annuals! Oh boy¡ I used the upside-down exclamation point to indicate that I'm actually the opposite of excited.

Dave Sim was making fun of Image artists a decade before Image existed! Except Sim can draw a mean fucking foot.

Cerebus #39 (June 1982)
By Dave Sim

When I last read Cerebus, the story was in the middle of Petuniacon, a Comic-con-like convention to highlight the candidates for Prime Minister. The candidates running are Cerebus, Lord Julius, Elrod, and K'cor. Cerebus wants to be Prime Minister because Astoria wants him to be Prime Minister. At some point, his ambitions were hijacked by Astoria and I'm not sure when (if ever) he really regains control of his life. Once he's put on this course, he's too lazy or stubborn to change direction. It's possible he tries during Jaka's Story but once his life as a houseguest falls apart thanks to the Cirinists, he once again loses his free will as he feels compelled to destroy Cirin. He probably has a few more chances to do his own thing and go his own way but he's way too easily manipulated by other people, either directly or simply by their influence. Last issue he almost broke free from Astoria's grip when he attempted to murder Elrod but she stopped him because killing Elrod wouldn't be politically expedient. Although it would have been satisfying.

I think they would have been saying, "I say, I say, son, that white-skinned boy sure is leaking a lot of red stuff. Blood, that is."

Mr. Blakely drops by and patronizingly ushers Astoria out of the room. Not many people can tell Astoria what to do but Blakely makes sure she realizes that he could easily run for Prime Minister himself and then where would she be? Without a dank little aardvark to manipulate? Blakely, of course, thinks that he's manipulating events for the benefit of the Church of Tarim. He needs to find the right candidate to rally behind to either turn everything around (as the city is falling apart and the Church has self-exiled for the time being, seeing abhorrent prophecies everywhere) or become a patsy. Everybody Cerebus meets tends to think Cerebus is a patsy so, um, Blakely's probably headed in that direction. The only problem is that Cerebus is some kind of magickal, talismanic figure which fate and prophecy can't seem to touch.

Before they even begin to discuss whatever business Blakely wants to broach, Lord Julius walks through in a towel to borrow the bath. Cerebus takes it in stride. Blakely near pisses himself. Lord Julius does the thing where he confuses the fuck out of everybody around him, calls for a taxi in the middle of the Ambassador Suite, and then disappears. The taxi driver arrives moments later through the front door while The McGrew Brothers come in through the back. It's pure chaos because, again, Cerebus is some kind of magickal, talismanic figure which not only can fate and prophecy not seem to touch but which also sews chaos in his wake. Oh, and the taxi driver turns out to be The Moon Roach.

Kevitch is basically Khonshu.

We learned previously that Dirty Drew seems to be so super attractive that even Astoria tried to fuck him. That's why the voice in Moon Roach's head notices how hot he is.

After Elrod barges in to brag about replacing Cerebus as the Ranking Diplomatic Representative of Palnu (and Cerebus beats the shit out of him, proving he's a more capable warrior than Elrod) and The Regency Elf admits she wrote the graffiti about Cerebus peeing in the sink, Blakely's seen enough. He winds up agreeing to write a letter of recommendation for Cerebus as Prime Minister even though, after every person barged in, he thought he could use that as an excuse to not recommend Cerebus. But Cerebus reacted correctly each time, barely fazed by any of it.

The Ranking!
We're still early days in Cerebus's 300 issue run when it's still fun and chaotic and carefree. Sim's a master at these early days of his storytelling where most of the characters are mostly one note (and often caricatures of other characters or famous people). This allows him to play up how Cerebus is the only character with any real free will and, I imagine, it's what helped him move the story along. In any situation, Sim knows exactly how Lord Julius will act or Astoria or Elrod or The Roach. They're barely two-dimensional. They're punchlines with straight narratives. But it's how Cerebus reacts to each of them in every scene that builds Sim's story and keeps Sim guessing as to how he's going to continue. Sure, he's definitely plotted a lot of this out. He's a master notetaker who pretty much knows the beats of the story. But that's all built around how Cerebus will surprise him in any give situation as he comes up with every new plot point. Or how Judaism and Islam and Christianity would absolutely surprise Sim when his plans for the end of the series went from a parody reading of The Bible by a selfish, ignorant barbarian aardvark to Sim's own interpretation of Genesis (by way of misogyny and conservative beliefs). "Surprise!" said the religions of the Book, "You're penultimate story won't be funny anymore! It'll be a long, boring trudge of a read as you explain that there were two Gods in The Bible, one good male one and one evil female one! What a genius to be the only person in all of history to understand how the pronoun used for God was actually two different pronouns discussing two different gendered Gods! Not crazy at all!"

It's possible I've forgotten a lot of that penultimate run of Cerebus and I'm miscategorizing some of it. If that's so, I apologize to Dave. We'll see for sure whenever I get that far into the series again! But before then, lots and lots of great plots, genius characters, and loads of laughs! Especially when Oscar Wilde lays dying for ten issues! Ha ha ha! So good!

Grunion Guy's Musical Corner of Music Reviews!

Electric Salsa (Baba baba) by Off (1986)
After some initial "Baba baba"s and a single line, this song begins with a simple Casio beat while a guy clears his throat, blows a load, and then takes a shit. Don't worry if that was your favorite part because he'll do it again later after the Casio horns and some rather tepid verses. I find it hard to criticize the lyrics as they're in English and singer slash DJ was German (Sven Väth). You can't (or at least, I can't!) shit all over a guy because the lyrics he wrote in a non-native language are simple and trite! I mean, I'm pretty sure English was Rebecca Black's native language and I never got on her case about the trite lyrics in "Friday"! I just listen to it and dance and sing along! Also this was released in 1986 which was practically the stone age for electronic dance music. So you probably have to forgive the simple Casio sounds and one note beats, right? Although Seth could have been a little more honest about his dance groove and named it "Electric Ketchup" instead of "Electric Salsa" because there ain't a bit of heat in this tune. At one point, he refers to himself as the Master of Salsa and I would have laughed out loud if I wasn't dancing so hard. Doobie doobie doobie doobie doobie bah bah!
Grade: B-.

Moron's Moron by Scratch Acid (1986)
A bassy intro leads into a song which sounds like it could have been the B-side off a single of "Black Dog Runs at Night" by Angelo Badalementi, David Lynch and the Thought Gang. For a band labeled as "noise rock", I was surprised to find less noise and more music. Sure, there's screaming and an intense bassy build up. But you don't say you play "noise rock" and then make me listen to actual music. What the fuck, man? If this is "noise rock" then isn't all music "noise rock"? Maybe I just don't understand the definition of the genre. Should I look it up? It could just mean "music in which you can't understand any of the lyrics except the word 'fucking'". Oh, check out this line from the definition of "noise rock" on the Wikipedia page: "The term 'noise rock' is a portmanteau of 'noise' and 'rock' music." Wow! I never would have fucking imagined! I'm so glad that's cleared up. Ultimately, I don't give a shit about pretentious portmanteaus masquerading as ever more specific names to describe a piece of music. What did Douglas Coupland call it in Generation X? "Musical Hairsplitting."
     Overall, for a band named Scratch Acid playing a genre specifying that it's at least half composed of "noise", this was pretty fucking good. If I could open a worm hole, I'd take a cassette of Scratch Acid and hurl it back to 1986 to hit dopey fourteen year old me in the face so maybe I'd discover at least some interesting music.
Grade: B+.