The Killing Joke (1988)

Oh boy.

Nobody needs to hear my take on The Killing Joke so they're not going to get it. The Interet is full of people who have praised it, destroyed it, defended it, pissed on it, embraced it, deconstructed it poorly, and commented on it without having read it. And I have read none of them. Hell, I barely have any idea what Moore and Bolland think of the book after all these years, just a few hazy, half-remembered possible anecdotes from interviews read decades ago. But none of that matters anyway. When I read a book, I do so with all the evidence needed to understand it: everything contained within the book. Sometimes even that's not quite enough to understand a text and you know what happens then? I live with the mystery of it. I'm currently going on 25 years of living with the fucking mystery of who Zampanò lost and how he knew Pelafina so, believe me, I'll live with fucking mystery.

Then again, I'm not going to say nothing about it! This blog is more for me than anybody else. It's an addition built onto the side of my brain. A place for storage. But be forewarned: I'm not scanning any panels from it so this'll be text heavy. I can't bare to crease the cover or damage the spine on this thing even if it's a First Edition meaning it's the least valuable of all the fucking printed editions. Really? Thanks a lot, world! I happen to buy one of the most popular stories of all time when it was on the stand and it's the later versions that wind up being worth the real cash? Fuck you! I don't know who I'm yelling at. I suppose the "you" I'm telling to fuck itself is just the general concept of reality and our vague awareness and understanding of it. Maybe the "you" that needs to fuck itself are the collectors who obsessively need a version of every different colored cover. I sort of wish I had the hot pink one.

Secondhand information on this comic book litter the shores of my brain like the flotsam and jetsam washed up after two ships smashed into each other at sea. Two? More like millions, I suppose. I read this and not long after that, Oracle showed up in Ostrander's Suicide Squad, one of my favorite ever comic book runs. So I don't think I ever thought this book was out of canon because it had a direct effect on the DC Universe. To be fair, I don't think I thought too much about canon and non-canon stories at the time. Which is weird because I pretty much began reading comics because of Crisis on Infinite Earths which was DC staking out the borders on their canon claim and trying to clean up their messy little universe. But upon revelation that Oracle was Barbara Gordon behind a computer because she couldn't be Batgirl anymore due to being paralyzed, nobody could argue that The Killing Joke wasn't in continuity. Whether it was meant to be or not didn't matter anymore after that. So I never believed that Batman killed The Joker at the end of it which, I think, some people read into it? Again, I'm not really up on all the opinions people have on this comic, just a hazy bunch of disordered whispers.

Based on the story, it wouldn't make sense for Batman to kill The Joker at the end of The Killing Joke anyway. It goes against the entire characterization of Batman in it, a man actively trying to avoid that end. By the time the story is over, nothing has actually changed (I know, I know. I'll get to that soon enough!). The Joker did some shit. Batman stopped him from doing more shit (although he never stops him from doing all of the shit which really becomes a problem that Batman should think about over time (although time exists in such a weird state in comics. We see Batman having not stopped The Joker from murdering thousands of Gotham citizens over many decades. But that's not the reality of Gotham in comic book time. Maybe The Joker hasn't really caused that much harm in the mind of The Batman in any issue you're currently reading!). The Joker has been caught and, presumably, thrown back in Arkham where he'll eventually escape. Commissioner Gordon has had a rough time but hasn't gone mad like The Joker, narcissistically, thought he would. The status quo at the beginning of the comic book is the same as the status quo at the end of the comic book. It's just another story from another point of view about The Batman. It could easily have been forgotten, just a story occasionally brought up among long-time readers as an interesting little take on Batman trying to make peace and The Joker trying to prove he's not a psychopathic anomaly.

Except, of course, for Babs.

But I'll get to that! I promise! First, I wanted to say how, on this re-read, I was ready to see how obviously this was an out-of-canon story in that it seemed to expressly be describing The Joker's origin. But, of course, we can never know The Joker's origin, or who he is. That's one of the mysteries we, and The Batman, must live with. It's how I knew Batman sitting in Metron's chair and asking who The Joker is wasn't going to give him a definitive answer even if some kid on tumblr screamed at me that I don't know what I'm talking about and it was all going to be revealed. But, of course, the revelation Batman got wasn't about who The Joker was, it was some dumb shit about there being three Jokers. So reading such a definitive take had me thinking, "Aha! This is obviously an out-of-canon story!" But then The Joker casually mentions how he doesn't know what exactly the pain was that brought him to where he was and that he likes to imagine different scenarios for it. So what we got was just one of those possibilities. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what kind of "bad day" caused The Joker to go insane. What matters is that Batman had one of those "bad days" and he, too, became mentally ill. Obsessive. Compulsive. Dressed like a bat. But he didn't become a nihilist without hope. So while The Joker needs to prove that he's just had a normal reaction to a "bad day", Batman's existence proves him wrong. And maybe that's why they hate each other without really knowing each other. They sense what they could have become, something diametrically opposed to what they currently are. For The Joker, that's an affront, an insult, the greatest offense. Because it shows he could have been a better person but he just became a psychopath. For Batman, it brings out compassion and empathy and understanding. He understands having a "bad day" and wishes to extend a hand to The Joker before their constant conflicts end badly. This entire story is about Batman trying to help The Joker and The Joker trying to prove that he just went mad like any normal person would. Which is why Batman killing The Joker at the end makes no sense.

And then, of course, there's Babs. Talk about a Bad Day! If not for The Joker shooting Barbara in the spine and then stripping her naked and taking photos of her broken body, this comic book would probably have gently faded into obscurity. It's not like the rest of the story was handed down from on high by the Great Alan Moore. The Joker's monologues simply read like excised entries from Rorschach's journal. There's nothing really new or revelatory here. Maybe in 1988, showing Batman and The Joker were two sides of the same card was something not so plainly stated? I don't know about that kind of stuff. But if Babs hadn't been brutally shot and tortured by The Joker so casually just to try to make Gordon insane (some might use the shorthand "fridged"), there's just no meat on the bone of this story. And once you know the story, that cover just mocks you. It offends. It puts the reader in the position of the random victim of any psychopath.

But, yes, Babs wasn't a random victim. She was the daughter of the Police Commissioner. She was used to get to him. A woman tortured to more deeply explore a man's character. And while this might be seen more grotesquely year after year, as it's so obviously done time and time again, I'd wager it wasn't seen quite as manipulative and cynically when this appeared on the shelves. Rightly, it was meant to horrify and disturb. Especially when readers are used to something this drastic happening in some kind of event and not some one-off story tossed up on the shelves with no real link to any current monthly title. It was meant to be shocking because it was an act meant to drive Gordon (the father!) mad.

Ultimately, with many, many thanks to Kim Yale and John Ostrander, what happened to Barbara Gordon wound up being uplifting in the way The Joker tried to prove "bad days" couldn't be. Outside of this story, Barbara's ordeal gained the meaning Moore and Bolland never intended to give it. Sure, they make her strong after having woken up, concerned for her father more than her well-being and possible paralysis. What The Joker did to her is never explicitly mentioned aside from a casual mention from the dirtiest, most unkempt version of Detective Bullock ever depicted (quite a feat!) about how Babs had been found undressed with a lens cap nearby for a camera they couldn't find. We must, I think, assume there were only pictures. Kim and John, I believe, assumed that as well when they brought Barbara Gordon back as Oracle. Did she become the most well-known disabled super hero of all time? I don't know! Why would I know? Should I even say disabled?! Is that okay?

Kim and John are the true heroes of this book. Because the cynical side of me sees what other writers might have done with a follow-up to this story and it's not great. Babs possibly pregnant with The Joker's child? Right? Somebody thought about that, I'm sure. It's the only rational reaction to this story! Any normal person reading this story would think that's the next story! I can prove that I'm not the only one who thought it! All I need is a dilapidated amusement park, some joker venom, three little people in bondage gear, and a karaoke machine! I'll prove that I'm not the sicko! You're the sicko for not becoming a sicko in the way I became a sicko! You! You're the pervert for not wanting a story about Babs having The Joker's baby!

The Killing Joke Rating: B-. It's fine! Again, if not for the shock and horror of the random act of violence against Barbara Gordon, it would have wound up a footnote, maybe a fan favorite on some lists by people trying to prove their love of comics by picking something not that great but interesting enough. The joke at the end was pretty good though. Did Alan Moore write it or was that an old standard? I don't know! But Batman thought it was funny so it must be a new one. Because Batman mentions earlier how if he's heard a joke before, he doesn't laugh at it (unless the main point was that he doesn't laugh at "unfunny" jokes). Although Batman laughing? What's that about?! That's more out of character than when Kevin Smith wrote that Batman pissed his pants! Why isn't Moore taken to task for that huge writing blunder?! Some people! You just can't criticize them, I guess.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 4: The Tempest #6 (June 2019)

"This comic book is too woke!" screams some lunatic because of the three women on the cover while ignoring the Gollywog in the background.

Look, I just made up that lunatic out of my imagination. Some might call that a straw man and those "some" would be delusional centrists who choose not to believe in lunatics behaving lunatically so they can not believe in anybody warning them about the lunatics. "Both sides are so crazy!" is a thing they are able to say because when they decide not to see the lunatics then the people pointing out that there are lunatics seem like lunatics themselves. I've seen it with older in-laws living in red states. They think you're crazy when you point out reality because their information sources never point out reality. So if reality doesn't exist for them, anybody expressing concern over the current realistic conditions in our country just appear like Chicken Littles screaming that the sky is a white supremacist nation and the only thing that concerns members of the right wing party in America is when the government helps people who are not white or male or rich. The most pressing concern for Republicans is coming up with a new dog whistle for the N-word when the current one becomes too obvious to centrists. Lee Atwater's quote about how you have to find new ways to say the N-word is pretty much the entire Republican strategy. N-word. Forced busing. States' rights. Thugs. Woke. DEI. It's their only platform and I hope they all fucking choke on it as soon as possible.

Lotta people in power who can't swallow two barrels of 000 buckshot fast enough.

This might be the last cheated artist article by Al and Kev but remember, kids: almost all comic writers and artists have been cheated by their publishers!

The issue begins with a scene in 1904 in which Mina Murray has just finished afternoon tea with Sherlock Holmes and Alan Moore is all, "I'm going to do a little tiny meta for the fans."

I don't mean the elephant. If I knew what the elephant was and was commenting on it, I would have said "reference" instead of "meta".

The elephant is being chased away from Holmes' bee-keeping farm by a man with a bident. It must be a Heffalump going after the honey. But if a Heffalump makes an appearance here on Sherlock's estate, can we at least maintain a sliver of belief that Pooh and Piglet were also once members of The League? Maybe a back-up League dealing with smaller and less apocalyptic mysteries?

Mina and The League have just destroyed Moriarity and she's asking Holmes to be a sort of League mentor and advisor. But he refuses, wanting nothing to do with the superpowered and strangely unique. He believes there is no place in regular society for them, himself and his powers of perception and logic included.

Heffalump confirmed!

Holmes surrounds himself with metaphor, the bees being a version of society he sees as orderly and humane, the Pooh Bear representing the concept of Tao, the raging farmer chasing away the Heffalump something, um, about capitalism and class struggle?

Holmes compares Mina to Irene Adler which is a compliment and an acknowledgment that Mina doesn't need his mentorship; she is equal, if not better, to the task of League leader on her own. He also mentions that if a unique and selfish bee were to present itself to the colony, the colony would have to flee the chaos which would ensue. Was he, in 1904, seeing the pattern presented by Prospero and the fairies which would lead Mina and The League to remove themselves to the moon in 2010? Probably!

Back in 2010, all of the fictional characters that have immigrated to Lincoln Island evacuate into Nemo's Nautilus Rocket for immediate evacuation from Earth. Who are they? I don't know!

David Bowie's Starman? Blofeld? The Beagle Boys? Mindman, Electrowoman, and Captain Universe? Six-Gun Gorilla? The Moneypennies? The Pink Child and her Bodyguard? Um, a load of others?

I put a question mark by all the suggestions because I don't want to appear arrogant that I might actually know who Moore and O'Neill were going for, even if they're main characters!

Satin Astro finally meets Vull the Visible aka Mina Murray and lets her know about how the world goes into an apocalypse spiral from this point on. Being that this is a 2000 A.D. parody, she explains how the world gets fucked in Judge Dredd style with killer sentient radioactive monkeys and killer robots. Or that's just Terminator meets Planet of the Apes. Or both, probably!

Emma Night and Orlando console each other with their failure to kill that sexist piece of shit James Bond even though the fairies got him in a nuclear blast that was contained by Captain Universe. Also he didn't die in that blast but nobody knows that yet. He sneaks on board the Nautilus with Spy vs. Spy and The Shadow.

Van Dusen takes a moment to describe more of mankind's fictional nightmares attacking the world.

I don't know these references but they sound Lovecraftian with the odd-angled house and the fishmen.

The final images of Earth being destroyed are broadcast to the Nautilus as everybody climbs into their launch recliners: a Jabberwock decimating London. Leaving Earth to its nightmares, the Nautilus flies past the moon where they see gigantic ants, the Selenites, killing the inhabitants of all the various nations' Moon Bases. But they're leaving all the technology intact as if they're being directed by some sentient being or, as they postulate, black monolith! But it's not just the Selenite army they witness forming on the moon; it's also the army of Amazons which Mina dealt with previously (I think it was in the all text adventures described in one of the earlier volumes). But the Amazons are simply stealing the Earth ships and heading to Venus. Seems logical.

Bond bides his time as the trio of women from the cover discuss a few stories from their past, like how Mina told some sci-fi magazine editor her adventures on the moon which must be where the previous all text adventure came from. This chapter ends with the revelation that the Amazons have already conquered Venus and are possibly heading to Mars next. Marsman cries like an Earth baby.

"They've changed those Amazons from the frozen mountains (of the moon)!"

On Mars, the League find evidence that mankind's nightmares have overreached Earth itself and breed anew on Mars as well. Anywhere human contact has been made, their dreams and nightmares have traveled with them.

Mars got the really spooky nightmares.

All the evidence points to Prospero and the fairies manipulating mankind for its entire history. Mina has been nothing but a pawn. It was Mina who provided the Amazons with the frozen body of Professor Moriarty so that they would have access to his sperm. The next generation of Amazons included men and after long having been pacifists, they were now warmongerers. Holmes's prophetic bee metaphor now haunts Mina's thoughts. Was it her uniqueness, intelligence, and power which caused the downfall of Earth as she was puppeted by Prospero from behind the scenes?! Will she be able to reverse this seemingly unstoppable chain of events? Or will James Bond save the day, an unlikely Gollum accidentally derailing the entire plan as he selfishly tries to fuck more women? Or kill them, I mean?

The revelation that Mina may have been the unwitting pawn of the Fairy all along comes at the center of this issue. That means it's important! I mean, even if it wasn't at the center, it would be an important revelation, I guess.

The Nautilus, unable to make landfall on the moon, Venus, or Mars, continues deeper into the solar system looking for their new home: Captain Universe's Universarium in the Oort Cloud. Captain Universe has opened his home to Jack Nemo and his refugees on one condition: Jack, Captain of the ship, performs a marriage ceremony between Captain Universe and Electrogirl.

On their way, they pass by Jupiter whose orbit is chock full of black monoliths.

Double-O Seven? More like Double-O Anticlimactic.

Yeah, James Bond doesn't do anything exciting at all after all the sneaking and stalking and sexual assaulting.

The marriage between Captain Universe and Electrogirl goes off without a hitch minus the close call with sparking the oxygen in the ship and blowing everybody to smithereens when the bride and groom kiss. Also there's the matter of two wedding crashers who get their comeuppance.

The super tiny speech bubble from Kev reads, "Al, you're a complete cunt."

So that's it! That's the end of everything! Except for the last installment of the Seven Stars battle against the 'Mass and maybe an epilogue or two detailing what happens when Earth has been destroyed by man's imagination.

The Seven Stars' story ends with Zom returning Toby the Schoolboy to his overly fat size so that he can consume the 'Mass and save the country. Most of Britain's heroes have died and the Seven Stars discover that their careers are over since they've all been Seduction of the Innocented into bad press and legal troubles. The team breaks up and Mina heads off to go crazy for a few decades.

The final epilogue reveals that New Lincoln in the Oort Cloud continues to prosper as they watch every fictional alien invasion of the solar system from every year after 2010 blast toward Earth. I guess 2010 was the end of the world because of the 2001 sequel? We did see the monoliths around Jupiter and they were apparently tools of Prospero and the Fairies in controlling and manipulating mankind. The entire series ends with Mister Hyde resurrected in a new immortality pool recreated by Captain Universe so that Mina can have somebody to dance with. Also the Pink Child winds up dating Astro Boy. The end!

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 4: The Tempest #6 Rating: A+. I haven't read the parody letters page yet because I never really write about it even if it's possibly the greatest part of every issue. I wish Alan Moore would make fun of comic book readers more often! Anyway, that's it. I'll probably understand it all better when I re-read the previous volumes (probably out of order). Just one last scan and I'm done!

Zom!

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 4: The Tempest #5 (February 2019)

I dare! I dare!

Prospero's army of fictional monsters were set loose at the end of the last issue with help from Mina and James Bond and Orlando and all the others because they've all been manipulated by Prospero and the Fairies for hundreds of years! It's only the fifth issue out of six so I don't feel like this is the big twist. An even bigger one has got to be around the corner. But in the meantime, the world is about to be destroyed by Shirtless and Winged Spock, Sam Weir, the mascots from The Trees of Mystery, Harambe, a massive acid-spitting pronoun, and Frankenconductor. I don't know about you but I think I could take them. At the very least, I could defeat Sam by throwing an egg at him and ruining his stupid fucking life. Nerd!

In this issue's "Cheated Champions of Your Childhood" segment (Alan Moore playing fast and loose with the word "your"), Moore lets slip exactly what they're parodying this issue: "British reprints of pre-code American crime and horror comics." Does he do that every issue and I just missed it? I think every issue, I'm supposed to understand what's being parodied by the style and career of the person who was cheated. Or, at least, the era in which they worked. Because Moore ties the theme into the reason they're spotlighting this month's Cheated Champion: Denis McLoughlin!

Holy shit!

Man, Alan Moore fucking hates business people as much as The Kids in the Hall do! I suppose since one of the themes of Jerusalem is that artistic nostalgia can redeem us, I can see why he can't stand what publishing companies do to the artists who create all of the art. I don't mean to suggest that he pays them much mind during his life. He's too busy creating! But when he does think about them, he's not holding back. And yet he's doing it in such a fun and whimsical way. I love me some seriously subversive art. That's why I like The Monkees so much!

Shut up. You don't know.

Oh, I didn't finish my thought about how little Moore thinks of the people on the business side! I brought it up because it seems the people on the business side think about the artists all the time and how much they hate them and despise having to pay them and they resent them for every single imaginative creation they produce because the money grubbing business assholes couldn't come up with a fun thought if they were, um, forced to come up with a fun thought! Stupid headed fart butts.

This issue begins with Osiris telling Richard Dadd to kill his father (whom he thinks is the devil). Whenever I read a name in a League comic, I always check it on Wikipedia so I can get some context and possibly understand some of what Moore's going for in the story. If you're reading this, you're on the Internet (presumably! I'm sorry for anybody reading this if I actually got around to printing all 4000+ reviews as 'zines! But you probably have a Musk Brand Brain Internet Connection so you can just quickly learn about it from Musk's AI Wikipedia. I'm sorry that you still won't be any less ignorant than before, you poor future thing) so you can look it up yourself. It's quite a sad story in only one aspect: the fact he killed his father. All the other stuff? Grand! Inspirational! A dream! He wound up living nearly 40 years of his life in a mental institution painting every single day and just doing art. And all he had to do was kill his father?! Man. My dad owes me so much, I wonder if he'd let me do a Dick Dadd on him?

Here's O'Neill's interpretation of him.


And here's Dadd. Kev fucking nailed the eyes! (Photo by Henry Hering.)

What young Dick tries to describe is the sudden onset of schizophrenia. Probably! Two of his siblings had it and another one might have. It's either that or Moonknightinism. Dadd's narration is mostly from a small gnome, a figure you can see in his work, "The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke." He declares that the image he painted was the final moment before fairy set loose upon the world all of its fictional monsters and nightmares. Looking at the painting, you can see a fairy about to bring a hammer down on an acorn while the self-portrait of Dadd as a gnome huddles by looking anxious and worried. He has painted the final moment of the world and then become trapped within.

The moment after the last moment of a world not undergoing an apocalypse.

If you don't have your 3D glasses on, that's Mina and Jack in the background trying to escape the world of Faerie so they can return home and save it from Sam Weir, Harambe, and Baba Yaga's Chicken Hut (not featured on the cover but featured within).

When everybody's fictional nightmares have been released (I'm assuming some people have a phobia for bunnies so you've got to believe Fivel and Peter Cottontail are out there tearing people's heads off), London has a major blackout. They're probably related but since nobody in London knows that their childhood nightmares are roaming the streets, they just assume Tory incompetence. Also Labor incompetence. Fuck Starmer.

Oh, they're also probably not related because I just remembered that Electrowoman caused the blackout by having an orgasm in the middle of the street. I mean tantrum. It's just I haven't acted like a horny comic book reader yet and something was bound to give.

Understanding that I have the mind of a horny juvenile (and also because he's parodying those aforementioned horror and crime comic books), Alan Moore has introduced a ghostly narrator character helping keep the plot straight for me.

Great. Now I want to fuck Marsman.

The paper used in this comic book is of such high quality and are so glaringly white that my scanner often reads the white border as the underside of the scanner's lid and cuts it out of the scanning preview as you can see in the previous scan where my scanner decided the top of the page was the top of the panels and not the extra quarter inch of white paper that was also scanned.

Those were two of the Bonds that killed each other thanks to Marsman and his titties. The last three movie Bonds remain back at Vauxhall monitoring the blackout. Their generators give them enough power to receive incoming messages from around the world and they realize that monsters have begun attacking the rest of the world. Oh, also London is under attack by werewolves. Get it? Ha ha!

Mina, Jack, the Hercules fellow, the racist doll, and the other ones I've forgotten try to flee the Blazing World but are attacked by Demogorgon. It's not the Demogorgon that's the rival of Orcus. It's, according to Mina, "a monster of the people." Basically it represents ignorant populists who believe they can understand the world through "common sense" and "gut instincts" and "intuition." So naïve!

Oh, now you're going to fetch your 3D glasses, hunh?

I don't know why Coghlan stripped naked to fight the Demogorgon. It's probably some lore I'm unfamiliar with. Next time I meet Demogorgon in a D & D campaign though, I'll know how to defeat that bastard.

Let me once again state how incredible the 3D work is on this comic book. Standing ovation to Charles Bernard and Christian LeBlanc who worked on the 3D process in this comic. Fantastic!

The little feller whose name I don't remember, the sporty guy in the flat cap, cuts the Demogorgon's head off with the scythe he won off the grim reaper. He mentioned it an issue or two ago and I probably thought he was just bullshitting everybody and it wouldn't be important to the plot. Oops!

After Demogorgon lies dead, the team reboard the Nautilus and head back to Lincoln Island to meet up with Orlando's team and figure out how to save the world.

Demogorgon losing its head is the exact middle of this issue. That's probably important. Something about populist comic book readers holding no power over how the story should end. They've just gone back to watching television, jerking off, and tweeting about how angry they are that they heard a rumor that there were three Black men playing Stormtroopers in A New Hope. I guess they need to feel like they've developed the ability to discern the Anti-Male and Anti-White secret messages in all forms of entertainment media (but especially those things created after 2008 because, well, you know why). I don't get why ordinary idiots can't just be happy being ordinary and living an ordinary life while being a dumb idiot who can't enjoy their stupid comic books anymore because a bunch of dumb dillholes like Ethan Van Sciver have serious low self-esteem issues? Stop trying to keep everybody else at your level, jerkos! This extremely online portion of the "ordinary" population constantly scream about freedom and free speech but then when the idiot they voted for gets into office, they seem to cheer all of his moves to end the free speech and freedoms of loads of other Americans. We see you, you assholes. And we will never forget. I wish somebody in a flat cap would cut all of their heads off!

The next story is called "What Happened at 3:08 AM?" Oh, did I mention this issue was divided into four stories like an old horror or crime comic book? This third one is about Mindman and Captain Universe. They've finally arrived back in London to help their old Seven Stars friends. But Mindman can't seem to get over the thought that something that he can't psychically see is going to happen at 3:08 AM! Doesn't that usually mean, if you're psychic, that it's the time of your death? When you can't see it clearly?! If I were Mindman, I'd be all, "I see myself shitting my pants soon!"

Meanwhile, a 3D fairy (who was also seen lurking in London in the story with the Werewolves of London) delivers a small box with the symbol of the original League of Extraordinary Gentlemen on it (a question mark) to Vauxhall. The movie James Bondses, not being incredibly smart or perceptive, bring it inside and decide to open it. A massive radioactive explosion occurs but Captain Universe and Mindman arrive just in time for Captain Universe to use his Polylocation power to contain the blast by making thousands of copies of himself and surrounding the blast with his bodies. M, the old main James Bond turned youthful, was not in the building because he was out test driving his fancy 007 car. He sees Captain Universe and Mindman save London and follows them to Orlando's team who are evacuating in one of Nemo's stealth fighters. Bond follows after them in his flying stealth car that's also a watch.

The final story's name is a totally hilarious literature pun!

Computer Van Dusen describes loads of scary things happening all over the world: Cthulhu, Giants, Vril-ya, vampires, and even the black monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sounds like everybody might be just a little bit fucked. That's why the League are getting out on Nemo's new ship, the Character Ark! Or maybe it's just called the Nautilus again. But this time, it's a space rocket that looks like a squid! Cool! They're headed to the moon where there's more black monolith activity. Also maybe a secret League base or something. I don't know! I haven't read Issue 6 yet. I mean at least not for six years! And whoever I was six years ago certainly didn't decide to retain any of the story for current me! Selfish prick.

The fifth part of the Seven Stars comic detailing their final battle contains the secret origin of Flash Avenger.

Gross! Poor people! Flash Avenger is my fave!

I'm not cross-posting these on tumblr anymore because I'm fucking tired of tumblr phasing out and not existing every three minutes or so and when I try to visit the site when it's not quite lined up with our reality, my browser crashes. But if I was, I'd probably be chastised by at least a few people for that previous caption because they don't have any ability to discern facetiousness. Or maybe not. Are they all still doing that Goncharov crap? Or that thing where somebody misuses a word and then somebody else reblogs it with, "No, that's X! What you're thinking of is Y!" But Y isn't right either and the next person is all, "No, that's Y! What you're thinking of is Z!" But then Z isn't right either and it just keeps going and oh it's so hilarious I'm pissing three pairs of underwear right now just thinking about it!

What I was trying to say before I so rudely insulted people on tumblr was that thank Christ's corpse that there were people who took pity on poor people like all of my friends' families when I was the poorest kid everybody knew growing up. Phil's family and Daniel's family and Sal's family and Davide's family and Doug's family and of course my aunt and uncle all treated me like I wasn't a dirty, stinky, smell, annoying piece of shit. Maybe I wasn't all of those things but if I was, they sure didn't make me think I was!

The Seven Stars battle the 'Mass but can't get the upper hand. It kills most of the British superheroes while every power the Seven Stars possess prove to be ineffective. But Vull comes up with a plan! She won't tell anybody though because that's how comic books work. You have to wait until the next issue.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 4: The Tempest #5 Rating: A+. What more do you want? I have a headache and I'm tired! Come up with a conclusion to the review yourself, you lazy bastich!

Satin Astro!

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 4: The Tempest #4 (December 2018)

Quick recap on the previous volumes!

Is Mina's comment in the second panel a critique of the movie based on Moore's comic book? Or just fan reactions in general? Do you suppose Alan Moore hates Steampunk? Or did he just hate the idea that people saw The League as Steampunk, which is a reimagining of the Victorian Era with steam-based technologies that didn't exist which were made up by the modern era author, when it was not technically anachronistic but accepted anything that had ever been written as if it actually existed (even having things exist in the past before the literature they were written in if the literary story took place in that past)? So if he introduced Nemo's submarine, it was only because it existed in literature at the time rather than an invention of Moore's asking, "What if steam technology enabled a submarine to exist well before one actually did?" Although that's not exactly a good example because The League stories pretty much all took place after submarines technically existed without steampunk technology. Whatever the case, I like that Alan Moore basically took the time to call some of his critics stupid asshats on an old-fashioned parody comic strip on his cover.

I am ignorant of most of these references (I meant that in an academic way and not in a popular culture "I Recognize What Movie/TV Show/Book That Name/Thing/Device/Idea/Line was from!" way).

One of the biggest problems with Libertarians is that they believe they exist inside a vacuum and that everything they know or have learned or experienced can be chalked up to something they did or something their brain figured out. They believe they live in a world based on their own actions, opinions, and gut instincts. To be a Libertarian, one must not believe in context. One must not believe in infrastructure. One cannot believe in inheritance. Any outside help they receive was never asked for and, as such, accrued no debt. Everything a Libertarian has ever done was done by that Libertarian alone. I mention this because somethings deserve context, need context, cannot exist outside of context. And yet a Libertarian will approach something like, say, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 4: The Tempest #4 and derive naught from it but what they've brought to it. Ultimately their opinion, rendered upon things they have never heard of before shines brighter than any information from outside. And even if they pick up some of the information presented, incorporating it into the context of "Their Knowledge", it has now been laundered into something they learned, by themselves, through outside reading. It is not something taught; it is something they found and now own. The context of accumulated knowledge thanks to civilization and history is not a platform that raises them up but a platform they either found and subsequently now own or, for many, something they simply built themselves.

Was that bit about context out of context? If so, I should explain a bit. I think some media needs the proper forum in which to be viewed. It's one of the reasons liberal arts classes are so important in colleges. Because a person can read Shakespeare on their own. But you get more out of Shakespeare if taught by somebody greatly familiar with his works and the times in which they were written and the stories from which Will stole. Some people read poetry and have favorite poets and yet they miss out on much of the context of their favorite poems because they never learn how much poetry is dialogue between the poet and the poets who came before. Absolutely nothing exists outside of the context of all of human experience and a dialogue with the past. One of the main reasons I suggest people read the Christian Bible is simply because it informs so much in every story that has come out of Western Civilization. Just like you should know every inch of the Bhagavad Gita if you want to understand past and modern media of India. And I bring all of that up to say this: Alan Moore's League comic books really should be read in a class forum. Alan Moore is a comic book and pulp story historian and he's not just writing whimsical little fan fiction fantasy stories here. He's engaged in dialogue with the past and the present and the future. There's context here and I, at least, am sorry for how much of it I'm missing out on.

Many years ago, I went to see Crispin Glover present his films, What Is It? and It is Fine! Everything is Fine. I don't want to discuss those films; I simply want to mention what Crispin Glover knew about context. He refused to let these films out into a contextless world. At the very least, he wanted to present them in a way to make them understandable to an audience. To let them out into the world without context was exploitation. To help create them and then present them to an audience as gently as possible, presenting why he thought they were meaningful, and how they came to be filmed and produced, and allowing for discussion with the audience afterward, was the only way he felt comfortable putting them into the world. I understand that there will always be a kind of narcissistic personality who doesn't believe they can be or need to be taught anything at all, that they can understand anything they need to by the power of their own unbelievably perceptive minds. I hate that kind of person and can only wish them a lingering and painfully unsatisfying end to all of their experiences.

This issue begins with some old time funnies.

I don't know what exactly British readers would recognize from this but I get old single page Mad Magazine gag vibes from it.

Orlando and Emma have subcontracted the murder of 007 to this guy King who is Bond's new M or something similar. I don't remember because I read a Justice League Quarterly between this issue and the last Tempest issue and it caused some light inflammation of the brain. It doesn't look like he'll be too successful. I gleaned that from the style of the comic book as well as his incompetence shown in the story. Luckily it was quite cartoony and silly so I only cried about the cat dying for ten to fifteen minutes.

The comic book continues with a story from one of the Special Team files that Bond and his group are studying: the League's encounter with Les Hommes Mysterieux. I was hoping for a Mystery Men parody but instead we just get Orlando fighting the albino Elric wielding his black sword, Stormbringer.

Thanks for the early reminder that this is also a critique of modern comic books and their audience, Elric!

As for the women who set King on his current task, they have recently made acquaintance with Satin Astro and Marsman. The four compare notes concerning their associations with Mina Murray and look over files stolen from M.I.5. by the Moneypennys (who were sick to death of all the sexual harassment and were easily convinced into helping Orlando and Emma). One non-Mina related coincidence Satin brings up concerns the most horrific space pirate in the 30th Century who also happens to go by the name of Orlando. Marsman figures it's the same Orlando and now Orlando knows she's going to be a cool pirate dude in the far future. That could be concerning since the catastrophe that made the 30th Century suck so much began when Orlando battle the Anti-Christ in 2009. Maybe the world doesn't need an immortal, gender-swapping miscreant sticking their nose into everything?! I said maybe because you could argue that Orlando causes as much trouble as she solves but, on the other hand, she's super cool!

Moore and O'Neill have decided that every turn of the page this issue should be part of a different thread of the story in a different style so now I'm back to Mina in the Blazing Worlds. And, apparently, I have to dig my 3D glasses back out because Prospero hasn't fully reversed the nuclear explosion yet. Also these pages are parodying Little Nemo in Slumberland. Mina and Jack Nemo take a tour around the Blazing World and go see a play while Prospero continues to undo the nuclear explosion. They observe that things don't seem to be as well-off as one would expect after an unmade nuclear explosion. But they're also too engrossed in speaking like Little Nemo characters to make any perceptive revelations.

The next adventure is another pseudo-comic strip thing, "The Adventures of Jerry Cornelius." Orlando meets up with Taffy Norton and two of his pals, Jerry Cornelius and the Vegetative Buddha (a guy who anchors London in reality) on a bench in a park in London. She's dressed like John Constantine and his initials are "J.C." and there are loads of ghosts and weird paranormal crap happening in the comic so maybe it's partly about Constantine in as un-suable a fashion as possible? Even though, you know, Moore created the character!

Orlando learns that London has reached its narrative end and all the fictional-turned-real characters are fleeing. She borrows Jerry's needle gun to help kill James Bond and then fucks off, leaving Taffy and Jerry to head out on their own adventures. At least Jerry helped me out on one thing that I've always been too lazy to care enough about to look up: a lyric in XTC's "War Dance". I was pretty sure the lyric was "There's a cheap sensation keeping Fleet Street wide awake" but never was sure about the "Fleet" bit. But since that's where Jerry's fucking off to because there's a sanctuary there for fictional characters, now I know and I never had to take the scant few seconds it would have taken to search the lyrics on the Internet! Laziness for the win!

I shouldn't call that laziness. I should call it something more spiritual and high brow. Like Taoism! I always knew the answer would just come to me if I kept my mind open to receiving it!

This issue is basically just a bunch of hilarious but oft-times disturbing sketches. It's like Donald Glover's Atlanta!

A lot of these threads, being told in half-page to two-page chunks, simply pad the stories and don't really move them forward too much. It's basically how comic books and comic strips work. Rare are the strips that allow characters to grow and move on like For Better or Worse, or comics like Cerebus. Most maintain a floating timeline where everything happens in a weird limbo that somehow includes major events across decades while the character maintains the same age. It's one of the reasons DC and Marvel love to reboot characters in one way or another so they can bring them up to date with the audience. Like how Sgt. Rock went from originally serving in World War II to serving in the '90s Iraq War in The New 52. What I'm trying to say is that I might be breezing through a bunch of these since I don't have the knowledge to discuss all the various styles of writing and art that Moore and O'Neill are using.

The Shakespeare play that Jack and Nemo venture out to see is called Faerie's Fortunes Founded. It's about secret League-style histories.

I think this is Shakespearean for "What Happens in Fairyland, Stays in Fairyland."

During the play, Mina learns that Prospero's original code was 007. That's important, right? He's all, "It seems like bosoms, or a brace of noughts; two O's within a seven bracketed." I didn't realize "007" was so sexy! But now I can't unsee it!

The play continues and describes the formation of Prospero's Men, the team that preceded The League. Its members were Prospero, Ariel, Caliban, Don Quixote, Orlando, the pilgrim from Pilgrim's Progress (I think), and that woman who flashed her tits in the last issue who was a character written in the 1960s but set in Elizabethan times. It was Queen Glorianna of the Fae who organized the team herself. She even mentions how the League, in time, will be run by a woman. Mina and Jack leave the play early, fearing some terrible long range plan by the fairies which Shakespeare wrote about to be performed secretly in The Blazing World four hundred and fifty years later?

The play within a play that reveals the conscience of the queen takes place at the center of this issue. That means it's super important and the bit which all else revolves around: the saving of the Blazing World, Mina's leadership, the assassination of 007, and the saving of the entire world. Somehow, the fairy are at the center of it. Also, did I mention that the ending of the last issue was the center of the entire story: Prospero unmaking the nuclear blast. So the first half of the story is about escalating destruction. The second half of the story will be about repair. Currently, here in America, we're in the destructive phase. Who knows when we'll get a chance to repair any of it. I can't pray any harder for clogged arteries on like five hundred different hearts.

After the play, there's a funny sketch involving all of the movie James Bonds stopping King's assassination attempt on the main Bond. In the chaos, Sean Connery Bond is killed and Timothy Dalton Bond takes a few needles to the arm. Orlando and Emma's disguises are exposed and they flee their surveillance outside Vauxhall.

After that, I have to put my 3D glasses back on because it's time for "Nemo 3-D"!

Are those creatures from the Upside Down?

Now that I've lost the last of my vision due to reading non-3D lettering through 3D glasses, I'm going to have to retire from comic book blogging. Thanks a lot, Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill! Truly it was worth it, though. The 3D effects in this comic book are so fucking good.

Mina and Jack realize the fairies are up to something and now they're working with the Demogorgon and his buddies from Stranger Things. The explosion decimating the Blazing World somehow purged it of some anti-fairy nonsense, or opened a portal (thus the Upside Downians being here?) that now allows the fairy easy access to the real world. Somehow, the destruction of the Blazing World was needed for whatever plans the Fae have for the real world. Probably the thing that causes the world to be so fucked up in Satin Astro's time!

Back in London, the Bonds begin to trace Orlando and Emma back to their hideout. But before they discover exactly where it's at, London experiences a total blackout due to Electrowoman becoming aggravated at the chaos around her when she steps back into the public eye looking for some serious man meat. The comic style during her temper tantrum is straight out of Mad Magazine with the final page being a Sergio Aragonés crowd scene. Also it could have been in the style of something more appropriately British which I wouldn't know about because I, sadly, am not British.

And finally, the plot is revealed to Mina and Jack. Prospero and Queen Glorianna put all the pieces in motion, the 007s serving Prospero who first carried the designation. The reason for Fairy's assault on the globe? Retribution for mankind disbelieving them into oscurity. Now the portal between realms is wide open and Earth shall be covered in fictional nightmares like Godzilla, King Kong, and, um, Paul Bunyan? The rebuilding of the world in Prospero and Glorianna's eyes begins now and ends in Satin Astro's 30th Century where she gets the feeling maybe things didn't have to be this way? So now she's traveled back in time to stop the plans of Prospero and the Fae so that her future stops existing and she doesn't get the feeling she should go back in time which will mean she doesn't stop the plan and winds up feeling she need to go back in time to stop the plan and, well, you get the idea. Except maybe we jettison that model of time travel and go with the one that makes this possible: branching, alternate timelines. The timeline Satin Astro left will always be a shit timeline. She goes back in time not to save that timeline but to create a new timeline that she likes better and which she gets to live in. She doesn't even need to be born in the new timeline because that wouldn't cause a paradox having shifted from one to the other. Just watch Primer and forget all about Back to the Future. You'll get it.

And finally, the 4th installment of the Secret Stars comic book.

Zom remembers his origin . . . of the Zodiac!

Having been sent into the higher realms by a magician from the future, the Seven Stars attempt to quest their way out. But to do so, they must contemplate infinity! Captain Universe gives Infinity a good thrashing by explaining Hilbert's Hotel and how multiple infinities exist simply in the spaces between whole numbers. Feeling less unique than when it all started, Infinity slouches away to have a long depression nap. The Seven Stars manage to get back to Earth only to find the 'Mass has already begun to devour London while killing all the British superheroes.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 4: The Tempest #4 Rating: A+. I'm not suddenly going to start finding fault with this series! If all you're interested in are the ratings I give comic books, let me save you the trouble of reading the next two League reviews: both A Plusses!

Marsman!

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 4: The Tempest #3 (October 2018)

Now in 3-D!

Hopefully the part of the story where Mina takes off her bra will be in 3D. I want to feel like her nipples are poking me in the eye. I mean, I also hope that all the fantastic action that men love will be in 3D because I love it so much too, being a man and all. Also cars! Vroom vroom! Today I learned (or re-learned because I've been listening to the song I should have learned it from since the '70s) that a car can have a triple carburetor engine from the song "Seven Little Girls (Sitting in the Back Seat)" by Paul Evans. I knew some cars had dual carb set-ups because my first car was a 1972 Volkswagen bus. But three?! Why the fuck do you need three, Paul Evans?! Obviously not to impress the ladies because not one of those seven girls stopped giving Fred a handjob in the back of your car while you drove them around talking about your trip carb set-up. Wow! Look at me! Talking about cars! The last time I had a conversation about cars was in 1991. I was playing Pictionary with a bunch of friends and the word was "Chirp" and this guy my friend Odessa was dating looked at me and said, "Man, if we were a team, we would have gotten it!" Then he showed me the picture he drew of a car burning out and I look at it and then looked at him blankly for an awkwardly long amount of times and he was all, "You know? Chirp the tires!" And I was all, "Why didn't you just draw a fucking bird?!" After that, I decided I didn't need to talk about cars anymore. But I still purchased a 1972 Volkswagen Bus which I miss terribly and still dream about and did not masturbate inside while moaning, "I love you, Volkswagen. You are my car wife."

This cover echoes the first cover in that it has question marks (related to the League's original logo?) and lock boxes and laser guns and mist and Mina. The second cover had a crashed space ship while the first cover had a crashing sailing ship. I think the dead person in the lower corner of this cover represents a crashed human being ship. This is to represent something that I'm either too stupid to figure out or I'm pretending to be too stupid to figure out. Probably the latter one.

Also, every time, it takes me way too long to understand which is the former and which is the latter when somebody says "the latter" or "the former" because we are time-based beings and does "the latter" mean the one that is further back in my conscious past which would be the former one in the text. But's it's latter to the way I experience things. See? It's only me, isn't it?

This issue begins with another mini-biography of an artist screwed by and forgotten by the industry which they gave their lives to. This time, it's Marie Duval!

Alan Moore loves the comic book medium more than anybody which is why he hates most of the comic book fans so much.

I should be scanning the Letters Pages in these things because they're quite entertaining! But sometimes I think it'd be like putting a hat on a cat. Isn't that the thing writers aren't supposed to do for some reason? I don't know why because everybody wants to see a cat with a hat on it. Is that why Dr. Seuss is such a rebel? Because he was all, "I'm going to write a whole book about a cat with a hat on it!" What I mean is that my comic book blog persona is the cat and Alan Moore's letters pages where he makes fun of comic book fans in voices that sound a lot like my blog posts are the hat. Who needs to read my blog post where I pretend I had to stop writing to jerk off over Orlando's naked titties only to have Alan Moore write a letter from a fake comic book fan saying, "And my other question is, wouldn't Marsman be a more scientifically realistic Martian character if he used his mind-powers to make Satin Astro take her bra off?" See? Nobody needs that hat on this hat!

Oh wait! Yeah! The thing writers should avoid is putting a hat on a hat (which, to be quite frank, also sounds funny and like something people would want to see). I always mix up the words "hat" and "cat". I still don't know which one Sting was saying was caught in a high tree top in The Police's "King of Pain"!

The actual beginning of this comic book and not that Marie Duval sob story finds Orlando, Mina, and Emma (along with Coghlan and Jack Nemo) discussing what to do next after hearing that M.I.5 nuked the Blazing World, Prospero's island of misfit toys. Orlando and Emma decide to head to London to kick James Bond in his massive cock for also murdering their friends from Girl Spy School. Mina, Coghlan (with the Pink Child under his care), and Nemo will head to the Blazing World to see if they can help irradiated Prospero and his melting and burning fables. The Pink Child continues to act weird while everybody tiptoes around it. Either The Pink Child is supremely powerful and prone to destroy everything around it at the slightest disturbance, or it just scares easily and shits itself and nobody wants to change its horrendous pink boom-booms.

I'm using "it" as The Pink Child's pronoun in the manner a callous person might use "it" to describe somebody else's pet and not in a jerk anti-pronoun way that's supposed to be some kind of weird joke. I once used the pronoun "it" for The Shining Knight and got scolded for it although, to be fair, it wasn't meant to be some kind of edgelord jock joke about trans identity. I was just changing the pronoun of Shining Knight every time I referred to them because according to the Shining Knight, they didn't identify as any gender. In retrospect, I should have just stuck with "they" and left it at that. It wasn't worth the scolding for the one time I used "it" that didn't reference how I also used "he" and "she" and "they" as well. But to be fair to Natalie Reed who scolded me about it, I did go back and take out the "it" reference because why the fuck should anybody have to even for a second think I was being off-handedly cruel to them?! Every now and again, a tumblr cop can be right! But even tumblr cops are ACAB.

Having mentioned that she went to a Boarding School for Girl Spies (like the one in Grayson! Remember how hot that was? How all the young women wanted to fuck Teacher Grayson?!), Moore and O'Neill decide to write a fun little comic strip about her sexy adventures there.

Finally a reference I know! Patsy from Ab Fab!

I love that Alan Moore sticks so many references throughout these things but being that he's my mother's age and British and also well-studied in pulp and comic book history, I only ever understand about 3% of them. But I don't mind because he never makes knowing them mandatory because he's a super cool genius magician writer! Do you think he'll ever read how much I'm lauding him in these posts and finally agree to be my Magic Dad?

There was, of course, a shower scene but no naughty bits were shown because, presumably, the girls are underage here. They're also fictional representations of adult real people so even if Moore and O'Neill chose to show a butt cheek or two, I wouldn't care. Of course, I don't care about anything so that was probably something that didn't need to be stated. And if you've read any of my other blog posts which seemed to suggest that I did care about something in this shit world, you're remembering it wrong and/or I was totally lying. I'm way too cool to have "feelings" about stuff. Ew! Gross!

Hmm, was that a feeling? No, that was a logical opinion based on rational decisions and hours and hours of rabbit-hole research on YouTube. At some point when some idiot is going from insane conspiracy video to insaner conspiracy video, YouTube should stop recommending videos and just put up a link to the Dark Web.

Orlando and Emma drop into London from one of Nemo's supersonic planes, taking refuge in one of Emma's secret properties to make plans and have a few martinis.

If James is going to be interested, they'll have to introduce themselves as Emma Putitinyou and Orlando Eatmypussyraw.

We leave Emma and Orlando there for the moment as they come up with their sexy female villain names that will probably be way more subtle and creative than mine (and Ian Fleming's as well, obvs). The next scene involves Mina Murray and Jack Nemo and no art from Kevin O'Neill because the images are all photos of two people playing as Jack and Mina. Unfortunately, Moore didn't write this scene in the shower.

Mina and Jack discuss the route they're taking to the Blazing World. Mina thinks it's closer to the Antarctic so she doesn't understand why they're going through the Arctic. It sounds to me like Alan Moore making excuses for somebody fucking up the difference between the Arctic and the Antarctic, like every single writer at DC. Jack explains the discrepancy away, plays the piano, and reminds everybody that Allan Quatermain is dead, all while flirting super badly.

I don't know if Moore is referencing a specific, famous British magazine that made comics with actual photographs or if he's just acknowledging that it had its place and time. I've even done it for the cover of one of my 'zines back in the '90s! Sort of.

We forgot to get the artist to draw the cover for this issue so I improvised.

I just realized Insectorama (played by Greedo) looks like he has a massive cock here. The other characters are Buck the Ogre (played by the Rancor Beast), Grunion Guy (played by a member of Max Rebo's band), and Teleman (played by a Playmobile man (I think?)). I made the spiked ceiling out of paper, spray paint, and cardboard. Alan Moore just paid a bunch of actors and photographers to get his done! I think. He may have just conjured them out of the ether, forcing them to take the pictures with him lest he reveal their true names and force them into subjugation for eternity. It's a coin flip between those two possibilities.

The next two pages are three strips stretching horizontally between two pages about three of the Seven Stars we've seen so far: Carol Flane, Jim Logan, and Satin Astro. Carol Flane has decided to leave her Faraday Cage to find somebody to fuck (probably Jim Logan).

Jim Logan, busy not yet fucking Electrowoman, acquires some pertinent information from a snoopy little twat named Mind Man.

Mind Man sends the information to Garath Gannz via telepathy. Marsman tells Satin Astro he's just learned some critical information, so critical that Satin Astro should sit down when she receives it: Vull was a *GASP* woman! That's where the scene ends but I'm sure if there was one more panel, a speech bubble would be coming out of Satin's mouth as she screamed, "NOOOOOOO!", while another speech bubble would be coming out of her butthole as she shit herself, "SPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPTHHTHTHTHTHTHHTHTHTH!"

She's talking about Terminator and The Planet of the Apes! And probably loads of other movies with alien invasions. So many!

On the trip to the Blazing Worlds, Mina and Mr. Ishmael, Nemo's Second-in-Command and the Tank Girl reject I mentioned previously, get to know each other a little bit. Mostly it's just Mina trying to find out if Jack Nemo is single because the flirting apparently went better than I thought. But Mina also mentions how many more women characters there are in comics these days. I mean in positions of authority on Lincoln Island. Hopefully all the Comicsgaters who ruined the first few copies of the original run of The League because they jerked their incel semen all over them due to how obviously for boys they were (one of the reasons Alan Moore was all, "Ugh. Gross. This is my audience? Why am I still writing comics?!") didn't throw this issue down in anger and curse Alan Moore for going woke. I mean, I say "hopefully" but I don't really fucking care. Fuck those guys. Fuck them right in their dirty buttholes because wiping is gay. If only they knew the kinds of things I've done to my butthole and I am the manliest man that ever manned! Three of my fingers will never be the same!

Mmm. Such a confident lover! And so big! Yes, please.

Disappointingly, Toyland is not Sex Toyland like we all thought it was going to be. It's just a bunch of teddy bears, hobby horses, and wind-up queens with massive badonka-donks. I'm talking shelving, baby. Two frozen turkeys resting side-by-side. The death star trench ending in a tight little thermal exhaust port. The Platonic cushion that allows for shadowy pushin'. I know, I know. You just have to see it now, right?

If I'd gotten that toy on Christmas morning, it would have been wrecked by noon.

Every turn of the page in this issue reveals a new style of comic art and storytelling. Of course I mean an old style being played with by Moore and O'Neill! I should have said the art style changes with every turn of the page! I'd love to see Moore's script on this thing. I'm sure every page had a description of the references he was going for and wanted O'Neill to use. And O'Neill probably knew exactly what Moore was talking about and nailed each one first try. Hey, if Moore doesn't want to be my Magic Daddy, maybe O'Neill will offer to be my Long Lost British Uncle.

Back in London, Orlando and Emma work on taking down Bond and stealing back all of Emma's intel and trophies from M.I.5. I probably don't need to say anything about this part of the story yet except that at one point, Emma compares being an agent in the '60s to living in a paranoid and hallucinatory comic strip. She doesn't realize it in the way people often don't realize exactly what they're living through at the moment but she's living in a paranoid and hallucinatory comic book now.

I almost forgot to mention that the center of this story was the Toy Queen's massive ass! I don't think that's the important part of the center for Moore, though. I think for him, the importance was the reveal that things are changing and that, as Mina floats through the Sea of Frozen Words, we learn that Lincoln Island has become more equal than most any other place in the world, natural and supernatural. Which is probably why Toxic Masculinity James Bond wants to fuck it with a nuclear bomb just like he fucked Orlando's Pool and Prospero's Blazing Worlds.

Back in Toyland, we discover that Queen Olympia of the Mighty Cheeks runs the island with her consort, Frankenstein. Yes, you heard me. Alan Moore ways in on the Frankenstein vs. Frankenstein's Monster bit and comes to the exact right conclusion.

"It's more correct to call the poor bedeviled creature who never asked to be brought into this world 'Tess'." I mean monster!

That other expedition Jack mentions had Toyland's noble "Galley-Wag" and his Dutch concubines sailing to check on the Blazing World in their ship, Rose of Nowhere. Oh no. Galley-Wag? As in Gollywog? Oh no. I suppose it was a popular toy at one time so it's, um, got to, you know, um, make an appearance. For history's sake! Hopefully he doesn't appear in any plot-important moments so I don't feel I need to scan the horrific little racist stereotype!

Back in London, Emma and Orlando head back to an old hideout Orlando used when working with Allan Quatermain and Mina Murray. Turns out, it's also the old hideout Mina commandeered to use for her Seven Stars project. They interrupt Satin and Garath discussing Vull, whom they now know is Mina Murray, and how to find her. After a brief dust up, they realize they're probably all on the same side and no serious damage occurs. Darn it. I guess Moore never liked those comics where two good guys would wind up fighting each other for most of an issue and then, before anything was settled as to which could actually beat the other one, they realized they should be working together. Moore decides that should last all of one page so he can get back to the actual plot of catching Bond and, ultimately, saving the world from Satin's coming catastrophe.

Okay, kids! Time to put on your 3D glasses as we enter the irradiated area surrounding the Blazing World! The world was sort of destroyed but, due to Prospero's magic, it's been reforming and the inhabitants have been resurrecting. Also it's become discolored so that everything is in three dimensions now. And, seriously, it's really fucking good 3D. Some of the best I've ever seen. I've just been staring at it with my special glasses for about a minute and a half marveling at the depth of field and how so much of it comes out over the page as well. I don't know if it works after it's been scanned because my scanner probably fucks up the colors but let's try it, right? Get them glasses on now!

It works!

The final page of the story has the team walking in on Lord Prospero at the near center of the nuclear blast. He's been working on it for two days, to shrink it, to "unhappen" it. And it just so happens, Prospero's got a bit of an Alan Moore vibe going. Who would have guessed? Plus one of the creatures on the final 3D page has a massive cock! In 3D! In really, really fucking good 3D! How did they do it?! Oh yeah! I know. Magic!

All that's left now is the Seven Stars story which probably matters but feels like one of those extra stories in Justice League Quarterly that only exists for the proclamation on the cover that this comic books is 80 fucking pages! I probably shouldn't be reading Quarterlies while also reading this. It's like I'm eating the most succulent Michelin Star meal by one of the greatest cooks to ever live and washing it down with a Monster energy drink. Also I've shit my pants. And the editors at DC keep sticking their dicks in my lobster risotto.

Anyway, let's get this dick-flavored lobster risotto down!

Having realized the twat British superhero team knows where the Seven Stars hangout and might drop by any time because they think they're peers, the Seven Stars head into space to avoid them. Captain Universe has a space headquarters at the edge of the solar system. That's why these back-up stories are important! They fill in the gaps on who the characters are, why Mina fell out with them, and create the illusion that places and people important to the story have existed for quite some time and aren't Alan Moore's version of a deus ex machina. It's Alan Moore putting the snake puppet on his arm and telling us it's God so that we'll take everything it has to say to heart even though it's not actually speaking. Moore is speaking. And he's writing some '60s knock-off silly comic book twaddle. But the snake is telling us about it so you need to listen to how important it is! And, sure, you can see Moore's arm going up into the snake puppet but you don't have to acknowledge that you see it if you don't want to ruin it for everybody like a didactic little asshole piece of shit.

See how much we learn here that will be important (or answers questions from before)? I bet we see the space fortress at some point in the main story!

Also important in the previous bit is that Electrowoman fucks. She's probably fucked every member of the team. We see here that she fucked The Flash Avenger into the hospital. And we saw earlier that she had a picture of Captain Universe that hinted at their relationship. And you know Mina fucked her with an invisible strap-on because Alan Moore is writing this.

Moore makes it apparent exactly what this back-up story is doing in the mundane sense by highlighting how comics do the same thing all the time but simply referring back to the previous few issues, helping remind old readers what was happening and getting new readers up-to-date if they picked it up in the middle of a story. Look how awkward this panel is but always deemed necessary by editors.

In all actuality, I could have used more of this the older I got. Real life could use this kind of exposition at times!

When Flash Avenger lets Electrowoman know they won't be dating again any time soon, Carol becomes super sad and it's time for her flashback origin story. She lost her father to electricity and then, after she completed her father's work and developed electric powers, she accidentally killed her cat Buster. After that, she felt so lonely that she put on a skimpy costume to attract men to her but none of them stuck around after nearly dying while fucking her. So she pursued super villains but that only caused more death and destruction. So that's why she's so lonely. But I bet Captain Universe would only find the shocks slightly stimulating!

Captain Universe's tour of his space fortress, and especially the private tour of his space bedroom and his space crotch for Electrowoman, must wait for the base is attacked by every British superhero to ever exist! A battle rages on and Electrowoman discovers that her sex life is going to be fucking incredible when she sees Captain Universe's power of Bilocation where he can split himself into multiple versions! She can be spit-roasted by the same guy! That would avoid the awkwardness of having to hear the two guys Eifel towering her constantly muttering, "No homo! No homo!"

A good portion of the British heroes are killed before they unleash their greatest weapon: The Black Wizard from 6400 AD! He sends the Seven Stars into an alternate dimension, ridding Britain of them once and for all! Or at least once and that once being this chapter of the story because there are still three more chapters and I don't think they'll all take place in the alternate dimension.

Meanwhile, the British government officials who might also be comic book publishers are busy with their plan to get the populace excited for British heroes by releasing "The 'Mass" on the public. The Victory Vanguard will stop it, save the day, and go on to earn millions of dollars in publishing deals and merchandise! It's a plan that can't fail! Unless, God forbid, the Victory Vanguard aren't up to the task of defeating it? No, no! That would be silly!

A plant? That thinks it's a man? Preposterous! All that might do is change comic books forever in ways unforeseen!

After the fat government agent finishes giving the skinny one an anatomy lesson on the 'Mass, all hell breaks loose in London and the Victory Vanguard shit their pants. Be sure to tune in next time to see how they all die!

Once again, the fake letters page is well worth the price of admission. But I won't be discussing it here because of that rat in the cat thing I talked about previously! So long, space chums!

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 4: The Tempest #3 Rating: A+. I can't get enough of this! Alan Moore, you mad bastard, do more comic books! Until then, I'll keep reading your prose stuff. But I guess I need to buy your new fantasy book first. Until then, I'll finish up the book of short stories, Illuminations. And also, let me know about that father deal. Maybe you can have me every other weekend? It'll be such fun! I can't wait to call you Papa Moore!

The Flash Avenger and a woman!

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 4: The Tempest #2 (August 2018)

How did anybody ever find every issue of this series when they all look like completely different serieses?!

That small blurb on the upper right about Alan and Kevin made me laugh out loud. I don't know what kind of device you're reading this on and I shudder to think it's a phone but I guess phones can magnify pictures pretty easily so that's cool but they can also allow people to constantly try to engage you in chat and I think that's not right and if it's not right you have to smash the patriarchy's phone and is there a gas leak in my house? What am I talking about? Um, so, this made me laugh:

Formerly respected funsters turned comic book cosh-boys in brutal attack on confused and elderly institution that loved them like a mother.

I just love Alan and Kevin for this series. Alan Moore can do no wrong in my eyes because he seduced me with a charm spell. Have you read Swamp Thing #50? Then you're charmed too because the spell was laid out in the words and pictures. In the comic, Alan Moore was saying, "You want to go to hell, buddy? Do you all want to go to hell? Well, I don't want you to! Read my magical nonsense and we'll beat the world back together! There are two things I believe: Magic is real, and art can redeem! Maybe there's a third thing in there about nostalgia not being as bad as everybody thinks it is when used for good because the power of what was is the potential energy of the kinetic present space. You don't make art or magic outside of time and existing in just the present moment. Spells and art are woven through time! They're made up of emotion and memory and loss and pain and love and all of those things need prologue to fully operate. The past is the fuse and the present is the fire and the future is the explosion and it'll happen, it'll all happen if you just remembered to light your fuse. Oh no. No! Don't tell me you didn't light your fuse! You've lost your prologue! Now you really are in hell!"

Yep, yep. Pretty sure there's a gas leak in here.

Al and Kev doing the Lord's work.

Why am I scanning pages full of text when there are pages full of boobies and naked men?! I forgot all about that but while scanning the inside cover, this is what I could see of the first page and it got me riled in the pants, I tell you what!

That's the real James Bond and the two secretaries he was threatening to fuck last issue after regaining his youth.

"Threatened" may be the wrong word since he just told the Movie James Bonds he wanted to bang the young girl and the old gal back at MI5. He didn't actually threaten the women. I think I just felt threatened by his confident manliness and swagger. Not once have I been, "I am going to go bang that woman and, by gum, it's gonna happen for sure!" Usually it was just me not realizing some woman was flirting with me at a party until she follows me into the bathroom and sticks her hand down my pants and I'm all, "I really gotta piss and now my dick is hard! Thanks a lot, lady!"

The new M, Bond James Bond, studies the old files on the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, files he took for balderdash and bullshit for years. But now that he's bathed in Ayesha's youth pool, he's beginning to believe the stories are true. He reads of five incarnations of the League: an 18th Century group led by Gulliver, the late 19th Century group led by Mina Murray (here he states it was the last competent group, largely because they defected from the government and the government could never get a good League going after that), the group in the '60s responsible for The 'Mass (the Seven Stars' rival group), a group in 1946 led by Warralson (I don't know about that one. Was it covered in a previous volume? I don't remember a hot shot female pilot character!), and the oldest: Prospero's Men, operating from 1610 to 1696 (as you can see on the file at M's feet in the scan of naked people). M hopes to discover awesome stuff like the youth pool that has been kept hidden from the "real" world all these centuries. He's about to find out reality and fiction are absolutely the same thing.

James never shows his pecker on panel, for those curious. But on the next page, in a little story from Utopia in 1919, some super powered guy's head explodes. That's almost like seeing M nut! If he had a prostate infection, I mean.

I don't know who these guy are but the dead one wanted to start Utopia until he went to war with Gulliver's Brobdingnags.

The quarter-god giant killing the super powered idiot might actually be from Brobdingnag. I wish he'd been one of the — pause as I do a search for the correct spelling — Houyhnhnms! Then we could have seen a horse head butt a man to death. Imagine how bit the Houyhnhnm's dicks were?

Me Watching Bojack with the Non-Certified Spouse: "I bet Bojack's a Hwinninem!"
Non-Certified Spouse: "You're going to bring up the size of Bojack's dick now, aren't you?"

Back in 2010, the quarter-god giant's hair has gone gray and he's caught himself a submarine full of sexy vixens. He dumps them out on the beach next to the title of this chapter, "And an Age of Giants, Adieu". Is this entire series about the comic book industry? Why would I only read the inside cover and the letters page and the outside cover and the comments in the Who's Who portions and think they're criticizing the industry but not read the story as criticizing the industry?! I really am a long way outside of my college years, aren't I? I can no longer read as deeply as I once did. On the plus side, I'm no longer sneaking into factories at night in Los Banos and stealing fire extinguishers which I sprayed all over the street and my friends on the way back to the house where 18 other drunk motherfuckers were crashing for the weekend! Not that that wasn't a good time. But I think about it now and I just get sleepy.

The ladies soon introduce themselves to Mister Coghlan in a way that says, "We're not really sure we trust a big strange shirtless man who can hold his breath underwater for way too long and carry submarines around on his shoulder."

Dammit. Now I want a sub-aquatic stripogram.

Man, reading this just makes me want to drink a pint in a dark smoky pub with Alan Moore and bullshitting about everything. I wonder if he'd let me call him Dad?

Oh! The next page reveals the man is Hercules! Yeah, that tracks. Strong. Angry. Irish. Hmm. It also identifies him as a "third generation Celtic god-king." All of this information is from a sort of newspaper slash newsreel bit where the strong man throws the sub in the sea while the ladies sit by wondering if he's going to mash their heads into pink butter. So the information might not actually be true. Just performative bullshit to excite the daily readers and/or movie goers.

I desperately want to scan the page and share it because it's so well done but I can't just scan the entire comic book! This blog entry isn't even really about the comic book! It's about how much I miss breaking into factories and stealing fire extinguishers! It might also be about the gas leak. But it most certainly isn't about how tired I'm getting and how my head is throbbing and how my eye feels like it's about to pop out of the socket. And, as always, it definitely is a little bit about my relationship with my father.

The giant makes sure the women don't try to stick any more swords in him. He gets dressed while he waits for the others to arrive.

The others are The Pink Child, some Tank Girl side piece, and Orlando's nipples.

I probably shouldn't have moved past the 1910 battle so quickly. The super powered man battling "Hugo Hercules" mentions that his Utopia was destroyed by colonizers from Brobdingnag. But he mentions the name Gargantua and his son, two giants from satiric series of novels, Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais. Reading up on this work, it feels like the kind of serialized novel that would have worked well in comic book format, which might be why Moore references it. Also, it had art by Gustave Doré. So it was basically Cerebus in Hell?, I think. In the fifth installment of the series (which was published posthumously and so may not actually have been by Rabelais), the giant father and son travel by ship visiting a series of islands that all have names which identify the kinds of people or things happening on the islands. Just like the ladies experienced last issue! Fuck. Now I want to read that too!

The only thing I hate about reading works by geniuses is that they just remind me how much reading I didn't do while I was young. Sure, I read a lot! But Alan Moore probably read fucking everything. Reading Moore isn't quite as bad as reading Thomas Pynchon, especially Gravity's Rainbow which he wrote when he was 36. Thirty-fucking-six?! Are you kidding me? How did he know as much as he did about so many wide and varying subjects? Maybe that's just a lazy person's way of saying, "People actually go to libraries and do research?!", but it still boggles my mind. Not just because of how much he knew factually but how much he knew intuitively and perceptively and intelligently about the world and how the monsters running it were monsters. I don't know how many times I broke down crying while reading that fucking book. It's like Pynchon was given a backstage pass to reality and every observation he made came from the secret source of all knowledge. The best thing I ever did was own Gravity's Rainbow for 20 years before reading it. He wrote it at 36 but I don't think I was ready to read it then.

Meanwhile, Satin and Garath find their final non-Mina living member of the Seven Stars, Jim. He's in New York and they visit a super-powered old people's home with him.

See?! SEE?! This entire thing is about the comic book publishing industry! God, I'm so stupid sometimes.

Al and Kev put it right out there on the inside front cover: "The comic book industry scams the people who make it what it is! The bastards!" And then they print letters on the back cover: "The fans are obnoxious assholes who don't fucking understand art and expression!" But somehow, I was all, "The middle is just pure wacky fun with no subtext! Subtext is woke!" But here I am! Reading another woke comic book!

You know what "woke" actually means in the case of comic books? It means somebody somehow slipped past the superficial surface level of the story where their stupid fucking brain that can't comprehend the world around them usually reads and they caught a little subtext. And usually that subtext is simply, "These are the things that dicks do and you shouldn't do them. Don't be a dick." And they look up from the book and think, "Hey! I like doing those things! How dare they judge me! I am not a bad guy! Well, if they're going to call me bad because I like doing that one small thing they just told me not to do, Heil Hitler!"

Holy shit that news guy. Is Moore also a precog?!

I love the older lady's line in response to being called a sexpot. Classic old ladyism.

Jim, Captain Universe, waxes nostalgic on the days when superhero stories were wondrous and exciting because of the rarity of them, but now they're pablum published and produced for the Status Quo, just more slop for the FOMOans' need to be in on what's hot. Money is in the saddle and rides storymakerkind.

Hmm. The gas must be clearing up. I'm starting to badly quote Emerson. You don't badly quote Emerson unless your senses are fully functional. Maybe if I'd quoted Whitman, I could say I was still feeling a little light-headed. Maybe something about young money glistened with wet and an unseen hand passing over money's stately images down to its hidden triangle. Goddamn, Walt was a thirsty boy!

And then just before we get to the exact middle of this story (which, remember, always means something even if I always forget to identify it! Or if the book is written by some hack schlub who doesn't even know how to write anything symmetrically (like, really! It's so important! Like the exact middle of Gravity's Rainbow, you find Slothrop (dressed as a superhero) crossing the Autobahn and he's found himself stuck smack dab in the median between the two opposite traffic lanes. It's like, "Hey, reader! Don't get fucking killed! You've still got another half of this thing to get through, dodging cars and reading about the Hereros trying get their birth rate below the zero because the Germans destroyed their culture and their people, and how about that story about the guy on the island with the dodos, hunh? Yeah, yeah! You're gonna get more tear producing shit like that no cap baby!), we get our first story about Prospero's League done in rhyming couplets! Because it takes place in the 17th century! Yay!

Orlando was on Prosper's team, back when she was a man. Prospero's destination the Blazing World, an island where fables live out the rest of their lives outside of their stories. Orlando and the other crew (Don Quixote and Amber St. Clair (who was written in the '40s but since it was about her sexed up life in the 17th Century, she gets to exist in the time she was written)) try to stop Prospero from throwing himself into the sea but it's no use. His elementals, Caliban and Ariel, lead him safely to shore across the water to the fairy tales he, um, I guess, uh, wants to fuck? Isn't that his quote? "A brave new world that has such sexy people and their orifices in it!"?

The reader gets the story as M Bond M reads it from the files. So now he's discovered where the League goes to hide away from the world: the Blazing World! Now he just has four and a half more issues to find it. That half is important because we have now come to . . . THE MIDDLE OF THE CHAPTER!

It's a cutaway view of Nemo's hideaway! His safe space! His home!

This is the center because the center is home; it's the place you know, the place you wander away from and the place you (try) to return. It's comfort and a rest stop for life. An oasis. The benches at the center of a hedgerow labyrinth. Just like last issue's center was knowledge and illumination and the comfort of seeing an old friend, this issue we get a safe place which is also a map with a key describing the locations. A key to unlock the knowledge that the person who lives here already knows. But we're being let in! We're being welcomed into the Sanctum. For us, this becomes an imitation of our center, far out in the wobbly orbit of our own center, we find this doppelgänger of safety and we embrace it and take a moment to reset our perceptions, maybe integrate things we've learned, map out what was and where we're going.

You know, it's the place where the ends of the staples are found! But not really in this book. This is the center of the story and not the center of the comic book. It's a decentered center which, let's face it, are the only kinds of centers that exist. I'm sure Derrida could explain it better.

Back in New York to see what Jim, Satin, and Garath are up to, we get a fun little Easter egg since I'd already mentioned Thomas Pynchon.

A W.A.S.T.E. drop-off box from Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49.

Also in that picture? A restaurant analogy of the conflict of the Middle East masquerading as a reference to Do the Right Thing.

Jim doesn't know how to find Vull but he does have a special film he wants them to watch. It's some research he's done on his own in the old timey version of YouTube: an 8 mm film!

What?! They faked the Superman landing?!

Is Moore saying American comic books are a big stupid knock-off on the awesome British comic books?! Those would be fighting words if I cared! Or if I'd noticed earlier how the battle between the United Nations backed Seven Stars who are an insert for American super heroes were taking the spotlight over the government sanctioned British super heroes and how that's the real commentary of the back-up story! The American comics were all flash and spectacle and everybody wanted to read them. And the British heroes just seemed like lousy knock-offs or outright rip-offs. The Seven Stars episode this month makes this point!

Back on Lincoln Island, we get some paper dolls of the ladies that I haven't cut out because I'm a comic book nerd and couldn't bear to destroy this comic book. Orlando's figure isn't wearing anything on her top and you can see EVERYTHING. It's possible the real reason I didn't cut out the paper dolls and their clothes is I wanted an excuse not to cover up Orlando's boobers. She has to stay topless. For the sake of keeping my book mint!

Jack Nemo introduces the ladies to Professor August S.F.X. Dusen, his computer pal, aka the Thinking Machine. This guy's another character from some early 20th Century series of adventure novels. The computer program for the Thinking Machine was created by Professor August way before the technology to read the punch cards which he apparently transferred his mind into. You know, that idea that's been around forever. How do we, as humans, maintain our ego and personality past death? Currently, it's the idea of putting our brains into virtual space. But in the past, we would have put our minds on disc. Or cassette tape. Or vinyl. Or punch cards! Like August here! August the Computer keeps an eye on the world for security reasons and not because it's a little gossipy bitch. It knew Emma and Orlando and Mina were on the way to find Jack Nemo not because it was spying on them bathing nude in Uganda but because, um, security reason! And now it also knows that Jimmy Bond (whom the Thinking Machine wasn't watching just because he was banging two hot chicks in his motel room in London) has taken a nuclear submarine on a trip to the Arctic to nuke the Blazing Worlds. Which is exactly what he does for the finale of the story. Way to end a story, right? The ultimate ending of everything! Or at least of all those stupid fairy tales. Good riddance, three little pigs! Eat shit, Cinderella! Suck my dick, Prince Charming!

In the Seven Stars back-up story, the Stars go to confront Britain's group, the Vanguard, and tell them they don't like being threatened. But the guy who threatened them, who they killed, greets them and is all, "What?! I totally admire you guys! Why would we threaten you?!" That's because he time traveled to stop them from starting this shit and got killed in his future but their past. They don't warn him not because they're afraid of creating a time paradox but because they're embarrassed they killed such a huge fan. One of the other members of Britain's Vanguard is being sued by an American company for being a near exact replica of an American hero. So they're having their own problems when they're attacked by Toby the Fat Schoolboy.

I'm pretty sure Moore mentions this Toby kid from the comics of his youth in Jerusalem.

The Vanguard eventually turn Toby into the not-fat schoolboy and he calms the fuck down. The Seven Stars head home having done nothing to help because the Vanguard insisted on stopping Toby themselves. But the press ignores the Vanguard and acts like the Stars are the heroes! Eww! Those bloody Americans! The secret cabal of British agents trying to make their government group popular come up with a new plan: hire as many heroes as possible so they can't be ignored! And also have them save the world against their bioengineered Black 'Mass in an upcoming installment which we already know winds up being a huge black eye for everybody.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 4: The Tempest #2 Rating: A+. The reason I've never done blog entries on these before is not just because Moore is too smart for me but also because I just really enjoy reading them and don't want to be distracted by my stupid brain thinking stupid thoughts while I stupid read. Plus I'm so busy looking at all the boobies, I don't have any hands to type!

Electrogirl!