Batman Beyond #1

This looks better than I expected!

These covers where you're supposed to get an artist to draw some raunchy T&A shot of an underage character are wasted on me. Not because I'm against pervy men drawing fuck fantasies on my comic book covers! Because I never go out of the house and I never meet any artists and if I did, they would probably say, "Didn't you criticize my art and say you wish time travel were an actuality so you could go back in time and sew my mother's vagina shut?" And I would be all, "Lord no! That's violence against women which I don't agree with even in theoretical situations and imaginary conversations which I've written! Although that does sound vaguely familiar!" Then I'd get thrown out of my fourth San Diego Comic Con.

I've been to San Diego Comic Con three times (many, many, many years ago! Before it was cool and popular! People probably get laid there now, right?!). One of those times, I was there with Dan Santat, the creator of The Replacements cartoon. Dan was housemates with my friend Upright and we ate breakfast at The Broken Yolk Cafe in Pacific Beach. One of his characters in The Replacements was called Dick Daring. Which seemed odd since he did art for a fanzine some friends and I were writing called The Galactic Hero Corps which featured a character named Dirk Daring. Although what's even more odd is that my friends, who created Dirk Daring, didn't realize they were stealing the name from the video game, Dragon's Lair. Dum-dums!

I so rarely meet anybody or get to name drop that I figured I'd force that one in!

Here's Dan's rendition of Carlotta Everyday, a fourth dimensional superhero who just confused everybody around her. He was the best artist I ever had! Um, figuratively!

The second caption on the first page of this first issue of Batman Beyond has the word "butit" in it. I think that's a typo but since I don't know all of the words, I might be mistaken. I mean, is it more probable that it's a word I've never heard of or more probable that everybody getting this issue to print missed a typo on the first page of the first issue? That makes it seem like nobody gives a shit about this book? If nobody getting paid can be bothered to give a shit about this comic book then why should I pay money for it? See? That's so ridiculous that it must be a word I've never heard of.

This issue is called "Escaping the Grave" without a Part Two on it. That's weird because the Rebirth issue was called "Escaping the Grave, Part One." It's almost as if DC is pretending the Rebirth book doesn't exist at this point! Which really ticks off my wallet because I paid for that book and I want the information gleaned from it acknowledged in what is supposed to be the second part of the story! I'm really starting to lose my patience here, especially after that whole butit fiasco I mentioned just ten to twenty seconds ago, depending on how quickly you can read.

This is Terminal. He really fucking loves belts. And mascara!

I'm going to assume you didn't read my commentary on Batman Beyond Rebirth #1 where I hoped that The Joker being resurrected by Terminal was actually Lobo in which case I just told you that I said that there. Now you have all the information you need for why I'm so excited when Terminal calls The Joker "my main man"! I knew he had too many muscles to be The Joker! And since I'm not going to be reading Issue #2 of this series, I hope nothing in the next eighteen pages proves me wrong so I can continue to believe that I was right!

But seriously. Why does Terminal like belts so much? He even has belts on his arms! Is his fashion sense mental hospital chic?

Terry begins the issue under a ton of rubble because a building fell on him or something. I know I wanted the events of the Rebirth issue to have some consequences in this issue but, in reality, I can't even be bothered to remember how the Rebirth issue ended! I guess Terry got his ass kicked by the Venom Sucking Jokerz Gang Banger. Oh, and then got a building knocked on him. That makes sense though! Now the title can be both figurative and literal! Although I don't know if Terry crawling out from under the rubble is the literal part or Terry returning from death is the literal part. I've been sort of confused by the word "literal" lately.

Batman frees himself and continues the fight with the Venomized Jokerz Member again. You know, in a way that causes the previous battle in Rebirth not to matter at all!

Batman's secret identity is Bugs Bunny?

Terry almost gets killed fighting this guy who doesn't know his history and has confused Bane with The Joker. Stupid kids! They keep ignoring history, some day they're going to elect a fascist for president of the United States!

Terry winds up running because there are so many Jokerz and he's forgotten how to be Batman. I'm glad I'm not planning on reading this any further because I don't want to have to read a bunch of issues where he trains to get back into fighting shape. Isn't that what the Rebirth Issues are for? To get the characters back to the place they were before The New 52 ruined them? Or, at the very least, sort of close to that? The Rebirth Issue should have been one long training montage.

Back at the Batcave, Matt has brought in their friend Max to help out since Commissioner Gordon is too busy to do Bruce's job, which needs doing because Bruce apparently died in the beginning of Brother Eye's attack on the world. Which totally means he's not dead at all and he'll eventually reappear. Jurgens can't bring back the real Joker without also bringing back the real Bruce! They have to die in a repressed homosexual suicide act!

Terry decides the way to defeat Terminal is to infiltrate them as one of the Jokerz. So it's a good thing he has a spare Jokerz costume in the Batcave bathroom! And body paint. And hair dye. And make-up.

The Review!
In a shocking turn of events, I've read my last Batman Beyond comic book ever! I think I deserve some cake! If that wasn't a good enough review for a comic book reviewer, just remember that I'm not a reviewer! I'm a critic! Which means I'm critical of things! So critical that I can't be bothered to read this crap anymore.



*Copy and Pasted Bat Person Art Credit From "Bat Licking Penis" Google Image Search: "LaCrosse man-bat by Richard Svensson."

Batman Beyond #15

Thank the grand universal consciousness that these nauseous hypno guy covers are coming to an end.

If you ever want to realize how desperately pathetic and stupid most people are, just click on any joke made by a relatively famous comedian on Twitter and read the comments. I'm not even talking about the comments where people are angry over their hot take on the tweet! I'm talking about the people who agree with the comedian and think they're adding to the joke with their lonely cries into the abyss. Take this Tweet by Patton Oswalt, for example: "Chex Mix is a vegetable, right?" I know he's asking a question but he obviously doesn't actually give a shit about your hilarious response! Just look at some of the saddoes responding to it:

Loser. It really is disgusting that the Internet has given everybody a voice!

The main problem with the Internet isn't the voice thing; it's that it hasn't given anybody ears. I suppose it wouldn't matter. What's to hear, really, when everybody is screaming at the same time? And even if most people took the time to listen, they'd be too dumb to comprehend what was being said anyway.

Does Twitter have a feature that enables Verified Users to only see Verified User responses? I'd want to be verified for simply that reason! It would certainly clean up all the nutjob responses I wind up rabbit holing into. Why are stupid people and train wrecks so hard to turn away from?

If your response to me calling people stupid and dumb is that I'm being ableist, you can fuck the hell right off. It's like really stupid people have decided the only way to stop people from calling out their lack of intelligence is to claim the other person is gross and disgusting. Just be thankful you're not smart because it's hell living among morons!

I'm really killing this Internet voice thing!

The Review!
Oh for fuck's sake. Terry McGinnis is alive because Tim Drake is in a different version of the future which is like Futures End's version but different because fuck you.

Batman Beyond #14

I'm not really interested in this comic book so I'm going to play some Nethack as I read it.

I usually play Nethack by letting the game randomly assign a class for me. That's because I don't care about winning. I mean, eventually I would like to win! It's just that I know that is unlikely because I have never read any spoilers. I just try to learn as much as I can, experiment, buy clues from the Oracle, and try not to die the same way twice. Unless that same way is starvation or falling down the stairs while cursed with a ball and chain and getting my head bashed in by the ball. This adventure, I'm a Barbarian! That's good because Barbarians are easy to play! At least up to a point.

And that point was the top level of the Sokoban tower where I stupidly thought I was powerful enough to fight a Winged Gargoyle after battling dozens of other monsters with my stomach full of troll! I found a Wand of Wishing almost immediately but, since I don't read spoilers, I don't know the proper way to use one! I just wished for an uncursed Amulet of Reflection because being zapped by some jerk Kobold that got its hands on a Wand of Lightning is my least favorite way to die. And it saved my life on the way to my Amulet of Life-Saving! Or another Wand of Wishes? I forget what's in the treasure room at the top of Sokoban Tower. It's been years since I've played. Anyway, a Centaur tried to lightning bolt me to death and instead lightning bolted himself to death. It left me blind but he had a Unicorn's Horn on him and I used it to cure my blindness. Which was a good thing because the next monster trying to kill me was a Cockatrice! If I'd been blind and felt his corpse, I might have turned to stone! Although I had Gloves of Power on, so that wouldn't have been a problem. Plus I had two lizards to eat although I don't know that I would have heeded the messages that I was turning to stone. Sometimes I play too quickly!

So it was a pretty decent game for my first time back in a long while. Also, Batman Beyond wasn't too exciting. I guess Rewire 2.0 (who must be Terry, right?!) is being used by the Spiral Face Hypnoguy. He's convinced Rewire that Batman wants him dead, so I guess they'll fight or something! Also, Matt McGinnis might become Robin or something.

The Review!
Nethack is a fun game! I've probably wasted about 2% of my life so far playing it! I haven't done the math on that statement but it's probably true. The amount of my life I've spent on Batman Beyond doesn't even register! I wish it registered even less than it normally did because this series is boring!

Batman Beyond #13

Somebody went overboard on the yellow ink.

This comic books has a cover date of August which means it probably came out in May or June. I'm only reading it now because I don't give more than a few shits (and probably not even that many) about Batman Beyond starring Tim Drake. It's like DC Comics decided to make a nonsense world that made no sense (thus the descriptor, "nonsense") and sell it to all of the assholes who read DC Comics. Fools! Oh, I realize I'm one of them! But not anymore. I've dropped Batman Beyond from my pull list because even though I only give a few shits about Tim Drake's Batman Beyond, I give no shits about Terry McGinnis's!

This isn't even going to be a proper review because who cares? Not that any of my reviews are proper reviews. Half the time somebody reads one of my reviews, they wind up more confused about a book than when they didn't know anything at all. This review will be even worse than that so you might want to have a doctor on hand. Is it possible for words to cause strokes? I'm pretty sure they can cause aneurysms because I once met this woman at a party who was so annoyed that I kept pronouncing Linux wrong, that I kept pronouncing Linux wrong. Less than a month later, she was dead from an aneurysm. I'm not bragging about getting away with murder by telling that story! I'm just saying people should be careful listening to me and probably reading my words. Although if you mispronounce anything I write, that's on you!

This issue begins with Tim Drake drowning. I'm tempted to just rip out the last eighteen pages because this seems like a fitting end for a character I don't like who wound up in a depressing future that makes no sense and which DC Comics has completely abandoned with Rebirth. Speaking of Rebirth, didn't Tim Drake's death in Rebirth make this comic book obsolete? Or did Rebirth simply make all of Futures End like a shrug in the fog? Did I steal that line from Edie Brickell?

Philosophy! It's the talk on a cereal box! Religion! A fly on a dog!
I'm not afraid of too many things but I can think of one: a spider with wings! Yeah!

I'm not a doctor but I'm pretty sure you shouldn't defibrillate a person to save them from drowning!

Tim survives and heads back to the Batcave where Barbara Gordon checks out the suit and says, "It's fine! Whatever happened won't happen again because it was just easy drama to end the first part of this four part story! Now do you want to know how you died in the past?!" I mean, he didn't die! He just disappeared and went into the future. Now all that needs to happen is he needs to get bitten by a vampire, steal a Time Bubble, and head back into the past to start NOWHERE. It had better happen in this comic book because this is my last fucking chance to be right about the identity of Harvest!

Babs explains how the Tim of her reality just disappeared and Batman could never find him. A-ha! So if nobody ever explains anything else about Futures End Tim Drake or where he went, I can claim that he became Harvest! I will never have been proven wrong! I fucking knew I nailed Harvest's identity! Suck on it, Tott Dedell!

Although Babs begins telling the story about how Terry McGinnis decided to solve the Mystery of the Disappearing Boring Robin. I hope he never solves it. Or, if he does, it involves vampires and time travel!

Terry heard some gossip that The Joker killed Tim Drake. So he went to investigate the place that supposedly cremated The Joker. What was he hoping to find? Some burnt, over-sized shoes? What's even more confusing is that Babs sends Tim to the same funeral home to find Rewire! Oh wait. The very next panel explains that. I should probably pay more attention to the comic I don't give more than a few shits about before criticizing it.

The two stories are told at the same time because they're practically the same story or something. It's really artsy! Especially if you're into the kind of thing a robot from the 80s would think was artsy and cutting edge! Remember, in Dan Jurgens' mind, Watchmen has only been out for about a year! Comics are smart again! Maybe not even again. Maybe it was in the eighties when comics became smart for the very first time!

Babs' story ends with the Mystery of the Disappearing Boring Robin still unsolved. That means I was right! Red Robin does become Harvest! I fucking knew it! Grandmaster Comic Book Reader! The other story ends with Rewire revealing his face while some guy in spiral pajamas bro-hugs him. Am I supposed to recognize him? I mean, the next month blurb says, "Terry, Rewired!" So I'm assuming the new Rewire is Terry McGinnis.

What's going to happen to Out of Time Tim Drake now that Terry McGinnis is back and ready to be Batman Beyond again? Maybe this one will also become a vampire named Harvest! That would explain so much if there were actually two Harvests. Or more! I bet every Tim Drake from every timeline wound up becoming Harvest and they all time traveled back to The New 52 where they weren't supposed to because time travel didn't work. So when they realized they broke the laws of the universe because the writers writing them were morons, they decided to team up and begin NOWHERE. Because that's where they belonged! NOWHERE!

The Review!
If I were to review this comic book, I would start by saying I was never interested in Batman Beyond and I've always hated Tim Drake. Then I would say "Can you do math?" and leave it at that.

Batman Beyond #11

Batman Beyond Thunderdome.

Rating: I don't know why I read superhero comic books anymore because they rarely ever tell stories that touch me in any meaningful way. And it's not like I get excited about the adventure of it all. I suppose most of the entertainment I consume is like that though. There's a lot of shallow shit out there. Don't get me wrong. A lot of it is entertaining. But I like to read stuff that means something every now and then. Batman Beyond isn't that. But it's also not bad. It does what it's supposed to do which is present a comic book adventure in the future DC Universe. It's not a great future but it's, at least, a lot more interesting than Futures End was making it.

It's been eleven issues of this and forty-eight issues of Futures End and I still don't know why Batman Beyond had to become Tim Drake. Poor Terry McGinnis. Let's pour one out for Terry! Oh shit. I just spilled my tea on my carpet. I got too into the moment! I don't know why since I never cared about Terry McGinnis. Come to think of it, I never cared about Tim Drake either! So it doesn't really matter to me as long as everybody just keeps calling him Batman.

Neo-Gotham has survived the machinations of Brother Eye. But now they have to weather their next crisis: a flood of refugees! The refugees were angry that they weren't getting immediate relief from the meager stocks of food and medicine within Neo-Gotham's walls so they've stormed the city and declared everything theirs. That seems like a solution that's only going to cause more problems. Now that the outside refugees have stormed their way in and taken over, how are they themselves going to split up the food and medicine? If the informal leader doesn't give as much to the next asshole as that asshole believes he deserves, who's to say he's wrong for rising up and taking as much as he needs from the new refugee leader? People really should think through the logic of their decisions instead of letting fear, greed, and desire rule their choices. Because now they have no moral ground to stand upon when somebody with more weapons comes along and demands they're given all that they want. How has civilization even survived this long when it seems there are two main rules: fight for what you want and fight to keep what you have. What a fucking hassle. I'd rather be dead.

I mean, I don't want to be dead! But the push and pull of need and desire isn't quite strong enough to be upsetting in my current life. Although last night I had some really weird anxiety dreams about not feeling safe enough within my own home. Eventually that dream led to a huge party with a dessert buffet and me trying to convince some friend I didn't recognize that I wasn't stealing pages from his prescription pad. Then Jason Priestley almost hit me as he drove through the room in a blue convertible. I wasn't wondering what had become of Jason Priestley but apparently his agent has now booked him for brief appearances in people's dreams.

Meanwhile in Metropolis (not Neo-Metropolis because I don't know why), Batman Beyond has seemingly been killed by a mind-controlled Justice League: Z-Listers. That's probably not true though. It's just a plot device to ratchet up the tension to an unbearable level. I'm so fucking worried I can't even pucker my ass.

Oh thank God*! I have full control of my ass again! *Use of the term "God" does not constitute belief in said being.

Terry's brother Matt shows Tim the secret weapon he's found in a stasis tube: Superman! Boy, I sure hope releasing him doesn't turn into a whole Batman Beyond v Superman Beyond: Future Dawn of Justice thing!

Batman Beyond (whom I really should learn to simply refer to as Batman) goes right back out to continue battling the Justice League: Z-Listers because they've decided to keep destroying Metropolis. That seems like a good idea since Tim just got his ass handed back to him by them. I suppose now that he had a brief respite, he's ready to get back into the action! Plus that whole cliffhanger with his death was resolved so no reason to not get back to the action now.

The Animal-man hybrids rebel against Doctor Evilguy and smash his Techno-manipulation device. But who cares about how the Justice League: Z-Listers plus Superman have now gotten their own minds back! There's a big double-page advert for a Hanna-Barbera comic called FutureQuest by Jeff Parker and Evan Shaner! It stars the Herculoids as well as some others you may have heard of but I don't care about as much as The Herculoids. Blue Falcon and Dynomutt aren't in this advertisement but I'm hoping they eventually join the crew. Maybe I should send Jeff Parker a Tweet to remind him about their existence and how I'll keep reminding him every day until they show up.

Batman introduces himself to Superman as Tim Drake and Superman introduces himself as Jon. I hope I like him better as an adult than as that little rascal from Lois and Clark.

I wonder if I should read the new Scooby Doo book as well. It's by Giffen and DeMatteis so I might just purchase it to turn into a drinking game.

Superman heads over to Neo-Gotham to lecture everybody about how to live their lives. What a fucking Douchéstork. He disappears for the entire Brother Eye war and now he thinks he can return to tell everybody how to live their lives? I hope everybody still hates him!

Nope, they all must love him because the riots stop even though not everybody has the food they need. I guess they trust Superman to get around to feeding them after he's done celebrating with the Justice League. Meanwhile, that Rewire guy is all, "Fucking fuck. Fucking League fuckers. Fuck them fuckers." But he's got a boss who is all, "Don't sweat it, bro! We got this!"

Batman Beyond #10

Good thing DC keeps reminding me about the Batman Loves Superman: Dawn of Just Us movie or I'd probably forget it was out in theaters on March 25th! I hope they remind me when it's in second run though because that's when I'll probably see it. If, you know, I don't forget about it.

I'm not sure if this comic book is meant to be a story about Tim Drake in the future or a delivery vehicle for Batman Loves Superman ads! Here's the inside cover:

The sexual tension is palpable! They should have made this advert with that 3-D effect so you could see their boners grow when you moved the page.

So Rebirth is on the horizon which might refresh some of my enthusiasm for writing about DC Comics. I just ran out of stuff to say about them after four years! How many times can I point out that the Teen Titans are jerk-offs and Green Arrow's comic book may as well have been replaced by the clerk at your Local Comic Book store slapping you in the face after handing them $2.99? Plus I'll be able to increase my word count because I'm certain to constantly write "REBIRTH!" after every two or three sentences.

This issue begins with Tim Drake battling a Tigerman and an Apeboy and a Womangirl. Unless the female is some kind of otter. But she only seems to have two breasts so I'm guessing she's a human or a bird. I don't think normal birds have boobs because they feed their babies vomit but I'm fairly certain that all human-bird hybrids have perky tits. Except for Big Bird.

Who made you, Tim Drake, arbiter of personal decisions? Maybe Apeboy likes having a huge gorilla cock even if he ejaculates almost immediately every time he rubs on anything. That's what gorillas do, right? Hmm. I'm beginning to suspect that Planet of the Rapes wasn't a documentary on gorilla culture.

While Tim Drake battles beastpeople and argues "philosophy" with a mad scientist, Matt McGinnis discovers the Justice League trapped in stasis tubes. I guess they weren't turned into Eyeborgs after all. Because that was Futures End bullshit that kind of painted this future's possibilities into a corner. But revealing that the Justice League survived means more variety for the DC Youniverse's bleak and awful future that came about because DC likes the idea that its heroes just aren't good enough to, ultimately, save the world. The members still alive are a Green Lantern, Big Barda, Warhawk, and Aquagirl. So, you know, the C-Team.

You know what the "C" stands for.

Over in Gotham, the refugees storm the city just before an ad for a new Superman trade featuring the "Before Truth" story arc. They decided to go with an IGN review blurb rather than use one of mine. I knew I used the word "shit" too many times!

Tim Drake is speciesist. What would be wrong with a half-giraffe girl or a sexy ladybug?

The Justice League is hypnotized by an elephant man because you know how that is. You go to the zoo and you can't stop staring at the elephant waiting to see it pop a boner or take a huge piss. It's mesmerizing! The Justice League now think that Batman Beyond is a cyborg. It's as good an excuse as any to get good guys to battle each other! It's also a good time for Tuftan the Tiger to learn that his mad scientist creator has been lying to him. And if there is one thing felines can't stand, it's being lied to and/or string. Cuvier, the mad scientist, also mentions how the Justice League Cyborgs weren't actually the Justice League, probably for those reasons I mentioned earlier about how shitty and boring this world would be if all of the heroes from just a few decades earlier had been murdered and turned into weaponized toaster ovens.

The next advert is for Wonder Woman Year One by Grant Morrison. Since it hasn't come out yet, DC has decided not to use any quotes by IGN or Comic Book Resources, even though I'm sure they already have some raving reviews ready to go. "'The most dramatic version of Wonder Woman I've seen since the first five minutes of the Wonder Woman porn parody!' -- Chris Sims." Instead, they went with a Grant Morrison quote about his own work.

Did Grant Morrison okay the punctuation in this quote?

Big Barda eventually believes she kills Batman but she doesn't realize that before she could kill him, Matt McGinnis sank his battleship which, um, helped Tim escape somehow or something.

Batman Beyond #10 Rating: +1 Ranking. This comic book is a lot better than it should be. What it should be is forgotten by everybody who read Futures End all the way through. I'm not denying that Futures End had some interesting parts or that it actually made me like Grifter for a few seconds but, overall, it was mediocre with an ending that had DC shitting all over the future of its characters. But Dan Jurgens is slowly changing the future by pretending a lot of the stuff that happened actually happened in a way that wasn't so stupid. I mean, it was just stupid in a different way that could lead to more interesting future stories! So hopefully it gets to some of those before REBIRTH!

Batman Beyond #6

Shoulder mounted missiles are the couture of the haute in the future.

I haven't watched any movies lately so I'm not going to review a movie. But if my niece's book which she told me about tonight eventually gets made into a movie, I'll review it here. The working title of her book is "Tess Makes Me Barf." It sounds fascinating!

I wonder what other people make my niece do since I make her barf and she's explicitly stated that I'm her favorite person. She must really be hard to please!

Currently in Batman Beyond, Tim Drake has decided it's time to go to the moon and kick Brother Eye in the robot balls. The only way to get to the moon now is to take a ship built by The Court of Owls. Unless it's some other way since I'm really only guessing. I should probably just read the comic book instead of guessing to get it over with since this is now the 54th issue of Futures End which I was completely bored of by around issue sixteen. I'd much rather be playing the new Call of Duty or creating a new board game called "Alleyways and Gangsigns." I don't yet know how the game will be played but I dreamt the name so I should probably create it.

I don't know why I guessed Tim would fly a ship to the moon. That's such an archaic from of travel! It turns out Bruce used the Court of Owls building for Teleporter storage. And since Brother Eye's headquarters is the Justice League satellite crashed on the moon, Tim now has instant access to Brother Eye's balls!

As long as you've got the Bat-lube, Tim.

The rest of the comic book is the final battle with Brother Eye. Inque drips inside of him and shorts him out and, for some terrible reason, his entire consciousness/program is housed inside the body he made for himself with no way out. So Inque sacrifices herself to make sure the entire headquarters on the moon explodes while Tim teleports back to Earth with her daughter. Basically Brother Eye could have been defeated at any time over the last thirty years had somebody just thought to throw a glass of water on him. Which means this series was just a retelling of The Wizard of Oz. Tim winds up in a strange land terrorized by a wicked robot and his flying cyborgs only to defeat them all by throwing water on the bad guy. I suppose this was also the ending of Signs too! From now on, I'm always keeping a glass of water by my bedside table in case an intruder ever breaks in and then SPLASHO! Water right in the face! Apparently it's the greatest weapon in the world.

The final page of the comic book has Tim forgetting to tap his heels together and say that thing about no place being like home (because home is usually way shittier than every other place a person can be). Instead he's all, "I guess this is home! Boring!" And Babs is all, "I can make it less boring for you. Meaning sex. I will have sex with you. Constantly." He doesn't throw a glass of water on her so I guess he's into it. And then the issue ends with a fairly definitive "The End." Does that mean what I think it means?! Is this really the final issue of this series?! I don't see anything online about the series being cancelled although I did find a bit about Lost Army being cancelled which has me thrilled! I wonder if I can get Sinestro cancelled too?

Batman Beyond #6 Rating: -2 Ranking. What a major let down! What a boring bummer of an ending! DC Comics basically just published fifty-four issues of Futures End where Brother Eye completely took over everything and beat all of the world's greatest heroes and destroyed the world! Nobody could defeat him because he was so powerful! And then he's defeated because his inner working got some liquid on them. Why did nobody think to spray him with a hose earlier? It's not like I was expecting an incredible ending to this story since the story itself has been just a little bit better than completely boring. Here's a suggestion to comic book writers: come up with your story before taking on the job of writing a monthly title. I'm sick of writers having no clue what they're doing so that their stories meander from plot point to plot point with no direction. As writers, stop thinking that you're good enough to figure out the story as you go along because it isn't working at all. Most of you are not that good at writing to just wing it. Come up with a fucking plan and write your ass off. I blame the editors too. Stop being lazy assholes and force writers to actually have stories they want to tell.

Batman Beyond #5 And A Movie

Why is this a Gods and Monsters Batman cover?

Glancing through my Netflix recently watched scrollbar, I see I've watched quite a few movies since my last Batman Beyond Critique (is "critique" better than "review"? Because I don't really review the comic books I read and saying "reviews" always makes me feel like a slimy bastard). Let me comment briefly on all of them.

Would You Rather: This probably would have been more enjoyable with a more diverse set of Would You Rather Games instead of the whole "Would you rather hurt X with Y, or Z with I Messed Up Because There Is No Letter After Z But If There Were I Would Place It Here?" Maybe I would have liked it better if I wasn't distracted by screaming, "It's Crab Man!" and "That's Bob from Walking Dead!" and "It's The Penguin as a Douchebro!" and "Oh! Who is that guy? I fucking know that guy! He kind of looks like the weasel faced Upright Citizen's Brigade guy but it's not him! Oh! Oh! WHO THE FUCK IS THAT? It's right on the...OH! It's Peggy's journalist boyfriend from Mad Men!" Also I guessed the super twisty surprise ending somewhere around the time The Penguin was trying to rape the Pitch Perfect girl.

V/H/S: Viral: The least scary and interesting of the V/H/S movies so far. Although it did feature an alternate dimension where people had carnivorous genitals.

The Nightmare: A testimonial of sorts featuring people with sleep paralysis. Only one of the sufferers seems to view it in scientific terms while the others are wrapped up in the paranormal or religious mystery of their Sleep Paralysis Waking Dreams. It's interesting to compare them to schizophrenics in that they seem to (or feel the desire to?) believe that they're experiencing real phenomena that opens up the world to a more mysterious reality. But really they're just people who develop a kind of momentary schizophrenia while falling asleep or waking. The stories are fascinating. The need for meaning is not.

Monster Squad: I guess I saw this a long time ago when it first came out but I didn't remember it until watching the movie. It suffers from the fat kid trope where the fat kid is constantly eating. Plus everybody just calls him "fat kid." At one point, he staves off Dracula because he has a piece of garlic pizza stuffed inside his jacket in the way that all fat people always have a slice of pizza crammed into one of their pockets. I think characters say "fag" and "gay" a lot. At one point, Frankenstein takes a picture of the neighbor girl disrobing. One of the kids flashes the picture to her in order to blackmail her to tell them if she is a virgin or not (surprise twist ending: she isn't). I paused the Netflix to see the picture and it's a picture of her standing in front of a house fully clothed. Stupid PG movie.

Mad Ron's Prevues From Hell: This is a cheesy VHS movie from the late eighties that just strings together a bunch of sixties and seventies horror movie trailers. One trailer was for a movie called Africa: Blood and Guts. After all the fake, cheesy violence, it was disturbing that they'd throw in a trailer showing actual footage of wild animals and people being shot, as well as clips of real severed body parts and corpses. The tag line was "Every scene looks you straight in the eye...and spits!" It really wrecked my boner from the preview that was for a 3-D porn film.

Anyway. Batman Beyond, kids!

The entire future is a shit sundae not worth saving but Tim Drake is going to save it in a dusty suit of Honey Bunny Batman Armor anyway!

As Tim climbs into the Honey Bunny Batman Armor so that he can pretend he cares about saving this godawful future, he has a short conversation about Dick Grayson with Barbara Gordon. Most of it amounts to Dick and Babs liked each other but never got together (as far as Drake knows!). And some of it is actually nice dialogue by Dan Jurgens. I guess he's not too old to write something interesting or relevant on occasion.

Just imagine how Bruce felt when he realized Dick was also the perfect Batman.

Tim's plan is to take the fight out of Gotham and to the moon. If I were Tim, my plan would be to get bit by a vampire already, survive until the end of time gathering knowledge, take a time bubble back to the past, start an organization called NOWHERE which will gather up the best young super heroes in the world, and train them to defeat Brother Eye when he comes around. It should work out perfectly as long as his own young self and his team of teen misfits don't stop him!

But first Tim has to save Gotham and destroy Superman so that Superman doesn't grab his ankle to keep Tim from flying to the moon.

In the past, the Honey Bunny Bat Armor couldn't battle anybody without being shut down in five seconds or having its knee joints shot out. But now in the future, it's practically undefeatable against impossible to beat odds! I guess Batman made some improvements which the Powers Company didn't think of. During the battle, Matt McGinniss steals John Stewart's power ring.

Tim lures out Cyborg Superman (not that one) to distract him from the Moon Plan. But he also winds up attracting Cyborg Wonder Woman's attention as well. But then she attracts Micron's attention because he's a man, isn't he? I think he is. I don't know. Whatever. Cyborg Wonder Woman is so hot that everybody wants a piece of her.

Oh yeah, Micron! Wreck her!

Micron makes himself as large as possible and Wonder Woman's head blows off. He probably should have taken out Superman this way but maybe he felt awkward entering Superman through the only orifice Superman wouldn't have noticed.

Tim pops out of the Honey Bunny Bat Armor while Cyborg Superman is distracted, hops on Superman's back, and shoves Bruce's faithful kryptonite ring down Superman's throat. The only person able to dislodge it from Superman's throat via the Super Heimlich Maneuver is Superman! And now he's not so super because he has a kryptonite ring stuck in his throat! That's like ironic or a catch-22 or something. Maybe it's just a notably interesting conundrum?

Micron smashes Superman and it's over. With Cyborgs Wonder Woman, Superman, and Green Lantern taken out, there really aren't any DC super heroes left who can challenge Batman (even if it is only Tim Drake Batman in Jim Gordon's armor). Time to take the battle to the moon! But first they have to stop at an old Court of Owls property bought up by Bruce sometime in the last thirty years. Because hidden inside is the secret Macguffin that will help them destroy Brother Eye next issue! What is it?! I don't know! It's a secret until you pay another three dollars next month!

Where are all the magic using super heroes? They haven't all succumbed to cyborgism, have they? Did they all flee to hell in the House of Secrets and/or Mystery?

Batman Beyond #5 Rating: No change. Lately (and by "lately" I might mean since The New 52), a lot of DC's future or elseworld stories have been all idea and no story. I get the idea of coming up with the story about how Brother Eye takes over the future and how everybody reacts to it and battles against it in a pitch meeting, and how a lot of people would be excited for it. But without an interesting story to develop the idea, it's just a big letdown. Futures End was mostly that. It didn't even provide the satisfaction of having the heroes save the world! They failed. So now this comic book is about how the world deals with their failure. Great. Remember when superheroes were meant to be a shining beacon of what was possible? They represented humanity's optimism and never-say-die attitude? Remember how your life sucked but you could read a comic book and you realized you could also find the power within yourself to battle your problems and succeed? Well forget them! All the heroes eventually fail and die just like us! The future is a great big pit of suck and the only thing we all have to be thankful for is that we'll be too dead to experience it! Thanks for the uplifting message, DC Comics! Yeehaw.

Batman Beyond #4

Stop eating yourself, Batman!

I knew Batman Beyond was on the top of my stack so I took a break from "writing" last night to watch a movie. I really should start titling these Batman Beyond reviews as "Batman Beyond And A Movie." Unfortunately, I watched Upstream Color last night which gives me precious little to rant, rave, or wax pseudo-intellectually about. It does have some really cute pigs though. I watched it because I loved Shane Carruth's first movie Primer more than I love my mother. Maybe I should think of a better way to describe my love for the movie since I'm fairly certain I also loved Ghostbusters II more than my mother. Anyway, Upstream Color is more of an experience than a story. A bunch of people have a traumatic experience at the hands of a greedy asshole which they can't actually remember. But they do have a hole in their life which cost them everything, so that's something. Two of these people find each other and enjoy a romantic love story where they occasionally freak out for reasons unknown to them. The reason they feel something suddenly missing, or intense separation anxiety, or sudden, uncontrollable anger is because the pigs that now contain their hypnotic tapeworms are going through some really tough shit. Eventually they realize that they can recite Walden like a pretentious college sophomore believing they're the first to ever truly understand Thoreau, naturalism, and civil disobedience, and that nobody before them ever has realized that you can actually ignore people in authority to live your own life and help raise your psychically-linked pig's offspring as if they were your own. In one stunning and innovative scene, Carruth uses a swimming pool as a metaphor for the subconscious as Kris begins to regain some of her memories which later allow her to kill the farming DJ who's been killing her pig children. Anyway, I enjoyed it but the next Shane Carruth movie I watch will be Primer. Unless he figures out a way to finance that Topiary movie.

So last issue, Brother Eye hacked into A.L.F.R.E.D. and discovered the location of Neo-Gotham. That's probably bad news since Brother Eye has already destroyed and/or conquered every place else on Earth. Hopefully Tim Drake destroys him this issue because I'm sick to death of Brother Eye as the ultimate antagonist.

This issue begins with Neo-Gotham being invaded by hundreds of Brother Eye's cyborgs. So it's basically Futures End #52.

I'd say Gotham needs the "whole lot more" more than it really needs Batman.

Batman smashes A.L.F.R.E.D.'s hard drive because Brother Eye is using it against him. He gets distracted and is captured by a cyborg. But then Micron, the Ray Palmer equivalent of this time, smashes the cyborg and says, "Experience this." If I weren't reading all of DC's comic books, I would make it a rule to drop any book where a character uses the "[VERB] this!" line.

Inque, the villain with the ridiculously spelled name, decides to fight on the side of the good guys even though Brother Eye still has her daughter on the moon. Batman promised to help rescue her daughter and I guess she believes Batman is capable of it. That's because she doesn't realize Dan Jurgens is writing this story and Dan Jurgens' protagonists have a way of failing spectacularly at everything they do. Remember Justice League International and how depressing it was?! I need a Xanax just thinking about it.

Tim Drake and Micron are being overwhelmed by the first wave of cyborgs attacking the city. Just over the river, the second wave of cyborgs, full of old super heroes, stands waiting to join the fight. But before that happens, Tim Drake has to Narration Box some thoughts that make it sound like he's giving up only to turn it around at the last moment and declare he doesn't believe any of what he was just thinking at all. It's really fucking annoying. I often go about thinking things like, "You can't cross a busy street without risking life and limb. It's so dangerous that it should never be attempted, no matter how much delicious food is on the other side. If you want to live, you're stuck never crossing the street. Or so I once thought! Until I was taught about crosswalks and street lights and pedestrian overpasses! Thank you, city planners!"

After Tim decides not to lose because Bruce taught him not to lose, Barbara Gordon picks him up in a Batplane. They ditch Micron and head on over to the Batcave to find some helpful weapons and maybe a backup hard drive of A.L.F.R.E.D. Apparently the current Batman Beyond suit is the newest technology and Tim has destroyed it. So now the only thing left to use is some old bat armor that's going to make him look fat when he wears it.

Batman Beyond #4 Rating: No change. Hey Dan! Remember last year when Futures End came out every week? Remember how after 48 weeks, it sort of ended in unsatisfying failure? The part of it that I really liked was the part where it ended. I'd had enough of Brother Eye dominating the world. I'd grown sick of a DC Universe's future where all of the heroes had ultimately failed to stop a computer in space. So I kind of resent that the story is continuing. This is the future DC comics wants to maintain as the "real" future of the DC Youniverse? If so, it sucks. In thirty five years, everybody will have failed and it's up to Tim Drake and Barbara Gordon and a handful of other heroes to save what's left of the world. Is what's left really worth saving? Maybe they should try going back in time again and keeping this shitty ruined future from ever happening. Although it says a lot about how DC Comics views their universe and its heroes. Apparently they have no confidence in any of them except for Batman. And they want the readers to know it by introducing this future into continuity. "Hey look! Superman and Cyborg and Wonder Woman suck! Ultimately they're not the heroes you thought they were! But Batman survived! Sort of! He's the greatest!" This is the worst version of the future DC could come up with and it's the one they choose for their timeline. Idiots.

Batman Beyond #3

Something's happening!

This is apparently the comic book review where I begin by talking about a movie I just recently watched. But the only movie I recently watched that didn't star Albert Ingalls and Willis Drummond pretending to be autistic was Apartment 1303 and that movie isn't worth talking about at all. I guess it's worth saying things like, "I have no idea why this movie was made or what it was supposed to be about." And I suppose I could say something like, "Everybody in it was a horrible actor except maybe the decaying corpse in the hammock." Most people aren't going to even recognize the movie by the title which gives away the whole movie anyway! If there is a thirteenth floor in your apartment building, it's probably an imaginary space full of ghosts and dead people! Which this floor is! It was so surprising! The main problem with the movie after all of the other problems with the movie that are essentially the entire movie is that it has no theme and barely any plot. Perhaps the theme is the fear of growing up? Maybe it has something to do with madness? Dysfunctional families? If one is willing to severely contort logic, one might come up with a theory that would at least be more interesting than the movie. As far as I could tell, the movie was about a haunted apartment where a ghost that loves to throw people off of balconies lives. It does it to one woman so the woman's sister moves into the apartment for reasons that the writers decided not to spend much time on. Then she convinces her dead sister's boyfriend to spend the night with her two nights in a row when her sister could hardly even get her boyfriend to answer the phone. Then the ghost decides it wants to change its plan of attack which it's loved for at least three or four other victims. This time instead of throwing the woman off of the balcony, it decides to frame her for the murder of her sister's boyfriend and her mother. The end!

What I really think is the movie is a poorly constructed story about a woman who murders her sister and her sister's boyfriend and her mother because she's mentally ill and sick to death of everybody's faces. But the only real clue there is that one time the mother asks her daughter if she stopped taking her medication and one other scene where the woman has a nightmare about suffocating her mom. I don't know why there is a ghost girl except that there always has to be a ghost girl. The rapey ghost landlord only makes an appearance for shits and giggles, I guess. The convenience store located in the lobby of the apartment building was the biggest unexplained mystery of all! I think it was an Asian grocery!

I guess I got what I deserved for watching a movie on Netflix with a one and a half star rating. I have to assume I'm at least four or five times smarter than everybody watching movies on Netflix, so if they can tell they're watching a turd instead of a movie then the movie must be really fucking awful.

Now that I've vented about it, I'll ask Lord Google about the movie. And--no surprise although I'm surprised!--it's based on a Japanese horror movie. Now I want to watch the original! That totally fucking explains why the ghost crawls up the wall one time. Also unsurprisingly, the movie was completely rewritten in a way which would make it completely incomprehensible. I suppose it's still about an apartment and a ghost and people falling off of a balcony. Nailed it!

Reading the plot summary of the 2012 version causes me to wonder what movie the person writing the plot summary was discussing! Did the American release cut a bunch of scenes from the European release because it explains a bunch of stuff that was simply not in the version I watched on Netflix, like who the landlord and the little girl actually were, and how the decaying corpse in the closet became a prostitute (before becoming a corpse!). It is possible I fell asleep at several different points while watching the movie.

The issue begins with Brother Eye recounting Tim Drake's history for Tim Drake. Or the readers.

Or maybe just to remind readers that DC Comics thought it over and decided that Tim Drake discovering Batman's identity was really the way to go even if the whole "Batman being impressed" thing never actually happened in Scott Lobdell's revision of his own story about how Tim and Batman got together.

Remember how Lobdell's first version pissed everybody off because Tim Drake almost figured out Batman's identity but he guessed the wrong person? And then remember how Lobdell rewrote that scene so Tim Drake was only pretending to think Batman was the wrong person to allow Batman to preserve some dignity? So either way, Batman could never have been impressed enough with Tim Drake's detective skills to bring him on as a sidekick. No, the real reason Batman took him on as a sidekick was because Tim hacked into The Penguin's bank account and stole all of The Penguin's money and The Penguin found out. So Tim's parents had to go into hiding while Tim was allowed to live in Batman's mansion before going on to be a completely boring idiot in Teen Titans.

Brother Eye has decided to turn Batman Beyond into a cyborg like all of the other superheroes. But Alfred the A.I. has other plans. Like telling Tim not to become a cyborg. Luckily Tim listens to him and breaks free! Now he has to battle Inque while trying not to giggle too much over her stupid name. Although he's only heard it so far so he probably doesn't realize that it's spelled stupidly.

Meanwhile on the moon, Brother Eye stops looking.

Of course he foresaw this! I hate supervillains who are never surprised by anything! Brother Eye might as well be Harvest. Except Tim Drake is Harvest, so that would wind up just being needlessly complicated. Like the X-Titles in the nineties.

The child on Brother Eye's moon belongs to Inque and is the reason why Inque is not a cyborg and yet still doing what Brother Eye says. I bet Brother Eye has a whole moon full of children! They're probably forced to make candy all day long. How long is a day on the moon?

Tim tells Inque that he'll go to the moon to save her daughter if she helps him destroy Camp Happiness. Or, at the very least, if she simply doesn't interfere. That allows Tim Drake to beat up all of the cyborgs and save Barbara Gordon and Max while Brother Eye shakes his fists in the air and yells, "DDDDOOOOOOOOOM!" I mean, "NOOOOOOO!"

Batman returns Happy Max and Barbara Gordon to Neo-Gotham and everybody lives happily ever after. Or at least they will once Tim Drake deals with Brother Eye who infected his suit which allowed him to shut down Alfred and learn the location of Neo-Gotham. So that happily ever after will probably have to wait for several more issues. Hopefully it can happen before this comic book is cancelled.

Batman Beyond #3 Rating: No change. After forty-eight issues of Futures End, I figured everybody had had enough of it. But this is just more of Futures End. And I was bored of Futures End after about twenty issues of it. If I had the confidence to tell my comic book store to stop putting this comic book in my pull box, I'd do it. But the way I know Peter would look at me when he discovered I was no longer going to read every DC Comic book gives me pause. I guess I'll plod through it every month and just spend most of the commentary talking about a stupid movie I'll have recently seen!

Batman Beyond #2

Ambushed by The Flocked Assassin!

At times I want to do nothing more than lie on the couch in the wee early hours of the ending night and watch a horror movie or a stupid comedy on Netflix. Which is why I watched Andy Samberg in Hot Rod last night. Ignoring the clichéd plot of the underdog saving the whatever and winning the good looking something (which is actually asking a viewer to ignore the whole movie but, you know, whatever), it really works! But it only works for two reasons! You take out these two bits and the movie is utter garbage and not worth watching. The two aspects of this film which lift it into heavenly glory are Al Swearengen and the use of the worst (best! (worst! (no, no! Best!))) songs from Europe's album The Final Countdown. If you aren't familiar with the album, the movie might not have worked as well for you. But the movie had me hooked from the start by using "Danger on the Tracks" as the opening song. And I'm impressed that they had the willpower to leave "The Final Countdown" out of the movie. I guess it might have been confusing since Gob Bluth was one of the cast.

I'm only sad they didn't find a way to use the song "Ninja" in the movie. Jesus Christ, Joey Tempest and Europe! What were you guys thinking?! Every song on that album could have won the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for 1986!

On second thought, maybe Hot Rod had a little more going for it than Swearengen and Europe. Bill Hader deserves credit for playing himself perfectly and Isla Fisher should be acknowledged for wearing the crap out of clothing. I mean, the way she turned up in that sun dress? Stunning! And the Hiking shirt alone was Oscar worthy.

I just realized I began my commentary on the first issue of Batman Beyond rambling on about Ghost World. I think that might say something about how interested I am in reading this comic book. Although Tim did meet elderly Barbara Gordon at the end of the last issue and that was kind of interesting, right?

This issue begins with Tim Drake being recruited into Barbara Gordon's Secret Prisoners Who Have Retained Their Faces Club. She lives in The Lodge (that's the name of Brother Eye's Death Happiness Camp) with her friends because Brother Eye crushed their souls. But he only crushed their souls after greed, apathy, and corruption crushed their spirits. What's the difference between a spirit and a soul? No wait! I know! Spirit is like cheering for your high school football team while soul is like making other people feel sexy with your dancing and singing. So they're more different than I thought they were after I thought about them a little bit.

As if any gathering is authorized!

I bet the first mandatory class you have to take in the Joe Kubert School of Drawing Comic Books is "Window Breaking/Wall Smashing 101." I wonder if artists ever even learn how to draw a door being opened? I do know one artist that can draw a door being opened! Brian Bolland!

The Flocked Assassin from the cover seems to be running The Lodge along with her sidekick, Deathstrobot. He looks less formidable as a robot than he does as a Tony S. Daniel drawing. I wonder if he got to keep his youthful testicles? The Flocked Assassin has noticed that one of the men escaped the batch of new prisoners and was replaced by a woman. This could be trouble which means this woman must be questioned in an ethical manner to find out what she knows or The Lodge could lose their insurance.

Brother Eye and Tim Drake sitting in a tree!

I hope Brother Eye's Nemesis is a huge sheep so that when they meet, Brother Eye will say "It is Eye!" and his nemesis will say "No! Not Ewe!"

Ouch. I think I strained my pun muscle.

Barbara Gordon and Tim Drake can't hide underground for long before they're discovered by Inque and Deathblow! I bet Deathblow loves hanging around with Inque so that his name isn't the worst in the group for once. Although I'm sure Deathblow was probably a pretty creative name among the heroes he hung out with.

Also I'm just guessing that it's Deathblow. I know with my comic book reading skills, there's only a sliver of a chance that I'm wrong. But sometimes slivers can be pretty big! Although big slivers are always better than small slivers because they're easier to pull out with my huge manly hands full of muscles and chest hair.

Can we hold a summit where we agree to retire the phrase "I've got your [thing referenced earlier] right here"?

Tim Drake pulls out his Audio/Visual cables and plugs himself into the back of Deathblow's neck. His suit fires up and Alfred is back to talk Tim through everything that doesn't involve body functions. Alfred tells Tim Drake about Inque because, like me, he never watched the Batman Beyond cartoon. I bet the best way to deal with her is either to freeze her solid or to dip a quill in her and quickly write the Great American Novel. I'm sure Alfred will know how to best her in battle.

Alfred informs Tim that water is a good weapon against Inque. Not really. Unless you also include tons of soap and harsh chemical cleaners and some seriously rough scrubbing pads, Inque is really tricky to defeat. Tim Drake learns that the hard way and winds up a prisoner of Brother Eye. Next issue, he's going to be processed while Brother Eye watches from his base on the moon. And Brother Eye isn't just a big bank of computers or a satellite or WOPR! Nope! He's a humanoid automaton! Or, more probably, a cyborg! My guess is that it's Harvest! I mean Michael Holt! I mean Jason Todd!

Batman Beyond #2 Rating: No change. I wonder how well this comic book is doing so far. This comic book must be for Tim Drake fans, right? Because it seems like they're alienating the Terry McGinnis fans. If you're a fan of the cartoon (or the comics based on the cartoon), why read Batman Beyond if the main character isn't Terry McGinnis? I guess for the same reason many fans stuck around for the reboot? Plus I guess having Tim go up against Inque might be exciting for fans familiar with Inque. I like her when she looks like flocked wallpaper. Anyway, I'm not recommending this comic book to anybody because I don't know who would like this comic book?! Maybe fans of an older Barbara Gordon?

Batman Beyond #1

I should probably sit down and watch this cartoon sometime. Even though the cartoon has nothing to do with this comic book.

I just rewatched Ghost World so bear with me as I recover. I've mentioned before how all of my favorite novels aren't about good people overcoming their problems or defeating the bad people or making the world a better place. No, all of my favorite novels are about the protagonist finding their only choice is to escape from the insanity of a world they were never asked to be a part of. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Catch-22. The Grapes of Wrath. Some other books I'm probably forgetting. All of those (maybe!) pale in comparison to how I feel about Ghost World (the movie and the comic book). My heart breaks so hard for Enid and yet I feel intense and overwhelming joy when she chooses freedom. It's not easy, and she probably hurts a lot of people in the process. But she was dying trying to find a life which her best friend and family would fit into. I love how she and Becky's hand holding lingers in their final scene together, and I'm happy that Becky seems to understand. I like to imagine that they still sometimes speak, or visit, and that when they do, they pick up exactly where they left off, as old, first friends are wont to do after long absences.

Fifteen years later, Ghost World takes on a more poignant tone knowing that Thora Birch kind of disappeared from the big screen (not entirely but, really, you have to be looking to find her. I suggest you don't go looking down the Dungeons and Dragons path) while Scarlett Johansson was accepted by Hollywood and fit right in.

Anyway. If Ghost World means anything special to you, we would probably understand each other although it would be awkward and we probably wouldn't really care about hanging out. If you hated the movie and didn't identify with it at all, lucky you.

Now let's see how Tim Drake goes from Batman Beyond to Harvest in twelve easy steps!

This issue begins with a decapitation and other dismemberments! That'll keep the kids busy in a non-offensive way on a long road trip. Imagine if the issue began with tea and cupcakes?! No modern kid would turn the page!

The people doing the dismemberment are painted up like clowns because they're bad guys and bad guys in Gotham tend toward looking silly and being utterly ridiculous and teetering on the verge of absolutely moronic. I think Joker Gangs of the Future are also a standard part of the old Batman Beyond world, so we should all have expected them (even if this world is supposed to be covered in Brother Eye Cyborg Super Monsters).

Special Chase Foil Paragraph of Ultimate Rarity: I'm super excited that Bernard Chang is doing all of the penciling and inking himself. See? Sometimes I do mention the art. Especially when I'm prepared to say a lot of horrible things about the writing. Sorry, Dan Jurgens! I don't hate your writings! But I'm preparing myself for not really thoroughly enjoying it very much?

That last sentence of the previous paragraph wasn't a question but I felt the question mark softened the sentiment enough so that if Dan Jurgens' family were to read this, they wouldn't cry.

The map and remembering where Brother Eye was built bit was clever enough for me to think this book could be going in the right direction. It's the kind of question I'd ask! But saying it's the kind of question I'd ask doesn't exactly bring it up to Oscar Wilde levels of wit. But it's at least on the comparative scale (because I'm on the comparative scale!).

This Veil Technology that Wayne Enterprises has invented helps to make the Neo-Gotham of Batman Beyond believable after a full year of being told that the future was just cyborgs, cyborgs, and more cyborgs. This allows for a city hidden from Brother Eye's gaze which has developed free from monster super robots. That's good because I was going to get bored really quickly of Tim Drake battling robots with familiar looking heads on them.

The Joker Gang want to steal the Veil Technology so that Brother Eye will notice Neo-Gotham and destroy it just like the rest of the world was destroyed. Tim Drake is against that for possibly obvious reasons. I say "possibly" because if you don't know why, I don't want to sound patronizing or insulting to your limited intelligence by assuming everybody can figure it out.

Tim and A.L.F.R.E.D. (henceforth to be known simply as Alfred) are still trying to work out how this future is different from the future Terry McGinnis came from. In that future, it seemed the entire world was a wasteland. Batman was also grafted to The Joker in that future and sent back in time. But since Gotham is hidden from Brother Eye in this future, I'm sure Tim will be dealing with him soon enough. Dan Jurgens has also left room for the survival of other cities as well since Alfred doesn't know everything about this timeline yet.

Tim decides to go ask Nora Boxer some questions. She's...oh, I can't remember who she is! Read the Sneak Peek, or the final issue of Futures End, or watch the television show if you really need to know! I do know that she lives with Terry McGinnis's younger brother though. The scene helps to inform those readers who missed the Sneak Peek of some of the information gleaned from the eight pager.

See? They don't know he's from the past!

Nora explains how Matt was now an orphan and looking for a sidekick job. But Tim probably feels it's too early in the run to throw a kid in a suit and into dangerous situations. Better to wait for Matt to wind up kidnapped where he'll have to show his pluck and determination which will prove he's just as capable as any other Robin ever was.

Tim asks about the Justice League and Nora says they're all dead or have been turned. So Tim is all they have! His first job is to rescue some human prisoners being held by Brother Eye for their knowledge. Tim heads out as Matt looks on envious of the suit. He's already dreaming of being the hero and he hasn't even done his time as Robin Beyond!

Once Tim arrives at the POW Camp known as The Lodge, he encounters his first Brother Eyenemy. Get it?!

First issue and he's already going to die?

Tim blows his load (the electric kind) and shorts out Superman. He also shorts out his own costume and Alfred as well. While he's in mufti (thanks Larry Hama!), Tim decides to sneak into the prisoner of war camp and pretend to be a prisoner. Once thrown into the general population, he's assaulted and shaken down for any tech he might have on him by some guy named Max and his pink haired friend. But a familiar face is able to set him free before any punches are thrown.

Oh shit! His cover is blown!

Batman Beyond #1 Rating: 7.5 Harvests out of 10. Okay, Dan Jurgens, I'm in! Let's see where this goes. The best part about this comic book being Futures End Lite is that it doesn't have to represent the future of The New 52 Universe. Maybe some fans will demand that it has some sort of relationship with The New 52 Universe or else they just won't feel a connection to the story. But for me, I just like that it's an Elseworlds book about one possible future of the DC Universe where Bruce Wayne and Michael Holt completely fucked up and destroyed the world. How are people dealing with that? How are Mike and Bruce dealing with it?! I'm sure they'll play an integral part in the future of this title. As far as Tim Drake now being Batman Beyond? That's a bit weird. I don't really care since I've never even watched the cartoon so I'm not invested in Terry McGinnis. But the fact that Batman Beyond was so popular and that Terry McGinnis won over everybody who watched the show and is thought of as Batman, it seems wrong to just kill him and throw Tim Drake in the suit. On the other hand, it's time for Tim Drake to prove he can be Batman as well! So you know. One half dozen dildos in one hand, six vibrating cockmonsters in the other.

Green Lantern Corps #40

That's one fucking wild 'fro, John.

I may have mentioned once or twice that my laptop was running like shit. I could see the sands in my hourglass speeding away as my web browser refused to load pages, my photoshop application decided not to respond, and my messaging client completely locked up. Well, my troubles are no more! Today I am free! Fuck you, Avast! You had your time but whoever decided that your anti-virus software wasn't up to par with McAfee's incredible power to bog down every computer it is installed on is an asshole. Now I feel like I'm using an actual computer again instead of seemingly trying to blog on a toaster. I can't believe the difference it's made. Doom Bunny suggested I take off Avast since it had been screwing up his wife's computer. I thank him for saving this blog and my life. At one point, I opened another browser window to go to Tumblr to post that I was quitting because I was so frustrated. But the stupid fucking browser window never opened and I forgot what I was opening it for in the first place and then I wrote a suicide note to Doom Bunny. Luckily he didn't take me seriously which pissed me off, so I still had something to live for: yelling at Doom Bunny. But then he fixed my problem so now he's a saint! You can now pray to Saint Doom Bunny, patron Saint of jerkos, You Make The Rules, and hockey.

I knew Avast was getting crappy when it was beginning to bug me for registration renewals and increased service for a monthly fee. But I never expected it to be behind all of my problems. Now my computer is the Wild West! Fuck you, anti-virus software! Suck my dick, firewalls! Anarchy rules here! But, um, hackers? Please be kind and leave my shit alone! I turned off the wireless on this thing a few months ago. Now if I sense any hinky dinky funny business going on (and believe me, I can smell that shit like a three star Michelin chef smells truffle oil), I'll just yank out my internet wire and stop those viruses in their tracks! I can do it too! Boom! See? Just did it! BOOM! Did it again!

Anyway, if this is my last blog post, you'll know that my laptop has become a useless brick full of pop ups, trojan horses, and porn.

This issue begins with John's memory of blowing up Xanshi. You see, there was this bomb and it was poisoning the people of Xanshi. It was killing them slowly. So John thought, "I will stop it from killing them by disabling it!" And the bomb said, "Oh no you don't! I will just kill them faster!" And Katma went, "Oh fuck!" And John went, "Whoops!" And Fatality went, "I will murder you, you asshole!" And they all lived happily ever after.

I don't know any other way to end stories.

Now there is the same kind of bomb on Zarox. It's time for John Stewart to right the wrongs of his past! Or to banish some of his demons at least by being successful in a situation where he had failed once before. Because he's never going to bring back the people of Xanshi no matter how badly he wants Fatality to fuck him. I bet he's successful this time because John Stewart has suffered enough! Let him have one, guys!

Whoops!

If John Stewart can drop this bomb and it doesn't detonate, I don't think he should blame himself for the destruction of Xanshi. He barely looked at that bomb and it blew up. This one he's throwing all over the planet and nothing! I think John should have realized that when Katma declared, "John! You armed it!", she was mistaken. And then she was dead. He could have yelled out to her, "It armed itself because you didn't help me destroy it!" And then it would have been her fault! Man, he's just got to let the past go. Here's some advice, John: empty the garbage can. The past is just candy wrappers, banana peels, and used coffee grounds, man. Throw it the fuck away. It isn't doing you any good.

Since you're probably going to remember that garbage can thing to use on your kids in the future, let me give you some more advice for your kids about time. The present is a Grecian urn, all anticipation and excitement for the future. That's the best place to be! And the future is a brick wall. Run at it full speed and you'll kill yourself getting there. But if you enjoy your life and take your time, by the time you get to that brick wall, you'll be able to climb over it on the stack of corpses of the people rushing headlong into it. Although the only thing on the other side of that wall is a grave so, you know, it really doesn't fucking matter.

The bad lady with the splotch on her face tells John that the bomb, like the one on Xanshi, is powered by crimes and evil thoughts and dog poop. So, once again, the other bomb wasn't John's fault! It was the fault of Fatality and her people! Which is kind of blaming the victim but sometimes the victim is to blame, amirite? Stupid victims! Stop being so victimy.

Speaking of victims, Maro was kidnapped by the bad blotchy lady and now he's as big a dick as his meaty, coke-can-sized cock.

Maro is the worst philosopher ever. If you discount all the philosophers sitting in coffee shops all over the world right now. Fuck those guys.

Meanwhile in the heart of the Empire of Tears' largest bomb manufacturing center, Daggle and his partner Asile battle some person named Wyllt. She's the queen of the Empire of Tears. She was probably that little girl that was possessed by the Inversions on Ysmault. I remembered "Inversions" and "Ysmault" without any help from past commentaries or Lord Google! I wonder if I've accidentally been taking brain vitamins?

Wyllt flees to go watch one of her Emotion Bombs explode while Daggle and Asile blow up the bomb factory. Wyllt will probably arrive on Zarox since that bomb is ready to blow. And now I'm pretty sure I was wrong about those brain vitamins because I had to flip back a few pages to remember the name of the planet John is currently on even though I just read it five minutes ago.

John comes up with a stupid plan. "I sure hope that bomb doesn't explode!" BOMB DISARMED.

I bet the bomb inside of the Earth is powered by fleeting fame.

Princess Wyllt arrives to remind John that it was his arrogance that destroyed Xanshi. You know, if he still believes that after all the evidence to the contrary, he's a puss and he doesn't deserve a Green Lantern Ring.

The Zaroxians fight off the despair because hope is strong and powerful or some bullshit. Fuck hope! All hope ever got me was a disappointing Christmas morning!

Actually, hope doesn't save the day. It just stops the bomb from exploding on its own. Wyllt fixes that and arms it herself though. So now, since the Green Lantern Rings can't harm the bomb, it's up to Love to save the day! Fuck love! All love ever got me was tear-stained face and countless hours lost listening to Disintegration!

I can think of a few limits to love. Like nobody is shoving their fingers up my asshole, I'll tell you that right now. I mean, maybe after a half dozen shots of sake and an eighth of shrooms. Okay, maybe love doesn't have any limits provided the conditions are right.

John saves the planet because there's nothing you can say that can't be sung. And there's nothing you can do that can't be done. And there's nothing something something that you can never something something. It's easy!

Everybody celebrates the great big victory of love triumphing over darkness!

Gross. They don't even know if their sexual bits are compatible! What if one of them has a viscous blob and the other has a spinning propeller? That could get messy.

John leaves Jruk and Maro and Feska to rebuild the planet of Zarox while he goes to take a break. Typical foreman! He's had a lot of practice with that on building sites.

Green Lantern Corps #40 Rating: No change. We all knew John would win out with the power of love, didn't we? Now you all have a homework assignment. Download a bunch of Huey Lewis and the News albums, listen to them for the entire weekend, and then write a five page report on what it must have been like living in the eighties with that as your soundtrack. Hopefully now that you're busy with your assignment, you won't notice that I didn't offer any profound commentary on the end of this series.

Green Lantern Corps #39

Oh no! What's his name is in trouble!

I've been staring at the cover of Green Lantern Corps #39 off and on for over twelve hours now. Sort of. I mean, I slept for part of that time. But I was thinking about the book because I can't get past an image in my head and just begin reading and commenting on the book. I want to take a big black Sharpie and draw a cartoon version of John Stewart standing with his hands on his hips and looking out at the viewer. He would say something about knowing he wanted to be an architect because he found so much joy in drawing dungeon layouts for the Dungeons and Dragons games he ran throughout junior high. Behind him and his speech bubble, still in dark black ink, would be an intricate dungeon layout on graph paper with numbered rooms, an ornamental compass rose, and tiny monsters drawn here and there. So that image, an image I know I would fail to draw to my satisfaction, has been clogging up the neural pathways. You see, when I get an idea into my head, I need to pursue it. It's why some of my commentaries are in weird or offensive voices at times, or why a few, here or there, might not make much sense to anybody but me and the driving need in my brain. I'm hoping that talking this out will get me past it but my brain keeps trying to make the idea more and more complex.

Brain: "Wait. Get this. What if you draw a maze with lots of little rooms which can be clicked on to open a new window with a short story about one of the Green Lantern Corps members relating to decisions they've made within this issue?"
Me (which is somehow different from my brain. Some of you understand): "No. That's too much work and most of the people visiting the page won't even notice that you can click on different parts of the image for different links."
Brain: "Bullshit! People know how the web works!"
Me: "Right. That's why nobody ever figured out how my Superball Web Comic worked so I just abandoned it almost immediately after I created it."
Brain: "Bah! That was over a decade ago! Web uses are smarter now!"
Me: "Seriously, Brain? You're an idiot. If anything, they're less savvy because they browse everything on tiny screens and expect UIs to take their hand, put it on their genitalia, and move it around in a rapid, somewhat erotic manner. If a website doesn't do everything for them, they blame the fucking creator instead of their own limited imagination."
Brain: "You're lazy."
Me: "Fuck you! Eat a bullet!"
Brain: "You don't have the guts!"
Me: "I know. Bastard. Just wait until I'm motivated enough to get some anti-psychotics. That'll fucking teach you."
Brain: "Come on now! Let's be cool. Just draw that Stewart picture with the dungeon behind him and we'll go get some Oreos, okay? Would you like that? Some nice, fat Double Stuf Oreos?"
Me: "Well...okay."

"See, brain? This is why I didn't want to do it! There's no payoff! Now give me my fucking Oreos, bitch."

Forget the Oreos! Just having the weight of needing to do that gone from my head is all the reward I need. Life sure would be simpler if my brain would stop coming up with stupid shit to do.

Meanwhile on the planet Zarox, a bunch of Green Lantern Corps member whose names I should learn go about Green Lantern Corps business. Actually, I know most of their names and one or two personality traits. There's Jruk, the one-armed warrior monster from the planet Killdeathmaim. And there's Feska, the mother and thief from Zarox. And there's John Stewart, architect and Dungeons and Dragons nerd. And there's the little pink guy that doesn't talk which is probably why I forgot his name. He's super into philosophy but not very into gossip and he loves to not say anything. People at parties are always, "Who's the little pink guy? He's so mysterious! And he looks like a Tic Tac. I bet he's got one of those super thick Coke can cocks, right?" Is that how people talk at parties?

Oh, that's bullshit, Grandmother Feska. That's just the standard, old person rigmarole! "Things were better in my day when we shamed people into all acting exactly alike and never discussed the rights of the slaves we kept and also we castrated nine out of every ten boys when they were born. So much better, those days!"

Feska's son says the monsters are to blame for turning all of the Zaroxians into "Darkness Falls" spouting zombies. She tells her son that there are no such things as monsters as she uses her ring to turn Jruk into a cute little kitten. Depending on how racist Feska's son is, Feska might also turn John's skin pink. "See? No monsters in here," she says as she slaps Maro's hand away from his pants as he tries to unleash his trouser Kraken.

I didn't spontaneously remember Maro's name. I had to consult Lord Google to figure it out because "slaps the pink mute guy's hand away" didn't work as well as just using his name.

As soon as Feska tells her son that their are no monsters, an Owlbear crashes through the wall. Typical. I mean, you give an Owlbear an opening like that, no saving throw in the rules will stop her from taking it.

Grandmother is killed in the attacks and Feska can't help feeling a little bit relieved that she's not going to have to pay for her care anymore and then she feels guilty and then she feels annoyed that she's going to have to find a new caretaker for her son and then she feels guilty again. You know, the standard emotions when a parent dies. Also, Maro is kidnapped by the Owlbears. What can they say? They love Coke!

"Again!" Or what about, "Unless it's by my own hands!"

Meanwhile on the moon above Ungara, Green Lanterns: The Lost Army continues to prelude up the place. Maybe. It might be something altogether different, actually. Daggle finally finds his old partner acting as a slave master overseeing a mysterious building project. Probably a new color Lantern Corps! I'm hoping for a Fuchsia Corps!

It seems the Shadow Empire (hey! Those are the same guys on Zarox! Coincidence?!) is building a contraption to spread shadow seeds all over the universe. The Shadow Empire is run by a woman that was poisoned by the Inversions to bring the Empire of Tears back to fruition. The woman was saved by Abin Sur and taken back to Ungara where she began to resurrect the Empire of Tears. I guess that's a bad thing. I mean, the Guardians fought a long war against them, so maybe the Empire of Tears are the good guys? It's sometimes hard to tell which side, good or evil, the Guardians support in any conflict.

Back on Zarox, Stewart wills up a light construct of something he's quite familiar with from years as an architect: a double headed lower back "massager." Leaning over the drawing table really does a number on the lower back. Just ask Mike Brady.

Once underground, the group are attacked by more Owlbears. That's when John Stewart creates a few more contraptions he's quite familiar with: a Gatling strap-on and an over the shoulder dildo holder.

Shoulder mounted pocket rocket?

My entire office smells like Sharpie now. Huff on that, Brain!

As you can see, this is one of those times when John Stewart deems killing is okay. I don't know how he decides when it's okay and when it's not. It must be a very tricky equation because most of the situations all seem the same to me. Sometimes he meets up with an incomprehensible alien and he decides it's just an incomprehensible alien that shouldn't be killed. Sometimes he meets up with an incomprehensible alien and he decides it's a slavering, growling monster that needs to be put down before it kills again!

Stewart and his Lanterns discover a cavern deep within Zarox with a large bomb inside of it. It's vaguely familiar to Stewart, having seen it once before in real life and then over and over again every time he falls asleep only to wake up screaming.

No problem! This thing can be filled with yellow wires now and it's not going to stop him!

Green Lantern Corps #39 Rating: No change. It's time for John Stewart to get some closure or something. I guess he'll save this world from the bomb then realize that he could have saved the other world too. I mean, he'll realize he can only do what he can do and he can't save everybody but sometimes he can. Or something. Then he'll cry for three days straight before waking up, have four slices of bacon, some sourdough toast with half a pat of melted butter on each slice, exactly one scrambled egg (heavy on the pepper), and a cup of pulpy orange juice. He'll smack his mouth through the entire meal, relishing it with, um, relish! And then he'll stand up, stretch, make a huge bowel movement (in the toilet! Not in his pajamas in the middle of the kitchen), and he'll be thoroughly cleansed of his guilt and sorrow. A new day will begin for John Stewart! And that day will not be recorded in any comic books because, well, pretty much all of the Green Lantern titles are ending next month. Sorry, John!

Green Lantern Corps #38

In which The Flash stumbles upon Hal and John's sex games.

So I was thinking about what kind of man Charlie Brown would become when he grew up when I realized exactly what person he would become. So I made some comic strips about it!

That nutty kid!

I was also thinking that Twitter should change its name to "Wanna Know Who's Racist?"

Is everybody ready to see what John Stewart does when he isn't caught up in a cosmic crisis? I know I am! Although he's only got like what? Three issues left? I hope he just gets drunk for three issues and cries over Fatality.

The Bohemian Guardians offer to let Stewart lead the Corps but he declines because that's a sucker's job. Let Hal Jordan keep it after he returns from his Earth vacation. Stewart would rather hang out with the new recruits and get one or two of them killed.

Mogo is visited by some of Feska's people. Never mind how they found her or how their tiny ship traversed the vast distances of space! They're here and they've got a plot ready to go!

At first I thought Arisia was talking about John's skin tone.

So they all head off to Zarox where Feska will probably discover her son is the leader of the Shadow Market that is destroying her home planet! Well, maybe he won't be the leader. He was only like seven or something. But I'm sure he'll still disappoint her somehow.

Or maybe he'll just get kidnapped and used as leverage against the Green Lanterns. That will really force John Stewart to make a difficult choice between one person's life or another person's life!

Some weirdo named Ocula is running things and she doesn't plan on giving up easily. I wouldn't either. From what I've seen over the last three years, the Green Lanterns have the weakest weapons in the universe. They probably long for the days when all they had to worry about was a weakness to yellow.

The Lanterns catch Ocula easily enough but then instead of staying above the crowd of Zaroxans, they land amongst them and are attacked. Everybody seemed fine but then Ocula said, "Niagara Falls," and they all went apeshit bananas! So then Stewart lost Ocula as the Lanterns retreated to regroup and figure out how to save the Zaroxans from the mind control.

Meanwhile, Daggle and Hunger Dog forget who is whom.

Earlier in the comic, the speech bubbles for the Zaroxans and Feska were all screwed up as well. Somebody was drunk when they were putting this comic book together.

Daggle is still searching for his long lost partner and he thinks he finally found the moon she's hiding on. Do I really care about Daggle and his partner? That's Preboot stuff! Probably.

Back on Zaroxa, The Green Lanterns join up with Feska's boy, Zep, and Feska's mother, Grandmother. They warn them that monsters have arrived on Zaroxa! And Feska is all, "Pshaw! There are no such things as monsters!" And then she shoves Jruk behind John so she isn't instantly proven to be a liar.

Green Lantern Corps #38 Rating: No change. Boy, things sure are boring when a cosmic crisis isn't happening! This issue would have been better if the Corps went on shore leave to Wrigley's Pleasure Planet!