Bonus Book! #13 (Justice League International #24) (1989)

Simon Bisley got in trouble for drawing a penis in Lobo's arm musculature but this Haspiel guy can just draw a penis right on Maxwell Lord's penis?

I'm judging this Bonus Book by the cover and this is my judgment. You know how you have that friend that's always talking shit and causing trouble? And you know how sometimes somebody reacts violently toward your friend being an unbearable prick to strangers? You know how you just shrug instead of having their back and thinking, "Yeah, well, what did they think was going to happen?" That's what I think just happened to Maxwell Lord. He's a fucking prick and the Justice League are probably kicking back at headquarters shrugging and saying, "What did Max think was going to happen?!"

See?! They're just watching dumb old sci-fi movies which Giffen and DeMatteis probably stole plots and quotes from.

Actually, this takes place before Max Lord is kidnapped. He's in the panel to the right, just after the spot where I cut off the scan. You can just make out his briefcase because I did a sloppy job!

I'm really not the person to complain about this but every single sentence of dialogue in this story ends in an exclamation point! At first I was all, "Why is this story about Booster and Beetle talking about television shows and movies so exciting?!" And then I was all, "Hey...I recognize this trick!" Half of my novels use an exclamation point at the end of every sentence to trick movie studios into optioning the rights!

This is the part where I might sometimes critique the art but fuck if I complain about any artist that worked with Harvey Pekar. He may have passed on but he still scares the shit out of me. Also I think Max Lord's nose is another penis.

The only sentences that don't end in an exclamation point end in ellipsis or a question. That means these characters are either shouting, questioning somebody, or questioning themselves. Fuck. I think I just described the way I talk.

I almost questioned how this robot, in 1989, could sound this animated with all the exclamation points. But then I remembered the Wizard of Wor arcade cabinet constantly laughing at me.

Max Lord was just kidnapped by that robot pretending to be a chauffeur. I'm less curious about who kidnapped him and why then I am about this robot's personal life. Is he only programmed to imitate chauffeurs? I'd like to imagine he has a rich and vibrant life on his off hours where he's married to a toaster oven that pretends to be a lawyer and has three electric pencil sharpener children.

While in the back of the limousine, Maxwell Lord thinks his first calm sentence: "Might as well get comfortable." Man, that's the only one I would have exclamated!

It was the time of the Romans!

Never mind that last caption. It was for me and like two other people.

I've matured so much over the last ten years that I'm not going to write an entire paragraph on this woman's ass. But I haven't matured enough not to be proud of my maturity.

Imagine being so wealthy that you didn't immediately have this thought when a fucking robot driving a limo kidnapped you.

"Oh, I'm being kidnapped by a robot! Must be run of the mill blue collar super villains! How embarrassing!"

The kidnappers, being so well-funded, have kidnapped Max Lord to become, um, even betterly well funded! They want half a billion dollars for his return. Who's going to pay it? I don't know. Superman? Does he have that kind of money? I bet he makes diamonds up his butthole while he works out on Dr. Shay Veritas's bench press she invented that lets Superman press the equivalent of five Earths so that he can drip one single drop of sweat and then refuse to towel off the machine.

As an aside that has nothing to do with this comic but does sort of involve Superman and one of my least favorite writers on his book, Scott Lobdell, I've now seen enough examples online where Scott Lobdell comments on a person's review of one of his books (usually when they're complementary (which is something that actually happens? I know, I was floored too!)) to be convinced he's read my reviews. So, because I'm maturing, I'm sorry for being such a huge hilarious jerk to you, Mr. Lobdell!

The kidnappers cannot convince anybody to pay them 500 million dollars so the people who hired them (and paid for the headquarters and the robot driver) fire them for not being able to get the money. Sure, I guess. But how is it the fault of the mercenaries if the amount you wanted for Max Lord is just too high? They didn't come up with the figures! And when the ransom isn't going to make a profit, they fire the mercenaries and probably stiff them too! Who works like that?!

Because the originator of the kidnapping pulls all funding, the mercenaries accept paying jobs from Maxwell Lord and he frees himself. So let me get this straight. A criminal organization spent a shit-ton of money to kidnap Max Lord in the hopes that they could make an even bigger shit-ton of money. But when nobody can get enough money together in 24 hours, they get cold feet and bail on the people they hired to kidnap Max. It's a good thing the story never reveals who the criminal mastermind of this plan was because their reputation would have been in tatters. They'd never get another gig as an antagonist in the DC Universe!

Here's a quote from the writer of this story:

I hope you finally got a chance to write your new story because this one where the hostage winds up being too much trouble for the kidnappers so they eventually pay to get rid of him was old when I first read this in 1989!

This was the final Bonus Book in DC's Bonus Book project. I'm sad that I don't have the Bonus Book with art by Rob Liefeld. But then that one was in Warlord and I never read that series.

Bonus Book! #7 (Justice League International #18) (1988)

"Don't anger the wife" was the top plot point of every sitcom until Seinfeld.

Booster Gold's butt looks super weird on this "cover." That's probably because it was drawn by an amateur artist who has never seen an actual butt before.

The issue begins with a quote from the autobiography of the original Mister Miracle, Thaddeus Brown: "A stable home life is essential for escape artists. It's very hard to concentrate on death-defying feats while you're wondering where you'll hang your hat that evening."

What a fucking stupid quote. It's pure bullshit! I'm not an escape artist myself but I like to think I'm capable of reasoning and simple thought! This is so obviously a crutch by the writer of this story, Mark Askwith, to wedge his theme into the reader's mind immediately. Not that anybody needed this trite short cut! We already knew from that terrible cover, especially since we were reading it in 1988! "Oh ho ho," my sixteen year old self probably chortled when getting to the Bonus Book! cover, "Looks like they made the wife angry! That's sure to cause some hilarious conflict full of nagging and impromptu mothering of the child-like husband!"

Where the hell does this idiot think Barda was raised?! If she could learn to iron since leaving the Female Furies, he can fucking learn too!

Immediately after asking Barda if she'll do the ironing simply because she's a woman, Scott Free makes a joke about Oberon's height. I guess the character portfolio DC gave Mark Askwith on Mister Miracle just read, "He's a royal douchebag."

While Barda and Scott discuss who should be doing what chores, Oberon is goofing around downstairs accidentally arming strange machines left by Thaddeus Brown. The device blows up and completely destroys Scott and Barda's house in a huge display of fireworks that light up the neighborhood with the glowing words, "Mister Miracle." A picture of it makes the front page of the Daily Post which means somebody must have been walking by with their camera as soon as it happened. That might not seem ludicrous now but this was 1988!

Barda, Scott, and Oberon are forced to move into the JLI Embassy until their house can be rebuilt. I think all of the other members of the team already live there because they're bachelors. Also they're not escape artists so they don't have to worry about a stable home life interfering with their day job.

Barda tries to fit in by helping out around the place. She cleans and buys groceries and cooks. But instead of thanking her, everybody just gets annoyed because I guess she should just sit around in filth doing nothing while eating junk food? Damn Barda! Always trying to keep everybody alive and clean! Although, she did eat J'onn's Oreos. On one hand, I get it. Oreo's are delicious! I would eat J'onn's Oreos too! On the other hand, if they were my Oreo's, Barda is a fucking asshole who needs to be stopped!

Batman's solution to get the person actually doing chores and cooking and buying food (meaning Oreo's) out of the house? Rebuild Scott and Barda's house! That'll solve the huge problem of having somebody who actually lifts the slightest finger out of all the lazy assholes' hair!

Things do not progress swiftly with Barda gone because the rest of the JLI are huge fuckups.

I think the joke is supposed to be that even though Barda tries to help, she's a big klutz or is always in the way or something. Like she vacuums but nobody says, "Oh, she's incompetent at vacuuming!" Instead, it's "Oh the vacuum is making the television staticky!" (That's a thing that actually used to happen back before technology got good.) And it's not like, "Oh, thanks for buying all of the groceries, Barda!" because she drops one egg on Beetle's head and it's all, "Why doesn't she stop being helpful, dammit?!" And then she cooks "Beef Flambé" but it's on fire, as per the name, which causes Martian Manhunter to freak the fuck out. It's not like she throws it at him?! Calm down, you pussy! The only real complaint any of them should have is J'onn because she does eat his Oreos.

But see, the joke doesn't work because Barda is actually being quite helpful in all of these situations and it's the guys who just aren't grateful and, actually, are huge assholes about her living with them. So when they're all, "We should be able to build a house without Barda fucking it up," it's not funny at all! I was thinking, "Wait. She would be a big help, wouldn't she?!" But then I went back to scrutinize all the ways in which the story tried to prove she was a klutz and I was left thinking, "This story is terrible at proving she's a klutz!" Anyway, Guy Gardner uses his ring to make the nails and then his ring runs out of charge and the house collapses. I'm pretty sure Barda would have been happy to purchase actual nails and nail them into actual lumber. Fucking assholes.

Bonus Book! #7 Rating: F-. The only good thing about this Bonus Book! is that it gave Mark Pennington his start, I guess? His job before this was thinking up new G.I. Joe's like "Razor Clam" and "Billy Hoodinks." Hmm, I wonder if I could get a job thinking up new G.I. Joes?