Doctor Fate #18

This might be the first time I accidentally purchased a comic book with a penis on the cover. The word "accidentally" is important to that sentence.

Let me quote Shakespeare at the moment of this incredible event where I'm reading the final issue of this terrible comic book: "Let's git 'er done!"

The Internet is proof that everything has already been done so I'm not even going to check to see if somebody has performed a redneck version of King Lear. I know in my heart this has been accomplished.

The issue begins with Khalid admitting that his mother is a treasure-hunting, Imperialist looter of other countries national treasures.

I mean, it's no surprise. She is a white person who married an Egyptian, probably to gain access to places she could get her sneaky hands on more historic loot. But admitting she'd kill for them? Since Khalid seems to lack whimsy and imagination, I'm taking him at his word. His mother is terrible and evil.

Khalid encounters Thoth, the patron something of Nabu and the original owner of the golden helmet, who tells Khalid that his choices matter. Oh, thanks for such divine and unknowable wisdom, great God with he pointy beak. I hope this is all about Khalid choosing the wrong girlfriend. I don't want this Doctor Fate in control of anything more important than his own love life. Plus it's easy to see he's been making the wrong choice in that department for seventeen issues so far. So I can see it culminating in this huge psychedelic journey where he nearly goes insane from his blue balls.

Doctor Fate continues to express confusion on his inward journey. I get the feeling that Brendan McCarthy laid out this whole idea of a psychedelic inward spiritual journey that would teach Khalid how to master the powers of the Fate helmet and come to grips with taking the mantle. But then Paul Levitz took the script and old personed it. It didn't make sense to him so he stuck in all the Narration Boxes where Khalid states how nothing is making sense and how he's thoroughly confused by everything being plainly stated by gods and dream worms. The entire story loses any impact it may have had because Khalid is an imbecile with no ability to contemplate profound or interesting ideas. Not that I'm claiming any of this is profound! It might be! But that's for you to decide for yourself. I can't go around explaining the importance of every little thing to every single person because we all discover different bits of ourselves in different ways and through varied revelatory pop culture media. This garbage might actually be important to somebody. But they should probably be ashamed to admit it.

The Sphinx suggested that Khalid embrace the dreamspinners and their mother but Thoth calls them liars and deceivers. I guess maybe "embrace" was code for "crush them in a great big magical bear hug" because Doctor Fate decides to defeat the dreamspinners. But he's soon overwhelmed and finds himself back in front of Mr. Mind. I mean, Clothorooloohoo.

Khalid must have went to quite the religious school. It's called your penis, dear.

Fate is lowered into Mr. Mind's boiling cauldron. Maybe he finally realized this is what he's meant to do. He's meant to embrace his own destruction at the hands of a creature obviously created by the demonic love child of Dr. Seuss and H.R. Giger. Conversely, if I'm using that word correctly, maybe he's just going to die! Although I also wouldn't mind if after he's lowered into the cauldron, Khalid opens his eyes to see his neighbor leaning over him and wiping his semen from her hand. This entire series could have been like Jacob's Ladder except the main character wasn't dying. He was just getting a hand-job.

See? This represents sex, right? I guess Khalid is getting more than a hand-job! Praise Allah!

Ew. I just realized Mr. Mind's name in this story was Clot Horus. Gross.

Khalid wakes up in the park next to a pile of human feces buzzing with dreamspinners. Oh shit. I guess Khalid just had a random hook up in the park with a shit fetishist. I think that probably means he's gay because women tend to engage in sex with strangers in the park far less often than men do. I don't know if gender or sexuality has any bearing on whether or not somebody wants to include shit in their sexual escapades though.

The Ranking!
No change! I'm just glad this is over. And what an ending! Khalid stumbles through a few weeks of his life believing everything was a hallucination or he was going crazy. So then he wakes up in the park at the end of it all, puts his helmet away (see? sex occurred!), shrugs, and goes back to avoiding sex with the neighbor. The Doctor Fate helmet really chose its host poorly this time around. How the fuck did this comic book last eighteen issues? My guess is Paul Levitz sucked a lot of interoffice cock. Um, figuratively! My lawyer says I should point out that I meant that figuratively! Also, Pickle Boy is now my lawyer instead of my writing assistant and sandwich maker. He's really made a name for himself! I mean, it's drawn on a card that's meant to be a business card and he misspelled lawyer. But at least his services are cheap.

Doctor Fate #17

Fucking Christ. I can't believe I'm still reading this comic book!

I've been reading this comic book for a year and a half and I am not entertained by it at all. The only other things I've maintained for that length of time or more which brought me no joy were my relationships with family members. Ha ha! Just kidding, mom and dad!

Oh, who am I kidding?! Like they'd ever show any interest in anything I love! Although that's not entirely true. I love pizza and Oreos and my mom definitely notices when I'm loving those things. "Oh, you're going to eat all of that?" Yeah, mom, of course I'm going to eat a whole fucking pizza topped with Oreos. Now fuck off!

So, as usual, I didn't think much about the cover because I barely looked at the comic book as I picked it up sighing and rolling my eyes and hating the life I've chosen for myself. But then when I opened it up and saw the name of the artist, I perked up a bit. Brendan McCarthy? You mean, the Brendan McCarthy?! Not the one who co-wrote Fury Road! I mean, yes, that one! But I wasn't thinking, "Not the one who co-wrote Fury Road?!" I was thinking, "The guy who did the covers to Shade the Changing Man and the art for Rogan Gosh?!" And why, yes, it is indeed that Brendan McCarthy! I'm fucking stunned. I'm so glad I didn't simply give up on this comic book the way I'm giving up on so many others!

My feeling of pure unbridled joy doesn't last long. Fucking life. Fuck you! Can't I at maintain some kind of enjoyment for any length of time before you intrude and smash it all to pieces with more of the same Doctor Fate bullshit?! First off, the colorist looks like he just pissed all over McCarthy's art. It looks like a kid who just discovered the joy of creating light with an eraser. But on top of that, Khalid once more begins experiencing some weird shit and his first thought isn't, "This must be more magic! Like all of that other magic that has been intruding on my life! It's like I can't get a moment's peace or a handjob from the neighbor without magic fucking it all up!" No, instead when things get weird, he goes back to the whole, "Is there a weird but rational explanation for this? Are the cops drugging us? Is this a fireworks show? Am I having a stroke?"

The weird lights turn into multi-colored threads that pierce the tops of the heads of everybody at the rally he's attending. He thinks it's weird until one of them pierces the head of the girl who won't fuck him (so not the neighbor lady! The other one!). Now it's personal! Time to turn into Doctor Fate and have a strange psychedelic experience!

"At least not until I've known her carnally!"

Khalid winds up in some other plane that's really strange. He doesn't think, "Holy fucking hell! So cool!" No, he thinks, "This is utterly, totally, completely impossible." You are such a disappointing Doctor Fate, Khalid. You deserve to fail Medical School. And also Magical School. And also How Can You Not Have Noticed That Your Neighbor Wants To Suck Your Cock School.

Seventeen Goddamned issues of this attitude! Somebody revoke his Doctor Fate card already!

Here's how huge of a failure this Doctor Fate is. He just asked the weird bug thing what manner of being it is. It responds with a sound. Doctor Fate thinks, "Usually the magic works to translate--but all I'm getting is static...and the word dreamspinners... ...what are these things?" So he asks them what they are, they respond with dreamspinners, and then he asks himself again, "What are these things?!" You know what? He doesn't deserve a fucking handjob from the hot and horny neighbor lady. Khalid can live with his parents as a failure for the rest of his life for all I care. I think his next life choice should be getting a Playstation 4 and a medical marijuana card and just calling time on his ambitions.

Also, the punctuation in that quote is the fault of the writers. I wonder if they learned how to punctuate from Howard Mackie's School of Terrible--Really...Fucking, Terrible — and Awful; Punctuation..

Khalid loses Akila's thread and decides the best way to find it is to search at the other end. All the threads are entering a big dream egg, so that's where he heads.

Where he finds a giant caterpillar fucking a glowing cauldron.

The gigantic caterpillar is named Clothorus and it's been wanting to eat Doctor Fate for as long as it can remember (which I think is forever). But Doctor Fate does some whining and pleading to Nabu who comes to his rescue. I think. Khalid definitely doesn't do anything heroic himself. I know there's another issue but I can still hope that he gets eaten. The next issue might be twenty pages of Khalid digesting inside of Clothorus, right?

Doctor Fate escapes to another plane of existence where the pyramids were built by flying scarab ships. I guess it's the spiritual version of Egypt, or something even more profound that I'll never figure out in a million years because I'm constantly being distracted by my physical needs and desires.

Doctor Fate visits the Sphinx which tells him how to defeat Clothorus. It says, "If you would defeat the mother, you must embrace her and all her children." Then Khalid is all, "What?! Riddles! Just tell me how to defeat her!" And the Sphinx is all, "How can I be any more plain than that, you stupid fucking asshole!" Then Khalid, confused by the mere presence of words, is dragged back into the dreamspinner realm for the final fight of his life. Hopefully.

The Ranking
-1 Ranking. There have been some pretty shitty incarnations of Doctor Fate over the years and none of them can compare to the overall shittiness of Khalid. He's the fucking worst.