Justice League: Gods and Monsters #3

This pseudo-X-Men story even has a Sentinel!

This comic book series asks the big question that nobody really wants a fucking super hero comic book to ask but it won't shut the fuck up about it. It's like a two year old constantly asking question after question! If you want to know when five hours is up so I'll let you out of the closet, learn to tell time, you parasite! Um, anyway, the question being asked is this: What if our heroes were scary and out of control monsters instead of loving and peaceful gods like the ones none of our religions are actually founded on? You know how you're supposed to love and fear God at the same time? That also makes him a monster, right? How can one feel safe when the person supposed to be keeping them safe also scares the shit out of them? Do we really want people like that in power? That's a rhetorical question because apparently most people in America want monsters in power. But I digress so let me start a new paragraph.

At some point in the modern age, writers decided to let reality intrude in comic books. No longer could stories be about a heroic figure that exemplified goodwill and compassion whom everybody trusted implicitly. Perhaps that gray (or grey) area had always been there because Stan Lee was all, "What if the Fantastic Four had real problems?! Kids would be way more into that than those gay characters at National Comics! Or DC, depending on what they were called at the time. Who knows? I'm just a fictional version of Stan Lee who forgot that 'gay' had a very different connotation in whatever decade I'm supposed to be in while saying this! Not to mention that it's way inappropriate to use 'gay' as an insult in whatever actual decade the person is in who is reading this right now! Unless 'gay' makes a huge comeback as an insult in the next century after the Homoerotic Wars of 2115! Hopefully the internet survives that long and isn't destroyed by trolls and anti-trolls and anti-anti-trolls!"

I forgot what my point was again.

Oh yeah! At some point, comic book writers felt like they were destroying any suspension of disbelief if they didn't acknowledge all of the grey (or gray) areas that would exist if a superhero were in the real world. And from there, every single story became some version of the stupid fucking absolute power corrupts saying. You know the one. I think it was from the preface of The Art of War by Richard Marx. This story is kind of like that. What if the Justice League were here to help save the world from threats but they were so fucking scary that nobody realized they were actually trying to help? A vampire?! A super strong woman capable of stepping over a puddle on her own and opening her own doors?! A Mexican-immigrant that didn't need a helping hand from liberals?! Holy shit! I need a new pair of underwear already!

You know what was really scary? Dr. Phibes Rises Again! It was on last night when I got home from work and I think it was a horror movie? Or a comedy? Or one of those Abbot and Costello/Universal Monsters mashups? I couldn't really tell because it was making me laugh when I think I was supposed to be horrified.

The other problem with this series (at least in the first two issues) is that it just felt like an X-men versus the Brotherhood of Evil story. A bunch of super powered people fighting to determine which super powered people's attitude toward normal people would win out. Are they their saviors? Are they their superiors? Are they supposed to protect them or enslave them?! Do they act condescending and patronizing constantly or just sometimes? Well, the Brotherhood of Evil was mostly destroyed at the end of Issue Two but now the Justice-Men have to battle a Sentinel with the mind of Alpert Magneto inside of it. And all the while, Lois Lane is writing a scathing article about the Justice League. I would have said "expose" instead of "article" but I can't be bothered to figure out how to do an e with an accent on it.

Come on, Wonder Woman! Do you think you should judge everybody by who they were fifty years ago?! People can change! Look at me?! I'm no longer a non-existent nothing! I've developed into an actual human being with sentience and existence and the ability to fill up space and waste time! Go me!

As the Justice League battle Imperiex the Sentinel, Lois Lane describes the battle in her story. Somehow she has access to reports on the battle from people who also weren't at the battle and she admits in her article that she doesn't even know if the events she's describing actually happened. Some fucking reporter! You know Clark Kent never hedged about the veracity of his Superman stories! He was a great reporter!

Imperiex's plan is to download his consciousness into every single living person on Earth so that everybody will get along and have a good time. I suppose that would work although it seems to be the comic book fascist go-to plan! Assimilation equals paradise! Doesn't Imperiex realize how boring it will be if he is everybody? He'll never again feel the excitement of another person reaching down the front of his trousers for the first time because he'll be that person and he'll know it's coming and he's done it so many times before that it won't ever be the first time again! Not that I'll ever experience that feeling again either unless somebody surprises me and does it without my consent. Wink, wink. The winking was my consent but not really consent because I can't be a party to asking somebody to do that because I'm in a committed relationship!

Imperiex hypnotizes the Justice League and uses them to battle the humans while he begins downloading his consciousness. So the Justice League kills a bunch of innocent people who are trying to defend the world. This is more of that crap that happens in modern comic books that shouldn't fucking happen because it ruins the ultimate reason for having superhero comic books in the first place. If the populace believes the heroes are a threat to mankind while the heroes deny that they're dangerous because their intentions are good but then become mind-controlled and threaten the populace, the heroes are a threat to the populace! They can't be both heroes and villains and still simply be heroes. Once they're used by a villain to kill a single person, the hero is a danger to the world and needs to take responsibility to protect the world from themselves. I'm not interested in tainting heroes like this. If people really enjoyed stories like this, newspapers wouldn't be tanking all over the country. Because they're all about people in authority failing the people they're supposed to be helping! Did you get that in my previous statement? Did I need to explain myself because I felt I needed to explain myself. I just don't trust that anybody reading anything on the internet is smart enough to understand anything they're reading. Oh, I know they'll purposefully misunderstand anything they can so they can rant and rave about whatever fucking issue they're dealing with! But do they have any actual reading comprehension at all? I tend to err on the side of "they don't."

Anyway, Wonder Woman's Mother Box saves the Justice League from Imperiex's mind-control and then Boom Tubes the combatants to Pripyat where they could destroy as much property as they wanted without anybody getting hurt. If by "anybody" you mean human beings. I'm sure lots of wildlife were killed. Although who cares because they were probably mutants and evolutionary dead-ends anyway!

Should a reporter be this cynical, sarcastic, and biased?! I mean, I know critics should be that way! But Lois Lane is a respected reporter and not me!

There's more fighting. Lots of fighting. Punches and shit. It all comes down to fighting! But not just fighting individually! They need to work together! They need to become the Justice League! And later, Lois Lane will write a poorly researched article (I suppose she's just writing an "editorial" but then why am I reading it?!) about the events so that everybody gets riled up against the Justice League. Or so she can prove that she wasn't fooled if they ever do go rogue. She can point back at this horrible article she wrote when they first appeared on the scene as the Justice League and scream, "See?! See! I warned you! I warned everybody! Pay attention to me!" But nobody will pay attention to her because they'll be fleeing for their lives as the city is destroyed around them and Lois Lane's "I told you so"s.

Lois Lane's article quotes from some government testimonials given by the Justice League after the battle. They're interspersed with Lois Lane's written eyerolls and jerking off motions.

The Justice League defeats and kills Imperiex. After that, the United States government invades Russia to pick them up.

Who are the real monsters?! Probably critics like me!

Lois Lane does makes some good points at the end of her story although by then I'm mostly disappointed with her bullshit. It's about how superheroes should not be running around solving every problem with violence. Hey! I totally agree with that! But Lois Lane doesn't have to tell the reader that! She needs to direct her comments to the Superman editorial staff! Tell them how Superman shouldn't be punching everybody in the face! Tell them how he's so powerful and invulnerable that he doesn't need to resort to violence! Almost every encounter should be Superman walking right up to the bad guy, taking them by the scruff of their neck, and hauling them to prison. But writers think that kind of story is too boring! So Superman has to constantly encounter creatures more powerful than he is even though he's supposedly the most powerful person in the DC Youniverse. The real problem is that most of the writers on Superman (and all of the editors!) are lazy and unimaginative slobs who have no fucking idea what Superman represents.

And then Lex Luthor becomes the Charles Xavier of the Justice-Men!

Justice League: Gods and Monsters #3 Rating: It wasn't horrible. It just happens to be a story I don't want to read in comic books anymore. Can't writers just use the X-men when they want to write a story about the populace's xenophobic fear?! I'm almost never in the mood for a story about how heroes might be perceived in the real world. How about we just all agree that the good heroes are good heroes and the only people who hate them are bad guys and their henchmen? I'm okay with suspending my disbelief for that to be a regular part of the DC Youniverse. I mean, I guess Batman can be feared by everybody because that's kind of the point of Batman. He's a bogeyman but only if you step out of line. But some people will still be scared because they aren't sure what Batman would consider stepping out of line! But can't Superman and Wonder Woman and Green Lantern and The Flash be seen as the heroes they constantly are? I guess not when they're always being mind-controlled and turning on the populace. Which, now that I've mentioned it, can that be stopped as well? Stop giving the populace of the DC Youniverse good reason to fear them! Christ, people. Do I have to go down to your offices with my yardstick and start slapping asses?!

Gods and Monsters: Wonder Woman #1

Let me guess! Wonder Woman leaves Paradise Island to live in Japan?

I was up in Seattle visiting "friends" the last couple of days. I thought I'd get back into the blogging routine by reading a Gods and Monsters book. I hope I still remember how to make jokes. If you saw my trivia team's performance at the Geeks Who Drink trivia night, you'd be pointing out that I definitely still know how to make jokes. We tied for second with all of the teams that did not come in first or last. We failed at the tie-breaker because the way they do the tie-breaker is stupid. The question was about Broadway and I wrote down "Cats" faster than anybody else but we still didn't win. Possibly because I should have written Andrew Lloyd Webber. But at least I scratched out my first guess, "Madagascar," which was written before the tie-breaker question was asked just in case I was having a psychic moment. My trivia team's name was Snake Titty because somebody had written "Snake Titty" on the chalkboard in the men's restroom and it made me angry. That's just bad science!

The team that won were a bunch of know-it-all assholes. Probably. I hope they died.

So anybody in the Portland area who wants to become a member of Snake Titty and who also wants to do all of the work in getting a team together for Geeks Who Drink events should contact me. Also you should be able to answer all of the questions that I can't answer (which will be most of them). I also have a tendency to not pay attention when my teammates are writing down the obviously wrong answer because I'm saying something tremendously witty. Sometimes I erupt into physical violence.

Snake Titty. Except for the guy giving the thumbs up. That was the quizmaster. My grown-up schoolyard rival has the blue hair. The Non-Certified Spouse is across from her. Making the peace sign is the Non-Certified Spouse's cousin and the saboteur that ruined our chances for outright second place before skedaddling out of there. I suppose she should get credit for all the answers she did give us but I won't forgive her for erasing that correct answer to replace it with a wrong one just before the game ended! Teammate Mark is a shadowy monster on the run from his past and could not be photographed, so he took the picture. And I am the one pointing at my face as if to mime, "Look. This is me. I am this person. This one."

This issue of Gods and Monsters begins with Wonder Woman emerging from a BOOM Tube in India in 1962. So it's as close as DeMatteis and Timm could come to the original origin story without just completely ripping it off.

The uniform Wonder Woman is wearing on the cover that I mistook as a Japanese crime fighting costume is just a Jack Kirby outfit. Totally understandable mistake. Wonder Woman is Bekka of New Genesis. She's going to be extremely popular because people are just naturally drawn to Bekka and want to have sex with her for no comprehensible reason at all. I want to have sex with her and I know she's just printed on a page and I also don't know how to have sex. I mean, with a fictional character. I totally sex with real people all of the time, or at least during the times when it is possible. You know those times. The proper ones. Sexy, sexy times.

Bekka meets a statue of Ganesha and she imagines it saying all of the things she needs to hear. After her delusion, she feels much more comfortable with her completely random decision to accidentally arrive on Earth. But now she has to learn all about her new home! She's lucky to have a teensy, tiny Mother Box which can act as her Wikipedia since Wikipedia didn't exist in 1962. Back then if you wanted to find out some information about something, you had to find a set of Encyclopedias or an almanac or an old blind black woman. If you had access to all three of those things, you could learn anything you needed to know about life and the world around you.

Bekka quickly learned that Earth was beautiful and savage. It was like New Genesis and Apokolips but combined together! Was that what Jack Kirby was getting at? Was he writing an allegory for the human heart at war with its own selfish desires and uplifting charities? What was he writing about when he created The Demon? Man's lustful nature and his obsession with his own cock?

Bekka discovers the proper time for doing it: on the brink of Armageddon. Is that why people are constantly predicting the end of the world? So they finally have the proper time to do it?! Oh boy! That means I'm going to have sex on the Jewish Day of Atonement this month! Woo hoo!

Bekka decides it's time for her to stop watching the goings on of her new home and time to become a part of it. So she gets into her fancy New Genesis duds and goes out to battle crime! Her first battle leads to a bunch of dead people instead of a bunch of hugged people, so I think she's doing Wonder Woman all wrong. But she does cry so she might be on the right path. You'd never see Batman or Superman cry. That's the main difference between Wonder Woman and her Justice League cohorts, just after her boobies.

Bekka discovers the hippie movement which teaches her about love since they invented it. They also invented having sex at even improper times and with the improper number of partners. Bekka teaches them about "bringing down the party" and "bad vibes" and "how big a stick can fit up one person's bottom." She's all, "Drugs are bad! Don't do drugs!" But the guy who makes the drugs who isn't a bad person at all and probably the protagonist of this story is named Doctor Psycho and he's all, "I make good drugs! The best! Don't you ruin my business, you jerk! I think we might wind up having an adversarial relationship!" But Doctor Psycho has a friend named Guitar Joe who thinks Bekka would be an awesome addition to the farm and the loads of improper sexual relationships going on up at the farm, especially the ones that include his penis.

Yes. Naivete is the answer to cynicism. As long as you don't mind all of your answers being completely wrong. Which, if you're naive, you really don't! Which is why so many people believe in an omnipotent creator!

Eventually Bekka decides that the commune isn't being run correctly so she begins to teach people how to do things her way. Instead of taking drugs, they used "crystals" for their mind-bending trips. Instead of the women pleasing the men, the women pleased themselves and told the men to get the fuck off of them for once and haven't they ever heard of contraceptives?! Plus Bekka discovers that Doctor Psycho is a super villain. He drugs her because he wants everybody to be free but she wants to be free to stop him from making everybody free in the particular way he wants to free them. I'm not sure which one of them is being hypocritical and fascist.

Bekka and most of the other hippies left Guitar Joe and Doctor Psycho's commune to set up their own farm called New New Genesis. Everybody was all, "Why two news?" And Bekka was all, "No reason!", and then winked at the reader with a huge wink. Then one of the hippies was all, "Who is she winking at?" And one of them was all, "She must have taken some crystals." But soon enough, they all saw what Bekka's crystals could really do when Doctor Psycho's army of burnouts attacked the new commune. They were led by Guitar Joe hopped up on one of Bekka's crystals. But using the power of the crystal, Bekka transformed everyone back to their normal, hippie selves and saved the day. Then she said, "I have to become a super hero instead of dropping out!" And her new friends said, "No! Don't go! Are you sure you must?" And Bekka was all, "You bet your bippy! *HUGE WINK AT THE YOUNG AUDIENCE READING WHO ARE THINKING 'WHAT IS A BIPPY?!'"

And that's the end of the Gods and Monsters One Shots! I guess I'm prepared to read the Gods and Monsters Justice League three issue series. I hope I get around to reading it before I forget that Batman is boring old Man-bat, Superman is probably Zod although that wasn't expressly stated in his comic book, and Wonder Woman is a New God. It's all so super exciting because it's so different! The only problem I have with this story is that it portrayed Doctor Psycho in a better light than Wonder Woman. I'm always going to root for the guy who makes LSD and used to work for the MKUltra project and who's goal is to free everybody from the status quo! I don't need some anti-drug alien coming down to Earth and telling me I shouldn't take drugs unless they're her drugs and that I shouldn't drop out but should accept things the way they are and just try to make individual lives better within the fucked up bullshit system that is fucked up and total bullshit. Go Doctor Psycho!

Gods and Monsters: Superman #1

"What Earth does this take place on?" -- Continuity Nerds and/or Me.

I have now braved the 90+ degree whether and walked to Excalibur, my local comic book store, to pick up this week's comic books. So even though I now have a bunch of New 52 DC Youniverse books to read, I decided to read another one of these Gods and Monsters things. By the way, "Gods and Monsters" is redundant. All gods are monsters. Although not all monsters are gods, so maybe that's why both are needed. Never mind.

Also there are no such things as gods. Sorry to break the news to all of you believers. I realize the only reason you've believed in God for so long is that nobody ever told you that God doesn't really exist. It's probably a real M. Night Shyamalan shocker, right? I know you'll be sad and scared for a little while as you try to figure out how your life can have meaning and purpose without an omniscient being giving it to you, but you'll be fine after a few weeks. You'll realize that nothing much has changed except maybe now you actually have to depend on yourself and your family and your friends, and vice versa, so you'll probably wind up being a kind, more caring human being. It's a burden to have to take Jesus's place, especially since so many of your family members rely on Him for so much, but you'll probably really enjoy helping them. You'll soon come to despise all that time you wasted praying when you could have actually been taking action. You'll probably also stop being such a judgy asshole although that might just be part of who you are naturally. Just look at me! I've never believed in God ever and I judge like a motherfucker!

This issue of Gods and Monsters is drawn by Moritat! I'm super excited about that because I miss when he draws tiny people! They're so adorable! Although he also reminds me that All-Star Western was cancelled. Thanks a lot, jerko comic book readers who couldn't support the best comic books of The New 52! Assholes.

In the Gods and Monsters Universe, Superman was found in a field by migrant workers and named Hernan Guerra. That doesn't bode well! Hernan?! I mean, his last name translates to war?! I'm afraid of him already! Plus he's the child of a migrant worker taking all of the sweet vegetable and fruit picking jobs!

Speaking of xenophobia and racism, I have to renew my Oregon driver's license this year. Because Oregon's population is about 98% xenophobic asshole, I now have to visit a Notary Public to get a note authorizing that I am who I say I am so that I can send it to California so they can send me a government issued copy of my birth certificate so that I can prove that I'm a lawful citizen of the United States of America so that a whole bunch of white people can feel safe that undocumented workers aren't driving around without insurance. Oregon, you suck.

Get it? Superman is an alien and also an alien!

At least having a Mexican-American Superman will make it more believable when everybody is, yet again, afraid of him.

Cynical, intelligent people will understand that the last sentence was aimed at xenophobic (probably white!) Americans. Reactionary self-righteous assholes will have stopped reading in disgust before they even get to this sentence because they believe I was making a racist joke. But then, I'm totally used to that!

The story is narrated by Valentina, Superman's sister. Get it?! It's like love and war! Although her name is Valentina Guerra so she's technically both love and war. But when she gets married, she can drop the war part of her name to show that she's now her husband's property.

As teens, Hernan challenges his sister to climb a tree even though she's afraid of heights. He then causes a strong breeze to blow her out of it so that she falls and breaks her back. That's the trouble with having a super brother! He never knows when he's going too far.

Look! Tiny people! And Spanish swearing! Yay!

Hernan stopped using his powers after the injury to his sister. Even later, when a small plane is crashing right in front of his family, he refuses to use his powers to save the people within. He claims it's because his parents always wanted him to hide the truth. But the truth now is that he simply feels too full of guilt to use them.

I haven't seen Man of Steel but I have read about it and heard quite a few podcasts talking about it. It seems like this story is taking some of the poorly written aspects of the movie and using them here but with better reasons. Hernan's parents don't want him using his powers because they don't want people knowing he's different. This makes more sense as a son of an undocumented worker in America than it would to a son of a white farmers in a small town where everybody knows each other and are close. Not using his powers to save people makes makes more sense if he has a psychological reason for not wanting to use them than if he's just simply obeying his parents. Plus this Superman is probably Zod since Batman wasn't Bruce Wayne but Kirk Langstrom. Also, Heranan keeps worrying about being a monster and his last name, as a human, is Guerra, so totally Zod!

One night, Hernan burns out the eyes of a drunk who called him a wetback and threw a bottle at the back of his head. This causes him to run home and curse God in front of his mother which is like the biggest no-no you can do in a Mexican household (next to cursing Mary, of course! Or Jesus. Or about fifteen different Saints. And then cursing God is the worst, after all those others).

Earlier his father threatened to hit him and Valentina mentioned it was good he didn't because he would have broken his hand. Luckily Hernan's mom is made of sterner stuff.

A bunch of racist assholes (in other words, police) come to take Hernan off to jail or worse. But Hernan would rather kill them all than take any more shit from one more fucking asshole. The only reason he doesn't kill them is because his sister threatens to stop loving him if he murders anybody. So instead of killing them all, Hernan flies up, up, and away. I think everybody is too shocked to say the whole "up in the sky!" thing.

Hernan's dad tells him to get the hell out because he's a curse and a monster. That's pretty much what Kirk Langstrom's dad said by walking out on him and not saying anything! So at least this version of the DC Youniverse is consistent with the other one because everybody in it has Daddy Issues. How is Wonder Woman going to have Daddy Issues if she were made from clay? I guess not having a Daddy in her life is probably the biggest Daddy Issue of all, right?

Hernan flies off to find himself, first in America, then in the rest of the world, and finally in Mexico. It's in Mexico where, filled with despair that he ultimately has no home, he hears about a Mexican drug lord and the constant violence he inflicts on his father and his mother's homeland. It's then that he embraces his powers and flies off to punish the cartel and save some kidnapped children. And after that, he finally heads back to his family where he finds his mother dead, his father apologetic, and his sister married with a kid. So I guess his Daddy Issues have cleared up a bit by the time he puts on the uniform and decides to be a hero. A much darker, more murderous hero than regular Superman but what does anybody expect?! DC Comics hates their original version of Superman! Why would they make another one?!

That's two members of the Justice League who are both gods and monsters! I guess they're gods because they like to punish people with death and they're monsters because that's how they see themselves. Gods don't feel bad about murdering innocent people to punish a few bad ones. But human beings generally feel remorseful when they kill, so when Superman and Batman kill people who maybe deserve it, they think of themselves as monsters for enjoying it.

Gods and Monsters: Batman #1

Should I have called this "Justice League: Gods and Monsters--Batman #1"? Who named this stupid fucking comic book?

I haven't been to the comic book store yet today because it only opened six minutes ago and I only woke up forty minutes ago, so I guess I'll read whatever this shit is. Does the gold DC Comics logo have any special significance? Does it signify an Elseworlds story while the blue logo means a book that's in continuity and a pink logo means full on lesbian vagina punching and heterosexual men failing to please heterosexual women and breast cancer awareness? DC Comics, you should use my idea if you aren't already using it. Especially the part about the pink label being for mature titles with loads of sex in them. You already have teen titles with loads of violence and I feel you need to bring some balance to your comic books. Just imagine how many issues you'd sell when you reveal Batman's penis for the first time!

I hope this comic book explains why Batman is a vampire trapped in a spider web. I also hope it explains why I'm reading it. Mostly I didn't mind buying it when I discovered it in my comic book subscription box because Bruce Timm stuck his name on it. So it has to be good, right? Even if that name is by J.M. DeMatteis's name? Even if this isn't a cartoon but a comic book? Am I wrong to hope for the best?

Shit. I'm definitely wrong.

Ha ha! I'm just kidding, Mister DeMatteis! Just a little harmful ribbing! Just a little joke where I completely insult you and then tell you I was just teasing so you're not allowed to be hurt or angry anymore and if you are it just shows that you have no sense of humor and not that I'm a complete and utter prick! Ha ha!

The issue begins with a husband beating his wife and about to rape her. Everybody knows that other than getting breast cancer, this is the worst thing that could ever happen to a woman. This husband is as vile and despicable a human being anybody is ever likely to meet. This is important because Batman is now a vampire and Batman is unsure if the city is corrupt or if he's just projecting his own vampiric corruption onto the city. But when Vampire Batman recognizes that this man is evil and chooses to punish him instead of choosing to watch or join in, it proves to the reader that Batman still has a working sense of justice. This allows the reader to think, "Whew! Batman is still a good guy! I was worried because vampires are always evil and they're never the hero of the story at all ever and this is still 1982, right?" I guess if you're a young, hip, modern reader, the main thing you're thinking when you find out Batman is a vampire is "I want to fuck that."

I should apologize to Anne Rice about that whole "vampires were not fuckable back in 1982" line because she was way ahead of everybody else and saw the sexy potential in homoerotic vampires and gay adoptions.

Vampire Batman can smell stupid and it makes him hungry, so very, very hungry! I guess stupidity is finally illegal in Gotham City! Yay!

Maybe they were just engaging in sexy role-play?

Vampire Batman is a murderer. But he's not really any more of a murderer than anybody who eats meat. Feeding is something animals need to do to survive and Vampire Batman probably wants to keep surviving so he needs to feed. You can't fault him for that! Although I guess people will fault him for that because when a Mountain Lion eats a jogger on a hiking trail like Mountain Lions should be allowed to do since they're simply hunting and feeding in their own terrain, jerks still feel the need to go out and kill a Mountain Lion to make everybody feel safer. Can't we all just leave the Mountain Lions alone and accept that the stupid jogger knew the risk and was also a stupid jogger who jogged? Isn't jogging the real crime here?

Vampire Batman heads up to a rooftop to feel guilty in exactly the same way I head into the bathroom to feel guilty after eating an entire tub of kettle corn. He knows he shouldn't splurge on stupid people but he just can't help himself because they're so tasty. How did Batman fall so far?! How did he allow himself to become this monster?!

Oh. That's how. He went to Kirk Langstrom for a cancer cure. Let me guess! In Gods and Monsters: Superman, Superman will have taken out a large loan from Lex Luthor, right? And in Gods and Monsters: Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman's therapist is Doctor Psycho!

So Vampire Batman must feed on other people's blood so that his cancer won't come back. Can't he just get a transfusion? This doesn't seem like a kind of life that Batman would choose to continue living. I guess Batman is, in the end, just as weak as every person reading this. You can't all be as strong as the person writing it. But that's okay, my weaklings. I'll be loving and kind as I feed off of your pathetic hopes and dreams.

Actually, Vampire Batman is Kirk Langstrom. So it makes sense that he's a weak piece of shit that can't just simply give up and die like Bruce Wayne would choose to do. Even Kirk's parents are disappointed in him. I suppose celebrating the cure for cancer isn't on anybody's minds when the cure just creates a race of monsters that now terrorize all of the healthy people. At that point, I suppose we all stop worrying about raising breast cancer awareness and begin raising garlic.

The abusive husband was the first time Vampire Batman killed a person. Until then, he's been stealing from blood banks and sucking off hobos. But now that he's felt the thrill of murder food, he's worried he's going to kill again.

Kirk Langstrom throws his ex-girlfriend's husband through a window which gives him the idea to become Batman!

Vampire Batman begins feeding on the criminals of Gotham City because he decides that eating is better than crying about the families of the criminals he's murdering. Why worry about whether or not the person he just ate was an evil scumbag or just somebody who got mixed up in a bad scene due to generations of poverty and abuse? Vampire Batman rejects the idea of a gray world and chooses instead to believe in a black and white world and a full belly!

Oh Kirk! Keep listening to the Louis inside of you! Don't let all of that wishy-washy Lestat garbage intrude on your thoughts! Be the vampire! Embrace the vampire! Feed! FEED!

Vampire Batman kills a big time criminal overlord and in the process creates a vampire nemesis in Joe Chill. I think. It's hard to tell by the art but I think it's supposed to suggest that Joe Chill's hand spasms after supposedly being dead but somebody forgot to draw motion lines! Or a Narration Box that said, "If only I knew at the time that I could pass this disease onto others!"

After Kirk murders the crime lord Lew Moxon, he stalks Lew's family and begins to realize that just because he's hungry, it doesn't make the world less gray. He realizes good, honest people close to Lew Moxon have been terribly hurt by the death of the man. I suppose Kirk will have to learn not to kill if he's going to be allowed to join the Justice League. Unless of course he's willing to kill Lex Luthor so that Superman can get out from under those outrageous interest rates.

Whelp, I guess it's back to the hobos.

Kirk befriends Jeremy Moxon, Lew's son. I hope he's befriending him in a homoerotic way because that's the way of vampires! They were bisexual before being bisexual was cool! Unless Kirk is just gay and Francine was only his ex-beard. Kirk becomes so close to Jeremy that he tells Jeremy his secret vampire life. He doesn't tell Jeremy that he ate his father though because that would be awkward. Jeremy decides to use his knowledge of biochemistry to help cure Langstrom's vampirism. Well, he can't be any worse at science than Kirk Langstrom, right?

Jeremy's mother is killed by the mob because they believe Jeremy has something they want. Doesn't the mob always believe stuff like that? And aren't they always killing people to send messages? Maybe they should invest in a courier service because killing people seems like a lousy way to send a message. But Jeremy's mother's death at least gives Kirk an idea for dinner.

While hunting up some grub, Vampire Batman meets Vampire Joe Chill! He has a nemesis! Although he hacks his nemesis up into a bunch of pieces so that doesn't last long. Or at least it just puts a second confrontation well on the back burner until Joe Chill can get his pieces back together again. At least it gives Kirk time to almost kiss Jeremy!

Or to figure out Jeremy was actually a scumbag crime lord as well and a pretty decent apéritif.

There you have it! Gods and Monsters' Batman is actually Man-bat which totally makes him awful! I hate Man-bat! Making him into a vampire doesn't make him any better! Although this is probably the best story Kirk Langstrom has ever been in. It may not have been subtle but who expects subtle from a comic book?! I only expect two things from a comic book: sex and violence! No wait! Three things: sex, violence, and injuries to the eye! No wait! Four things: sex, violence, injuries to the eye, and not very many words! I like looking at pictures.