Deathstork #16

I am not Shooping this cover so just pretend it reads "Deathstork".

The Review!
Deathstork has gone blind so now his name is Twilight and he kills people with the help of his guide sidekick, Roscoe. Currently he's battling a guy named Deadline so if you had "Eventually somebody will come up with a stupider name than Deadpool" on your superhero pool at work, you still haven't won anything. Let's face it. Deadpool is a dumb name derived from Deathstork. At least Deadline makes it sound like "Oh! I've taken out a contract to kill a person so now that person's life is running on a deadline! And that deadline is my gun! KERPOW!" I guess Deadpool is called Deadpool because there was that Clint Eastwood film a few years earlier and it was probably on television when Rob Liefeld was thinking, "What should I give the name of my Marvel version of Deathstork?"

Although Deadline might beat out Deadpool for stupidest idea ever because Deadpool eventually found a niche in the superhero world that made him popular and Deadline has a weapon called an Infinity Rifle. It uses alien isotopes to create static disruptive shells around its targets. That sounds cool!

The new Power Girl has a fake boob window and it's making me angry. She also has an illusory underboob awning! That's making me less angry and more the other thing. You know, the emotion that powers the Violet Lanterns except more sexy.

Well, now she has a belly window!

See what kind of damage the Infinity Rifle does? Pretty awesome, right?! It could probably kill Superman. Why didn't Lex Luthor think up this weapon?

In the B-story line, Rose finds out that her Hmong family are all actors paid for by Slade. She finds out from Etienne, the woman Joseph is about to kill. I mean marry. He's already fucked her. Also I think he probably will kill her after marrying her when he finds out she's been fucking his father. That story doesn't have any blood in it yet so let's go back to the story where Deadline is about to get his hand cut off and then mauled by Roscoe.

Deadline has all sorts of special powers which he received from his encounter with an alien race. I bet it was just government agents in stupid costumes fucking with him. He also explains his moniker. If he doesn't kill a person by the guaranteed deadline, the kill is free. So why didn't he call himself Domino's?

Deadline's alien tech allows him to phase through solid objects. He likes to kill people by phasing a hand into their chest and going solid. Although that probably hurts his hand too so he usually just relies on the Infinity Rifle. As you saw, that makes a pretty good mess of even people with invulnerability.

Do you think Power Girl is actually dead? It would be interesting if DC allowed her to die in this series. It's not like she was being interesting in any other comic book, even the ones she was appearing in.

Darn it. She's still alive.

The Ranking!
No change! I wasn't paying particularly close attention to this issue. That'll happen, life being what it is.

Deathstork #15

A Hound of Death would make sense if his name were Deathhound.

The Review!
No change. The reason for the story's name, "Twilight", is revealed in this issue. Since Deathstork has gone blind, he's decided to change his assassin name to Twilight. I also think maybe he's a little bit ashamed of his name (his real name, Deathstroke! Obviously he'd be embarrassed if his name was actually Deathstork!) since he's now butting heads with a rival assassin who goes by the name Deadline. Seriously?! I suppose it's kind of creative in that it has a form of "dead" in the name which all bad-ass comic book assassins should have (except for Lobo) and it underlines the idea that all people have an expiration date, or deadline if you will (or don't. I mean, if some other person told me I should equate "expiration date" with "deadline" just to fit the flow of what they were saying, I'd call them a cunt (yeah, yeah. I go to that word way too quickly! But discussions about writing can get heated!)) and it's a riff off of Deathstroke! Stroke? Line? Dead? Death? Ha ha! Good one!

Also in this issue, Deathstork probably breaks some kind of sexual predator registry laws.

She's sixteen and a half, Slade! Way too old for you!

Other important plot points to remember for next month: Jericho's comatose boyfriend who he practically murdered for his supersuit has died but Jericho has taken him to Doctor Villain so that maybe he can have a new Origin Story; Rose has had a vision of Jericho covered in blood with a woman's body at his feet, so I don't think the wedding is going to go over great; and Wintergreen acts shocked that Deathstork is causing chaos at a Congresswoman's fancy party.

The best moment is when Deathstork realizes he's hanging out with another underage Teen Titan and he spends the rest of the issue trying to hide his boner.

Deathstork #8

Shit, Adeline really got to Supes!

I was disappointed with Batman's guest appearance a few issues ago because he just ignored Deathstork being in his city. I suppose that's the smart thing to do, really. If Batman isn't going to arrest Slade (and he never does!), why bother getting into a tussle with him? It'll just end with a whole bunch of broken walls and windows and skylights. Which, come to think of it, is exactly why Batman should bother! Wayne Wall, Window, and Skylight Repair would make a fortune!

I don't think I'm going to be disappointed with this confrontation though. Superman has a history of solving all of his problems by punching them in the face. Okay, so Batman does as well. But there's no way Priest can pull that "the hero acts reasonably and responsibly" bullshit twice in one story arc! Fans would riot! And Deathstork fans are the worst! They riot whenever somebody points out that Slade Wilson is an unethical, morally repugnant pedophile!

Slade decides to give up without a fight. But that doesn't mean he has to shut up.

Oh my god! He's a bigger nag than Adeline!

Adeline and Slade are really making Superman look like a lazy chump. But Superman just has to put up with it. He knows the crap Slade Wilson has done because Batman probably whines incessantly about Deathstork sometimes being called the Batman Who Kills. But what is he supposed to do about Alisante? Take Deathstork's word for it? Bring Alisante in without any evidence as to why? At least Adeline had warrants on Slade and evidence of his misdeeds. Superman can't just grab anybody off the street (or the ocean) and drop them off with the cops with a note saying, "Bad person. Do something about it." Although on pages two and three of the last issue, Superman was hauling the entire aircraft carrier to land. So maybe he'll use his x-ray vision to see all of the drugs inside the ship. Does Superman need a search warrant or can he use his x-ray vision for probable cause? Not that Superman has to follow the same procedures as police officers do. But I'm sure he probably tries to, for his own peace of mind.

Luckily for me and my need to see Deathstork beat up Superman, Slade fires a shot into Superman's face as he pretends to give up. Superman then begins to do that thing that makes all of his battles last so long. He hits Deathstork as hard as he thinks he can hit him without putting his fist clean through him. It's not hard enough because of Slade's Ikon Suit. So Superman recalculates and tries a little harder. And then a little harder. And then a little harder than that. See? This is why all of Superman's fights aren't just one punch and done. If Superman knew exactly how hard he could hit an opponent without killing them, then his fights would be short. But he has to be extra careful or else the next time he sees Batman, Batman will be all, "Everybody who hasn't killed anybody can sit by me!"

Pounding on Deathstork's Gravity Armor gives Superman a nosebleed from the shock waves bouncing back at him after each punch. Superman just got rope-a-doped! If you don't know what a rope-a-dope is, you should read Catwoman #15 where Ann Nocenti explains it to the idiots reading her garbage.

Meanwhile, Rose learns that Etienne, Joseph's fiance, works for HIVE. Just like Grant! Just like Adeline! Just like maybe not those two and maybe not HIVE but probably! Nobody is who anybody thinks they are in this thing! Even Superman isn't really Superman since he's Preboot Superman!

Apparently, the Ikon Suit isn't Adeline speaking to him. It's just the stupid suit talking. But it sounds like Wintergreen so that maybe Slade will finally let the real Wintergreen retire. Superman is given an earpiece to listen to Ikon Wintergreen because he's even better at philosophical bullshit and making a person feel guilty than both Adeline and Slade combined! He's all, "So what is justice? What laws do you follow? When do you punch a guy in the face and when do you kick him in the nuts? Who told you you could police the world and what Goddamned rulebook do you follow?!"

Through a bunch of legerdemain and distracting balderdash, Deathstork manages to kill his target while Superman flails around like a Magic the Gathering player trying to take off a bra. Sure, I'm assuming the Magic the Gathering player here is a male but I'm not clarifying whether the bra is on himself or a woman he's about to see naked. You know which one is most plausible.

It's as if Priest were given Deathstork to write and told, "Give people a reason to root for him other than the disgusting bloodlust of enjoying seeing baddies sent to Hell!" And he was like, "Sure! No problem! Easy peasy! Why has everybody found this so hard to do?"

In the DC Universe, if you want to show that your character is a huge bad-ass not to be trifled with, you have them kick Lobo's ass. If you want to show that your character has a conscious and possibly a heart and is actually trying to do the right thing even if maybe they go about it in a blood-soaked manner, you have them engage in a conversation with Superman. Deathstork understands that just because something is a law, it doesn't make it lawful. Sure, his morality also offers a chance to put a significant amount of money into his bank account but maybe there's a reason Batman didn't pursue him while he was in Gotham. Batman operates on the same assumption that sometimes doing things legally isn't enough to get the job done. It's just that Deathstork doesn't mind going whole hog into that line of reasoning. I've liked the character of Deathstork for a long time (it's why I have so many of his comic books!) but I've never really liked the way he's been written. There have been the rare exceptions and this series is one of those.

Also, can you imagine if Red Hood and Batman had basically this same kind of conversation? It would go a long way to fixing Red Hood and cementing why he does things the way he does, and why Batman allows him to. I know some people might have a problem with using the word "allow," but, come on! It's Batman! He's the fascist dictator of Gotham ruling from the shadows! What happens in Gotham only happens because he allows it to happen!

Superman brought along Jericho to help stop Deathstork and to convince himself that he's washed the blood from his hands over whatever the hell situation he got himself involved in. It's all Jericho's clusterfuck now! But in the end, Supes does get the satisfaction of punching Deathstork in the face and knocking him out. Clark and Bruce will later probably swap tales of beating up Deathstork over a beer.

In the end, Superman embarrasses the United States by exposing their ties to the drug lord Deathstork just assassinated right under Superman's nose. He does it to show Adeline and everybody else in the government who wants to keep using them to fight their ideological battles that he's not on anybody's side and he won't be manipulated. He's on the side of his own ideology which is, according to Superman, totally the right one. According to Batman, it's totally an infantile one! But hey, like Deathstork or Rose or somebody said earlier in this story arc, "Tomato, tomato."

Superman places Deathstork in the custody of the Coast Guard so that Slade will be able to free himself by next issue. And, finally, Rose Wilson leaves her dad in the present while she heads off to investigate her Hmong past. Also she's being followed by some white guy! Epilogue!

The Ranking!
No change. Isn't it nice to have a Deathstork comic book that's well done, Deathstork fans? Now you don't have to send me angry messages over the Internet every time I bash your precious anti-hero. You see, it's never been my goal to attack Deathstork. I don't have any personal vendetta against any character in popular fiction. What kind of an insane garbage hound do you think I am?! My goal is, to be precise, to attack horrible writing and terrible art! We might disagree on what those are but know that if we do, you're almost certainly wrong. Mostly because the majority of people can't get past their own internal desires that color the world with their bias, and so they defend awful and terrible things simply because they support their cuckoo world view. But I have a secret and it is this: I don't give a shit about anything except being entertained so that I can, for whatever length of time it gives me, be blissfully ignorant and unaware of my eventual descent into the grave. Just be fucking good and entertaining and, maybe on occasion, terribly, terribly smart and witty and so clever my envy will burn as fiery and hot as the interior of a thousand suns. If you're none of those things, my wrath and disgust will burn even hotter.

Deathstork #7

I think I've spent enough time this week Photoshopping covers.

This opening paragraph is for Anonymous: Trump is a stupid head!

Two issues ago, Batman failed to care about apprehending Deathstork. Although he did manage to make Rose Wilson feel guilty about her chosen profession. This issue, Adeline Kane tries to convince Superman to apprehend Deathstork. She makes a pretty good argument. At least I think it's good. She yells at him a lot and makes him feel like a piece of shit. According to Twitter, that's standard debate tactics which usually lead to winning the argument. Twitter defines "winning the argument" as being blocked by the person you were making feel like shit. Currently in America, a lot of people think they're master debaters when they are, in fact, simply assholes.

Superman decides he should bring in Deathstork just so Adeline gets off his case. Adeline needs to be careful. Superman could leave this meeting feeling sympathy for Deathstork.

The short stories in this issue take place all over the past few days. So the Superman thing was thirteen hours ago. Then he caught Deathstork on a battleship for a double page splash before shifting scenes to Joseph now using dead Uncle Dr. Ikon's super suit himself. That's the problem with secret identities. Anybody can kill you and take over, as long as they fit in the costume.

I suppose all of these stories are the final bits and pieces of backstory needed for the conclusion of this story where Superman and Deathstork have a heart-to-heart talk on the roof of the Daily Planet. Superman will learn that Deathstork is a killer but only of bad people. And Dathstork will learn that Superman will believe anything.

Eleven hours before Adeline convinces Superman to go after Deathstork, Slade Wilson pays Adeline a visit at her home in Georgetown. She's remarried but she still has at least one family picture including Slade on the mantle. Is that normal? I mean, I get having the picture. But she hasn't drawn devil horns or blacked out his eyes or anything!

Anyway, Slade has determined that Adeline is the person currently trying to get him killed. Just like I said! Remember how I said that? I totally did. At least, I think I did. Well, if I didn't, I'll just go back and add it into a past commentary so it looks like I had already said it.

While Slade explains what he's learned to Adeline, he remembers creepily watching Rose and Richard fuck.

I hope it doesn't turn out that Pat, Richard's mother and one-time Vigilante, isn't behind the plot to kill Slade because I'm not going back and changing my past commentaries again!

Apparently Adeline and Slade were made for each other because neither one of them can simply express their feelings or needs. Adeline set up all of these dominoes just to get Slade back into her kitchen so she can ask him to accept a contract for HIVE, or whatever organization she works for. Or maybe she just likes being a stinger in his ass. Whatever her reasons, she tells Slade she's going to keep after him. He decides to walk away because he somehow thinks he won't fall for any more of her intricate games in the future. He's got a surprise with a capital "S" in store for him!

At some point during the past day, Slade pays a visit to Pat the Ex-Vigilante.

Pat probably had a stroke from everybody constantly telling her how terrible her costume was.

Slade's current job to kill some rich person on a personal aircraft carrier goes tits up when his current — I don't know what to call him — you know, the guy who helps him on the radio while he's on a mission? Oh! His Oracle! Anyway, his Oracle gets a call from Joseph's fiance letting him know who he's really working for. Hosun, the Oracle, apparently didn't realize he was working for the guy who fucked his mother. Or killed his mother? I don't know but I guess Hosun is Rose's half-brother? Maybe? I'm fucking speculating like crazy here! Anyway, after Hosun cuts off his help, Deathstork has to finally activate the Ikon suit that he was forced to wear due to the initial bits of Adeline's Rube Goldbergian plan. And once he turns it on, Adeline is able to contact him and she's all, "Fucking Christ, you idiot. Why couldn't you have turned this thing on six issues ago?! Now look at what you made me do!" And that's when Superman tears open the side of the battleship to beat the shit out of Deathstork.

At least, I think it was Adeline talking to him over the Ikon Suit! This series doesn't like to easily reveal its secrets. That must make it hard for people who have to wait two weeks for each new issue to remember everything. But that's their own problem. They should start a blog to help them remember the plots of all the comic books they're reading!

The Ranking!
No change. I'm still loving this comic book even if I don't always know what's going on because I eventually discover what's going on! That's the way stories are supposed to work! I hate when comic books are confusing and then they stay confusing and they never explain themselves because the writer really never had a plan in the first place. But Priest seems to have like a dozen plans in place and they're all paying off!

Deathstork #6

Why is Slade making moose antlers?

Here's an anonymous message sent to me via Tumblr today:

Your reviews are actually kind of funny, but Jesus Christ lay off the Trump references. As a Clinton voter, I'm sick of the low lame jabs.

As anonymous messages go, it's pretty polite! Practically even a compliment! I mean, the "kind of funny" is sort of an off-hand slam that really hurt my feelings. But then everything else about the message seems like a lie, so I probably shouldn't care too much that the messenger didn't say my reviews are uproariously hilarious like they probably should have. I'm sure there are Clinton voters who still consider themselves "Clinton voters" who really hate people making fun of Trump because everybody has a right to be stupid, even Democrats (or people pretending to be Democrats!). But to categorize my slanderous comments about Trump as "low lame jabs"?! Come on! Those jabs were uppercuts! And right hooks! And they were intelligent and cutting! You know how else I know this person didn't actually vote for Clinton? Because they typed "Jesus Christ" with the appropriate capitalization! People who voted for Clinton were obviously atheists and Satanists who would never invoke the name of Christ! I'm too smart for you, Anon!

Look, Anon. If you want to read my stupid reviews, you might have to put up with me expressing opinions that will differ from yours. You can't go around being angry or annoyed every time somebody says something with which you don't agree. But you must realize that I was never going to take your suggestion seriously, right?! I mean, you'll probably never read another one of my reviews ever again! You stumbled upon them today, felt you needed to express yourself to the void of the Internet because nobody else will listen to your Magic Deck making strategies, and probably have already moved on! I would be as pathetic as Cullen Bunn thinks I am if I changed my ways for a disgruntled, anonymous drive-by commenter!

I take it you think I mention sucking dick and masturbating just the right amount though?

This issue begins with Deathstork back in Sub-Saharan Africa. I guess things there weren't completely resolved after he rescued Wintergreen and fucked over the president of the country. I guess he's there to save the president of the country after giving him ample time to think about how he tried to fuck over Slade. Being a villain is hard. You can't trust anybody. It must be nice to have a guy like Wintergreen in your corner who will do anything you say no matter how crazy because he loves you unapologetically.

The president's name is Matthew but he likes to be called Red Lion. But he doesn't matter. Also on the plane is Rose's boyfriend Richard. Apparently he was the one who put the hit out on Rose. I guess that's why all of the subterfuge last issue. It was Slade's way of telling Rose he loves her! By keeping her in the dark about how her boyfriend tried to have her killed. He's so sweet!

Meanwhile Rose is meeting with her brother Joseph to discuss Slade trying to kill her. Joseph isn't too sympathetic because Slade nearly got him killed a long time ago. Also, Slade killed Joseph in the Preboot Universe. But he did it because Joseph wanted him to and because the Wildebeest story had been dragging on for years with no end in sight. Even though I liked Jericho back then, I was glad to see that story arc end!

Oh, well that finally explains that! I was tired of being too stupid to understand what was going on! I mean, pretending I was too stupid! It was a joke! Ha ha! And you fell for it!

Okay! I think I finally understand what is going on! I sort of already understood though because Wintergreen explained it all to Rose about how her father doesn't know how to express affection. Look at what kind of trouble can happen when you don't just hug your parents? Not that the child should be blamed for lacking the ability to have close, intimate contact with their family members (not that kind of intimate contact, you pervert!). I can probably count on my fingers the number of times I hugged my grandparents and I loved the fuck out of them! Plus I have all my fingers! Just for, you know, clarification.

I saw this quote recently that may or may not have actually been said by F. Scott Fitzgerald: "An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke!" I added the exclamation point because I imagine he probably yelled this at somebody who used too many exclamation points. I use a lot of exclamation points but I assure you, I only use them when the sentence preceding the punctuation mark makes me laugh. Or I'm excited. Or angry. Sometimes all of those! See, I was excited there but not angry and I wasn't laughing. The point to this is that from now on, because he was so critical of the exclamation point which I love, I'm only going to refer to him as F! Scott Fitzgerald.

This issue is filled with editor's notes about other issues because this issue is beginning to tie up a lot of loose ends. The various short stories making up the narrative are beginning to meld into one coherent story in which Deathstork probably disovers Adelaide is behind kidnapping Wintergreen and getting Deathstork back in his suit and turning his children against him and getting him to team up with the Red Lion. Or it's totally different. I'm tired of being a Grandmaster Comic Book Reader! Sometimes I'd just like to admit that I don't know what the fuck is going on.

Oh shit! Richard is that Luis! The one that got involved in gang activity in Gotham because his mother, Pat, put the maid in charge of him while she went out to fight crime as Vigilante!

Richard (aka Luis) hates Deathstork because Richard's mother, Pat, abandoned him to go be Vigilante at Deathstork's side. Also because she was on the run from the police but she really super wanted to be at Deathstork's side. And when he told her he works alone and wouldn't let her come with him, she made the worst cry face in the history of comic books. I think I have the scan around here somewhere.

I can't tell if she's crying or she's in shock due to her brains leaking out of her eyeballs.

Whoa. I'm starting to feel like a Grandmaster Comic Book Reader again! Self-doubt can stuff it!

Meanwhile, Joseph (not Jericho as the previous writer of Deathstork thought his actual name was) meets with Uncle Dr. Ikon to let him know that he's getting married to his sign translator. I know a few signs! I know helicopter and cookie and raccoon and boy and hungry and horny and vagina and cunt. I learned most of those from Signing Times on PBS. I learned the last two from Lee Mack's stand-up. What I'm trying to say is that I might not actually know any of those signs well at all. The ones from Lee Mack because he was a comedian on stage making jokes. Do I trust that?! And the ones from Signing Times because I learned them watching barely verbal toddlers do them while shaking from yet-to-be mastered motor control and flipping the fuck out from excitement.

Anyway, Uncle Dr. Ikon has the best response to a friend confiding their love for somebody that I've ever seen.

I highly doubt anybody who knows me at this point in my life will ever confide in me about their love for another but if they do, I'm not ashamed to say I'll be stealing this response.

Uncle Dr. Ikon has a bit more of a reason to say "I love my cat" to Joseph's declaration that he loves a woman than just being snarky. He's been in a relationship with Joseph for some time, so he's making a comment on the different kinds of love and that maybe Joseph's love for Etienne is like Uncle Dr. Ikon's love for his cat. I don't mean pure and unadulterated and the best kind of love ever in the world forever and ever! I mean the kind of love where you probably aren't going to engage in sex. But Joseph points out that he refuses to be labeled and he'll love and, probably, fuck whomever he wants to fuck. I should also probably stop calling him Uncle Dr. Ikon now because that's a level of creepy that I didn't realize was going to be reached when I began calling him that.

Uncle Dr. Ikon (I decdided not to stop) refuses to accept bisexuality, especially when he's losing his lover to it. Instead of gracefully staying Joseph's secret dick on the side, Uncle Dr. Ikon decides to tattle to Deathstork that his son is a big gay homo fucking his big gay homo uncle. Knowing Deathstork's sexual history, I imagine that will elicit little more than a shrug. But Joseph decides he can't take the chance and enters Uncle Dr. Ikon one last time (or maybe for the first time. Not all gay sexual relations result in sodomy, you know. Oral and hand jobs are quite satisfactory for satisfying certain disgusting urges (I don't mean those urges are only disgusting when gay people have them! Everybody's urges are totally disgusting. Mine resulted in performing a rimjob this morning!)). But this time, Joseph enters him as Jericho in the usual way: eye contact! He then turns off Uncle Dr. Ikon's suit and allows him to plummet to his death. Possibly. The issue ends before Uncle Dr. Ikon ends.

The Ranking!
+1 Ranking! Christopher Priest reached back and plucked out Luis from Marv Wolfman's 90s Deathstork comic book! I mean, that's crazy! Maybe not Geoff Johns crazy or Alan Moore crazy. And because it's just Luis, it's a little bit boring. Also, I don't know that Luis didn't become some huge character during the Naughts! Maybe everybody reading this comic book knew right away who Richard was. Anyway, Luis is a good example of how this comic is really building a great foundation for the Rebirth Deathstork to be more than DC's Punisher with a worse costume. I'm enjoying the complexity of the entire story and how it's all coming together.

Deathstroke #2

I hope this guy's name is The Malingerer. I just want Deathstork to have an enemy named The Malingerer.

The Commentary!
• Douchéstork is written in short stories. It's almost as if Christ Priest (you can shorten Christopher to "Christ", right?) realized Deathstork wasn't interesting enough to carry a comic book all by himself so he decided to explore the entirety of his life through bullet points. Instead of learning about Deathstork through his own personal war journals, or his incessant Narration Boxing, the reader is allowed to see moments of Slade and his family's life to really see what makes Deathstork murder and have sex with underage females.

• The first short story is called "Home Alone". It's about how Joseph Wilson was constantly being left home by himself due to his mercenary parents constantly rushing off to other countries to assassinate people and his older brother throwing temper tantrums and running away because he didn't feel like his dad loved him enough. Joseph apparently doesn't feel loved enough either because when the house is empty, he invites a bunch of strange teenagers over to party on the off chance that a few of them might think, "Jake Wilbur is the coolest!"

• The second short story is called "Ishmael". It has nothing to do with the Moby Dick Ishmael which everybody probably first thought because holy fuck why are so many people in love with the novel Moby Dick?! It's almost as if they've got some kind of obsession or something?! No, this story is called "Ishmael" because it's about the sacrifice of a son. I know what you're thinking! You're thinking, "But Tess! Isaac was the son who was almost sacrificed!" Sure, if you want to believe the Old Testament and the way the Old Testament contradicts itself! Because, seriously, you can't have Abraham sacrificing Isaac if he's sacrificing his only son. The only time Abraham had an only son was when he had Ishmael. The Koran gets it right. Although, to be absolutely fair and transparent, the Koran is a bit lax with its proper nouns. So it's not like it's super clear either! But at least it's not trying to obfuscate things on purpose to make Abraham's story about the Jewish line of decent and not about the Muslim line of descent. Although Joseph, who has been kidnapped and may be sacrificed, is the second son which would make him Isaac. So maybe the title did reference Moby Dick since the bloody writing on the wall says "CALL ME DEATHSTROKE". At least that's what Adeline reads. I think the bloody "E" may have merged with the comma.

• So that past story about Joseph getting kidnapped and eventually getting his throat slit which leads to Adeline putting out Slade's right eye is being told alongside the present story of Deathstroke being forced to wear an old costume that doesn't have boots with huge fucking cuffs on them.

• The next story is still in the past. It's called "Our Gang" and it's Slade's half of the story after he hangs up on Adeline and refuses to hear why she sounds so panicked. It's because somebody took her son and she thinks it's somebody called Deathstork. Slade doesn't have time to talk because he's busy yelling at Wintergreen for crashing the plane they're in.

Apparently you talk upside down and backwards when you're upside down. I had no idea!

• The next story is called "Two Guns" and takes place in the present in Edinburgh. Wintergreen and Wilson are visiting one of the guys who was in that crashed plane eight years ago. I would have guessed it was eighteen years ago based on how badly he and Wintergreen have aged. Wintergreen is searching for the person who was responsible for his kidnapping and only five people knew he was still alive (four if you don't count Wintergreen himself which I totally wouldn't but Wintergreen chooses to do for--I don't know--accuracy's sake?). After Wintergreen and Wilson, their old mate Fredric was one of them. It probably doesn't matter who the others were because it was probably Adeline who had Wintergreen kidnapped.

• In the hopes that Slade doesn't murder him, Fredric tells a story about a man named Racskowski. Why couldn't he be named Smith?! I'll never remember how to spell that! Although the story Fredric tells is called "Rax" so I can probably just refer to him as Rox from here on out. I mean Rax!

• Rax was the other guy in the plane! The story is about how he was murdered by some unknown assailants in a way that would make it look like Rax hung himself (which is probably why Fredric's bar is called "The Hanged Man")! They were unknown because nobody could question them after Deathstork murdered them to death.

• Fredric points out the last person who went on the mission where the plane crashed in Cambodia and Slade probably impregnated a whore with Rose (since the next story is called "Rose" and since that's sort of how it happened in the Preboot, Post-Crisis era) was a Canuck named Isherwood. Unless he didn't go on the mission because he wasn't in the plane that crashed earlier. Although he could have been in the back! I don't know because I haven't read the short story that tells his tale yet.

That was a rough eight years! Although I'm probably entering those eight years now as I turn 45. I should take a before picture now and an after picture in eight years and see if they're similar to this!

• Lillian (Rose's mother) runs a hotel where mercenaries in Cambodia go to have a nice cup of tea and a short nap between missions. She's also the kind of person who mentions how smart they are which means she isn't really that smart. Although it's a comic book so there aren't many ways to let the reader know how smart a character is without somebody vocalizing the fact. And since Lillian doesn't have an advocate the reader can trust to tell us how smart she is, she has to do it herself. But if she were a real person and I met her at a party and she was all, "I'm smarter than 75% of the people I meet," I would probably try to have sex with her. I mean, if I met her at a party and she said, "Der! Der duh der doy!", I'd probably try to have sex with her.

• Apparently Slade has already had sex with her. Several years ago so Rose can be a teenager in the present time.

• Oh! I guess I was mistaken about who was in the plane. Isherwood was the guy in the glasses. Fredric was just the recon guy sent to check out the brothel run by Lillian, the person Slade and his team were trying to rescue. Wait. He got paid for that?

• The brothel was attacked by drug cartel muscle and in the ensuing rescue, Fredric was shot by a ten year old girl with silver hair. Why did she have silver hair when Deathstork's hair only turned as he got older? Was it because Slade's semen was full of the lie detecting drugs which gave him his power? Did he have his powers ten years ago?! Maybe I just don't understand genetics.

• Fredric admits that he happened to mention to somebody that maybe Wintergreen wasn't actually dead which is all Slade needs to head to Canada to find Isherwood.

Why is Wintergreen so familiar with Batman and the way he disappears? I bet he's an old SAS friend of Alfred's and Alfred talks way too much when they get together to drink and reminisce.

• The Doctor Slade goes to see is Isherwood. The guy in the plane with the glasses. Otherwise known as Ikon. Or Doctor Ikon. Or Professor Ikon. He's the guy who built the suit Slade is currently wearing. He's also got his own suit and can fly. So instead of just asking him questions about Wintergreen's kidnapping, he has to also punch him a lot.

• Dr. Ikon is a hero of God. He uses that as an excuse to judge Slade's life of killing even though God loves to kill for justice even more than Slade! Or at least he used to before his peacenik son decided to change the entire message, so much so that it's barely recognizable from one Testament to the other. Almost as if they don't actually have anything to do with each other!

• Slade knows Dr. Ikon wasn't the guy to rat out Wintergreen but he needed more information to help find the people who killed Rax and kidnapped Wintergreen. Wintergreen, meanwhile, kills Fredric. It also turns out they were doing these things at the same time and the Deathstork in Fredric's bar was just a guy paid to hang out in the costume and look scary. Anyway, that whole thing is still a story that is happening. But now they have a twist that is probably tied to that story: Deathstork received a contract to kill somebody named The Ravager. I suppose Deathstork doesn't know anything about Rose yet. But the silver hair and the blue and orange uniform seems to show she knows about him.

The Review!
I forgot I wasn't doing a review section anymore! I'm not a Reviewer! I'm a Reader! But I will keep leaving undefended changes in the rank of the comic book which place it in an imaginary list of comics from best to worst!

The Ranking: +1! If you want to read about Rose Wilson's first appearance, check it out here!

Deathstroke #1

Am I the only one who hopes Slade and Rose have sex in this series?

The Commenatary!
Douchéstork has already done so many horrible things, incest really wouldn't matter. It's like dropping a kitten in a lake. Nothing changes! At least not for everything that isn't the kitten or the little girl the kitten was taken from or the lucky fish that gets to taste kitten for the first time. Usually the kittens come in hard to open sacks.

The issue begins with Congressman Hasgrove deciding that jumping off of a balcony and killing himself is better than having his constituents know that he loves being fucked in the ass while chained up and dressed in leather. That seems odd because I don't think Heaven allows that kind of activity. And if you go to Hell, why would they torture you like that if it's your kink? Earth is the place for sado-masochistic butt stuff; I don't know where it's likely to go better (to quote Robert Frost! I'm nothing if not literary!). I guess he just doesn't want to be humiliated which is a shame because he shouldn't feel humiliation over his sexual desires! But it's his own fault for representing a constituency who thinks sado-masochistic butt stuff is shameful and not erotic and super intriguing. I'm not sad to see him die because he obviously only cares about his own feelings otherwise he wouldn't kill himself with the pictures still in his hand so his family have to live with the shame and complicated erotic feelings of being super intrigued by his lifestyle.

I don't know what is about to happen on Page Two but since it involves Slade, Wintergreen, and Slade wearing butt-explorer gloves, I love it!

This is my original ship before people called it shipping. I just thought of it as my Fictional Fuck-buddy Fantasy.

This is the best comic book I've ever read because it's divided into multiple short stories. My attention span has the biggest hard-on!

Speaking of my attention span, the Non-Certified Spouse is on the road for work this week and she took this picture in a Grant's Pass Safeway women's restroom:

This is the saddest short story ever.

The story so far (even though this is Issue #1 so you wouldn't expect there to be a need for a "story so far" synopsis but then you might have forgotten about that whole Rebirth #1 issue): Clock King was betrayed by a genocidal African despot who hired Deathstork to kill Clock King but Deathstork betrayed the despot to get information from Clock King about the whereabouts of his lover Wintergreen. So Deathstork has found Wintergreen and Clock King has decided to get some revenge on the African despot.

When Wintergreen is found by Slade, Wintergreen shows Deathstork that his captors also wound up with Slade's family home videos and photos as well as Slade's old super costume. Slade is all, "Give me that!", as he steps all over the family video tapes and wipes his ass with the photos and spits on the grave (and future graves!) of his children to grab the old suit and put it on. The suit has some kind of kinetic technology that allows Slade to be shot multiple times at point blank range without being hurt. Oh yeah! And Wintergreen manages to say "Bob's your uncle!" so you know he's from New Zealand or Australia or the United Kingdom or whatever.

I actually know where Wintergreen is really from because in the old Deathstroke comic book, a toy company puts out a line of Deathstroke action figures and mistakenly label Wintergreen as "Slade's Australian Fuckbuddy!" The "fuckbuddy" part was not the part where they were mistaken. Oh, I also know where Wintergreen is from because there's a Union Jack on his grave which he isn't actually in. Some guy who was impersonating Wintergreen is apparently buried there.

Wintergreen and Wilson (their ship name is "Wintergreen" or "Wilson" if you prefer the stupid ship name) escape on a motorcycle they drive underneath the story's title: "Deathstroke the Professional: Part One: Among Thieves". Did Prince ever name one of his albums "Among Thieves"? Seems like a missed opportunity, especially when his name was a symbol. That would have really driven people crazy! He did, however, name one of his albums "Plectrumelectrum" which makes no sense because he was a genius. Or I'm just stupid. Unless it's the other way around which it probably is, actually.

Wintergreen says a lot of geopolitical stuff that reads to my American brain as "This isn't about popular entertainment so blah blah blah blah." Does Chris Priest know he's writing a comic book? Usually comic book writers have characters say things like, "I've been in that cave so long, I missed the last season of Lost!" Then Slade would be all, "Don't worry, Insert Writer's Opinion of Lost's last season here rather than trying to think about how Slade may have actually felt about it!" This whole "Turkish Kurds and Syrian borders and religious conflicts and genocide" makes Chris Priest look like an amateur comic book writer. And yes, I just said somebody who writes intelligently is an amateur comic book writer. Get a grip, Chirs! This kind of thing isn't what the kids want! This is the type of stuff that gets you hired by Vertigo!

So, anyway, Slade needs to stop Clock King from killing the African Despot for some reason. Maybe it has to do with making sure the check clears.

Clock King refers to the clock on his crotch as his Cock Clock. Probably.

After being hit be Clock King's Nostalgia Ray, Wintergreen remembers a time when he dropped by while Grant and Joey were playing video games and Slade and Adeline were having a huge fuck-fight.

At first glance, I thought Slade's right shoulder was one of Adeline's breasts. Enh, I'll still probably jerk off to it.

The fuck-fighting has something to do with Adeline being irresponsible with her uterus. It's resolved in the way most fuck-fights are: the guy comes prematurely and the woman finishes with her vibrator. Grant takes off before he has to hear the ravaging while Joseph just wishes he were deaf. He'll almost get his wish!

I guess Wintergreen remembers this moment in particular because he gets to interrupt Slade and Adeline in their post-coital bliss. He comments on Adeline's bosom but you know he's checking out Slade's cock. Why else would he use the made up word "velociraptorous"? Definitely not talking about Adeline. That's totally an adjective for a cock.

Wintergreen sprays the room with bullets until he blows up Clock King's oxygen tank because Clock King is really just a sick old man hiding behind a machine that creates the illusion of his mastery of time. He's really just like the rest of us. Sitting bored on a bus trip that takes about eighty years to get to its destination.

After the mission is over, Wintergreen is all, "You saved thousands of lives on purpose in some convoluted scheme, you big softy you! Now we can all forget about your tendency toward pedophilia and indiscriminate slaughter!" I guess even this Rebirthed Deathstroke is the version of Deathstroke where he only does ethical things in somewhat unethical ways. Boo! Boring!

Wintergreen assumes he's having another hallucination from living malnourished in a cave in Africa with the daily threat of death but Slade convinces him he's finally been rescued. Which is when Wintergreen flips the fuck out.

Now kiss!

The final page epilogue makes sure that the reader knows that not only was Deathstork's plan super convoluted and involved and it still worked, some villain behind-the-scenes had an even more convoluted and involved plan that needed Slade's plan to work to work and it worked! The plan was for Slade to change his clothes. Seems like there may have been an easier way to go about it.

The Review!
I'm not doing this review part anymore! You're all adults! You can figure out if a comic book was good or not. Oh, and if you aren't an adult and can't figure out why Deathstork is a good comic book then maybe you shouldn't be reading my commentaries since I often say things like "motherfucking cunt" or worse. Sometimes I even describe how babies are born! Here's a hint: carelessness!

Deathstroke Rebirth #1

Did Deathstroke just accidentally chop his holster in half?

The Review!
Too many people somewhere along the line decided what made Slade interesting was that he was a mercenary for hire who also would do anything to protect his children. But that's stupid. Also, his kids are stupid. They're always whining and dying and doing sign language and fucking Robins and getting killed in their first appearance. They're totally annoying! The only relationship of Slade's I've ever cared anything about is his relationship with Wintergreen. And guess what?! That relationship fuels this story! Finally, a Deathstork that I can enjoy! All you other Deathstork fans who love to think he's better than he is and he isn't a monster at all can go suck farts! Man, I hope there's a scene where Wilson and Wintergreen fuck.

The Commentary!
I hope all of the Deathstroke fans have been good little girls and boys! I hope they all prayed to our loving lord and savior, Whoever, for a decent Deathstroke comic book. This is only the Rebirth issue so if you haven't offered up praise, there still may be time! Here's a prayer I wrote for us all to say before bed every night in the hopes that we will be blessed with an engaging story about our favorite sociopathic pedophile:

Whoever, hear my prayer!
Unless it's Whomever, which I don't think it is, but it might be, so whatever.
Please let Christopher Priest be the vessel through which you spread the gospel of Deathstork.
His name is fitting enough, right? "Christ Priest!" How can he be the wrong person to write this book?
If you promise to fulfill our fondest wishes and present a Deathstork comic book that makes sense,
I will promise to never masturbate again. Unless I'm really super horny and you have yet to bless me with a mate,
Which you have to admit must be your fault,
Since you are all-knowing and all-powerful.
And if you really wanted me to stop jerking off to Manga Porn,
You would have me meet someone who might find it pleasurable to lie with me,
Or at least pleasantly buzzed enough to not notice my significant flaws,
But not so drunk that we cannot come to consensual terms
(Forgive me for not knowing how to spell "consensual" at first but who would have thought it would lose the "t" and form a word with "sensual" in it).
Anyway, you probably know better than me what's best and even asking this prayer is probably pissing you off a bit,
Since it means I do not have faith in whatever you have decided is my destiny in life,
And for some reason I can't be happy with your plan,
And I want you to care more for me than you apparently actually do.
Did that come off as passive aggressive? It's really hard to know what to say to an omniscient being.
I mean, you probably knew what I was going to say long before I even said it,
And I imagine you were completely dreading this moment,
And now I feel bad that I've wasted so much of your time,
Even if you have an infinite amount left.
Please do not cut my life short for wanting a better Deathstork comic book>
Amen and Mahalo and all that other junk.

Okay! Now if we all say this prayer, we're bound to get a Deathstork comic book that we can all be proud of! I don't mean "proud" as in "I hope my parents find me reading this!" I mean proud as in "This comic book is finally about an awful, terrible person and it is riveting and I cannot tear my eyes away and Rose and Joseph are nowhere to be seen. Ptui!"

Oh! I think this is a good sign! The title all alone in a black panel with quotes around it is kind of like an independent movie! I already don't understand what's going on! That means it's smart!

The person being thrown in the snow is Grant and the person doing the throwing is Slade Wilson and I already love this version of Slade so much. He threatens to beat Grant's ass and Grant screams at him and runs off to die in the snow. I mean, he won't die, but it's not like Slade goes after him. And guess what? This Slade actually knows that his other son's name is fucking Joseph and not Jericho! Thank Christ(opher Priest)!

Although, why would running the heater on the truck all night kill the battery of the truck? Wouldn't it just run the truck out of gas? Because doesn't the truck need to be running for the heater to work? I guess Slade's truck as an electric space heater system! It's also possible, although not very likely, that the comic book is correct and I just don't know anything about cars. I know my Volkswagen wouldn't run the heater without the engine running! I think!

That story is called "The Bear" and it's either just two pages long or it'll continue throughout the book as the story that takes place in the present, "Wheelons," alternates with "The Bear." I bet they both have similar thematic elements too! I bet!

I don't know what a Wheelon is but apparently it is Deathstork and The Red Lion, the man who hired Deathstork to kill his enemies. Or something. Deathstork is actually after a man under the protection of The Red Lion. So Slade had to do a job to help Matthew get something he wanted before he betrayed a man who trusted him by allowing Deathstork access to him. There are some other political things going on as well just to show that Slade Wilson's "jobs" don't happen in a vacuum. He may be in it for the money but everybody else is just trying to not destabilize their own little pieces of the world.

Back in the past, Slade kills a mother bear to save Grant and continues to berate him. Then he goes off to kill the bear's cubs because, as he says to his lover Wintergreen, "It'd be cruel to leave them without a mother." Well it's a good thing Adeline is still alive! Otherwise Slade would have to waste a couple more bullets.

Wintergreen has arrived to take Slade to a mission to Qurac. It's probably the mission where he gets his super powers and his white hair and loses an eye. Or else he loses the eye in the normal way later when Adeline is all, "What the fuck did you say to Grant? KAPOW!" She doesn't actually say KAPOW! That's what her gun says.

The man Deathstork has been paid to kill is the Clock King. Not the one that was in Harley Quinn with Power Girl. Or the one that was in Green Arrow. This is the Rebirth one! The one who seems to be sick and exists on a seven-second delay so that he can't be shot in the face. Since Clock King arrogantly thinks Slade can't kill him, he decides to philosophize about time while Deathstork prepares a grenade. Maybe he can just cover Clock King in flames with a flamethrower for longer than seven seconds! Wouldn't that catch up to him?

Clock King does manage to give Deathstork some information that makes Slade rethink his need to fulfill every contract. Because sometimes contracts conflict with each other and if he takes the right contract at the right time, maybe he doesn't have to kill Clock King who is dying of terminal terminalness anyway!

Clock King mentions a name--Kenilworth--and Deathstork decides maybe he should make one of those new contracts now.

Jazaki is The Red Lion and, I guess, he has somebody Deathstork loves. As if Deathstork could ever love anybody! Seriously! Don't let him love people! He's a monster!

The rest of the story is about Deathstork rushing in to save the person he supposedly loves. And since it doesn't wind up being Grant or Joseph or Rose or Adeline, I could be just fine with it. But since it does wind up being Wintergreen, I'm absolutely ecstatic! Deathstork loves Wintergreen! Deathstork loves Wintergreen!

So gay!

Telos #2

Wait a second. I'm still reading this?!

Captain K'rot has been called in from the bench to make this comic book interesting! He must be part of the rebellion on Colu trying to overthrow Validus and Computo. Hopefully I'll remember who all of his friends are as I begin reading the comic book but it's unlikely. I was mostly drunk while reading Threshold because I had turned it into a drinking game.

Telos has decided to reenact The Odyssey because it has so many exciting chapters. There's the part with the cyclops and the part with the dog and the part with the shooting contest and the part with the sirens and the part with the Scylla and Charybdis and the part with Xena and the part with the blind man and the part with the Nemean Lion and the part with the hydra and the part with the cockatrice and the part with the kraken and the part with the Trojan War and the part where the ghost says "GET OUT!" I may have gotten some of those parts mixed up because I read every single book on myths I could get my hands on in elementary school as well as The Amityville Horror. I also read all of the Oz books and all of the Mouse and the Motorcycle books but I can tell when I'm thinking of one of those stories and not a myth. Because I just ask myself, "Now, Tess, was there a big round mechanical man in that story? Did he fall through the center of the Earth? Were there flying monkeys and evil gnome kings? Was there a mouse riding around on a toy motorcycle? Then it probably wasn't one of Hercules's twelve labors." I also read The Hobbit in elementary school because my sister checked it out of the library (who fucking knows why?! She's never been into fantasy literature at all! Come to think of it, I'm not even sure she can read!) and I saw it had pictures of monsters in it.

On the second page of this issue, Telos reveals his real identity: Arak, Son of Thunder! Ooh! Ooh! That's so fucking exciting I just pulled a bladder muscle! Is that a believable excuse for pissing myself? I wish I'd taken an anatomy class in college.

I'll talk about Arak, Son of Thunder in a Who's Who Update Special Spectacular after this since I haven't done one of those in a long time. I really should stop taking on projects only to completely forget about them because I'd rather just waste time by thinking about nonsense and naked women. When I first began doing New 52 Who's Who Updates, I had meant to keep up with all of the characters as they were reintroduced into The New 52. I sure have failed at that! At least I did most of the Villains Month characters.

Telos allows himself to become a prisoner on Colu because that seems like the best way to infiltrate Computo's fortress. Remember the prison in Lost Army #5? Remember how the cells were connected to all of the important places that could help the inmates escape? I guess Colu prisons are the same way! Once Telos is inside, he'll meet the rebels who are bad at their revolting and were caught. Then they'll devise some kind of plan that probably involves Captain K'rot digging a tunnel and missing that left turn at Albuquerque.

Telos remembers fucking his wife when he was Arak, Son of Thunder! I wish he'd remembered a different moment with less blanket.

Telos tells himself his origin story because I guess he forgot most of it until just recently so he just wanted to make sure he had it all straight. Brainiac came to steal his planet and to save his family and his people, Arak surrendered to Brainiac. He'd hoped to betray Brainiac but Brainiac wiped his memories and turned him into a much more boring character. Maybe this book should just be about Telos remembering stories from when he was Arak because his life as a shaman is more interesting than his life as Odysseus.

Captain K'rot is in prison with his partner Stealth and Captain Comet. I don't know how Captain Comet wound up here but he's like super evolved so I guess he can go wherever he wants to go. K'rot lost his ship as Telos arrived on Colu in a meteor swarm and now K'rot thinks Telos owes him a new one.

What a conveniently placed service shaft! Comic book prison architects must accept huge bribes to build their prisons so that the prisoners have access to everything they need.

The plan (which is actually a trap) goes off without a hitch except for the one hitch where Captain Comet doesn't do what he's supposed to do because he's distracted by evidence that the Psions are conducting eugenics experiments on Colu. Telos insists that they find his family before they destroy the Psions. But when Techne argues that if Psions are on Colu then his family might not exist, he relents immediately and decides to destroy the Psions first. I suppose he's smart enough to know better than to argue with a Twelfth-Level Intellect! Although he doesn't actually listen to her either because after she finds the location of the Psions, he decides to lead everybody back to Brainiac before going on the mission to kill the Psions. I thought Kyle Rayner killed them all but I guess the dirty little bastards are hard to wipe out.

Too bad on the way to Brainiac, Validus attacks! Validus is like a big baby that's evil and strong. I know most babies aren't strong but I think maybe the "evil" part was redundant.

Telos #2 Rating: No change. I suppose I could have raised the ranking this month because this issue was much better than the previous one which wasn't universe shattering at all. But it's still about a character I don't care about at all! Maybe I'd care a little bit more about him if I had been a fan of Warlord in the seventies and early eighties. But he gained a retinue which makes the book more interesting because a few of the characters from Threshold have found a new home. I'm much more interested in Stealth and Captain K'rot than I'll ever be in Telos. Plus Captain Comet reappears and there have to be at least a dozen people who love a good Captain Comet comic book.

Telos #1

Will somebody tell me why I bought this shit?

I guarantee that by the time I'm done reading this comic book, I'm going to hate myself for having thrown away three dollars. I'm still upset that I didn't just spend two months taking time off from reading comic books during Convergence. Now I'm going to torture myself by reading about this uninteresting prick who pretty much did bugger all throughout that series? Who the fuck was curious about what happened to this guy? Who are the asshole fans that were clamoring for more Telos? No seriously. Tell me. I could use some practice slapping people in the face.

The issue begins with Telos angry at Brainiac. That's because Brainiac used him and probably destroyed his planet and probably killed his family. Although I suspect that Telos probably killed his family and Brainiac gave him a boon of forgetfulness. That's the kind of cool thing Brainiac does for people, right? I mean, as long as they can be turned into immortal slaves forced to do all of his bidding, of course.

Telos attacks Brainiac looking for the truth. But he probably doesn't want to know the truth! That's why he's forgotten it! How many times has this story been written where somebody has their memory wiped because they don't want to know what they've done but then they realize that their memory has been wiped and they try to discover the truth and then when they discover the truth they say, "Oh yeah! That's why I wiped my memory!" I know it was done at least once in Red Dwarf. And I think that's happening with Noah Bennett's character in Heroes Reborn right now. It happened to Jason Todd in Red Hood and the Outlaws around issue twenty or so. And I'm pretty sure there were some examples in famous plays as well. And possibly some music videos by The Police! Telos isn't familiar with any of those things although he's familiar with the story of Odysseus which might have some memory loss parts in it. But I think the main reason he's thinking about Odysseus is because he's trying to get back to his family after being away for years.

Telos seems to be getting the better of Brainiac when the scene shifts to the capital of Colu where Computo is hanging out with Validus. Maybe they're supposed to make this comic book interesting.

Ooh! Exciting!

Telos wants to know the location of his family but--surprise!--Brainiac doesn't remember where they are! Oh no! Does that mean Telos will have to go through some sort of long, drawn out adventure to discover the information? And then he'll have to go on a long, drawn out adventure trying to find them! And then he'll go on a long, drawn out adventure trying to prove to them that he's who he says he is! No wait! I forgot this comic book will be cancelled long before most of that crap happens.

The plan is for Telos to steal Brainiac's backup data disk which is hidden deep inside of Colu. That means he has to beat the shit out of Computo and Validus, meet up with the rebels led by Techne, avoid the trap Brainiac is sending him into, hack the system, do some other things that I probably missed while skimming the boring dialogue, and then he'll know where his family is! Easy peasy!

Telos #1 Rating: I'll begin this at Ranking #43. This comic book commits the ultimate sin. No, not nuclear war. It's simply uninteresting. If I wanted to experience an alternate version of The Odyssey, I'd rewatch Oh Brother Where Art Thou? because at least that had interesting music and visuals. This is just Telos beating up Brainiac and then accepting Brainiac's word when Brainiac has never been trustworthy in any moment during the entire history of every universe in the infinite DC multiverse. Telos is a chowderhead and I don't recommend this comic book to anybody. Please let it die by Issue #6.

Convergence #8

I actually made it to the final issue without anybody spoiling it for me!

The cover must portray the end of the book when Telos delivers all of the heroes to their new worlds in The New 52. Hopefully those new worlds include the entire universe they came from as well. The Multiversity Guidebook listed seven unknown dimensions. Hopefully those will be converted into old DC Universes that will subsequently be ignored for years. Except for the new Earth-2. After what DC did to it, Earth-2 needs a serious reboot. And probably a long shower too.

The issue begins with Doctor Fate speechifying and explicating up a storm. He explains how the death of Deimos has released the powers of all of the time travelers and has turned Planet Brainiac into "a proverbial bullet that will shatter the multiverse." Is this the Doctor Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs Doctor Fate because he's talking Madame Xanaduian nonsense! Nobody listen to Doctor Fate! I've never heard of this proverbial bullet that will shatter the multiverse! What proverb was that in?

The point to be taken from Doctor Barn Owl's words is that they're all going to die now. Everybody thank Uncle Parallax!

Hal Jordan is all, "No, no! Hold on! I wasn't finished yet! You can't critique my work until you've seen it to its end!" Then he quickly writes a script that portrays Starfire as something more than a cosmic cum dumpster and points out how everybody was completely wrong when they criticized him. No wait. That wasn't Hal Jordan! That was Scott Lobdell. Hal Jordan's lie to save face is just that he can stop the planet from becoming this mysterious proverb.

Hal's new plan is to gather up all of the Green Lanterns on the planet so that he can kill them and take their rings. Then he'll say, "Voila!" And nothing will be fixed but Hal will be even more powerful and might even survive the new crisis. But nobody trusts Hal probably because he actually vocalized that ridiculous plan. The Flashes begin to feel the world coming apart and Telos says, "The Countdown to Final Zero Infinite Crisis Point Hour Redux has begun!"

Great, Booster. You just had to bring Waverider into this. Can I get a refund now?

How long will this fight to survive go on before Booster Gold mentions that he comes from a universe that isn't represented by any cities on this planet which probably means that it has never been destroyed in a crisis! I bet he remembers when Waverider screams, "Booster! Only one chance left! You have to suck my cock!"

Waverider tells everybody his plan and then acts on it before anybody can chime in with a "Bad idea!" or a "Are you fucking nuts?" or "Where did Ambush Bug and Cheeks go?" His plan is to bring Mega-Brainiac back to the planet because Mega-Brainiac is the only being that can absorb all of the chronal energy threatening to destroy the multiverse. But the heroes pretend like they didn't hear Waverider's plan because they didn't come up with it, and they attack Brainiac.

You're the asshole who screamed attack, Superman. If this was your stance, why did you provoke him?

Superman's speech reminds Brainiac how he just wanted to be known as the most intelligent person in all of existence. Oh, poor boy! He's just suffering from low self-esteem. I think all he needs are billions and billions of tiny hugs.

Brainiac explains how he's experienced every single version of the DC Universe and survived them all. But the exposure to all of the nonsense left him riddled with Cosmic Time Cancer. Now he just wants to go back to being Brainiac from Colu. And he asks the super heroes for their help.

Meanwhile in The New 52 universe, the heroes have given up hope and gone home to wait for nonexistence to creep in. Superman holds Supergirl's hand and says, "Well, we did our best! We all gathered here by this strange anomaly, watched it for a bit, got hit by exploding chronomatter, and realized we couldn't do anything. Nobody can say we didn't try our hardest to save the universe!"

"Although," begins Kara, "If we really do believe this is the end of everything, shouldn't we have laid down our lives trying to stop it instead of just twiddling our thumbs?" Superman smiles a smile that he'd be surprised to learn made him look exactly like Ma Kent. And he says the last words he figures he'll ever say: "What are you? Dumb?"

Back on Planet Brainiac, Brainiac begins sending everybody back to their cities so he can return them to their original universes. He mentions something about resetting the Multiverse because it's been over three years without a universe changing crisis. But then something goes horribly wrong!

I don't get it.

So Brainiac says if the First Crisis isn't changed, the multiverse will once again collapse into one universe. So he wants the First Crisis to maintain a multiverse instead of it happening and destroying infinite Earths. But then he sends The Flash and Supergirl back in time so that they can die in the Crisis just the way it happened the first time. Wouldn't that result in the First Crisis not being changed and exactly what Brainiac doesn't want to happen to happen?

Maybe he'll explain it better if I keep reading.

Before Mega-Brainiac sends everybody back in time, the heroes form teams and decide to go back to different parts of the past to help defend against the various crises. Parallax wants to go back to Crisis on Infinite Earths to try to save The Flash and Supergirl. That means he won't be around to become The Spectre. I think DC has gone mad! After decades of trying to make their entire library of stories more coherent, they're now on the verge of making them incomprehensible!

I love it! Tear it all down! Blow it all up! DC Comics does like this theme of "52" so this must be their version of playing 52 Pick-up with their universe.

Who wants to be DC Comics does "Crisis On Infinite Earths Redux" with the new ending? Then they'll set up a few comics that continue from that version of the DC Universe. Dan Jurgens can write it since it'll have to take place in 1985.

Mega-Brainiac informs everyone that the heroes were successful. Crisis on Infinite Earths now happened differently! Now they'll have to deal with Zero Hour! Or have all the other crises just been wiped out by the change of the first one?

Apparently it changes everything. All of the worlds that were destroyed by Crisis on Infinite Earths actually survived. They've changed and evolved now because it's thirty years later and we don't want stories about a bunch of planets from 1985. Mega-Brainiac declares he's returning to Earth-0. But first he must cleanse Planet Brainiac. Too bad the Twofers and Telos are still on the surface! If Alan Scott can't save them with his Rainbow Energy power, they'll all be doomed!

Alan Scott converts Planet Brainiac to the new Earth-2 and Telos transports it back to Universe-2 where the survivors of World's End are still looking for a new home. Green Lantern sends out a Green Spectrum Flare for them to follow back to Earth. Hopefully when Dick is reunited with his son, he won't ever ditch him again for his son's own good.

At least the kid had the sense to ditch Barda!

Convergence #8 Rating: -1 Crisis on Infinite Earths out of 1 Crisis on Infinite Earths. Oh, DC Comics! Why can't y'all just be content with the universe as it is. It's not a puzzle that has to be solved. It's just a bunch of stories. This feels like the powers that be got together and asked, "When did our universe get so fucked up?" And what they came up with was that everything started getting screwed up after Crisis on Infinite Earths which was supposed to be their big fix. So what the current people in charge of DC Comics think is that more variety and insanity is good for comics. This was something that DC tried to quash for years. My question is this: how long before a new set of people in charge decide things should be more like the universe after Crisis?

Hopefully this revelation isn't treated as a "fix" of the universe. Hopefully DC has the endurance to run with it and just accept that this is their universe now. Every story is now in continuity. Even the ones that happened after Crisis are in continuity because they had to have happened to have the characters meet on Planet Brainiac so that they could eventually beat back the Anti-Monitor. So are y'all satisfied now? While your favorite characters might not be in a current book, their stories exist. They haven't been rebooted into oblivion. They're just part of a wacky-doodle universe that has never made complete logical sense no matter how much the powers that be wanted it to.

For some reason, this entire thing reminds me of Brandi Carlile's song "I Will."

Convergence #2

The hero of every conflict in which an artificial intelligence tries to start a war: Tic Tac Toe Man!

Between the color scheme and the fact this guy is punching Superman, it's obviously Lex Luthor. More simple-minded people who think they're "with it" and "culturally appropriate" or "another term I just made up for my list" might think of it as a hashtag. But hashtags are stupid retarded. #offensive #insensitive #IsThereAnAcceptableWordToCallPeopleThatBasicallyMeansRetardedButDoesn'tGetMeYelledAt? #semantics

You know whose hashtags I just love to hate? My cousin Jennifer's! But since you don't know her, I also can't stand Scott Lobdell's instagram hashtags. I think he thinks he's funny. But then again, I think I'm funny and I just used the word "retard" so my judgment might be impaired. I'm going to invoke "old man privilege" and say that I can use the word retard in a lovingly curmudgeonly way. Also I'm an old man so I don't know how to "check my privilege." I do know how to act confidently in my own opinions though! Here's an essay I wrote to prove it:

The Way of the World
By Grunion Guy

Have you heard all the things the young people are saying? Boy are they not good at saying things! It's like "slang word" this and "phrase somebody else came up with but they're going to stick with it to sound cool" that! It's like I always tell my cat: "Get an imagination, you freeloader!" And why do they keep ranting about the meaning of the word "feminist"?! In my day, feminists knew their place! I think that place was Sunday morning on cable access shows! And now they're all, "Blah blah equality is awesome!" And the anti-feminists are all, "Blah blah equality sucks, you idiots!" Who are you supposed to believe?! It's like the media says: "Every opinion deserves equal weight and airtime!" Sometimes when I lie down in bed, I can't fall asleep because there's a bit of kitty litter under my back and it makes me super uncomfortable but not quite uncomfortable enough to sweep it out of the bed. Goddamn cat! Wipe your paws off before getting into bed like the person you think you are! Asshole.

Back when I first went to Comic-con, long before all of this Tumblr crap where young people tell you how to behave because you're old and probably have gross opinions and they think old people haven't already been over the same fucking ground they're going over, I took pictures of cosplayers and booth babes! I've got a whole stack of pictures from back then. And guess what, you angst-ridden bastards? Every fucking one of them has the person posing for me because even before you told me how to fucking act, I knew how to ask permission before getting a picture! You sound like a bunch of naive punks! Think you're going to change the world do you?! Well, good! I hope you do! Because other generations before kept trying and some almost fucking succeeded but then the money grubbing asshole parasites took charge and fucked up all the advances! You think Jimmy Carter was an impotent bitch? He was a prince of a man! He knew what the fucking world needed but he was naive to the machinations of the people that wanted power and was manipulated and painted as an incompetent prick by power hungry assholes that fucked up our entire world! War on drugs! Increasing tensions with the Soviet Union! Thank the Ever-Loving Fish God for Mikhail Gorbachev! So many other Soviet leaders would have gone as hard at Reagan as he went at them!

So good luck with your changes, you jerks! Get it right this time! All I ask is that you let me call a few Republicans retarded cunts every now and again! Remember, I'm too old and white to change (and I'm only half-white! But it really oppresses my Spanish half)! I'm on your side! Probably! Although if you're into any kind of religion then you can get your fucking God-fearing ass off of my lawn! I mean, you're welcome to come have an old man beer with me (Hamm's, probably) just don't tell me about Christ or Allah or Abraham or Mr. Hubbard. No, you know what. I changed my mind. Tell me all about them because mankind (or womankind (or dragonkin)) has come up with nothing so interesting as religion! Fascinating! Especially the Mormons! Hoo boy!

And what the hell is up with your music?! Why the fuck is it so good? Calm the fuck down, assholes. We get it! Your music is better than our music. You don't have to rub it on our fucking faces. Although have you listened to "Video Killed The Radio Star" lately? Classic! And "Jesse's Girl"? Brilliant! And anything by Rush with lyrics? Fuck songs without lyrics. I mean, I guess some of them are okay. But I think Beethoven's Fifth would have been easier to listen to with Beyoncé singing about cocks and surfboards or whatever you kids sing about these days. Fucking mostly, I think.

Why the hell does Beyoncé have to have an accent on her name? I suppose if I looked and sang like that, I'd throw a few odd pieces of letter punctuation on my name. "Letter punctuation"! Can you believe some college gave me an English degree?!

What the fuck was I talking about? Oh yeah! The way of the world! It's terrible! Fix it!

Bibliography
The Internet. All the pages of it.
My Rapidly Degenerating Mind. The few parts I could access while I rambled.

Let's read a comic book!

Now I can't even remember if this kid's name was Johnny or Tommy! I'm pretty sure they got it wrong here!

Maybe Babs wanted to name their son Johnny but Dick had really wanted his son to be named Tommy. So once Babs was dead, Dick decided to just start calling his son by the name he wanted. So now this kid is confused because his mother has disappeared, his father keeps ditching him, and he doesn't even know what his name is anymore. Plus I think he's a few years older here than when he was first introduced. I just hope he grows up to be the Earth-2 Tommy Monaghan.

For some fucking reason (because DC Comics has incompetent editors?), the first few pages of this issue recount that time when Twofer Dick Grayson abandoned his son to an unknown gigantic woman obviously trying to hide her face behind some ratty robes. Perhaps the editors realized that hardly anybody was reading World's End by the time this scene happened, so it could use a revisionist telling. At least little Johmmy is allowed to speak this time instead of just silently accepting that his dad was abandoning him yet again.

Part of the revisionist telling of this scene is that Dick tried to board an escape plane with Babs's police officer credentials but was refused because she wasn't with him. In World's End, he was simply refused because only children with mothers were being allowed on board. Fuck the orphaned children, amirite? What a burden!

"We're in charge of rescuing you! Now die!"

At the last second, Barda leans out of the closing gates and says, "Give me the boy. Hurry! I'm hungry!" And Dick is all, "Here! Save hi...wait what?!" But by then it's too late! Barda has taken his son and disappeared onto one of the final escape ships. It blew up anyway which explains why Dick wasn't moaning about having to find his son after he gave him up this final time.

No, the sun was already blocked by Apokolips surrounding the Earth. If you're going to try to woo me with your flowery language, Dick Grayson, at least try to make it less obvious that it's a complete fabrication.

After Dick's reminiscence, he wakes up in a mass of metal pinning him in place. The other escapees from Earth-2 are stuck in the metal morass beside him.

Of course you can hear her! She didn't say you were unconscious! She said you were TKO! And that doesn't mean Totally Knocked Out!

You might not be able to tell by her skin tone that Yolanda is Mexican but she says "home-boy" which is a clue. I think. I don't know. Maybe she's just half-latina. My mother is full Spanish but after living away from California for over fifteen years and living in Portland, I'm pretty fucking pasty. I used to be able to call my skin color olive! Now I'm whitey-white white white. I think that's a Crayola Crayon color.

I think I've been White-Washed!

Planet Brainiac explains to the Twofers that they will be the judges in his contest. Right now, he's pitting the Futures End world against a world "born of a great creator whose time was short-lived but who moved on to serve his purpose on another planet!" Is that code for an artist or writer that only worked for DC for a short time before going to Marvel and being a big shot? Oh, I see! It's Stan Lee's versions of the DC characters (currently living on Earth-6 of The New 52!). I bet they get killed off! 'nuff said!

I know I said "'nuff said" but I should probably replace my supposition with fact: Stan Lee's characters are most definitely and irrevocably slaughtered. Dead. Gone. Fuck you, Stan the Man! Eat it!

While Planet Brainiac is jerking it to his Hungry, Hungry Royale Games, the Twofers break free from their shackles!

Somebody get Jeff King a dictionary opened to the word "pacifist"!

Alan Scott manages to pull power from the planet Telos (even if that doesn't make any sense. Comic books! Alternately: Fuck you!) and use it against Planet Brainiac. He falls long enough for the heroes to regroup and for Dick to judge Batman when he catches him shooting up with Miraclo. He's an old man, Dick! If the Miraclo is helping him to fight and he's helping y'all save lives, perhaps you should choke on your fucking lectures until later. If you all happen to save the day, you can gather up the last of the Twofers, find some folding chairs, practice your holier-than-thou attitude, and have an intervention. Until then, mind your own fucking business. You don't see him telling you how to raise your son!

Although maybe he should. Father of the year he wasn't. But better than you? Oh yeah.

Planet Brainiac reforms and points out that he did tell them that he was the planet. So, you know, they're going to have to destroy the planet to defeat him. That gives Val-zod an idea! Maybe if he punches him in the face, he can defeat him!

Surprisingly, that doesn't work. Sigh. Remember when Val-Zod used to think violence was useless? And remember that time, just previous to this, when he was shown that violence was, once again, useless? And now his big plan is more useless violence? Did the editors at DC forget to give Jeff King notes on who this character was?

At least Planet Brainiac realizes the futility of Val's violence and decides to go enjoy his game somewhere in peace. He sinks back into the ground and leaves the Twofers to whatever idiocy they can come up with next.

I get that Green Lantern derived his powers from the Parliament of Earth and his relationship with the planet. But that does not mean his powers are derived from any planet he visits. Of course, it doesn't mean they don't either! So, yay!

Alan Scott's Green Lantern will be a much more interesting character if he derives different powers depending on the planet he's on because his powers come from the planet. Of course that would only be interesting if he does a lot of space travel which I don't think the Justice Society did much of. If, you know, they could help it.

Alan Scott learned that Planet Brainiac fears something and that something has to do with a ruined city nearby and an underground kingdom (or something). Flash, Superman, Green Lantern, and Yolanda head off to investigate while Batman and Robin run off to a nearby Gotham to recruit some allies. It's another chance for Bruce to meet his father!

Why the fuck do they need you? So you can write a shitty article about their experiences when it's all over?

Batman and Dick infiltrate Gotham and Thomas is able to find the Batcave. He disappears to search the place while Dick meets Barbara Gordon on Skype and Alfred in the flesh. Babs doesn't get a good look at him and Alfred doesn't seem to recognize him but he did give Dick Barbara's name and mentioned Bruce built this cave, so he must have an inkling that this Dick is a Dick he can trust.

Meanwhile upstairs, a meeting between father and son took place. It might have been interesting but half of it was blocked by Dick Grayson's speculating Narration Boxes. Dick didn't have access to the images but we, the readers, did. So how about giving us access to the conversation as well instead of Dick's fucking audio commentary track? Especially since his stupid track was more about his guilt over ditching his son than about Batman and Batman's meeting.

The other group of Twofers stumble upon the bodies of the Justice Riders and a bunch of Thanagarian feathers. Yolanda cries because that's the appropriate social reaction when faced with the senseless death of others. I'm going to file that away in my memory banks so I can act appropriately if this ever happens to me.

There are words! She just said some of them!

Back in the Batcave, Bruce gives Thomas and Dick the keys to the Batmobile so that they can do their part in saving all of the cities. After they leave, we get a full page of Batman standing stoically without his cowl. It is not marred by Narration Boxes. It's everything that the meeting between father and son could have been if Jeff King had kept from over-writing the moment the way he did.

One of the best things about comic books is that they don't need to tell the reader how to feel. The art can do just about all of the heavy emotional lifting without being pedantic or patronizing. I really wish more writers utilized the medium and realized what it can do and how powerful it can be.

Green Lantern's group finally comes to the ruins of the city they were searching for where Alan finds an old Court of Owls' mask. They also rescue a man calling himself Deimos who tells them he can help lead them off of the planet. Since Alan Scott mentioned Planet Brainiac's fear stemming from something beneath the surface of the planet, could he then be talking about Skartaris where Travis "Warlord" Morgan lives? Maybe Planet Brainiac lost control of that city somehow? But if so, Deimos is the enemy of Warlord, so is he just going to use these heroes to try to defeat Warlord and take over Skartaris? Or maybe something else since I really don't know anything about the comic book Warlord and am just relying on the Who's Who entry from 1985!

Convergence #2 Rating: Minus Plus Double-Bad-Good. This comic book has a lot of writing problems! But they're of the type that I'd probably tend to ignore if I weren't writing a commentary on the book. I'd probably just read it and get giddy whenever some old character makes an appearance (like Red and Blue Superman!). Then I'd probably set it down and forget about it until Convergence #3 next Wednesday. So all in all, it won't be a classic but it was a comic book! And if you're interested in comic books, this was one of them! You should pick it up! Or pick up Saga! That's a comic book too!

Convergence #1

Jesus Christ. I still have to read World's End? And even worse, Scott Lobdell is co-writing it!

Now that the back story has been explained in Convergence #0, I hope we dive right into the different realities battling each other. It's Hunger Royale but better because I know all of the combatants. I have to hope that Batman and the Outsiders take the title because Halo is dreamy. Although I don't even really know how the realities are going to compete with each other. I think they're just going to mix and match so that fans can see some of their favorite characters interact with some of their other favorite characters that they normally, under normal DC Rules, wouldn't be able to interact with.

And by "interact," of course I mean fuck.

Convergence begins with Planet Brainiac destroying the heroes of Injustice Gods Among Us. I think. That's one comic book I haven't been reading because I've been avoiding the video game tie-ins, no matter how good they are. Look, I'm not reading comic books based on how good they are! I'm just reading a whole bunch of arbitrarily grouped comic books because I'm a masochist and an idiot. If I was into well-written comic books, do you think I would have picked up this one with Scott Lobdell's name right there on the cover? I'm, at the very least, smart enough to know he's a horrible writer. Don't anybody tell him I said that, though. I don't want him to be a horrible writer and sad that people know he's a horrible writer. It's bad enough he has to live with the knowledge every day. I'm sure his garage full of X-men money helps console him.

Planet Brainiac mentioned one of the experiments of Mega-Brainiac being a failure and then said it was an injustice last issue. So this must be the collected timeline that he was talking about. It's probably a failure because, within it, Superman hasn't sacrificed himself for a kitten stuck in a tree.

After the Injustice Gods Among Us world is destroyed, Planet Brainiac returns to an empty expanse of dirt and rocks. But then a super gay portal opens up in the sky and a Dick falls out! It's Dick Grayson of Earth-2! I really don't think he's going to find his son way out here. Replacement Batman also falls out of the portal which, as you might be able to tell because I called it "super gay," was probably opened by Alan Scott in a last ditch desperate attempt to flee from Darkseid. Especially since the Mister Misters ditched these guys. I imagine Alan, Val, The Flash, and Barbara Grayson won't be far behind.

Everybody but Babs appears (she'll be a big surprise to Dick so they can't bring her immediately along with everybody else) and Val wonders where they are. Replacement Batman, who, I suppose now that the whole Earth-2/World's End thing is over, I'll just start calling Batman, has some thoughts about that!

Those aren't thoughts about where y'all are! That's just a restating of events with a pretty flimsy speculation tacked onto the end!

Dick Grayson punches Batman in the face for expressing that opinion. While it might not have been very informative, I don't think it deserved a sock to the jaw. I wouldn't be blaming Batman because you lost your stupid kid, Dick! That's on you for constantly abandoning him and then three seconds later regretting your decision. Don't make me start hating Dick Grayson again! I thought those years of my life were over now that Dick finally matured and became a peer to Batman. I know this Dick Grayson doesn't have anything going for him because he's a hack writer and a crappy father and even worse husband who just sat back and watched his wife get shot. At least he won't have to live with that failure for much longer since Babs is right there on the cover waiting to ask him where their son is.

After Dick blames everybody except Darkseid for the death of all of the Twofers, Jay Garrick punches him in the throat. He's all, "I lost my fucking mother, you asshole! And by 'fucking mother,' yes I mean I was fucking her!" I wonder if Val is going to get caught up in all the punching and decide violence looks fun.

Whoops! Wrong red head. I guess Babs is still taking her dirt nap. You can see how I would have been mistaken since the colorist has kind of gotten the skin tone wrong.

I bet Jay Garrick begins zipping around digging at the ground hoping he'll find his mom to reenact this scene.

Alan Scott knows nothing about the portal that brought them here even though it looked just like all the colored light shows he created once he integrated all of the other Avatars. I guess Planet Brainiac collected them himself but since he's new at it, he was only able to capture a few people instead of a whole city. Or maybe that stupid fucking Oracle works for Mega-Brainiac and it transfers timelines to Mega-Brainiac's collection. I'm sure Planet Brainiac will be along in a page or two to explain everything.

Planet Brainiac is just new at his job and totally incompetent.

Planet Brainiac might be a little Space Mad. I think he's just making shit up now because he's been isolated from everything (including time and space) for so long. So he takes it as a sign that collecting these people without a city means they're the last of the objects to ever be collected. The fact that his Master has disappeared is probably a pretty good sign too. But since these are the last occupants of Hunger Royale World (aka Telos), it's time for some motherfuckin' MULTIVERSAL THUNDERDOME!

Apparently, just like Thunderdome and all of the other Thunderdome knock-offs, two (or more!) cities enter and just one city leaves. The winning city gets to be reinstated into the DC Universe. Come on, Batman and the Outsiders! Kick some ass!

This issue ends with ten more comic book worlds that will make an appearance in Convergence. My personal favorite in this grouping is the League of Shadow Universe from Doom Patrol #53. That's basically another Marvel satire universe. If I remember correctly, that story was a parody of "This Man...This Monster!" And even though the Doom Patrol universe is going up against some pretty good competition like Reverse Gender Universe and New Frontiers Universe and Animal Man's Dreamworld, I've got to root for the good old Doom Patrol!