Kamandi Challenge #4

I guess Kamandi is younger than I thought. Is there actually an age where it becomes illegal to show a female topless? Or is it all dependent on breast development?

Once again, I should probably explain the caption. Kamandi is female. I've told you before not to believe everything you're told. Unless it comes from me. I would never lie to you.

So at the end of the last issue, Palmiotti and Conner had Kamandi and her fuck plant about to be sacrificed to the God of Jaguars (the God is just a giant Jaguar. That's pretty much the accepted truth of all gods. They're just giant sized versions of the creatures who worship them. Unless you're Hindu. Then they're multi-limbed or animal headed humanoids who can't get enough butter). I would have expected Jimmy and Amanda to come up with a sexier cliffhanger. Perhaps there's an urban dictionary definition of "sacrifice to the Jaguar God" that I'm not familiar with. According to this cover, Tynion the Fourth has come up with a simple solution to the cliffhanger. Kamandi is grabbed and then she stabs the Jaguar God with a dagger that she was hiding inside her vagina. That might sound dangerous but it's okay if you stick the sheath in there first.

I bet James Tynion the Fourth's cliffhanger will be Kamandi telling her fuck plant that while she loves to fuck robots and grandmothers and humanoid animals and mechanical appliances, she's not really into foliage.

Before I begin reading this comic book, it's probably a good time to question the question on the cover: "Can you solve it before they do?" Nobody has yet to explain what I'm trying to solve before this mysterious "they" solve whatever it is! It's not like Kamandi woke up one morning and met up with her slacker friends, took their garish van down a spooky back road, came upon a ghost town where the only living occupant was Don Knotts, and quickly realized there was a mystery to be solved when they saw the ghost. I loved the Scooby Gang. When they saw a ghost, three-fifths of them instantly thought, "It's obviously not a real ghost since there is no such thing as life after death or God. Therefore, whatever is going on is caused by a human trying to get one over on other humans for their own selfish, greedy reasons. We need to squash this bullshit right now with science and logic!" The other two-fifths usually screamed, "G-g-g-g-g-ghost!", and then shit themselves.

I suppose the mystery is just a kind of general "What the fuck is going on here?" thing. Why was Kamandi left to live a lie in a city of robots? Why did her parents abandon her? What happened to the world? That's all stuff that hardly matters since this series is really just a bunch of writers getting to play around in Jack Kirby's world. I bet before writing their parts, they all got to pick their favorite bits of Kirby's Last Girl On Earth series to write about. That way not everybody was writing the issue where Kamandi and Tuftan find themselves trapped on an island with only fucking to keep them alive. Man, I've dreamed about being trapped on that island constantly!

The story begins with Kamandi in the grip of the Jaguar God (just like on the cover!). Her fuck plant screams her name from below. "Kamandi! You haven't eaten me yet!" I bet the thought of eating her fuck planet gets Kamandi so wet, she slips from the grip of the Jaguar God and escapes! Then the Jaguar God just gives up because once your food touches the floor, it's gone, man.

Is it ... semen?! The Jaguar God is just a big fuck puppet!

Kamandi is deep throated by the Jaguar Fuck Puppet which deposits her in the creatures semen supply bunker. That's also where a couple of regular Jaguar people are controlling the fuck puppet and enjoying the previous loads of semen. It turns out it's just an automaton! The Jaguar God is a big fake created by creatures in their own image. Just like every other god! Again, except the Hindus. Which means the Hindu gods must be real because according to the most boring thing anybody can ever say yet they still say it a lot anyway, "You just can't make that shit up!"

Don't you hate when people say that? Because I can make a lot of shit up and usually the "you can't make that shit up" stuff is so boring and mundane that the expression should be "Why would you want to make that shit up?"

So the "being swallowed whole" by a giant which was my stupid guess as to how this would play out since it's a basic comic book trope and James Tynion the Fourth fucking loves basic comic book tropes turns out to be the solution to the mystery. Of course there's a twist in that the giant is a robot. I guess. Maybe that's not a twist but just another comic book trope that I wasn't really thinking about. After Kamandi is swallowed whole and survives, her fuck plant is chewed up before being swallowed. That's because she's capable of regrowing lost body parts which Kamandi hasn't quite gotten the hang of yet.

A scientist jaguar?! Ridiculous! I mean, I get having a canine scientist. But a feline?! Pshaw!

I should create some kind of rating that scores how long I was able to suspend my disbelief while reading any particular comic book. Maybe put one of those dripping blood line animations that were so popular in the Internet's wild and woolly frontier days at the point I lose my suspension of disbelief. In this one, I'd have placed it right at that spot that a jaguar was a scientist. Totally ridiculous. Jaguars are sporty creatures! Since when has a person into sports ever been able to science anything?! Ridiculous!

Since the jaguar is a scientist, he loves explaining things so Kamandi didn't have to get so threatening so quickly. To be fair, she was just gulped down by a giant fuck puppet god machine. I'd probably be a little bit crazy at that point too. I can't wait to see how Jimmy and Amanda say they would have solved this cliffhanger! I bet Kamandi and his fuck plant would have realized at the last second that it wasn't their bodies that were going to be sacrificed but their God cherries. Then they would have been, "Oh? Okay! I'm totally up for this!" Then there would have been twenty pages of fucking before the next cliffhanger where the condom broke.

Oh! This guy was just a freaky nerd offshoot of the jaguar sun cult. Disbelief re-suspended!

Kamandi forgets that she was just nearly murdered by Professor Cano the Sciencing Jaguar and is impressed by Cano's ability to fool a bunch of religious lunatics. She's all, "Oh yeah! That's what they deserve! Fuck those ignorant motherfuckers!" Then they all dance for a bit before getting back to the plot.

Cano tells Kamandi that she won't be leaving because Jaguar Scientists are a lot like Nazi Scientists. They don't mind vivisecting people who tick the wrong box on the race, religion, sexuality, and anything that kind of slightly annoys the scientist forms. So Kamandi says, "I figured that would be the case. That's why I don't just keep a knife sheathed in my vagina; I also keep a gun holstered in my butthole!" Then she pulls out the gun and threatens to shoot some of the scientist's machinery. Cano curses having not spent enough time in jaguar gym or else he could easily disarm Kamandi. Instead he's all, "Oh shit I just shit my lab coat!"

This paragraph is just for the Actually Nerds out there: I fucking know Kamandi didn't have the gun in her butthole. I know the fucking gun was Cano's and it was mixed in with the tea service or something. But what do you want me to do? Admit to the ridiculous truth of the comic book that Cano leaves his gun just lying around where any two year old jaguar can happen along and shoot itself in the face or make up my own ridiculous truth that goes along with the earlier ridiculous lie about Kamandi's knife? That ridiculous lie was told to obfuscate the ridiculous truth that the jaguars tied up Kamandi for a sacrifice without finding a huge fucking knife on her nearly naked torso. Okay. Back to the bit of commentary that's for everybody.

Instead of threatening Cano and forcing him to free her, Kamandi shoots out the view screen which is the only way the professor has of seeing where the giant robot jaguar god is going. Great job, idiot! Why did the last human on Earth have to be such an idiot?!

Kamandi and his fuck plant climb back out of the jaguar god's mouth while the jaguar king misses the perfect opportunity for a spit take.

Oh come on, James Tynion the Fourth! You don't mind stealing and using every other boring ass cliché in comics but you refuse to use the standard sitcom spit take in the most perfect spot?! Pretentious jerko!

As they're climbing down the front of the giant jaguar fuck puppet, fuck plant notices the plane hanging on a chain around the god's neck. "Do you think that is still mechanically viable and full of fuel and in proper working order after sitting unused for so long and then battered from hanging around the neck of a giant robot?" she asks. Kamandi answers, "Fuck yeah, bitch!" Then she moans orgasmically and says "Why haven't you eaten me yet, honey?" while chlorophyll drips down her inner thigh.

Even though the fuck puppet's view screen was shot out by Kamandi, it still seems to be able to see them escaping in its bling. Kamandi gets in the cockpit and says, "Hee hee! Cockpit!" Then she says, "I hope there's still fuel in this thing!" And that's it. That's the only bit that a reader has to imagine needs to be okay with the jet. It just needs fuel! Don't worry about how long the fuel has been sitting in it or any other bit of maintenance that probably needs to be done on a plane that's been hanging around a fuck puppet's neck for who knows how long! Also, the fuel probably has gotten some semen in it in the intervening years.

But no! The jet works and Kamandi and fuck puppet fly off into the sunset to live happily ever after! I solved the mystery! I think!

She's a plant, you idiot! You're going to suffocate her!

Kamandi blacks out and the jet crashes in the desert where, during his blackout, presumably, she walks away from the crash and collapses. When she wakes back up, she rushes back to the jet and realizes her fuck plant is drying out! Unless she's dead from being suffocated. I bet she just needs to be fucked really good!

Kamandi has crashed next to a gigantic wall. That must mean she's in Australia. I think this is where the Kangaroo Mafia (or whatever they're called!) are going to be used as the cliffhanger.

Before Kamandi can fuck his fuck plant back into consciousness, she's hit in the side of the head with a high tech boomerang. Remember, it's the future! So the boomerangs need to be high tech even though there isn't a lot that can be done to perfect them. Maybe put a gyroscope inside them?

Being that this cliffhanger is, once again, going to be Kamandi about to fight something to the death, she and Fuck Plant (I might as well make that her official name since I refuse to remember that her name is Vila) get to choose some weapons and a vehicle which they'll be able to use against that cliffhanger I mentioned.

Stupid Australians! They're always so violent and ignorant! Which is why it's so strange that they actually have rational gun control!

That's it! That's the cliffhanger! How will Kamandi and Fuck Plant defeat the Kanga Rat Murder Society?! I hope they use sex as their weapon. This series needs more futuristic fucking. Bill Willingham is the next writer so I'm probably not imaginative enough to figure out what he'll come up with. Remember when he was famous for drawing fantasy pics in Dungeons and Dragons supplements? What a time to be alive!

Jimmy Palmiotti writes the essay at the end describing how he would have gotten Kamandi out of the Jaguar God predicament. I bet it involves Kamandi being swallowed whole as well but with a comment from the jaguar king about deep throating. A tasteful comment, of course!

Jimmy lets slip one of the secrets that I pretty much already assumed anyway and said as much in this or the last commentary: the teams of writers and artists already knew what characters or areas of the world they would be writing about before they got their cliffhanger from the previous team. So Jimmy already knew he had giant bat people when he got the Kamandi falling off a cliff ending. Anyway, Jimmy would have solved this cliffhanger pretty much how James solved it: Kamandi gets away in the jet. Personally, I would have used the tank and had Kamandi commit genocide against the jaguar people.

The Ranking!
No change! I suppose this could have been a "+1" issue but why should I feel anything but petty after seeing what a bunch of despicable assholes are in charge of our country? Not that I didn't already know it. But watching them laugh and live it up while pissing and shitting on the people they're supposed to represent? Fuck them all. And fuck everybody who watches Fox News and doesn't understand that it's the capitalist equivalent to state controlled media. When corporations own your politicians, the corporate news channel runs the propaganda machine. But all y'all Fox viewers are all in on believing the opposite. "This one channel is the only one that tells the truth! I mean, this channel and all these weird backwater Internet sites that copy and paste bullshit from each other until you've seen the same thing in so many different places, it must be true. Also, how come nobody ever refutes Fox News and these shady sites if they're lying? I mean refutations from sites that I trust! Get that fucking Snopes bullshit out of here, idiot!"

Convergence: Batman and the Outsiders #2

Chip Kidd has gotten sloppy with his cropping.

This issue say Batman and the Outsiders on the cover so if you were a Batman and the Outsiders fan, you might think, "Hey! Maybe I should pick this up and enjoy some sweet, sweet on the bus stealth masturbation in my pants with this comic on my lap!" But you'd be wrong because you should only masturbate in public even if you are female and I'd like to see that while riding the bus. But especially if you're a guy because I don't want to see your O-face or have to dodge your bodily fluids when you reach enlightenment. Is that how you reach enlightenment? If it is, I must be doing it wrong because I usually just reach naptime. Maybe I just need more practice?

Anyway, what I was trying to say before my brain sidetracked me is that Batman and the Outsiders fans are going to be disappointed when they open this book and realize they're reading an OMAC comic book instead. Fucking OMAC. This is where if I touted myself as an unbiased comic book review site, I'd say, "Now, I have nothing against OMAC but when I purchase a Batman and the Outsiders comic book, I want to read Batman and the Outsiders." But I'm a completely biased comic book review site and I have everything against OMAC. Even DC Comics decided he was stupid which is why they changed his name from One Man Army Corps to something else which I can't remember. And he's always taking orders from artificial intelligence trying too hard to seem human. So for a long time, "Brother" Eye gave him "suggestions" on how to "save" the world. This comic book begins with not Brother Eye commanding him but Godmother. So I guess this is going to be some kind of fairy tale? Will OMAC eventually become a real princess/boy/woman respected for her accomplishments instead of just her good looks (although she'll still have the good looks because Hollywood is pretty sure audiences only have a limited ability to suspend disbelief)? Although now I'm sort of hoping this comic book goes all Boxing OMAC on me.

Geoforce does manage to show up on about page four which I'm grateful for. Not because I like Geoforce! It's just that a knife in the kidney is better than a thin, long needle up the urethra. I think. Having never experienced both of those things, I can't really compare.

Hey Letterer! That guy flying up in the air in the second panel? Not Geoforce.

Black Lightning is busy recovering from Sudden Onset Lightning Powers while a little kid bothers him. Then a big kid named Batman bothers him with the usual Bat-orders: "Drop everything and do what I say!" He probably stamps his foot as he says it while Alfred mutters to himself about spoiled brats and shitty health care.

Halo has recently exploded out of a coma burying Katana and a number of the hospital staff in rubble. But that's okay! She's a hero! Normal people should be glad to sacrifice their lives for added drama in the lives of super heroes.

Jesus Christ, Letterer. Am I going to have to continually correct you?! It's GABY not GABBY!

I suppose I should learn who the letter is on this comic book but I haven't hit the credits page yet and I don't want to skip ahead and see spoilers! Plus I should probably be yelling at Andreyko and not the letterer. Andreyko is definitely the one that scripted Halo yelling "Katana" and not "Tatsu" like she probably would have. Maybe Halo just learned, after repeatedly being threatened with hospitalization for punctured lungs, not to call Tatsu by her name in public.

Meanwhile Rex and Sapphire climb out of the shower and wrap camping tarps around their naked bodies because they're fucking weird, I guess. Metamorpho grosses Sapphire out. I don't mean he started making racist comments! He just turned into a monster while they were fucking and had trouble keeping his face from sliding off of his "skull." Skull is in quotation marks because Metamorpho doesn't really have a skeleton until he thinks about it and makes one for himself.

How does Metamorpho control his ability? If I had the ability to turn myself into any element, I doubt my body would respond to my brain thinking, "Turn into gold!" What do I know about the properties of gold?! It's shiny and it's the color of gold! Half of that you could have guessed without even having ever seen gold in real life! At least I could probably come up with a semblance of gold. Maybe pyrite. But how would I turn into other elements like magnesium? Or neon? Or Einsteinium? Is that one?

Geoforce meets up with OMAC and I forgot that Geoforce's name had a hyphen in it. I don't care. I don't think it should have a hyphen in it so I'm going to stubbornly refuse to type it correctly. Later I might even misgender him for kicks.

Batman and the other Outsiders arrive to help Geoforce defeat OMAC which is when I learn the letterer is Steve Wands. Don't worry, Steve! I'm not going to blame you for the previous gaffs. I'm sure they were due to Andreyko's scripting. And if you write anything about one of the characters being raped, I won't blame you for that either. We all know who's responsible for that! *touches side of nose because I think it means something*

The rest of the comic will probably be one long fight followed by an earthquake followed by everybody hugging Halo because she's better while Metamorpho cries in the corner.

Black Lightning insulting Batman to his face.

The earthquake actually hits in the middle of the fight because why not get that editorial mandated crap out of the way as soon as possible. After that, Andreyko returns to making mistakes in his script.

Halo was in a coma for the same amount of time Rex was human. She doesn't know he's "back"! It's also possible Steve fucked this up and that should have been Tatsu's line. Maybe I should just blame Marc and Steve equally for all of the mistakes.

Batman and the Outsiders defeat OMAC and he disappears along with Kamandi's New York. I guess. I actually don't think any of the cities will remain non-existent at the end of this. I think some of the creative teams took the Multiversal Thunderdome too seriously. Especially since these battles are set up in such a way that a city shouldn't disappear simply because one of the city's champions lost their own individual battle. I bet at the end of Convergence somebody snaps their fingers and all the worlds magically wind up in a happy place where their universe gets to exist in a state that never changes from each huge pending Crisis (in this case, Crisis on Infinite Earths).

After the battle, Batman is all, "Hey Rex! I hope you're not planning on killing yourself now? Oh wait! You can't kill yourself! Ha ha!" And then Rex is all, "Don't be too sure about that! Elemental Woman took her own life! Or will take her own life! Or...do Vertigo books count in our universe?" And then the story ends and everybody lives ambiguously ever after!

Convergence: Batman and the Outsiders #2 Rating: I enjoyed the art! It was happening! The story was average. There were mistakes. So I guess I'll rate this comic book 6 Roy G. Bivs out of Ten!

Divergence: Batman Beyond
"Trapped in the future, Tim Drake becomes the new Batman Beyond as he protects a Gotham City that stands on the edge of a great disaster."

I bet all of the Terry McGinnis fans are dancing in the streets over this decision, amirite?! That was sarcasm! I probably shouldn't use sarcasm because it makes me sound like Chandler Bing and nobody knows who that is anymore. The good thing about Tim Drake having time traveled to become Batman Beyond is that my theory about Tim Drake being Harvest has inched that much closer to being correct! He's got thirty five years of the time travel part down! Now he just needs to time travel another 965 years and somehow become a vampire!

In the Sneak Peek, Tim Drake learns that he needs to fight cyborgs and rescue survivors in the name of Terry McGinnis. Terry McGinnis fans learn that this comic book sucks donkey vomit. I think it's just more Futures End repackaged in a less interesting, um, package! And it's written by Dan Jurgens so it'll be set in the future but it'll feel an awful lot like 1986.

Convergence: Batman and the Outsiders #1

Whenever Geoforce passes out at a party, somebody always writes a big "Y" after the "F" on his chest.

Batman and the Outsiders were my first favorite super hero team. I had a crush on Halo. I thought Katana was bad-ass. Metamorpho was fucking hilarious to a thirteen year old boy. I wanted to be Black Lightning. And I thought Geoforce was the most boring fucking fictional character ever created. Batman just seemed like the parent that wouldn't let them do all the super cool stuff they wanted to do. Maybe it's because of this series that I never really became a huge Batman fan. I just saw him as a bossy parental figure that I wanted to get away from.

I've been rereading the old series and it holds up in the way that comic books from the early eighties hold up. Which is not very well but you give the comic book a lot of slack and try to view it through the eyes of your younger self. One of the things that series taught me was that you could build characters best not through conflict but through the downtime out of the super hero suits. Marvel probably does that better and more often but they also tend to overdramatize problems that I, even when I was younger, barely saw as problems. Stop fucking whining and deal with it, assholes. You can either be a victim and allow everybody around you an inordinate amount of influence on your life or you can just say "Fuck 'em all" and get on with being who you want to be. I'm looking at you, Peter Parker! Unless I'm looking at Scott Summers. I don't know! It's been a long time since I really read any Marvel books besides Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, Moon Knight, Superior Six, and Inhumans.

Speaking of overly dramatic writing, Mike W. Barr must have thought he was writing Shakespearean plays at times. Holy fuck can he turn a ridiculous phrase! And Jim Aparo's facial expressions! Hoo boy, do these cats react to shit! The last time I saw so many open, gaping mouths was at Glory Hole Fest 2014.

But that's the old days. This may be the old Outsiders but Andreyko will probably (hopefully) give them a bit of a modern sensibility. And maybe somebody will get raped! I mean, not really raped! Just, you know, hypnotized into thinking they like the person and then being told afterward by the "hypnotist" that you can't hypnotize somebody into doing something they don't want to do so being fucked while under hypnosis is implicit consent! So there, fandom!

I don't care how many people call me a misogynist. Without the outside controversy and Andreyko's insistence that Batwoman wasn't hypnotized, it was actually a well done story about hypnotism. Especially the way the hypnotist reacts when confronted by the victim and piles all of the blame onto her. But I guess nobody is allowed to write hypnotism stories anymore because women aren't allowed to be victims of hypnosis anymore because it perpetuates hypnosis culture which causes more women to become victims because when a person reads that story they realize people can get away with hypnotism and not getting away with hypnotism and getting thrown in prison for it is the only thing keeping somebody from hypnotizing.

I mean, you know, aside from the fact that nobody wants to see their favorite character whose comic book they're supporting go through a bunch of horrible shit that they shouldn't be going through since they're the hero trying to prevent this kind of crap. Unless it's Batman. Fuck Batman.

I opened this comic book just now and realized it's the first one from the third week which means a new Fight Card! Just as I thought by the characters being spotlighted this week, the battles take place in Earth-One Pre-Crisis Gotham City. The other cities featured are Kamandi's New York, Vampire Batman's Gotham, the Atomic Knights' Durvale, and Central City from the Tangent Universe. I don't know anything about the Tangent Universe. I hope Infinity Inc. deals with those guys. I want Batman and the Outsiders to battle vampire Batman so that the Outsiders can take all of their Batman is a dickhole frustations out on a surrogate Batman.

The beginning sounds a lot like a Mike W. Barr comic book.

This issue is called "The New Normal." This normal is really new for these characters that have never known a true DC Crisis event! They're used to a lot of weird shit happening but things continue along as normal. Although occasionally some really fucking weird shit goes down and everybody just agrees to pretend that it never happened. The old normal was chill like that.

Batman has been working on the mystery of the dome for 364 days now. He gives Jim Gordon an update on his progress which amounts to "I don't know shit but that won't stop me from 'investigating' it more." At what point do you stop calling what you're doing detective work and just admit that you're killing time? It's not like he has any clues to follow. Any analysis of the Dome would have taken place on Day 1 of the investigation and that was probably the last day any progress was made.

What is Dr. Thompkins shocked about in the fourth panel?

I guess when the Dome came down, Gabrielle's parasitic alien whatever-the-hell stopped functioning and she slipped back into a coma. Unless I'm remembering her origin incorrectly. I haven't gotten that far in my reread to get a refresher on Halo and her powers. But I guess she gets her hair cut after Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Meanwhile Geoforce is moving masses amounts of broken asphalt with his bare hands. What the fuck is that about?! Was Dr. Jace so good at giving people Earth Powers that he retained them after the Dome fell? Or is Geoforce just that naturally boring? I mean strong!

Geoforce goes off with the others to...*snrrk snrrl SNORE*

Where...what?! Oh, uh, sorry. I seem to have passed out there for a second. I drooled all over my comic book. Let's see, I was probably done reading this Geoforce crap so let's skip ahead to Rex and Sapphire.

Why Mrs. Stagg! Is your butt trying to seduce me?!

Metamorpho might be the only person truly happy under the Dome since he now has a real flesh and blood penis to put inside of any one of three magical Sapphire Stagg orifices. Unless he only has access to two of them. Or just one. Hell, just one is more than he deserves, the big mug.

Back in the Batcave, Batman continues his investigation.

See?! I knew it! The big fucking phony! Pretending that he's got some kind of investigation going on!

The next day is the day the Dome drops. Everybody is going about their normal business and, luckily, Rex and Saph are getting one last good shower fuck in. Because it's time for Planet Brainiac to welcome everybody to Thunderdome.

Luckily Rex's dick isn't inside Sapphire when he regains his powers and he just burns the shit out of her arm and probably her boobs and maybe her stomach. But mostly she's probably okay. Good thing Rex didn't transform instantly into Magnesium, amirite?! No seriously. Am I? Would that have been bad?

Gaby comes out of her coma, Geoforce flies up into the sky, Katana's sword probably starts speaking to her again, Black Lightning recharges, and Batman hits a big red button. It's probably a call to gather The Outsiders because they're going to be battling OMAC and an army of mutants from Kamandi's world next issue.

Convergence: Batman and the Outsiders #1 Rating: It seemed like a lot to pack in since this is a pretty big team for this two issue set up. But I like the glimpses we got of all but one of the characters. Actually, Black Lightning had a pretty boring arc. And Katana's arc was really just worrying about Halo. And Batman's arc was just showing how fucking useless he really is. So Rex's story was the only one that was truly interesting. And mostly that's because it had fucking in the shower.