Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea: The Newsletter #18 (First Week of April 2018)

E!TACT #18
Story Time!, Deadman #5, Kick-Ass #2, Cave Carson Has an Interstellar Eye #1, Justic League #41, Batman #43, Grunion Guy's Musical Corner of Music Reviews, and Letters to Me!
By Grunion Guy!

STORY TIME WITH GRUNION GUY
"What If Pickle Boy Was the Writer and Grunion Guy Was the Assistant?"
By Grunion Guy

Grunion Guy was playing hockey like he loved to play because he was so physically fit. All the beautiful women were watching him and swooning. Also the ugly women who thought they had a chance with him because he was so sensitive and caring. He never pretended they weren't talking to him when they talked to him because some of them had really hot bodies. But then just as Grunion Guy was making the big play, he was hit in the head with the hockey thing! And even though Grunion Guy was super tough and rugged and manly, the hockey thing was hit with such tremendous force that it knocked him out for like no more than three seconds. But during those three seconds, he had the most horrific fantasy in his head!

[This is the part where the screen goes wavy and dark before opening on a brand new scene. Audiences should be a little bit confused but they've seen this kind of thing before, so you probably won't need to add a voice-over or captions to explain that we're now in Grunion Guy's fantasy!]

"Hey, dumby! Wake up and edit my new book, dumby!" Pickle Boy was standing over Grunion Guy, his bald head blinding everything around him which was a good thing because everything would be puking if they could see all of the sausage and egg bits that fell out of his breakfast burrito stuck in his goatee.

"Yes sir!" shouted Grunion Guy as he saluted and grovelled too. "I was just getting on that!" Grunion Guy sat up and glanced around for the book he was editing that had put him instantly to sleep. He finally saw the page on the floor, picked it up, and got back to editing it.

Eastworld
by Pickle Boy

"I am getting vacation!" sparked the protagonist who wasn't a robot. He robot danced to his suitcase and only malfunctioned twice on the way. "I go Eastworld today!" His name was Rob.

Tpn [svlrf yjtrr yord smf yep [sotd pg imfrterst/

"Oops!" thought Rob as he readjusted his fingers on the home row. "That's better!"

Rob decided to use the bathroom before catching the bus because that's what humans do. He pulled out his huge pecker which was totally a Mary Sue version of the writer's penis, just in case you weren't sure. Boy was it big! Pickle Boy big! It was the kind of pecker that peckers dream of having! Some would say it was the greatest and most human pecker of them all.

Before Rob could catch the taxi but after he had put his pecker away, the family pet died. It was so sad that the reader got super emotional. It really connected the reader to the story in a way that not having the family pet die doesn't do.

"Take me Eastworld," Rob told the train conductor. "Choo choo, righty-do!" said the Train Conductor. But then there was drama. "Wait. Are you sure you're a human? This train is only for humans!"

Rob smiled humanly. "What?! Of course I human! That almost insult but I think robots are nifty so then it complimentary!" Rob did the robot and winked. Choo-Choo the Train Conductor blushed. He could tell Rob had a great pecker.

The plane landed at Eastworld and Rob fell down the stairs. When he stood back up, half of his face hung off the metal frame but he hadn't noticed yet. But the audience noticed and were all shocked. This is dramatic irony! I learned about it from Grunion Guy who is the greatest writer of them all except when he's unconscious due to a hockey thing hitting his face.

"One ticket for human!" said Rob at the turnstile. The ticket taker was looking at the ticket in the way that ticket takers do. Then as the ticket taker handed the ticket to Rob, he saw Rob's robot skeleton. He screamed! Unless there have been too many male characters so far and then she screamed. Unless that's sexist and then I don't know what to do. Whoever directs the movie version can figure it out.

"What wrong?!" asked Rob, panicking as he did five million calculations in his head the way humans certainly must be capable of because wasn't he human? Wasn't he? Rob reached up and touched the part of his face that was hanging off the other part of his face. Then he felt the metal underneath and the horror dawned on him like the sun dawning on the day.

"NOOOOOOOOOOO!" screamed Rob as he fell to his knees in front of the Statue of Liberty sunk in the ground. "NOOOOOOOO!" The Eiffel Tower was also there and maybe a pyramid. "NOOOOOOOO!"

His last thought before he died of shock was this profound thought: how do any of us ever lmpe ejp er trs;;u strz@

The End!

Grunion Guy woke up because the story was so bad! All the hot girls and the ugly girls with the hot bodies and even some hot girls with gross body odor were standing around him. "Is his pecker okay?" one of them asked as she was trying to pull down his hockey pants.

"Wait!" yelled the referee! "Grunion Guy won the game because the hockey thing bounced off his face and into the score!" Everybody cheered and Grunion Guy's pecker was just fine.

The Real End!

Comic Book Reviews!

Deadman #5
By Neal Adams

Each of the previous four covers of Deadman have had some sort of gimmick to them. One glew in the dark. One had a see-through lion image. One had secret writing. One had The Spectre formed from other characters or something. I don't totally remember that one for sure.

This one is apparently an homage to Highlights for Children.

When I first saw this cover, I thought Neal Adams had finally finished having the stroke he started having while writing The Coming of the Supermen. "Deadman find Ra's al Ghul!" It's not like it was any less coherent than most of his tweets on Twitter. But then I realized the tagline was a command and spent all of three nanoseconds searching for Ra's al Ghul. Couldn't Neal have made it any harder? It's obvious that Ra's is up Deadman's ass.

Now comes the real chore: trying to understand what's going on in the fifth installment of this comic book. The first issue was really confusing because it was poorly written. But every subsequent issue has been exponentially harder to understand, both because I have to first comprehend what is going on and because I have to remember it too! It would probably help if I gave an ounce of shit about this story. I'm surprised I don't since I like DC's mystical characters. But Neal Adams isn't really writing about them. From what I can tell, he's just colored a whole bunch of dog turd bags the same color as Spectre, Etrigan, Deadman, and Zatanna.

Deadman uses the adjective "Brobdingnagian." I bet Neal Adams was jerking himself off while writing that line. "This won't be wasted on a bunch of illiterate comic book readers," he probably thought to himself as he jammed the butt plug a little further up his ass. I hope later, Deadman meets a horse-faced woman and uses the adjective "Houyhnhnmian."

Everybody is gathering outside Nanda Parbat for a reason I've completely forgotten to try to remember. No, that's a lie. I actively tried to forget to remember. That's different, somehow.

According to some samurai that I don't recognize, the army attacking Nanda Parbat (why is it attacking? I don't think Neal Adams explained that part. Maybe he explained it. But poorly) is composed of armorers, yeti, deformers, robotoids, zombies and, um, "stupid things." Checking my Who's Who comic, I don't find an entry on Stupid Things.

I wonder how Neal Adams writes a comic book in which he's also the artist. Does he do the art first, drawing whatever strikes his fancy, and then tries to make a coherent story out of the panels? Judging by how incomprehensible the entire story is, I wouldn't be surprised if that was his method. But even if he plans the story out, his dialogue is terrible. At one point, the samurai attacks a deformer and says, "Remove the bones before you swallow the fish, deformer. They tend to get caught in your throat." Why does he say that? What's he referring to? Does the samurai get his strength from giving out life hacks?

It took me way too long to understand why Doctor Fate said that last thing. But I still don't get why Neal Adams would write it.

Rating: This was one of those issues that gets shoved in when DC Comics demands a six part story from a writer who only has two to three parts in them. It's just a nonsensical brawl that keeps the characters from entering Nanda Parbat one issue too early. Plus the dialogue is worse than Pickle Boy's dialogue. I don't mean the dialogue he writes. I mean the dialogue he comes up with over a few beers. Talk about strokes!


Kick-Ass #2
By Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.

Today is new comic book day so let's count how many comic books I read last week. One! That was easy! It also might be telling. Is it time for me to stop reading comic books again? There are a handful I still enjoy, like Batman and The Wild Storm. But the main reason I can't stop reading comic books is that I'm afraid to break up with my comic book store again. It's too much pressure going in there and telling them to cancel my subscription box! Last time I cancelled back in 2003, Debbie acted hurt and shocked, as if it were something the comic book store had done. So I actually told her, "It's not you; it's me!" What excuse do I give this time?! Maybe I should just have the Non-Certified Spouse call up and tell them I died?

As of right now, I'm three weeks behind on my comic book reading. In a few hours when this week's books come out, I'll be a full month behind! I'm getting my ass kicked by comic books!

Oh! Speaking of ass kicking, I found my way back on topic! Let's just rate this thing and move on to the next one, shall we?

Rating: Patience steps up her Kick-Ass game by caring about the little guy. This is how you become a superhero in real life (because this comic book takes place in real life. You can't forget that. Not because you need to remember it to understand the comic book. You can't forget it because Millar constantly says things like, "This isn't like a comic book!" and "This isn't like in the movies!" and "This isn't like a book written by [Google famous author to put here before sending newsletter]!"). You begin due to desperate circumstances and then project your problems and needs on to everybody else. If extreme violence can solve your problems so easily, why can't that be used to solve all of the other people's problems too?! Nothing can go wrong with that philosophy, right?!

Anyway, it was pretty good. Not $3.99 good! But what can you do? Comic books are ridiculously priced these days. I guess you can stop buying them. But then you have to do that break-up thing and my stomach is hurting just thinking about it!


Cave Carson Has an Interstellar Eye #1
By Rivera, Oeming, and Filardi

The last Cave Carson series was about his impotence. It's a pretty sweet read if you're smart enough to figure that out. If you aren't as good at reading comic books as I am then you might have missed the significance of a man obsessed with drilling over and over again into deep caves. Now you're thinking, "Grunion Guy, that doesn't sound like impotence at all! Don't you know how to do it?" And I'm return thinking, "Pshaw! Of course I know how! Why would I even feel the need to write fake dialogues where I assure readers that I've totally done it a lot? So ridiculous!" Also you must not have read the series because it was about how Cave Carson couldn't spelunk anymore. I think "spelunk" is short for "sperm dunk" with an "L" added for some reason.

Since the first comic book's title was an anagram for "I c-ca-can see a very-y chaste boner," I bet this title has an anagrammatic clue as well! Let's see. Cave Carson Has an Interstellar Eye is an anagram of "An anal character's eye is never lost". Methinks I'm most of the way to figuring out what this comic book is really about!

Also I've apparently become one of those people who says "methinks!" Get me a fedora, stat!

Rating: It's weird in that way things are written when they want to be weird. That's a harsh critique and not a compliment. Also maybe it's not as harsh as it could be. Maybe it's not harsh at all? Anyway, that scathing review doesn't mean the comic book is uninteresting. It's just not as interesting as it was when it was about Carson's impotency. I'm not yet sure what this series is about. Maybe about loss and maturity? The entire thing might be about grieving the loss of one's favorite pet. That isn't as sexy as a limp ding-dong! But I'll probably give it at least one more issue.

P.S. I wrote the ranking before reading the back-up story. After reading the back-up story about Cave Carson's podcast, I can confirm the series is about loss. And still maybe about the loss of a pet! I'm sure I can force that view into the narrative.


Justice League #41
By Priest, Briones, and Cox

Rating: This comic book deals with super powered people and aliens and space travel that ignores physics and the Justice League trying to deal with international conflicts and the entire team's institutional racism yet the most unbelievable moment was when some guy was excited to see Aquaman. It took me right out of the comic book. Otherwise, it was a fun read! Especially the part where Wonder Woman was somehow shot. Priest doesn't think she blocks bullets simply because they can actually hurt her, right? Ignoring Kerry Callen's take on Diana's bullet bouncing, she probably deflects them in specific directions so that they don't bounce off of her body and kill an innocent bystander in the way they just bounced off of Superman and killed her. My guess is one went into her open mouth while she was yapping about saving children. I bet the inside of her skin isn't invulnerable. How else could she derive pleasure from fucking Steve Trevor?


Batman #43
By King, Janin, Petrus, and Chung

Rating: I haven't discussed the last few issues of Batman because I've simply been enjoying them. I suppose if there are people out there who can't stand King's Batman, I can't be bothered to mind. Contrary to the evidence presented in thousands of pages of comic book criticism over the last few years, I actually do understand what 'subjective' means. And I can live with people not liking Tom King's writing style because that means Tom King's writing style is there to be experienced. He reminds me why I once loved comic books. He doesn't write a person in a costume. He writes a character who happens to wear a costume. His dialogue is fun and serious and touches one in a way that I thought was a bad touch but I think it's actually the kind of touch most people crave. The current arc is a love story disguised as a villain taking over the world story and it couldn't be better. That's hyperbole because of course it could be better. All of the characters could be drawn naked and aroused.

Grunion Guy's Musical Corner of Music Reviews

Get Your Shit Together by Public Enemy
There's something incredibly Shakespearean about Public Enemy's music. It's like when Chuck D is rapping, you're all, "Fuck man. Fuck. This is profound! This is fucking American truth man! This is crazy." Then Flava Flav starts singing and you're all, "Oh yeah! This Shakespeare loved cock jokes too!" Mostly you forget Flava Flav is a part of this group when they're singing about serious shit like this. Occasionally you'll heave Flava Flav's high-pitched, sidekick exclamations ring out and I can't help laughing. Then I feel terrible because somebody might think I'm laughing at the serious lyric, "What you gonna do? What'ch you gonna do? If you'd been on that plane, both sides would've killed you too!" Mostly though, Public Enemy really understands when to play up Flava Flav and when to downplay him. He's barely even a blip in this song. I imagine he was just bopping along in the studio as this track was recorded without ever realizing his mic wasn't turned on.
Grade: A.

Never Say Die by Jon Bon Jovi
Most Americans think Bon Jovi was a huge punchline to the joke of 80s rock music. But we all know why Bon Jovi survived the death of that 80s hard rock genre; it was because he was a master of sex appeal and also wrote really catchy songs! This song is from the soundtrack to Young Guns II which was almost as good as the movie itself! This might be the worst song on the album (aside from the one without lyrics, "Guano City." Who listens to songs without lyrics?! What a waste of time!) and yet I still don't skip it when it comes up on my shuffle. Because even the worst of the best is still good! Some might say I'm a Jovi Lover and they have a right to their totally correct and non-spurious opinions. Let me share the glory of some of Jon's triumphs in lyrical beauty:

"Once I was afraid of love
But when it's your brother those things change.
Love is just another word for trust!
So hear me when I say, 'Never say, "Die!"'
'Never say, "No!"'
You got to look them in the eye and don't let go!"

Wow! That just gets right to the heart of sex shop glory hole culture! It's right up there with "Love is a Social Disease" and "Shot Through the Heart" (not to be confused with "You Give Love a Bad Name" which uses the lyric "shot through the heart")! I'm not sure why Bon Jovi included an anthem for living with and fighting AIDS in the Young Guns II soundtrack. But it works somehow!
Grade: B.

Saturday's Child by The Monkees
"You'll be called 'The Monkees!'"
"What? Why?"
"But not monkeys like you're imagining it! Monkees with two 'e's!"
"What? Why?!"
"You don't like it? The other three guys we're interviewing for the band probably love it! You should to!"
"Well, as long as we play catchy pop tunes that make all the girls go wild."
"You mean 'pretend to play!'"
"Wait. What? Why?!"

That's probably how Mike Nesmith's job interview went, right? Anyway, what about "Saturday's Child", you're probably thinking. Well, I'm probably thinking, "What about it?! It's kind of stupid." I don't even know what a Saturday child is supposed to be! Did people used to not only believe personalities were formed by astrological signs but by days of the week as well? What makes Saturday's child not break your heart like Thursday's child? Why is Wednesday's child so aloof?! And Sunday's child is way too into commitment. I guess Saturday's child is the one that will sleep with you on the first date and not care when you never call again. Is that love?

It's also a bit weird to be singing about loving a child.
Grade: D+.

Ubangi Stomp by Alice Cooper
This is Alice Cooper's version of an Elvis dance song. Alice Cooper did a lot of versions of other people singing songs that already existed. People don't realize this but Alice Cooper was basically Weird Al Yankovic drunk out of his mind. This song is from Lace and Whiskey which is an album that most people could hear any song from, be told it was Alice Cooper, and they would say, "Fuck you that's Alice Cooper." I guess maybe "Road Rats" or "It's Hot Tonight" wouldn't get that reaction. But that's just twenty percent of the album. Nobody would hear this or "My God" or "I Never Wrote Those Songs" or "King of the Silver Screen" or "You and Me" or "Damned If You Do" or "Lace and Whiskey" or "(No More) Love at Your Convenience" and think, "I know who sang that!" Except maybe "You and Me" since it was basically Alice Cooper's last big hit of the seventies and also because he sang it to Miss Piggy on The Muppet Show. This song is catchy and I would dance to it if I actually knew how to do the Ubangi Stomp. It probably involves a lot of stomping and racism.
Grade: B.

The Simpsons Halloween Special End Credits Theme ("The Addams Family" Homage)
I don't know why I haven't deleted this from my iTunes. I don't know why I haven't deleted all of The Simpsons special themes from my iTunes. Probably because I'm lazy. I'm not too lazy to hit skip every time one of them comes up on the Shuffle though. If you hear a "song" like this and think, "I need to hear more of that a lot of the time I'm living this finite life," then we don't have much in common. I mean music-wise! We probably have more in common in other ways, like how often we masturbate or how many burritos we can stand to eat in one day.
Grade: F.

What Am I Currently Reading?

This week, I finished reading Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers. Mostly it was a rehash of a few of the first series episodes with some minor and not so minor differences. Lots of the dialogue was the same in places but Red Dwarf's captain was a woman named Kirk rather than a bloated man with a pockmarked face. We also learn how Lister became a crew member and that his breaking of quarantine by smuggling the cat on board was done on purpose so he could be in stasis for the entire trip back to Earth. It was an easy and enjoyable read that actually made me laugh out loud in places which the television show doesn't really do any more. Well, maybe it does. But the way laugh tracks have aged makes viewing of old sitcoms really fucking difficult.
    What reading this book has taught me is that maybe the Xanth books aren't such quick reads after all! Either I'm not as big a fan of fantasy as I was at twelve when titillating descriptions of naked creatures caused me to take a short bathroom break (and that scene where Dor and Irene rip each other's clothes off in the moat in Centaur Isle probably fueled more bathroom breaks than any other bit) or the Xanth books just aren't as entertaining as I remembered them being. It's a slog to get through a Xanth book. I had to force myself to try to read at least one chapter every morning before bed (I work nights!). But I kept going back to the Red Dwarf book even when I could have been playing Fortnite! If you don't know what Fortnite is, that was meant as high praise!
   Next up on my to read list is Spiral by Koji Suzuki. It's the sequel to Ringu which everybody knows about. I think I'll reread Ringu first because it took so long to find the second book. Ringu was written in 1992 and it might be the best book on memes I'll ever read. Mostly because I'll never read another one.

Letters to Me!

KB writes: My mom took us to see Godspell on multiple occasions. ::shudder::

My reply: Ick! I hate when people equate Jesus Christ Superstar with Godspell. Although I think I owe my love of Jesus Christ Superstar to Godspell. At some point as a kid, I saw the end scene of the Godspell movie where Jesus Christ is crucified to a chain link fence by a bunch of clowns while the World Trade Center sits in the background mocking modern audiences. I was all, "What the heck was that?! It seems awesome!" The visual stuck in my head for years. I also knew the title song of Jesus Christ Superstar thanks to grocery store background music. I assumed the two were one and the same. After years of having that song and image stuck in my head, I eventually dug out my mom's VHS copy of Jesus Christ Superstar (taped from television, of course) and watched it. It was not the movie I remembered but I fell in love with it anyway. I loved the music and was fascinated by the sympathetic take on Judas.

Eventually I watched Godspell as well and was not taken in the same way. I also saw Godspell at least once in the community theater version because my friend Doom Bunny was doing the lights for it.

KB:

"took nine hundred and ninety nine comics but Superman finally realized that throwing criminals into the Phantom Zone was a dick move. His first (and possibly only?) step in correcting this attitude is letting Hank Henshaw out. After which Superman immediately imprisons him in an Inertron cell (unless it's Adamantium) and puts him into a hallucinatory state so he won't cause trouble. Jurgens seems to be telling this tale to show that Superman is too good to be corrupted like, in the other half of the story, Sam Lane fears."

So, using Black Mercies is evil, but a hallucinatory condition isn't? Though there is an interesting discussion to be had about whether it's merciful to let people live in blissful delusion. Even if you were to construct a hallucinatory setting where Hank Henshaw could grow as a person until he decided to foreswear evil, what happens when you yank the rug out from under him and tell him it's all been a lie? I guess that's an argument about practical application more than about morality, but it's still a question.

"Although, to be fair in a fairer way, Superman's foes always seem to escape from the Phantom Zone just like Batman's enemies escape Arkham. So Superman can either follow the law and the villains he captures will still escape, or he can imprison people illegally while they still manage to escape. Since nobody can keep a comic book villain locked up, Superman should at least choose the option that doesn't make him look like a fascist."

Gold kryptonite used to be a solution, yet Superman almost never used it. "Look, you lived your whole life on Krypton without super powers, you can live here on earth just fine without powers too. Trust me, you'll love the Denny's Grand Slam. And you can probably get rich going into tech companies. Stay away from Lex Luthor though, he'll probably want to vivisect you."

Me: Basically, I think DC's view is that if Superman does it, it's okay. If some other character who we aren't told by DC that everybody but Batman and Lex Luthor can trust implicitly for some reason does it, it's terrible and should be stopped immediately. That Gold Kryptonite solution seems particularly troublesome and hypocritical. If Superman thinks Kryptonians who abuse their powers don't deserve them, shouldn't he take the same hard line on himself? As soon as he realizes that he's constantly being manipulated to use his powers against Earth through magic or hypnosis or Joker serum or Doomsday viruses, shouldn't he also expose himself to Gold Kryptonite so he loses his powers forever? I suppose he has an imaginary whiteboard in the Fortress of Solitude where he keeps a list of all the pros and cons of keeping his powers. Once that list tips too far into the cons, he probably has a Gold Kryptonite suppository set aside.


Upright writes: Did you ever check out Anthony’s Bio of a Tyrant series? The only thing I remember is that Jupiter was the U.S., Saturn was the USSR, and Earth was India (weird). And a missile crisis, because Saturn, of course. And the guy was a tyrant but totally misunderstood like so many of them are! We can’t think beyond the present unless you can and then you’re Philip K Dick and he’s crazy until he’s absolutely not at all.

My reply: I never did pick that up. Which is weird because I read almost everything else Anthony churned out (for some reason. Let's not be too hard on twelve year old me! He may have been a smelly, know-it-all jerk but...well, maybe we should have all been harder on him, actually). Maybe since I'm reading all of his terrible stuff again, I should read some of his terrible stuff that I never read before!

Speaking of Philip K. Dick, I'd read more of his stuff but I can't remember what I've read of his and what I haven't. I really should have kept a list. Since he became so popular again in the whatever years he became really popular again, publishers seem to reissue his stuff over and over again. It's hard to tell when I see a bunch of new covers which ones I've read. Maybe I should just hit the library and go through them all. Then when I recognize I've read one, I can just return it without costing me anything! Except for the late fee I'll almost certainly accrue.

And that's a wrap on this week's newsletter! Goodbye, jerkos!

Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #1 (December 1989)

Hal Jordan: Messiah figure.

I know the writing credits to this series say "James Owsley" but when I refer to the writer, I'll call him Christopher Priest, or just Priest. Just thought I'd start with that before it became confusing to those who didn't know he later changed his name. It's not me losing my mind! It's just me referring to the writer as he's chosen to be referred to. I will not be referring to M.D. Bright as "Doc" though. No, you know what? Maybe I will. It's easier than typing "M.D."

The comic book part of this blog began in 2011 with DC's New 52 because I thought I loved comic books. I own enough of them to fool anybody into believing that. But as I read more and more of The New 52, I began to realize that maybe I didn't love comics. At least not in the way most comic book fans love comics. Because if I truly loved comic books, wouldn't I remember all those comic books I read when I was younger? It's true, I did remember some. But not all and by no means even the majority of them. It was only then that I realized I loved stories, be they comic books or not, and they had to be well-written and intriguing and impactful. I began to notice commenters to my blog actually remembered so much more about the past comics they read, as if all the comics had been impactful, as if — gasp — they truly loved the medium. Perhaps I just loved some of the art and some of the stories and the fact they were about a buck a pop. I became disillusioned, depressed, and distraught about what I'd been doing with my life. And, so, I stopped purchasing new comics (again!). My mediocre love for the genre left me wondering why I was spending nearly five dollars for a comic I could read in five minutes, half the time telling a mediocre story with middling art, when I could be purchasing or reading actual books! With fantastic plots and intriguing characters! Books! That I could read in public and look smart as opposed to, well, I don't want to denigrate people who read comic books in public! I've done that plenty of times because, in truth, I don't care if I look smart while in public. I don't care if I look smart writing this blog! If I'm caught reading Gravity's Rainbow in public, it's simply because I fucking love that book and probably need to read it a fourth time! Plus I look smart reading it.

What all that was meant to say was this: I have no fucking memory of Emerald Dawn! Wasn't this supposed to be the big return of Hal Jordan into the post-Crisis world? Don't people still talk about it to this day?! And here I am, owner of the comic book, a person who read it off the shelf, and I can't fucking remember one moment from it. Oh shit. Oh shit. Here comes the despair and depression again. What good was my life if I can't even remember doing the things I did during it?! I might as well be an amnesiac waking up from a 35 year coma! Fuuuuuuuuck.

Oh well! Let's see if I remember it while rereading it! Won't that be fun! Plus I can destroy the value of the comic by dripping weepy snot tears all over it as I contemplate my squandered opportunity and complete waste of existence.

There's one more thing about me before we get to how the issue begins: I hold nothing sacred. Don't misunderstand me; I have beliefs. I believe a lot of shit! But I don't care if those beliefs are skewered by somebody else, or by me even. Sometimes that makes me entirely the wrong person to write about a comic book, depending on what that comic book is about. Like, say, Bitch Planet. That's like playing fetch with your pit bull by tossing a hand grenade. I know (knew? I already did Bitch Planet reviews!) I'm gonna say some disrespectful shit if I find something funny. Some people think of it as being an edgelord but it's just stuff I find funny that inches into other people's sacred territory. Stuff you don't joke about. A lot of people have those boundaries and they think if somebody makes a joke outside those boundaries, they're doing it to get a rise out of people within those boundaries. But it's not like that at all. I don't even seen the boundaries when something is funny. Frankie Boyle describes it well in his current podcast, Here Comes the Guillotine, but I can't remember how he says it or what episode he says it in but I do remember nodding vigorously at his comment. Again, it doesn't mean I don't have strong, compassionate beliefs. And it doesn't mean I'll joke about offensive shit. That's boring, low hanging fruit best left to immature assholes and insecure adult white men. It's just that sometimes I can't help laughing at something horrible. Like that video from some terrible Fox show many, many, many years ago where an Australian teacher is filming two girls walking along a thin trail on a cliff that gives way and they begin tumbling down a near sheer cliff. That's not the funny part. That wouldn't make me laugh. But what got me, what truly made me break down into tears, was the teacher continuing to track their fall with the camera and yelling, "I told you not to go out there!" I mean it's horrible. But it's some darkly funny shit. Like when this moment happens:

I don't know what got me: either the hat or the over-exaggerated sound effect.

That's little Hal Jordan watching his father die in an experimental plane crash. Ha ha! Pretty fun, right? No, of course it isn't! It's supposed to be horrible! Priest creates a scene with bookended parallels, one depicting the Brightest Day of Martin Jordan's first successful pass of the sonic plane, the other depicting the Blackest Night of Martin Jordan smashing down on the runway and incinerating right in front of his boy.

Oh, I should also say, those two girls wound up being okay. Obviously they wouldn't show a tourist's snuff film on television! No, wait. That isn't so obvious because that show was on Fox in the '90s. I think anything fucking went back then and on that network.

Anyway, Hal's dad died in a fireball of airplane fuel and braggadocio and Hal's all, "I want to be just like my father!" Cut to twenty years later.

Carol ready to eat some dick.

That three panel scan above looks like 1/3 of the comics that used to be in the newspapers when I was a kid. They were the ones I'd always skip over because I didn't read the comics daily and, even if I did, who could follow a long form story three miserable little chunks at at time? Although if Mary Worth gave that look Carol Ferris was giving, I'd probably have read it more. That look would have intrigued me at 12. That look intrigues me at 52!

Carol isn't currently Hal's girlfriend. Carol is Biff's girlfriend which means I pictured her eating the wrong dick earlier. Apologies to everybody involved except my brain who got to see some images of Carol eating a dick and didn't care whose dick it was. Good stuff!

Hal, upset that he got called a momma's boy and a non-pilot while also having his hat sarcastically called "nice," decides to prove to Biff, who isn't there because Carol is eating his dick somewhere else, that he basically is a pilot by driving his jeep as fast as he possibly can on curvy mountain roads.

Well, I don't know if he's a pilot or not but he's certainly not a driver.

Cut to twenty years later as Hal wakes up from his coma. Okay, maybe a little bit less than twenty years later. Like 175,196 hours less. Hal learns he's crashed his car while drunk. Carol is there in his room to glare at him and slam the door as he explains that it was the sign's fault. Since the sign didn't jump out in front of his car, he must mean he saw the words "Happy Tymes" and couldn't help but think about Carol eating his dick. That would cause anybody to crash. Just ask Billy Halleck.

I guess Hal didn't get anybody killed and Ferris Aircraft swept the incident under the rug because Hal Jordan is at work the next day. But not to fly real experimental aircraft. That would be irresponsible. No, he's testing out a flight simulator. And somehow that flight simulator rockets off its mounting, flies through the wall, and takes off into the sky. I'm going to guess that wasn't built into the simulator and this is how Hal Jordan winds up meeting Abin Sur, post-Crisis. If that's not the case, and this isn't Abin Sur pulling Jordan to him, this will wind up replacing Nightwing driving a motorcycle up the side of a sidescraper as my go-to example of how unserious comic books are.

As Hal flies off in his simulator, he hears Abin Sur in his head describing how the Green Lantern Corps was formed. It goes something like this: "Order begat chaos which was actually order because order is the way of things. But then out of that order came sentient life and sentient life was all, 'Fuck order! Eat my dick!' And because the eating of dicks was not logical, order had to be restored. Which is why the Green Lantern Corps was formed. To stop all the dick eating in the universe."

That's a whole lot of words just to say "fascist."

Abin Sur tells Jordan that knowledge is power and Lolly's got some adjectives and some kids with weird names took a fucking rhinoceros on a bus and The Monkees are a fucking person, place, or thing. Unless what he actually says is that power without knowledge is violence. But he never really defines power with knowledge. Unless that's his definition of order. Which, again, just sounds fucking fascist. Power with or without knowledge leads to violence and thinking you have the knowledge simply excuses yourself for using violence as the means to your end. Sixteen pages into the first issue of Emerald Dawn and I'm beginning to remember why I hate Green Lantern and especially Hal "Always Quick to Fisticuffs" Jordan.

"Be sober." Abin Sur throwing shade.

Hal tries to rebel against being a Green Lantern because that's what makes Hal such a great Green Lantern. He refuses to follow orders when he thinks those orders are stupid or go against true justice. It's one of two things I like about Hal. The other is that he loves to punch people in the face. In reality, I'm not big on people who do that seeing as how I was once punched in the face by stupid jerk Jimmy Arthur. But in a comic book, it's always nice to have a lead character ready to spring into action and break up all the damn speech bubbles.

Just to be clear, after Jimmy Arthur punched me in the face and knocked me down because Jimmy Arthur was fucking massive, I jumped up and hit him with my skateboard. Was that fair? Do I care? It worked and he ran off bleeding all over the place. According to the police who questioned me later that night, I was the absolute winner of that encounter! And you know you were the most violent asshole in an altercation when the cops point it out. Those guys are super violent dickheads.

Man, if I were a Green Lantern, every issue would just be me hitting another alien in the head with a gigantic green skateboard.

Hal Jordan continues to refuse to become a Green Lantern but it's no use. The ring has decided. Abin Sur turns into an hourglass without the glass and the ring flies onto Hal's finger. It immediately puts him in the green and black uniform and Hal is appalled. I don't know why. It's actually one of DC's better costumes. Maybe he's just upset at the responsibility. He doesn't seem to be too big on responsibility at this stage of his heroic journey. This is Stage One: Like Father, Like Son. Pretty sure that's what Campbell named it.

Hal figures out the ring can make him fly and since he's always wanted to be a pilot, he begins to enjoy it. Not knowing what else to do, he calls Carol to check on his job, his brother, and his friends. His job seems to be done because they think he somehow stole the simulator rather than thinking the simulator almost killed him. His brother and his brother's girlfriend are fine. But his friend Andy, Carol tells him, will be paralyzed for life. Angry and unwilling to blame himself, Hal decides to take his anger out on the "Happy Tymes" sign. The yellow "Happy Tymes" sign.

Now this, I think, I was supposed to laugh at. I mean, while also being awed at the beauty of Priest's writing. Both of those things, right?

Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn #1 Rating: A+. How great is that ending? Is this what people who read this in 1989 remembered for the rest of their lives because they were much smarter than I was? They were all, "Look at Hal! Refusing to take responsibility for anything! His job. His friends. The Green Lantern ring. His drunk driving accident. What a fool!" And then the symbolism of the sign that wrecks his life and smashes in his head because his ring is powerless against it having the phrase "happy times" emblazoned on it. As if Happy Times are something he's not allowed anymore. The Happy Times died when he was a child in a fireball of airplane fuel and braggadocio. And now the thought of them only causes him pain. The sign's fault. The happy times now long past's fault. Always somebody else's fault. Never Hal's. What a great re-introduction to this character. I love it so far! Of course, it's just one issue. Can Priest keep it up for six issues? I mean, probably. I do love Priest's writing. He especially loves that thing where he drops the title at the end because the title means so much to the overall theme. He knows you'll forget it if he drops it at the beginning, and also it will sort of be a spoiler to bits coming up. So instead, he's all, "Here's the ending where Hal runs into a sign and the issue is called 'The Sign' and can you think of other ways the 'sign' theme appears throughout the story? No? What are you, an idiot? Maybe think about the comic a little bit before putting it away. No wonder you didn't remember any of this, you fucking dolt! You moron! You nincompoop!"

Hey, man! Geez! Give a guy a break, fake only in my head Christopher Priest!

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Bluesky

The Ray #6

He's still fighting his father, isn't he?

For a kid who had a dad, this fucking kid sure wishes he had a dad. I don't fucking get it. He lived 18 years with a man who was his dad but then that man died and said, "I'm not your real dad! There is another!" and this fucking kid is all, "I want my daddy!" Man, I only have the one dad and I couldn't give a fuck! Just go out and get a dog, you needy bastard! Also get a fridge. You fucking still need a fridge, you stupid asshole.

Have I cursed at The Ray enough? It's not like he deserves it; I've just grown bored with this series and I'm acting out. Luckily this is my last The Ray comic book before I get to move on to Kid Eternity written by Ann Nocenti. Fuck yes! Who knew I'd read Ann Nocenti before her run on The New 52 Green Arrow?! I wish I could remember what younger me thought of it.

Three kinds of comic books exist in my past: those I loved so much that they became an integral part of that chapter in my life (Elfquest, Transmetropolitan, and Shade the Changing Man), comic books that I thoroughly enjoyed and can still remember a good percentage of plots and themes (Suicide Squad, The Demon, and Justice League) and comic books I read in five minutes and completely forgot about (apparently The Ray, Kid Eternity, Scarab, and so many more that I can't list because I completely forgot about them). I could probably break those categories down further into dozens of other categories but you were probably already bored at the beginning of this paragraph so I'll just move on.

The issue begins with Black Canary penning a letter to Justice League Human Resources.

The Ray decided to take a day off from being an adult and also a super hero to explore the underwater wreckage of a 1940s cruise ship. This brings up so many questions! How did he know it was there? Did he stumble upon it by accident? Is he exploring the Bermuda Triangle?

How does an 19 year old in 1994 know about The Poseidon Adventure?

Okay, that last question was unfair. I was barely twenty-three when this comic book came out and I'd watched The Poseidon Adventure at least a half-dozen times on local stations during rainy Sunday afternoons. But you also have to wonder, "If he's familiar with the movie, why is he comparing himself to Shelley Winters?!"

For a fad disaster movie of the time, I'm surprised how it was able to blow my mind. Sure, I was super young and everything was fucking blowing my mind every Goddamned day because the universe is a fucking LSD trip full of unexpected miracles (at least until you've pretty much seen them all five million times and you slowly sink into the mire of bored cynic (I wish I'd known enough in my youth to not sink slowly but to rage, rage against the dying of the wonder. Fucking stupid kid me)). But there's that moment in the movie where the protagonists are going toward the back of the ship and they pass by another group of passengers going the other way. And it's like, "Whoa. Holy shit. We could be watching their story! They could be the ones who survive! Why are they any less important than the people whose stories we're watching?!" It's a fucking great cinematic moment that not only ratchets up the tension by suggesting the protagonists might be heading the wrong way but also introduces the idea that the "protagonists" are only that because we're focused on them (and because some of them are the ones who will live, I suppose. But as an inexperienced kid, you're secure from the cynical understanding of narrative choices). If we root for our guys to be going the right way, does that mean we don't give a fuck that the other people are heading to their deaths? And why does the movie's point of view dictate to us who we care about living and dying? It's a lesson that stayed with me for a long fucking time (and one you'll see I apply occasionally when reviewing super hero comic books) and probably why I fell in love with the writings of Kurt Vonnegut. Because Vonnegut might have a "protagonist" but he's also constantly aware of the idea that the other people in the story aren't just window dressing. They're other people with stories of their own and they shouldn't be treated like just another prop. Again, it's one reason I almost always despise big action movies, especially natural disaster kinds. Because the plot always boils down to "a whole lot of fucking people are going to die on screen and it's going to be horrible but this person the camera is following will live so that will make it seem like a happy ending."

While exploring, The Ray is attacked by Death Masque. What?! But how?! Death Masque was only a computer program! What is going on?! So unexpected!

The Ray barely survives and then just chalks up the attack to some quirk in his program. He flies home to debug and to also think about how strange it is that Black Canary has yet to write him back. Cue a scene change to see what Black Canary thinks of his advances! Spoiler: it's the best part of the comic book so far.

Now I'm paranoid that every woman I've ever had an unrequited crush on has a note like this in her journal about me.

Hell, I'd be lucky if the women I've had crushes on noticed me enough to even mention me in their journal! Their entry would be more like, "Saw that creepy fucker staring at me in the library again. Fucking going to get a punch to the throat if he doesn't knock it the fuck off."

Black Canary's currently trying to save a young girl taken hostage by a terrorist. But when she goes into the building to save her, she discovers a portal to another world with laser-wielding demons and increased gravity. Being that she's just a martial artist with no real powers (even if the artist depicts her flying in one panel but I think that's a mistake, right? She could never fly (and, no, it's definitely not a depiction of her "flying" by using her sonic scream. I don't think she even has the sonic scream at this moment in her history), she fucks right off to get help (probably from The Ray, right?! Green Arrow won't be any use in this situation).

Back in wherever The Ray lives (Philadelphia, I think? Site of one of my all-time favorite books, The Boomer Bible (which I should reread again since, thematically, it couldn't be more relevant to our current political woes)), he's busy buying his fridge! Except this is only Issue #6 so you really didn't expect that plot point to be resolved so soon, right? Because it's not! Instead of buying the things he needs (being an adult and all), he buys a life-size Superman cardboard stand-up and a stereo system. Who needs a fridge anyway? I don't imaging there's anybody in America who buys a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream and saves some for later!

The Ray gets a message on his old school voice mail machine from Dinah and he instantly zips off to Seattle to help her. Is she taking advantage of his feelings toward her or does she actually think he's the best person to call in this situation? Maybe she didn't want to call Superman because he'd get all the credit. Or maybe he's dead. And Batman has a broken back. And Green Arrow, you know, uses a stupid bow.

Turns out Black Canary called in The Ray because he has light-based powers and she surmises he can open closed portals that have disappeared from reality. It turns out she's right because what kind of shitty narrative choice would Priest have made if she were wrong? The Ray arrives, can't open or find the portal, shrugs and then Black Canary breaks down crying because she didn't save Mercy. Oh wait. That's not a crappy narrative choice at all! The Ray could have comforted her and they would have bonded emotionally and Green Arrow would have walked in on them bonding and flipped the fuck out. Sure, Mercy would be dead, but who is Mercy anyway? Nobody I give a shit about! She should have thought about readers caring about her before she chose to be a background character.

The Ray turns into a raging Hulk version of himself as he passes through the portal, flying off and leaving Black Canary alone. Apparently Black Canary suffered some trauma recently in her comic book or Green Arrow where somebody pointed a gun at her and said, "I'm not afraid of you!" Now everybody keeps pointing guns at her and she imagines they aren't afraid of her. But she's super afraid all the time, even when she's being sexy.

This is a depiction of female masturbation, right?

The issue ends with the hostage taker pointing his gun at Black Canary and screaming, "I'm not afraid of you!" He's holding a young girl who is probably Mercy. And it appears younger me cared so little about Mercy's welfare that I decided I wasn't going to purchase the next issue.

The Ray #6 Rating: C. I'm vaguely disappointed that I don't have the next issue. While I'm not curious about what happens to Mercy, I do sort of want to see the final confrontation between Black Canary and The Ray where she tells him she loves him like a younger brother and he's never going to see her tits. Maybe younger me knew seeing that confrontation would be too emotional for him as he pined over somebody who probably just wished he'd leave her the fuck alone.

The Ray #0

"The Beginning of Tomorrow" sounds like my life philosophy.

I don't totally know what I mean by the above caption but then that's philosophy for you, isn't?

I'm not going to discuss Zero Hour because when Zero Hour happened, it changed the entire DC Universe's past so that Zero Hour never happened. Everything was suddenly always post-Zero-Hour continuity except without Zero Hour actually existing in that continuity. Therefore I can't discuss it because it's not something that exists. Which probably means I can throw this comic book in the garbage can and forget about it forever!

Surprise! I didn't throw the comic book in the garbage! I mean, I did! But I fished it out before I pissed on it because I thought, "Wait. Are the Zero Hour comics part of post-Zero-Hour continuity? They might be stories that happened after Zero Hour which clarify facts about how the world has always supposedly been. So if Martian Manhunter's cape was normal length in the pre-Zero-Hour continuity, this story begins telling readers, "Oh no! It was always five hundred feet long! Don't you remember? You should remember that it was always like that! And did Crisis On Infinite Earths happen in this continuity? Who can fucking tell! Just stop whining about the two different Supermen and how the fuck does Infinity Inc. exist in this timeline, you stupid assholes! If you don't, we're just going to have to keep pulling this shit! You think Zero Hour is bad? Just wait until we pull out The New 52! And then just when you've think you've seen it all, have we got a Watchmen trick ready to flop to fix that!"

Visual proof of J'onn's new and/or always lengthy cape.

My brain is so muddled by DC's continuity changes across the last forty years that I'm not even sure I'm correctly remembering why Zero Hour was needed. But I think it was simply because every fix DC tried to incorporate into their universe just broke a bunch of other shit that later needed to be fixed. What DC didn't realize was that their main problem that needed fixing was the way-too-literal know-it-all fans who couldn't just shut the fuck up.

One thing that remains the same from pre-Zero-Hour continuity to this Zero Hour continuity is how Golden Era The Ray is a huge fucking psycho dick. He can't find his son to beat up on so now he's decided to beat up Martian Manhunter. The guy needs severe anger management classes. He needs to spend a little time at Sanctuary, the Heroes in Crisis spa.

During the battle that Older The Ray starts, a lot of property is destroyed. Weird how when his son gets into a battle that destroys property, it's the most irresponsible thing in the world. But when he does it, it's just super hero business as usual. Fucking dads! They're the worst, right?! Hypocritical Fox News watching recovering alcoholic assholes who have never done a ninth step with their son! That are also angry super heroes, of course!

Older The Ray decides to ask Jenny and Cousin Hank if they've seen The Ray. He doesn't beat the shit out of them when he asked the question though. That doesn't make him less of a dick; it makes him more of a dick! Because now we know he could have approached Martian Manhunter reasonably! Cousin Hank doesn't have much to offer as usual.

It always amazes me how often a person can understand an acronym with which they're unfamiliar simply from a tiny bit of context. It didn't take me more than a few seconds to figure out that VPL equals varicose pussy lips. Oh wait! It's probably visible panty lines.

Jen manages to hack into The Ray's laptop so they can read his letters to Black Canary. Which reminds me that I know why The Ray is missing! I forgot to mention that at the end of the last issue, he went by his dad's house to hug him and his dad wasn't there. But his mother who was supposed to have died giving birth to The Ray was! So now he's probably off crying somewhere. It turns out that "somewhere" was Dinah Lance's bathtub. But when she never returned, he fucked off to cry somewhere else.

Sitting in the bath tub, The Ray has a Zero Hour hallucination recounting his origin. He was born leaking radiation. Older The Ray knew the government would come to study him or exploit him, so he gave him to his brother without telling anybody. He left a light image of the baby that would eventually consume itself. He just told his wife their son died and moved on. Meanwhile, The Ray grew up thinking his uncle was his dad. Right up until his uncle died and told The Ray the truth on his death bed. And all of that is pretty much the same as his pre-Zero Hour origin, I think! But it was important during Zero Hour that every series got a Zero Hour book to explain their origins for all the new readers jumping to DC now that all the continuity errors were fixed and it was going to make complete sense.

The Ray #0 Rating: C. I don't expect a special Zero Issue to advance the plot in any way so this issue lived up to my non-expectations. It even ends at basically the same point as the last regular issue as The Ray's mom acts confused by this strange teenager trespassing on her property. Even the origin story was a long-winded version of information already expressed in earlier issues. I began reading this series hoping to realign my perspective and read with the same sense of wonder I once had for comic books. But I don't think I can ever regain that feeling I once had that every comic book series was telling a story that was going somewhere. I once thought that the worst thing about dying was that I wouldn't be able to learn how the comic book series I was reading would end. But that's never been the point of most comic book series. No wonder I loved Elfquest and Cerebus so much. Because they were written with an end in mind (Elfquest more than Cerebus but Dave Sim already had the 300 issue thing in mind when I began reading it, so, you know). And, sure, I don't want to rush to the end of a well-written story just because I need to know how it ends. But I'd like to know the journey meant as much to the writer as it does to me. And if the writer of a story is simply writing whatever comes to mind to fill out a page count from month to month, I feel cheated now. There was a time I didn't realize that was a thing. But now that I've seen it, I just can't go back to the excitement and wonder of thinking, "What is going to happen to The Ray's relationship with his family?! How will it affect his super heroing? And what, exactly, is his super heroing anyway? He doesn't seem to have any plan aside from buying a fridge and he's not even working on that plan." Hmm, maybe the whole point of this comic book is that adult life is so complicated that all of your tasks simply become digressions. All of your beliefs and philosophies which propel you to do the things you do mean nothing to the universe which will continuously wear you down with problems you weren't expecting. Didn't some famous jerk-off once say something about life being the thing that happens while you're making plans? Maybe that's what this comic book is about which is also what growing up is about. And maybe that's why so many adults become soulless automatons with no underlying set of ethics to guide them through social interactions requiring empathy and compassion. Who has time to think of anybody else when you're busy putting out fire after fire intent on destroying your life's plans?

I don't have this entire series but now I'm hoping that The Ray never gets that fridge until the final issue.

The Ray #5

The Ray Senior has six armpits.

It's hard to believe there was a time when comic books didn't acknowledge who did the cover. I suppose publishers simply thought comic book nerds were so rabid for the medium that they could instantly recognize the artist without any credit. Or maybe they figured if the reader was truly interested, they'd scour the cover to find the signature. That would answer the question, right?!

Oh yeah. Okay. That fucking helped nobody.

In 1994, good luck figuring out who the fuck this signature was by. Sure, you can read "Nichols" in that fucking doodle but that probably means you'd merely assume Art Nichols did the cover (if you even knew who the fuck that was). But no! This cover was by Joe Quesada and Art Nichols! Fucking Joe Quesada. How delusional do you have to be to think that a J stuck to a giant fucking rendition of Saturn would read "Joe Quesada" to anybody who didn't already fucking know that that was his pretentious signature?! I suppose if my understanding of the musculature of the human body was on Joe's level, I'd want to obfuscate my name too.

Some people who have only grown up with the Internet might not entirely understand my issue. When they first encountered an artist they really liked, they probably learned all about that artist immediately. But back in 1994, if your local comic book store owner (and the owner back then was almost always the clerk (okay, maybe not in 1994. But in the 70s and early 80s, definitely)) couldn't answer any questions you had (if you could bring yourself to actually engage them in conversation, of course), you were shit out of luck. Sure, you might send a letter to DC and then hoped they'd answer it in a future issue of the comic book that maybe you were still continuing to read. Or maybe you'd have a more knowledgeable comic book friend. But what you almost certainly didn't have was an easy way to find out answers to mysterious things. Maybe you were lucky enough to have AOL or Prodigy but was your question being answered so important that you would submit yourself to a comic book AOL chatroom? Almost certainly not! You'd just live with a mystery for awhile and hope that maybe, some day, you'd get satisfaction.

I'm definitely not saying it was better in the past! If you somehow got that out of what I just read, you're probably a bit too defensive and maybe you should relax a little bit.

And speaking of generation gaps, this cover is apparently about a generation gap! It's father vs. sun in a knockdown, drag-out battle that absolutely nobody fucking cared about! Most of us bought this issue thinking, "I hope The Ray finally buys that fridge!"

I know what the Oedipal and Electra Complexes are but what do you call it when you want to both kill and fuck your father?

The Ray is drunk on the energy he absorbed from the Light Entity. Older The Ray seems angry and violent from the energy. I'm sure once the energy dissipates, the two will have said everything they needed to say and they'll hug. And judging from the above panels, maybe they'll suck a little dick too.

Older The Ray absorbs The Ray's powers and teleports him all over the world to teach him that the world has problems that can't be solved by punching Doomsday in the throat. And they certainly can't be solved by a reckless teenager using his powers to fly to Hawaii to get laid and murder other super heroes. So Older The Ray decides he needs to take away The Ray's powers forever. I don't know how he has that kind of power and why he didn't do it when The Ray was younger so The Ray could have a regular childhood. He probably decides to do it now because he's simply an asshole. And also maybe because Zero Hour happens next issue.

Except it's all some kind of test and The Ray doesn't ever actually lose his powers. This story definitely isn't making Golden Age The Ray any fans. Was he always a gigantic asshole? Maybe Christopher Priest just believes the same thing I do: dads are kind of dicks.

Some people think the song "Cat's in the Cradle" is sad but I think it's a triumph of the spirit! Stick it to that fucking asshole old man, kid!

Finally, Older The Ray screams at The Ray about how much he sacrificed to give him a decent life while his son, The Ray, just weeps uncontrollably. Because why the fuck should the son care what the parent sacrificed when that decision cost the son so much? And the father didn't fucking care about that at all. It's just "Me me me!" and "Look what I had to go through!" and "You don't know how much I suffered!" But all the son fucking wants is his father. Nothing else fucking matters and why should it? The son is angry and hurt and upset and he doesn't need to hear his father's excuses or rationalizations or explanations as to why he wasn't there. The bottom fucking line is that he wasn't there. He was never there. And now that he is, he thinks his son somehow owes him unconditional love? Fuck that guy.

But in the end, they hug because Older The Ray maybe sort of gets it. His son just wants a father, not some guy teaching him how to be a super hero. It might be a happy ending but I'm fucking pissed. I hope Zero Hour erases Golden Age The Ray from existence!

I hope Issue #0 resolves the fridge situation.

The Ray #5 Rating: B-. I know a lot of father/son relationships never have problems. But a lot of them do. And, eventually, many of those fathers and sons work through their problems to become friends of sorts. But fuck that bullshit. I'll take on their bitterness and resentment and hatred and keep it stored safely in my cold fucking heart. I will cherish those feelings of ill will and hurt. I will become an Anger Elemental and I will makes sure that fathers everywhere never again perceive a world in which their child owes them something. They owe you fucking nothing, no matter how good or bad you were to them. Accept what they can give you and stop being a huge fucking prick, Lloyd. I mean anonymous fathers.

The Ray #4

The parking meter visual joke only works if the viewer understands the red flag reads "expired."

How do parking meters still exist?! It's 2020 and we have phones that are handheld computers which are also cameras with myriad other uses. The main thing we don't do with them is use them as a phone so why are we still calling them phones? I guess people who understand that criticism call them "handheld devices" but, I mean, my dick is a handheld device if you want to get technical about it. Also, I don't own a phone that does anything except call people. I guess it takes pictures if you don't mind taking pictures of gray blobs in gray backgrounds because 90% of the time, the lighting isn't perfect. Plus it can text but it's that kind of texting where you have to punch the number 3 three times to type the letter "I". I don't mind because I only use it for work and I try to barely use it for that.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah! Parking meters! What's up with parking meters? Do we really need antiquated free standing machines that run on coins simply to make it easy to fine people hundreds of dollars for city income? I know a lot of cities have gone to one central parking meter per block that prints tickets and accepts credit cards and runs on solar power. Or is that just Portland? I have a better system! How about we all just park on the street for free but once an hour, somebody gets a $500 ticket. It'll be like Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" except with less social commentary and more rage inducing bullshit. It makes as much sense as every other fucking thing we deal with in our so-called "civilization." Man, I wish mankind had never come down from the trees. Or been created by visitors from another galaxy. According to the History Channel, it's pretty much 50-50 one of those two things and definitely not God. The History Channel might be crazy but it's not that crazy.

Coins aren't magnetic.

I'm such a dour bastard that I scrutinized this page for a non-inconsequential amount of time determined to find some metal that Doctor Polaris shouldn't be able to manipulate.

Too bad there isn't a better word for "non-inconsequential."

If you were wondering how I rate comics as a professional critic, here's a little insight. This comic book has been a steady, average C for the first three issues. And then this panel where The Ray is mocking Doctor Polaris just popped it up to a high B and made me really like The Ray.

Some people think recognizing comic book dialogue which references Nietzsche or Shakespeare proves that they're intelligent critics. I prefer dialogue that makes me go, "Hee hee. That was so fucking stupid."

I would like to be a critic who can point out intelligent themes layered within the physical conflicts who references smart texts and quotes famous thinkers. But what am I supposed to do? Read more?! I'm a writer not a reader!

The Ray gets to the part of the story where Doctor Polaris covers The Ray head-to-toe in liquid metal. He's about to die when suddenly...

He has to pause the narration to take a shit.

Is The Ray the only DC superhero that canonically shits and jerks off?

The Ray rallies by saying, "It was time to stop being the donut in the on-deck circle." This is a reference to Navy circle jerks, right? And just like the Seaman who has finally had enough jizz launched into his face, he rises and kicks some serious ass! He defeats Doctor Polaris by using his brains instead of just his will power. Normally I prefer that kind of victory but I don't buy it with The Ray. I just don't think he's that smart even if he did write that training program I mentioned earlier. Also, he didn't really write it! He just adapted the code from an existing program. Pshaw! Anybody can do that! I used to do it to BASIC programs all the time!

While The Ray celebrates his victory, the Light Entity returns and engulfs him. It also engulfs The Ray's dad, The Ray, whom I haven't mentioned over the last three issues. See, he sometimes appears in light form to tell his son how terrible he is at superheroing. Then The Ray tells him to fuck off and that's that. Mostly I didn't know what to make of the encounters because they're too thematic and psychological and painful because Daddy? Why did you leave me alone for all those years?

But now the Light Entity has captured The Ray's father and The Ray must communicate with it so that he can convince it to spare his dad and the city of Philadelphia. And the only way to talk to it is for the Light Entity to use The Ray's memories. So the Light Entity appears as young Ray crying because his father left him. The Ray is all, "Yeah, yeah! I remember crying because my father left me too!" The Ray offers to find the Light Entity's father for him and the Light Entity agrees. After which The Ray launches the Light Entity into the sun. Yeah, that's probably its father. Good work!

After The Ray returns to Earth, he's attacked by his father. Why? Because fathers are dicks, I guess?

The Ray #4 Rating: B. The Ray still hasn't gotten around to buying a fridge so I don't know how this comic book is about buying a fridge.

The Ray #3

Doctor Doom?

I'm not too happy with my younger self right now. Not because he was a slacker who did nothing to prepare me for middle age and beyond. I'm irritated by him because he purchased six issues of The Ray and I'm now bored with it after two issues. The concept behind this comic book was "What if a young person had to buy a fridge? How would they go about doing that while also needing to pay rent and pursue a sex life? How do young people learn to be adults? And also, he has super powers! What?! I know, right?! That's going to be some crazy fridge buying!" That isn't speculation on my part (although it is in my own words). That's what Brian Augustyn wrote about this comic book in the back of Issue #1.

Oh well! I guess I just have to eat an entire bag of Sour Patch Kids, feel sick and headachey, take some aspirin and a nap, wake up, remember I need to read The Ray #3, sigh until the Non-Certified Spouse puts her headphones in, and finally open up the stupid comic book.

I mean the wonderful comic book! I forgot about my change in attitude! I love comic books! They're like no other art form!

Imagine having no lungs and trying to read aloud a sentence that ends with an exclamation point. I'm passing out just thinking about it.

The issue begins in the middle of a fight because The Ray knows to start in the middle of the story when he's writing a letter to Black Canary. I still don't know why he's writing her letters but that seems to be the narration aspect of this story. I like it better than when the narration sounds like the character is doing a DVD commentary on their recent life. It makes way more sense!

Maybe I shouldn't be so quick to move on from that thought! One of the things that really annoyed me when I returned to comic books after about an eight year break was how so many were narrated by the main character. But they weren't the thoughts of the character during the action. They were the character commenting no the action while looking back on it from some future point. Priest gets around this by having The Ray writing about his life to Black Canary. It's a fucking brilliant way to get around the nonsense of a character commenting to the reader (I guess?) about their past. This is also a good chance for me to use the word epistolary but I don't know exactly how to use it.

Earlier that week (prior to sitting down and telling Black Canary about the event in a letter), The Ray battled a guy named Death Masque. Death Masque was one of those guys really into teaching the hero something while he also tried to kill the hero. The Ray thinks he sounds like some guy trying a little too hard to be his father. Man, Star Wars cast a pretty long shadow on pop culture, didn't it?!

The battle between Death Masque and The Ray is a bit of a therapy session.

Death Masque: "Your father would be so disappointed in you!"
The Ray: "My father is dead!"
Death Masque: "I meant your real father! Not his stupid lying brother who raised you!"
The Ray: "You're not my father!"
Death Masque: "What? I never claimed to be, you fool!"
The Ray: "Rot! I was so busy getting my serve on that I failed to gaffle myself! Daddy!"

An alarm sounds and The Ray is all, "Oh shit! I have to go to work. End program!" That's right! He was battling a computer simulation that he programmed! And it's as intuitive as that therapist program on the Apple IIe from way back. You know the one that would ask you about your mother 95% of the time and hardly ever ask you about your dreams even though that was all I really wanted to talk about?

I wonder why The Ray is working at a fast food restaurant when he can program such sophisticated therapy slash battle simulation software?

The Ray heads off to work after hurting his own feelings because he's such an intuitive programmer. I guess he'll just have to battle the real Death Masque after his shift is over.

This is what a fart looks like at 20,000 feet.

Look, I don't like to concentrate on continuity errors. I love to! The Ray's suit is made out of light. But not the jacket! So how come he doesn't have his jacket on when he decides to get naked while flying through the stratosphere? Maybe it was destroyed when he was eaten by Brimstone and now it's just light too! Although, why would he fight naked under his light suit? What happens if he's knocked out in mid-fight?! Talk about embarrassing! I mean embarrassing for him! I would be all, "Hey ya! Look at my dick, Joe and Joanna Public!" I mean, I'd say that after I woke up naked in the middle of the street with everybody gawking and trying to resist jerking themselves off while looking at my beautiful man meat.

After The Ray exposes himself to everybody on the right side of the plane, he goes home to wallow in self pity and remember the time a nun caught him jerking off. Although according to Neil Gaiman, he was once told by editorial that characters in the DC Universe never jerked off. Obviously that was disproven by The Scarab since he jerks off right on panel. But that was a Vertigo title a little bit more removed from the DC Universe than even The Sandman, so I guess it was allowed. But that doesn't explain The Ray jerking off in the DC Universe! Isn't that against editorial rules?

Oh! I see. Jerking off is nonexistent in the DCU which is why neither he nor the nun can explain what he's doing! It's like The Invention of Lying but with masturbation!

While The Ray is moping about people having seen his dick, Doctor Polaris reaches out to him for help. Well, he claims he's the good half of Doctor Polaris and not the bad half. So that probably means it's not a trick or anything! If there's anybody you can trust, it's the good half of an evil person, right?

Oho! So The Ray is smarter than I was willing to give him credit for! For which I was willing to give him credit? Fuck it. I hate writing.

Nobody will help The Ray figure out if Emerson is lying to him so he decides to simply break Emerson out of prison and force him to help. But that also means he's breaking Doctor Polaris out of prison, right?! I'm so confused about this kid's thought process!

The bottom line is that The Ray fucks up and winds up allowing the "grave danger" to escape while also causing Doctor Polaris to take over Doctor Emerson's mind. So now The Ray has to battle both Doctor Polaris and a mysterious Light Entity.

The Ray #3 Rating: C+. I liked this issue a little bit better than the other issues because a nun caught The Ray masturbating. Not on panel, of course! But it was still an exciting story to learn!

The Ray #2

For $1.75 a pop, I bought a lot of comic books I probably wouldn't have otherwise.

I'm sure at the time, I was appalled at having to pay $1.75 for a normal comic book. I'll always feel regular newsprint comic books are worth seventy-five cents at best. Anything over $1.25 meant they were printed on Baxter paper without advertisements! Up until they added advertisements. And returned to regular comic book paper because what the fuck is Baxter paper anyway? Also, I realize saying that the $1.75 price allowed me to buy more comics than I otherwise would have seems outrageous when I purchased every comic book in The New 52 for years and they ran three to four dollars a piece! What was I thinking?!

Oh, I remember what I was thinking! I was thinking, "I remember loving comic books. But I don't remember why I stopped loving comic books! Maybe I'll read all of these new DC comic books where they're restarting their universe because I'm sure I'll love them like I did when I was younger!" And then I read them and found some that I did love! But I also found a bunch of them that were as near to experiencing somebody shit directly into your mouth as I can imagine (while also not having requested the shit in the mouth). When my blog began, the voice I used was full of excitement and childlike wonder! People were reading my blog and commenting, "I love this blog because it's so different from the usual edgy asshole critic on the Internet!" In a way, I wished that I could have kept that sense of wonder. But we've all read Robert Frost's poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay," (or at least heard Ponyboy recite it in The Outsiders). It's nature's hardest hue to hold! Especially when you're trying to hold it and J.T. Krul keeps bumping into you and Ann Nocenti keeps flashing weird smiles at you and Scott Lobdell keeps trying to touch your dick and Howard Mackie keeps asking, "Can you put two periods at the end of a sentence?" and Rob Liefeld reminds everybody that his art isn't bad at all if you compare it to his writing. I was trying my hardest to love comic books again but the real world kept knocking at my door and screaming, "Are you home? Is anybody here? I want to fucking remind you of how terrible it is out here!"

Fucking real world. It can go fuck itself! And I know that sounds like an awesome thing to do because I'm totally imagining myself fucking myself right now but I assure you I meant it in the worst possible way! I mean, not rape because nobody should tell somebody to go get raped. But can you be raped by yourself? I've had some weird wet dreams that I never consented to so maybe?

So in memory of the me that had yet to be groped by Scott Lobdell or shit on by Ann Nocenti (dammit. I think I just developed a new fantasy), I'm going to lose the cynicism and become, once more, a lover of comics! One can do worse than be a lover of comics! Like maybe some old jerk who still thinks fondly on destroying birch trees by swinging on them. Asshole.

Juice. This issue is called "Juice."

I've never had an opinion on the word juice until just now. Who the fuck does it think it is?! Look at the way it's spelled. That's a fucked up word. And just listen to it as it leaves your lips: "JUICE." It's practically a racial slur! I fucking hate it. I hate it so much that if a genie were to give me three wishes, I would wish for a benign brain tumor placed on just the right spot of my brain that would make me forget the word while also not allowing me to hear or read it. Right now, some of you are screaming, "Just wish the word out of existence, you idiot!" But you don't know genies! They're tricky motherfuckers! If I asked one to remove "juice" from existence, I'd probably wind up being responsible for another fucking Holocaust!

If I had an editor, they would probably tell me that I shouldn't keep both of the "juice" and "Jews" "jokes" in the previous paragraph. Maybe they'd even tell me to just forget it altogether while also maybe losing the digression into raping oneself. But that's why I don't have an editor because I'd just tell that editor to go fuck themselves and I'd be back to not having an editor!

Juice. Ugh! I'm grossing myself out now! I can't stop saying it! You can't say it without sounding revolted! Like my taxi driver in Kyoto that time when I pointed out the window by the temple and was all, "Hey! Skateboarders!" and the taxi driver glanced back at me in the rear view mirror and said, full of disgust and vitriol, "Sukatobordo."

Um, so The Ray has just run out of "juice" and it wasn't from fighting Brimstone. No, instead of battling the gigantic monster from Apokolips, the dumby decided to blast the guy helping fight the gigantic monster from Apokolips simply because he was a rude and arrogant teenage rival. Hmm, I get it. I'm 48 and I'm pretty sure I'd punch a teenager acting snarky before some guy murdering a baby within my reach.

At the end of the last issue, the narrator said that Superboy wasn't really dead but that The Ray really was out of power.

Well, the narrator is unreliable so now I'm hoping that Superboy really is dead as well.

Priest relies on some internal monologue so the reader understands what The Ray is going through. The reader needs to be reminded that he's just a teenager with godly powers and no real sense of responsibility except the vague sense that he should have some kind of responsibility. Ray The Ray keeps reminding himself, "I'm a man now!" At this moment, after knocking Brimstone into the ocean with the last of his juice, he reminds himself he's a man now and can't resort to the typical retreat of childhood: vomiting. Yeah, that's right! I said vomiting! I mean, The Ray and Christopher Priest said vomiting! Apparently vomiting is a great way for kids to react to things, according to The Ray (and maybe Priest but I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt by distancing the author's beliefs from what the character believes. Although my facial expression as I type this reads as "I just want to sound rational but I know fucking Priest thinks vomiting is some form of childhood escapism").

This isn't the kind of theory you just come up with to fill comic book script pages. This is the kind of seemingly profound observation the writer mentions to other people at cocktail parties thinking they'll nod and say, "Yeah! Yeah. That's right!" Instead, they nod and go back to their friends and say, "You'll never believe what that fucking whack-a-doodle writer said at the party last night!"

It feels like maybe Priest had loads of anxiety and a nervous disorder as a young kid which caused him to puke all the time and he learned that he could get out of difficult situations by spewing. It's as if he views the experience as voluntary! "Hmm, if I just manage to hork all over the floor, I can distract everybody from the dog I just set on fire!" And if the nervous vomiting wasn't something he learned to do on purpose, why would he think he could stop doing it just because he suddenly became a man?! "Oh no! Everything feels so overwhelming that I'm going to spew! But...but...I'm a man now! Have to hold it in!"

Brimstone gets up out of the ocean but instead of killing The Ray, it wanders off to get a beer. I think it's acting weird because in order to bring it to life, the weird little goblin guy from the first episode had to throw a souvenir shop seller into the volcano. For some reason, the Apokolips tech-seeds weren't doing the trick so it needed bolstering with a live sacrifice. But I think the person sacrificed is taking over Brimstone's mind. Probably some glitch in the way the anti-life equation works.

The Ray decides to bury Superboy (or hide his corpse, probably) while thinking about how sad he is for himself for having killed somebody and having disappointed God. He doesn't show any remorse for ending Superboy's existence. I don't know what God would think if It were real but It would probably be just as mad about The Ray not really giving a shit about the victim as It would be about The Ray murdering that victim. Maybe not. Maybe even if some humans can't understand it, an omnipotent God would probably understand that murder is worse than not showing remorse. Maybe.

But in the end, it doesn't really matter because Superboy isn't actually dead so The Ray has no reason to feel remorseful.

A second chance and The Ray didn't even have to vomit!

Superboy says "zooted" and it reminds me that the slang in this comic book is fucked up. This has to be Earth-15. Superboy also uses more conventional 90s slang like "sweating me," "rolled up," and "Holmes." I don't understand a single word he's saying! But I think he's trying to tell The Ray that they probably shouldn't be fighting even if they don't like each other because that part of the comic book where the heroes engage in physical conflict is over. Now they need to work together to stop the actual bad guy!

Maybe I don't hate Superboy so much as I hate the 90s.

The Ray tells Superboy his origin story while they both sit under the stars charging their powers. The Ray's secret origin is that he's the son of The Ray from the Freedom Fighters. That's it! That's his story! He's just a lucky shit who inherited his wealth. Fucker.

Superboy tells his origin story too but it's not recounted in this comic book. There's an editor's note telling the reader if they want to know it, they should buy the Superboy comic book. But I'm reading this 26 years later! I'm not tracking down Superboy's comic book to learn his origin! Luckily, 26 years later, there's the Internet! Also I don't really need the Internet. I know he's a clone based on Superman and Lex Luthor's DNA. It's a pretty boring origin.

After comparing earrings, they head off to stop Brimstone.

My theory about the souvenir person must be wrong. Obviously Brimstone's brain has been infected by a Looney Tunes cartoon.

Brimstone eats The Ray after Superboy smashes an orange juice tanker over Brimstone's head. He doesn't chew The Ray which is always a mistake. You always chew the small, live creature you're ingesting if you don't want it to bust out of your midsection later!

That doesn't happen this time. I mean, it sort of happens! But The Ray busting out of Brimstone isn't what stops him. Superboy douses him with a tanker of liquid nitrogen which turns him into a huge statue. Only then does The Ray come busting out with the Looney Tunes hacked techno-seed. The government takes the seed, The Ray tells Superboy he'll smell him later, and Superboy pouts off to who cares. Later we learn that The Ray isn't a comic book writer or a journalist. He's just writing a letter about his day to Dinah Lance. Hey! That's Black Canary! I just read some of her comics!

The Ray #2 Rating: C. If this comic book is supposed to be about a teenager learning to be a responsible adult while also dealing with god-like powers, I don't get it. So far, he's just done the same thing any superhero would have done. Fought a beast from Apokolips. Teamed up with another hero (after battling each other first). Spoke weird fucking slang. Oh! I see! That's the part that makes him seem like a teenager! He says cool words like Boffo and Zork! The Ray also comes from a religious background so the story is saddled with all of those theological trappings. It would be less annoying if we didn't already live in a world where everybody sees God in everything even though the physical manifestation of this world holds no place in it for paranormal trappings. I don't mind God being in the DC Universe though because it makes sense. But I just got done watching The Outsider on HBO and I'm running low on my "just fucking ignore all the God talk" tank. It would be amusing if it wasn't so infuriating how people always harp on about atheists never shutting up about their atheism when it's actually the other way around. More atheists should be as vocal as religious people just to make things even. I mean fuck. We even have In God We Trust on our fucking money! But then why should I expect anything different from this comic book? It's written by a guy who legally changed his name to Priest!

The Ray #1

In 1994, I had no idea who Christopher Priest and Howard Porter were so I have no idea why I purchased this comic book.

Although (continuing the thought from the caption which is just me saying, "Fuck the format! I can do what I want!") I was in my early 20s in 1994 so I was probably into that edgy fascination with freaks and body deformity. I hadn't seen Tod Browning's Freaks yet but I'm sure I would have jumped at the chance if I'd known about it. It's the only reason I can figure why I bought a comic book about a character I knew nothing about. Because it looks like he's a hero with a deformed baby leg. I probably picked it up off the shelf and yelled, "Fuckin' A, dude! Look at this ganky bastich!" It was 1994 so obviously I was emulating Lobo in my every day life.

Some of you might be thinking, "Ugh! You're so gross and problematic!" But I'm just being honest! I was a young man, masking like crazy in order to hide my vulnerabilities so I wouldn't be crushed by social interactions and existential threats to my psyche. I had to act tough to survive the crazy streets of Santa Clara, California! Back then, Silicon Valley wasn't like it is now! In 1994, hulking techno-nerds were roaming the streets with razor sharp circuit boards looking to cut the genitals off of anybody who criticized the Neo-Geo CD home gaming console. If you looked at them funny, they'd challenge you to a game of Cyberball and you'd better hope you won because they were also obsessed with Mortal Combat and if you lost, the last thing you'd hear would be a bunch of techno-nerds screaming "Finish him!" before you found yourself upside down gagging on the filthy water of an unflushed public toilet. The early nineties were some rough years! Especially when you were into heavy metal! People think grunge and rap killed metal but think about what people thought was "rock and roll" during the early 90s: Warrant's "Cherry Pie" and Extreme's "More Than Words." I mean, Feetal's Gizz! Metal was dead long before grunge and rap came by to fill its grave.

Anyway, you could totally be into freaks in the early 90s because the Internet didn't exist so your opinions weren't reaching anybody outside your small circle of friends. All the other people of the world who didn't know you at all didn't have a way to tell you you were a piece of shit because of one single thing that comprised the myriad facts of who you were. Fuck you, Internet!

No, no! I'm sorry! Don't be mad at me, Internet! I can't live without you!

Also, maybe I just bought this comic book because the cover was shiny and embossed and growing up in Santa Clara was so boring that it made this comic book looked exciting.

The issue begins with The Ray battling Brimstone. Remember him from Legends?

Brimstone is as big as Godzilla and he's already killed hundreds of people, judging by the apartment buildings he's smashed.

I don't know who The Ray is or where he's from. What part of the United States of America uses slang like "gaffle," "put my serve on," "zoom this buster," "bone out," "feebs," and "rot." Is this just Christopher Priest trying to mimic youth speak? I would expect this kind of thing from an aging comic book writer like current Neal Adams but Priest was in his early thirties when he wrote this. Maybe The Ray is from another Earth and Priest's theory was that slang words would obviously differ between Earths. But not so much that you couldn't get the gist of what he's saying. Except for "gaffle." I don't know what the fuck he wants to do to Brimstone when he says he's going to gaffle him. I know what I would mean by it but that doesn't seem appropriate in this situation.

Oh wait. The Ray was just writing fan-fiction about himself.

So the Brimstone fight didn't really happen. Or it did happen but The Ray is using it as fodder to write comic books about himself. So he's like Clark Kent writing articles about Superman? At least writing comic book stories about your own adventures isn't unethical. Fucking Clark Kent. What kind of a journalist uses his soap box to simply promote himself? No wait. Journalists fucking suck. I despise journalists for the same reason I despise police officers. If you're just letting your profession go to shit because a bunch of people are abusing their positions of power and not actually doing the public service they're supposed to be doing, you're just as bad as the worst apple in the barrel. There's a reason that whole apple/barrel thing is still a saying even though nobody really associates apples with barrels anymore.

Maybe The Ray isn't writing comic books although it seems like the super edgy postmodern take a writer in the 90s would think was fucking mind blowing. We got Kyle Rayner, comic book artist, as the new Green Lantern. Why shouldn't we also get a comic book writer in there as well? Or The Ray might just be writing stories for his college paper which would mean he's just as unethical and terrible as Clark Kent, I suppose. But in an amateurish way.

The Ray (whose name is Ray Terrill so it was lucky he got light-based powers) stops trying to write and decides to tell the readers about the last few days. He's a young guy who works at a fast food chicken joint and has just leased his first apartment. It's a piece of shit with some garbage and/or artistic sculpture in the middle of the room but he doesn't have any credit or money so he's stuck with it. I bet there are corpses under the floor boards as well as other things too boring to mention (but which I'll mention anyway) like rats and cockroaches and dried semen stains.

This is Ray's narration of the place which I read after I wrote the previous paragraph. Was I writing comics and named Christopher Priest in 1994?

The Ray spends all day handing out flyers to Clucky Chicken while standing right outside Clucky Chicken. Is that what flyers are for? To remind people about the thing they can totally see right in front of them? I guess they could be coupons. While he's handing out flyers, his super cool cousin Hank stops by to gaffle some swang all up in through him.

This must be Earth-15 where they say things like "Yo trip dat frum, golderboots!" and "Swank on into my PQs, Flub Daddy!"

The Ray is disappointed that he's a man now because responsibility sucks. Kids can't stand curfews and rules but man is it sweet to be able to come and go as you please (within curfew, of course!) while doing whatever the fuck you want and not worrying about money for food or rent. The Ray can't even fuck his girlfriend because she saw him in the chicken suit and is all, "Oh, um, I just came by to say I can't come by! Bye!"

The Ray can travel at the speed of light anywhere he wants while carrying other people. That makes sense because comic books. He takes his cousin Hank Fonzerelli to see a volcano shaped like a hand in Hawaii only to discover that it's another Brimstone. It's activated by a henchman of Darkseid while The Ray and Hank are checking out a surf competition or a luau. It's at this point when The Ray gets back to the beginning of the story where he was failing to stop Brimstone from destroying a city. As he picks the story back up, Superboy arrives to save the day. Not the boring Superboy who used to be Superman and learned a terrible secret about himself on his sixteenth birthday about an extra candle. The new Superboy who arrived on the scene after Superman died. He might also be boring but I wouldn't know having never read any comic books about him.

The new Superboy is an arrogant dick and The Ray hates him. That's probably why The Ray winds up killing him. Or he thinks he killed him. Everybody reading the comic book probably thought The Ray killed him too (because we were all dumb-dumbs who actually believed DC Comics had killed Superman off for good. Why wouldn't they?! He was a big boring boy scout whose powers kept fluctuating because editors and writers thought the problem with writing Superman stories was that he was too powerful. But the real problem with writing Superman stories was that those same writers and editors were unimaginative assholes who didn't actually understand Superman. Why else would Superman have died from a fist fight?! Seriously, Dan Jurgens. What were you thinking?! Superman should never have been killed because he encountered something more powerful that could just beat the shit out of him. Superman should have been killed because of a philosophical or ethical dilemma where he realized the only way to save the world was to allow himself to die. He should have been Jesus but instead he was just Apollo Creed. Who I think was a metaphor for John the Baptist?

The issue ends with the narrator letting the readers know that Superboy isn't actually dead and why would the idiots think he'd be killed in The Ray when he was currently starring in his own popular monthly comic book? Stupid dumb comic book readers! But the narrator also mentions that The Ray is out of power (I didn't know he had to recharge) and Brimstone is kind of mad. Then he's all, "If we were you," (I don't think a proper editor in 1994 would have allowed a writer to use the plural pronoun "we" as a non-specific gender singular pronoun so now I'm picturing the narrator as a small group of old people), "We'd be back here in 30 days!" And I guess 22 year old me agreed with them because I purchased Issue #2.

The Ray #1 Rating: C. C is average, right? I didn't find anything I particularly loved about this issue but I also didn't find anything I absolutely hated. Except for Superboy but I think I was supposed to hate him so that's a positive critique. I probably purchased the next issue because I wanted to find out what happens to Hank Fonzerelli. What a cool dude!

The letters pages don't have any letters but it does have a story by Brian Augustyn about how Christopher Priest changed his name from Jim Owsley. It also explains that Priest's idea for The Ray was to have a teenager suddenly have to deal with god-like powers while still being a teenager. I think before this that was called "Spider-man". Except for the god-like powers! Those were more spider-like powers.