Detective Comics #52

Ugh! Thanks for reminding me of Tony S. Daniel's horrible run on this comic book when The New 52 began! Now I have to scrub vomit and shit out of my clothing.

The Review or Whatever
I was in Seattle for a few days which is why you weren't graced by my Internet presence and were probably suffering from withdrawals. You were probably thinking, "Why have I stopped understanding comic books lately? Wasn't there a blog with a stupid name where I could go for penetrating insights and tired dick jokes?" That was me! Remember?! Me! I'm back! I hope nobody forgot about me over the last four days! Stupid modern short attention spans. It's so hard to stay relevant!

I was in Seattle with some friends rocking the faces off of everybody who found themselves in our orbit. They kept coming up to us and saying things like "I want to be your friend!" or "I'm going to hang out at this table!" or "Everybody else is boring and annoying compared to you!" and "Oh! Oh! You guys like me because I sang 'The Final Countdown'?! What if I sing Journey next? Would you like that? Please say you'll like that! NNNNEEEEERRRRRDDDDSSSS!" (That last example screamed "NERDS!" because he looked like that guy from the movie Revenge of the Nerds and not because he realized we were nerds.) I suppose there were a whole host of jealous haters who kept thinking things like "Fucking dicks. I was the popular douchebro who sings rap in this karaoke bar!" or "How is that three person team doing so well at bar trivia while obviously not paying any fucking attention to anything and enjoying life so much?!" or "Why didn't they agree to be my friend when I spent so much time begging them?!"

My favorite moment of the weekend which will keep my going for a few more weeks before I find everything drab and worthless again was when I ran into another Geeks Who Drink Trivia player at the bar while we were both exchanging our free beer cards. He mentioned our team by name (Snake Titties) while talking about the competition and I said, "I don't know. We got two perfect rounds in the first three rounds and we're in fucking third!" He then turned to look directly at me and said in a hushed and awed tone, "You're in Snake Titties?" Yes, peon. Yes, I am.

It's also possible he took one look at me and was just utterly shocked that I would know anything at all. I'd have to say that's a fair assessment too.

Before I get to Detective Comics #52, I'd like to send a shout out to Money Mike at the Tarasco Karaoke Night who celebrated his 51st birthday! It's nice to see that even at 51 years old, people can still throw tantrums! Also cake! Way to throw your birthday cake all over the bar! How do you get to be 51 years old and not realize how important cake is?! What a waste.

Anyway, I don't know what was happening in Detective Comics because it was about Jim Gordon and I didn't want to remember it. I think it was some kind of Three Kings story line but with less gold and more mummies and cult members and ancient gods.

This is the guy Jim will be fighting in the big boss battle. He's a mummy wrapped in human jerky.

Batcommissioner battles Human Jerky Mummy for a few pages and I begin to worry that this story won't ever end! But then I remember that Detective Comics is renumbering back to its original numbering system and there's no way they'll do that in the middle of a story. Especially one as mediocre as this. I wonder if I'm missing some important theme to this thing. Brotherhood among modern warriors? The dangers of death cults? Possibly something about how terrible U.S. foreign policy is?

How weird is DC's need to renumber Action Comics and Detective Comics so that they can make history by having the first comic books to make it to #1000? It feels really unsatisfying knowing that your collection of Detective Comics comic books suddenly revert to #1-52 somewhere in the late 800s. And then suddenly it's in the 900s! You know what DC Comics should do? They should rerelease all of the New 52 Action and Detective Comics with the proper numbering on the cover! Or maybe they should sell a book of stickers so you can renumber them yourself!

If Rebirth is basically going to do what I figure it's going to do (which is reestablish all DC stories as canon and restore all continuity while still leaving The New 52 Universe the basic universe (only different now! Somehow! Or something!)), renumbering Action and Detective is a good call. It's symbolic of returning all of that lost history to the characters. Not that it ever mattered to me! I still know when I read Batman that he once knocked out Guy Gardner with one punch to the face. All of that shit will always be part of every character I read, no matter how DC explains it. They can't tell me how to experience my life! You hear me, DC Comics?! You can't retcon my life!

Detective Comics #42

This cover is too artsy for me. And by "artsy," I mean "incomprehensible." And by "me," I mean stupid dumb idiot moron.

If Harvey Bullock is now the main character of Detective Comics, shouldn't Harvey Bullock be on the cover? Does DC Comics have an issue with putting fat slobs on the cover? Oh, don't get your twisters in a knick! I mean Harvey is both fat and a slob not that all fat people are slobs. I suppose if Harvey were on the cover, some people might pick this comic book up thinking it's the new issue of Section Eight.

Last issue ended with Montoya, Yip, and Bullock rushing off to save Commissioner Batman's ass. Only one of those three officers to the rescue do not currently have cum dripping down the inside of their leg.

Commissioner Batman is having trouble battling bad guys in skeleton costumes with automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenades. Such an amateur. He's going to have a new found respect for Batman when Batman comes back. Maybe that's Batman's plan! The Gotham Police will see firsthand just how super duper expensive it can be to battle the real threats to Gotham City. When he finally returns, they'll be all, "Oh yeah, buddy! You can go back to being a vigilante as long as you pick up the tab. Mad respect for however you please Bruce Wayne on a regular basis to convince him to pay for all the battle gear you blow up each week and all the explosives (non-lethal, of course!) you use! You must be real nice to him, right? Wink wink! Nudge nudge. Coughhomocough." I imagine Gotham Cops aren't very subtle and spend most of their time either calling another cop gay or protesting that they're not gay after another cop called them gay.

The skeleton gang fail to kill Commissioner Batman (which it seems was the whole point of the attack) but they do put the Honey Bunny Bat Armor out of commission by shooting out its knee joints. So for the cost of two bullets, Commissioner Batman's armor needs to go back to the shop for what will probably be millions of dollars in repairs. I think the Skeleton Gang wins this round.

Since returning to the Gotham Police Department, Renee Montoya has noticed that there are an awful lot of dirty cops.

I wonder what impressed Yip the most about Bullock? His gruff, no-nonsense attitude, or the smell of the litter box in the middle of his studio apartment?

Later that night, Jim Gordon stops by to pout. "Nobody likes me," he says. "They all think I'm stupid," he says. "They're all laughing at me," he says. "If Batman comes back, he's going to kick my ass for turning him into a laughingstock," he says. All of those things are true, especially the last one. Bullock just listens and drinks his beers and says, "You know I'm fucking Yip, right? A real woman?"

The backup Batman team of Yip, Montoya, and Bullock stand around waiting for Commissioner Batman to fuck up so they can swoop in and delay the bad guys until Alvarez and Keyes show up. Yip goes off to get some coffee and hops immediately on the phone. Bullock says to Renee, "You know I'm fucking Yip, right? A real woman? And I never get to do that so could you check on this number that keeps calling her cell phone because I don't want somebody else fucking Yip because then she might stop letting me fuck her." And Renee is all, "You realize how Yip is always the object of the sentence when you talk about the two of you fucking, right? You know she's also fucking you, right? The only difference is she'd probably never tell anybody about it." So now Renee is going to find out that Yip is in contact with cop killers!

The Skeleton Crew ambush Commissioner Batman and short circuit his suit. So he gets out of his suit to fight them hand to hand. It's a good thing the armor release mechanism is manually activated! Or a bad thing because Jim is probably going to get his ass kicked next issue.

Detective Comics #42 Rating: -1 Ranking. I like the interactions between Montoya and Bullock but they're too short and not often enough. Like last issue, it didn't feel like there was really a lot going on. The "Yip is a Dirty Rat Cop" plot continues to slowly slouch toward the story that was already told in the Sneak Peek. I have a feeling the whole point of the Sneak Peek was to make the reader think the other cops discover Yip's dirty secret and are forced to kill her on duty to make it look like an accident. But it has to be misdirection or else it means almost nothing except to make these current issues of Detective Comics without tension. So the Backup Batcrew will probably discover Yip is betraying the Gotham Police but they'll find out that she's being extorted or blackmailed. Whatever the case, it'll be against her will. And the only way to get the bad guys off of her case is to fake her own death. Aside from the Sneak Peek kind of ruining the pacing of Detective Comics if what it portrayed was true (and even if it is a fake death scene, Detective Comics is currently a kind of boring slog (except for Harvey and Renee!)), it's also impossible to believe that Harvey, Renee, and Jim would murder a fellow cop. And that being the case, there's just no tension in this whole "Yip is Dirty" plot. And I don't mean she's dirty because she's banging Harvey! Oh!