Court of Owls #1

All I want for Court of Owls Christmas is to find out when they started. And why! And how! And by whom!

Since the Court of Owls are a new threat to Batman's precious Gotham City, I don't have to do a Who's Who entry on them! Suck it, God!

The issue begins in Gotham City in 1974. I know that isn't when the Court began! It began at least ten years earlier! Maybe more even! The Narration Boxes are black with white font which, I suspect, means it's a Talon narrating. It could also be the most selfish, oldest, most rubber mask wearingest member of the Court of Owls. He's called the Grandmaster and he can't stand meddling kids.

Since the first Narration Box says, "I like to see imagine their faces when it happens," it proves two things: it's not a Talon talking because a Talon would get to see the non-believer's face and I tend to jump the gun when commenting on the story. Instead of actually getting into the mood and reading even the first fucking page, I start commenting on the color of the typeface! I wonder if this habit can be tied to the reason my mother was constantly screaming at me?

That makes me think of an assignment one of my grade school teachers handed out one day that was a great big fucking trick to play on elementary school kids. She passed around some ditto sheets (yes, dittos! Not copies! Not printed pages! Fucking mimeographed dittos!) that had a numbered list on it. Above the numbered list was a paragraph that said some shit and said to read all the directions before continuing. What that meant was to read over the entire list because the last item on the list said to ignore all of the others which had you marking up the page. But to an elementary school kid who is given tests all the fucking time, the instructions to the test are at the top and the numbered points the questions. So if it said to read all the instructions, not one fucking kid was going to read "all the questions" on the page. It was a big fucking trick by changing up the paradigm they'd hammered into us day in and day out up until that moment.

Of course, it may have been the best lessons I learned in my whole school career and I learned it early. Don't fucking trust teachers. Teachers are smart ass dicks. Tests are bullshit. And following instructions is all they ever wanted out of any of us. Bastards!

The Court of Owls thrive on a neutral Gotham, neither too chaotic nor too lawful. But at the news of Batman's possible death, the city has fallen apart.

Look at the thug stealing the printer! "MY DATABASES NEED TO BE ORGANIZED!"

While the streets run unread with illiterate assholes, Daddy Owl tells Daughter Owl a story about the Court of Owls that took place in 1914. Still too late! I want early stories! I want the fucking beginning already!

The mayor that year was elected on a populist ticket and now he's trying to bring in a bunch of unions to set up shop in Gotham. But the Court has different ideas, of course. They can't allow any power shifts that weren't expressly their idea. Because they like to wield the power! Owls are the most power hungry bird of the animal kingdom! Besides the penguin.

That's what he said! WHO?! Oh wait! I get it. That's supposed to be intimidating.

The mayor does what the Court wants the Owls still wind up killing him by throwing him in their labyrinth. Hmm. How exactly does a labyrinth fit into the theme of the Court of Owls? I don't think owls like labyrinths, so it must be a metaphor for the bureaucracy of the courts system. So he's dead! The Owls win! Yay! Next story!

"No, no dear. It's "WHO?" You never were the brightest owlet in the nest."

The next story takes place in 1891. That's getting better! But in 1914, Owl Orchards said they'd been in power for centuries. So we're still at least 100 years away from the Owls true origin!

In this story, a photographer and his wife are killed because he took a picture of the owls sitting about in their masks watching 19th Century pornography. I think that's composed of a man in a full wool bathing suit showing his flaccid bulge through the cloth while a fully clothed woman with bare wrists holds up a sign that says, "Tallywacker."

The next story takes place in The Narrows in 1862 and features a familiar face!

I guess the Owls can't control everything. Although they are pretty good at secrecy and manipulation. So I bet they actually wanted this member of the Court killed which is why they sent him to rein in The Gotham Butcher.

Eventually The Gotham Butcher is put down and the Court of Owls rise up stronger and blah blah blah. I get it! The Owls are motherfucking Goddamned awesome! Get to the point of the story! Get to the beginning and the only thing that can save the Court at a time like this when Gotham is being burnt to the ground!

How cute! The Court of Owls have a First just like Slayers and Vampires do! Now open the fucking door and tell your little girl how it all began! DO IT! DO IT NOW!

But he doesn't do it. His daughter does kill the jerk with the crossbow trying to stop The Court from UNLEASHING the First Talon on Gotham. So Daddy Owl opens the door and gazes upon the tomb of the First Talon. And then the issue ends.

The Court of Owls #1 Rating: You know, it was a pretty good issue up until the part where it failed to tell me anything new about the Court. I enjoyed the writing and the daddy/daughter dynamic and the little stories. But I learned nothing new except that there was a First Talon. And guess what? I'm pretty sure I could have fucking extrapolated that knowledge. I'm not a genius but I know counting things usually begins with one! Unless you're counting by twos or threes or something. And guess where the First Talon will be making his appearance to help clean up Gotham City? Earth 2! No, no. Of course not! Oh, but that makes me wonder: is there a Court of Owls on Earth 2?! Anyway, The First Talon will be sure to bore your fucking socks off in "the pages of Talon!"

Talon #7

This Court of Owls shit is still going on?

Last issue, everybody learned that Sebastian Clark was the Grandmaster of the Court of Owls during the Night of the Owls. He was also the one to recruit Calvin Rose. For all the other people like me that have trouble with names, Sebastian Clark is the old man and Calvin Rose is the good Talon. Calvin Rose also has a girlfriend by the name of Fuck If I Know. But Calvin Rose is too busy to deal with that betrayal right now. He's got an island to blow up. But he kind of needs to hurry because Sebastian caught his girlfriend learning secrets she shouldn't aught to have learned.

This is how the current Grandmaster of the Court of Owls has Calvin secured. Ha ha! Amateur! I could get out of those bonds!

Not only does Calvin Rose have an overabundance of expertise to free himself from these paltry manacles, he has a man on the inside now! Baby Talon turns on Daddy Talon and Grandaddy Talon, just like Grandaddy Talon always knew he would because Baby Talon is a weak, fucked-up, piece of shit, no good pussy. Talon and Baby Talon best the elder Talons and Calvin sets off the bomb at the base of Securitus Tower. This causes the computers to wipe their own memory and an escape pod fires up. Hey! ESCAPE pod!? I bet I know who's going to be riding that thing to freedom!

See? That teeny, tiny figure is Calvin Rose! The Court of Owls current Grandmaster is inside.

Back at Sebastian Clark's headquarters, Sebastian tries to lock Casey (that's her name!) away in the Aztec Tomb, one of Calvin's tricks illusions. But Casey ends up locking Sebastian in the pantry where The Aztec Tomb is kept because she's a computer expert and a paranoid genius.

His partner is Bane. I figured that out myself. I'm like Sherlock Holmes and shit.

Casey and her daughter pack up and leave the compound. I hope her daughter is good at self-defense because there might just be a Gotham Butcher waiting outside.

As Calvin hurries home to save Casey because she's female and therefore must need saving (do the math!), he's intercepted by The Goddamned Batman. Batman lectures him for a bit about how Gotham is Batman's home and Owls are stupid because they eat bats and there's no way in hell an owl-type person can operate in Batman's city because Batman will be fucked if he allows Gotham to ever love somebody else again. The whole scene reveals Batman's huge insecurity problem. And then I turn the page and laugh out loud by Calvin's reaction.

I think Calvin and I might be cut from the same cheesecloth.

Batman clasps the Waynetech Inescape 3000 Megacuffs on to Talon's wrists, assuring him that even he, Bruce Wayne...er, Batman, couldn't escape from them! Which means it takes Calvin exactly one panel to be free and running for his life. Batman loses him because how can even The Goddamned Batman keep the most escapiest man in the world secure?

Calvin runs straight to Sebastian's hideout to rescue Casey and runs smack dab into Bane's meaty fists.

Good thing his teeth are full of resurrection fluid!

Talon #7 Rating: +1 Ranking. This issue was excellent in the amount of Aquaman it didn't have. Also, I can't believe they're actually going to kill Calvin Rose! I know that would make him a practically immortal escaping and killing machine whose only kryptonite is drinking a slurpee too quickly but the main draw of this comic is that he can escape shit and he's a man Talon instead of a corpse Talon! And Casey isn't going to want to have sex with him anymore either. So my guess is that Calvin Rose escapes death in the next issue!

Talon #5

Ugh. No more Court of Owls!

If I were to give up one comic book in The New 52, it would be this one. It's not because of the quality. There are far worse comic books than this one that I'm currently reading. But I'm just so fucking sick of the Court of Owls. I'm just not interested in them anymore! And because they're supposed to be some kind of super mega-evil syndicate whose influences reach across all space and time, I don't see them going anywhere any time soon. If only Calvin Rose could defeat them and move on with his life to fight petty criminals like Night Rat or Garter Snake, maybe even Tiny Poodle. But until that happens, it's just going to be Court of Owls, Talons, Escape, Court of Owls, Talons, Escape, ad nauseum.

Before I could begin my ramblings about how Batman should have his little bat hairs in a bunch over this Talon shit going on around him, I picked up the comic to see that Batman has his little bat hairs in a bunch over this Talon shit. He's trying to get Nightwing interested too but Nightwing's not biting.

Well, not at first he isn't. I supposed Dick recognizes him from his associations with Haly's Circus.

Calvin and Casey and her daughter have settled down in Gotham City since the battle with the Gotham Butcher. It's taken two weeks for Calvin to heal but now he's ready to start his crusade again and Casey wants to help. They're ready to destroy Securitus, Casey's father's company that the Court of Owls took over. Taking over the company was the reason they wanted her and her daughter killed, so nobody would step forward claiming a right to the company. But now it's one of the Court's biggest assets and Sebastian believes it should be their next target and Casey has no problem destroying it. As long as the Court of Owls can't have it, she'll be satisfied.

The Gotham Butcher has also returned to Gotham to hunt down Calvin Rose. I thought he'd be out of the action for a few issues at least. If he fails, what will the Court of Owls do next? This was their most vile Talon of all! They've blown their load on this guy. I guess that's a good thing for me! Get rid of this asshole and maybe the Court of Owls disappears and Calvin Rose has to begin dealing with bad guys like The Owl Pellet and Feral Cat.

Or maybe the Court will piss The Butcher off themselves and he'll turn on them! If only John Constantine were here to get that ball rolling.

The Securitus building is a towering glacier-like structure located in Gotham Harbor. It's different from the squat glacier-like structure located in Gotham Harbor which is the Iceberg Casino. It's impenetrable. Electrified surfaces. Turbines under the water that drag down any ship getting too close. DNA recognition alarms. The inside layout is a complete mystery. Casey's father was about as loony as Mrs. Winchester, it seems. But Casey's father's ghosts were real. And they weren't ghosts. They were owls!

You know, since that wasn't a revelation to anyone, I think I just wasted an exclamation point.

While Casey is telling the story, she says something that Calvin picks up on which makes it sound like they aren't going to have to break in after all (well, maybe a little bit!). Her father designed the computers to complete wipe themselves if the place were bombed. So that's all Calvin needs to do! Drop a bomb!

Meanwhile The Butcher of Gotham relieves some stress.

Once Talon's plan is set in motion, it makes me think he might have to set the bomb off from inside. He manages to swim through the undertow creating turbines while they're off by hitching an underwater tow ride underneath a Securitus Boat headed toward the island.

I wish I had a story about how I once infiltrated a high security building with my elite Escaperotomy Skills but the closest I've ever come to that is drunkenly sneaking past trucks picking up grain at a factory in Los Banos one night, sneaking up the side of the building to enter the factory on the catwalks above the darkness, and running off with a fire extinguisher. Ocean's 11 it was not. I guess I also climbed over the wrought-iron spiked fence of the Carmelite Monastery in Santa Clara (which I grew up directly across the street from) and padded about their library. That, also, was a drunken escapade. Go figure.

Anyway, things don't work out so great for Calvin Rose.

I'm glad the Carmelites didn't have this kind of security.

Talon #5 Rating: No change. I keep hoping something will ignite my interest in this comic. But until then, I can't really judge it one way or the other. It isn't bad, so I won't drop it in ranks. And it might be good, but I just don't care.

Talon #3

Since he's in New York, there's an 85% chance Talon ends up fighting The Teen Titans.

I don't really think Talon will end up fighting the Teen Titans because there's no mention of the Teen Titans on the cover. And DC wouldn't pass up a chance to sell more comic books by announcing Red Robin or Kid Flash was going to guest star. And since Scott Snyder would probably have to make sure he keeps continuity, he'd have to have a meeting with Scott Lobdell. That's probably reason enough not to have them in the comic book.

I asked Lord Google if he had any information on Scott Lobdell and Scott Snyder interacting with each other and he had an article where Lobdell praises the hell out of Scott Snyder. But that wasn't the part I found fascinating. I found a few quotes from Lobdell himself that pretty much explain why his writing is so shitty.

Scott Lobdell: "Because I am one of those writers who writes plot first and then scripts only after the page arrives...."

And...

Huffpo: "So do you have long term plans for the book?"
Scott Lobdell: "I don't work that way. Just like I could not have imagined a year ago that I'd be writing the world's most famous super hero... I like the stories of the characters to mirror the same sense of spontaneity and unpredictability that define us in 'real life.'"
Scott Lobdell: "Just imagine how boring it would be if you sat down and told me exactly how your life was going to play out every month for the next 12 months -- who you were going to meet, what you were going to say, how they were going to act, what super powers you were going to use to defeat them? Then imagine the likelihood that your life would play out exactly the way you predicted it would over the course of the next twelve months."

This is why Scott Lobdell's stories suck. I speculated that he just starts over from month to month with each script and I was correct. He has no plans for the characters! But it's even worse than that! He doesn't script the comic until the art is done based off of his plots? No wonder his comics are filled with Narration Boxes to explain everything. Because Narration Boxes basically work to regurgitate his plot synopsis he handed to the writers.

I'm agog at his excuse for not planning out stories though. He's writing so that he can be surprised by the story every month! You can plan a fucking story out, you stupid asshole, and the readers will still be surprised twelve months later even if you had the whole thing planned from the beginning! His defense is so fucking illogical. He's not spontaneous; he's just fucking lazy.

Sorry, Talon. I didn't mean to get off track but once I start in on Scott Lobdell, it's kind of hard to pull myself away.

First off, are there really people out there who AREN'T tired of the Court of Owls? People desperate for just a little bit more history? I think Calvin Rose might be an interesting character once he's finished off the Court. But I don't see that ever happening in the life of this comic book.

Calvin Rose has come to New York to make sure Casey and Sarah are safe. So he's sent her a message to meet him on the Brooklyn Bridge. You know, to make sure she's safe. It's not as if meeting up with her after he's pissed off the Court of Owls is at all dangerous. Maybe he should just leave her alone? I don't know. It's a thought. Anway, Casey is smart enough not to meet him. Instead he meets up with Joey and his girlfriend.

I don't know who Joey is but since he's starting a fight with Talon, he's probably a friend.

While Calvin is strung up, the woman checks him out and discovers his Talon costume underneath. She mentions they were warned that a Talon might interfere. So they're friends! Casey must have hired some super powered bodyguards. I hope they're old enemies of the Preboot Teen Titans. They just seem to have that vibe. Plus they're in New York. Calvin ends up unconscious from a dart to the neck and wakes up in the hands of some thugs.

I guess if you go with a snake theme, you're automatically associated with Basilisk. Unless you're working for Medusa! Or maybe Kobra!

These are Casey's people and she eventually shows her face. The reason why the snake guy worked for Basilisk is because he used to work for Basilisk! I mean, he's here now because Casey runs an organization that houses people on the run from horrible organizations! I guess that makes them all safer, right? Safety in numbers? But doesn't that also mean that every evil organization in the DC Universe is constantly attacking them? I suppose they're super underground and nobody knows about them. Although when has "secret" or "covert" or "underground" ever meant anything to anybody in the DCnU? My guess is they'll be attacked by the Atlanteans later.

I hope they don't have anyone from N.O.W.H.E.R.E. because who needs Harvest sticking his vampire face in this comic book too.

Speaking of Harvest, it's been a few commentaries since I've mentioned how he's Future Vampire Tim Drake from the Future!

Rose and Clark are kind of forced into accepting Casey's help with their attack on more of the Court of Owl's finances. It's probably a good idea because Calvin Rose can only get lucky surviving against the undead Talons so many times before I declare this comic book unrealistic! My limits aren't infinite! A secret organization running Gotham for four hundred or more years? Believable! Resurrecting their assassins because they've fed them a life long mixture of Resurrection Juice through the fillings in their teeth? Sure, why not?! Once they're brought back to life they're practically immortal unless their brains are frozen, cracked into a million pieces, and then the pieces are scattered across the world? Totes believable. Some jack-ass escapapediest going around defeating these immortal killing machines with only the help of an old man nagging him in his earpiece? No way! That's fucking crossing the line. Reality check!

My dad and I were watching Aliens one night many, many years ago with my step-mother coming in and out of the room watching bits and pieces of it. When Forklift Mecha Ripley begins fighting the mother alien at the end, my step-mother just said, "If she survives, this movie is unrealistic." I guess suspension of disbelief is like a well that just eventually empties if the the fiction goes back to it too many times. "An alien parasite? Why not? One woman survives? Sure. A whole army squad fighting an army of aliens? Crazy but I'm in! The aliens are wiped out but the egg laying mother is left to fight the mother fucking bad ass Ripley? Sure but if Ripley lives, I'm done."

Although this whole Talon business is really straining my credulity!

The resurrection process is so effective that they can speak rationally and hold down jobs. I wonder if they can marry and have children? Is rekilling one of these guys murder?

The whole heist goes off without a hitch. Mostly. Mostly goes off without a hitch. Fake hold up and fake police distract the Talon downstairs. Calvin Rose gets in upstairs in disguise where Joey meets him (from a ceiling vent or something. Who cares how he got in!) with Rose's Talon costume. Talon hacks the computers and the Court of Owls' accounts are nearly drained when that thing takes place that makes it a "mostly works" kind of plan.

Calvin Rose meet The Gotham Butcher!

Talon #3 Rating: No change. A comic book with a shallow premise like this one has to be careful when introducing new characters and new ideas into the comic book. Casey's organization makes for a much more interesting comic book idea, I think. I'm pretty sure they'll become an integral part of this title though so that's definitely a positive side to this thing. Calvin Rose's Talon has the backing of an organization that lets him continue his work once the Court of Owls have been defeated. He can infiltrate N.O.W.H.E.R.E. and The League of Assassins and The Black Razors and Task Force X and Checkmate and A.R.G.U.S. and A.M.M.O. and S.H.A.D.E. and Stormwatch! Maybe he can go around discovering the secret identities of all of the super heroes and causing trouble that way. Maybe that's what Constantine's New 52 comic book is going to be about seeing as how he's collecting so much material on the Super Heroes over in his little House of Mystery office.