Deadman #4 (May 2002)

Mignola out here making this comic seem way more interesting than it actually is.

I shouldn't point to Mike Mignola as the reason I stopped reading this comic book but I will anyway. The last cover made me think, "This is going to be fucking incredible!" And then the story had nothing to do with Mignola's cover. And now this one? Look at this shit! What's this about? What strange supernatural space has Deadman found himself? I can't wait to read this story! But my supposition is that, like last issue, this will have nothing to do with the story inside. And my precious little thirty year old heart (at the time I bought this, I mean!) couldn't stand to be hurt a third time. Is it my fault for judging the book by its cover? For expecting it to be a blend of existential horror and supernatural terror? No, it isn't. I won't blame myself when I was clearly victimized by DC's penchant for having covers that don't match the stories inside. So what if they fooled me over and over and over again since I was a kid? Still not my fault! Look, if you eventually begin blaming Charlie Brown when Lucy's the obviously evil, lying jerk, I'm not sure I want to know you. You don't turn on the victim of perpetual criminals just because they've been victimized one time more than you think is reasonable. They're still the fucking victim, you empathy lacking turd licker!

What I'm trying to say is that nobody in the history of the world has been victimized as horribly as I have been throughout my life by DC's cover lies. I stand by that statement even if it means I sound as naïve and idiotic as Pink does when she sings a song called "My Vietnam" about, well, um, just living her life. Holy shit that wasn't just a dream I had? That's an actual song?! I take it back. I've barely suffered at all and DC's lying about their stories doesn't even move the needle on me! Also I just remembered what the Nazis did in World War II. Oof. What was Pink thinking?! (See how I deflected everything at Pink?! She can take it! She's rich and married to a guy who rides motorcycles and breaks all of his limbs regularly as a living!)

Last issue, we learned that the real villain of this series was a guy named The Sensei. Less said about him, the better. I thought Yellow Peril characters went out of favor in the '80s but it seemed the early 2000s was a whole Renaissance era for them. I'm not suggesting Asian characters shouldn't be villains. I'm all for every kind of person in the world being the evil monster behind all of society's ills! Just maybe don't go with the long fingernails and the Fu Manchu facial hair and the, you know, other exaggerated features. If Yellow Peril villains become acceptable in mainstream media, how long before we're seeing a new trend of golliwog dolls?

Okay, sure, Alan Moore introduced a golliwog character in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. But that's Alan Moore! If he's writing something racist or rapey or utterly inhumane, you give him the benefit of the doubt that he's doing it in such a smart way that you might be too stupid to understand how it isn't racist or rapey or utterly inhumane! He's a genius and a magician! You know how I know Alan Moore is a genius? Because he's the only person in the history of ever who explained magic to me and made me think, "Holy shit. He's right. Magic is fucking real." And I don't mean that in the way you think I mean it! Magic isn't real. It's a fantasy. But magic is real when it's not a fantasy but words warping reality just like, you know, a spell does! In other words, writers are wizards. Even Grant Morrison couldn't make me believe magic is real and they're pretty good at writing. It's just that when Morrison says something that blows my mind, I don't think, "What a great magician!"; I think, "What great drugs Grant does!"

What do you think Fox News and all that other propaganda shit is? It's a Mass Charm spell, binding the weak-minded and warping their reality. Donald Trump was a demon summoned by Right Wing Republican Grift being chanted over and over and over again until enough people believed in the power of those words. Boom! Demon summoned! Plus the added benefit of making people believe things that aren't real? You make them believe that the people who actually see reality are the ones being fooled into seeing a false reality! It's the perfect spell! Fucking assholes. Why'd they have to be so good at magic and controlling dimwitted morons?

Wow. I really went to sea on that tangent. Here's what I was going to write a few paragraphs ago before I was distracted by racism: "Last issue, we learned that the real villain of this series was a guy named The Sensei. This issue, we learn that Steve Vance thinks prison rape is kind of funny."

Granted, the guy doesn't actually threaten him with rape. So maybe Vance meant to imply this muscular guy plans on inundating the new fish with terrible puns.

While that guy about to wish he were dead because of all the puns being told to him while he gets raped was being thrown in his prison cell, he was screaming that everybody was going to die that very day. How does he know that? Well, the comic book is going to tell us because after that exciting opening page that uses one of the worst things that could happen to a person as a punchline, the story reverts to two weeks previous where we see this guy, in Europe, setting up a drug deal with a guy who looks like a cross between a fisherman, an academic, and a DILF.

Oh? Leash talk? My penis is listening!

While nefarious things are going on in Europe (bad nefarious things! Not the usual consensual sexy adult nefarious things that are always going on in Europe), Deadman has decided that he needs help finding the evil exiles of Nanda Parbat. But before he finds somebody to help him, he decides to possess Lois Lane to find out what getting fucked by Superman is like.

Holy shit. Lois is so fucking horny.

Lois grabbing Clark's tit as she pushes herself up against him from the back might be the sexiest panel I've ever scanned while doing this blog. And I know sexy! Haven't I scanned panels with dead Rose Wilson drawn by Paolo Pantalena before? You don't get sexier than that!

See? So hot!

Deadman gets tired of waiting around for the sexy times to begin because Superman keeps zipping out to save some idiot's life every few seconds. Lois, totally being used to these interruptions, probably has a vibrator inserted keeping her edging the whole time Clark flies out a window. She doesn't seem bothered at all by the constant interruptions.

Ignoring my bullshit, Deadman actually thought Superman could help him find the Nanda Parbatans but decided against it when he saw Superman is even too busy to fuck Lois. He'd probably ask Batman for help but I'm assuming Batman has either kept his secret identity secret even from Deadman or Deadman knows, from past experience, that Batman has a punch of Ghostbuster-style traps protecting every entrance to the Batcave.

See? Must be the ghost traps. Sounds like they're super painful.

Boston decides to visit Max for a little conversation via tape recorder. He doesn't learn much more than nonsense, philosophical hokum like good exists because evil exists and we choose our path due to free will and it happens because it happens. Max aphorisms don't literally help Boston but somewhere in the conversation, Boston has an "A-ha!" moment and takes off to follow a hunch. So at least there's that and none of the philosophical conversation needs to be carry any weight; it just gets to sound profound for a few pages before Boston forgets it all.

While Deadman is doing whatever he decided to do, Vector 9 and some other Rakvian terrorist hijack a submarine. They do this by pretending there's an emergency and getting the rest of the crew to abandon ship. That led me on a lazy rabbit hole exploration trip about escaping from submarines because my first thought was, "Subs have escape pods?" I can't say I'm confident on any of the information I found but it looks like subs abandoned the idea of escaping disabled submarines for outside rescue. It seems it's safer to remain in a disabled sub on the ocean floor and wait for rescue than it is to exit the sub and have to endure whatever conditions are on the surface while awaiting rescue. I'm not confident on that though, and I definitely haven't kept any timelines straight. I'm assuming Steve Vance did his research in 2002 and submarines were maybe using escape pods of some sort? Although wouldn't the crew of the Russian nuclear submarine, the Kursk, have used an escape pod if they were being used? Anyway, in the DC Universe, you can trick a submarine crew into abandoning the submarine and then take possession of the submarine yourself. Easy peasy!

No wait. What's the opposite of easy peasy? Hardy pardy?

Oh hey! A submarine plot point! And the cover? Sea of Madness! With Deadman surrounded by fish and bones! Is it going to actually be relevant?!

Oh! I knew I recognized that guy who plans on listening to his cellmate deliver fifty terrible puns per day. He was Frankie Serna's drug dealer who told them where to find all the people who purchased Hate Cocaine before Max and Boston left him for the cops. Now he's in prison with an understanding that the world will be brought down by Hate Cocaine (or something similar) soon. Deadman finally remembered him and thought, "Why the fuck not? This low-level criminal might know something. I'm all out of other ideas!"

I should applaud this comic book for wasting so many pages with Boston having no idea what to do next, just to make it more realistic. Most comic books would have had a television in a department store window broadcast breaking news which Boston would have coincidentally been floating by at the time so he'd immediately know what to do next. I usually criticize that kind of lazy writing while acknowledging that it's better than reading ten pages of the heroes not knowing what to do. But now I have proof that ten pages of a hero not knowing what to do is actually better than some deus ex machina newscast pointing them in the right direction. Because without this plot point of Boston being lost, we never would have seen how Lois fingers Clark's nipples and rubs her pudenda up against his rock hard ass as he cooks.

Deadman flies into the prison just in time to hear Serna's man lamenting how everybody is going to die. He does know something! So Deadman possesses the rap...er...punster to question Serna's guy.

Exactly the kind of plan somebody on cocaine would come up with and think it's great. Somehow, a bunch of other people bought into it too.

Serna's guy also knew the exact location they were going to rendezvous with the submarine. Luckily for everybody involved (the people of Glade City who now won't be nuked and Deadman who will be able to communicate with the ghosts), everybody aboard the submarine was killed. Deadman doesn't realize it yet but he's flying toward . . . a Sea of Madness!

Deadman locates the submarine using a power I didn't know he had: Dead Reckoning! When he gets there, he finds a rescue submarine hard at work collecting the nuclear sub from the dead man. It's captained by the Fisherman DILF from earlier, a guy named Vilos. I guess it was his plan all along to double-cross this Rakvian idiots so he could pocket all of Serna's drug money for himself. So the nuclear threat is still a threat since it's this Vilos guy who expects to get paid in a few hours. But nobody needs to worry about that with Deadman and his super powers of possession and dead reckoning on the case!

Deadman possesses Vilos to try to get everybody to stop stealing the submarine. But since Boston doesn't speak Rakvian, the rest of Vilos's crew turn on him and knock him unconscious. Deadman decides that maybe pure chaos (or MADNESS?!) is the way to stop this hijacking so he jumps from body to body, confusing everybody and turning the ship into a huge free-for-all brawl.

Vilos awakes to see the chaos and rushes off to escape. He knows it's Deadman who's probably causing the issues because his actual boss, The Sensei, has briefed him on their possible enemies. But in the end, Vilos fucks up. He learns a harsh lesson about underwater, submarines, and pressure. Like those poor billionaires on the Titan submersible! Rich in material goods, poor in risk assessment and gray matter.

Gross.

Deadman fails to speak with the ghosts of Vilos or the rest of his gang so he doesn't get any leads on The Sensei. Being that this is the last issue of this series that I bought, I'll just assume that Deadman grew bored of hunting down evil men from Nanda Parbat and just got on with his death.

Deadman #4 Rating: B. I'm not sure how to sum up this issue because I've been distracted the entire time I've been reading it by the cover of the next comic book in my stack. I'll just say three words and you'll understand why I couldn't stop staring at it: "Amanda. Conner. Boobs." Um, not Amanda's boobs! But you know how she draws! Imagine that with boobs! But also the character with the boobs has that now iconic Internet thirsty Only Fans girl look where they're kind of sticking their tongue out in that way that says, "I want something on my tongue and you know what it is it is your cock put it on my tongue." I can't wait to read that comic book so much that I've already forgotten all about this one. I guess it was decent? So decent I never bought the next issue! Was that a burn? boobs

Deadman #3 (April 2002)

Where'd Mike Mignola come from?!

Sometimes when I'm reading a series, I'll look it up on the Mile High Comics website just to see how many issues it ran and, sometimes, to see if the comic has any value at all. With Deadman, I discovered that the series only ran for nine issues and that there was a small bump in value on issues beginning with the third. Was that because of Mike Mignola's covers? I'm going to answer, "Absolutely. Without question. No doubt. The king of all undisputed facts." Along with that answer, I have a question: "Did Mike think he was doing a cover for Moon Knight?"

Last issue, we learned that a special chemical had to be added to cocaine to make the user paranoid. Was that ingredient just more cocaine? Did Duroc just invent more cocaine? No wait. I just remembered that his additive also makes the user more violent. So I think along with the extra cocaine, he added testosterone.

I've never done cocaine in my life because I only do things that interest me and talking one million miles an hour while your nose runs and you believe people are stealing your brilliant cocaine thoughts while you basically edge a heart attack doesn't sound fun. I was once at a party in the middle of the day (some older person's birthday? I didn't know anybody but the guy who brought me (Bob Henline, the not yet burnt and not yet a comedian guy you might have heard about)) and his cousin Derek. Everybody at the party was doing cocaine. The bathroom had black fixtures, black granite, and black carpet (YES CARPET I KNOW FUCKING GROSS), I guess so you'd never lose any of your sweet cocaine when you dropped it. Derek, Bob, and I had gone to the flea market earlier in the day while doing LSD. We peaked at the dirt mall so later at the party, I was just chilling, feeling relaxed and all smoothed out and just sipping the same one beer for however long we were there. Derek was busy trying to collect all the dirty prizes that came out of the adult piñata, like the wind-up, walking cock and the flavored condoms. And Bob found his way into the cocaine because he was sitting at the kitchen table telling incoherent stories at five million miles an hour. Everybody at the party looked at me like I was a narc but I couldn't be bothered because I was in such a blissful state. Coming down on LSD, before the physical weirdness sets in, is like meditation and massage combined. So fucking relaxing!

Anyway, don't tell Bob I told that story! If you do, I'll have to digitize my VHS footage of us from the place at the mall that let you make music videos! Oh wait. That's actually an incentive, isn't it? And I'd be punishing myself! Never mind!

I also surmised that this Battle Royale drug would wind up being snorted by big wigs in Hollywood, California. But it turns out, the drug has been dispensed in Hollywood, Florida! So once people start taking it, nobody will even notice. And, basically, that's exactly what winds up happening.

This is page two. Deadman already took care of most of the problem between issues.

I don't know how Deadman tracked down all of the Hate Cocaine. He probably has sources on the other side. You'd think Deadman would talk to a lot more ghosts than he does, don't you? Instead he just gets people killed, interacts with the ghosts of those people for the few seconds before they enter the afterlife, and then goes back to possessing somebody about to jerk off so he can get one last hit of human ecstasy. If I were Deadman, I'd hang out at haunted places, especially those where women were said to have killed themselves, and hit on them all night long. I'd bother them all night just ghost moaning, "Come on! Just touch it. Please touch it! Come on! I'm so full of ectoplasm I'm going to burst!" I'd be all up in the Amityville house trying to fuck that pig ghost. Christ, I'd be such a thirsty ghost!

Deadman possesses the guy on the Hate Drug and convinces the secretary to knock him out. I love the look and hand gesture of the guy getting smashed in the cranium with the LCD.

Come on, lady. You didn't smash him in the head with the tower! Just the monitor!

Boston and Max tracked down all the cocaine by threatening one of Duroc's dealers. Now they're hunting down the last of the buyers so that he doesn't bite anybody's face off. But being Florida, they can't stop everybody from biting off a face or two. Can you stop an avalanche? Sweep back a tsunami? People getting their faces bitten off is just something you have to live with if you live in Florida. It's on the state flag.

Boston becomes super depressed that more people have died and he couldn't save them. It's weird. He knows there's an afterlife but he's all butthurt when people get killed. Maybe he's jealous that they get to pass on while he has to remain on Earth with the only people who can see and talk to him being boring fucks like The Phantom Stranger and The Spectre. He probably hates seeing the souls of the recently departed fly off confused and scared and never having to hear The Spectre say, "There's nothing I can do! I can't interfere! My only duty is killing cops who actually feel guilty about the murders they constantly commit! Let's face it, it's a good job!"

Boston decides to stop Duroc's plan once and for all. He flies off to possess Duroc's right-hand man and shoot Duroc in the face.

Serves you right, you fucking pusshole.

Deadman has already killed two people in this series by possessing them and taking an action while in their body that leads directly to their deaths. But he can't shoot the main villain in the head? He's worse than Batman! Out of context, that sounds like the most obvious fact. Everybody is worse than Batman! But you know what I meant, right? I don't think you'd be reading my blog if you didn't have the ability to follow along with my barely coherent rambling bullshit.

Duroc already figured out that everything going wrong was due to Deadman possessing all of his underlings. So this was a trap! Duroc punches Deadman in the face, knocking out the man Deadman is possessing. That way, if Deadman leaves the body, Duroc will know because it will slump to the ground. He tells Deadman that he'll shoot Manos, his right-hand man, if Deadman leaves. Deadman surrenders in defeat. Earlier, before he got super depressed from seeing so many dead bodies, he would have attempted to wrestle the gun away from Duroc with little regard to whether Manos was shot or not. Earlier he had a secretary bash a guy he was possessing in the head with a computer monitor from the late '90s. You know how heavy those fucking things were? That guy's probably dead too! But now, with the fate of the world in the balance, Deadman's afraid to bring harm to his criminal host who is probably a murderer many times over.

To celebrate having finally captured Deadman, Duroc kicks a servant down the stairs.

This is how my family celebrates the resurrection of Jesus! Except with less chocolate eggs.

Easter at my house, we used to hang up construction paper cutouts of Pontius Pilate, Herod, and Judas Iscariot. It was to keep the ghost of Jesus away because I was terrified of ghosts and Jesus was like the most ghosty of all ghosts.

That guy getting kicked down the stairs might have seemed like a character driven moment to prove that Duroc was a big jerk. But it was actually a sneaky plot moment that won't mean anything to the reader until they get to the end of the comic book to find out who the true villain of this series is! Oops! I almost spoiled the big surprise twist!

Duroc leaves Deadman with two of his henchmen who don't know it's Deadman and just think it's their old buddy Manos. They don't want to shoot him but they also saw how Duroc just kicked an old man down the stairs for being terrible at his job. They definitely don't want to get kicked down some stairs so they keep their guns trained on Deadman and try to convince themselves that they will shoot him if he falls unconscious. Deadman takes advantage of their confusion, fear, and slight feelings of friendship with Manos.

Deadman is just a slightly better version of Jericho from the Teen Titans with a slightly worse collar than Nightwing's from the Teen Titans.

It's at this point, halfway through the issue, that the pacing of this story really goes off the fucking rails. I think it's because Vance only has nine more pages for Boston to defeat Duroc's plans and still introduce the actual villain of the story on the last page. So eight more pages! Plus, by the time you get to the final page, you realize these last eight pages with Deadman don't matter. Because Deadman doesn't do anything to defeat Duroc. Duroc has already been defeated by the old man he kicked down the stairs. But nobody knows that yet! Not even Duroc!

Deadman is defeated by this door.

Not being able to get through the door to stop Duroc celebrating with all the other Nanda Parbatans for their super smart drug ploy to rule the world, Deadman decides to go destroy their drugs. So I guess he does do something heroic even if he doesn't stop Duroc himself. Deadman also calls the police who arrive on the scene in less than a minute because this is a comic book and real world physics don't affect comic book plots. I know police responding to a call isn't actually a physical law of the universe but it might as well be! Cops suck worse than black holes!

After the police arrive, Deadman decides to go see how Duroc and his guests are doing. In ghost form, of course, because his corporeal host was defeated by a corporeal door. When he enters the room, he finds everybody dead! Murdered by each other!

Boston wants Duroc to look at Duroc's dead body with three faces in its mouth.

What Deadman doesn't realize is that the old man who was kicked down the stairs poisoned Duroc's wine with his Hate Cocaine! He also stole Duroc's ledger with the location of all the ex-residents of Nanda Parbat! Bumping into Duroc to steal the ledger is what got the old man kicked down the stairs. But he wasn't the mastermind of this plan. He was just the personal servant of the mastermind: The Sensei!

Censored for the use of Yellow Peril. We had enough of that shit with The Authority!

Deadman #3 Rating: C+. I can't decide if I liked the way this issue ended or not so I'm going to go with a slightly above average grade on this one. I don't like that Deadman, when he's given the chance to slow down and think, doesn't want to put the body he's possessing at risk but he often puts the body of the person he's possessing at risk anyway because he acts too much on impulse. He's like a person who takes three drinks out of a crystal goblet and then smashes it to the floor because he's through with it and there are about 7 billion more on the shelf that he can use for his next drink. I don't like how he's portrayed as fairly impotent. And it's not like he doesn't know it! He falls into Duroc's trap in this issue because he was trying to get a big fat boner of justice instead of not saving people constantly. Up until he falls into the trap, he's watched so many people die and caused a few of their deaths himself. He watched The Flash die. He watched Jason Todd die. He watched Superman die. He caused one of Mongul's guards to die. He blew up a graverobber. He got Duroc's pilot shot dead by Duroc. He got a Hate Cocaine user's brains smashed out by a secretary. He couldn't get to the last Hate Cocaine user in time and several people had their faces bitten off. He's just a fucking mess by the time he goes after Duroc directly. And he still couldn't pull the trigger on him. Maybe that's noble? Or is it just pusshole?

And now that I've finished reading this issue, I'm even more convinced that Mignola thought he was doing a Moon Knight cover. It had nothing to do with this issue!

Deadman #2 (March 2002)

TFW you realize you accidentally made Deadman's balls the focal point of the piece and you smash your iPad in frustration.

Last issue, we learned Deadman was dead. But we also learned that he used the name Deadman in his circus act. Maybe it was more apt then because he wasn't actually dead. Being dead and being called Deadman is what writers call a "hat on a hat." That's supposed to be a bad thing but I think a hat on a hat is funny. Although this comic book isn't funny. Or is it? Maybe I've been reading it like a supernatural horror thriller but it's actually a rollicking roller coaster ride of slapstick and snide observations and also a dwarf (but that's only for people who laugh at things that aren't actually funny because they think humor is just being mean-spirited. You know, like bullies on playgrounds and conservatives). I've been reading this as if Boston Brand were Colin Farrell dealing with the existential horror of having murdered a child while being forced to look at Bosch paintings instead of what the character really is: Chandler Bing wandering around an open house and touching everything with his dick.

See? This is too stupid and obvious to be profound. So it must be funny! Ha ha!

That was the opening line to this issue and I jumped down its throat before it even got a chance to expound on what it meant. That's because I'm a schoolyard bully with low self-esteem (but not a conservative because I have dignity and compassion and empathy and all the other emotions that make me human and not a nearly empty vessel whose only contents are a bit of essence that the French call "being a fucking jerk"). I'm sure Deadman will follow up this trite statement with a discussion on people who commit suicide. He'll be all, "They're so brave! But also so cowardly! How can they fear to continue life but be brave enough to face the mystery of death?! It's such a conundrum. Should we celebrate their bold spirit and adventuresome ways? Or should we use the opportunity to point at other depressed people and go, 'Don't be like stupid, stupid!'?"

No wait! I bet he's going to talk about daredevils! Yeah, that would be more apt to this comic book and way more funny than a discussion on suicide! Man, who would bring that up in a piece of entertainment? An idiot, that's who!

Ha ha! He's being sarcastic! Right? Isn't he?

I don't know what this comic book wants from me! Am I supposed to be having fun or am I supposed to be verging on a panic attack with all this discussion of my failing mortal body and what's in store for me? A long slide into misery and pain until death is the only thing I look forward to?! Jesus Christ, Vance! Hopefully Max does a little tap dance on page two so I can bust a gut laughing at the antics of the d...um...detective!

What Deadman is trying to say is that death is scary until life has become even scarier and then death is the only friend you'll have left. Especially since all of your other friends have stopped talking to you because you make them uncomfortable. Oh fucking Christ I'm the worst friend.

Boston's having all of these existential thoughts because he was just inside of a body that was torn apart by a bomb at point blank range. So he's all, "Yeah, that sucked." But at least he didn't die like the guy he possessed died! Imagine that? That guy didn't even get to experience his own death because Deadman subsumed his consciousness! Technically, the guy died the moment Boston Brand possessed him because that was the end of his personality and free will and choices and thoughts. He just went to sleep and the next thing you know, he was being blown apart. Hopefully he never regained consciousness as he died because imagine how confusing that would have been!

Oh yeah! I forgot this was a fictional world where people can have thoughts after they die. He gets to be scared and confused anyway!

I don't mind being an atheist in a world of believers. The only thing that rankles me even a little bit is that believers will never know they were wrong because they die and then no more thoughts. They don't even get a moment like this guy where they're all, "Oh shit! I died! And now my ego goes back to the oblivion of the time before I was born!" Of course, on the really fucking off chance that I'm wrong, Satan will be annoyed forever because there won't be an endless torture that can destroy the glee I'll have for realizing that my personality and ego get to exist for eternity! When I'm not being force-fed my own flaming shit, I'll be whistling the most jaunty tunes and trying to high five the demons farming the flaming shit out of my burning asshole. "Dude! I still exist! Fucking incredible!" Then to shut me up, a demon will probably shove his fat sweaty hog into my mouth and I'll wink at him and he'll think, "Shit. We got another one that can't get enough demon semen."

I bet it tastes like spicy pineapple!

Max survived the blast by hiding behind a bed which seems completely realistic because this is a comic book about a ghost. Also he's a small guy so he had less chance to get hit by shrapnel. Is that how explosions work? Did they ever test that on Mythbusters? Could a smaller guy survive a bomb blast better than a larger guy?

Boston and Max flee the scene of the murder (let's face it: they totally murdered that guy) so they don't have to answer to the cops because we all know the real bad guys are the cops, amirite?! Especially since this is a detective story. Way before all the fucking copaganda shows on television, the American people understood cops were corrupt assholes and if you wanted justice, you needed a hard-boiled detective on the case or a noble lawyer like Perry Mason. I wonder how many conservatives despise that they have to virtue signal their love for cops when they personally fucking hate them so badly? It's got to be like 80 or 90 percent, right? Man, cops fucking suck.

Before the guy blew up, he mentioned a name: Frankie Serna. Time to investigate that prick!

No, you saw him in Crusades when his name was Tony Quetone.

Deadman doesn't learn anything he expected to learn from visiting Frankie. He thought maybe he'd find out why Frankie would have a bomb and cash smuggled into the country in the fake legs of a circus performer's corpse. But Frankie doesn't helpfully reveal any of that and, I suspect, he'll never reveal it at all! Because what Deadman does learn is that he can't possess Frankie which could only mean one thing (I mean one thing that means anything to this comic book): Frankie is from Nanda Parbat! He's one of the thirteen or more ghosts of Scooby-Deadman! So now it doesn't matter what Frankie was up to because it's Deadman's responsibility to bring him to justice for just generally being an evil prick.

Deadman haunts Frankie's plane as he takes a trip to North Africa. Couldn't Frankie had made this trip on his private plane to pick up the cash and explosive himself? Or at least sent some men to do it? Why smuggle shit into the country in the corpse of some guy who died from a virulent disease? Oh! Don't mind how stupid I am. I just realized why he did all that. Who's going to look too closely at a corpse full of some deadly raging virus? You might follow this answer up with the question, "But why $10,000 cash? Way easier ways to smuggle that into America. I mean, do you even have to smuggle it?" But then you forgot about the package that blew up Deadman! The cash was probably an incentive to get some schlubs to dig up the body and retrieve the package. And the explosive was probably to protect the package in case it fell into the wrong hands. So the only real question left is this: what the fuck was Frankie trying to smuggle into America from Egypt? Well, there's only one sensible answer to that: Tutankhamun's penis. Obvs.

It's a conspiracy of Nanda Parbatans!

I can't wait to find out how Tutankhamun's penis fits into all of this!

That was a purposeful penetration joke. You don't have to respond in the comments with your more obvious one!

Duroc has brought together more Nanda Parbatans than just Frankie Serna: Dala, Zeta, Liu, and Adham. All aliases or sobriquets. That's probably because DC didn't want to introduce historical evil people into the comic book but still wanted to hint that these were all actual evil people. You can tell by how often I'm constantly repeating it, I don't know anything about history. Please list some evil historical figures in the comments and I'll steal them, re-edit this piece, and pretend I knew who these fictional characters were actual representations of.

Duroc explains his history and his plans. It's all handily laid out on one page so that I don't have to interpret it though my lens of lying, bullshit, and misunderstandings!

Duroc wants to turn the world into a Battle Royale.

I didn't italicize Battle Royale because it's become more than just the Japanese movie. It's basically the biggest form of social gaming right now. And, yes, I'm talking more about blocking people on Twitter than killing people in Fortnite. Ha ha! No I'm not. I meant the games.

As a really annoying young man who read too many National Geographic magazines, I had a major boner for Bonaparte. One time in Spanish class, we had to present facts about ourselves. One of mine was, "Yo quiero dominar todo el mundo." My teacher was all, "¿Como Hitler?" And I was all, "Como Napoleon." And he was all, "¿Cual es el diferencia?" And I was all, "¡Más diferencia!" Remember that thing I said about not being great at history? You can extrapolate that to my grasp of Spanish as well.

Duroc explains himself to his fellow Nanda Parbatans with a quote.

Take that, Neoliberals!

I'm not getting behind a quote and saying, "Yes! This makes sense of the world! It is now my foundational philosophy!" Because fuck that kind of rigid garbage thinking. But I will point out that this quote sums up just about every forum debate on the Internet between a "reasonable" liberal and an "unreasonable" progressive. Liberals are so smug in their arguments that basically come down to "Stop expecting the world to be better. Let's just try to keep it from getting too much worse." And the progressives are all, "Fuck that noise, you Status Quo motherfucker. Just because you're comfortable, you're okay with suffering on the fringes." And, sure, keeping the Status Quo is way better than every belief of a conservative American. But why get so fucking angry at people who demand a better world? Why are they always so much angrier at leftists than at Trumpers? Calm down, you Status Quotians! Maybe stop assuming everybody who just wants Israel to stop killing every Palestinian they can get in their sights are "HAMAS dick suckers"! Yeesh. What a bad look, dude.

Turns out Duroc has invented a drug that makes people violent and paranoid. It's absorbed through the skin and it was covering the paper on the explosive packages he sent out to everybody. I don't know what that plan was meant to do. "Oh look! The package I was sent by Duroc! Let's see what's in it. Oh, oh! Why am I so angry and paranoid?!" BOOM! And then Duroc meets with, um, nobody? Terrible fucking plan.

Duroc found all these Nanda Parbatans because he's the oldest of the residents of Nanda Parbat and he's super smart. So now he has a book with all the names and the current locations of every evil resident of Nanda Parbat. That would be really useful for a character whose main plot in the series is to capture every escaped resident of Nanda Parbat! But only if the series were to go longer than nine issues. So, basically, who the fuck cares if Boston Brand gets his hands on it.

Frankie Serna tries to betray Duroc by stealing the Battle Royale drug. But his men wind up contaminated by it and wind up breaking Serna's neck as they die from bullet holes caused by bullets out of Serna's gun. Deadman stands back aghast, both at the display of violence and at Duroc's plan, already in motion!

Oh no! Hollywood is about to burn down!

Deadman #2 Rating: B+. Oh man. Sorry for that last caption. I meant it as a funny joke about how writers and directors are probably the biggest coke heads. But since Hollywood is actually pretty much burning down right now, it sounds like it was in really bad taste. Maybe I should have left it without saying anything because most people will probably eventually read this post in the future, out of context for the Los Angeles fires! Too bad I also suffer from the biggest flaw of everybody on the Internet: the inability to delete comments! I'm just going to double down here in the wrap-up and guess that most people won't be too upset because I just explained to them that the joke wasn't meant to be offensive! See? All good! No reasonable person will be upset at me! But all the people who want a better world might be!

I just realized that if the Battle Royale drug did take effect in Hollywood because that's where most of the coke is snorted (I mean other than Wall Street and Washington, DC), it would look just like Fortnite! A guy in an Elmo costume would be shooting the shit out of a guy in a Spider-man costume as a guy in the Bruce Lee Kill Bill outfit does the fucking Running Man in the background.

Deadman #1 (February 2002)

Has the cover artist, Josep Beroy, ever been to a cemetery?

Whoever runs this cemetery has a cheap payment plan: just toss your loved one over the fence for twenty bucks and they'll bury them wherever they wind up. Or, since Boston Brand was buried here, maybe plotting a cemetery as chaotically as possible is just some circus tradition so ghosts and evil spirits can't find anybody's body to possess. Seriously, how does this even work? The tombstone underneath Deadman's right hand points in such a way that body it represents has been buried in Deadman's corpse's lap. This place is a nightmare.

This series begins with Deadman reliving his origin story which is also his death story (it's also Dick Grayson's parents' story but we'll ignore that for at least a couple of paragraphs). He's reminiscing with his pal Max as they sit at a Black Lodge bar and drink some beers. Max can see and touch Deadman so somebody's dreaming this or lost deep in their memories or put on the ring and went looking for Annie in the grove. I won't know unless I skip ahead a few pages and I'm not willing to do that for reasons that would probably become clear if you read all 4,000+ of my comic book posts or a lengthy transcript of my therapy sessions. No wait. Those are exactly the same things. Never mind.

So gay!

Of course! A near-death trance! That was my fourth guess! Did Max have to get naked to put himself in a near-death trance or was getting naked and putting the cum towel over his crotch just for easy clean-up? Is assuming they fucked while doing this assuming too much or did everybody think that? Deadman made it abundantly clear in the mini-series that he fulfills his basest desires by possessing people. But even I can't imagine that he pulls any Fermata shit and sexually assaults people just to get his rocks off. So getting his balls drained would make for a great birthday present, right? I suppose Boston sometimes just flits from suburban bedroom to suburban bedroom until he finds a couple fucking and then possesses one of them just to remember what an orgasm feels like. But when he possesses somebody, unless they're unconscious, they can still operate their voice! So that would probably ruin the mood if the person you're fucking starts yelling, "Get out of me! Get out of me right now! Why am I fingering my own asshole?!"

You know I'm clipping this speech bubble out of this panel to use the next time I read a Batgirl series.

Moira, the bearded lady, drops buy to hire Max to investigate the possible murder of one of their circus friends, Benny Molton, the twin limbless musician and brother of Lenny Molton (also a limbless musician). The super hot bearded lady decided to help Lenny because he had too few limbs to hire Max himself. That seems kind of ableist, no? Wasn't there that one guy without any limbs in Freaks who helped murder that guy and turn that woman into a chicken? That's pretty radical. I'd be hard pressed to murder anybody and I think I still have all of my limbs.

I'd want my dollar back if I went to see the Limbless Men and they still had a full set of limbs between them.

Something else I learned in the panel above: Deadman can speak through the person he's possessing even if they're conscious. I guess I don't know how his powers work at all. Maybe I'm thinking of the Pre-Crisis Deadman! No wait! I just realized of whom I was thinking: Jericho! And he isn't dead at all!

Lenny explains how he and Benny had a bit of a falling out when Lenny began fucking Moira, the bearded lady. Apparently Benny wanted to fuck her too but she only had hairy eyes for guys without arms. And Benny just had two too many of those. So he hit the road doing musical gigs on his own. Lenny hadn't seen him in four years when he got the news about his brother's death.

"If I hadn't slept with the woman he loved, he wouldn't have gone and eventually died many years later!"

It seems like Benny's case is open and shut, unlike his coffin which is just plain shut. That's the only reason Lenny feels like something fishy is going down: nobody would let him see the body. Why would he want to?! He caught the Mummy's Curse! He's probably so disfigured that he'd be unrecognizable anyway. But Max and Deadman decide to investigate so Lenny would stop crying. They never even ask Lenny if he masturbates with his feet! I mean, obviously he does and they probably already knew that from their time living with him in the circus. But they could have asked for the reader's sake!

Okay fine. He's recognizable. Disgusting but recognizable.

Discovering Benny's Mummy's Curse-riddled body inside the coffin isn't enough for Boston and Max. For some absolutely unknown reason that isn't explained in any way except that this issue is only half over, Boston feels like there's something fishy going on. So he decides to hang around the grave the night after the burial to see if anything happens. Again, he has no reason to believe anything weird will happen but guess what? Something weird happens! No, Benny doesn't crawl from the grave as a legless mummy. Two grave robbers show up to exhume his corpse. They open the coffin and Boston thinks, "I wasn't seeing things — he's got legs." Oh, well why didn't he say that earlier? Or tell Max about it? Why did he just say, "Hmm, there's still something screwy going on"? I feel like he's trying to make me feel stupid! But then, I feel that a lot about almost everything everybody else says. I wish people would dumb themselves down a bit more when I'm around. Frankly, it's offensive.

It turns out Benny's fake legs are stuffed full of cash! Probably stolen from a mummy! That's how he contracted the curse.

One of the grave robbers kills the other one and buries him alongside Benny, keeping the cash for himself. Deadman tails him back to his place because he's a huge pervert.

Deadman wrote on the mirror, "I know what you did!", in this guy's own semen.

No, wait, I'm wrong. He wrote something else.

Although I was right about the semen.

Max gets the criminal at gunpoint and forces him to confess the entire plan. In his post-nut clarity, he realizes he's been caught and explains that some guy named Frankie Serna gave him the job. "Dig up the body, keep the money you find, deliver the package you'll find in one of the legs to Frankie." Deadman decides he wants to see what's in the package and he possesses this guy one last time. It's the last time because the package is a bomb and it blows the shit out of him. Max probably survives because this comic book needs a living person to help Boston out.

Deadman #1 Rating: C. It wasn't offensive or anything. It wasn't poorly written. The art was pretty good. But overall, it was lackluster and boring. That might be why I only have four issues of this series. Apparently it only went to Issue #9 but I couldn't even give it that long. My guess is I was looking for more of a supernatural thing and this series leaned too heavily on the detective angle.

Telos #3

Here's a simple trick for gauging the quality of a comic book: the more creators credited on the cover, the worse the issue is going to be.

I haven't watched it yet but before heading to work last night, I noticed one of the weird non-cable television channels that only shows old movies and commercials about drugs or lawsuits pertaining to drugs was showing Motel Hell so I set the Channelmaster to record it. I probably haven't seen that movie in thirty-five years. And yes that means that I probably saw the movie when I was eight or nine. My mom didn't want me seeing boobies in movies but she didn't mind if people got hacked up and made into jerky. It's probably why I'm so well adjusted. If this movie isn't as exciting as a man wearing a pig's head over his face and hacking up motel guests, I'm going to abandon it and go watch my movie!

Telos had recently made some friends in prison on Colu. They're helping him to overthrow the tyrant Computo and his lapdog Validus because Brainiac wants his planet back. Unless there were other reasons for the conflict. It's hard to keep fifty-two or more different plots straight from month to month, especially for titles I'm not interested in. This is one of those, in case you are bad at reading comprehension.

Validus attacked at the end of the last issue so this one picks up during that battle. Telos also telosgraphs that somebody will die before the issue is over. He actually says "before the day is over" and the day might last more than this issue but I hope not because I'll feel like I was scammed. Here are the characters we have to choose from who might die:

Captain Comet: No way. Even though he's not the most important character in the DC Universe, he's a favorite among really nerdy readers. And you don't piss off the severely nerded.
Captain K'rot: Technically he's not the real Captain Carrot because DC Comics doesn't want to pay any bonus money to Scott Shaw and Roy Thomas but he won't be killed off anyway. Because then they'd have to bring Captain Carrot back from Multiversity world, a place where apparently DC will pay any royalties they must so they can watch Morrison jerk off on nostalgia.
Stealth: Stealth is a possibility because she has such a simple name and an easy power to replicate. Plus she's new as of Threshold. I think. It's so hard to tell which characters have been brought back from Limbo and which ones are freshly minted buttercups.
Techne: It could possibly be Techne because she's just a female version of Brainiac-5. But that's also an argument for keeping her.
Telos: Oh man I hope it's Telos! Then I never have to buy another issue of this idiotic idea of a comic.

After laying out my arguments (were those arguments? Whatever), I've decided it will be Captain Comet. His death will be the easiest to explain away when he reappears later in the story. It'll be some latent power that all super-evolved humans have or something.

Oh wait. Is that a cop out? I think that's a cop out!

Validus isn't dead so now I'm not so sure anybody will actually die. Telos may have just been acting dramatic.

Telos opens a portal and sends Validus into space which, as I read about it happening, causes me to think, "Why didn't he just do that first? And why are they taking the short way to the Super Secret Data Center if Telos can open portals in space? And when will Captain K'rot begin making jokes about being an alcoholic?"

Meanwhile Computo is pissed off that things aren't going his way. Poor dolt should have gone to the Harvest School of Super Villainy! There he would have learned to act as if every thing that ever happened was all part of your plan. Now instead of looking like an undefeatable bad-ass, he just looks like a sorry asshole that has to ask Brainiac for help. Which was part of the plan since the beginning so maybe he did take some classes at Harvest U. He just needs to tone down his temper.

Telos and Friends decide to go destroy some Psions before completing Braniac's plan. I mean Telos's plan. I mean Computo's plan. You know what? I think it's time I admit I don't know what's happening anymore. I know Telos wants to find his family and Techne wants to free Colu and the others probably just want to escape. So that probably means that even though Brainiac manipulated Telos into doing work for him (and maybe Computo?), it doesn't really matter anymore because everybody has their own agendas now.

First agenda: destroy the Psions!

Or startle them into setting the self-destruct sequence and destroying themselves.

This isn't as exciting as cannibalism but I'm almost done with it so I guess I should finish.

Techne injected a virus into Computo (I think?) and now his control over Colu is breaking down (I think?) so the gang must destroy Computo's back-up and Computo's body to save the world (I think?). Unless destroying him just hastens the demise of Colu? I don't know. Whatever's happening, Telos ends this issue facing off against Computo and Brainiac while the rest of the gang get stuck in the same cliffhanger as last issue:

Validus attacks! Again! I think!

Telos #3 Rating: -2 Ranking. Three issues in and I don't see the point of this comic book. Since I don't believe that our lives or the universe has any inherent meaning behind it, I like my art that was actually created on purpose by sentient beings to have some kind of meaning. It's a small pet peeve of mine. I'll accept that life has no greater meaning than to perpetuate itself. I mean, that's already pretty weird in the first place, right? But think about it. The reason life which accidentally was created by complete accident continues to exist is because it was accidentally created with the need to keep existing. If life had been created without that need or drive (and it probably has been created that way billions of times!), it would cease to exist after living its lonely life. Therefore life which continues to exit continues to exist because it needed to be able to continue to exist to continue to exist. It's simple philosophy! Unless it's math. Or science? Um, whatever! Unlike this comic book, I had a point! Oh yeah! I accept that in the greater scheme of things, life is meaningless. But we are sentient beings who desire meaning! Thus we project whatever meaning we think appropriate onto our lives or our existence or the reason sharks have dead eyes. I want to read stories that encourage the illusion of meaning! Why do I want to read something that's a perfect reflection of reality?! Don't give me a story that doesn't matter and has no meaning and then call it Telos! That's just fucking depressing, man!

Gods and Monsters: Wonder Woman #1

Let me guess! Wonder Woman leaves Paradise Island to live in Japan?

I was up in Seattle visiting "friends" the last couple of days. I thought I'd get back into the blogging routine by reading a Gods and Monsters book. I hope I still remember how to make jokes. If you saw my trivia team's performance at the Geeks Who Drink trivia night, you'd be pointing out that I definitely still know how to make jokes. We tied for second with all of the teams that did not come in first or last. We failed at the tie-breaker because the way they do the tie-breaker is stupid. The question was about Broadway and I wrote down "Cats" faster than anybody else but we still didn't win. Possibly because I should have written Andrew Lloyd Webber. But at least I scratched out my first guess, "Madagascar," which was written before the tie-breaker question was asked just in case I was having a psychic moment. My trivia team's name was Snake Titty because somebody had written "Snake Titty" on the chalkboard in the men's restroom and it made me angry. That's just bad science!

The team that won were a bunch of know-it-all assholes. Probably. I hope they died.

So anybody in the Portland area who wants to become a member of Snake Titty and who also wants to do all of the work in getting a team together for Geeks Who Drink events should contact me. Also you should be able to answer all of the questions that I can't answer (which will be most of them). I also have a tendency to not pay attention when my teammates are writing down the obviously wrong answer because I'm saying something tremendously witty. Sometimes I erupt into physical violence.

Snake Titty. Except for the guy giving the thumbs up. That was the quizmaster. My grown-up schoolyard rival has the blue hair. The Non-Certified Spouse is across from her. Making the peace sign is the Non-Certified Spouse's cousin and the saboteur that ruined our chances for outright second place before skedaddling out of there. I suppose she should get credit for all the answers she did give us but I won't forgive her for erasing that correct answer to replace it with a wrong one just before the game ended! Teammate Mark is a shadowy monster on the run from his past and could not be photographed, so he took the picture. And I am the one pointing at my face as if to mime, "Look. This is me. I am this person. This one."

This issue of Gods and Monsters begins with Wonder Woman emerging from a BOOM Tube in India in 1962. So it's as close as DeMatteis and Timm could come to the original origin story without just completely ripping it off.

The uniform Wonder Woman is wearing on the cover that I mistook as a Japanese crime fighting costume is just a Jack Kirby outfit. Totally understandable mistake. Wonder Woman is Bekka of New Genesis. She's going to be extremely popular because people are just naturally drawn to Bekka and want to have sex with her for no comprehensible reason at all. I want to have sex with her and I know she's just printed on a page and I also don't know how to have sex. I mean, with a fictional character. I totally sex with real people all of the time, or at least during the times when it is possible. You know those times. The proper ones. Sexy, sexy times.

Bekka meets a statue of Ganesha and she imagines it saying all of the things she needs to hear. After her delusion, she feels much more comfortable with her completely random decision to accidentally arrive on Earth. But now she has to learn all about her new home! She's lucky to have a teensy, tiny Mother Box which can act as her Wikipedia since Wikipedia didn't exist in 1962. Back then if you wanted to find out some information about something, you had to find a set of Encyclopedias or an almanac or an old blind black woman. If you had access to all three of those things, you could learn anything you needed to know about life and the world around you.

Bekka quickly learned that Earth was beautiful and savage. It was like New Genesis and Apokolips but combined together! Was that what Jack Kirby was getting at? Was he writing an allegory for the human heart at war with its own selfish desires and uplifting charities? What was he writing about when he created The Demon? Man's lustful nature and his obsession with his own cock?

Bekka discovers the proper time for doing it: on the brink of Armageddon. Is that why people are constantly predicting the end of the world? So they finally have the proper time to do it?! Oh boy! That means I'm going to have sex on the Jewish Day of Atonement this month! Woo hoo!

Bekka decides it's time for her to stop watching the goings on of her new home and time to become a part of it. So she gets into her fancy New Genesis duds and goes out to battle crime! Her first battle leads to a bunch of dead people instead of a bunch of hugged people, so I think she's doing Wonder Woman all wrong. But she does cry so she might be on the right path. You'd never see Batman or Superman cry. That's the main difference between Wonder Woman and her Justice League cohorts, just after her boobies.

Bekka discovers the hippie movement which teaches her about love since they invented it. They also invented having sex at even improper times and with the improper number of partners. Bekka teaches them about "bringing down the party" and "bad vibes" and "how big a stick can fit up one person's bottom." She's all, "Drugs are bad! Don't do drugs!" But the guy who makes the drugs who isn't a bad person at all and probably the protagonist of this story is named Doctor Psycho and he's all, "I make good drugs! The best! Don't you ruin my business, you jerk! I think we might wind up having an adversarial relationship!" But Doctor Psycho has a friend named Guitar Joe who thinks Bekka would be an awesome addition to the farm and the loads of improper sexual relationships going on up at the farm, especially the ones that include his penis.

Yes. Naivete is the answer to cynicism. As long as you don't mind all of your answers being completely wrong. Which, if you're naive, you really don't! Which is why so many people believe in an omnipotent creator!

Eventually Bekka decides that the commune isn't being run correctly so she begins to teach people how to do things her way. Instead of taking drugs, they used "crystals" for their mind-bending trips. Instead of the women pleasing the men, the women pleased themselves and told the men to get the fuck off of them for once and haven't they ever heard of contraceptives?! Plus Bekka discovers that Doctor Psycho is a super villain. He drugs her because he wants everybody to be free but she wants to be free to stop him from making everybody free in the particular way he wants to free them. I'm not sure which one of them is being hypocritical and fascist.

Bekka and most of the other hippies left Guitar Joe and Doctor Psycho's commune to set up their own farm called New New Genesis. Everybody was all, "Why two news?" And Bekka was all, "No reason!", and then winked at the reader with a huge wink. Then one of the hippies was all, "Who is she winking at?" And one of them was all, "She must have taken some crystals." But soon enough, they all saw what Bekka's crystals could really do when Doctor Psycho's army of burnouts attacked the new commune. They were led by Guitar Joe hopped up on one of Bekka's crystals. But using the power of the crystal, Bekka transformed everyone back to their normal, hippie selves and saved the day. Then she said, "I have to become a super hero instead of dropping out!" And her new friends said, "No! Don't go! Are you sure you must?" And Bekka was all, "You bet your bippy! *HUGE WINK AT THE YOUNG AUDIENCE READING WHO ARE THINKING 'WHAT IS A BIPPY?!'"

And that's the end of the Gods and Monsters One Shots! I guess I'm prepared to read the Gods and Monsters Justice League three issue series. I hope I get around to reading it before I forget that Batman is boring old Man-bat, Superman is probably Zod although that wasn't expressly stated in his comic book, and Wonder Woman is a New God. It's all so super exciting because it's so different! The only problem I have with this story is that it portrayed Doctor Psycho in a better light than Wonder Woman. I'm always going to root for the guy who makes LSD and used to work for the MKUltra project and who's goal is to free everybody from the status quo! I don't need some anti-drug alien coming down to Earth and telling me I shouldn't take drugs unless they're her drugs and that I shouldn't drop out but should accept things the way they are and just try to make individual lives better within the fucked up bullshit system that is fucked up and total bullshit. Go Doctor Psycho!

Convergence: Shadow of the Bat #2

Don't judge my art skills! I had a cat on my lap and did this one handed on a touch pad.

This Convergence series has Azrael in it so I'm already tuned out. Let's see if I can make this commentary interesting for myself and utterly offensive to everybody else.

This issue is called "Home is the Sailor" because Larry Hama is cuckoo whacko. I wonder if I asked him nicely if he'd write a back of the G.I. Joe Action Figure card style biography for me.

On second thought, I'd like one with less grammar errors and a better Code Name.

This issue begins at some point hours after last issue ended. Wetworks are hunting Azrael and Batman in their home town of San Diego (which is going to disappear before the earthquake hits according to Aquaman!). But you know what they say when you try to hunt Batman?! Batman hunts you! Do they say that?

Anyway, Batman hunts them! The members of Wetworks have names like GI Joes which is probably how Larry Hama got this gig. Although I don't know how he got the Wonder Woman gig. Probably because he wrote Scarlet and Lady Jane and Cobra Commander so well.

Don't we all, Batman?!

Wetworks somehow realize immediately, possibly through smell, that Batman does not kill. Batman realizes immediately, possibly through his half-hearted boner, that Dozer hasn't been kissed by very many people. Dane realizes, possibly through nerve receptors, that Batman wears hard boots.

Wetworks are really cool cats because they're part of the early years of Image where killing was cool. So they're like totally killers and kill everything and never die because they kill first. It makes for really exciting comic books that fits with Image's dynamic art style. It's all in your face and saying, "This ain't your mother's comic book company, nerds!" I think one of their slogans was "Are you an athletic athlete that drinks beer and scores with women? Read Image! We ask if you scored with women because we know women aren't interested in all of our big boobed, nearly naked characters that kill and kick ass. Chess sucks!" It was a long slogan but Wizard magazine printed it for half-price because the writers and editors at Wizard loved giving blowjobs to everybody at Image Comics.

Azrael has saved a kid named Damon who's a resident of San Diego. Now he and Batman are becoming friends with the kid and his mother which means they're going to have to save both cities. Batman already knew he was going to do that but Azrael is all, "Sharks! Now I don't get to kill everybody!" He probably added something in French after that because I think he's French.

Batman and Azrael are inside of an aircraft carrier when Wetworks goes after them. I hope while they're fighting they make cool references to it like "I'm inside an aircraft carrier! Now die!" Or maybe something cooler. I hope Larry Hama has put some work into the upcoming retort filled violence.

The first battle is with Mother One and is wrapped up quickly with no clever zingers.

"One lady cyborg buttoned up and ditched overboard" was as zingy as it gets.

Batman makes a joke later after encountering Dane and Dozer but nobody laughs at it. I think he was just amusing himself the way I'm just amusing myself while writing these commentaries. Let me show you Batman's joke through the magic of scanned images!

Here's Bruce's encounter with Dane.


And here's his joke! Get it?! Hand! Ha ha! Genius!

Bethany, the mother of Damon, Azarel's new friend, has a plan to defeat Wetworks without actually defeating Wetworks. Too bad the city is already doomed thanks to Deathblow being horrible at blowing death. I hope the battle at least has a few good one-liners that I can mention at the water cooler at work tomorrow.

I wonder if "Not nice to pound on ladies" will make me popular at work or just get me sent to Human Resources? How about this hilariously obscene line that Azrael drops: "We are standing on top of half empty fuel bunkers with their stopcocks open...." Ha ha! Stopcocks!

Wetworks chooses to surrender and work with Batman and Azrael instead of shooting Azrael in the face and hoping the grenade misses falling into the stopcocks. The city doesn't disappear when they surrender even though the earthquake hasn't hit yet. I guess Deathblow hasn't lost yet so Batman can feel good about the truce. If the entire city had disappeared after Wetworks lost, Batman might feel bad. But now he can go after Telos with Wetworks and they won't notice when the city disappears! Batman might notice Wetworks disappear. And I wonder if Wetworks will know what's happening as they phase out of reality? Will it hurt? I bet it's excruciating! They probably should have risked their lives on the grenade thing being a bluff. Idiots.

The biggest idiot in the entire story is the kid because he calls Azrael a hero at the end. Bah! Don't encourage him!

Convergence: Shadow of the Bat #2 Rating: This issue earns Five Stopcocks out of Ten. It kind of felt like an issue was missing judging by the way last issue ended and the way this one began. But who cares, right? There was a full month between and nobody probably remembered anything about last issue anyway. I wish I didn't. I wonder if I get completely drunk in the next half hour, I can forget this entire comic book?

Divergence: Deathstroke
"The World's Greatest Assassin takes on the impossible contract to murder an Olympian God!"

Hey! Tony S. Daniel is getting writing help on Deathstroke now! I'm sorry to see that happen because the best part about reading Deathstroke is pointing out how most of it doesn't make any sense. Tony S. Daniel just writes a scene he wants to draw and then writes another scene he wants to draw and connects them with plot that he forgets entirely by the time he's thinking up the third scene he wants to draw which totally contradicts the reasons that the first scene led into the second scene!

And Peter Nguyen is doing the art which means Deathstroke is going to be a completely different experience than the first few issues. I liked when Tony S. Daniel drew it because we were assured at least two double splash pages per issue! Now the only double splash pages I can look forward to are the four or five in every issue of Wonder Woman!

How much can he really care when he doesn't even know his son's real name?

The distraction that takes place is the Teen Titans because Deathstork Deathstroke hasn't really battled them in The New 52 like he's supposed to. He fought the Green Team and he fought Lobo and he fought his children and he fought Stillborn and he fought hundreds of assassins and he fought his father and he fought Batman (sort of unless it was a dream) and he fought some other people probably. But he hasn't battled his arch-nemeses, The Teen Titans!

I thought the fight scenes would be more comprehensible than when Tony S. Daniel writes and draws but they aren't. Wonder Girl gets Deathstork Deathstroke tied up in her lasso but then he does something which makes her fall and Bunker hits a mountain and crushes himself in an avalanche which causes Deathstroke to not be tied up or on a mountain but in a jungle where he's attacked by a green panther. Totally following this. Easy peasy!

Oh! It was a simulation! That's probably why it made no sense. Lousy programmers!

The Spanish Inquisitor is giving Deathstroke a mansion with a Danger Room on a private island because Deathstroke might be valuable to the Dead Bastards some day. Plus he was broke and lost all of his hiding places early in the run because Tony S. Daniel thought that was a good idea. Also Slade is young again and loves looking at his testicles. But now danger is headed toward his island! I bet it's a god! Like the "How We Made This Comic Book Worse" blurb indicated!

Hephaestus shows up to give Slade a sword which he's supposed to use to slay a god. I suppose that's a loophole to the whole "only blood can kill blood" rule of the Greek gods. I guess if a god made the weapon it can kill a god. And I bet the god Hephaestus wants Slade to kill is Wonder Woman because she's getting all of the great big double splash pages these days!

I'm satisfied that Deathstroke is going to continue to be just as horrible as it was when Tony S. Daniel was writing and drawing!