Tangent Comics: The Atom #1 (December 1997)

This guy looks as heroic as a freshman math tutor.

Tangent Comics: The Atom #1 (October 1st, 1997)
By Dan Jurgens, Paul Ryan, Pat Garrahy, and Dave Lanphear
Cover by Dan Jurgens and Paul Ryan
Edited by Frank Berrios, Dana Kurtin, and Eddie Berganza

Some of you dimwits probably think of math tutors as heroic because you have trouble dividing things by zero but I want you to know that I meant that as an insult to The Atom. Also the dividing things by zero bit is a joke that all the math tutors reading this didn't get because they were instantly angry at me. Most of us know you can't divide things by zero because we're told that and we have to repeat it back as if we believe it but we all know that if you divide something by zero you get infinity. It's just logic, man! I didn't make the way the human brain works by refusing to learn actual things and chooses instead to believe the things it thought were right before actually being told what was right. I will go to my grave believing that dividing by zero equals infinity and Pop Rocks plus Coke will blow your stomach wide open.

Anyway, The Atom never had a chance of being good looking, hip, or cool because he was drawn and created by Dan Jurgens, an artist and writer who hasn't had an original thought since 1987. It's not his fault! That's just the last year his model received any software updates. Luckily this was written in 1997 so it's only ten years past Jurgens pop culture, fashion, and trends blind spot. But I'd be willing to bet Dan Jurgens could have written this in 2027 and not realized how spectacularly square it would be.

Do the kids still use the term "square"? I haven't had a proper software update since 1977.

"Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's . . . ah, who cares?"

I just realized that Superman bit where people looked up amazed to see him doesn't really work. It's taken me all this time to realize it, probably because I'm the sort of person who refuses to believe my math tutor. Who walks around yelling, "Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird!"? Obviously far less people than scream, "It's a plane!" Even though screaming, "It's a plane!", at the idiot who just looked up in the sky excited to see a bird when he was really looking at a plane is absolutely understandable. The only time anybody should have been shouting excitedly while looking at the sky was when they saw Superman so they should have just yelled, "Look! Up in the sky! It's Superman!" Then it would be more understandable to have people follow up with, "It's a plane!" or "It's a bird!" The whole Superman "Up in the sky!" catchphrase was simply written backwards!

"Look! Up in the sky! It's Superman!"
"NO, it's a plane!"
"You idiot! It's a bird!"

I just described this revelation to my friend Doom Bunny who tried to then explain the concept to me as if I didn't get it before I could convince him I understand the conceit but only now realized it didn't make any realistic sense. Then I also realized: "Metropolis is a massive city. Maybe seeing a bird is exciting! And then proclaiming it's a plane and then Superman are just subsequent levels of disappointment in not seeing a bird!"

Ahem. Moving on.

The President secretly watches The Atom (who looks suspiciously like Booster Gold but with dark hair and different coloring (mostly I'm talking about how you can see every muscle under his suit but somehow can't see the outline of his dick and balls) as he searches Metropolis for The Fatal Five, the criminals who killed his father! For this is The Atom III, the most human looking Atom of them all! I guess Atom II looked like a little guy with lightning bolts for ears and Atom I looked like an ant wearing clothes.

Ignore the unrecognizable Fatal Five. Check out his crotchless crotch in the upper left corner!

The Fatal Five in the Tangent Universe are more like The Fearsome Five in that they exist in the 20th Century and they also have a little guy on their team. But instead of Gizmo, the little guy on The Fatal Five is Kid Psycho which means he's based on Doctor Psycho, I guess? This universe is confusing! Instead of Doctor Light (not to be confused with Doctor Psycho who, as far as I know, isn't a total pedo), The Fatal Five have The Shadow Thief, I guess? That sort of makes sense! I guess Deathstroke replaces Mammoth or, if you were a snarky genius, you can point out that Deathstroke replaces Gizmo since this Deathstroke has whirling blades on his wrists which are the dictionary definition of a gizmo. I suppose Count Viper replaces Psimon because they're both arrogant jerks with psychic powers (again I'm prone to assumption; I don't know for sure that this "vampire" has psychic powers). And lastly, Ice replaces Shimmer because who cares.

During this battle, we learn that The Atom III has Firestorm powers except better because he can turn organic things like Count Viper's face into another organic thing like tapioca pudding. It's pretty disgusting and somehow doesn't kill Count Viper.

I guess he's immortal and now has to live with tapioca face.

The president, concerned with Shadow Thief on the loose with some kind of teleportation technology and the dangers of The Atom III tearing everything apart to hunt him down, demands his people get to the bottom of whatever the fuck is going on. He's all, "We run this country!" Mostly he says that for the perfect segue to shift scenes to Nightwing's leaders laughing uncontrollably and slightly pissing themselves as they spy on President Schwartz. Yes, that's his name. It is. I swear it is.

Somehow, the president isn't the only one spying on The Atom III. I guess his exploits are simply being televised to everybody and the President just happened to be watching along with everyone else? This is because The Atom III, no relation to Booster Gold, has a robot flying about him streaming live video and audio via a pirate signal to everybody's television sets across the country. And it must send the feed into the past because it gives everybody who knows the real identity of Atom III the chance to get their asses to the Fatal Five's hideout and confront The Atom III as he emerges from the battle.

President Schwartz is worried about teleportation technology getting into the hands of a criminal but it looks like every Tom, Dick, and the other guy already owns the technology.

Most of this will probably be explained by Jurgens in that The Atom III just happened to make his debut in the same city where he works (probably at the newspaper) and everybody knows him and also The Fatal Five live there as well because it was a convenient locale to kill his father from. But what I'm worried he won't explain is why his grandmother is Judy Garland.

So the camera was the president's spy device but that doesn't explain how the other people saw what was happening and how they knew he had a spy camera following him (supposedly they knew because they saw the video feed. But now I have to reassess that assumption and just believe those normal jerks observed the "micro-cam" before the super hero could). The President calls up the files to find out more about The Atom III since this is the first time they've every encountered him even though they had a spy camera following him around. I suppose if I want to do Jurgens' job for him, I could fill in the blanks and believe that every city in the United States is just infested with micro-cams waiting to pick up news like this. Although then why would the bystanders believe The Atom III had a micro-cam following him to record his exploits instead of understanding that they live in a surveillance state? I guess maybe they just don't know that and only see micro-cams when they're following a hero around?

Why am I doing this?! Writing this comic book isn't my job! I'll just assume anything worth explaining will be explained later. Like how The Atom, Arthur Harrison Thompson, got his super name! My guess is that it's because he received atomic powers when he was irradiated by the first atomic bomb ever tested! Right?!

Oh fuck off.

The bigger mystery now is how was Judy Garland attracted to that?!

The president watches Nightwing's history of the events of the early '60s that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. These doctored files and movie reels suggest that the first Atom was a hero that stopped a Soviet nuclear bombing of Florida from Cuba into devolving into a full out nuclear apocalypse. But judging by what Shadow Thief said earlier, my guess is that the real event was The A. Thom. went to help, couldn't control his powers. blew up Florida himself, and The Metal Men had to save the day. Or nobody saved the day and America just never launched their nukes because they knew A. Thom. had made a huge whoopsie. But they needed people to hate the Communists and love America so they lied about what really happened. I'm so glad this is just a fictional account of American history!

At least this answers my most pressing question: he fucked Judy costume on and rotting, irradiated dick out.

Just kidding! The A. Thom. became so popular that even Marilyn Monroe had to be caught fucking him no matter how ugly he looked or putrid he smelled! Eventually he got Judy Garland pregnant and disappeared from the public view to raise their child together on the moon. Nobody knew this until 1969 when America faked the fake moon landing and actually landed on the moon. Nobody noticed until Armstrong was halfway through his rehearsed line when he noticed the glowing yellow mansion just dozens of feet away from him. I, for one, would like to believe that NASA looked at the moon at least once before sending a bunch of humans to it. But what do I know? I read fucking comic books.

Not realizing he's a comic book character and the exposition wasn't for him but the readers, President Schwartz complains about the intel.

The Atom III goes off to pout because he blew his big debut. He cries about how bland his life was growing up in the suburbs without a father (at least after they moved from the moon). He beats himself up for letting Shadow Thief, his father's murderer, get away. But then he meets a little girl who is all, "I like reading old shit comics instead of using computers!" And Dan Jurgens, I mean The Atom III is all, "Me too! Old stuff is where it's at! New stuff is scary and I can only hold it in my RAM for a limited amount of time!" Then he flies away thinking about how to tell young children about his family life. Just in case it comes up a second time!

No, it's a plane! No wait! It's just a bird! Darn!

The Atom III sees a news report about how The Batman (or whoever he is in this universe) has been stymied while trying to find a cure for AIDS. The Atom III is all, "Man, I'd love to help with that but right now, I've got more important things to do! Like find out what Shadow Thief meant about my family being huge failures!" I know that sounds like I'm levelling some major critical side-eye at The Atom III's decision to forgo helping cure AIDS because he has his own personal shit going on but, I mean, isn't that just life? Luckily some people's personal curiosities and desires just happen to align with making the world a better place. But not mine and not The Atom III's so I can't fault him here.

I mean, obviously I'm judging the shit out of him! He fell backwards into powers that allow him to make a man live the rest of his life with tapioca face. Of course he can take a weekend to cure AIDS!

Tangent Batman's theory is that he's so smart he should have found a cure for AIDS himself but since he hasn't, it means somebody is sabotaging his efforts! And we all know Batman, even Batmen from other dimensions, is always fucking correct.

Why does he relate Red Tornado with AIDS? Was Red Tornado a sexbot meant to spread a deadly sexually transmitted disease to all commies, peaceniks, and nonconformists?

I should point out, even if it was in one of my previous scans, that The Atom III's secret identity is Adam Thompson. So we know he took the name Atom because it's his first name, Adam. And we know the first Atom took the name because of his first initial and first half of his last name: A. Thom. But how did The Atom II get his name?! It will forever remain a mystery!

The Atom III, in need of answers to his many questions like "How do I explain my dysfunctional family to a strange child?", visits his grandfather who now lives on a yacht. That's why Nightwing could never find him! Because yachts, like, mover around and shit. Really hard to track down and pinpoint! But since Nightwing are keeping an eye on The Atom III, they now know where old Gramps has been hiding. They anonymously alert Shadow Thief to A. Thom and The Adam III's location so that he'll murder them.

After some nuclear missiles are launched at the yacht by Shadow Thief breaking into an American military installation, Adam and A. Thom. fly off to confront him and end him once and for all. Except Adam doesn't want to end him just yet. First, he wants to know what the big secret is! And while Gramps refuses to confess, Shadow Thief does it for him.

The real story: A. Thom. killed the sergent in charge of keeping him locked up on base (Shadow Thief's father, of course) and then flew to Cuba. The Cubans, thinking he was a missile, launched nukes at Florida. America launched nukes at Cuba. Everybody launched nukes at everybody else. A. Thom. stopped the long ranged missiles but couldn't stop the ones that destroyed Florida and Cuba. So the official story was close enough and the only one the Americans could tell because it made other people seem like the cause of the problem. So typical American history.

The Ranking!
Why the fuck am I still calling this part "The Ranking" when I don't even rank my comic books anymore?! I haven't done that for over eight years! It probably has something to do with my grandfather whose name was ArTHEr RANKINGSberg.

When I first purchased a few Tangent comics from the Local Comic Book Store, I skipped over this one because it was written by Dan Jurgens. I'm not anti-Dan Jurgens. But I'm also not looking to read anything more than I already own by him. He doesn't do the art in this book although he did the "art layouts". Which is why the entire book looks like Dan Jurgens drew it after four beers and a shot of tequila. The art and character design are very much Dan Jurgens but there's just something sloppy about the overall finish. And that's that I've always thought a lot of Dan Jurgens' art was a bit sloppy, especially when he tries his hand at foreshortening characters legs or arms as they take up flying poses. They often just look like people born with baby limbs rather than a body looking shorter as it moves back towards the horizon or stretches out closer to the viewer. This book is not one I would have remembered if I'd read it in 1997. Other than the whole "I'm named the Atom because some military rank and file put a plaque on my door that read A. Thom." Hilarious, Mr. Jurgens.

I've just had another look at the art and I want to apologize to Paul Ryan. Some of it does look quite finished and distinctive of a style that isn't just "I'm inking Dan Jurgens' unfinished concept art." My guess is Dan, in doing "art layouts", didn't actually sketch out every panel and many of these panels have no Dan Jurgens in them at all. But then I'm not an art guy so what the fuck do I know?!

Batman: Shadow of the Bat #6 (November 1992)

Imagine using the article "the" for this cover. As if there's only one.

The Cover
The early '90s (let's include the second half of 1989 here to make my statement valid, if you don't mind admitting facts that are completely wrong into your view of reality) were a fantastic time for Batman comic book covers. Between this series and Legends of the Dark Knight, Batman covers were slaying kids' eyes from the racks of other boring ass typical comic cover fare. Who was hired at DC in 1989 that had a flair for cover design? This shit is so sleek and cool. It demands you pick it up and buy it. And who was I to deny that demand? I'm nothing if not a yellow-bellied simp. Brian Stelfreeze's painted covers within the blue ombré border (or whatever color that month (sometimes just a solid color which seemed lazy, really)) really pop. And wait until you get a load of the gimmick for the next three issues! Hmm, I think I just oversold a gimmick that's been used a lot. Anyway, this cover design, right now, looks so fucking cool that I'll forgive the sort of Choose Your Own Adventure look of Brian's painting. It's a little bit low rent compared to the first four issues (but not compared to last issue which looked like a Which Way book cover).

As for Stelfreeze's depiction of an ugly American, well, you know, there is a fucking type. And he nails it!

The Story
The story begins with that guy on the cover behind the wheel of a massive truck choosing to drive four teenagers off of a bridge because they were driving a foreign car. A Toyola, to be precise. Not precise to reality but precise to DC's in-universe car manufacturers.

The car smashed through a steel girder without any noticeable damage? Fuck, now *I* want a Toyola!

I think Dan Jurgens drew that page after reading a bunch of old Phantom Stranger books. Why is Batman's cape suddenly some kind of oracular artifact? Maybe that's just to indicate how great a detective he is. This is like an episode of Columbo. We get to see how the crime was committed just like Columbo seems to see it in his mind's eye. Maybe Batman has always had a Bat-Sense, like Spider-man's Spidey Sense, but to remark on it would cause people to question his detective abilities and his intelligence. How smart are you really if you're solving crimes because you can "see" them with some kind of paranormal bat radar of justice? I think Bruce never told the whole truth about the bat that crashed through his window. It obviously was glowing from gamma radiation and bit his ass. Just like Columbo?

I have to assume that this guy didn't drive these kids off the bridge simply because they're driving a foreign car. I bet there's something more going on in his life! That's the kind of sharp analysis you'll find in nearly 1/3 of my comic book reviews! In the other 2/3, you'll get rampant speculation and insane ramblings because I was once bitten by a radiated schizophrenic.

Anyway, now is when I speculate on why this guy's so fucking angry. The easy answers are that his penis is tiny and/or he can't satisfy his nagging wife. But I trust Alan Grant not to go for the easy answers! He's probably got something heavy to say about the rotting effects of patriotism on the human mind (especially the less curious minds). This guy's obviously compensating for something with the big truck and the big muscles. I think with guys like this, it's most often their lack of curiosity. It's the inability to find things fun, joyful, or interesting. They're so wrapped up in what they consider makes them manly that they refuse to feel any emotion that they consider feminine. They'd rather feel no joy at all than to have somebody, for one instant, think they're gay. To them, humor is punching a weaker person in the face and making them cry, bleed, or die. They've never heard of the phrase "self-deprecating humor". God forbid anybody, ever, laughs at them. This is the kind of person who thinks pronouns and gender ideology are fake bullshit but will kick your fucking ass if you dare call them a little girl. He's a sad, pathetic creature trying to portray an image of manliness that nobody but other sad pathetic creatures give any fucks about at all.

Another theory: he's suffering from CTE caused by six years of high school football.

I feel sorry for The Ugly American simply because he's being dressed by Dan Jurgens. Can the waist of his pants be any higher? Is eating roadkill a stereotypical American pastime to be proud of? Did he swallow a brick just before entering the bar?

The bartender serves The Ugly American a Mexican beer but, luckily, isn't murdered immediately. Instead, The Ugly American lets him live because The Ugly American is hunting a woman by the name of Tina. Usually I'd say "looking for" but, come on. Look at this beefy piece of dumb. He's definitely hunting her.

While barging in on Gordon and the police investigating the accident, Batman learns that two CIA agents are snooping around Gotham for classified reasons. There's nothing Batman can do for the four drowned teenagers so he decides to follow and stake out the Agents to see what they're up to. This is probably a case of his Batty Sense tingling because they're in town to recapture The Ugly American. I guess he's DC's version of Captain America? Got a dose of the shitty alpha version of the super soldier serum and it turned him into every other white male on Facebook?

By "alpha version", I mean the first version and not the anti-beta-cuck version which I'm only explaining to every other white male on Facebook who absolutely misunderstood me.

Now, I'd like you all to prepare yourselves because I'm going to scan an image that could trigger some of you. It's Dan Jurgens version of the late '80s/early '90s Batmobile.

I'm so sorry for this!

I just made a few calls to try to book an appointment with a therapist and after being greeted with responses like "Who is Dan Jurgens?" and "What do you mean by choad Batmobile?", I was told to stop wasting everybody's time and "just fucking man up, you simp piece of shit." Christ. I didn't know therapists went so hard.

Meanwhile, The Ugly American tracks down Tina who happens to be his daughter. She's currently married to a Korean man and pregnant with his child. Working through the previous bits of plot that I read, I come to the conclusion that her eventual meeting with her father isn't going to go so well. After he kills a lady's poodle on the way into Tina and her husband's store because it's "foreign" (because it's a poodle? Because it's name is Rodrigo?), I begin to suspect it might go worse than not so well even.

See? My momma didn't raise no fool no matter how many times she called me one!

Wait. Her husband's name is Kim? That's a girl's name! Or did she mistakenly think his surname was his first name when they initially met and he just never bothered to correct her because she was so hot?

While Kim Cheung gets his ass beat for being not white (and maybe a little bit for having a girl's name), Batman follows the CIA Agents until he finds an opportunity to steal their file on The Ugly American. He learns that The Ugly American was some guy named Jon Kennedy Payne who killed a Vietnam protester for burning an American flag in the '60s. He was sentenced to life in prison while his daughter was just two years old. Eventually the CIA heard about a guy who killed somebody for "patriotic" reasons and thought, "A-ha! The perfect specimen for our shitty super-soldier project! A guy who has never shown any aptitude for anything except being an angry asshole! He's perfect for the military!" When the government took him from prison, the official story was that he died by slipping in the shower and falling directly onto his shank. I totally didn't make that up and would scan proof from the comic book but I, um, lost power while trying. Darn! You'll just have to trust me.

Once he was officially declared dead, Payne was entered into a program of propaganda, LSD, and high-level murder techniques. Once they were threw, he was the perfect patriot: a complete and utter racist piece of shit.

To think they "overdid it" and not that they got it perfectly right just proves how naïve they were.

There was definitely a period of time when I would have guessed that people in the military were less racist than the general population because everybody in the military trained, lived, and worked together as a cohesive group. They were like the Studio 54 of diversity but without the fun, music, cocaine, and sex. Well, maybe just without the fun and music. I don't know when that time might have been though. Maybe during Vietnam up until sometime in the '80s? This comic was written in 1992 when being patriotic seemed not to be an absolute red flag but was understood could easily slip into full blown racism and bigotry. Now though? In 2025 when the Coast Guard has decided that swastika and noose tattoos aren't hate symbols but merely divisive? Yeah, fuck patriots, man. They can suck my freedom loving ass. Also, they, in absolutely no way, can lay claim to the idea that they "keep me free". They're the least free people in the world, fighting for corporations, oil, and greedy old white men! Having to conform to a strict set of principles so that they're embraced by all the other assholes who signal that they're super patriots by sticking to exactly all the same sets of principles. Not one of them free to be their own person lest they show some "woke" quality that will get them ostracized from the tribe.

Luckily Payne's too stupid to make the connection that his daughter married a Korean and she's also pregnant. So the baby stays inside Tina for now instead of being ripped out and stomped into a bloody smudge on the pavement next to Rodrigo. I assume he understands what sex is and its consequences so it's lucky that Batman arrives just in time to stop a fun little comic book infanticide (she looks to be nearly nine months pregnant so I'm going to go ahead and assume that the baby can, with proper care, survive outside of her womb at this point. If she was only a few months in, I'd have said "a fun little comic book abortion" instead of "infanticide". Duh!).

Batman and Payne get into a physical confrontation and Batman decides to try to reason with him. He makes a half-hearted attempt to appeal to Payne's pain of what the government did to him. But then Payne throws a brick at Batman and Batman is all, "Fuck you, asshole! You're dead meat now!"

This is what happens when you throw a brick at the motherfucking Batman!

Actually, the CIA show up and shoot Payne in the face. Batman explains to them, while shouting, that the real Ugly Americans are the government officials who use, abuse, manipulate, and coerce common citizens into doing their imperialist bidding! Right on, Batman! But also, the other guy was a pretty ugly American, even before their manipulation of him.

Bruce Wayne ties up all the loose ends by hiring a lawyer for Tina to sue the government for what they did to her father. He says things "for all he lost" even though "all he lost" was life in prison for killing a protestor against the Vietnam War. Batman might be projecting a little too much humanity onto this Jon Kennedy Payne guy. And, yeah, sure, maybe I'm not allowing him to have as much as maybe he did. But fuck him. He killed a guy for burning the American flag. Who's the real monster?

The Ranking
This story wasn't as good as the previous two. But maybe that's just because I found Batman too sympathetic towards the guy manipulated by the government. Sure, sure. I'm against government manipulation of its citizens as well! But just because somebody's a victim of the government doesn't mean that person was any good to begin with! Come on, Batman! Maybe spend a little more time on reading comprehension and a little less time on fucking Catwoman. Don't get me wrong! I don't want to see that training in the pages of the comic book! I still only want to see when you fuck Catwoman. In 1992, I think you could call a story "The Ugly American" and everybody would totally understand what you were doing. Everybody knew one or two major assholes like this and they just sort of put up with or avoided them as best they could. But in 2025? It's a fucking race to the top of who can be the worst fucking American piece of shit in the country. Things people knew they shouldn't say in public just get spouted nonchalantly all over social media and the 24 hour news network airwaves on a constant basis. Shame has fled the country. Or, more apt, it's been murdered in the dead of the night and dumped in a backwater swamp to be eaten by scavengers.

Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea: The Newsletter #2 (Third Week of December, 2017)

E!TACT! #2
Detective Comics, Justice League of America, Suicide Squad, Action Comics, and Other Assorted Bullshit
By Grunion Guy

Batman Detective Comics #970
by Tynion IV, Bennett, Regla, Loerzer, Jaime, and Wright

I only included the "Batman" part of the title because it's right there on the cover even though Batman is hardly ever in this comic book anymore. Now, I don't mind Batman not being in Detective Comics. But if they're going to stick "Batman" right on the title, I sort of expect him to be a major player. In reality, they should replace "Batman" with "Tumblr's" because Tynion IV seems to be writing this comic book to a quite specific audience.

Following that statement, I feel I need to add this paragraph that doesn't actually need to exist. But people have forgotten that they don't need to exist in a constant state of defensiveness (like the one I'm in right now which is causing me to write this paragraph to defend against the people in a constant state of defensiveness (it's like our current ability to engage in any kind of social dialogue has become a monstrous Ouroboros)). But being that we're all constantly feeling attacked, I can understand that a simple statement of observed reality (such as "Tynion IV is writing to a Tumblr audience") can be construed as judgment. Believe me, I'm not judging the book on its content. By all means, let Detective Comics be about the younger generation trying to fix the older generation's mistakes while uplifting minority viewpoints and calling out bullshit like authoritarianism and ableist memes extant within Batman (and other comic book) tropes. But please, at the very least, make it fucking interesting! It just seems like Tynion IV is incapable of that last bit.

This comic book is simply boring. I suppose if you can't get enough of the Tim Drake/Stephanie Cluemeister drama, you've probably rubbed this comic book against your genitals a half dozen times since it came out. But for those of us who want a compelling story that doesn't rely on the old mainstay of "Batman is bad and everybody thinks so" crutches, it's disappointing. If you want moving and entertaining stories that include all that "Tumblr audience" stuff that everybody probably believes I'm rebelling against because I wrote that line that caused me to write that other paragraph and they're never going to believe the other paragraph over their initial reaction to that one line, tune in to Brooklyn 99 or watch Master of None on Netflix. The writers of those shows are giving us a glimpse into the future. Whenever people complain of a piece of pop culture pandering to a certain audience, it's usually because they're having a difficult time dealing with the transitional phase between "shows with all white and/or male concerns" and "shows that take all perspectives into account." And that response is only amplified when the writing is terrible (or even mediocre. Like in Detective Comics). But the writers of Brooklyn 99 and Master of None (and I'm sure many other shows that I either haven't seen or aren't thinking about right now) develop shows that seem to exist in the post-transitional realm. These are shows that exemplify how stories can exist in a realm where all kinds of people exist. And they do it naturally because that world is just fucking natural (at least to the people living in the bubbles which aren't actually the anomaly bubbles but the bubbles of exemplary social conditions). I'm certain stodgy people who often find themselves saying things like "I'm not [insert difference]-ist!" probably couldn't sit through those shows either. But fucking hell what I wouldn't give for James Tynion IV to write something even half as good as those shows. I might be up for his Detective Comics at that point.

As a final aside (because I mentioned Brooklyn 99), I wanted to mention how I've been rewatching Deadwood and there's that part where Wild Bill is helping Bullock and Star build their shop when two guys stop by to talk to Bill. As I was watching the first guy critique Wild Bill's acting ability, I yelled out, "It's Hitchcock!" I'm so happy that Hitchcock lived in Deadwood and that he didn't seem too far off from his modern version.

As for the story itself, I suppose I could try to push my way past my own boredom to see what Tynion is trying to do. He seems to be examining the problems of Batman as an authoritarian forcing his own beliefs upon not only the social system he feels somehow responsible for but for the "family" he's taken under his wing as well. He is, literally, the Patriarch and Tynion's stories so far have been to expose his weaknesses and failings. Just because he's a white male of the previous generation, it doesn't mean he knows everything and it doesn't make everything he does okay. As a white male of the current generation, Tim Drake is struggling not to fall into the same patterns of patriarchal abuse of the system. He wants to do things differently but he's been failing because his need to control everything mirrors Batman's way exactly. But it isn't just Batman's authoritarian technique that's the main problem.

Enter Anarky. Here, we have another white male who knows best how things should be. It's the complete opposite of the way Batman wants to control Gotham but it's still just another white guy telling everybody how they should live their lives. Caught between these two men (Red Robin and Anarky) is Steph. Not only is she struggling with these two men telling her how she should be, she's also living under the shadow of her supervillain father. She has tried to find her own sense of agency by rebelling against her dad's ways (as we saw in the interminable Batman Eternal) only to later lose that agency in her relationship with Tim (who is so smart, how can he not constantly tell her what to do?!). Rebelling against Batman and the others when Tim seems to have died, she manages to find herself in Anarky's clutches. Eventually Steph will realize that these men never fucking listen to her and she'll figure out her own thing. Maybe. It's hard to hope that it will happen because she's been lost for so long.

The B Story between Cassie and Clayface is more compelling but it's hard to get emotionally invested when Cassie is reduced to speaking in her pidgin language.

The C Story about Kate dealing with her father and Batman I mostly already discussed in that part about Steph, Red Robin, and Anarky. Just replace all the proper nouns.

As for the Victim Syndicate and the city turning on Batman (can I call it "turning on Batman" when they always seem to hate him all the time now anyway?), I'd rather not write about it because I'll hurt my neck falling asleep at the keyboard.

Justice League of America #20

By Orlando, Petrus, and Hi-fi

I haven't mentioned this in quite some time but did y'all know Lobo was in this book? He's right on the cover this issue so I can't imagine anybody passed it by on the shelves. The most typical reaction was probably "HOLY FUCK! A COMIC BOOK WITH LOBO?! I JUST RUINED MY UNDERWEAR IN A SEX WAY, THE SPECIFIC WAY BEING DEPENDENT ON THE GENITALIA INSIDE MY PANTS! EITHER WAY, I'M NOW ALL GOOEY! I THINK. WOMEN GOO TOO, RIGHT?! I HAVE TOO HAD SEXUAL RELATIONS WITH A WOMAN!" That might not have been the most typical reaction unless you're also a closeted virgin who shouts crazy shit in the middle of your comic book shop.

This issue ends another story arc about a villain attacking a super group directly instead of the super group stopping a super villain from doing harm. I suppose Prometheus's plan was to turn everybody against the Justice League of America. And, I suppose as well, attacking a super group and endangering regular people during the attack is a good way to enact that plan. But Prometheus fucks up because this Justice League of America, from the beginning, has stated that they're the Everyperson's Justice League (at least Every Person from America, I guess)! So the civilians don't buy it (even though it seemed like they were buying it last issue) and they help the Justice League to save the day. Because ordinary people are strong as hell!

The story concludes with Lobo exposing Killer Frost's murder of a Null soldier in the last story arc. Instead of everybody going, "Wait. Why are we judging Frost when the person who got us to judge Frost is a well known genocider?! Why are we letting him off the hook?! I guess until he murders his first person while being part of the team, everything is peachy?", they go, "Oh no! Killer Frost! You've completely messed up your life and it's probably our fault for trusting you!" Killer Frost responds by saying, "No, no. It's my fault. Don't everybody get all up in my face with hugs and compassion. I'll take responsibility for my actions and ruin my life to prove that I'm remorseful." And then the JLA goes, "Whew. I can't wait until she's gone so I can stop feeling bad about myself."

The epilogue begins another story about a villain whose only plan is to attack a superhero (this time, it's The Ray's turn). Remember when villains didn't want to come into conflict with heroes?! I mean, I think there was a day like that. It's hard to say when people like The Riddler were constantly leaving clues so that Batman would eventually find him and punch him near to death. That's a fucking weird fetish, Riddler. But, you know, at least The Riddler wasn't just walking up to the Batcave, ringing the doorbell and calling Batman a cunt to his face when he answered. Like all these other villains do these days.

Suicide Squad #31

by Williams, Bagenda, Leisten, and Lucas

Ha ha ha! Hoo boy. That's some hilarious Narration Boxing from Harley Quinn. I don't think anybody has really died in the Squad since New 52 Suicide Squad #18 when Yo Yo was killed. Unless it was when Light was killed? I mean Lime. No wait. That was definitely earlier. Anyway, the people who have died in this comic book recently haven't really. Captain Boomerang. Reverse Flash. Even Rick Flag is simply in the Phantom Zone! I suppose it's good that Harley was the team member to have this thought because she's crazy. She might actually think there's been an extra person on each mission who has died.

Rick Flag Senior Senior dies this issue. I mean, he shouldn't die since he's in The Phantom Zone where time doesn't work. But he dies anyway. Maybe because he's simply in the foyer of The Phantom Zone? Anyway, his death doesn't matter because who the fuck cares about the Suicide Squad from two or three generations ago?! The only one that matters is the one from one or two generations ago! Shit, this one I'm reading now barely matters more than the original one I've never cared about.

Next issue, the Suicide Squad have to run down Karin who is driving a space station into the sun. So I guess the mission isn't an emergency or anything. It'll take her a few months to get there. And I'm sure the Squad has a faster ship than a fucking ginormous space station. Although does size matter in space? Since there's no atmospheric friction, does something being bigger help it to accelerate faster? I never claimed to be a scientist! Or smart even!

Action Comics #993

by Jurgens, Prado, and Hi-fi

Last issue, Dan Jurgens found a way to, once again, bring Booster Gold back into the DC Universe. How much extra money does Dan Jurgens get whenever Booster Gold appears in a comic book? Do "Created by" credits come with a monetary reward?

Last issue, Superman used The Flash's Cosmic Treadmill to go back in time so he could observe Krypton's destruction. I guess the Cosmic Treadmill also allows the user to travel through space? Or did Superman do that separately? Did he account for the amount of time it would take him to fly from Earth to Krypton before running back in time? I only ask that question because we all know Superman isn't as smart as Batman. He might not even be as smart as Hawkman.

I actually feel bad for saying that. I can't believe I'm about to apologize to a fictional character. I'm sorry, Superman. Nobody is as dumb as Hawkman. Except maybe Green Arrow. Although that's only in a figurative sense. And since I'm now speaking figuratively, I should probably point out that Aquaman is pretty dumb too.

Booster Gold joins Superman on a Krypton from an Elseworld's book (or should I say Elsewhen book?! Ha ha! Time travel humor that I totally didn't steal from this issue's Booster Gold since I actually stole it from the one person in every time travel movie who has to say, in response to "Where are we?", "Don't you mean . . . when are we?!"). The main difference on this Krypton is that  Zod and Jor-el are the best of friends. Like super best friends. It's so different and weird! How do writers come up with this stuff?!

Things get crazy on Krypton before Booster Gold ends the comic book by dropping the shoe off the other foot: he reminds Superman that he's powerless on Krypton! Oh man! What a jaw dropping last line! What a crazy twist reveal! I most definitely was not ardently screaming at the comic book the entire time I was reading it about how Superman would be powerless on Krypton so why was he being so stupid going back there and also this whole thing has reminded me of Scott Lobdell's Superman time travel to Krypton barf party so I might be a little bit crazy right now and have forgotten how to put together an understandable sentence. What I'm saying is: what a twist!

Other Assorted Bullshit

I still have a few comics that I'll probably read but that's quite fucking enough already, right? I've already passed my total word count record from the first issue: 2465 words. Is that a lot of words? That's probably two thousand, four hundred, and fifty words past TL;DR.

Judging by my weekly schedule of doing the things I need to do to maintain my existence, this newsletter will most likely go out on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. So I've narrowed it down to less than half the possible days of the week!

If you have the inclination, I believe you can reply directly to these Newsletters and I'll get them. I'll respond to all replies that don't make me think "I don't have time for these stupid questions that I was told don't actually exist but they fucking do! They totally fucking exist! Just like monsters! And drunk fathers who abandon their children to the harsh verities of existence?! Why didn't anybody tell me the truth as a child?!" So join the conversation! And if you want to converse with other followers of this Newsletter, let me know if it's okay to publish your email and a name you'd like to be called that isn't "Fucking degenerate."

Superman #77 (March 1993)

And thus we bid adieu to Superman. Forever.

If you weren't reading comic books in 1993, you have no clue how sad we all were that we were going to be losing Superman forever. Every essay I wrote in college revolved around the Death of Superman and what it meant for every American from here on out. Didn't I? Maybe I just mentioned it once in one of my memoir papers entitled "Within the Dream of the Sleeping Red King". Also my friend Brent assures me that I was nearly inconsolable that my nephew would grow up in a world without a Superman. Maybe I said that because I was feeling so sentimental about my one year old nephew but I surely didn't say that because I gave a fuck about Superman, as evidenced by the fact that I own, pre-New-52, about a dozen Superman comic books. That's not counting nearly the entire run of DC Comics Presents because I didn't collect that for Superman! I collected it for the guest stars and, only discovering it after the fact, Ambush Bug. What I'm trying to say is we weren't a cynical lot of bitter bastards! We took DC at their word that they were killing Superman and that everything would be different after that! It was a sad and terrible time.

Also, I might have had several concussions from downhill biking accidents between 1993 and now which have muddied my memories of the time. It's possible I'm getting the death of Disco confused with the death of Superman.

Before I begin discussing this issue, just a quick update on my Infinite Jest read. One of the things I always do when I'm trying to understand a text is figure out why the book was called what it was called and why the characters are named the way they are. And while Infinite Jest was obviously a reference to Yorick from Hamlet, I wasn't sure why it was chosen as the name of the text and James Incandenza's name for his ultimately deadly Entertainment. I had been discussing it with the Non-Certified Spouse over dinner a day or two ago and later that night, the book simply explained it pretty fucking matter-of-factly to me. The father of Hal Incandenza (if, at railroad spike, we were forced to choose a protagonist among the many characters, it would certainly be Hal. But without a threat of hearing the squeak, I'm choosing to believe this text is anti-protagonist), who de-mapped himself by putting his head in a microwave oven, created his deadly entertainment to try to make his child, whom he saw suffering more and more from anhedonia and disassociation from the world and others, happy. The entertainment, or Hal's father, was the jester, Yorick, full of infinite jest, trying to pull his son out of his spiraling depression and separation from the world. So while I've been meaning to dive back into the world of Shakespeare (being that I've lugged that six pound book of the collected works of Shakespeare around my entire life, having purchased it in college), I sort of have to probably read Hamlet next. Mostly because of Infinite Jest but also because of Station Eleven which I should re-watch around the same time (and, probably, read the actual book).

I've also been reading Stephard Bachking's The Long Walk which I haven't read since 1986 or so. The only things I remember (or think I remember since I haven't gotten to them in this re-read yet) are when the main character Ray needs to take a crap under the threat of being shot if he takes too long and how he goes fucking nuts at the end of the story (probably not a spoiler for the movie because they'll probably change 85% of the book). But what keeps going through my head as I read it this time is this: "Is this Stephen King's more vulgar and dumbed down version of "Night-Sea Journey" by John Barth?" My current hypothesis is "I'm pretty fucking sure it is" but you'll have to wait for my full review on Goodreads when I finish it. By the way, I highly recommend "Night-Sea Journey" and most of the rest of John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse. I say "most of the rest" because I know not everybody enjoys the kind of tangled stories that I enjoy. It's not like I go around recommending Gertrude Stein to anybody else no matter how much I adore her. I am acquainted with the limits of status quo brains for their entertainments.

And then I opened this comic book to the first page and, by golly, even at 53, I have discovered I can spontaneously ejaculate!

Enough about my literary inclinations; here's some man nipples and a mention of my ejaculate!

I'm not one of those people who desperately need to figure out if somebody is trans or not; accepting a person as they present themselves is (and should be!) the be all and end all of how we interact with each other. But (oh no! He said but!), that being said, Lex Luthor is a fictional comic book character (whom I should be able to speculate on wildly) who just had his mind transplanted inside a cloned body. Lex presents himself as male because that's what he is. My hypothesis is that the clone his brain was put into was female that has had top surgery (and possibly bottom surgery but that's not my fucking business. Besides, he's fucking a mass of shifting, sexless cells, so he can basically be packing anything down there and Supergirl can just make whatever genitals will most please Lex (even a toaster, I guess?)) and is taking hormones to maintain his presented masculine traits. Why would I even consider this? Well, the luscious nipples and fabulous hair were my first clue but men often have amazing nipples and hair as well so it didn't have me wondering at all. Wondering about my sexuality, sure! But not about Lex's gender. What made me suspect Luthor's brain was placed inside a woman's body was this:

Look at those dainty feet! And the limberness!

I'm more than certain that Dan Jurgens can draw feet reasonably well so this has to be purposeful! And those delicate, scrumptious feet aren't a mistake because they exist in more than one panel.

They're so cute and delicate!

Sure, maybe Lex just has tiny feet. Maybe Dan Jurgens was having a weird foot day. But it's also possible Lex Luthor II's brain was placed in a female body. Or a cloned body drawn by Rob Liefeld.

Even weirder than Lex's miniscule little lady feet though is Lois's choice of outfit.

Is this Lois Lane or David Byrne?

Lois has dropped by to tell Lex that Cadmus has Superman's body, as if he didn't already know. He acts as if he didn't already know but that's because he's a manipulative little prick who can never give the slightest hint about his hand to anybody at the poker table. Lois, also a manipulative little bitch, pretends she's going to publish a story about it but she really just wants Lex Luthor to destroy Cadmus. She's afraid printing the story would kill one or both of the Kents. Ha ha! If only she knew her previous story has already done that!

I don't know whose toes I'd suck first!

Pa Kent doesn't die which is probably good because I laughed at him face down on the cover of Superman The Man of Steel #21 so many times that people might suspect I'd feel bad. I can't have people suspecting things that aren't possible so I'm glad Jonathan has pulled through. Although it was weird that Pa didn't respond to any of the medical treatment for his cardiac arrest until they ripped his shirt open to expose his old man nipples and then he jolted awake with a "Clark!" That's just an observation. I'm not suggesting anything untoward or kinky.

Later in the women's locker room at LexCorps, Sasha, the martial arts trainer from earlier who knocked Lex off his tiny feet, has a mysterious encounter with a mysterious person who can't be Lex Luthor because Dan Jurgens totally sets it up to be Lex Luthor.

You can tell I really wanted to concentrate on the dialogue in this encounter because I left out the previous panel where Sasha is topless.

No men around LexCorps? So, like, if Lex had to clone a body for his brain, it would probably have to be female? And, if this is Lex, just like a villainous piece of shit Republican, he's all, "Being that I'm a male brain inside a female body, I have a right to be in either changing room and I'm going to use that fact for nefarious purposes! Ah ha ha ha ha!" But that's just dumb speculation because this obviously isn't Lex killing Sasha. This murderer being revealed as Lex has as much chance as the island on Lost having been purgatory!

Oh, what the hell! Here's Sasha's tits!

Also, Lex admits to killing Sasha before the end of the comic book so I guess the island in Lost was purgatory! I mean, at least until the writers decided it wasn't because too many people guessed that it was. Just like when everybody guessed Monarch was Captain Atom so DC decided Monarch was actually Hawk! So dumb!

Also also, Pa dies at the end. And it's way less funny than when he died in the field on that cover. Ha ha! That looked so silly!

Also also also, Supergirl retrieves Superman's body and she, Lex, and Lois return him to his crypt inside a new coffin, probably created by Lex to suck out the last of Supe's powers or some other weird shit.

Also also also also, some good news: I don't think I have any more Superman comic books to read! Yay! The bad news? I'm going to be reading more Gerard Jones' comic books soon. Boo! Hiss! Just to clarify, I'm booing and hissing because he's a convicted sex pest and not because he's a terrible writer. His comics are always top notch! Now if I were booing and hissing about Scott Lobdell, it would be because his writing was terrible and not because he's been convicted of being a sex pest. I'm not saying he is one! But I'm also saying you can't prove a negative. So, you know. Shrug!

Superman #77 Rating: C. So, in the end, Superman died forever and we never saw the likes of him again. At least for about seven months or so. During those months, I bought a lot of Magic the Gathering cards to salve my emotional turmoil and often wept for my poor nephew's non-Superman future! So sad! Then when Superman returned, my main reaction was, "Thank God they didn't bring Jason Todd back! I hope he stays dead forever!" But you know how that ended too: me buying even more Magic the Gathering cards to salve my emotional turmoil and constantly weeping for my poor nephew's non-non-Jason Todd future. Stupid Judd Winick!

Superman #76 (February 1993)

I do not like this cover but I can't explain why.

It's times like these when I wish I'd done more work throughout my life coming to terms with my emotions and exploring my feelings more deeply because then maybe I'd know why this cover depresses the shit out of me. Don't get me wrong! I know it's not the sentiment that's depressing me! I'm not a pussy and nobody has the right to bully me and call me a pussy because I'm an adult and not in junior high anymore so don't even think the cover made me feel actual emotions like a junior high school kid who deserves to get thrown in a trash can after school as he scuttles from wall to wall trying not to be seen. It depresses me because it's, like, bad. But I don't know why. If only I were as good at expressing things as David Foster Wallace who might be one of the first novelists I've read in my fifty plus years of reading who makes me see exactly what he's describing and in a way where he's not even trying or smacking you in the face with your own science textbook while trying to find the stankiest trash can in the quad. But then again, look at what happened to Wallace! He hung himself from his back deck! Is that what happens to people who have looked inward so deeply that they can easily express their perceptions and feelings of the world in such a casual and illuminating way? No thanks! I don't even have a back deck! What am I going to do? Hang myself off the rickety stairs leading up to my front door? They barely hold me while I'm carefully ascending or descending them! They'll definitely collapse in a spray of splinters, moss, and probably termites if I drop my fat, pussy, still-not-over-Pig body from the bannister!

I've never been to a Funeral for a Friend before. Not that friends of mine haven't died. I've just never been to a friend's funeral for complex reasons that probably have nothing at all to do with the way I've called my feelings pussies and shoved into mind trash cans. I have been to family funerals though and let me tell you, those are not a good time. Are they supposed to be a good time? At my grandmother's funeral, one of her sister's kids got up to speak and all she kept talking about was how she hounded my grandmother on her death bed about Jesus and making sure that Ann, my grandmother, had accepted Jesus before she died and then happily declaring before everybody gathered that my scared, dying grandmother who was probably sick of being browbeaten by this Jesus lover had finally accepted Jesus as her lord and savior before dying and how that was supposed to make us all feel better. I should have gotten up and rescinded all of that with actual facts about my grandmother, like how she distanced herself from the church because she couldn't understand the casual antisemitism, as if she was supposed to just go along with everybody else's hatred of Jewish people because of the historical fact that Jesus was crucified by, well, you know, his own people? I mean, who else would have crucified him? Oh, sure, the Romans did but as a Catholic, you can't go around hating Romans because they crucified Jesus! Plus that one guy washed his hands of it or something so that probably explains why the Romans couldn't be blamed, right? It was also at my grandmother's funeral where the priest presiding over the ceremony (is a funeral a ceremony?) didn't know shit about my grandmother so began with, "I Googled Ann's name to see what her name meant," and then went on as if he knew her because he now knew that Ann meant, I don't know, merciful or something. Fuck that guy and fuck Connie. I think it was Connie who said the Jesus stuff. Fuck if I can remember my 2nd cousins!

The saddest funeral I have ever been to was my grandfather's funeral because his little brother, the last living one of my grandfather's siblings, was sitting at the viewing in the front weeping and there wasn't a trash can in sight so I couldn't do anything about it. Actually, what I did about it was go up front, sit by him, put my arm around him, and cried with him. I would use my grandfather's brother's name here but I don't know how to fucking spell it! Melio, maybe? I don't know! I only ever just said it growing up! In that moment, I might have been sadder than Pig made me. But definitely not sadder than the end of Guardians of the Galaxy just a week after my cat and soulmate and familiar and best friend had died, my boy whom I often called my Raccoon Boy. And then when Rocket is so sad and needs to be comforted and I'm crying now but I didn't cry in the theater and it wasn't until we left Laurelhurst and we crossed the street on the way back to the car and I just fucking exploded and was weeping and wailing and I scared the absolute shit out of the Non-Certified Spouse because I'm not generally such a pussy.

If you haven't understood by now that I'm mocking the idea of calling people who feel emotions a pussy than maybe you shouldn't read anymore of my stuff. Or just throw me in a trash can, I guess.

Oh, I also think my mom punched my sister at my grandmother's funeral but fuck if I know for sure because I generally just try to stay out of their shit. I think my grandmother might have died in the same room as them while they were screaming at each other and they may have blamed each other for my grandmother basically "Noping" out of their fucking shit way grander than I've ever managed.

Everybody is here? This is everybody?! What the fuck?

Supergirl had way more people at her funeral. Is that because she was more popular than Superman or did Crisis on Infinite Earths actually decimate that much of the DC Universe?! It's actually kind of sad that so few heroes managed to make it to this memorial. My favorite part of this panel is Aquaman's legs sticking out from under the Daily Planet logo. If I saw Aquaman trying to hide from the rain, I might think twice about standing in it. How fucked up is this rain if Aquaman — who's only known for two big things: loving water and molesting fish — won't let it touch him?

The second page destroys my whole Aquaman theory almost immediately because this comic book is like comic book fans on the Internet: neither one wants to see me have fun.

Here's Aquaman saying the most boring and expected thing. No wonder everybody hates him and the people who don't hate him are lying because they secretly hate them but have decided being a contrarian is the meat of their personality.

Can you imagine having the Wisdom of Solomon and yet everybody still argues with you and questions your opinions? It's kind of how like my friend Bob who always said I was the smartest person he knew grew up to be a huge Christian and devout Trumper (mostly because he was blown up in Iraq and found solace in the unthinking, virtue-signaling lifestyle of "patriotic Christians") ignoring me now as an adult every time I tried to point out how the man he seemed to worship was actually a huge know-nothing ignorant moronic demagogue. Captain Marvel's situation is exactly like that! Not that I'm claiming to be the smartest person! I'm just claiming that the guy whom I once dared to eat tape who then complained after eating it that it was "stuck in his throat" and I was all "of course it is; it's tape!" thought I was smarter than he was. That's not a huge bar to leap is what I mean.

While the heroes gather on top of the Daily Planet to remember their friend while people down below think, "Why are they gathering at the Daily Planet to honor Superman? What's Superman's connection to the Daily Planet? Maybe Superman worked there in his secret identity?!", the coolest kid in the world has traveled to Metropolis to apologize to whomever he can because he thinks it's his fault that Superman died. Why? Did this skateboarding, heavy metal loving, mom bitching at, school hating, long-haired lover create Doomsday? Was this kid so cool that he jerked off on a rock and the rock got pregnant and it gave birth to Doomsday?! Am I even close to figuring out Doomsday's origin here?

The coolest kid in the world travels to Metropolis for a press conference called by a woman who wants to report that she was Superman's wife!

Wait. So that woman is Mrs. Superman? I'm confused. Also, did I miss the issue where Lois's head was transplanted onto the frame of an ex-football player?

Is what Lois doing here an example of dramatic irony? If so, it's not as good as that moment in Les Misérables where the innkeeper is scavenging the dead after the battle and he's all, "God in His heaven, he don't interfere. Because he's as dead as these stiffs at my feet!" Except we, the audience, know Marius, the stiff he's currently stealing the watch off of, isn't dead at all! I'm an atheist because however the universe came into being, it definitely wasn't some magic creature made in our image but that's still an awesome line because I love literature and musicals and the human mind and feeling feelings and philosophy and Sailor Moon and all of those other things that caused me to see the inside of several trash cans over my lifetime.

The coolest kid in the world runs into the lamest kid in the world (Jimmy Olsen) and they decided to go get something to eat at Bibbo's Bar and talk about Superman and, I'm guessing, possible blow jobs in the back room. Jimmy Olsen is gay, right? Isn't that why he became the Elastic Lad? Wasn't that an allegory of being "not straight"? Especially since he became Elastic Lad whenever he drank semen.

What's that? It was a serum and not semen? Are you sure? I'm pretty sure it was semen.

Later at Clark Kent's apartment, the "How Do We Convince the World Clark Kent is Dead Without a Body Gang" meet to discuss options.

My guess is the plan will be "Call Batman and have him figure it out."

The heroes have not gathered in Metropolis for a wake; they've come to answer letters sent to Superman every Christmas by kids who understand writing to Santa Claus is a huge waste of time. Apparently the main Post Office in Metropolis has a huge room devoted merely to storing letters to Superman, mostly because Superman only reads them once a year on Christmas Eve. Presumably these aren't just Christmas letters though and they build up all year and the employees at the post office fucking hate Superman. You can tell because they just toss the letters on the floor.

Why is Guy here? Can he even read?

Guy cynically assumes that every letter is going to ask for something and Wonder Woman is all, "Guy! Many unfortunate souls find themselves without hope or power to affect their situations. Superman realized he can't be a beacon of hope without helping those he's shone his light upon." Or some shit. But then Nightwing and Aquaman open up and read the first two letters and Guy is all, "In your face, Wonder Woman!"

Unfortunately, Guy reads a letter when a dying woman wants to once again see her son estranged for 30 years and Guy is all, "Fuck! Why couldn't I get the space debris kid?!"

The rest of the issue is a montage of the heroes doing good things for people to prove they're actually heroes and not just authoritarian fascists who beat the shit out jay walkers and shoplifters. Plus Wonder Woman helps get the cool kid's dad back in the picture and Flash and Green Lantern rebuild their house. My brain tells me this is an uplifting story but my heart has been yawning for the last ten minutes. Is this what a World Without A Superman is like? Super boring?!

The only exciting part of the issue is the end when we see Cadmus has decided to get into graverobbing to steal Superman's body. Christ, that Westfield is super horny for dead aliens.

Superman #76 Rating: C. My favorite part of this comic is the bit that wasn't expressly stated. In the montage part where all the heroes are helping out and answering letters to Superman and just generally doing good work, Batman is nowhere to be seen. Of course he wouldn't waste his time with this sentimental bullshit! Mostly because his whole thing is based on sentimental bullshit and also insanity. You can't be a grown man running around in kid pajamas trying to end crime because you're super sad about the death of your parents and think people are going to see it as grim and dark when it's just sad and sentimental and fucking insane. I swear to God Alfred might be the worst character in the entire DC Universe. How many years did he simply not get poor Bruce some therapy?! Did he have too much British stiff upper lip to allow Bruce to work through his feelings in an appropriate manner?! With therapy, Bruce might have been able to see his life more clearly and understand that he isn't stopping the death of somebody else's parents by donning the mask; he's actually causing more kids to lose their parents when he breaks all their limbs because they were so desperate in their poverty to work for The Joker or The Riddler or The Penguin and then almost certainly died of shock and sepsis later after Batman had long stopped thinking about them and then, technically, could go on believing he doesn't kill. Although after watching The Sopranos, I suspect therapy wouldn't have necessarily stopped the violence.

Superman #74 (December 1992)

Concentrating all their firepower on his crotch? No wonder this fucker killed Superman!

I used the word "crotch" for Doomsday's naughty place because nobody actually knows what's going on down there. Does Doomsday even have genitalia? If so, is it more sensitive than the rest of his body? Is it just a huge bone spur? Maybe it takes the strength of somebody like Superman for Doomsday to feel anything down below and he's getting off on finally feeling something in his sexy spot. It's like how I imagine Lois Lane has to wear a Kryptonite retainer when she's blowing Superman just so he feels something. Plus the Kryptonite makes it so that when he comes in her mouth, he doesn't blow her head off of her neck. I bet Superman has a sex room in the Fortress of Solitude where the sexy lighting is just a miniature red sun. I'm assuming that most invulnerable superheroes have a nervous system to match so that they don't feel the pain of every super-powered punch to their invulnerable and undamaged face. That makes the most sense and the main evidence is when Superman gets hit super-duper duper-super hard, he usually says something like, "Whoa! I actually felt that!" Which means he definitely isn't feeling anything when Lois slides a finger up his butthole. I mean, as if she could slide a finger up there! She'd need a nuclear powered jackhammer to untighten that sphincter.

I was going to start reading these comics straight through before writing about them to speed up the process but I've found it's not possible. Because I begin reading and then I stumble upon some action or image that I just have to comment on. Like this:

Maxima's an alien from Almerac so it would be ignorant of me to assume that her crotch shouldn't hang down that far.

Ice convinces Maxima to take Blue Beetle to the hospital instead of stopping Doomsday from killing hundreds of more people on his rampage toward Metropolis. Ice assures Maxima that she'll stop Doomsday herself and Maxima somehow doesn't shit her intestines out of her asshole laughing. I suppose in comic book terms, there's not much difference between Maxima trying to stop Doomsday and Ice trying to stop Doomsday. We, the reader, know he's bound to kill Superman so why would any of us believe Maxima's mind forcefields would work to contain Doomsday any better than Ice's ice cubes? Maybe Doomsday's weakness is cold and he's immune to mind powers because he's just a mindless killing machine. Maxima carries Blue Beetle off while everybody else lies around dying, I guess?

You should realize you're not much of a superhero when you're the only one lying around unconscious who anybody is actually worried about.

While Maxima runs off with Blue Beetle and her huge crotch, Ice follows Doomsday's trail of disaster in the hopes that she'll stop him. She really is the most optimistic hero on the team. I also want to call her perky but that might be because I can't stop thinking about her breasts hanging out from under her quarter-top. The underboob costume might be the sexiest super hero costume of the '90s and it's on what often feels like the most prudishly written character. Maybe that's also why she's so sexy! Also maybe she's sexy because I know she gets to look at Guy Gardner's hog. Fucking lucky.

While on the trail of Doomsday (and Booster, I guess? Apparently he's still battling him), Ice comes upon the coolest kid in the world.

Skateboarding without a helmet while also chewing gum?! Fuck yeah!

This kid whose home life sucks who also thinks school sucks but proclaims he loves Fridays because he's the most boring cool guy of the '90s wears a "Meta Death" t-shirt. The shirt alone proves why Artificial Intelligence sucks. Because if AI came up with that shirt (assuming it somehow figured out how to do actual writing because the prompt was so fucking laborious you might as well have drawn the stupid picture yourself anyway, you talentless prick (Who am I insulting?! I guess everybody who uses AI!)), I wouldn't give a shit. But knowing that an actual person was all, "What's a good fake metal band name that sort of sounds like an actual metal band name? Metal Death? No! I know! META DEATH!" Hmm, now that I typed that out, maybe the kid's shirt was actually supposed to say "Metal Death" but the "L" was hidden by his jacket. Also maybe this is where Scott Snyder got the idea for the Meta-Gene actually being the "FUCK YEAH METAL GENE!"

Also this kid isn't the coolest kid in the world at all! I was duped!

He's the biggest dick in the world! I bet he listens to Joe Rogan and has framed pictures of Jordan Peterson in his locker at school. When he called his home a "war zone", he meant the zone where he conducts war against his mother who obviously cares about him (more evidence of her love appears in some non-scanned panels I didn't have room for because we've got a really juicy one of Ice's crotch coming up!). Calling his home a war zone was also foreshadowing for Doomsday bringing his war and Ice's crotch to this kid's kitchen.

Well, she almost stopped him!

Doomsday smashes up the family's car and Meta Death is all, "That guy rocks harder than Axl Rose shitting into a tube attached to Robert Plant's asshole!" I disagree with that because now that I've typed it, I kind of want to see a comic book splash page of that. Maybe even a video. Are Plant and Rose down on their luck right now? Could we get a GoFundMe together for them contingent on filming the shitting into each other's anuses video? The video could be called "Fertilizing the Garden"! Maybe have a hot woman in an Alice in Wonderland get-up holding the tube and saying things like, "Curiouser and curiouser!" Also you'd be able to see her nipples poking through her top. What's the woman from the Blues Traveler video, "Runaround", doing? She's probably still hot, right? I'm sure I'd think so because I seem to like the way women I've had crushes on my whole life are aging with me. Winona Ryder. Christina Applegate. Stacie Mistysyn.

Anyway, Booster Gold tosses a tube full of shit into the bushes as he and Superman arrive on the scene from whatever the fuck they were doing while Doomsday was throwing Ice through the wall. Meta Death's mom is all, "That Superman easily took a punch from the fat guy in the body bag!" And Meta Death is all, "Who cares? Superman sucks. He's a bigger potato than that Ross from Friends."

Do we ever find out Doomsday's real name? Or did Booster just happen to guess it correctly? Or maybe Skeets fed him the information from the future?

Doomsday kicks Superman through Meta Death's "war zone", completely collapsing it. Superman is all, "Unbelievable! I don't know if I've ever been hit that hard!" Well, you still haven't, Supes, because he kicked you. Is that me being too pedantic just to be a dick? Probably. Remember, I'm the idiot who immediately thought Meta Death was super cool when he was obviously, on a quick re-assessment, the worst person in the world.

While Superman catches his breath, Doomsday decides to kill Booster Gold and Ice.

I know he's not really dead. Stupid force field saved his stupid spud butt.


What a dumb spud! Just lying on the counter waiting to get her back broken!

Just before Doomsday kills the mom and her baby, Superman begins wailing on Doomsday with his fists. He could have grabbed him by one of his loose pipes and dragged him into space but he's probably still reeling from that kid calling him a spud. What a classic insult!

The rest of the Justice League arrive to re-enact the cover where they're all shooting him in the crotch but it doesn't help. All it does is free up Doomsday's other arm and destroy some of the body bag he's wearing so that eager readers can finally get a look at his face! And his left nipple!

I would have made his nipple a bone spur.

Do all sentient beings in the DC Universe have nipples? Seems a bit far-fetched. Or maybe it's far-fetched to expect them to have only two nipples. Doomsday's upper torso should be riddled with nipples and bone spurs. At least I know they'll never show what's going on between his legs so I'm free to imagine it's either a massive bone spur or a clanking, crashing clam-like opening full of teeth and razors. You know, depending on his gender. I shouldn't presume to understand his alien anatomy. For all I know, he's just got a second, smaller face down there.

Doomsday continues to beat the shit out of Booster Gold so hard and with such specific moves that I think I've figured out where he's from.

Doomsday's from Philadelphia, isn't he?

No alien from another world is going to drag some chump over to a car that he shouldn't recognize just to slam his head in the door. This guy's definitely from Philly. Maybe Boston.

For a creature who's faster than The Flash (I'm not buying it) and strong enough to surprise Superman, there's no way Booster Gold's head wouldn't have just come completely off when slammed in the car door. Maybe his goggles offered just enough protection to keep his head barely on his body.

The house explodes just as the mother mentions a gas line which keeps me from writing three paragraphs about why the house exploded just because Superman crashed through it. The family is caught in the middle of the fire but Superman gives chase to Doomsday who has decided he's hurt enough people here. Superman hears the kid calling but realizes he can't go back to help; he needs to stop Doomsday before he can kill more people. Also that kid called him a spud; does he expect Superman to give a shit about him or his family now? Fuck that kid!

Superman #74 Rating: B. I probably could have given this comic book an A because I did enjoy it. But then Booster Gold said Doomsday was faster than The Flash and even my ability to process and accept comic book logic couldn't make that statement compute. I suppose I could give Booster the benefit of the doubt and say he had such a massive head injury by the time he yelled that that he wasn't processing reality too accurately. But I don't give benefits of the doubt which is why writers like Cullen Bunn and Mark Millar despise me! Which is sad because all I ever wanted was my father's love. I mean the love of writers who remind me of my father.

I mean the love of people who were formerly the world's youngest hypnotist!

Justice League America #77 (Late July 1993)

Gross.

Whenever a plot seems to be an allegory about disease and the wasting away of the flesh, why is my go-to belief that it's about AIDS? Why not cancer? It's easy to think that being sexually transmitted, it becomes a more versatile disease for a fictional allegory. Cancer is random and stupid but you can't get it from sitting on public toilet seat. I mean from kissing a stranger. I mean from blood-to-blood contact with somebody you met in a park, or a loved one, or a transfusion from a health care system that didn't take AIDS nearly as seriously as they should have because we had an asshole president and his mean-dick-sucking wife who refused to treat AIDS as a national epidemic and instead viewed it as a consequence of living a gay lifestyle. That's a lot more meat for your allegory than "Well, I was diagnosed with cancer like almost everybody in the world will eventually be as well if they live long enough." Then again, I suppose it depends on the point of your allegory. Many cancers can be traced back to government blowing up atomic bombs right in our own backyard or not giving a shit and allowing corporations to do whatever the fuck they want with whatever chemicals they wanted. So cancer could be a good allegory for getting fucked by the system while AIDS is a good allegory for getting fucked by your social connections. But the main reason I find I can't stop comparing all of the plots about diseases to AIDS is that I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the '70s and '80s and saw how it ravaged our friends, neighbors, and loved ones, especially early on when nobody really took it too seriously in parts of the country that didn't have such a large gay population. It's probably in my top five things that terrified the fuck out of me while still young, scarring and reshaping what would become my adult brain. AIDS haunted me because it was so mysterious for so long. For things that terrified me as a youngster, it was right up there with Killer Bees invading California from South and Central America and shining a flashlight into the sky while standing in my driveway late at night. My understanding of light at the time was that it kept going forever and it traveled so fast (practically instantaneously) that I was obviously signaling to alien beings that I was extant and that I was delicious.

Now that I think about it, was me shining a flashlight into the sky to provoke aliens my areligious version of praying to God?

When we last left Martian Manhunter, he was filled with men: The Atom, The Ray, Rott, Weapons Master, and the mysterious Bloodwynd. Your first thought was probably, "You can't fit that many penises in so few orifices." My first response is "Maybe you haven't tried" and my second response is "J'onn is a shapeshifter, buddy. He'll make as many orifices as needed." Upon arriving inside J'onn, everybody was met by Rott, the disease allegory.

Simon Bisley was banned from working with DC for years because he drew one penis on one Lobo arm and Rick Burchett was allowed to keep working after this disgusting panel?!

This dude invited The Ray into his penis mushroom playground and then immediately began kicking his ass. Imagine being invited to a party and then being threatened by the host because you were expecting to have a good time rather than being assaulted upon walking in the front door. Also the party smelled like moldy taint. Also the previous guests were all strapped into weird sexual torture devices. I don't have to imagine that because, remember, I grew up in the Bay Area!

Rott threatens to snap The Ray's spine into "so many pieces they can't be counted." He sounds like God talking about Abraham's sperm. Also, why would ask for The Ray because The Ray can help him escape only to threaten to kill The Ray once he got there? Is this part of the HIV allegory? How HIV attacks the immune system because it thinks it's helping or something? I'm not a doctor! I don't know how HIV and AIDS work! I'm just a kid who grew up terrified that I was going to die! I'm still that kid! At least I finally lost my fear of Killer Bees invading in my 40s because, well, they seem to have settled nicely in Texas and mostly had their aggression bred out of them by mating with American bees. Damn, talk about a xenophobic allegory! Our country is being invaded by Africans who are going to mate with our women and have aggressive criminal babies! It's basically one of the main plotlines in The X-files. Was everything we were taught to fear growing up just xenophobic allegories that othered minorities? That was a rhetorical question, meaning it doesn't need to be answered meaning we already know the answer meaning yes, yes that was everything we were taught in the '80s.

Oh shit! Being an aggressive, violent twat was all part of his plan!

This is why I never get into fights with aggressive men who obviously want to fight me because I'm so awesome. I won't fall for their plan of taking my power after I punch them in the face! I see through your shifty shenanigans, you asshole bumping into everybody at the club!

I just realized Rott is shaped like a Masters of the Universe action figure. Also, his crotch cries for freedom. That's why he would have been called "Freedom Crotch" in the He-man cartoon.

Using The Ray's power, Rott bursts out of J'onn's chest. I was going to add a comparative simile to that statement but it would have either been "like a chest burster" which is pretty fucking redundant or it would have been the most disgusting, over-detailed comparison to male ejaculation. That one didn't seem like the proper choice not because it would have been gross but because I know dicks aren't located on chests. So I chose not to add a simile and just ramble about the choice of not choosing instead.

Artist's rendition of me and my ejaculate.

The first thing Rott does after gaining freedom is assume Booster Gold is going to send him back into the gem and punches him in the face. I've made terrible assumptions in my life but I don't think I've ever walked into a room, didn't like the look of a guy in high-waisted pants, and knocked him the fuck out because he looked threatening. Who would ever think a guy in high-waisted pants was threatening? Wait. Did Hitler wear high-waisted pants? I have no reason for asking that assumptive question but if the answer is "Yes," I might rethink how I feel about men in high-waisted pants. To be clear, I will look down on them as the genocidal lunatics they obviously are.

Beetle said he was down, J'onn, not out. Now he's also "down" in that his feelings have been hurt.

Obviously Booster knows he's not as strong as J'onn. But nobody wants to hear that, especially after they've just been knocked out by a sentient syphilitic spirochete.

Only one person ever looked at Blue Beetle and thought, "He's just DC's version of Spider-man." That one person was Dan Jurgens. Ever since Dan took over the book, Blue Beetle has been hanging upside down from lampposts, squatting on the backs of chairs, and running around hunched over. I guess Dan is one of those idiots who think spiders are bugs. I am one of those idiots who will mock a person for thinking that.

Rott rips the gem from J'onn's chest and declares he's going to use it "for power. For the dark side." Great. He's not only a living representation of an STD; he's also a Star Wars fan.

Inside the gem, The Atom finally gets free of the Stasis iPhone he was trapped within. He and The Ray ponder how they're going to escape when they find the original Bloodwynd hanging from the rafters. He explains that he can explain.

Oh no. The allegory is worse than I imagined.

This isn't an allegory about sexually transmitted diseases at all. It's an allegory about a Black man struggling with his internal, violent nature! Egads! It's like I'm reading fiction from four plus decades ago! Oh, wait. That's right. Never mind.

I understand that this story could just be one individual man wrestling with the darkness inside of him. That's always a rational possibility. But I've got a degree in literature so I've read enough literature from across centuries within the context of the times each piece was written and one thing's certain: if you're writing in the context of "Western Civilization" and you're writing about one individual's struggle with whatever, that character is always white. Because in "Western Civilization," "white" (and, ultimately, "male" and "heterosexual") is a blank and neutral canvas within to inscribe the themes of your plot. "White heterosexual males" were the only characters who could be "individuals" with internal struggles. Much of this was just unconsidered supremacy but it was also due to an understanding of context and interference from things outside the author's plot. If the main character were a woman or non-white, the plot would essentially need to deal with a whole host of outside distractions. The character no longer becomes an "individual" but a representation of a smaller group. So a woman must represent not only herself but all women in the context of the historic moment. How that character acts will be seen by the audience as the way all women would act, and thus she must shoulder a responsibility to act "appropriately." Whereas a man can just do fuck all and, if his actions are reprehensible, will be judged as just an individual jerk-off. Non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual characters are never given that kind of latitude and freedom. They can never be just a reprehensible piece of shit without a large portion of the audience thinking, "Yep. Those types are all reprehensible pieces of shit."

What I'm trying to say is that it looks bad, even in 1993, to have a Black character struggling with their inherent violent nature! Maybe that's just me and my racist reading of this text. But if my reading of this text is racist, it's only because I grew up in the context of people writing racist texts like this!

Bloodwynd tells his origin story to The Atom and The Ray.

The woke mind virus must have time traveled to 1993 because I was led to believe this kind of stuff only exists in modern comics.

It's not just Bloodwynd's violence and anger that has been captured by the gem; it's the violence and anger of all of his ancestors who kept the Blood Gem safe. Also it's the violence and evil and darkness of slave owner Jacob Whitey. I mean Whitney. Because the gem was used to murder him and capture his soul! So Rott is actually representative of the centuries of violence perpetrated on the African people stolen from their home and enslaved by white Americans. Now I'm wondering why Bloodwynd seems so ashamed of this evil and ugliness! He has a right to be angry! Maybe if he stopped trying to imprison Rott and instead incorporated him into his being to become whole (like a 1993 Black version of Hedwig), he would become balanced and more capable of restoring justice to America! Didn't we learn in Justice League Europe when the team went up against Echidna the Mother of Monsters that it's better to understand rather than suppress one's darker nature?!

What The Atom and The Ray learn is that Martian Manhunter was manipulated not by Bloodwynd all this time, but Bloodwynd's evil side, Rott. Although J'onn wasn't being a big jerk so maybe Bloodwynd tempered the control somehow. It doesn't make perfect sense but then I'm pretty sure Bloodwynd was never meant to be an actual character, just J'onn in disguise. But seeing Bloodwynd's popularity, Dan Jurgens had to rewrite the story so that an actual Bloodwynd could exist after all was said and done.

While The Atom and The Ray learn Bloodwynd's half of the story, Martian Manhunter gets the rest of the story from Rott. It turns out J'onn didn't find the gem in a cute little boutique store. But the story is still pretty close to my assumption from last issue's review. He was about to fly into space when he was distracted. Not by antiquing but by a scream from Bloodwynd. While trying to help Bloodwynd, the gem wound up on J'onn's chest and Rott took over, forcing him to infiltrate the Justice League as Bloodwynd to find a power source to help free him. And that's the story of Bloodwynd! Are we all satisfied?

I'm satisfied! It was a decent way of explaining J'onn's transformation while also keeping Bloodwynd as a real character. Now he can stop being mysterious and actually build a personality while interacting with the other members of the League. Oh, and also they all escape from the gem while trapping Rott back inside of it. And then Dan Jurgens ends the story with "So long. It's been fun!" with his signature. I guess that's it for Dan then!

Justice League America #77 Rating: B+. A bit rushed, probably due to Dan Jurgens only having two more issues left to explain Bloodwynd, but overall a solid origin story for a character that was probably never meant to be anything more than another disguise of J'onn's. It's possible Dan planned this whole thing out exactly as he wrote it but, in the end, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that a writer can write their way into and out of whatever situations they place the characters. And Dan was more than capable throughout this run. Plus you could tell he really respected Blue Beetle! Blue Beetle was probably the star of most of Dan's run, really coming through for everybody at the end of each story. He even beat Eclipso in an annual! On the other hand, Superman did practically fuck all. And everybody was worried he'd take the spotlight away from the rest of the group! I suppose he did but he did it by dying and not by saving the world singlehandedly every story. Ha ha! What a loser.

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