Deathstork the Terminator #3 (May 2026)

If that's how Slade sees the world, he needs a new fucking mask.

Deathstroke the Terminator #3 (May 2026)
By Tony Fleecs, Carmine Di Giandomenico, Ivan Plascencia, and Wes Abbott
Cover by Carmine Di Giandomenico
Edited by Brittany Holzherr and Marquis Draper

When we left Deathstork last issue, he had just been confronted by Deathblow and Deadshot. But for some reason not Deadborn. You'd think Deadborn would get more love what with having a fucking stupid fucking name. If I were writing Deathstork, he'd be first on my list as Deathstork's new nemesis. We'd learn his secret identity is Johnny Truant and he was actually stillborn but his mother's love and her story of his life (or maybe his Elseworld's life as some jerk named Navidson) somehow made him real. His catch phrase would be "Etch a Pooh air!" and he'd speak in multisyballic words because he'd read the Oxford English Dictionary so many times. Deathstroke wouldn't be able to kill him because he was more ghost than physical person. The only way to defeat him would be to find his mother and kill her. Or find the letters she sent to her blind friend and old lover, Zampano, and burn them. But then he'd find the real monster behind it all was a massive werewolf called Redwood! Also Deathstroke would groom a few minors during the run, just to keep his character tied to his canonic lore.

But back to reality (reality being this comic book I'm reading), you'd think with three guys who love guns and have dead or death in their name, they'd wipe each other out in a matter of seconds. But, surprisingly, these assholes talk a lot. Deathstork is all, "Who killed Wintergreen?!" And Deadshot is all, "Hey buddy! What're you up to?" And Deathstork is all, "Who killed Wintergreen?!" And Deadshot is all, "Why don't you surrender, buddy?" And Deathstork is all, "*waugh waugh waugh* Who killed my father . . . I mean Wintergreen?!" And Deathblow is all, "I love guns!" And then Deadshot reveals the big revelation! No, not who killed Wintergreen. But that Slade apparently knows who killed Wintergreen! What a twist!

I think maybe I suggested at some point that Slade was hunting himself because the guy he was after had all the same attributes as Slade (divorced, middle-aged, male, pedophile) and that maybe Slade wanted a real challenge so he did one of those Philip K. Dick mindwipes so he could hunt himself. Is that what's going on?!

Nobody would be fucking surprised if Deadman joined in with all the other Dead/Death/Noun/Verb guys.

How has this series made it three issues without somebody in editorial threatening to fire the letterer if they don't fucking change the fucking Goddamned fucking font?!

You may not have noticed this detail in the scanned panel above because of the coloring and the diminished size so I'll zoom in for a better look:

Who the fuck is Deathblow aiming at?!

Three of the deadliest psychopaths with guns and after several pages of fighting, nobody has been shot. How am I supposed to buy into this?! These guys are super good at shooting other people but also they're super good at not getting shot by other people who are super good at shooting people? Am I to believe that they're honoring some strict code that doesn't allow them to shoot other people mercenaries so instead they just punch each other in the face a few times and yell non-sequiturs?

What's outside the bounds? What's unacceptable? What code? Were Deadshot and Deathblow created by Ann Nocenti because I don't know what the fuck they're talking about!

In answer to Slade's very astute question, "What are you talking about?", Deadshot answers, "Rule #1, Slade!" Oh! Okay. I get it! They're talking about Fight Club. But Rule #1 is you can't talk about Fight Club so it's really confusing when you have to beat the shit out of somebody who broke Rule #1 and talked about Fight Club.

Deathbro don't miss, dude!

Oh, he doesn't?

Look, you can't be certain that "BANG" sound effect was Deathblow's gun! It may have been from when they knocked him backwards!

Hmm, I'm arguing with myself. I think I might have a Deadman situation here.

Christ this fight is choreographed worse than a Tony Daniel fight written and drawn by Tony Daniel. You'd think if you were writing the fight you were drawing, it'd be easy to translate for the reader. They'd see all the beats, understand how the characters are moving and attacking, easily decode the movements throughout. But you'd have to think one or two more times if it was Tony Daniel writing and drawing. Maybe that's unfair. Maybe he'd gotten better at it since The New 52. I've never felt the desire to pick up another one of his comics after having to read his Detective Comics. You remember? The one where The Joker cut off his own face for reasons that I'm sure they eventually got around to explaining.

So after five pages of confusing fighting and dizzying dialogue, the story slips into a flashback to explain these rules they're arguing over. Rules set up by Deathstork so that maybe he could get Adeline off his fucking back.

Two rules? That's it?!

Adeline doesn't give a shit about the family rule because her sons are already dead. And I guess Slade didn't give a shit about Rule #1 because Deadshot's accusing him of breaking Rule #1. I think maybe in the first issue, Slade went a little tiny bit against the wishes of the client by making a massive spectacle of the kill when he blasted out of the sixth floor of a parking garage in an armored vehicle spraying the whole Goddamned fucking city with poorly aimed bullets. Although they should be talking about Rule #2 and how Slade groomed Terra to get at the Titans and since the Titans consider themselves family, his fucking a minor went against the spirit of Rule #2. Not to mention the actual physical embodiment of, like, um, real, actual statutory rape laws.

Oh wait! There were more rules but they weren't important to the story yet! Rule #3 needs to be mentioned right around when Deadshot and Deathblow are going to kill Slade for free.

"No freebies in the limousine that's not what it's about" -- the Goddess Pink

I hope this becomes one of those comic books where we get a new rule every fucking issue for the next 100 issues.

Wait! Let's get back to Pink and her song, "Respect". I don't expect high-minded philosophical dialogue on a Pink album, especially one where she has a song about how volunteering to feed the homeless is her Vietnam. I mean, um, Pink? PINK?! Did you have nobody around to explain a bad idea to you?! Her song respect feels like a lot of trite dumb bullshit about how women shouldn't be putting out unless they're in some kind of relationship or they're getting something out of it or whatever. But there's a line in there that I think is the heart of the idea and I'm all for it, no matter a person's gender: "Respect is just a minimum." That is followed by "Go on, girl, and get you some!" So, see, Pink wants her girls to be out there fucking and enjoying themselves. But respect being the minimum doesn't sound like a bad rule to follow.

Or maybe I'm wrong? I know I wouldn't mind getting laid by some hot piece of ass who treated me like dogshit. At least I'd be getting laid!

My favorite line on the album, Mizundaztood (I don't know how to spell it or how many fucking Zs she used!) is this one: "What good am I to you? If I can't be broken?" Fuck that's great! Yumyumyummyyum!

Deadshot begins talking too much yet again while Deathblow stands there stupidly with his gun out which gives Deathstroke's healing factor time to kick in so that he can use his super dexterity and speed to leap at Deadshot and slice his guts open before Deathblow can even get an unmissable shot off. Plus more rules!

Oh! This is why they can't tell Slade who sent them or who killed Wintergreen. No snitching is in effect!

By the way, those three shots missed.

During the fight, the mysterious young person who is good with computers so maybe's it's Oracle calls Deathstork with some news: Wintergreen's body wasn't found at the scene. Some mercenary is searching for both Slade and Wintergreen and not caring about leaving evidence of their search. Deathstroke has an idea who it might be. Rose, maybe? That's too obvious though, right? Adeline? Anyway, Slade takes out Deadshot and Deathblow with a knife because when you fight with a gun, you simply expect to win against a knife. And that's when you always lose! I think there's a Biblical passage about it somewhere. If I knew The Bible, I'd find it and quote it but I'd probably spend more time flipping around the Bible than Russell Brand on Piers Morgan's show. I think it was something like "Let he who shoots the first bullet die by the sword and also Samaritans suck, man. Just the worst people. Fucking awful."

It's on your back, stupid.

While Deathstroke helps Deathblow look for his gun, Deadshot walks up and shoots Deathstroke in the good side of his face! Luckily his armor takes the brunt of the damage as it's blown apart because as we've seen before, his eyes don't regenerate. Just before Deadshot pulls the trigger one final time, point blank in Slade's face, he lets Slade know who killed Wintergreen. And let me tell you, it's not the most surprise twist ending anybody's ever read. It's the most expected thing Deadshot could have said.

"Holy fucking shit I just shit myself from surprise and shit!" is what I would have said if Batman had been revealed to have killed Wintergreen. But not Slade. Slade was the main line in Vegas.

The Ranking!
Is the killing of Wintergreen, along with the killing of Alfred, some kind of message DC's trying to send to its long time fans? "We don't need you old fuckers no more! Get the fuck out, man!" I have a feeling this entire story line is just going to be some elaborate Escape Room puzzle that Wintergreen set up for Slade's birthday. It'll end with Slade arriving at some dark warehouse where all the people he battled, as well as Wintergreen, alive and well, will pop out of the dark and scream, "Surprise!" Of course you don't surprise Deathstork like that so they'll all get shot in the face and it'll be the worst party ever, especially when Slade sees the blood leaking out of his giant cake and looks inside to see three dead fifteen year old girls in Terra costumes. Then Slade will shrug and quote Rule #6: "Never scare a man with a gun and super reflexes."

Deathstork the Terminator #1 (March 2026)

If Deathstork were actually any good, he wouldn't need laser sites to aim. Shit. Was that ableist? Does he need them because he only has one eye?! Oh, who cares. He's a pedophile!

Deathstroke #1 (March 2026)
By Tony Fleecs, Carmine Di Giandomenico, Ivan Plascencia, and Wes Abbott
Cover by Carmine Di Giandomenico
Edited by Marquis Draper and Brittany Holzherr

• I guess March is Anti-Hero Month at DC Comics because alongside Lobo, they've also released BatmanButWithTits¹ and Paedo the Terminator. It was probably a good move because idiots like me² figure as long as they're in the store picking up Lobo #1, they might as well pick up Batwoman #1 and Deathstork the Terminator #1 as well.

• While doing a little research to see if I've collected every volume of Deathstork that exists to date (I have), I noticed that this series was Volume 2 of Deathstork the Terminator and not Volume, I don't know, 3? 4? of simply Deathstork. In essence, this is a sequel to the early '90s series where Deathstork got to participate in Total Chaos and was almost outshined by a ginger troll from the future who loved to say, "Cheese this!" Boy, wasn't that an exciting time for Titans fans! Evil Nightwing! Rapist Mirage! Terry Long creeping out another generation of teenagers! Terra back to tempt Paedostork!

• I'm going to read this entire comic book while picturing everybody naked. Especially if Wintergreen is in it. I mean Rose Wilson! I fucking meant Rose Wilson!

• Oh, I'd also like to point out that I think Rose Wilson is 50-something so don't start talking about pots and kettles, you jerk! Rose was conceived while Slade was in Vietnam, right? So, you know, do the math! I mean, have your smart phone do the math! We're "All In", baby, and that means whatever happened in the DC Universe happened! Rose Wilson just looks young because she's full of super soldier semen. I mean serum.

The DC Wiki has a long list of Rose Wilson's powers but "talking while drinking" isn't one of them. I should update it!

• I wonder how many times Billy and Alfred have stood around smoking cigars and shaking their heads as they watched their "Masters" beat the shit out of each other? I bet they're best friends!

• Why's everybody in the Deathstork universe have white hair?

• Oh, I should finish Rose's thought for her from that last panel! She finishes her statement with "He's a killer." Well, I'm glad somebody isn't delusional about Slade Wilson! I mean, she's delusional in that she probably doesn't think he's a Paedo but, well, you know. All in, baby!

• I've often had people scream at me online in their defense of Deathstork, claiming he's not a pedophile at all. But did you read that part about how I have every single run of Deathstork comics?! You can like the character and still acknowledge that he knowingly groomed and fucked an underage girl. And don't buy into Marv Wolfman's whole thing about Terra seducing Slade! Marv had some weird ideas about older guys and younger women. Also weird ideas about demons from other dimensions that super loved rape. He also once looked me straight in the eyes and said, "There will be an animated Elfquest movie." Okay, maybe not straight into my eyes and more like straight into the ears of everybody in the room at that panel at Comicon. But it felt like he ripped out my soul when that movie never materialized.

• Why was Marv Wolfman talking about an animated Elfquest movie? I don't remember the particulars but I think he was involved with the Pinis somehow trying to get it done. I don't think I'm remembering that wrong although I very well could be. I should also blame the Pinis for ripping out my soul but then they didn't create Terry Long so I can easily forgive them.

• Later that evening, Deathstork's on a job to murder somebody for money. He doesn't know who he's murdering for money because he gets extra money for murdering unknown people because it's harder to look Batman in the eye and say, "I'm not a villain! I'm an anti-hero! Like your dead sidekick!" Because you can't have the word "hero" anywhere near your name if you're fucking underage girls. I mean if you're murdering people without any knowledge of the people you're murdering. He's just taking the word of a person with a bunch of money that he's murdering a terrible person. Hell, maybe Slade doesn't even have to tell himself the world's a better place because he killed somebody. He just has to know the numbers keep going up in his bank account.

Oh look! Slade's actively making the world a worse place by killing a whistleblower!

• The typeface used in this series is going to drive me fucking batty. It's just too small! When I shrink a longer panel down to 600 pixels to fit within my blog's boundaries, it becomes really hard to read. Stupid Wes Abbott! Use Bold Arial or something so I can see it clearly!

• To make sure this first issue is super exciting, Tony Fleecs writes in a scene where Deathstork rides atop an armored car as it crashes off the eighth floor⁵ of a parking garage and into the middle of a special forces escort protecting his target. Slade's left hand holds his staff which is pressed down on the accelerator of the vehicle leaving him to shoot his semi-automatic rifle one-handed. He can do all of this because he's a super soldier and also because he's a comic book character but mostly because Tony Fleecs sat down to write this script and thought the answer to the question, "Should this be in any way believable, even as a comic book?" was "No! No! By all the Gods in Heaven, NO!"

• Deathstork explains to Wintergreen that the people he's killing who were just paid to protect a whistleblower don't mean anything to him. He doesn't hate them. He doesn't pity them. He barely even thinks about them as he cuts them all down and ends their one and only existence. But he does despise the people who pay him to kill people because they're all, "Do it this way! Don't do it this way!" Wintergreen is all, "I think that's what's called 'being employed'?"

• I'm glad to see Fleecs writing Deathstork as the sociopath he truly is. The only problem with having a monthly comic book about a villainous sociopath is that there's no motivation other than to watch them be awful monsters. That's why the bartender in Lobo #1 had that bit about some "honorable reason" needing to be "shoehorned" into their motivations. There's a big difference in an anti-hero monthly and a villain monthly. I thought I would enjoy Giffen's Eclipso monthly back in the early '90s and, hoo boy, let me tell you: booooooooooo-ring. Just nowhere to go, man! Aside from Eclipso walking around outside the panels on the pages, there wasn't much more to enjoy. Hopefully Deathstork, having a bunch of human connections in his life that he has to navigate, will allow for more drama and story fodder. Eclipso was just sitting on the moon being mad at stuff.

• Although as I say all that, I'm sure Deathstork will have some weird change of heart when he sets his eyes on the client for the first time. Probably be a clone of himself or something and he'll be all, "Wait? What?! I have to kill myself?! But, but, existentialist crisis!"

Well, if these are the kind of self-preservation at any cost assholes that Deathstork's killing then I'm not going to think much about them either. Have fun, Slade!

• During Deathstork's assault on the compound where the target's being held, he's mentally composing a letter to Rose to apologize for being a murderous piece of shit father. I threw in the "murderous" there to distinguish him from all the other piece of shit fathers out there who didn't have to resort to murder to be truly awful. Deathstork's barely exceptional even if he got two out of his three kids killed. Lot of deadbeat dads out there who'd rather hate other men than love their kids.

• Deathstork kills a lot of random men and then he's knocked to the ground by a couple of non-random women.

Weren't these two in Resurrection Man? Enh, I'm probably thinking of somebody else and somebody else.

• Deathstork sets up these women and their "Body Doubles, bitch!" entrance by saying this: "Wintergreen, I've only got one eye . . . how is it that I'm seeing double?" But that would only work if the two women in Body Doubles looked identical. Which they absolutely don't. Which means Tony Fleecs only wrote that line to set up their "Body Doubles, bitch!" introduction to Slade. This is worse plotting than having an assassin ride an armored car through the air while shooting a semi-auto rifle with one hand!

• The dark haired woman of the Body Doubles duo probably shouldn't be dressed so Lolita-esque because now Deathstroke is going to want to fuck her.

See?! He's so gross! I can't wait to buy more of his comics!

• Wintergreen gives Slade some intel on the women in Body Doubles. They're names are Carmen Leno and Bonny Hoffman. They have healing factors. He doesn't give their ages which Slade wouldn't give a shit about anyway, I guess, so, well, Wintergreen knows the important stuff to pass along.

• One of the Body Doubles stabs Slade in the heart which causes him to see his life flash before his eyes. Grant. Joseph. Adeline. The young girl he groomed. You know, Tara! Say her name, right?! TARA! Was Tara Terra's actual name? Seems like a bad choice. Especially since she was a famous princess and everybody would be all, "She seems familiar?" Then she'd be all, "I'm Terra!" And everybody would be, "Oh! Yeah! Tara Markov! That's why she looked so familiar!" And she'd be all, "No, no! I said, 'Terra!' T. E. R. R. A. Dammit!"

• Slade remembers that he has a healing factor and stops seeing his life flash before his eyes. Then he stabs and shoots the Body Doubles before kicking in the door leading to his actual target. Who will it be? What will be the big reveal?! A Caucasian father! Divorced. Three kids! Will it just be a fucking mirror?!

Surprise! It's Alfred's best friend!

• I hope that note is from Batman! But it's probably from Red Hood. Or, you know, Rose, maybe? Would Rose do this to Wintergreen? Of course she wouldn't! It's got to be, um, resurrected Joseph! Or resurrected Grant! Or resurrected Adeline! Or resurrected Tara! The only suspects Deathstork knows are all dead.

• It could be Memento Slade Wilson! Maybe he's trying to get himself to feel anything at all by taking a fuck-ton of Ambien every night so that he disassociates and then gives himself terrible experiences to ignite his feeling sensors! Seems like a lot of work when he could just go out and rent Pig.

• Wintergreen has been dead too long for Slade to do the kissy kissy of life on him. Later, Slade discovers that all his accounts have been drained of cash. His Gotham Bank account. His Deathstork, Inc account. Even his account at the Bank of Markovia which seems a little, um, inappropriate. Why's he gotta bank there after all this time?!

• So somebody used Wintergreen to steal all of Slade's money because Wintergreen had access to it all. If this were a movie, it would have to be Rose because she's the only other character in the comic book. Aside from Body Doubles but I think they were just there to establish some early nemeses for this ongoing series. Deathstork versus two nubile women who also have healing factors! So paedo!

• The issue ends with the person who has been talking to Deathstork this entire time pretending to be Wintergreen saying, "Tick tick, Slade." Then the room explodes. Slade lives but he ends his internal missive to Rose saying something like, "You said I was a killer. But now I'm worse than a killer because everybody stole everything from me and Wintergreen, who kept me in check, is dead and I haven't groomed a young girl in a long time! The world is going to rue the day, bitches!" That's when I stood up and applauded!

The Ranking!
How was this this good? Did I forget DC could publish good new comics after injecting my veins with Pure New 52 for five years (or was it six? How long did they give it before they were all, "Can we get Superboy to punch this universe too?"). I imagine whoever just pissed off Slade won't be the most exciting reveal when it happens (unless it's Batman. I mean, that would be a fucking twist, right? Maybe it's Alfred! Or is he still dead? All in, right?!) but I think I'll continue to get this series for at least one more issue. I love loving Deathstork! I've got to admit, knowing he's a paedo makes it a little bit more exciting. It's like, "Why do I like this character so much?! I'm so naughty!" Also maybe Tara was 28 and just pretending to be 14. If Hal Jordan could have his paedo tendencies retconned with comic book nonsense, Deathstork can too, right?! Maybe Tara was a Durlan who was actually three hundred years old. That would mean she was basically the paedo! Fucking Tara. So gross!


__________________________________________________________________________________
¹ I was going to call Batwoman "Mature Batman" because in The New 52, any book in which the main character was a woman who had sex, it received a Mature Rating. Robin was over in Batman and Robin cutting off heads left and right while Batman tsked at him but did that get a Mature Rating? No sir! That rating was saved for Catwoman enjoying a good frolic and Batwoman scissoring or whatever lesbians do in bed. I'd probably have a better idea if I knew what a woman's naughty bits looked like. I hope the term "scissoring" isn't a visually descriptive term because now I'm fucking terrified.³
² You know. Mindless guppies.
³ Oh wait! I forgot to finish my point about calling Batwoman "Mature Batman"! I didn't do that because I noticed that Batwoman #1 was rated "13+" while Deathstork #1 and Lobo #1 were rated "15+". So has DC finally realized that graphic depictions of violence are more harmful⁴ than women having a fulfilling sex life?
⁴ The term "more harmful" here just means "possibly could cause people to complain if they found their five year old reading it" and not actually "harmful" in any fucking sense of the actual meaning of that fucking word at all. Although by that definition, I think I agree with The New 52 DC in that people would probably complain more about Catwoman having an orgasm while unmarried more than Robin cutting off a terrorist's head.
⁵ That's a guesstimate!

Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea: The Newsletter #23 (Second Week of May 2018)

E!TACT! #23
Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #5, Deathstroke #31, Batman #46, DC Nation #0, Poetry Corner, Grunion Guy's Musical Corner of Music Reviews, and No Letters to Me!
By Grunion Guy


Comic Book Reviews!

Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #5
By Russell, Stilwell, Feehan, Vazquez, Parsons, Marzan Jr., Mounts, and Campbell

You know that feeling when a close friend doesn't like something you love? That feeling that insinuates itself into the heart of your being no matter how illogical or petty you know you're being simply because your friend didn't express the same unbounded joy for that cherished thing? That moment when you first realize they're the dumbest asshole on the planet and how could you ever have been friends with them for thirty wasted years? I have that feeling all of the time. But I don't express it because that would be crazy! I just marinate in small resentments, updating my will at every turn. Someday they'll all know what fucking stupid morons they all were!

People are legally obligated to listen to your will read by a stern lawyer, right? Is that a law or do I need to call some lawmakers to make sure that's a thing before I die? Because these so-called friends aren't getting off so easy, relaxing in their pleasant lives without a care in the world that they only half-listened to me when I was telling them about Elfquest in sixth grade and then didn't ask to borrow it so they could share in my enthusiasm for attractive elves riding powerful wolves! I wonder if I can force everybody to play Wizardry at my funeral while listening to Concrete Blonde and drinking Strawberry milk? Also I wish I loved more things so it doesn't sound like I stopped enjoying life at twelve years old!

In the non-hyperbolic reality outside of my blog and newsletter, I'm not the one who stopped enjoying things the way they were when I was twelve. But I'm also not the type of person who's an overblown fan desperately trying to prove how much they love the things they love. When Wil Wheaton says, "You're not a nerd because of the things you love but how you love them," I just want to grab him by the lapels and scream, "Stop encouraging them!" We have become a society where the thing you love must somehow remain the thing it was at the moment you began loving it (and you must also be the only one that loves that thing as much as you love that thing because obviously nobody else understands it the way you do (although you hate them for not understanding it the same way. How can they not?! (But then if they said they did, you'd think to yourself, "Pshaw. Poseur."))). We have no room for change or disappointment or different interpretations of our beloved (and static!) popular culture. When somebody posts on Facebook that they literally cried over the cancellation of Brooklyn Nine-Nine or that they will forever mourn it, I want to get them a book on evolution and a box of nipple clamps. I haven't yet proved that the retention of information from reading increases exponentially with nipple pain but my hopes are high (and my nipples bleeding).

When did we become a society that can't handle simple change while expecting such great change from civilization at large? How can we blame something like the House Un-American Activities Committee shitting themselves from their intense fear of a changing world when we can't even handle living with only five seasons of Brooklyn Nine-Nine?! How can we scoff at gun enthusiasts afraid that reasonable gun control won't wind up in the loss of all of their beloved weapons when we fucking lost our minds at only one season of Firefly?! Being a 2nd Amendment Freedom Fighter seeing news reports on another school shooting is probably exactly like being a Firefly fan who has to endure the death of Wash just to get the movie Serenity. Was it worth it?! That's an unanswerable philosophical conundrum!

I mean, sure, it can be frustrating having great popular culture killed by corporate monsters who can't understand art because it speaks to the struggles of life that they don't even know exist. But fans need to ask themselves why they need so much of the same thing repeated over and over again? Because fans don't only get angry when a show is cancelled. They also get angry when the show changes in any substantial way away from the exact thing they had grown to love. And in a world where fans have instant access to the creators, they expect their voices can be used to maintain the "integrity" of their beloved fictions. Sure, I disliked Metallica's black album because it was so different from their previous albums. That just meant I stopped listening to Metallica. I didn't demand they continue to be the thing I perceived them as being. And I was disappointed that I never saw Concrete Blonde live when they first broke up but it wasn't the end of the world. I still had the albums I loved. And it only made it all the more exciting when they regrouped and I got more of their music and finally saw them live (three and a half times even!). I guess my point is that I'm better than most people!

Or what I'm really trying to say is this isn't your childhood Snagglepuss and Huckleberry Hound. Unless, of course, you always knew they were gay and that Huckleberry Hound would hang himself, broken beyond repair, in an unkempt cheap apartment in New York City. Based on the cartoons, I wouldn't have been surprised if some "friend" of mine had ever suggested that. Also there's some crazily terrific stuff about life and civilization and politics and culture mixed into this comic book.

Rating: 5 out of 5 Thumbs. I hate Mark Russell for reasons that aren't at all based on my envy of what he's written in this issue. Here's only one small part of some truly marvelous bits: the speech Snagglepuss gives to the House Un-American Activities Committee (which I read after writing the previous rant (I say this because this comic speaks to the nature of fandom and its relation to the world which I didn't know when I wrote the preceding. It's weird how often my pre-comic book reading rants seem to intuit the story within (although not as weird with this one because this rant began by thinking about how one reviewer I read was annoyed that Mark Russell's Snagglepuss had barely anything in common with the cartoon (and how is that a slight?! The cartoon was vapid fluff!)))): "The purpose of art is subversion. Art is telling the world how it's killing you. How its institutions have failed you. In the end, any culture worth a damn is made by subversives. Because art is what tells the world it needs to change. Power merely redecorates it." I may have cried while reading that. It might have been the words but I can't be entirely sure it wasn't the nipple clamps.

P.S. More on Snagglepuss #5 (which I had to add as a postscript or else I couldn't end with that nice little nipple clamps callback)

The Snagglepuss bit I quoted in the previous paragraph cuts to the heart of one thing I return to in my blog again and again: "Art is telling the world how it's killing you. How its institutions have failed you." My main complaint with the world is that it doesn't make room for those who can't simply accept things the way they are. I have railed against just about every expectation society seems to demand from me. I began reading Frankenstein for the first time last week and on the first day, I only read the quote used on the title page because it completely derailed me. It was from Milton's Paradise Lost: "Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay to mould me man, Did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?" It stopped me cold because, ultimately, when I am thoroughly disappointed with the way people are expected to live, I rage against my parents for giving birth to me. And here is a quote from Milton (who I've been pretty hard on (not in a gay way! (I know that didn't make sense. I should work harder on my gay jokes (not in a gay way!))) where he's basically putting his arm around me and saying, "Brother. Let's commiserate." Of course, he'd be all, "God blah blah God blah blah blah God!" And I'd be all, "Why is so much of life all about interacting with other people?!" And he'd be all, "God blah blah blah God blah God blah blah." And I'd be all, "Why can't people see I don't know how to be a person?!" And then he'd "glare" at me and I'd have to think about what I just said and then be all, "Oh! Whoa, I didn't mean to be ableist in my speech, bro! I mean brother!"

I don't mean to suggest that I feel our current social constructs are such a burden to me that I can barely function. I've carved my own niche into the existing paradigm where I can mostly hide away and not be bothered by it. But I do suffer, occasionally, from a kind of social vertigo. It usually comes across me like a sort of anxious unheimlich (that doesn't mean a Jewish lich. Also, I don't know what it means. So, you know, it might mean that) feeling when I spend too long in a "socially normal" setting. I begin to see the world most people live in and how outside of their sense of comfort I have fallen. I see myself through their eyes and how my lack of the things they take for granted would worry them, or make their lives so radically different that they'd lose all sense of direction. And for days afterward, I feel those feelings as my own. It's one of the reasons I'd rather have my friend Doom Bunny visit me in Portland than me visit him and his family in Denver.

Anyway, I'm about to read Frankenstein and I think it might cause some feelings in much the same way Snagglepuss has. Did that sound dirty?


Deathstork #31
By Priest, Pagulayan, Viacava, Paz, and Cox

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 Bat-whatevers. I guess Batman and Deathstork are having another beef. But this time, Alfred and Wintergreen are pulling the strings. I guess they want them to get along? Ultimately, I imagine Priest is telling the story that will explain why Batman allows Deathstork to continue killing. It might be because Joseph will wind up being Damian's half-brother.

Priest's best new Batman idea is to have him explain his detective work in convoluted and unbelievable ways only for the reader to find out that the real detective work was something super simple. It's such a simple way to retcon the entire Bat-history, making every story you've ever read where you scream "No way!" at Batman's explanation about how he found out something (like finding where Catwoman lives based on mouse poop) suddenly believable. Now you can believe he actually found out where Catwoman lived by doing a reverse address search on the Internet for the name Selina Kyle.

But he still definitely pissed himself in The Widening Gyre #6!


Batman #46
By King, Daniel, and Morey

Rating: I like to think that every time Booster Gold goes missing in the DC Universe for months or years at a time, this story is why. He's off dicking around in another timeline. I doubt this entire story began as Booster Gold trying to get a gift for Batman. That's just his excuse to fuck with time and have an adventure. That's why he's enjoying it so much and acting so goofy. It's like he's in a theme park and he can go home any time he wants to.

I know I'm usually hard on the other review sites and the major fan-genders who run those sites but I suppose I can see why they might hate this story. First off, it's so absolutely outside of canon that, to them, it's not even worth reading. Of course by "canon," I mean part of a continuous and linear Batman story of issues they've chosen to believe were the most significant and not-written-by-Tom-King ones. Obviously this story will always be "canon" to Booster Gold. It's his story. Plus those types of fans take everything way too seriously. This issue can do nothing but confuse them since it's so violent and violence equals gravitas and chin stroking boners! But in the end, it's really just a whimsical sitcom starring Booster Gold as the selfish asshole who is entertaining himself in a world that doesn't matter. It's why he enjoyed watching Jokerized Hal Jordan shoot himself in the head. Because it didn't matter.

Playing "hero" in alternate timelines is Booster Gold's heroin. 5 out of 5 Skeets.


DC Nation #0
By A Bunch of People

The first story is a Batman story by Tom King. It's full of old jokes because it stars the Joker. Although he asks a couple of riddles which seems like maybe he's treading on other people's turf. Not that I'd complain about it to him since a riddle is also a joke. But not all jokes are riddles. And it's not like The Joker should have to stop telling jokes which are riddles just because some other jerk came along and decided to specialize in riddles. Anyway, it all works out in the end for The Joker, I guess.

The second story is a Superman story by Bendis. It begins perfectly with J. Jonah Jameson telling all of his reporters that they have to stop editorializing on Superman and spreading fear to the readers. Although if they want to write some scathing indictments about Spider-man, they should totally go ahead and do that. Especially if Parker comes in with a shot of Spider-man doing anything that looks suspicious (which is everything he does or why else would he wear that stupid mask?).

Anyway, it's about time somebody decides to quash the Superman Hot Take Culture that has sprung up in the DC Universe. Everybody suddenly thinks they're critical geniuses just because they once thought, "What if Superman were the bad guy?" and then shit themselves. Superman isn't the bad guy, guys. Let's just stop worrying about that. Although if everybody is going to agree on that, a whole bunch of writers are going to have to agree to stop writing stories where Superman becomes hypnotized or controlled by magic or infused with the Doomsday Virus or Jokerized by The Joker. Because all those "editorials" that J. Perry Jamesite has suddenly become critical of might have a point in a DC Universe controlled by lazy writers.

The rest of the story is some kind of prologue to Bendis's Superman story where he probably gets to rewrite any continuity he wants to rewrite (this prologue alone reminds us that there was a time Luthor was president). That's fine with me if it's any good. I hear he's supposed to be good. I am so going to judge him!

The third story is a No Justice prelude by Snyder, Tynion IV, and Williamson. That means I'm already bored. I bet somebody uses a word that not many people are familiar with and then somebody else defines the word and then somebody else mentions another definition of the word and that explains the whole premise of the story.

That isn't what happens (although Snyder does take the term "emotion" and use it to base the structure of the story which is pretty close to what I said he would do). But what happens is still quite Snyderesque. Once again, the entire universe is on the brink of destruction. The only way for the Justice League to save it from not one terrible alien threat but four Galactus-sized alien threats is to form four new Justice Leagues. Each team is based on "the four cosmic energies." And we all know what those are right? Right: entropy, mystery, wonder, and wisdom. Totally makes sense.

This prologue reveals that the composition of the four new Justice League teams makes no sense before fans begin asking, "How does any of this make sense?" Apparently not making any sense was the only way to fight the Omega Titans. But what's also revealed is that while all the heroes and villains are off saving the universe, the Omega Titans have come to destroy Earth. Whoops!

Ranking: How can I rank a book of three prologues?! It's basically an advertisement for DC's future stories. And I thought I was getting a comic book for cheap. What really happened is that I just paid twenty-five cents for an advertisement! Bastards!

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Poetry Corner with Grunion Guy!

A Poem

This is a
poem. You can
tell by the way the
lines are all out of whack.
Also,
Sometimes,
You'll notice weird capitalization and odd,
commas. Some poems
use analogy or metaphor to
engage the reader's emotions
in a way that bluntly stating the
point can't do.
But this one doesn't. It's
exactly what it says it is.
Or is it?

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Grunion Guy's Musical Corner of Music Reviews!

...And the Gods Made Love by The Jimi Hendrix Experience
I purchased Electric Ladyland because it was the favorite album of my online friend Groot. Groot is dead now. He died last year. I never met him in real life so his death is as abstract as it can get. He was always kind and always interested in having a conversation. Some people online just want to tell you the things they want to tell you (stop looking at me like that, mirror) but he was always completely interested in learning new things about his friends. We knew each other for over a decade before I learned that for a few years in the 70s, he lived in Santa Clara where I grew up. I was just a kid then so we probably never would have come into contact. But who knows?! Maybe we once rode in the same coaster on The Whizzer at Marriott's Great America!
     Anyway, Groot declared Electric Ladyland his favorite album so I purchased it. For the most part, I like it but in that appreciative way that you give space to a thing because you know a friend really loves it. It's not really the kind of music I can groove to. Not that I "groove" in the way you're probably thinking I might groove. I often skip songs from this album when they come on shuffle, especially "Voodoo Chile" because it makes me hungry. Also because, at nearly fifteen minutes, it's just way too long to listen to ("2112" gets the same treatment). I think you need to be on acid when you listen to that song because that's the only way you'd never know you were listening to one single song for a quarter of an hour. But no matter how often I don't really listen to any of the songs on this album, I will forever keep it on my shuffle because of Groot.
     Hmm. That makes Groot sound like a dick, as if he's handcuffed me to something I'd rather live without. I guess if you're a cynical bastard looking for a hot take, that's one direction you can go with that statement. But mostly I'll keep the album around because it makes me think of Groot.
     As for this song, it's not really a song, exactly. It's more like a statement saying, "Here comes Jimi, you stupid bitches! Are you ready? No, seriously. Are you ready? I don't think you're ready! You'd better get ready! HERE HE COMES!" Then "Have You Ever Been To (Electric Ladyland)" comes on and I'm always all, "No! I haven't! It sounds cool and sexy!"
     I just realized that Guardians of the Galaxy is absolutely never going to not be the saddest movie I'll ever watch because Rocket reminds me of my cat Judas and Groot reminds me of a tree. I mean Groot.
Grade: C.


Haunted by Poe
I first heard this song at the end of Blair Witch 2: The Blair Witchening. At the time, I had either already read House of Leaves or was currently reading it. I knew about Poe and that she had an album that was a companion piece to her brother's book but had yet to purchase it. This song has the lyric, "Here in November in this house of leaves we'll pray." But even before that, I was thinking, "Is this from that House of Leaves album?" because she just nails the atmosphere of the book. After that lyric, I was fairly certain of it and it wasn't long after that that I bought the album (Yes, Doom Bunny. I bought the album before you got me a copy. For awhile, the Non-Certified Spouse and I had two copies).
     This song does everything Blair Witch 2: The Goth Chick is Hot didn't do. It evokes emotion and atmosphere. It's creepy and heart-wrenching. It's mysterious and suspenseful. It also tells a more coherent story. I wonder if the writer of Blair Witch 2: What the Fuck Were They Thinking? sat through the premiere feeling pretty good about themselves right up until this song began playing after which they stood up and slit their throat wide open.
      Apparently Poe was thankful to Portland, Oregon for helping make this album a big hit because "Hey Pretty" got a ton of radio play on some local station. So she played a special concert in a small club (I think it may have even been a small bar with a stage!) that I was able to attend. How I managed to get tickets to this small show, I have no idea. I got just as lucky with my first Concrete Blonde show and then when I saw Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. When I found out he was in town playing The Crystal Ballroom, the show was sold out. But then he canceled the concert because it wasn't long after Bush went to war with Iraq and Nick Cave refused to tour America at the time. But I knew he'd be back so I kept an eye out for his new dates and got tickets when he returned not too long after that. I guess he needed the cash and/or America's declaration of war wasn't valid enough to keep him out of the country for ethical reasons.
Grade: A.


Triggerman by Alice Cooper
This song is from the album Dragontown which is really just Brutal Planet Part II. That's not a great thing because I wasn't a huge fan of Brutal Planet Part I (which was just called Brutal Planet). This album was released on September 18, 2001, which meant everybody was happy to forget about 9/11 at that precise moment. But after listening to the album a few times, everybody decided maybe the album didn't quite fix the world and maybe they were a bit rash in expecting an Alice Cooper album to cure all the ills of the world.
     "Triggerman" is about an assassin who doesn't have any body parts but he's still really good at killing people somehow. It's possible the not having any body parts is some kind of metaphor. Although Triggerman, who sings the song, also points out that he doesn't exist. So how he does all the killing, I don't know! I'm so confused. If somebody who doesn't exist kills you, are you really dead?
     Leave it to Alice Cooper to really get his fans thinking! Like after listening to "Cold Ethyl," his fans think, "Is he fucking a corpse?" And then after listening to "I Love the Dead," his fan's think, "Is he fucking a corpse?" Then after listening to "It's Much Too Late," his fans think, "Wait. Is this a religious song? Is that corpse fucker preaching to me?!"
Grade: C-.


I Am Not A Robot by Marina and the Diamonds
When this song comes on the Shuffle, I usually listen to it at least five times in a row before moving on to a new song. I just love it so much. You know how much you're supposed to love people? No, seriously, I'm asking because I don't know and can't tell you. But whatever that amount is, it's probably how much I love this song. Again, I can't say for certain because I don't know how people actually love other, real people. How do you love something that betrays every aspect of what you want to believe they are (which you projected onto them) just by opening their autonomous and sentient and stupid mouths? Stop proving that you're not worth the pedestal I've put you on, you individual! Be what I want you to be!
     Well, this song is excellent at being what I want it to be. It's perfect. If it were to be hit by a car, I would lie in bed for three weeks straight crying while declaring that I will never love another song again as long as I live.
Grade: A+.


Absorbing Man by Ookla the Mok
This song counts as a song a little bit more than that Jimi Hendrix song but not by a lot more. I mean, I can't argue that this isn't a song. But it's much shorter than "...And the Gods Made Love" by about a full minute. How does Jimi have a song that's basically a long chord (unless it's a robot goat screeching?) but is still longer than an actual song that has a melody and a verse or two? Maybe this is less a song and more of a joke that's being told with some guitars and some sing-song sentences? All this song does is point out that the childhood insult "I'm rubber and you're glue" only makes sense if the two people engaged in the rubber/glue conflict have the powers of Absorbing Man. There. You've pretty much heard the entire song. Just imagine that being sung by a couple of nerds who are actually really good at harmonizing and writing music.
Grade: B.

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No Letters to Me!

Whatever. Bastards.

Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea: The Newsletter #19 (Second Week of April 2018)

E!TACT! #19
Metal #6, Justice League: All Access, Doomsday Clock #4, Mother Panic: Gotham AD #1, The Hellblazer #20, Detective Comics #977, Justice League of America #27, Demon: Hell is Earth #5, Suicide Squad #38, The Terrifics #2, Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #4, and Deathstroke vs. Batman #30
By Grunion Guy!


Comic Book Reviews!

Metal #6
By Snyder, Capullo, Glapion, and Plascencia

Fact That Isn't Fun (It's Just a Fact, You Know?): Metal is the longest running six issue comic book series in DC's history that also has the most issues (well over six! I lost count somewhere around year ten).

But it's finally over, guys! I'm using guys the way the young generation use it after they've just gone to Wikipedia to learn as much as they can about a thing that somebody else mentioned in an attempt to pretend they always knew more about it than they originally did. I mean, I'm not completely using it that way since I haven't just read (and will never read) the Wikipedia entry on Metal. I probably couldn't even find the right one since it certainly disambiguates into dozens of different entries.

Today, I become a man! No, not because I'm going to finally have sex! I did that like four years ago. Today I'm a man because finishing this series feels like the biggest accomplishment of my life! After having sex, of course. Which is what really made me a man in society's eyes. Up until that point, I was just a loser virgin who could tell how every color of kryptonite affects Superman and how many times in the original Star Wars you can see the outline of Mark Hamill's cock through his pants.

Earth-Main-Earth has sunk into the Dark Multiverse. Wonder Woman and Lady Blackhawk remain the last hope for all mankind. And, I'm assuming, the entire Earth-Main-Earth universe. I'm never quite clear on how much the problems on Earth are affecting the rest of the universe. I think, as human readers, we're supposed to narcissistically believe that the fate of the entire cosmos hangs in the balance of what happens to Earth. Mostly I think all of the aliens would just like to see Earth-Main-Earth destroyed for good. There would be so much less drama.

Plastic Man finally wakes up to save the day and I lose all respect for this comic book. Nobody believes Plastic Man can save the world! He's the biggest joke since a few of those schoolyard jokes about the space shuttle Challenger disaster. Who came up with those jokes immediately after the tragedy? I bet it was some Deep State comedian who knew the Challenger was going to be blown up by government operatives and aliens.

Luckily, Plastic Man only saves the day for like a page. I'm not even sure why he was in this comic book. I'm guessing it was a drunken bet between Scott Snyder and Dan DiDio. Snyder was all, "I bet I can bring Plastic Man back into the DC Universe in a serious way." And DiDio was all, "No way. There's less chance of that than a comic book with two women in a romantic and healthy relationship not having a mature rating." And then Snyder was all, "If I fail, you can have James Tynion IV for a night." And DiDio was all, "Deal!"

After Plastic Man saves the day, Wonder Woman saves the day. But only until the real saviors arrive.

Monkeys and Batmen!

Now I'm pissed at DC Comics. They spent five years trying to sell everybody a historically watered down and less fun version of their comic book universe by claiming there were just 52 worlds. But all that time they could have been printing a comic book full of monkeys on a 53rd Earth?! Does DC have no actual business men running their business?!

Batman and Superman also return because I guess they're the ones who need to save the day. The monkeys and Plastic Man and alternate Batmen weren't actually important after all and never really appear again after that splash page arrival. They were the non-raisin bits of this Raisin Bran. Oh, I guess that would be the bran. Now, I like raisins as much as any other boring person but could any company in any of the 53 universes have come up with a more unappetizing name for a cereal? I mean aside from Grape Nuts.

Maybe I should give up on trying to determine who actually saves the day because this issue is just scene after scene of somebody arriving to save the day but then the day never actually gets saved. I guess they're all just making things more hopeful. Especially when The Joker saves the day. That's when every Fangender is supposed to go, "Did Snyder include his dick in this comic book because I think I'm supposed to start sucking it now?"

In the end, the Justice League pull some Sailor Moon shit and believe in each other and save the world while holding hands while remembering all the good times they had with each other, like the time Sailor Batman cheered up Sailor Wonder Woman, and the time Sailor Superman gave Sailor Flash a prostate exam.

Rating: There's the typical epilogue that explains things have only been saved (by fifty different people) for a short time because things are actually going to get worse than what they just went through. You know how stories foreshadow future events as they go along in an unobtrusive way that sometimes you don't even catch until a subsequent rereading? Being a comic book (and a Scott Snyder comic book, at that), this isn't like that. The story resolves with the heroes winning and then there's an epilogue where Batman says, "Things are just going to get worse!" and Lucius says, "Dream, where are you? OMG! There's a book missing in the library of books never written! What does it mean? Aside from it suddenly having been written or something." This is the part where I might wonder how comic books can keep escalating but I've learned that the escalation is all just an illusion. This seemed like the biggest threat to the universe since the last one but was it? They're all really just the same. The bottom line is that everything is always on the line. This story just made the 'everything' part bigger by removing the Source Wall, expanding the DC Universe, and creating a lovable Earth full of monkeys.

All in all, it was a big event that was quite comic booky. That's all I'm looking for. The main problem was all the tie-ins that didn't matter and didn't really add much to the story. DC should have just made this an eight issue series, folding Hawkman Found and The Wild Hunt into the main story. All of the other books should have been scrapped.


Justice League: No Justice All Access Page
By whoever writes this shit

Here's a quote about No Justice from Francis Manapul: "Anyone who has asked for Harley Quinn, Martian Manhunter, Starfire, Zatanna, the Atom, Raven or Doctor Fate to be in their personal Justice League will stand up and cheer." It's nice to see he's shooting for the smallest audience possible. I was almost cheering but he included the Atom instead of Lobo. Man, I was so close to being one of the three people excited for this!


Doomsday's Cock #4
By Johns, Frank, and Anderson

Based on this cover, the comic should be called "Rorschach's Cock is Long and Weird."

Doomsday's cock was going to be long and weird since Doomsday has never really had any motivation for wanting to kill everything. But being enraged at the universe for having a micro-penis makes sense to me. Not that I know what it's like to have a micro-penis! My penis is at least twice as big as a micro-penis. And that's when it's flaccid! I know I shouldn't brag about the size of my penis when I'm writing comic book reviews that will be read by comic book nerds. Although I'm mostly writing to fans of DC Comics who have the biggest penises of all comic book fans. I haven't done research on this fact but I have to assume that DC fans have to have enough self-confidence to be shit on by Marvel fans on the daily. And you know the only way people can have any self-confidence is by being okay with their penis size, right?

I don't know how women gain self-confidence. By knowing guys with big penises?

I should stop writing about big penises because I'm getting anxious and a little bit scared.

Let's talk about Rorschach for a second! I just read a comic recently where a character stole the Rorschach line about people being locked up in prison with him but I can't remember which comic book it was. I wish I could remember because I couldn't help thinking, "Why, as a writer, are you lifting that line for your comic book?! It's like one of the most famous comic book lines which means your entire audience is going to snort and scoff when they read it and think, 'What a hack!'" Why didn't the writer use something like "To be or not to be, that's a fairly relevant question"? Less people would have known where the author had stolen that line from than the Rorschach line! That wasn't really talking about Rorschach. I'm sorry for lying to you in the segue into that paragraph.

This is where I first realized the new Rorschach was the son of Rorschach's psychiatrist. Was it evident earlier than this? I mean, probably since there were only two black characters in the entire run of Watchmen and one of them died hugging an old white man.

The new Rorschach, Reggie, has wound up in Earth-Main-Earth's Arkham Asylum because he trespassed in the Batcave. I guess Batman sometimes doesn't give a shit about the rule of law and he just backdoors people he doesn't like into Arkham. It's probably where Rorschach belongs since he was driven insane by Ozymandias's fake alien attack on New York City.

Reggie has been placed in Arkham across from Saturn Girl so I guess it's about time we learn why she's the only member of the Legion of Super-heroes left in DC continuity. I bet it's because she's the only one Superboy had sex with. She probably read his mind when he was looking at her at age sixteen and thinking, "I'd like to have sex with her!" She was flattered because she was too naïve to realize he was thinking that whenever he looked at any female Legionnaire. Also Superboy probably had sex with all of them. Why wouldn't he? The Legionnaires fucked everything that moved! It's what the entire series was based around.

Reggie and Saturn Girl escape while Alfred worries about another one of Batman's choices. How could Batman stick some guy who knew his identity into Arkham without at least erasing his mind first?! Hasn't he learned anything?!

Rating: Four dogs with split heads out of five dogs with split heads. Maybe even four and a half dogs with split heads. This is the first issue that makes me think Johns has the chops to pull this thing off. This issue was the secret origin of the new Rorschach and it may have taken me an hour to read. That's a compliment! Some reviewer said of the first issue of this series that it was a page turner that the reader devoured unlike Alan Moore's. That praise didn't sit right with me because it just screams of fluff and the same old bullshit tropes to make readers think they're reading something exciting. I want a comic book that forces me to take my time with it and this issue was finally that. If the rest of the series tanks, it may have been worth it for this issue alone. Hell, Mothman's story could have been a stand alone mini-comic that I would have raved about for minutes. Perhaps hours even. The one downside is that it didn't mention Doomsday's penis once.


Mother Panic: Gotham A.D. #1
By Houser, Moustafa, and Boyd

Rating: This might be better than the previous version. It also might be worse. It's hard to tell after just one issue, especially when that issue spends the majority of time reminding the reader that Mother Panic has been dumped in an alternate Gotham in an alternate time and an alternate place. Batman has gone missing in this Gotham, presumed dead by The Joker who noticed that nobody ever stops him killing people any more. The city isn't run by Owls either. Instead, The Collective (the organization behind Gather House and turning Violet Paige into Mother Panic) has taken control, turning Gotham into a great place to live (as long as you don't mind pretending you're living in a great place that actually sucks lady balls). The art fits the book, the sidekick character might be reminiscent of Hit-Girl but more likeable and cutesy, and something about Mother Panic's uniform makes me want to fuck her super hard. Not that I've ever fucked anything super hard. Unless almost sticking my penis inside of a vagina as my penis unwound its spool of silly string is an acceptable definition of fucking hard.


The Hellblazer #20
By Seeley, Fabbri, Dalla Vecchia, and Strachan

Rating: The art is terrible. Just awful. Maybe, occasionally, there's a shot of The Huntress's thighs that made me appreciate The Huntress's thighs just a little bit more than I did before. But that was one panel out of twenty pages of panels. That's about all the rant I have in me on that.

Remember when I used to be so harsh on artists and writers that I'd go on for multiple paragraphs trying to think up unique ways to use time travel to prevent their birth? And now that I've got a more private place to do it, you'd think I'd get even more blasphemous in my descriptions of Rube Goldberg machines that would destroy the fertility of the artist's mother's ovaries. But instead, I can only seem to write the equivalent of a shrug. And I think I know why that is.

When I got back into comic books and first began reading The New 52, I decided to take my time with each issue. I wanted to read carefully and examine each panel with a critical eye. I felt there was a mystery to be solved in this New 52. DC had to have some kind of a plan for their new universe. There had to be a genius reason behind throwing out all of their continuity to rebuild their superhero playground. I haven't reread them but I bet a lot of my early reviews were fairly innocent and upbeat. The jokes were at my own expense, exposing how dumb I was, never faulting the comic book. I chose to believe that I just couldn't fathom the secret depths of DC's huge plan. But ever so slowly, I began to see past the veil. DC had no plan. DC didn't know what they were doing. DC had put no thought into their idea and hired some of the worst comic book writers of all time to help them pretend they were doing something special. It drove me crazy and I began to attack every thing wrong with a merciless fervor.

Fans of DC that had jumped ship because of The New 52 had no sympathy for me. "You should have known," they commented, not really caring to engage with me but needing an outlet to pretend the temper tantrum they threw dropping DC was actually an intelligent and well-thought out choice. But these people didn't get it. DC had a chance to do something wonderful. They could have begun The New 52 with the idea that Rebirth or something like it would eventually happen. They could have had a plan in place. Things could have been foreshadowed across their entire line of comic books. What the people who instantly hated The New 52 failed to understand was that I was doing the science. I was out there running the numbers and doing the math and trying to solve the mystery of what DC was doing. So when I discovered that there was no substance behind The New 52, I took the passion I had for researching the mystery and applied it to mocking the fuck out of them. So, yeah. I eventually reached the same conclusion as all the butt-hurt fans who suddenly didn't have Wally West to jerk off over. But those fans dumped DC from the beginning of The New 52 without proof of its poorly thought out structure. They didn't have the numbers and the facts and the research that I had to back the opinion that The New 52 failed miserably. They claimed to have hated The New 52 but none of them really had to experience it in-depth like I did.

But now that everything is back to normal? I just don't fucking care enough to call Davide Fabbri's mother's twat a superfund site full of dog paddling sperm where the only babies made could either be creatures like the one from the movie Prophecy (not The Prophecy! That one doesn't have the creature I'm speaking of!) or artists that make me wish I'd been born deaf, dumb, and blind. Mostly blind. But I'll take being deaf as well so that nobody can tell me how bad the art is. I don't know why I chose to be dumb too. Maybe so I have a better chance of being a super smeller?

"So what about the story?" nobody is still reading this to ask. Well, the story's okay. It's by Tim Seeley and it features John Constantine and The Huntress. That's a combination that makes it impossible for a story to be terrible. But this is a comic book which means 75% of the reason people are reading it is for the art. And that art is horrible.

P.S. It's possible the terrible art is due to inker Christian Dalla Vecchia or colorist Carrie Strachan. If that's the case, apply all of my insults to their mother's vaginas and send my apologies to Davide's mom's twat.


Detective Comics #977
By Tynion IV, Fernandez, Barrows, Ferreira, Kalisz, and Lucas

Rating: I'm going to drop this comic book because I'm sick of typing that IV after Tynion's name. Also, I guess, for some other less important reasons. One of them is that I'm tired of Tynion's Bat-stories. Here are some things which Tynion thinks makes a good story: smartest kid on Earth thinks up super smart stuff that could revolutionize everything but uses it to stop petty criminals in Gotham; smartest kid on Earth meets other smartest kid on Earth and they smart things up; smartest kid on Earth makes older people look stupid and bitter and gender normative; smartest kid on Earth acts boring and bland and makes me throw up five times from extreme boredom. "Maybe can we have less smartest person in the DC Universe stories?" I say as I sit eager to read The Terrifics #2 because it only features the 3rd smartest person on Earth. "I can't wait to see how dumb heroes tackle problems!" I exclaim while shoving five Oreos into my mouth so that the Non-Certified Spouse in the next room hears, "GRRBBLE GRPDT FLBABBLOLL *hack sputter choke*!" Should I be concerned that she waited for ten minutes of silence after choking on the cookies to check on me?

Gross.

Justice League of America #27
By Orlando, Petrus, and Hi-Fi

Rating: More time travel nonsense with an added side of "Earth superheroes exist because some proto-superguy came to Earth in the Jurassic period and left a footprint." What a time to have just lost Lobo! He'd be immune to Chronos's plan to erase the idea of Earthly superheroes! I knew the Justice League of America was fucked when Lobo chose to leave. Mostly I knew that because it would cause me to stop raving about this comic book and begin treating it like every other shitty DC title. He was this book's Kevlar!

I wish Steve Orlando's name was Steve Orlando IV so I would have a good reason to drop this book.


Demon: Hell is Earth #5
By Constant, Walker, Hennessy, and Sotomayor

Rating: This comic book just reminds me that there was once a Demon comic book written by Alan Grant and drawn by Val Semeiks that was so entertaining that I didn't mind that I wasn't getting laid. Later after I totally laid a non-made-up girl that doesn't exist just for the sake of the story and so that I don't suffer the embarrassment of being another virgin on the Internet, I came to the conclusion that the comic book was better. That might be a controversial opinion because according to everybody who has ever had an orgasm, apparently nothing is better than an orgasm. That's something that I probably agree with so now my argument has been completely invalidated since even I don't support it. Maybe I should stop discussing orgasms before you begin trying to picture the contorted face I make when my totally real sex partner makes me orgasm. Here's a clue to help you visualize it: Disney log flume souvenir photo.

I would love to reread Grant's Demon comic book (along with the later issues by Ennis and McCrea) but those comic books are still in the basement of the house in which I grew up. The good news is that my mother is driving up to visit this summer and she's offered to bring up more comic books! The bad news is that my mother is coming up to visit!

I haven't even read this comic book and I'm purporting to rate it. I'm beginning to wonder if I even need to read the comic books I'm reviewing any more. It would certainly save me a lot of money. And as an added benefit, I could start reviewing Marvel books too!


Suicide Squad #38
By Williams, Derenick, and Arreola

Rating: I forgot to take this off of my pull list. Maybe my subconscious won't allow it. I try to cancel it but then I black out and wake up naked in a pile of old Ostrander issues. Maybe if I get hypnotized, I'll be able to do it. Because it really needs to be done. This comic book is so terrible that I'm beginning to fantasize about an Ann Nocenti version of the Squad drawn by Brett Booth.


The Terrifics #2
By Reis, Lemire, Luis, Tarragona, and Maiolo

First let me offer congratulations to the creative team for making Linnya Wazoo, the only female of the group, super hot. That might sound sarcastic because what female superhero isn't super hot, right? But it's not sarcastic. That congratulations comes from the bottom of my heart and the tip of something else. Probably my brain but don't make me declare that while hooked up to a lie detector unless you want to be offended. And if you want to be offended, just accept that, yes, I meant my erect penis. But seriously, you try not having an erect penis when looking at Tinnya Wazoo in that tight uniform.

Mister Terrific's uniform is just as tight but that only suggests that he has no genitalia. That Linnya has no discernible genitalia is hot because my mind is going crazy imagining what a woman looks like down there. I bet a woman's private place is just an image of a naked woman, right? That would be hot on so many levels. Probably.

I felt guilty, ashamed, and reprimanded when Linnya said, "Don't look at me."

I had a huge crush on a girl named Marilyn Mendoza in junior high. She spent every lunch in the library so I would too so that I could stare at her (I was with friends, of course! I didn't just sit their creepily alone. I was creepy while with friends). One day, her friends noticed me staring at her. As she walked out of the library, she came past my table and said, "I don't like being stared at." After that, I was heartbroken but I basically abandoned my crush and tried to ignore her. I stopped staring and just tried to not die from sadness. A few months later, she walked past me as I was going into the school wing with my locker and she said, "Don't go in there. I think a fight is about to break out." But I said I needed to go to my locker. At least I think I did. I might have said, "Grbble snack pediddle." It was hard to tell with my heart beating so loudly and my love machine whirring back into action.

Some time after that, we were sitting across from each other in the library passing notes back and forth. At one point, her note to me said, "You're weird." I don't know what I wrote in response to that. She responded, "I like you anyway." I didn't even know how to respond to that and, weirdly, stopped passing the note back and forth.

Some time after that, she convinced her friends to join the P.E. class that me and my friends were signing up for. During that class, she tried to casually give me one of her school pictures and I, shyly and stupidly, laughed it off and didn't take it.

If you're wondering what the fuck was wrong with me, you're still miles behind the amount of thought I've put into that.

Some time after that, at the end of the school year, she asked me if she could sign my 9th grade year book. She wrote a long note that seemed a bit form-letter-ish but was sweet and way more eloquent than the "P.S. I'll miss you" that I wrote in hers. Her cursive was beautiful and immaculate and she surrounded what she wrote with junior high school 80's designs. After signing her name, she wrote, "P.S. Say hi to Kim for me! JK!" Kim was a girl I'd known since elementary school and we always sat next to each other in class because our last names were so close alphabetically. We were friendly enough that I guess it seemed flirtatious. Being an anti-social shy nerd, I couldn't flirt. Also I didn't even know what "JK" meant.

Some time after that, in the middle of summer after 9th grade, my friend Sal was looking through my yearbook. He said, "Who is this girl who said she loves you?" And I was all, "What are you talking about, you stupid illiterate idiot?" He showed me Marilyn's note to me and sort of mixed in with the designs she'd made, she'd written, "Luv you, kid!" I never saw Marilyn Mendoza again.

So you see, children! The moral of this story is to stop staring at women when they want you to stop staring at them and they'll fall in love with you so that you can throw the entire potential of a doomed and awkward childhood romance into the toilet with your weird behaviors! Isn't love grand?!

That short story was probably better than 95% of all of the comic books I've ever read over my lifetime. That might sound arrogant but I'm just stating the non-subjective facts. "Non-subjective" means "objective"!

Linnya tells her origin story to the other Terrifics and I think it's supposed to be tragic but I wound up laughing a lot. See, she was on vacation with her parents when some space problem cropped up. For some reason, the ship they were in had an escape pod which only had room for one member of the crew. I suppose that makes sense because why would a ship the size of a Volkswagen house another ship the size of a Volkswagen to escape in case something happened to the first Volkswagen? But then it doesn't make sense either because why have an escape pod that only allows for one person in a ship to escape? That's going to make for a seriously tense game of roshambo.

Anyway, Linnya's parents send her off in the pod which subsequently gets sucked into the space problem while the parents go free. I bet they were kicking themselves for weeks over that mishap.

Luckily Linnya aged while stuck in phantom form without needing to eat or pee otherwise I'd be feeling even more shame and guilt over the way her uniform fits. She doesn't say how old she is but she must be that perfect female age where she's old enough so that nobody can arrest you for wanting to engage her in adult pastimes but young enough that she's not yet thirty and gross.

I learned that women don't matter after thirty from songs by Marina and the Diamonds and Lily Allen. I don't think they were meant as criticisms of that way of thinking at all!

Metamorpho tries to touch Phantom Girl without her consent and his hands pass right through her. He then apologizes but not, I think, for the non-consensual attempt at contact. I think he's sorry that his hand passed through her titties. That does seem inappropriate.

Um, so, the Terrifics escape the Dark Multiverse and everything works out. And in only two issues! I mean, there is the problem that they can't wander more than a few dozen feet away from one another without all of them dying painfully. But that's just a plot point to force them to work together for the entire run of this comic series. It's not a real issue!

Rating: I hate this comic book way less than I hate all of the other comic books I'm reading (aside from Batman and Mister Miracle and Snagglepuss and maybe Eternity Girl). I might even sort of like this book even though it features Plastic Man. Plus there hasn't been a bum like Linnya Wazoo's since the early days of The New 52 Supergirl!


Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #4
By Russell, Stilwell, Feehan, Vazquez, Parsons, Mounts, and Campbell

Rating: This is the kind of comic book that will get reviewers straining their intelligence muscles. It's the kind of book you have to talk smartly about or else your review site will look like it's run by rubes. It's the kind of comic book that requires footnotes and mentions of how much you know about specific events in history and how they differ from their portrayal here. It's the kind of review that I'd never do. My only criticism with it is that the anthropomorphic animals don't wear pants and yet I haven't seen one animal ding-dong or hoo-ha.

I didn't realize while writing the above with left leaning comic book reviewers in mind that it would be even more true for right leaning comic book reviewers. But apparently this is just the type of comic book that gets them to write about how much they know about history so that when they say, "This comic book is boring," it will have more authority than just saying, "I disagree with the obvious leftist slant in the politics and the most damning critique I can give it is saying, 'Meh.'"

Sometimes I think if my mind were erased and I was left as a blank slate with no knowledge of how the universe worked or what exactly was going on, but I still understood language (only the English language, of course. What am I? Not American?!), I would know instantly which side of the political aisle I belonged on just by which responses from one side to the other I enjoyed more. So I wouldn't be moved by "You're just shocking to be shocking" (or, even better, "You think you're shocking but you're not," which is just another way of saying, "I was shocked but I don't want to admit that you shocked me." Although what is "being shocked" anyway? Isn't that what humor is all about? You don't laugh because you see the punch line coming. You laugh because it jumps out from behind a bush and shoves its finger up your ass. No wait. That probably isn't a laughing matter because I just realized that analogy is rape) but I would totally be won over by "You've probably never made a woman come." After which, I might have to concede that the lame argument about people being shocking just to be shocking might have a granule of truth. Although, having been accused of "being shocking for the sake of being shocking" by boring people on the boring Internet, I can say that, from my perspective, most people aren't out there trying to be shocking. A lot of us just don't hold anything sacred and say things that make us laugh, figuring other people will find it funny as well.


Deathstork vs. Batman #30
By Priest, Pagulayan, Paz, and Cox

How many times have Batman and Deathstork fought now? Don't they do it every six months or so? I think DC Comics has a permanent Google Calendar alert set for this event. Occasionally they'll trash the Batman vs. Deathstork event and ramp it up so that it's Deathstork vs. Superman. I think sometime in the early 90s, the decision was made to alternate which hero Deathstork has to beat to continually prove that he's the best super-villain in the DC Universe. Although I don't think anybody at DC has thought of him as a villain since just after he stopped having sex with a minor. Since then, they're constantly playing up his mercenary with a sense of ethics card. When he fights with heroes, it's understood to be some kind of misunderstanding.

I guess he sometimes battles Wonder Woman too but since Daniel or Finch or Mrs. Finch was writing that story, I've mostly purged it from my memory.

Rating: Batman finds evidence that Damian might be Deathstork's son. He's desperate to finally learn if he can write Robin out of his will and he's willing to murder Deathstork's ability to make money from murder until he clears up the confusing newly discovered DNA results. Deathstork's response is to threaten Batman and Batman's family because that's never caused the violence to escalate in the past. What is wrong with these two guys? They know exactly what to say to make a conflict between them last for six issues. That's just long enough to sell as a graphic novel later.

My only question with regards to Batman and Deathstork constantly fighting is why does Batman allow Deathstork to keep killing? Is it because Batman knows he can't beat him? Or is it the same reason Batman lets Jason Todd go on killing? And Wonder Woman (who doesn't kill as often but also doesn't see the problem with it)? Is it because Batman's war on crime is only a war on random crime? He doesn't want random people dying due to criminal activity but it's okay if a criminal dies due to their criminal activity? That seems about right. He's got an old school sensibility about responsibility.

Or maybe Batman just figures if Deathstork were really a problem, Superman would throw him into the Phantom Zone. And since that has never happened (unless it has?), Deathstork must be a pretty swell guy.

Deathstork and Batman didn't fight much in this issue so Deathstork vs. Batman has started off in a disappointing manner. But since Priest is writing this, I bet he takes a completely different tack with it. I bet Batman and Deathstork simply face off on a matter of philosophy. Instead of trading punches, they'll trade biting existential remarks about the other's ideology. Preferably while sipping cappuccinos in a Paris café.


Sorry for such a long newsletter that was all comic reviews. Maybe next time I'll just draw a bunch of sexy Dick Grayson pictures. Goodbye, jerkos!

Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea: The Newsletter #16 (Fourth Week of March 2018)

E!TACT! #16
The Terrifics #1, Strangers in Paradise XXV #2, Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #3, Deathstroke #29, Black Lightning: Cold, Dead Hands #5, and Letters to Me!
By Grunion Guy

This week, let's start with a letter:

Upright: So why’d you leave the website and turn to newsletters?

My reply: I liked the idea of doing something that was more akin to a zine than a web page. I had been playing with the idea of doing a monthly roleplaying zine to publish digitally for a dollar. It was going to be a companion piece to my cribbage roleplaying game with lots of other features. I'd even designed most of the first issue but realized I was way too far ahead of myself. I still needed to get art for the cRPG (cribbage roleplaying game and not computer roleplaying game. Maybe I need different shorthand for it) and make some tweaks with the game world.

About the same time, I was drifting away from reading as many comic books as I had been and didn't feel like writing about most of the ones I kept reading (being that the worst comic books were the most fun to write about and those were the books I had stopped reading). Plus the comic book branding on the site was never as great as it should have been being that I didn't give a fuck. What the hell does the gibberish name "Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea" have to do with comic books anyway? And what kind of review site barely reviews the comic books they're writing about due to constantly segueing into "made-up" stories like masturbating in the bathroom sink (which was totally made up and not just in the way that somebody insists that something embarrassing is made-up so that the person thinks it's true because they're protesting too much but in the way where a person protests just enough so the reader thinks, "Yeah, that totally can't be true. Gross.").

So I was looking for a change and thought that before I try to publish things on Amazon or whatever online publisher isn't akin to sucking the devil's cock, I thought this could be an interesting hybrid idea. I figured I could begin doing shorter comic book reviews by dropping most of the comic book review but keeping all the tangents. Then I thought I would add more features as I went along to make it more zine-like. It would be more like my original Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea blog idea than the comic book pseudo-review site it became.

One other thing before another thing and then a final thing: people who follow you on social media sites probably rarely see anything you post. When you see a person on Twitter or Tumblr and they follow more than a few dozen people, you realize that they may as well not be following anybody. They certainly aren't seeing everything every follower posts which says to me that they don't really give a shit about any of the people they follow. I mean, obviously they do or they wouldn't follow them. But when you follow your 968th person on Twitter, do you really think you're going to see much of anything that person posts? Maybe people are spending a lot more time on these social media sites than I give them credit for!

Anyway, I decided that anybody who still felt the things I write to entertain myself were still entertaining to them, they could follow me this way. And then when they wanted to stop following me because I hurt their stupid gun loving Republican feelings, they could unsubscribe. At the very least, I'd have a better gauge on how many people were, in some small way, feeling entertained by stuff that entertains me.

The other thing: most of the people on the Internet don't deserve most of the things on the Internet. So this is my velvet rope to keep out the morons.

That final thing I mentioned: in a future Newsletter, I will start trying to sell things. I just have to finish a few of them and find an artist. And then decide how to publish them. I'm really looking forward to selling everybody a copy of The Chicken by the Gate.

I still (rarely) post reviews on the website. But only to remind people that this is where I'm really spending my time. I mean the time I'm not spending playing Fortnite and Overwatch.

It's also possible that all of that is bullshit and a therapist would realize that the only reason I spent so much time working on the website previously was because it was also time spent hanging out with my cat Judas. Once he died, it just wasn't the same anymore. But that imagined therapist can go fuck herself for making me sad all over again. Stupid jerk!

Comic Book Reviews!

The Terrifics #1
By Reis, Lemire, Prado, and Maiolo

I don't know why I scanned the middle part of the triple sized vertical cover when the bottom part is the most interesting because it features Tom Strong.

There was a time when putting Plastic Man into your mainstream comic book meant you didn't give a fuck about your comic book. It screamed "This comic book is a silly piece of shit that nobody is going to take seriously." Which is weird because I've always thought that that was how comic books should always present themselves. Unless, of course, you're Chris Ware and then your comic book should scream, "You are going to weep harder than that time that life kicked you square in the crotch and then pissed on your face and recorded it to play back in front of all of your loved ones every time they almost thought perhaps they might be a little bit proud of you."

Writers should never fear putting whimsically silly characters into their comic books. But the problem with most writers is that they're writers. And writers often have this pressing need to seem profound and intellectual. If I were allowed to declare who could be a writer and who couldn't, I'd immediately disqualify all men with severe daddy issues who need to prove themselves to the world. I think we've had enough of those. Besides, why aren't they going into Wall Street with the other "Daddy! Daddy! My bank account proves I'm not a failure!" asshats? Then they'd have to pass my only test. I'd put them alone in a room with a covered easel (and hidden cameras, of course!). Then I'd press a button and the sheet would drop from the easel where a canvas would rest with simply the word "fart" on it. If they sneered or rolled their eyes or clutched their "I'm above this kind of juvenile bullshit" pearls, I'd announce that they couldn't be a writer. Right after I filled the room with my stored farts, of course.

Maybe it's a good thing I'm not in charge of who gets to write. I suppose some highbrow bullshit that gets you thinking about stuff I never want to think about is good for somebody somewhere. But I'd rather read Vonnegut than Hemingway. I'd also rather force people to do what I would do.

But then maybe I should also remember that I'm re-reading a bunch of Piers Anthony books currently. I'm not sure I'd say he's a sexist writer but his works are definitely burdened by the male chauvinistic attitudes of mid to late twentieth century thinking. I know I'm supposed to be commenting on The Terrifics #1 but here's an excerpt from A Spell for Chameleon, a book written in 1977 which won the Novel of the Year from the British Fantasy Society. I meant to write some kind of essay on the sexist and gendered attitudes in the Xanth novels but I'm too lazy to get into that kind of structured bullshit. That stuff is written by people who don't smirk at the word "farts."

Excerpt from A Spell for Chameleon (for review purposes only or something. Stupid Pickle Boy was supposed to get his law degree to help me out with junk like this but did he? Nooooo! He decided he'd rather work at Subway):

The others arrived: two men and three young women. The men were ordinary, bearded farmers, one young, one middle-aged; the girls ranged from indifferent to ravishing. Bink forced his eyes away from the prettiest one lest he stare. She was the most voluptuous, striking, black-haired beauty he had ever seen, a diamond in the mud of this region.
     "Now the six of you sit down across from each other at this table," the bailiff said in his official voice. "I'll do the talking when the judge comes. Mind you, this is a play—but it's secret. When I swear you in, it's for keeps—absolutely no blabbing about the details after you get out, understand?"
     They all nodded. Bink was becoming more perplexed. He now understood about playing opposite a sweet young thing—but what kind of play was this, with an audience of one, that no one was permitted to report on later? Well, so be it; maybe it was a kind of magic.
     The three men sat in a row on one side of the table, and the three girls faced them. Bink was opposite the beautiful one; her knees touched his, for the table was narrow. They were silky smooth, sending a shiver of appreciation up his legs. Remember Sabrina! he told himself. He was not ordinarily swayed by a pretty face, but this was an extraordinary face. It didn't help that she wore a tight sweater. What a figure!
     The judge entered—a portly man with impressive paunch and sideburns. "All stand," the bailiff said.
     They all stood respectfully.
     The judge took a seat at the end of the table and the bailiff moved to the far side. They all sat down.
     "Do you three ladies swear to tell no truth other than that presented in this hearing, any time, anywhere, and to shut up about that?" the bailiff demanded.
     "We do," the girls chorused.
     "And do you three louts swear the same?"
     "We do," Bink said with the others. If he was supposed to lie here, but never to talk about it outside, did that mean it wasn't really a lie? The bailiff knew what was true and what was false, presumably, so in effect—
     "Now this is the hearing for an alleged rape," the bailiff announced. Bink, shocked, tried to conceal his dismay. Were they supposed to act out a rape?
     "Among these present," the bailiff continued, "is the girl who says she was raped—and the man she charges. He says it happened but it was voluntary. That right, men?"
     Bink nodded vigorously along with the others. Brother! He would rather have chopped wood for his night's lodging. Here he was, possibly lying about a rape he never committed.
     "This is done anonymously to protect the reputation of those involved," the bailiff said. "So's to have an advisory opinion, in the presence of the first parties, without advertising it to the whole community."
     Bink was beginning to understand. A girl who had been raped could be ruined, though it was no fault of her own; many men would refuse to marry her for that reason alone. Thus she could win her case but lose her future. A man guilty of rape could be exiled, and a man accused of rape would be viewed with suspicion, complicating his own future. It was almost, he thought grimly, as serious a crime as having no magic. Getting at the truth could be a very delicate matter, not something either party would want to advertise in a pubic trial. Win or lose, reputations would suffer grievously. Yet how could justice be done if it never came to trial? Thus this private, semianonymous hearing. Would it suffice?
     "She says she was walking down by the Gap," the bailiff said, glancing at his notes. "He came up behind her, grabbed her, and raped her. Right, girls?"
      The three girls nodded, each looking hurt and angry. The vigorous head motion caused the knee of the girl facing Bink to shake, and another ripple of suggestion traveled up his leg. What an opposite lady, in what a play!
     "He says he was standing there and she came up and made a suggestion and he took her up on it. Right, men?"
     Bink nodded with the others. He hoped his side won; this was nervous business.
     Now the judge spoke. "Was it close to a house?"
     "'Bout a hundred feet," the bailiff said.
      "Then why did she not scream?"
     "He said he'd push her off the brink if she made a sound," the bailiff replied. "She was frozen in terror. Right, girls?"
     They nodded—and each looked momentarily terrified. Bink wondered which of the three had actually been raped. Then he corrected his thought hastily: which one had made the accusation? He hoped it wasn't the one opposite him.
     "Were the two known to each other prior to the occasion?"
     "Yes, Your Honor."
      "Then I presume she would have fled him at the outset, had she disliked him—and that he would not have forced her if she trusted him. In a small community like this, people get to know each other very well, and there are few actual surprises. This is not conclusive, but it strongly suggests she had no strong aversion to contact with him, and may have tempted him with consequence she later regretted. I would probably, were this case to come up in formal court, find the man not guilty of the charge, by virtue of reasonable doubt."
      The three men relaxed. Bink became aware of a trickle of sweat on his forehead, generated while he listened to the judge's potential decision.
      "Okay, you have the judge's ifso," said the bailiff. "You girls still want to bring it to open trial?"
      Grim-faced, looking betrayed, the three girls shook their heads, no. Bink felt sorry for his opposite. How could she avoid being seductive? She was a creature constructed for no other visible purpose than ra—than love.
     "Then take off," the bailiff said. "Remember—no talking outside, or we'll have a real trial, for contempt of court." The warning seemed superfluous; the girls would hardly be talking about this one. The guilty—uh, innocent—man would also shutup, and Bink himself just wanted to get clear of this village. That left only one man who might want to talk—but if he breathed a word, all the others would know who had blabbed. There would be silence.

That's...um...that's quite the scene, Piers. Maybe this was Mr. Anthony's Shakespeare moment where he got to put a play within a play. But what a weird fucking play in what is supposedly a light-hearted fantasy adventure. I suspect Piers thought he had figured out the way to deal with rape charges in a sensible fashion. Which makes it even more odd that, throughout the entire scene, Bink focuses on the erection he has over the woman sitting across from him. He even lets his mind wander to how she's made for rape! What the fuck, Piers?!

So in Mr. Anthony's world, the worst part about rape isn't the rape. It's that the rape trial ruins the reputation of both the accused and accuser, no matter the jury's decision. So it's best to hold the trial in front of a male judge who seems to believe that all rape cases should end in clearing the name of the accused due to reasonable doubt. Unless, I suppose, there was a witness. Although if there was a witness who was against rape, I would assume they would have stopped the rape. If the witness was pro-rape and probably jerking off while watching, why would that witness bother to come forward? Or would he be forced to come forward with two people who weren't him and they would all just shake their heads no when asked if they saw anything?

It's a weird fucking moment in this book that won best fantasy novel of the year. And while it seems to me that Piers Anthony really thought he was coming up with a sensitive way to deal with bringing rape to trial, he simply just reiterated how rape is dealt with at trial anyway! The guy is almost always protected and seen as innocent while the woman is blamed through questioning her actions. How is Piers rape justice any better than the reality? In fact, it's actually worse. What Piers seems to be suggesting is a way to bring rape to trial so that the man, who will not be found guilty anyway, gets to also keep his non-rape reputation intact!

And that part where Bink thinks about the woman across from him being made for rape and how she can't help seducing people? It's, unbelievably, not the worst part. Later when Bink asks the bailiff to give him directions, the bailiff explains that Wynne, the seductress that sat across from him, can help him. Bink is suddenly nervous that if he's alone with her, she'll accuse him of rape. The bailiff identifies her as, "Your opposite. The one you almost raped." He then pauses for a moment and then says, "Not that I blame you."

Jesus fucking Christ! I'd better just read The Terrifics #1 now before I mention how the males in the rest of the Xanth books think about women! It's fucking terrible. The Terribles!

Back to The Terrifics #1
By those guys I mentioned previously

Mister Terrific begins the book by calling all but three people on Earth sheep-like zombies without an ounce of curiosity or intellect. It's possible he's talking about less people than that but seeing as how he's the third smartest person on Earth (behind two other men who are men), I feel like he's rubbing his giant brain penis all over my face. It turns out I don't like it as much as I thought I would.

Mister Terrific's opening speech is probably meant to impress me. He refuses to be ignorant of any part of the mystery of the universe. He says, "I demand to know the answers. I seek out these mysteries and solve them. I wrangle the unknowable...and pin the impossible down." Aside from the titillating sexual imagery of this statement, I'm not a fan. It just shows he's as needy for meaning as the faithful! Let some of it go, man! You can't solve every mystery of the universe because you're a human being which means you're basically a narcissist which means your ultimate search for truth is a search for a reason for your personal existence. There isn't a reason, man! You're a cosmic accident and you're either lucky or unlucky to have been born into whatever this reality happens to be for. It exists because it exists and you exist because you exist and tautologies exist because sometimes there is no other reason for something than that thing's own being. Besides, you're an atheist in a world where gods and devils have been proven to exist. How smart can you actually be?!

Oh, Mister Terrific ends that sexy wrestling quote with "I guess that's why they call me Mr. Terrific." No. That's why you call yourself Mr. Terrific! You made up your own superhero nickname. You chose to be called Mr. Terrific and that's why people call you Mr. Terrific! I think we're back to tautologies!

I'm fairly certain saying that to a caveman is some kind of racist. Speciesest, maybe?

Mr. Terrific, Metamorpho, and Plastic Man all wind up in the Dark Multiverse so they can find the fourth member of The Terrifics, Linnya Wazzo. It's not as funny as Tiny Wazoo but I'm still chuckling. She's one of them Phantom Girls from that comic book about teenagers fucking each other constantly. They also meet a hologram of Tom Strong which declares Tom Strong is probably dead and the people who found the hologram had better be some kind of godlike hero because it's now up to them to save the universe.

The Terrifics #1 Rating: Didn't the universe just get saved in Metal? How many times is this stupid universe going to need saving? The worst conceit of comic books is that humans (or humanoid alien equivalents) need to act as property managers for the universe. I'm pretty sure it's doing fine. And if somebody comes along to destroy it because they're a super-villain with a really terrible plan (I mean, why would you want to destroy the reality in which you live? I guess they must all be super depressed. Maybe I should re-read Crisis on Infinite Earths keeping in mind that the Anti-Monitor is just mentally ill), isn't that just part of the universe taking care of itself (poorly, I admit)?

Anyway, I hope Tom Strong isn't really dead or else this comic book is terrible. Although Tom Strong not written by Alan Moore is probably better off dead, right?


Strangers in Paradise XXV #2
By Moore

I don't know how to feel about this. I already did my last of my lifetime re-read of the complete Strangers in Paradise and now Terry Moore is adding another chapter to the story? (This is where everybody reading thinks, "Now here comes the "more/Moore" joke!" This is also where I say, "Fuck you! I'm no hack!" Then I think, "See, Brain? You don't know everything, do you?! I knew that more/Moore joke was way too easy! I'm glad I listen to you, Penis.")

I suppose I could have refused to purchase it. But then where would I get my fill of sort-of-lesbian stories that don't devolve into complete pornography? Nowhere on the Internet, that's certain. Although now that I've described Strangers in Paradise as "sort-of-lesbian stories that don't devolve into complete pornography," I'm beginning to wonder what the appeal was. Perhaps the appeal was that, while reading it, I was anticipating the devolving into complete pornography which is what kept me hooked. Only now, after the series was finished, do I realize it was the biggest blue balls of my life. At least Elfquest finished up with a huge elf orgy!

Maybe that's why I didn't continue to read all the Elfquest stories after "Kings of the Broken Wheel." Because I already nutted! Although it probably has more to do with Wendy and Richard Pini setting up an Elfquest fan-fiction publication and brought Marv Wolfman into the mix in some way. I don't remember if he actually did anything. I just remember him being at the Elfquest Movie panel at San Diego Comic-con which caused me to think, "I guess some elves are going to be raped in the movie?"

Mentioning rape reminds me that I should get around to finishing my Places and Predators Hero Text Adventure. For one of the puzzles, there was going to be a magic wand that removes the first letter of any object to turn it into a new object. I thought about having a grape in the game so if somebody used the wand on it, the response would just be, "NO." Or maybe, since the object of the game is to buy the perfect present for the Hero's girlfriend, the Virgin, I could allow the player to make the most horrible choice they could ever make in a game. I wonder if I can program an EMP to go off via Inform?

Although I guess I already did that in my webcomic, Dwarf Lover (not the EMP! The part where the reader chooses to rape somebody!). Part of the series was in Choose Your Own Adventure format and one of the choices led the reader to attempt rape. The choices weren't "Do you rape Sheila?" and "Do you not do something terrible even though you're chaotic evil?" It was a little more ambiguous. Maybe I should have put a Content Warning on the rapey choice.

This quote is from Picasso at age five arguing with a playmate at a friend's birthday party.

Katchoo finds herself in the town of Manson as she searches for the missing Parker Girl, Stephanie. It reminds me that I need to finish reading my Rachel Rising omnibus. I hope I can remember what was happening when I left off. I also hope my forearms are still strong enough to lift that thing.

Strangers in Paradise XXV #2 Rating: This comic book has a completely black back cover. Why do publishers still allow comic books to be made with black covers? I can't say for sure because I never wash my hands but even if I had just washed and dried my hands, I'm confident they'd leave greasy prints all over the stupid thing anyway. Not that it matters since most of my comic books will almost certainly wind up in a landfill somewhere after I die and my current cat at the time of death partially eats my face. But it's still annoying. Aside from that criticism, it was a typical Strangers in Paradise book except for the absence of Francine. Although the way Terry Moore draws most women so similarly (also maybe I'm comic book face blind), I could have been reading Motor Girl or Echo or Rachel Rising. But I don't think I was. I'm pretty sure it was Katchoo stuck on the edge of the cliff for the entirety of the story.


Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #3
By Russell, Stilwell, Feehan, Vazquez, Morales, Mounts, and Campbell

Rating: Do I have to give this a rating? It's written by Mark Russell and when has he ever failed to pack a whole lot of philosophical and social commentary into the most unlikely franchises? Well, two of them, anyway (meaning The Flinstones and Prez, for those not in the know). This isn't just a comic book about a gay playwright heading for a precipitous fall thanks to Joseph McCarthy's Communist witch-hunt. It's also about patriotism and acting and immigration and love and family and cartoon characters and pretty much anything else Russell feels like discussing. And it's all done so well that I don't have to comment on it because I'd just be repeating what he said but with dick jokes in. Just like with The Flintstones! And Prez! And probably that Bible thing he wrote that I won't read even though I'm sure it's nothing like my Bible thing being that his rewrites the entire Bible in a fairly short amount of space and I'm dissecting The Bible so thoroughly that I've already got 300 pages on Genesis and I'm only to Joseph's international work in Egypt.

What I'm saying is this book gets the highest rating in whatever rating format I should probably be using. Lots of stars or thumbs or buttholes or something.


Deathstork #29
By Priest, Neves, Scott, and Cox

Rating: I remember praising Priest for this book and the way he was telling the stories. But it doesn't work anymore. The book began as a bimonthly book (twice a month not every two months. Stupid English) so his multiple story lines and quick scenes to establish character worked well. But now that it's monthly, I can't remember all of these tangled story threads. The book is just too confusing. Maybe Priest forgot that he was writing comic books. He does know that we're a much dumber audience than actual book readers, doesn't he? I guess he doesn't because I have no idea what's going on in this book anymore. Except that Deathstork statutory raped Terra and now in this issue, he's simply mocking her for being his victim. I may not be a young teenager on Tumblr who is constantly amazed when they experience any kind of media from before they were born in which people are decent and socially progressive but I think what Deathstork is doing is probably wrong? I mean, sure, exes can be super annoying. I get that part! But I think when you've been in a relationship with a minor and later the police show up at your door, you probably aren't supposed to roll your eyes and say, "Exes, amirite?!"

I would watch this show.

Black Lightning: Cold Dead Hands #5
By Isabela, Henry, Guichet, and Pantazis

Rating: This is the penultimate issue. That means Black Lightning gets his ass severely beaten while Tobias Whale tells him his entire super villain plan. Next issue, Black Lightning's heart or will or belief in himself will grow ten sizes bigger and he'll summon the power to not be killed by Tobias Whale. Then he'll be all, "Thank goodness I now know Whale's plan so I can stop it efficiently in twenty short pages!" Or nineteen pages, anyway, because he needs to stick his dick in the principal of the school where he works on page twenty.

Letters to Me!

KBwrites: Harrumph! Still didn't get the newsletter via email. Oh well, I'm a bright boy, I just looked at it online.

"At one time in my life, I would have scoffed at that. I really did think, at some point in the past, that comic book readers were less likely to be prejudiced and racist assholes. I have no idea why I thought that. We've had plenty of evidence to the contrary to wake me from my naïve stupor. Every time some white male character gets traded out for a minority character, a large percentage of fanboys simply lose their shit."

Yeah, you'd think that people who enjoyed comic books might cleave to the ideals of their favorite characters. Even I am that most embarrassing type of comic readers, the Hal Jordan fan, exactly because I'd like to foster his virtues in myself: he knows right from wrong and cannot be intimidated into doing the wrong thing. (In theory every superhero has a healthy serving of those virtues, but they're what Hal excels at.) I'd be really disappointed in myself if what I liked about Hal was that he makes big green things and there are lots of explosions.

"Duke Thomas"

Agreed. The correct thing to do is present the character to the readers, and if they warm to the character, keep using him. If they aren't into the character, work on the concept or the execution -- but don't keep shoving the character at us in hopes that we will eventually give in and like him. This isn't a romantic comedy and we aren't the woman with the jerk boyfriend (Damien).

"it seems the plot dealt with Thomas Wayne being a monster who worked with Carmine Falcone."

Another story I would have passed on. While there might be good stories to tell about Thomas and Martha Wayne, giving one or the other a dark backstory doesn't rise to the level of "good". It introduces a conceptual problem as well. The deal with Batman is, Bruce Wayne learned at an early age that anyone can be taken from you for absolutely no reason, and he makes it his mission to protect people from being killed. Except, if Thomas Wayne was himself a criminal with a heinous list of misdeeds to his name, then his being killed by a criminal isn't random tragedy; it's poetic justice at a minimum, and (depending on the details) possibly even a direct consequence of his own actions. He who lives by the sword dies by the sword; he who lives by carpentry dies by carpentry (cough Jesus cough); and he who lives by crime dies by crime. It doesn't change the value of Batman's mission but it does ruin the thematic foundations.

"So how does that relate to Batman? Well, he began his journey just like a bill to stop another dog from dying on an airline. His parents were killed senselessly so he passed the Batman Law to prevent something like that from ever happening again. It's purely selfish. And while I agree that it could be a move to increase the greater good, it seems most Batman writers don't approach it that way."

Yes. I would further argue that it's not that Bruce Wayne wants to beat crime specifically, but the thousand ways human beings can suffer. Batman is just his way of dealing with crime that is beyond the scope of the Gotham PD.

"Like Tynion in this issue. Batman is less concerned with the fact that Batwoman probably saved hundreds of lives by killing an out of control Clayface. All Batman cares about is that she broke his rules. Batman has decided to embrace his system more than the reason that system exists. It's to save people."

Adults have to deal with competing principles pretty often. It shouldn't be that difficult for an adult to write a Batman who wrestles with competing principles. Though to Tynion's credit, it sounds like he had other characters express the various perspectives, so it's not like he hasn't thought this through. He just makes Batman sound like a moron.

Go Hommlet!

My reply:

"Yeah, you'd think that people who enjoyed comic books might cleave to the ideals of their favorite characters."

Maybe this is where my naiveté comes from. When I (and you!) began reading comic books, super heroes were actually heroic (even if not long after I started reading, many of them became bumbling). The generations of comic book readers after us grew up on dark Batman and dark Daredevil and depressing everything else (most of it published by 90s Image (which should be no reflection on current Image!)). They didn't give a shit about Hal's code. They just wanted to see some aliens pay with their lives. Things became less about saving people and making the world a better place to focus more on punishing bad guys. That's a hugely warped view of what seemed to be, at one time, the essential nature of comic books.

I don't know if you were ever into computer games but I often think back to Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar and how truly groundbreaking it was. Instead of questing to kill some terrible monster or stop evil from taking over the land, the entire premise was to make yourself a shining example for the people of Britannia. Imagine playing a game that refuses to let you win not just because you stole and murdered but also because you lied or refused to give to the needy or slaughtered monsters who were fleeing from combat? I imagine there are a lot of gamers today who couldn't even comprehend how Ultima IV was entertainment.

"Another story I would have passed on. While there might be good stories to tell about Thomas and Martha Wayne, giving one or the other a dark backstory doesn't rise to the level of 'good'."

You're right in how it changes Batman's entire philosophy. He'd be a different sort of dark knight if he grew up with the knowledge that his father was a criminal who most likely got what he deserved. Just finding out the premise of the Telltale Game made me glad I never picked it up (not that there was any chance of that; I played the first chapter of their Walking Dead game (because it was free) and grew bored fairly quickly). But I did appreciate the way this story was told in the aftermath of the one I'm going to assume was shitty and terrible.

"[Tynion] just makes Batman sound like a moron."

I don't think James Tynion IV likes Batman at all. I believe he's writing Detective Comics with the view that Batman is all that is wrong with the patriarchy and the kids are going to teach him what's right. But he also knows that he can't get too crazy with this idea because Batman fans read Detective Comics. So he introduced into the mix the super patriarchal figure that also happens to be a patriarch: Batwoman's dad. I suspect we're going to see Batwoman become an example of a woman being manipulated by the Patriarchy into believing its lies. That's a story that I don't mind seeing. But I just don't get why Batman should be seen as the enemy when he's way more progressive than just about everybody else in Gotham. Except maybe Alfred Pennyworth. And when he's visiting, Dick Grayson, of course.

"Go Hommlet!"

Yeah. Straight to hell! I was so mad when I bought that module and discovered it was all about roleplaying with hardly any hacking or slashing. And then they made me wait years for The Temple of Elemental Evil where all the good stuff was located!

And that's a wrap! Goodbye, jerkos!