Killer Croc #1

I'm pretty sure Waylon is vomiting those bones into the air. And I can just hear the sound he made. You know that sound? The one you make when you vomit and the vomit catches you by surprise and comes exploding out of your mouth with a kind of ratchety raspy croak?

I wish I could remember a time I looked forward to reading comic books. Now it's just work. Especially since I've run out of funny things to say. Oh well. Back to the coal mine with Killer Croc. *sigh*

Killer Croc begins by defining a word as if I were some dumb bloke that didn't know what "atavastacism" meant! When did Waylon Jones get so smart that he thought he would act better than me using big words. I know better! He's just a big dumb thug! He probably received that word in his email today from Merriam-Webster.com's Word of the Day email self-improvement program. The Word of Today is "lucubration." That's an abrasion you get when you stumble after cheering because you won some money in the lottery.

When did Waylon Jones become better at languaging than me?!

If a great big stupid drop out like Waylon Jones is beginning to sound like a Modern Day Mickey Dolenz compared to me, I've got a problem! I'd better bone up on the books! I think reading nothing but comical books is rotting my think organ. Just a second while I sign up for the Merriam-Webster Sound Pretentious One Word at a Time Email Course. I don't really have time to read every email they send me though so I'll probably just read the word and guess at what it must mean. Then I'll use it all day with my made up meaning and see if anybody notices. Okay! I signed up via Twitter. Wow! Education is easy! I can't believe so many young people are whining about their enormous debts from college. I just signed up for a daily class for free! Ha ha! Who's the stupid person now?!

I can't believe DC is sexualizing this little boy. See? He's naked in a tub which automatically means he's being sexualized. Disgusting.

I don't know about how sexy the boy is in the previous panel because I'm not a weirdo pedophile that likes lizard boys. But man is his aunt sexy! I'd let her scrub me with a gigantic piece of coral! Or pink kryptonite! Or her vagina! I haven't declared a new favorite character in quite some time so I'm going to do that now! Auntie Flowers is the best character DC has created so far! I can't wait until Birds of Prey gets a new roster with Auntie Flowers, Tig the Vampire, Alysia Yeoh, Sleen (Captain K'rot's Raccoon/Kitten friend) and Ferdie. Holy shit that comic book would give me a lucubration!

Too bad that scene was from twenty-six years ago. That probably would put Auntie Flowers in her forties which might not make her a very popular hero according to DC's stupid managing editors that make stupid decisions all of the time and really don't know what sells. If they knew what would sell, they'd call themselves Marvel Comics with Batman! I think a black woman in her mid-forties would make for an awesome team leader. She could probably kick Black Canary's ass.

This issue is written by Tim Seeley and I'm not sure he's every read a Killer Croc story in his entire life! Why else would Killer Croc sound like he just walked out of a college course on not speaking like a drop out thug flunky? Killer Croc is really pissin' me off with his eloquence and his not droppin' letters! Fuck you, Killer Croc! You can't fool me! You're a stupid sewer poop face that doesn't know words and things. You probably found a dictionary floating in some feces and now you're trying to better yourself. Well stop it. Everybody knows better. You're just a dumb monster!

Back to Killer Croc's time spent not learning anything, he wrestled Alligators (I can tell it's an alligator he's wrestling because it's name is "Al!") during a sideshow rock festival. But that ended when he didn't get paid enough. So he decided to rob jewelry stores in Gotham. But that didn't pay off because of The Goddamned Batman. And his annoying sidekick!

Jason Todd should really be worrying about his own flaws!

Some Gotham City Police Guys have been wandering the sewers looking for something that they lost that will get them in big trouble if they can't find it. But they're in Killer Croc's home now and he makes them pay for trespassing. Killer Croc kills all but two of them and then his followers show up. It looks like Killer Croc has an Underworld Kingdom just like all the assholes in Ann Nocenti's comic books! But at least Killer Croc's tribe lives in actual sewers and not some fantasy kingdom. And they look like people living off the street instead of High-tech Survivalists or Baron von Flamehead Cultists and Goat Ranchers.

Killer Croc was leading other were-creatures down in the sewers so I'm going to just pretend that these followers of his are more of them. I wouldn't want the Killer Croc stories from Batwoman to be erased from Canon. I'm not saying they are although I've read different! I just know I'm going to believe them for as long as I'm able and the comic books actually tell me something different.

The last two dirty cops find what they've been looking for: a key on a good cop they killed a few days earlier. But it's a little bit of a trap.

And I'm glad it was because it set up this panel which I simply adore!

It turns out Waylon is busy killing all of these crooked cops because of the man they killed. The man was a caring adult friend of Waylon's when he was a young child. And he was always there with ice cream when that fucking spooky ass Shauna would make fun of him because shit rolls downhill and she had to find the only person that was being teased more than she was. It's also interesting to think that the Ventriloquist is in her thirties.

Hey! Your Auntie Flowers wanted nothing but the best for you! You should respect her word instead of this weirdo pedophile that likes lizard boys!

Killer Croc holds a funeral for his dead one-armed friend and says some words that are probably inspiring but I'm not listening to him anymore! I'm bitter and angry that Killer Croc is being portrayed as smarter than I am! First Clayface proves he's smarter than me! And now this? It's untolerable!

Killer Croc #1 Rating: This was a pretty good story although Killer Croc's voice was nothing like Killer Croc's voice in Batwoman because his character was much better over in Batwoman. He was more vulnerable in his desperation and his average intelligence. And he didn't make me feel stupid! I wonder if maybe it's not him that's making me feel stupid but my being stupid that's making me feel stupid? OH SNAPS!

Ventriloquist #1

Great. How many image tags am I going to screw up typing "ventriloquist"?!

I was going to do a Who's Who entry on Scarface before reading this one but then I felt that was a bit occupationist to group them together when all they have in common is making dolls talk without moving their lips. Scarface is just a gangster bullying the man with his hand up his ass. He's only creepy because he's a ventriloquist's dummy. But Ferdie's least creepy feature is that he's a ventriloquist's dummy. His most creepy feature is that he acts like one of those guys that has to turn every thing anybody says into some kind of sexual innuendo. Fuck, I hate those guys. My dad is one of those guys! You're not being witty just because you can make a woman uncomfortable by pointing out how much you'd like to bang her after every thing she says.

Female: "I love the way these pants fit but they're so difficult to get into some days."
Creepy Guy: "I bet I can get into those pants easily enough!"
Female: "Ugh. I had such a hard day at work today."
Creepy Guy: "I don't find it work to get hard for you!"
Female: "Yeah. Great. You do know I'm about to call the police?"
Creepy Guy: "Po-lice let me bang you!"

Ferdie's chat up lines all seem fake and creepy in another way as well because I'm fairly certain Ferdie is a closeted homosexual ventriloquist's dummy. He's just trying so hard to be macho in that way men don't actually act macho. Well, except for those really fucking creepy ones. Like my dad and Mickey Rourke.

The real creep factor lies with Shauna though. She's some kind of Carrie mixed with the girl in the well from Ringu and every cast member of every episode of Big Brother. That last bit is the creepiest part of her personality.

Currently everything in Gotham is truly fucked up. Batman disappears and things just fall apart. In my mind, that's no city. That's daycare. The entire city should be knocked down if they can't even keep it together when Batman goes away for a few hours. While all the chaos rages on outside, Shauna and Ferdie have set up shop in an old theater. They're giving away food, the building has heat and light, and the Ventriloquist is planning on giving a "gasser" of a show. Hey, Ferdie! Stop being ominous! But first, they have an interview to explain Shauna's origin! Other than the Byrthday Party where she was teased relentlessly which led to her poisoning all of the other children and stealing the entertainment's Ferdie puppet.

I hate to judge people on their appearances but since Ferdie is a puppet and not a people, I'll engage in some idle speculation based on that well-moussed hair and sharp suit: he's gay. Although, really, I'm also basing that on his trying too hard to show that he's sexually attracted to the woman continuously fisting him.

Shauna begins her story at the beginning. Not as "at the beginning" as Tristram Shandy begins his story. But at her birth, anyway. That's close enough to the beginning for a Teen Rated comic book. Wouldn't want those teen boys and girls learning how to make a baby! Just imagine if they knew making a baby happened when a penis released its seed into a vagina! They might actually stop doing that! Anyway, the important thing was that Shauna was not born alone; she had a twin brother!

Twin is just the technical word for two babies born at the same time because apparently these two were anything but twins.

What the hell? She looks cute! She must be suffering from some Japanese Video Virus Curse or something that doesn't affect readers. She was also adorable at the byrthday party where she found Ferdie.

While Shauna's brother received all the recognition and became an annoying child actor, she went on to become a brilliant child murderer!

I wish I had the secret power to push children in front of cars move things with my mind!

Eventually Shauna's brother dies in a tragic swing set accident that couldn't be helped by anybody. It's just one of those things! And it's why swing sets should be built on that weird green foam rubber crap that was probably carcinogenic which is why they moved to bark or sand or, mostly, just parks without swings. When was the last time a park had a see-saw? And yet whenever there is a park nearby, the street sign for playground is two kids on a see-saw! How soon before those are completely recognizable by everybody going to the park? "Why the fuck is that the sign for playground? What the fuck is it?"

Meanwhile some Gotham Street Gang called The Crime Alley Cretins (because one of them had a thesaurus when they came up with the name) have heard about Shauna's gig. Mostly they heard how it had free food. Mostly mostly they heard that women were attending. And one day without Batman in Gotham City makes it feel like the end of the world has come and you've got to always be on the look out for keeping the human race going when the apocalypse hits.

Just before the show starts, Shauna nears the end of her origin story.

Continuity error! That sign read "Byrthday Party" in Batgirl!

Gotham City has the most dangerous playgrounds in the world! Swings over concrete AND see-saws?! Death trap! Why doesn't Batman put a stop to this nonsense?

So Shauna tells the story about how Rainbow Rodney gave her his Ventriloguist dummy because he saw how it would help her through all of her future troubles. Then she named it Ferdie after her brother and it immediately began to try to fuck her.

Goddammit, Gail Simone! Did you just brainstorm "all creepy things" and instill them in this character?

Gail Simone: "What would really creep people out? Incest!"
RocketSpouse: "Penises caught in hot tubs!"
Gail Simone: "Umm, thanks honey, but maybe not that. Oh! Japanese horror movies!"
RocketSpouse: "Pistachio ice cream!"
Gail Simone: "Yeah, I'll try to work that in. How about Ventriloquist dummies?"
RocketSpouse: "Oh yeah! That's why you're the writer! I was going to say kittens!"
Gail Simone: "Women in bra-less slips!"
RocketSpouse: "Scott Lobdell's MSN Messenger messages!"
Gail Simone: "Yeah but I don't know how I can incorporate that into the script, dear."

I forgot to add her ability at telekinesis into the creepy things!

Don't Batman and Batgirl have a responsibility to brief the police on the criminals they're taking into custody before they simply disappear when everybody turns their backs? I'm kind of close to blaming these police deaths on Batgirl!

Finally Shauna and Ferdie head up on stage and begin their act filled with lots and lots of Ventriloquist Dummy fucking things innuendo. It would kill if the audience was the normal Gotham populace. But since it's only people trying to find a place to survive, the entire act is really fucking creepy.

To be fair to Shauna, this is the normal audience reaction to every ventriloquist act. Seriously. How the fuck did that Terry guy win America's Got Talent doing this shit?

You know what? The black father in the audience? Wasn't he somebody's psychiatrist somewhere? In Detective Comics or something? The Evil Dentist? He looks familiar!

Oooh! Ooooh! Where is her right hand?! I hope it's...oh. That's the one that's up his bum. Never mind. Also, I guess the "K" sound is really hard to pronounce as a Ventriloquist!

Midway through the Ventriloquist's act, The Crime Alley Cretins break into the theater and interrupt the show! Good thing Ferdie knows how to put up a fight.

I was once accused of heckling once but the guy was an idiot. Like most people who heap hate onto someone or something simply because they got the wrong vibe or message or misinterpreted something at first glance. I'm looking at you, Tumblr.

So my friend Bobby Henline was blown up in Iraq a few years ago. Since he was really upbeat and inspiring in his attitude toward losing an arm and an eylid and his hair and a bunch of tattoos and a whole lot of skin, his counselor encouraged him to try stand-up. The first time he did stand-up was at The Laugh Factory or one of those places down on Melrose or wherever in Los Angeles (what am I? Google Maps?) while he was in Southern California getting some surgery consults. I flew down to visit him at the time and went with him to his first stand-up gig at an open mic amateur stand-up thing. Being that the audience really just consisted of me and Bob's nurse and a friend of Bob's nurse (maybe less than half a dozen other patrons but we sat close to the stage), the Emcee kept asking me questions about where I lived or what I thought of a comedian and whatnot. So I wasn't yelling out my opinion of anybody! I was being asked in-between sets! But Bob went up and told his jokes and he was pretty good. Now, before we went out, we had some whisky shots and he said if he was bombing, he was going to do his rap, "The Constipated Rapper." I said to him: "No. Do not do that. Under no circumstances should you do that!" But after he was done with his fairly successful set, he did Constipated Rapper as he walked off stage. Now, I'm not going to repeat the Constipated Rapper even though I know it by heart. I don't want to steal his material, no matter how bad it is. Remember, Bob was missing an arm and his entire head was burned so that he looked somewhat like Sloth from The Goonies. So he had the audience's sympathy, if anything. As he walked off and finished his rap, the Emcee said, "Bob, they haven't rapped like that for twenty years." After which I yelled out, "That's when he wrote it!" Because it was true. Bob wrote it in high school. That was twenty years ago at the time. But the other comics that were there made this weird negative sound that, in retrospect, sounded like twenty people saying, "Can you believe that cunt?" So one of the stand-ups came up later and simply berated me for his three minutes and wishing that I would get cancer. And I just laughed and laughed and laughed because he perceived the whole experience incorrectly and then decided to steal a Howard Stern move and wish cancer on me. Fuck you, you dumb-ass son of a bitch! I have no sympathy for people who decide to treat other people like assholes after they misinterpret a situation. I'm looking at you, Tumblr.

One of my favorite posts today was Neil Gaiman posting how he didn't want to answer a Doctor Who question because of the shitty reaction he got answering the previous one about whether the 13th Doctor should have been a woman or not. A moment where I defended him because, hey Tumblr: Stop attacking your fucking allies. Even if you think you can look righteous and smart and wise in the moment. It just hurts the entire cause, dickfaces.

Holy shit. I love Ferdie almost as much as I love Alysia. Oh! Power couple!

The issue ends with Ferdie killing all the Cretins and Shauna applying Ventriloguist Dummy Make-up to all the innocent guests she poisoned so they wouldn't heckle her during her terrible act. And it is terrible. Terrible in that way that is incredibly funny. I suppose that's why people go into ventriloquism. Because they know they don't need great material. You just tell old jokes that everybody sort of know but are funny anyway. And they're especially funny when a little dumby is telling them! And funnier when a homicidal dumby is telling them!

Ventriloquist #1 Rating: Rank #10 out of 52. So far, I've enjoyed this one the most after Cyborg Superman. I think it's because Shauna is just completely sweet and adorable as a child. I might have a differing opinion on what is sweet and adorable. Anyway, she's my kind of girl. And Ferdie could be my best friend.

Batgirl #21

I don't know who's more terrifying. Shauna who looks like she just crawled out of the well from Ringu or Ferdie the well-dressed living gay puppet.

Actually, I know the answer to my own question. I was raised on horror movies. I'm not saying that was a good thing being that it caused me to emotionally shutdown so as to not feel anything just so I could fall asleep every night. At least until Nightmare on Elm Street where I realized I couldn't even comfortably do that anymore! So most scary movies for a few decades never made me budge. But Japanese Horror films scare the sanity out of me. Not in a way where I watch them and jump and scream and throw my popcorn all around the room. But where I feel tense and nerved up and creeped out while watching and then later, I have to turn on every light in the house so that no weird pale children can crawl up out of the shadows and mouth voiceless words at me. Just typing that sentence is scaring me!

What I'm trying to say is, Shauna is scarier than Ferdie. I actually think I could become good friends with Ferdie if he'd just lose the drills in the hands.

This cover makes me realize something I didn't know was going on in Batgirl up until this point. I know all of Batgirl's enemies after The Mirror have been women and, technically, the Mirror can be thought of as female as well since he was reflecting Barbara back at herself. And like The Mirror, every villain has mirrored some aspect of Barbara's personality so we can see how Barbara dealt with it and learned from it and how easily the same thing can break someone under different circumstances. None of that is what I realized! What I realized was how important it was to have Batgirl's villains be female for one simple reason: it removed the whole idea of sexual assault from the picture. It's something I didn't even really realize was there until this cover; the fact that if Batman were on this cover (minus maybe Ferdie's little heart on the cheek and how obvious it is that Ferdie is gay), nobody would think a sexual crime might be committed. Nobody reads a comic book and worries that any harm other than direct physical damage will come to Batman or Superman or The Flash. Maybe Aquaman but the sea is a weird place. But if you throw some large muscular asshole at Batgirl on the cover, sexual assault is an easily read uncomfortable undercurrent of the situation.

I'm not throwing anything new out there about how different threats can be seen based on the genders of the heroes and villains. What I wanted to say was how fucking smart it has been of Gail Simone to have Batgirl's antagonists all be female for that specific reason. It's easy to just read the comic and think, "Oh, of course she's just going to fight female villains because she's a female!" But to never have to deal with even the stray thought that Batgirl could be sexually assaulted forces the reader to concentrate on the story sans gender roles.

Of course now Simone has introduced a randy little murder puppet, so that's pretty fucking awesome all in itself.

The first page of this issue shows Nightwing falling to the ground swinging through Chicago and I instantly hear all the readers' hearts speed up in unison. Nightwing makes the call to Babs at a weird time but I guess that's the life of a crimefighter!

When did Dick become the glue holding the Bat Family together? It still boggles my mind that Dick Grayson has become one of my favorite characters in the DC Universe.

Dick lets Babs know he's there for her and Barbara tells him she's not ready for anybody to be there for her. Hopefully she'll find out her brother either survived or was brought back to life via Amanda Waller's Samsara Project (ugh, I hate that project!) so that she doesn't have to be sad for very long. I like my Batgirls upbeat and perky and overly confident in her ability to beat the piss out of a living doll. Babs doesn't want to wear the Bat but she knows she's the only one capable of saving Xavia the Celebrity Hostage Judge. So it's back to work.

Alysia has potato chip pajamas! Or maybe she's just a messy eater? Or maybe Vengeance Moth got a hold of them. Oh! Maybe that's Vengeance Moth's power! She destroys clothing!

Meanwhile Shauna and Ferdie are having relationship troubles. Ferdie's eye keeps wandering and Shauna is feeling a little under-appreciated. So she wants Ferdie to put out Xavia's Celebrity Eyeballs.

I want to learn all about how Ferdie came to be. Am I going to have to wait until the Villain Month in September to find out how he became independent? And who installed the drills in his palms? I have a feeling that wasn't a built in feature. I'd love to know Ferdie's origin but I suppose in the end it doesn't matter. Does Talking Tina ever really have a reason for being a vessel of pure vengeance and hatred? How about Willie or Caeser, the dummies from the other Twilight Zone episodes? I always figured Caeser was Willie later in his career and think of "Caeser and Me" as the sequel to "The Dummy."

The other thing I'm curious about is this: Does Shauna own any other clothes?

Hacking for great justice, Batgirl discovers Shauna's address through the DMV's files and arrives to investigate.

Okay, I'm going to let Batgirl slide on this first one because she hasn't seen as much of The Ventriloquist as the readers have. But if she gets fooled by the throwing the voice trick a second time, well, fool her once won't get fooled again South Africa and such create education better!

And then Batgirl goes running into the dark just like every protagonist of every horror movie she sat and watched with her psychotic brother. I think she knows how this is going to end! "And just like that scene in Halloween when you think it's all over, and you're gazing into space. But you gotta make sure...you hear something. You start to turn and you're standing there, frozen, staring him face to face. And he looks at you and says, 'Tag, you're it, sweetie.'" Or something like that.

Batgirl considers how the doll is acting the way it is and she thinks, "Telekinesis?" Oh yeah! I forgot that Shauna showed signs of that power. Well fuck! That explains how she controls the doll. I was hoping for a more Japanese Horror Movie reason! Well, I can still hope to get one! Just knowing TK is a possibility doesn't make it the way things are. And even if that ends up as the answer, I can believe my own version just like I'm happy to believe that Harvest is actually Vampire Tim Drake from the Future, just like every single clue points to! Even the fact that Tom DeFalco and Scott Lobdell wrote vastly different origins for Harvest makes my version possible!

But the next couple of pages make the Telekinesis Theory look rock solid as Batgirl is attacked by Shauna's long dead parents. Batgirl remurders them and they collapse. Perhaps the shock of seeing her father decapitated caused Shauna to falter in her power. The whole ordeal causes Batgirl to throw up. So now when she fights, she's going to be distracted by stray pieces of half-digested food stuck in her sinuses.

Throughout the battle, Shauna's parents are raving about her daughter and her potential for fame.

My favorite scene.

After Batgirl secures the parents, she ends up battling Ferdie. Ferdie is supposed to kill Batgirl for Shauna but he's really coming on to her. It's really inappropriate seeing as how his girlfriend is right in the other room. I have a feeling Ferdie is going to go to far and Shauna is going to beat his horny little cheating head in herself. Also, if Batgirl gets her ass kicked by a doll, she'd better hope Nightwing never hears about it! It'll be 24/7 doll jokes from here on out. Heck, I bet even Alfred cracks a joke or two. Of course, his jokes will be so subtle that you won't be quite sure he's actually making a joke.

Batgirl puts the little monster down with a concussive batarang, blowing him into something that now looks more like Scarface than Ferdie. I wonder if they know each other? And then she knocks out Shauna in one punch because Shauna lost her shit when her little lover was blown to pieces. Batgirl saved Xavia and is finally beginning to feel a bit better. She'd feel a whole lot better if she wasn't so worried about that bastard brother that isn't even dead anyway.

Later at home, feeling a bit depressed about her situation with her parents although it's slightly better than Shauna's situation with her parents, Babs makes cookies for her and Alysia (and Alaska too! He's so fucking fat! Awwwww!). And then the most horrible part of the night takes place.

Wait a second. Forget Ricky and the forgotten date. What the fuck is that a picture of beside the door? Four shadowy figures riding down a canyon? Is it a hint about Alysia's past life?! I really hope she was a cowboy!

Batgirl #21 Rating: +1 Ranking. The surprise guest star at the end of this comic book really sealed it. I'm glad the surprise wasn't ruined by showing the cookies right on the cover! Also, I have to end with this panel because even though I can't seem to shut up, sometimes I just have nothing to say to supplement the cuteness and the accuracy of a thing. So just enjoy!