Eclipso: The Darkness Within: L.E.G.I.O.N. '92 Annual #3 (August 1992)

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: L.E.G.I.O.N. '92 Annual #3 (August 1992)
By Barry Kitson, Mike McKone, John Dell, Jack Torrance, Peter Gross, Bob Smith, Jimmy Palmiotti, Gaspar, and Lovern Kindzierski
Cover by Mike McKone and Jan Harpes
Edited by Frank Pittarese and Dan Raspler

• Should I make a list of the top ten comic book characters I'd like to fuck or would that make me sound too much like a huge anti-social nerd who too often thinks about having sex with fictional creations? Would a list of fuckable comic book characters be more or less weird than a list of animated insurance characters I'd like to fuck? Maybe if I actually fucked a real person, I'd stop thinking about fucking fictional characters that have no agency? Or would I just become the protagonist of Boxing Helena II: The Boxening?

• Shit! I meant the antagonist! Fuck! Did I just expose too much of my interior squidgy being by accidentally expressing that the main character of Boxing Helena was the guy who cut off Sherilyn Fenn's limbs and not Sherilyn Fenn?! I mean, I was joking! Ha ha! It was a joke! I totally understood Boxing Helena! Probably more than you did because I'm an introvert pervert who has only ever loved women whom I've projected my own thoughts and beliefs onto instead of actually getting to know them. Yuck!

• Anyway, that top ten list of comic book characters I'd like to fuck would include Lobo like seven times so it's probably not worth writing. Lobo drawn by Simon Bisley. Lobo drawn by Val Semeiks. Lobo drawn by Keith Giffen¹. Lobo drawn by Jorge Corona².

• Halo would have made that list when I was in my mid to late teens but now it would be just weird. Also, is she still in a coma? Because that would make it less weird. I mean more weird. Stupid squidgy interior being!

• Also, obviously if I made a list of Insurance Company cartoons, it would be Erin Esurance. I would fuck, marry, and kill her! Wait. Goddammit.

• Are there insurance company cartoons other than Erin Esurance? If they are, are they hot? Should I search them out on Deviant Art?

• The issue sort of begins³ with L.E.G.I.O.N. waiting outside the United Nations for a meeting. Maybe the reason was revealed in the monthly title. Maybe it'll be revealed here. For some reason, even though Lobo was in this series, I never fucking read it.

I don't know who this member is but she's wearing Brother Blood's belt slash loin cover-up.

• How many pages until Lobo defeats everybody and wins at comic books? I'm not sure why there's another annual after this and a final bookend Eclipso issue to finish the story. Once Lobo becomes possessed, Eclipso should have all the power he needs to accomplish whatever he wants to accomplish. Destroying the sun, I'm guessing?

• Lobo had to remain behind because, as you can see on the cover, he's missing a sleeve on his jacket and you can't go in front of the United Nations in a leather jacket missing a sleeve! Also he might kill everybody.

• Back at the hotel room where Vril Dox decided Lobo couldn't cause any trouble other than throwing the television out of the window like any Earth rock star might, Lobo decides to drink himself silly with L.E.G.I.O.N. member Scrawny. Is that her name? Scrawny? It's what Lobo calls her so probably.

Oh, no. It must be Stutters!

• Stutters isn't offering to fuck Lobo. That's just the conclusion that he and all the comic book readers leapt to. She wants to play Settlers of Catan Or whatever the equivalent to Catan was in 1992. Probably Trivial Pursuit.

• Lobo drawn by Mike McKone isn't on my list of Top Ten Comic Book Characters I'd Like to Fuck because it looks like he was using Brett Michaels as a reference. No thank you.

• Oh, Ice would be on my list! Also Supergirl's bum drawn by Mahmud Asrar. That might be on the list twice. I wonder if Mahmud has ever drawn Lobo's bum? Hmm. Be right back. Gotta see if Mahmud does commissions!

• Fire wouldn't have been on my list even before she wasn't being transphobic in this issue.

I don't think it's up to you to decide, Fire.

• I have no idea which member of L.E.G.I.O.N. is Strata she's got to be either the caterpillar, the shiny bald one with the massive shoulder pads, or the red Schmoo. None of them are on my Top Ten List of Comic Book Characters I'd Like to Fuck.

• Vril Dox didn't make it to the United Nations thing because he's out on the town looking to buy a Black Diamond. I'm going to assume he has a solid reason for buying one because he's one of them Brainiacs.

• The guy who has the diamond tells Vril Dox "No" when Vril asks him if he can buy the Black Diamond. Afterward, Vril Dox and his partner beat the shit out of the guy's henchmen.

Um, what? It's you guys who didn't understand the word "No" and then resorted to violence. Am I losing my mind here?!

• Fascism to fascists is when they don't get their way. If other people's agency stands in the way of them getting something they want, they believe their freedoms are being crushed and think that violence against the person not giving them what they want is righteous violence against the oppressor. God, I hate fascists. I know! I can't believe I've gone out on such a long, scrawny, stuttering, dangerous limb to declare such an extreme opinion!

• Also I hate libertarians. They're just authoritarians who don't have the balls to do their own violence. The only State anything they like is State violence. But only if that State violence allows them to keep doing whatever stupid fucking thing they believe they have a right to do without anybody complaining. Creeps.

• Here's a quote from Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night (1961) that has aged like the finest wine⁴:

"There are plenty of good reasons for fighting," I said, "but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive. "It's that part of an imbecile," I said, "that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly."

• Mother Night isn't one of Vonnegut's most memorable works but it should be. I hardly remembered it after reading it in my 20s. But then I just re-read it a few years ago when I turned 50 and it quickly became one of my favorites. Especially in our modern era of fucking Fox News. The thing Mother Night most taught me was that Sean Hannity should be first against the wall in the coming revolution.

• The game Lobo plays with Stutters is Scrabble. Lobo plays "fragulate". Lobo is so smart!

• Vril Dox and his helper (Lady Quark in a wig, maybe?) retrieve the Black Diamond and then leave it in the same hotel room as Lobo. Even without having seen the cover, I know that's a bad idea! Lobo's anger, rage, and violent libido can probably activate the Black Diamond from several feet away! That wasn't a length of Lobo's dick joke but it could be?

• The first page after everybody leaves Lobo and Lady Quark alone with the Black Diamond makes me laugh out loud. Probably because I'm giddy from all the love chemicals spiking through my brain right now. If I knew how to make heart emojis in HTML, every time I typed L♥B♥, the Os would be hearts. Oh look! I do know how!

1992 and Lobo has mastered the manspread.

• Vril Dox was intelligent enough to somehow beat Lobo in one-on-one combat⁵ so we've got to assume that Vril Dox wanted Lobo to get his hands on the Black Diamond and become Eclipsed. He's already said as much by admitting to Lady Quark that their visit to the United Nations is a sham and that if they really wanted to visit Earth peacefully, they wouldn't have brought Lobo. So why bring Lobo? Why pretend to negotiate an Intergalactic peace summit? Because Vril Dox wants to experiment with making Lobo into super weapon!

• Lobo trashes the hotel trying to kill Lady Quark and Stutters. I mean Zena. Apparently her name is Zena. She can absorb light to make things dark and, this is the important bit, release the light she's absorbed. When Eclipso begins bragging about how darkness is his friend and darkness can't stop the God of Vengeance and "I love Darkness's dick, baby!", Zena thinks light might save the day and blasts Lobo in the face with a million, um, Kelvin? Moles? Parsecs? of light!

• Lobo left the diamond upstairs so once Eclipso's been forced out of him, he returns to plain old regular violent Lobo.

• The rest of L.E.G.I.O.N. returns in time to miss all the action. But when Vril Dox patronizes Lady Quark while she's holding the Black Diamond, she gets super pissed and Eclipses. Or she just saw an opportunity to gain a free beatdown and slapped some make-up on so she could blame it on Eclipso.

• Lady Quark easily defeats all of L.E.G.I.O.N. leaving Lobo to save the day. But not because he wants to save the day. Because he wants to get vengeance on the God of Vengeance for using him to get vengeance on Lady Quark who is currently the God of Vengeance. No matter what happens, Vengeance shall be venged this day. Unless the Justice League shows up to fuck it all up.⁶

How could this team manage to constantly out-fail a team made of Vibe, Gypsy, and Aquaman?!

• English isn't Lobo's first language so he probably thinks "buttheads" is a lot filthier than it actually is. I mean, it sounds pretty filthy! A butt? For a head? Gross! Or is that sexy? Damn, I think it might be sexy.

• Lady Quark gets away and Zena goes missing. She was kidnapped by Bruce Gordon and his Ozymandias gang. Nobody apologizes to Lobo for assuming he was the bad guy because he'd beat the shit out of them if they tried.

• Finally having an intelligent person on the side of the good guys means somebody finally comes up with the idea to take the fight to Eclipso on the moon. It took a fucking Coluan to think up that plan!

The Ranking!
This was the best annual yet! That's a weird thing to say because it surmises that I actually likes some of the annuals and then this one was of even superior quality to those. And I hate annuals! Sure, sure. You can't really know if I liked this annual or not because Lobo was in it and I love everything Lobo is in even if it's terrible. I'll never admit to a Lobo comic being bad. You can't make me! Because, um, I don't believe any Lobo comics are bad! If I ever admitted to a Lobo comic not being the best comic, I'd be lying and that would be wrong. Plus this one had a really fucking great ending where it was all, "Only one more annual left and then the conclusion! You're almost done, baby! Celebrate by eating an entire cake!" And I was all, "Rmffleplumfgrr?"⁷


__________________________________________________________________________________
¹ Weird, sure. But intriguing!
² I mean, probably. We'll find out on Wednesday, March 18th, if I want to fuck that Lobo!
³ If you ignore the actual beginning.
⁴ Most of Vonnegut's quote age that way because when you can see reality clearly and have no agenda other than to communicate the truth of how things are, your words will always sound prophetic and modern. When you're speaking lies to manipulate people toward a selfish agenda, your words will die over time, if they don't immediately fall out of your mouth stillborn.
⁵ Which is why Lobo works for L.E.G.I.O.N. Keeping his word and being honorable is Lobo's biggest flaw!
⁶ I'm pretty sure fucking things up is in their charter.
⁷ That's "Yes, sir! Right on it, sir!" with my mouth full of half of a cake.

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Wonder Woman Annual #3 (August 1992)

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Wonder Woman Annual #3 (August 1992)
By William Messner-Loebs, John Dennis, Dave Johnson, Ande Parks, Clem Robins, and Matt Hollingsworth
Cover by Joe Quesada and Kevin Nowlan
Edited by Frank Pittarese and Dan Thorsland

• Let's get back to bullet points, shall we? This is like The Matrix but for nerds. Hmm. There's something wrong with that statement but I just can't identify quite what it is.

• Eclipso currently sits on his bone throne in a crater in the moon. Do you think the creators of this series meant for that to be so sexual? Did I invent that his throne was made of bone just to create the image of a penis in a moon hole? It's hard to say when about 66% of every thought I have is a delusion created by my brain to make the world more entertaining for myself.

• According to my blog's tags, this is the first comic book I've reviewed by William Messner-Loebs.

• The cover of this comic book turned my pants into a bone throne. In a mere matter of seconds, it will also look like a triple wax carwash down there. I think I have a thing for feral women.

• This issue begins by firing all circuits on my male gaze just to have my horned-up levels' legs kicked out from under it by reading the caption.

Too bad I'm not into necrofellatio. Is it weird that I began that sentence with "too bad"?

• The person making that terrible assumption about Wonder Woman is, surprisingly¹, an on-the-scene local news reporter. The reporter is a woman so she's apparently never heard of the Girl Code. I also have never heard any of the Girl Code because when I ask about it, they usually just say, "Ewww!" But I think there's something there about hyping each other up and not assuming that they've died and then broadcasting their humiliating failure to the entire world².

• As she broadcasts, Cassie continues to pull down her knickers and shit all over the Girl Code.

"Being that Wonder Woman can't fly, she had to walk instead of fly, which she can't do, fly, I mean. She sucks at flying. Just the worst. Probably dead because she can't fly."

• Some guy named The White Magician shows up and, well, even in 1992, I'd maybe have thought twice about that name. He wears white and has white hair but he also has what is colloquially thought of as "white" skin so, you know, maybe that name is saying more than you actually want it to say? Because "white", especially in 1992, was the society accepted neutral position³ which meant if the person's "race"⁴ wasn't mentioned, one would assume "white". If you have to go above and beyond to express your "whiteness" or your "Defender of Western Civilization" status⁵, you're probably making a bigger statement than just the color of your costume and hair.

The White Magician's power is literally making people choke on their own shit.

• The White Magician spends a full page or more invoking all sorts of DC magics that I've never heard of before. Zatanna could have saved the day with a couple of backwards words. Madame Xanadu could have wrapped this shit up by manipulating a bunch of actual heroes in no time at all. But this guy is doing the equivalent of a Great White guitar solo in a small club.

Love bites! Love bleeds! Oh fuck! Oh shit! Why's my dick burning?!

• While White Magician fucks around with the dark arts for the benefit of the news crew, Wonder Woman climbs up a building and tries to hug the terrorist into surrender. You know how she does. She's all, "Look, you're being a toxic male. Maybe get therapy?" And he's all, "I'd rather turn on a machine that removes the friction between air molecules, murder the HR rep of the job that fired me, take a woman and her small child hostage, and blame everybody who doesn't have a metagene for my failures!" And Wonder Woman is all, "Okay, but maybe don't do that?" And his gun is all, "Bratratrat!"

• Wonder Woman takes a few shots to the wrist bracelets and everybody around her is all, "He's a lone gunman! Being a white man, he's the only one responsible for his actions! He doesn't represent his entire race in the same way society demands anybody of a minority group represents the entire group!" Except it couldn't be that explicit, right? Because this is 1992 and according to Comics Gaters, comics only went woke in this millennium. Right?

I guess white supremacists in 1992 could easily overlook a blatant allegory simply by saying, "Well, I don't have a metagene so this guy obviously doesn't represent my idiotic way of thinking!"

• The main problem with this guy is that his metagene has yet to be activated. So he's just a mediocre white dude. But he knows he's better than other people because he's white. I mean because he has a metagene!

• I had to check the cover of this issue again because I got the odd feeling that I was reading a Bloodlines annual and not an Eclipso annual. I guess this is just foreshadowing for next year's big annual crossover event. Maybe this guy becomes Gunfire or Dildosniffer. Were those Bloodlines characters? If they were, I know one of them was written by Warren Ellis.

• The White Magician's spell of bowel-cleansing fear takes place just as Wonder Woman's de-escalating the situation. It affects everybody on top of the skyscraper: the killer, Wonder Woman, and the two hostages. Wonder Woman's big fear is disappointing her mother and the Gods. I would have guessed it would have been Batman.

• The killer, Roger or Robert or whatever, dies from choking on his own shit while Wonder Woman and the hostages just get a little collateral shit swallowing. But I have to think part of the reason Wonder Woman failed was because she was calling him by the wrong name while trying to calm him down.

Whoops!

• Even though The White Magician fucked everything up and his costume isn't anywhere as spectacular as The White Rabbit's, Wonder Woman still accepts an invitation to his mansion for dinner. As a way to apologize to her for completely fucking up the rescue, of course. Not as a way to get into her biker shorts. Not that she's currently wearing biker shorts. But she does go to the dinner in her star-spangled onesie.

• The White Magician's dinner conversation makes me think that perhaps my earlier discussion around his name was way more astute than even I would have guessed.

First he starts the edgelord shit with all the "Oh, I imagine you'll be offended by just about everything, no?"


And then he, um, just gets right to the KKK point.

• The hostage from earlier was a Black woman. Diana was insistent she was the real hero because she threw off the fear spell to save Diana from falling off the building while Diana hung by her foot holding the young girl who first fell off the building. The White Magician wouldn't even acknowledge this fact and now we see why. Obviously a Black woman couldn't be the hero! The look Diana gives this guy says it all.

• Wonder Woman, while pointing out how seriously pathetic white supremacists are, pulls the old Don Draper in the elevator meme exactly two decades before Don Draper does it.

Although Don Draper is lying in that scene and I've got a feeling Wonder Woman seriously means it.

• 24 pages in and not a whiff of Eclipso.

Speaking of whiffs . . . yes please!

• It turns out the local reporter Cassie and the White Magician are fucking. It also turns out Wonder Woman likes watching them fuck.

• Okay, so maybe they don't actually fuck on panel while Wonder Woman watches. But you don't think this is the reaction of somebody who loves the cuck chair?

Messner-Loebs staying true to Wonder Woman's origins as a horny little Amazon.

• Ultimately, I have no fucking clue why Wonder Woman went to dinner at the White Magician's home. I mean, the only conclusion I can make is that she was horny after her close call with death and he was offering. Perhaps when she was blasted by his Spell of Terror and she inundated with feelings of self-loathing, she needed a good fuck to get her confidence back. And the White Magician, while racist, is good looking enough. Also he has a penis⁶.

• The reason Cassie was calling Wonder Woman politically correct is that Wonder Woman admitted that justice, in the parlance of Titus Pullo, makes her wetter than October.

• The White Magician gives Diana a circlet with a Black Diamond on it. She demures but quickly accepts because she's super fucking horny and I can't believe I don't remember this comic book! How did I not start reading Wonder Woman after this?! I should have assumed half of each issue was just Diana trying to get laid.

• Wonder Woman slips into some kind of hypnotic fantasy after donning the Black Diamond. She believes that she has taken the White Magician to Paradise Island and he's brought in developers and horny men. When she confronts him, he goes all Twitter Incel on her.

If that doesn't get her to Eclipse, I don't want to think how far he'll have to go.

• The White Magician isn't working with Eclipso. He just wants Wonder Woman possessed with Eclipso's power so that he can bind her and drain her of the power. Wonder Woman winds up bound by tentacles in the garden with resting Eclipso face.

• Oh, also? It doesn't take. Eclipsed Wonder Woman escapes to either kill the White Magician or eagerly sit in the cuck chair.

• PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE BE CUCK CHAIR!

Okay. Close enough!

• I don't want people to think I'm into women in hardly any clothes choking other women in even less clothes. I mean, I guess I am because that panel was hot. But I'm not so into it that I actively look for it! What kind of sicko porn search terms do you think I like?! If one of your guesses was "Penguin Costume With Butt Access", congratulations. I guess?

• Wonder Woman lets Cassie go and then fails to kill the White Magician as he slips into another dimension just as she goes for the kill shot. Eclipso, now in total control, decides he got his revenge by trashing the White Magician's house because Wonder Woman is free to fly off to the moon at the end.

• Fly? I thought she couldn't fly? I guess she's more Eclipso than Diana now.

The Ranking
Goddamn! This issue was actually kind of fun. And confusing. I think maybe it contained a lot of actual lore and characters from the 1992 regular series. Or maybe it didn't and this was just a short little story about a horny woman, a racist illusionist, and the God of Vengeance? It's weird because I hate annuals but, I mean, this one was enjoyable! I bet it was because I went back to using bullet points! Yeah, I probably enjoyed it because of the thing I did and not because of the art the artists did! Whew. I feel better now! Go me! __________________________________________________________________________________
¹ Not actually surprising.
² At least the part of the world that receives broadcasts from WTBN.
³ I'm not saying it was correct. I was just media-biased shorthand accepted by a white supremacist society
⁴ In quotes because "white" and "black" are not exactly the most scientific way to determine a person's race. Unless you're a Nazi scientist or somebody's Republican uncle.
⁵ Looking at you, high school friend Soy Rakelson, who disappeared from Social Media in 2016 after Trump won the election because you knew your "Defenses of Western Civilization" were no longer sustainable with your "morality". I mean in your eyes. Everybody else already knew they weren't sustainable and wondered why you kept insisting on debating obviously (to everybody but you, apparently) racist shit. Especially when your closing argument for every debate was, "Where's your faith?" Oh? Sorry I argued facts and logic while you were gummed up in religious dogma while concentrating on attempting to trap us with pre-approved C.S. Lewis logic traps.
⁶ I'm assuming.