Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea: The Newsletter #6 (Third Week of January 2018)

 

E!TACT! #6
Doomsday Clock #2, The Demon: Hell is Earth #2, Detective Comics #971, Suicide Squad #32, Justice League of America #21, Action Comics #994, and Letters to Me! 
By Grunion Guy

Doomsday's Cock #2
By Johns, Frank, and Anderson

The top of Lex's head has the skin of a David Finchian female superhero.

In the world where this comic book actually did turn out to be the comic book I thought it was going to be (you know, Doomsday's Cock), this cover would be Doomsday ramming his huge member so far down Luthor's throat you'd see the outline of the head of Doomsday's cock through Lex's belly. Instead we get Lex steepling his hands while he contemplates The Button and Ozymandias jerks off with his right hand.

Last issue, the world learned that it had three hours left to kiss its ass goodbye because the nuclear missiles were in the air. If you're reading this from Hawaii, you now know that feeling. On the plus side, according to Fight Club, everybody in Hawaii will pursue their best life now that they know it all can end at any second. Not that we don't all know that already. It's just that we spend all of our time trying to distract ourselves from that knowledge. What else is popular entertainment for other than to keep our minds occupied so that they don't dwell on that which they can't help but dwell on when your phone screams an emergency alert and says, "Dude. You're about to fucking die. Deal with it."

At one point in some universe that might be The New 52 because this story is all about washing Johns' and DiDio's and Lee's hands of that mess, Bruce Wayne undergoes a psychological evaluation for Wayne Industries.

This is obviously a circle jerk.

Ozymandias, The New and Improved Rorschach, The Marionette, Mime, and Nite Owl's ship (which I'm assuming is just called The Owl?) have followed Dr. Manhattan to The New 52. I suppose I should call it Rebirth since they're the same universe. Rebirth is just The New 52 with a guarantee to the butthurt fans that Tim Drake will get to continue to fuck Stephanie Cluemasterberg while white Wally West watches. I can't help thinking of it as The New 52 though because that's the universe that needs to be fixed. Rebirth didn't really change The New 52 in any real way. It just said to the audience, "Look. We know we fucked up. So from here on out, characters will begin to acknowledge the past we were pretending they didn't have. And we'd like you all to just accept it because eventually you'll just forget that we ever said none of that shit ever happened. As we do this, we'll think up a story to make sense of all this bullshit since you're all fucking continuity and canon addicts without a shred of whimsy or joie de vivre."

If anybody was still wondering who were the two smartest people ahead of Mister Terrific because they're fucking idiots, this issue reveals that #1 is Lex Luthor and #2 is Bruce Wayne. What about the new Power Girl? She seemed pretty smart. And Tim Drake? Isn't he supposed to be the geniusiest genius ever? I know I'm forgetting about five dozen other heroes since every single fucking teen hero seems to be portrayed as some kind of genius. I think the only heroes that are canonically not the brightest bulbs are Booster Gold, Blue Beetle (the new, young one!), Hal Jordan, and Guy Gardner. Although now that I think about it, most Earth Green Lanterns aren't ever portrayed as being overly intelligent. John Stewart was probably the smartest Earth Green Lantern right up until somebody decided he should be known more for his military service than his brains.

Ozymandias speaks with Lex Luthor and Johns spends almost no time trying to make himself look way smarter than Alan Moore.

First off, Ozymandias never said he was surprised. Second, the alien threat wasn't meant to keep everybody united. It was meant to end the conflict ramping up to nuclear Armageddon. It was the first step toward creating a new Utopia. It gave pause to the world's aggression which Ozymandias would take advantage of to begin the next phase of the plan to keeping world peace. He even says as much. But I guess it's always easier to simplify and misrepresent your opponent's argument so that you can tear it down all the easier. Third, I just felt like I needed three statements.

I have a friend (not Soy Rakelson!) who does this thing where he acts confused at somebody else's point to try to make it seem like the other person's point was stupid or unclear. I've always felt that gambit made him seem like the dumb one. I remember a time when somebody might misunderstand an argument but the person making the argument could clarify what they meant and the person who misunderstood would say, "Oh! Okay, I get it now. Never mind that other mean shit I just said about your mother and how many penises she can fit in her body at once." Now it seems that people purposefully misunderstand every statement made by everybody they simply don't agree with so that they can scream at them and call them gross monsters or lib-turds (which, I think, is the conservative political correct version of lib-tard (wait. Do conservatives have political correct versions of things?!)). Now, even if you clarify your point, the people on the other side of the argument simply assume you're making excuses for the thing they decided you said but didn't. They never stop believing you meant the thing they pretended to believe you didn't say.

After reading what I just wrote, you're probably thinking, "Your mother can put ten penises in her at once?" I know I don't write clearly so I don't mind when people misunderstand something I said. There's a section of the left-leaning populace that are so earnest that they can't help but get angry at me. I don't think anything is sacred and that can cause problems with people who think practically everything is sacred. Facetiousness must be the opposite of earnestness, right?

The issue ends with Batman and Rorschach not immediately getting in a fist fight even though Rorschach has invaded the Batcave. That part is actually more surprising than the return of The Comedian as he saunters into Lex Luthor's office, putting a bullet meant for Ozymandias's head into Luthor's ribcage.

Rating: Once again, not one whiff of Doomsday's Cock. Terrible.


The Demon: Hell is Earth #2
By Constant, Walker, Hennessy, and Sotomayor (Was this comic book written by alcohol?)

Here is a list of the poor choices made in this comic book:

1. Jason Blood gets to be an incorporeal sidekick to Etrigan when Etrigan is let loose. I like when he wound up in Hell. It was better when they couldn't speak to each other. But I guess this is a product of modern comic books. It's more psychologically interesting to have the two halves interact. Etrigan and Jason Blood are sort of like Scully and Mulder. Except in Etrigan and Blood's case, I actually do want to see them fuck.
2. Jason Blood can't stop mentioning how Etrigan is much bigger than he's been in the past. My theory is the artist figured Etrigan was bigger and the editor didn't want to make him redraw the comic book so he forced the writer and/or letterer to insert mentions of the disparity to quiet the inevitable Internet Actually Nerds.
3. Etrigan only rhymes occasionally and his rhymes generally rely on mentioning that he's rhyming or reciting poetry. I don't mind when Etrigan spouts off a terrible rhyme or two when the writer is forced to make all of his dialogue into rhymes. But when the writer gets to choose to make Etrigan rhyme when he wants to? Make those fucking rhymes magical, asshole. Nobody's forcing you to do it.
4. Madame Xanadu wasn't killed off.
5. Jason Blood threatens to say cute and adorable things to Etrigan if Etrigan doesn't follow Blood's lead. And Etrigan chooses to be cowed by this tactic! At least for nineteen pages which makes me suspect that Constant's outline for this series has about six steps and those are all just the final page of each issue. Everything else is blathering filler.
6. The story, so far, isn't really going anywhere. A portal to Hell opened in Death Valley and shit is going down. That shouldn't take two issues to explain. After two issues, I should have a much firmer grasp on why this is happening. I'm so tired of comic books thinking the way to hold the attention of the reader is to withhold most of the story. You know what makes readers more interested in pursuing a story than making them wonder what the fucking story is? Giving them great bits of the plot the entire way through the story. As a six part comic book, this should have six chapters that build up to the final confrontation. Instead, it seems like we're going to have five chapters that hint at something happening. I guess the mystery is supposed to get me on the edge of my seat instead of making me yawn and consider surfing the Internet for pornography. Intelligent, non-creepy pornography where the two (or more!) actors spend at least ten minutes engaging in a way that ensures everything is consensual and everybody is having a pleasant time no matter how much blood and viscera wind up on the sheets afterward.

Now here is a list of the things the comic book does right:

1. Etrigan puts the "demon" back in "demonstration."
2. Etrigan burns a little girl to death with his Hellfire breath. That was a rhyme. Also, I'm sure the little girl won't actually be dead next issue. The barn owl will probably save her life somehow.

Rating: Well, you know, it's an Etrigan comic book. Something there is inside me that insists on my purchasing it, no matter how terrible it might be. I'm a fucking Etrigan Fangender and I hate myself for it. He's almost as great a character as Lobo!


Detective Comics #971
By Tynion IV, Mendonça, Egea, and Wright

Why does DC continue to let James Tynion IV write a major Batman comic book when he seemingly hates the entire concept of the character? It's entirely possible that I'm wrong (although I only say that to make it seem like I'm less arrogant than I really am) and this First Victim stuff will all wind up being an examination of how the people "Tumblr critical" of Batman have completely missed the point of him. Is Batman a rich white male that punches mentally ill people in the face? Yes, of course he is! But those mentally ill people are generally in the process of trying to harm the citizens of Gotham and/or make real estate values fall through the floor (which is sometimes good, depending on whether those properties are owned by Wayne Real Estate and Skylight Repair). It's not as if Bruce Wayne runs the Arkham Asylum and he is responsible for how the patients are ultimately treated there. Is it really his responsibility to make sure the place is engaged in rehabilitation rather than torture? Is he supposed to not spend his money on crazy crime fighting technology and instead bore himself silly using that money to help fix society's problems rather than the symptoms?! That's not fair to expect him to do things the way his critics want him to do them.

I suppose an argument for Tynion IV not espousing the First Victim's actual philosophy is that the First Victim has already killed a bunch of cops in his anti-Batman protests. He's not the hero of the book either. And neither is Anarky or Tim Drake. But you can see the field of characters narrowing down to the person Tynion IV seems to be most focused on. You have the conflict between Batman and the First Victim being the outer edges of the funnel. They're sort of the two sets of grandparents in the family tree (Batwoman probably acting as Batman's counterpart (while her father and his military attitudes are of the generation above that (I guess Jacob would be the Boomer, Batman/Batwoman would be Gen Xers, and Tim Drake/Anarky, the Millennials))). The parents would be Tim Drake on one side and Anarky on the other. This allows the spotlight to fall on Spoiler, the main character of this comic book. She represents the clear-minded next wave Millennial feminist who's going to call out everybody else's gross and problematic behavior.

Gosh! Is she talking about The First Victim or Batman?!

Batman stories have a history of pitting Batman against somebody who is a warped mirror of himself. This story isn't any different. The First Victim is an apt sobriquet for Batman himself (as Spoiler makes clear in the above panel in which she's not really being clear (or subtle!) about who she means at all!). In their motives, each of them wants to make Gotham safe from random acts of violence perpetrated on innocent civilians. They simply disagree on how that can be accomplished.

Moving down the family tree, Anarky and Tim become the next set of warped mirrors. Tim is all about safety through control and Anarky is all about unsafety through uncontrol. Or something. You probably understand what I'm trying to say! And if not, just trust me! They're mirror images of each other! It's why Spoiler is all, "Do I want to fuck the one guy who needs to control everything or the other guy who needs to control everything? The choice is so hard!"

And finally there's Spoiler who sees everybody's errors, points them out, and then feels pretty fucking good about herself for coming up with so many hot takes. Now that's a hero for the 21st Century!

Mayor Akins must be a Judas Priest fan. It's "another think," asshole.

Ranking: I wrote most of this after having only gotten to the "another thing" panel so I have to say that my spirits were uplifted a bit when Batman goes in to face the problem himself because the Mayor and Jim ask him to. And he deals with it the way he's always capable of dealing right until Clayface emerges as a maniac once again. But this time, he's been trained in combat by Batman! Also he's well practiced on his Shakespeare, thanks to Cass who will probably need to save the day. Because the kids are the important aspect of this comic book. Batman can't win out alone! That would be sending the wrong message about older generations and the Patriarchy!


Suicide Squad #32
By Williams, Eaton, Faucher, and Lucas

I know I mentioned I was going to stop reading this but, deep down, I'm a typical comic book fan. I want to love the Suicide Squad because I loved it so much at one point in my life which means I'll put up with the shit they continue to serve me. They aren't even trying to fool me anymore about how shitty this comic book is. You'd think they'd at least serve me the shit underneath a beautiful antique silver serving tray delivered by a posh butler whose pants are so tight I can see what's for dessert. I keep hoping that one day I'll arrive at the comic book store and my reserve box won't be emanating a monstrous wave of stink lines. One day, I'll arrive and I'll think, "What's that?! Is that the smell of lavender body lotion indicating a freshly scrubbed and thoroughly cleaned out butthole? I'm so intrigued!" Then I'll discover that DC has finally put a new writer on this comic book, one that respects the characters and has a vision for what the Suicide Squad can be. That's the opposite of Williams who treats every character like a fucking joke and can't be bothered to exam any themes other than "What would life be like if you had a brain bomb in your head that wasn't actually a bomb but an electric field generator while a power hungry mad-woman was in control of the bomb's dimmer switch? And also what if you were a crazy person who wasn't really crazy or a dull-witted monster or an Australian who is constantly shitting himself or whatever other boring characters make up the current roster of this terrible comic book?" Was that a theme or was that just me rambling? I might also be confusing this book with Titus Andronicus.

Spoiler Alert: I've never read Titus Andronicus so I probably wasn't confusing it with that at all. Is that really a spoiler or was that just an edifying comment? Maybe it was a twist ending!

Since I enjoyed making that list for The Demon: Hell is Earth #2, I'm going to give the Suicide Squad (which, for the sake of consistency, I probably should have put in italics. I mean, it would have taken less time than this parenthetical reference, at least) its own list of terrible moments from this issue.

1. Killer Croc is a nearly illiterate, barely intelligible cannibal. Remember when Batwoman tried to make him dignified and interesting? Then remember when DC was all, "No, no. He's gross. Make him stupid." Even fucking Scott Lobdell treated Killer Croc better than this and Scott Lobdell can't even be trusted to fill out a Mad Libs correctly. "Adverb? Is that a verb from a Pepsi commercial?" That was my impression of Scott Lobdell doing Mad Libs! Most of you probably understood that but I know Doom Bunny might read this, so I definitely needed to explain it.
2. A "Phantom Zone Wave" is subsuming everything it comes into contact with. If it continues, it will trap the entire universe in the Phantom Zone. But it apparently can't move past the walls of the vault it began in. I'm not sure why this bothers me since this is a comic book. How am I to understand the physical attributes of a wave of Phantom Zone energy?! I'm still boggled by the simple phrase "Phantom Zone Wave."
3. Karin Grace is flying the Red Wave Beast (what is Williams' obsession with waves?) into the heart of the sun. Nobody is concerned with how long this will take because remember that thing I said in the last point about this being a comic book?
4. By being this terrible, this comic book makes me hyper-aware of how foolish I look being critical of a stupid fucking superhero story in which maybe 10% of anything ever written is realistic anyway. Nightwing once drove a motorcycle up the outside of a skyscraper and I was all, "I could probably do that."

5. I hate how after reading this panel, I instantly turned into an Actually Nerd and yelled at the comic book, "No! You're accelerating too fast, jerko!"

6. Even if I believed Karin Grace's ship was capable of reaching the sun in a matter of mere moments, I now also have to believe that the tiny shuttle containing the Suicide Squad could travel there even faster so that they can save Karin before her ship hurtles into the sun. This comic book has me Actuallying so fast my head is doing the Macarena.
7. The Suicide Squad battle the Red Wave Monster in space just a few miles (or yards? Who knows how close they are! Does it matter at this point?) from the sun. This is the kind of job even the Justice League would have trouble with. But I'm supposed to believe a few boomerangs, a samurai sword, an oversized mallet, and Killer Croc with his physical powers completely useless because he's in a space suit are going to battle this thing? This is another one of Rob Williams' problems. He doesn't give a shit about the scale of the story. The Suicide Squad has only two actual super powered people on the team: Enchantress and El Diablo. You don't send these idiots into space simply because they work for you and they're expendable. Is Waller just sitting back thinking, "Okay, the world needs to be saved. And I have this roster that doesn't make any sense at my beck and call. So I'll send them even though they're completely unfit to do the job because who cares if they die, right? Except that if they die, they fail the mission and the world ends. I should probably put a better, more space-capable team together. But that would mean doing more work and I'm a fat, lazy bastard! Good bye, world!"
8. In the end, Katana kills the Red Wave Monster with her samurai sword. Couldn't that have been done back on the moon? Did everybody have to nearly burn to death but not burn to death at all because, I mean, come on! The sun isn't that hot, right? Total fake news.
9. Nobody dies. Not one person. Ever. But as long as the writers and editors keep reminding everybody that Task Force X is nicknamed the Suicide Squad for a reason, we'll all continue to believe that, one of these days, one of these stories might have some kind of consequences.

Ranting: This book should be called Fake Suicide Attempt For Attention Squad.


Justice League of America #21
By Orlando and Byrne

This issue isn't worth discussing because Lobo only appeared on the final page. Although that one page might be worth mentioning.

My Gaydar is going fucking mental!

Action Comics #994
By Jurgens, Thibert, Scott, and Hi-Fi

Dan Jurgens isn't smart enough to be writing time travel stories. This is disappointing because he created Booster Gold, a time traveler, and insists on using him in a high percentage of his writing gigs. I was going to say "75% of his writing gigs" but I didn't do the research and didn't want to be called out on my statistics. Sometimes my love for truth and science butt up against my love of hyperbole and facetiousness.

And yes, my only qualification for high intelligence is being able to write an entertaining time travel story.

Booster Gold is concerned that Superman has changed time by traveling back in time (and space!) to just before Krypton blows up. Booster Gold's evidence is that everything on Krypton is completely different when Superman arrives. But how did Superman's arrival at a point in Krypton's past change that point's past of Krypton? Maybe I just don't understand how temporal anomalies work being as how they aren't real things.

Oh, apparently it all has to do with time cracking like a mirror when Doctor Manhattan took Jor-el from Krypton. Which means it isn't Superman's fault at all. So Booster Gold changes his theory and says Superman is making a concrete bridge between hard time and soft time.

Maybe Dan Jurgens is even dumber than I suspected.

It all leads to naught but Superman having a broken heart for a timeline that never existed and should never have existed but Booster shows it all to him anyway. What a dick. They wind up in the 25th Century where the story will continue to be as dumb as ever.

Rating: I'm really only reading this so I can get Issue #1000 in my reserve box at my comic book store.


Letters to Me!
Hi, I was wondering if Dwarf Lover would be getting an update soon or just be able to continue at all? Although I don't really have experience with Warhammer I find the comic to be really funny and I love the humor and references. It'd be a shame for me if it would stop especially since I was really looking forward to read chapter three. Hope you get to see this email and send a reply.

Regards,
Lol No

Oh, it'd be a "shame for you"? Why are you so narcissistic, Lol No? You'd ask me to dedicate hours and hours and hours and hours (many hours! The most hours!) of my time so that you can experience a brief bit of pleasure in this gigantic dirty butthole of an existence?! Although, now that you mention it, I do miss doing the comic. And shouldn't I simply care about the pride it gives me to write something that gives so much pleasure to so little people? I mean, the amount of people who appreciate it is so small! You know how some comedy is broad but so stupid that you sometimes wonder why you laughed so hard at it throughout your twenties? My humor is the opposite of that. Nobody laughs at it in their twenties. My target audience is three junior high school girls from Missouri (who are now in college! Can you believe that?! I'm so proud of them!), a smattering of British folks, and the guy who wrote the next letter who lives in Shithole, Ohio. Whoops! Sorry, I meant Cleveland. Did I have to clarify? Ha ha! Just kidding! I kid, Cleveland!

Although, let's get serious for a moment. How interesting can your city be if your football team is named the Browns? It makes picking teams for the football pool on Sunday impossible because how do you know if a "Brown" can defeat a Dolphin? I mean, I'm fairly certain a "Brown" can't beat a Jaguar or a Texan. But can they beat a 49er or a Seahawk?

Anyway, this is all it takes to move a mountain, people. Every time one person mentions how they miss Dwarf Lover, it revs up the "writing Dwarf Lover in my head" machine and I begin to obsess over putting out the next part of the story. And there is an arc to the next Chapter. It's not just a bunch of dumb scenes slapped together based on encounters in a thirty-five year old Dungeons and Dragons module! I mean, it's mostly that. But more too!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

KB writes: Found it in me spam folder again!

Me: I really can't argue with your spam filter.

KB: Thanks for the kind words. For what it's worth, I'm convinced that you're like twice as smart as me, at a minimum. Besides the fact that you read actual books and use vocabulary that I have to look up, you also regularly make comic book insights that I don't even properly understand until days later. Hell, there are times I read something you wrote, and weeks later I think I came up with the idea and I'm proud of myself for being so smart.

Me: I almost edited this out and replaced it with a drawing of us blowing each other.

KB: Between the two of us we could keep DC Comics on the straight and narrow, if they gave us a chance.

Me: Well, maybe you could. I feel I might steer DC into a weird territory with a niche audience. I'm not sure there are that many fans who want to read about Superman's butthole fetish or Catwoman's daily grooming routine. No wait. I'm sure the majority of DC's readership want to know about the Catwoman thing. And Superman would really be into that one part of her routine! Spoiler: it's the part where she licks her butthole!

KB: Was thinking about that Talia / Selina sword fight you mentioned. Another dimension to it, perhaps: Talia doesn't give things up voluntarily, she can only be defeated. The sword play was the opportunity to get information from Selina, but it was also the excuse by which Talia could say, "you win". Had Selina not been able to plead her case persuasively, Talia would have whupped her and told her to take a hike. But since Talia was satisfied with Selina, she gave in.

Me: That's probably what I meant to say.

KB: Hoping your Christmas was good! Things were calm here, I liked it. The skill I'm working on mastering this year: picking locks! I am starting to realize that padlocks are a scam, since even a piker like me can pick many of them with just a little practice.

Me: Oh. I see what you're doing. You're gathering all the skills you're going to need to be a late stage super villain. Although I think your choice of bow and arrow might have been a short-sighted decision. By the time you're ready to break into bank vaults, the police will be better armed than the American military. Maybe you should learn to be invisible next year.

KB: Also, I've been losing weight, pretty simply and without messing up my lifestyle too much. You ain't no fatty but if you know any, I got tips I would be happy to share.

Me: I currently need to lose the thirty pounds I put on grief eating when Judas died. I hope your tips are "lots of cocaine and masturbation" because I could probably follow those. Well, maybe not the cocaine part. Can I substitute chocolate instead?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Those are all the letters! I'll have to dig up some old letters soon if I don't get any by next week! I've got some pretty good ones but I don't know if they'd make sense in the context of this Newsletter. The Dwarf Lover one doesn't really make sense but I got it last week and I shrugged and thought, "Why not?" That, by the way, is my life philosophy. I shrug a lot and say "Why not?" or "I can't be bothered." Then I sit around wondering why humans live so long.

Doomsday Clock #5

Nostalgia's branding efforts might be a little off the rails.

Today on Facebook, my cousin Laurie said, "Your thought process fascinates me." So I decided to give everybody an insight into my thought process!

My thought process: think something nobody should ever say. Say it. Pretend you were being hyperbolic and facetious when people get annoyed. Experience your twentieth shame spiral of the day. Eat a whole carton of Oreos. Fall asleep lonely and humiliated.

Or, if I wanted to be honest (which I never am! (although sometimes I am but I'm pretending I'm being facetious and hyperbolic so that when I'm judged harshly, I can distance myself from that judgment)), it's more that when I post something to Facebook, it's usually somewhere so far down the "thought process" that all context has been lost. I suppose I could explain every single thing that led up to me having a thought that makes me laugh but that's too close to just walking around naked in public. And I would never do that! Wink, wink.

So, um, Doomsday Clock! After last issue, I had forgotten that this comic book was meant to be a severe lecture to the fans who never wanted the whimsy and fun taken out of comics but are being blamed by Geoff Johns for DC doing it anyway. That might not actually be what this book is about but it's what my issues have decided it's about anyway. What made me spontaneously remember that was this scene in the hospital where Ozymandias wound up after falling out of the LexCorp building.

Dammit. I had almost forgotten how everybody blamed and mistrusted superheroes!

Of course there's always been a long history of Gotham Police mistrusting and hating Batman (if only because he does their job better than they do and obviously has way better pay and benefits). But DC really fucked up when they decided that level of mistrust should be applied more broadly so that every citizen suddenly turned against even Superman, the universally acknowledged boy scout. I'm not a comic book historian so I don't know when that attitude began but I think it's generally acknowledged that it was a byproduct of Watchmen and similar comic books of the time. "Look at how more realistic this is! Why should a world embrace and trust masked heroes?! And Watchmen was so popular, that aspect of it must be what made so much money!" But, of course, that's the kind of thing people who didn't read Marv Wolfman's New Teen Titans believe. Because if I had to pick a starting point for when the mistrust of heroes seriously got rolling (I'm not saying it wasn't there before! It just wasn't the standard reaction of the public), I'd point to Wolfman's work trying to adapt The X-men feel to DC's superheroes. In the X-men, the "heroes" were actually mutants enrolled in a school where they could feel safe and learn to control their powers. They were hated by the public due to bigotry and a misunderstanding of what they represented to humanity's future. They were constantly attacked by "evil mutants" due to a disagreement on what mutants meant to the world. This worked as a plot point because of the bigotry aspect and the underlying difference between mutants and superheroes. But translating that to DC's world where mutants don't exist completely missed the mark. Wolfman's world became a place where The New Titans formed to help the world but never actually did. They simply created a headquarters in New York where they were constantly attacked by family members. Of course the people of New York would begin hating them for bringing danger and destruction to the city. Because they were actually doing that! And since The New Titans became DC's biggest seller for quite some time, every comic book writer on Earth learned that Wolfman's model was acceptable to readers. Instead of having heroes exist for saving the world, they could just exist to be targeted by super villains. And if that's all super villains seemed interested in then isn't it true that heroes are the root cause of all the problems with super villains? It's one thing to comment on bigotry in America by portraying people's hatred of mutants. It's a totally stupid other thing to have people hate heroes because of the destruction caused by the heroes attempting to simply save themselves from their enemies. In the first one, you side with the mutants because the people hate them for irrational reasons. In the second one, you have to side with the citizens because who wouldn't be upset if their house was destroyed and their dog was killed because The Joker was trying to kill Batman?

I've said all of that before. Sometimes, I feel that's all I have left to say about DC. At least when Priest recently had the public hating the Justice League, it was because the Justice League was racist! Not in the regular racist way where Batman is using slurs and Superman is flying around in blackface and a sombrero but in the systemic way where they don't realize they're being racist but they just are. That was at least different (even if I still wasn't happy about it).

I don't understand people who prefer heroes who are mistrusted and hated over heroes who are inspiring, loved, and embraced by the public. Wasn't the latter version the whole point of them in the first place?

Dammit! I should really read ahead before I go on a rant! Although, technically, I think this somehow proves my point about how this is all supposed to fix what went wrong with The New 52.

This issue is called "There is no God." I'm guessing at the capitalization because the font actually reads "THERE IS NO GOD". But it doesn't end in an exclamation point (or any other kind of punctuation, being a title and all) so I'm assuming it isn't meant to be yelled and it's just DC's perverse avoidance of lower case letters.

Anyway, "There is no God" is the perfect title to ruffle religious feathers. But I bet it's a set-up! I bet Geoff Johns is going to write a story about how God does exist, even if only in a metaphorical way that gives hope to people who need more than a few decades of random, chaotic life! I mean, I would like more than a few decades of life too! But I wouldn't mind if it remained meaningless. Who needs a purpose? That's just adding obligation to this precious gift! Why do people want that?! I think that's why "being inspiring" has become such a huge achievement for so many people. Because it seems to give meaning to your life without you having to actually do anything except exactly the thing you want to do. So, say, I was coming up with a completely hypothetical situation where a guy I know survived an IED attack in Iraq but the four other people in his Humvee were killed, he might want to find meaning in why only he survived. He might feel somehow responsible for carrying on in a meaningful way to make their deaths less random and nonsensical. He might also become religious because it's too painful to believe that those four other guys simply winked out of existence in a meaningless war that didn't do anything for anybody (aside from some people making a lot of money (and aside from opening up the country to more chaos and instability)). And the meaning he might find in his life is becoming the center of attention just like he always wanted but could never attain. He became a comedian who also inspires people because he's so badly burnt and disfigured, how can he tell jokes?! Now his life has meaning even if his jokes and his poetry never get any better because the people who hear and read them are Christian and patriotic supporters who can't be critical of anything he does. So if he says in a poem that his daughter is crying "alligator tears," nobody tells him that they're "crocodile tears" and that if his daughter is crying them, it means she doesn't actually care that he's off in Iraq. And when his only joke is that he was blown up and set on fire, nobody minds because he was blown up and set on fire and—look at that!—he can still stand up and tell jokes! So inspiring!

Now if my thought process were better than it is, I would delete all of that so that I don't sound like a jealous and bitter friend. But I explained my thought process earlier so you can judge me but I've got my Oreos ready to go after you misunderstand the hyperbole and facetiousness. Also, I'm not jealous and bitter. I'm supportive but critical! Which is why I didn't post what I just wrote on his wall. Because he can take supportive but I don't think he's up for critical. Especially hyperbolic and super truthful critical. Hypothetically, I mean!

Back to how this comic book is doing its part to reset the DC Universe into the Post-Zero-Hour, Pre-New 52, Post and Pre a bunch of other stuff I can hardly guess at because DC Continuity is super fucked, a news report on a hospital television reports on Hawk, Dove, Red Star, and the Rocket Reds. So maybe I was wrong about Post-Zero-Hour! Maybe this reboot is post-Crisis only? And I might be wrong about that too! Isn't the current Superman from the Crisis timeline where they actually beat the Anti-Monitor? It's hard to remember Convergence because it was super boring and terribly written. It rated 5 Flaccid Penises out of 5. Unless you're totally into flaccid penises and then it rated zero of them.

Along with the Rocket Reds and Red Star gearing up for an anti-west battle, Pozhar has stepped up to the plate as well. Or whatever you step up to in Russian baseball. Do they have something akin to baseball in Russia? Maybe cement-block-call? If we're going by themes, it's beginning to look like we're headed back to the eighties cold war, so a reboot to pre-Crisis levels of continuity isn't completely off the table! If I didn't know Geoff Johns was writing this, I'd be tempted to guess it was Dan Jurgens.

The Cold War of this ear isn't about nuclear superiority but about metahuman superiority. But that's just a superficial difference, really! What's actually happening in Watchmen 2: Doomsday Clocks is identical to what was happening in Watchmen. Which means everybody will get along at the end not when Mister Terrific teleports a fake space creature into the middle of New York but when an actual cosmic threat attacks Earth and all the American and Russian metahumans have to team up to save the day. Then everybody will be inspired and begin fucking. Right on panel! I hope.

In Moore's Watchmen, there was a thread with that kid reading the pirate book. I wasn't smart enough to know what that was about. Maybe it had something to do with how, to survive, the lead turned himself into a monster the way Ozymandias did. Or maybe it was just about the kinds of things media used to distract the populace. Who can tell?! Not me! Anyway, this series has Nathaniel Dusk stories as the story within a story. I guess it's the only way DC could get people to read them. So boring! You can tell they were boring if you read them in 1984. Also because an old man really loves them in this comic book. That old man is Johnny Thunder! His name makes him sound exciting but you'd be wrong! More boring! And he's trying to get the Justice Society back into continuity. Most boring of all!

Some of you might be bristling at my description of the Justice Society as "most boring of all." But you've forgotten about the hyperbole and facetiousness! There's a twenty-five percent chance that I actually liked the Justice Society and own a bunch of their comic books!

The Superman Theory states that the American government is in the business of making metahumans to make sure they retain control on the world stage. Most of the heroes deny that they were made by the government because they were actually made when they were exposed to Nth Metal. Duh. Everybody who believes The Superman Theory must not have read Metal. How did they miss it? It was the biggest and longest blockbuster ever produced! Anyway, Lois thinks Lex Luthor is the one behind this propaganda. But Lex denies it. In fact, he says somebody in the government is creating metahumans and that person was once a member of the Justice League! So, um, like Lex?

Hopefully the reveal of the person behind The Superman Theory doesn't wind up being somebody like Commander Steel. With a twist like this, it's got to be somebody you generally associate with the League, like Martian Manhunter or Gleek.

Here Ozymandias lectures Batman thanks to years of terrible comic book writers.

By the end of this issue, Rorschach and Saturn Girl have caught up with Johnny Thunder who finally found Alan Scott's lantern. Batman has been captured by The Joker. And Geoff Johns is well on his way to telling comic book fans how dumb they've been accepting the bullshit narrative they've been fed for years that super villains only exist because super heroes exist.

Rating: This issue was called "There is no God" and it had nothing to do with the story inside. But it was used because it was part of the Eugene O'Neill quote that closes the issue: "When men make Gods, there is no God!" Is that how every issue has been titled so far? Using a bit of the quote at the end? I haven't been paying close enough attention to know. Anyway, I have a few issues with that quote. First off, you shouldn't capitalize "Gods." I suppose you can argue that you would capitalize "Johns" but if you choose to do that, I probably don't like you and would discount your argument on that basis alone. I mean, the point is that men are making little gods which kills the proper noun God. Second, why does it end in an exclamation point? Is the second half of that statement such a huge twist that it needed the surprise element of the exclamation point? Maybe Eugene knew it was a fairly week turn to the phrase and thought the exclamation point would bolster the sentiment. I know that trick! The third problem I have with it is that I don't understand it in the context of this story. Is Johns saying that super heroes have replaced God? Are fans now supposed to feel reprimanded for being blasphemous monsters?! Am I supposed to believe that if we rely on heroes, we have lost our faith in God? Is Johns saying inaction through faith is better than relying on super heroes? Or is he saying that we lose our own motivation and free will when we expect heroes to save the day? How is that any different than expecting God to save the day? I guess in that context, I understand the quote! "When we come up with something more entertaining that still doesn't actually help or save humanity, we've forgotten the original concept we came up with that doesn't actually help or save humanity!" Hmm, good quote! I've won myself over! Five out of five stars! Not for this issue but for my twisted logic!

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DC Universe Rebirth #1

First there was the Pre-Crisis Universe. Then the Post-Crisis Universe. Then the Zero Hour Touch-up Universe. Then there was the 2000s with about two dozen crises. That became the Preboot Universe. Then came the Reboot Universe. Then the DC Youniverse. Now after Rebirth, it will be the Afterbirth Universe.

The Review!
I can live with this change. I can't say for sure but it sounds like DC Comics is finally taking my advice that I've been giving for free for five years now and decided to go with a really loose continuity. Everything happened if a writer wants the thing from the past to have happened and wants to use it in their story. And since Wally keeps mentioning how he's forgetting things, he's helping frame the universe in a way that defies explanation. "Well how did that come about?" "I don't remember! Because if I remembered, it wouldn't make any fucking sense!" This is the kind of continuity I like. You know what? Forget even that word: continuity. It's history. It's the history of the DC Universe that makes the characters who they are and DC is once again acknowledging it. Let the Fangenders who need a consistent world that makes sense day by day struggle for a change. I just want to be able to read a comic book and think, "This is the world where Shade the Changing Man took place. At least until he got the Vertigo label, I guess! Same with Doom Patrol! I can now have the Cliff Steele who was friends with Crazy Jane and mentor to Dorothy Spinner. Although Booster Gold is still AWOL. Maybe he'll be the final fix to the universe. Actually, if Booster Gold were the Narrator in this comic book and it was Ted Kord who remembered him and brought him back, I might have actually cried. But as it was, I don't really have any emotional attachment to any Flash that ever existed. All in all, I like the direction the DC Universe is headed. I mean, since it's a universe, it's headed in all directions. Which isn't exactly true either because it's just expanding but not really moving! Or something.

The Commentary!
This comic book has a lot of pages for just $2.99! I don't mean that as praise that DC has held the line at $2.99 because they really haven't. They only do it when it suits them. Like with Rebirth! This is like handing out ecstasy at the local Junior High School. You know those kids won't be able to spend their lunch money fast enough for more of that shit. Of course, if the comic book is awful, DC could give this away with free hand-job or digital manipulation and nobody will be back for more. Hmm, even I wasn't convinced by that. If I got a free hand-job with this comic book, I'd ask my local comic book store to order more.

Okay, I'm going to take a serious guess as to whose hand is coming out of that bright light! I'm not going to make a bunch of jokes just to cover for my ignorance so that afterward I could be all, "Oh, ha ha! My guess was so obviously a joke because I totally knew who it was but who wants to read page after page of me bragging about my Grand Master Comic Book Reader status?! My guess is...

Jonni DC!

It would be just like Johns to turn Jonni DC into a dramatic character whose much more important than anybody first suspected! If I'm wrong, I'll never do what I would have said I was going to do here anyway so I'm just going to forget I said it.

The issue begins with somebody talking about a watch they received from their uncle which had been in the family for generations. Is Geoff Johns trying to make us think of things shoved up people's asses on purpose? That would make a good category on Jeopardy. I bet I'd do really well with that category.

The Narration Boxes are yellow and red so I'm going to guess they're Wally West's thoughts. Plus the Narrator mentions meeting a hero and becoming a legacy. Also because fans of Wally West have never been able to shut up about his disappearance from the DC Universe. Are there worse fans out there than Wally West fans? Of course! Look at the barely human monsters who like Deathstroke! Wally West fans are just over-enthusiastic! And whiny!

Nonexistent Wally West has decided that maybe Batman can help the DC Youniverse remember him because Batman can do anything. But Batman is currently obsessing over The Joker. Better yet, he's obsessing over three Jokers! This must be Batman's best day ever! Finding out there were three Jokers! My theory is that Rebirth is going to allow all events in DC's history to be part of continuity. Nothing has been labeled an Impossible Tale. Nothing has been Retconned. Nothing has been forgotten and thrown into the bin. It can all be referenced because it all happened. How it all happened doesn't fucking matter, you nerds! Just let it be! Let it all lie in a big disgusting mess on the floor like some forgotten, vile, stinking Afterbirth. Oh yeah! I mentioned my theory to continue with the three Jokers thing! I bet it's Geoff Johns way of explaining the various Joker-type stories. You have Joker stories where he's just a goofy flirt. And you have Joker stories where he's a dangerous, murdering, maniacal madman. And you have Joker stories where he puts things up Commissioner Gordon's butt while taking pictures. Hmm, maybe that falls into one of the first two categories. Anyway, I think you can probably think up a third type of Joker story better than I can because I'm barely paying attention to anything. I mean, I just farted a really long fart and am still giggling about it.

Great. The tomato goblin is back.

So is this how things stand, DC Comics? If I whine long and hard enough, you'll bring back my favorite character, the original Sgt. Rock? I don't mean an old guy who lived through World War II! I mean the same guy who was in the World War II comic books but is now alive in the modern era after having lived through World War II and all the intervening years without aging somehow. You figure it out! You're the comic book writers! I guess I just have to complain loudly enough until I get my way! Let me practice with some of the things the Wally West fans probably said to get this moment again.

"I will never accept that black kid as Wally West!"
"I can't believe you Blackwashed Wally West!"
"Wally West was my favorite when he wasn't a black and a criminal and not a white!"
"I hate when things change and they're not the way I wanted them to change! Plus some derogatory stuff about black Wally West! Like referring to him as Kanye!"

Okay! I think I got the hang of it!

I know people weren't simply upset that DC brought back Wally West as a totally different colored person (who was black). They were upset long before DC tried to bring Wally back as a totally different person. I guess I just don't understand the kind of love and loyalty a person can generate for a fictional character. Especially one with red hair.

Look, Afterbirth is messy! I'm going to ruffle some feathers here with some real honest facts like how redheaded people aren't actually people but some kind of meat-vegetable hybrid.

As an aside, people should remember a few words as they read my comic book "reviews". Those words are "hyperbole," "facetiousness", and "genius".

Wally is currently in a place where he remembers Flashpoint and probably all of the other stories he's ever been a part of. He's in the DC Afterbirth! Some people call it the Speed Force but I call it the Afterbirth. Mmm-hmm.

Two identical workplace accidents?! I bet OSHA was all over that.

Wally goes on to explain, in story terms, how The New 52 (and stories preceding it and Flashpoint) were huge mistakes that needed to be set right. But they needed to be set right in story terms! So instead of a bunch of editors taking the DC Universe and fucking it in every orifice they could until the Universe oozed from every pore, the DC Universe would have to be set right by the heroes from within! They would have to pretend the bad guys weren't the editors at all and were actually fictional supervillains or space aliens or time monsters who had to be stopped at all costs! It might not return the universe to something that fangenders can make sense of but it will hopefully return all of DC's history that was once lost. It has to be that way because look at what Giffen is doing in the Sugar and Spike comic book in Legends of Tomorrow! He's got DC's whole history as his playground and he's making full use of it! I mean, in Issue #3 he brought one of DC's Impossible Tales into actual continuity! If Rebirth is doing that, I'm all for Rebirth! Even if it means this idiot Wally West is back!

Just kidding, Wally West fans! Sheesh, you're so easy to piss off! It's like taking candy from a baby and then punching that baby to death so it shuts up about the loss of candy.

Chapter One ends and I realize I'm going to be writing a novella about this thing. I hope you're comfortable and have plenty of Oreos to eat while you read this. Speaking of Oreos, I'm going to go get a Ho-Ho now.

Next, Wally visits an old man in a facility for the elderly. If he's tied to the Speed Force, might it be some version of Jay Garrick who's still tied to the Afterbirth so he realizes something isn't quite right with the world?

Oh! It's almost Jonni DC, right?!

Johnny Thunder can't help because he's old and has lost the genie. So Wally continues his search. While traveling to his next destination, he feels somebody else lost outside of time whom he can't reach. Probably Booster Gold. He's been missing for quite awhile and he's supposedly important to straightening out all of these time shenanigans.

Some blonde member of the Legion of Super-heroes has also arrived in the present DC Youniverse to speak with Superman. The Legion of Super-heroes has about five million members and a good portion of them are blonde, so I don't know who it might be. Saturn Girl? One of the other ones I don't know the name of? Infectious Lass? Is she one of them?

Next there's a scene with Ryan Choi so I know Gail Simone just got some bonerses.

Ray Palmer has discovered a new universe that he's dubbed the Microverse! I'm snickering because I can now see "bonerses" and "Microverse" next to each other. Apparently the Microverse has something to do with how time has been fiddled with and The Atom has gotten lost investigating it. He needs Ryan Choi to once again become The Atom and to try not to die this time. Did he die the first time? I don't remember because time may have been changed and I can't trust my memories! Also I've never read a single comic book that had "The Atom" boldly printed across the cover.

The next legacy character to be visited is Jaime Reyes and his mentor, not dead Ted Kord. It's about time New 52 Ted Kord made an appearance as Blue Beetle and not just as some guy considering going into business with Lex Luthor!

I can't believe how long it's been since I've been able to do this again! Although I think I only used to do it when Jaime was in costume.

Jaime flies off to school while Ted is visited by Doctor Fate. Not that namby-pamby Doctor Fate who won't take his job seriously! This is the Doctor Fate that everybody wants to fuck. His voice is so...so...fonty! He explains that the Blue Beetle scarab is magic and not created by a race of aliens like everybody and their animated universes would have you believe! It's more of a Dan Garrett Scarab!

Elsewhere in the soon-to-be soup of Afterbirth, Damian turns thirteen which makes him eligible for the Teen Titans, Jessica Cruz has decided that what would make her costume really stand out is a Green Lantern Insignia monocle, and Aqualad is into boys. Thankfully! I always thought he was a fish-fucker.

Chapter Two ends with Pandora exploding into dust and smoke, much like what happened to Metron and Owlman on the moon. Good riddance! She never played the part she was supposed to have played anyway! I don't think. It's hard to say. All that Trinity War stuff was legerdemain. DC was all, "Look! Look! The Trinity of Sin! This is about them! Or is it about Wonder Woman, Superman, and Batman! Oh, oh! We fooled you all! It was really about Earth-3! Which isn't actually a trinity unless you include it as one part of three Earths. Which you shouldn't because Earth-2 never came into play in that story! By the way, fuck you, you stupid fans! Ha ha!"

They lost a chance at a one night stand is what they lost. And besides, what are Green Arrow and Black Canary doing at the site of Superman's death? Especially Black Canary! Shouldn't she be rocking somebody's face off right now?

Clark White and his family are hiding out in a hotel room trying to figure out where they go from here. Clark runs into the enigmatic Mister Oz last seen in Geoff Johns' run of Superman. I think. He's all, "I sent a blank Superman notebook to Superman! So funny! Maybe! I'm mysterious! Maybe it was foreboding! Things aren't what they appear! Or are they?! Oooooh! I can't say too much! Gotta go!"

On a deserted island somewhere, Aquaman asks Mera to marry him. Is this Didio and Johns' way of saying they were wrong and they realized all the things that they stole from their universe with The New 52? Because I can think of better ways to go about it than by making Mera miserable! Can you imagine spending the rest of your life as Aquaman's wife?! How humiliating.

Finally at the end of Chapter Three, Wally finds Linda Park and asks her to help him. But she doesn't remember him and he fucks off back to Afterbirth. Ha ha! I can't believe some Tumblrer thought this would make me cry! I don't give a shit about Wally West and Linda Park and their "true love!" Those quotes indicate you should read "true love" in a mocking, sing-song way. This story had better come with something a lot sadder than Park not remembering West!

Chapter Four explains who the new Wally West is. He was never meant to be a replacement for old Wally West. And by that I mean, he obviously was but now Geoff Johns has thought of a way to make him Wally's cousin Wally. Although he says that New 52 Wally West is Daniel West's son which isn't true at all. Or at least it wasn't true. I guess it's true now. But since this is Afterbirth, we have to hold both possibilities as true! Because every story DC has ever told has now happened! Even if some of them had glaring errors in them. Like this one I'm reading right now that says New 52 Wallace West is Daniel West's son.

After Linda forgets him and he sees Kid Flash is in good feet, he finally decides to confront the guy who caused all of this to happen (or, at least, gave the mysterious villain the opportunity to cause it). He really should have gone to see Barry Allen first. I know Batman is the go-to guy to solve every problem but when time is fucked up? That's all Flash.

Still not sad. If Wally really does die before this is over, still won't be sad. Might even have a little dance.

The Flash manages to recognize Wally and pull him back into the world. Or it was a mistake and he thought it was New 52 Wally he was rescuing. Either way, it worked! Preboot Wally West is back in the world! Now he can tell everybody about the danger and they can stop it by the end of this issue and the DC Youniverse can turn into the DC Afterbirth! Or it could go another way. It could go the Geoff Johns' way where nothing is really explained but he keeps on baiting hook after hook after hook for ten years telling his story without ever satisfying anybody because he keeps changing direction every year or so. You know, it'll probably go that way.

The Flash suddenly remembers everything thanks to remembering Kid Flash. He now knows lots of things that don't add up or make any sense if thought about for too long. So don't think about them! Just remember that all of your favorite Flash stories happened at some point. Every single one of them. Even the bad ones happened! But you don't have to acknowledge those if you don't want to. Because it's all right there. DC acknowledges that they all exist. All of it. No matter how hard it is to explain things now.

The way Wally West tells the story about the people who want to destroy the universe just make it sound like he's talking about DC's editors and readership. I suppose he could be but that would actually suck because I don't want that kind of meta-bullshit invading my mainstream superhero comic books! Although I suppose the bad guys might just be aliens called "Eddortors" or something.

The last page of the main story has Batman finding the Comedian's button with the blood on it in the wall of the Batcave. Well, that explains why Johns made the first page so reminiscent of the Watchmen.

The Epilogue takes place on Mars where Ozymandias and Doctor Manhattan are having a conversation as Doctor Manhattan fixes Wally's lost watch. It sounds like Adrian, once again, manipulated events to save everybody from themselves. Instead of a giant exploding space octopus in Times Square, he used Flashpoint to change shit so that DC Comics wouldn't go bankrupt. Or something. I don't know. He's way smarter than I am! I'm sure he had a reason!

Justice League #21

His form on that Sleeper Hold is all wrong.

I guess it doesn't matter what the Justice League was up to last month since they're being preempted by Shazam. But what was he up to last month? Oh yeah! Getting killed by Black Adam!

Since this main story is usually the back-up feature and I usually keep my comments short on the back-up feature, I guess I'll keep this commentary really short!

First off, the Seven Deadly Sins are running rampant in Philadelphia. So what else is new?

The green guy must be lust because he has so many hands with which to masturbate.

How come only one of the Seven Deadly Sins is female? Gluttony is probably female as well. Lust might be female although it looks like Lust has a mustache. It's an interesting take on Lust to show him in a straight jacket as opposed to sucking off eighteen of his own twenty dicks. He's only sucking eighteen of them because the other two are penetrating two of his five vaginas. I'm pretty sure that's the classic way of illustrating Lust.

The Seven Deadly Sins are off to find the Bryer brother's father because they've been sent to find the most rotten soul in Philadelphia. And since that person needs to be somebody we already saw earlier in the story (okay, okay. It doesn't NEED to be but we all know how stories work, right?!), it's probably that dickbag. They leave Doctor Sivana behind, bloated and gassy from consuming too much magic.

Much more quickly than I expected (like the next page practically!), The Seven Deadly Sins enter into Bryer through his seven orifices and he becomes a monstrous, flaming devil with a pentagram burned onto his chest. I guess now he's going to trash the city by stealing, raping, beating, eating, and envying everything really, really slowly. And he'll be damn proud about his job!

Black Adam threatens to kill Freddy if Shazam doesn't release his power to Black Adam much the way Black Adam's nephew many, many years ago shared his power with Adam. It's the only way Shazam can save his family. Or is it? Being that he can share his power, seems pretty obvious what's going to happen next.

Oh! I thought he was going to just give up his power and go home.

Next up is the big fight scene where Pedro learns he can magically grow a beard and Mary learns she might need a bigger bra and Eugene learns the secret language of machines and Freddie learns he's Thor and Darla learns she has ADHD (unless she already knew that). I think that's everything they learn before Mary and Billy punch Black Adam into a probably famous Philadelphia landmark that I don't recognize.

Now that Billy has all of this firepower at his side, he tells them to go away while he takes care of Black Adam all by himself. The others decide to help evacuate everybody from the path of Mr. Bryer. But Mary decides to fight Bryer because she's the second most important Shazam there is!

Billy's fight with Black Adam leads them to the zoo because Tawny the Tiger needs a dose of Shazamamillin too.

I'm a bit disappointed that on the following page, Black Adam is merely being attacked by a gigantic, sparking tiger instead of a goofy cartoon cereal mascot with a cape.

Billy seems to have fucked up his spells after blasting Tawny and the entire Marvel Family begins to feel weaker. I knew his spell should have turned Tawny into a cartoon tiger! Now everybody is going to lose their powers and Bryer is going to raze Philadelphia and the rest of the world isn't even going to fucking notice a difference.

Billy realizes he can't beat Black Adam because Billy is too new to the magic game while Black Adam is a total dick. I don't know. Those two things seemed comparative enough for that sentence when I began it. Billy says the magic word and returns to his normal, childlike self just as, further off in the city, his brothers and sisters change back too. He then challenges Black Adam to a fair fight. In Billy's case, it doesn't bother me because what the fuck advantage does Billy have one way or the other. But usually when someone accuses somebody else of not fighting fair, it usually means that they want the fight to be unfair in their advantage. Nobody wants a level playing field. You're supposed to use every advantage you have. So when someone says, "Fight fair," what they're really saying is "Get rid of your advantage so that I can have the advantage!" Black Adam is almost smart enough to not fall for it but he's just too arrogant. Who wouldn't believe they can kick a young boy's ass even without magic? I'm pretty certain I could! Black Adam sees no way Billy could have the advantage in a "fair fight" so he says SHAZAM and reverts to normal.

Apparently Billy's winning advantage was youth.

Billy changes back and The Seven Deadly Sins are free to go on their own way now that Black Adam is dead and dusted. And everybody lives happily ever after because the school was destroyed in the fight. Everybody except Doctor Sivana who seems disappointed but I'm sure he'll get over it when he realizes he can become a super magical mad scientist and find a best friend in a worm.

Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea's Believe It or Not!: I wrote the last sentence of the previous paragraph before reading this page. I didn't even think they'd introduce Mr. Mind in this story.

Justice League #21 Rating: +1 Ranking. It didn't have any Justice League in it but it was a good ending to the Shazam story. Especially the part about Shazam screwing up the spell on Tawny because that means to get the spell right, Tawny has to turn into a silly anthropomorphic talking tiger! So that's something to look forward to if you're a fan of whimsical shit in comic books. Where else does whimsical shit go best? Keith Giffen agrees with me: "Actually, do we really need another dire, depressing, grim comic book in a market already saturated with the like? C'mon. Lighten up. These books are supposed to be fun." That was about Larfleeze but it's what I keep saying! Let's have more silly, fun shit! Comic book reviewers need to stop wishing for "serious" and "edgy" and "arty" in their fucking comic books. All that gets you is dead superheroes. Let's all take a step away from the ledge and enjoy this shit. There are other ways to prove you are intelligent than by panning humorous stories because they didn't engage your super smart mental acumens and shits.

Anyway, Happy Shazam Is Over Day!

Justice League #20

Thank goodness Aquaman is here!

That was a joke because this battle happens in space instead of the pool at the YMCA. I suppose Aquaman can throw his trident to put out all of Despero's eyes at once. Or maybe Aquaman can telepathically communicate with the microbes swimming in Despero's eye goop and get them to do something that somebody with more knowledge of the biology of eye goop microbes would know that they could do. Maybe they could all defecate at once and blind him? If DC doesn't like the science behind that move, I'll just sell it to Marvel.

While everybody was busy doing non-Justice-League-Meeting related things while they were all supposed to be having a Justice League Meeting, Despero attacked the Justice League Satellite. The only two people that were there were Firestorm and The Atom. I guess that's technically three people. Four people if you want to count Despero. Only three and a half people if you count normative amounts of eyeballs per person. I was hoping Element Woman would show up to save the day. She's currently grabbing some grub for the get together.

Do they have televisions in Atlantis? I know that question doesn't have anything to do with the picture! But I was just wondering what they do for entertainment while they get beerguts. Oh my god?! Do they even have alcohol? Do they ferment seaweed?

The Atom is narrating introductions to whoever the fuck she's narrating introductions to. She knows Firestorm's secret identities as well as Element Woman's old identity. Maybe she's selling information to Amanda Waller because Amanda Waller is the type of person that people sell information to. Hey, did you know a tautology is what it is because it's a tautology? True story.

Element Woman joins Firestorm and The Atom aboard the Justice League Satellite just in time to help them retreat from Despero.

Oh, so now everybody gets to remember that Martian Manhunter was a member of the Justice League? Perhaps it has something to do with the Magenta Time Line since Martian Manhunter was probably never in Stormwatch now and never had to erase his existence from everybody's memories.

The Atom stops acting cocky right about the time that Despero rips Firestorm in half with his psychic powers. Well, he doesn't exactly rip him in half. He just disassembles Firestorm returning him to his component parts of Ronnie and Jason. Element Woman has proven to be the most useful if the only way to stop Despero is with non sequiturs. She's actually the opposite of useful which is entertaining. She did turn into a pink cloud at one point and managed to make her right leg into a messy fart that she got all over The Atom.

This is disgusting.

Despero smashes Element Woman into bits but it's not like she has any vital organs that will stop functioning when something like this happens. I don't even think she has a brain anymore. I suppose she's just a skewed magical version of her former personality that has basically imprinted on an extreme batch of silly putty. That's probably why she's crazy and eccentric and depressed.

I just realized Element Woman was bringing enough food for nine people. But Firestorm is two people. Does Jason taste food when Firestorm eats? If Firestorm were somewhere where he had no water and I guess everything was made from stuff he couldn't turn into water since this is a hypothetical situation, would Jason be safe in Ronnie's head? Could Ronnie keep Jason alive longer by maintaining the Firestorm body while he dies from dehydration? Then when he's nearly dead, they would separate and Jason would now be as fully hydrated as he was when he merged?

Also Despero causes the Justice League Watchtower to lose orbit and begin plummeting to Earth. This prevents Cyborg from Boom Tubing them to it because its position keeps changing. If only they had a computer that could do the calculations that would enable them to know the satellite's location across time!

The Atom is more concerned with Despero reading her thoughts and discovering her secret than she is of dying. Her secret must be something truly awful! Like she's working with Lex Luthor or she short-sheeted Batman's bed. Boy, the old days sure were tame when short-sheeting was the height of pranks! Well, that and putting your sleeping friend's hand in a bowl of warm water. Nowadays a prank has to be video taped and somebody needs to nearly die for it to be funny.

The Atom gets lucky (actually she makes her own luck by saying "Martian Manhunter" out loud) and Martian Manhunter arrives to save the day. Since he's the only one that can defeat Despero (don't tell Batman I said that).

Martian Manhunter is a cross between Bloody Mary and The Candyman. Just say his name and you've got a surprise guest for your kid's birthday party.

Since The Atom knows so much about the superhero community and she keeps mentioning having read files, she must actually be a member of the Justice League of America. That's also why she's more desperate to keep her secret than to live. Because if Waller finds out The Atom let the secret slip, Waller is going to nail the little shit to the wall. Being on Waller's bad side is obviously worse than dying. Which means the saying Manhunter's name thing might only work for other members of the JL of A. So forget that kid's birthday party thing. You better just play it safe and hire the fucking clown.

I guess I could let this go but I'm not going to: the smaller you are in the DCnU, the harder it is to read your mind. I suppose it's like having a gigantic Ham radio antenna in your backyard versus a tiny little antenna mounted on the rain gutter. The Atom's tiny mind just puts out tiny little brain waves that are hard to pick up. And it also means Despero's psychic attacks are less effective because her tiny little brain just can't pick up the psychic waves.

I read this just after I wrote that last paragraph. Also, The Atom must be a triple agent and is working for the Super Duper Secret Society of Super Villains as well if she's afraid of what Martian Manhunter might see in her mind.

Cyborg can calculate where the Watchtower is going to land but he can't do the relatively simple math to teleport their asses on its falling structure. Teleporting this group into an empty space on board the Watchtower is no different than landing a rover on Mars! And even with some risk, Batman and Wonder Woman are going to willingly take that risk! Or Superman could just fly them all to the Watchtower just as quickly, right?

Martian Manhunter defeats Despero by reversing the flow of his synapses. Yeah, that totally makes sense. DC Comics: we am more scientifical than Marvel! He should have just said he blocked Despero's synapses from firing. Reversing them! Ha ha. You know what? Maybe he was making a Martian joke and it just went over my head because I've become so acculturated to Earth humor.

Instead of wiping The Atom's mind, he simply trusts that she won't tell anybody that he was there. Which means they must be teammates! It also means The Atom is going to have to take credit for reversing Despero's synapses! I guess she could have become really tiny and ran around his brain exchanging potassium ions with sodium ions and shitting in all of his receptors.

That lie might work on Superman dying from Kryptonite poisoning but don't you dare try to get it past Batman!

Superman was able to land the Watchtower safely on Earth before freaking out from a tiny little piece of Kryptonite. He heads to the sun to feel better while Aquaman finally climbs out of the ocean to make an appearance. Batman explains that he was studying the Kryptonite to find a cure for Superman's allergy and in no way was he ever possibly even contemplating in the slightest using the Kryptonite against Superman himself. Nope. Never crossed his mind.

Using some Dupin style deductions, Cyborg realizes that Despero didn't steal the ring. Somebody else got it for him. Probably that fucking Martian Manhunter! Whoever did take it also kept a sliver of the Kryptonite for themselves.

Afterward, Batman gives Superman a tour of his In Case of Emergency Batcave. He shows Superman that he has a briefcase with a means to stop any one of them if they go out of control. Wonder Woman's does not have a book of insults against women like I thought it might. Instead it's empty because Batman says Superman belongs in that box.

Superman, you don't need to prepare! Obviously if someone acts out, you can immediately deal with it. Batman doesn't have that luxury so his preparation seems morbid and depressing.

And then Batman gives Superman a box with the secret to take him down.

It's probably child pornography with Bruce Wayne's fingerprints on it.

Seriously, why does Superman need a case with some secret weapon to take out The Batman? Superman has super strength and freeze breath and laser eyes and super speed and flight. I'm pretty sure he can use any one of those powers to steal a gun to use to shoot Batman in the face.

In the end, it turns out The Atom is working for the Justice League of America. She may have been trying to shield her thoughts from Martian Manhunter because she could be Waller and Trevor's secret agent. The Atom is meant to be able to take out Element Woman but the JL of A have yet to find someone to counter Firestorm. I'm pretty sure they'll need Captain Atom for that. But The Atom probably won't be around for long since she has one hurdle there's no way she's going to be able to jump.

I'm pretty sure that Batman can't disprove that dropping trou and pissing in Despero's head wouldn't short circuit his brain!

The Shazam story begins with Billy Batson learning he made a huge mistake. Black Adam is not the small boy that was given the power of Shazam! He is the boy's uncle with whom the boy shared his power. And then the uncle stole all of the power and destroyed the boy because the boy was a no good beatnick peace loving love child. But Billy may have learned from that story that he can share his power with his siblings! And probably even a tiger!

Billy's siblings run a garbage truck into Black Adam to free Billy. But then they end up at Black Adam's mercy while Billy transforms to Shazam. And then the next issue is the conclusion of the great Shazam Family Origin Story! I'm sure Billy will share his power to save them all. And Black Adam will cry at how lovely it all is and slink back to Khandaq to be a dick later.

Justice League #20 Rating: +2 Ranking. This issue gets a +1 Ranking for Element Woman making herself into a car and a +1 Ranking on the reveal that Black Adam is a gigantic dick. Okay, so that last one wasn't much of a reveal. But I did like how he usurped the Wizard's choice of champion. That was nice.

Justice League #19

I thought these covers were supposed to be surprising.

The League finally had their big recruitment drive last issue. They didn't so much as pick the best of the bunch as took whoever agreed to join. Most of the experienced heroes have their own lives and comic book titles and issues with Batman and so decided to pass on the offer. But Firestorm's comic book isn't long for the shelves, so he joined. I don't know why Batman and the rest want two high school kids on the roster. Every time the main group heads into deep space for some cosmic battle, the satellite is going to be used for a house party. They also accepted Element Woman who has a Preboot history of depression and suicide according to The Sandman. So that should be fun! And the Reboot version of The Atom joined because every team needs a teeny, tiny person that's useful in less situations than a guy that speaks with fish.

Like you'd expect, this issue begins in the Batcave with Red Hood hanging out with Alfred Pennyworth.

It's nice to see Alfred grieving. I mean, it's not enjoyable. It's not giving me joy. It doesn't turn me on or anything. Next I want to see him angry and punching Bruce in the face for risking kids' lives.

A mysterious man in a black body suit and red goggles interrupts the mourning process by shocking Red Hood into unconsciousness (didn't the All Caste teach him how to not be incapacitated by electricity?) and throwing Alfred through a glass case. He then enters some secret secret sanctum of the Batcave by pressing his hand into the WayneTech Palm Reading Security Scanner and clicking the secret button hidden in the rocky outcropping of the secret rock button wall. He then uses his eyeballs on the WayneTech High Definition Eyeball Sensing Sensor Scan to get himself into the vault which contains items to use against his best friends when he really, really needs to win an argument with one of them.

Only Batman could possibly figure out a way to defeat every other hero and have that solution fit in a box the size of a briefcase.

Superman's method of defeat is easy which is why, I suppose, Johns decided to show similar boxes for the other heroes. A Kryptonite Ring fits nicely in a briefcase. But what could possibly be in the other cases? Aquaman's probably has super concentrated fish food to slip into one of his meals so that he overeats and his belly explodes. Cyborg's case contains a great big super-powerful magnet to stick on the side of his head. Wonder Woman's case probably has a Big Book of Insults to Women so Batman can hurl them at her as they fight and get her off her game. Green Lantern's case might have contained some yellow powder at one time but now I imagine Batman probably just has his own Green Lantern ring. And Batman with a Green Lantern ring powered by willpower is the definition of unbeatable. The Flash's case probably just has a bunch of piano wire that Batman will string around Central City so that The Flash simply decapitates himself while going out for tacos.

After this mysterious man infiltrates the Batcave the way nobody but Batman could, the scene shifts to The Atom playing computer games. But she has to leave her guild on their raid because she has a meeting with the Justice League. Her guildmates call her a traitor and I think that might be some kind of foreshadowing. Or else it's Red Herring Foreshadowing. It's one of those which means it doesn't really help nail anything down except that half the people who guess one of those things will be able to tell the other half of the people guessing, "I told you so!"

The Atom meets up with Firestorm on the Justice League Satellite as they await the main group so they can get their Passcards and Teleport Authority Codes and the Justice League Manual on Sexual Harassment in the Workplace. I wonder who handles Human Resources in the Justice League? It's not like when they had Sue Dibny to take care of all the non-catastrophic related issues. She was probably the most important part of the Justice League and now Johns expects me to believe that this League can run without someone like Sue handling the day to day matters? Maybe Cyborg simply has an App for that.

The current Justice League are all busy taking care of busy business. Superman and Wonder Woman are in Khandaq dealing with the Sons of Adam. Does that mean that Captain Atom's version of the future is going to come true no matter what Captain Atom managed to accomplish in his comic book's stupid time travel story? No, no. This is Khandaq which is Black Adam's country. Or will be. Or was, at least, in the Preboot. Besides, the revolutionaries wear patches on their uniforms showing Black Adam's lightning bolt.

Cyborg, Batman, and Aquaman are investigating the break-in at the Batcave. While Batman lies to Aquaman and Cyborg about what the intruder may have stolen, Cyborg gets a news alert that could mean trouble.

This is exactly the type of thing Batman warned Superman about. They can't be fucking with world politics without causing more trouble than they may be preventing.

Superman and Wonder Woman have a conversation about interfering with humanity to make the world a better place. Superman mentions how he made the decision a long time ago to inspire and not to interfere. Well, technically Batman made that choice for you, Supes. But Superman seems to now understand it's a short trip from helping people for their own good and Supreme Dictator of the World. And just in case he's unsure on some points, Batman appears out of thin air courtesy of Cyborg's new Non-Boom Tube travel technology.

And then Batman breaks out the Justice League Handbook on Interoffice Dating.

Batman lets them know that they need to be careful how they represent the Justice League Organization when they're out living their own lives. So I guess Batman is in charge of the Justice League's Image. Sure, leave it to the guy that thinks having a good image is scaring the shit out of everybody. How is it Batman is the one telling others how to act appropriately in public? This is some mixed-up shit right here.

While this Justice League meeting of the three top CEOs is happening, Firestorm and The Atom are trying to find the Watchtower's kitchen. Or bathroom. Or any room that a normal office building might have for the comfort of people who actually need to eat and/or defecate, unlike Superman and Cyborg and Batman. And that's when the mystery person shows up to kill whatever it can find!

Now that was a surprise. I didn't expect Despero seeing as how just recently in JLA or perhaps this comic, Waller or Trevor mentioned, in passing, how the Justice League had already battled Despero and Starro. I was disappointed that the Justice League was fighting each other and Cheetah and Ocean Master and an old writer with cancer while just flippantly having them deal with Amazo and Despero and Starro. Do all the most powerful enemies have names that end in "O"? Eclipso!

Next, Chapter 11 of Shazam wherein the children search the subways for the great Wizard that can take the magic away from Billy Batson. Or, you know, spread it out amongst them all (including a tiger). During the search, Billy once again encounters Francesca, the woman in the reflection. She tells him Black Adam's history and how Black Adam also received the power of the lightning when he was a child, although many, many years ago. And this makes Billy think he can talk to Black Adam as equals, having gone through basically the same thing: Adam through slavery and torture, and Billy through foster care.

Not the best plan. Although out of all of Billy's plans throughout this entire story, it was better than the others.

Justice League #19 Rating: +2 Ranking. I can't believe Batman is running around telling Superman how to behave in public. And in the meantime, Firestorm and The Atom are going to have to defeat Despero all by themselves! Hopefully Element Woman will arrive to not be any help at all. What would happen if Firestorm used his transmutation powers on Element Woman? Would she just be able to instantly change back to whatever she wants? Or could he even manage it because she's technically organic? My guess is that the universe would be destroyed.

Justice League #18

I think deadend spoiled this issue when he said, "Cyborg handles all cell phone narrative bullshit. For everyone." That has to be what this is about!

The Throne of Atlantis story is over so now it's time to get back to less boring stories about fish and the ocean and more fish. I'll get enough of that in the next comic book I'm going to read. If you're really stupid, let me tell you what that comic will be: Batman Aquaman! I sometimes expect too much out of people but not anymore! From now on, I'm going to treat everyone as if they're really dumb so that I don't make them feel dumb. And that shouldn't bother the smart people reading my commentaries because they probably won't even notice a difference.

Smart Reader: "Ugh. Another review by that moron Tess Ate Chai Tea. I have to slog through all of his personal anecdotes and unintelligible jokes so that I can find out what's happening in the comic books I'm too cheap and/or poor and/or smart to buy on my own!"
Dumb Reader: "You're right! His jokes are unintellichable! Way over my head! Der!"
Tess Ate Chai Tea: "The phrase "Duty. Honor. Country." always makes me giggle because all I hear is "Doody on her cunt" and then I crack up."

This issue begins with two kids at Pittsburgh High in a computer lab. Since it isn't Walton Hills High School and the characters aren't acting like Ronnie and Jason, I don't know who they are.. Also, Jason is interested in his new lab partner named Blythe instead of faking interest in Tonya while actually being interested in Ronnie. So they can't be Firestorm, right?

Wrong. But what do I know? Maybe I forgot that Walton Hills burned down or something.

I like that Geoff Johns can basically take any characters in the DCnU and write them however the fuck he feels they should be written. I guess as long as Jason cares about school and Ronnie cares about sports, their characterization is pretty much dead on. Not that it matters though. The only good thing about the Firestorm comic book is the budding romance between Jason and Ronnie and I think that might just be in my imagination. So if Johns can make Firestorm fun and interesting, what do I care how he changes them?

Except for the romance thing! Keep that!

While they bicker (cute!), Jason and Ronnie receive messages from Cyborg telling them he can help them with their future plans if they're willing to help him. Wink wink. This romance just got cyber interesting!

Next to be recruited by Cyborg is Black Canary who is fighting Copperhead in Gotham. I mean Baltimore. What the fuck is up with all the incorrect locations? This isn't an omniscient narrator! It's an amnesiac narrator! Not that Black Canary is limited to fighting crime in Gotham. But I wanted to pretend that everything was fucked up. Intentionally misunderstanding is fun and it makes other people look stupid while you look smart! Except you don't look smart at all, I guess. I probably looked pretty stupid thinking Black Canary isn't allowed to set foot in Baltimore to take down Copperhead. The Birds of Prey were probably the right group to take him down though since his weakness is apparently seeing a vagina.

This misrepresentation of the story is for readers that keep up with my Supergirl commentaries.

Next, Zatanna has apparently made it back from Faerie alive and is getting the brush off from Constantine. So she's off Justice League Dark because Justice League needs some magic. How does Amanda Waller not know that the Justice League is hiring? Her whole plan of matching one member of her team with one member of her other team is going to need some updating already! She's going to have to make sure Green Arrow becomes a full time member to combat Black Canary. And she'll need Captain Atom on her team to combat Firestorm. And she'll need Annataz to combat Zatanna.

And then it finally happens! One of those big Justice League interview issues! Crowd the satellite with a bunch of familiar faces and give them a moment to answer Batman's questions correctly or incorrectly, and we've got new members! Although the best interview ever probably goes to Hitman.

Don't get too excited about New 52 Hitman! This is from Grant Morrison's run. That was a reminder just in case you forgot that Martian Manhunter won't be conducting the interviews today.

The potential candidates (beginning with the coloreds) are Black Canary, Black Lightning, Blue Devil, Goldrush, and Platinum. The non-coloreds are Element Woman (yes, please!), Firestorm, Nightwing, Vixen, and Zatanna. I wonder what the Justice League can offer for full time members? Benefits? A salary? Or do they just try to fool them into the "making the world a better place being its own reward" bullshit? These people all have rents to pay!

The person I'm most interested in at this gathering (besides Element Woman!) is Platinum. I'm pretty sure this is the first time a Metal Man has been seen although they were mentioned in **mumble mumble mutter** back in **mumble mumble mumble**! Why would she be interviewing alone? Did she finally get sick of all the sexism in a group with "men" in the title? I imagine she finally got fed up being the only one doing the dishes, screamed, "Fuck you all!", turned briefly into a gigantic platinum middle finger, and flounced the fuck out of their headquarters. Or she's simply here to spy for Will Magnus.

Looks like Dr. Magnus has yet to perfect his super duper wacky A.I. personalities.

Zatanna declines because she needs to find her father's killer. Nightwing declines because he's still mad at Batman. Blue Devil and Black Lightning decline because they're a team and Black Lightning is a teacher and wants to stay close to his local district to help the troubled youths. Flash doesn't want Goldrush because he's afraid of her strength. And by strength I mean libido.

Element Woman mentions Rex Mason, Metamorpho! I think that means all of the original Outsiders have cropped up. Sort of. Black Lightning is here. Looker and Halo have been mentioned and seen very, very briefly in Batman Incorporated. Metamorpho mentioned here. Katana has her own book. That leaves Geoforce but I count him as being mentioned simply because Terra exists. And because she was kidnapped by N.O.W.H.E.R.E. and had her memory fucked with, I imagine Geoforce will come looking for her some day.

And then Platinum freaks out because she suddenly doesn't know where she is. And she shows her love and concern for Will Magnus. Looks like her personality is kicking in! Too bad she begins kicking ass at the same time. Cyborg is in contact with Will and Will tells him about her Responsometer. Oh yeah! That was what the Wacky A.I. Personality mechanism was called! Since Platinum's personality resides solely in the Responsometer (although I think it reacts to the metal it's encased in to give the different personalities of the Metal Men, so technically the personality is a combination of the two), Magnus informs them that if they can separate the platinum from the Responsometer, she'll be stopped. Firestorm turns her platinum into water and her Responsometer crashes toward the floor! Oh noes! None of these super heroes have any abilities at all that can react in time to save it! Not The Flash! Not Superman! Not Batman! Not Wonder Woman! Not Cyborg! Not Firestorm! Not Element Woman! I can't think of any way at all that the Responsometer can be saved now!

Look at The Flash and those other dicks! Just standing there watching the thing crash to the ground. Fucking jerks.

Batman is looking for members to join the League full time because the other heroes have so many of their own commitments. So I understand why they choose Element Woman. I'm pretty sure she just sits in her apartment dreaming she had friends. I'm happy to see her on a team and interacting with people. But then they also choose The Atom who's currently in college and Firestorm who is currently in high school. How does that translate to being able to commit full time?

As soon as the League decides on the new members, their system crashes, their files are stolen, and a skull and crossbones pops up on the computer monitor. Somebody hacked their system during the interview and it looks like it may be the same person that kidnapped Ronnie Raymond's mom! I have a feeling Cyborg hacked himself. Not because he's a traitor but because he was probably infected with some kind of Trojan Horse virus. I wonder if he has anti-virus software installed?

Meanwhile in the back-up story, Black Adam is destroying New York looking for Shazam since he doesn't know that Shazam is currently hiding inside of a young boy. Um. Anyway, Freddy realizes Black Adam is looking for Shazam and tells his brothers and sisters all about Billy and Shazam because Billy needs their help. They find Billy hanging out at the zoo with Tawny and then they all set out to once again find the wizard and figure out how to give the Shazam powers to somebody else. I think they'll find that but not in the way they expect! It looks like the Shazam Family will be here soon!

Which is good because Dr. Sivanus has a super team of his own.

Justice League #18 Rating: +1 Ranking. I'd really like to know what incentives members get for joining the Justice League. Giffen's League all received paychecks, right? But it seems like whenever Superman and Batman are involved, it's gauche to bring up payment. Jerks.