Vigilante: Southland #3

Vigilante is still high as fuck.

The Review!
Last issue ended with Vigilante being framed for murder! Since he's a black man with a weapon in a house he doesn't own next to a dead body, he doesn't take the time to start a rational conversation about how he couldn't be the murderer based on the brain splatter patterns and the caliber of the sniper bullet and the broken window which the bullet came through and a whole bunch of other evidence that would probably exonerate him but it would be too late because he would have been shot dead immediately. So instead he begins fighting for his life against a full SWAT team who aren't high as fuck. He is in trouble!

"OH MY FUCKING GOD IT'S KEVLAR! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! WE'RE DEFEATED!"

That caption wasn't hyperbole. The SWAT team really are defeated by the Kevlar. It's pretty embarrassing.

The Kevlar doesn't stop the SWAT team from shooting at Vigilante because Kevlar isn't a magic force field! I mean, it basically is in comic books but I have to believe that this comic book is pretending it isn't or else why wouldn't the SWAT team just stop shooting and go home? I mean, Kevlar, bitches! That's like Starfleet going up against Romulan cloaking technology! There's no way to fucking win! Unless you're Captain Kirk, of course. He's the anti-Kevlar!

The Kevlar isn't the only thing that helps Vigilante escape. He also confuses the SWAT team with a huge bong hit.

The sniper who sniped the guy who got sniped also gets away. But not before revealing to the reader that he has an upside down diamond tattooed under his left eye. That's a clue to the mystery! I kind of forget what the mystery was though. Part of the mystery was The Case of the Dead Girlfriend Who Probably Should Have Been the Main Character of this Comic Book. But she was investigating a mystery too and that's the one I can't really remember. I don't think it matters as long as Vigilante engages in some really exciting car chases and gun fights.

Some stuff takes place that has to do with the bad guy Spectros and his boss. His boss is a nearly naked woman who later gets naked because she's been a bad girl. Both of them want Vigilante dead.

Last commentary, I said "Vigilante" was one typo away from a sort of lewd word. It confused me at first because even I find my writing confusing if I'm not in the exact same head-space. But I quickly realized I must have meant "Vagilante."

Luckily for the plot and the reader, Vigilante found a clue while escaping the frame-up. He got the ID number of the sniper's boat! Now he's got something to investigate so the rest of this comic book isn't just Donny (that's Vigilante's real name!) getting his ass kicked in training by a guy in a wheelchair.

While investigating the boat, Vigilante is attacked by Diamond Eye Dick who tries to kill him. Since Diamond Eye Dick isn't in a wheelchair, you'd think he'd have a greater than 100% chance of defeating Donny. But you'd be wrong because apparently Donny's weakness is guy's in wheelchairs. He manages to fend off Diamond Eye Dick and escape. But while escaping on his motorcycle, he falls asleep. Probably because he's high as fuck. And just to make matters worse, he crashes right by two hungry pit bulls! To be continued! Such drama!

The Ranking!
-1! That was kind of a weak cliffhanger. It was almost as if Gary realized he was coming up on twenty pages and he was all, "Shit! I have Vagilante escaping on a motorcycle but how is that for an exciting ending?! I know! I can introduce his narcolepsy! And he can fall asleep! And he can crash! But that's not good enough, dammit! Oh! I know! DOGS! Wild dogs should be seen menacing him! BOOM! Thrilling ending! What's in store for old Vigilante next month?! Rabies? Maybe!"

Vigilante: Southland #2

Vigilante fights crime high as fuck.

I just read the last issue and I almost forgot how it ended! This one begins with yet another ex-Vigilante (was fucking everybody Vigilante?!) staring creepily at Donny as he lies wounded in bed. It took me much longer than I'm comfortable admitting to remember that Donny blew up at the end of the last issue. This is why there have been so many Goddamned Vigilantes! They're careless as fuck!

I'm just going to end every fifth or sixth sentence throughout this commentary with "as fuck." I think that sentence counts as one of them, right?

Mike, the guy I didn't mention last issue because he was just some nobody scientist in a wheelchair who Donny didn't know, begins the comic book by remembering how he used to ride a motorcycle around town while wearing a costume that was as ugly as fuck. But I guess he got blown up or hit and runned or something too! Because now he's just the guy who makes the gadgets for whatever sucker he can talk into putting on the terrible looking costume. It won't be hard to convince Donny because Donny is hot on the tail of a conspiracy and he's also stoned.

Mike was known as The Eastsider because that's marginally better than the name Vigilante the vigilante. At least it let people know there was a Mexican underneath that mask. Vigilante is pretty nondescript. It's also one typo away from being sort of obscene.

Donny's girlfriend's mom and Mike tell Donny that he shouldn't become the next Vigilante because he hasn't been trained. But I say I don't want to read three issues of him training! Donny seems to agree! He puts on the Vigilante mask, hops on a motorcycle, and sets off to solve The Case of the Dead Girlfriend Who Probably Should Have Been the Main Character.

"A clumsy backpedal that seeks to blame the fans and editors for fucking up The New 52!" -- Grunion Guy.

Vigilante begins his investigation at a kinky sex club. I don't know who he's asking questions or why because I don't care about the mystery part of this comic book. I just want to see Vigilante shoot people in the face while pretending he has the moral high ground. At the sex club, Vigilante battles a half-naked woman with a whip and says the F-word! I didn't know you could swear in a Teen Plus comic book! I thought the Teen Plus rating simply meant a woman was going to enjoy sex! You can't have non-plus teenagers knowing that women like sex just as much as men! At least they do when the man is good at it. That's the main reason women are attracted to confident guys because you know a confident guy can give you an orgasm. Although it's also true that some guys are too stupid to realize they shouldn't be as confident as they are based on their bedroom skills.

"For a series written by Pet Murderers, it's surprisingly light on murdered pets!" -- Grunion Guy.

Vigilante gets his ass kicked by a dominatrix because she's had way more training than he has. Also she's not stoned. What's really strange about the dominatrix is that she has the same weapon as Vigilante except it isn't electrified. What kind of a coincidence is that? If this story doesn't give a reason for it by the end of the series, I'm going to...well, actually, I'll probably forget all about it after I finish typing this paragraph. But it does seem like it should mean something, right?! Does it mean Donny's girlfriend was a dominatrix before she became Vigilante? Is that a standard dominatrix weapon, a mace on a rope? I guess that's technically a flail but this weapon seems different somehow. More sexy!

Meanwhile, Donny's girlfriend's mom does some investigating of her own. At a fancy dress party (American style fancy dress, not British style fancy dress! Nobody is in chicken costumes or Nazi uniforms here), she walks around pretending her daughter's death wasn't that big a deal. Unless she's not pretending. She might not be pretending! So Nina asks a woman where Vance Childers, the man she thinks is responsible for her daughter's death, might have disappeared to.

I've never given this specific an answer to any question I've ever been asked. And I have a college degree!

This woman knows all about the house Childers runs off to but has no idea how to contact him there. I think you've given Nina enough information to find him, Help Advances The Plot Lady.

Back at the Vigilante Cave, Donny learns that Mike can train him to turn his basketball skills into a fighting style. Ooh! Imagine if Mike could do that for the Harlem Globetrotters? They'd be the most elite fighting team in the world! As long as Sweet Georgia Brown was playing, of course.

"Tom King never used any of my fucking blurbs for the cover of Sheriff of Babylon. He can go fuck himself!" -- Grunion Guy.

I hope this comic gets the training over with quickly! Can't I read about a Vigilante that's already battle tested and street ready?! I have to read about some stoner basketball player trying to learn how to fight by getting his ass kicked by a guy in a wheelchair?

Two pages later, Donny realizes he can't beat a guy in a wheelchair. Idiot. Throw a typewriter at him or something! That's probably just the first lesson. It's a pretty lousy lesson since all it did was demoralize Donny before he goes out to follow Nina's lead. Now when he fights a guy standing up, he's really going to shit himself.

Donny discovers that Childers is also looking into the murder of his girlfriend which is why he disappeared. He didn't want to get hit and runned too! Donny breathes a sigh of relief because if he couldn't beat a guy in a wheelchair, no way would he be able to take on a fat, out of shape, middle aged college dean!

Oh! Here's the reason for the Teen Plus! The "fuck" was probably just incidental.

A woman never has to ask if she was any good in bed! If you're a woman and you just let me put my penis anywhere inside of your body, you did a great job! You don't even need to go that far! Sometimes just slowly sliding your hand down the front of my pants is a job well done, and quickly! I think the only time a woman is bad in bed is when she tries too hard. I don't need to think you're the wildest person to ever bone. In fact, the stiller and more corpse-like you are, the better! I don't want to have to remember that you're an individual with a distinct personality and her own agency when I'm defiling you with my love squirts.

As Childers is about to reveal the reason for the conspiracy, he's shot in the head by a sniper! Oh no! That's probably the same sniper who crippled The Eastsider! And just as Childers is killed, the police break down the door and storm the house! Oh no! Vigilante has been framed for murder! And he's still high as fuck!

No wonder The Eastsider was only crippled instead of killed. This sniper needs to get his scope fixed.

The Review!
More of the same 80s action clichés! How about a side of being framed with your vengeance appetizer?! Would you like a glass of conspiratorial cover-up while you wait?

Vigilante: Southland #1

I wish saying "not" after a statement to negate it sarcastically wasn't such a stupid piece of shit thing to say because right now I want to say, "This comic book looks fantastic! NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT!"

Which came first? Plans for Vigilante to appear on Arrow or pitch meetings for this egg?

When I first saw that a Vigilante comic book was coming out, I got super excited! But only for like the three or four seconds it took my body to absorb the endorphins released by the nostalgia factor and then I thought, "This comic book was never really very good, was it?" But it was printed on Baxter paper! So cool!

The issue begins with Vigilante beating up some thugs. I don't mean thugs in the conservative media vernacular where they're slyly winking as they say it because their audience knows what they really mean. I mean thugs in the comic book sense! Those are just nameless henchmen or free-range criminals who the hero beats up in the parts of the story that don't really matter. Comic book thugs are the guys Batman beats up at the beginning of the story to show some quick action before he sees the Bat-signal and rushes off to listen to Gordon whinge on about The Joker suddenly being back in town. So that's what Vigilante is doing here! He's beating some guys up so readers can get their violent action boners going before the boring talking parts have to happen.

Also, when I say "boners," I mean both male and female boners, whatever those are. I think they're like elementary school drinking fountains?

Vigilante might have the ugliest costume in the DC Universe, counting Lobo's original pink and purple one.

In the past, Vigilante has been a white male and a white female. Now he's a black male. What will Vigilante be in his or her next incarnation? A little person?

You know, I don't hear an awful lot of clamor from little people about representation in comic books. Maybe that's because I don't know any little people so I'm not around to hear them moan about the lack of representation in comic books. Who was the last little person in a DC Comic book? Oberon?

As I read about the main character going about his business playing basketball and ignoring his girlfriend's texts and smoking dope and playing video games, I realize the first two pages are doing that thing where the comic book has to show the reader the action that will happen in the future before returning to the boring, non-action parts of the story. I fucking hate that shit. It's like the writer has no confidence in the story or the audience. It's as if I can't be bothered to read a comic book that doesn't assure me, right up front, that somebody will eventually be punched in the face. I mean, I did call that part the exciting bit and the non-violent part the boring bit! So my opinion my be radically at odds with itself.

The main character, Donny, might also not be the only main character. His girlfriend, Donny's girlfriend, might be the main character too! She wears another terrible version of the Vigilante costume to do some corporate espionage. Or maybe she's just doing some simple civil disobedience to expose a corporation's criminal behavior. I'm just guessing because I've barely read four pages of this comic book. It's far less interesting than what I might have to say about it. Also, I had to make sure I mentioned, again, how terrible Vigilante's costume is.

Well, at least I don't have to learn Donny's girlfriend's name now! Thank you, evil corporate man in black hit and run driver!

Now Donny can go about his video gaming and getting stoned without being nagged by Vigilante! If she was Vigilante. I was just making an assumption. But she probably was and now Donny will start going through her things and find her suit and all of her evidence proving whatever injustice she was trying to prove! Then he'll have to get off his ass and continue her work! Even though she could have continued the work just fine and the story could have been about her if Gary Phillips hadn't decided to kill her.

Donny begins investigating the hit and run on his own. I guess without his girlfriend to pay the Internet bill, he's lost his online Xbox play. He might as well get out of the house because single player games are boring as fuck. NPCs don't rage quit and send you spiteful messages when you teabag them.

Donny hits up his father--who he has serious issues with, of course--to do his shady underworld investigative shit to find out who might have killed his girlfriend. While Donny waits for that to happen, he begins going through his girlfriend's things. You know, just like I said he would! Behind the box with the vibrator and a stack of Penthouse Forums, he finds her Vigilante costume and her electric mace. I think it's an electric mace. It might also be a vibrating Ben Wa ball.

At this point, the story is almost over and the whole dead girlfriend thing is getting depressing, so the narrative speeds up a bit. Donny and his father get some information they need from a witness of the hit and run but that witness has also been bought out by the bad guy, Spectros. So when Donny gets home later that night, his house explodes on him! I might think he's dead but for those first couple of pages at the beginning of the comic book! Way to ruin the suspense, Phillips!

The Review!
So far there's nothing original in this script. It's basically every 80s movie about some guy who loses a loved one and then reaps deadly vengeance on the killers. It's also got whiffs of a chosen one story where the hero begins as a shitty, crappy, lazy asshole and has to rise to the occasion when the real hero (this time, his girlfriend) dies tragically in the first three minutes. Donny's girlfriend was far more interesting in the scant few pages in which she appeared. Donny is just a lazy asshole. But I guess that's part of the story! He has to prove himself and rise above his flaws to become the hero his girlfriend already was! Although I don't know why he has to do it in an even more terrible looking costume than her already awful one!