Teen Titans Annual #3

Doing a commentary on this Annual now that the Teen Titans featuring Scott Lobdell has been cancelled reminds me of one of my favorite lines by Norm McDonald: "What's the point of beating a dead horse aside from the pure pleasure of it?"

That quote may not be exact because I am one of those people that remembers the gist of shit (not jism of shit) rather than forcing myself to remember every line in excruciating detail so I can impress my asshole friends. Here's another one of Norm's lines that I love that I'm probably paraphrasing: "Kenny G has a new Christmas album out this year. Happy Birthday, Baby Jesus. I hope you like crap!"

And speaking of crap, let's read the Teen Titans!

The issue begins promisingly enough!

The only problem with this opening panel is that it occurs eight hours into the future. And we all know how much Scott Lobdell loves time travel comic books because motive derives from seeing the future. So while the Teen Titans would normally have to act according to their dreams, needs, or desires, in a story where we see the future (i.e. the death of the Titans), the Titans can act on that fact alone. So now they're driven to keep themselves from being killed in eight hours. Which they'll probably accomplish because this book is continued in Reboot Version Two in a few months.

Red Robin is then approached by a shadowy stranger that says, "This was all planned, so buck up, buttercup!" That must mean that the shadowy figure is Harvest! And Harvest is here to give Tim Drake the Eternal Kiss! That way, as a vampire, he can grow up to become Harvest so that he can go back in time to make sure that he bites Time Drake to make sure that Harvest can go back in time to bite Tim Drake!

Of course the reader doesn't get to see the face of the person Red Robin is ready to beat the shit out of. Because that's how comic books work, especially when you're too lazy to write your own stories. You just take the usual tropes, write some generic teen angst dialogue, and then run off to fuck a stray dog in the face.

Sometimes I worry that I might cross a line in the activities I imply Lobdell partakes. But then I realize all that I've ever really said, in many various and imaginative ways, is that Scott Lobdell sucks at writing. And the only way he can prove I'm lying is to write something decent. Which he can't do. So I'm lawsuit proof!

Teen Titans #30 ended with the Next Blurb asking readers to pick up the Annual to see who survived the yacht blowing up. As if that was going to be a major part of this annual. But long time readers of Lobdell knew that he'd never continue the story from there nor would he ever tell any more of that part of the tale! He never remembers anything he writes. So he just has Tim Drake watching the yacht sink the next day and thinking, "I'm just glad no one died in the explosion." Don't worry, Timmy. Nobody was fucking worried for one second. Guess what nobody is worried about now?! Nobody is worried that the team is going to die in eight hours.

When you use the same trick over and over, it stops losing its power. Every Lobdell story either involves a threat to the Omniverse which is always overcome, or it involves the future deaths of heroes (or the Omniverse!) which the heroes learn about somehow, so they must avert the future disaster. I'm fairly certain those are his only two stories. He may have others but they probably sucked so badly that I forgot all about them.

"Glue! I need glue!"

Two panels previous to this, Cassie says they have nothing to apologize for. I guess stealing shit doesn't count. Fuck you, Wonder Girl. You're the worst. Right after every other person on this team. And Superman, currently. And soon to be Jason Todd and Roy Harper (again!). Fuck, Lobdell. Why did you blow all of your X-Men money? Shouldn't you have purchased an island and gone off into retirement, never to be heard from or seen again?

This is Raven totally making sense. I want to kill them all as well. Although I actually have motivation for my feelings. "Habbits." Ha ha. Wait. Was that a joke or a typo? So hard to tell when Lobdell often has characters say things that only make sense if somebody were reading their dialogue and the dialogue's punctuation!

Bunker comes along and says, "Oh, hey there, Little Miz Betrayal." And Raven is all, "How'd you know?!" And Bunker is all, "Duh! Scott Lobdell!" And Raven is all, "Oh yeah! Totes duhs!" And Bunker is all, "Jesus loves you and shit even though you suck!" And Raven is all, "That's so cool!" And Bunker is all, "Score! One more in my account, God!" And God is all, "You're going to Hell, you gay." And Satan is all, "Man, that Guy is a prick. Don't worry, Bunker! It's cool down here! The only reason Jesus tells his Followers that Hell is the worst place ever is because I allow gays and Jews down here. We're just kicking it and shit. Just stay away from Trigon; he's a little rapey."

Red Robin has called an emergency meeting at a really stark and plain restaurant because Harvest is back and he's started another colony in Africa! Being that this is a Scott Lobdell story and he has a history of not knowing what the fuck he's doing, I'm not even going to try to figure out how this plan ties in with Harvest's plans in Superboy. I just don't have the patience to spend much brain power on this comic book.

Remember last issue when Skitters mentioned she was stuck in Skitters form? Yeah, the artists don't either.

The restaurant butts up against Danny the Street because Lobdell hasn't spent enough time soiling one of the greatest members of Doom Patrol in the history of members and patrols and doom. Thankfully Danny just transports the team to Africa as quickly as possible and then gets the fuck right out of this comic book. The Teen Titans arrive at the Colony in Africa to find it a little bit different than they remember it.

It's now Professor Harvest's School for Gifted Youngsters.

Seriously though. How many times am I going to be forced to say this: Scott Lobdell never stopped writing the X-Men.

The Titans discover that nobody was permanently killed in the Culling. They were all resurrected and enrolled in Colony College. And none of them were bitter or wanted their freedom or were pissed at how they were manipulated and tortured and killed! Because, fuck it, they're getting a free education now!

Things continue to get more and more familiar and DC's lawyers continue to get more and more nervous.

Cyclops?

Professor...Harvest?!

I'm sure that Lobdell thinks he's being cutesy doing this whole X-men parody thing. But to pull off good parody, you have to have already proven that you can write well (or at least done enough hilarious parody to show that you're good enough to run a site like Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea) and that you have ideas of your own. But since Lobdell's last Annual was also a parody of the X-men, Lobdell is simply proving that he has no other ideas. There's still a lot of comic book left, so this whole thing could be an illusion to draw in the Titans and kill them but I have a feeling Harvest might actually be this sick, old vampire version of Tim Drake and he really does want to begin again! Except we saw that beginning sequence so we already know Harvest is a big poopy pantsed liar!

Harvest tells Red Robin that his ultimate goal was to help and maybe he went about it a little wrongheaded that first time. But since he's brought everybody back to life and taken away their powers, no harm, right? Time to party and learn Latin, dudes! Now it's an intellectual Culling! Beast Boy is lucky he's missing out on this one! Total washout, that one.

But then Red Robin and the team explore a bit and then a few pairs of giant green hands grab them all and then Red Robin gives everybody up for dead and is ready to record a message to warn the rest of the world that Professor Harvest's School for Gifted Youngsters is a bullshit front for bullshit and other shit.

That's when Harvest enters the room so that he can have a hearty philosophical brawl with Red Robin.

I suppose Harvest planned every word!

After two and a half years of being the most powerful, well-planned villain in the history of the DC Universe, Harvest goes down like a chump. Raven destroys his Meta-DNA supply so that he can't use it to become a super duper villain (although the college hasn't exploded with him in it yet, so there's always hope of a hand shooting up out of the rubble and a "The End?" popping up under it).

But wait! Scott Lobdell isn't yet done jerking off all over Marvel's trademarks! After the Teen Titans pat themselves on the back for defeating Harvest by leaving him in that explosion (seriously. He was right there. One of them could have helped him out as they fled), Superboy takes over the narration of the comic book! But he's no longer Superboy since he died back in that stupid Back to Krypton story arc. Now, he's a herald of OmniGalactusWatcher!

Or whatever the fuck this stupid piece of shit character is. Oracle!

Please make it stop! But it doesn't stop! It never seems to stop! Lobdell still has a few more pages!

Apparently Wonder Girl went back to being a thief because she's a fucking asshole. And Raven became her roommate because she's pure evil. Bunker and Beast Boy joined with the Green Team to create a new super hero group called International Douchebags. Kid Flash and Solstice are still fucked on future Earth a full millennium century in the future! Skitters got work at STAR Labs where the artists still weren't remembering how she wasn't supposed to be able to control her form. Red Robin hangs out with Batman patrolling Gotham and using their real names which seems stupid but then I'm not Batman so what the fuck do I know? Except we all know that the team is really just going to forget about all of this bullshit and start over in a few months. Even Scott Lobdell knows his shit is going to be forgotten immediately.

Actually, it only matters what happens from here on out. What came before was complete and utter garbage.

Teen Titans Annual #3 Rating: You have to kind of admire how Scott Lobdell thinks that by tacking on these epilogues, he's somehow going to control the future path of these characters. If any of this shit is even mentioned in the new series, I'm betting it doesn't go past a few panels with an editor's note saying, "See Teen Titans Volume One! If you don't give a shit about wasting your time!"

Superboy #28

I hope he's trying to commit suicide by crushing his own head.

I have never been a fan of Superboy. I just didn't care about him at all. But thanks to Lobdell and Wolfman, I now hate Superboy with the kind of primal hate that teenagers save exclusively for their parents when their parents won't allow them to go to some event where the person that teenager has a huge crush on is going to be. But instead the parents make that teenager stay home and read shitty comic books about shitty characters that were shitty before they even became a new character that's even shittier! Fuck you, Superboy! Get the fuck out of here!

Last issue some ridiculous stuff was happening with ridiculous people and it involved all those ridiculous Teen Titans in a ridiculous future involving a trial with that ridiculous Kid Flash. When the editors at DC had the meeting about the Teen Titans characters and what the team will be like in The New 52, they must have unanimously decided that they simply had to suck.

So I find myself thinking, "What the fuck could be worse than having to read another Superboy comic that crosses over with those shitty Teen Titans?"

Fuck me.

Please, Harvest. You aren't fooling anybody. Trying to look like somebody has you at a disadvantage. You know you planned for this to happen! That's all you do! That's your superpower: the power to plan everything. So you're not fooling anybody and you're especially not fooling me because I know you're Tim Drake from the future after he's been bitten by a vampire. So stop pretending to be some grieving father that created Joke-el to destroy all the super humans. Because I know better! You're just Tim Drake and you hate that you're the smartest guy in the world but you get less attention than a bunch of dimwitted people that were lucky enough to have super powers. So you've made it your goal to kill them all. You're a pathetic wretch!

This might be the worst thing I've read so far: "I can sense him in the time stream." But, you know, I wouldn't expect anything less from the mouth of Harvest. What a piece of shit creation.

One of the few things that I think the Reboot had right when it began was to break time travel. But apparently a few writers that spent many years at Marvel learning that plots derived from people from the future and alternate timelines decided to ignore the whole Flashpoint Paradox. I'm looking at you, Lobdell and DeFalco! Either they were too stupid to understand how time travel would theoretically work or they just decided that the Flashpoint Paradox was only in effect in one fucking specific timeline which meant they could bring people from the future from alternate timelines. And so now DC is stuck with this lousy after-dinner mint Harvest. Nobody wants you, Harvest! You taste horrible!

Back in the future, Joke-el teams up with S-Cheese while Raven manipulates them from the shadows. I hope Raven and Harvest become lovers. And I use the term "lovers" because it reminds me of Romeo and Juliet which ends in two truly delicious suicides! Not that the suicides were delicious in that play! But if Ravest were to commit suicide? Oh glory! Hallelujah! We'll have made it to the other shore!

Yes, this makes total sense. S-Cheese must have had Fox News pumped into her stasis chamber for the last seventeen years. Lazy, apathetic, have-no-fucking-dreams-at-all mankind! Just let the superheroes do it all!

The past that S-Cheese's world is from is an analogous universe that might have been if the people of our world were to give up their freedom in exchange for safety. Also if our world had super heroes in it. I guess the super heroes are a metaphor for politicians and shit. And I bet they started down this horrible road because of gun control laws and abortion! Possibly also sugared soda! And video games!

For having been put in stasis since she was a newborn (although I don't know how she grew to the seventeen year old she is now if she were in stasis), she sure knows a lot of history about her world! I guess since her "Stasis Tube" didn't truly put her in stasis, she was free to read people's minds while imprisoned.

S-Cheese goes on to explain how the stasis tubes were actually just sleep tubes that put people into a state of hibernation. So basically they're shoved into a tube, put into a medically induced coma, and remain completely out of it until they die of old age. In 1000 years, that's the best advancement they could make on putting people into stasis? You'd think if they'd traveled across the galaxy searching for alien life and fleeing Old Earth, they'd have made some kind of advancement in true stasis technology! But instead they invent a tube filled with liquid that can't keep a newborn from growing at a normal rate.

Apparently even the other prisoners aren't actually in any kind of mental stasis since Saturn Girl S-Cheese suddenly feels emotions of joy coming from Cosmic Boy Lodestone and Lightning Lad Volt! And since they're happy that they're going to be free soon, Joke-el decides to free them. Um, yay?

Previously I had suggested that a new group of Ravagers was being formed to go back in time and hang out with Harvest. But I guess Wolfman is creating a new, twisted version of The Legion of Super-Heroes with, once again, Superboy's help. Will it become a New 52 title eventually? God I hope not.

After Superboy frees his new Legion members, S-Cheese nearly kills a handful of guards. But Superboy stops her because he doesn't want the Titans to discover what's going on. She thanks him from stopping her from becoming a murderer. She seems so sincere that it's too bad Wolfman has Joke-el, Saturn Cheese, Lode Boy, and Volt Lad kill everyone in a nearby ECHO base to steal their weapons. And then the final bit of dialogue and I'm off to the bathroom to vomit for three hours.

For my own sanity, I might have to drop every comic book that relies on time travel and characters from alternate timelines.

Superboy #28 Rating: No change but only because if it drops any ranks it becomes worse than Teen Titans and I blame Teen Titans for this comic book being so horrible. I love time travel stories. When they're done well! But this whole idea of time travelers from alternate timelines coming back to change the timeline they came from is just stupid ridiculous nonsense. Or characters in the present trying to save a specific timeline that will result in a specific future. Stop writing alternate timeline stories that have characters believing there can only be one true timeline when they've obviously come from other timelines. Why are they bothering to force their timeline into existence when it already fucking exists? Why are they bothering to try to stop their timeline from existing when it obviously already exists? They're all just wanking off into the wind. Stupid fucking bullshit. An example of a DC time travel story that I've liked during the Reboot? Booster Gold's brief time in All Star Western as well as Jonah Hex's visit to the present. Those are fun because Hex isn't trying to change anything or keep anything from changing. He's just caught up in an inadvertent journey and just wants to get back home.

Also, I actually think I wouldn't mind a Twisted Legion of Super-heroes comic book but I can't endorse one when I think it's going to be this Harvest and Joke-el timeline crap. I'd love it if it were just about the future and the twisted Legion doing whatever they're doing in the future. But fuck it if they're concerned with somehow changing the past because why fucking bother, you idiots!

Superboy #19

Yes, but what about the third strand of DNA?! Jimmy Olsen?

At the end of the last issue, Dr. Psycho had found himself astrally projected into Superboy's lungs where he encountered a mini-hologram or nanobot of Lex Luthor. While that was going on inside of him, Superboy was busy fighting Plasmus because Plasmus was trying to rob the same bank that Superboy had robbed earlier in the year and Superboy now knows that that was wrong. But the most important part was that Lex Luthor was going to explain Superboy's origin and unravel the mystery of his DNA! I hope Scott Lobdell remembered that was how the last issue ended!

Does Scott Lobdell even know that comic book stories are allowed to continue from one issue to the next?

Okay. Forget Dr. Psycho. Forget Nanobot/hologramatic/miniaturized Lex Luthor. Let's just go with Harvest telling the reader the secret of Superboy. And, I guess, the secret of himself. But why now? Why is Harvest suddenly telling his story? And I'm not so sure Scott Lobdell should be telling that story! He's sure to get a bunch of his facts wrong. Like I'm sure he'll have forgotten how many times I said Harvest was futuristic vampire Tim Drake and he'll screw up and make Harvest somebody else!

Also, who are these new people being introduced at the beginning of the comic book?! I want to see fucking Plasmus puke on Superboy some more!

This Colonel guy is Harvest. This is the 30th Century. There is a war between Metas and Normies. This is another alternate fucking timeline story. At least Scott Lobdell realizes he can't keep anything straight in normal continuity so he constantly cheats and makes up timelines that will eventually cease to exist. Colonel Harvest's child, Venn Diaphragm, was the only thing he ever truly loved. His wife was dog shit on his heel compared to his love for his son! But then one day, the Metas kidnapped the child, ate his gonads, and left his body to rot in the sun. The day Colonel Harvest lost his most cherished connection to humanity was the day he made a decision.

The Metas also ate all of his clothing.

But don't think that Colonel Harvest went into this massacre with vile intentions!

Which is why he devised a plan to make young metas fight each other to the death!

I can't believe Scott Lobdell hasn't called something an "omni"-something or other yet. He's omnislacking.

NO! Bad Colonel Harvest! BAD! Scott Lobdell is not good with time travel stories!

Unless Colonel Harvest goes back in time to create Superboy and Superboy is the reason that the metas take over the 30th Century and begin killing everybody, this time travel story is stupid and broken. Oh, guess what? That isn't going to happen because Colonel Harvest comes from a dead future timeline. The "real" future timeline is the one where the Legion of Super-heroes takes place.

Look. I'm taking this whole New 52 thing as literally as possible. DC set it up. They set up the parameters. They wanted to make things more coherent and less confusing. So they're the ones fucking up the whole paradigm by doing so many time travel stories especially since they declared time travel broken early on. You know why time travel was supposed to be off-limits when The New 52 began? Because time travel and alternate timelines is simply another way to make infinite universes and dimensions. The reason Earth 2 is different than Earth Prime? Because somewhere in the past, something happened (Mr. Mind was hungry!) and things went a different way. Earth 2 is merely a different timeline than Earth Prime. That's how you get these 52 alternate Earths. But guess how many alternate Earths there must be in the 30th Century?! The New Billion! Because DC keeps allowing this bullshit and fucking with their own model. Idiots.

Colonel Harvest's timeline stems from a past where Superman and Lois Lane had a child. This child had super super powers because he was born under a yellow sun instead of just migrating to one. He also somehow didn't kick his way out of Lois's womb, killing mother and child before he could be born.

But then the kid "died" because Lois's genes were incompatible with Clark's genes. And Superman became omnisad and omnihid inside his omnifortress. But Colonel Harvest knew the kid could be saved and collected and taken back in time on his slow backwards tour through reality. Or, um, "reality."

I'm not sure how the law works but I think if you take a baby backwards through time, it's technically not kidnapping.

Except Harvest doesn't take him either way through time. He just begins raising him as his own child while Superman and Lois Lane hid in their Fortress of Near Solitude. Colonel Harvest and Jon Kent (JoKe-El, in Kryptonian) defeated all of the metas. But then Jon's cells began rebelling again and Colonel Harvest needed to go back into the past where Superman and Lois Lane could still be found. They were the only chance to heal him. So he went back in time again.

Harvest's super duper abilities are also explained as his making "use of all the amazing technology" he had acquired during his journey through time. I guess he just stuck it all in a backpack. Too bad he didn't have a time bubble. Oh wait! He did! Or he had did? Because he certainly doesn't have one now.

Harvest begins wearing a mask because he apparently doesn't actually look like a vampire red dot faced dick. That's too bad. That was his most interesting aspect. He also creates the clone Superboy out of the DNA of three people although he doesn't say who they're from. I suppose Lois and Superman since the clone is supposed to somehow save Jon someday. Maybe the third strand is from himself since he's desperate to be a father again. Colonel Harvest creates N.O.W.H.E.R.E. to take care of Superboy and then he hides Jon in a dumpster out back until he's ready to be healed.

That's because you're the same person! Colonel Harvest just doesn't know it yet because he's confused and muddled from time travel!

Five years before it happens, Colonel Harvest witnesses Superman kiss Wonder Woman. Somehow that moment makes him realize that time can be changed. Even though that's why he came back in time. To, you know, change it. Wow. He's a fucking genius, that one.

Fucking Scott Lobdell. Different characters are supposed to be different. Stop having every single fucking character you write describe something or other as "so-called".

Anyway, let's return to "NOW". Superboy is still fighting Plasmus as Colonel Harvest watches from afar because he has cameras inside every one of Superboy's cells. Apparently these cameras can pick up astral projections and subliminal thoughts.

Holy shit, you suck at writing comic books, Scott Lobdell.

First off, the Lex Luthor projection never told Dr. Psycho that he was going to reveal the secret of Superboy nor did he actually introduce himself. So Dr. Psycho must know this information because he can read "Next Month in Superboy" tags when they're in the same panel as he is. Lex Luthor actually said, "Finally. I have been waiting for you. It is time for you to learn who you are." Which should mean that Dr. Psycho should have thought Lex had some Secret Origin News about Dr. Psycho himself! And then for Lex's "subliminal thought" to respond? What the fuck is that? And to say that Dr. Psycho misunderstood because they were going to have a tea party investigation and frolic through Superboy discovering the mystery together? This isn't quite as bad as the lead up to nothing that was the Oracle storyline. But it's pretty much crap. It's typical of Lobdell though. If he can't figure out how to continue the story that he wasn't planning anyway, he just dumps it for something else while making up a shit excuse about the previous issue.

Superboy defeats Plasmus as an aside and thinks he might not quite be recovered from the DNA unraveling he caught in Metropolis. And whatever H'el did to Superboy, apparently it began the process that will allow Harvest to utilize Superboy to save Joke-El. Here's what Harvest says about H'el's power initiating the process. It's classic and beautiful.

"I alone know that he's completely unaware H'el's intrusion into Superboy's genome has initiated the process that will finally allow me to reanimate my son."

I love it. Harvest is the only one that knows Superboy is unaware of the process! Pure genius with the languagical skills!

Anyway. There you have it. The Secret Origin of Harvest revealed! I can see Scott Lobdell did a lot of rethinking about the Superboy and Culling storylines to come up with something that is at least coherent in the parameters of a crappy time travel drama.

Superboy #19 Rating: -1 Ranking. I can live with this explanation. At least they fucking finally explained some shit in this comic book. But this is crap that should have been slowly explained all along instead of getting to a place where the story of Superboy and Harvest made no fucking sense so it was time to explicate it somehow. If told across all these issues, it might seem reasonable. But when thrown at the reader in one issue that relies heavily on alternate realities and different timelines, it can only be read as scrambling to finish a project that wasn't started until the night before it was due. And because of that, it doesn't ring true to the previous stories with Harvest. Like why would Harvest have had a Time Bubble? And how come Harvest knows only so much history up until Captain Adym goes back in time? And why would Captain Adym be surprised by Colonel Harvest's identity when he's actually a nobody? Not to mention how could he time travel post-Flashpoint. That I can actually accept though. One guy gets some kind of Chronal Virus or something and slowly travels backward through time? Sure, I can accept my slightly altered take on it.

But basically, I can live with this rewrite where Scott Lobdell had a sudden inspiration to fit it all together so he wedged it into the story and had Harvest overly narrate the entire thing. I hate to though since it involves a Joke-El from an alternate timeline. But who am I to complain when I now have a character I get to call Joke-El?! That's magic! (For those precious few that didn't understand that, "JOn KEnt"? See? JOKE?) The main thing I'm disappointed with is that Harvest is a nobody. I still think he can somehow end up being Tim Drake. It wouldn't be any more complicated than Cable's history! I think.

The Ravagers #10

Deathstroke? Is Deathstroke what comes next? Wasn't Deathstroke supposed to be coming? What happened to Deathstroke?!

Yep! It's Deathstroke!

I know I should have some profound observation about Deathstork teaming up with Sweatervest but I'm stunned that they spelled Ig Guara's name wrong.

Ha ha! Just kidding! I'm not really stunned at all! This is The Ravagers, after all! Historically, it has been the worst edited comic in DC's 75 years publishing comic books! I haven't actually done the proper research to know if that's true, but my gut is telling me no other comic could possibly have been edited this poorly. And my gut is full of french fries, so it knows what it's talking about.

Look at Harvest being all batlike! He's also acting so Tim Drakey! I'm surprised Deathstroke hasn't figured out who he is already just by the smell of his body odor and the way he shifts his weight and the name on the contract I'm sure they both signed or else Deathstroke wouldn't have taken on this assignment. Free killing is the worst.

Of course he'll stick to the deal, Slade. Because you signed a contract. Right? Tell me you signed a contract! He's a super villain! Of course he's going to try to screw you! At least you have the contract so you can sue his ass. Right?

I'm pretty sure Deathstroke isn't interested in money on this mission because he wants access to Rose Wilson. Does he know she's his daughter? Is she the native girl from Eclipso Island? Or is she just some psycho that took Slade's name and Slade simply wants to know why? Maybe it's his granddaughter!

Speaking of Slade's relatives, what the fuck happened to Jericho? Liefeld had a fucking major boner over bringing Jericho and Adeline back and then they both disappeared with Liefeld! I hope everyone just forgets that version of them (along with Jericho's henchman, Miscarriage Man).

Harvest has already sent out his Butcher Bots to kill Warblade and Rose for their ineptitude. If that happens and Deathstroke signed a contract to kill The Ravagers so that he can have access to Rose Wilson, he's got a potential lawsuit on his hands. I hope the final issue of Deathstroke takes place in Judge Judy's court with Harvest guest starring as the Defendant.

Meanwhile back at The Chief's non-Doom Patrol safe house, The Ravagers are bonding over not having to speak any more Howard Mackie dialogue.

Here they revel in some good Tony Bedard conversation. Blue Beetle died so The Ravagers could suck way less. Well, he didn't actually die. I mean, Ted Kord died but that was in the Preboot and now I'm sad because I brought up Ted's death. Thanks a lot, readers!

While everybody is joking around about their most embarrassing moments like how Caitlin fucked Niles and how Beast Boy sprayed butt juice on a Ravager and how Thunder's sister disappeared into Brother Blood's portal, Ridge begins to exhibit Hulk-like behaviors. Or should I say Banner-like behaviors? Ridge doesn't hulk out when he's angry but when he doesn't feel safe. And now that everybody is having a good time and nobody is trying to kill them, Ridge reverts back to his human form.

I guess Beast Boy can stop being jealous of him now.

Back in Hartsville, Warblade and Rose defeat the Butcher Bots and realize they need to capture the Ravagers and bring them back to Harvest or else Harvest is going to keep trying to kill them. Maybe they should just join the Ravagers and help defeat Harvest! That's such a dumb idea that might just happen! Damian Wayne was a psychotic monster and he learned how to love. Maybe Warblade can too!

Meanwhile more of this disgusting shit is going on:

Dude! How many times am I going to have to see Beast Boy get his heart broken by Terra?! Hasn't he been through enough already! She's going to betray him!

Now I'm wondering if Geoforce is out there ruling over Markovia!

While Beast Boy and Terra suck face in a children's toy store, Niles Caulder is busy bringing Lightning back to life. How did he do it? Did he use Waller's Samsara project? A Lazarus Pit? Whatever Basilisk uses to bring back their corpses? Nanobots? Cloning? Black Magic? No, he just used technobabble! I mean, science!

I bet Batman still has one of Damian's stool samples! I bet Caulder can resurrect Damian from that!

After a big day of nobody trying to kill them (day's not over yet!), everybody tries to go to bed happy so that nothing horrible can crop up unexpectedly. Too bad Little Boy Ridge decides to get up for a midnight snack. As he's grabbing food, he remembers that his mother was pregnant when N.O.W.H.E.R.E. kidnapped him. So there's a Little Toddler Ridge out there somewhere as well! Too bad Little Boy Ridge will never get to meet him. Remember last commentary when I said, "If only Ridge’s skeleton were shown, I’d be willing to believe the cover."

I knew he was disposable!

The Ravagers #10 Rating: +1 Ranking. Ridge being stabbed in the back by Deathstroke and erupting into flames doesn't actually mean he's dead. You see, a stipulation in the contract was that Deathstroke use "the Abeo Blade" to kill The Ravagers. I have a feeling the Abeo Blade somehow captures a person when they're stabbed by it. Kind of like a really sharp Pokeball.

Why was this issue called "Women and Children First"? Is it because that's the order in which Deathstroke likes to kill people? What a dick!

I also think the cover was intended for whatever storyline Howard Mackie had in line before he left the title. Because that shit don't make sense!

Legion Lost #16

I'm actually curious to see how this all ends.

I'm not curious as to how it begins though! It'll be a single splash page with seven or eight Narration Boxes on it. It'll begin by introducing on of the Legion members and giving a short description of their origin and/or powers. My guess is it'll be Gates because he's off trying to save everyone with a Time Bubble.

Holy crap! Tom DeFalco changed up his style! I'm flabbergasted!

So the first page was different; it doesn't mean it was good. I really wish these idiots would stop and think for a moment about how this bullshit doesn't make any sense. They're trying to make sure Captain Adym's timeline continues to exist which means they'll save the untold quintillions of people that make up the population of the time between now and the 31st century. But by establishing that specific timeline, they're laying waste to an infinite amount of other timelines. Which means they're killing infinity times untold quintillions of people just to selfishly save their own timeline. Fuck them.

Now, I don't have a problem with them trying to save their timeline. Fuck. Might as well go for it. But don't act like you're doing something righteous! You're murdering all of that other potential, you dumb bastards!

Once Harvest shoves Adym in the Time Bubble and shoots him back into the past, he and his Ravagers beat a hasty retreat since they don't want to be around when Adym sets off his singularity bomb. I guess Adym had to make sure that he didn't set the bomb off until an hour and ten minutes passed while he sat within the force-field, otherwise he would have fucked up his own timeline or something. You know, killing untold quintillions.

Meanwhile, Superboy continues to impress me.

I hope he never breaks free from Harvest's mind control! This is so much easier to listen to than his pouting about who he is and why he was created and what could his purpose be.

Harvest and Leash teleport into the force field and pick up an item that Harvest just gave to Captain Adym. Is this thing going to be like Locke's compass in Lost? Forever stuck in a loop of time to be handed back and forth between two people? Or could it be one person?!

Good. No more fucking knowing every fucking thing that is going to fucking happen.

Meanwhile Gates is pondering coming back to help even though he knows he's going to come back to help since he told Timber Wolf he already saw this shit go down and they all die. It's probably because he ended up here when he disappeared way back in the first issue and then returned all fucked up.

Gates does return and enters the force field just in time to run into original Gates from way back when. New Gates plan is to have Original Gates get his face burnt half-off while New Gates opens up a portal to a black hole to suck Lord Daggor and Thraxx and their world ending machine into it, thus saving the world without a singularity being blown up.

Speaking of which, what happened to Captain Adym? Wasn't he supposed to blow this shit up?

And thus he goes back in time to form N.O.W.H.E.R.E. Right?

So Captain Adym ends up being Harvest. I don't like that DeFalco tried to give him some kind of motivation to be angry at the Legionnaires simply because they wouldn't help him explode a bomb though. He acts as if they betrayed him. So does that anger toward them cause him to create NOWHERE? Or does he create NOWHERE to be "better prepared" for the fight against Daggor. Does he know at that moment when he goes back in time that he's Harvest or will he have to figure that out later when he gets in the horrible accident that gives him a gigantic mouth and teeth the size of jawbreakers? Once he realizes it though, he will use his old self's motivation to save the "untold quintillions" into tricking that old self into going back in time so Harvest can continue to exist. So he'll direct events toward that meeting in the desert which is why Harvest knows what to do. Because he was there as Captain Adym and Harvest is just repeating what Harvest did when Harvest was Captain Adym. So basically Harvest's entire motivation was to make sure that Harvest existed. Just like I've been saying! Except for the part about Harvest being Vampire Tim Drake.

Finally, everything blows up and gets sucked into the black hole with Gates. Harvest and his men flee but to buy themselves time, they drop Wildfire's original containment suit which Wildfire's energy instantly fills. And Dawnstar is happy to see him even though she was free to fuck Timber Wolf if he hadn't returned. And everyone lived happily ever after. In the past.

Except wasn't Tyroc supposed to die? I think I still have a few pages left to read! Maybe he'll be bitten by a rattlesnake and keel over dead.

Dammit! I was expecting a death! Not a rebirth! Fucking Gates. You ruined my mood!

Legion Lost #16 Rating: No change. I'm just glad it's over. I kind of like the Harvest/Captain Adym thing but let me list the problems with it. First off, Captain Adym is just a brand new character dropped in to become Harvest. That's never any fun. Second off, just because Captain Adym is from the future, it doesn't mean he should know every fucking thing that happens as Harvest. He should know the things Harvest does when Captain Adym was around Harvest because he observed those. I guess Captain Adym just studied all of history so closely that he knows everything that ever happened. What a nerd!

I do kind of like that Captain Adym is a piece of Captain Atom and Captain Atom has a history of becoming a villain! Remember when he turned into Monarch? No? You don't remember that? Oh yeah! That's because DC changed their fucking Armageddon storyline so that it made no sense simply to surprise readers once the Captain Atom is Monarch bit was leaked. So maybe that's going to happen here too! Maybe when it comes time to really show Harvest's origin, DC will decide too many people know it's Captain Adym and they'll make it Vampire Tim Drake instead!

Legion Lost #15

I have no idea what is going on in this picture because boobs.

This issue might be Wildfire's last appearance ever in The New 52 but I have a feeling he's going to be overshadowed by Dawnstar's Boobs. Literally! I guess I'm being insensitive since Dawnstar and Wildfire have been in a long, loving relationship. Although Dawnstar has been showing interest in Timber Wolf because penis.

But none of that relationship stuff is important right now! The fate of everyone in the one timeline that Nathaniel Adym cares about (his own!) is about to be destroyed by The Cosmic Butcher! What I want to see is someone from the future of the timeline where Nathaniel Adym is killed come back in time to save his timeline by making sure Nathaniel Adym dies! And then someone else from the future will show up because her timeline is in jeopardy and can only be saved if the guy who wants Nathaniel Adym dead is successful and then has sex with her so she can have a child in the past that will rise up against the evil Japanese toilet overlords of her future. Seriously, Nathaniel Adym, stop being so selfish! If there can only be one timeline, why are you so insistent that it's yours? It obviously will be yours no matter what you do since you're here. Except Tom DeFalco doesn't understand anything that doesn't come in a Pop Tarts Box.

Is anyone surprised at the way this comic began?

At least he's using an omniscient third person narrator. I suppose he wouldn't know what to do once it came time to focus on another character.

Tom DeFalco: "Should Timber Wolf narrate what he thinks the other guy is thinking? Should he narrate what he thinks the other guy thinks that Timber Wolf thinks he's thinking? I've seen Scott Lobdell do it with Roy Harper. Gosh, he's such a good writer. He has such amazing control over the story and narration. I should have never hired him! He's so much better than I am. But at least I'm still better than Grant Morrison and Scott Snyder. How does anyone understand what's going on in those comics without the constant use of Narration Boxes? Fools!"

The thing I thought was some city emerging from the Earth last issue turns out to be a World Killer Machine Bot. Perhaps it is The Cosmic Butcher built from raw materials yanked from the Earth by Daggor and his pet dragon. Unless Daggor is the dragon's pet. That was awful humanoid-centric of me. Captain Adym and Tyroc and Harvest and Timber Wolf and whoever else is there (some Ravagers, I think? Superboy?) begins tossing ideas around on how to destroy it. Tyroc tries yelling at it but it must be stronger than a mountain range because he can't defeat it. Timber Wolf scratches it and talks tough. That doesn't work. Captain Adym points out that this shouldn't be happening which doesn't convince the World Killer to give up. But then Gates comes through with a plan of his own!

Run away!

What Gates is trying to say here is, "Get Batman!" That's a pretty good plan. I've seen it work time and time again. Except he's a bit busy with his party. And Superman is a bit busy with H'el on Earth. And Wonder Woman is on a big date with Batwoman. Green Lantern is dead. The Flash is fighting Gorillas. I guess Aquaman and Cyborg aren't all that busy? No? Don't bother? Okay then! Legion is going to have to deal with this themselves!

I guess after Daggor and Thrax started the World Killer Machine's autobuild program, they took off for another planet. I think Daggor was simply there to determine if Earth was a good candidate to be unterraformed so that the Cosmic Butcher could turn it into a vacation home. Once they set up the World Killer, there work was done. I'm speculating on this because Wildfire and Psykill decide to go after Daggor and Thrax and have to fly to another solar system to defeat him.

I think everyone on Earth would appreciate their help with that fight since the World Killer is the immediate threat. But what do I know? I'm not a superhero.

Meanwhile, Superboy has lost his mind to Harvest's programming and his personality has improved measurably.

The uber-violence is so much more palatable than the existential dread he was constantly whinging on about.

Daggor's mechanical droids continue to attack while the World Killer continues to build itself while the heroes continue to randomly bump into each other for short conversations while not actually doing a whole lot. In one of these conversations, Warblade tells Ridge he's welcome to come home if he does a small favor for Harvest. Then the editor tells me to see future issues of The Ravagers for more information as if I have 24 hour access to a time machine. Hmm. I guess if I had any access to a time machine it would be 24 hour access. Because if I needed it right now but didn't have access to it, I would just wait until I had access to it and visit myself when I needed it and then I'd have access to it! Twenty four hour access.

I believe Ridge will not take up Warblade's offer (whatever it is) because he hates Harvest so much. But maybe the offer will be to betray Beast Boy which would get Beast Boy out of the picture so that Ridge could have Terra all to himself? Okay, he might do that! And since Harvest hates Beast Boy because he's the only person to ever thwart one of Harvest's plans, that really could be the possibility!
And then Daggor destroys Wildfire. Or at least rips his containment suit.

And apparently everyone in Arizona can simply look up and see the explosion in whatever solar system those planets and moon represent.

While Wildfire may have blown up in a double page spread, I doubt he's dead. Even if he doesn't return before this comic book ends its run, he's still easily alive. He's simply energy and the suit contains his energy. The explosion may confuse and dissipate him for awhile, but he'll be okay.

More importantly than Wildfire's pseudo-death, Daggor finishes one speech bubble in the other solar system and then instantly returns to Arizona.

I guess this makes sense since Legion Lost #13 established that his speed was 31,558,464,000 times faster than light.

Although his arrival does not explain how Wildfire's mask ended up in Dawnstar's hand so she could cry over it, Yorick style. I probably should have said Hamlet style but I wanted to type "Yorick."

Apparently the battle between Daggor and Wildfire happened in the sky above them and all those incorrectly drawn planets were some kind of visual metaphor. The comic book didn't say anything to make me think that. That's just me imposing my own beliefs on reality so that this comic book doesn't drive me insane. And it's working really hard to do just that, especially in this next panel where I think DeFalco just said, "Fuck it. This title is over anyway."

Did DeFalco and Lobdell obtain some sort of free pass to ignore Flashpoint?

Captain Adym has already broken the no time travel rule once to get into this comic book. Now he's going to try to break the rule again and change the timeline? But what about all the people living in the timeline where the World Killer begins to build itself? You're killing them all, you monster!

The other Legion members reject Captain Adym's stupid plan as well but for less logical reasons than mine. They're afraid his stunt will kill millions of Americans in the explosion and they won't be a part of that. But there's one person left who doesn't mind!

Yay! Last stand! I'm so excited!

Harvest once again knocks everyone out with one single blast. Except for Gates who is off considering skinning out of there and doing it to Captain Adym's time bubble. Of course he won't! He'll somehow come back to save the day. And by saving the day, it will look like Legion Lost died but they will really just end up back in the future because Tom DeFalco and his editors don't give five fucks about Flashpoint and the whole fucking reason behind this Reboot.

Legion Lost #15 Rating: -1 Ranking. I don't think anything actually happened in this issue with the excepting of Wildfire exploding. Everything else is exactly where it was at the end of Issue #14. And what was up with Lord Daggor and Wildfire fighting amongst a couple of strange planets but still being in the skies of Arizona?