The Fall and Rise of Captain Atom #5

I'm totally up for some of this nuclear fusion.

I hope that the cover isn't Captain Atom and Captain Atom's son or else I'm going to be even more turned on than I already am.

The issue begins by the media giving Max Thrane a super villain name: Ultramax! Fuck! How did I not guess that? It was just sitting there all stupid and obvious and I didn't even bother to pick it up. To be fair, I've been pretty cautious about the things I pick up lately after the slugs on the dog shit caked in vomit incident.

This issue is called "Quantu Mechanic" which is either the dumbest name since Ultramax or I'm being too literal in the way the graphic designer smooshed the words of the title together. It's probably the first one.

Before Captain Atom beats Ultramax in a battle that just looks like two oiled up porn stars under a spotlight trying to outfuck each other, he decides to find his son, Genji.

Don't do it, Tess! You can resist! You don't have to drop everything you're doing to go play Overwatch simply because you were reminded of it! You can finish reading this comic book first. Think about this, Tess: after you finish this "review," you'll be completely caught up for the first time in so long I can't even remember! Oh, sure, I still have fourteen comic books in the stack. But they're fourteen comic books I purchased just today!

Okay, Tess! You've sold me! Besides, I can probably play Overwatch all day and night tomorrow. Unless the mechanic doesn't call back with good news about my work vehicle. At that point, I might be spending the rest of the week shopping for a new work vehicle and stressing out over my business and hating everything.

Here's a handy chart of the stress I can handle in life (in equal units of stress called Fuckingshitballs):

0 Fuckingshitballs: I can take on the world, motherfucker!
1 Fuckingshitball: Why was I even born?!
2 Fuckingshitballs: Oh my god it's gotten worse? How is that even possible?!
3 Fuckingshitballs: I curse the day my father's penis ever entered my mother's vagina for I never asked for this burden called life!
4 Fuckingshitballs: Who do I see about ending this ride?
5 Fuckingshitballs: Is there even anybody in the world who can handle this much stress? Are they stupid?

To get a good idea of how much stress it takes to get me to 5 Fuckingshitballs, here's a handy chart of how many Fuckingshitballs different things equal.

Having anything at all that I have to do coming up on the calendar: 5 Fuckingshitballs.
Talking on the phone with somebody I don't know: 5 Fuckingshitballs.
Realizing a clerk I see often mysteriously has learned things about me through the barest of interactions: 5 Fuckingshitballs.
Having to deal with a work vehicle's failing electrical system which could potentially lead to having to search for a used car to replace it which means interacting with a whole bunch of people I didn't expect to be in my life and then having to deal with the bureaucratic nonsense of registering it and then getting it outfitted for my business and just, in general, having to do a whole bunch of stuff outside of my normal routine or else my adult life is going to fall apart completely and I might as well be dead at this point because it would be so much easier and relaxing: 5 Fuckingshitballs.

As you can see, my scale only goes up to 5 Fuckingshitballs. Also, my chart probably would have been easier if I just stated "having to do anything outside of my normal routine which takes me outside of my house" equals all the Fuckingshitballs all the time. Ultramax begins going on a murder spree of people who once used his services to assassinate somebody. Since Captain Atom failed to connect with his kid, I suppose he'll have more time to stop Ultramax.

But first, as he's dropping off Genji, he's got to deal with a thing that could be anything, like maybe a toaster or a cigarette case!

Fucking stupid comic book bullshit. "How are we going to get Captain Atom to realize the military has been spying on his son?" This is the answer they come up with? A random glinting light in a window across the street? What kind of superhero rushes off to save the world from every glint of light they see out of the corner of their eyes?

Oh, today while having lunch at the St. Johns McMenamins, I overheard two old hippies talking. You're probably picturing them exactly just from the phrase "old hippies" because that's the perfect way to describe them. Both had long, scraggly gray hair cascading off balding heads and they were both wearing Grateful Dead tie dye t-shirts. I wasn't listening because I found myself thinking, "I bet I could glean some important wisdom from these two burnouts!" No, I began listening when I heard the first one say, "I could feel a really strong breeze through the larger glory hole." He then referenced a smaller glory hole that needed some work as well. Is there another usage of the term "glory hole" that I'm not familiar with? If not, these two old guys were talking about fixing up the booths in their sex shop.

Captain Atom isn't pleased with the surveillance of his son so he rushes off to confront General Eiling. While he's yelling at him, Ultramax stops by to battle. Or fuck?

Gross! Their colliding streams knocked them into the Slash Fiction Quantum Field! Now things are really going to get dicky!

Captain Atom wins the fight although is it really winning if you just shove the guy out of a portal and into who the fuck knows where? That seems more like helping him escape. Anyway, there's still one more issue so I guess they'll finish battling there. After that, Captain Atom can go do the one thing he knows he shouldn't do but won't be able to stop himself from doing: revealing his true identity to Genji. Then Genji can be all, "You're no my father!" And bam! Just like that, he'll be a DC Superhero!

The Fall and Rise of Captain Atom #4

Can we call a moratorium on using The Vitruvian Man as the basis for comic book covers?

If the basis for this cover wasn't Vitruvian Man and was instead some kind of nod toward the endless cycle of the Hindu universe, I apologize. I'm only suggesting it might be that because of the six arms thing. Now I wish Jesus had had six arms. I bet they would have gone with a different method of execution. Happy Easter!

I hate when I'm eating chocolate covered graham crackers and I wipe my lips with a napkin and it looks like I just wiped my ass with it. I also hate when the same thing happens after rimming someone.

I'm not going to pretend that I'm excited to read this comic book. I say that because sometimes I pretend to be excited about things I'm not excited about. It helps me get through the day without becoming an adult who throws a tantrum. Unless it's one of those days when I'm pretending to be excited about throwing a tantrum in Starbucks. That's an entirely different story.

I hope this series ends with Captain Atom encountering Doctor Manhattan on Mars. No wait! I hope it ends just after that when they're fucking.

I should probably point out that this is an adult rated commentary! Maybe I don't need to add that warning. How many kids actually read things on the web? There's video in them thar hills! (The video is the gold and the hills are the Internet!)

Captain Atom has been told by the military to go on television and tell the public that he's not a tool of the military. He also demonstrates that he's the opposite of the terrible Captain Atom everybody remembers from J.T. Krul's run at the beginning of The New 52. Instead of leaking radiation everywhere and being a danger to everybody, he absorbs radiation and is friend to all animals! Hooray!

"I can't put my finger on why it looks like they're both pondering the situation?" I think as I stroke my chin and ponder the situation.

Captain Atom, in his civilian identity of Cameron Scott, has hired a detective to find his son. She has a robot leg so wounded vets have a character with which to identify. This turns out to intersect with one of my hobbyhorses:

Close-up shots of women's legs while wearing skirts!

Captain Atom's first mission as a government tool is to figure out why a man being put to death who was hit by one of Captain Atom's Quantum Tantrum Blasts has remained in a stasis field for five years. His name is Max Thrane and I bet he winds up taking some kind of stupid super villain name like Max Power!

A STAR Labs scientist is on the scene to explain how they know the things they know about the "Temporal Warp Bubble." See, they know time is stopped inside the bubble because Max Thrane hasn't grown any facial hair! But even though time has stopped, his heart is still beating, though slowed down exponentially. Yes, he said exponentially. I have doubts he means it in the literal sense. He probably just means "slowed down a lot!" Which means maybe he should have said it's slowed down logarithmically? I'm beginning to doubt this scientist's scientific credentials. You can't just say he's from STAR Labs and get me to buy into his nonsense!

Max Thrane manages to absorb a bunch of Captain Atom's power and escape his Temporal Warp Bubble. He also escapes the prison. What he most likely doesn't escape is the plot to this comic book. I'm sure Captain Atom will hunt him down and defeat him in the rematch.

Captain Atom's detective tracks down Captain Atom's kid and his name is Genji. Which reminds me it's time to play Overwatch! Goodbye!

The Ranking!
No change! Captain Atom may have had trouble tracking down Genji but Dr. Megala has been keeping an eye on him and experimenting on him in secret for years. So far, he hasn't shown any signs of being a superhero. But I'm sure that will change when his dad tries to hug him and he's all, "Where were you when I was growing up?! DADDY ISSUES!" Then his Quantum Pilot Light will flare up and he'll be Captain Atom Kid!

The Fall and Rise of Captain Atom #3

Tragedy! I don't mean the death of Captain Atom's wife. I mean the shape his ass is in.

• Captain Atom has returned to the year 2017. He'll probably meet his seventeen year old son this issue. Luckily he can't create a time paradox by accidentally causing his son to fall in love with him because this is the present. Time paradoxes can only happen in the past, for some reason.

• This issue is called "Back to the Future." I feel like Cary Bates may have ripped off that title from somewhere.

• Dr. Megala has been waiting for Captain Atom to return. He's been pining away in his wheelchair, slowly falling apart. Although the guy talking to Captain Atom through the drone doesn't look like a decrepit old man at all. Maybe that's because Captain Atom left The New 52 universe and arrived back in the Rebirth Universe. That should explain everything.

• Captain Atom discovers his wife died seven years ago. I probably didn't have to mention that since it's right there on the cover.

• The most important thing to change since Captain Atom returned is that he can transform himself into a normal person. That's always a plus when you're a superhero. It's tough writing a character who can't look human. Or one that doesn't look human and can't talk! Remember Skitters from Teen Titans? She sure didn't last long! When she was normal, she couldn't do anything. But then to become interesting and transform into Skitters, she had to spin a cocoon which took like a whole day. When she emerged, she was now a superhero but she couldn't communicate and was super gross and nobody gave a shit about her. What a terrible character.

• Dr. Megala and General Eiling test out Captain Atom's new powers and discover he's the most powerful hero to ever grace the DC Universe. I think. He's offered a job working with the government but turns it down. But since the offer wasn't really an offer and more like one of those "Do it or we'll ruin your life" things, Captain Atom will probably change his mind. Especially when he discovers he has a seventeen year old son. That's reason enough to not have his life ruined, I guess. I'd rather go to jail for three counts of manslaughter than have to pretend I'm interested in some seventeen year old stranger who just happens to share my DNA.

The Ranking!
No change! It's kind of boring but I expected that from a Captain Atom comic book.

The Fall and Rise of Captain Atom #2

"I've got it!" screams the mistaken artist believing he's come up with a dramatic comic book cover.

Imagine, if you will (because it's not hard. Just fucking go along with this. Stop being so stubborn), driving through the American Southwest in the 1950s. You've got the top down in your huge steel car that steers like a child's spring-loaded rocking horse and is painted the colors of a football team that hasn't won a homecoming in twenty years and whose mascot is a fish nobody has ever heard of. Don't try too hard to figure out what that reference might be because it isn't a reference. It's just a colorful turn of phrase to get your imagination going but in a way that isn't directing it too narrowly. You're free to imagine your own world, baby!

Dammit. Stop interrupting. Now I need to start again.

Imagine, if you will, driving through the American Southwest in the 1950s with that car and stuff. The stifling wind blows back your hair and tastes slightly of electricity and cancer. You've passed through half a dozen small two gas pump towns where old fellas greet you at the pump and their wives greet you inside at the register. Too many stray dogs to count have sniffed at the cuffs of your pants or the hem of your long skirt, depending on what you've decided to be wearing in the fantasy. Maybe you're naked. What do I care?

Are you still imagining? Okay good! You're getting a bit weary from the road (unless you're just dizzy from the radiation in the atmosphere) and you see a town up ahead in the distance. It'll probably have a small motel where you can unwind by masturbating frantically in the shower as you wash the dirt of the road and the gamma rays of the air from your tangled hair. But what you don't know is that this town hides a secret. You might be too self-involved when you arrive to notice how it's different from other communities. Like antelope at a watering hole, the residents glance furtively about them without even realizing they're doing it. They're kinder than the people you've met previously who have been far kinder than the people you left behind in the big city you're imagining you came from. If you imagined you're from a smaller place, fix that! That's a part of the fantasy that you don't get to control, jerko!

You pull into the motel parking lot (The Setting Sun Inn) and laugh audibly. Not the kind of laugh you'd emit upon hearing a neighbor's anecdote about somebody at work making a huge fool of themselves but a kind of relieved chuckle. So many motels along this stretch have entered the atomic age by cutely referencing the testing of nuclear weapons that it's a slight comfort to be staying in one that decided to keep the old fashioned charm of a name that represents the end of a long, weary day and the promise of a restful night's sleep. Of course you only feel that way because you don't yet know this town's secret.

Perhaps you get lucky and your rest is fulfilling and peaceful. You wake, masturbate again, grab a quick breakfast at the diner across the parking lot (Also The Setting Sun but a Diner instead of an Inn. You might remember later how you thought it should be The Rising Sun Diner as you strode across the already too hot asphalt on your way to grab some hash browns and gravy), and drive out of town without ever learning why the town was different from any other town you've driven through on your journey. You eventually make it to wherever you were headed for whatever reasons spurred you on to that destiny. Hope for a better life on the West Coast? A chance at romance? Running from the bodies you buried in the crawl space under your neighbor's house. Who knows! None of that is pertinent to this fantasy.

But in the end, you aren't lucky. Because if you were lucky, I would end this fantasy and you would be sitting there thinking, "What the fuck was the secret?! The secret, goddammit! What was it?! You can't end your story like that!" So even though the secret might not be pleasant and most likely will end in the death of the main character (which is you, remember), you can't bear to not know it. You would sacrifice the safety and happiness of your alternate timeline self simply to satiate your curiosity. What a fucking bastard.

So instead of having a restful sleep, the clerk at the front desk grabs your wrist as she hands you the key to your room. She still smiles at you but there's an urgency in her grasp and you feel her desperate need to articulate something to this stranger who thinks they're just passing through. And, again, you might be one of those. But the clerk feels she can't take that chance. She's been complicit in the death of too many strangers who weren't let in on the town's secret. Her fingernails begin to dig into your wrist and you pull back, maybe a bit too frantically. She's caught you by surprise and your heart rate skyrockets. For the first time since you've entered this town, somebody's smile falters. Her lips tremble and her eyes go glassy and distant. "Don't stay," she croaks in a voice straining to not break into a sob. You almost bolt out of the front office but that curiosity that resides in your actual chest also lives in the chest of your alternate persona in this story. You have to know. What's going on. Why should you leave? So you ask.

"Why?"

But before the clerk (Ms. Waverly. Her name was Ms. Waverly. The black and gold nameplate near the little bell read Ms. Waverly) can answer, the air around her shimmers. You hear a muffled roar that seems to echo down from above as if you were at the bottom of a deep canyon and somebody was yelling from the top of the cliff's edge. The air around Ms. Waverly streaks red and black and shimmers like the air over a desert road. A blast of warm air punches your hair back and stings your face. It only takes a second or two but in the end, Ms. Waverly is gone. The shock of the incident keeps you from noticing, at least for a few seconds, an intense pain in your right foot. You were standing back on your left heel and your right foot was still stretched out ahead of you, where you were standing when Ms. Waverly grabbed your wrist. You look down and notice blood gushing out of the front of your shoe. Not the front, exactly, but what is now the front after having lost about an inch of the toe. Your big toe has been sheered in half, and maybe the tips of several others. If you hadn't fallen back violently when Ms. Waverly grabbed you, what happened to your right foot might have happened to the rest of your body.

You stumble out the door away from the incomprehensibility of whatever the hell that was. You run, limping heavily, toward the diner across the parking lot where two old men sit smoking on a bench outside. Their eyes open wide with fear as you stumble toward them and they do that thing you noticed earlier...that bit where they glance back and forth quickly and tense up, like rabbits having seen the shadow of a hawk. They know you've seen it. Their secret. You don't yet understand it and maybe that's a good thing. But, once again, you have to know. What just happened in front of your eyes? What took your big toe?

"Ms. Waverly!" you stammer. "She just...she...she's gone!" One old man stands up and puts an arm on your shoulder.

"Come on, kid," he says, possibly saying son or daughter, depending on your vision of yourself and how you present yourself to the world. "Take a seat. You're still here, by God. You'll be okay." You slump onto the bench next to the other old timer who nervously chews on the end of an unlit cigar.

"A mighty shame," he states, unemotionally and with a voice like irradiated gravel blown across the potholed asphalt of a long Southwest road. Your breaths come hard and fast and you feel like passing out. The first man, the one who stood at your approach, kneels down in front of you and begins removing your shoe. He pulls a handkerchief out of his back pocket and wraps it around your bleeding foot. The other man pats your knee and gently takes your hand in his surprisingly smooth grip.

You win the fight to stay conscious because you have to ask: "What was it? What did I see?" The old man tending to your foot looks up at you, makes eye contact, then looks over at his friend. You glance over at his friend and see him biting his lower lip, the cigar now in his free hand. He begins to speak in that voice which reminds you of a motorcycle throttling low.

"Imagine, if you will, an ocean. In that ocean float millions and millions of plankton. What they know, who can say? They're just little creatures and their entire world is simply drifting en masse towards whatever destiny has in store for them. For what is an inconceivably small fraction of them, being that whales are so large and eat so many at a time, death awaits. There one moment. Peaceful, tranquil...or whatever the feeling of just being is to a goddamned plankton. And just gone the next. Imperceptible to the others, really. The whale is on a scale so large that the plankton, if they were sentient, couldn't articulate what was happening. They couldn't know the scale of the world they lived in. Imagine only knowing a world of plankton. And imagine you're the plankton at the top of the plankton food chain. What do you have to fear? You eat them little veggie bastards getting their energy from the sun. You have nothing to fear. Except...there's this thing that happens. This thing where your mates just up and disappear for no reason at all. Just huge swaths of them...gone."

Your foot is throbbing but your heart has stopped racing. The old man's story has distracted you from the terrible sight you saw earlier, even as his story offers a vague kind of explanation for what you saw. He's telling you the town's secret the only way he knows how. By parable. Because what you've quickly understood from the story is that the people of the town are not, like they thought, at the top of the food chain yet have no concept of what terrible whale engulfs them one at a time. The only evidence? The occasional organic matter that comes slightly too close to the feeding but not close enough to be consumed.

These men have obviously told this story before. They recognize the moment you understand what they're saying, and they grow quiet. You want to know why they don't leave. You want to know how they have survived to the age they are. You want to know how they live with this terrible knowledge that their lives aren't in any way under their own control. But what you don't want to know is the real secret they have yet to tell you. It's the secret they keep to themselves, and it's the secret they won't pass on to you as you race out of town in the middle of the night. Why burden a stranger passing through with the truth, one of them will say to the other long after you've fled. Why let them know that this creature...these creatures, for surely the laws of nature work the same on whatever plane this predator exists...doesn't merely hunt in this one small irradiated town in the American Southwest. They feed across the world.

The old man with the cigar pulls another from his shirt pocket as he watches the dust roil around your car as you back out of the parking lot across the way. He hands it to his friend and they light their cigars together as they watch your taillights disappear down the perfectly straight highway that connects their little town to the rest of the world. They inhale deeply and, as they do, they shift their glances quickly to the right and to the left, unconsciously, and constantly, keeping an eye out for something they'll almost certainly never see coming.

The Review!
• This issue is called "Past Imperfect" and can I get a fucking memo passed around every comic book office across the world that reads: "NO MORE FUCKING VERB TENSE PUN TITLES!" How many fucking stories are there now called "Past Imperfect" or "Present Perfect" or "Past Perfect Continuous." Okay, that last one doesn't really work. But enough already!

• Captain Atom went back in time to 1994 last issue. This issue begins in 1997 so I guess Zero Year wasn't a big deal. Especially considering there were no superheroes. Yes, Captain Atom points out that in 1997, there are no superheroes. So now that's fucking continuity. Have fun fucking that one up, future writers who wind up mentioning somebody doing superheroics twenty years in the past! I mean, Superboy must have been around doing some shit, right?

• Captain Atom is 27 years old in 1997. So I guess he's going to be doing some more time travel soon since there's no way DC Comics is going to have a forty-seven year old hero in the current DC Universe. Hopefully Captain Atom will still fuck things up so badly that the DC Universe's old continuities will somehow fold over onto the current one and they'll all, somehow, coexist.

• Captain Atom goes about his life, dating and working and pretending to write science fiction so he can learn about time travel from professors of physics who only have speculative and theoretical ideas on how it works and so can't really help him out. Not that he really wants help. He just wants somebody to basically say, "You know what? It's okay to enjoy yourself without fear of fucking up the future. You deserve it, man!"

• In the year 2000, Captain Atom's wife Takara becomes pregnant. Okay. So that would make a seventeen year old new Captain Atom. Got it! I can probably wrap up the review on this entire series now, right?

• On his way home from being tested, Captain Atom is shot by some carjackers. The bullets force his body to go critical (since he still has quantum traces of his powers inside him or some other technobabble bullshit). And since Captain Atom never existed in the year 2000, he's sent back through time! He winds up back in 2017. I think. There are clouds over his head that read, "Give to 2017 super hero fund." So, you know, I guess that's a clue?

The Ranking!
No change! Next issue, Captain Atom probably meets his son! I hope they don't have sex. That would probably cause a time paradox.

The Fall and Rise of Captain Atom #1

I know why he fell. He was written by J.T. Krul.

Captain Atom is a really clever character because his secret alias is Captain Adam. He is also subversive because he's become a caricature of Doctor Manhattan who was a caricature of Captain Adam. I don't know why that makes him subversive but it sounds like it probably does and by saying it, it sounds like I know things that I really don't fucking know. It's better to write vague things that hint at hidden depths than to try to write long explanations of things you hardly understand. That's tantamount to dumping a whole load of chum in the ocean to bring sharks to your boat. Except the ocean in this instance is the Internet and the sharks are the Actually Nerd Trolls. Boy how I hate those guys. Nobody ruins a good joke like an Internet Actuallyier!

I don't remember when we last saw Captain Atom. Probably in Convergence or Futures End but those don't count. He may also have made a cameo in Firestorm or some other comic book that treats nuclear men farting radiation across the city as normal and nothing to be afraid of. But I think, in regards to this story, the important last time we saw Captain Atom was probably in the last issue of the J.T. Krul series which went about five issues too long (most of those issues were at the beginning of the series. What I'm saying is that Krul began the story in entirely the wrong place). In that issue, I believe Captain Atom had decided to go live on Mars like another character that he was based on who was based on him. You know the one! The one that, along with his friend Ozymandias, is fucking with the Rebirth Universe.

Before I begin reading this book, I'd like to be transparent about my bias of Captain Atom. I don't have a specific problem with his character (except that he's military and, thus, lacks any sort of whimsy that doesn't involve calling your friends gay retards with whores for mothers). I have a problem with his usual cast of characters. Why does he always have to be at odds with General Eiling? That guy isn't a super villain at all! He's just a regular villain. And Doctor Megala?! He's just a pathetic old Daddy Issue in a wheelchair. I really wish Captain Atom would kill them both so he could find a proper nemesis, maybe Captain Atomess! She's be super hot and horny and constantly be making fusion innuendos.

The issue begins at the end of 2012. Captain Atom isn't hidden away on Mars but he has been contained by Dr. Megala deep underground. Captain Atom decides he's too dangerous to live and meltsdown. But that's probably not the end of his story because I'm only on page four of the first issue of a six issue series. Hopefully he'll simply time travel to 2016 and become the new Jonni DC, continuity cop. But instead of making sure everything is in continuity and fixing the shit that isn't, he should just go around saying, "Who cares. Don't care. That's continuity now even if it makes no sense. Yep, that's continuity too. And that. And that. It's all canon, bitches!"

After Captain Atom blows, the narrative moves to twenty-three minutes earlier instead of four years later. Dammit! Is this Captain Atom story going to start in the wrong place as well?! Writers need to stop thinking they need to explain every single little thing and just let the story get to the interesting bits. Not knowing the whole story is always better than knowing the whole story. Nobody needs Star Wars Episodes I-III! We're better off imagining that shit!

Oh, he was on the moon. That's super different than going to Mars. Totally not like that other guy.

Captain Atom is out flying around irradiating everything when he comes upon a cruise ship being swamped by a giant wave. He decides to intervene so that now the people on board don't just have to worry about drowning, they have to worry about cancer as well. What a huge dick. I mean, he keeps the boat from sinking but only due to a huge burst of radiation which changes the water around the boat into gelatin.

Oh, fuck you, random nobody boat person with opinions.

Well, I'm convinced! Those passengers on the cruise ship must know what they're talking about since they're people and they're talking which means they're, like, influential and shit. I mean, I do hate when people talk shit about Batman and Superman when they're only trying to help. Am I, in a way, one of those people? I don't talk shit about Batman and Superman though. I just talk shit about D-list superheroes who have never been able to rise in popularity even when they had a huge starring role in Zero Hour.

Captain Atom's rescue of the ship has sent his body into spasms of nuclear explosions and is about to endanger all life on Earth. But being on the moon was so lonely!

Captain Atom's "flare-ups," as they're being called by Eiling and Megala for insurance reasons, attract the attention of Superman, Cyborg, and Hal Jordan. Remember, this is 2012! So Hal Jordan is still a stubborn piece of shit ready to fight anything with fists Green Lantern. And Superman is still New 52 Superman. And Cyborg is still boring.

Dr. Megala explains to the Justice League that Captain Atom isn't the dangerous threat they think he is; he's actually a lot worse. And he says it right in front of Captain Atom. No wonder Captain Atom kills himself at the beginning of this comic book.

The Justice League decide to escort Captain Atom back to Megala's Suppression Dome but don't make it back in time. Another way to look at it is that they brought Captain Atom over a populated area just in time to destroy most of the city when he blows up. I suppose they save everybody by blocking the individual rays shot out of Captain Atom as if he were a grenade throwing shrapnel instead of a seamless burst of deadly energy that would have been impossible to stop. Or at least harder to depict being stopped by Cyborg's White Noise Cannon in a visual way.

The narrative finally catches up to the point where Captain Atom tried to kill himself. But instead of dying in an atomic blast, he's shot through time back to 1994. Oh no. Am I going to have to relive Zero Hour all over again?!

The Ranking!
Once again, a Captain Atom comic book has begun at the wrong place in the story. There is too much prologue here. I suppose it's one way to flesh out a six issue miniseries seeing as how six issues is always about two issues more than the story needs. But even though I'm not a fan of Captain Atom and this story was relatively mundane and probably unnecessary, I'm interested to see what they do with Captain Atom going back to the Zero Hour year. Will he fix continuity so that I can just resume pretending every story I've ever read from DC actually matters to the current universe? Not that I don't already think that anyway. I just wish DC Comics would put out a press release that just says, "Fuck it! We screwed up multiple times since 1985. Just forget all that shit about certain stories not having occurred. They all happened and every character remembers every story whenever the current writer needs them to remember it!" I think Captain Atom could be that press release!

Cyborg #3

I am so uninterested in this comic book that I just read my summary of last month's story and wasn't really paying attention.

To be or not to be! That is the question that every highschooler reads and thinks, "What the fuck are you talking about, dude?" At least until the teacher spends forty minutes trying to get somebody in class to understand it before telling them, "It's about suicide, you nitwits! SUICIDE!" And then they're all, "Oh yeah? Fuckin' emo, dude!"

Man, I hope that Hamlet soliloquy is actually about suicide! Or was actually said by Hamlet! I don't think it was Macbeth because he was the one who had to battle the Ents and I don't think it was Othello because his speech began, "To love well or to love too well!"

This issue begins in the middle of a Justice League operation!

I realize Batman is trying to be motivational but this seems a bit harsh. How would he like it if every time he was struggling, Superman would yell, "Do it for your long dead, murdered parents!"

This is just a nightmare so it's really Cyborg saying this to Cyborg. That makes more sense. Cyborg has always been his harshest critic. Mostly because writers think it's the most fucking amazing shit to tell stories about examining what it means to be human using robots and cyborgs. And people seem to love it so much that every time I hear anybody say anything about Westworld, they quote each other with that whole "examining what it means to be human" line. We get it! You're so smart! You can parrot the smart things to say about a show you like! Bravo!

Oh, um, also, regular people that aren't robots are always their own harshest critics. So none of the Justice League is going to be this critical of Cyborg in real life! Hell, none of them would ever think Cyborg was the reason the Justice League failed. He's like the seventh reason to blame their failure on after Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, and Green Lantern!

No, I didn't forget Aquaman.

This is the exact opposite of what most women say to me! Stupid simple machines outdoing me in the bedroom!

Wonder Woman concludes that Cyborg not being human is the real flaw in the Justice League. You can tell it's a dream because she's not saying this for Aquaman's benefit while actually darting her eyes towards Aquaman and nodding in his direction and trying every other bit of body language in existence to say that Aquaman is the biggest flaw.

Cyborg wakes up from his nightmare and has an idiotic conversation with Sarah Charles.

Cyborg: "I just had a nightmare!"
Sarah Charles: "Not possible. I totally killed you for a bit there so I could update your memory banks. I mean, I didn't kill you. I, um, put you on sleep mode! Get it? Because you're not human!"
Cyborg: "No, seriously! I had a nightmare!"
Sarah Charles: "No you didn't. Your brain was shut down."
Cyborg: "Are you a scientist? You're a scientist, right? Well, here's some evidence for you to work with: I just had a fucking nightmare!"
Sarah Charles: "Not possible. Maybe you just imagined you had a nightmare because you're stressed out?"
Cyborg: "I hate you."

Cyborg doesn't know how much he hates Sarah Charles until the next part of their conversation.

What the fuck does that mean, "fully normal"?! You think he's a freak!

I don't know why Cyborg made boxer shorts when he transformed. It's not like Sarah Charles, a doctor and scientist, hasn't seen a fifteen inch flaccid penis before. That's probably how big he'd make it, right? He'd be overcompensating for not really feeling human!

Vic and Sarah go out to a jazz club later where Vic runs into an old ex-girlfriend of his. She's a jazz singer which is why he probably doesn't remember her. The two halves of that sentence might not seem to make sense to you but have you ever dated a jazz singer? Oh wait. You probably wouldn't remember!

Her name is Britton Claire and she introduces herself as Vic's ex. Then Sarah calls her a slut and stomps out like a child. Sarah Charles is the worst! Also she might not have actually called Britton a slut. But she wanted to! You could see it in her eyes! Will Conrad draws a great pair of 'What a Slut' eyes! Remember when he was doing art for Stormwatch? Apollo looked at Midnighter that way constantly!

Britton explains that Vic broke off their relationship because he was in love with another woman. I've never broken up with someone because of that! Once I broke up with somebody because they were intruding on my time to play Apple IIe games! I was all, "I like putting my ding dong into your hoo-ha but I really need some time to become the paragon of virtue!"

Vic goes back to the lab to find out why his memory is so screwed up. The only person working is T.O. Morrow who quickly hides all of his illicit robot experiments to help Vic regain the memories that Vic's dad and Sarah Charles turned off after the Boom Tube accident.

Instead of restoring Vic's memories, Doctor Morrow explains that he's going to have to shut Vic down because Vic isn't really a person; he's just an out of control machine. And since Doctor Morrow was too stupid to just turn Vic off while Vic thought he was getting his memories restored, it's a good thing he called Superman in to help push Vic's off button.

And since Superman is all, "Sure, Doc Mor! I'll beat up Cyborg for you on your word alone!", it must mean this is all still part of Vic's nightmare. He's probably still stuck in some machine with his fake robot dad trying to force him to accept his robohumanity.

No, this is a new nightmare. Apparently it began when Doctor Morrow shut off Vic's brain activity to restore his memories. Just like earlier with Sarah! But this time, Vic's dream has him flipping the fuck out and he decides to go sleep vandalizing Detroit. Or Metropolis. Wherever the fuck this STAR Labs is.

Robot Daddy Silas Stone decides to take this opportunity to weasel his way into Vic's life and STAR Labs while Human Daddy Silas Stone is trapped in Robot Daddy's evil lair.

Meanwhile, Vic is still struggling in his nightmare where, I guess, he'll learn something important about himself. Like how he's human! Didn't he just learn that lesson in the Kilg%re story? Maybe he needs the message reconfirmed every few issues before he can truly believe it.

The Ranking!
0! Mostly I don't care about Cyborg or this comic book. But since it isn't demonstrably terrible in whatever it's doing that I don't care about, I won't penalize it! It can just float somewhere in the middle of the viscous substance that is mediocrity. That's probably for the best since Cyborg comics are used to being mediocre.