Lobo #3 (May 2026)

This was my brain in the late '80s, early '90s.

Lobo #3 (May 2026)
By Skottie Young, Nicoletta Baldari, Jorge Corona, Jean-Francois Beaulieu, and Nate Piekos
Cover by Jorge Corona and Jean-Francois Beaulieu
Edited by James Reid and Kathleen Wisneski

I get why people who are patriotic and religious get angry with me because I'm neither of those things. I'm sure they're thinking, "I have to pretend to be super into that shit or my peers will fucking lose it. How did you get out of having to live a performative life?!" Sometimes they try to debate me with their entire thesis being "You're a terrible person and I'm a great person because I am Christian and love the police and military and capitalism." But the thesis of my rebuttal is simply, "Okay. I don't care what you think of me. Goodbye." Is that a thesis?

I had a friend growing up who would constantly try to argue religion with me and our other friends, as if he were going to logic trap us into finally converting to Catholicism thanks to some helpful word puzzles from his hero, C. S. Lewis. Most of his arguments ended in, "Where's your faith, [my last name]?!", as if lacking faith meant anything at all to me and somehow destroyed all of my other arguments against souls or God or the existence of absolute evil or whatever other religious idea he was trying to launder through the eyes of his friends' logic sensors and belief in actual reality. As if by debating us, his ideas were just another set of equal views on the way the universe worked and not just a bunch of ancient dogma that has been used to control populaces for a couple thousand years.

So, yeah, I can understand that people who don't believe the things they espouse belief in would bristle at people who go about their lives not feeling the need to pretend in those things too. Sure, some of them actually believe that shit. But most of them, especially the ones in power (or trying to gain it) only believe in it as much as they can use it to manipulate others. They pretend they believe the things other people believe so those people will support them and they pretend to believe in those things to shit on and destroy anybody who doesn't believe them. One day, those people will all die out. I don't know when that day will be. Probably in a few thousand years because a lot of young people seem to love fascism, authority, and controlling things that don't affect them in any way at all. But one day they'll be gone because they offer nothing to the world but bad vibes, terrible takes, and abusive behavior.

I don't even care if people embrace religion for fake reasons or real reasons. The one thing which these people embrace that just makes me laugh at how huge a beta cuck it makes them is the police. Nobody fucking likes cops. NOBODY. Anybody who has ever encountered a cop has never been, "That was awesome! They really did a great job! What a needed role in our community!" I imagine the people who say they love cops must especially hate how free others are in their ability to state exactly what they think of cops. Cops are only good for feeding Wickermen. Whenever I see some poor sap flying a Thin Blue Line flag and that sap isn't a cop themselves, it fills my heart with glee that they have to live with that hypocrisy. "I love freedom and democracy so much that I want to pay a bunch of arrogant pieces of shit a ton of money to harass and beat and kill civilians!" Ha ha! Idiots.

Anyway, um, Lobo!

I love that Lobo's space pajamas are just his Omega Men uniform.

Lobo recently lost his job on a reality television show so now he's acting like he's a broke-ass motherfucker without any future. But he's still a mercenary, right? Maybe he's just sad that he's not going to be rich and famous like Nicole Richie. I'm super sad about that too. I mean that I'm not famous like Nicole Richie. I've stolen street signs, changed the letters on a fast food joint, and made a sex tape too! I guess I'm missing the key piece to her fame though: my father never fucking wrote "Hello". Stupid father.

Oh, I guess something happened to the Bounty Hunter Union when the broadcasting empire took over and all the bounty hunters lost their licenses. But some little twerpy alien guy drops by to give Lobo a psychological evaluation to kickstart the process of Lobo getting his license back. Psychological evaluation? For Lobo? To be a bounty hunter?! How can he fail?!

If I were fifteen, this panel would have instantly given me a boner. Now I'm 54 so I only have a boner in my mind.

I don't want people to think I can't pop boners at my advanced age! It's just that before I hit my late 40s, the boner drove the horniness. The boner was the beginning of the cycle and then the brain was all, "Oh shit. Let's do something with this! Why did it happen? Oh, fuck it, who cares?! Just stick somewhere warm and moist!" But now, it's the opposite. My brain actually gets horny and wants to get the sex stuff in and I have to convince my dick to join along. Oh, he joins along just fine (maybe not as staunchly and rigidly as before!) but he hardly ever starts the process anymore! I think my penis is just suffering from Weltschmerz.

The psychological test asks Lobo a series of questions in which his answers are mostly "I love fucking. I killed my entire race. I'm fucking drunk. And I don't really have any emotions other than lust (for food, women, and killing)." But eventually, the little alien dweeb asks Lobo about the first time he experienced joy that wasn't from any of the previous topics. And thus it's time for the origin story of Lobo's love of Space Dolphins! It's about fucking time!

I should note that even though I love the fuck out of Lobo, I did not follow comics for several years a number of times across my life. So if they've done the Lobo space dolphin thing at depth in some other place, I probably missed it. It's also quite probable that I just fucking forgot.

Miss Tribb is hot! Look at those gams! Too bad what eventually happens to them. Over and over again.

Little Lobo is so cute! Oh my god! I just want to cuddle the shit out of him! Also he's way cooler than all those other 4th grade nerds. I hope he kills them.

Lobo finds the controls for the aquarium and pushes the button that inexplicably destroys the glass and sets all the creatures free. I don't know why that button was installed. I guess for an emergency that I'm too unimaginative to think up. It causes Miss Tribb's panties to wad up really badly so she ends the field trip early. If there was a panel of her panties wadded up nice and snug against her alien pudenda, I'd have scanned it. So don't worry. You aren't missing anything!

Since Czarnia has no police or prison system because it's a grand utopia, nobody knows what to do with an anomaly like Lobo. So instead of murdering the little bastard because nobody knows what murder is, they call in the Pink Lantern to hug the violence out of him.

He's close to being the best lantern ever. The only thing holding him back is that I don't feel sexually attracted to him.

Lobo's memory of his childhood on Czarnia feels like a Conservative fairy tale. They love stories where the moral is "There should have been more cops." I love stories where the moral is "There should have been more Wickermen." That high school friend I mentioned earlier once had a class in high school where they split everybody up into smaller groups to manage an "island". They had to come up with some kind of budget to make their island a feasible nation state. My friend (Soy Rakelson. I've mentioned him many times before) and the jerks of his island spent their entire budget on a military. They wound up invading and taking over all the other islands which spent no money on defense. He was proud that the moral of his story was "The world needs more cops to protect all of the good people from me and these other assholes." Um, yeah. Cool, Roy. I mean Soy!

Lobo cuts off the lantern's ring finger, steals the ring, and terrorizes Czarnia for the next week with monster butterflies, devil flowers, and monstrous teddy bears. Eventually a Green Lantern comes forth to put a stop to Lobo. But that doesn't work either because the Green Lantern isn't Hal Jordan or Guy Gardner, men who would have beaten the little kid to within an inch of his stupid life. Instead, it's some weak jerk who takes pity on the child and chooses mercy over punishment. Lobo takes advantage of this and steals back the Pink Lantern Ring. That's the end of the memory because, I don't know, Lobo had no greater joy from not murdering, sexing, and drugging after that?

In the "end" (you'll get those quotes when you see the next scan!), Lobo decides he's bored of the psychological evaluation and just quits. He goes back to being happily unemployed.

What a windfall of Lobo ass this month!

The Ranking!
I love Lobo but I just feel like this series is missing something. Oh, I know exactly what it's missing: Simon Bisley, Alan Grant, and Keith Giffen! But that's okay because nostalgia is only good for horseshoes and hand grenades. I can enjoy a new thing that isn't the old thing that I loved while still feeling the feelings that I'm feeling where I feel like the new thing just isn't up to snuff! I'm a complicated and complex organism formed from multitudes of other organisms basically working together to create a meat shell that can sustain sentience! And if I can ignore all of that while reading this new Lobo, I can certainly ignore this isn't the thing I once loved and that death has claimed Keith and Alan! I don't think it will ever be able to claim Biz though. He'll probably kick death to pieces if it ever comes for him.

Lobo #2 (April 2026)

Goddamn that Lobo logo makes me so happy.

Lobo #2 (April 2026)
By Skottie Young, Jorge Corona, Jean-Francois Beaulieu, and Nate Piekos
Cover by Jorge Corona and Jean-Francois Beaulieu
Edited by James Reid and Kathleen Wisneski. And I guess Paul Kaminski, too

I cannot believe that The New 52 decided to toss this logo into the trash in favor of that fucking nothing logo they used for "I paint French Girls" Lobo. Whoever was in charge of the redesign was all, "Our new Lobo is too much of a pansy ass cufflink wearer to ride a hog so his logo shouldn't look anything like a motorcycle at all. It should just be regular letters but with some spikes coming out of the letters! And the letters should get smaller as they approach the edge of the page to simulate that a child with no sense of space and perspective were drawing it because then readers will be prepared when they read the comic book and think, 'Did a fucking baby write this shit?!'" After seeing this logo, I needed to refresh myself with the awful experience of reading Twat Lobo #1, mostly so I could really appreciate having Lobo back in his proper form. While doing so, I noticed a comment on my review of Twat Lobo #1 that I hadn't responded to. It went a little something like this:

"This Lobo is more like how he was in Omega Men and Justice League International, back when he was a scary villain rather than the crap joke Simon Bisley made him out to be. I eat my own poo and find it delicious! P.S. This anonymous comment is not Cullen Bunn at all!"

An interesting take calling New 52 Lobo a "scary villain" when he was waifier than a Victorian girl with dysentery and had less testosterone. In the first issue of his series, he either shit or pissed his bed after having a nightmare. And yet I've never heard anybody complain about how Cullen Bunn made Lobo shit himself from a scary dream! How is that when I still, to this day, hear people moan about Kevin Smith saying a teeny tiny amount of pee dribbled out of Batman's peener after he stood too close to an explosion¹! You know another thing nobody talks about? Aquaman's priapism during Cullen Bunn's run of that loser! How does an artist not consciously incorporate a raging boner into a character's new look? It had to have been on purpose, right?! At least I already hated Aquaman when Cullen Bunn began writing him so that I wasn't disappointed at all. I was just all, "Hmm. This isn't Aquaman. Seems more like Cullen Bunn pulled an old John Carter of Mars script out of a drawer and replaced 'John Carter' with 'Aquaman'."

But enough about Cullen Bunn! Unless you want to see how much he hated me. Do you want to see how much he hated me? It makes me sad to think about it because I was having so much fun writing stupidly angry comic book reviews and he was all, "This hurts my feelings!" I probably owe him a beer or something. Maybe a Snickers.

Is that a still from Boondock Saints? Because it would make sense that Cullen Bunn would like the shittiest movie ever made!

I don't know who asked that question on Bunn's tumblr because I maintained a policy to never interfere with artists and writers online while doing my reviews, especially if I disliked their stuff. Sure, I'd talk with various writers who would reach out to me with comments, like Gail Simone and Sterling Gates. Or if they were generally disturbed by something I wrote and I noticed, I would sometimes reach out and apologize, like when Marcus To found a post where I savaged a cover he drew. But I pointed out to him that, at the end of the review, I was all, "I generally really loved this art! There's obviously something seriously wrong with me!"

This issue begins with Lobo getting his hair did for his new bounty hunter reality series for Space HBO.

Is this how haircuts work? I haven't had one in six years and I've forgotten.

On one hand, I think they missed a trick by not having one of Lobo's hairstyles be the Twat Lobo style. But on the other, much better hand, I'm glad they didn't remind me a second time of Twat Lobo, especially since I've already made myself sick to my stomach by re-reading some of my old reviews of that series. Can you get cancer from reading about terrible comic book characters? I'm so scared.

Lobo really seems to like the pompadour upsweep thing in the fifth panel but judging by the back of his head on the cover, he's going to get the "Dragonball Z".

Glancing at the cover again to take in some more of that Lobo ass-crack, I noticed that the title on the television screen (that I'm assuming, possibly incorrectly, is the name of the reality show) ends in a period. That's so uncommon that I can't think of one television show that ends in a period that wasn't an acronym like S.W.A.T. or Trapper John, M.D.. Exclamation points like in Just Shoot Me! and question marks as in Wiseguy? are just fine. But a period?! Come on!

On the second page, getting right into the thick of things as Lobo makes his first appearance in costume with "All New Lobo" in the background (possibly the actual name of his show and "The Last Czarnian." was a 60 Minutes story? Did those use periods?!).

Just like a television producer to remove everything great about a concept to put their own shit spin on it.

Lobo would rather wear his leather, jeans, and chains but a focus group suggested a superhero costume might work better. I don't understand why focus groups exist. I've come to the conclusion that anybody who would be willing to take part in a focus group doesn't know shit about anything. I guess the entire point is to get enough random opinions so that everything becomes sanitized and shoved into some median opinion that doesn't actually exist. If a few people say they love to see people die on camera, and a few people say they hate to see people die on camera, do you decide to just cripple people on camera which is something nobody said they liked? I think maybe I just don't understand focus groups. The only focus groups I've ever seen were either fictional like in Silicon Valley (was that one? I don't know!) or fucked up like in Impractical Jokers (again, are those focus groups?).²

A lot going on in the first panel of Lobo's new reality gig!

First, Slixton Blind is probably some kind of joke about the names of British towns. Or a sex joke I'm missing because, well, you know what? Never mind why I don't get sex. I mean sex jokes! Second, "brutanium" is meant to invoke the stupidity of adamantium or inertron or unbreakablygen. Third, how can a galaxy be "southeastern"? Fourth, the Main Man makes a timely '80s "I ain't gay, bro" joke. Fifth, Dawg has ripped his cape to shreds like any good animal put in stupid fucking clothes. Sixth, "Space Crime Alley" is a shot at Batman and his dead parents. Seventh, the glory hole³ has a tongue. Eighth, on this planet, gum is adult oriented. Ninth, I think that's Orko in the lower left corner. Tenth and final comment, I don't know if the purple mohawked kid with the katana on their back is a reference to something because I haven't consumed all pop culture there is to consume.

We discover, in the next panel, that Lobo's quarry's name is Brummer Jip which I'm sure is at least three slurs in one name: Gyp, Jap, and Bummer (as in a man who has butt sex with another man). Maybe "Brummer" is also a slur for somebody from Birmingham. One thing I do know: it was all intentional! Fucking Skottie Young! You naughty boy!

The president of Space HBO soon learns that Lobo ain't too good at following scripts and directions. So he blows the factory to shit when he's supposed to knock and declare his bounty hunter intentions. So they retake the shot after Lobo picks up the door from the rubble and knocks on it. But then he adds too many violent threats to the warrant and they have to take the shot again⁴. On the next take, he uses the name of the wrong advertiser so he's forced to go again. But one thing everybody knows about Lobo aside from how thick his luscious cock⁵ is is his lack of patience.

With an offensive name like Brummer Jip, I'm glad they're dead!

On Lobo's second bounty, we learn that Space HBO doesn't have an actual limit in the number of times a character can say "frag" or "fucker" or "cocksucker" or "glory hole". The studio just wants to limit Lobo's use of the word because he's supposed to be an "antihero" and not just a villainous swearmonger like he was in Omega Men or Justice League International.

It seems like Lobo's show is going out live but the director keeps yelling "Cut!" when Lobo does something he doesn't like. Maybe that's all part of the fun of the show! It's the reality of making a reality television show. It gets so graphic that even Atrocitus vomits blood⁶ while watching it.

A few more focus groups later and Space HBO has determined that what the audience really wants (more so than Lobo shoving blenders up bounties' assholes) is for Lobo the anti-hero to go after an actual hero!

Oh shit. He's going after me!⁷

No, no. He's going after Aquaman. Specifically, Cullen Bunn's John Carter of Mars Aquaman. You can tell because Lobo acts as confused as I was reading Bunn's Aquaman. You could tell I was confused because I kept saying things like, "What's this funky fish sunnofova carp doing all the way out in space?"

Um, it's also possible, being that I haven't been reading DC Comics in many years, that Aquaman now lives in space. Why? Who the fuck knows why? I still don't know why Bunn thought he'd be good out there!

Aquaman laughs in Lobo's face when he realizes Lobo's the star of a new Space HBO show called The Main Man. I'm beginning to get the feeling that Skottie Young got the okay from corporate to kill Aquaman. Or at least to have one of his hands⁸ cut off again. No way he's going to get away with laughing at The Main Man in his own comic book!

Luckily for Aquaman, Lobo's show gets cancelled mid-fight. Sure, I know Lobo's chest had been pierced by Aquaman's trident and Lobo was missing a leg. But that's all foreplay for Lobo! Aquaman was just several seconds away from being in a position where he could give himself a rimjob.

Back at Space HBO studios, Lobo learns a lesson about studios and their execs and how they'd seemingly rather fail than succeed because, somehow, it makes them more money. He throws the guy out the window, threatens the rest of the studio if they don't pay him what they promised, and walks out of the studio naked. I'd scan naked Lobo but, in all earnestness, I just don't want anybody else to drool over him. Go buy your own copy if you want to flick your Bic over my Main Man.

The Ranking!
Is this the best comic book to hit shelves in nearly thirty years? Um, yes? Duh!


__________________________________________________________________________________
¹ Or something. Fuck if I know what happened. Do you think I read whatever comic book that was in?!
² The Merriam-Webster definition of focus group: "a small group of people whose response to something (such as a new product or a politician's image) is studied to determine the response that can be expected from a larger population." How do people still buy into this shit? Why can't people be content for things to fail or succeed in the rigors of actual life? We hardly ever get anything surprising thanks to these Goddamned focus groups!
³ The term "glory hole" will get this review put behind a warning label on Blogger until I can request a human to review it. Then they'll hesitantly take a look at it knowing the phrase "glory hole" was used, click over, breathe a sigh of relief, and reply to me, "Okay, nerd, this is cool. I guess."
⁴ Also he says "Frag" too many times. I guess "frag" is space swearing and Space HBO isn't quite like Earth HBO. Unless, since this is the reality TV division, this guy is head of Space Discovery.
⁵ The focus group is suggesting I don't reference Lobo's cock, especially with the earlier use of "glory hole". I had to fire them. Into the sun.
⁶ I think that means he loves the graphic violence because doesn't he love to vomit blood on stuff?
⁷ Me! Grunion Guy! Beloved funky-shit-filled-ass hero! Son of a tuna! Sometimes in spa. . . oh wait. He said "son of a carp". Whew. I'm going to be okay!
⁸ On my first run at this thought, I typed "nads" instead of "hands".

Mother Panic #6

Mother Panic looks like the goalie for the Gotham Blades.

The Review!
In this issue, Violet discovers that Ratcatcher has taken up residence in the basement of her hotel home. She doesn't mind because his rats eat the face of the Pretty Pauper to save her mother's life. So now the Ratcatcher gets to be a heroic sidekick for Mother Panic. Although how is she ever going to sneak up on a criminal again with all of those rats in the house? Her costume will definitely smell like rat piss.

Nothing else happens this issue! There are a few reminders that this story is about pretentious artists, just in case you forgot. The comic book didn't forget. It's all, "This story is about art! But good art! The kind of art that, if you get enough people to praise it, will be considered great art! Not that other art that is pretentious and lame and unhip and doesn't make any money at all. That's the kind of art that Mother Panic fights against!" That's pretty much exactly what this comic book said.

The backup story is another one of those boring stories where a demagogue convinces the people of a DC city that superheroes are terrible. I've read that story about five bertwillion times! Enough already!

The Ranking!
No change! The art by Shawn Crystal makes this comic book worth reading.

Mother Panic #5

I know wild rats are vermin that often carry disease on their beshitted fur but they're so fucking adorable I want to hug them!

I had a rat in high school and a gerbil in college (the answer to your inappropriate question is no). If it weren't for how lazy I am, I'd currently have either a couple of rats or a couple of gerbils. But you really have to make a daily effort to keep their cages clean so your house doesn't smell constantly of rodent piss. Gerbils aren't as bad as rats but it's still more work than I'm willing to do. Plus my cat Pelafina is a mouser so I'm fairly confident I already know how my rodent friend would eventually die: listening to me yell "Pelafina!" and sort of giggling at the same time because it would be cute the way my cat was mauling the rodent, and I don't think anybody deserves to be laughed at as they're being ripped to shreds.

I hope Shawn Crystal is the new permanent artist on this book because I'm in love with the art now. It definitely counteracts the pretentious art story about a girl whose father let his friends rape her so she had to murder him which caused her to be imprisoned in a boarding school run by sadistic nuns who experimented on her and turned her into a whacked out superhero who sees strange visions when she brawls. It feels much more lighthearted now!

You know what I haven't done in awhile? I haven't proven my Grandmaster Comic Book Reader credentials! Let's get that out of the way immediately.

Remember what I suggested this guy's name should be last issue? The Plastic Pauper! Say it together now: Grandmaster Comic Book Reader!

Okay, now that I've covered the most important part of this blog (stroking my ego), I can get to the boring bits (plot, characterization, Mother Panic's superb ass (I didn't scan the picture of it last issue but it's better than Nightwing's)).

Somehow Jody Houser forgot to use the term "uncanny valley" when describing The Plastic Pauper last issue. That's a shame since Ann Nocenti used it as often as she could in every incorrect manner possible. See, Gather House did so much plastic surgery on The Plastic Pauper that they made him looks so beautiful he looks fake and nobody can stare directly at him. So maybe this is less like the uncanny valley and more like the valley past the lake and over the mountains where nobody visits because it's unheimlich unheimlich. Jody didn't use unheimlich last issue either so I thought I'd use it here.

Violet's mom has made some new rat friends. They come by to chat with her and share their food. But Violet doesn't know about them yet. She just thinks her mother is talking to the roses which is just crazy. If she knew her mother was talking to rats, she'd be less concerned because that's totally normal behavior.

I'd like to get my bats in that belfry.

I'm trying out a bunch of new phrases that mean "I want to do it!" "I'd like to blow bubbles in that milk!" "I'd like to carpet bomb that Dresden!" "I'm going to clog that toilet!" "I'm going to punch that Nazi so hard!" "I'd love to play Global Thermonuclear War with that WOPR!"

After going out on the town to remind everybody that Violet Paige totally isn't Mother Panic, just in case anybody was wondering, Violet goes out with The Plastic Pauper the next night to take out their next target, Ashley Layton. He's just another on the list of people who ruined their childhoods. I might need a new name for The Plastic Pauper because he keeps spouting Alice in Wonderland shit. What is with super villains in Gotham being obsessed with Wonderland? Is Gotham a metaphor for Wonderland that I've totally missed all of these years and have never seen any evidence for at all? I mean aside from all those villains. Maybe the Gotham Public Library only had three books: Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, and The Autobiography of Bruce Wayne: Totally Not the Batman.

The Plastic Pauper wants to snipe the fuck out of Layton's child. But Mother Panic is all, "Whoa! I think you got the wrong idea about me and my ass, buddy! I'm trying not to get my jaw broken by Batman here. If you hadn't heard, Batwoman and I are practically finger-bang buddies. Killing a helpless child will probably get my fingers 69'd from that sweet vagina. 69'd? Oh! 86'd!"

Oh! The Plastic Pauper isn't just obsessed with Alice. He's into all the fables and children's stories too. So maybe I can call him the Pretty Pederast?

Back home, Violet's mom takes some cake to the basement to share it with Ratcatcher (or his loser brother?) and his rat buddies. I guess the shot at the end of the last issue that showed he was staying in the Pike Hotel was supposed to make me shout, "Oh! That's where Mother Panic's mom is staying!" But it didn't because who remembers shit like that from month to month?

In the back-up story, Miss Stoner, the producer for Cory Edgars (the right wing anti-Batman radio nutjob), meets a man with no eyes who tells her that Batman once saved his life. Maybe his eyes are on his fingers! If so, they're now full of bacon grease because he was feeding his dog bacon. Anyway, he wants to help Miss Stoner stop Cory Edgars from destroying all vigilantes which includes her dad, Odd Man. This back-up story is always just two pages long so that's all that happens.

The Ranking!
+1! This really is a much better comic book now that I'm in love with the art!

Mother Panic #4

I already believed this comic book was pretentious. This cover just confirms it! Just look at the name of that one creator: Jean-Francois Beaulieu! Who has that many vowels in their name?!

Almost immediately, I'm sorry I called this comic book pretentious.

Classic working class comeback!

Mother Panic's first nemesis was Gala, an artist. See why I thought it was pretentious? Art?! Pshaw! That's fancy boy stuff! And fancy girl stuff, too, I guess. But all girls are fancy when you get a peek under their skirt. Woo hoo! So fancy! But this nemesis looks like he's going to be more down-to-earth. Because who doesn't like a good "YOU'RE A WHATEVER!" burn? I use it all the time. Clerks are always, "That'll be $3.50." And I yell, "You're a $3.50!" Boom! Taken down a peg! That'll teach you for thinking you're better than me with your sick ability to handle money and do sums and tell nickels apart from dimes. La dee flippin' da!

So this mystery guy (I bet his super villain identity is The Playground Rascal!) is probably a Trump supporter. He already had that sick white working class put-down and he pulled a fire alarm! Who pulls fire alarms except stupid people who haven't studied for their money handling and doing sums final?! Although he also uses a cane with a skull on the handle which might mean he's a hipster villain. Double although, a woman looks at him and has a mental breakdown so he must have a working class face. You know the kind of face! The kind that isn't great to look at and, if you happen to stare directly at it, you think, "Minimum wage."

Wow! Now who's sounding pretentious! Probably not me! It was the way you read it and not the way I wrote it, you pretentious douche!

The Playgound Rascal blows the fuck out of the Rosemary Layton Memorial Wing of the Gotham Museum of Science and Other Fake News.

This hipster douchebag is upset for some reason. I guess he likes science. Or memorial wings. Spicy!

Mother Panic in her civilian guise goes on a talk show to do the whole I'm a drug-addled gigolo who likes to take her tits out in public and fuck other women raw shtick. She stole that from Bruce Wayne! While she's on the show, she decides to have a popular Tumblr opinion about Batman.

I an not happy about comic books being so socially conscientious! Don't fucking tell me your hot (well, lukewarm) take on Batman. Instead of judging Batman by his worst written stories, how about coming up with your own story about Batman and how he rationalizes the way he does things? I'll only be happy if Jody Houser allows Batman to change Mother Panic's judgmental view on him.

These words are just Violet Paige's act to get people to hate her so they don't think she's also a vigilante superhero. She probably secretly admires Batman and has all of his action figures on a shelf in her closet.

The other guest on the show is the Ashley Layton, the hipster douchebag. Violet recognizes his voice as he passes by. It turns out he's the guy who suggested to Violet's brother that she be sent to Gather House boarding school after she murdered her father. That's the place with the nuns who taught Violet how to be the superhero, Mother Panic! I guess she's not super happy about that so she decides he needs to be punished. I bet she pulls a thread on his sweater vest and unravels it a little bit. Ooh, he'll be so angry!

P.S. I really like the art in this issue. It might even make me like the comic book about thirteen percent more. End of P.S.

Don't tell me I'm using P.S. wrong! I know what I'm doing! This is just the Post-Post part of the commentary. Duh!

Violet goes to investigate Ashley Layton's software company. After breaking in, she encounters The Playground Rascal. I think I should rename him now that more of his character has been revealed. Apparently somebody gave him so much facial reconstruction that his face doesn't look real. It's why that woman was so terrified to look at it earlier. I bet somebody uses the phrase "uncanny valley" at some point! They might even say unheimlich!

I forgot to rename him in the last paragraph! He's The Plastic Pauper! Or maybe Fancy Lad! Hmm, maybe I'll just wait to find out who he really is. The main thing Mother Panic learns is that he also went to Gather House and he also wants to make them pay. So maybe he's Mother Perfect Face? Together, they blow up Layton's building and go home to reminisce about their terrible childhood.

Meanwhile, The Ratcatcher (or Ratcatcher's brother?) moves into the basement of the Pike Hotel. That'll probably be important later.

Double meanwhile in the back-up story, the producer of the Right Wing Radio Host who wants to put an end to Batman by making everybody hate him (which totally shouldn't work but, as we've seen recently in reality, totally works on the feeble minded and stupid). The producer wants to stop him but she doesn't know how. Luckily her father was a superhero named Odd Man and he still has the suit! It'll probably fit her or else this back-up story is going to be terribly boring.

The Ranking!
+1! That increase in the ranking is simply for the art. It's got the kind of personality I like my art to have! It's practically the exact opposite of David Finch and Tony S. Daniel. Their art is for the unthinking masses who love men with fish lips and women who look twenty years younger than they actually are. The art in this comic book is for smart, sexy, good-looking people who probably write comic book blogs.