Gotham By Midnight #6

The Joker versus The Spectre. Has that ever happened?

This issue begins with the Midnight Shift mourning the loss of Justine the nun. I don't know why. She's with her husband now, right? They attend the funeral and, afterward, Jim Corrigan has the right attitude. "I hate funerals," he scowls. Damn right. Fuck funerals. I mean the usual funerals that we all eventually just get roped into because nobody wants to deal with all the bureaucracy of burial shit when they've just lost a loved one. At my grandmother's funeral (on my mother's side), the priest (or whatever. Fuck if I know anything about the nomenclature of church henchmen) gave his "eulogy" for her. Although he didn't know anything about her because who knows the last time she had any connection to any church in her city. I'm fairly certain she just slowly became an agnostic after many years of observing hatred and racism by other people in her church who professed to be Catholic. But this priest's eulogy was based on having Googled her name. Then he spoke about what her name meant and how it probably represented who she was. I'm still disappointed with myself that I didn't stand up and just tell him to shut the fuck up. Her family knew who she was and didn't need to say anything out loud to the other family in the room. The only person to get up to speak was a hyper-religious cousin whose only story of my grandmother was how when my grandmother was sick in the hospital and afraid of dying (she lived and later, eventually, died at home), this cousin convinced my grandmother to accept Jesus Christ as her lord and savior. So her entire story about my grandmother was how she, this cousin, used my grandmother's fear and desperation to tic off another name in the "Saved" column. Fucking piece of shit. I should have stood up and told her to shut the fuck up!

Funerals need some serious competition. Enough with this religious monopoly on death! I think I'm going to open up a paint gun arena where your loved one's ashes are mixed into paint ball pellets. Then the deceased's loved ones and friends can spend the day chasing each other around and shooting each other with their dead friend, sibling, mother, or son.

James wants to go raise a glass to Justine because everything makes James want to go raise a glass. He's such a stereotype. But instead the Midnight Shift has to go investigate some strange goings on at the Powers Corporation. Hey! That's where they designed the Honey Bunny Bat Armor!

All Rook cares about is getting the proper receipts! Document, document, document, people!

While everybody is pointing fingers at the Spectre and saying things like, "HOLY FUCKING SHIT DUDE!", James Corrigan decides he should clear all of the airs. So he's all, "You think I'm scary?! Drake is a fucking Banshee! She screams, somebody dies! So don't fucking jump out at her from the closet, you bozos!" I wonder if it's any scream or if it's a particular kind of wail? I wonder if she can do it any time she wants or if it's just somebody's impending death which makes her scream? I wish I had a Banshee scream! But only if you could choose the victim. I don't want one of those monkey paw banshee screams that is all, "So, you want somebody to die, do you? How about...your favorite porn star! Ah ha ha ha ha!"

Tarr, the guy that can speak Ancient Gibberish, has wandered into the church to chastise Jesus Christ. As if He cares! Some nerd is going to question His choices? Please! Jesus was crucified a virgin, man! You think it could get any worse than that?! Okay, so maybe he wasn't a virgin. It's not like The Bible talks about anything he was up to in his teens and his twenties. Those are prime years for putting your penis in other people's orifices! God was probably, "Okay son. You have this many years to do whatever you want and I promise I won't document any of it. Sure, some crackpots might come along and write about your life during those years but I'll make sure all that shit gets labeled as apocrypha, got it? Now go have fun because you are in for some wild shit when you get to your thirties!"

The team winds up at the Powers Corporation which reminds me I have those old Power Company books by Kurt Busiek to read which reminds me that Kurt Busiek came into my comic shop last Wednesday while I was buying comic books. He was busy talking with the owner so I didn't suck his dick at all. Although I probably owe him at least a handjob with a little ass play simply for writing Astro City.

This guy Jenner they meet at the Power Corporation says their new Powerwatch will sell "billions" by the end of the month. That guy is delusional. Who is buying all of these expensive watches?! I hope he isn't in charge of anything more important than bullshit press releases or human resources or this company is in trouble. The company might be in trouble anyway since a ghost is haunting it. And it's not a cute ghost that just creates cold spots and rocks rocking chairs. It's a ghost that screams and sprays blood and causes pieces of human hearts to materialize in the throats of employees. It's one of those ghosts that everybody is afraid of, even people who sometimes sing that they ain't afraid of them.

He probably had a stroke after the twentieth time hearing Jenner repeat that the Powerwatch will sell billions in a month. Even if everybody in the United States bought one of your stupid watches which most of them can't afford anyway, you'd still not even be close to selling your first billion, you dumb asshole! I have a headache!

While Jim investigates the clock on the wall which he saw in a vision earlier, it begins to bleed. Then the ghost appears and screams, "ALL HANDS". Then it writes "Return on investment" on the wall which is a dead giveaway that Jenner and the Powers Corporation killed the man from too much stress. Plus they forced him to take speed to stay awake for days on end because it's always beneficial to your overall product to have somebody with severe sleep deprivation on speed making crucial design decisions on an upcoming product. I bet he built in a button that zaps demons and another one that creates white noise to drown out the voices in your head and an application that translates the weird creature speaking nonsense in the corner of the room. Hmm, now I want that watch.

Meanwhile, Manhunter stops by with some hot DC Lawyer action for Lieutenant Weaver (I'm always surprised when I spell Lieutenant right on the first try!) and the Midnight Shift!.

They better have those Jeezly Crow receipts handy!

Gotham By Midnight #6 Rating: No change. This was like one of those episodes of The X-Files that you know is just padding the season with a so-so mystery but filling up some of the space around that mystery with information applicable to the overarching relationship between Fox and Dana. What I mean is, in general, it was probably forgettable but some of the scenes will be remembered but in the context where a person mentioning the scene will be all, "I don't remember if it happened during Interview with Jose Chung or Postmodern Prometheus?" Although it obviously wouldn't have happened during either of those because the person speaking would obviously have both of those episodes completely memorized!

Gotham By Midnight #5

Gotham by Midnight just sounds like a late night radio show.

Good evening, Gotham. How're we all doing on this surprisingly green night? Hopefully you've got a cold glass within reach and a warm body to lean against to get you through one more Gotham night. And this one's a weird one. If you're out there all alone, huddled under an old quilt while trying to remember if you locked the front door or, if you know you did, wondering if the lock would even hold against a mad, desperate intruder, try to take a little comfort that I'm there with you, Gotham. I'll be here all night taking your calls and answering your deepest, most profound midnight questions. But before I go to the phones, let's begin our night with a little Billie Holiday and "Gloomy Sunday."

"Good evening. Welcome to Gotham By Midnight. How can I drive away the darkness, caller?" "Well, Charlie, I think I might be going mad because there's an enormous white nipple pressed up against my apartment window!"

Caller, that is a problem some of us would love to have. That's a hard one to answer though because it's an ambiguous portent. If it's a female nipple, it represents life and charity and the pure love of motherhood. If it's a male nipple, it represents whatever the opposite of that is. Like death and greed and the tainted hate of fathersocks. See, socks are the opposite of a hood because they go on the opposite end of the body!

I hated the soft, soothing voice of Charlie so I couldn't help but slip back into my own voice. Besides, I wasn't going to be able to do that stupid radio shtick for the entire commentary!

Although the whole ambiguous nipple thing does fit in to the story since The Spectre is currently trying to decide if he's going to give mother's nipple or father's nipple to Gotham. It depends on how racist the DC Universe's God is. Does he think the native people slaughtered by the founders of Gotham have a case? I mean, Gotham only named the swamps around the city Slaughter Swamp. It's not like they were even trying to hide the city's foundation on genocide! I suppose The Spectre really just has to decide if he's punishing the right people. Obviously the natives of this land have a case! But should The Spectre punish the modern day citizens for the sins of their fathers' nipples? If The Spectre were the judgment of our Christian/Jewish/Muslim God (He is the same God, so why not lump them all together, right?), he'd definitely punish them. The God of the Book really just loved dishing out punishments and he didn't fucking care at all if he was punishing the right person. Fuck, he punished all women forever with childbirth because Eve ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge! And he punished all men forever with, um, having to watch the women endure the pain of childbirth because Adam ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge! He even punished all serpents with quadriplegia because one serpent couldn't resist a good practical joke. That Guy was a dick.

While The Spectre plays Godzilla to the Ghost of Apache Chief's Other Godzilla, Tarr and Drake break into the bar to find Corrigan leaking green crap out of his face holes and Rook lying on the floor with no heart beat.

I wonder if Scott at Polite Dissent mentioned this use of the defibrillator? Hmm, no. His last post was last Easter!

Tarr and Drake had better hope that the defibrillator was free to use or that it doesn't save Rook's life because there is no way in hell that Rook is going to have the Gotham Police Department pay for this Midnight Shift nonsense.

Corrigan doesn't become The Spectre. His body is just the container for The Spectre. But when The Spectre manifests, Jim does get to hang out inside The Spectre's head kind of like Jason Rusch hangs out in Madison Payne's head. Except less sexually exciting. I think. Maybe The Spectre spends 75% of his time thinking about judgment and 25% of his time thinking about big, fat cocks?

Sister Justine and that Weaver fellow arrive at Corrigan's drinking hole because the climax of a story is best when all the characters wind up in the same place. Especially when you only have about a dozen pages left to finish the story.

What's that other saying? No Rabbis in gloryholes? Look, I'm not saying either saying is true.

How do you find a kosher gloryhole in a sea of goy gloryholes? It's the one not covered in dickcheese.

Jokes are hard to make up! Especially when the premise doesn't even make any sense.

Drake screams like a person named Drake might scream so that Weaver doesn't shoot Corrigan in the face. That would probably just free The Spectre to find some other body to inhabit. Or maybe it would just keep inhabiting Corrigan's body because isn't Jim dead already?

And then The Jeezly Crow Batman arrives to save the Goddamned day!

Or to make things worse. One of those.

I'll never understand how The Batman is so anti-gun but he's pro-every-fucking-other-lethal-weapon in the whole entire universe. Pistols are bad. But boomerangs full of dynamite are peachy! Sniper rifle? No fucking way! Gatling guns attached to the Batmobile? Awesome! Shoulder mounted rocket propelled grenades? Hmm. I actually don't know if he'd be okay with those.

Batman fails to stop Ikkondrid the Giant Ghost Monster with his missiles because his name isn't on the cover. This is Jim's book, Bruce! You don't get to save the day when you're up against magic and religion. You should be saving citizens on the street so that nobody ever dies ever. Why can't you stop death, Bruce? You fucking failure.

Batman crashes his plane into the street and then ditches it like a drunk teenager smashing daddy's car into a tree on prom night. It's good to have a secret identity! Now when the police discover the hit and run, they'll be all, "We can't arrest anybody because this car is registered to The Batman. Dammit! Who the fuck down at the DMV keeps letting this guy register vehicles in costume?!"

Sister Justine is doing that thing Abraham did to try to save Sodom. "Hey, God? If there are like, forty righteous people, will you spare the city?" "Sure!" "How about thirty-five?" "Yeah, I guess." "So then you wouldn't mind going down as low as say...thirty?" "Why not?" "What about ten, God? Ten too little?" "Why the fuck did I choose you? Always gotta question my authority! Always fucking asking for more. You little bitch." At least Justine doesn't waste God's time and just cuts right to the chase and asks to save the city due to one pure soul.

In an earlier issue, Corrigan mentioned that Drake was some kind of creature or something. And since she screams, it makes sense that she's part Banshee. This issue after she screams, she mentions that since she screamed, somebody is going to die. And if there's one thing that Darby O'Gill and the Little People taught me before Dungeons and Dragons taught it to me, it's that when a Banshee screams, somebody fucking dies.

Everyone desperately wants to live so they're all trying to convince God or Jim or The Spectre to not judge Gotham. Because they all know what happens to Gotham if it's judged. Hoo boy, do they know. Out of all the arguments, Sister Justine hits upon one that God really loves. It's that one where an innocent person pays for everybody else's crime? Huge favorite! Taken from the Jewish loophole of the scapegoat, of course. And since Justine offers herself as a martyr in place of everybody in Gotham, God and The Spectre agree. And Ikkondrid the Monstrous Ghost Giant tentatively agrees. For now. Because it's something even if it's still only one life in exchange for thousands. Eventually, Ikky isn't going to feel satisfied and he's going to come back for an appeal.

Batman comes up to Jim and is all, "What the fuck?" And Jim is all, "I know, right?"

Gotham By Midnight #5 Rating: +1 Ranking. Thanks for listening, Gotham. Now I'm going to slip out of this robe and slip into a nice, warm tub where I'll slip out of my skin and slip into another reality. Catch you on the underside, Gotham.

The Spooky Files #4

That's one nasty penis. Unless that's how they usually look and mine is deformed because mine is nothing like that thing!

Gotham has been inundated with spooky happenings lately and it's all up to the Midnight Shift to shut down the spookiness! They're spooky too but they're spooky in a good way even if they're treated like they're spooky in an embezzling kind of way by the other police task forces. Jim Corrigan is trying to hunt ghosts but his phone keeps ringing and it's Rook of Gotham Police Accounts Services and he's all, "You submitted this receipt last week, Jim, that says you ordered fifty deep dish pies from The Hellfire Club. Can you explain why we're paying for this?" And Jim is all, "You wouldn't understand! It's too spooky to discuss with you!" And Rook is all, "If you submit one more receipt for pizza parties or vats of holy water or refurbished Ouija boards,'m shutting you down, Corrigan!" And then Jim hangs up and he's all, "Nuts!"

That pretty much sums up Gotham By Midnight (aka The Spooky Files!).

"Tarr, so help me, if you submit a receipt for that weird glowing jar, I'm taking your badge!"

This issue begins with Corrigan and Rook getting to know each other better over fifteen shots of whisky. It's what cops do! They've got to let off some steam after a tough day of glaring and/or shooting at innocent people. What better way to do that then by killing themselves little by little with too much alcohol? I guess telling each other harrowing stories of their worst shifts is a better way of blowing off steam. That seems safer!

Except the kinds of stories Jim Corrigan likes to hear are Spooky Files! That can be just as dangerous.

This is how Corrigan explains putting his bar tabs on Midnight Shift's expense accounts.

The ghosts' attack on the bar forces Corrigan to turn into The Spectre. It's about time! I feel like I've been waiting three years to see the Spectre in action. He's really green and likes to use a lot of flowery language. Unless by flowery I meant biblically apocalyptic. Then he shoots green lightning out of his eyes and chokes the ghost. As he does, Tarr has a revelation about the ghosts. Children taken from their families and returned acculturated; death by smallpox; lives ruined by alcohol: the ghosts are the ghosts of the native people killed to make way for Gotham City. And they're a little annoyed with the way things went down, historically speaking.

It's about time! Wipe it off the map, Spectre!

Gotham By Midnight #4 Rating: No change. The Spectre is about to judge everybody in the city and, since it's Gotham, my guess is it will soon be just a smoking pit filled with salt. Unless Batman can save the day by swinging in and reminding The Spectre of his humanity. I think if I were living in Gotham, this might be my final night in the city. The murdering clowns and the wisecracking bank robbers I can deal with. But a massive green ghost judging me on behalf of a God I don't believe in battling a monstrous, angry ghost of the natives killed by the white settlers out for my blood when I just want to sit in my underwear and play on the Xbox? Fuck that. Metropolis, here I come!

The Spooky Files #3

Sister Justine's true face is composed of a cock, two vaginas, and a sphincter full of teeth.

If you are pregnant or have a heart condition or are pregnant with a baby with a heart condition, you should not read my commentary of The Spooky Files #3 because things are going to get quite spooky indeed. But first, I need to practice being the World's Greatest Detective by taking the third course in the Trixie Belden Course For World's Greatest Detectivating!

This course is titled "The Case of the Tricky Tattoos!" Since I live in Portland, Oregon, I bet I'll be pretty good at solving crimes involving tattoos and/or non-prescription glasses. Here is the case:

Trixie is investigating a robbery in which there are four suspects: Donna the Dip, Dapper Dave, Jailbird Joe, and Carol the Con. Where was the robbery? The 1940s?! Did somebody steal a thing that represents the 1940s that would be totally hilarious to people that grew up in the 1940s but since I didn't I can't think of any? Maybe a Zoot Suit? Or a Nazi? Anyway, Trixie has four clues to help her nab the culprit! If one of those clues is "They had a tattoo on their neck," that's my vote for the guilty party!

1. Three of the suspects are right-handed, and three of them have tattoos on the opposite wrist from the hand they write with. Wrist tattoos? Really? Those aren't hardcore! I think the fourth person is the thief!
2. Neither Dapper Dave nor Jailbird Joe has a tattoo on his left wrist, but both Jailbird Joe and Carol the Con have scars under their left eyes. How are these clues related to the crime? Are we just trying to figure out which suspect looks the most like a criminal? I don't even know what the crime was yet!
3. Donna the Dip writes with a different hand than Dapper Dave does. So what?!
4. The guilty suspect has no tattoos on either wrist. So arrest the person without any tattoos on their wrists then! What are you asking me for?!

Let me get this straight. Some place was robbed and the police just nabbed four people on the street who happened to have fishy nicknames. Then a witness came forth and said, "The thief didn't have any tattoos on their wrists." Then the cops went, "Duh! Which one could it be! Somebody get Trixie Belden over here!" Using my great deductive skills and impeccable logic, Jailbird Joe must be the thief because his nickname is "Jailbird"! Also he has a neck tattoo and the witness was all, "Yeah, yeah. That's totally the guy that stole all of those dildos. Also, Dapper Dave was the left handed one and since the trend in this town was to only put tattoos on the wrists of their non-dominant hand, Jailbird Joe should have had a tattoo, if he had a wrist tattoo at all, on his left wrist! That's when I shouted, "A-ha! Jailbird Joe! Your nickname is well earned, culprit!"

Okay, I made up the thing about the neck tattoo but the solution was Jailbird Joe so pretty soon I'm going to have The Batman's job!

That wasn't very spooky, was it? Let's get to the spooky stuff now. LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU!

Just kidding! That was like when the counselor at camp tells a scary story that doesn't really have a scary ending to it so he just kicks the fire into the face of the kids while screaming the last line of his story.

Camp Counselor: "AND THE MAN WITH THE HOOK WAS UNDER THE BED LICKING THE GIRL'S HAND AND NOW HE'S STANDING BEHIND YOU!" *KICK FLAMES BURNING SCREAMING*

Since smallpox was wiped out in the non-biological warfare vaults world, do kids still get vaccinated against it? I thought there was a cut off year between those of us with a smallpox scar on our arm where we were inoculated and those of you with clear, unblemished skin who will never run into one of your government sponsored alien hybrid clones one day.

The girl is attacked by her shadow and that's just the time Ray Fawkes and Ben Templesmith decide we should experience a flashback! Jerkos!

Just like Sister Justine had a flashback last issue, Drake gets a flashback this issue. It's about a time she was stoned out of her mind as she and a friend went to pick up some drugs and wound up in a Quentin Tarantino movie. Something about a drug deal turned into a cop killing initiation and possibly Matches Malone being involved. We'll return to that story later.

Rook continues to investigate the Midnight Shift because he's totally their Dana Scully and he's all, "This can't be what it seems!" and "Aliens aren't real; it was probably bears!" and "Please God, give us the faith and wisdom to understand the scientific reasons behind these supposedly supernatural events. Amen."

Back at the hospital, the shadow escapes from its source body!

Smallpox has become shadowborne!

I think Oral Herpes went shadowborne decades ago. I'm pretty sure you can catch it just be having somebody's shadow pass over you while your mouth is open.

Back in the flashback, Drake turns out to be not high at all and an also she's an undercover cop. She can also knock people down with her screams. When did Black Canary go back to her maiden name and join the Gotham Police Department? Does she have a sister? Maybe this is her evil shadow twin that left Black Canary when she began dating Condor because she was so disgusted by him.

Back in the present, Doctor Tarr stops the spreading epidemic by talking to the shadow in Weird Little Girlese.

Maybe it can join the team?

Back in the flashback, Corrigan was the cop in the trunk that Drake had to save by killing all of the drug dealers and totally blowing her cover. And Jim Corrigan knows more about her Supernatural Scream than she does. She's probably a banshee. But the flashback doesn't let the reader know her secrets because the point of the story was just to show how Drake and Corrigan met and became partners. Unless there was a different point to the story!

Back in the present, Drake removes the shadow from the girl using a flashlight to cut it away. The shadow disappears and the girl dies or falls into a coma or some other sad thing that makes Drake cry. Unless she was crying for some other reason!

This case was just another spooky case involving a general rise in spookiness in Gotham City. The city is under attack by spooky forces and only the Midnight Shift has what it takes to stop it!

Gotham By Midnight #3 Rating: +1 Ranking. This book is good and I love the art but it could definitely be spookier. Somebody needs to turn the Spooky Rating to 11. No, to 12! Turning the dial to 11 is so three or four decades ago!

Gotham By Midnight #1

How many secret cocks can you count on the cover of Gotham By Midnight? I count two on my copy!

Just a second. Let me put my dick back in my pants before I begin.

So, for as long as I can remember, I've done this thing where I look at a piece of text and cancel out repeating letters until I'm left with only the letters with no pairs. In elementary school when the teacher would hand out dittos, I would do one of two things. I would either draw a little stick man on the top sentence and draw a path of his decent through the sentences, dropping between words, bouncing off of "o"s, being impaled on "t"s, and sliding through small "l"s to gain another life. If I didn't do that (or sometimes after I'd marked my stickperson's descent), I'd begin crossing out letter pairs until all the repeated letters on the page were crossed out. Then I'd list the leftover letters to the side and see if they could be rearranged to spell something. I mention all of this because Gotham By Midnight becomes "Day Nob" I'm sure it means something!

That explanation would have been more exciting if the secret message in the title would have been better than "Day Nob." Or "No Day B." Or "Bandoy." Or "Yo Band." Or "Boy Nad." Or "An Body." Or one of any other of the 720 possible combinations. Unless I did my math wrong and maybe I already listed all of the possibilities.

This issue begins with the statement that Gotham City can't possibly survive without protection. Isn't that putting the donkey in front of the carrot? Don't villages and cities and towns come together because people are more protected in groups than alone? So the city itself is just the symptom of people needing and feeling protected. Once the city, or gathering of people, becomes too large, the people all become strangers to each other with no connection which begins to erode the feeling of safety. The amount of protection afforded by the city passes its peak and becomes more and more dangerous as the people begin to see their fellow residents as the threat they had once felt protected from by their peers. The other people, rather than the unknown and the wilds of nature, suddenly become the thing to fear. At that point, does the city really need protecting? Why must a city that has lost its value to the community need protection? Maybe it needs to be fixed, or changed, or restructured. But does a city that kills off its populace by the dozens every night need protection?

Oh wait! I bet "Gotham City" is an inherent metaphor for "the people of Gotham City!" Stupid me! I probably got confused because DC Comics (and especially the Batman within DC Comics) constantly treats Gotham City as just another character in its universe while it treats the people of Gotham City as faceless victims to be slaughtered by the whims of the current plot. I always get the feeling that Gotham City itself is somehow more important than the people that live in Gotham, even though, as I just realized, they are one and the same.

It's The X-Files meets The Wire!

If this is The X-Files meets The Wire, does that mean Jim Corrigan is going to be the Omar Little of this comic book?

Corrigan is called Detective Corrigan by Lieutenant Weaver, so I guess he's part of the the Gotham City Police Department. Which means he's not equivalent to Omar. Maybe I should stop thinking about this comic book as The Wire or as The X-Files because I can probably only be disappointed if I'm expecting it to measure up to those shows!

The bald guy, Sergeant Rook, explains that his visit is a formality and he'll be shutting down Precinct Thirteen in two days, no matter how many g-g-g-g-g-ghosts he sees.

It looks like McNulty has his next X-file!

It turns out comic books without super heroes in them are better than comic books with super heroes in them! It seems that when a character doesn't have a cool super power to show off, they resort to talking to other characters! They open up with them and discuss who they are and trade stories about growing up and bond and all that human shit humans do! Which, in turn, makes me interested in the characters! So by page seven of this comic book, I'm already more invested in the characters than after eight issues of World's End and the seemingly infinite amount of issues of Aquaman and the Others!

This is embarrassing to admit for a guy who reads all of DC's New 52 books and hardly any Marvel Comics, but when I was a kid, I wanted to be Spider-Man.

Corrigan and his partner, Detective Lisa Drake, take Sergeant Rook with them as they investigate their new case. It's a case which the Gotham Police closed, coming to the conclusion that it was just two young girls who returned home after running away. But Jim Corrigan knows something supernatural is going on and he wants Rook to see it with his own eyes so he doesn't dry up the funding on The Spooky Files.

The young girls have only spoken in tongues since they came home. That alone won't prove anything to Sergeant Rook! My sister and her friend Colleen used to talk in tongues all the time, saying things like "Gidigo fidiguck yidigoursidigelf" to me and then laughing uproariously! The joke is on them though! Because I still don't know what they were saying! Ha ha! My feelings weren't hurt at all!

Rook and Corrigan head off to Slaughter Swamp to question some flowers about missing children. Hopefully the flowers know what's going on! I bet just before the flowers begin talking and telling Corrigan what's going on, Rook will have fallen behind and gotten lost in the swamp. He'll step out of the bushes just as the flowers finish speaking and say, "See, Mulder! Nothing out of the ordinary going on around here!" And then he'll probably pray to Jesus.

"A burrito sure would hit the spot right about now"?

Jim Corrigan had better stumble upon some for real life Goddamned g-g-g-g-ghosts already or Sergeant Rook is going to shut down The Spooky Files in the first issue! What Jim does stumble upon is an old abandoned church falling apart in the middle of Slaughter Swamp. This looks like a job for The Spectre! Or a representative from OSHA.

While Corrigan and Rook enter the church, the little girls back home begin flipping the fuck out. They might be reacting to Jim setting foot inside their school or they're reacting to the nun, Sister Justine, that came to visit them. Because nobody likes a fucking nun coming into their home and telling them that they're possessed by the devil because they masturbate constantly. Or, um, you know, for other reasons. Like speaking in tongues!

Instead of getting lost or refusing to look directly at the UFO or missing the weirdness because he's too busy trying to come up with a rational explanation for the alien/demon/monster standing directly in front of him, Sergeant Rook gets an eyeful of a Spooky File!

This isn't so spooky! It's just a private Catholic school in a swamp with midnight classes! Although the dunce monkey in the corner is kind of weird. Should you really punish a monkey for being a bit out of control in a classroom setting and for being not quite as smart as the human kids?

The Spooky Files #1 Rating: DC Comics is really hitting some home runs with their new fall comic books! The only one that probably sucks is Deathstroke but that hardly matters since a lot of people will buy that comic book simply because Deathstork Deathstroke is the title character. And the art on Gotham Academy, Gotham By Midnight, and Arkham Manor are all non-industry standard. Thank god who dwells in my belly and is currently dining on masticated doughnut!