Timber Wolf #2 (December 1992)

Timber Wolf #2 (December 1992)
By Al Gordon, Joe Phillips, Bob Pinaha, and Tom McCraw
Cover by Joe Phillips and Al Gordon
Edited by Eddie Berganza and KC Carlson

Timber Wolf (Timby to his friends) has an anger problem. I don't know if he had an anger problem before Aria transformed him into the werewolf he is now and transported him to the 20th Century. It seems that before this mini-series, he was not a full blown werewolf. I don't know. Maybe he was? I think he was just a skinny little emo twat who had extra fast reflexes and extra strength from his father shooting him up with Zoon beams. But that's all boring standard Legion fare so he needed a cool Wolverine/Lobo update for the '90s! Now he's angry and vicious and has a huge cock. You can argue about the cock but if you were a horny twelve year old who's halfway to becoming God and you transformed the only guy you were hanging out with, wouldn't you make his cock massive?

Aside from having to learn to live with a floppy gourd between his legs, Timber Wolf also has to learn to get along with Lobo's bastard son, the half-Durlan Thrust. Lobo's wanted for about a billion crimes across the galaxy but naming his son Thrust might be the grossest thing he's ever done. I love Lobo and my eyes keep trying to look at him sideways over that name. Thrust is kind of a pussy but that's because his mother was a Durlan. That means he's a shapechanger and if you were a horny young male who had the power to shapechange, wouldn't you try changing into a pussy every now and then? I'm pretty sure if I were a Durlan, I would have invented the fleshlight. I mean my left hand would have constantly been a pussy. Maybe a mouth sometimes. Oh! And a butthole!

Thrust and Timber Wolf have gone off on their own to search for Aria because they're bad boys who don't follow the rules. Their first stop: a bar called The Gene Pool where newly created supers hang out. That's because Captain Flag is there and the only clue they have is that he's involved with Aria's disappearance somehow.

Thrust drinks soda and gets horny over feet. No wonder Lobo doesn't want anything to do with him.

Captain Flag makes himself known on the next page by throwing Thrust through the front window. Captain Flag's costume consists of an American eagle codpiece and some other stuff I can't describe because I just kept staring at the codpiece. It's massive!

Ew. I don't know what the third thing he smells is yet but it's almost certainly something that's going to make me retch.

I'm not going to reveal what the third thing Timby smells is because it's too gross even for one of my comic book commentaries. All I'll say is that it's a smell that I can't seem to get out of my sheets.

The battle lasts for the rest of the issue because Al Gordon isn't just a writer; he's an artist! Of course he's going to write a comic book that's mostly big battles and sexy butts! Captain Flag gets away but not before Timber Wolf smelled a fourth smell on him: Aria!

See that expression? He is Lobo's kid!

In the end, we discover that Aria was kidnapped by a Dominator who's also controlling the head of Point Force. Not Jesse! The other guy whose name I don't know. And I'll never know it because I don't own Issue #3 and I'll never re-read the first two issues again to figure it out! Oh well. I hope Thrust went on to live a happy life full of soda pop and sexy feet because I don't think he really made much of an impact past this mini-series. He did make it into the version of the DC Who's Who that was perforated pages with holes punched down the side to stick in a binder. I definitely have his page but I'd have to dig it out. Maybe when I get around to continuing my series on Who's Who entries!

The Ranking!
It had a really nice lady ass, a guy mimicking a Lobo expression, and a guy with a massive American eagle codpiece. What more could you want out of a comic book? Oh, that's right. Having it not be based around Legion of Super-heroes characters! Oh, come on! Don't get upset with me, Legion fans! I'm just an ignorant asshole who never read Legion at that time of my life where I would have been completely sucked into their teenage horned-up drama! My adolescent Legion of Super-heroes was Degrassi Junior High! The original, baby! I remember when they began The Next Generation. Man, I was so annoyed by it. I was all, "Look at how good looking all the actors are! This isn't like real life at all! So stupid! The original had boys and girls whose level of attractiveness was all over the place, mostly the lower place (minus, you know, Caitlin Ryan. Rrrrow!). But then I discovered that the main character was little Emma, Spike's daughter, and I was all, "What the fuck?! Spike is in this?! And she's with Snake?! There's continuity with the original!" And then I watched it and fell in love with it as well. Especially because Caitlin was in it!

Timber Wolf #1 (November 1992)

Timber Wolf #1 (November 1992)
By Al Gordon, Joe Phillips, John Workman Jr, and Tom McCraw
Cover by Joe Phillips
Edited by Michael Eury

The Cover
The logo, like the werewolf, is trying way too hard. Look at how dynamic it is! With all the jagged lines, blaring red borders, and crazy long ends! It's like if an infected wolf gouge were a logo! That's probably what they were going for, right? So I get the concept. But it's — and this is a technical term used by the better art critics — fucking garbage. Also the werewolf, like the logo, is coming on too strong. He's all, "Hey, buddy! I asked you if you had a cigarette." And I scream "I don't have one!" as I cower and piss myself. Then he's all, "I saw you smoking one last week!" And I whimper, "I think it was cold. That was just my breath!" Then I have to suck his dick to calm him down but I forget that some of my fillings are silver and his lycanthropic penis breaks out into huge blisters and he's all, "You just gave me herpes!" Also now I'm a werewolf because I swallowed a little pre-cum.

So anyway, that's what the cover says to me. Maybe that says less about the cover and more about my werewolf fetish.

The Story
I've never been a Legion of Super-heroes reader. I don't even know if it's "Super-heroes" or "Superheroes" or "Stupid-zeroes". The only time I ever read it was during The New 52 when I had to because I was reading everything (I know, I know. "I had to" isn't the load bearing wall I'm pretending it is. A load of Superboy fans on tumblr never could understand why I kept reading that shit). So it's a mystery — other than my werewolf fetish — why I purchased this comic book. I also purchased the second issue. But I must have been sexually satisfied after that because I decided not to buy the final three issues of the mini-series. Hopefully it's just as terrible as I'm assuming it's going to be or I'm going to be dying to find out what happens! I mean that literally. I will buy the last three issues only over my dying and/or dead body.

I'd also like to state before going any further: Seth Green nearly destroyed my werewolf fetish. Gross. Not interested. Sorry, Seth! It's not meant as a personal insult. I just need a big bulky furry snarl-bro looming over me and not a yippy little motherfucker I can hold back with one hand as I unsuccessfully try to get my limp dick hard.

Okay, you know what? That did sound personal. Sorry again!

Wait a second. Did Lobo have a kid already back in 1992?!

I don't know who this Thrust character is but I suspected he was Lobo's kid from this first panel. A page or two later, he says "Frag" and he casually mentions how his "father doesn't work that way" when trying to figure out why Timber Wolf, obviously from the far reaches of space (if not time) due to speaking Interlac, was Earth. You don't have a character with space clown make-up on one eye say "frag" and then mention their father without knowing that every Lobo-lover reading the book will jump to that conclusion. It also makes sense that Lobo's daughter is called Crush when we realize his son was named Thrust. Does he name all of his kids while he's in the middle of creating them?

Apparently this series spun-off from Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #3 which makes it an even bigger mystery as to why I purchased this comic book. No, wait, we already settled that. The fetish.

Oh shit. Maybe I picked this up because I'd heard the rumor that Lobo's son appeared in Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #3 and this spun-off from that?! That would make sense if I owned Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #3. But I don't. So, never mind. Back to the fetish.

Jackass?! Now hold on a minute!

The "you're father is a piece of shit" jokes continue for a few more pages because, I guess, Lobo, even when unnamed, is way more entertaining than any characters from Legion of Super-Heroes. I probably stopped reading this book after two issues because you really need to have read the annual that led to this and probably need to know at least one or two things about the history of the Legion of Super-Heroes. The only thing I know by page 9 is that Thrust is Lobo's son, everybody thinks Lobo is a fucking joke, and Aria, Timber Wolf's companion, has a great ass.

No thanks.

Since Aria doesn't want to live a life on the run in 20th Century Earth, she convinces Timber Wolf to surrender to Thrust and his pal, Jesse. They're with a secret government organization that isn't Task Force X or Checkmate or Argus or the Department of Extranormal Operations. They run a task force called "Point Force". Jesse gets clearance to invite Timber Wolf to the team but I'm not sure it includes the woman with the terrific ass.

Um, I mean, uh, the twelve year old girl in a woman's body with the ass I've become super uncomfortable around now? Christ, DC Comics. Why the fuck do you have to keep up-aging girls and boys into super attractive adults?! No wonder Gerard Jones was so interested in working for y'all!

As Timber Wolf's about ready to join the team, he learns that Aria has been kidnapped from Jesse's office. So instead of joining, he beats the crap out of everybody within arm's reach. The whole misunderstanding leads to Jesse taking a plasma bolt in the shoulder to protect Timber Wolf so that Timber Wolf can trust him and join Point Force. So most of this issue was composed of fight scenes to set up the foundation of the series: Timber Wolf has settled in with a team comprised of Lobo's son and some other mysterious heroes not yet introduced. And the point of it all? To rescue Aria who was kidnapped right out from under their noses. So this entire mini-series could have been avoided if Timber Wolf and Aria had just decided to remain on the run instead of shacking up with this hillbilly Suicide Squad.

The issue ends on the reveal of, I guess, another team member: Captain Flag.

Yeesh. I really had forgotten how influential Lobo really was in 1992.

Captain Flag really is just Lobo with an American patriot reskin. So gross!

The Ranking!
I can't say it wasn't entertaining. It was a quick read due to over half of it being fight scenes. And I learned about Lobo's kid Thrust! How come that didn't stick in my memory? Was I too dimwitted at 21 to understand they were talking about Lobo? Did I even read this comic book back then? That's a possibility and explains why I only purchased two issues. By the time the third came out, I'd realized I hadn't read the first two off my stack and just gave up on it. Or I could have been saving them to read after all five came out but had forgotten the series existed by the time the third issue hit the shelves. Now if only Lobo had appeared in it, I would have several copies of every issue!

I want to fuck Lobo so bad!

Justice League America Annual #5 (1991)

Guy Gardner looks like if Burgess Meredith, as an old man, was one of the Little Rascals.

Jesus Christ that caption! I'm sorry for every time I complained about your super fucking old references, Giffen and DeMatteis!

Based on Max Lord being hooked up to oxygen on this cover, and being that I'm as smart as Sherlock Holmes, I'm guessing this Annual took place during "Breakdowns." I'm reading it after finishing "Breakdowns" because I've been averse to re-reading the Annuals and the Quarterlies. They just contain too many pages! Plus this should really be read with all the other Armageddon books. I have Past Me to thank for none of the big event books ever being stored together. They're just scattered all over, some with the series they belong with and others just in random places because I never read the series they go with in the first place. I hate that I bought into this shit every summer! It was so expensive! Two whole dollars for this book! Outrageous!

I'm pretending I can see the faces of the younger generation right now who pay sometimes up to six whole dollars per book. That's not outrageous. That's fucking criminal. You can be reading a whole damn used book for that price! Sure, it doesn't have all the pretty pictures but you get way more value out of it. People always like to compare modern prices with prices from the past by running them through some sort of inflation calculator but let me tell you: no matter what an inflation calculator says $2.00 from 1992 is worth now in 2023, it was still way easier to buy a $2.00 comic than a $6.00 comic. Plus there were more pages: twenty-four versus the twenty you get now. Unless you get less? I have no idea. During The New 52, each comic was 20 pages which pissed me off at first. But then when I realized I had to write about every single one of them, I was glad for the lighter load of work.

If I remember Armageddon 2001 correctly (and I suspect I don't, memory being what it is and LSD doing what it does), the story was that some evil despot named Monarch was going to take over the world and murder all of the other heroes by 2001. That despot was an unknown superhero from 1991. A being named Waverider came back in time ten years to ferret out who the culprit would be and to stop them before they turned villainous. I won't spoil who Monarch turned out to be here because Waverider won't find him in this group of heroes. But it was Captain Atom. Just kidding! It was actually somebody else. Just kidding again! It was definitely Captain Atom except DC changed it part way through the story because all of the fans were casually discussing how Monarch was obviously Captain Atom. So I was kidding?

Anyway, how Waverider would discover who was probably Monarch was to divine their futures. But he was only divining possible futures so it wasn't really that effective. What it was effective for was creating a whole bunch of Elseworlds stories and What-Ifs! So much fun! Let's see what Waverider learned about these chowderheads.

Dramatic ironically, Waverider takes the form of Captain Atom so he can touch all the other heroes without raising their suspicions. No wait. It would only be "dramatic irony" if everybody reading the comic already knew Captain Atom was Monarch but nobody in the comic book did. Oh wait! It was dramatic irony because everybody reading this comic book had already figured out Captain Atom was Monarch! Unless the dramatic irony only rears its dramatic head now in 2023 as I read this knowing that Captain Atom didn't become Monarch which means I knew something the audience at the time thought they knew but ultimately did not (because DC editors cheated).

I'm confused. Let's just see what happens when Waverider touches J'onn J'onzz. Not like that, you pervs. They just shake hands!

In 2001, Martian Manhunter has become a guru high up in the Himalayas where he doles out wisdom to those who sacrifice everything in the attempt to reach him. One man, in Waverider's vision, ascends to the temple and asks J'onn the meaning of life.

I buy it.

J'onn obviously isn't Monarch and nobody would have expected him to be anyway. He's pretty much the only decent hero on Earth, aside from maybe Wonder Woman and Halo.

The next member of the League Waverider comes in contact with is Guy Gardner. Now there's a good candidate for Monarch! He's angry and filled with issues that he never confronts. Surely some day all of his trauma that he keeps bottle up inside will explode outward and he'll become an inhuman monster. Or more of an inhuman monster, I mean.

Guy's a girl?

That isn't really Guy, just a member of his cult. But it could have been Guy if Waverider missed the mark by 1000 years and was seeing the year 3001!

Guy's a girl!

In 2001, Guy has thousands of followers who all act like him and get their hair cut like him. He also loves fucking women who look just like him. Hey, I get that! I always knew Guy and I had a lot in common! At the big Guy Gardner rally (whose purpose isn't expressed. I guess to feed Guy's ego?), he's hit in the head with a sandbag from the rafters, cut by some mysterious person! This obviously turns him into Nice Guy Guy Gardner who his fans despise. His downfall is swift and I assume he's killed at the rally. So it must have been Monarch who cut the sandbag.

Waverider touches Blue Beetle next. Instead of seeing nothing at all since Blue Beetle has been murdered by Maxwell Lord by 2001, he sees a fat, balding Blue Beetle sitting in a tiny apartment watching television. As if Blue Beetle could ever be Monarch! He doesn't even have any super powers! How is he going to kill all the other heroes? I mean, Batman doesn't have any powers either and I wouldn't assume Batman couldn't be Monarch. But then I respect Batman.

I never thought I had what it takes to be a super hero until reading this panel.

Blue Beetle's life has gone to shit. He lost the rights to his own super hero name, tried to become the Stupendous Silverfish, and was laughed at by criminals due to his stupid costume and his flab. Bold call in 1992 by Keith and J.M. to know you could still laugh at fat people in ten years time. They probably assumed that would never change having spent their entire lives immersed in American pop culture where anytime a fat character was on screen, they were double fisting high calorie snacks and had chocolate smeared on their faces. Ha ha! What a great joke! What a time to be alive!

After realizing Beetle becomes too much of a loser to be Monarch, he moves over and touches Ice's inner thigh. Isn't Waverider worried that this inappropriate touch could be what sets everything in motion for Captain Atom to become Monarch?! He should be more careful! By the time he touches Captain Atom, he's going to see how his life fell apart when Ice sued him for sexual harassment and then Sue Dibny arranges to kill herself by having Jean Loring stomp all over her brain so that nobody finds out she's dying of cancer after fucking Captain Atom but that plan falls apart too because Waverider messed with the timeline! People say even the flapping of the wings of a butterfly can create a hurricane so why can't touching the inner thigh of an ice goddess bring about the destruction of every DC hero?

In 2001, Ice is living alone in a small cottage with a dozen cats. So she made it! She's living the dream! The only problem is she hears about Guy's accident and how he was struck on the head. She rushes out to find him, knowing he'll be sweet and kind and asexual Guy Gardner. Why she loves that one, I can't fucking guess.

I wish this were a scene between Batman and Superman.

Waverider's vision is broken because Ice reacts to his forwardness.

Oh, I know what you felt! The same thing I feel when I get a boner!

Darn. Waverider probably learned he shouldn't touch the heroes so close to their no-no zones. That's too bad because I was hoping he was going to read Bea's future via contact with the inside of her butthole! Finger or tongue. Hell, I'd take a toe even!

Waverider approaches Fire next thinking about how beautiful she is and how that translates to her being the hero he most admired. Sounds like it's butthole exploration time!

Fire touches Waverider's chest and he sees her future. She's at Tora and Guy's wedding with her date, Oberon. Oberon asks her to marry him just as Ted Kord comes barging into the church to kick Bea's ass. It was her company who bought the rights to Blue Beetle and sued him to keep from using the name. He's so angry that he just might be Monarch! Except he's still just a powerless loser so nobody reading this comic book was thinking anything other than, "Monarch is Captain Atom. I fucking know it. All the clues point directly at him!"

Booster Gold arrives and Waverider reads his future next. But he shoots way past 2001 and reads Booster's future when he returned to the 25th century (or whatever time he's from) after he lost everything going into business with Ted. But while looking at all the displays in the super hero museum's 20th Century exhibit, he realizes something terrible happens to Blue Beetle in 2001. It's not revealed because Keith and J.M. want the readers to think Ted might be Monarch but instead of thinking that, we're all thinking, "I wonder if Ice and Fire every kiss while naked?"

Booster decides he has to go back in time to save Ted and realizes only Maxwell Lord can help him. Oh man! Maybe he read how Maxwell Lord shoots Blue Beetle in the face!

Sorry, no scans for Booster's future. We've got to move along quickly here! Chop chop!

Scott Free, Mister Miracle, is next although does anybody really care about that? He's retiring and passing on the mantle in 1991. Shouldn't Waverider be touching his protégé, Shilo Norman? Maybe it doesn't matter since Shilo Norman and half a dozen other Mister Miracles appear in Waverider's vision. Maybe because Waverider's abilities causes him to focus on the hero that is most likely to become Monarch, Scott's future vision is mostly about Blue Beetle and the trouble he's causing. He's been arrested for attacking Fire at Ice's wedding and now everybody thinks they're responsible for rescuing him. Sure would have been nice if they thought about rescuing their friend when he was down on his luck, lonely, and depressed.

Next up is General Glory. Why? Won't his alias, Joe Jones, be dead in ten years?

Well, he's ready to die but stupid Max convinces him to become General Glory again.

The General Glory vision becomes a Justice League vision as it's mostly about Maxwell Lord getting the Justice League back together and working for the United Nations again. The new team consists of General Glory as the leader and his sidekicks Guy Gardner, Ice, Aquaman, Booster Gold, Blue Beetle, and two women I don't recognize. Beetle is still fat but I guess he didn't become Monarch or kill himself? Whatever was happening with him, I guess Booster Gold, Mister Miracle, Oberon, and Big Barda saved him.

Oh wait! There's one vision left: Maxwell Lord! This vision fills in the gaps of the effort to save Blue Beetle. Booster talks Max into mind controlling Bea to drop the charges and then he figures he might as well force her to hand over part of her business and then he decides to convince General Glory to lead the new JLA and then he almost certainly uses his power to get all of the new members to cut their hair like Guy Gardner. What I'm saying is that Waverider learned Maxwell Lord is still a controlling jerk ten years later.

The next chapter in Armageddon 2001 takes place in the Hawk and Dove Annual but I won't spoil what Waverider discovers there. I mean, he discovers nothing because Hawk isn't Monarch at all. At least not yet!

Justice League America Annual #5 Rating: I don't rate these things! The thing I find most interesting about this Annual is how Booster Gold never mentions what Blue Beetle is going to do if Maxwell Lord doesn't help him out. It shines an interesting light on what eventually became DC continuity. What if Blue Beetle was going to do something even worse than become Monarch? What if Booster Gold knew Beetle needed to be stopped by any means necessary? And what if minor things can change in continuity but major things are much harder to change. So at some point in the future, Maxwell Lord learns he must stop Blue Beetle but many other events have transpired and he can't get General Glory back. Fire isn't running a corporation that bankrupted Beetle. Ice and Guy aren't married. What if the only resource at Lord's disposal was a gun? And Beetle absolutely had to be stopped? Maybe Max Lord teamed up with Brother Eye not to become all-powerful and a Monarch of his own sorts. Maybe it was all a ploy to kill Blue Beetle before he does the horrible thing Booster Gold saw he would do! I'm pretty sure that's what happened and Max Lord saved everybody by being a huge manipulative fascist dick!

Justice League International Special #1 (1990)

This looks as shitty as an annual.

How was younger me so bamboozled by comic book continuity that he kept purchasing all of these extra issues that invariably had nothing to do with continuity? Okay, I know how that sounds. "How was younger you bamboozled by continuity if he kept buying books that had nothing to do with continuity?" I see where you're confused. Younger me didn't know they weren't going to have anything to do with continuity. That might sound stupid and naïve but I really thought, "If I don't get every comic book labeled 'Justice League,' I'm going to miss out on something important!" I remember my main concern with death as a teenager was that I'd never find out what happened in my comic book stories! Imagine that! I was so young and dumb that I thought the stories would culminate in some kind of satisfying resolution instead of just going on and on and on with characters never actually changing or growing! At least my grandmother's soap operas actually had characters aging along with their actors so there was some illusion of movement in their lives! But with comic books, I was afraid to miss out on the next eighteen times Batman battled The Joker only to throw him in Arkham where he eventually escapes for a story slightly altered from previous issues.

Anyway, that's how I wound up with this stupid Mister Miracle World Tour. What the fuck is this shit? Why should I care?! Don't the Justice League ever do anything that has to do with justice in any way?! They're nearly as bad as The Titans who never once helped New York City and almost always destroyed part of it while fighting evil family members bent on revenge. Remember Councilwoman Alderman and how Marv Wolfman tried to portray her as the bad guy for wanting to shut down the Titans and send them packing from her city? Remember how every time she'd point out how dangerous they were to her city, we, the readers, would think, "She's really got a good point! They never do anything but fight their mothers and fathers! What good are they?!" Councilwoman Alderman was the true hero of that book!

The story begins with Manga Khan headed back to Earth. He's the guy who talks to himself a lot, has an assistant named L-Ron, and runs an intergalactic home shopping network. Apparently somebody on Earth has purchased something without reading the fine print so he's on his way to, I don't know, blow it up or something.

Kilowog is going to be pretty pissed off when he finds the monitor full of crossbow bolts.

See? My joke was riffing on The Huntress explaining that she has talents better suited to something else but those talents are mostly just shooting crossbow bolts! I needed to explain that because people who read comic books and comic book "reviews" are kind of dumb. I mean, have you read comic book reviews sites?! They're fucking boring (especially those guys at my nemesis site! I'd link the site but I fucking forgot who they were. My only clue to their identity was that they somehow loved Scott Lobdell and would often blow Neal Adams' post-New-52 stuff (which was frankly unreadable)). And have you read comic books? Holy shit do they suck!

The Huntress points out that the JLI monitor is fully automated and Oberon responds with, "Suck it, toots!" Then he stomps off thinking, "What a dumb whore! Thinking a fully-automated system could actually do monitor duty itself!" I mean, yeah, fucknuts. Perhaps if it can't, stop telling everybody it's fully automated. Sounds like maybe it's partially automated, or not-at-all automated. Fucking bald bureaucratic piece of shit.

I just wanted to add this as proof that Oberon thought the things he thought (okay, maybe not "dumb whore") and that Fire looks hot in her ripped-up jeans.

Fire picks up Oberon and kisses him goodbye so I can only assume that his underpants are now caked in semen.

Oberon laments that Funky Flashman is helping run Mister Miracle's World Tour. I guess that means this issue is going to be full of jabs at Stan Lee because Funky Flashman is based on Stan Lee. I think. I don't do research; I just rely on whatever my brain thinks it knows. It works out about 60% of the time!

Beetle convinces Booster to go on a date with him to "Medison Square Gardens" to see the start of Mister Miracle's World Tour. It's definitely a date because Booster Gold feels the need to point out that he's only after romance. No dick tonight.

At least I think that's what he's saying here. I can't fucking figure out any other interpretation.

Luckily The Huntress is on monitor duty so that she can see the alert about Manga Khan's ship approaching Earth. An alert that apparently couldn't have been automated to alert individual members of the Justice League via their Justice League Alert Thingamabobs. She informs Martian Manhunter of Manga Khan's approach and he sighs and rolls his eyes and contemplates suicide.

Fire and Ice agreed to be Booster and Beetle's beards.

Hoo boy. I feel a quick summation of the rest of the comic coming followed by a low rating and a slight depression ruining the rest of my night as I contemplate how shitty my life turned out. This special is just so fucking dumb. No wonder it's taken me over a week to read this thing. My subconscious probably remembered how terrible it was and kept forcing me to do other things, like play X-Com 2 or masturbate.

Anyway, everybody winds up on Manga Khan's ship wondering whether they should be kicking his ass or not. Except Guy, of course. He kicks the asses of a bunch of robots before somebody calms his dumb ass down. Because Manga Khan isn't here to fight! He's here to insist that Mister Miracle fulfill the contract Funky Flashman got him to sign where Scott agrees to tour the universe promoting "The Miracle Mister," a cleaning appliance. If you don't get it, that's okay because it's fucking stupid.

Did I mention Oberon was dressed up like a clown for the performance? Probably because Funky Flashman demanded it and nobody goes against Funky Flashman's demands or else they spend the next fifty years of their lives watching the corporation they worked for make billions of dollars off off of their imagination. Oh, even if they didn't go against his demands, I think that happened too. Not like DC was ever any better (because Funky Flashman is Stan Lee, remember? So I'm talking about Marvel here, and Jack Kirby!). But since DC has a character based on Stan Lee, they can write a comic book that says, "Careful about the contract you sign with Stan Lee! He's just going to use you to get rich and promote himself while also taking as much of the credit as possible! Not like us here at DC! You'll notice Marvel doesn't have a character based on any of our editorial management and that's not because we're all boring pricks!"

Since Mister Miracle has been Shanghai'd by Manga Khan and Funky Flashman, a robot Mister Miracle has been created to take his place in the pages of Justice League America. Which means this entire "Special" was created simply to explain how Mister Miracle is in space on tour with Manga Khan in the pages of his own comic book and still goofing around in the Justice League comic book. So all that bullshit about how I was always buying all the Specials and Annuals even though they were never much for continuity was completely wrong. This comic book exists simply for continuity's sake! And it shows because it's fucking terrible! And boring! Although Fire has a few good cleavage shots so it wasn't a total waste of my time.

Justice League International Special #1 Rating: D-. I hated every minute I spent reading this comic book. And now I have to live with the knowledge that I read it fucking twice.