The New Teen Titans Annual #2 (1986)

Not only do you get the origin of Brother Blood but also a battle with robot dinosaurs from space on Easter Island?! Come on!

Stupid dad remarried three times and never to somebody this hot! Although Cheryl did walk into the room to yell at us kids one time topless and in her underwear. She gets points for trying.

The New Teen Titans #11 (August 1985)

That time Dick Grayson began wearing the same perfume as Abigail Arcane.

This isn’t actually Swamp Thing, of course. It’s more like the Chinese knock-off Swamp Thing.

In this issue, the Teen Titans rescue Kole from her parents who want to turn everybody in the world into insects so that they’ll survive a nuclear holocaust. Also so they won’t start a nuclear holocaust because bugs can’t push buttons. Maybe a bunch of ants could….

Anyway, The Titans sort of save the world but only incidentally while saving yet another member of their team from that person’s parents. I think I’m sensing a theme here!

Cyborg sensed the theme earlier in this panel but he’s half-robot so his computing processes are better than mine.


Whoops! I meant this panel. Never mind that other panel with the lactating bug that somehow fell out of my personal stash of secret art clippings.

So first they battled Raven’s dad. Then they battled Lilith’s mom. Now they’re battling Kole’s dad. We still have stories coming up where Kory comes into conflict with her parents, Gar probably battles Steve Dayton, Joseph’s father will obviously attack at some point, and Batman will eventually guest star to tell the Titans that they’re doing everything wrong. Will the Titans ever actually be heroes or will they forever be battling their parents in a search for identity and autonomy?!

Heroic Teen Titans Stories So Far: 0 for 11.

The New Teen Titans #10 (July 1985)

In this issue, three Titans have sex, two want to have sex but can’t find a partner, and one refuses to have sex no matter how hard Kole rubs her vagina in Joseph Wilson’s face. Needless to say, they do no heroing. You see, Marv Wolfman seems to have simply wanted to write The X-Men. But since The X-Men takes place at a school where mutants are learning to control their powers, it isn’t necessarily supposed to be about being a super hero group. So a lot of action can take place that doesn’t involve saving people’s lives. But The Teen Titans specifically joined up to make the world a better place. Which is something they never do because they’re constantly dealing with their relationship problems and their baggage and the threats against the team brought on by the different members. Just save one person not affiliated with your team, guys, and I’ll call it a heroic act! Just one!

Number of Times The Titans Saved The World For Reasons Other Than Self-Preservation or Some Selfish Interest: 0 for 10.

The New Teen Titans #9 (June 1985)

The New Teen Titans hang out with the Titans of myth as they defeat Thia. Lilith is rescued but she winds up having to stay in Olympus since she’s the daughter of a mythical Titan. The Titans adventure to rescue one of their teammates is at an end. And even though the Amazons were rescued and the world doesn’t have to worry about Thia, Titan of the Sun, anymore, I can’t help but think the mythical Titans and the Amazons really did all of the work and saved the day. The Titans just sort of tagged along.

Number of Times The New Teen Titans Saved the World or Anybody At All Who Wasn’t Part of Their Team: 0 for 9.

The New Teen Titans #8 (May 1985)

The Titans discover Lilith has been taken to Olympus by the Titan of Old, Thia. They travel through Tartarus to pick up some of the other Titans to help them rescue Lilith. So while they’re technically acting heroically to save a friend, they’re not doing much for the world at large.

Number of Issues Where the Titans Forgo Their Own Self-Interests to Act Like Super Heroes and Save Innocent People: 0 for 8.

Excellent! Bogus!

The New Teen Titans #7 (April 1985)

Lillith is kidnapped by Azrael. Then Lillith is kidnapped by her mother. The Teen Titans wonder if this is any of their business.

Number of Issues Where the Titans Save Somebody Other Than a Member of Their Own Team: 0 of 7.

All Star Western #31

In this issue, Jonah Hex trips and falls face first into a campfire. Time anomaly fixed!

I had a bit of an existential crisis this morning in which I wondered why the fuck I was writing about comic books every single fucking day. And then I looked at the cover of this comic book, saw Jonah Hex grimacing like the hard bastard he is, felt a twinge of lust, and masturbated. That was followed by an even greater existential crisis in which I bargained with Jesus and told him he could be my Lord and Savior if he could just make me happy. But at that exact moment, lying on the floor amidst my tears and random bits of kitty litter, I saw an unopened bag of Darkside Skittles sitting on the bottom shelf of the bookshelf. "Too late, Jesus!" I screamed as I tore open the pack of Skittles and devoured them all from a sitting position, chewing heartily and happily as I stared at the clock, and thus time, directly in the face. It seemed my sugar levels must have been off because after gorging myself on evil candy, I felt loads better!

What actually happened this morning is that I woke up to a dream where the Non-Certified Spouse and I were running from a pyroclastic flow, sat down at the computer, surfed the web a bit (which made me feel a little bit down as I took a look at all the other Catwoman #31 reviews on the internet and realized there are people out there reading other people's reviews instead of mine, the assholes), laughed at someone actually being offended at Tumblr's little Doughnut Day Doughnut seemingly making a lighthearted D-Day reference, and then made up that first paragraph because I can't ever be honest with anybody at all. I'd rather they think I was crying and masturbating and eating candy all morning than have them know I was just sitting around feeling slightly sorry for myself because a few other people read a few other review sites.

Although I keep insisting this isn't a review site, so maybe I should be upset with myself! Maybe I should be appending "review" to all of my blog titles!

Anyway, when Jonah was last seen, he was surrounded by the Clem Hootkins Gang. Again!

It ends the way everybody knew it was going to end except the Clem Hootkins Gang.

I would be so awful in the Old West. I'd try so hard not to get myself killed that I'd probably get killed for being a spineless yellow coward. While Jonah and Tallulah seem to have no fear, managing to control every situation, I'd control no situations and have so much fear it would leak into my underwear several times per day. Although I've never shot a gun, so maybe I'm a quickdraw crackshot and I don't even know it! It's probably closer to the truth that I'd be the person getting a shot glass shoved down their throat or a key jammed into my eye. Fuck, that might still happen to me this weekend! I think I'll just stay inside.

Jonah and Tallulah only just got reacquainted and they're already bickering.

But you know this is going to end in some steamy fucking. If you're under seventeen, you should read that last sentence as "...going to end in intimate and rhythmic hugging." Don't say I've never done my part to protect the innocence of the youth!

I miss Moritat's art because it was perfectly suited for my sense of aesthetics. Unless I'm using "aesthetics" wrong. I don't even know if I spelled it correctly! Good thing you can't hear me trying to pronounce it! You'd think you were being attacked by a bunch of snakes! But for the first time, I'm appreciating Staz Johnson's art. It's not because it really seems to fit the mood. It's more because his check cleared. Enjoy your weekend, Staz!

That's more rhythmic hugging than I was expecting to see! Yee haw!

The Sheriff comes calling and makes the kids put their clothes back on. Then he and Hex have a discussion about scars and how Jonah Hex is wanted for murder. There's a guy out there kind of looks like Jonah but has the scar that Jonah used to have, and he's killing, robbing, and being generally downright disagreeable. Looks like Jonah fucked up time and now he's got to go back to the future! Or just kill the imposter.

It's hard to know with time travel what the writers are going to do with it until they actually do something with it. So Jonah has arrived back in "his" time although some things seem a bit different. That little person with the curly red hair was dead when Jonah headed to Future Gotham. Now he's alive. And there's a raggedy motherfucker that looks like Jonah out there killing people without bounties on their heads. Could be Jonah arrived back in an alternate timeline. Which is a proper possibility when writing a time travel story. The main thing to remember when writing time travel stories is consistency. Just stick to the rules you've made for your story, and you should be okay. Or just be thoroughly entertaining and I'll forgive your time travel missteps. I'm looking at you, Bill and Ted.

In the back-up story, it is revealed that Madame .44 has arrived in a strange place and that she's terrible at math.

Or she's fantastic at astronomy and knows she's looking at two moons, a planet, and a star.

There is one other explanation, Madame .44! You're in the world of Elfquest! Also, I forgot about the character I was going to create last month: Madame Edamame!

Madame .44 has either died or not died or gained They Live Grifter Vision or suffered a severe knock to the head. It's also possible she's dying, crushed under tons of rock, and having a Jacob's Ladder/An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge end of life vision. She also might be on Earth 23 unless the demon Earth is Earth 46. It's also possible she fell into an alternate timeline but is still on New Earth. Contrariwise, she may have swum into hell. Or she could have been bitten by a hallucinogenic moth and is tripping her bullets off.

On her way to town to figure out what the fuck is going on and how she can get the fuck to stop going on, her horse (which she befriended after a demon told her she was dead) gets shot by a demon bumblebee. Not that the demon bumblebee was holding a tiny little gun! No, the demon bumblebee was shot out of a rifle and blasted straight through the horse's neck. Madame .44 puts the horse out of its misery (because demon bumblebee's don't kill! They just pierce the flesh causing a little blood and horrific convulsions) and walks into town. This is the part of the story where my pants would be full of fear. But Madame .44 kills the bad guys and gets some help from the friendly neighborhood prostitutes.

I guess that's the set-up for any future Madame .44 stories to appear in any future DC Western titles.

All Star Western #31 Rating: +1 Ranking. Even though I wasn't very interested in the Madame .44 story, I still found myself enjoying it. And the Jonah Hex story had one of the best sex scenes so far in The New 52. That's counting the bloody foreplay. That's the best review I can do! If anybody out there writes real reviews for DC's New 52, let me know and I'll link your reviews at the end of my reviews. But you have to advertise my site on your blog as well! You have to accept that you will be backing somebody that might say something inappropriate about everybody's mother at any time! But you know what you also get? Leaving feigned humility dead in the dust, you get the best comic book reviewer (that doesn't know how to review) on the internet on your side! That's me, smart ass!

All Star Western #30

Since Gina's death, did Jonah stumble into a campfire face-first?

This issue begins with Hex digging a grave and the Narrator getting unduly philosophical on the nature of time and ding dongs. Well, maybe the Narrator doesn't talk about ding dongs. But I was thinking about ding dongs. Not the delicious, capitalized and trademarked Ding Dongs! The ding dongs that men have between their legs! Don't ask me why I was thinking about their veiny, throbbing, pre-ejaculate glistening, orifice seeking existence! It's too disturbing to even contemplate being that Jonah Hex is digging a grave for the sexiliciously sexy but now dead Gina. I wonder if he buried her with her clothes on? Dusty red dirt flung on top of her pearl white skin, settling slowly into every crevice and fold and pouty, bluing lips....

Maybe that should be my epitaph? "Tess always thought about inappropriate things at the most inappropriate times." Unless that's a stupid epitaph because when is an appropriate time to think about inappropriate things? A better epitaph would read, "Why the fuck did anybody ever read anything Tess ever wrote? Sicky weirdos!"

I imagine sassy, smart-mouthed clerks didn't last very long in the Old West. Randall and Dante would have been riddled with bullets in the first five minutes of the film.

Tallulah comes into town murdering thieves and thieving keys off of their corpses. Except it's just one thief she murders and one key she thieves, so I don't know why I pluralized everything in that last sentence. I suppose it could be that I don't know what I'm doing! I wish I was into math instead of nothing! Then I could have a math blog and post things like, "Isn't it cool that 2 + 2 = 4 all of the time, every time!" And people will go, "Like! Like! Like!" And then one asshole will go, "Actually, that only works if we're dealing with a base ten system and we agree on the signifiers used to communicate the equation." And then I'd shoot myself in the face rather than deal with some jerk that begins every single one of their sentences since they learned to construct sentences with "actually."

Jonah reintroduces himself to Tallulah because Gina died a week ago and Jonah hasn't had sex now for six days. So he's all, "Hey Tallulah Black! Remember how much you like the friction caused by rubbing our thingies together?" And Tallulah is all, "Hells yeah! Wait. Who are you?!" And Jonah is all, "Hey baby! It's me! Jonah Hex!" And Tallulah is all, "Why doesn't your face look like a raccoon trampled by a stampede of wild buffalo?" And Jonah is all, "My face might look different but little Jonah is exactly the same! Except I might have brought back Chlamydia which will totally change history somehow!"

I wonder if in the future, teenagers will study a famous book that uses the Californication "is/was all" instead of says/said? Is that even a Californian thing or just a generational affectation? It's hard for me to tell seeing as how I grew up in California and, at times, I've wanted to stab people in the face for the amount of times they shoved the word "like" into a sentence. I find myself, like, doing it sometimes and I, like, despise myself for it. Anyway, "is all" is just one of my favorite ways of shoving a full conversation into a single paragraph!

For an audience to accept a writer breaking traditional rules regarding writing, grammar, and language in general, the writer usually has to have previously proven that they understand the rules that they're breaking. The readers often need to understand that there is a battle going on inside the words and language being used or else they'll just abandon the written piece due to their belief that it's ignorant twaddle. Of course, you'll never win over the pretentious assholes who feel the constant need to prove they know more than everybody else. But what are you going to do about them anyway? Fuck those prigs!

Gina who?

Jonah's story about traveling through time is interrupted by the Clem Hootkins Gang. Who should be mostly dead. So it looks like Booster wasn't too specific about when he sent Jonah back in time.

The Jonah Hex part of the story was short to make way for a Madame .44 story because DC Comics hasn't had enough Madame .44 stories in the Reboot. Especially ones drawn by really old men!

Madame .44 is a dumb name. Also, I just decided to create a superhero named Madame Edamame.

The story is about demons and gold mines and manipulative whores and paranoid sons and rattlesnakes and dynamited mines and betrayal and dead whores and supernatural underground glowing lakes and corsets and such. Typical old west stuff.

All Star Western #30 Rating: No change. I miss Moritat! And full length Jonah Hex stories! And my youth!