Gotham Academy: Second Semester #9

I have boxes full of pictures of me as a teenager with the girl next to me cut out or burned. The girl was always a mannequin but now it looks like I had a passionate and tempestuous youth.

• This is probably the last Gotham Academy story because DC Comics can't afford to keep paying three different people on story credits.

• Amity Silverlock, using Olive's body, has begun her reign of arsony terror on Gotham's old blood families. She begins by burning down an old Dent home while twirling her mustache.

• The Pizza Mystery Club has plans to save Olive from the angry spirit of her long dead ancestor. Hopefully this plan will finally need Pomeline to get naked.

• Kyle quits the club because Olive doesn't want to fuck him and Colton does.

• The Pizza Mystery Club decide finding Amity Silverlock's bones is probably the best way to defeat her. It worked in that Freddy Kreuger movie, didn't it? No, you know what. I don't think it did. I think he still returned for another pre-cursor to Scream movie and a battle with Jason Voorhees.

• While searching through a small mountain of skulls, the Pizza Club encounter another strange Gotham Academy Student.

I didn't know King Shark had a daughter.

• Apparently Gotham Academy is where all the super villain kids go to school.

• A kid with a fox head and a kid with a crow head seal the kids into the Well of Skulls as it fills up with water. Apparently ghosts aren't the worst things haunting the halls of Gotham Academy. It's also full of furries.

• Olive Silverlock makes friends with Harvey Dent. But she still has to make friends with his coin. His coin decides to help her get revenge on the Cobblepot family next. It's too bad she didn't go after the Wayne family first. This story could be over by now.

• The Mystery Pizza Club discover a legendary secret society called the Terrible Trio comprised of a Fox Person, a Crow Person, and a Shark Person. Their goal was to spread disinformation and cause general mayhem so that other secret societies would never discover the true secrets of Gotham Academy. Maps takes off on her own to investigate them, leaving Colton and Pomeline to figure out a plan that involves Pomeline getting naked on-panel.

• Meanwhile, Kyle didn't quit the club at all. He just went out on his own to follow Olive around Gotham because he's a creepy perv who can't take no for an answer.

Gotham Academy: Second Semester #8

When did this comic book take a left turn on What the Fuck Avenue?

The Review!
Batman is chastised with the modern view that he's a monster who simply beats up on people with mental illnesses and then the love of friends and family and warm hugs saves the day. Well, it saves this day, anyway. Olive disappears to continue her arsonistic rampage across Gotham as Cal-Amity Arkham possesses her body. Hopefully Batman will speak nicely to her and not punch her in the face to get her to stop burning the city to the ground.

The Ranking!
No change. Pomeline didn't get naked.

Gotham Academy: Second Semester #7

Oh, hello figment of Olive's imagination aka I was right from the beginning.

The Review!
Olive learns that her roommate isn't Amy the Roommate at all. She's a ghost named Amity Arkham, one of Olive's distant relatives. Or, according to Batman (and me, really!), Amity Arkham is just a delusion. It's weird that Olive's mental illness manifests in the exact same way her mother's did. Batman might be the World's Greatest Detective but he isn't really the most caring or sympathetic man when it comes to the mentally ill. Apparently the AA symbol all over the school stands for Amity Arkham instead of Wayne Manor (that makes sense if you saw the symbol. It also could be a W and an M! In fact, it looks a lot more like a W and an M).

Anyway, Pomeline discovers her ancestor was best friends with Amity who was Olive's great to the nth degree grandmother. It seems a bunch of people ruined Amity's life and Amity is still angry about it. So she began a career in possessing her descendants and giving them the power to burn Gotham to the ground. But that stupid Batman keeps stopping that from happening! And before Batman, I bet the Court of Owls stopped it from happening. Or maybe Jonah Hex. Or Booster Gold. Possibly even a Cobblepot or two.

I don't think anything else pertinent to future issues took place. Oh, the Scottish teacher has been secretly meeting with Batman to fuck in the barn and gossip about Olive. Also a few of the kids said "Oh my crap!" in that way they usually do. Plus Colton found a ton of treasure so he'll probably stop stealing everything now that he's rich. Oh, and most importantly of all, Pomeline did not get naked.

The Ranking!
No change!

Gotham Academy: Second Semester #6

It's Wayne Manor Man! Unless it's Arkham Asylum Man!

The Review!
The Pizza Detective Club are currently trying to solve the Mystery of Kyle Giving Colton A Handie, Just To Be Cool, Y'Know? They might also be solving some other mysteries. Like the Mystery of the Stolen Map and the Mystery of the Nerdy Kid With a Crush on Maps, and the Mystery of Olive's Tyler Durden Friendship and the Mystery of Pomeline Fritch's Spectacular Bu...um...maybe I'm the only one trying to solve that mystery.

While searching for a way to reverse Colton's expulsion, Maps finds a clue!

Then why are there only twelve drawers on the dresser?

Maps is a better detective than I am because instead of being a cynical asshole who thinks pointing out a dresser of twelve drawers goes against her theory, she thinks, "There must be a secret thirteenth drawer!" And she finds one! Batman never would have figured that out.

Since the first issue, I've been saying Olive's new roommate Amy isn't real. But it's possible she's not real in a different way than I imagined. She might be ... (do a drum roll on your thighs for a few seconds here) ... Millie Jane Cobblepot's ghost! They're really pushing that theory hard this issue. So the first five issues were just, "Amy is Olive's chaotic friend who nobody else seems to notice!" And now this issue is all, "Remember the ghost of Millie Jane Cobblepot?! That might be good knowledge to remember soon! Remember how Pom was looking for her? Remember how Pom did a ceremony to contact her? See how Maps is asking Olive if she thinks ghosts are real?! Hee hee. You're going to be so surprised soon!"

During the adventure, clues are found and some minor points in the mystery are solved. Mostly, the Pizza Detective Club finally get back together from their separate adventures so they can finally solve the Myster of the M/W or A/A Symbol That's All Over Everything and Also Above the Door at Wayne Manor So, Um, You Know, Mystery Probably Solved There?

The shocking cliffhanger ending is more of a cliff-falling ending as Tristan, bound up by Eric the Boy Who Likes Maps, falls off the side of the Secret Elevator. Since he's probably going to die, Amy tells Olive to burn Eric. That's just the kind of thing Tyler Durden would have told the Narrator to do!

After writing that, I just looked up Fight Club to see what Edward Norton's character was called and it was "The Narrator." See? I pay attention to movies I haven't seen in over sixteen years. I also remember the first rule of Fight Club: "Don't eat all the Oreos."

Anyway, Tristan will probably be saved by Batman since he seems to be skulking around stalking kids. And Olive probably won't burn Eric to a crisp, even though her anarchic figment of her imagination thinks she should.

The Ranking!
No change! This book isn't going to change the world the way no other DC Comic book is currently doing so that's probably a statement that didn't need to be made. But it's fun and I love the art and Pomeline's probably secretly, like, forty years old, right? I'm allowed to investigate the Mystery of Pomeline Fritch's Butthole! I bet it's spectacular! Like a treasured relic from an Indiana Jones movie! You probably have to solve all kinds of puzzles and escape from dangerous traps just to lay your eyes on it! And then your face might melt! But I bet it would be worth it.

Gotham Academy: Second Semester #5

Pomeline and Bane must be second cousins.

Here's what I wrote in my "review" of Gotham Academy: Second Semester #1: "I wonder if Amy is just a Tyler Durden figment of Olive’s imagination? I hope so! If she is, I hope Olive kisses it!" Try to ignore the part where I want Olive to have a lesbian relationship with a figment of her imagination. I just wanted everybody to know that I called it immediately when it turns out to be true, as the evidence continues to mount. What evidence, you say? The evidence that nobody fucking acknowledges her ever. The evidence that she doesn't appear on panels with the other kids when the perspective changes away from Olive. The evidence that I'm always right about stuff.

Aside from this issue totally trying to expose Amy's fantastical nature, it also exposes Maps' sexuality. She's sexually attracted to maps. I know! Totally not shocking at all given her nickname. But then, my nickname isn't Looking At Naked Women From the Back as They Bend Over, so I wasn't really prepared for her nickname to be the thing she wants to fuck. Also exposed? Eric is a totally evil little shit doing Mr. Scarlet's bidding. I don't know exactly what the bidding is but it's probably connected to finding The Big Old Book of Gotham. Pomeline is also looking for that Book because it contains all the answers to all the mysteries and will break open every case the Pizza Detective Club ever tries to solve.

What Did We Learn?
Practically nothing aside from all of those plot elements I pointed out previously. But this section of the review isn't about plot elements! It's about themes! So I think the theme of this comic book was that no theft goes unpunished even when it probably winds up punishing the person you wanted framed for the theft. So you'll probably be okay if you decide to steal stuff. Just remember to look up the definition to the word "patsy" first.

The Ranking!
No change. This is probably a good place to mention how much I love Adam Archer and Sandra Hope's versions of these characters, right?

Gotham Academy: Second Semester #3

Maps makes some new friends.

The Review!
No change. Pizza Detective Club solves yet another weird mystery at Gotham Academy. This time it's an English teacher who's a witch bent on burning all the books in revenge of being dumped by the scrawny Mr. Scarlet. He must be fantastic at cunnilingus because, looking at him, I'd guess that fucking him would be like rolling around on top of a bundle of sticks covered in maple syrup. Colton is still in love with Kyle but Eric might be dropping his crush on Maps now that she burned his notebook. Not that she did it on purpose! Remember the witch!? She totally mind-controlled Maps the way I'd like to mind-control Maps. But I wouldn't ask her to burn books, if you get what I'm getting at. I'd compel her to Dungeon Master every night so I could get my Wood Elf Bard up to epic levels!

During the mystery solving, Colton gets busted again for breaking and entering and theft. But this time, he's going to be expelled. I'm sure everybody will take pity on him when they realize he wears sunglasses constantly because his father beats him. I'm making assumptions but this is basically Degrassi Junior High in comic book form and thirty years later and that's the kind of story you'd expect from that show. It's never-ending drama for five seasons until you get some titty in the movie finale and then maybe drive drunk, kill a kid, and go to prison for years.

What did we learn this issue? Headmaster Hammer doesn't give a shit that every single teacher at his school is involved in supernatural shenanigans but when one student breaks a few minor laws while investigating said shenanigans, Hammer loses his fucking head. The American Education System, amirite?!

Gotham Academy: Second Semester #2

Young people are the worst.

The Review!
So. Know today the way I'll review this issue of Gotham School is by this rule which you've probably noted already. Unless you're not as smart as one who sniffs a fart. In which case, I must wonder why dum-dums read my Tumblr.

The kids these days are into clubs, but I'm still into limbless nubs. This month Mia has become a witch. Trigger warning for this line: a bitch has convinced Olive to be her new friend, a situation Maps would like to end. The kids discover a teacher named Pio is sick, or missing, or just gone to pee. Oh! Colton is apparently in love with Kyle while Eric's in love with Maps. I like his style. Cause other than Pomeline, Maps is my favorite (cause Maps cannot stand that jerk Amy (who gave her shit)). I mean, there are other reasons why I also love Maps! Like how she always role plays and doesn't give any craps. I'm certain the star was supposed to be Olive Silverlock but I lost all respect for her for dating Kyle. Dumb jock.

You might be wondering about some of the other chaps at the school, right? They don't matter unless one of them snaps. And the girls? They are too young to say they shave a bit downstairs. I also shouldn't say I favor a tit of one over another since one might cry. I'll just wind up looking like a huge pedophile.

This issue introduces a new trio: Harriet, Evan, a witch from Yu-Gi-Oh. Evan, a character I hope they spend no time developing, followed the trend and decided to join up with witch club. Is join too strong? He felt an itch to join! Aunt Harriet who scrubs Wayne's house is now one of the subs. The witch has torn asunder Gotham School life. A blunder (although a decent start) the witch will take to heart. Because Mystery Club will certainly stop the old fool because they're cool.

And so to all of you I say, "Good day! Yolo!"

Gotham Academy: Second Semester #1

I wish this series were subtitled "Week #2".

The Commentary!
The first thing that happens in second semester is that Olive gets a new roommate named Pushy. I mean Amy. No wait! The first thing that happens is Olive takes a bath. Totally naked! Which I only mention because it's a fact and not because I'm some demented old perv who gets off on fictional characters' naked body parts drawn by other demented old pervs! I mean, if you've seen one fifteen year old's tits, you're either a super cool teenager or a demented old perv or, you know, somebody who had tits at fifteen. Also some stuff happens before Olive takes a bath but it's lonely, depressing stuff that nobody should allow past their psychic shield or they might wind up spiraling into a black abyss of isolation and fear.

Some people probably think Amy is cool. They see how she wears a cool thermal undershirt underneath a t-shirt with a ratty collar and ratty cuffs on the short sleeves and whose hair is the color of a not quite ripened plum and whose face is full of piercings who has the cavalier attitude that the world is her own and think, "Yasss! She's my jam! And by jam, I mean the stuff that comes out of my nether regions. Ooh la la!" One of the things I learned in my composition classes at university was that you should always tag sexy statements with emotes like "Ooh la la!" so that readers know that they just read something sexy and it's acceptable to be turned on by it.

Amy also steals sandwiches and crushes on Pomeline. Well, who doesn't? Amy isn't as unique as Amy probably thinks she is! Oh, and she's also moving into Maps's side of the room. I guess Maps has a new cuddle buddy for the semester?

Amy turns out to be a dick. I mean, it was obvious she was a dick in the first scene. But she continues to raise the bar on her dickitude. She tempts Olive with all sorts of chaotic nonsense which Olive falls for because Olive just wants to be free from responsibility. She just wants somebody to tell her what to do. She has a pretty low threshold for falling out of her normal behavior. But that's probably because she recently lost her mother for good and she has no actual home and Kyle won't stop asking if he can fingerbang her even though she's told him repeatedly that Maps does it better. So when somebody comes along and says, "Hey! You should throw a rock through that window and break into a museum!", it's easy to say, "Yeah! Yeah, I should do those things!" Plus if you get caught doing those things, you can always rat out the dick who convinced you to do them and, most of the time, if you were generally a decent person before that and the person you ratted out was known for being a pushy, sandwich stealing, hooligan lesbian with facial piercings and colored hair, everybody will believe you. Then they'll hug you because you were the victim of peer pressure and they will sneer at the dick who forced you to do those things by being too cool to not do the things they told you to do. I mean, why else do people begin smoking?! Because some kid who was way cooler than you were was all, "Hey, smoke this and maybe I'll acknowledge your existence."

I wonder if Amy is just a Tyler Durden figment of Olive's imagination? I hope so! If she is, I hope Olive kisses it!

Oh no! She's destroying art! I hope the people who instantly loved Amy are suddenly upset that Fletcher totally screwed up her character and apparently doesn't really "get" Amy at all!

Olive and Amy run into Eric inside the Wedgwood Museum. You remember Eric, right?! He's the one who does art who is totally in love with Maps but Maps only likes him because he can draw the pictures for her Spells and Serpents characters! For some reason, he has a key to the museum. He also knows all of the secret passages inside it. Especially the secret passage where he jerks off thinking about Maps.

Eric has been following the "Arkham" signs all over the campus which led him to the secret room in the Wedgwood Museum! Of course, the "Arkham" sign is really just a Wayne Manor monogram. It's totally just a "W" on top of an "M" and not an "A" on top of an upside-down "A" because that is stupid. Although it could also be a monogram for Wedgwood Museum! The mystery grows more mysterious!

Amy continues to be a dick. Big old floppy dick. Jerkiest dick in Gotham, really.

Amy runs off with Eric's backpack full of wank material which also contains his inhaler. When Olive and Eric emerge from the museum, they're caught by Mr. Scarlet who is completely understanding because Olive has always been such a good kid. Olive decides not to snitch on Amy because snitches are bitches or something. So Amy gets to continue to go to Gotham Academy so she can be a dick to Kyle and Maps and Pomeline and Coulton too! So awesome!

The next day, Olive discovers Professor MacPherson stood her up the previous night to go out with Bruce Wayne. No wonder Olive's mind created her Amy Durden so that she can allow herself to step outside of society's normal rules! That's also probably why "Amy" slashed the picture of Bruce Wayne!

Mmmm. I bet Isla MacPherson and Bruce Wayne fucked so hard! Ooh la la!

My farts smell like mysteries and coal smoke too!

The Ranking!
+2! First rule of Gotham Academy is I probably shouldn't make sexually explicit statements about the characters because they're all so young and fictional.

Gotham Academy #12

Why isn't the main character on the cover?

Hopefully at the one year mark, we'll get an ending to the Sybil Silverlock story. Then Olive can get serious about her school work and Maps can take over the lead. Unless that jerk Riko thinks she's going to get the lead! If she winds up at Gotham Academy for good, she'd better know her place! Maps is the leader of Pizza Detective Club and she's more of a real Robin than Riko ever will be! Maps had the approval of two separate Robins before this stupid We Are Robin movement even began!

While Maps and Olive were off looking for clues as to the identity of Calamity, Kyle Mizoguchi disappeared. Now Maps is upset because that was her brother but Olive is probably sort of glad because he was her ex and it's always easier when your ex just mysteriously disappears and you can breathe easy knowing you'll never run into them again.

Maps isn't actually upset either. She wants to keep looking for Kyle but she knows the school is going to send her home to be with her parents while the search for Kyle goes on. So Maps and Olive recruit Katherine Karlo to mimic Maps so Maps can lead the Pizza Detective Club to victory.

I think Katherine took a huge blow to the head during the Hamlet fiasco. Has nobody thought about getting her some medical attention for a possible concussion?

The Pizza Detective Club have a key to Arkham Asylum so that's the first place they go to look for clues. I guess it's been rebuilt since The Spectre sent it to hell! Alfred has Wayne Manor back and the crazy people have to go somewhere other than the streets of Gotham.

Hmm. Maybe I imagined the asylum going to hell. Am I the only one who read Batman Eternal? Was that just a dream?!

The problem with reading all of DC's comic books is I don't have the luxury to think, "Oh, maybe it was magically restored in a book I didn't read!" Of course, it's quite possible it was magically restored in a book I read and I've completely forgotten about it! Although that's not a luxury; that's a possible symptom of something awful. I have a feeling the destruction of Arkham has simply been retconned so that it's merely sort of broken down and abandoned rather than "completely gone and replaced by a crater reaching to the bowels of hell."

Olive remains outside because she'll probably need to have a confrontation with her mother while alone. The rest of the Pizza Detectives head inside to find Kyle almost immediately, thanks to Maps's super sleuthing skills. Kyle was dragged to Arkham by somebody other than Calamity. He doesn't reveal who it was because he almost falls to his death while he waits for the Pizza Detectives to figure out how to use their Arkham Key. Maybe the hole Kyle almost falls in is all that's left of the crater that I must have dreamed swallowed the entire building previously.

I think Arkham lies on reality distorting field and that's why it exists differently than I remember! That's why Colton was able to grab Kyle's hand even though there's no way he could have grabbed Kyle's hand if I trust the upper right panel!

I was hoping that right in the middle of this issue, we'd get a scene of Katherine just shoving slices of bread into her mouth.

Olive has followed a voice calling to her and wound up in an upper room of the old building. It's there that she meets the jerko who kidnapped Kyle: Hugo Strange! Well, duh! That's what happens when a school lets a loony like him counsel the kids! Although it's possible he hasn't really done any crazy shit yet in The New 52. He was teased in Teen Titans (or was it Red Hood?! It was a Lobdell comic) but nothing ever came of that. And he was counseling Roy Harper in Red Hoods (when Tynion was writing, I think?). And he may have taken part in a back-up story in Detective Comics a long time ago but I think that was his just his son, Eli. Also, that was the most horribly written Poker story I've ever read. Thanks, Tony S. Daniel! I think the "S" stands for "YOU SUCK!"

Professor Strange has been dressing up like Olive's mother because he's a weird pedo. Also it's pretty typical for the villain in a story about young people acting like detectives for the villain to be an old guy dressing up to scare people so he can find the treasure or buy the real estate cheaply. In this case, Calamity has hidden something in the tunnels beneath Arkham. Hugo Strange has been trying to scare the Calamity out of Olive so that she'd channel the villain and maybe show him where she hid the treasure. Instead, Calamity chases off Hugo Strange and Kyle is saved. Calamity may or may not have appeared through Olive. It's a Pizza Detective Mystery!

Or it's not. Olive feels whole so I think that means Calamity has become a part of her. Which means Olive now feels closer to her mother. Although she's still not sure how her mother died! It was probably Strange!

Gotham Academy #12 Rating: No change. The art in this comic book is simply adorable. Or beautiful if adorable is too patronizing. I'm also a huge fan of the characters and the setting because it's something different that DC isn't really used to doing. Plus it feels a bit like Degrassi Junior High which is a show I grew up with and which I loved a lot. I suppose Maps is a big reason as to why I like this comic as well but I'm always singing her Dungeons and Dragons praises so I'm just going to ignore her this time.

NoI'mnotMapsisthebest!

Gotham Academy #11

Scary!

Thank goodness this issue isn't about Shakespeare so I don't have to pretend not to know anything about Shakespeare while discussing it. Hopefully it's about William Butler Yeats because I really don't know anything about William Butler Yeats. At least not about his poems from the young version of himself. I prefer when he gets older and writes poems discussing how, since he's old, he's forgotten all of the mysterious symbols he used throughout his career that caused most of his poetry to not make any sense at all unless you had dozens of supplementary materials like letters Yeats wrote telling people what the fuck he was talking about. Some people probably think William Butler Yeats is their favorite poet because they heard "The Second Coming" once read at the beginning of an episode of Heroes but they're wrong. Because William Butler Yeats is incomprehensible to anybody not willing to study him for four or five years straight. Occasionally he'll write five or six lines in a row that don't have anything to do with gyres or a local news story that time has forgotten or the history of the architecture of a tower or lions or Irish mythic heroes and they'll actually make me cry (except not really because Pshaw! Boys don't cry!). Stupid Yeats. What a jerko!

The Pizza Detective Club are headed into Downtown Gotham to skip a Gotham Academy tennis tournament against Metropolis High. Instead of watching Kyle get his ass kicked by Alexander Luthor or whatever robot kid they're going to use to cheat, the Pizza Detective Club are going to look for clues to the Mystery of Calamity Silverlock! Is she dead? Is she alive? Is she just a hallucination brought on by Olive's pent-up sexual frustration causing her to lash out with pyrokinetic lust blasts? That's probably the problem.

Maps has come up with a plan to discover more clues to the mystery.

The plan's not really that good. It doesn't even have any practice kissing in it.

The girls almost get caught breaking into City Hall by a security guard practicing to be a radio personality. True Story That May or May Not Be True Because The Caveat May Be All I Have To Save My Dignity When Somebody Asks Me If The Masturbating In The Sink Story Was True: You know those "tests" they give kids in high school to determine what career they might best be suited for? I got radio DJ. Fuck you, test. That was an insulting answer! I suppose I only got Radio DJ because Arrogant Internet Blogger wasn't a potential career when I took that test.

Olive and Maps make it to the records room where Olive instantly finds the files on her family because nobody wants to read three pages of the girls searching through files. While Olive searches for clues, Maps makes a new friend.

Just put Maps in a Robin costume already. Preferably the original one.

Red Robin reveals to Maps that practically every kid in Gotham is now calling themselves a Robin. I guess Maps could go the generic route and just slap an "R" on her chest and pretend she's part of the movement. But she has a real Batarang! She's now been acknowledged by two actual Robins that she has what it takes! When Batman returns, he'd better give Maps a chance to kick at his side! Maps isn't the type of person that can keep a secret about anything she's super excited about, so she mentions that Olive is currently stealing records on Calamity. Red Robin was about to steal some records too, so he isn't too concerned with that part of the story. But he does warn Maps to be careful around Calamity and then tells her a story about how Dick Grayson was totally almost killed by Calamity because he wasn't as good a Robin as Tim Drake was.

In Tim's story, Dick is actually kind of a hero so I guess I was thinking of the way Damian would tell the story. Anyway, Batman and Robin stopped Calamity, discovered she was Sybil Silverlock, threw her in Arkham to keep everybody safe, and then realized they'd orphaned her kid. So they stuck Olive in Gotham Academy where Batman could keep an eye on her to make sure she didn't turn into the next Calamity.

Olive discovers that more than just her mom went about burning Gotham as Calamity. Pretty much all of her relatives gave it a go at one time or another. And then Olive makes a new friend.

What rough beast slouches toward...oh, you know it's a lion!

Maps and Red Robin drive off Calamity even though Olive would have preferred if they'd left her alone so she could hug her. Calamity drops a piece of a key before fleeing before the wrath of Maps. Red Robin leaves but not before giving Maps false hope about her chances of working with Batman. Not because she isn't good enough but because Batman is on a mental vacation right now. Meanwhile, Pom and Colton have discovered that Kyle disappeared before the tournament. The only clue to his disappearance is another piece of a key left in his locker. The pieces fit together to create a key to Arkham Asylum. Too bad Arkham Asylum is just debris at the bottom of a huge sinkhole! Otherwise the key might have been a good clue!

Gotham Academy #11 Rating: No change. I get it, Becky and Brenden. Maps is enthusiastic. Maps is overly enthusiastic even! It's adorable. But it's more adorable in small doses. Don't make me burn out on Maps because you realize she's the surprise hit of the DC Season. Don't turn Gotham Academy into all Urkel episodes of Family Matters. She should be treated as a limited resource. Fill up a bunch of pages with Pomeline and Olive flirting nastily before throwing in a few panels of Maps getting super excited about playing Dungeons and Dragons. Seriously. Why are you holding back with the Olive/Pomeline loss of innocence story? The Maps thing is a cute smokescreen to distract the prudes away from the real meat of this comic book but you've used too much smoke! I can't see the horny older teens experimenting with their newly found feelings full of erotic overtones! I know it's there! I know it's happening! Stop turning the camera on Maps (even though she's totally cute and adorable and not into Yeats' poetry). Give me some PomOlive already!

Gotham Academy #10

"Out, vile jelly!"

I knew the scene on the cover was expecting a Shakespeare quote but the only one I know is "Out, vile jelly!" I think it comes from that scene in Othello where he whines on about having loved too well which is just the most pathetic excuse for killing your lover. Unless it's actually that scene where Lady Macbeth is looking in the fridge and going crazy? "Out, vile jelly!" Yeah, that fits the context better. Although I suppose Othello could be trying to roll Ophelia's corpse out of a window while whispering, "Out, vile jelly! Where is they lustre now?" Oh! I remembered more of the quote! I'm a literary genius!

The most Shakespeare I ever committed to memory was something by Fabian in a scene from "Twelfth Night" for a class. Unless Othello's final speech was longer. But who can remember stuff you memorized years ago? It's all just sound and fury now, signifying memory loss. At least I can still impress people with that vile jelly line.

This issue begins with Olive and Pomeline fleeing from the Gotham Academy theater which exploded into flames when they entered. It was probably Olive's fault since she's a firestarter prone to hallucinations of her mother suggesting she burn shit down.

Mr. Trent, the director of the theater, believes the tragedy was due to his arrogance in trying to perform Macbeth which is like super cursed or something. It's so cursed that I think you're not even allowed to say the name of the play inside of a theater. That makes it really hard to perform because occasionally one of the characters in the play will say Macbeth and they aren't allowed to run outside during those scenes and shout their lines from just beyond the doorway.

Mr. Trent assumes that everybody who left the theater so that they wouldn't die in the fire have quit the play. So when Olive comes along and offers to perform it with her friends as a pretense to investigate her mother's ghost living in the balcony, Mr. Trent jumps at the offer.

Katherine is Maps' roommate who is probably a ghoul, as I pointed out last commentary.

Katherine gets shunted aside and ignored because she's so sweaty and plain. Maybe she's Clayface just trying to live out his dreams of acting while also being a young girl. That's one of my dreams too! Except minus the acting part.

Olive, Pom, and Maps rehearse the scene with the three witches that not once has the phrase "Out, vile jelly!" in it. I think the witches throw some vile jelly in the pot though, specifically of the newted variety. But during the scene, Trent calls a stop to the rehearsal because the light boy keeps missing his cues. Those light guys! They're constantly getting distracted with their goof offs and spontaneous naps. My friend Doom Bunny did lighting for the Santa Clara Junior Theater for a number of years and he once almost burned down the entire place by running a windmill in the opening scene of The Wizard of Oz until it caught fire. Sure, he noticed the engine on the thing smoking like crazy but he just kept running it faster and faster because the audience had to know a tornado was coming somehow, right? What did Doom Bunny care that I was standing behind Dorothy's house right next to the windmill?! It could have blown up in my face! Instead, it caught fire right before the stage manager and I had to spin the house at the end of the scene. Luckily the Scarecrow wasn't a method actor because as the curtain closed, he ran onstage with a fire extinguisher and put out the flames. Unluckily for Dorothy and Toto, everybody forgot they were in the house when the stage was evacuated. I guess they would have burned to death if the fire had gotten out of hand. But that's the price you pay for being an actor!

I wonder if the fire began because I was walking around backstage mumbling, "Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth!"?

Eric the light guy (you remember Eric, right? The kid that has a crush on Maps who sometimes draws her role playing characters for her?) is freaking out because he's afraid of the Phantom of Gotham Academy's Theater and Arts Program. He swears it's been ruining the play and sabotaging everything. I bet it's not a real phantom at all. It's probably just an old white guy in a rubber mask that wants to buy the theater for cheap because a buried treasure is hidden in the basement. It's also possible that the phantom he thinks he keeps seeing is actually Katherine's real visage. Remember how I pointed out she was a ghoul in my last commentary? Remember?

No. I knew I hated Brenden Fletcher! I could tell by his sweater vests and stupid beard! Do not make Maps into just another character from CW's Arrow!

Maps is better than this! She's perky and upbeat and I'm pretty sure she knows her place as a younger friend of Olive's who knows Olive because she's the sister of Olive's ex-boyfriend. Of course Olive is going to tell certain things to a friend of similar age before she tells Maps! Who does Maps expect Olive to practice kissing with? Pom, of course! It would just be weird if she kissed her ex's younger sister! Plus if things go further than kissing, Pomeline is definitely the dirty whore you want to be experimenting with.

Maps is distracted from her nonsense feelings by Colton discovering some muddy footprints! They're the footprints of somebody the same basic size as Maps. Somebody like Katherine the ghoul and/or disguise for Clayface?! I guess Clayface keeps driving everybody out of the theater so that Trent will notice him (as Katherine) and finally give him a part in the play. It's the perfect kind of mystery for the Pizza Detective Club to solve! I just hope they actually get some pizza this time.

Later, Olive goes to rehearse the "Out, out vile jelly!" soliloquy when she's almost killed by the Phantom of Gotham Academy's Theater and Arts Program! Is this the speech where she says they've waded so far into jelly that it would be just as sticky to continue forward as to go back? Maybe Macbeth says that later. Or Hamlet perchance dreams that part.

The Pizza Detective Club give chase but the Phantom gets away! But it leaves a few clues behind and one of those clues is one of Maps's maps! And the only person who knew about those maps was Katherine!

Oh my god! I knew she was a ghoul and/or a vile jelly!

The Mystery Pizza Detective Club chase Katherine back to the theater where she reveals she's actually Clayface. Then he reveals his motivations for sabotaging the play because he's still a supervillain. And his motivations are fairly standard. Trent stole his best roles back when he was an actor. Also Trent stole his wife which just seems cruel after taking all of Clayface's jobs as well. Trent comes to the kids' rescue and forces Clayface into a Shakespeare off. It's all "Out, vile jelly!" this and "Out, vile jelly!" that! There's not even a single "Brave new world that has such people in it" which is a quote I just remembered I knew because I just finished reading Brave New World and that's like an important quote in that book for some reason.

Trent is defeated by Clayface's superior barding skills but Olive knows the killing quote!

Bah. It should have been "Out, vile jelly!"

Gross. Katherine was stuck up inside of Clayface this whole time? That's disgusting. Especially since she's his own daughter. She's a Karlo! I'm going to assume that Clayface fathered Katherine before he became a living pile of hangover poo because the scientific and biological questions would haunt me if it were otherwise. I guess Katherine will become the newest member of Mystery Pizza Detective Club! Although she'll probably just go unnoticed by everybody again as she just fades into the background. She's so plain!

Gotham Academy #10 Rating: +1 Ranking. This issue was exciting and beautiful and quite educational to boot! It taught me that Shakespeare doesn't make any sense at all. Who would say "Brevity is wit" and then go on to write more plays than anybody can read including a bunch of sonnets to some dark chick? Such a silly goose, that Marlowe. I mean Shakespeare! I don't have much more to say about this comic book because everybody is already reading it (right? I mean, how can somebody not be reading this? Those people must be awful, horrible people!). So let me finish with this statement so that it saves everybody from inundating me with messages and comments: I know which play "Out, vile jelly!" comes from. It's the one with the guy who named one of his daughters after a sexually transmitted disease.

Gotham Academy #9

Are Gotham Academy polo shirts on sale yet?

Tonight on Facebook, a cousin's wife's status update read "God is real." I figured the other side of the debate needed representation as well so I posted "God is not real" as my a status update. It's a super clever retort! Well, it's not really a retort since I didn't directly reply to her well-researched opinion. It's actually just an experiment to see whose super intelligent and non-controversial statement about the way we view reality earns more praise! Some people might think it's a dick move but it wasn't meant to be that way at all! She just reminded me that I hadn't spouted my atheist agenda for months while she posts Bible quotes and secret letters to Jesus on a daily basis! Her husband posts daily pictures of the different kinds of beer he is drinking. I think the two might be related! I mean, I think their posts might be related! I didn't mean to suggest their marriage was an incestual union and an affront to nobody.

When we last saw Olive Silverlock, Maps wasn't anywhere around her so I didn't really care what was happening. But she was reading a letter from her dead mother which reminds me I should get to work on all of my posthumous correspondence to all the dicks who outlive me. I bet the stigma of incest doesn't exist in the afterlife, so putting some jokes about fucking my mother in my Death Letters is in okay taste, right? I should write a letter to O, the girl I had a crush on in high school, like the letter she wrote me that one time where she apologized for having done something horrible but was smart enough to not actually mention anything horrible that she might have done! Not that I was looking for her to apologize for anything or mad at her for any reason at all even! I just knew that being friends with her was killing me and so I was just trying to move on! Apparently she thought that was the best time to apologize for, I don't know, blowing all the members in Trixter at that concert in Oakland we went to together and she and her girlfriend disappeared backstage for an hour? That's just a guess! My buddy Joe and I just hung out in the parking lot with a shitload of Binaca at the ready.

Joe was the first guy I ever knew who liked the band Extreme and who sucked up his own semen into his mouth after coming on a woman's stomach. What a great guy!

I thought I liked Extreme after Joe introduced me to their music because it's their song "Come Out and Play" in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure when Beethoven is jamming on the organ and the other historical figures are running rampant through the mall. I was all, "Shit! That fucking rocks! Hells yeah Extreme is awesome!" But then I read the liner notes on the cassette tape to find out that Dweezil Zappa was responsible for that entire guitar solo and pretty much all of the really technical and difficult guitar solos on the album. Then I was all, "Extreme can suck it!" Then Extreme came out with "More Than Words" and I was all, "Extreme can double suck it!" True story. More or less.

You know, I still have that letter from O! I should transcribe it here because this isn't fucking "Burn All the Letters" or some shit. And no, I didn't just keep this one letter in a secret crying vault! I have all the correspondence ever sent to me in old fashioned letter form! But I won't transcribe it. At least not yet! Maybe I'll ask her permission first. That seems like the more appropriate way to act, right?

If that were anybody but Maps sneaking up on somebody in the dark and screaming, "THERE YOU ARE!", at the back of their head, I wouldn't believe they were sorry. But Maps is kind of spazzy, in the non-ableist meaning of that word, fuckface.

People who think words like "dumb" and "spastic" are ableist are the kind of people that are not allowed to read my most secret thoughts and extreme desires. Those are people who are refusing to let words evolve while thinking that everybody in the world should strive to be exactly like they are. You can let the negative connotation of some words die out, you know. I mean, unless you keep fucking reminding everybody every time you hear the fucking words. I have a sneaking suspicion that it isn't about trying to save hurt feelings at all and more about controlling and policing the things other people say so that you feel some kind of power--any kind at all! No matter how petty!--in your life.

Maps reminds Olive that they're in this thing called Pizza Detective Club and Olive is all, "Okay! Let's hunt monsters and not ask me about the letter behind my back or why my eyes are red!" And that's how the monster hunt begins!

I hope this series doesn't end out on Maps's parents lake house with all of Maps's friends visiting her while Maps leads them into the woods on one last adventure as Olive narrates something like, "It didn't matter that there were no maps or dice or monsters. Maps saw the monsters. We did not. All we saw was the death of hope and the loss of our friend."

Boy, I remember way back in my commentary for Issue #1 when I claimed Pomeline was my favorite because she flipped Olive off on panel! Who knew my heart would be stolen by the rambunctious monster loving Maps?!

The team investigates the cemetery where Tristan the Teen-Bat was attacked. They find some fur which Colton takes to analyze in his secret laboratory which he obviously has because he needs some place to make his fireworks and drugs.

I hate Monte Carlo sandwiches because sometimes they're on menus with Monte Cristo sandwiches and my brain stabs me in the back and orders the Monte Carlo instead of the delicious deep fried sandwich I truly wanted.

Tristan discovers that the hair is wolf fur which causes Pomeline to gather everybody up to hear the story of how Werewolves are made! I know! I know! The daddy werewolf approaches the mommy werewolf and says, "Um, hey." Then he flips his hair in a manner that is attractive but still the mommy werewolf is unsure if she should give him a baby. So the daddy werewolf has to figure out how to do something extremely manly and competent in front of the mommy werewolf, like rebuilding the engine on a VW Bus or rescuing a child from being hit by a speeding train. Then the mommy werewolf's eyes will bug out of her head and she will howl and he will howl and then they'll do it and voila! Somehow that makes a baby werewolf. I would get into the details but they're really boring unless you're currently engaged in them.

Somehow while the Pizza Detective Club is learning all about werewolves from Pomeline (without Maps interrupting at all even though she knows twice as much about werewolves as Pom does!), Olive disappears. Some Pizza Detective Club they turned out to be! They lose one of their own and they still don't have any pizza! They're doing a worse job than the Hardy Boys written by Scott Lobdell!

Olive has gone back to her room where she finds Maps's creepy ass roommate rearranging Olive's posters! I think Maps's roommate might be a wraith or a ghoul. This is the Ghoul's Dorm after all. Ha ha!

After Olive chases off Maps's roommate Katherine, somebody slips some Permanent Records under her door. Inside the manila envelope, Olive finds some papers that indicate her mother was a supervillain named Calamity! That sounds exactly like the type of supervillain that would die all the time and then come back from the dead!

I love House of Secrets! It's like my favorite comic ever at this exact moment when I'm not thinking of other ones which I probably like better!

Doctor Strange tells Olive a bunch of stuff Olive probably shouldn't know because he's a manipulative ass. He sends Olive to go bother Kirk Langstrom and Tristan the Teen-Bat (and also Macpherson and her dog, Ham, since they all seem to be having a party at midnight). Mac and Kirk head out to get a coffee so the girls can speak with Tristan alone. Maps asks MacPherson in Cat, "Can I has a soda?" (which should actually be "Can I haz soda?" but I'm not really that nitpicky, especially when it comes to Maps), and MacPherson corrects her grammar. Oh, you're so uncool, Miss Mac! You're not hip to the groove, dig it?

As Tristan and Olive talk, the gym teacher jumps through the window. Also, the gym teacher is a werewolf. I've still got my fingers crossed that the girls' phys ed teacher is the White Rabbit. Va-va-va-voom! Anyway, Tristan flies off with the Werewolf while the rest of the Pizza Detective Club arrive.

Uh oh. Maps is the Faith of this Scooby Gang?!

Maps has a plan to stop the werewolf all drawn up in a cute crayon chart because only the most adorable and brightest and well-loved people draw hilariously cute crayon cartoons. But first they all have to get to the gym without being distracted by their dead mothers and/or wolves in tennis shorts. Most of the Pizza Detective Club are successful. Only Olive makes the rookie mistake of hearing her mother call to her and then running headlong into a wolf in tennis shorts. So amateurish!

Olive's mother tries to possess Olive so that she burns down Gotham City. But since that already happened in Batman Eternal, Olive decides it would be derivative and lame. So instead she waits for Colin to shoot the werewolf with a tranquilizer dart.

After everybody heads off instead of celebrating Pizza Detective Club's first big mystery solved, Pom ushers Olive into the theater building to tell her she knows all about Calamity. And that's when Calamity attacks and begins to burn down the school! Or, arguing the other side, it's when Olive Silverlock has a freaky hallucination and a severe mental breakdown.

Gotham Academy #9 Rating: +1 Ranking. Why is this comic book so much better than every Superman comic book currently being published by DC Comics? Because the characters are the foundation of this comic book. This isn't just a book about a bunch of interchangeable characters who solve mysteries. This is a book about a bunch of kids with distinctly different personalities and problems who are becoming good friends while messing around investigating mysteries that are becoming more and more dangerous. Superman's comic books mostly suck right now because everybody has forgotten the character of Superman. They aren't taking the same character and putting him in a different situation. They've taken an unrecognizable twat and put him in a situation that Superman would deal with in a completely different and more rational and peaceful fashion. Also Gotham Academy looks beautiful. But you just can't go wrong when you write interesting characters. Put them in any kind of situation you want! The readers will follow because they want to see how Maps reacts and how Pomeline toughs it out and how Kyle mopes around and how Olive...well, I don't really care what Olive does. Just give me more Maps!

Gotham Academy #8

Oh! I get it! Olive the other reindeer!

Last commentary, I asked why dumb people don't appreciate my commentaries. And then I found out the answer when a dumb person responded to some of my Twat Lobo commentaries on the Blogger mirror site! It turns out dumb people get angry when they read my commentaries! And then they get super angry and start drawing lines in the sand when you point out that they are not smart at all! Boy, unintelligent people sure don't like to be called dumb! Especially when they don't understand jokes! I mean, I guess, "Hey, Anonymous Person, you are dumb! Ha ha!" isn't the best joke and can probably use some workshopping. But the "ha, ha" kind of shows that it was a joke, right? Maybe I should have repeated it!

Boy, I sure hope Dumb Anon doesn't read this commentary because that person will be drawing lines in the sand all over the place! I don't know if there are enough grains of sand on all of the beaches on Earth to contain all of those lines! And it sure will be confusing. How will I know if I'm being careful and not stepping over the lines or if it's too late and I've already stepped over all of them?! I'll be paralyzed and won't be able to write any more commentaries! Just think of all of the free time that will leave me! Oh wait. I'm all turned around on this paralyzed thing! I hope Dumb Anon does read this commentary!

Last issue, Olive missed the entire issue. But judging by the cover of this issue, I'm guessing she's returned. Now Super Ha-ha Mystery Solving Pizza Club Rockfest can get busy pulling masks off sleazy real estate developers! I hope the first pizza they eat is Jalapeno and Pineapple. Mmm! My butt is burning just thinking about it! Oh! You know what would make that pizza even better? Vegetarians hide your eyes for the last half of this sentence after the colon: linguiça!

I wonder if anybody has ever put loquats on a pizza? I miss loquats so much!

This issue begins with a funeral. Somebody close to Olive died. It's possible it was her mother since she escaped from Arkham Manor in the middle of winter. And even though Olive can make fire just by thinking about it, it doesn't mean her mother can as well. So she probably froze to death. I hope Olive doesn't blame Batman because Batman didn't save her. With that logic, Olive will have to blame everybody because nobody saved her!

Actually, I'm getting ahead of myself. I still don't know who is dead!

Teenbat gets to Olive before Kyle can and she goes off to be consoled by his hunky Teenbatness. Kyle just hides behind a tree while his penis withers.

Later in the family car, Maps confirms that the funeral was for Olive's mother. Although I still haven't seen a body! And even if I saw a body, this is a comic book so Olive's mother can come back to life at any time! If Jesus Christ could come back in The Pictorial Bible then Olive's mom can come back in Gotham Academy!

Maps is frickin' adorable in that way that nobody else thinks she's as adorable as I do because she's my favorite and I called dibs on being her biggest fan. Queue for liking Maps begins behind me! And don't think you liked her before I liked her because I liked her five billion times more than you liked her in the very first panel she appeared in and probably even before that if you say you liked her earlier than that. She was my favorite when I thought her up and told Becky and Brenden about her and then they stole her from me and put her in Gotham Academy. Brenden also stole all of my sweater vests and beard oils.

Kyle is now definitely single since Olive is talking to a Teenbat. He's got all kinds of sweet tennis partners trying to get a handle on his racket but all he can do is pine for what he's lost. Or maybe he's just consumed with thoughts of Olive and Teenbat doing it constantly up in her room and he's actually more obsessed with the idea that Olive is being touched by some other guy than concerned with breaking up with Olive.

Tristan the Teenbat is busy spying on Kyle because this school is full of people who can't mind their own beeswax! Actually, Tristan is spying on Coach Humphries for the new science teacher, stupid old man Langstrom. Coach Humphries seems extra angry and he even squashed a tennis ball in his hand! I mean in a way different than in the way anybody can squash a tennis ball! I bet he's hooked on Venom!

Anyway, Kyle catches Tristan the Teenbat spying so he follows him to do some spying on Tristan! Is all of this spying extracurricular activity for Spying 101?

Holy hot as hell naked Teenbat! Rowwr! Or whatever bat's say when they see something sexy. BLIP BLIP BLIPPITY SQUEAK!

Kyle rushes off to tell Olive that she can't hang around with Tristan which only makes Olive imagine putting Tristan's cock in her butt. That's totally how things work, guys! Don't ever tell an ex you still care about not to hang around with some guy because she'll do it all over that guy after that! Also, you probably shouldn't do anything in anyway that's manipulating your ex. You should, you know, stop it already. You broke up. It's over! Go find another girl to creep out with your stalkery behavior! Just realize you never love a woman more than when you realize she'll never, ever have you and move on posthaste.

While Kyle and Olive discuss the Teenbattiness of Tristan, Maps is spying on them from the secret passage. Christ! More spying! Although this spying is the cutest spying so far.

Olive goes to talk to the guidance councilor who must be Hugo Strange because why not? Kirk Langstrom is the science professor! I bet the lunch lady is the Mad Hatter. I hope the White Rabbit is the girls' phys ed teacher!

Well, I guess Kyle never wants Olive to speak to him again.

Tristan is attacked in the graveyard but Kyle and Maps find him and help him back to Langstrom. Maybe they can all enjoy some Super Serum and become Man-Bats! If Maps were a Man-bat, I'd finally stop complaining about how lame Man-bats are! Langstrom has the kids go find Professor MacPherson because she and her dog have experience in solving paranormal mysteries! Ham and Mac to the rescue!

Kyle goes after Olive so that she can tell him she's a firestarter and then he can take advantage of her confusion and kiss her right on the mouth. So that's how you get women to kiss you! You find them in a vulnerable state and then tell them you're going to be a manly man and then kiss them before they know what's happening! I am going to get so much lip action at the roller rink this week!

Olive tells Kyle that she didn't mean to kiss him but that's okay because now Kyle can stay a single man but he still got the sweet, sweet kissing action! After Kyle leaves, Olive finds a letter from her mother and learns that her mother was really Fox Mulder!

Dun dun DUN!

Gotham Academy #8 Rating: No change. I have an idea for a new series! Gotham Academy: 20 Years Ago! Then it can star Bruce Wayne and lots of hot young kissing action! Not that I want to see Bruce Wayne kissing stuff! I just want to see the stuff he's kissing because that stuff will probably be totally cute girls! He'll be all, "Hey, lovely young lady, my parents died and I'm sad and need consolation. Do you want to come back to my dorm and watch Seinfeld with me?" Then they'll be all, "Who are you?" And he'll be all, "I'm Bruce Wayne. I have a butler." And they'll be all, "Like sure I'll go back to your dorm room all alone. Big sarcastic eyeroll! Huge fart noise! Jerking off motions!" She says all those things because that was what people did in the nineties instead of saying "hashtag" before everything. I think. I might be remembering it wrong because I was busy watching a lot of Seinfeld in the nineties and so I don't actually remember what human interactions were like back then.

Gotham Academy #6

How many Experience Points is Batman worth? I'd say he's about a 12 Hit Dice creature.

When's the last time anybody else has gone to a Fry's Electronics? When did soft soap, candy, and body pillows become "electronics"? That place is like walking into a flea market now. My favorite display is for the digital cameras. It's more empty spaces and security wires connected to nothing then it is cameras. Who would have guessed the cell phone market would kill the digital camera market?

Last issue ended with Maps and her friends hanging out with Killer Croc as he told them funny Batman stories. But then Batman dropped in because his Bat-Ears were burning and he was all, "Lies! Take it back! I never once said Jason Todd had it coming and I in no way financed that pub calling itself the Crow Bar!"

This is what happens when you talk about Batman behind his back.

While Maps heroically leads Pomeline and Colton to safety during the Batman/Killer Croc throwdown, Olive Silverlock stays behind to manifest some super powers. She ignites Colton's fireworks with the power of her mind. That might be conclusive proof that she is the one that burned down the North Hall last summer. Or it might just be proof that she time traveled.

With the North Hall burning around them (again!) and the ceiling about to cave in on top of Olive (again!), Killer Croc scoops Olive up and heads into the secret passage that Maps bravely retreated into to make sure it was clear. Batman remains behind in the fire because nothing can kill him. The kids get split up and Olive winds up alone with Croc. That's probably a good thing because now he can tell her secret stories about her mother.

Croc's cell was right across from Sybil's but none of his stories are, sadly, about her using the toilet in her cell. Instead he just mentions that she could be scary and when she was scary, she'd talk about how Gotham Academy and Arkham Asylum were connected by more than just tunnels. They're also connected to Wayne Manor too!

Croc leaves Olive at the edge of the swamp and disappears telling her she's always welcome to come visit him. Then she heads back to school to join up with this comic book's real main character, Maps.

I wonder when Maps's secret power will be revealed?

Later Batman appears to Olive so that he can lecture her. Why is Batman the favorite of so many people? He's a douchey killjoy buttpoo. And then after his lecture when Olive thinks she gets to ask him some questions, he does the fucking disappearing act. He's such a coward!

The next day, Pomeline and Olive (PomOlive?) give their Millie Jane Cobblepot report. It's all about how Millie Jane was made a captive of Arkham to ensure that she wouldn't expose the Cobblepot family secrets. She was kept in the building that's currently the girls' dorm. She later escaped using the secret tunnels but her freedom led to her death and the death of her father. In mysterious circumstances! Also she might not have died since she wasn't buried in the Cobblepot family tomb.

Then Colton arrives with a big clue to the mysterious symbol they've been seeing everywhere. The one with the "W" on top of the "M" denoting "Wayne Manor"? Well, Maps sees Colton's "A"s on his assignment and realizes the symbol could be an "A" with another "A" inverted on top of the first one. And that could stand for Arkham Asylum! Too bad they're wrong because the symbol was already shown at Wayne Manor when it was renovated to become Arkham Manor! But they're just junior detectives who have yet to begin the Trixie Belden World's Greatest Detective Home Course like I have. And anyway, Arkham Asylum, Wayne Manor, and Gotham Academy are all linked to some greater mystery anyway, so at least they're on the right track.

I hope they call their detective club "Maps'sses Dicks."

I think instead they're calling it Pizza Club which is stupid and dumb because it isn't what I suggested.

But wait! There's one of those "meanwhiles" I love to throw around my commentaries! This one involves Damian Wayne hunting down The Diary of Millie Jane Cobblepot and taking it back from Maps'sses Dicks. He does this because it was inscribed to Bruce from his mother Martha. Aww! And I thought Bruce was just being a pushy asshole when he tried to get the diary back from Olive! But the best part about the Meanwhile Epilogue is that Damian Wayne is being enrolled in Gotham Academy! Yay!

Stay away from Maps, you ten year old pervert!

Gotham Academy #6 Rating: +1 Ranking. What a twist! I never saw the Damian thing coming! Could this book get any better or any more like an episode of Degrassi Junior High? The good series with Caitlin and Joey and Snake and Wheels and The Zit Remedy. Although I'm not a hater about the new version with Drake and all the other people whose names I've forgotten (like the kid that gets shot in an alley and the kid that shoots Jimmy and the hot girl and the other hot girl and the hot boy and Liberty and the other hot boy) since I only watched it through the one time thanks to Netflix and its old fashioned method of sending disks through the mail. Degrassi the Next Generation is good stuff too but since I grew up alongside the first series, I have to love that one more. Gotham Academy really does need a theme song that I can play each month before I read it. DC Comics, get to work on that!

Gotham Academy #5

Stop copping a feel, Mister Grey!

I just finished watching the third season of American Horror Story, "Coven." It was basically just the X-men! A school for gifted children with special powers? A headmaster that wants to teach the children to fit in and pass among the rest while another, more powerful mutant witch wants to train them to fight. At first I thought Cordelia was Charles but then she has all of those eye problems and it's obvious she's Cyclops. Her mother Fiona seemed to be Magneto but then maybe she was just Charles Xavier when he was a big jerk. He was a big jerk at some point, right? Marie Laveau later turned out to be Magneto with her Brotherhood of Evil. Plus she and Fiona were like Fremeses which is totally the Magneto/Professor X relationship. Madison was kind of like Emma Snow although Nan had all the proper mind powers. Zoe was Kitty Pryde. Kyle was, I don't know, Wolverine or Deadshot or something. The Witchhunters were kind of like X-Factor but for real and not for show. I'm sure there were more similarities, like who Queenie and Misty represented, but I don't know as much about the X-men as I should. And I probably never will since Scott Lobdell wrote so much of it in the nineties.

The biggest problem with Coven is that Maps wasn't in it. It's time to read something with Maps in it!

It turns out the escaped Arkham inmate in the walls of Olive's dorm is Killer Croc although he drops the "killer" when he introduces himself to Olive. Smart!

Oh my god, Maps! You're breaking my heart! Oh, to be young again! And fictional!

Killer Croc gets spooked by Maps'sses (is that the proper way to make her name possessive?) voice and hightails it out of the attic. Hmm, was that insensitive? Since, you know, crocodiles can't actually raise their tails? I don't mean to be insensitive! I mean, I'm not racist or anything in all the ways white people think matter when it comes to racism. Like I don't oppress and hate groups of people based on generalizations and stereotypes about their race or ethnicity or gender or sex or overall level of sexual promiscuity (unless the level is low and then why am I wasting my time, amirite?!)! But I'm pretty sure my sarcasm and cynicism make me racist in my own head! My mind can't help but Mind-Tweet career ending comments at my own behaviors and actions whenever I deal with anybody. It's just that when my mind adds hilarious commentary about a white person, I don't think, "Fuck, dude, that was wrong." So when an old girlfriend of mine once told an extremely old lady who had just had hip surgery that it will be worth it in the long run, my mind goes, "Never say 'in the long run' to an old person!" A couple of nights ago, I was cleaning the floor of a grocery store which is closed. But a delivery guy comes by to drop off fruits and veg while I'm there. As he was leaving, I told him to feel free to move my ramp if it's ever blocking his way. Then he left and I thought, "Hmm, should I have used the phrase 'feel free' to a black guy?" I blame the media for my racism!

Didn't I say she'd only be concerned about how many experience points he was worth? Okay, she's pretty concerned about its Treasure Type as well. I didn't realize Maps was such a gold-digger.

As Olive and Maps continue to explore, Maps fantasizes about finding a treasure chest or a gelatinous cube. Maps would have been so in love with my junior high school self!

Eventually they find themselves in a large antechamber (unless it's just a chamber!) with the Wayne Manor insignia carved into the floor and doors leading in every compass direction. They hear some movement to the north but it leads to a blocked passage under the North Hall. Olive decides to call the expedition for the night and Maps places a question mark and a little doodle of a collapsed passage on her map before heading back to the dorms.

The next day, they regroup in Maps'sses room to brief their new party members, Pomeline and Colton.

I was wrong about the question mark but look at the collapsed passage! I think Maps and I are soulmates!

While they're making plans, Kyle, Olive's ex and Maps'sses brother, butts in.

Literally! Who enters a room this way?

Kyle acts all pissy that Olive might be putting Maps in danger by taking her on dungeon expeditions of the North Hall because he apparently doesn't know his sister at all. But Olive changes the subject and asks Kyle to the school dance even though she has hot pants for The Guy Who Reads. But taking Kyle to the dance is just her cover! Pomeline's cover is Heathcliff and Maps'sses cover is her roommate Katherine who has a bit of an Alice in Wonderland vibe going on. I think that whole dorm room is just full of win!

The adventurers ditch their dates as quickly as possible and head out on their expedition to find Killer Croc and ask him about Olive's mother. And if they happen to find a few potions and magic weapons, that's just gravy. And experience points for treasure found, of course!

Before they can set out, they need to retrieve Colton's thieves tools. Their first hurdle is a locked door to Hammer's office that can only be answered by finding the right combination on a rune lock.

I can't believe Maps missed the mimic! She'd be so disappointed! Also, Pomeline drops a Ghostbusters' reference on the next panel. She might be a bit geekier than she lets on!

Maps opens the lock easily because she knows her runes just like I do! I once had a dungeon master in high school (Welson Niggins! Friend of Soy Rakelson!) draw up a map for our party and he labeled a bunch of places with the runes used for Dwarfish in Tolkein's books. I took the map and began reading the place names as he looked on in surprise that such a cool looking dude as me could read runes. I'd learned them from the map that came with Ultima III!

I know all the stories I tell about my life make it sound like I looked exactly like the kind of person that would be able to read runes. But I offer this abridged, mostly true story in defense of my Cooleptitude! One time at a party, I flipped back my hair and said, "Hi, my name's Tess." And later that night, women (maybe just a woman) were (was?) yanking down my pants in front of a library near the house we'd been in earlier. I probably have tons more proof like that but I don't want to brag or make them up right now. I mean try to remember them.

Once past the door, the party of adventurers raid the place and pick out the weapons that will help establish their characters for the campaign to come.

See? Maps knows the importance of this initial outfitting ritual.

After they're all outfitted, they head to the Girls' Dormitory to slip back into the secret passageway. But before they can get there, Olive has a completely separate adventure all on her own! Or while the others watch from a distance? Anyway, she sees a Man-bat flying through the sky and brings it down with her new crossbow that she should probably name Batfeller. I'm super excited to see Man-bat shot out of the sky until it's revealed that he's not dead and that he's also The Guy Who Reads. He points out the obvious, that he has the Langstrom Virus, and then tells Olive about a day in the summer when he first saw her.

That's the perfect ice breaker! "When I first saw you, I witnessed you burn down a school. Now kiss me!"

Angsty Teenaged Boy-bat (Tristan is going to get a lot of nicknames as I avoid calling him anything but Tristan Grey) rescued Olive from the fire and then Old Lady MacPherson took her to the infirmary and asked The Guy Who Reads if he could keep an eye on Olive. And he said "I'll keep more than an eye on her!" while waggling an imaginary cigar.

Maps comes running out of nowhere and manages to scare away yet another monster worth valuable XP. Apparently Olive did lose the rest of her group as she went on her Man-boy adventure.

I don't think there's enough comic left for a dungeon crawl. Maybe just a page or two to cover Kyle's anger when he realizes he's been ditched at the Valentine's Day Dance.

Except fuck Kyle and the dance apparently because the action picks up with the party crawling up out of the pit and into the North Hall where they lure Killer Croc to them with snack cakes! Killer Croc tells some good stories about how he threw rocks at Batman and how he almost bit Batman's balls off and how the new Robin totally almost killed him like eighteen times already. Everybody is having a good time and just as he begins to open up about Sybil Silverlock and her knowledge of secret tunnels connecting Arkham with Gotham Academy, Batbuzzkilljoywrecker crashes the party. Fuck you, Batman! Aren't you in enough books each month?!

Gotham Academy #5 Rating: +1 Ranking. I've always wanted a DC Comic book that combines all of my favorite things like the DC Universe and Dungeons and Dragons and Degrassi Junior High and Sailor Moon all in one package. Now if this comic book were sold with a free package of Oreos, it would be the most perfect thing ever.

Gotham Academy #4

Maps Maps Maps Maps Maps Maps Maps Maps Maps Maps Maps Maps!

Previously in Maps Goes To Gotham Academy With A Bunch Of Other Characters That Don't Matter Except Maybe Pomeline Fritch Because I Can Remember Her Full Name For Some Reason. Maybe it's because I really like this comic book! I also know Maps Mizoguchi and Olive Silverlock! And Kyle Mizoguchi but that's cheating because he has the same last name as the best character in all of comicdom so how could I ever forget it?

So far, Maps has been having a lot of scary adventures with her friend Olive. They've hunted ghosts and played Dungeons and Dragons and broke into the North Hall where they were forbidden to go and hung from a rope which interrupted Bruce Wayne's rich guy speech to the school. She's also invented the next huge catch phrase: "Oh my crap!" I'm waiting for Maps to get her own comic book now, DC. Don't make me start writing serious fan fiction!

This issue does not begin with Olive Silverlock's funeral for some reason. She was grabbed by a monster inside the North Hall when last issue ended but now she and her love interest, Pomeline Fritch, are standing outside of the North Hall's crime scene remembering how Olive didn't die. I hate when comic books begin with minor characters. Let's see what Maps is up to!

Olive is called into the Headmaster's office for mysterious reasons. She's probably going to be told that her mother escaped from Arkham Manor! Although that happened in the snow and it doesn't look like it's been snowing lately at Gotham Academy. So maybe that won't happen for a few issues yet. While waiting for the Headmaster to yell at her, she witnesses Bruce Wayne and Isla MacPherson talking about their date from the other night. So I guess Bruce Wayne has been sexing it up since Natalya's death! Maybe they're not discussing a date but it really seems like Bruce is trying to apologize for being such a greedy, selfish lover and Isla is trying to just forget the entire experience. Before Olive can hear any sweet details, Headmaster Hammer Head nearly scares the shit out of her. Why does he have to look so creepy? Doesn't he know Gotham Academy looks like the kind of place where creepy old man monsters roam the halls looking for sweet, young innocent flesh? Hmm, that describes every high school in America, I think!

Olive has also been noticing a symbol that looks like somebody typed an "A" on a typewriter and then moved the carriage back one space and typed a "V" over the "A" and then moved the carriage back one space and typed an "O" on top of that. What it is is a "W" on top of an "M" which is the symbol for Wayne Manor as seen in Arkham Manor when the workers were converting the place into an asylum. One of the workers just knocked the ends off of the "W" to turn it into an "A" and voila! Arkham Manor!

Oh look! It's the guy who reads!

The Guy Who Reads knows Olive. It seems he helped her over the summer which is still fuzzy in her memory. She should go ask Maps what Maps knows about him because Maps! She hasn't even been in this yet!

Oh wait! I just turned the page and there she was! Best character ever!

I hope Wizards of the Coast doesn't sue over this! I guess as long as Maps doesn't also paint a Mind Flayer and a Rust Monster, she'll be okay.

Eric, the boy who had better stay away from Maps if he knows what's good for him, is also in Maps's painting class. Apparently Maps and Olive saw the symbol in his sketchbook, so they head over to make him really uncomfortable in that way that only teenaged boys can feel uncomfortable when two cute girls approach him out of nowhere and want to talk to him and he didn't have any time to prepare what he should say so the only authentic response becomes to run away screaming.

Sigh. Maps is perfect! Except for the part where Eric's painting looks nothing like Tiamat. But I'll just blame Karl Kerschl for not getting that detail correct! Maps would never get a Tiamat fact wrong!

Even before the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon made the Dungeons and Dragons version of Tiamat a household name, I bet every Dungeons and Dragons Campaign in the late seventies and early eighties culminated in a battle against Tiamat (if not Orcus or Demogorgon or Juiblex).

Eric leaves a scattering of script pages to Macbeth in his wake as he flees from the attention of the cute girls. So Olive and Maps decide to stake out the drama nerds. They discover Eric designs the props and trap him in the backroom so they can get some answers out of him. Eric panics and tells them everywhere on campus that he's seen the symbol. One of them is in the girls' dorm, so Maps and Olive prepare to explore it by getting their fifty feet of rope, their ten foot pole, their iron spikes, and their iron rations together for the journey.

Also torches! They probably need torches! Fuck, I always forget the torches and then the Dungeon Master is all, "You can't see anything." And then I'm all, "But I'm an elf! I have infravision!" And then he scoffs and says, "That hardly works here in the cold depths of a forgotten barrow!" And then we spend another hour role playing going back into town to buy torches and a tinder box because fuck you, Dungeon Master, you won't laugh at me again when I can't light the torches!

While packing, Maps and Olive have a run in with the Ghost of Millie Jane! Oh my crap!

It's just a puppet operated by Heathcliff.

Olive catches Heathcliff on the roof and agrees not to tell Pomeline if he'll just knock it off. He was doing it to make Pomeline happy about summoning the ghost and not just being mean by trying to fool her. But now Olive and Heathcliff have a shared secret which will bring them closer! Pomeline isn't going to like this much.

Pomeline especially isn't going to like these mild flirtations!

Is giving the Guy Who Reads the name of "Grey" a good choice in the current Fifty Shades of Grey pop culture climate? Maybe Cloonan and Fletcher want us to make that association. They must, right? Who wouldn't? And is the name of the book "Fifty" or "50"? Do I really care? No, I don't really care.

On her way back to her dorm room, Olive stumbles upon the symbol and presses it, opening up a secret passage. Which she ventures into without her provisions or Maps! That's a bad idea! Maps is never going to forgive her for this insolence! Maps is the dungeon delving expert!

Sure, Olive breaks the window and leaves Maps to clean up while she goes gallivanting inside the walls. Typical!

While Olive waits for Maps to join her inside the walls, she runs into the monster that grabbed her leg last issue. He's a big blue version of Killer Croc! Unless he's just Karl Kerschl's version of Killer Croc bathed in blue light. Whoever he is, he has a picture of Olive and her mother taped to the wall by his makeshift bed. Olive realizes he's an escapee from Arkham and empathizes with him. She says she won't tell anybody that he's living in the walls but she also wants to know what he knows about her mother. Hopefully she'll get some answers out of him before Maps arrives and tries to kill him for two hundred experience points.

Gotham Academy #4 Rating: +1 Ranking because Maps Maps Maps Maps Maps Maps Maps Maps Maps Maps Maps Maps Maps! I really like Maps!