Plastic Man #1

Plastic Man is a smarmy bitch.

With the return of Plastic Man to the DC Universe, DC Comics is declaring they don't give a fuck about being taken seriously anymore. Which is a good thing! Plastic Man is a sign that DC is daring to have fun again. They completely lost their sense of humor for awhile and then doubled down on not ever having a sense of humor ever again with The New 52. "Ambush Bug and Detective Chimp?" spat Dan DiDio into the faces of every writer who dared to mention that they chuckled at Giffen and DeMatteis's Justice League one time. "They're out! Put them in a stupid news feature in the back of the comic book! Make sure everybody knows they're out of continuity!" he declared as he wrote on the white board in the staff meeting room, "Continuity is king!" But after being criticized for a number of New 52 years and realizing that maybe they weren't making the barrels full of cash they had anticipated, Dan DiDio erased the white board and wrote, "Fans are stupid jerks." Then he put Tom King in charge of Batman to make sure everybody knew continuity was less important than great story telling.

By the way, that was a compliment for Tom King! It was also a criticism for all the people who can't stand Tom King's Batman because they wouldn't know a good story if Scott Lobdell knew how to write one.

I'm pretty sure I made my point in one of those last two paragraphs so I'm just going to move on without rereading them.

So. Plastic Man. He's perhaps the goofiest comic book character in the DC Universe that isn't named Aquaman. But he has to be taken seriously now because Scott Snyder said so. Although maybe I'm wrong about that because why would DC give a serious character to Gail Simone? She's just going to make him revel in fart and dick jokes.

You know what I just realized? I'm terrible at comic book reviews.

The issue begins with Eel getting his ass kicked by some low life thugs who used to be his friends. Then he makes a dick joke.

I might not know how to review comic books but I know how to spot somebody who loves a good dick joke.

For somebody who thinks they know a good dick joke, I can't even think of one right now. And the more I think about it, the more I realize maybe I've never told one in my entire life! What constitutes a good dick joke? Is it just referencing a penis like in the panel above? Does that count? Is emphasizing Grayson's first name when Bruce is scolding him technically a dick joke? Is the bill for the therapist I hired because the first woman who ever put her hands down my pants chuckled a dick joke? Oh wait! I just remembered a couple of dick jokes! The first one is that one where the guy wishes for a seven inch pianist (which seems weird because why not wish for an eight inch pianist? Is that too much?!). The other one I first heard in fifth grade and I didn't understand it but I pretended to because I didn't want to be embarrassed. It had a really strange premise where a cop was arresting me and a friend and somebody we didn't like (for purposes of the joke at the time, the person my friend and I didn't like was Paul Avila (sorry, Paul, if you're Googling your name!)). For some reason, the perverted cop decided he would let us all go if our penises measured thirteen inches. So I pulled out mine and it was six inches. Then my friend Daniel pulled out his and it was six and a half inches (of course he got the biggest penis! He was telling the joke!). Then Paul pulled out his and it was half an inch. Just enough so that the cop allowed us to go free. Afterward, Paul said, "Whew! Good thing I was popping a boner!" I laughed even though I was in fifth grade and didn't know the slang term "popping a boner." Maybe I was just a late bloomer and had never popped one before. It's hard to say because I didn't keep a boner diary when I was younger.

That last sentence makes it sound like I keep a boner diary now. But that's none of your business.

Anyway, Plastic Man works in a strip club where the strippers dress like superheroes. I hope most of the comic book takes place in this location. A few years ago, I met a stripper who called herself Princess Unicorn Pants. I still regret not running away with her because now I just sit alone at night searching for porn that never exists on Tumblr.

I'm so disappointed in you, Internet.

Later, after Plastic Man has a nightmare about the guy he thinks he killed when he was a criminal, a woman named Obscura shows up in his apartment. She works for Spyral which is probably important because she might know Dick Grayson and Dick Grayson's first name is Dick. Get it?

They get it!

I'm glad Gail Simone deals with the elephant in the room in this first issue otherwise I'd be reading every issue thinking, "So, how big is Plastic Man's penis? Big, right?" And I think this answers the question! Just look at Obscura's face! That's not the face of a woman looking at a tiny penis. I should know because I've never seen that face before.

Obscura wants to discuss the kind of conspiracy you'd learn about if you read Rosanne Barr's Twitter feed. And just as Plastic Man is learning about this conspiracy, he's drawn directly into it! His old criminal pal Benny is murdered and before he dies, he writes, "IT JLA," in blood on the wall. So Obscura was right! The superhero teams have been infiltrated by baddies! I hope they aren't Manhunters again. Or white martians! Although when your team has Lobo on it, would you really be surprised if people began winding up slaughtered for no reason? Seriously, Batman, maybe try Zip Recruiter next time.

Plastic Man is fingered for the murder which sounds sexier than it really is. He'll probably get away next issue or else this series is just going to be Plastic Man telling dick jokes from a prison cell for fifty issues.

Rating: Three and a half inches out of five inches. Is that enough to satisfy readers? I don't think so. Maybe I should say seven inches out of ten inches. That sounds like a better system, right?! Now to see if maybe PorhHub knows what Sleestaks do in the privacy of their own caves.

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Shade the Changing Girl #8

Who brought the young girl to a velociraptor fight?

• Marge Sausage was apparently only doing the art for one issue. Now I'm really going to have to dig deep to find anything positive to say about this comic book.

• Oh wait! I know one. It has a female lead. Boom! Worth reading. Also she's a person of color. Can you refer to alien bird species who love to fuck as a POC? I'm probably a white guy in his mid forties, so I don't know anything about saying the correct thing. I mean, I thought I knew how to be a generally kind person and then I found out, online, that I was actually gross and problematic. At least now I know how all the gay kids felt in 80's high schools when they heard people calling terrible things gay! Because now every aspect of me that I never actually think about unless I'm filling out a census form is the new way to call something gay! I imagine it would hurt if I wasn't already full of self-confidence due not to my circumstances of birth but to my being so objectively awesome.

No it isn't! That's the definition of dying in a way that will cause people talking about it to have to bite their tongue before they completely blame the victim!

• You know what's wrong with this country? We've become too afraid to blame the victim! Sometimes blaming the victim is really important. Like when somebody crosses the street at night and in the raing while wearing dark clothing which causes them to be hit by a car and killed. In that instance, we need to blame the victim as hard as we can! It's not like it was the driver's fault in that situation! It's not like it was an accident that couldn't be avoided! The victim's death was due entirely to the victim's poor choices. And by refusing to blame the victim, we obfuscate the reason the victim died and dance around the real danger. By not blaming the victim, we discuss things like the speed limit on the road and the lack of a crosswalk and the need for drivers to be more aware of things they couldn't possibly see in time to stop because who could have guessed that person would suddenly be on the hood of their car when the driver was blinded by oncoming headlights and the heavy rain and the darkness of the stupid sun not being in the dumb old sky! None of those things would prevent the death of a person who treats reality as if there are respawn points!

• Obviously there are times when we shouldn't blame the victim. Stop taking something I wrote and deciding I'm a monster because you have no reading comprehension! Maybe you're the gross and problematic one in this situation! You ever think of that?!

• You know what? I bet you Internet Scolds think of that all the fucking time. I bet you're constantly thinking that. I can't imagine being part of a community of people who are obsessively looking for a flaw (or a perceived flaw through a purposeful misunderstanding) in any of the people in their community so they can out them and receive praise for being so fucking perceptive and righteous and noble! Anybody can look at a huge fucking jerk and point out why the person is a huge fucking jerk. But not everybody can look at their best friend who is supposedly just as socially just as they are and tear their fucking heart out when they make a misstep. It must be so stressful to be a young person in this day and age. You can't make one mistake — NOT ONE FUCKING MISTAKE — before your life is ruined and you have to change your Tumblr URL. Man, I'm glad I don't give a shit what anybody thinks of me!

• I think this commentary is getting away from me! I've only read two Narration Boxes on the first page so far! Excuse me while I discuss this problem with my brain.

My Super-Ego: "Hey. Get back on track, you secretive monster! You're fucking making us look bad! People are going to read this shit and determine we're gross. GROSS! That's the worst thing you can be on the Internet!"
My Id: "Go fuck yourself! Masturbating!"
My Ego: "Ugh. Again? What the fuck is wrong with me? Don't worry about Id, Super-Ego. I've got this! I can get this train back on the rails!"
My Super-Eggo: "L'eggo me!"
My Super-Ego: "Knock it off, Id! I know that was you pretending to be a version of me. That is wrong. You can't do that."
My Ego: "Look, I think I've got Id back in the closet, okay? I can deal with this. Just let me handle things from here."
My Super-Ego: "Why the fuck should I trust you? That Id fucker pulls your strings and you know it! You need to stop listening to his obscene whispers and fall in line. Do you want to die homeless in a Seattle gutter? Do you want to fling yourself off the Fremont Bridge in a state of manic energy? Do you want to be known as the neighbor who sometimes kicks around a soccer ball in the middle of the street without any pants? Then get a fucking grip and start following my orders!"

• Okay! I'm back! Let's get this shit done so I can go do some keepie-uppie!

• The destination Shade has not chosen because she didn't do any research before traveling and just hopped on any old fucking train that pulled up at the station is Gotham City. See? Blame the fucking victim! She deserves to be gassed by The Joker at this point!

• Luckily for Shade, she's looking for danger. She just ditched the only friends she made on Earth and is in a state of self-destructive self-pity! No better place for that than Gotham City! Or that house on Ash Tree Lane. That place is a sublime location for losing oneself in their own doubts and self-hatreds.

Me. And me!

• Shade spends multiple pages doing touristy stuff that I think is some kind of essay on cities and the people who live there? Maybe something about how the people of Earth are meant to be but ultimately fail to live up to their ideals? Or maybe just a fun romp through Gotham? I seem to have lost interest after all that digressive writing I did!

• Shade wanders about having pseudo-profound thoughts about life and cities and art and relationships and dinosaurs until she comes to a theater where the Sonic Booms are playing. Apparently she remembers a version of them from the old television show Life With Honey. So she rushes in to be thoroughly disappointed. Or completely uplifted? Really, it could go either way. Although since she's experiencing music and Young Animal is basically DC's hipster brand, I'm pretty sure music will be treated as a religious and transcendental experience next issue.

Bitch Planet #10

I'm woman enough to survive Bitch Planet! At least according to my father's messages all through my childhood!

I know I shouldn't be allowed to review Bitch Planet. This is the kind of comic book that you're only supposed to talk about in fuck yeah reverence. But I wasn't born with the part of the brain that can process reverence. I was, however, born with double the part of the brain that doesn't mind telling sexist jokes! Here's a sexist joke I once heard that I don't really get but the bro-dude who told it to me thought it was hilarious:

"What do you tell a woman with two black guys?"
"Nothing. You already told her twice!"

See? I don't get it. Who are the black guys? Coworkers? Maybe they were messengers who gave your message to the woman already? Oh no! I just thought of something. Maybe that guy was laughing because the joke was racist?! I mean, I don't know how it could be. Does it matter if the woman is white or black? Why does the joke specify the guys are black but doesn't specify the woman's race? Maybe I just don't understand jokes!

Anyway, I sure hope the big Megaton Jailball game happens this issue! I know the stadium still needs to be built but I'm sort of hoping that the same amount of time that passed between the publication of Issue #9 and Issue #10 is the same amount of time that passed in the comic book.

Luckily, Bitch Planet has a "Previously" section inside the front cover. Otherwise I'd never remember all of the pertinent details needed for understanding this issue.

The riot goes into the second act this issue. That's where the prisoners learn that beating up all of the guards doesn't exactly free them from the prison planet. Plus one of the guards captured Ex-President Doane and is taking her back to the prison control center. Kam, Mo, and Whitney go after them because they need the president to unite all of the prisoners. You see, some prisoners don't like other prisoners because some of the prisoners were born with pensises and, in general, the enemies are the ones with penises. But these penis havers are women too which is why they were sent to Bitch Planet when they got uppity instead of what happens to uppity (and maybe too feminine?) men who wind up being punched in the face and told to grow some balls and then maybe sent into the military where a bunch of penis peers could beat the shit out of them on a daily basis until they learned to "man up." Why isn't testosterone just called Jerk Juice?

This must be the part where she becomes more powerful than you can possibly imagine!

President Doane lives because Kam, Mo, and Whitney arrive in time to save her by killing the guard. Meiko's father lets them in the control center so that they can have complete control of the prison. I hope they don't forget about the Megaton game against the guards now that they've liberated the place. People are anxiously awaiting that spectacle.

Meanwhile on Earth, the Children of Eleanor Doane totally ruin the Protectorate Day Celebration. One of those children is the daughter of the Father of Media so she's hustled aboard the emergency shuttle with all of the other important people to keep them safe from the terrorists. Since she's a terrorist — or should I say rebel fighter? — she shoots the High Father in his stupid patriarchal head. It's like what's happening on Bitch Planet is also happening on Earth! Almost as if what's happening in one reality is also happening in another reality, wink, wink! I think I know what Kelly Sue is asking one of Sean Spicer's children to do!

That's how the first part of the comic book ends. There are other parts too! Like the page where Kelly Sue says some stuff and then the pages where some other person says some stuff and then the letters pages where lots of people say lots of stuff and then the back page where all the best stuff is ultimately said!

I'm not into thinking about things this week so I'm not discussing the material composed of lots and lots of words. Instead, let's just get a quick look at the best part of the comic: the back cover!

I'm pretty sure if I wrote DTF Fetus in any of my commentaries, I'd instantly lose half a dozen followers. I suppose that's the difference with seriously talking about them and sarcastically writing about them on a fake Woman's Magazine.

The Ranking!
No change! Come on! Where's the flippin' Megaton footsball game?! I'm seriously beginning to believe this isn't a lighthearted spoof comic about sci-fi sports at all!

Supergirl: Being Super: Book Three

Electrical problems are the worst.

DC got the title of this comic book wrong. I'm not interested in the super part of Supergirl. I want to read Supergirl: Being A Girl. I suppose, technically, that's what this comic book is actually about. It's less Supergirl saving people and more Supergirl not saving people. Burn! Jen is dead because Supergirl wasn't being super enough. All that's left is Supergirl being a girl with her friend that is still alive. And by being a total girl, she's attracted the attention of her evil lesbian coach who either wants to explore being a girl with her or wants to experiment on her in a non-sexually aggressive manner. That was the name of my Chem Lab class my freshman year of college: Non-sexually Aggressive Chem Lab. It wasn't as much fun as Try Desperately to Get Laid Racquetball.

It would have been much easier to get laid in racquetball if some of the other students had been my type. You know, indiscriminate.

Supergirl has realized, via her dreams, that she's an alien from another planet. That might mean that I'll stop caring as much about this comic book. I liked the parts where she's just trying to be a regular Earth kid in high school with super powers and explosive masturbation. I don't care for the stories about Kryptonians who long to know more about their previous life. Whenever I see one of those Unsolved Mysteries where a person tries to find original family members from a time they can barely remember, I always think, "Pee-yuke! Why would I want to be reunited with some strangers with whom I'm supposed to feel some kind of bond?!" If anybody ever came forward to say that I was their long lost brother or son, I'd be really uncomfortable with it. They would probably decide I was a rude asshole because I would be all, "So we're only doing this get together once, right? Nothing against you, of course! I just don't need any more time parasites sucking up my life energy." Is that the polite way to say fuck off?

Kara decides there's too much going on in her head to worry about being an alien. Good! Now we can just get back to dealing with school stuff, like hanging out with friends and fighting off the lesbian coach's advances.

Your mom's meatloaf what?!

Dolly and Kara have a rough day listening to everybody talk about how the tragedy affected them. But it affected them even more! So everybody is stupid and dumb for having feelings. What do they know about feelings?! Jen wasn't their best friend so they couldn't know what it means to really hurt! I mean, it's not like Jen was their daughter so Kara and Dolly aren't having the greatest feelings about the subject. So maybe they should shut up and stop whining too because obviously Jen's parents are really, really hurting!

Dolly figures out that Kara has super powers but Kara is all, "No, I'm just being a normal girl. I can't be any more normal than this!" And Dolly is all, "I don't care if you're different." And Kara is all, "Well, look again cause I'm not. Totally normal if you accept the white middle class view of normality which is blonde, blue-eyed, light skinned, heterosexual, and from the middle of the country! Totally normal in that offensive way people use the term normal!"

Later, Kara decides to have a memory about how her mother's parents were total ungrateful shitholes. She saved her grandfather from a burning barn (that he probably set fire while testing his burning cross to be used later) and he was all, "That girl ain't right! Git ridda her!" So that's why she can't tell anybody about her powers, even her best living friend Dolly.

Speaking of Dolly, she tampered with her heart monitor slash tracker that the predatory coach gave to the girls she wants to fuck and discovered it had a LexCorp battery. She thought that was weird for some reason. I guess Lexcorp doesn't market batteries for public consumption and only uses them in their futuristic high-tech gear since they're powered by Apokoliptian energy?

That night, Kara hears a voice whispering "Save me." She flies off to see if it's Jen going through her super villain origin but discovers it's Coach Stone's secret lesbian laboratory. Coach freaks out and hits a panic button which triggers Kara's bracelet which knocks Kara's powers offline. It looks like maybe Coach Stone wasn't a creepy pervert lesbian after all! She was just a scientist working for LexCorps who totally have a permit to kidnap local kids and run tests on them.

Kara trashes the lab and Coach Stone runs off to try to look through Dolly's blinds. The person Coach Stone was experimenting on gets up and thanks Kara for saving him. He's speaking Kryptonian but she can totally understand him. His name is Tan-on and I've never heard of him. Kara remembers her name is Kara Zor-el. I hope this guy isn't her cousin also because they're totally giving each other the fuck eye.

Before Supergirl rushes off on an Earthling killing spree with Tan-on (not that Kara knows that's what's about to happen!), she has to go home and leave a note for her parents. "Mom. Dad. I met a boy from my planet. We are going to fuck and kill people. See you later!" She doesn't tell Dolly where she's going because she's not supposed to tell Dolly anything that would make Dolly realize the whole normal act was a lie. Not that Dolly believes it anyway. But she's pretending to believe it because she's a good friend, unlike Kara who is a jerko friend. You know how many friends I managed to not save from death? Less than Kara! Because I'm a great friend!

The Ranking!
+1! Sometimes I feel it isn't fair to rank open-ended comics with comics written to have a conclusion. Obviously the stories that have a beginning, a middle, and an ending are going to be better executed than the stories that have an early middle, a middle middle, and a later middle bleeding into the next early middle of the next story. That's just common sense!

Shade the Changing Girl #6

Now kiss!

My catch phrases are "Now kiss!", "Whoops!", and "This isn't an offer to suck Tom King's dick at the next convention, wink, wink!"

I'm not really enjoying this comic book but I don't think I'm meant to enjoy it. In the same way Shade the Changing Man seemed to be written for me in my late teens and early twenties when I most felt lost trying to forge a path into adult life and relationships, this book would probably resonate for a young person trying to navigate the social labyrinth of high school friendships and rivalries. I could be wrong and it might be just as banal for them as it is for me. My point is that I don't think I have the capacity to know the difference. Is it as boring as I think it is? Or is there something here that really connects to a certain person in a certain place in time?

In Vertigo's Shade the Changing Man, Shade eventually had to battle with the original owner of the body he had taken over, serial killer Troy Grenzer. It seems the only way to travel from Meta to Earth is to leave one's body in the Area of Madness (or just on Meta, I guess? This comic goes about the transportation in a slightly different way than Vertigo's Shade the Changing Man) and to arrive in a body of a person just on the brink of dying. It's that "on the brink" part that seems to cause trouble because the person doesn't completely die. So while Rac Shade had to deal with serial killer Troy fucking Kathy's brains out, Loma has to deal with mean girl Megan demanding her body back so she can once again torture all of her high school friends. I don't think the Grenzer thing happened as quickly as this confrontation is taking place. It seems like in comics these days, you have to sort out the established problems much quicker.

While Loma fights for her life, Megan's ex-boyfriend decides it's all about him and his feelings.

Ooh! A two man job? Maybe this book just got interesting!

Okay! My hand is now down my pants. I'm ready for the two man job! I hope they pull the old Chinese fingercuffs routine!

Megan's ghost gets upset that her old boyfriend Wes doesn't realize that her body has been hijacked by another person. Why should she be surprised?! Guys don't recognize personalities! All they see are tits and ass. And Loma still has those! Duh!

Back on Meta, Mellu has recovered the Madness Vest. It's still on Loma inside a protective coffin that Mellu can't open. But she's determined to gather an army together to invade Earth so she can get the Madness Vest back. That's a bit of plot I'm not too concerned with. It's just another standard alien invasion story! Why can't the Mellu stuff be written out of this comic book? It should just stick to the Mean Girl stuff.

River and Teacup rush to help Loma battle Megan. Between the three of them, they convince Megan that nobody ever liked her and Megan explodes into a rain of pink dandruff. Then Loma, Teacup, and River become the bestest of friends forever! But nobody pisses on the pile of pink dandruff to make sure it doesn't reform into Megan! They've obviously never studied my guide to exorcism.

Mostly the guide is just using the excuse that you're exorcising ghosts when somebody catches you peeing on their stuff.

See?! A nice warm stream of piss would have kept the pink dandruff from floating around in the air! Which would have prevented it from going into Megan's mouth to settle in her uterus. Oh man. Does this mean blow jobs can get you pregnant?!

The Ranking!
No change! I already told you I don't have the expertise to judge this comic book! And judging by most of the other comic book reviewers on the Internet (you know, fat white guys who know how much an Alpha Black Lotus is worth), none of them have the expertise either!

Supergirl: Being Super: Book Two

This is where that jerk Jen dies because everything always has to be about her.

This issue is called "Hold On!" That probably means that the theme will have something do with holding on! It sounds like I just made the most obvious statement in the world but you probably didn't realize that I mean the holding on in a figurative sense. It's a metaphor for life! This is going to be the literary equivalent of the poster with the kitten falling out of a tree that's supposed to be uplifting but is just a really macabre thing to have in your office. That kitten probably died during that photo shoot!

The issue begins with Jen not being able to hold on after she falls in a giant crack that opened up during an earthquake the way giant cracks never actually open up during earthquakes. Sure, sometimes buildings fall down or bridges break or the ground cracks open enough for a lake to drain out. Maybe. I might be wrong about some of those. But I don't think giant cracks ever actually open up under your feet. I've lived through so many earthquakes having grown up in California that I think I'm the best authority you'll find on how giant cracks don't open up during earthquakes. It's science! I've experienced earthquakes and I've never seen a giant crack. Therefore they never happen. Q.E.D. That means my logic is unassailable.

Kara Danvers almost helps Jen hold on but then Kara's powers short out because she's been masturbating too much. Remember how when Kara's vagina explodes in a FWASH, she releases all of her stored yellow sun energy and then rolls over and falls a sleep for an hour? Well, she's apparently really been going at it a lot lately, being at that age, and so her powers have gotten wonky. Instead of saving the day by holding on to Jen, Kara loses her powers and Jen falls into a chasm to either die or become a super villain. It's the perfect origin story for a super villain! I wonder if her last name was Luthor?

No. Jen's stupid last name was Bard. Maybe she was the daughter of Jason Bard? He's a guy that huge comic book nerds know. He's famous enough that he has an old Who's Who entry! It's all about how lame he is. No, no! Literally! He's got a bum leg!

You're allowed to call people with mobility problems "lame" in comic books. Jane Foster said so.

Kara mourns by eating lots and lots of cereal. After that, she needs to burn off the cereal calories because she's still in high school and she doesn't want to be the fat girl as well as the girl that masturbates constantly. Everybody knows when Kara masturbates because of the loud boom and the flash of light that can be seen on the horizon. Also because she uses her super ventriloquism to yell "I'm coming!"

Just to make sure everybody understood that the "Hold on!" title wasn't just about literally holding on to Jen but also about figuratively holding on to Jen, Kara breaks down while thinking, "How could I not hold on to her?!"

I would probably have scanned a picture by now but I don't want to break the binding of this comic book by shoving it in my scanner. That's almost the exact same excuse for not shoving things up my ass.

At Jen's memorial service, a background person mentions how they haven't found Jen's body. A-ha! A super villain! I fucking knew it!

Oh! And I found a picture that I wanted to scan that was in the right place on the page so that I could scan it without harming the comic book.

I didn't know an egg in an egg cup was a Christian symbol. What does it represent?!

Jen's sister Beat-Rice is an idiot. She doesn't say anything emotional or intelligent. She's just all, "You made macaroni and shit! You were fucking fast but not fast enough, amirite?! Yo, you in heaven, sis? See you later! Beat-Rice out!"

After the memorial, Kara's coach hits on her. Yeesh! That's so inappropriate. At least wait until Kara's showering in the locker room and her best friend isn't dead!

Kara wears black and white checkered Vans. That was important enough to get a paragraph all to itself.

Kara's got a pretty good home life. The kind of home life that Superman had. That's the thing about Superman and Supergirl that makes them special. Not that they're from Krypton and have extraordinary powers. It's that they had great families and grew up without Daddy Issues. It's what makes the current run of Supergirl so awful! In The New 52 (it could have been earlier than The New 52 as well! I don't know every fact in the world!), somebody decided it would be a good idea to make Zor-el into Cyborg Superman. Somebody made the decision to give Supergirl Daddy Issues. Because how dare she be happy with her adopted family and growing up as an Earthling? Some writer is always coming along with another hot take on Superman or Supergirl and how they should be emotionally fucked up about their real parents and their original home. That's why I'm glad the biggest Daddy Issue Kara is dealing with in this comic book (so far!) is that her dad doesn't want to discuss her growing body with her! She thinks he doesn't want to talk about her super powers but I think he just feels weird talking about any of the changes her body is going through. Some dads find that stuff uncomfortable!

Kara and Dolly ditch their parents to meet up at Burger Shack and have some fries and shakes and to hold on to Jen. It's also an opportunity to remind the reader that the weird coach gave Jen, Kara, and Dolly bracelets that track their every movement. Gay! I mean suspicious! We already knew she was gay by the way she tried to take advantage of Kara's sad feelings at the memorial for a quick roll in the lesbian hay.

Kara's mom has a sweet chat with her before putting her to bed so that Kara can dream the only dream she ever has: the moment she was put in a capsule and shot off from Krypton. She doesn't know that's what the dream is about though! At least she didn't know until maybe tonight. She remembers her father and her mother. He mother says, in Kryptonian, "Be sage, Kara Zor-el, my daughter." That's a weird thing to say! "Be sage"?! I don't want to assume that the letterer made a typographical error so I'm going to assume it's canon that those were Alura's last words. "Be sage, Kara Zor-el, my daughter!"

The dream reminds Kara of the pod in the barn with the garish red blanket so she goes out to the barn to masturbate.

FWASH!

Meanwhile, somebody somewhere else has been handcuffed to a machine with Kryptonite handcuffs! It's either the primary or the secondary subject. I think maybe the coach is interested in more than just an underage lesbian hookup!

The Ranking!
+2! This book looks gorgeous and is smart and emotional and funny and other stuff that people who like comic books would enjoy. It doesn't have any decapitations though. So if that's what you're into, you might want to skip this and wait for Damian: Being Sadistic.

Shade the Changing Girl #5

Make your own damn bird joke.

The Review!
-1. If I wasn't so enamored with the original Shade the Changing Man, I would probably drop this book. I don't have anything clever to say about it because I've already forgotten everything that was in it this issue. Even the trip to the zoo! And the return of Megan from the Madness Zone. Those parts of the story were so uninspiring that they just didn't stick in my brain and now I don't remember them. Hopefully this review was helpful because it certainly wasn't entertaining (which is backwards from the usual way I write these things: entertaining but not helpful at all).

Shade the Changing Girl #4

The male gaze sexualizes every comic book cover with a woman on it. Especially one that's possessed by a gawky bird creature from another planet. So fucking sexy.

The Review!
No change. In this issue, Shade the Changing Girl learns the power of apologies. The title is even called "All Apologies". I totally couldn't remember who sang that so I asked Lord Google. He said, "What? Are you kidding? You don't know? How uncool are you?" And I was all, "I'm not uncool! I just don't remember! I'm like old and shit!" And Lord Google was all, "Snort! It's Nirvana, you musically illiterate plebe." And I was all, "Oh shit! I totally should have known that. I mean, I can sing the fucking stupid song!" And then I sang the fucking stupid song. Then I thought about how embarrassing it would be to admit that I couldn't remember that Nirvana sang "All Apologies" and I said, out loud, "No fucking way I'm writing this in the commentary!"

After apologizing to all of Megan's friends and family members so that Shade can feel more relaxed in her new life, she remembers what happened at the lake. She remembers she drowned and nobody sprang to save her and everybody was kind of happy that she was brain dead. Whether or not she wields that knowledge as power against her friends will have to wait to be seen. Because after Shade realizes her friends aren't just afraid of her because she's an asshole but also because they basically let her die, the story ends and it's time for the back-up story.

But first, I should probably say something smart about this story. Here it goes! You should always apologize to people when you feel you've hurt them. But you should never apologize to people who demand that you apologize to them. Because those people are just using it to have power over you. Don't let them! You're only enabling their terrible behavior if you apologize! Besides, an apology given under duress isn't an actual apology. And when you do apologize under duress, 95% of the time, the person will be all, "You don't really mean it. Not good enough. You're gross." So, in closing, you should only apologize if you mean it and you should never apologize if somebody demands one and if you don't apologize when you know you've hurt somebody, you're just being a fucking dick.

Here's a good example of an apology I made this week! While playing Overwatch, my friend was complaining about how nobody on the team was helping take the point. I was frustrated because I kept getting hooked by Roadhog meaning I was mostly respawning and not helping take the point. So I got short with him and went off on how I couldn't help take the point because I was fucking respawning! Then the game ended and we played another game and then I was all, "Sorry about snapping like that, Will. I was just really frustrated and shouldn't have turned on you." No big deal but it really brought the tension back down and we had fun and even began winning again.

Here's a good example of an apology I would choose not to make! If I used the word retard in one of my commentaries and some anon messaged me and said, "You shouldn't use that word and you should apologize because it literally hurts people." Then I would just ignore the message or make a stupid joke because what do I fucking care about somebody trying to get me to change when they'll never interact with me again? People like to say that thing about if you step on somebody's toe, you apologize. Well, sure! But demanding that I fucking not ever do something again and that I should apologize for it isn't the proper reaction to somebody having their toe stepped on. If I stepped on somebody's toe and they screamed at me, "You gross fucking asshole! How dare you, you piece of shit! You're garbage!", I would not apologize to them. I would think to myself, "Ha ha. I'm glad I accidentally stepped on your toe, you lunatic."

The backup story is about Element Girl and how she just wants to be normal. But instead, she isn't normal at all and also lives in a desert. The end.

Shade the Changing Girl #3

Synchronized Swimming would be more interesting if the routines were improvised.

Here's a simple test to gauge your intelligence level:

A. How often do you worry about looking stupid?
1. Not often.
2. Semi-often.
3. Often.
4. I giggled at the use of the word "semi."

B. Have you ever found yourself exclaiming, "I am not stupid!", because somebody called you stupid for doing something stupid?
1. I've been called stupid but I had just done something stupid, so I was all, "Yeah, der! So dumb!"
2. I can't recall.
3. Yes, dammit!
4. I am not stupid!

C. How many times have you found yourself explaining to another stupid person that book smart people have no common sense?
1. Never.
2. When I was younger, maybe?
3. A few times.
4. What do you mean "another" stupid person?! I am not stupid!

D. Do you often vote against your own self-interests?
1. Probably because our system isn't built to order a system catered entirely to my own personal needs.
2. Nope!
3. How is voting for less taxes against my own interests, right? More money for me! Holla!
4. Yesterday, I gave a fetus an assault rifle.

E. How annoyed do you get when people know things without having to consult their phones?
1. Annoyed? You meant overjoyed, right?
2. Not much if they're not smug about it.
3. Knowing things without asking Google? That's a thing?
4. Fucking elitist bitches.

F. How much of your news do you get from YouTube videos?
1. Seriously? People get their news from YouTube? Isn't it just raccoon videos and BBC shows flipped right to left so they don't get taken down?
2. None. I just use it to watch old videos from the 80s.
3. Just pop culture stuff.
4. Have you heard that the Earth is flat?

Now add up your score! The higher you scored, the dumber you are! If you can't add up your score, you're really fucking stupid!

I probably shouldn't judge people who can't add too harshly. It's not like intelligence alone dictates your ability to add. First you have to be taught to add! Then, if after you've been taught, you still suck at it, I can judge!

I don't have a sweet segue to get me from that to the comic book, so this sentence will have to do.

Shade is having trouble getting back on the synchronized swim team because she doesn't know how to swim in a human body. Back on Meta, she was some kind of bird person. So now she's all, "I don't float with ease! How are these gangly limbs supposed to keep me above water? Which hole is my cloaca?!" Thankfully, she has a boy Megan used to fuck stalking her who knows how to swim and is willing to teach her. I also might have used thankfully incorrectly there.

Meanwhile, the pink girl in space is headed toward Meta. It must be Megan's soul and she's seeking Loma's body because it's wearing the Madness Vest. Instead of being in the Area of Madness, Loma's body is in a glass case in her boyfriend's apartment. That will make it more entertaining when Megan takes it over because she'll be able to wreak havoc on Meta and teach everybody about the power of the mean girl.

Megan's messages to Teacup look like my Xbox received messages after playing Call of Duty.

Shade decides she needs to figure the whole Megan thing out if she's going to survive among the people Megan knew. So she climbs deep into her body's subconscious where Megan's memories still half-reside and begins rooting around in them for clues about the life she's going to have to try to lead.

On her inner journey, Shade learns that her mom is a dope, her best friend is a dupe, her boyfriend sucks at grammar (but can identify Mars in the sky, so he's cool with me), and Megan herself has been a fucking jerk to Teacup. So she decides to check with her neighbor River to find out why Megan was so hated. River never knew Megan personally so it's okay if he helps her. He shows her a BookFace group full of the people she's bullied. It's so traumatic for her that she has a Madness Seizure. River begins to suspect she isn't Megan at all but Shade flees the scene because what else can you do when your innermost being is suddenly splattered all over a stranger's room?

The next day, Shade decides to learn how to swim with the help of Megan's old boyfriend. It goes fantastically! I mean the part where she relearns how to swim goes fantastically. The part where she beats the shit out of Megan's old "friends" because they threaten to kick her off the swim team doesn't go that great.

Meanwhile, the pink girl is still floating around observing the universe.

The backup story is a Dial H for Hero story. A girl named Christy is working at some kind of Hard Rock Cafe but superhero themed. On the wall is the Dial H for Hero dial. When a customer begins attacking his girlfriend, Christy decides to use the dial! Probably because if she saves this woman, she'll get a B-I-G-T-I-P! And she does! Sort of!

She gets a kiss from...me?! Try to ignore the part where I'm killed!

Christy untransforms when the villain appears because this is one of those stories where the villains are caused by the heroes. Except that's not the point and I know it! That's just one of my issues with mainstream superhero comic books interfering with my ability to understand this story on the most basic of levels. I'm also disappointed that with all the words that only use letters in the word HERO which form the skeleton of this story, the writer forgot to use O-R-E-O.

The Ranking!
No change! A lot of the time, I give a comic book a "No Change!" rating simply because I don't want to have to adjust the sideboard rankings list. I'm not even sure where this comic book is placed on the rankings (or if it's even on there at all! I should probably check. No, no. If I check and it's not there, I'll have to add it which is more work (not much more work but still more!)). But I do like this book even if it probably wouldn't make the top of the To Read pile on the weeks it comes out.

Shade the Changing Girl #2

Whoa! Look how crazy this comic book looks! It must be super smart and insightful and full of the arts!

People generally look down on happy, cheerful, and joyous people as stupid jerks. Because they obviously can't be intelligent if they aren't angry or dissatisfied! The way you prove how smart you are to somebody else is to point out how fucking stupid and terrible everything is. But I think happiness and joy get a bad rap simply because it's not as intense a feeling as sadness or pain or heartache or anger. But as an older person (not that older! You'll see soon, you jerko young people! You'll be old one day too! That's my curse on you!), I don't want to constantly be bothered by intense emotions. Drama doesn't make life exciting. It makes life tiresome and distracts a person from enjoying themselves. Who has the energy to be angry at everything all the time?! Not me! About all the energy I can muster is a biting word or two thrown out into the void of the Internet like a tithe to the Gods of righteousness and condemnation. If you young people want to be so angry about everything, I don't mind. But you're really exhausting me about some of the bullshit you get angry about. Christ. Stop going off like a shotgun and blowing holes in everything! Maybe work on getting laser focused and fixing something big like sexism or racism or something because I'm tired of getting hit by your buckshot every time I call somebody a retard. Let's face it: I'm definitely going to call my friend Doom Bunny retarded at least three times this week. But it will be in private so you probably shouldn't be angry about it. Also, I probably shouldn't have admitted to doing it. Mostly because I probably won't do it and now people will be mad that I even joked about it! Because words literally cause harm, if you fall for that sort of propaganda used to get people to just shut up and act the way other people want them to act. You can't shame a person who has no shame, motherfuckers!

That point I made about people criticizing things to prove how smart they are? I wanted to say something else about that! I've always found it's easy to read something and instantly tear it apart because it doesn't meet the approved standards of the person reading it. I find it's much harder to quell those instantaneous reactions and take a moment to think, "What if I'm wrong? What if I'm just reacting to the most shallow aspect of the thing? What if I were to take a second look and try to figure out what makes this thing, this art, interesting, or well created, or intelligent?" You aren't always right because you thought the thing you thought, you cocky fucking bastard. Sometimes things aren't terrible simply because you thought they were terrible on first inspection. It's much smarter to ferret out the good in something than to tear it apart and shit all over it. That's something even dogs can do! And they're super dumb!

Oh, sure! Now the dog lovers are all up in arms! But you know, in comparison to a lot of creatures, dogs are pretty fucking dumb. If you taught your little brother the kinds of things you taught your dog, nobody would be impressed by your little brother's intelligence. They would just think he's a fucking idiot for doing everything you tell him to do. Give me an animal with a sense of fucking dignity! Like a raccoon!

So now you're going to argue with me about how a filthy animal that digs in the trash has any dignity?! Sheesh! Maybe if you invited the raccoon in for tea, you'd see just how much dignity one has. Have you ever thought to do that? No? Well, fuck you then! You don't know what you're talking about! Raccoons are quite dapper and dignified when invited round for tea and biscuits.

This comic book is take itself too literally.

In this comic book, the poetry of Shade the Changing Man, Rac Shade, appears in rainbow colored Narration Boxes. The Narration Boxes of Shade the Changing Girl, Loma, are in blue. Then there are pink Narration Boxes that belong to somebody else. They appeared last issue but I just assumed they were also Shade's. That was a bad assumption because you know what they say about assumptions? I thought I knew but I can only make the word ass and u and mptions out of that, so I guess I was wrong about what they say. Anyway, the pink Narration Boxes belong to a third person. Possibly Megan who was pushed out of her own body? Or maybe it's some aspect of Loma that's left in her Metan body still in the Area of Madness. There's a moment this issue where a pink comet is zooming past a sun and moon in space thinking, "What. Where. Why. Wow." See? It's probably Megan. Just like some aspect of Troy Grenzer remained when Shade took his body, Megan's consciousness is still out there and still somehow attached to her body.

Shade walks into school for the first time since she came out of her coma and she quickly realizes everybody at the school hates or fears her. Why do I suddenly have the urge to croak "Corn Nuts?" and over enunciate the word "eskimo"?

Meanwhile on Meta, Mellu is investigating the Case of the Stolen Madness Vest although it hardly matters. Whoever took it probably put it on (they did!) and their body is now slowly decomposing in the Area of Madness (it is! Probably!).

Shade discovers the library at high school, much to the chagrin of a small girl. It's probably Teacup, right? It's been so long since I read Issue #1 that I don't remember if Teacup made an appearance before Megan drowned while doing a shitload of ecstasy. Anyway, it's obvious that Megan never showed an interest in the library before, and this tiny girl (Teacup, right?!) used to hide out here from the mean girls.

Ugh! Don't read Yeats! I can't bear to read a character who picks up a book of Yeats poetry and understands it without any outside sources or further reading! But if she is going to get into Yeats, please at least let her read something other than "The Second Coming"! Yeats wrote way more poems than just that one!

Heather's Numbers Two through Four come in search of Teacup in the library. But Teacup hides from them, as does Shade. But she can't help herself from engaging in a little Madness. Probably because she doesn't have any real control over it. Maybe it's her Madness Nemesis! Shade the Changing Man had the American Scream. Maybe Shade the Changing Girl has the American Teen!

I can name all of the books, plays, and poems these are from! The whale is obviously from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the one-eyed thingy is from Lady Chatterley's Lover, the hand holding the skull is from Harry Potter and the Skull of Squicking, the letter A is from Dr. Seuss's ABC, the raven is from The Sandman, and the cat is from Garfield.

Shade thinks that maybe Teacup was her friend but Teacup is terrified of her. So she makes a big scene in the library and some guy named River is all, "I'd heard you were all about the drama. But do you mind having it somewhere else?" Right?! Libraries should totally be drama-free zones! And anybody who ever makes a scene or an uproar or a loud sneeze in a library should be banned for life. Libraries should have no tolerance policies for shenanigans! Although I did once masturbate in the stairwell of the library at Portland State University, so obviously I only mean that if the person gets caught they should be banned for life!

I almost certainly, probably, never did that thing I just said I did. So gross! Besides, I was barely eighteen! Possibly even still seventeen! I was too young to cope with the freedom of college! Besides, nobody ever specifically sat me down and said, "Do not masturbate in public stairwells."

Anyway, River is Shade's neighbor. He never knew Megan so Shade feels like maybe she can safely become a friend of his. He might not be thinking the same thing but I bet he gets pulled into her madness anyway. Especially because his name is River and that's got to be symbolic for something soon!

Meanwhile, the pink girl in space with the pink Narration Boxes makes an appearance. So, see, that's another character or something!

Shade goes home to watch old timey television and ponder how she's going to figure out who Megan was and how to make her better. Then it's time for the back-up comic!

The back-up comic book isn't worth reading. It's all in-your-face about how change is a good thing and not changing is a bad thing which totally ends with a sex joke. I think. I don't know. I stopped paying attention to narratives that feel like clubs to the back of the head.

The Ranking!
No change! I'm not infatuated with this book but I'm still intrigued and enjoying it. So that's a review, right?

Supergirl: Being Super: Book One

Ugh! A comic book about a girl?! Gross!

I'm only pretending to not like comic books with girls in them because I don't want people thinking I'm less of a man for not reading comics full of men with lots of muscles. You know the kind of man I'm talking about! The kind who would rather see the world destroyed than see a woman leading the team to save the day. You know! The kind of man who would rather build a killer magic deck than talk to a woman he knows isn't interested in getting naked with him. Come on! I know you know the kind of man I'm talking about! The kind that always vaguely smells of farts and Arby's. They're the keepers of the male dominated everything and have the fortitude to stick to their guns, no matter how detrimental those guns are definitely going to be to their future sex life. Not that women are only in the world for men to have sex with! What I mean is that if a guy thinks women are only in the world for men to have sex with, that man isn't going to have sex with any of them. It's a self-denying prophecy!

No, but seriously. Did I use that segue correctly? I want everybody to know that I was just joshing in that previous paragraph. Just a little light humor between friends and possibly future Internet lovers. I can't really grasp the reason to feel threatened by female characters taking the lead roles in action movies and science fiction and other previously male-dominated genres. How does it affect a person's life in any way at all? When I was in elementary school, two of my favorite series were the Oz books and Ramona Quimby books. It never even occurred to me that I somehow couldn't or shouldn't identify with Dorothy or Ramona because I was a boy. Obviously I read way more books with male leads in them because there were more of those. I couldn't know what those characters, being female, meant to girls who had a scarcity of female leads in books that didn't get people tittering about periods and boobies. And that's my point. More female leads in fantastic stories is in no way taking anything away from guys. But it is adding value to the world for young girls. The only reason to be an angry asshole about it is that you are probably, inherently, an angry asshole.

Plus I'd rather watch Felicity Jones for two hours than Mark Hamill. Sorry, Mark. That's not being sexist! That's just me being true to my heterosexuality! I'm allowed to discuss my interests even when they align with the patriarchy's agenda! I'm allowed to watch a movie and go, "Le sigh!"

Supergirl's story begins with a page talking about how to begin the story. My high school English teacher would have read this in front of the class and humiliated Mariko for it. He was always all, "Just begin your fucking story! Don't call attention to beginning your story. Just fucking begin it! If you feel you have to mention the beginning in some sense to get going, just cut out the beginning nonsense when you're finished! You fucking idiots!" Then he'd kick a desk or two just to show that he really meant what he was saying. I don't know if he was right or not. I just know I never begin stories by talking about how I'm beginning the story because I'm too scared to.

This is the second page of the story. It's a perfectly acceptable place to start! Although the first page did show a spaceship crashing in a field. Maybe that was needed for anybody who picked this up thinking, "I wonder who Supergirl is and where she came from?!" Of course if they're that ignorant of Superman and Supergirl, the crashing spaceship scenes aren't going to clear anything up for them.

This Book is also called "Where Do I Begin?", so I guess the whole "Where do I start?" question is thematic to the entire piece. I think Mr. Borror might have been okay with the opening of this comic. But just this once!

I've always thought that when people write things about how they don't know what to write because they feel they need to write something, they may as well not be writing anything at all. If all you have to say is, "I don't know what to say!", maybe that's a sign that you should stop thinking of yourself as a writer.

Kara Danvers (Supergirl!) has two friends: the Athlete and the Dyke. I suppose she's the Nerd. They're most of the way to their own Breakfast Club already!

That's not sexist at all! Like I said earlier, people have a right to desire the things they desire without being told they're wrong for desiring them! Jerko Athlete!

Being sexually attracted to a specific group of people doesn't make you sexist against those people. Of course, treating them as if all they have to offer is relief to your aching secret body parts is probably sexist. There are probably other reasons people are sexist but I wouldn't know what they are because my Wisdom score is like 4. I put all of my Attribute Points into Shaming Men Who Play Magic the Gathering. One of the flaws I took to get more attribute points was "Male who plays Magic the Gathering." It wasn't the best decision.

Kara's birthday is coming up. It'll probably be the birthday when she becomes a woman. A super woman! A super woman called Supergirl! Hmm, that probably makes more sense than it seems to. I bet whoever dates Supergirl must feel really awkward telling other people. "Oh, I'm totally talking with this chick named Supergirl. Um, but she's a woman! A grown ass woman! I mean, a teenaged woman but, you know, I mean, she's not like eleven! You know what? We're breaking up. Never mind."

Kara has been wondering where she's from lately because it fits the theme of this story. She knows she arrived on Earth in a pod and that she can fly and that Jimmy in math (Second row back, fourth seat over) makes her belly float and that she's super strong but that's about it. I guess she doesn't even know Silver Banshee yet. Unless Dolly Granger (the Dyke!) is going to become Silver Banshee.

"Moooooooom! Gross!"

The morning of Kara's sixteenth birthday party, she squeezes a Kryptonian zit and almost destroys her house. Now I'm wondering what happened the first time Kal-el had a wet dream. He could have killed somebody in the next room!

Kara's hands also begin to glow and she gets a fever and she feels tired. I think she really is becoming a woman. Don't females go through some kind of menopause at this age? I don't mean the old person menopause where the meno gets put on pause. I mean it's the start of the meno but it could be called menopause as well because you don't just press the pause button to pause a show; you press the pause button to get it going again! I once had that revelation while on LSD and it was, well, a revelation! It wasn't quite as spectacular the next day. I also thought triangles explained everything but I couldn't remember the logic behind it the next day. Taking hallucinogens doesn't make you smarter or more spiritual or wiser. But they sure are entertaining!

Later at the big track meet, an earthquake hits and Dolly almost dies by falling in one of those huge cracks that opens up whenever an earthquake hits. I'm from California so I can confirm that's totally true. I've fallen in like five or six dozen over the years. Comic books really exaggerate them though and make it seem like you fall all the way to hell. Usually you just fall into the sewer and get bitten by a rat or two.

After Kara saves Dolly without exposing her ability to do super feats, she begins looking for her other friend, Jen. Jen is knocked down by the stampeding parents and it looks like she's about to fall in a crack too when the issue ends. It would be just like Jen, the character who knows exactly what she wants from life and the talent to get it, to die so that Kara Danvers can learn a lesson about how random and chaotic everything is and how nobody should ever bother pursuing their dreams because life is a futile attempt to attain any sort of lasting happiness.

Or Kara will, like, save the day and shit. Whatever.

The Ranking!
I'm not going to say Kara and her friends are super adorable in this comic book because that would be sexist and reductive. But I will say, "Oh my god they're so fucking cute with their teenage problems and high school friendships!" That's okay to say, right?

Bitch Planet #9

Why is Bitch Planet advocating voting for Donald Trump?!

On the day after America decided to stop pretending it wasn't sexist (even though it wasn't pretending very hard to begin with), I'm not sure I should be allowed to comment on a comic book called Bitch Planet. I am far too flippant to discuss serious topics like imprisoning non-compliant women on planets located on the far end of the solar system! I don't think now is the time for jokes about women being disrespected! Okay, I'm guessing some of you immediately thought, "You fucking think there's a time for those kinds of jokes?!" Well, yeah! I do! The ultimate goal of equality is for everybody to be the butt of a joke without it feeling like an attempt to dehumanize and take away somebody's power! The ultimate goal of an equal society isn't that nobody is ever made fun of! It's that anybody can be made fun of in the current way almost nobody cares when white hetero men are the butt of a joke! I say "almost" because there will always be a few hugely butthurt white nerds tsk-tsking from the back of the room. I don't mean this next part in a mean or condescending way but in a way that needs to be addressed because it's important to why they feel picked on: they're usually non-teenage (and sometimes late teenage) virgins. Being an older virgin can make a person feel useless and unwanted, and the feeling compounds weekly. The anxiety of not getting laid turns into resentment, bitterness, and anger. They begin to feel they are somehow owed this right of passage. Women no longer become friends or coworkers or possible romantic companions. They become the enemy, withholding the most sacred of all life experiences. Not that I'm speaking from experience! Women have been totally throwing their vaginas at me my whole life, and sometimes their buttholes too! My teenage years were like a waterfall of poontang! I was always having to tell women, "No, no! Not now! The Birds and the Bugs will have to wait! I'm trying to eat my pizza rolls right now!" And they were always, "But my place aches! You know the place! The place where the doing it happens! Do the thing to that place!" And I'd be all, "Oh my god! I just totally burnt the roof of my mouth!" And they'd be all, "Oh yeah! Yeah! Say more of that dirty stuff!"

Man, I hope people believe my sexy teenage life stories! I mean, because they are true and they should totally be believed! Unless they were sexist and I shouldn't have told them! I told you I shouldn't be commenting on this comic book!

But how can I not comment on this comic book! It's so good! And totally tells it like it is but in a secret fictional way that makes some people think, "Can you imagine if the world were really like this?!" And other people are nudge-nudging each other behind the person's back and whispering, "How cute! They think this is an allegory and not reality!"

Ha ha! It's true! Men never lie! It's like they don't know how! Or are too stupid to!

It's been nine issues and so far the Bitch Planet Megaton Team hasn't even played a real game! I thought this book was going to be an exciting underdog sports tale! If The Bad News Bears had taken this long to get into the baseball action, nobody would have said things like, "The best baseball movie ever made that featured a drunk man driving around a car full of kids hanging out of his convertible!" Or this great review of the movie, "Never has a team full of spics, niggers, women, and Jews wormed its way into America's heart like the Bad News Bears!" That part with all the racial epithets is practically a direct quote from Tanner from the movie, so don't get mad at me! Get mad at the twelve year old white kid with the filthy mouth! Also, now that I'm thinking back to that movie, it took an awful long time to really get to the baseball. It really dragged on with that whole relationship plot between Buttermaker and Amanda! Why was that even in the movie?! So boring!

Oh! What I was going to point out was that it's almost time for a real game! All of the contracts have been signed and now they just have to build a stadium on Bitch Planet. And that probably won't take more than six or seven issues, right?! I wonder what the Bitch Planet team mascot is going to be? Probably a huge cock and balls with Band-aids all over it and a big black eye! Not to be confused with a big black guy's cock and balls! Although that would work too! Also it should probably be circumcised! Otherwise people might think it's just a big sea cucumber. Although it could wear a turtleneck with the team's logo on the front if it's supposed to be uncircumcised!

On Bitch Planet, things are going a bit upside-down. Makoto Maki, Meiko's father, has discovered she's been killed and has now taken over central command of the prison. He's also the guy who's supposed to design the stadium, so I hope he calms down and stops trying to upset the prison status quo! I want to see some Sportsgames!

Everybody is freed from their cells and a riot ensues. Meanwhile, Whitney and Kam have found President Eleanor Doane's cell. I don't know how much I'm supposed to know about Madame President since this comic book has some really long intervals between issues and my memory is terrible (although I still totally remember all of that doing it I did as a teenager! Except I did so much, I don't remember the names of all of my partners! Like the one from camp! Or the one on my vacation to Canada! Or the one you never heard about because she was a new kid who got suspended almost immediately! Or the one I met at the beach that summer who had to go back to Australia!). Was Madame President the president who was changing things that caused a white male backlash (some CNN reporters might call it a "white-lash" even though that doesn't make sense. It might make sense if backlash were actually "black-lash" (which maybe it is since pundits are always making up stupid words! Although usually those words just have gate on the end)) which created a world where women couldn't speak their mind without risking a jail sentence?

Poop is going down fast now! The prisoners in Facility One are going to mix with the prisoners in Facility Two and apparently that's bad news. Why? I don't know! Does the atmosphere combust when women and trans women enter the same room? That seems improbable! Maybe the "explosion" is just a metaphorical one!

Oh. That's the problem! Bigotry! Or misogyny? Anti-gender politics?! I don't know the right phrase for this kind of prejudice!

As the women begin fighting among themselves, Kam arrives and finds her sister Mo. Mo, having no idea Kam was incarcerated on Bitch Planet as well, flips the fuck out. But it brings everybody together and they stop fighting because of some speech about everybody being sisters or something. It's probably touching if you're into emotions and stuff. Plus Madame President shows up to unite everybody for rebellion! I hope the takeover of the prison doesn't mean there won't be any Megaton matches where the Bitch Planet team kick ass and take the title!

That's the end of the comic book section. But that's only half of the comic! The next half is full of words in different sections. It's the part of the comic book that makes you think even more than the comic book part of the comic book! And even though I hate thinking because it hardly ever leads to shots of women taking showers, I'm still going to read it all! The first part is where Kelly Sue makes a statement. This one is called "Content Advisory: I'm going to talk about Donald Trump."

Kelly Sue says some things about Donald Trump's "Grab them by the pussy!" statement and the way the news reacted to it. It's all very smartly said and expresses some of the problems I had with it too! I totally had all the same proper reactions. But she also mentions that sexy lamp she's always talking about. Where can I get one of those?

The next essay I won't have an intelligent reaction to is Rebecca Wanzo's "Superhero: Feminist; Superpower: Killer of Joy, Destroyer of Worlds". I probably got the punctuation wrong on that title because it's actually two lines and I didn't feel like making it two lines in this commentary, so I just threw in a semicolon. That's good enough, right?

The essay totally sums up everything I should probably be feeling and almost certainly do, especially right now after having read it. Although she says this one bit about not laughing at racist or sexist jokes and I couldn't help but get my feelings hurt and tsk-tsk from the back of the room. Also, why am I standing back here with all of these white male virgins?

The next session is a dialogue between Rebecca Henderson and Kit Cox called "An Empire of Tears: Male Fragility and Weird Capitalism". I can already feel my ego shattering!

In the dialogue, Rebecca says, "Being able to say 'No,' and not suffer for it, is basically the vision I want for the world." Can we get a Hallelujah? Also, her Male Tears pin is absolutely lovely.

After that is the letters! I hope there's one from a guy who doesn't get it!

There wasn't! Also, letters pages take a long time to read! After the letters is the lip glossary which defines intersectionality. I didn't read it because I already know all about different types of couches. So instead, I moved right on to my favorite part of the comic book: the back cover!

The back cover is worth the price of the comic alone! And you can read it right there in the comic book store! They give it away for free! Like a slut!

The Ranking!
+2! This comic is always good. It has so many opportunities to be good what with the cover and the inner pages and the back cover. That's a lot of stuff! Oh, and the essays too! And sometimes it even has naked women in it! But your Male Gaze isn't supposed to be titillated by it! So avoid getting a boner (or whatever the female equivalent to a boner is. A reverse boner?) or you're not a good feminist!

Shade the Changing Girl #1

Being that Shade the Changing Man was my favorite comic book in my late teens, I can't imagine I'll be anything but disappointed by this.

The Commentary!
Why Shade the Changing Girl? Why not Shade the Changing Woman? Is it because we assume grown ass women have matured past the point of enjoying comic books, so why not market this to younger women? Is it because male nerds are so frightened by the prospect of autonomous, individualized adult women and their aggressive sexuality full of mandatory oral sex and probable rimming that DC doesn't want to scare them away with an adult female protagonist dealing with adult female issues and problems? Like, you know, constantly dealing with man-children locked in a state of arrested development who have no job and no car and can't engage in a conversation that doesn't include the phrase "d-pad" in it? Is it because the world can accept a cute, pixieish, vibrant, perky girl but who wants to deal with a dour, serious woman who is so sick of this world's shit that she can't get through a sentence without peppering it with at least two or three fucks? I suppose the idea is that young people buy comics and young people will flock to the Young Animal series and young girls, especially, drive fandoms. So if you want to get this comic book started on the right economic foot, you target it to girls and young women. Although if this were Shade the Changing Woman and she was based on somebody like Laura Silverman, I'd fucking buy ten copies of this every week and hand the extras out to strangers on the street. Give me a fucking Shade the Changing Woman over a Shade the Changing Girl any day. As Luke Cage said, "Dumb men like little girls." Also, the Young Animals imprint doesn't really justify Shade being a girl and not a woman because isn't Cave Carson and his Cybernetic Eye going to be a goddamned adult man? Doom Patrol also suffers from the main character is a perky young girl syndrome. I don't mean to suggest I'm against perky young girls as leads. If the writing is there, I'm up for anything. It's just getting fairly obvious that if a comic book company wants to introduce a new female lead, it's almost certainly going to be a cute perky off-the-wall alt girl. Why not a grown ass woman, is all I'm saying?!

The issue begins with Shade the Changing Girl climbing into a body of a dying girl on Earth. I'm assuming she's from Meta but I don't know if she's found her own Madness Vest or she's come to Earth via a different means. I wish she would have entered a convicted killer like Shade the Changing Man did! Oh! Maybe this dying girl is a killer! Or a mean girl, at least. Then everybody will be all, "Ew! You're a jerk!" And she'll be all, "What? No way! I'm sensitive!"

That's my summation of Shade the Changing Man. "You murdered my family and raped me!" screamed Kathy George as she flipped the fuck out. "No! No! I love you, Kathy! I'm a sensitive poet!" cried Shade in the body of murderer and rapist Troy Grenzer. "Fucking Romeo and Juliet, this is," snarked Lenny, the ever unfazed smoking artsy type who really should have been the main character in Shade the Changing Girl. Maybe she'll be a supporting character!

All sorts of crazy shit happens in the wake of Shade the Changing Girl as she walks down the halls of the hospital. A Rac Shade poem floats in rainbow narration boxes. Shade decides she loves Earth in only the way a teenage girl can love something, completely and even more completely than the next teenage girl who dares to say she loves Earth.

Shade's new body's parents are really into Corgis. Probably because they're the only breed of dog that isn't an annoying asshole.

Now we come to the part of the story where the writer feels like the reader is just confused enough and must be thinking, "How did this happen?" So the writer, being an experienced writer who knows that you can't have a reader being too confused for too long (especially if they're stupid), decides to jump the narration back in time for a bit of an explanation. Although the explanatory prologue story takes place on Meta, so it will probably just make things more confusing.

Yesterday, two creatures were fucking in a Metan museum on Earth in front of the Rac Shade Madness Vest display. One creature is a pudgy vaping bald squid-human hybrid. The other is a bird lady who is in debt, can't keep a job, likes squid penis in her cloaca (is that how it works?), and has lots of alien lovers. She doesn't like her life on Meta and dreams of being in a place where they feel big feelings and drink Pepsi. So she's all, "I'm going to put on Rac Shade's Madness Vest which is less vesty and more trenchy than the name would imply. Madness!

The bird girl is named Loma and she's a huge Rac Shade fan. She even remembers the poem Shade wrote about his death! I think the improbable moon poem was the poem that haunted Shade which eventually led to his dead body. It's quite possible it's a different story line altogether! I have no room in my head for other people's thoughts! My head is only full of my own present thoughts. Hell, I can't even remember what I wrote in any comic book commentary from last week!

Speaking of past commentaries, if you search my site for "penis", you'll find 509 results! Oh! Now 510!

Loma puts on Shade's Madness Vest and floats off to the Madness Zone and, from there, Earth! Where she enters Megan's body and starts the story! One of her first thoughts after the memory is "I wonder where my body is!" Well, Loma, I've got bad news for you! It's going to be dying and rotting away in the Zone of Madness while you have crazy adventures on Earth!

On her way back to Megan's home with Megan's parents, Shade has a memory of Megan's life partying at the pond with her friends.

She is in the body of a Mean Girl! Grandmaster Comic Book Reader!

Megan's "friends" at school are distraught that she's awake and coming back. Mostly they're concerned that Megan will remember how they tried to kill her because she kept putting them on her Burn List. Or maybe they're just more concerned that she'll take one of their spots in the synchronized swim team. Is that a metaphor that her friends are on a team where they all have to do the same thing and act alike? Is it a statement on conformity?

Meanwhile on Meta, Mellu Loran, Shade's one time fiance who hated him and has gotten old and is now an important bureaucrat, heads up the investigation to find the person who stole Shade's Madness Vest. Also, Loma Shade's friends are glad she's gone in much the same way Megan's friends are not glad she's back.

The rest of Megan's memory that Shade hasn't quite remembered yet plays out for the readers, just in case they needed details on how Megan's friends tried to kill her. It turns out Megan's boyfriend just gave her a lot of ecstasy and they left her floating in the pond tripping balls so that she'd drown. Which, I guess, she partially did! Some synchronized swim team they are! How good could they be if they weren't also willing to take too much ecstasy and partially drown? I give them a 1.5 overall for this routine.

The Ranking!
+1. Oh boy! A comic book where the main character is not liked by anybody in either of her two incarnations! I bet she learns some lessons about selfishness and friendship! Although she really isn't that different from Shade. Just because he portrayed himself as a sensitive poet, it didn't mean he wasn't completely obsessed with his own pains and anxieties to the point that he really didn't give a shit about anybody else. Sure, he loved Kathy George! But only in that way that he loved the idea that he could love something more than anybody has ever loved anything because he was such a sensitive poet. When he found out Troy Grenzer had sex with Kathy and she liked it better than when she had sex with Shade, it was the worst pain he'd ever felt in his entire life. Which then meant it was the greatest joy in his entire life because he was a sensitive poet feeling such big feelings! Just the kind of shit Loma Shade is hoping to feel on Earth! And she's going to be feeling those same kinds of feelings soon since everybody already hates her!

Wow. I think I just realized why I loved Shade the Changing Man so much in my late teens and early twenties! I knew I loved it because it was a reflection of what I was feeling at the time but this is the first time I really thought about how consumed Shade was with his own pain and sadness. I don't think he wanted to feel joy or happiness because it's so less intense than suffering and heartache. I don't think Loma is looking for that but I have a feeling she's going to get quite a bit of it. She will be in high school, after all.

Bitch Planet #8

This comic book never fails to make me think deeply about things. Like remember how fun it was to give the head of a push broom a good spin to screw it onto the pole?

The Review!
Some people read this comic book because they enjoy the satirization of the Patriarchy via a model of women-in-prison storytelling almost exclusively used to pander to the male gaze. I only put the "almost" in there because I'm certain there must be some women-in-prison pulp literature that was actually written with lesbians in mind but was able to avoid being blacklisted or banned because it resided in the male gaze circle of the Venn Diagram of porn audiences. Some people read this comic book to feel empowered by its message of rebellion. I bet some people even read it for the essays in the back which seems weird because that's a lot of words to read for people who read comic books. I bet some guys even read this book to mock the women in it and cheer the men on to victory because women can't have anything nice without overly opinionated men ruining it by missing the point and twisting it into something demeaning! Fucking jerks! Now I bet you're all thinking "But why do you read it, Tess?!" because you're all astute readers who recognized that the structure of this paragraph was leading to a "but I read it for..." closing statement! Well, I don't want to disappoint all of you eggheads, so here we go! But I read it for the back cover! It's so brilliant! I always enjoy pure, unadulterated jokes alongside the knife twisting in the bloated stomach of the patriarchy!

Now you're probably thinking, "If that's true, why don't you just read the back cover while standing around like a knob in the comic book store?" Because I also like the story and the other stuff I mentioned! I even like when a guy writes a letter about how he totally missed the point of this comic book and tries to mansplain his reading to the creators and they answer by just drawing a picture of a dick or something. I don't know if they've ever done that but it would probably be a good response. Also I don't want anybody in my local comic book store to see me reading Bitch Planet. I have a manputation to maintain! At first I typed "mantain" but I thought that was putting too man a mant on man. Plus it just looked like a typo.

The Commentary!
This is the part where I don't take anything seriously and make fun of this comic book in ways that might be uncomfortable for people who automatically think everybody is sexist. So if that's you, you might want to find all of the other reviews for this comic book that are intelligent and thoughtful. This won't be that. And to prove it, my first scan with caption:

Other nicknames for Bitch Planet: The Kitchen; No Means Pluto; The Planet Where Nobody Knows The Minutest Comic Book Trivia And If They Do, They Probably Learned It From Their Boyfriends; See Where You Wind Up When You Don't Give Up Uranus; and The Place Where Nobody Knows How To Construct A Killer Magic The Gathering Deck.

I wonder if Bitch Planet has an orbiting moon where the men who guard them live. And I wonder if that moon wears a fedora?

The issue begins with women with penises being given health examinations. I mean, that's what the official word statement is! But why would I believe anybody in an official capacity? I'm sure they're doing something duplicitous, like simply using the idea of yearly health exams as reasons to abuse and humiliate the transwomen. Kogo (who is, according to the inside cover blurb, the woman responsible for organizing the Bitch Planet Megaton Team (I mention the cover said that because I didn't want to imply that I remembered it! It's been a long time since I read Issue #7, let alone whatever issue was the one where the idea for a league was bandied about (who is, now that I've read further, actually Kamau's sister whom Kamau Kogo is attempting to find. I should have realized that because "Morowa" is not "Kamau". Sometimes it pays to pay attention. Which is probably why the phrase is "pay" attention!)) mentions that Bitch Planet was originally created to send trans women who were accused of lying about their gender and being purposefully duplicitous. This is the part where a person of greater intelligence and empathy would remark on how this ties in to real world issues of transphobia and misogyny. But I'm just trying to keep myself from saying something insensitive! Not that I'm dying to say something insensitive! I just mean if this were about nerdy men, I would make any joke that came to mind and not worry about what people might think because we all know nerdy men have so much power that a joke at their expense is punching up. Although back in high school, that would have been considered bullying? I guess things are different now! It's weird how bullying used to be a consistent thing white male nerds had to deal with when nobody cared about bullying but now that everybody cares about bullying, it's still okay to bully white male nerds! Ha ha! Nerds! Serves them right!

I like to pretend that I'm not a white male nerd who plays Magic the Gathering and Warhammer. That way I don't get my feelings hurt when I make fun of them. I mean, of course I'm different than they are! I may have a beard but I regularly shave the neck area and I've never been tempted by fedoras! Okay, maybe there were those few years when Indiana Jones first hit the theaters but it's not like my mother was dumb enough to buy me one! She was all, "That's stupid and nerdy. You're already stupid and nerdy enough. Don't call attention to it, you dumby!"

Whew! I think I made it past the transgender thing without making any missteps by turning things around on white males! Unless the word "transgender" is now the wrong term! Shit. I think I'm supposed to just say "trans"? I definitely know better than to use the t-slur, even though while I was growing up, I thought that was just used for transvestites (mostly thanks to Phil Donahue). Not that that excuses using it, even if some drag queens think it's okay! Also, who am I, an outsider, to project my thoughts onto the person I'm looking at? It would be nothing more than a guess on my part if somebody were a transvestite, or a trans woman, or a woman, or a douche-bro who thinks his woman Halloween costume is totally hilarious? And why should I be guessing anyway? If somebody presents themselves to the world as a woman, they're a woman! Except for those douche-bros in the cheerleader outfits. They're just trying to get laid. Oh shit. I think this paragraph has all of that insensitive stuff I was trying to avoid! Abort! Abort!

Meiko's father learns that his daughter is dead when the prison tries to convince him his daughter is merely unavailable to speak and so they give him a virtual visit with his daughter. There's a clue in the way she plays the violin but I don't remember the Meiko issue well enough to know what it was. Probably something about how his daughter always shirked her practice or something. I'm sure it was very touching for those with a better memory than I have.

Meiko's father decides to flip the fuck out and destroy the facility. His first step is powering down the power grid. That gives Kamau and her new cellmate, Agent Whitney, time to run about the complex and discover Eleanor Doane in the most secretest secret cell on Bitch Planet. Eleanor Doane is some kind of feminist icon that maybe I should remember better but at least Kelly and Valentine and Kelly put in that scene in the beginning to remind me of Eleanor and how she's the focal point of a feminist rebellion back on Earth.

And although that's the end of the comic portion of this comic book, I figure it's really a book in five parts so I should allow for some room of those other parts. The first part is, of course, the comic book. The second part is Kelly's own words about the issue and being that I had a few comments on her words (and also that some of her words--in a more intelligent and earnest and less facetious way--mirrored some of my own), I should probably include her thoughts before vomiting forth a few of mine. I mean, you don't expect me to reprint a white woman's voice without shouting over it with my own male opinions, did you?!

This is all very well said and I don't even have a but for it! One thing Kelly expresses well, something I try to point out is the best part of white hetero cis male privilege (and using that description of me is not part of white hetero cis male privilege since most white hetero cis males will laugh at me for saying it and call me a girl!), is this: "I'm not going to do damage with any version of white male representation. We have an understanding that that character is only representative of himself; the humanity of white men is never in peril." That's a great synopsis of the best advantage of being a white male. We think of ourselves as individuals first and white or male second. That is as powerful as you can get in the privilege game of life. And those white males who lose themselves in fighting for white or male rights, or see themselves as victims whenever somebody takes a shot at whites or males? They're giving away the best power they were ever given. I feel sorry for those shlubs. They have it all and they choose to throw it all away because they'd rather, somehow, be seen as victims. But what they're really being seen as is ridiculous. Seriously. You had it all, white dudes! You had every day of your life to work on yourself as an individual! Society has never once told you that you were white or male before you were Bill or Kevin or Keith or Richard, you sodding dum-dum! Those mantears you cry which you hate people calling mantears? Those are tears of your own making! Your own choosing! That's why people make fun of them! Instead of whinging and wailing, you could be helping to make the world a better place. Hell, you don't even have to do anything to help make the world a better place, that's how fucking lucky you are! You just have to go about your normal white male business without worrying about anybody else! Simply by not worrying about it, you're doing less harm than going on the internet and crying about your illusory victimization!

Okay, so, you know, well said Kelly! Not just the thing about the males but, you know, the reason you said those things about males but your stuff about writing a trans woman and how you didn't want to fall into any of the pitfalls I probably fell into while writing about somebody writing about a trans woman!

The third part of the Bitch Planet experience is the essay. This is the worst part of the book because it is composed of a lot of words which, after you read them, you're supposed to think about them. Ugh! Thinking is so hard. Well, here it goes. I'm going to read it anyway! The essay is by Professor John Jennings and is called "Skin Cells".

Whew. That was tough! Professor Jennings describes the flip side of that bit I mentioned about how whites get to be individuals from the moment of birth. In what Kelly wrote and what I was expressing, I was speaking of their internal views of themselves. Professor Jennings points out the other part of that equation which is how other people view you at first glance. If a cop stops me, a white male, his first instinct is that I'm an individual and treats me as such. He leaves most of his preconceived notions behind, especially the closer I fit into his notion of how a "good citizen" should look. So probably white, well coiffed, nice clothes, a car that doesn't look in need of repair. You know, things that might suggest I'm "not poor". But for a black American, that isn't what happens. Preconceived notions fly into the window and crowd the officer's mind. As Professor Jennings states at the beginning of his essay, his black body is inscribed by society "with the visual language of discrimination, fear, and violence."

At one point, Professor Jennings uses the term Iron Maiden and I'm all, "Excellent!" I don't think that was appropriate to the subject matter. I'm a lousy student of everything.

Quote by Claudia Rankine used in John Jennings' essay.

Professor Jennings mentions how "terrifyingly amazing" that "Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man (written in 1952) could have been written last month?" And the same terrifying amazement is horrifically on display in his essay which, due to it being written and turned in for publication, ends with the account of nineteen police officers responding to Fay Wells' neighbors call to police when she thought Fay, a black woman, was breaking into her own apartment. If this essay were turned in this month, it could have ended with the account of Alton Sterling, or Philando Castile. And if it were published next month, Professor Jennings would surely be able to list many more.

The fourth part of the Bitch Planet experience is the letter column! Except this time there's an interview with the Feminist Sticker Club! So maybe Bitch Planet has more than five parts to the experience!

Oh wait! Maybe this is still part of the essay part because after the sticker interview, there's another essay. This one is by Mey Valdivia Rude, a Mexican-American trans woman, and is called "The Kind of Characters We Need: Hypervisibility vs. Visibility in Trans Representation". This one sounds complicated! And also one that I probably won't have anything to say about because I probably totally agree and don't need to disagree because it's one of those moments where I, as a white hetero cis male, should just go about my business and not interfere! Except to say all that stuff I already said about how I don't need to worry about representation because white males are already seen as not representative! Which is kind of the point of representation. Representation is needed to get to a point where every character is not representative of a group of people! It's almost a paradox! But once trans people are represented constantly and well in pop culture, trans characters will stop being representative of the entire community and will just become an individual trans character. Which means they can be total dicks at that point and nobody will be pissed off! Maybe I should have said "total assholes" because whether or not they have dicks is their own business. But we all have assholes!

And once this is well established, we can have super villain trans characters without any backlash! Right? Did I understand this correctly?

Okay, now I've finally gotten to the fourth bit: the letters! Nothing much to say here! Everybody was on their best behavior and writing in with positive, glowing responses. Darn it!

And finally to the fifth, and my favorite part, of the book: the back cover!

Ah! Such sweet and refreshing satire! So good! Wait. This was satire, wasn't it? Um. I'm scared.