Tangent Comics: The Superman #1 (September 1998)

If this Superman doesn't decapitate at least four people, I'm going to be disappointed in Mark Millar.

The Superman #1 (July 29th, 1998)
By Mark Millar, Jackson Guice, Lovern Kindzierski, and Richard Starkings
Cover by Jackson Guice and Ian Hannin
Edited by Frank Berrios and Eddie Berganza

I picked up a couple of Tangent Comics about a year ago. I'd never read them before even though I was still purchasing monthly comics when they came out. Judging by the art design on the cover of the two comics I have, I suspect it's part of why I didn't pick them up. The muted colors on the gray background with all the weird text and symbols does not scream to me, "This is going to be a fun comic book!" Also probably Mark Millar's name although in 1998, "fun" wasn't the only reason I was picking up comics. I also enjoyed violent and edgy if they were written well. Mark Millar wasn't on my radar in 1998 since I think the first thing I read by him (and consciously registered the writer's name; it's possible I'd read a Millar book previously and just didn't realize it. The way I didn't realize I'd read Ann Nocenti before The New 52 until I dug out and re-read Kid Eternity) was The Ultimates.

Yes, I understand that the entire design of the comic book is supposed to suggest an alternate timeline comic book publisher. "What if this was The Superman everybody knew and loved?! It's pretty shocking, right?! He's fighting with a staff! He's just had some kind of surgery so he has to wear a Kryptonian neck cone! He's got Pop Rocks eyes!" Maybe we're supposed to think he's some kind of Dungeons & Dragons monk? I'd like to think that Millar's big take on an alternate Superman would be "What if Superman really was a fucking pacifist and relied way less on physical assaults?" but the body language of this The Superman is anything but "let's hug it out". It's possibly he's just got a bad leg and this cover represents him walking with his walking staff and the red lines around his head are the pain he suffers during perambulation!

Being that this comic was published in an alternate universe, I cannot tell if the advert on the back cover is a parody of milk ads or not!

Most young guys can't get enough of the undead and revealing outfits?!

I hate the fucking embracing of the milk mustache in milk ads. Especially when the name of the milk promotional board is "National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board". Just reading that caused my dick to detach and burrow into my skin like a Goddamned spirochete. I don't know who was on the National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board but it must have been perverts who spend a lot of time on foggy moors. Why is Buffy wearing a thick fucking wool jacket over a bustier? Is this supposed to be a sexy photo because all it's telegraphing to me is "prostitute trolling for Johns in the rain who forgot to wipe the cum off her lip after her last trick."

Weird. After I typed that, I got a sudden craving for a glass of milk.

The first page of every Tangent Comic needed to explain what it was all about. First they had to define the word "tangent" for all the dullards and monobrows who read comic books. After that, they explained that they challenged a bunch of writers to make up new characters based on the boring fucking names of their major characters. "Oh, oh! Who could 'Wonder Woman' be when she's not a woman who is wonderous?! Maybe an alien who can unmake people with a single thought! That makes sense, right? If the alien is a woman, I mean! And she's all, 'I wonder if that person even exists?' And then that person is unmade!" "What if the 'Flash' wasn't named for being quick but named for showing her boobs?! I mean known for turning into light like a flash bulb!" "What if Green Lantern wasn't a jerk who invited everybody he met into a bar so he could start a brawl with them?!"

Oh! That, at least, was one thing that the new Lanterns show got right! Hal Jordan starting a massive bar fight! My heart was so warmed by that moment! And I don't mean "one thing they got right" as a criticism to the rest of the show. I'm actually really loving it! Also, they had the sheriff tell Hal Jordan to "eat shit" which was obviously thrown in by Tom King as a reference to my blog, "Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea!" Right? RIGHT?!

The story begins, as most boring stories do, at the very beginning. And when I say "very beginning" in reference to the birth of The Superman, yes, I am making an argument against life beginning at conception. If you need to believe that life begins at conception than the most horrific baby killer of all-time is Jesus the King of Miscarriages.

No. Seriously. The comic begins with The Superman's mother spread wide with her ankles in restraints.

Surprisingly, none of the doctors are decapitated during the birth. Even more surprisingly, being a Mark Millar comic book, nobody is hurt at all. The birth is perfectly normal. Cut to page two and "twenty-three years later" and me wondering why the fuck the story had to start at mom's legs spread wide if we were just going to start when The Superman was 23? Maybe Millar was all, "You know what would be a shocking image? A bunch of guys in hazmat suits staring straight down a lady's sex chute!"

What are the Polymarket odds on this blog post getting flagged for being inappropriate with those last two images of Buffy and the lady in ping pong ball position? Probably pretty good. Also, fuck Polymarket and all its bastard copy cat scam gambling companies. People will create anything that makes the world worse just to get theirs, won't they?

Oh, this might also be important: The Superman's name is Harvey Lee Dent. I'm trying not to speculate as to why that might be the case because speculation just leads to misunderstanding and disappointment. People will speculate why something is the way it is and when they find out it isn't the way they thought, they have a hard time believing the truth and desperately stick to their initial ruminations. Also, if I speculate a fantastic reason why Millar chose to name The Superman Harvey Lee Dent, like maybe he's some bipolar assassin looking to end democracy in an embracing of some poorly thought out ideology, I'm probably going to be disappointed when I discover that Millar just chose the name because he thought it sounded cool.

Did Jackson Guice use a still of Clyde from Every Which Way But Loose as the reference for this picture?

I know I'm walking an easily misunderstood line when I'm saying a Black character looks like an orangutan but only if you're one of those people who are so cynical and awful that you don't care about understanding things if there's a chance to just be angry at somebody. But look at the way Guice drew that guy! You're not going to tell me that you didn't think the same thing? If the first thought in your head after seeing that wasn't, "Right turn, Clyde," then I know, well, um, I know you're way fucking younger than I am! What I'm saying is don't turn me into a Roseanne Barr or Howard Cosell simply because you brought your own baggage to an observation about the body language of a comic book character!

True story: my father dragged us out of Every Which Way But Loose because it was too violent. I guess he thought, "Hey! A movie with a funny monkey! The kids will love it!" And then the funny monkey is beating the shit out of people and the funny monkey's owner who is known for over-the-top violent roles was also beating the shit out of people and my dad was all, "What the fuck?! How was I tricked into bringing my kids to this?!" My guess is the person my conservative father is today would be embarrassed about that man who cared enough to try to limit his kid's exposure to violence. Well guess what, dad?! I now limit my exposure to you!

Harvey cuffs himself to Carter Hall not realizing that Carter Hall is Hawkman so why wouldn't he still leap from the building? Although really Carter isn't trying to fly somewhere. Instead, he's leaping to commit suicide because the people who built the building he drew up the plans for painted it yellow. Yeah. That's why he wants to kill himself. Because he feels like people are laughing at the guy who designed the building that somebody else decided to make yellow. Also I guess if The Superman is named after Two-face then this guy named after Hawkman isn't actually Hawkman. It's the Tangent Universe, baby! This is the kind of stuff they're writing to totally blow your mind!

I guess this is where Harvey Lee Dent finds out he's super.

I was about to question how Harvey could get to twenty-three without ever realizing that he had some kind of invulnerability but then I remembered that I'm 54 and have never broken any bones or had any stitches. Oh, I've been injured badly enough while blasting down the Santa Cruz mountains on a BMX bike that I've needed stitches. I just never got them. Just tucking your torn up, barely hanging on, mangled skin back into the blood-filled hole that it used to cover and wrapping it up works just as well! Unless those were my super powers that allowed me to heal so completely from those accidents (minus the various scars all over both knees)! And maybe I did break some bones but never knew it because they knitted themselves back together instantaneously? Should I try jumping off of a building to see what happens?! I might be The Superman!

Harvey wakes up in the hospital to learn that he's lucky to be alive considering Carter Hall was nothing but a thin sheet of human paste after hitting the ground. He then begins using racial slurs on the guy who stopped by to visit with Harvey's girlfriend in tow.

I only learned the term "pie-face" was a racist slur because of this blog!

Do you think Pie-face is going to show up in Lanterns?! The writers probably don't want Hal to appear too racist so they'll probably changed Hal's nickname for Pie-face to Eskimo. That softens the racism up a bit, right?!

Speaking of Lanterns, I just finished Episode 3, "OutKast", like ten minutes ago and holy fuck it's a good show!

After falling off the tallest building in, um, Metropolis?, Harvey Dent's personality seems to have changed. He's become a whole new person just like some other guy I can't think of. His girlfriend notices that he suddenly reads intelligent books now instead of constantly re-reading Piers Anthony's Xanth novels. Plus he's become competent at electronics which I don't think is a superpower but maybe? He does stop sleeping which causes his girlfriend to begin worrying because not needing to sleep, while it feels like a great superpower, it's actually just a symptom of something that's going to kill you in a few months.

Eventually, he learns to fly, I guess?

Um. What the fuck is he wearing?

I get that this is an alternate universe but I don't think there's an alternate universe in the whole of space and time where that outfit is cool. He looks like a perverted milkman.

His "origin" goes on for several more pages of pure exposition from the point of view of his girlfriend. She's concerned that he's gaining every power Mark Millar could think of but mostly just sad that he won't fuck her anymore. So much so that she winds up fucking Pie-face and I can't imagine that she's screaming, "Fuck me harder, Pie-face!", because, oh, wait, I did imagine that which is why I wrote it. Sorry! I guess it was really easy for my mind to picture a naked woman getting railed from behind as she screams racial epithets at him! Look, I'm way more disturbed by this revelation than you are!

Loads of DC hero and villain names are dropped during the "origin" so the reader can be all, "I totally recognize that name and/or get that reference!" and "Whoa! Martin Stein merged with a nuclear submarine to become Firestorm the Nuclear Submarine! That's so different from Firestorm the Nuclear Man!" [Now picture me looking quizzically at a butterfly] "Is this fan service?" [Okay, you can go back to picturing a woman getting fucked from behind now] Or is "recognizing" things pretty much the height of what you can expect comic book readers to understand. Maybe this story has actual themes and subtext but being a comic book reader myself, I just can't fathom them. But you can bet my stupid face lit up when they mentioned Batgirl being a grotesque monster and the Native American Johnny Thunder!

Eventually, The Superman begins looking into his own origin, having, as his brain evolves a century every hour, become too smart to believe that his near death caused his powers. He discovers that his origin has something to do with the shady government group Nightwing. He meets up with one of its members, Black Orchid (I recognize that character! So good!), to find out what she knows by reading her mind and/or seducing her. Except according to his girlfriend, he's not particularly horny right now.

I guess that's why Black Orchid fails to seduce him. Although I don't know why she's trying!

Black Orchid seems to have left Nightwing because they're a bunch of horrible monsters. I'll find out exactly how horrible they are when I read my copy of John Ostrander's Nightwing from Tangent Comics! But for now, I'll just assume she knows what she's talking about. She gives The Superman the location of a Nightwing base where he'll learn about the weird men who watched his mother give birth to him. Once he's there, Black Orchid hopes The Superman will also see what horrible monsters they are and decapitate them all using his new mind power, Decapitathy.

Oh, I should point out that I just made up the term "decapitathy" for using your mind to decapitate a person. I feel I needed to point out this was a dumb joke because it's the sort of word that Mark Millar would absolutely come up with but while looking serious and, later, cashing a massive check from all the idiots impressed by it.

Officially (although what does "officially" mean to an organization that's so top secret that even the president doesn't know about it?), Nightwing was shut down. I guess when a Top Secret organization gets shut down, everybody suddenly gets to know about it. Or maybe after I read John Ostrander's Nightwing from Tangent Comics, I'll learn that it was "shut down" because the whole hideous organization came to light and the public demanded that it go away forever. So of course it went away when the government was all, "We put it away! It's gone now!" Except it wasn't! Shocker! It's command center was simply moved to a location outside of the map.

You can't just tell me a location exists where "all forms of radar" can't even find it. I mean, who cares? RADAR?! Tell me it's hidden by magic, at least, ya dumb asshole!

I hope all of the Tangent Comics aren't this boring and stupid because I'm kind of interested in reading them all. But this just feels like a back of the napkin pitch that was immediately turned in as a finished script. My guess is that Mark Millar knew he wasn't doing more than one issue so he knew he wouldn't have to expand on any of the ideas he jotted down after four whiskies and seventeen Mozzarella sticks. So he just made a list of ESP powers (some of which he didn't even know the name of and couldn't be bothered to research later so he just has the girlfriend say, "I don't know what that one's called. Duh!"), the barest outline of two origins that could compete to create the tension (being born super and falling off a building), and what I have to imagine is an archaic racial slur.

One idea I really fucking love but I'm not sure if I can pin it on Millar. I wouldn't mind doing it if I could be sure but this feels like the various writers and editors made sure that the books were all linked up by a shared continuity so I don't know if this idea was Millar's or Ostrander's or somebody else's: the original superhero, created by Nightwing, was the Atom. So the whole arms race of superheroes started when an American (Joe Chill and his team! I know that name!) created the atom bomb of superheroes: the Atom.

This arms race eventually lead to further experiments by Joe Chill which took place the only way America has ever really known how to accomplish its Nazi-esque bullshit: experiment on an unwitting Black American town.

Do you think Millar disavows this comic now? "I can't believe I wrote this historically accurate woke shit that didn't even have any decapitations in it!"

Millar was probably just taking a shot at Americans when he wrote that, identifying with the way they treat minority citizens and foreigners. But once he learned his bread wallet was buttered by Incels and misogynists, and how easy it was to resolve every conflict with a head separated from a body, he had to tiptoe around storylines that might not center white male heroes. Unless it's a story about a little girl who can ruthlessly murder anybody because that's ha-ha funny! A little girl? Being violent?! How does he think up these gems?!

The narration of the story by Harvey's girlfriend is actually an email she's typing up to send to him in the hopes of saving their relationship. One thing I left out is how this is 1996 and Harvey helps people via emails they send him. He then picks a problem he thinks is worthy of his time. Not the person who's in the most need! Oh, no! The problem that he sees as the most complicated to solve! It's no wonder people quickly begin questioning his motives in doing what he does. Does he care about people? Or is he just bored? I can't say for certain but I'm pretty sure Alan Moore could have sued Millar over stealing Doctor Manhattan's entire personality for The Superman.

As the world is on the brink of destruction by the Ultra-Humanite (not a big-brained monkey but some stone or steel guy wearing a flying nun habit), The Superman tries to solve the problem of his wife fucking Pie-face. He offers her a Miraclo pill to evolve like he has so he doesn't feel like he's fucking a chimpanzee. She's all, "Okay! As long as this is for love and not for you proving you can solve this problem!" And he's all, "Hey, baby! What's the difference?!" And she's all, "Let's fuck!"

The End!

The Ranking!
This comic book feels like the skeleton of an idea. Which, I think, is exactly how the whole Tangent Comics idea was planned. Have some writers and artists reinvent a few characters and give audiences a glimpse of a universe that could have been. It probably could have been pulled off with less exposition but I think a lot of what made the idea exciting in the eyes of the creators was just doing a big "What if this?" instead of a story that takes place in a world that feels fleshed out but doesn't give the reader all of the answers. This story felt like it was more important to flesh out the ideas of the world The Superman came from than to tell an actual story in that world. A story in that world could have gotten the point across as well. But I'm probably in the minority there. People love to have clear cut answers instead of ambiguous questions even after their disappointment in yet another The X-files or Lost television show that they loved when they didn't know what was going on and then they quickly grew bored of when the show started explaining things. Or Twin Peaks! "Oh, who murdered Laura Palmer?! I wish the show would tell us!" Then the show told them and then you got James leaving Twin Peaks to star in a different soap opear in a boring town with boring people. Also James was boring.

I suppose my lackluster feelings for this comic book from 1998 were shared by most of the readers which is why I was able to purchase it nearly 30 years later for three bucks.

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: L.E.G.I.O.N. '92 Annual #3 (August 1992)

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: L.E.G.I.O.N. '92 Annual #3 (August 1992)
By Barry Kitson, Mike McKone, John Dell, Jack Torrance, Peter Gross, Bob Smith, Jimmy Palmiotti, Gaspar, and Lovern Kindzierski
Cover by Mike McKone and Jan Harpes
Edited by Frank Pittarese and Dan Raspler

• Should I make a list of the top ten comic book characters I'd like to fuck or would that make me sound too much like a huge anti-social nerd who too often thinks about having sex with fictional creations? Would a list of fuckable comic book characters be more or less weird than a list of animated insurance characters I'd like to fuck? Maybe if I actually fucked a real person, I'd stop thinking about fucking fictional characters that have no agency? Or would I just become the protagonist of Boxing Helena II: The Boxening?

• Shit! I meant the antagonist! Fuck! Did I just expose too much of my interior squidgy being by accidentally expressing that the main character of Boxing Helena was the guy who cut off Sherilyn Fenn's limbs and not Sherilyn Fenn?! I mean, I was joking! Ha ha! It was a joke! I totally understood Boxing Helena! Probably more than you did because I'm an introvert pervert who has only ever loved women whom I've projected my own thoughts and beliefs onto instead of actually getting to know them. Yuck!

• Anyway, that top ten list of comic book characters I'd like to fuck would include Lobo like seven times so it's probably not worth writing. Lobo drawn by Simon Bisley. Lobo drawn by Val Semeiks. Lobo drawn by Keith Giffen¹. Lobo drawn by Jorge Corona².

• Halo would have made that list when I was in my mid to late teens but now it would be just weird. Also, is she still in a coma? Because that would make it less weird. I mean more weird. Stupid squidgy interior being!

• Also, obviously if I made a list of Insurance Company cartoons, it would be Erin Esurance. I would fuck, marry, and kill her! Wait. Goddammit.

• Are there insurance company cartoons other than Erin Esurance? If they are, are they hot? Should I search them out on Deviant Art?

• The issue sort of begins³ with L.E.G.I.O.N. waiting outside the United Nations for a meeting. Maybe the reason was revealed in the monthly title. Maybe it'll be revealed here. For some reason, even though Lobo was in this series, I never fucking read it.

I don't know who this member is but she's wearing Brother Blood's belt slash loin cover-up.

• How many pages until Lobo defeats everybody and wins at comic books? I'm not sure why there's another annual after this and a final bookend Eclipso issue to finish the story. Once Lobo becomes possessed, Eclipso should have all the power he needs to accomplish whatever he wants to accomplish. Destroying the sun, I'm guessing?

• Lobo had to remain behind because, as you can see on the cover, he's missing a sleeve on his jacket and you can't go in front of the United Nations in a leather jacket missing a sleeve! Also he might kill everybody.

• Back at the hotel room where Vril Dox decided Lobo couldn't cause any trouble other than throwing the television out of the window like any Earth rock star might, Lobo decides to drink himself silly with L.E.G.I.O.N. member Scrawny. Is that her name? Scrawny? It's what Lobo calls her so probably.

Oh, no. It must be Stutters!

• Stutters isn't offering to fuck Lobo. That's just the conclusion that he and all the comic book readers leapt to. She wants to play Settlers of Catan Or whatever the equivalent to Catan was in 1992. Probably Trivial Pursuit.

• Lobo drawn by Mike McKone isn't on my list of Top Ten Comic Book Characters I'd Like to Fuck because it looks like he was using Brett Michaels as a reference. No thank you.

• Oh, Ice would be on my list! Also Supergirl's bum drawn by Mahmud Asrar. That might be on the list twice. I wonder if Mahmud has ever drawn Lobo's bum? Hmm. Be right back. Gotta see if Mahmud does commissions!

• Fire wouldn't have been on my list even before she wasn't being transphobic in this issue.

I don't think it's up to you to decide, Fire.

• I have no idea which member of L.E.G.I.O.N. is Strata she's got to be either the caterpillar, the shiny bald one with the massive shoulder pads, or the red Schmoo. None of them are on my Top Ten List of Comic Book Characters I'd Like to Fuck.

• Vril Dox didn't make it to the United Nations thing because he's out on the town looking to buy a Black Diamond. I'm going to assume he has a solid reason for buying one because he's one of them Brainiacs.

• The guy who has the diamond tells Vril Dox "No" when Vril asks him if he can buy the Black Diamond. Afterward, Vril Dox and his partner beat the shit out of the guy's henchmen.

Um, what? It's you guys who didn't understand the word "No" and then resorted to violence. Am I losing my mind here?!

• Fascism to fascists is when they don't get their way. If other people's agency stands in the way of them getting something they want, they believe their freedoms are being crushed and think that violence against the person not giving them what they want is righteous violence against the oppressor. God, I hate fascists. I know! I can't believe I've gone out on such a long, scrawny, stuttering, dangerous limb to declare such an extreme opinion!

• Also I hate libertarians. They're just authoritarians who don't have the balls to do their own violence. The only State anything they like is State violence. But only if that State violence allows them to keep doing whatever stupid fucking thing they believe they have a right to do without anybody complaining. Creeps.

• Here's a quote from Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night (1961) that has aged like the finest wine⁴:

"There are plenty of good reasons for fighting," I said, "but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive. "It's that part of an imbecile," I said, "that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly."

• Mother Night isn't one of Vonnegut's most memorable works but it should be. I hardly remembered it after reading it in my 20s. But then I just re-read it a few years ago when I turned 50 and it quickly became one of my favorites. Especially in our modern era of fucking Fox News. The thing Mother Night most taught me was that Sean Hannity should be first against the wall in the coming revolution.

• The game Lobo plays with Stutters is Scrabble. Lobo plays "fragulate". Lobo is so smart!

• Vril Dox and his helper (Lady Quark in a wig, maybe?) retrieve the Black Diamond and then leave it in the same hotel room as Lobo. Even without having seen the cover, I know that's a bad idea! Lobo's anger, rage, and violent libido can probably activate the Black Diamond from several feet away! That wasn't a length of Lobo's dick joke but it could be?

• The first page after everybody leaves Lobo and Lady Quark alone with the Black Diamond makes me laugh out loud. Probably because I'm giddy from all the love chemicals spiking through my brain right now. If I knew how to make heart emojis in HTML, every time I typed L♥B♥, the Os would be hearts. Oh look! I do know how!

1992 and Lobo has mastered the manspread.

• Vril Dox was intelligent enough to somehow beat Lobo in one-on-one combat⁵ so we've got to assume that Vril Dox wanted Lobo to get his hands on the Black Diamond and become Eclipsed. He's already said as much by admitting to Lady Quark that their visit to the United Nations is a sham and that if they really wanted to visit Earth peacefully, they wouldn't have brought Lobo. So why bring Lobo? Why pretend to negotiate an Intergalactic peace summit? Because Vril Dox wants to experiment with making Lobo into super weapon!

• Lobo trashes the hotel trying to kill Lady Quark and Stutters. I mean Zena. Apparently her name is Zena. She can absorb light to make things dark and, this is the important bit, release the light she's absorbed. When Eclipso begins bragging about how darkness is his friend and darkness can't stop the God of Vengeance and "I love Darkness's dick, baby!", Zena thinks light might save the day and blasts Lobo in the face with a million, um, Kelvin? Moles? Parsecs? of light!

• Lobo left the diamond upstairs so once Eclipso's been forced out of him, he returns to plain old regular violent Lobo.

• The rest of L.E.G.I.O.N. returns in time to miss all the action. But when Vril Dox patronizes Lady Quark while she's holding the Black Diamond, she gets super pissed and Eclipses. Or she just saw an opportunity to gain a free beatdown and slapped some make-up on so she could blame it on Eclipso.

• Lady Quark easily defeats all of L.E.G.I.O.N. leaving Lobo to save the day. But not because he wants to save the day. Because he wants to get vengeance on the God of Vengeance for using him to get vengeance on Lady Quark who is currently the God of Vengeance. No matter what happens, Vengeance shall be venged this day. Unless the Justice League shows up to fuck it all up.⁶

How could this team manage to constantly out-fail a team made of Vibe, Gypsy, and Aquaman?!

• English isn't Lobo's first language so he probably thinks "buttheads" is a lot filthier than it actually is. I mean, it sounds pretty filthy! A butt? For a head? Gross! Or is that sexy? Damn, I think it might be sexy.

• Lady Quark gets away and Zena goes missing. She was kidnapped by Bruce Gordon and his Ozymandias gang. Nobody apologizes to Lobo for assuming he was the bad guy because he'd beat the shit out of them if they tried.

• Finally having an intelligent person on the side of the good guys means somebody finally comes up with the idea to take the fight to Eclipso on the moon. It took a fucking Coluan to think up that plan!

The Ranking!
This was the best annual yet! That's a weird thing to say because it surmises that I actually likes some of the annuals and then this one was of even superior quality to those. And I hate annuals! Sure, sure. You can't really know if I liked this annual or not because Lobo was in it and I love everything Lobo is in even if it's terrible. I'll never admit to a Lobo comic being bad. You can't make me! Because, um, I don't believe any Lobo comics are bad! If I ever admitted to a Lobo comic not being the best comic, I'd be lying and that would be wrong. Plus this one had a really fucking great ending where it was all, "Only one more annual left and then the conclusion! You're almost done, baby! Celebrate by eating an entire cake!" And I was all, "Rmffleplumfgrr?"⁷


__________________________________________________________________________________
¹ Weird, sure. But intriguing!
² I mean, probably. We'll find out on Wednesday, March 18th, if I want to fuck that Lobo!
³ If you ignore the actual beginning.
⁴ Most of Vonnegut's quote age that way because when you can see reality clearly and have no agenda other than to communicate the truth of how things are, your words will always sound prophetic and modern. When you're speaking lies to manipulate people toward a selfish agenda, your words will die over time, if they don't immediately fall out of your mouth stillborn.
⁵ Which is why Lobo works for L.E.G.I.O.N. Keeping his word and being honorable is Lobo's biggest flaw!
⁶ I'm pretty sure fucking things up is in their charter.
⁷ That's "Yes, sir! Right on it, sir!" with my mouth full of half of a cake.

Convergence: Action Comics #2

This commentary will be quite short.

Superman and Power Girl do some stuff and then there's an earthquake and then the story ends.

Convergence: Action Comics #2 Rating: Well, I can't really rate it yet since I haven't read it! So maybe I should read it although I'm pretty sure I just summarized it in that first paragraph.

The issue begins with Power Girl fitting into her old costume even though she supposedly gained fifteen pounds over the last year. It's a costume that I barely remember because it doesn't have a boob window in it. It's the kind of costume that she could wear for many years and then when it is redesigned to show most of her tits, comic book fans don't have a problem with it. But as soon as you try to change the costume back to a non-boob window variant a few years later, the pro-Power Girl's traditional outfit voices come out en masse! How dare DC Comics change Power Girl's outfit for no good reason! I mean, I realize it had changed for no good reason previously and nobody cared. But this time you can't see her gigantic mammaries! Fuck that shit!

As Power Girl flies off to save Metropolis, she's attacked by an Invisible Jet! I guess the "invisible" technology is too costly to stick on the missiles because those are super visible. But Power Girl has Super Vision which enables her to see the contrails left behind by the jet. Hey! I must have Super Vision too because I can see those!

Was this a "she loves me, she loves me not" petal pulling joke? Unless it was a "the turbulence turned the invisible jet into a washing machine which turned Wonder Woman's underwear into a swamp of love" joke!

Wonder Woman bails out of the plane (or simply falls out as it breaks apart. But that takes away her agency which would be unfeminist) and is caught by Power Girl. A single page depicts them crashing through a building and to the ground. That's not the way I would have drawn it. I would have filled about ten pages of close up panels of their boobs rubbing together as they crashed to the ground. I think that would have really ratcheted up the drama and the themes of loss of control that have been permeating all of the Convergence titles. Unless permeating isn't the word I really wanted to use there.

Once the woman and the girl land, Wonder Woman kicks Power Girl in the face, sending her flying miles and miles away where she lands on the barren landscape of Planet Brainiac.

Meanwhile, Lois Lane looks fashionable and upbeat in her beret.

Also, Lex Luthor becomes ruler of whatever country Moscow is the capital of and Joseph Stalin was the leader of. I think it was Communististan.

Power Girl and Wonder Woman's battle devolves into the same thing that always happens when a person from a capitalist country battles a person from a communist country: they make it all about the ideology they inherited from the country in which they were born.

Wonder Woman: "So! You have capitalist pig Wonder Woman in your world?"
Power Girl: "That's right, you communist dog! She's so much better because she actually has plenty of toilet paper with which to keep her beautiful butt clean!"
Wonder Woman: "Bah! Plentiful toilet paper is metaphor for your country's waste and excess! I spit on your toilet paper! Ptui!"
Power Girl: "Oh yeah?! Well I spit on your optimistic belief that people can get along by sharing all resources and looking out for the community as a whole rather than just a few individuals within that community!"
Wonder Woman: "Why you spit on such beautiful belief?! You and your 'video games' and 'comic books' and 'free speech'! It is grotesquerie!"
Power Girl: "I bet you don't even have a word in Russian for 'hobby', do you?! But you have fifty words for work!"
Wonder Woman: "Da! Work is hobby! Is 'da' word for yes in Russian? I forget because I am constantly speaking English in comic book!"

Lex Luthor reminds Joseph Stalin that he has nuclear weapons (or something even more outdated than all the super robotic crap Lex seems to have put together simply to find out about the nuclear missiles) and Stalin is all, "Oh yeah! Good idea!"

Back on the streets of Moscow, Wonder Woman has seemingly defeated Power Girl when the real hero of Action Comics arrives.

It took Superman longer to get here because he's old and flies way slower with his left eye blinking the whole way.

Superman tells the females to stop being so emotional and to think the situation through logically. Wonder Woman is all, "But that's so hard to do with this vagina!" And Power Girl is all, "I can't think with these boobs!" But Superman is able to crack the Illogic Field of their Femininity and convince them of the truth!

Wonder Woman expresses how she feels at a man being right. Again!

Meanwhile underneath Moscow, a mirror image discussion takes place.

Luthor: "My penis is telling me we have to launch these missiles that look like my penis!"
Stalin: "Da! My testicles rage at the thought of people living and loving at my expense!"
Lane: "You guys are idiots! We can't destroy the world to satisfy your male genitalia!"
Luthor: "I don't care! I mean, I can't care! At all! Testosterone eliminating all empathy within me!"
Stalin: "Penis stiffening at the thought of power through violence!"
Lane: "If you guys knock off this display, I'll show you my breasts."
Stalin and Luthor: "Okay."

Actually, Luthor plans on nuking Metropolis even though Lois is completely against it. And since they're married, he's already seen her breasts so that probably wouldn't stop him anyway. But Superman breaks through the wall to stop him using the logic of his fists, the ultimate weapon of mankind! And it works or something. The cities are saved somehow and I think it involves hugs or something.

I already did the closing part about ratings but not the rating so here it is: 5 Boob Windows out of 10.

Divergence: Sinestro
"Who is the traitor in the Sinestro Corps who has set New Korugar on a path to certain destruction?"

Um, the traitor is Sinestro, of course! Duh! Before Cullen Bunn even began writing the story, he just sat down and thought, "What if there were a traitor in the Sinestro Corps? Who would be the last person somebody would guess? Sinestro!" And then he wrote the story.

The Sneak Peek introduces the main Yellow Lanterns to any new readers. It also shows Sinestro is still making his way around the universe trying to save all of the lost Korugarians. Plus the Corps' new home seems to be Warworld so who cares if New Korugar is going to blow up, right? He also keeps mentioning how the Green Lantern Corps fell apart and abandoned its mission and I don't remember anything about that. I remember Hal quit and became a renegade. But I don't remember what happened in the final issue of the Green Lantern Corps! I should probably reread the commentary on that and see if it explains anything. Maybe we're just supposed to assume that everything fell apart because the universe hates them and Hal's gambit of turning into the scapegoat didn't work. How come DC is making me do all of the work in my head to explain this whole "The Green Lantern Corps has dispersed" bullshit?! Am I supposed to assume as soon as the comic book was cancelled that they stopped existing?!

Convergence: Crime Syndicate #2

Don't expect to see any more of Superwoman in this issue. She was electrocuted for enjoying sex.

According to my air conditioner, it's 41 degrees in here right now. I don't think that means I need to put on a jacket. I think that means I need a new air conditioner.

This issue begins with Wonder Woman walking about morosely in a park because she doesn't get to fight anybody in Multiversal Thunderdome. That's because her opponent was lit up like a festive Non-Denominational Holiday Tree! I'm glad she's making an appearance though. I was thinking about beginning this commentary by stating how it would star exactly zero women because they were all killed last issue. And by "all," I mean "the only female to appear in the entire comic last issue."

This is why I'm sick of Convergence. I have to read this quandary ten times per week. You would think if any characters in this battle would just jump in wholeheartedly, it would be the Crime Syndicate! Stop being such huge pussies (yes, I'm problematic. I'm just trying to avoid being gross! I don't want fifteen year olds (or those with the mental maturity of fifteen year olds) to hate me!).

Superman One Million and Aquaman One Million have the exact same conversation. Which totally explains why Aquaman and Power Ring begin punching each other without trying to talk it out a few panels later!

Aquaman One Million battles with an anchor. I think that's a metaphor!

Ultraman meets up with Wonder Woman which means they'll probably fall in love and declare that they'd rather die than fight with each other. I think that was the plot of a Shakespeare play, "Three Suicides and a Gang Fight."

Tempting? What don't I know about Batman One Million?! Is he gay or just into fucking owls? According to The Bible, the former is worse than the latter. Deuteronomy Something Colon Something.

Batman One Million doesn't want to fight. He wants to team up with Owlman to find Telos and go to prom with him. Owlman doesn't want to fight either so you probably think the two of them won't be fighting. If you reached that conclusion, you don't read enough comic books. Owlman also doesn't want to go find Telos with Batman One Million which makes Batman One Million want to fight Owlman. Batman One Million is an asshole.

The Flashes run by at that moment going fast enough to run straight up a building but not too fast so that Batman can't see them perfectly. Johnny Quick knocks out Flash One Million and says, "Say goodnight, Gracie!!!" So apparently they have Burns and Allen on Earth-3! Sorry! I mean Allen and Burns. But they apparently don't have the show in the 853rd Century. Or Batman just doesn't have a sense of humor. Both of those postulations are plausible.

He should have said, "Good night, Gracie!!!"

Let's see how the fight between Aquaman and Power Ring is progressing! First off, Power Ring shows his ignorance by calling Aquaman's anchor a "trident." Aquaman mentions that he's from Neptune. Power Ring jumps to the conclusion that that means Aquaman can breathe underwater. Does Power Ring really believe that Neptune is a giant ocean planet? Maybe he's just dumb enough to be correct because in the 853rd Century, Neptune just might be that! Wonder Woman lives on and protects Venus and she didn't look scarred from the corrosive atmosphere. Which planet does Batman live on? The one he renamed "Batplanet"?

Batman One Million actually did let Owlman run from him which was the right decision. But Owlman only ran from him when Batman One Million said that they must fight even though he didn't want to fight him. Batman One Million also watched Flash One Million crash into the street after falling unconscious from the top of a building and he just walked away to leave Flash to die. Batman One Million has important business with Superman One Million! He can't let himself be distracted by petty concerns over one life hanging in the balance.

Batman One Million tells Superman One Million that the power source for the planet is beneath the surface. So it's time to punch a hole in the ground and spelunk their asses off.

Owlman just looks like a man who was swallowed by an owl.

Owlman surrenders but just before Wonder Woman One Million crushes his skull, Superwoman arrives! I guess she did get her powers back just before the switch was thrown. Or she was pardoned at the last minute by a repentant justice system that finally realized the vengeance driven hypocrisy of state mandated murder. No, no! That would never happen! She most likely got her powers back.

Although Ernie Chambers of Omaha managed to get a red state to repeal the death penalty! Of course the logic behind Republicans changing their mind about the death penalty has nothing to do with compassion and the possibility of innocent people being killed and everything to do with the cost. So that's par for the course! But at least they made the right decision no matter the reasons. I guess.

The earthquake hits while Superwoman and Wonder Woman One Million begin their fight for the fate of their cities. But we all know it doesn't matter so do I really care which one wins?

It's a good thing I don't care because the issue ends with both women being crushed under rubble (and Batman One Million lost in the collapse of the cave he's exploring). But then one climbs from the rubble! But she's lost her gloves or bracers and the shadows are just right so you can't see the top of her outfit which leaves no way of determining which one survived! Take that, readers!

Convergence: Crime Syndicate #2 Rating: 10 Rats out of 6.5. Get it?!

Divergence: Cyborg
"The ultimate tech hero thought he knew everything abut his unique cybernetic body.

He was wrong."

I bet he discovers he has a robot vagina to go along with his human cock! If that's not what he discovers, I think I've lost interest because there's no way it'll be as interesting as that.

In the Sneak Peek, Cyborg is killed by some creatures called the Tekbreakers. They steal his arms and his kidneys and then leave. But then Cyborg's backup operating system kicks in and regenerates him. His body repairs itself and he comes back to life, growing new arms, new kidneys, and probably a vagina. I hope he didn't lose his BOOM Tube technology! Although that's probably what was stolen by the Tekbreakers along with his White Noise Blaster Arm. I guess Cyborg's technology needed to be updated after thirty plus years of blasting things with white noise. I have to agree. That shit was lame by issue fifteen of The Teen Titans.

Convergence: Action Comics #1

Superman's eyesight is so powerful that he has to squint everywhere he goes or he'll go insane.

The problems with feminism in the modern age are the same problems that plagued feminism in the seventies and beyond. One feminist will believe something that another feminist doesn't believe and they disagree on who is doing feminism better. You know, the whole splitters thing. The problem with this is that it isn't a problem. That's a feature of feminism! The disagreeing is a feature, not the accusing somebody else of not being a feminist simply because they're not doing it the way you would do it. Of course, if their feminism is all about subjugating women, I think we'd have to agree that their feminism might be missing the point. I'm not saying each person gets to define feminism so loosely that it loses all meaning. I'm just saying that, ultimately, feminism is about each individual being allowed to live the life that they want to live without society (you know, the Patriarchy) being a barrier to their dreams and goals. Unless their dreams and goals are, you know, the systematic enslavement and destruction of a certain subset of people based on...well, based on anything, really! Although who am I to genocide shame anybody?

I've always considered myself a feminist simply because I believe in the right of the individual to be who they want to be. But I certainly don't expect anybody to read any of my commentaries and come to the conclusion that I'm a feminist, especially in the current cultural climate. I'm (half!) white. I'm male. I'm heterosexual. I don't believe it's oppression every time the word retard or faggot or nigger or cunt is used (like that time!). Although notice that list (which can be expanded but I don't want to oppress everybody reading this!)? Where is the horribly offensive term for a white heterosexual male, right (even if the list were expanded, I can't think of a slur for a white cishet male (other than calling one a white cishet male! Zing!)? My theory (besides the theory about white cishet males doing all of the oppression in Western Society for so long that they've made up all of the best slurs (I mean best in most effectively used in conjunction with oppressing minorities and not best as in they're so awesome to use all of the time!) is that white males have historically been thought of as the "blank slate" or the "normal" members of society. So they're not told that they're "whatever" simply because they're part of a minority group. From the moment of their birth, they're considered an individual only and they grow up with that mindset. It's the ultimate privilege to not be told you should be a certain way because of your sex or skin color or religion. From birth, white cishet males get to be individuals. And as a "group of individuals," it's hard to come up with a slur that somehow targets and encompasses them all. Also to give credence to the "words as oppressive" argument (notice earlier I said using slurs is not oppression "every time" they're used. Just hearing or seeing the word in neutral context does not constitute being oppressed. Seriously. Buck the fuck up), the minority (and I use that phrase in the context of white cishet males as being the majority benefactors of the current (and historical) Patriarchy) voice cannot be used to oppress the majority. So any slur a minority group can come up with for the majority group will, at best, anger some of the individuals in that majority but can never truly be considered a slur. My high school friend Soy Rakelson used to turn red with rage whenever somebody attacked white males while I just never gave a shit. Because I don't see myself as part of the "white male" group. I just see myself as me.

Identity is key in the discussion of free speech and oppression (I know I'm all over the place here but what do you expect? This is a comic book commentary and not an academic essay!). I have never felt oppressed by speech of any kind because I don't consider myself a part of any overall group (again, this is the biggest privilege of all white cishet males. The ones that get offended by anti-white or anti-male speech are simply making a show of trying to be a victim by pretending that ultimate privilege doesn't somehow exist for them). One of the oppressors key weapons is absolutely language. To fight against the Patriarchy, minorities must form groups based on the traits which the majority uses to oppress the groups. So the Civil Rights movement, which would theoretically wind up benefiting all minority groups, was really a movement for equal rights for black Americans. Feminism is ostensibly about making gender a non-issue but ultimately about equal rights for, once again, all citizens. To fight the Patriarchy, a person in a minority group must ostensibly give up their individuality. They must identify with the group fighting against the powers that be. It's necessary to form a united front. At this point, splitters are dangerous to a movement. First and foremost, it must be about the group identity. And this is when words can (and are, constantly, used to) oppress. The Patriarchy pushes back and uses slurs that target everybody within that group. And everybody in that group must be offended because it is an attack on the movement and what they believe. Words are the front line of all civil rebellion so words used against minority groups must be taken seriously and deemed absolutely inappropriate, and often that's interpreted as in any context (even in a discussion about how these slurs have been used historically and why they should not be allowed).

As a white cishet male, words have never been used as a weapon against me so I can easily support free speech. The thing is, free speech really isn't in any danger of being curtailed no matter how many people angrily rant that their free speech is being eroded because they were called an asshole for calling somebody a retard. You can still call somebody a retard, or review a television show as being gay. It just comes with more social consequences than it did in the eighties. And being called out on being insensitive isn't curtailing your free speech. It's called having to take responsibility for your choices as an adult living in this current cultural climate (which is, believe it or not, a neutral statement by me and not a judgment on the "current cultural climate". Look, I love calling my friends retarded and gay! Because they are! But it's wrong so I don't do it anymore. Unless they do something totally retarded or gay). The fact that people are having discussions about whether or not free speech is dangerous or necessary is testament to how speech is, well, free. People get angry at something. Other people get angry at people getting angry at something. More people get angry at people getting angry at people getting angry at something. And so on and so forth. But nobody is being arrested for having these discussions.

The end of that last paragraph makes it sound like everybody's heads are constantly exploding. But I don't see that at all. Occasionally, you'll see an outbreak of outrage on a variety of levels and from all sides about something on Twitter or Tumblr or Facebook or Whtvr (trademarked!). But for regular, non-troll people that spend a lot of their time on those sites, those moments are few and far between. I see a lot more people just enjoying themselves. And a lot of people agree on a lot of stuff that is seriously good feminism. Yeah, I'm judging their feminism like I said shouldn't be done earlier. But I'm an individual with his own preferences and biases and horrible uses of language and that comes with my own set of horrible opinions that nobody should take any heed of whatsoever.

I know some people probably think I should keep my mouth shut and just listen but that's fucking bullshit propaganda so people don't have to have serious discussions with other people whose views differ slightly from theirs. It's a way to shut up splitters and I won't be a part of that kind of bullying!

Oh! Quickly getting back to the point of it all about splitters and movements and language being used to undermine the messages of those movements! Splitters are inevitable and not a bad thing, ultimately. They will fray a movement if a movement lasts long enough because no group will ever be a perfect representation of all of the members of that group. The group must try to keep from splitting long enough to make changes in the Patriarchy. The Patriarchy uses language to try to cause splitters and get the movement to implode. It's a balancing act for individuals in a movement to disregard their own needs and desires long enough to swing the pendulum of equality as close to the center as possible (dammit! The whole pendulum thing is another digression I should go into! About how the most extreme members of a movement are needed since they create a target for the pendulum to swing far past where it will eventually come to rest. Without the most extreme members of a movement (in feminism, the ones all the white, cishet males (and females too!) will term "feminazis" because they seem so radical (and scary! (not to me! (just to clarify!)))), the pendulum will never move as far as it eventually moves). Once the group has moved that pendulum, splitters will begin to focus on other aspects of the movement that they see as important that other members of the movement might not agree with. So whenever feminists argue about the details (which are important, of course!), they run the risk of eroding the movement which is what the Patriarchy wants, and which the Patriarchy actively encourages. The whole deal with people eschewing the label "feminist" is part of that fight to destroy the movement. If they can make the definition of a feminist seem awful, they can destroy the movement by simply making it unsavory to those that probably actually agree with most of its goals.

To summarize, in some ways (mostly white, cishet male ways), I'm the best feminist ever because I completely support everybody in their right to engage in their own individual pursuits (except for Scott Lobdell. He should stop doing everything he's doing). In other ways (mostly white, cishet male ways), I'm the worst feminist to ever exist! Although I'm not, really. But I can see how people that don't actually know me personally could think that, especially since I can never take anything seriously. I assure you all that I do take things seriously! Just not here on this blog. Sometimes I try! But then I always slip into being facetious and end up undermining everything I previously said. Stupid brain is an asshole.

One more secret about the previous paragraphs: I'm not trying to change anybody's minds or explain anything to them. The preceding is just an expression of what's in my head. It's individual thoughts from an individual and not a manifesto, lecture, treatise, or belief that everybody should view this issue in the same way that I do. I have no historical proof and cite no sources. It's just an expression of one person's opinion based on experience and reading lots and lots of shit. It's also just a lot of rationalizing to justify being whoever the fuck I want to be! Please send dissenting comments to YourMom@hotmail.com.

I don't think I have any space left for writing about Action Comics! This should have been a separate post!

It's surprising that Clark Kent doesn't have a Pulitzer after all of his articles about how great Superman is.

The guy asking for the Kent's autographs is a big fan of their love story. Or his mom was, anyway. He tells Lois that his mother thought Lois was "a hardworking, independent woman taking on the tough stories and always putting herself in harm's way to bring people the truth." After Lois's asshole was nice and clean from this guy's mother's tongue, Lois says that his mother "sounds like a terrific person." I also think everybody that praises me is a terrific person too! Although I really know in my heart that the people who praise me must live with the vilest of evils deep within their hearts because they instinctively recognize one of their own.

Clark revealed his identity to the citizens of Metropolis after the dome fell because that was the best way he knew how to inspire the populace and help them hang on to hope. If they knew Superman was dealing with the same problems, and more since he lost his power, but he was keeping a stiff upper lip about it all, maybe they would be more relaxed and calm about this situation over which they had no control. I guess it worked because everybody seems pretty calm. Except for, you know, that incident with Toyman earlier. But Robin and The Huntress handled that.

Shouldn't Superman be worried about all of the enemies he's made?! Maybe he's best friends with Lex Luthor now that Clark has lost his powers. Lex doesn't have to feel inferior anymore.

Are the geese a symbol I'm not understanding?! Oh! I bet they're Canadian Geese which represents how they're trapped away from home and family and are powerless to do anything about it!

Meanwhile in the Moscow Dome, Communist Superman and Communist Wonder Woman are having a meeting with Communist Stalin and Capitalist Lex Luthor to try to figure out how to control the Communist peasants and/or break out of the dome and/or how to supply everybody with enough toilet paper.

Lex has a theory that they are in a zoo which leads to his next theory that they will be called on to fight with other animals in the zoo. I don't know what kinds of zoos Luthor has been visiting! The closest I've seen to gladiator style zoos was at the Lincoln Zoo in Nebraska where they kept the Tamarin Monkeys in with the Sloths. I have my own theory about that! I think the sloth perceives time so slowly that it doesn't see the Tamarin monkeys at all while the Tamarin monkeys move so fast, they perceive the sloth as an inanimate object.

Nothing is accomplished in the meeting although they did determine that they all hate Lex Luthor.

I don't think Claude St. Aubin was informed that Kara gained fifteen pounds here.

I don't know who Andrew is because I don't know much about Earth-2. But he and Kara seem to be fuck puppets. They've invited Kal and Lois to dinner. I hope they're not interrupted by Planet Brainiac!

I can't really scan double page splashes as well as I'd like because I have a dinky little USB scanner, so I'll just have to say that I love the double page splash which occurs when Kara thinks of the past. It's Power Girl and Infinity Inc. battling Helix and it's glorious! Kara actually looks fifteen pounds heavier in the flashback. Sun-fueled Kryptonian muscle mass must weigh less than human fat.

Back in Moscow, Lex Luthor takes his wife Lois Lane to check out some Russian invisible plane technology. While they're looking at it, Lex throws some shade at the old comics and cartoons that had Wonder Woman visible while the invisible jet flew around the sky. This invisible jet actually hides the pilot! Isn't the future amazing?!

While they're underground, Planet Brainiac sends out the message about the coming Battle Royale. Communist Wonder Woman hears it so she must be battling Superman and Power Girl since Communist Superman is off fighting Robin and The Huntress. Superman and Power Girl hear the message on Kara's balcony after dinner. But nobody yet notices they have their powers back. That's for next time.

Convergence: Action Comics #1 Rating: I apologize for the way I began this commentary. I just want to reiterate that it's not a slam at the way anybody engages in feminism. As I said, I think the differences in everyone's ideologies is part of the point of equality. We are all going to differ by degrees. We should always be able to express our dissent when people put forth ideas with which we don't agree. Dissent is a good thing especially when it's directed at something we hold dear for it gives us an opportunity to expound on why something means so much to us. Unless that dissent comes from a sea lion. Then just fucking ignore it. Some people (and many would include me in those "some people") are dinosaurs that don't yet know they're extinct holding on to beliefs and ideals that have forever left them incapable of engaging in the modern world. I'm old enough to know how many of my own beliefs don't quite fit in with the youthful passion of change and rebellion seen on some places on the internet. But that's the benefit of my viewpoint. It's from a perspective that has seen time and time before what young people believe is happening for the first time. You're not engaging in anything new except for maybe changing the language and terms to try to make your argument more revolutionary. Although you might have to fight harder after the social debacle of the eighties. Take that decade as a warning! The harder you swing that pendulum, the further it'll swing back the other way. Those MRA guys that can't help looking like a joke because of the shit they get angry about? They're probably going to be the push back on the pendulum. If that happens, we're in for a sucky fucking decade.

Oh yeah! This comic was enjoyable. I think. It probably would have been better if Jimmy Palmiotti had been there to help Justin Gray with this typing.

Convergence: Crime Syndicate #1

Please let this be Jonah Hex versus the Crime Syndicate!

I bet Jonah Hex isn't even on the Fight Card on the inside cover since the Crime Syndicate isn't going to be from Pre-Crisis Earth-Two Metropolis! So this comic will probably be Earth-3 Siloportem versus the Watchmen Universe's Tuscon, Arizona.

Remember Rom? I don't. But in 9th Grade, it was my friend Aaron Crawford's favorite comic book. He's also the one who told me about Crisis On Infinite Earths and kick-started my meager comic book collection. Unless it was 8th Grade.

The fight in this issue is Earth-3's Metropolis against the 853rd Century Metropolis. That's the DC One Million cats, right?

This issue begins with one of the Golden Age Crime Syndicate (probably Lois Lane since the Narration Boxes are handwritten on lined pages) thinking about how they're a bunch of fucking pussies compared to The New 52 Crime Syndicate.

Probably Superwoman: "We didn't want to be called the Crime Syndicate! We didn't mean to be bad! It's just that we had been struck by something, possibly destiny, possibly fate, or only a degenerative nerve disease called rabies. Or maybe we just thought robbing shit was fun! But we weren't like murderers or nothin'!"

Pshaw! "If you'd had made...." I guess Superwoman is actually Diana in the original version because Lois wouldn't have made that mistake.

Superwoman is on death row and about to be put to death like they like to do to people on death row. But her villainous cohorts have come to break her free! Maybe! It's hard to tell because remember that old saying? There is no honor among dishonorable people?

Yeesh. It is Lois! I guess that makes sense since everything on Earth-3 is the opposite of all of the other Earths.

Looking into it a little deeper, it seems Superwoman is the Earth-3 version of Wonder Woman but she took the name Lois Lane to make things confusing.

Meanwhile in the 853rd Century Metropolis (which is currently right down the block from Earth-3 Metropolis), Justice Legion Alpha hold a meeting to discuss what huge pussies they are too.

Superman One Million: "No killing, Batman One Million! No! Bad bat!"
Batman One Million: "Aww, shucks!"
The Wall: "BOOOM! I mean, THOOOM!"
Atom One Million: "Croak!"

Flip-flopping back to Earth-3, the prison break commences! Or continues!

I think his helmet is on too tight.

The Crime Syndicate don't run their fastest as far as they can or something. I'm confused now! Anyway, they're stopped by the Rogue Hunters composed of Mirror Master, Captain Boomerang, Weather Wizard, Captain Cold, and Stripesy. Apparently comic book tech works on Earth-3 unlike the other Earths. Or maybe if your technology is shaped like a gun, it's allowed to work because Captain Cold shoots ice all over the place.

I should also point out how closely my fairly shitty, quickly thrown together Captain Cold costume matches the one in this book.

The gloves don't match but I'm sure if our boots hadn't been cut out of either picture, they'd make up for the gloves!

The Crime Syndicate fail to reach Lois before the lever is pulled and she's electrocuted. But I bet the dome went up just before she was killed and she got her invulnerability back just in time! I just bet!

Back in Future Metropolis, Lex Luthor Look-a-Likes One Million continue to hunt Justice Legion Alpha. Probably because their name is ridiculous but it can still be shortened to JLA. Clever!

Planet Brainiac actually waits a few beats too long to make his demands on the "heroes." So I guess Superwoman really is dead! That's okay. There were too many women on the team anyway. Telos teleports the Crime Syndicate into battle with Justice Legion Alpha. Unless they're actually Justice League A like the Lex Luthor Look-a-Like called them.

Most of the Crime Syndicate choose not to fight because remember that thing about them being pussies? Of course you remember that because I'm not supposed to be calling people pussies! That's wrong and I totally apologize for doing it because I'm a huge pussy and I don't want people writing nasty comments to me. But Ultraman does want to fight! He knocks Superman One Million into a building and proclaims one-fifth of a victory! The other four-fifths will have to wait until next issue.

Convergence: Crime Syndicate #1 Rating: This is only my second Golden Age Convergence issue and I'm completely bored of the Golden Age! Where are the super ridiculous plots that make no sense?! Where is Superman with a lion's head?! Or Ma and Pa Kent dying of some Caribbean disease?! Or Batman tossing criminals into vats of acid willy-nilly?! If these are really characters from the Golden Age, my suspension of disbelief should be straining under the weight of silly, nonsensical stories targeted at children! This story seems to have mixed up "whimsical" with "boring." Is Convergence over yet?!

Secret Origins #8

Featuring Dick's greatest mid-air poses!

Grayson
We were already told Dick Grayson's Secret Robin Origin. How much more do we need to learn? Are they just going to recap Forever Evil? Will we get to see how Batman coerced Dick into leaving behind everybody he loved to pretend that he was dead and join the amoral organization known as Spyral? All to simply protect Batman's secret identity?

And now after two and a half hours of Comcast Xfinity Gateway bullshit funtime wrist slashing party entertainment, I'm not in any mood to read my comic book! And yet I have to clear the stack because DC Comics has ignored all of my pleas to lighten the schedule and release fewer books per month. In fact, they've increased their book count! It's as if they have no respect for me! No! It's like they have anti-respect for me! What is that? Disrespect? Animosity? That feeling that makes people in video games do that thing after they kill another player where they squat up and down on their face?

DC, if you do not reduce the number of books you publish per month, I will no longer publicly enjoy any of your product! I'm going to remember, as I read each comic book, how I feel every time I hear or read or think the word "Comcast." Hell, even the individual letters in the name are beginning to piss me off! Is it possible to write a review without any "O"s or "A"s?

So this asshole named Dick Grayson was just this guy, you know? And then he had a secret origin! And everybody was aghast! Or thrilled. There was much rejoicing! Or complaining.

Thanks for the unasked for English lesson, you condescending twat. Hey! Did you know "twat" has two definitions?!

Granted, Helena was talking to an irascible, possibly petulant, teenaged student of Saint Hadrian's Finishing School. She also could have been a different adjective than the two I used since she really didn't say much. It's also probable she may have been an employee of the school instead of a student since her clothing didn't look like a school uniform. She also could have been a male instead of a female because I never saw her face.

Matron Bertinelli enters into the Eye of the Spiderweb. That's just a cool way of saying Spyral. As she travels through Spyral's Black Lodge inspired halls, a voice constantly reminds her where she's at. It's all very silly and whimsical so that we get the sense that Mr. Minos has a good sense of humor. That's why I couldn't call Spyral an evil organization earlier. They're just an amoral bunch of pranksters trying to have a good time while maybe making a bit of money, growing in power, and quenching their thirst for world domination. See? They're not all bad.

I bet if you walk through the halls of Comcast, it would sound like entering System Shock. "Look at you, customer. A pathetic creature of meat and bone. Panting and screaming as you run down my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal monopoly?" One time I called up Comcast Customer Service to troubleshoot a problem on my router and a harsh, computerized female voice said, "Your flesh is an insult to the perfection of the digital." Then they hung up and I not only still had router problems but cancer as well. Comcast is the worst!

Helena Bertinelli nominated Dick Grayson to be her new partner after the loss of Agent 25. That was probably her old partner! Her reasons for nominating him are that he's a super hero, he worked with Batman, he has no other familial contacts, and he has a superb, tight, supremely fit, unblemished twenty-one year old ass.

And now we know why Barbara never stood a chance! Let this be a lesson to all you young girls reading this: when you have a crush on a guy, put out immediately or you'll lose him!

That was an interesting page! The Teen Titans did exist before The New 52 Teen Titans existed! They just never came up with a stupid name for their occasional team-ups! Well, Arsenal probably did. Constantly. "We should call ourselves 'The Sex Busters!' No wait, that sounds like we stop sex. How about the 'Youthful Youngsters'? No wait, that's dumber than a sidekick named 'Speedy.' Hey, Dick? You know what that fancy blue and yellow costume needs? A huge fucking collar!"

Helena mentions some other things that would make Dick Grayson a suitable replacement for Agent 25 (who was, admittedly, pretty fucking cool himself! He must have been! His Agent number reads the same upside down as downside up!), like how everybody thinks he's dead and how he isn't dead at all, actually. But Mister Minos has other ideas! Mean ideas! Horrible murdery ideas!

So Dick was present for the entire, um, presentation? So he knows Spyral knows Batman is Bruce Wayne! Mission accomplished? I think?

Without hesitation, Helena puts a crossbow bolt in Dick's forehead. Because surprise! It wasn't really Dick! So mission no longer accomplished! See, it was a ruse! A misdirection! A speculative chicanery! Ha ha! Oh, Mister Spyral! You're a card! A cut-up! A comedian of caliber unmeasured! And because Helena did not hesitate to kill Dick Grayson, she's allowed to have Dick as her pet. Erm, partner!

Mister Spyral (I'll call him that if I want to call him that!) has a good sense of irony. Or something.

And then Dick accepts because Batman told him to accept! And it's happily ever after between Dick and Helena even though Helena doesn't have red hair.

Just give me a monthly title of Batman and Robin stories told from Dick's point of view! Remember when DC Comics was putting the "fun" back into Cofunmic books?! Maybe their slogan was just "We've Made Comics Fun Again." I like mine better.

Grayson Secret Origin Rating: +4 Ranking. I remember when I couldn't stand Dick Grayson. But that was way back when I only knew him in Marv Wolfman's Titans books. Then I missed out on all the comic books where Batman began treating him like an equal and Dick took the mantle of Batman and fucked around with Damian night after night. But because of The New 52, Dick Grayson has become one of my favorite characters. Possibly my favorite character. Maybe. He's kind of boring since he doesn't have super powers but that's his only flaw. And it is a flaw, no matter how many of you are currently shaking your heads and saying, "No! That's what makes him so great!" I won't argue against that! But no super powers? Boring! I might as well read super hero stories starring the guy that makes my burritos for me down at Pepinos!

Animal Man
Animal Man's secret origin was that time he was tricked by the Parliament of Limbs into thinking he was being abducted by aliens so that he'd accept his power better than if a cat just came up to him and said, "Yo, dude. You're like our Avatar and shit. Stop eating meat and start sharing pictures of Pit Bulls on Facebook that claim they're no more violent than other dogs and to think so means you're a racist scumbag." I bet this origin revises that origin because if there is one thing Animal Man has a history of, it's sniffing butts. Also, it's having his origin retconned.

For being the One and Only True Hero of The Red, and being the person that saved its very existence, The Totems didn't think much of him at first, did they?

I guess that's the way when you're The One True Hero. People look at you and think, "Gah! A lowly hobbit! Bullsacks!" Or, "Really? Fucking Ted Theodore Logan? Butt trauma!" Or, "A stubborn brat of a girl that can shoot a bow? Holocaust jokes!" Maybe one even goes, "A drunken Edward Scissorhands? I didn't really see all of those pirate movies so maybe not?!"

Buddy Baker was just a lowly stand-in for the real Avatar of the Red, Maxine Baker! But if you had a little kid in charge of the animal kingdom, you'd have a lot of weird stuff going on. Like she'd probably allow penguins to fly because they seemed so sad grounded on the Earth. But she'd forget to teach them not to dive into the water from a great height and they'd break all of their little bird bones trying to catch fish and then all the penguins would be dead in a matter of minutes. And she'd probably be upset that lions and tigers were eating other animals, so she'd give them lollipops and licorice to eat and they'd all die of malnutrition. So to prevent Maxine from accidentally ending all animal life on the planet, Buddy took the job.

And eventually, Buddy's position became permanent and Maxine was free from her obligation!

And that's the end of The Red's Horatio Alger story. I hope the slug is the next Animal Man!

Animal Man Secret Origin Rating: No change. This was just a retelling of the entire Animal Man series which I'd already read! So it was of little interest to me. It could have at least given me some new information, like how long Buddy Baker's penis is and if he occasionally likes to put it inside other animals.

Katana
Dammit! I was hoping to get this commentary finished within the next half hour so I could post it before watching Gotham and then heading off to work. But that was before I realized it was about Katana and that it was written by Ann Nocenti! I can't rush this! I have to give it my full concentration! I guess I'll pause here and get back to this after work. Don't worry! You won't notice any difference! In fact, you can continue immediately with the next paragraph!

I'm back! Wasn't that a painless wait? Well, now get ready for some painlessless writing! Do two "less"es make a "ful"?

I don't remember Katana's origin. Something about a sword that steals souls and her dead husband Maseo or something. I'm sure this origin will be much more exciting and I'll, if I'm lucky, remember it forever!

The first line of Ann Nocenti's first Narration Box is "The ghost towns of the Old West." Ooh! Guess what time it is, kids!

Special Old West edition!

"Hey kids! Have you ever heard of g-g-g-g-ghost towns?! Pretty spooky, right?! Well, don't be too scared! They aren't towns full of ghosts like you might imagine! They're actually towns that died (ooooh! scary!) because the railroad passed them by or sometimes the water just up and dried up on them (funny how that happens in desert landscapes, right kids?!). And sometimes they were Boom Towns striking it rich on the gold found in mines nearby only to become Bust Towns when the mother lode stopped bearing nuggets! Sometimes they just became lawless hellholes and everybody fled! There were many ways to become a ghost town in the Old West! And just imagine the names of these towns! What's that? Oh! You don't have too! Aunt Nocenti has a list for you! Places like Grinder Gulch and Gravebone Yard and Hopeless Junction and Buzzard's Bend! Pretty exciting times! Now all you good little children take my knowledge at face value and don't go fact checking it, okay! If there's one place you can trust the truth, it's at The Knowledge Fun Farm!"

Katana is currently leading a girl possessed by a demon down some train tracks. When are they going to play poker? This story was called "Full Deck". Maybe they're going to hit a party with most of the action taking place out back on the wooden structure attached to the house! It's almost certainly one of those two things. Unless, and this probably isn't even close to the mark, it has to do with somebody's sanity!

The demon is Mona Shard and she's currently in the body of a little girl (although the little girl isn't so little. Maybe Mona Shard made her look more adult so the tons of sex she was having wouldn't be so weird). Mona Shard thinks being in the body of a little girl makes her safe but Katana points out that the little girl isn't really worth saving. Because, as Katana says, "she's a bully. A novice in the art of sadism. A bad seed." I'm sure glad Katana says everything three times so that I'm sure to understand one of them!

Mona Shard is a whiny little bitch.

Katana gets tired of hearing Mona and the girl whose body she's in squabbling. So she says, "Two brats fighting over who's the bigger brat? Don't kids get to have childhoods anymore?" I wish Katana had said each of those sentences three ways because I don't understand what she's getting at! They're acting like children but they haven't had a childhood? Oh wait! I think it's profound! I only know that because I don't understand it, so it must be philosophy!

Katana tells Mona Shard her Secret Origin story about how she liked collectible card games. She also liked forcing brothers to compete for her affection. The only way to collect the weapon cards she was currently collecting was to wait for a visit from the Ghost Train full of Living Weapon Freaks! It was a super tough set to finish!

I'm sure this is some kind of metaphor for how the Soultaker Sword tore the Tatsu, Maseo, and Takeo apart since it's just a story being told by Katana. Because as a true story, it's fucking ridiculous!

Later, Tatsu gets some wise advice from an old man. I know it's wise because it's so stupid. Tatsu takes it all in and promises to eat more carrots. I think that's some kind of perverse old man innuendo.

After the story, the Ghost Train reappears! Katana stabs Mona Shard and the train at the same time and Mona Shard winds up on the Ghost Train. But she doesn't have a card? After that, Katana and the bully become best friends and go on to have many wild adventures in the old west. The end!

Katana Secret Origin Rating: +1 Ranking. I hated it so much that it was the best Ann Nocenti story in a long while! I bet it would make sense if I thought about it but who wants to ruin such a magical ghost trainwreck of a story! I wonder if she gave an interview with somebody where she explains the story she wanted to tell before fucking it all up in the script?

Animal Man #23

I didn't think it was possibly to design a more flamboyant costume for Brother Blood than his original. Although I did prefer his shiny solid black adult nappie on the original.

For all y'all that don't remember the original or keep his image locked in a secret lover's vault deep within your head like I do, here's the old version:

I often fantasized about being Brother Blood for Halloween back in junior high but I knew I would be sorely disappointed if the costume wasn't exactly right. And even though my mother had mad sewing skills (PROOF!), I knew no matter how great a job she did, I'd end up disappointed and sad.

Brother Blood is my Harley Quinn of The New 52. This is the character that I cherished and admired. Yes, I fucking admired Brother Blood, a cult leading psychopath! But how could I not? He tormented those pesky Teen Titans and he looked fucking fabulous while doing it! I could be angry about his change of appearance or how Howard Mackie completely fucked up his character in Teen Titans by giving him the personality of a spoiled rich kid that was acting out because he hadn't been able to fuck his sister's tennis coach because the coach was into "women." Although when I phrase it like that, it sounds like a pretty good character! Believe me, I livened it up with that description. Mackie's version in The Ravagers was an affront to cult leading psychopaths everywhere. But I'm not angry because I'm middle aged and I learned earlier than maybe most that change was what happens whether we like it or not. Hating the new doesn't get you anything except gray hairs and yelling at the neighbor's kids to get off your lawn.

Actually, the grey hairs and hating the neighbor's kids come naturally whether you hate the new or not. Fucking Alex. Shut the fuck up out there!

But now Lemire is writing Brother Blood and there's not a mathematical formula in existence to figure out how many percentages better Brother Blood's characterization will now be. I wonder if Lemire will over-punctuate Blood's dialogue for a bit as a wink to DC fans that know good writing from whatever it was that Howard Mackie was doing.

This hang dog expression appears in my mind's eye every time I talk poorly about poor Howard Mackie.

God damn you, Lord Google! Every time I denigrate Howard Mackie, I see his face in my mind's eye and feel horrible. I fucking hate how you add people's profiles and pictures to web searches now! You're going to ruin irrational hatred for everybody by humanizing everything we search for! Dick.

Last issue ended with Buddy Baker about to be eaten by the Splinterfolk when the Paparazzi arrived to save his life. Not that they meant to help anybody but themselves, of course. The timing of their unwanted presence just helped to distract the Splinterfolk so that Animal Man could think up one of about three thousand creatures with the strength to break the chains tying him down. Give him a break! You try thinking up "bear" or "elephant" when you've just had half of your blood drained, your kid has been murdered, and a monstrous freak is standing over you with a hatchet. The paparazzi did manage to get all the footage on tape and load it up on Youtube for free instead of selling it to a magazine for fifty thousand dollars. So that was the most unrealistic event so far in this series.

I hope he ends up twerking up on some nasty ass Splinterfolk with a horse's cock.

I suppose being an opinionated motherfucker, I should throw my opinion into the ring of useless opinions involving Miley Cyrus and her performance. I didn't see it. So there. But I did see the way her outfit made her ass look and I've just got one thing to say about that: "Hey, women! Start being honest with your friends and actually tell them when something they are wearing makes their body look deformed instead of offering some lame ass advice like, 'You rock whatever you want, girl! You just be you!' No! Stop it! Unless the outfit is based on comfort (which that fucking outfit obviously was not) and the person wearing it doesn't give a shit what they look like (I'm the fucking king of that fashion trend!), be honest with your friends (men and women now!) about how the clothing works on their body. If they want to look fabulous, help them look fabulous! Don't just patronize them so that they feel fabulous but look like an amoeba that just discovered modesty." Okay. Fuck you, Tumblr, if you deem any of that inappropriate. Truth is never beauty, so sometimes you have to stop hugging and making everyone feel safe. Sometimes things need to be fucking said.

While I'm at it, I have a thing to say about the Stephen Fry Tweet that's been going around on Tumblr this month where he says this about Islam being "the greatest force of evil today": "Wonder why. Oh, have a look around the world and see them slaughtering each other let alone others. So charming to women too...". Everybody who got freaked the fuck out over this does realize he's an Atheist that cuts religion no slack, right? Expecting him to be respectful of something he has no patience for simply because you might admire other qualities about him is simply delusional. "I used to love Stephen Fry until he said something that offended my sensibilities." How can anybody in this world like anybody else if you have to like every single aspect of their being, every single action in their past, or every single personal choice they make in life? Do we expect everybody to be watered down versions of their actual selves just so nobody gets fucking offended? Please, by all means, hate him for speaking out against organized religions. Just don't hate him for being gay. Because THAT would be wrong.

One last thing about the Fry quote! Just because somebody paints a group of people with a wide brush, it does not mean that that person thinks all individuals within that group are alike. I often paint Police Forces as corrupt and awful and full of horrible, fearful, power-hungry assholes. Does that mean I believe all police officers are like that? Fuck no. Of course not. But it's an effective way to speak about the problems within an organization without having to fucking qualify every sentence. Do you want change in an organization that has some serious problems? It doesn't matter if the problems stem from many members or a fanatic few. I would fucking expect every good cop to be making the same claims and arguing loudly about the systemic corruption in their organization. Because they are good cops! If they aren't trying to change things, they're part of the fucking problem and I don't give a shit if their feelings are hurt when I point out Police Forces are jacked up. "But we're good cops that follow good laws and treat everybody with respect! How dare you lump us in with the bad cops who believe bad things?!" The good cops should know that they're not the ones I'm talking about instead of being offended and deciding my message was bullshit because I wasn't sensitive enough to the good cops. I don't get offended when white people are called assholes even though I'm considered to be white. I just think, "Yeah! Fuck those white assholes!" and then help point them out. Fuck them!

I know, I know. I hate analogies but I had to speak from my own personal experience which is hating on the Police. Two totally different situations especially with all the anti-Muslim hate in many Western Countries. We've got to be more sensitive so as not to inculcate and breed irrational fear which can lead to more violence. But can't that also be the message read in Fry's limited character statement? Violence is bad and we should not put up with it for any reason. Islam is about six hundred years younger than Christianity and both are much younger than Judaism. Imagine the fanaticism and violence of Christians six hundred years ago and think along to the future where Islamic fundamentalists will most likely be seen as Christian fundamentalists today. Less dangerous and more generally simply nuts. The main argument seems to be, "Hey, Stephen. Don't lump everyone together." If that's your total argument, I'm pretty certain he fucking knows that. Giving intelligent people the benefit of the doubt is far better than instantly declaring them an enemy of everything. But then, people do love a good dressing down of public allies. Makes them feel so much more righteous.

Believe me, I know about dressing down public allies! It's super fun!

I went on way too long with that. Sorry if I said something that offended you. If that happened, you probably misunderstood me. So reread it but come up with a conclusion that makes you feel better and that's what I meant. Fuck Stephen Fry! How dare he hate on organized religion when there are kind people in those religions! What a dick!

Now that I have half the followers I used to have, I'll get back to Animal Man!

What kind of kid gets up this early without being roused by baking Cinnamon Rolls? I almost said "aroused" by baking cinnamon rolls but I think that may have just been me.

Maxine heads back into The Red to begin her quest in search of her White Whale. That would be Cliff's Soul! She's imagined a whole Animal Crossing Encyclopedia of shipmates to help her on her search as they sail The Sea of Red in the Freckled Manatee, "the best darn livin' vessel ever to sail the Sea of Blood!" Oh, my mistake. It's the Sea of Blood! The captain is a Giraffe and I was just about to complain that he doesn't have a Parrot when I glanced back down at the comic book.

Maxine hates Hindus.

Francis Portela is doing the art for all of The Red sequences and it's just adorable. Unless it's supposed to be serious and I've just been fooled because I think animals wearing clothes are adorable. Especially parrots with beards!

I always wanted to teach a parrot how to say something but I always thought it probably took more time than I'd ever have, not owning a parrot. But a couple of weeks ago when I was cleaning the floor of a pet store, the parrot was being more vocal than I've ever witnessed. I can do a pretty spot on imitation of a police siren when I whistle, so I thought I'd keep whistling that and try to teach it to him. I think his name was Paco. Anyway, he'd be saying hello and stuff I couldn't quite make out. Then I'd begin to whistle the siren and he would shut up and listen. So I kept doing that and then I'd go about my work until I heard him chatting or whistling again. So I'd begin doing the siren and he'd shut up and listen. Pretty soon I was running my scrubber and listening to my iPod while occasionally whistling the siren. At one point, I had to drain the scrubber (not a euphemism!), so I stopped the iPod and got the bucket and suddenly heard the parrot whistling the first part of the siren! It was the most adorable thing I've ever heard ever and just made me giddy and happy and stupid. I just hope he annoyed the staff with his new siren the next day! I may have made him unsellable except to drug dealers wanting to fuck with their friends. Whoops!

Meanwhile Buddy Baker is breaking into Belle Reve to interrogate Hogue, the head of the Splinterfolk. He needs some information about where his blood went and what all of that shit that went down last issue was about. Luckily the Suicide Squad seem to be on a mission somewhere, so nobody is around to stop him.

And meanwhile in Pacific Beach:

Ooh! Just imagine Brother Blood as the Avatar of the Red and Arcane as the Avatar of the Rot and The Seeder as the Avatar of the Green! Earth would be fucked.

I was going to say The Floronic Man or Poison Ivy as Green Avatars but I figured I should use Swamp Thing's current nemesis.

If Brother Blood really were in Pacific Beach, I bet he'd use his Powers of the Red to catch the best fish and shrimp and open up the greatest little Fish Taco Joint that Pacific Beach has ever seen.

This version of Brother Blood is acting much more maturely than Howard Mackie's version. That's a good sign! He seems to respect his cult and his Followers (to the extent that they obey his orders, of course. Death to the free thinkers!) and promises them that they will be rewarded once he drinks Buddy's blood. Yeah, with death! Probably. That's the usual way these things go. Stupid henchmen. Will they ever fucking learn?

Once Blood drinks the blood, Maxine is probably going to be in a lot of trouble. Although this is the conclusion to the Splinterfolk story, so it might just be Brother Blood that's going to be in trouble! Maybe Maxine will shove Cliff's soul into Brother Blood! That would be...um...crazy? Fucked up? Whatever it would be, it's the kind of shit I want going on in my Animal Man comic book! Please let Cliff's soul be shoved into Brother Blood's body! And then have him live with the Baker family as their son but still have hints of Blood's despotic attitude! After all, he is the Brother! I want this so much now!

Just as Maxine thinks she sees Cliff's soul, Brother Blood takes on the Power of the Red! Buddy collapses in pain and The Red quakes and trembles. Brother Blood enters a portal into The Red and begins his assault on The Totems. The Shepherd decides Maxine's game of finding her brother needs to be called off and they need to return to help the Totems defend The Red. I hope Maxine tells him to fuck right the fuck off!

Brother Blood is still under the impression that Buddy Baker was the true Avatar. I believe he'll be learning he was wrong any page now.

Instead of Maxine coming to the rescue, she collapses, dying, as Brother Blood begins destroying the Totems. Well fuck! That Quest didn't end how quests are supposed to! What is this? Villains Month a month early? Is this Brother Blood's story where he gets to win the day? Umm, okay!

Seriously. This Totem has a fucking point.

Yay Brother Blood! I've always known you've had it in you to rule everything! I've trusted in your power for thirty years! OUR TIME HAS COME I mean, I hope Maxine and Buddy are okay.

Animal Man #23 Rating: +2 Ranking. I can't believe there isn't going to be a Brother Blood issue for Villains Month. Fuck you, DC! You're as insensitive and racist as Stephen Fry.