Detective Comics #956

Look at Cassandra's ass and see how much trouble comic book artists have drawing baggy clothing.

• Recently, Cassandra Cain defeated the entire League of Shadows by herself. Now she needs help defeating Shiva. That math works out to Shiva could probably defeat the world in a one on seven billion cage match (if Cassandra were excluded! So seven billion minus one).

• Shiva declares she will never yield so she's about to get her ass beat by Batman and Cassandra and Batwing and Batwoman and Clayface and Azrael. But not Red Robin because he's dead. And not Spoiler because nobody really cares what happens to her. They only cared when she stopped existing during The New 52. Now that she's back, nobody who called for her return is buying comics with her in them and DC's executives are sitting in their offices going, "Why the fuck do we keep thinking fans actually want what they say they want?" But the joke is on them! Because what fans want is quite specific and they all want a different specific thing which means any move DC makes only brings back one fan who left angrily! And the move probably alienated a thousand more! Ha ha! Losers!

• The Colony has released a swarm of Nano-Bots that will kill everything they come in contact with. They're meant to just kill the League of Shadows because Jacob Kane doesn't realize his daughter and her friends are also in the League of Shadows' sewer hideout. Boy is he going to have egg on his face at his daughter's funeral!

• The final battle can't just be a physical brawl. It also has to be a debate. So, once again, some DC superheroes get embroiled in a discussion on whether to kill or not to kill! So fascinating! I just love whenever this topic is revisited every two or three times in ever fucking comic book.

"You're making false equivalencies!" is some top notch Batman battle repartee!

• Shiva sets the nuclear bomb to detonate in five minutes. Why in five minutes? Why doesn't she just blow it? Because she hopes to still get away? She must know that by giving herself time to escape, it also gives the good guys time to deactivate the bomb. Being a villain, she should also know that she won't escape and the good guys will disarm the bomb. Since she states she's not afraid to die for her objective, she really should just blow the thing immediately.

• I wonder if there is an OSHA for super villains and they're not allowed to have bombs or weapons of mass destruction that activate immediately? That would explain a lot of things. I bet the Super Villain OSHA even has regulations on presenting safety reminders to everybody involved before they activate their plan. Which is why they all have to monologue and reveal their plot.

• Shiva is all, "I know we should be fighting but I have a few things to say about Batman working for the Patriarchy!" But Cassandra is all, "Shut up while I prove not killing is better than killing by making you wish you had been killed! Ha ha!"

• Right when Cassandra feels she's making a connection with her mother which might possibly lead to an extended hug, Ra's shows up and shoots Shiva in the back. He's all, "I called her a rabid dog so you know I'm referencing Old Yeller but I really should have narrowed the allusion to Of Mice and Men."

• Before Shiva dies, she whispers something to Cassandra. I'm pretty sure Cassandra would rather have had a hug.

• Ra's helps disarm the bomb and takes the League of Shadows into custody while Batman stands by with his limp dick in his hands.

In the epilogue, Batwoman cosplays Desire of the Endless.

• Batman decides the Bat-Team is going to need some magic help in the upcoming war against the League of Assassins. I hope he's going to look up his old friend, Jason Blood!

• The next month blurb reads "Spoiler Alert!" Hasn't that been used enough? Can we retire it yet?

Detective Comics #955

You know what kind of people I despise (other than people who think Trump is intelligent)? People who have to point out that writing DC Comics is tantamount to saying Detective Comics Comics. I mean, it is! But it's not ridiculous to say that. Detective Comics is the name of the company. They print comics. Those comics could be described as Detective Comics comics. Duh! Get a life, you stupid fucking Actually Nerds. Also, stop telling me it's Frankenstein's Monster. I know, you fuck basket! But some of us are lazy and enjoy shortening that to just Frankenstein. If I want to speak about his creator, I'll use his fucking title, Doctor! Get it, dick snap? And if I say ATM Machine, don't fucking correct me because I'm talking about my masturbation machine that enables me to ass to mouth myself. Now if I said I've got my self-contained underwater breathing apparatus scuba gear then you can get on my case. But only then, you stunted pharmaceutical representative.

Last issue ended with the question, "How is anybody going to stop the League of Shadows?!" No wait. It ended with the answer to that question as Cassandra Cain showed up on their doorstep with dozens of murdered League of Shadow assassins. See, this entire story arc (practically since Rebirth (and including Batman and Robin Eternal)) has been about teaching the reader that Cassandra Cain is the most dangerous and formidable fighter in the DC Universe. Usually comic book companies like to be a bit ambiguous about which heroes can beat up which other heroes. That's call Stan Lee's Law (otherwise known as the Fangenders Can Get Pretty Angry If Their Favorite Character Gets Their Ass Beat By Another Hero They Hate So You'd Better Never Have A Fight Between Heroes Reach A Satisfying Conclusion Theorem).

Last night while I was dreaming, I kept reminding myself, in my dream, to remember to use this in conversation at some point: "Has there ever been a serial killer who was also a magician? Because then he would be a serial nerderer." Man, my dream self was on fire last night.

This issue begins with...oh, let's face it. Who cares, really? I haven't even opened the comic book yet and I already know what's going to happen. Cassandra Cain is going to kick the ass of every League of Shadow assassin. Then she's going to face off against Lady Shiva who will dare her to kill her. But then when she's about to kill her, tears streaming down her face, Batman will be all, "You can't! You can't kill! If you don't kill, I will give you another hug!" Then she'll stab her blade down at Shiva's face but it will miss by a milliliter, exactly like she planned it. Also, I'm not good with metric measurements. After that, Cassandra will run into Batman's arms and she'll feel satiated. Meanwhile, Batman will roll his eyes at the other Bat-Kids standing behind Cassandra and point down at her miming, "What a fucking handful, amirite?!"

While Cassandra plays out her fairy tale (see, that's why she took the name Orphan. Because she's like the lost princess in the woods who has to lure a wolf to her mother's cabin so he'll eat the woodsman who's been sexually harassing her for months (no wait. That's not the fairy tale she's living out. I think she's just living out a general fairy tale theme of lost parents and hidden identities)), Batwoman, Batwing, and Azrael have been chained up naked next to a thermonuclear bomb underneath Gotham City.

Why would somebody hide a utility belt in hollow teeth when they have buttholes and vaginas? And, if we're talking about Batman, a thoroughly gauged urethra! I've talked about his practice of gauging before!

When I was younger and somebody mentioned gauging, we knew it meant expanding the urethra in your penis. But now everybody thinks people are talking about increasing the size of the hole in your earlobe. Bah! Kids today are so tame with their body modifications.

The Bat Gang decide the only thing they can do is wait for Batman to save them. That's when Batman is tossed on the floor in front of them and put up in chains beside them. That's when Shiva explains that Gotham City is going to die in under an hour. That's when a League of Shadows flunky runs up and exclaims, "There's a little girl killing us all in the west corridor! We're nowhere near as great at assassinating as we thought! Eeep!"

Before Cassandra can destroy the entire League of Shadows all by herself, she needs to experience the flashback where the dancer she used to stalk gives her a hug and tells her she's not broken. Oh, because she knows so much about Cassandra, right?! This scene may as well have been Cassandra feeling sorry for herself while scrolling through Tumblr and stumbling upon one of those ridiculous affirmation sites that tell sad people that they're worth it, even when the sad person knows, deep down, that they totally aren't worth it. But people who don't hate themselves see those sites and get huge boners over them. Ugh. Those sites are the fucking worst. Get out of here with your cute animals vomiting forth insipid bullshit!

I'm just angry that those unimaginative, barely creative sites get so much love and attention while my bitter site full of vitriol and hatred hardly makes a blip on the Googles.

The dancer explains a book to Cassandra and Cassandra is all, "Oh yeah! Thanks! I needed somebody to tell me how to feel differently about the way I felt about the way people told me how to feel! Now I feel in control of my life thanks to you explaining how I should perceive my life through your perspective! I'm totally myself now!" Then Cassandra rushes off to save Batman and the others and possibly the entire world.

The issue ends with just Shiva left standing to face Cassandra. Shiva says, "You think you can fight me alone? After destroying hundreds of my elite soldiers alone, you think that makes you strong enough to defeat me?!" And Cassandra is all, "No! That's why I saved Batman and the others first, dummy!" Although she says it with less words. So the moral of the story is to rely on yourself sometimes and then, at other times, to rely on your friends. I wish the story would explain when each of those times were. Because it would seem to me that I should rely on myself when I had to fight just one person and not ask my friends to gang up on that one person. And then I should rely on my friends when I'm being swarmed with enemies. But this story is all, "No, no! That's totally backwards, stupid!" And I'm all, "Stop calling me stupid, comic books!" And my comic books are all, "Hee hee. What a dufus."

The Ranking!
I don't have time to rank this! I have to go cry in another room where my jerko comic books can't see me.

Detective Comics #954

Ra's shows off his big dick.

The Review!
In this issue, Batman gets fucking duped by Ra's al Ghul. He has a history of being duped by al Ghuls. This time probably isn't as bad as the time Talia scraped Bruce's Bat-semen out of the condom carelessly tossed in her bathroom trash can and then incubated Damian in a glass womb. But it was close! Ra's convinces Batman that they can work together to defeat the Court of Shadows and then he yells "Psyche!" while blowing paralytic powder into Batman's face. Ra's then gives Batman to Shiva as a peace offering so that Shiva will stop kicking his ass and killing his men. But that's not the most important part of this comic book. No, the most important part of this comic book is James Tynion IV introducing us to his Mary Sue character.

"The fans are going to love me! I mean him!"

The reason I know this is James Tynion IV inserting himself into the comic is that James Tynion IV loves to fuck guns. So it's totally obvious. This guy may have been introduced in an earlier issue and I just missed it because he didn't make a big deal about fucking his guns. I don't think he gives his name but the other member of Black Alpha Total Mystery Aggression Nerd Squad's name is Cooper. He has lots of tattoos and is also bald. I think he's James Tynion IV's penis's Mary Sue character.

The Ranking!
No change! I wonder how many people on Tumblr instantly declared this gun fucker as their favorite character? I hate him! He's immoral! It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Smith and Wesson! Oh, also his mustache is stupid.

Detective Comics #950

Great. An extra long comic book. I fucking live for these.

• Being a superhero must be a huge pain in the ass. The older I get, the less time I want to actually spend on maintaining the life support for my brain (you know, my body). Why fucking bother? I mean, except to keep it in good enough shape to keep the life support running longer so the brain can experience years more existential dread and worry. I suppose the eroding of wonder and passion is a necessary evil. If things still ratcheted up my emotions to teenage levels, I'd be fucking exhausted. Plus, life wouldn't be dragging me down more and more every year so that when I'm finally about to take my last breath, I'm more apt to say "Finally. Good riddance!" than "NO! It was too short!"

Who am I kidding? No matter when I die, it's going to have been too short, no matter how fucking miserable I am.

• I think I was about to make a different point in that last bullet point when the specter of my mortality gripped me by the throat with its skeletal hand and whispered...well, I'm not going to tell you what it whispered! It's personal! And terrifying!

• Oh! I remember what I was going to say! I need to exercise! I gained way too much weight after my cat Judas died because I didn't fucking care about anything and now I've got to figure out how to lose it all. But I don't want to spend extra time doing physical things! I walk all the time but apparently not enough to seriously counteract the mournful gluttony I went through for about a year or more. I suppose I could run but I can barely remember the last time I did that! Aside from occasionally sprinting down the driveway after getting the mail barefoot in the rain. Come to think of it, that usually feels exhilarating. Maybe I should do sprints for my exercise regimen?

• The other day, I heard somebody say regiment when they meant regimen.

• This issue is probably too long for me to care about reviewing in bullet points. Just look at the cover with all the names of the artists who worked on this. It's so long that they had to split their time across all those people. And they got paid for it! Yeah, I'm definitely not putting effort into this review. So, you know, it'll be like most of my reviews! But at least that doesn't make my reviews any worse than any of the others on the Internet. Holy shit, people who review comic books are boring assholes.

Well then Christine Montclair is an idiot because she lives in a fucking comic book where all kinds of supernatural things happen on a near constant basis.

• Does anybody remember the haunted Toys "R" Us in Sunnyvale, California? It was on That's Incredible or one of those weird shows of the early 80s. Maybe Ripley's Believe It or Not. But not Real People since that show was about real people and not fake people like ghosts. Anyway, that was the Toys "R" Us where I got all of my Atari cartridges and Star Wars Figures! I never saw the ghost. Probably because (Spoiler Alert!) it wasn't real.

Well, now it's certain she's an idiot. She doesn't even believe in creepy stalkers! Come on, Christine! Smarten up! You live in Gotham! Four out of every five guys are creepy stalkers lurking in the shadows watching young women dance!

• It turns out the creepy stalker is Cassie just trying to learn how to dance. When she's caught by Christine (who still gets to not believe in ghosts and creepy stalkers because Cassie wasn't either. Maybe I'm the idiot!), Cassie doesn't want to scare Christine so she just throws a smoke bomb and runs away. That seemed like a reasonable reaction.

• The Omniscient Narrator (who is rarer than ghosts in DC Comics) turns their attention to Cassie Cain and is all, "Cassie believes in ghosts! Oh, you better believe it! Boy howdy, does she! So real, ghosts are!" And that's the prologue to the prologue!

• James Tynion IV seems to have chosen to use an Omniscient Narrator this issue so that he could write lines like this: "Every gesture, every twitch of muscle in her face, forming words in a sentence that Harper doesn't know she might as well be shouting at her." Pee-yuke! If you want to write Young Adult Literature, write Young Adult Literature, Tynion! This is a comic book! Utilize the medium you're writing in to the best of your ability rather than writing a short story and sticking it in Narration Boxes and letting the art be the sidekick to your masturbatory wordsmithing!

• "Cassandra envies the way the emotions just bleed from her friend's body." Gross! It's like full body menstruation!

• "Even more, the way they can just tumble out of her mouth without effort." So evocative of barfing!

• The conceit here, if I may act like I know how to use the word conceit in a critique of another person's writing, is that Cassie can't articulate what she's feeling. So while her responses are short and clipped, Tynion has decided to contrast her stifled expression with the overly expressive Narration Boxes. They're the things Cassie would say if she could. Although she'd probably fill Harper with revulsion using all those disgusting body function metaphors. But then when you're raised to know only death and killing, what other metaphors are at your disposal?!

• Cassandra is sad that she didn't get to be a regular girl and was instead made to grow up as a weapon of destruction. Bah. First world problems!

• After visiting Harper and finding she cannot express her needs to her, Cassandra seeks out Batman. She defeats a drug ring and saves some children but he does not hug her. Not like the time before. That one time. That time she seeks desperately. Now, he treats her kindly but warily. He sees the potential threat she could be if she lost control, and it hurts her. She cannot express what she needs to Batman, so she moves on.

• Um, anyway, Cassie runs from Bat-family member to Bat-family member thinking, "I wish I could say the things I want to say to them! Boo hoo!" Then she goes home to dance which is the way she shouts back at the city because body language was her first language. On a rooftop across the way, Shiva spies on her and says, "I hear you girl! I'm coming!" Sexy! Also, I didn't know Shiva was that good at reading body language.

• There's a second story but it's about Azrael and I hate Azrael so I'm going to pretend it doesn't exist.

Plus there are Bat-Sentinels in it. I really want to pretend those don't exist.

• At least the Bat-Sentinels were part of the Clayface Danger Room. So it's not like anything was really stolen from the X-men.

• Azrael isn't just a religious nut whose secret identity is basically Cousin Oliver from The Brady Bunch. Apparently, he's also a twelve step junkie. Ugh, I can't stand him! I'm ignoring this story!

• Luke Fox is one of those atheists that people who aren't atheist think all atheists are. He's all, "I need a reason to believe shit! Proof and what not! I am super logical!" But some atheists are just all, "I can live with doubt. I can live with heaps and heaps and heaps of doubt. I don't need to know how the universe began or why people exist. I can live with no meaning. I'm an atheist because even though I don't know even a small percentage of the mystery of everything, I know that God doesn't exist. It doesn't fit anywhere inside the model of life and the universe. It is an outside idea that nobody studying the theory of everything would ever come up with. God is outside the system and thus not an answer as to why the system exists or works. The whole creation has to have a creator argument is legerdemain and misdirection. It's an assumption that our own lives are a reflection of the rest of reality. And it's expressly ignorant of the idea that if something needs to be created then what created God? As soon as you suggest God didn't need to be created, you are allowing that a thing can exist that didn't need to be created (at least in the way our minds can process the idea of creation). And if you can believe that, why can't you believe the universe itself is that thing that didn't need to be created by a creator? I'm really just one step away from agreeing with Creationists."

• As Atheistwing and Friend of Billzrael have their philosophical debate, the Azrael mask watches and learns. Maybe. I don't know. Anyway, the Order of St. Dumas have created a new angel to do their revelatory bidding: Ascalon!

• There's still another story! This one about Batman and Red Robin. Basically it's just Red Robin asking Batman why he's preparing for war and Batman not answering him. Typical!

The Ranking!
+1! Okay, this issue had some good shit in it. I can admit when I was being disingenuous in some of my earlier critiques in the bullet point portion of this review! I mean, can I? Really? I'm always disingenuous in my reviews! I think I'm usually honest about that though, right?

Nightwing #9

How does Nightwing get into this kind of trouble in Gotham?

I keep saying that I'm going to do a bunch of shorter reviews just to catch up so that I'm reviewing comics the week they come out. But then I can never stop myself from digressing into digressions where I digress about more digressions. But I'm going to try! Starting now! For awhile, I'm actually going to read the entire comic book and then fart out a quick review! Ready? Set? Oh! I remember this thing I wanted to say. After watching the first episode of the first season of Little House on the Prairie, I started swinging my arms mechanically and making a goofy face and singing, "Der der der!" I was set off by the whole thing about how Pa was happy about his unexpected "harvest of friends." The Non-Certified Spouse looked at me and said, "You're aggressively cynical." Yes, I am! But that doesn't mean I don't love Little House! Laura Ingalls is my favorite character ever. She's a feisty bitch and she owns every fucking second of it. Even Ma and Pa love it although they only love it in private after they're done scolding her with passages from The Bible.

The Review!
+1 Ranking. Once upon a time, I used to hate Dick Grayson. I despised Nightwing. He was overly dramatic and constantly jealous. He whined about living in the shadow of Batman. He wasn't funny or charming or anything but pathetic. Mostly it was because he was being written by Marv Wolfman and I was reading the mid to late eighties Titans run. I never got over it. I went on for the next couple of decades decidedly anti-Nightwing. That only changed once I forced myself to read The New 52 Nightwing comic book because I was reading all of the others anyway. I couldn't ignore it simply because Marv Wolfman had ruined my taste for the character. What I discovered, nearly right from the start with Kyle Higgins' run, is that I really liked Nightwing. I loved his appearances in Scott Snyder's Batman as well. Dick Grayson had become his own man since the many years before when he was a tiresome twerp. Instead of Batman treating him like the son who abandoned him, Batman was treating him like a peer. Batman respected him for the man he became. That goes a long way because Batman doesn't even respect fucking Superman. I found that I was capable of actually admiring this character. He was logical, compassionate, and always kept his sense of humor. I discovered Dick Grayson was the greatest superhero in DC's New 52. I don't mean he was the most powerful, of course. I just mean he had the truest heart of what it means to be a hero. And, beyond belief, Dick Grayson became my favorite character of the DC Universe. So you can imagine how chuffed I am that Tim Seeley has been writing him for so long (because Tim Seeley is a Great Writer).

This issue is an examination of what makes him the finest hero in the DC Universe. It also reestablishes his relationship with Superman since DC Comics fucked that shit up by cutting their old universe into confetti, tossing it into the air, and reassembling it into a new universe without caring that over half the pieces were left under the desk. Dick is the guy to truly accept the new Superman without dozens of issues where he acts suspiciously and questions the new Superman's motives. He just fights beside him and sees who this Superman is and, afterward, accepts him as his friend. Which goes a long way to getting everybody else to accept him. Everybody in the DC Universe could take a few paragraphs out of Dick Grayson's book of being a hero.

Also, Doctor Destiny and his Materioptikon made an appearance! And Helena in a bikini! Or Tony the Tiger in shorts, if you're into man beef.

Batman and Robin Eternal #13

I wish I had a mark of Cain!

Who doesn't want a mark of Cain?! If I'd had a brother, I would have totally murdered him so that I would fall under God's protection too! Lucky Cain! Not only was Cain given God's protection, he was also driven out from under God's sight so that he didn't have to worship him! So he got out of going to church too! And that's just the beginning of the gifts Cain got! Cain was also "cursed" to not be able to do farm work! I wonder how many people you have to kill to be cursed to not have to do any labor at all?! Can I just declare that I did something so bad that I'm cursed even worse than Cain the way Lamech did?! "Oh shit! I totally took God's name in vain like a billion times! I'm cursed seventy-thousand fold more times than Cain. Now I need to go on disability!"

Maybe the assumptions I just made about The Bible are part of the reason the church didn't want any old stupid piece of shit peasant reading and interpreting it on their own. How angry must the church have been at John Wycliffe when he first translated the Latin into English and they began hearing the same stupid questions from ignorant dolts over and over again. Questions like "Where did Cain's wife come from if it wasn't totally his sister and since I haven't read Leviticus all the way through because--let's face it, guys--it's ficken boring, it's totally okay to bang my sister because it had to have been Cain's sister, right? Can you give me an answer quickly because the tip is almost in and I don't want to go to hell in...oh god yes it was worth it!" Also "How angry must the church have been at John Wycliffe?" is totally a question that can be answered because they were this angry at him: 44 years after Wycliffe died, the Pope ordered his bones dug up, crushed into powder, and tossed in a river. You might be thinking, "Holy shit! That's horrible!" But look at it from the church's point of view: now people like me are reading The Bible and pointing out how silly it is. I would never have taken the time to learn Latin just to make fun of The Bible!

Too bad for the Church (capital "C" because it's the one that killed millions to keep itself all powerful. We know which one that one is, right? *huge manga wink*), desecrating Wycliffe's body wasn't warning enough for the many people over the following centuries who continued his work of making The Bible accessible to the masses. It's a long list of people banished, excommunicated, burned at the stake, martyred, and discredited in an effort to keep people from realizing that the story of Abraham and Sarah scamming Pharaoh out of his donkeys in Egypt was repeated at least two more times but in different places and with Isaac and Rebecca as the con-artists. Oh, they were also trying to keep people from knowing a lot more than that! The things in Genesis that make no sense according to Church Doctrine is just the tip of the conspiracy. The part I'm most angry about is where Onan's sin is said to be attributed to spilling his seed on the ground when the real issue is that he broke a contract. Isn't that always the way though? Let the corruption of big business off the hook while blaming the few and simple pleasures of the common people.

I should find some illustrated Bible comics and do commentaries on those! That would be fun! Until then, maybe I should stick to Batman and Robin.

Cassandra Cain begins this issue by reprogramming an ARGUS spy plane to fly over Mother's nursery, stowing away aboard it, and then bailing out when it flies over a Russian pit to Hell. The ARGUS pilots recognize the pit because James Tynion IV was all, "I once heard about how a Russian diamond mine dug too deep and let loose Durin's Bane which killed them all but not before one of them recorded the sounds of the damned because the pit reached Hell unless that was a totally different thing but anyway I'm going to mention it in a comic book because it's so fucking cool, Scott!" And Scott Snyder was all, "Mmmpphhh-ffumffle-mmmbble-fummfffle!" I don't know what that means because Google Translate doesn't have an option to translate "James Tynion's Dick In Your Mouth" into English.

I kid! I know Scott Snyder is a happily married heterosexual who only spent a small fraction of his life dressing up as Disney characters and hanging out in the men's showers at Disneyworld. Besides, if I was really being serious, it would have been James Tynion IV sucking Scott Snyder's dick because Snyder is the one that was hired by DC for his ability and it was James who was hired because of whose dick he knew.

I hope Snyder and Tynion never read this! Or if they do, I hope they have as good a sense of humor as Sterling Gates and not as poor a sense of humor as Cullen Bunn.

Oh! Pictures! I should distract everybody with pictures after that doubly horrible start to a comic book review!

Is Mother supposed to be an accurate representation of all mothers because she's almost exactly like my own!

This is the part where everybody has to forgive me for all of the horrible things I constantly say because they realize I was raised by a horribly manipulative woman who constantly showered love upon every child around her except her own! That's why my heart is a shriveled piece of turkey jerky! Unless it's like that because of all the horror movies I watched and horror books I read and all those things I hid under the front porch.

Oh! Look at this! I don't know which one to rub my dick on first!

You've got to think that after nine seasons and two movies, maybe the truth isn't fucking out there after all, hmm?

What the fuck is television trying to do to me?! I don't have this much time! I'm going to have to give up comic books if television is going to spend this much time turning them into shows.

Cassandra Cain has come to save Mother's children before they're all purged in the move. While she runs about, she remembers learning how to hug a person. She hugs The Sculptor who is appalled because Cassandra wasn't made for hugs. That's Wonder Woman bullshit. At that moment, The Sculptor should have known that Cassandra wasn't right for The Orphan's project. I would be better suited because I not only hate hugs, I also hate shaking hands and nearly every other form of human contact ever invented by humans who, for some reason, need more themselves!

Cassandra does not find any children. But she does find her father, The Orphan! He's got a new bionic arm and possibly a new foot since Harper mentioned he'd lost his leg even though that was probably just her misremembering what happened because the writer of that script didn't really fucking care about the comics written by the other writers.

Cassandra is captured and dumped in a pit full of the corpses of Mother's murdered children. So I was totally wrong that the comic book wouldn't lie to me last week and try to make me believe something that wasn't true! I totally and completely fell for it and super believed that Cassandra had just murdered all of the children! How could I be so dumb?! How could anybody be that dumb as to believe that Cassandra had killed the children or that Batman had murdered some kid's parents?! I mean, who am I? Dick Grayson?

The Orphan reminds Cassandra that the death of these children is on her shoulders because she left Mother and ran to tell Batman. But Batman was too busy battling The Joker so he had to give his Batgum to Cassandra to give to Dick if he died. Which he kind of did. But first he had a message of hope for Cassandra that ended with this vile act.

Ugh! Batman is so fucking touchy-feely!

Cassandra attacks The Orphan but before she can prove to him that she's a better fighter, Dick and Harper show up to help out. Cassandra hugs Harper because she's weak and then a hologram of Mother appears to set up the cliffhanger ending!

Look at it this way, Orphan. You've now earned a chance to redeem yourself now that Mother's betrayed you! Die with the thermonuclear device as you delay it long enough for your daughter to escape and we'll all pretend that the murder of thousands of children and their parents can be forgiven!

Batman and Robin Eternal #13 Rating: No change. I'll say this about this weekly in comparison to the Batman Eternal weekly: at least each week seems to be giving up a piece of the story. Batman Eternal was all about red herrings and rungs in some bad guy ladder leading up to Lincoln March (or, um, the actual villain who wasn't Lincoln March if you haven't read it yet and don't want it spoiled. It was totally somebody else and not Cluemaster at all). It's been a bit of origin overload the last few weeks but at least it all has to do with the main plot of Mother trying to take over the world and Batman trying to beat her by pretending to order a personalized Robin and Cassandra being at the center of it all. And now as I say that, next week will probably be an issue where Alfred deals with getting Titus neutered.

This has been a free taste of my wonderful reviews! This one is free to, you know, try to get people interested in spending one dollar per month to read the rest of my commentaries. As ConfusionGrows said once about some comic book I actually quite liked for some reason (probably because I was on Vicodin): “If Tessatechaitea says this much good about a comic it must have something going for it.” I think the subtext of that is that I'm usually a huge asshole. If you’d like to support me and maybe get me to offer even more freebies (sure, why should you pay when other people will get them for free? Probably because you’re a totally terrific and swell person!), please head on over to Patreon and sign up for one dollar (or more!) per month. It’s totally worth it for the email notifications of new posts alone!

Detective Comics #46

Oh! Is this how impressive the Honey Bunny Bat Armor is supposed to look?! I thought they were going for cartoonish and silly all this time!

Commissioner Batman has been recruited by the Justice League because they need help solving a mystery. Usually when there is a mystery to be solved, they never even realize it because Batman has solved it instantly and run off on his own to take care of the problem while the Justice League continue to talk to him without realizing he's pulled his disappearing trick. So now when they've discovered a gigantic skeleton lying in some snow-covered region, they've all realized just how stupid they all are. And then they prove just how stupid they all are by asking for help from a police commissioner with no background in the paranormal or in cryptids or in giants or in magic or in anything that might give him a reason for understanding the gigantic skeleton better than they can. I bet the entire time they were wondering where the giant skeleton came from, Cyborg kept piping up, "Hey guys? Remember how many times I said I was a genius in the last issue of my comic book? Remember that? Maybe I could figure it out? Also I'm hooked up to every piece of information in the world (and more!) which might cast some light on this discovery? I also have access to this place called The Red Room which has a lot of shit like this? Maybe if I call my dad in on this we could shed some light on the mystery?" But The Flash kept saying things like, "Hey? Do you hear something, Aquaman?" And Aquaman was all, "Yeah! It sounds like some young kid who doesn't know his place on the team!" And Wonder Woman was all, "You know, I thought I heard something boring droning on and on!" And Superman was all, "I told you all we should have just had Doc Magnus build us a sentient computer without any legs that we could force to remain behind on the satellite!" And Shazam was all, "Cyborg, dude. Don't worry about it. These assholes pull this shit on me all the time. I mean, I'm magic! You'd think they'd ask me about a gigantic skeleton but do they? No! They just tell me to...." And then Cyborg is all, "Shut up, you dumb brat."

Christ. Why don't these guys just suck Bruce off right on-panel?

The Justice League brought Commissioner Batman to the scene to run forensics on the dead body. Barry doesn't once pipe up about how he could have led them all through this work himself being that he's a police forensic investigator. Or how The Flash probably already did all of that investigating while the rest of the team stood around slowly firing a synapse or two. I'm beginning to suspect that this giant skeleton is just papier-mâché and this is some kind of test! It's either that or the Justice League are sad sacks who are completely lost without Bruce's leadership skills. That's too depressing to think about! It's also probably exactly true.

Commissioner Batman's first move is to look for defensive wounds on the hands. He doesn't bother with the arms because that's too much work. I suppose if he actually found defensive wounds on the hands, everybody would shit their pants immediately. Although nobody has seen a two hundred foot tall psychopath running around stabbing people in the face in the last two hundred years. At least nobody who reported it or wasn't thrown into an asylum for being an insane asshole rocking everybody's reality boat.

Next, Commissioner Gordon decides to check out the skull!

Okay! Time to take it all back to the lab in the Smithsonian!

Aquaman suggests they find a cave nearby with giant stalactites. They're hot on the trail of the culprit behind The Mystery of the Giant Snow-Covered Skeleton! With a little help from everybody (except Shazam, probably), this case will be in the solved pile by morning!

In the cave, they discover the skeleton of another giant! The evidence points to this giant being the one who murdered the other one. It also looks like this giant committed suicide by shoving another stalactite into its chest! To make matters more interesting, Cyborg teleports home, gathers up all the hikers he's murdered recently, and teleports back to drop them in the cave.

Clever, Cyborg! Very clever!

Flash takes samples of the bones and the weird gelatinous fluid they found back to the satellite to run tests on it. He returns to tell everybody that the first skeleton is male and the second skeleton is female. He needed a lab to tell him that? The first thing somebody does in every single fucking episode of Bones is notice if the victim is male or female. There are only like five billion different ways to tell the difference and most of those ways aren't sexist at all. Flash also discovers that the gelatinous fluid is eye jelly. Hey! That ties in with the weird Eyeball Gelatin from the beginning of last issue! I bet they're related!

Wonder Woman pipes up with "That ties in to the mysterious deaths and loss of eyes we've heard about in the region." Really? People have just been losing eyes and it's been no big deal until now? Now that it's tied up in this gigantic skeleton nonsense?!

At just that instance, the mystery is solved!

Good work, Commissioner Batman!

The murderer's vomit encases Wonder Woman, The Flash, Superman, Aquaman, and Shazam. That means they will be losing their eyes in just a few moments if Cyborg and Commissioner Batman decide not to simply say "Fuck this. We're going home." The monster also speaks some kind of alien language that is different from Old Portugese [sic]! If it's saying anything coherent, I'll figure it out with my Trixie Belden Detectivanting Skills! Although it's not looking good for a coherent translation based on preliminary findings. The first three letter word the creature says is composed of the same three letters of the final four letter word it says only they're printed backwards. I'm going to declare the monster speaks nonsense until more evidence is uncovered.

Commissioner Batman and Cyborg watch from a distance as their teammates drown in aqueous humor. And then Commissioner Batman puts it all together in a way that completely makes sense based on the evidence and doesn't rely on at least half a dozen crazy assumptions!

Totally believable. Commissioner Batman is a fucking genius!

If this were the case, why couldn't Commissioner Batman have simply stated that the first skeleton had no defensive wounds at all? Was Tomasi afraid the reader would have guessed this conclusion knowing that the creature was killed without trying to defend itself? Because he's right. I totally would have nailed it if that clue hadn't been left ambiguous!

Commissioner Batman's plan is to have Angela...I mean Cyborg recreate the mother's features using the skeleton as a basis for the model. Then he'll project a hologram over the skeleton so that the baby alien believes its mother has come back to life and is ready to suckle it some more. Of course the entire plan relies on Commissioner Gordon's reconstruction of events being true! Which it is, of course.

When the hologram is activated, the creature sees the body and possibly says "Mother" in his alien language. But it doesn't help to translate the rest of the text because none of the letters are the same. Okay, one letter might be the same but turned ninety degrees and printed less sketchily. My declaration that the language is nonsense stands!

The creature is happy to find its mother and decides to let the Justice League go. It wasn't trying to be mean! It was just hungry! And now it can fucking starve because that hologram isn't going to feed it at all! Ha ha! Suck it, monster kid!

The Justice League have no feelings or sympathy for people in pain. They only know how to stop disasters which cause pain so they rush off to help out in an earthquake. Commissioner Gordon remains behind to help comfort the dying monster child who isn't just starving but suffocating from Earth's atmosphere. Commissioner Gordon sings to it and puts its dead mother's arm around it as it cuddles up to its dead mother.

Jesus fucking Christ. You're the real monster, Tomasi! How dare you make me feel something!

Detective Comics #46 Rating: +2 Ranking. This was both the worst and the best episode of Bones ever written. It was the worst because the forensic work didn't tell the story so much as Commissioner Batman's imagination did. Of course he was right though, so no big deal. This was the best episode of Bones because it involved giants and monsters and aliens and people getting their eyeballs sucked out by monster vomit. Also it took an unexpectedly poignant turn which shouldn't have turned me into a weeping ball of aqueous humor but did for some reason. I might have issues concerning my relationship with my mother!

Detective Comics #45

This is so close to my dream cover! Just switch Honey Bunny Batman with Harvey Bullock!

While walking to the store today, a limousine driver leaning against the back of his limo watched me walking up the street. I usually avoid eye contact with everybody but since he was an African American, I didn't want to appear racist so I made the most minimal eye contact I could. It was still too much because then he said, "Do you want to buy some jewelry for your girlfriend?" I couldn't believe it! He thought I looked like the kind of guy who would have a girlfriend! I was so flattered!

That wasn't even the best part of my day! The best part was when I got to the store to buy toilet paper and I saw that Fred Meyers had a "Buy Two Get One Free" sale on Reese's Peanut Butter Pumpkins! Oh lordy! The cherry on my Monday sundae? The clerk at the 7-11 whose floor I clean every week didn't even try to talk to me! He just let me clean and then handed me my money while I was buffing! What did I do to deserve such a day as this?!

Anyway, Peter J. Tomasi is back writing for a Bat Book! Hooray! And he begins it exactly how I expected him to begin it!

I totally called this in my totally unedited commentary for Detective Comics #1!

Instead of focusing on Harvey Bullock, Tomasi has decided to write about Bruce Wayne and Alfred Pennyworth. Will it finally be time for somebody to sit Bruce down and tell him he has a son? It seems to me that Damian, after coming back from his world tour, isn't going to listen to Alfred and allow his father to remain in the dark about his history as Batman. So it's probably a good thing that Damian has been sent away until everybody forgets that the timeline for bringing him back from the dead doesn't really fit into the Batman Eternal or Endgame continuity.

While Alfred regales Bruce with tales of Bruce's parents, the Justice League stop by to see Bruce. I'm sure that won't be weird at all.

Alfred tries quickly saying "No solicitors!" and slamming the door in their faces but The Flash is too quick and gets his foot, and the rest of his body too, in the door. The rest of the Justice League shove their way in as well and Alfred tries to avoid looking at Aquaman's boner. Bruce comes up and doesn't find it at all strange that the Justice League are begging at his front door. He does know that he used to fund Batman so he's probably thinking these assholes want a handout to help pay for satellite repairs.

Bruce agrees to let Wonder Woman tie him up in the study because why would he not? Alfred's his butler and can surely be trusted not to tell Julie Madison. With Diana's lasso around him, Bruce admits to remembering nothing about the Justice League or Batman or his involvement with them. He suspects that he used to write them checks. Memory Loss Batman is no help to them. The Justice League finally decides to leave him alone and go introduce themselves to Commissioner Batman.

They find him battling some F-15s over Gotham Bay. The pilots have been fitted with some kind of mind control device so it's probably the work of The Mad Hatter! Being a detective in Gotham isn't hard at all! Anybody could be the World's Greatest Detective when all of your enemies have such strong M.O.s!

Not only am I a Grandmaster Comic Book Reader, it turns out I'm a World's Greatest Detective too! And I've only done like five lessons in my Trixie Belden Home Detectivanting Class!

Jaws quote!

Commissioner Batman wraps up Jervis and the Justice League save the last three pilots. Then they all meet up in Mike W. Barr Park to have a civil conversation. Probably! Hopefully Commissioner Batman and Superman won't remember their Greg Pakian relationship.

The League let Gordon know (yes, they know it's Gordon! They know everything! Even without stupid amnesiac Batman's help!) that they need him for his detective work. The Justice League have a mystery to solve and Commissioner Batman has to get ready for his act. Hopefully he won't hold back. Because he knows if he comes through he's going to get himself a detective snack. That's a fact. The only problem is how hard it will be to find clues for this specific mystery.

The Mystery of the Giant Snow-Covered Skeleton!

Detective Comics #45 Rating: +3 Ranking. On the surface, this comic book really didn't have a lot going on. Most non-Grandmaster Comic Book Readers probably read it in two minutes and tossed it aside to read the next comic book in their stack. Mostly because the bulk of the book was Commissioner Batman flying around fighting F-15s. Not the most compelling story. But I'll tell you why I gave it such a good rating. First, Billy Batson smiled a lot and waved when appropriate. And not just Billy smiled! Flash and Cyborg and Superman threw a few smiles around as well. On top of that, the Justice League had a reasonable and compassionate interaction with Bruce while sticking to Alfred's wishes that they don't say too much. Also, when the Justice League flew in to help Commissioner Batman, he welcomed the help and was awestruck by the fact he was battling at their sides. And finally when they all met up again to ask for Commissioner Batman's help, everybody was civil and honest and acted like actual good guys. Okay, Aquaman was a little brusque but that's who he is! How often do we get heroes acting like adults? Not fucking enough. Thanks for showing heroes being reasonable, Mr. Tomasi!

The Flash #19

This issue should probably be dedicated to Carmine Infantino.

The Flash recently lost his powers to some irresponsible jerks with a magic dial and now he's trapped inside Iron Heights Penitentiary (unless it's called something different) while Outlander Nation storm the walls to free The Trickster. And now it looks like Reverse Flash is coming from the future to cause a Reverse Flash Point. This won't restore DC's old Universe. It'll just make this, hopefully, The New 25! Then maybe I'll actually have some fucking free time to do some other reading and writing. And have relationships with things. And keep my business from failing. And eat more cookies.

I actually began typing "Get more exercise" for that last one and then thought I'd be honest.

Luckily news reports update everybody constantly so that Speed Force can learn about the trouble at Iron Heights and head over to help out. It'll be nice to have a few people who haven't had their powers stolen in on the action even if they have stupid powers like flying Segways and running really fast in super short bursts. Unless Sprint and Turbo Charger have different powers than I'm guessing they have because their powers weren't actually explained last issue. And why did just these two guys get powers while Sprint's girlfriend and Iris West didn't get any? The Speed Force Dimension is fucking sexist.

It looks like Sprint has already discovered the fringe benefits of super powers.

Over at Iron Heights Prison, Outlander Nation seems to have decided that saving The Trickster isn't exactly their main priority. Why not rob the Prison Armory while they're there, right? Too bad for them, Barry Allen (who isn't The Flash right now because of stupid Nelson Whatshisname) has beat them to it. Sure, he's locked in. But he's gathering up all of the super villain weaponry to protect it. In the first panel Barry appears, he's gathering up boomerangs. But who uses Boomerangs anymore? Captain Boomerang doesn't use physical boomerangs! He creates them out of thin air or something. Just like all of The Flash's enemies now. None of them use weapons anymore since everybody finally realized that The Flash instantly disarming super villains made for a really boring comic book that still somehow ran for hundreds of issues. I guess the weapons Barry's getting together are all from the old days before the super villains actually became super.

Apparently the Prison Armory isn't very secure since Barry just climbs through a ceiling tile and gets into the hallway behind the Outlanders. This prison is awful. No wonder it can't hold any Rogues for long.

Yep! Weapons from the old days.

Barry uses the weather wand to create a windstorm that blows the bad guys (and the guard) into the wall, knocking them out. That's some pretty shitty genetic coding on that wand. Unless Barry Allen is The Weather Wizard! Or related to him. Or has some of his semen on his hand. Next Barry takes out another group with one of Trickster's balls. This fight is getting super sexy! I mean disgusting!

Somewhere else in the prison, Turbocharger (I guess his name is one word!) overloads a circuit breaker while trying to help and releases all of the inmates instead. His partner, Sprint, hasn't shown up because he's probably off robbing a bank. And I don't blame him! The Flash treated him like shit last issue and told him not to use his powers. Who the fuck does The Flash think he is? Arbirter of who gets to use super powers? That's the Goddamned Batman's job. Boy, The Flash will steal work from anybody.

Eventually Barry finds Turbocharger surrounded by Trickster and the last of Outlander Nation. Using Captain Cold's old gun, Barry has Turborcharger "turbocharge" it, and he fires on Outlander Nation.

Instantly killing them all. This is one of my favorite comic book suspension of disbelief assumptions: encasing a person in solid ice is a means of subduing people as opposed to a means of freezing, suffocating, and crushing them.

One of the people encased in the ice is Sprint's girlfriend, Marissa. Barry realizes that she was the one making the vibrations shaking the prison. So the Speed Force isn't sexist! I guess it's just that when a woman gets super powers, she doesn't feel the need to pull them out and show them to everybody at every party she goes to. This probably means that Iris West also has some trick up her sleeve. Too bad Marissa is now frozen and dead before we even got to learn her super power name. I bet it's The Vibrator.

It also turns out that Marissa was the jerk that stole the diamonds and killed the security guy. So it wasn't Sprint using his powers to steal shit. It was this asshole! No wonder she was keeping her powers secret. And since they arrest her later, I guess she and everybody else frozen in the ice didn't die.

What do you mean nobody was around to see it? Do the people encased in ice go blind? Am I expected to believe they're in some kind of stasis? Are they unconscious? In a coma? I think what this actually means is Marissa, The Trickster, and a dozen Outlander Nation guys now know Barry Allen is The Flash.

After all the ice thaws and the prisoners are rounded up and moved to a location safer than a prison where inmates can escape through ceiling tiles, The Flash explains how the crime was committed to a derp-faced Turbocharger.

I think you ruin the purity of the pun by adding "literally" to it.

The Flash realizes that everybody who spent time in the Speed Force now has powers except for Iris. Should I phrase that differently? The Flash has learned about the powers granted to everybody who spent time in the Speed Force except for Iris's power. I bet she now has Speed Mind capabilities. She's going to be the greatest interviewer/journalist ever!

The Flash decides to do research on why he lost his powers and he makes an obvious discovery: Batman was already working on the problem before The Flash lost his powers. That Batman is so smart! I don't think Batman knows about Nelson and Roxie (look at me! I'm a doubter! How can I not believe Batman already knows everything?!) but he is keeping tabs on the Canadian Organization that The Human Centipede works for. Or, um, used to work for. Cyborg promises to keep some RAM open to monitor the crazy Dial events.

And then Cyborg makes a joke which I guess he hasn't done for five years because The Flash is completely shocked by it! So if you're keeping score, it takes five years to be able to joke about having most of your body destroyed and then merged to a high-tech computer.

The issue ends with Reverse Flash reverse killing Turbocharger. What I mean to say is he had just killed Turbocharger and then he pulled a Braid and reversed time so that Turbocharger was alive. He may or may not have done this so he could enjoy killing him a second time.

The Flash #19 Rating: +1 Ranking. As always, this comic gives up the good times. Marcio Takara's art seemed rushed in places but that might just be because he's drawing The Flash and he's trying to keep the artwork thematic! I hope Reverse Flash doesn't break The New 52 just a year and a half in. Maybe The Reverse Flash will get his own title after this where he goes back and forward in time watching the heroes that don't exist anymore but did exist before the Reboot. It could be like a DC Universe Presents but it would be called Reverse Flash Presents Tales From the Preboot.

The Flash #18

It's either because of the bag full of diamonds or his twelve inch penis.

I think I'm going to go through my pre-Crisis on Infinite Earth's Who's Who comics and add "Penis Size" as a category to all of the personal information. If they can guess at something as useless as a character's weight, I can guess at the length of their manhood. "Penis Size: (Flaccid) X (Erect) Y". I hate to speculate as to whose might be the biggest in the Who's Who but I suppose it would be between Darkseid and Mister Terrific. And that isn't a "black men have big penises" joke since the Pre-Crisis Mister Terrific is white. But the stupid name had to come from somewhere!

Oh! And look at that! He was Terry Sloane who is now Mr. 8 on Earth 2! I did not know that!

And here's more proof that he's got some serious goods in those tights from the back cover of Issue XVI.

Night Girl is simply aswoon at the possibilities. If she's this into big dick, it could suggest that Cosmic Boy is also packing a mighty magnetic anaconda in his future tights as well.

Why am I discussing Super Hero Penis Sizes instead of reading The Flash? Perhaps his hilariously inappropriate name threw me off track.

The comic begins with a long shot of the Keystone City skyline with cranes on just about every building. I guess those monkeys really did a number on the infrastructure. The camera pans in closer to reveal a quiet street in the Diamond District. Moving inside a building, the camera reveals a lone security guard eating chips and watching porn on his laptop. And then the silence is broken with a loud KAAAA-THOOM as an explosion rips through the building! A shadowy figure with a hammer moves into the smoking ruins. The only sound is the security guard's rasping breath as he slowly bleeds out from shrapnel. The figure moves in, smashes a case full of diamonds, and an alarm sounds! The thief escapes with...wait a second! What the fuck kind of shitty security system did this jewelry store invest in? The entire front of the store is blown open and no alarm? Even if that explosion somehow took out a security system for breaching the store that is separate from an alarm system for the cases, the explosion smashed a bunch of jewelry cases as well! Perhaps the security guard was outfitted with a deadman's switch which would trip an alarm only after he died! And then it was just a coincidence that he bled out just as the thief smashed the case with the diamonds!

Whew. Good thing I thought up a totally plausible reason for the weird alarm system or I wasn't going to be able to get my mind back on the comic book.

The Flash has been busy helping rebuild the city since Grodd's invasion. I don't know if this is such a good idea. I know he's fast so he can do everybody's jobs for them while they sit out of work because they're too Goddamned slow, but he isn't actually a carpenter or a drywaller or a bricklayer or an engineer now, is he? He's definitely not union.

No, it's also about putting skilled laborers out of work. I'm not sure I'd allow my kids to play on that.

When people walk at normal speeds around a city, they sometimes bump into other people while turning corners or not paying attention. Does The Flash ever round a corner and suddenly bump into someone? I know his reactions are supposed to be super fast but even he can be surprised if the timing is just right. Would he simply explode right through them? Do you think he'd tell anybody? Or are the Gem Cities' papers filled with reports of people mysteriously exploding into a fine mist?

Barry Allen is dating (or possibly living with. But that's just extreme dating anyway) Patty and he's allowed her to retain the memory that he's The Flash. That's pretty magnanimous (and unsafe!) of him. If I were Patty, I'd totally love fucking The Flash suspect every friend Barry brought by the apartment was another Super Hero. He'd introduce me to his friend and every time I talked with the friend, I'd probably use a lot of air quotes. "So, 'Bruce', how do you know Barry? Did you meet him on a 'business trip'? Would you consider yourself a 'super friend'? You're Batman, right?"

Currently Barry is suspended without pay from the Central City Police Force due to being dead. But now that he's not dead, he's waiting to see if the union will allow him to come back. If they knew he was The Flash and he was taking other union jobs, his union might not look too favorably on his request to be brought back to life. I wonder if Deadshot is having the same problem with the Suicide Squad's union.

Ha ha! That's really funny. The Suicide Squad having a union! Ha ha! See what happens when unions are crushed?! The bosses stop caring if you live or die while at work! And fuck child labor laws! Add the Teen Titans to the roster! No fire exits in your sweater making factory? Fuck you! You're all going to die! Oh la dee da! You want changes made so that you don't die? You're fired, asshole!

While Barry waits to hear about his real job, he has a non-real job serving beer to Central City's Rogues at the Keystone Saloon. Currently The Trickster is drinking beers acting down on his luck. My guess is that he didn't do the diamond heist! At least he's not dead from having an arm torn off by a talking ape.

Cut him off, Charles! You know he's had one too many when he can't even say "Ape-ocalypse" correctly. Other than stumbling on the word, that was a good pun!

Does the Keystone Saloon pay off all the cops so that the place isn't continuously being busted? The Rogues hang out in full costume all the time! Perhaps only Barry Allen is hip to the hideout due to his amazing powers of observation as a Central Keystone City crime scene investigator. Is there a super villain called the Investi-Gator? There should be. He could be Detective Chimp's rival!

The Trickster really is pretty drunk since he just won't shut up about his criminal activities. And his new arm!

My letter to DC must have worked! Puns left and right! Mostly right with this one.

If I were The Trickster, I'd call my new hand a "her" as well, if you know what I mean! I think we all know what he means by "test drive" as well. I'd be afraid to get that cyberhand anywhere near my penis though! And here's the rest of the page just to show that I'm not being inappropriately vulgar!

I'm pretty sure they are talking about masturbation! Also, I think the trick thing counts as a double pun! It references The Trickster's name and trick as in a sexual act provided by a prostitute!

Those men with guns that know The Trickster's name? They're cops. Yeah, I guess everybody knows this is where the super bad guys hang out. They want to arrest The Trickster for robbery and murder. I'm fairly certain that The Rogues and thus The Trickster have always tried to avoid murder. They just don't need the extra heat from a crime like that. But who could the shadowy diamond thief be then? If this were a Scott Lobdell comic book, he wouldn't tell us for another five issues. Being that this is a normal comic book by a decent (if not actually quite good) writer, I'm guessing we'll learn the bad guy's identity by the final page. If I'm wrong about that, I'll owe Lobdell an apology. I won't give it to him. I'll just throw it on the pile with the rest of them.

The Trickster escapes by losing a hand and slipping out of the cuffs. Don't worry, he just lost his new fake robot hand. It's probably just a big plastic, lubed up fist. I'm sure he has plenty of cheap replacements for it. The arm is where all the actual technology lies.

Before Barry can change into The Flash and go after The Trickster, the two new guys from the cover show up to nab The Trickster. They call themselves Speed Force. The guy in the football jersey is Sprint and the guy on the rocket powered Segway is Turbo Charger. I guess their powers are sprinting and charging turbos. I guess those are better powers than spinning like a spaz. I mention that because these are two of the guys sucked into the Speed Force many issues ago. And just like Turbine, they seem to have gained super powers while inside the Speed Force. I wonder if Iris West has any herself?

The Flash manages to capture The Trickster and prevent Speed Force from hurting anybody or themselves. But they're pretty crappy as super heroes, so The Flash decides to lecture them after handing The Trickster over to the authorities. Or putting him in a shed for safe keeping. I'm not sure what he does with him yet.

The Flash's lecture basically comes down to "stop using your powers, you stupid douchebags. I'm the hero here!" I may be interpreting what he said a bit liberally. Who gave The Flash the right to say who can and cannot use super powers? Fuck him! What a dick! He steals contractor jobs and now when someone threatens his job, he tries to put a stop to it? Barry Allen is a big jerk! Maybe a bigger jerk than Superman and Batman! And I liked him up until now!

Well, I still like him. I'd put a stop to some stupid guy flying around on a rocket Segway too. And a lummox in a football jersey that can, well, sprint fast? I guess? They simply speak in generalities about their powers during the conversation, so I don't really know what these two idiots can do. Maybe Sprint will become a bad guy now that The Flash has pissed him off when he got Sprint's girlfriend involved.

Meanwhile some post-ape-ocalyptic group known as Outlander Nation (I think these guys live in the Badlands and were associated with Mob Rule in an early story) are threatening to storm the city and free The Trickster from Iron Heights if he isn't released. They claim he's a citizen of Outlander Nation and thus not subject to U.S. laws. I'm sure that will go over well.

The Flash decides to prove The Trickster is innocent of the diamond heist before more hell breaks out in Central Keystone City. He checks out the police report and the warrant and finds the evidence lacking. So then he decides to speak with The Trickster in jail. I guess vibrating-through-walls powers come in pretty handy sometimes. His discussion with The Trickster leads him to go after a sample of The Trickster's bombs to test them against the explosives used at the scene of the diamond robbery.

Oh Trickster. You do not want to get into a copyright fight with a massive corporation like Holt Industries!

While The Flash is in the prison armory checking out The Trickster's balls (will that joke ever get old?), Outlander Nation attacks the prison. And The Flash slams into the wall as he tries to vibrate out to fight them. His powers have just disappeared. And they've disappeared because of the moment I've been waiting for for months!

Way to go, Nelson and Roxie! Now I'm tempted to move Dial H #11 up in my stack!

The Flash #18 Rating: +2 Rating. This comic book really captures an aspect of comic books that I can't quite communicate. It's something visceral that brings me back to when I first began reading them. It's a very comic booky comic book, if you get my meaning. If you don't, well, I don't have the words to make it any clearer. I might be able to find them but that would take effort! Anyway, I enjoy reading this comic book. It's building a great character and a great cast. Every issue feels like it's not just built on one or two previous issues but it's standing on the spines of all the other issues, ruining their near mint condition. Stupid comic books. Stop standing on each other! Get back in your polybags! Also, a regular New 52 character finally had their powers taken by the Dial H Dial! Yay! Oh yeah! Go read Dial H, nerds! If the best comic books get cancelled because you're all reading shitty comics that star characters you love from the cartoons, I'm going to be really angry with all of you!