Second Coming #4

One day, I will be the guy missing his middle finger.

I was actually intrigued and interested in Watchmen until that third fucking episode. Silk Spectre's phone call to Mars was the worst joke I've ever heard. Maybe I wouldn't mind so much if she finished the phone call by saying, "I don't know why I keep calling you to ramble about stupid bullshit." But no. She says, "I don't know why I keep calling you to tell you jokes." What you fucking told Jon was not a fucking joke! Hey, Lindelhof! Maybe don't write your "jokes" yourself anymore. I get that the stories she had sort of had joke set-ups. But you know what jokes need? Punchlines! And, no, a punchline isn't fucking up the first joke and then surprising the audience by having the second joke just become part of the first joke! At best, she was telling a Shaggy Dog story because it was definitely pointless and rambling. And it was the kind of Shaggy Dog story that isn't a joke because there was no fucking punchline! I suppose maybe you wanted her to tell a parable and we, the audience, were supposed to suck in our breaths and look at the other dimwit watching this show seated next to us and say, "Whoa! She's not telling a joke! She's really talking about herself! And her relationship with her father! And her ex-lover Nite Owl! And her other ex-lover Doctor Manhattan! And that other guy! The Jeremy Irons' character! Profound!" But mostly we all just sat there not looking at the person sitting next to us because most of us watched this in the dark, alone and ashamed. And we didn't say those things not because there was nobody to say them to but because there's no possible way we would have thought them. I know I thought, "Shut the fuck up! Why are you doing this?! This is fucking stupid! Stop talking already! Can this show just be that background cartoon about the real Watchmen now?!"

And, yes, I'll probably keep watching. I am nothing if not a hate-watcher of popular media.

But enough about media I hate-watch. How about some media that I love-read?

Sunstar has lost Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ was arrested for being an annoying know-it-all vagrant. Man, I wish being a know-it-all were an arrestable offence! I bet my karaoke place would be less full of hipsters every night.

Sunstar enlists Night Justice and Lady Razor to help find Jesus Christ. Row-Bot decides not to help because Row-Bot is an atheist and also because if Row-Bot had too much panel time, the readership would be clamoring for a Row-Bot series. I mean, Row-Bot has only been in six panels in the first five pages and I'm already writing an email in another browser window demanding more Row-Bot.

Row-Bot will never get their own series because the people they rescue will have to sit on Row-Bot's face. Inappropriate.

Now I can't focus on anything except Row-Bot. I'm glad Mark Russell saved Row-Bot for this comic book instead of creating Row-Bot in a DC comic book and giving DC the rights to Row-Bot. Maybe Ahoy Comics now have the rights to Row-Bot but what is a small publisher going to do with those rights? Best for a publisher to just give the creator all rights so that the creator will keep their best ideas to publish with that publisher. Do DC or Marvel ever wonder why a publisher like Image Comics constantly publishes comics of greater artistic merit than they do? The days of giving your work to one of the Big Two simply for the prestige of publishing with them are long gone. If a publisher wants a writer to put forth their best effort, they've got to wine and dine those assholes.

Hopefully in a future issue, Jesus will try to walk across some water and He'll find He's lost the talent. But He never learned how to swim so He'll begin to drown! But then Row-Bot will save the day even though they're an atheist. They're still a hero even if they don't believe in the person they're saving!

Anyway, Jesus gets out of jail before he's Gomorrahed by his cellmate Pinecone. And then God meets Satan in a cafe in Berlin to discuss what they're going to do to keep the world from killing Jesus. Again!

Second Coming #4 Final Thoughts: I know I probably should have discussed more of this comic book than Row-Bot. But I don't like discussing comic books that are smarter and more earnest and kind and pretentious than I am. What am I supposed to write about when Jesus says profound and insightful things? I can't make them more profound and insightful by making a dopey comment about them! This is the kind of comic book that people should just read and stop trying to find out what it's all about by reading online reviews by people who are too dumb to appreciate anything in the story except a stupid robot/rowboat pun!

Wonder Twins #8

The British version of Polly Math isn't as clever because her name is Polly Maths.

Only one lesson ever made an impression on me in high school. In Physics, Mr. McFarland had a bonus question on a test. It had three examples of the trajectories and exchange of force between two billiard balls. The math was correct on all three examples and the question was, "Which one is actually correct and why?" The answer to the "Why?" part of the question Mr. McFarland was looking for was simply this: I've observed it. So while the math on the other two examples was perfectly fine, they were ways billiard balls never actually react. So when somebody talks about something like string theory and how it's a mathematical model that provides a theory of everything, I think about Mr. McFarland's bonus question. The math may be right but what does that matter if we can't see what the billiard balls are doing?

I'm definitely not being anti-science! I'm totally pro-science! I'm anti-math! Stupid numbers. Think they can solve everything! But they're as bad as alchemy. Have you heard about three being a magic number? Magic! Fucking math is all made up hocus-pocus nonsense, I tell you what. We think it's some kind of universal constant but remember "Little Twelve Toes"? That taught me that we can't even use math to communicate if we wind up meeting aliens with a different amount of fingers and toes than we have! I mean, I guess the people who understand math and who also write songs for children's television would understand them. But I just learned that aliens only visit hick kids who pretend they get the concept of a base ten number system!

Maybe I'm a poor example of a person who was meant to understand the math in Schoolhouse Rock songs. Hell, I didn't even get the point of "Conjunction Junction." I just liked singing about trains!

Please don't reply trying to explain any of this stuff to me. I play a guy far dumber than I actually am on this blog. Well, maybe not "far" dumber. But somewhat dumber! Which is the opposite of what hoity-toity Mark Russell does! I bet he's not as smart as he seems to be! Although it's tough to pretend you're smarter than you actually are. So it's possible he's a genius who also cares about making some kind of difference in the world, even if he is only writing funny books about the God-awful Wonder Twins.

I also don't want to hear people defending the Wonder Twins because I may or may not have always liked them although I definitely have never jerked off to any of them and that precludes Gleek.

I thought aging was waking up every morning because you didn't take enough pills the night before.

The worst part about aging is being too dead to see the youth who made fun of you for being old grow old and die themselves.

The sad old 48 year old guy typing this wants you to know that the sad old 48 year old guy in the panel is the principal of Zan and Jayna's high school. The librarian is also a sad 48 year old guy except not a guy and maybe not sad. She probably fucked the principal in high school though. This is probably a love story. Not one of those love stories that ends happily. More like one of those love stories where some lonely jerk goes to their 30th high school reunion and tells the person they had a crush on in high school that they never stopped loving them and the person they confess to says, "Did we know each other?"

I'm beginning to think I shouldn't be as proud as I am to guess where comic book plots are going. I'm fucking pathetic.

Don't worry. Principal Adultman doesn't admit to being a chronic sleep-creeper in the panel following the previously scanned bunch. He just says, "I'm a principal!" Although I totally would have been intrigued if he had said, "I was a sleep-creeper!" I would have thought, "Gross! What a jerk," and not, "Oh! I hope we get a flashback!" Because I'm a decent person who now knows sleep-creeping is wrong.

Principal Adultman wants to cancel his 30th high school reunion so he doesn't have to interact with Librarian Lost Love. I guess he's afraid they might play The Cure's "Last Dance" during the reunion which was playing the first time he finger-banged the librarian.

The principal confesses his love for the librarian and his subsequent failure over the years to get over it on the open school announcement microphone. So now the librarian knows things are even more awkward than she realized! Now she has to start preparing her speech about how there's no way he can love her because he doesn't know her and even if he thought he loved her in high school, she didn't love him. She couldn't love him because she didn't even know who she was or what she wanted and should she have to live with the unintended consequences of one moment where she really wanted to fucking cum on some guy's warm hand for the rest of her lives simply because that warm hand belonged to some schlub?! Maybe she's the type of person who doesn't prepare speeches and she'll just tell him to fuck off and get a life. Although she's a librarian so I think speeches probably excite her as much as the album Disintegration does.

Somewhere in the high school reunion drama is a story about Polly Math and her inability to forgive Jayna for putting her in prison and failing to save her dad from eternity in The Phantom Zone. But I don't think that's as important as that old guy still pining for a woman who forgot about him decades ago. Polly escapes prison or something. I don't know. I just skimmed those pages to get to the final embarrassing confrontation between Principal Adultman and Librarian Lost Love that Jayna is unwittingly setting up. She thinks she can prove people will always forgive each other. Ha ha! What a child!

Bah. Stupid Jayna being right.

Wonder Twins #8 Final Thoughts: I guess Mark Russell doesn't trade in cynicism. He's all about earnestness and optimism and hope and shit. Hey, I get that! It's totally the stuff I would aspire to if I wasn't such a lowly, scum-sucking piece of crap. But I'd still prefer for Librarian Lost Love to have been a bit mean. He treats her like a failed conquest for thirty years, making as if she's the reason his world has fallen apart and his time at work has uncomfortable moments, while she was just going on with her life as he grew smaller and smaller in her rear view and he expects her to do the heavy lifting of forgiveness?! Fuck that dude! Although, I suppose, if he didn't matter to her as much as I suspect he didn't matter to her, it's easy enough to just say, "Sure! You're forgiven. Now can you stop making things so awkward, you immature turd?" Anyway, I guess Polly is going to forgive Jayna soon because they're going to team up to save Polly's dad.

Second Coming #3

If that bug-eyed guy on the cover is named "Preying Mantis" (with an E!), I will be suing.

I realize I didn't review the first two issues of this series but that's because I'd mostly stopped reviewing new comics. Once I began reading mostly new comics that I wanted to read because I liked them, I found I wanted to simply immerse myself in the story and enjoy it without interrupting that enjoyment every half page to spout some invective or spew my opinion about something just tangentially related to what I just read. But recently, I realized that writing commentaries (or reviews (or whatever the fuck it is I'm doing that really just amounts to distracting myself from the notion of mortality)) was more fun if I didn't have to write one hundred and twenty Teen Titans review in a row. So now I'm mixing things up! Let's see if I can find anything critical to say about Mark Russell! I wouldn't place any bets on me losing my shit. You should put all of your money on me fawning on Russell like he's the first girl to ever let me touch their private business through their cotton underwear.

I know Mark Russell isn't the first writer to discuss this because I was.

This morning, I realized I have a big crusty gash in the top of my head because I banged it on the bathroom cabinet while stumbling around in pain, dizzy and nauseated, from passing a kidney stone. So much kidney pain my nerves couldn't appraise me of the gaping head wound. And even though I instantly began to feel better after stumbling out of the bathroom and collapsing into bed, I now must live in fear of that kidney stone pain coming back. At least for as long as the human mind can grapple with that kind of sheer terror before moving on to something else. I guess reading a comic book and trusting that my insides aren't going to suddenly explode is moving on!

Jesus continues to ride around on Sunstar's back being a literal angel on his shoulder. Sunstar is all, "I'm going to kick ass for justice!" And Jesus is all, "But is that justice? Really? I mean, really? Justice?" Then Sunstar is all, "What do you mean?" And Jesus is all, "Well, I'm glad you asked! Have I got a parable for you!" And just like every single apostle, Sunstar listens to the parable and then says, "What? Explain better." Then Jesus sighs, drops the parable, and says directly whatever he was trying to say poetically. I mean, Mark Russell does a better job with the dialogue! But if you want Russell's spectacular dialogue and the soft, budding pudenda under fuzzy cotton, you're just going to have to buy this comic book yourself. Take my word for it: it's worth it! But don't think you should stop reading my review now that you got my take on it. There are still some great jokes coming up and probably a moment where I offend all gun owners! Even the ones I'm friends with!

One of the great things in the many great things about this comic book is how Mark Russell isn't specifically calling Superman to task for being a blunt instrument against crime. He's throwing shade at all the writers of Superman who haven't had the nerve or wit or understanding of the character to make him the peaceful motherfucker he always should have been. Yeah, sure, occasionally he's going to need to punch a giant alien robot into smithereens so the fans can be all, "Wow! Cool!" But every time he punches Lex Luthor (not in Battle Suit), it's because the writers don't fucking get it. Why would Superman ever have to punch a human?! First of all, whenever he punches any sentient being he's ever just encountered, he has to use the most minimal amount of force he can just to be sure he doesn't knock the creature's head clean off. Which means the fight just drags on forever as he punches a little harder each time until he calibrates just how hard he can punch his opponent without actually making his opponent's head explode. That seems like a huge pain in the ass. Instead, can't he just grab the opponent and fly them to the arctic? He can do that pretty fast. And if the opponent just happens to be too strong to do that? Well, that's the time to start punching super hard! If it's a human opponent, that person is now trapped in the arctic on an ice floe where Superman can just hover over them and scold them while wagging his finger in their face.

I just realized Jesus is Mark Russell's Mary Sue in this comic book.

Sunstar and his version of Lois head out to look for Grandma Sunstar. She's escaped her retirement community and headed to Littleton. Instead of pretending like things don't really change much like DC would have readers believe, Mark Russell takes the time to comment on urban sprawl by having Littleton subsumed by Urban City. He doesn't even hit anybody over the head with a major rant! He's just all, "Look at this shit! This is why Portland has laws against it! I mean, the laws came too late for a lot of the area. Have you seen how much Portland has sprawled? But at least it's not like the San Francisco Bay Area where you can go from San Francisco to San Jose without ever leaving El Camino's stripmallesque environment while simultaneously driving through like twelve other cities!" Um, once again, that wasn't Russell's actual dialogue! Do I have to keep explaining this? Sometimes I feel like I have to keep explaining myself. Have you seen the idiots who comment on blogs and Twitter reply threads?!

No offense, King Beauregard! I always enjoy your comments! Although stating it like that after what I just wrote makes it seem like maybe I'm being sarcastic. But I'm not! I always come off as sarcastic which is why I simply gave up on earnestness and, thus, am always sarcastic. Except that part where I said I enjoy your comments! Sometimes my sincerity comes screaming out of my skull to shout at the world: "I'm a fucking human being! I can feel! I fear! I love! I cherish my time with friends!" But then I bash myself in the head using a bathroom cabinet until the little fucker hides back inside and regrets showing his stupid earnest face. Fucking sincerity. Suck my dick!

While Sunstar visits home, Jesus wanders around looking for evidence that people remember him and his message.

That's an outstanding sign!

The new karaoke place has a bunch of Jesus Christ Superstar songs so I will be doing "Heaven on Their Minds" soon.

Jesus doesn't get much page time because Mark Russell ditches him to get back to the Sunstar story where he can insult me right to my face.

Does being vulnerable to physical harm count? Because then I'm lovable too! I have the head wound to prove it!

Sunstar gets all nostalgic which is why Fake Lois needs to hold his hand. Because he's being cute and vulnerable and stupid. They roll by Sunstar's old house to see it has become a dildo shop where they sell totally vulnerable, sincere, earnest dildos.

Jesus runs into Satan who explains God is going to destroy mankind if anything happens to Jesus on his return visit. Satan then ditches Jesus when some anti-gay Christian protesters approach him. They try to tell him about the word of Paul and Jesus is all, "Don't know the guy." It's pretty good Biblical comedy! Plus Jesus gets his ass stomped and the police pick him up for vagrancy. Exactly what we all know would happen if Jesus came back. Maybe that sentence is in the wrong tense. Let me try again. Exactly what happened when Jesus came back. Because obviously we're already in the end times.

Second Coming #3 Rating: A+. When this comic book was announced as a Vertigo title, there was a ton of religious pushback. I don't know the whole story because that would require research and how much life do you think I have left? I almost just died falling over because my kidney betrayed me! But the pushback was of the type where religious people hear that some secular person is writing a story about Jesus and so it must be fucking blasphemous. And of course it isn't at all. It's treating Jesus more sacredly than most religious idiots treat him. And don't think you secular people are any better! The amount of times I've seen people bitch and moan and attack DC or Marvel simply based on a poorly worded solicit in Previews makes me think all y'all are no better. How about we all stop relying on that one charismatic Tumblr follower whose word is somehow gospel and maybe put in the work to read and experience the actual thing people are so worked up about before totally condemning it? I mean, I'm all for condemning shit! It's a lot of fun! But maybe do the research first! And yes I know how that sounds after claiming I don't do research! Suck it sideways!

Wonder Twins #7

I didn't realize the Wonder Twins were Gen X.

If you've ever wondered why I'm such a facetious asshole who doesn't hold anything sacred, it's because I'm solidly Generation X. We were raised by the Baby Boomers so we've known from an early age that everybody is fucking fucked. Although we were also partially raised by grandparents from the Greatest Generation and let me tell you something: my Spanish grandparents were absolutely the fucking greatest and kindest people in the world. And their daughter, my mom, is pretty liberal and did everything she could for her kids as a single parent. But my dad. Let me fucking tell you! He's the epitome of a Baby Boomer. Vietnam Vet who came back so anti-war that I remember him telling me, when I was probably ten or so, that America ever brought back the draft, he'd drive me to Canada himself. Wound up working middle management jobs at tech companies until he retired to watch loads of Fox News and play the stock market online. Now he talks about how people can't joke anymore and that the Native American guy in AA doesn't mind the name "Washington Redskins" so it must just be whiny white college kids who think the term "redskin" is a racist term. Which, I mean, it fucking is so I guess his point is that he doesn't mind an NFL team with a racist nickname because a guy he must think of as a redskin (or why else would he bring him up?!) says it's okay with him? I'm pretty sure I've heard that stupid bullshit thing about how "if you're not liberal when you're young then you don't have a heart but if you're not conservative when you're older than you don't have a brain" from him. He definitely got upset with me one time when I made sweeping generalizations about big business and yet he doesn't mind doing the same thing about Millennials. One time when I took some cousins who were in town to go see him, he made a joke about a third wheelchair access ramp at a local strip mall being for trans people not five minutes after telling everybody in the room that nobody can joke about anything anymore.

It's fucking weird because I know the guy he used to be and it's disheartening to say the least. I should probably blame the Boomers as a generation less than the fact they just happened to be the exact ripe old age to be scared shitless by Fox News and to believe all of its terrible propaganda. I guess it's tough when the victims are also the perpetrators of the crime. Terrible Boomers seemed to know exactly how to manipulate the others into being right bastards. But then again, my mom turned seventy this year and she hates Trump and the GOP so it's not all bad. Although she sometimes says some cringey stuff about the Middle Eastern family who ran the 7-Eleven by my house for decades. Plus there's my aunt who's in her eighties who had to watch her children vote for Trump while she (as she revealed to me) "liked that one guy. What was his name? You know, the Jew?"

Look. They're old people! Sometimes you just need to learn to laugh about their old timey, passive, not-really-hurting-anybody racism! Well, if you're a Gen-Xer, you do. If you're a Millennial, I think you point out how their attitude causes a culture of harm and the only way to combat that is to just cancel them? Is that how that works? It's hard to know for sure because anybody I can ask about that has already cancelled me.

I bet my mom would like the Untitled Goose Game because one of her best friends is a lame goose at a park she walks in! She also once tripped and fell in the goose shitty pond one time, tearing a tendon in her arm, so that was probably her comeuppance for a couple of casually racist remarks from long ago that I'm sure she'd be embarrassed by now if I ever brought them up to her.

It might sound like I'm excusing some shitty things my mom once said because she's liberal while holding my father at a higher standard because he's conservative. And fuck yeah, that's exactly right. Because, ultimately, my mother has some flaws that come with her age and experience but which she's actively trying to change while also being sympathetic to everybody in our society with her political beliefs and her vote. My father, on the under hand, just continues to dig the hole of terrible he's decided is his new philosophy. You can tell me all you want how you're a good person but if you still vote for Trump or any current Conservative politician who won't stand up to corruption, I know better than to listen to your words. I see what you believe and/or what you've fallen for.

I know, I know! I'm a hypocrite because I'm allowing myself to be biased against conservatives. But, if it'll make y'all feel any better, just remember how you love to say things like, "I don't hate homosexuals. But I hate the acts of which they choose to partake!" Well, same but for conservatives! Also, the conservative speaker would have chosen to end that statement in the preposition. I apologize for my illogical dialogue choice.

Um, so, uh, the Wonder Twins! What are those scamps up to this month?!

Oh yeah! Zan had just saved the world by stopping a plot that was going to save the world.

I just realized I hadn't scanned the cover yet and as I did, I noticed the Wonder Twins fist/star emblem marks a striking resemblance to a goat.se riff.

Zan and Jayna get taken off of monitor duty at the Hall of Justice now that they've stopped the League of Annoyance. You'd think that doing a good job would get you a promotion but those of use who have always done spectacularly good jobs know better. While everybody else works down to the lowest common denominator (because who wants to do more work than the next guy?! A fool, that's who!), good workers just put on blinders and do the job they were hired for until the time they're being paid for is up. Sure, that sounds like I'm describing a sucker who's been completely manipulated by the man! But I'm also describing a person who fulfills their end of whatever bargain they've agreed to! So when I say Zan and Jayna wind up giving tours at the Hall of Justice because they were too good at catching criminals, you'll understand why I went into the previous digression. Maybe? I don't know. Have you seen what state the U.S. is in?! Why are you picking apart my writing style?!

Mark Russell takes a few pages to shit all over hockey fans and now I hate Mark Russell with a burning passion. Even though I'd hardly call myself a hockey fan. I mean, I loved NHL '93 (unless it was '92 (or maybe '94?)) and I loved going to San Jose Sharks games when I was still living in the Bay Area (plus my friend worked equipment for the Sharks and would get us free tickets). But it's not like I follow it much anymore. I just like the feeling of being angry at somebody for writing a satirical critique of sports fans rioting because they're so happy that their team won. Although why would I be angry when I've never done that nor think Russell's wrong in his pointed and humorous critique?! Oh, who cares why! Being angry is just more fun!

Oh shit! I finally understand people's attraction to Fox News!

I just watched a YouTube clip of somebody's Jeremy Roenick highlights from NHL '94 set to the song "More Than a Feeling" and it was pretty awesome. Also, that was definitely the one we played nonstop back in 1993 and 94 and maybe even into 95. Roenick unstoppable down with the puck while Sharks players lay splayed out on their back all across the ice.

To stop the riot, Superman calls in Repulso! He's a guy whose super power is super stink and he's kept in a locked room with a bare table and a microwave and nobody wants to be his friend because he smells like a garbage dumb that vomited on top of the diarrhea it shit out while standing on its head so the stanky muck ran down his body absorbing all of his body odor and then somebody cut up a durian and tossed it in the mix.

Superman is a dick. Get this guy some friends with no sense of smell. Or at the very least, an Xbox Gold account.

After the hockey riots, some "the end of the world" riots take place because Zan and Jayna screw up something or other. Basically what that means is that Repulso gets to be let out of his airtight containment unit again! He's a pretty optimistic guy for being sealed away by Superman (which is just Superman's way! Is somebody a problem? No problem! Put them in the Phantom Zone!). He's so happy and not bitter about his living arrangements that I feel like Zan and Jayna had better figure out a way to give him a better life before this issue ends. Because if Mark Russell fails this character he created before this issue is over and I have to face reality after snot crying about a fictional person, I'm going to be pretty upset when I continue to buy Mark Russell comic books because what other choice do I have? Am I going to stop reading DC's best written comic books because Mark Russell betrayed poor Repulso? Of course not! What am I? A person with integrity?!

Repulso winds up getting his ass beat by rioters as Repulso's handlers flee the chaotic "end of the world" downtown riot scene. Luckily the Wonder Twins are headed downtown to save his life and maybe become his friend or something? Please?

After Zan and Jayna save Repulso, Jayna goes to Superman to tell him everything sucks. He gives her a big speech about how being a hero is lonely work because you don't always get to fuck the hot chick at your secret identity's workplace and also fuck an Amazon warrior while also getting to fuck anybody at all whose initials are "L.L." and also have a best friend who is the coolest guy in the world with a butler who makes the best pancakes. Sometimes you're a fat jerk who smells who even Superman won't fucking give the time of day because Superman has this speech about how being a hero is lonely and that's a good thing so you should embrace your loneliness because who wants to put up with your super stink, fatty?

Jayna is a way better hero than Superman. At least in this comic book that's all about her and not Superman so of course she's going to outshine him!

Oh yeah, the ant in the above picture is Jayna. It can't smell.

Wonder Twins #7 Rating: A+. I should probably be less cynical when reading Mark Russell comic books because he's as earnest and serious as he can be while also providing lots of jokes. He takes writing seriously because what else is there? If your message isn't going to matter, why bother? (is his philosophy. I think. It's not my philosophy! I don't think? Maybe it is! I just write things that matter in a much different way than Mark Russell writes things that matter.) I should probably read Superman's speech and be inspired by the idea that you don't do good because you want adulation; you do good because it's the right thing to do, even if the entire world thinks you're an asshole for doing it. Even if all of the other superheroes think you're a stinky fuck and only keep you around to use as a tool to oppress and manipulate the masses without having to use logic and reason on them (because, let's face it, the people doing terrible things don't understand logic and reason. Or they're do but they're just selfish and greedy so nothing is going to reach them anyway (which maybe is part of Superman's message?)), you're still a hero at the end of the day. You can still be proud of your stinky self. And even if the life is lonely, you should remain positive and upbeat because Superman really doesn't want to be reminded that you exist every time you complain about the lack of reasonable living conditions. Being a hero is a state of mind, says the guy who also looks great and is invulnerable and has the best wife and a cool son and doesn't have to fear death! So inspiring!

Year of the Villain: The Riddler #1

My shadow is always an asterisk.

Everybody knows Batman villains were all named to represent pedophiles except slightly changed so as to not be blatant about Batman's anti-child fucking theme. So The Riddler is The Diddler and The Joker is the Poker and The Penguin is the creepy uncle and Man-Bat represents the National Man-Boy Love Association and Hush is "Don't tell your parents about this" and Bane is an engorged penis and Robin is the intended victim whom Batman must constantly keep safe (and not Batman's secret sex partner, you disgusting assholes who think it's so fucking funny to point out that Batman and Dick Grayson totally tongue kiss each other and call it "Bat Snogging"). Catwoman obviously represents the pussy that all the pedophiles ignore in order to get some of that sweet, sweet Dick Grayson. Poison Ivy, also a better choice to pursue than a young boy, is so named because all the kiddie diddler villains would rather avoid her touch. This whole paradigm was set up in the mid-twentieth century so you'll have to forgive them for thinking a "normal" relationship is one that's between a woman and a man (I mean, you don't have to forgive them. But calling them out on it isn't going to create a time vortex which will fix their outdated and patriarchal attitudes! You're just going to have to accept that's the way it was! Unless maybe the Scarecrow was the male version of an appropriate partner for the adult gay villains (it was the 40s! Of course the gay villain would be seen as scary! (and also the Scarecrow could have been scary because he was just another pedophile (and also the gay villains were pursuing Robin because they were pedophiles and not because they were gay!)))).

That doesn't have anything to do with this comic book. I'm not sure why I even brought it up since even the least comic book savvy person already knows it! It's a better known fact than the one about how Aquaman is only useful for interviewing fish witnesses at scenes of crimes.

Remember Brave and the Bold #68 in which The Riddler left clues like "If a man makes a spectacle of himself, what crimes will lurk in the heart of the ice palace?" and "What's totally illegal but so, so satisfying?" and "How many pairs of Robin's underwear can I fit inside of my mouth?" Some of Batman's other pedo gallery members appeared in that issue too. But luckily Robin was safely away on a mission with the Teen Titans. Instead, Batman had Metamorpho take the shape of a young innocent boy to trap all of his disgusting foes. Man, comic books were totally weird and inappropriate!

I only bring up this ancient history most DC fans don't like to bring up because this issue begins with The Diddler up to his old tricks.

The answer to this question is easy if you were alive for the Dead Baby joke trend in the eighties.

Batman knows some good Dead Baby jokes too!

A baby impaled on a globe!

The Riddler is upset because Lex Luthor hasn't asked him to join the whole Year of the Villains extravaganza. Of course Lex didn't! Why would he want anything to do with a pedo Batman villain? Okay, sure, he's working with The Joker. But that's probably because he's seriously afraid of The Joker. Also, maybe he's working with the one of the two Jokers (out of the three!) that aren't pedophiles.

But Lex Luthor does pay The Riddler a visit!

Hopefully Lex just came by to out The Riddler and punch him in his disgusting face.

I don't know what's on The Riddler's trophy that Lex is holding but I'm sure it will be important on the last page of the comic book. Sort of a Rosebud surprise that explains why The Riddler is the gross, incompetent jerk he is. I hope it's first place in a Dead Baby joke telling contest.

Lex tells The Riddler a story that's supposed to help The Riddler figure out why he's such an incompetent jerk. It's a riddle of sorts so The Riddler should be able to figure it out by the end of the issue. I hope he does because I'm sure not going to figure it out! It's not like Scott Lobdell wrote this issue where I'd have it all figured out by the third page (after the first two pages were done recapping the last issue and also changing some things that Scott apparently didn't like and figured nobody would remember a month later (that being said, his trades must be hell to edit together)). This was written by Mark Russell! I mean, I wouldn't say Mark Russell is smarter than me. But I would say that he thinks differently than me in a way that "society" might "deem" "more intelligent."

Tut (not King Tut because that would probably create legal troubles between whoever owns the television series characters and DC Comics) decides to join forces with The Riddler so they can catch Batman in an Egyptian-themed riddle trap! This is where I think up a bunch of dead baby jokes where the answer involves being able to fuck the dead babies but I'd rather not do that because everybody on the Internet will judge me. They'll be all, "Who would think up a joke about comparing a stack of dead babies to the pyramid at Giza and how you'd break your dick trying to fuck the pyramid?! Ugh! Cancelled!" I don't want to be cancelled! I don't want my last tweet to be, "Et tu, Internet?"

Tut and Riddler prepare for capturing and killing Batman so they can get their filthy hands on young, innocent, hairless Dick Grayson by sending a missive to Commissioner Gordon.

I don't know if this should make me feel closer to Mark Russell as a writer or closer to Mark Russell's idea of Tut who is a terrible writer?

While Batman walks into Tut's trap (which maybe should be in quotation marks because all traps should be in quotation marks when Batman is walking into them?), The Riddler thinks about the trophy and what it meant to him. It was awarded to him for solving some class mystery in under a minute. And it represented respect. But Lex says some sort of AA hoodoo about the mistake of living for the past and trying to prove you're not who you used to be rather than just getting on with living for the future which eats away at The Riddler until he just up and quits being The Riddler.

But what will he become?! Can any other writer figure out the answer to that riddle or has Mark Russell ensured that he'll have at least one more gig at DC in the future?! Maybe Tom King can answer the riddle. And I bet Brian Michael Bendis can make the riddle not matter anymore and just bring The Riddler back like he was. And maybe Dan Jurgens can answer the question by bringing back the 1986 version of The Riddler while ignoring the events of this comic book completely. Or maybe Geoff Johns can bring Scrooge McDuck into the DC Universe to fix The Riddler by offering him loads of gold to continue being The Riddler? Or maybe Garth Ennis can be hired on to make The Riddler step up and actually come out as The Diddler in a Vertigo Diddler series that would show The Diddler fucking up kids in ways that would make all the shit that happened to Herr Starr in The Preacher look like a fun day out at the local water park!

Or maybe The Riddler will just come back as a hero who asks villains riddles where the answer is almost always, "A kick to the groin, asshole!" I guess that version would be written by Mark Millar!

Year of the Villain: The Riddler #1 Rating: A+. I think I promised to always rate Mark Russel and Tom King books as "A+" because who else is writing stories of this quality in the DC bullpen? Fucking nobody, that's who! Okay, maybe Bendis but I'm not reading Bendis's books anymore. Except for Batman Universe which stars The Riddler but dumber (he's dumber because something in the story is clouding his mind and not because I'm criticizing how well Bendis writes The Riddler. Although making him dumber for plot reasons is a great way to obfuscate Bendis's terrible ability to come up with good riddles! So it's both smart and stupid in a way!).

Wonder Twins #5

Jayna just punched straight through her brother's butthole.

If you're a being who turns into water, your dick and butthole don't just disappear, right? They just become part of the water! So I'm almost certainly correct in my comment on the cover. Hopefully Mark Russell will explore this topic in a future issue. Until then, I'll be certain to tell everybody I know that Jayna basically fisted Zan. Luckily for the Wonder Twins, I don't know many people and also they are fictional characters.

This issue is called "Magic and Games." I think. It will probably take me less time to read this entire comic book than it took me to puzzle out the word "Games" in the font used for the title.

Sure, you can see it now that I already told you what it was! But it was difficult before I worked it out! Although I still wouldn't be surprised to learn the title is "Magic and Galljes" or "Magic and "Gaines" and that the second word is somebody's name.

Usually I don't comment on Mark Russell comic books because to comment on a Mark Russell comic book, you should probably be smart and serious. Sure, he's having fun and writing an entertaining book that I can easily use to make jokes about fisting incest! But he also writes sensitive stories about social justice and systemic bias and ethical dilemmas in changing times and, well, other stuff that I'm too dumb to even discuss in the most general terms! He's a smart guy which is why I hate him with a burning passion! But it's a good hate! It's the kind of envious hate that pushes me to my own Emerald Twilight! I probably won't wind up destroying an entire town and ruining my reputation and becoming the most vilified hero in our universe but I almost certainly will eventually become the avenging spirit of God judging everybody around me! Wait, I think I already am that! Whatever my point is, it's that Mark Russell writes good and I'm too weak to not despise him for it.

Polly Math has just won first prize at the science fair because her last name is Math. I guess Sandra Science didn't compete this year so Polly was the obvious next choice. Jayna wins second place because her project on fucking hot guys while being a nerd in high school fell apart when the guy she attempted to science fair fuck turned out to be a villain. It's also possible I'm confusing story lines but you have to expect that kind of thing! I'm not spring chicken! Remembering details between chapters that come out a full month apart has been nearly impossible for the last twenty years!

I shouldn't make fun of Polly Math's name because I have a name that people always try to make jokes about too. It's not Grunion Guy! You can probably find it if you do even the smallest amount of Internet research! I'm not going to help you though because I don't want to get called a Deaf Chef anymore!

Polly is upset that her father is working with Lex Luthor and the League of Annoyance. But Jayna has a plan to fix things! I bet her plan is to turn into a giant tortoise while Zan turns into an ice dildo and...wait a second! Why am I giving out good ideas that Mark Russell will just steal in a few issues?! Better to not speculate on things! Also, I mean, the cover shows Jayna going with the shark plan.

Okay fine! I'm finally interested in Fox News!

The most disturbing thing about people who watch Fox News is that they ignore five hundred other channels that are showing entertaining things on their television at the same time! Who chooses that shit over Comedy Central or the Game Show Network?! I haven't had cable for nearly twenty years and whenever I'm staying somewhere with cable, it's locked on the Game Show Network 24/7! Who the fuck chooses to watch state propaganda over old game shows?! Fucking psychopaths, that's who!

Polly Math's father wound up working with Lex Industries because only Lex Luthor hired African Americans, I guess? Hadn't he heard of STAR Labs?! Maybe Silas Stone and Sarah Charles fulfilled their quota?

I might be misreading this scene but I don't think I am because the white guys with white guys playing golf pictures behind them seem interested in Filo Math if he's Norwegian (so, you know, totally white!) and then when they meet him, they don't want to hire him. It could be that they really are concerned with his specialty! What could that be?! I mean, it can't be any worse than Silas Stone's specialty of turning his son into a cybernetic example of the castration of the black male in America! That's a really terrible specialty! Although Sarah Charles seemed to be pretty into it.

See?! This is why I can't review a Mark Russell book! He's making a great point about the systemic bias inherent in corporate hiring practices and I'm not taking it seriously! I mean, he isn't either, really? He's being light-hearted while still making a good point. Which is what I've done, I think, in my comment about Cyborg's lack of a penis!

The Scrambler wants to play a trick on society. He's a magician that believes people are frightened of magic and only like the part where everything is normal again.

Magician: "Is this your card?"
Audience Member: "Why yes! Thank God you picked my card! I was worried I was going to have to live in a world where my card wasn't picked!"

Maybe I'm not comprehending his point. Anyway, The Scrambler wants to do a trick where things don't ever go back to normal! He's a monster! Imagine picking the Three of Clubs and nobody ever showing you the Three of Clubs ever again! Ugh, I'm feeling faint.

To save Polly's Dad from definite prison time (or possibly, if Superman shows up, an eternity in the Phantom Zone. As if Superman can be bothered with Earth's judicial system! Pshaw!), Jan has challenged the League of Annoyance to a duel at the zoo. I guess if she wants to stress out all of the animals there with a big battle, who am I to judge? I mean other than being the real life version of Hal Jordan's Spectre, of course!

At the zoo, Jayna recruits a bunch of Australian animals to help fight which goes as spectacularly as you can imagine it would. And what I mean by that is that a koala is blown to bits. But I guess that's worth it in the grand scheme of getting Polly Math's father to stop working with the League of Annoyance. It's like that philosophical conundrum about an ant that sacrifices its life for even the tiniest amount to better the world. It's just an ant! It practically owes it to the universe to die for nearly nothing! What does this koala bear expect? It should get to live in luxurious confinement at the zoo and not die for a trivial reason? Stupid koala bear. Go fuck yourself, you selfish bastard.

The Wonder Twins defeat two out of three of the League of Annoyance members at the expense of just one koala's life and the bruised jaw of an innocent kangaroo. The third member, some woman with a Kryptonian cell phone whose name maybe I should remember, gets away to go regroup.

Sylvia is a racist that joined the League because she didn't like the demographics of her small town changing. She's startled by Filo entering the League's headquarters to pack up his stuff and winds up zapping him like she zapped the koala. Okay, I guess the koala isn't as dead as I first thought. I should have realize a Kryptonian phone is probably sending everything to the Phantom Zone. So once again, I, the Grandmaster Comic Book Reader, was correct when I speculated that the worst that could happen to Filo was prison or the Phantom Zone! I'm the smarterest!

Sylvia is caught on camera zapping Filo Math and then messes up in an interview when she kind of admits to having maybe zapped more than one black person with her phone off-camera? It's a real public relations nightmare!

But Lex can fix it! His greatest strength is turn public relations nightmares into public relations wet dreams!

Lex News turns Cell Phone Sylvia into a national hero. Because anything is excusable if you just say how scared you were! I mean, as long as you're white! It's scary being white! Sometimes you have to kill people with your legal gun while standing your own ground after confronting somebody for the most inconsequential reasons! It's just the way the world works! At least in America! Happy 4th of July!

Just in case some readers weren't smart enough to get that everybody blasted by Sylvia's phone went to the Phantom Zone, Mark Russell supplies us with an image of Filo and the koala and a bunch of Sylvia's other victims (hmm, all black! But that's probably just a coincidence!) in the Phantom Zone.

Polly, at the end of her rope with doing the right thing in an unjust world, decides to contact The Scrambler. I can't wait for her big magic trick to fix the world!

The Scrambler's big trick to fix the world is to threaten to scramble everybody's identity. Everybody's minds will switch around so that they're now in different bodies. That means the powerful might wind up being the poorest people in the worst poverty. And the only way he won't do it is if the powerful fix the world in thirty days. Seems like a good plan! Except I'm curious to see how they fix it. Most people's ideas of fixing the world rely on the current world still existing somehow. So the fix is handicapped from the beginning by needing to be built on the ruins of the old system. To truly make a new system that works, the old system must be completely razed to the ground. But nobody has the stomach for that. So we make exceptions and compromises, building the new structure on top of a rotting foundation. It's why DC's Universe fixes always fail. They rely on making things new and better but need to remain rooted in the past. Crisis on Infinite Earths was built on a world that still contained members of Infinity Inc. who suddenly didn't fit in the world anymore. So DC then had to do Zero Hour which told new origin stories but still refused to throw out everything that came before to simply start again. Even The New 52, which people hated because they felt it did exactly what I suggested (razing the shit to the ground), didn't work because, I believe, it didn't go far enough! It still accepted Superman had died. It still accepted all of Green Lantern's past. It still contained a Batgirl who was shot by Joker and became Oracle. It was still the DC Universe but with arbitrary and subtle changes that made no real difference except the jettisoning of a ton of history. So it didn't work for anybody!

Um, anyway, my initial point was that real life political structures and social dynamics and economic systems can never really be restructured in a meaningful way because they have to kowtow to older ways of thinking and doing things. The comic book stuff was just easier to write about! I'm sure Mark Russell will figure it out! Or he'll just have The Scrambler and Polly Math arrested and nothing will work out like it should and it will just be the punctuation on the idea that everything fucking sucks. Yay!

Wonder Twins #5 Rating: A+. Come on! Everything Mark Russell writes gets an A+! It shows how smart I am!

The Flintstones #11

Hopefully this is the issue where Betty finally discovers the Bikini-rock.

The Review!
It's good. You should probably be reading it.

The Flintstones #10

Pebbles' vibrator died.

Here is a thing I just typed into a messenger app to my friend Doom Bunny: "The Flintstones comic book is my favorite current comic book. That is a thing I just typed and meant." I had to reiterate that I actually meant the thing I said because it's ridiculous to think that The Flintstones would wind up being my favorite comic book. Although the more I read this comic book, the more I'm projecting this comic book's attitude and humor backward in time onto the cartoon. I'm actually beginning to think, "Was the cartoon this incisive?" The answer to that is probably no since the first memory of the cartoon that springs to mind is when Fred and Barney bought a boat. Fred wanted to name it the Nautical Princess and Barney wanted to name it the Queen of the Seas. They decided to compromise and named it the Nau-seas. That's the kind of ham-handed comedy I remember from the show! Also I might have gotten some of the facts wrong about the scene. I have no idea what Barney and Fred's names were but I remember the Nautical part and the Seas part because it led to the hilariously named boat joke! Of course now when people mention jokes about boat names, everybody with a lick of a sense of humor thinks of Arrested Development. It makes me laugh whenever I think about them talking about the Seaward and Lucille saying, "I know you're talking about me." Imagine if The Flintstones had come up with that! Instead, they just have a scene where Barney and Fred dress up like a dinosaur in a two man costume and Barney, giggling like crazy in the back half of the suit, tells Fred to make sure Dino knows Barney is in the costume as well so that Dino doesn't get any funny ideas! You know the kinds of ideas dogs (and dog dinosaurs) think are funny! The kind where they hump things without any consent.

I just rewatched the original opening of The Flintstones (the one without the song with lyrics) and was completely floored that The Simpsons must have been riffing on that. So already, I'm buying into the idea that The Flintstones was far more clever than I remember the show being! It makes sense being that The Flintstones was The Simpsons of its time. A prime time cartoon that satirizes the modern family life. I bet even the jokes that I roll my eyes at while watching The Flintstones were fresh when they were used on the show. It's just that I've heard them repeated so often in so many other derivative comedies that they now seem ham-handed.

That's almost the exact question I ask when I buy new technology! Just replace the "or" with an "and"!

The news doesn't focus on the advent of movies for long because they have to get in some warmongering. They continue to portray the Lizard People as dangerous adversaries intent on threatening the safety of Bedrock! The new mayor, Clod the Destroyer, has vowed to destroy them. I wonder if Fox News viewers would understand the satire in this comic book or if they'd be seething right now about those Goddamned Lizard People?

After Clod fails to genocide the Lizard People because they heard him coming and skedaddled, Fred and Barney sneak off to see a pornographic movie. It also might just be an art film since Barney describes it as "women baring themselves." It's possible it's also just a film about women baring their souls and not their breasts. My guess is it's that last one since the movie is called Shale Magnolias. While Fred and Barney pre-masturbate furiously to women crying about their relationships with other women hoping that one of them will suddenly take off their top, Werner Herzrock discovers Wilma's paintings in the trash at the local art gallery. He decides to interview her for the job of art director on his new film. I bet the film has lots of earnest narration about the nature of existence!

There was a bit just before this that was a rousing speech about the ultimate inability of the artist to communicate effectively which spoke less to me than this.

Late at night, the vacuum cleaner has been sneaking out to watch movies at the local theater. On one of those nights, he's forced to vacuum the movie theater floor. Gross! Men have been masturbating in there!

I guess it's not a big surprise then that vacuum cleaner dies. The appliances have a wake that's all feelings and more feelings and things being said that the writer was probably pretty proud of and which I'm totally glossing over because it didn't contain any fart jokes.

The other stories partially resolve themselves as well and other stuff and things. You might be thinking, "What kind of a shitty review is this?" Well, it's the kind of shitty review that can't say anything that would be better than actually reading this comic book. I critique comic books because they're usually vapid and silly and inconsequential pieces of cultural fluff! I never expected to have to say intelligent things about intelligent observations made in intelligent plots that already critique and satirize the world in which we live. How am I supposed to add to that without feeling like a fucking asshole?

The Review!
+1! Just go fucking read this series, dumby.

Booster Gold Loves The Flintstones #1

If Prehistoric Man had any concern with animal rights, they never would have had any scientific advancements. At least according to The Flintstones which is, like, history and shit.

I don't know how many people consider these Hanna-Barbera crossovers canon. Everybody should. There's no way I can respect you if you don't now think the Banana Splits went on a mission with the Suicide Squad or that Green Lantern and Space Ghost had gay sex on the planet Krikkit or that a talking dog gave a rimjob to a talking cat. And now Mark Russell gets to write an in-continuity story about Booster Gold traveling back to The Flintstones era? If you don't have a woman boner or a male whatever happens to women when they get a boner thing happening about this comic book, you can't be my friend. You also can't be my friend on just a more reasonable level like how I probably couldn't stand listening to you. If you don't mind me saying everything and you just shut up and laugh at all the right places, it's possible we can be friends. But you also can't smell weird or look me in the eyes.

This issue begins with Booster asking Skeets if he looks sexy. I always knew Skeets had a slot for a penis! I used to tell my friends in junior high, "He's fucking that flying robot, you know!" Booster Gold is in his apartment that is either outside linear time or at Vanishing Point (which is also outside of linear time but more upscale than just "a ratty studio apartment in any buttfuck place outside linear time"). Inside his room, he has a Dodo bird as a pet and he stores all of his valuables in the Ark of the Covenant. Booster Gold might be my hero. He's got no time for your shitty time paradox theories!

Oh, apparently he lives in New New Newest Gotham in the year 2472. I bet Batman is still alive.

In 2472, Gary Gygax is considered a god and you can get a McTalon Burger at the local Food Court of Owls.

While Booster is on his date with Amy, an army of Chupacabra riding space scooters while setting people on fire with laser beams descend on the city.

The Chupacabra are apparently space aliens and not Chupacabra which they most definitely are. I suppose it doesn't matter since conspiracy theories can account for any eventuality. Obviously Chupacabra are just space aliens and not cryptoids! Anyway, Booster accesses his time computer to find that these aliens first visited Earth in the year 20,000 BC in the town of Bedrock. So that's where he goes to solve the problem! I guess he's going to find their leader and suggest that they not come back 24 thousand years in the future?

I don't know. Any noticeable bodily function that lasts that long would concern me.

Booster Gold arrives in the past right on top of the alien, cutting it in half. Well, I guess that's why they invade 24 thousand years later! That's actually a pretty fast response time in galactic times and distances.

Booster Gold's Time Sphere is ruined in the encounter so he needs some help getting it fixed. Luckily, he's met up with Fred and Barney! They always have a scheme up their butts!

Moments like these are why I love Russell's writing so much.

With the help of some of Barney's science-know-how (otherwise known as animal abuse), Booster's Time Machine's Chrono CB Radio begins working. He puts the call out for help and the only person who responds and doesn't immediately die afterward is Alfred Pennyworth from 1966. Batman has a fourth dimensional radio transceiver because why not? Luckily Alfred in 1966 knows Booster Gold for some reason. That reason was mentioned earlier where Booster Gold gives no fucks about time paradoxes.

Booster is an idiot! Due to having such a small amount in his account, Booster will undoubtedly have to pay for that savings account! The payment will be taken out of the account and subsequently begin costing him insufficient funds penalties and fees! He's going to owe the bank billions when he gets home (because the bank will never just close the account since it costs them nothing to keep it open. Banks are assholes).

Booster Gold, Barney Rubble, and Fred Flintstone are out of luck getting help from other time travelers. So they're just going to have to figure out how to power the time machine themselves. I bet five billion vacuum cleaners could do the trick.

Instead of enslaved animals, the trio use the Chupacabra's spacecraft to power Booster Gold's time sphere. While it's charging, Skeets discovers that Booster Gold caused the invasion (that's probably why he doesn't give a fuck about time paradoxes. There are none! Everything just happens the way they happened and no time traveler can change it because they made it that way when they tried to change it in the first place!). Booster doesn't really care because he just wants to get back in the future to fuck Amy. But there's an error in the calculations and a huge chunk of Bedrock goes into the future with him.

Anyway, everything eventually works out in the end and Booster Gold's bank account has 3.8 billion dollars in it. I guess banks in the 1960s weren't such huge douchebags as banks are now. I blame Reagan.

The back-up story is a Jetsons story by Jimmy and Amanda. So it'll be full of sexy innuendos!

It doesn't have any sexual innuendo at all! Unless I'm supposed to believe that George Jetson eventually fucks the robot housing his mother's personality! Yeah, I can do that.

Anyway, the story is basically one of the episodes of Black Mirror.

The Ranking!
I don't rank these! But anything by Mark Russell is worth reading. The end!

Suicide Squad Loves The Banana Splits #1

I feel like this comic book has a target audience of one and that one is me!

I used to watch The Banana Splits early in the morning before school back in early elementary school. They were sort of like The Monkees if the The Monkees were furries. I was sold on the show just from the opening theme song with The Banana Splits running around an amusement park. I can't really recall the plots to the shows but I get the feeling they were always trying to evade the landlord because they hadn't sold enough crack to pay the rent yet. My favorite part of Kick Ass (and pretty much the only part I remember) was when Hit Girl begins murdering the fuck out of people while The Banana Splits theme song played. I have that version of the theme song (and the original!) on my iTunes and I never skip it when it comes up. If only the Suicide Squad had such good music to accompany their crazy exploits.

That's my love of the Banana Splits half! My love for the Suicide Squad half begins with Ostrander's run post-crisis in the eighties. That's my favorite all time mainstream super hero comic book run of all time. I have to add all of those qualifiers because it can't really compare to my love of Elfquest or Cerebus or Transmetropolitan or The Sandman or definitely not Shade the Changing Man or Astro City or Planetary or Strangers in Paradise or many others. But for a super hero comic book from DC or Marvel? Totes my fave! It did shit no other comic book at the time was doing. Like, um, things you wouldn't believe! Adult things that didn't have to do with sex (but if they had, it would only have made it better!). Also, that's where Oracle was created! And the eventual reveal of who Oracle was might be one of the greatest and most satisfying reveals in comic books. Those kinds of things are hard to pull off! Unlike me who is easy to pull off! Get it?! I come quickly!

The issue begins with The Banana Splits nearly being gunned down by overzealous cops on their way to play the Whisky-a-Go-Go. They've traded in their Banana Buggies for a military grade Humvee. I guess they finally figured out how to sell all of their crack. Or maybe their music took off.

I feel like they're making light of a monstrous problem in our society!

It turns out the violent cops who turn up to taze the Banana Splits work for somebody known as "The Boss Lady." That could be Amanda Waller although it goes against the spirit of the Suicide Squad to hunt down an innocent band of non-criminals for recruitment. They must really be selling drugs to get by! It's also possible they're being kidnapped by a female super villain to use their music against the world. Sort of like how the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band's instruments were used for evil by Steve Martin, Alice Cooper, and the Future Villain Band (aka Aerosmith).

While the Suicide Squad are on another mission going tits up (which sounds great but it isn't for some reason), The Banana Splits have been sent to Belle Reve for some reason? Resisting arrest, I guess? Oh! I bet the cops found all the crack they were trying to sell for rent in the trunk of the Humvee. Unless Humvee's don't have trunks. I guess it was in Snork's trunk.

In Belle Reve, the Banana Splits act the same way The Monkees would act if they were sent to prison. They really are pretty much the same exact group. But I think The Banana Splits were meant for a slightly older audience.

Deadshot, Katana, Flag, and Killer Croc are in serious trouble on their mission. So Amanda is all, "I know how to save you! I'll send some prisoners who haven't actually been convicted of anything yet and probably shouldn't be in Belle Reve at all but are because otherwise it would have been too hard to figure out how to do this crossover! Also, they're musicians whose only experience with violence is through slapstick. Although to make this entire premise more palatable, I'm watching a fight scene on the lunchroom monitor right now explaining how The Banana Splits are great fighters because one of them is a gorilla, one is a lion, and one is an elephant. So don't worry, Deadshot! You'll be safe in one quick music montage chase scene!"

I wonder which one is going to die?

The Suicide Squad apparently weren't as on the verge of death as Waller was led to believe. After the Banana Splits parachute in to save the Squad, the Squad save the Banana Splits. It really just seems to be Rick Flag whose life is in danger. The threat? It's the same threat as in the mid-80s Apple IIe game, Wasteland! The AI of a robot factory has achieved sentience and decided to make millions of robots to cleanse the world of humankind. I guess that's the same plot as in Terminator as well. And probably a whole bunch of other stories from the 80s. We were really afraid of machines in the eighties. I didn't eat toast for twelve years. I still eat my Pop Tarts uncooked like a barbarian!

Snork comes up with a plan and then Harley describes the plan to Amanda. In doing so, we have a new piece of verified canon that I'm currently adding, in Sharpie, to my Who's Who entry of Rick Flag.

"Likes being fingered in the butthole during sex."

Some people might want these Hanna-Barbera crossovers to be alternate universe stories. But remember if you choose to believe that, you can't know for sure that Flag needs one up the bum to orgasm.

The mission is successful and the Banana Splits choose to remain in Belle Reve so they can shed their bubblegum pop image and become hard core idiots. Fuck that nonsense! Bubblegum pop forever!

The back-up story is about Snagglepuss. I bet at some point, he exits stage left! Probably to go suck a dick. The story is by Mark Russell with art by Howard Porter so I'm bound to like it. I'm sorry, Steve Buccellato, that I have no opinion at all on your coloring skills.

I don't remember Snagglepuss being so philosophical! Maybe I was watching his cartoons incorrectly!

I bet Snagglepuss and Foghorn Leghorn would have made a cute couple. Volatile, but cute!

The Ranking!
I don't rank one shots and specials! Unless sometimes I feel in the mood to rank them. Today isn't one of those days.

The Flintstones #9

It's a bowling ball, right?! Fred and Barney haven't gone bowling at all yet!

• Currently in Bedrock, the First Church of Gerald is seeing its attendance fall. Gerald just doesn't say enough of the right things to hold people's attention. If you're going to be a god, you really need to think about what will keep your customers coming back. Or are worshipers considered clients? Anyway, a religion that preaches kindness and charity to other people without making a substantial attempt at pointing out how much charity you'll be getting due to how charitable you are is a piss poor religion. That's why people are now worshiping Vorp in Bedrock! Vorp is a giant snake in a suit. I think it's meant to represent a huge throbbing boner. Because Vorp loves the rich and powerful. Vorp doesn't want the rich and powerful to feel guilty when they go to church and hear idiotic things like "It is better to be an elephant or a camel or something than to be a big fat richy" or "The meek will inherit all of your stuff" or "Don't throw the first stone at poor people. Maybe wait and see if somebody else starts the rock throwing so you can feel blameless."

• This issue is called "A Basket of Disposables." Don't get your expensive silk undergarments in a bunch, you fat richies! The full context is that half of the people Mark Russell is referencing are in the basket! Just because you also think the same thing as the disposables, it doesn't mean you're a disposable. When you get angry and take the name on so you can feel like a martyr, you're missing the entire point of the statement just to be a fucking partisan dickmonster. If you had any self-awareness or intelligence, you would realize that the point was that awful people are supporting this imaginary person that Mark Russell thought up. You don't have to also be awful to support this person but it does kind of say something about you in that it doesn't give you pause in your support of this person that's totally made up in Mark Russell's head and not the person you're totally thinking of right now.

• At night, the vacuum cleaner, bowling bawl, and ottoman get drunk with the coat rack and the lamp. It's like a night in the Young Ones' house.

• Mr. Slate fires all of this workers because he can get apes and Neanderthals to work for far lower wages. Fucking corporations were corrupt even back in prehistoric times?! It figures!

It was a bowling ball! But now that Wilma threw out the old one, I'm too sad to gloat about being a Grandmaster Comic Book Reader. The vacuum cleaner is going to be devastated.

• Betty still hasn't invented the Bikinirock. I'm still upset about this.

• The old bowling ball gets hauled off by recycling. The new bowling ball is a huge asshole.

• Mr. Slate, having realized his dreams of being a totally selfish prick without the overbearing guilt Gerald used to fill him with, fires his turtle butler and hires a cigar smoking eagle butler. Now Mr. Slate is going to get tons of pussy! You can't not get laid with an eagle on your arm. And you can't not get not laid with a turtle roaming your house and shitting all over the floor. Slowly!

• The Flintstones and Rubbles finally go bowling. Unless they've been bowling in an earlier issue and I just totally forgot about it. Anyway, while they're gone, the blender, lamp, vacuum cleaner, ottoman, coat rack, and curtain rod decide to mount an expedition to rescue the old bowling ball. I don't want to get their disposable little hopes up but he's probably dead. Oh wait. That would get their hopes down! That's what I don't want to do!

• Dino tries to get in on the action but he's not an appliance so his attempt at friendship is rebuffed. It's not Dino's fault that the humans have placed him in a category higher than the appliances! He just wants to have friends too. I can't believe the appliances, who know what it feels like to be excluded, derided, and shit upon (some of them literally! I bet the toilet is a pelican), would treat Dino so poorly! The bastards!

• Coat Rack frees all of the animals at the recycling center so that Mr. Slate's turtle can eventually return to his job carrying liquor and cookies around the house. Mr. Slate is going to need him back because his eagle (along with his girlfriend) have decided Mayor Clod is much better, what with the bigger arm to rest upon and the bigger dick to, um, you know what upon.

• Back at home, the appliances murder the new bowling ball.

Too bad the people who need to be shamed by this speech will never read it.

• Look how Steve Pugh fits full bodies into the panels. With feet on the floor and everything! He's the best.

• Later Wilma finds Dino tied up in the pantry. I bet Pebbles takes the blame on that one. Who would believe the furniture and appliances did it?!

The Ranking!
No change! But no change still means it's practically the best comic book DC puts out right now. Who would have guessed? Aside from the part where Mark Russell is writing it. That was a pretty good indicator that it would be good. But I wouldn't have guessed that I'd be loving Steve Pugh's work on this book so much. His shit is wonderful! I don't mean his bowel movements. I have never seen one of those, not even at a con where I may or may not have followed him to the toilet.

The Flintstones #8

Are those the only options? What about Slackers?

• The first vignette (that's a little vig. Unless it's a female vig) is about how women do work that's unappreciated while men do work that is over-appreciated. That's because men need all of that appreciation due to their tiny penises having caused serious ego problems as they grew to adulthood. This causes them to need more appreciation for the slightest of accomplishments. Women are just used to getting shit done because men are oblivious dickfarts who can't even be bothered to notice when a female they see every single day changes up her look. I mean, he'll probably eventually notice which is pretty good for a man. But don't expect him to notice immediately! If it doesn't make their dick move, it can't really penetrate the thought centers of the brain.

• If you're a guy with low self-esteem (probably due to your micro-penis (which I'm not making fun of! I'm just pointing out how that condition can cause a lot of psychological trauma to a male individual (or so I've heard from a friend!))), that previous bullet point was probably pretty sexist. But if you're a guy who gets laid all of the time because you're a super famous comic book blogger (or some other thing that is so hot women's panties fall off around you all the time (or men's panties! I don't want to seem homophobic as well as sexist right out of the gate! I need to lure you deep into my web before I reveal all of my flaws)), you probably read that first bullet point and thought, "Ha! Some guys have small penises."

• Oh, also the first vignette (that sounds delicious, right?) shows how smart women are and how totally bro guys are. You know what I mean by bro. Fucking bros are ruining this world! Go read a fucking book, bros! I mean a real book like Catch-22 or something by that Kurt Funnygut guy! Harry Potter might be an entertaining read with some inspiring messages (Or not. Who can tell? I haven't read it!) but you bros need to read something more substantial. Maybe when the ping pong ball lands in the plastic cup full of beer, how about you have to read a book instead of getting so drunk you do a bunch of stupid shit that completely embarrasses your mother (she doesn't need to know exactly what you've done but, you know, she knows).

• Betty and Wilma are ditching Fred and Barney to go visit Wilma's mother at her farm. Hopefully the farm is in a sunny place which will cause Betty to invent the bikinirock.

• Steve Pugh is back on art duties this month so I'm super happy. Not boner happy! I mean, I will be if that bikinirock thing happens. But I'm just aesthetically pleased (is a person who appreciates aesthetics an aesthlete?) because the faces of Pugh's characters are fucking great. That's as descriptive as I can get because I'm not J.R.R. Tolkien. I don't have the patience to write five pages of flowery nonsense to describe a hobbit's bunion caused by walking halfway across the world. Would it have killed Gandalf to learn the teleport spell?

There's more social commentary in this one sign than in the entire run of most comic books.

• In Bedrock! Twist! Twist!

• In school, Pebbles and Bamm Bamm learn about economics. Apparently it's a scam. Fucking Adam Smith! I knew he was a huge asshole! I'm taking my econ paper from twenty years ago where I said just that back to my professor and demanding he change the F to an A! I have a Flintstones comic book to back me up! Take that, Mr. Whaler!

• In the realm of politics, Clod the Mayor wants to go to war against the lizard people. Damn right! Fucking lizard people. But he doesn't have enough money in the budget. Nobody in the government has the foresight to see the kinds of problems these lizard people are going to cause if they go unchecked. Fuckers will rule the world one day! And for want of a few extra dollars, Clod could have destroyed them centuries ago!

• To get some support for the Lizard People War, Clod hires celebrity Stony Danza to do some Pro-Lizard People war commercials. You remember Stony Danza! Star of Who's the Mastodon? and Taxi (But A Dinosaur Taxi and Not a Car Taxi).

• At the farm, Wilma has some cathartic discussions with her mother and Betty never even contemplates the bikinirock. My boner is so sad.

Are you trying to make me angry, Flintstones comic book?!

• At the Town Hall meeting to discuss closing down the children's hospital so Clod can afford his war, Fred makes an impassioned plea to the men to get them to understand that one of their most critical roles is protecting the children. Since most men are stupid, they take his speech as being a clear reason for destroying the Lizard People. Got to keep those kids safe!

• Betty and Wilma return from the farm and there's a lesson learned or something. I can't really parse the emotional messages!

The Ranking!
+1! Look at that! A positive ranking even though Betty never got into a bikinirock! That proves this comic book is special!

The Flintstones #7

This is the kind of joke that young people get pissed at if an older person makes it but young people are all "Right?!" if a young person makes it.

Young people are too young to be so defensive all the time. Learning to be defensive about anything you think is a criticism simply teaches you to believe everything is a criticism or a judgment. Then you become an old person who is too old to be so defensive all the time! Sometimes an observation is just a neutral observation! I sometimes feel that 95% of the anger and resentment carried around by us as a people is caused by our own preconceived notions and jumping to conclusions. You know how much energy is wasted in discussions where somebody says something and somebody else misunderstands the statement and gets angry at it? Then the first person has to clarify the statement to show how the second person got it wrong but then the second person, trusting confidently in their own thoughts about other things, doubts the first person's clarification. Because how did the second person read it as a terrible statement unless the first person didn't obviously mean what was so obviously horrible?! And even if the first person can thoroughly clarify the statement, the second person will remain suspicious and bitterly hold on to their first erroneous interpretation of the statement! So much wasted energy! It would be nice if somebody could be all, "Statement!" And the next person would be all, "Whoa, dude! Really?" And the first person would be all, "No, no! Clarified statement!" And the second person would be all, "Oh yeah! Okay! I see that. Thanks!" Instead we all have to stand our stupid ground being angry and feeling holier than the next person.

Now I'm mad at everybody and full of bitter resentment! You know what? I take it all back. I don't even want to get involved with people who feel they need to police everybody else. Next time you police somebody on the Internet, just remember what we all think of the real police! Fucking pigs!

I know a lot of you support the police blindly. But you racists aren't part of this current discussion so I knew I could exclude you.

Steve Pugh isn't doing the arts on this issue so I'm already disappointed. I didn't notice his name was missing from the cover. I just took one look at the first panel and thought, "Doodle poop." That's how I curse inside my own head, just in case God is listening. But I know he doesn't read the Internet because it's Satan's Playground, so I can say motherfucker and cunt all day long here.

Even though Pugh isn't arting this issue, I still want to put my filthy lips all over Betty's everything.

This week in Bedrock, The Flintstones learn about Hell! They also learn that the Great Gazoo is keeping tabs on all of them while protecting them from con artist aliens from outer space. Other stuff probably also happens since that's how this book works. It utilizes a thing called vignettes which isn't a crime fighting salad dressing like I first thought.

One thing that happens is the head priest of the Church of Gerald invents indulgences. He does it on accident so it's not like he was trying to get rich by cleansing people's sins so that they don't wind up in Hell. He just invented Hell to get people to fear doing bad things and then he suggested to a parishioner that maybe she do good things to make up for the bad things she's done. But she, like everybody, is way too busy for all that. And giving money is almost always an acceptable solution to one's problems. I mean, you would think that not doing the bad thing is the best solution. But sometimes you do bad things because you want to do them so badly and it's always nice if you can pretend the bad thing doesn't matter because you're giving money to offset your sin. Especially if you're, say, a big business and it would cost a lot of money to clean up all of the pollution created by your business. Everybody knows you don't want to be a major polluter, right? But what can you do?! You still have to make all of your money doing the thing you've been doing the exact same way forever. Changing takes too much time and money! But if not changing only takes money (and far less than you would be out if you changed to stop doing the bad thing), it's obviously the best choice!

It's so much cheaper to just not believe in sinning or a God!

Gazoo writes his report about humans but it's all "Blah blah blah lies and more lies and propaganda against humans!" And then there's another story happening about Fred being compassionate enough to help out some idiot who gets himself crushed at the quarry. It's too complex for me. I barely even noticed the criticism against art critics running through the story.

The Ranking!
This comic book is way too smart for me. It's like I'm reading a college essay written by a student who actually cares about their grade. But I'm smart enough to know that I want people to think I like smart things! So I totally love this comic book! It's my favorite. Whew, does it make you think! Also if you don't want to think because you're a typical comic book reader, you can probably jerk off to a couple panels of Betty Rubble. I can't say the same if you're into guys though because all the guys look like tree trunks wrapped in fur skirts. Oh man! That phrase "fur skirt" just got me horny for some reason! I mean, I'm going to go read some Shakespeare now!

The Flintstones #6

It's the end of the world!

Not surprisingly, this issue with is called "The End of the World as We Know It". Surprisingly, I resisted adding the "as we know it" to my caption for the cover! More surprisingly, Mark Russell chose to do the thing every hack writer would have chosen to do by using that name. That's okay. I'd feel like I'd be in a better condition to judge if I wasn't sitting here feeling really horny for the fictional Betty Rubble.

Before we get to the part of the story where civilization breaks down at the thought of impending doom and everybody becomes savage barbarians bent on survival even if they have to eat their neighbor to accomplish it, let's take a look at how the experiment of civilization is coming along in Bedrock!

Yay! Civilization! I'll stay right here! Did I quote that song correctly?

Later, the bowling ball and the vacuum cleaner have a philosophical discussion about the meaning of life. Surprisngly, the vacuum cleaner doesn't come to the conclusion that life sucks. Unsurprisingly, I just did that tired old joke! The bowling ball, on the other hand, gives life a 9 out of 10. Brozingo!

Each comic book in this series is less like a coherent story and more like a bunch of sketches that revolve around a theme. Sometimes the book can be a bit more story-like than others, like last issue which was half Bamm-Bamm's origin story. I only mention it so that you'll stop wondering why every single one of my paragraphs begins with "Meanwhile" or "Later" or "Back in the Rubbles' bedroom." Because meanwhile, Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm are recruited by Professor Sargon (he's a satirical take on that computer Chess game from the Eighties, Sargon) to become interns at the Science Cave. They've recently gotten a grant to study the sex lives of moths. That's probably totally appropriate for high school kids because who knows more about terrible sex than they do? I suppose I'm being judgmental. For all I know, moths have great sex.

While Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm are doing unpaid work for Professor Sargon who takes an extra long lunch, the moths escape. That's probably a plot point and it'll probably be bad news for somebody! Maybe that's how the world ends? Not in fire or ice but moths.

I'm only scanning this for the Non-Certified Spouse. She has a moth phobia.

The moths begin to fuck which seems about on par with the filth The Flintstones used to air on television. While the moths fuck, Professor Sargon runs a astronomical projection program on his Applecus to discover that an asteroid is on course to strike the Earth!

Everybody panics in different ways. Bamm-Bamm declares he won't be going to school in the interim. Professor Sargon watches moths fuck. Fred, Wilma, and Pebbles attend service at the Church of Gerald.

I wonder how many pedophile priests have used the preach-around joke?

The Flintstones abandon the church when everything breaks out into chaos. Because the only thing keeping people civilized is the thinnest of social contracts. Most of us agree to not be a dick when we go out in public because we don't want to be the victim of dickitude ourselves. But once a small percentage of people decide to break that contract, we're all fucked. At that point, it's beat the shit out of the next guy with a club before he beats the shit out of you! Our social contract for peace rests solely on our selfish desire to not have to deal with other people's shit.

Bedrock is being destroyed by the panicked populace. Pebbles decides that Professor Sargon should recant his observation simply to calm everybody down. Let them die in three days instead of killing each other immediately. Professor Sargon refuses to be a part of a beautiful lie because he adheres to the ugly truth no matter what may come. It's at that moment he discovers the fucking moths messed up his calculations. See? They were a plot point!

I think this story means Mark Russell is a climate change denier. That's totally what he's saying here, right? Science can fuck up so we should never believe it! I mean, climate change? Really?! Show me one other planet that has ever become completely inhospitable to life due to an abundance of greenhouse gases! You can't, can you?! And if you can, I just won't believe it matters because if you said Venus, I say, "Pshaw!" Name a different one because I just won't accept that one.

The news reporter goes back on air to tell everybody that they aren't going to die. He goes on to say, "I hope we can all just go back to pretending we're good people, life being a series of mutually agreed-upon delusions designed to keep us from becoming ongoing accumulations of regret." That's so well said, I'm going to pretend I wrote it. I wrote that bit. Forget how I said the character in the comic book said it. It was totally me.

The Ranking!
No change because it's as high in the rankings as it's going to get until I decide I, ultimately, like it better than The Sheriff of Babylon. Maybe when The Flintstones reaches Issue #13, I'll give it the first spot. Until then, just know this is the most enjoyable monthly comic book I'm currently reading.