Bonus Book! #13 (Justice League International #24) (1989)

Simon Bisley got in trouble for drawing a penis in Lobo's arm musculature but this Haspiel guy can just draw a penis right on Maxwell Lord's penis?

I'm judging this Bonus Book by the cover and this is my judgment. You know how you have that friend that's always talking shit and causing trouble? And you know how sometimes somebody reacts violently toward your friend being an unbearable prick to strangers? You know how you just shrug instead of having their back and thinking, "Yeah, well, what did they think was going to happen?" That's what I think just happened to Maxwell Lord. He's a fucking prick and the Justice League are probably kicking back at headquarters shrugging and saying, "What did Max think was going to happen?!"

See?! They're just watching dumb old sci-fi movies which Giffen and DeMatteis probably stole plots and quotes from.

Actually, this takes place before Max Lord is kidnapped. He's in the panel to the right, just after the spot where I cut off the scan. You can just make out his briefcase because I did a sloppy job!

I'm really not the person to complain about this but every single sentence of dialogue in this story ends in an exclamation point! At first I was all, "Why is this story about Booster and Beetle talking about television shows and movies so exciting?!" And then I was all, "Hey...I recognize this trick!" Half of my novels use an exclamation point at the end of every sentence to trick movie studios into optioning the rights!

This is the part where I might sometimes critique the art but fuck if I complain about any artist that worked with Harvey Pekar. He may have passed on but he still scares the shit out of me. Also I think Max Lord's nose is another penis.

The only sentences that don't end in an exclamation point end in ellipsis or a question. That means these characters are either shouting, questioning somebody, or questioning themselves. Fuck. I think I just described the way I talk.

I almost questioned how this robot, in 1989, could sound this animated with all the exclamation points. But then I remembered the Wizard of Wor arcade cabinet constantly laughing at me.

Max Lord was just kidnapped by that robot pretending to be a chauffeur. I'm less curious about who kidnapped him and why then I am about this robot's personal life. Is he only programmed to imitate chauffeurs? I'd like to imagine he has a rich and vibrant life on his off hours where he's married to a toaster oven that pretends to be a lawyer and has three electric pencil sharpener children.

While in the back of the limousine, Maxwell Lord thinks his first calm sentence: "Might as well get comfortable." Man, that's the only one I would have exclamated!

It was the time of the Romans!

Never mind that last caption. It was for me and like two other people.

I've matured so much over the last ten years that I'm not going to write an entire paragraph on this woman's ass. But I haven't matured enough not to be proud of my maturity.

Imagine being so wealthy that you didn't immediately have this thought when a fucking robot driving a limo kidnapped you.

"Oh, I'm being kidnapped by a robot! Must be run of the mill blue collar super villains! How embarrassing!"

The kidnappers, being so well-funded, have kidnapped Max Lord to become, um, even betterly well funded! They want half a billion dollars for his return. Who's going to pay it? I don't know. Superman? Does he have that kind of money? I bet he makes diamonds up his butthole while he works out on Dr. Shay Veritas's bench press she invented that lets Superman press the equivalent of five Earths so that he can drip one single drop of sweat and then refuse to towel off the machine.

As an aside that has nothing to do with this comic but does sort of involve Superman and one of my least favorite writers on his book, Scott Lobdell, I've now seen enough examples online where Scott Lobdell comments on a person's review of one of his books (usually when they're complementary (which is something that actually happens? I know, I was floored too!)) to be convinced he's read my reviews. So, because I'm maturing, I'm sorry for being such a huge hilarious jerk to you, Mr. Lobdell!

The kidnappers cannot convince anybody to pay them 500 million dollars so the people who hired them (and paid for the headquarters and the robot driver) fire them for not being able to get the money. Sure, I guess. But how is it the fault of the mercenaries if the amount you wanted for Max Lord is just too high? They didn't come up with the figures! And when the ransom isn't going to make a profit, they fire the mercenaries and probably stiff them too! Who works like that?!

Because the originator of the kidnapping pulls all funding, the mercenaries accept paying jobs from Maxwell Lord and he frees himself. So let me get this straight. A criminal organization spent a shit-ton of money to kidnap Max Lord in the hopes that they could make an even bigger shit-ton of money. But when nobody can get enough money together in 24 hours, they get cold feet and bail on the people they hired to kidnap Max. It's a good thing the story never reveals who the criminal mastermind of this plan was because their reputation would have been in tatters. They'd never get another gig as an antagonist in the DC Universe!

Here's a quote from the writer of this story:

I hope you finally got a chance to write your new story because this one where the hostage winds up being too much trouble for the kidnappers so they eventually pay to get rid of him was old when I first read this in 1989!

This was the final Bonus Book in DC's Bonus Book project. I'm sad that I don't have the Bonus Book with art by Rob Liefeld. But then that one was in Warlord and I never read that series.

OMAC #8

One More Annoying Comic

This issue is called "Omit, Mutilate, And Cancel". It begins with Kevin Kho explaining how he is not OMAC. He just turns into that creature against his will. And then he states that this (The Narration Boxes?) is his last will and testament. Is he planning on killing himself because his life has become so out of control? Or is he going to try to scare OMAC out of him? Perhaps he'll threaten suicide until Brother Eye actually believes Kevin might go through with it. Then Brother Eye will be forced to remove OMAC from Kevin as host.

But I think none of that will happen. I'm pretty sure Kevin will come to terms with being OMAC and then go over and hang out with Justice League International as their bodyguard.

Kevin tells the story of his flight from Cambodia at six years old. His sisters were nowhere to be found and his mother was wounded. His father told them to keep running while he stayed back to protect them. Kevin never saw his father again. And then his mother died.

Maybe his father and sisters will come back as Massacres?

The narration boxes hang over scenes of OMAC fighting wave after wave of guards. He then begins to fight Sarge and Maribel (no sign of Knipper) as they try to contain him for Maxwell Lord. And in space, Max has sent some space vehicles to destroy Brother Eye's satellite.

OMAC destroys Checkmate Headquarters during the fight. Just the inside though! Don't worry, Mt. Rushmore is still standing.

More or less.

During the fight, the narration boxes sort of match up with the action in a metaphoric sense. But they're pretty boring and standard. "My parents gave me strength." "Life was hard." "I found my own way." "blah blah blah" At the end of the fight, he's destroyed all of Checkmate's big weapons and a monster sent from Cadmus before Brother Eye teleports him back to Metropolis (taking Sarge's hand with him. That teleporting is dangerous).

Kevin teleports into his house where Jody is waiting for him. She needs to know what's been going on and he says he'll explain just before the wall explodes outward. Checkmate has found him. And Brother Eye's hull was intended to be magnetized by Maxwell Lord's weapons and not destroyed.

So there is also a bunch of asteroids orbiting Earth as well as all the other shit nobody knows about. Maybe everything is hidden by the asteroids orbiting Earth. The asteroids are probably debris left over from when Peraxxus tried to upcycle the Earth.

Before Brother Eye is completely encased in Asteroid and loses contact with OMAC, he energizes Kevin one final time. This time he makes Kevin OMAC permanently. But at least Kevin keeps his own mind this time and doesn't talk like a retarded Hulk. Max calls off his men because he feels OMAC is no threat. The real threat was Brother Eye. And Jody doesn't know what to think now that she knows Kevin is OMAC. But it doesn't really matter because Kevin pushes her away and stomps off out of the comic series.

"The end?" See those quotes? That was in the comic. I wouldn't write that!

OMAC Issue #8 Rating: No change in Ranking. This comic was a really quick read. The battle wasn't exciting and the narration boxes seeming to go hand in hand with the action wasn't anything special. The narration boxes were trite and general and fairly cliché. What kept it from being a total disappointment was the way they kept their story open-ended. They left OMAC usable for other comics by giving him Kevin's mind and brain and his own free will. But they also kept from destroying Brother Eye and encasing him in solid rock so that he can still be a future threat. And Maxwell Lord is obviously going to continue to be up to no good. So OMAC may be over but I'm sure they'll find a place in the New DCU to tell more of his story. Or at least more of Maxwell Lord's story.

OMAC #2

The video for Teardrop is probably what Pro-Lifers think is really going on in the womb. At all stages. Forever.

It turns out OMAC no longer stands for One Man Army Corps. Probably because DC already had Men of War and who needs another military book, amirite? Unless Blackhawks counts. And speaking of Men of War (although I should save this for the Men of War post): does DC expect its readers to be anything but cynical about its reboot motivations when it cancels Men of War and replaces it with GI Combat? Oh look! The war book was cancelled due to low numbers. Maybe we should replace it with another war book! Then we can use all the stories we were going to do for Men of War in GI Combat! And people will buy it because it's a new title instead of that old title which sucked! I know there are more changes than that. But what's really happening is DC is changing one war book that didn't sell with another war book that will never sell as well as they want because they put JT Krul at the helm! Fuck. Really? Eat me, DC! You are so lucky I get 13 titles free each month or I would start beginning to possibly consider maybe not purchasing one of your 52 titles! Stupid suck ass JT Krul.

I would have called it the Overwhelming Military Ambiguity Container.

Oh yeah, returning to my previous thought, OMAC now stands for One Machine Attack Construct. Which sounds like he'll be beating the the hell out of tons of shit even more than when he was a One Man Army! It also sounds like Kevin has acquired a perfected version of the virus that the Suicide Squad had to stop. Sort of. A little bit. If you squint and kick yourself in the balls. Which I just did before having that thought. Am I the only person in the world who can't sit comfortably and correctly in an office chair? Generally I just squat in it like a [insert foreign type that squats a lot]. <--- Irishman?

As you can probably read in that panel I posted, Brother Eye thinks he's controlling Kevin. He's probably right. He can probably flip the OMAC switch any time he wants. Let me guess: Kevin is now going to wander the Earth like Carradine's character (my friend Ken via Instant Messenger: "Not sure how to spell it, but it's Quay Chang Cane" Close!) in Kung Fu or Bruce David Banner in The Hulk.

OMAC THE TELEVISION SERIES BY ME!
EPISODE ONE: Only Men Are Callous

Kevin Kho wanders through the Southwest. He ends up in Santa Fe wandering around a local artist fair. A man walks by a native themed pottery stand and scoffs! Kevin begins to feel weird. Brother Eye can't stand smugness! Kevin erupts into OMAC and smashes everything including the scoffer's skull! The police ride up on burros to arrest him but OMAC runs into an alley and changes back to Kevin. Kevin pouts about all the lives he's hurt but just as he's about to turn his back on the scene, he sees the pottery artist smile and hug her pot! He turns and walks away into the desert with sad music playing.

OMAC's origin story!

This issue, I learn that Cadmus is in Metropolis! And Checkmate makes its first actual appearance (I think) investigating OMAC's attack on Cadmus. That chick that looks like Jonni DC Continuity Cop in the above panel is a Checkmater. And Cadmus is a part of Checkmate. The only Checkmate comics I read were the ones that crossed over with Suicide Squad. I wasn't really interested in them but this following bit in OMAC makes them look about 15 percent more interesting than 20 years ago. That's pretty slow growth.

I guess I was wrong about them being a United States agency. Except I guess they are! They're just privatized, really!

After throwing his cell phone away in the desert because Brother Eye kept talking to him through it, Kevin Banner Caine walks into Wayne, Texas. How is he going to get home to Metropolis without a cell phone?! How is he going to take instagram pictures of his trip and post them to Twitter?! He's going to fall so far behind on his tumblr time wasting! This Kevin is in some serious trouble!

Kevin stops into a bar and ends up in the middle of this situation:

I would have gone with the name Rockest.

Oh, turns out the guy's name really is Rocker! His codename is Amazing Man and he worked for Checkmate before Cadmus gave him his rock man abilities.

No relation to this Amazing Man. As far as I know.

It looks like Brother Eye teleported OMAC into this little Texas town to capture Rocker. I think OMAC just turned into the 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo and Pokemon as well as Kung Fu and The Hulk. Is OMAC going to be sent from place to place to capture escaped Cadmus projects? OMAC ends up throwing a building at him.

Well then maybe you should have sent a poet to capture him!

The Amazing Rocker Man absorbs stuff. So it just absorbs that building. But after OMAC literally punches his face off (yes, literally literally, not figuratively literally!), Rocker decides to absorb OMAC's power. Which is, of course, what Brother Eye wanted all along. Once Rocker is full of OMAC circuitry, Brother Eye uploads him into his satellite for later use. With the fight over, Brother Eye teleports OMAC to Metropolis. No, just kidding! He only teleports him to the bus station in Fort Worth. Kevin can find his own miserable way back home!

You know, after Brother Eye sends him on on another mission to Louisiana. Also, the last page big surprise reveal just makes the Reboot even more less of a reboot.

So he's back? Again again again? Again?

I was going to end there but needed an addendum. I just read all of Maxwell Lord's confusing history. In an off-hand way, I knew a bunch of it. Like how he killed Ted and how Wonder Woman broke his neck. But I hadn't known about all of the OMAC stuff he was involved in and how he ended up running Checkmate. So this comic makes a lot more sense as one of the titles of the New 52. And that nano-virus in Suicide Squad looks to actually have been this OMAC virus that Maxwell Lord tried to release on the world. Which is why Checkmate arrived at the scene after Suicide Squad killed everyone.

You know, you knowing a lot about the DC Universe really helps explain what is supposed to be some kind of reboot. I suppose just changing all the titles to Issue One was reboot enough. Why ditch all of the history?! Now I have to wonder about all the people who bitched and moaned about the reboot. Are they just sad that they aren't picking up Detective Comics #794?