Lobo Loves Road Runner #1

If a comic book writer has the last name of Morrison and isn't Grant, they should have to use their first initial along with their last name to identify themselves. Also I want my $4.99 back because I was expecting this thing to blow my fucking mind!

I didn't really think Grant Morrison wrote this issue. But my point still stands.

I spent a majority of the 90s having to read comic books featuring Lobo getting his ass kicked by the title character to prove how amazing the title character was. After Lobo became hugely popular as the most dangerous character in the DC Universe so, of course, every writer wanted to show their main character taking him down. I accepted it because I knew most of the writers wished they had created such a fantastic character. I wouldn't say they were jealous but I might say they were shitting all over Lobo due to self-esteem issues derived from being raised in a household without any parental love and affection. Besides, Lobo made it through that trial and wound up in his own comic book where he didn't have to deal with small-minded writers who hated seeing an obscenity to all common decency become the greatest DC character to ever be created!

But now, am I seriously going to have to see him get his ass handed to him by the fucking Road Runner? If I were writing this comic book, I would have Lobo accept the contract on Road Runner from ACME and head off to kill the Road Runner with one of ACME's bullshit gizmos which fails spectacularly. He'd then tear up the contract and head back to murder every person working for ACME. The majority of the book would be Lobo just stuffing ACME anvils up ACME employee assholes. Maybe Road Runner would hang out with him yelling "Meep meep!" occasionally because his name is on the cover.

The first half of the story explains how Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner became intelligent. Should I have put intelligent in quotes? I mean, Road Runner only ever said "Meep meep!" (unless it's "Beep Beep!" but I don't think it is, even if the comic book does) and Wile E. Coyote just about killed himself every time he touched anything mechanical. See, what happened is that ACME Laboratories mixed alien DNA with animals to create fast road runners, wily coyotes, slobbering cats, and rapist skunks. What did these creatures decide to do with their new roles in the animal kingdom? Well, the coyote wanted to eat the road runner and the road runner just wanted to run around on roads.

For some reason, I spent twenty minutes staring at this picture. Then I orgasmed.

Meanwhile Lobo isn't on Earth or encountering the Road Runner at all. But he's accepted a mysterious contract so that's probably a good sign! I mean it's not a good sign for the Road Runner! Because there's no way Lobo is going to fail to kill the stupid bird! No way at all! I mean, I probably don't even have to read the rest of this comic book, do I? The Road Runner is as good as dead.

Although I've got this nagging feeling I haven't felt since all through the 90s! Lobo might wind up in a wedding gown with video footage of him being fucked by an over-sized bird that only says, "Meep meep bueno!"

Oh. I guess Lobo's contract is to kill somebody else. Hopefully Woody Woodpecker.

Wile E. meets up with Lobo because it's easier than you might expect. Besides, you don't want to read fifteen pages of Wile E. trying to find Lobo, do you? That's fifteen pages of no Lobo! When they meet up, Lobo accepts the Road Runner job but sends Wile E. to go finish the job he was on. Hopefully it's easier than killing a stupid Looney Tunes bird or Lobo is going to fail a contract!

Not that Lobo isn't going to not fail the Road Runner contract. Did I put the right amount of negatives in that statement so that it means he won't not not kill the Road Runner?

Lobo's first attempt to kill the Road Runner ends with his face on fire and then blowing up. That's a pretty good start!

Next Lobo swallows a grenade and blows his head off. He's getting closer!

After that, Lobo hooks an eagle instead of the Road Runner and is flown off a cliff to fall in a ravine. Oh! Just about had the stupid bird!

Finally, Lobo blows himself up with an atom bomb while the Road Runner remains unharmed. This comic book is so unrealistic!

The story ends with all the contracts being called off so that Road Runner fans don't wind up crying snot all over their Road Runner stuffed animals. They're lucky too because Lobo was just about to kill that bird, I just know it.

The Wile E. Coyote in space story doesn't really matter because Lobo wasn't in it. Kilowog was, so if you're into that ugly bastich, you might want to pick up this issue. Also if you love jerking off to penises masquerading as coyote noses. That sure was a surprise! I haven't seen one of those since they stopped publishing "Women Who Get Off On Penises That Look Like Coyote Noses" magazine. Fucking 70s porn magazines were so great in their specificity!

The back-up story is about the time Lobo met Bugs Bunny in Las Vegas. And you know what they say! What gets shoved down Bugs Bunny's throat in Las Vegas is fucking huge.

Swamp Thing #6

In the fight of the century, Zatanna's vagina loses to her leotard!

 The Review or Whatever!
Just in case you haven't read this issue yet and you just love having stories spoiled, either because you're filled with a false passion that pretends to a passion for knowing things before you experience them or because you never intended to read this comic book any way, I'm going to expose the big twist in this comic book right now: Len Wein name drops a few poets. They're a couple of the typical poets that are easy to name drop because everybody knows them: Robert Frost and T.S. Eliot. When you want readers to know you're super literate and intelligent enough to appreciate poetry (which, let's face it, you have to have something weird going on in your head (like a high IQ!) to appreciate all of that rhyming--and sometimes even non-rhyming!--gobbledygook!), you can't be dropping names that they might not recognize like John Betjeman and those other ones nobody remembers without grabbing an anthology of poetry and flipping through the pages to find some more names to list other than John Betjeman! Like, um, Patrick Kavanagh? He's a poet? I guess? And, um, Louise Bogan?

No wait! I just realized the big twist was that Matt Cable's body was actually possessed by Anton Arcane and now Anton Arcane is the Swamp Thing! Holy goose penises! The world is in big trouble! Except that this is the final issue of the limited series, so I think the world will be fine. So it isn't ending in fire or ice or with a bang or with a whimper or choked by plants. It's just going to keep going on and on and on. Of course, that's what would happen anyway, even with the fire or the ice or the bangs or the whimpers or the plants! But then, we understand that when somebody says "the end of the world," they actually mean "the end of all human life on the world which is really basically the same thing, and which probably includes the dolphins as well, leaving no intelligence grand enough to think about existence, or consider any scale larger than the creature's own sphere of needs." Effectively, that would kill "the world" because nothing would be left that could conceive of the world. But Earth itself would keep chugging right along. We all understand that, right? Because I'm sick to death of people who hear the phrase "destroying the Earth" and respond "the Earth will be fine!" Yeah, we know that, chicken dumpling! What people are concerned with saving is a world in which humans can continue to live in peace and prosperity and little private dwellings where they can masturbate in peace and quiet!

Is that a good enough review? I haven't even finished reading the comic book yet! But I have a stupid friend coming into town for couple days that is going to completely throw off my schedule! And just when I was getting my backlog down to one week of comics! I mean, a lot of my comics in my stack have been there for far longer than one week! But that's because I keep putting the Rebirth stuff first. One week behind to me is having only 14 comics in the stack before new comics come out on Wednesday! So, um, what that means is I'm too busy for a proper review! Especially since I have to go pick up that jerk friend at the airport in about an hour! And I have to go catch Pokémon! They're all getting away!

Never mind how ridiculous it would be to have ensure a fair fight when fighting for the fate of all humankind! I'm curious as to what the fuck pose Zatanna is trying to strike?!

Etta Candy and Steve Trevor discuss how to save the world from Swamp Thing. Their top two options are sending in Seal Team Six and nuking Louisiana. I suppose that's some kind of joke? That Seal Team Six is so great at their job (which is killing, I guess? Being good at killing is heroic?) that they're almost as good as just nuking a place. That doesn't sound like a good comparison, does it? I suppose Seal Team Six is who you send in to kill precisely but with the efficiency of a nuclear bomb! Or, just use the nuke, if you don't give a shit about the people of Louisiana because, let's face it, do we?

I'm fairly certain the ARGUS scenes are parody or satire or one of those things where you portray an organization as ridiculous in a matter-of-fact way. It's social commentary or something. Or maybe Len Wein just hates ARGUS and Steve Trevor and New and Less-Improved Etta Candy (aka Baby Amanda)?

Zatanna and Alec use the Hand of Fatima to reverse the spell and Alec is once again the Swamp Thing. After that, Anton Arcane mistakes The Spectre for Jesus and winds up getting dragged to hell. See, Jesus would never do that! I mean, not literally. He doesn't sully his hands with the physical dragging of souls to hell. He just damns everybody right from the get go by covering his ears and screaming "LALALALALALALA!" whenever they say or do anything until they say, "I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior!" And also they must have to say it in just the right way or Jesus won't believe them. Because I've said it out loud many times but never actually meant it. I don't mean to suggest I've said it in an attempt to fool Jesus Christ just in case he was really the son of God (he wasn't, if he existed at all). I just meant there have been times I've needed to say that phrase in a conversation where I was probably shitting all over Jesus's supposed merit badges. Anyway, my point is that Jesus Christ is sending everybody to hell for his ego's sake and we're supposed to believe he's merciful? One thing I'm fairly certain isn't in the definition of mercy is "declarations of fealty with horrible strings attached."

Kelley Jones and Michelle Madsen do a masterful job with Etrigan.

Another silly ARGUS scene and the story is almost over! There's just time for a final scene between Swamp Thing and The Phantom Stranger. It will probably go something like this:

Swamp Thing: "This sucks!"
The Phantom Stranger: "I can't help you! I'm not allowed! Stop asking me for favors!"
Alec Holland: "I want my dick back."

Swamp Thing #5

The Review or Whatever!
I wound up in my father-in-law and his wife's garden shed last week (never mind how!) and noticed that they had four or five big containers of Roundup stored inside. Seriously? It's not that I began judging them for using Roundup. If somebody wants to purchase and use poison from Monsanto, who am I to vociferously point out that they're monsters? What I did judge them for is how they are loudly and adamantly opposed to Monsanto's bullshit practices that hurt farms and reduce the amount of variety in agricultural yields and yet they're still buying Monsanto's products when it suits their own needs and desires! This is the problem I have with most people and their supposed belief system. Their belief system only really means anything when it's stopping other people from pursuing their wants, needs, and desires. But if it somehow gets in the way of keeping pests out of your garden? Well, I guess an exception can be made to any belief. It's the same problem I have with people crying out for forgiving college tuition. Look, I'm all for free college education but if you think the system that currently exists where people pay exorbitant rates and wind up in debt for decades is wrong, don't fucking participate in that system. Even if it fucking means you don't get a "real" college education. Sometimes the person making sacrifices for their beliefs and their ethics will wind up being you. Don't always expect other people to make those sacrifices for you. Or go to a State school nearby one of the big name universities and spend all your free time at the big name campus meeting people. Because that's the only real benefit of expensive universities! It's getting into the right crowds and getting to know the people who move in those circles. The name of the school on the degree barely matters when you can wink at the person in the interview and name drop all the right names!

The college tuition thing is, of course, an easy one for me to argue about since I got my college education in the nineties. But it was still expensive, depending on where you went. I chose to go to San Jose State University where tuition was maybe $6000 a year? I think? I don't remember! Maybe that was a semester but then that sounds like way too much for SJSU! Whatever it was, it was affordable. Of course, I now clean floors for a living with my San Jose State University Literature Degree, so maybe I'm wrong about the need to go to a better, more expensive school. Although I think my main problem with my status in life is my lack of ambition and my missing need to prove anything to my absentee father. Hell, my main reason to go to college was that I wasn't ready to be an adult. And my main reason for getting a literature degree was because reading and writing about what I read is what I enjoyed doing. I wasn't thinking about my future career. Also, I own my floor cleaning business, so maybe I'm doing better than I've actually presented myself as doing.

I'm not saying everybody has to be a martyr! But you should realize that if you have a problem with the system, participating within the rules and confines of that system is only helping to perpetuate that system. Maybe not participating won't destroy the system, but at least you can serve as an example to others that they can get along a different way. And if enough people get along in a different way, living outside of the regular system becomes a second, viable option for future dissidents! It's much tougher now that the frontier has disappeared. It must have been nice when all you had to do when you disagreed with the majority was to pack up a suitcase and head West. It must have been even nicer when heading West just meant climbing into a covered wagon instead of climbing on board a rickety old ship to cross the Atlantic. Fleeing from a system to set up your own somewhere else is always easier than changing the system, even if you have to genocide some people to live your dreams of freedom. At times like that, you just invent some stupid phrase like "Manifest Destiny" and you're suddenly not as evil as the system you were fleeing from! Unless it was the evil system that invented that phrase in the first place to manipulate disgruntled people into leaving the cities where they were just causing trouble and sending them out West to do their dirty work for them by killing the natives.

You know what? Never mind! Anything you do, you're probably doing at the behest of our lizard lords! Maybe we should all just give up and enjoy the next season of our favorite television shows. And if that gets too boring, we can all get angry over a stupid comic book.

Yeah! Why do I think I'm Scooby Doo?! I can't unmask the evils of the world! I'm just as biased as everybody else! I just happened to read Catch-22 and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and The Grapes of Wrath and I suddenly think I can beat the fucking system!

Matt Cable, the new Swamp Thing, has just made demands of the world's leaders to give control to him and the plants. That's probably not going to happen because leaders love their power and think that by retaining their power, they're making a stand for the world! In actuality, all they're doing is gambling the innocent lives of everybody they're supposedly working for and making a stand to retain their own power in the hopes that Swamp Thing is bluffing. The only way that Matt Cable can be stopped is if Alec Holland can figure out a way to reverse the spell that gave Matt the power. But he can't do that underground, so The Phantom Stranger whisks him away to Nanda Parbat. I suppose that's not really helping since The Phantom Stranger isn't allowed to help, according to some cosmic rulebook he never shows anybody. I think he's really just lazy.

Once Alec Holland gets what he needs in Nanda Parbat which is the Clenched Fist of Fatima, he has to walk home. So I guess the world is going to end long before he can get back to Louisiana. Unless, of course, Steve Trevor and ARGUS can think of something!

The Titans are off planet? Why the fuck are the Titans off planet?! It's not like Starfire is still in the group! Not like they'd help anyway. What about reaching out to Spyral? They have Midnighter and Apollo's home number!

ARGUS will probably just fuck everything up and make it worse since they pretty much represent the American Military in this scenario. Military might can't save the day against a Plant God! Although they do have napalm and DDT, so maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, Alec manages to hitch a ride to Gotham via The Phantom Stranger so that he can get some help from The Spectre. You know? God sure has a lot of servants in the DC Universe for a guy who doesn't interfere and has a whole bunch of rules about letting people free will it up themselves.

Alec introduces The Spectre to the Clenched Fist of Fatima and says, "We need to talk." Hee hee. I bet.

Swamp Thing #4

Alec's got quite the body for a biochemist. Although it's rather shitty for a botanist.

The Review
I have no idea how this series reads to younger audiences but I'm enjoying it because it's such a throwback to the comic books I read when I was younger. Everything about it hearkens back to pre-Crisis DC Comics books: the look, the written style, the thought balloons, the writer, Zatanna's extreme level of horniness. Maybe that last only existed in my head back when I was younger although I do remember her trying to fuck Blue Devil back when she wore a jumbo shrimp on her head. So I think Zatanna has constantly been trying to get laid. I bet she's fucked the entire Justice League. She's my hero. This wasn't much of a "The Review" section, was it? Fuck it. I'm crap at this part anyway. If you're into old Swamp Thing comic books, this book is probably going to be up your whatever. I can't bother to think of the word I was going to use because I'm imagining what Zatanna would do to Cyborg.

The Commentary
This is an appropriate series for one of these throwback covers that present the potential purchaser with the crazy "What the fuck?!" scenario that will be taking place within the comic book. Covers like this were important in a time when young kids didn't collect entire runs of comic books but instead, each week, picked a few with the most outrageous stories from off of the spinner rack at the corner store. These were comics bent over at the middle from being packed into the metal slots and already well-fondled and sticky from other kids having already read them in the store. I generally prefer covers that don't scream some absurdity into my face in the hopes that I'll buy a single issue in the run of a series because I couldn't pass up the cover's claim of wacky antics supposedly going on inside. I've become a fan of covers that create a consistent mood from month to month, like The Omega Men or the early I, Vampire issues at the beginning of The New 52. DC also seems to love variant covers although I can't imagine why. I understand why they like the limited edition variant covers because those generally only go to shops who buy a certain amount of the issue with the regular cover. But what are the advantages of doing things like the John Romita Jr. variant months? It boggles my mind that DC sells enough extra copies to pay for the additional art work from the artist. I just buy whichever cover my comic book shop shoves into my pullhole. But I suppose there are John Romita Jr fans who must purchase every single one of his variant covers even if they don't normally read the series on which the cover appears, right? Are there rabid fans of John Romita Jr? I get why DC would shove Harley Quinn on all of the covers but minimalist art by John Romita Jr where everybody looks like a character from Kick Ass? That strains my credulity!

So last month in Swamp Thing, Zatanna had just helped Alec Holland get his body back while turning Matt Cable into the new Swamp Thing. Zatanna knew this was going to be the result of the spell but she never informed Alec. You would think that would be something Zatanna would have made clear being that she's supposedly Alec's friend. But instead she kept acting mysterious about the price Matt Cable would pay. I guess Alec could have stopped obsessing over having a human penis again and actually stopped the ritual to ask, "What the fuck is this price you people keeping talking about?" Especially since he just recently went through the same thing in his New 52 comic book. Will he never learn? Maybe Plant Gods can't form new memories so he simply didn't remember the previous incident.

I'm fairly certain he believed you were going to die, Matt, which is probably why he avoided asking too many questions.

The conversation about the price is finally broached with Alec being all "Nobody told me!" and Zatanna being all "I assumed you knew! I kept saying 'The price! The price!' and you kept saying 'Just get on with it, Madame Xanadu!'" and Matt going all "Ha ha! Sucker!" Alec even says, "We talked around it." See? He knew he was avoiding knowing the price because he just assumed his friend Matt was going to die and Alec wanted to be human badly enough to not want to know! Coward!

Oh, don't you start peppering everything you say with 'literally' as well, Zatanna! I expect that kind of overused, boring, exaggerated emphasis from Madame Xanadu but you?! You're better than that!

This horror story takes a literally weird turn once Zatanna literally informs Alec that he literally can't change back except by a literal act of God. It literally becomes a romance story.

I guess Zatanna helped out because she wanted to be fucked by a Plant God!

Alec cannot think of one thing he'd want to do now that he's human after all this time as a plant? He doesn't fucking deserve humanity! I've been human for the last 44 years and I'm desperate to masturbate and eat a huge slice of carrot cake simply because I've been stuck reading this stupid comic book for the last ten minutes! I haven't been unable to enjoy these things for years and I'm still jonesing to enjoy them. Surely Alec Holland has been dreaming of something human! Even if it's just having a really solid bowel movement! Which, you know, maybe that's what it is being that he's too embarrassed to tell Zatanna.

The thing Alec came up with only after a bit of prodding is...pancakes! He's fucking missed pancakes! I want to judge him for that but I listed "carrot cake" in my desires so I'm going to let him have his boring ass desire. I really wish Len Wein would have gone for broke and had Alec say, "A huge cock in my mouth! God, how I've missed huge cocks in my mouth!"

Zatanna was actually fishing when she asked Alec about what he wanted because apparently she's the one who wants a huge cock in her mouth. She gets naked in front of Alec (who is also naked) and hands him her robes.

Matt, you're making the moment a little creepy.

When I turn the page, Alec and Matt are back in the swamps of Louisiana having been teleported there by Zatanna. So now I just have to imagine the three way orgy over pancakes? Fucking bullshit, man.

Instead of leaving the swamp, Alec decides to hang around and help train Matt. Eventually they run across a poacher so that Alec can see his friend at work and, afterward, say, "You're being Swamp Thing wrong! That's not how I did it! Do it my way!"

I guess this entire series is simply about how Alec is a micro-manager and a control freak.

Alec quickly learns that his friend doesn't give a shit about him. Matt just wanted power and immortality and no penis. Matt has decided to take over the world and where better to start than Houma, Louisiana? I mean where better that's close to the swamp!

Matt Cable builds a throne so he looks regal when he makes his demands to the world and then he uses some vines to pull Alec Holland underground. I guess it's the end of the world.

Swamp Thing #3

Time to write an insightful piece about old school Swamp Thing in moder...booooooooooooooooobies.

I think Americans would get more work done if the female breast were demystified in our culture. I don't mean in a feminist way because guys are going to want to touch any boob they see no matter how much enlightenment is shoved down their throats. I just mean that if female nipples were ubiquitous, men (and lesbians!) wouldn't spend so much time and effort trying to get glimpses of them. Or thinking about what they might look like! Because now all I can think about are the various possible nipple configurations hidden away under Zatanna's waistcoat! I'm also wondering what her puckered little butthole looks like but that's probably less men (and lesbians!) in general and more me and my kinks.

Now I'm also wondering what Swamp Thing's butthole looks like. Did he bother to form one in his need to look like a human while composed of plants? He doesn't feel the need to build a cock on his body which strikes me as something that should be pursued in a Swamp Thing story. How much effort does it take to build a body that looks human? How much thought is put behind the details? If it's subconscious, why doesn't Alec have a penis on his body? What's his hangup? Is it possibly it's just hidden by loose foliage? Does he imagine himself with a vagina which is far less noticeable on his flora covered body? Why would he take the time to create individual toes when he can't be bothered to sling a penis on? I think it's time for a new Anatomy Lesson story arc!

I can't think up too many times when bringing up The Origin of Species was less fitting!

Being a master of tortured introductions to a piece of writing, this one takes the cake and eats it too. Survival of the Fittest has nothing to do with two different kinds of organisms trying to kill each other! It's not about a snake being better suited to survive than a plant man in the swamps of Louisiana! If I were a righteous nerd who had no trust in my audience (can I call three people an audience? Yes, probably!), I'd over-explain this bit and possibly take umbrage with the ease in which Len Wein replaces the term "natural selection" with "survival of the fittest." But I'll presume (finally!) that my caption was enough to make the reader snort and say, "Right!?!"

Ignoring the idiocy of Len Wein's introduction, why on earth is a boa constrictor attacking a plant? It must have a personal grudge against Swamp Thing. Maybe Buddy Baker asked it to fuck with Swamp Thing because Buddy Baker is a drunk, lonely dick.

Some guy with a shotgun happens by and shoots the boa constrictor in two while Swamp Thing wrestles with it. That's pretty fucked up, dude with the shotgun. I don't mean killing the snake when it probably didn't need to be killed! I mean using a shotgun as if it's as accurate as a rifle! Swamp Thing surely took a good portion of buckshot to his face with that blast.

Swamp Thing explains to the overenthusiastic hunter that he and the snake were just pulling an Inspector Clouseau and Cato Fong! Now I wish one of the Pink Panther movies would have done this scene with some passerby hearing the ruckus and barging in to shoot Cato in the head.

The guy with the gun explains that he's Matt Cable and Swamp Thing forgives him immediately while they blow each other. Afterwards, they catch up. Matt explains that he's been searching for a cure for Swamp Thing. Surprisingly, Swamp Thing doesn't explode with outrage about how his condition doesn't need to be "cured" so that he'd be "normal".

Absinthe needs to be more demystified than boobs. It's nothing more than really strong alcohol that tastes like guzzling Prell shampoo. What people are generally looking for when they seek out The Green Fairy would be best sought in LSD or magic mushrooms.

Matt Cable explains how he spent his life savings to find Nanda Parbat. Swamp Thing doesn't tell him that he could have taken Matt there for free. Why burst Matt's balloon when he's telling a tale of such sacrifice for friendship? Although it's a good thing Swamp Thing didn't let Matt into Nanda Parbat or else he might be partially accountable for Matt's theft of the Hand of Fatima! Apparently it's a limited Monkey's Paw in that it only grants one wish. Plus, seeing that it's a holy reliquary and not a black magic animal paw, the wish probably won't be cursed.

Matt and Alec take the hand to Zatanna because she's easier to deal with than Madame Xanadu. Zatanna likes to help her friends while Madame Xanadu just uses them to run errands for her in the name of "saving the world."

Before Zatanna invokes the hand, she keeps asking Alec and Matt if they're ready and willing to pay the price of the spell. Both she and Matt are acting as if they know the price of the spell yet they refuse to be honest with Alec about what will transpire. It seems like a dick move because they're both acting like Matt is somehow not going to survive. Or maybe he's simply going to trade places with Alec so that Alec will have to live the rest of his life in Matt's shitty body. I know I'd be a little bit pissed off if two of my "friends" kept implying that I'd be returned to normal when they knew that wasn't exactly the case at all. This is some kind of Madame Xanadu bullshit!

When the ritual is complete, Alec has his body back. So at least that part was true. But Matt Cable has now become the Swamp Thing. That seems like something Zatanna should have mentioned. I get why Matt didn't say anything because he's just another guy seeking power and immortality (probably!). But Zatanna is supposed to be Alec's friend! How hard is a little transparency about the results of invoking a holy reliquary? Alec may as well have gone to Constantine.

Swamp Thing #3 Rating: No change. Zatanna spends the entire comic in her low cut nightshirt. You'd think she could have at least dressed for company. Unless her nightshirt was actually her wizard's robes? I'm guessing it was her pajamas though since she was lying on her fainting couch (presumably masturbating) when Matt and Alec walked in on her with their decaying hand. Aside from that strange bit which I totally had a real and not a facetious problem with because a man would have been given a full outfit, this issue was everything I expected it to be. That's probably not a good review since you have no idea what that I was expecting a mediocre comic book with an old timey vibe and weird-ass, non-erotic Kelly Jones art.

Swamp Thing #1

I recently mentioned that "The Anatomy Lesson" was when the Swamp Thing finally became interesting and relevant. So it's a shame that Alan Moore isn't writing this mini-series. Instead, I'm going to have to put up with Len Wein on scripting duties. Seriously?! What does this guy know about Swamp Thing?! Oh sure. He created the character. But who cares?! Rob Liefeld created Deadpool too! But can you imagine Liefeld writing Deadpool as the character he is today?! It would be a disaster! Now imagine if he were drawing it as well?! Hmm. Hey, Marvel Comics? I know you're not reading this because nobody in the business reads this. But just in case you accidentally are reading this because you thought it was an important piece of journalism by Comic Book Resources or one of the other shit comic book websites, could you get Rob to draw and write a Deadpool mini-series? I'd really appreciate it because I could use a good laugh.

Liefeld and Deadpool probably isn't the best analogy to Len Wein and Swamp Thing because Len Wein is respected in the comic book business. But he is older and I'm always a bit worried when I'm reading something written by somebody returning to their halcyon younger days. Remember how Marv Wolfman sucked his own asshole dry in the Trigon Villains Month book? And I hate to say this because I loved his Suicide Squad run more than I love my own mother, but John Ostrander didn't really big much of a passing game to his Others scripts. And by "passing game," I don't mean American football. I mean passing as in grades and he didn't get an A at all. Or any of the other letters that aren't F.

But I'm hopeful! Hope is all I've got! And Faith! And Demeter! Although Demeter hates when I only tip her in ones so I tend to sit at Hope or Faith's stage.

The story begins and I think somebody told Len Wein he was writing a book of poetry. That isn't a compliment. It's an observation. He goes on about the swamp being Mother Nature's biggest brat and how a freight train toots and toots its sad toot because it can't find its way home. Which is stupid because trains don't have a lot of selection in the paths they take. Then he snaps some heron's wings with his words and allows a few bullfrogs to fuck and shows some scary alligators just before he uses the word "antediluvian." It made me do the jerking off gesture five or six times as I read it. But then I came to the last panel on the page and I thought, "Hmm. I might really like this. I think he snuck a mood in somewhere while I was jerking off a ghost."

The look and sound of the narration almost fools my fingers into thinking they're touching newsprint.

I like that he calls him a monster right off the bat. I like that he puts him alone in the midst of so much life. In this one page, a new reader already has a feel for what it must be like to be Alec Holland. He could have begun with Swamp Thing narrating his own story. "My name is Alec Holland. I used to be human. I am man no longer! I am sad! So sad! I love but am unloved! Woes me!" That's probably how I would have begun the issue. I also would have probably kept Swamp Thing unrevealed until the second page which would be a splash page of Swamp Thing fucking a knothole in a swamp tree and looking over his shoulder in surprise.

I wonder why DC never responds when I send them scripts?

Oh! Um, back the monster thing. I think DC has done a disservice to the character of the Swamp Thing by portraying him as another one of DC's heroes. He is not a hero. He is a gardener. He's a caretaker. He shouldn't be involved in fist fights and end of the world battles. Although I'm not the editor of Swamp Thing so I'm probably wrong. I guess he's whatever DC wants him to be! What do I know?! I'm only grandmaster at reading comic books, not writing them!

The second page of this issue is a brief synopsis of Swamp Thing's origin which is fine, I suppose. It's nice to get it out of the way quickly while setting the tone. Wein makes sure to get the "muck-encrusted mockery of a man" line in there because it hasn't lost its awesomeness. What a great descriptor for a character. Although it might be a little sad that Len Wein is still using the line forty five years later.

This is probably a smarter decision than the knothole idea.

I'm pretty shit when it comes to commenting on the art but Kelley Jones really is a natural for this book. And I almost never mention the colorist because why the fuck should I? Usually reviewers do it simply because they feel they're not doing their job if they don't throw a bone to the colorist and letterist. But I'm going to praise Michelle Madsen for the palette being used on this comic. The whole thing is a throwback to Swamp Thing's early days when he was simply a monster in love and not a member of Justice League Dark and righter of eco-wrongs.

Oh, um, Rob Leigh can like type or something? He puts letters down good?

Swamp Thing tussles with the alligator not to show his strength but to show his anger tempered by mercy. I hope Superman is watching.

Can I digress for a second? What the fuck am I doing? I don't need anybody's permission to digress! I'm digressing, dammit! I created a Bretonnian Blood Bowl team earlier to play a Solo League (I do too have friends! I have other teams for multiplayer leagues, smartoff!) and I called them Justice League Bretonnia. In their first and only match so far, Batman was sidelined by the refs for committing a foul. It was totally accidental because I didn't realize I was moving him onto a downed opponent's square. I just shook my head and thought, "Oh Batman! Can't walk away from a good beating, can you?" So he was out for the rest of the match eating Batnachos in the penalty box. Of course he got MVP at the end of the game. Because he's the Goddamned Batman!

Swamp Thing has retired from doing the Parliament of Trees' grunt work because this is Len Wein's Swamp Thing! He isn't going to fucking deal with all of that Alan Moore bullshit! This is a comic book about horror! It isn't supposed to be about politics and bureaucracies! But some thing there is that doesn't love a Swamp Thing who doesn't work with the Parliament of Trees. Which means somebody has to chastise Swamp Thing for abandoning his obligations.

Don't tell me Madame Xanadu sent the Phantom Stranger. Did she see the end of the world if her garden doesn't grow some spectacular cucumbers?

Do you think Kelley Jones ever zoned out while drawing only to realize when he was done with a panel he'd drawn Killer Croc instead?

Swamp Thing hears a scream and Phantom Stranger decides he's done his job and delivered his warning so fuck whoever needs help. He buggers out while Swamp Thing rushes to help a woman whose husband is sinking in quicksand. Remember quicksand?! Remember when every adventure story had somebody nearly sinking in quicksand? Has anybody in the world ever died in the stuff? Does the shit even exist?!

The couple Swamp Thing helps actually came to the swamp to find Swamp Thing. He decides to stick around to hear their story for some reason. Probably because their name is Wormwood.

The Wormwoods had a son named Lazlo who went to Crowley University which is exactly what you think it is based on the name. He was taking a class about Resurrection and volunteered to be killed as the class project. Unfortunately, the class couldn't bring him back to life and he sat on life support in a coma for weeks. Eventually the plug was pulled and Lazlo didn't die. Instead he murdered his professor and disappeared. The Wormwoods would like Swamp Thing to find their boy and maybe learn a lesson during the adventure.

So Swamp Thing enrolls at Crowley University. I hope he pledges a Floraternity. Although he might not have much time for shenanigans because he discovers Lazlo murdering to ex-classmates on his first night on campus.

No! Not...Zombie!

Did nobody tell Len Wein that zombies are on the way out and adult coloring books are on the way in?! Swamp Thing should be battling The Colored Book!

Zombie tears Swamp Thing in half and then walks away to find some other people to blame for his condition other than himself for being a weak-willed idiot who enrolled at a place called Crowley University.

Swamp Thing #1 Rating: This is definitely a throwback. It's a caveman of comic books! It's meant to be and it works. Although I have no idea how well it will work for kids who have never really experience comics from the seventies and early eighties. They might be confused by the narration boxes because they'll automatically assume Swamp Thing is thinking them. And they'll wonder why the colors aren't as crisp and clean as they're used to. And they'll wonder why the art is so dark, especially in the faces. And they'll wonder who the fuck Len Wein is. And they'll scratch their heads thinking, "Did Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea actually like this crap?" Yes. Yes I did like this crap! I was a bit underwhelmed by the revelation that the enemy is a zombie but what should I expect? This is supposed to be a horror book! I hope next issue, Swamp Thing battles the Werewolf!

Bizarro #2

YOU! Got what I neeeeeeeeeed! But you say he's just a friend! You say he's just a friend. OH BABY!!

My dream is to be the Biz Markie of comic book reviewers! Have I succeeded yet?! My pockets aren't full of cash so I'm going to assume the answer is no. But that's not a problem on my side! That's a problem with the sophistication and intelligence of the people not giving me scads of cash. Jerks! I bet all those people with money are sitting around talking about their money and how excited they are to have Bloom County back after they quickly read the Bloom County Wikipedia to find out what all the hubbub was about. Hey! I'm super artsy and popular and funny too! At least I could be popular if everybody started talking about me! You should be the first people to talk about me on social media sites because that would make you cool and cutting edge! You could build the bandwagon! Also, you should be an investor with lots of money who isn't expecting a return on that money because I'm just going to spend it on Oreos and fines for masturbating in public.

Hmm. Since Bizarro is rated E for Everyone, I probably shouldn't mention masturbating in the commentary for it. Although, as long as I don't make a big deal about the word "masturbation" and call attention to it, all the young Everyones won't know what it is or how much time they'll be spending doing it in a few years!

Hey DC Comics! Leave the poorly drawn stick people crayon pages to me! You'll be hearing from my pretend lawyer whose never lost a pretend case in his life.

I've been reading the second edition of The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry published about twenty years ago because I really like poetry by old white people and Langston Hughes as well. What I have discovered so far is that I don't appreciate Gerard Manley Hopkins at all. It's as if he decided he was going to write the most incomprehensible comic book reviews poetry he could think of, throw in a bunch of references to Jesus and Mary, and add a bunch of accent marks to make sure everybody was stressing his syllables correctly. As if it mattered! His meter is fucking--and I'm being quite technical in my poetry criticism lingo here--wackadoodle! Maybe it's just me. I have to admit some of his meter and schemes are quite clever, and he never makes them easy by not ending sentences where they usually end in low grade amateur poetry (at the end of the line! Duh!). I think people like him because he's difficult and liking difficult poetry makes a person better than a person who doesn't like difficult poetry. They get to look down their snobby noses at the dissenter and say things like, "You just don't understand it." Oh, I understand it's crap, jerk! Sometimes I like difficult poetry! But I certainly don't like Gerard Manley Hopkins' difficult poetry! Although that one where the nuns drown was hilarious.

Gosh darn it, Bizarro! Now a whole generation of kids are going to think King Tut was Pharaoh during the time of Moses! Thanks for contributing to Dumb Kids Who Don't Know Their Bible Culture!

I'm sure glad God is fooled by changing the "d" in his name to "sh"! That way I can get away with committing blasphemy whenever I stub my toe or rant at a fictional character! Watch this! "Hey Gosh! Suck it! Your son Jeezly Crow is garbage!" Hee hee! The best part is I can't be punished on a technicality! God is dumb! I mean Gosh is dumb! Crap!

Schlemiel! Schlimazel!

As an areligious kid growing up in Northern California, I had no idea that Schlemiel or a Schlimazel was anything other than complete nonsense. I don't think I learned of the existence of Jewish people until that commercial with the son and his grandfather fishing where the kid is a huge transphobic, misogynistic, anti-semitic bigot. Even back then, I knew to yell at the television set within earshot of people who would nod in assent and approve of my views, "That kid is gross! He should be shunned and destroyed!"

Oh! I forgot I was reading Bizarro. Um, Jimmy Olsen is freed from Tut's spell by Bizarro's penis chewing on his skull. Don't worry! It doesn't have to make sense! This book is rated E for Everyone. Have you read a children's book lately? They're worse than a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins! I wish my middle name were "Manley" and then people would just assume I knew about cars and sports and pleasuring women without always embarrassing me by asking me questions I can't answer. Like "What is an engine?" and "How many sports does a sportsball score?" and "Why would I have sex with you?"

Bizarro's penis also slaps Tut's daughter in the head, breaking the spell on her as well. I should probably remember her name because it might seem sexist that I can't remember it as opposed to seeming like I have a serious brain injury which I wish I had right now to defend against any accusations of sexism.

What's her name's boobs look hot, right?

Bizarro uses Super-Hypnosis to defeat King Tut by making him think he's a chicken. I don't know what Bizarro really thought he was turning King Tut into because I don't know what the opposite of chicken is. When Tut drops his Staff of Ra, Jimmy Olsen breaks it over his knee releasing a huge amount of destructive magic energy! No, no. It just breaks in two. So unbelievable.

Does Superman have Super-Hypnosis? I suppose he would have the opposite of that power which is Super-Gullibility?

After Jimmy and Bizarro are given medallions and a convertible for saving the people of Smallville from buying some cars, they leave town, presumably for Gotham if the cover can be believed. Regina, King Tut's daughter, decides she needs to get revenge on Bizarro for turning her father into an Indigo Girl's song. Part of her motivation might also be the influence of the Staff of Ra after she repairs it. Also she might be mad at Jimmy Olsen for not kissing her after she gave him a car.

In Gotham, Jimmy Olsen snaps a picture of Kelley Jones' Batman throwing a Batarang into Bizarro's head. Next they stop off at Central City where Jimmy snaps a picture of Bizarro clotheslining The Flash as he runs by. Jimmy must have a pretty fast shutter speed! Unless it's something else about cameras that lets them capture fast moving objects. Like the aperture! Or the cell phone plan!

After evading the ARGUS Agents that have been following them across the country, Jimmy and Bizarro head into a ghost town where Jimmy gets to meet another fantastic looking woman he's not going to do it to. I mean, he's not going to do it to her because she's going to be a fully fleshed out character who is not just in the comic as a romantic foil for Jimmy Olsen. She won't be that at all! But she must still have nice bosoms and a nice behind, of course, or else all the male fans will throw the book down in disgust while scratching their huge bellies and wondering why the room smells like old farts and sniffing the hand that was just scratching their balls to determine if they should take a shower or not before the big Magic Tournament later that night.

Chastity Hex am not stripper name at all!

Night falls and the ghosts come out and I inscribe "Chastity Hex" on the inside of my Secret Diary where I keep the names of all of my crushes.

Bizarro #2 Rating: No change. It am not funny at all. By which I mean it has quite a few moments that really entertained me. It's a cute book!

Convergence: Swamp Thing #2

Ahhhhhhhhhh!

Last issue I began my commentary pointing out how people often lose interest in comic book characters without a sense of continuity in an established universe. This time I want to begin by saying who the fuck cares? Isn't the continuity of a character derived from the stories you've read across the years? Isn't that what binds a reader to the character? Why let a comic book company dictate to you which Batman stories are "true"? Batman is a shared fictional character that will never have a final act. His entire story is the middle act and it's all based on a mostly unchanging first act. As story arcs go, that's a pretty crappy model if you want a character to evolve. But the character has to change for the new audience that continually churns at the shores of fandom. All of those changes from decade to decade form what we think of Batman. The movies and the television shows and the cartoons and the books and the comics...they're all there to be incorporated into this character that people have enjoyed for years. Why let a corporation tell you that any part of the Batman mythos is less important than any other part? The important bits of Batman are the ones that made you love the character. The stories you remember aren't (most likely) the ones by his original creators. They're by a host of writers getting the chance to direct Batman in whatever way they (and the editors and the studios and the networks) see fit. Batman is not who DC Comics tells us he is. Batman is who you've determined Batman is, continuity be damned.

Besides, if you're fans of a comic book character long enough, you'll inevitably do your own editing of their continuity. Who would leave in Ann Nocenti's run of Catwoman in their envisioned history of the character? Fucking nobody! We learn soon enough that some writers will hand us gold and others should never been let near the vault. We learn that if the name of a certain writer (or artist) appears on the cover, we don't need to read that story. It never has to taint our vision of the character. As fans, we've seen dozens and dozens of reboots of our favorite characters over the years. They're called "a change in the writer." Sometimes you get spoiled and a writer remains on a book for so long that you can't help but accept every story as continuity, no matter how bad. And sometimes you get extremely lucky and a writer puts out something like Sandman or Cerebus where the tale is told exactly how one person wants to tell the tale and then the character is put away for good. Well, mostly. But even if you were able to read every copy of Detective Comics, you'd find that the changes in Batman are more drastic across the years in that single run then the changes made to Batman in Detective Comics #1 of The New 52. Although that was written by David Finch and was crap. But that wasn't the fault of The New 52 continuity! It was a crappy writer!

None of this has anything to do with Swamp Thing except that it kind of has everything to do with Swamp Thing, doesn't it? I can't think of any greater reboot in the history of DC Comics than when Alan Moore took over scripting on Swamp Thing #21 back in February of 1984. In a way, it began a Reboot of DC Comics that happened parallel to Crisis on Infinite Earths. It was the British Reboot and what would eventually become Vertigo. Those of you who weren't born yet have no idea how much mainstream comic books changed with the British Invasion and Vertigo. Think of what Image Comics is currently doing but realize that nothing like it had ever been seen before. It was revelation. And I kind of wish that DC's New 52 had merged all of their titles into the Vertigo line! Batman needs to cuss more.

I wonder if, as I peter out and slip into my usual voice, I should go back and pepper the previous three paragraphs with dick jokes? I wonder if "peter out and slip into" qualifies?

At the end of last issue, Swamp Thing was beset by vampires. Vegan vampires? No! Just normal vampires. This issue begins with Swamp Thing pointing out how stupid the are.

Swamp Thing is a tactical genius! Plus he knows a lot about vampires for 1984. He must have been a Dungeons & Dragons player. Or a fan of Salems Lot. Fright Night wouldn't come out for another year and that one taught people all the most important rules about fighting vampires! Like not inviting them into your house!

Vampire Batman appears and introduces himself to Swamp Thing. He points out that he's Swamp Thing's real opponent. But first he kills all the nagging vampires so he and Swamp Thing can figure out what to do next. I'm guessing Red Rain Batman is still a good guy? Even if he's a monster? Just like Swamp Thing! I think I discovered the theme! Don't judge a monster by the way it looks because that makes you the real monster!

Most people don't say "To be brutally honest" and then go on to say something that's hard for themselves to hear. But then most people aren't vampire Batman.

To be brutally honest, I'm a horrible writer. I'm just too lazy and unambitious to write any of the things I truly desire to write. So instead, I comment on comic books. I wonder how many great writers history has lost to frivolous pursuits?! I'm not claiming to be a great writer! If you thought I was then you're a lousy reader because I began this paragraph saying I was a horrible writer! The real problem with writing is that it takes more hard work than talent. You can be a hack but if you put your shoulder to the grindstone and just keep working at it, you can be successful. But if you have scads of talent but just can't be bothered with how toilsome writing can actually be? Forget it. You don't deserve to be remembered.

Batman agrees to let Swamp Thing win the battle but first he'd like Swamp Thing's help killing as many vampires as possible. It's basically beating a dead horse but then Batman is a vampire and who can really know what those things are into? Besides drinking blood and seducing stuff. I'd probably be really into video games and not writing.

Batman is searching for the Queen Vampire. I wonder if she'll be somebody important to Batman? Are there any females important to Batman? Oh! That one that he lectures and fucks! What's her name? Feline Lady?

Well. A redhead. Kate or Barbara? Judging by all the women in the room? Kate.

Swamp Thing kills all of the Vampire Queen's attendants with Garlic Gas while Batman goes after the queen. He decapitates her after a short battle in which she claims to have learned a lot of tricks over the centuries but she demonstrates none of them. After she's killed, the vampires that are left revert back into humans. Swamp Thing is all, "What the fuck?" And Batman is all, "Oh yeah. Didn't I mention? When the Queen dies, all of her victims turn back into humans!" And Swamp Thing is all, "So I...I...I just murdered dozens of people?!" Batman is all, "To be brutally honest? Yeah." Then Batman, who was turned by Dracula so he's still a vampire, heads out to watch the sunrise.

Swamp Thing and Abby win the competition and are transported back to Gotham where Len Wein ends his Convergence tale perfectly.

Got the earthquake in, made sure it didn't matter one fuck, and ended with the whole "The End?" thing which I think he absolutely meant. "Really, DC Editors? That's all I get to say about it? The reader doesn't get anything more than a stupid earthquake? Nice resolution, guys."

Convergence: Swamp Thing #2 Rating: 8.5 Hallucinogenic Tubers out of Ten. I think Len Wein did a smart thing with this story. He tried his best to write two stories that just happened to take place in this Convergence framework and I think he pulls it off nicely. The first story is merely a look at the burgeoning love between Swamp Thing and Abby as she takes care of him for a year in Gotham. There is still no romance between them but we see how much they mean to each other. In the second story, we get a heartbreaking tale of a man trying to protect his city not only from others but from himself as well. Swamp Thing is just a bit player in this Batman tale. And then on the final page (in each book, if I'm not mistaken?), Len throws in the editorially mandated things, washes the blood off of his hands, and removes himself from the proceedings.

Divergence: Catwoman
"She's still Gotham's queen of crime -- but now, in order to work all the angles, Selina Kyle is back as Catwoman!"

Well it's about time! I hope she teams up with Other Catwoman! You know, the one whose name I can't remember in that way that I can never remember names? I think it began with an "E"? Two Catwomen running around Gotham together would make Batman's head explode. Eiko! Was it Eiko?!

The preceding paragraph is why I'd suck on Jeopardy. My brain needs more time to process than contestants are allowed!

The most important bit of the Catwoman Sneak Peek that isn't mentioned in the "How Did We Completely Fuck This Title Up" blurb is the bit about how the art looks fantastic now! Did anybody see Catwoman's ass in that dress?! I mean, I can tell people apart! It's some good looking stuff.

Catwoman is still framing her stories around historic epistles. This sneak peek's is from Elizabeth I to her Council in 1585: "From mine enemy let me defend myself...from a pretensed friend, good Lord deliver me." It's fitting because this short story is mostly to get new readers caught up with Selina's position in the crime families of Gotham. Her friends and enemies are introduced and there's a bit of overlap in the categories, of course. Oh, and I said to help "new readers" get caught up but I think some old readers are glad for this summation of the groove in which events have settled. I know I was!

Convergence: Swamp Thing #1

I can draw!

Convergence really exposes the need for comic book companies to maintain a sense of continuity and history in their story telling. People may have felt excited to get glimpses of the characters they used to love before The New 52 but without any tangible tie to an overall continued existence for these characters, a reader can lose interest fairly quickly. Too much continuity can get in the way of a writer feeling free to tell the story they want to tell. But not enough continuity and the reader doesn't develop a bond for the character in the book. Every time the character appears, without that sense of history, it may as well be a new character. The characters always kept that sense of history after each of DC's previous reboots because they were essentially the same character but having become a resident in a somewhat different universe. The New 52 outright told the fans that these were not the same characters or the same universe and to get used to it, so many felt that disconnect with the characters and just moved on. Now DC Comics has taken a few months to say, "Here! Those characters you miss! They're right here!" But come on. Who fucking really cares when it's just a brief window into old lives that are now long gone? These stories are less interesting because they are no longer part of DC Continuity.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the old fans are coming out in droves to support this event. But I know after two and a half weeks of it, I'm a little bit bored by it, overall. It feels like I'm picking up old comic books out of my collection and giving them a reread. I suppose DC is going to allow most of their old timelines to come back into their overall universe in some form or another by the time this Convergence is over because they're dying to bring back all those fans who can't stand them anymore due to The New 52. But history being doomed to repeat itself whether or not people know their history because that's just the way history works, the people running DC Comics will eventually look at how confusing their universe is to new readers and decide to clean it up somehow. Which, once again, won't work exactly how they wanted it to, make things more confusing in the long run, and wind up in yet another cleaning up of continuity.

Here's some advice, DC Comics: put ice cream on pizza. Man, it's weird.

Was Swamp Thing a comedy pre-Crisis?!

I like that Len Wein brought back that whole Strange Tales Narrator deal and the nice Swamp Thing tagline of the shambling muck-encrusted mockery of a man. But naming the story "It's Not Easy Being Green"? I'm not exactly going to be terrified by this tale, am I?

So Swamp Thing was caught in Gotham during the doming. What was he doing up there? Did the dome drop while Abby was being put on trial for fucking a plant man? Has he been rooming with Solomon Grundy in Slaughter Swamp for the last year? Hopefully he wasn't connected to The Green in pre-Crisis continuity or else he probably died when moved off planet and the rest of this comic book will be his body as it rots on the edge of Gotham.

The Narrator just turns into the Swamp Thing narrating because he was just putting on that highly dramatized horror book narration voice for old times sake. After he points out that he's the muck-encrusted monstrosity, Swamp Thing tells his history because Len Wein didn't want to simply write, "Remember how I created the Swamp Thing?! Remember all of the stories I wrote about him?! Remember my work on him and not that fucking wanna-be mystic piece of shit English person?! Me! I created Swamp Thing! I DID IT, GODDAMMIT! The fucking Anatomy Lesson was bullshit."

The walking moss pile is surprised that Abigail wants a lover with a penis.

The Swamp Thing's recounting of his history ends with The Anatomy Lesson so I guess, since Len was editor on the book at the time, he seems to think it was an okay story and it's probably not a bad idea to keep it part of pre-Crisis Swamp Thing's history. I mean, he could have cut it from this version of Swamp Thing's history altogether since the story appeared so close to the beginning of Crisis. Wouldn't it be interesting to return a new version of the Swamp Thing to DC Continuity? One that never underwent the magical transformation of weird horror novelty to interesting character that people began to love? I want stories of the weird horror novelty!

None of the other Pre-Crisis books have documented the time of the doming as well as this one. Although, really, this is just Len's version. No other book mentioned the red skies at all.

Swamp Thing decides to go to Gotham to ask Batman about the red skies because Batman knows everything. Abby tags along and they make a nice vacation out of it. Let me guess! The dome falls, they get trapped in Gotham, Swamp Thing is cut off from the Green, and Abby spends the next year trying to desperately keep her Chia Thing alive!

The dome covers Gotham and cuts Swamp Thing off from The Green. Now he's just a shambling muck-encrusted mockery of a man again instead of whatever Alan Moore made him. A philosopher? Abby leaves him in the park while she heads off to find a job and an apartment. That shouldn't be any problem what with everybody probably freaking the fuck out and such.

A week later, Abby reports back that Gotham is handling things reasonably well since a giant dome covering the city winds up being a lot more fun than everybody dying from Joker gas. And Abby has done some wangling of her own.

At first I thought "wangle" was a sex act and then I read the definition and, well...getting the job and the apartment probably did involve sex. I can read between the dictionary definitions.

Abby begins delivering plant food which is barely keeping Swamp Thing alive. Then one day, many weeks later, the usual business of Gotham intrudes on Swamp Thing's territory as Batgirl chases Poison Ivy through the park.

Naughty!

Many weeks later, just as hope for Swamp Thing's survival is waning, Planet Brainiac lifts the dome and Swamp Thing's connection to The Green returns. Even if this planet is nowhere in space or time. I guess The Green exists everywhere except inside of domes. Swamp Thing's power comes back but before he and Abby can adjust, they're transported by Planet Brainiac to the Gotham of Red Rain where they're attacked by a bunch of vampires.

I think the lead vampire is Vampire Lobo.

Convergence: Swamp Thing #1 Rating: It was a day in the park! But for a year! Exclamation point! Nervous stomach! What the fuck am I doing with my life?!

New Guardians #33

Carol and Kyle have invaded the Psions' home, so technically this cover should read, "Defense of the Psions!"

When we last saw Carol and Kyle and Quarros and Pokey, they had been trapped aboard the mother ship of the alien race known as the Psions. And all you need to know about the Psions is that they're gigantic assholes that love to experiment on other races because they grew up being experimented on and that's all they know. Are the Psions a cautionary tale about how human life will end due to what rats will become in the future? An angry, sentient, species that became stronger than every other species on Earth due to humans constantly testing cures and procedures on them until they were immune to all disease, able to regenerate body parts, stronger than every other creature on Earth, and could breathe toxic gases? Because that's where we're headed, people! Look at how strong the Guinea Pigs got before we stopped using them for experimentation! If they weren't so fucking skittish, they'd probably have taken over the world by now.

This happens this issue. You know, if anybody was interested.

While Kyle and Carol dry hump each other in their skin-tight outfits, the Bohemian Guardians are being tortured by the Psions. I'd use the phrase "comeuppance" here but I don't know what it means or if I even spelled it correctly.

The Bohemain Guardians are learning slowly, tortuously slowly (because they're being tortured! Like Guinea Pigs! Or like Jews and Heretics and, well, practically everybody in 13th Century Europe!), that the Psions were created by them. They were the lab rats of the Bohemain Guardians and when they were abandoned by them, they just continued on the only path they knew: to make themselves better, hardier, more resistant to everything! And now billions of years later, they're pretty fucking hardy!

That's rich! Did you listen when the little baby ancestor Psions said, "Eeek! Squeak! Eeek! Eeek!" (which translates, roughly, to "Do not touch me!").

I woke up thinking about some particularly bold advice that could possibly truly help young people navigate the artificial structure of our society but then I remembered that I'm tired of being told to check my privilege, so fuck you all. Figure it out yourselves. Continue to wallow in your pain because you've decided that the memory of trauma is the exact same thing as the trauma itself. Go ahead and believe that a multitude of labels are the things that make you an individual as opposed to the real things that make you an individual, like the way you dream of becoming that one thing that nobody else you know dreams of becoming simply because when you think about becoming it, it makes your insides squish over and meltdown in a warm cascade until you feel like your bottom might catch on fire. Try not to remember that you're the person that loves the smell of rain dampened pavement mixed with melted marshmallows in fresh cocoa. Don't think about how you hide pieces of your secret self because you'd be embarrassed for people to know that you love the pungent odors of your body after several days unshowered, and you never want the eczema on your scalp to go away because your body and mind thrills to the way the tiny flakes feel as you slowly pull them from your skin and through your hair. Go ahead and always judge anything anybody says by the way they look and the gender they express and the parts of the body that bring them to a sexual frenzy. Absolutely believe that the things I just said were derogatory and dismissive instead of helpful and freeing. Disbelieve in other individuals because you are the only unique person in the world. And always never remember to tell people to think for themselves because telling people to be themselves is the best advice a person can get from another person.

If you watch a lot of television (and I'm sure you don't because you're not a dimwitted dumb dumb head caught in the patriarchy's mind-numbing light show), you'd be hard pressed to believe that anybody pursues any career at all anymore. It's less important to do things than to inspire people to be inspired and to raise awareness so that people are aware. I'm surprised at how many people hate television and commercials and yet they aspire to a life of being nothing but a fucking commercial themselves.

I probably should have buried these thoughts further into the review so I don't start this commentary all up in the reader's face! And what a beautiful face, might I add! Does that compliment go any way to making up for sounding like a self-righteous dick at the beginning? Anyway, I think it is a good idea to bury this in the middle of the review so now that you're reading this sentence, you'll realize that the preceding paragraphs that came out of nowhere initially began this review of New Guardians! But now they're just interrupting the review. Like a commercial!

Meanwhile, Carol reminds Kyle that after they save the Bohemian Guardians, they're going to have to talk about the dry humping that happened earlier. How come two people can't spontaneously dry hump each other in a scary experimental spacecraft without having to discuss it afterward?! Why must everything be discussed? Why can't we just lose ourselves in pure emotion and then move on to the next purely emotional experience?

I suppose if I were to take my own advice, I'd stop doing long-winded commentaries and just post things like this:

New Guardians #33 Review
Wheeee! SO HAPPY! Squidge! Twiddly diddly doopsie day!

Fuck. Maybe I should take my own advice! That would be so easy!

Kyle and Carol soon realize the ship they're on is a huge laboratory filled with cages housing the results of the Psions alien eugenics experiments. Kyle nearly throws up which, while it might be a natural reaction to seeing a living pile of heads that have been sewn together and are all screaming in pain at the same time, did he ever think how the pile of heads might feel from seeing a person react that way to them? I'm sure they already feel pretty crappy about what's become of them. Do they have to be reminded that their physical appearance is now so hideous that it causes uncontrollable vomiting in the people they meet? So rude, Kyle.

Off in another part of the ship, Pokey (or whichever Bohemian has the googles. Fuck if I can keep them straight) gets an advanced course in "How the Guardians Fucked Up, Part One: The Psions." He learns the Oans took some caterpillars, injected them with a stupid drug that probably made them use 100% of their brainpower because that continues to be a stupid fucking sci-fi myth that I'd thought we'd all gotten past until that ridiculous Lucy movie started airing ads on television, and turned them into sentient monsters! And now they will do the same for the rest of the universe! Bwa ha ha ha! It seems that revelation would have more impact if I hadn't been mentioning it over and over again since I first read "Psions" on the cover of the last issue of this comic book.

And then Kyle and Carol find Quaros.

Worst spa ever.

New Guardians #33 Rating: No change. Hopefully after the Psions are defeated, we'll get a five issue story arc where Carol and Kyle simply discuss their relationship. I'm not saying it would be riveting but I bet it would still sell more copies each month than Cerebus sold every month during its last story arc, The Last Day. Talk about the wheels falling off of a thing with wheels! I should do some in-depth commentary on Dave Sim's entire run of Cerebus. That thing is fascinating on so many levels: pop culture satire, commentary on history and religion, feminist criticism, and the slow meltdown of a comic book creator as he loses himself in a heady mix of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, not to mention his own narcissism. I still own all the Cerebus Phone Books but sold many of the individual issues which is too bad because his responses to letters and his commentaries in the backs of the single issues help the reader to see when and how each wheel comes off the thing with the wheels (Cerebus! Okay, it has metaphorical wheels! It's just a vehicle in a not very literal sense!). I wonder if he ever published an appendix Cerebus Phone Book with all the stuff he wrote in the backs of the individual issues? I'd actually throw more money at him to own those as well!

Batman: The Joker's Daughter #1

This font is called "A Sane Person's Version of A Crazy Person's Handwriting."

Crazy people do not write like children on a sugar high. This is how crazy people actually write:

Writing by Me. Words excerpted from "The Commuter" by Philip K. Dick.

Anyway, here we have been presented with a version of The Joker's Daughter which may not suck! I don't think we'll have the luxury of completely erasing Ann Nocenti's influence on the character, seeing as how she has the Smiley Face Creator Staff and the same old clothes. But we might get a coherent and interesting story about The Joker's Daughter anyway! Or maybe Marguerite Bennett will go the same route with Joker's Daughter as she went with Lobo! Rob Liefeld so tainted Lobo in his Deathstroke run that DC had to declare Lobo an imposter and create Twat Lobo to take his place. I don't see how this is any different! Ann Nocenti's fragrance ("Shit Writer" by Lobdell) is all over Joker's Daughter, so maybe Bennett will introduce us to the real Joker's Daughter now!

The first page shows a lot of promise and already blows away Nocenti's version of "I'm ugly but beauty is the true ugly and I'm going to make everybody ugly so that we're all beautiful like me who is ugly" nonsense.

Okay, so she falls back on the Daddy Issues thing that DC has a huge boner for. At least it's a more personal reason to go crazy than having a vendetta against the media portrayal of beauty.

A female character having Daddy Issues might be a bit of a stereotype and cliche but it's fine here in the DC Universe since just about all of their characters, male and female, have Daddy Issues. A few have Mommy Issues which is always a refreshing change of pace that barely feels like a change of pace (more like a reskin of Daddy Issues). I also appreciate that her addict need for a new rush causes her to ingest part of The Joker's face which she just fished out of sewage. It's grotesque enough to show she's really been pushed pretty far past sanity by her current circumstances rather than Ann Nocenti's manic crusader against standards of beauty.

To begin her pursuit of her "true father," The Joker's Daughter burns a busload of kids in front of a cosmetics store. Her main goal is to get Batman's attention because she thinks The Batman can help her locate Daddy. But burning children in front of a make-up store could be seen as an attack on our pop culture need to improve our looks by any means. Although it's really just a statement that says, "Hey Batman? I'm looking for a guy that wears make-up and murders people. Can you help me locate him?"

The title of this issue is called "GolGotham" which is too clever in that specific way that makes me think Marguerite has been dying to use it for years and finally found the right place. I bet Peter J. Tomasi is kicking himself that he didn't think up this one for his Arkham War titles. The other interesting thing about the title page is that it's an all female creative team if you ignore Georges Jeanty who penciled the cover and Mike Marts, Group Editor. But those two jobs are only peripherally important to the putting together of the issue. I hope Lois Lane's one shot gets the same treatment.

The Joker's Daughter didn't kill any children, unfortunately. She just loaded the bus up with mannequins, left a note so that Batman would think it was The Joker's doing, and blew it up around Batman's ears. After Batman's done investigating and browbeating the local police, he takes off with The Joker's Daughter following after on her Big Wheel with streamers. Those were the best.

Batman is probably leading Joker's Daughter into a trap because he's The Batman and she's never done any criminal masterminding previous to this. So she probably screwed it up completely and The Batman knew before even arriving on the scene that this was a copycat crime to make him think The Joker was back. He probably even knows the booby trap was rigged by a female with Daddy Issues that hangs around with an ugly cat because The Batman is fucking amazing at interpreting forensic evidence. Like the cat pus and cat tooth and drippy cat butt stuff and mangy fur that he probably found at the scene. And the note was obviously written by someone with a much daintier grip on a pen who has practiced their cursive for at least ten thousand hours.

Batman leads Joker's Daughter down into the Gotham Underground to the place where The Joker was last seen, to the place where he fell to his death (wink). He led her there because he knew she was following him because those fucking Big Wheels make that "tick tick tick tick ticktickticktick" sound as you ride them.

No way! A poor little lost drug addict girl didn't stand a chance against Batman? Oh yeah. That's how it should be! I forgot Nocenti wasn't writing this for a second.

Batman leads Joker's Daughter up and out of the sewers and into a trap by the Gotham Police. She's easily arrested and thrown in the back of a squad car with Ugly Cat. But she manages to escape although she isn't able to bring herself to kill the police. She wants to be Daddy's Girl but she's not even close to crazy enough yet. But maybe that's why she heads off to Arkham next. So she can learn the ins and outs of proper insanity and murder.

She's a fast learner!

The Joker's Daughter becomes lost in Arkham as she hallucinates from the mushroom spores she inhaled from Golgotham. So even though The Joker isn't part of Gotham's fetishization of Lewis Carroll's characters, it's time for Joker's Daughter to take a little trip through Wonderland.

This is the cutest picture of Ugly Cat so far.

The first crazy character The Joker's Daughter meets on her journey is The Anchoress. She's Arkham's first resident and the antagonist of Marguerite Bennett's first story for The New 52. I think it was in Batman Annual #2 and was called "The Night Nurse Cometh!" Or something. Anyway, The Anchoress does her thing she do and causes The Joker's Daughter to remember her past. Or not her past. Perhaps pasts that she wants to be her past, pasts that she's read about or seen on television or simply made up in her head when bored in her room as dad made dinner and mommy made her cry.

Did anybody else read "You don't know who you are" to the tune of the final line of Spider-man's cartoon theme song?

The Joker's Daughter's next stop is to the Dollmaker, the man who removed The Joker's face for him. For some reason. I don't think it was every quite adequately explained. I tried to explain it myself during The Death of the Family run but I never really felt convinced. I felt maybe The Joker was trying to expose his true self. People saw The Joker as an identity that he was hiding behind, so he cut off his face to make The Joker the mask. Now the only person he could be was the raw, tender, exposed flesh underneath the mask, as close to his true self as possible. It was a statement to Batman that he, and Batman, were their masks. Nothing mattered but who they were when wearing the masks. The Joker didn't give a shit about Bruce Wayne or Barbara Gordon or Dick Grayson. Those people were boring. Those people were the false identities. I suppose I should think it through better but who has time to write actual essays?! I'd rather just stick to "The Joker cut off his face because he's crazy!" Ah. Much better.

The Dollmkaer mentions how he's heard of The Joker's Daughter and that she takes philosophies and corrupts them. That's not a bad interpretation of Ann Nocenti's writing! I think that means that this takes place after the Catwoman story arc. And it must because Joker's Daughter has the Dollmaker sew the Joker's face to her face. The Dollmaker also has some of The Joker's blood that he collected. He keeps it in a jar in a cabinet so I'm not sure why it hasn't dried up but it hasn't! Because The Joker's Daughter injects it into her veins and kind of flips the fuck out. She heads back to her runaway hideout and tells her true story to herself.

We all do stupid things when we're young and trying to fit our fucked-up shaped selves into society's waiting round hole but most of us are lucky enough not to do anything permanently stupid like sew the rotten face of an insane clown onto our own faces. Joker's Daughter is going to have one hell of a story to tell the people she meets in her twenties.

Back in her shack, she comes to terms with her relationship to The Joker and decides he's gone for good so she'll have to become his heir and take Gotham for herself. But then she finds a note tied to Ugly Cat that says "Hello Beautiful" and realizes it's from Daddy. That we will eventually be back. And that the person she just came to grips with is a hollow shadow of The Joker and anything she does will be destroyed when he returns. So while she was searching for him to make her life exciting, she seems to have found herself. But she loses that person when she finally gets what she wanted and realizes The Joker is still out there.

Or something. Maybe I should have just begun this whole commentary not understanding anything instead of pretending I understood it! It's hard trying to make sense of crazy people.

The Joker's Daughter #1 One Shot Rating: I have yet to decide how I'm going to archive these one shots. Do they get their own page? Do I rank them against other One Shots? Do I just let them disappear into the archives? This was a good look at The Joker's Daughter since it's the only really coherent look at her and her motivations so far. DC seems to love this character for some reason. I suppose because the character was a fan favorite in the Preboot Universe and so she sold well when returning to The New 52 even if she was being written by Ann Nocenti. On the DC Comics All Access page, they write all sorts of nonsense like "Very few characters have made an impact on The New 52 quite like the murderess madwoman knows as The Joker's Daughter" and "the most deadly new location in the DCU -- The Gotham Underground" and "You should expect big things out of The Joker's Daughter this year." Who the fuck is running DC to think that The Gotham Underground and The Joker's Daughter have been exciting to anybody in the DC Fandom? For fuck's sake, they've been given to us by Ann Nocenti! Is anybody at DC reading her bile? Have they been paying attention at all? Apparently DC's decision makers don't give a shit about the execution of ideas; they just like getting smoke blown up their asses about some exciting idea a writer has come up with, even if it's as stupid as The Gotham Underground. I don't know who to blame because the small print list of DC's Employees and their positions at he bottom of the All Access page doesn't include the position of "Employee Assigned To Insert Straws Up the Asses of The People in Charge."