Lobo #3 (May 2026)

This was my brain in the late '80s, early '90s.

Lobo #3 (May 2026)
By Skottie Young, Nicoletta Baldari, Jorge Corona, Jean-Francois Beaulieu, and Nate Piekos
Cover by Jorge Corona and Jean-Francois Beaulieu
Edited by James Reid and Kathleen Wisneski

I get why people who are patriotic and religious get angry with me because I'm neither of those things. I'm sure they're thinking, "I have to pretend to be super into that shit or my peers will fucking lose it. How did you get out of having to live a performative life?!" Sometimes they try to debate me with their entire thesis being "You're a terrible person and I'm a great person because I am Christian and love the police and military and capitalism." But the thesis of my rebuttal is simply, "Okay. I don't care what you think of me. Goodbye." Is that a thesis?

I had a friend growing up who would constantly try to argue religion with me and our other friends, as if he were going to logic trap us into finally converting to Catholicism thanks to some helpful word puzzles from his hero, C. S. Lewis. Most of his arguments ended in, "Where's your faith, [my last name]?!", as if lacking faith meant anything at all to me and somehow destroyed all of my other arguments against souls or God or the existence of absolute evil or whatever other religious idea he was trying to launder through the eyes of his friends' logic sensors and belief in actual reality. As if by debating us, his ideas were just another set of equal views on the way the universe worked and not just a bunch of ancient dogma that has been used to control populaces for a couple thousand years.

So, yeah, I can understand that people who don't believe the things they espouse belief in would bristle at people who go about their lives not feeling the need to pretend in those things too. Sure, some of them actually believe that shit. But most of them, especially the ones in power (or trying to gain it) only believe in it as much as they can use it to manipulate others. They pretend they believe the things other people believe so those people will support them and they pretend to believe in those things to shit on and destroy anybody who doesn't believe them. One day, those people will all die out. I don't know when that day will be. Probably in a few thousand years because a lot of young people seem to love fascism, authority, and controlling things that don't affect them in any way at all. But one day they'll be gone because they offer nothing to the world but bad vibes, terrible takes, and abusive behavior.

I don't even care if people embrace religion for fake reasons or real reasons. The one thing which these people embrace that just makes me laugh at how huge a beta cuck it makes them is the police. Nobody fucking likes cops. NOBODY. Anybody who has ever encountered a cop has never been, "That was awesome! They really did a great job! What a needed role in our community!" I imagine the people who say they love cops must especially hate how free others are in their ability to state exactly what they think of cops. Cops are only good for feeding Wickermen. Whenever I see some poor sap flying a Thin Blue Line flag and that sap isn't a cop themselves, it fills my heart with glee that they have to live with that hypocrisy. "I love freedom and democracy so much that I want to pay a bunch of arrogant pieces of shit a ton of money to harass and beat and kill civilians!" Ha ha! Idiots.

Anyway, um, Lobo!

I love that Lobo's space pajamas are just his Omega Men uniform.

Lobo recently lost his job on a reality television show so now he's acting like he's a broke-ass motherfucker without any future. But he's still a mercenary, right? Maybe he's just sad that he's not going to be rich and famous like Nicole Richie. I'm super sad about that too. I mean that I'm not famous like Nicole Richie. I've stolen street signs, changed the letters on a fast food joint, and made a sex tape too! I guess I'm missing the key piece to her fame though: my father never fucking wrote "Hello". Stupid father.

Oh, I guess something happened to the Bounty Hunter Union when the broadcasting empire took over and all the bounty hunters lost their licenses. But some little twerpy alien guy drops by to give Lobo a psychological evaluation to kickstart the process of Lobo getting his license back. Psychological evaluation? For Lobo? To be a bounty hunter?! How can he fail?!

If I were fifteen, this panel would have instantly given me a boner. Now I'm 54 so I only have a boner in my mind.

I don't want people to think I can't pop boners at my advanced age! It's just that before I hit my late 40s, the boner drove the horniness. The boner was the beginning of the cycle and then the brain was all, "Oh shit. Let's do something with this! Why did it happen? Oh, fuck it, who cares?! Just stick somewhere warm and moist!" But now, it's the opposite. My brain actually gets horny and wants to get the sex stuff in and I have to convince my dick to join along. Oh, he joins along just fine (maybe not as staunchly and rigidly as before!) but he hardly ever starts the process anymore! I think my penis is just suffering from Weltschmerz.

The psychological test asks Lobo a series of questions in which his answers are mostly "I love fucking. I killed my entire race. I'm fucking drunk. And I don't really have any emotions other than lust (for food, women, and killing)." But eventually, the little alien dweeb asks Lobo about the first time he experienced joy that wasn't from any of the previous topics. And thus it's time for the origin story of Lobo's love of Space Dolphins! It's about fucking time!

I should note that even though I love the fuck out of Lobo, I did not follow comics for several years a number of times across my life. So if they've done the Lobo space dolphin thing at depth in some other place, I probably missed it. It's also quite probable that I just fucking forgot.

Miss Tribb is hot! Look at those gams! Too bad what eventually happens to them. Over and over again.

Little Lobo is so cute! Oh my god! I just want to cuddle the shit out of him! Also he's way cooler than all those other 4th grade nerds. I hope he kills them.

Lobo finds the controls for the aquarium and pushes the button that inexplicably destroys the glass and sets all the creatures free. I don't know why that button was installed. I guess for an emergency that I'm too unimaginative to think up. It causes Miss Tribb's panties to wad up really badly so she ends the field trip early. If there was a panel of her panties wadded up nice and snug against her alien pudenda, I'd have scanned it. So don't worry. You aren't missing anything!

Since Czarnia has no police or prison system because it's a grand utopia, nobody knows what to do with an anomaly like Lobo. So instead of murdering the little bastard because nobody knows what murder is, they call in the Pink Lantern to hug the violence out of him.

He's close to being the best lantern ever. The only thing holding him back is that I don't feel sexually attracted to him.

Lobo's memory of his childhood on Czarnia feels like a Conservative fairy tale. They love stories where the moral is "There should have been more cops." I love stories where the moral is "There should have been more Wickermen." That high school friend I mentioned earlier once had a class in high school where they split everybody up into smaller groups to manage an "island". They had to come up with some kind of budget to make their island a feasible nation state. My friend (Soy Rakelson. I've mentioned him many times before) and the jerks of his island spent their entire budget on a military. They wound up invading and taking over all the other islands which spent no money on defense. He was proud that the moral of his story was "The world needs more cops to protect all of the good people from me and these other assholes." Um, yeah. Cool, Roy. I mean Soy!

Lobo cuts off the lantern's ring finger, steals the ring, and terrorizes Czarnia for the next week with monster butterflies, devil flowers, and monstrous teddy bears. Eventually a Green Lantern comes forth to put a stop to Lobo. But that doesn't work either because the Green Lantern isn't Hal Jordan or Guy Gardner, men who would have beaten the little kid to within an inch of his stupid life. Instead, it's some weak jerk who takes pity on the child and chooses mercy over punishment. Lobo takes advantage of this and steals back the Pink Lantern Ring. That's the end of the memory because, I don't know, Lobo had no greater joy from not murdering, sexing, and drugging after that?

In the "end" (you'll get those quotes when you see the next scan!), Lobo decides he's bored of the psychological evaluation and just quits. He goes back to being happily unemployed.

What a windfall of Lobo ass this month!

The Ranking!
I love Lobo but I just feel like this series is missing something. Oh, I know exactly what it's missing: Simon Bisley, Alan Grant, and Keith Giffen! But that's okay because nostalgia is only good for horseshoes and hand grenades. I can enjoy a new thing that isn't the old thing that I loved while still feeling the feelings that I'm feeling where I feel like the new thing just isn't up to snuff! I'm a complicated and complex organism formed from multitudes of other organisms basically working together to create a meat shell that can sustain sentience! And if I can ignore all of that while reading this new Lobo, I can certainly ignore this isn't the thing I once loved and that death has claimed Keith and Alan! I don't think it will ever be able to claim Biz though. He'll probably kick death to pieces if it ever comes for him.

Lobo #1 (March 2026)

I got the special edition which comes with lotion, a box of tissues, and a change of underpants.

Lobo #1 (March 2026)
By Skottie Young, Jorge Corona, Jean Francois Beaulieu, and Nate Piekos
Cover by KyuYong Eom
Edited by James Reid, Kathleen Wisneski and Paul Kaminski

• I excitedly walked down to my local comic book shop to pick up Lobo #1 and then sadly looked at the shelves empty of Lobo #1s for what seemed the saddest eternity. So I went up to the owner who shall remain anonymous¹ and said, "I was looking for Lobo #1 because Lobo's about the only thing that could get me back into buying new comics!" And then she kicked me in the balls, tackled me to the ground, and yanked my arm up behind my back and growled, "Say you like big dicks, nerd. Say it! Say, 'I like big dicks!'" So between my sobs when I could catch my breath, I cried, "I like big dicks! I can't get enough of them! Mmm, mmm!" And she was all, "Yeah, I though so. I like them too." And then she helped me up, dusted me off, and we high-fived over big dicks. But, sadly, she then said, "Our DC shipment was delayed." Diplomatically, I did not say, "That's why I stopped buying comics here back in 2020! Because you never got your DC shipments!" And while, intellectually, I know, at the time, that was Diamond's problem which led to Diamond losing their stranglehold on the comic book distribution market, I still felt like maybe it's not totally the distributor's fault if this is still happening six years later? And at such a crucial time as the day the first issue of the new Lobo series shipped?!

• So later I went to Cosmic Monkey Comics and they had fifteen thousand copies of every Lobo variant on the shelves next to fifteen thousand copies of every other new comic that came out that day and also they didn't tackle me to the ground or force me to declare my love of big dicks. On the other hand, the clerk seemed to want to get rid of me as soon as possible and while normally I would attribute that to my terrible social skills, it's possible that she was just rude. Also it might have been the "I like big dicks" written in Sharpie across my forehead by Debbie. I mean the owner of that unnamed comic book store.

• Peter never treated me so roughly when he ran the store! He would always gently take my hand and wink and say, "Man, I bet you like big dicks, don't you?" And then I'd blush and I'd giggle and I'd say, "PETER!" Then he'd give me my 25% discount which I thought was for having a subscription box but it might also have been because I liked big dicks. Who can say?

• Anyway, look at this! Lobo's back! I mean, yeah, I know he's been around this whole time. But he's back with a monthly series that doesn't star a fake Lobo written by a guy who hates DC characters! I hope Alan Grant is rolling over in his grave! I mean in a happy way because he's gotten a huge boner and he's trying to get more comfortable. If Val Semeiks were dead, he'd probably have a big angel boner too. But he's alive so his boner is pure flesh and blood like mine. And he must have one because he once said, about drawing Alan Grant's Lobo, that it was "about as much fun as anyone can have drawing comics." I stole that from his Wikipedia which I went to to find out if he was still alive.

• Speaking of Val Semeiks, I should constantly praise him to the ends of the Earth because while he was having as much fun as anybody could have drawing comics, I was having the best time of my comic book reading life because of his work on Lobo and The Demon. I can't thank him and Alan Grant enough. I should also throw Keith Giffen's name into the ring while I'm at it because, well, Lobo but also Ambush Bug. And his and DeMatteis's Justice League was the League I grew up on. Thankfully! Can you imagine if you grew up on the League before that and were nostalgic about Aquaman, Gypsy, Vibe, and Commander Steel?! How embarrassing for you!

• Am I stalling? I'm so excited but I'm also scared! I'm basically an old man now. Can my heart handle this much Lobo?!

There he is! There's my sweet, sweet boy! Singing about shoving a gun up somebody's hoo-ha²!

• Lobo begins his adventure by parking his space hawg in a No Parking zone at a space dive bar. An alien parking attendant³ points out that Lobo's breaking a rule. Lobo points out that the guy should go get medical help before he dies after he rips his arm off.

• Often, Lobo avoids killing people if he's not being paid to kill them. Not because he's "honorable" but because he doesn't like providing free labor. But ripping off some guy's arm isn't killing them. Just ask Batman! If the guy doesn't seek adequate medical attention before he bleeds out, that isn't Lobo or Batman's fault, is it?! It's the carelessness of the person who carelessly lost their arm without taken precautions against dying from severe blood loss.

• Also the guy called Lobo "a rejected wannabe Kiss member" and if there's a better reason for ripping off an arm than that, I can't think of one. Unless it's telling somebody they're a Bon Jovi fan. But that should result in the loss of two arms so technically I was right in my first sentence where I said "a better reason for ripping off AN arm."

Ha ha! Lobo's so funny and clever and hot and sexy and, um, good thing this issue came with these extra underpants!

• I'm only on page three and I've already had to use the free underpants. I'd better got get some more before I continue.

• While having a drink at the bar before he murders whomever he's been hired to murder, Lobo accidentally learns a little something about himself.

So is Lobo "Murder Mouth"? Are they watching a bootleg movie about Lobo's Paramilitary Christmas Special?

• Judging by the film, Murder Mouth is more Wolverine than Lobo. But also, is there really much difference? Except that Wolverine isn't hot and sexy or funny or charming or tall or interesting in any way at all? And Fisty Claus is some kind of robot Steve Urkel with guns.

• And then I come to a part of the comic where, well . . . I don't want to say I cursed God and threw my comic book against the wall. I also don't want to say I went for a long walk in the rain while kicking rocks and sad Charlie Brown music played. I don't want to say any of that because I don't want anybody to know that that's what I did after Lobo called his readers, "mindless guppies". The readers who made Lobo the #1 all-time greatest comic book character to ever exist! The readers who couldn't get it up for regular sex anymore once they saw his physique and charming smile and his way with the sex workers without having to picture Lobo naked and aroused. The readers who spent most of their youth punching random nerds because it's what the 'Bo would do! I mean, I wasn't one of those readers! Oh, I also wasn't one of the ones who couldn't get a boner from regular sex either (unless you count "coming in your pants and then not having a boner anymore when the pants were off and it was time to actually do it" We're not counting that, right? Whew!).

• I don't know why Skottie Young would put those words in the Main Man's mouth and try to hurt his fans. Especially the "me" part Lobo's fans! But then a purple pig-faced orc says what all the awesome, cool, smart, sexy Lobo fans were already thinking which is why they didn't curse God or go for a sad walk or search "how to make a noose" on YouTube.

That's right, Grimlak the Pustulent! Exactly what I was going to say!

• When Lobo calls his readers the '80s F-word (that's not a literal reading of what he said; it's a postmodern critique!), he's reacting to the bartender's definition of an anti-hero which is "a villain that kills and frags and various other nefarious stuff, but they make jokes while they're doing it. Then they shoehorn in some kinda honorable reason for why they're doing said nefarious stuff." And that right there rules out Lobo anyway! Because he never gets a reason shoehorned in for doing his nefarious stuff! That definition of anti-hero should have been saved for Deathstork #1⁴. That ladyfingers always needs an honorable reason for murdering and pedophiling! But not Lobo! Unless you call "fixing a typo" honorable?

• As Lobo beats up all the mindless guppies who liked Rorschach for all the wrong, dumb reasons and not all the smart, postmodern reasons, he tells his secret origin story. From the first mini-series to The New 52 and beyond. I guess that's part of the whole "All-in" thing? Everything that happened, happened? No more Post Zero Hour Continuity? No more Rebirth? No more Superboy punch? No more Doctor Manhattan, um, doing, um, what was he doing again?

Oh, come on, you metro twat! Explain yourself!

• I still like to believe that New 52 Twat Lobo was just one of Lobo's drops of blood that fell into a vat of mineral water as it sprouted into a clone. That's a pop culture reference to Heathers because I'm a mindless guppy!

• Lobo also describes a brief love affair that's pretty much the one part of his story I didn't read because even though I was going to read DC's Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, I wound up not doing it. Probably because Debbie kicked me in the balls and made me admit that I wanted to be pegged when I went in to buy it.

He's just like me! I also get a crush on every woman I see in their underwear!

• The guy Lobo tells his life story to winds up being his bounty. But before he can say something witty and pop cultury like "Smell ya later!", his dawg barges in and interrupts his bounty hunting.

So what I'm hearing, Lobo, is that I can hire you to kill everybody who ever said that Boondock Saints was their favorite movie? For free?!

• I wonder how many times Jason Momoa, while in his Lobo make-up on the set of Supergirl, did the Pennywise dance?

• Now's the part where we find out why Lobo has a new series! What's changed in his life that's made it so he can have monthly adventures full of over-the-top violence and pop culture references? Full of space dolphins and space hawgs and space clown make-up? I hope he doesn't get roped into doing honorable things like that part of his life he forgot to mention where he was forced to do goody-two-shoes shit for Vril Dox. I guess if I were beaten in a one-on-one physical contest against Space Bill Gates, I wouldn't tell people about it either. Just like how I never told anybody about that time I went camping with my friend Soy Rakelson and woke up with Vaseline on my ass.

• Lobo makes a reference to Guardians of the Galaxy and I almost missed it because Lobo mentioned trash pandas and I — against every fiber of my being, every particle of my non-existent soul — squeeeeed.

• Just try to remember how most of what I say happened to me is a lie so that you won't embarrass yourself when you spread the gossip that I squeeeeed like I grew up on tumblr or cried every afternoon in college while watching Sailor Moon or, one or more times, masturbated into a sink. I say those things for comic effect! If you believe I was sobbing when I first heard "Rainy Day Man", you're certifiable! I'm super cool and tough and macho in real life. But that doesn't make for interesting or entertaining reading! It only makes for banging loads and loads of hot ladies! So if you need to spread rumors about me, spread that one! How I banged loads of hot ladies!

• Lobo goes after the bounty he's owed for the kill he didn't commit and learns that he's now an employee of HBO MAX.

• Why does it smell so bad behind my left ear but not my right ear? Do spiders shit behind people's ears? Can ears fart? Did I accidentally fling some shit up behind my ear while wiping my ass earlier?

• Whoops! Wrong window. I'd better close my journal and write in it later so that doesn't happen again. I'm just glad I wasn't talking about how wide my urethra is! Now that would have been embarrassing!

• As Lobo's finding out that Space HBO MAX wants him to star in an anti-hero reality show, he decides to have a double splash page where he pretends his hook on a chain is his dick and he's fucking the guys he's about to kill.

Simon Bisley would have hid like fifteen dicks in this art. I only count three in Jorge's.

• After Lobo kills all the security guards, the president of Space HBO MAX⁵ offers Lobo a deal to star in the biggest bounty hunting reality show since that one where that guy did bounty hunting but which I never saw. His name was Mongoose or Polar Bear or something.

• Wait. It was Dog? Just plain old Dog? Was it at least spelled cool? Or did he need it to read as "god" backwards? You know what? Never mind. I don't care. I've avoided knowing about that guy for five decades. I'll be fine never knowing about him at all.

The Ranking!
Best comic of 2026? Sure! By a mile! By five miles! By however many miles your weensy brain can imagine! Twelve, probably. If a better comic than this has been published in 2026, I'd probably have heard about it. I mean I've had heard about it and not told you to go fuck yourself because Lobo #1 was better. And since that didn't happen, quid pro ipso facto, this is the best comic book of 2026! Suck it!


__________________________________________________________________________________
¹ I wouldn't want to embarrass Debbie or Excalibur Comics, would I?
² Okay, maybe I'm misinterpreting the term "jammie" here. He's probably just talking about loading a gun and not doing the most misogynist thing he can think of immediately on the first page of his new series.
³ Or some other kind of hall monitor nerd. Maybe he just loves rules and hates seeing cool people break them. Loser.
⁴ Which I'll be reviewing next!
⁵ As big a douche as the president of Earth HBO MAX.

Green Arrow #9

Green Arrow offers Black Canary some protection as she perfumes her vagina.

According to the cover, Bear Fuck Island is also full of heroin poppies! That totally makes sense because when you're a bear, the greatest thing to do after eating a mouthful of poppies is to fuck whoever just washed up on shore. Also, the poppies are probably the reason the half-faced woman is building robots to guard the island! It's like how the Great and Terrible Oz decided to rule over Oz when he realized the street value of the heroin poppy fields surrounding the Emerald City. His hot air balloon basket was definitely lined with bags of heroin which is why he had to pretend to float off without Dorothy. The heroin just added too much weight to support a human female and her little dog too.

Last issue, I stated that Black Canary and Green Arrow were searching for Diggle by following bear tracks and semen. You probably thought I was joking, right? Well take a look at this, not true believers! I hope Stan Lee can't sue me for typing that.

Gross!

While tracking Diggle and a certain bear that isn't wild simply because it's a bear but also because it's not civilized enough to understand the meaning of consent, Dinah and Ollie stumble on the field of orchids. I mean poppies! Poppies are the ones that make heroin. Orchids are the ones that look sexually perturbing. While he and Dinah share a moment of silence for all of the lives ruined by heroin, somebody falls off of the cliff behind them. Mostly because Green Arrow shoots an arrow at the lip of the cliff, destroying it. I guess that's his Mountain Smashing Arrow that you all remember.

The man who fell off the cliff is Ata, a First Nations...um...First Nationer. He gets all snippy with Green Arrow because Green Arrow is a white man. Gah! It's so tiresome always getting called out on being a white male! It's like every time I take something that doesn't belong to me, or act like a woman in pain is just being dramatic, or call my retarded friends gay, people are always all, "Typical white guy!" How fair is that?! I mean, the guy has a point. Ollie is totes privved. That means "totally privileged" for all of you uncool readers out there. Also, I didn't want to spell privilege. But then I realized it might be confusing so I got out my word calculator and learned how to spell it correctly anyway.

Meanwhile, John Diggle is saying stupid things to his captor.

Don't admit to being enemies! Aren't you supposed to just be repeating your rank and serial number?!

Oh, my mistake! Diggle must know what he's doing because after calling Half-Face here a Ninth Circle Employee, she flips the fuck out trying to point out how she isn't one of them. She proves this by explaining her whole Bear Fuck Island operation to Diggle. In practically no time at all, Ana (that's Half-Face's real name) and Diggle become business partners! Apparently the natives of Bear Fuck Island are just trying to bring green technology to the world and make a little cash doing it. The Ninth Circle provided them with a substantial business loan but to secure the loan, Ana's tribe also had to produce heroin. Diggle explains how the Inferno sank and the bank is dead. But Ana insists that they still probably have two more Bank Ships floating about, the Purgatorio and the Paradiso!

Green Arrow and Black Canary learn all about the Bear Fuck Islander natives' tech from Ata as he leads them to the Bear Creation Laboratory. Apparently all the fucking bears died off but he brought them back for perverted reasons. And now Bear Fuck Island wants to bring their Fucking Bear Technology to the mainland! Except those gosh darned Bankers and Businessmen won't let them! I don't mean the regular ones that are just normal evil and vile! I'm talking about the weirdo ones that burn their employees' skin off before giving them a promotion.

Somewhere in the last eight issues, Green Arrow and Black Canary fell head over heels in love. I'm not sure I can pinpoint the exact moment but I think it was either when they fucked or when Black Canary called Oliver a privileged white male cis piece of shit billionaire asshole who was ruining the world and should probably go hang himself. Now they can't stop kissing each other every time somebody mentions how one person wants to kill another one! They giggle at that and start getting sloppy!

Oh my. The romance is getting me so wet!

I fucking hate competitive couples. I hate when two people are bickering and somebody says, "Get a room already!" I always think, "Better yet. Just stay the fuck away from each other!" Not that I'm saying a really good hate fuck isn't called for now and again. It's just probably not the best thing to found a relationship on. I feel like maybe Black Canary is enjoying the hate more than the fuck.

Oliver, Dinah, and Diggle destroy everything Ana and Ata created while attempting to escape the island. When Ata and Ana get pissed, Oliver just grins and says, "Let's get going! Once again, everything worked out for good old Green Arrow and his crew!" Then a bunch of explosions happen in the background and a bunch of bears burn to death. Green Arrow's final thought is, "I'm not sure how much good we've done here!" Ugh! Typical white guy!

So after destroying another people's native land, Oliver Queen heads back to Seattle with his friends. He'll probably never spare another thought for Bear Fuck Island and how he shit, pissed, and vomited all over the poor place.

The Ranking!
+0! Some of the art was cute although it was weird that Black Canary was drawn almost exclusively with her legs spread in one way or another. I don't think that was the main point of the story though! I think the main point was how native people could totally bring about a green revolution if it weren't for having to live with all of those horny bears.

Green Arrow #6

This looks like a playing card. The Bore of Dragons?

The Facts!
• This issue is an Emiko story. It's called "Sins of the Mother" so I'm expecting it to be super sexy.

• I don't know why the sins of the mother would be any sexier than the sins of the father. My mother and father both have many sins for which they'll eventually pay and neither one's sins are any sexier than the other's.

• Emiko is a teenager so of course she's wise beyond her years and smarter than most of the adults in the comic books. It's an easy way to write to an audience because any teenagers reading will be all, "Yep. I'm super wise." And most adults reading are busy screaming out in pain from their eyes cramping up in mid roll. Emiko's wise words are these: "Sometimes the best way to help someone is to hurt them." Why haven't I heard this advice before? You mean I wasted the first forty years of my life trying not to hurt people which means I haven't been helping them to the best of my ability?! Well, that ends today! I'm going to go shine up my crotch-kicking books immediately!

• I think what Emiko is actually saying is that whole thing you say to the friends and family of addicts. You have to let them bottom out before they can get better. Helping them along every step of the way is just enabling their self-destructive behavior. Emiko might also be talking about how doctors have to re-break bones to set them correctly sometimes, or cut people open to take out whatever is inside them and killing them (like feelings). But I'm not going to rule out that she just generally means kicking people in the crotch is good for their well-being.

• Shado has just kidnapped Emiko so she can point out all the ways in which Emiko doesn't actually know all of the things Emiko thinks she knows. I wonder if parents can hire Shado to straighten out all of their teenagers? I wonder if I could get a job doing that?! Parents can hire me to logically point out how a teenager doesn't actually know what the teenager thinks they know and/or to kick them in the crotch.

• The crotch kicking part of my job would only be necessary if the teenager is a total smart ass. And by that, I mean if the teenager is absolutely wiser and smarter than I am. Because they still need to learn that no matter how wise or smart they are, getting kicked in the crotch still fucking hurts.

• Emiko narrates the story of her previous year living with Ollie. It's a whole bunch of "alas, my life" moments where Ollie teaches her how to be a responsible individual not beholden to a criminal mastermind. So of course Emiko runs right out and gets herself beholden to The Clock King. Not The Clock King in Deathstroke or the one who appeared in Harley Quinn! This is Seattle's Clock King who is totally different somehow. Maybe there's an original Clock King who sells Clock King franchises? Maybe he's a subsidiary of Burger King?

• Meanwhile in the present and also in Tokyo, Emiko shows Shado what she learned from Ollie about not being anybody's stooge and then running off to become somebody's stooge anyway. This time, she refuses to do as Shado says and then runs off to be captured by the leader of the Yakuza, Oyabun. Shado is his stooge so at least Emiko moved up from being the stooge of the main bad guy instead of the stooge of the stooge of the main bad guy!

The Opinions!
This issue didn't need to be a comic book. It was about 75% first person narration. It may as well have been published as a diary. I might have liked it better if it had less of Emiko blah blah blahing up the thing. Or I may have actually not minded it if Emiko's voice were a bit less self-assured. Can't people just be individuals without putting so much effort into being one? It's also probable that I didn't really give this book much of a chance because I've been farting a lot and I can barely breathe in my office now. That might have tainted my attitude toward Emiko. I should probably go reread this in the garden but I'm just not interested in reading a Green Arrow comic book twice.

Ranking: +0! Or -0! Whichever!