The New Titans #0

At first I thought Beast Boy had a tiny erection.

Steel seems upset that Arsenal's new roster of Titans are just kids because he obviously hasn't been paying attention to the adjective before "Titans" during the last several decades. I can see why he'd be upset though. He wants the Titans to sign a contract to work with the government and teenagers probably can't sign the contract legally without parental consent. And how is he going to get that?! One of the other major features of the Titans over the last several decades is that their parents were all assholes and psychopaths. Looks like The New Titans can't work for the government! The government probably should have figured out all the details before paying off all of the Titans' debt and giving them a satellite.

I don't mean to sound ableist but Changeling is fucking disgusting.

Fine, I did mean to sound ableist. Changeling's new disability makes me sick. I didn't mind when he would turn into an elephant or a rhino or a gorilla because then he only had one giant swinging dick. Now he's 95% penises! Sorry, I don't mean to sound homophobic but did I also mention the penises are also green and that one of the newer commercials for a class action lawsuit against a diabetes drug asks if you suffered from genital gangrene? See, now you're sick too!

These two guys from New Jersey are trying to catch a few of Gar's penises in their mouths.

Crimelord (remember him from Deathstork the Hunted #0? I guess he's the new evil nemesis of the Titans universe. And maybe the entire DC Universe!) is causing chaos in America, almost blowing up the World Trade Center seven years before it's supposed to get blown up. But the new New Titans are out to stop his henchmen. Those Titans are Arsenal, Damage, Terra, Mirage, and Changeling. The henchmen are men in giant robot armor, some jerk named Slagg, and a misshapen woman named Coven.

I didn't think she was misshapen until this panel.

Although maybe it's not Coven's fault. I think maybe there's something wrong with my eyes.

Is there an optical condition that makes you see people as having giant thighs?!

If there were an optical condition like the one I described in the previous caption, it would probably be call Brettbootharacts.

Is Mirage still pregnant with Deathwing's rape baby? What are the negative consequences of battling super villains while being pregnant? I bet it's worse than drinking too much alcohol while pregnant! Notice I said "too much alcohol"? You can drink while pregnant. Non-American adults do it all the time! I mean, not "all the time" because that's actually the problem. But in moderate quantities, your baby will be fine! Probably! And even if it isn't, it's just a stupid new baby! You just met it! How attached can you be?

I have to admit: I thought about all the people who would probably get choked up reading this line about the World Trade Center and said a little prayer for them. Poor bastards. They're the real victims, having to be sad for the rest of their lives.

There's this terrible conservative game show on Fox called Spin the Wheel. Here was my first reaction to it which I wrote on Twitter or somewhere else on the Internet:

Spin the Wheel is right-wing fantasy of what they wish television was. The only people who get a chance to win lots of money are ones they think deserve the chance. When discussing the Las Vegas shooting, they just call it a "tragedy" and never mention what actually happened.

It's called "Spin the Wheel" but it should be called "Touch the Wheel." Um, that's evidence that they ignore reality while still believing things are what they are because they say they are (and also the audience chants the "truth" the entire time).

Although the best part is the rift they're causing in these "deserving" families because the idiot trusted family member keeps costing the family millions of dollars. Oh, sure, they act like they don't care on television. But that fucking wound is permanent! Ha ha!

See, the rift is caused because the final four spins of the wheel work like Deal or No Deal. The show offers the person a deal to walk away. But the person doesn't get to pick. Instead, a loved one makes that decision. When the person spins the wheel (I mean touches the wheel), the ball inside the wheel can either land on some money or a Back to Zero wedge. If the ball lands on Back to Zero and the loved one didn't take a deal, they lose all of their money and go home humiliated. But if the loved ones takes the deal on the first or second or third spin, the person spinning can still win millions of dollars which are then lost because the loved one took an early deal. It's a fucking rigged set-up for the family and I'll tell you why.

The only thing for the loved one to do is to never take the deal. You might go home with zero dollars but you avoid something even worse: rooting against your loved one. As soon as the person who can take the deal takes the deal, they have to hope that the person spinning loses everything. They have to. Otherwise, they made a poor choice and cost their loved one millions of dollars. And I can't help but think that anybody rooting for their loved one to crap out on the wheel is a fucking piece of shit. Now, you might be saying, "Hey, they took the deal as insurance! Even if their loved one wins millions, they couldn't have known. They did the smart thing!" But here's the thing about being a human: you know the loved one who took the deal wants proof that they made the correct choice. They don't want to be responsible for all the money lost if their loved one never hits a Back to Zero wedge. Therefore anybody who takes the deal is a fucking traitorous rat and I, for one, would never fucking forgive them. "You took the second deal?! That means you wanted me to fail every spin after that, you fucking asshole! Get out of my life!" is totally how I'd react on national television. Not that Fox would ever think I was deserving of touching the wheel!

That was a digression because the rest of the comic book was just idiotic Teen Titan banter. You know the kind! "I want to fuck you so bad, you ugly shitstain!" "Ew, you make me so mad that I want to stick my tongue in your butt!" "Will you two knock it off already because Changeling is masturbating again!" "Gross! All of his dicks at once?! Gag me with a spoon!" Oh wait. This comic was from 1994 and not 1984. Although didn't Wayne and Gar bring back gag me with a spoon?! Probably! Not! Ha ha!

New Titans #0 Rating: C-. Boy howdy was this an average comic book! The best part about owning this series is that I have conclusive proof of when I became a man! Between New Titans #114 and New Titans #115 when I finally grew up and realized this comic book was terrible and I should stop reading it. But I didn't stop reading all terrible comic books so maybe I became a man later. Or, more apt, will become a man later! Hopefully soon because I can't wait to see what a woman's ding dong looks like!

New Titans Annual #10

I'm sure Starfire is completely naked for important plot reasons.


Oh, I get it! Elseworlds stories are like Marvel's "What If...?" stories! So this Elseworlds story would be "What if Raven had huge tits?"


In this version of the DCU, colorists get so distracted by Raven's big tits that they accidentally color Raven's face the same color as Raven's clothes.


In this universe, Raven is played by Tina Turner. And Cyborg is related to Toys'R'Us.


Speaking of V'ic'tor's'ton'e, Raven turns him into Cyborg in this world. And she makes sure he has the biggest cock in all the land. "Booyah, I tuck it into my knee pocket. What of it?! Booyah!"


No wonder Raven had to make Cyborg's penis so long. Pantha is providing some really flaccid competition.

Raven is a sorceress queen who has turned a bunch of random peasants into her Teen Titans.

But she fucked up because she made Dick Grayson the dumb one. That's no way to convince her to let you out of your cage, dick!


Cyborg shocked that the six human people he saw in cages were "transformed" like him. I mean, I guess one of them was green? And one had a huge penis? Maybe that's it! He's pissed about Raven giving somebody else a huge penis!


In this weird Elseworld, Starfire wears more clothes than any other woman.


I didn't scan this to say, "Whoops! Never mind! She's hardly wearing anything!" Because even with her underwear riding straight up her ass, she's still better dressed than Raven and Pantha. I scanned this to say, "Whoops! I guess Cyborg and Pantha don't have the longest penises after all!"


Look at this guy casually running for his life! He's my second new favorite background character!


Right after this guy, Anguished Fat Man! He was from one of the early New 52 Action Comics.

The Titans escape Raven's clutches with Nightwing taking the lead.

I don't know why Donna looks so disgusted or how she's holding up Arsenal's rigid body. Maybe Raven put handles on his back?








Oops! Sorry! I got distracted by all the tits and ass.


This is totally not a metaphor for what I just did in my pants. What do you think I am? A twelve year old boy who doesn't own any better jerk off material than a 1994 New Titans Annual?!


Anyway, Raven kills Nightwing and, I guess, Boxing Helena's Starfire?


Look, Marv Wolfman. I think I know what you meant for Phantasm to be doing to Nightwing here but I can't do anything about it! I'm spent!

This is exactly the kind of sordid universe I'd expect from a DC timeline where the only thing that was changed was Raven's cup size.

Hee hee!


Double hee hee!

Trigon does come just like every twentieth issue of the Titans. You'd think they'd have some other enemies! I mean, sure, they have Deathstork but that's just so Trigon doesn't appear in every tenth issue. And also they have Brother Blood but that's so Deathstork doesn't appear in every fifth issue. And I guess they have the Fearsome Five and the Brotherhood of Evil! But that's just so Brother Blood doesn't appear in every third issue!

By fighting together, the Titans save the world. That's the message in every Titan's story! If you fight alone, you will be defeated. If you fight together, you will destroy New York and drive your parents and/or siblings back to Hell/Tamaran/Slade Industries/Dayton Enterprises! Go go Titans go! Is that their catchphrase?

New Titans Annual #10 Rating: I'll let this panel speak for my rating:

See? The colorist never recovered from seeing Raven's huge tits.

New Titans #114

This is it! The last regular issue of this comic that I own!

I guess the changing of the guard leaving Arsenal in charge was the last straw for me. Or maybe the last straw was that Pantha's tail hole on her shorts never ripped so that I could see her butthole. One of those two reasons is definitely why I stopped buying this comic though.

This issue is called "24 Hours" which makes me think of Gaiman's The Sandman which makes me think, "Why the fuck am I rereading this shit when I could be rereading that shit?!" Oh wait! I actually know the reason for this! It's because these Titans comic books were stored in a big old regular sized moving box that I wanted to get out of the way! Also I've reread The Sandman and I've never reread this. And since I'll be fifty in a little over two years, I should probably get all of the stupid time-wasting bullshit ideas out of my head now. Any writing projects I can't finish by the time I'm fifty, I'm abandoning. At that time, I'll just make up new ones that will only entertain me and a few other people. So if I've ever said anything in passing about something I was going to do, like finishing the Goggles Futures End story or my Fantastickal Fuck-Fighting Books, you'd better get your vote in now!

The issue begins at midnight with Changeling getting his ass beat by a dark silhouette who claims Changeling promised to "end her living days." I don't know who that might be or why this is happening. With Zero Hour beginning right around this time, my comic books might become complete nonsense. I just have to hope the comic books involved in that non-crisis-labeled crisis will have "Zero Hour Tie-in" labels on the front. I probably don't understand what's going on in this one because Marv Wolfman is being artsy. And fuck if I know anything about art! I read comic books for a reason, people!

At 1:10 AM, Starfire flies around wondering if Earth is really her home. Yes, it takes six panels for her to ask that question. But she's also being artsy in a poetic way! She uses phrases like "scarlet sea" and "delicious nectar" and "golden skies." It's almost as if somebody scoffed at Marv Wolfman when he mentioned he wrote comic books earlier in the week and he thought, "I'll show them!" Then he was all, "Hey! That issue by that new kid Gaiman was kind of artsy! It had those clocks that showed what time it is and the whole thing took place in only 24 hours and it was all filmed in real time although with all the cuts from one character to another, why did it even fucking matter? Oh wait, it's only 1994! I don't know who Jack Bauer is yet!"

At 3:36 AM, Pantha breaks into somebody's apartment. Supposedly it's the person who changed her from a person into a cat or from a cat into a person. But it isn't so Pantha gets to scream in existential angst which is the only cathartic release available to those of us who know nothing has any meaning and all of our clothes need to be tailored so the tail can stick out of them.

At 4:10 AM, Dick Grayson proves he's a master of disguise by first being unrecognizable and then being unrecognizable in a different way.

A true master of disguise! He's already showing hints of his ability to be Agent 37 of Spyral.

Notice how the panels are all wonky in the previous scan? I'm sure Marv Wolfman put a note in the script to the artist: "We're being artsy this issue! Art it up!"

At 5:20 AM, we finally learn what happened to Deathwing. I don't mean we get an explanation of what Mirage did to him and why he doesn't have testicles anymore. We just see that he's making an appearance so that the audience can go, "Oh, that fuckbunny isn't dead? Great."

The silhouette from earlier has dragged Changeling into Deathwing's bachelor pad. She's still just a dark profile but she mentions that Changeling is probably strong enough to accept her seed so it must be Raven. I guess being a demon from a dimension of empaths means you don't learn about the birds and the bugs. Unless this answers a question I'm sure I asked much earlier! Changeling can turn into a female version of any species! And Raven squirts semen because, well, she's Trigon's daughter.

At 6:05 AM, Arsenal goes jogging with Bill Clinton. Clinton messes up Sergeant Steel's plans to manipulate the Titans into working for the government by telling Roy that he wants the Titans to be completely independent but he hopes that they'll work with the government. This plot point feels like Marv worked himself into a story arc that he didn't want to pursue any more. It's not like the DC Universe needed another team working on behalf of the U.S. government.

At 6:15 AM, Garfield Logan finally gets laid.

Okay, maybe he doesn't get laid. But he definitely comes in his pants.

Do you think Marv Wolfman was in the shower when he thought, "Comic books have 24 pages. There are 24 hours in a day. Hey! I should steal an idea from Neal Gaiman!"

At 7:43 AM, Nightwing crashes through a skylight. Just like Batman taught him! I can hear Bruce now: "Good job, Dick! Now they'll have to call Wayne Skylight and Window Repair! Another payday for the Batman!"

At 9:00 AM (Eastern Time, Planet Earth, Sol System), Jarras Minion of some planet in the Alpha Centauri system watches his entire race disintegrate before his eyes. Probably a symptom of Zero Hour!

At 10:05 AM, Nightwing declares, "I'm not a doctor! I just feel like a doctor!" It's his philosophical explanation for why he doesn't use lethal force. It totally makes sense because Nightwing still punches the shit out of people just like how doctor's love to give shots and cut people open.

At 11:20 AM, Changeling begs to remain a virgin. He escapes but he has some missing time so he might also be pregnant. I guess I'll never know unless he starts showing in 24 hours! Or I'm curious enough to go buy some back issues. Ha ha! That was a joke! I have no curiosity.

Page 12 is noon, of course! Nightwing has lunch with a detective because Dick Grayson had the fear of Alfred beaten into him about sitting down promptly at noon for the midday meal. Twenty-four hours for Dick Grayson went like this:

9 PM - 4 AM: Risk life with grown ass adult man in bat costume.
4 AM - 8 AM: Sleep.
8 AM - 9 AM: Waffles.
9 AM - 12 PM: Training.
12 PM - 1 PM: Cucumber sandwiches.
1 PM - 5 PM: Study time.
5 PM - 6 PM: Tea.
6 PM - 9 PM: Try to evade Bruce and Alfred as Dick finds a quiet spot to masturbate.

At 1:30 PM, Roy has coffee with Steel. The government's final offer to the Titans: the government gives the Titans the Terraist's satellite, an Earthbound base, and money to pay off any lawsuits against the Titans and in return, the Titans promise to consider missions for the United States. What a terrible deal for the government! The Titans can just turn down every mission and the United States gets nothing for their investment. There must be a loophole. Steel reminds Roy, "You gotta decide fast!" As if it wasn't the easiest deal in the world to say yes to!

At 2:25 PM (Eastern Time, Planet Earth, Sol System), Jarras roleplays Kal-el's early days. As his world is destroyed (along with some visiting Darkstars), Jarras escapes in a pod called the Omegadrone. It's both an escape pod and a weapon! I don't remember the character Minion at all. Probably because this was the last Titans comic I read for decades.

At 3:55 PM, Wolfman reveals that Red Star has taken a job as a mall security cop. And I guess a babysitter as well since Baby Wildebeest is hanging out with him.

At 4:10 PM, Roy Harper signs the contract with the government even though he knows it's going to blow up in his face. Fucking leftist comic book writers, portraying the United States government as underhanded, manipulative bastards who don't give a shit who they hurt to get what they want!

At 5:20 PM, a bunch of Darkstars are killed by the rainbow spiral that destroyed Jarras's planet. The populace of the planet had been bred to be passive. So I guess the moral of this story is that hippie beatnik pacifists are only asking for trouble. Fucking right wing comic book writers! Well, at least Jarras has learned the lesson that peace is for dead people. The Omegadrone will teach him how to get revenge.

At 6:03 PM, Roy thinks he's going to get Wally West to join his government Titans team but he's really going to get Impulse. I know that because I looked at the future roster of this team: Arsenal, Damage, Impulse, Mirage, and Terra. No wonder I stopped reading it!

At 7:32 PM, Nightwing takes a shower. Naked! I know that's how most people take showers and I probably didn't need to emphasize it but he also jerks off so maybe I should have started with that.

DC canon: Dick Grayson jerks off thinking about puns.


And after he finishes.

At 8:54 PM, Dick Grayson turns in his resignation to Roy Harper. He's officially off the Titans! Good riddance, ya dumb jerk! If that even is you. Try looking more like Dick Grayson next issue, Dick Grayson!

At 9:20 PM, Red Star, Pantha, and Baby quit the Titans as well. Then they go on a romantic road trip which DC apparently didn't publish. There's an advert in this issue for a Green Arrow story arc called "Cross Roads" that the copy compares to Knightfall and which nobody fucking remembers (probably!) but DC never published a Red Star/Pantha team-up?! No, they were right. Just as I was typing that, I was thinking, "Fuck, I would never have purchased that shit."

At 10:10 PM, Changeling agrees to stick with the Titans. But he's full of Raven's disgusting seed, so he'll probably just turn on them immediately.

At 11:05 PM, Dick and Kory break-up. But not in person! Dick waits for her to arrive to a dinner where he can dump her but Kory knows better and just flies into outer space. I don't remember what happens with her but it's probably super boring. I'm sure she goes home, fights with Blackfire, fights some Gordanians or whatever dumb race always enslaved the Tamaraneans, and then remembers why she moved to Earth in the first place.

At midnight, Phantasm arrives to lead Harper and Logan into Damage #6. And then into Titans Zero Hour! Oh. So I guess I do have one more issue of this story arc to read: New Titans #0. I also have a Titans Elseworld Annual in the stack. Plus a Team Titans Elseworld Annual and one more Team Titans issue. And finally, before I can totally move on, Deathstork #0!

New Titans #114 Rating: C. The one hour per page gimmick really helps Marv Wolfman clean up a bunch of loose ends to get the Titans ready for a big group change in Zero Hour. Plus he was able to shove in the Minion origin story (which was really just Superman's origin). And I usually give the art a pass even when it's not very good (and I often ignore it when it's great!) but holy Lobo's bulging crotch, it was fucking terrible this issue. It was so bad that I'm not even going to remember who the artist was so that I don't have to feel embarrassed for them.

New Titans #113

In Dick Grayson's memories, Starfire and Cyborg were Christ figures while Aqualad spent 100% of his time trying to suck his own dick.

When my beloved cat Pelafina died a few months ago at eighteen years old, my eulogy was simply this: "She was the best gift I was ever given." And then the Non-Certified Spouse just sent me a picture of some Lobo socks that our friend Xan wants to give me and I just said, "Now Pelafina was the second best gift I was ever given!" Just in case anybody was wondering just how dedicated I am to my hyperbolic love of Lobo!

How do I show these off? Shorts while wearing long socks?! How gauche!

And just for comparison so you can truly understand the infinite limits of my hyperbolic nature which can declare those socks better than Pelafina, here is Pelafina for comparison. I am not responsible for your hearts melting.

I just ordered Koji Suzuki's Loop, the third novel in the Ring saga. Spiral was so fucking yo-yo bananas that I figured they could never make a movie of it. But I was wrong, being that I think like an American and no like a Japanese. Because they audaciously made a film of it (Rasen) and I watched it a few days ago. Inexplicably, the movie remains completely true to the book. I say "inexplicably" because this is the first time I completely expected a fuck-ton of changes to the premise and the plot. I naively thought, "There is no way they're going to make a film where the curse of the video tape jumps into the journal of the reporter from the first movie because it somehow senses the report will be a more virulent mode of transmission. But then almost immediately, the virus will be all, 'You know what? What if I infect this guy and have him fuck this chick? That means I could spread to her in a much more normal virus-y way!' And because that might make the entire premise of the Ring series less supernatural because now the virus has suddenly decided to spread like a normal virus instead of like some techno-virus spawned in the dank and smelly recesses of some 4channer's basement lair, the story will have to introduce a new twist! Now the virus won't just kill! It will cause the woman infected by the virus to give birth to a clone of themselves except possessed by Sadako, the woman who climbs out of the television in The Ring. Which is a premise no movie audience would ever be expected to swallow! Especially when the plot also asks you to believe the virus can clone anybody one Earth through the Sadako clone as long as you possess their DNA and understand in vitro fertilizaion! Oh, and also the clone is birthed at the exact age the person died? Or the sample was taken? I don't know, it's all so confusing that nobody would ever make that fucking movie." So, anyway, good for you, Japan! You did it! You win again!

Seriously though. How is Loop going to be any crazier than Spiral?! I can't wait to find out!

This issue begins with Dick Grayson helping to rebuild the Amazon village where Kory broke up with him. He's showing some emotional growth as he contemplates the naked chest of one of the villagers, Maria-Theresa. If you're now thinking, "That's an odd name for a native of the Amazon," have you done any reading on missionaries? Whenever anybody tells me all the good religion has done for the world, my entire rebuttal is the word "Missionaries!" screamed at the top of my lungs. I've finally decided to embrace the phrase, "Brevity is the soul of wit." Why should I have to explicate my missionary argument to another grown-ass adult who should understand the whole bullshit idea of spreading their religious dogma to other cultures? How does that help anybody?! Oh wait, I forgot. It lets Jesus collect more souls so he can stick his tongue out at the devil and say, "Nyah, nyah! Hallelujah! Amen!"

Dick realizes that he's been a selfish child and constantly expected Kory's emotional support for his problems while always sighing and rolling his eyes at all of Kory's problems. Which might be a step up from his paternal role model who did all of those things but to a butler because he thought women were just for fucking. Is that a step up? At least Dick was trying not to treat all women as penis cozies? At least all non-red-headed women!

I've lost my train of thought. Again.

Oh yeah! Dick was learning to forget about Kory through emotional growth and new boobies.

The rebuilding of the village ends with a big celebration after getting the cross on top of the rebuilt church. That makes me super sad. How many Amazonian Rain Forest Gods were displaced due to this incursion of Christian bullshit?! I hope they become super villains.

Dick loves how quickly the villagers manage to rebuild the village without somebody taking control as leader. Maria tells him, "Yeah, dumbie. Is that the right word? 'Dumbie'? Anyway, we all know what we need to do and we do it without anybody standing back and judging our every movement like some dark controlling knight!" And Dick is all, "Yeah! I wish that would work with the Titans! But how can I trust Changeling to turn into the right creature without me telling him? And how can I make sure Cyborg will synchronize using his white noise cannon while saying 'Booyah'?! And I'm just supposed to trust that Raven won't rape and impregnate everybody we meet with her father's demon babies?! Pshaw! No way!"

What I'm trying to say is that Dick hasn't really fucking learned anything. At least not yet! I'm still just a few pages into his journey!

Dick takes a canoe down the Amazon while contemplating his life. I think maybe Maria slipped him some hallucinogens. Although most of his thoughts are on his friends and loved ones and how they've always been there for him and how he hopes he hasn't let them down and how maybe he should celebrate those who died as heroes while none of his thoughts are about how he's lived five thousand years or how that monkey keeps looking at him or how the number three seems to connect all of reality and explain the meaning of everything and why the fuck is that monkey still looking at him and have you ever wondered why you push pause on the remote to pause a show but then can push pause again to unpause it? Like, is it its own antonym?!

Seriously though. In 113 issues, did Dick ever lead the Titans into battle? Weren't the battles all just relatives and/or old villains attacking the Titans directly, without any say from Dick? Also, I kept in the Starfire side boob for you perverts.

Dick eventually blames his self-absorption for why he was raped by Mirage. He blames himself for not realizing he was with another woman who just happened to be able to shape herself like any woman. I guess maybe when she was all, "I'm going to put this strap-on straight up your asshole, okay?" he could have wondered why Kory didn't realize she was shoving the bat-grapple gun up his ass. So, yeah, maybe it was kind of his fault. I don't think I'm victim blaming when I'm just shrugging my shoulders and letting the stupid victim blame his stupid self. Some son of the world's greatest detective he turned out to be! He couldn't even tell his dick was in the wrong vagina!

Dick's navel gazing causes him to plummet off of a waterfall which pretty much sums up his entire situation over the last hundred or so issues. I'm not sure if Marv Wolfman meant for it to be the case but I guess I have to assume that he did, no matter how much I don't want to.

Oh, also, he doesn't die. He just has a revelation as he falls that maybe he didn't cause Jericho's death or Terra's death or Cyborg's death or Kole's death or Danny Chase's death or whatever other Titan deaths I'm forgetting since there have been so many. Also maybe Kole didn't die. She might just have been super boring.

At the end of Dick's journey, the Narrator declares, "Dick Grayson was once The Boy Wonder. But today he has become a man!" Maybe this was the beginning of the end of my hatred of Dick Grayson! Marv was all, "I'm done writing Dick Grayson as the angry kid trying to live up to Batman's legend! From now on, he'll be his own man, compassionate and thoughtful!" Also, maybe Marv just continued to write him as a bitter asshole and I was right not to like Dick Grayson until the 21st Century.

The prologue features Starfire on a satellite in a garden throwing a snake back to Earth from orbit. Maybe she's the one on hallucinogens?

New Titans #113 Rating: C. I like that Dick Grayson supposedly grew up in this issue but I'm not sure how he really changed. The entire premise that he considered his life and what he should be doing distracted him from the waterfall ahead was just Dick repeating all of his life's errors. But somehow this time, he had a revelation? Whatever, Marv! I guess I just have to accept when you tell me through the narration boxes that Dick is now a man!

New Titans #112

Don't you worry your pretty little head about Red Star's right leg.

I keep trying to organize my life so that I can read more actual books (as opposed to comic books which I'm not judging. I'm just differentiating) without having to sacrifice any of the other things I enjoy doing. What that generally means is that I wind up reading about ten pages every morning before going to bed (I work nights!). Which realistically means I need to do improve my time management if I'm going to be serious about reading. I have managed to read the first "book" of Alan Moore's Jerusalem but it's taken me a fucking long time to do it. I thought it would take me a long time because I was expecting a difficult read but I'm finding it enjoyable. Plus by the time I've finished, I'm fairly certain I'll be able to navigate Northampton with ease. I'm also wondering if all the descriptions of the characters' movements through the city are an encoded treasure map! Or, being that Alan Moore wrote it, it's more likely a spell to summon some sex demons.

While organizing (and by organizing, I mean the main definition of organizing: moving shit around in a way that makes you feel like you're accomplishing something but really you're just engaging in an activity to forget about your mortality for awhile. Plus you can generally get some really fucking good dusting done), I managed to place all of the books from various book shelves that I have yet to finish reading (or that I simply want to reread) on the top shelf of the row of bookcases in my office. Jerusalem is first on that list followed by some books by high school friends (Rogue's Curse by Jason Beymer and Soy Rakelson's children's books that I'm willing to bet everything I own as well as my life and my mother's life on that they're black and white morality tales with a super conservative and possibly Ayn Randian view of the world). After that is There Is No Year which Doom Bunny gave me because it's supposedly a terrible book that I'm not sure he even finished and which I wanted to make fun of (but, hey, maybe I'll love it!) and the rest: Inside the Yellow Submarine, Trixie Belden Mystery-Quiz Book #1, Don Quixote, Gravity's Rainbow, Lost in the Funhouse (reread!), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, And the Ass Saw the Angel (by Nick Cave!), King's The Wind Through the Keyhole (A Dark Tower book!), Crime and Punishment, Hey Nostradamus!, The Best of H.P. Lovecraft, The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, The Boomer Bible (re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-read), Six Volumes of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (finished with one and a half volumes after owning this set for twenty five years!), The Holy Bible (currently reading for my Patreon), The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (Second Edition) (because I need poetic context for the 20th century!), Only Revolutions, The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, and The Familiar (currently just book one but there's going to be like nine hundred of them, so maybe I won't even bother!). Oh, and I just added We Learn Nothing (reread) and I Wrote This Book Because I Love You, both by Tim Kreider. I'll probably start with those because funny essays are easier to get through than anything by Dostoevsky, Danielewski, Pynchon, Cervantes, Barth, Joyce, or Sakelson! I mean Rakelson!

Oh man. Rakelson would have a stroke if he knew I listed his name with all those postmodern authors! Not that they're all postmodern. You can figure out which ones are and aren't on your own. I'm busy reading New Titans #112 which must be good since Starfire is naked on the cover. Okay, almost naked. She is wearing a dickie and a belt.

I know a lot of you just skipped that big paragraph while thinking, "Oh, la dee da! What a fancy book reader you are! Fucking virtue signaler! Or whatever the term for listing or showing off your reading list full of classic literary texts is! Seems like virtue signaler works well enough! Better even than what idiotic fuck nuggets use it for on Twitter anyway!" But maybe you missed the part about how those are books I haven't been able to get through yet! I've owned some of these books for over a decade! And I didn't even put The Collected Works of Gertrude Stein on this shelf because do I need to be reminded that I used that book more as an address book than something to read? Although I carried it with me everywhere I went for a year or two (which is why it's full of phone numbers and addresses!). And I really did want to read it. I didn't carry it around so people could think, "Look at him with that book! Who the fuck is Gertrude Stein? What a ponce!" Although to be fair, I did leave off a few books on my "to-read" shelf! But it wasn't because they weren't smart enough sounding! It's because they were comic books and also pornography and also also fucking hilarious.

One of my friends in the state department who learns a brand new language every four years or so bonded with me over Oglaf last time he visited. He was all, "I'm glad I know somebody I can share my love of Oglaf with and not be looked at like a completely demented perv!" Although I do look at him like he's a completely demented perv, I didn't need to admit it to his face!

I embrace my delusion that readers merely skipped "one" paragraph of my comic book "reviews"!

This issue is called "A New Home" and my brain continued to add to that title with "o-erotic Journey." Mostly because of this panel:

Fairly certain "bamming" a baby is illegal, even in space.

The Titans (and I use that term loosely since the characters encompassed by that shorthand are Changeling, Red Star, Pantha, Baby, and Starfire) have been stranded on The Terraist's space station. That name probably could use a hyphen so you don't first read it as terRAIST twelve times thinking "What the fuck does that mean?" before your brain finally sees the God-awful pun and you give up, finally letting go of that last gossamer thread that's been connecting you to the reality you just discovered doesn't fucking matter. How can there be any meaning to existence when an editor greenlights the name "Terraist"? I'm sure Wolfman's pitch contained at least two dozen "Get it?!"s. Anyway, maybe most readers never even noticed, shrugging their shoulders at every single moment in which a comic book doesn't make sense because at least Starfire is practically naked throughout the last few issues!

I have a theory that most people don't really absorb much of what they're reading in comic books. They tend to just love a character for some magic reason and stick with loving that character no matter what terrible writer winds up writing them. And at that point, they just ignore plot holes and inconsistencies and terrible dialogue and whatever the fuck Ann Nocenti does with her typewriter. They simply go star-eyed and gape lovingly at the drawn images of Dick Grayson's throbbing buttocks. That was a hypothetical sentence and not a memoir. Here's a panel with evidence that might lead to proof of my theory if I could actually interview anybody who read this comic book in 1994 and ask them, "Did you even notice this panel?" To which they would all probably respond, "No, I was distracted by the opposite page where you can see tons of Starfire's side-boob and I think one of her outer labia." Um, anyway, the panel I mentioned:

Damn, Marv. Beyond the Forest was nearly fifty years old at the time this comic came out.

To be fair to Wolfman and Changeling, I did an Internet search on "Whatta dump" (and, yes, I spelled it differently than Marv did) and the first hit was video of the scene where Bette Davis says the line. What's odd is that she delivers it flatter and straighter than anything I would have expected out of Bette Davis's eyes...I mean mouth. Gar's rendition of it is terrible! The way Bette says it, I would never think to spell it any way but "What a dump."

But that's not the point! The point is how is "What a dump!" a immortal words?! Granted, you're probably now thinking to yourself, "Well, how did X and Y and Z become oft-quoted movie lines?!" (where X and Y and Z are actual phrases from movies and not just letters. But I'm not psychic so how should I know what terrible oft-quoted movie lines you were thinking of? Mine would have been "Seven schools in seven states and the only different is my locker combination" or "William H. Bonny. You are not a god?" "Why don't you pull the trigger and find out?" or "Ziggy Piggy! Ziggy Piggy! Ziggy Piggy! Ziggy Piggy!") I suppose one can't help what phrases the zeitgeist picks up on. According to the YouTube video of Bette Davis, "What a dump" is Bette's famous bitchy line from that movie I'd never heard of. I guess I just haven't traveled in the right circles! Although I have heard the phrase "What a dump!" Has everybody in the world been quoting Bette Davis all this time and I just didn't know it?! Was this movie the first time that phrase was ever uttered?! To think I could have known all of this if I hadn't been distracted by Starfire's side-boob and — I'm fairly certain — one of her outer labia.

To shut Gar up, Starfire admits that she doesn't remember any of them and then she punches Pantha in her vagina.

Starfire punching Pantha in the vagina is funnier than anything that Pantha has said in the last forty issues.

After punching Pantha in the vagina, Starfire knees Red Star in the balls for no reason. Unless the reason is that she's been wanting to do that for a long time and her pretend amnesia allows her this moment! I suppose I'd fake amnesia too to get away from being a Titan.

I've been joking about seeing Starfire's outer labia but is this it? Is that one of those things?

Is my boner proof that it's her labia or is my boner proof that I'm a comic book reading virgin nerd?

I can't wait for everybody to message me telling me how that can't be her outer labia because that's not where it would be and anyway this photographic proof I'm sending you is what one looks like! Then I can actually them and say, "Well, you can't know that for sure! She's an alien and maybe her outer labia is fully engorged due to Pantha back-fucking her!" Also I'd really enjoy some of that photographic evidence!

This is not what I would do with those photographs.

Garfield turns into another monster because he can't do birds and rhinos anymore. He lies on top of Starfire and then reveals something that destroys every moment in DC canon where Garfield turned into a rhino to knock some hugely muscled bad guy on their ass. He tells Red Star, "Hey, I may be big and ugly but my mass doesn't change! I'm not as strong as she is!" Well fuck me! The whole concept of Beast Boy has been based on a huge lie! Or at least scientific principles that make the character utterly worthless. Why the fuck would he ever change into a huge beast if his mass doesn't change? Wouldn't he always change into something small and fast to be most effective?! This revelation is one of those moments where DC tries to make their universe more logical but only winds up fucking up the entire multiverse.

Red Star and Changeling knock Starfire unconscious and then tie her up which probably isn't totally rapey at all, even if the artist draws it that way.

Yep. Everything is just fine here! Move along.

Meanwhile on Earth, Arsenal, Aqualad, and Flash consider a proposal from the United States government to get the Titans to work for them. They consider it over a couple waters at a local strip club named Ding Dong Daddy's." I mean, the comic book calls it a "retro club" but everybody either gets a private lap dance or laid. It's hard to tell what Marv Wolfman was going for with this scene. Proof that the young cool Titan men fuck? Proof that women are only to provide relief for men's sexual desires? Proof that Aqualad should maybe think twice before saying "Hey guys! We came together!" when women are throwing their vaginas at them?

How long does Aqualad think a lap dance takes?

Back in space while the reader was away, Red Star and Changeling have managed to put a gag on Starfire and tie her legs together. That makes things less rapey, right? If not, I'm sure Marv will improve the situation in a sensitive and professional manner!

Oh come on!

Starfire remembers everything while Changeling whines about how he didn't get to kiss Starfire while she was tied up and scared and beaten and suffering from amnesia. Poor kid! Maybe next time!

After regaining her memory, Starfire says, "X'hal! That was dick I saw in South America!" and I snicker like a twelve year old.

The first decision Starfire makes after regaining her memory is that she and Dick should get their marriage annulled, if it even took which I'm pretty sure it didn't. If you were a fan of reading the letters pages, whoever the letter answer person was constantly kept pointing out that they couldn't be married because the priest blew up before he could say they were man and wife. But now Wolfman provides more evidence like how no paper work was filed and nobody signed anything (although don't you sign the papers before the ceremony?) Anyway, they're not married and probably never will be if the last twenty five years of reading comic books has taught me anything!

Snicker!

Baby has an idea to use The Terraist's satellite as their new headquarters and the government is all, "Okay! But you have to work with us on a minimum number of yearly missions!" And Roy Harper is all, "That number is zero!" And the government is all, "Yes sir! What a deal! We will pay you a salary, give you the satellite, and get nothing in return! Let's shake on it!"

Who the fuck is wearing The Flash's costume?! First appearance of New 52 Wally West?

The epilogue reveals Raven needs to rape the Titans so that they'll all give birth to Trigon's children. So it should be a fun few final issues before either this comic book was cancelled or I finally recovered my sanity and simply stopped buying it.

New Titans #112 Rating: B. It was all kinds of stupid but I enjoyed making fun of it!