The Hellblazer #6

Constantine's face looks like a cross between David Duchovny and a lamp post.

• It looks like we're still trying to discover the poison truth! This is part six! Exclamation points for everybody!

• While Constantine and Mercury are headed to France via the Cannibalistic Hell Tunnel (you know, the Chunnel), they have time to discuss what happened to Mercury while she searched for Abby Arcane. John also decides to tell her about the time he did mushrooms with Mercury's mom.

One time when I did mushrooms, I spent one thousand years in a time loop in the parking lot of a strip joint, was spied on the entire time by Jupiter, and invented comic books.

• One time, I pondered why you push the pause button on a DVD remote to pause the action but then you also pressed the pause button to resume the action.

• One time, I realized the secret of everything resided in the shape of a triangle due to the number three.

• I loved doing hallucinogens but I never claimed to anybody that they gave you actual insights into spirituality or the answers to the universe or helped in any other way than to pass the time in a thoroughly enjoyable manner.

• When Mercury left Swamp Thing, she wound up in the dimension where God banishes his mistakes. No wait. God probably doesn't make mistakes. It's where he banishes the creations he has grown bored with. Although can God really get bored? I mean, he's probably always bored, being omniscient. And if he's always bored, why send some creations to his Dimension of Discarded Toys? Maybe that's where creations go that he wills himself to forget about because they served their purpose. What purpose, you ask naively? God's mysterious purpose, of course! Duh!

• In the Dimension of Discarded Toys, Mercury met Adnan, the brother of the genie who wants to destroy humanity (for their own good!).

• Meanwhile, Clarice has sent out little red invitations with goat emblems on to every mage she knows. She's been forced to work with the genies and they need a bunch of magicians in their corner if they're going to defend against whatever stunt Constantine is going to pull to stop them.

• Oh, I also get an answer to a question I asked previously.

Enh. I'm still going to call them genies. Who cares what word a creature prefers when that creature is about to commit genocide.

• While Clarice convinces the other mages to work with Marid the Genie, Mercury finishes her story. Adnan helped her escape but she left him behind.

• Surprise! That was a lie! It wasn't my lie though even though it's usually my lie when I lie here like a liar. No, this was Mercury's lie. She actually did rescue Adnan from the Dimension of Discarded Toys and locked him away in her own mind prison to use later. She has this power because she's really a...well, nobody actually says. She might be a fairy or a genie or a hobgoblin or just Irish. Constantine probably already knows her secret but he's keeping it to himself to use later.

The Ranking!
No change! This issue is basically just a train ride and a cocktail party. Nobody dies or has sex. There weren't even any robots fighting. So boring.

The Hellblazer #5

Stop oversexualizing Constantine, Comic book artists!

• The huge revelation in this comic book is that genies actually exist and weren't just made up by Scheherazade. Not that that's much of a revelation since Johnny Thunder's Thunderbolt is a thing. The genies had decided not to interfere with humans so that they wouldn't be discovered. Maybe that's why Thunderbolt chose to act like he was working with a human. He could help make the world a better place while hiding in plain sight. Also, maybe nobody even fucking remembers Thunderbolt since Johnny Thunder is apparently 90 years old and stuck in an elderly care facility, according to DC's Rebirth.

• The previous bullet point took over twenty minutes to write because I asked Lord Google for the proper way to spell Scheherazade (because I'm too lazy to pick up my copy of Volume I & II of The Book of The Thousand Nights and a Night sitting on my desk in arm's reach and flip through it to get the proper spelling) and wound up on a forum where some guy was bitching about how the Magic the Gathering card, Shahrazad, should be banned from play because it annoys the fuck out of him. If that were the basis for banning cards in official Magic the Gathering tournaments, I'd have to ban every single fucking card because the people playing them annoy the fuck out of me and isn't that really the same thing?

• I don't play in Magic the Gathering tournaments anymore. Let me get out my wide brush: people who play Magic the Gathering are intolerable.

• Yes, I play (or used to play? I suppose I'd still play Sealed Deck leagues if I could stand other players) Magic the Gathering. That isn't proof against my statement.

I scanned this for the sentiment. The plums that look like pudgy little penises are a bonus.

• I often wonder why it seems like there isn't as much time during each day as I seem to remember there being. Then I think, "Oh yeah! The Internet!" What a time sink that thing is! Why isn't anybody regulating this thing?!

• That was a joke!

• The man fingering the plum is actually a genie. He's not as hyperactive as the one in Aladdin but then how many of them are? Probably not many of them. Although Aladdin was really lucky to find a genie who wasn't into cutting off the heads of everybody he met or dismembering people and hiding them in trunks. This genie wants to save mankind from itself in the usual way which probably means genocide with some additional enslavement. The woman, Clarice, is a mage who he's forcing to work with him. If she doesn't, he'll banish her to the Land of Discarded Toys. I think that's the island where Darien Wolf died to save his sister Therese.

• I guess that's a spoiler but if I don't mention what it's spoiling, it isn't really a spoiler, is it?!

• Meanwhile, Swamp Thing is declared physically unfit to continue doing a favor for Constantine. Also, the new artist draws Mercury in such a way that I instantly lose my crush on her. Apparently I never actually liked Mercury herself. I only like the way Moritat draws Mercury. Also, I like the way Moritat draws Tallulah Black. And also Charlotte the Harlot. And also Lorna Kyle. And also Gina. And...okay, every female Moritat draws, I fall in love with. And also some of the men! Like Jonah Hex! But I think that had more to do with the writing in All Star Western and less with his physique.

• Swamp Thing explains how he goes to the water closet and then disappears into the Green. Now it's up to John, Chas, and Mercury to figure out why the genies need an elemental.

• I should probably call them Djinn since that's what they call themselves. But I also would just rather use the Anglicized version. Since they don't actually exist, I'm hoping that I don't get called a disrespectful racist for not using the term they prefer.

• Ha ha. I wrote "disrespectful racist."

But genies is okay, right?!

• Constantine decides to get to know Mercury better by telling her three things he supposes she doesn't know about him and then getting three pieces of information from her that will probably help him when he needs to cast a spell on her later.

• Fact #1: Constantine can't ride a bicycle. I wonder if anybody went through every issue of Swamp Thing and Hellblazer to verify this fact or if they just went, "This is fucking Rebirth, motherfucker! Everything is what we say it is! Boom! Is this the appropriate time to drop a mic?"

• I bet his other facts are "I've never eaten peanut butter" and "I suck dicks. Lots of dicks. All the dicks."

• Mercury's number one fact is that she used to eat McDonald's. Ew! Slut!

• Constantine hates the word "moist." Boring. Fucking boring! You know who I hate more than the people I actually hate and aren't just pretending I hate to make a stupid point? People who say they hate the word "moist!" Along with moist, Mercury also hates these words: slacks, smear, squirt, nomads, Indians, and saints.

• Constantine's third fact is that he wished things had turned out differently between him and Mercury's mom. Or maybe the creepy pedo means between him and Mercury! He's about as clear on the point as The Bible is on its use of pronouns.

• Mercury's third fact is that her mom is in Cane Hill Asylum which just happens to be one left turn away from where they're currently playing John's game in the back of Chas's black cab. So they go to visit!

The bit about nobody being ready for real life is something I often think. But then how do you explain all the people running things and trying so hard to look like adults? If they're as truly not ready for real life as I continue to be then I can only think they're monsters. They're some kind of mimic desperate for other people to approve of the way they're doing the thing that gets approval from people who think that's the way they're all supposed to be. Also, it might just be about sex. You act like an adult because confidence, responsibility, and financial security are all things people look for in mates. Otherwise you just wind up fucking your next dependent.

• Mercury calls Constantine a tosser which reminds me I'm not playing Overwatch. My main character is Tracer and I always have her in her Vivienne Westwood outfit because while wearing it, she sometimes calls people she kills wankers or tossers.

• Meanwhile, it seems Simon Oliver finished the script a page too early so he threw in a scene where Swamp Thing tells his parents to go stuff it. Sort of.

The Ranking!
+1! Constantine didn't swear at all this issue! I think maybe he's been replaced by a simulacrum!

Black Canary #5

This cover reminds me I need to catch up on iZombie Season Two.

Annie Wu is still being lazy and refusing to draw issues of Black Canary, so Pia Guerra is back. I guess that's okay. She did a good job of making me want to put my penis on top of Bo's vagina, or however that works. I wonder what would happen if I entered "vagina" into Lord Google? Here are the things that pop up (besides you know what! Hee hee!):

"Amy Schumer on her dating life": That's because she has a vagina and vaginas are used in dating. I'm only guessing since I didn't actually click on the link.

"Jessica Biel, Vibrators, Vagina": This must be one of those SAT questions.

"Mike Tyson: Khloe's vagina saved Lamar...'brought him back from the dead'": Holy shit. Somebody should bring back the show In Search Of and the first episode should be "In Search of...Khloe Kardashian's Vagina." Tomorrow, I'm going out and getting a bracelet that reads "If found dead, put penis on Khloe Kardashian's Vagina, or however that works." I'm going to live forever!

"The Vagina (Human Anatomy): Picture, Parts, Function...": I guess you have to be specific if you're looking for like a cat vagina or something.

"Vagina - Wikiepedia, the free encyclopedia": What do nerds know about vaginas? Go here if you want to believe they have teeth and can cast curses. I mean if they can't. Can they?

"What Men Think of 8 Vagina Types (Yes, Really)": There are eight types of vagina? I can only think of five: Normal, Sideways, Rotating, Penis, and Mostly Hair.

"10 Wonderful Things You Should Know About Your Vagina": This is from Women's Health Magazine's website so it's probably biased. I bet Maxim has a totally different set of wonderful things.

"The Best Ways To Touch Her Vagina": This is from Men's Health Magazine so it probably doesn't list things like "with her consent" or "with clean hands."

I couldn't just leave that last one without wondering what their advice was! So the first thing they recommend is to stroke her clitoral hood. The image to go with this advice is a woman looking under the hood of a car. Now I'm super confused about what I'm supposed to be doing. Shouldn't the picture be the thing I'm supposed to find?! Based on this picture, I'm expecting to find a pull tab to check my lady's love juice levels and a severely crusted battery.

This is the image they use for "caressing her cervix" which must be a euphemism for "kick her in the vagina as hard as you can."

Okay, now that I know how to touch a vagina (but not what one looks like! Some diagrams really would have helped), it's time to pick up some horny ladies in the bar at the bowling alley! But since it's Halloween, It will be extra intimidating, so I'm just going to stay home and read Black Canary. Maybe I'll try it next week! Except the new Call of Duty comes out next weekend. Bah, maybe I'll find a willing vagina next year.

Black Canary begins this issue by saying all the wrong things to say at the beginning of a story.

Stories need conflict and if you say things like this at the beginning of the story, you're making it easy for Conflict to say, "Hey! What a great idea! She loves these people so if we put them in danger, conflict! And then the resolution can either be she saves them or they die. Doesn't really matter. I did my part! Conflict rules!"

Somebody backstage is not happy about Black Canary's onstage lovefest. He's all, "Grump grump grump stare stare." That must be Conflict.

The band's bus was destroyed by ninjas or aliens so now they're traveling in a minivan. Conflict let's Dinah know that he really felt the love but I don't think he really felt it at all. Also Conflict turns out to be Kurt Lance. I forgot he was hanging around trying to get this comic book cancelled.

Apparently the band is out of the money the label gave them for the tour because they had to pay for rebuilding every venue they've played in. So now they can't stay in a hotel and have to sleep in the woods where the murderers live. While they're making camp, we learn that Byron's sister is named Shelley and then we all puke. At least I did! She probably has a couple of brothers named Keats and Barrett Browning. And she probably grew up with a parrot named Coleridge who wouldn't shut the fuck up. "Water! Water! SQUAWK! Everywhere! SQUAWK! Ruin the wedding! SQUAWK! Ruin the wedding!"

Over veggie hot dogs and S'mores, Dinah decides that the record label is behind some kind of conspiracy and the band is being used by them. She also clears up the whole Ashes On Sunday thing which was so obvious it's no wonder I couldn't figure it out. Ashes was just the band she was in before she ditched them because the record company offered her a lot of money to replace Bo in Alas Insane and change the name to Black Canary. They also forced Ditto on the band. I think they might be creating a rock band that is also a super weapon.

While sleeping, Black Canary is stuck with a needle by the good ninja in white!

Darn it. I wish Dinah slept in frilly underwear.

The White Ninja isn't as good as her white clothing would lead you to believe. She's taken a sample of Black Canary's juices and kicked her and thrown ninja stars at her. But Dinah keeps up the chase through lots of pages without any words. Eventually Dinah loses her because ninjas are impossible to follow through trees. They can run along the tiniest branches while fat-ass non-ninja types just break everything and get caught in shrubs and twist their ankles. And since the chase is over, it's time for the record signing in the morning!

At the signing, Black Canary gets called out by a bunch of other bands for a Band Fight! Band fights are always called Battle of the Bands and they're serious business. One time after Iron Maiden had put out a couple of records, they lost a Battle of the Bands and their lead singer was cannibalized by the other bands. Later they hired some guy named Paul Di'Anno to pretend that he was their original singer but true Battle of the Bands fans know what really happened. Fear of the repercussions of a losing Battle of the Bands competition is also why Pete Best left The Beatles. It was a Battle in which the losing bands would all be placed under Gypsy curses. The Beatles were young and inexperienced and lost. It's why Lennon was eventually murdered, Harrison died of cancer, McCartney lived way too long to matter to anybody anymore, and, although everybody knows there was a fourth member, nobody can remember him because he ceased to exist.

I don't think these youngsters know how serious a Battle of the Bands is! I bet Bo's band is the last band and she set up the challenge by putting Satan's dick on top of her vagina, or however that works.

Backstage, Heathcliff reveals that he's in love with Pomeline. I mean, he reveals that the fifth band is Bo's band, "Bo M." Is that short for Bowel Movement because that's a good name for a band. I'm ignoring everybody who is telling me what it really means because I'm pretending it's short for Bowel Movement. La la la! I can't hear your poorly pronounced French! La la la la la!

Dinah watches Bo perform and realizes that maybe she needs to learn to move on stage the way Bo does. Dammit, Dinah! Everybody has been telling you that you need better movement and stage presence! I might be wrong but it feels like she's been told by every other character (except Ditto but you can see in Ditto's eyes that she thinks Dinah is a cold fish and a wet blanket too) that she needs to learn some moves! Most of my critical reviews have been filled with me screaming things like, "Maybe you should do your martial arts on stage, you barn owl!" But it took Bo's sexy, sexy moves to make Dinah realize that maybe grinding her vagina against the mic stand isn't the only move she needs.

Dinah also discovers that Bo has learned how to do the Sonic Scream! Whoops.

Black Canary #5 Rating: +1 Ranking. I wish I was reading more comic books meant for adults because there isn't enough sex or nudity in DC's comic books. No wonder people write fan-fiction because I really want to read a story about Bo sitting on Dinah's face now. The conflict of the story should be whether or not they're going to get into some serious ass-play. But I guess for a comic book targeted at teens, this one is pretty good. I guess teens don't know about sex so sex is forbidden in these books. Stupid teens! You're ruining it for everybody!

Black Canary #4

Ashes on Sunday is over, Bo.

I swear I just had two different topics I wanted to discuss before getting into the comic book but then I surfed the web and now I can't remember what they were. It's probably a good thing because they definitely would have been presented in a patronizing and condescending manner. So if you'd just do me a favor and try to feel like I just wagged my finger in your face while lecturing you about something totally obvious then you'll be in the proper frame of mind (a little angry, a little ashamed, quite a bit confused) to read the rest of this review.

Whatever happened in the plot last issue doesn't matter because DC Comics sold it to me for $2.99 before it was finished. It only had sixteen pages of comic as opposed to the usual twenty! Sure, sure. They threw in two pages of Burnside Tofu. But fuck that! If I wanted to pay for a shitty 'zine raving about the garbage local music scene, I have about twenty thousand to choose from down at Powell's. I suppose I should at least remind everybody (including my future self) that Ditto was kidnapped by ex-Ashes on Sunday singer Bo Maeve because Bo learned that Ditto was an alien and could give people super powers with her blood. Although Bo's main motivation may be just to fuck up her ex-band-mates new gig. She seems shallow enough to risk federal kidnapping charges for petty revenge.

Since Ditto doesn't talk, we're in for a constant barrage of self-promotion and not-so-humble brags from Bo.

"Obvi"? Who says "obvi"?! It obs should be "obs"! Who wants to take the time to say two whole syllables?!

I hope Bo has a lot of ninja friends because Black Canary is going to try to tear her face off later in this comic book. But I don't think Bo's the type to have many friends because she just loves talking about herself too much. Nobody likes those kinds of friends! That's why I don't encourage my friends to read my comic book blog. They think it's all about comic books so they don't read it. But it's actually all about me! Which, if they knew that, they'd probably read it. But I don't want them to know how much I love talking about myself so I let them believe this blog is actually about comic books. Good thing my friends are idiots!

Bo decides to tell Ditto about how she learned to dance because that will probably become important later. Remember how Black Canary sucks at on-stage choreography? But Bo is amazing at it? Do you see what I'm getting at? Black Canary and Bo are probably going to scissor each other's faces! If I were an artist, I would totally draw that but I'm just a wordsmith so here's my word picture of Dinah and Bo pulling off the incredibly dangerous Scissors-69:

SMASH SMASH DRIP LICK LICK GRIND GRIND GRIND PANT PANT GASP LICK POOT GIGGLE GRIND BUMP DRIP BUMP MINOR FINGER EXPLORATION LICK GRIND SMASH DRIP DRIP PUMP GRIND LICK SLOBBER LICK GASP MOAN GROAN CHIP TOOTH GRIND LICK LICK GRIND FASTER GRIND TONGUE (PAUSE TO PULL PUBE OUT OF BACK OF THROAT) CRAMP LICK FASTEST BUMP AND GRIND AND SMASH AND FEMALE EJACULATE GAG COUGH CUDDLE NAP STEAL BLANKETS SNORE VIBRATOR.

I'm just assuming that when two women engage in sex it ends exactly how sex between a man and a woman ends.

Bo's flashback seems like it might be a bit of the old unreliable narrator. I would expect no less from my new all-time favorite character ever, Bo Maeve!

It must be hard for kids today to be the biggest fan of something. I know how desperately you all need to prove to everybody else that you're the biggest most ultimate fan of all-time when it comes to whatever you're fangendering over. But how is that even possible when you're competing with everybody else on the internet? You're going to waste your life trying to be the ultimate fan when their are so many people who have already wasted more years than you were born being the ultimate fan of whatever you've just discovered! It was so much easier to be the biggest fan of something before the internet. You just had to hang posters in your locker and wear only shirts of the band (or whatever!) you were the biggest fan of until everybody in your circle and, hopefully, in your school associated you with your obsession. Now if you're a fan of something, you're just an inconsequential buoy in a sea of rabid fans. The only way to stand out is to completely throw your life away in service to your fandom! It's really pretty pathetic.

By the way, don't even try to be Bo Maeve's biggest fan because that's me, you hear? I'm declaring it right now. Just like I declared I was the biggest fan of Maps (still am), Alysia Yeoh (yup, still me), 2-6-8-1-7-9-5 (I don't know. I've kind of lost interest since she's being written by Cullen Bunn), and Vampire Tig (Totally the masturbating president of that fan club still!). I'm probably the biggest fan of other characters too but I don't remember them offhand which doesn't mean I don't love them more than you because I do. It just means I have memory problems and you can't make fun of me for that because it's a medical condition called, um, Memoroflogiston. You don't want to be a Memorflogistonphobe, do you?

Bo mentions the first name of the band was Alas Insane. I'm so going to have an Alas Insane t-shirt made up and hang Alas Insane posters on my non-existent locker! Right over the top of my Dale Eaglesham Secret Six covers I've got hanging there now! I don't care! I'm so obsessed with Bo that my boner just curved the wrong way (because it's so rock hard!). I hope that's an actual thing or else people might guess I'm lying. I mean assume I'm lying about my boner which I'm not because I'm a huge fan (huge! Get it?! That's a lie about the size of my boner that I hope you believe!).

I guess Bo was kicked out of the band before they became Ashes on Sunday. I hope so because I've always hated that name. Always!

Bo is my total favorite. I'm glad I mentioned how she was my favorite immediately upon her first appearance to prove that I liked her first and I didn't add it to the older commentary just now at all!

Black Canary recruits Frankie to help track down Bo because she's planting the seeds for a new Birds of Prey book that won't be super terrible like the one written by Duane Swierczynski. I find it weird that I can remember how to spell his last name after all this time but I still want to keep calling him "Dwayne."

Annie Wu isn't drawing this issue for some reason that probably isn't that she's being super lazy. Instead the artist is Pia Guerra whose art is great as you've seen by the spectacular Bo moments which make my heart burst with fan-love. But sometimes--just sometimes!--she slips into Steve Dillon territory.

I've seen this Dinah before! Back when she was named Tulip and was starring in Preacher!

Black Canary has to go help the woman outside by fighting the man stealing the car. Her fighting is a lot like Bo's dancing because I said it would be and that was how she would solve the problem of being a cold and/or dead fish on stage. But she still needs help perfecting the changes from fighting to dancing. That means Bo will soon be living on the tour bus with the other characters.

Bo decides to have another flashback about the day she was replaced by Black Canary. On that day, Bo accidentally set the studio on fire. Maybe it wasn't even Bo who set the fire because Dinah just happens to have a bad history with fire! Remember that time all of her belongings and her Dojo burned down because of Batgirl's incendiary device stashed in her Mobile Bat Cave? And I think when she killed Kurt, fire was probably part of the explosion of the island. And that time Katana blew up a building full of people in Birds of Prey! There was fire there too even though the Birds of Prey didn't face any consequences for that. What I'm trying to say is Bo wouldn't hurt anybody on purpose! At least not anybody who was not trying to steal her spotlight.

Black Canary puts out the fire by yelling which is totally a thing that makes sense. Bo saw Dinah use her power which is why she kidnapped Ditto when she found out that Ditto is key to gaining that power. So Bo takes Ditto to Amanda Waller which is a really bad idea because it makes me remember Duane Swierczynski's version of Birds of Prey. I'm pretty sure that gave me the post dramatic stresses.

A ninja in white (that means it's a good ninja! Stormshadow taught me that!) rescues Ditto from Waller after Bo is taken away by Waller's guards to be prepped for super power acquisition. And then the mystery ninja drops Ditto off at Dinah's motel! I guess everybody can get back to the tour now.

Lucky for Bo, Amanda still had some samples of Ditto Extract. She's injected and becomes just as loud as Black Canary! But she's going to become the more elegant, sexier, more likeable version of Black Canary. I'm sick of Dinah Grumpypants! If only there were a popular way of expressing which side I was on when you have two characters that are battling against each other in the pursuit of some goal! I would say that if it existed but it must not or I would know of it.

Black Canary #4 Rating: No change. Wait! Before I lock in this month's ranking, I need to count the number of pages this issue! DC owes me at least two pages of Black Canary thanks to the eighteen page issue presented last month (sixteen if I'm being stingy and disqualifying the Burnside Tofu pages). If this book has over twenty pages, I can increase the ranking because I thoroughly enjoyed Bo and her dancing. But if it only has twenty pages, I'm in an ethical quandary. I cannot raise the rank on this comic book until I am given back the two pages I paid for last month and didn't receive. The good news is this issue was twenty pages long and thus was exactly what I paid for. The bad news is this issue was twenty pages long and DC Comics still owes me two pages of Black Canary. Figure out how you're going to satisfy me, DC! Until then, this comic book will never get a good ranking again!

Batwoman #34

Remember when this comic book was fascinating as opposed to merely passable?

Batwoman has been having vampire troubles in Gotham City. I suppose that's more interesting than slapstick problems, or flightless bird problems, or brain teaser problems, or undead zombie assassin monster problems. That last one sounds like it could be vampire problems but it's not. It was a problem that went on and on and on for like eight years until all that was left was a mute undead zombie assassin monster that nobody would bother to buy a pad and pencil for so she could communicate more effectively.

At the end of last issue, Batwoman had been confronted by Nocturna, Night-Thief, and Killshot. It was a panoply of horribly named villains! I think I'll name my eventual memoir, "A Panoply of Masturbation Anecdotes." That should get it to fly right off the shelves!

Right, Batwoman? It boggles the mind. Also, I'm ignoring the fact that your moniker is "Batwoman." On the plus side, Moritat! Although, really, what kind of name is that as well?

Luckily for Batwoman, nobody is interested in her. Unluckily for Batwoman, she keeps putting herself between Killshot and Night-Thief so that they're reminded she's also somebody they can punch. Or shoot. Or rip off her weave.

Maybe these two can go out for a stake dinner afterward! That's a vampire joke because the best stakes have lots of garlic on them and vampires hate garlic! Oh! Also I spelled stake wrong! I meant steak.

Night-Thief gets shot a few times in the chest by Killshot and tumbles off of the building and into the bay, dragging Nocturna with him. Killshot somehow thinks he's going to receive a check for the assassination of Nocturna without any proof her demise, so he's even dumber than his name would suggest. And I already scanned two pictures too closely together or else I'd scan the panel where Moritat draws some really cute cleavage on Nocturna hanging upside down. Sorry about that, cleavage fans.

Cleveland should rename itself to Cleavage. That sounds like a fun town! As opposed to "Cleveland" which sounds like a rather unexciting sewage system.

Another reason Killshot isn't going to collect a check on this job is because Batwoman knocks him out cold with the old Bat-Electrified-Wire gag. Then she leaves him for the cops and goes out to her favorite dive bar, The Haunted Clam. Moritat must also head out for a drink since he's done with his part of the arting.

Instead of going to the bar, Kate Kane goes and cleans all of her possessions out of Maggie Sawyer's apartment. I'm really disappointed in Kate. She wants to be with Maggie. Maggie wants to be with her. Jaime likes her. But Kate is letting the whole incident where she startled the kid in the middle of the night get out of hand. Kate believes she's responsible for the tension between Maggie and her ex-husband. No, you know where that tension comes from, Kate? Divorce. It's just two bitter and resentful individuals trying to fuck with each other as much as they can because their feelings were hurt. I think the jerky way people treat each other during a divorce is caused by the huge embarrassment of having invited all of their friends to a ceremony that they subsequently shit all over. How do you keep the wedding presents after that and still look your friends in the eyes?

Kate tries to sneak out while just leaving a Dear Johnette letter (unless it's a Dear Jane letter (or maybe just a Fuck You, I'm Outta Here letter)) but Maggie comes home. And she's so happy to see her across the next two pages that I don't want to fucking turn the page! Poor Maggie. Jerko Kate! Stupid Dan DiDio.

Kate pretends everything is just fine before scurrying into the elevator and getting the hell out of there before Maggie gets a chance to read the letter. That's the second best way to break up with someone. The best way is to put your car in neutral, push it off of a bridge, and then start a new life in Argentina.

The letter is actually pretty decent. The only problem is that it's still Kate controlling and manipulating the people and the environment around her instead of trusting that other people can make decisions and compromises about their own lives all by themselves. Anyway, she's leaving Maggie until Jaime, Maggie's daughter, dies or runs away or decides she wants to live full time with her father. Then they can get back together and be two single people alone together. Or something.

With that not very sexy drama over, Kate goes home to get sexily bitten by a sexy vampire.

Lucky!

Batwoman #34 Rating: No change. At one point in the latter half of the comic, Kate's psychiatrist says to her, "You made a decision based on the emotional welfare of someone else. That proves you're not a sociopath." I think that means I am a sociopath! I don't think I've ever made a decision like that in my life! I didn't even know other people had emotional welfares! It's as if he's saying other people actually exist as autonomous beings! Ridiculous.