Larfleeze #11

Do I actually have to read the comic book when the outcome is right on the cover?

Okay, so this issue might not actually end this way. I've been reading comic books long enough to know that the cover often has nothing to do with the story inside. But if I never actually read the comic book, I'll never know the cover didn't tell the actual story. I can continue to believe I know what happened without ever being told differently. It's not like anybody out there is actually reading this comic book. Sure, some die hard Lantern Fans continue to buy it. But it probably remains on the bottom of their "to read" stack month after month. Eventually, they'll realize they've got eight issues of this thing piled up whereupon they'll just board them and throw them in a box unread. Meanwhile, DC will continue to publish it because the numbers are satisfactory even though nobody is fucking reading it.

Even if the cover were blank, I still wouldn't have to read this book to know what it's about. Larfleeze is going to insist everything is his and fight with everybody that insists everything isn't his. Pulsar Stargrave is going to whine and whinge and bitch and moan about his lot in life. And the members of the House of Tuath Dan are going to have bigger and bigger fits of apoplexy. Some jokes from the first issue will be told again for the eleventh time. And although this next supposition cannot be proven simply by reading the comic book, I'm sure Giffen and DeMatteis scripted this book while blowing each other in a rusty orange van. They usually believe they have a hit when one of them can make the other one laugh jizz out of his nose.

If one good thing has come from this comic book, it's the Planet of Sad Robots. Too bad it will never be seen again in the DC Universe, and may very well be destroyed before this issue is over.

G'nort has also entered into the fray because Giffen and DeMatteis have to keep the joke characters alive somehow. Giffen and DeMatteis are basically taking the easy way out with their choices of scripts. Writing about serious topics, filling a story with emotional arcs and tragic characters, and, in essence, taking the job of writing seriously is a difficult task. If you decide to write silly and inconsequential, people can't really criticize you too harshly. You can brush off the criticism since you didn't really put your heart into what you were writing. But if you approach a subject with gravitas and a critic points out how spectacularly you goofed it up, it can be a real blow to the ego. Why do you think the tone of this blog is so lighthearted and hyperbolic in its anger? It's because I'm actually a very sensitive creature that could never hold up to the harsh critics of the internet if they were to attack the things that I truly believe! Besides, the things I truly believe are completely misanthropic and disturbing.

I should have made this comic book into a drinking game! Just like Giffen's Threshold, the jokes and the story are so predictable that I could have made a long list of rules to drink by. Just drinking for jokes that have already been used would have me drunk by page five! Pulsar has already been sarcastic and whiny. Larfleeze has declared he fears nothing. G'nort has corrected the way someone pronounces his name when they call him a gnat. The sad robots worry about their planet being destroyed. The Wanderer reiterates that she took an oath to marry any creature that could defeat her in combat. G'nort mentions how he wants to make his parents with the funny names proud. And Larfleeze has been called an Orange Monkey. It's like Giffen and DeMatteis are just recycling the same script over and over.

I probably shouldn't complain about people using the same jokes over and over. It leaves me open for criticism!

Whose sentient chip are they going to find? O-Henry's? L-Sprague's? K-Dick's?

While the Sad Robots deal with the comedy genocide card they've been dealt, Larfleeze and G'nort engage in a battle of rings and the members of the House of Tuath Dan bicker and squabble. And Giffen and DeMatteis shamelessly continue to recycle the same jokes.

That's the second time for this joke in just this issue!

The next page uses the gnat joke for a third time because when a joke is terrible, it must be done multiple times before it becomes funny. Not that the joke actually becomes funny after multiple uses of it. The funny comes from the person telling it over and over again when it was never funny in the first place. It's this comedy theory that propelled Family Guy to such great success!

Meanwhile over a few more instances of the G'nort/Gnat joke, Larfleeze and G'nort settle their differences when they realize it's all just a misunderstanding of contract law. The robots did give everything to Larfleeze and had no right to use the Green Lantern Corps to get them out of a shitty deal. But the robots aren't down and out yet! Even though they're depressed and sad and only two of them are left, they think they've made contact with another robot mind built into the the Larfleeze Trap created by the House of Tuath Dan.

It's Z-Elda? Z-Fitz? That doesn't fit with the robot naming conventions! I call foul! Quick! Call G'nort a gnat to distract from this poorly thought out surprise twist!

They don't recycle the gnat joke but they do recycle the "Larfleeze doesn't know the meaning of surrender" joke! So that was extra funny when read again! And then the final page states the obvious as Larfleeze and G'nort team up to defeat the House of Tuath Dan next issue.

Oh, that's such a shame.

Larfleeze #11 Rating: -2 Ranking. I think the problem this comic book had that the back-up Larfleeze feature didn't wasn't that it was too long but that it didn't have enough characters. Oh, sure! By this eleventh issue, there are many, many characters. But getting to this point it had Larfleeze and Pulsar and Larfleeze's orange construct creatures. The back-up feature had a nice sampling of old Sci-Fi DC Characters fleshing out the story so it wasn't just Larfleeze saying "mine", Pulsar hating his life, and Larfleeze's constructs being passive aggressive. They all had different motivations and charms. They were probably all as one dimensional as the characters in the full length series but it was just harder to tell when you only have eight pages to get to know so many characters. So maybe being too long was one of this comic book's problems! How the fuck should I know? I'm not here to fix DC's problems! I'm just here to point at them and laugh.

Larfleeze #7

Here we see Larfleeze in the grips of puberty, rocked to the core by confusion, longing, and severe bouts of acne.

I have decided to become a better person. Only optimistic, happy-go-lucky thoughts will be acknowledged by the part of my brain that acknowledges the other part of my brain that comes up with a constant stream of utter bullshit. I am going to ignore the things I dislike about every comic book and only discuss the things I love about the comic book. All of the comic books will get a positive ranking and they'll all get the same ranking as every other comic. Otherwise it might be seen as being mean to a comic book if I ranked it less than another comic book. It is time to be kind because that's the way of the world now. Better to be kind than to criticize incompetent people in the hopes that they'll take the information and learn from it. Better to do nothing than to create something that might offend some people. Better to hug than to shrug!

The proper way to be a good person is to only say things that everybody can understand, only create things that everybody can use, and only live by ideals that everybody else also lives by. I already feel like a failure because I'm being a severe linguist. You might think that means a person skilled in foreign languages. It doesn't. What it means is a person that uses language to demean and exclude others. It hurts my heart to think about all of the people that don't understand English and how I'm flagrantly expressing my opinions in their face even though they can't understand it. I'm also being elitist and possibly ableist because I'm assuming people know how to read or have the capability of vision! Dammit! I already feel like this kindness thing is being derailed by my laziness to learn all languages and to provide this commentary in visual and audible and tactile means!

Fuck it. It's hopeless. Now I'm depressed. Except I'm probably not as depressed as really depressed people so now I'm exploiting the idea of depression when I'm really just in a slight funk! Oh shit! Using the word "funk" is probably offensive to people with body odor problems! Oh crap! And I keep swearing! What about the children of non-sailors?! They shouldn't have to be exposed to words like that! Unless it's wrong to keep knowledge from people. Who am I to hoard knowledge?!

Bah! I'm just going to go lie in the corner on the floor and not make use of any of my body parts or internal organs because how is that fair for people who don't have all the same parts as me? Can you offend dead people? Oh man, I hope nobody is concerned with me offending dead people! I guess I should return all those corpses to the cemetery before somebody decides I'm being rude to them.

I'm just going to read my stupid comic book. I'm such a failure as a humanist. Gah! That's a speciesist term!

The beginning of this issue feels familiar for some reason.

I would explain precisely what I mean by that last caption but I don't want anybody to assume that I think they're stupid and didn't understand. But then if I don't make myself clear, I'm failing the people that don't want to work at understanding complex pieces of literature that I often supply. Fuck it. This is too hard. I'm just going to do normal reviews from now on.

If you like characters bickering, you will really love this comic book a whole lot. It is full of squabbling. God-like beings squabble with other god-like beings. Butlers squabble with giant dogs. Selfish aliens squabble with talking jewelry. It is a bonanza of bickering! It will make your sexual parts quiver with heady longing if you find inconsequential chatter arousing. If those are the things that describe you and the things you enjoy, I recommend this book very much! 10 out of 10!

If you don't like those things, don't bother buying this comic book. Even if you like space travel and aliens and exotic locales, you will be annoyed by the characters arguing over semantics and sparring over material possessions. The main character of this book is supposed to be the most selfish character in the DC Universe but I'd be hard pressed to say the other characters are any more selfless.

See what I mean? Inconsequential pablum.

And the art! Get me started on the art! It's like a child got into his mother's Valium drawer and got hold of her crayons (because she always kept them in the Valium drawer) and began scribbling like a dolphin having a seizure after somebody taped crayons to its body and left it on a giant pad of paper. I might call the art professional if I wanted to completely abuse the meaning of the word. It's as if a large machine that usually sails smoothly across the landscape has completely wrecked, strewing bad art all over the everything.

Unless, of course, you're into this kind of cartoony, over-exaggerated, intensely colorful work! If you are then you must be one of those perverts who pull over to the side of the road to examine every mutilated corpse that was thrown from the wrecked machine and is now lying amongst the bad artwork. You're a vile and disgusting human being and you probably enjoy having sex while snuff .gifs are projected onto the ceiling of your dirty sex room. While I admit that I'm partially partial to this artwork, I will deny vehemently that I entertain the possibility of one day orgasming under a projected image of a woman getting hit by a train. How dare you even suggest that.

I liked this part because it was about incest. Remember what The Buddha said: "Incest is best put your sister to the test."

Perhaps art and plot are the least of your worries when reading a comic book. Perhaps what really blows your goat are characters! Lots and lots of different types of characters! And by different, I mean they are easily distinguished by their looks and the colors with which they've been drawn. Do you like big fiery red guys? This comic book has one! How about a canine orange guy? Yep! Main character! What about a whinging little bald green guy! Tick that box because he's included! What about a blue alien with long sparking hair (yes, I meant "sparking")? Beautifully rendered on at least four pages! Perhaps what you really desire is wrinkly old rotting green women? Oh, did you think you'd be missing out on that bold archetype? No, no! I assure you: included within! What about (Oh man. You really won't believe this one was included but I assure you it is!) a teal tornado woman?! HOLY FUCK! For only $2.99, you will find her too!

If you want characters with a little more depth, you'll probably want to skip this comic book. Besides their looks, they have one distinguishing attribute and act continually upon that attribute. Selfishness. Whiny. Vacuous. Depressed. Angry. Chaotic. They all get one! But only one! You don't want characters that are too complex! This is a comic book which means it's obviously meant for children and people who like to look stupid in public places. If you want to look smart when reading in public, might I suggest a copy of Moby Dick? But only read it in public if you've already familiarized yourself with the Cliff Notes because people will try to engage you in conversation about the novel because they want to look smart too!

This is a representation of Larfleeze's mind. Just imagine every other character in the book has one different colored word like this in their heads as well.

Anyway, should I discuss what little of the plot there is in this issue? Lafleeze pisses off every member of the House of Tuath-Dan. Now they're going to have a family meeting to figure out how to kill him. Hmm. That's it!

Larfleeze #7 Rating: No change. I'm fairly certain Giffen and DeMatteis sat down over doughnuts and heroin and decided that they should make a comic book about nothing. And then they did. I think I'm getting the hang of writing reviews! Now if only smart people would read this! Hey stupid people currently reading this! Reblog it so your smart friends can see it! Thanks!

Larfleeze #4

Meet the Orange Lantern Corps! Pharaoh Nanotoknonnen! Senor Bonespur Sideburns! Glomulus! Giant Space Tapeworm! Noface Korean Ghost Monster!

Last issue Larfleeze's Orange Lantern Corps became real boys. But there were strings attached to their renewed physical manifestations: they must kill Larfleeze. Hopefully they'll try for a few pages and then everybody will settle down and work out a contract to keep the gang together.

See? They're already negotiating terms!

Larfleeze blames his trouble on The Wanderer because she's a woman and women are troublemakers. At least, that's what you think at the beginning of the song and then you slowly realize, after you've cut your foot on a pop top, that you're actually to blame for your own troubles. So you gorge on lobster and margaritas and get a new tattoo of a salt shaker and learn to live on the beach as a gigantic failure. Maybe later you'll get a job as a merchant marine and sail around dreaming of eating a cheeseburger. But first you have to work out your issues with women. Which somehow explains why Larfleeze needs to hunt down The Wanderer. Oh, also she's stolen his butler, so he probably wants that back. You all know Larfleeze's philosophy about possessions, right? "Mine, mine, mine!" is how it goes. I might be misquoting him.

Pulsar and The Wanderer visit the Village of Sad Victorian Robots. Unless they're Edwardian Robots. Possibly Robespierrian?

The reason the robots are so sad isn't because they've stolen the children and their shiny toy guns. They're sad because The Wanderer's sister Dyrge moved in next door. I don't want to jump to any conclusions but isn't that a little racist of the robots? Are they worried about their property values because an emo God of Emo shuffled into town, slump shouldered and mumbling about the futility of life, and bought the house next door? I get it. She's covered her house in barbed wire and depression. It doesn't scream "Great Neighborhood to Move Your Robot Kids Into!" anymore. But it's just one house! And even though I'm not a fan of Homeowner's Associations, I imagine the robots could have been a little more proactive to prevent their neighborhood from being overrun by pouting demigods. Come on, Robots! Climb out of your Victorian Era mindset and get into the future! Embrace diversity and change! Put away your steam powered tears and buck the fuck up! Look at it as a new adventure with a new friend and not as an invasion of The Other bound to turn your robot kids into sexual deviants and lower the property values of your robot houses with the constant, God-Awful loud crying, weeping, and moaning that never ceases.

Did I miss the issues where Pulsar displayed these qualities? So far in all of my Larfleeze comics, he's only managed constant pouting and whiny backtalk!

And then The Wanderer introduces Pulsar to Dyrge.

After seeing the pile of robot bodies in Dyrge's parlour, I kind of see the robot's side of things now. But you know, serial killers have to live somewhere.

Back to the fight between Larfleeze and the Orange Lanterns, the Orange Lanterns defeat Larfleeze. But then, because they're all selfish bastards under the influence of the Light of Avarice, they argue amongst themselves about who gets to deal the killing blow. But that's when they realize Larfleeze has become the Orange Light's Power Source and if they kill him, they'll lose their powers too. I don't know how they recharge the rings though. I mean, I think I do and I think I finally understand goat.se! He's just trying to recharge his ring!

So the newly free Orange Lantern Corps bind up Larfleeze and fly away to live lives of their own choosing without Larfleeze's influence. Which means they all choose to live a life where they torture Larfleeze incessantly. Good choice, morons! You're still allowing him to have power over you!

Larfleeze #4 Rating: +2 Ranking. I haven't really liked this comic. Possibly because I allowed my hopes to get too high before being supremely disappointed by its lackluster and trite comedy. But this issue has things moving and I think I'm going to like Dyrge and her crying robot town. I already like those things so I think I'll like them more later! That's how liking things is supposed to work! That's good advice from me and you should remember it next time you're in a relationship and you find yourself liking your partner a little less every day because that's not how like works. So don't listen to the people that say relationships take work! Listen to me saying like is supposed to grow and not diminish! If it's diminishing, stop wasting your time! You obviously don't like that person! That advice also works for comic books!

Larfleeze #3

Can Giffen and DeMatteis refrain from quoting a song released in 1961? I highly doubt it.

Before I begin writing Larfleeze, I want to post my Missed Connection Ad:

You: Drunk frat guy in blue shirt trying to fist bump me and mumbling incoherently.
Me: Unkempt adult male that only high fives people under the age of four who waved you off and made a face which most semi-intelligent people would recognize as "Get the fuck away from me, you clownish twat."
You: The same guy standing in front of the pizzeria who pointed at me as I came back from the store and mumbled something about our previous encounter and then acted indignant when I wouldn't even say hello.
Me: Annoyed male that can't believe you feel butthurt that I'm not participating in your life and who now truly suspects that you're probably one of those guys who can't understand why women are such assholes to you, at least, and possibly a rapist, at worst. I hope we continue to miss each other for the rest of our lives. But I thought you could use some advice anyway: not everybody should be expected to participate in your life story. You will be left hanging at times. People will not enjoy talking to you. People may often not feel obligated to engage in your desperate need for conversation. Learn to move on without feeling it's a personal slight against your family honor. And, seriously? Stop trying to fist bump strangers, you asshole.

Okay. Now I can read Larfleeze!

Infighting? More like inbreeding! Also, I appreciate the usage of the "savage breast" quote. Because I'm one of those assholes that always needs to point out when somebody incorrectly quotes the line as "to soothe the savage beast." God, I hate people like me.

Speaking of hating people like me, here's a quick test to find out if your child is going to be an "actually" troll on the internet so you can nip that shit in the bud! Stay up past midnight some Friday night playing a board game. Wait until it's about twenty or thirty minutes past midnight and then ask them the time. Your kid probably has a cell phone, right? When they answer, respond with, "That late? Man, I love Fridays." If you're child pulls the "actually, it's Saturday!" routine, slap them in the mouth and send them to bed. Stop being such a spoiled literal douchebag! An easier test is to ask one to make you a sandwich and if they say, "Poof! You're a sandwich!", send them to their room forever.

The Wanderer tells how she and her brothers came to the Earth Prime Universe of The New 52. There's some torture and more interruptions by Butler Stargrave. But eventually, Wanderer gets to the reason why she's helped keep Stargrave alive: she purchased him many years ago before Larfleeze kidnapped him and now would like to know if he'd like to butler her.

Well, that will keep anybody from thinking that "butler" is just an immature euphemism.

The Wanderer also gives Stargrave the option of switching his male genitalia for female genitalia. Now while I believe that's a superior option to being castrated, I'm not sure how it better solves the problem of his male urges. He's still going to be attracted to females and enjoy giving The Wanderer baths. If I were Stargrave, I might even take her up on the option since she has some thing called an Omnachine which is capable of doing pretty much anything she needs. It's the Swiss Army Knife of her dimension. I wouldn't mind taking out my own female genitals for a few trial runs! Except I'd probably kill myself by accidentally knocking my head on the kitchen counter at the first sight of any blood in my nether regions. I'm simply assuming that the Omnachine Technology does a complete transformation to fully functional male to fully functional female, biologically speaking.

Oh no wait I'm out fuck that!

Her Omnachine really is the technological equivalent of a Swiss Army Knife! Pulsar Stargrave decides he'd rather keep his penis and his job with Larfleeze. I have a feeling Pulsar now understands why Larfleeze screams "MINE MINE MINE!" so emphatically.

Before Larfleeze completely comes around and begins destroying shit, Herb the Board Certified Lackey mentions somebody named "Dyrge" who, I imagine, is another member of the House of Tuath-Dan.

Once Larfleeze is conscious, quite a few pages are spent on The Wanderer and The Laord of the Hunt and Larfleeze battling over ownership of Pulsar Stargrave. There is a lot of "I'll kill you!" and "No, I'll kill you!" and "Nuh-uh!" and "Unh-huh!" It's all very less funny than I was hoping.

Although I still like every reference made to inbreeding. Man, why is incest so funny? I wonder if I was wired wrong and I'm actually supposed to think insects are funny?

Hee hee. Incest and Poop Jokes!

I think I know why this comic isn't working as well as the back-up stories in Threshold. Larfleeze needs more straight men in his life! No, not heterosexuals! Comedy partners. Right now he just has Pulsar whose a one note character like Larfleeze. And he's simply confronting other people as single-minded as he is, so there's a lot of bickering with no real substance. The back-up issues had a whole gang of people with the Star Rovers all with various personalities and kinks. Sure, many of them were also one-note characters but there were enough of them to keep the banter fresh. So Larfleeze needs to join a group of some kind. It's a lot like Lobo. When he's off on his own battling shit, it's a lot of Fraggin' Bastich this and Fraggin' Bastich that. But you put a bit of a leash on him and hook him up with LEGION, and you've got more beats to play to the character.

So far in this comic, Giffen and DeMatteis are building a bunch of various characters but they're still just obstacles to Larfleeze, like Herb and Lou the Guard Dog. Larfleeze needs some structure and limits! Hopefully Giffen and DeMatteis have Larfleeze interact with more old school DC Space Characters after this initial story run is over. I wouldn't mind seeing Larfleeze hang out with Space Cabbie for a bit.

After The Wanderer returns to kill Lou the Guard Dog, Larfleeze decides to summon forth the Orange Lantern Corps to battle The Wanderer while he gathers up the loot. But The Wanderer has this power she calls the Starsoul and it has the ability to transform energy into matter and whatnot. So she returns the Orange Constructs to their living forms and takes off with Stargrave.

This is an unexpected turn that I greatly appreciate! And may have saved this comic book from losing ranks! I sure hope they agree to continue to work for Larfleeze like this instead of just being another bunch of antagonists!

At least for next issue, they're all going to have to fight. But I'm sure Larfleeze will have some ability to keep them in line since they're all still wearing Orange Rings and he's kind of like the Master Battery and One Ring and all that shit. Fuck, I hope they remain a Corps like this and actually work as the team I was hoping for! The mummy is my favorite!

Larfleeze #3 Rating: No change. But that's just barely a no change! The beginning of this issue was a lot more of the same old same old for this thing: character tells a story while the Butler constantly interrupts. But then the Orange Corps got their lives back and I'm suddenly excited for the future of this comic book again! I'm only sorry it didn't happen sooner. Like five or six issues ago.