Batgirl Annual #2

Hopefully those skulls belong to Condor and Starling.

Some people might wonder why, in the caption above, I've placed Starling on the same level as Condor. Well, that's easily explained. The only Starling stories I've ever read have been in The New 52. Even with all the shit characters Lobdell has written, Swierczynski still has the record for writing two of my most hated characters in The New 52: Starling and Condor. If she was ever entertaining or not annoying or able to actually hit a target that she was aiming at, I wouldn't know. Condor continues to suck under the guidance of Christy Marx but I think that's because she's remaining true to the character Swierczynski created. Starling ran off with Mr. Freeze rather quickly after Marx took over and hasn't been seen since. So I really do hope one of those is her skull.

You know which other characters Swierczynski wrote badly? Poison Ivy. Batgirl. Black Canary. Katana. Did I miss anybody? I do miss referring to his Birds of Prey as the Turds of Prey though. That was super mature of me!

This issue begins by showing how Batman's bad habits have rubbed off on every other hero in Gotham.

Are skylights paned in candy glass in Gotham?

Has there ever been a story where the glass from the skylight has fallen and cut the bad guys into ribbons? I suppose on those nights, Batman just slinks off back into the shadows and lets the Gotham Police happen upon an unfortunate accident. Unless the building is owned by Wayne Enterprises and then he has to call in Alfred to clean up the mess and throw the bodies in the bay.

This Birds of Prey story takes place well before Condor was an idea that should have been passed on. So Starling, Katana, and Poison Ivy are still on the team. I still don't know why this team was formed! I think Black Canary was either lonely or she was being paid to babysit Starling, Katana, and Poison Ivy.

The team is currently battling Mr. Rain for some reason. Black Canary won't say why and Batgirl trusts that her reasons are sound because Batgirl has yet to live through that whole Turds of Prey debacle. The others don't need a reason to beat the shit out of and, just possibly, kill some bad guys. Starling just came along to shoot the wall as often as possible.

Well then. Blades and guns probably weren't the most appropriate weapons to bring to the throw down.

This story is called "When Pamela Gets Blue" which is probably a clue as to what it's about. I guess Pamela is going to get blue. She does get a message from Mr. Rain and then tries to kill everybody in a story (not told here) that I think involved a plane or a rain forest and probably a whole bunch of people getting amnesia. And by "people," I mean the readers of the story.

And that's the end of season one. I mean, after Alysia screws Barbara by making her help with a lousy community garden project. That's set up so the next season can begin with Alysia showing off her tomatoes.

My guess is that eating pancakes in your sleep might be scaring off the potential suitors.

Barbara points out how people might wind up stealing the fruits and veggies which causes Alysia to take off her panties and bunch them up really tight. She tells Babs that the garden is for anybody who wants or needs anything from it, so why doesn't Babs take her fascist talk of ownership and shove it up her father's asshole. Maybe she says it with a little more tact. But she does have a point. Ownership is theft! But Babs has a point too! Because the people who believe in ownership are going to steal every vegetable in the garden to sell to the people that Alysia wants to give it to for free! If I had to pick which one of these two were currently being unreasonable, I'd pick Barbara because I like Alysia better.

After Alysia self-righteously walks out on her roommate, Barbara pees on the crops. Then later, she goes out as Batgirl to run into Poison Ivy! They're both searching for Mr. Rain but I have a feeling they're seeking him for very different reasons.

Yes. Well sure. Why don't we call "asking around and gathering evidence" "intuition"?

Poison Ivy accidentally finds Batgirl's weakness when Pamela tells her that she's pregnant. Batgirl immediately falls on her face and would have been dead if Poison Ivy wanted to kill her. She'll have to remember that bit when she does want to kill Batgirl at a later date.

I'd say you're not arresting her because you don't have the authority to arrest her. You might have the ability to tie her up against her will and leave her for the police. But let's not start pretending that's the usual legal process.

Poison Ivy hasn't turned blue yet! Although she does point out that she didn't mean she was literally pregnant. She meant she was some other kind of pregnant! Metaphorically! Or analogically! Or similillically! Which is a good thing because I was afraid she might have been impregnated by Clayface when he raped her over in Detective Comics #15.

What Poison Ivy meant was that she's just become more powerful. Now instead of just kissing people and making them do her will, she can now stab them through the face with a vine as quickly as she can think it. Sure, okay. So she's more powerful but at the cost of being way less sexy. Unless you're into being stabbed in the face. I don't want to marginalize the "stab me in the face while you fuck me hard" crowd. For them, Poison Ivy is probably a dream woman now!

Poison Ivy and Batgirl discover a warehouse full of scarred corpses and Poison Ivy points out how she's going to check the "Fern" box when the next census comes out and asks for her race. And that's the end of summer!

The best season begins and everybody gets cupcakes because it's my birthday season! Yay! Also the temperature is the most mild and the kites are screaming to be flown (the best kites ask to fly in autumn because summer is full of kite flying poseurs) and there are probably kittens everywhere! Also Batgirl and Poison Ivy are still hunting for Mr. Rain. Again, probably for very different reasons!

Yeah! It's not always lethal! Sometimes she just uses it to get better grades on her final exams.

I'm also not sure how "crashing through skylights" and "kicking in doors" constitutes a fetish for stealth!

Oh shut up, you actualliers! I know they're stealthy right up until the moment of surprise when they crash through very expensive construction materials to catch the bad guys off-guard! I'm not a full-blown moron!

Batgirl and Poison Ivy find out what Mr. Rain is doing with his subjects. He's implanting them with something that grows inside them and gives them a few more months to live. But then that something is taken out and given to somebody rich enough to pay for it. I don't know what that something does. Makes them stronger? Healthier? Allows them to live longer? Just as long as they keep paying for it.

Batgirl gets angry at Poison Ivy for not crying over some stranger that's dying due to Mr. Rain's experiments. No wait. The guy was dying anyway. The guy was able to live for a little while longer. Anyway, he's dying and it makes Batgirl sad because she's way too emotional. Poison Ivy doesn't give a fuck about this guy and I'm totally with her on that! I think Batgirl is the one acting a bit crazy. Isn't Poison Ivy's apathetic reaction to the death of a stranger that chose to be a criminal to live a little longer the more normal reaction? It's definitely the one I have!

How dare you, Barbara Gordon!

Batgirl isn't judging Poison Ivy on her inability to feel for some stranger that chose his fate. She can't be because that would be ridiculous! She must still be hurting because Poison Ivy turned on her. But even in the face of the revelation that Poison Ivy suffers from SAD (and, seriously, can there be a more apt person to suffer from it? Genius idea!), Batgirl judges Pamela's emotional reaction to the man's death as insufficient. Duh! You just fucking realized her emotional capabilities are intertwined with the changing of the seasons! So in reality, Batgirl must still be pissed at how Ivy treated their blossoming friendship. Although she treated it that way because of her Seasonal Affective Disorder, you dumb Batjerk!

I think Babs will come around to understanding all this by the time winter comes along. She has to work through her emotions (maybe with the help of some cookies from Alysia) before she can begin to come to terms with Poison Ivy's problems.

Also, Poison Ivy does care about the stranger but only because the stranger cared about his daughter and it reminded Ivy that her father never cared for her (as seen in Poison Ivy #1, on sale nowhere anymore! I mean, probably digitally! But you won't get the extra special migraine from trying to masturbate to the cover). So Ivy puts the guy out of his misery by kissing him right on the mouth!

This is what happens when you allow Gail Simone to push the boundaries on what is acceptable in a comic book! Now plants and people are having sex! Oh wait. That's already happened more than once over in Swamp Thing. Never mind.

Kissing isn't actually sex! If you think it is then you've probably had sex with your mother and your father and your aunts and your uncles and many, many babies. You pervert.

And finally Winter is here and Mr. Rain had better watch out because the end of the comic book is near! The first thing to happen is Alysia's community garden has been destroyed. The worst part is that they wrote "go home hippies" on the wall of the shed using their own shit. Gotham City is full of maniacs.

Batgirl finds Ivy and she's finally blue! She's nearly frozen and just barely keeping it together in the dead of winter. But she's found Mr. Rain. She needed Batgirl's help because she knows Batgirl will take her to Arkham where she can be safe through the winter. Mr. Rain tries to get Poison Ivy on his side by telling her he can cure her and she kicks his ass. The last thing any of us want to be told by some rich person with a drug is that they can cure us. That somehow the person we are is flawed or diseased or simply put together incorrectly.

Batgirl's lucky Ivy didn't go full tilt Poison Ice on her ass last Autumn.

On the way to Arkham, Batgirl has Poison Ivy fix up the community garden by growing lots of shit that shouldn't be grown in Gotham City at all, especially during the winter! I'm fairly certain the Swamp Thing got a new hemorrhoid or two due to this abuse of the Green.

Batgirl Annual #2 Rating: I don't rate Annuals. I usually say something extra stupid here. But this one time, I want to say something about the actual comic book. Seasonal Affective Disorder being at least partially responsible for Poison Ivy's behaviour is one of the greatest character moves I've seen so far in The New 52. It's right up there with Tomasi's reboot of Two-Face. It's much better than Bennett's creation of Twat Lobo but not quite as good as her introduction of Arkham Night Nurse! And a bazillion times greater than Swierczynksi's creation of Condor! Also, if this issue and the Poison Ivy issue of Harley Quinn aren't proof that Pamela is a lesbian then I'm going to need more proof, I guess. Lots and lots more proof!

Batgirl #30

When is Marguerite Bennett going to get her own comic book and stop stealing Gail Simone's paychecks?

I really do hope Bennett gets her own monthly comic. I'm hoping it'll be a buddy road trip comic starring Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen. They can travel around the country, Lois following leads to bring down dirty politicians and expose illegal habits of mega corporations like Monsanto and Sunkist. And Jimmy Olsen is tagging along searching for American Cryptids! Holy fuck, I think I should be pitching this comic book to DC instead of telling it to a bunch of internet nerds!

I'm surprised by the cover of this issue. Why is Batgirl fighting a monster? And why is she fighting a man? Isn't she supposed to fight females that mirror one of her insecurities?! I suppose The Midnight Man might be a story that her mother told her so that she'd eat her vegetables. Also so that she'd never fucking sleep again.

Mrs. Gordon: "Dear. You know if you don't eat your vegetables, your pee won't smell funny. And if your pee doesn't smell funny, how are you going to keep The Midnight Man from sneaking into your bedroom at night and marrying you and having you in a wifely fashion?"
Barbara: "MOTHER! I can't believe you would say such horrible things?!"
Gordon Family: *Eats in silence for a minute*
Barbara: "Is he cute?"

After reading the first page, I might not be so far off about The Midnight Man!

Aubry is so cool! Pronouncing "cliché" with the accent on the "i"!

This is where I remind everybody about that Japanese game of solitaire hide and seek that scares the shit out of me every time I think about it. I think about it so much that I have a feeling I'm going to do it one day. And you'll all know what day that is because the blog will stop and you'll be seeing some crazy ass news story from Portland about a man that was murdered by a teddy bear.

When I was a senior in high school, my cousin was having a slumber party with a bunch of her friends. I was hanging out because of the female friends part! They decided to play Bloody Mary, so I took a turn and went in the bathroom by myself. I took a razor and sliced open the top of my fingers on one hand. Then I made a scuffling sound and a panicked noise and stumbled out of the bathroom holding my bleeding hand. I told them all that I touched the mirror and a woman's hand with long nails reached out and clawed the backs of my fingers. Everyone was completely freaked out and it was glorious.

These kids play their Midnight Man game but nothing happens so they go to sleep. Please! Nothing happens! That's always what happens when something happens! Instead of erasing the door like smart people that understand the importance of rituals would do, the kids just go to sleep on the floor around it. I suppose they wanted to be The Midnight Man's first meal when he came into our world! Idiots.

Elsewhere in Gotham, we learn that Batgirl runs around with an EMF Detector. Interesting. I never had Batgirl pegged as a complete nutcase crackpot. When the EMF Detector malfunctions and begins beeping like crazy, it leads Batgirl to a nearly empty house with a yellow door traced on the floor and four healthy meals lying in their sleeping bags.

Batgirl is thinking about Dick Grayson in the past tense, so I guess the rest of the world really thinks he's been killed by The Crime Syndicate! I have no idea when the final Forever Evil comics will be hitting the shelves though, so I can't say for sure what happened to Dick. I mean after Luthor killed him and Batman probably revived him but doesn't tell the rest of the world that he's been revived because how can Dick Grayson be Nightwing if Nightwing continues to fight crime after Forever Evil? Keeping Dick Grayson dead is pretty much the only way to protect Batman's secret identity as Bruce Wayne. Although somebody should tell Batgirl at some point!

If Nightwing is dead, that means Tim Drake is the only Robin left that hasn't been killed! And he might as well be dead after the way Scott Lobdell treated him.

These are the filthy things going through Barbara's mind just before The Midnight Man crawls through the chalk doorway.

Good thing Batman taught his Bat-Family not only how to break kneecaps and swing from bat-grapples but also how to defeat spirits from other dimensions. I'm sure he just threw that shit in so he could joke about it later with Alfred. But now that information (if it's true and not just a Bat-Joke) is going to come in handy! Batgirl needs to get her hands on some sage to defeat the evil spirit! I would think that if she's running around with an EMF Detector looking for supernatural bullshit, she'd also have some sage in her Utility Belt to poison any spirits that she found.

Since Batgirl seems prepared to find spirits but not to destroy them, she's lucky the parents of one of these kids keeps sage in the kitchen. She uses it and her knowledge of horror movies to defeat The Midnight Man. Because the monster in the horror movie is always defeated by the virginal woman. If you're a man, forget it. Dead. If you're a woman that has given in to the awesome temptation of carnal desire? Forget it. Dead. If you're an adult of any kind and you weren't in a previous iteration of the movie franchise? Forget it. Dead. But if you're a girl in a batsuit that's only ever kissed one boy (and not even a whole boy at that!), you have a fairly decent chance of not only surviving but defeating the psychotic killer. You just have to make sure that you never encounter this same psychotic killer again though. Because that would mean you're in the beginning minutes of the sequel and you're fucked.

That's because the movie isn't over yet, stupid! Because now's the part where you think you're safe but you've got to make sure, so you turn and he's standing there staring at you, face to face. Then he looks at you and smiles and says, "Tag. You're it, Sweetie."

I can't believe Batgirl Narration Boxed even more than when Simone is writing this comic! Babs wouldn't stop thinking about Dick and the other Robins and how she was different than the Robins and how she was a bat and how she watched horror movies and how Dick watched with her and blah blah blah blah! Shut up already, Batgirl! I get it! You wish you could have at least gotten to third base with Dick before he died!

Batgirl #30 Rating: No change. The real action is going to be when The Midnight Man's sequel happens! And it will happen since Batgirl mixed flowers and whiskey into barrels of yellow paint being used to draw the lines on the streets of Gotham so that they make a gigantic door! I say it was Batgirl who did it because she ended her section knowing she shouldn't do something but also loving the thrill! So it's definitely not some dangerous mystic enemy of Batman's at all that wants to summon a giant version of The Midnight Man! It's definitely Batgirl because she wants some answers! But she'll never get them because she's going to die two pages into the next Midnight Man issue.

Batgirl #27

Gothtopia means "the Goth place!"

I understand that shoving "topia" on the back of something simply makes it an ideal place due to cultural baggage. Just like when any scandal (or pseudo-scandal) takes place in the political realm, you know it's a scandal because somebody decides to append "gate" to it. It's like a bunch of children are running things.

The current thing in the media that's pissing on my goat is that Apple iPad commercial where they point out that certain careers are needed for society but it's poetry that we live for. Then they go on to quote some Walt Whitman, appending their own line at the end of the Whitman quote: "What will your verse be?" Fuck you, Apple! You're taking Whitman's poetry about life itself being a poem and a verse and trying to make it a call to arms for people to get out and create (with your product, of course). But Whitman's whole point is that we are here and that is life and we all have a unique identity and that's fucking enough! What we do, no matter what it is, is poetry in and of itself! So take your stupid ass fucking call to arms and shove it up your stupid ass fucking ass!

Since I'm ragging on Apple, let me take a moment to point out when Microsoft did pretty much the same thing about ten years ago. Remember when they stuck "Rainbow Connection" on some commercial about Windows XP or Windows 7 or whatever the fucking product was? Besides the fact that Jim Henson probably shit his grave over that song being used to sell some shitty product, Microsoft didn't even understand the fucking song. It was okay in the original length commercial (I suspect. I can't remember exactly). But like the Apple one out now, after airing a few times, the commercial was cut down in length. At that point, they ended the commercial before the turn in the song! So Microsoft's product was being sold to this: "Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what's on the other side? Rainbows are visions and only illusions and rainbows have nothing to hide." That was it! Unless they left in the next line as well. Again, I can't remember! Anyway, they left the nay-sayers part in but ended the commercial before they can get to the part where the singer says, "I know they're wrong wait and see." Fucking idiots. Get bent.

Now that I'm rage free, I think I'll read about Batgirl. Or whatever her name was in Gothtopia!

Oh, not you too Babs. I'm so sick of everybody's love of bacon. BACON BACON BACON! If you're going to fall in love with meat, might I suggest Linguiça? Perhaps I'd be willing to accept someone falling head over heels for Chorizo as well. But bacon? Too ubiquitous for true love.

Babs is currently living with her father because that's the way life goes when everything is perfect! I mean, Alysia was a decent roommate and all. But if Babs is going to hallucinate extreme happiness, she's obviously going to pretend that her family is all together. Besides, she's probably actually sitting in a hole in the backyard that she dug the night before, chewing on a rotting squirrel and talking to a big orange dog.

Apparently Scarecrow's Happy Gas has caused Babs to become best friends with her greatest enemy, Knightfall. Unless, of course, Babs is really just hanging out with a fire hydrant and making out with her boyfriend Ricky the pile of dead leaves.

Her name is Daybreak because it's the opposite of Knightfall! Um, kind of. Maybe it should be Squirerise?

Meanwhile The Joker Ice Cream Company has decided to try out a new flavor of ice cream on this hot day: Death Toffee. A bunch of people are killed after eating it which they probably should have suspected since it was called Death Toffee. Oh! Maybe the gas made them read Neapolitan. Although I don't think that name is any more encouraging, actually.

Bluebelle and Daybreak decide they need to stop kids all over town from eating ice cream. What monsters!

After stopping one person on the streets from eating ice cream, Bluebelle learns that a bunch of kids are currently on a field trip to The Joker Ice Cream Factory. So she and Knightfall choose to help the kids at the factory rather than chase down ice cream trucks all day in the heat. Let somebody else take care of that bullcrap. The factory probably has air conditioning!

This is Mother Mercy spreading happiness and joy all across Gothtopia.

The news reporter on the scene is named Amanda Holden. I bet that's just her Gothtopia name. Her real name is probaly Nomanda Holdenkiss.

When Bluebelle crashes the ice cream party to stop Mother Mercy, she notices the Joker logo on the wall and suddenly remembers the real Gotham City. And that's when the sniper takes out Mother Mercy and Batgirl decides she'll just pretend that Gothtopia never actually happened. I wish I'd known that before writing this commentary! If she doesn't have to remember what happened then I don't either!

Batgirl #27 Rating: No change. Maybe my memory is getting better after two years of reading comic books and I can stop writing commentaries on them! I bet I've learned how to remember things better now since I do seem to remember a lot of what's happening from month to month. Although that's probably a side-effect of writing the commentaries, right? It's like studying! Ick! I hate studying! I should be playing computer role playing games and console video games and watching all the crap in my queue on Netflix! I should be writing my verse! Stupid commentaries are draining my life away! Hey DC Comics? Would it be possible to do another reboot and change it to The New 26? This stupid project is too much work!