The Ray #6

He's still fighting his father, isn't he?

For a kid who had a dad, this fucking kid sure wishes he had a dad. I don't fucking get it. He lived 18 years with a man who was his dad but then that man died and said, "I'm not your real dad! There is another!" and this fucking kid is all, "I want my daddy!" Man, I only have the one dad and I couldn't give a fuck! Just go out and get a dog, you needy bastard! Also get a fridge. You fucking still need a fridge, you stupid asshole.

Have I cursed at The Ray enough? It's not like he deserves it; I've just grown bored with this series and I'm acting out. Luckily this is my last The Ray comic book before I get to move on to Kid Eternity written by Ann Nocenti. Fuck yes! Who knew I'd read Ann Nocenti before her run on The New 52 Green Arrow?! I wish I could remember what younger me thought of it.

Three kinds of comic books exist in my past: those I loved so much that they became an integral part of that chapter in my life (Elfquest, Transmetropolitan, and Shade the Changing Man), comic books that I thoroughly enjoyed and can still remember a good percentage of plots and themes (Suicide Squad, The Demon, and Justice League) and comic books I read in five minutes and completely forgot about (apparently The Ray, Kid Eternity, Scarab, and so many more that I can't list because I completely forgot about them). I could probably break those categories down further into dozens of other categories but you were probably already bored at the beginning of this paragraph so I'll just move on.

The issue begins with Black Canary penning a letter to Justice League Human Resources.

The Ray decided to take a day off from being an adult and also a super hero to explore the underwater wreckage of a 1940s cruise ship. This brings up so many questions! How did he know it was there? Did he stumble upon it by accident? Is he exploring the Bermuda Triangle?

How does an 19 year old in 1994 know about The Poseidon Adventure?

Okay, that last question was unfair. I was barely twenty-three when this comic book came out and I'd watched The Poseidon Adventure at least a half-dozen times on local stations during rainy Sunday afternoons. But you also have to wonder, "If he's familiar with the movie, why is he comparing himself to Shelley Winters?!"

For a fad disaster movie of the time, I'm surprised how it was able to blow my mind. Sure, I was super young and everything was fucking blowing my mind every Goddamned day because the universe is a fucking LSD trip full of unexpected miracles (at least until you've pretty much seen them all five million times and you slowly sink into the mire of bored cynic (I wish I'd known enough in my youth to not sink slowly but to rage, rage against the dying of the wonder. Fucking stupid kid me)). But there's that moment in the movie where the protagonists are going toward the back of the ship and they pass by another group of passengers going the other way. And it's like, "Whoa. Holy shit. We could be watching their story! They could be the ones who survive! Why are they any less important than the people whose stories we're watching?!" It's a fucking great cinematic moment that not only ratchets up the tension by suggesting the protagonists might be heading the wrong way but also introduces the idea that the "protagonists" are only that because we're focused on them (and because some of them are the ones who will live, I suppose. But as an inexperienced kid, you're secure from the cynical understanding of narrative choices). If we root for our guys to be going the right way, does that mean we don't give a fuck that the other people are heading to their deaths? And why does the movie's point of view dictate to us who we care about living and dying? It's a lesson that stayed with me for a long fucking time (and one you'll see I apply occasionally when reviewing super hero comic books) and probably why I fell in love with the writings of Kurt Vonnegut. Because Vonnegut might have a "protagonist" but he's also constantly aware of the idea that the other people in the story aren't just window dressing. They're other people with stories of their own and they shouldn't be treated like just another prop. Again, it's one reason I almost always despise big action movies, especially natural disaster kinds. Because the plot always boils down to "a whole lot of fucking people are going to die on screen and it's going to be horrible but this person the camera is following will live so that will make it seem like a happy ending."

While exploring, The Ray is attacked by Death Masque. What?! But how?! Death Masque was only a computer program! What is going on?! So unexpected!

The Ray barely survives and then just chalks up the attack to some quirk in his program. He flies home to debug and to also think about how strange it is that Black Canary has yet to write him back. Cue a scene change to see what Black Canary thinks of his advances! Spoiler: it's the best part of the comic book so far.

Now I'm paranoid that every woman I've ever had an unrequited crush on has a note like this in her journal about me.

Hell, I'd be lucky if the women I've had crushes on noticed me enough to even mention me in their journal! Their entry would be more like, "Saw that creepy fucker staring at me in the library again. Fucking going to get a punch to the throat if he doesn't knock it the fuck off."

Black Canary's currently trying to save a young girl taken hostage by a terrorist. But when she goes into the building to save her, she discovers a portal to another world with laser-wielding demons and increased gravity. Being that she's just a martial artist with no real powers (even if the artist depicts her flying in one panel but I think that's a mistake, right? She could never fly (and, no, it's definitely not a depiction of her "flying" by using her sonic scream. I don't think she even has the sonic scream at this moment in her history), she fucks right off to get help (probably from The Ray, right?! Green Arrow won't be any use in this situation).

Back in wherever The Ray lives (Philadelphia, I think? Site of one of my all-time favorite books, The Boomer Bible (which I should reread again since, thematically, it couldn't be more relevant to our current political woes)), he's busy buying his fridge! Except this is only Issue #6 so you really didn't expect that plot point to be resolved so soon, right? Because it's not! Instead of buying the things he needs (being an adult and all), he buys a life-size Superman cardboard stand-up and a stereo system. Who needs a fridge anyway? I don't imaging there's anybody in America who buys a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream and saves some for later!

The Ray gets a message on his old school voice mail machine from Dinah and he instantly zips off to Seattle to help her. Is she taking advantage of his feelings toward her or does she actually think he's the best person to call in this situation? Maybe she didn't want to call Superman because he'd get all the credit. Or maybe he's dead. And Batman has a broken back. And Green Arrow, you know, uses a stupid bow.

Turns out Black Canary called in The Ray because he has light-based powers and she surmises he can open closed portals that have disappeared from reality. It turns out she's right because what kind of shitty narrative choice would Priest have made if she were wrong? The Ray arrives, can't open or find the portal, shrugs and then Black Canary breaks down crying because she didn't save Mercy. Oh wait. That's not a crappy narrative choice at all! The Ray could have comforted her and they would have bonded emotionally and Green Arrow would have walked in on them bonding and flipped the fuck out. Sure, Mercy would be dead, but who is Mercy anyway? Nobody I give a shit about! She should have thought about readers caring about her before she chose to be a background character.

The Ray turns into a raging Hulk version of himself as he passes through the portal, flying off and leaving Black Canary alone. Apparently Black Canary suffered some trauma recently in her comic book or Green Arrow where somebody pointed a gun at her and said, "I'm not afraid of you!" Now everybody keeps pointing guns at her and she imagines they aren't afraid of her. But she's super afraid all the time, even when she's being sexy.

This is a depiction of female masturbation, right?

The issue ends with the hostage taker pointing his gun at Black Canary and screaming, "I'm not afraid of you!" He's holding a young girl who is probably Mercy. And it appears younger me cared so little about Mercy's welfare that I decided I wasn't going to purchase the next issue.

The Ray #6 Rating: C. I'm vaguely disappointed that I don't have the next issue. While I'm not curious about what happens to Mercy, I do sort of want to see the final confrontation between Black Canary and The Ray where she tells him she loves him like a younger brother and he's never going to see her tits. Maybe younger me knew seeing that confrontation would be too emotional for him as he pined over somebody who probably just wished he'd leave her the fuck alone.

The Ray #0

"The Beginning of Tomorrow" sounds like my life philosophy.

I don't totally know what I mean by the above caption but then that's philosophy for you, isn't?

I'm not going to discuss Zero Hour because when Zero Hour happened, it changed the entire DC Universe's past so that Zero Hour never happened. Everything was suddenly always post-Zero-Hour continuity except without Zero Hour actually existing in that continuity. Therefore I can't discuss it because it's not something that exists. Which probably means I can throw this comic book in the garbage can and forget about it forever!

Surprise! I didn't throw the comic book in the garbage! I mean, I did! But I fished it out before I pissed on it because I thought, "Wait. Are the Zero Hour comics part of post-Zero-Hour continuity? They might be stories that happened after Zero Hour which clarify facts about how the world has always supposedly been. So if Martian Manhunter's cape was normal length in the pre-Zero-Hour continuity, this story begins telling readers, "Oh no! It was always five hundred feet long! Don't you remember? You should remember that it was always like that! And did Crisis On Infinite Earths happen in this continuity? Who can fucking tell! Just stop whining about the two different Supermen and how the fuck does Infinity Inc. exist in this timeline, you stupid assholes! If you don't, we're just going to have to keep pulling this shit! You think Zero Hour is bad? Just wait until we pull out The New 52! And then just when you've think you've seen it all, have we got a Watchmen trick ready to flop to fix that!"

Visual proof of J'onn's new and/or always lengthy cape.

My brain is so muddled by DC's continuity changes across the last forty years that I'm not even sure I'm correctly remembering why Zero Hour was needed. But I think it was simply because every fix DC tried to incorporate into their universe just broke a bunch of other shit that later needed to be fixed. What DC didn't realize was that their main problem that needed fixing was the way-too-literal know-it-all fans who couldn't just shut the fuck up.

One thing that remains the same from pre-Zero-Hour continuity to this Zero Hour continuity is how Golden Era The Ray is a huge fucking psycho dick. He can't find his son to beat up on so now he's decided to beat up Martian Manhunter. The guy needs severe anger management classes. He needs to spend a little time at Sanctuary, the Heroes in Crisis spa.

During the battle that Older The Ray starts, a lot of property is destroyed. Weird how when his son gets into a battle that destroys property, it's the most irresponsible thing in the world. But when he does it, it's just super hero business as usual. Fucking dads! They're the worst, right?! Hypocritical Fox News watching recovering alcoholic assholes who have never done a ninth step with their son! That are also angry super heroes, of course!

Older The Ray decides to ask Jenny and Cousin Hank if they've seen The Ray. He doesn't beat the shit out of them when he asked the question though. That doesn't make him less of a dick; it makes him more of a dick! Because now we know he could have approached Martian Manhunter reasonably! Cousin Hank doesn't have much to offer as usual.

It always amazes me how often a person can understand an acronym with which they're unfamiliar simply from a tiny bit of context. It didn't take me more than a few seconds to figure out that VPL equals varicose pussy lips. Oh wait! It's probably visible panty lines.

Jen manages to hack into The Ray's laptop so they can read his letters to Black Canary. Which reminds me that I know why The Ray is missing! I forgot to mention that at the end of the last issue, he went by his dad's house to hug him and his dad wasn't there. But his mother who was supposed to have died giving birth to The Ray was! So now he's probably off crying somewhere. It turns out that "somewhere" was Dinah Lance's bathtub. But when she never returned, he fucked off to cry somewhere else.

Sitting in the bath tub, The Ray has a Zero Hour hallucination recounting his origin. He was born leaking radiation. Older The Ray knew the government would come to study him or exploit him, so he gave him to his brother without telling anybody. He left a light image of the baby that would eventually consume itself. He just told his wife their son died and moved on. Meanwhile, The Ray grew up thinking his uncle was his dad. Right up until his uncle died and told The Ray the truth on his death bed. And all of that is pretty much the same as his pre-Zero Hour origin, I think! But it was important during Zero Hour that every series got a Zero Hour book to explain their origins for all the new readers jumping to DC now that all the continuity errors were fixed and it was going to make complete sense.

The Ray #0 Rating: C. I don't expect a special Zero Issue to advance the plot in any way so this issue lived up to my non-expectations. It even ends at basically the same point as the last regular issue as The Ray's mom acts confused by this strange teenager trespassing on her property. Even the origin story was a long-winded version of information already expressed in earlier issues. I began reading this series hoping to realign my perspective and read with the same sense of wonder I once had for comic books. But I don't think I can ever regain that feeling I once had that every comic book series was telling a story that was going somewhere. I once thought that the worst thing about dying was that I wouldn't be able to learn how the comic book series I was reading would end. But that's never been the point of most comic book series. No wonder I loved Elfquest and Cerebus so much. Because they were written with an end in mind (Elfquest more than Cerebus but Dave Sim already had the 300 issue thing in mind when I began reading it, so, you know). And, sure, I don't want to rush to the end of a well-written story just because I need to know how it ends. But I'd like to know the journey meant as much to the writer as it does to me. And if the writer of a story is simply writing whatever comes to mind to fill out a page count from month to month, I feel cheated now. There was a time I didn't realize that was a thing. But now that I've seen it, I just can't go back to the excitement and wonder of thinking, "What is going to happen to The Ray's relationship with his family?! How will it affect his super heroing? And what, exactly, is his super heroing anyway? He doesn't seem to have any plan aside from buying a fridge and he's not even working on that plan." Hmm, maybe the whole point of this comic book is that adult life is so complicated that all of your tasks simply become digressions. All of your beliefs and philosophies which propel you to do the things you do mean nothing to the universe which will continuously wear you down with problems you weren't expecting. Didn't some famous jerk-off once say something about life being the thing that happens while you're making plans? Maybe that's what this comic book is about which is also what growing up is about. And maybe that's why so many adults become soulless automatons with no underlying set of ethics to guide them through social interactions requiring empathy and compassion. Who has time to think of anybody else when you're busy putting out fire after fire intent on destroying your life's plans?

I don't have this entire series but now I'm hoping that The Ray never gets that fridge until the final issue.

The Ray #5

The Ray Senior has six armpits.

It's hard to believe there was a time when comic books didn't acknowledge who did the cover. I suppose publishers simply thought comic book nerds were so rabid for the medium that they could instantly recognize the artist without any credit. Or maybe they figured if the reader was truly interested, they'd scour the cover to find the signature. That would answer the question, right?!

Oh yeah. Okay. That fucking helped nobody.

In 1994, good luck figuring out who the fuck this signature was by. Sure, you can read "Nichols" in that fucking doodle but that probably means you'd merely assume Art Nichols did the cover (if you even knew who the fuck that was). But no! This cover was by Joe Quesada and Art Nichols! Fucking Joe Quesada. How delusional do you have to be to think that a J stuck to a giant fucking rendition of Saturn would read "Joe Quesada" to anybody who didn't already fucking know that that was his pretentious signature?! I suppose if my understanding of the musculature of the human body was on Joe's level, I'd want to obfuscate my name too.

Some people who have only grown up with the Internet might not entirely understand my issue. When they first encountered an artist they really liked, they probably learned all about that artist immediately. But back in 1994, if your local comic book store owner (and the owner back then was almost always the clerk (okay, maybe not in 1994. But in the 70s and early 80s, definitely)) couldn't answer any questions you had (if you could bring yourself to actually engage them in conversation, of course), you were shit out of luck. Sure, you might send a letter to DC and then hoped they'd answer it in a future issue of the comic book that maybe you were still continuing to read. Or maybe you'd have a more knowledgeable comic book friend. But what you almost certainly didn't have was an easy way to find out answers to mysterious things. Maybe you were lucky enough to have AOL or Prodigy but was your question being answered so important that you would submit yourself to a comic book AOL chatroom? Almost certainly not! You'd just live with a mystery for awhile and hope that maybe, some day, you'd get satisfaction.

I'm definitely not saying it was better in the past! If you somehow got that out of what I just read, you're probably a bit too defensive and maybe you should relax a little bit.

And speaking of generation gaps, this cover is apparently about a generation gap! It's father vs. sun in a knockdown, drag-out battle that absolutely nobody fucking cared about! Most of us bought this issue thinking, "I hope The Ray finally buys that fridge!"

I know what the Oedipal and Electra Complexes are but what do you call it when you want to both kill and fuck your father?

The Ray is drunk on the energy he absorbed from the Light Entity. Older The Ray seems angry and violent from the energy. I'm sure once the energy dissipates, the two will have said everything they needed to say and they'll hug. And judging from the above panels, maybe they'll suck a little dick too.

Older The Ray absorbs The Ray's powers and teleports him all over the world to teach him that the world has problems that can't be solved by punching Doomsday in the throat. And they certainly can't be solved by a reckless teenager using his powers to fly to Hawaii to get laid and murder other super heroes. So Older The Ray decides he needs to take away The Ray's powers forever. I don't know how he has that kind of power and why he didn't do it when The Ray was younger so The Ray could have a regular childhood. He probably decides to do it now because he's simply an asshole. And also maybe because Zero Hour happens next issue.

Except it's all some kind of test and The Ray doesn't ever actually lose his powers. This story definitely isn't making Golden Age The Ray any fans. Was he always a gigantic asshole? Maybe Christopher Priest just believes the same thing I do: dads are kind of dicks.

Some people think the song "Cat's in the Cradle" is sad but I think it's a triumph of the spirit! Stick it to that fucking asshole old man, kid!

Finally, Older The Ray screams at The Ray about how much he sacrificed to give him a decent life while his son, The Ray, just weeps uncontrollably. Because why the fuck should the son care what the parent sacrificed when that decision cost the son so much? And the father didn't fucking care about that at all. It's just "Me me me!" and "Look what I had to go through!" and "You don't know how much I suffered!" But all the son fucking wants is his father. Nothing else fucking matters and why should it? The son is angry and hurt and upset and he doesn't need to hear his father's excuses or rationalizations or explanations as to why he wasn't there. The bottom fucking line is that he wasn't there. He was never there. And now that he is, he thinks his son somehow owes him unconditional love? Fuck that guy.

But in the end, they hug because Older The Ray maybe sort of gets it. His son just wants a father, not some guy teaching him how to be a super hero. It might be a happy ending but I'm fucking pissed. I hope Zero Hour erases Golden Age The Ray from existence!

I hope Issue #0 resolves the fridge situation.

The Ray #5 Rating: B-. I know a lot of father/son relationships never have problems. But a lot of them do. And, eventually, many of those fathers and sons work through their problems to become friends of sorts. But fuck that bullshit. I'll take on their bitterness and resentment and hatred and keep it stored safely in my cold fucking heart. I will cherish those feelings of ill will and hurt. I will become an Anger Elemental and I will makes sure that fathers everywhere never again perceive a world in which their child owes them something. They owe you fucking nothing, no matter how good or bad you were to them. Accept what they can give you and stop being a huge fucking prick, Lloyd. I mean anonymous fathers.

The Ray #4

The parking meter visual joke only works if the viewer understands the red flag reads "expired."

How do parking meters still exist?! It's 2020 and we have phones that are handheld computers which are also cameras with myriad other uses. The main thing we don't do with them is use them as a phone so why are we still calling them phones? I guess people who understand that criticism call them "handheld devices" but, I mean, my dick is a handheld device if you want to get technical about it. Also, I don't own a phone that does anything except call people. I guess it takes pictures if you don't mind taking pictures of gray blobs in gray backgrounds because 90% of the time, the lighting isn't perfect. Plus it can text but it's that kind of texting where you have to punch the number 3 three times to type the letter "I". I don't mind because I only use it for work and I try to barely use it for that.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah! Parking meters! What's up with parking meters? Do we really need antiquated free standing machines that run on coins simply to make it easy to fine people hundreds of dollars for city income? I know a lot of cities have gone to one central parking meter per block that prints tickets and accepts credit cards and runs on solar power. Or is that just Portland? I have a better system! How about we all just park on the street for free but once an hour, somebody gets a $500 ticket. It'll be like Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" except with less social commentary and more rage inducing bullshit. It makes as much sense as every other fucking thing we deal with in our so-called "civilization." Man, I wish mankind had never come down from the trees. Or been created by visitors from another galaxy. According to the History Channel, it's pretty much 50-50 one of those two things and definitely not God. The History Channel might be crazy but it's not that crazy.

Coins aren't magnetic.

I'm such a dour bastard that I scrutinized this page for a non-inconsequential amount of time determined to find some metal that Doctor Polaris shouldn't be able to manipulate.

Too bad there isn't a better word for "non-inconsequential."

If you were wondering how I rate comics as a professional critic, here's a little insight. This comic book has been a steady, average C for the first three issues. And then this panel where The Ray is mocking Doctor Polaris just popped it up to a high B and made me really like The Ray.

Some people think recognizing comic book dialogue which references Nietzsche or Shakespeare proves that they're intelligent critics. I prefer dialogue that makes me go, "Hee hee. That was so fucking stupid."

I would like to be a critic who can point out intelligent themes layered within the physical conflicts who references smart texts and quotes famous thinkers. But what am I supposed to do? Read more?! I'm a writer not a reader!

The Ray gets to the part of the story where Doctor Polaris covers The Ray head-to-toe in liquid metal. He's about to die when suddenly...

He has to pause the narration to take a shit.

Is The Ray the only DC superhero that canonically shits and jerks off?

The Ray rallies by saying, "It was time to stop being the donut in the on-deck circle." This is a reference to Navy circle jerks, right? And just like the Seaman who has finally had enough jizz launched into his face, he rises and kicks some serious ass! He defeats Doctor Polaris by using his brains instead of just his will power. Normally I prefer that kind of victory but I don't buy it with The Ray. I just don't think he's that smart even if he did write that training program I mentioned earlier. Also, he didn't really write it! He just adapted the code from an existing program. Pshaw! Anybody can do that! I used to do it to BASIC programs all the time!

While The Ray celebrates his victory, the Light Entity returns and engulfs him. It also engulfs The Ray's dad, The Ray, whom I haven't mentioned over the last three issues. See, he sometimes appears in light form to tell his son how terrible he is at superheroing. Then The Ray tells him to fuck off and that's that. Mostly I didn't know what to make of the encounters because they're too thematic and psychological and painful because Daddy? Why did you leave me alone for all those years?

But now the Light Entity has captured The Ray's father and The Ray must communicate with it so that he can convince it to spare his dad and the city of Philadelphia. And the only way to talk to it is for the Light Entity to use The Ray's memories. So the Light Entity appears as young Ray crying because his father left him. The Ray is all, "Yeah, yeah! I remember crying because my father left me too!" The Ray offers to find the Light Entity's father for him and the Light Entity agrees. After which The Ray launches the Light Entity into the sun. Yeah, that's probably its father. Good work!

After The Ray returns to Earth, he's attacked by his father. Why? Because fathers are dicks, I guess?

The Ray #4 Rating: B. The Ray still hasn't gotten around to buying a fridge so I don't know how this comic book is about buying a fridge.

The Ray #3

Doctor Doom?

I'm not too happy with my younger self right now. Not because he was a slacker who did nothing to prepare me for middle age and beyond. I'm irritated by him because he purchased six issues of The Ray and I'm now bored with it after two issues. The concept behind this comic book was "What if a young person had to buy a fridge? How would they go about doing that while also needing to pay rent and pursue a sex life? How do young people learn to be adults? And also, he has super powers! What?! I know, right?! That's going to be some crazy fridge buying!" That isn't speculation on my part (although it is in my own words). That's what Brian Augustyn wrote about this comic book in the back of Issue #1.

Oh well! I guess I just have to eat an entire bag of Sour Patch Kids, feel sick and headachey, take some aspirin and a nap, wake up, remember I need to read The Ray #3, sigh until the Non-Certified Spouse puts her headphones in, and finally open up the stupid comic book.

I mean the wonderful comic book! I forgot about my change in attitude! I love comic books! They're like no other art form!

Imagine having no lungs and trying to read aloud a sentence that ends with an exclamation point. I'm passing out just thinking about it.

The issue begins in the middle of a fight because The Ray knows to start in the middle of the story when he's writing a letter to Black Canary. I still don't know why he's writing her letters but that seems to be the narration aspect of this story. I like it better than when the narration sounds like the character is doing a DVD commentary on their recent life. It makes way more sense!

Maybe I shouldn't be so quick to move on from that thought! One of the things that really annoyed me when I returned to comic books after about an eight year break was how so many were narrated by the main character. But they weren't the thoughts of the character during the action. They were the character commenting no the action while looking back on it from some future point. Priest gets around this by having The Ray writing about his life to Black Canary. It's a fucking brilliant way to get around the nonsense of a character commenting to the reader (I guess?) about their past. This is also a good chance for me to use the word epistolary but I don't know exactly how to use it.

Earlier that week (prior to sitting down and telling Black Canary about the event in a letter), The Ray battled a guy named Death Masque. Death Masque was one of those guys really into teaching the hero something while he also tried to kill the hero. The Ray thinks he sounds like some guy trying a little too hard to be his father. Man, Star Wars cast a pretty long shadow on pop culture, didn't it?!

The battle between Death Masque and The Ray is a bit of a therapy session.

Death Masque: "Your father would be so disappointed in you!"
The Ray: "My father is dead!"
Death Masque: "I meant your real father! Not his stupid lying brother who raised you!"
The Ray: "You're not my father!"
Death Masque: "What? I never claimed to be, you fool!"
The Ray: "Rot! I was so busy getting my serve on that I failed to gaffle myself! Daddy!"

An alarm sounds and The Ray is all, "Oh shit! I have to go to work. End program!" That's right! He was battling a computer simulation that he programmed! And it's as intuitive as that therapist program on the Apple IIe from way back. You know the one that would ask you about your mother 95% of the time and hardly ever ask you about your dreams even though that was all I really wanted to talk about?

I wonder why The Ray is working at a fast food restaurant when he can program such sophisticated therapy slash battle simulation software?

The Ray heads off to work after hurting his own feelings because he's such an intuitive programmer. I guess he'll just have to battle the real Death Masque after his shift is over.

This is what a fart looks like at 20,000 feet.

Look, I don't like to concentrate on continuity errors. I love to! The Ray's suit is made out of light. But not the jacket! So how come he doesn't have his jacket on when he decides to get naked while flying through the stratosphere? Maybe it was destroyed when he was eaten by Brimstone and now it's just light too! Although, why would he fight naked under his light suit? What happens if he's knocked out in mid-fight?! Talk about embarrassing! I mean embarrassing for him! I would be all, "Hey ya! Look at my dick, Joe and Joanna Public!" I mean, I'd say that after I woke up naked in the middle of the street with everybody gawking and trying to resist jerking themselves off while looking at my beautiful man meat.

After The Ray exposes himself to everybody on the right side of the plane, he goes home to wallow in self pity and remember the time a nun caught him jerking off. Although according to Neil Gaiman, he was once told by editorial that characters in the DC Universe never jerked off. Obviously that was disproven by The Scarab since he jerks off right on panel. But that was a Vertigo title a little bit more removed from the DC Universe than even The Sandman, so I guess it was allowed. But that doesn't explain The Ray jerking off in the DC Universe! Isn't that against editorial rules?

Oh! I see. Jerking off is nonexistent in the DCU which is why neither he nor the nun can explain what he's doing! It's like The Invention of Lying but with masturbation!

While The Ray is moping about people having seen his dick, Doctor Polaris reaches out to him for help. Well, he claims he's the good half of Doctor Polaris and not the bad half. So that probably means it's not a trick or anything! If there's anybody you can trust, it's the good half of an evil person, right?

Oho! So The Ray is smarter than I was willing to give him credit for! For which I was willing to give him credit? Fuck it. I hate writing.

Nobody will help The Ray figure out if Emerson is lying to him so he decides to simply break Emerson out of prison and force him to help. But that also means he's breaking Doctor Polaris out of prison, right?! I'm so confused about this kid's thought process!

The bottom line is that The Ray fucks up and winds up allowing the "grave danger" to escape while also causing Doctor Polaris to take over Doctor Emerson's mind. So now The Ray has to battle both Doctor Polaris and a mysterious Light Entity.

The Ray #3 Rating: C+. I liked this issue a little bit better than the other issues because a nun caught The Ray masturbating. Not on panel, of course! But it was still an exciting story to learn!

The Ray #2

For $1.75 a pop, I bought a lot of comic books I probably wouldn't have otherwise.

I'm sure at the time, I was appalled at having to pay $1.75 for a normal comic book. I'll always feel regular newsprint comic books are worth seventy-five cents at best. Anything over $1.25 meant they were printed on Baxter paper without advertisements! Up until they added advertisements. And returned to regular comic book paper because what the fuck is Baxter paper anyway? Also, I realize saying that the $1.75 price allowed me to buy more comics than I otherwise would have seems outrageous when I purchased every comic book in The New 52 for years and they ran three to four dollars a piece! What was I thinking?!

Oh, I remember what I was thinking! I was thinking, "I remember loving comic books. But I don't remember why I stopped loving comic books! Maybe I'll read all of these new DC comic books where they're restarting their universe because I'm sure I'll love them like I did when I was younger!" And then I read them and found some that I did love! But I also found a bunch of them that were as near to experiencing somebody shit directly into your mouth as I can imagine (while also not having requested the shit in the mouth). When my blog began, the voice I used was full of excitement and childlike wonder! People were reading my blog and commenting, "I love this blog because it's so different from the usual edgy asshole critic on the Internet!" In a way, I wished that I could have kept that sense of wonder. But we've all read Robert Frost's poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay," (or at least heard Ponyboy recite it in The Outsiders). It's nature's hardest hue to hold! Especially when you're trying to hold it and J.T. Krul keeps bumping into you and Ann Nocenti keeps flashing weird smiles at you and Scott Lobdell keeps trying to touch your dick and Howard Mackie keeps asking, "Can you put two periods at the end of a sentence?" and Rob Liefeld reminds everybody that his art isn't bad at all if you compare it to his writing. I was trying my hardest to love comic books again but the real world kept knocking at my door and screaming, "Are you home? Is anybody here? I want to fucking remind you of how terrible it is out here!"

Fucking real world. It can go fuck itself! And I know that sounds like an awesome thing to do because I'm totally imagining myself fucking myself right now but I assure you I meant it in the worst possible way! I mean, not rape because nobody should tell somebody to go get raped. But can you be raped by yourself? I've had some weird wet dreams that I never consented to so maybe?

So in memory of the me that had yet to be groped by Scott Lobdell or shit on by Ann Nocenti (dammit. I think I just developed a new fantasy), I'm going to lose the cynicism and become, once more, a lover of comics! One can do worse than be a lover of comics! Like maybe some old jerk who still thinks fondly on destroying birch trees by swinging on them. Asshole.

Juice. This issue is called "Juice."

I've never had an opinion on the word juice until just now. Who the fuck does it think it is?! Look at the way it's spelled. That's a fucked up word. And just listen to it as it leaves your lips: "JUICE." It's practically a racial slur! I fucking hate it. I hate it so much that if a genie were to give me three wishes, I would wish for a benign brain tumor placed on just the right spot of my brain that would make me forget the word while also not allowing me to hear or read it. Right now, some of you are screaming, "Just wish the word out of existence, you idiot!" But you don't know genies! They're tricky motherfuckers! If I asked one to remove "juice" from existence, I'd probably wind up being responsible for another fucking Holocaust!

If I had an editor, they would probably tell me that I shouldn't keep both of the "juice" and "Jews" "jokes" in the previous paragraph. Maybe they'd even tell me to just forget it altogether while also maybe losing the digression into raping oneself. But that's why I don't have an editor because I'd just tell that editor to go fuck themselves and I'd be back to not having an editor!

Juice. Ugh! I'm grossing myself out now! I can't stop saying it! You can't say it without sounding revolted! Like my taxi driver in Kyoto that time when I pointed out the window by the temple and was all, "Hey! Skateboarders!" and the taxi driver glanced back at me in the rear view mirror and said, full of disgust and vitriol, "Sukatobordo."

Um, so The Ray has just run out of "juice" and it wasn't from fighting Brimstone. No, instead of battling the gigantic monster from Apokolips, the dumby decided to blast the guy helping fight the gigantic monster from Apokolips simply because he was a rude and arrogant teenage rival. Hmm, I get it. I'm 48 and I'm pretty sure I'd punch a teenager acting snarky before some guy murdering a baby within my reach.

At the end of the last issue, the narrator said that Superboy wasn't really dead but that The Ray really was out of power.

Well, the narrator is unreliable so now I'm hoping that Superboy really is dead as well.

Priest relies on some internal monologue so the reader understands what The Ray is going through. The reader needs to be reminded that he's just a teenager with godly powers and no real sense of responsibility except the vague sense that he should have some kind of responsibility. Ray The Ray keeps reminding himself, "I'm a man now!" At this moment, after knocking Brimstone into the ocean with the last of his juice, he reminds himself he's a man now and can't resort to the typical retreat of childhood: vomiting. Yeah, that's right! I said vomiting! I mean, The Ray and Christopher Priest said vomiting! Apparently vomiting is a great way for kids to react to things, according to The Ray (and maybe Priest but I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt by distancing the author's beliefs from what the character believes. Although my facial expression as I type this reads as "I just want to sound rational but I know fucking Priest thinks vomiting is some form of childhood escapism").

This isn't the kind of theory you just come up with to fill comic book script pages. This is the kind of seemingly profound observation the writer mentions to other people at cocktail parties thinking they'll nod and say, "Yeah! Yeah. That's right!" Instead, they nod and go back to their friends and say, "You'll never believe what that fucking whack-a-doodle writer said at the party last night!"

It feels like maybe Priest had loads of anxiety and a nervous disorder as a young kid which caused him to puke all the time and he learned that he could get out of difficult situations by spewing. It's as if he views the experience as voluntary! "Hmm, if I just manage to hork all over the floor, I can distract everybody from the dog I just set on fire!" And if the nervous vomiting wasn't something he learned to do on purpose, why would he think he could stop doing it just because he suddenly became a man?! "Oh no! Everything feels so overwhelming that I'm going to spew! But...but...I'm a man now! Have to hold it in!"

Brimstone gets up out of the ocean but instead of killing The Ray, it wanders off to get a beer. I think it's acting weird because in order to bring it to life, the weird little goblin guy from the first episode had to throw a souvenir shop seller into the volcano. For some reason, the Apokolips tech-seeds weren't doing the trick so it needed bolstering with a live sacrifice. But I think the person sacrificed is taking over Brimstone's mind. Probably some glitch in the way the anti-life equation works.

The Ray decides to bury Superboy (or hide his corpse, probably) while thinking about how sad he is for himself for having killed somebody and having disappointed God. He doesn't show any remorse for ending Superboy's existence. I don't know what God would think if It were real but It would probably be just as mad about The Ray not really giving a shit about the victim as It would be about The Ray murdering that victim. Maybe not. Maybe even if some humans can't understand it, an omnipotent God would probably understand that murder is worse than not showing remorse. Maybe.

But in the end, it doesn't really matter because Superboy isn't actually dead so The Ray has no reason to feel remorseful.

A second chance and The Ray didn't even have to vomit!

Superboy says "zooted" and it reminds me that the slang in this comic book is fucked up. This has to be Earth-15. Superboy also uses more conventional 90s slang like "sweating me," "rolled up," and "Holmes." I don't understand a single word he's saying! But I think he's trying to tell The Ray that they probably shouldn't be fighting even if they don't like each other because that part of the comic book where the heroes engage in physical conflict is over. Now they need to work together to stop the actual bad guy!

Maybe I don't hate Superboy so much as I hate the 90s.

The Ray tells Superboy his origin story while they both sit under the stars charging their powers. The Ray's secret origin is that he's the son of The Ray from the Freedom Fighters. That's it! That's his story! He's just a lucky shit who inherited his wealth. Fucker.

Superboy tells his origin story too but it's not recounted in this comic book. There's an editor's note telling the reader if they want to know it, they should buy the Superboy comic book. But I'm reading this 26 years later! I'm not tracking down Superboy's comic book to learn his origin! Luckily, 26 years later, there's the Internet! Also I don't really need the Internet. I know he's a clone based on Superman and Lex Luthor's DNA. It's a pretty boring origin.

After comparing earrings, they head off to stop Brimstone.

My theory about the souvenir person must be wrong. Obviously Brimstone's brain has been infected by a Looney Tunes cartoon.

Brimstone eats The Ray after Superboy smashes an orange juice tanker over Brimstone's head. He doesn't chew The Ray which is always a mistake. You always chew the small, live creature you're ingesting if you don't want it to bust out of your midsection later!

That doesn't happen this time. I mean, it sort of happens! But The Ray busting out of Brimstone isn't what stops him. Superboy douses him with a tanker of liquid nitrogen which turns him into a huge statue. Only then does The Ray come busting out with the Looney Tunes hacked techno-seed. The government takes the seed, The Ray tells Superboy he'll smell him later, and Superboy pouts off to who cares. Later we learn that The Ray isn't a comic book writer or a journalist. He's just writing a letter about his day to Dinah Lance. Hey! That's Black Canary! I just read some of her comics!

The Ray #2 Rating: C. If this comic book is supposed to be about a teenager learning to be a responsible adult while also dealing with god-like powers, I don't get it. So far, he's just done the same thing any superhero would have done. Fought a beast from Apokolips. Teamed up with another hero (after battling each other first). Spoke weird fucking slang. Oh! I see! That's the part that makes him seem like a teenager! He says cool words like Boffo and Zork! The Ray also comes from a religious background so the story is saddled with all of those theological trappings. It would be less annoying if we didn't already live in a world where everybody sees God in everything even though the physical manifestation of this world holds no place in it for paranormal trappings. I don't mind God being in the DC Universe though because it makes sense. But I just got done watching The Outsider on HBO and I'm running low on my "just fucking ignore all the God talk" tank. It would be amusing if it wasn't so infuriating how people always harp on about atheists never shutting up about their atheism when it's actually the other way around. More atheists should be as vocal as religious people just to make things even. I mean fuck. We even have In God We Trust on our fucking money! But then why should I expect anything different from this comic book? It's written by a guy who legally changed his name to Priest!

The Ray #1

In 1994, I had no idea who Christopher Priest and Howard Porter were so I have no idea why I purchased this comic book.

Although (continuing the thought from the caption which is just me saying, "Fuck the format! I can do what I want!") I was in my early 20s in 1994 so I was probably into that edgy fascination with freaks and body deformity. I hadn't seen Tod Browning's Freaks yet but I'm sure I would have jumped at the chance if I'd known about it. It's the only reason I can figure why I bought a comic book about a character I knew nothing about. Because it looks like he's a hero with a deformed baby leg. I probably picked it up off the shelf and yelled, "Fuckin' A, dude! Look at this ganky bastich!" It was 1994 so obviously I was emulating Lobo in my every day life.

Some of you might be thinking, "Ugh! You're so gross and problematic!" But I'm just being honest! I was a young man, masking like crazy in order to hide my vulnerabilities so I wouldn't be crushed by social interactions and existential threats to my psyche. I had to act tough to survive the crazy streets of Santa Clara, California! Back then, Silicon Valley wasn't like it is now! In 1994, hulking techno-nerds were roaming the streets with razor sharp circuit boards looking to cut the genitals off of anybody who criticized the Neo-Geo CD home gaming console. If you looked at them funny, they'd challenge you to a game of Cyberball and you'd better hope you won because they were also obsessed with Mortal Combat and if you lost, the last thing you'd hear would be a bunch of techno-nerds screaming "Finish him!" before you found yourself upside down gagging on the filthy water of an unflushed public toilet. The early nineties were some rough years! Especially when you were into heavy metal! People think grunge and rap killed metal but think about what people thought was "rock and roll" during the early 90s: Warrant's "Cherry Pie" and Extreme's "More Than Words." I mean, Feetal's Gizz! Metal was dead long before grunge and rap came by to fill its grave.

Anyway, you could totally be into freaks in the early 90s because the Internet didn't exist so your opinions weren't reaching anybody outside your small circle of friends. All the other people of the world who didn't know you at all didn't have a way to tell you you were a piece of shit because of one single thing that comprised the myriad facts of who you were. Fuck you, Internet!

No, no! I'm sorry! Don't be mad at me, Internet! I can't live without you!

Also, maybe I just bought this comic book because the cover was shiny and embossed and growing up in Santa Clara was so boring that it made this comic book looked exciting.

The issue begins with The Ray battling Brimstone. Remember him from Legends?

Brimstone is as big as Godzilla and he's already killed hundreds of people, judging by the apartment buildings he's smashed.

I don't know who The Ray is or where he's from. What part of the United States of America uses slang like "gaffle," "put my serve on," "zoom this buster," "bone out," "feebs," and "rot." Is this just Christopher Priest trying to mimic youth speak? I would expect this kind of thing from an aging comic book writer like current Neal Adams but Priest was in his early thirties when he wrote this. Maybe The Ray is from another Earth and Priest's theory was that slang words would obviously differ between Earths. But not so much that you couldn't get the gist of what he's saying. Except for "gaffle." I don't know what the fuck he wants to do to Brimstone when he says he's going to gaffle him. I know what I would mean by it but that doesn't seem appropriate in this situation.

Oh wait. The Ray was just writing fan-fiction about himself.

So the Brimstone fight didn't really happen. Or it did happen but The Ray is using it as fodder to write comic books about himself. So he's like Clark Kent writing articles about Superman? At least writing comic book stories about your own adventures isn't unethical. Fucking Clark Kent. What kind of a journalist uses his soap box to simply promote himself? No wait. Journalists fucking suck. I despise journalists for the same reason I despise police officers. If you're just letting your profession go to shit because a bunch of people are abusing their positions of power and not actually doing the public service they're supposed to be doing, you're just as bad as the worst apple in the barrel. There's a reason that whole apple/barrel thing is still a saying even though nobody really associates apples with barrels anymore.

Maybe The Ray isn't writing comic books although it seems like the super edgy postmodern take a writer in the 90s would think was fucking mind blowing. We got Kyle Rayner, comic book artist, as the new Green Lantern. Why shouldn't we also get a comic book writer in there as well? Or The Ray might just be writing stories for his college paper which would mean he's just as unethical and terrible as Clark Kent, I suppose. But in an amateurish way.

The Ray (whose name is Ray Terrill so it was lucky he got light-based powers) stops trying to write and decides to tell the readers about the last few days. He's a young guy who works at a fast food chicken joint and has just leased his first apartment. It's a piece of shit with some garbage and/or artistic sculpture in the middle of the room but he doesn't have any credit or money so he's stuck with it. I bet there are corpses under the floor boards as well as other things too boring to mention (but which I'll mention anyway) like rats and cockroaches and dried semen stains.

This is Ray's narration of the place which I read after I wrote the previous paragraph. Was I writing comics and named Christopher Priest in 1994?

The Ray spends all day handing out flyers to Clucky Chicken while standing right outside Clucky Chicken. Is that what flyers are for? To remind people about the thing they can totally see right in front of them? I guess they could be coupons. While he's handing out flyers, his super cool cousin Hank stops by to gaffle some swang all up in through him.

This must be Earth-15 where they say things like "Yo trip dat frum, golderboots!" and "Swank on into my PQs, Flub Daddy!"

The Ray is disappointed that he's a man now because responsibility sucks. Kids can't stand curfews and rules but man is it sweet to be able to come and go as you please (within curfew, of course!) while doing whatever the fuck you want and not worrying about money for food or rent. The Ray can't even fuck his girlfriend because she saw him in the chicken suit and is all, "Oh, um, I just came by to say I can't come by! Bye!"

The Ray can travel at the speed of light anywhere he wants while carrying other people. That makes sense because comic books. He takes his cousin Hank Fonzerelli to see a volcano shaped like a hand in Hawaii only to discover that it's another Brimstone. It's activated by a henchman of Darkseid while The Ray and Hank are checking out a surf competition or a luau. It's at this point when The Ray gets back to the beginning of the story where he was failing to stop Brimstone from destroying a city. As he picks the story back up, Superboy arrives to save the day. Not the boring Superboy who used to be Superman and learned a terrible secret about himself on his sixteenth birthday about an extra candle. The new Superboy who arrived on the scene after Superman died. He might also be boring but I wouldn't know having never read any comic books about him.

The new Superboy is an arrogant dick and The Ray hates him. That's probably why The Ray winds up killing him. Or he thinks he killed him. Everybody reading the comic book probably thought The Ray killed him too (because we were all dumb-dumbs who actually believed DC Comics had killed Superman off for good. Why wouldn't they?! He was a big boring boy scout whose powers kept fluctuating because editors and writers thought the problem with writing Superman stories was that he was too powerful. But the real problem with writing Superman stories was that those same writers and editors were unimaginative assholes who didn't actually understand Superman. Why else would Superman have died from a fist fight?! Seriously, Dan Jurgens. What were you thinking?! Superman should never have been killed because he encountered something more powerful that could just beat the shit out of him. Superman should have been killed because of a philosophical or ethical dilemma where he realized the only way to save the world was to allow himself to die. He should have been Jesus but instead he was just Apollo Creed. Who I think was a metaphor for John the Baptist?

The issue ends with the narrator letting the readers know that Superboy isn't actually dead and why would the idiots think he'd be killed in The Ray when he was currently starring in his own popular monthly comic book? Stupid dumb comic book readers! But the narrator also mentions that The Ray is out of power (I didn't know he had to recharge) and Brimstone is kind of mad. Then he's all, "If we were you," (I don't think a proper editor in 1994 would have allowed a writer to use the plural pronoun "we" as a non-specific gender singular pronoun so now I'm picturing the narrator as a small group of old people), "We'd be back here in 30 days!" And I guess 22 year old me agreed with them because I purchased Issue #2.

The Ray #1 Rating: C. C is average, right? I didn't find anything I particularly loved about this issue but I also didn't find anything I absolutely hated. Except for Superboy but I think I was supposed to hate him so that's a positive critique. I probably purchased the next issue because I wanted to find out what happens to Hank Fonzerelli. What a cool dude!

The letters pages don't have any letters but it does have a story by Brian Augustyn about how Christopher Priest changed his name from Jim Owsley. It also explains that Priest's idea for The Ray was to have a teenager suddenly have to deal with god-like powers while still being a teenager. I think before this that was called "Spider-man". Except for the god-like powers! Those were more spider-like powers.