Scarab #8

Scarab fucking Eleanor.

You know that toilet paper commercial with the bears who apparently use toilet paper? They constantly run around the house naked. Like that one commercial where the parents are afraid to touch the little one's underpants and he runs in and smears them all over his face, shaking his naked ass, and says, "They're clean because I wipe my ass correctly!" Then his parents nakedly show their pride in him while standing there naked. You never see them wearing underpants at any other time in those commercials which obviously means they're furries. Their clothes are under the bear suits. And while I wasn't going to purchase whatever brand of toilet paper airs those commercials based on the asses of bears being clean, I'm super not going to purchase any of their toilet paper while promoting the furry lifestyle. I have some standards!

If you are a furry and you're reading this, don't be a stupid idiot furry and claim I'm kink shaming. I didn't come into your Instagram feed full of disgusting pictures of foxes rubbing their empty nether regions on the faces of wolves and say, "This is gross!" I simply expressed an opinion on my own blog not directed at anybody! I can dislike kinks just like you can enjoy kinks! When the fuck did people get so stupid that they can't tell the difference between somebody expressing an opinion and somebody shaming somebody else for their likes? If I were to Tweet, "J.T. Krul's Green Arrow was a fucking disaster and terrible in every single way," somebody would probably respond, "Let people like what they like!" And then I'd have to hire a hitman to murder that person because I wasn't hurting anybody's enjoyment of an objectively shitty comic book by pointing out how shitty it was. Now if I'd responded to somebody proclaiming their love for J.T. Krul's Green Arrow (probably because they're a fucking dumbshit) with my tweet, the person responding "Let people like what they like!" has a point. The problem with the Internet is that nobody fucking understands context anymore. They see something awful in one context and simply extrapolate that lesson they learned to every other fucking context imaginable because they're fucking assholes who don't understand logic. I blame Tumblr!

Sorry about that. I mean, I'm not sorry for letting people know about how terrible J.T. Krul's New 52 Green Arrow run was. I'm also not sorry about disliking furry culture. Especially since I actually never really think about it one way or the other. I'm actually just upset about those fucking bears and their stupid bear cub who loves sniffing his disgusting underpants.

This issue is called "What the Rabbit Saw." One of the Cosmic Plumbers from the end of the last issue had a pet rabbit under one arm. So I guess we're going to get the story from the rabbit's point of view. Hopefully the artist, Scot Eaton, decided to draw all the characters as giant carrots.

It's hard to admit that I believe a toilet paper commercial was written better than this psycho-blather.

John Smith may have over-corrected on the balancing act between Vertigo phrasing and techno-gobbledygook used to explain plot advancements. When the Vertigo phrasing is used simply to show a character is fucking weird so it says stuff like, "Ergonomic celestial tampons bloated from the cosmic rays to staunch a black hole," you can let it go. But when it's used to explain what the fuck is happening, it just becomes another shitty episode of Star Trek. Although "Ergonomic celestial tampons bloated from the cosmic rays to staunch a black hole" makes for better plot explanation than "Agnostic angels of the quantum mesh safeguarding the integrity of the world-mind."

Just as Scarab begins suspecting these two guys aren't what they seem (although what they are seeming to be is too confusing for me to even bother with contemplating that it's an obfuscation of their true selves), Eleanor begins to wake and he flies off to make sure he doesn't help out at all. Maybe everything that has gone wrong so far is because of Scarab's blue balls. It'll all right itself when he and Eleanor finally fuck (as depicted, grossly, on the cover).

Is he suggesting these feelings are similar? I'm going to throw up now.

Eleanor has transformed into some sort of ectoplasmic vagina which must be what Louis is into because he rushes into her room naked.

That's what a vagina looks like, right?

I'd really like to say that the last few pages of the series are just Louis fucking that thing. But even non-Comics Code Authority approved Vertigo probably couldn't get away with that! Also, the rabbit wasn't around to witness it, so it wouldn't fit the title.

Okay, so he's fucking it on panel. But I wasn't wrong! This doesn't continue until the end of the comic book! Also, Harvest was definitely meant to be vampire Tim Drake from the future!

I just scanned three panels in relatively quick succession so I'm going to pass on the panel I really wanted to scan: another raccoon! Scot Eaton is quickly becoming my favorite artist from the 90s!

While the entire world begins its end in Iceland, Louis and Eleanor fuck. They fuck and they fuck and they fuck. And it's fucking gross. I can't believe my caption on the cover was correct. It was supposed to be a joke, John Smith! A FUCKING JOKE! I did not want to see Scarab fuck his greasy ectoplasmic bubbling oil slick of a lover!

While Scarab and Eleanor fuck, the rabbit goes mad, Bobby Dazzler dies, and the portly guy with the hands for wings passes out. When he awakens, the chrono-storm has subsided and their sea horse drones begin to fix the collective unconscious of everybody in Reykjavik to make it seem like nothing happened. Much like the rest of this comic book.

The Cosmic Plumbers were from the Labyrinth (which they called the Gyre) which is why Scarab sort of recognized them. So I guess the Labyrinth is sort of like where The Endless live but for Time Soldiers? Eleanor tells Scarab that he's the Minotaur, so I guess he's the main Time Soldier. He just doesn't know it yet. And he never will because this series never went any further than eight issues.

Scarab #8 Rating: C-. Scarab achieved nothing in this series. He merely sat around waiting for Eleanor to get better and she eventually did. Then they fucked. The end!

Scarab #7

What a surreal cover. Babies don't have skeletons.

I just got blocked by Mark Millar on Twitter. "How is that possible?" those of you new to this blog are asking. I know, right?! Sure, sure. I have a history of being a dick when I'm reading something written by a supposed professional who decided they would waste everybody's time by not putting any effort into a product that they knew people were going to pay for. The audience has a right to be angry at the lack of effort put into something the audience loves, right?! But even then, I still have never directly interacted with any of the creators to tell them how I feel. That might be the one rule I have! I don't mind theoretically discussing how many genie wishes I'd use on making sure any writing instrument Scott Lobdell touches turns into searing hot melted sugar or what kind of abuses I'd do to the timeline if I had a time machine simply so Ann Nocenti wouldn't exist in the 21st century. But I'd never @ them on Twitter because I don't want to hurt their feelings (unlike Cullen Bunn's apparent dick friend who used to tweet him all of my Cullen Bunn reviews. Cullen blocked me for that when he should have considered punching his friend in the groin instead)! I once Googled Howard Mackie to see how old he was because his writing was so amateurish only to have Google present to me a picture of an old man which meant I now had to feel awful every time I harshly and vulgarly criticized him! You might be thinking, "You know, Grunion. You could have not criticized the old man, you know?" But then you'd just expose yourself as somebody who has never had to suffer through his terrible writing and punctuation!

Anyway, we're not discussing bad comic book writers here! I'm talking about a great writer! And if not exactly great, at least better than decent and quite marketable: Mark Millar! Why would I ever say something so awful that he'd block me when I've read and enjoyed so many of his comic books?! The answer is probably that he doesn't have a sense of humor. No, no! That's probably not right! The real answer is that he probably gets people trolling him on Twitter and being generally awful to him all the time so obviously he isn't going to spend any brain power trying to decide if the person responding to his Tweet was some stupid jerk or a totally hilarious genius jerk.

Here's the tweet he sent out that I replied on:

And here was my reply:

I don't blame him for blocking me. Twitter is a giant shithole where nobody should be spending any time at all and the block feature is all that makes it bearable. He probably couldn't see just how funny I was being about how boring his fact was because he was — inexplicably — fascinated with it! It was so boring that I'd already forgotten it the next day when I discovered Millar had blocked me! And since he blocked me, I couldn't see the tweet which I had responded to. Which worried me because I thought, "Damn. What kind of a dick was I being?!" But then my friend Doom Bunny took a screenshot of the boring fact and I was relieved. I read it and thought, "Oh yeah! My response was hilarious! That fact was so boring I'm going to forget about it again almost immediately!"

I guess I should apologize to Mark Millar. But should I be sincere or should I do one of those wise-ass apologies where I say something like, "I'm sorry you were so thin-skinned that my totally hilarious joke on Hellspace...I mean Twitter hurt your stupid feelings." Or I could just go on living as I had been living where I never see anything Millar tweets anyway because I don't follow him and haven't cared about anything he's written since he did the whole Todd McFarlane thing and started having other people write Hit-Girl and Kick-Ass while still somehow taking all the credit. Some day in my reading of old issues, I'll get around to The Ultimates and then I'll remember this day! I remember loving that series back around the turn of the Millennium but oh boy will I give it what for this time around! I'm already remembering that it probably sucked!

My brain is really terrible with remembering names and even words that I often know I want to use but have to reverse Google search them by looking up the definition to give me the word I can't come up with. So when I was trying to remember who wrote Spawn, I just couldn't come up with Todd McFarlane. So I Googled him and this is the picture Google decided was the fucking Platonic ideal of Todd McFarlane:

I believe I own zero comic books by Todd so this is the only chance I have to look at his picture and think, "Really? REALLY? No, no. But really?!"

You know who I blame for me thinking I'm funny when I'm probably just a huge Internet troll that's making life miserable for a ton of comic book creators? Fucking Gail Simone! Why did she have to have such a good sense of humor about my blog?! Now I expect that kind of good natured ability to laugh at oneself from all creators instead of this tired pretentious bullshit that their art is above making dick jokes about!

I should get blocked by somebody on Twitter every few days! It really gives me something to write about!

Apparently the "Scream Over Hiroshima" story isn't finished. I guess Scarab still has a chance to do something — anything! — before this is over.

Russians super excited that their pacifist weapon destroyed London and taught everybody that war is Hell.

British Madame Xanadu fills Scarab in on what's happening so he can stop the next Scream Over Hiroshima attack. Not that she's worried about it destroying Reykjavik. She's more worried about what it's going to do to the astral plane. And, well, we all know how important the astral plane is having spent all those years playing Dungeons & Dragons instead of jerking off some peer in the bushes outside of the junior high school cafeteria. The astral plane is like the connective tissue of all the other planes, like The Happy Hunting Ground and the Abyss and the Negative Plane and Acheron and Gehenna and all the elemental planes too! This Scream Over Hiroshima situation is dire! It's also a good idea for my next Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

Louis isn't really worried about saving the astral plane. Remember, he's spent the last six issues not giving a shit about anything except saving Eleanor.

See? Exactly like that barn owl Madame Xanadu!

While Scarab begins to realize that Madame Xanadu (even the British version!) always gets her way because how can you prove she's not being totally honest and just manipulating you for her own ends unless you risk the entire world by not doing as she says, one of the Russian scientists begins to have doubts about their plans for world peace. He's suddenly gotten philosophical and he's all, "How many dead babies is world peace worth?!" And his assistant is all, "All of them, you idiot! Every single one! Because all of the new babies won't have to worry about war anymore!" And the one feeling doubts is all, "But why do we have to be responsible for killing all of the babies?!" And the other guy is all, "We're not responsible! Science is responsible! Fucking murderer! But, you know, a necessary murderer! Because science is important!" Then the other guy starts losing his doubts and he's all, "You're right! Science is important! Imagine not having toasters! I'd probably kill three or four babies just to make sure science created toasters!" And then the other guy is all, "That's the spirit! Let's kill more babies for world peace!"

Just to be clear, I was paraphrasing the actual conversation in the comic book! I know it was probably hard to tell because I used the word "fucking" and discussed killing babies and since this is a Vertigo comic, those kinds of things are totally expected.

Actually, the scientists never really have time to come to grips with what they're doing before the Russian General shoots them both in the face. His mind has been taken over by the Glory Boys which probably means the entire world is in some serious shit now.

Scarab travels through the astral plane to arrive in Russia so he can stop the Glory Boys from destroying the world. It'll probably be the easiest fight of his life because I'm sure the Glory Boys simply want to die.

Except Scarab fucks it all up and his kill shot on the General just knocks the General into the lever which fires up the Glory Boys and releases the Scream Over Hiroshima over Reykjavik. That's where all the world leaders are meeting for some summit. The whole purpose of the Scream is to hit them with their own abuse of power. So maybe Scarab fucking up is good. Fuck the politicians! I hope the Scream Over Hiroshima makes them feel as bad as I felt when I realized Mark Millar blocked me on Twitter!

The Earth is fucked and Scarab couldn't help. The issue ends with two cosmic dudes walking out of the chaos to fix everything. They claim they're Bobby Dazzler and Benedict Creed. They're cosmic plumbers or something. They work for the Cosmic Coincidence Control Center. Sounds like some real Doom Patrol shit.

Scarab #7 Rating: B-. Once again, Scarab doesn't do shit. He's mostly just an observer of the horrors of the cosmos. He didn't even have to be in this story! And it looks like he doesn't need to be in the next issue either because those cosmic plumbers are there to stop the astral plane from overflowing into our reality. Unless they're actually the bad guys and Scarab needs to punch them a few times!

Scarab #6

I don't know what's happening on this cover but I definitely have a new sexual fetish.

It's difficult to engage in your new sexual fetish when you're not entirely clear as to what it is. I think I'm horny for being compressed, upside-down, in snot, naked like the day you were born, in a spinning tube almost certainly on display at a Midwestern state fair.

This issue begins with the bomb exploding over Hiroshima (you know which bomb! Don't make me get technical!). It's almost as if time died on August 6th, 1945 and the only thing anybody should ever talk about any more ever is the capacity to end all life on Earth in the shrug of a pair of shoulders. It's almost as if every story after that date is really only about one thing. When people bitch about postmodernist art, I always scream at them, "WHAT DID YOU FUCKING EXPECT?! WE CAN ALL BE OBLITERATED AT ANY SECOND! WHY AREN'T YOU PAYING ATTENTION?!"

Not really speaking about postmodernist art but having typed the phrase "postmodernist art," I recently say It Chapter Two. Since I know you're intelligent since you're reading my blog, I know you're now thinking, "How do the two halves of that sentence relate to each other, you fucking asshole?" (I also know you're vulgar since you're reading my blog.) (I don't know how to punctuate statements in a stand-alone parenthetical reference that don't end in an exclamation point or question mark. Do you leave them without punctuation as you would in a normal parenthetical reference? Or do you need to punctuate them because they're standing out all by themselves without any support from punctuation outside the parentheses?!)

Let me try again: So, I recently saw It Chapter Two. I have two main criticisms of the film. First, if you don't already feel tremendous love and nostalgia for the book, I'm not sure the movie would do anything for you. But if you do, the movie invokes so many moments that make you think about how well they were done and portrayed in the book that it actually works by making you remember how good the book was. My second criticism is that when Bill tells the kid with the skateboard, "Be careful," the kid doesn't reply, "You can't be careful on a skateboard." I'm lucky there was only one other person in the balcony at the theater it was playing who was there to hear me yell, in anticipation of saying it with the kid, "You can't be careful on a skateboard!" But that's not what I was going to talk about when I mentioned postmodernist art! I think I have to start this paragraph again.

Whenever I list my five all-time favorite books, it's riddled with postmodernist literature and also Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (and the sequel, of course! But I include them as one book, really). And yet, Stephen King's It is absolutely one of my all time favorite books. I don't do a lot of repeat readings and/or viewings of media I love. But I think I've read It three times which is more than I've read my other favorites like Catch-22 and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Hell, I've only read House of Leaves twice (which is probably four times more than I should have read it (I think that was a postmodernist joke because I don't really get it but it kind of makes sense?)). And yet I never include It in my list of favorite books. And watching the movie (see? I've gotten back to my point somehow!), it finally dawned on my why it just doesn't fit. My other top books are about the protagonists escaping a broken and terrible system or reality instead of battling back and changing that system and/or reality. But It is the exact opposite of that! A bunch of kids who escaped the worst place in the world to become successful adults actually risk everything to go back to that terrible place in order to change things for the better for future generations! It's also about a scary clown from outer space or some other astral dimension but that shit is believable compared to the premise I just described! In the movie, the motivation for the characters is partially that one of the Losers has seen the future where they all die young and horribly if they don't stay to fight Pennywise. I hated that because it takes away a large part of why you love these characters and what they're fighting for. It gives them a selfish motivation that works against everything the book tries to convey. I mean, it's also Stephen King so I think the book is really about nostalgia and listening to 50s songs and drinking pop out of a bottle or something. It's also about the loss of innocence and adult responsibility and the transition from childhood to adulthood which, in the book, is represented by the one female friend fucking all of the male friends in a filthy sewer. Stephen King makes weird choices sometimes.

The movie also makes sure to talk about how Stephen King's endings are terrible which is really weird because the movie changes the ending to actually make it even worse than the book's ending (which I still don't think is all that bad. How else do you expect to defeat an immortal cosmic horror if not by yelling "It thrusts its fists against the posts and still insists it sees the ghosts" at it over and over again while an even greater cosmic presence, in the form of a turtle, doesn't help at all because it choked on its own puke sometime after the kids left Derry. I mean, sheesh. Some people are so overly critical about everything!).

Yes, I see the irony in me calling people overly critical. You don't have to point it out, jerko.

Anyway, this issue is called "Scream Over Hiroshima" and begins with a quote from somebody who was there. Don't worry about the quote of a survivor. It's less important than this thing about myself I want to discuss. In some ways, I'm always envious of people who have survived near death experiences because of the excitement of it and the story and the feeling that, "Yeah, dude, I totally just lived life to the fullest, man!" But then I think, "In many ways, you have to intentionally risk death to gain a death defying experience and maybe fuck that? Fuck it a whole lot?"

Now it sounds like I'm comparing a survivor of Hiroshima to somebody who free climbs Half Dome in Yosemite! And maybe I am! Would that be so completely inaccurate?!

I don't even think the quote was real. It reads more like one of Douglas Coupland's end-of-the-world short story scenarios from Life After God (see? More postmodernism that is about the only thing worth writing about since August 6th, 1945!). It might be a character speaking whom Scarab will meet later and not help because he's busy thinking about Eleanor's lifeless corpse leaking long ribbons of oily black bubbles.

This comic book stars a raccoon. Rating: A+.

Most of the weird dialogue in this comic book probably comes from John Smith's high school notepads full of terrible poetry. I mean, this part about winter isn't too bad! I kind of like it. It's almost as if William Carlos Williams and H.P. Lovecraft were caught in a Star Trek transporter malfunction where their minds were melded but they had to overcome the horror of their new two-dicked physical existence to continue writing poetry.

I knew John Smith was English from his previous work on 2000 A.D. and other British comic book periodicals but then he uses the phrase "Chinese whispers" in this issue and I think, "If I hadn't already known he was English from his previous work on 2000 A.D. and other British comic book periodicals, I'd now know he was English by his use of the phrase 'Chinese whispers.'"

Here are some of the ideas John Smith throws into a two-page account of Scarab's recent adventures that he couldn't bother writing into full scripts but wanted everybody to know he thought up anyway: a television at the Waldorf haunted by the 20th Century, a pervert breaking the spirits of kids with his Zoo of Shame, The Phantom Barber stealing scalps from runway models, the world's sexiest man raped by Tarot cards, and the Electric Fetus Machine which manifests as a large organ whose music foments rebellion in fetuses. Is this how the British writers took over DC's adult comic books? By occluding our minds with so much random and weird pseudo-philosophical garbage that we couldn't think straight? Sure, I guess an Electric Fetus Machine sounds like a way better story than Batman beating The Riddler near to death. But is there really any substance there? I suppose there could be if the idea were fleshed out and some kind of theme built around the idea of fetuses rebelling. Maybe all of these ideas John Smith throws out are just a game of Chinese whispers where he takes, say, a story by John Barth from Lost in the Funhouse about the thoughts of a sperm considering how the race toward life is pointless and, maybe, they should all just give up, and he turns it into the Electric Fetus Machine so that when I read it, I don't instantly think, "Isn't this a John Barth story?" Instead, I think, "That's a better sounding story than the one where the guy is raped by the Three of Wands!"

Meanwhile, Scarab spends his downtime watching Eleanor turn into a Dr. Seuss tree. Or a mushroom cloud (because remember the theme established by the beginning quote and title?!).

Try to ignore Scarab's ass in the previous scan. It's phenomenal.

If you're training to be a comic book artist, you need to spend a lot of time getting the ass right. And once you do, you'll never get an ass in pants right again because all you have ever learned to draw is a naked ass which readers will know is actually under skin tight Lycra unless the colorist completely shits the bed.

The guy in the jar on the cover is a Russian experiment in psychotropic warfare called a Gloryboy. There are three of them and they're some kind of pacifist dream come true. They constantly mutter Vertigo phrases in a tonal frequency that makes normal people vomit and shit themselves. It's the Brown Note theory of winning battles but taken to the Vertigo extreme. Instead of a whomping bass sound system, the noise comes form a naked albino in a jar composed of dream matter.

Maybe they're not composed of dream matter. And maybe they're not about pacifism at all. It seems they've been altered and experimented in such a way that they can give voice to "the Scream over Hiroshima!" That sounds pretty bad. It's probably some form of psychic bombardment, comparable to a nuclear blast, which drives everybody in the vicinity completely insane. Or maybe it really will just be a thing that pacifies everybody because have you ever tried to do anything while shitting yourself? I mean other than read the ingredients in your shampoo. And even then, I bet you take your eyes off the bottle for a moment to really be in the moment.

As an aside, do women find shitting as enjoyable as men or is it just the fecal matter pressing up against our prostate as it passes that makes a big shit feel so good?

The Russians test the Scream Over Hiroshima on London. What it does is project into the minds of everybody who hears it the entire reality of what happened in Hiroshima. It's the truth of war. It's pure horror and death and consequence. It probably also makes everybody shit themselves. But when it's done, they'll all understand, on a physically primal level what war is. And the assumption is that everybody will finally be against it, I guess? I've been on Twitter for many years and the one thing I know is that even physically experiencing the horrors of the bombing of Hiroshima isn't going to change the minds of most idiots. I mean, if you didn't become a vegan pacifist hug machine after hearing Sting's song, "Russians," why would you become one after living the horror of fifty thousand lives snuffed out in an instant?! Some people, you just can't reach.

London turns into a burning chaotic mess as everybody flips the fuck out from suddenly experiencing the most painful thing they've ever experienced. Scarab arrives after it's all over and everybody is afraid of him. Surprise! There's nothing he can do. He just observes the mess and meets a psychic who tells him that Eleanor is coming back. And isn't that the most important part of this eight issue story? That Louis the Scarab's love returns to him while the rest of the world falls into death and chaos?

Scarab #6 Rating: C. Smith seeded this issue with more story ideas than story. The main story is an idea that really goes nowhere as well. It's a thought experiment. It's a minor philosophical musing. And Scarab doesn't do anything but distract himself from his wife's condition. But it also wasn't uninteresting. So I think that means it's a C? What am I, a high school teacher? I don't know how to grade shit!

Scarab #5

Scarab just learned how to use "whomst'd" correctly.

Don't fucking bother me asking how "whomst'd" can ever be used "correctly" because I've never fucking galaxy brained, okay? I live over here in "peaks and valleys on an electroencephalogram so mild that they look like rolling hills." Whomst'd you expect to know how to use "whomst'd"? Me?! Fuck off!

It's only been a week since I read Issue #4 and I've already forgotten everything about this comic book except that it featured an old man named Louis Somethingorother and his dead wife Eleanor's ghost. I also think Scarab might have been a member of the Justice Society but only in the Vertigo version of DC Continuity. It's basically the same continuity as the regular DC Universe except with more female nipples and the occasional use of the word "cunt."

As I begin reading this issue, I start to think, "I'd love to get addicted to fucking opiates." I'm a pretty relaxed person as it is contrary to all the evidence in my comic book reviews that suggest I've had two or three strokes a month since 2011 due to reading comic books by Scott Lobdell and Ann Nocenti and J.T. Krul. But a few times, I took Vicodin after having a root canal. I was at home playing around on the computer the first time so my initial reaction was, "How do people get addicted to this shit? I don't feel any different." But then later that week, I took one at an old 9 to 5 job I used to have and it was fucking glorious. My annoying bosses maniacal cackle was like a gentle cat purring and nuzzling me on the back of the neck. My idiotic coworkers who made me realize that shoving sharpened pencils into my ears might one day be a legitimate option were suddenly silent ghosts passing softly beneath me as I floated about the office on a serene cloud of cotton candy flavored fuck-it-all. And that was just from one lousy Vicodin! From that one single experience, I know why people get addicted to opiates and I don't fucking blame them one bit. It would be so nice to just shuck the world and tend to your own little garden of no shits given.

Now I'm annoyed that I'm not on opiates! You know what would quell that annoyance?! Damn right!

Maybe the sudden need for drugs was due to this character with my name trying to kill himself.

I hadn't actually gotten to the part where the guy notes he's on drugs or that he's surrounded by poppies so I think I just have to give credit to John Smith's writing for setting up a real "I'm fucking overdosing on pain killers" tone. Now I'm also jealous of a fictional nobody. If only I had too many painkillers right now, um, well, I'd probably never hit publish on this blog post and all five of my readers would be wondering, "When the fuck is Grunion Guy (or Tess (or Jeff (or whoever the fuck this asshole is))) ever going to finish reading Scarab?"

According to my Non-Certified Sister-in-law, nutritionists have to report people for suicidal ideation. She told this to me because she's a nutritionist and I said to her one night at karaoke that my current retirement plan was to do whatever the fuck I wanted until my bank account was dry and then kill myself. But she never reported me so I guess she doesn't realize that's actually my retirement plan.

Speaking of karaoke, I knocked another song off of my karaoke bucket list this week: "Like China" by Phil Collins. I fucked that song so hard on stage, some woman high-fived me and some other guy came up to me and thanked me for reminding him that the song exists. He was super drunk. Super drunk guys love me at karaoke. One time this guy whose name I believe was Creepy Kevin asked me, after I'd just sung "Everybody Knows," if I was doing it in the style of Leonard Cohen or Concrete Blonde. I said Concrete Blonde and he said, "Your voice really suits it." Which is when I stabbed him in the throat and tossed him in the dumpster out back with the leftover spring rolls from the night before because how dare he insult Johnette Napolitano! She has the voice of an angel and I have the voice of the person the angel walks on so that they don't have to get their feet dirty at the angel orgy.

I know nobody is reading this and thinking, "What the fuck are you talking about?! What has happened to Scarab this issue?! Has Eleanor found her way home?!" How many people even remember that this comic book ever existed?! I just read four issues of it a week and a half ago and I almost forgot it existed!

This issue is called "Paradise Defiled" which I just read although maybe my subconscious read it earlier (due to the comic being opened to that page and just sitting there on the scanner) which is why I was thinking about angel orgies.

This guy Jeff is somebody Louis knows. An old woman — maybe his mother? — phones Louis to ask if he's seen him. So that's how Scarab gets involved with Jeff's suicidal problem. Meanwhile, Eleanor is sprouting ecotoplasmic rivulets. It's super gross.

But this issue isn't about Scarab and Eleanor! At least I don't think it is. It's about Jeff waking up from his pleasant and relaxing overdose to find himself in an afterlife torture garden sex party. He totally hates it and I understand why. The place is first described as "a literal incarnation of a littoral world" and I have to stop myself from Googling "home lobotomy." The first tortured sex victim he meets is a guy strapped to a wheel with a bunch of knives in him spouting "Vertigo phrases." I explained "Vertigo phrases" in a previous commentary (or all of my previous Vertigo commentaries maybe?) but for those who somehow just stumbled upon this commentary because "every blog post is somebody's first" (although why Scarab #5 would be somebody's first is beyond comprehension), here's a nice example of "Vertigo phrasing."

It doesn't have to mean anything. It just needs to sound weirdly profound while making the reader feel like a real fucking smarty pants.

Jeff is taken to some Herod-like angel named Lord Colouris. He's also a bit like a cross between John Lennon and Jabba the Hutt. Did I just describe David Crosby? Lord Colouris declares he's going to make a new man out of Jeff and I don't think he means it figuratively.

In the middle of the Garden stands the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It bears the fruit of truth and whispers as skulls pile up beneath it from those feeding on its devastating pronouncements. Also, I sort of agree with what it's saying here:

Ninety-eight percent of this blog is me screaming from the anguish of losing the bliss of nonexistence.

Not that I think I'm evil. Nor do I believe in souls. But that whole anguish over the loss of nonexistence? That hits me fucking hard, bro. Look, it even made me call you bro. I'm hurting here, dude. See? I said dude too!

The rest of what the tree says is meaningless gobbledygook. Something about sex tearing the flanks of God and a snake jerking it into a pot of clay like my junior high school classmate Chris Huff beating off in a breadbox. Maybe it makes sense to guilt-ridden Catholics but it's all wasted on me. I'm just wondering if I should do a Google search on a snake ejaculating. I've done it before for bats and let me tell you: there's a great video of a bat at a zoo sucking itself off in front of some kids! Truly a work of art. So privileged to live in this modern age and able to experience such wonders of this world!

Lord Colouris turns Jeff into a monstrosity because he's trying to reform the lost souls that wind up in the Garden of Pain into his image before he fell from Heaven. But he can't do it because everybody who enters the Garden is tainted by their boring and uncreative lives. To finally make a work of art equal to his previous state of being, Lord Colouris releases all of his Frankenstein monsters into the world to hunt down a truly innocent and beautiful person who can provide the raw material for Lord Colouris's sculpture. Jeff is now one of them.

Being uncreative morons, the monsters raid nurseries all over New York. Idiots. How many babies does it take to create an angel? Probably like millions!

Some of the monsters seek out Eleanor because her leaking bodily fluids smell succulent and, I guess, virginal? I don't know. Like I said, she's gross. I hope they take her.

Instead of Eleanor, the monsters accidentally take Scarab back to the Garden where he's quickly defeated by Colouris with a tree grown up through his guts. Then Scarab, like a true super hero, remembers that he can't be defeated if he just summons one last burst of strength and hope to overcome his enemy! Which he totally does by biting Lord Colouris's tongue off (because Lord Colouris was doing naughty things to Scarab. So naughty that I was embarrassed to discuss them). Then he punches Colouris in the throat and he barfs up the keys to all of his monsters' souls. Plus the key to his own soul which Monster Jeff helps Scarab find. Scarab recognizes him and thinks, "Fuck. Okay, I guess I'll just have to tell Jeff's mother he's dead." Then Scarab sticks the key in Colouris's head and the Garden dissolves into an empty room with a ticking metronome. That probably makes really smart people go, "Holy fuck! That's fucking brilliant! What a great reference or theory or idea or intelligent bit of philosophical scat!" And, um, that's totally what I said too. I'm not one of those morons who don't understand Vertigo comic books. Pshaw! Can you even believe uncool losers like that exist?!

Scarab #5 Rating: You know how many things I had to look up on the Internet while reading this comic book? At least two! Maybe more but even two is a lot! Remember, I first read this in 1993 when most people didn't have Internet (and those that did were spending their time in AOL and Prodigy chat rooms with names like "Horoscope Lovers" and "Remember The A-Team?!"). So that's two things I definitely didn't understand when I read it the first time because you can believe that I was too lazy to pick up a dictionary in the middle of reading a comic book. And that's even assuming that I'm the type of person to own a dictionary! Man, stop embarrassing yourself with your lousy assumptions!

Scarab #4

Is this child porn? I hope this isn't child porn. I bet it's not child porn because this is a fetus.

Fuck. I just realized that the above caption will probably cause an auto-block on Tumblr because Tumblr eats shit. You can't even have a rational discussion of child porn without the automatic censors instantly banning your debate about the benefits and drawbacks of child pornography! Can't people in this country even engage in healthy debate?! Sure, the healthy debate on child pornography should look like this:

Pedo: "If you get the child's consent and make sure the pornography only passes through online pseudonyms on the Dark Net, nobody is hurt!"
Anybody Who is Not a Pedo: "Fuck you, you sick bastard. Go to hell!"

But if you're really into free speech and you're not just a namby-pamby pseudo-free-thinker who only thinks moral and upstanding beliefs should be expressed and acted upon, you'd be upset when a pedo couldn't express his love for fetuses! If you don't stand up for the pedos, who will be left standing up for you when I and my army of 8chan incels accuse you of whatever thing you like to do that I can twist into seeming wrong and perverse? Certainly not the pedos! So maybe think twice before you decide not to debate a pedo on Twitter and instead block and report them, you fascist. Whenever you block an intolerant monster on Twitter, you become the intolerant monster! Think about that!

That was me playing the character I just invented "MisterOgynist69". He's a greasy weasel who knows he's smarter than everybody else because he's taken the red pill and he can laugh at gifs on Encyclopedia Dramatica of actual people killing themselves in front of webcams. His catch phrase is "Empathy and sympathy are their weapons of mass control to keep you from enjoying the most graphic and disturbing images and ideas in the world, you fucking sheep. Also, fucking sheep is hilarious!" He's never had sex because he's not conventionally (or non-conventionally) attractive which has given him an excuse to be a total bastard and an unrepentant prick because obviously, even if he were the nice guy he thinks he is, women still wouldn't fuck him. Granted, he's never tried to get to know any women and he treats unattractive women the way he believes he's treated without any awareness of hypocrisy. He would absolutely shoot up a school but, you see, Control just came out and it's really quite genius and then Gears of War 5 is just sitting there and, well, he hasn't got his daily intake of being enraged at losing twenty-five Apex games straight because his fucking suck-ass teammates sucked, well, ass!

I know everybody is wondering, "What happened to Marty at the end of the last issue? Stop fucking writing all this stupid bullshit about an abhorrent person and tell us!" Okay, okay! I'm getting to it in my own time! Let an old man digress every now and then, for Christ's sake. Hmm, just typing "for Christ's sake" now has me doubting the lack of an apostrophe when I, last commentary, I typed "for fucks sake." I guess the "fuck" in that phrase isn't a proper noun and, besides, the fucks doesn't own the sake. It's just an expletive inserted for emphasis, right? Fucking English. Fuck you! Here's a stupid comic book panel:

Apparently this is why Marty was so bloody. He beat an old woman to death. Or to miscarriage.

Marty claims the old woman wouldn't stop screaming so he had to beat her. But why wouldn't she stop screaming? Was Marty raping her? Probably. As I mentioned before, Marty believes the women of this town deserve physical violence. Although he ended last issue screaming, "Look what it did to me," which doesn't make any sense in this context. Maybe he just means Pan drove him crazy by not allowing him to kill himself? So this violence is Pan's fault and not part of Marty's toxic masculinity?

Marty goes on to explain the entire story to Scarab so that the reader isn't confused anymore. All the men in town were castrated by Pan who then pissed in their mouths. And afterward, either due to visions of heavenly glory or the ripest of all embarrassments, they marched into the sea and killed themselves. Except Marty had a broken leg so he didn't get to experience the beauty and wonder of castration followed by ritual suicide. But earlier this evening, he glimpsed Pan and came in his pants. I think the "Look what it did to me" while opening his pants before Scarab was to demonstrate he'd lost his balls. Then he beat the old woman to death because she couldn't stop screaming after seeing his mutilated manhood. So now Scarab feels like he needs to put things to right although it seems like the women of Whitehaven are happy with how things are going. And the men are dead so what do they care if somebody destroys Pan?

I guess this is why I'm not a superhero because my first reaction to seeing dozens of naked women engaged in a passionate orgy is to think, "Things look good here! I guess I'll be off! After staring an inordinately long time. You know, to just top off the wank bank."

Meanwhile, this pornographer happens upon the scene and decides to join in. Little does he realize, it's Pan's fetuses who are in control. He's fucking the fetuses!

Scarab seeps into the ground to confront Pan and to nobody's surprise, Pan threatens to fuck his arse off when they finally meet. This is another reason why I'm not a superhero or Jesus Christ. Because I can't resist temptation.

If I were Jesus Christ, Kazantzakis's The Last Temptation of Christ could probably still have been called that. But, just to clarify, it would also have been The First Temptation of Christ. Satan would have been, "Look. Knock this shit off for a handful of Fizz candy and a Snickers bar?" And I would have been all, "Ooh! Fizz!"

Scarab punches Pan and Pan responds by saying, "Hey man! Why so violent?! Sheesh. Let's be civil. Come inside my lair and let's talk. Watch out for the puddles of semen. Don't touch those socks. I apologize for the stench."

Pan reveals his real name and exposes himself for the vanilla sex monster he really is.

Why would Pan joyfully claim he's the missionary position?! At least be "The Beast Whose Penis Looks Like a Backwards Woman So I Can Stare Straight Up Her Butthole as We Fuck!"

It turns out Pan is dying. Probably because he only fucks in one the worst position. Scarab can't convince Pan not to die so Pan dies. Some hero.

After Pan dies, the women of the town begin realizing they don't want to be pregnant with a smell goat god's disgusting progeny so they begin to perform abortions on themselves or scream until they miscarry or simply go insane. Pan told Scarab that Eleanor will be taking care of his children. I don't know if he meant because they're all going to be killed now or because they'll be born into the Net or any number of other stupid reasons I can come up with through my terrible ability to speculate.

The pornographer turns out to be Sidney Sometimes, the Fortean publisher, who I completely forgot about because I read that section of this comic book yesterday. Maybe he'll become the Scarab's lead on weird things to investigate.

The issue ends with one more revelation: the "it" in Marty's "Look what it did to me" was indeed impregnation. I'm not going to rule out the castration as well but that wasn't ever explicit. So Marty wanders off to ignore what's going to happen when he gives birth because it certainly won't be a lot of fun finding out.

Scarab #4 Rating: C. I think Pan fucked up this entire town just to get a few more months of life. I can respect that. People act horrified at the thought of bathing in baby's blood to stay eternally young but, I mean, seriously, if that were an actual option, we'd find out a whole lot of people were way less concerned about the welfare of infants.

Scarab #3

Every time I see a Glenn Fabry cover, I assume I'm about to read about Jesse Custer.

Now that Scarab's alter ego is a fit young man, I'm way more into this book. That doesn't mean I'm excited to read this third issue. It just means I'm less not excited to read it!

The writer, John Smith, was twenty-six when he wrote this comic book so issue #3 begins with some narrator saying shit like, "Remember your childhood?" It's probably in your twenties when you become most nostalgic for the carefree, open-ended days of your childhood. Now in my forties, I just want my twenties back! And look at this guy, wasting them pining for his even younger days! To be fair, I spent my twenties the same way so I might as well still be yearning for my childhood. I remember in college writing poetry about the weight of mortality and the confusion of adulthood and the slow, weary process that is the loss of innocence. How many people have sung "I wish I didn't know now things I didn't know then." Two people, at least!

And, no, I'm not going to post my old poetry in any of my comic book blogs! There are three things I'll never release to the public: my old poetry, the lip sync rock videos I did in the mall with friends when I was a teenager, and my deepest, darkest secret. I hope that doesn't sound like I murdered somebody because it's supposed to be a secret.

The issue begins when all the male humans of a town called Whitehaven walk into the ocean to willfully and joyfully drown themselves (except for one guy named Marty who's laid up in the hospital and fucking pissed that he can't go drown too). Meanwhile, all the female humans decided to throw a festival and judging by the amount of titties being shown, I now understand why the men had to die. Even in a Vertigo comic book, you can't just go around showing cocks. Also, this was 1993 so don't worry about how it dealt with trans folx. Just let it go! If you're going to be ready for our time traveling future where we can go wherever we want in history, you're going to probably need to take some Desensitivity Training Courses. Otherwise, you're going to be flipping the fuck out on some really confused and bewildered people every time you take a trip to the past.

On the other hand, this comic book was written for Vertigo in 1993 and it's entirely possible John Smith will deal with non-binary gender issues within this story. Sometimes, the past surprises you. Just take a walk through Tumblr some time and watch as all the young kids with blown minds post things from 70s sitcoms that are more forward thinking than a lot of shit on television today. Not everybody from the past was a racist, sexist troglodyte! I suppose part of that depends on where you grew up. I grew up in California's Bay Area in the 70s, so for awhile there (right up until Reagan and his cohorts fucked us), I thought all of society's problems were fucking fixed. I was also a kid so I wasn't really aware of things like the systemic racism that formed two worlds between San Francisco and Oakland, or the homophobic hate that passed like an underwater current through America's Gay Mecca.

Whoa whoa! Sometimes when I digress, I get way too far into the weeds of subjects I shouldn't be speaking about! As an ally, you don't want to bring too much attention to yourself because then you're just asking to be critiqued as an ally and — let's face it — not many of us are going to receive a passing grade when thoroughly scrutinized! I'm already losing a ton of points being a white male who thinks his opinion matters so much that he's written about four and a half thousand comic book reviews! Who the fuck does that?! That's a rhetorical question because I know what a narcissist is.

I also know the term "misdirection"! Look at all the titties!

I wanted to say I knew the word "legerdemain" because it's way fancier but it wasn't as specific as I wanted to be. But I still wrote the previous sentence where I say wanted to write a different sentence so that you know the thing I wanted you to be impressed by in the first place.

Meanwhile, Eleanor is still flying around in the Net having profound Vertigo thoughts. If you're speculating, "I bet she thinks about her first kiss and the first time she got her period and her father's funeral and the rain on her wedding day," I'm aghast. How'd you know?! Fucking clever of you, mate.

Two new characters are introduced: Sidney Sometimes and his sidekick (not named! I'm not even sure "Sidney Sometimes" is the other guy's name). They're Fortean dudes publishing a Fortean magazine. But this one is heavy on the sex and mutilation and probably drugs. Sidney's upset that his alien rape story has fallen through and now has to decide if he should run the Manson interview this month or next month alongside the DIY surgery issue. I'm sure these characters will fit into the story later but for now they just seem like a one page dumping ground of John Smith's story ideas.

Sure, every teeaboo knows what a Clanger is now. But back in 1993, American audiences wouldn't know what the fuck this was about.

Speaking of teeaboos, I've got a new idea for a streaming service: I'm the only customer and I'm paying a single British person to upload all the shows I want to watch on a private YouTube channel. Come on, somebody! I need a reliable source for full episodes of Taskmaster!

Marty is the guy watching some Clangers. He's still bitter that all the men drowned themselves without him. Imagine having self-esteem so low that you're hurt and angry that nobody invited you to the mass suicide? I guess he could also be affected by magic but I'd rather think he's got the same kinds of problems that I do. I mean that we all have.

See? He's Everyman!

Scarab arrives in Whitehaven, the town without any men (except for me. I mean Marty). He realizes something bad is happening in Whitehaven because, um, women are running things, I guess? Maybe his subconscious is reacting to an article he forgot he read about how hundreds of dead and bloated men washed up on the shores of nearby towns for weeks. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing you'd forget too readily but remember Scarab was a super old guy for the first two issues. Or maybe Louis is just a Comicsgater at heart. He walks into a town full of women and thinks, "What the fuck is wrong with this comic book I'm in?! Where are all the men? Fucking pandering bullshit!"

It's also possible he senses the magic monster at the center of this mystery. But that's not as much fun to speculate about.

Louis meets Marty who tells him how every woman in town is now four months pregnant and how the matriarch of the town is living with a monster. He's going to take his shotgun and put things right. I don't know how a shotgun does that but then I'm not a fucking cuckoo nutso whackjob who thinks every problem can be solved with physical violence. Scarab probably thinks there's a better answer too. I don't mean to suggest he doesn't also think physical violence will be the answer. This is still a comic book, for fucks sake! He'll probably just concentrate the violence on the monster while I assume Marty is just planning on going around shooting pregnant women.

It turns out the god Pan is fucking everybody in town. He also drove all the men into the sea. But for some reason, he couldn't figure out how to deal with Marty because how do you get a guy with a broken leg to kill himself? It's impossible! The only flaw in an otherwise perfect plan!

Unless Marty wasn't driven to suicide because Marty is trans. It's possible because later that night when Marty goes to shoot Pan in the face, something entirely different happens instead.

Marty was definitely fucked by Pan (raped? Probably! But who knows what happens when you get a whiff of a lustful goat god?!). But what is he trying to show Louis? That he's suddenly pregnant? Or, with his pants open like that, has he lost his cock?

Scarab #3 Rating: C. I'm super confused by this ending. Is the art just not sufficient to portray what Marty is upset about? Is he simply upset that he's all beaten and bloody due to being raped by Pan? Is he holding his pants that way because they were torn off during the violence or because he's trying to show Louis his genital region? Or is he holding his pants that way to show that he's suddenly pregnant? It's possible because the art could be suggesting a swollen stomach. Rarely do I find the art failing me in a comic book to this degree. I suppose the writing is also failing but I only think that's because this final image was supposed to portray whatever the dialogue was leaving out. The good thing is that I don't have to be confused for a full month because I've got the next issue waiting for me in my stack!

Corrections: It was brought to my attention that The Phantom Stranger has more than ten fans. Although no proof was provided other than that The Phantom Stranger has gotten published in more than its initial series. I'm not sure that's enough proof though because I've purchased a lot of comic books about characters I didn't give a shit about and by writers I actively hated. But I will grant that the person providing me with this information was also a fan of The Phantom Stranger. So in my previous commentary, I should have said The Phantom Stranger had eleven fans.

Scarab #2

This looks like the original cover to a Philip K. Dick book where you just knew the editor and publisher had no idea what was happening so they commissioned some artist to just paint some "crazy fantasy shit."

I gave everybody ample opportunity to praise me for my commentary on Scarab #1 and I was met with crickets. Luckily I'm confident enough to realize that it was because nobody cares about this comic book from 1993 and not because my commentary is uncomfortable, childish, and probably less funny than my mother told me it was. Oh, who am I kidding? Even my mother doesn't read this blog!

In the meantime, I began listening to Eaten By A Grue, a podcast where two guys play Infocom games. And because I used to play Infocom games, I decided to try to play the games before listening to the podcast. The first episode was about Zork which everybody of a certain age and geekiness played years ago. So I didn't revisit that one. The next one was Ballyoo but I wanted to listen to it more than I wanted to start playing Infocom games so I didn't play that one either. The third episode was Trinity which is a game I beat without any clues or hints because I'm fucking hard, ladies. The hosts came to the conclusion that it was impossible because they fucking suck at these games. The next episode was Seastalker and that's where I decided to try playing along. But Seastalker is fucking boring and you have to pilot a submarine around an ASCII landscape which I quickly grew bored of doing. So I skipped that game. Now I'm playing Border Zone and writing about it, so that's what I've been doing while waiting for my Pulitzer on my Scarab #1 commentary. If you want to eventually find out what happens with me in Border Zone, you can check out my other blog, Eee! Text Adventure Reviews Daily! Obviously I don't do them daily! How quickly do you think you can you power through a text adventure without cheating, Missus Tough Nuts? Especially if it's an Infocom game!

I'm also trying to whittle down my stack of new comics but I'm far less interested in reading new comics. Probably because I've stopped writing about them. What can I say about Lois Lane #2 except "Fuck you, Lois. Of course everybody is shitting on the media these days because those fuckers won't do their fucking fuck jo-fucking-obs." And I just read Justice League #29 about Jarro which was super cute and gay. You can use gay as a positive adjective, right?

Boredom warning: the protagonist of this comic book is still a super old guy.

Eleanor isn't dead like everybody who read the first issue believed by the end of it. That means about ten people were surprised when they picked up Issue #2 of this series. Logically, I know more than ten people purchased Scarab #2. But if we lived in a world where comic book readers didn't just constantly shrug their shoulders and keep buying every issue of a series simply because they picked up the first issue and actually limited their purchases to comic books that had an entertaining previous issue, my estimate would probably be pretty close to the mark.

Louis has brought Eleanor back into the Labyrinth of Doors to keep her alive because time doesn't work there. I mean, it does work there because people can move around there and movement is a symptom of time. Symptom might be the wrong word but when have I ever cared about my word choices? You either have time or you have stasis. You can't have both! Unless you live in the Phantom Zone and then I don't know what the fuck is going on. Sometimes kids grow up there and other times dogs roam billions of miles unchanged to find their stupid boy. If Louis wanted to be more accurate, he'd point out that life functions seem to slow down to imperceptibility inside the Labyrinth of Doors. If Eleanor seems like she didn't age for fifty years while living there previously, she probably won't bleed out until he can figure out how to work Scarab's super life saving powers on Eleanor, the way he used them after he was thrown out of a second floor window and became an undulating sack of blood and broken bones that somehow wormed his way up two flights of stairs and opened the bottom drawer of a dresser (which is the biggest impossibility. Go lie on your stomach on the floor right now and try to open your dresser drawer. If you were successful, now go belly flop off the roof of the house and try again, smart ass).

Louis admits that Eleanor's soul has left her body so he's really just taking care of a naked empty vessel. The naked part is the most important part of Eleanor's current description. Why else would he want to prolong his grief when he knows she's dead? Now this pervert just gets his kicks off bathing her every twenty minutes.

See? He admits it.

The Phantom Stranger arrives because why not. A writer has to throw something into this thing to attract buyers. Fans of The Phantom Stranger would have been all over this comic book when they saw him on the cover, probably doubling the amount of people who purchased it. Yes, I'm saying there are only ten Phantom Stranger fans.

The Phantom Stranger really is a genius idea for a comic book character. If you call your character a stranger that means you can't divulge too much about that character lest they stop being a stranger. Which means you don't actually have to do any real work building the character, or giving the character motivation, or making any kind of sense at all! You can just have him poke his nose into other people's business every now and...um...help? Maybe not help? Maybe just judge. I don't really know what he does because he's been written so well over the years! I wish I could write a character this popular without ever giving it any defining characteristics or motivation. Oh, excuse me, I suppose The Phantom Stranger does have some defining characteristics. I forgot about the fedora and the trench coat.

Meanwhile, a beam of light that used to be somebody (Eleanor? The Sicari?) flies through God's eye, circles Hell, and winds up coming its brains out in the Internet. I don't know how sexually exciting the Internet was in 1993. It was mostly just AOL chat rooms, bank account draining Neverwinter Nights, and Star Trek bulletin boards. Okay fine. I admit it. Just typing that gave me a boner.

Once DC's Vertigo line was fully up and running with a few major titles leading the way and proclaiming, "This is what Vertigo is!", other titles with newer writers came along and all produced exactly the kind of shit that Vertigo apparently was. I don't know if I can fully articulate what that was, sort of a mash-up of Milligan's weirdness and sensitivity from Shade the Changing Man combined with the stark, metaphysical horrors of Moore's Swamp Thing and the shitty, grim reality and politics of Delano's Hellblazer with a sprinkling of the intellectual topsy-turvy re-tellings of mythic unreality of Gaiman's Sandman. But even unable to really describe it, I fucking know when I read something written to be a Vertigo title rather than written to be a story worthy of being a Vertigo title.

This might as well be a Polaroid of writer John Smith wanking himself off.

The early nineties were full of these kinds of Vertigo titles that just strung together words and phrases trying to invoke some kind of profound weirdness. Even the previous series I discussed, Milligan's The Extremist, came off as one of these books that was just putting on the clothing of Vertigo to make it seem more important. But at least The Extremist used the weird and outlandishly adult story to portray flawed humans considering their lives and how they got to where they were and what the fuck do they do now? There were some really bleak and gut-wrenching moments in The Extremist that I truly loved even if the plot didn't matter much to me. But it was the plot that pulled and pushed the characters to those moments, so who am I to complain? Also there were plenty of titties.

I know, I know! All you high-falutin' comic book nerds don't read comic books to get boners like I do! Well la dee da! Just remember that I'm not judging you for getting your kicks by sticking your genitals in Blue Bonnet ice cream and putting it back in the display case.

Um, anyway, this comic book still has a lot of space so I'm not giving up on it providing me with great moments. And since my tone in this commentary says I'm casually beating the shit out of Smith's writing," I should probably show something I sort of liked. The Phantom Stranger has touched Louis's head to make him relive some of his memories as Scarab. And while it's an easy way to present a bunch of "weird" story fragments that John Smith doesn't have to expound on, I still like this one:

The Non-Certified Spouse tells me "Weltschmerz" means, literally translated, "world pain."

On the left hand, this is just more of that "here's some weird stuff to stick into this magazine to make it Vertigo!" But on the right hand, I'd love for this to actually be a story that Smith thought out and formed into a coherent, deep, and touching two to four issue arc. Maybe Smith jotted it down and thought, "That's really all that needs to be said about that." But isn't that also how pitches start? This is a pitch. The story that could grow from this could be tragic and heartbreaking with all the nihilistic elements to ultimately provide evidence of the uplifting and hopeful nature of mankind. I think maybe this one panel should have been the pitch for Scarab.

Some more of Louis's memories ("Frozen in ice on the dark side of the moon, summoning the Breathing Trees for help" and "Teaming up with Sargon the Sorcerer against the dreaded double menace of Doktor Vortex and The Quote") help establish that the Scarab had weird adventures that, while extruding the essence of Vertigo phrases, also helps ground the Scarab in the Golden Age. Because that's weird shit that you can absolutely see on the cover of comics with huge price tags hanging on the wall behind the counter of any local comic book shop. No difference exists between the two scenarios I just quoted and Batman and Robin battling "The man who saw with his fingers!" Smith is definitely evoking the Golden Age here. And, of course, Vertigo because that Auschwitz thing.

Look at me! Reading into and explicating the evidence of the text when I could have just kept reading ahead and had John Smith say it to me plainly.

The Phantom Stranger tells Louis he needs to become the Scarab again because "the world skin is diseased" and "the wheels of chance are turning too fast" and "disorder corrupts the physical plane." But then when Louis is all, "So that's why all this shit is happening!", The Phantom Stranger says, "Well, I mean, it's hard to tell for sure. But, you know, maybe somebody sent the Sicari. It's a possibility. But then, maybe not. Who knows? But just do what I say, just in case! I'm sure if Madame Xanadu were here, she'd totally agree with me."

Meanwhile, the light that actually is Eleanor isn't in the Internet at all. When it said it had entered "the Net" while orgasming harder than it's ever orgasmed before (take that, Louis!), I simply assumed Smith was being all cutting edge in 1993. But he just meant the "net of life" or whatever. She's just connected to everything now. That's probably a better path for this story since the Internet wouldn't get interesting for another year when Geocities came along and The X-Files fan pages started to proliferate like cancer cells.

Louis's only desire is to find Eleanor again so if becoming Scarab can help do that, he'll take it back and maybe he'll get around to saving the world too. The Phantom Stranger just remains silent because that's what he does best. As if he knows anything! He's totally acting like he knows stuff by not saying stuff but really looking like he knows that stuff while he really don't know any of that stuff. Like knows like, my man, and I see you!

The Phantom Stranger leaves and Louis asks the scarabaeus (that's the thing that turns him into the Scarab which I also probably spelled incorrectly) to make him young again and it works! Issue #3 is going to be more exciting simply because the protagonist isn't an old man anymore! Me and six other people can't wait for it!

Scarab #3 Rating: B. Enh, it wasn't so bad! Sure, I had plenty to criticize. But in the end, it's a story about mortality and longing for the expansive freedom and possibility that fall further and further into a person's past until all they have left is the end of fatigue promised by death! I can totally relate to this shit.

Scarab #1

As I picked this up, I said, "If that's not a Glenn Fabry cover then I'm not a virgin!"

In 1993, I must have been buying any comic book with the word "Vertigo" on the cover. Also every comic book with the word "Scarab" on the cover because I think I have this entire series. Did I read the entire series though? I have no clue! I certainly have no idea what it's about. A scarab, probably?

Judging by the look of the woman on the cover, I probably should have done an anagram of this title. A crabs? Bra sac? A BS car? I came up with three anagrams because it looks like she came three times.

The beginning of this comic book isn't as confusing as you, a dumb comic book reader, probably think it is (had you read it (which you totally didn't. Seriously. I bought this comic book and I don't think I read it. So there's no way you, the worst comic book reader in the history of reading comic books, read it and then understood it)). Some creature called a Sicari (a term which probably has to do with assassins and daggers and maybe Jews (and which I would have no way of referencing the term in 1993 because we were all Internet blind and only knew the things we knew. We barely even knew the things we could discover at the library because the library wasn't the living room and you couldn't access it by remote control. The library was so hard to deal with that I just shrugged and decided I would never answer the riddle in The Legacy of Llylgamyn that began "I am part of the deck of seventy-eight" even though I knew that I probably just had to research tarot cards!)) has just dug the third eye out of a witch underneath an old pier. He's doing his own research and I have to applaud his effort. Although maybe I shouldn't be admiring his ability to get off his ass and do the research he needs to answer his questions. Pulling the blind third eye out of an old woman's skull is probably way easier than dealing with a card catalog.

This chapter is called "All Roads Lead to the Minotaur." That sounds fucking exciting! It's also a reference to the labyrinth which means this story is going to be about life! Stories about life are great! I love them because I get a glimpse at people who aren't wasting theirs! Like that Sicari fellow. Oh to have the ambition to pursue a goal even if it means touching an old woman.

But that Sicari fellow isn't important right now! Instead, we need to meet the protagonist, maybe? He's a 78 year old man so you can understand why I'm not too sure he's the protagonist. Nobody wants to read about an old man. If I were writing a novel about an old man, every fourth sentence would be, "The old man grimaces, shifts his weight to one side, and lets out a strained, musty fart." Maybe I should write that book! I already have 25% of it written!

I just grimaced, shifted my weight to one side, and farted.

Look out! We've got a real barn burner of a tale starting here!

Louis, the old man, gets interesting when he reveals that his wife, Eleanor, has been locked behind a door in his house since 1945. And it's not a normal door! It's a door his father brought home and threatened him with the cutting off of his hands if he ever touched it. He said his father became Bluebeard but I think that was just metaphorical what with the door that nobody can look behind and all. I don't think he really had a bunch of dead wives' heads behind it. Although Louis here now had one wife's head behind it! Probably still attached to her body and possibly not dead, what with the door being magic and all.

According to Louis, even Scarab couldn't get the door open. I guess Scarab is a superhero? And maybe it was Louis's alternate identity? Or maybe Louis knew him. I think I'll discover the answer to that question when I read the next page.

Well, it's not actually the next page. That page describes how Louis's father disappears inside the door for months at a time and returns with strange items and new venereal diseases. It's the page after that page where we learn that Louis became the Scarab by messing with one of his father's treasures.

Fifty percent chance this isn't a superhero outfit but an alien S&M getup.

I'm not good with double negatives and I just got concerned that the initial caption reads wrong. Just make sure you read it to mean I'm totally not a virgin!

Meanwhile, Eleanor lives in the Labyrinth of Doors now. She gets to be eternally young and have grand adventures every day. Sometimes she finds locked doors that can't be opened. Exciting! Other times, she'll find empty rooms behind the doors. Dramatic! Occasionally, she'll discover old appliances and housewares in piles. Swoontacular! How boring is my life that reading about a life where you get to open mystery doors that lead to stupid bullshit gets my heart racing?! Eleanor is living the dream!

When I was a kid, one of my fantasies was that somebody would create a game which was just a neighborhood or city void of people. But their houses were all still there and you could go from house to house snooping at all of their possessions. I was so boring that my fantasy wasn't even about the end of the world where I could do that for real. I only wanted to do it from the safety of my room on my Vic-20! Oh, and how delusional was I that I thought a game like that would run on my Vic-20?! What a stupid jerk I was.

I heard that, you smart ass! Questioning the tense of that sentence!

See? An assassin! Look at me doing actual research instead of just ejaculating my own precious opinions!

After the Sicari's ritual to find the door is over, he relaxes naked under a ceiling of swords while holding back his orgasm (so as not to commit the sin of Onan (which he wouldn't be committing because the sin of Onan is not a sexual sin but a breach of contract. But since religious people are obsessed with sexual desire (having so much pent up inside of them at all times), they've consistently demanded that the Onan story was something the Onan story was not. Just go read it yourself) and "shivering ... with a terrible sexual longing for death." It's too bad the Sicari is the bad guy because he just became my favorite comic book character. I wonder if Vertigo ever sold t-shirts of the Sicari? Can you wear a t-shirt in public that shows some leprous man whose skin is half barbed wire naked and holding in his orgasm? That sounds more dangerous than holding in a sneeze.

While Sicari doesn't come, Louis sits at home thinking about his comic book battles as the Scarab.

I don't remember the time Doctor Fate fought Conjoined Twins Brain Man.

I hope the previous panel is ildchay ornpay! I'm using King Beauregard's suggestion to fool Tumblr's censors! But wouldn't be weird if you couldn't even talk about the negative aspects of ildchay ornpay (which I think are all the aspects, just to be clear!) without Tumblr censoring you? It would almost be like Tumblr didn't want people to be educated on how terrible ildchay ornpay was! Oh, I hope I didn't drive away all of my ildchay ornpay loving readers! Sorry for being critical of you with that whole "it's all negative" take!

Eleanor's next adventure is a room full of electric fans. Can you imagine standing in front of not one fan but dozens?! Oh the heights of excitement she must experience every day of her life! So many fans blowing on you all at once! It's erotic!

Holy crap! This is a Vertigo title! They mentioned the lady's curse!

Remember the good old days when you didn't know what a period was or what the word virgin meant and your only wish was to search through a stranger's sock drawer? Oh to be young and naive again! To not have your body betray you and say, "No! Today you are a woman! Put away your childhood things and bleed!" To not have people at school pointing and laughing and calling you a name you had to look up in the dictionary later that day which led you to think, "Everybody else in seventh grade has fucked?!" To never be burdened by the shame of your first forays into masturbation, splashing loudly in the bathtub in such a way that, looking back, you know your mom totally fucking knew what you were doing in there. To feel the sweet granular relief that it was Chris Huff who got labeled "the breadbox masturbater" in junior high and not you (not that you'd ever even though of jerking off into a bread box. Nor did you think Chris did either but some kid has to become the scapegoat burdened with the rest of the school's masturbatory sins!). To never be so old that you find yourself sitting in a dark room thinking, "How fucking terrible must that burden have been for Chris back then if I can still, thirty-five years later, remember his whole Goddamned name?!"

I never felt more empathy for a person, before or since, then when Chris Huff's name was said at 9th grade graduation and nearly the entire auditorium laughed. I swear I almost cried right there among all my peers. But I held it in lest I get labeled a bread box masturbator sympathizer!

The night Eleanor finds her first window in the Labyrinth of Doors (and thinks about her period) is the night the Sicari finds the door and murders Louis. Or probably tries to murder Louis. He'll probably get his S&M costume on before he dies and it'll heal him because it's magic. I'm only speculating that it's magic because it's created by a scarab and because the Scarab fought alongside Doctor Fate. The Sicari throws Louis out of the second floor window which means I now have to believe that, broken and bleeding, Louis is going to crawl back upstairs to get to the scarab. You know, comic book, it would have been a lot easier on my psyche if you'd just let the Sicari dump Louis by the bottom drawer of the dresser. Sure, I understand it's less dramatic! But realize that just asking me to believe a 78 year old man can survive being dumped on the floor is already straining the limits of my disbelief! You can't also ask me to believe all of his bones didn't shatter after going out the second floor window! My God, I'm already invested in believing in a magic door and an evil being whose brain is composed of conjoined twins! How much more work do you want me to do here?!

No Louis. You're dead and this comic is over.

Being that this is a Vertigo comic book, Justin probably is dead and the rest of this story is just Justin Jacob's Laddering the last few seconds of his life.

The Sicari realizes the door to Alamut (whatever that is. I can't constantly be asked to do research while reading comic books. Somebody expects me to check Wikipedia twice in one sitting?! The nerve! (okay fine! I checked. It's a region in Iran! Happy?)) doesn't exist. And in his rage, he does something that would be unthinkable to non-Comicsgate comic book readers in 2019: he threatens to rape Eleanor's corpse! Man, that Vertigo sure knew how to do horror! He also threatens to shit in the Scarab's heart when the Scarab finally shows up. That's the kind of thing that made a person reading comic books in 1993 think, "Whoa! This is cutting edge adult stuff! I can't wait to tell my first boss that I'm going to shit in his heart!"

Yes, Louis manages to crawl upstairs and open the dresser drawer and put on his sex suit. He then somehow manages to find Eleanor but not in time. She's been killed by The Sicari. So the Scarab tells the Sicari that he's dead and he dies. And as he dies, the Sicari realizes there is no afterlife, no paradise, waiting for him and he loses his death boner and weeps like a baby that's dying. What a fucking wuss.

I don't know why the last scene takes place on a plane but it does. I guess the bathroom door on this flight was a magic bathroom door that led to the Labyrinth of Doors. Maybe all doors sometimes lead there!

The Scarab Rating: I rarely get excited by what I might discover on the other side of a door which seems odd when you realize one of my biggest fantasies as a kid was basically just that. Maybe I've been taking doors for granted? From now on, I'm going to stop expecting the room I've always known to be behind the door to be there. I'm going to hold my breath and hope that it will lead somewhere fascinating, like a room full of hatstands or urinals or electric fans or some other noun writer John Smith could come up with off the top of his head to take the place of something mysterious and exciting. Seriously, John Smith. You could have at least filled Eleanor's rooms with fornicating sloths and newscasters eating shit. But I guess the point was for Eleanor to be lonely so every room had to just have useless, inorganic bullshit. Just like the rooms in my house. Oh my God! I'm Eleanor!