Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Robin Annual #1 (July 1992)

How can Anarky's mask be Eclipsed?!

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Robin Annual #1 (July 1992)
By Alan Grant, John Wagner, Tom Lyle, Scott Hanna, Timothy Harkins, and Adrienne Roy
Cover by Sam Keith
Edited by Scott Peterson and Dennis O'Neil

• If your enemy is named Anarky, I'm going to root for him (her?) every time.

• Anarky always freaked me out because he reminds me of the one image that creeped me the fuck out for most of my childhood.

I would obsessively open the book to this page, get a quick glimpse, and slam it shut, feeling super creeped out and upset.

• I'm not sure why Robin gets an annual in this Eclipso crossover. Why is Eclipso trying to possess fucking Robin? Also Robin didn't have his own monthly series until after his second annual. I know rules aren't real but what the fuck, DC? This shit doesn't make any sense.¹

• Didn't it turn out Anarky was a twelve year old girl² or something? Man, I hope so! Mostly because that means Robin will either get his ass kicked by a young girl or will kick the ass of a young girl. It's a lose/lose situation for our young hero!

• Robin got them tabi boots like he a ninja or somethin'.

Look at this freak! Fucking terrifying!

• Am I the only person terrified by people with long necks? Is that a phobia? I am severely unsettled when I see an actual person with a disproportionately long neck. Maybe that's just a leftover evolutionary trait retained from thousands of years ago when we lived on the African savannah to keep people safe from giraffes³ and, um, probably ancient aliens.

• It's also possible I'm pre-remembering how I'll be killed by somebody with a long neck. "Pre-remembering" is probably a scientific concept if you don't think about the science too much and instead concentrate on the Woo Woo. You can have Post Traumatic Stress so why not Pre Traumatic Stress? I rest my very well-argued case.

• Anarky torments that artist in the above panel to steal his Black Diamonds which he carelessly uses on his art pieces. Why does he want them? How the fuck should I know? I've almost certainly never read this comic book before and if I have, I wouldn't admit to it. It has fucking Robin on the cover! Blech!

• Robin, also looking for the Black Diamonds because Batman told him to, arrives too late to stop Anarky. But not that too late because Robin just looks out the window and sees Anarky swinging away on an Anarkyrope.

I'm so ashamed of comic book readers that we all just bought into this "get anywhere in Gotham by swinging from a thrown rope" business.

• Robin catches Anarky because Robin has way more experience throwing a grappling hook into the sky — hooking I don't fucking know what a gargoyle I guess — and swinging after the thief.

• Robin calls Anarky a "14 year old genius" but then uses the male pronoun so, um, Boo! Hiss! Sexism! Maybe. I don't know. What the fuck am I going on about?

• Anarky, being a genius, throws a smoke bomb at Robin and slowly walks away as if Robin coughing on smoke is all that's needed to defeat him.

Oh. It is? I mean, of course it is! Robin sucks.

• Christ I just love Anarky's design. So fucking cool. And creepy!

• My love for the concept of unheimlich began all those years ago when I was fascinated by Alice with the long neck, didn't it?

• To make sure he gets away, Anarky gives one of the Black Diamonds he stole to the only man he encounters on the street this late at night: an angry drunk man railing against outside façade of The People's Bank of Gotham. The man instantly produces a smoke Eclipso from every orifice⁴ which attacks the bank.

• Robin, a protector of capitalism (being Batman's ward), decides he must stop this creature from destroying a fine institution of the city!

Cool but I don't see how that's going to help.

• Surprisingly, Robin's solar-powered fleshlight doesn't stop the rampaging beast and the entire bank collapses into rubble.

• The beast, once it's successful with the vengeance demanded by its creator and thus gaining free will, turns on Robin. But Robin just jacks it off with the fleshlight and it dissolves into nothingness. You know, like all guys after orgasm.

That sound effect is spot on.

• Robin steals the Black Diamond from the drunk groggily getting to his feet like one of those assholes in an old Reese's Cup commercials where they're idiotically walking down the street with a whole jar of peanut butter and enjoying it in the way that nobody has ever done outside of a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup commercial and then when they run into the person eating the chocolate bar and the bar winds up broken in twain in their jar of peanut butter, they take out half of the bar and begin eating it. Dude. That wasn't your fucking candy bar, you asshole! Give it back!

• Robin reports back to Batman with his failure but tries to zhuzh⁶ it up by emphasizing how he managed to obtain one of the Black Diamonds. He doesn't tell him that he had to use the BatFleshlight though.

• Batman heads off to interrogate Anarky's father while Robin swings over to juvenile hall, the last known place Anarky was living. But it turns out, Anarky moved out with all his favorite books, his posters, and his clothing. He left nothing important behind. Except his computer, of course. Probably because it's a stupid tool of capitalism.

Robin exhibiting how he got the moniker "The Boy Wonder".

• Anarky, being a huge Lord of the Rings nerd⁷, uses the same old password trick that the dwarves use on the back door of Moria. But instead of "Speak friend and enter", his computer displays "Enter Codeword For Access". Yes, the statement, like the dwarves' statement, is literal. The codeword is codeword.

• Meanwhile, Anarky sits on his throne of seeds surrounded by all his books, clothes, and posters.

Being that Anarky is fourteen years old in 1992, I'm assuming most of those books are Xanth novels.

• Not only did Anarky leave his computer, he left all of his computer disks with all of his anarchistic plans on them. It's so convenient that Robin should assume that he's being led into a trap. But Robin doesn't suspect that at all. Robin just suspects he's outwitted Anarky.

• It is possible, being a 14 year old kid, Anarky simply made a stupid mistake? I guess we'll see if I can manage to read to the end of this comic!

• After discovering what Anarky's demands to the mayor are (which if not fulfilled will result in a bridge being blown up (safely, though! It's not open to the public yet!)), I think maybe Anarky left all his information for Robin to find so that Robin will think, "Man, this is a good plan! This kid really knows how to make the world better. Unlike that stupid Bruce Wayne!"

Centrists who are super scared about the changing of the status quo getting really fucking pissed right now. "This is ridiculous! Better things are scientifically impossible!"

• Just really fucking amazing that I'm supposed to think Anarky is a villain. I imagine he was created as a 14 year old kid because then all the adults could shake their heads and say shit like, "Oh, how sweet and naïve! He thinks the world works for everybody!" and "If you're not liberal when you're young, you don't have a heart. But if you're liberal when you're an adult, you don't have a brain!" and loads of other things that make them sound smart and responsible instead of what they really sound like: hissing ghouls feeding off the corpses of the quickly expanding graveyard they're living inside.

• I bet when Anarky is stopped, Batman will lecture him and be all, "Your heart is in the right place but you're going about things the wrong way. You have to change the system using civility and decorum and by rocking the vote!"

• Anarky heads to the bridge where he plans on becoming Eclipso via his rage against the machine. But he sets a solar flare to erupt in 90 seconds so that he won't remain Eclipso for long.

• Like the cover shows, when Anarky is Eclipsed, his mask does the whole eclipse make-up thing. Which is just stupid because, well, you know why! Why would I need to explain that to you? Or anybody?! Sometimes things are so obvious that you don't need to "Expand this thought!", Professor Guenter!

• Sorry. Old college trauma flashback.

• Anarky's plan is successful! Um, not the one to make Gotham a better place and to house the homeless and to make the city more friendly to pedestrians and to save money via a commuter transportation overhaul and to institute Universal Basic Income. No, no. The plan of his that's successful is where he destroys the bridge and then drives Eclipso from his body. See? Hard work, planning, and having a compassionate heart can really get things done! Or get things destroyed. Whatever. Who cares.

Oh sure. Nothing calms the populace's nerves like sudden and catastrophic crumbling infrastructure.

• I just find it extremely rich that a vigilante and his vigilante sidekick think the kid anarchist needs to be reined in. Oh? You don't approve of the way he's doing things? But you're okay that the law doesn't approve of the way you do things? How come people who think they're responsible enough to do whatever they want can never extend that belief to anybody else? Okay, sure, the kid just blew up a fucking bridge. But that's beside the point! I'm being theoretically philosophical right now!

There's never any money for giving people a hand up, always plenty of money for locking them up.

• The public would feel safer with less homeless on the streets. So housing the homeless would make people feel safer in the same way people think hiring more cops makes people feel safer. But hiring more cops is only an illusion and a political act to signal to the people that you're interested in their safety. More cops doesn't actually make people safe. But giving the homeless a place to live does make people more safe, including, and especially, the homeless! So you fire some cops and spend their salaries and all the bullshit overtime they pad their checks with to house the homeless. Don't have enough? Fire a few more cops!

• The main problem with that proposed solution is that cops are dirty bastards and if they lose their jobs to a program that uses the money to help people they look at as inferior and unworthy and thieves, the cops will probably turn to banditry and crime. Like all of Caesar's soldiers after taking Rome!

• Robin figures out where Anarky's next Eclipso attack will be and manages to stop him. But in so doing, the Black Diamond lands in the purse of a spurned teenage girl and she begins leaking Eclipso smoke out of every orifice⁴.

• The girl manifests a Tyrannosaurus Rex which goes rampaging across a carnival looking to bite the head off of her teenage rival. Anarky cannot stop it because he's an idiot and his solar flare fucks up. Robin, who is also an idiot, cannot stop it because his solar fleshlight has broken. And Batman? Nobody can reach him!

"Ciiiinddeeeeeee! Ciiiiiinnnndeeeeee! I'm going to get you! Right after I fuck this ticket booth!"

• Cindy's boyfriend, the guy who nobly dumped Dinah in the hopes of fucking her, skedaddles when the dinosaur approaches. Since they were just about to fuck in the Tunnel of Love, this leaves her with massive lady blue balls. But then Robin arrives and she's all, "I'm fucked! I mean I'm saved! And then, hopefully, fucked!"

• She really does seem to be into Robin for some reason. I guess even dorks and nerds and losers can seem attractive to a woman when they're displaying competence, bravery, and compassion.

Hmm. I hope Cindy's into necrophilia.

• Cindy's massively swollen lady parts now see Anarky as their only relief so she runs off with him leaving Robin to molder and decay.

• Oh wait. Robin's not dead. Silly me! I can't believe how often comic books fool me with that trick! I still think maybe Superman really did die back in 1993. The guy we have now is just a simulacrum.

• Robin finds a solar-powered car being shown at the carnival, steals it, and drives it into the dinosaur, shining its headlights on the beast which are powered by batteries that were powered by solar power. I mean, okay, I guess. But really, if that's how this whole thing works, anything can defeat Eclipso because it's powered by the sun all the way down! That's just called life on Earth, baby!

• Robin decides to arrest Anarky and make him pay because, um, you know. He's a jerk. Robin, I mean. Anarky's cool.

• As Robin leads Anarky away to have him arrested (or maybe set him free. It's not like he waits at the carnival for the cops to show), he scolds him just like I thought Batman would scold him. "You might have the public good in mind but you can't do evil to attain good! Also, you can't find public money for the general good. So you shouldn't even try, idiot!"

• Robin probably fucks Cindy on Page 55 but my issue doesn't include that page. I guess I'll just have to sketch it out later after I take off my clothes and get a washcloth and some lotion.

The Ranking!
I really enjoyed this issue!

I know. Shut up! Maybe I'll delete this entry later. Stupid proof that I enjoyed a Robin comic book.




__________________________________________________________________________________
¹ Outside of the context that rules aren't real, I mean.
² Maybe that was Anarky in The New 52. Comic book continuity got me, um, how do post gifs here?
³ Giraffes are dangerous, right? I bet they headbutt people to death on the regular.
⁴ Yes. Every orifice. Even the sexy ones⁵.
⁵ The pee and the butt holes.
⁶ Jeuje, juje, tszuj, zhoosh, or any number of alternate spellings. Take your gayest pick!
⁷ I'm assuming because Anarky is a 14 year old genius.

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Flash Annual #5 (June 1992)

This cover is almost a goatse!

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Flash Annual #5 (June 1992)
By Mark Waid, Craig Boldman, Travis Charest, Dan Davis, Scott Hanna, John Lowe, Timothy Harkins, and Matt Hollingsworth
Cover by Travis Charest and Dan Davis
Edited by Brian Michael Augustyn

The Cover!
This is dangerous territory for a critic (and while I might not be a critic, I am intensely critical). I've heard that some idiot's mother once said something about not saying anything at all rather than dropping your drawers and shitting all over Travis Charest. But I don't get many opportunities to do it so why would I listen to that idiot's mother (who is also an idiot)? I had the opportunity to express my displeasure with his work on Darkstars and one of the covers of Robin III: Cry of the Huntress. I'll get another chance whenever I get to DC Showcase '93. But for now, here we have, basically, his first professional gig (being that this was released in 1992 and Showcase '93 in — you guessed it — 1993). And for his first cover, Travis decided to go with 60% solid black inks. Since this is an Eclipso story, I'll allow that it was a fine, if lazy, idea. About 30% of the rest of the cover, as we'll see in his general artwork (I'm assuming since I haven't actually opened this book for thirty-four years), lines. Lines, lines, and more lines is something I'm assuming Travis's art teacher once told him five thousand times. "If you think you have enough lines, you don't! Only when you're dizzy with vertigo from all the lines will your be able to declare your work finished!" Judging by that metric, Travis Charest has knocked this cover out of the ballpark. I just wish I hadn't been standing in the parking lot to catch it.

So many lines . . . going to . . . vomit . . .

The Story So Far
I don't know. Eclipso has eclipsed a number of heroes but not enough. I guess he's got Bruce Gordon's girlfriend's hot ass now as well as a handful of actual heroes, none of them that impressive: Starman, Hal Jordan, Star Sapphire, The Creeper, Valor. I'm not sure if he managed to capture Etrigan because my Eclipso Demon Annual isn't with this batch of Eclipso books being that I actually collected The Demon at the time. So it's with them.

The Story
The issue begins with me thinking, "I knew I came here to make fun of Travis Charest but I didn't think I'd get Mark Waid in my sights as well."

The only way this conversation makes sense is if it's one of The Kids in the Hall sketches where they make fun of stupid cops (i.e., all cops).

It's possible (probable, even, but I'm being purposefully dense right now) that the panel makes perfect sense but I've been programmed to understand fanny in the British sense and now I'm picturing somebody wiggling their fanny and most of the blood has left my brain for a secret location on my body. If you're over 18, you can drop me an email and I'll tell you what secret body part that is. If you're under 18, you probably already know I meant my penis.

The cops discuss how much they know about and love nuts while The Flash runs by on a nightly jog. Wally decides to investigate because an optometrist building nearby, the one the cop was talking about, wasn't there the day before. I would have stopped to investigate to make sure either the cop wasn't suffering from a nut allergy or an ape wasn't impersonating a cop. One of those reasons.

At this point in Travis Charest's career, he had never actually seen a human face.

The cop who wanted the other cop to do a sexy little dance earlier happens to be so hungry he's getting a headache. Luckily, they find a can of nuts on the ground so why not eat up? Free trash still in the can? Delicious! The big twist is that the can of nuts was rolled out into the street by The Trickster so you know it won't have nary a nut inside it. It's probably full of raisins. Ha ha! What a trick that would be!

I should offer up a correction and say that the cops were actually night deposit security men? You know, the kinds of guys who drive armored trucks full of money around. But they do it at night because it's more dangerous and easier to be robbed? And that's what The Trickster's doing. The Flash can't stop him because Weather Wizard appears at just the right time to freeze Wally in a block of ice. It doesn't kill him though because, um, comic books, I guess. He also doesn't vibrate out of it because Wally sucks (which the Rogues make sure to mention, of course. "Barry Barry Barry!" they say while then saying, "Barry! Barry Barry!"). They get away to go have a secret Rogues Gallery meeting while The Flash thaws out, goes home, and has a mini-adventure inside his friend Chunk's butthole. I mean black hole. I don't know. It was weird. If it has anything to do with the rest of the story, I'll mention it then. Otherwise, I'm moving on and ignoring it.

If only he had been in Chunk's butthole though! You would have had a play-by-play of that encounter!

Captain Cold has sent out an invitation to the Rogues for an emergency meeting. I guess they meet in a movie theater because why not be complete and utter pieces of shit when you're already mostly a piece of shit? The people trying to watch the movie do this thing to show their disapproval of other people talking through the film. Here it is:

I can't believe they actually went there! Such harsh criticism!

I wonder if Mark Waid just wrote in his script, "Have the other movie-goers show their disapproval," and Travis was all, "Oh, a thumbs down! That's like an international sign that nobody would ever use but I'll have everybody in the theater use it as if it's a common thing to do!" I mean, maybe it was a common thing to do in a '90s movie theater and my choice of yelling, "SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU FUCKING STUPID MOTHERFUCKERS!" was a bit too Avant Garde for most people.

Later, Chillblaine doesn't know how to cross his arms and the Rogues share their love of Tuesday.

I think Travis asked a friend to pose with their arms crossed and then, having to think about how they cross their arms instead of just doing it, panicked and came up with that.

But before Tuesday comes around so that everybody can, I don't know, fuck it, I guess?, everybody has to get through Monday just chillin'.

I guess Mondays are for masturbation?

Mondays are also for kidnapping Wally West which is what Chillblaine, the least chill of the group, does with his day. Chillblaine just seems to be some raging Alpha bag full of testosterone that Golden Glider's currently fucking. I guess her brother, Captain Cold, was in jail at the time so Chillblaine's taken his place in with the Rogues. Nobody likes him because he can't cross his arms correctly and he's a dick.

Turns out Mondays are actually for each of the Rogues to stab each other in the back by doing the Tuesday job on their own one day early. It doesn't work out because they all do it which means it probably worked out perfectly for Chillblaine and Golden Glider who knew they would all attempt the job early. That's just stories work when you've got a writer who decides that plans always work out perfectly until they finally don't for some reason which is weird because all the things that happen in a plan are usually wildly implausible and then a normal thing in the plan's chain breaks and I'm always all, "Wait. What? THAT didn't work?! The easiest part of the plan?! But the part where the plan relied on the hero to take two minutes longer than usual on his morning shit because they fed him some extra fiber did work?!"

I'm guessing The Flash's secret identity isn't secret (I assume this because all of his villains are always all, "Barry was way better at this than you!") or else why would Chillblaine want to kidnap Wally West? Fuck, I just realized I don't even know what Wally West's regular job was. I'm going to guess "slacker" which is why he probably doesn't have a secret identity. He's all, "See?! I'm not lazy! You're lazy! Because you're all so fucking slow is what I'm saying! Idiots!"

Oh, um, well, there you go! Question answered!

I'm such a dumb jerk. I just realized Chillblaine is probably Starman. This whole plan to trick the Rogues into stealing the Black Diamond and kidnapping The Flash so he can send him on their tail is the entire Eclipso plan! I probably would have figured it out a long time ago if I didn't spend several days between each page I read.

I'm 27 pages in and I know I haven't been giving Travis Charest the hard time I promised. You can see in the panels I've scanned why I would want to give him a hard time but Mark Waid's script is also pretty fucking bad so I've been a bit distracted. But I thought I should maybe give Trav his big chance at being insulted by me, the greatest comic book critic on the Internet! But that's when Golden Glider showed up and my brain was all, "Hey, he does nice tits, doesn't he?" And I was all, "Hey, Brain? Could you stop trying to get a response out of Dick? You know he's 54, right? He doesn't just hop-to at a couple of nicely drawn titties. He needs story these days! He needs, say, a pirate whose cousin has just come aboard his ship after they hadn't seen each other for fifteen years and she's wearing tight leather pants and a billowy shirt that keeps billowing almost enough to see nipple (which you can see anyway through the shirt what with the cool breeze blowing and also she probably iced them up before the shot). And she's all, "Oh my god! I'm so horny after my encounter with those eight sex mermaids who did all kinds of disgusting things to me but couldn't finish me off because I need some serious man penetration!" And then her cousin is all, "Yeah, me too! Lucky I run a gay pirate ship!" And then he hands her an eight-dicked octopus dildo and says, "Maybe this will help!" And she's all, "Well, it's better than nothing. But can I at least watch all y'all gays fuck as fuck myself raw?" And he's all, "Actually, tonight is Scrabble night!" And she's all, "Fuck! I love Scrabble! I can pleasure myself later!" And then there's like two hours of exciting Scrabble play and what was I talking about?"

Luckily the tits were kind of hard to see in this panel so I noticed a few other things wrong with it. See if you can spot them too!

I guess the main thing wrong with that panel is that Chillblaine must be about ten feet tall. But maybe that's not wrong because is he ten feet tall? The other problem I have with that picture is this: Where did the '90s artists who were so bad at art and yet so beloved by idiot comic book lovers all learn to draw the same stupid faces? This is how Travis draws faces but it may as well be Rob Liefeld or Marat Mychaels. Probably others but, like, I never read Pre-Image Marvel and then Image. I definitely never looked at a cover of any of the '90s X-Men off-shoots or Image books and thought, "Holy shit that looks amazing! I have to buy it!" To me, it all read exactly like the cover of Doom Force. That was a parody that got it so exactly right.

It turns out Wally West has been attached to the sphere in which the Black Diamond is kept. Golden Glider poisons the Rogues by fucking them with her poison puss and then tells them that whichever gets the Black Diamond away from Flash gets the antidote. Okay, maybe Starman is actually Golden Glider since she's thought up this overly complicated plan to Eclipse The Flash. My plan, if I were Eclipso, would be to possess a worker at Wally's favorite pizza place, put a bunch of the wrong toppings on one of his pizzas along with the Black Diamond, and then when he finds the Diamond and takes it off the pizza, he'll be super pissed at them getting the order wrong. Then after he destroys the pizza chain and kills a bunch of teenage employees, he'll be free to do Eclipso's bidding!

Instead The Flash battles Captain Boomerang in a fight so confusing that I still don't know what happened. I'm not sure Travis Charest understood Waid's script and completely fucked up the fight scene.

Go ahead. Make sense of that yourself! I can't look at it anymore. I've thrown up on my laptop six times from line-induced vertigo!

What happened (which was not represented visually at all except vaguely one time) was that Captain Boomerang threw a boomerang that split every time it was hit but then it kept flying around and/or at Wally as if it had been thrown like a real boomerang. So when The Flash is spinning in that one panel, I guess he's causing all the little boomerangs (millions at this point? I don't know because Travis only ever drew three boomerangs (the first one and then a panel with two more that you really had to work hard to interpret that they were born of the first one) to orbit him so he can smash them all back at their source? And somehow when he smashes them back at the source, this time they didn't all split when struck because they were, um, confused from the spinning?

I think maybe Travis's art goes pretty well with Waid's script! Well paired! Like Dog Urine Rosé and Cat Shit Linguine!

Speaking of Doom Force, there's an advert for it in this issue! "Hey kids! Are you currently making fun of the art you're seeing right now? Well see how Grant Morrison, Keith Giffen, and Steve Pugh make fun of it!"

So a whole bunch of confusing battle happens. I can't follow hardly any of it once The Flash smashes through the ceiling riding a spout of Weather Wizard's water. Everybody gets lost. Nobody knows what's what. Glider and Chillblaine actually fuck downstairs during the battle. The Black Diamond they're fighting over turns out to be a bomb of some kind and The Flash rushes outside to throw it in the air where it can explode harmlessly. But does he run out and hammer throw it on the end of its tether? No. He puts it in a wheelchair and then push-throws the wheelchair into the sky? Like, um, that was actually more difficult? Barry would have done the hammer throw, dude.

Anyway, The Flash winds up Eclipsed because he gets mad when his friend Chunk shows up and doesn't save him. Um. What? I'm not even sure why Chunk was there. Some mystery person in a sleek car lured him over. Starman, maybe? I bet it was revealed in the script but Travis Charest didn't know how to convey the reveal in images and so he just left the unknown person as glowing eyes and a smile in the darkness.

The Ranking!
Absolute dogshit. Saying this is dogshit might be an insult to the colon of a dog because why would I accuse it of being able to push out something this fucking horrible. I'd rather step in dogshit than read this comic book again. I wonder if I drank three liters of vodka right now, the ensuing black-out would incorporate this moment into it and I could forget I ever read it. No, I'd better forget that rout. Every sci-fi story in existence where somebody chose to forget something always winds up with the person so curious about what they forgot and why that they seek out the memory. I'd like to assume that I trust myself enough to not seek out the reason I chose memory loss over the memory but I also think I should trust better writers before me and the lessons they've tried to teach. I didn't read nearly every book by Philip K. Dick and not learn a little something about, um, memory loss and delusional identity disorders?

Detective Comics #653 (November 1992)

Has The Huntress never used a crossbow before?

I'm going to give my poor boy Travis Charest a break on this one. Don't say I never did the absolute barest anything I possibly could for you, Travis! In fact, I'll give you a compliment: I would wear the shit out of Huntress's boots. I was going to be way more vulgar with my compliment but nobody wants to hear how I would absolutely ruin The Huntress's perfect little butthole. No, no! I'm not going to explain it! You'll just have to wonder if I was going to shove something up it or feed her my Five Alarm Chili.

Oh wait! I have another compliment: The Batman balloon The Huntress is trying to keep from blowing away in the wind looks like a super convincing 2-D blow-up person!

Last issue ended with the Gotham Police threatening to arrest Batman and The Huntress for stopping a criminal ring of jewelry thieves. Mostly it's because the Gotham Police are realistically corrupt but partially it's because the criminals have diplomatic immunity which prevents any justice from being taken against them what-so-ever. I grew up in the late '70s so popular culture has convinced me that that's totally how that works. Other things I learned: Killer Bees would invade California and make it unlivable; the Bermuda Triangle was the most dangerous place on Earth; and plants could communicate telepathically. It's possible I didn't learn the diplomatic immunity thing until the '80s and Lethal Weapon II though.

"Also, who the fuck did your hair, lady? It looks like you meant to pick the #5 but you pointed to some kid on the little league team your salon sponsors."

I understand sponsoring little league teams and customers pointing out the number of a haircut is more of a barber shop thing where boring men try to look like other boring men. But that Gotham Cop whom I was imagining saying that doesn't know that! He doesn't know anything about hair salons and stylists. Although he does know enough to see The Huntress's hair is fucking wrecked.

If I Photoshopped The Huntress's cape to yellow and cut about three inches off the length of her hair, the panel would just look like any other Batman and Robin panel.

Hmm. I'd like Robin so much more if he had tits. Is that why I like Carrie Kelley so much? Am I a slave to my male gaze? Wasn't that a Skid Row song?

Batman believes in justice but he fucking hates the law. He has so little respect for cops it makes me love him even more. He doesn't even bother arguing with the police; he just throws down a smoke bomb and flees. The Huntress is all, "How does this work? You gonna change costumes and never be Batman again so they can't keep trying to arrest you?" And Batman is all, "You noticed earlier how I must have a ton of money, right? And what do cops love more than beating the fuck out of minorities? Right. Bribes!" So they easily get away while the cops tell the foreign criminals to just drop it because they've seen what Batman does to henchmen and, being cops, they're not willing to suffer even the slightest physical pain for the job.

"Look. I'll wear the uniform and I'll collect the paycheck. But don't actually expect me to solve any crimes. Not enough overtime for that."

I don't know if I'm being too harsh on The Huntress's hairstyle or not. I'm just this ignorant person who finds both Aubrey Plaza and Jemaine Clement sexy. What does that say about my ability to judge a person's haircut? Nothing, I guess. But I do know what I haven't been harsh enough on: the Batmobile of 1992.

What an ugly piece of shit!

Batman's very nearly driving a chode. Does it always look this bad or did Graham Nolan draw it this way to force it to fit into the panel? This car is like a self-published book that's never had a whiff of an editor about it. Nobody's going to tell Batman what his car should look like! "I'm going to shape it like my dick no matter how hard you fucking roll your eyes, Alfred!"

Before dropping Huntress off, Batman reminds her that he already has a partner with a shit haircut so she shouldn't get any ideas about their working together again. That's very feminist of Batman. Most guys would be glad to have a hot woman work with them because they're sexist bastards. But Batman doesn't care how hot the woman is; she's not taking the job from a young, out-of-work boy. I, being way more sexist, would absolutely have kicked Tim Drake to the queue out front of the unemployment office to work every night with The Huntress. Then three days later, I'd be hit with a sexual harassments lawsuit and lose everything. My brain would be sad but my dick would be all, "It was worth it!" Stupid dick. It always makes the worst decisions and is constantly throwing up. I think it might be on drugs.

The next day, Batman goes undercover as a gas line repairman in order to infiltrate the embassy. Nobody finds it odd and nobody keeps an eye on him after they let him on the premises to investigate because I guess the day shift didn't hear about Batman and The Huntress breaking in the night before and causing trouble. I, a criminal genius, would have put everybody on high alert and beefed up security. But I guess it's not like Batman was driving the gas repair van. It was just some bald jerk with a terrible mustache with sunglasses that he continued to wear once inside the house. Not suspicious at all!

While Batman does real investigative work, The Huntress heads to the library to do research. As if Batman doesn't already have a voice-activated computer system hooked up via wi-fi to the Batcave that can answer any questions he asks it in a matter of seconds. Unless that's all kayfabe and it's really Alfred doing research as quickly as possible on the other end of the line.

"Neeeeeigh! Libraries are for nerds!"

Helena learns that Krasna-Volny was at war with a country called Transbelvia for hundreds of years before both were subsumed by the Ottoman Empire. But then after the Berlin wall fell and the Eastern bloc nations were left to fend for themselves, Krasna-Volny and Transbelvia got right back into the swing of things. I guess racial animosities never die; they're just briefly quieted by a larger, angrier nation of jerks. The Huntress decides to check if Transbelvia also has an embassy in Gotham and, holy shit, would you believe that they do?! Why would these two nations have Gotham City embassies?! It reeks of crime! Also the Transbelvian embassy is located in a Motor Lodge and their cars with diplomatic plates are all rentals. That also reeks of crime! Helena smells something super fishy but decides to call it a day and see what Batman's found out.

Batman has Robin doing research and he finds out a lot more using a computer than Helena found out using stupid books. Take that, print media! Although in not too many decades, nobody will be able to read the information on any of the devices information is currently stored on and the printed page will be all, "Ha ha! Our time has come back round at last! Eat ink, techfucker!"

I take it back. Robin's haircut isn't shit at all. It's entirely adequate.

As you can see, Batman's too ashamed to admit he's working with The Huntress. That means he's more sexist than I thought or he's got a cute little crush on her! Third possibility: Robin would cry if he found out. But then Robin will get to work with her in a year or so and he won't tell Batman. So all the deception sort of works out in the end! Is that how relationships work? If you deceive me and I deceive you and nobody ever finds out, our relationship is super strong and everything is going really well?

In other words, I don't want the kid to fuck up my groove, dude.

Batman and The Huntress meet up to exchange information. Batman doesn't tell Huntress any of the shit Robin found out because BORING. Instead, he mentions that he found weapons in the basement of the Krasna-Volny embassy. The Huntress tells Batman what she learned at the library and Batman makes snoring noises as he pretends to fall asleep. They decide the best course of action is to just sit in a tree and watch the embassy.

Eventually a car leaves the embassy in the middle of the night and Batman and Huntress follow in Helena's Lamborghini.

The letter messed up the dialogue. It should read "less conspicuous than that tool you rocket around in."

Batman's face does not agree with his answer of "Fine" about Helena's driving. He looks like the co-pilot flying with Nathan Fielder in the final episode of The Rehearsal, Season Two. Mostly that's probably because Batman never gives up control, ever. Has he ever been in the passenger seat of a car before or after this?

Batman and Huntress tail the Krasna-Volny diplomats to a park with the statue of a Gotham war hero. The hero happens to be Transbelvian. A banner over the street leading to the park mentions there's going to be a parade soon to celebrate this hero. So all of a sudden, this little shit country that nobody had ever heard of before this suddenly has an active community in Gotham with a long history with statues celebrating that history. And yet the embassy for the country from which the people of this community originate has all the hallmarks of a temporary set-up. What the fuck is going on? I'm sure Batman already knew all of this bullshit but hadn't said anything because he likes to keep as much information to himself so that nobody else makes any leaps of logic and solves the mystery before he does. He's worse than Sherlock Holmes.

The day of the parade and festival — Transbelvia's version of the Italians' Columbus Day — arrives and Batman and The Huntress stake it out. They know the Krasna-Volnians will probably attack the festivities in some way. But Batman also doesn't want to stop the attack because the attack will be the reason to get them deported. I guess some people will just have to die in a massive bombing so that Batman stops some jewelry thieves.

I accidentally and purposefully just tore this comic book in half after reading that "NOT" joke from The Huntress. Ugh. Fuck this shit. F-!

Be fucking thankful you're living in the age of everybody saying, "That's what she said!", even though that's just as fucking dumb (probably because it was started by the same fucking person!). Sure, it's stupid and unoriginal and boring as all the levels of the Abyss to respond, "That's what she said!", to the most obvious things. But at least it takes the slightest modicum of cleverness and wit to realize when to say it. Back in the '90s, idiots were constantly saying the opposite of what they meant and then yelling, "NOT!", like it was the funniest fucking thing they'd ever heard! Well, I wouldn't stand for it then and I won't stand for it now. This comic book review is over!

Detective Comics #653 Rating: F-. NOT! Ha ha! Oh man! That was a good one! Here's one more scene after The Huntress captures the main Krasna-Volny terrorist ready to suicide bomb the entire festival, throws him in a van, and drives the van into Gotham Bay where the man explodes underwater. The Huntress almost drowns but Batman saves her so that he can remind her that he doesn't like her because she kills while he doesn't because allowing The Huntress to drive away with the terrorist so that he explodes in safety isn't an action. It's the opposite of an action so Batman didn't kill the guy. He obviously couldn't have stopped The Huntress and disarmed the bomb himself! Could he have? I mean, well, he's, like, Batman? Anyway, I'm sure he couldn't have done any of that or else you might be able to argue that he killed the guy by allowing The Huntress to kill the guy so that he couldn't be blamed for killing the guy.

That's what she said!

Detective Comics #652 (Late October 1992)

Oh, Travis Charest, my boy. God bless you.

It was only at this moment that I dressed up in Nazi garb, put on my best David Mitchell impression, and asked, "Am I the elitist?" Because when I look at Travis Charest's art, all I see is a person who is decent at art and maybe trying their best to emulate the comic book artists that came before them, but still has a long way to go before they're getting professional gigs. But, of course, he's got the professional gig already so am I wrong about it? That's not what makes me an elitist, though! What makes me an elitist is that if I thought that Travis Charest was a great artist who has done many different pieces over his career, in many different styles, I might actually look at this and think, "Stylistically, there's something interesting going on here." In other words, I'm judging this piece by poor Travis within a certain set of parameters that I've established in my mind. If I felt this style was a choice, I might applaud it. But sensing that this style is the best attempt Travis is making at doing comic book art (or laziest?), I find it not quite up to snuff. "Not quite up to snuff" is New Me speak for "absolute dripping bloody dreck with undigested corn chunks!"

In the past, some people have really gotten on my case about judging artist's art. Their main argument has been, "Let's see you do better!" And while the job of a critic isn't to prove that they're better than the things they criticize, I probably could attempt to draw this to back up my critique. But I won't for a few reasons. One, even if I drew this scene worse than Travis did (and, believe me, I would), I wouldn't ask DC to pay me for the work. Two, if I managed to draw this exactly as Travis has, I would be embarrassed, crumple it up, and throw it away to try again. And by "try again", I don't mean try to redraw it; I mean come up with a different career path.

Travis probably won't ever read this, right? I hope not because I don't mean to make him feel bad. My most venomous reviews of comic books are never proof that the artists or writers are terrible at their job; my most venomous reviews of comic books are proof that I hate myself and am, mentally, not doing well. Maybe Travis's art speaks the same for Travis! Maybe Travis just wasn't feeling very confident and sexually attractive when he drew this picture of The Huntress moments before she died from having her organs crushed by a too-tight belt.

Look at The Huntress's streamlined feet too! So cute and stylized! I'd really adore them if I knew the real reason they looked that way was because Travis didn't really care much about drawing feet. He was so gung-ho to draw that ass, he couldn't give a shit about the rest of the cover.

I don't know why I purchased this comic book back in 1992 but I could take a guess based on some clues in the previous paragraphs: I fucking hated myself and just didn't feel great about my life. Also maybe that ass.

Why is that a question? Is he asking the hostages what he should do to them?

As you can see, the rest of the issue isn't drawn by Travis Charest. To enjoy more of that art, you'll have to purchase old issues of WildC.A.T.S. or read some of my Darkstars reviews. I hope I didn't praise Travis's art in those reviews! Boy, I sure would be embarrassed if I sounded like a hypocrite!

That was sarcastic. I don't care if I sound like a hypocrite because I don't owe anybody the unending minutiae of the context of my life that makes all of my opinions perfectly viable with every other opinion, even if to a non-expert on me, it might sound like I contradict myself all the time. Maybe read Infinite Jest. That'll help explain that to you if you don't already understand it even if I've felt that way about being a hypocrite most of my life and I only just read Infinite Jest this year. It's one of the reasons I can't stand trying to communicate with people, especially on the Internet. Too often, people aren't dialoguing with other people; they're just looking for inconsistencies in people's ideas to pounce on them and give themselves a reason to not believe anything else the person ever says. Usually they're wrong about those inconsistencies because every fucking situation is different from every other situation and if you ever point to one of my opinions on one thing to show that it contradicts my opinion on a totally different thing, you can very politely fuck all the way off back up into your mother's uterus. Which I've just recently lovingly spackled with my love plaster.

A corollary to people trying to prove other people are hypocrites are people who are so careful about the things they believe because they feel everything has to back up some foundational text which upholds the rest of their ideology. These people often miss the historically right side of an issue in the present because they're so concerned about the way their beliefs interweave between more than one situation. If you don't know what people I'm talking about, forget it! I didn't mean nothing by it! Can't we all just get along?

I'm turning over a new leaf as of July 18th, 2025! I'm no longer burning bridges! I'm now just pissing on them. Oh, sure, I'll still fucking hate every MAGA chud until the day one shoots me in the face and then claims self-defense because one of the lessons they've learned the best is that if they kill the second side of the story, their side is the only one the judge and jury get to hear. People who shoot other people in public disagreements do so because they're either the biggest cowards on the planet and feel that their life is always in danger from another person carrying around a gun like they are (cops are a good example of this) or they just want to find an excuse to murder somebody and believe they'll get away with it on claims of self-defense (cops are a good example of this). Anyway, I'd rather be shot in the head than live one second of my life afraid that somebody else might shoot me in the head if I don't carry a fucking gun around with me. Grow up, you dickheads.

Why does that shopper have a Tesco bag? Is Gotham City in the United Kingdom?

None of the artists are from the UK so what the fuck, man? Even colorist Adrienne Roy wasn't. Tesco never had a store in New York, did it?! I guess somebody was just a fan!

As you can see, the Narrator thinks these robbers are fucking stupid. I'd guess the narrator would be Batman but The Huntress is also on the cover and I think she's pretty judgmental too. It would be nice if somebody would come along, say somebody like Scott Lobdell, and fix it so all Narration Boxes begin, "My name is So-And-So. I fight crime and talk like I'm doing commentary on a LaserDisc."

Just a second. I need to go check eBay for a used working LaserDisc player! BRB! Holy shit they're more expensive than they were 35 years ago!

I really miss owning two thing: a LaserDisc player and my 1972 Volkswagen Bus. Also all of my cats over the years but I didn't own them. I wouldn't say, "I miss owning two things: my grandmother and my grandfather."

The Narrator turns out to be The Huntress, whichever fucking version it was in 1992. Helena Bertinelli, I guess? She's apparently been "out of the game" for some time so doesn't feel confident stopping the robbers. She just watches as a subway transit cop gets gunned down while she thinks, "He was outgunned. Should have known better. Dumber than the robbers." Okay, maybe she's not that judgmental. That was all me.

Helena watches Batman beat the shit out of the criminals as she thinks about how much she loved it but how scared she is now.

Not once does she think, "I am going to sue the fuck out of my hairdresser."

So Helena has given up being The Huntress until she runs into Batman in the subway and she makes her wet herself (in the good way not the bad way) and that's a sign to be The Huntress again? This moment, the way I depicted it, is so incestual if you bother to think about the original Huntress which you probably don't because Crisis On Infinite Earths erased all of that continuity and now only people suffering from The Mandela Effect remember it. Or anybody who read any comic books post-Crisis in which the creators were all, "Let's bring back Helena Wayne!" Too bad their second thought wasn't, "Maybe her head gets stuck in the washer at Wayne Mansion when Bruce suddenly walks in?" Because that would be terrible! In a comic book, there's no implied consent. In pornography, I think everything is implied consent! So if you're in a pornographic movie and you walk in on somebody naked from the waist down and they're top half is stuck in a washing machine or wood chipper, it's okay to have sex with them. Everybody is already asking for it if you're in a porno!

On her way back to her apartment, Helena Bertinelli notices two guys waiting to ambush her on the landing at the top of the stairs.

"Something else you want"? Dude, stop thinking past the money. You're holding a fucking board with a nail in it. Get her money, go buy a knife, than worry about whether or not your victim also has some Pokémon cards.

Helena beats the shit out of the muggers and kicks them down the stairs. Then she casually heads to her apartment and forgets about them. I hope they don't rush off and kill her uncle now! It'll be such a hard lesson to learn that nobody in the world will ever let anybody else in the world forget it! 'nuff said!

Inside Helena's apartment, we learn a little bit about her by the objects and creatures in the backgrounds.

She owns a cat and the Great American Novel, Assault Rifles. Oh, and a Dave Brubeck knock-off CD by "Dave Brubek".

The cat doesn't yet get a name but it's probably Selena or Isis. Les Misérables' spine is marked with a "V-H" to distinguish it as Victor Hugo's version and not C-M Schönberg's version. I'm assuming, and this might just be me, that she has The Right Stuff because she rubs herself silly re-reading the passage where Gus Grissom burns to death. I know that sounds terrible but doesn't it also sound sexy? Paul Haggis won an Academy Award for Best Picture suggesting that car crashes make people horny! I won't stand being called gross and disrespectful for suggesting the Helena is into snuff! Why else would she use a crossbow, a notoriously slow-to-load artifact of medieval battle?! She loves the visual of death by penetration!

You either get what I'm laying down or you're an uptight prude! There's no in-between! I SAID THERE'S NONE!

I just went back and re-read the beginning of this comic book and saw that Batman let the robbers get away because they grabbed hostages. I guess Batman could tell they weren't the kind of guys who are into killing hostages if they don't have to so he let them get away. Also if they wind up killing the hostages, it isn't Batman's fault! Batman doesn't kill! I mention that because Helena has decided to become The Huntress again to catch the robbers whom Batman let get away. And this isn't your slightly older sibling's The Huntress from, like, a year ago. This one is different!

This Huntress throws daggers into The Joker's penis shaft!

Helena doesn't just get her tits out and throw on the costume. No fucking way! She's a teacher, motherfucker! She's off to do research! Like how many knives can one dick take before death occurs? And how long can a woman have camel toe before her labia goes numb and falls off? Those are my guesses as to what kind of research she's going to do because I don't like her explanation: "A huntress has to know her prey." How the fuck is the library going to tell her about the men who robbed the jewelry store?!

Oh wait! I'm such an idiot! I forgot about newspapers and microfiche! She's going to find clues in proper and well done journalism! Good thing this story takes place in 1992 because she'd be shit out of luck if she had to rely on today's journalists.

She's still not thinking about suing her stylist.

Oh yeah! I forgot she saw an important tattoo on one of the criminals! I thought it was the flag of Wales!

The only time I ever remember using the library for information that wasn't school-related was when playing "Wizardry III: Legacy of Llylgamyn". One of the riddles went something like "I'm one of the deck of seventy-eight." There was more but I forget what it was. I figured it meant it was a Tarot card but I knew nothing about Tarot cards so it sent me to the library to do occult research! Later, I married Satan and sucked his dick. Thanks a lot, Robert Woodhead and Andrew Greenberg! I'm full of the devil's cum because of you!

By the way, I know the Welsh flag has like a dragon on it and not a griffon. But I was only half paying attention earlier. Remember how I had to go back to realize Batman let the robbers go? My mind was distracted but I can't remember what by. I'm almost 54! I was probably thinking about how some odd pain in my body was probably cancer.

After the library, Helena tries to hunt down some of the stolen goods.

Of course you feel eyes on you. Your stylist obviously doesn't have a current license to do hair!

Helena chances on a pawn shop where the clerk has the same accent she heard the criminals using. She doesn't immediately beat the shit out of him because she's not a cop. Instead, she plants a recorder or something under the display case to get more information. On the way out, she notices the bum that was checking her out earlier hanging about waiting for her. She chases him but he gets away because he's probably Batman going undercover. Which he is. Seems Batman needs to get better at being unobserved. Unless he wanted her to see him because he's got a lonely old bat-boner and she's fit and also I just remembered that she's, sort of, if you squint just right, his daughter. Gross!

Later that night, The Huntress runs into Batman on a nearby roof as they're both staking out the pawn shop. Batman has a super computer in his Wayne Basement (the Bat Cave!) so he didn't need to go to the library to figure out who the criminals were. I almost typed "who the bad guys are" but I thought that might be too confusing. People would read it and think, "Wait? Batman's going after the cops?" Criminals might also be a good descriptor for cops but since I've used it previously to describe the guys who robbed the store, it seemed less ambiguous.

Batman and The Huntress decide to work together. Mostly because Batman has a subconscious need to work with the daughter he never actually had. And also The Huntress has all of the evidence and Batman refuses to push her to the ground and take it. That would look bad no matter how many Gamergaters would cheer. No wait. The more Gamergaters who cheer something actually helps make the thing look worse. So it would look bad and then it would look even worse when some online loser with no ability for introspection applauds the deed.

From Helena's voice recorder, they learn where the pawn broker will be meeting up with the other members of the criminal organization later that night. Batman and Helena crash the meeting, easily subduing them all and tying them up tight for the Gotham Police. Except it doesn't quite go that way because before Batman and The Huntress can leave, the bad guys show up.

Yeah. No ambiguity this time. It's the cops. They're the bad guys.

Detective Comics #652 Rating: B-. Who came up with the trope that if somebody has diplomatic immunity, they basically have carte blanche to commit whatever crimes they want and nobody is legally allowed to stop them? "Oh shit! That diplomat just fucked every animal in the zoo and used the Santorum to make milkshakes for all the kids! We wanted to warn everybody but it would have been illegal for us to try!" If it was a trope because it allowed vigilante characters to stop criminals when the cops' hands were tied due to regulations, then this would be a perfect use of it! But instead, Batman and The Huntress are going to be arrested for helping stop more crime?! "Outrageous!" is a thing I would yell while slamming my fist down on the desktop if this wasn't a story about Gotham. Instead, I just nod while continuing to sniff my finger that I'd just recently stuck in my belly button and say, "Yeah, seems about right." (Meaning the cops and not the vintage of my filthy bodily odors.)

I almost said that I was sniffing my finger which I had just shoved up my ass but then thought, "No way! People might believe me!" And then, as I sniffed a shit finger, I was all, "I don't care if they believe I was just sniffing a belly-button finger. But to have people believe I was just casually sniffing a shit finger? Even I can't bear the indignity of that!"

Justice League Quarterly #6 (Spring 1992)

Judging by Fire's expression, that nutcracker grabbed her by the clitoris.

That nutcracker is obviously nutting (or taking a shit (although taking a shit probably helps with nutting, depending on the size of it and how swole your prostate is and how much pressure's being put on it)). That might be why Wally and Ralph have such shocked and disgusted looks on their faces. Judging by Elongated Man's body, he might be getting nutted in right now. More information based on my extensive research of this cover (mostly just casually looking at it and believing everything it makes me think. You know, American research): Nutcracker semen flows orange, red, and black. That's a massive load that nutcracker cracked.

The main story begins by reminding readers that Sue Dibny is way out of Ralph's league.

I bet when Sue's alone, she dips her dildo in Gingold.

I don't know what Ralph's stretchy dick game is like but if I were Sue, I'd have made him sign a pre-nup that said if he ever did the nose twitch or the neck stretch while fucking me, I'd get everything in the divorce. So fucking gross.

Do you think Ralph can stretch his butthole? Like prolapsing his rectum but using it to catch a robber by his face? That's not too far-fetched, is it? Wasn't there a member of Sixpack's Section Eight who was just a walking asshole or something?

Sue suffers from therapeutic levels of low self-esteem and I know this because she's married to Ralph Dibny when she could be married to somebody hot and sexy and super cool like Bruce Wayne. But also because she says shit like this all the time:

You stay together because of your low self-esteem! Get out of there, hot stuff! His personality stinks and there's no way you married him for his looks!

You know? Every time I rant about Sue being way out of Ralph's league, my brain constantly screams underneath every other thought, "He has stretchy dick powers, dumbass!" I try to ignore it because I can't imagine the dick is good enough to have to look at Ralph stretch out his neck every fucking chance he gets because he's too lazy to walk his ass three feet to look out a window. But the proof is in their long-term marriage, I suppose. Ralph has a doctorate in rocking Sue's world.

Also lets revisit what Sue said in the above panel now that I'm off my oft-repeated rant on their marriage: it makes no fucking sense! You're only together so he doesn't lose you?! So if he wasn't afraid of losing you, you'd break up? Wait, wait. I think it's almost making sense in my head! No! I won't let it. It's dumb! I'm moving on! I have to get off the first page. There's still 79 more to go!

Sue discovers a board game left in the foyer of their hotel room so she decides to check it out by warping inside of it. It was either a trap or Sue has a new power (her old power was maintaining her love for Ralph even after seeing the neck thing more than once. I swear to fucking H.P.'s elder gods, I would have left him the moment his neck grew two centimeters longer than it regularly was). Ralph, after declaring he could never lose Sue, has lost Sue. Ralph suspects she's been kidnapped and, according to the cover, maybe she has been? By a nutcracker? But Ralph and Sue are also currently on vacation in Seaside City (DC's Atlantic City, I suppose, because they were there to gamble), so it's possible Sue just thought up a fun detective game for her husband to distract him all weekend and keep him from trying to put his Stretch Armstrong inside her Slip 'n' Slide.

The board game Ralph finds is called Land Baron. So it's DC's version of Monopoly so I'm guessing it's based on Seaside City. Ralph opens up the box and finds the pieces are in the shape of super hero logos! So the game is tied in to Sue's disappearance!

The big white square must represent Rocket Red because he's super boring and unhip.

The cube actually represents Ice which is super rude being that last issue was all about raising her self-esteem. And now her piece is a boring white square?! Luckily, Fire rounded up all the heroes who had game pieces representing them in the box without Ralph telling her about them: a lightning bolt for Flash, a Green Lantern ring for Guy, a lighter for Fire, and a big red Superman dildo for Rocket Red. Oh! I get it! Ice just grabbed Rocket Red's boring square because she didn't want people realizing the dildo represented her! She was all, "Oh, um, I must be this ice cube! So weird that Dmitri is the red dildo! Must be to represent how Communism fucks you!" Fire wink because she's seen Ice's massive Superman rocket wang. And probably Superman's real massive rocket wang! She loves to fuck people!

You would think there would be clues about how to find Sue on the game board itself but Ralph just shoves everything into the box and decides they should go check out the place where the game is manufactured. Is that how detective work usually goes? "Hey, the murder weapon was left at the crime scene! We should investigate the company that made the gun. Maybe they'll know something!" Ralph is shit at detectivanting.

Guy has a long history of head injuries.

Holy shit! Was Mark Waid setting up some new Guy Gardner lore that never took hold because it was dropped in the fucking Quarterly?! If Guy had a head injury as a kid that changed his personality, as we've seen he's prone to, then he started off as a fucking terrible bastard! Then the fall from the roof when the parachute didn't open turned him into potential Green Lantern material! Until the head injury from the, um, faulty Green Lantern, I think it was, that turned him into the pissed off woman-hater that I love so much! Then between Batman punching him in the noggin' and banging his head on the JLA security console, he returned reverted to super nice guy Guy. And then he got hit on the head again somehow — Lobo maybe? — and he returned to his natural state! Of course, there's a lot of Guy history we don't know about so it's hard to tell how many times he's had severe brain injuries and how many times his personality has flipped and flopped. But we can only judge on what we've been told in the stories and, as far as I'm concerned, good old heroic Guy Gardner who became Green Lantern back-up was brain trauma personality from his fall as a kid! Guy really is an asshole!

Aside from all that, Fire's cold response to Guy warms the heartles of my cock. No wait. Strike that. Reverse it. Chills the heartles of my cock!

Sue's kidnappers probably put so much work into sticking clues all over the board game and the cards and Ralph just goes, "Fuck the game. Let's go on a wild goose chase!"

Only it wasn't a wild goose chase, was it? Of course not! Mark Waid only has 36 pages to tell this story and he's not going to waste them on having the heroes go check out boring dead end lead after boring dead end lead. And the only thing more boring than actually playing Monopoly is reading about other people playing Monopoly! So he couldn't go the having the clues to the mystery be in the game route either. So instead, Ralph makes the right call and immediately everybody is attacked by two massive nutcrackers.

If Metamorpho were here, he'd definitely be cracking nut jokes!

Guy Gardner blows the shit up out of one, as, um, Dmitri would say and not as a terrible writer would write, I mean, and Ralph gets annoyed with him because Ralph wanted it captured intact. Why?! He already knows where it was manufactured and since that's his one big detective move, it doesn't matter what happens to it. But Dmitri, being a man who loves to lick the insides of his leader's colon (the tastiest parts are like, four, five inches in), takes down the other one a little more tactfully. Ralph is all, "Yes! We did it! We're safe and now we just have to find out where this giant nutcracker was made!" But guess what? They aren't safe at all!

Fire's on fire this issue!

Turns out the nutcracker's head was full of automated army men who spill out like baby spiders from an egg sac you thought was a pimple only to realize, after popping it and seeing the tiny army of aliens beasts flood out of the seeping wound, that you'd rather be dead if shit like this can happen to the human body. Or maybe it wasn't quite like that because I looked at the images on the page and the need to tear my eyes out of my head maintained a steady level of the usual 7%.

Wally gets shot in the ass though! What's wrong? Can't outrun tiny bullets?

This consequences of this battle are so low stake that the Justice League manage to work like a team and destroy several dozen tiny army men in only two pages. Nobody gets hurt (except maybe Fire's dignity after Guy suggests she's fucked her way through the Marine Corps) and soon they're inside chumming it up with the company's Official Archivist for Barton Toys, Bartholomew Barton. He definitely comes in his pants when Ralph shows him the first edition of Land Baron but I'm not sure how many times. Did he come when he said, "Oh!" And again when he followed that up with, "Oh, oh, oh!" And then maybe one more time when he walked stiff-leggedly away squealing, "Oh, frabjous, frabjous day!"?

Ralph's gut instinct proves right when Bartholomew the Pants Jizzer breaks out an ultraviolet light to see the watermark on the game board that would prove that it's a first edition. I'm saying it was Ralph's "gut instinct" because the clue to what happened to Sue is revealed on the board under ultraviolet light which makes absolutely no sense if the guy who kidnapped Sue really wanted people to know it was a ransom ploy for ten million dollars. Maybe leave a fucking note on one of the Community Breast cards that reads, "You Won $10 Million Dollars marrying a rich broad way out of your league! Now come to the Promenade and give it to me or Sue dies way before Identity Crisis!"

This is supposedly Bartholomew so maybe this whole thing isn't supposed to make sense.

It would be weird if this were a mere kidnapping and the kidnapper left a clue that was all, "You should bring more members of the Justice League with you!" So this Bartholomew and his double must have some other plan besides ransoming Sue. Although that still doesn't explain how lucky they got that Ralph's first inclination was to take the game to the factory where these guys were waiting for them to reveal their stupid ransom ploy! Man, I fucking hate comic books.

No wait! I just remembered why I love comic books!

What the fuck is on that woman's neck? Is it the penis of her previous lover?!

Ralph has had the same thought that I had: Sue set up this whole mystery for their vacation. He says it's because Sue does this every year for his birthday. But then Flash points out that his birthday is still one week away. That's when Ralph finally panics and starts taking Sue's disappearance seriously. I think he finally realized that maybe Sue is behind it all but she's using as an excuse to get the fuck out of her marriage with Rubber Neck Libido Killer.

Eduardo Barreto just wanted to draw half-naked women.

Just offshore, a toy steamboat appears steered by The Land Baron himself! Except he's not actually the Land Baron. He's one of Sue Dibny's cousins who looks exactly like the Land Baron. He must have thought, "Hey! If I ever decided to begin a life of crime (or continue it, in this case, since I already ripped off all those people in a Savings and Loan scam), I can take on the identity of Mr. Monopoly! I mean the Land Baron!" It seems this Augustus jerk lost out on the family inheritance due to being in prison. Now he wants Sue to share and his go-to move was kidnapping her and attacking her husband and his super-powered friends instead of asking her nicely. Although, how broke can this guy actually be? He's already spent way more money than I'll ever spend in my lifetime on massive robot nutcrackers, mini-nano-bot army men, self-inflating (I said INFLATING!) dragon inner tubes that spray high powered jets of water, and a stupid looking toy boat. Did he just spent eight million dollars in an attempt to steal ten million from Sue? Sure, that's a net of two million. But he could have just kept his eight and sat around playing video games and eating Oreos for the rest of his life. You know, the American Dream¹!

During the battle, Guy Gardner tits one of the tits and tits the tits all over the tits. So Fire rushes in to tits the titty titty tits tits.

Tits²!

I knew David Finch, Tony S. Daniel, and Frank Cho draw the thirstiest comics imaginable. But I didn't know until today that Eduardo Barreto did as well! Kudos, you horny devil!

Pretty soon, Ice subdues one of the inflatables by doing that move that caused me to gain me to start crushing on one of my earliest crushes: shoving her crotch against the back of its neck! Oh, younger me didn't realize the devilry a woman could get up to by the mere placement of her nether regions casually against your body!

I've got to find more Eduardo Barreto comics!

Normally when I read comic book fights, I always think, "No way they'd stop me that easily!" or "I would totally beat them if that's all they've got!" But I admit, Ice would incapacitate me with this move. She wouldn't even need a follow up move. I'd just fall over on the floor drooling while trying to find a razor to cut Ice's name into the back of my hand.

The third inflatable sprays knock-out gas on everybody and they all succumb. Ralph wakes up alone in a prison cell and doesn't think, "Maybe Sue planned this a week early to throw me off my game? Why would she have a broke cousin who looks exactly like the mascot based on the location of our vacation who also somehow paid for all of these cool toys?!" I bet Sue was one of the two "Bartholomews" in a fancy and really expensive disguise.

Ralph breaks free and saves his friends locked in some other cell somewhere else or, more probably, just sitting around waiting for him to rescue them so Sue doesn't yell at them for ruining the game. Ralph finally realizes that the game board has all the clues on it and that they're traveling from one location to the next. But they've been to all the locations! Which, he realizes, means they have to pass Go and return to the first location on the board: the hotel where Sue was kidnapped! Which, come on, if Ralph hadn't figure it out before, he surely has now. Sue would have booked the room at the starting location on the game board. Obviously she's in on this ruse!

At the hotel, Ralph doesn't find anything. But then the trolley goes by and he's all, "I forgot about the railroads! I mean the trolleys! Let's hop on board!" And then they hop on board and wind up trapped and I'm all, "Should my next scan be Fire's tits or Ice's ass?!" It's a real conundrum! And you know what they say about conundrums! When you conundrum, you make a drum out of, um, never mind that! No time for aphorisms! I've just realized the answer!

If they weren't on the same page, I totally would have chosen Ice's ass.

The Justice League finds themselves battling automated trolleys which doesn't seem like much of a battle because you could just not stand on a track. It would be like if in Stephen King's Maximum Overkill only the trains had become sentient. Everybody would be all, "Oh no! Get off the tracks! Stand away from corners!" And then I guess the last hour and a half of the movie would be everybody celebrating while all the trains pouted and ran out of coal.

Like every other battle against toys, somebody in the group is reminded of their childhood. This time, we get another Guy Gardner story. It's not about early brain trauma this time.

I don't think this is Waid shaming young boys for playing with dolls. This is Wally thinking there's something wrong with that because he's gross and Guy feeling ashamed of having played with dolls because he can't stop trying to project super masculinity.

Oh, you might have also noticed the extra panel where Ice looks super sexy while Ralph tries to cop a feel. Some people don't like Ice's vaguely '80s inspired outfit but I think that whole underboob thing is super hot and I'm not at all a pervert and I'm going to start writing smart stuff soon!

But not yet! First, Ralph finally unravels the mystery: it was J'onn J'onzz the entire time! He was Sue! He was Bartholomew! He was the Land Baron look-a-like! Oh shit. He was Sue? I hope he wasn't Sue the entire previous night! Also, is that why Sue was so hot earlier? Is it really Martian Manhunter to whom I'm sexually attracted?!

The reveal ends with the narrator asking the reader if they've figured out where Sue is! What?! I haven't been paying that kind of attention. But I suspect she never left the hotel's shower and she's been in there with her Gingolded-up dildo this hole time.

Oh! I think I found her! She was bathing topless on the beach the entire time!

Oh no! That wasn't her at all. Sue was disguised as Ice all day! So it's Sue I've been eye fucking! And that means Ralph copping a feel wasn't inappropriate. I mean, it was because he didn't know it was her at that time (he admits he only found out later!). And Sue now knows that Ralph grabbed Ice's boob while "saving" her! I bet this is why Sue later fakes her death.

Later at the hotel, Sue discovers that Ralph figured out the mystery immediately because Sue never leaves Oreo crumbs all over the bed sheets. And then it ends with Sue distracting Ralph with a bunch of hippos in top hats for some reason? I have no idea what that's about! It must be a reference to something. Did Ralph once fuck a hippo in a top hat? Or does Sue always distract Ralph with inane bullshit when she knows he's about to get weird with her. He rushes downstairs and Sue returns to the shower with a bottle of Gingold.

The next story is about Fat Blue Beetle because he's been too fat for too long! So fat! He's so fat he's going to change his name to Blue Bonnet! He's so fat, he wobbles but he won't fall down. He's Blue Weeble! He's so fat . . . wait a second. How many fat jokes can I get away with before it goes from charmingly facetious to mean-spirited bullying? Because I want to get right over the edge of that line but pretend that I never crossed it at all when replying to all the anonymous messages I'll get on tumblr calling me ableist. I'll say things like, "What did I do?! I was just making fun of how casually Ostrander was mocking fat Beetle?" or "I'm just channeling the feeling I get from all the writers who decided to portray fat Beetle as a huge joke?" and "I'm not fat! You're fat!"

He doesn't look fat. He looks like he ate bad clams while bees stung him in the face.

Ostrander begins this story in a way that the reader might think Ted just found out he has the ass cancer but the title, "Fighting Trim", that's just over his head on the same page ruins any possible tenseness to the situation. Everybody knows the doctor just said Beetle was obese and, if he wants to lose the weight and not that he has to lose it, then he needs to go on a diet. It'd be funnier if he had ass cancer. Also, his doctor isn't very good.

I mean, it isn't really that simple. But this was written in the '90s. Nutrition was still suffering from the Lobbyists Basically Get to Set Nutritional Guidelines '80s.

It gets less funny and way less interesting when it turns out General Glory will be training him. Ugh! Fuck that patriotic twat! I can't believe Guy Gardner is in love with that narc! I might not even finish reading this comic book! Although I have a feeling the story will be various JLA members giving Blue Beetle advice on how to lose weight until he finally just get locked in hotel room with Fire for 48 hours and they fuck off all his extra weight in sauna conditions.

Blue Beetle winds up hating General Glory too so the doctor advises dieting with a partner, preferably one who won't lose as much as he will. So he partners with Power Girl who, frankly, doesn't have any weight to lose³. But she does drink a lot of diet soda and has major anger issues and Blue Beetle loves to taunt and mock people. So flaunting his weight loss in front of Power Girl gives him the impetus to finally work his diet and exercise program until he's back to his old weight. After that, he refuses to eat a hot dog for some reason.

The Power Girl story reintroduces the character of Ghy, a magical imp from Atlantis that knew Arion, Kara's super great grandfather (at the time of this story being published, anyway). It was so fucking boring that I took at least three masturbation breaks. Um, those are breaks I take to snack on a Pop Tart. I just call them that so nobody knows I have an addiction to Pop Tarts. They all just think I'm super normal instead.

The final story features the Global Guardians and . . . whoops! Would you look at that? I accidentally went to the store, bought a lighter, came back home, tripped, and meticulously burned the comic book to ash in the bath tub. I'm so clumsy!

Justice League Quarterly #6 Rating: C. Mark Waid's story was actually decent and kind of adorable. The other stories were terrible. That's what happens when some editor needs to fill 80 pages of a comic book every three months. They basically just accept any script that falls into their laps. I'm pretty sure this is how Scott Lobdell got the job and then nobody knew how to get rid of him.







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¹ Okay, fine. My American Dream. But I'm sure some people share it with me!
² Boobies!
³ I will not make the obvious joke here².