Kamandi Challenge #1

If this is as big a trainwreck as DC Challenge, I'll definitely solve it before DC does! I still don't think they solved that one.

I solved the DC Challenge before they did but it didn't matter because the story was a fucking joke. Batman is the World's Greatest Detective but only when the writer writing him has control of the entire story. Otherwise Batman gets the easiest clue in the world (finding the name ELI ELLIS by turning over a calculator after doing a sum) and he promptly forgets all about it for eleven issues. Then in the final issue when everybody had to get together to make sense of the eleven different stories that basically ignored almost everything that came before, Mark Evanier, writer of the first issue, was probably all, "You are all idiots!" Then somebody probably called him an idiot because he thought Benjamin Franklin was a president and on the fifty dollar bill. Maybe. I have a vague recollection that The Riddler fucked up that clue. It's been over twenty years, you know.

The DC Challenge was supposed to end each issue on a cliffhanger which the next writer was supposed to get out of. If I remember correctly though, these cliffhangers were either generally ignored and left for somebody else while the writer began a completely different plot thread concentrating on new characters. I imagine this series will be a lot like that. This one will start with Kamandi and his adventures. Then there will be a cliffhanger ending where Kamandi is about to die and the next issue will ignore it while focusing on the Atomic Knights. Then the next issue will focus on Ben Boxer while ignoring how the Atomic Knights were about to go critical and destroy the world. They'll be going critical for ten issues before somebody resolves that situation.

What I'm trying to say is that this thing is going to be a huge fucking mess.

I'm surprised Keith Giffen is doing the art. Unless this is Koblish trying to look like Kirby but instead looking like Giffen!

Kamandi, the not quite last boy on Earth, races off across town to try to catch the school bus at its last stop. It seems like if he can catch the school bus by cutting through town, he can probably just race straight to school. Not that I know the layout of his town! This is a mystery, by gorsh! Knowing the topographical features of the local locale could give away the mystery!

Kamandi is stopped by a cop who takes the law a little too seriously. He says, "I don't care if you're the last boy on Earth, no one crosses against the red." Dude. If he's the last boy on Earth then there's no danger crossing against the red! Unless the last girl on Earth is driving like a fucking maniac and coming from the other direction. Okay fine. I guess the cop has a point. Plus there are all those sentient animals who drive in the future. But maybe in their society, they cross on the red and stop on the green? Take that, Mr. Fascist Cop!

Some creatures crash through the sky as if it were just the top of a dome painted like the sky. Kamandi's fellow citizens pull out weapons to begin fighting them and urge Kamandi to rush home. I guess this is Command "D" and Kamandi lives in a simulated environment with his grandmother. Did I just solve the mystery? No? Oh, yeah, that's right. I just comprehended what I was reading. Never mind. I'll get that mystery yet though!

The Kangarat Murder Society has broken into Command "D" because there's a bounty on Kamandi's head. The villagers protect him because they're just robots built to protect the last boy on Earth. Kamandi rushes home thinking, "So when I fucked Sarah Lou Ellen behind the bleachers, I actually had my dick in a...a...machine?!"

Is that the mystery? The Case of Kamandi's Missing Parents?

After being shoved through The Void, Kamandi learns he's in a terrible spin-off of Heroes when he hears a voice say, "Find your parents. Save the world." Also, Heroes itself was fucking terrible. I will admit there were some interesting things about it but it was lazy in that the characters in every series were motivated by either a vision of the future or a prophecy. When a writer uses those devices to get the action moving, it means they're terrible writers.

Kamandi comes out of the other side of The Void with long hair and three months worth of piss and shit staining his torn up jeans. He winds up in the clutches of the Tiger-men! That means he's about to meet that pervert, Doctor Canus! Did I just solve the mystery? The pervert is Doctor Canus?

But before he can meet Doctor Canus, Kamandi must survive in the arena against Tiny. And you know with a name like "Tiny," he's got to be big. Even in the future, they stick to nickname clichés.

Based on what Kamandi knows, this statement makes no sense. Even if he's riffing on what the cop told him earlier, Kamandi has no idea that he's currently the last boy on Earth so if he dies, he'll, um, still be the last boy on Earth but with a slightly altered meaning.

And that's the end of part one! That's a pretty simple cliffhanger to solve! Kamandi just needs to beat Tiny. I bet he's swallowed whole by Tiny and then he kicks his way out of Tiny's stomach from the inside! No wait. That's preposterous. Maybe he'll do that thing that Luke did to the Rancor but instead of using a large thigh bone, he'll use the last boner on Earth. Or maybe Doctor Canus will stop the match because he likes the smell of Kamandi's asshole. However it's solved, I'll find out immediately because Dan Abnett takes over for Dan DiDio right here in the middle of the issue!

Oh yeah. Dan DiDio wrote the first story because of course he did. He seems to have called Dibs! on all of Jack Kirby's characters since The New 52 began (and maybe even earlier!).

Part Two is called "K is for 'Kill'!" K is also for Kamandi! And kissing! And kleptocracy! Oh! And klue! A klue to the mystery! Which is still a complete mystery!

Prince Tuftan watches bored as he waits for Kamandi to be torn to bits. I guess this is entertainment for tigers. It's probably like watching America's Test Kitchen on PBS. It's definitely making me hungry.

As Kamandi tries to escape Tiny (who is much bigger when drawn by Eaglesham than when drawn by Giffen!), he discovers the walls of the arena are electrified. Boo! Hiss! That's a cheating shortcut! Electricity is always the way the hero takes out the unstoppable foe! This Cliffhanger Solution rates a 3 out of 10! Did I boo yet? BOO!

Tiny is knocked unconscious from the electrified walls. That's got to be a lot of electricity running along those walls to drop a beast like that! I guess the Tiger-men's post-apocalyptic world isn't so bad if it has such generous power reserves.

Prince Fuzzypants is impressed by Kamandi's resourcefulness even though that resourcefulness has been used over and over again in all kinds of books and movies and television shows. How lucky that there's always some kind of electrical danger nearby when the hero is about to be torn to pieces.

Kamandi is brought to Doctor Canus to be trained. Doctor Canus begins slathering peanut butter all over his cock.

You'd be shocked too if your dog began talking to you while you were crouched in front of it with your crotch covered in Jif.

Doctor Canus takes Kamandi on a walk and shows him Tiger City. Upon seeing the Brother Eye symbol outside the Hall of War, Kamandi tries to investigate it. But it will have to wait until Kamandi becomes best friends with Prince Fuzzypants. For now, he's just a lowly animal being trained to fight in the arena. I hope the second cliffhanger isn't another bout in the arena! Maybe all the cliffhangers will be bigger and bigger opponents in the arena.

Great Caesar returns with a load of leopard slaves and a nuclear missile. Kamandi slips his leash and loses Canus in the celebrating crowd. He heads straight to the Hall of War where he was just told he couldn't go. Somebody is going to be called a bad human and thumped on his tender nose.

Guarding the Hall of War are a bunch of Jackdaws. They're sentient humanoid crows and probably the next cliffhanger. Oh, no. There are still too many pages left. I guess this diversion was just so Kamandi could learn that the tigers of Tiger City are stockpiling ancient weapons. That might be a clue for later! It's hard to tell though because I still don't know what the mystery is. But I think I do know what the next cliffhanger will be!

Silly tigers! Nukes are for...uh, I mean, they're greeeeeeeeat!

The stupid tigers set the bomb to detonate in five minutes. What a cliffhanger! Kamandi only has five minutes to convince Doctor Canus that the tigers will die if he doesn't disarm the bomb! And he'll only have thirty seconds to do that since he'll spend most of the time licking off that peanut butter!

What Did I Learn?
Well, I haven't learned what the mystery is yet, that's for sure! Is the mystery how the world was destroyed? Or why Kamandi needs to find his parents? Or why he needs to remember Command "D" (other than so everybody thinks that's his name)? Or why the world needs saving? Or why the tigers are so stupid and careless? Maybe the mystery is how a dog became a scientist!

The Ranking!
Well shit. It's not too bad because I love stupid gimmick comic books like this!

Infinity Man and the Forever People #9

Who cares?

Last issue with Infinity Man introducing himself to Big Bear and saying, "Oh yeah. I can manifest whenever I want. I just like watching you idiots touch that malfunctioning Mother Box and yelling 'Garblooey!' Ha ha. Totally hilarious."

Hopefully the revelations in this book will rival the revelations in Revelations! And hopefully they'll be more understandable. And hopefully none of them will leak out into other comic books. Can we just put this mess to rest here and now?

I like when the comic book says what I want to say before I can say it. Although I have already said multiple times that this comic book hasn't made any sense. I just hadn't gotten around to saying it yet in this commentary.

I'm going to begin calling my commentaries "critiques"! Doesn't that sound fancy?! I already sound smarter, right? I'm gonna make you proud yet, mama!

Wouldn't it be great if Infinity Man reveals all the secrets to Flashpoint and the Trinity of Sin and Convocation right here in this comic book? It would be a great big fuck you to all the smart people not reading this bullshit! I might even be the only one to learn all of the secrets! Am I the only person that purchased a copy of this issue? I wouldn't be surprised.

The first thing Infinity Man reveals is that The Joker did not rape Batgirl when he shot her in the spine and took naked pictures of her. He just really wanted to make that clear for Big Bear. Next he points out that Batman wasn't raped by Talia al Ghul at all because Batman is immune to Rohypnol so it was totally consensual. Then he goes off on a tangent where he wonders why he's never seen an anti-rape poster that points out how "sensual" is part of consensual and how it's sexy to get consent or something. Then Big Bear is all, "That's fucking disgusting, you idiot." And Infinity Man is all, "I was just trying out some new comedy. It's totally unfair to criticize me for new material!" And Big Bear was all, "I can have my opinions and my opinion is beginning to be that you're a problematic asshole!" And Infinity Man is all, "Okay! Okay! Calm down! Let's just get back to my revelations, okay?"

The third revelation from Infinity Man is that Batwoman was not raped by Nocturna and then she didn't have to deal with Nocturna blaming her for being victimized. Anybody who thought that totally read the situation wrong and should just know they were wrong and they shouldn't revisit the comic to try to prove that they weren't wrong at all and Nocturna totally blames Batwoman for her own rape and is a total gross asshole about the whole situation. Just believe the revelation, okay?

Infinity Man's fourth revelation is that it totally wasn't sexist and gross when DC Comics asked people to draw pictures of Harley Quinn naked in the bathtub trying to kill herself. That was comedy, people! Comedy! Jesus Christ (he says! Not me!), will you people get a sense of humor already!

Infinity Man's fifth revelation is that he didn't mean to tell readers with real issues about the things DC keeps printing that they were overreacting and that they needed to get a sense of humor. Infinity Man was totally thinking of something else at the moment and he's sure you misunderstood him and shit.

Infinity Man's sixth revelation is that Starfire is master of her sexuality and if it looked like she was portrayed as a cum dumpster that loves to gobble cum, it was only because you didn't read all of Scott Lobdell's tweets where he explicitly said that that wasn't how Starfire was being portrayed at all!

It's about at this point in the comic book where I started to think that maybe DC could have come up with a better way to spin their problems from the last few years than to try to spin them in a more positive way in continuity! These were really weird revelations!

Infinity Man's next revelation is his secret origin. It's about time Didio got around to the fucking characters in this comic book.

Infinity Man's secret origin is all about Izaya and how he turned into Highfather. At a crucial point in New Genesis's history, Izaya considers entering into a deal with Darkseid, exchanging his son Scott Free for Darkseid's son Orion. Unless they exchanged other sons. Anyway, to get some advice, Izaya visits the last shard of the original Source Wall. Apparently it's some kind of Magic Eight Ball.

DC is already selling replica Mother Boxes. Maybe they should sell mini-Source Wall's that answer questions like this?

Infinity Man is the bastard child of the Source Wall and Izaya's conscience. That's a pretty shitty revelation. I don't care about Infinity Man and I care even less about Highfather! So now I care many times more less than I used to about Infinity Man! Worst revelation and secret origin ever.

Stop threatening me with the possible continuation of crappy stories and garbage characters!

Infinity Man and the Forever People #9 Rating: -2 Ranking. Ugh. Uff. Blarg. Yeach. Pflooey.

Infinity Man and the Forever People #4

This should be the November Variants! Bat-Cow covers! I'd request that variant! Although I wouldn't have known to request that variant since I never know what's coming up. Hey! If a Bat-Cow Variant Month ever happens, somebody let me know in time to request them!

Remember that television show Lost? Remember how I constantly mention how it really screwed up when the writers decided the characters weren't in Purgatory because too many people on the internet guessed that was what was going on? Here's another reason why you know it was supposed to be Purgatory: the Flashbacks. The flashbacks were there to show what kind of a person the character was when they were alive and how they were changing or repenting or staying the same or falling further to evil. In a show where the characters are merely on a weird island taken over by a near mystical corporation, the flashbacks don't mean nearly as much. Which is why they changed to flashforwards and, finally, to flashafterlifes.

Also, for the people that only really watched the show to find out what the smoke monster was (it was a smoke monster that made roller coaster noises), the final season didn't mean they were all dead the whole time. The flashafterlifes were just what the characters were doing in Lost's new version of Purgatory as they all waited to move on together. So they were really just all waiting for everybody involved to die. Not counting the drunk drivers. They all went to hell immediately.

This issue is called "Milk Run" because dry cereal is awful.

At the end of last issue, The Forever People were involved in a BOOM Tube accident.

And by "topography," Serafina means "billboard."

Batman is involved in dairy farming? I don't think Batcow would be very pleased to learn this! Dairy Farmers are the leading cause of people feeling bad about eating baby boy cows. It's a fact! I bet Batman is actually experimenting with weaponized cows. At least that would be less vile than dairy farming.

I said it's a fact! Don't fucking argue with me! Dairy is evil! Except Ben and Jerry's which is fucking delicious! And probably all the other ice cream too. And butter. And strawberry milk.

Oh no! That's the most difficult cardinal direction in which to make your way!

That last caption probably would have been a good place to make my traditional "mother box" joke! Oh well. I guess I'll have to wait for another opportunity to equate the female genitals with a container.

I bet Giffen and DiDio just laughed and laughed about Batcow licking Mother Box. It's an innuendo!

Why is Batcow in Ventura, California? I bet Batcow is on a secret mission to catch Jokercow! Or maybe she's on vacation with Catcow!

The Forever People are morons who need Batcow to show them how to travel south. Not that you have to be a moron to be less smart than Batcow! It's just, well, they are morons.

Meanwhile on New Genesis, Infinity Man tells Hymen that he's going to help Highfather. That's a lie! Last issue, he said that Highfather and the people of New Genesis were just as dangerous as Darkseid and the monstrosities of Apokolips! He said ordering the universe was just as bad as chaoticking the universe! I think the Infinity Man has some hidden, selfish motivations!

Anyway, I thought Infinity Man could only appear while the Forever People were singing songs to Mother Box? And then don't they take his place in Infinity while he forces people to stop doing everything they're doing because they're interfering with the natural order of things?

Back on Earth, the bus The New Gods take to go south takes sixteen hours to get from Ventura to Venice Beach. I think that's Dan DiDio's commentary on how shitty bus travel is. Or the people of DC have no idea how to look at a map. I think it might be that one since practically nobody at the company knows that Antarctica and The Arctic are two separate places.

What?

Is there a reason this comic book needed to be created (besides Dan DiDio's obsession with rewriting everything Jack Kirby ever created)? Am I supposed to be learning something about human nature when viewed through the eyes of a New God? Is it about the slapstick adventures of out-of-place foreigners getting their bearings in a new and strange land? I thought the New Gods were supposed to teach earthlings how to be grown up citizens of the universe but the New Gods are getting directions from cows, so how wise can they be? It's drawn and partially written by Keith Giffen so I guess it's supposed to be funny? Maybe? I mean funny in that way that Giffen is funny where he comes up with an average joke and tells it fifteen times in the same book.

Oh! I get it! Ha ha! They pissed in the pool! Didn't they read the sign that said, "This is our _ool. Notice it has no 'P' in it. Please keep it that way"?

The man cleaning the pool is Doctor Skuba. That's an evil scientist name if I ever heard one! And I have heard one. I've heard many! He tells Serafina that his hatred for those that would befoul water knows no bounds! Bwa ha ha ha!

He doesn't laugh like Giffen would have made him laugh. I added that! Because Giffen probably just forgot to add it. Or he'll do it later. Or maybe he can't use that laugh unless J.M. DeMatteis is co-writing.

Why didn't she use that cartridge on Batcow?!

I think I just realized what genre this comic book is! It's a teenaged college shenanigans comedy! Cow craziness! Road trips! Pool parties! Repeat offenders! Women losing their tops! Men making gay jokes about each other because being gay is gay (even though it is college which is the most appropriate time for a heterosexual to be gay). I can't wait until they prank the Dean!

But first the New Gods Greek House has to get into a crazy battle with the other main Greek House of Earth, Gamma Lipschitz Coitus.

AKA The Red Lanterns!

Infinity Man and the Forever People #4 Ranking: No change. Batcow saved this issue because I can't rank down a comic book that has Batcow in it! Even though it didn't make sense for Batcow to be in California. Sure, I know the cover said it was a gratuitous appearance! But I still hope that Batcow's trip to California will remain in continuity and Peter J. Tomasi will work it into Batman and Robin.

Infinity Man and the Forever People #1

Dan Didio still thinks he's a writer, does he?

Earlier today when I was washing dishes, I was thinking about Grunion Guy's quote, "Writer's Block is just a sign that you're lazy." Grunion Guy, by the way, is an alternate version of me that thinks differently than I do so it's not really me but Grunion Guy. He's also sometimes Pickle Boy and sometimes Upright, so I have to speak about him in the 3rd person. Anyway, I was thinking of an addendum to that quote so that it should read, "Writer's Block is just a sign that you're lazy. Or that you experience shame." That thought came to my head because I obviously write a lot, about four hours per day. And I instantly put the majority of it out there for anybody to read because I apparently have no shame. And then just now, jenstansfield reblogged this quote by Bradbury: "Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all." That's probably a better way of saying the shame thing! And probably nice than calling people with Writer's Block lazy!

Okay. So now about this Infinity Man and his Forever People. From the cover, it looks like Infinity Man is the god that lost his time travel map and the Forever People are the bandits. Judging by the name and the fact that Keith Giffen was tagged to do the art, I'm going to go out on a great big very safe looking limb and say these characters were created by Jack Kirby. Looking up the characters in my 1985 Who's Who, I see both entries were drawn by Jack Kirby. Like I said, it was a really safe limb to go out on. Plus I'm pretty sure the information that Kirby wrote these characters was rattling around in my brain somewhere but wasn't exactly a fact I could have spit out while trying to score with some hot piece of hotness at a cocktail party. Attractive people love discussing comic book facts at parties, right? That's a rhetorical question because I'm an attractive person and I like discussing comic books at parties! So I already knew the answer. Which is kind of the definition of rhetorical question so I probably didn't need to say that. I sure wish I had some self-consciousness!

I think Dan Didio likes to write about characters that have mysterious origins and/or were created by Jack Kirby. So he's done OMAC and The Phantom Stranger and Challengers of the Unknown and now Infinity Man. The first line in Infinity Man's bio in the 1985 Who's Who is this: "Nothing is known about the origin of the mysterious being called Infinity Man." What is known about him is that he pals around with five kids who touch his box and shout, "Taaruu!" I think this guy might need to be investigated.

Looking up The Forever People, I see I recognize Beautiful Dreamer and Big Bear. It looks like Serifan the Cowboy has been replaced by another female in the new team. And Vykin the Black probably dropped the "the Black" from his name because most people nowadays don't go around saying things like "Barack Obama the Black" and "Samuel L. Jackson the Black." Unless he's known as "the Black" because of some other reason that isn't racist like I've made it out to be! Perhaps it's simply rare to have a dark skin tone on the planet of New Genesis. It's just that so many comic book creators of the past simply added "black" to the name of any character that was a black man. I'm not sure black women got the same treatment though. I could be wrong though since I'm a scholar of Ancient Egypt and not a scholar of comic books!

Looking at the covers of the Who's Who (the front and back portrayed every character listed in the issue) to see if the whole adding "black" to a black character's name has much truth to it, I see the first issue, which is obviously a control issue, has one black character: Amazing-Man. So right off we see how small representation was for African-Americans even in 1985. One out of thirty entries is a black hero. There are more locations listed in this issue than that.

Issue #2 begins the run of characters with "black" in their name yet features not a single black character on the front and back cover! We've got Black Bison, Blackbriar Thorn, Black Canary (I and II!), Black Condor, Blackfire, Black Hand, and three Blackhawk entries (incidentally, the Blackhawks were an apparently all-white division when they were created). So the word "black" gets used no matter what the skin tone of the character. Well, as long as that skin tone is white or orange so far.

Out of 31 entries on Issue #3, we have three black characters (all male) and they all have "black" in their name: Black Manta, Black Lightning, and Black Racer. So that's three times as many characters as issue #1 and, um, I don't know how many times more than Issue #2 because I keep coming up with the answer "zero" for that equation. Let's look at a few more control issues.

I know Captain Atom is white but his pose made me laugh and this commentary really needed a picture in it.

Issue #4 has three black males on the cover (I don't think I should count Captain Carrot) yet none of the entries are individual entries for the characters. Two of the characters (Crowbar (oh yeah! He made an appearance in Vibe!) and Black Mass) were part of the team known as Cadre and one was Sir Gawain from Camelot 3000. This is an interesting cover in that one of the three characters has "black" in his name yet there are no individual entries. Figuring out percentages has now moved into word problems that I can't solve! I'll check a few more covers briefly for this super important research project that totally proves something or other.

Issue #5 has Cyborg. Issue #6 has none. Issue #7 has none. Even Easy Company didn't have any black members. Issue #8 has none. And finally Issue #9 has three black men (still no black women. It can't take until "V" to get an appearance of a black female hero (or villain), can it?): John Stewart, Gravedigger (whose real name is "Ulysses Hazard" which makes him completely awesome), and Impala of the Global Guardians (Dr. Mist and several others were left off the cover. Probably to make room for all of the Green Lanterns).

To finish, a very quick and cursory glance of the covers reveals the first black female to make an appearance is Onyx. And there isn't another until Vixen. So forget about how this began looking for black characters with or without "black" in their character name. It was hard enough just finding any! It's insane that in that white a pool of characters, people complain when any diversity is added to the mix. These covers were from 1985 detailing characters created many years ago. Has the diversity gotten better? I don't know! I'm not a comic book scientist! Although just look at the cover to Infinity Man and the Forever People #1! New Genesis has gotten a bit more diverse!

I should probably get to reading this fucking comic book already.

So far in The New 52, we've had just a small hint of New Genesis and Apokolips. Darkseid #1 covered a bit of the relationship between The New Gods and Darkseid (although I think much of it was a lie). In Wonder Woman, we've gotten a glimpse of the world shown in the panel above when Wonder Woman visited New Genesis floating above the ruined planet of, I suspect, Old Genesis. And now we've finally gotten a comic book dedicated to the world of The New Gods! And one where we don't have to endure the insufferable Jimmy Olsen!

There's a big trip to Earth planned for the newest graduating class on New Genesis but Mark Moonrider can't get the Mother Box to work correctly. Probably because everybody needs to be touching it and yelling, "Taaruu!"

Everybody but Big Bear has gathered together and most of them are arguing. Unless the female that arrived with Vykin is Big Bear and she'll have some transformation into the Big Bear on the cover later. That's probably not the case though since this comic just started. I should just finish reading the pages where they finally become a group since those are the pages of group stories that I find the most monotonous.

That's the way I feel all of the time, Beautiful Dreamer.

Vykin touches Mother Box and she loves his gentle touch so she opens wide for him. Now he's stuck going on the trip to Earth even though he wasn't meant to go along. Everybody hops in even though they're still missing Big Bear. Also, the comic is still missing a reason to exist. Right now, it's just the Europe trip taken by a bunch of students the summer after graduation. I bet there will be a lot of sexually hilarious antics!

Big Bear is waiting for the kids on the other end. He's got an apartment in Venice Beach set up for them and some kind of artificial intelligence named Kirby that does magic scientific wonders.

Meanwhile, a facility in the Sudan turning desert into fertile ground to grow crops is having a bit of an Apokolyptian bug problem.

It's Preying Mantis! With an "e"!

Infinity Man and the Forever People #1 Rating: I don't know! It's yet another Giffen doing Kirby book! As I mentioned previously, these team books where the team has to get to know each other tend to bore me. I suppose if they're written well, they wouldn't bore me! But this one was mediocre at best. I sort of know a few one dimensional things about the Forever People and a little bit about a few of their relationships with each other. Other than that, they're on vacation where Mantis is also spending time. Unless this isn't a vacation at all! Maybe it's like going into military service for a year or two after graduating. It's hard to say since none of that has really been explained yet.

Legion of Super-heroes #17

Sometimes I think Giffen's art is stuck in this space where he's emulating aspects of Jack Kirby while parodying aspects of Rob Liefeld.

Legion of Super-heroes still has too many characters I'm not interested in and too many relationships I can't remember. I don't think anybody interested in Legion of Super-heroes reads my commentaries on them. I also don't think anybody not interested in Legion reads my commentaries on them! Legion of Super-heroes gets the least likes and the least responses of any other comic book of The New 52.

Why do I bother continuing to read it?! *sigh* Let's make this quick!

Phantom Girl has crashed on an alien planet and her translator is down, so some aliens show up speaking in a new Alien Font that I need to translate! This may be a tough one since the letters just look like smeared inkblots but I suppose I'm going to now waste more time translating it simply to find the aliens are saying things like, "This is an alien language!" and "Keith Giffen's mother chews used condoms!"

Judging by the last alien quote bubble that I thought I would begin with, I'm not sure this is anything but the entire alphabet of the font spaced out to look like words. It's hard to tell for sure since the letters are so crazy, but it looks like the last speech bubble has 27 letters and only one is repeated one time. So it seems to be a representation of the alphabet with one letter repeated. A few other bubbles have 32 letters, again with a single one repeating once. So numbers as well? Or punctuation. Anyway, that was a good five minutes wasted! Back to the story!

I believe Phantom Girl crashed on the Planet That Never Discovered Dental Hygiene! The putrid smell is probably because the planet's topsoil is composed of rotted teeth.

Phantom Girl survived the crash because she went intangible. Now she begins digging through the ship's rubble to see if any of the other Legion members survived.

What happens when Phantom Girl goes intangible while moving at high velocity? As her mass grows closer and closer to zero (assuming the transition takes some amount of time, even if a microscopic amount), wouldn't her velocity increase? Wouldn't she end up just shooting straight through the planet and into space? How can she stop when she encounters no friction?! When her mass does equal zero, does she just come to a dead stop since her momentum would now be zero? But doesn't that go against some law of thermodynamics? Fucking Tinya Wazoo. You make no Goddamned sense. I guess, once again, I simply just have to suspend my disbelief! Fucking comic books!

I like how such a simple power can be such a super headache when one tries to figure out how it would work according to universal laws. I'm sure I got a lot of shit wrong in my speculation, but you get the point. All she does is become intangible. But ultimately, she's DEFYING GOD'S WILL! And by God I simply mean Universal Law which is totally arbitrary as a rule set to this dimension.

Polar Boy survives by encasing himself in ice. Just as believable a survival method as losing all mass!

And what about Polar Boy's powers?! Isn't one of those laws of thermodynamics something about conservation of heat?! Where does the heat go when he freezes things? I believe he channels the heat through tiny wormholes where it mostly returns somewhere in deep space and dissipates. And occasionally the worm hole opens up in a character from Bleak House.

Where else can you go for Charles Dickens references and fart jokes? Yeah, yeah. The whole fucking rest of the internet, right?

Next Phantom Girl finds Invisible Kid. Good thing he survived or they'd never find his corpse. I wonder how he survived? With the power of invisibility? I think he was cocooned in ice as well. But the last Legion member they find didn't fare so well.

Yay! Maybe I can keep track of all the Legion Members now that they have one less! Let's see...infinity minus one is...DAMMIT!

Elsewhere on a planet that the narrator recognizes (Rimbor!), Ultra Boy, Chameleon Boy, and Glorith Girl are experiencing the same failure of technology that caused Phantom Girl's ship to crash. Perhaps when Phantom Girl's mass neared zero, her velocity neared infinity and she fucking broke the universe. Again. But they did notice one area on Rimbor still with power. Someone must have a gas powered generator made from Alternate Dimensional Technology and thus runs by a different set of Universal Laws!

I think I'm getting the hang of writing futuristic comic book stories!

Back on Somewhere, the little toothless aliens continue to yell the same few alien phrases at Polar Boy. They're probably screaming, "You just fucking crashed on an orphanage, you dicks!" Polar Boy ignores them and continues to walk around moping because Sun Boy is dead. Hey! Maybe that's where the heat went! Polar Boy and Sun Boy fuel each other! That would explain why Polar Boy is so depressed! How is he going to use his powers now? While he's out walking, he discovers a clue as to where they are!

Great! So now I have to believe in "organic rock"?

Back on Rimbor, Chameleon Boy finds evidence that Tharok of the Fatal Five is behind the Universal Power Outage. That's pretty fatal, all right! Ultra Boy, Chameleon Boy, and Glorith Girl are set upon by maintenance robots. But since they're just robots (never mind the advances in artificial intelligence that have made robots of this time self-aware. Probably!), Glorith can turn them into leaves with a spell.

Somebody had better warn Mon-El and his pervy fingers!

And then back on the Promethean Giant, this bit of awesome happens:

So that's what they've been saying this whole time: "Is it okay if we roast and eat your dead friend?"

Since this has been, by far, the best issue of Legion of Super-heroes so far, I hope it doesn't end up being one of Dream Girl's dreams. If all of this is really happening, I wonder if the readers killed Sun Boy? I bet Levitz and his editors (and maybe Giffen too) decided that whichever Legion member received the least votes in the election would be killed and eaten by aliens! Nice job, voters! I didn't vote so this is hardly my fault.

Polar Boy, offended, attacks the aliens and calls them "cannibals." Polar Boy. They're hardly cannibals! Eating Sun Boy is no different from you eating a member of the Legion of Super-cows. Before Polar Boy can throw a punch, the Promethean Giant begins to awaken! The horror!

The issue ends with the new and improved Tharok discussing a Fatal Five reunion with Persuader. But for the moment, they'll just sit back and see if the Legionnaires can make it out of the current predicaments Tharok has forced them into with his technological shenanigans. Also, Validus has just crashed on some planet's surface and he's ready to begin killing things.

Legion of Super-heroes #17 Rating: +2 Ranking. Best issue yet. I'll never dislike an issue of Legion of Super-heroes where their member count drops!