Threshold The Drinking Game #8

Who cares about Caul? There's a space cupcake shop nearby!

What a surprise! Threshold, DC's next attempt at a War Comic (science fiction but still their war comic!) only made it eight issues! Just like Men of War. And Just like G.I. Combat. Although this series was actually good while the other war comics were just awful. I'm glad DC keeps trying but they've got to figure out how to sell non-Batman comic books already. And I think I know how! Here's what you do, DC: kill off Batman. Just kill him off. Then hint around that Bruce Wayne is actually undercover as a different super hero in the DC Universe! And the cover of every comic book after killing off Batman should read, "Is this really Bruce Wayne?!" And then have Bruce Wayne in a Catwoman suit looking sexy or wearing Superman's cape and diving off of a building. People will go mad trying to figure out who is now Bruce Wayne!

Although what will actually happen is that all the Batman fans will simply stop reading and proclaim that DC sucks and has always sucked. So actually, I don't have any ideas about how to sell more comics. DC, I suppose your solution is as good as it gets: just put Batman and Superman in every single comic book.

Batman and Superman aren't in this comic book. So you can move along to one that does now. But I have to read it. It's, like, mandatory and shit.

Last issue I believed that Jediah Caul, Green Lantern, was teleported to Lady Styx for some diplomatic business. But instead he's ended up in the Office for Intergalactic Visas battling a mob of bureaucrats.

Uh oh. I'm pretty sure she's from HR. Or the equivalent since these aren't exactly humans.

You know, I only write these commentaries so I can reread them when a new issue of the comic comes up and catch up quickly on what was happening previously. But since this is the final issue of Threshold, I don't have to write a commentary about it! Yay! We should all just get drunk instead! Yay! Or eat a lot of cookies if you're not into getting drunk. I guess it depends on which you'd rather deal with: a hangover or twenty extra pounds? Fuck it! Let's get drunk AND eat cookies!

Let's just turn this comic book into a drinking game, okay? Let me make up some rules. How about twenty of them?

1. Whenever a character says "literally", you have to take a shot. If they use it correctly (very rare!), you get to eat a cookie instead!
2. Whenever a character defies another character (without violence), drink.
3. Whenever a character acts rationally and engages in normal conversation when confronted with defiance or potential violence, eat a cookie!
4. Drink every time somebody is punched or kicked or hit with a light construct.
5. Eat a cookie every time a light construct is used in a helpful manner, like to save lives or fix a tea pot.
6. Finish your drink whenever a character dies.
7. Eat a cookie every time Keith Giffen writes a meta-textual statement.
8. Drink after every time you turn a page.
9. Finish your drink if Captain K'rot's leg kidnapper is revealed.
10. Eat three cookies if Lonar calls his motorcycle, "Thunderer."
11. Drink whenever Batman makes an appearance.
12. Two drinks when Star Hawkins' robot assistant insults him.
13. Eat a cookie if Ember kisses somebody.
14. Finish your drink if The Hunted game show is cancelled.
15. Drink if Captain K'rot's Raccoon lady friend makes another appearance; eat a cookie of Captain K'rot's friend Pig Iron returns.
16. Drink and eat a cookie if Adonis is still alive.
17. Down three shots if Blue Beetle is returned to Earth.
18. Finish your drink if T'morra's bartender betrays the rebellion.
19. Eat a cookie every time Stealth is in a panel and not using her power.
20. Drink every time Stealth is in a panel and using her power. Finish a full beer if this never happens by the end of the comic.

I think I've covered most of what might happen! Now I'll just scan in the pictures which match one of the rules! Everybody ready? Let's go!

I'm calling five drinks on Page One due to violation of Rule #4! At least five bureaucrats are involved in the fracas with Jediah, so they're either pummeling or being pummeled.

Drink because we're turning to Page Two (Rule #8)! Oh man. I hope nobody decided to start out with Tequila because the first panel on Page Two is going to fuck you up.

Nine people hit with a light construct! Drink nine times thanks to Rule #4!

The next few panels are the ones I initially scanned. I think those call for eating a cookie because the Human Resources Manager calms the violence by being rational (Rule #3). It was about time to eat a cookie anyway!

Page Three sees quite a few violations of Rule #2 thanks to Caul acting like a typical Green Lantern and thinking nobody has any authority over them except maybe the stupid Oans.

Two drinks for two acts of defiance by Caul (Rule #2) and one drink for Lady HR's deescalation with her mind powers (Rule #3. I think mind powers can be considered being rational).

Turning to Page Four, so take a drink (Rule #8)! Oh, but first take a drink because of Batman's appearance on the inside cover (Rule #11). I almost missed that one!

Page Four has five panels with Stealth not using her powers, so eat five cookies (Rule #19)! And be sure to wash them down with a drink because we're turning to Page Five now (Rule #8). I'm not counting advertisements as story pages. But they will count for Batman appearances!.

Whoa. Page Five is a bit crazy. Let me scan it in and we'll tally up what happens and maybe make a couple of judgment calls.

Remember how I compared this place to Cheers last commentary? Well, it's time to break down the set!

Holy shit. This page alone makes it look like I already read this comic before making my rules because it's a fucking guzzlefest. First off, eat a cookie for the first panel's meta-text commentary on the cancellation (Rule #7)! Second, I think we can call this as the bartender betraying the Rebellion since she was working with The Hunted game show by running this Hunted Set so finish your drink (Rule #18). Now be sure to get another completely full drink and finish it because The Hunted game show has been cancelled (Rule #14). Eat one more cookie because Stealth appears on panel without using her power (Rule #19). I think that's everything! Be sure to get another drink ready because we're turning to Page Six now (Rule #8).

Don't listen to the Bartender/Actress! Rules are not made to be broken! Stop trying to skip eating cookies and drinking drinks just because you're getting slammed by this game!

Page Six gives us a bit of relief from drinking. But we do need to eat three cookies due to two appearances by Stealth (Rule #19) and one metatextual comment about "Mysteries in Space" (Rule #7). See, Mysteries in Space is another old DC Anthology Title which this guy is going to go star in. That wasn't meant to be patronizing for all y'all who already knew that. I just figured some people might be wondering why they were eating that third cookie! Although who really needs a fucking reason to eat a third cookie?

Take a drink because we're moving on to Page Seven (Rule #8)!

I think this counts as defiance! Rule #2! Drink up, bitches!

It's a good thing it's five in the morning and I couldn't purchase any alcohol before reading this or I might be on the floor by now puking up Oreos.

Turning to Page Eight, drink up (Rule #8)! This page turning rule is just one of those arbitrary rules in a drinking game that simply allows everybody to drink because why are you playing a drinking game if you don't want to drink at all anyway?

Caul gets his back healed by an Omnidoc on Page Eight so he doesn't have to use his Green Lantern Brace anymore. If he'd made that brace during this issue, it would have been time to eat a cookie thanks to Rule #5! As Caul is led by Lady HR to get some answers about why The Hunted is ending, they pass by a scene that deserves one cookie for Rule #7 (meta-textual commentary) and three shots for sending Blue Beetle home (Rule #17).

Oh. I think a drink is in store for Caul's defiance as well (Rule #2).

Drinkity drink up because we're turning to Page Ten (Rule #8)! Caul is led into the Office of the person running The Hunted: T'morra! I still think this allows for the full drink judgment call on his bartender earlier. They were just in it together is all!

Just to be on the safe side, I think we should chug an entire drink with a couple of cookies crumbled into it in honor of Rule #7, Meta-textual commentary, simply based on the overall premise of this entire issue!

Turning to Page Twelve, so chug-a-lug (Rule #8). Just a little bit! One tiny drink! So maybe I used chug-a-lug incorrectly. It's not like I was ever sober enough to learn proper usage in situations when people were using it! Anyway, get your drinks and cookies ready for more!

So this is where Blue Beetle actually returns. Don't worry, you don't have to drink again. Unless you want to!

I suppose we'll count the above panel as four drinks thanks to Rule #4 (Punching and shit!) and one cookie thanks to Rule #7 (meta-textual narrative concerning the reasons for introducing Lonar and Blue Beetle into the title). And another drink as I turn to Page Thirteen (Rule #8). You know, we wouldn't need to drink so much if the advertisements were placed more strategically.

Three drinks thanks to Rule #4 and two cookies thanks to Rules #3 and #7! And another drink as I'm going to be turning to Page Fourteen after this caption (Rule #8).

On Page Fourteen and Fifteen, Caul and T'morra simply discuss job offers. T'morra "offers" Caul a job starring in a new show about an inspirational hero that always tries to do the right thing. Caul, the soon-to-be actor, already understands the job of an actor fairly well when he realizes he's simply going to be a "walking, talking, propaganda-spewing shill." You should probably eat some cookies here due to Rule #7. I don't know how many. Whatever you feel comfortable with. And a drink as we turn to Page Sixteen (Rule #8).

Fuck it. Just eat all of your Goddamned cookies.

Rule #7 probably doesn't matter anymore since I told you to eat all of your cookies. But on Page Seventeen, T'morra mentions Space Cabby and how he's disappeared from everyone's memories.

If you've actually been playing the Threshold Drinking Game, you probably won't remember this. Or you'll simply assumed you hallucinated it.

Caul decides to join up and star in the show. He's put in costume and sent off to appear in the pilot episode. But it doesn't turn out quite like he expected.

Whoops! Rule #6! Finish your alcohol! Game over!

T'morra's big fake out was that Caul would get a Glimmernet show and everybody would make a ton of money. Instead, T'morra films Caul being murdered to establish the premise of his Glimmernet Show:

Fuck. I've scanned way too many pages of this thing. I'll have to do the back-up story scanless and with no drinking!

The back-up story reveals that Star Hawkins was the one to kill Caul when he suddenly materialized in front of a panicked Hawkins. So Hawkins is the guy T'morra is hunting in his new show! It outta be pretty exciting whenever it gets published in Super Pretend Imagination Land!

Threshold #8 Rating: +10 Drunkenness. So Men of War failed. G.I. Combat failed. Threshold failed. Is Mystery in Space next? Or maybe Ghosts? I'm kind of hoping for House of Secrets.

Threshold #7

Yay! A new character this issue: Goon the Offensive!

Now I'm sad that I'm going to be reading a comic book called Threshold and not a comic book called Goon the Offensive. And now I'm mad at comic book companies in general for no longer allowing comic books to be about comic books. Comic Books are really just the bottom of the heap of the super hero intellectual property. It's all about movies and television and merchandising and the comic book must play the support role for those greater money making opportunities. Which means comic books become watered down, vanilla stories that won't take chances for fear of ruining the image of the characters. Although the comic books are exactly the place that companies should be taking risks and telling controversial and insane and crazy and psychedelic stories that stride boldly across the boundaries of the status quo.

Maybe those kinds of stories would just suck coming from a corporate entity anyway. Those things I just mentioned do exist in comic books, just not in DC or Marvel comic books. Although I haven't been paying attention to Marvel's "reboot" so I can't exactly say what's going on there right now. Anyway, thinking about a title called Goon the Offensive made me realize to what extent DC's comic book stories are truly limited.

The Hunted begins with Caul bemoaning his life as a Green Lantern. Nearby, Captain K'rot acts sympathetic. Not. You know what needs to come back? People appending "not" to the end of sentences! Not! Man, that's annoying! It confuses me that people continue to use it! In the 21st Century! I thought after the millennium, we would all agree to retire a few dozen things from humankind's cultural baggage. I figured high-fiving anybody older than two would be right out by now. I was also hoping that watching sports would have fully entered its ironic phase which would spell the end of it altogether in a few years. Except that's wrong too, isn't it? Because the actual cycle is people love something, then people hate on people loving that thing, then people begin to love that thing ironically, and then they all slip right back into actually loving that thing. And so we beat on, boats against the current, blah blah blah. If F. Scott Fitzgerald were here right now, I'd high-five him! Not!

God I hate myself.

Instead of words, here is a picture of a drunk, anthropomorphic space rabbit with a cybernetic leg.

Speaking of words, Threshold #7 is full of them! Jediah Caul continues his belly aching inside Narration Boxes after he charges his ring and grows back to normal size. He never wanted to be a hero and all that shit. So don't be a hero, Jediah! Be your own man! Don't feel shackled to the ring and the uniform just because it picked you! Fuck the Green Lantern image. It's not like they're currently respected anywhere in the galaxy right now anyway. I think most of the universe's population expect you to act like a selfish asshole at this point.

There you go! Good man!

Caul ends up thinking better of it and rescues the Collected Neighborhood to return it to Lady Styx. Fucking chump.

Back on Tolerance, The Hunted are living in fear, running for their lives, and fighting Hunt Clubs to the death!

Not?

According to the previous scene, the television show Cheers was an accurate portrayal of a life and death struggle of human prey being hunted by legalized murder clubs. I suppose Cheers is a microcosm of the cast of every single story every told when you gather them into a bar to relax away from whatever their true story is. Now that this revelation has suddenly descended upon me (although, really, how much of a revelation is it? The gathering of people in a non-space to tell stories is possibly the first story!), I wish Cheers had never had any episodes outside of the confines of the bar. Now I'm disappointed that they occasionally told stories in the character's apartments and other places.

Stealth realizes that T'morra may have had a good idea with the televising the underdogs and getting the audience to love them better than money. She returns to join the Rebellion. Perhaps seeing Ember shot in the head also convinced her. Although as she walks into the bar, she does a double take at Ember's double. And Ember decides to tell Stealth her story!

Oh wait. That's it? That was worse than an episode of Cheers! ... wait for it ... Not!

Oh! I forgot about "wait for it"! That's pretty annoying too!

Caul gets a personal call from Lady Styx assuring him he's free to come back to Tolerance with her bit of city. Although I think she may be using "free" loosely since she's pretty much telling him he has to bring the city to her personally. So it's that kind of freedom. Like when the cops tell you you're free to come with them to the station. Or the government tells you you're free to pay taxes. Or your sexual partner tells you you're free to fuck whomever you want to fuck.

How cute! Despero's little brother is a news anchor in the Tenebrian Dominion!

For the whoever is keeping records, I should make this statement: Ember has to be one of the best characters to come out of Threshold. Okay, now everything else is off the record! I'll deny ever saying any of it! Especially that bit that Jelyde1 tricked me into saying about the Suicide Squad needing to swallow Resurrection Man's semen if they want to survive contact with the Samsara Project!

Those of you that have no idea what I'm talking about don't read enough Disqus Comments!

Caul places the district back where it belongs although it doesn't quite fit the same way that it used to. He has no way to return it to its normal size but that point is moot anyway when Lady Styx transports him to meet up with her. That's just speculation on my part when he disappears. And although I'm no Batman, I'd like to believe I can follow a fucking comic book story without anybody holding my hand. Although it would be nice to have somebody holding my hand while I read it. Or my cock.

Jesus Christ! No wonder Google Ads denied doing business with my Blog! It's filled with smut! And blasphemy!

Meanwhile (wow! I think this is my first 'meanwhile' segue so far today!), Lonar and Blue Beetle are looking to get into the teeny tiny Tolerance District. I'm pretty sure it's because Lonar needs to get his space motorcycle, Thunderer, out of Adonis's Storage Cube. Lonar drops the disguise on Blue Beetle so that Lonar can sneak into the tiny district while the crowd attempt to murder the fuck out of Blue Beetle. His only seeming defense is to take up the Bottled City and use it as a hostage.

Inside the Tiny Town, Lonar BOOOM tubes in and kills Adonis for the Storage Sphere (yeah, yeah. I got the shape wrong earlier!). Or seems to kill Adonis. Slugs are pretty elastic when it comes to concepts like "death" and "eating ones own genitalia."

I miss Captain K'rot's kitten-raccoon hybrid female friend.

Star Hawkins continues to star in his back-up story this issue as he heads off to meet the first ever contestant of The Hunted, the woman behind The Crimson Thrust. I kind of forget why he's going to see her though. Oh! It's probably because he's on a case! He's a Private Investigator of the Stars! He's super famous.

Before I continue, let me say that Larfleeze #1 wasn't as funny as I was hoping. I sort of expected that extending Larfleeze from eight pages to twenty might make the joke wear a little thin. But I also think it was just a bit of those "not sure how to set up the comic" first issue kind of blues. Although the initial characterization of Larfleeze and his beginnings was nicely under-emphasized. We were introduced to a character that had a tragic life but now lies about the tragedy of it, even to himself. Anyway, what I was trying to say is this: Keith Giffen is fucking funny. He does funny well. This Star Hawkins short has some good laughs in it. And, as such, I think a lot of people who read Larfleeze #1 and were disappointed should really give it another shot. I have to stick with it because of this blog but I'd stick with it anyway because I trust Giffen to provide some really good laughs, even if Larfleeze #1 missed the mark somewhat. I wrote all that just to scan this next bit in because it's well funny. I think "well funny" is how they say "it made me smile a little bit" in that old Shakespearean language they continue to speak in London Town.

Not the biggest fan of not so much either. Not! Wait. How many "not"s is that? Am I saying I'm a fan or not?!

And the Legend Star Hawkins is looking for? Well, it turns out to be...wait a second. Are you sure you want to hear this? It'll completely ruin the surprise for when you go to the comic book shop and purchase a copy of this comic book which is cancelled anyway so what the fuck do I care if you continue to support it? Oh! I know why! DC might see the rise in numbers as a reason to put out a solo Ember comic book! Here, I'll give it to you in code so that if you don't want to know, accidentally seeing the name won't spoil it for you. I'll just randomize the letters in her name: Lady Styx.

You know, sometimes when you take a thing that goes in a certain order and randomize that thing, it still comes out in the normal order. That's true randomness! Besides, the two "y"s were switched around.

Threshold #7 Rating: +2 Ranking. It gets a +1 for both stories because I'm a fucking pushover for a tree girl and a nagging, disembodied robotic head. I've really been going easy on DC's comics lately! I might as well be receiving kickbacks for all the +1s I've been giving out!