Wonder Twins #7

I didn't realize the Wonder Twins were Gen X.

If you've ever wondered why I'm such a facetious asshole who doesn't hold anything sacred, it's because I'm solidly Generation X. We were raised by the Baby Boomers so we've known from an early age that everybody is fucking fucked. Although we were also partially raised by grandparents from the Greatest Generation and let me tell you something: my Spanish grandparents were absolutely the fucking greatest and kindest people in the world. And their daughter, my mom, is pretty liberal and did everything she could for her kids as a single parent. But my dad. Let me fucking tell you! He's the epitome of a Baby Boomer. Vietnam Vet who came back so anti-war that I remember him telling me, when I was probably ten or so, that America ever brought back the draft, he'd drive me to Canada himself. Wound up working middle management jobs at tech companies until he retired to watch loads of Fox News and play the stock market online. Now he talks about how people can't joke anymore and that the Native American guy in AA doesn't mind the name "Washington Redskins" so it must just be whiny white college kids who think the term "redskin" is a racist term. Which, I mean, it fucking is so I guess his point is that he doesn't mind an NFL team with a racist nickname because a guy he must think of as a redskin (or why else would he bring him up?!) says it's okay with him? I'm pretty sure I've heard that stupid bullshit thing about how "if you're not liberal when you're young then you don't have a heart but if you're not conservative when you're older than you don't have a brain" from him. He definitely got upset with me one time when I made sweeping generalizations about big business and yet he doesn't mind doing the same thing about Millennials. One time when I took some cousins who were in town to go see him, he made a joke about a third wheelchair access ramp at a local strip mall being for trans people not five minutes after telling everybody in the room that nobody can joke about anything anymore.

It's fucking weird because I know the guy he used to be and it's disheartening to say the least. I should probably blame the Boomers as a generation less than the fact they just happened to be the exact ripe old age to be scared shitless by Fox News and to believe all of its terrible propaganda. I guess it's tough when the victims are also the perpetrators of the crime. Terrible Boomers seemed to know exactly how to manipulate the others into being right bastards. But then again, my mom turned seventy this year and she hates Trump and the GOP so it's not all bad. Although she sometimes says some cringey stuff about the Middle Eastern family who ran the 7-Eleven by my house for decades. Plus there's my aunt who's in her eighties who had to watch her children vote for Trump while she (as she revealed to me) "liked that one guy. What was his name? You know, the Jew?"

Look. They're old people! Sometimes you just need to learn to laugh about their old timey, passive, not-really-hurting-anybody racism! Well, if you're a Gen-Xer, you do. If you're a Millennial, I think you point out how their attitude causes a culture of harm and the only way to combat that is to just cancel them? Is that how that works? It's hard to know for sure because anybody I can ask about that has already cancelled me.

I bet my mom would like the Untitled Goose Game because one of her best friends is a lame goose at a park she walks in! She also once tripped and fell in the goose shitty pond one time, tearing a tendon in her arm, so that was probably her comeuppance for a couple of casually racist remarks from long ago that I'm sure she'd be embarrassed by now if I ever brought them up to her.

It might sound like I'm excusing some shitty things my mom once said because she's liberal while holding my father at a higher standard because he's conservative. And fuck yeah, that's exactly right. Because, ultimately, my mother has some flaws that come with her age and experience but which she's actively trying to change while also being sympathetic to everybody in our society with her political beliefs and her vote. My father, on the under hand, just continues to dig the hole of terrible he's decided is his new philosophy. You can tell me all you want how you're a good person but if you still vote for Trump or any current Conservative politician who won't stand up to corruption, I know better than to listen to your words. I see what you believe and/or what you've fallen for.

I know, I know! I'm a hypocrite because I'm allowing myself to be biased against conservatives. But, if it'll make y'all feel any better, just remember how you love to say things like, "I don't hate homosexuals. But I hate the acts of which they choose to partake!" Well, same but for conservatives! Also, the conservative speaker would have chosen to end that statement in the preposition. I apologize for my illogical dialogue choice.

Um, so, uh, the Wonder Twins! What are those scamps up to this month?!

Oh yeah! Zan had just saved the world by stopping a plot that was going to save the world.

I just realized I hadn't scanned the cover yet and as I did, I noticed the Wonder Twins fist/star emblem marks a striking resemblance to a goat.se riff.

Zan and Jayna get taken off of monitor duty at the Hall of Justice now that they've stopped the League of Annoyance. You'd think that doing a good job would get you a promotion but those of use who have always done spectacularly good jobs know better. While everybody else works down to the lowest common denominator (because who wants to do more work than the next guy?! A fool, that's who!), good workers just put on blinders and do the job they were hired for until the time they're being paid for is up. Sure, that sounds like I'm describing a sucker who's been completely manipulated by the man! But I'm also describing a person who fulfills their end of whatever bargain they've agreed to! So when I say Zan and Jayna wind up giving tours at the Hall of Justice because they were too good at catching criminals, you'll understand why I went into the previous digression. Maybe? I don't know. Have you seen what state the U.S. is in?! Why are you picking apart my writing style?!

Mark Russell takes a few pages to shit all over hockey fans and now I hate Mark Russell with a burning passion. Even though I'd hardly call myself a hockey fan. I mean, I loved NHL '93 (unless it was '92 (or maybe '94?)) and I loved going to San Jose Sharks games when I was still living in the Bay Area (plus my friend worked equipment for the Sharks and would get us free tickets). But it's not like I follow it much anymore. I just like the feeling of being angry at somebody for writing a satirical critique of sports fans rioting because they're so happy that their team won. Although why would I be angry when I've never done that nor think Russell's wrong in his pointed and humorous critique?! Oh, who cares why! Being angry is just more fun!

Oh shit! I finally understand people's attraction to Fox News!

I just watched a YouTube clip of somebody's Jeremy Roenick highlights from NHL '94 set to the song "More Than a Feeling" and it was pretty awesome. Also, that was definitely the one we played nonstop back in 1993 and 94 and maybe even into 95. Roenick unstoppable down with the puck while Sharks players lay splayed out on their back all across the ice.

To stop the riot, Superman calls in Repulso! He's a guy whose super power is super stink and he's kept in a locked room with a bare table and a microwave and nobody wants to be his friend because he smells like a garbage dumb that vomited on top of the diarrhea it shit out while standing on its head so the stanky muck ran down his body absorbing all of his body odor and then somebody cut up a durian and tossed it in the mix.

Superman is a dick. Get this guy some friends with no sense of smell. Or at the very least, an Xbox Gold account.

After the hockey riots, some "the end of the world" riots take place because Zan and Jayna screw up something or other. Basically what that means is that Repulso gets to be let out of his airtight containment unit again! He's a pretty optimistic guy for being sealed away by Superman (which is just Superman's way! Is somebody a problem? No problem! Put them in the Phantom Zone!). He's so happy and not bitter about his living arrangements that I feel like Zan and Jayna had better figure out a way to give him a better life before this issue ends. Because if Mark Russell fails this character he created before this issue is over and I have to face reality after snot crying about a fictional person, I'm going to be pretty upset when I continue to buy Mark Russell comic books because what other choice do I have? Am I going to stop reading DC's best written comic books because Mark Russell betrayed poor Repulso? Of course not! What am I? A person with integrity?!

Repulso winds up getting his ass beat by rioters as Repulso's handlers flee the chaotic "end of the world" downtown riot scene. Luckily the Wonder Twins are headed downtown to save his life and maybe become his friend or something? Please?

After Zan and Jayna save Repulso, Jayna goes to Superman to tell him everything sucks. He gives her a big speech about how being a hero is lonely work because you don't always get to fuck the hot chick at your secret identity's workplace and also fuck an Amazon warrior while also getting to fuck anybody at all whose initials are "L.L." and also have a best friend who is the coolest guy in the world with a butler who makes the best pancakes. Sometimes you're a fat jerk who smells who even Superman won't fucking give the time of day because Superman has this speech about how being a hero is lonely and that's a good thing so you should embrace your loneliness because who wants to put up with your super stink, fatty?

Jayna is a way better hero than Superman. At least in this comic book that's all about her and not Superman so of course she's going to outshine him!

Oh yeah, the ant in the above picture is Jayna. It can't smell.

Wonder Twins #7 Rating: A+. I should probably be less cynical when reading Mark Russell comic books because he's as earnest and serious as he can be while also providing lots of jokes. He takes writing seriously because what else is there? If your message isn't going to matter, why bother? (is his philosophy. I think. It's not my philosophy! I don't think? Maybe it is! I just write things that matter in a much different way than Mark Russell writes things that matter.) I should probably read Superman's speech and be inspired by the idea that you don't do good because you want adulation; you do good because it's the right thing to do, even if the entire world thinks you're an asshole for doing it. Even if all of the other superheroes think you're a stinky fuck and only keep you around to use as a tool to oppress and manipulate the masses without having to use logic and reason on them (because, let's face it, the people doing terrible things don't understand logic and reason. Or they're do but they're just selfish and greedy so nothing is going to reach them anyway (which maybe is part of Superman's message?)), you're still a hero at the end of the day. You can still be proud of your stinky self. And even if the life is lonely, you should remain positive and upbeat because Superman really doesn't want to be reminded that you exist every time you complain about the lack of reasonable living conditions. Being a hero is a state of mind, says the guy who also looks great and is invulnerable and has the best wife and a cool son and doesn't have to fear death! So inspiring!

The Ray Rebirth #1

This comic just reminds me that I never read The Ray miniseries published at the start of The New 52.

The Ray is a kid named Ray whose father was the Original Ray of The Freedom Fighters. Unless it's different since this is Rebirth. All we're told for sure in this Rebirth Issue is that Ray inherited an "allergy" to light from his father. That allergy is really just a super-power where he gains energy from light. This origin story is his coming out story. Tired of hiding in the dark because he's different, Ray is inspired by an old childhood friend to embrace his true self and stop fearing what everybody else thinks of him. Especially the bigots in the Sons of Liberty super-villain group who want to keep their small town bubble life from popping. So they're all, "Ew! Immigrants and gays! They're ruining our town! We tolerate them in this town but only if they shut up and stay in the darkness! I mean, we must because the Sons of Liberty totally believe everybody hates them, right? Which means everybody will vote against this gay, biracial guy running for mayor! But, I mean, just in case, we have to stop him from becoming mayor to save our democracy!" Then The Ray saves the day by shining a light on the ignorance and hate!

What Did We Learn?
We learned that people hate people who are different. That's the general message in comic books and it's getting pretty depressing. I like to see people as being generally good-natured and willing to get along in a friendly manner. But the Non-Certified Spouse says I'm always giving people too much credit and maybe that's probably true. She's from Nebraska and I'm from the San Francisco Bay Area. Before all this talk of "bubbles," I had learned after traveling across the country and meeting other people that I absolutely did live in a bubble. But the bubble was one where people got along and differences weren't a fucking big deal and even in the 80s, the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade was televised on KOFY TV-20 every year. And yet now that bubble is constantly being attacked as if it's the wrong way of looking at things. If I grew up in a fucking bubble then thank the God I don't believe in that I did. Because I view the world in an optimistic way where most everybody gets along, and those who are hateful or bigoted are marginalized. You lose friends when you have those attitudes. You aren't respected when you cling to those prejudices. And maybe you look inward at some point and wonder why you're so angry and everybody else seems to be having a great fucking time at the roller disco. Yes, I grew up in a bubble. But that bubble should be the shining example of what this country should be. That bubble should grow bigger and be embraced rather than belittled and popped.

The Ranking!
Now that I've said all that, I think I've earned a moment to be super immature: The Ray?! More like The Gay, amirite?!

Green Arrow #9

Green Arrow offers Black Canary some protection as she perfumes her vagina.

According to the cover, Bear Fuck Island is also full of heroin poppies! That totally makes sense because when you're a bear, the greatest thing to do after eating a mouthful of poppies is to fuck whoever just washed up on shore. Also, the poppies are probably the reason the half-faced woman is building robots to guard the island! It's like how the Great and Terrible Oz decided to rule over Oz when he realized the street value of the heroin poppy fields surrounding the Emerald City. His hot air balloon basket was definitely lined with bags of heroin which is why he had to pretend to float off without Dorothy. The heroin just added too much weight to support a human female and her little dog too.

Last issue, I stated that Black Canary and Green Arrow were searching for Diggle by following bear tracks and semen. You probably thought I was joking, right? Well take a look at this, not true believers! I hope Stan Lee can't sue me for typing that.

Gross!

While tracking Diggle and a certain bear that isn't wild simply because it's a bear but also because it's not civilized enough to understand the meaning of consent, Dinah and Ollie stumble on the field of orchids. I mean poppies! Poppies are the ones that make heroin. Orchids are the ones that look sexually perturbing. While he and Dinah share a moment of silence for all of the lives ruined by heroin, somebody falls off of the cliff behind them. Mostly because Green Arrow shoots an arrow at the lip of the cliff, destroying it. I guess that's his Mountain Smashing Arrow that you all remember.

The man who fell off the cliff is Ata, a First Nations...um...First Nationer. He gets all snippy with Green Arrow because Green Arrow is a white man. Gah! It's so tiresome always getting called out on being a white male! It's like every time I take something that doesn't belong to me, or act like a woman in pain is just being dramatic, or call my retarded friends gay, people are always all, "Typical white guy!" How fair is that?! I mean, the guy has a point. Ollie is totes privved. That means "totally privileged" for all of you uncool readers out there. Also, I didn't want to spell privilege. But then I realized it might be confusing so I got out my word calculator and learned how to spell it correctly anyway.

Meanwhile, John Diggle is saying stupid things to his captor.

Don't admit to being enemies! Aren't you supposed to just be repeating your rank and serial number?!

Oh, my mistake! Diggle must know what he's doing because after calling Half-Face here a Ninth Circle Employee, she flips the fuck out trying to point out how she isn't one of them. She proves this by explaining her whole Bear Fuck Island operation to Diggle. In practically no time at all, Ana (that's Half-Face's real name) and Diggle become business partners! Apparently the natives of Bear Fuck Island are just trying to bring green technology to the world and make a little cash doing it. The Ninth Circle provided them with a substantial business loan but to secure the loan, Ana's tribe also had to produce heroin. Diggle explains how the Inferno sank and the bank is dead. But Ana insists that they still probably have two more Bank Ships floating about, the Purgatorio and the Paradiso!

Green Arrow and Black Canary learn all about the Bear Fuck Islander natives' tech from Ata as he leads them to the Bear Creation Laboratory. Apparently all the fucking bears died off but he brought them back for perverted reasons. And now Bear Fuck Island wants to bring their Fucking Bear Technology to the mainland! Except those gosh darned Bankers and Businessmen won't let them! I don't mean the regular ones that are just normal evil and vile! I'm talking about the weirdo ones that burn their employees' skin off before giving them a promotion.

Somewhere in the last eight issues, Green Arrow and Black Canary fell head over heels in love. I'm not sure I can pinpoint the exact moment but I think it was either when they fucked or when Black Canary called Oliver a privileged white male cis piece of shit billionaire asshole who was ruining the world and should probably go hang himself. Now they can't stop kissing each other every time somebody mentions how one person wants to kill another one! They giggle at that and start getting sloppy!

Oh my. The romance is getting me so wet!

I fucking hate competitive couples. I hate when two people are bickering and somebody says, "Get a room already!" I always think, "Better yet. Just stay the fuck away from each other!" Not that I'm saying a really good hate fuck isn't called for now and again. It's just probably not the best thing to found a relationship on. I feel like maybe Black Canary is enjoying the hate more than the fuck.

Oliver, Dinah, and Diggle destroy everything Ana and Ata created while attempting to escape the island. When Ata and Ana get pissed, Oliver just grins and says, "Let's get going! Once again, everything worked out for good old Green Arrow and his crew!" Then a bunch of explosions happen in the background and a bunch of bears burn to death. Green Arrow's final thought is, "I'm not sure how much good we've done here!" Ugh! Typical white guy!

So after destroying another people's native land, Oliver Queen heads back to Seattle with his friends. He'll probably never spare another thought for Bear Fuck Island and how he shit, pissed, and vomited all over the poor place.

The Ranking!
+0! Some of the art was cute although it was weird that Black Canary was drawn almost exclusively with her legs spread in one way or another. I don't think that was the main point of the story though! I think the main point was how native people could totally bring about a green revolution if it weren't for having to live with all of those horny bears.

Green Arrow #7

This is almost the exact experience I had in Tokyo.

The Commentary!
• Last night I went to a Portland restaurant named Yakuza. Today, I have to relearn how to type.

• Why the fuck would you name your restaurant Yakuza? Am I missing something hipstery about this? Are there places in the United States that think it's cute and cool to name an Italian restaurant Mafia? What about naming a German restaurant Chuck Nazi Cheese's? Where a kid can be an Aryan heterosexual! Did I go too far with any of those? Probably not because I'm not the one who opened a Japanese restaurant in Portland called Yakuza.

• I didn't choose to eat there. The Non-Certified Spouse's father's current wife chose it to get the two sides of the family together to celebrate my birthday and her son's girlfriend's birthday (I just realized she can describe the situation in the exactly reversed terms!). She had looked up online for the best Portland family friendly restaurants and apparently Yakuza was in the top ten. Seems appropriate. Also, she only found out what Yakuza meant while we were at the restaurant. It seems like an odd thing not to know but then who am I to judge other people by the information they think is important to their lives? I just went to paste in the code for a bullet point and was surprised when instead of an ampersand followed by bull followed by a semicolon, I pasted in the word "Clitoridectomy".

• You don't need to know what I was doing with that word in my copy memory!

• Since about my mid-twenties, I've had a standing request of everybody I know not to get my presents for any occasion. Sometimes people will because they see something that makes them think of me and they get it. I appreciate that. But when people get me shit simply because I'm a name they need to cross off of a list, they usually just give me junk that I don't fucking want in my house. It's easier for everybody if they just don't feel obligated. The Non-Certified Spouse's father's current wife has yet to listen to me. She even said last night, "It's a crap shoot getting something for Jeff when he doesn't want anything." So here's what she got me: a t-shirt that says "Some people just need a pat on the back" and shows a person-shaped figure pushing another person-shaped figure off of a cliff. Really? That's what she thinks of me? She thinks I'd find that funny and I'd wear that shirt? She would have been better off just getting me a nice button-up shirt to wear to family gatherings instead of a ratty, moth-eaten t-shirt! A good rule of thumb is not to buy people clothing with some kind of joke or statement on it. Let the idiot buy that for themselves. Why would I want to wear a shirt that had a statement that you thought was funny in relation to me? I'm not your t-shirt wearing monkey!

• They also got me two pieces of hipster arcade art: wooden blocks of Pac-men ghosts. We currently have an Ikea light hanging in the living room that is a bunch of blue circles strung together. So I hung the ghosts above two of the strands of dots. They look right at home!

• Anyway, I brought all of that up because Shado and Emiko are dealing with the Yakuza themselves! Of course they are. They're Japanese, right? What other conflict is there? Aside from the occasional really horny octopus.

That'll happen when you invest too much of your personality in your career!

• Green Arrow appears and says, "I'm looking for the angry, white, mouth-breathing, red-meat fascists. Anybody seen them?" Is he talking about the loggers? Why does he assume they're white? Is logging a whites-only job? And why bring up their diets? I'm sure he's just guessing at that because it's a stereotype that manly-men only eat red meat and the occasional potato. Why is he being such a huge jerk to some people who are dealing poorly with feeling misplaced and lost in America? And why the fuck are they suddenly fascists?! Who the fuck do these working class loggers have any power over?! They're just fighting to keep their shitty, dangerous, underpaid jobs because they don't have the imagination to see themselves doing something else for a living! Maybe Oliver needs to shoot himself with an empathy arrow.

• Green Arrow finds himself winding down like a top. I guess he didn't eat breakfast this morning. Or else Emiko purchased a watch for him from The Clock King.

• Oh, it's the watch thing. William Tockman, The Clock King, left a message on the watch to let Oliver know all of his plans and his name and his work history and, pretty soon, his bank account. So I can't see how Oliver is going to bring William Tockman to justice at all. There's just no clues or evidence to his treachery!

• Anyway, now Oliver Queen has to pay William Tockman a lot of money for a long time or Oliver's Swatch will kill him. It's not magic though! It's just technology that doesn't need any elaboration because, well, it's basically magic.

• That story was from a year ago if you didn't notice the "Seattle. One Year ago" tag at the beginning of the previous scan. It's all about how Oliver learned to trust Emiko after losing her trust after he gained it after he first met her. The story in the present is about how he once again lost her trust and now has to regain it. So I guess there are similar themes or something tying the stories together.

• Emiko has confronted The Dragon, the leader of the Yakuza. Shado owes her loyalty to him because in Japan there are only five things one must be concerned with: anime, Pachinko, shame, vending machines, and loyalty. The Dragon asks Emiko what her next move is now that she's made herself a nuisance to him.

I bet the opponent is either Shado herself which puts Emiko in a lose/lose situation, or Green Arrow who will, once again, lose his corporation to save somebody he loves! Wait. I don't think he has his corporation right now. Well, maybe he'll gain it back before the death match against Emiko takes place so that he can lose it again.

• Oliver Queen decides to confront the Clock King (you know! In the story that took place a year ago! Not in the story where Emiko is battling the Yakuza!) instead of paying him tons of money to stay alive. The Clock King points out how he knew Oliver would act out instead of complying because Oliver is "too entitled to follow orders." Oh? So blackmailing a person is now considered following orders? Also, it's moments like this where Ben Percy really interjects himself into the story and ruins the rhythm. Is everybody Oliver encounters from now until Percy is off the title going to call Oliver entitled or talk about his privilege? Because that's all a rich white person can be now? It seems weird that the whole point of social justice and civil rights is to treat everybody as an individual and yet it seems everybody wants to take it in the exact opposite direction where everybody is lumped into preconceived labels and categories. That's going the wrong way! I can see how it's satisfying to turn it around on rich whiteys! Or just hetero whiteys! Or just neurotypical whiteys! Or just, you know, whiteys in general! And, I mean, it's not like I ever do anything that doesn't satisfy some desire of my own, so why should I be sitting back trying to armchair quarterback a social movement that I don't really have any stakes in?! I mean, except for the stake of not being called an entitled privileged white guy! I hate that! Stop doing that! So mean!

• I'm not even white! I mean, half of me is white! And I happen to look like the white half of my family and I didn't get the Spanish name because my mother bought into all that Patriarchal bullshit and took her husband's name! So, I mean, I'm passing as a white person and I gain all of the advantages of a white person and the only Spanish I really know is stuff my grandmother would say when she was angry at me! You knew she was pissed when she reverted back to her native tongue! So, I mean, essentially I'm just a dumb white guy. But if you ask me about the history of the white side of my family, at most I can offer a bored shrug. But if you ask me about the history of my Spanish side of the family, I know that shit back to Spain! Pretty much exactly right back to the moment my ancestors left Spain, like where they left for America (Malaga) and why they came (leaflets handed about asking for labor to come to Hawaii to work in the sugar cane fields). I certainly don't know why my white ancestors came over. Probably to get away from all those Spics!

• Clock King takes an unconscious Oliver Queen and does things he probably shouldn't do to an unconscious person. Like strap him down on a clock face with a bladed pendulum swinging above him! I hope Emiko comes by to save his life! And somehow deactivate the Swatch which is killing him! And apologize for being a terrible sister!

• Emiko stops by with a bomb strapped to her chest. She just walks into the back room where William Tockman keeps all of his traps. He really should remember to lock the front door when he drags an unconscious victim into the back room to have his fun.

• If Emiko's Swatch winds down, she'll blow up and kill The Clock King. So now let's see if he's too entitled to follow orders!

• Darn it. He's not. I should have known that because he's an African-American! I think. Is that what Ben Percy was trying to say? A black guy tells a white guy to do something and the white guy is all, "No way, Jose!" (which is totally racist, by the way). But then a white woman tells a black man to do something and he's all, "Darn it! But I didn't want to! But I guess I have to! Shucks!" (I hope that wasn't totally racist, by the way). So Ben Percy is showing us the hierarchy of entitlement: white guy, white girl, black man. That's just the first course though! I'm sure it gets way more complicated by introducing other ethnicities, genders, mental illnesses, and sexualities! I'm way too white to know the order. I just knew I was right there at the top of the entitlement food chain. I'm Number One! I'm Number One! Unless I'm Number Two because totally white guys might call me a half-breed. Except that I think half-white, half-Spanish gets a pass and is never actually called that derogatory term. I think we're just pretty much whites.

• Shoot! Being on the Internet, I should have probably just pretended I was raceless and sexless and genderless! I could have been a monstrous disembodied brain just spewing all sorts of vile, awful things! Boy did I miss my opportunity to be a total scumbag!

• Oh, I didn't say I wasn't still a partial scumbag!

• Back to the present, the person Emiko is going to fight is the leader of the Yakuza, the Dragon himself. He sure is confident! And stupid. Doesn't he know acting like a typical super villain comes before a fall?

• Shado has been invited to watch because The Dragon is an idiot who somehow thinks one of the main qualities of mothers is to stand by and do nothing while their child is killed. Turns out, they usually do the exact opposite! Who would have guessed?! Certainly not somebody who watched their mother not give a shit about them every single day of their lives while always showing way more affection for other people's kids! That was just a hypothetical type of person who might not have known that mothers are fierce and loyal for their children.

• Shado defeats The Dragon and shames Emiko. Unless fighting your child's death battle isn't a shameful act and then she probably made Emiko proud. It's probably that second one because they hug at the end and then Shado rushes off to go play some Pachinko.

• Before leaving her daughter, Shado tells Emiko to go find Oliver Queen. Then Emiko jumps off the top of a skyscraper and, presumably, dies. Hmm. That's a weird ending!

The Ranking!
+0! Ben Percy should have spent more time on the William Tockman story and less time on the Japanese Shame Game Loyalty Club story. Also, I don't think I learned anything about racism this issue. That's probably why I typed the word "Spics" in the commentary. I'm forgetting why racism is bad, Benjamin! Isn't it about time you write another story about it?

Green Arrow #6

This looks like a playing card. The Bore of Dragons?

The Facts!
• This issue is an Emiko story. It's called "Sins of the Mother" so I'm expecting it to be super sexy.

• I don't know why the sins of the mother would be any sexier than the sins of the father. My mother and father both have many sins for which they'll eventually pay and neither one's sins are any sexier than the other's.

• Emiko is a teenager so of course she's wise beyond her years and smarter than most of the adults in the comic books. It's an easy way to write to an audience because any teenagers reading will be all, "Yep. I'm super wise." And most adults reading are busy screaming out in pain from their eyes cramping up in mid roll. Emiko's wise words are these: "Sometimes the best way to help someone is to hurt them." Why haven't I heard this advice before? You mean I wasted the first forty years of my life trying not to hurt people which means I haven't been helping them to the best of my ability?! Well, that ends today! I'm going to go shine up my crotch-kicking books immediately!

• I think what Emiko is actually saying is that whole thing you say to the friends and family of addicts. You have to let them bottom out before they can get better. Helping them along every step of the way is just enabling their self-destructive behavior. Emiko might also be talking about how doctors have to re-break bones to set them correctly sometimes, or cut people open to take out whatever is inside them and killing them (like feelings). But I'm not going to rule out that she just generally means kicking people in the crotch is good for their well-being.

• Shado has just kidnapped Emiko so she can point out all the ways in which Emiko doesn't actually know all of the things Emiko thinks she knows. I wonder if parents can hire Shado to straighten out all of their teenagers? I wonder if I could get a job doing that?! Parents can hire me to logically point out how a teenager doesn't actually know what the teenager thinks they know and/or to kick them in the crotch.

• The crotch kicking part of my job would only be necessary if the teenager is a total smart ass. And by that, I mean if the teenager is absolutely wiser and smarter than I am. Because they still need to learn that no matter how wise or smart they are, getting kicked in the crotch still fucking hurts.

• Emiko narrates the story of her previous year living with Ollie. It's a whole bunch of "alas, my life" moments where Ollie teaches her how to be a responsible individual not beholden to a criminal mastermind. So of course Emiko runs right out and gets herself beholden to The Clock King. Not The Clock King in Deathstroke or the one who appeared in Harley Quinn! This is Seattle's Clock King who is totally different somehow. Maybe there's an original Clock King who sells Clock King franchises? Maybe he's a subsidiary of Burger King?

• Meanwhile in the present and also in Tokyo, Emiko shows Shado what she learned from Ollie about not being anybody's stooge and then running off to become somebody's stooge anyway. This time, she refuses to do as Shado says and then runs off to be captured by the leader of the Yakuza, Oyabun. Shado is his stooge so at least Emiko moved up from being the stooge of the main bad guy instead of the stooge of the stooge of the main bad guy!

The Opinions!
This issue didn't need to be a comic book. It was about 75% first person narration. It may as well have been published as a diary. I might have liked it better if it had less of Emiko blah blah blahing up the thing. Or I may have actually not minded it if Emiko's voice were a bit less self-assured. Can't people just be individuals without putting so much effort into being one? It's also probable that I didn't really give this book much of a chance because I've been farting a lot and I can barely breathe in my office now. That might have tainted my attitude toward Emiko. I should probably go reread this in the garden but I'm just not interested in reading a Green Arrow comic book twice.

Ranking: +0! Or -0! Whichever!