Hitman Annual #1 (August 1997)

Tommy never looked so cool. What a great fucking cover.

Hitman Annual #1 (August 27th, 1997)
By Garth Ennis, Carlos Ezquerra, Steve Pugh, Carla Feeny, and Willie Schubert
Cover by Laurel Blechman
Edited by Peter Tomasi and Dan Raspler

Laura Blechman, who did the cover here, apparently did a bunch of covers for the "Weird Western Tales" section of the "Pulp Heroes" Annual event. A lot of covers across the event look fucking cool but I missed all of the others because I don't think I was reading many comics in 1997. I kind of have a big hole in my pop culture knowledge around the years 1996 and 1997 because I'd finally left home and was traveling in my VW Bus. I think a bunch of comics I own from '96 and '97 were picked up later as I tried to catch up on all the series I'd been reading before I left my home town. During my road trip, I got by on reading mostly collections, mainly Sandman and Astro City. I was still picking up some comics along the road because I do remember reading a new issue of House of Secrets while lying in the grass in a park in Snoqualmie, Washington, after having a chile relleno for dinner at the Double R Diner (or, um, Tweedy's, I guess?). I think it was around the time Rain and her friends were traveling down the coast from Seattle to San Francisco, exactly the opposite of the route I'd just taken.

This is an annual so don't expect me to care much about it even if it's the best thing I've read since [INSERT NAME OF SMART BOOK HERE. DO NOT FORGET AND LEAVE THIS IN, YOU BIG STUPID. AND, NO, CAVE OF TIME IS NOT SMART. I WONDER IF I CAN READ MOBY DICK IN THE NEXT SIX HOURS?! MAYBE IF THERE'S A FIGHTING FANTASY VERSION OF IT?!]!

I've been finishing up my Dungeons & Dragons campaign the last two weeks which seems to have been a waste of time because two weeks ago I sent out an invite to play to my potential players and not one of them has answered. Do people not read e-mails anymore? Even people who I expressly told "I sent the email!"? Should I reconsider my friendship with them? It's hard to be friends with somebody who has so many friends that you're just another one of the incessant pulls for their attention but they're basically your only friend. It's a terrible power dynamic for the loser with only one friend!

Dammit. Now I'm crying! Maybe Tommy can cheer me up by killing people!

It's going to be hard to read a Western Tale after reading the ultimate Western Tale, Danielewski's Tom's Crossing.

That was the first page of the comic book which obviously isn't where the story begins. You'd know that if you were familiar with the "in media res but only for the first page and then right back to the absolute start of the media" method of writing comic books. For the 21st Century youth who have only ever purchased their comic books already bagged and boarded on the shelf (because what do they think their local comic book store is, a lending library?), this was a marketing gimmick. They knew a kid would pull a comic book off the rack to check it out and that first page had better be a fucking doozy or else the kid was going to stuff it back into the overfull rack and go for the EC comic book with the nearly naked woman smoking a cigarette while giving her aggressive male suitor (probably a werewolf or vampire) an injury to their eye. Oh man. Yeah. That's the stuff, by God! I'm practically burning down my local grocery right now thinking about it!

The issue really begins back at Noonan's where Tommy and Natt are watching marathon of Spaghetti Westerns. Django Eviscerated is mentioned and I assumed it's a made-up title but being that old footsucker put out that movie Django Unchained, it sent me on a mini-research bender looking into the ties of the name Django and Spaghetti Westerns. I grew up in the '70s where every Sunday you could catch a Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Western on a local station on rainy Sundays but I never thought too much more of them past that. So looking them up now, there's like five thousand movies about Django! Should I start a Django podcast?! Obviously I won't because speaking is not my medium; I need the time and comfort and long, five-hour breaks taken in the middle of a sentence that blogging allows. But if I did, I'd definitely begin with Nude Django or Brand of Shame if you're a push-your-glass-up-your-nose smarty pants know-it-all!

Hey! I'm technically an adult!

Natt and Tommy discuss The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and the way Clint Eastwood talks through his teeth for a couple of pages and I think that was mostly because Garth wanted them to say "Clint" a lot and was just hoping for some runny inks on the lettering.

Tommy gets a call to do a job in the American Southwest and, because it pays enough, he takes it. Tommy takes an awful lot of jobs that promise a lot of cash and then he hardly ever gets paid. He really should be taking at least half the pay up front on these gigs.

Oops! Sorry. With all the southwest imagery and Spaghetti Western themes, I didn't realize he was actually heading into the lush forest areas just across the bay from Berkeley.

This is the DC Universe so I know it has different places and geographies than the real world. So when Tommy mentions that he's just a few miles from the Rio Grande and then he travels to Tiburon which has a distinctly American Southwest look to it, I probably should assume there's a town in the Southwest named Tiburon and that he isn't off to have shoot-outs with ex-hippies and acidheads.

Tommy begins the trip by throwing a grenade in a truck with three Mexican guys. I know that sounds bad but hear me out: they were laughing at him! They called him a gringo! I mean the G-word! Sorry for using the Hard-O there! Also I think they threatened to break his legs and also we have yet to be privy to the conversation Tommy had on the phone back at Noonan's Maybe the person on the phone described these three guys and said how they were tormenting the town and murdering and raping and Tommy believed the voice on the phone and so, um, justice? Is that how justice works? You believe one side and never hear from the other side before throwing a grenade at them? I think that's justice. It's definitely the way I act when I'm the Hero in a computer role-playing game! Offer me a reward and some experience to murder somebody? Yes, please! Do I need to hear the other side of it? No way! Justice!

See? If this old white cop told Tommy some Mexicans were causing trouble, then it must be true!

I'm getting the distinct feeling this began as a Jesse Custer story!

The Mexican guys survived the grenade and only lost their truck so the sheriff doesn't see any reason to arrest Tommy. Especially since Tommy is working for him. He's law enforcement and if law enforcement wants to blow up your truck for no reason, your truck is going to be blown up and people online are going to defend it by typing shit like, "If you didn't want your truck to be blown up, maybe don't do whatever you did to get it blown up!" Then they'll hit the enter key and walk away thinking they're the smartest person on the planet with a logical mind that would rival any Vulcan in the universe. Then they'll have sex with their gun (no protection, of course, because that's the only declaration ever made by the Catholic church that they'll listen to because it aligns with their "I ain't wearing no damn condom!" stance) and "forget" to put the child support check in the mail again.

I'd say that I just made a Strawman argument if everything I just typed wasn't so fucking accurate!

I can't believe I never knew this existed. Stupid life-changing road trip in my VW bus!

This is an annual meaning that it's longer than normal. And since I make so many digressions, I always wind up writing about the first 20 pages and then summarizing the last 20 pages in one paragraph. So let's try something different! I'm going to read about 20 pages now, summarize them, and then get back to digressing about the end of the story!

I would summarize the story but I keep getting distracted by the advertisements! Here's another one that has me thinking, "How much extra cash do you have in your pocket and do you think the Local Comic Book Store has any Scare Tactics comics in the back issue bins?!"

This comic book exceeds your recommended daily allowance of tits.

The sheriff's hands aren't entirely clean in all the shit going down in Tiburon since he's taking money from the Mexican crimelord, Santiago, to look the other way. That's why he paid $90,000 to hire a hitman to take care of his problems. I haven't got to what his problems are yet but I have a sneaking suspicion they might just boil down to "The Mexicans are taking over!"

So the long and short of what Tommy's gotten himself into for 90k: a developer bought up a graveyard in Tiburon to turn into a mall. They're supposed to relocate the bodies but they're actually just burning them as they go. The problem the Sheriff and Santiago have is that one of those graves hides a coffin with two million 1905 dollars inside. Sure, it's about 15 years past the end of the frontier but criminals and gangs and cowboys still rode where they could, especially if they got wind of some hotshot tycoon keeping his cash on a train running about the country. They rob this guy and bury the money in a marked coffin. Now, ninety years later, that coffin is going to get dug up and the money isn't going to have rotted away because maybe it's all in gold or something and Santiago and the Sheriff both want it. But the Sheriff has all the leverage because he's got spies in the construction company and even a spy in Santiago's organization. So Santiago has hired some super-powered somebody to help secure the money. And the Sheriff heard about a guy who murders super-powered somebodies and decided to hire him. And that's why Tommy's in Marin County: to help a Sheriff steal a long lost cache of stolen money! It's so fucking typical that my guess is Tommy isn't going to wind up helping either corrupt side. But he'll do enough to try to earn his 90k, at least.

Tommy meets a man who "fought" in Desert Storm, part of my friend the Well-Done Comedian's 82nd Airborne, so they can have a little discussion about black and white and good and bad and how those getting paid to do the dirty work get fucked left, right, center, and super center (you know, right in the starfish). After that, Tommy gets a glimpse at Santiago's new muscle.

He's impressive! A little cavemanesque with a bit of a post-punk hairstyle. But impressive!

Santiago threatens Tommy with Manko but Tommy threatens Santiago's dick with, um, I don't think Tommy names his guns so let's just say Little Tommy. Santiago decides he likes having a penis and calls off Manko for now. Besides, it's not even high noon yet.

The art in this issue is begin tag-teamed by Carlos Ezquerra and Steve Pugh. I'm not super familiar with Carlos Ezquerra. Very familiar with Steve Pugh. You can tell which one is doing the art each chapter because Ezquerra's men who aren't regular characters of the series all have squashed noses and his stubble is realistic. Pugh's art has a more animation style quality to it and Tommy shaves a bit better. Both of them are fairly decent at drawing a racist Mexican stereotype though!

Ezquerra makes me think this is a Steinbeck adaptation; Pugh's makes me think Looney Tunes.

Pugh's also makes me think he was using Cheech Marin as his reference.

After seeing Manko at work and seeing what the dispute is over and realizing any escalation in violence is only going to make everything worse for the regular folks of Tiburon, Tommy declines the contract. Once again, he's not getting paid. And after paying for bus fair all the way across the United States, he must be out about 25 bucks! But maybe he'll stick around to help on his own terms, right? Or be forced to stick around but not actively choose sides? It'll be one of those because the comic book doesn't end after Tommy declines with a page of him on the bus heading back to Gotham.

Upset that Tommy won't be doing his bidding and being a corrupt piece of shit, the Sheriff tips off Santiago that Tommy's leaving. Santiago sends all of his disposable soldiers to murder Tommy but Tommy is all, "I guess I'm doing a bunch of killing for free. Again!" Then he high fives Judd Winick for the "Again!" joke and starts putting bullets in Mexican's heads. But even Tommy isn't good enough to take on a whole army by himself. He's eventually captured.

Stupid corrupt sheriff! I knew I didn't trust him when I saw in that first panel that he was old and white and a cop!

For some reason, the Mexican guys do not kill Tommy. They just leave him in the desert to die. I mean, I know the reason. Tommy isn't allowed to die until Issue #60. Or Issue #59 if Issue #60 is his wake at Noonan's or something. I don't remember. But still, it just seems weird. Like how in The Walking Dead the people who we're supposed to believe are the bad guys never wind up killing Rick and his people but Rick and his people always wind up murdering the shit out of everybody we're supposed to believe were bad. I mean, even Negan's response of smashing Glen's head to a pulp was restrained next to Rick murdering so many of his people! But we, as the audience, are supposed to feel like that was over-the-top because we loved Glen so much! He was such a good boy doggy boy man child boy! Who would kill Glen?! Must be the worst person in history who maybe also just saw a bunch of his people blasted into shit by a rocket launcher or had their throats slit in their sleep! I don't remember how much of what I'm describing was from the comic and how much was from the television show. It's all kind of the same thing to me now.

I will say this: having Negan kill Abraham before he kills Glen in the television show was genius. Because it pulls the rug out from the feet of all the comic book readers who were all, "Here we go! Glen's going to get it!" And then, instead, it's Abraham who gets it! And they're all, "Holy shit! No way! Whew, I'm glad they chose not to kill Glen!" And then Negan is all, "You know what? Let's do one more!" And then everybody is all, "OH MY GOD NO GLEN!" Man, so good.

Tommy's rescued by 82nd Airborne and explains that these guys kill all of their enemies by taking them out to the desert and not killing them. So that explains that perfectly! And then he's all, "You know Manko? He was one of my Desert Storm buddies! I lost partial use of my legs and he became a braindead greased lightning monster!" Also 82nd Airborne called back to Noonan's and left a message for back-up! I hope we see Six-Pack and Baytor in cowboy hats and chaps!

Yeah, man. That's what happens when you don't kill a bitch. They don't get killed!

Only Natt arrives as back-up which seems short-sighted. But then this was probably written before Baytor stayed on Earth and Six-Pack showed that he's, um, somewhat, um, competent. I think I've chosen the wrong words to put there. Anyway, Natt also brings some more firepower to help. So instead of standing there with an old revolver against modern weaponry like on the first page, Tommy now has an Uzi and a fat friend with a shotgun.

Finally, Tommy has a The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly showdown with Manko.

Sure, there's supposed to be a third guy but this isn't an exact retelling of the moment.


Oh wait! There's the third guy! Still, um, not um, exact.

Meanwhile, the sheriff digs up the coffin and finds the two million dollars has rotted away. Man, you'd think somebody would have been smart enough to realize that was what would happen, hunh? I guess that's why he and everybody else in this shithole town use violence to solve their problems. No offense, Tommy!

Tommy winds up burying the Sheriff in the grave with the money and then he and Natt go back to Gotham. Still broke.

The Ranking!
For an annual, this was really good. But then Garth Ennis always seems to take whatever he's writing seriously. He never treats part of the gig as something he has to do that he's not interested in. He just writes a story he's interested in writing! Good for him! Also good for Carlos and Steve because sometimes annuals can get by on the most adequate art. But this looked good! And fun! And mean!

The Flintstones #11

Hopefully this is the issue where Betty finally discovers the Bikini-rock.

The Review!
It's good. You should probably be reading it.

The Flintstones #10

Pebbles' vibrator died.

Here is a thing I just typed into a messenger app to my friend Doom Bunny: "The Flintstones comic book is my favorite current comic book. That is a thing I just typed and meant." I had to reiterate that I actually meant the thing I said because it's ridiculous to think that The Flintstones would wind up being my favorite comic book. Although the more I read this comic book, the more I'm projecting this comic book's attitude and humor backward in time onto the cartoon. I'm actually beginning to think, "Was the cartoon this incisive?" The answer to that is probably no since the first memory of the cartoon that springs to mind is when Fred and Barney bought a boat. Fred wanted to name it the Nautical Princess and Barney wanted to name it the Queen of the Seas. They decided to compromise and named it the Nau-seas. That's the kind of ham-handed comedy I remember from the show! Also I might have gotten some of the facts wrong about the scene. I have no idea what Barney and Fred's names were but I remember the Nautical part and the Seas part because it led to the hilariously named boat joke! Of course now when people mention jokes about boat names, everybody with a lick of a sense of humor thinks of Arrested Development. It makes me laugh whenever I think about them talking about the Seaward and Lucille saying, "I know you're talking about me." Imagine if The Flintstones had come up with that! Instead, they just have a scene where Barney and Fred dress up like a dinosaur in a two man costume and Barney, giggling like crazy in the back half of the suit, tells Fred to make sure Dino knows Barney is in the costume as well so that Dino doesn't get any funny ideas! You know the kinds of ideas dogs (and dog dinosaurs) think are funny! The kind where they hump things without any consent.

I just rewatched the original opening of The Flintstones (the one without the song with lyrics) and was completely floored that The Simpsons must have been riffing on that. So already, I'm buying into the idea that The Flintstones was far more clever than I remember the show being! It makes sense being that The Flintstones was The Simpsons of its time. A prime time cartoon that satirizes the modern family life. I bet even the jokes that I roll my eyes at while watching The Flintstones were fresh when they were used on the show. It's just that I've heard them repeated so often in so many other derivative comedies that they now seem ham-handed.

That's almost the exact question I ask when I buy new technology! Just replace the "or" with an "and"!

The news doesn't focus on the advent of movies for long because they have to get in some warmongering. They continue to portray the Lizard People as dangerous adversaries intent on threatening the safety of Bedrock! The new mayor, Clod the Destroyer, has vowed to destroy them. I wonder if Fox News viewers would understand the satire in this comic book or if they'd be seething right now about those Goddamned Lizard People?

After Clod fails to genocide the Lizard People because they heard him coming and skedaddled, Fred and Barney sneak off to see a pornographic movie. It also might just be an art film since Barney describes it as "women baring themselves." It's possible it's also just a film about women baring their souls and not their breasts. My guess is it's that last one since the movie is called Shale Magnolias. While Fred and Barney pre-masturbate furiously to women crying about their relationships with other women hoping that one of them will suddenly take off their top, Werner Herzrock discovers Wilma's paintings in the trash at the local art gallery. He decides to interview her for the job of art director on his new film. I bet the film has lots of earnest narration about the nature of existence!

There was a bit just before this that was a rousing speech about the ultimate inability of the artist to communicate effectively which spoke less to me than this.

Late at night, the vacuum cleaner has been sneaking out to watch movies at the local theater. On one of those nights, he's forced to vacuum the movie theater floor. Gross! Men have been masturbating in there!

I guess it's not a big surprise then that vacuum cleaner dies. The appliances have a wake that's all feelings and more feelings and things being said that the writer was probably pretty proud of and which I'm totally glossing over because it didn't contain any fart jokes.

The other stories partially resolve themselves as well and other stuff and things. You might be thinking, "What kind of a shitty review is this?" Well, it's the kind of shitty review that can't say anything that would be better than actually reading this comic book. I critique comic books because they're usually vapid and silly and inconsequential pieces of cultural fluff! I never expected to have to say intelligent things about intelligent observations made in intelligent plots that already critique and satirize the world in which we live. How am I supposed to add to that without feeling like a fucking asshole?

The Review!
+1! Just go fucking read this series, dumby.

The Flintstones #9

It's a bowling ball, right?! Fred and Barney haven't gone bowling at all yet!

• Currently in Bedrock, the First Church of Gerald is seeing its attendance fall. Gerald just doesn't say enough of the right things to hold people's attention. If you're going to be a god, you really need to think about what will keep your customers coming back. Or are worshipers considered clients? Anyway, a religion that preaches kindness and charity to other people without making a substantial attempt at pointing out how much charity you'll be getting due to how charitable you are is a piss poor religion. That's why people are now worshiping Vorp in Bedrock! Vorp is a giant snake in a suit. I think it's meant to represent a huge throbbing boner. Because Vorp loves the rich and powerful. Vorp doesn't want the rich and powerful to feel guilty when they go to church and hear idiotic things like "It is better to be an elephant or a camel or something than to be a big fat richy" or "The meek will inherit all of your stuff" or "Don't throw the first stone at poor people. Maybe wait and see if somebody else starts the rock throwing so you can feel blameless."

• This issue is called "A Basket of Disposables." Don't get your expensive silk undergarments in a bunch, you fat richies! The full context is that half of the people Mark Russell is referencing are in the basket! Just because you also think the same thing as the disposables, it doesn't mean you're a disposable. When you get angry and take the name on so you can feel like a martyr, you're missing the entire point of the statement just to be a fucking partisan dickmonster. If you had any self-awareness or intelligence, you would realize that the point was that awful people are supporting this imaginary person that Mark Russell thought up. You don't have to also be awful to support this person but it does kind of say something about you in that it doesn't give you pause in your support of this person that's totally made up in Mark Russell's head and not the person you're totally thinking of right now.

• At night, the vacuum cleaner, bowling bawl, and ottoman get drunk with the coat rack and the lamp. It's like a night in the Young Ones' house.

• Mr. Slate fires all of this workers because he can get apes and Neanderthals to work for far lower wages. Fucking corporations were corrupt even back in prehistoric times?! It figures!

It was a bowling ball! But now that Wilma threw out the old one, I'm too sad to gloat about being a Grandmaster Comic Book Reader. The vacuum cleaner is going to be devastated.

• Betty still hasn't invented the Bikinirock. I'm still upset about this.

• The old bowling ball gets hauled off by recycling. The new bowling ball is a huge asshole.

• Mr. Slate, having realized his dreams of being a totally selfish prick without the overbearing guilt Gerald used to fill him with, fires his turtle butler and hires a cigar smoking eagle butler. Now Mr. Slate is going to get tons of pussy! You can't not get laid with an eagle on your arm. And you can't not get not laid with a turtle roaming your house and shitting all over the floor. Slowly!

• The Flintstones and Rubbles finally go bowling. Unless they've been bowling in an earlier issue and I just totally forgot about it. Anyway, while they're gone, the blender, lamp, vacuum cleaner, ottoman, coat rack, and curtain rod decide to mount an expedition to rescue the old bowling ball. I don't want to get their disposable little hopes up but he's probably dead. Oh wait. That would get their hopes down! That's what I don't want to do!

• Dino tries to get in on the action but he's not an appliance so his attempt at friendship is rebuffed. It's not Dino's fault that the humans have placed him in a category higher than the appliances! He just wants to have friends too. I can't believe the appliances, who know what it feels like to be excluded, derided, and shit upon (some of them literally! I bet the toilet is a pelican), would treat Dino so poorly! The bastards!

• Coat Rack frees all of the animals at the recycling center so that Mr. Slate's turtle can eventually return to his job carrying liquor and cookies around the house. Mr. Slate is going to need him back because his eagle (along with his girlfriend) have decided Mayor Clod is much better, what with the bigger arm to rest upon and the bigger dick to, um, you know what upon.

• Back at home, the appliances murder the new bowling ball.

Too bad the people who need to be shamed by this speech will never read it.

• Look how Steve Pugh fits full bodies into the panels. With feet on the floor and everything! He's the best.

• Later Wilma finds Dino tied up in the pantry. I bet Pebbles takes the blame on that one. Who would believe the furniture and appliances did it?!

The Ranking!
No change! But no change still means it's practically the best comic book DC puts out right now. Who would have guessed? Aside from the part where Mark Russell is writing it. That was a pretty good indicator that it would be good. But I wouldn't have guessed that I'd be loving Steve Pugh's work on this book so much. His shit is wonderful! I don't mean his bowel movements. I have never seen one of those, not even at a con where I may or may not have followed him to the toilet.

The Flintstones #8

Are those the only options? What about Slackers?

• The first vignette (that's a little vig. Unless it's a female vig) is about how women do work that's unappreciated while men do work that is over-appreciated. That's because men need all of that appreciation due to their tiny penises having caused serious ego problems as they grew to adulthood. This causes them to need more appreciation for the slightest of accomplishments. Women are just used to getting shit done because men are oblivious dickfarts who can't even be bothered to notice when a female they see every single day changes up her look. I mean, he'll probably eventually notice which is pretty good for a man. But don't expect him to notice immediately! If it doesn't make their dick move, it can't really penetrate the thought centers of the brain.

• If you're a guy with low self-esteem (probably due to your micro-penis (which I'm not making fun of! I'm just pointing out how that condition can cause a lot of psychological trauma to a male individual (or so I've heard from a friend!))), that previous bullet point was probably pretty sexist. But if you're a guy who gets laid all of the time because you're a super famous comic book blogger (or some other thing that is so hot women's panties fall off around you all the time (or men's panties! I don't want to seem homophobic as well as sexist right out of the gate! I need to lure you deep into my web before I reveal all of my flaws)), you probably read that first bullet point and thought, "Ha! Some guys have small penises."

• Oh, also the first vignette (that sounds delicious, right?) shows how smart women are and how totally bro guys are. You know what I mean by bro. Fucking bros are ruining this world! Go read a fucking book, bros! I mean a real book like Catch-22 or something by that Kurt Funnygut guy! Harry Potter might be an entertaining read with some inspiring messages (Or not. Who can tell? I haven't read it!) but you bros need to read something more substantial. Maybe when the ping pong ball lands in the plastic cup full of beer, how about you have to read a book instead of getting so drunk you do a bunch of stupid shit that completely embarrasses your mother (she doesn't need to know exactly what you've done but, you know, she knows).

• Betty and Wilma are ditching Fred and Barney to go visit Wilma's mother at her farm. Hopefully the farm is in a sunny place which will cause Betty to invent the bikinirock.

• Steve Pugh is back on art duties this month so I'm super happy. Not boner happy! I mean, I will be if that bikinirock thing happens. But I'm just aesthetically pleased (is a person who appreciates aesthetics an aesthlete?) because the faces of Pugh's characters are fucking great. That's as descriptive as I can get because I'm not J.R.R. Tolkien. I don't have the patience to write five pages of flowery nonsense to describe a hobbit's bunion caused by walking halfway across the world. Would it have killed Gandalf to learn the teleport spell?

There's more social commentary in this one sign than in the entire run of most comic books.

• In Bedrock! Twist! Twist!

• In school, Pebbles and Bamm Bamm learn about economics. Apparently it's a scam. Fucking Adam Smith! I knew he was a huge asshole! I'm taking my econ paper from twenty years ago where I said just that back to my professor and demanding he change the F to an A! I have a Flintstones comic book to back me up! Take that, Mr. Whaler!

• In the realm of politics, Clod the Mayor wants to go to war against the lizard people. Damn right! Fucking lizard people. But he doesn't have enough money in the budget. Nobody in the government has the foresight to see the kinds of problems these lizard people are going to cause if they go unchecked. Fuckers will rule the world one day! And for want of a few extra dollars, Clod could have destroyed them centuries ago!

• To get some support for the Lizard People War, Clod hires celebrity Stony Danza to do some Pro-Lizard People war commercials. You remember Stony Danza! Star of Who's the Mastodon? and Taxi (But A Dinosaur Taxi and Not a Car Taxi).

• At the farm, Wilma has some cathartic discussions with her mother and Betty never even contemplates the bikinirock. My boner is so sad.

Are you trying to make me angry, Flintstones comic book?!

• At the Town Hall meeting to discuss closing down the children's hospital so Clod can afford his war, Fred makes an impassioned plea to the men to get them to understand that one of their most critical roles is protecting the children. Since most men are stupid, they take his speech as being a clear reason for destroying the Lizard People. Got to keep those kids safe!

• Betty and Wilma return from the farm and there's a lesson learned or something. I can't really parse the emotional messages!

The Ranking!
+1! Look at that! A positive ranking even though Betty never got into a bikinirock! That proves this comic book is special!

The Flintstones #6

It's the end of the world!

Not surprisingly, this issue with is called "The End of the World as We Know It". Surprisingly, I resisted adding the "as we know it" to my caption for the cover! More surprisingly, Mark Russell chose to do the thing every hack writer would have chosen to do by using that name. That's okay. I'd feel like I'd be in a better condition to judge if I wasn't sitting here feeling really horny for the fictional Betty Rubble.

Before we get to the part of the story where civilization breaks down at the thought of impending doom and everybody becomes savage barbarians bent on survival even if they have to eat their neighbor to accomplish it, let's take a look at how the experiment of civilization is coming along in Bedrock!

Yay! Civilization! I'll stay right here! Did I quote that song correctly?

Later, the bowling ball and the vacuum cleaner have a philosophical discussion about the meaning of life. Surprisngly, the vacuum cleaner doesn't come to the conclusion that life sucks. Unsurprisingly, I just did that tired old joke! The bowling ball, on the other hand, gives life a 9 out of 10. Brozingo!

Each comic book in this series is less like a coherent story and more like a bunch of sketches that revolve around a theme. Sometimes the book can be a bit more story-like than others, like last issue which was half Bamm-Bamm's origin story. I only mention it so that you'll stop wondering why every single one of my paragraphs begins with "Meanwhile" or "Later" or "Back in the Rubbles' bedroom." Because meanwhile, Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm are recruited by Professor Sargon (he's a satirical take on that computer Chess game from the Eighties, Sargon) to become interns at the Science Cave. They've recently gotten a grant to study the sex lives of moths. That's probably totally appropriate for high school kids because who knows more about terrible sex than they do? I suppose I'm being judgmental. For all I know, moths have great sex.

While Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm are doing unpaid work for Professor Sargon who takes an extra long lunch, the moths escape. That's probably a plot point and it'll probably be bad news for somebody! Maybe that's how the world ends? Not in fire or ice but moths.

I'm only scanning this for the Non-Certified Spouse. She has a moth phobia.

The moths begin to fuck which seems about on par with the filth The Flintstones used to air on television. While the moths fuck, Professor Sargon runs a astronomical projection program on his Applecus to discover that an asteroid is on course to strike the Earth!

Everybody panics in different ways. Bamm-Bamm declares he won't be going to school in the interim. Professor Sargon watches moths fuck. Fred, Wilma, and Pebbles attend service at the Church of Gerald.

I wonder how many pedophile priests have used the preach-around joke?

The Flintstones abandon the church when everything breaks out into chaos. Because the only thing keeping people civilized is the thinnest of social contracts. Most of us agree to not be a dick when we go out in public because we don't want to be the victim of dickitude ourselves. But once a small percentage of people decide to break that contract, we're all fucked. At that point, it's beat the shit out of the next guy with a club before he beats the shit out of you! Our social contract for peace rests solely on our selfish desire to not have to deal with other people's shit.

Bedrock is being destroyed by the panicked populace. Pebbles decides that Professor Sargon should recant his observation simply to calm everybody down. Let them die in three days instead of killing each other immediately. Professor Sargon refuses to be a part of a beautiful lie because he adheres to the ugly truth no matter what may come. It's at that moment he discovers the fucking moths messed up his calculations. See? They were a plot point!

I think this story means Mark Russell is a climate change denier. That's totally what he's saying here, right? Science can fuck up so we should never believe it! I mean, climate change? Really?! Show me one other planet that has ever become completely inhospitable to life due to an abundance of greenhouse gases! You can't, can you?! And if you can, I just won't believe it matters because if you said Venus, I say, "Pshaw!" Name a different one because I just won't accept that one.

The news reporter goes back on air to tell everybody that they aren't going to die. He goes on to say, "I hope we can all just go back to pretending we're good people, life being a series of mutually agreed-upon delusions designed to keep us from becoming ongoing accumulations of regret." That's so well said, I'm going to pretend I wrote it. I wrote that bit. Forget how I said the character in the comic book said it. It was totally me.

The Ranking!
No change because it's as high in the rankings as it's going to get until I decide I, ultimately, like it better than The Sheriff of Babylon. Maybe when The Flintstones reaches Issue #13, I'll give it the first spot. Until then, just know this is the most enjoyable monthly comic book I'm currently reading.

The Flintstones #5

This issue is about skullfucking T-Rexes.

Obviously it's not really about skullfucking T-Rexes! The skullfucking of the T-Rexes will be an analogy for some other modern day activity we engage in to the detriment of our animal friends around us. It'll probably be a commentary on the Westminster Dog Show. Is that a dog show? I think that's a dog show.

This issue begins with a salty look at how the most intelligent of us are at the mercy of a population of stupid.

Betty Rubble probably holds the record for person I've had a crush on the longest.

This issue is called "Election Day" because I'm that far behind on my comic book reading. It'll probably be a scathing critique of Republican voters and how after they're done voting, they go back to their secret I Voted Room (which they all have in their houses) to crank some of Rush's early hits while while an Ayn Rand look-a-like beats their genitals with whip made of hundred dollar bills.

Some readers might be thinking, "Tess! Why would you alienate conservative readers by expressing such horrible truths?!" Well, I feel the same way about Republican voters as I do about police. As long as the supposedly good police officers refuse to stand up themselves against the corrupt and racist and power mad authoritarian bastards in their ranks, I will never acknowledge any good police officers exist. And as long as conservative voters continue to simply vote Republican when the Republican Party has shown that they have no loyalty to any of their constituents who aren't wealthy or running a corporation, I'll refuse to believe there are any intelligent Republican voters. If you believe a country without government regulations or oversight is better than a country where corporations are allowed to do whatever they want, you're delusional. Because no matter how terrible the system is, at least with corrupt governments, you still have the comfort of possibly being able to vote them out. You can't do shit to a corporation except not buy their product which you're probably not buying already anyway. Although sometimes I think voting is about as useful as stating you're boycotting a company that doesn't even exist in your local area. I think that, when I'm at my most cynical, but at least voters have some kind of access to the people in power. Try getting a message to a corporation and see how fast they don't respond. I mean, I guess that happens instantly but you'll never know until years have gone by that they really don't intend to respond.

I know the general response to the previous will be a loud squawking of "What about Hillary? What about Hillary? What about Hillary?" which isn't an argument at all. It's just proof of my point about the lack of intelligence on the conservative voter's side.

At Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm's school, they're also holding elections. Some guy named Ralph's campaign slogan is "Vote for me or I'll punch you in the beef!" I like that he adds an exclamation point to it.

Clod is obviously the best pick for mayor. I don't even care about his message. He's just got great headgear!

Fred and Barney are concerned about the anger at the Lizard People because they remember years ago when the people of Bedrock let fear overtake them and they exterminated the Tree People. Back then, the people of Bedrock lived in fur tents and not the great civilization they have now. To get to that point, the trees needed to be cleared so that the construction companies could gain access to the granite to build the city. So Clod's father Mordok convinced the populace that the Tree People were terrible and evil and so fucking in the way. I mean, totally in the way! And not in a good way! They were sneakily in the way in totally selfish and evil ways. Fucking tree people! I'm getting angry just thinking about how in the way they were, just living their fucking lives and wishing to be left alone!

Most of Fred and Barney's peers enlisted to wipe out the Tree People because of the cool headgear. Anybody who has ever looked dapper (and felt dapperer!) knows that's a valid reason for genocide.

Actually, Fred is convinced to enlist because he has a new baby on the way. No better way to get people to fall in line than to make them feel like their children are threatened! No wait! There is a better way! Make them feel like their material possessions are being threatened and also the income that gets them those possessions and it really helps if you've already convinced them to buy a house so that they're sweating over losing the income that pays the mortgage on the place where they keep all of their material possessions and maybe some babies.

Barney and Betty are having trouble conceiving. Oh yeah! I just remembered Bamm-Bamm was a foundling! I bet he's one of those disgusting Tree People!

Fred and Barney continue to satirically remember their military training in preparation for the Tree People Slaughter (you probably remember it as the Vietnam War) while Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm try to deal with the impending election to class president of Ralph the Bully (you probably remember him as Donald Trump).

Pebbles' teacher is hot. I mean, she's intelligent with a great set of agencies.

Pebbles stands up after Portnoy withdraws from the race to tell her class that they probably deserve getting punched in the beef every day for the next year if they have no problem voting in Ralph. That seems a bit too on the nose, Russell! You're getting me depressed and I'm worried about my beef now!

Because Pebbles voices her opposition to Ralph without being scared of him, everybody decides to vote for her. Plus she has protection!

How are we supposed to eliminate bullies from our culture when I audibly cackled at him punching that nerd in the beef?! Am I part of the problem?!

I would like to reiterate from previous commentaries: Steve Pugh is doing a wonderful job on this book. How can you not completely fall in love with Pebbles so joyfully doing the Nixon?

Oh man. I just picked up the comic and glanced at the "Aaah! My beef!" panel again and sniggered like Muttley!

Back to the hilarious send-up of the Vietnam War (or any other modern American war for that matter. Just fucking take your pick, really), Fred and Barney realize that they were lied to about the Tree People invading when they stumble upon the burnt out ruins of the Tree People's home. That's where Barney discovers a survivor: Bamm-Bamm. Instead of stomping on it with his boot heel like a real American...I mean Bedrockian would have done, he takes it home and cares for it and raises it as if it were a real human person.

The Ranking!
I absolutely love this comic book. I would give up all of the other comic books for just this comic book. I would marry this comic book and impregnate it with the Anti-Christ. But I'm still going to only put it at #2 on my All Time (if all the time started like last November or whatever) Comic Book Ranking List because I look smarter if I have the intelligent comic book, The Sheriff of Babylon, above the silly, goofy, satirical comic book. And the only thing I really care about is looking smarter than I really am.

The Flintstones #4

Wilma obviously married Fred for the size of his sausage fingers.

The Review!
Some people write comic books because they never actually cared about comic books but then thought, "Hey! I'm super funny and I can probably con my way into a job with Marvel if I bother the right guy for years on end and then exploit his penchant for being lazy!" And some writers who are not Scott Lobdell write comics to say, "Hey! Look how much smarter I am than you putzes! What a bunch of jerks! I see the truth and shit because I'm a cynical asshole!" That writer is Mark Russell and his attitude is what makes The Flintstones a pretty darn special comic book. If you like reading things written by somebody who takes the opportunity to shit all over everything you believe in--and you probably are since you're reading my blog, you fairy--you'll love Mark Russell's The Flintstones! It's not as good as Prez because Prez had an adorable thing called Corndog girl who made me wish I was a fictional character her age and in her comic book and sexually attractive to her. But it had the same sensibility! The plot existed as a framework mostly to keep a bunch of social conventions in place as Russell skewered them. You may have seen this comic book on the shelves and thought, "Fuck the fucking Flintstones. Maybe I'd watch the stupid ass cartoon if it were the only thing on every channel and I couldn't move and the television wouldn't turn off! Although, wouldn't be fucking hilarious if the show were called The Flintstoners? 420 dude!" If you thought that, you were wrong. Especially about the part where the cartoon would be funnier if it were about pot smokers. Pot smokers are the least funny people on the planet. Of course, there are funny people who occasionally smoke pot, obviously. But those people who base their personalities around the fact that they love to smoke pot? Those people are unbearable.

Some of you may even be passing up this book because you're all, "Steve Pugh is the artist? I don't know, man. Wasn't his Animal Man a little weird to look at and shit?" You might say that but I would never say that! Especially since he follows me on Twitter! I would say things like, "Steve Pugh! How do you pronounce his last name? I do it like I'm throwing up while farting." Anyway, if you ever had doubts about Steve Pugh's art, I'm here to tell you to throw those doubts in the trash bin, Doubty! His work on The Flintstones is fucking beautiful! And I don't just throw the word "fucking" around lightly!

Thanks to America's warmongering reaction to 9/11, I was able to see Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in concert way back then! It's this whole story I don't want to get into so I don't know why I even brought it up.

Another reason you might enjoy The Flintstones is because it teaches lessons! It has some wise things to say in that way that when said, people tend to dismiss it. Boy, do I know how that feels! In this issue, the reader learns that it really was Adam and Steve except not in Eden. They liked to hang out at the Homo Erectus. Readers also learn that pets are Uncle Toms and the animals doing the Flintstones' housework are akin to slaves! Also, they're reappropriating the derogatory term "appliance" for their own casual use. Readers learn that school simply teaches kids how to be a cog, preferably a quiet one. The reader learns a little bit about science too! I think. I mean, Professor Sargon's lesson sounds like he cribbed it from most of the episodes of The Twilight Zone. That's because he says the fundamental force in the universe is loneliness. I'm fairly certain 98% of all The Twilight Zone episodes were about loneliness. The reader also learns some stuff about marriage! I think! And while they're learning that, they're also learning how big of an asshole they are if they're homophobic and have some kind of problem with same sex couples getting married!

Oh! I also learned that gay people are great to have around your kids! Like if you're climbing a hill or something, they can be all, "Here! We'll help your child up!" And you can be all, "Thanks, gays!"

So, in conclusion, I conclude my review.

The Ranking! +...how many points can I give to a book? I mean, this is one of my favorite comic books right now. So, I mean, I'd give it like +10 or something. But that seems a bit excessive. There are kids in third world countries without any pluses to go around, and here I'd be just heaping them onto this book. How about a +4? I don't think I've given one that high since I abandoned my Ranking System and then set up this knock-off version of it that means even less than the previous one! But that's the whole point of this system, in case most of you missed the satire of it all. Like usual. And then you probably called me dumb and dismissed me instead of saying, "Wow! That Tess is so wise!"

The Flintstones #3

Is Wilma taking some kind of feminist stand? Is she throwing away the pubic trimming bird?

The Commentary!
• I just found out that Garth Ennis is going to do a Dastardly and Muttley comic book and I can't be happier. When Dick Dastardly isn't trying to cheat everybody out of everything for his own nefarious purposes, I imagine he drinks alone with Muttley and becomes the most maudlin sad sack in the history of people who drink. Garth Ennis is just the person to humanize Dick Dastardly while still keeping him a right, unlikable bastard! But likable in his unlikableness, you know?! At least to me! I love that guy!

• The Bedrock Middle School's mascots are the "fighting tree people." Oh boy. I can't wait until Pebbles starts raising a stink about that! And about how they all celebrate and have a big feast on Forest Burning Day! And how Christopher Colombrock didn't actually discover Bedrock at all because how can you discover some place that was full of trees with people living in the trees?!

• Bedrock Middle School has taken a trip to the Planetarium to learn about rocks in the sky.

Look, Mark Russell. If you're going to keep taking cheap shots at illogical religious thinking, I'm going to keep reading your comic book.

• I still love Steve Pugh's character designs. Just looking at Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm, I feel like I understand, essentially, who they are. Fucking great work.

• Another aspect of this book I like but probably haven't mentioned is how, like in the cartoon, the animals can speak but the humans don't realize it. I mean, all the animals except Dino and Hoppy, probably.

• Today at the planetarium, a chimp named Sergeant Grumbles is going to be launched into space! Rocket science one hundred thousand years ago was less rocket science and more flinging spitballs. Also it was fictional. If any rockets were being launched one hundred thousand years ago, they weren't being launched from Earth.

• Some aliens detect the death of a chimp being catapulted across the land so they decide to investigate. None of them look like The Great Gazoo, so The Great Gazoo must a shared hallucination between Barney and Fred brought on by the mold growing in their Water Buffalo hats. The aliens land, realize Earth one hundred thousand years ago sucked, and continue on their way. Maybe Gazoo was a stowaway who gets trapped on Earth and now he's going to live in Fred's attic.

• The possibility of being colonized by the aliens has Fred, Barney, and their old vet buddy reminiscing about the days when they were heroes. It was a span of two weeks after they burned out the Tree People and took their land. One of their army buddies, Joe, is now thinking about killing himself. It's pretty funny because he's using one of those huge ram's horn phone receivers and he's just been put on hold! Ha ha! He might kill himself while on hold!

• The aliens catalog Earth on Galactapedia where it catches the interest of some other aliens who decide to visit. These aliens have one of those sexy lady mud flap chrome doohickeys on their spacecraft so they must be classy dudes.

I've met a few men and women in my life who would consider this classy.

• Classy is one of those adjectives that mean absolutely nothing. I mean, it means something in that it has a meaning: stylish and sophisticated! But anybody who calls themselves classy usually isn't. And anybody who calls anybody else not classy, definitely isn't classy. The only fucking people who argue about whether or not someone is classy are people who aren't classy! If you're actually classy, you don't think of yourself as such and would never get in an argument with somebody about your classy status! I hope I never think or hear the word "classy" ever again after writing this bullet point!

• From the way Fred has used "yabba-dabba-do" so far, I'm guessing it means "Fuck me."

• The spring break aliens begin pranking the citizens of Bedrock by disintegrating them. Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm decide to go hide out at the planetarium until the aliens get bored and head home. Fred decides he needs to get the war buddies together to battle back the alien menace. And Betty still has not appeared in her bikini. I'd take a shot of her in her underwear as well.

• Bamm-Bamm wants to fight back but Pebbles has a better idea: message their parents using the pterodactellite dish. I guess you kick it in the nards a bunch and it screeches out a message into the sky. The message is magnified by the cone around its neck. The message is modified by how often and how hard you kick the testicles.

• Suicidal Joe is killed in the uprising so that ties up that sticky plot end nicely. Now nobody has to think about the horrible life of vets of foreign wars full of desperate isolation, loneliness, and depression! Now he can just be remembered as a hero!

I can see why they went with the Grumbles statue. A statue of Joe would be depressing. But who can't smile at the sight of a chimp?!

The Review!
I'm learning so many lessons from this comic book! So far I've learned that nobody appreciates art! And I've also learned that no company appreciates their employees! Also nobody appreciates religion. And nobody appreciates the things they should appreciate but instead appreciate crap. And nobody appreciates war heroes for their service in killing innocents (since that's, apparently, why freedom isn't free! The cost is other people's lives). Hmm, are those really lessons? Or are those just the cynical worldview of a bitter, resentful comic book writer? I don't know but they make sense to me!

Ranking: +2!

The Flintstones #2

The Commentary!
• Who would have thought that the Hanna-Barbera comic books would be the cutting edge comic book commenting on our modern times? The Young Animal line is going to have to really step up their game if it wants to be considered the thinking person's comic book line. Wacky Raceland is over there commenting on the important aspects in our journey through life. The Flintstones are commenting on the ridiculousness of our modern way of living and how we believe much of that idiocy is just the way things are, shrugging off any belief we can change it and just struggling through the role others have given us. Scooby Apocalypse is commenting on how fighting for survival at the end of the world in a short skirt doesn't provide as many on-panel upskirt shots as a reader might expect. And Future Quest is commenting on how wrong it is for a boy and his boy-servant to love a dog so intimately. I think. I've only read one issue of that months ago, so I might not have a clear grasp on what is going on.

• I suppose the Hanna-Barbera comics are aimed at the older generations who watched them in their youth and who are now having midlife crises which the questions being raised in the comic books are only intensifying. Jerks. But the Young Animal imprint will probably be aimed at a much younger generation who still think they're immortal and think the height of humor is when somebody responds to something totally serious with "deez nuts!"

• This issue begins with Fred discovering that his neighbors, the Rubbles, are Promists. That's the opposite of Morpists! Unless Stsiprom is the opposite of Morpists? No, no! You're distracting me with pedantic puzzles, brain. Just let me get to my point about Barney and Betty having a television in their rock house that's apparently wired with rock wires! I don't think they're the caveman equivalent of Satanists because they have a magic television that somehow works without a bunch of bird slaves flying about and making pictures with their beaks in slate at 24 slate pictures per second! I mean he must be a Satanist due to his connections. How did Barney and Betty get their hands on a flat screen, wall-mounted television set in time for the first ever television broadcast?! I think Barney belongs to a more Masonic Lodge than the Water Buffaloes!

Oh! They've got an original Wilma hanging in on the wall!

• Mark Russell had better not be gearing up to make some kind of anti-television point! That's worse than insulting my mom! Don't fucking attack the person and/or object who raised me!

• The television explains how there is "crap" to buy and that everybody is buying that "crap". Well, if that's as tough on television as Russell is going to get--it's a tool to get people to buy useless garbage--I can deal with it! I mean, he also sort of takes a shot at news programs and the media but I do that every chance I get, so I'm all aboard on that one. I'm just glad he didn't denigrate the art of television! Unless Steve Pugh did that by drawing the scene with Wilma's art off to the side while everybody was fixated on the television. I think that was a statement of some kind!

• I don't like having to figure out what things mean. I just like pointing at stuff and saying, "I saw that! Did you see that? Totally saw that. Means something, probably."

• I'm really enjoying Steve Pugh's different people and their facial expressions. He's drawing a lot of characters in this comic book and they all pop with their own little mini-personalities.

• Due to the power of advertising, Fred takes Wilma and Pebbles to the Bedrock Mall to buy some crap. And probably a television of his own so he can see more violent images reported as news!

I want one of these! I wonder if they have any Raccoon Garbage Disposals? Or Kitten Cuisinarts?

• Apparently "Wammath Bammath Thank You Mammoth" is where people buy their general hose devices for washing cars and getting water to the dishwasher because Wilma buys a dishwasher at the mall and it's an octopus. Basically the Flintstones need to hire a full time appliance to feed and care for all of the other appliances. Would that be a monkey? Could a monkey do all of that?

• After the television watching and the shopping and the yard work, the Flintstones go to church. See? Church is just another useless activity in an endless list of activities and chores to pass the time until death.

• The church is called The First Church of Animism and the Morp they all worship is a bird. Hmm. Is that why so many appliances are birds? Because they're Morp's gift to his people? But Morp is a special bird! It's the bird that led them to warmer lands in colder season! It's the bird that led them to water! It's the bird that...well, that's actually all Morp did for them. Two things! Although, that's two more things than God ever did for anybody!

• Morp has been turned into a turntable so now Morp's voice is simply the voice of anybody who knows how to record to vinyl. I guess that's the end of that religion!

• With the sudden influx in Joneses to keep up with, Fred finds himself in a prehistoric pickle. That's clever because it does that thing where the two words begin with the same letter. You know? I don't want to say the word because it might be offensive to people who mishear things. Oh, but I guess I can type it! Alliteration! I just don't want people hearing me say that and thinking I said, "A Little Asian."

Uh-oh! The first Multi-level Marketing scheme!

• While Fred starts his new sitcom moonlighting job, the First Church of Animism reforms because Morp's debut album wasn't too popular.

Ha! Nice dig at the Unitarians!

• After church, Fred goes to return a garbage disposal. Probably because it isn't a raccoon! It's a stupid lizard thing! He also mentions that he needs food for the appliances. See? He needs an appliance to do that job for him.

• While at the Bone Despot, Wilma discovers Peaches is just a vacuum cleaner. This is another one of those statements! I just want everybody to know that I'm not saying this! This is absolutely what this comic book has just declared: God sucks.

• Due to every single animal the Church of Animism can think of to be their god already being used as a piece of crap to improve the lives of the people of Bedrock, they decide to go with the invisible God who can't be seen or heard or easily argued out of existence. It really is difficult to win an argument where somebody says, "Prove my God doesn't exist!" And then you say, "Look around you? Do you see your God? Doesn't exist!" And then they say, "Just because you can't see God or hear God or feel God or touch God or smell God or see any actual non-made-up evidence that God doesn't exist, doesn't mean that God doesn't exist!" Then you say, "Well then anything I can think of exists and you can't prove me wrong!" Then the other person says, "Stop being ridiculous." And then you lose!

• Fred is having difficulty selling his vitamins door-to-door. They're all the difficulties you would expect him to have in a sitcom, like interrupting people at dinner and being chased off of the property by Tyrannosaurs. But Barney is doing well because he's using his absurdly strong child to lie to his customers about the vitamins capabilities.

• Fred learns another lesson from Wilma at the end of this issue because she knows lots of happy bullshit that makes life sound better than it actually is. This time, she points out that people don't need things. What people desperately need is love and recognition and attention and compliments from other people. So get rid of all the stuff and just find some poor sap who desperately needs you more than you actually need them. That'll make you feel better! Unless it just makes you feel guilty that you don't seem to love them anywhere close to how much they love you. I guess you'll just have to figure out what makes you the least miserable!

• While returning a bunch of appliances, Fred picks up Dino because Dino doesn't do shit. I mean, Dino doesn't have a use for the household! What Dino does provide is a never-ending source of love and affection at a cost of practically zero! You don't even have to feel guilty about not really loving your dinosaur dog that much because it doesn't give a fuck. It just loves loving you!

The Review!
I think I already reviewed this in the opening bullet point. It's a fun comic book and I like the way it's put together in short little scenes that all end with a joke or a commentary on something. And then it's all tied up like a shitty television sitcom where Fred learns a lesson from his loving mate! Actually, I could do without the lesson. I'm not reading The Flintstones for insight! I'm reading them to see Betty in a bikini! When is that going to happen?!

Ranking: +3!

The Flintstones #1

See, everybody? I'm fucking reading it! Now lay off me!

The Commentary!
• At first I wasn't planning on reading The Flintstones because I don't have any real fondness for the old cartoon. But my comic book shop put it in my pull box anyway, so I picked it up. I'm glad they did because when I found it was written by Mark Russell, the writer of Prez, I was absolutely excited to read it. If this is a fraction as good as Prez was then it'll still be better than most comic books on the shelves.

• Snippets of songs I heard on this show have been with me since my childhood. Not a month goes by that I don't sing one or two (or three!) of the various songs stuck in my head because of this show. First there is the one that Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm sing: "Let the sun shine in! Meet it with a grin. Open up your heart and let the sun shine in!" Then there's the song by the fab group, The Way Outs! "Way out! WAY OUT! That's where the fun is! WAY OUT!" And lastly, the jingle of some prehistoric burger joint: "Here I come on the run with a burger on a bun singing blah blah blah blah blah! Something about lettuce you'll upset us something pickle or some other thing." Anyway, I still often sing that whole "Here I come on the run with a burger on a bun!" part.

• One other way music and The Flintstones was a part of my life was the theme song. At a way too young age, my mom used to let me watch slasher and paranormal horror movies like The Sentinel and The Exorcist and Friday the 13th. When I would lay down to go to sleep and feel terrified, I would simply picture Fred and Wilma in their car driving down an endless road as I sang the theme song to myself until I passed out from exhaustion.

• One other thing I remember about the cartoon. Barney was a fucking pervert! I'm fairly certain there's an episode where he's reluctant to be the back half of a dinosaur costume because he's worried Dino might get some funny ideas. I think there's another moment that became popular on the Internet where Barney jokes about having two heads. Which is a dick joke, of course.

• This issue is called "A Clean Slate". I guess it's about Mr. Slate taking a bath?

• As an aside, for those of you annoyed that I often don't put my punctuation inside the closing quotes, I suggest looking up why Americans and British differ on the topic. I might be American but I choose to do the logical thing and not the traditional way which only came about due to the printing process. Last I checked, the Internet isn't run like a printing press.

• The comic book takes place in the town of Bedrock one hundred thousand years ago!

Page Two and Russell and Pugh had me at a club called "Homo Erectus".

• I'm guessing "Wammoth Bammoth Thank You Mammoth" is where cavemen go to buy their dishwashers and not a brothel.

• My other favorite place in Bedrock? Trey's Bird Slavery Emporium.

• In Bedrock, Homo Sapiens run it all! But recently, Mr. Slate has hired some Neanderthals because they work cheap and illegal. You can't run a profitable quarry without illegals who are also much stronger and not as smart as the citizens of the city! Fred calls Wilma on his Shellphone to tell her he'll be late because he's got to take the new guys to a boxing match. She reminds Fred that he and Barney have some support group for veterans or something down at the lodge.

• Wilma is into cave painting on canvas.

• Morp is apparently their God.

• Barney calls the Neanderthals "cavemen" when Fred comes to pick him up. Now I feel like a jerk referring to the regular citizens of Bedrock as cavemen! I'm so insensitive! I think?

• After the support group, Fred, Barney and the cavemen finally head out to watch the fights.

Apparently every current fighter on the circuit is undefeated.

• So, anyway, Fred teaches the Neanderthals how they have to work a sucky job and hope to move up to another sucky job to pay for all the other sucky crap that encompasses life until they deflate like a pig balloon and are no use to anybody anymore. Except maybe as slave bird feed. But at least Wilma is having a nice life! Her paintings have been accepted in an exhibition at the Bedrock Museum! That's probably just a cave.

• Fred learns that the only people who profit from war are financiers and corporations. He learns this at Mr. Slate's Hot Tub Party where guests are encouraged to bring their own lotion. Ew. I don't want to know any more about it.

I'm with Wilma.

• One of the Neanderthals winds up falling through the ice at Mr. Slate's party while trying to kill a mammoth for Mr. Slate to barbecue. After that, the other Neanderthals decide they've had enough of civilization and bingo bongo bungle head back into the jungle.

• Fred doesn't get the foreman job because he failed to get Mr. Slate cheap labor. So he and Wilma go home leaving Mr. Slate alone with his dessert tortoise.

I only scanned this picture so I could send it to the Non-Certified Spouse. She was terrified of giant sloths as a child because she saw them in a book on prehistoric animals.

• Later at the art exhibit, Wilma's art is skewered by the critics. I totally agree with them: her hand prints are childish but lack the whimsy which would bring a spark of life and joy to the canvas. Critics are awesome!

• Wilma explains to Fred what her art means to her. Well, that's all well and good but since when did what the artist believed matter? Her handprints are still boring crap!

The Review!
How am I supposed to give an intellectual critique of this comic book when Mark Russell made sure to point out that critics are assholes? Fucking dick! I don't go to his job and draw pictures of writers masturbating constantly over their own material before he can even write the material which would make him want to masturbate! Or something. I mean, obviously if I have a criticism with this comic book, it just proves I'm a stupid artwad critic! So I'm not going to offer a criticism of this comic book even though it would have been favorable!

Ranking: +3! Oh yeah! I forgot to give rankings to the Wacky Raceland comic books! I suppose they can have a +1 between them!

Detective Comics #47

I hope Maps was arrested too!

Commissioner Batman has been busy capturing Robins with the help of Dick Grayson. But he's realized that Dick Grayson is manipulating him to get what he wants so Commissioner Gordon probably has the upper hand. Unless letting Commissioner Gordon know that Dick is manipulating him is part of the manipulation? Can a comic book plan be that complicated if it takes place across different comic books with different writers?

I don't remember where I was going with the previous paragraph because something else which I don't remember caused me to look up Cullen Bunn's Twitter feed and I found that I'm blocked on it. I've never tried to interact with him so he must have just found this tweet linking to a recent review: "Sinestro #17: It's better so I've been writing less smack about Cullen Bunn's mom's decision to have a child." Was that too harsh? I feel like it's playful and somewhat elegant!

I've realized recently that I cannot abide earnest people. Why are earnest people so fucking earnest?! How am I supposed to interact with somebody so bereft of cynicism and facetiousness that they can't understand when I'm making a hilarious joke that's totally at their expense and really kind of mean? Although, in all seriousness (see how I typed that to show that I'm capable of seriousness and that I'm putting my serious pants on right now? Just so nobody is confused by this), I can totally see his reasons for blocking me. We may never have interacted (and if we had, I wouldn't have been mean to him at all!) but he's gotten so much heat from comic book fans that he shouldn't be expected to put up with ones like me who are totally charming and hilarious (even when I think he squatted over Aquaman's face and took a huge dump on him).

Dick Grayson has decided to confront Batman because he thinks Batman should help create an army of teenagers to fight crime in Gotham. It's also possible Dick just doesn't want the police coming down on the kids as hard as they have been. I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle. You can't have every teenager leaping from rooftop to rooftop trying to take down The Penguin! But, I mean, you have to have some teenagers doing that, right?!

But before Dick has that conversation with Commissioner Batman, the story has to jump back in time a few hours. Can't get the exciting part out of the way first! Unless the exciting part led to even more exciting parts! Ooh! Why isn't this comic book doing that?! Instead it's gone from big confrontation between Dick and Jim to boring work talk between Jim and Harvey.

The cops do remember when the Court of Owls were murdering all those important people, right? So why accept a contractor for hanging bird cages to hold Robins guarded by owl sentries?! And why the fuck is a barrel of flammable liquid being stored in there?

I guess all of the police (minus Harvey and Jim) must be working for the Court of Owls and the plan is to burn these children to death as soon as the Court of Owls gives the word. Why else would the place be full of explosive barrels?! Luckily Damian Wayne is already working on an escape plan while Jason Todd and Tim Drake distract everybody with their bickering. Unless it isn't a distraction and that's the only way they know how to interact with each other. I think it's that last one. The only time the two of them had a nice moment together was in Scott Lobdell's Red Hood and the Outlaws and I'm beginning to think that the nice moment wasn't as well-written as I thought it was because the two of them shouldn't have been getting along at all! That's too bad because I always felt like I could at least point to that one scene when I needed to believe that Scott Lobdell might possibly write something worth reading some time in the future.

Commissioner Batman decides to talk with Councilwoman Noctua about the Robin Laws but it's late and she asks him to meet her during office hours. Apparently I don't know anything about local politics because I can't for the life of me understand how this councilwoman has so much power! Where's Commissioner Sawyer in all of this? Doesn't she have anything to say about this bullshit law? What about the Mayor? No wait...he's corrupt. What about the District Attorney?! Harvey Dent would have been on this in two flips of a scarred coin. Actually, Harvey has contacted the District Attorney but nothing has come of it. I guess the Court of Owls have returned to their control of Gotham now that Batman isn't around to challenge them.

And then it's back to the fight between Dick and Jim.

Dick is wearing hypnos and Jim still makes him. If Gordon can recognize Dick Grayson's moves from all the time he spent around Robin, he definitely knows his daughter is Batgirl.

Back in the cage, Damian pisses off the guards so they decide to finally take the masks off of the kids. I'm just guessing they didn't have enough manpower or lawyers around to undress the kids previously. But now that Damian tried to blow them all up, it's strip search time!

Commissioner Batman and Dick Grayson decide it's time for another Batman and Robin team-up. They have both decided that the killing of a police officer by a Robin was a setup to get the ball rolling on this Robin crackdown. And they're going to investigate Councilwoman Noctua together. Nobody's talking Court of Owls yet even though a bunch of cops were nearly killed by a Talon confronting a bunch of Robins just a few days prior to Officer Darrell's murder. The battle was even televised so it's not like Dick wouldn't know about it.

And where the hell is Alfred Pedoworth?!

Back at police headquarters, the administers of the strip searches has arrived.

This was a bullshit reveal! First a shot of the back of the head and in the dark. Then Jason Todd saying, "YOU!" And then the reveal: a guy in an owl mask. Boo! Hiss! Diarrhea spray!

Detective Comics #47 Rating: No change. I bet the Court of Owls are pissed that this crossover is simply called Robin War. Last time, they had the marquee! They were the important players in the show! Now they've just got supporting roles. They'd better get used to it though. They're only as important as the Court's most popular member and right now their most popular member ditched them to work for the Birds of Prey and then went to work for Mockingbird. Now they're just a bunch of nameless Talons and faceless people who think they're important. The owl mask is sort of cool though. I wanted one but I'd already purchased all of the stories in single issue form and couldn't justify buying the Court of Owls Boxed Mask Set no matter how much I wanted to have sex wearing that mask. I wonder if I could bug Scott Snyder to send me one! I bet he has a whole shitload of them. Although I'd better not bug him on Twitter because I wouldn't want him to block me the way Cullen Bunn did! Should my feelings be hurt?! I never even messaged him! Hell, Scott Lobdell hasn't blocked me and I've actually said awful things about him! All I did to Cullen Bunn was criticize one of his mother's decisions in life and BOOM! Blockinated! I'm going to be so mean to him in my next Aquaman review, I tell you what! Petty revenge for the...well, not for the win, exactly. But maybe for temporarily filling the void within my soul?