Action Comics #686 (February 1993)

This should have been the cover to The Adventures of Superman #499.

This cover must be doing its impression of the quiz show Jeopardy because we were given the answer to this riddle in the previous arc of the story, Superman Triangle Issue #7. I felt like last issue was filler so that probably has something to do with this cover being on the wrong comic book. My brain is too old to give a shit about backing up my hypothesis with three strong arguments followed by a conclusion. Also that's baby shit that Debate Bros still somehow cling to. Maybe it's because Junior High was the peak of their lives? Anyway, let's just pretend that my I've written a Big Baby Essay Paper and my arguments that last issue shouldn't have existed are "DC needed to make this story arc 8 issues, 2 for each monthly Superman title," "This cover should have been on the previous issue," and "Why would God let me come up with this hypothesis if it wasn't true?" Bam! Prove me wrong, Bro!

The other riddle on the cover, "Why is Lex Luthor so paranoid?", doesn't need a proper answer because it's a simple tautology. He's that paranoid because he's that paranoid. Paranoia makes you that paranoid, whether it's warranted or not. Does Lex Luthor do crimes against Superman because he thinks Superman will somehow make humanity weaker and thus ultimately destroy humanity? Does Lex Luthor believe Superman will destroy him because of his crimes to stop Superman from destroying him? Paranoia doesn't need any reasons to justify itself because the nature of paranoia isn't that it's a rational reaction to the reality surrounding you. It's going to creep up no matter what outside factors exist. Because paranoia creates paranoia.

I'm not a doctor so the previous paragraph might be absolute bullshit. But God let me think it so it is more probably the absolute truth instead?

This issue begins with The Guardian chasing down criminals driving minivans.

He's not bulletproof but you have to stop aiming directly at his shield, you moron!

The way automatic guns kick, you'd think The Guardian would have been killed in his first fight against some young tough with an Uzi. The first five bullets would ting off the shield as the barrel slowly kicked upward until the sixth bullet would just blow right through The Guardian's neck or chin. Except I don't actually know what The Guardian's powers are so, you know what? Maybe I'm the moron! Maybe The Guardian is bulletproof and the shield is just to remind the readers that he's a Captain America knock-off!

Man. I should have read ahead to this panel so I wouldn't have had to publicly admit that I didn't know something!

The revelation that The Guardian isn't bulletproof (or, more literally, that he doesn't need to be but I'm guessing that he's not and he's just being casually dismissive of the danger he's in here) is less jaw-dropping than the revelation that four guys armed to the teeth with automatic weapons are simply stealing a mini-van. The Guardian apprehends them all and the last one still conscious whines, "You could have killed me!" You hate to see somebody trying to kill somebody else get upset and accuse the other person of trying to kill them. And by "you", I mean "I". I hate to see it. If I were a vigilante and some piece of shit criminal said this after I'd disarmed and subdued him, I would strip him naked, dress him up in a huge Big Baby Diaper, shove a pacifier gag into his mouth, and leave him hanging from a streetlight in one of those baby jumpers. Sure, that would take up more time than it's worth but if you're going to whine when I use every violent option available to me to keep you from killing me, the least I can do is absolutely humiliate you. I might also have a sidekick who's a tattoo artist whose only job is to tattoo the image of the Big Baby Debate Bro Criminal in a diaper hanging in a baby jumper on their back so everybody in prison knows they're a Big Whiny Baby Boy Who Wants Their Num Nums.

Meanwhile, Lex Luthor steeps in paranoia. Superman's body is missing so Lex Luthor, who just recently faked his death, worries that Superman has faked his death to trick Lex Luthor into dropping his guard. But you know who never drops their guard? Paranoids! That could be Thomas Pynchon's sixth Proverb for the Paranoids, just after #5 which is "Paranoids are not paranoids because they're paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations." That seems to go against my paranoid tautology which might look bad for my ability to hypothesize since Pynchon was a genius. But Pynchon was also a paranoid genius who couldn't quite perceive the world outside of his paranoid mind which meant that his paranoia caused him not to think every situation was paranoid because that's how his mind worked but to think every situation was paranoid because, being paranoid, he put himself into those situations. Are those different things? I'm not even sure that sentence makes sense but it hurts my head to re-read it so I'm just going to leave it alone now and ignore it.

One other fault with my argument that I didn't mention: I am also generally paranoid but in a way that allows me to see outside my paranoia and convince myself that I'm starting to think in a paranoid manner. This ability to sort of see outside myself was honed living with my mother who abso-fucking-lutely is (or has been at times in the past?) super paranoid. She also downed a lot of "diet pills" in the '70s so her paranoia may have been less genetic and more amphetaminic. But there must have been some genetic aspect because when I lose my outside overview of my paranoia, I can spiral really quickly. It's only afterward when the paranoid situation I, according to Pynchon, put myself into has passed that I can look back at my thoughts and actions and think, "Whoo boy! What a coconut!"

Lex Luthor explains to Maggie Sawyer why Superman's tomb contains secret doors and tunnels.

Elsewhere in Metropolis, The Guardian gets a telepathic message from Dubbilex that something fishy is going on at Cadmus. He heads back to find Westfield in a lab with Superman's corpse and a technician who had no qualms about dissecting Superman's body until he realizes he's getting caught up in "office politics." I want to say that I'd hate to be friends with somebody eager to cut up a corpse but doesn't want to be judged by his coworkers for that but I have a feeling I already am friends with people like that. It's best that I just don't know that they're like that, I think.

Weird that they would put him in an undamaged suit before taking it off of him to slice him up.

I suppose somebody else put Superman in the new suit before the funeral and not Westfield and his sadistic crew. I don't know who though. Batman? Does he keep a spare suit for Superman in the Batmobile? Maybe it was Wonder Woman? I don't want to be gross but I'm going to be anyway because my mind instantly provided me with a picture of Wonder Woman carefully putting her mouth around Superman's penis while changing him. I don't know why my mind would think that. Maybe my brain was all, "Wouldn't you give it a shot if you thought a BJ would bring Superman around?" Maybe my mind was also just thinking, "Superman naked? Suck that cock!", and it forgot I was thinking about Superman's corpse being naked which makes it gross, at least in most U.S. states. It's also possible that Superman's suit regenerated and it's a hint that maybe the same process is taking place within Superman's body!

A bit of a tussle takes place around Superman's body but ultimately The Guardian is convinced by Westfield to let the experiments go on. The Guardian was apparently brought back from the dead so he figures he owes Superman a chance at being brought back too. That means cloning him and using Dubbilex's telepathic powers to imprint what he's previously collected of Superman's mind and personality onto the clone's brain. Yeah, sure. That seems fine! Who cares if a new Superman isn't really Superman? The only person who would be able to notice is the old Superman and he's dead!

Luthor, Supergirl, Maggie Sawyer, and Dan Turpin investigate Superman's tomb but are stymied by an explosive which floods the tunnels used to break into Superman's crypt. Lex and the police go their separate ways having failed to find out what happened to Superman. But both parties pretty much know Cadmus was behind it. They agree not to go public with the grave robbery, especially now that the Superman Is Jesus Cult have arrived from California to shake tambourines and give out flowers to everybody.

The issue ends with the Kents and Lana Lang flying back to Kansas and, I think, a hint at a future lesbian romance?

I don't know what true compassion looks like because my male gaze consumed my empathy during my teenage years.

Action Comics #686 Rating: B+. You might think I'm kidding about my empathy having been destroyed and maybe I would also normally think that but then I keep glancing over at the pile of comics I have to read and seeing the cover to Superman The Man of Steel #21 and giggling. You can Google the cover to see just how much of a monster I must be to giggle at that cover or you can wait until my review of it coming up in, oh, I don't know, a week maybe? A day? Three months? I am not consistent.

Supergirl #9

This cover reminds me that I should do a review of that fucking awful DC Superhero Girls book. Holy shit that thing is terrible!

My intitial impression of the DC Superhero Girls book was that it was about girls supporting each other and getting along and friendship and yay! But then the first scene is Wonder Woman sparring with Cheetah in gym. Cheetah gets her ass beat and all the DC Superhero Girls cheer wildly while Gym Teacher Wildcat writes a big A on a piece of paper and shows it to her. "See? You get an A for beating up that girl nobody likes!" Cheetah slinks off without a word from any of these caring, kind, supportive girls. No "Good try!" or "You'll get her next time!" or Are you okay?" Nothing! Not a fucking word. They just cheer Wonder Woman and everybody celebrates Wonder Woman's accomplishments and Cheetah probably slinks off to go eat lunch alone trying not to listen to the whispers of the other girls calling her a bitch and a whore.

It's possible I'm reading too much into the comic book. Also, I haven't gotten much farther than that so maybe it all comes together in the third act to explain why everybody treats Cheetah like she doesn't exist and deserves to get beat down so Wonder Woman can get her precious A.

In this issue, Magog interrupts the embryonic Superman/Batman rivalry developing between Batgirl and Supergirl. He's upset about something Supergirl does in the future which is always a good excuse to create time travel so you can go back in the past to punch the person in their confused face. It seems Magog has become a member of the Fatal Five. Last time we saw New 52 Magog, he was just an angry kid transformed into a brutish adult by Circe to extract his revenge on the Justice League for not saving his family during Darkseid's invasion. That's the long way of saying he's just another irrational villain who, like most of America, don't seem to understand blame. So he's a time traveler who wants to avenge future slights in the past, he's a victim who has decided to blame the wrong people for his pain, and he's a villain who has no plan other than to battle a superhero. He's hit the trifecta of comic book tropes I can't fucking stand!

Ultimately, this current issue isn't about Magog and Emerald Empress and the Fatal Five and Saturn Girl and whatever plot all this fucking time travel bullshit will be a part of. This story might be even worse because the villain is Xa-du, a character whose appearance always make me exclaim, "Yawn!" Ben, Batgirl, and Supergirl all wind up in The Phantom Zone. Xa-du, wearing a creepy suit made out of the souls of Kryptonian prisoners, realizes he might be able to escape while wearing the skin of Kara Zor-el. Ew. What is with grown Kryptonian men wanting to wear Kara's skin?! This shit is getting ridiculous. Anyway, that'll be the riveting plot of the next few issues. I thought that nothing could be more boring than Kara dealing with her Daddy Issues and Cyborg Superman. But that's because I Xa-du is so utterly boring that I completely forgot he existed until now. Why is Steve Orlando doing this to Supergirl? And to me!

I wonder if I can find a way to blame Eddie Berganza?

Supergirl: Being Super: Book Three

Electrical problems are the worst.

DC got the title of this comic book wrong. I'm not interested in the super part of Supergirl. I want to read Supergirl: Being A Girl. I suppose, technically, that's what this comic book is actually about. It's less Supergirl saving people and more Supergirl not saving people. Burn! Jen is dead because Supergirl wasn't being super enough. All that's left is Supergirl being a girl with her friend that is still alive. And by being a total girl, she's attracted the attention of her evil lesbian coach who either wants to explore being a girl with her or wants to experiment on her in a non-sexually aggressive manner. That was the name of my Chem Lab class my freshman year of college: Non-sexually Aggressive Chem Lab. It wasn't as much fun as Try Desperately to Get Laid Racquetball.

It would have been much easier to get laid in racquetball if some of the other students had been my type. You know, indiscriminate.

Supergirl has realized, via her dreams, that she's an alien from another planet. That might mean that I'll stop caring as much about this comic book. I liked the parts where she's just trying to be a regular Earth kid in high school with super powers and explosive masturbation. I don't care for the stories about Kryptonians who long to know more about their previous life. Whenever I see one of those Unsolved Mysteries where a person tries to find original family members from a time they can barely remember, I always think, "Pee-yuke! Why would I want to be reunited with some strangers with whom I'm supposed to feel some kind of bond?!" If anybody ever came forward to say that I was their long lost brother or son, I'd be really uncomfortable with it. They would probably decide I was a rude asshole because I would be all, "So we're only doing this get together once, right? Nothing against you, of course! I just don't need any more time parasites sucking up my life energy." Is that the polite way to say fuck off?

Kara decides there's too much going on in her head to worry about being an alien. Good! Now we can just get back to dealing with school stuff, like hanging out with friends and fighting off the lesbian coach's advances.

Your mom's meatloaf what?!

Dolly and Kara have a rough day listening to everybody talk about how the tragedy affected them. But it affected them even more! So everybody is stupid and dumb for having feelings. What do they know about feelings?! Jen wasn't their best friend so they couldn't know what it means to really hurt! I mean, it's not like Jen was their daughter so Kara and Dolly aren't having the greatest feelings about the subject. So maybe they should shut up and stop whining too because obviously Jen's parents are really, really hurting!

Dolly figures out that Kara has super powers but Kara is all, "No, I'm just being a normal girl. I can't be any more normal than this!" And Dolly is all, "I don't care if you're different." And Kara is all, "Well, look again cause I'm not. Totally normal if you accept the white middle class view of normality which is blonde, blue-eyed, light skinned, heterosexual, and from the middle of the country! Totally normal in that offensive way people use the term normal!"

Later, Kara decides to have a memory about how her mother's parents were total ungrateful shitholes. She saved her grandfather from a burning barn (that he probably set fire while testing his burning cross to be used later) and he was all, "That girl ain't right! Git ridda her!" So that's why she can't tell anybody about her powers, even her best living friend Dolly.

Speaking of Dolly, she tampered with her heart monitor slash tracker that the predatory coach gave to the girls she wants to fuck and discovered it had a LexCorp battery. She thought that was weird for some reason. I guess Lexcorp doesn't market batteries for public consumption and only uses them in their futuristic high-tech gear since they're powered by Apokoliptian energy?

That night, Kara hears a voice whispering "Save me." She flies off to see if it's Jen going through her super villain origin but discovers it's Coach Stone's secret lesbian laboratory. Coach freaks out and hits a panic button which triggers Kara's bracelet which knocks Kara's powers offline. It looks like maybe Coach Stone wasn't a creepy pervert lesbian after all! She was just a scientist working for LexCorps who totally have a permit to kidnap local kids and run tests on them.

Kara trashes the lab and Coach Stone runs off to try to look through Dolly's blinds. The person Coach Stone was experimenting on gets up and thanks Kara for saving him. He's speaking Kryptonian but she can totally understand him. His name is Tan-on and I've never heard of him. Kara remembers her name is Kara Zor-el. I hope this guy isn't her cousin also because they're totally giving each other the fuck eye.

Before Supergirl rushes off on an Earthling killing spree with Tan-on (not that Kara knows that's what's about to happen!), she has to go home and leave a note for her parents. "Mom. Dad. I met a boy from my planet. We are going to fuck and kill people. See you later!" She doesn't tell Dolly where she's going because she's not supposed to tell Dolly anything that would make Dolly realize the whole normal act was a lie. Not that Dolly believes it anyway. But she's pretending to believe it because she's a good friend, unlike Kara who is a jerko friend. You know how many friends I managed to not save from death? Less than Kara! Because I'm a great friend!

The Ranking!
+1! Sometimes I feel it isn't fair to rank open-ended comics with comics written to have a conclusion. Obviously the stories that have a beginning, a middle, and an ending are going to be better executed than the stories that have an early middle, a middle middle, and a later middle bleeding into the next early middle of the next story. That's just common sense!

Supergirl #8

Check it out, kids! A free digital comic book on this $3.99 comic book that used to cost $2.99! What a deal!

So DC Comics has decided they can no longer draw the line at $2.99 on monthly comic book titles. But what they can do is distract everybody with a free digital comic code! I'm super angry about this right now! Not because I have to pay an extra dollar on the monthly comic books but because I could be talking about Emerald Empress's tits! I particularly like the giant one leaking milk in her right hand! Wowzers!

The story begins with Kara being excited by a visit from her cousin, Superman. That's because she's forgotten that the only time he comes to visit her is to criticize the way she chooses to live her life. It's always "Wear underwear when flying around the city!" or "Don't stick the Kryptonian memory crystals in your vagina!" and "Stop immediately punching people in the face when you meet them!" and "Stop constantly exploding your vagina!" He has a lot of advice on what she should do with her vagina. Krypton is a lot more like Earth than people realize.

Why would he bring up the time she died as an example of cousins getting together?! That's not sexy at all!

Supergirl is about to remember how awful visits from her cousin can be when he begins to explain that today is a Kryptonian holiday: The Day of Truth! On this day, "Kryptonians tell only the truth, no matter how blunt or brash." Holy fuck. That sounds like the worst holiday ever. I have a feeling most Kryptonians took the day off work and locked themselves in a dark room until it was over. The problem with that kind of holiday is that most people's "truths" aren't truths at all! They're just terrible opinions a person thinks which they want to label as truth so they don't sound quite as horrible expressing them. What The Day of Truth really sounds like is a woman's every day experience on Twitter as sea lions harass them endlessly with "logic" and "reason" and "polite discussion." And of course Superman's first thought on The Day of Truth was to go harass Supergirl with some of his "truths." I said it at the end of the last commentary when he appeared! Superman only visits to tell Supergirl how she's living her life incorrectly. Even when she died in the crisis on infinite Earths, Superman made it all about him!

How about saying, "Go to hell, you prick! Why aren't you spending the day with Lois, hmm? Is it because you know this holiday sucks ass and you'll just wind up saying a bunch of shit you'll regret later?!"

I bet Superman totally just made up this day.

I wonder if the Kryptonian Fox News affiliate had to go off the air on this day?

Luckily for Superman (because if Kara is going to tell the truth, Kal's about to get buried in some), Emerald Empress begins attacking a cement mixer in downtown National City. So instead of attacking each other in the spirit of the holiday, Supergirl and Superman fly off to speak some truth to Emerald Empress. If Superman doesn't say, at least once, "You are so fit!", I won't believe he's taking the day seriously.

Supergirl can't remember why Emerald Empress is mad at her. That makes sense since Emerald Empress is from the future. She's probably mad about however this battle ends. Also, she has apparently already tracked down Saturn Girl in Arkham Asylum and learned that Supergirl destroyed her life. Again, I'm betting Supergirl destroys her life because Emerald Empress attacked her for no reason on the Day of Truth (even if the reason is that Kara destroyed Emerald Empress's life because she attacked her on the Day of Truth for no reason).

Supergirl explains that magic cannot hurt iron. And she says it out loud on the Day of Truth, so it must be truth. But I think she's wrong about that! I think the iron has to be smelted by a Rabbi or spit on by a priest before it can become an anti-magic talisman. I don't think Ford built their engines out of anti-magic iron. I definitely know Volkswagen didn't!

Supergirl defeats Emerald Empress with an engine block so Emerald Empress teleports away but not before truthfully saying, "This isn't over! Lots of people hate you! You might want to reconsider punching people in the face when you meet them!" Meanwhile, Batgirl voyeurs through batnoculars from a building across the way. I bet she just solved the Mystery of Supergirl's Missing Underpants!

Superman and Supergirl fly off to the Fortress of Solitude to eat dinner with Clark's family on the Arctic Express. I don't know why there is a train sitting outside the Fortress but I'm sure the reason can be found in a Golden Age story I've never read.

So she can't use contractions but she understands the way we categorize extended family? I don't even understand that shit!

After dinner, Superman and Supergirl play catch between the Earth and the Moon using the Supermobile. I would have used the Bottled City of Kandor.

Since it's the Day of Truth, Superman finally gets around to what he wants to discuss. He needs to tell Supergirl about how he is now the Superman of every DC Universe. I know Superman Reborn only showed two merging but that was probably due to limited space and/or artist error. I won't believe that DC needed to fix Preboot Superman by integrating him with New 52 Superman. That's like pissing in a milkshake to make it more palatable. No, Preboot Superman has definitely integrated with all of the Supermen that have ever appeared in any non-Elseworlds DC Comic book. And in so doing, apparently, he's changing all of the other characters into their united forms as well! The only thing stopping the process from being truly complete is a tiny dicked blue man on Mars.

Don't think about it too hard or for too long! Shh, shh. Just let it be.

Meanwhile, Simon Tycho apparently isn't a gelatinous butler encased in crystal (unless he became a sentient AI unit in Supergirl's Underwater Fortress of Secret Shame?) anymore. He's back running Tychotech and stealing technology and generally doing bad corporate things and pretending he's not a poor man's Lex Luthor. Also involved in corporate espionage (probably)? Batgirl! Everybody is looking into the rumor that Tychotech has developed (or, you know, stolen) the next big step in green energy. Catco, the DEO, and Batgirl's company (whatever it was called. Luke Fox's Cock Industries?) are interested!

The Ranking!
+1! This comic book became so much better when Cyborg Superman was removed.

Supergirl #7

I hate to complain about a comic book before I've even opened it but who am I kidding? Of course I love to!

You may have noticed the previous caption made no sense. Welcome to my blog, motherfucker!

You're just going to have to imagine what my initial complaint about the cover was because now I'm more interested in discussing the drop of wolf semen on Supergirl's face. Is that appropriate for a Teen comic book? Discuss! But not with me because I say, "Yes! Of course it is!" I'm pretty much up for anything. You hear that, Tom King's penis?

For some unknown reason, Dr. Shay Veritas, Omniologist, has become a main character in this comic book. Here is a list of reasons I hate Dr. Shay Veritas:

1. Her last name is Veritas. Please stop hitting me with the Not-So-Subtle Hammer.
2. She was created by Scott Lobdell who is terrible at everything.
3. She is an Omniologist which is a reminder that she was written by Scott Lobdell because he loves to stick the prefix "omni" on words to prove that he couldn't think of a better word.
4. She uses a cane. What a pretentious hipster.
5. She lives in the center of the Earth. Again, pretentious hipster.
6. She's a DJ. See annotations of point 4 and 5.

I hate to steal the homosexual slang terms because people might think I like to suck dick (don't read that sentence, Tom King's dick. You're different) but is this Supergirl throwing shade at Dr. V?

Dr. V does not stand for Doctor Vagina like you totally thought. It's Dr. Veritas, remember?!

Does anybody else have a problem with the DEO standing for Department of Extra-normal Operations? Wouldn't extra-normal mean even more normal than usual which would mean totally more boring and not more exciting like DC seems to think? If I described Thanksgiving as "extra-normal," people would think, "I guess nobody sucked any turkey dick this year." That's the exact opposite of what it would mean in DC's definition of "extra-normal."

I really seem to have dick sucking on my mind this commentary! Maybe it's because I'm just trying to raise awareness that there are dicks out there that need to be sucked. Go get 'em, dick suckers!

I guess Dr. Veritas doesn't live in her Time Cube in the center of the Earth anymore. She probably got priced out by Hipster Moloids trying to gentrify the DC underworld. Now the Omniologist works for the DEO in their monster containment lab. Need a monster contained? Dr. Veritas is your supremely intelligent person to do it! She might even be smarter than Lex Luthor. He's not a doctor of everything!

Boom! Truth bomb dropped by Dr. V! She really does know everything!

That's a pretty controversial statement, Dr. V. According to The Bible, God made two lights in the sky. Not one light and one thing that reflects the light of the first light. Blasphemer. Also, how does Dr. V explain Eclipso being just fine under the light of the moon, hunh?!

Dr. V's next question (after that panel) is "If moonlight affected Lar-on, why not the light reflected off our own planet?" Yeah! Why isn't he...um...affected by the light that hits him after it already hit him but after it hit Earth after hitting him?! Explain that, lycanthropes! My theory is that light picks up moondust when it bounces off the moon and it's that moondust that turns people into werewolves. Shouldn't the word be "wearwolves" since it's like they're wearing a wolf? But on the non-full moon days, they would be wherewolves because where are the wolves?!

I just wrote a better werewolf story than Twilight. Or whatever sequel of Twilight introduced the wolves. Breaking Moon?

Dr. V has some theory's about werewolves too!

The full moon just makes him angry! "Get out of here, bright light! It's night! It's supposed to be dark! Eeeeeew! I'm so mad! RAWR!"

To cure Lar-on of his Moon Anger (which is the preferred new terminology for his condition), Supergirl must venture into his mind! Why is this a technology that only exists in comic books and usually terrible movies? Why can't I enter the mind of somebody else already so that I can figure out their problems in a metaphorical world created by their personality and ideology? Probably...I started this sentence before wandering off to watch the new It trailer and now I can't remember what I was going to write. Also I need to change my underwear. Be right back!

Supergirl enters Lar-on's mind where he's currently processing Daddy Issues.

No one plans for Lar-on's mother's death? That seems...reasonable?

I've got it! The man in the moon looks like Lar-on's dad which is why he gets so angry he transforms into a wolf! Boom! I'm smarter than Dr. V!

Supergirl finds some other clues as well. She notices Red Kryptonite seems to be behind Lar-on becoming a werewolf. Oh yeah! That's so much the most obvious excuse that I totally forgot about it. Who uses Red Kryptonite in modern comic books? Basically it's only real use was to turn Superman into a stereotype! Or a cabbage. And nobody approves of either of those things anymore, except maybe the awful, terrible monsters who eat fish tacos.

You know what would help make things go as planned? By first making a plan, dum-dum!

After battling the werewolves of Lar-on's hopes and dreams, Supergirl follows mini-werewolf Lar-on into his father's Greenhouse Observatory. I know his greenhouse is red but you wouldn't know what I meant if I had called it a redhouse, would you? You would have been all, "Wait. His observatory is a barn?" Lar-on had dreams of exploring the moons of Krypton even though nobody on Krypton could leave Krypton because its gravity was so strong. Unless that isn't a thing in Rebirth? I don't remember. Maybe people have always been able to leave Krypton and I'm remembering one imaginary tale I read when I was twelve. Anyway, Lar-on's dad is all, "You suck, Lar-on. You're not smart enough to do anything. Although based on these super duper Daddy Issues I'm heaping on you, you'll someday be a DC Superhero! So take heart in that, you moronic twat."

Stop it, Supergirl! By curing his Daddy Issues, you're relegating him to an extra-normal life! OH! I finally get the DEO's name!

Lar-on's dream was to travel to Krypton's moons but his father was all, "That's a stupid dream." So I was as close I as I could come to the truth with the limited knowledge I had after reading three pages of this comic book! But then again, you could guess the answer to every mystery in a DC book was "Daddy Issues" and you'd be right one hundred and ten percent of the time.

I never said I was good at math. I think I even once said I was terrible at math! Also, I might have said I was actually good at math. Which is truth? Dr. V might know!

Supergirl flies Lar-on to the moons of Krypton in his mind. That should cure him of his Daddyissuesthropy! Now he can become Kara's faithful sidekick, Superwolfboy.

The issue ends with Superman paying a visit to Supergirl. Join us next time when Superman tells Supergirl how she's doing the job all wrong!

The Ranking!
+1! It earns that change in rank just for not being a Cyborg Superman story!

Supergirl: Being Super: Book Two

This is where that jerk Jen dies because everything always has to be about her.

This issue is called "Hold On!" That probably means that the theme will have something do with holding on! It sounds like I just made the most obvious statement in the world but you probably didn't realize that I mean the holding on in a figurative sense. It's a metaphor for life! This is going to be the literary equivalent of the poster with the kitten falling out of a tree that's supposed to be uplifting but is just a really macabre thing to have in your office. That kitten probably died during that photo shoot!

The issue begins with Jen not being able to hold on after she falls in a giant crack that opened up during an earthquake the way giant cracks never actually open up during earthquakes. Sure, sometimes buildings fall down or bridges break or the ground cracks open enough for a lake to drain out. Maybe. I might be wrong about some of those. But I don't think giant cracks ever actually open up under your feet. I've lived through so many earthquakes having grown up in California that I think I'm the best authority you'll find on how giant cracks don't open up during earthquakes. It's science! I've experienced earthquakes and I've never seen a giant crack. Therefore they never happen. Q.E.D. That means my logic is unassailable.

Kara Danvers almost helps Jen hold on but then Kara's powers short out because she's been masturbating too much. Remember how when Kara's vagina explodes in a FWASH, she releases all of her stored yellow sun energy and then rolls over and falls a sleep for an hour? Well, she's apparently really been going at it a lot lately, being at that age, and so her powers have gotten wonky. Instead of saving the day by holding on to Jen, Kara loses her powers and Jen falls into a chasm to either die or become a super villain. It's the perfect origin story for a super villain! I wonder if her last name was Luthor?

No. Jen's stupid last name was Bard. Maybe she was the daughter of Jason Bard? He's a guy that huge comic book nerds know. He's famous enough that he has an old Who's Who entry! It's all about how lame he is. No, no! Literally! He's got a bum leg!

You're allowed to call people with mobility problems "lame" in comic books. Jane Foster said so.

Kara mourns by eating lots and lots of cereal. After that, she needs to burn off the cereal calories because she's still in high school and she doesn't want to be the fat girl as well as the girl that masturbates constantly. Everybody knows when Kara masturbates because of the loud boom and the flash of light that can be seen on the horizon. Also because she uses her super ventriloquism to yell "I'm coming!"

Just to make sure everybody understood that the "Hold on!" title wasn't just about literally holding on to Jen but also about figuratively holding on to Jen, Kara breaks down while thinking, "How could I not hold on to her?!"

I would probably have scanned a picture by now but I don't want to break the binding of this comic book by shoving it in my scanner. That's almost the exact same excuse for not shoving things up my ass.

At Jen's memorial service, a background person mentions how they haven't found Jen's body. A-ha! A super villain! I fucking knew it!

Oh! And I found a picture that I wanted to scan that was in the right place on the page so that I could scan it without harming the comic book.

I didn't know an egg in an egg cup was a Christian symbol. What does it represent?!

Jen's sister Beat-Rice is an idiot. She doesn't say anything emotional or intelligent. She's just all, "You made macaroni and shit! You were fucking fast but not fast enough, amirite?! Yo, you in heaven, sis? See you later! Beat-Rice out!"

After the memorial, Kara's coach hits on her. Yeesh! That's so inappropriate. At least wait until Kara's showering in the locker room and her best friend isn't dead!

Kara wears black and white checkered Vans. That was important enough to get a paragraph all to itself.

Kara's got a pretty good home life. The kind of home life that Superman had. That's the thing about Superman and Supergirl that makes them special. Not that they're from Krypton and have extraordinary powers. It's that they had great families and grew up without Daddy Issues. It's what makes the current run of Supergirl so awful! In The New 52 (it could have been earlier than The New 52 as well! I don't know every fact in the world!), somebody decided it would be a good idea to make Zor-el into Cyborg Superman. Somebody made the decision to give Supergirl Daddy Issues. Because how dare she be happy with her adopted family and growing up as an Earthling? Some writer is always coming along with another hot take on Superman or Supergirl and how they should be emotionally fucked up about their real parents and their original home. That's why I'm glad the biggest Daddy Issue Kara is dealing with in this comic book (so far!) is that her dad doesn't want to discuss her growing body with her! She thinks he doesn't want to talk about her super powers but I think he just feels weird talking about any of the changes her body is going through. Some dads find that stuff uncomfortable!

Kara and Dolly ditch their parents to meet up at Burger Shack and have some fries and shakes and to hold on to Jen. It's also an opportunity to remind the reader that the weird coach gave Jen, Kara, and Dolly bracelets that track their every movement. Gay! I mean suspicious! We already knew she was gay by the way she tried to take advantage of Kara's sad feelings at the memorial for a quick roll in the lesbian hay.

Kara's mom has a sweet chat with her before putting her to bed so that Kara can dream the only dream she ever has: the moment she was put in a capsule and shot off from Krypton. She doesn't know that's what the dream is about though! At least she didn't know until maybe tonight. She remembers her father and her mother. He mother says, in Kryptonian, "Be sage, Kara Zor-el, my daughter." That's a weird thing to say! "Be sage"?! I don't want to assume that the letterer made a typographical error so I'm going to assume it's canon that those were Alura's last words. "Be sage, Kara Zor-el, my daughter!"

The dream reminds Kara of the pod in the barn with the garish red blanket so she goes out to the barn to masturbate.

FWASH!

Meanwhile, somebody somewhere else has been handcuffed to a machine with Kryptonite handcuffs! It's either the primary or the secondary subject. I think maybe the coach is interested in more than just an underage lesbian hookup!

The Ranking!
+2! This book looks gorgeous and is smart and emotional and funny and other stuff that people who like comic books would enjoy. It doesn't have any decapitations though. So if that's what you're into, you might want to skip this and wait for Damian: Being Sadistic.

Supergirl #6

Is this the inappropriate cock drawn on the cover variant?

• Right now, I don't know if I want to name my own price on car insurance or fuck Flo deep in the ass.

• In a lot of ways, that above bullet point is everything I strive for this blog to be. I fail an awful lot. But that bullet point up there? That's pure.

• This issue begins with a super exciting moment that forces me to pretend that I'm not now sitting uncomfortably in a load of sticky baby creation vinaigrette.

To be fair, my current pants situation might not be entirely the fault of the word "finale." I did just spend an awfully long time staring at that ad of Flo putting the name your price gun right up to against her lips.

• The main problem with these constant reboots is that fans that stick around from one new universe to the other are forced to reread the same fucking stories over and over again. I fucking get it already, Steve! Supergirl has worse Daddy Issues than that stripper I tipped too well and made too much eye contact with who thought that was an invitation to provide a therapeutic ear for her as she gyrated near my vinaigrette decanter. Is it too much to ask that when I walk into a building that screams in bloody neon "Objectify women sexually here!" that I not have to learn that they're real people with real problems?!

• A lot of what I write is just lying for entertainment reasons (mostly my own entertainment). Like, did I really go to a strip club recently or was that just to build a metaphor I thought was funny? Am I really sitting in a squelchy load of nutsauce? Have I ever found Flo attractive? I mention this because I was reminded of my favorite stripper ever by fabricating that last stripper story and I wanted to retell it but I wanted everybody to know it was absolutely true! So here it is:

I think I met a stripper super villain in Vegas this weekend. She told me her name was Princess Unicorn Pants and for $25, she'd stab me in the face and choke me. All that for $25?! How could I refuse! I wonder if that's why I can barely speak now? It could also be the cause of my spontaneous loss of depth perception.

• Okay, so I can tell you part of that story isn't true because I still regret not finding out what would have happened if I'd spent that twenty-five dollars. I like to think Princess Unicorn Pants totally understood me and that she doesn't offer the Stabby-Chokey to just any pervert who wanders into her club.

• The only reason I had an orgasm in my pants over the word "finale" is because I noticed before reading the first panel of that first page that it begins with somebody in the New York Headquarters of the DEO saying, "Chief Bones." That totally would have been the money shot.

• Currently, National City is being attacked by Cyborg Supermen from outer space. This is happening so that Steve Orlando could use the pun "Rain of the Cyborg Supermen." Totally worth bringing back Cyborg Superman and going over nearly the same ground covered in The New 52 Supergirl comic book.

• Cameron Chase, Dr. Veritas, Cat Grant, and Supergirl have a plan to finally defeat Cyborg Superman. Hopefully in one of those "once and for all" kind of ways. Hopefully they'll smash him into scrap iron and toss him into the sun. Then they'll run some kind of spectrographometer that will pop out a punch card reading, in English and verified by Wonder Woman's lasso, "No trace of Cyborg Superman. Utterly destroyed forever and not 'forever' in comic terms but in the actual definition of forever. Good riddance, fuckbumble." It would be odd for a machine to use the word "fuckbumble" but that could be used as a seed for some future plot where machines rise up, not to take over the world, but to just be really snarky assholes to the people trying to use them.

Oh, the Kryptoniad! Who can forget it's powerful first line: "Great Krypton lay in a dark and stormy night."

• The joke in that caption probably fully hit for only like five people.

• To stop the Cyborg Superpeople, Cat Grant uses the Catco App on the phones of every citizen of National City who uses the app because they didn't read the terms of service that stated "We can hijack your phone at any time if it will help save National City (or promote Catco Enterprises in any way)." The app sends out a signal that shuts down the Cyborg Superpeople, allowing Supergirl to walk up to a now powerless Cyborg Superfather and say, "Dad. Suck my fucking dick."

• Argo City crashes into the ocean a few miles out from National City and doesn't cause a tidal wave of any kind whatsoever. Also, Supergirl is more compassionate than I am. She doesn't tell her dad to suck her dick at all! Instead, she hugs him and is all, "We could have worked together, daddy. Why wouldn't you love me?" Then all of the heroes in the DC Universe feel the strengthening of another Daddy Issue and silently shed a tear.

• So instead of crashing into the sun and being obliterated for all time so I never have to read another Cyborg Superman story again, Cyborg Superman and his city crash just off shore from National City. Just the perfect place for Supergirl to shrug her shoulders and think, "I guess that takes care of that! No reason to follow up at all!"

Wait a second. The Pacific Ocean? National City is on the West Coast?! With a name like National City, I assumed it was a version of Washington, D.C. But not Washington, D.C., obviously, since it isn't the seat of the United States government. But more like the way Metropolis and Gotham are both kind of New York but New York still exists as well. I guess it's pseudo Los Angeles or quasi San Francisco or quasi-pseudo San Diego.

• Great. So now Hank Henshaw has become the Randall Dowling of the DC Universe? Now that he's returned from space with some secret super power, he's gallivanting around the globe collecting alien technology to use for his own ominous purposes.

• Later, one of Doctor Veritas's aides mentions why there wasn't any tidal waves and I'm all, "Oh, sure! Make me look stupid for wanting an explanation and then giving it to me later after I'd already complained about it." The tidal wave was absorbed by "Dr. Aquadus' field." I would have made that "Dr. Aquadus's field" but then I'm just a barbarian storming down the gates of language. I also will never for the life of me say "an historical something or other." But the weirder part is that a guy named Aquadus went into aquatic sciences! The weirdest part is that I first thought the tidal wave field absorber was invented by Dr. Aquadog.

• Supergirl didn't let Cyborg Superman crash into the ocean because she likes boring plots, I guess. She took him back to Dr. Veritas's lair in the center of the Earth to be made Kryptonian again. That would make more sense if he were human because you'd understand that when I said "be made human again" that I meant he was being de-robotified.

The Ranking!
No change! It was difficult to check my excitement on reading the Chief Bones comment but I had to rate this book based on its merits. And its merits only consisted of phrases that included the words "Cyborg" and "Superman," so I couldn't help but be mostly bored by them.

Supergirl #5

Remember that mirror anecdote I used in the last review? I'm fucking smart and shit.

I don't know how long I'll be able to enjoy reading comic books this morning because I just discovered my stupid fucking comic book store put two copies of Suicide Squad #9 in my pull box (with different covers) instead of giving me Justice League vs. Suicide Squad #4. Who wants to be when I go back there and start busting heads later today (if I can even find the energy to leave the house because now I'm super depressed with my life not having gone smoothly in this tiny instance) that they won't have any more copies of that comic book?! Fucking hell. My life is the worst. And I don't mean that in a hyperbolic way. Totally serious. The worst. Not even joking to make a point.

This scene is a good analogy for me and my comic book reading habits. I could avoid reading all of the bad comics but instead I just stand there and rant and rave while they crash down upon me, leaving me a shuddering and miserable pile of organic goop.

Not that I think this is a bad comic book. At least not yet. It's just a boring comic book in a lot of ways, most of those ways being Cyborg Superman. I know I've harped on this four separate times prior to this (in each of the previous issues, natch!) but I think it can't be ranted about enough. Nobody wants to read any more stories starring Cyborg Superman! Kara's dad was a fucking loser in life and he's an even more boring loser in half-life! Please kill him at the end of this story. And not inconclusively! Tear him to bits, melt him down, smash his brain and throw it into a black hole. I suppose in comic books, even that isn't conclusive. So maybe have an epilogue where God appears and says, "Well, I guess that's it for Cyborg Superman! Even I couldn't bring him back after that!"

You might want to worry about the owner of that car's insurance company coming after you though.

Cyborg Superman does not die in this issue. He's not even defeated. Instead, the battle continues next issue. That's bad news for me because I have to read another Cyborg Superman story. But it's good news for anybody who likes to read my long, rambling digressions of life and comic books because by next month, I'm sure I'll be caught up on my back issues. That means instead of just summarizing the story by saying things like "Cyborg Superman is boring" and "Supergirl has a terrific bum," I'll say things like "Do you suppose if you jerked off into a toilet and then shit in that same toilet, the sperm would try to fertilize your turds?"

The Ranking!
No change!

Supergirl #4

Spoiler alert: zero bum shots in this issue.

The Review!
No change. Instead of one Cyborg Superman, this issue contains hundreds of them. That doesn't make the story better because when you multiply a negative number, it still remains negative. Unless the other Cyborg Supermen should also be thought of as a negative number and then the equation would wind up positive. But that can't be true because this wasn't the best Cyborg Superman comic book I've ever read. It was just another boring one because the character is boring. I'm sorry to have to drop that truth bomb on all of the Cyborg Superman fans who thought he was exciting. He was only invented to make people wonder if the real Superman had come back from the dead. He could have been Clone Superman, or Hoodoo Superman, or Sentient Protoplasmic Jelly Superman. But Dan Jurgens went with the cyborg angle because Dan Jurgens is a robot with no input devices to upgrade his knowledge so he's basically stuck in 1986. Cyborgs were pretty fucking hot in 1986! None of that explains why Steve Orlando has decided that another Cyborg Superman story would be exciting in 2016 and 2017. Am I supposed to be excited about them because of the storytelling trend of using robots and machines as a mirror to our own humanity? Probably because that's basically what's happening to Supergirl in this story. She's learning what it means to be human. Too bad I'm just learning what it means to be bored.

Also, I still can't stand Cat Grant. Such a terrible human being. She thinks she's so much better than everybody else and she speaks down to them constantly and acts like she knows everything and is super hyper-arrogant! Why would anybody read anything I write? I mean she writes! So awful.

Supergirl #3

Lucky Cyborg Aliens get to see Supergirl's bum.

I posted a quote from my review of The Lost Boys #3 on Facebook yesterday and these were the immediate responses.

My profile picture is Oliver Queen making out with a bear.

This, in a nutshell, is why people can't stand satire. The target of satire is such a small bulls-eye that most people will miss the point entirely. In the above example, people with the attitude it was meant to mock praise it. Others who read it and thought it was serious but thought it was a disgusting and sexist statement probably just rolled their eyes and moved on, possibly unfollowing me because they now think I'm a disgusting bastard. But does that mean satire should be done away with simply because the target audience is so narrow? Fuck no! Because without humor like this, I would find little joy in the world. Statements like the one in the screenshot above are also why people tend to think I'm unsubtle and shallow and sexist and stupid. Because they don't realize that writing takes a lot more effort than reading. Reading is fucking easy because you're backed up by all of your prejudices, biases, issues, and life experiences. You don't have to think, "What does this bit I'm reading intend to communicate?" You just read it and think, "Sexist." Or, like the guys on my Facebook timeline, "YEAH BOY!"

I want to write to an intelligent audience, no matter how stupid and terrible I may come off to those incapable of comprehending my true wit!

Plus I'm facetious as fuck, so I can't blame anybody for misunderstanding the majority of the things I write. Sometimes I'm making a statement and sometimes I'm just making myself laugh. Somebody's got to be funny enough to do it!

This issue begins with Supergirl headed into space to investigate Cyborg Superman's claim that he saved Argo City and Kara's mother. Kara's Other Mother, Eliza Danvers, decides to go with her.

I just noticed that Supergirl doesn't use contractions in English in much the same way Starfire didn't in the Teen Titans cartoon. Is that shorthand for a character speaking a non-native language? It must be since she does use contractions in the flashbacks where she's speaking in Kryptonian.

The DEO has ships capable of attaining speeds that will allow Eliza to finish this space journey in her lifetime.

Argo City is floating just outside the orbit of Saturn. So I suppose even with current space vehicle speeds, Eliza could make this journey in her lifetime. It's just that she'd probably not want to spend more than half a decade heading to Saturn and back just to get a glimpse of Argo City.

On Argo City, Kara discovers that all of the dead Argonians have been resurrected as Cyborg Argonians, including her mother. I would be so angry if I had thought my entire family was dead and then somebody came along and brought them all back to life. I was free of them, you monster! FREE! You might as well chain me up and throw me in a cell as create a social situation where I'm constantly bombarded with a sense of obligation to others!

Other stuff happens in National City while Supergirl is away but since it features characters that are assdicks like Cameron Chase, Cat Grant, and Ben Rubel, it doesn't interest me. The part of the story with Supergirl shouldn't interest me either because it's more fucking Cyborg Superman but it also involves the possibility of getting a glimpse of Supergirl's Bum, so I'm giving it my full attention.

Supergirl realizes her mother and the other cyborg denizens of Argo City aren't really anything but automaton look-a-likes. Cyborg Superman assures her he has a way to bring them all to life but he doesn't go into detail. Probably because it's the same detail as the last time Supergirl experienced this story: he needs Supergirl's skin. And probably her memories and life juice and stuff.

Why did Orlando feel he needed to retell this story? I know this isn't a retelling but actually a different telling of Supergirl once again coming to Argo City at the insistence of her cyborg dad. It's like reading Genesis. How many times do I have to reread stories about a husband convincing some authoritarian that his wife is actually his sister which only winds up in some ludicrous Three's Company situation where the authority figure decides to marry the guy's wife only to be cursed by God? Then the king or Pharaoh not only repents but gives the guy a large sum of money to keep quiet about the little mistake. Now I've practically read Supergirl going to Argo City to be manipulated by her fake dad almost as many times as the "My Wife is My Sister Con" from The Bible!

The way to bring the Cyborg Argonians completely to life is to steal the life from another living creature. Cyborg Superman has decided the people of Earth will do nicely.

The Ranking!
No change! I feel like I'm not going to get an accurate reading on how much I like this comic book until Cyborg Superman is no longer in it. I suppose writers bring back the same damn villain over and over again because each one was created for a specific thematic reason. Since this is a reboot to Supergirl's life, Orlando needs to establish how she fits on Earth as quickly as possible. The easiest way to do that is to have her deny her Kryptonian heritage, even if what she's denying is a twisted, monstrous version of it. She needs to shove the past away and look to a future with the DEO, the Danvers, Cat Grant, and Ben Rubel's penis. Like the speaking without contractions, Cyborg Superman is shorthand for Kara moving on and accepting Earth as her home.

Supergirl: Being Super: Book One

Ugh! A comic book about a girl?! Gross!

I'm only pretending to not like comic books with girls in them because I don't want people thinking I'm less of a man for not reading comics full of men with lots of muscles. You know the kind of man I'm talking about! The kind who would rather see the world destroyed than see a woman leading the team to save the day. You know! The kind of man who would rather build a killer magic deck than talk to a woman he knows isn't interested in getting naked with him. Come on! I know you know the kind of man I'm talking about! The kind that always vaguely smells of farts and Arby's. They're the keepers of the male dominated everything and have the fortitude to stick to their guns, no matter how detrimental those guns are definitely going to be to their future sex life. Not that women are only in the world for men to have sex with! What I mean is that if a guy thinks women are only in the world for men to have sex with, that man isn't going to have sex with any of them. It's a self-denying prophecy!

No, but seriously. Did I use that segue correctly? I want everybody to know that I was just joshing in that previous paragraph. Just a little light humor between friends and possibly future Internet lovers. I can't really grasp the reason to feel threatened by female characters taking the lead roles in action movies and science fiction and other previously male-dominated genres. How does it affect a person's life in any way at all? When I was in elementary school, two of my favorite series were the Oz books and Ramona Quimby books. It never even occurred to me that I somehow couldn't or shouldn't identify with Dorothy or Ramona because I was a boy. Obviously I read way more books with male leads in them because there were more of those. I couldn't know what those characters, being female, meant to girls who had a scarcity of female leads in books that didn't get people tittering about periods and boobies. And that's my point. More female leads in fantastic stories is in no way taking anything away from guys. But it is adding value to the world for young girls. The only reason to be an angry asshole about it is that you are probably, inherently, an angry asshole.

Plus I'd rather watch Felicity Jones for two hours than Mark Hamill. Sorry, Mark. That's not being sexist! That's just me being true to my heterosexuality! I'm allowed to discuss my interests even when they align with the patriarchy's agenda! I'm allowed to watch a movie and go, "Le sigh!"

Supergirl's story begins with a page talking about how to begin the story. My high school English teacher would have read this in front of the class and humiliated Mariko for it. He was always all, "Just begin your fucking story! Don't call attention to beginning your story. Just fucking begin it! If you feel you have to mention the beginning in some sense to get going, just cut out the beginning nonsense when you're finished! You fucking idiots!" Then he'd kick a desk or two just to show that he really meant what he was saying. I don't know if he was right or not. I just know I never begin stories by talking about how I'm beginning the story because I'm too scared to.

This is the second page of the story. It's a perfectly acceptable place to start! Although the first page did show a spaceship crashing in a field. Maybe that was needed for anybody who picked this up thinking, "I wonder who Supergirl is and where she came from?!" Of course if they're that ignorant of Superman and Supergirl, the crashing spaceship scenes aren't going to clear anything up for them.

This Book is also called "Where Do I Begin?", so I guess the whole "Where do I start?" question is thematic to the entire piece. I think Mr. Borror might have been okay with the opening of this comic. But just this once!

I've always thought that when people write things about how they don't know what to write because they feel they need to write something, they may as well not be writing anything at all. If all you have to say is, "I don't know what to say!", maybe that's a sign that you should stop thinking of yourself as a writer.

Kara Danvers (Supergirl!) has two friends: the Athlete and the Dyke. I suppose she's the Nerd. They're most of the way to their own Breakfast Club already!

That's not sexist at all! Like I said earlier, people have a right to desire the things they desire without being told they're wrong for desiring them! Jerko Athlete!

Being sexually attracted to a specific group of people doesn't make you sexist against those people. Of course, treating them as if all they have to offer is relief to your aching secret body parts is probably sexist. There are probably other reasons people are sexist but I wouldn't know what they are because my Wisdom score is like 4. I put all of my Attribute Points into Shaming Men Who Play Magic the Gathering. One of the flaws I took to get more attribute points was "Male who plays Magic the Gathering." It wasn't the best decision.

Kara's birthday is coming up. It'll probably be the birthday when she becomes a woman. A super woman! A super woman called Supergirl! Hmm, that probably makes more sense than it seems to. I bet whoever dates Supergirl must feel really awkward telling other people. "Oh, I'm totally talking with this chick named Supergirl. Um, but she's a woman! A grown ass woman! I mean, a teenaged woman but, you know, I mean, she's not like eleven! You know what? We're breaking up. Never mind."

Kara has been wondering where she's from lately because it fits the theme of this story. She knows she arrived on Earth in a pod and that she can fly and that Jimmy in math (Second row back, fourth seat over) makes her belly float and that she's super strong but that's about it. I guess she doesn't even know Silver Banshee yet. Unless Dolly Granger (the Dyke!) is going to become Silver Banshee.

"Moooooooom! Gross!"

The morning of Kara's sixteenth birthday party, she squeezes a Kryptonian zit and almost destroys her house. Now I'm wondering what happened the first time Kal-el had a wet dream. He could have killed somebody in the next room!

Kara's hands also begin to glow and she gets a fever and she feels tired. I think she really is becoming a woman. Don't females go through some kind of menopause at this age? I don't mean the old person menopause where the meno gets put on pause. I mean it's the start of the meno but it could be called menopause as well because you don't just press the pause button to pause a show; you press the pause button to get it going again! I once had that revelation while on LSD and it was, well, a revelation! It wasn't quite as spectacular the next day. I also thought triangles explained everything but I couldn't remember the logic behind it the next day. Taking hallucinogens doesn't make you smarter or more spiritual or wiser. But they sure are entertaining!

Later at the big track meet, an earthquake hits and Dolly almost dies by falling in one of those huge cracks that opens up whenever an earthquake hits. I'm from California so I can confirm that's totally true. I've fallen in like five or six dozen over the years. Comic books really exaggerate them though and make it seem like you fall all the way to hell. Usually you just fall into the sewer and get bitten by a rat or two.

After Kara saves Dolly without exposing her ability to do super feats, she begins looking for her other friend, Jen. Jen is knocked down by the stampeding parents and it looks like she's about to fall in a crack too when the issue ends. It would be just like Jen, the character who knows exactly what she wants from life and the talent to get it, to die so that Kara Danvers can learn a lesson about how random and chaotic everything is and how nobody should ever bother pursuing their dreams because life is a futile attempt to attain any sort of lasting happiness.

Or Kara will, like, save the day and shit. Whatever.

The Ranking!
I'm not going to say Kara and her friends are super adorable in this comic book because that would be sexist and reductive. But I will say, "Oh my god they're so fucking cute with their teenage problems and high school friendships!" That's okay to say, right?

Supergirl #2

When Superman does this, everybody screams, "IT'S SUPERMAN!" When Supergirl does it, everybody screams, "BREASTS!"

The Commentary!
Have all of Marvel's superheroes been given a teenage girl version yet? Supergirl was so far ahead of her time! I'm holding out for Young Female Punisher and Young Female Moon Knight. As long as they aren't the most intelligent teenager to ever teenage in an intelligence contest. I'm so tired of that myth! A super smart teenager! Come on! So unbelievable.

Supergirl has recently run away from home because she's the only girl on the planet with a mansion made of crystal in the Arctic. Although Ma and Pa Danvers are super spies working for the DEO so it's not like they don't have access to a supersonic snow copter which they could requisition to be able to fetch their daughter. Supergirl thought being alone while writing entries in her diary that featured the phrase "so mean to me" over and over again would help her move past just another moment of teenage drama. But instead, she has flown smack dab into the middle of even more teenage drama! Because her cybernetic dad is waiting for her! He's all, "Daughter!" And she's all, "Suck my butt!" What she means by that is "You are not my father! You're just a crazy robot that thinks it's my father who just wants to wear my skin!" It's true. He does want to wear her skin.

It doesn't take too many panels for the punching to start. Usually Kara begins the punching but this time, her father shoves her into a wall because she touched his shoulder. That's fair. It's not like she asked for consent to touch his shoulder. That's his personal space, Kara, not your funzone playground of tender time touches.

Cyborg Superman ends the encounter by exploding all over the inside of the Fortress of Solitude.

I have a suspicion that nearly every teenage girl has uttered these words. Minus the "by Rao" bit.

After her psychosexual experience with her father, Kara heads to National City's prison, The Ditch. Every big city in the DC Universe gets their own prison! That's because prison breaks are exciting comic book events which are mandated by editorial. Supergirl visits not to taunt the guy she captured in the first issue but to counsel him in the hopes he can be rehabilitated. Is counseling prisoners a school project? On what authority is a sixteen year old with no counseling experience allowed to enter a prisoner's cell to counsel him?

Supergirl: "You know what you did was wrong and totally mean, right?"
Criminal: "Just touch it. Come on! At least look at it!"
Guard: "All right! That's enough! Get her out of there!"

Later at school as Kara tries to erase the sight of a flopping prisoner's penis as it strains to become erect, Cat Grant hosts an assembly where she picks a student for her Young Innovator's Program. That student is, of course, Ben Rubel, the smartest kid in the DC Universe (tied with all of the other kids in the DC Universe). But since this comic book isn't called Ben Rubel, Cat Grant chases down Kara Danvers to offer her a chance to be part of the program too. It's because Cat Grant understands that girls need the extra help since society has taught them to not speak up as loudly as boys. Of course, Kara Danvers grew up on Krypton so that doesn't apply here. This was just a case of Ben Rubel being one of those loud dicks who thinks pushing people out of the queue in front of you is just a smart tactical decision to get what you want. Although, to be fair to nobody, Cat Grant really shouldn't have asked a question to an auditorium full of students expecting some kind of fair and equitable response among the crowd. Besides, Kara began speaking and Cat noticed. But then when Ben said, "Miss Grant! Miss Grant!", Cat called on him to answer instead of Kara. So, you know, Cat's kind of a dick.

I hate Cat Grant.

Basically, Cat Grant's idea for the next big movement in news is to water it down even more with amateurish, emotional stories about individual experiences that are expected to be extrapolated to everybody's life but really don't mean anything to anybody except to give them a quick jolt of sadness, happiness, or anger that will dissipate and be forgotten quicker than their shot of morning caffeine. What it sounds like she's trying to do is to set up Tumblr but advertise it as a legitimate news source. I mean, really, "open source news available to anyone"? Isn't that just the Associated Press?

On her way out, Kara runs into Ben and they almost have sex right there in the elevator. Actually, they bicker and argue but I know what that's code for in comic books! And television shows. And movies. And literature. And in everything, really, except real life. I know the women I've constantly bickered with because they were pretentious idiots who never actually knew what they were talking about just annoyed the fuck out of me! Guys, too, but then there was never the societal expectation that if I constantly bickered with another man that we should "get a room."

Later, Kara's Fake Mother Boss asks her how her interview with her Soon-To-Be Other Fake Mother Boss went. After that, Cyborg Superman once again speaks to Kara to tell her that Argo City is just about ready and guess who's waiting for Kara there? Her Fake Cyborg Zombie Mother! Kara really has too many parents in her life.

The Ranking!
No change. This comic book is concentrating on the worst drama in a teenage girl's life: parental drama! I don't care about the adults in Supergirl's life! Especially Cat Grant! Oh, and Cyborg Superman! Oh, and the Danvers! I want to read about her dealing with Degrassi Junior High type shit! Also, she should be allowed to battle villains other than Cyborg Superman. Why do comic books feel they need to keep going over the same conflicts? What better way to drive people away from reading the comic books than to tell slight variants of the same story over and over and over? I think the constant repetition of "iconic" conflicts is making me nostalgic for Ann Nocenti. At least her shit was so fucking weird and nonsensical that I couldn't accuse it of borrowing too heavily from the past.

That being said, I like the look and tone of this comic book. It's just...Cyborg Superman again? It just feels like every new writer who comes onto a book brings a hot take on an old story. But it's still an old story! Plus it's Cyborg Superman! On the scale of villains I don't want to read about, he ranks right between Doomsday's left testicle and Doomsday's butthole.

Supergirl #1

Oh man! I hope her bum is as cute as her face!

The Facts!
• I love the term "hot take" for internet think pieces! Mostly because it makes every single opinion on the Internet sound disingenuous! Which, of course, they are! Now here's my hot take on Supergirl #1! You won't believe what I say!

• The issue begins with a poem, I think. And then a double page spread of Supergirl flying over Io which the comic book describes as "one of the last habitable places in the solar system." Are they crazy?! It's not habitable at all! It's all lava and lava plumes and lava lakes and lava lava and...oh wait! It says "least habitable." Never mind.

• The scene changes from Io to National City so the narrator can say "And so is this!" As in National City is also one of the least habitable places in the solar system! Ha ha! That's funny because...wait. I don't know why it's funny yet. Why is National City not very habitable? I bet it's because rent is so high because people are selfish pricks. If you're one of those house flippers, you can just fuck off from reading my blog! I mean, if you're a house flipper, you probably have better, more money making things to do than read a stupid blog about comic books. But I just want you to know that I disapprove of your actions! You aren't adding anything of value to the world! You're simply making it more expensive for people to find places to live so that you can line your own stupid pockets! I know your pockets are stupid because they're full of cash and I'm envious of them.

• Kara is currently learning how to parallel park for some reason. Parallel parking isn't on the driver's test so why bother learning it?! The only reason you need to know how to parallel park is because the streets are full of fucking cars because every old house in older neighborhoods has been converted into four or five units without any parking so now there are four to five times as many people with cars living on the block than there used to be and the only way you're ever going to park anywhere near where you live is if you can squeeze a car into a space three inches smaller than your car actually is. It's possible! But not if you go nose first!

• Later Kara goes to high school because she needs to learn how to socialize. She needs to know that punching people in the face and exploding your vagina in public aren't polite (although they are exciting!). Although aren't those the kinds of things people do in high school? I don't think she's going to learn anything new!

This makes no sense at all.

• Does Kara wear a wig when she's a high school student or when she's Supergirl? Or do Kryptonians living under a yellow sun have the power to change their hair color at will? I'm getting déjà vu typing this!

• Why does the phrase "déjà vu" have so many scribbles all over it?!

• Kara is having trouble at school because Earth school is way too archaic for her smarts. Her school is like "What is 2 plus 2?" And she's all, "I can only do infinity plus infinity or higher!"

• Kara has a classmate named Ben Rubel who is--get this!--a super genius! Wow! I'm glad DC Comics finally had the guts to create a smart teenager! Usually they just...oh wait. I was about to defend my statement when I realized I was being sarcastic.

• Ben is worried that Kara is super smart even though she can't use a toaster or do primitive calculus. And he doesn't want any other mysterious smart kids at his science school because that's his thing! Plus she might get wind of Cat Grant's Young Innovators Grant for People Not Named Grant. And she might win! Even though she can't work a pencil sharpener.

• Ben is creepily spying on Supergirl as she eats lunch and then gets suspicious when she leaves the cafeteria because there are still three periods left. Maybe she's fucking going to the bathroom, Ben! Maybe you should mind your own fucking business, Ben! Maybe you should stop trying to insinuate yourself into my girlfriend's life, BEN!

• Ben is right to be suspicious even though he really shouldn't have been suspicious at all. Unless she just ran out the door, down the front lawn, through the parking lot, and off into the horizon. That might be suspicious! But Kara just got up from her table and walked out of the cafeteria. So suspicious! I mean, she is leaving school to go stop a robbery on a train because she heard the threat with her super senses. But Ben couldn't know that, no matter how smart and mysterious he is.

This wouldn't worry me at all! I don't own a smart phone!

• I have two main reasons I don't own a smart phone. The first reason is that I don't agree with Contract Culture. I don't believe, to be a consumer, a person needs to agree to stay with a company for a certain amount of time. I understood that some of that was part of the system so that the true price of the phone could be subsidized and subsumed by the length of service demanded by the contract. That's changing to a great degree but it already spearheaded the movement where companies now love charging people a monthly fee for cloud based technology instead of a one time fee to own the rights to use a program indefinitely. But even if I were willing to pay the high monthly fee for a smart phone that didn't demand a two-year contract, I still wouldn't own one. Why the fuck do I want to be beholden to everybody who fucking knows me? They'll just demand my attention constantly! If they text, they'll know I have the phone on me and if I don't text back, they'll know I'm avoiding them! It's easier to just avoid everybody constantly by not having a phone at all! Besides, I am so super smart and full of information that I don't need to constantly check Google while having conversations to understand what everybody is talking about. And if I can't recall something, I don't mind living with a little mystery in my life!

• Speaking about how super smart I am, I watched The Exorcist on Netflix last night and I'm fairly certain I don't have a clue what's happening in three-quarters of that movie! I did notice before watching it that Sharknado has a higher rating on Netflix than The Exorcist. Does anybody actually use those five star ratings to determine what they're going to watch? I figure most people watching things on Netflix are idiots and their critiques aren't worth the part of the bathroom floor I sometimes accidentally pee on because my penis is looking the wrong way and I was too lazy to make sure it wasn't. I use the rating system simply to remember what I've seen on Netflix. If I watch something, I rate it 5 Stars just so I know I've watched it. I don't care how bad it is! Everything gets 5 Stars! Hmm, I might be part of the reason why you shouldn't trust the ratings on Netflix.

• The guy leading the data robbery on the train is an idiot. Supergirl uses her heat vision to melt their guns and he yells, "No! The Dataphage!" She does melt the Dataphage but not until the panel after he yells that. Next he tries to punch a sixteen year old girl in the face (she's fictional so it's okay. That's the same excuse I use to not feel creepy checking out her bum) and she uses her super breath to freeze his hand. He then yells--because he's stupid remember--"Gah! My hands!" Hands! Plural! Dude, you just broke one hand! Ah ha ha ha! What a massive idiot!

• Supergirl is all, "Why would you idiots be so idiotic to pull this idiotic stunt in my idiotic city? Idiots!" And Cat Grant is all, "I've got this now, Supergirl! You stop them from causing harm; I humiliate them!"

• Cat Grant acts arrogant and smart and professional. She's come a long way from publishing photos of Superman and Wonder Woman kissing on CatClarkTropolisStupidName.com. I hope somebody asks her about that site at some point so she can explain why she didn't sell it for millions of dollars when she had the chance. The only story it ever ran that got any hits was the kissing photo! You sell that shit when you get an offer, Cat!

• Maybe by not selling, Cat developed the site into her springboard to become the hottest hot person in National City! Look who's stupid now! Oh, it's me! Dammit!

• Cat Grant annoys me. Mostly because I can't stand strong, independent women. But also because she's arrogant and rude and has that thing in comic books where characters simply know everything by reading the situation to prove that they're super smart and capable. I hate that! That's not a thing! Here's a thing though: people who think they know everything by reading the situation as they try to prove how super smart and capable they are! But in comic books, those people never wind up being wrong! So annoying!

• Supergirl not only gets chewed out by Cat Grant for stepping in and saving the day in a way different than the way Cat Grant planned on saving it (which probably would have turned into a massacre once the robbers realized their Dataphage was corrupted by some asshat on the train who forgot to somehow hack their guns), she gets screamed at by Cameron Chase at the DEO for saving the day in a way that showed people Kryptonians are better than humans.

Shut up, Supergirl! Arrogant, asshole adults are telling you the way things are!

• The Danvers try to make Kara comfortable in her new home with them but they just fuck it all up the way parents do. It's because they're so old! They just don't understand what it's like to be young! Or Kryptonian! So Supergirl runs away to the Arctic.

• Supergirl discovers her other father, Cyborg Superman, is waiting for her in the Fortress of Solitude. He wants to take her back to Argo City.

The Opinions!
Great! Supergirl now has two fathers to worry about! Not to mention three mothers! Four if the corpse of her mother that Cyborg Superman was fucking in the Rebirth issue ever comes back to life! It's confusing enough having one pair of uncool people trying to teach you how to make your way in the world. How is Kara going to deal with a government agent, an alien cyborg, a narcissistic journalist, and two DEO field agents all trying to tell her the best way to live her life?! Can't they see they're going to drive her straight into Ben Rubel's bed! Bastards!

Supergirl Rebirth #1

This is not the end I'm excited to see back!

The Review!
Tonight while playing Call of Duty, a friend of my cousin's thirteen year old son joined our chat. His gamer tag was Marshall Law or something. At one point, he said, "Reading Rainbow," and my friend KCBlueGal began singing the theme song. So he said, "Ha ha! You're old! It was an old trap! You're old!" Which is, you know, annoying because he joined our party and should have some manners. So I said, "You already fell into the young trap by being an idiot." So then he kept bothering everybody to play another game and my cousin's son told him he'd play with him after the game we were playing. So finally we finished and my cousin's son said, "Okay, let's go play whatever," and he left the party leaving his friend. So I said, "Yeah, go sit around and say 'der' to each other." So Marshall said, "You're mean and I don't like you!" before leaving the party. I wanted to tell him, "You started it!", but then remembered I was supposed to be the old one. So instead I felt some accomplishment in knowing the lyrics to Reading Rainbow's theme song. Also in mocking a young kid! I think I probably mostly felt accomplishment in that! He was pretty fucking annoying. And ageist too! Oh, um, Supergirl is going to be totally awesome because it takes place in high school and high school drama is the best drama. Often it involves teenagers mocking adults which is totally hilarious! I mean, um, when it happens to other adults. My feelings are still hurt even if I put up a tough front. Oh! Marshall also said he'd rather be an idiot and young than old! I can't wait until he's an old idiot! Ha ha! Except then I'll probably be dead. Dammit! He wins again!

The Commentary!
Finally! Supergirl's bum is back! And it's going to be drawn by Lupacchino! At least in this first issue. Judging by the art in the Supergirl advertisements, it'll definitely be somebody else who is going to draw her butt too cartoony to be sexy. If that's true, I hope Emmanuela takes every opportunity she can to draw some sexy close-ups of Supergirl's bum!

This comic book is probably going to be its own thing and not a clone of the television series because this isn't the Supergirl comic book being written by Sterling Gates that's based on the television show. But DC is keeping it close enough so that fans of the television show won't be confused when they pick this up. They might be a little concerned that Eliza Danvers, Supergirl's mom, is the one working for the DEO instead of her sister. But they'll probably seen DEO Director Cameron Chase and think, "Oh? Didn't Charisma Carpenter play her in the show? But she wasn't director? Is that really Martian Manhunter under those boobs?"

Supergirl lost her powers at the same time Superman did because...well, I don't want to remember that. It was a dark time in the Superman Mythos which was stupid and stupider. It's better if we all just quietly agree to never mention it again. This issue begins with the DEO firing Supergirl into the sun in the hopes that it will restore her powers. And I imagine it'll work or else this comic book wouldn't be called "Rebirth." It would probably be called "Oops!"

Kara's father is also a DEO agent who isn't dead at all. Their names are Jeremiah and Eliza Danvers and they probably won't survive this issue. Supergirl's ship is using some kind of "Phantom" drive so you know what that means! Lars Lars-on, the horrible monster from Argo City with the Red Kryptonite problem who was locked away in the Phantom Zone, will probably return to cause trouble and not understand what socialism actually is.

Lars Lars-on arrives to blame the wrong people for his current situation. Also, he seems to be a Kryptonian Werewolf.

As Werewolf Lars Lars-on tears the DEO seventeen new assholes, Supergirl flies into the sun and doesn't die. The experiment worked! She's free to flash that bum all over the world again!

I hope Lars Lars-on doesn't just kill Supergirl's parents. I hope it remembers to kill Mike-hole the girlfriend stealing dickpoo too.

Supergirl manages to travel from the sun to the Earth in about ten seconds which isn't enough time for Lars Lars-on to murder her parents. Now how is she supposed to learn about great power and great responsibility and justice! She might as well just learn about hugs and compassion and peace and love! Ptui!

Luckily for Lars Lars-on, his monster tongue enables him to speak rudimentary Kryptonian so Kara is able to calm him down by speaking reasonably with him and in a reassuring tone. She hardly punches him at all! What is this? Some kind of peace and love freak out?! What kind of superhero talks to the bad guys and clears up miscommunications through reasonable means and rational dialogue? Harrumph!

I do like that Kara is wearing a skirt again instead of that weird Kryptonian diaper she wore in The New 52.

Supergirl resists killing the Kryptonian Werewolf just like every werewolf hunter ever should do. And instead of sending him to The Phantom Zone because nobody can think of a solution that keeps the full moon from shining on him once every thirty days, Kara decides he can live in the basement of the DEO until they find him a cure. It's also possible they shoved him in a plastic bubble and medically induced a coma. Hopefully that's not what happened because that's practically just like being in the Phantom Zone.

Kara's parents have only been her parents for a couple of weeks but it's now their job to teach her how to be human. Good! She needs it! Up until now, she thought punching people in the face was an appropriate way to greet them! Maybe she'll also learn that fwashing her vagina at every super villain that comes along is sure to give her a bad reputation...as the most fun party hero in the DC Universe! I guess with her new DEO Family, Supergirl's stories won't be like every third Twilight Zone Episode: all about loneliness.

Based on the pacing of the New 52 Supergirl series, I can see it taking place in just a few months. Now how that fits into the rest of The New 52 continuity, I'm not going to understand even if I try to guess at it which I won't because continuity criticism is for nerds.

Supergirl is now beginning her new life as Kara Danvers, age 16, sophomore at National City Technical High School! She is going to fwash so many guys! And hopefully some girls too!

Meanwhile on the ruins of Argo City, Cyborg Superman displays a penchant for robot necrophilia. I think.

Because this is the end of my commentary, this is usually where I post a picture of Supergirl's rear end and call it a bum. But since Emanuela failed to draw even one shot of Supergirl's bum this issue, here is Cameron Chase's instead.

Action Comics #51

In this issue, Superman borrows The Atom's technology to learn what it's like to be a spermatozoa.

The Review!
This month's issue is a bit light on story but it gets across everything it needs to before bringing Wonder Woman into the story since the next installment takes place in Superman Loves Wonder Woman. Since Tomasi is handling every aspect of this story, it's been consistent and well-paced which is something the Superman titles have sorely lacked. Although some might argue the "well-paced" part since there wasn't any punches thrown this issue. Which is weird because Supergirl hasn't seen her cousin in some time. You'd think she would have greeted him like she used to with a nice right cross to the jaw.

The Commentary!
Last issue ended with Superman planning a trip to famed National City in search of his cousin, Supergirl. This issue begins with him immediately finding her shoved into an overly complicated La-Z-Boy recliner inside a secret lab of the DEO (Department of Extra-Normal Operations (which is a pretty stupid name, really. And for what? An acronym that doesn't have any kind of wink-wink meaning like ARGUS?)). I know the Supergirl television show decided to go the Martian Manhunter as director route but this being a comic book, can we please get Mister Bones back? He was still running the thing in Batwoman but Batwoman was one of those weird New 52 titles that clung heavily to Preboot history and material. Plus a lot of it seemed to have been scrapped when Blackman and Williams had their falling out with DC.

Superman doesn't ask anybody why Supergirl is in the chair. He doesn't think, "Maybe she's hurt or sick and the DEO are helping?" He just kicks in the door, says, "Fuck you, assholes!", destroys their equipment, and flies off with Supergirl. I suppose I don't blame him since Supergirl has been missing for so long and the DEO doesn't have the best reputation. But he is Superman which means he actually can take a moment to consider that his actions might hurt Supergirl more than help her. Although the DEO is so shitty that that moment could turn into Superman being enveloped in a cloud of Kryptonite dust. Double although, maybe that would cure him? Oh! Or maybe the DEO is curing Supergirl of her Kryptonite poisoning that perhaps was worse than she thought! Maybe she's in some kind of Kryptonite Dialysis machine! I'm not exactly clear on what Dialysis does but I think it takes the pee out of people and puts in not pee. Or something. So it might be analogous to a Kryptonite Removing Machine.

Oh Supergirl's bum, how I've missed you!

Supergirl explains where she's been and how she was losing her powers too and how that led her to team up with Cameron Chase (no relation to Danny Chase. I think? But also played by Charisma Carpenter in the Supergirl television show! I think) and the DEO.

Meanwhile, the Wanna-be Superman decides to also pose as Clark Kent. Well, it's less of a decision and more of a can't help himself from doing it. So he invades the Daily Planet and winds up killing a few security guards before Lois Lane takes him down with a Taser. Perry decides to send the guy to ARGUS to figure out what the hell's going on.

Superman wills the Fortress of Solitude over to Supergirl just before Wonder Woman shows up armed for a fight. She's a bit miffed that Superman found out he was dying and decided to tell Batman first. As if Batman doesn't get to find out everything first!