Detective Comics #949

These kinds of grimaces always make me think of Rob Liefeld.

The Review
No change. Batwoman gets a new mission from her father hunting down terrorist organizations fighting over control of Hugo Strange's monster venom that turns corpses into Godzilla Zombie Monsters. This is a job for Batwoman because she doesn't mind using shotguns and you need to use a shotgun if you're going to kill Godzilla Zombie Monsters or if you're going to protect the Batcave from clowns. But she'll be dealing with that mission over in her own comic book so Batman isn't "TT"ing her every other page due to the gun residue all over her body. I suppose she'll still be in this series as well since she's the leader of the Bat-family Military Training School.

Oh, and the derivative Colony super assassin who bragged about being able to beat up Batman because he had studied all of Batman's moves for years? He gets his ass kicked. Embarrassed, he jabs some monster venom into his neck so that he can be Batwoman's nemesis over in her comic book. He would have been a boring nemesis if he'd remained just a regular old white dude. Now he's some kind of man-bat thing which most people who aren't me probably find more exciting than average white guys.

Doctor October doesn't appear in this issue. She'll probably be the main supporting character in Batwoman's series. Also, her name has a lot of 'O's in it.

Green Werewolf #52

This cover accurately portrays how boring this comic book is. Although this cover has more arrow shooting than the stories inside usually have.

The Review or Whatever!
Remember when this series began as J.T. Krul's outlet to rant and rave about reality stars being famous for reasons he didn't approve of? "But...but...but...they're untalented morons who do have done nothing that I approve of to get their fame! I fucking write comic books, people! I should be famous! Me! I mean, my comic books are terrible but at least I'm writing! That's more than these reality stars are doing! They're just looking good and doing things that entertain the masses for some reason. I should be entertaining the masses! Why won't the masses pay attention to me?! You know what? Green Arrow is going to fix it! He's going to arrest anybody trying to be famous for being on Internet videos! They won't even break laws! He'll just arrest them because he despises them! Then I'll have him say a lot of things in Narration Boxes that will criticize critics trying to criticize me before they can criticize me! That'll show them! The fucking parasites!"

I might still be retaining a ton of Bitterhasswasser from Krul's initial run on this shitty comic book.

When I say this comic book is shitty, I don't want Benjamin Percy getting his underwear full of wet farts in a twist. I hated this book long before he began using it as his soapbox to bring the horrors of racism to the attention of comic book readers everywhere. Or at least the idiotic comic book readers who were still picking up this terrible comic book. I have no sympathy for people still reading this shit. They should have known it was terrible when they saw it on the shelf and realized it said "Green Arrow" on the front. That's worse advertising than that comic book that says "Aquaman" on it!

At the end of the last issue, Green Werewolf had been killed by Douchéstork. Which kind of makes me wonder: why the fuck did this comic book need another issue?! It already had the best ending to any story it was going to tell! Now I'm going to have to read a story where Green Werewolf desperately needs a blood transfusion to remain alive and he's going to be given Doctor Miracle's blood without his consent (because Ollie is dead or almost dead) which will cure his Werewolf AIDS! That way he never has to make the decision to stop being a minority and go back to being a rich white asshole. It's a solution that allows Ollie to still seem sensitive to the plight of the minority population (represented by people with Werewolf AIDS) by not having him choose to stop being a part of their group. Even though he really wasn't a part of their group simply because he contracted some disease. Percy doesn't really get racism, does he?

It turns out, Doctor Miracle's blood was still on the dagger. So the part of the story I just mentioned in the previous paragraph took place in two pages. Ollie is saved from death and his blood is clean of Werewolf AIDS. Now maybe he can go back to shooting arrows. Although he's going to have to deal with being a totally racist white guy again.

While Ollie heals, Douchéstork kidnaps Doctor Miracle to take him back to Seattle.

Most purses I know are bigger than hearts. Are bigger hearts worse than smaller hearts? Does he mean a coin purse? What the fuck is Douchéstork talking about?! Maybe he means it's such a large muscle that Doctor Miracle will never have the strength to open it up?! Or maybe he means it's full of tampons?!

Green Arrow, Emiko, and George are now stuck in Africa. It looks like Green Arrow will never be able to save Doctor Miracle so that he can use his blood to cure all of the Werewolf AIDS in the city.

No, seriously! That's Ollie's plan! Which turns Benjamin Percy's story about racism into a fully racist story! I imagine something else will happen because equating the people with Werewolf AIDS as the Other who the white privileged folks (the people with American President masks on. Subtle, no?) are trying to drive out of their city, and then deciding that the solution is removing the Otherness from the Other to make them more like the white privileged folks isn't exactly the best moral of the story.

The other problem with this "allegory" is that The Wargs are people with a dangerous, deadly, transmittable disease and are actively trying to spread it to others. Hmm. Maybe they're the bad guys after all! They're spreading hate and ignorance and...no, no. That can't be it. Because Ollie embraced having Werewolf AIDS because it allowed him to understand how it feels to be outside the hateful, vile, despicable norm! Plus the guys who hate the Wargs are all white men. That makes it easy to identify them as the bad guys.

Maybe it'll all make sense by the end. It's also possible Percy's allegory got away from him.

Ollie saves Doctor Miracle and asks him to help heal the city. Doctor Miracle heals the Wargs who want to be healed but I guess his healing powers don't work to heal the hate and ignorance of the Anti-Warg faction. In the end, the leader of the Berserker Wargs rides off to become a pain in the ass later. And Ollie lets him go because he understands the best way to change things is to have a hyper-extreme voice screaming nonsense into everybody else's faces so that people will go, "Okay, okay. These other people who don't want to change as much sound reasonable and I'll agree with them but get that fucking Warg out of my face!" Or something. I don't know.

I did learn that racism was bad though! So that was a worthwhile message!

Hopefully Rebirth will be the Doctor Miracle of this Green Arrow Werewolf AIDS epidemic.

Green Arrow #51

How much time did John Romita Jr. spend on researching how to draw a bow?

Rating: Has any other comic book been this consistently terrible and still made it past the fiftieth issue? How has this book survived for so long when it's been nearly unreadable since J.T. Krul handed in the script for the first issue (which I'm assuming was mostly scribbles, vomit, and tears)? I don't mind stories with a message. Stories are better with a message. But this comic book is mostly message with little story. The pages might as well be "Racism is bad!" printed over and over again. Green Arrow hasn't even been needed since Percy took over. Instead of using his bow and arrow, he's mostly just been attacking like a wild animal. Which, I suppose, makes sense since he's now Green Werewolf. Emiko is no better. She's just a font of Youthsplaining. If I wanted that, I'd just read my Tumblr dashboard. This comic book sucks.

I was going to post a trailer of The Bad News Bears on my Tumblr this week in celebration of its 40th anniversary but holy shit that trailer is awful. And I'm not even talking about the parts that would offend modern sensibilities like when the narrator says Buttermaker does the unforgivable by putting a girl on the team and then Tanner's reaction to that when he says, "Jews, spics, niggers, and now a girl?!" While the movie is terrific, the trailer is just plain awful. I imagine it's a product of its time but I don't really remember many trailers from the seventies. It's just a narrator giving a synopsis of the film seemingly with his own biases and interpretations of events thrown in. And not a single note from Carmen! I imagine either the music rights weren't secured when the trailer was made, or the music wasn't chosen yet. But it's so synonymous with the film now that the lack of the song is jarring.

Over at MTV's website in 2013, somebody named Amanda Bell wrote a brief "article" that's just a reaction to The Bad News Bears trailer. Actually, it's just a reaction of Tanner's string of racial epithets. Wait. Did I say "wrote"? Actually actually she just embedded a couple of reaction gifs. What she's trying to get across in her article is that a movie in 1976 created a trailer that could be seen in front of family friendly movies that wasn't family friendly at all. Yeah? Welcome to the fucking seventies! There's a reason past decades happen in the past. Or something. Maybe that wasn't as clear as I meant it to be. Maybe I wouldn't care about her "article" so much but she obviously doesn't understand storytelling and characterization. Because she puts the horrible quote on Timothy Lupus! That kid was the kindest, sweetest, greatest portrayal of a booger eating moron I've ever seen! He would never have said anything so uncouth! No, it was Tanner who said that, Amanda. Tanner. Maybe you should at least watch the movie before judging it by one line from one character! Plus, Tanner's degrading line is answered by Amanda with "Grab a bat, Punk!" She then proceeds to strike out the little bastard and prove to him that he's a lousy fucking baseball player and their team needs her. Also, Tanner's little list of racial slurs also tells you something else about the movie: it's got a fucking inclusive cast of heroes! And guess who the bad guys are? The white coach with his all white team of hot shots! This movie has 70s stink all over it. But like the recent Mad Magazine collection of 80s spoofs I picked up at Safeway says, "MAD Magazine reflects the sensibilities and language of the time in which it was first published. This content is reprinted without alteration for historical reference." Seeing how things were and in their proper context is much better than pretending those things never existed.

Currently Green Werewolf has decided to endanger his little sister's life by taking her to Africa to battle Douchéstork. Ollie and Slade are both looking for Doctor Miracle. Ollie wants Doctor Miracle's DNA inside of him to cure his Werewolf AIDS. Douchéstork wants Doctor Miracle because he's been paid to find him. That's the only reason Douchéstork does anything! Well, maybe he sometimes does things to protect his reputation. But he drags his feet and pouts a lot if he's not getting paid as well.

I was going to argue against this because I believe that people who hate based on differences are people mired in the past who can't adapt to a beautiful future of interracial relationships leading to a population of people who would eventually all look alike which would, ironically, really help those people to fit in! But then I remembered how stupid people really fucking hate me and I thought, "Oh yeah! People do hate people different than themselves!"

If you've ever questioned somebody's common sense, or proclaimed that you have common sense, just stop. Because what you're actually doing is telling people you're a moron. "That uppity jerk may have read half of The Grapes of Wrath but does he have common sense? Probably not!" Also you might want to stop bragging about being intuitive. The more you think you're intuitive, the more you project your beliefs on situations which causes you to read the situation wrong. But since you believe you have a great intuition, you'll never be convinced that the situation isn't the way you believed it was. People with "great intuition" tend to have more fallings out with friends and family than people who actually trust and respect the statements of their friends and family. When it is confirmed that your intuition was correct in any given situation, realize that it wasn't your gut speaking to you and mystically revealing the way things were. How you figured it out is even better than intuition and should be embraced for what it was! You took various clues pertaining to the situation and logically worked them out in your brain to come up with a plausible scenario which wound up being accurate. Why would people rather be "intuitive" than fucking "observant"?!

Green Werewolf has come to the conclusion that you can't cure hate. Nonsense! Isn't knowledge and travel supposed to cure hate? Or is that ignorance? I suppose they're basically the same thing.

I think this guy stumbled upon an Insane Clown Posse gig and culturally appropriated that.

Great. Previously Percy has lectured the readers on racism, corrupt cops, racism, and racism. Now he's going to lecture us on cultural appropriation! It might be an interesting story if it were a subtle, fictionalized reversal of typical American cultural appropriation. But I'm already bored when he begins by saying, "This is a story about cultural appropriation. See how the bad guy appears and spells it out for everybody? I suppose I could have masked the bad guy's cultural appropriation in the same way I masked racism in my Werewolf AIDS story where the minorities are 'monsters' and the racists are 'rich white American presidents'. But this is too important a message to make it subtle and interesting! I want Tumblr to know that I get what they're saying no matter how shrill and incoherent they generally are! I'm with them! I'm a white guy from Eugene, Oregon, man! I get it! I get it!"

"On the one hand, I hear you! We've all known for quite a long time that white dreads were terrible. But now we have an accepted reason for bullying anybody sporting them! On the other hand, you're crazy! Because being mean to individuals without knowing the history and context of the individual's life is simply a means of creating a new kind of power with which to abuse others."

Green Werewolf wants to sympathize with Mister White because cultural appropriation is the worst thing in the world ever (apparently). But since Mister White is using the playbook of white imperialists, Green Arrow can't sympathize with him at all! Plus Mister White wants to sell Ollie and Emiko and George into slavery so he's going to have to fight against that even if he winds up seeming racist doing so. I don't believe that he would but I'm sure somebody could make an argument for it somehow. Like how a black man is actually succeeding and a rich white man just can't have it. It sure would be easier if Douchéstork would just show up to beat up the black guys. It's okay if he appears racist.

The best part of this issue so far is the map of Africa that looks like a skull and Doctor Miracle's shirt of Africa that looks like a hand giving a peace sign. Unless it's flipping the British bird? Maybe it's a foot with two horribly deformed toes? Whatever the case, it's Doctor Miracle's shirt. Which means Ollie has found Doctor Miracle! Which means Douchéstork will be rescuing everybody shortly!

Doctor Miracle's tongue is cut and he makes out with a woman whose arm Ollie broke. Her arm heals, she claims it's a miracle, and in the next panel, some guard outside the tent is saying, "I could shoot the tail off a giraffe at fifty yards." First off, that was a shitty scene change. Second, shouldn't he be using meters instead of yards? Of course, this means that Douchéstork is about to arrive and culturally appropriate these sons of bitches!

He just killed the guys he's asking that question.

Douchéstork increases his kill count by about 19 people bringing it up to 962, give or take a dozen. One of those people is Mister White. Douchéstork does not kill him while saying, "Culturally appropriate this!" Another one of his kills is Green Werewolf. But I have a feeling that kill won't take so I'm not adding it to Slade's kill count.

Green Arrow #50

This scene has "ends in a blow job" written all over it.

Rating: -1 Ranking to fall to 45 out of 51 DC Comics. That translates to "shit you'll regret wasting your time on on your deathbed." I don't mind wasting my time reading Green Arrow so I can warn other people away from it. I have much worse things than my comic book choices which I'll be regretting on the day of my death.

• Recently in Green Arrow, Benjamin Percy has been writing shitty morality tales trying to get the attention of the Tumblr audience. I guess he doesn't have enough people shitting all over the things he writes. Sure, he's got me! And everybody who comments on my Green Arrow posts. And probably more people outside the sphere of my attention (which, admittedly, isn't very big because I'm only concerned with things that affect me). Ben has made Green Arrow into a clueless rich white heterosexual male (I mean, he was already those things! But I've added the "clueless" part to describe Ben's Ollie plus some more stuff that I'll continue with after this parenthetical reference ends) who is learning all about his privilege and about being a minority. Is he learning this lesson by helping make his city a better place for those who have had the hardest time? Is he learning the lesson by reaching out to advocacy groups to find out how he can help? Is he searching his soul for things he can do with his advantages to help others? No. He's simply contracted Werewolf AIDS and suddenly knows what it feels like to be discriminated against.

• That was a long bullet point! I'm not sure if it qualifies as a bullet point if it's just a paragraph about stuff.

• Green Arrow is into eating testicles.

• Some people actually came back to reading Green Arrow monthly when Percy took over the writing. Ha ha. That's funny. I wish I had stopped reading it after J.T. Krul's first issue. It's only been 49 issues of downhill since then!

• The Wargs (as a non-lupine human, should I be using that word?) are spreading their wolfy disease all over the city by donating their blood to blood banks and/or payday lenders.

• The guy who owns all the Blood Pawn Shops is about 130 years old. He must be the bad guy because he's an old, rich, white male.

• Henry Fyff is too fat to find a sweatshirt which covers his stomach. Ha ha! Fat people are so funny! He's not constantly eating yet in this issue but I'm pretty sure that's something he does. Because he's fat. I mean, skinny people eat too. But they eat so little that it usually happens off-panel.

• Henry Fyff has reprogrammed a racist drone for Green Arrow's use.

• Apparently people want to destroy whatever is different.

• People want to believe the world is worse than it really is so they seek out news that confirms their beliefs. This is why the internet is crap. Anybody can find every reason in the world to make them believe everything is going to shit. If I were in charge of search engines, it wouldn't matter what topic a person put in because my search engine would just return pornography.

• Doctor Miracle is some guy that travels the world healing people while sad music plays. His blood cures whatever ails somebody. So of course everybody wants a piece of it. Even if they think he's a witch. I mean, do you want to die or do you want witch blood all up inside of you?

• Green Arrow admires the Wargs' plan of infecting everybody. "There's no more hate if you erase the differences between us," he says. Oh yeah? Well remember when Anthrax said if we were all blind and had no choice, would we hate each other by the tone of our voice? Schism! Sch-sch-sch-schism!

• Lately, the ethical dilemmas in the Green Arrow comic book have been laughably simple. "If the Wargs infected everybody, it would be a big party because nobody would be angry about being infected at all! They'd just join Team Dog! Did you also know that being racist is wrong? You know what else is bad? Violent cops! I know, I know! I'm being super controversial here! But it has to be said!"

• The Masked Presidents (it's a metaphor for their racism, see? White males in power!) arrive at the blood bank that Ollie is investigating and begin pissing on the werewolves' motorcycles. That's a metaphor too!

That isn't all you want at all! You want to infect everybody in Seattle! Also, you're not "my people"! You're just a bunch of dissimilar individuals who all have the same disease! Talk about a needy bunch of assholes desperate to belong! But then, I guess they are dog people.

• When is Green Arrow going to stop the fighting and say something wise like "Both sides are wrong! We need to come together and stop being so wrong! Let's be right! Together!"

• Green Arrow doesn't know what to do because he can see both sides! So wise!

• Don't you hate people who constantly claim they can see both sides of an issue and refuse to take a side simply because they want to seem more open-minded than the next person? I hate those guys!

• Ollie doesn't play hero because he doesn't completely agree with either side and decides that whatever violence they do to each other is deserved. What a baby.

• Since Ollie doesn't know what to do, he decides he needs a good dose of Youthsplaining. Emiko tells him what's what! Oh, those modern teenagers! So wise! Did I use "wise" correctly? It means "being somebody you aren't and doing things you probably wouldn't do because it's how everybody else seems to be doing it and living in constant fear of being ostracized from your group for saying one wrong thing" right? Oh wait! That's peer pressure! Teenagers have always been victims of that! But now peer pressure is causing them to be self-righteous a-holes!

• Oliver decides to live as a werewolf because being simply Green Arrow was way too fucking boring. I mean, it worked for like sixty years or something. Just like how Aquaman didn't work for decades until Cullen Bunn came along and made him into a totally different character with tons of magic powers and a weapon that could be anything! So much better than a guy who can speak with fish!

• Deathstork arrives to make this comic book more exciting (just in case Green Werewolf wasn't doing it for you).

• Deathstork is trying out for Strictly Come Dancing.

• Deathstork is hunting the Miracle Worker to save the really old man's life. Green Arrow decides to follow Deathstork because...I don't know. I guess Henry Fyff figured it all out or something. I may have missed a few pages and didn't bother to check because who the fuck can care about this comic book?

• Deathstork's name not only has "stork" in it, Emiko, but "death" as well. Did you not notice that part?

• Oliver says Deathstork's kill count is like the number of stars in the sky or the number of grains of sand on a beach. Wrong. It's actually only about 943.

• Ollie, Emiko, and George get shot out of the sky over Africa by Deathstork while hunting for Doctor Miracle. I bet they wind up working together!

• The mayor of Seattle decides to put the Wargs in camps. Oh my god! Like concentration camps! I'm so outraged! I mean, I would be if I had never heard of the concept of quarantining.

Sinestro #17

Since when did Wile E. Coyote change professions from bird hitman to world conqueror?

Remember when Sinestro was a guy with a ring that could make yellow light constructions but he couldn't defeat a guy whose green light constructions couldn't protect him from anything yellow? It's totally fitting that he's sharing this cover with the world's most inept coyote. When I was an autistic little shit kid who stared off into space for 90% of the time when I wasn't a whirling dervish of fists and tears, it never occurred to me that Sinestro should be able to defeat Green Lantern in the space of fifteen seconds. I just thought Sinestro and Green Lantern were like knights with a code of chivalry that said they must attempt to defeat each other in the bounds of whatever theme they happened to agree upon. I think one of those times they actually chose green and yellow suits of armor with lances which was a contest--come on! Seriously!--Sinestro should have come out on top of. I just loved that they'd battle with baseball paraphernalia or construction equipment or Tennis racquets (or rackets if I weren't such a snob!). It excited me to see what they would come up with together for that episode's battle. It's not like Green Lantern ever decided to bring a giant yo-yo into battle while Sinestro fired yellow nuclear missiles at him. It was a gentleman's game and it made Sinestro seem far less incompetent than I'd soon realize he truly was as I got older and stopped whirling in frustration as much as I used to and decided to begin cultivating a horribly cynical outer shell to protect me from the vagaries of social conventions and the awkwardness of intimate human contact.

This issue begins with Sinestro writing an essay on Earth and how it's consumed by fear. In his view, the people of Earth are so embroiled in fear that this planet should have been called Fearth. Get it? Has that joke ever been made by Geoff Johns when he was writing the Sinestro War? Suck it, Geoff Johns! Unless he did make that observation and then I'm arrestedly developed man enough to say, "Kudos to you, goodsir!" Then I'd probably tip my fedora, pull in the edge of my cape, and bow with a flourish. "Kudos!"

Um, so Sinestro's essay points out that the people of Earth are fearful little muskrats full of fear and other emotions that are basically just synonyms for fear like terror and anxiety and all American conservative modes of thought. He's all, "Earth is a Kinder Surprise Egg with the most dangerous toy inside! In fact, there's not a toy inside it at all! It's a knife! A big fucking knife covered in fire ants and the handle is a naked woman who totally wants to do it! So scary!" And the Earthlings are all, "Ah! Everything is so scary! God, help me! I would call to science to help me but science is complicated and every time I ask my atheist friend 'How does science know that?', he always goes into a long-winded explanation of things that don't make any sense so he has to explain those things and...ugh! Just say something easy like 'God made it!' Now that I can understand!"

Sinestro's encounter with the Pale Bishop, the long dead leader of The Paling whom he tracked to Earth some mysterious way that was probably scary, has gotten him thinking about fear and Earth. He knows an awful lot about Earth for a guy from the planet Kellogg. I don't think that was the name of the planet he was from but I do remember it began with a "K" and it's destroyed now so who the fuck cares what it was called? The Pale Bishop has turned out to be a 30% Guardian of the Universe and 70% Mummy. So not only is he obsessed with making the universe safer by destroying all individuality and choice and emotion, he's also really fucking slow and brittle. This fight should last about the amount of time it takes Sinestro to find an open flame.

Wait a second! Is that Warworld hanging up in the sky? And...and...and it isn't causing mass panic of the already panic-stricken people of Fearth?!

If Warworld were that visible in the sky, I think it would be having some destructive gravitational effects on the planet and the moon of our planet which is so unimaginatively called "the moon." Holy fuck we are boring people! We couldn't even come up with Magic Floating Sky Rock?! I'm surprised we're not a bunch of Planetlings living on the planet Planet. I would go into the science of how gravity works but I wouldn't want to bore any religious people who might be reading this. Let's just say God has this shit under control and leave it at that, shall we?

No wait! I can't leave it at that! Last night I was listening to Ground Zero with your host Clyde "I'm a Stupid Piece of Fucking Shit" Lewis and he was talking about climate change. At the end of the show, some guy called up to remind Clyde that God promised not to destroy the Earth in a flood ever again. And he quoted Genesis 8:22 as proof that climate change is bullshit: "While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." See, scientists? God promised that he won't cease all that shit so calm the fuck down, you idiots. God promised! The guy's second point was that Jesus was eventually going to come down and rule so why is everybody being so pessimistic? Jesus has got this, motherfuckers! Do whatever the fuck you want!

And that is why religion is dangerous! Because people believe that The Bible is useful in scientific discussions! Maybe instead of Fearth, this planet should have been called Dearth...Of Any Intelligence At All! Zing!

The Pale Bishop strikes Black Adam with Apathetic Lightning which makes Black Adam angry for some reason. I know when I suddenly don't care about something I forget all about it and it doesn't make me angry at all. I'm usually just, "What did I do with that ballot for the local election? Maybe I left it in Call of Duty multiplayer or inside this delicious carrot cake?"

Isn't the Pale Bishop asking Black Adam to be angry like Pope Urban II calling on Christians to invade the Middle East? You know what. Those aren't even really close to equitable. I just wanted to mention Pope Urban II because how cool is that Pope name? Urban. You know he fucked a lot of ladies. Maybe ladies should be in quotes? It was still the Catholic Church. Zing!

I don't know what Sinestro has against The Paling. It's not like his philosophy of "Fear is the answer and reason for everything and I can't read a book or watch a movie without making it all about fear because it's the only issue I care about!" I guess it's like how religious people look at my atheism not as a belief I have that doesn't have anything to fucking do with them but as a danger to their religion because my beliefs negate their beliefs which just sounds dangerous until you realize that I don't fucking care if somebody wants to believe in Grown-up Santa Claus who stuffs their stockings full of everlasting life. I guess The Paling is basically a bunch of militaristic atheists to Sinestro's dogmatic and well-established religion. I suppose, historically, Christians have a right to fear atheists due to what atheistic fascist dictators have done to them and other religious peoples. But then if we're talking historically, I think a lot of different groups have a lot of different arguments for why Christians should be feared as well. The most a Christian has to fear from me is maybe a cutting remark about their beliefs after which I'll scream "ZING!" right in their face as I dance around the room pumping my index fingers into the air.

And don't you Muslims think I'm against making cutting remarks against your religion either just because somebody might call me an Islamophobe! I've got some pretty good zingers for y'all too! Although I don't really think I have any zingers for Jews because they'd probably out do me and come up with a better zinger against themselves after which they'd probably dance around the room better than me too. I definitely wouldn't come at a Hindu because I've accepted many of their talismans and gods into my world. I do sometimes pray to Ganesha because if I'm going to act like a ridiculous fool, I might as well be speaking to a god who is also an elephant. Plus he totally removes all obstacles from your life if you simply ask him! Seriously, why is anybody praying to gods who are men when there are gods who are elephants out there?! So much more powerful!

At least somebody was worried about Warworld! Thank the goddess! Literally in this case!

Why is Wonder Woman protecting Earth's orbit? With Superman out of commission and Stormwatch having been forgotten and all the Green Lanterns in another universe, is she the last line of defense against invaders from space?! It just doesn't really seem like it should be her job. It would only be slightly weirder if Aquaman had shown up. Although I don't know why Aquaman didn't show up since Cullen Bunn is writing Aquaman and he loves to do crossovers of the characters he's writing.

The battle where Wonder Woman defeats the entire Sinestro Corps easily (and then tongue kisses Bekka because guys totally need to see women kiss on a fairly regular basis or else they become gay) will have to wait because the battle with the Pale Bishop is still happening on Earth. To help Black Adam shake off the power of apathy, Sinestro lends him a Yellow Ring. It's always exciting when a new character puts on a lantern ring, mostly to see how their costume changes. But this time it isn't too exciting because Black Adam already looks like a Yellow Lantern. The battle doesn't last long after Black Adam gets his ring because the Pale Bishop decides to move the story to another planet.

You should be quite confident having killed all of the other Guardians!

Sinestro points out that he can't follow the Pale Bishop because his ring doesn't have that capability. I mean, it probably does have that capability when it needs to have that capability depending on the story being told. But right now, it doesn't have that capability because Sinestro and Black Adam need to go to Warworld to encounter Wonder Woman so Sinestro says, "But Warworld has that capability!" Once back on Warworld, Sinestro explains to Wonder Woman in a respectful manner that his Lanterns are now protecting the universe because the Green Lanterns have disappeared. Wonder Woman doesn't say "Oh my goodness! What has become of my friend Hal Jordan?!" because she never really liked him and the way he treated Carol so shabbily. Instead she says, "Well you had better get to protecting because The Paling has arrived! I suppose I will remain to bump up your sales numbers and to also help protect Earth."

Sinestro #17 Rating: +1 Ranking. A lot of people have been fans of this book since it started but they were all wrong. This book has had a lot of problems and I'm not just discussing the problem where Cullen Bunn couldn't remember what sector New Koriander was located. The story was constantly interrupted by whatever new direction Bunn decided to go. Perhaps he was just extending The Paling story but it really felt like he would abandon it for ideas he'd rather pursue only to come back to it after abandoning those other ideas. I mean, is New Korugar still a thing or was that just to get rid of Parallax? What about the Aphid League? And then there was all the Twat Lobo nonsense. But with this issue and the previous (I'd also include the issue which introduced Nax), I feel like this book has found a voice and a personality and started working out a bit to tighten up some trouble areas. I'm slightly more attracted to this book for some reason! Maybe Cullen Bunn simply became less distracted when he realized he didn't care about Aquaman at all and he knew The Lost Army was a shit book based on one big idea. Or maybe Bunn just started taking Ritalin and has become hyper-focused on writing this book. He wouldn't want to burn every bridge at DC, would he?! Because if that happens, how will he cash the checks Marvel keeps giving him to ruin DC characters?!

From this point on, all of my Wednesday Comic Book Commentaries will be available in their entirety. It’ll be mostly weeklies, first issues, special issues that have just come out, or whatever is on the top of my stack when Wednesday hits. You know, to try to get people interested in spending one dollar per month to read the rest of my commentaries. As Gail Simone says about my site: “Tess’s reviews are some of the funniest things on the net, every time. I wish I could convince them that they should be doing this for a website or a magazine or something. This is top-notch stuff!” She uses third person singular pronouns for me because she doesn't want to offend me by getting my gender wrong even though she met me and I totally look like a rotten stinking man. I should also find some other famous people to write blurbs for my blog before I run out of Gail Simone quotes! If you’d like to support me and maybe get me to offer even more freebies (sure, why should you pay when other people will get them for free? Probably because you’re a totally terrific and swell person!), please head on over to Patreon and sign up for one dollar (or more!) per month. It’s totally worth it for the email notifications of new posts alone!

Green Arrow Annual #1

All of the September 2015 annuals so far have been enjoyable. Don't you fucking break that trend, Green Arrow!

Grayson had two annuals in one year. Green Arrow is finally getting an annual after four years. Judging by the quality of the writing on both series, I'd say that's about right. It might be a little too heavy on the Green Arrow annuals though.

This issue begins with a metaphor about an apple. You know how some people claim to be face blind, seeing everybody like Dick Grayson with his Hypnos in? I'm metaphor blind! So I don't know why Oliver mentioned a gross apple he once ate and then begins talking about some seemingly good citizens who are evil douchebags at night. I guess it's because they like apples. They also like to wear the masks of ex-presidents. I think I've seen that somewhere before!

The people they're going after are all listed in a Seattle "Register of the Infected." I doubt they're going after zombies so they must be attacking people with AIDS. I'm guessing AIDS because it seems like the virus most easily used in a less-than-subtle analogy about rotting apples. I really want to like Benjamin Percy for some reason. Maybe because he has Pacific Northwest ties. Maybe because he seems to know how to write except he keeps putting out really clumsy and obvious stories relying too heavily on Narration Boxing.

Maybe the infected in this story simply have measles or herpes or HPV. Do people still write stories about AIDS? Hasn't it been cured by injecting everybody with Magic Johnson's Immune Juice? Maybe these guys are anti-vaxxers and since they don't believe in vaccines, they have to go around and kill everybody who is infected with measles or the mumps or rubella! You know, to protect themselves and their community in much the same way they'd be protected if they all just got the fucking vaccines!

Well, the victim screams at the television while watching Wheel of Fortune. I have no sympathy for him. Kill him! Also, it's not Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or else the "R" in "Mr." would be on the board which it isn't. Maybe this is a Monsters in Literature Before and After?

Meanwhile Oliver Queen is lying naked in bed thanking his girlfriend for putting her tongue in his ass. That must be what he's talking about because he says "That thing you did? Before the other thing." There's not much things to do to the male body, right? So it's like putting the penis in things or putting things in the butt! I don't think there is anything else. Unless people put things in the penis but that just seems like unreasonably off the beaten path!

His girlfriend Melanie leaves because she can't relate to hot, white, rich men. I'm not sure how that explains why she has to leave unless she's just trying to garner the sympathy of everybody in earshot who isn't a hot, white, rich male. A better excuse would be that his room smells like farts or that he makes terrible waffles. I'm confused as to why Oliver wants her to stay. Doesn't he realize he's a hot, white, rich male?! He should be inviting the next girl into bed while Melanie gets dressed!

My first guess about the infection was that they were werewolves but I didn't write that because it was silly. It turns out the infection is werewolfitis. That makes a lot more sense though since Benjamin Percy likes to write in analogies. Which means the story really is about AIDS but the AIDS turn people into werewolves.

See? He's got Werewolf AIDS!

Remember when Tiny Tim wrote "Santa Claus Has Got the AIDS"? To be fair, he recorded it in 1985 before we all realized what a plague it was turning into. To be more than fair, I think by 1985 Tiny Tim should have known better! At least somebody realized the song probably wouldn't become the next "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" and squashed its release.

I'm not totally sure about the 1985 date on the song. I got that from Wikipedia's page of the worst songs ever. One of the songs on the list, to nobody's surprise, is Rebecca Black's "Friday." I have that song on my iTunes and it's fucking catchy if you're going to be honest about pop music. The lyrics are inane but she was a young girl pursuing her hobby of singing and songwriting. The lyrics really weren't any more inane than hundreds of pop songs to come before her and by people much older. I remember when everybody was being really mean to her on Twitter when the song was first released. I never bothered to listen to the song and I just thought everybody was really showing how much they don't care about looking like an asshole and a bully. It was about two years later when I first listened to the song and was surprised by how young she was and how awful people were to her and her song. I will stand by the fact that it is a catchy pop song.

Oliver and Henry hear about the attacks on the infected and meet up to discuss what to do about the Ex-Presidents.

Well la dee dah! Too posh to sit on something a fat slob sat on?!

The Infected are called Wargs which I should probably type as the W-slur. It turns out the analogy is much broader than just people with AIDS being feared by society. Apparently the W-slurs are analogous to Muslims, Witches, and Jewish people as well. Is Jewish okay to say? Or should I have typed J-word?

Some victims of Werewolf AIDS take a drug to keep from transforming. But others have joined the Berserkers biker gang and love to ride around howling at the suburban housewives. They also want to clean up Oliver Queen's city in their own way just like the Ex-Presidents want to clean up the city in their own way. "Cleaning up the city" is shorthand for somebody who will become Oliver Queen's enemy.

Meanwhile Emiko is practicing to be a terrible stand up comedian. She's also too young to remember the Unknown Comic and that she's stealing his gimmick.

Emiko is upset because she turned into a bully at school and beat up two kids. But it's okay because they were acting obnoxiously. It's okay to physically assault people who are being dicks. Don't even try to engage them and point out how horrible they're being. Just knock them unconscious because that's cool. If gross people want to have the freedom of speech they have to accept the consequences that come with it. And those consequences might take the form of a totally perfect non-problematic person using violence against them while everybody cheers. It's okay to be a violent dick and a bully if your victim has opinions that differ drastically from yours and which you think are completely gross.

Oliver instantly believes that the kids are somehow involved in the attacks on the Wargs. That makes sense. Teenagers are only inconsiderate douches if their parents have taught them to be inconsiderate douches. So it's obviously a clue that they're picking on the sister of a known Warg! Now Oliver has a lead! That was easy!

Emiko is sad because she's such a unique snowflake that nobody likes her. Fuck, Emiko. Being a teenager who thinks they're different from all the other teenagers and feels ostracized just means you're exactly like all of the other teenagers!

Green Arrow narrates a bit about Tommy Maltman the puppet maker who was just killed by the Berserkers even though he isn't there and hasn't witnessed it. It's at these moments that I wish comic book writers still remembered about omniscient narrators. I know they're frowned upon but it's no better having the main character do the narration of scenes he isn't a witness to.

Oh poor Oliver. Somebody called him a name! Who the fuck cares what other people think of you. That's the best part of the privilege of being a white heterosexual male! You don't have to be a representative of a group! You can think of yourself as simply Oliver Queen and not white or male or heterosexual! Therefore you don't have to feel insulted when somebody assumes things about you based on those facts! White heterosexual males who whinge and moan about people complaining about white, heterosexual males are merely throwing their privilege down the drain! Besides, Ollie. Who cares if you're a privileged jerkoff. You're still a hot, white, rich male!

Oliver and Emiko and George go out for the Halloween parade where they catch site of the Ex-Presidents in the parade. They don't realize yet that the Wargs are also in the parade! Which side will Oliver choose?! I mean, obviously he has to choose the Werewolf's side or else he'll be an accessory to a hate crime. But it's okay for the Werewolves to attack everybody since some of those everybodies are assholes hatemongers. I guess.

The Werewolves' plan is to make everybody else a werewolf by biting and clawing them. The Ex-Presidents' plan is to kill anybody who has been infected. The innocent bystanders' plan is to run and scream and cause a whole lot of chaos.

Maybe think about this in the context of your day at school, Emiko. Learn a lesson for once!

Oliver and Emiko subdue both sides and the story ends with Oliver noticing he's been bitten! Oh no! Green Arrow Wolf Man!

Green Arrow Annual #1 Non-Ranking Annual Rating: I have been severely disappointed by Green Arrow for nearly four years. Jeff Lemire did some work to make the comic book interesting but it never felt much like a Green Arrow or an Oliver Queen book during his run. The first time I felt interested in Green Arrow was during Benjamin Percy's Convergence Sneak Peek. But then he followed that up with a fairly trite and ridiculously unsubtle story about institutional racism. This story felt like it was going to be another too spot on analogy and, in some ways, I suppose it was. But I think it was a really good attempt for a longer annual story. The social justice stuff felt clumsily written but I think it's a perfectly reasonable direction to head with Green Arrow. Hasn't he always fought for the downtrodden and the oppressed? So putting a rich white male into this role and having him deal with the "white savior" stuff could make for some really good stories. But maybe ease up on the mallet, Ben. A little more subtlety. Move things along a little more organically and well-paced. I could see this becoming a really interesting book.

Twat Lobo #9

Twat Lobo had better not try to cross over with The Omega Men! Unless Tom King writes it!

Twat Lobo is not interesting because he's the greatest assassin in the universe so the reader knows he's always going to defeat any opponent he battles. He needs another thing to make him interesting and a nice set of abdominal muscles isn't enough to keep me interested. If it's enough to keep you interested then you probably shouldn't be reading this review because I'm not going to discuss how fit Twat Lobo is. All superheroes are fit. What Twat Lobo needs is a personality that's interesting. Instead we have a guy who's super confident and arrogant who follows a supposed Code which he really just makes up as he goes. Perhaps the fact that he says "Sorry. Not Sorry" is supposed to make him hip and groovy and the bee's knees and/or the cat's pajamas instead of what it really does which is cause the bile to rise up in my throat.

What Twat Lobo needs is a flaw of some kind. He needs to be vulnerable in some aspect of his character. Maybe he lost his penis and it never regenerated and he's super ashamed of not having one because he acts so macho and manly with all the sex he's supposedly having? Or perhaps he's super gassy and can't stop farting? Perhaps he's truly sorry about killing all of the other Czarnians? Maybe Czarnians have to mate once every four years or their heads explode and he's desperately seeking out Rob Liefeld's character Sheba (the female version of Real Deal Lobo he created in Deathstroke) so he doesn't die? Perhaps he's obsessed with raising gerbils? Give me something to fucking like here, Cullen! Who needs another bad-ass killer with a hot body? A person can only look into a mirror so often before they're completely bored, you know?!

First page has eleven Narration Boxes because Cullen Bunn hates that he's writing comic books. I think he'd rather just write plot summaries.

Does that count as a kind of vulnerability? An aversion to insects and countesses?!

So Twat Lobo has always hated insects and Countesses. Now we're getting somewhere! I'm finally understanding who this Twat Lobo really is! He lost his only love when he destroyed Czarnia but his tight abs and strict Code helped him to put her out of his mind and, by the way, he hates insects and Countesses. I've had Twat Lobo all wrong! I just thought he was a cardboard cutout of yet another unbeatable cosmic killer! I'm totally fucking into this guy now!

Oh hey! Remember a few sentences ago when I said Cullen Bunn would rather just write plot summaries?!

I love when I get proven right!

So Frank J. Barbiere is doing dialogue, eh? How much work is that in a Twat Lobo comic book? Most of the words appear in Narration Boxes! Do those count as dialogue or are those considered plot?

The Countess decides to rape Twat Lobo since he's under her control now. But he's into it, so it's okay. I guess sometimes when you're raped, it's just being fucked before you realized you actually wanted to be fucked! It's cool and not totally gross at all. I think Cullen Bunn is onto something here! I mean, the same thing actually happened to me once! And I didn't cry in the corner at all afterward! Am I using too many exclamation points to compensate for my inner turmoil and pain?! No, probably not! I suppose I gave tacit consent when I tried to put my penis in her vagina out in front of the library the first night we met! She stopped me that time because we didn't have a condom. And I knew no meant no so I stopped! I don't know why, at a later date, she didn't stop while I was sleeping even though she didn't have a condom!

I have to say, waking up to a woman sitting on your penis is kind of nice. I mean, I was victimized!

I'm not advocating any kind of rape at all (except maybe the kind where a woman I'm attracted to takes out my penis and puts it into her vagina while I'm asleep). I'm just relating a personal anecdote lacking many details and how I felt about that anecdote (which was pretty good! Unless it was traumatic?)! I did stop dating her immediately after that though because, come on! You can't just have sex with me and expect me to remain interested afterward! I mean, you can't violate my rights and expect me not to be upset!

I should probably stop talking about this! I think I'm saying some things that I shouldn't be saying! I totally disagree with everything I just said and that me from a few minutes ago is totally gross and problematic and I want nothing to do with him. Thankfully timed moved forward and I'm totally different now and I've learned my lesson.

Twat Lobo gets infected by dozens of the spider things that may or may not have been salvaged from Ann Nocenti's Klarion comic book. Twat Lobo is in real trouble now! It appears he's powerless against rapey countesses who sweat spider mind-control technology. I wonder how many of them have entered through his urethra?

It's a good thing Twat Lobo Narration Boxes that this "is bad...real bad" and that he's "totally useless...at her will...just a plaything" or I wouldn't understand what was happening. I would say that I was functionally mentally retarded but that would be a retarded thing to say, considering the backlash that I'd get for using the R-Slur even if it communicates exactly what I want to say without actually demeaning anybody because having retarded mental functions is just a thing that some people have to deal with. Most of them own guns and vote Republican. Oh! Burn! Don't worry, I'll pretend to attack liberals and pacifists later! Wouldn't want me abusing my soap box by not being fair and balanced with the things that I say that will get me into trouble and make people hate me.

I really don't mean to upset anybody. It's just fate! One things leads to the next thing and the next thing leads to the thing that comes after that and I have no actual control over what I'm going to wind up writing about. I'm just a victim of my own destiny! You can't blame a person for anything since nobody has any free will! Right? Was that convincing? Is that a good enough excuse to keep using "retarded"?!

Remember that thing I said a commentary or two ago about my writing being too vulgar?! The previous was an example of that! What I just wrote was actually pretty intellectual stuff but nobody will take the time to dissect it in any way except a way that makes me look like a bigoted asshole with a peabrain and probably a tiny penis (I say probably because I don't want to admit to it being small (which it totally isn't because it's adequately man-sized and maybe better! (probably))). Does this caveat about how what I wrote was smart and not just vulgar make what I wrote smart? I hope so!

Ha ha! Wait. Was that a cunnilingus joke? Maybe this wasn't as funny as I first thought.

I'd better make fun of liberals now while I'm still thinking about. Let's see. What kind of stupid things are liberals into? Oh yeah! Why don't y'all just go enjoy your stupid free health care that isn't free at all because everybody pays into it and only some people are going to end up using it! You know, just like private health insurance works now! But, um, different somehow because it's bad or something! Idiots! Oh, and guns don't kill people! Jerks kill people! And they often use guns because it makes killing easy! Also sometimes innocent people like little kids kill people with guns because I guess those kids are jerks! How dare they touch that gun when they were probably not supposed to at all?! Idiots!

Ha ha! She's talking about cunnilingus! Again! I think! Also, why is that White Martian wearing boob armor?

Oh! There it is! Cunnilingus! Ha ha! I knew it would be in there somewhere since it was a woman talking about a man's tongue! Ha ha! Those women have a one-track mind!

I wonder when Twat Lobo is going to Narration Box that he was just kidding about being Countess Odessa's slave?! I don't buy that he's her puppet at all! Although why would he Narration Box that he was when the only people he would be fooling are the readers?!

Twat Lobo asks a question that the Countess really shouldn't answer but this is a comic book so she says, "I suppose it's more fun this way," and then blabs all of her plans and secrets. Yay! Such fun!

The Countess shows Twat Lobo her money-making scheme which is a factory that creates bodies for people who want bodies that are different than the bodies they were randomly assigned at birth.

I don't know if I understand her plan correctly. She implants mind-control spiders into people who give her cash to fund her Flesh Factory? Or she implants mind-control spiders into people who will become the customers for her flesh factory? Why is she involved in the Flesh Factory at all? Why doesn't she just mind-control people into simply giving her cash? I really am too stupid for this comic book!

In the next instant, the jerk with the laser bow attacks. He's from The Citadel because DC probably wanted to try to tie this book (the worst one DC publishes) with The Omega Men (arguably the best book DC publishes (along with Grayson and Gotham Academy)). The problem with The Omega Men is that none of them are young and hot with six packs and huge cocks. Why would anybody want to read about characters that are interesting but don't look good?

Just as an aside because I can't help pointing out every little thing that's wrong with this book: on the eleventh page of the story, Odessa is spelled "Odesa." Ha ha! Typo! What idiots!

Twat Lobo is compelled to attack Mr. Laser Arrow but apparently it's worse than that. He seems to have no control over his body and he's just watching as it reacts to the situation. I don't know if his brain completely understands what's going on though because it praises his body for having the sense to pull the laser arrows out of it yet when the laser arrows are set to blow a few panels later, Twat Lobo's guts blow out all over the place. I guess he missed the only one that was sticking in him that his body supposedly had the sense to pull out? The visuals don't really match the Narration Boxing but that'll happen when you rely on Frank J. Barbiere to do dialogue!

Mr. Laser Arrow sets off an EMP which fries all of Twat Lobo's mind-control spiders, freeing him up to get revenge on Countess Odessa. But don't worry! He's not as bad as she is! He has a Code! So he won't rape her. He merely kills her.

Twat Lobo turns down a job with The Citadel and heads back to his other job he didn't actually want to take with the Void Whisper. But I think he suffered irreparable brain damage during the mission.

"I talk care of problem. With my tongue! Cunnilingus! Cunnilingus! It's the Code!" Lobo talk pretty one day.

Twat Lobo heads off to deal with Sinestro. That story took place in the Twat Lobo Annual where Twat Lobo learned Sinestro wants him on his team too. So this book is just about how popular Twat Lobo is. Everybody wants to work with him! And probably suck him off too!

Super twisty epilogue: Countess Odessa comes back to life and tells her spider children that she now has enough Twat Lobo DNA in her vagina to start producing Czarnian Flesh for her Flesh Factory which seems unnecessary to her plans of becoming super wealthy and shit. Even if her plan is to rule the universe, she doesn't need anything but her mind-control spiders. I think the Countess Odessa might be overthinking her plans.

Twat Lobo #9 Rating: No change! Holy shit! With that "No Change" rating, that means Twat Lobo has remained out of the Worst Comic Position for a full month! Congratulations to Deathstroke for being even worse! What a feat!

Klarion #6

Please let this be how the series ends.

My favorite thing about Twitter is how a funny person will tweet something funny and then one hundred unfunny people will reply to it with "jokes" of their own, and usually half of those "jokes" are just rehashing the original joke. It's like some people hear a joke and think, "Oh! I wonder if the person who told that joke knows how funny it is! I'd better repeat it but in a different and less subtle way! LOL!" Seriously, I love the internet because everybody can shout into it and, golly gee, isn't that a good time. But 99% of you assholes are superfluous. Me? I'm part of the 1%! Suck it, 99 Percenters!

I love being confident!

No wait! I love pretending to be confident!

No wait! I hate crying into my pillow every night!

Now that I'm done with my rambling introduction, this is the part where I'd normally give a synopsis of the previous Klarion issues. But since I didn't understand any of them at all, an update like that would be useless and, most probably, really fucking mean. And I'm not here to bash Ann Nocenti!

Good thing you can't see my face when I type because I couldn't not smile while typing the last sentence of that last paragraph! I'm actually here to bash her a lot!

Since when did Klarion decide to represent Nature in this battle? Did Ann Nocenti suddenly realize that she should probably mention nature at some point since her theme was technology versus nature?

"Game over!" "Game on!" Oh, oh! It's all so cute and clever that my butt hurts again! Thanks a lot, Ann!

Klarion and Coal are having a big battle now for some reason. Were they ever at odds before this? Why does Klarion even care? Why is anybody buying this comic book? I guess the colors are pretty. Good job, Guy Major! You're a colorist like Gabe Eltaeb and Jeromy Cox! You guys color things and make them pretty! Oh so pretty! Might I make a suggestion? Can you somehow cover up the word balloons with lots of pretty black ink the next time you color an Ann Nocenti book? No? Because the lettering gets added at a different time? Well then fuck you. You're useless. I'm just going to go buy a black Sharpie.

It's Teekl along with some words that that asshole Guy Major didn't color over. Good for nothing colorist.

How did it all start with Teekl? Because Noah stole some of its fur or something for a dinner recipe? And why would Klarion need to banish his own past? And can we just forget about the Buddybots! Unless they're meant to represent masturbation! If this comic book has been about people losing themselves in masturbation all of this time and I missed it, I'll never let myself live it down.

Oh my god it is about masturbation! I'm such a fucking idiot!

I made a joke last issue about the buddybots being masturbatory fantasies come to life since they emerge from the palm of a person's hand but I didn't think this entire run might have been entirely about masturbation. But now I'm starting to see it! Klarion was punished back in his home world because he wasn't using his hands properly! So he runs off with the devil to a less puritanical world where masturbation is practiced by everybody except liars! There he finds a group of witches who think masturbation by hand is the best way and a group of witches who think using mechanical, high-tech toys is better! And these buddybots are the perfect companion for the person whose palm they come out of which is obviously an argument about how masturbation cuts you off from other relationships. Which is why Buddybots are perfect because they're just extensions of you that help you get off but they have no agency of their own so you don't have to worry about their desires, needs, or feelings!

I might have to apologize to Ann Nocenti! She's a genius!

See?!

Klarion's buddybot, Klarwitch, goes on to ask Klarion to teach her and not hit her. She just doesn't understand jerking off yet because she's young. But Klarion teaches her to hold her hands like he holds his and then he shoots a massive ray of jizz into Coal's face. There should be a professional masturbation battle federation. Two men enter, one man remains covered in semen. I don't know how the female version of the sport would work since who can fucking tell who won and who fake won?

Klarwitch crashes to the ground and breaks so that Piper can have a conversation with Klarion about touching himself. I don't know where Rasp and Zell wandered off to since they were in this room with the buddybots just two pages ago.

Geez, Piper! He's being metaphorical! The snake represents his penis!

I think Ann Nocenti threw in that above panel so she could justify all of the times one of her characters spouted erroneous information in previous series. "See? I know better! It's just I write characters that continues to believe silly nonsense! You didn't think I actually believed that crocodiles love rotting meat or that cats can't swim? Pshaw! So crazy!"

That part where Piper and Noah were talking about how Klarion needs to banish his past that came up out of nowhere becomes a topic of conversation. And if you really want to know what it's about, you're going to need to do some serious digging in your local comic book stores back issue bins.

I think this that issue of Kirby's The Demon can be found at Billy Galaxy's on Powell Boulevard in Portland, Oregon. But it's super expensive there so I wouldn't recommend purchasing it at that location.

Gargora appears just as Noah and Piper are helping Klarion craft a spell to bring Teekl back to life. Sure! Just as the series is ending, the best character in the book is going to finally make an appearance.

I'm completely lost right now. I wonder if all the assholes that raved about this comic book are still pretending it's a magnificent triumph? I bet they're all blaming its incomprehensibility on editorial interference and the cancellation of the book. Because who would want to blame the introduction of a character and plot point that has somehow become the focal point of the entire series on the writer of the series?

I hope Teekl comes back to life, glances over at Klarion with his detached penis Klarwitch, licks her butt, and says, "Fuck this shit." Then she goes off to star in her own comic book written by anybody else*.

*Not Scott Lobdell.

Something happens and the witches win or something. I'm not sure who they beat. Or why. Or what the point of it all was. But I guess everybody is happy now?

Klarion #6 Rating: -10 Ranking. As you can tell, I stopped trying to figure out what was going on during the last battle. I suppose if I wanted to do more work than just handing over my $2.99, I could make sense of the story. But it would all be my own assumptions and guesses because the story is nonsense. Hopefully this is the last Ann Nocenti book I ever have to read because it stopped being fun about ten Nocenti Catwoman issues ago. She truly is an awful writer.

Klarion #5

Ooh! This issue looks promising!

I just found out today about mortality! Did anybody mention this to you guys? How come only Tumblr is talking about this?! It's so important! We're all, like, going to die one day! Think about it! It's like one minute we're here and then eighty years later, not here! What the fuck?! How come nobody's mentioned this to me before? Why isn't the media reporting on this?! It doesn't seem like the kind of thing you leave out. I would begin every newscast with incomprehensible screaming and blubbering followed by an in-depth consumer report about how to keep death from happening. If I'd known about this whole mortality bullshit, I wouldn't have wasted the first half of my life! How does one start this thing over?!

I mean, I'm not totally stupid and naive. I knew other people died! Heck, I've even killed some of them (don't worry! They were assholes and misgenderers). But me?! That's crazy! Me? Not existing?! How does that even work? I'm the center of the universe? If the center falls out, it all collapses in on itself! I'm sorry to inform you all that one day I will die and that'll be it for all of you. Poof! Out like a candle! Just like that fat guy with the fat brother once said.

Maybe nobody told me because look at how terrified I was right from the beginning. Also, I apparently was born wearing gloves made out of human skin. I guess I should have had a twin?

Now that I've learned the most important truth there is, I think I need to turn over several new leafs. I should probably stop being mean to other human beings just because they are terrible at writing and I keep wasting $2.99 every month buying their comic books. I mean, that's on me. That's my fault. So, Ann Nocenti, I'm sorry for treating you like garbage. From now on, you will get nothing but respect from me. That doesn't mean I'm going to be kind to your writing, of course. But I won't say things like, "If I had a time machine and a shrink ray and a pistol with only one bullet and some scuba gear, I'd go back in time and assassinate Ann Nocenti's father's fastest sperm on the day she was conceived." I will try to be encouraging! I will say things like, "Come on, Ann Nocenti! I know you can write dialogue that's coherent. That can be understood. That makes sense!" Or maybe, "Ann, you write like Shakespeare. Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Trite. Predictable. Full of cliches." Or even, "Go Ann Nocenti! You're burning up the quarter mile! Ann Nocenti! Go Ann Nocenti! Go Ann Nocenti! You're postal from the hip hop child! Ann Nocenti! Go Ann Nocenti! You are supreme! The dicks will scream! For Ann Nocenti! Go GO GO GOGOGOGOGOGOGOGO!"

This comic book starts off completely awesome if you're illiterate!

I hope Ann Nocenti looked up the definition of "uncanny valley" since last issue. Not that it matters. She can write whatever she wants to write! This is a work of fiction. Even if its untrue that crocodiles love rotten meat, Katana is still free to say that because Katana is a character that believes things that may sometimes not be true. It's not like Ann Nocenti actually believes that nonsense. Or one of her characters might say that cats can't swim. Perfectly reasonable for a character to think that even if it's false. It's not like Ann Nocenti, an experienced, wise, world traveler, would actually believe that nonsense. So when the characters in Klarion misunderstand what the uncanny valley is, it's just part of their characterization. They're just dullards that don't know how to crack open a dictionary (or type the word "dictionary" into a search engine). And Rasp really is kind of dumb as you can see from the above conversation between Klarion and big, fat, chubby Zell. Rasp will put anything in his mouth!

Before Klarion can pop the Future Swag Buddybot into his face, he asks Swag if it's magic. He already knows it's future tech! The only reason he asks that is so Ann Nocenti can have Swag say, "Magic is nothing but a future we haven't met yet." Yay! So when I feel like I have to poop, is that my body casting a poop spell that will conjure poop in the future? I knew there was an explanation for why we poop!

After Zell was warning Klarion about eating a strange, future Buddybot, she tells him to not be scared when he hesitates. That girl sure does like to send mixed messages! Firs she's all, "I'm going to kill you with my hair!" and then she's all, "No wait, kiss me, you man!" Now she's all, "Don't eat that gross thing!" and then she's all, "You're scared to eat it, you chickenshit bastard fuckhole!" Then she's all, "I love to eat! Tee hee! That's why I'm so disgustingly out of shape! Boo hoo!"

Trevor McCarthy does know he's drawing Zell super hot and skinny, right? Even though his character designs looked exactly the same way and yet she was labeled as "chubby"? Does Trevor McCarthy not know what "chubby" means? Maybe he and Ann should split the cost of a dictionary.

After some wacky goings on in which Ann Nocenti is able to say something the same way but differently three times at least twice, everybody is expelled from Klarion's Every Kiss Begins With K-Verse. And they all lived happily ever after. Unless you all really want me to read the last thirteen pages. It's just going to be more of the same! Pretty pictures with lots of purple and blue colors surrounded by a bunch of words that make the pictures less interesting. Sigh. I guess I've come this far. I'll keep trudging along.

"Ann Nocenti, you're doing great! Keep up the good work! Love what you're doing with Klarion! Greased Lightning!"

Meanwhile at The Neapolitan Club, Rasp is getting his junk all up inside the Uncanny Valley.

Rasp: "Eww! Eww! You're so fucking hideously freaky, Contessa!"
Contessa: "Wouldn't having three nipples be fun?"
Rasp: "I'm so put off by your near human but not quite human looks!"
Contessa: "Let us exchange junk so that we can feel each others orgasms."
Rasp: "Don't look at me while I fuck you because you're freaking me out!"
Contessa: "Inna future, wes does not needs any secrets acause we all share da same infomations! We just fink, 'I wanna tell dat knocks knocks joke' and da pooter download da knock knock jokes right inta our brains and we's all laughs and laughs!"
Rasp: "Did I just put my dick in your vagina or did you just put my dick in your vagina?"

I think it's more like masturbation than incest. She's just an extension of the palm of his hand, after all.

Coal (the bad guy. I think?) gets a couple pages of back story. Apparently he walked in on his father just as his dad was about to blow his own brains out because some people stole his patents. The bullet blew off his father's hair and a piece of his skull which lodged into Coal's heart. I think this is some kind of metaphor for Coal's daddy issues. His father's failures weigh heavy on Coal's heart or something. I don't really care because the entire conflict of this comic book makes no sense. Klarion is only in the middle of it all because his name is on the cover. Also, I guess he's super powerful at magic (which is just the future that hasn't become the present yet, remember!).

I think Zell and Klarion are in a romantic entanglement as well? The only thing I'm sure of is that Teekl should be the costar and she's been nothing but a whiff of a monster in the K-Zone.

"Let's go live now to Rachael O'Rachael live on the streets talking a man who fears new technology. 'Sir? What do you have to say about the onslaught of technology on your life?' 'Get off my lawn!' 'You heard it hear first!' Now let's go to Simon O'Simon who has found a member of the embrace technology crowd! Simon? 'So, how do you feel about Luddites?' 'Fuck old people! What the fuck is a Luddite?' Ha ha! Good interview, Simon! Perhaps we should 'Google that for her,' right?"

My fake conversation isn't nearly as bad as the actual conversation that continues on the radio broadcast. One thing I know I'll never be any good at: faking Ann Nocenti dialogue. Here's a good moment from the radio debate: "Robots have rights. Just like sentient beings." "Really, Chuck? Even if we're scared of them?" That's hard hitting journalism right there! Apparently fear negates intelligence! I mean, I knew fear within an intelligent person negated their own intelligence. Happens all the time. Just look at the war on terror. But I didn't know that fear of somebody else negated the feared person's intelligence! I'm going to try that sometime.

Sometimes we get sad glimpses into Ann Nocenti's real life like this panel here. Friends hate all of their friends a little bit? Does that make me her friend?

Klarion's Future Swag Buddybot is birthed from his palm and he instantly abandons it to Zell because it's a girl. Plus it's a burden. Also it's no fun and needy and gross and a baby. On the news in the background where the mandatory television set showing news always appears in every comic book panel ever printed, a tornado warning is given for the surrounding area. But Klarion realizes it isn't a tornado at all! It's Coal's Buddybots flying off the shelves!

Klarion abandons his baby and Zell and heads off to battle Coal for some reason. I don't know why he's battling Coal. What does he have against Coal and the Neapolitan Club? Anyway, Klarion claims, for the first time ever, that his magic is from nature so it's going to destroy Coal's techno-magic. Although Klarion's entire motivation for the last two issues was to gain as much techno-magic as possible to kick all the asses forever. I guess once he had his Techno-Baby, he changed his mind. What a dick.

Klarion #5 Rating: -2 Ranking. This comic book really doesn't make any fucking sense. Ann Nocenti may have ideas she wants to write about, to debate, and to discuss, but she doesn't know how to form them into a coherent piece of fiction. Her characters are just things which speech bubbles come out of and whatever is in the speech bubble generally has no relation to the character at whom the speech bubble is pointing. I think she'd be better off just writing an essay on technology versus nature rather than trying to force whatever points she's trying to bring up into an entertaining comic book. She's proven four times now that she just can't do it with any skill at all. Perhaps earlier in her career, she did some good work at Marvel. I don't know. I've never read it. But so far in The New 52, I just don't think her return to comics has been very successful. But there are some reviewers elsewhere on the internet who do, so what do I know (besides knowing that those other reviewers have no dignity, sense, or intelligence)?

Klarion #4

Even upside down, his pants won't stay up!

Everybody else is doing it, so why shouldn't I? May I now present to you Famous Comic Strips With Ann Nocenti Dialogue! Umm, not that everybody is doing that! But you know, for years, people have been doing things like Nietzsche Family Circus and This Charming Charlie and, in a somewhat different manner but in a way exactly like the other two, Garfield Minus Garfield. For what it's worth, I think Garfield Minus Garfield catches the absurd condition of the existentialist life better than the other two. The Smiths mixed with The Peanuts is too spot on because Charlie Brown already was Morissey. And you can stick anything underneath a Family Circus cartoon and it'll improve it. As Seth Bullock points out in Go, Family Circus just sits there at the bottom of the page waiting to suck.

Okay, that's enough of that! This is why those "take one creation and mash it with another creation but never add anything new to the thing" things never work for me. Because you read the first one and think, "Oh, I get it," and then you don't need to see hundreds of variations on the same idea. I got it! Ha ha! That was funny pairing Nietzsche with the Family Circus. But you know what would be funnier? If I could do it again and again and again!

Plus, I don't think I could read anymore fucking Lockhorn strips. Here is a synopsis of every Lockhorn strip every: one spouse judges the other. Reader thinks, "Holy fucking Christ, why are these two still married?!" That comic is so bad! It was making Ann Nocenti seem like that one writer who wrote really well and was loved by all the critics.

Here's the story in Klarion #4 right up until I almost opened my veins due to reading Lockhorn comic strips: Klarion ditched Zell when they were attacked by Witchhunters. He took off in Beelzebub's muscle car which can open holes in reality. Zell and her new friend, Medusa the Robot Dog, fall into the hole created by the car and everybody escapes the Witchhunters except for one of The Neapolitan Club's Robot Cockroaches.

The characters find themselves in Klarion's Pocket which is the Klarionzone which is also the Klarvoyance which is all the Klarvergence which is also the K-Pocket because Ann Nocenti can never just say one thing and leave it alone. It's always, "I found a dog. A canine. A creature that often eats its own shit." Sometimes she even gets fancy where she says one thing and then follows it up with a few more until she's talking about the thing that she really wanted to talk about which actually has nothing to do with the first thing. It's like when you take a word like "sports" and change one letter at a time forming other words until you get to a completely new word that had nothing to do with the first one but the journey somehow links them together. "Sports::sporks::storks::stores::stones!" Here, let me give you an Ann Nocenti example:

Actually, this is even worse! "Familiars" has nothing to do with "albatrosses" but by stating one and then the other, she tries to fool the reader into believing that all the aspects of "an albatross around someone's neck" are equally valid when describing a familiar.

And then Ann Nocenti does something that nobody has been up in arms about at all! Probably because nobody reads this book. And even though I don't give a shit about policing people's words because only assholes that want to be bullies but feel self-righteous in their bullying do that, I don't like Ann Nocenti's writing so I'll point it out:

Nigget? That's a combination of "nigger" and "midget"! And DC allowed that!?

See, I don't mind this because it's a story and Beelzebub is a devil character who is the Lord of Flies. He wouldn't give two, maybe three shits about what anybody thought about the words he chooses to use. But he's also a character in a teen rated comic book put out by DC Comics who probably don't want everybody up in arms about their insensitivity. I mean, you wouldn't know that from their past history but I'm sure they don't want people calling them out on it! And now a character is calling a whole race of impish creatures "niggets"? I'm offended!

No, not really. But people who are offended by this kind of thing should be offended! So start being offended already! Racism! Dwarfism! Impism!

Anyway, Beez takes Klarion to meet a guy named Swag who...you guessed it...deals in swag! Future swag! From the future! He even has smooth lines to lure in the potential customers!

*KRRRRRAAAAACKKKK!* "Ugh! Ugh! What dat?!" "Dat God bowling! Ugh!" "Ugh! Ugh! What bowling?!" "Not know! God work mysterious ways! Ugh!"

This is probably one of the things I love most about Ann Nocenti's writing. She wants to include the idea of "god-of-the-gaps" where people shout "God!" to answer any question that can't be answered by the current limits of science. If we extrapolate, we should realize that the things we don't know now, we will most probably know in the future. This pushes God further and further out of the equation until there is simply no need for him. But in Ann Nocenti's typical fashion, her methods of introducing topics like this are ham-handed at best. It's like she's taken hours to prepare us a sumptuous meal and when she gets ready to serve it to us, she loads it up in a trebuchet and flings it into our faces.

Swag pressures Klarion into drinking a mysterious glass of alcohol and rape drugs as he answers Klarion's refusal of "I don't drink" with "Hard to do business with a man that don't drink. Oh, but you're just a kid." And after noting that he's giving the drink to a minor, he continues to pressure the minor into drinking. Which is what Klarion does because why not?! Sitting between two creepy grown ass men in a bar inside his Klarvection Oven isn't that weird!

And then big old fucking chubby Zell walks in! Seriously. This character was designed to be chubby. This is DC's idea of chubby. God, we're all so fucking fat!

Oh! I bet Teekl comes flying out of the rafters of Klarion's Klarvent to scratch the shit out of Medusa the Robot Dog that talks like an adorable child! And Teekl will be all, "Take it, bitch!" And Medusa the Robot Dog will be all, "Oh no, please do not do that to me because I would like to be your friend because your butt smells delicious."

Meanwhile, Piper and Noah fly around checking out the Buddybots that have become ubiquitous in New York City.

America has been trying to solve the "old folks die alone and lonely" problem for years!

The conversation between Piper and Noah just reads like Nocenti writing out a list of pros and cons for the Buddybots to be used in this scene. And then instead of deciding where each character stands on the issue, she just throws the pros and cons in dialogue boxes. Also, her pros and cons eventually break down until she forgets what she was writing about and begins listing the pros and cons of living with dogs. And then when she's written enough, she probably scribbles out, "And then they go to bed. End Scene."

Then there's a powerful one page scene where a Pink Elephant Buddybot stops a man from drinking himself to death. It's the most powerful anti-Buddybot piece I've ever read. Unless it was an anti-drinking piece? I don't know! Anyway, Samuel Beckett would have been proud to have written that one page!

Instead of going to bed, Noah and Piper (with help from Agent Lush Moody, Noah's daughter and Witchhunter) head into Klarion's Klarionzone (which just sounds like an eighties arcade) to save them from Beez and Swag.

"Oh Contessa! I love this feeling of revulsion you give me! If only I could be even more revolted by you!"

Maybe Ann Nocenti is a robot that looks and acts nearly like a human and makes everybody at Marvel and DC Comics unbearably uncomfortable. Then one day she heard some people talking about her and heard the term "uncanny valley." So she approached them and asked about it, so they lied to her and told her it was the awesome feeling she gives them whenever she's in the room and they're totally not even remotely disgusted by her ever!

Back in the Klarverse, Swag gives Klarion some free Buddybots from the future so that all of Klarion's friends will get hooked on them! Now Klarion just has to make some friends in the next two issues! But then Piper and Noah arrive to save everybody! I hope they don't forget to grab Teekl on the way out.

Ann Nocenti's synopsis of gender relations. Nails it! 'nuff said!

Apparently the only thing that can save Klarion is true love! But since Klarion made one mistake by ditching Zell, he's already ruined his chances for true love because women never forgive men ever! For anything! For centuries!

Klarion thinks up the only four possible ways the future can go and decides that eating a Future Buddybot is the best choice of his four possible futures. Then the last page might possibly show what happened after Klarion ate a Future Buddybot which summoned Teekl to be his new Buddybot? Maybe? But then Teekl's natural form looks like a Medusa which is just confusing since Zell's Buddybot is named Medusa. Perhaps the Medusa is Zell's Buddybot's natural form or something? I don't know. The last page doesn't really make any sense. Klarion threatens to kill Zell's dog and Zell says, "Whatever the fuck is happening on this last page, please don't!" Or something.

Please read the fucking definition before next issue, Ann.

Klarion #4 Rating: -2 Ranking. I've been way too kind on this title. It's just...and this should come as no surprise to anybody that's read any of Ann Nocenti's DC Comics work...awful. Pure shit. Garbage. Not the magical fairy fantasy that other comic book reviewing sites are saying it is. Lying to your face and making you think there is some kind of mad genius behind it all. There isn't. My favorite part was how awful the art got near the end of the book, as if the artist just finally said, "Fuck it! I can't do this anymore!" and walked off the job.