Eclipso: The Darkness Within #2 (October 1992)

I wanted to call it "The Many Tits and Asses of Evil" but that was a bit too much work in Corel Photopaint.

Eclipso: The Darkness Within #2 (October 1992)
By Keith Giffen, Robert Loren Fleming, Bart Sears, Mark Pennington, Randy Elliott, Raymond Kryssing, Gaspar, and Tom McCraw
Cover by Bart Sears and Mark Pennington
Edited by Eddie Berganza and Michael Eury

• I know I can use a bunch of modern applications that would basically change the cover for me with a quick suggestion to a machine but where's the fun in that? Most of my artistic endeavours¹ have come from my brain suggesting something fucking ridiculous and my body having to figure out how to comply. Besides, I've been using Corel Photopaint for over 25 years so it's practically like breathing or keeping my heart beating. Plus I purchased it once² and that was it! No fucking subscription. I just have to make sure I don't lose the Install CD which, um, I've done so, well, there's always eBay, I guess? No, no. I'm sure it's around here somewhere.

• Okay. Right. Nobody cares about my Corel Photopaint career. If I thought anybody did, I'd send you to the Internet Archive of my old site to see all the great work I did with it: 8-bit buttons, moving advert banners, Dwarflover, and so, so much more. It's on Internet Archive because Doom Bunny stopped paying the miniscule hosting bill. He also pays the miniscule hosting bill for the site which houses all of my comic book scans. I just mention that so when that day eventually comes where the links to all of my comic books scans are broken, you'll know who to blame! I really need to get control of that payment!

• Not only does this cover have Lobo and Guy Gardner, it also has Klarion the Witch Boy! You might not have noticed him because you were staring at Starfire's ass and Black Canary's ass and the L.E.G.I.O.N. lady's ass. Sorry, I don't recognize most of the L.E.G.I.O.N. characters by name and I'm less interested in figuring their names out than I am in figuring out the names of the Legion of Super-hero horndogs.

• The characters possessed by Eclipso when this issue begins: Valor, Lady Quark, Star Sapphire, Starfire, Flash, Green Lantern, Changeling, The Creeper, Hawkwoman, Wonder Woman, Deathstork, Maxima, Power Girl, Red Star, Pantha, Starman, Mona Bennett, and Klarion the Witch Boy³. This issue begins with all of them (minus Valor and Starman) battling a bunch of heroes and Lobo in that crater in Arizona. Judging by all the newly Eclipsed characters on the cover, they're going to lose. That makes sense because Bruce Gordon, his team of geniuses, and Science Itself will need to rise up to save the world from the moon.

• Before the battle can take place, the moon becomes completely devoid of reflected sunlight as the Earth's shadow fully eclipses it, at least from the perspective of the crater in Arizona. A massive purple beam shoots down from the moon to transport all of the Eclipsed characters to the moon. Instead of cheering and celebrating because how can Eclipso take over the Earth when his entire army is on the moon, the heroes figure they need to somehow go to the moon to beat them up. Not one of them remarks, "Yay! They fled! We win! Earth is saved!" They might be stupid. Or I'm super ignorant of military tactics? I shouldn't have made that a question because it's true: I am super ignorant of military tactics. The question mark was just meant to convey that I don't know if that has any pertinence to the current story.

• Eclipso has used Starman's shapechanging power to make his face not have an Eclipso tattoo and to change his voice from purple gravel to normal old black type in white bubble speak. He's pretending to be one of the heroes by constantly screaming, "We need to follow the Eclipsed heroes to the moon! We need to go to the moon! Hurry, don't even think about it for a second! We have to get to the moon! Staying on Earth is the real trap when you think about it! But don't think about it! Just get to the trap! I mean moon!"

• I knew Eclipso's plan was to somehow absorb the powers of the people he possessed during the eclipse of the moon but it turns out to be far more literal than I expected.

"Um, uh, why do I have the urge to fuck underage girls? Can somebody help me unabsorb this guy?!"

• I don't know why Deathstork was "an easy one" but I'm going to assume it has to do with his age. It's like how old people are so easily absorbed by Fox News. They just turn to the channel and they're all, "Oh no! I'm scared of everything now! Kill brown people!"

For some reason, Blue Devil makes an appearance. Did he drop by to proclaim he wasn't a hero so he wouldn't be able to help out?

• Maybe Blue Devil appeared in The Demon annual. Although Bronze Tiger and Nightshade have also made an appearance and I don't remember a Suicide Squad tie-in annual. I think some of the Challengers of the Unknown are also at the big Let's Murder Eclipso Conference. Perhaps Giffen and Fleming just told Bart Sears to add whoever the fuck he wanted to draw.

• Some of the more loserish heroes have a problem with the "Murder" part of the Conference title but Vril Dox just tells them to shut up. They seem to take the Batman approach and decide that if they don't take part in the actual stabbing on the Senate floor, they won't have any blood on their hands. Even though they know the plan and they know what's about to happen. It's like when you own a cat that you let outside. You can easily take the stance that the bird your cat ripped up isn't on your conscience but you were the one who made the choice to let the cat out of the door.⁴ This doesn't apply to people whose cats can unlock and open doors.

• Meanwhile on the moon, Eclipso is absorbing all of the possessed heroes. I guess that'll be the argument against Vril Dox murdering Eclipso. Saving Eclipso will simply be an act of saving all of their friends. Not that Vril Dox will care. He's super logical which means that if he sees a goal as needing to be accomplished, it doesn't matter how many people will have to die to accomplish that goal. Even if that goal is to kill one person. You can't allow one person to not die just because it would mean seventeen other people will die! Are you crazy?! What kind of hippie peacenik thinks like that?!⁵

• The panel where Eclipso absorbs all of the other heroes is so gross I'm not going to scan it. Mostly because it's hard to use the scanner when I keep retching.

• Lobo decided not to take part in this mission because then it would go too easily. Instead, he stayed behind in Circus, Circus to play craps. I'm not kidding. He stayed behind to gamble. He's just like me! I also would rather gamble than risk my life to save the world!

• Starman continues to be way too insistent on walking into Eclipso's trap. Still, nobody suspects he's a double agent working for Eclipso. Unless they do. This story was called "Brilliant Men" and unless it was ironic, Vril Dox must know Starman is a traitor, right? Also, nobody has yet asked, "What happened to Superman?"

I don't even know who this guy is⁶ and yet he's the smartest guy currently on the moon!

• Everybody follows Starman into the palace where he reveals he's actually Eclipso. Everybody is shocked at the revelation! But more importantly, they're all slightly irritated that he fooled them. And since irritation is the precursor to murderous rage, they all become possessed by the God of Vengeance! But I guess the rules set down through the rest of the series where the possessed have to destroy the thing that caused them rage doesn't apply in the foyer of Eclipso's moon palace because they don't immediately descend on Starman and tear him to bits.

• While Eclipso's in the middle of taunting Mona by showing her how he's disgustingly absorbing everybody into his body, a portal opens with a flash of sunlight and Bruce Gordon appears with Team Solar Flare! Superman was recruited because he could probably destroy Eclipso just by pissing on him. That's not how this issue ends, is it? Did I just guess how it ends? I bet I did!

• I think this is where the big fight was but, once again, I've ripped out most of the pages and replaced them with pictures of Lobo fucking chicks at the Bunny Ranch. I guess twenty year old me found that more interesting than a huge fight between Superman and Valor meant to show how awesome Valor is so that everybody would buy up his new series just hitting the shelves after this series wrapped up. It must have worked because I own at least the first issue of that series. But I also would have purchased this series where Lobo blows all his cash at a legal brothel in Las Vegas.

• Anyway, the good guys unEclipse everybody and make their way out of the palace just in the nick of time because the palace turns into the God Eclipso.

Yes! Massive shirtless Eclipso on the moon! Twelve year old me's dream of being an astronaut has returned! Get me on the next Artemis mission!

• Bruce Gordon and Starman are still inside Eclipso with a Sun Bomb. I'll assume they're in the urethra for mostly logical reasons and not pornographic fantasy ones.

• Massive Shirtless Eclipso somehow has a massive Black Diamond which he's going to look through so he can murder everybody with Black Diamond Laser Beams. I don't know where this massive Black Diamond came from. I guess if you think about it logically, it was in his urethra.

• Bruce Gordon's taking too long to set off the bomb so Starman goes, "Fuck it! I'm a human bomb! I'll kill him myself!" And Bruce Gordon yells, "Wait! What are you doing? How am I going to get out of this urethra alive if you blow yourself up!" And Starman is all, "You should have thought about that when you were attaching a timer to your bomb that takes fifteen minutes to fucking set up!"

See? The explosion was centered in the urethra.⁷

• Starman is the only person who died to make way for James Robinson's Starman. Bruce Gordon survives to set up the Eclipso comic series. Superman tells Lar Gand that he accomplished an amazing feat of "valor" to set up his comic book series. And my 20 year old self thought, "I'm going to buy all of these series! Except for James Robinson's Starman because I'll have forgotten all about this Starman in the two years it takes to relaunch Starman!" Eclipso isn't dead because he has to come back for that series I just mentioned so instead of being dead, he picks himself up off the surface of the moon and quotes Winston Churchill for some reason. Was Churchill one of Eclipso's possessed puppet people?

The Ranking
I mean, it was okay, I guess. Retconning the whole idea of Eclipso was a nice idea for a big DC Summer Event. He's much better as the God of Vengeance than some two-bit villainous paranormal spirit possessing a guy named after Batman and Commission Gordon. Did I need to purchase all of the annuals? Obviously not but FOMO drove a ton of my comic book purchases back in the day. Not all of them because I just couldn't afford to follow as many series as I would have liked. But a one-time blockbuster summer event? Sure, why not! Plus in the '90s these massive annuals were cheaper than a modern twenty page monthly! You could just walk into a comic book shop, sweep a whole row of new comics off the shelf and into your backpack, and maybe just skip lunch for a few days. People will try to point out that the cheap prices were balanced out by lower wages but that's just theory coming out of the mouths of people who don't know any better. The cost of living was much more balanced back in the '90s. You might have had a lower wage but you could buy way more for that wage than you can buy with a much higher wage now. That was a good thing for comic books! Companies and indie publishers could experiment and try loads of different shit while people wouldn't mind risking a buck and a half to check it out. Now you can't risk shit if you're asking people to buy your comic at a five dollar cover price! Who would dare?! You can get a hit of LSD for that price! Can't you? I don't know how much LSD costs anymore. But back in my youth, you could get a tab for the price of a comic book!


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¹ Yes, I consider changing the word "FACES" to "ASSES" art.
² At least, somebody purchased it. I just wound up with the Install CD.
³ He must have been possessed in The Demon annual which I have yet to read.
⁴ I'm not making a judgment on people who let their cats outside. I'm just making a judgment on people who can manage to feel that any mayhem their cat does while outside isn't somehow their responsibility.
⁵ Me, actually. I'm that hippie peacenik!
⁶ If I had to guess, it's either Doctor Light or Keith Giffen. Maybe it's a Challenger of the Unknown because I don't know why Keith Giffen or a suspected pedo would have come on the mission.
⁷ What am I? A doctor?

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: The Adventures of Superman Annual #4 (August 1992)

Guy Gardner AND Lobo on the cover of a '90s comic book? This issue must have sold a trillion copies!

The Adventures of Superman Annual #4 (August 1992)
By Robert Loren Fleming, Bob McLeod, Albert De Guzman, and Matt Hollingsworth
Cover by Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti
Edited by Dan Thorsland and Mike Carlin

• I've been trying to interpret this cover for three days now. Here's what I've concluded: Superman's right side has been Eclipsed which is why his right arm and right bollock¹ are so massive. Lobo has shoved his hook up his own ass to stimulate his Czarnian prostate because it makes killing feel so much better. With Lobo about to bite into Superman's midsection, this might be the first cover by an artist who understood the true meaning of Lobo's name². Superman has shoved Krypto up his ass to lick his prostate which is why he's currently having a screaming orgasm. He didn't do it in anticipation of this battle; he was just doing it for kicks when he was attacked by Lobo. Guy Gardner, not being the best at smarts, believes a gigantic fireball made out of yellow light will harm Superman and/or Lobo. It's also possible he was so late to the battle that he has yet to get his yellow fireball up his ass so that it massages his prostate while he, oh, I don't know, sucks Lobo's dick? Is that how everybody else sees this cover? Seems pretty logical to me. • This is the final Eclipso: The Darkness Within annual that I have to read unless I find the Green Arrow and The Demon annuals. I know I have The Demon annual with my run of Grant and Semieks series. But was I getting Green Arrow at the time? That doesn't seem possible. The only time I remember purchasing Green Arrow of my own free will³ was when Kevin Smith was writing it. But I wasn't reading most of these other series that I purchased the annuals for so it's weird that I don't have Green Arrow. Maybe I've just always hated him that much and I couldn't bear to spend the money on it. I probably thought, "I could play a full game of Cyberball for two dollars and fifty cents instead!"

I'm going to guess that Lobo was so drunk that he just assumed he was in Antarctica when he visited the Fortress and saw the snow and polar bears.

• You know what? I give up. I always figured Superman's Fortress of Solitude was in the Arctic but enough writers keep putting it in the Antarctic that I'm simply tired of fighting it. I'm glad they finally put it in the Bermuda Triangle. Or wherever the fuck it is now. It's been in so many different places, no wonder no writer can keep it straight.

• When I was a young prepubescent dimwit of moderate energy, I once decided to dig a hole in my backyard. Not a small hole. No, this was going to be the biggest hole anybody had ever seen since the Chicxulub crater was discovered. And since this possibly took place before that was discovered, it was going to simply be the biggest hole. I dug down about two feet but the diameter of the hole was near four feet. It was about that time that I uncovered something that looked a lot like that disgusting L.E.G.I.O.N. member scanning the Antarctic for Superman except that it was brown. I had no idea what it was but when I hit it with my shovel, it split open and oozed what I'm assuming was all of its gooey life essences out into the dirt. I had no idea what it was and didn't even consider it was something living, some kind of pupa or chrysalis. But when I saw it rupture and spill vital fluids across the dirt, I freaked out. I threw down my shovel and ran inside the house to hide from, well, I don't know what I was hiding from. I was just completely creeped out. The hole remain undug for several years. I believe, at some point, long after the unheimlich of the incident had faded from my blood, my friends and I used the crater as a battle place for some kind of Warhammer game that wasn't exactly Warhammer but I can't remember what it was.

• Apparently as a young boy, "running inside the house to hide" was my go-to move. I also used to go out in the driveway late at night and shine a flashlight into the starry sky until I was sure that aliens had noticed me and were homing in on my location. I'd become a living goosebump and run inside to hide from the aliens. If they came knocking, they could take my mother. I'd be safe under my Scooby Doo blanket!

• In this comic book, we learn nothing. I was going to say one of two things but since you can't be sure which it is (among, I'm sure, an infinite amount of interpretations being that human beings are infinitely stupid and also finitely smart), you effectively learn nothing. Those two things that totally don't matter are this: Alfred totally wasn't in the SAS at all and he's a huge fucking liar and massive scaredy cat; or Alfred has an infinite amount of patience with Batman's wards and willingly indulges their stupid pranks to make them feel good.

I guess the fact that Alfred doesn't instantly kill Dick here isn't really proof that Alfred wasn't SAS. I guess.

• After Alfred shits his pants and/or puts away the blade that was mere seconds from going through Dick's eye and piercing his brain, he calls Dick a "scamp". That sounds like a slur for circus people!

• Nightwing's searching for Superman in the Batcave but Alfred is all, "No Superman here, according to the Batcave Sensors which, as you know, are especially dialed in to detect Superman so Batman can kill him." The fact that Nightwing looks for Superman in the Batcave after Superman's turned evil says a lot about the tenuous relationship between Clark and Bruce. Or Nightwing just figured that Superman had to hide from the sun as Eclipso so why not the Batcave? It's dark and full of people who would beat his ass when they discovered he was there. He might be a great trapeze artist with a stylish mullet and ponytail but he's a shit detective.

• Have you ever spent a few hours fantasizing about seeing Crimson Fox and Black Canary wrestle in shit? If so, you're in lucky, baby!

The guy with the waggly nose that's always sniffing out mysteries can't smell that the mud they're wrestling in is shit.

• If any superhero team ever needed a sexual harassment in the work place seminar, it's Justice League Europe. And I don't just meant the guys! The way Crimson Fox, Catherine Cobert, and Sue Dibny treated Captain Atom like a prime hunk of fat cock was just as hot and sexy⁴ as when Wally and Ralph did treated Power Girl like a sentient pair of tits.

• Booster Gold manages to locate Superman using a computer all by himself without any help at all, probably, from Skeets and an earpiece.

• For some reason, Wildebeest is hanging out with Booster, Fire, Ice, and Bloodwynd. I really don't fucking care to know why. I'm more interested in why Fire has blonde hair.

It's easy enough to answer: it's a coloring mistake. Her hair is green in every other panel. Boo. I want in-continuity reasons!

• If you're wondering where Blue Beetle is, he was kidnapped by Bruce Gordon and taken to the Ozymandias's Band of Geniuses Building a Massive Alien Octopus and Light Gun to Shoot the Moon Island.

• Aquaman makes an appearance riding a Killer Whale and completely failing like always. He didn't get an annual because he sucks jellyfish dick⁵ and nobody would have purchased it in much the same way that I refused to purchase the Green Arrow annual.

• Everybody gathers on the side of the volcano where they've discovered Superman is hiding. Yes, even Aquaman. How's he going to help? I know, that's not fair. I could be asking the same question about Ice or Crimson Fox or Elongated Man or Black Canary. Not only are they going to battle Superman, they're going to do it inside of an active volcano. Is that why the cover depicts Guy and Lobo battling Superman? Because everybody else dies in the volcano in the first chapter?

• Guy Gardner makes his debut appearance (since undergoing his transformation in his three issue prestige format series) and really princesses it up. As if a white gloves, a pair of jeans, and cowboy boots are the hottest look of the year.

I've never seen Hal Jordan preen this badly and Hal loves to preen.

• Preen. Preeeeeeeen. Preeen. Preen. Sounds weird.

• I'm missing the next twenty pages of the comic book because I tore them out and replaced them with my own drawings of Guy Gardner and Lobo sucking and fucking each other like crazy. It's actually pretty romantic stuff. I like a little bit of sweetness and story to my hand-drawn pornography.

• Later we'll discover that Bloodwynd is really J'onn J'onzz in disguise. I'm not sure that was always supposed to be the plan or, if it was, nobody told Robert Loren Fleming because Bloodwynd tackles the volcano like a champ who isn't at all a Martian.

Wait. Did we also discover, later later, that Bloodwynd really did exist? But this version was J'onn, right? Fuck comic book continuity is so confusing.

• Lobo immediately gets his ass beat by Eclipso Superman because in 1992, the main way to show that somebody was really powerful was to have them defeat the Main Man. Every writer wanted to do a story where the hero they were writing defeats Lobo to show that they could best the absolute best. Which wound up making Lobo a huge punching bag who didn't seem capable of beating everybody. Also he was ass-raped in Hitman by Bueno Excellente which seemed, up, excessive?

• Metamorpho causes the volcano to erupt which ejects Superman and everybody else into the air. But it's moments too late as the sun just sets as Superman takes to the air. It seems the Earth is about to lose everything to Eclipso. And all because Superman gave himself to Eclipso to save the population of one small town. That would, of course, immediately be enslaved by Eclipso when Eclipso used Superman to take over the world. You know, Batman wouldn't have been so stupid. I mean, sure, Batman Eclipsed himself on purpose to defeat Eclipsed Joker. But he knew they'd wind up in a stalemate and the morning sun would interrupt their fight and save them both. Because he's no Superman⁶.

• All of the heroes who gathered at the volcano to stand around uselessly as the heroes with powers tried to stop Superman wind up being needed to save the villagers of the island escape the lava from the volcano which the heroes caused to erupt. They bring them to the ocean where there aren't enough boats for everybody so Aquaman brings in some whales leading to Nightwing saying the rarest statement in the history of DC Comics.

But I mean, did he? Really?

• Having a character exclaim that Aquaman saved the day makes it feel like Aquaman must not have actually saved the day or else why would readers need a massive shot of Nightwing enthusiastically stating it? This feels like Batman got Nightwing alone for a moment early in the morning and said, "If you get the chance, really play up Aquaman's part in the heroics. I feel like he's starting to think he's just as useless as we all know he is."

• Eclipso Superman beats the shit out of everybody for a few minutes until Guy Gardner, having raced to the sun and back in, presumably, sixteen minutes, brings back a big scoop of solar matter to dump in Superman's face. Then he tackles him into the volcano where Superman finally returns to normal and where Guy's boots, jeans, and white gloves don't burn off of his body. I guess the Sinestro ring is as good at protecting its host as the Green Lantern rings.

• All of the heroes and villains who have been Eclipsed are gathering at the crater in Arizona. Pantha is one of them which explains why Wildebeest was being babysat by Bloodwynd. I forgot exactly what happened during the Titans Annual because I re-read it a few years ago when I was re-reading the Titans series.

• Dick and Superman track down all of the missing scientists except Dick leaves Superman t find them himself because he has to go fight the Eclipsed Titans in a crater. So Superman goes on his own and walks into a trap! But it's just a trap for Eclipso in that Superman gets blasted with sunlight as he walks in on the scientists. But that's where this issue ends. As if readers are going to be all, "Oh no! Superman walked into a trap! He's done for!" He's fine! Just a little more powered up, probably!

The Ranking!
That's the end of The Darkness Within annuals! Only one book left: Eclipso: The Darkness Within #2! This annual was really good because Lobo and Guy Gardner and Lobo and Lobo and Guy Gardner and — you won't believe this one — Phase's ass. Hoo boy! What an ass! It may have excited me more than Lobo and Guy Gardner beating the shit out of Superman.


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¹ Bollock not depicted. But, believe me, it's fucking huge.
² In the Czarnian language, Lobo means "One who devours your entrails and thoroughly enjoys it."
³ No, nobody forced me to purchase it without my consent. I added that condition because reading The New 52 Green Arrow wasn't my free will; it was just a necessary part of the project to read all of The New 52 books every month.
⁴ I mean despicable. I meant to say despicable!
⁵ They must have dicks, right? Big stinging danglers!
⁶ Meaning he's smart. Like how when I said Superman was no Batman, that meant Superman was dumb.

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: L.E.G.I.O.N. '92 Annual #3 (August 1992)

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: L.E.G.I.O.N. '92 Annual #3 (August 1992)
By Barry Kitson, Mike McKone, John Dell, Jack Torrance, Peter Gross, Bob Smith, Jimmy Palmiotti, Gaspar, and Lovern Kindzierski
Cover by Mike McKone and Jan Harpes
Edited by Frank Pittarese and Dan Raspler

• Should I make a list of the top ten comic book characters I'd like to fuck or would that make me sound too much like a huge anti-social nerd who too often thinks about having sex with fictional creations? Would a list of fuckable comic book characters be more or less weird than a list of animated insurance characters I'd like to fuck? Maybe if I actually fucked a real person, I'd stop thinking about fucking fictional characters that have no agency? Or would I just become the protagonist of Boxing Helena II: The Boxening?

• Shit! I meant the antagonist! Fuck! Did I just expose too much of my interior squidgy being by accidentally expressing that the main character of Boxing Helena was the guy who cut off Sherilyn Fenn's limbs and not Sherilyn Fenn?! I mean, I was joking! Ha ha! It was a joke! I totally understood Boxing Helena! Probably more than you did because I'm an introvert pervert who has only ever loved women whom I've projected my own thoughts and beliefs onto instead of actually getting to know them. Yuck!

• Anyway, that top ten list of comic book characters I'd like to fuck would include Lobo like seven times so it's probably not worth writing. Lobo drawn by Simon Bisley. Lobo drawn by Val Semeiks. Lobo drawn by Keith Giffen¹. Lobo drawn by Jorge Corona².

• Halo would have made that list when I was in my mid to late teens but now it would be just weird. Also, is she still in a coma? Because that would make it less weird. I mean more weird. Stupid squidgy interior being!

• Also, obviously if I made a list of Insurance Company cartoons, it would be Erin Esurance. I would fuck, marry, and kill her! Wait. Goddammit.

• Are there insurance company cartoons other than Erin Esurance? If they are, are they hot? Should I search them out on Deviant Art?

• The issue sort of begins³ with L.E.G.I.O.N. waiting outside the United Nations for a meeting. Maybe the reason was revealed in the monthly title. Maybe it'll be revealed here. For some reason, even though Lobo was in this series, I never fucking read it.

I don't know who this member is but she's wearing Brother Blood's belt slash loin cover-up.

• How many pages until Lobo defeats everybody and wins at comic books? I'm not sure why there's another annual after this and a final bookend Eclipso issue to finish the story. Once Lobo becomes possessed, Eclipso should have all the power he needs to accomplish whatever he wants to accomplish. Destroying the sun, I'm guessing?

• Lobo had to remain behind because, as you can see on the cover, he's missing a sleeve on his jacket and you can't go in front of the United Nations in a leather jacket missing a sleeve! Also he might kill everybody.

• Back at the hotel room where Vril Dox decided Lobo couldn't cause any trouble other than throwing the television out of the window like any Earth rock star might, Lobo decides to drink himself silly with L.E.G.I.O.N. member Scrawny. Is that her name? Scrawny? It's what Lobo calls her so probably.

Oh, no. It must be Stutters!

• Stutters isn't offering to fuck Lobo. That's just the conclusion that he and all the comic book readers leapt to. She wants to play Settlers of Catan Or whatever the equivalent to Catan was in 1992. Probably Trivial Pursuit.

• Lobo drawn by Mike McKone isn't on my list of Top Ten Comic Book Characters I'd Like to Fuck because it looks like he was using Brett Michaels as a reference. No thank you.

• Oh, Ice would be on my list! Also Supergirl's bum drawn by Mahmud Asrar. That might be on the list twice. I wonder if Mahmud has ever drawn Lobo's bum? Hmm. Be right back. Gotta see if Mahmud does commissions!

• Fire wouldn't have been on my list even before she wasn't being transphobic in this issue.

I don't think it's up to you to decide, Fire.

• I have no idea which member of L.E.G.I.O.N. is Strata she's got to be either the caterpillar, the shiny bald one with the massive shoulder pads, or the red Schmoo. None of them are on my Top Ten List of Comic Book Characters I'd Like to Fuck.

• Vril Dox didn't make it to the United Nations thing because he's out on the town looking to buy a Black Diamond. I'm going to assume he has a solid reason for buying one because he's one of them Brainiacs.

• The guy who has the diamond tells Vril Dox "No" when Vril asks him if he can buy the Black Diamond. Afterward, Vril Dox and his partner beat the shit out of the guy's henchmen.

Um, what? It's you guys who didn't understand the word "No" and then resorted to violence. Am I losing my mind here?!

• Fascism to fascists is when they don't get their way. If other people's agency stands in the way of them getting something they want, they believe their freedoms are being crushed and think that violence against the person not giving them what they want is righteous violence against the oppressor. God, I hate fascists. I know! I can't believe I've gone out on such a long, scrawny, stuttering, dangerous limb to declare such an extreme opinion!

• Also I hate libertarians. They're just authoritarians who don't have the balls to do their own violence. The only State anything they like is State violence. But only if that State violence allows them to keep doing whatever stupid fucking thing they believe they have a right to do without anybody complaining. Creeps.

• Here's a quote from Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night (1961) that has aged like the finest wine⁴:

"There are plenty of good reasons for fighting," I said, "but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive. "It's that part of an imbecile," I said, "that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly."

• Mother Night isn't one of Vonnegut's most memorable works but it should be. I hardly remembered it after reading it in my 20s. But then I just re-read it a few years ago when I turned 50 and it quickly became one of my favorites. Especially in our modern era of fucking Fox News. The thing Mother Night most taught me was that Sean Hannity should be first against the wall in the coming revolution.

• The game Lobo plays with Stutters is Scrabble. Lobo plays "fragulate". Lobo is so smart!

• Vril Dox and his helper (Lady Quark in a wig, maybe?) retrieve the Black Diamond and then leave it in the same hotel room as Lobo. Even without having seen the cover, I know that's a bad idea! Lobo's anger, rage, and violent libido can probably activate the Black Diamond from several feet away! That wasn't a length of Lobo's dick joke but it could be?

• The first page after everybody leaves Lobo and Lady Quark alone with the Black Diamond makes me laugh out loud. Probably because I'm giddy from all the love chemicals spiking through my brain right now. If I knew how to make heart emojis in HTML, every time I typed L♥B♥, the Os would be hearts. Oh look! I do know how!

1992 and Lobo has mastered the manspread.

• Vril Dox was intelligent enough to somehow beat Lobo in one-on-one combat⁵ so we've got to assume that Vril Dox wanted Lobo to get his hands on the Black Diamond and become Eclipsed. He's already said as much by admitting to Lady Quark that their visit to the United Nations is a sham and that if they really wanted to visit Earth peacefully, they wouldn't have brought Lobo. So why bring Lobo? Why pretend to negotiate an Intergalactic peace summit? Because Vril Dox wants to experiment with making Lobo into super weapon!

• Lobo trashes the hotel trying to kill Lady Quark and Stutters. I mean Zena. Apparently her name is Zena. She can absorb light to make things dark and, this is the important bit, release the light she's absorbed. When Eclipso begins bragging about how darkness is his friend and darkness can't stop the God of Vengeance and "I love Darkness's dick, baby!", Zena thinks light might save the day and blasts Lobo in the face with a million, um, Kelvin? Moles? Parsecs? of light!

• Lobo left the diamond upstairs so once Eclipso's been forced out of him, he returns to plain old regular violent Lobo.

• The rest of L.E.G.I.O.N. returns in time to miss all the action. But when Vril Dox patronizes Lady Quark while she's holding the Black Diamond, she gets super pissed and Eclipses. Or she just saw an opportunity to gain a free beatdown and slapped some make-up on so she could blame it on Eclipso.

• Lady Quark easily defeats all of L.E.G.I.O.N. leaving Lobo to save the day. But not because he wants to save the day. Because he wants to get vengeance on the God of Vengeance for using him to get vengeance on Lady Quark who is currently the God of Vengeance. No matter what happens, Vengeance shall be venged this day. Unless the Justice League shows up to fuck it all up.⁶

How could this team manage to constantly out-fail a team made of Vibe, Gypsy, and Aquaman?!

• English isn't Lobo's first language so he probably thinks "buttheads" is a lot filthier than it actually is. I mean, it sounds pretty filthy! A butt? For a head? Gross! Or is that sexy? Damn, I think it might be sexy.

• Lady Quark gets away and Zena goes missing. She was kidnapped by Bruce Gordon and his Ozymandias gang. Nobody apologizes to Lobo for assuming he was the bad guy because he'd beat the shit out of them if they tried.

• Finally having an intelligent person on the side of the good guys means somebody finally comes up with the idea to take the fight to Eclipso on the moon. It took a fucking Coluan to think up that plan!

The Ranking!
This was the best annual yet! That's a weird thing to say because it surmises that I actually likes some of the annuals and then this one was of even superior quality to those. And I hate annuals! Sure, sure. You can't really know if I liked this annual or not because Lobo was in it and I love everything Lobo is in even if it's terrible. I'll never admit to a Lobo comic being bad. You can't make me! Because, um, I don't believe any Lobo comics are bad! If I ever admitted to a Lobo comic not being the best comic, I'd be lying and that would be wrong. Plus this one had a really fucking great ending where it was all, "Only one more annual left and then the conclusion! You're almost done, baby! Celebrate by eating an entire cake!" And I was all, "Rmffleplumfgrr?"⁷


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¹ Weird, sure. But intriguing!
² I mean, probably. We'll find out on Wednesday, March 18th, if I want to fuck that Lobo!
³ If you ignore the actual beginning.
⁴ Most of Vonnegut's quote age that way because when you can see reality clearly and have no agenda other than to communicate the truth of how things are, your words will always sound prophetic and modern. When you're speaking lies to manipulate people toward a selfish agenda, your words will die over time, if they don't immediately fall out of your mouth stillborn.
⁵ Which is why Lobo works for L.E.G.I.O.N. Keeping his word and being honorable is Lobo's biggest flaw!
⁶ I'm pretty sure fucking things up is in their charter.
⁷ That's "Yes, sir! Right on it, sir!" with my mouth full of half of a cake.

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Batman Annual #16 (August 1992)

I've got to believe The Joker is less dangerous Eclipsed.

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Batman Annual #16 (August 1992)
By Alan Grant, John Wagner, Vince Giarrano, Clem Robins, and Adrienne Roy
Cover by Sam Keith
Edited by Scott Peterson and Dennis O'Neil

• Sixteen annuals! That's fucking crazy! That means that by 1992, the Batman series had been going since 1976! Incredible!¹

• During the Detective Comics Annual, The Joker escaped Arkham with the help of The Ventriloquist and Scarface. He then escaped Batman with the help of Commissioner Gordon and Eclipso. So now he's on the loose and Batman's trying to track him down. That's probably why Robin couldn't get in touch with him during the Eclipso Dinosaur Rampage in Robin's annual.

See?! Every orifice.²

• While Batman fishes a bunch of people out of a bus that crashed off of a bridge³, The Joker sits on a tall, teetering throne of money questioning a corrupt Gotham cop about the Black Diamond.

• Visually, this issue is really impressive. But I'm a Lit Major. Visually doesn't do it for me. I need, um, pathers? Pathros? Whatever that thing that the movie Pig had way, way, WAY too much of!

• I rarely look up artists to see what else they've done because I rarely one into one that fits both of these categories: I'm super impressed by their work, and I'm not already familiar with their work. Vince Giarrano did the art for "The Human Flea" story in Batman: Shadow of the Bat but his stuff didn't really strike me in those two issues. I was probably too stunned by Alan Grant using a flea circus as a plot device in the waning decade of the 20th Century to even notice the art.

• Anyway, I checked out Vince's current site and, um, wow. I'm envious of every woman he paints!

Oh to be able to pull off this outfit! I mean, sure, I'd look great in the boots. Not sure I could do a midriff exposing shirt and short skirt though!

• What impressed me most about Giarrano's work so far in this annual are his panel compositions, layouts, and "camera" angles. It feels like Alan Grant gave him a lot of room to explore the pacing of the story in this annual as it has so many extra pages to fill. The scene I skipped over completely where Batman rescues people in the sinking bus just has some wonderful shots.

• Oh! And the panel with the Joker on the teetering throne of money? DC should have made it a poster.

This could have been hanging on my wall under the bagged WaRP Elfquest issues displayed backwards to show the characters, my LPs of out-of-print⁴ Alice Cooper LPs like Zipper Catches Skin and Flush the Fashion, my massive Christina Applegate poster, and the ads for the It television mini-series cut out of the TV Guide.

• I should probably scan the sequence that impressed me enough to think, "Wait, this is really fucking good!", and caused me to go back to the beginning of the book to really look at the art.

Okay. That's enough about the art. I'm beginning to chap my lips on Vince's butthole.

• The Joker's henchmen display why Gotham's major villains can never get away with any crime in Gotham. First a couple of his guys throw the body of the now dead and rictus-mouthed cop on top of a passing train where it's easily spotted by Batrope swinging Batman. Second, a couple of his other guys steal the Black Diamond from the police evidence room only to run into a guy who used to work for them who's got Batman on his ass about the Joker's possible locations. I realize most of this is bad luck and coincidence but when Batman patrols your city, you've got to take every precaution you can to mitigate those factors while doing your henching!

• Here's a handy acronym for Gotham Henchman: ABNBO. Always Be Never Being Outside!

• Manzoni, one of the Joker's ex-henchman who Batman's been leaning heavily on, chases Joker's current henchmen who have the diamond. He's not doing it because he's afraid of Batman though; he's doing it because The Joker is, quite literally, sitting on 25 million dollars which Manzoni helped him steal and never got a cut of.

• To get Manzoni off of their tail, one of the henchmen grabs up one of the Black Diamonds and thinks about how angry he is at Manzoni. Pretty soon, orifice smoke!

• A dragon manifests from the henchman's anger and goes after the convertible with Manzoni in it. It picks them up and drops them to their death. Batman witnesses it and shrugs even though he doesn't know exactly how innocent the men in the car are.

Batman's come to terms with his superhero impotency. He saves whomever he can and doesn't lose any sleep over the others, I guess.

• It's disturbing to see Batman so cavalier about the death of a couple of Gothamites when you know, if they were innocent or important to the plot, Batman would figure out how to save them in the blink of an eye. But since the reader knows they're basically criminals who were just trying to shoot some other criminals, it's somehow okay that Batman can't save them, knows he can't save them, and just watches them die.

• Batman does check on the victims of the dragon, at least. Manzoni has somehow survived⁵ and he tells Batman that they were on the tail of some of The Joker's henchmen when the dragon appeared. Batman knows the body of the cop was dumped on top of a train by The Joker so he just follows the train back to a likely place where the body could have been dropped on it. Plus earlier, he and the cops found some pink wax under the dead cop's nails!

• Batman solves the easiest case of his life when he locates an overpass above the train and sees a Wax Museum nearby. "Let's see Superman solve this shit!" he cackles as he climbs the building to check if it has a skylight to drop through.

• I just made up the entirety of that last bullet point to save time and then I read the comic book and, um, it's exactly what happened. Sure, most if it was already telegraphed and obvious. But, um, that bit about the skylight? That was just me being cheeky.

Cheeky but correct.

• Does every building in Gotham have a skylight? Is a local ordnance that mandates skylights? Did Bruce Wayne lobby that contracting law onto the books?

• Batman crashes down, disarming The Joker and stealing his bag of Black Diamonds. Too bad The Joker already had one in his grubby mitts!

• Batman defeats The Joker's henchmen while The Joker tries to muster up an Eclipso.

Is this where we learn The Joker loves Batman so much that he can't even pretend to be angry at him?

• I wonder if there are 1000 Pink Diamonds that cause a person to be possessed by Aphrodite?

• The Joker does manifest into Eclipso (because he's aggressive!). Batman, knowing he can't match Eclipso, does the only thing he can: turn into Eclipso himself. Now Eclipso once again has to kill himself before he can properly manipulate whoever wins.

• The battle rages for several pages and it's both entertaining and hot. And then it suddenly becomes genius⁶.

I wasn't expecting this to become a critique of the comic book medium and how characters are trapped in an endless middle story.

• Batman and Joker, being evenly matched as Eclipsos, battle until the sun comes up. Eclipso is banished and then, I mean, you know who wins that fight. Batman takes Joker out in one punch and hauls his ass back to Arkham.

The Ranking!
What's going on? I generally hate Annuals and I'm often disappointed by these massive crossovers. But here I am enjoying annual after annual! I even liked the Robin annual! I must have done permanent damage to my brain when I took a hammer to my head. Should I re-read Scott Lobdell's New 52 Teen Titans?! Do you think I'd like it now?! What about New 52 Superboy?! Maybe I'll finally understand Ann Nocenti's writing! It's a new dawn for my love of comic books! I'm so fucking excited!


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¹ This bullet point is so facetious that it shouldn't even garner it's own footnote but I am posting it on the Internet which means it's necessary to point this out: that was a dumb joke, stupid.
² See Footnote 4 in Robin Annual #1
³ Don't worry. Nobody was hurt by the bus plummeting into the water from a great height even though busses don't have seat belts or harnesses. Even the baby was perfectly fine!
⁴ At least at the time. I'm not sure when Alice's albums between '80 and '83 were eventually re-released on CD.
⁵ But not for long!
⁶ Or amateurish if you'd rather your stories didn't explicitly point out the smart stuff. I, for one, love how Grant worked it here. He gives you several pages for what he's doing to dawn on the reader before going, "Well, this is the point. Did you get it? I bet you got it! But I know some of you didn't. So here ya go!"

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Hawkworld Annual #3 (July 1992)

I barely remember this series existed.

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Hawkworld Annual #3 (July 1992)
By John Ostrander, Luke McDonnell, Roy Richardson, Timothy Harkins, and Matt Hollingsworth
Cover by Luke McDonnell
Edited by Bill Kaplan and Archie Goodwin

• For some reason, this annual isn't squarebound like the others (aside from the upcoming L.E.G.I.O.N. '92). I suppose that means it has less pages? But why would that be? Was it a less popular comic book so it didn't sell as many advertisements? The story itself seems to be the same number of pages.

• Nope. I just counted the pages. Same exact number (32/64 not counting covers). Was it different quality paper? I can't tell. It seems like most annuals didn't need the squarebound set-up. That was usually saved for 80 pagers and Prestige Format books. So I'm not sure why most annuals in The Darkness Within were squarebound. Could it be because Eclipso: The Darkness Within #1 had that Black Diamond glued to the front and it was easier to accomplish with a squarebound book? And most of the annuals just followed suit? I don't know! I'm a comic book reading idiot not a comic book historian!

• It's weird that I didn't read Hawkworld when it was written and penciled by the team who did Suicide Squad, a comic which I loved. I guess I just hated Hawkman that much.

• The issue begins with Peacock¹ and Shayera attempting to solve that well-known Chicago problem: Pterodactyls.

Was it a running joke in this series that Shayera really wanted a gun?

• So was Hawkworld just a suburb of Chicago?

• Peacock stabs the Pterodactyl in the eye, as you do, and it explodes into a puff of smoke, as Pterodactyls do. I guess. Maybe. Who can ever really know, you know? You can't disprove something even if that thing makes no sense based on all the observations we've ever made about reality and how it tends to work. Maybe some creatures evolved to blow up in a puff of smoke when stabbed in the eye? And then they went extinct because there's actually no benefit to blowing up in a puff of smoke after you die. I mean, maybe there's a benefit? But evolution can't really choose to pass on a trait that manifests after you die. I guess predators might stop trying to eat you if they just wound up with lungs full of smoke and reeking stench and your siblings would live to pass on the exploding into smoke gene?

• Did skunks evolve from Pterodactyls? That makes the most sense. I think I figured it out. I'm a scientist!

• According to the scientist whose lab the Pterodactyl flew out of, the Pterodactyl first flew into his lab via the skylight (which is how it exited). So he's obviously lying about the Pterodactyl flying in, right? He somehow created it in his lab for malicious purposes and now he's trying to cover his ass because he was caught by the dumbest heroes in the DCU².

Shayera suggests nothing. Doctor Kaslak, "You're not suggesting I *full confession of crime*!"

• Apparently "Peacock" is Katar Hol. I guess that's Shayera's sex name for him.

• Later, a man dressed all in black with a goatee and an evil look about him burgles a mansion and comes away with the Black Diamond. He's got to be Shadow Thief, right? That's a Hawkman enemy!

• Shadow Thief works for Doctor Kaslak which means Doctor Kaslak is a big lying liar because you don't work with Shadow Thief if you're a big innocent truth teller.

If magic is science than why isn't magic called science?! Answer me that, stupidhead!⁴

• Doctor Kaslak sends the Black Diamond to Shayera because she treated him like a lying jerk. And even though he is a lying jerk, that doesn't mean she knew he was a lying jerk. I mean, she definitely knew. But without solid proof, Doctor Kaslak has the right to be super offended by her assumption that he is what he actually is. Also, she's a woman. I'm sure that played a part. How dare a woman describe him in perfect detail!

• The anonymous gift of the Black Diamond pleases Shayera to no end. She immediately puts it on so that it highlights her cleavage while Katar mutters and mumbles and reminds me why I dislike him so much.

• On the moon, Eclipso thinks, "Wait. What?! Why is one of my Black Diamonds being wasted on Hawkwoman?! Ugh! I might as well possess Green Arrow or Aquaman!"

• Oh, I just realized Aquaman didn't get to participate in this Crossover Event. What a loser!

Okay, I assumed they were already fucking. I guess "Peacock" isn't Shayera's fuck name for Katar. I guess it's an insult!

• I'm glad my nickname isn't Peacock because then I'd constantly have to dress extravagantly so that nobody would assume the nickname was describing the size of my dingle.

• I wonder if Katar is embarrassed to tell Shayera that he loves her because they're brother and sister?

• While Katar breaks up with his current girlfriend, Shayera goes on the Howard Stern show. Or DC's equivalent: Tod Sweeney. Was his only appearance in this annual? I wonder how many variations of Howard Stern exist in the DCU?

• Tod Sweeney asks Shayera if she wants to have baloney thrown at her ass and her reaction isn't great.

Obviously if some sexist jerk sexually harasses you, it's time to destroy the local government.

• You might be thinking, "Tess, that sounds like bullshit. Are you writing bullshit again? Can I call you Tess? Or should I call you by your Christian name, Mx. Bullshit?" Well, let me explain something to you, you snarky asshole. Um, yeah, it was bullshit. But look at DC's version of Howard Stern there! He's less Howard Stern and more Frank Rossitano from 30 Rock! Who's going to take any sexual harassment from him seriously? And Shayera?! She looks like Grace Slick in the middle of the video for "We Built This City" as it slowly dawns on her that she's just killed her career! If I'm given bullshit to work with, I'm going to excrete bullshit! It's, um, science! And, if you remember from earlier, I'm a scientist!

• Eclipso, taking Shayera's anger literally because what does he know about the difference between local government buildings and local government bodies, flies off to destroy city hall⁵. Everybody is terrified because usually it's Hawkman that loses all of his cool and does something terribly stupid. But now it's Hawkwoman because Howard Sweeney called her Hawkgirl and through lunch meet into her butthole.

Like most cops⁷, this guy has a really American grasp on the law. Vandalism equals the death penalty without trial. Capitalism demands sacrifice!

• Hawkman convinces Shayera that she's killed the building and even Eclipso realizes that was a stupid plan to stop her vengeance. But he accepts it so he can get on with using her for other things. Like, um, flying stuff around and, um, flying other stuff around. I'm really not sure why he wants Hawkwoman. I guess he's just taking whom he can based on the chance of the Black Diamonds falling into their hands.

• Shayera flies off and leaves the Black Diamond with Hawkman, making a point of wondering if it even matters. Are two Hawkpeople better than one Hawkperson? Probably not.

• Hawkman takes about two minutes to lose his cool and become Eclipso. I mean, he manifests an Eclipso. Which means, according to Anarky's notes from Robin Annual #1, Hawkwoman is an aggressive persona and Hawkman is a passive persona.

• I guess when Katar realizes he activated the Black Diamond but before he vomits up a manifestation, he says, "Damn me," thus assuring that the monster will go after him. It should just kill him after but for the first time in the series⁸, the person who manifested the monster did not simply pass out. Katar is fully awake and retains his senses as the manifestation tries to kill him.

Eclipso showing he understands the situation in the same way I do.

• Somehow the battle has been going on all night because Hawkman is saved by the rising sun. Weird that Eclipso didn't realize the sun was about to rise and that Hawkman wouldn't be dead. Maybe he can't tell, from his crater in the dark side of the moon, how much time has passed on Earth. Like, he can't know exactly how much night is left once he manifests from a Black Diamond, right?

• During the day, Hawkman does some research into Eclipso. Oh, he doesn't do anything as academic as go to the library or read a book. No, no. He threatens to kill Doctor Kaslak until the Doctor tells him how to stop Eclipso. Man, I would have fucking eased through college if I'd known that trick!

• STAR Labs makes Hawkman some "moonlight intensifiers" with which to blast Eclipso. I feel like Ostrander was taking the piss out of this whole crossover by pointing out that moonlight was sunlight and it should fuck up Eclipso just as much as, say, a toy lightsaber charged by the sun. Ostrander shows so much scorn for this whole project in Hawkman's speech about moonlight that I could easily be convinced that Ostrander added some of his own shit to the brown ink used for this annual.

• Hawkman manages to defeat the manifestation he created but he blinds himself when he uses the "moonlight intensifiers" on it. After that, he basically gets his ass kicked by Hawkwoman until he hides and she retreats for the final battle.

The Ranking!
Blech! This stupid crossover got me reading Robin books and Hawkman books? I'm so glad I seem to have missed the Green Arrow annual! I'm not sure I could have survived reading sixty page issues of those three characters all in a row! Maybe I would have survived physically but would my life have been worth living after what it would have done to my psyche? I'm glad I didn't have to find out! My main question after reading this annual is this: Fans of Hawkman actually exist?!


__________________________________________________________________________________
¹ I have no fucking clue who Peacock is.
² The dumbest heroes in the present DCU. Or else that superlative³ would go to the Legion of Super-heroes.
³ I know being dumb isn't indicative of something of high quality. I just mean that they're, you know, the greatest at being dumb.
⁴ Still undefeated in Master Debate Club!
⁵ The building and not the people. That's what I was trying to point out when I interrupted the sentence with that clause that maybe didn't explain enough? But maybe it did and I'm just being too cautious now because I know my audience is the dumbest collective of people in the world⁶.
⁶ The Internet.
⁷ I'm assuming that a "superintendent" is a cop. Am I wrong?
⁸ At least, I think this is the first time this has happened.

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Robin Annual #1 (July 1992)

How can Anarky's mask be Eclipsed?!

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Robin Annual #1 (July 1992)
By Alan Grant, John Wagner, Tom Lyle, Scott Hanna, Timothy Harkins, and Adrienne Roy
Cover by Sam Keith
Edited by Scott Peterson and Dennis O'Neil

• If your enemy is named Anarky, I'm going to root for him (her?) every time.

• Anarky always freaked me out because he reminds me of the one image that creeped me the fuck out for most of my childhood.

I would obsessively open the book to this page, get a quick glimpse, and slam it shut, feeling super creeped out and upset.

• I'm not sure why Robin gets an annual in this Eclipso crossover. Why is Eclipso trying to possess fucking Robin? Also Robin didn't have his own monthly series until after his second annual. I know rules aren't real but what the fuck, DC? This shit doesn't make any sense.¹

• Didn't it turn out Anarky was a twelve year old girl² or something? Man, I hope so! Mostly because that means Robin will either get his ass kicked by a young girl or will kick the ass of a young girl. It's a lose/lose situation for our young hero!

• Robin got them tabi boots like he a ninja or somethin'.

Look at this freak! Fucking terrifying!

• Am I the only person terrified by people with long necks? Is that a phobia? I am severely unsettled when I see an actual person with a disproportionately long neck. Maybe that's just a leftover evolutionary trait retained from thousands of years ago when we lived on the African savannah to keep people safe from giraffes³ and, um, probably ancient aliens.

• It's also possible I'm pre-remembering how I'll be killed by somebody with a long neck. "Pre-remembering" is probably a scientific concept if you don't think about the science too much and instead concentrate on the Woo Woo. You can have Post Traumatic Stress so why not Pre Traumatic Stress? I rest my very well-argued case.

• Anarky torments that artist in the above panel to steal his Black Diamonds which he carelessly uses on his art pieces. Why does he want them? How the fuck should I know? I've almost certainly never read this comic book before and if I have, I wouldn't admit to it. It has fucking Robin on the cover! Blech!

• Robin, also looking for the Black Diamonds because Batman told him to, arrives too late to stop Anarky. But not that too late because Robin just looks out the window and sees Anarky swinging away on an Anarkyrope.

I'm so ashamed of comic book readers that we all just bought into this "get anywhere in Gotham by swinging from a thrown rope" business.

• Robin catches Anarky because Robin has way more experience throwing a grappling hook into the sky — hooking I don't fucking know what a gargoyle I guess — and swinging after the thief.

• Robin calls Anarky a "14 year old genius" but then uses the male pronoun so, um, Boo! Hiss! Sexism! Maybe. I don't know. What the fuck am I going on about?

• Anarky, being a genius, throws a smoke bomb at Robin and slowly walks away as if Robin coughing on smoke is all that's needed to defeat him.

Oh. It is? I mean, of course it is! Robin sucks.

• Christ I just love Anarky's design. So fucking cool. And creepy!

• My love for the concept of unheimlich began all those years ago when I was fascinated by Alice with the long neck, didn't it?

• To make sure he gets away, Anarky gives one of the Black Diamonds he stole to the only man he encounters on the street this late at night: an angry drunk man railing against outside façade of The People's Bank of Gotham. The man instantly produces a smoke Eclipso from every orifice⁴ which attacks the bank.

• Robin, a protector of capitalism (being Batman's ward), decides he must stop this creature from destroying a fine institution of the city!

Cool but I don't see how that's going to help.

• Surprisingly, Robin's solar-powered fleshlight doesn't stop the rampaging beast and the entire bank collapses into rubble.

• The beast, once it's successful with the vengeance demanded by its creator and thus gaining free will, turns on Robin. But Robin just jacks it off with the fleshlight and it dissolves into nothingness. You know, like all guys after orgasm.

That sound effect is spot on.

• Robin steals the Black Diamond from the drunk groggily getting to his feet like one of those assholes in an old Reese's Cup commercials where they're idiotically walking down the street with a whole jar of peanut butter and enjoying it in the way that nobody has ever done outside of a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup commercial and then when they run into the person eating the chocolate bar and the bar winds up broken in twain in their jar of peanut butter, they take out half of the bar and begin eating it. Dude. That wasn't your fucking candy bar, you asshole! Give it back!

• Robin reports back to Batman with his failure but tries to zhuzh⁶ it up by emphasizing how he managed to obtain one of the Black Diamonds. He doesn't tell him that he had to use the BatFleshlight though.

• Batman heads off to interrogate Anarky's father while Robin swings over to juvenile hall, the last known place Anarky was living. But it turns out, Anarky moved out with all his favorite books, his posters, and his clothing. He left nothing important behind. Except his computer, of course. Probably because it's a stupid tool of capitalism.

Robin exhibiting how he got the moniker "The Boy Wonder".

• Anarky, being a huge Lord of the Rings nerd⁷, uses the same old password trick that the dwarves use on the back door of Moria. But instead of "Speak friend and enter", his computer displays "Enter Codeword For Access". Yes, the statement, like the dwarves' statement, is literal. The codeword is codeword.

• Meanwhile, Anarky sits on his throne of seeds surrounded by all his books, clothes, and posters.

Being that Anarky is fourteen years old in 1992, I'm assuming most of those books are Xanth novels.

• Not only did Anarky leave his computer, he left all of his computer disks with all of his anarchistic plans on them. It's so convenient that Robin should assume that he's being led into a trap. But Robin doesn't suspect that at all. Robin just suspects he's outwitted Anarky.

• It is possible, being a 14 year old kid, Anarky simply made a stupid mistake? I guess we'll see if I can manage to read to the end of this comic!

• After discovering what Anarky's demands to the mayor are (which if not fulfilled will result in a bridge being blown up (safely, though! It's not open to the public yet!)), I think maybe Anarky left all his information for Robin to find so that Robin will think, "Man, this is a good plan! This kid really knows how to make the world better. Unlike that stupid Bruce Wayne!"

Centrists who are super scared about the changing of the status quo getting really fucking pissed right now. "This is ridiculous! Better things are scientifically impossible!"

• Just really fucking amazing that I'm supposed to think Anarky is a villain. I imagine he was created as a 14 year old kid because then all the adults could shake their heads and say shit like, "Oh, how sweet and naïve! He thinks the world works for everybody!" and "If you're not liberal when you're young, you don't have a heart. But if you're liberal when you're an adult, you don't have a brain!" and loads of other things that make them sound smart and responsible instead of what they really sound like: hissing ghouls feeding off the corpses of the quickly expanding graveyard they're living inside.

• I bet when Anarky is stopped, Batman will lecture him and be all, "Your heart is in the right place but you're going about things the wrong way. You have to change the system using civility and decorum and by rocking the vote!"

• Anarky heads to the bridge where he plans on becoming Eclipso via his rage against the machine. But he sets a solar flare to erupt in 90 seconds so that he won't remain Eclipso for long.

• Like the cover shows, when Anarky is Eclipsed, his mask does the whole eclipse make-up thing. Which is just stupid because, well, you know why! Why would I need to explain that to you? Or anybody?! Sometimes things are so obvious that you don't need to "Expand this thought!", Professor Guenter!

• Sorry. Old college trauma flashback.

• Anarky's plan is successful! Um, not the one to make Gotham a better place and to house the homeless and to make the city more friendly to pedestrians and to save money via a commuter transportation overhaul and to institute Universal Basic Income. No, no. The plan of his that's successful is where he destroys the bridge and then drives Eclipso from his body. See? Hard work, planning, and having a compassionate heart can really get things done! Or get things destroyed. Whatever. Who cares.

Oh sure. Nothing calms the populace's nerves like sudden and catastrophic crumbling infrastructure.

• I just find it extremely rich that a vigilante and his vigilante sidekick think the kid anarchist needs to be reined in. Oh? You don't approve of the way he's doing things? But you're okay that the law doesn't approve of the way you do things? How come people who think they're responsible enough to do whatever they want can never extend that belief to anybody else? Okay, sure, the kid just blew up a fucking bridge. But that's beside the point! I'm being theoretically philosophical right now!

There's never any money for giving people a hand up, always plenty of money for locking them up.

• The public would feel safer with less homeless on the streets. So housing the homeless would make people feel safer in the same way people think hiring more cops makes people feel safer. But hiring more cops is only an illusion and a political act to signal to the people that you're interested in their safety. More cops doesn't actually make people safe. But giving the homeless a place to live does make people more safe, including, and especially, the homeless! So you fire some cops and spend their salaries and all the bullshit overtime they pad their checks with to house the homeless. Don't have enough? Fire a few more cops!

• The main problem with that proposed solution is that cops are dirty bastards and if they lose their jobs to a program that uses the money to help people they look at as inferior and unworthy and thieves, the cops will probably turn to banditry and crime. Like all of Caesar's soldiers after taking Rome!

• Robin figures out where Anarky's next Eclipso attack will be and manages to stop him. But in so doing, the Black Diamond lands in the purse of a spurned teenage girl and she begins leaking Eclipso smoke out of every orifice⁴.

• The girl manifests a Tyrannosaurus Rex which goes rampaging across a carnival looking to bite the head off of her teenage rival. Anarky cannot stop it because he's an idiot and his solar flare fucks up. Robin, who is also an idiot, cannot stop it because his solar fleshlight has broken. And Batman? Nobody can reach him!

"Ciiiinddeeeeeee! Ciiiiiinnnndeeeeee! I'm going to get you! Right after I fuck this ticket booth!"

• Cindy's boyfriend, the guy who nobly dumped Dinah in the hopes of fucking her, skedaddles when the dinosaur approaches. Since they were just about to fuck in the Tunnel of Love, this leaves her with massive lady blue balls. But then Robin arrives and she's all, "I'm fucked! I mean I'm saved! And then, hopefully, fucked!"

• She really does seem to be into Robin for some reason. I guess even dorks and nerds and losers can seem attractive to a woman when they're displaying competence, bravery, and compassion.

Hmm. I hope Cindy's into necrophilia.

• Cindy's massively swollen lady parts now see Anarky as their only relief so she runs off with him leaving Robin to molder and decay.

• Oh wait. Robin's not dead. Silly me! I can't believe how often comic books fool me with that trick! I still think maybe Superman really did die back in 1993. The guy we have now is just a simulacrum.

• Robin finds a solar-powered car being shown at the carnival, steals it, and drives it into the dinosaur, shining its headlights on the beast which are powered by batteries that were powered by solar power. I mean, okay, I guess. But really, if that's how this whole thing works, anything can defeat Eclipso because it's powered by the sun all the way down! That's just called life on Earth, baby!

• Robin decides to arrest Anarky and make him pay because, um, you know. He's a jerk. Robin, I mean. Anarky's cool.

• As Robin leads Anarky away to have him arrested (or maybe set him free. It's not like he waits at the carnival for the cops to show), he scolds him just like I thought Batman would scold him. "You might have the public good in mind but you can't do evil to attain good! Also, you can't find public money for the general good. So you shouldn't even try, idiot!"

• Robin probably fucks Cindy on Page 55 but my issue doesn't include that page. I guess I'll just have to sketch it out later after I take off my clothes and get a washcloth and some lotion.

The Ranking!
I really enjoyed this issue!

I know. Shut up! Maybe I'll delete this entry later. Stupid proof that I enjoyed a Robin comic book.




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¹ Outside of the context that rules aren't real, I mean.
² Maybe that was Anarky in The New 52. Comic book continuity got me, um, how do post gifs here?
³ Giraffes are dangerous, right? I bet they headbutt people to death on the regular.
⁴ Yes. Every orifice. Even the sexy ones⁵.
⁵ The pee and the butt holes.
⁶ Jeuje, juje, tszuj, zhoosh, or any number of alternate spellings. Take your gayest pick!
⁷ I'm assuming because Anarky is a 14 year old genius.