Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea: The Newsletter #28 (Second Week of June 2018)

E!TACT #28
Grunion Guy's Musical Corner of Music Reviews!, Doomsday Clock #5, The Unexpected #1, The Man of Steel #1, and Poetry Corner!
By Grunion Guy


Grunion Guy's Musical Corner of Music Reviews!

Natural One by The Folk Implosion
This is from the soundtrack to the movie Kids. Based on the movie being set in New York and Rosario Dawson acting in it, I think it's the prequel to the Netflix Marvel shows. This song doesn't really make any kind of impact on me at all. It's like riding a bus. It gets you from Point A to Point B where Point A is life without this song playing and Point B is life after having just heard this song but it's not playing anymore. The beat also feels like you're riding a bus. And the guy singing feels like the person who sits down next to you when there were plenty of other places to sit even though you let out a huge sigh as they were eyeing the empty seat next to you and you put on your most obvious "get the fuck away from me" body language. Anyway, I didn't buy this soundtrack for this song. I purchased it for "Spoiled" by Sebadoh because it's the song that plays at the end of the movie during the credits and because it made me cry when I first saw this film. Why? I don't know. Because I'm a pussy, I guess?
Grade: C.


Lay Down and Die by Alice Cooper
Most people can probably say they know Alice Cooper because they heard "Feed My Frankenstein" when they saw Wayne's World. Also if they've ever spent any time listening to a classic rock station, they've heard "School's Out," "No More Mr. Nice Guy," and "I'm Eighteen" about seven thousand times. And maybe they remember "Poison" when it was in MTV's video rotation. But what most people forget is that Alice Cooper is seven hundred years old. That means he's had a lot of time to write better songs than "Poison" and "Feed My Frankenstein" (both songs that would get middling ratings from this expert reviewer). So unless they're the kind of freak who can distinguish people's voices just by hearing them sing, most people probably won't recognize this as an Alice Cooper song. It sounds like something The Doors might have written if they hadn't showered for three weeks and only played half-tuned, janky instruments. Which makes sense since Alice and his bandmates worshiped all the sex The Doors were getting.
      This song is from the album Easy Action. It's one of those albums you buy after you discover a band somewhere in the middle of their career and think to yourself, "I want to hear more of this!" Then you rush out and buy one of their early albums, throw it in the tape deck, and, while listening to the first track, you check the inside cover to make sure this is the same band. That being said, I love Easy Action. It's raw and youthful but not so raw and youthful as Pretties For You which was too raw and too youthful because the finished recording was, apparently, only the rehearsal. Still, I'm a big fan of everything Alice does although he skirted the edge of my apathy with some aspects of Brutal Planet and Dragontown.
Grade: B.


Rubbin' Me the Wrong Way by Electric Six
If I were the kind of freak who can almost distinguish people's voices just by hearing them sing and was a huge Internet actually nerd who can never be wrong about anything, I would insist that Jemaine Clement sings this song. But then when Mr. Valentine begins doing his rock screech instead of his dulcet sexy David Bowie in space impression, I would have to walk away from the conversation instead of admitting I'd been mistaken. As I'm writing this review, I've been trying to fix style errors that keep cropping up in this dumb Newsletter so I haven't been listening to the song as closely as a reviewer should. I'm just going to assume this is about the same thing as Billy Squier's song, "The Stroke" (which, helpful hint, isn't a sad tale about Billy's grandfather (it also might not be about what I think it's about because I'm not sure what it might be about being that my sister would never tell me why she and her girlfriends always giggled at this song (I'm sure it's something dirty though!))).
Grade: F (That's for TinyLetter's user interface)


Winterlong by The Pixies
If you put Neil Young's "Winterlong" on the stereo and then turned the treble way up and went back in time to make sure The Pixies were using the same janky guitars that the Alice Cooper Band were using, you would get The Pixies version of "Winterlong". It wouldn't surprise me if The Pixies decided to form a band where they would play covers while hopped up on powdered sugar and Pop Tarts. In Neil Young's version, it sounds like the singer is privately mourning the inescapable and eventual end of a beautiful relationship. But in The Pixies' version, it sounds like they drove their partner away with their constant yammering on about it. That might sound like a criticism but it's just a different way of viewing a thing. I mean, I've just listened to both versions about five times each. So I have to admit I really like both versions.
     If you like songs about stuff that makes you think sad things then you would like this song! Ba na DUN! That's my impression of a kid on Reading Rainbow.
Grade: A.


Free at Last from Big River
Can I say "negro spiritual" in a music review as a smarmy white man who holds nothing sacred? Maybe I'm supposed to just say "spiritual" now? Although doesn't that white wash them? I bet I should say African-American spiritual now, right? Maybe I shouldn't have even brought it up! I certainly won't bring up any other words that might crop up in the discussion of Huckleberry Finn! Although that just brought them up, right? And when I say "them," you know I just mean one specifically.
     That was a terrible introduction to such a beautiful and moving song about a man who wants to get away from exactly that kind of introduction. I'm a terrible human being and listening to this song makes me know that I'll never bring anything even one percent as beautiful as this into the world. I'm a monster. Which probably means I'm at least better than my parents because while they brought a monster into this world, I haven't brought anything into it! Go me! Vindicated!
Grade: A.

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Comic Book Reviews!

If you follow my blog, you've probably already read these. You don't have to read them again unless you really want to. It's not like I put any secret codes in these versions of them!

Doomsday Clock #5
By Johns, Frank, and Anderson

Nostalgia's branding efforts might be a little off the rails.

Today on Facebook, my cousin Laurie said, "Your thought process fascinates me." So I decided to give everybody an insight into my thought process!

My thought process: think something nobody should ever say. Say it. Pretend you were being hyperbolic and facetious when people get annoyed. Experience your twentieth shame spiral of the day. Eat a whole carton of Oreos. Fall asleep lonely and humiliated.

Or, if I wanted to be honest (which I never am! (although sometimes I am but I'm pretending I'm being facetious and hyperbolic so that when I'm judged harshly, I can distance myself from that judgment)), it's more that when I post something to Facebook, it's usually somewhere so far down the "thought process" that all context has been lost. I suppose I could explain every single thing that led up to me having a thought that makes me laugh but that's too close to just walking around naked in public. And I would never do that! Wink, wink.

So, um, Doomsday Clock! After last issue, I had forgotten that this comic book was meant to be a severe lecture to the fans who never wanted the whimsy and fun taken out of comics but are being blamed by Geoff Johns for DC doing it anyway. That might not actually be what this book is about but it's what my issues have decided it's about anyway. What made me spontaneously remember that was this scene in the hospital where Ozymandias wound up after falling out of the LexCorp building.

Dammit. I had almost forgotten how everybody blamed and mistrusted superheroes!

Of course there's always been a long history of Gotham Police mistrusting and hating Batman (if only because he does their job better than they do and obviously has way better pay and benefits). But DC really fucked up when they decided that level of mistrust should be applied more broadly so that every citizen suddenly turned against even Superman, the universally acknowledged boy scout. I'm not a comic book historian so I don't know when that attitude began but I think it's generally acknowledged that it was a byproduct of Watchmen and similar comic books of the time. "Look at how more realistic this is! Why should a world embrace and trust masked heroes?! And Watchmen was so popular, that aspect of it must be what made so much money!" But, of course, that's the kind of thing people who didn't read Marv Wolfman's New Teen Titans believe. Because if I had to pick a starting point for when the mistrust of heroes seriously got rolling (I'm not saying it wasn't there before! It just wasn't the standard reaction of the public), I'd point to Wolfman's work trying to adapt The X-men feel to DC's superheroes. In the X-men, the "heroes" were actually mutants enrolled in a school where they could feel safe and learn to control their powers. They were hated by the public due to bigotry and a misunderstanding of what they represented to humanity's future. They were constantly attacked by "evil mutants" due to a disagreement on what mutants meant to the world. This worked as a plot point because of the bigotry aspect and the underlying difference between mutants and superheroes. But translating that to DC's world where mutants don't exist completely missed the mark. Wolfman's world became a place where The New Titans formed to help the world but never actually did. They simply created a headquarters in New York where they were constantly attacked by family members. Of course the people of New York would begin hating them for bringing danger and destruction to the city. Because they were actually doing that! And since The New Titans became DC's biggest seller for quite some time, every comic book writer on Earth learned that Wolfman's model was acceptable to readers. Instead of having heroes exist for saving the world, they could just exist to be targeted by super villains. And if that's all super villains seemed interested in then isn't it true that heroes are the root cause of all the problems with super villains? It's one thing to comment on bigotry in America by portraying people's hatred of mutants. It's a totally stupid other thing to have people hate heroes because of the destruction caused by the heroes attempting to simply save themselves from their enemies. In the first one, you side with the mutants because the people hate them for irrational reasons. In the second one, you have to side with the citizens because who wouldn't be upset if their house was destroyed and their dog was killed because The Joker was trying to kill Batman?

I've said all of that before. Sometimes, I feel that's all I have left to say about DC. At least when Priest recently had the public hating the Justice League, it was because the Justice League was racist! Not in the regular racist way where Batman is using slurs and Superman is flying around in blackface and a sombrero but in the systemic way where they don't realize they're being racist but they just are. That was at least different (even if I still wasn't happy about it).

I don't understand people who prefer heroes who are mistrusted and hated over heroes who are inspiring, loved, and embraced by the public. Wasn't the latter version the whole point of them in the first place?

Dammit! I should really read ahead before I go on a rant! Although, technically, I think this somehow proves my point about how this is all supposed to fix what went wrong with The New 52.

This issue is called "There is no God." I'm guessing at the capitalization because the font actually reads "THERE IS NO GOD". But it doesn't end in an exclamation point (or any other kind of punctuation, being a title and all) so I'm assuming it isn't meant to be yelled and it's just DC's perverse avoidance of lower case letters.

Anyway, "There is no God" is the perfect title to ruffle religious feathers. But I bet it's a set-up! I bet Geoff Johns is going to write a story about how God does exist, even if only in a metaphorical way that gives hope to people who need more than a few decades of random, chaotic life! I mean, I would like more than a few decades of life too! But I wouldn't mind if it remained meaningless. Who needs a purpose? That's just adding obligation to this precious gift! Why do people want that?! I think that's why "being inspiring" has become such a huge achievement for so many people. Because it seems to give meaning to your life without you having to actually do anything except exactly the thing you want to do. So, say, I was coming up with a completely hypothetical situation where a guy I know survived an IED attack in Iraq but the four other people in his Humvee were killed, he might want to find meaning in why only he survived. He might feel somehow responsible for carrying on in a meaningful way to make their deaths less random and nonsensical. He might also become religious because it's too painful to believe that those four other guys simply winked out of existence in a meaningless war that didn't do anything for anybody (aside from some people making a lot of money (and aside from opening up the country to more chaos and instability)). And the meaning he might find in his life is becoming the center of attention just like he always wanted but could never attain. He became a comedian who also inspires people because he's so badly burnt and disfigured, how can he tell jokes?! Now his life has meaning even if his jokes and his poetry never get any better because the people who hear and read them are Christian and patriotic supporters who can't be critical of anything he does. So if he says in a poem that his daughter is crying "alligator tears," nobody tells him that they're "crocodile tears" and that if his daughter is crying them, it means she doesn't actually care that he's off in Iraq. And when his only joke is that he was blown up and set on fire, nobody minds because he was blown up and set on fire and — look at that! — he can still stand up and tell jokes! So inspiring!

Now if my thought process were better than it is, I would delete all of that so that I don't sound like a jealous and bitter friend. But I explained my thought process earlier so you can judge me but I've got my Oreos ready to go after you misunderstand the hyperbole and facetiousness. Also, I'm not jealous and bitter. I'm supportive but critical! Which is why I didn't post what I just wrote on his [Facebook]. Because he can take supportive but I don't think he's up for critical. Especially hyperbolic and super truthful critical. Hypothetically, I mean!

Back to how this comic book is doing its part to reset the DC Universe into the Post-Zero-Hour, Pre-New 52, Post and Pre a bunch of other stuff I can hardly guess at because DC Continuity is super fucked, a news report on a hospital television reports on Hawk, Dove, Red Star, and the Rocket Reds. So maybe I was wrong about Post-Zero-Hour! Maybe this reboot is post-Crisis only? And I might be wrong about that too! Isn't the current Superman from the Crisis timeline where they actually beat the Anti-Monitor? It's hard to remember Convergence because it was super boring and terribly written. It rated 5 Flaccid Penises out of 5. Unless you're totally into flaccid penises and then it rated zero of them.

Along with the Rocket Reds and Red Star gearing up for an anti-west battle, Pozhar has stepped up to the plate as well. Or whatever you step up to in Russian baseball. Do they have something akin to baseball in Russia? Maybe cement-block-ball? If we're going by themes, it's beginning to look like we're headed back to the eighties cold war, so a reboot to pre-Crisis levels of continuity isn't completely off the table! If I didn't know Geoff Johns was writing this, I'd be tempted to guess it was Dan Jurgens.

The Cold War of this era isn't about nuclear superiority but about metahuman superiority. But that's just a superficial difference, really! What's actually happening in Watchmen 2: Doomsday Clocks is identical to what was happening in Watchmen. Which means everybody will get along at the end not when Mister Terrific teleports a fake space creature into the middle of New York but when an actual cosmic threat attacks Earth and all the American and Russian metahumans have to team up to save the day. Then everybody will be inspired and begin fucking. Right on panel! I hope.

In Moore's Watchmen, there was a thread with that kid reading the pirate book. I wasn't smart enough to know what that was about. Maybe it had something to do with how, to survive, the lead turned himself into a monster the way Ozymandias did. Or maybe it was just about the kinds of things media used to distract the populace. Who can tell?! Not me! Anyway, this series has Nathaniel Dusk stories as the story within a story. I guess it's the only way DC could get people to read them. So boring! You can tell they were boring if you read them in 1984. Also because an old man really loves them in this comic book. That old man is Johnny Thunder! His name makes him sound exciting but you'd be wrong! More boring! And he's trying to get the Justice Society back into continuity. Most boring of all!

Some of you might be bristling at my description of the Justice Society as "most boring of all." But you've forgotten about the hyperbole and facetiousness! There's a twenty-five percent chance that I actually liked the Justice Society and own a bunch of their comic books!

The Superman Theory states that the American government is in the business of making metahumans to make sure they retain control on the world stage. Most of the heroes deny that they were made by the government because they were actually made when they were exposed to Nth Metal. Duh. Everybody who believes The Superman Theory must not have read Metal. How did they miss it? It was the biggest and longest blockbuster ever produced! Anyway, Lois thinks Lex Luthor is the one behind this propaganda. But Lex denies it. In fact, he says somebody in the government is creating metahumans and that person was once a member of the Justice League! So, um, like Lex?

Hopefully the reveal of the person behind The Superman Theory doesn't wind up being somebody like Commander Steel. With a twist like this, it's got to be somebody you generally associate with the League, like Martian Manhunter or Gleek.

Here Ozymandias lectures Batman thanks to years of terrible comic book writers.

By the end of this issue, Rorschach and Saturn Girl have caught up with Johnny Thunder who finally found Alan Scott's lantern. Batman has been captured by The Joker. And Geoff Johns is well on his way to telling comic book fans how dumb they've been for accepting the bullshit narrative they've been fed for years that super villains only exist because super heroes exist.

Rating: This issue was called "There is no God" and it had nothing to do with the story inside. But it was used because it was part of the Eugene O'Neill quote that closes the issue: "When men make Gods, there is no God!" Is that how every issue has been titled so far? Using a bit of the quote at the end? I haven't been paying close enough attention to know. Anyway, I have a few issues with that quote. First off, you shouldn't capitalize "Gods." I suppose you can argue that you would capitalize "Johns" but if you choose to do that, I probably don't like you and would discount your argument on that basis alone. I mean, the point is that men are making little gods which kills the proper noun God. Second, why does it end in an exclamation point? Is the second half of that statement such a huge twist that it needed the surprise element of the exclamation point? Maybe Eugene knew it was a fairly weak turn to the phrase and thought the exclamation point would bolster the sentiment. I know that trick! The third problem I have with it is that I don't understand it in the context of this story. Is Johns saying that super heroes have replaced God? Are fans now supposed to feel reprimanded for being blasphemous monsters?! Am I supposed to believe that if we rely on heroes, we have lost our faith in God? Is Johns saying inaction through faith is better than relying on super heroes? Or is he saying that we lose our own motivation and free will when we expect heroes to save the day? How is that any different than expecting God to save the day? I guess in that context, I understand the quote! "When we come up with something more entertaining that still doesn't actually help or save humanity, we've forgotten the original concept we came up with that doesn't actually help or save humanity!" Hmm, good quote! I've won myself over! Five out of five stars! Not for this issue but for my twisted logic!

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The Unexpected #1
By Sook, Nord, Orlando, and Plascencia

You really only have a limited number of times you can use the catchphrase, "Nobody expects...The Unexpected!"

I'm not surprised I don't recognize anybody on the cover because you know why. You read the same title that I just read. Stop playing dumb.

The woman in the front who is about to engage in oral sex with the reader is named Firebrand. I vaguely remember her getting a scene in one of the previous "The New Age of Heroes" comic books (New Challengers, I think). She's a fighter who loves to fight in and out of the ring. That's a secret shortcut to writing a strong female character. You can tell she's strong because in the first page, she knocks out Killer Croc with one punch. You can tell she's female because of the boobies. I know that joke risks alienating the trans community due to erasure but sometimes you have to take risks to become a leading comedy writer known for their third grade humor. Plus it's empowering to the trans community that I think they're way too smart for my stuff, right?

Speaking of society's double standards for boobies, remember that scene in Mad Men when Ginsberg cuts off his nipple and gives it to Peggy? What if Peggy had cut off her nipple and given it to Michael? Would it have been too obscene for television to show the nipple in the box once it's been detached from Peggy's breast? Where is the line drawn between being able to show a nipple on television and not being able to show a nipple on television? What if Peggy had just found a detached nipple left on her desk? Would ambiguity make the nipple offensive to a censor's tastes? Can a trans man's nipple be shown? What about a trans woman's nipple? It can't just be that the nipple on fatty tissue is obscene because remember that show The Biggest Loser? There were a lot of exposed nipples on large breasts in that show but they were deemed acceptable for some reason. Why are nipples such a contentious aspect in the discussion on vulgarity and human body?

Don't misunderstand me! I don't think there is anything vulgar about the human body at all! I mean as long as I'm attracted to the specific human body we're talking about. I don't want to see stuff I don't want to see! You know the stuff! Gross!

I would describe the stuff I don't want to see but I don't want to be called a fat shaming homophobe. Anyway, I just got rid of all of the full length mirrors in my house and solved the problem.

Firebrand was a civilian killed during Metal. But she got a new futuristic heart that only keeps working if she gets into a fight every twenty four hours. Don't ask how it works. That's boring detail that doesn't really matter. Just know that her heart is called "the Conflict Engine" which is the only reason you need to understand why something this stupid would be developed.

Weird Doctor: "We have some good news and some bad news! The bad news: we brought you back to life by giving you a new heart. Welcome back to the pain of existence! The good news? You legally get to beat somebody's ass once per day to keep yourself alive!"
Firebrand: "Wait. What? Why?!"
Weird Doctor: "No time to explain! I have to rush off to give somebody a fake rectum who will then have to eat three large linguiça and jalapeño pizzas per day or they'll die! Good luck!"

Firebrand currently explains her life by being so contradictory that I don't care anymore. Not that I cared at all from the beginning. But I needed some way to end that initial sentence that didn't take a lot of effort to construct.

Every scumbag in New Jersey knows where to find her but the CIA and some black ops corporation have no idea where to look. *shrug*

I get it, lazy writer. The heart wants what it wants and what your heart wants is for readers to simply accept the scenario you've created without thinking about it critically at all! Although I will allow myself to be wrong in this instance. Because generally what comic book writers have found is that readers are so willing to accept every idea that they'll do all the critical thinking they can to contort reason and logic until they can explain away any poor writing within a comic book they like. It's just too bad nobody has any reason to like this comic book yet! Unless you're one of those people who read one word from a new character and instantly claim "THIS IS MY FAVORITE CHARACTER!" just in case the character becomes super popular. Then you can claim to be the character's biggest fan! Good for you!

What I'm trying to say is that Firebrand is totally my new favorite character.

An evil guy named Alden Quench wearing a Project Runway outfit comes to take Firebrand's heart. He spouts a lot of stuff that would make people who read Metal think "That sounds familiar!" which ties everything together and satisfies my need for closure. It might not provide the link to Metal that other people need but remember how I said I don't care anymore? That makes me easier to please than other readers of this book.

Alden Quench calls himself Bad Samaritan which is a totally racist stereotype of Samaritans. The only reason Jesus tells a story about a Good Samaritan is that everybody in Jesus's time simply accepted that all Samaritan's were terrible people. He might as well call himself simply "The Samaritan" (except I think that bad guy was already taken by an enemy of The Outsiders (unless he was also called The Bad Samaritan! (double unless this is actually him!))).

A huge fight breaks out between The Unexpected (who arrive to help Firebrand for selfish reasons) and the Bad Samaritan putting everybody in the hospital at risk. So because Firebrand exists, regular people are endangered. I really don't want to be on the side of the argument that claims heroes endanger everybody but come on! I can't get any stories that don't prove the paranoid civilians are wrong!

The leader of The Unexpected is a guy named Neon who is probably an Aurakle like Halo because he gets cut in half and rainbows slosh out. The Bad Samaritan splashes this rainbow blood on Firebrand and then chops her in the heart with Viking Judge's axe (Viking Judge might not be her real name but I sincerely hope that it is). In so doing, he kills himself and creates a new Nth Metal isotope.

Meanwhile beneath the surface of Thanagar, a guy named Onimar Synn eats a dinosaur guy and then settles down for a nice long pout. I guess he wants to eat Firebrand's heart but its too far away. FOR NOW!

Anyway, The Bad Samaritan created something called Destruction Metal. It's going to blow a hole in the multiverse if Neon and Firebrand don't do something about it. Viking Judge and Ascendant (the woman with the horns and the blue guy on the cover) apparently died in the conflict. I'm glad I didn't declare they were my favorite characters!

Rating: You know what? Going against my screaming brain, I'm going to buy the second issue of this comic book. It's interesting even if it's relying on that same old lazy premise that I keep shitting all over: heroes that exist only to be targets of super villains. In this one, people want Firebrand's heart and they'll hurt the entire world to get it. Neon might be trying to save the Multiverse though which is one reason I'll hang around for a bit. I would like The Unexpected to be some kind of multiversal freedom fighters. Apparently they haven't been doing too good a job so far though because worlds keep dying around them.

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The Man of Steel #1
By Bendis, Reis, Prado, and Sinclair

Imagine trying to get fans rabidly excited about a new Superman event and the only adjective you can come up with is "weekly."

I've never read anything by Bendis (aside from that Superman advertisement in that twenty-five cent comic book). I'm only saying that because if Bendis Googles for reviews of this comic book, I wanted to warn him right up front that some writers haven't been able to handle my comic book reviews. Some reactions have been "I'm Cullen Bunn and you're terrible!" and "You're the meanest jerk and I should know because I'm Cullen Bunn!" and "You have no right to say those things about me, Cullen Bunn!" On the other hand, I have had some positive reactions like these: "I want to take you out behind the handball court and get you pregnant with my Gail Simone babies," and "Yeah, security? This is Tom King and that guy offering to suck my dick is bothering me again," and "I don't know who this guy is but I, Scott Lobdell, like him a lot!" In other words, there's a fifty percent chance that I'm about to forever ruin any chance of becoming Brian Michael Bendis's new best friend.

Maybe I should change that from a fifty percent chance to a ninety percent chance because before I even read this comic, I'm already biased against it. I can't stand any comic by a hot shot creator who comes on the scene and knocks all the pieces onto the floor before shitting on Dan DiDio's desk and saying, "I'm going to do whatever I want!" Don't get me wrong! I like that scenario a lot! But it definitely biases me on the comic. I mean, are we really going to get yet another comic book by a writer who says, "You thought you knew everything there was to know about Superman's past! But you were wrong! Now eat it, DiDio!"?

Remember when Krypton exploded for reasons that weren't due to a genocidal cosmic maniac insisting that all Kryptonians needed to be wiped out to save the universe? That was before the first four pages of this comic book were published. We're in a new era now: the Brian Michael Bendis Era! Tell me how it really went down, Mister Bendis! I never did like the pansy ass passive way the world blew up due to whatever the Kryptonians did wrong. Too much fracking or sodomy or whatever. This is so much more exciting to make one monster behind it all! It'll finally give Superman somebody he can punch in the face to relieve him of his pain from the loss of his family! Not that he really focuses on that pain much. But he will once he hears the name "Rogol Zaar" and also about three or four hours of new Kryptonian history which should really get him wound up!

Rogol Zaar is a combination of Lobo, Battalion, and Perry White.

The part of the story we all still know because I'm assuming it's the same is that Superman escaped the death of Krypton. That means Rogol Zarr is probably about to learn that a baby survived and he's going to blow his frontal lobe. He's going to have such a murder boner going to complete his act of genocide that Superman is going to be all, "Whoa, dude. I think you have the wrong idea about me and my sexy body," when they finally meet.

In the opening scene in Metropolis, Superman makes friends with Killer Moth and Firefly. Then when he deals with a fire in a high rise, he imparts some of his mother's wisdom on the reader: "Fire is fire." So I guess in Bendis's retelling of the Superman myth, Ma Kent was a simple woman.

At the scene of the fire, Superman meets a female firefighter with whom he flirts. He's all, "You should call Clark Kent and tell him all about this tomorrow. Don't call Lois though! Lois can't find out Clark is talking to you and probably having lunch with you maybe?" Then he flies off and female firefighter Melody Moore causes more water damage to the smoldering building.

You understood that was a filthy joke, right?!

I'm beginning to see why people like Bendis. He has characters talk a lot. Talking a lot is always good. It's much better than characters shouting shallow one liners at one another in an attempt to fool the reader into thinking the writer knows what they're doing. In this brief post-fire scene, we see that Superman is kind and thoughtful and not averse to stepping out on Lois Lane.

Most of the issue is Superman and Clark Kent going about their day to day business. It's really all I ask of a comic book! Especially when those things are filled with conversations that build characters rather than first person omniscient narration boxes which tell the reader exactly what's going on and leave no room for ambiguity. Like if this were written by Scott Lobdell, Superman would have thought, upon meeting the firefighter, "She really wants to lick my butthole! But I would never let her because I love Lois Lane so much!" But without the narration boxes, the reader simply gets knowing looks and crooked little smiles and I think I might have noticed a slightly larger bulge in Superman's red underwear. Bendis allows me to jump to the awful conclusions I want to jump to rather than reining me in and telling me exactly what's going on so I can't have any dirty fun.

Filling in the negative spaces of Superman's life is the story of Rogol Zaar and how he wanted to destroy Krypton but the Council of Eternal Elders tells him he can't. He probably still will but that's for another issue. By the end of this issue, Lois says something that's actually funny and then Superman, Lois, and Jon all disappear in a fade to white. That's supposed to keep you excited for the next weekly installment of this weekly Superman event. So week!

Rating: I so wanted to shit all over Bendis's writing the way Bendis shit all over DiDio's desk but instead I wound up enjoying this story. I sincerely appreciate when Superman is written as a kind person with a subtle sense of humor and a raging hard on for redheads. Hopefully Issue #2 will suck so I can let loose this shit that I now have to hold in! Quick! Somebody get me an Ann Nocenti comic book so I can relieve myself!

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Poetry Corner with Grunion Guy!

Untitled
Look.
At some point,
The negative shit the party you support
Engages in
Really should fucking outweigh
Your opinion on
Abortion.

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I guess that's it for this week! Later, jerkos!

Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea: The Newsletter #5 (Second Week of January 2018)

 

E!TACT! #5
Kamandi Challange #12, The New Age of DC Heroes, The Overlooked: an RPG, 
By Grunion Guy

Kamandi Challenge #12

By Simone, Levitz, Sook, García-López, Thompson, Prado, Mulvihill, Crossley, and Martin

I still don't know what the fuck we were supposed to be solving!

At least when DC did this last time, they set up the DC Challenge as a mystery. True, nobody treated it like a mystery. Every writer just added more bullshit and more characters each month while ignoring the calculator clue that Eli Ellis was responsible for whatever the fuck the mystery was. I can't remember anything about the comic book except that, yes, I solved it before DC did. I noted the Eli Ellis clue that every subsequent writer ignored because Batman is a terrible detective when he has to rely on real people to do his work for him. I think one of the other clues Batman was supposed to decipher had to do with Benjamin Franklin being on the fifty dollar bill.

If your reaction to that last sentence was, "Wait. That's not right!", then congratulations! You're also smarter than DC Challenge's Batman!

But getting back to the Kamandi Challenge, what the fuck is the challenge? What am I supposed to be figuring out? I hope before they reveal the solution, they'll explain the mystery!

They didn't explain the mystery. But I guess the mystery was "Did you know Jack Kirby was Kamandi's father?" and the solution was, "Yep! Jack Kirby was Kamandi's father!" So the final issue was like that moment in Cerebus when Dave Sim sings a Pink Floyd song to his aardvarkian creation while they discuss the importance of the Injury to the Eye motif in comic books destroying the innocence of American children. Except with less misogyny.

Speaking of Cerebus, I sometimes wonder how many people were left reading the monthly book by the end. Probably less than ten thousand, right? That number might even be pretty high. Well, if you weren't one of those who made it to the end, let me explain Dave Sim's concept of the creation of the universe. See, there was this female void and this male not-void. And the female void was super sexy which caused the male not-void to want to fuck it. Now, the female was a void because she was empty of the creative process, being that her only reason for existing was henpecking and nagging the male not-void. But the male not-void was super creative and full of creative juices. Now, the male not-void would have created the best universe in the world with his great male creativity, but he was distracted by the female void, what with her basically being a giant, infinite orifice. And because he spent so much energy trying to please her so that he could fuck her, he didn't get any creative work done and the world suffered for it and became less than perfect. In other words, if you're a male, you should become a celibate hermit so that you can create a six thousand page comic book that doesn't suffer the influence of women. Although being that a good portion of that six thousand pages was all about how women ruin everything, it would seem that women ruined those six thousand pages anyway!

I don't think Kamandi Challenge is going to end as crazily although it begins that way with Kamandi, The Last Boy on Earth, resolving some father issues with a godlike father figure cradling a massive phallic object. I hope Jack Kirby's final words to Kamandi aren't, "Don't trust women, boy! Not that there are any left. That's just general advice! What I mean to say is, 'Don't get distracted by your penis.'" Then he chomps down on his cigar and his eyes roll back in his head and he mutters, "Oh yeah. That's good oral fixation."

Oh. I guess Kirby is the anti-Dave Sim. He wants Kamandi to fuck!

Some of you that read up through Dave Sim's "Tangent" before breaking your connection with him might be thinking, "Your explanation about his creation of the world was in Mothers & Daughters. I thought you were going to explain some shit from the end!" And I did! It's just that the Mothers & Daughters creation story basically became Dave Sim's vehicle for explaining The Bible. Instead of one male God, he tells the Genesis story as if it were a back and forth between two Gods, the form and the void, or the male and the female. At least that's how I remember it. I'd reread it but I'm not sure I can muster the energy to slog through that shit again.

The issue ends with Bobo the Chimp saying, "This is what comics are about! I hope you had fun!" Well, fuck you, Bobo. I didn't have fun. This was worse than DC Challenge! Mostly because I hate reading 240 pages of  sucking Jack Kirby's dick metaphors. I'd rather have simply had a bunch of artists draw that.

The New Age of DC Heroes

Around the time Image cropped up causing the people behind the scenes at DC to begin shitting themselves over writer's and artist's rights to the characters they created, DC began thinking up schemes to create as many new characters as possible so they could own all of the ideas. There was that crap about Bloodlines which created nearly no heroes that anybody cared about and then some other shit about a meta-gene which might have had to do with the Legends miniseries. That might not have created new heroes as much as relaunched a few franchises like the Justice League and the Suicide Squad. But I had to add it to make my point because just referencing Bloodlines didn't seem like enough evidence of DC losing their minds about the potential loss of profits in having to acknowledge creator's rights. Plus the Legends thing fits in with this whole "New Age of DC." That's because this new wave of heroes will become extant thanks to the Metal Gene. That's my guess, anyway. I figured I should take a look at these up and coming heroes and judge them by their covers.

DAMAGE

I don't have any issue with Robert Venditti's writing, and I might, in fact, even like it better than most. But I'm not interested in reading a comic book that's probably not a complete rip-off of The Hulk according to DC's lawyers. Nor am I interested in seeing two to three double page spreads of this monster every issue. Here's Tony S. Daniel's quote on the book (which you've all probably read since it's in every issue of DC Comics sold for two or more weeks):

"As I grow personally and as an artist, it feels similar to how Damage is trying to be the best version of himself."

It seems odd to compare yourself to a character that explodes into a monstrous rage an hour each day but I guess it's provided me some insight into Tony's personality. I wonder if once or twice per day, Tony S. Daniel pictures himself in a double splash page? What would that even entail? I've probably had only a half dozen double splash pages in my entire life and they were the kind of double splash pages that I complain about because they would have communicated the exact same message as a regular panel. And, yes, my loss of virginity would be one of those.

Picture me climbing clumsily on top of the lucky woman who was about to obliterate my sexual innocence as I say, "Am I in? Am I...OH GOD YES! Um, sorry."

THE SILENCER

John Romita Jr. is artist on this series so if you hate subtle curves in your art, this might be the book for you. It's written by Dan Abnett who I've never found anything but sufficient. Apparently Romita fell in love with the boring name of this hero and just knew he had to bore audiences on this book. It's also possible I'm misremembering the back of the comic book interview with this "creative" team. If you liked that movie about those hot actors who were a married couple but also spies, you'll probably read this book and say, "What is this shit? It's a total rip off of that movie I love! The one with Lara Croft in it!"

Here's Romita's quote on the book: "That's what I like, something realistic and you add fantastic to it." Imagine how terrible all of his other quotes about this book must have been if that's the one DC went with. "I like real stuff but exciting! Imagine having real sex but with, like, a thumb up your butt! Real but fantastic!"

SIDEWAYS

This book's name was probably based on Kenneth Rocafort's inability to draw a standard comic book panel. This comic book is about Vibe except it's not Vibe at all. He's totally different for some reason. Maybe he's not boring? Although he's taken up the name Sideways, so he's definitely not creative or witty.

Kenneth Rocafort says: "I prefer to let my art speak for itself." Hey! Thanks for the fucking aggressive quote, asshole! "Hey, Kenny! How do you enjoy working on this new series?" "Why don't you look at this, bitch! BLAM!" The "BLAM" is when he shoves one of his drawings in the face of the interviewer. Later, the interviewer realizes she's now suffering from vertigo thanks to Rocafort's haphazard page layout.

THE TERRIFICS

Finally a book I'm excited about! Metamorpho and Plastic Man together?! Which one will be the funny one? Does the comic book have enough room for two funny characters?! Also Mister Terrific and Phantom Girl, for some reason. Plus there's mention of Tom Strong. What now?! Thankfully this is written by Jeff Lemire and drawn by Ivan Reis so I have no horribly judgmental insults to heap upon the creative team.

Ivan Reis: "Readers have never seen a group like this." Maybe Rocafort had the right idea. Maybe the artists should just keep quiet.

THE IMMORTAL MEN

This series sounds interesting except for one aspect: James Tynion IV is writing it. I might add it to my pull list anyway because how much could it cost per month? Jim Lee is on art duty so it'll probably only come out every other month, at best.

How is James Tynion IV going to write characters that have been around for centuries? Is this book going to be about a bunch of Immortal Men having to learn from their new millennial pal, Caden Park? Is he going to teach them about all the different genders which they can't possibly understand, being old and probably white and most likely male (see the "MEN" in the name!). I bet Caden is bisexual.

Jim Lee: "When you create new characters, you can kind of swing for the fences." Why didn't somebody help Jim Lee with his quote. The whole idea of the phrase "to swing for the fences" is that you aren't "kind of" doing something. I'd like to see how he draws this idea. Then maybe I'd understand it! Although I'd probably wonder why he had to scribble on the person kind of swinging for the fence's face.

THE CURSE OF BRIMSTONE

Wasn't Brimstone the big bad dude in Legends that the Suicide Squad had to defeat? Remember, I might read comic books but I don't remember them very well. The most interesting thing about this series is the name. I was intrigued when I read the name and then became less intrigued as I read the concept and then was completely out of intrigue by the time I read Justin Jordan's quote: "He's a character who wants to try and do good with a power that is fundamentally evil." That sounds like somebody trying to make a mountain out of a philosophical mole hill. Unless his power is evil because it only works while keeping people in other nations starving, what does it matter if the power is "fundamentally evil"? Does that even mean anything? Unless, like I said, it has some kind of huge negative repercussion on the world. Because if it does then Brimstone is definitely just a narcissistic douche rationalizing his heroism. But if it's just evil in the sense that it was given to him by the devil, who the fuck cares? All that really means is that the devil is probably kicking himself every time Brimstone helps people using his devilish powers.

Philip Tan: "I love world building, and this project allowed me to create the look." Fucking hell. Will somebody please stop asking the artists what they think?! It's pissing me off because I'm beginning to respect Rocafort's answer!

NEW CHALLENGERS

Somehow, this series isn't being written by Dan DiDio. Everybody knows who the Challengers of the Unknown are and this is more of that. But it's by Scott Snyder! So whoever missed the memo that Snyder's writing isn't as great as we all thought it was (and it was. I think? Remember that thing about me not remembering comics at all?!) will probably be excited for this. Since it's the "New" Challengers, I take it that means the team won't be a blond white guy, a brown haired white guy, another brown haired white guy, a black guy, a red headed woman, and some kind of talking animal.

Scott Snyder's quote about this book was so good that the blurb about the comic is just a repeat of Snyder's quote. But Andy Kubert's quote doesn't disappoint (if you realize that by "doesn't disappoint," I mean that it totally does and that's what I expect from artists): "I am so excited to do science fiction, dinosaurs and all kinds of things like that." So fucking Andy Kubert is excited to, like, um...I don't know...draw?

THE UNEXPECTED

This is written by Steve Orlando so I kind of have to give it a chance. Until I read something by Steve Orlando that is the physical equivalent of Orlando pissing in my face, he'll get my money. Here's a quote from the comic book's description: "It centers in on something we all face every day, wrestling with our pasts and the compromises we've made." I'm glad I'm not a friend of whoever wrote that quote. I hope I'm not friends with anybody who identifies with that quote. Who the fuck is spending every day wrestling with their past and the compromises they made?! Fucking dramatic assholes, I suspect.

Ryan Sook's quote was fine. Thank you, Ryan, for a passable quote by an artist.

So that's that! I look forward to reading two of the New Age of DC Comics comics! Or would that simply be "New Age of DC comics"? It's hard to tell when the DC should have the word comics following it as a proper or improper noun. Was improper the right term there? I don't really fucking care.

And Now...A Game!

The Overlooked

A Roller Playing Game based on the HBO series The Leftovers.

If I'm not allowed to base a Roller Playing game on somebody else's Intellectual Property then pretend I never said it was based on what I said it was based on, even if I'm allowed to do it because this is technically a work of parody. It's not really but I write so poorly that it would be hard for any lawyer to argue that it wasn't parody because everybody in the court room will be laughing at my terrible style and constant incorrect use of big words.

The Premise

It's been three years since two percent of the population disappeared in the blink of an eye. No wait! It's been five years because that makes it significantly different than the television show. And instead of two percent, it was three percent! Everybody has tried to get on with their lives by somehow trying to forget the horror of that day but while also being constantly reminded of that day every single day. That's the whole conflict in the Roller Playing Game! How does your Fantasyer deal with what happened?! How does your Character deal with all of the other broken people trying to deal with what happened?! Will you ever figure out what happened? Can you ever get your life back on track? How many dogs will you kill?

Character Creation

Don't think up a name for your character just yet! The first order of business is to determine if your Character wasn't overlooked! Roll Percentile Dice. If you roll a one, a two or a three, your Character disappeared on the Day of the Disappearance! You win because you don't have to deal with all of the other pain in the butt people going crazy! Congratulations! I suppose if that isn't satisfactory, you can try rolling up another Character. In this case, your new Character is closely related to the Character who disappeared. You should probably make up a story about how messed up your new Character is due to not having as much good luck as their vanished loved one.

            If your Character didn't vanish, you can name it now. You can decide yourself what gender it is and what kind of sex it likes. According to Tumblr, those are the most important attributes of a person after their name. Also race! Don't forget to not be a white heterosexual male because that's totally boring and probably evil. Oh! Unless you want to be an evil Character! There's plenty of room for those in this game! Remember that thing about shooting dogs? Probably only a white man would do that!

            Using those Percentile Dice, roll on the following chart to determine your family:

            01-10   Single, No Children   

            11-20   Married, One Child   

            21-30   Single, One Child       

            31-40   Married, Two Children         

            41-50   Single, Two Children 

            51-60   Re-married, Two Children    

            61-70   Widowed, One Child 

            71-80   Widowed, Two Children       

            81-90   Divorced, Three Children     

            91-96   Remarried, d6 Children        

            97-98   Pre-teen (Roll for family type)          

            99-00   Teen (Roll for family type)     

Next, roll for each member of your family to see how many members of the family you just discovered you had vanished on the Day of Disappearance! If you roll a 50 or less, the person vanished! I know that math doesn't match the math of only three percent of people vanishing from the face of the Earth but you don't want to Roller Play a Character who hasn't been affected by a disappearance, do you? I mean, I'll still make it interesting because remember how screwed up everybody was in that one town where nobody vanished? I mean the hypothetical town and hypothetical situation that I just made up while winking at you and poking you with my elbow and whispering so any lawyers in the room couldn't hear me. Add fifteen to each subsequent roll if a family member vanished in a previous roll. So if you have to roll three times and two of your family members vanished in the first two rolls, the third roll is at +30. See? That makes it hard for you to wind up like that one Character whose boobies you always got to see who was super into playing the role of a victim. Remember how she used to have hookers shoot her in the chest while listening to Slayer?! Normally I would have begun that by saying "Spoiler warning!" but if I say that here, it could be used against me in a copyright court of law. It's better if everybody just thinks I made that up just now.  

            If none of your family members vanished, you should roll on the following chart because you really should have been personally affected in some way. Otherwise you may as well play the Roller Playing Game "Nothing Particularly Unusual Has Ever Happened." And why would you play that when it would just be a simulation of your typical Saturday night!

            Person in Your Life Who Vanished  

            01-10   Your mother  

            11-20   Your father    

            21-30   The person you were doing it to.       

            31-40   The babysitter you were probably doing it to   

            41-50   Your best friend        

            51-60   Your nemesis 

            61-70   Your spiritual advisor (like a priest or rabbit or yoga instructor)      

            71-80   The taxi driver of a cab you were in           

            81-90   Your favorite celebrity         

            91-100 A person who was just about to murder you

Flaws

Each Character has a number of flaws that will help you to Roller Play them as they try to discover the mystery of the vanishing or just try to deal with their insecurities based on not having been taken too. Roll about five times on the following chart and hope that you can handle all of the psychological baggage that comes with being a troubled survivor obsessed with their own tragedy!

            01-03   Only attracted to people who lost somebody on the Day of Disappearance because they probably won't be as hurt when you dump them.    

            04-06   You believe dogs...I mean cats...are turning into people and taking over America.

            07-09   You hate your stupid family but keep pretending that you love them for some reason that I could never figure out.

            10-12   Your mother died the day before while you were doing smack in the bathroom which led to intense guilt about being the child of a rock star.         

            13-15   You can never relax because you're constantly annoyed by crickets and charlatans.  

            16-18   You were a star of a YouTube series and the only member of the cast who wasn't taken.

            19-21   You constantly masturbate because that's what you were doing when it happened and you're afraid if you don't keep picking at the pork pie, you'll wind up being taken.  

            22-24   You've joined a cult. See the Cult Creation section.           

            25-27   Voices in your head keep telling you to do things that are never mentioned at all!   

            28-30   Life is apparently meaningless so you've lost all inhibitions and engage in reckless behavior.      

            31-33   You were in an accident due to people disappearing and are now in a coma.    

            34-36   A doctor who was operating on you vanished while holding one of your kidneys and you really want it back.    

            37-39   You smoke just like every other person who can't cope with their life, especially without the constant unconditional love of a dog.  

            40-42   You hate your stupid family and don't keep pretending you love them, instead faking your own secondary vanishing.     

            43-45   You kill dogs on sight. I mean cats! Whichever, I guess.      

            46-48   You believe if you don't appropriate every culture you can think of, the world will end.          

            49-51   You pay prostitutes to shoot you while you wear a Kevlar vest and listen to Lionel Richie's "Dancing on the Ceiling."         

            52-54   You've invented a Roller Playing game called "Nothing Particularly Unusual Has Ever Happened" so you can feel normal.    

            55-57   You keep yelling at your television...I mean, at other people...that it's all meaningless and they really should just get over it already.    

            58-60   You constantly rain on other people's parades and even got a job that helps you hurt them because you hate yourself and your life and your really nice boobies.          

            61-63   You died and came back to life and now you think you're God but you're really just a jerk.   

            64-66   You worship an old lion that was able to get a whole bunch of boners because why not? Nothing makes sense anymore! 

            67-69   You think the people who vanished are the lucky ones because remember how much you can't stand your family?

            70-72   If you lost nobody, you only date people who lost multiple family members because you're sure to blow up that relationship easy!      

            73-75   Your father was a pedophile. This isn't as funny as you might expect. Or at all even. 

            76-78   One time you buried a bird in a box for three days and it survived and what the heck was that about anyway?!      

            79-81   You spent the last five years on top of a thirty foot tall pillar just to get away from your religious spouse.

            82-84   You pay strangers to spank you with an oar and shout the first name of your favorite fat comedian. 

            85-87   I'm glad they eventually explained the goat guy.         

            88-90   You obsess over minute details because big picture thinking makes you want to commit suicide.          

            91-93   You can't stop obsessing over your own problems and no longer have any empathy for other people. I think every character has this one.          

            94-96   Were there any cats in the series? I don't remember there being any cats! 

            97-99   You can't let other people believe the vanished ones were taken by the Rapture because what does that say about you if they were? Sinner! 

            100      Somebody left a baby on your porch and you feel better now because caring for something helpless gives your life meaning. But just wait until you lose it and you once again have to face how life is as meaningless as Lily was to the show.

Special Powers

Some people in this post-meaning world have been given special powers for some reason. Maybe they're not really special powers at all! Maybe they're frauds or there is some kind of scientific mumbo-jumbo behind it all. Who can tell?! It's not like anything matters anymore anyway. Just roll on the following chart, take your stupid special power, and consider yourself lucky! Or burdened, more likely!

            01-96   No special power! Ha ha!

            97        You can see through the disguises of dogs! Those sneaky mutts! You should probably kill them all!           

            98        You can't die! I don't know why you can't. It's not like it's ever explained in the show that this may or may not be based on!        

            99        You can hug people's pain away! This might just be a great big lie. But even if it is, it's a big hit with people of the gender you want to do it to!  

            100      You can tell people's future by making them do kindergarten art projects. This power is probably fake too. But play it as if it's real!

Cult Creation

After an event that seems to indicate the world ended (although suddenly losing two percent of the world's population doesn't seem like a bad thing, right? (I mean three percent!)), a lot of people lose faith in whatever crazy but accepted system of belief was barely keeping them tethered to sanity by providing a buffer against the possibility that nothing matters and we live in a careless and chaotic universe that doesn't have a special place in it for mankind. Since the old beliefs didn't stop masses of people from simply disappearing, maybe a new system of beliefs can help staunch the existentialism that's begun leaking in at the corners. That's where Cults come in! If you joined a Cult in Character Creation, welcome! You're about to learn your new rules to live by! This section should also be used by the Game Master to come up with some adversaries that aren't dogs or half-naked people.      

            First, come up with a name! This is easy. Just pick an adjective or an adverb and stick it in front of a noun or phrase. You should probably choose words that make people feel terrible. A good name might be The Penitent Fragment or the Sheepish Shred or The Regretful Oddment or The Conscience-Stricken Scrap. You can probably come up with one of your own since I'm running out of synonyms for The Guilty Remnant.         

            Second, you need to come up with some wacky rules. I suppose I could make another chart for those but they'd all be variations on what kind of clothing to wear and how to do your hair and make-up. Then the last rule would probably be about the conditions under which all the members would kill themselves. Your Game Master can figure that stuff out for themselves!

Random Encounter Table

Life is all about conflict! And in Roller Playing Games, that conflict is usually violent. But this is a special kind of Roller Playing Game! You don't get experience points for killing things. You just get more and more depressed every time you have an interaction with somebody until you feel like you can't go on with the charade anymore. This table will help drive Characters closer and closer to the brink!

            01-05   Labrador Retriever  

            06-10   Cocker Spaniel          

            11-15   German Shepherd     

            16-20   Poodle

            21-25   St. Bernard    

            26-30   Doberman Pinscher   

            31-35   Corgi  

            36-40   Greyhound     

            41-45   Australian Shepherd  

            46-50   Bloodhound    

            51-55   Cult Member 

            56-60   Guy with no pants on

            61-65   Truly happy person   

            66-70   Religious person        

            71-75   Dog hunter     

            76-80   Prostitute       

            81-85   Woman with no top on          

            86-90   God. Maybe.  

            91-100 A hallucination

Some Starter Adventure Ideas

Adventure #1: Somebody asks you if you're happy. Let the tragedy of your existence begin!

Adventure #2: Your teenager's best friend keeps walking around the house in their underwear and you really want to do it to them. Let the tragedy of your existence begin!

Adventure #3: Your best friend's parent keeps staring at you as you walk around their house practically naked. Let the tragedy of your existence begin!

Adventure #4: You live in a town where nobody vanished and everybody thinks your town is special. Let the tragedy of your existence begin!

Adventure #5: The cult in your town, Doggy Daycare Disaster, has been putting fireworks in unscooped dog dirt. Let the tragedy of your existence begin!

Adventure #6: Your father set all the National Geographics in the library on fire. Let the tragedy of your existence begin!

Adventure #7: You begin hallucinating. Or do you? Who can tell?! Let the tragedy of your existence begin!

Adventure #8: Have you seen any cats since the Day of Disappearance? Let the tragedy of your existence begin!

Adventure #9: Just let the tragedy of your existence begin already!

The Goal!

The goal of the game is to become satisfied with your life. I suppose I could make up some rule about how you accomplish that but who do you think I am? Some kind of Enlightened Master of Life?! I'm just as scared and anxious as everybody else!

    

The Unexpected #1

You really only have a limited number of times you can use the catchphrase, "Nobody expects...The Unexpected!"

I'm not surprised I don't recognize anybody on the cover because you know why. You read the same title that I just read. Stop playing dumb.

The woman in the front who is about to engage in oral sex with the reader is named Firebrand. I vaguely remember her getting a scene in one of the previous "The New Age of Heroes" comic books (New Challengers, I think). She's a fighter who loves to fight in and out of the ring. That's a secret shortcut to writing a strong female character. You can tell she's strong because in the first page, she knocks out Killer Croc with one punch. You can tell she's female because of the boobies. I know that joke risks alienating the trans community due to erasure but sometimes you have to take risks to become a leading comedy writer known for their third grade humor. Plus it's empowering to the trans community that I think they're way too smart for my stuff, right?

Speaking of society's double standards for boobies, remember that scene in Mad Men when Ginsberg cuts off his nipple and gives it to Peggy? What if Peggy had cut off her nipple and given it to Michael? Would it have been too obscene for television to show the nipple in the box once it's been detached from Peggy's breast? Where is the line drawn between being able to show a nipple on television and not being able to show a nipple on television? What if Peggy had just found a detached nipple left on her desk? Would ambiguity make the nipple offensive to a censor's tastes? Can a trans man's nipple be shown? What about a trans woman's nipple? It can't just be that the nipple on fatty tissue is obscene because remember that show The Biggest Loser? There were a lot of exposed nipples on large breasts in that show but they were deemed acceptable for some reason. Why are nipples such a contentious aspect in the discussion on vulgarity and human body?

Don't misunderstand me! I don't think there is anything vulgar about the human body at all! I mean as long as I'm attracted to the specific human body we're talking about. I don't want to see stuff I don't want to see! You know the stuff! Gross!

I would describe the stuff I don't want to see but I don't want to be called a fat shaming homophobe. Anyway, I just got rid of all of the full length mirrors in my house and solved the problem.

Firebrand was a civilian killed during Metal. But she got a new futuristic heart that only keeps working if she gets into a fight every twenty four hours. Don't ask how it works. That's boring detail that doesn't really matter. Just know that her heart is called "the Conflict Engine" which is the only reason you need to understand why something this stupid would be developed.

Weird Doctor: "We have some good news and some bad news! The bad news: we brought you back to life by giving you a new heart. Welcome back to the pain of existence! The good news? You legally get to beat somebody's ass once per day to keep yourself alive!"
Firebrand:: "Wait. What? Why?!"
Weird Doctor:: "No time to explain! I have to rush off to give somebody a fake rectum who will then have to eat three large linguiça and jalapeño pizzas per day or they'll die! Good luck!"

Firebrand currently explains her life by being so contradictory that I don't care anymore. Not that I cared at all from the beginning. But I needed some way to end that initial sentence that didn't take a lot of effort to construct.

Every scumbag in New Jersey knows where to find her but the CIA and some black ops corporation have no idea where to look. *shrug*

I get it, lazy writer. The heart wants what it wants and what your heart wants is for readers to simply accept the scenario you've created without thinking about it critically at all! Although I will allow myself to be wrong in this instance. Because generally what comic book writers have found is that readers are so willing to accept every idea that they'll do all the critical thinking they can to contort reason and logic until they can explain away anything in a comic book they like. It's just too bad nobody has any reason to like this comic book yet! Unless you're one of those people who read one word from a new character and instantly claim "THIS IS MY FAVORITE CHARACTER!" just in case the character becomes super popular. Then you can claim to be the character's biggest fan! Good for you!

What I'm trying to say is that Firebrand is totally my new favorite character.

An evil guy named Alden Quench wearing a Project Runway outfit comes to take Firebrand's heart. He spouts a lot of stuff that would make people who read Metal think "That sounds familiar!" which ties everything together and satisfies my need for closure. It might not provide the link to Metal that other people need but remember how I said I don't care anymore? That makes me easier to please than other readers of this book.

Alden Quench calls himself Bad Samaritan which is a totally racist stereotype of Samaritans. The only reason Jesus tells a story about a Good Samaritan is that everybody in Jesus's time simply accepted that all Samaritan's were terrible people. He might as well call himself simply "The Samaritan" (except I think that bad guy was already taken by an enemy of The Outsiders (unless he was also called The Bad Samaritan! (double unless this is actually him!))).

A huge fight breaks out between The Unexpected (who arrive to help Firebrand for selfish reasons) and the Bad Samaritan putting everybody in the hospital at risk. So because Firebrand exists, regular people are endangered. I really don't want to be on the side of the argument that claims heroes endanger everybody but come on! I can't get any stories that don't prove the paranoid civilians are wrong!

The leader of The Unexpected is a guy named Neon who is probably an Aurakle like Halo because he gets cut in half and rainbows slosh out. The Bad Samaritan splashes this rainbow blood on Firebrand and then chops her in the heart with Viking Judge's axe (Viking Judge might not be her real name but I sincerely hope that it is). In so doing, he kills himself and creates a new Nth Metal isotope.

Meanwhile beneath the surface of Thanagar, a guy named Onimar Synn eats a dinosaur guy and then settles down for a nice long pout. I guess he wants to eat Firebrand's heart but its too far away. FOR NOW!

Anyway, The Bad Samaritan created something called Destruction Metal. It's going to blow a hole in the multiverse if Neon and Firebrand don't do something about it. Viking Judge and Ascendant (the woman with the horns and the blue guy on the cover) apparently died in the conflict. I'm glad I didn't declare they were my favorite characters!

Rating: You know what? Going against my screaming brain, I'm going to buy the second issue of this comic book. It's interesting even if it's relying on that same old lazy premise that I keep shitting all over: heroes that exist only to be targets of super villains. In this one, people want Firebrand's heart and they'll hurt the entire world to get it. Neon might be trying to save the Multiverse though which is one reason I'll hang around for a bit. I would like The Unexpected to be some kind of multiversal freedom fighters. Apparently they haven't been doing too good a job so far though because worlds keep dying around them.

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