Wonder Twins #8

The British version of Polly Math isn't as clever because her name is Polly Maths.

Only one lesson ever made an impression on me in high school. In Physics, Mr. McFarland had a bonus question on a test. It had three examples of the trajectories and exchange of force between two billiard balls. The math was correct on all three examples and the question was, "Which one is actually correct and why?" The answer to the "Why?" part of the question Mr. McFarland was looking for was simply this: I've observed it. So while the math on the other two examples was perfectly fine, they were ways billiard balls never actually react. So when somebody talks about something like string theory and how it's a mathematical model that provides a theory of everything, I think about Mr. McFarland's bonus question. The math may be right but what does that matter if we can't see what the billiard balls are doing?

I'm definitely not being anti-science! I'm totally pro-science! I'm anti-math! Stupid numbers. Think they can solve everything! But they're as bad as alchemy. Have you heard about three being a magic number? Magic! Fucking math is all made up hocus-pocus nonsense, I tell you what. We think it's some kind of universal constant but remember "Little Twelve Toes"? That taught me that we can't even use math to communicate if we wind up meeting aliens with a different amount of fingers and toes than we have! I mean, I guess the people who understand math and who also write songs for children's television would understand them. But I just learned that aliens only visit hick kids who pretend they get the concept of a base ten number system!

Maybe I'm a poor example of a person who was meant to understand the math in Schoolhouse Rock songs. Hell, I didn't even get the point of "Conjunction Junction." I just liked singing about trains!

Please don't reply trying to explain any of this stuff to me. I play a guy far dumber than I actually am on this blog. Well, maybe not "far" dumber. But somewhat dumber! Which is the opposite of what hoity-toity Mark Russell does! I bet he's not as smart as he seems to be! Although it's tough to pretend you're smarter than you actually are. So it's possible he's a genius who also cares about making some kind of difference in the world, even if he is only writing funny books about the God-awful Wonder Twins.

I also don't want to hear people defending the Wonder Twins because I may or may not have always liked them although I definitely have never jerked off to any of them and that precludes Gleek.

I thought aging was waking up every morning because you didn't take enough pills the night before.

The worst part about aging is being too dead to see the youth who made fun of you for being old grow old and die themselves.

The sad old 48 year old guy typing this wants you to know that the sad old 48 year old guy in the panel is the principal of Zan and Jayna's high school. The librarian is also a sad 48 year old guy except not a guy and maybe not sad. She probably fucked the principal in high school though. This is probably a love story. Not one of those love stories that ends happily. More like one of those love stories where some lonely jerk goes to their 30th high school reunion and tells the person they had a crush on in high school that they never stopped loving them and the person they confess to says, "Did we know each other?"

I'm beginning to think I shouldn't be as proud as I am to guess where comic book plots are going. I'm fucking pathetic.

Don't worry. Principal Adultman doesn't admit to being a chronic sleep-creeper in the panel following the previously scanned bunch. He just says, "I'm a principal!" Although I totally would have been intrigued if he had said, "I was a sleep-creeper!" I would have thought, "Gross! What a jerk," and not, "Oh! I hope we get a flashback!" Because I'm a decent person who now knows sleep-creeping is wrong.

Principal Adultman wants to cancel his 30th high school reunion so he doesn't have to interact with Librarian Lost Love. I guess he's afraid they might play The Cure's "Last Dance" during the reunion which was playing the first time he finger-banged the librarian.

The principal confesses his love for the librarian and his subsequent failure over the years to get over it on the open school announcement microphone. So now the librarian knows things are even more awkward than she realized! Now she has to start preparing her speech about how there's no way he can love her because he doesn't know her and even if he thought he loved her in high school, she didn't love him. She couldn't love him because she didn't even know who she was or what she wanted and should she have to live with the unintended consequences of one moment where she really wanted to fucking cum on some guy's warm hand for the rest of her lives simply because that warm hand belonged to some schlub?! Maybe she's the type of person who doesn't prepare speeches and she'll just tell him to fuck off and get a life. Although she's a librarian so I think speeches probably excite her as much as the album Disintegration does.

Somewhere in the high school reunion drama is a story about Polly Math and her inability to forgive Jayna for putting her in prison and failing to save her dad from eternity in The Phantom Zone. But I don't think that's as important as that old guy still pining for a woman who forgot about him decades ago. Polly escapes prison or something. I don't know. I just skimmed those pages to get to the final embarrassing confrontation between Principal Adultman and Librarian Lost Love that Jayna is unwittingly setting up. She thinks she can prove people will always forgive each other. Ha ha! What a child!

Bah. Stupid Jayna being right.

Wonder Twins #8 Final Thoughts: I guess Mark Russell doesn't trade in cynicism. He's all about earnestness and optimism and hope and shit. Hey, I get that! It's totally the stuff I would aspire to if I wasn't such a lowly, scum-sucking piece of crap. But I'd still prefer for Librarian Lost Love to have been a bit mean. He treats her like a failed conquest for thirty years, making as if she's the reason his world has fallen apart and his time at work has uncomfortable moments, while she was just going on with her life as he grew smaller and smaller in her rear view and he expects her to do the heavy lifting of forgiveness?! Fuck that dude! Although, I suppose, if he didn't matter to her as much as I suspect he didn't matter to her, it's easy enough to just say, "Sure! You're forgiven. Now can you stop making things so awkward, you immature turd?" Anyway, I guess Polly is going to forgive Jayna soon because they're going to team up to save Polly's dad.

Wonder Twins #7

I didn't realize the Wonder Twins were Gen X.

If you've ever wondered why I'm such a facetious asshole who doesn't hold anything sacred, it's because I'm solidly Generation X. We were raised by the Baby Boomers so we've known from an early age that everybody is fucking fucked. Although we were also partially raised by grandparents from the Greatest Generation and let me tell you something: my Spanish grandparents were absolutely the fucking greatest and kindest people in the world. And their daughter, my mom, is pretty liberal and did everything she could for her kids as a single parent. But my dad. Let me fucking tell you! He's the epitome of a Baby Boomer. Vietnam Vet who came back so anti-war that I remember him telling me, when I was probably ten or so, that America ever brought back the draft, he'd drive me to Canada himself. Wound up working middle management jobs at tech companies until he retired to watch loads of Fox News and play the stock market online. Now he talks about how people can't joke anymore and that the Native American guy in AA doesn't mind the name "Washington Redskins" so it must just be whiny white college kids who think the term "redskin" is a racist term. Which, I mean, it fucking is so I guess his point is that he doesn't mind an NFL team with a racist nickname because a guy he must think of as a redskin (or why else would he bring him up?!) says it's okay with him? I'm pretty sure I've heard that stupid bullshit thing about how "if you're not liberal when you're young then you don't have a heart but if you're not conservative when you're older than you don't have a brain" from him. He definitely got upset with me one time when I made sweeping generalizations about big business and yet he doesn't mind doing the same thing about Millennials. One time when I took some cousins who were in town to go see him, he made a joke about a third wheelchair access ramp at a local strip mall being for trans people not five minutes after telling everybody in the room that nobody can joke about anything anymore.

It's fucking weird because I know the guy he used to be and it's disheartening to say the least. I should probably blame the Boomers as a generation less than the fact they just happened to be the exact ripe old age to be scared shitless by Fox News and to believe all of its terrible propaganda. I guess it's tough when the victims are also the perpetrators of the crime. Terrible Boomers seemed to know exactly how to manipulate the others into being right bastards. But then again, my mom turned seventy this year and she hates Trump and the GOP so it's not all bad. Although she sometimes says some cringey stuff about the Middle Eastern family who ran the 7-Eleven by my house for decades. Plus there's my aunt who's in her eighties who had to watch her children vote for Trump while she (as she revealed to me) "liked that one guy. What was his name? You know, the Jew?"

Look. They're old people! Sometimes you just need to learn to laugh about their old timey, passive, not-really-hurting-anybody racism! Well, if you're a Gen-Xer, you do. If you're a Millennial, I think you point out how their attitude causes a culture of harm and the only way to combat that is to just cancel them? Is that how that works? It's hard to know for sure because anybody I can ask about that has already cancelled me.

I bet my mom would like the Untitled Goose Game because one of her best friends is a lame goose at a park she walks in! She also once tripped and fell in the goose shitty pond one time, tearing a tendon in her arm, so that was probably her comeuppance for a couple of casually racist remarks from long ago that I'm sure she'd be embarrassed by now if I ever brought them up to her.

It might sound like I'm excusing some shitty things my mom once said because she's liberal while holding my father at a higher standard because he's conservative. And fuck yeah, that's exactly right. Because, ultimately, my mother has some flaws that come with her age and experience but which she's actively trying to change while also being sympathetic to everybody in our society with her political beliefs and her vote. My father, on the under hand, just continues to dig the hole of terrible he's decided is his new philosophy. You can tell me all you want how you're a good person but if you still vote for Trump or any current Conservative politician who won't stand up to corruption, I know better than to listen to your words. I see what you believe and/or what you've fallen for.

I know, I know! I'm a hypocrite because I'm allowing myself to be biased against conservatives. But, if it'll make y'all feel any better, just remember how you love to say things like, "I don't hate homosexuals. But I hate the acts of which they choose to partake!" Well, same but for conservatives! Also, the conservative speaker would have chosen to end that statement in the preposition. I apologize for my illogical dialogue choice.

Um, so, uh, the Wonder Twins! What are those scamps up to this month?!

Oh yeah! Zan had just saved the world by stopping a plot that was going to save the world.

I just realized I hadn't scanned the cover yet and as I did, I noticed the Wonder Twins fist/star emblem marks a striking resemblance to a goat.se riff.

Zan and Jayna get taken off of monitor duty at the Hall of Justice now that they've stopped the League of Annoyance. You'd think that doing a good job would get you a promotion but those of use who have always done spectacularly good jobs know better. While everybody else works down to the lowest common denominator (because who wants to do more work than the next guy?! A fool, that's who!), good workers just put on blinders and do the job they were hired for until the time they're being paid for is up. Sure, that sounds like I'm describing a sucker who's been completely manipulated by the man! But I'm also describing a person who fulfills their end of whatever bargain they've agreed to! So when I say Zan and Jayna wind up giving tours at the Hall of Justice because they were too good at catching criminals, you'll understand why I went into the previous digression. Maybe? I don't know. Have you seen what state the U.S. is in?! Why are you picking apart my writing style?!

Mark Russell takes a few pages to shit all over hockey fans and now I hate Mark Russell with a burning passion. Even though I'd hardly call myself a hockey fan. I mean, I loved NHL '93 (unless it was '92 (or maybe '94?)) and I loved going to San Jose Sharks games when I was still living in the Bay Area (plus my friend worked equipment for the Sharks and would get us free tickets). But it's not like I follow it much anymore. I just like the feeling of being angry at somebody for writing a satirical critique of sports fans rioting because they're so happy that their team won. Although why would I be angry when I've never done that nor think Russell's wrong in his pointed and humorous critique?! Oh, who cares why! Being angry is just more fun!

Oh shit! I finally understand people's attraction to Fox News!

I just watched a YouTube clip of somebody's Jeremy Roenick highlights from NHL '94 set to the song "More Than a Feeling" and it was pretty awesome. Also, that was definitely the one we played nonstop back in 1993 and 94 and maybe even into 95. Roenick unstoppable down with the puck while Sharks players lay splayed out on their back all across the ice.

To stop the riot, Superman calls in Repulso! He's a guy whose super power is super stink and he's kept in a locked room with a bare table and a microwave and nobody wants to be his friend because he smells like a garbage dumb that vomited on top of the diarrhea it shit out while standing on its head so the stanky muck ran down his body absorbing all of his body odor and then somebody cut up a durian and tossed it in the mix.

Superman is a dick. Get this guy some friends with no sense of smell. Or at the very least, an Xbox Gold account.

After the hockey riots, some "the end of the world" riots take place because Zan and Jayna screw up something or other. Basically what that means is that Repulso gets to be let out of his airtight containment unit again! He's a pretty optimistic guy for being sealed away by Superman (which is just Superman's way! Is somebody a problem? No problem! Put them in the Phantom Zone!). He's so happy and not bitter about his living arrangements that I feel like Zan and Jayna had better figure out a way to give him a better life before this issue ends. Because if Mark Russell fails this character he created before this issue is over and I have to face reality after snot crying about a fictional person, I'm going to be pretty upset when I continue to buy Mark Russell comic books because what other choice do I have? Am I going to stop reading DC's best written comic books because Mark Russell betrayed poor Repulso? Of course not! What am I? A person with integrity?!

Repulso winds up getting his ass beat by rioters as Repulso's handlers flee the chaotic "end of the world" downtown riot scene. Luckily the Wonder Twins are headed downtown to save his life and maybe become his friend or something? Please?

After Zan and Jayna save Repulso, Jayna goes to Superman to tell him everything sucks. He gives her a big speech about how being a hero is lonely work because you don't always get to fuck the hot chick at your secret identity's workplace and also fuck an Amazon warrior while also getting to fuck anybody at all whose initials are "L.L." and also have a best friend who is the coolest guy in the world with a butler who makes the best pancakes. Sometimes you're a fat jerk who smells who even Superman won't fucking give the time of day because Superman has this speech about how being a hero is lonely and that's a good thing so you should embrace your loneliness because who wants to put up with your super stink, fatty?

Jayna is a way better hero than Superman. At least in this comic book that's all about her and not Superman so of course she's going to outshine him!

Oh yeah, the ant in the above picture is Jayna. It can't smell.

Wonder Twins #7 Rating: A+. I should probably be less cynical when reading Mark Russell comic books because he's as earnest and serious as he can be while also providing lots of jokes. He takes writing seriously because what else is there? If your message isn't going to matter, why bother? (is his philosophy. I think. It's not my philosophy! I don't think? Maybe it is! I just write things that matter in a much different way than Mark Russell writes things that matter.) I should probably read Superman's speech and be inspired by the idea that you don't do good because you want adulation; you do good because it's the right thing to do, even if the entire world thinks you're an asshole for doing it. Even if all of the other superheroes think you're a stinky fuck and only keep you around to use as a tool to oppress and manipulate the masses without having to use logic and reason on them (because, let's face it, the people doing terrible things don't understand logic and reason. Or they're do but they're just selfish and greedy so nothing is going to reach them anyway (which maybe is part of Superman's message?)), you're still a hero at the end of the day. You can still be proud of your stinky self. And even if the life is lonely, you should remain positive and upbeat because Superman really doesn't want to be reminded that you exist every time you complain about the lack of reasonable living conditions. Being a hero is a state of mind, says the guy who also looks great and is invulnerable and has the best wife and a cool son and doesn't have to fear death! So inspiring!

Wonder Twins #6

Every comic book series needs one cover where the bad guy becomes over-sized to crush Earth in their hands.

Being a totally sexually active male who's totally into having loads of sex and doesn't misspell "sexuality" four or five times before getting it right at all, I feel uncomfortable reading comic books with young women in them. And it's almost certainly because I find them attractive and not because I would cry watching Sailor Moon during college because it would make me think, "That's what life would have been like for me if I'd been a girl!" Although sometimes it's really hard to tell while reading The Terrifics if I want to bang Phantom Girl or I want to dress up like Phantom Girl so that people want to bang me. Now that I've forced myself to think about it a bit more than "Am I gross for being so into Jayna?!" (and then instantly flagellating myself), I realize it's their attractiveness to others that I yearn for. Who doesn't want to be an adorable little elfin waif in beautifully constructed frilly clothing and smooth satin underpants? I bet 100% of everybody reading this has their hands up their own rectums right now yelling, "Me! Me! Yes! Yes! OH GOD YES!"

I should probably delete that and start over. Especially because now everybody thinks I'm turned on by cartoon drawings of fictional characters! Let's get this straight: I lie a lot in these commentaries (I almost called this a "review" but that's not accurate because I'll probably barely even discuss the merits or failings of this comic book. Not that it will have any failings seeing that it's written by Mark Russell!). I haven't been attracted to a comic book character since Elfquest! And not the fan-fiction Elfquest of Elfquest's later years! I'm talking about the original twenty issues! I know I read a lot of comic books but that's not where my perversions lie!

I probably shouldn't delete that first paragraph because it was a fitting way to start talking about the Big Scramble. I totally wouldn't mind if my personality were scrambled into another body! Sure, it's a crap shoot! But I'm a 48 year old guy who really stopped caring about his looks five years ago! I'm apt to get the better end of a personality swap! Let's do this! And I apologize to the poor fool who winds up in my body. On the plus side, it's comfortable and broken in nicely!

Looking at Zan and Jayna here, I just realized I could wind up in my sister's body. Gross. Please stop The Great Scramble!

I'm not saying my sister's body is gross (I'm also not saying it isn't! I'm not choosing sides on that debate!). I'm just saying I would be profoundly uncomfortable forever if my mind wound up in my sister's body. I would never be able to masturbate again!

But what if I could get my sister, in my body, to jerk me, in her body, off? That isn't weird, right? She's just doing what she always did and I don't have to touch my sister's naughty place (which is now my naughty place?). That's probably the only real solution to this problem!

Anybody grossed out by my sex talk can go suck on a dog turd because Mark Russell makes sex jokes too!

LOAD "Load",8
RUN

Superman is super worried about The Great Scramble because he could wind up in Aquaman's body. He calls for the Justice League to stop helping victims of natural disasters and concentrate on stopping The Great Scramble. I don't know what his plan is but I know it's not "give The Scrambler what he wants and make the world a fair and just place for every Earth citizen" because Batman would just shoot it down. He just wants to stop random violence in back alleys not upset the status quo which serves rich people.

The Scrambler is hiding out at Polly Math's place because she loves his plan. Plus I bet she gets immunity as his sidekick. Superman doesn't know the hell Polly Math is so he has no chance of figuring out where The Scrambler is hiding. He contacts the president to let him know the world probably isn't screwed but maybe be prepared for the worst?

I applaud Russell and Byrne's choice to let the DCU have a different president.

Zan uses his powers to become a disgusting fly to learn where The Scrambler is hiding rather than working a deal with the League of Annoyance. I wonder if Zan craves shit when he's a fly? Probably. But even though all the clues point to Filo Math's place, Zan can't figure it out.

Jayna does figure it out though and she goes to talk some sense into Polly and The Scrambler. But Polly logically suplexes Jayna's argument into the hospital. It's one of those scenes Mark Russell does really well where he explains social problems through character and plot in much the way good comic book writers have been doing for so long that Comicsgaters never really noticed until they felt their frail white masculinity threatened. I'm sure they'd read this, scoop out their eyes, roll them around the room, and then tweet death threats to Gail Simone. But if you gave them Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams early seventies run of Green Lantern/Green Arrow, they'd probably say, "Fuck those faggots too!" Hmm, that sentence really got away from me. I was going to point out that they probably wouldn't have had a problem with those stories even if they were absolutely non-abstract social justice stories but then reality slapped me across the face and said, "You know how those fucking assholes would really react, right?" So sorry about saying the f-word but I just got too into the character of a Comicsgater. It was worse than when I contemplated having to masturbate in my sister's body.

Seriously though, I can't understand the argument about comic books ignoring character and plot to simply put forth social justice agendas because when I think back at all the comic books I've read for the last forty years, the majority of them by a large margin were stories about increasing social justice. What the fuck were these Comicsgaters reading all these years?!

"With our bank accounts!"

If I knew the exact time The Great Scramble was going to happen, I'd leave my body sitting naked in a tub of chocolate pudding with The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick wrapped around my penis.

Lex creates an app called Lexema that will allow family members to stay in contact after The Great Scramble. I just figured everybody would stay in contact because they're still the only ones with their names and passwords on their social media platforms and emails. Unless most people don't know how to use computers in libraries and/or use those password apps to create passwords that their computer remembers for them. I guess Lex probably has a good point with that program. It's not like anybody memorizes phone numbers anymore (which would be useless, of course. I'm just using that as evidence and an example of how people probably won't remember all the passwords they need. I would expect, in The Great Scramble world, the first few months would be all about proving who used to be who and just setting everybody back up in their old lives. Lex's app should be a place where everybody locks in a secret password which they can use to prove who they were prior to The Great Scramble! Man, that would have been the better idea! I think I'm smarter than Lex Luthor!

The world governments actually are instituting laws to protect people all over the world when The Great Scramble goes into effect. So The Scrambler's plan is sort of working! Jayna realize that they can stop The Great Scramble and all of those laws will still happen. The Scrambler will be a hero! But before she can reach Polly and The Scrambler, the Justice League arrives and captures them. Because Zan did some detective work as a water molecule to find where The Scrambler was hiding. And with the capture of The Scrambler, the president and the rest of the world decide not to sign all the laws that would improve the world. Stupid meddling kid!

Wonder Twins #6 Rating: It's still being written by Mark Russell, right? So A+! And that Stephen Byrne guy didn't do too bad a job, whatever it was he does. Draws the boxes the stories go in or something. They were pretty straight! Good job!

Wonder Twins #5

Jayna just punched straight through her brother's butthole.

If you're a being who turns into water, your dick and butthole don't just disappear, right? They just become part of the water! So I'm almost certainly correct in my comment on the cover. Hopefully Mark Russell will explore this topic in a future issue. Until then, I'll be certain to tell everybody I know that Jayna basically fisted Zan. Luckily for the Wonder Twins, I don't know many people and also they are fictional characters.

This issue is called "Magic and Games." I think. It will probably take me less time to read this entire comic book than it took me to puzzle out the word "Games" in the font used for the title.

Sure, you can see it now that I already told you what it was! But it was difficult before I worked it out! Although I still wouldn't be surprised to learn the title is "Magic and Galljes" or "Magic and "Gaines" and that the second word is somebody's name.

Usually I don't comment on Mark Russell comic books because to comment on a Mark Russell comic book, you should probably be smart and serious. Sure, he's having fun and writing an entertaining book that I can easily use to make jokes about fisting incest! But he also writes sensitive stories about social justice and systemic bias and ethical dilemmas in changing times and, well, other stuff that I'm too dumb to even discuss in the most general terms! He's a smart guy which is why I hate him with a burning passion! But it's a good hate! It's the kind of envious hate that pushes me to my own Emerald Twilight! I probably won't wind up destroying an entire town and ruining my reputation and becoming the most vilified hero in our universe but I almost certainly will eventually become the avenging spirit of God judging everybody around me! Wait, I think I already am that! Whatever my point is, it's that Mark Russell writes good and I'm too weak to not despise him for it.

Polly Math has just won first prize at the science fair because her last name is Math. I guess Sandra Science didn't compete this year so Polly was the obvious next choice. Jayna wins second place because her project on fucking hot guys while being a nerd in high school fell apart when the guy she attempted to science fair fuck turned out to be a villain. It's also possible I'm confusing story lines but you have to expect that kind of thing! I'm not spring chicken! Remembering details between chapters that come out a full month apart has been nearly impossible for the last twenty years!

I shouldn't make fun of Polly Math's name because I have a name that people always try to make jokes about too. It's not Grunion Guy! You can probably find it if you do even the smallest amount of Internet research! I'm not going to help you though because I don't want to get called a Deaf Chef anymore!

Polly is upset that her father is working with Lex Luthor and the League of Annoyance. But Jayna has a plan to fix things! I bet her plan is to turn into a giant tortoise while Zan turns into an ice dildo and...wait a second! Why am I giving out good ideas that Mark Russell will just steal in a few issues?! Better to not speculate on things! Also, I mean, the cover shows Jayna going with the shark plan.

Okay fine! I'm finally interested in Fox News!

The most disturbing thing about people who watch Fox News is that they ignore five hundred other channels that are showing entertaining things on their television at the same time! Who chooses that shit over Comedy Central or the Game Show Network?! I haven't had cable for nearly twenty years and whenever I'm staying somewhere with cable, it's locked on the Game Show Network 24/7! Who the fuck chooses to watch state propaganda over old game shows?! Fucking psychopaths, that's who!

Polly Math's father wound up working with Lex Industries because only Lex Luthor hired African Americans, I guess? Hadn't he heard of STAR Labs?! Maybe Silas Stone and Sarah Charles fulfilled their quota?

I might be misreading this scene but I don't think I am because the white guys with white guys playing golf pictures behind them seem interested in Filo Math if he's Norwegian (so, you know, totally white!) and then when they meet him, they don't want to hire him. It could be that they really are concerned with his specialty! What could that be?! I mean, it can't be any worse than Silas Stone's specialty of turning his son into a cybernetic example of the castration of the black male in America! That's a really terrible specialty! Although Sarah Charles seemed to be pretty into it.

See?! This is why I can't review a Mark Russell book! He's making a great point about the systemic bias inherent in corporate hiring practices and I'm not taking it seriously! I mean, he isn't either, really? He's being light-hearted while still making a good point. Which is what I've done, I think, in my comment about Cyborg's lack of a penis!

The Scrambler wants to play a trick on society. He's a magician that believes people are frightened of magic and only like the part where everything is normal again.

Magician: "Is this your card?"
Audience Member: "Why yes! Thank God you picked my card! I was worried I was going to have to live in a world where my card wasn't picked!"

Maybe I'm not comprehending his point. Anyway, The Scrambler wants to do a trick where things don't ever go back to normal! He's a monster! Imagine picking the Three of Clubs and nobody ever showing you the Three of Clubs ever again! Ugh, I'm feeling faint.

To save Polly's Dad from definite prison time (or possibly, if Superman shows up, an eternity in the Phantom Zone. As if Superman can be bothered with Earth's judicial system! Pshaw!), Jan has challenged the League of Annoyance to a duel at the zoo. I guess if she wants to stress out all of the animals there with a big battle, who am I to judge? I mean other than being the real life version of Hal Jordan's Spectre, of course!

At the zoo, Jayna recruits a bunch of Australian animals to help fight which goes as spectacularly as you can imagine it would. And what I mean by that is that a koala is blown to bits. But I guess that's worth it in the grand scheme of getting Polly Math's father to stop working with the League of Annoyance. It's like that philosophical conundrum about an ant that sacrifices its life for even the tiniest amount to better the world. It's just an ant! It practically owes it to the universe to die for nearly nothing! What does this koala bear expect? It should get to live in luxurious confinement at the zoo and not die for a trivial reason? Stupid koala bear. Go fuck yourself, you selfish bastard.

The Wonder Twins defeat two out of three of the League of Annoyance members at the expense of just one koala's life and the bruised jaw of an innocent kangaroo. The third member, some woman with a Kryptonian cell phone whose name maybe I should remember, gets away to go regroup.

Sylvia is a racist that joined the League because she didn't like the demographics of her small town changing. She's startled by Filo entering the League's headquarters to pack up his stuff and winds up zapping him like she zapped the koala. Okay, I guess the koala isn't as dead as I first thought. I should have realize a Kryptonian phone is probably sending everything to the Phantom Zone. So once again, I, the Grandmaster Comic Book Reader, was correct when I speculated that the worst that could happen to Filo was prison or the Phantom Zone! I'm the smarterest!

Sylvia is caught on camera zapping Filo Math and then messes up in an interview when she kind of admits to having maybe zapped more than one black person with her phone off-camera? It's a real public relations nightmare!

But Lex can fix it! His greatest strength is turn public relations nightmares into public relations wet dreams!

Lex News turns Cell Phone Sylvia into a national hero. Because anything is excusable if you just say how scared you were! I mean, as long as you're white! It's scary being white! Sometimes you have to kill people with your legal gun while standing your own ground after confronting somebody for the most inconsequential reasons! It's just the way the world works! At least in America! Happy 4th of July!

Just in case some readers weren't smart enough to get that everybody blasted by Sylvia's phone went to the Phantom Zone, Mark Russell supplies us with an image of Filo and the koala and a bunch of Sylvia's other victims (hmm, all black! But that's probably just a coincidence!) in the Phantom Zone.

Polly, at the end of her rope with doing the right thing in an unjust world, decides to contact The Scrambler. I can't wait for her big magic trick to fix the world!

The Scrambler's big trick to fix the world is to threaten to scramble everybody's identity. Everybody's minds will switch around so that they're now in different bodies. That means the powerful might wind up being the poorest people in the worst poverty. And the only way he won't do it is if the powerful fix the world in thirty days. Seems like a good plan! Except I'm curious to see how they fix it. Most people's ideas of fixing the world rely on the current world still existing somehow. So the fix is handicapped from the beginning by needing to be built on the ruins of the old system. To truly make a new system that works, the old system must be completely razed to the ground. But nobody has the stomach for that. So we make exceptions and compromises, building the new structure on top of a rotting foundation. It's why DC's Universe fixes always fail. They rely on making things new and better but need to remain rooted in the past. Crisis on Infinite Earths was built on a world that still contained members of Infinity Inc. who suddenly didn't fit in the world anymore. So DC then had to do Zero Hour which told new origin stories but still refused to throw out everything that came before to simply start again. Even The New 52, which people hated because they felt it did exactly what I suggested (razing the shit to the ground), didn't work because, I believe, it didn't go far enough! It still accepted Superman had died. It still accepted all of Green Lantern's past. It still contained a Batgirl who was shot by Joker and became Oracle. It was still the DC Universe but with arbitrary and subtle changes that made no real difference except the jettisoning of a ton of history. So it didn't work for anybody!

Um, anyway, my initial point was that real life political structures and social dynamics and economic systems can never really be restructured in a meaningful way because they have to kowtow to older ways of thinking and doing things. The comic book stuff was just easier to write about! I'm sure Mark Russell will figure it out! Or he'll just have The Scrambler and Polly Math arrested and nothing will work out like it should and it will just be the punctuation on the idea that everything fucking sucks. Yay!

Wonder Twins #5 Rating: A+. Come on! Everything Mark Russell writes gets an A+! It shows how smart I am!