Harley Quinn Annual #1

I've been rubbing Harley's tits for the last hour and I'm not smelling anything.

My cat Pelafina will be helping me read this issue since it is obviously meant as a cat book. The issue begins right off with a Rub 'N Smell experience!

It doesn't smell like her butt at all! It smells like leather.

Pelafina seemed interested in the leather smell but she agreed with me that it would have been better if it were ass. The leather smells authentic but then they've had years to perfect it! I think one of the seven Scratch 'N Sniffs included with Infocom's The Leather Goddesses of Phobos was leather, along with pizza, chocolate, perfume, garlic, and, I think, banana? Isn't banana always a Scratch 'N Sniff choice? I can't remember the last one. But you could have King Mitre remove the "T"s from any word. So maybe after changing the cotton balls to coon balls, you could smell those?

Now my whole office smells like Harley's leather butt! Pelafina is pawing at me now which either means she wants to be in my lap and completely in the way of everything or she wants me to hurry up and get to the next Rub 'N Smell!

Just from the leather smell, I'm already getting a headache. No wonder this comic was sold in a sealed baggy.

Harley gets dragged into Arkham Asylum because she forgot to load her gun when she went to do whatever she was doing when we first discovered that her ass smelled like leather.

Done and done!

Harley decides that the readers might want to know how she wound up in Arkham, so we get a smellback.

Pelafina approves of this smell. I'm not sure what it makes my finger smell like. I wish somebody were around right now so I could ask them to smell my finger. I think it's cocoa butter. Or bananas. Although banana is usually my favorite Scratch 'N Sniff smell and this isn't anything like the stickers I remember from my youth.

The advertisement for Arkham Manor smells like sweat and desperation! No wait. That's just me.

It turns out Ivy has been thrown in Arkham because she cares about the environment or flowers or monkeys or something. Harley needs to break her out! Although, really, if Harley waits a few days, I'm sure there will be a riot that will allow all of the inmates to escape.

Why does her lotion smell exactly like a comic book?

I think the lotion was supposed to smell like homicide since Harley is stealing a parachute from some sky divers waiting to get on the plane. I suppose there are safer ways to procure a parachute but they're all less entertaining than this.

The parachute is so that Harley can float safely to the ground after she's launched from New York City into Gotham via her dog poo flinger. It kind of works and she winds up in a new smell.

Has Scratch 'N Sniff technology not changed at all since Leather Goddesses of Phobos?

How can this comic book be graded to determine if it's in mint condition? I suppose it has to remain inside the sealed bag, right? Because to know if it's mint, you have to know if it still smells. But to know if it still smells, you have to rub a bit of the smell off! And then it probably drops a full grade!

That ends the smellback which leaves us to watch as Harley escapes from her cell in a scene full of burps and pants shittings. I would say, "So and so it's not!", where "so and so" is a bit of highbrow literature, but I don't know any highbrow literature.

Harley stumbles upon a secret lab where Ivy is working with some suspicious new Arkham employees. She's concocting some kind of hallucinogenic drug which will probably wind up being tested on Harley since the rest of the issue is composed of various artists. Sounds like hallucination time to me!

This, unfortunately, did not smell like a cock and balls.

Ivy has amnesia or is being mind controlled or something so she's not interested in any hanky or any panky with Harley. That's probably why Harley is going to wind up carving pumpkins. That's how I say "hallucinating" because my friend Bob and I were once going to carve pumpkins for Halloween while on mushrooms.

I think this smelled like Pinesol. I suck at identifying smells! At least it should make me hallucinate, right?

I bet the smell I couldn't remember from Leather Goddesses of Phobos was a pine air freshener!

Everybody gets a nice dose of A Better World, so now the reader gets to go on four different hallucinogenic journeys! The first is Poison Ivy's where she gives the Swamp Thing an erection, burns down some factories, and gets hit on by a gigantic bumblebee. But there are no smells, so let's move on!

Next is Doctor Bliss's acid trip. Her's is boring. Moving on, we get a cartoony hallucination that must be Harley Quinn's, although why would Doctor Bash get the last story?

The story is about Hurl Girl, Harley's comic book creation. Does that clear anything up?

Speaking of mind-numbing bozos, let's add the artist of this piece, Ben Caldwell, to the list for this horrible representation of the flag of the United States of America! This is a cartoon hallucination! Therefore, the number of stripes should be less than normal, not more than normal! Like the number of fingers on characters' hands! DUH! He got it right on the cartoon flag on the board!

The Hurl Girl hallucination ends with Harley as a cat teaming up to fight crime with an anthropomorphic hairball. Obviously!

The final hallucination is that of Doctor Bash. He thinks he's some detective or something trying to solve some obscure murders in a place nobody has ever heard of called Whitechapel. It ends quickly so we can discover the real threat behind whatever has been going on for the last thirty pages.

It's Egg Fu! And the recycled leather smell!

His elaborate plan was motivated by his need for an apartment in New York. Just his luck, Harley is a landlady! And now she has a new tenant that can't spend too long in the sun! And then Harley burps because DC purchased too much Pizza Smell and had to use it twice. But I'm not scanning that one because it's not new! And I've already spent too much time reading this silly thing!

Egg Fu moves into the House of Macabre and the last page has one last smell which is that Pinesol, perfume stuff from before. And now I just realized the Banana Coconut Lotion Oil stuff was used twice too but it was so subtle, and because I still had the same exact smell stuck in my nose from the previous Rub 'N Smell, I couldn't smell anything new and just thought it smelled like the comic book. Anyway, here's a scan of the final page to close this whole show down because it's titillating! That means acceptably pornographic!

Ugh. All those smells gave me a headache!

Sinestro #6

I gazed at this cover for about fifteen seconds wondering where the story was going with this horned version of Sinestro before I realized it was a Monsters of the Month Variant.

It's times like these, when I pick up a new copy of Sinestro to read, that I think, "What the fuck am I doing with my free time?" After three years of reading every comic book of DC's New 52, I can't say that I'm enjoying it the way I did when I began with four months of new titles, filled with magic and mystery, stacked up helter skelter in my office. Now I know what I'm getting. And I especially know what I'm getting when I pick up Sinestro. A tepid, mediocre, bland take on the character where I'm sure to be reminded, at least once per issue, that Sinestro and Hal Jordan are truest friends and most hated enemies! That's when I say, "Get Lamp coin? Give me some advice!"

That's good advice! I'm glad the other side didn't come up since it says, "It is pitch dark and you can't see a thing."

While I've enjoyed doing these commentaries for the last three years (and I'm not sure how much I could have enjoyed DC's Comics without doing the commentaries), I need to make a change. I took Athena's advice yesterday and finally threw out my beat up, holes in both soles pair of pink ROOS I found in a used clothing store a few years ago. Now it's time to walk a different path for awhile. I still want to keep up the comic book commentaries in some form since I can't remember what's happening from month to month without it. If I give this up entirely, I'll probably just stop reading comic books again.

I'm not quitting today! And don't completely blame Cullen Bunn for this (although, really, he's to blame); I've been a bit burnt out for awhile, and I can't ignore how hard Judas's death hit me. If I can find whatever it was that let me not give a shit about each commentary back when I started so that I could actually get through four or five comic books per day, I'd like to maintain that level of review. I probably became too aware of my audience which caused me to stop writing completely for myself. I became too self-conscious when a commentary was just a general rehashing of the events even though that's exactly the reason this blog came into existence. So that I could look back and remember what happened the previous month before I read each new comic book.

So I'm going to work on finding a balance between comic book commentaries and a few other projects I'd like to work on during Issue #36 month. Maybe I'll find this is the thing that I enjoy above all of my other hobbies. But before I learn that, I have to read Sinestro #6. At least it's part of the Godhead story, so maybe it won't be excruciatingly mundane.

Is this going to become an Arctic/Antarctica situation?

Cullen Bunn has been consistent with New Korugar being in Sector 3567 (I think!) but some other Green Lantern writer placed it in Sector 3052 at some point. I don't know where that was or why so I can't back up my statement! I can only say that when I read it at the time, I remember thinking (and possibly commenting!), "I thought New Korugar was where Necropolis had been in Sector 3567?" It's possible the mix-up simply happened because Sinestro's hideout was in Sector 3052 and some writer and his or her editors had not been paying attention. I added the pronoun "her" because I'm sure at some point a woman will write a Green Lantern comic book.

The Yellow Lantern with the crazy eyes and the pointy chin begins reminding Sinestro how Sinestro was humiliated by a woman because that always seems to be helpful in most situations. Remind the sexist (probably racist), psychopathic, egomaniac control freak that he's a complete failure. Especially since it just happened a few minutes ago. "Hey, hey! Remember just now how that chick punked you! HA!" It's as if these characters know their story took a month long break and that the people observing it needed two wasted pages worth of reminder to sum up the action from last month. Hey DC?! How about you either add a free page that gives a plot synopsis to help readers catch up or just stop wasting ten percent of your comic book having the characters remind each other about events that just fucking happened to those characters?! I already paid $2.99 for that story last month. I think providing a 20% refund for fans that show proof of purchase of Issue #5 is the least you can do. I'll expect my sixty cents within the next fourteen business days. Thanks!

Is that a euphemism for oral sex?

Everybody thinks Sinestro wants to find this woman that attacked her so he can date her. I'm not sure where they're getting this feeling. Did he have a huge Parallax while battling her? And you can't tell his emotions by looking in his eyes since they just look like glowing yellow washers. And that moustache is just fucking stupid. And that military haircut is so severe. Is he trying to look like the kind of guy that smashes shot glasses into the faces of people minding their own business?

Sinestro consults his Magic 8 Ball to learn that death is spreading like an infection. I would have chosen sexually transmitted disease but then I read Death's pamphlet on HIV and I love to steal things other people say but get them completely wrong when I do it. Conveniently for DC Comics that wouldn't want the end of Godhead ruined by Sinestro's Magic 8 Ball, the darkness that consumes the future keeps her from seeing the future.

This issue is called "Sacrifice" which seems strange because Sinestro wouldn't know a sacrifice if the bloody altar it took place on bit him in the stupid moustache.

Sinestro has a spy inside of Arkillo's ring called Despotellis, another shitty name I won't remember. It's apparently nicknamed The Worldkiller. I guess because Warren Ellis loves to write about despotic world killers? I don't know if that's true but since I said it, it probably is.

The Worldkiller is a tiny little thing. Is its name supposed to be ironic? Like calling a fat guy Slim? Or does it manage to kill worlds because people see it and become paralyzed by how cute it is before it eats their faces? Anyway, Sinestro learns from it that the Indigo Lanterns and the Green Lanterns are currently being defeated by Bekka of New Genesis and her army. Bekka is Orion's girlfriend. Unless she isn't.

Sinestro fixes Arkillo's hand and gives him a fake Yellow Lantern Ring (like how he gave Hal one in the early issues of Green Lantern) so that Arkillo, the Kilowog of the Yellow Lanterns, can get a small band together to help the other Lanterns. For some reason.

Is that another euphemism for oral sex?

Somehow the Yellow Lanterns get from Sector 3567 to Sector 2814 instantaneously. It's as if the Indigo Lantern's power of teleportation isn't fucking special at all! Any Lantern can seemingly get anywhere in the universe in mere seconds. Who needs the fucking Indigo Lanterns? Compassion is for losers!

When did Isamot become a Yellow Lantern? Quit yellowwashing Green Lanterns, DC Comics!

It's a good thing the Yellow Lanterns arrive to fight the majority of the battle against the New Gods since the New Gods can't be defeated. The Yellow Lanterns have lots and lots and lots of faceless, strange creatures that can be used as fodder so it looks like the death toll was massive. That's probably why the Yellow Lanterns get the weirdest looking creatures. Because every time the reader sees one, you get the vague sense that you've seen that crazy three faced creature before but can't be sure that it's the exact three faced creature you saw die in an earlier issue.

But...but...but...?!

Does anybody else have a free copy of Sinestro they can send me so I can finish my commentary because I just tore mine in half and pissed on it.

Wait, I think I can salvage the last few pages. But I'm getting my own piss all over me just to finish this commentary! You all owe me.

Sinestro sets the rings of the worst of the Yellow Lanterns to self-destruct as the best of them retreat with the Indigo and Green Lanterns. Then lots and lots of warriors of New Genesis die covered in pieces of weird aliens, leaving Bekka as pissed off as her boyfriend. Maybe.

Sinestro #6 Rating: +1 Ranking. At least I wasn't bored by this issue, which is high praise for Cullen Bunn's Sinestro!

Wonder Woman #35

Say goodnight to a well written, well drawn Wonder Woman comic book!

I have no idea whether Meredith Finch can write a good story or not. I'll judge it when I read it (probably quite harshly!). But I do know that David Finch is only capable of drawing women (and usually drawing them looking fifteen years younger than they really are) and is not capable of drawing men that aren't in shadowy corners of the room and who don't have fish lips. He absolutely is a talented artist but only when he seems interested in the page he's drawing. And that interest only seems to extend to teenaged girls.

On an unrelated note, is Wonder Woman #36 being written by a teenaged girl?

But that small bit should be enough about the Finches for now. I'll have plenty of months in the future to disparage their ancestral line and question how many mutations must have occurred in their chromosomes. For now, let us just enjoy the final chapter in Azzarello and Chiang's run of Wonder Woman. You know, the chapter where we find out that Zeke was actually Zeus who was hiding so that the murderous prophecy of deicide could happen while he was safe in the arms of Wonder Woman?

And it appears Zola has become Athena! The "who" is a cute clue!

Poseidon, as usual, puts up a pretty shitty fight. I always feel bad for Poseidon. He wants to be so majestic and grand but he's just Aquaman writ large. He's just a big fish that's always out of his depths. He's fish stick day in the cafeteria when you were hoping for cheese pizza. He's ten thousand forks when all you wanted was rain on your wedding day. In conclusion, he's a loser and he's always been a loser and the greatest thing he ever accomplished was getting some sailor lost at sea for two decades.

The real adversary, The First Born, arrives to stop Zeke from ascending the throne. Too bad he brought his pal, the S&Minotaur, because that guy is probably going to betray The First Born and side with Wonder Woman. She's the only person that ever showed him mercy or love and he probably never forgot that. But before that can happen, more Gods need to die!

Oh, he'll be all right. I'm pretty sure he can't be killed by his Staff of Healing.

Forget about the Minotaur changing sides. Wonder Woman finds it's easier to gut him than hug him this time. Mostly because he killed a bunch of Amazons and he probably shouldn't have done that if he wanted to keep Wonder Woman as his friend. But the gutting doesn't take because Wonder Woman probably was feeling sentimental when she stabbed him. So instead of beating him, Wonder Woman is beaten by him. And The First Born takes out Zola and kidnaps Zeke.

Things aren't going very well for the heroes! Maybe I was rooting for the wrong side this whole time. Is The First Born the real hero? The child ignored and thrown away by callous parents that returns to punish them for their sins?

I don't think the good guy usually throws babies into bottomless pits, so I think I was rooting for the good guys all along.

I think this is the part of the story where everybody begins singing "All You Need Is Love" and The First Born goes running for his life because that song is so Goddamned repetitive!

But before throwing the baby in the pit and ending the prophecy and winning everything forever, The First Born catches a case of the Antagonist's Compulsion. He waits for Wonder Woman to awaken and then calls for her death at the hands of the S&Minotaur before he kills Zeke. Oh, The First Born. I know you've been locked away in a glacier for thousands of years but you could have at least familiarized yourself with the tropes that always cause the bad guy to fuck up in the end!

The beast refuses to kill Wonder Woman?! Who would have guessed?! WHO?

Seeing The First Born kill the creature that she spared so many years ago, Diana remembers that her most powerful weapon after hugs is mercy. She drops her weapons of war and challenges the First Born to a hug fight.

The First Born tosses Zeke and Zola into the pit but Hermes saves them because his Staff of Healing is also a Staff of Teleportation. It's a really powerful artifact! After that, Wonder Woman hugs The First Born really, really tightly with her Magic Lasso. And that's when Zola sets Zeke down on the Throne of Olympus.

Oh Strife. We all knew it! Practically from issue #1!

Here's what I wrote in my commentary on Issue #1:

By the end of the first issue, the oracles give a typically unclear oracle which leaves Apollo with the possible knowledge that maybe something bad might perhaps be going on and it could be Zeus’s fault, maybe? And that maybe Zeus doesn’t exist yet? Possibly because he got Zola pregnant with himself?!

Thank you! Thank you! I don't call myself Grandmaster Comic Book Reader for nothing!

Although I didn't guess that Zola was actually Athena. I did occasionally wonder where Athena was though. And then in Wonder Woman's Secret Origins, it was a bit telling that Athena had finally made an appearance to help Wonder Woman escape from lesbianism. I mean, from Paradise Island.

The First Born is knocked into the Abyss where he was planning on throwing the Last Born (who is the father of them both). Wonder Woman helps toss him in with a last lecture about love which she hopes he'll meditate on for the next seven thousand years instead of feeding the angry wolf. He is just a scorpion after all!

Tossing an old pair of shoes is actually really liberating.

Wonder Woman pleads with Athena to let the vessel which housed her for twenty plus years continue to live. And so, being wise and/or an owl, Athena agrees. And everybody lives happily ever after! If by everybody you ignore The Minotaur and Cassandra and The First Born and Ares and Poseidon and all of the dead Amazons.

Wonder Woman #35 Rating: +2 Ranking. I'm a heartless, emotionless, uncaring bastard that over intellectualizes everything but this ending may have caused my eyes to water. The best run of Wonder Woman I've ever read! Of course, it's the only run of Wonder Woman I've ever read! I hope the next three years of this comic book are at least tolerable.

World's End #4

Is this the scariest image of Death the World's End creators could come up with? A pregnant woman with a mullet?

I don't have a problem with mullets. I think it's about time we all stop shaming people for poor fashion choices and haircuts everybody knows look fucking awful. Let people do what they want! Besides, the only reason people with mullets get ridiculed so much is because mainstream society has designated mullets as one of the few choices a person makes that can be wholeheartedly made fun of. It's disgusting and we should all stop doing it immediately. Or we should allow that it's okay to make fun of anybody for any reason at all.

What I'm actually waiting for is for somebody to come up with a medical diagnosis that causes a person to have to have a mullet so that mullet wearers can have a label just like everybody else. That way when someone makes fun of them, they can pull out their label and reverse shame the shamer! "How dare you?! I have a condition! A condition, you unsympathetic bastard!" Sometimes I think the reason everybody wants to be diagnosed with something is so that they have some kind of defense against assholes. "I have social anxiety, you dick! You're not allowed to make jokes at my expense!"

Fuck labels. You don't need a label to defend yourself. You just need the confidence to be yourself and to shout, "FUCK YOU, YOU MISERABLE PIECE OF SHIT!" whenever anybody targets you with the slightest, most innocuous, probably not even meant the way you interpreted it comments! This ability has allowed me to survive amongst a whole host of extroverted monsters constantly trying to get me to participate in their "society." And they rarely ever tell me they have a condition when I start making fun of them!

Extrovert: "Why are you constantly inside on the computer? You should come to my party this weekend!"
Tess: "FUCK YOU, YOU NEEDY BASTARD! 'Daddy! Daddy! Look at me!'"
Extrovert: "What the hell? Are you okay? It's just, you seem to be missing out on life."
Tess: "FUCK YOU! Drinking yourself into a stupor every weekend and fucking a different face every night will be a grand legacy to leave to all of your bastard children!"
Extrovert: "Jesus. Sorry I tried to help. You really could use some fresh air. And maybe a shower."
Tess: "FUCK YOU! I'll shower when I'm good and ready and not sad, you dickhole!"
Extrovert: "Fine! I'm leaving!" (Extrovert leaves)
Tess: "Why doesn't anybody ever want to do anything with me?"

I have no idea what's been going on with Fury, Scott, and Barda's relationship with the people of Earth-2 which, I think, means I'm as confused as the writers. But it seems the writers are finally settling on an alliance between groups.

Back in Geneva, Switzerland (I forgot to look at a map! Luckily, the editors finally told me where Geneva is located. Although they're probably wrong since they don't even know where the Fortress of Solitude is located half of the time), Replacement Batman and his team prepare to enter the Geneva Firepit to look for clues. I never watched much Blue's Clues but I'm confident that the clues they will find will be fire, heat, and third degree burns. Salt and Pepper agree with me.

The scene shifts to Apokolips where my entire day is ruined by what Apokolips (the planet is a person is a throne is a thing? What?) and his sniveling court of snivelers discuss.

No! Not that! Not Scott Lobdell's boring, fucked up versions of the Silver Surfer and Galactus combined with bits of The Watcher.

This Apokoliptian Court needs more intrigue and dances and wigs and John Malkoviches.

Atlantis has fallen to Death so Aquawoman does what the World Army would in a losing situation: she launches the Armageddon Bomb. Or whatever Atlantis's equivalent to a doomsday device is. It's probably the Kraken. Or a giant squid that spins its tentacles really quickly so that it can fly and then spray hallucinogenic ink all over the world causing everyone to think their own flesh is made of delicious, gooey caramel.

And then Solomon Grundy returns to hassle Alan Scott. Because the Apokoliptian invasion wasn't enough! I suppose Grundy being the Avatar of the Grey (not to be confused with the Avatar of the Gray who is the avatar of fungus. Grundy is the Earth-2 Avatar of The Rot), he's going to be attracted to the death and destruction left behind in Pestilence's wake.

Some other things that happen: Dick and Babs decide to begin some kind of crime fighting unit in Chicago; Barda, Fury, and the Three Misters decide to infiltrate Apokolips and kill its living heart; Desaad reappears inside the Fire Pit in Geneva. None of it is terribly funny.

World's End #4 Rating: No change. Why is everything ending? Worlds and futures! At least Batman is eternal so we don't have to worry about him. But I am kind of worried about the pacing on this comic book and how much trouble it is to comment on when each thread of the plot reveals itself one or two pages at a time. I may have to change my style on my commentaries for this book and actually read the entire comic book before writing about it. What a pain in the ass you are, World's End! FUCK YOU!

Batman Eternal #30

If only there were some famous quote that would fit this image so perfectly that it would be overdone so that I wouldn't want to use it anyway!

Last issue, Arkham Asylum was destroyed in a fount of existential vengeance! I think Madame Xanadu probably should have warned Batman that this could happen. You can't keep that many angry, insane, monstrous psyches underneath one roof without something suitably poltergeistian happening! Buildings are constantly subsumed by the psychic energies poured into reality by psychotic minds. It's a known fact that I'm fairly certain Neil deGrasse Tyson mentioned on Cosmos. Unless it was Carl Sagan that mentioned it on that other show, Cosmos. It's also possible I'm remembering something Velma said.

Also blasted by the Beam of Pure Vengeance: a passing 737 full of people willing to fly Lexair. Don't they know they're contributing to the downfall of Superman? Batman commands Penny-Two to launch the Batplane on autopilot and it will save the plane all by itself. That's convenient! And totally believable! What isn't believable is that Penny-Two has only recently sat down in front of the Batcomputer and she knows how to operate it without any extra help from Batman besides instructions like "Launch Batplane and execute plan Drag That Bitch To Safety."

Why is Alysia suddenly manning the Batcomputer? Shouldn't she be Penny-Three?

Oh wait! I know those tiny, weasel eyes! Fernando Pasarin is drawing this issue! Are you ready for some overly long torsos as well?!

I asked if you were ready!

Somebody in a suit with a smooth head approaches The Joker's Daughter while shushing her. I think it's either The Question or Black Mask. Probably Black Mask because The Question hasn't been very important to The New 52 so far even though he was cast as one of The Trinity of Sin who seem to be important for some reason that has never been articulated very well. It could also be her father with some new LexCorps technology strapped over his face so that he can grow a new one.

Why is Deacon Blackfire summoning every character that was ever in a Perry Bible Fellowship comic strip?

The Spectre finally awakens to tell Deacon Blackfire, politely yet firmly, that he will not be unleashing hell on Gotham. He also says it sensually because he has an enormous erection. I think. No wait, maybe that's his thigh? Or the crotch on some baggy pants? You know what? Forget about that. At least he's finally arrived to save the day! Although he's a bit too late to save Arkham Asylum.

The Spectre seals the portal to Hell and sends Deacon Blackfire back to wherever secondary characters go when they've done their job of advancing the plot past where they're needed. Batwing helps Jim escape while The Joker's Daughter goes off with her mystery date. And when I say "Batwing helps Jim escape," I mean he helps Jim escape while he remains trapped under the rubble of Arkham.

All the inmates inside of Arkham, including Alfred Pennyworth, die in the building's collapse. Except I read Arkham Manor #1 and Alfred wasn't dead in that even though it took place after this. So there is still hope for everybody! Plus, Bane was in the scene where Alfred was freaking out about the earthquake. And no way is Bane going to be killed!

Batman is on scene having just helped save the Lexair flight, so he goes running to the crater to help. While he does that, the Gotham Police arrive to arrest him and/or shoot him. What the fuck is wrong the the Gotham Police? Can people stop writing them as spineless, corrupt pawns that do nothing but abandon the good people of the city and ignore violent crime and villains while trying to kill and/or arrest the only person making a difference?

At the bottom of the crater, Batman encounters The Joker's Daughter who is all dressed up for Halloween as her father on the day he killed Jason Todd. It's pretty creative! But then the comic book ends without Alfred having been saved so I'm going to have to point out how editorial was wrong in Arkham Manor #1 about the events taking place after this issue. We've got at least one more issue to go because Alfred should probably be accounted for.

Batman Eternal #30 Rating: No change. In this issue, Arkham Asylum collapses and the Gotham Police are once again portrayed as dumb fucking assholes. That's pretty much it.

Futures End #26

Halfway through this series! Probably!

Sometimes, reading Futures End feels like waiting for my number to be called at the DMV. Let's move it along, people!

My favorite book when I was a single digit old monster was Sam and the Firefly. I think the book was supposed to teach me to be kind or something but I'm pretty sure all it taught me was that chaos was fun. I definitely didn't learn to use my words for good as Gus the Firefly did by the end of the book. The evidence of that failure is this entire blog. While, once again, digging through my bookshelf of old children's books looking for Sam and the Firefly (which I can never find but I keep looking anyway), I found this Golden Book:

"Hey look! A small boy choking on a cork! I should give him the Heimlich and save his life!"

That caption isn't what Brer Rabbit thinks at all! What Brer Rabbit actually does is he says hello, waits for a response, and when the stranger doesn't respond, he punches him in the face. No wonder Brer Fox and Brer Bear wanted to kill him. Brer Rabbit was an asshole!

I didn't scan this cover to talk about Brer Rabbit's horrible social skills though. When I saw the tar baby on the cover, I decided to look up the term "tar baby" to see if it's still in use. I figured if it were still common, it was probably only used by old white men, probably from the south, and it probably indicates they're racist even if they're not using it as a slur at the time! Turns out Republicans still pull it out of their lexicon from time to time. And then they get a bunch of heat for using it and refuse to apologize and it all blows up in their face! So the term "tar baby" has become a tar baby in and of itself!

The term still seems like a useful and viable term to say something very particular, but regarding its popular culture history and the history of this country and the way the term is also used as a racial slur, it's probably a term that politicians should be giving a wide berth. Why do people insist on using words or phrases that are uncomfortable or that have a negative history tied to their usage? You know, words like "retard" or "cunt." Oh. Um. Uh...forget this whole discussion! Let's move on! Nothing to remember or learn from this!

What was I not talking about that I should have been talking about?

This needed to be a full page instead of one tiny little panel because why?

Have comic book readers been so abused by the people seemingly in charge of the entire medium so thoroughly that they simply accept with tired resignation pages like the previous scan of Doctor Yamazake? Who turns the page, sees this, and thinks, "Wow! A scientist standing with his hands in his pockets! Fucking cool!"? Do the majority of fans simply turn to this page, read it, and flip past without feeling completely ripped off? It just feels like the script was one page short so the artist was told to simply take one panel from the end or beginning of one of the pages and blow it up to a full page splash, no matter how boring it is. Can I even call this a splash? Doesn't that term carry the connotation of excitement? Or, at the very least, movement? Where's the kineticism? Where's the vibrancy?

The first panel on the following page extends the width of two pages even though it's just Jason Rusch standing there responding to Doctor Yamazake. So my "One Page Short" theory holds water! These panels could have been planned with less wasted space! If, you know, anybody actually cared about the quality of the product. It's also possible that this page was supposed to create some kind of tension as the reader wonders whose lab access is being revoke by Doctor Yamazake. Except, you know, Jason Rusch was the only other person with access to the lab. So that theory does not hold water!

Jason is kicked from the lab because he's Firestorm which means he's the enemy of Doctor Yamazake! He's one of those arrogant heroes that refuse to share their technology and their power with the rest of the world. They lord it over all mankind from their high-tech mansion in space, emptying their septic tank onto the heads of the masses while laughing and smoking fat cigars from alien civilizations. Now I'm mad at the Justice League too! Fuckers!

Madison wanders into Doctor Yamazake's lab looking for Jason and not to be a guinea pig. But sometimes we don't always get what we want! Or what we need!

I'm going to write an essay called "Women in Teleporters" now!

While Madison Payne becomes Madison Brundlefly (I bet she winds up with super powers! Teleportation powers! AMBUSH BUG POWERS!), Terry McBatman and Plastique plan their next plan of the plan: recruiting Red Robin. That sounds like a stupid plan. And Plastique agrees with me!

You can't stop the future from happening! Dumb dumb!

The reason Terry McBatman can ask Red Robin for help is because there is no trace of Red Robin in the future. So nobody has to worry about a paradox destroying the universe! Whew! That's one less universe destroying thing everybody has to worry about. I bet Red Robin doesn't exist in the future because he's named Harvest in the future and he's a vampire. Y'all thought I forgot about that, didn't you?! It will be revealed soon that I was right! I'M ALWAYS RIGHT!

You know what's really annoying? Brother Eye always says "eye" instead of "I" even though how can anybody fucking tell the difference when he's speaking? From now on, whenever I type "I", realize I'm actually thinking "SexMuffin71". That's two better than "69" so just imagine that, right? RIGHT? Two better!

Brother Eye gives Fifty-Sue a packet of information about her creation. She is test subject 52 and she was created using 52 DNA strands. That means she's, um, let's see, carry the something...three times better than Superboy! I mean, seventeen times better than Superboy! Jesus fuck!

That's become my new swear for when I'm really angry. I mean really angry and not fake angry. It's unconscious. It just steams out of my mouth in a spray of foam and spittle. "JESUS FUCK!" If I could consciously change it, I'd make it "Jesus fucked" so that it becomes a parody of "Jesus wept." But I'm not really in control when my stupid fucking computer takes more than a few seconds to load a webpage! You are supposed to be the future, computer! You are suppose to go at future speeds! Stop acting like an Atari 2600, you piece of shit!

Brother Eye also shows Fifty-Sue that the one person she admires and thinks of as her friend, Slade Wilson, is taking steps to betray her. Well, Christ always needs a Judas. And Slade has been known to enjoy stories with the name "Judas" in them! And my poor, beloved, dear, fifteen year friend whom I lost recently was named Judas! I think that fits somehow.

No! No more mentions of the frog and the scorpion! And now that you guys have told the old woman/snake variant, no more telling that one either! And while we're discussing stuff I don't want to read in my comic books because they've been all over social media for way too fucking long, stop telling that story about the wolf that survives is the one that you feed!

Finally, Batman plays marriage counselor to Ronnie Raymond and Jason Rusch, telling them to stop bickering, forget their petty problems, and just fucking merge again. The world needs Firestorm! Brother Eye needs Firestorm! I mean, he will need him but nobody probably knows that yet. The world probably would have been better off if Batman had just stayed out of business that doesn't concern him.

Futures End #26 Rating: +1 Ranking. Nobody died but I guess I'm feeling charitable today. I'd better hit "Publish" on this post before I change my mind!

The Multiversity: The Just #1

Dude. So wish, being the amazing Man-Bro that I am, this were a copy of Maximus so I could wank to minor female celebrities in their underwear.

If this were an issue of Maximus, I could be looking at air-brushed, nearly naked pictures of famous women that refuse to pose completely naked because they probably have weird nipples. Plus, Maximus would be full of Man-Bro articles about doing things that all Fratboy Man-Bros know show us living just on the other side of the line of civilized acceptability! Like drinking fake Absinthe or pointing out when women have weird nipples. We're like wild animals and shit. You can't tame us! This is the part where I'd probably howl and fist bump some other Man-Bro because it obviously impresses all of the ladies.

Speaking of nipples, I'm fairly certain that if I saw a picture of the actor that plays Diggle on Arrow's nipples without any other context to the body that they were on, I'd masturbate to them. Any woman would be proud to display those nipples to a room full of hooting Man-Bros! Seriously, he's got some sexy nipples. Um, you know, for a guy! Being that I'm a total Man-Bro, I have to make sure that you know I'm fully heterosexual! Minus those hazing experiences in college that I totally didn't like and only did to become a full fledged Man-Bro. Although it is kind of weird how none of us like seeing each other's dicks and yet, every year, we make the new Frat Recruits pull theirs out for our pleasure. I mean, amusement. I mean, entertainment. I mean, to call tiny and slather mayonnaise on before we make them dip them in the Koi Pond!

This issue begins with a couple of super hot super babes talking about whatever super hot super babes talk about. I don't know. Why would I listen to the words coming out of the place where my dick goes?

Didn't Elemental Girl once kind of kill herself? That was pretty ruff, know what I'm saying?

Dude, one of my Man-Bros, Diddler, just read that line about where my dick goes and said, "Your dick goes in my hand! Burn!" That's gay, right? But it's also fucking ignorant because words don't come out of his hand. That's not a well crafted burn, Bro. Better go back to Burn School on that one. My insults graduated head of the class at Burn School because they're on fire! Oh yeah! Holla!

The Atom is currently in Sister Miracle's bloodstream. Can you imagine how tiny his penis gets? Talk about a grower, right? I wonder where else The Atom's been inside Sister Miracle, right? Right?! I know you were thinkin' it, dude! If I had The Atom's power, I'd call myself Fuck Spelunker! And I'd call my Man-Bro Diddler "Spunk Spelunker" because you know why! He's totally into man juice!

I wonder if the guys in that all gay fraternity call each other straight and hetero all the time? I bet every day during hazing week ends in an orgy with those guys, right? Lucky fuckers! I know it's not gay to wish you could suck your own dick but what about this: since I can't reach my own dick with my mouth, what if I had another Man-Bro suck it while I sucked on fat sausage with my eyes closed? That's like I'm sucking myself off and practically full hetero, right?

Two thousand words? I can answer that question in like twelve: "Batman is totally gay if he's banging that bald broad."

Nah man, I'm just joshing! That Alexis Luthor is super cute. Plus she's fucking hilarious!

See? "Gay!" Ha ha! Totally!

Then this broad starts talking all uppity and shit, using unintelligible words like "post-modern" and "picto-fic" and "predatory." What the fuck? I'm just trying to read a book about Batman kicking the shit out of bad guys! All this comic book talk about comic books inside of other comic books being talked about by the characters of the comic book is getting me all frustrated and sleepy. Fuck this shit. Somebody else read it. I got some beers here ain't gonna drink themselves.

Exeunt Man-Bro (finally, amirite?).

We've already got enough people on the internet that seriously talk like that, so I don't think there's a real need for me to satirize them. They're doing a good enough job satirizing themselves. Here's a perfect example of these guys satirizing themselves: Julien Blanc. I imagine many of you have already read that post going around with dozens and dozens of his offensive tweets. But out of all that shit, I found one tweet that is actually a well-crafted (albeit unintentionally well-crafted) joke (which is still offensive but that doesn't mean that it's not well-crafted. Although can something be well-crafted if it was unintentional? Anyway) in which Julien, unknowingly, satirizes himself:

"The woman sitting next to me is too sensitive. She's not even the fat cunt I was talking about."

The real humor in this joke is not that a woman was called a fat cunt but in the ignorance of the man using the phrase "fat cunt" who cannot see how insulting it would be to the woman sitting next to him. Now this Julien, I'm sure, probably just thinks calling a woman a "fat cunt" is funny and fails to see how the tweet really pokes fun at the guy tweeting it. My friend Diddler said that I should write for Julien and my response was, "That's just what he needs! Somebody that can make his misogyny palatable!" That was a joke because not even my smooth charms can make a fat cunt joke palatable!

I wonder if Julien didn't steal that joke from an old stockpile of already extant racist jokes? It sounds vaguely familiar, like maybe I heard it from that one guy in middle school whose father was a racist drunk asshole who steadfastly taught his son every offensive joke he heard at the bar the night before.

Anyway, I know the previous discussion is kind of hard to take from this staunch hero of comic book commentary blogs that you've grown to love for his pithy wisdom and ingratiating affability. I'm not denying the joke is offensive. But I did want to mention it since it has, at the very least, one foot solidly inside the camp of a successful joke, especially since the joke is about the teller and not about women being fat cunts. And it's a joke I'd only tell in this context because I think what I really like about it is that this Julien guy is so mired in his own misogyny that he's tone deaf to how this joke is really skewering Julien by pointing out how he's so mired in his own misogyny that he's tone deaf to who this joke is really skewering!

Back to Multiversity! Let's see how offensive Alexis can continue to be!

Oh Grant. You're so adorable. Pointing out how you're trying to make super heroes interesting but you can't because they're not interesting anymore!

Everybody is so bored on Earth-16! Earlier when I was acting like a Man-Bro, a bunch of citizens were walking around as Gotham City was invaded and none of them were even pointing to the sky! Whenever there's a crowd scene, artists always make at least half of the people in it pointing at the action! So obviously the people of Earth-16 feel too safe! They're complacent! And you know who else is complacent? Sheeps being led to slaughter! I mean, sheep! Multiple ones! Not singular ones!

Everybody on Earth-16 seems to be legacy heroes who have become bored, disenfranchised young adults because their parents completely cleaned up the world by arresting all of the super villains. And any trouble that does come up now is taken care of by Superman's Robot Army. But Chris Kent, the current Superman, has decided he and his best friend and fellow Hardy Boy, Damian Wayne, have a mystery to solve: the Suicide of Megamorpho! That does sound like a good title for a Super Hardy Boys Mystery!

Meanwhile, Alexis Luthor hides under a lead lined coat in the closet because Damian doesn't want Chris knowing he's fucking Chris's father's arch-nemesis's daughter. Superman notes, during his conversation with Damian, that he can hear breathing. I'm sure he can smell her as well. Although it would be just like a Luthor to tamper with their DNA so that their body never produces any smells! Smell. That's one thing I find disappointing in comic books. Smell is rarely ever dealt with. I mentioned in a Batgirl commentary how Alysia should be able to recognize her roommate by smell. It's not that odd. Friends get to know and recognize each other's smells. And Superman? Holy Geez! Superman probably wants to rip his nose right off of his face most of the time.

This is so fucking cute.

Now I need an Earth-16 comic book. Just a bunch of young, bored super heroes trying to find something to fill their lives and having conversations like this! No punching! No alien invasions (except those quickly mopped up by Superman's Army of Robots). Everybody fucking everybody else. Although I'd really want Sapphire Mason to not be dead. She's my favorite!

I'm sorry Grant for ever doubting you in anyway. Amen.

Apparently if Lex Luthor put on lipstick, I'd begin crushing on him because Alexis Luthor is fucking cute. She also knows what's what when it comes to Superman and Batman.

Or this could just be her penchant for calling everything gay.

I guess Bloodwynd will be the hero to join up in The Bleed with the others since Bloodwynd makes an appearance at Megamorpho's apartment where a bunch of legacy heroes (Superman, Wally West, Connor Hawke) along with Kyle Rayner, the last of the Green Lanterns, are investigating Sapphire Mason's suicide. Sapphire has a copy of the "haunted comic book" in her apartment so that's probably the mystery solved right there. I don't think anybody else has finished reading the haunted comic book because they keep getting interrupted by other heroes wanting sex or wanting to solve mysteries.

Meanwhile, Kon-el is evolving into something incredible because all Superman clones eventually turn into Bizarro on Earth-16. If that were true on all Earths, Superboy would be my favorite character! Eventually.

In the Nevada desert, the Justice League do some training exercises against Red Amazo. But the training quickly turns into a real battle. I guess DC decided that "bored heroes" couldn't keep the readers interested for the entire comic book.

Plastic Man's son was dating Metamorpho's daughter. Just think of the bedroom antics!

Batman discovers something in the comic books Sapphire was reading while Superman gets some information from Mento's daughter, Holly. She used the Mento helmet to psychically rummage through Sapphire's corpse where she came up with some images of The Grey Lady and The Gentry. Looks like Earth-16 is going to get some exciting visitors. Also Nix Uotan. He's a visitor too but less exciting. Although he has a monkey! Just like Wordgirl!

Batman believes the comic book infects whoever reads it and that it's from a parallel world. He's a pretty good detective! Maybe the multiverse's greatest even! No wait. It's Damian. No way did he become a great detective. Adequate, maybe. But not great!

Then there are two different groups of panels that I could scan: one contains more information about what is happening in Multiversity and the other has Menta acting cute.

Who cares about the Multiverse? Look how cute Menta is!

And then all hell breaks loose as the Robot Superman Army are taken over by Alexis Luthor (infected by the haunted comic book) using her ex-boyfriend's Genie. She sends them out to crash Sister Miracle's party and probably destroy the world for The Gentry. But fuck all of that! The party of the century is more important! And Lobo's in the pool!

Nobody in this issue manages to use the Lex Luthor Portal Thingamajig to make it to The Bleed so it may have been another version of Bloodwynd that wound up there. Or he'll get there later since Alexis did have a portal set up in her apartment. Hopefully Damian Wayne accidentally used it though!

Earth-16 is my favorite Earth so far. I hope the Robot Superman Army doesn't destroy it all.