Aquaman and the Others #7

Argh! It's that time of month again? Do I have to read this?

DC Comics needs to cancel this book. They're going to do it eventually so why not now while they have all that revenue streaming in from their weekly comic books starring Batman, Replacement Batman, and Future Batman? And while they're at it, they should also cancel Infinity Man and the Forever People because nobody cares about Dan Didio reworking Jack Kirby's old creations; Constantine because having a hobbled Constantine means we don't get the full blown Constantine in Hellblazer (plus the current series has been lacking in a lot of ways); Sinestro because we don't need more Green Lantern books, especially boring as shit ones; Deathstroke because it's going to be painful watching Tony S. Daniel try to write and draw yet another book; New Suicide Squad because they fucked up the Rebooted Reboot immediately with the shitty roster and putting Sage in place above Waller; and Red Hood and the Outlaws. I'm sure a lot of people just punched my imaginary face with their imaginary fist for suggesting that. But you need to kill off this version before you can bring one along that works. Get Lobdell off of the title. Revamp the premise. Then allow Todd, Harper, and Kori to pal around in a book together. And drop that fucking outlaw shit from the title. It reeks of desperation. "Look! Look! They're anti-heroes!" I'm allowing Klarion to not be cancelled because I think Ann Nocenti can do the least harm on that book. Trinity of Sin can have a few more issues to get me interested. And Twat Lobo can stay too because I need a book that's the literature equivalent of going into a closet and whipping myself across the back forty times with a cat o' nine tails. It's what I deserve!

Just to prove that he could make this book more boring and irrelevant, Dan Jurgens has the team battling KGBeast.

Dude, shut up! You're going to ruin it for all of us! I mean, she has the right to dress however she pleases!

Remember how last issue ended with iSpy being thrown from a building, exactly the way no comic book has ever ended before in the history of comic books? I wonder why it's taken so long for a writer to realize how great that cliffhanger is!

Dan Jurgens: "If I end this issue with one of the Others falling off of a building, the readers will be on the edge of their seat for a full month wondering if he'll survive or how he'll get out of it! What could be more intense than a D-list character..."
Geoff Johns: "*AHEM*"
Dan Jurgens: "Um, right...an A-list character possibly falling to their death when the story ends?! The readers will go nuts!"
Aquaman and the Others' Five Readers: *picks up Aquaman and the Others #7*
Aquaman and the Others' Five Readers: *slides Aquaman and the Others #7 to the bottom of the stack*

Vostok-X flies up just in time to catch-X iSpy before he iSplatters all over the ground. They head back up to where KGBeast is waiting to swap KGBoring stories of glory days with Vostok-X. But only if Vostok-X is the Omega. Does he mean the last one? Or would that be the first one in Russian since they have that silly alphabet with all the backwards letters in it.

Yes, I called the Russian alphabet silly! What are they going to do about it? Make a bunch of buildings out of concrete blocks where they'll ration out Kit Kat bars to long queues of people afraid to gossip about Putin's sexuality? I hope nobody in the Portland Russian Mafia reads this blog! Or if they do, I hope they have a good sense of humor and are incapable of telling when people are lying when I tell them this entire paragraph was just a joke! Ha ha! Levity!

Is anybody interested in any of these characters yet?

I know why Aquaman hangs around with The Others. Because he seems exciting and likable by comparison. I don't care about Vostok-X's past because he has yet to interest me on any level. The same goes for all of the other Others as well. Except for Ya'wara. Her butt cheeks are moderately interesting.

Cheshire (or The Leprechaun. How the fuck should I know? iSpy merely calls her "her." That doesn't help!) drops out of the sky to even the odds. But then Aquaman drops out of the sky to uneven the odds right back. I think Mera is flying the warbird that Aquaman drops out of. When did she learn to pilot an aircraft? All those years when she lived in the ocean?

Cheshire, KGBeast, and a new ally of theirs, Maelstrom, escape with iSpy's flash drive full of sensitive information and his Anne of Green Gables fanfiction.

Aquaman and the Others stand around on the rooftop going, "Blah blah blah!" "Oh, blah blah blah blah blah!" "BLAH!" Blah ha ha ha!"

I wish DC would at least include gum with this comic book so I could choke on it and never have to read it again.

Let's take a poll. Hands up, who likes this book? Now look at both of your arms. If either one of them is up in the air, smack yourself in the face with it. Also go run around the neighborhood until you fall and skin your knee because you're obviously not feeling anything on any kind of regular basis. You need a shock to your system! If you know of a beehive nearby, go get stung. That should wake you up.

No! Not Mayhem! That sounds mildly irritating!

Meanwhile Prisoner of War has tea and tells a woman a story about how her husband died. It begins with an explosion in a building and Prisoner of War jumping to the conclusion that it's terrorists. Couldn't it have just been a domestic accident involving a cigarette, a build up of methane, and a toilet? That seems more probable.

The big twist in the story was that this woman's husband was killed in a firefight between KGBeast and iSpy! And it was probably iSpy's bullets that did the killing. Oh the humanitragedy!

Actually, I just finished the book and it definitely was iSpy that killed one of the "ghosts" inside Prisoner of War.

Meanwhile on the moon, Mayhem have taken over Vostok-X's old base! And what a group of super villains it is! Somebody named Brace and Stranglehold. Cheshire and Maelstrom. And KGBeast and NKDemon. And they've got a plan that would make 1980 say, "Really? Really? Are you sure you want to go with that...okay! Okay. Just asking. But I'm telling you, that was tired back when I was alive. Which was, you know, 1980."

Holy fuck. It just got even boringerer.

Aquaman and the Others #7 Rating: Hey Aquaman fans! Stop buying this stupid fucking comic book. You know who the only sane character in this comic book is? Mera! Because she keeps telling Aquaman he shouldn't be hanging around with these assholes.

Along with his run on Superman and Justice League International, this issue makes me believe that Dan Jurgens is some kind of artificial intelligence that was created in the eighties and built without a port for an ethernet cable or a USB. So he only has access to information that existed up until the time he was built and programmed. More evidence to that theory is that his art hasn't changed or grown since the eighties. I know Lan Medina drew this issue! I was talking about other issues, you Sopwith Camel! Anyway, Dan Jurgens, I've discovered your secret! You are a bulky 1980s robot that probably has a light that flashes back and forth across your face for eyes and has probably been programmed to disco dance to Michael Jackson music.

Injustice League 3000 #11

I don't recognize Flash's enemy? Molly Ringwald?

The caption above is assuming the bald guy is Lex Luthor. I suppose the bald guy could also be Mirror Master, and then I don't recognize Superman's enemy! Molly Ringwald?

In honor of Messrs. Giffen and DeMatteis, I am going to recycle my Molly Ringwald "joke" as many times as I can. And it will be funny every fucking time, you hear me?!

Is that L-Ron 3000? And is that Ambush Bug 3000 way off to the left? Or Kick-Ass 3000?

This issue is called "A New Beginning." Just like that version of Little House on the Prairie starring Shannon Doherty! The one alternately remembered as Little House 66676. That's just my guess at the zip code for a Kansas address. I'm not even entirely sure what state Little House on the Prairie took place in! I know when the economy shit all over itself, they all moved up to Mankato which is in Minnesota. Unless it was Wisconsin. One of those cold states with people that talk funny and street urchins can get addicted to heroin and find a loving father figure who always wanted a son of his own but his damn wife failed him every time so that he became exhausted from digging tiny grave after tiny grave.

For some reason (and it might be the because I'm stupid reason), I thought the Convert physically went to Camelot Nine with the rest of the Fatal Five even though he never has to actually show himself. And when he appears in this issue, I still believe he's speaking through a person he's possessed. So it's still possible that Aquaman 3000 is the Convert! That's my Thanksgiving Wish! Do I have to kill a turkey and eviscerate it and yank out its wishbone and then stand over its corpse while giggling and playing a game where me and somebody else fight over one of its bones in the hopes of gaining a wish? Or can I just have the wish without the violence, humiliation, and desecration of a poor animal's corpse?

Hey! Hey! What do you think's going to happen, hunh?! Hunh?!

Now I have Bon Jovi songs stuck in my head for some reason!

Ariel Masters plans to use Camelot Nine as the headquarters for the JL3k Gang. Bruce thinks they need to hire a butler. Darn. I was hoping they'd work out of a van and hire a talking dog.

Superman 3000 and Teri Flash race each other because you always need a good Superman versus The Flash in a footrace every few years. Superman loses because he's out of shape. Does that mean Camelot Nine does not revolve around a yellow sun?! Are his powers running out?! If different colors of Kryptonite do different things to Superman, does he gain different powers depending on the color of the sun he's currently bathed in the light of? That story must have already been written somewhere when I wasn't paying attention.

Oh duh! Of course Superman's enemy is Lois Lane! I guess the marriage eventually hit the rocks. Dan Didio was probably steering the boat.

I'm getting awfully close to the super duper extra exciting last page that was mentioned in the credits on the first page! I'm as excited as Patton Oswalt's depression after two days without medication!

Meanwhile on Takron-Galtos (New Old Earth That Was!), a construction crew are excavating the ocean. Are they going to find Aquaman? Mera? A cache of Hostess Fruit Pies?

No, what they find is a cryogenic chamber. That was my joke guess because we all know what's going to be found already anyway because solicits and advanced cover screenings gave it away months ago! They're going to uncover Molly Ringwald.

Oh how sweet! They opted for adjacent graves!

I hate fucking spoilers. If I hadn't known Beetle and Booster were going to come back, I might have just come in my shorts right now with this revelation. As it is, it's just a big fucking yawn. I really do despise the comic book culture of having to know everything months in advance. Not that it's just comic book fans that eat that shit up. Television shows always show the big fucking surprise in any promo of upcoming shows so that the tender headed masses will perk up from chewing their cud and go, "Moo? MOOO! MOOO!" And then they have to watch whatever the commercial made look so exciting. But you know who those fucking commercials fuck over? The regular viewers! The viewers that were going to watch anyway and would have fucking loved to be surprised by the outcome of a show for once in their goddamned lives! I understand that DC needs all eight Booster and Beetle fans to know that they're going to be starring in this book so they'll pirate it on the internet throw their hard earned cash at it. But I'm really disappointed that I couldn't have been surprised by this.

Justice League 3000 #11 Rating: It's a good thing I'm not actively rating comic books this month or I'd give this a big minus simply because it reminded me how much I can't stand having stories ruined for me. It's a good thing books come out with all the chapters included right from the start or else the publishing companies would be advertising shit like, "Don't miss the last chapter of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest! You'll never guess what the surgeons finally do to McMurphy! And you won't want to miss how Chief Bromden finally outwits the Combine!"

Earth 2 #28

The Apokoliptian Invasion! Run for your life!

Since World's End has taken to telling a fairly linear story about the Not Quite the Justice Society's battle against Apokolips, Earth 2 hasn't been given any time at all to talk about them. So what will this comic book be about? I've got a feeling it will tell the secret origins of the Fab Furies of Apokolips! Remember them? They're the ones that were going to cause widespread devastation and tons of exciting plot twists but haven't really done shit for five full issues. What are they doing? They traveled across the universe to destroy Earth and they've simply all gone AWOL! I suppose I'll get my fill of them here.

The credits show four full sets of artists, so I guess each set will be doing one story each or something. The first story takes place on Czarnia. Oh great! With a special appearance by Twat Lobo, I bet! Is Twat Lobo from Earth-2's Czarnia? Is that all the explanation we need? Is his Czarnia really from Earth-Twat?!

Wait. This girl and bad boy Twat Lobo aren't going to come together and create a baby, are they? A baby THAT WILL NEVER BE BORN!

My first thought was that this Czarnian was going to be Death. But beyond the skin color, they really don't share any similarities. I bet she becomes Pestilence after Twat Lobo (or Lobo Lobo?!) destroys Czarnia with a plague. Twat Lobo gives the girl some advice and never once says, "Sorry. Not sorry." I am sorry for typing that though.

This Czarnian is caught stealing medicine for her family and locked away. As punishment, she's filled with every disease known to Czarnia to be the ambassador to Apokolips. All she has to do is act naturally, walk up to Darkseid, and fill him full of various airborne illnesses.

"I feel fine! When do I get to meet Darkseid?! Um, don't worry about my exploding sores! You should have seen them yesterday! I'm totally getting better. Now where's her majesty? I mean his majesty?!"

Desaad has probably never seen a gift horsemen in his life but he recognizes one when he sees one. And he doesn't even look her in the mouth because gross! Desaad hires her and this story ends. Except it doesn't end with "the end." It does that stupid, overdone thing where it ends with "The beginning...". I hope all four short stories don't end like that! You can't do that, can you? Maybe that's the only way it can be done! Four times in the same comic book! It's so overdone that it will come back around to being underdone and clever!

The next story takes place on the Warworld of Earth-2. Or, um, Universe-2, I guess! It stars Famine! And Mongul! And Steppenwolf! What a star-studded cast! I wonder if Jim Starlin is upset that somebody else is writing his baby, Warworld?

On Warworld, they battle seemingly eight days a week. In spite of all the danger, Steppenwolf has decided to pay a visit to Warworld, probably to look for new recruits.

How do those little skinny guys carry that weight? I saw her standing there on the battlefield, and she's freaking gigantic! She looks like a yellow submarine!

Later at dinner, Steppenwolf is all, "Miss, I've just got to get you into my life." And Mongul is all, "Ain't she sweet?" And Steppenwolf is all, "Do you want to know a secret? My furies live forever!" And Mongul is all, "Oh! Darling, do not listen to him!" And Steppenwolf is all, "You'll be mine." And Mongul is all, "What you're doing is not cool!" And Steppenwolf is all, "Baby, baby. You know what to do." And Soon-to-be-Famine is all, "Everybody's trying to be my baby!" And Mongul is all, "Don't let me down!" And Steppenwolf is all, "I want you (she's so heavy!)." And Mongul is all, "Don't listen to him! The two of us...we can work it out!" And Soon-to-be-Famine is all, "I sense a beginning ending coming up!" And Steppenwolf is all, "I don't want to spoil the party, but you're going to lose that girl!" And Mongul is all, "I'm a loser." And Steppenwolf is all, "She's leaving home!" And Mongul is all, "I'll get you!" And Soon-to-be-Famine is all, "Hello goodbye!" And Mongul is all, "Help! I should have known better!" And that's how the Fury of Famine left Jim Starlin's Warworld to live on Apokolips.

And, yes, this story ended with "The Beginning...". So it's getting really exciting! Four "The Beginning..."s in one book! If I were a paperback writer, I would never even attempt this feat!

The next story stars little Earth-2 Starfire, K'li. I think that was her name. It's possible her name is Lucille. Or Michelle! Maggie Mae? Starfire-2 crash lands on Apokolips and kills every parademon she stumbles across.

Hello little girl. How do you do it?

Big Barda trains Universe-2 Starfire to be the best monster she can be. Every little thing she does is horrific, as if she had a devil in her heart. Here, there and everywhere, corpses line her wake. Darkseid readily accepts her as his Fury of War thus marking another beginning! Three in a row! Majestic!

The fourth story is about Death and takes place on Mars-2. Happiness is a warm gun. I am the walrus. Everybody's got something to hide except me and my monkey. Being for the benefit of Mr. Kite! Maxwell's silver hammer.

Ob-la-di, ob-la-da.

I want to hold your hand. Blackbird. Dear Prudence. Dizzy Miss Lizzy. Magical mystery tour. Lucy in the sky with diamonds. The long and winding road. Komm, gib mir deine Hand. I've just seen a face. Glass onion. Doctor Robert.

Day tripper.

Earth 2 #28 Ranking: I'm only sleeping.

In Which I Plug Some of Grunion Guy's Recent Bullshit

Grunion Guy wanted everybody to know that he recently reviewed an old text adventure game from 1978 or something. He also wrote an unnecessary walkthrough of it. Oh sorry. As he calls it, "A Walk Story."

Grayson #4

Uh oh! Somebody pissed off the Spider Women of Spider Island!

After last issue, Spyral probably held a meeting about Dick Grayson and his usefulness to the team. And even though he keeps not following orders and he was sort of responsible for Agent 8's death and he's probably fucking every woman in the organization, Mister Spyral Minos still wants him on the team. At the meeting, he probably had to say, "Just trust me!", about twenty times to his outraged lieutenants. I almost went with "sergeants" because lieutenants is so hard to spell but I got it right on the first try anyway! Not because I'm good at spelling (I'm not terrible!) but because I just got lucky on the first shot. I find, with spell-checker, I'm getting lazier and lazier about my spelling. I just take a few stabs at spelling a word and if I can't get it right, I left-click on it, choose the correct spelling, and move on without having learned a thing.

Back to Mister Spyral Minos, he probably wants Dick on the team for some long con against Bruce Wayne. They currently have him hunting down the body parts of some guy named Paragon, probably for dual reasons: to keep him busy, and to, well, you know, find the body parts of Paragon. While Dick is kept distracted with his spy job, Mister Spyral Minos is probably setting up some scheme to bring down the Batman once and for all. Or he's just grooming Dick so he can get a shot at that ass too.

I don't think the creative team eats a lot of lollipops because it isn't the sucking sound that annoys other people. It's the constant clicking of the lollipop against the teeth that drives them nuts. Although "suck, suck" is much funnier than "clickety clackety" and gets the message across better. Also every person reading is imagining a dick in Dick's mouth. By the way, I'm a sucker, not a hater. Um, of lollipops!

It's time for another mission! This time, Dick and Helena get to infiltrate Checkmate and steal a hard drive with information on Paragon! Which seems like a difficult mission to do since once somebody has a hard drive with important information on it, don't you think they'd copy that information to other drives and clouds and Hello Kitty USB data storage devices? You can't put the genie back in the bottle! Well, sometimes you can, if you're really smart and tricky. You just have to use the genie's arrogance against himself (or herself! Some genies can be female! I saw it on a television show. I think if you're a 'djinn', you're male; if you're a 'Jeannie', female).

We haven't seen a lot from Checkmate in The New 52, so this could be interesting. Or it could just be a lot of "Get them, Pawns!" and "Yes sir, Rook sir!" and "Who let Bishop in the children's ward?!"

Meanwhile at Saint Hadrian's finishing school, a lot of curious girls are coming into their sexuality and practicing kissing on each other and practicing fucking on thick candles. Um, I think. That's what goes on in finishing schools, right?

Holy crap! There's a b-b-b-b-b-boy in the building! Where'd Matron lock up those candles?!

Lucky Dick! Now he's got a band of horny young teenaged murderesses after him! I've never been so envious.

Dick probably won't think he's so lucky since he has a lot of secrets he's trying to keep from everybody at Spyral and Saint Hadrian's. These dripping young lasses might stumble upon one of his Bat Devices! And then where will he be? Oh! Probably having sex with an underage vixen that's blackmailing him into having sex with her or else she'll report him to Mister Minos! Gosh, what a horrible turn of events that would be!

Dick's sucker was actually a means to try to pick up some DNA samples from Mister Minos. I know a better way of sucking that would get a bigger sample! Um, anyway, the sucker was sent off to Batman for analysis and Bruce discovered that Mister Minos keeps a supply of tiny, hungry nanobots that eat all of his DNA so that he doesn't leave any forensic evidence anywhere. Gross. I bet Mister Minos just masturbates all over his office because he knows his little robots will clean it right up for him.

How cute. They're having a bit of a tiff.

This is an excellent example of how to do a comic book well when you hold back information from the reader. Too many comic books begin in the action on the first couple of pages and then flash back to tell the whole story from the beginning. Or they keep having characters learn things which move the plot forward but refuse to give the reader the same information to keep the mystery going. But this book is doing the Paragon thing right. Stormwatch killed some guy named Paragon (or just dismembered him (or, according to this line about the heart by Midnighter, blew him up in orbit)) and now Spyral and Midnighter are separately searching for his parts (as well as other organizations. Emphasis on "organ!"). The reader doesn't know the whole story because this comic doesn't rely on that story for forward momentum. Sure, it's what the plot is all about. But the comic is about Dick and Bruce and their infiltration of Spyral. The pacing on the revelation of the Paragon stuff has been nicely done. Especially this part where we finally get some Apollo action. It's all balanced nicely between the spy stuff and the Bruce stuff and the young girls lusting after Dick stuff.

Oh! They're college girls! Even better! I mean, obviously even better because of arbitrary laws about sexual activity and very specific ages!

Oh, don't get your thick cotton undies in a twist, ya damn Puritans! I'm not interested in the youngings! I'm forty-three and I can barely deal long term with anybody, male or female, born post Empire Strikes Back! Although Nick at Nite has given many young people the pop culture knowledge to interact with my exact level of immaturity. And now with easy access to all media ever, the lines between generations blur rapidly between any two people of any age who are simply curious to consume as much as they can. So while the Empire Strikes Back limit used to be a visceral thing (probably right up to about the turn of the century), now that we're all online, the different generations share many of the same experiences. Like ease of access to tons of pornography!

Pornography should be my generation's "At your age, we had to walk uphill in the snow to school."

Old Tess: "When I was your age, I had to find my pornography in the bushes down the side of a steep creek covered in poisonous snakes and spiders! And we didn't get to pick what kind of porn we masturbated to! Oh no! Beggars can't be heterosexuals! If it was gay male porn, you just squinted a bit and pretended that was a woman's hairy asshole. Oh! Speaking of hair! I don't even know the first time I saw actual female genitalia and not just bush! I once found a magazine called "Girls Who Eat Cum" which was just shot after shot of penises shooting their load onto women's faces. Not a tit or snatch in sight! Did that stop me? By golly, no! I treasured that porn like it was, well, like it was porn! Porn was gold in those days! Oncet, and yes I meant oncet, I found a black and white porn cartoon of Santa's elves fucking Missus Claus. That was all I had for weeks and it was enough! I hid it in the branches of a fucking tree at my elementary school! Okay, I guess it was enough because I wasn't actually masturbating yet. But I could get a boner! Good god could I get a boner! A boner like you never saw before! Young and eager and straining at the waist band of my underwear! Giddy with the possibilities of future sexual adventures! Sexual adventures like, well, I don't know! I guess my ding dong would rub up on the woman's nether hair or something?"

Uh oh! They're onto Dick! Good thing Helena has a crush on him! She'll never rat him out!

Mister Minos must be playing a game with Helena because if I had hired Batman's pool boy and then secret transmissions suddenly began leaving my facility, I'd immediately suspect Batman's pool boy! Everybody remains loyal to Batman! Even Jason Todd is loyal to Batman! Even though he never killed the Joker with a crowbar like he probably should have.

Trade four inexperienced girls for one tiger of a woman like Matron? Baws yes!

Bruce Wayne is a genius. By sending Dick Grayson to a spy school for girls, he'll never be caught! Because all the women just want to eat his tight ass! Spy schools expect a little subterfuge and sabotage now and then. So who cares if Dick Grayson is a spy as long as he's a spy willing to make mama happy.

Later, Dick gets reprimanded by Mister Minos for exposing himself to the young girls on campus.

Come and knock on our door! Take a step that is new! Where the faces are hers and spirals and unmemorable! Three's company too!

Helena reports back to Mister Minos about the unknown broadcasts on campus. She hands over some mini-cameras that one of the girls was using to spy on staff. That's the one that got all the nearly naked pictures of Dick Grayson! Lotti, the camera girl, receives extra credit for her imaginative extra-curricular activities. And all the young girls get paddled for breaking curfew. Why isn't that scene in this comic book? Doesn't DC want to sell lots and lots of comic books?! Doesn't DC like money?

The issue ends with Helena getting Dick Grayson to chase her across the rooftops. Helena has an elementary school crush on Dick Grayson! Except Helena will know what to do once he catches her.

Grayson #4 Rating: I'm not rating the issues this month. I'm just revamping the rankings. Across four issues, Grayson has been a surprisingly charming and fun book. Tim Seeley and Tom King understand the character. They seem to have a plan to fit Dick Grayson into a world that he, at the most fundamental levels of his character, doesn't fit into. Plus Midnighter has been a supporting character!

Swamp Thing #36

This doesn't look like horror at all! This? This is romance! Bleck!

Abigail hasn't been around for some time because she's not very interesting without her Uncle Anton touching her creepily. Also she's a lousy Avatar of the Rot. You're supposed to be Swamp Thing's antagonist, Abby! Antagonists don't hug! Unless it's a death hug! Swamp Thing does seem to be evaporating wherever he's touching her.

Last issue, A Calculus and their goons had marched into Swamp Thing's backyard and began destroying it. Swamp Thing was busy not destroying the Machine's Headquarters because he's never heard of a little thing called a preemptive strike! That's where you tell as many people as you can that a place that has resources you really want for yourself is the most evil place in the world and that they're going to destroy us all if we don't destroy them first. Then when everybody goes, "Let's see the evidence!", you shout, "No time! No time!" Then you attack the place (or person) as they go, "What the fuck?" Except they probably say "what the fuck" in a different language because it's wrong, for some reason, to attack places that speak the same language as you do.

Everything I've learned from pop culture leads me to believe the same thing: a war with machines is inevitable! The only way we can stop that from happening is if we create a zombie apocalypse first. Then the zombies can worry about fighting the machines when we're all dead.

Swamp Thing returns just in time from his arctic vacation to disassemble A Calculus and their hooligans. I guess Charles Soule can write a fight scene!

Alec realizes he finally has a good reason to call Abigail. He should probably call Buddy as well so it looks like he's keeping the visit with Abby professional. Then he can cough a few times and stare really hard at Buddy as he jerks his head toward the door until Buddy gets the hint and beats it.

If they can't touch, watching each other masturbate is a decent option.

While Alec and Abby create duplicates of themselves which they watch fuck until they burn, A Calculus, along with B Calculus and C Calculus, go about choosing a human avatar for the machines. If I were them, I'd pick Kevin Kho! He's already used to being part of a machine and he's completely human.

They consider Cyborg, Metallo, Cyborg Superman, The Metal Men, and Earl J. Dukeston. Better known as The Duke of Oil! Are you fucking kidding me? Way to pull that guy out of your ass, Charles Soule! Maybe Charles Soule loves the original Outsiders just like I do!

After vetoing all of the people I mentioned, the Calculi seem to be thinking about choosing Anton Arcane as the Avatar of Machines, simply for his experience. They haven't named him yet but they're considering a candidate with all the requisite skills of an Avatar. And Anton seems like the best prospect out there.

Oh! Even better! How could I forget you so quickly, my lovely Lady Weeds?!

Swamp Thing #36 Rating: Swamp Thing under Charles Soule has been one of my favorite books of The New 52. For now, this comic will remain high up in the ranks as I re-sort my rankings. What will it become when Soule leaves though? I hope whoever takes over after Soule turns it into a dark, disgusting, horror story full of unheimlich and uncanny valleys! Or something. I might not know what I'm talking about.

Detective Comics #36

Get it?! The story about a terminal disease takes place in an airport terminal!

Last issue, Batman, The World's Greatest Detective, had teamed up with Ed Boar, The World's Greatest Port Authority Layabout. Together, they will solve The Mystery of the Terminal Terminal! Mostly the mystery is solved because Magnus Magnuson appeared on television to tell the world that he was behind it all. Usually that's the detective's job at the end of the story! He calls everybody to the study and looks smug and paces about while saying things that make everybody nervous because he doesn't want to come right out and say who the culprit is because then nobody will have any reason to listen to him anymore. So he mentions lots of ambiguous clues first so that the wife gets nervous and then the cleaning lady gets nervous and then the chauffeur gets nervous and then the gardener gets really nervous but then the detective points at the ex-boyfriend and shouts, "You had every reason to do it!" And then the ex-boyfriend jumps up and says, "But I loved Bill more than life itself! I would never have killed him!" And after that drama plays out, the detective says, "I know! It was really the mother-in-law!" Then everybody gasps and a few people lean over to the person next to them and say, "I knew it all along." Then the mother-in-law tries to run but the detective grabs her and says, "But what you didn't know is that the mother-in-law is really Sirius B. Finch, the real estate mogul who is planning to build a nuclear power plant on this very spot!" And the detective pulls the rubber mask off of Sirius B. Finch and everybody gasps and applauds and yells, "Good show!" Then the father-in-law frowns and whispers, "But I've been sleeping with her for months!" And the detective says, "If only you had seen the clues the way I had seen the clues! And by clues I mean his penis! I figured it all out while using the urinal next to the mother-in-law at the wake!" And then the story ends.

But the Mystery of the Terminal Terminal is the mystery we are concentrating on today! Let us see how Batman finds the clues to solve the mystery! Yes, yes! Let us see!

That's a pretty big clue! Thanks, culprit, for helping Batman solve the mystery!

Since the whodunit is no longer a whodunit, I guess it's now a medical mystery! Doctor Batman has only eight hours to figure out what is killing everybody or the world will end! I bet it's Lupus!

While Batman tries to find the clues, the Narrator tries to get all philosophical by comparing air travel to life. The Narrator is quite accurate in describing air travel as a piece of time in our lives that nobody really acknowledges. It's just a chore to be dealt with so we can get from one destination to another. But that's where the Narrator's analogy breaks down because the narrator compares the travel destinations to birth and death. But who is ignoring life just to hurry along and rush headlong into death? Okay, okay. So we're all rushing headlong into death. But we're not actively seeking it out! At least most of us aren't. I think maybe Batman is! Maybe I should think about my life as air travel more often! Then maybe I'd read more books by Michael Crichton and John Grisham! I would think, "Boy, I can't wait for the next exciting moment in my life to happen! But until then, I will sit in a tiny space with minimal amounts of food and drink while trying to read my shitty thriller. I will also try to sit uncomfortably close to a stranger while I chew my ice and they go out of their minds listening to me chew my ice but never say anything so how was I ever supposed to know there are people out there that can't stand the sound of somebody chewing ice? Oh, fucking pardon me, Mr. Sensitive Ears!"

Maybe life and air travel are exactly the same thing! I think I'm all turned around on the analogy! Life is just air travel with more elbow and leg room.

Batman needs help! He's the World's Greatest Detective, not the World's Greatest Medical Mystery Detective! When you find a murdered body, you don't call Doctor House! And when you find a body bleeding out of its asshole, you don't call Sherlock Holmes! And since Batman needs help solving a medical mystery, he calls the greatest doctor in the world.

Oh, sorry. He calls a retired acrobat.

Batman calls up Dick Grayson and says, "Dick! Remember the first rule of being my friend? When I say jump, you say, 'Skip deedly doo!' Well, I'm saying jump!"

"But Batman," whispers Dick Grayson, "I am in the middle of torturing a man! Surely saying, 'Skip deedly doo!', can wait!"

"I did not ask Shirley to say 'Skip deedly doo!' I asked you to say it! That was a joke from Airplane! It is timeless, is it not?" wheezes Batman into his Batphone. Dick hears the desperation in Bruce's wheezing and agrees to say "Skip deedly doo!" Finally! That kid sure has learned how to back talk!

Batman continues to search for clues amongst the air traffic controllers while probably thinking, "I bet it is Lupus and not at all contagious enough to spread to these innocent workers!" Meanwhile Dick Grayson continues to torture the man he was torturing but now he's asking him to answer Batman's questions.

Batman continues to run around the airport confidently spreading the disease to as many people as possible. "It does not matter who I infect," he brags to himself, "because I will save them all by solving the mystery! Then they will all thank me for saving their lives!"

Back in Minsk, Dick continues to search for clues to the whereabouts of Magnus Magnuson.

"This is the biggest clue yet!"

Dick is finding clues all over the place!

"Look, Bruce! Look! I have found an even bigger clue than the previous clue! Right in my pants!"

Dick learns that Magnus Magnuson is in Gotham! He's on the plane! Everybody get out! He's on the plane!

I already knew that because I found the biggest clue of all: the cover of the comic book. See Magnus Magnuson choking Batman? See?

The issue ends with everybody surviving thanks to Magnus Magnuson's blood! Yay! Except then the Narrator chimes in and starts blabbing about how we're all going to die. Way to ruin the moment, Narrator! And way to hit us all over the head with your philosophy of "slowing down to smell the roses because we know we're going to die" being the way we should all embrace life. Or something. I stopped listening because I don't enjoy pedantry unless it's coming out of my own typing fingers. Also, pedantry isn't perverted like some of you dumb dumbs probably think it is. Buy a dictionary! Also, a dictionary has nothing to do with penises.

Detective Comics #36 Rating: I'm changing up my ratings this month. Everything is getting reshuffled! So I won't be rating anything for the rest of the month. I'm just going to stick all the books back in whatever order feels right as I read them and as I reflect on how consistently well written each of the titles has been. It's hard to judge Detective Comics because this is a new creative team (and I don't even know if they're going to stick around for more than this two part story). But this issue alone was not a very good example of Batman's detective skills. He really just got lucky that Magnuson was the cure and that Magnuson was on board the plane. Hey, you know what? Dick got lucky too!