Futures End #28

What's something totally recognizable in Gotham that we can have the Batmen crash into while fighting (even though they're battling in New York City?)? I know!

I know, I know! The fight in New York ended almost immediately when Plastique blew the poop out of everybody in Tim Drake's apartment. This cover probably represents the next meeting of the Batmen! It doesn't look like it goes any better.

Do you think an editor would have told me that I can't use the phrase "I know" three times in a row? Probably! But who needs editors anyway? Don't you dare say I do, you traitor.

This issue begins with Lois Lane not being eaten by sharks because she parachuted onto Cadmus Island and not into the ocean like we all thought was going to happen, right? Right? You all thought that too, right? Thought that this issue would be twenty pages of Lois Lane drowning while hallucinating a happy life courting and eventually marrying Superman? Then at the last minute, she would be saved from drowning by a shark and die from blood loss and shock instead.

On Cadmus Island, Lois runs into an OMAC, and then an OMAC, and then another OMAC, an OMAC, an OMAC, two OMACS, then another OMAC, and finally somebody she recognizes (not an OMAC).

Has Lois Lane ever worn a Lantern ring? Did she call herself Lois Lantern?

Over in Frank Rock's office, Frank and King Faraday and, soon, Fifty Sue and Voodoo are all trying to figure out who is going to kill whom and what enemy is the worst and how do any of them work together when some of them want to kill some of the others and what the fuck is going on in this comic book again?

Voodoo's steez is pretty kickin', yo.

Wait, wait. I think I got this, Voodoo. See, your buddy Grifter was taken by Faraday to be part of a team that would remove superheroes from the world. But that team was infiltrated by Brother Eye so Faraday turned the team's attention to destroying Brother Eye. But then Faraday realized he needed a back-up plan to kill the super powered members of his team who were busy defeating Brother Eye and/or killing and capturing other super powered people! So he hired Frank Rock's Girl Squad to kill Fifty Sue. But then Deathstroke joined with Brother Eye in an attempt to kill Fifty Sue which made Fifty Sue want to kill Deathstroke which caused her to seek out Faraday and join the team that was put together to kill her. Easy peasy!

Meanwhile, Batman and Batman Beyond do not smash into the Batsignal. And Tim Drake, Ronnie Raymond, and Jason Rusch all search for Madison Payne. But they'll never find her because she's with Doctor Yamazake testing out his teleportation device. Such a helpful lass.

Futures End #28 Rating: No Ratings November continues! Judging by the cover of Futures End #29 and the "in next issue" pics, it looks like Ronnie Raymond and Jason Rusch are going to break up permanently.

Look how terrified poor Ronnie is of merging with a female!

Action Comics #36

Fucking Lego covers.

Regular readers might find this hard to believe, but I hate drama and confrontation. So much so that I just take these fucking Lego covers when my comic book store puts them in my box. I know I can trade them out for the regular cover (and I did for Batman #36), but most of the time I just rush in, make sure I have all my books, answer Peter the Store Owner's question of "What's new?" with "Nothing much" and scurry out as quickly as possible. Then I hate myself for hours afterward. Although coping with the hate allows me to eat a box of Oreos, so it isn't all bad!

Last issue, Lana Lang was in the Smallville Cemetary [sic] whining about how Superman saves the lives of everybody on Earth so much that they're all going to be dead because of it. Way to not do logic, Lana! I bet the zombies that were crawling out of the ground ignore you since there's nothing in your head to feast on!

Superman had just recently come back to town (and by "town," I mean "Earth" (and by "Earth," I mean "our solar system" (and by "our solar system," I mean "our galaxy" (and by "our galaxy," I mean The New 52 Universe (which I probably should have just said from the start))))) and has been checking in with his city and its people to see how they're all doing after Brainiac's attack.

That's the right attitude, Clark! Fuck them! They can do their own Goddamned labor!

Meanwhile, Greg Pak may as well have just spread his ass cheeks and placed his anal sphincter directly on my lips before ripping a huge fart because the whole zombie sequence from last issue was just a dream.

I bet it's called Tromboning when you eat out a guy's ass while giving him a reach around, right? Am I right on that one? This is just like when I invented a drink called the Gojira (or Godzilla as non-Nipponophiles would say) that was one-half Green Monster and one-half Sake. I figured that was too spot on a drink to not have been created already and I looked it up online to find it had been. Although it was called a Godzilla.

Give a girl a little warning, Steel, before you try to shove it up that hole.

This issue is called "Horrorville" so I suspect that John's penis isn't the only thing that's going to make Lana scream before it's over. Maybe the zombies will be real! The dream was a portent! Or did I mean important? It was an importent dream!

Well, Lana has Romero, Craven, Carpenter, and Coscarelli covered. Next will she see two little girls wanting to play with her forever and ever?

It seems Lana Lang is suffering some traumatic brain injury from Brainiac's attack that is causing her to hallucinate pieces of horror movies. We've got Romero's zombies, Craven's nightmares, Carpenter's fog, and Coscarelli's ubiquitous hearse (Coscarelli was the only name I couldn't remember and had to look up. I'm still working on my Grandmaster Horror Movie Watcher badge. I let it lapse for a long time!). Plus the issue was called "Horrorville"! Maybe she'll hear some "chu chu chu mah mah mah" next! Unless you make different noises when doing Jason's theme.

Lana and John follow the hearse to the Smallville Cemetary [sic again!] to discover that Lana's parents have escaped from their graves! That's good news, right? They're alive! Maybe alive in a weird kind of stinky, ravenous undeath...but they're alive!

The fog descends on everybody and even though they were all within five feet of each other (John, Lana, the Sheriff, and the woman driving the Hearse), they suddenly can't see or find anybody else! Whelp, that's what happens when you get covered in quickly descending fog in a horror movie. Also it's always full of dead people.

And sometimes things like this that love to shove its tentacles up the assholes of corpses and use them like puppets.

Superman flies in to punch the alien in the face and make it disappear.

Hey. I have a question. Does anybody in Metropolis wonder why Superman and Clark Kent returned at the same time with the exact same Goddamned beard? No? Nobody? Okay.

Superman finds himself trapped in the fog in Smallville. I guess next issue he'll have to begin looking for clues. The first clue he might find is how everybody in Smallville suddenly has Invasion of the Body Snatchers face.

Action Comics #36 Rating: It's nice to get some smaller stories, right? A break from all the unending cosmic continuity crossovers? I just wish Krypto was involved a bit more than Lana Lang. As far as rankings go, this comic is a standard, middle of the road affair. If you love Superman and if you really love Lana Lang, you probably really enjoy this book. Unless Lana Lang isn't being written correctly! Then you probably hate this book with a passion and wish Greg Pak would die in a gas station men's room bathroom stall. Whatever. I'm not here to tell you what to like! I'm just here to say Action Comics written by Greg Pak is better than some New 52 comic books and not as good as some other New 52 comic books. Go read it yourself! Don't take my word for it!

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!