Worlds' Finest #31

What happened to Wonder Woman and her Pegasus? Was that just a dream I had? Oh wait. It was a Greg Pak story so I was probably forced to forget it for future plot reasons.

Currently in Worlds' Finest, we're all learning the secret history of Superman and Batman. Because if there are two characters in the DC Universe that nobody knows much about, it's these two guys. How did they become the men they became?! Where did their super powers come from? What were their childhoods like? Nobody knows! It's secret history that has seemingly never been explored in the last seventy five plus years of Batman and Superman's existence. So far we've learned that Batman's parents were murdered and Superman grew up on a farm. These events formed the foundation for their philosophical beliefs! Batman decided nobody should ever be the victim of crime ever again. Superman learned that platitudes only really work on a farm where your neighbors are many acres removed from your solitary existence and things get a little bit more complicated when you move out of your elderly parents' home and into the big city where you can finally fuck a girl in your room without your mother constantly reminding you to keep the door open when you have female guests in the house which totally kills a boner.

This is the second time this month that Lois worried about how she was going to report on the end of the world. I don't think people are going to need a reporter to tell them about the apocalypse, Lois.

Luckily for Lois, this current catastrophe was just the start of the first war with Apokolips and she'll have plenty of war stories to report on for years to come. Too bad I think Lois Lane is one of the first people killed in the war, so I guess I shouldn't have begun the last sentence with "luckily for Lois."

As satellites came crashing down on city after city, Superman tried saving as many days as possible. And while Superman tried to save the world from being destroyed by its own satellites, Lois Lane bothered emergency workers with hard-hitting questions!

All the communication satellites have come crashing down to Earth, so Lois can't fact check that thing about oceans and deserts. But she's fairly certain that she thinks she once heard something about the Earth being less city and more ocean and desert. Maybe?

Superman can't save everybody in Metropolis but Batman flies in to help! I guess Batman just looked at Gotham, shrugged his shoulders, and said, "Fuck it. I'm helping a city that deserves to be saved." Or maybe he already saved everybody! He is The Batman, after all. Greatest super hero in the DC Universe! Just ask DC's accountants!

Batman left Gotham in the paws of his wife and the claws of his daughter, Catwoman and Robin! According to Lois Lane, Gotham hadn't been hit as hard. But even if that were true, I think the criminals of Gotham would take advantage and turn the city into a burning mass of suddenly empty stores. While all the citizens of Metropolis act heroically, the citizens of Gotham would just murder, loot, kill, and take advantage of the situation. Gothamites are bastards!

This cliche spouting bore is the greatest journalist on Earth?

I shouldn't be so hard on Lois Lane's narration of the secret history of her lover and his best friend. She's a robot now. Her language center was probably programmed by a non-poetic mathematician. When she was alive, she probably wrote florid descriptions of the most mundane news items, elevating them to compelling stories that kept people coming back to her blog day after day. But now she's a robot trying to form elegant thoughts from a sorely lacking database of common and ordinary words. Kind of like my brain!

Supergirl helps save Gotham but she's not allowed to stop and pose for pictures. Her name is Supergirl. She came to Earth from seemingly nowhere to become a living weapon and also a secret. But soon she'd become Robin's best friend. I bet that friendship would have made a really fun comic book!

No it's not! Will you people stop being so excited about appearing on shitty local television stations?! You're only feeding the monster!

When I was fifteen and didn't know any better, I appeared on a local news segment about one of those make your own video shops that were popular in malls in the mid to late eighties. A couple friends and I would hang around the place talking to the two women who ran it. We would basically loiter until they grew so bored because no paying customers were coming in that they'd let us film a video for free. If I ever decide that my dignity has become absolutely valueless (I'm not quite there yet!), I might have to digitize some of the videos and post them. Although that really seems like the kind of thing you threaten to do to somebody unless they pay you a lot of money. Maybe one of my cohorts from back then will pay to keep them off of the internet!

Intri shows up to beat the crap out of Supergirl and to show off her cool heels a little bit more. I think she's the main reason this history is secret! Because for some reason, she keeps showing up in Superman's life over and over again. I think she has a crush on him.

After the satellites had stopped falling, Batman decided to break into Terry Sloan's house, knock the teeth out of Terry Sloan's paid guards who are just trying to do their jobs, and steal Sloan's Kryptonite. So what makes Batman any different than one of the fucking villains he's always trying to stop?! Sloan may seem like a dick but does that mean he should have his property stolen? Does that mean the men that work security at his home should be disfigured?! Even Earth-2 Batman is an asshole!

Lois and her big scoop enter the crumbling Daily Planet building because that's where her webcam is located. If only Jimmy Olsen had gone into photography on Earth-2 instead of gay porn, Lois Lane's life could have been saved that day. Instead, she had to rely on her own equipment and technology to film her interview with Lustig. But that story will have to be concluded next issue.

Worlds' Finest #31 Rating: No change. I've read hundreds, maybe thousands of boring comic books over the years. I just mention my qualifications to say that this comic book isn't exactly boring. It feels unnecessary but it's not quite boring. When I'm reading it, I get a vague sense of entertainment. The art has that slightly odd, almost bad style that I actually quite enjoy. Maybe knowing that just about everybody in it is going to die fills me with warm fuzzies as well. What I'm trying to say is I won't miss this book when it's over next month but I don't mind sitting down and spending a little time with it until then.

Constantine #22

Constantine's "birth date" must just be a reference to his first actual appearance in Swamp Thing.

I can see DC Comics wanting Constantine to be about twenty-nine. It makes sense since they don't want fucking old people in their comic books anymore. I think Batman being about thirty-two is really pushing the limits of age acceptability. But it makes no sense for John to have been born in 1985 if he hung around CBGBs and the punk scene in New York. I suppose the stories about Constantine and Nick Necro could have taken place in a post-punk hardcore punk punk pop punk punk new punk rock-a-punk junk punk scene of the mid-naughts. You remember that scene, right? That was a pretty wild scene. Right? Wasn't it a scene? Did I get the name wrong? Can we at least pretend it was a scene so we can hear people say, "Dude, I was there! Right smack fucking dab in the middle of the post-punk hardcore punk punk pop punk new punk rock-a-punk junk punk explosion, man!"

Last issue, John Constantine killed Earth-2 John Constantine because that's the closest he'll ever be able to come to killing himself. Except for that time he killed himself when he had lung cancer but that doesn't really count because he knew the bureaucracy and red tape to recover his soul would be so confusing that nobody would allow him to die. So that was less a suicide attempt and more just being a Smart Alec.

Constantine also opened a gate between Earth-2 and Earth-Main-Earth so he could finally return home after his relatively boring trip into the past. He was hoping to take along his lost family and friends but after murdering their John right in front of them, he's kind of lost them as well. But Doctor Cocoa Puffs is still trying to hitch his oxen to the wagon that he's hoping to hitch to Constantine's star because he wants to stop being Doctor Cocoa Puffs and once again become good old normal Doctor Fate. But I'll only ever call him that when he resides on Earth-Main-Earth! So he'd better come up with a spell that allows him to follow John! This story probably takes place after Doctor Cocoa Puff's trip to Apokolips where Khalid and Nabu become best friends and easy lovers.

Making friends the John Constantine way!

Constantine doesn't want these people thinking he's the worst liar and murderer to ever exist, so he takes them on a site seeing tour of Heaven where God is shutting up the Pearly Gates and leaving the universe because He's afraid of Darkseid. So Constantine's argument is what? "I may have just killed their best friend but look at God! What a Dick, right?!" Why would they even believe what they're seeing is real? He's shown he can do great feats of magic and he's shown that he's a great big bloody lying bastard! Do those make for a trustworthy tour guide?

Doctor Cocoa Puffs continues to hamper Constantine's escape attempt. He can apparently shoot Ankh-shaped fish hooks into the portal that John opened but he can't follow himself unless John allows it. In his fishing attempts, he manages to snare Earth-2 John's Mom and pull her off of Constantine's Tenser's Floating Disc. Constantine's fake family get even angrier.

You know, John, some people's base motivation isn't simply self-preservation at any cost. I know! It's crazy. It should be but it isn't for some reason!

General Apathy continues to hound Constantine as well. I guess it can travel in the spaces between worlds too. Probably because it was told it can't and it was just all, "Boundaries? Limits? Whatever."

Constantine and his group (composed of many more people than just his pseudo-family and quasi-friends. I guess he just grabbed up everybody near the spell in London) travel through The Green and The Grey and The Red until they wind up in the Astral Realm. Even here, Parademons attack a blue flame that is the source of life in the universe. Is this like that light that Lobo kept trying to snuff out in the Magenta Timeline? But Constantine ignores it because fuck the Earth-2 universe! Put a spork in it, as the kids say, because it's too hard to eat with just a fork or a spoon. And then Constantine and his new frenemies are suddenly through into the Earth-Main-Earth universe! And they brought a gigantic hand with them!

Whoops!

Is it the Anti-Monitor's hand? The Anti-Monitor really hates Earths that aren't Earth-Main-Earth. And he probably hates that Earth too even though he never got a chance to show it.

Apparently it's just Darkseid's hand. And he's suddenly become interested in Constantine because Darkseid likes to find new Universes to consume and Constantine has shown the ability to cross from one to the next. Constantine throws a bunch of survivors at Darkseid's hand because fuck them. They would have already been dead anyway if it hadn't been for Constantine. Now he's trying to save Universe-Main-Universe and the only way to do it is to pull a con on Darkseid and he's only got one issue left.

Constantine #22 Rating: No change. Darkseid didn't recognize Earth-Main-Earth's universe but that was probably because only his hand made it through the portal and Darkseid is no Ten Eyed Man. If Darkseid had known which universe Constantine had escaped to, Darkseid might have retreated of his own free will. Not the universe that kicked his ass! Not the universe with The Batman that humiliated him and his son and his Glorious Godfrey! Not the universe that put Highfather in his place with a proper scolding from Hal Jordan! No reason to kick that universe full of hornets when there are 50 others to kick that are full of easier victims, like cartoon rabbits and Chibi Superheroes and Marvel families that can't even say "crap" or take advantage of Georgia Sivana's wonderful traits.

I just realized next month is going to be a pretty exciting time with Last Issues all over the place!

Harley Quinn Valentine's Day Special #1

This is why The Joker is trying to kill off The Batman.

Happy Valentine's Day! Remember how everybody you know probably made some kind of Friday the 13th joke about Valentine's Day this year? That was pretty funny! Pretend I said the funniest line you remember. Go ahead. Just attribute it to me. Any time you think, "I wonder who said that witty, wonderful, and charming thing?", just convince yourself it was Tess who said it! It probably was anyway!

The issue begins with Harley Quinn imitating Jack Sparrow. But some killjoy comes up and tells her to try acting like everybody else and to stop endangering her own life by having fun. His philosophy probably has something to do with living as long as humanly possible no matter how fucking boring and mundane that life is. Me? I want to go out in a big flaming explosion of doughnuts and blow jobs! Preferably blow jobs being performed on me but I'll take what I can get as long as their are doughnuts and explosions as well.

On second thought, I'd like to live through that. Please don't make me die ever.

How many crap jokes is this poor guy going to have to endure?

Over in Gotham City which is a totally different place than New York (somehow), Bruce Wayne learns that he's to be auctioned off for charity. Some lucky lad or lady is going to pay to go on a date with Bruce Wayne! It will just be dinner, of course. Unless the winner is hot enough to extend dinner into a night of rough fucking. And if she's super duper hot and intelligent and artsy, Bruce may even confide in her about his secret life as Batman and she can look forward to a horrible untimely demise at the hands of one of The Batman's many enemies! Perhaps The Mighty Carp?

The big twist surprise that nobody was expecting comes on the next page where Harley learns about Bruce Wayne's charity date and decides she needs to win the auction so she can break off a piece of Kit-Catwoman's Bat. Harley calls Tony up to plan a few robberies targeting some of the most vile people in America. You know, the rich ones that got rich by any means necessary. The ones that grew up realizing that the easiest way to win Monopoly was to be the banker and just fucking steal as much money out of the bank as possible while nobody else was looking. And then lie about where all the money came from!

Is this foreshadowing for the jokes at the Mighty Carp's expense later? I mean other than just being true. Napping and crapping are some spectacular activities.

Harley falls asleep and we learn that Harley's beaver talks in her sleep. That's weird.

Harley dreams about a life with Bruce Wayne. She dreams about herself in a polo outfit and diamond underwear and a bikini and an evening gown. It's a shame she isn't dreaming about a life with Pamela Isley. Then Poison Ivy could be in a polo outfit and diamond underwear and a bikini and an evening gown! But instead she dreams about Bruce who wants so many kids that she kills and eats him and flushes him down the toilet (after pooping him out of her behind). I guess napping while dreaming about crapping is as good as it gets. But Harley doesn't like the talk of children, so she wakes up in a cold sweat. People only ever have a cold sweat when they have a nightmare or when their spouse is about to talk to the person they've been fucking behind their spouse's back.

After waking from the nightmare, her beaver hasn't quite gotten enough so it suggests she think sexy thoughts and go back to sleep to try again. Maybe this time she'll dream about Poison Ivy and Harley's beaver will be satisfied.

Yay! Somebody's waking up with goopy underwear!

Later that night, Tony and Harley take an Ice Cream Truck and head out to rob some rich asshole that totally isn't based on some other rich asshole. It doesn't take long because Harley beats the guy with a bat and smashes a Ming vase over his head and breaks his kneecaps with a hammer. And that was all after the guy tells them where he keeps his money! Um, mostly. I guess the first thing she did was hit him with the bat while saying this really hilarious pun that I can't even remember now. But oh boy was it a good one!

Meanwhile The Carp has acquired a sidekick named Sea Robin and a magical formula that allows him to leap great distances. Like a carp, I guess. He has yet to hear a crap joke. But then, he's yet to run into Harley as well.

I guess everybody attending the event expected a few of the bidders to get this out of control since nobody seems to care about the woman bleeding out in the middle of the ballroom.

Harley tries to stop The Carp from robbing the place but is laid out by a Taser net. Then Bruce Wayne is covered in Puffer Fish poison and begins to hallucinate a life with Harley Quinn. I'm beginning to sense a pattern with these Harley Quinn One Shots!

Harley figures that if she's sleeping with Batman, she might as well be his new Robin. I didn't mean for that to sound as perverse as it does. Oh, what the heck. Yes I did. The Dynamic Doing It With Each Other have a case to solve that involves Catwoman stealing some cat thing! How despicable!

Hopefully Harley doesn't investigate all the names in that little Black Book because I bet most of them are dead and that would make things weird between her and Batman.

Bruce Wayne wakes up to find himself kidnapped by The Carp who wants five million dollars in ransom or Bruce Wayne dies. Using his greatest detective skills, it looks like Bruce is going to find out that Carp wants to use the money for a good reason and will end up cutting him a check for his freedom. But maybe not before Harley mounts a rescue attempt that will fail spectacularly! At least she's bringing in Poison Ivy to help out. So if she doesn't get to fuck Bruce, she'll definitely be fucking Pamela.

Harley goes in alone with tear gas just as Bruce strikes a deal with The Carp. Hopefully she doesn't kill The Sea Robin with a crowbar because that might fuck Bruce up a little bit.

This was cute and made up for the part where Harley said, "Squeeee."

After the "rescue," Harley and Bruce go on their date where Bruce learns that Harley is really turning her life around. At least the parts of her life she admits to. I notice she doesn't mention the crap catapult or the occasional mindless killing.

The exact moment The Joker decided Batman needed to finally die.

No wait! Maybe this was the exact moment!

Apparently Batman practices kissing like a cold fish when he's in the cowl. That's why Catwoman likes him so much! You know? Because cats like fish! Batman must also spray some kind of Bat-De-Cologne-ifier on himself when he puts on the costume, especially immediately after going on a date as Bruce Wayne.

Harley Quinn basically tells Batman to get the fuck off of her building and fly back to "his" stupid fucking city. He threatens to stalk her and then flies away happy that he took bad kissing lessons.

Harley Quinn Valentine's Day Special #1 Rating: Hasn't Harley reached critical mass yet? I wonder if it's the success of this title that made DC Comics see the error of their ways in selling continuity to their fans. This title has next to no ties with the regular DC Universe and yet it sells like flapjacks on a day when people are really hungry for flapjacks. This along with Batgirl's new upbeat makeover and Gotham Academy's super fricking fucking cuteness overload may have awakened DC Comics to the possibility that fun, whimsical comics are a good thing. They can still have dark and desperate in some titles. But not every fucking title has to be a huge boner killer. I'm really looking forward to the June makeover, especially if they keep The New 52 universe but allow for some major flexibility with stories in other universes. They don't all have to take place in the same universe, guys! You've got 52 of them! Maybe one of them should be a world where every person but Barbara Gordon is in a wheelchair! They can all be computer whizzes and she can't even figure out a calculator! Not even one of those programmable ones which overconfident parents often buy their kids only to realize later that their kids don't even know what most of the buttons mean.

Secret Six #2

What is the secret?! How many is six?!

Unless you're one of those extravagantly luxurious people who can buy their comic books as soon as they're available and also live on the East Coast, you will invariably receive Secret Six spoilers by following Gail Simone's Twitter account.

Okay, so not all of her Tweets are Secret Six spoilers.

I know the internet isn't very good at fact checking, so let me just point out, right here underneath the photoshopped tweets, that these are not actual Gail Simone tweets. I assure you, even now, somebody will still think they're real because words that aren't part of an image or a tweet or a Facebook status message aren't worth reading. I might as well be typing words that nobody would ever want to read anyway, like "Your grandmother masturbated" or "Your genitals touched your mother's vagina while you were being born." What is the secret?!

At the end of the last issue, Catman and his new friends were trapped under the ocean in an electrified box with a digital display asking, "What is the secret?" They were also given masks and a dead body as hints or clues to the mystery. Being that I'm currently enrolled in the Trixie Belden School of World's Greatest Detectivanting*, I think I've got this mystery solved. The masks show that everybody in the room has a secret identity. The dead body proves that one of the people is not who they say they are! So the secret is that one of them is not who they say they are and is probably the person behind the trap and is also probably The Batman.

*Detectivanting: The art of doing detective work while gallivanting around the globe having grand, sexy adventures.

Oh! Mockingbird was the secret figure at the heart of the original Secret Six! You know, the one that was all white people long before Gail Simone made it all crazy people! There may have been a Mockingbird in Gail Simone's previous run as well but I haven't read it yet, so you'd know better than I would.

Cats love to eat birds. What is the secret?!

Catman remembers being recruited to lie in a hole for a year. I have to say, Project: Mockingbird sounds a little bit like a pretentious art installation, or shitty non-magic magic trick. It's possible that when Catman tried to bite the project's director's fingers off, he was kicked off of the project. But that was eighteen months ago! I think Catman has been re-recruited for another try at getting Project: Mockingbird out of the nest.

The six prisoners have one more minute to answer the question, "What is the secret?" If nobody can answer the super vague question, one of them will die. I think the whole point of this project is to get them to begin confessing all sorts of horrible crimes. They'd be better off keeping their mouths shut and their notepad pages blank than implicating themselves. Then after the minute is up, just choose Private Investigator Balloon Boy to be killed.

When the voice said they only had one minute left, I was getting excited that the secret would be revealed this issue! But with all of these flashbacks to Catman in captivity, I don't think that's going to happen. Plus it's only Issue #2 and when has a comic book ever made a big revelation two issues in?

Dude, you're Catman! Don't think of it as being confined! Think of it as being inside the best box of all the boxes that ever boxed! You're king of the boxes!

The minute passes without anybody even taking a stab at a guess. Come on, guys! At least try to save your own lives! I've made more guesses than you idiots and my life isn't even currently in danger. But the threatening voice doesn't seem to be in any hurry for the contestants to self-eliminate, so the secreted six talk about escaping while the voice blah blah blahs in the background.

Catman realizes The Ventriloquist is telekinetic and suggests she raises the box out of the ocean. But she'll only do that if he gives her a kiss. That's prostitution!

That's also talent! I wonder if she can make Ferdie talk while giving oral? What is the secret?!

While in captivity eleven months ago, some woman stops by on Caturday to give Catman a kitten. I bet she's Mockingbird! Or the kitten is! Or Catman is and he's doing this to himself! What is the secret?!

So anyway, the voice begins shocking Black Alice because nobody in the box would choose a scape goat. That's when The Ventriloquist raises the box out of the sea and saves the day! Maybe. Raising the box at least seems to have cut off power to the electrified floor. Also, the box is shaped like a coffin which I called last issue. Grandmaster Comic Book Reader! What is the secret?!

The Not-So-Secreted-Anymore Six break out of the coffin, jump to an ocean drilling rig, and begin killing everybody in the vicinity. Not just because they're nearby but also because they have guns and they keep trying to kill the good guys. The bad guys. The girls and guys guys. And the puppet!

The voice somehow thinks that telling them to get back in the box will work. It points out that one of them killed an innocent girl two years ago and that if they just get in the box, only one of them will die. But if they remain out of the box, they will all die. So the Six decide to stick together and fight to live. Sounds to me like the experiment worked perfectly, you manipulated assholes. Now you're a group as to where there was no group bond before! Project: Mockingbird has started!

Secret Six #2 Rating: +1 Ranking. You know what the real secret is? What happened to Catman's kitty cat? And what was its name? And did it like burrowing under covers and waking him up by biting him on the nose? Did it tend to spaz out for no reason at all and try to jump up the wall and through the ceiling to get at some invisible, other worldly something that only it could see? How about giving us the important information about the best character in the comic book so far, Gail and Ken? What is the secret?!

World's End #19

Val-el's crotch is grossing me out.

Pee-yuke! Who wants to look at man crotch?! Gross people, that's who! It's probably all sweaty and stinky with scrotum skin sticking to everything so that Val-el's testicles look like some kind of spider dragon. And his penis is probably all smashed up against his leg looking like a baby sea cucumber recently frightened by a passing Clown Fish. Not that Power Girl's crotch is probably any better right now! It's probably all sweaty and puckered with loose pubes sticking out all over the place. Although I'd still like to look at it!

I hate World's End! I haven't even opened the cover and it already has me talking about untoward subjects! Now I have to climb into the closet and beat myself for ten minutes. Be right back!

Okay, so when we last left this comic book, we were all extraordinarily happy to leave the comic book. We set it gently aside and smiled, seeing the rest of the World's End free week stretch out in front of us. But time is a methodical bastard and it betrays us over and over again. So before any of us knew it, a week had passed and here, once again, in our hands is another issue of World's End. It sits there taunting us with that word: end. Will it ever? For most of you, it probably ended weeks ago, possibly months ago when you realized this comic book had nothing to offer but pain and despair. So you left me to shoulder the burden, to trudge on ahead and clear the way. Fine. I'll go on without you. Without any of you! But if I find gold, it's mine, you hear?! All mine!

Wait! If it kills the inevitability of death, nobody can die! The world will be saved! New plan guys!

The Deathspawn of Apokolips begins trying to crack open the Earth to get to its core. The Parliament of the Green tells Queen Lantern that if it succeeds, it will mean the death of the world! And then the monster succeeds and Queen Lantern says, "I'm going to go after it!" And The Parliament of the Green says, "No, you know what? Maybe it won't be so bad. Let's figure something else out."

Meanwhile in Atom Shaven, Earth-2's last survivors have to deal with earthquakes and cave-ins. But that's going to happen when you decide to take refuge in the center of the Earth to survive the destruction of the Earth. Idiots.

Dick Grayson is still hunting for his son who he threw on a train with a bunch of strangers and decided not to get on the train for some reason. I thought he just didn't want his son anymore but now all he's doing is searching for him, so he must want him something awful. So why did he get rid of him in the first place then?

Constantine's friends, the ones he broke out of The Arkham Coma Cylinders, have some kind of plan in mind. Why did Constantine even bother to break them out? They didn't help him in any way! He was in London then he was breaking them out of Arkham then he was in Chicago and then he ditched them to go back to London! Why doesn't this comic book make any sense at all?!

From now on, I'm calling it Apokpolips. And Darkrseid. And New Genenesis. And Highghfagather.

Even the characters have decided they don't give a fuck about the story anymore. Nobody is taking it seriously! Mister Terrific, upon blasting off in a rocket to go find the Multiversal Ship they're going to use to go to Earth-Main-Earth, says, "It's been said before but this time I really mean it...Let's go save the world!" Pee-yuke! And then Power Girl says, "Have superbody, will travel." What the fuck does that even mean?! I think Daniel, Marguerite, and Mike have simply left the scripting to the letterer.

We? Val-el is a pacifist. He just watched you destroy the army, Power Girl.

Meanwhile, Replacement Batman and The Huntress head off to New York to find whatever Oliver Queen supposedly has for The Huntress. I don't know why Earth-2 Green Arrow (Red Arrow? I'm so confused!) doesn't live in Seattle. The West Coast had one fucking super hero and the East Coast had to take him as well. Earth-2 really is a nightmare version of Earth-Main-Earth.

I think I might have jumped to the wrong conclusion because it seems Replacement Batman and The Huntress are searching one of Sloan's lairs. I blame this incomprehensible comic book for being both hard to follow and terribly written. And boring too!

I wish! Characters keep promising that it is the end but it never is the end! The story just keeps going and going!

World's End #19 Rating: -2 Ranking. Why won't Earth-2 just fucking burn already?!

Batman Eternal #45

[INSERT CAPTION HERE]

[EXPLAIN WEBSITE CHANGE OF OWNERSHIP HERE]

Hey. You people. This is Batman Eternal and shit. I'm your new bloghost or whatever, Derek "Fat Wallet" Markham. You can call me Fat Wallet because it's a nickname I thought up for myself due to my fat wallet full of cash and credit cards. I saw the money making capabilities of this website and bought it off of that fat fuck Grunion Guy. Man, what an idiot. I can't believe people enjoyed his blarting. Blarting is a cool word I made up. It's a combination of "blathering" and "sharting."

[MAKE FUNNY JOKES/SATANIC CHANTS/OBSERVATIONS/PROPAGANDA AS YOU READ. INTERSPERSE WITH SCANS FROM THE COMIC.]

Before I start this whole review thing or whatever, go purchase this lovely gift for the lonely Batman nerd in your life:

Batman Lunch Box

So the comic book begins with some tar baby versions of Martha and Jonathan Wayne bubbling out of the runway tarmac.

I got a real pain in the ass editor over here called my fucking wife and she's saying I can't use the term "tar baby" to describe these monsters formed out of fucking tar. How can I be descriptive if I can't describe exactly what is fucking happening? Get off my back, will ya?!

Batman beats up the tar monsters (there, are you fucking happy?). One of them is some dude named Mister Bygone. He's like some guy from The Cure or something, all sad and pale and shit. Batman punches him in the mouth and he crumples to the ground like a fucking pussy. Then Batman tries to save Milo from having a heart attack while the fucking Gotham Port Authority decides to put on their big boy britches and act like they're fucking heroes instead of what they really are: scumsucking lazy union leeches grifting their way into retirement.

Speaking of grifting, how about purchasing this super cool Grifter figurine for your writing desk at home? It probably gets as much use as my wife's writing desk I bought her for Christmas five years ago. Gonna write children's books, my ass. The longest thing she's written so far is a note bitching at me to clean up the fucking garage. And the only fiction she's ever written were her fucking wedding vows.

Super cool Grifter figurine!

Meanwhile some black guy in a bat suit is battling some Amityville Horror shit. I thought when them blacks saw a ghost, they just fucking took off the other way? Ain't it usually them white fucks that get their asses killed by ghosts cause they got no sense to get out when the staying in is terrifyingly scary? My mother just used ta live with weird ghost shit no matter what was going on. She'd hear some cupboards rattling and just yell out, "Hey! Quiet it down in there! I'm trying to watch Jeopardy in here! You ain't wanna make me get Presbyter Alexandro in here to make you quiet, enh?!" I don't even know who the fuck this Presbyter Alexandro fucking was. But it seemed a problem didn't exist that this fucker couldn't solve. It was always "Presbyter Alexandro this!" and "Presbyter Alexandro that!"

Some spooky guy named Jim Corrigan drops by this Luke Fox's house to talk about ghosts. Then they meet up with Batman in a cemetery to talk about what this Milo character knows.

Damn. I guess I ain't got no fucking Batman in a cemetery product tie-in to sell.

This Corrigan guy interrogated Milo before he knocked him out with one fucking punch. He learned he cast some kind of dream spell after some dream bird, an Owl or something, spoke to him and told him to fuck up Gotham real good with fucked up black magic and shit. But he still ain't the guy responsible for Batman's fucking headache.

Some chick named Harper tells this other chick named Spoiler that she kind of likes her. Now that comic book idea would be a money making monster. Chick super heroes fucking each other for twenty or thirty pages. But it would have to be online because who buys over the counter pornography anymore? It's fucking free on the internet. So the money would come from advertising shit like sex toys and more porn sites. If you want to get rich, some rich person I knew always said, you got to get your dick dirty. So why am I wasting my time buying up shitty little comic book sites like this? It may have a lot of eyeballs but what the fuck kind of eyeballs are they, right? They're kids and cheapskates, probably. And I'm supposed to keep up this shit two or three times a day just to advertise crappy comic book related trinkets? Fuck this. This is a lot of fucking work. Goddamned wife was right this time. "You ain't never gonna put no work in that shitty little site, you'll see! You like buying shit that might make you fucking money but you hate putting in the work." Yeah, yeah. Look who's fucking talking, woman.

That's the trick with making good fucking money on internet porn. Keeping your site clean of them fucking computer viruses! Those fuckers'll cost you money quicker than new perverts can find your site!

Some internet porn moguls think it's a good fucking idea to steal information with viruses. But I say it's better to make steady money honestly, month after month, than to try to get a lot of dishonest cash fucking quickly by abusing customers. Customers are king for a reason, fuckheads!

Finally, Batman decides that Ra's al Ghul must be behind the problems Gotham has been experiencing lately. So he's got to go beat his fucking ass and show him who the fucking boss of everything is.

Batman Eternal #45 Rating: [RAISE RANKS ON SNYDER/SOULE/SIMONE/FLETCHER/TOMASI BOOKS. LOWER RANK ON LOBDELL/BUNN/NOCENTI BOOKS. FLIP COIN FOR ALL OTHERS] Fuck this fucking shit. That fucking no-life Grunion Guy can have this site back for fifty percent off. What kind of chump is that guy? Who puts in this much work for no fucking money? That guy must have the skinniest wallet in America. That's his new fucking nickname. Skinniest Wallet. Har har! Fuck that guy. Fat Wallet out!

Futures End #41

Mister Terrific might be the world's third smartest man but his juggling technique is terrible.

At times, I feel like Alexander Pope,
Ranting and raving and having lost hope
That readers have any brains left at all.
The stories they love just fill me with gall.
Books just need to star a hero adored,
To be treated as if a gift from the Lord.
Critics heap praise on the worst ever made,
Hoping for blurbs on the front of the trade.
"A visual spectacle!" writes CBR
On piss running down the back of the bar.
"Gutsy change of pace!" I guess that describes
Nocenti's Catwoman without any lies.
But "Well-done...inviting" for J.T. Krul's
Short work on Green Arrow? What are we? Fools?
"Exceptional" for Lobdell's Titans Teen?
Crave Online, that blurb is almost obscene.
IGN's Superboy quote, "lotta fun,"
Must have been written at the point of a gun.
And now I've begun to feel like a dope,
Because I've remembered I fucking hate Pope.

I don't hate Lois Lane but boy do I hate the way she's portrayed sometimes.

Who does Lois Lane fucking think she is and what does she think journalism is all about? This isn't a story that only she can break. This is the kind of story she should avoid because every fucking hack is going to write a piece on the destruction of New York by a gigantic robot and his pink balls. Does she believe she's the only journalist with something important to say? That she's the only one that's going to have some kind of insightful spin on this disaster? Why is her stupid fucking blog the main thing on her mind while the city is being destroyed and her life is in danger? I guess if I were a Writer's Writer, I'd get all pretentious about how writers truly observe shit and how they see things in microscopic details that others miss and a whole bunch of other self-congratulatory bullshit that writers love to write about when they can't think of anything else to write. How many of Lois's blog entries begin, "Being a writer allows me to...blah blah blah." Fuck you!

Being a writer, I understand that I could come up with literally one or two words other than "fuck" when swearing. But, being a writer, I pick and choose my words carefully. And anybody that thinks "fuck" can be overused can go fuck themselves right in their fucking fuckholes.

Meanwhile, Superman, who is also a writer, flies in to save New York while not thinking, "I can't wait to tweet this shit all over my social blogosphere!" He does not think, "Lois Lane is going to be so pissed when Clark scoops her on this story! She'll be all, 'Superman flew in to save the day!' And Clark will be all, 'Superman, having been making a living farming in Africa since the end of the Earth-2 Wars, learned of a threat against Manhattan from a smarmy English Bloke named John Constantine, who smelled of corn chips and stale cigarettes. Superman told me that while he was flying into battle, he was thinking, "I can't wait to tell my story to Clark Kent because he always picks exactly the right words to make the reader feel as if they were there in the heart of the action. Unlike that hack Lois Lane!"'" No, you know what? He probably was thinking exactly that.

Meanwhile in space, Hawkman flies into Mega-Brainiac's spaceship and realizes this guy doesn't just collect worlds!

He collects universes! I mean, he collects fucking universes!

Of course Donna Troy is front and center because she's one of the best symbols about how DC's penchant for "fixing" their universe always creates just as many problems as the fix was expected to solve. Also pictured in Mega-Brainiac's Universe Collection? Adam West's Batman! It's now DC Canon, people! Adam West Batman is just as real as Frank Miller's Dark Knight! And you know what that means, right? Julie Newmar's Catwoman is now the hottest Catwoman in all of DC's canon versions of Catwoman!

Also featured: Ambush Bug! Because fuck yeah, that's why!

Also featured: Harbinger, Pariah, and Lady Quark because we're going to need some Anti-Monitor nonsense to really spice this shit up.

Also featured: Legion of Super-heroes and the Justice Society because that shit will need to come back because people miss it for some reason.

Hawkman comes face to face with Shayera and then gets the multiverses knocked out of him.

I was once hit this hard which is why I have no other future possibilities other than writing commentaries on DC Comics.

Mister Terrific watches Manhattan engulfed in a pink dome as Mega-Brainiac taunts him. Mega-Brainiac thinks Mister Terrific is dumbfounded by the sheer magnitude of Mega-Brainiac's destruction but he's wrong. Mister Terrific is merely thinking about how this is totally fucking up the uSphere's launch.

Mega-Brainiac also discusses omnipotence and he totally gets it! It's what I've been saying forever! Both ways forever! Because I'm sure this won't be the last time I say it!

See? I wrote this back in Wonder Woman #25: "I pointed out that if you're omnipotent, you would experience all things and all times as one quick and furious "now" moment. Omnipotence would make immortality a brief experience." I couldn't find where I originally mused about it since it's hard to sort through over two thousand commentaries. It was probably in one with Scott Lobdell's Oracle character though.

So Bruce interrupts Mister Terrific's conversation with Mega-Brainiac while Plastique and Tim Drake explore the rest of the building.

McG? Oh! She means Terry McBatman! It's hard keeping characters straight when the characters don't call each other by the names I made up for them.

Polaris, Shazaperman, and Firestorm teleport down to Manhattan to battle Baby Mega-Brainiac because Superman is out of shape, cramped up, and fell into the bay. Now the Justice League has to call on all the heroes (and probably villains) everywhere to help battle this new cosmic threat! Too bad this wasn't Marvel because all of the heroes and villains would already be in Manhattan ready to fight. But being DC, the heroes and villains have to travel from all over the world to join the fight.

They're unable to stop Baby Mega-Brainiac from hooking up his Manhattan Transfer to Mega-Brainiac in orbit. But they still have thirteen minutes before the connection is complete because that's like some kind of Super Villain Union Rule. You can't immediately defeat the good guys. You have to give them a fighting chance. Although during the transfer, Ray Palmer is obliterated by the same Pink Multiuniversal light that disintegrated Hawkman. Or did it? They probably just got transferred into Convalescence earlier than the rest of the New 52 Universe.

Futures End #41 Rating: +2 Ranking. Things are really ramping up nicely now that Convocation is nearly here! Plus two super heroes "died" this issue! Isn't that what this stupid book is supposed to be about? Heroes dying because it's an elseworld's story in which writers can kill heroes willy-nilly?! That's what I was expecting, anyway. And I've been sorely disappointed so far! Almost as disappointed in the same lack of deaths over in Suicide Squad.

Oh! And in the Next Issue Mural: Tara Markov! Preboot version! You know, the only version that matters!