Black Canary #9

What the fuck is that chain attached to?

Rating: I have a complex relationship with this comic book (if you define "complex" as "simple and petty" (which I totally do)). It's currently 32 of 51 and I'm dropping it two ranks to 34 of 51 because several issues ago, DC published it with only sixteen pages of content. Unless I feel like giving it the benefit of the doubt for the two pages that were just that Burnside Fanzine! But I don't! So DC still owes me for four pages of comic book! Until they make good on the debt, I have no other option than to lower the ranking of this comic book month after month. Even if I love Moritat's artwork!

• Black Canary took a weird time travel turn an issue or two ago. And then it did some thing where Dinah was now battling her aunt or something in Germany. It's hard to remember because I haven't been keeping adequate notes on the comic books I've been reading lately. Which is why I need these bullet points! Because I'm fucking old and can't remember anything, okay?! Plus I don't have the fanatical need to know everything about every character that I enjoy reading about. Not that Black Canary fits into that category. I mean, I do know an awful lot about Sailor Moon and Vampire Tig and Maps Mizoguchi. Not in a fan way! In a desperately weird way that I'm going to pretend isn't sexual at all.

• The artist forgot to draw the microphone.

• The previous picture looks like something an adult would be overly proud of having colored.

• After that first page, the comic begins "two hours earlier." Why? Why not just skip that page with Black Canary's face that says nothing and means nothing and simply begin the comic book at the "two hours earlier" part but say "Now"? This is the kind of shit that somebody should be giving TED Talks on! Stop fucking wasting the first few pages of a comic book by having some kind of exciting bullshit splash page that's just going to be repeated later when the story finally gets around to that part of itself. Black Canary has wasted more pages than any comic book DC has released in The New 52.

• The last bullet point reminded me that this comic book still owes me four pages. I forgot I'm giving it negative rankings until I either get a refund on the comic book that was short four pages or DC adds four more pages to one of these comic books.

• I should also mention that this comic book has fallen behind schedule. It's so unprofessional!

• This issue is a flashback story because the creative team must want to watch the world burn. Get your act together and make a deadline, assholes! Now I have to read some other creative team's take on Black Canary in their early days (which was about three weeks ago, I think?)! At least Moritat is the artist. I love Moritat.

Oh, I'm so fucking impressed! You know all the words to four fucking songs! Wow! Impressive!

• Sometimes I get really snotty with fictional characters.

• Why would the guest writer of Black Canary mock the kinds of fans who probably love the comic book Black Canary? That seems counterproductive! Like pissing in the wind! I mean an upwind wind. Pissing in a downwind wind is all kinds of cool.

• Pissing in the wind isn't actually a good example of something that is counterproductive. That's just an example of my bad writing skills.

• Black Canary is playing a teenaged girl's birthday party because they're really popular but not so popular as to be uncool and mainstream but just popular enough to have rabid fans and also not so popular that they can't pass up a birthday gig.

• Tobias Whale shows up because he's creepily attending teenaged girls' birthday parties. So Black Canary tries to kick him in his fat face. I approve.

• He literally has a fat face so fuck you if you're insulted by that, you fat facers.

• I just reread that last bullet point and I think I hurt my own feelings.

• Black Canary finds out that little Julia is Carmine Falcone's granddaughter. I was wondering why Algebra Madden had an "F" on her belt buckle! I thought it stood for "Fuck me in my fat face."

• Her face isn't literally fat so that was probably uncalled for. It's a little bit chubby because that's Moritat's style. But it makes her fat face so much more fuckable.

• "Fucking faces" sounds like just about the sexiest thing in the whole world. After carrot cake.

• Other creepy male adult motherfuckers who go to teenaged girls' birthday parties? Professor Pyg. Hugo Strange. Black Mask. Me.

• This is an appropriate reaction to somebody trying to chat you up.

• To be fair, the guy in the above caption is probably a criminal and a murderer. To be a different kind of fair, my caption for the above photo doesn't have to be read sarcastically. I bet some people totally didn't even read it that way the first time!

• Black Canary discovers that a bunch of assassins were hired to kill the teenaged girl at her own birthday party. That's the second worst thing to happen to a teenaged girl's birthday party! The worst is when her parents insist on chaperoning!

• Black Canary sticks around to stop all of the hitmen while she sings and dances.

• See! See! I knew the artist forgot the microphone!

• One of the hitmen is the boy Julia the teenaged girl has a crush on. When Dinah kicks his ass, Julia decides she hates Black Canary. That's fine! Black Canary is totally an old person's band anyway. Life is so over at 26.

• Black Canary doesn't get paid and she accepts that bullshit because she's tired of kicking people in the face, I guess.

• This story is called "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want". That sentence doesn't describe quite how sour the look on my face is having to type it.

Martian Manhunter #10

Pornographic.

Rating: No change. It's still 15th of 51 DC Comics. I mean, it kind of is. It's stumbled a lot but I've been wanting to like it so it's remained rated fairly high even if I don't think it's actually this good. But it wants to be this good! And shouldn't we reward people for the things they want to do rather than for the things they actually do? I mean, not everybody. I want to murder people sometimes but I don't and I don't to be rewarded for murder! And by that I mean reverse-rewarded. Which is, you know, punished! Besides, this issue took some sorely needed steps in explaining what the fuck has been going on! I think. I might still be confused a little bit.

• Remember when Martian Manhunter killed himself a few issues into this series? I think it should have ended then.

• Not that some nice scenes haven't taken place since then. But in hindsight, more harm has been done than good. It's like some people enjoy a number of episodes of The X-Files in the fifth season and beyond but let's face facts. The series should have ended after the fourth season with Mulder killing himself while Dana was dying of cancer. It's not the most upbeat ending but it makes perfect sense when the show is read as Mulder and Scully being two halves of a single brain. Just end with Scully, the logical half (even though she believes in God. That's too long a discussion for a bullet point), dying which causes Mulder, the emotional half, to spiral out of control eventually leading to suicide. Even before the fifth season began, I was trumpeting the pros of ending the series after "Gethsemane".

• Earth and the recently resurrected Living Mars are going to collide in two hours. That sentence sounds final. Maybe I should have typed, "This comic book thinks I'm a stupid douchebag who actually feels tension over the possibility of the Earth being destroyed by Mars in two hours. How about presenting a dilemma that actually might result in disaster because it wouldn't end the entire company's comic book line by destroying Earth-Main-Earth!"

• Daryl, the hunter part of Martian Manhunter (also a man part!), must convince a childish Martian to return the Living Mars to the past so that Earth can live. But the child is petulant and won't do it. I say hit him! Is there an ornamental wooden spoon hanging on the wall nearby? That's what I would have been hit with! And I deserved it too! Because I was a mal Niño! Mal niño!

• The child Martian was once J'onn's boy. He's decided that everybody should know a little bit more about themselves before they die. Why? The information they gain right before they die is wasted information! Even if it's just to sate their curiosity, what good is a sated curiosity when your curiosity no longer exists?!

• I suppose anything to pass the time before death that isn't extremely painful or sports-related is a decent way to spend a few of one's finite moments. And I wouldn't pass up hearing the Answer to the Question of The Life, The Universe, and Everything even if I was going to die immediately after hearing it. I mean, I would pass up that knowledge if hearing the answer was the reason for me dying immediately! Fuck that! I'd rather remain in the dark! Which I'm, you know, already comfortable with anyway.

• The child's story about J'onn is, I suspect, an allegory meant to enlighten human readers! I feel insulted! Admittedly not as insulted as I felt reading the Green Arrow comics by Benjamin Percy!

• The Martians were sent a warning that they were being assholes and that it was going to destroy the planet. So most of the Martians doubled down on assholery thinking it would save them. You know. Like Americans are doing. See? Allegory!

• But J'onn was a poet! He was the conscience of Mars! He was that fucking stupid ass voice in your head that tells you not to steal your cousin's underwear and wear it around under your jeans because the material felt so silky smooth on your nether parts. Stupid voice. Don't tell me what to do!

• Ma'alefa'ak does some technopagan magic and turns J'onn and some other Martians into the Martian Manhunter. He's sent to destroy the threat to the planet. But the threat to the planet was the Martians themselves, remember?! So instead he goes off to threaten the messenger! Which was Mars! OH! IRONY!

• Mister Biscuits tries to convince Mars that it should let everybody live and return to Earth. But Mars is all, "I don't know! You're so ugly!" And Mister Biscuits is all, "No! Not anymore! See! Normal face! Totally normal!" And then Ma'alefa'ak is all, "FUCK EVERYTHING!"

See? Fuck everything!

Green Arrow #50

This scene has "ends in a blow job" written all over it.

Rating: -1 Ranking to fall to 45 out of 51 DC Comics. That translates to "shit you'll regret wasting your time on on your deathbed." I don't mind wasting my time reading Green Arrow so I can warn other people away from it. I have much worse things than my comic book choices which I'll be regretting on the day of my death.

• Recently in Green Arrow, Benjamin Percy has been writing shitty morality tales trying to get the attention of the Tumblr audience. I guess he doesn't have enough people shitting all over the things he writes. Sure, he's got me! And everybody who comments on my Green Arrow posts. And probably more people outside the sphere of my attention (which, admittedly, isn't very big because I'm only concerned with things that affect me). Ben has made Green Arrow into a clueless rich white heterosexual male (I mean, he was already those things! But I've added the "clueless" part to describe Ben's Ollie plus some more stuff that I'll continue with after this parenthetical reference ends) who is learning all about his privilege and about being a minority. Is he learning this lesson by helping make his city a better place for those who have had the hardest time? Is he learning the lesson by reaching out to advocacy groups to find out how he can help? Is he searching his soul for things he can do with his advantages to help others? No. He's simply contracted Werewolf AIDS and suddenly knows what it feels like to be discriminated against.

• That was a long bullet point! I'm not sure if it qualifies as a bullet point if it's just a paragraph about stuff.

• Green Arrow is into eating testicles.

• Some people actually came back to reading Green Arrow monthly when Percy took over the writing. Ha ha. That's funny. I wish I had stopped reading it after J.T. Krul's first issue. It's only been 49 issues of downhill since then!

• The Wargs (as a non-lupine human, should I be using that word?) are spreading their wolfy disease all over the city by donating their blood to blood banks and/or payday lenders.

• The guy who owns all the Blood Pawn Shops is about 130 years old. He must be the bad guy because he's an old, rich, white male.

• Henry Fyff is too fat to find a sweatshirt which covers his stomach. Ha ha! Fat people are so funny! He's not constantly eating yet in this issue but I'm pretty sure that's something he does. Because he's fat. I mean, skinny people eat too. But they eat so little that it usually happens off-panel.

• Henry Fyff has reprogrammed a racist drone for Green Arrow's use.

• Apparently people want to destroy whatever is different.

• People want to believe the world is worse than it really is so they seek out news that confirms their beliefs. This is why the internet is crap. Anybody can find every reason in the world to make them believe everything is going to shit. If I were in charge of search engines, it wouldn't matter what topic a person put in because my search engine would just return pornography.

• Doctor Miracle is some guy that travels the world healing people while sad music plays. His blood cures whatever ails somebody. So of course everybody wants a piece of it. Even if they think he's a witch. I mean, do you want to die or do you want witch blood all up inside of you?

• Green Arrow admires the Wargs' plan of infecting everybody. "There's no more hate if you erase the differences between us," he says. Oh yeah? Well remember when Anthrax said if we were all blind and had no choice, would we hate each other by the tone of our voice? Schism! Sch-sch-sch-schism!

• Lately, the ethical dilemmas in the Green Arrow comic book have been laughably simple. "If the Wargs infected everybody, it would be a big party because nobody would be angry about being infected at all! They'd just join Team Dog! Did you also know that being racist is wrong? You know what else is bad? Violent cops! I know, I know! I'm being super controversial here! But it has to be said!"

• The Masked Presidents (it's a metaphor for their racism, see? White males in power!) arrive at the blood bank that Ollie is investigating and begin pissing on the werewolves' motorcycles. That's a metaphor too!

That isn't all you want at all! You want to infect everybody in Seattle! Also, you're not "my people"! You're just a bunch of dissimilar individuals who all have the same disease! Talk about a needy bunch of assholes desperate to belong! But then, I guess they are dog people.

• When is Green Arrow going to stop the fighting and say something wise like "Both sides are wrong! We need to come together and stop being so wrong! Let's be right! Together!"

• Green Arrow doesn't know what to do because he can see both sides! So wise!

• Don't you hate people who constantly claim they can see both sides of an issue and refuse to take a side simply because they want to seem more open-minded than the next person? I hate those guys!

• Ollie doesn't play hero because he doesn't completely agree with either side and decides that whatever violence they do to each other is deserved. What a baby.

• Since Ollie doesn't know what to do, he decides he needs a good dose of Youthsplaining. Emiko tells him what's what! Oh, those modern teenagers! So wise! Did I use "wise" correctly? It means "being somebody you aren't and doing things you probably wouldn't do because it's how everybody else seems to be doing it and living in constant fear of being ostracized from your group for saying one wrong thing" right? Oh wait! That's peer pressure! Teenagers have always been victims of that! But now peer pressure is causing them to be self-righteous a-holes!

• Oliver decides to live as a werewolf because being simply Green Arrow was way too fucking boring. I mean, it worked for like sixty years or something. Just like how Aquaman didn't work for decades until Cullen Bunn came along and made him into a totally different character with tons of magic powers and a weapon that could be anything! So much better than a guy who can speak with fish!

• Deathstork arrives to make this comic book more exciting (just in case Green Werewolf wasn't doing it for you).

• Deathstork is trying out for Strictly Come Dancing.

• Deathstork is hunting the Miracle Worker to save the really old man's life. Green Arrow decides to follow Deathstork because...I don't know. I guess Henry Fyff figured it all out or something. I may have missed a few pages and didn't bother to check because who the fuck can care about this comic book?

• Deathstork's name not only has "stork" in it, Emiko, but "death" as well. Did you not notice that part?

• Oliver says Deathstork's kill count is like the number of stars in the sky or the number of grains of sand on a beach. Wrong. It's actually only about 943.

• Ollie, Emiko, and George get shot out of the sky over Africa by Deathstork while hunting for Doctor Miracle. I bet they wind up working together!

• The mayor of Seattle decides to put the Wargs in camps. Oh my god! Like concentration camps! I'm so outraged! I mean, I would be if I had never heard of the concept of quarantining.

Robin, Son of Batman #10

Having wings that are an extra set of limbs is just weird. It's insectile!

Rating: Unchanged at 8 of 51 DC Comics. That means it's a decent way to spend a few minutes of your finite life. You know, if you're not busy doing something important like curing cancer or perfecting a Super Mario Speed Run.

• Does Batman disapprove of bullet points? Does he call them Bat-Dots? He probably shapes them like little bats, doesn't he?

• Robin has been trying to prove that he's not a disappointment. You know the kinds of people who worry about being disappointments? People with demanding father figures! I may or may not be a disappointment. Don't know. Don't care!

• The Robin of the title is Damian Wayne (just to clarify in case a Marvel Comics fan wandered in to this blog on accident. Although why the fuck am I clarifying that when, if they didn't know it, they're only going to have a boatload of butts more questions about it! Like "Who the fuck is Damian Wayne?" And "People actually like the Robin character?" And "What is the phone number I call to get this kid killed?"). Some people like Damian Wayne and other people don't like Damian Wayne. There are tons of other options but why should I list them all?

• Don't you hate when people say they're the kind of person that people either love or hate? They're so right! I hate them all.

• Robin has a new little friend named Maya. I think. Her non-secret identity is Nobody. She's a little cutie pat-her-booty. Is that how the saying goes? I'm also just going to assume that she's of the appropriate age to think of as a sexual being, depending, logically, what country she's in. I'm also reminding myself that she's fictional so she actually is an object and I don't have to worry about treating her like a real person. In other words, Nobody is a sex object. Powerful!

• Damian has returned to Gotham to hang out with his pets while the Son of Lu'un Darga has been resurrected by Damian's efforts to fix the things he broke during the Year of Blood. This is a common theme in comic books. The villain always has to be some kind of twisted reflection of the hero. Although, as of yet, I'm not sure which son is the hero in this story.

• I'm fairly certain Machiavelli came up with this quote while playing chess with a seven year old.

• People who are oft quoted aren't necessarily the geniuses the people quoting them think they are. They're just people who have been so oft quoted that other people think they should read the things those people wrote and then quote them to seem intelligent. If I were quoted more often, I'd totally be quoted more often! Somebody should quote me on that.

• The title of this issue is "Son is Rising." This marks the 18,000th time that that pun has been used as a title in a comic book. Probably. I'll fact check that later.

• Why did co-creator of Batman Bill Finger go by the name Bill? Do you think he introduced himself to single ladies as "Will Finger"?

• I sometimes wish I were female simply so I could wear this exact outfit. I would probably spontaneously orgasm from feeling so sexy. I mean, I suppose this outfit is just a sheet with a rope cinching the waist. I might be assuming that women feel sexy all of the time no matter what they're wearing because I've relegated them to being sex objects. I mean, the fictional ones, of course! Ha ha.

• I watched last night's Walking Dead today. There was a scene where Rosita is pulling up her pants and it shows her bare belly and upper pubic area. The scene begins with that shot and the viewer doesn't know it's Rosita. My first thought was "That's a really sexy shot of Carl putting on his jeans." Seriously. I thought it was Carl.

• Some people might not think I'm a feminist because I still joke about treating women like sex objects. On the other hand, I'm reading comic books which are 85% treating women as sex objects. So you just have to laugh about it! Remember that shot in Deathstroke of Rose's dead female friend? Remember how sexual it was? That's pretty much comic books. Even when they're corpses, women need to look fuckable.

• Damian has taken a trip to Bald Headed Mexican, Mexico. That's a reference to Leave it to Beaver.

• In the earlier seasons, Leave it to Beaver had more continuity problems than DC's New 52.

• Oh! I was supposed to be writing a bullet point about Robin in Mexico. He's gone there to save the world! Meanwhile, Maya's beach in Bronisia is being attacked by Jet-Skiing Ninjas.

• I guess Robin would have been upset if somebody else returned the thing he stole during the Year of Blood. It's his Year of Redemption! Not some artifact stealing thief's!

• Robin didn't know the kind of chaos he was causing by returning the items he stole during the Year of Blood. But now he seems to know that returning certain items will cause all kinds of chaos. Well, one specific kind of chaos which is the end of the world.

• Talia is the leader of the ninjas attacking Maya. Is it weird that I want Talia and Maya to kiss? I hope the next DC movie is Talia vs Maya. Then I know it's okay to want them to kiss because that's all I see people hoping for in Batman vs Superman.

• Talia's yacht is called the Hunky Dory. I don't think she has the sense of humor to own a yacht like that. There's a reason she fell in love with that sourpuss Batman.

• Talia, like Damian, is trying to stop the three artifacts stolen from Damian's vault from being returned to their rightful, world-ending places.

• Damian's thematic doppelganger (and quite possibly his literal doppelganger!) is headed to the next location: Gorilla City! Oh man! I hope next issue is called "Gorilla Warfare"!

Batman and Robin Eternal #24

Is this the issue where Azrael is not just killed but wiped out of DC Continuity completely and forever?!

Rating: No change. When Rebirth happens, I'm going to change my ratings system! I'm going to be like everybody else and say things like, "8 out of 10 erect phalluses! The writer used dozens of different words, the artist's characters were all easily differentiated from one another (you know. Like in the way Charlie Adlard or Steve Dillon's characters aren't!), and the colorist really used a lot of colors!"

• Bullet points are really fucking useful!

• If this were a business, I would be super succeeding based on my new ability to use bullet points!

• Since last time I used bullet points, I've realized that I'm not typing in German so the noun "bullet points" does not need to be capitalized.

• Is "bullet" part of the noun "bullet points" or just the adjective describing what kind of amazing business points I'm making? I assume they're called bullet points because they're fucking killer.

• Robin has hardly appeared at all in this story which seems weird for a comic book calling itself "Batman and Robin Eternal."

• • • Does using three bullet points indicate an extra important bullet point or is it a kind of bullet point ellipsis?

• This issue is called "All Out" so I'm assuming DC has finally decided to make all of their characters gay. They might lose a lot of older fans who will tell you to your face that they're not being homophobic but respecting traditional comic book storytelling while they'll gain a lot of younger fans who will torrent all of their shit because why the fuck not?

• I could actually tell you why the fuck not in this bullet point but nobody who torrents shit is reading this because it's both a wall of text and not something that they should have had to pay for and are now getting for free. If it's free to start with, why fucking bother?

• Oh! I bet I can answer that question too! But nobody wants to hear what another white heterosexual male thinks except for the white heterosexual male thinking the things. I know I'm super interested in the things I'm going to be thinking about Batman and Robin Eternal #24! I can't wait until I finally start thinking them!

You're beating on children all over the world! I think Mother has already won! Hell, "beating on" would be compassionate! Red Hood is fucking shooting them!

• Twelve cities around the world are being taken over by children. One of those cities, Tokyo, has fallen! I bet it's because the kids got their courage up by drinking beers out of vending machines on the street. Can you imagine if cities in America had beer in vending machines?! Those machines would be in the backs of teenagers' pick-up trucks all over the country!

This is a fitting image because there's a graveyard just across the street from Tokyo Tower. I climbed the wall to get pictures! Japanese people pretended they didn't see because seeing somebody break the rules is practically breaking the rules yourself.

This is it! I think! Maybe I should have labeled my pics from Asia.

• The Bat-family members are finally shutting down the Icthys receivers because the series is almost over.

• It's kind of a big joke that Midnighter isn't getting to beat up on little kids because he has to man the communication center. But for a kid who was abused and experimented on, I'm fairly certain he doesn't want to beat up a bunch of innocent kids being manipulated by Mother.

• I probably should have been more cynical with my last bullet point. I don't want to get a reputation for taking comic books seriously.

• My downstairs neighbor seems to be learning to play the ukulele. I suppose it's better than practicing being a DJ. Barely.

• To prepare the world to be strong enough to survive a massacre, Mother massacres the world so they'll be strong enough to survive a massacre. I don't think Mother has truly thought her plan through.

• Mother tries to convince Harper to cut her ties and become the weapon she was meant to be. Does Mother know about Harper's brother Cullen? If so, she wouldn't trust that she's turning Harper to her side. I think Harper might be kicking Mother's ass soon.

• How satisfying is the phrase "kicking Mother's ass" to you? No? Just me?

• Azrael arrives and commands Dick to join his side. Dick should join Azrael's side because they both want the same thing but I won't blame Dick if he chooses not to join Azrael. I wouldn't join Azrael if he offered me one million blow jobs. I mean dollars. I'd probably join for the blow jobs.

• I'd rather get a hand job than a blow job because I like to imagine my own hands beating me off. Oh wait. That's just masturbating. That's what I like.

• Dick wants Mother in a courtroom. Azrael wants mother in a coffin. So I guess they don't want the same thing.

• Mother sends out a super ninja orphan to fight each member of the Bat-family. Midnighter sends Spoiler to Tokyo because she's the most like Sailor Moon. Except in purple. So Sailor Saturn, I guess.

When I was in high school, I dreamed about this kind of armpit to vagina contact with females!

• Mother offers Cassandra up to Harper to kill. How much of a genius can Mother truly be if she thinks Harper is going to murder a helpless Cassandra instead of turning the blade on Mother? I suppose this is where that whole pride comes before a fall nonsense comes in.

• A lot of people have serious doubts about Batman Loves Superman: Dawn of Just Us because--let's face it--it looks ridiculous. But you know the moment in the preview when I rolled my eyes and made the wanking off gesture? When Lex Luthor does the voice over about power corrupting. Aren't writers tired of using the same old fucking cliches in everything they write? Here's a twist: sometimes power doesn't corrupt! You know why it usually seems to corrupt? Because, generally, only corrupt assholes seek power! People who aren't corrupt? Couldn't give a fuck about being powerful.

Okay, I want you to admit it if you're the one person who actually finds this moment tense! We all know what's going to fucking happen here! Harper is going to free Cassandra and they're going to go in the corner and fingerbang.

Detective Comics #50

This gives me a great idea for an installation in downtown Portland!

Rating: Does it even matter at this point? I rate this issue a "Well, fuck it. Rebirth and renumbering are coming soon! Enjoy whatever the hell is left of the DC Youniverse, assholes!"

Batman must hate bullet points, right? Well, fuck you, Batman! Bullet point time!

Although this is James Gordon's Batman and James doesn't have an aversion to guns. At least not before he became Batman and suddenly he had to use a gun that shoots Batarangs. Remember those guns we had in the seventies that shot little discs out of it? Nowadays people might think those are too dangerous for kids to play with but it's not like they were proper choking hazards. The discs had lots of holes in them so you could breathe through them when they lodged in your throat.

This was the best toy ever! Kids today are pussies because their toy guns only shoot Nerf discs and at a much lower velocity than these discs traveled. Also they probably have to wear helmets when shooting Nerf discs at each other. And they probably have to be supervised by at least one parent (of every child! You're an irresponsible parent if you trust your child's safety to another parent). It's not the fault of the kids that they're pussies today. It's the kids of my generation who became overprotective parents that have turned the world into a giant game of Bumper Bowling.

Okay, I think I said something about Bullet Points earlier! Here we go!

• Commissioner Batman is currently hunting a killer who dresses up in historical costumes to murder people also dressed in historical outfits. He also takes one of their bones because I'm guessing he's building a wacky skeleton for his Murder Room. But the killer doesn't have free rein to choose any historical figure he'd like! Nope! He has to use a figure based on one of the many statues of historical people located around Gotham. I think that's because he needed to use the statues in his mask making process.

I don't really know how bullet points work so I'm just going to be using them as a way to ease myself out of one thought and into another thought without needing some kind of a segue. Except for right now where I'm over-explaining things! Because that last Bullet Point was the "Here's what's been happening! Now we're all caught up! Give yourselves a round of applause!" Bullet Point. Now I'm moving on to the "Here's what happened this month in Detective Comics that might be important to remember next month!" Bullet Points.

• Don't you hate when you're trying to read your comic book and the protective Mylar bag gets stuck to your arm and you flip the fuck out like a cat with a piece of tape on its paw? So annoying!

• Detective Bullock might want to try a bigger hat size. Although I don't wear hats so maybe that's how they're supposed to fit?

• I hope the Unicode for the Bullet Points actually appears as a Bullet Point! I mean, it is called "Unicode" which I think means it's a universal code and should work across all coded platforms in the universe. But I can't help but think I'd feel more secure if it were called Omnicode.

• Detective Bullock thinks that chess is played with rocks.

• James Gordon is shit at solving mysteries. Bruce would have wrapped this up during his morning bowel movement.

• The Bronze Age Killer's next victim is a dog. Does Gotham City have a statue honoring Ace the Bathound?

• Detective work in Gotham consists mainly of beating the shit out of people and then believing everything they've said when they really just said what would stop the shit getting beaten out of them. This is how I know the majority of people in the world are unthinking idiots. Because they still believe torture works. They believe lie detectors are accurate. They believe people don't get manipulated into giving false confessions. They believe eye witnesses are as reliable as filmed footage. And they don't believe police won't falsify evidence to support what the police believe are accurate assumptions about the guilt of a suspect. Remember when Mark Fuhrman was accused of planting evidence in the OJ Simpson trial? Remember how most of white America put their hands to their mouths in shocked disbelief that anybody could think that? I'm not speculating on the guilt or innocence of Simpson but I have no doubt that it's a strong possibility Fuhrman planted that evidence. Not because he wanted to frame OJ. But because he actually believed OJ did it and was just trying to help the case. I never really thought too much on it until Netflix's Making A Murderer. After watching that, I've come to the conclusion that every case ever brought to an American Court should be thrown out! Clean slates all around! Give everybody a certificate showing they've done their time, tell them to be better, slap them on the ass, and send them out the front gates! With a little positive reinforcement, I think we can all be on our best behavior from here on out! Let's do this!

• The Bronze Age Killer didn't really try too hard on this one, did he? Where are the historically accurate dog sled reins? Where are the boxes of diphtheria antitoxin? Where is the cease and desist notices from Stephen Spielberg?

• I didn't really think much about the Bronze Age Killer up until the point he killed the dog. Now I despise him. Go ahead and kill people. Most of them will eventually prove themselves to be worthless anyway. But a fucking animal? Come on! I mean, I guess I wouldn't have felt much if he'd murdered a cow because I'm currently pretty hungry. But a dog?! How in the world do you kill a dog? A dog owner I can understand! But a dog?

• According to the Balto statue, Gotham City is canonically New York!

• According to the Saint George Versus the Dragon statue which all of the Bronze Age Killer's other statues are looking toward, Gotham City is canonically Berlin.

• The Bronze Age Killer dresses up his next victims as Alice and Lewis Carroll. I've done that roleplay! Now wait. Before you think it's weird, just realize that I was Alice.

• The Bronze Age Killer's plan is to open a portal to Hell so that he can battle the devil. So the guy isn't as crazy as I thought.

• Commissioner Batman discovers the location of the Bronze Age Killer's ritual thanks to detective work that didn't rely on beating the crap out of somebody. Disappointing.

In other words, James, you don't have the Bruce Wayne cojones to stick with the Batman job.

• Commissioner Batman saves the day but he's got some thinking to do! If he isn't willing to go whole hog at being Batman, he's going to have to give the job back to Bruce Wayne. Which, thankfully, should be happening quite soon over in Batman #50. Hopefully. Penises crossed!

• The extra dollar on the cover price is justified by throwing a bunch of Narration Boxes onto an updated art gallery of old Batman covers to make it into some kind of "story."

Two more days to Halloween! Halloween! Halloween!

Superman #50

Basically the Superman/Batman movie boils down to whether you like Chocolate-Strawberry or Caramel cereal? I guess I'm Team Superman!

Rating: No change.

I've become so invested in how this God-awful Superman story is going to end that I had to bring back the long-form commentaries for a few issues. Also, I'm simply avoiding doing my taxes. It's such drudgery!

At the end of Superman Loves Wonder Woman #27, Vandal Savage was gaining more and more powers from being in close proximity to the comet that made him immortal thirty thousand years ago. He's going to need the extra powers because Superman just got his powers back as well! I wish I could say something like "I hope this fight is going to be as good as Superman's battle against Doomsday" but that fight was shit, wasn't it? Just a lot of punching each other into buildings until everybody died. I doubt this fight will end in the death of anybody. I'm actually hoping it ends by page three with all of Vandal Savage's teeth knocked out and Superman banging Wonder Woman on top of his unconscious body in celebration.

I almost get my wish! Page two and three are a double splash of Superman punching Vandal Savage in the face. Shards of the comet are flying by in the background and at first glance, I thought they were teeth! According to Vandal, Superman has already lost because he's relying on punching instead of making a plan. Although I suppose if punching is the plan, Vandal is screwed.

This is that part which I mentioned happens every time Superman meets a new threat. Superman mentions how he actually felt a punch or, as here, got the wind knocked out of him. Now the reader knows how powerful Vandal is and how tense the situation really is! Oh my!

Instead of killing Superman, Vandal Savage decides to play a game of Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future with him. I suppose it's because his plan is to...okay, you know what? I can't even be bothered to make up a stupid reason for Vandal not killing Superman. It must all be part of the plan because plans are important! More important than punches! Or friends!

Vandal's son Puzzler (or the robot version of him, anyway) uses some techno-hoodoo to send Superman back to Krypton just as the planet is about to explode. I'm sure he's not really there! Like I said, this is probably a Ghost of Christmas Past thing. I guess Vandal wants Superman to learn some kind of a lesson about being a douche.

Although Superman seems to be corporeal enough to save his mother and father from being crushed. It's probably just an acid trip. Or a device built by Hordr_root capable of creating virtual simulations. Vandal decides to show Superman what one timeline might have looked like had something beyond Superman's control turned out different. Wow. How fascinating. Imagine that! Things could have turned out differently if things had happened differently. I can see I'm in for a really tedious read.

After showing Superman how Krypton could possibly have lived if things had happened in the way his totally false and assumptive simulation calculated, Vandal takes Superman to a future which is complete and utter speculation based on bullshit data and inconclusive assumptions.

Vandal shows Superman a future where the Earth is safe because weak people have been turned into slaves while the strong rule and defend the world. It's a great place! Then Vandal shows Superman a future where he continued to protect everybody and that world is an awful, barren dead place. Of course the two versions of the future are like that! Vandal wants what he wants so he shows Superman a future that he assures Superman will come to pass if Superman helps him. This is Vandal's plan? Prey on Superman's need to keep his adoptive world safe by feeding him absolutely transparent lies? I think Vandal should have stuck to punching things.

Vandal learned this trick from spending all those years with Madame Xanadu. Tell people lies about future dangers and they'll do anything you want them to to save the world!

Vandal ends the simulation and asks Superman to make his choice: work with Vandal to create a paradise on Earth (for some) or try to stop Vandal so that Earth can remain the mediocre toilet it currently is (for everybody!). Superman decides to think about Pa Kent for a bit to help him make his decision.

I guess up until this moment, Superman had forgotten this conversation because he seems to live by the theory that punching solves everything.

At the end here, across these last few chapters, this story really seems to be playing up the idea that Superman isn't supposed to solve problems with violence. And yet, that's all he does. Constantly. I suppose if DC tells the readers that that isn't true enough times (starting now), the fans will eventually believe it. Because it was true every now and again, depending on who was writing the character.

Superman decides to not join Vandal. Now he finally gets the bright idea to get rid of the comet. Fucking dick. I told you to deal with that earlier! How nobody told Hal Jordan to fling that fucking thing into the sun when they realized it's what Vandal was after, I'll never know. I mean, I guess I do know. Because that would have ended the story anticlimactically. Now the story ends with Puzzler betraying Vandal because Superman reaches out and finds the humanity in Puzzler. I know normally I would be calling for that kind of ending but I was really hoping Superman would have just punched him.

The comet is destroyed in a tug of war between Superman, Puzzler, and Vandal. Everybody is flung back to Earth where they all celebrate because Superman's hair somehow grew out during this issue and he now has his spit curl back. Hooray!