Batman and Robin Eternal #25

I hope when I bleed out on the street someday, my blood will spill out in the shape of a dick and balls.

Rating: Rank 11 of 51 DC Comics. I guess. I can't wait for rebirth so I can change this whole system of ranking DC's comic books against each other. Mostly I can't tell anymore what books are better than others because so many of them are bland and mediocre. I should just have three categories without rankings. They can be comic books worth reading because they're written well, comic books pretty much only worth reading if you're into the title character, and comic books worth reading if you love train wrecks. This one probably falls slightly in-between written well and reading if you're into the Bat-kids. It's hard to really judge a weekly comic book on its writing merits because the writers change so often.

• I just reread my bullet points on Batman and Robin Eternal #24 to get caught up before reading this issue and found about a dozen typos. So you should probably expect the same kind of quality writing this time too!

• At the end of the last issue, Harper was thinking over Mother's offer to kill Cassandra and I was rolling my eyes so hard that I could hear a clicking sound in my head.

• The battle to bring down the towers receiving Mother's Icthys Virus has been going on for way too long because this comic book has to go 26 issues. So, you know, it's still happening.

• Dick and Azrael don't so much fight as philosophize. It's the same old bullshit about whether or not killing the person destroying the world is right or wrong. Is a country's arbitrary justice system a better way to go than just putting the person threatening the world in the ground? It seems like a shaky argument to make but since comic book heroes have to measure up to some kind of code, the "no killing" thing seems to be a decent measuring stick. It's just that it's so Jesusy! The only reason not to kill somebody like, say, The Joker is because by killing them, you're killing their chance at redemption. But what if The Joker has never shown any sign of redemption? Ever? How many times do you allow him to return to killing innocent people? When does Batman become responsible for all of the people The Joker kills because Batman keeps insisting that The Joker not be killed? I realize that Batman will never, ultimately, be responsible for The Joker's victims. The Joker makes the decision to kill and Batman makes the decision not to kill. There's a scene in the new season of Daredevil where The Punisher gives Daredevil a gun. Then The Punisher points a gun at some scuzzball hitman and tells Daredevil that if Daredevil doesn't kill The Punisher before The Punisher kills the hitman then Daredevil is responsible for the hitman's death. That's obviously bullshit because everybody is ultimately the choices they make. Daredevil choosing not to kill even if somebody else is going to be killed doesn't make Daredevil responsible for the person who gets killed. But let's say The Pnnisher has lined up hundreds of people and is killing them one after the other while Daredevil has a chance to kill The Punisher. At what point does Daredevil become complicit in the murders of the hundreds of people? After the first killing? The second? The thirty-first? At some point, a person has to realize that their ability to say "I have never killed anybody" is the only thing they're really protecting. The argument should never be so black and white that Batman or Daredevil or Dick Grayson can say they will never kill. You've got to allow for extreme situations that arise where killing somebody will absolutely make for the greater good. Although in Batman's case, I think if he ever kills anybody, he's going to get a taste for it! So he should probably just keep Red Hood's phone number close at hand and let him do any killing that needs to be done.

• Let's not be so hasty! Why should Azrael choose Batman's terms, hunh? And what if the terms he thinks through and chooses just happen to be similar to Mother's? Is that truly wrong?

• Mother continues to badger Harper about killing Cassandra. I'm not sure why she thinks her arguments will sway Harper since they're all really arguments for Harper to save Cassandra! I guess maybe Mother's arrogance is blinding her to reality. It's like when somebody on Facebook tells a story that's meant to show how big of a jerk somebody they dealt with that day was but it actually reveals how much of an asshole they themselves are? It's like one of Robert Browning's dramatic monologues! But not as subtle.

• Cullen Row uses Midnighter's Door technology to transport to Midnighter all of the mini-orphans battling the Bat-family. You know, so Midnighter can kick their asses.

• While Mother and Harper argue inside her base and Dick and Azrael argue outside Mother's base, Mother's Icthys infected children all over the world are finally cured by the Bat-family with Midnighter and Cullen's help. Also the other heroes who aren't technically part of the Bat-family. Like Black Canary and Katana and Red Hood.

• Dick finally reaches Mother so he can stop her without killing her. I think he just likes sending criminals through the bureaucracy and humiliation of the American justice system.

• Next issue is the final issue, right? Please be right.

Titans Hunt #6

I still hate the title of this comic book.

Rating: The comic remains at 29 of 51 DC Comics. You know who would really enjoy this comic book? Fifty year old or older fans of the Teen Titans! I'm forty-four and I barely know anything about the history they're referencing. But then, I'm also not really a fan of the Teen Titans. I thought I was but then I reread my old Marv Wolfman comics and ugh. I am not a fan at all! Although I still like Joseph Wilson. Probably because he isn't constantly saying stupid shit like the rest of the group. Marv Wolfman figured out the only way he can write a likeable character! Make him a mute!

• I think this comic book is about the Titans gathering together at their old clubhouse and taking peyote.

• You know what? That would be a better comic book than this!

• Not that this is a terrible comic book. It's just unnecessary! I mean, it's totally necessary! But it shouldn't ever have had to have been necessary! If DC hadn't allowed Scott Lobdell and Tom DeFalco and Howard Mackie and Will Pfeifer to screw up the Titans so horribly, they never would have needed this mystic story of the Titans remembering how there was a universe where they didn't completely suck.

• I'm making a pretty huge assumption about a universe where the Titans never completely sucked. Because I'm rereading Wolfman's eighties revival of them and--hoo boy!--do they stink it up! And they've only gotten worse since the issues hit the 1990s! The editors actually think by taking Jericho's sideburns, they're bringing him into the nineties! He just looks like a right turd without them!

• I just realized that the cover looks like Arsenal and Gronk (or whatever the fuck his caveman name is. I don't care if I'm being insensitive to Caveman Culture!) have actually just taken peyote! I didn't realize that when I claimed that that was what this book was about.

• I recently finished watching the second season of Young Justice and my biggest complaint is that they concentrate on the legacy characters too much.

• That last bullet point is a stupid joke and not evidence of my stupidity. Dum-dum.

• Mal sings a song and the rest of the Titans are all, "Hey! I know that tune! It's awful!"

• Donna Troy doesn't seem to remember that she's supposed to have taken the place of The Fates. I think.

• How is Donna Troy going to remember something that happened five years before she was created from clay? I think it's time for one of DC's traditional Who is Donna Troy/Wonder Girl?! stories!

• A guy with a stupid mustache tells Bumblebee all about the demonic Mister Twister and how the Titans sacrificed their memories and their friendships to stop him five years ago.

• DC should just make Kid Flash time travel to change continuity into something they can live with.

• The guy with the stupid mustache works for some organization called Diablo and he decides they need to kill the Titans to keep Mister Twister from entering their reality.

• Diablo is Team Rocket?

The New Titans #65 (April 1990)

If I’m not mistaken, Tim Drake sucked Gar Logan’s asshole in this issue. I'm sorry I don't have scans of this. Also, the Plague story arc apparently wasn’t finished. It should have been finished. But it wasn’t. This didn’t really add much to it at all.

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"!