Grayson #18

A new creative team? How quickly do they get the butt joke out of the way? First fives pages?

Rating: The dialogue isn't as loose as I'm used to in the pages of the Grayson comic book. But Lanzing and Kelly have continued to tell the story being told by King and Seeley and they seem to have a decent handle on it. Especially since Spyral is fucking crazy cuckoo nonsense. Maybe that makes it easier to step in and pretend like you know what you're doing? I'm not sure I'm a fan of Tiger trying to crack a joke in battle but it doesn't really come off smoothly and it's basically just a variation of one of Dick's slams on Tiger since the insult is directed at Bronze Tiger. All in all, this is still a title worth reading until it ends. Which should be soon, right? Along with all the rest, right? DC really loves razing their demesnes.

• Dick Grayson is now working for The Court of Owls and Spyral and Batman. He has heard the term "conflict of interest", right?

• Because of the Robin War, I'd forgotten what was happening in this comic book. Dick has turned all of the other spy agencies against Helena after she had them all hunting him. Of course, he doesn't really want Helena to be killed. He just wants to teach Spyral a lesson.

• Dick might also want to teach a lesson to Grifter and King Faraday and Father Time and probably Maxwell Lord too even though he got his help for this attack on Spyral.

• Grayson and Tiger show up to save Helena's life. One of the assassins is Bronze Tiger so that could get confusing.

• Remember in Red Hood and the Outlaws how Bronze Tiger had a real tiger head? That was stupid.

• Ding ding ding ding! Page five! We have a winner!

• The hot girls in the horny dorm are recruited by Agent Zero. She wants to save the school from...well, from somebody. The assassins? Grayson and Tiger? Her sister, Doctor Netz? I don't know!

• Otto Netz's entire plan was to create a super confusing evil agency that could fight itself constantly without realizing it's fighting against itself. That's why its spirit animal is the ouroboros. So I don't feel stupid that I'm confused because I'm supposed to feel confused! Everybody is supposed to feel confused!

• Many pages of fighting fill the middle of the comic book. Eventually Dick calls in Midnighter for some even more brutal fighting.

• Dick convinces the skull girls that they've been duped by Leviathan. Oh yeah! Now it all makes sense! Except for the parts that don't. But those parts are probably still supposed to not make sense. Right up until the Netz sisters merge and turn back into Otto.

• Instead of the sisters merging to become Otto Netz, they bicker until Otto Netz's mind enters Helena's body. Ew. Dick's dick is not going to be happy about this turn of events.

Harley Quinn #26

Nobody else is completely sick of Harley Quinn yet? Just me?

Rating: It's a Harley Quinn comic book by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti. Does it even need a review? Half of the copies sold probably never even get read. Harley fans just pick them up because they can't be the biggest Harley Quinn fan in the world if they don't have a complete Harley Quinn comic book collection! Or a tattoo of Harley within one or two inches of their asshole.

• It doesn't matter what was happening last issue. I think a bunch of sexual innuendos were said and somebody learned a cock's name was Mike. Did you know he also hunts? Oh, Harley probably also spoke to her beaver at least once. And she might have fingered Poison Ivy. Unless that was the previous issue.

• Harley commits some violence against some people on the beach. But it's okay because they were bullying her and one called her a bitch. That excuses Harley for insulting their aesthetic and making them bleed.

• I totally get where Harley's coming from though. I grew up in Santa Clara, California, and spent many summers on the beaches of Santa Cruz. Not the tourist beaches crowded with assholes! No way! We went to the beaches through holes in people's backyard fences spray painted with sayings like "VALLEYS GO HOME" and "LOCALS ONLY". I never had to rip anybody's hair off for my right to be on the beach though. Apparently the locals at Santa Cruz weren't as bad-ass as The Lost Boys made them seem.

• Big Tony reminds me that I'm going to have to purchase yet another fucking Harley Book in April. Egad.

• Harley Quinn has a tasty ass.

• Some Deathstroke wannabe motherfucker with one arm has a vendetta against somebody named "Nutbuckets."

• Harley gets a makeover so when all the fans flock to her comic book after seeing the movie, they'll recognize her.

• Oh wait! I get it! Harley is Nutbuckets!

• The comic really improves when some women get in their underwear.

• The guy in the flashbacks challenges Harley in the Skate Club ring. Rink? Um, anyway, he's a Deadpool parody which everybody else probably already understood with the Wayne Wilkons name thing. I'm so old school that I flew right past that reference and hit on the guy Deadpool was a parody of.

Suicide Squad Most Wanted: Deadshot and Katana #3

Do cover artists often think, "I really don't care if this cover idea has been used hundreds of times before! I've got the definitive version!"

Rating: Two Suicide Squad comic books in one? How can somebody pass up this shit?! I mean, one is technically an Outsiders story starring the Suicide Squad. But I'm pretty sure it's the story where one of the members of the Suicide Squad is finally going to die. Why bother even having a team called "Suicide Squad" if none of them are ever going to die? The squad may as well be called Prison Furlough Playtime Team. This comic book is better than a whole lot of comics currently being published by DC so it's worth the five dollar cover price. I mean that figuratively. Five dollars can buy you an awful lot of stuff that's better than this book. And probably more useful to your life. But people don't make money choices based on what is necessary! They make them based on what is desired! So if you desire buying a comic book that will allow you to escape your nightmarish existence for even the barest minimum of time, you could do worse than this one!

• Deadshot just found out that his dad has died of natural causes so he shot his mom in the face. Probably the face. I may be projecting on that fact.

• If my mom ever reads my commentaries, she'll probably think, "But he often ends our phone calls with 'I love you'?!" Right before she changes the will to leave everything to her stuffed Garfield collection.

• Everybody should change their Tumblr reply settings to "Everyone can reply" because I have got a lot of shit to say to you all.

• Deadshot is angry with Waller because Waller wasn't their for his daughter. Now who's projecting!

• Waller wants the Suicide Squad to battle Deadshot because teammates fighting is usually a cornucopia full of ratings and dollars. It's also an easier story to tell than having to think up a villain's motivation and how the protagonists find out about the villain and why they want to stop the villain and all the other fiddly plot points you have to come up with. It's much easier to have Batman go, "You stepped on my toe, Superman! Apologize!" And Superman would go, "I'm sorry!" And Batman would go, "Not good enough!" Then they fight for twenty pages and all of the nearly illiterate, drooling fangenders eat it up.

• The team arrives at Lawton's parents' estate by helicopter so of course it lands to let them out to do their job. Ha ha! Kidding! Captain Boomerang jumps out of the helicopter and doesn't get extremely killed or hurt at all even. Cheetah also jumps out but that's comic book plausible! How does Boomerang break his fall? Throw a boomerang at the ground?

• Deadshot shoots Cheetah in the face with an elephant gun because he doesn't know his animals. The elephant goes, "RROWRR!"

But you did!

See?!

• Harley talks Deadshot into surrendering and he's immediately shot five times by Wannabe-Deadshot. He wakes up in a hospital bed with Amanda leering at him.

But doesn't Floyd really, really want to be a Lenny? Specifically the Lenny that winds up being Amanda's dog.

• Floyd finds out that he stole the Villains Month Deadshot #1 story from Wannabe-Deadshot. Wannabe-Deadshot reveals to Floyd that he gets to be the new Deadshot. Probably because all of the new fans coming over from the movie are going to be expecting a black Deadshot. Although Will Smith is playing Floyd Lawton so that's probably wrong and Evans will be dead by the end of this story.

• Now it's time for the Halo story. I mean the Katana story!

• One of these characters is not like the others! One of these characters doesn't belong! Can you tell me which one of these characters will be dead before I'm done singing this song?

• Prince Brion Markov shows up in a tank to chase away the Kobra army. Boo! Hiss! Go to hell!

Oh my god! Shut up, Deadshot! You're ruining the whole reason for having a Task Force X!

• The cat is injured in the battle because Mike W. Barr is an asshole. Is CatsInRefrigerators.com taken? It's a good thing the Markovian Army enlisted a Veterinarian.

• Sometimes I feel like the Captain Boomerang of comic book critics. Katana here represents [name a writer or artist for DC].

• Castle Markov looks like Doom's castle. Or maybe the castle of Anton Arcane. Maybe they all just work on the same set.

• Prince Markov calls the Suicide Squad and Katana "outsiders." Hee hee hee! HEE HEE HEE! GET IT?! See, he doesn't realize only one of them is! And he's going to be one of them when the experimental geothermic plant blows up in his face! And Halo's host body is out in the woods nearby doing heroin. And, well, I don't know where Metamorpho and Black Lightning are. I guess they'll turn up later.

• Kobra has discovered that the Suicide Squad have bombs in their neck. He's also experimented on Violet. Probably by blasting her with rainbows, right?

• The "Outsiders" invade Kobra's volcanic base where one of them is sure to die. I'm not naming any names but her name is the same as her weapon! Not Katana, you idiot!

• Nobody dies this issue but the Squad and Katana are captured by Kobra. That makes two Suicide Squad stories in one issue where nobody died! At least not anybody of any consequence. Aside from that cat! I mean, I'm sure it's not dead. What kind of horrible monstrous writer would kill a poor innocent cat? Oh, I remember one who did that! Cullen Bunn! Fucking dick. I'm glad editorial told him he couldn't kill Dex-Starr and he had to come up with a tacked-on one page ending which completely made the story he just told meaningless.

Wonder Woman #50

I like how David Finch snuck naked female breasts onto Ares!

Rating: Meredith Finch often tries to get too philosophical for my tastes and she doesn't back off on that tact this issue. She even packs the back end with a story about fate and choices and destiny which really could have just been replaced by eight pages of somebody masturbating. Philosophically, I'm not against philosophy. But in reality? When philosophers start philosophizing? I just want to cut my own throat. Philosophy is like crossing a street by traveling around the world to get to the other side from the other direction. What I mean is when a philosophical premise is brought up, you can see exactly where they're going to wind up in the first few seconds. But then the philosopher has to pad out the argument until they've spoken for five hours about how the point they were getting to is the only conclusion to be made. Then they throw out some Latin words to close the argument before waking you up and asking if they need to repeat themselves. What I'm trying to say is Wonder Woman #50 was actually a fairly readable comic book which doesn't quite live up to its pretensions.

At the end of the last issue, Wonder Woman was carted off, unconscious, by a walking dick with arms. She got into trouble trying to help cure Zeus of Crib Seizures. Normally Diana wouldn't give a shit about helping Zeus but he's currently in the guise of a toddler. He's so cute that when Diana looks at him, her vagina aches. The last issue was also full of allegorical references to the Patriarchy but I think they were all accidental. I bet every time David Finch asked Meredith to write a scene where Diana is in the shower, Meredith subconsciously got more and more angry. This subconscious anger came out in metaphorical representations of the patriarchy and how Diana is being kept down by it. Diana's entire mission is to take care of a baby. First she has to look to the Mother of All Mothers as an example. Then she has to swim up Hera's Fallopian Tubes to steal some of her eggs. Then she's knocked unconscious by a Cyclops which we all know is the least subtle of all mythological penis references. And being that this whole comic book is in a Greek setting, the whole Cyclops dragging an unconscious Wonder Woman back to its lair has to be a critique of the Greek System in our schools.

This issue begins with the Penis fingering Wonder Woman.

Typical guy! I'm fairly certain the clit isn't on the temple.

Wonder Woman wakes up to find herself in a dungeon full of huge Penises. But she's not afraid of them! They're also not being aggressive. And who could be afraid of a flaccid Penis? Wonder Woman even accepts a drink from one of them! I bet it's Pocari Sweat.

The Penises, or Cyclopes as some less accurate people might refer to them, offer to show Wonder Woman the way out of the secret passage she fell into. At least that's what she assumes they're going to do. Mostly they just stare at her and offer stuff to drink. On the way out, Hephaestus arrives to choke and beat the Cyclopes. Wonder Woman begins to feel sorry for them. But not sorry enough to actually try to understand why they find it uncomfortable to sit without their legs spread wide.

Wonder Woman watches the way Hephaestus treats the Cyclopes and wonders, "Was I so desperate to belong, to have a family, that I've ignored who and what the Olympians really are?" When the fuck did she do that?! She hasn't trusted these bastards without reason ever! At least not that I can remember. She sort of trusted a few of her siblings but even when she trusted a god like Hermes or Cupid or Hades, they eventually betrayed her for their own ends. And it's not like she was surprised! And the only reason she trusted Hera was because Hera lost all of her powers and was mortal for awhile! No way Hera would have been able to stay in Diana's flat in London if she'd still been a god!

Precum.

Diana learns the most cliche lesson to be learned! She learns that the creatures who look like monsters aren't monsters at all! The actual monsters are the people who look just like her! In...the Twilight Zone!

You know who must really hate that "whole monsters aren't defined by their looks" crap? People who look like monsters and act monstrous! Where's their uplifting lesson?!

I think somebody forgot to tell Johnny Desjardins to draw the wrap around Wonder Woman's torso carrying Hera's eggs! That's probably because the first page of the scene that Johnny draws was drawn by Finch (the drinking Penis juice scene) and he forgot the wrap in those panels.

Anyway, Wonder Woman can't free the Cyclopes but promises to set them free of their patriarchal chains after she saves Zeke.

This dialogue made me snicker.

Do you think anybody has yet told David Finch that it was "Iapetus" and not "Lapetus"?

The totally believable and trustworthy Hecate (who looks like a monster which must mean she isn't a monster. I think?) informs Wonder Woman that the Mother of Everything, Gaia, is behind Zeke's sickness! No! It can't be! That would mean the real problem is...the Matriarchy! GASP!

Why do superheroes default to threats of punching when discussions don't go their way? Can you imagine if this was how every conversation in a place of business went down?

Looking at Wonder Woman's crotch in the previous scan caused me to remember flipping the channel to Columbo earlier this evening. I heard a familiar voice and thought, "Oh hey! Roddy McDowall!" Then I looked up and was greeted to the tightest pair of pants I've ever seen Roddy McDowall wear. Apparently Cornelius's penis rests to the left nearly parallel with the ground.

Hecate informs Wonder Woman that to save Zeke, Diana must first save the children of Gaia: the Cyclopes, the Hecatonchires, and Typhoeus. Wonder Woman is all, "I can do that! Because I know that monsters aren't really monsters! The real monsters are men!" There's probably high-fiving at that point.

While Diana is saving Typhoeus, she encounters Ares. He's less the God of Drinking Whisky Barefoot and more Ares the Old Ares That We're All Used To In Preboot Wonder Woman Ares. And he wants to be Diana's enemy again! Mostly because he wants his God of Warhood back. But I think the only way to regain that is over Diana's dead body. So it probably won't happen.

I love all the bullshit philosophy to try to make war seem important. It isn't. Here's an idea! How about getting rid of the gods of Peace and War and setting up the gods of Compromise and Having A Bit of a Row?

Ares and Diana crash through the ice and fall into the lair of Typhoeus. Typhoeus is, of course, a giant Wyrm. I'm seeing a trend in Mother's children! They're all just a bunch of penises! And you know what you need when you have a lot of penises?! A lot of hands! That's where the Hecatonchires come in!

Diana rides off on the father of monsters in a completely non-sexually allegorical way, leaving her father figure in the past. In the next issue, she'll have to save the Hecatonchires. Until then, this fiftieth issue isn't quite over yet because DC needed to charge five dollars for it. I guess even with Johnny's help, David couldn't fill an extra-big book with his art in a single month.

The backup story is about how Donna Troy has low self-esteem and can't make a decision. It's a walk on slippery rocks. It's the talk on a cereal box. It's masturbating in your own face. Edie Brickell didn't describe philosophy in that way but I think she would have if she had time for another verse.

Legends of Tomorrow #1

This would be a cool looking book if it weren't marred by the Batman vs Superman advert at the top (which I cropped out!).

Rating: 26 out of 51 DC Comics? I guess? It's hard to recommend a comic book that costs eight dollars just for one story. But at least the one story I highly recommend in this book is the one story that nobody is purchasing it to read: the Sugar and Spike story! So if somebody is interested in this book because of Metamorpho or Firestorm or the Metal Men, they're going to get an enjoyable bonus story! And the other stories are competent enough to satisfy fans of the characters. I just don't think this book is worth the price if you aren't fans of any of the characters on the cover. Is this format DC's new way of introducing possibly monthly comic books? Are they going to weigh the responses from fans on Sugar and Spike or Firestorm to gauge interest in a monthly? I personally like the format because I don't mind spending eight dollars (six with my local comic book shop discount!) for an anthology title. I am disappointed that more of the characters aren't changing next issue (or any of them, possibly!). I really thought this was going to be a bunch of one and done stories.

• This is a really long comic book which would usually take me a really long time to read. But now I'm utilizing bullet points! So instead of dozens and dozens of long-winded paragraphs of digression after digression, I can get lots and lots of ideas out in record time! That might not be a positive.

• Who at DC Comics thought Sugar and Spike needed retooling? I bet it was Geoff Johns.

• The first story is about Firestorm which means it's going to be professional grade slash fiction! I'm getting my dick out right now!

• Ronnie and Jason are still sharing their lives as Firestorm. Martin Stein is their mentor. All of the other Nuclear Men from the horribly titled The Fury of Firestorm the Nuclear Men have died because they didn't have what it takes to merge long term. I guess they weren't romantic enough.

• Ronnie's racist, dog-dick eating mom makes an appearance! Yay! Although I don't think she's as racist as when I first began claiming she was. I mean, she's probably just as not racist as then! I don't think that dating Jason's dad proves she isn't racist because she might just like guys with amputated limbs.

• Jason and Ronnie are still using the same beard.

• Jason's big academic rival is a cute little egghead named Littman. That's probably her last name. I would so have had a crush on her in high school. But she would probably be dating some super cool guy taking drama who would later reveal he's gay. Even if she wasn't dating anybody, it wouldn't matter. I would never have attempted to speak to her and probably just stared at her in the library during lunch.

• Jason is having issues with entering the Slash Fiction Matrix. Now whenever he goes to enter Ronnie, he gets dizzy and sick to his stomach.

• Ronnie and Jason must not be too experienced with intimate matters because after they merge for a bit, they warn Martin Stein that they're going to explode. Yeah, boys. That's supposed to happen! Then you just grab a towel and clean up.

• The Firestorm story is going to be continued. Next up: Metamorpho!

• It's about time Metamorpho appears in the New 52. Aside from his cameos in Batman Incorporated which wasn't entirely a New 52 comic book so it doesn't count. Although how much does this comic book count since no matter what DC Comics says, Rebirth is definitely going to be a reboot. Not the typical reboot! I think they're just going to restructure the New 52 characters so that they incorporate a bunch of their Preboot history.

• The Metamorpho story is also just the first of a multi-part story. Couldn't DC find a writer who could compress each story into twenty pages? I want a Legends of Tomorrow book that is all different legends every month! I'm starting to think this is just a trick to make me pay eight dollars for a monthly Metamorpho book with a bunch of back-up stories I don't want to read!

• Also starring in Metamorpho's comic book are Simon Stagg, Sapphire Stagg, and Java. I wonder how many times Java has been reported to HR for harassing Sapphire? Not that he knows any better! He's just a caveman! They didn't have sexual harassment in his time. According to every sexual harassment video I've had to sit through at various jobs, sexual harassment wasn't discovered until the eighties. Until then, it was simply known as being a secretary.

• Sapphire has all the right Daddy Issues to become a star in the DC You!

• Kanjar Ro has decided to come to Earth to do some Flea Marketing.

• Sapphire begins Florence Nightingaling all over Rex Mason. Java gets jealous and decides it's time to kill Mason before Sapphire can fuck him. I mean free him!

• I should probably retire the joke where I mistakenly type 'fuck' instead of the word I was really going to fuck.

• Speaking of jokes that have been used way too many times, the next story is by Keith Giffen! It's the Sugar and Spike story. I hope their first mystery is called The Case of The Fatal Face Fuck.

• Sugar and Spike engage in that kind of repartee that Giffen makes all of his characters engage in. You know the kind. One person says a thing which the reader has no context for. Then the next person responds to the thing and the reader still has no context. Then the first person says another thing that confuses the reader. Then the other person says another thing that makes no sense. They do this for a number of panels until the reader finally catches on to what they're talking about and starts the story over from the beginning.

• I can't quite remember all of Keith Giffen's work since The New 52 began so I'm just going to sound confident and hope that what I'm about to say is true: this is Keith Giffen's best work since The New 52 began. It's irreverent and paced well and funny. Maybe not in the "ha ha ha my guts hurt and I just pissed myself" funny way that 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown is funny. It's more of a kind of Portlandia funny where you watch it and go "That's clever" or "Oh yeah, I've seen white people do that" or "Christ, this show is so on the nose that it's attracting the kind of people it's making fun of to my fucking city!"

• The gist of the story is that Sugar and Spike are detectives who clean up embarrassing pasts of super-heroes. Alfred hires them to take back all of Batman's lamest Batsuits which Killer Moth somehow acquired and has been snacking on. This is a good bridging story for what I figured Rebirth was going to do! This is one-handed, New 52 Alfred dealing with a bunch of crap from Batman's Preboot history. See? Rebirth!

• The final story is about the Metal Men and I'm just going to end this commentary here and read the story. I'll only be back if there is a panel of Will Magnus with a Responsometer up his ass.

• I'm back! I'm sorry to say that it isn't for the aforementioned reason I gave for my eventual return. Instead I'd just like to say something I'm sure I've said before, along with thousands of DC Comics' fans over time: why the fuck would Doctor Magnus make one of his Metal Men out of mercury?! Every time the Metal Men fight, the whole battlefield has to be thoroughly cleaned by a hazmat team!

• The city is currently being attacked by Missile Men and protesters have taken the time to make signs and gather at the edge of town to protest against robots. Christ, Len! You can't even wait until a proper moment in the story to remind the readers that the populace hates the heroes?!

• I'm fairly certain Iron just climbed into Gold's penis. And it gave Tin an erection.

• I guess I should apologize to Len Wein now. It looks like the protesters have been protesting for three weeks. And the reason the Missile Men were dropped on the city under protest is because that's where the government robot lab is located. I guess I jumped the gun yet again! Stupid stories that eventually make sense making me look like a fool.

• Some guy named Nameless can hack into anything in the world except the Metal Men. Which is why he wants the Metal Men so badly he's willing to screw with every military project he can until he's given access to them. But the military knows how to beat him: destroy the Metal Men once and for all! Ha ha!

• The Metal Men's story continues next issue. Does that mean Sugar and Spike get another story too? Or are they the only ones being replaced next time?

Doctor Fate #10

Doctor Fate isn't quite as imposing as he used to be.

Rating: Still ranked at 43 out of 51 DC Comics. This is one of those DC Comics where I'm just waiting for it to end. The entire premise seems to be "What if Doctor Fate were a boring, risk-averse medical student who lived at home with his parents?" It seems strange that nobody could have answered that question with "everybody would be bored" before putting out ten issues of this slog. How does DC not know that what sells is adorableness? You know the kinds of characters people wind up thoroughly loving? The kind who they either want to be or want to fuck (sometimes both!). And I don't mean "fuck" literally. I suppose I could have said "have some kind of weird crush on" but then I'd still have to explain further that the crush doesn't necessarily have to be romantic either and that sometimes it's just a strange longing to be near the character that you don't quite understand. I figured it would be easier to just say fuck.

• I couldn't remember what was happening in this comic book until I turned to the first page. And then I only vaguely remembered what the current plot was. The things I remember are these: Khalid won't fuck the neighbor who desperately wants to fuck him; Khalid won't fuck his girlfriend who desperately wants to fuck him; Khalid didn't really give a fuck about his cat drowning in the flood. Those are also three reasons why I don't like this Doctor Fate.

• Doctor Fate has discovered that Egyptian ghosts are keeping people prisoner beneath the Egyptian Consulate. Although the way the comic has been going, maybe "discovered" is too strong a word. It's more likely that he believes he's hallucinating the ghosts and the prisoners and the helmet and his entire life. Also he might believe he's dreaming it or he's gone insane. Accepting reality isn't one of his strong suits.

See? Insanity! While I've got a few people's attention, I'd like to point out that color fade in the Narration Boxes of DC Comics? It might be my own ego and narcissistic tendencies but I'm fairly certain DC made that change during The New 52 because they got tired of my photoshopped Narration Boxes making their way around the internet and making their characters look like idiots. Not that it's stopped me. It's just more difficult to swap letters around when the background is a gradient and not a solid color.

• Doctor Fate is battling the ghosts in the basement of the Egyptian Consulate. So when he brings the roof down to crush some ghosts, it shows he hasn't thought about a single aspect of this battle.

• While Doctor Fate battles ghosts to save some protesters, the two women who want to be in his bed are desperately trying to find him. Maybe the earlier flood was a metaphor for the desire of these women? Have I been missing the entire subtext of this comic book?! Is it more fascinating than I realized? Is everything Khalid going through a metaphor for becoming an adult with responsibilities and sexual partners and leaving the toys of childhood behind? Probably not.

• Doctor Fate frees the protesters but is then caught by Roman ghosts and taken before Caeser's Ghost to be punished. I suppose this is probably just another dream.

• I would go back through this series and read it as a young man navigating the path to adulthood but I found it too boring to read the first time through. At one point in this issue, his father says, "[Khalid] is much too busy changing...becoming American...a doctor...whatever he'll be." Later he goes within himself, seeing glimpses of his family's past, and thinks, "But I'm mom too...why isn't any of that in me...or any of my own time, my own world...America...". So see? There's evidence that this is all a metaphorical trip into adulthood and one's own sense of self. I suppose if I were getting paid for this, I'd spend a few work days rereading Doctor Fate and writing about it from this angle. But I'm not so I'll just go back to waiting for this comic book to end.

The Coming of the Supermen #2

Jesus is having a great time in this picture.

Rating: No change. It continues to be ranked at 23 of 51 DC Comics. It's worth reading if you're into a bit of modern writing with a helping heaping of old school charm. Not that this writing is "modern" modern! It's not taking itself too seriously or trying to wink at the audience every chance it gets to show how smart it is. It's just that it's old school without being written down to the audience (mostly because in the old school, the majority of the audience was suspected to be kids (even if it wasn't and DC had the letters to prove it)). And it's a story about Superman that gets a lot of the Superman beats right. That alone makes it a better Superman comic book than most of the Superman comic books DC has published since The New 52 began.

• I have a sneaking and intelligent suspicion that Neal Adams is writing about religion in this story. It's too early to predict what the point is but since he seems to have made Muhammad into a demon and Jesus into a dog that Middle Easterners will not accept, I think it might be pro-Christian. Although the little kid Rafi tells Superman that the demon (you know, Muhammad) isn't as scary as he looks. Not that anybody knows what Muhammad looks like. But, you know, most Americans probably think he's scary anyway. Also try to remember that most of those Americans probably have no idea that Muslim, Judaism, and Christianity all worship the same god.

• It's currently Easter so I should probably lay off all the pornography talk and concentrate on the religious undertones in this comic book. Actually, I'll probably wind up being more disrespectful by talking about religion than by talking about fat cocks. So I'm still up in the air about which way to go with this commentary.

"Bad taste in my mouth"? I guess it's decided which way I'm going to go! Religion because that reminds me of transubstantiation!

• Oh wait! It could also be semen! I'm still confused!

• Kalibak has returned to penetrate Lex's backdoor but this time he brought some Apokolips Dogs! The kind that bite, not the kind with relish. I mean, they probably bite with relish but they don't have mustard. I mean, they obviously must turd but nobody puts ketchup on them. I mean...okay, okay. This routine is getting old!

• Superman and the three new Supermen arrive to stop Kalibak from making more sexual innuendos.

• The "S" on this Superman's chest must stand for synesthesia because I've never smelled a foul-smelling sound before.

• The Kryptonian is probably confused because he's ESL and he meant to say Kalibak has bad breath.

• Steppenwolf is dressed like an elf.

• As you can see in one of the above scans, Neal Adams still thinks it's okay to use thought balloons. What an old fool! Doesn't he know the cool kids are all using Narration Boxes with the main character's voice but from some time in the future where he's reflecting on the story and able to speak directly to the reader? Duh! It's so much lazier. I mean better!

• The new Supermen are from Kandor. I'm not sure where Kandor is in this DC Universe. It sounds like maybe it was placed in a red sun system on a planet now called New Krypton? Was that a thing in the Preboot? Or did the Supermen build a rocket ship that could blast through the cork in the bottled city of Kandor?

• After Superman defeats Kalibak, he and the others are looked after by Luthor's medical team. The medical team take samples of their blood. But when Superman realizes that Luthor is behind it, he destroys all of the blood he can find. But he fails to find the Kryptonian DNA which Luthor swallowed!

• Superman discovers that Darkseid stole some kind of Red Sun technology from Luthor. So that's probably going to get turned into weapons that cancel out Superman's power!

• Kalibak attacks for the third time but this time he's got Rafi and Rafi's dog Isa (that means "Jesus", remember?). Kalibak takes him into a Boom Tube and disappears. Stupid Superman! Why did he allow himself to get close to a kid and his god? I mean dog! Doesn't he know that's what secret identities are for?! Oh! Maybe the nanny he hired was actually Granny Goodness! Never trust a nanny you find on Apokolist.

• Rafi didn't appear enough to get any religious undertones so I'm still not sure what all the religious shit was about or why the Muslim kid has a dog named Jesus.