Teen Titans #18

Normally I would be annoyed by a cover that depicts heroes battling each other. But have the Teen Titans really been acting like heroes?

Rating: No change. This may not technically be the worst DC Comic but it hasn't been very good. It's getting a little better with Greg Pak even though I mostly don't like Greg Pak's writing. At least he's telling a story that was long overdue. But he still has to use all of the unlikeable characters in this team! They're all selfish criminals! Why would I care what happens to any of them?! This is what happens when you allow lousy writers to wing it month after month without any thought to how the stories they're telling will affect how readers see the characters. I also have an aversion to super hero groups that don't have any reason to be a super hero group. The Teen Titans are really just a gang of hoodlums doing whatever they want, constantly fighting among themselves, falling in and out of love with each other without any indication of intimacy or closeness, and causing lots and lots of property damage while they're simply dealing with their own problems. What I'm saying is that the Teen Titans haven't changed a bit in decades!

• Recently, the Teen Titans have helped a super murderer (created to be a living weapon) escape from justice, broken into a prison, and escaped custody rather than answering for their crimes. They've also justified their behavior because they're selfish pricks. I probably didn't need to say that since it's right in the title: "Teen"!

• To be fair, Tim Drake did create the Teen Titans to protect meta-human teenagers all over the world. He never said any of them would be heroes! They would just be a gang of assholes protecting each other from the fucking adults who don't know everything! They have no idea what it's like to be a teenager! I mean, they did but that was a totally different time when things weren't nearly as difficult as now! Aside from a less safe world with selective service and way more expectations of behavior. But they didn't have like our problems, you know?!

• The Titans were busy looking for Cassie's father whom they found on Wonder Woman's mantel in London. I mean, they found his head. So that seems suspicious.

• Wonder Woman has caught them destroying and raiding her apartment. But she's compassionate and understanding so that makes her a total doormat. I mean, it makes her willing to understand what other people are going through and empathize with them.

• Wonder Woman calls Tim "Robin" and he doesn't correct her and say, "Actually, it's Red Robin, you stupid adult. Gosh! Leave me alone!" He probably doesn't say that because he doesn't have a room at hand which he can dramatically flounce into and slam the door behind him.

• Oops. I spoke too early. Take that, adult! You don't know everything!

• Red Robin does not tell Wonder Woman that he and the rest of the gang are escaped felons on the run. It's none of her business anyway!

• The rest of the Teen Titans have been taken by Cassandra. Cassandra can predict the future but nobody listens to her predictions so then she just gets really frustrated. That's probably why she's kind of a bad guy.

• Boo fucking hoo. Someone needs to do a whole lot more than yell at you, you fucking thief.

• Gar points out that Cassandra must be the villain of this story because she's not one of them and she's against them and an adult and a jerk too.

• Gar is wrong. Obviously the Teen Titans are the villains of this entire comic book series.

• Power Girl tells Cassie that she's her friend. They barely know each other! How off in your head do you have to be to consider somebody a friend so quickly and freely?! I should ask my friend Doom Bunny! He thinks everybody he meets is a friend!

• Doom Bunny isn't answering immediately. I'll get back to him!

Right. And what you do is constantly break the law for your own selfish purposes.

• Cassandra begins winning Cassie over by saying things that teenagers like to hear like "You have a right to be angry and lost. Nobody could have gone through what you've been through and remain as strong! Your father actually loves you even though he abandoned you. I'm your representation and you totally identify with me so you totally can even."

• The Titans battle some giant snakes as they hunt for the Rod of Asclepius beneath Apollo's temple in Delphi. They sort of find it but first Wonder Woman has to tie up Cassandra and ask her some questions like "What is your real motive behind bringing Lennox back to life?" and "Who do you think you're fooling?" and "Are you manipulating everybody for your own selfish ends because that's par for the course in a Teen Titans comic book?" Actually, Wonder Woman doesn't ask any important questions that would get to the bottom of Cassandra's plot while her lasso is around Cassandra. Instead she just says, "Tell her, Cassandra, why did you come to her?" And Cassandra says to bring Cassie's father back. Which isn't a lie but, come on! You know it's only a small part of her overall plan! This is what happens when Batman isn't around to ask the questions!

• Nobody gets beaten up by Wonder Woman like the cover fooled everybody into thinking would happen. Not that comic book fans are used to covers telling any kind of truth at all. Even though I hate how variant covers break up a collection because I don't have the "real" covers of each issue, I sort of like them better because at least they don't try to manipulate me!

Secret Six #12

Secret Strix?

Rating: In many ways, Gail Simone's Secret Six has always been a spiritual successor to John Ostrander's Suicide Squad. Most of the revamps of Suicide Squad missed what made Ostrander's such a hit. It wasn't about characters possibly dying every month. It wasn't about loading a team full of star villains to attract an audience. It was about bringing to life characters that had been largely one-dimensional up until that point. When people think of Deadshot now, they're thinking of Ostrander's Deadshot. He realized Deadshot so fully that people probably just assume the character was always the guy Ostrander brought to life. But he was just a guy who was really good with a gun who Batman kept running afoul of. Simone did much of the same with Catman and Bane and many others, as well as creating a bunch of her own. The series shines because the characters are not ignored. They're not just fodder for the plot in garish costumes. They are fully realized and enjoyable to read about. I wish more writers would understand that plot is less important than characterization. I'd rather read a bunch of interesting characters sitting around a diner talking than have a bunch of hot, one-dimensional people in spandex hitting each other with heavy objects for twenty pages. Secret Six will be missed after Rebirth. I just realized that I'll probably start calling all of the stories after Rebirth "Afterbirth". DC is about to get gross.

• What is the secret?! No, seriously. What is it? I think I missed it at some point. I have a nagging suspicion that the secret is Mockingbird can't count to six.

• One secret is that I photoshopped a bunch of fake tweets by Gail Simone about "What is the secret?!" and posted them on Tumblr with tags saying "Photoshopped Tweets" and "Let me repeat myself. These tweets are photoshopped!" and "These are not real!" I knew it wouldn't help which is why I wasn't surprised when somebody reblogged them with the tag "This is why I love Gail". No, that is why you love me!

• So what was going on previously? I think Batgirl and Catman were rutting in the park while Goatfly watched. That was so sexy I nearly happy accidented all over myself. Also Sue decided she wanted Ralph back because you can only hear "What two letters keep a car from going?" "M-T!" so many times before your vagina dries up and falls off. And Shiva was hunting Strix for secret assassin reasons.

• The title of this issue is "The Violence of Silence". It rhymes so it must be profound wisdom. Profound wisdom hasn't always rhymed. That's just a modern thing because modern people are easily impressed by people who can think up two words that sound almost identical. I wish Jesus had given all of his allegories in rhyme. With a good beat. He may as well have been a rapper since he had the biggest East Coast/West Coast rivalry of all time. Although the Romans weren't too good at drive-bys. They were better at long-occupation-bys.

• You know what caused the Roman civilization to collapse? Washing their hands of things! You can't just ignore problems by washing your hands and waving the problem away and going off to draw a cock on the wall! You have to fix the problem! And by "fix" I don't mean "affix to a giant cross."

• Oh! I think maybe the Roman civilization collapsed because of the violence of silence! Maybe? No? Am I on to something?

• I actually know a lot less about everything than I pretend to.

• No wait! I meant the reverse of that last bullet point!

• Currently Scandal and Knockout and Stripper Knockout are considering which vintage of sperm to sprinkle on their baby cakes.

• I actually know a lot more about doing it than I pretend to! Like how awesome it probably is!

I just realized how perfect these two are for each other! Not Catman and Batgirl! The pets! On walks, the dog shits and Goatfly eats it! No mess! Okay, the goat still makes a mess. But I don't think you're legally required to pick up goat droppings.

• A cop in Ralph's neighborhood calls Shiva "sweetcheeks". While not technically incorrect, it's probably a bad move.

• In every run-in I've ever had with the police, not one has ever been complimentarily degrading. I think my feelings are hurt.

• The cop also calls Shiva "little dumplin'", "lady", "hot stuff", and probably something else. I think he notices her feet are cute too but I can't confirm that since her feet are hidden in every panel. That's such a sexist move! Framing a woman so that you can't see her feet.

• Catman warns Porcelain to get Strix out of the house. Why? Shiva might be a deadly assassin but Strix is an immortal Talon! I'm confident Strix can take whatever Shiva has to dish out. Unless Shiva's here to taunt Strix for not fitting in and not having a family and being horribly emotionally and physically scarred by life. That might hurt.

• I just realized Strix and I have a lot in common!

See?

• Strix writes a note to Batgirl when everybody meets up on the front lawn. The note is "I hart your yelow boots" and not "Y did u byrds not git me an ipad, cheepsktes?"

• Shiva defeats everybody in one page. Probably to show how good she is and not because comic books are only twenty pages and Gail Simone would rather fill those few pages with more cute notes from Strix. I mean, it could be that! But I think it's more about Shiva's talent at ass-kicking.

• Shiva invites Strix to join the League of Assassins. Usually invites aren't threats against your loved ones but this is the League of Assassins. They like to put on a show.

• Strix accepts the offer to save her friends and new family! Tragedy!

Holy shit! You can print that kind of thi...oh. Wait. Sorry. Misread that!

• Batgirl gives Mary her yellow boots. How is Batgirl going to afford another pair of yellow Doc Martens?! Doesn't she still owe Black Canary a new van and a complete wardrobe and maybe an entirely new dojo too?

• Sue returns to the house and finds it filled with vagabonds, strays, and perverts. Wasn't that a Cher song? Or an Indigo Girls album?

• Ralph calls the Secret Six "strays" after I called them strays. Word stealer! Although he doesn't call them vagabonds or perverts.

• Sue brings Ralph his Elongated Man suit so that the Secret Six can learn how annoying he really is.

• The team decides to go save Strix from the League of Assassins! That fight might take longer than one panel.

Justice League 3001 #10

All women are beautiful in their own way! On an unrelated note, does anybody know how to clean vomit out of a keyboard?

Rating: This is a comic book that works on its own. It's in its own little universe doing its own little thing and not bothering any of the actual DC continuity. That means people who don't give a shit about DC continuity but enjoy a fairly entertaining book loaded with characters they'll recognize from the Preboot days might enjoy this series. But for people who just want to read books that are canon so that they can know everything about the "actual" DC Youniverse, this book can be ignored. Because who needs to read something that won't bolster your knowledge of DC with which you can "actually" your friends whenever they mention any DC hero at all? What a huge waste of time!

• All the male members of the Justice League 3001 have been killed. Probably been killed. Most likely been "comic book killed" which means they'll be back at a later date. Except this future universe has probably run out of later dates due to Rebirth. So I guess they're all really dead.

• Nobody really cares that they're dead because they're not part of any real DC continuity!

• Who saw this week's Supergirl starring The Flash? Isn't it interesting how that team-up basically happened the same weekend as Batman Loves Superman was playing in theaters? And isn't it interesting how it showed the kind of super hero team-up that people enjoy? They were so fucking adorable together! No misunderstandings. No punches. No arguments. Just ice cream and hugs! Why can't Superman and Batman play nice like that?

• This issue is called "To Have and Have G'nort". Uh oh.

• I didn't realize this at the time but Scott Lobdell wrote the G'nort stories in the Green Lantern Corps Quarterly books back in the nineties. They were just as awful as you're imagining they were. And if you weren't just now imagining how awful they were and were thinking, "Really? I need to find back issues of those!", fuck you.

• G'nort appears and he's over one thousand years old. Just imagine how old that is in dog years!

• If you can do math, you don't have to imagine how many years that is because you can figure it out. Although I can't stand the whole concept of "dog years" or "cat years". It's not like they're somehow zipping around the sun seven times faster than humans. And if you're going to tell me that my fifteen year old cat is equivalent to a hundred and five year old person, I'd point out that I've never seen an elderly human jump up on the kitchen counter from a standstill. And most three to seven year old humans can't get pregnant. How about we all just agree to talk about animals in their actual ages. Because I pretty much know what to expect from a thirteen year old cat if you just tell me its thirteen. But if you're going to tell me it's 91, I won't say anything for a bit as I try to divide by seven and figure out the cat's actual, non-stupid age.

• G'nort works for Larfleeze scavenging worlds that Lady Styx has reduced to rubble.

• Supergirl's new costume makes it look like she's wearing a belt to hold up her vagina.

• Meanwhile, Lady Styx has Eclipso working with the Legion of Super-villains to destroy the Justice League 3001. Remember when Eclipso was just a piece of shit nobody but then DC decided they wanted to make him some kind of powerful godlike threat? So they had the big Eclipso Crossover Summer Annual Event and it was...well, it was just about as good as all of their other big summer annual crossover events: not very. Shit, it was so poorly thought out that Eclipso's hideout was on the dark side of the moon and to defeat him, the super heroes had to reflect the sun's light onto his headquarters. In comic book terms, that meant a big plan that was tough to pull off. In real world terms, that meant waiting until the moon orbited the earth so that the "dark side" was facing the sun.

• This issue has a back-up feature starring Lois Lane and Ariel Masters on a pleasure planet! Oh boy!

• Hmm. That's not the kind of pleasure I was hoping for.

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.