The New Titans #67 (June 1990)

I don’t know what this story has to do with the “power of love”. It’s actually about an overbearing jerk trying to have sex with Raven when she really isn’t ready. But he's super ready because he needs to suck her power out through her vagina with his penis so he doesn’t become a computer. What does that have to do with love?!

Of course, I never tried this line down at the roller rink back in 1990. Maybe I would have had tons of ladies wanting to charge my penis so that I didn't become an Apple IIe!

Dark Knight Universe Presents: Batgirl #1

What the fuck is happening here?

The Review or Whatever!
During DK III: The Master Race #4, Batman gave Carrie Kelley a mission and a graduation present. It looks like the graduation present was the awful pink and green Batgirl costume. Is that really a present? "Here! Have a costume that's even more ridiculous than the Pederast's Dream Robin outfit!" You know how Batman action figures have names like "Arctic Batman" and "Jungle Batman"? I think the card on the original Robin action figure should read "Pederast's Dream Robin". Anyway, the mission was to deliver some drugs to Aquaman. It's mostly a mystery as to why Aquaman needs the drugs, or why he was waiting so patiently for them, or why he decided to take Batgirl under the sea with him after the delivery, or why Batgirl's costume is the color of Easter Bunny vomit.

This story is a metaphor for hard work! To succeed in life, one must be willing to break at least one bone in the body of each and every one of your competition. No wait! The breaking of bones is probably a metaphor as well! Although I think making "selling drugs" a metaphor for "hard work" makes me think maybe I'm pulling at the wrong thread. That's a metaphor too!

Oh wait! I think I got it!

Batman gives drugs to Carrie which leads her on a troubled journey beneath the sea which is an obvious metaphor for dropping acid and taking a trip through ones own subconscious! Aquaman probably represents Carrie's worst thoughts about herself. The only thing Aquaman can truly be a metaphor for is a person's low self-esteem. To really get at the roots of this psychedelic experience (OH! That's why the costume's colors!), we'll have to wait until the story is continued since it ends with Batgirl about to slip beneath the waves of her rational mind.

Harley Quinn #27

Romita's Harley isn't anywhere near as sexy as Conner's Harley.

The Review or Whatever!
Harley meets Deadpool and it's just as forced as you would expect. Unless you expected a story about Harley and Deadpool to be a never ending laugh riot. If you were expecting that, I have some bad news for you. The story isn't charming, or funny, or interesting. Half of the dialogue is just people making up stupid names for each other. The other half of the dialogue is "That's what she said." How long until Harley fans stop finding this crap funny simply because they love Harley and will not be disappointed by anything she's in? I've gotten to the point where Harley's comic doesn't just barely escape my notice by being meaningless twaddle that passes the time with some risqué humor and a few half-naked shots of Quinn. It is now beginning to seriously annoy the fuck out of me. When will it all end?!

Teen Titans #19

Ugh.

The Review or Whatever!
The Teen Titans have cared only about themselves pretty much since The New 52 began (and probably before that as well!). They don't change at all this issue. Wonder Girl might even be worse now that she knows she's a demigod and isn't bound by man's laws. The entire team is composed of miserably needy and lonely extroverts who accept each other as family simply because they're in proximity of each other. Not once in any issue has there been any actual bonding or intimacy that would believably bind these assholes into the family they happily proclaim they are. I hate Red Robin. I hate Bunker. I hate Beast Boy. I hate Power Girl. I hate Raven. I hate Wonder Girl. I especially hate Superboy. Thank fuck he's gone! For now! Thankfully Rebirth is happening and I'm hoping that it will erase all of the bullshit that has caused me to hate all of these characters. They're despicable narcissists full of arrogance and entitlement. And since this issue made sure to focus on only the mission of saving Lennox and nothing that happened prior to breaking into Wonder Woman's apartment, Greg Pak will probably just pretend like the Teen Titans aren't currently wanted for assisting a wanted fugitive and breaking into a prison and whatever other bullshit they did because they get to do whatever they think is right for the "family." Fuck these assholes. I hope this was the last Goddamned issue before Rebirth.

Deathstroke #17

In the art world, this stance is known as "I didn't plan my space correctly and began drawing the figure too low and too big so I had to make him kneeling and disappearing into the ground."

The Review or Whatever!
I could go all "'nuff said" on this review and simply point out that one of Deathstork's enemies last issue called him "Douchéstroke" and let people figure out if that's for them or not (I've learned how to type the "e" with an accent now so I can easily refer to Deathstroke as "Douchéstork"!). But I feel I'd be remiss in not pointing out all of the other shit that has gone horribly wrong in the telling of Douchéstork's Rebooted Reboot of his New 52 Reboot tale. Like for instance, Slade Wilson is now a young man for some reason. It doesn't matter how or why because it matters little to Slade. The only thing he needed to do was check his balls and they seemed fine, so that was the end of that. The only reason for his sudden youth, I suspect, was Tony S. Daniel must have believed it would attract the youth market who would suddenly be interested in shipping him with other characters. Although I'm not sure if the new creative team realizes that Slade was only recently turned into a young man.

This was supposedly five years ago. Perhaps Slade the Silver Fox was just really into Just For Men back then?

The guy Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kidding out of the panel with Slade is another one of this comic book's stunning errors. He's a man who has given himself the metahuman moniker of Lawman. Fucking "LAWMAN"! Seriously! Who thinks up this shit?! Not me! If I were to come up with this story, I would have called him Sheriff Guy!

Speaking of the term "guy", I learned today on Twitter from one of my heroes, Susie Dent, that the word "guy" as in Tumblr's "You guys! Pay attention to me" guys derives from Guy Fawkes. It's because his effigies were known as guys, like in "Bring me all of those guys to throw on the fire!" It then did some other stuff and now here we are! Or something. Shut up.

Dammit! I just realized I missed the perfect opportunity to say, "You guys! Actually, didactic stuff about how guys entered the vernacular said in a fairly condescending way!"

Douchéstork has been searching for his missing daughter Rose because he wants people to actually think he cares about her (he doesn't). In doing so, he's made enemies with some Street Fighter II character named Snakebite and found himself in Shitstain, Montana, about to die. He probably won't die because the guy masterminding this ambush is the idiot I mentioned earlier who wanted to be called Lawman. That doesn't even sound cool! I'd rather be called Turd Police.

Lawman is angry because he was killed on the battlefield and Slade left his corpse there. Their enemies brought him back to life and used him as a metahuman blood bank. That's why Lawman is so angry with Slade. Because Slade decided to save himself instead of dying trying to drag a corpse off of a raging battlefield. As reasons go, it's not the worst motivation for a villain. I can only say that because I've read stories by Ann Nocenti and Scott Lobdell.

I would like to think that if I ever died and my friend left my corpse so he could save his own life and my corpse was later brought back to life and horrible things were done to my reanimated body, I would be so ecstatic to be alive again that I wouldn't give a shit. Definitely the last thing I would be thinking would be, "Ew! That Doom Bunny is going to pay for thinking about himself and his wife and kids and not making my dead body his first and only priority! I'll teach him never to abandon a corpse again!"

Okay, so I've now established that Lawman doesn't just have a silly name, he's also an idiot with no facility for logic.

In the literary world, this is known as "I didn't plan this story at all and am now providing this explication to tie it all together even though it's a bunch of bullshit nonsense."

Lawman also works with some new covert organization named NOVA (which I'm sure will be a really clever acronym when it's finally revealed) which targets "metahuman criminals and those who use their powers for currency." Why couldn't that be the entire reason for hunting down Slade? Why all the "I was your friend and you left my corpse to be reanimated and tortured, you jerk!"? I think the whole NOVA thing works just fine without introducing all the stuff that makes Lawman appear silly (I mean the stuff besides his name. No fixing that. Except, you know, giving him a different name that isn't stupid).

Okay, now that everybody understands what's going on and how Lawman definitely is going to kill Slade because he also can't wait to be known as the man who killed Douchéstork, Lawman shoots Slade in the head and dances a jig. Oh no, wait. I got ahead of myself. That was my speculation as to how this scene would end in the most logical way. I forgot about the part where Lawman has no facility for logic.

Oh, that's right! Give him a fighting chance! Ruin your whole Harvestian plan that took forever to pull off just to throw it all in the toilet here at the end! Way to go, Flawman.

Red Hood has also been dragged off to Buttereddick, Montana, so he's able to save Douchéstork (whom he named, by the way. I mean, except for the stork part. He came up with the terrible "douché" part. What's with the fucking accent, Todd? Is that how Alfred used to pronounce douche?) in the nick of time! Whew! I thought for sure Douchéstork was going to save himself.

Lawman uses his mind powers (oh yeah. He has mind powers. Seems sort of useless for somebody without much of a mind) to convince Jason Todd that he sees Batman. Jason follows illusory Batman back to Gotham or something. I don't know. He just leaves the comic book at this point. Does it matter?

Douchéstork is once again about to be killed by Lawman but this time Rose Wilson saves his life. For some reason. I'm sure it has to do with Daddy Issues. That seems to be a running theme in DC Comics. That's why my blog's banner is the way it is. Not the Blogger one! The Tumblr one!

While Rose is being stabbed by Lawman, Slade gets up behind him with his sword and cuts off his head! No, wait. He puts the sword down and does this instead:

Daddy's an idiot.

And since Douchéstork is now unarmed, Lawman simply goes ahead and does this:

I guess Lawman just can't be beat!

Just before Lawman kills Slade and Rose, Jericho pulls some mental shenanigans which makes Lawman think Rose and Slade have disappeared. I didn't know he had that power. Slade and Rose limp over to him so that Slade can remind his children why they hate him when he calls his son Joseph "Jericho." And hanging out with Jericho is Ra's al Ghul because whatever. It might tie into some earlier part of this series but I can't remember. It might also just be the only thing the creative team could think to add for a big last page surprise. "Horrible story still tainted by Tony S. Daniel's awful writing ability finally over! And look who's now in it! Surprise!" I don't think the surprise was enough to make up for all of the other shit in this story.

Poor Deathstroke has been garbage for so long. At least it's been consistent, I guess.

The Omega Men #11

There are plenty of reasons why this comic book is so much better than most of its competition. Turning the Green Lantern symbol into the Omega symbol is simply not ignoring the balls.

The Review!
Super hero comic books too often wind up not being about anything except super hero comic books. So now we get stories deconstructing the ideals and myths which were commonly excepted tropes for decades. How would people actually react to a world full of super powered people? What if the super heroes weren't infallible and could be corrupted by their own power? What steps would the government take to control the perceived menace? If we're not getting stories about the negative reaction people would have to the super heroes, we constantly get the story where the heroes teach regular people that they're the actual heroes. Everybody is actually Batman! Everyone is actually Superman! We are in control of our own lives and thank you, super heroes, for giving us that message! It's exhausting! Although not in an intellectually exhausting manner! The stories are never subtle about who is in the right and who is totally fucking wrong. Although sometimes I think Superman is being a complete and utter dick but the story is hitting me over the head with some stupid fucking message about how he's doing the right thing even though he obviously isn't. So maybe I'm just tired of writers who can't write complex stories without having to explain them in long-winded narration boxes that often contradict the actions of the character. Maybe I'm just tired of being told, by the writer and the first person narration of the main character, how I'm supposed to feel and the conclusions I'm supposed to draw.

Sometimes I just want to read a book that can't fucking decide if the hero is inspiring or terrible! I want a book that lets me decide who to support! Although, to be fair, putting "The Omega Men" right on the cover kind of makes me think I'm supposed to agree with their view of the universe. And who is actually reading this book and siding with The Citadel anyway (you know, since politicians and CEOs probably aren't reading it)? So maybe this is a bad example of a comic book with an ambiguous message that doesn't offer any easy answers. This book hasn't really tried to be subtle about the black eye it's intending to give America's foreign policy and America's kowtowing to corporate interests. Maybe I should have begun with an off-topic thought like usual.

Is it bad that I drive around in Grand Theft Auto laughing hysterically as I run people over or would it be worse if I were totally stoic and serious about it?!

This month, The Omega Men gather an army and march into the Citadel's headquarters. That's pretty much the summation of the entire issue. Trying to summarize something so well put together and make stupid dick jokes about it would be an insult to the work. The meat of the story is how the characters go about convincing each world to join the war against the Citadel. The actual action, the war, the battles...they're all skimmed past in a few pages detailing half an Earth year's worth of conflict. Some writers would have made a huge mistake and swapped those ratios and concentrated on huge double splash pages of heroic battle and stupid one liners. I don't know if Tom King would have spent longer on the war if given more than twelve issues of The Omega Men. Whatever the case, it's better this way. Sometimes writers are tempted to fill pages with nonsense or simple action because they have no actual deadline for a story. In fact, it's the exact opposite where the writer knows that the comic just keeps going and going, so why not pad the story as much as possible to fill up as many pages as possible to extend one story for as many issues as possible? I really wouldn't mind if all of DC's comics simply became four, six, or twelve issue mini-series! Because then the writer would be forced to pitch an actual story with a beginning, middle, and end with a fucking reason for existing. Until then, we'll just keep getting pitches for stories for things like "Superman battles the most powerful intergalactic monster he's met to date for five issues until he finally wins in the last issue through sheer force of willpower and heart!"

Justice League 3001 #11

Is Larfleeze showing them his penis?

The Review!
Keith and J.M. make a joke about how Larfleeze keeps repeating the same thing over and over. They do read their own stuff, right? Perhaps it's a self-referential joke! Ha ha! These guys are so funny! This story has gone a bit off the rails but that might be because of Rebirth and the end of nearly everything, including this title. It's also possible Keith and J.M. just got bored writing this. They seem like the kind of writers who come up with ideas they think are funny, enjoy writing those funny ideas for a bit, and eventually come to a place where they're desperately trying to wring the last of the humor out of the concept they came up with. Justice League 3001 has done its time and is ready to be put to bed. Hell, Booster and Beetle aren't even in it any more! I think they each had too many dicks.