Batman #6

Finch to King: "Do you mind if I do a rapey cover?" King to Finch: "Yes!" D. Finch to M. Finch: "He said yes!"

The Facts!
• For those of you who don't understand language, the previous caption is a misunderstanding between an imaginary Tom King and a less imaginary David Finch. It is not actually an imaginary Tom King agreeing with a not really that imaginary at all David Finch.

• Tom King wrote The Omega Men which was a fantastic piece of writing. The fact that it was also a comic book is practically inconceivable unless you have a history of reading comic books by Warren Ellis, Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and me. Although I hope you haven't read my comic books because that would mean you've broken into the secret shoe box underneath my bed. Tom King also co-wrote Grayson which was one of the best comic books DC Comics has published in years. Tom King writes The Sheriff of Babylon which is so smart that I don't even understand it. Tom King writes The Vision which is, I've heard, an excellent book as well (I'll read it when his twelve issue run is collected!). That's a lot of comic book acclaim to have garnered in the year or two in which Tom King has been writing comic books. He also wrote some superhero novel which I should probably read because it supposedly has comic book pictures in it. I don't want people thinking I read actual books without cartoons in them! That's why my Tumblr page where I discuss fancy books is a mystery.

• I sucked Tom King's dick pretty long and hard there, didn't I?! Well guess what, Tom King! I'm walking away before you come! Because your run on Batman stinks!

• I wanted to end that last bullet point sounding as if I were fed up with Tom King's Batman but that isn't actually true. I like a lot of stuff about it but the entirety of the Gotham story either lacked the subtlety I enjoy or it was too subtle for me and so I missed how brilliant it was and now I'm probably embarrassing myself by criticizing it! Maybe I should reread it before pointing out the bits I hated! Any decent critic would surely do that, just to give it a chance. I'm glad I don't consider myself a decent critic or else I'd have to dig out the last five issues and try to reread them in a different context!

• Dammit! I hate myself because I'm going to reread them now. What happened to the lazy, arrogant, fly-by-the-torn-seat-of-his-pants reviewer who first began this blog five years ago?! I guess that fucker is dead. Ptui! Good riddance!

• Okay! I've finished rereading it and I enjoyed it a lot! I think about Issue #4, the story suffers from being told too quickly. A bunch of things happen that really should have been allowed to take place over a full issue or two instead of being crammed into one or two pages. But I feel like rereading it allowed me to not care so much about the glaring faults in pacing which I obsessed over last time and let me see the bigger picture. I think.

• As I've so brilliantly and eloquently pointed out before, Gotham the superhero is a metaphor for Gotham the City. I know, I know! I probably just blew a few minds with that revelation. But what I wasn't seeing before was that "being Gotham" means also being dark and murderous and dangerous and confused and scared and everything else. So of course Gotham wants to save Gotham. But by taking on the name, he also becomes the thing which needs to be saved from itself! That's pretty much why he can't survive. Even Batman admits at one point that Gotham can't be saved. I don't think Batman means that in a pessimistic belief that the city can't be saved. I think he means it in a self-destructive way in that he can't be saved. Batman is Gotham and, one day, Gotham will kill him. Then it will kill Dick. And then Damian. One after the other, Gotham will defeat them and there will be nobody left to save Gotham and Gotham will lose the fight for survival. Which--and this is an important bit--is why Batman wanted so much to believe that Gotham and Gotham Girl would be the city's ultimate saviors. Sometimes super bad things happen to the city and Batman can't fight those things without super powers. He often does his best but he knows, one day, much like the plane crash that almost killed him, something will take his life and he'll give it gladly. So a couple of super kids whose parents tell him are really great kids come along? Of course Batman is going to allow himself to believe they'll help keep the people of Gotham safe. He even tells the Gotham Kids' parents how much they remind him of some other great parents he once knew. Batman is willing to trust his emotions to help him figure out how to keep Gotham safe. Ultimately, this fails him due to Gotham's emotions being manipulated and turning him into a monster. Which just proves to Batman that he's been right all along in crushing the emotions of all of the Bat-kids any chance he could get!

• I wonder how much Tom King had to compact this story due to the whole Monster Men thing being planned to, almost certainly, coincide with the new season of Gotham beginning? I have a feeling that timetable caused the majority of problems I have with this story.

• Anyway, The Monster Men are coming soon because Hugo Strange and Psycho-Pirate were never apprehended at the end of the "I Am Gotham" story. Until that story begins (which could be now? I don't know when it begins and I have yet to open this issue!), I think we might have some Gotham Girl Year One stuff to get through. My prediction is it begins with Gotham Girl in a towel! No wait! I retract that prediction because David Finch isn't the interior artist!

If this had been Finch, Gotham Girl would have been in a towel for sure! Or her underwear! Or maybe naked but with cut hair falling about and hiding all the interesting bits!

• Gotham Girl really is young if she thinks that qualifies as a great joke. It doesn't even have any swear words or Jesus in it!

• This is the "I Am Gotham" epilogue. That probably means The Monster Men will be coming all over the place next issue.

• Even though Gotham Girl dies a little faster when she uses her super powers, she continues to act like a hero protecting Gotham. Just like Batman, she and her brother were also willing to die to save the city. Just in a completely different way. I wonder if Gotham and Gotham Girl bought their powers from Kobra?

• Gotham Girl stops a villain named Colonel Blimp who is really into ransoming submarines. I will admit that I looked up Colonel Blimp in the old Who's Whos comic books. You know, just to make sure he wasn't new. He wasn't in them. It's still possible he's an old villain who just wasn't popular enough to make the Who's Who but who people remember from that one issue he appeared in fifty years ago.

• Gotham Girl flies around talking to Hank constantly. It's beginning to trouble Batman. He already had one super powered person flip the fuck out and almost destroy his city. The worst part is he had to call in the Justice League for help. They'll never let him live that down now!

• Duke's penis tells Duke that they need to save Gotham Girl. So Duke tells Batman that they need to save Gotham Girl. Batman already knows that they need to save Gotham Girl. So I guess Duke's penis's plan is going to be put into action.

• This issue begins by recounting several days in Gotham Girl's week. So it's all Monday! Then Tuesday! Then the next one! Then Thursday! It reminds me how Batman Rebirth #1 was all about the passing of time and how Batman stories are cyclical. And then Tom King brought in Solomon Grundy to do his weekday chant. And now this? I think there's a theme happening!

• Batman tries to talk to Gotham Girl but she flies off giggling about meeting Batman. So he turns to Alfred for help.

Rebirth Alfred is the fucking sassiest motherfucker! I love it!

• Alfred has had some really snarky shit to say since Tom King took over. He really gets Alfred's "I think I've given enough fucks and yet he still chooses to worry me into an early grave" attitude.

• On Saturday, Kite-man decides maybe he's not so shitty that he doesn't deserve a little Rebirth moment himself. Which makes me think Colonel Blimp and Captain Stingaree are a couple old bottom-of-the-barrel Batman villains as well. Plus Captain Stingaree is really ringing a bell. It's a bell I've lost somewhere deep in my subconscious but I'm fairly certain I hear it ringing. It's either that or the tinnitus.

• Batman finally gets Gotham Girl...Claire to settle down for a moment. He reveals who he is and what he suffered as a ten year old boy. And how he still feels the urge to talk to his mother. And Claire hugs him and cries and simply misses her brother.

• You know what? It's nice to have an epilogue to a story where a hero dies that deals with mourning. Fuck just glossing over that shit like often happens. Or sometimes it's just done in a hacky way that tries to appeal to the reader's emotions. This one doesn't do that. This story takes its time in the way mourning sometimes does. I'd put it right up there with some of the best Requiem issues that followed Damian's death.

• The epilogue to the epilogue story makes me hate the idea of The Monster Men story arc because it's keeping me from immediately experiencing the next story arc which is the one I want to read: Batman joins the Suicide Squad to invade Santa Prisca in hopes of retrieving the Psycho-Pirate from Bane's clutches! Goddamit, Monster Men Story! You had better be fucking good for making me wait for another Batman working with the Suicide Squad story! I hope it's as good as Ostrander's!

The Opinions!
I will readily admit that some of "The Facts" are also opinions. But they're more comments on the facts and since my comments and opinions are practically facts anyway, it all seems to work out! But this part is where I really let my opinions fly! So if you don't like sexist, racist, homophobic, anti-animal comments, don't worry! You probably won't get any of that here! Anyway, I loved this issue. And after rereading the first five issues, I loved so much about those that I'm just going to blame the flaws on the editors and DC management! This was a touching story about a person mourning the loss of her brother. It's also a Batman story with a really good Alfred moment! So don't worry that you won't get some Batman story in your mourning story! Because it's there. Since, you know, Batman went through this same thing a few years ago!

Rating!
+3!

Justice League #4

Come on, Front Cover Blurb! There's no "Superman" in "Team"!

The Facts!
• The world is coming to an end and nobody actually cares. Mostly because they've all formed up into gigantic human meat puppets and gone on a trip to Canada. But even though it looks like humans have joined together and decided on taking some kind of action to defend the Earth, the Justice League has decided they don't like how regular folk are going about it and they're going to stop them. I suppose whenever somebody does something that you think is wrong, it's best to simply assume they've been mind-controlled. Usually Batman would advise the Justice League to stay out of international politics. But then Batman is better at judging situations than I am. He probably noticed how everybody was suddenly speaking with the same voice and a light bulb exploded over his head and he was all, "This seems fishy!" Then Aquaman was all, "What was that? You wanted me?" And Batman was all, "Wonder Woman, tell Aquaman I will never speak to him ever."

• If mind-control really existed, our courtrooms would be full of prosecutors throwing their hands up and screaming obscenities every time the defense made their opening statement which would, of course, begin, "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I wonder if you're familiar with...mind-control!" Then when the prosecutor is being warned about outbursts in court, they can just say, "Sorry, judge. I was just mind-controlled." Later when everybody breaks for lunch, they can all head out to the taco truck, order some tacos, and then run away without paying while yelling, "Mind-control!"

• I wonder if parents would be proud when their child first used mind-control to excuse their shitty behavior? Or would they just yell, "I'll show you mind-control!" Then they'd start undoing their belt with the belt buckle that says "mind-control" on it. Then when they're arrested for child abuse, they could just say, "Mind-control!" And since the police knew the case would be thrown out like all cases involving mind-control, they'd beat the shit out of the parent and tell their superiors they were suffering from a temporary case of mind-control.

• You would think my ruminations on a world with mind-control would end in some jokey manner where the last example I give doesn't end in mind-control but that would be a disservice to my serious thoughts about a world full of mind-control. I don't want to turn it into a huge joke. Mind-control is serious business.

• I don't remember why I brought up mind-control and I'm too busy to reread what I just wrote. So instead, I'll start discussing Justice League #4! According to the cover, this is the issue where Superman makes everybody question the need for a Justice League if he's going to be the one saving the world all by himself on a regular basis.

• I almost ended that last bullet point with "on the regular" but then I remembered I'm old. And it's a risky affair to use slang as an old person because the slang we know probably has already changed by the time we know it and then young people scoff at our attempts to use it. Which is totally ageist but ageist in the direction that isn't gross and problematic, apparently.

• I eschew most slang and trendy phrases anyway because I tend to just come up with my own ways to describe things, being that I'm an individual and not a needy piece of shit desperate to prove that I'm in the know!

Yeah, Jess! So just let them all through the wormholes and take a fucking break. Flash has this!

• Simon actually continues his thought which is just restating what Jess just said. Stop the freaky things from getting to Earth so that The Flash doesn't have to do it all himself. I suppose Jess is specifically talking about the Space Bed Bugs and Simon is talking about the Space Mattresses. But it takes a lot longer than the two seconds anybody is going to spend reading this page to figure that out.

• Comic books are easy to write because even if you feel you're being unclear as a writer, you know that the readers are just going to breeze past anything that doesn't quite make sense, especially when it happens on the first page and they can't quite remember what was happening in the story since they read the last issue a month ago. Or two weeks ago, I suppose.

• The Green Lanterns have apparently stumbled upon the Alien Bed Bug Mattress Factory. So their job is to stop it at the source. Meanwhile, The Flash is killing the Alien Bed Bugs that made it to Earth. Cyborg is burning clothing on the Watchtower. Wonder Woman is arguing with the Kindred. Superman is readjusting Earth's Ben Wa balls. Aquaman is showing off his collection of crystal Precious Moments Zodiac figures. And Batman is mumbling under his breath about how they're all doing a terrible job.

• The Alien Bed Bugs not only have the capability of rewriting a person's DNA but they can also hack computer systems. So Cyborg is, in the Victorian parlance, "buggered like an unchaperoned orphan."

• No wait! Cyborg is more the buggerer! His Firewall is apparently so big that the Alien Bed Bugs couldn't put it out. Or climb it. Or climb down it and back up the other side? No wait! That's more of a firebreak! Anyway, Cyborg uses the Alien Bed Bug's language against them and knocks them offline. So I guess they're Alien Robot Bed Bugs. As if the threat couldn't get any more confusing!

I prefer the Victorian phrase. It just has more character.

• The Kindred begin singing their song to the universe to save the world. I'm still betting that they're some sort of world defense set up by Lord Arion millennia ago. Now that was a hero Atlantis could be proud to call their own!

• Aquaman hears and understands The Kindred's song. Probably because it's in Altantean! Their song reveals that the world will end if they don't get their hands on a complete set of crystal Precious Moments Zodiac Figurines! Especially the Leo with the really big, sad eyes! So Aquaman rushes off with his toys to save the world.

• That's a laugh, isn't it? Aquaman saving the world? The only way that could reasonably happen is if a writer sat down with an editor and they brainstormed a story in which Aquaman would be allowed to be the big hero. It was probably a terribly difficult day in the office but occasionally you have to put in the long hours. Figuring out a story about Aquaman saving the world though? That was probably a long weekend. With a lot of alcohol and cocaine.

• The alcohol was to help loosen them up and think outside the "Aquaman is useless" box. The cocaine was to keep them from falling asleep thinking about Aquaman for hours on end.

A worldwide earthquake that was off the Richter Scale? I guess that's the end of everything! The Justice League didn't save the world! The end!

• Instead of assuming that every single building in the world just collapsed onto every single person in the world, I choose to believe that Cyborg's Richter Scale software was fucked up in the Space Robot Bed Bug attack. The quake was probably just a 2.4.

• Cyborg gets a nice information dump from the Alien Robot Bed Bugs which isn't as Two Girls, One Cup as it sounds.

• Should I italicize Two Girls, One Cup? Or would it be considered more of an "in quotations" kind of story?

• Oh, um, Cyborg's explication! It turns out the Alien Robot Bed Bugs were built to purge the universe of humanoids. But instead of killing them, The Purge just turns them into something else. Like Humanoid Centipedes, maybe? That part is unclear! The part that is clear is that Earth's Ben Wa balls are a fail-safe to prevent The Purge from turning everybody into Humanoid Centipedes. Whoever placed them in the Earth would prefer everybody die before they're claimed by The Purge. That's weird. So way before Earth had humanoids on it, somebody installed a method of destroying the Earth just in case it developed humanoid beings and was subsequently targeted by The Purge. That seems like an awful lot of work and planning for something that might never happen. I suppose whoever placed the Ben Wa balls in Earth were working from a prophecy, or information from a time traveler.

• Meanwhile inside the Earth, Superman impotently beats against one of the three gigantic earthquake machines (you know! The Ben Wa balls! I decided maybe I should describe them more accurately. Although, to be fair to Ben Wa balls, they do make things quake). Superman can barely stand the heat and the pressure inside the Earth and his punches do nothing to the single ball he's attacking. Even if he finds a way to stop this ball (probably with his freeze breath or his disintegration semen), how is he supposed to travel around the world to the next Earthquake Machine? He doesn't have a portable Boom Tube and Cyborg already said he can't help Superman out once he Boom Tubed into the core.

• Why am I speculating on how Superman can't win? That's a hurdle Bryan Hitch needs to jump! I can just sit back in the stands watching him hurdle and waiting for the hot dog guy to come by while holding my piss because I'm not pissing in the fucking trough shoulder-to-shoulder with all the other drunk assholes splashing their piss everywhere!

• Batman has nothing to add to the world saving.

• Wonder Woman, on the other hand, is busy interviewing The Kindred. She finally stopped smashing lightning bolts into their face long enough to have a conversation with them. It's not much of a conversation.

Wonder Woman: "Who are you?"
The Kindred: "Who are you?"
Wonder Woman: "I'm Diana!"
The Kindred: "No, no. Who are you?"
Wonder Woman: "I'm an Amazon!"
The Kindred: "No, no. Who are you?"
Wonder Woman: "I don't know! I seek truth! Am I truth? I'm truth!"
The Kindred: "Seems reasonable."

I'd push it the other way. It would be like popping a huge zit! Plus once Superman breaks through the mantle, he can get Cyborg to Boom Tube him to the next Earthquake Machine!

• Superman shoves the ball deep enough so that it's crushed. Now he has to figure out how to get to the next one. This issue is almost over so Superman's problem probably won't be solved until next issue. That would have given Bryan Hitch some time to think about how to solve the issue. I hope it has to do with Aquaman's adorable new collecting hobby.

• The Flash has once again had his speed stolen by The Kindred and now the last of the Alien Robot Bed Bugs are devouring him. Sorry, transforming him! Not into a Humanoid Centipede like I was thinking! No, Simon and Jess discover exactly what it is The Purge is turning humanoids into: copies of Cyborg. So what is this? A new origin story for Cyborg? The unknown Red Room technological contraption Silas Stone used to save his son must have been something from The Purge, right? And then it was hooked up to a Mother Box so Cyborg could have some individuality and distance from The Purge (also, since The Purge wasn't a thing when Cyborg was created or when he was retooled multiple times or when he was rebooted or, even, when he was rebirthed, it's no wonder it's never been mentioned before!).

The Opinions!
To sum up: The Purge has been turning humanoids all across the universe into Cyborg replicas for eons. Something has installed World Breaker technology into planets to destroy the planets before The Purge can Cyborg everybody. But The Purge still always manages to Cyborg everyone even while the worlds shake apart and are destroyed. During the World Breaking and Purging Events, The Kindred try to sing a song. They've never been able to complete their song in time and so who the fuck knows what it does. This time though, thanks to the Justice League delaying The Purge, The Kindred are going to finish their song. As long as Wonder Woman fails to stop them, of course. So I think that all makes sense? Sort of? It's a bunch of shit happening that was set in motion so long ago that nobody knows why it was set in motion. It's just too bad for Earthlings that Earth was targeted long before Earthlings even inhabited it. You'd have thought that maybe whoever created the World Breaker Balls would have come for them to place them in another world when dinosaurs were ruling for millions of years. They would have been all, "Well, I guess that planet isn't going to have sentient humanoids. It'll be sentient gigantic lizards for sure. Let's grab the World Breaker Balls and stick them in another potential planet!" Maybe the World Breaker Balls' creators are long dead. Or on strike! Or maybe just on break. Who knows how long it takes an ancient probably omnipotent being to smoke a cigarette?

The Ranking!
+0.

Nightwing #4

More mazes? Maybe Tim Seeley should just write Sudoku puzzles. If he did, I'd probably play them even though I think Sudoku is the biggest waste of time in the world! And I know wasting time!

The Facts!
• Last issue ended with Raptor, my new favorite character, introducing Nightwing, my old least favorite character, to Dr. Leviticus, my old new favorite character. Dr. Leviticus is the accountant for the Parliament of Owls. A creepy accountant into grave robbing and being awesome.

• Dr. Leviticus is the person who devised the method of resurrection used on the Talons. She also keeps rats in her purse and is still sexually active even though she's sort of dead. Undead? Whatever she is, she's really making a case for being even more of a favorite than Raptor.

• Tim Seeley should create more characters more often. Plus he should write existing characters more often. Is it possible for one writer to write all of the DC books?

• The Parliament of Owls have their own Bohemian Grove called the Parliament Grove. Hmm. That's kind of a problem. If you're trying to be a world class villainous organization with an eye on running the entire world, it might be a bit of a stain on your reputation if you steal the ideas of those villainous organizations who came before you and whom you're trying to oust.

• I wonder how many days per year Coast to Coast AM devote to whispering about goings on at the Bohemian Grove? Is it still even relevant? The whole thing feels like something that everybody just dismissed by the end of the 70s. Maybe Reagan ruined their fun by becoming president. They were all, "Fucking Reagan! He always took everything too seriously?! Didn't he realize this whole Bohemian Grove thing wasn't really about power? It was about a bunch of rich, powerful, influential men getting together to suck each other's dicks without fear of being photographed!"

• Not only have the Owls stolen the whole Bohemian Grove shtick, they've stolen Dr. Dedalus's whole labyrinth motif! These guys are just a bunch of unoriginal twats! Unless...unless it was their behind the scenes machinations that influenced the Bohemian Grove and Spyral!

• Once Dick sees that some kind of sacrifice of innocents is about to take place at Parliament Grove, he tells Raptor they need to bring the organization down immediately. Dick does realize this is only Issue #4, right? What will he do with the rest of the series if he defeats the Parliament of Owls so soon? I guess there is always loads of sex to be had.

• Dick is so good looking that I can't believe he doesn't have sex constantly with lots and lots of strangers. There must be a story there. I think DC needs to publish a four issue mini-series about Dick's sex life and how he came to the decision that fucking loads and loads of women was just too complicated. Maybe he simply became viscerally disgusted at the thought of sex because every time he slept with a woman, Alfred would greet her on the way out and already know her name because Bruce had already fucked her. Not that he'd care about the woman's sexual history but it would have to disturb a person quite a bit to find that your father has already fucked his way through most of Gotham's single women.

• Nightwing and Raptor move in to save all of the Owls' prisoners in a really clumsy way which gets them noticed. It's possible the plan was to get caught because remember how Dick is better than Batman and remember how Batman would never be caught if he didn't want to?

• Some nobody Owls report the problem to the Orator who flips the fuck so far out that...well...um...see for yourselves, I guess:

I would have liked the Parliament of Owls' god to look like a parrot. Simply because I'm stuck in believing there's an underlying cypher going on in this story. Raptor. Orator. Tarot. Parrot. It fits, right?!

• Raptor and Nightwing lead the prisoners through the Parliament of Owls' labyrinth. Really? That's the only way out? Through the confusing maze that almost definitely has a monster lurking in it? Talk about a metaphor for life!

• No, you don't have to really talk about a metaphor for life. Who are you suddenly talking to anyway? You're just reading this sitting alone and miserable! And I don't mean alone in the literal sense. You might be on your phone in a public space surrounded by people which just makes your intense feelings of solitude all the more worse. Maybe you should join a club or something? Then you can be alone and miserable with other people.

• I forgot Dick and Rappy have a map to the maze which they took from that Crazy Norwegian Map Guy. Dick gives it to one of the prisoners and deputizes him. His sidekick name is now Hummingbird. Hopefully Dick didn't just send them into the jaws of the monster. That would be a real black eye to his superheroing career.

• As the prisoners rush off, the Orator minotaurs his way out of a side passage and begins screeching on and on about how Dick screwed him over. Also he begins slicing Raptor open with his claws. Good thing Raptor has a hand that can heal anything.

• The Great Owl God Formerly Known As The Orator decides Plan A isn't that much different than Plan B. Plan A was to have Dick Grayson be a talon for the Parliament of Owls. Plan B is the same except Dick is dead in Plan B.

• But Raptor has a plan to save Nightwing!

Great! Now they're going to have to battle a giant half-owl, half-shark monster!

• "The Parliament of Owlsharks" has a nice ring to it!

• Raptor collapses as he and Dick reach the center of the labyrinth where the Book of Wisdom--which is actually a Box of Coins--is located. Luckily Raptor keeps some of his blood in Suyolak just for emergencies like this! He mentioned it in an earlier issue which meant it was going to be important later. That's how stories work! Authors don't have enough time to put everything that happens in a person's life into the story unless that piece of everything will matter later to the story. It's why people rarely go to the bathroom in fiction! Unless going to the bathroom is a pivotal metaphor about missing out on moments in life by not paying attention which will eventually lead to a person's death like in Pulp Fiction!

• As Dick tends to Raptor's wounds, he points out how he didn't have to ask Lord Google about Suyolak because he, of course, already knew the legend. Not because Dick is the greatest genius who ever lived and was forced to study everything in the world by his obsessive father but because Dick grew up in the circus and circus folk are often gypsy folk and Suyolak is a gypsy legend. I, of course, already knew all of this because I am friends with Lord Google and not ashamed of asking him things when I don't know them and then admitting to other people that I looked it up instead of pretending like I already knew it like most people do on the Internet.

• Raptor reveals that he was indeed in the circus. He was called Mr. Numb which explains why he carries supplies of his own blood around just in case he begins to bleed out from a wound he can't feel. It also explains why Dick couldn't beat him in a fist fight.

• Raptor and Nightwing bond over circus sights and smells. I hope that doesn't mean Raptor is about to sacrifice himself to save Dick. I hope it means Raptor and Dick are going to become friends and partners. I also sort of hope Raptor is gay and that he and Midnighter fall in love. Sorry, Apollo!

• The Owl-Shark-Bull-Monster-God finally catches its breath and catches up to Raptor and Nightwing. See? This is the part I'm worried about! Raptor had better not show that he's been an honorable person all along by throwing away his life to stop the Owl-Shark-Bull-Monster-God! I suspect that's a turn that is too expected for Tim Seeley. He's less about common plot elements and more about building characters. It's no fun to build a character just to kill them! Why would he create a great character like Raptor just to kill him off? That's what hack writers do to squeeze a little bit of emotion out of the reader.

• Raptor doesn't sacrifice himself when they come to the end of the labyrinth. But he does abandon Dick because Dick is leaving the shadows and re-entering the light. Luckily Raptor has a few things to say which will ensure that he'll be back.

Ooh! Raptor mentioned he was older than Dick when they both had different pop cultural comments about the labyrinth. I hope he's old enough to have fucked Nightwing's mom!

• Nightwing doesn't fall to his death because he's got another partner that I'm happy to see he's still working with: Tony the Tiger! Hooray for Dick's surrogate Bat-family! I hope someday Raptor can join it full time. And I hope Dr. Leviticus is going to become Dick's Alfred!

• After Dick spends enough time near the exit of the Labyrinth to be seen by the returned-to-his-former-state Orator so that the Orator can see that the Parliament of Owls is shit out of luck, he returns to Gotham for some cutesy moments with Damian and The Bat.

• Okay, maybe The Bat moments aren't that cutesy. But Dick always tries his best to make them so!

I don't know. Since Batman is constantly lying to his Bat-Family, I think I might have to believe Damian's version of events.

• Dr. Leviticus does not become Nightwing's new Alfred. But she may become some sort of the same something to Midnighter since she's now living in The God Garden with the Gardener. Perfect! That means Tim Seeley won't forget about her! I hope she gets her own mini-series! Four issues though! I'm sick of these overly long six issue mini-series! Stop letting business methods trump story! Four issues in a mini-series was always about right. I know comics now have less pages per issue but six issues is still usually just dragging the shit out for the sake of making a series the right size to be a trade paperback.

• Dick thanks Batman for being a micromanaging asshole so that Dick could learn not to be that. Then he walks out mumbling about how he's totes better than Batman.

• It turns out Raptor is working for Kobra which is probably super smart if I was into giving compliments. Because of Raptor's subterfuge, Kobra now has access to all of the information on the Parliament of Owls that law enforcement have. Which means Nightwing's trust of Raptor was misplaced and the Jeezly Crow Batman was right! Again! Maybe Dick should become a micromanaging asshole who doesn't trust anybody!

The Opinions!
If I start giving the Rebirth comic books ratings again, does somebody else want to keep track of the Rankings? Because I certainly don't. You know, just make a Tumblr page for Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea's ratings which I'll link to! You can probably put advertising on it and shit! Even if nobody does, maybe I'll still rate the comic books with plus and minus ratings and the ranking chart can be imaginary! With that said, this issue gets a +2 because Raptor and Dr. Leviticus are the best and Damian is adorable and Batman is a stodgy fuck who is always right no matter how much fans want the Bat-Kids to be right and not Batman. I guess everybody will just have to write more Fanfic which pretend Batman has some flaws!

Harley Quinn #3

I'm a huge fan of Ivy's new dildo.

The Facts!
• Previously in Harley Quinn, Harley was living with a stuffed beaver, a wiener dog, and a cock named Mike. If those three things set you to giggling, you'll love this fucking comic book.

• The issue begins with Wannabe Deadpool (who is Wannabe Deathstroke, so we're really getting into some comic book history layers here) receiving a new arm in the hospital. I didn't know that if you arrived at a hospital missing an arm, they'd just stick a new one on! I'll have to remember that!

• Vertigax, the alien who became hot dogs which turned everybody into zombies, has parents who care for him on a planet far away. They had put a tracker on their teenage son because they're busybody, micromanaging assholes. Maybe it's a good thing they did though because now they can track him to Earth and discover he's been spread out among dozens of human stomachs.

• Did you grow up in the late 70s and early 80s? Remember how they used to have days at school where they would fingerprint all of the kids just in case they went missing? I can't believe our parents fell for that shit out of fear. All the fucking cops wanted was a record of our prints so we could easily be caught when we became teenagers later and began vandalizing shit. Fucking pigs! Do they take samples of children's DNA now and pretend it's for safety reasons?

• You can get DNA samples in other ways then jerking kids off, right?!

This page takes care of all of the formulaic bits at once! Harley and Ivy being sexy and naked. Mike Cock strutting around all hard and erect. Harley's stuffed beaver turning into Eclipso. And the wiener dog licking the weed whacker. If that doesn't sound dirty, I probably should have put a little more thought into it to make it sound dirtier.

• I just remembered I forgot to buy Sheriff of Babylon #10 this week. Eep!

• Oh wait! Here's a better Mike Cock joke!

"Dammit! Mike Cock is blocking the television!" Har har har!

• Harley and Ivy shower together so I'll be stuck on those panels for awhile.

• Oh yeah. Scrub that back. Lower. Come on! Lower!

• That reminds me of a time I was lying in my friend Doom Bunny's bed the day after a party. He was lying next to me and next to him was his friend Amanda. That's her secret name because I don't want to expose her true identity or the fact that I can't actually remember her name. We were talking and I was rubbing her back with my arm over Doom Bunny. I said something about how I didn't want to rub any lower because things would get weird and Amanda said, "You can rub lower." So things got weird.

• Sorry! That's the end of the story! Actually, the end of the story was when I couldn't get my shoelaces to tie later and I said, "Please Baby Jesus! If you let me tie my shoes, I'll never ask for anything ever again!" And then they were tied! I really fucked up with my huge miracle prayer! The really scary part was that I was getting on a plane in an hour!

• Speaking of planes and flying, I used to do this thing where I would carefully check out everybody in the waiting area to make sure they looked like major characters in their lives. Because major characters don't die! You don't want to look around you and realize you're getting on a plane with background players and people who only ever get one line!

• Wannabe Deadpool wakes up from his operation to learn he was given the arm and hand of a chronic masturbator. One who did it in public even! Constantly! He totally freaks out because, I suppose, he believes the hand is gay. I mean, it did touch a lot of another guy's cock.

Like that matters! I'm right-handed and I jerk off with my left hand! Seriously! It's because when I was a teenager, I noticed my cock was getting a curve in the other direction from the frequency of my masturbation. So even though it was awkward at first, I began jerking off with my left hand. And now it's the only one I use! I mean, it's the main one I use! I totally need both to do it properly! Wink, wink! You know why I'm winking, right? Because I need to put a finger of my right hand up my ass to really do it right.

• Also, it turns out Chronic probably was right-handed and the doctor was just calming down a patient. Does that mean I exposed my way too personal history for nothing?!

• Enh. I'm sure I've told that story before!

• The Harley Crew (different from the Gang) decide to escape the area via the tunnels under the Wax Museum. This allows me to complete my Harley Quinn Bingo Card when she says, "Holee Spelunkerolee!"

• Harley's House of Leaves Exploration B Outfit is pretty cute. I'd buy the Action Figure.

• Poison Ivy smells mothballs on the way to the tunnel and I want to smell them too! So I pull out my Leather Goddesses of Phobos Scratch 'n' Sniff card and go to town!

• Nope. That's chocolate.

• Leather.

• Pizza.

• Oh! There we go! Mothballs! Ew. Gross.

• You know what? Supergirl #1 was a total rip-off because there wasn't one shot of Supergirl's Bum. There wasn't one in Supergirl Rebirth #1 either! I guess I'm going to have to drop Supergirl as my favorite butt in comics. Good thing there seems to be a replacement in this issue of Harley Quinn!

Oh yeah, Ivy. That's the stuff! Is that costume painted on?

• The door to the tunnel is the most obvious door to Hell anybody has ever seen. Which makes Harley want to go through it more than ever.

• The tunnel leads to a room full of doors. I think it might be the Hall of the Mountain King.

• The doors are just plot droppings for future plots. For now, the Harley Crew stick to the plan and go through the door that will lead them outside the radius of the Alien Zombie Hot Dog Apocalypse.

• The exit doesn't go far enough and the Harley Crew find themselves once again fighting zombies. Who's going to save them this time? Catwoman with a powerful laser pointer?

• Of course it isn't Catwoman! It's the alien's parents! They pull a transporter beam trick which yanks out all of the pieces of their son so they can put him back together. All of the creatures he was inside die in the transfer though. Oh well! The Aliens Ex Machina saved the day!

The Opinions!
So far, this series has breathed some fresh life into the way too formulaic and overused Harley Quinn. I'm enjoying it and not dreading it in the way I used to. I'm going to allow the comic book to get the credit for that this month and not my brain chemistry. But it could be my brain chemistry. Because--let's face it--I really enjoy the me part of these commentaries more than the comic book part of these commentaries.

Supergirl #1

Oh man! I hope her bum is as cute as her face!

The Facts!
• I love the term "hot take" for internet think pieces! Mostly because it makes every single opinion on the Internet sound disingenuous! Which, of course, they are! Now here's my hot take on Supergirl #1! You won't believe what I say!

• The issue begins with a poem, I think. And then a double page spread of Supergirl flying over Io which the comic book describes as "one of the last habitable places in the solar system." Are they crazy?! It's not habitable at all! It's all lava and lava plumes and lava lakes and lava lava and...oh wait! It says "least habitable." Never mind.

• The scene changes from Io to National City so the narrator can say "And so is this!" As in National City is also one of the least habitable places in the solar system! Ha ha! That's funny because...wait. I don't know why it's funny yet. Why is National City not very habitable? I bet it's because rent is so high because people are selfish pricks. If you're one of those house flippers, you can just fuck off from reading my blog! I mean, if you're a house flipper, you probably have better, more money making things to do than read a stupid blog about comic books. But I just want you to know that I disapprove of your actions! You aren't adding anything of value to the world! You're simply making it more expensive for people to find places to live so that you can line your own stupid pockets! I know your pockets are stupid because they're full of cash and I'm envious of them.

• Kara is currently learning how to parallel park for some reason. Parallel parking isn't on the driver's test so why bother learning it?! The only reason you need to know how to parallel park is because the streets are full of fucking cars because every old house in older neighborhoods has been converted into four or five units without any parking so now there are four to five times as many people with cars living on the block than there used to be and the only way you're ever going to park anywhere near where you live is if you can squeeze a car into a space three inches smaller than your car actually is. It's possible! But not if you go nose first!

• Later Kara goes to high school because she needs to learn how to socialize. She needs to know that punching people in the face and exploding your vagina in public aren't polite (although they are exciting!). Although aren't those the kinds of things people do in high school? I don't think she's going to learn anything new!

This makes no sense at all.

• Does Kara wear a wig when she's a high school student or when she's Supergirl? Or do Kryptonians living under a yellow sun have the power to change their hair color at will? I'm getting déjà vu typing this!

• Why does the phrase "déjà vu" have so many scribbles all over it?!

• Kara is having trouble at school because Earth school is way too archaic for her smarts. Her school is like "What is 2 plus 2?" And she's all, "I can only do infinity plus infinity or higher!"

• Kara has a classmate named Ben Rubel who is--get this!--a super genius! Wow! I'm glad DC Comics finally had the guts to create a smart teenager! Usually they just...oh wait. I was about to defend my statement when I realized I was being sarcastic.

• Ben is worried that Kara is super smart even though she can't use a toaster or do primitive calculus. And he doesn't want any other mysterious smart kids at his science school because that's his thing! Plus she might get wind of Cat Grant's Young Innovators Grant for People Not Named Grant. And she might win! Even though she can't work a pencil sharpener.

• Ben is creepily spying on Supergirl as she eats lunch and then gets suspicious when she leaves the cafeteria because there are still three periods left. Maybe she's fucking going to the bathroom, Ben! Maybe you should mind your own fucking business, Ben! Maybe you should stop trying to insinuate yourself into my girlfriend's life, BEN!

• Ben is right to be suspicious even though he really shouldn't have been suspicious at all. Unless she just ran out the door, down the front lawn, through the parking lot, and off into the horizon. That might be suspicious! But Kara just got up from her table and walked out of the cafeteria. So suspicious! I mean, she is leaving school to go stop a robbery on a train because she heard the threat with her super senses. But Ben couldn't know that, no matter how smart and mysterious he is.

This wouldn't worry me at all! I don't own a smart phone!

• I have two main reasons I don't own a smart phone. The first reason is that I don't agree with Contract Culture. I don't believe, to be a consumer, a person needs to agree to stay with a company for a certain amount of time. I understood that some of that was part of the system so that the true price of the phone could be subsidized and subsumed by the length of service demanded by the contract. That's changing to a great degree but it already spearheaded the movement where companies now love charging people a monthly fee for cloud based technology instead of a one time fee to own the rights to use a program indefinitely. But even if I were willing to pay the high monthly fee for a smart phone that didn't demand a two-year contract, I still wouldn't own one. Why the fuck do I want to be beholden to everybody who fucking knows me? They'll just demand my attention constantly! If they text, they'll know I have the phone on me and if I don't text back, they'll know I'm avoiding them! It's easier to just avoid everybody constantly by not having a phone at all! Besides, I am so super smart and full of information that I don't need to constantly check Google while having conversations to understand what everybody is talking about. And if I can't recall something, I don't mind living with a little mystery in my life!

• Speaking about how super smart I am, I watched The Exorcist on Netflix last night and I'm fairly certain I don't have a clue what's happening in three-quarters of that movie! I did notice before watching it that Sharknado has a higher rating on Netflix than The Exorcist. Does anybody actually use those five star ratings to determine what they're going to watch? I figure most people watching things on Netflix are idiots and their critiques aren't worth the part of the bathroom floor I sometimes accidentally pee on because my penis is looking the wrong way and I was too lazy to make sure it wasn't. I use the rating system simply to remember what I've seen on Netflix. If I watch something, I rate it 5 Stars just so I know I've watched it. I don't care how bad it is! Everything gets 5 Stars! Hmm, I might be part of the reason why you shouldn't trust the ratings on Netflix.

• The guy leading the data robbery on the train is an idiot. Supergirl uses her heat vision to melt their guns and he yells, "No! The Dataphage!" She does melt the Dataphage but not until the panel after he yells that. Next he tries to punch a sixteen year old girl in the face (she's fictional so it's okay. That's the same excuse I use to not feel creepy checking out her bum) and she uses her super breath to freeze his hand. He then yells--because he's stupid remember--"Gah! My hands!" Hands! Plural! Dude, you just broke one hand! Ah ha ha ha! What a massive idiot!

• Supergirl is all, "Why would you idiots be so idiotic to pull this idiotic stunt in my idiotic city? Idiots!" And Cat Grant is all, "I've got this now, Supergirl! You stop them from causing harm; I humiliate them!"

• Cat Grant acts arrogant and smart and professional. She's come a long way from publishing photos of Superman and Wonder Woman kissing on CatClarkTropolisStupidName.com. I hope somebody asks her about that site at some point so she can explain why she didn't sell it for millions of dollars when she had the chance. The only story it ever ran that got any hits was the kissing photo! You sell that shit when you get an offer, Cat!

• Maybe by not selling, Cat developed the site into her springboard to become the hottest hot person in National City! Look who's stupid now! Oh, it's me! Dammit!

• Cat Grant annoys me. Mostly because I can't stand strong, independent women. But also because she's arrogant and rude and has that thing in comic books where characters simply know everything by reading the situation to prove that they're super smart and capable. I hate that! That's not a thing! Here's a thing though: people who think they know everything by reading the situation as they try to prove how super smart and capable they are! But in comic books, those people never wind up being wrong! So annoying!

• Supergirl not only gets chewed out by Cat Grant for stepping in and saving the day in a way different than the way Cat Grant planned on saving it (which probably would have turned into a massacre once the robbers realized their Dataphage was corrupted by some asshat on the train who forgot to somehow hack their guns), she gets screamed at by Cameron Chase at the DEO for saving the day in a way that showed people Kryptonians are better than humans.

Shut up, Supergirl! Arrogant, asshole adults are telling you the way things are!

• The Danvers try to make Kara comfortable in her new home with them but they just fuck it all up the way parents do. It's because they're so old! They just don't understand what it's like to be young! Or Kryptonian! So Supergirl runs away to the Arctic.

• Supergirl discovers her other father, Cyborg Superman, is waiting for her in the Fortress of Solitude. He wants to take her back to Argo City.

The Opinions!
Great! Supergirl now has two fathers to worry about! Not to mention three mothers! Four if the corpse of her mother that Cyborg Superman was fucking in the Rebirth issue ever comes back to life! It's confusing enough having one pair of uncool people trying to teach you how to make your way in the world. How is Kara going to deal with a government agent, an alien cyborg, a narcissistic journalist, and two DEO field agents all trying to tell her the best way to live her life?! Can't they see they're going to drive her straight into Ben Rubel's bed! Bastards!

Cyborg Rebirth #1

Cyborg has a brand new vibrator and he's sort of afraid to use it.

The Facts!
• Oh Cyborg! Haven't we given you enough chances to be an interesting character?! If as a character you hit your peak when you're stuffing your face full of pizza and playing video games, it's probably time for a little soul searching. Perhaps just bow out gracefully. Let some other people have a chance at the spotlight. Stop embarrassing yourself! At this point, I'm more compelled to read an Aquaman comic book than a Cyborg comic book.

• Part of my current distaste for Cyborg might be because I'm reading the late eighties, early nineties Marv Wolfman run of The New Titans where Cyborg spends about thirty issues as a remote controlled piece of taxidermy. I really can't imagine why they keep him around anymore. Maybe it's because all of Gar Logan's Playstation save game files are stored in Cyborg.

• In his early years, Cyborg was basically just a life support system for a white noise blaster. But nowadays, he's the ultimate computer hacker! He's also a shape changer! Basically if anybody needs to recover their files from a crashed hard drive or needs to rent a Bobcat to bury a body in the garden, Cyborg is your guy!

• Cyborg is twenty-one years old at this point and has been half-machine since he was fifteen. I mean sixteen! Stupid fat fingers hit the wrong button on the calculator. He's currently training at STAR Labs. The "STAR" part of the name stands for "Scientific and Technology Advanced Research." That sounds fucking stupid. Didn't it used to mean "Scientific and Technological Advanced Research" Labs? Who authorized the idiotic change?!

• Cyborg is currently battling the monster version of himself. Although maybe it's more robot and less monster with zero human. So it's not a real reflection of Cyborg. It's just Cyborg's projection of a reflection of himself! See, he sees himself as an unlovable monster. At least he sometimes did and might still think that. Perhaps we'll finally get a confident Cyborg who doesn't worry about asking "Who or what am I?" at the beep of a boop.

• Cyborg gets knocked unconscious by his enemy which is a perfect time for the system running the simulation to pop open a subroutine to figure out Cyborg's identity. It's weird to think that a STAR Labs computer doesn't know Cyborg's identity. Although it isn't weird to think some of the people picking up this book don't know his identity or how he became the inhuman monster with the white noise cannon on his wrist. Let's find out about Victor Stone! If that's who he really is! Maybe his entire life has been a lie and we'll find out he was adopted by the Stone's! That would put a new spin on Cyborg constantly asking, "Who am I?!"

• The computer checks the DNA records and confirms that Cyborg is Victor Stone. That's when it realizes its database is full of romantic stories about how people in STAR Labs met. I think most of them met through T.O. Morrow's Dating App which was also his cybernetic son.

"I am a computer. I can speak normally and use all of the words without calling attention to my computerness. At least until I have to mention love. Why do humans call it that? Can they not simply refer to it as the engaging of their input/output devices?"

• The simulation might not actually be a simulation but an actual attack on STAR Labs. The computer is just monitoring Cyborg's efforts to defend STAR Labs so it can analyze his powers. I'm fine with either thing being true since Cyborg is unlikely to die in a simulation and he's also unlikely to die in a real battle in his Rebirth issue.

• The monster politely introduces itself to Cyborg as Malware. Hey Malware! According to my grandmother, I'm Mal Ñino!

Hey look! Cyborg made a joke that was actually kind of funny and he didn't follow it up with "That was a joke!" This series is different than his last one!

• Cyborg gets knocked unconscious again so it's a perfect time for another flashback! I hope everything readers need to know is covered in this Rebirth issue or else Cyborg is going to be suffering from a lot of concussions to set up the flashbacks for his backstory.

• This flashback is about the death of his mother. It was the first failure of Silas Stone and it hardened his heart like a hard thing! And it's hard to love with a hard thing!

• As Cyborg is beginning to recover, there's time for one more short flashback to when Cyborg was half destroyed by a Mother Box opening a Boom Tube inside of him. Victor's life was saved only because Silas took him to the Red Room and attached him to all of the technology and crossing his fingers. Some scientist!

• I mean, it worked, so...um...Some scientist!

• Cyborg and Malware have their final face-off in a secret room just past the Red Room and three doors down. The room is buffered against any kind of wireless technology sending any streams of data through it. That way, nobody can hack into and find the data being stored in the secret safe in the center. I bet the safe contains Vic's actual penis!

• Malware tries to hack Cyborg but Cyborg is so full of his own malware that Malware is destroyed. Or something. I don't really understand how computers work. I think it's just a bunch of cockroach brains linked together with fiber optics?

Oh look! Cyborg is definitely more human than machine! No human knows when to use whomever over whoever!

• The information inside the safe in the center of the room...the information that was so well-guarded so that nobody would discover what it was...that information? It automatically begins telling Cyborg what it is. It's all, "Hey! Hey! Is somebody out there?! Oh man, I've been so lonely in this room! Let me tell you all about me! I'm a Victor Stone program! I'm what's in Cyborg! Does that mean Cyborg isn't real? Oh no! Mystery! I hope you're not Cyborg, whoever you are. Or is it whomever you are? Oh man, that's a tough word to figure out! Anyway, don't worry if you are Victor because, um, I was just kidding. Ha ha! You're real. Don't spend your entire comic book series wondering if you're real or not! Bye!"

• The computer narrating the story turns out to be STAR Labs' scary version of Silas Stone. It's Victor's Machine Dad! That's good because now Cyborg can have Human Daddy Issues and Machine Daddy Issues! He'll be twice as interesting as every other DC character! Other members of Machine Dad's step family include Amazo, The Engineer, The Metal Men, Cyborg Superman, Red Tornado, The Shaggy Man, The Brain, Steel, Robotman, OMAC, and some guy with goggles whom I don't recognize!

The Opinions!
At least I'm not completely disinterested in this Cyborg series yet! It's got some potential, I suppose, even if it's going to go in the usual direction of Cyborg questioning his authenticity. At least they threw in the Double Daddy Issue Deal. Maybe that'll be interesting. Especially if Machine Daddy shows any kind of affection at all because Human Daddy is a stone-hearted dick! Oh! A stone! That's the hard thing Silas Stone's heart became!

Team Titans #5

Monsieur Poniard has two left arms.

The cover pretty much sums up this comic book: it's a huge mess. We do learn that Battalion can cry as long as he's reminded by somebody how he got his family killed by thinking he was above punishment by Lord Chaos. This is why you don't get married and have children if you want to be a revolutionary! Families are a way for the system to control you, both figuratively and literally. Figuratively in the sense that the entire system is set up so that people want to have children which traps them into the need to provide for those children! Literally because they sometimes kidnap your family until you do what you want to do! I'm not sure that happens too often but it happens in this comic book so I figured I'd better mention it. I'm sure there are some stories of this happening to a friend of a caller's friend on Coast to Coast AM.

Nothing else really happens in this one. For some reason, Terry and Donna's farmhouse which they just moved into is burned to the ground by the Judge and Jury so that Terry and Donna can declare that they will rebuild. I guess that was to show how heroically determined they are to have a normal life. I just feel like it was a waste of a good farmhouse to make a point. Seems a bit excessive! Even if it was only a drawn farmhouse.

There's also a reminder that Gar Logan, who loves chasing women like crazy, keeps pushing Terra away. He wants her to think it's because he was traumatized by a woman who looks just like her, but I think he's just nervous about losing his virginity.