The Flintstones #1

See, everybody? I'm fucking reading it! Now lay off me!

The Commentary!
• At first I wasn't planning on reading The Flintstones because I don't have any real fondness for the old cartoon. But my comic book shop put it in my pull box anyway, so I picked it up. I'm glad they did because when I found it was written by Mark Russell, the writer of Prez, I was absolutely excited to read it. If this is a fraction as good as Prez was then it'll still be better than most comic books on the shelves.

• Snippets of songs I heard on this show have been with me since my childhood. Not a month goes by that I don't sing one or two (or three!) of the various songs stuck in my head because of this show. First there is the one that Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm sing: "Let the sun shine in! Meet it with a grin. Open up your heart and let the sun shine in!" Then there's the song by the fab group, The Way Outs! "Way out! WAY OUT! That's where the fun is! WAY OUT!" And lastly, the jingle of some prehistoric burger joint: "Here I come on the run with a burger on a bun singing blah blah blah blah blah! Something about lettuce you'll upset us something pickle or some other thing." Anyway, I still often sing that whole "Here I come on the run with a burger on a bun!" part.

• One other way music and The Flintstones was a part of my life was the theme song. At a way too young age, my mom used to let me watch slasher and paranormal horror movies like The Sentinel and The Exorcist and Friday the 13th. When I would lay down to go to sleep and feel terrified, I would simply picture Fred and Wilma in their car driving down an endless road as I sang the theme song to myself until I passed out from exhaustion.

• One other thing I remember about the cartoon. Barney was a fucking pervert! I'm fairly certain there's an episode where he's reluctant to be the back half of a dinosaur costume because he's worried Dino might get some funny ideas. I think there's another moment that became popular on the Internet where Barney jokes about having two heads. Which is a dick joke, of course.

• This issue is called "A Clean Slate". I guess it's about Mr. Slate taking a bath?

• As an aside, for those of you annoyed that I often don't put my punctuation inside the closing quotes, I suggest looking up why Americans and British differ on the topic. I might be American but I choose to do the logical thing and not the traditional way which only came about due to the printing process. Last I checked, the Internet isn't run like a printing press.

• The comic book takes place in the town of Bedrock one hundred thousand years ago!

Page Two and Russell and Pugh had me at a club called "Homo Erectus".

• I'm guessing "Wammoth Bammoth Thank You Mammoth" is where cavemen go to buy their dishwashers and not a brothel.

• My other favorite place in Bedrock? Trey's Bird Slavery Emporium.

• In Bedrock, Homo Sapiens run it all! But recently, Mr. Slate has hired some Neanderthals because they work cheap and illegal. You can't run a profitable quarry without illegals who are also much stronger and not as smart as the citizens of the city! Fred calls Wilma on his Shellphone to tell her he'll be late because he's got to take the new guys to a boxing match. She reminds Fred that he and Barney have some support group for veterans or something down at the lodge.

• Wilma is into cave painting on canvas.

• Morp is apparently their God.

• Barney calls the Neanderthals "cavemen" when Fred comes to pick him up. Now I feel like a jerk referring to the regular citizens of Bedrock as cavemen! I'm so insensitive! I think?

• After the support group, Fred, Barney and the cavemen finally head out to watch the fights.

Apparently every current fighter on the circuit is undefeated.

• So, anyway, Fred teaches the Neanderthals how they have to work a sucky job and hope to move up to another sucky job to pay for all the other sucky crap that encompasses life until they deflate like a pig balloon and are no use to anybody anymore. Except maybe as slave bird feed. But at least Wilma is having a nice life! Her paintings have been accepted in an exhibition at the Bedrock Museum! That's probably just a cave.

• Fred learns that the only people who profit from war are financiers and corporations. He learns this at Mr. Slate's Hot Tub Party where guests are encouraged to bring their own lotion. Ew. I don't want to know any more about it.

I'm with Wilma.

• One of the Neanderthals winds up falling through the ice at Mr. Slate's party while trying to kill a mammoth for Mr. Slate to barbecue. After that, the other Neanderthals decide they've had enough of civilization and bingo bongo bungle head back into the jungle.

• Fred doesn't get the foreman job because he failed to get Mr. Slate cheap labor. So he and Wilma go home leaving Mr. Slate alone with his dessert tortoise.

I only scanned this picture so I could send it to the Non-Certified Spouse. She was terrified of giant sloths as a child because she saw them in a book on prehistoric animals.

• Later at the art exhibit, Wilma's art is skewered by the critics. I totally agree with them: her hand prints are childish but lack the whimsy which would bring a spark of life and joy to the canvas. Critics are awesome!

• Wilma explains to Fred what her art means to her. Well, that's all well and good but since when did what the artist believed matter? Her handprints are still boring crap!

The Review!
How am I supposed to give an intellectual critique of this comic book when Mark Russell made sure to point out that critics are assholes? Fucking dick! I don't go to his job and draw pictures of writers masturbating constantly over their own material before he can even write the material which would make him want to masturbate! Or something. I mean, obviously if I have a criticism with this comic book, it just proves I'm a stupid artwad critic! So I'm not going to offer a criticism of this comic book even though it would have been favorable!

Ranking: +3! Oh yeah! I forgot to give rankings to the Wacky Raceland comic books! I suppose they can have a +1 between them!

Wacky Raceland #3

I really want to feel joyous thanks to the Muttley sticker but my mind is screaming because of the fucked up dice.

The Facts!
• Today's race takes place in Big Sur! I put the exclamation point on there because anybody who was ever in The Sierra Club in High School in California probably first got fingered there. Apparently the place is now called Poseidon's Toilet. I assume that's because fingering isn't the only "first" that happens there anymore.

• If there isn't an urban dictionary entry for "Poseidon's Toilet," just imagine it's when somebody pees in your asshole as you're receiving oral sex.

• Apparently Peter Perfect is a God-fearing man. What a puss.

Dick didn't mock God at all! He was mocking victims of sexual abuse! Get it right, Peter!

• Luke of the Arkansas Chuggabug declares God is dead while Pat Pending points out that the search for a supreme being has been mankind's biggest folly. Now, I don't know about all that! I'm sure believing in something greater helped people until they didn't need the crutch of religion anymore. Sure, some people still need it. And that would be fine if they kept it as their own business. But when somebody sees you walking around crutch-free and having a good old time, I really wish they would stop insisting that life would be easier if I got some crutches too.

• Peter answers Pat by pointing out that science doesn't answer everything. No, it doesn't. YET! But you can't just decide that anything you can make up in your imagination is as good an answer as anything else! Science continues to paint the floor of the universe with explanations while God is desperately trapped in an ever-decreasing corner. He's just not needed as an explanation. For anything!

• The mountain the Racers are driving across collapses into a deep body of water which knocks Penelope Pitstop into a memory of her youth. It's mostly composed of crayons.

• Penelope's memories might be a little wonky from the near drowning. Or else she actually had a Cyclops for a step-father. She seems to worship Zeus, so I guess it's possible! Anyway, her backstory was one of abuse so you'd think she would have been more offended by Dick's comment than Peter was. But why would she get offended at Dick Dastardly?! He's the hero of this story!

• One of the rules of the race is that the Racers can't let other Racers die. That seems like a ridiculous rule. I guess this race isn't about finding a winner to send to a fabled Utopia after all. The Announcer must need them to save what's left of the world and the only way to do that is to forge them into a strong team who can depend on each other.

• I still wish they could kill each other. I guess that would make things too easy.

• Sawtooth has a metal chastity belt and a metal mouth gag. What the fuck is up with that?! I guess he's Rufus's sexual subservient.

See? A deviant! Rufus and Sawtooth are definitely fucking. Violently.

• Penelope and Dick bond over slaughtering mutant crabs away from the rest of the Racers. Penelope even admits that Dick makes a lot of sense. Of course he does! He's the most intelligent Racer in the group! He also hates everybody and knows life is a piece of shit that simply wears you down until you're too tired to argue with it anymore and you die listlessly! That whole raging against the dying of the light? Impossible! Life has almost assuredly crushed the spirit from you long before you're gasping your final breaths.

• Dick also probably reviews comic books.

• The plant monster controls Red Max like a puppet in the way you're probably imagining a puppet is puppeted. He says to Rufus, "I don't know what you see in this, Rufus." Is the only point of Red Max to insult all of the characters in ways that allow the reader to discover their gender and sexuality?! He's quite the important character then!

• Dick and Penelope are almost eaten by a monstrosity of a Leviathan. It's not a natural sea monster though! It has the logo of some gene-splicing company: a hatchet chopping a double helix in half. Is the company the bad guy The Announcer is training the Racers to battle? Or is the company just one of The Announcer's many assets to make the Racer's life more difficult?

• I hope the ultimate enemies are aliens.

• The issue ends without revealing who wins the race. It was probably Pat Pending! But I think this issue is the one that's saying, "Look! It doesn't matter who wins each race because the race is beside the point! The point is what the Racers learn about themselves and each other during each race! Sheesh! Pay attention!"

• I'm just going to mark down that Pat Pending won! So that's one for Penelope, one for Dick, and one for Pat! Go Dick!

My Opinions!
I wish the art in this comic book were a little bit clearer. I get that it's gritty and post-apocalyptic but sometimes I actually want to be able to understand what I'm looking at without having to cross my eyes and stare through the page until everything comes into focus. As for the writing, I have a feeling it will get better as Ken Pontac gets more comfortable with the world he's building. I do like that each issue has been one individual race, like the episodes of the cartoons. I also like that the race doesn't actually matter. It's just a metaphor for life, and the Racers a metaphor for those we're closest to on our journey through it. Getting to the finish line ahead of the rest isn't the point. It's how you treat the others on the journey, and it's about discovering the things you're capable of, and it's about redeeming the things you eventually become wise enough to realize need redeeming. This book has a lot of potential, I think. Dick Dastardly has always been my favorite Racer and he continues to be in this comic book. My second favorite from the cartoon? Rufus and Sawtooth! And, hey! Guess what? I think they're becoming my second favorite here too! They just need more on-panel time!

Wacky Raceland #2

If at all possible, I will always choose a cover with Dick Dastardly. Unless one of the covers eventually shows the Turbo Terrific and the Compact Pussycat fucking.

The Facts!
• It's sometimes hard to tell how filthy-minded people from the past actually were. In a general sense, I believe the amount of cynicism among the general populace wasn't as great while the amount of naiveté was greater. So when I look back at the Wacky Races cartoon, I have to wonder if the artist who designed the Turbo Terrific and the Compact Pussycat knew he was making a sexually explicit visual comment on the Peter and Penelope? I would have to think he knew but owing to that greater level of naiveté, it was something that could easily make it onto a kid's cartoon. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, here are the two cars:

A head-on collision between these two cars would be x-rated.

• The current race is in San Francisco. That probably means they'll encounter a gay earthquake who is tripping balls.

• Dick Dastardly drives by a building that allows him to reminisce about his life before the apocalypse. He can't do it while driving though so he stops and gets out of the car, ignoring the radiation and cannibal mutants. Maybe he left some devious trap supplies in the building and he needs them to make sure the Anthill Mob wind up with Hepatitis C. Oh, and also lose the race, of course!

• Apparently Dick Dastardly was a famous concert pianist before the world went to shit. And also not-so-apparently and maybe I'm interpreting the story wrong, but his piano playing causes plagues. Also maybe he plays the violin. And maybe the plagues were just happening. And maybe...well, anyway, some horrible cataclysm hits San Francisco and Dick, being inside the secure vault with the Stradivarius he was showing his wife and child, survives. But his wife and child were locked out of the vault. By Dick. So, you know, he watched them die. So I guess that's supposed to make him a bad guy? I think it makes him a survivor!

• Meanwhile, the rest of the racers are being attacked by cannibals and nanites and underground comic book artists. It's not the most exciting story. Just a bunch of scenes with how each of the different racers tries to avoid the nanites. Pat Pending gets his Convert-a-Car to convert. The Gruesome Twosome gruesomely drag some cannibals behind the Creepy Coupe to distract the nanites. The Red Max continues to say as many transphobic things as he can think of to Sergeant Blast. And Peter Perfect decides to blast an EMP to disable all of the nanites. Of course, that kills all of their cars as well. If this were the cartoon, the Anthill Mob would all lift up the frame of the car and run across the finish line on their feet to win. But since this is a comic book and not a silly cartoon, I hope Dick Dastardly wins since his car is still operational, being that he was left way behind while he picks up the violin he left all those years ago for some reason. I mean, why didn't he take it with him the night his son and wife and everybody in San Francisco died?

• Oh, maybe he didn't want the violin after all. He just wanted to finish his concert and apologize to the audience for taking their money without giving them the performance they paid for.

I would prefer it if Muttley were sniggering.

• After Dick's family died that night, The Announcer came to him and turned his car into the sentient Mean Machine. The Announcer then promised Dick that if he could win the Wacky Races, she would be able to bring Dick's wife and son back to life. He agrees although he forgets to ask The Announcer if they could be brought to life with just a little bit of their memories cut off at the end of their previous lives. Because, I mean, how happy are they going to be to see him when their last memories are of him locking them out of his safe room to watch them die in a firestorm?

• Back to the others, it seems the EMP killed the cars but not the nanites. They were able to bring themselves back online and now the racers are all racing on foot to the finish line as they try to outrun death.

• Dick passes by the other racers and refuses to blow his EMP to help them out. Why do they even ask him? They saw how that didn't work before! I think they're just trying to get him to be stuck in the same position. What awful, awful people all of the racers who aren't Dick Dastardly are!

• Dick does use his EMP but only after he wins the race. Good job, Dick Dastardly! I can't believe he won a race in only the second issue! Did Ken Pontac ever even watch the fucking cartoon?! Dick never wins!

• At the finish line, the Racers are beset upon by cannibals before they can beat Dick's ass for not saving their lives quickly enough. Fucking ungrateful bastards! Dick Dastardly is a hero and a race winner and a survivor! How dare they treat him so shabbily. I've never read a character that is more upstanding and inspiring as Dick Dastardly! My hero!

My Opinions!
Hopefully this comic book doesn't concentrate on just the more human of the racers. I think we've got a pretty good handle on who Dick and Peter and Penelope and Red Max and Sergeant Blast and Pat Pending are. I want more stories about the Gruesome Twosome and the Slagg Brothers and Rufus Roughcut's beaver friend, Sawtooth! What's going on with those guys?! We already saw what was up with Blubber Bear which was less interesting, I thought, than having Luke running around with a cowardly, anxiety-filled bear as his partner. Why couldn't he have a sentient bear in this book? Why isn't Muttley more human? Why can't a beaver be a co-driver?! This thing has sentient cars and an omnipotent announcer! I want this comic book to be weirder than it is and less based in sci-fi realities. I want sci-fi fantasies!

Bloodlines #6

It's a good thing this cover is on the last issue because it's terrible and nobody would ever look at it and think, "I have to pick up this comic book!"

The Facts!
• I'm still confused as to why this comic book exists. I suppose it exists because idiots like me buy comic books like this. But who at DC Comics thought, "You know what we haven't exploited enough? Bloodlines! I mean, we designed that shit to make us wheelbarrows full of cash! Why the fuck aren't all the crazy characters we trademarked during the Bloodlines Annual Debacle of Nineteen Ninety Whatever more popular?! You people do know we're doing movies now, right? Let's get some fucking Bloodlines movies going! Who wouldn't rush to the movies with a marquee reading 'SPARX!' in 3-D! Or 'JOE PUBLIC'! Or 'LIONHEART'! Or 'LOOSE CANNON'! Or...hey, you guys want to wake up? I'm making a killer pitch here!"

• Although, now that I've refreshed my mind with the list of truly horrible names and ideas of characters that came out of Bloodlines, I think it could make a terrific Netflix series. Given the right writers, of course! Somebody can make these terrible Bloodlines characters interesting in a way that doesn't ignore how absolutely terrible they are. It would have to be acknowledged that most of the powers people received sucked and most of the people who received those powers were unimaginative idiots who came up with terrible monikers.

• Currently, the Bloodlines Gang have found themselves on the Boss Level. The Bloodlines Queen is living in the crater where the meteor hit and turning all of the humans gathered up by Cardinal Sin into more terrible Bloodlines characters. Hopefully this isn't one of those final fights where the bad guy punches harder for a bit and then the good guys punch harder for a bit and then the bad guy punches so hard that she almost wins and then the good guys rally and punch hardest of all to win. I want to read a battle that's actually thought out for once. What happened to those battles where somebody said something like "One last chance!" and then did something crazy to save the day? Now they just say something like "I have more heart and stuff!" so that they can power through the beating and knock out or kill the bad guy with just a punch or a blast of their powers.

• The first problem is Cardinal Sin! Unless his name is Father Bad Guy. Whatever! He needs to be stopped so that the dozens of people battling back stop believing in God and just walk away.

Really? That pipsqueak just choked the fuck out of that old man with one hand? Maybe Albert not only has invisibility but super strength in one hand.

• Eddie the Incredible Bulk decides it's okay to kill all of the Bloodlines victims attacking him. Why not? Duncan the Urban Hunter said it was okay! And he killed his wife and kids! Why would he have done that if he wasn't telling the truth? You know, aside from maybe he didn't really love them and was sick of them ruining his life.

• Eddie the Incredible Dolt tells the other Bloodlines Gang members to walk away from the battle with the Bloodlines Queen because...well, I don't know why he does. They all have useful combat skills (except for Albert. He'd never be able to choke the Bloodlines Queen with just one hand) so you'd think they'd be an asset. Heck, they have better weapons than Eddie: knives, guns, electricity! But Eddie doesn't buy into all that team bullshit! I agree with him. Teams never really work as teams. Like the Titans! They'll be defeated and Nightwing will be all, "We didn't work together! Let's work together this time!" Then they'll do exactly the same thing they did when they were beaten but, because they said they were working together, they win! Eddie just decides that beating the Bloodlines Queen to death with his fists is probably the right course of action.

• Where is little Anima? You know, the six year old with the head and face of a twenty-six year old?

• Eddie the Incredible Joke declares, "I have more heart and stuff!" And just like that, he tears the Bloodlines Queen limb from limb from limb from limb from limb from limb from limb. Hooray! What a magnificently structured story!

• Duncan the Urban Hunter starts counting out a number of bullets which are exactly equal to the number of members in the Bloodlines Gang. First bullet is for Blake! You know, Gunfire! The jerk who turned bad first. But Haley remembers reading Of Mice and Men, so she kills him herself. Or, at least, it seems like she kills him. What she actually does is stab the parasite inside of him and yank it out. Then she walks away crying instead of waiting for him to begin to cough before making a miraculous recovery! After that, Haley can stab everybody and they'll all be fine!

• Dana and Eddie do it. Probably awkwardly.

• The next day, we discover Haley actually owns a full pair of pants. But why bother now? They'll be torn up shorts the next time she Wolver...er, knives out!

• The Bloodlines Gang climb into Blake's car and head to Metropolis to visit STAR Labs. Maybe they can get somebody who can actually perform delicate surgery to remove the parasites because it looks like maybe Blake didn't survive Haley gutting him. Whoops!

• The series ends with Anima murdering a bunch of people in a bar. Cliffhanger!

My Opinions!
It's not like I expected this series to have any kind of an ending other than the typical beat the shit out of the Boss Monster ending. It's not like I picked up Bloodlines by J.T. Krul thinking that I was going to read a story I'll never forget. It's not like any of that happened and took me by surprise. So, you know, this was exactly what I thought it was going to be. It's a comic book that sells for $2.99 an issue but is really only worth maybe fifty cents per issue. It's the kind of series nobody puts a lot of thought into but executives are probably crossing their fingers that a character within it somehow proves popular with the audience. Of course, only delusional business executives could think J.T. Krul would be the writer to make that happen. I think this was just an opportunity to try to breathe some life into some old trademarks. I guess they accomplished that?

Ranking: -3!

Aquaman #6

Mera is the most powerful hero in this fight because even Kryptonians get dehydrated.

The Facts!
• Aquaman and Mera have gone nuts and decided to defeat America single-handed. Or is that double-handed since there are two of them? How did I already get distracted by a digression in just the second sentence?

• It's not that Aquaman and Mera wanted to defeat the United States. It's just that the United States government didn't give them much choice. Everybody knows that if the federal government says, "You're under arrest," it's your duty as a responsible citizen to respond, "No, you're under arrest!" Then you scream about fascism and oppression as you're put in a choke-hold and wrestled to the ground. Except Mera and Aquaman were too strong to be wrestled to the ground by the entire Marine Corps. So the president got on the phone and called in Superman to rough up Aquaman and teach him a thing or two about the scam known as "resisting arrest".

• Anybody who has ever been arrested and their only charge was "resisting arrest" should be able to sue their law enforcement agency who arrested them. If I'm charged with resisting arrest, I'd better fucking be charged with something else which would be the arrest I was resisting. There's no fucking way anybody should ever be brought in simply for "resisting arrest." How about a little honesty, Law Enforcement Dickheads? Just call it what it actually is. "Arrested Because the Officer Felt Disrespected For the Slightest of Reasons."

• Superman tells Aquaman that "whatever this is, it's got to end, right here and now." Who died and made you...oh yeah! New 52 Superman died! But never mind that! Why does Superman think he's the arbiter of what can and can't happen? What if Eclipso had been all, "Whoa whoa whoa! You can't explode The Eradicator on the moon! You'll ruin the environment for my Moon Cows!" I'm sure Superman wouldn't have appreciated that since Superman didn't start the fight. Shouldn't Superman be directing his speech to the Marines? Shouldn't he be telling them that whatever this is, it ends now? They're the aggressors! Aquaman was just an innocent king trying to go home when America was all, "Just a second, sonny!" Superman does know that the person winning the fight isn't always the person responsible for the fight, right?

Holy shit. I agree with Aquaman.

• Superman responds by saying, "Oh yeah? You don't think I know what's going on? I'm Superman, bitch! I know this shit is about to escalate into World War Bore! That's what I call a land versus sea battle because who cares! What I'm trying to say here, Arthur, is that I'm talking to you because you're the only reasonable person in this conflict! The U.S. Government is already chanting 'Remember the Pontchartrain! Remember the Pontchartrain!" which, to be honest, is a pretty shitty chant. They really should give their battleships names that flow better and don't sound so foreign when used in a chant to get people's patriotic blood boiling. And I'm not talking to Mera because, frankly, she scares the kryptonite out of me. So fucking listen to me and knock this shit off before this escalation escalates!"

• And then Superman does something that Superman will live to regret until the day everybody stops laughing about how Aquaman laid him out in one punch: he puts his hand on Aquaman. When I turn the page, I hope Arthur lays out Clark in one punch or else my previous statement will be faulty.

Whew! Still a Grandmaster Comic Book Reader! Sometimes I worry I'm losing it!

• I didn't know Atlanteans were so flexible! Aquaman would be great at Butt-Boob Showcases!

• Aquaman's frustration at being the laughingstock of the Justice League comes out and he begins beating the shit out of Superman. This is like that time I finally rose up against the brutal regime of my sister when she switched the television from MTV showing Lionel Richie's video of "Hello"! Sometimes enough is more than fucking enough!

• Superman suddenly wants to show that the members of the Justice League don't believe they're above the law by helping detain Aquaman via the quite suspect Patriot Act. That's funny, Superman. I don't seem to recall you interfering with Batman while he constantly breaks the law in Gotham City with his vigilante justice. I'm starting to see who's getting their dick sucked in the oval office this term. And who's doing the super sucking.

• Tula and the Atlantean army arrive to help rescue their king. But they don't attack immediately because they're not Americans. I mean violent animals. Was that redundant? Superman mostly decides that Atlantis not attacking might be good enough for now. But he still decides to be a dick about it.

Or else what?! Fuck off, Superman! This is why Lawful Good people suck. Because they're just as prone to commit violence as a Chaotic Evil person. It's just they feel justified by their righteousness.

• Meanwhile, Black Manta kills The Fisherman and takes over NEMO. So I guess NEMO is no longer interested in world conquest. It's Aquaman killing time!

• Aquaman swims back to Atlantis while the United States sits and fumes. Now they're probably pissed at Superman too! How dare he stand in the way of America when they're spending billions of dollars and risking thousands of lives to get revenge over what amounts to a negligible slight in the glint in the eye of history! How is America supposed to feel catharsis if they can't throw a huge tantrum which results in the death of hundreds of thousands of people?! It's not fair, Superman! It's just not fair!

• Apparently Aquaman now has to fix relations with America or else!

My Super Secret Opinions!
I wish Superman and Aquaman would just fuck already.

Ranking: +1!

Green Arrow #6

This looks like a playing card. The Bore of Dragons?

The Facts!
• This issue is an Emiko story. It's called "Sins of the Mother" so I'm expecting it to be super sexy.

• I don't know why the sins of the mother would be any sexier than the sins of the father. My mother and father both have many sins for which they'll eventually pay and neither one's sins are any sexier than the other's.

• Emiko is a teenager so of course she's wise beyond her years and smarter than most of the adults in the comic books. It's an easy way to write to an audience because any teenagers reading will be all, "Yep. I'm super wise." And most adults reading are busy screaming out in pain from their eyes cramping up in mid roll. Emiko's wise words are these: "Sometimes the best way to help someone is to hurt them." Why haven't I heard this advice before? You mean I wasted the first forty years of my life trying not to hurt people which means I haven't been helping them to the best of my ability?! Well, that ends today! I'm going to go shine up my crotch-kicking books immediately!

• I think what Emiko is actually saying is that whole thing you say to the friends and family of addicts. You have to let them bottom out before they can get better. Helping them along every step of the way is just enabling their self-destructive behavior. Emiko might also be talking about how doctors have to re-break bones to set them correctly sometimes, or cut people open to take out whatever is inside them and killing them (like feelings). But I'm not going to rule out that she just generally means kicking people in the crotch is good for their well-being.

• Shado has just kidnapped Emiko so she can point out all the ways in which Emiko doesn't actually know all of the things Emiko thinks she knows. I wonder if parents can hire Shado to straighten out all of their teenagers? I wonder if I could get a job doing that?! Parents can hire me to logically point out how a teenager doesn't actually know what the teenager thinks they know and/or to kick them in the crotch.

• The crotch kicking part of my job would only be necessary if the teenager is a total smart ass. And by that, I mean if the teenager is absolutely wiser and smarter than I am. Because they still need to learn that no matter how wise or smart they are, getting kicked in the crotch still fucking hurts.

• Emiko narrates the story of her previous year living with Ollie. It's a whole bunch of "alas, my life" moments where Ollie teaches her how to be a responsible individual not beholden to a criminal mastermind. So of course Emiko runs right out and gets herself beholden to The Clock King. Not The Clock King in Deathstroke or the one who appeared in Harley Quinn! This is Seattle's Clock King who is totally different somehow. Maybe there's an original Clock King who sells Clock King franchises? Maybe he's a subsidiary of Burger King?

• Meanwhile in the present and also in Tokyo, Emiko shows Shado what she learned from Ollie about not being anybody's stooge and then running off to become somebody's stooge anyway. This time, she refuses to do as Shado says and then runs off to be captured by the leader of the Yakuza, Oyabun. Shado is his stooge so at least Emiko moved up from being the stooge of the main bad guy instead of the stooge of the stooge of the main bad guy!

The Opinions!
This issue didn't need to be a comic book. It was about 75% first person narration. It may as well have been published as a diary. I might have liked it better if it had less of Emiko blah blah blahing up the thing. Or I may have actually not minded it if Emiko's voice were a bit less self-assured. Can't people just be individuals without putting so much effort into being one? It's also probable that I didn't really give this book much of a chance because I've been farting a lot and I can barely breathe in my office now. That might have tainted my attitude toward Emiko. I should probably go reread this in the garden but I'm just not interested in reading a Green Arrow comic book twice.

Ranking: +0! Or -0! Whichever!

Superman #6

At least Eradicator isn't wearing an obviously unneeded belt.

The Facts!
• Last night I dreamed about the URL tiegue.tumblr.com. Unfortunately, it's just a tumblr page which exists without posts. Stupid dream head. Why couldn't you dream up an interesting tumblr?! Idiot.

• I often read in my dreams (not long texts! Just bits and pieces. Like URLs or signs or tumblr responses to putting tiegue in the search followers box to see if they follow me on tumblr) and occasionally I'll write as well. But while I often wake up remembering thoughts I've had which fuel later writing, I can never remember anything I physically write in a dream. Except for once! One time I woke myself up as I read what I had written and jotted it down before it could flee my mind. It was this: "Still the water continued to boil and churn, so much that even if a million hives of bees had been sunk there, it would not have been enough."

• This issue begins with Superman realizing that this is Issue #6 and that the story needs to end quickly so that it will fit neatly into the usual sized trade paperback. Up until now, he had no incentive to end the battle. I suppose trying to keep his family alive could be incentive but, I mean, is it really? Really?

Eradicator sounds like every Sea Lion on Twitter. "Why are you so angry, Superman? I'm just asking questions! Why don't you just answer my totally harmless questions that are simply based on mere curiosity and not on an agenda at all?!"

• I think it took me six issues to realize that The Eradicator is a racist! Previously, I was just all, "Oh yeah! He's just super proud of being Kryptonian! Nothing wrong with that! That's a totally normal and patriotic thing to do when you can't find any real reasons to love yourself or others!" And now I'm all, "Did he just use the term 'half-breed'? Why would he...oh. I see what Kryptonian Pride actually stands for!"

• Some of you might be thinking, "How the fuck did you not realize he was a racist, Tess?! He's called The Eradicator! He's been trying to stomp out Jon's human side since the beginning! He's violently Pro-Kryptonian!" To you I'd respond, "Are you familiar with my blog?! I lie about shit to say other shit all of the time! Obviously I knew he was racist! And to prove I totally knew, I'm going to go back and change my previous commentaries to make sure I've said it previously!"

• I hope I actually did mention it previously so that now those mentions themselves are totally suspect!

• Clarity is not something I care about. Obfuscation is fun! I put the fu...n in obfuscation!

• In his zeal to defend his family, Superman destroys the moon. I mean, technically it's still there. But now it has a big hole straight through it and a large chunk has collapsed in on itself thanks to Batman's lunar excavations. On the plus side, Eclipso's property values probably just went way down.

• Superman's plan to defeat Eradicator involves a term I assume I'm just now coining: Kryptokake.

• I wish I had coined the phrase "to coin a phrase."

• Superman left Krypto behind in The Eradicator to help defeat The Eradicator. It seems weird that a purity freak like The Eradicator would think of a Kryptonian Dog as just another Kryptonian soul. I guess even disgusting racist dickholes love dogs. I mean, I don't love dogs! Mostly because they're usually hanging around dog owners.

• Superman and Krypto kill The Eradicator. I think The Eradicator was probably mostly robot or something, right? One of those World Killers? And I suppose Superman thinks it's okay to destroy a sentient robot even if you don't think of yourself as a killer. It's easy enough to rationalize that The Eradicator's sentience was just programming. Plus it's hard to tell a story about a monster who can't be stopped if the hero isn't allowed to kill it at the end. Therefore, comic books find it acceptable to kill certain sentient beings: robots, weird aliens who don't speak English, those returned from the dead with a chip on their shoulder, Doomsday (who, I think, falls into the weird aliens who don't speak English category).

• The people of Earth look up to see a mushroom cloud on the moon. I would be so pissed if I missed seeing that!

• I took a break to go to the store and had the most emotional interaction I'll probably have with another human being all month. I was looking at the flavors of canned cat food when an old man walked up and said, "Gotta find something that damn cat will eat." I loaded some food in my basket and said, as I walked away, "Picky bastards!"

Ugh! Just like a Twitter Sea Lion! You think you've put it down and crushed it with logic and it continues to bray incoherently!

• You know, there's a huge part of me that wishes I were doing a subtle parody comic book review site for the Manosphere.

• Superman takes The Eradicator's cape and ties it around Krypto's neck. Then he puts a bandanna around his neck and renames him Harley Tats. Then I throw up.

• After nearly destroying the moon and risking major flooding around the globe in the process (that's my hot take on Superman actually being responsible and taking The Eradicator fight to the moon!), Superman fixes up the Moon Landing Stage Decorations and poses for a photo op. Now the world knows the new Superman is just as good as the old Superman (if not like five million times better because this Superman hasn't been written by Scott Lobdell!).

• Now that Krypto is back, how are Pet Murdering Bastards Pat and Pete going to bring back Goldie?! I won't forgive them until they figure it out! Jerks!

• Now that the battle is over, here's some cute stuff that I will also ruin with a hot take!

Someday in the future, Jon is going to have memories of wrestling with his nearly naked mom and it will cause...feelings.

• Superman decides it's time to finally introduce Jon to the Justice League. I wonder how long it'll be before Jon and Damian are experimenting with Power Showers?

• Batman discovers it's going to cost him ten billion dollars to fix his Lunar Batcave. Ha ha!

Come on, Batman! Cheer up! This is a Superboy we can all get behind! As opposed to that piece of shit New 52 Superboy who did nothing but ruin every single comic book he guest starred in (which was, like, all of them, I think).

The Opinions!
Is this the best Superman since The New 52 began or the greatest Superman since The New 52 began? If you think I should have thrown in a negative choice, get the fuck out of here! Your opinions are shit! If you're one of those people who defends their opinions by pointing out that all opinions are equal, you do realize that identifies you as a person with shitty opinions, right? Obviously some opinions are more well-informed than others. Like if there were two people with opinions on comic books and one of them was me, my opinion would obviously be the better one in most cases. I suppose if the other person were Grant Morrison or Gail Simone, our opinions would have about equal weight! But only in those cases! I can't think of a case where my opinion would be worse. Maybe if the other opinions were from Jesus?

Rating: +3!