Superwomans #2

The Plot!
A Metropolis protected by a Superwoman needs a nemesis on par with the Lex Luthor of a Metropolis protected by a Superman. And that's what we get in Superwomans #2! Lex's sister Lena Luthor is revealed to be the brain behind the recent attacks on all Lex Luthor's properties. With her troop of Bizarronesses, she's captured her brother and seemingly killed one of the Superwomans. She's also been conducting torturous experiments on the super villains in the prison, probably so she would be able to fit her Bizarronesses with powers like shape shifting and turning people to sand. They obviously don't like being henchwomen though because one of them asks Lana Lang for help aboard Lex's gigantic Battlepenis.

The Theme!
I think the theme is to be nice to your siblings even if you're a sociopathic megalomaniac because you never know if your sibling is also a sociopathic megalomaniac! Is that a theme or a moral?! Maybe the actual theme has something to do with how a society who holds profit above compassion and empathy winds up failing to take care of the people incarcerated by federal (and probably state?) law. Not that a sufficiently dark and terrible government wouldn't experiment on its prisoners in gruesome and terrible ways! I mean, historically, I'm sure there's at least one country out there who did some kind of Scheisse like that. But at least we can assume that a government body won't be super terrible because it's run by people who theoretically can be voted out of office if they fail their constituents by turning prisons into factories which pump out violent criminals instead of trying to rehabilitate convicts. But if you leave it up to a private firm, the only thing they care about is what cuts into their profits! And also the private corporation might be run by a sociopath whose sister is also a sociopath who wants to get revenge on her brother by creating an army of super soldiers from technology gained by torturing the prisoners in the privately funded prison! How many times have we seen that story on 60 Minutes?! Probably a lot, right?

The Review!
Phil Jimenez once again packs a lot of words into this issue. What does he think he's doing?! He does know he gets paid the same amount if he just scripts a bunch of double splash pages full of sound effects, right?! Doesn't he know he can spend the first four or five pages just repeating what happened in the previous issue?! Then he can waste another four or five pages of script with a fist fight! Is he stupid?! Not writing is way easier than writing! I wonder if Brian Michael Bendis looks at a Phil Jimenez script and just shakes his head in disbelief before writing, "Pages 1-3: Spider-man swinging around city. Maybe he sees like a cat or something. Or an old lady through a window getting out of a shower. Page 4-5: Double splash page of Spider-man on ledge of building with head in his hands. Page 6-9: Old lady on phone with friend. Leave room for big ass speech bubbles because I have this great bit I'm writing about a lady who thinks she was peeped by Spider-man. Totally hilarious. I will probably get laid at the next con just for this one bit."

Ranking!
+1! Mostly because there is just so much story! Totally worth $2.99! You can't find better value for your money than this comic book! If you judge your value by penny per word.

Red Hood and the Outlaws #2

Sure they do! It's "θείος"! They probably just don't use it often. And they almost certainly don't use the idiom you're referring to.

The Commentary!
• This issue begins with Roy Harper wearing a dress. I think. I'm pretty sure it's Roy Harper. Red hair. Bow. Way too many fucking Narration Boxes hovering about his head.

Yeah, yeah. Definitely Roy Harper.

• Oh! I'm starting to understand why Scott Lobdell was picked to do Red Hood and the Outlaws for Rebirth! He probably still had a bunch of scripts left over from the initial series which he's just recycling for this series. I mean, how different really will Artemis be from Roy Harper?! And with Starfire's constant confusion about Earth culture, she's almost exactly like Bizarro!

• Artemis learns that warriors don't choose their weapons because their weapons choose them. Is that how it works? Is that why so many soldiers rush off to battle weaponless because no weapon ever spoke to them because they weren't insane? Maybe that's a Sun Tzu piece of wisdom! It's just stupid enough to sound like ancient wisdom. Judging by her appearance last issue, the weapon that chooses her is an insanely large and unwieldy battle axe.

• Artemis is an Amazon who worships Egyptian gods and she never thought it was weird. I wonder if Scott Lobdell accidentally researched the wrong Pantheon and just decided to go with it. Why should he let all the new information he learned go to waste? Better yet, I wonder if he didn't even notice until the editor said something? He probably wrote the dialogue between Artemis and Nephthys about the bow of Ra thinking he was nailing the whole Amazon thing. Then his editor was all, "Dude. You're using Egyptian gods. Amazons are Greek!" So then Lobdell was all, "Oh! I'll fix that with a Narration Box! 'The origin of my name is Greek. But the gods I worshipped were Egyptian.'" Is that better?!" And the editor was all, "Really? You like the double 'P' version of worshiped? Whatever. Just hand in the script."

• I wonder if Lobdell would ever admit that what I just supposed was true? It probably totally is, right?! Boy, what a fuck-up!

• Artemis is trying to get the same weapon that Jason Todd is trying to steal for Black Mask. It's probably the Bow of Ra. Unless it's the Mace of Incredible Size. Or the Lance Beyond All Normal Proportions. Or the Galactic Cannon of Ultimate Girth.

• Black Mask stands off to the side to applaud Jason Todd when he gets the upper hand. But that only lasts long enough for Black Mask to assure Jason Todd that the Bow of Ra isn't what he wants at all. He wants some kind of genetics technology (in other words, Bizarro!). Good thing everybody is so free with their information! Artemis is telling Todd all about the Bow of Ra. Black Mask is telling Todd all about the technology (you know, Bizarro!). How else could Jay make a decision if he didn't have all of this information? Good thing he was trained by Batman that it isn't enough to know your enemy, you have to really, really know your enemy! That's some good advice, right there!

• Artemis realizes Jason isn't trying to hurt her because she knew everything there was to know about battle straight out of her mother's vagina. She might be exaggerating because it took her until sixteen to realize that your weapon chooses you! Anyway, she decides she should work with Red Hood to blow his cover. He joins up with her and they turn on The Black Mask. So his undercover work is already over? I guess it's just changed because that's how Lobdell's stories work. His stories begin with a premise and then, in the next issue, he carefully wads up that premise and throws it at the wastebasket (and misses, of course) because he thought up a different premise he'd rather pursue. Obviously he had to think up a way to get Todd and Artemis working together. So he may have meant to use the Black Mask premise for just the initial issue. I'll give Lobdell the benefit of the doubt this time.

How is Red Hood impressing Black Mask now? "I always wanted an heir with morals who would turn on me the first chance he got! You're getting a raise, boy!"

• To follow Black Mask, Artemis throws Jason at the helicopter and then leaps after. As Jason crawls into the train car being stolen by Black Mask's helicopter, they have a barely comprehensible conversation.

She needs to figure out a better way to treat her metaphors?

• Artemis's metaphors are as good as they're going to get since they're being written by Scott Lobdell. They're awful and you can tell he's going to use them constantly as part of Artemis's personality. "You comparing yourself to me is like a weaker thing comparing itself to a stronger thing!"

• After Todd and Artemis stop bickering in just that way that gets fangenders underwear frothing but is actually terrible dialogue, Red Hood tells Artemis to call Mjolnir because the genetic technology in the train car with them is Bizarro. I hope he also gets out his book of antonyms or things are going to get confusing really quick!

Ranking: 0.

Batgirl and the Birds of Prey #2

Commissioner Gordon is an honorary Bird.

The Commentary!
• This issue begins with Commissioner Gordon and Batgirl escorting Santo to a safehouse, both for his own protection and for an enjoyable afternoon of Good Cop, Bad Cop (also known as Mustached Cop, Fat Cop to everybody in the precinct). Black Canary and Huntress are riding motorcycles and trying to distract Santo's gang so they can't follow Gordon to the safe house where they'll be keeping Santo until he tells them everything he knows about Fake Oracle. Batgirl is riding with her dad which seems awfully dangerous if she cares about her secret identity. If she farts, he'll know who she is for sure! No way he hasn't smelled her farts locked up in a car on long road trips for most of his life. Although, let's face it, Commissioner Gordon definitely already knows Batgirl is his daughter.

The Gordons don't make any sense. Why has Jim stopped driving to turn and shoot people in a moving vehicle and what the fuck is Babs talking about?! Is she saying she would have avoided shooting out a woman's tire?! Sexist!

• Black Canary takes care of the rest of the gang members by screaming all of their cars out of commission. I like how sound waves have the craziest properties in comic books. Either that or her Canary Cry is something totally different than just a really loud shout. Maybe she's belching up some kind of plasma?

• The Trying-To-Be-Witty Caption appended onto the Location Caption at the start of each scene is still a terrible, horrible, awful thing in this issue. It's almost enough to make me rethink reading every comic book by DC Comics. Here's the second one this issue after the Location Caption of "GCPD Safe House": "Safe is in the name. Definitely nothing horrible will happen here." As if my life wasn't already overflowing with existential dread, now I have to worry about reading the next one of those captions when the scene changes! It's almost as bad as when I'm sweeping a floor at work and some idiot with an IQ less than average says, "Missed a spot!" Another idiotic joke that you never, ever need to make to somebody cleaning a floor in public? That thing where you pretend to slip when you see a wet floor sign. Eventually my reaction will stop being one of intense inner hatred and I will wind up punching somebody in their stupid, smug face.

• Tonight at work as I was going to my van to get a bag full of free deli food for a clerk at a 7-Eleven to rummage around in for himself, a guy outside the 7-Eleven was looking at a car in the parking lot and asked, "Is that your car?" And I said, "No." So he said, "What kind of car is it?" And I said, "I don't know. It's not my car." So he said, "Is it a Lexus?" I stopped talking to him at that point. He was looking right at the fucking car. Cars almost always have the name of the stupid car somewhere on the car. Stop asking me. What do I look like, Lord Google? Man, I came so close to punching that guy in his stupid, smug face.

• Does health insurance pay for anger management classes?

• Forget my hatred for regular people in the real world because I think I'm also beginning to hate all of the fictional people in the fictional world of this comic book.

Black Canary is parodying the theme to Green Acres? Hate her. Batgirl is calling a place with a petting zoo a dump? Hate her.

• I'm still not completely sure if a place with lions and tigers wandering about freely actually constitutes a petting zoo.

• I wonder what happened to Condom? I kind of miss that guy! I wonder if I had a stroke in the last year? It's possible, considering how angry I get at everything everybody does.

• Commissioner Gordon decides to have a talk with Batgirl about Fenice and Fake Oracle but Batgirl gets super defensive when he says he thinks it would be a good idea for the cops to help and maybe Batman too. She's all, "You don't think women can do this?!" And he's all, "What?" And she's all, "You're a sexist pig, Da...mn you!" And he's all, "What the fuck are you talking about?!" And she's all, "How dare you offer to help with your man hands and your other man parts!" And he's all, "You know what? Forget it! Do whatever you want! What do I care if you get yourself killed?!"

• The Birds of Prey leave Gordon to watch over Santo while they run off to the Clock Tower to do some research. That's when they get a visit from Batman. Now Batgirl can tell off her surrogate dad too! She'll prove to them both that Batgirl is just as good as any Bat- or Non-Bat-man!

Stop being so understanding, Bruce! How the hell is a girl supposed to have Daddy Issues if her surrogate daddy is a decent guy?!

• The only thing anybody knows so far about Fake Oracle is that he or she is not The Riddler. Last issue, Fake Oracle sent the worst text clue ever. This time? A shitty riddle! "How many birds does it take to track down an Oracle? Zero. Birds can't type. LOL". That is terrible. First off, the riddle doesn't make any sense. Why would birds be tracking down an oracle? If you're going to set up that kind of premise, you need to anchor the answer in mythology. You can't have the answer be about birds not being able to type when typing isn't even part of the premise of the question! The entire riddle is flawed! It certainly doesn't deserve a LOL tagged to the end!

• The Birds track Oracle's message to a server farm which doesn't really help, does it? It's not like Fake Oracle is going to be hosted in the cloud. Although the last time there was a Fake Oracle, it absolutely was hosted in the cloud because it was a rogue AI. But this one is just a terrible clue giver who sets a trap at the server farm which the Birds fall for. But first Batgirl manages to get some information from the servers. And nobody blows up at all!

• Meanwhile, Oracle locates Santo and lets Fenice know the location. Fenice sends her team of meta-humans to kill him. I don't recognize any of the meta-humans except for Asp since he was in the last issue. But I guess they're all snake-themed. So besides Asp, there is Naga and a version of Copperhead and Black Mamba. Or just Black Snake. Black Mamba in Red Sweat Pants? Whatever. It's the Snake Patrol! They'll probably get beat up by the Birds next issue. Because birds always beat snakes! It's like a natural law.

Ranking: 0.

Deathstroke #2

I hope this guy's name is The Malingerer. I just want Deathstork to have an enemy named The Malingerer.

The Commentary!
• Douchéstork is written in short stories. It's almost as if Christ Priest (you can shorten Christopher to "Christ", right?) realized Deathstork wasn't interesting enough to carry a comic book all by himself so he decided to explore the entirety of his life through bullet points. Instead of learning about Deathstork through his own personal war journals, or his incessant Narration Boxing, the reader is allowed to see moments of Slade and his family's life to really see what makes Deathstork murder and have sex with underage females.

• The first short story is called "Home Alone". It's about how Joseph Wilson was constantly being left home by himself due to his mercenary parents constantly rushing off to other countries to assassinate people and his older brother throwing temper tantrums and running away because he didn't feel like his dad loved him enough. Joseph apparently doesn't feel loved enough either because when the house is empty, he invites a bunch of strange teenagers over to party on the off chance that a few of them might think, "Jake Wilbur is the coolest!"

• The second short story is called "Ishmael". It has nothing to do with the Moby Dick Ishmael which everybody probably first thought because holy fuck why are so many people in love with the novel Moby Dick?! It's almost as if they've got some kind of obsession or something?! No, this story is called "Ishmael" because it's about the sacrifice of a son. I know what you're thinking! You're thinking, "But Tess! Isaac was the son who was almost sacrificed!" Sure, if you want to believe the Old Testament and the way the Old Testament contradicts itself! Because, seriously, you can't have Abraham sacrificing Isaac if he's sacrificing his only son. The only time Abraham had an only son was when he had Ishmael. The Koran gets it right. Although, to be absolutely fair and transparent, the Koran is a bit lax with its proper nouns. So it's not like it's super clear either! But at least it's not trying to obfuscate things on purpose to make Abraham's story about the Jewish line of decent and not about the Muslim line of descent. Although Joseph, who has been kidnapped and may be sacrificed, is the second son which would make him Isaac. So maybe the title did reference Moby Dick since the bloody writing on the wall says "CALL ME DEATHSTROKE". At least that's what Adeline reads. I think the bloody "E" may have merged with the comma.

• So that past story about Joseph getting kidnapped and eventually getting his throat slit which leads to Adeline putting out Slade's right eye is being told alongside the present story of Deathstroke being forced to wear an old costume that doesn't have boots with huge fucking cuffs on them.

• The next story is still in the past. It's called "Our Gang" and it's Slade's half of the story after he hangs up on Adeline and refuses to hear why she sounds so panicked. It's because somebody took her son and she thinks it's somebody called Deathstork. Slade doesn't have time to talk because he's busy yelling at Wintergreen for crashing the plane they're in.

Apparently you talk upside down and backwards when you're upside down. I had no idea!

• The next story is called "Two Guns" and takes place in the present in Edinburgh. Wintergreen and Wilson are visiting one of the guys who was in that crashed plane eight years ago. I would have guessed it was eighteen years ago based on how badly he and Wintergreen have aged. Wintergreen is searching for the person who was responsible for his kidnapping and only five people knew he was still alive (four if you don't count Wintergreen himself which I totally wouldn't but Wintergreen chooses to do for--I don't know--accuracy's sake?). After Wintergreen and Wilson, their old mate Fredric was one of them. It probably doesn't matter who the others were because it was probably Adeline who had Wintergreen kidnapped.

• In the hopes that Slade doesn't murder him, Fredric tells a story about a man named Racskowski. Why couldn't he be named Smith?! I'll never remember how to spell that! Although the story Fredric tells is called "Rax" so I can probably just refer to him as Rox from here on out. I mean Rax!

• Rax was the other guy in the plane! The story is about how he was murdered by some unknown assailants in a way that would make it look like Rax hung himself (which is probably why Fredric's bar is called "The Hanged Man")! They were unknown because nobody could question them after Deathstork murdered them to death.

• Fredric points out the last person who went on the mission where the plane crashed in Cambodia and Slade probably impregnated a whore with Rose (since the next story is called "Rose" and since that's sort of how it happened in the Preboot, Post-Crisis era) was a Canuck named Isherwood. Unless he didn't go on the mission because he wasn't in the plane that crashed earlier. Although he could have been in the back! I don't know because I haven't read the short story that tells his tale yet.

That was a rough eight years! Although I'm probably entering those eight years now as I turn 45. I should take a before picture now and an after picture in eight years and see if they're similar to this!

• Lillian (Rose's mother) runs a hotel where mercenaries in Cambodia go to have a nice cup of tea and a short nap between missions. She's also the kind of person who mentions how smart they are which means she isn't really that smart. Although it's a comic book so there aren't many ways to let the reader know how smart a character is without somebody vocalizing the fact. And since Lillian doesn't have an advocate the reader can trust to tell us how smart she is, she has to do it herself. But if she were a real person and I met her at a party and she was all, "I'm smarter than 75% of the people I meet," I would probably try to have sex with her. I mean, if I met her at a party and she said, "Der! Der duh der doy!", I'd probably try to have sex with her.

• Apparently Slade has already had sex with her. Several years ago so Rose can be a teenager in the present time.

• Oh! I guess I was mistaken about who was in the plane. Isherwood was the guy in the glasses. Fredric was just the recon guy sent to check out the brothel run by Lillian, the person Slade and his team were trying to rescue. Wait. He got paid for that?

• The brothel was attacked by drug cartel muscle and in the ensuing rescue, Fredric was shot by a ten year old girl with silver hair. Why did she have silver hair when Deathstork's hair only turned as he got older? Was it because Slade's semen was full of the lie detecting drugs which gave him his power? Did he have his powers ten years ago?! Maybe I just don't understand genetics.

• Fredric admits that he happened to mention to somebody that maybe Wintergreen wasn't actually dead which is all Slade needs to head to Canada to find Isherwood.

Why is Wintergreen so familiar with Batman and the way he disappears? I bet he's an old SAS friend of Alfred's and Alfred talks way too much when they get together to drink and reminisce.

• The Doctor Slade goes to see is Isherwood. The guy in the plane with the glasses. Otherwise known as Ikon. Or Doctor Ikon. Or Professor Ikon. He's the guy who built the suit Slade is currently wearing. He's also got his own suit and can fly. So instead of just asking him questions about Wintergreen's kidnapping, he has to also punch him a lot.

• Dr. Ikon is a hero of God. He uses that as an excuse to judge Slade's life of killing even though God loves to kill for justice even more than Slade! Or at least he used to before his peacenik son decided to change the entire message, so much so that it's barely recognizable from one Testament to the other. Almost as if they don't actually have anything to do with each other!

• Slade knows Dr. Ikon wasn't the guy to rat out Wintergreen but he needed more information to help find the people who killed Rax and kidnapped Wintergreen. Wintergreen, meanwhile, kills Fredric. It also turns out they were doing these things at the same time and the Deathstork in Fredric's bar was just a guy paid to hang out in the costume and look scary. Anyway, that whole thing is still a story that is happening. But now they have a twist that is probably tied to that story: Deathstork received a contract to kill somebody named The Ravager. I suppose Deathstork doesn't know anything about Rose yet. But the silver hair and the blue and orange uniform seems to show she knows about him.

The Review!
I forgot I wasn't doing a review section anymore! I'm not a Reviewer! I'm a Reader! But I will keep leaving undefended changes in the rank of the comic book which place it in an imaginary list of comics from best to worst!

The Ranking: +1! If you want to read about Rose Wilson's first appearance, check it out here!

Suicide Squad #2

Hey look, Harley Quinn fans! Harley is in this! Pony up the dough!

The Commentary!
• Some woman from the NSA has arrived at Belle Reve to nag Amanda Waller and backseat drive her operations and Monday morning quarterback every decision Amanda makes. What is DC's boner for having Amanda Waller work side-by-side with somebody? Now she has to deal with this Harcourt asshole whose first interaction with Waller is "Your squad sucks and is about to die." Hopefully Waller doesn't tell Harcourt that something terrible always happens to the people working closest to her.

• Oh! Remember how the last issue said that somebody would die this issue as if the readers truly believed that one of the Squad would die when there's no evidence to suggest that anybody at DC Comics is interested in having characters die in the Suicide Squad anymore? Remember all of that?! I bet Harcourt is the one who dies.

• Another possibility? Somebody drowns in this arctic waters disaster but is then brought back to life with emergency first aid.

• Even in the security of Waller's Mission Control, Harcourt can't bring herself to reveal the identity of the "Cosmic Item" the Squad are after. And I say "identity" because you know they're on a rescue mission to bring back some alien whose power America wants to weaponize.

• Usually when I type "America", I replace it with "the U.S." or "the United States" because "America" isn't really the county now, is it? But it's so much more satisfying to just type "America" without any regard to every other country which exists in North and South America.

• While Amanda deals with her new pain in the ass, Deadshot deals with his old one.

"I'll boomerang anything!" is such a fucking ridiculous thing to say that I laughed out loud. I love Captain Boomerang!

• Rick Flag, Deadshot, and Captain Boomerang make it aboard the Russian facility where the Cosmic Item is being held. Flag is annoyed that he lost Katana, Harley Quinn, Killer Croc, and Enchantress but it's not like it was his fault or anything. No wait! It was his fault! He would have only lost Killer Croc if he hadn't fucked up the drop ship's balance by trying to save Killer Croc. Plus, Killer Croc probably wouldn't have choked on his own vomit. He's a crocodile! I don't think they can choke on stuff!

• Plus, the others didn't die! They arrive just seconds later with Croc clutching them all in his claws. Because he's good at swimming and holding his breath and clutching women! What a hero!

• Incredibly, the Russians are alerted to the breach in the hull of their submerged base and come investigating with their best investigative tools: AK-47s! See? They're not only good for killing humans and compensating for tiny wieners! They're also good for finding people who have broken into your complex and killing them! Oh! Never mind. That falls under the killing humans thing. So I guess their only other use is to compensate.

I don't care about Harley's out-of-place rant on neoliberalism; I just loved Digger's well-timed and accurate boomerang throw.

• I'm eight pages into the story and it's just getting good! That probably means I'm nearing the end of Jim Lee's page count for the month. Can somebody teach that guy how to draw faster? And maybe how not to draw so many lines on people's faces?

• Once all of the guards' families have lost their probable sole source of income and will now lose their home, get kicked out in the snow, and starve if they don't freeze first, the Suicide Squad continue searching for the Cosmic Item. Apparently the best way to find its location in the legendary sounding Black Vault is to free a Harley Quinn fan named Hack. What the fuck is she doing in a Russian prison?! What kind of huge mistake did she get caught up in that brought her here? Probably another version of the Suicide Squad, right?

• Hack turns the Squad into digital information so that they can travel via data streams and arrive instantaneously in The Black Vault. Captain Boomerang shits himself which he, apparently, tends to do quite often. He's pretty nonchalant about the whole thing which leads me to believe he's a raging alcoholic and shitting himself is just a normal occurrence in his life.

• The Cosmic Item seems to be a piece of the Phantom Zone which Captain Boomerang decides to investigate for some reason totally out of his character. Which is why he winds up a smoking pair of boots as a blast shoots out of the sphere. It either completely annihilates him (the death promised from last issue!) or he's just been knocked out of his boots by the blast and sucked into the Phantom Zone. It's hard to tell because would DC Comics allow Captain Boomerang to die so quickly in Rebirth? I'm thinking...yeah, probably! I mean, now they can replace him with a lesbian Boomerang! Win/win/win!

• The person climbing out of the Phantom Zone sphere is Zod. You can tell it's Zod because he says, "Kneel before Zod." And I can't think of anybody but Zod who has ever or would ever say that. Aside from about fifty thousand nerds who probably think they're funny and say it daily.

• The Suicide Squad probably can't beat Zod but I won't find out until next month because the comic book just ran out of Jim Lee finished pages. Time for the filler story!

• The filler story is about Captain Boomerang. So it's either an epitaph to his life or a story which will introduce everybody to his perky, younger lesbian sister.

See? This is why he's constantly shitting himself! Too much lager and curry!

• Digger also mentions having IBS. So, there you go. Totally nonchalant about shitting himself.

• Captain Boomerang tells a hilarious lie to Amanda Waller about his past. She knows it's a lie but she's trying to get to some kind of truth about his motives and desires. The only thing I learn from his story is that Perth is the Cleveland of Australia!

• Apparently Captain Boomerang's entire backstory is this: he has Daddy Issues. That's surprising! Although I feel like I've heard that backstory before? Hmm. Oh well! That's the end! Hopefully not of Captain Boomerang though! That death has to be another one of those fake out deaths, right?! Digger probably boomeranged himself back into Hack's digital network, right? Or he boomeranged himself out of his boots just in the nick of time! Or he...he...he's dead, isn't he?! BWAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!

The Review!
Big deal! So Rob Williams killed a member of the Suicide Squad! What a tough guy! What a big shot! What a fucking jerk! How dare he kill of Captain Boomerang?! What was he thinking?! Is it because he just didn't like Digger's carefree, chaotic attitude?! Is that why he decided to kill him off in the same issue that he made it canon that he shits himself?! People talk about writers Mary Suing shit but what do you call it when you take out your anger and hatred of a character by embarrassing them and then killing them? What do you call that?! I call it petty and sad! How's that for a review, Mr. Williams?!

Ranking: +2! What can I say?! He actually killed somebody and I fucking loved the filler story!

All-Star Batman #2

Oh my god this cover is so stupid!

The Commentary!
• DC Comics really knows how to squeeze every last dollar out of their Batman franchise. I don't blame them since they spend zero time trying to turn any of their other characters into the same kind of phenomenon. Instead of having meetings about how to improve the writing on Superman, they have meetings about how many Batman comic books they can sell each month and ways to make those comic books more expensive. The regular Batman title is a bit hampered by their dedication to biweekly (or bimonthly, depending on who is reading this and how annoyed they get at what they think is the improper usage of either of those terms when really we should just have an international meeting of English speaking countries to tie those fucking terms down to one meaning) comic books priced at $2.99. It's a smart move because that still means they make six dollars per Batman fan every month right there! But stop the presses! What if they could also sell a monthly Batman book for five more dollars each month?! Some people might think that price is a bit excessive but did those people note the extra heavy card stock being used for the covers?! It's also quite glossy! Too bad it's ruined by the John Romita Jr. cover art. But wait! The cover isn't the only bonus! You also get more madcap adventure with forty pages! Some of those pages are advertisements, of course. And the actual extra story pages are a back-up story that, even if it's well done, isn't really the story you want to be reading. But if that's not enough to justify the $4.99 then maybe don't buy the comic book because I can't think of any other reasons to make the price increase seem like a good deal. I definitely can't mention the art.

• Batman is currently on a road trip with Two-Face. They're headed to Two-Face's childhood home which is probably a duplex. But along the way, Batman must fight off a horde of villains set loose on him by Two-Face's proclamation that he'll present a large cash reward to whoever stops Batman. Also, if nobody stops Batman, Two-Face will reveal the dirtiest secrets of every single Gothamite. He knows all of the secrets because fuck you, that's how.

• This issue begins two days from the present. I guess Snyder hasn't given up on sticking twos in all of the time jumps. I would have thought he milked that for all it was worth in the first issue. Maybe he's concerned it was too (two!) subtle and not everybody noticed how smart he was being. Anyway, two days ago, Jim Bullock and Harvey Gordon were hanging out looking terrible.

I guess Two-Face isn't the only one who knows some secrets.

• I'm going to enjoy this comic book for what it is but I want to state, for the record, that the premise is fucking ridiculous. I understand Scott Snyder probably began the story by coming up with the question: What would any of us do to protect our most secret shame? Or, um, you know...something like that! He was probably sitting at a coffee shop taking upskirt photos and thinking, "What if Two-Face were omniscient and everybody in Gotham believed he was omniscient and then he threatened to expose their strange perversions or dark histories? I bet everybody would turn on the one guy who has nothing to hide: Batman!" Then he began writing a story which I already found entertaining in Issue #1 (except maybe the part where Alfred turned on Batman as well) even after I thoroughly pooh-poohed the premise.

• At the end of the last issue, Batman was driving off with Two-Face locked in the back of the truck Batman stole and Gentleman Ghost hanging on the back. That's why this issue begins with Batman being crushed to death by Killer Croc on the top of a train. So is this issue also going to tell the tale backwards? Is that the gimmick for the whole series? If so, it must mean something, right?! Is it because Batman is taking Two-Face back to face his past? And, in the same way, Two-Face is forcing every citizen of Gotham to face their past as they worry it'll be exposed?

• John Romita Jr. draws a terrible Killer Croc. His King Shark isn't too good either. King Shark is there to split the money with Killer Croc because they must not be confident that they can take Batman by themselves. Hell, they aren't even confident they can take Batman with each other because they've also brought along Amygdala. In introducing the three behemoths, the narration goes on quite a bit about each of their brains. I think that's to show they're not smart enough to realize, yet, that they're going to have to share Two-Face's reward. They'll probably start fighting over that so Batman can escape.

King Shark and Killer Croc have a nice laugh after Batman stabs Amygdala with his Bat-ear knives. Or maybe they just have gas.

• Batman uses some shark repellent to knock King Shark off of the train. Amygdala is also knocked off of the train because he served his purpose, mostly just to add to the huge list of villains Batman must face in All-Star Batman. Plus, you know, shark repellent! Hilarious reference to Campy Batman!

• Killer Croc is about to finish Batman off by hitting him with a large tree trunk. Luckily for Batman, he's got his Bat-Attach-A-Tree-Trunk-To-A-Massive-Person-Holding-It-Rang strapped to his back. He uses it on Waylon who now is too wide to fit in the tunnel the train is entering and is kept out of the tunnel and probably not crushed to death by a bigger train car coming up behind him. Because Batman couldn't have just killed three people in just a few pages after having not killed anybody ever (according to Batman himself, of course). I mean, King Shark and Amygdala obviously survived falling off of the train anyway so Killer Croc would only be Batman's first kill since he began his career.

• After the train exits the tunnel, Batman is shot by two poison darts: one from Cheshire and one from Copperhead. So I guess now he'll die of poison! No way Batman could have seen this coming! I mean, he did just use a Batarang with such a specific use that I'd be an idiot to think he doesn't have a way to survive being poisoned by two different poisons at once! But idiot or not, I'm predicting he's going to die in a few minutes! I just won't believe it if he survives this trap too!

• Dammit. Batman survives it! How does he do it?! Every time! No matter how improbable his odds of survival, he survives! I mean, except for the few times he doesn't! Although even when he dies, he doesn't die! He's incredible!

• Meanwhile in Gotham City, The Penguin, Great White, and Black Mask hire a Russian Super Hitman to take out Batman. Why is everybody so worried about their pasts being exposed? These guys are Gotham Mafia! Anything that comes out can only help their reputation. Unless they're trying to hide the charitable good deeds they've done in the past. Maybe they're ashamed of how much they loved their mothers?

• Twenty hours ago, Alfred and Duke Thomas were busy discussing what makes Two-Face Two-Face and why Two-Face can seem so different across all of his stories. Alfred doesn't say it's because it depends on who is writing him because Alfred is a fictional character in the story. But he does explain that Two-Face is a dick and Harvey Dent isn't. Plus they're trying to find a cure for Two-Face. I say a skin graft would go a long way to making him feel more confident.

• About five minutes...no, wait, make that two minutes after Batman and Two-Face survive being poisoned and falling off of a train trestle, Batman is shot in the head by some cops or prison guards or security personnel. I guess he'll get out of this one too! He's so resourceful!

• His resource this time is KGBeast! I mean, The Beast! That's the guy Penguin and friends hired to kill Batman. Well, that seems fair since Batman once killed him. I mean, he cut off his arm and left him to die which would be enough for most juries to convict a person of murder. But KGBeast survived and now he's, apparently, the world's greatest killer! He rescues Batman but he only does it to kill Batman. So Batman isn't out of the woods which caught fire due to a careless hunter trying to fry some eggs in a pan around a fire not in a secure firepit.

• That's probably a good place to end the story for this month. But Snyder chooses to end with Gordon and Bullock breaking through Bruce's Bat-clock to discover...well, who knows what they've discovered. Jim just says, "Damn you, Bruce. What the hell have you done?" So maybe he sees a staircase down into the batcave behind the clock. Or maybe Alfred, in an attempt to save Bruce the embarrassment of being Batman, shoved a bunch of child porn in there.

• There's still the back-up story about a wheel and Duke! In it, Duke gets cut up by Zsasz. The end! Next time: Batman feels bad!

The Review!
Here are the essential elements of this story. Batman fighting outside of Gotham. Two-Face showing Batman that everybody has two faces. Batman trying to get Two-Face's two halves to merge. Two-Face trying to get Batman's two halves to merge. Batman doing what he thinks is right no matter what the cost to himself, and to everybody else. It's that last one which might be the biggest problem for Batman. Some people use telling the truth as a reason to be a complete and utter asshole. Batman, apparently, uses justice. Fuck everybody's feelings as long as Batman gets done what he thinks needs to be done! At this point, I'm hoping--just a little bit--that Two-Face winds up triumphant.

Ranking: +0!

Future Quest #3

The censors didn't approve of Birdman's original name, Birdfuckingman.

The Review!
It seems Future Quest has too many characters to keep introducing during the story. Everybody is already confused by Jonny and Hadji and Race and Birdman and Space Ghost and Blip and Jan and Jace and F.E.A.R. and the Herculoids and probably other ones who I've forgotten about because there were so many characters introduced in the first issue's battle against Omnikron. This issue takes a break from the main story to tell two stories of introduction. The first story is about Birdman. What I found most interesting is that his name is Ray Randall and he has the power of Ra! That's a crazy coincidence!

I also learned that Birdman has a pet Bird named Avenger. He must be crazy jealous of that bird because it's name is so much cooler! Birdman must be Avenger's sidekick. It's right there in his name. He's the man of a bird and that bird has the coolest fucking name in the comic: Avenger!

In the first story, Birdman also meets a lady. He tries to make a play for her but she insists that they must keep their relationship professional. I might argue that his choice of costume has already thrown the term "professional" out of the window.

The plot of the story is the same plot as the main story in the first two issues. F.E.A.R. is trying to gather up parts of Omnikron and Earth's heroes are trying to stop him, although they don't know why. They just know F.E.A.R. is always up to something horrible!

The second story features the Herculoids! It's about how Zargon and Darnoff met and came to boss the Herculoids around. Also their names might be different than the names I wrote. Even though I loved the cartoon as a kid, none of the names stuck with me across the decades except for Gloop and Gleep. I suppose I could open up the comic book and correct my error but fuck that. That's practically work!

The humans who think they're better than the Herculoids once lived on a planet nearby. But that planet was taken over by robots because robots are jerks. I'm always perplexed by people who think artificial intelligence would be a good thing. I can hardly stand my electronics now and I have nearly complete control over them! Why would I want them to have a will of their own? Who thinks making electronics more like people is a good idea? Probably those fucking extroverts I've heard about! They would probably think it was fantastic if their record player could talk to the guests at their party. At least until the record player starts saying shit like, "What?! He said he's always loved Pavement?! This is the first fucking Pavement record he's ever asked me to play! He's such a poseur!" Hmm, now I sort of wish record players, at least, were sentient!

Every day, the Herculoids have to fight back robots trying to get a foothold on the planet so they could dig up the living mud that lives there and from which the robots' brains are made. I guess they need to upgrade their brains because they are pretty stupid. The Herculoids stop them every time they try to land on the planet and do some mining but they still insist on landing near the Herculoids! There's a whole stupid planet they could land on! I guess they're logical to a fault. So since they know the greatest concentration of living mud is where the Herculoids call home, that's the best place to try to land to get living mud even though the Herculoids beat the shit out of them every time. I bet some robots are all, "Maybe we should land further away from their camp." And then a more logical robot is all, "That does not compute. There is less living mud further away from their camp. It would be a waste of time and resources." Then the first robot is all, "Isn't it a waste of time and resources to keep getting destroyed by the Herculoids?" And then the second robot is all, "Error! Error! You do not compute! Guards! Unplug that robot!"

The story ends with Gorbo, Zargon and Darnoff's son, having to go to bed because it's bedtime. I bet that's how all of the Herculoid stories ended. Sometimes it's tough to figure out how to end a piece of writing so it's nice to have a gimmick that you can fall...oh! Sorry! I have to go to bed now! Good night!