Raven #1

This should be insightful! A seventy year old man writing the adventures of a teenage girl!

The Commentary!
I had to check with Lord Google to find out how old Marv Wolfman was and while doing so, I decided to drop by his IMDB page and see what he's been involved in on the writing side of television and movies. At first, I was flabbergasted! He had credits in so many things! Even video games! Had he written a bunch of video game plots?! Then I noticed most of them were saying "Uncredited". And that's when I realized the majority of the "Writer" credits Marv Wolfman had on the top half of his IMDB page were actually "Creator" credits. What the fuck, IMDB? Who the fuck does that help? Is IMDB run like Wikipedia now and there's some fangender fuming at the injustice heaped on writers and artists by mainstream comic book corporations who is going through and adding credits to every movie, television show, and video game in which one of the creator's characters appeared? It's fucking nutso whacko! And just so nobody thinks they're coming up with some hot take on the previous sentence, I did mean that in the full-on offensive to everybody with a mental illness way!

Hmm, maybe I shouldn't have written that! I bet the only people still interested in Raven are the ones who love to use their mental illnesses as invulnerable shields against any type of criticism. Well, I'm one of those people too! You can't criticize my ableist tendencies because my brain is just wired to be ableist and I can't do anything at all about it! And you're ableist if you insist that I can! Jerko!

Okay, now that we got all the sensitive twats out of here, I can be funny for the people who are hate-filled douchebags! Oh, my people! How I've missed you all!

No, but seriously. If you're a hate-filled douchebag, get the fuck out. I want a specific audience of people who are sensitive but also understand that there's a world where you can call your friend retarded and not be completely ostracized from society for it. Unless, you know, your friend is mentally disabled. Then, I mean, Dude? What the fuck? That's not cool.

Oh please tell me you came from Azarath and not San Francisco! Anywhere but San Francisco!

I actually love San Francisco. Or loved San Francisco. It sounds like the shittiest Mecca in the world now since the pilgrims flocking there are start-up assholes begging for an angel to crap in their bank account.

Raven's mother ran away from home because her parents believed in God. That doesn't seem at all like the first world problem of an entitled teenager. At best, her mother just left out all of the gory details like how her parents sexually abused her because God told them to, or how she was locked in her room every day so she wouldn't be tempted by the devil, or how she watched her younger brother get circumcised in front of a crowd of enthusiastic sadists she thought were family and friends. It's also possible she once heard her mother say "tranny" and realized she couldn't live with that kind of a monster anymore.

Luckily for Raven's mother, she found a better life being raped by a rapey demon named Trigon who, according to Marv Wolfman, loved to rape.

Do you see now why I had to scare away all of the overly sensitive readers?! I was doing them a favor! This is a Marv Wolfman comic book and even if it doesn't mention rape, the guy is rape-tainted! There's no way I can't point out how much he loves to write about rape!

Raven meets her aunt and her aunt's family. They're upbeat and jolly and wear bright clothing and aprons and Superman shirts. Her uncle wears a sweater over a collared shirt with khaki pants, so you know he's totally fucked up in some super secret way. They have a crucifix on the wall over a painting of the sermon on the mount and their bookshelf is full of Precious Moments figurines. Something truly horrible must be going on inside this house!

Raven begins her new life by going to high school the next day. I hope she doesn't get picked on for being weird! Does Marv Wolfman even know what high school is like now? I have a feeling Raven will have to take ROTC and stand up for the one black kid getting picked on by some white guys with buzz cuts.

The standard amount of people comment on her looks as if there wouldn't be dozens of other girls and guys who look just like her. One kid is all, "Really? Goth? So last millennium." That kid? Looks like Janis Ian. I don't think that look has ever been really popular. I mean, unless you could sing like Janis Ian. Then it was, um, tolerated? Anyway, she feels uncomfortable and out of place like nobody else ever felt in high school ever. Poor thing!

After her first class, Raven meets some kids who want to get to know her. Probably because she's cute and fashionable, no matter what any of the other sorry high school students say. I mean, if she were ugly and wearing corduroy pants three sizes too big (or small?) for her, who would speak to her?! And, of course, to get to know her, they ask all the pertinent questions!

Why the fuck are you asking about her father, Dude?! So fucking weird! Although, this is the DC Universe where everybody has Daddy Issues. Perhaps it's the main question everybody is always dying to ask everybody else. "How did your dad fuck up your life?" It's just Dude is too ignorant to know better than to get so personal so quickly.

Raven discovers that one kid at the school has psychic powers so that's probably going to be a problem. But she's making friends somehow, so I guess she'll be okay. I don't know how she's making friends because I don't know how to make friends. It would be nice if the comic book spelled it out a bit. The only way I knew how to make friends in elementary school was to just put myself in close proximity to the same people as often as I could until they simply assumed I was one of their friends. That worked in Junior High too! And then in High School, I just made friends with all of my cousin's friends. Those were the last friends I ever made because, for some lucky reason, they were all pretty good people. Don't tell Doom Bunny I said that. I suppose I've made a few friends of the Non-Certified Spouse's friends. They're almost all exclusively gay because I'm fairly certain the Non-Certified Spouse emits Gaydiation. For some reason, I'm the only male she knows impervious to it. I think. I mean, sometimes I dream about sucking off fifty guys in a row. But those are just dreams! Dreams are random and weird and I have no control over them! I mean, they're my daydreams, but that's practically the same thing, right?

There's also a girl in Raven's one class who looks like Raven and was happy to have another black clothes wearing Goth in the class. But Raven just kind of ignored her. What a jerk.

Anyway, later, one of Raven's new friend's friends gets lost in the White Carnival where some other students have also been trapped. And it might have something to do with her soul self gone rogue. Or it's her aunt's God being a total jackass. That's not a probability but it's a possibility, right? Plus the speculative sentence let me write that God was a jackass. That's fun!

The Ranking!
+1! It's not bad for a Marv Wolfman production! Does anybody remember those pictures in books that you couldn't see anything in but if you held up a red plastic filter, it would hide all of the red lines so that you could see the image beneath in blue? I bet if you had one of those lenses but instead of hiding all of the red lines, it hid all of the seventy-year old manness, this story would totally be just fine! As it is, it's kind of fun because it's written by a seventy-year old man. He named a character Dude! I would have named him WTF, personally.

Christ, I bet only seventy-year old men will remember those red lenses made of plastic and those old timey magic paintings!

Trinity #1

Oh, who fucking cares?

The Commentary!
Do comic book writers still want to pitch stories about these assholes? I have a feeling Francis Manapul went into the pitch meeting with an idea for a clever Gypsy, Hawkman, and Congorilla story. Dan Didio was probably all, "I love it! I love the energy! I love your enthusiasm for the story! I love that you didn't ask to write any Kirby characters since I have dibs on them! But do you think maybe the story would still work with characters who can sell a comic book?"

So that's probably how we wound up with yet another fucking comic book starring Batman and, to a lesser extent, his lessers, Wonder Woman and Superman. I can't fucking wait to see the twist on these characters that absolutely demanded this comic book be made!

This issue begins with Lois Lane spouting off like it's the first five minutes of some overblown drama which you know is going to have you crying your eyes out by the end. She begins by talking about parents and their kids. If this were a Stephen King book, I would already be writing off the kid as roadkill. But it's not! It's a comic book and the kid is Jon Smith, Superman's son. So he'll probably be safe for this story. Hell, everybody will probably be safe for this story! I think the major conflict will be Batman insulting Lois Lane in her own home and refusing to apologize.

Wait. Are there wolves in my walls? Did they go in there to catch the rats?

Lois Lane's metaphor about walls being put up to protect children from wolves is making me crazy. Her point is that walls keep the bad stuff out but eventually the bad stuff will find a way in so the best thing to do is to break down the walls so that the wolves can get in but also the non-wolves can get in to help fight the wolves but most people can't tell the difference between wolves and non-wolves. But Lois can because she's a reporter and thus a better mother than most other mothers who just let all the fucking wolves in the house and watch their children get mauled. So now we know that Lois Lane is a narcissist and possibly insane.

Too bad Lois's son is an idiot who is sneaking wolves behind the wall without her knowing. Apparently he was supposed to go get some fertilizer or something and instead of buying the usual stuff, he took some free shit from some weird fucker. That isn't going to bite everybody in the ass now, is it?! I bet the ass biting begins right around when Batman insults Lois's tea by pointing out Alfred's is way better.

Batman and Wonder Woman are making a friendly visit to the Smith farm. Diana even brought a dead wild boar to butcher. Superman is still on his way home so Lois has more time to kill thinking about walls. Oh! I've got a joke about fences which are basically walls: "Why do good fences make good neighbors? Because people are idiots who constantly forget the part of Robert Frost's poem where he says 'Something there is that doesn't love a wall.'" That wasn't a very good joke, was it? Maybe I should build a wall to keep out criticism of my jokes.

Lois has decided Clark's walls need to come down whether he likes it or not. That's marriage! It's where you step all over another person's feelings and just fuck around with their life without first getting their consent! Unless that's just bad marriage? No, no. It's all relationships. Two people can't live one life. Somebody is always going to be getting the poopy end of the stick.

Over dinner, Clark tells a story about the time Batman wore a Rainbow Suit to protect Robin. The real point of the story is how Batman endangers young children. But that's not a pleasant thought and nobody wants to get into that aspect of the Batman and Robin dynamic. It's better to just figure that it can't be helped and Batman is doing the only thing he can for these young kids and, anyway, they do more to save his life than he does to save theirs. They temper him and make him more cautious and give him a future to care about. Batman, of course, denies the Rainbow Suit (but not the endangering children). He can deny it all he wants! I saw proof of it in the Sugar and Spike story in Legends of Tomorrow #1!

Meanwhile outside, the bad stuff is beginning to happen.

Lois's wall metaphor is abandoned because now she's getting to the part where Clark, Bruce, and Diana need to begin forging a friendship. So now instead of building walls, they're growing...um...relationships? At the end of the night as Clark, Bruce, and Diana talk out in the yard, Clark hears something from the barn. So he goes to check it out and he finds Pa Kent harvesting grain with young Clark behind him. Or something. I don't know. Maybe Jon planted some Black Mercies in the yard or something.

The Ranking!
+1. Manapul's art is gorgeous as always. And he seems to write better than a lot of writer-artists. Also, I'm convinced that this comic book is probably needed. Since DC fucked up everything by making a new Superman that everybody needs to get to know again, DC needs a book where everybody can once again get comfortable with him. I hope once Batman and Diana trust him, this book will stop being Trinity and just become a new version of DC Comics Presents!

Cyborg #1

We get it, Cyborg comic book! The main character is a CYBORG!

The Commentary!
One of the main reasons I don't believe in The Bible is that it never mentions cybernetic beings. You'd think if something will have existed, God would have known about it. And if God knew about cyborgs way back when he created the world, how could he not mention them to Abraham or Israel or every single person he spoke directly to in The Bible? If I were God and I were hanging out in the Garden of Eden talking to Adam, I would definitely have mentioned cyborgs. Like that part where Adam was choosing a help meet, right? As God, I would have been, "So, what about a cow? No? A horse? A duck? Oh! OH! You'll never turn this one down: a cyborg! Boom! Totally radical, right dude?" And it's not like a mention of cyborgs wouldn't have gotten a whole section of The Bible all for itself. The sections would have been marked "The Creation," "Adam and Eve," "Adam Learns About Cyborgs", "The Fall of Man." I suppose Adam really wouldn't have learned much about cyborgs. He'd probably have only asked God the same question about cyborgs that he had been asking about every other rejected help meet: "Can I fuck it?" I think God's answer to Adam every time he asked that was, "Yeah, but you probably shouldn't!"

This issue begins with Cyborg's Machine Dad going on about broken and useless technology which people don't need anymore. I always thought it all wound up in bins at the back of a Goodwill but apparently, according to Cyborg's Machine Dad, much of it is toxic to humans and thrown in landfills. So are the four or five old broken outdated laptops piled in the corner of my office a threat to my health and well-being?! I should probably load them up with porn and send them to poor pornless children in other parts of the world.

Who am I kidding? I don't need to load them up with porn at all! It was probably a virus that downloaded tons and tons of porn onto the hard drive that killed each of those laptops.

I mean, the laptops probably burned out because I read so much Shakespeare on them.

This story is called "The Imitation of Life" and this issue is part one, "Awakening!" Ooh! So exciting! An exclamation point right in the title! I think I just came in my pants a little bit. Can somebody do that just a little bit? I suppose a little bit is all I have left after jerking it to four or five laptops full of porn.

Cyborg begins his part of the issue by stopping a robbery. So useful! He even does a bunch of the cyber. But that's probably not important because this story wasn't called "Cyborg Plays At Being A Hero While Secretly Being Sad About The Loss Of His Wiener". No, this issue is called "Awakening!" which means the conflict will probably be more of an internal thing.

I thought Morrow was going to say "Matchmaker."

Cyborg goes on an ice cream date with Sarah Charles. This sends him into a philosophical dilemma as he remembers hearing the recording his father made that explained a bunch of stuff his father wanted to keep secret. Seems like a weird recording to make, really. Anyway, Victor is now wondering if he's the same person he was before the accident or if he's just a machine programmed to think it's Victor Stone. Not like it matters. Human or machine, Sarah Charles has had both in her vagina. So I think he's going to get lucky tonight!

Seriously, though, I don't know why he'd be worried or concerned. So what if he's just a machine and code that replicates a human being? How does the knowledge that that is true change anything? I really wouldn't give a fuck if I were a simulation because I'm still a simulation of the person that I think I am.

Speaking of simulations, I find the theory that our universe could possibly be a simulation basically the religious theory of science. It's just a scientific way to say "God created the universe" except, in this instance, God is some other race of beings that created the technology to create a stand alone universe. Ultimately, the real question still remains: how did the race of people who created our universe (or those that created theirs? Or the ones who created theirs? Or...you get it) come to pass? Saying super smart bug-eyed reptilian scientists did it is no different than God did it. Without actual evidence of what happened before The Big Bang, the speculation is as useless as the Catholic Church.

At the ice cream shoppe, Cyborg meets his two biggest fans.

Why that little fucker?! How did his parents not slap the fuck out of him for saying that?! Little shit. I would have used my white noise attachment on him set to "Brown Note".

I probably shouldn't be so hard on these kids. I won't stop going on and on about how Cyborg doesn't have a penis! That's worse! You can live without feeling love. It's actually preferable that way! But without a penis?! Egads!

I don't mean to suggest all of you vagina-havers somehow don't have any reason to live. Of course you do! Your vaginas are terrific! Keep up the good work! A Plus Plus!

Sarah Charles discovers that Victor hasn't been to church since the accident. Well, she knows just the cure for that: jazz! Hmm, that sounds about right. I can't stand sitting through either.

I guess the whole religious thing is what has Victor so worried. If he's just a machine, how can he have one of those made-up souls?! If only God had mentioned cyborgs in The Bible, he wouldn't be losing faith. Although doesn't Jesus mention them? I'm pretty sure Jesus mentions them. If not, Jesus is pretty clear that the way to Heaven is through him. Does it count if a machine is programmed to accept Jesus as their lord and savior? I would have to think so because don't people want Xboxes and Playstations to go to Heaven too?

The jazz performer is named Blue and he's blind. I guess jazz from a blind person is more spiritual than jazz from some asshole who can read a sheet of music. That guy probably isn't jamming at all!

Blue's description of jazz is basically a description of this blog. So I probably shouldn't be so hard on jazz. If this blog were a type of music, I would call it punk jazz. But the bubble gum pop version of punk jazz! Played by a tone deaf piece of shit.

Is Cyborg going to cry soon? Will that prove he's got a soul? Because an old blind man makes him cry? That doesn't prove he has a soul! It just proves he's a big baby!

Cyborg doesn't cry while listening to the jazz which should mean I should be nice to him since I just scolded him for possibly crying. But instead I'd rather point out that if he didn't cry, he probably didn't really feel anything and, thus, he has no soul. At the very least, the kid in the ice cream shoppe was right and he has no heart. I won't even mention, once again, what I'm probably right about.

As Cyborg is feeling pretty good about himself, he's attacked by The Kilg%re. It probably dropped the "the" for Rebirth. For a creature that hates humanity as much as Killg%re does, it's odd that it would attack the machine guy and not his supple fleshy date. I guess Cyborg really is human after all!

The Ranking!
+1! So far, this is a Cyborg comic book that's kind of interesting. It still isn't about his penis though. It really should be about his penis.

Earth Too: Society #16

Please be the kind of last stand that Custer had.

The Commentary!
Some comic books work. Others don't work. That's just logic! Then there are comic books that might work but I don't fucking give any shits about. That's this comic book! Now that I've put my bias out there for everybody to see because I'm super transparent about things like that (I just call myself "super trans" cause it's cool to shorten all of the words), nobody can argue with any of the terrible things I say about this comic book in the paragraphs to come. I'll just say, "I told you right from the start that I didn't care about this comic book! You should have realized that meant I probably wasn't going to pay much attention to it which definitely meant that I was going to completely miss any intellectual themes that may or may not but probably almost definitely are not at all there!"

I think I was trying to make this point in the last non-Annual commentary I wrote about Earth Too but I fell into a digression and never quite climbed my way out! One of the reasons I think Dan Abnett changed the Pandora Vessel into the Pandora Casket is because it contains a dead world. So after Dan Abnett wrote the script with the Pandora Vessel and he sent the script to the artists who did the art and then the art went to the colorist and got some color and then it went to the editor who was super busy and just trusted there were no errors and sent it off to get published, Dan went, "NO WAIT! IT SHOULD BE A CASKET! A CAAAAAASKEEEEEET! IT'S MORE THEMATICALLY RELEVANT!" And the editor was all, "Just fucking change it in the next script. Nobody will fucking notice. And I don't think that Tess asshole who writes shitty shit about everything we do cares enough about your stupid Earth 2 comic book to notice either." But ha ha! You were wrong, imaginary editor! In fact, I totally noticed! And I can't fucking forget! It haunts me day and night! Why? Why did Dan change it?! WHY!?!

Anyway, stupid idiot Green Lantern got himself mind-controlled by the Ultra-Humanite, so Earth Too is probably fucked. Nobody can stand up to Alan Scott! Maybe Val-el if he's currently not in one of his pacifist mindsets.

Green Lantern is almost stopped by The Flash! I mean, for like one panel it seems maybe The Flash will do it. Then Power Girl, Val-el, and Tornado Lane arrive and it seems like maybe they'll stop him! For like, one panel. So then Fury arrives and she's all, "I may not be able to stop you but I'll sure as shit last longer than one fucking panel!" And she does! She lasts for four panels! Possibly five! What a hero!

Since when was Alan Scott's ring a weapon of Oa?

I'm not a Green Lantern scholar so maybe the origin of Alan Scott's ring has been retconned (probably dozens of times, really) but it wasn't an Oan weapon to begin with! Okay, it had links to the Guardians of the Universe but those links are more tentative than the links the lantern has to a crazy fucker at Arkham obsessed with train lanterns! Or a Chinese guy interested in meteors! Or to Alan himself who actually made the ring using the lantern! This was decades before Hal Jordan made a ring of his own during Rebirth!

Green Lantern breaks into the vault where the Pandora's Casket has been hidden away. But there's some good and bad news! The bad news is that there's a Wonder inside the vault guarding it! The good news is that it's only Red Arrow! How is that chump going to stop a Green Lantern?! No wait! Don't answer that! I'm sure Dan Abnett will come up with a super intriguing way to have a powerless noob beat somebody with the most powerful weapon in the universe! I mean, that very same thing happens in the pages of Green Lantern every five to six pages.

Green Lantern laughs at Red Arrow and Red Arrow is all, "Dan Abnett knows this situation is ridiculous so now I get to have a lengthy monologue explaining why it isn't ridiculous at all but totally fucking cool! SO COOL!" Then Red Arrow is killed. Probably. I mean, no way he can beat Green Lantern. No way at all. No writer would even try to convince readers that it could happen. We would all riot if Red Arrow somehow beat Green Lantern! I know I would. Unless I was feeling a bit peckish. Then I might just take a nap.

And Green Lantern is just about to kill Red Arrow when he notices Red Arrow has his erect penis nocked in the bow. That's when he's all, "Oh yeah!" And Ultra-Humanite is all, "Oh my god! I'm in a homosexual mind!", and flees. Ultra-Humanite? More like Ultra-Homophobe!

"The plan Flash My Huge Cock worked. Ultra-Humanite is gone and Alan is fellating himself."

Ultra-Humanite arrives and kills Red Arrow with some magic monkey magic. Now nobody stands in the way! Ultra-Humanite can open the Casket and restore World War II Era Earth-2! Right? Come on. Right? Just do that. Just stop writing this comic book and somebody start writing that comic book!

Before Ultra-Humanite can fix everything, Batjerk, The Huntress, Hawk Cop, and little Johnny Grayson arrive to prolong this nonsense. People often think it's noble to fight against death. They think clinging to life with every last ounce of energy is the only noble way to go out. But if that's really the case, why do doctors hand out DNR bracelets like they were candy going out of style? You know what doctors think, right? The same thing veterinarians think: saving people is a huge waste of energy, time, and money! It's better to just convince people that they should die with dignity and stop being a burden. Too bad the Earth-Too Wonders didn't get the memo. The memo I'm talking about is this paragraph I just wrote that sums up my feelings about how they should just give up already. Why don't they give up? Why do they hate me so?

Oh! OH! Wait! Somebody got my memo! Somebody gets it! Somebody understands and that somebody saves the world by opening the Casket and destroying the world! You know, before Ultra-Humanite could do it badly. And that hero is Fury! Hooray, Fury! I will remember you fondly when you never, ever reappear because the actual Fury that lives in that box is probably the one fucking Silver Scarab. I hope!

Anyway, that's the end! Everything is destroyed! Such a great ending to this comic book! Triple A Plus Plus! Oh wait. I ranked too early! Let me change my underpants and try that again.

The Ranking!
Triple A Plus Plus! That's probably something like a +3! And that ranking is only for the last few pages. The other pages were just a huge wind up. I wish more Wonders had been killed during that early part since their deaths wouldn't have mattered. But then, maybe that would have made it too obvious that they were going to lose and reboot Earth-2.

Teen Titans #24

I thought they already fell? Multiple times!

The Commentary!
Last night I was at work when the clock ticked over from the 25th to the 26th and I became as middle-aged as anybody can get. Forty-five. I was listening to my Shuffle so the last song I heard as a forty-four year old was "One Headlight" by The Wallflowers and the first song I heard as an old man was "Obsession" by Marina and the Diamonds. Let's hear it for aging!

"One Headlight" was big when I was in my mid-twenties. It kind of became the soundtrack for my life at the time as I was desperate to get out of the place I'd spent the first quarter century of my life. I hadn't changed. I knew I wasn't the same. I wanted to watch it all burn. I'm particularly proud of myself that I didn't set fire to the Netscape warehouse I managed when I quit my job and, a week later, was driving my Volkswagen bus across the United States. I'm also proud that I didn't burn each and every state on my way out. I'm just proud that I stopped setting fires!

This issue takes place after Red Robin died. He didn't actually die but he was yanked out of continuity much the same way Wally West was. But instead of telling fans Red Robin is gone forever and never actually existed (which they believed because most fans are dum-dums who don't know how to fact check by looking at their own pirated copies of comic books on their laptops to prove that Wally West did actually exist and DC Comics never actually created some time distorting technology which erased Wally West from everybody's minds), Red Robin was shown, in the very same comic in which he died, to still be alive but outside of DC Continuity with Doctor Oz(yman(hattan)dias) and Ambush Bug. I'm starting to think maybe Doctor Oz is Jonni DC and not Ozymandias and/or Doctor Manhattan like the fans have been told. Or maybe Doctor Oz is simply Irwin Schwab!

Sometimes I wish Keith Giffen were running DC Comics. I wouldn't even care if every comic book repeated the same five jokes over and over again. Because that would be the only predictable thing about a Keith Giffen DC Universe. Remember how they gave Stan Lee his own continuity? Why can't Keith Giffen have one of those?

Anyway, Red Robin is dead (but not really! I don't want somebody who thinks they're the biggest Red Robin fan ever reading about his death here and not realizing that DC made sure that the fans knew Red Robin wasn't really dead in the exact same issue because who wants to hear how loudly Red Robin fans can whine?) so this issue is all about the Teen Titans remembering their favorite Red Robin moments. I hope Wonder Girl's favorite time was when they were living on that yacht and she is all, "I loved that time he put his penis in me!" And then Raven will be all, "I loved that time he put his penis that smelled like Wonder Girl's vagina in me!"

Bunker begins Memory Sharing Time!

"I loved that time he put his penis that smelled like Wonder Girl's vagina and Raven's tonsils in my butthole."

Just to let all three of you know, I only got as far as that first panel before deciding Red Robin, possessed by Trigon, also fucked Bunker.

But, um, it looks like things might be going that way!

After they had sex, Tim and Bunker go clothes shopping and then Tim attends his first gay pride parade. He makes a lot of friends, goes to a lot of parties, and sucks a lot of dicks. I don't mean to say gay men are more promiscuous than straight men (of course they aren't! It's just that, you know, if you're a man looking to just fuck and the people you're looking to just fuck happen to be other men just looking to fuck, well...you know what? I'm now gay), it's just that Tim just discovered he loves sucking dick and that's not a time you instantly decide you're ready for a relationship!

So, um, anyway, that was Bunker's favorite memory of Tim. It was the day Tim came out of the closet. Unless that was just Trigon getting in as much fucking as he could while people found him attractive.

Fucking liberal entertainment artists! They can never get the American flag right but they get the rainbow flag correct! I mean, except for that one that has too many stripes and just begins repeating the rainbow pattern.

I suppose the reason DC's artists get the American Flag wrong so often is that most of them aren't Americans. So why should they know the specifics of why the flag is the way it is (although if I had to bet, I'd probably say a higher percentage of Americans can't explain why our flag looks the way it does)? They probably just do a Google Image Search and go, "Yeah. Right. Blue field. Bunch of white stars. Alternating red and white stripes. Got it!" Why would anybody think there's a specific number of stars and stripes?! Just stick on as many as you possibly can. That seems to sum up America pretty accurately, right?!

Next Power Girl shares her favorite memory of Tim. Oh! I know how that probably begins: "So, Tim introduced himself as Red Robin and I was all, 'Hi, I'm Power Girl.' Then he died."

I wasn't far off! Her memory is Tim telling a bad joke and then saying it's nice to know somebody who knows as much as he does. So, she, um, just fucking told all of Tim's friends that, in private, he thought they were morons? Great story, Power Girl!

Tim also helped Power Girl realize she had no obligation to cut a Boob Window into her costume. See? Gay!

Next up: Raven! I bet her story is all about feelings. I'm bored just imagining what it will be!

How many Titans were created to be living weapons?

I didn't have to scan as much of that panel as I did but I wanted to include Raven's crotch and Tim's stupid hair.

Tim is all, "Look, maybe I don't know what it's like being Trigon's daughter...but I know what it's like being in her! OH!" No, actually he mentions how they both have Daddy Issues. Yawn! If Wonder Girl's favorite memory isn't having sex with Tim, I think that's pretty telling about Tim Drake's sexual skills. I guess Batman didn't teach him everything he knows!

Wow! He's supposed to be a genius?! Tim sure read that situation wrong. Batman didn't see a spark of goodness! Batman saw a spark of his own sperm in Damian's genetic makeup!

Gar's memory is just a list of outing past Robin's identities. "Oh, the first one was Dick Grayson. I remember that for some reason even though Spyral erased all of our memories. And then the next one, the dead one, was Jason Todd. Then there's Tim Drake who we only knew as Red Robin for like the first five years we knew him. And then the latest one is Damian Wayne so, you know, guess who Batman is!" I don't really care one way or the other about secret identities. I wouldn't care if they were just left behind and writers simply ignored the idea that family members might get hurt simply to get at the heroes. But it's really hard to tell how much superheroes in the DC Universe care about their identities. Who knows what? How many people has Batman come out to as Bruce Wayne simply to get their confidence up? This is the kind of carelessness which you treat a secret that you don't really give a shit about keeping secret. Unlike that time you fucked the family dog. I mean, you don't tell that one to anybody!

Nope. Wrong. That would be Dick. Thanks for playing.

I do appreciate that Power Girl's funeral attire has a Boob Window, even if her costume doesn't. Totally more appropriate for a funeral anyway. The best place to look sexy is in a room of grief-stricken people just looking to feel life again. I bet more fucking goes on at wakes than at any other type of get together. Which is weird because often it's mostly a mini-family reunion. First cousins aren't technically incest, right? And if they are, there's always the family dog, I suppose.

I'm glad the Titans are telling stories about the good times they had because every issue of the Teen Titans since The New 52 began concentrated on only the bad times. I'm surprised they have any good time stories to tell!

Wonder Girl's story is about shopping with Tim but she doesn't mention the night they fucked! So in summary, shopping with Tim is better than fucking Tim. Totally would have guessed that.

Wonder Girl's story isn't just about shopping though. She and Tim actually did something heroic that day and saved a bunch of people trapped in a fire. So the Teen Titans do help out and save lives! It's just that those stories are super boring and nobody wants to hear them! I guess the fans would rather have lots of stupid relationship drama while the Titans are attacked by their enemies and nearly destroy New York. Then afterward, they pat themselves on the back for saving New York when New York was never in trouble to begin with! Stupid Titans are so stupid. I hate them. I wonder why I have so many of their comic books?! I wonder if I should see a therapist?

After they tell their stories, they all decide it's best to just break up. They all go off to do their own things and not matter separately instead of not mattering together. Meanwhile, Damian is in the Batcave laughing at Tim Drake's empty costume and dancing on his grave. Now all of the Robin's have died at least once! Plus he's probably thinking about how he can put together a Teen Titans that is better than any Teen Titans ever put together by a Robin (which is, like, all of them? Maybe 98% of them?).

Ranking!
+1! Tony Bedard should have been writing this comic book from the beginning. What Tony Bedard just did with these final issues is the equivalent of scraping dog shit off of the front walk and hosing what's left into the gutter so that nobody would ever know it was there. Also, the shit in my analogy is human shit.

Gotham Academy: Second Semester #1

I wish this series were subtitled "Week #2".

The Commentary!
The first thing that happens in second semester is that Olive gets a new roommate named Pushy. I mean Amy. No wait! The first thing that happens is Olive takes a bath. Totally naked! Which I only mention because it's a fact and not because I'm some demented old perv who gets off on fictional characters' naked body parts drawn by other demented old pervs! I mean, if you've seen one fifteen year old's tits, you're either a super cool teenager or a demented old perv or, you know, somebody who had tits at fifteen. Also some stuff happens before Olive takes a bath but it's lonely, depressing stuff that nobody should allow past their psychic shield or they might wind up spiraling into a black abyss of isolation and fear.

Some people probably think Amy is cool. They see how she wears a cool thermal undershirt underneath a t-shirt with a ratty collar and ratty cuffs on the short sleeves and whose hair is the color of a not quite ripened plum and whose face is full of piercings who has the cavalier attitude that the world is her own and think, "Yasss! She's my jam! And by jam, I mean the stuff that comes out of my nether regions. Ooh la la!" One of the things I learned in my composition classes at university was that you should always tag sexy statements with emotes like "Ooh la la!" so that readers know that they just read something sexy and it's acceptable to be turned on by it.

Amy also steals sandwiches and crushes on Pomeline. Well, who doesn't? Amy isn't as unique as Amy probably thinks she is! Oh, and she's also moving into Maps's side of the room. I guess Maps has a new cuddle buddy for the semester?

Amy turns out to be a dick. I mean, it was obvious she was a dick in the first scene. But she continues to raise the bar on her dickitude. She tempts Olive with all sorts of chaotic nonsense which Olive falls for because Olive just wants to be free from responsibility. She just wants somebody to tell her what to do. She has a pretty low threshold for falling out of her normal behavior. But that's probably because she recently lost her mother for good and she has no actual home and Kyle won't stop asking if he can fingerbang her even though she's told him repeatedly that Maps does it better. So when somebody comes along and says, "Hey! You should throw a rock through that window and break into a museum!", it's easy to say, "Yeah! Yeah, I should do those things!" Plus if you get caught doing those things, you can always rat out the dick who convinced you to do them and, most of the time, if you were generally a decent person before that and the person you ratted out was known for being a pushy, sandwich stealing, hooligan lesbian with facial piercings and colored hair, everybody will believe you. Then they'll hug you because you were the victim of peer pressure and they will sneer at the dick who forced you to do those things by being too cool to not do the things they told you to do. I mean, why else do people begin smoking?! Because some kid who was way cooler than you were was all, "Hey, smoke this and maybe I'll acknowledge your existence."

I wonder if Amy is just a Tyler Durden figment of Olive's imagination? I hope so! If she is, I hope Olive kisses it!

Oh no! She's destroying art! I hope the people who instantly loved Amy are suddenly upset that Fletcher totally screwed up her character and apparently doesn't really "get" Amy at all!

Olive and Amy run into Eric inside the Wedgwood Museum. You remember Eric, right?! He's the one who does art who is totally in love with Maps but Maps only likes him because he can draw the pictures for her Spells and Serpents characters! For some reason, he has a key to the museum. He also knows all of the secret passages inside it. Especially the secret passage where he jerks off thinking about Maps.

Eric has been following the "Arkham" signs all over the campus which led him to the secret room in the Wedgwood Museum! Of course, the "Arkham" sign is really just a Wayne Manor monogram. It's totally just a "W" on top of an "M" and not an "A" on top of an upside-down "A" because that is stupid. Although it could also be a monogram for Wedgwood Museum! The mystery grows more mysterious!

Amy continues to be a dick. Big old floppy dick. Jerkiest dick in Gotham, really.

Amy runs off with Eric's backpack full of wank material which also contains his inhaler. When Olive and Eric emerge from the museum, they're caught by Mr. Scarlet who is completely understanding because Olive has always been such a good kid. Olive decides not to snitch on Amy because snitches are bitches or something. So Amy gets to continue to go to Gotham Academy so she can be a dick to Kyle and Maps and Pomeline and Coulton too! So awesome!

The next day, Olive discovers Professor MacPherson stood her up the previous night to go out with Bruce Wayne. No wonder Olive's mind created her Amy Durden so that she can allow herself to step outside of society's normal rules! That's also probably why "Amy" slashed the picture of Bruce Wayne!

Mmmm. I bet Isla MacPherson and Bruce Wayne fucked so hard! Ooh la la!

My farts smell like mysteries and coal smoke too!

The Ranking!
+2! First rule of Gotham Academy is I probably shouldn't make sexually explicit statements about the characters because they're all so young and fictional.

The Flash #6

Oh! How come I've never thought of this before? The amount of power The Flash needs to run up a building would absolutely cause him to crash straight through any window he ran across! And most skyscrapers he runs up are all windows! Man. Now the whole superspeed thing is ruined for me.

The Things!
Remember how The Flash used to battle people who threw boomerangs and shot icicles out of guns? Who was the first writer or editor to sit down to work on The Flash and think, "What the fuck are we doing? How are these villains challenging The Flash?! This is fucking ridiculous!" Then they ruined everything and decided Flash should only battle other speedsters and time travelers. At least every now and then back when The Flash was somehow not dodging every boomerang thrown at his head (I guess because he didn't know how they worked and that they came back around after he dodged them!), a writer would at least try to make things plausible by having him fight a psychic ape.

I wonder if this is the issue where we'll discover that August Heart is really Godspeed? Or will the twist be that that totally comic book twist isn't the actual twist? Because that would be a huge surprise! You know, I'm starting to think this story has gone long enough that Williamson realized everybody was going to guess that August Heart was Godspeed and so now Godspeed might wind up being Meena.

The issue begins with Godspeed fucking with some guy because of justice! Hey! Isn't August Heart obsessed with justice?! I wonder if they could be the same person? Probably not, right?! I mean, sometimes plot points that are way too easy to guess are that way so that people will guess them and then the writer can be all, "A-ha! I knew you'd take the cliché bait, you stupid fuckhole! This other thing is what was really going on all along no matter how it doesn't make as much sense as the cliché thing!"

Barry began this story learning, with help from Iris, that one of his major failings was always taking on too much at one time. He never had time for anything because he tried to make time for everything. Having a city full of speedsters to lighten his load solved that problem. But now Godspeed is killing them all and taking their speed so what does Barry do? He spends all of his time trying to solve the case and tell people their loved ones died and work August's brother's murder case all at once! Didn't he learn anything from Iris's advice?! Not that he should have. It was kind of stupid. But thematically, I guess it's appropriate that he's back to where he began? Because he runs so fast he always winds up standing where he started? Or something?

Barry notices that what happened to Meena seems to be the same thing that happened to him during Crisis on Infinite Earths. But that didn't actually happen. I don't think. Did it? I don't know. Whatever.

Godspeed kills again and Barry still has no idea that it's August. I mean, he doesn't know who it is.

Man, I'm really betting the farm that it's August, aren't I?! Well, even if it turns out that it isn't, I'm going to say that it was in these commentaries so that I don't look like a fool.

Ouch! Show some respect!

Barry needs to find out who Godspeed is so he checks with Iris because she's a journalist. Who better to go to than a journalist if you want to discover the truth? That's a joke! The kid who hands you your tacos in the Taco Bell drive-thru probably knows more than most journalists! Well, maybe they don't. But at least I know that the kid in the drive-thru won't be all wishy-washy about her opinions or worry about what Taco Bell management might think of them or worry that something she says might limit her access to other Taco Bell patrons. Iris really must know something because she's already thought up the headline for the story she has yet to write: "MURDER AT S.T.A.R. LABS. WHO IS GODSPEED?" That, my friends, is a shitty fucking headline.

While Barry is asking Iris for help and sort of groping her ass as she hugs him, Wally walks in on them and flips the fuck out. He goes all rabid teenager on Barry and screams at him to solve the crime already. As if Barry isn't trying to do just that! Can't Wally see that Barry's best lead is to read Iris's headline?! Sheesh. Wally runs off crying to find The Flash since Barry can't be dicked to solve the case in the next ten seconds. Lazy fuck.

One of the reason Barry goes to Iris is because he's read all of the evidence over and over and he's super tired of reading it. So he thinks a new set of eyes will discover something. And he's right! Iris finds the name of one of Godspeed's victims that might be a clue to his identity! Not that the name was hidden! But she discovers the person wasn't registered with STAR Labs as a speedster. When Barry looks at the name, he's all, "OH SHIT! Godspeed is August! And, I mean, how come I didn't react to this name before when I read this evidence the other six or seven times I said I read it? Maybe I should really read shit instead of telling people I've already read it. Fucking Wally was right. I'm totally not doing my best to solve this case!" Actually, Barry just looks shocked when he reads the name and says, "...oh no." But that's practically what I said previously.

So Barry catches up with August and is all, "Now I know why you couldn't come up with a code name! It was right there in my stupid CSI face all along! You do have a code name! It's Godspeed! You're Godspeed! I cracked the case!" And August is all, "Let's race!"

No wait. They don't race for some reason I don't understand. That's always the first thing competing speedsters do! They have to wave their big fast dicks at each other to see whose is quicker. Oh wait! They may not race but Godspeed definitely does pull his dick out.

Oh! I'm glad I mentioned that bit about Iris's advice earlier because this revelation sticks to the theme!

Ranking!
0. Usually when I guess something in Issue #1 that won't be revealed until Issue #6, I crow about being a Grandmaster Comic Book Reader. But the only people who didn't instantly know August Heart was the bad guy on page one of the first issue should simply be embarrassed. I'm still sort of hoping that next issue will reveal that Meena is actually behind it all somehow because this revelation was just pathetic.