Blue Beetle #1

Doesn't this comic book just scream, "Hey middle-aged mom wet for every shirtless high school baseball player she happens to run into hanging around the showers at the local high school, this comic book looks like a lot of fun for your stupid kid you wish you'd never had!"?

The Commentary!
• Blue Beetle is one of those stupid super hero names that were thought up back when people had no imagination. Every character from back then has a name that sounds like a fifth grader came up with it playing Mad Libs. No wait. If that were true, he'd be Fart Crab, or Booby Louse. I probably should have said second grader. Although I wonder how Blue Beetle got past the editor? Shouldn't the editor have been all, "Blue Beetle, hanh? Blue Beetle! Who do you think reads our funny books, hanh? Entomologists?! How them kids gonna know Blue Beetle is a man, see? They're going to think he's a beetle, ya fool! Change the name to...let's see...Beetle Man! Yeah! That's it! Beetle Man! Top notch! That's a book that'll sell like flapjacks!" Then he would have walked off puffing on a cigar to go dive in a pile of money.

• This issue is called "Deja Blue" because that's word play! But just in case it's a bit too foreign for some readers, the entire phrase is written out as "Deja Vu" and then the "Vu" is crossed out with a red X and the word "Blue" is written underneath. I don't know if that's supposed to be a cutesy touch or if the final print for this book got one last edit.

• I don't really remember how Rebirth ended and I'm not sure if it really matters. But this issue begins with the visuals showing Doctor Fate battling a huge azure insect in what looks like Ancient Egypt. Over the top of the battle is one of those banter sessions Keith Giffen's character love to engage in. This session is between Jaime and Brenda. Unless it's Ted Kord and Brenda. It's hard to tell because all of Keith Giffen's characters talk the same way. But the Blue Beetle half of the discussion makes a really lame Ted Kord joke on the first page about Brenda's nose not being an ear, so it seems like Ted. But then why is Ted hanging out with Brenda? Plus then Brenda quips back (since every other response by every other character in a Keith Giffen Dialogue is a "quip") at Blue Beetle, "How's that G.E.D. coming along?" Which sounds like something she'd definitely say to Jaime and probably not say to the billionaire inventor. Although his jokes are about equivalent to questions on a G.E.D.

• Every adult citizen of America should have to take the G.E.D. Then their scores should always be linked to all of their online identities. That way when somebody corrects me on something stupid I said for a joke, I could look at their shitty scores and think righteously to myself, "There's no way you knew that before Googling it and you've probably already forgotten it, you ass-toothed clown." Although then the Internet would be full of Hot Takes about how the tests don't measure anything substantive, really. Of course, those Hot Takes would be by know-nothings who completely flopped the stupid test because they rely on their cell phone to answer any questions that might come up which have nothing to do with themselves.

• I don't even give a shit about how well people do on things like standardized tests. One of the wittiest guys I know has only ever read three books in his life: Where the Red Fern Grows, McMahon!: The Bare Truth About Chicago's Brashest Bear, and Rambo: First Blood. He's a hilarious guy but he'd tank a G.E.D. And let's face it, all of you Mensa people! You're really just an organization of pretentious assholes who all think alike and needed some kind of official seal for your obnoxious personality!

• Um, you know, no offense, people of Mensa! Don't get your bow ties in a twist!

• Oh! So on the second page, Brenda asks Jaime, "So, was Doctor Fate in it again?" So Jaime is telling Brenda a dream! I don't have to remember what happened at the end of Rebirth to understand why this issue began like it did! Whew. My memory isn't bad enough to justify how weirdly panicked I was getting!

Why does he need to know Doctor Fate to dream about him? I dream about having sex with all sorts of people I don't actually know!

• What's up with Brenda?! She's totally not super hot like she's always been previously! She's skinny and spotty and actually looks like a kid in high school! How am I supposed to have a fantasy crush on that?! Ugh! Goodbye, Brenda! Welcome back to my dreams, Vampire Tig!

• Today at Goofball High where nobody says anything in a clear and concise way and everybody is constantly insulting the other person, it's Career Day! And speaking at Career Day is Ted Kord! He's a really great lecturer! He says stuff like, "There is no such thing as a bad idea, if you could prove the idea wasn't stupid." He didn't say it exactly like that but I think I nailed the idiotic flavor of the quote.

This third wheel is Paco. He's the only person in the Blue Beetle Universe who can't get a handle on the quick banter. I don't know who the brunette is longing to be a part of their hilarious group.

• Ted Kord's partner is Teri Magnus so she obviously has a couple of Responsometers shoved up her vagina. And a twin brother named Terry! His Responsometers are up his asshole. I suppose Teri's might be too. Who am I to judge where she likes to shove her Responsometers?

• Ted Kord has been doing some investigating because he's basically Green Arrow-lite who is basically Batman-lite and I'm sure he'd love to become the World's Greatest Wanna-be Detective. But because he has a heart problem, he needed to stop by the school to pick up Jaime to do all of the superhero work that the investigating will surely lead to. So they go out in the Bug to begin fighting crime together. After the bantering, of course. Always with the Goddamned bantering.

• At the scene of the place where the clues can be found, Blue Beetle gets in a battle outside of a bottle with a shadow creature.

Hopefully by mentioning Nightshade, it means she'll be appearing later, right? Or is Ted just going to constantly refer to his Post-Crisis days before he got fat, developed a heart problem, and was shot in the face?

• Blue Beetle battles Blot while being belittled by Ted Kord. He eventually defeats him and that's when Posse shows up. They're Blot's friends and they're the local gang who apparently aren't quite bad but aren't altogether good either. Like a local Justice League but with more petty theft and fronting. Blot's parents have been kidnapped which is why he was flipping the fuck out. I guess Blue Beetle will be working with Posse next issue. I also hope Keith Giffen works on his material next issue. He loves to use the same jokes over and over, so much so that he has two different characters say the exact same thing this issue.

If it wasn't for Giffen's penchant for repetition, I might suspect Brenda was Red Electricity Head.

The Ranking!
0! It's not bad! It's just a Keith Giffen comic book. If somebody said, "Hey! I have this comic book!", you probably wouldn't know what to expect. It could be anything! But if somebody said, "Hey! I have this Keith Giffen comic book!", you'd probably have to ask, "Written by, drawn by, or both?" After they answered "Written by!", you'd be all, "Oh, yeah. Totally know what to expect!" Also if that person had said "Drawn by!", you'd also know what to expect. Nine by nine panels and people with sort of long faces and half-closed eyes.

Teen Titans Rebirth #1

The Commentary!
• I was just listening to Josie Long and Robin Ince's podcast Book Shambles while washing the dishes. I believe it's their most recent episode where they speak with Alan Moore. I find that it barely matters what Alan Moore is saying; I could listen to that voice forever. I think maybe he's casting spells as he speaks! I'm only about a third of the way into it (I finished the dishes!) but one of my favorite things he says is about his time on the Swamp Thing. He reminds Josie and Robin that it didn't take a lot to stand out in the late seventies and early eighties because most of it was shit. That's not an exact quote! Comics really were terrible back then! Of course, they were terrible for different reasons in the eighties. And in the nineties. And in the...well, as you can see by my stellar argument, comic books are terrible. But they get better every decade! Okay, some decades they fell all over themselves trying to pass off shitty art with terrible stories because the people running the companies were insane and the people buying the comic books thought they were investment bankers. But ignoring blips like that, generally the overall quality has gotten better. Not as quickly as the quality of independent comic books, of course! That shit was already good in the seventies! Probably earlier but since I wasn't alive and don't currently have access to a time machine or decent research skills, I can't say. In other words, thanks to people like Alan Moore who decided comic books were shit and maybe they should be better, they've gotten better! Despite having a field filled with people just writing as much cliché superhero shit as possible in order to earn a weekly check.

• I know there were greats before Alan Moore! You don't have to get all up in my face about it! But they were only great in relation to the other shitty writers and artists of their time. By today's standards, they fucking sucked, no matter how much your old man mentality wants to yell at me that they didn't! Kirby's Fourth World may have blown your mind way back then but it's not fucking Saga!

• You should try to forget about Alan Moore and other really good writers now or else you'll inevitably begin comparing Benjamin Percy to them. And that's just a recipe for a huge Percy fail. Let's just judge Percy on Percy's own standards. Of course, like Alan Moore, Percy has the benefit of writing the Teen Titans at a time when nearly every Teen Titans story in the last half of the decade have been terrible. How can he fail, right? This shit had better be the Teen Titans version of "The Anatomy Lesson"!

It doesn't get off to a great start.

As a Writer (with a capital "W"!), I can read something and immediately know its quality! This opening page is Benjamin Percy doing the least amount of work he needs to do to get his point across. You might think, "Hey! That's smart! Brevity is the spice of wit! or whatever! He's being economical! Now that's writing!" Okay. Sure. He's only got twenty pages and a bunch of characters to introduce. Why not do the least work possible to get it all out of the way? It's such a simple concept, this works just fine. Beast Boy surrounds himself with other people because he hates himself. He acts like a big shot who's having fun because he's really crying inside. This explains that. Good job.

It's just...well, it's just so on the nose. It's as if Percy doesn't trust the audience to read anything more subtle than spelling out that Beast Boy is alone even though he's surrounded by other people. It's just so cliché to have the rich kid buying friends yet lacking any real friendship. It's just the kind of thing that makes me read quickly past the page while thinking, "Yeah, yeah. Got it." It certainly doesn't try to get me emotionally invested in his pain. Although, that also might be the last five years of reading a shitty Beast Boy talking. Why the fuck would I like this asshole? Hell, he's still fucking tainted from Marv Wolfman's eighties version of him that I've been rereading lately because I guess I hate myself. I'm smiling so wide, it hurts. Also people are getting really creeped out by it.

• Anyway, Garfield is still mourning Tim Drake's death and remembering how Tim said his greatest weakness was his need for an audience. He also says he spent his uncle's money on this stuff. Who is his uncle? Is Steve Dayton not super rich and his father? You know why I don't know these things? Because none of the previous New 52 writers of this series gave a shit about building the lives of these characters!

It's getting better! That's a good use of images versus Narration Boxes! Plus a woman in her underwear!

• Gar scares the naked girl out of the pool and possibly the poop out of the naked girl. Then a shadowy figure electrocutes the pool and knocks out Gar, saying, "One down. Three to go." So Tim went around talking to people trying to get them to join the Teen Titans. It's fitting that Damian Wayne is just going to go around and force them to join. Best Robin ever!

• Next on the list: Starfire! Starfire has decided, apparently, that friendship and fun and fucking are too complicated and now the only way she feels comfortable on Earth is by working. Well, she's really changed! Unless her work is fucking friends for fun!

• Starfire's work is stopping human trafficking. Well, that sucks. Why did Percy have to bring such a serious issue into this comic book? Can't he save that shit for Green Arrow?! Now I'm going to have to ignore the fact that Damian has kidnapped Starfire away from doing something important to join a stupid club of superheroes who never actually do any real superheroing! Starfire was just about to do some before she was kidnapped by Damian! Not that she's been kidnapped yet. I'm still at the part of her story where she has all of her clothes on. She'll probably take them all off on the next page, right?

• Darn it. This Starfire is boring.

• Starfire is captured when a mysterious hand reaches out and incapacitates her with electricity. He then says, "That was shockingly easy." Since when did Damian start getting into puns?! That's more of a Dick thing to do!

Next up: Raven! And her cute little skull barrettes!

• Damian uses Goliath to help get Raven by shooting her with a Ketamine Dart and then letting her trip out on Goliath. She passes out in terror from the demonic sight. Seems a bit harsh since her father was a demonic intergalactic rapist. At least he didn't use electricity again! I wonder how he'll trap Wally? Magic mirror? Weather machine? Freeze Ray? Boomerang?

• Damian tricks Wally with the old "canister of gas disguised as a kid passed out on the subway tracks." And just like that, Damian has captured the new Teen Titans! That's a pretty good start for an incarnation of the Teen Titans. The first rule of Teen Titans is "You are going to constantly get your ass beat by a kid named Robin." Is that a rule? I'm not sure that's a rule. But it is what always happens.

Discounting Bedard, this might be the best Teen Titans' interaction since The New 52. I said might!

• Robin reveals himself with Goliath standing behind him. I'm sure they'll all be quite understanding in the first issue regarding his recruitment methods. I hope Titus, Alfred Pennyworth the Cat, and Batcow are also somewhere in the Teen Titans new headquarters.

The Ranking!
+1! So far, so good! This was a well done Rebirth book. It acquaints new readers (and old ones confused by The New 52 Teen Titans) with the members of the team. It hits on all the pertinent information of each character, even if it's a bit heavy-handed on certain character traits that I suppose Percy will be concentrating on with each character. But all in all, this did what a Rebirth title is supposed to do. Characters introduced! Premise set up! Everything is ready to roll for Issue #1. Oh, and Damian completely starts off on the wrong foot with everybody. So perfect. He's the Robin nobody likes and he just doesn't give a shit. At least not yet! He's getting to the age where he'll stop being a smarmy little pre-teen and start realizing he wants the affection and camaraderie of his peers! Poor little confused boy has a long, hard road in front of him after this recruitment disaster.

Suicide Squad Most Wanted: El Diablo and Boomerang #2

Parasite stars in way more comic books than he should because he's an easy villain to use if you don't want to think of a specific way to negate the powers of the protagonist.

The El Diablo Commentary!
• When you're in a hurry and you accidentally restart your laptop instead of shutting it down, what do you do?
A. Smash it with a hammer.
B. Smash it with a brick.
C. Kill yourself.
D. Burn everything.
E. Wait patiently because you're a good person who everybody fucking hates because how does it not make you instantly furious, you pathetic worm?!

• You may have guessed that I recently restarted my computer instead of shutting it down. Shouldn't the computer at least ask you if you're sure you want to restart before simply restarting? I mean, the two choices are right on top of each other! They're practically the same option when you live a swingingly chill lifestyle like I do! I can't be that accurate when shutting down my laptop! What am I? A boy scout?! I'm more the kind of person who throws a tomato at the keyboard and hopes it hits the off button as I stroll out of the house like motherfucking Jesus Christ!

• That was blasphemy, wasn't it? Not the part where I compared myself to Jesus! No, the part where I swore but it sounded like I was implying that Jesus fucks his mother. Although, I mean, is that really far off? Jesus and God are kind of the same person and God made Mary pregnant which sort of means Jesus made Mary pregnant which, if you said it crudely, might be something like "Jesus fucked his mother." You can't argue with logic! I mean, you can but why would you want to? Logic is a good thing!

• El Diablo has recently left the Suicide Squad to be part of a less exciting government black ops organization called Checkmate. You know they're less exciting because they based their entire organization around the game of chess. I know some of you are thinking, "But Tess, you ignorant slut! Chess is an exciting game that pits two people's minds against each other because luck does not factor in! It's all skill and mental acuity!" Of course, those same types of people thinking that will probably give you a fucking impossibly hard time if you want to take back a move in a casual game immediately after letting go of the piece. So, in a way, they really don't want to play against somebody playing their best. They really want you to make early errors so they can destroy you and push their glasses up on their nose and snort in derision at your feeble mental abilities.

• El Diablo is a horsey piece. That's a great piece in chess because it can leap over other pieces. In my Chess House Rules, you have to roll a six-sided die when the horse moves over one of your own pieces. On a six, the piece is trampled to death.

• El Diablo is on a mission inside of LexCorp Tower which has to be scrapped because he's run into Parasite. That's on the first page! Which means I still have like thirty-nine more pages to go! I've already been at this for an hour. Stupid internet! I'm always getting distracted.

How is this a proper response to that?! I guess he's trying to say "You can't always get what you don't want."

• The person speaking out of Parasite's face is Amanda Waller. Somehow El Diablo recognizes that it's her. I guess Amanda is constantly telling everybody in Belle Reve how much people in hell want ice water. I would think getting ice water would be the last thing on their minds. I would probably want my mouth not to be full of shit and maybe to be ass raped by demons with smaller and less barbed penises.

• Amanda is using some Jervis Tetch technology that enables her to control Parasite as if she were wearing him like a suit. For some reason, she doesn't want Parasite remembering this mission which is why she's taken control. You know, she's such a control freak, why doesn't she do this on every mission? Just stack five or six mind-control helmets on her head and then control the whole Squad!

• Amanda uses Parasite's powers (unless it's the Jervis Tetch Tech since I've never known Parasite to have psychic powers (unless he just recently drained them from somebody (like maybe the scientist at LexCorps!))) to infiltrate El Diablo's mind. She wants information on Checkmate and their recent goings-on. The way Amanda reads minds is by projecting a ghostly version of herself inside El Diablo's mind and then El Diablo creates a version of himself inside his mind so that they can stroll through his memories. That doesn't seem overly complicated.

• The original El Diablo winds up following Amanda and El Diablo through El Diablo's memories. That's overly complicating an aspect of this story that was already overly complicated!

• Once the stroll down memory whatever is done, Waller learns more about El Diablo than she expected.

El Diablo has an Old West DC character living inside his chest who emerges to punch people in the face just before they kill El Diablo?

• After putting Parasite down with his Cowboy Chest Punch, El Diablo meets a woman named Azucar. That's either "Sugar" or "Help!" or maybe "Rice" in Spanish. She's dressed like a Day of the Dead sugar skull so it could be any of those.

• Azucar tells El Diablo that both Checkmate and the Suicide Squad are using him. I expect him to say, "Duh!" Instead, he quits Checkmate and joins with Azucar to find out the truth! I don't know exactly what truth they're going to discover. I'm pretty sure the main truth is that El Diablo is a criminal with fire powers who people just want to use for their own ends. But I suppose there's another truth about why Checkmate needed El Diablo to catch the invisible metahuman Xolotl.

• El Diablo asks Arroz how they're going to get out of LexCorps without being caught by the Metropolis police. She says, "We have to play dead." He says, "I can't die." Who the fuck cares if you can die or not?! Can you pretend you're dead?! She said you have to play dead, not be dead! Fucking idiot. Anyway, Ayuda does her magic killing thing and the first half of this issue ends.

The El Diablo Ranking!
0! I know I don't have to believe everything that happens in a comic book can really happen but sometimes comic books do such outrageous things that I dismiss them outright. That whole bit with Amanda Waller walking through El Diablo's memories while being followed by a cowboy who wasn't part of the memory was too much for me! I did like when Lazarus Lane popped out of El Diablo's chest to punch Parasite in the face though. I have no fucking idea what that was about but any time a DC character from their western genre can get in on the action, I'm all aboard. Except when he's wandering around in somebody else's memories. That was dumb.

The Captain Boomerang Commentary!
• These comic books that are two comic books in one are a pain in the ass to do commentaries on. I don't have this long of an attention span!

• Captain Boomerang has been drafted by some kids living in a South American jungle to help them overthrow El Jaguar. That shouldn't be too hard since that was why he was there in the first place with the Suicide Squad. It's just now he gets to do it with kids instead of insane monsters micromanaged by an even bigger, more insane monster.

• While Boomerang plans the mission with his new team consisting of Breaker, Volt, Wave, and Boost, Amanda Waller tells the Suicide Squad that they need to go back to South America to rescue Captain Boomerang. I was sort of hoping they wouldn't show up again until the end of the story. How dare they take away any of Digger's limelight? This is his solo story!

• Remember Lime and Light? I still can't believe DC killed of Lime before Light. I'd much rather have had some idiot running around named Lime.

• Breaker screws up Captain Boomerang's plan to sneak in and assassinate El Jaguar. That's what happens when teenagers don't follow the orders of adults! I know as a teenager, you might be thinking, "But who would think a drunk, sort-of racist asshole like Captain Boomerang would know what he's doing? Fuck that! I'm going my own way!" And to that, I say, "Yeah. That's probably the right choice 99 out of 100 times. But this time, Breaker fucked up! She should have listened to the adult!"

• Anyway, now Captain Boomerang and the kids wind up in a huge battle that will probably burn about five or six pages. That's good because I never have much to write about comic book brawls.

What a jerk! Doesn't he know what a boomerang is? You have to dodge it twice before you start acting like a big shot!

• The epilogue features Breaker exploding El Jaguar and the Squad returning to pick up Captain Boomerang. And it's cute and adorable and just makes me love Captain Boomerang even more. Even Katana, who I've loved for as long as I've pretended Ann Nocenti didn't ruin her, has a cute moment with him. And then it's over! The story is over! So I guess Issue #3 will be El Diablo and Somebody Else. Unless Captain Boomerang is just going to begin another story. I'd be super cool with that.

The Captain Boomerang Ranking!
+2! Digger Harkness is one of the greatest comic book characters ever created by a creator in an act of creation. And he lives up to his greatness in this story. Also he's kind of dead in the regular Suicide Squad as of Issue #2. I'm still hoping it was a great big fake-out! Maybe I should read Issue #3 out of order so I can see how Digger survived being heat visioned by General Zod!

Doctor Fate #16

This had better be the last Goddamned issue! We've got a Rebirth happening, Dr. Late!

The Commentary!
• This issue begins with the sun not rising when it's supposed to rise. At least not in New York. I'm assuming the other side of the world has the opposite problem because I'm quite the scientific-minded person. I know how all of that sky garbage works and shit. Except this comic book is based on magic and not science so maybe the Earth didn't stop revolving since that would cause a whole host of other problems that might interfere with life on Earth. Like how everybody would fly against every wall as the Earth stopped, even if their mothers put out their arms to keep them from smashing their face into whatever she was also smashing her face into. Perhaps the magic antagonist just pulled down some space blinds. I'm sure Doctor Fate will sort it all out before the comic book is over.

• I wish this comic book were over! It hasn't been very good except for the few times it's been sort of not bad.

For some reason, Alan Moore makes a cameo. Those other people might be caricatures of famous people as well but I don't recognize them.

• The real Doctor Fate, Kent Nelson, and not the reluctant Doctor Fate who still probably thinks somebody slipped some acid in his tea, heads off to investigate a setting sun in a nearby park. It's probably a waste of time because if it were the Earth's missing sun, it would be too big to fit in a park. So it's probably somebody else's lost sun. Best to not get involved.

• It turns out Osiris is in the park and he wants his helmet back. But when he goes to get it, he finds Khalid has powerful friends like Bastet and I think Coyote and I think the Archangel Gabriel and I think Mohammad except there's no way it could be Mohammad because he was drawn on paper and everything. So it was probably a different prophet who really shouldn't have been drawn either. I mean, I'm sure Sonny Liew isn't Muslim so it's not like there's any reason he can't draw an image of a prophet of Allah! I mean, except for the reason that he probably doesn't want to be killed by some asshole who thinks everybody needs to follow the tenets of a religion they're not a part of.

• Anyway, Osiris lets Khalid live. Khalid is all, "I didn't even have to do anything! This gig is great!" But the readers are all, "Dude, Doctor Fate didn't even do anything! This comic book is terrible!"

The Ranking!
-1! And I'm going easy on it! Especially since this isn't even the final issue! I can't understand how this thing made it sixteen issues! I mean, even Ann Nocenti's Katana went six issues. So I guess compared to that pile of dog vomit, this one deserves ten more issues.

Aquaman #7

When is the last time Aquaman spoke to fish? Has DC Comics told writers to move away from that because too many people were making too many fish fucking jokes?

The Commentary!
• This issue begins by introducing (or re-introducing. What am I? An Aquaman historian? I'd rather be Cullen Bunn's masturbation sock) a bunch of Atlantean politicians or bureaucrats as they request meetings with Aquaman. For some reason, they're bothering Mera with these requests and not Aquaman's royal aide. I highly doubt that's an effective use of the fiance of the king's time.

• For some reason, Jurok Byss, Keeper of the Monsters, has a Cockney accent. How does that happen in Atlantis? Is he like Aquaman? Born on land and only recently returned to the sea? What are the chances a Cockney accent developed in Atlantis as well as in Britain? Do they also have rhyming slang?! I wonder if there's a sea creature that rhymes with barn owl?

• Instead of meeting with the jerks who want to use up all of his free time, Aquaman decides to show Mera his Justice League Identity Card. Are those really necessary? This was Lex Luthor's idea, wasn't it? And I bet Batman was all, "Oh, hey! That's a great idea! Maybe we should also have a Justice League VIP Area for members worth billions of dollars!" Then he and Lex fist bumped and bro chest banged and said the secret rich man phrase which is...oh no! I'm not going to spill the beans. I've spilled enough beans in my life. Although if somebody wants to send me the secret rich man phrase in a private message, I'll send it back to you and we can be best friends!

• The Justice League Identity Card is also a key to use the Watchtower Teleport System. That's probably an important plot point that readers should remember for later. I bet somemanta steals it later!

• After getting the pertinent plot point foreshadowing out of the way, Aquaman decides to do some kingly business and meet with people of lesser stature so he can put them in their places.

Ha ha! Get out of here, you racist! Come back after you've tried being a Werewolf for a week!

• Aquaman eschews the bureaucratic nonsense in order to speak with Murk. I hope I used eschew right! If it's a sex word, I apologize to my younger readers for destroying their innocence! If it's not, I apologize to everybody else for using it incorrectly!

• Murk has returned from the scene of the Pontchartrain sinking where he discovered a whole bunch of clues as to who sank it!

Oh come on! If surface dwellers wanted it to look like Atlanteans did this, they would have "deliberately placed" helmets that weren't fitted with scuba gear! So it's obvious that rogue Atlanteans deliberately placed these modified helmets to make it look like surface dwellers were trying to make it look like Atlanteans were behind the attack! Duh!

• Unless of course that means...no, you know what? There's no reason to go spiraling into crazy logic time. In this case, it's obvious that the obvious is too obvious to be that obvious! In conclusion, it was definitely Atlanteans who attacked the ship! Unless Dan Abnett just assumed readers of Aquaman comics are complete morons. Then maybe I should take this scene at face value and believe that the attackers who planted material to make people think one thing fucked up and planted material that would reveal it was a total con job.

• Meanwhile in Venice, Black Manta lets the other members of N.E.M.O. know that he's now The Fisher King and he'll be their leader, no matter how fucking ridiculous he looks in that stupid helmet and skin tight body suit. Some people don't like the idea and Manta kills them. He should have also declared, while stabbing them in their revolting (double meaning!) faces that N.E.M.O. now stands for "Never Eschew Manta's Orders!" I guess then it would be N.E.M.O!, right?

• Aquaman, using the clues he got from Murk, decides to ask a Deluge prisoner if the Deluge were behind the attack. See?! He came to the same conclusion I came to! That it must have been disgruntled Atlanteans who staged the attack! Which is worrying because it means I'm thinking like Aquaman! Now I'm worried I might stick my dick in a fish tank.

• The Deluge prisoner is all, "I may be a murderer and a killer and a racist, but I'm not a liar!" Then he calls Aquaman a half-breed which is a lot like Republican Talking Heads calling Obama a thug. Actually, it's not quite as bad because we all know that thug is now the acceptable way to say nigger. Or at least racists think they're talking in code when they say thug. It's like stoners who still think 420 is a clever way to identify themselves as boring assholes.

• Rath, the Deluge prisoner, says everything he does is in the name of Atlantis. He refuses to follow the orders of a "half-breed" king because, I guess, he feels it weakens Atlantis. But then he's happy to hear that somebody is using the name of the Deluge to try to start a war between the surface world and Atlantis. Wouldn't that be harmful to Atlantis? If he's pro-Atlantis and not just anti-Aquaman, why would he want a war that could bring so much death and destruction to his precious city? The only reason he wants a war is so that the Deluge can blame Obamaman for doing a poor job. He and the Deluge don't give a shit for Atlantis. Some patriot!

• Rath eventually admits he would help stop a war that might hurt Atlantis but he doesn't know anything. He does admit to Aquaman that he doesn't like him because he doesn't value the traditions of Atlantis. I can see that point being that Aquaman is from the surface world. He might be half-Atlantean, but he certainly doesn't know much about Atlantean traditions. He should probably make a concerted effort to immerse himself in the lore and traditions of Atlantis before simply shrugging them all aside and declaring they're stupid because he has no connection to them. He really hasn't tried to fit in, has he?

• As you can tell from my use of the word "Obamaman", you can tell that this interaction between Rath and Arthur is heavily influenced by the way some conservatives seem to have a ready criticism for anything Obama does, especially the talking heads who make a shit ton of money from this viewpoint who then convince their audience of the same things. But in this case, Rath does have a point. He makes it poorly by calling Arthur a half-breed since that points out that possibly the only reason the Deluge hate him is because of his parentage. But the bigger point obfuscated by the racial hatred is that Aquaman doesn't really know much about the traditions of Atlantis and he doesn't seem to have much time for learning about them. He spends most of his time on the surface world with the Justice League. Arthur could make a lot of headway by showing that he's trying to fit in with their traditions. It looks like he might soon insist on Mera going through the ceremonial ritual of proving she's a worthy Xebel. Even though that seems pretty racist and misogynist. Maybe he could start with something less icky.

• Mera actually decides she wants to go through the rituals. That probably makes it less icky. Plus, I mean, when has Mera ever been defeated by anything? I just hope one of the challenges isn't the Challenge of the Clitoridectomy! Judging by Mera's casual attitude to the potential rituals, I have a feeling they might not be far off from my disgusting joke.

• N.E.M.O. is behind the attack on the Portwhatever. Why did the battleship have to have such a foreign name?! I can hardly spell "foreign"! How am I supposed to spell that other thing?! America should really stick to more American sounding battleship names. Like the USS Hotdog or the USS Loveless Marriage or the USS Dirty Sanchez. To keep Arthur from discovering their organization, Black Manta has decided to unleash a distraction! He's either going to question Aquaman's birth certificate or unleash one of Professor Ivo's robots on Atlantis.

• Aquaman continues his investigation using informants and resources he's gathered over his short New 52 career. He reaches out to Reagan and Arni, FBI Agents who are total fangenders of his. They have information about the underground world of ocean scavenging that might help lead him to whoever destroyed that battleship with the complicated French name. He's all, "This is Aquaman! I need you!" And Reagan is all, "It's true! He can cause floods!"

• N.E.M.O. unleashes some gigantic, monstrous underwater Incredible Sea-Thing. Remember that part about me not being an Aquaman scholar?! I don't know what this thing is! But apparently it used to live in Atlantis before it was buried for its own good. And by "its own good," I actually mean the good of everybody else, probably. So I don't know why I said the first thing. I should try to write more clearly.

The Ranking!
+1! Aquaman is a stupid hero but Dan Abnett is doing a good job telling the story of a stupid hero. So I don't mind reading this!

Green Arrow #7

This is almost the exact experience I had in Tokyo.

The Commentary!
• Last night I went to a Portland restaurant named Yakuza. Today, I have to relearn how to type.

• Why the fuck would you name your restaurant Yakuza? Am I missing something hipstery about this? Are there places in the United States that think it's cute and cool to name an Italian restaurant Mafia? What about naming a German restaurant Chuck Nazi Cheese's? Where a kid can be an Aryan heterosexual! Did I go too far with any of those? Probably not because I'm not the one who opened a Japanese restaurant in Portland called Yakuza.

• I didn't choose to eat there. The Non-Certified Spouse's father's current wife chose it to get the two sides of the family together to celebrate my birthday and her son's girlfriend's birthday (I just realized she can describe the situation in the exactly reversed terms!). She had looked up online for the best Portland family friendly restaurants and apparently Yakuza was in the top ten. Seems appropriate. Also, she only found out what Yakuza meant while we were at the restaurant. It seems like an odd thing not to know but then who am I to judge other people by the information they think is important to their lives? I just went to paste in the code for a bullet point and was surprised when instead of an ampersand followed by bull followed by a semicolon, I pasted in the word "Clitoridectomy".

• You don't need to know what I was doing with that word in my copy memory!

• Since about my mid-twenties, I've had a standing request of everybody I know not to get my presents for any occasion. Sometimes people will because they see something that makes them think of me and they get it. I appreciate that. But when people get me shit simply because I'm a name they need to cross off of a list, they usually just give me junk that I don't fucking want in my house. It's easier for everybody if they just don't feel obligated. The Non-Certified Spouse's father's current wife has yet to listen to me. She even said last night, "It's a crap shoot getting something for Jeff when he doesn't want anything." So here's what she got me: a t-shirt that says "Some people just need a pat on the back" and shows a person-shaped figure pushing another person-shaped figure off of a cliff. Really? That's what she thinks of me? She thinks I'd find that funny and I'd wear that shirt? She would have been better off just getting me a nice button-up shirt to wear to family gatherings instead of a ratty, moth-eaten t-shirt! A good rule of thumb is not to buy people clothing with some kind of joke or statement on it. Let the idiot buy that for themselves. Why would I want to wear a shirt that had a statement that you thought was funny in relation to me? I'm not your t-shirt wearing monkey!

• They also got me two pieces of hipster arcade art: wooden blocks of Pac-men ghosts. We currently have an Ikea light hanging in the living room that is a bunch of blue circles strung together. So I hung the ghosts above two of the strands of dots. They look right at home!

• Anyway, I brought all of that up because Shado and Emiko are dealing with the Yakuza themselves! Of course they are. They're Japanese, right? What other conflict is there? Aside from the occasional really horny octopus.

That'll happen when you invest too much of your personality in your career!

• Green Arrow appears and says, "I'm looking for the angry, white, mouth-breathing, red-meat fascists. Anybody seen them?" Is he talking about the loggers? Why does he assume they're white? Is logging a whites-only job? And why bring up their diets? I'm sure he's just guessing at that because it's a stereotype that manly-men only eat red meat and the occasional potato. Why is he being such a huge jerk to some people who are dealing poorly with feeling misplaced and lost in America? And why the fuck are they suddenly fascists?! Who the fuck do these working class loggers have any power over?! They're just fighting to keep their shitty, dangerous, underpaid jobs because they don't have the imagination to see themselves doing something else for a living! Maybe Oliver needs to shoot himself with an empathy arrow.

• Green Arrow finds himself winding down like a top. I guess he didn't eat breakfast this morning. Or else Emiko purchased a watch for him from The Clock King.

• Oh, it's the watch thing. William Tockman, The Clock King, left a message on the watch to let Oliver know all of his plans and his name and his work history and, pretty soon, his bank account. So I can't see how Oliver is going to bring William Tockman to justice at all. There's just no clues or evidence to his treachery!

• Anyway, now Oliver Queen has to pay William Tockman a lot of money for a long time or Oliver's Swatch will kill him. It's not magic though! It's just technology that doesn't need any elaboration because, well, it's basically magic.

• That story was from a year ago if you didn't notice the "Seattle. One Year ago" tag at the beginning of the previous scan. It's all about how Oliver learned to trust Emiko after losing her trust after he gained it after he first met her. The story in the present is about how he once again lost her trust and now has to regain it. So I guess there are similar themes or something tying the stories together.

• Emiko has confronted The Dragon, the leader of the Yakuza. Shado owes her loyalty to him because in Japan there are only five things one must be concerned with: anime, Pachinko, shame, vending machines, and loyalty. The Dragon asks Emiko what her next move is now that she's made herself a nuisance to him.

I bet the opponent is either Shado herself which puts Emiko in a lose/lose situation, or Green Arrow who will, once again, lose his corporation to save somebody he loves! Wait. I don't think he has his corporation right now. Well, maybe he'll gain it back before the death match against Emiko takes place so that he can lose it again.

• Oliver Queen decides to confront the Clock King (you know! In the story that took place a year ago! Not in the story where Emiko is battling the Yakuza!) instead of paying him tons of money to stay alive. The Clock King points out how he knew Oliver would act out instead of complying because Oliver is "too entitled to follow orders." Oh? So blackmailing a person is now considered following orders? Also, it's moments like this where Ben Percy really interjects himself into the story and ruins the rhythm. Is everybody Oliver encounters from now until Percy is off the title going to call Oliver entitled or talk about his privilege? Because that's all a rich white person can be now? It seems weird that the whole point of social justice and civil rights is to treat everybody as an individual and yet it seems everybody wants to take it in the exact opposite direction where everybody is lumped into preconceived labels and categories. That's going the wrong way! I can see how it's satisfying to turn it around on rich whiteys! Or just hetero whiteys! Or just neurotypical whiteys! Or just, you know, whiteys in general! And, I mean, it's not like I ever do anything that doesn't satisfy some desire of my own, so why should I be sitting back trying to armchair quarterback a social movement that I don't really have any stakes in?! I mean, except for the stake of not being called an entitled privileged white guy! I hate that! Stop doing that! So mean!

• I'm not even white! I mean, half of me is white! And I happen to look like the white half of my family and I didn't get the Spanish name because my mother bought into all that Patriarchal bullshit and took her husband's name! So, I mean, I'm passing as a white person and I gain all of the advantages of a white person and the only Spanish I really know is stuff my grandmother would say when she was angry at me! You knew she was pissed when she reverted back to her native tongue! So, I mean, essentially I'm just a dumb white guy. But if you ask me about the history of the white side of my family, at most I can offer a bored shrug. But if you ask me about the history of my Spanish side of the family, I know that shit back to Spain! Pretty much exactly right back to the moment my ancestors left Spain, like where they left for America (Malaga) and why they came (leaflets handed about asking for labor to come to Hawaii to work in the sugar cane fields). I certainly don't know why my white ancestors came over. Probably to get away from all those Spics!

• Clock King takes an unconscious Oliver Queen and does things he probably shouldn't do to an unconscious person. Like strap him down on a clock face with a bladed pendulum swinging above him! I hope Emiko comes by to save his life! And somehow deactivate the Swatch which is killing him! And apologize for being a terrible sister!

• Emiko stops by with a bomb strapped to her chest. She just walks into the back room where William Tockman keeps all of his traps. He really should remember to lock the front door when he drags an unconscious victim into the back room to have his fun.

• If Emiko's Swatch winds down, she'll blow up and kill The Clock King. So now let's see if he's too entitled to follow orders!

• Darn it. He's not. I should have known that because he's an African-American! I think. Is that what Ben Percy was trying to say? A black guy tells a white guy to do something and the white guy is all, "No way, Jose!" (which is totally racist, by the way). But then a white woman tells a black man to do something and he's all, "Darn it! But I didn't want to! But I guess I have to! Shucks!" (I hope that wasn't totally racist, by the way). So Ben Percy is showing us the hierarchy of entitlement: white guy, white girl, black man. That's just the first course though! I'm sure it gets way more complicated by introducing other ethnicities, genders, mental illnesses, and sexualities! I'm way too white to know the order. I just knew I was right there at the top of the entitlement food chain. I'm Number One! I'm Number One! Unless I'm Number Two because totally white guys might call me a half-breed. Except that I think half-white, half-Spanish gets a pass and is never actually called that derogatory term. I think we're just pretty much whites.

• Shoot! Being on the Internet, I should have probably just pretended I was raceless and sexless and genderless! I could have been a monstrous disembodied brain just spewing all sorts of vile, awful things! Boy did I miss my opportunity to be a total scumbag!

• Oh, I didn't say I wasn't still a partial scumbag!

• Back to the present, the person Emiko is going to fight is the leader of the Yakuza, the Dragon himself. He sure is confident! And stupid. Doesn't he know acting like a typical super villain comes before a fall?

• Shado has been invited to watch because The Dragon is an idiot who somehow thinks one of the main qualities of mothers is to stand by and do nothing while their child is killed. Turns out, they usually do the exact opposite! Who would have guessed?! Certainly not somebody who watched their mother not give a shit about them every single day of their lives while always showing way more affection for other people's kids! That was just a hypothetical type of person who might not have known that mothers are fierce and loyal for their children.

• Shado defeats The Dragon and shames Emiko. Unless fighting your child's death battle isn't a shameful act and then she probably made Emiko proud. It's probably that second one because they hug at the end and then Shado rushes off to go play some Pachinko.

• Before leaving her daughter, Shado tells Emiko to go find Oliver Queen. Then Emiko jumps off the top of a skyscraper and, presumably, dies. Hmm. That's a weird ending!

The Ranking!
+0! Ben Percy should have spent more time on the William Tockman story and less time on the Japanese Shame Game Loyalty Club story. Also, I don't think I learned anything about racism this issue. That's probably why I typed the word "Spics" in the commentary. I'm forgetting why racism is bad, Benjamin! Isn't it about time you write another story about it?

Green Lanterns #7

Jessica looks like she's wearing a waistcoat and Simon looks like an idiot.

The Commentary!
• The issue begins with Jessica battling her anxiety. This is why Narration Boxes are so annoying. With them, I have to read about her struggle to just get the fuck in the other room and deal with Simon's family. I would rather not have to be inside of her head as she did that because I'm really inside of Sam Humphries' head and I don't think he understands what it's like to have anxiety at all! He needs the Narration Boxes so he can keep speaking directly to the reader, saying things like "See? See? She's struggling so hard with her anxiety! That's a thing she has and you can tell because I'm telling you about it! Constantly! See how she's having a tough time being around Simon's family? Oh, but you don't know it's Simon's family yet since you're a big fucking moron dope asshole! You probably think she's trying to work herself up to do some Green Lanterning, right? What a fucking idiot! Ha ha! Dope! I'm such a good writer I bet nobody at all guessed that her anxiety was keeping her from just an every day interaction! Surprise!" I hope that isn't what Sam was actually thinking because I haven't even turned the page yet and I just blatantly put all of my Grandmaster Comic Book Reader Cred on the guess that that's what's happening. You know why? Because I don't think this opening fooled fucking anybody. Maybe it wasn't supposed to! But it's certainly written like it's some big twist cold open!

• Yeah, it turns out Jessica was just getting up the courage to be around Simon's family. It didn't even have anything in particular to do with Rami the Rogue Guardian who is a fucking lunatic.

• Oh, also this story was called "Family Matters". That was probably a big clue too! But I completely forgot it was called that because when I was absorbing every detail on the cover to come up with a caption, I was mostly absorbing Jessica's camel toe.

• Jessica chickens out and teleports out of the house to get away from the family. What does she think she is? An Indigo Lantern?! You can't teleport, you dumb barn owl.

• I get it, Jessica. I can't stand to be around people I don't know either! And this situation is extra bad because you're spending time with a Muslim family. And you know what that means! No alcohol to take the fucking edge off! You, Jessica, are fucked.

• One of the main reasons I hate being around new people is that most of them ask all of the same questions about things I'm not interested in. I don't want to talk about my family. I don't want to talk about my stupid job. I don't want to talk about how good I am at the sexing. I just want to listen until somebody says something dumb, leaving me an opening to tear them the fuck apart.

• Simon promises Jess that she doesn't have to spend any time with his family if she helps him make dessert in the kitchen. She agrees because cookies. That makes her adorable, I guess. I fucking hate all of these "this character is so fucking adorable" shortcuts that get fangenders into a tizzy. Ugh. Fuck you.

Gross. Put a shirt on.

• Simon tastes the dough and finds it lacking, so now he takes off. Dude, you probably got some tit sweat in it. Nobody wants to eat your stank ass shirtless cookies.

• Oh my god! Somebody call the Guinness Book of World Records! It turns out Simon Baz doesn't have Daddy Issues at all! He's a Mommy Issues Boy!

• Jessica talks Simon back into the kitchen and convinces him to make the cookies in his Green Lantern costume. It might look stupid but at least he's got a shirt on.

• Simon hasn't told his mom that he's a Green Lantern yet. So he figures now's the time!

Fucking hell. You couldn't have left the gun off?!

• With Jessica's help, Simon manages to impress his mom with his cookies and his costume and, I guess, his gun. For some reason his mother puts up with his nonsense instead of rushing straight through the house to find her grandson. What kind of grandmother is she?! The worst, that's what kind!

• Her grandson is busy stacking things on Rami the Rogue Lantern. I guess the family doesn't have a cat.

• Rami wakes up and screams that the Dominators are coming before rushing off. I don't know where he's going. Wouldn't his precious Phantom Ring be safer with two Green Lanterns guarding it? Also, if anybody can use the Phantom Ring, why doesn't he use it to protect it? It must have some serious side effects that he isn't willing to deal with. Better to just find some sucker to test out the ring for him.

• The Dominators are those yellow aliens with lots of teeth and big red spots on their heads. I think they're supposed to be super scary.

The Ranking!
+1! I'm giving it a plus one because it's gotten much better now that Simon and Jess are friends. Plus, Sam really isn't relying on Narration Boxes like he did when they had to think opposite thoughts so the reader understood how different they were.