Odyssey of the Amazons #1

I don't know why I'm reading this. I don't care about the Amazons.

I picked this book up because I figure why not try all of the mini-series DC puts out. But it's not like I've long been a fan of Wonder Woman or the Amazons. To clarify, I've never been a big fan of the major DC heroes. I often tried to get into Batman because I wanted to be cool but it never really stuck. And not being into Superman or Wonder Woman, I was really never interested in stories about where they came from. If you really wanted to bore the fuck out of me, you could probably just open your mouth. I mean, you could give me a story about the world of Krypton! I also always thought that reading a story about Amazons would be super boring and uninteresting. But after opening this book to the first page, I might have changed my mind!

Male gaze ahoy!

The scrolls in the panel above seem to imply that all of the Amazons were beautiful. Where is the representation for ugly girls? Not cool, Amazons. Or DC. It's almost as if the Amazons of the DC Universe weren't meant for an audience of young girls at all but for an audience of teenage males who have just landed on the shores of masturbation.

For some reason, the Amazons are engaged in a world tour. The scrolls explain that even when they approached another nation in peace, they "left a devastating wake of honor, respect and blood." These Amazons sound like huge assholes.

The Amazons are currently performing for the O'Kunga people who are less than thrilled that the Amazons chose their country as a premier venue. I guess I'm supposed to be on the side of the invading Amazons so these O'Kungans must be right evil bastards. Why else would the Amazons be going around the world performing surprise slaughterings? I'd better read the first page again!

Let's see...okay, right! They are challenging the "stronghold of the Patriarch's world." No wait! Later it says they're on a mission of peace. Although that really seems at odds with the description of their leaving a "devastating wake of honor, respect and blood." "Devastating" seems like the wrong adjective to use for a mission of peace. Another reason they're out and about is to find like-minded women who aren't Amazons. I guess this is about establishing a more multicultural group of Amazons. I'm not sure I'm any clearer as to their reasons for hitting the road for the last five years.

The slaughter of the O'Kunga people is just a way to introduce all of these Amazons to the reader. So while they kill, they make sure to always use the name of the person standing next to them. So Hessia is the leader (probably because, you know, it's Hessia! Even I recognize Hessia!) and the samurai is Wakumi and Thekla is the blonde and Demetria is the chaotic fun-lover and Rayja is the brunette and Chriselda is the berserker and Imani is the responsible one and Aminata is the Zhu'kharan. And what about the O'Kunga people? Why are they being invaded? I guess because they're men! The dumb bastards!

Aha! So their mission is to help downtrodden and subjugated people around the world! Totally on the right page now!

These Amazons are going around the world doing what Superman would love to do but refrains from doing because Batman keeps telling him he doesn't have the right. But these Amazons make their own right because they have the might! Basically they're on a world tour to stop Bullying. "Bullying" with a capital B because I probably really should have said Despots and Genociders and Evil Empires and Men! They're out there risking their lives to make the world a better place. Take that, Superman! You coward! Why don't you stand up to Batman sometime and just go end some genocide somewhere?!

One of the Amazons, Ophelia, is a sculptor. Whenever the Amazons help out a nation in need, she creates a statue of the Amazons and forces the nation to put it in a prominent courtyard so they'll always remember who helped them and who will come back and crush them into powder if they start acting like dicks. That's way better than some stupid Statue of Liberty.

The women, like Aminata the Zhu'kharan, whom the Amazons are recruiting are actually descendants of Amazons who have gone out into the world. They are being offered the chance to return to Themyscira and become immortal once again.

Oh no! Grumblings about too much violence! Time for a coup!

It's always more exciting when the true enemy comes from the inside! Like When A Stranger Calls! Or most of the Disney cartoons!

Hessia also has doubts about her mission. Like is she wearing enough scanty uniforms or fucking enough well-muscled men. Oh, plus she'd like to be the Amazonian diplomat to the world proving that they are about peace and not just slaughtering evil bastards.

Meanwhile the young, newly acquired Amazons are attacked on a beach by Giant Were-hawks. They're defeated and taken captive. Even Demetria, the Amazon with fire for blood and freckles to die for! The giants turn out to be Jotuns and they've stolen the Amazons away to Odin's realm. And even though the Fates warn that Amazon interference in Odin's land could bring Ragnarök down upon all of their heads, Hessia cannot turn her back on her sisters. Also, Narkissa points out that even the Amazons aren't sure about why they've been sent on this five year mission. So I was right to be confused! That's good because I hated sounding so much like the assholes "innocently" asking the point of the Women's March!

This Narrator is the insane one!

The Amazon ships crash against some glaciers and they all sink. A bunch of Amazons sink beneath the waves and die. I hope none of the ones whose names I learned died. What a waste of time that would have been. Not that I remember even half them at this point. So maybe I should hope that those Amazons drowned.

As the Amazons try to recover in the snow and stormy weather, they're attacked by new enemies!

"They've changed, those trolls from the Frozen Mountains."

The Ranking!
I hate ranking books I'm not particularly interested in that do the job they set out to do competently. I used an Elfquest quote for that final picture because it reminded me of that moment near the end of the quest when they arrive in the Frozen Mountains. It was on my mind because this journey felt like being dropped into the middle of the Elfquest quest with no idea why they were questing and then ended with the confrontation with the trolls. While Elfquest took fifteen or so issues to get to that point, making you care about every fucking character in the group, this story tries to jam all of that into one issue. So while I've been introduced to a bunch of characters, I haven't been given time to become emotionally invested in any of them. Except maybe Demetria. I suppose she was meant to appeal to young impatient upstarts. The way fandom works nowadays, you don't have time to get to know a character and fall in love with them over time. You have to love them and identify with them immediately and draw a ton of fan-art and begin writing fan-fiction to prove your worth as the greatest fan of a character nobody knows shit about. This might be the problem with people getting so upset at writers who seemingly ruin people's favorite characters since the "favorite character" is really just a cipher full of the reader's projections thrust onto him or her.

That being said, Demetria is now my favorite character and I love her and Kevin Grevioux had better not kill her off.

Killer Frost Rebirth #1

I hope this is just twenty pages of Killer Frost shaving the side of her head.

This issue is a test to see that Killer Frost can keep her need to kill in check otherwise Batman will have no use for her. It seems odd that Batman and Amanda Waller's entire concern is that Killer Frost doesn't feed on anybody when they know she needs to absorb other people's life force to stay alive. They simply expect her to suffer. At the end of the issue, we see that she's been coping by absorbing small amounts of energy from everybody she comes into contact with instead of completely draining and killing a person every few days. But, again, nobody discusses this with her. I'm not sure if the ending of this issue is supposed to be a revelation that she hasn't quite lost the killer inside of her or that she's just doing what she needs to do in a responsible way. I have to assume that, since she's being sneaky about it, we're supposed to think she hasn't changed as much as she's saying she has. But wouldn't it be better for Batman, who is supposedly the smartest guy ever or something, to discuss the issue with Killer Frost? This issue shouldn't be twenty pages of making sure Killer Frost doesn't take a life even when she's about to die. This issue should be twenty pages of Batman sitting down with Killer Frost and discussing a plan for managing her need to absorb heat. It's not like Batman is recruiting other members for the team and telling one that the can't eat and another that they can't breathe and another that they can never shit. He needs to take fucking responsibility and work out a plan to manage Killer Frost's physical needs! If I were Batman, I'd try to set her up with Lobo. They'd make a nice couple. Lobo would probably love being completely drained while fucking and Killer Frost wouldn't have to worry about killing him either.

What Did I Learn?
I mentioned in a previous Justice League vs. Suicide Squad that Batman was making a great new Outsiders team. But I also only brought that up when Deadshot was one of the pretend members. That's a team I'd like to see. But I also see why it would be wrong to call this team Outsiders and why, symbolically, Orlando needs to call it the Justice League of America. Calling a team with a gay guy, an Asian immigrant, a young black female model, a white female pop star, and Lobo (who represents the MRA or something, I guess) The Outsiders is sending the message that these character types are on the fringes of America instead of that these are examples of the make-up of America. And Batman fills it out by being the rich bastard controlling everybody. See? Perfect metaphor for America!

The Ranking!
Can we just get to JLA Rebirth already?!

Kamandi Challenge #1

If this is as big a trainwreck as DC Challenge, I'll definitely solve it before DC does! I still don't think they solved that one.

I solved the DC Challenge before they did but it didn't matter because the story was a fucking joke. Batman is the World's Greatest Detective but only when the writer writing him has control of the entire story. Otherwise Batman gets the easiest clue in the world (finding the name ELI ELLIS by turning over a calculator after doing a sum) and he promptly forgets all about it for eleven issues. Then in the final issue when everybody had to get together to make sense of the eleven different stories that basically ignored almost everything that came before, Mark Evanier, writer of the first issue, was probably all, "You are all idiots!" Then somebody probably called him an idiot because he thought Benjamin Franklin was a president and on the fifty dollar bill. Maybe. I have a vague recollection that The Riddler fucked up that clue. It's been over twenty years, you know.

The DC Challenge was supposed to end each issue on a cliffhanger which the next writer was supposed to get out of. If I remember correctly though, these cliffhangers were either generally ignored and left for somebody else while the writer began a completely different plot thread concentrating on new characters. I imagine this series will be a lot like that. This one will start with Kamandi and his adventures. Then there will be a cliffhanger ending where Kamandi is about to die and the next issue will ignore it while focusing on the Atomic Knights. Then the next issue will focus on Ben Boxer while ignoring how the Atomic Knights were about to go critical and destroy the world. They'll be going critical for ten issues before somebody resolves that situation.

What I'm trying to say is that this thing is going to be a huge fucking mess.

I'm surprised Keith Giffen is doing the art. Unless this is Koblish trying to look like Kirby but instead looking like Giffen!

Kamandi, the not quite last boy on Earth, races off across town to try to catch the school bus at its last stop. It seems like if he can catch the school bus by cutting through town, he can probably just race straight to school. Not that I know the layout of his town! This is a mystery, by gorsh! Knowing the topographical features of the local locale could give away the mystery!

Kamandi is stopped by a cop who takes the law a little too seriously. He says, "I don't care if you're the last boy on Earth, no one crosses against the red." Dude. If he's the last boy on Earth then there's no danger crossing against the red! Unless the last girl on Earth is driving like a fucking maniac and coming from the other direction. Okay fine. I guess the cop has a point. Plus there are all those sentient animals who drive in the future. But maybe in their society, they cross on the red and stop on the green? Take that, Mr. Fascist Cop!

Some creatures crash through the sky as if it were just the top of a dome painted like the sky. Kamandi's fellow citizens pull out weapons to begin fighting them and urge Kamandi to rush home. I guess this is Command "D" and Kamandi lives in a simulated environment with his grandmother. Did I just solve the mystery? No? Oh, yeah, that's right. I just comprehended what I was reading. Never mind. I'll get that mystery yet though!

The Kangarat Murder Society has broken into Command "D" because there's a bounty on Kamandi's head. The villagers protect him because they're just robots built to protect the last boy on Earth. Kamandi rushes home thinking, "So when I fucked Sarah Lou Ellen behind the bleachers, I actually had my dick in a...a...machine?!"

Is that the mystery? The Case of Kamandi's Missing Parents?

After being shoved through The Void, Kamandi learns he's in a terrible spin-off of Heroes when he hears a voice say, "Find your parents. Save the world." Also, Heroes itself was fucking terrible. I will admit there were some interesting things about it but it was lazy in that the characters in every series were motivated by either a vision of the future or a prophecy. When a writer uses those devices to get the action moving, it means they're terrible writers.

Kamandi comes out of the other side of The Void with long hair and three months worth of piss and shit staining his torn up jeans. He winds up in the clutches of the Tiger-men! That means he's about to meet that pervert, Doctor Canus! Did I just solve the mystery? The pervert is Doctor Canus?

But before he can meet Doctor Canus, Kamandi must survive in the arena against Tiny. And you know with a name like "Tiny," he's got to be big. Even in the future, they stick to nickname clichés.

Based on what Kamandi knows, this statement makes no sense. Even if he's riffing on what the cop told him earlier, Kamandi has no idea that he's currently the last boy on Earth so if he dies, he'll, um, still be the last boy on Earth but with a slightly altered meaning.

And that's the end of part one! That's a pretty simple cliffhanger to solve! Kamandi just needs to beat Tiny. I bet he's swallowed whole by Tiny and then he kicks his way out of Tiny's stomach from the inside! No wait. That's preposterous. Maybe he'll do that thing that Luke did to the Rancor but instead of using a large thigh bone, he'll use the last boner on Earth. Or maybe Doctor Canus will stop the match because he likes the smell of Kamandi's asshole. However it's solved, I'll find out immediately because Dan Abnett takes over for Dan DiDio right here in the middle of the issue!

Oh yeah. Dan DiDio wrote the first story because of course he did. He seems to have called Dibs! on all of Jack Kirby's characters since The New 52 began (and maybe even earlier!).

Part Two is called "K is for 'Kill'!" K is also for Kamandi! And kissing! And kleptocracy! Oh! And klue! A klue to the mystery! Which is still a complete mystery!

Prince Tuftan watches bored as he waits for Kamandi to be torn to bits. I guess this is entertainment for tigers. It's probably like watching America's Test Kitchen on PBS. It's definitely making me hungry.

As Kamandi tries to escape Tiny (who is much bigger when drawn by Eaglesham than when drawn by Giffen!), he discovers the walls of the arena are electrified. Boo! Hiss! That's a cheating shortcut! Electricity is always the way the hero takes out the unstoppable foe! This Cliffhanger Solution rates a 3 out of 10! Did I boo yet? BOO!

Tiny is knocked unconscious from the electrified walls. That's got to be a lot of electricity running along those walls to drop a beast like that! I guess the Tiger-men's post-apocalyptic world isn't so bad if it has such generous power reserves.

Prince Fuzzypants is impressed by Kamandi's resourcefulness even though that resourcefulness has been used over and over again in all kinds of books and movies and television shows. How lucky that there's always some kind of electrical danger nearby when the hero is about to be torn to pieces.

Kamandi is brought to Doctor Canus to be trained. Doctor Canus begins slathering peanut butter all over his cock.

You'd be shocked too if your dog began talking to you while you were crouched in front of it with your crotch covered in Jif.

Doctor Canus takes Kamandi on a walk and shows him Tiger City. Upon seeing the Brother Eye symbol outside the Hall of War, Kamandi tries to investigate it. But it will have to wait until Kamandi becomes best friends with Prince Fuzzypants. For now, he's just a lowly animal being trained to fight in the arena. I hope the second cliffhanger isn't another bout in the arena! Maybe all the cliffhangers will be bigger and bigger opponents in the arena.

Great Caesar returns with a load of leopard slaves and a nuclear missile. Kamandi slips his leash and loses Canus in the celebrating crowd. He heads straight to the Hall of War where he was just told he couldn't go. Somebody is going to be called a bad human and thumped on his tender nose.

Guarding the Hall of War are a bunch of Jackdaws. They're sentient humanoid crows and probably the next cliffhanger. Oh, no. There are still too many pages left. I guess this diversion was just so Kamandi could learn that the tigers of Tiger City are stockpiling ancient weapons. That might be a clue for later! It's hard to tell though because I still don't know what the mystery is. But I think I do know what the next cliffhanger will be!

Silly tigers! Nukes are for...uh, I mean, they're greeeeeeeeat!

The stupid tigers set the bomb to detonate in five minutes. What a cliffhanger! Kamandi only has five minutes to convince Doctor Canus that the tigers will die if he doesn't disarm the bomb! And he'll only have thirty seconds to do that since he'll spend most of the time licking off that peanut butter!

What Did I Learn?
Well, I haven't learned what the mystery is yet, that's for sure! Is the mystery how the world was destroyed? Or why Kamandi needs to find his parents? Or why he needs to remember Command "D" (other than so everybody thinks that's his name)? Or why the world needs saving? Or why the tigers are so stupid and careless? Maybe the mystery is how a dog became a scientist!

The Ranking!
Well shit. It's not too bad because I love stupid gimmick comic books like this!

Suicide Squad #10

Rustam gets his revenge against Amanda by showing Amanda's children the kind of person she is. They already hated her but now they get to hate her even more. So that's something? Or it's nothing. I don't see how it matters since we've gone this long without knowing much of anything about Amanda's past and now that we do, she's just lost the people from it again. Good riddance. Family is like an albatross. Meaning it's good luck to shoot them and hang them around your neck.

What Did I Learn?
Amanda Waller is no longer fat. She just has a big fucking head.

The Ranking!
No change!

Justice League vs. Suicide Squad #6

I didn't know Killer Frost could shoot ice sludge out of her vagina.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists are obviously not Iron Maiden fans or they would have cranked that Doomsday Clock up by another thirty seconds.

Yesterday I won an Internet argument. Not that I was having an argument with anybody! But I saw some guy named Shawn Overton on an Omaha World Herald post writing dumb, illogical things. He then mocked everybody who countered his dumb, illogical things with rational things by sarcastically calling their replies brilliant. Using my philosophy of never trying to reason with idiots who can't be reasoned with and just approaching these situations with joyful whimsy, I responded, "I have a brilliant response for Shemp Overdone: You are the big dum-dum!" He preceded to delete his original comment and go home. I'm pretty sure that's a win! Plus, it's what I'm doing daily to Trump and Spicer. They're probably more used it and have aides receiving these daily insults and jabs so it might take longer for them to get frustrated and just go home. But if more people were to join me in joyfully and whimsically insulting the president and his press secretary on a daily basis, I can't imagine that they'll have the gumption to keep it up for four years.

Here's my latest tweet to Donald Trump: "@POTUS @realDonaldTrump You're like the saddest children's book. You just want to be loved but you're the most hated president ever!"

It's difficult being a revolutionary revolutionary!

At the end of the last issue, Max Lord finally turned into Eclipso. Oh man. Remember Eclipso: The Darkness Within from 1992? I suppose a lot of you weren't born yet. Don't worry, you didn't miss anything. Eclipso eclipsed a whole bunch of superheroes before they finally hit upon the idea of using mirrors or something to shine the light of the sun on his headquarters located on the dark side of the moon. Except, you know, the "dark side of the moon" is just a thing we say to describe the side of the moon that you never see from Earth. It's fully bathed in sunlight every thirty days or so! I suppose the DC heroes didn't have that long to wait so they had to come up with the mirror thing.

Eclipso begins this issue with a riddle: "Have you ever wondered why the darkness always returned?" Oh! Oh! I can answer that riddle! "No."

Eclipso goes on to explain the answer anyway. He says, "Because it never leaves." That's so fucking profound! Yeah, yeah! I never thought of it that way. The darkness is always all around me! It hasn't been driven away by light at all. It's just remaining dormant, waiting for the light to be switched off! And then boom! It's back with a vengeance! But I think Eclipso is being more figurative than that. He's just trying to point out that we all have evil inside of us and when we're eclipsed by his power, we don't become evil because of Eclipso. We act on the evil impulses already there which we normally control because we don't want to embarrass our mothers.

Eclipso remembers his shitty crossover event!

And then Batman's Suicide Squad rescues the Justice League and they save the world from Eclipso! Probably. It's not like I need to know every detail of this story since it's the last issue. These blog entries are just a way for me to remember each comic from month to month so I'm not thoroughly confused by every new issue. I suppose the other important thing that will happen by the end of it is that Batman will quit the Justice League (again!) to form the Justice League of America and he'll offer Lobo and Killer Frost jobs on his team. Then everybody will think, "Wait a second! How can Batman afford Lobo, the most expensive hitman in the entire universe?! He would need Bruce Wayne money for...OHO!"

Deadshot really dug deep for this insult!

Apparently one of Deadshot's deepest, darkest evil thoughts is that he'd like to kill his daughter so he'll never feel guilty about killing again. I could go two ways on this one with my comments. I could choose to be a childish asshole and discuss how Joshua Williamson is an idiot if he thinks this is good characterization and that Deadshot would ever harbor that evil thought. Or I could be magnanimous and believe what is probably the truth anyway because it's less entertaining to write about: Eclipso is just a lying douchebag trying to convince himself that he isn't forcing people to be evil when he actually is. It allows him to see himself as a heroic god giving people the freedom to engage in their deepest desires rather than a manipulative bastard who just wants to see the world go dark.

Deadshot becomes eclipsed and declares he's going to kill everyone. Oh no! Even the other eclipsed people?! And Eclipso?! He might just save the world!

Batman eventually comes to the same conclusion I did last issue.

So the delivery systems are different. He wants Superman to look at Eclipso while I wanted Superman to pee on him.

Eventually it's down to just Batman, Amanda Waller, Killer Frost, and Lobo. Eclipso is terrible at triage. He concentrated on eclipsing all the wrong people! You definitely have to get Batman first. Or at least get one of the others to kill him. If Eclipso really makes people's deepest, darkest thoughts rise to the surface, I imagine every member of the Justice League would have killed Batman immediately, the pretentious twat.

Batman and Killer Frost get their prism plan underway while Lobo beats the shit out of everybody else. Luckily everybody else complies and only goes after Lobo. Just Superman goes after Batman and Killer Frost. What a stroke of luck!

Batman is faster than Superman's heat vision. Although, I suppose, I've dodge Roadhog's hook on Overwatch enough to realize you begin the dodge before Roadhog even knows he's about to throw the hook. Same principle!

The plan works to free the heroes and villains from Eclipso's control. Judging by the FWASH sound effect, Supergirl could have done this without Killer Frost's help. That's an old joke that only one person reading this blog will understand.

Eclipso counters with a FWSSH sound effect which is probably something totally disgusting. I think it amounts to Eclipso spraying his darkness juice via a goat.se pose. But it's too late! Killer Frost has gotten a taste for justice and she turns the tables on Eclipso. He's bathed in sunlight and reverts to Max Lord as the black diamond explodes. I think. I'm sure it exploded so that little black diamonds can litter the Earth causing small Eclipso attackes every few months.

The world has been saved and all that is left is for the Suicide Squad and the Justice League to participate in a denouement.

Oh man. Enchantress and Jessica Cruz are so going to fuck.

Batman admits to Waller that Task Force X can work as long as she stops stealing his files out of the Batcave. Also, she needs to let Killer Frost retire so Batman can use her for his new Outsiders team he's going to call Justice League of America. But we all know it's really The Outsiders. Just look at the lineup!

Lobo decides to give Batman one free job (not that kind of job! (or that kind!)) for freeing him from Max Lord's control. I'm not sure what kind of jobs Lobo thinks Batman has for him. Hide in Damian's closet to scare him straight? But of course Batman already has a job for him. I bet it's to be Killer Frost's life-force battery as a member of the new Outsiders. Although I can't imagine that job qualifies as a freebie since it's ongoing. Lobo's going to need some of that sweet Bruce Wayne cash to keep that job.

Apparently Lobo has to join The Outsiders because he gave his word he'd do a free job for Batman and specified that it didn't matter what the job was. Lobo should be more careful with what he says. Doesn't he know that writers take his "always keeps his word" thing way too seriously?!

In the epilogue, Max Lord points out that this whole thing was engineered by Amanda Waller to get Batman to lay off the Suicide Squad. That totally makes sense since it's basically the plot of the Suicide Squad movie.

The other characters all get to tie up their loose ends too. Emerald Empress decides to start the Fatal Five so she can hunt down Saturn Girl. Johnny Sorrow's mask is still on Earth waiting for a non-white, non-heterosexual, non-male character to put it on. Doctor Polaris is making out with his helmet. Rustam is going after Havana Waller. And, of course, the Black Diamonds are now everywhere.

Then on the final page, Amanda Waller does that reveal thing where the "X" in Task Force X is a number and not a letter. Even though it was a letter just one or two incarnations ago because there were Task Force Ys and Zs or something. It's such a shocking revelation that isn't boring and overused at all!

Previously, there was Task Force A-Y. Now there are just Task Force I-XI plus zero which was the first one but I don't think the Romans have a letter for zero. They should have used an O like we do! Dumb-dumbs!

What Did I Learn?
Amanda Waller is as much a genius as Harvest was. She really knows how to build an overly complicated Rube Goldbergian plot device to take care of fairly simple problems. I'm sure she could have come up with another way to keep Batman off of her back instead of this method that relied on so many unknowable factors that it should never have worked out exactly as she planned. It would have been easier to hire Psimon or J'onn J'onnz to erase Batman's memory of the Suicide Squad. And while they were at it, maybe erase the memory of everybody in the world since they all seem to know about Task Force X and how it's part of the United States government. People knowing about how it works ruins the entire reason for why it works!

The Ranking!
No change!

Raven #5

Catchy nickname.

The covers for this comic book make me believe that Marv Wolfman didn't have any idea what the story was going to be in time to give the cover artists an idea of the story inside. Marv probably just said, "It'll be about Raven in high school or something! And she does magic and shit! I'll probably throw Trigon in there and he'll rape some stuff." The cover of Issue #6 will probably be Trigon with his dick in a mailbox.

The White Carnival is still kidnapping people. Raven still can't get a ticket to the carnival. Her Aunt continues to ask Raven if she believes in God. Oh, and Antt's name is spelled with two Ts. That's important for some reason. I think it's so Antt's fragile ego isn't destroyed by everybody's ignorance of her superior individuality.

While Raven does nothing, Aunt Alice discovers her niece is a Teen Titan.

Fake news! The Titans haven't even saved New York once!

Raven's friends hang out in the hospital doing nothing. Raven's cousin comes out to find her but winds up doing nothing but getting in trouble. Raven's Aunt watches Raven turn into a demon on television and does nothing. And Raven almost continues to do nothing until she finally gets into the White Carnival just before this issue ends.

What Did I Learn?
I learned this series should have been two issues long. Raven should have found the White Carnival at the end of Issue #1 and entered it at the beginning of Issue #2. Then Issue #2 would be whatever is going to happen in Issue #6 and Issues #2-5 wouldn't exist because nothing fucking happened in them anyway.

The Ranking!
-1!

Raven #4

This cover makes me think of autoerotic asphyxiation.

Since Donald Trump is against the free exchange of ideas, supporters of Donald Trump are not allowed to read my blog anymore. Not that it really matters! The moment any of them read that, my blog became idiotic and unfunny to them, no matter what they thought of it before.

I really am finding difficult to read a comic book straight through these days without being distracted. I have to keep stopping to tweet to President Trump or Press Secretary Sean Spicer. Here's my latest tweet to Trump:

@realDonaldTrump While you're investigating voter fraud, maybe look into gangs driving without headlights on and murderers with hookhands.

It's suddenly become more fun to tweet at Trump and Spicer than to make fun of comic books. I sincerely think the best course of action is to tweet Trump hilariously insulting daily tweets until he can't take the incessant criticism and quits.

But enough about stuff that doesn't matter! Let me explain how shitty this comic book is!

The White Carnival is still pulling people into it. It's been doing that without any real change to the plot for three issues now because DC mini-series have to be six issues long, no matter how much story Marv Wolfman was able to come up with. Raven has wound up in the hospital battling her soulself while a terrible doctor looks on.

"Cardiac arrest! Oh no! I have to cut her open!"

The doctor is about to cut into Raven saying, "I don't know if what I'm doing is the right thing, but I know she will die if I do nothing." Maybe he's the janitor who just found a scalpel lying nearby? Surprisingly, the doctor doesn't do anything and Raven doesn't die. I bet the nurses never look him in the eye again.

Once more, people go in to the White Carnival, people come out drained, and Raven cannot get in. It's still not powerful enough to defeat her. It would have been nice if it were powerful enough as soon as it was up and running so this series could have been two issues long.

Raven also takes care of the super-villains trying to take credit for the White Carnival in order to collect a ransom. None of them are ever named because they were just a way to prolong a story that has no point. Oh, and Raven battled Trigon's will because Marv Wolfman doesn't know how to write a Raven story without featuring Trigon.

What Did I Learn?
I learned I've had my fill of Trump supporters. If they're still supporting Trump at this point, they're obviously only concerned with gloating. Introspection is not a thing they are capable of. They steadfastly believe that the truth is propaganda and that propaganda is truth because they have such a high degree of self-confidence in their ability to sense bullshit. But they are wrong. They will always be wrong. Because instead of stopping and wondering why Trump is working to remove all transparency from Washington when he stated he was giving America back to the people, they're busy calling people libtards and laughing about their liberal tears. They're angry and butthurt and they have no idea why the anger didn't go away when Trump became president so they continue to lash out at those they perceive are their enemies (thus actually making them their enemies). They can't understand why they should stand up for anything that doesn't affect them directly and so revel in other people's misery. Eventually they'll learn that they've been duped but we're all going to pay the price until then. I have a sad feeling the only thing that will make Trump supporters angry at this point is when they realize they're paying for the Mexican Border Wall out of their taxes. Actually, that sad feeling is "hope" and it makes me sad because I don't even think that will do it for them.

The Ranking!
No change.