Mother Panic #3

Now kiss!

Batman can't stand that another vigilante is operating in Gotham City. That's his turf! It's his honey pot! If Mother Panic plans on opening a Window and Skylight Repair Shop, she's in big trouble. Hell, she's in big trouble anyway. Batman is such a control freak that he's going to have to learn her identity and where she lives and how old she is and how acidic her urine is. It's all quite important to running Gotham. Not that Batman runs Gotham, wink, wink! He just wants to keep it safe! If you know what I mean!

Mother Panic continues her quest to rescue a bunch of teens from some pervert art lover named Hemsley. But finding those kids isn't in the cards this month. This month, she gets to be scolded by Batwoman. The scolding winds up turning into a fight. Typical.

That's an odd thing to say unless Mother Panic's dialogue comes from a writer who knows Batwoman is a lesbian and thinks this is some kind of playful flirting. Although I don't know why somebody would follow up "Not my type" with "although under other circumstances." You mean like if she were your type?

Mother Panic wins the fight with her super power of thinking of some abstract image and then striking. I don't know what that is about. I guess she gets her power from art. That's why her nemesis is a swanky hip artist.

After the fight, Mother Panic swears. Oh! That just made the comic book better!

At Hemsley's place, Gala is waiting for Mother Panic inside the art piece she created for him. It's a throne surrounded by six sitting children in monk's robes tethered to the ceiling. They continuously chant some thing about sinners and god. I can only imagine the entire room smells like dried semen.

Gala introduces herself and then sets the room on fire to escape. I guess it's important for an artist to have a patron and/or a superhero nemesis. Otherwise why would she let Mother Panic know she's behind Hemsley's disgusting wank installation? Probably just ego. Anyway, Gala escapes while Mother Panic saves the helpless children.

Uh oh. It's getting super artsy in here!

It looks like Mother Panic is too big for art to hold! She's the creator's creation that breaks free to create! And while she does that, she'll also smash the shit out of terrible art. But not pretentious art or she'll have to punch herself in the face.

Batwoman reappears to tell Mother Panic she did a good job. Mother Panic responds with "Fuck your approval." I approve! She says fuck at Batwoman a few more times, just to show she doesn't care what anybody thinks of her. She's off the leash! Remember when practically every cover of The New 52 proclaimed that somebody was unleashed? Bad times!

The encounter with Batwoman allows the writer to just get on with the story without a bunch of fangenders going, "Why doesn't Batman do something about her?!" Now in just a few pages, they have their answer! Batwoman knows Mother Panic is a good person and she'll be allowed to do her thing so long as she doesn't fly her ship into Batman while he's grappling around the city.

Later Mother Panic discovers Hemsley's dead body. So that's one person down who did a thing that Mother Panic needs to avenge (like having sex with young kids, maybe? Perhaps burning down an orphanage? Maybe voting 3rd party?), probably a bunch more to go! It's also time for a flashback to explain her relationship with her brother and the reason for her costume and name, Mother Panic.

Aha! So she's a super nun!

There's also that back-up story about a right-wing podcaster boring people dumb enough to subscribe to his scary alternate version of reality. Oh wait! I forgot he's moved up to radio! So now he can bore all of the people who forget to turn the station after Coast to Coast AM ends!

Cory, the right-wing podcaster, is starting a late night radio show to call out The Batman and turn everybody against him. Boring! He's just another hot take on why Batman is a huge negative for Gotham City and he's going to use evidence from the times shitty writers really painted Batman in a terrible light. At least his audience will only be a couple dozen people and he'll never get popular! No way that'll happen, right?

The Ranking!
No change! I'm not even sure I have this comic on the ranking list. I should probably check. Enh, we'll see if I can find the energy to bother.

Odyssey of the Amazons #2

Ostensibly, this is a book about building Amazon diversity but my male gaze suspects a different agenda.

• The above caption was my reining it in caption! My initial caption was all about double penetration and penis envy.

• The Narrator of this comic book is fucking mentally unhinged. Not in a "I'm going to scoop out my neighbor's insides and make them into a delicious pudding" unhinged. More like "I'm going to use as many words as I can think of and mash them together into sentences that make enough sense that an editor will just wave impatiently at me and mutter 'Good enough!'" The Narrator makes the kinds of statements that most people reading comic books won't think twice about. Why question words when there are big breasted women in scanty clothes who bend over a lot while fighting? But for a picky asshole like me who loves to point out the flaws in other people so that I feel better about myself, the Narrator is driving me up the fucking wall.

So a troll will eat anything that screams when devoured alive. How does it know the meal will scream when devoured alive until it tries devouring it alive? If the presumed meal doesn't scream, does the troll spit it out?

• I wouldn't mind so much if the caption used the preposition "or" instead of "and". But now I imagine a troll sees something breathing and is all, "Might be food!" Then it stabs it and sees that it bleeds and its stomach rumbles and it thinks, "Oh yeah! Belly here it comes!" Then it begins eating the still alive thing which doesn't scream so the troll spits it out in disappointment, holds its belly in both hands as it glances down at it, and says, "Sorry, tummy. Maybe the next thing will breathe, bleed, and scream!"

Well yeah! They can't eat without the screams. And if they don't eat, they don't live!

• The trolls are illiterate heathens. You can tell because they end their questions with two question marks. Only one acceptable sentence ending double punctuation mark exists and that's the question mark/exclamation point combo. Some idiot invented the interrobang which is a single punctuation mark that combines the two but it looks even more idiotic than using two pieces of punctuation at the end of a sentence (which almost always looks fairly idiotic (because it is (unless there are closing parentheses before the period (or quotes (and probably a whole bunch of other special cases))))).

Wait. You roast your food? What about the eating things alive while they scream thing?!

• The troll proceeds to smash Hessia in the face and say, "On your knees like the female dog you are." Stupid troll. Dogs never sit on their knees! It's pretty much impossible! Also, Mr. Troll, you're being really sexually aggressive with your violence. Maybe tone down the allusions to forced oral sex while beating up women.

• During the big fight scene, the Narrator says, "They will not go gently into the night." Being that that's a riff on Dylan Thomas's poem, it made me think of the poem which made me angry. If I were dying and somebody was all, "Fight! Fight against the dying of the light!" I'd be all, "Fuck you! I'm dying here! Don't make this all about you, you narcissist!" Then I'd probably die and those would be my last words and anybody who heard them would think, "Gor, he were a grouchy one, weren't he?"

• The Amazons begin getting their numbers punched, and in their own comic book even! Luckily, there are male warriors nearby to save their lives. Unluckily, the Narrator won't shut up about it.

What do Vikings know about summer pools?! Does summer even exist in the Fjordic countries?

• I recently made a Norse Blood Bowl team called the Fjordic Bee-Orcs. They're going to rule the Norse League.

• This bit where some other warriors rush in to save the weary warriors being killed by trolls doesn't make this story any less reminiscent of Elfquest. At least the vikings didn't ride in on elk.

• The Amazons and Vikings defeat the trolls and head back to Viking Village, a community for people who like community and flying into random, blood-soaked rages.

• The next day, Hessia gets to know one of the vikings. She makes a passing mention of Morpheus and he's all, "Who?" Then he mentions Thor and describes him as "the storm god himself" and Hessia is all, "Who?" And the viking is all, "Bitch, weren't you listening?!"

• The Vikings and Amazons join up to defeat the Jotuns because the Amazons need to save their sisters and the Vikings need an exciting way to enter Valhalla.

• Meanwhile in Jotunheim, the young Amazons who were taken find out that they will be the mothers to a new race of half-Amazon, half-Giant babies. Why would they consent to tha...oh. I think the number of copies of next issue being sold next month just fell substantially.

• The Amazons and Vikings begin their journey to Jotunheim over discussions of gender as seen through the prism of differing cultures. The Amazons are all, "You Vikings don't respect women!" And the Vikings are all, "We do too! At least we don't rape the fuck out of them like the giants!" And the Amazons are all, "Oh shit! Can we get this raiding party moving any faster?"

How nice of him! I hope it's a magic sword!

• On the way to Jotunheim, Hessia is bitten by a werewolf and they meet a bunch of Odin's Valkyries on flying boars and horses. That should shut these Vikings up about whether or not women were meant for battle. Fucking dicks.

The Ranking!
No change! I haven't changed my position on not being interested in tales of DC's Amazons.

Deadman: Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love: Book Three

Finally! The Forbidden Love shall be unforbidden! And hopefully graphic!

Last issue ended with the shocking twist revelation that Adelia was the bad ghost. But she's only the bad ghost when Nathan exits his writing room and enters the part of the house she can haunt. Then she loses her fucking shit because he's just another man ruining a lesbian's life by loving her and trying to marry her. Berenice, the lesbian fiance, wants to marry him for some reason. I suppose she could be bisexual but the story isn't playing out that way. If it were, Berenice would be happy to marry Nathan and fuck Sam on the side. I don't know how happy that would make Sam or Nathan though. But who cares?! This isn't their story!

But this is also Adelia's story. Adelia the ghost was murdered by her husband, probably because of the same reasons she's freaking out over Nathan. Her husband didn't want her fucking the female neighbor.

I suppose this is Deadman's story too although he just seems to be a witness to the events and the connection to DC continuity. He's also the man whose eyes emasculated comic book reading males can peer through so they don't feel like they were tricked into reading a story about women and how women like to fuck other women and don't need men at all. That's really kind of a clever ploy by Sarah Vaughn! Use the hero "Deadman" to show that men are dead and unnecessary!

Adelia has just attacked Nathan but Deadman drove her back into purgatory where she can face the revelation that she's the bad ghost. Meanwhile, Nathan, Berenice, and Sam discuss what happened.

Berenice: "It was a ghost!"
Nathan: "You must be having female problems!"
Sam: "I believe you!"
Berenice: "That's all I've ever wanted to hear! Let's fuck!"

Geez, Sam. Put your vagina back in your pants. You had her at "I believe you."

Nathan passes out because he's not really needed for this story. Unless at some point he's going to threaten to kill Berenice as he relives the past history of the house and then Deadman will have to possess him (against his will! Shocking!) to save the day. But until then, it's just Boston, Sam, Berenice, and Adelia left to solve the mystery. And the only place they have yet to search for clues is in Nathan's writing study! I hope it's filled with corpses and used Kleenex.

The study isn't filled with crumpled up balls of papers that compromise the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth drafts of Nathan's crappy novel. Instead, they discover spell books full of the dark arts. It appears Nathan is really a lich! He has somehow extended his life through the murdering of his wives on their wedding night. Probably. This revelation leads to Nathan trying to murder Sam and Berenice so that his secret remains safe: as long as the house stands, he lives. I guess murdering his wife didn't have anything to do with magic. He probably just didn't like that she was fucking all the women in town.

Oh Deadman. Rape is never okay.

Once Deadman enters Nathan, he's flooded with the memories of Nathan's long life across a couple of centuries. It's convenient because he finally gets the whole story. There's not as much forbidden love as I was hoping.

While the ghosts fight among themselves, Berenice and Sam burn the house to the ground. And then fuck, I hope? I'm starting to get annoyed with this comic book. How dare DC Comics subtitle a book "Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love" and then forget to include the forbidden graphic love.

Berenice and Sam never kiss let alone finger-bang. I think finger-banging was the Forbidden Love. I wonder how much finger-banging is happening all around us in public at any time? I bet at least a couple cases in every movie theater I've ever been in!

The Ranking!
No change. This was the least sexy book about forbidden love I've ever read. I suppose that shouldn't be shocking considering this book was also about multiple corpses.

Gotham Academy: Second Semester #6

It's Wayne Manor Man! Unless it's Arkham Asylum Man!

The Review!
The Pizza Detective Club are currently trying to solve the Mystery of Kyle Giving Colton A Handie, Just To Be Cool, Y'Know? They might also be solving some other mysteries. Like the Mystery of the Stolen Map and the Mystery of the Nerdy Kid With a Crush on Maps, and the Mystery of Olive's Tyler Durden Friendship and the Mystery of Pomeline Fritch's Spectacular Bu...um...maybe I'm the only one trying to solve that mystery.

While searching for a way to reverse Colton's expulsion, Maps finds a clue!

Then why are there only twelve drawers on the dresser?

Maps is a better detective than I am because instead of being a cynical asshole who thinks pointing out a dresser of twelve drawers goes against her theory, she thinks, "There must be a secret thirteenth drawer!" And she finds one! Batman never would have figured that out.

Since the first issue, I've been saying Olive's new roommate Amy isn't real. But it's possible she's not real in a different way than I imagined. She might be ... (do a drum roll on your thighs for a few seconds here) ... Millie Jane Cobblepot's ghost! They're really pushing that theory hard this issue. So the first five issues were just, "Amy is Olive's chaotic friend who nobody else seems to notice!" And now this issue is all, "Remember the ghost of Millie Jane Cobblepot?! That might be good knowledge to remember soon! Remember how Pom was looking for her? Remember how Pom did a ceremony to contact her? See how Maps is asking Olive if she thinks ghosts are real?! Hee hee. You're going to be so surprised soon!"

During the adventure, clues are found and some minor points in the mystery are solved. Mostly, the Pizza Detective Club finally get back together from their separate adventures so they can finally solve the Myster of the M/W or A/A Symbol That's All Over Everything and Also Above the Door at Wayne Manor So, Um, You Know, Mystery Probably Solved There?

The shocking cliffhanger ending is more of a cliff-falling ending as Tristan, bound up by Eric the Boy Who Likes Maps, falls off the side of the Secret Elevator. Since he's probably going to die, Amy tells Olive to burn Eric. That's just the kind of thing Tyler Durden would have told the Narrator to do!

After writing that, I just looked up Fight Club to see what Edward Norton's character was called and it was "The Narrator." See? I pay attention to movies I haven't seen in over sixteen years. I also remember the first rule of Fight Club: "Don't eat all the Oreos."

Anyway, Tristan will probably be saved by Batman since he seems to be skulking around stalking kids. And Olive probably won't burn Eric to a crisp, even though her anarchic figment of her imagination thinks she should.

The Ranking!
No change! This book isn't going to change the world the way no other DC Comic book is currently doing so that's probably a statement that didn't need to be made. But it's fun and I love the art and Pomeline's probably secretly, like, forty years old, right? I'm allowed to investigate the Mystery of Pomeline Fritch's Butthole! I bet it's spectacular! Like a treasured relic from an Indiana Jones movie! You probably have to solve all kinds of puzzles and escape from dangerous traps just to lay your eyes on it! And then your face might melt! But I bet it would be worth it.

Supergirl #6

Is this the inappropriate cock drawn on the cover variant?

• Right now, I don't know if I want to name my own price on car insurance or fuck Flo deep in the ass.

• In a lot of ways, that above bullet point is everything I strive for this blog to be. I fail an awful lot. But that bullet point up there? That's pure.

• This issue begins with a super exciting moment that forces me to pretend that I'm not now sitting uncomfortably in a load of sticky baby creation vinaigrette.

To be fair, my current pants situation might not be entirely the fault of the word "finale." I did just spend an awfully long time staring at that ad of Flo putting the name your price gun right up to against her lips.

• The main problem with these constant reboots is that fans that stick around from one new universe to the other are forced to reread the same fucking stories over and over again. I fucking get it already, Steve! Supergirl has worse Daddy Issues than that stripper I tipped too well and made too much eye contact with who thought that was an invitation to provide a therapeutic ear for her as she gyrated near my vinaigrette decanter. Is it too much to ask that when I walk into a building that screams in bloody neon "Objectify women sexually here!" that I not have to learn that they're real people with real problems?!

• A lot of what I write is just lying for entertainment reasons (mostly my own entertainment). Like, did I really go to a strip club recently or was that just to build a metaphor I thought was funny? Am I really sitting in a squelchy load of nutsauce? Have I ever found Flo attractive? I mention this because I was reminded of my favorite stripper ever by fabricating that last stripper story and I wanted to retell it but I wanted everybody to know it was absolutely true! So here it is:

I think I met a stripper super villain in Vegas this weekend. She told me her name was Princess Unicorn Pants and for $25, she'd stab me in the face and choke me. All that for $25?! How could I refuse! I wonder if that's why I can barely speak now? It could also be the cause of my spontaneous loss of depth perception.

• Okay, so I can tell you part of that story isn't true because I still regret not finding out what would have happened if I'd spent that twenty-five dollars. I like to think Princess Unicorn Pants totally understood me and that she doesn't offer the Stabby-Chokey to just any pervert who wanders into her club.

• The only reason I had an orgasm in my pants over the word "finale" is because I noticed before reading the first panel of that first page that it begins with somebody in the New York Headquarters of the DEO saying, "Chief Bones." That totally would have been the money shot.

• Currently, National City is being attacked by Cyborg Supermen from outer space. This is happening so that Steve Orlando could use the pun "Rain of the Cyborg Supermen." Totally worth bringing back Cyborg Superman and going over nearly the same ground covered in The New 52 Supergirl comic book.

• Cameron Chase, Dr. Veritas, Cat Grant, and Supergirl have a plan to finally defeat Cyborg Superman. Hopefully in one of those "once and for all" kind of ways. Hopefully they'll smash him into scrap iron and toss him into the sun. Then they'll run some kind of spectrographometer that will pop out a punch card reading, in English and verified by Wonder Woman's lasso, "No trace of Cyborg Superman. Utterly destroyed forever and not 'forever' in comic terms but in the actual definition of forever. Good riddance, fuckbumble." It would be odd for a machine to use the word "fuckbumble" but that could be used as a seed for some future plot where machines rise up, not to take over the world, but to just be really snarky assholes to the people trying to use them.

Oh, the Kryptoniad! Who can forget it's powerful first line: "Great Krypton lay in a dark and stormy night."

• The joke in that caption probably fully hit for only like five people.

• To stop the Cyborg Superpeople, Cat Grant uses the Catco App on the phones of every citizen of National City who uses the app because they didn't read the terms of service that stated "We can hijack your phone at any time if it will help save National City (or promote Catco Enterprises in any way)." The app sends out a signal that shuts down the Cyborg Superpeople, allowing Supergirl to walk up to a now powerless Cyborg Superfather and say, "Dad. Suck my fucking dick."

• Argo City crashes into the ocean a few miles out from National City and doesn't cause a tidal wave of any kind whatsoever. Also, Supergirl is more compassionate than I am. She doesn't tell her dad to suck her dick at all! Instead, she hugs him and is all, "We could have worked together, daddy. Why wouldn't you love me?" Then all of the heroes in the DC Universe feel the strengthening of another Daddy Issue and silently shed a tear.

• So instead of crashing into the sun and being obliterated for all time so I never have to read another Cyborg Superman story again, Cyborg Superman and his city crash just off shore from National City. Just the perfect place for Supergirl to shrug her shoulders and think, "I guess that takes care of that! No reason to follow up at all!"

Wait a second. The Pacific Ocean? National City is on the West Coast?! With a name like National City, I assumed it was a version of Washington, D.C. But not Washington, D.C., obviously, since it isn't the seat of the United States government. But more like the way Metropolis and Gotham are both kind of New York but New York still exists as well. I guess it's pseudo Los Angeles or quasi San Francisco or quasi-pseudo San Diego.

• Great. So now Hank Henshaw has become the Randall Dowling of the DC Universe? Now that he's returned from space with some secret super power, he's gallivanting around the globe collecting alien technology to use for his own ominous purposes.

• Later, one of Doctor Veritas's aides mentions why there wasn't any tidal waves and I'm all, "Oh, sure! Make me look stupid for wanting an explanation and then giving it to me later after I'd already complained about it." The tidal wave was absorbed by "Dr. Aquadus' field." I would have made that "Dr. Aquadus's field" but then I'm just a barbarian storming down the gates of language. I also will never for the life of me say "an historical something or other." But the weirder part is that a guy named Aquadus went into aquatic sciences! The weirdest part is that I first thought the tidal wave field absorber was invented by Dr. Aquadog.

• Supergirl didn't let Cyborg Superman crash into the ocean because she likes boring plots, I guess. She took him back to Dr. Veritas's lair in the center of the Earth to be made Kryptonian again. That would make more sense if he were human because you'd understand that when I said "be made human again" that I meant he was being de-robotified.

The Ranking!
No change! It was difficult to check my excitement on reading the Chief Bones comment but I had to rate this book based on its merits. And its merits only consisted of phrases that included the words "Cyborg" and "Superman," so I couldn't help but be mostly bored by them.

Earth Too: Society #21

Seriously. How is this not over yet?!

The Review!
The main take away of this comic book is Vicente Cifuentes loves drawing huge breasts.

"Go! And strike that pose where you push your breasts out!"

Also in this issue: Ultra-Humanite kills Batdick and Green Lantern kills Ultra-Humanite. Oh! So who's the fascist now, Green Lantern?! So intolerant of hate and intolerance and murder. Who's the real Nazi, amirite? How fucking hypocritical to kill somebody who kills people! Fucking monster. And I would totally say the same things if he were straight! Although I wouldn't say any of what I just said if I wasn't pretending to be an idiot.

The Ranking!
I think I've punished this title enough. I'm only still reading it because it's the last book of The New 52 and I'm an idiot for deciding to read all of The New 52 comic books. But just for some criticism nostalgia, here's one of the reasons I hate this book. On the New Earth 2 (dubbed Earth Too by me in a way that confuses people with no sense of whimsy and too much sense of grammar and/or spelling mistakes), everybody was, once again, up in arms about the Wonders. "We hate them! Especially the robot!" they would chant in their marches against people who wear disgustingly tight spandex outfits. But now Earth Too has become Earth Too: The Rebirthening and guess what? The people of this Earth don't know what wonders are and are afraid of them. So, the usual, really. Which means that Fury has to have a scene speaking directly to about fifteen citizens telling them all about the Wonders and how wonderful they are and how they're going to save them all and be their protectors. You know, a speech that doesn't make an intelligent person's butthole crawl right up into their esophagus. Instead of just getting on with saving the world from the Ultra-Humantie, Fury now has to take time out of her busy day of punching Sandmen in the face to calm down the populace because of the history of populations all over several different Earths and Convergence-based locales hating superheroes. And it's not like she's even giving the speech to an international reporter with a camera crew so it doesn't just seem like an especially egregious waste of time. She's just telling a handful of people what's going on and making it sound super sketchy and a little bit too invasiony for the likes of most people. Half of the people probably don't even hear her message because it was muffled by her gigantic tits.

Now that I've said all of that, I've changed my mind. -1!

New Super-man #8

With an entire Bat-school full of Bat-men (Bat-mans?), Yang is probably going to turn Chinese Bat-man into Kenny from South Park.

• Just in case anybody forgot, this is currently my favorite Rebirth comic book that doesn't star Lobo.

• Continuing the drama from last issue (which is preferable to just going in a totally new dramatic direction (I mean, I can't speak for all readers. I'm sure some shitty 4chan users out there would rather have a plot as absurd as a Pokey the Penguin strip. But then they think knowing the secret message of an Internet meme is the height of humor because they're all basically sentient bean bags)), Kenan battles Master I-Ching. If Kenan wins, he'll be taken on as a student. But he isn't winning. He's currently getting his ass kicked. An I-Ching hasn't kicked this much ass since one helped write Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle.

• Continuing different drama from last issue, Bat-man of China battles his rival, Wanna-Be-Bat-man of China, to see who gets to keep being Bat-man of China. The wanna-be guy has been cheating so far but Wonder-Woman of China will straighten that shit right out. I sometimes wonder how the patriarchy came into existence when women are so much better at being adults and resolving conflicts. I suppose when you have two people trying to solve a problem where one of them has the fortitude and ingenuity to fix the problem and the other one is strong enough to physically threaten the problem solver if they don't shut up, the wrong people are going to wind up in charge.

• Holy shit! That reminds me that I had a dream last night where I was at my mother's house and my friend Doom Bunny asked, "Where is your mother? Why haven't we seen her?" And I thought, "Oh shit! Yeah." So I went to check the master bathroom and found a cabinet knocked over and my mom collapsed halfway out of the bathtub. She couldn't speak and just looked me in the eyes like a wounded animal, teeth chattering and scared. I fucking freaked out and took her in my arms to try to keep her stabilized. I yelled at Doom Bunny to call 911 while staring into the terror-filled eyes of my mother. As she struggled to slide back into the bath, I thought "This is too fucking much" and woke myself up. So for anybody who has read this blog and thought, "Geez, Tess. Why do you act like your relationship with your mother doesn't fucking matter?", you can have that dream as evidence that, apparently, it matters a lot. That may be the worst nightmare I've had in years.

• Continuing still different drama from last issue, Wonder-Woman of China battles Alpaca in the server room of the Bat Training Facility. He's (unless it's a she, hint hint! Baixi has a sister who is the only other student worth knowing about in this facility) the one who has been spray painting obscenities all over the school. See, the joke is that the Grass Mud Horse is a type of Alpaca. This is a good example of that 4chan humor I mentioned earlier.

• Excuse me while I turd. Have a panel to look at until I get back.

I don't know if that's a better question. It's just a different way of answering it.

• Hmm. I probably didn't have to mention the bowel movement, did I? Because of the way I comment while I read the comic book, I tend to forget that this blog entry isn't going out live.

• Back to the Kenan versus the ancient prophetic text made into a man, Kenan decides to move his qi up from his fists into his ears. That's so he can hear where Master I-Ching both is and is not. It's ancient Chinese wisdom.

• Speaking of Ancient Chinese wisdom, has Archie McPhee never sold fortune cookies with Sun Tzu quotes in them? That seems like a bajillion dollar idea! Imagine opening a cookie after dinner and reading, "Invincibility lies in defense, the possibility of victory in the attack." That's already better advice than any regular fortune cookie I've ever eaten!

Although this one was pretty good. The Non-Certified Spouse's mother once got this one at a Chinese restaurant in Lincoln, Nebraska.

• Um, anyway, when Kenan moves his qi up into his ears, he begins to hear all of the noise all over the neighborhood around him. One of the things he hears is some kid bouncing a basketball. FUCK YES! That is one of my top hated sounds coming in through the walls of my house when I'm trying to write and I don't even have super-hearing! I just want to go outside, snatch the neighbor kid's basketball out of his sticky hands, and kick it over the roof onto the next block. The only reason I don't is I know that kid will soon be a teenager and he might stab me.

• Wanna-Be-Bat-man of China loses the fight even though he conspired with Alpaca to rig the contest. So now he's decided to threaten the life of his schoolmaster by putting a Bat-Grapple up to his head. That seems wrong but I don't know anything about Schoolmaster O so I'll withhold my judgment. Schoolmaster O might be a huge prick.

• It doesn't work. Baixi, Bat-man of China, saves the day and remains Bat-man of China. I wonder if there will be a Manbat of China? See how I left out the dash in the same way they've been putting in a dash for the Chinese versions without one? Clever!

• I just wrote "clever" about something I just wrote. I also constantly call myself a Grandmaster Comic Book Reader. I wonder how many people are turned off by the seeming arrogance and completely miss the joke of it all? Dum-dums!

• Once Kenan invokes his super-hearing, he hears a kid about to be hit by a truck and ditches the fight to save the day. But in saving the kid, the driver of the truck is grievously wounded. So he rushes him to hospital and heads off to pout at a nearby shrine. Master I-Ching catches up with him there. Probably to punch Kenan one more time and win the fight.

• Alpaca winds up being Jiali, Bat-man's sister. She is tired of being controlled by China and all things communist. She's not even fighting for democracy! She's just an anarchist and my heart is suddenly pittering and pattering all over the place. Alpaca is the real hero!

• Oh, also she escapes to be Bat-man of China's Jo-ker. But named Alpaca.

• Master I-Ching doesn't punch Kenan in the nose and gloat and do a little blind man dance. Instead, he tells Kenan why Kenan has an octagon on his chest. And he explains Superman better than about 90% of all writers who have ever written Superman.

Never mind the third interpretation. It's not nearly as clever as the totality of this page.

• That previous page didn't make me cry but it has come closest to any comic I've read in a long time. It got me right in the belly trigram and the eye trigram.

• After a moment of showing what everybody is doing during the Year of the Rooster celebration, there's an epilogue. Somebody identified as Super-man Zero, locked away in the Crab Shell, is approached by a mysterious figure who claims to be the reason for Chinese super-heroes. The final page identifies this mysterious stranger and...um...well, uh. See for yourselves!

Whew. I'm glad a genius grant Chinese American is tackling Ching Lung but I'm nervous about the comments I might make!

• I can't believe Ching Lung isn't in DC's late eighties Who's Who! They were trying to erase history, weren't they?!

• Seriously, though, I'm super excited about Gene Luen Yang taking on this story. I'm a huge fan of people examining the racist history of popular entertainment, talking about it in a frank and honest way, rather than pretending it never existed. And I especially like when a company decides to tackle it in-house. I'm sure DC Comics had to be nervous about this whole thing but if they didn't kill the idea, I can only imagine Gene Luen Yang (who has been writing the fuck out of this comic book (that was a compliment!)) will have some insightful and thoughtful opinions on the subject of Yellow Peril characters.

• Speaking of race in popular entertainment, I watched some thing on PBS last night with George Takei and Nichelle Nichols discussing Star Trek and how it was such major social commentary to have a diverse cast of characters in charge of the Enterprise. This made me reflect on watching the show as a kid. Something that was such a major issue when the show was produced in the sixties meant nothing to me in the late seventies or early eighties, whenever I began watching it. The diversity of the crew didn't have any kind of impact on me at all. That's encouraging, right? I know I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area which is probably the bubbliest bubble of all the bubbles (according to people who think embracing diversity and difference in others is somehow abnormal) so that's probably part of it. After school on KTVU, there were shorts produced by the television station between shows that showed non-white children living in the city that would end with the kid saying, "I'm proud to be a Chinese American!" Or "I'm proud to be a Black American!" Representation and diversity isn't just important for children who identify with the diverse characters in popular entertainment. It's also important for the white children to see that we're all a part of everything. We're all piloting the Enterprise to the future. Although what was meant to be a five year mission has gone ten times as long. Get it together, you non-bubbled bubbleheads.

The Ranking!
+2! It gets +1 for just being an overall well written book with great characters. It gets another +1 for the insight into Superman. Still my favorite comic book, beeyatches!