Action Comics #974

I have the "Can you spot the hidden Batmobile?" variant cover by Gary Frank.

Superwoman Lana Lang is currently dying. Superman realizes that no doctor on Earth can help her because Earth doctors suck so much. It's like he was rocketed into the fucking stone age! Stupid fucking Earth doctors. But Superman knows how he can save her! He's taking her to the Fortress of Solitude because it's her only hope.

Now wait a Goddamned second, Superman! You have the technology to save people who Earth doctors can't save and you're keeping it just for your friends and family? Shouldn't you be giving away this technology for free?! I'm probably jumping to conclusions. I'm sure Lana's only hope isn't that Superman has a machine that can cure any mortal illness. It's probably just a machine that can cure people dying of having too much super power. So, you know, it wouldn't work on normies anyway. Wink, wink. I mean, I just had something in my eye and wasn't winking at all to make sure you understood that Superman just doesn't want to help regular Earthlings.

Meanwhile in Metropolis, Lois Smith has turned Clark Kent's stalking around on him. So now she's stalking him stalking her. Eventually Lois got tired of walking around the block over and over and over again. So she accepted a dinner date with Clark Kent so she could do some undercover investigations of him. Hopefully literally under the covers, amirite?! It's not cheating if the person is a doppelgänger from another world. Also not cheating: having sex with your own doppelgänger from another world!

Here's my theory explaining the mystery Clark Kent: he's a robot that was built in the eighties and doesn't have any ports to update his memory files, so he's permanently stuck in 1986. No wait. That's my theory explaining Dan Jurgens!

While Clark Kent and Lois Smith check into a seedy motel, Superman decides Lana Lang can be saved by sticking her inside Kryptonian Battle Armor. Is that where he recovered from his battle with Doomsday? Or was he just comatose in a coffin? I might be able to remember it if The Death of Superman hadn't been thirty years ago. And also if I had read it.

Superman is alerted to intruders at the Himalayan Fortress of Solitude but he ignores it. It has automated defenses and it's not like anybody has ever broken in before. At least no more than one or two people, anyway. Things should totally be safe. It's not like there's a history of somebody inside the Fortress being taken over by Blanque who forces them to release him? That was sarcastic. Also, it's happening again!

Back in Metropolis, Clark Kent asks Lois Smith to marry him. When did he suddenly get the idea that Lois was interested in him? He's suddenly obsessed. Which means he's being controlled! Or maybe that photo album that he left at the door of the Smiths in Superman #18 (which I only read up until that point before I realized I should probably read this) was a photo album of Preboot Superman's wedding that fell through time and landed at this Clark Kent's feet. So he, obviously, believed it came from the future and that meant he and Lois were meant to have sex!

When Lois refuses to see things Clark's way, he goes from mild mannered nice guy to obsessed misogynist stalker. You know, just like all the guys who call themselves nice guys wind up doing.

Clark follows Lois back to her home in Hamilton County. She doesn't notice because Metropolis taxis go out to her farm all the time, probably. It's either that or she didn't notice and who the hell would think Lois Lane wouldn't notice being followed?! Not me! Standing outside the house, Clark Kent sees that Lois is married to a look-a-like and they have a kid together. He flips the fuck out and decides he's going to destroy them all. Because that's a thing nice guys do. Just research GamerGate! All those guys who constantly threatened women through all that? Almost assuredly think of themselves as nice guys. Apparently their definition of a not nice guy is an attractive guy with whom women want to have sex. A nice guy is a guy women don't want to have sex with because they're not attractive and they obsess over Magic the Gathering and they live with their parents and they show no outward sign of being responsible for their own lives or future. But they're nice! Up until you refuse to have sex with them, of course. But that's understandable, right?!

The Ranking!
No change! I'm not really enjoying Action Comics much at all. But it's going to hit Issue #1000 some day and I want to be around for that!

Superman #17

Solomon Grundy, right? It must be Solomon Grundy.

Based on the cover, this story is going to star Trixie Belden, right? The Mystery of Dead Man's Swamp! I hope her friend, Honey Wheeler, makes an appearance because she's a sexy whore who always winds up fucking the suspect (and Trixie too!). I think. I might be confusing the canon Trixie Belden stories with my Wank Fiction Trixie Belden stories.

Wank Fiction is a good title for my Young Adult series of books! Don't steal my idea! Oh, who am I kidding? Nobody but me will ever write a line of books marketed at young adults called Wank Fiction.

This issue begins with Jon's neighbor, Trixies Belden, stopping by to tell him about a mystery that needs solving. I wish these two character were older so I could anticipate some deep woods finger banging. But since they're just kids, I probably shouldn't have even mentioned finger banging because somebody is going to get the stupid idea that I'm interested in seeing these two kids play doctor. Don't be gross, you gross person who wants to feel self-righteous by misunderstanding what I wrote and calling me gross! I don't want to see two young kids getting sexy. Ew. I want to see two young adults getting sexy! Note the word "adult" in that sentence! See? Totally appropriate.

Maybe lead with "My grandfather is missing!" instead of "The cow got out of the pasture." I don't know. Just a thought. But who am I to judge, a person who wrote a sentence that included "kids" and "finger banging" (but not in the way that you're thinking after reading that, you criminal perv!)."

The kids hop on their bikes the way kids always do when they're off to solve a mystery or to save an alien from the government or to find a pirate's treasure or to save a number from the government or to save almost anything from the government. Why aren't kids all over America hopping on their bikes and figuring out a way to save America from the government? And by "government," I mean "Republican party who are so into being fellated by corporations that they've decided people employed by those corporations are greedy pieces of shit for wanting to be compensated fairly." Maybe I should buy stock in GT and Haro? Come on, kids! Get on your bikes and fight the power!

The neighbor, Kathy (not Trixie Belden like I first thought. Nor Nancy Drew like I second thought. Nor neither Tom or Dave Hardy like I third thought), explains that Bessie the Cow (Bessie?! That's the most unoriginal cow name in the entire world! It's so unoriginal that, I suppose, it becomes the de facto cow name. Anything else would cause comic book readers to lose their sense of disbelief in the story) would never go into Dead Man's Swamp. How does Kathy know what a cow would or wouldn't do? I'm fairly certain the only predictable thing a cow does is eat grass and shit. But then I'm not a farmer, so I apologize to all the farmers and ranchers out there actuallying me right now and telling me all about how cows have personality and how loving they are and how, duh!, they'd never go into a scary swamp!

Also, don't fucking actually me about the names of the Hardy Boys. Who really knows their first names?! At the most, you probably read Tom and Dave and thought, "Wait. Those can't be their actual names, right?!" Then you consulted Lord Google, found out their real names, and decided to throw your new facts into my face. Well, I don't give a shit about the Hardy Boys! They can go fuck each other in the shower at the YMCA for all I care! From now on, those fuckers are Tom and Dave Hardy!

Superboy was watching a scary movie before coming out to the scary swamp so he's likely to overreact and cut Kathy's grandfather in two with his heat vision when the old man comes lumbering out of the shadows. Oh! He's probably the monster that lurks in Dead Man's Swamp! Or maybe the monster lurking there is simply misogyny.

Eeep! The monster! It's the legendary Broccoli Brains! Of, um, New Jersey legend! Oh wait. This is New York. Never mind.

While running from Broccoli Brains (distant kin of Pumpkinhead), the kids run through that Incredibly Shrinking Fog that used to be a problem in the Sixties. After that, Pete and Pat decide to write to their strong suit again: hurting animals.

Fucking assholes. First you have Jon kill a cat and now you're having him brain a raccoon. You've now fucked with two of my three favorite animals. What's next? Is Jon going to finger bang a goat?

Yesterday, I went to pick up a grilled cheese at The Cup and Saucer around the corner. As I waited for my to go order at the bar, the server said, "I've been seeing your totem animal a lot lately around dusk." Usually I'm confused by statements like this. But I knew I was wearing my knitted raccoon-face tuque (with the ear flaps and hanging ties) so I knew exactly what she was talking about. It's also possible shed didn't even notice my tuque and just read my aura. I'm a total raccoon dude.

The kids rush to hide in an old house. Maybe the fog didn't shrink them. Maybe it just made the animals bigger. Or maybe it's all just part of The Mystery of Dead Man's Swamp! And hopefully, seeing as how this is a mystery, the house they just found is The House of Mystery. It would be nice to have it make a Rebirth appearance.

Jon does a couple of things that highlight his super strength and partial invulnerability but Kathy doesn't make the connection that maybe he's some kind of Superboy. Which is weird because she knows he can fire lasers out of his eyes. I guess in a world of superheroes, you take it in stride when somebody shows some kind of power. It's not like just having laser eyes makes you anything more than a poor man's Cyclops (who is already a Poor Man's superhero in general, being that he's a whiny douche).

The house starts to fall apart around them but they manage to get upstairs (which seems like a weird place to go when the house is collapsing) where they find Bessie screaming and dancing a jig before she belches up tons of milk. This is the worst Trixie Belden story I've ever read.

Jon and Kathy decide to hide in a well until the craziness passes. Eventually Bessie and Kathy's grandfather discover them. Kathy's grandfather tells them they were probably hallucinating on Swamp Gas. But at the end of the story, Kathy's grandfather stands creepily in a cornfield in much the same way Broccoli Brains stood! Who could he and Bessie actually be? I think he's Fiddler's Green back in the real world and Bessie is the cow that jumped over the moon and barfed out the Milky Way.

The Ranking!
No change! So, what monster lurks in Dead Man's Swamp? I don't know! This stupid comic book didn't answer the question! It just raised more questions about Kathy's grandfather and his dancing, bulimic cow! Hee hee! "Bulimic cow." That's a pun, right?!

Batman #18

This is more erotic than Batman's rooftop humpfest with Selina.

I'm a romantic which is why I use phrases like "rooftop humpfest" and "finger banging."

We should now be viewing the Make America Great Again hats as sarcastic commentary, right? I mean aside from viewing them as the new white nationalist headgear. Although the white hood was actually less trashy than that cap. Obviously Trump isn't making America great in any semblance of the word. He's doing exactly what he convinced the idiots who voted for him the democrats would do. He's simply fucking working class people while he romances corporations. For the life of me, I'll never understand why working class Republicans trust corporations over the government. They do know that they can't vote out CEOs, right? If a corporation does something evil, you need the government to slap them on the nose with a rolled up copy of the constitution. I suppose you could also firebomb the corporation's headquarters but since you've only voted in pro-corporation Republicans, they've probably made it illegal to burn corporate buildings. Fascists. If corporate money is free speech, why isn't setting buildings on fire?

I’m trying to be interested in Batman but my anger at white working class Americans who don’t fucking know how anything works and are just bitter that there might possibly be an ethnic person receiving some kind of benefit from the minuscule amount of taxes they’ve paid that they’d rather just do away with any kind of government benefit won't let me. You would think crushing public schools would have turned them around but being that, as I pointed out and didn't cite sources because it's just such obvious information, they don't know how anything works, they probably think school vouchers means their kids get better schools and they get a tax rebate. This is, of course, nothing new. White people's heads have been exploding ever since Affirmative Action was touted as a means to push back against systemic racism. I can't even wrap my head around how many of them espouse the theory that they're Christian when their main political beliefs amount to Fear of Welfare Queens. I'm an atheist and I'm more understanding than these assholes. You don't look at the tiny percentage of people who cheat the system to prove that a system is failing. You look at how many people are helped by it. You don't remove a benefit to society because a few people abuse it. What you do is try to ensure that the system works in a way to make it hard to abuse and then assume that a certain percentage of people will always be able to abuse it, no matter what you do. The answer to your incomprehensible rage at people cheating the system is to stop thinking about the people cheating the system. It is not to burn the whole fucking thing down. Because, as I pointed out earlier, that's probably illegal! Stupid fucking anti-arson government.

Let's get back to Batman. I feel like I just breezed by that bit where the Robins were hanging in the Batcave. I made a few jokes about it and just moved on. But are Batman and Robin fans supposed to simply accept that Bane and his coterie of hotel staff themed villains were able to easily take down Nightwing, Robin, and the Dumb One? I'd like to give Tom King the benefit of the doubt but then I remember I gave Scott Snyder the benefit of the doubt for quite awhile after he invented the Court of Owls and look where that got us: All Star Batman. Ugh. We can't let Tom King get so far up his own Batman creator ass that he believes any decision he makes in pursuit of his plot is a reasonable decision. Aside from Bane and his cronies defeating the Robins (including the Dumb One), he apparently knows the location of the Bat-cave and has access to it. Was that Preboot Canon? It definitely wasn't Prebirth canon (Prebirth being the continuity between the start of The New 52 and the start of Rebirth). Sometimes, Tom King, coming up with a cliffhanger isn't worth shitting all over basic knowledge of the DC Universe. Let's pretend the Dumb One wasn't even in the equation. Dick and Damian alone could have at least fought Bane to a standstill. Maybe the Jokerized fries at Batburger really were toxic and Bane just found the Batkids lying sick in an alley.

Looks like Bane's back on the dope! Plus we're finally getting a story about Mommy Issues! About fucking time, DC. I've had it up to my prostate with Daddy Issues.

King gives us a little back story on Bane and Bruce to set up the conflict. After they both lost their mothers tragically (which totally makes them the same person who experienced the same trauma and thus are the same except for the next difference that I'll be getting to outside of this parenthetical reference), Bruce was sent to live in a mansion with a butler where he could become a responsible, strong, obsessive man with a death wish while Bane was shoved in an oubliette that flooded daily where he could become a psychotic drug user with a Mexican wrestling fetish. See? They'd be samesies if it weren't for Bruce's privilege. I hope he acknowledges it in his encounter with Bane so everything will then be okay and they can become friends. Although I assume Bane will just say something like "So what? Now you deserve an ally cookie?!" or maybe just break Batman's face.

Both young Bruce and Bane are really fucking into their mothers. It's creepy. Or is it normal? Is that how kids react when they lose their mother? I would have thought there would be more drinking and piñatas.

No, you're a drug addict in a luchador mask. Your past is no more compelling than any of the other people you're currently denigrating and writing off.

So Batman's entire plan to distract Bane for five days is to get his ass beaten by him? For five days straight? This is going to go well. You know what might have been a good idea? Instead of asking Superman to babysit the Robins while they're in cryogenic stasis, maybe get Superman to put Bane in stasis for five days. No? I suppose there's less chance of a lawsuit kidnapping and restraining your children than doing that to a convicted criminal threatening you with death.

Bane says he's also not some rich boy playing dress-up. So I guess he does know Batman's secret identity and thus the location of the Bat-cave. I can't keep straight who knows and who doesn't know. Why should Batman even care at this point? Enough people know that the information is probably all over the Internet in hilarious meme form.

Bane beats the shit out of Batman but Batman refuses to give Psycho Pirate back to Bane. So Bane tells Room Service to kill the hostages. Uh oh! Batman better have a back-up plan! Like how he could have had that Superman back-up plan I mentioned earlier.

Oh come on! Who didn't think he had a back-up plan? Show of hands? See? No hands! I mean, I couldn't see them even if there were any but I'm certain their weren't any. Mostly because even if some of you thought he didn't have a back-up plan and this series was about to end, you'd probably be too embarrassed to admit it.

Get it?! Cats beat birds! Duh! It's evologic! That's a combination of evolution and logic, in case you're one of those dum-dums who occasionally and accidentally read one of my reviews.

Catwoman has strung up Room Service, Housekeeping, and Night Clerk back in Bane's safehouse and clawed "I am cat" into their chests. Then Batman heads into Arkham and Bane follows him. Good for Bane! He never even stops to say that stupid thing about it probably being a trap and then going in anyway. He just kicks the motherfucking door down and gets on with it.

The Ranking!
No change! I almost gave it a +1 because it ended so well with Catwoman's flexing line that I was all positive and upbeat about it. But then I remembered all the flashback sequences with Bruce and Bane saying, "Mommy this!" and "Mother that!" Fuck that shit. It was annoying.

P.S. I just noticed I didn't complain about David Finch's inability to draw the mouth of a man this issue. So, um, good job, Dave? I guess?

Batman #17

Is Finch afraid that if he looks too closely at a male mouth for reference purposes, he might become gay?

You know that feeling when you've just finished writing a novel and printing it up so you delete the file on the computer so it can't be stolen and then go to your printer and get the pages and accidentally throw them in the wastebasket nearby that's still on fire? I hate that feeling.

I find myself checking in on Twitter far more than I ever have before since the election. Mostly because the few people I follow are liberal which means they know how to create funny jokes. It must suck to be a conservative if you like to laugh because mostly when you laugh at jokes conservatives like Huckabee tweet, you're only laughing because in that way that screams, "This isn't an actual physical reaction to something funny but an acknowledgment that I completely and utterly agree with the words you strung together in just the right kind of way that I could tell it was supposed to be a funny joke. Err, ha ha!" That's not to say all heathen liberal atheist monsters are funny! Here's a good example of the big fat colored-in part of the pie chart of Twitter (as opposed to the little splinter that represents people being creative and unique and hilarious):

"Hey! Look at this headline that makes a point! Now read my tweet where I restate the point, just in case you were too stupid to understand it. Although my restating of the point is almost exactly the same as the point in the headline so if you didn't understand that, I suppose you won't understand this tweet. So you're probably thinking, 'Why was this tweet needed?', right? Fuck you. I'm hilarious at hot takes that were already made!"

Anyway, that's most of Twitter. People tagging jokes by making the same joke yet less subtly. I'm not sure why people ever expand a tweet to read the replies because conversation on twitter is like going out to the dog park and comparing the taste of the various dog dirt you find lying in the grass.

You might be wondering, "Is this a review of Batman or Twitter?" If you are, you shouldn't limit your life experiences. Sometimes when you plan to do something and the plan falls apart because the person lied about the plans (like, say, you wanted to read a Batman #17 review and instead got a review of Twitter), you should not think, "Well, this is crap!" You should instead embrace this life detour and think, "The person who lied to me and wasted my time is probably a super cool person who has had so much sex, how can I be mad?"

Now that we've established my credentials of being super cool and having had so much sex I can hardly feel my crotch due to nerve damage, let's get to Batman!

When we last left Batman, he and Alfred had just walked into the Batcave where Dick, Damian, and the Dumb One were hanging by their necks with a three word message painted on their chests, one word on each dead kid: Am I Bane? So they're probably dead. This issue will probably start with a funeral but then it will turn out not to be the funeral of these dead Robins but the other one.

Nope. It doesn't begin that way at all. I guess I'm not as good at writing comic books as I am at playing Tracer on Overwatch. Lately when I play, I begin as McCree because come on! Gunfighter! Even if his ultimate almost always fails, the times it doesn't make me call my mother to tell her how much I probably love her (in theory). But if I'm doing poorly as McCree, I'll switch to Tracer and then the other team is all, "What the fuck just happened? What has changed? Why are we dying all the time?! Who let this lesbian punk rock maniac out of her cage?! And why won't she stop calling me a wanker when I die?!" Then they call their mother to tell her she's a fucking whore.

Oh! Sorry! This was supposed to be about Batman!

So, um, this issue begins in a hotel with Bronze Tiger ordering a shotgun blast to the stomach from Room Service. I wonder how much that set him back?

That's just some kind of prologue to get everybody's genital juices flowing. Maybe that was inappropriate to the people reading this blog who don't find violence sexually alluring. The real beginning (Oh! I just watched the fourth episode of Season Two's Little House on the Prairie and it was called "In the Big Inning". Get it?! So clever!) begins in the Fortress of Solitude (located either in the Arctic or the Antarctic, depending on which dumb writer is currently writing). Apparently Dick, Damian, and the Dumb One didn't die (just as I predicted! Who else would have predicted that? Not you dum-dum comic book readers!). They just lost consciousness which allowed Batman to fly them all up to the Fortress of Solitude where Superman has some cryogenic chambers lying around. He threw them all in and has now asked Batman to babysit them while he goes after Bane. Why would he call Superman? Wasn't Supergirl given the Fortress? Preboot Superman has his own Fortress in the Himalayas. Having three kids stuck in freezers will seriously hamper Supergirl's social life. How creepy will it be fucking that Ben kid in the Fortress with their dead faces staring at Supergirl's naked bum going up and down and up and down and maybe sideways? Do butts go sideways when people do it?

Alfred Pennyworth busies himself with Gotham Girl's therapy. Disguised as Jeremiah Arkham (who was recently shot in the face), he sneaks Gotham Girl into the most isolated wing of Arkham where Psycho Pirate is being kept. He has to keep her safe for the next four days while Batman hunts down Bane. Bane is Batman's most dangerous foe! At least for this story since Bane is the antagonist of this story. Next story arc, the most dangerous foe might be Penguin or Mad Hatter or Kite-man.

If not for his terrible ability to draw the lips of men, I would have forgotten David Finch was doing the art for this issue. But I would have quickly been reminded when I turned the page and discovered a double splash page of Batman on a rooftop saying, "I have mine." Mr. King and Mr. Finch, I would like to not commend you on your use of comic book pages. What was so dynamic about that shot of Batman that it needed to waste two full pages of story? He's simply brooding on a roof with a clock tower in the background. We've seen this shot millions of times in Batman comic books over the years. Making it larger doesn't make it more compelling.

Later, Room Service decides to head out of the hotel to shoot Catwoman.

What does Room Service have against characters with feline names? Jerko.

Room Service goes after Jim Gordon next. I don't get it. How is the name "Commissioner James Gordon" in any way catlike?

Because he doesn't have a cat name, James Gordon doesn't wind up getting shot. He shoots Room Service and Room Service's friends, Housekeeping and Night Clerk. With the help of Duke, Batman's unnamed sidekick (although people keep telling me his name is Lark because of a dumb vision in Batman #35. I refuse to call him Lark until he's actually called Lark because it's a dumb name that evokes a sense of flippancy that Batman would never allow), Gordon survives the onslaught. But then Bane crashes through the wall like the Kool-Aid man on bath salts and the scene ends.

The episode ends with Batman still hunched on the roof where he had his double splash appearance. Across the way, Bane is on another rooftop with all of his captives: gutshot Bronze Tiger, backshot Catwoman, severely beaten Commissioner Gordon, and was supposed to stay out of this Duke Thomas. I guess it's time for Batman to beat the shit out of Bane. Although, I suppose what this story has been hinting at, is that Bane is more dangerous suffering through the withdrawals of Venom (which, I guess, never end unless you have a Psycho Pirate to comfort you?) than he is on the drug. I don't know. I get that Bane broke Batman's back so he's supposed to be Batman's Doomsday. But to me, Bane is just as boring as Doomsday. He's a big, beefy beatdown machine and that's about it. I will admit, if you're going to argue because you're so in love with Bane that you probably pretend to suck his dick before falling asleep every night, that he has a little bit more character. He wears a luchador mask and is some kind of ethnic and, I suppose, he's also intelligent or something. Plus he has so many mental health issues because he was born inside a prison to somebody serving a life sentence which, apparently, means you have to live out the life sentence too. That's...well, I was going to say clever but that's the entirely wrong word, isn't it? It's not clever at all! It's the epitome of comic book nonsense! Like Dick Grayson driving a motorcycles straight up a wall! Doomsday's background of having been killed and reborn over and over again to make him immune to death is a more believable origin story!

The Ranking!
No change!

Trinity #6

Just in case you were wondering who the Trinity were (and you couldn't read more words than "Trinity" (I'm sure that's a thing!)), here they are on the cover!

The Review
Francis Manapul came up with this analogy concerning life and walls. He decided to make it into a story. The analogy went something like this: we build walls around us to keep out dangerous people, probably because our mother was overprotective. Even rock stars do it! But the walls also keep out good and kind people! So they're not really as great as we think they are. Francis thought, "Okay, okay! That's a great start. But what's the lesson?" Then he came up with the lesson after writing six issues. The lesson was that the walls, even though they protect our delicate psyches and fragile bodies, don't need to be knocked down completely. You just need one crack to let in the light! Hooray! Everything is better now and the judge that is actually a giant asshole can no longer tell you that you can't eat your pudding!

I bet Francis was super jazzed about this story idea until walls became associated with idiotic presidential claims. Now people will read Francis's wall analogy and think, "Yeah! Walls keep out the danger and keep us safe! Life is so much better! But I'm not too sure I like that idea about the crack in the wall. Won't some Mexicans get through that?!"

This was a mediocre comic book trying a new riff on the Pinocchio story. White Mercy has become a real girl because she learned all about loyalty from Wonder Woman, joy from Superman, and incapacitating obsession from Batman. Although, since her father is Mongul, it's probably her severe Daddy Issues that enabled her to become real in the DC Universe.

The Ranking!
No change!

Raven #6

More like Carnival of Raven Jizzing Her Pants!

If you haven't been reading this series and you're waiting for the trade, might I offer some advice? Just find Issue #1 and #6 in the fifty cent bins. Nothing happens in the other issues. Actually, nothing might happen in this issue either. But I'm assuming Marv will, at the very least, offer some kind of resolution to the threadbare plot he's created.

Raven has finally gotten into the White Carnival. I would explain what the White Carnival is but Marv hasn't been too free with the details in the previous five issues. It has something to do with Raven's soul-self which can fly free from her body when she's not paying attention. It also might have something to do with Trigon which is why the carnival has No Consent Fucking in the Bum-per Cars, a Hall of Sleep-creeping, and mascots roaming the park who don't know the meaning of the word "No!"

Welcome to Trigon's Marriott's Rape America!

I guess Marv Wolfman is too old to care that his favorite character he's ever created might as well just be the word RAPE in big bold letters.

This guy just got off the Cum Guzzler.

I hope this White Carnival is like Dante's Hell. At the center of the park will be a gigantic Trigon with an elephant ear stuffed into his mouth as he jizzes into fryers to make more for the guests.

Raven wanders around the Carnival while lost souls all around her plead for it to stop while I ponder what the White Carnival is a metaphor for. I really have no idea, probably because I haven't been paying a lot of attention to this comic book as I read it. Hopefully Marv will do that thing where writers aren't totally confident that their message will be understood and he'll have a character explain what it's all been about near the end.

After realizing she can't help anybody, Raven crumbles under the onslaught of the mysterious force behind the White Carnival. She gets up and suddenly can't remember who or where she is. Now I'm thinking this entire series could have just been this one issue! Since Raven is going to have to learn everything about this story again, who needs to read the previous issues? And she does relearn everything in one of the weakest "I remember it all now!" moments in any comic book I've ever read. And there have certainly been a lot of those.

"My memories have been taken. Which reminds me, my memories have been taking before! Way to jog my memory, loss of memory!"

Raven forces her way outside of the White Carnival before she completely loses the memories she remembered, since she kept losing them. Once outside of the White Carnival, I ask myself, "Why did DC publish this series? It's terrible!"

Raven's religious aunt heads over to the White Carnival to save Raven with Christianity. Aunt Alice convinces everybody outside the White Carnival to hold hands and give their strength to Raven. For some reason, everybody does it. Where are all the cynical assholes with the snarky comments at moments like these?! I know San Francisco has to have at least a few of them. Instead they all hold hands and help. Fucking sheep.

With the power of love and, apparently, God, Raven destroys the White Carnival. Hopefully now will be the part where somebody explains what just happened! Although if nobody does, I really won't be too disappointed. I'm sure the message is either "Help each other out" or "Pray to God to help people, if you can't be bothered to."

Afterward, nobody remembers. So Raven takes their memories in the same way the monster behind the White Carnival took their memories. So her soul-self was behind it all, right? And now she's super powerful because she drained so many people! And she's going to be the big villain in the next DC Crisis, right?

Meanwhile in space, more White Carnivals are all, "Whoa! One of us died! Should we send another?" And they answer themselves with "No way, dude! We need more souls!"

The Ranking!
-4. I've now spent forty-five years on this stupid planet, doing terrible things and good things and all the things that make people flawed and human. But I can honestly say that if I have any time at all for regret before I die, it will all be concentrated on reading this series. Hey, Marv. Apparently you've been at this game for far too long. You're used to writing an ongoing series where you can hint at future antagonists and dangers. But when you have a six issue limited series, don't you feel you owe it to the people supporting that series to tell a complete story? What is this bullshit of having the antagonist be mysterious for six issues and then end it on offering no other explanation than "It was from space!" Okay, sure, sometimes that's a decent enough explanation! But it helps if that spaceborne entity at least sings a song with curse words in it.

Cave Carson Has A Cybernetic Eye #5

Did the cybernetic eye cause Cave Carson's impotency or is it just a metaphor for his condition?

Yesterday, I asked, "Lately, most new followers on Tumblr have basically been adverts for shitty Internet business scams (or something. Whatever). Even more so than the porn followers! Is Tumblr done?" It wasn't meant to be a hipsteresque taking down of the site. It was meant in good faith because a good percentage of the Followers I've been getting lately are accounts that obviously aren't just people enjoying Tumblr but using it for some kind of (probably shady!) business. Then today I got this Follower:

What is this even?! This is why I added the "or something. Whatever" to my query! Is it a site meant to garner a lot of Followers so that it can begin to sell advertising? And if so, who are the simpletons following it?!

The first picture post on Man Planet...excuse me..."MAN pLaNeT" is of a woman in a short dress bending over as she reaches into a car exposing the gusset of her undergarments. The tags on this picture are not "I forgot something!", "gusset," "Time to jerk off!", or "accident waiting to happen." No, the tags are cars, bikes, girls, tatt, tatts, tattoo, hotrod, hotrods, motorbikes, and ratrod. Since none of those have anything to do with this image (except, I suppose, the car the woman is leaning into. But since that isn't the focus of the pic (her vagina is!), it seems weird to tag the image with car while not tagging it with vagina), it's obviously just a site using a bunch of tags presumed to garner the attention of men into things like "ratrods" and "tatts" and "girls."

Most of the images after that first one are indeed cars and motorbikes and tatts (I'm fairly certain I lose one more day at the end of my life every time I type, think, or say "tatts"). They're the kind of images that make me exclaim, "Yawn!" But then you get to this image:

This is the definition of cognitive dissonance for residents of MAN pLaNeT. "I love me some Jack Daniels...but it's blocking boobies!"

MAN pLaNeT exemplifies the reason I don't turn on the widget to show people who follow me. Why would I give them any extra traffic? They're also the type of account that I usually block when they follow me but now that I've mentioned them, they feel a bit like a mascot. And now that I have a mascot, I hope those jerks over at Weird Science Blog don't try to steal it before the big homecoming game!

Enough about my cute little new plaything, MAN pLaNeT. It's time to discuss Cave Carson's impotency (a thing followers of MAN pLaNeT never have to worry about! MAN pLaNeT! Where men can jerk off to women whose naughty bits are covered by alcohol and beef jerky, even though with one click of the mouse they could find actual porn. MAN pLaNeT! This has been a sponsored ad...I hope! Send me a check, MAN pLaNeT!).

This issue begins with somebody telling the history of the Muldroog people. Those are the race of underground mole people who Cave Carson discovered when he could still get it up. One of the Muldroog women agreed to marry him because she was impressed with the size and power of his drill. She eventually died but not before she and Cave had a daughter. Her daughter is now just finding out that she's Muldroogianese. So maybe she's the one getting the history lesson.

Basically the Muldroog were like Scientologists. They followed the ancient teachings of a space alien. But instead of living in a volcano, their space alien lived in a crystal. Now, I might be getting some of this wrong because I'm still thinking about MAN pLaNeT and also I don't really know anything about Scientology except that it's another religious scam that makes some people happy and other people rich and some people miserable. Just like the Muldroog's alien in crystal which made the Muldroogian society more technologically advanced than the surface people but at a cost. That cost was...freedom!

Cave Carson, Chloe Carson, and Wild Dog are listening to a Muldroog witchdoctor give a history of Muldroog while they eat a hallucinogenic treat called Night Pudding. It leads to Chloe stripping naked and swimming. This comic book has more real nudity than MAN pLaNeT! And it's probably artistic and not titillating, right? Although try to convince my penis of that!

There's also another scene about the father of the owner of the company that Cave just quit being a fungus monster who has been using Muldroog technology to get rich. Even though he's obviously the monstrous bad guy, his son's spelunking team led by Ace the Corporate Sycophant doesn't seem to mind. They're probably mind controlled by some kind of goo emitted by Edward Borsten, father of Paul Has A Douchey Ponytail.

Anyway, I'll let the comic book explain what EBX (the company Cave worked for that was formerly called Edward Borsten and Sons) has in mind for the Muldroogs. Otherwise I'll be here all day, lost in digressions. And afterward, nothing would be any clearer! And since I barely wrote anything about last month's issue, I'm getting perilously close to being too confused to understand what is going on. This next page helps explain the basic premise of the series so far.

Whew! Now I'm thoroughly anchored to the plot! At least for a few more issues.

Why does EBX need Cave Carson to operate the drill? Because this is a story about Cave Carson's impotency, remember?! For some reason, EBX needs Cave Carson's virility to return before they can free The Whisperer from its underground prison. Johnny Blake might know how to fuck but he's just not good enough to compare to Cave in his prime.

It turns out The Whisperer's prison is encased in inertron! That shit can't be drilled at all. But it can, somehow, be formed into flexible wings that once allowed the juvenile Harvest to glide around Gotham and New York City. So the only way into the prison is via the DNA of the Muldroogian Royal Bloodline. That means Chloe, the only symbol left of Cave Carson's sexual potency, can penetrate the vault. But when EBX attacks in just a few seconds, they'll discover they have captured the king and don't need the granddaughter anyway.

During the attack, Team EBX remembers how Cave Carson came to their aid and they're all, "Fuck this shit! We're out! Let's find Floppy Dick Carson!" Johnny Blake is stabbed while escaping with the team but he'll probably live. His name is Johnny Blake! That's the name of a character who doesn't die.

#cars #bikes #girls #tatt #tatts #tattoo #hotrod #hotrods #motorbikes #ratrod

Cave and his step-mother meet back up with Chloe and her new gang of skinny dippers as well as Wild Dog and Team EBX. That was nice and quick and easy! Jon Rivera really knows which parts of a story to not fucking tell! That's a quality I admire in a writer. Some writers go five or six issues telling parts of the story that don't need to be told!

Cave Carson's plan is to hook his phone up to the Mighty Mole so he can get cell reception. Then he auto dials Superman. I guess Batman never gave him his number.

Ouch! Ghosted by Superman!

If you read the previous caption and felt the overwhelming compulsion to respond, "The reason he didn't get through is because Superman is dead," you might be an Actually Nerd.

If you read the previous page and realized it's a metaphor for Cave Carson's impotence and his daughter expressing the statement, "Don't worry, it happens to everybody," you've been paying attention!

The issue ends with a horde of Fungus Men bearing down on Cave Carson and his new and improved team of Spelunkers and Misfits. He's probably going to have to get advice from real, virile man, Johnny Blake. Man, that's going to be rough.

The back-up story is more fun with the Super Powers by Tom Scioli. That is all.

The Ranking!
+2! Even though Cave Carson's Cybernetic Eye took a back seat this issue, it was really enjoyable! I guess this series isn't just one big gimmick.