Team Titans #10

Face/Off is one of only two movies I've fallen asleep to in public. It made it super confusing after I woke up.

The reason I had fallen asleep during Face/Off is that I had been drinking previously. The other movie I fell asleep during was The Last of the Mohicans. I fell asleep during that because I had spent the night previously trying to sleep in some ivy outside a lawyer's office in the rain in Sacramento, California. It did not involve drinking.

Why does the movie Face/Off have that slash in it? It wasn't about computer programming, was it? I only know it has the slash because I just looked it up to see what year it came out. IMDB credits Travolta as playing "Sean Archer / Castor Troy" and Cage as playing "Castor Troy / Sean Archer". Do you think the actors thought of this movie as testing the limits of their acting ability? Or did the producers pick Cage and Travolta because they act exactly the same way and realized this character switch wouldn't cause either of them any problems?

By the way, Battalion is still a terrible character. I wonder why DC Comics didn't bring back Twat Battalion in The New 52?

Wrong.

Nightrider makes friends with a bunch of vampires who want to turn their food into more vampires. That seems like a bad way to avoid extinction. It also sounds weird. I've never eaten a ham and then thought, "I wish this ham could fuck me." I mean, sure, I could fuck the ham but that's normal behavior. Who would want the ham to become sentient so that it can seduce me? Perverts, that's who!

Back at Donna's, the rapist has been raped and I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel. I mean, rape is bad, right? But The Bible is pretty much pro eye for an eye, rape for a rape. No wait. It's actually more lenient with rape than taking somebody's teeth or eyes. The Bible is eye for an eye, a rape for a marriage and compensation to keep everybody other than the victim from being harmed and disgraced by the foul deed of the rapist. I don't think I should say that that sounds reasonable but it is The Bible. I've heard that it's the rule book for living! And that must be true because I've never taken its advice and my life is a mess!

Charlie reacts to Mirage being raped as if somebody had scratched his Ferrari.

That's a feminist joke about how men only care about sexual abuse when it's centered at women they've objectified with their man-feelings and not a joke about how rape is equal to scratching the paint on a car. So stop being angry at me and realize I've made a valid point. Also maybe go watch Boxing Helena.

Also maybe it's not so much a joke as a scathing bit of social commentary! Maybe all of my commentary is scathing bits of social commentary since it rarely makes people laugh. I should stop thinking of this as a comedy blog and thinking of it as a serious blog attempting to cure the ills of society! That would certainly make me feel better when I get anonymous comments telling me I'm not funny. I can just reply, "I wasn't trying to be funny! This is serious shit!"

On a side note, how big do you think Deathwing's penis is if it may have caused internal damages? I know they mentioned he was ruthless and brutal in his sexual attack of Mirage but can a guy with a three inch penis cause internal damages just because he's being brutal? Remember when considering this question that this is a serious blog now!

Meanwhile Judge and Jury take a field trip to New York to meet the mysterious person behind The Darkening!

Here's some advice, Judge and Jury: to disguise yourself, you can just take off your costume instead of putting another costume on top of your Team Titans costume.

For those who don't know Judge and Jury, they're a nihilistic Titans team from the future and not a vaudeville act.

If you've been reading this series and you've seen Mirage rape Dick and Evil Raven rape Councilwoman Alderman and Deathwing rape Mirage and you've found yourself thinking, "I haven't gotten enough rape yet," well good news! Evil Raven rapes each of the members of Judge and Jury one by one while the others watch and Deathwing jerks off! It might not be physical rape but it's hard to tell since it all takes place cloaked in her olive green robe. It might just be psychological rape. But, if we're being serious (and we totally are now!), there isn't a lot of difference between physical rape and psychological rape. Some people might want to argue that one is worse than the other but those people are probably victims of one or the other and want to feel like a bigger martyr. Did that sound insensitive to an imaginary group making an imaginary argument that I just made up? Well, so be it! I stand by my imagination!

So the Team Titans came back to Donna's place to get help to fight the vampires but they're momentarily distracted by the rape of Mirage. After being compassionate and making sure to tell her multiple times that it wasn't her fault, they remember that Battalion might be dead. They raid Battalion's stash of weapons and head back to New York.

Count me in!

Kole arrives from wherever Kole has been (the storage room for boring comic book characters?) to free Battalion just as the other Team Titans arrive. They wade in slaughtering the vampires. I think that's okay because vampires are monsters. Or maybe because they're already technically dead? Or maybe because it's easier than figuring out how to jail them after the battle is over? Anyway, it probably doesn't matter because the master vampire will almost certainly get away to haunt the Team Titans in fourteen months or so.

I suppose there are still some readers who, after reading the scene where Evil Raven rapes every member of Judge and Jury, are still thinking, "I don't know. This rapey comic book just doesn't have enough rape in it. Is it really worth the $1.75 cover price?" Well have I got a surprise for you!

Free bonus rape content!

As I guessed, the lead vampire gets away while Kole murders the rest of them by using her crystals to bend the sun's rays into pre-dawn New York City. Then she disappears leaving the Team Titans free to go find some of that sweet dick they were leaving for dessert.

Team Titans #10 Rating: I think part of the point of this comic book was to present a message that rape victims shouldn't blame themselves for being raped. Try to pretend, for just a second, that you have no knowledge of our current civilization. Now think you've just heard somebody say, "It's not your fault for being raped." How fucked up would you think that entire civilization was when that was a message that had to be reiterated time and time again? You would think, "No shit it's not the victim's fault! Why would you even need to say that?" And yet here we are living in a society where a guy writes a comic book that uses rape in so many plot points writing an issue reminding victims that rape isn't their fault! You would be floored to find out how much energy goes into convincing victims that it wasn't there fault. But then you'd see how people react to women telling their stories and you'd be all, "Oh shit. Okay. I see what's going on here. Holy fuck." Then you would get vocal and start telling people to believe the claims of victims! But then somebody would start shouting at you that people are innocent until proven guilty! And you'd be all, "Okay, granted, that's a thing but why are you instantly dismissing this person's claims?!" And then the person would be all, "Some people lie, you know!" And then you'd be all, "Yes, but the statistics don't match up anywhere near your argument! And besides, isn't that what the whole proving people innocent thing is you mentioned earlier?" And then they'd be all, "He said, she said!" And you'd be all, "Well, yeah, but she said he committed a major crime and he said he didn't do it. You know who else says they didn't do it? Everybody all the time!" And then they'd be all, "Yeah! Exactly! Like people who didn't do it!" And by then you'd be so tired of arguing that you'd just go to the victim and be all, "You know what? This isn't your fault."

New Titans #99

I was so disappointed when I realized Speedy just changed his name.

Monsieur Mallah and the Brain haven't fucked once yet since they appeared in this comic book which should have been a clue that they weren't who they seemed. Since we last saw them in Doom Patrol, they declared their love for each other and then blew up. You would think if they survived the explosion, they wouldn't be taking life for granted. They'd be holed up in some little bed and breakfast in Maine living on room service and gorilla semen. It turns out Rita Farr isn't who she seems either! Surprise!

The bigger surprise is that the readers don't immediately find out who they actually are. Is that a surprise? That's actually more like par for the comic book.

Some other stuff happens and then Dick asks Kory to marry him. She's all, "Well, now that you've asked that question, I'll instantly stop being angry that Mirage raped you. I won't ever mention it again, you know, how I was hurt that you were raped. So when's the big day? In like six, seven months? Or, you know, what about next issue?"

New Titans #99 Rating: People have asked me how I could hate Nightwing because they only know him from the last decade or so and from DC's cartoons. But this issue is a good example of what an asshole he is. He threatens to beat up just about everybody he talks and his hair is terrible. In fact, each one of these ninety-nine issues is testimonial on how terrible a character Dick Grayson was in the eighties and most of the nineties. I guess it wasn't until somebody pried the character out of Marv Wolfman's cold, dead hands that he became interesting. To clarify, Marv Wolfman didn't die before somebody else wrote Dick Grayson. It's just that Marv Wolfman has the hands of corpse.

Batman #33

This issue of Batman was perfect.

Thank you, Tom King. Thank you, Joëlle Jones. Thank you, Jordie Bellaire.

Every comic book should be this comic book. But, you know, different. Like if it's Superman, it should star Superman and not Batman. But it should be the same in all the other ways!

Batman #33 Rating: My favorite issue of a comic book in quite some time. So much time! The amount of time is inconceivable! At least by cat standards. Those things don't know shit about time.

Dark Nights: Batman the Drowned #1

I can't wait to find out how Bruce Wayne got such a fantastic pair of tits.

I'm super excited to read yet another story about how Batman once had a dark thought that turned into a depressing world for a few minutes. I bet this time Batman's thought was "Why is this orange fucker on the team again?! If I had tits, they'd be more useful than this guy!" Then BAM! Earth-Negative-Guys-With-Awesome-Tits comes into existence! Why does that have to be a Dark Multiverse world? Why wasn't that one of Grant Morrison's 52 worlds? DC missed out on making a lot of money with that mistake.

You know what pisses me off? No, not 85% of DC's comics. The fact that Millennials think they invented eating ass! Eating ass as a Millennial is like dropping Cable TV when you have dozens of streaming options. It's not like you're sacrificing anything by giving up Comcast now! Also try eating ass in the 70s! That's real ass eating! Eating ass on a hairless person with impeccable grooming skills isn't a challenge! That's just doing something hot and sexy. If you were eating ass in the 60s and 70s, you were an adventuring spirit! A pioneer! You were the Columbus of your neighborhood! For the most part, it was okay to use Columbus as an example of an explorer in the 60s and 70s. I mean, it should be okay now too because explorers were mostly assholes. It's good to know what you're getting into by reminding everybody that Columbus wasn't the exception when it came to explorers. You can't really say "Stop glorifying Columbus! You should be glorifying decent explorers!" because the only decent explorers were the ones who got themselves killed before they could rape the native cultures with their dicks and guns and crosses.

Now I can't remember why I started talking about Columbus and his penchant for eating ass? Maybe I should just read the comic book!

Aquabat has come to Earth-Main-Earth to destroy it because it exists "at the expense" of the Dark Multiverse. That's illogical, Aquabat. You've been listening to Batjoker propaganda again, haven't you? Your world wasn't some kind of fuel for the regular DC Universe. Your world only exists because of the existence of the regular DC Universe. You should be thankful that you were given life by the regular DC Universe! Not that I'm thankful for the life my parents gave me. I seek to destroy them every day of my life. That's the logic you should be using! Hatred for having been brought non-consensually into this miserable existence! How dare they create this much angst and despair for one night of drinking wine and fucking after stuffing my sister's socking on Christmas Eve?! One night of pleasure they probably don't even remember resulted in forty-five years of a tortured existence that I'm frittering away on constant thoughts of not existing! That's why you should hate Earth-Main-Earth! Don't hate it because it lives and your world dies. Hate it because even though it knows the pain of living, it still creates other lives! I despise the arrogance of parents to think that the child wants to exist! I despise the neediness of parents who need to create a being to fill the hole left from the lack of love their parents bestowed on them daily! Why must I pay the price for my parents' careless night of fucking?!

Man, I hate when I'm reading comic books to distract from the eternal darkness of the looming grave when the comic book itself reminds me that death is still stalking me! Stupid comic book!

At least Aquabat has a great looking set of tits to look at as I read.

"This is my wish! And I'm taking it back. I'm taking them all back!"

The explanation for Bruce Wayne having magnificent tits occurs in a brief Narration Box where Aquabat thinks, "The gender roles are reversed here." I used the word "explanation" incorrectly in the last sentence. By saying the gender roles are reversed, does he mean the people who are women on Earth-Negative-Guys-With-Awesome-Tits are men on Earth-Main-Earth? Does that explain why he's a woman named Bruce? Or is he a man but men on Earth-Negative-Guys-With-Awesome-Tits would be considered women on Earth-Main-Earth? Am I using the correct pronoun for Aquabat? I can't tell because is being a woman actually considered being a man from his Dark Earth? Is that what he means by the gender roles being reversed"? My boner is super confused right now!

Oh! Everything becomes clear when the flashback happens and this is taking place on Earth-Negative-Eleven and also when I check back to the panel I scanned to see that Bruce Wayne is actually called Bryce Wayne. Is Bryce a non-gender specific name? Is any name, in this day and age, non-gender specific?! Down with parental labels that force a person (and others!) into seeing them as a specific gender! That's the fight we should be fighting! Also maybe the fight against circumcision. Can that be a major fight too? Hello? Anybody? Babies being mutilated here!

Anyway, now I have a question. If the Batman on Earth-Main-Earth is the Batman that Barbatos is obsessed with, why are all these Dark Earths, created by Earth-Main-Earth Batman's dark thoughts, not versions of Earth-Main-Earth? Oh wait! I have an answer to my question! Because Batjoker is actually the Dark Version of Earth-Main-Earth Batman. He just happened to recruit other versions of Dark Multiverse Batman before coming to the main universe. So Aquabat wasn't created from a stray thought of Earth-Main-Earth Batman. She was created by a stray thought from gender bent Earth-11 Batman! Okay, everything is straight now! Oh, I didn't mean that to sound like a micro-aggression! I just meant everything was back to normal! Oh man. That was a micro-aggression too, wasn't it? I just reiterated my implication that straight is normal!

Batwoman on Earth-Negative-Eleven decided to kill all the bad guys just like the Batperson on all the other negative Earths. Apparently that's Batman's constant dark thought on every world in which he exists. He just goes around thinking, "Why don't I just kill all of these assholes? Stupid Bat-Rules." On this world, he killed them all because they killed his lover Catman. Not that Catman! Differently gendered Selina Kyle! His name was Sylvester Kyle and my boner is disappointed that Catwoman had to get the gender bent treatment. I want to see Bryce and Selina make out. And yes that means I want to co-opt their lesbianism for my own heterosexual turn-ons! We can't all be saints!

Is the trident regarded as a phallic weapon or am I picturing dicks incorrectly?

I know I have a lot of fun attacking bad writers and artists in a hyperbolic way but whenever I hear Jim Lee give an interview, I feel bad about complaining about his scribbles all over the art he does. I genuinely like Jim Lee so much that it makes me hate myself for every time I critiqued a piece of his art that I didn't care for. Even though my hyperbolic rants are meant to be taken as the over-the-top ridiculous rantings of a rabid comic book fan, I know many people take this shit seriously instead of absorbing the whimsical feeling I have while while writing it. And since I like Jim Lee so much, I have to confront the fact that I might even like Scott Lobdell or (God forbid!) Cullen Bunn! Maybe I should stop being so mean? I mean so directly mean! I can be indirectly mean by making fun of the comic book and specific pieces of art that I scan because there's something wrong with them (like the way every colorist always fucks up the stripes in the American flag)! What I'm trying to say is this: "Jim Lee, I love you and I wish you were my father."

So Bryce transformed herself into Aquabat to defeat all of the Atlanteans on Earth-Negative-Eleven. You know the story from the past Dark Nights books. Batperson wins but still can't save the world. Batjoker arrives with the shuttle to Earth-Main-Earth. Everybody rides the train to funkytown. Earth-Main-Earth suffers horribly because the Justice League are terrible at saving the lives of people who don't get to be characters in the comic book. It seems it's okay to kill thousands of people nowadays and still finish the story with the idea that the good guys somehow won.

Aquabat turns Mera into one of its drowned henchman and then Doctor Fate saves Aquaman. Couldn't he have gotten there a bit sooner and saved Mera too? Or just saved Mera, really. Nobody cares about Aquaman.

Dark Nights: Batman the Drowned #1 Rating: Apparently I'm reading a different comic book than all of the comic book review sites on the Internet. According to the advertisement for Metal in this issue, other reviewers are saying embarrassing things like "Like a good guitar lick, it'll melt your face off." Who writes that and thinks it's clever? Worse, who reads that and thinks it's clever enough to be used as a review blurb?! Here's another good one because it shows they know all about the metal music genre: "Just hold on tight and ride the lightning." Since it's an Internet quote, I'm surprised they weren't asking us to ride the "lightening." It's as if these reviewers heard about the concept of this comic series and wrote their reviews on that! Because I agree with the review that said "one of the most viscerally exciting comics series to kick off this year." But I only agreed with it before I read all of these tie-in Dark Nights books! And I only agreed with it before I had to actually think about most of Scott Snyder's plot points! I mean, I still agree with it in that I love this kind of comic book shit! And I'll love it even when it's not as good as I was hoping it would be. It's just that I can't bring myself to laud something in this way simply because it gets the comic book nerd inside me erect. I expect the writing to give me that same visceral feeling! It's just that it never does. Especially these fucking Dark Knight Origin Stories that are all basically the same.

I think to write the kind of glowing reviews that Internet comic book lovers write, I need to just read the comic book without writing about it, not think about it while I'm not writing about it, somehow maintain a boner through whatever means necessary while reading it (to, you know, keep my interest and keep some of the blood out of my brain), and then talk about it with a really stupid friend who can't get enough of all the comic books. Then maybe I'd walk away thinking, "That was fucking awesome!" It's also possible I'm simply dead inside.

Team Titans #9

I bet Nightrider has the fattest cock.

I wonder if vampire cocks have tiny little teeth so they can suck you?

If the only evidence of human civilization after its collapse was my blog, I wonder what future cosmic archaeologists would think of Earth? I bet they'd conclude that it must have housed the greatest culture of all time and space, even if they were a bit obsessed with their own genitals.

Ugh! Where's the Comics Code Authority when you need them?!

Between the end of last issue and the beginning of this issue, Mirage put on a bra. That seems like a weird thing to do when you're about to have sex with somebody. "Wait, wait! My breasts don't have enough support for the raw fucking you're about to lay down on my asshole!" Oh, well when I put it that way, it makes sense. I guess I'm just like every other comic book loving nerd. I eagerly await the chance to make excuses for poor plotting and continuity errors!

The vampire at the end of the last issue apparently wasn't Nightrider even though it looked exactly like Nightrider. My mistake for believing the odds of a vampire from the past looking exactly like Dagon were greater than they actually were. Apparently vampires in their vampire form all look pretty much the same. Or it could be Phil Jimenez's art. He sort of draws like George Pérez if George Pérez were drawing with the pencil shoved into his butthole. I'm pretty sure I've seen him do that at a convention for twenty bucks.

Bloodlines has begun to be advertised in the current batch of comics I've been reading and I now know what people mean when they use the term "triggered."

After some bullshit where Deathwing abuses Mirage and Donna Troy kicks him out of the house and Battalion is (probably not really) devoured by vampires, Dagon gets a chance to hear the lead vampire's origin story. He was a scientist studying the hole in the ozone layer. But instead of coming up with a way to repair the ozone layer or to stop its depletion, he decided to dabble in genetics. He figured the ozone layer was a lost cause because people weren't going to give up their hairsprays and refrigerators. So instead he created a way to alter people's DNA so they could live under the harsh light of a non-ozone shielded sun. I've got to give him credit for thinking so far outside of the box that I can't even think of an analogy to describe it. Science: it can do anything nobody asked for!

This scientist was so bad at sciencing that instead of manipulating the genome to create a race of people that could survive under the harsh rays of the vile sun, he did the exact opposite. He tested it on himself and he became a vampire. But not only could he not bear the sun's rays (which you would think, if he were an adept scientist and we readers were able to suspend our disbelief enough to think that any of this genetic tampering would work anyway), he could shapeshift and needed to drink blood. I guess all of those genes are interconnected.

Dagon drinks some blood not realizing it's Battalion's. Now he's one of the bad vampires! It's too bad he didn't go to school like the rest of the Team Titans so he could become a total heartthrob that all the girls would be dying to die for.

The Team Titans return to the Troy place to pick up Mirage but wind up discovering true terror: Terry Long in a robe. *SHUDDER*

Team Titans #9 Rating: This comic book isn't getting any better. I'm not really an art critic so I can't say what's wrong with Jimenez's art but there's something wrong with it. It's like when you look at a good painting and then your friend sends you a pic of their turd floating in a toilet bowl and then both images merge and you don't know what you've done with your life to arrive at this point. But I am a writing critic and Marv Wolfman's writing is the turd in your friend's pic.

New Titans #98

I'm hesitant to say this is the worst Titans line-up ever because it lacks Aqualad and Speedy but it's pretty terrible.

When I was in junior high, three songs would make my little love-struck heart dissolve into a weepy mess: "Against All Odds," "Total Eclipse of the Heart," and "Hello." The song titles don't actually include the punctuation but I think that's how Americans like to deal with punctuation and quotes. We're idiots. Usually I ignore the rule but sometimes I feel like toeing the line and doing the thing I'm supposed to do. I really struggled with whether or not I should leave out the totally optional (and especially useless in this case) Oxford comma. Did all of that grammar bullshit make you forget about me as a young boy weeping inconsolably due to a few pop songs that made me think about Marilyn Mendoza? Okay, good! Because that boy wasn't a soft boy at all! He was hard! HARD I TELL YOU!

Not like that, you pervo.

The Darkening continues to darken everything in its path. Luckily it's only been a short path from Councilwoman Alderman to Future Nightwing. I'm certain the person darkening everybody must be some form of Raven having gone Full Trigon. I mean, she can't really be dead, can she? Phantasm can though. Anything plot developments that help erase the memory of Danny Chase are appreciated.

Pantha gets a lot of pages at the beginning of this issue. She uses most of them to make cat jokes about herself.

His excuse is that he's not bloody?

For younger comic book readers, what Pantha is doing in this scene is thinking to herself. That's a thought bubble. It's been replaced by character narration boxes. The main difference between the two is that thought bubbles are things the character is thinking in the current scene and character narration boxes are comments from the character as if they're giving a director's commentary track on the story to the reader. They're terrible for the comic book medium. The whole point of comic books is to allow the pictures to tell a good portion of the story. But a lot of modern comic book writers seem to write scripts that give no thought to the medium. So it's tons and tons of Narration Boxes describing the action and the plot and the intent of the character. It's fucking lazy.

Not that older comic books didn't do a lot of the same thing! Non-modern writers had their share of lazy writers too! It's just they used omnipotent narrative voices in their narration boxes. Plus maybe they thought the kids reading the comic books were stupid. So they'd write a panel where the art depicts Lois driving off of a cliff and Lois thinks to herself, "Oh no! I'm driving off of a cliff!" Placed just over this scene is a narration box saying "Lois Lane drives off of a cliff!", an obviously needed redundancy for all of those daft kids.

Also note in the panel above how Red Star enjoys the home shopping network. He's no communist! He enjoys all the perks of a capitalist system, even the most terrible ones.

Orange is as orange does. Or something.

I don't get Dick's threat to Pantha about spitting out hairballs. Is he going to force her to groom herself incessantly as punishment? "You're a dirty, dirty half-woman, half-cat beast! Clean yourself good! Make sure you get your butthole. Oh yeah. Get that leg in the air! Oh. OH. OH YEAH! I'm coming all over you! Now lick that up too until you choke on a hairball, you slut." Then everybody shames Pantha for months on end because she let Dick jerk off on her.

Meanwhile Kory spends the night at a club with Jason Priestley. Unless it's meant to be the short one with the forehead. You know! The guy who played Dylan McKay! Not that I watched that show obsessively because fuck you judging my choices as a younger person! Like buying this comic book well past the hundredth issue!

Jason Priestley gets darkened as Kory flees from the club when a fan asks her to autograph her picture in a porno magazine. The picture was the one taken of Mirage shape-shifted to look like Kory. Maybe Kory shouldn't be so angry at Dick and realize that Mirage is a terrible person who has completely fucked with both of their lives. Hopefully she'll be dead soon in Team Titans #9.

Nothing much happens with the Titans. They learn Garfield tried to steal the Mento helmet and then disappeared. He's been kidnapped by the Brotherhood of Evil who have a knew member of the team: Rita Farr! Gasp! Shock! Faint!

There's something so inappropriate about this picture that I have an erection.

New Titans Rating: Two and a half stars out of five. Generally, I like when comic books slow the plot down to establish more scenes where characters simply get to interact with each other in day-to-day life. But all of those scenes in this issue just seem to be inserted to delay the reveal of Evil Raven's identity. I suppose if the dialogue were better written, I'd have really liked this issue. But Marv Wolfman tends to write scenes that are superficial and one-dimensional. Half a dozen pages of Pantha making cat jokes followed by a few more of her finding ways to call Kory a slut. There isn't any evidence of why any of these people would actually stay together to be a team. Is there a rule in the superhero community that you can't kick somebody out of a team unless you're Batman? Why do the Titans even exist if none of them can stand each other? Gar is angry that nobody has helped Cyborg. Cyborg is less animated than the microwave. Pantha hates everybody, even baby Wildebeest (who everybody is annoyed by). Dick and Kory are constantly fighting. Only Red Star seems to not have any problems with the rest of the team. But I don't care about that because he's even more boring than the microwave. I mean Cyborg!

Team Titans #8

Deathwing's urine is black.

This might be the worst cover of a comic book I've ever seen. Although if it were an underground comic book that was full of penises and vaginas, it would probably be acceptable.

This issue begins a day after Nightwing was attacked by Possibly-Not-So-Raven. What has he been up to since then (besides drinking the blood of women)? Here's how the Narrator chooses to describe the previous day's events:

Judging by the construction of the sentence, I'm guessing the pleasures were part of what would have driven most men to suicide. I'm racking my brain trying to come up with something pleasurable that would make me want to kill myself. Eating a chocolate bar that tastes like getting a blowjob? I'm sure one of the pains that would make me want to kill myself is eating a chocolate bar that tastes like giving a blowjob.

I don't want anybody to think I'm down on giving blowjobs! Thank the maker that anybody, male or female, wants to give them! They are the true saints of this world. I'm just not one of those people. I don't think. Not like I've ever tried to put a penis that wasn't my own into my mouth.

Deathwing has been leaving corpses around the city drained of blood so that the Team Titans can suspect their teammate, Dagon. He is a vampire, after all. Hopefully somebody asks him if he's been killing people and he gets super upset that they'd suspect him because I love bullshit drama! It's why I watch Arrow! Or watched it, at least. I haven't even checked to see if the DC superhero shows have started. I think maybe I'm going to skip them this year. If I'm curious later, there's always Netflix.

This is the naked butt of alternate timeline Nightwing. It's from a timeline where his ass was just average.

Deathwing decides to change his costume because now he's cooler. For some reason, he keeps the terrible hair and the huge collar. The way he makes his costume more bad-ass is by baring his chest and piercing his left nipple. Plus spikes!

Deathwing looks like a vampire from Salem's Lot trying to look like a vampire from The Lost Boys.

Deathwing isn't the only problem the Team Titans must deal with this issue. They also have to deal with how boring and unfair school is and, once more, The Judge and Jury. They're busy judging scientists and killing them. Deathwing arrives and hires them. When you become a vampire, do you automatically become an asshole who likes hanging out with assholes and doing asshole things? Judging by this comic book and The Lost Boys, I'm going to guess yes. Unless your name is Lestat and then you just whinge and cry about how tough your life is. Why was Lestat anybody's favorite in Anne Rice's series? Louis was the best vampire! At least in the first book. I seem to remember liking another vampire in another book but I don't really remember them that well.

The Team Titans find Dagon and his new coven of vampires. I guess Dagon is just as much a dick as every other vampire. At least this is a better twist than Dagon getting upset that nobody trusted him. He wasn't to be trusted at all, the stupid vampire.

Meanwhile, Miri stayed home to wait for Dick. He arrives and the book ends with him about to murder her as they fuck. That should be an interesting issue.

Team Titans #8 Rating: Five sexy vampires out of fifteen Salem's Lot vampires. That's a pretty miserable score because one Salem's Lot vampire can probably murder an entire coven of sexy vampires. They're way too image conscious. Better to just look like a scary, undead freak so you don't have to worry about what people think when you enter their bedrooms and feast on them. Most of the bad score is due to the story and the way the narrator speaks directly to the reader but a bit of it is due to Jimenez's artwork. His style doesn't work for me at all. That's my way of saying it's terrible but in a way that lets me off the hook if somebody disagrees with me.