Dark Nights: Batman the Merciless #1

Is that Deathstork's Godslayer sword?

On one hand, I should be thrilled to see Tomasi's name on one of these Batman the Adjective books, especially since the next one has both Tieri and Daniel's names on the cover. But I know Tomasi has a history of writing shit stories based on editorial edicts. I get how he wouldn't care about writing a story that isn't his own. I can see how writing a crap story based on an editor's crap ideas probably makes him feel good about sticking it to the man. Why can't they do like he did and stop editing to become a writer if they're so fucking great at coming up with stories?! My main problem with his rebellion is that the readers become collateral damage. Now I also have to read Tomasi's "just enough to cash a paycheck" story?! Well, I suppose it's better than being subjected to Batman the Merciless written and drawn by Rob Liefeld.

No fucking way. What am I saying?! I would love to mock that fucking book!

Batman the Merciless's origin story takes place on Earth-Negative-Twelve. According to the Multiversity Guidebook, Earth-12 (not Earth--12! (which also shouldn't be confused with Earth—12! (that's Earth with an em dash before the 12 if you couldn't figure out what makes it different from Earth-12!))) is where Batman Beyond takes place. It doesn't look like that's the case for Earth-Negative-Twelve. Although it's possible because what do I know about Batman Beyond except that it had so many recent terrible versions that I've grown to hate it more than I hate the regular DC Universe.

Some of you might be thinking, "How can you review DC Comics if you hate the DC Universe?" I'm much too polite to respond to that since my response would be "Fuck you! It's my choice to waste the precious moments in my finite life screaming and ranting like a lunatic because I wasted more money on total garbage!"

I mean, I kid, DC! I kid! Your universe is fantastic and imaginative! The people running DC must have a great imagination if they can somehow imagine Neal Adams is going to write and draw an entertaining take on Deadman. Did they read the last thing they let him write, The Coming of the Supermen? It was a total mess! It wasn't even sensical enough for me to use the term nonsensical! It was so far past nonsensical that anybody saying it had come back around to sensical are idiots because it was super nonsensical!

I kind of can't wait to read Neal Adams' Deadman now!

Before Wonder Batman came to Earth-Main-Earth, he was just plain old Batman battling Ares, the God of War. Everybody was dead except Batman and Ares. And since Ares was still one of the last two people left alive, it meant the two couldn't live in peace.

I suppose we should all be tolerant of cowboys but can't you at least make them wear the proper uniform for their current job?

Dark Nights: Batman the Merciless #1 Rating: Apparently I didn't have anything more to say about this story because I've just finished reading it. It was just like all the rest! Batman on a Negative Earth decided to drop his rule against killing and becomes a self-deluded monster. Then BatJoker convinces him to travel to Earth-Main-Earth where he can continue to act like an asshole. While the dialogue and characters were better written than in the previous Dark Nights tie-ins, the story was just as bland. I couldn't even figure out what bad thought of Batman's created this Negative World. It couldn't have been when he decides to wear Ares' helmet to save the world because that's exactly something Batman would do without a second thought. Maybe it was when he killed Wonder Woman after putting on the helmet. That's not a great thought, right? I suppose Batman was at a buffet somewhere and Wonder Woman took the last cup of pudding with Vanilla Wafers and he thought, just for a brief second, about killing her for it. That's when Earth-Negative-Twelve came into existence!

Team Titans #11

Imagine claiming your comic book wedding was the biggest wedding in the same century that included Diana and Charles' wedding.

To be fair, I didn't give a shit about Di's wedding and I did purchase New Titans #100. I just realize that I'm in no way the barometer of wedding interests.

In 2017, a flashback to 2001 makes sense. But I read this in 1993!

I've now reread that first page four times and I'm wondering how I can go back in time to punch my younger self in the nose for purchasing Team Titans #12. I wouldn't even stop him! I'd just give him a good jab and steal his money, the asshole.

Time travel being what it is, maybe I did do that! I mean I will have done that and it already has happened to me. I don't remember getting punched in the face sometime around when I purchased this comic book but I could have blacked out and forgotten the incident. The idea that time travel might be invented and I'll get to do this has finally given me something to look forward to!

If I were to rewrite this page, it would begin with that first guy reporting the news. But then the old guy who responds would say, "Well, we're still here so I guess they didn't succeed in changing this timeline. Don't worry about it." Then the next scene would be the pudgy white guy sexually harassing the female because even in 1993 we knew that nothing would ever change. Then the guy with the mustache would jerk off into his own mouth and DC Comics would have fired me. I would have been confused because can't straight white men do anything they want?! Stupid political correctness!

Of course the bald guy's response to the trooper and the flashback to 2001 aren't the only things wrong with this first page. The fact that the woman pipes up to offer non-pertinent information to what's going in continues the absurdity. Why would she mention Redwing by name? It's not like the trooper on camera said, "Redwing's Team Titans team went back in time to shit all over our glorious future!" Who cares who designed the equipment used by the Meta(l)gene Hunters? It's irrelevant and adds nothing to the discussion! And then the main guy responds as if her comment is pure poetry! "Oh yes! The Titans will be destroyed by equipment created by the father of one of the Titans! Is that irony? Yes? No? Discuss!" It's as if he wouldn't be certain to let loose the Meta(l)gene Hunters unless their was a dramatic narrative element to it! Hmm, maybe I shouldn't be complaining. Maybe I should be praising him for his superb villainy!

On the next page when the story returns to the present, the Narration Box says, "Flashforward: the present!" It doesn't make any sense! I mean, it does, in terms of narrative continuity. Marv Wolfman wants everybody to know that the moment that happened in the future actually happened before the moment that's taking place in the present. I mean, it didn't. But he needs to string together events in a linear way that doesn't actually work when you're telling a time travel story. But we get the idea! I think. I'm confused.

Team Titans #11 Rating: Five stars from the future out of one star from the past. Unless I have that backwards. Anyway, not much happens other than that Meta(l)gene Hunter arrives to hassle some Team Titan named Sunburst and Metallik. The subplot involves Battalion stalking the woman who was his wife in his actual timeline. He seems to think it's fair to her to upend her entire life because she resembles the person from his past he once truly loved. I suppose he has to make the attempt because True Love is always more important than not terrorizing the woman you're truly in love with.

New Titans #100

Surprise! The person behind the Darkening was Raven all along! We were all fooled by her bones on Azarath!

In the caption, I've gone with the colloquial usage of "all" which is known to mean "nobody at all." Let's try to forget how the first seventy issues of this series had the Titans battling family members instead of actually doing heroic things and let's look at the last twenty five issues. Surely somebody at DC realized that the Titans weren't so much a superhero group as a dramatic bunch of youths turning family problems into public battles that caused tons of property damage and thousands of injuries (and probably deaths too!) and thought, "Maybe we should change the direction of this comic book so that it looks like these 'heroes' are actually heroic." At that point, somebody came up with the genius idea of having the villain actually be one of the Titans! So now the Titans weren't just fighting family members and being a nuisance to New York (making Councilwoman Alderman a hero in her fight to get the Titans out of New York rather than the villain Marv Wolfman desperately tried to convince the readers she was); now they were actually fighting each other! It might have made for a great twist ending (that's the colloquial usage of "great." It's basically the same as the colloquial version of "all") but it didn't help the Titans reputation as superheroes who actually helped more than they harmed regular people just trying not to be crushed by falling skyscraper debris. After that, the Titans went back to fighting family members as they fought Donna's baby from the future. But now we're back to the Titans battling themselves as Raven has been going around raping people for fun and, um, maybe profit? At least the Team Titans actually took the time to destroy a nest of faux vampires that were murdering people in New York City while they dealt with their internal drama.

I've said this before about the Teen Titans but it bears repeating over and over and over again, seeing as how this series actually made it past Issue #100: the Teen Titans are not the X-men. Obviously that was the model Wolfman was using to try to replicate the X-men's success at DC Comics. But the X-men would actually work fine if they used the same plots used in this run of Wolfman's Titans because the X-men weren't specifically brought together to create a heroic team out to help the world. They were just kids in a boarding school! Plus Xavier had the foresight to place the school out in upstate New York instead of downtown Manhattan. I think. Anyway, you could make stories work where family members were attacking the school to get even at their kids or siblings or parents from the past in the present because the kids at the school weren't meant to be saving regular people lives. I'm not making a great distinction between Xavier's school and the actual X-men team because I don't think that delineation was all that sharp anyway. Besides, the X-men can't be blamed for bringing together a group of heroes to simply defend themselves and other mutants whereas the Titans portray themselves as a youthful Justice League but then only ever deal with their own shit. The premise of this title was broken from the start.

Not that that hurt the book, of course! I'm complaining about how terrible every issue of this thing was and yet I still bought every issue up through about #120 or so! I was lulled into complacency by this comic book for ten years! I don't think young me was as smart as young me thought he was, the big dumb-dumb!

This final chapter of The Darkening is called "Something old. Something new. Something borrowed. Something . . . DEAD". There's no ending punctuation on the title. I should probably Sharpie in an exclamation point.

Why would you need a blood test to get married? To find out if the woman is pregnant so you can judge the couple? To make sure the husband isn't riddled with STDs? Oh! I should ask Lord Google!

So I guess the blood test was to reveal which member of the loving couple was a total skank whore! I mean, you know, for medical reasons so the STD could be cleared up before the honeymoon and not to totally drive a wedge between the two by making one member of the loving couple bitter and resentful that they didn't also live an awesome previous life riddle with sexually diseased partners!

I guess there's also some commentary about mixed marriages or something on that page. Now it would be commentary on gay marriage. Look how far America has come into the 21st Century! We've partially opened the door to matrimony for a few more select groups! Way to go!

Bruce saw how clean your blood test was and was ashamed.

Dick Grayson: "Hey Alfred! I'm getting married! Did Bruce get the invite?"
Alfred: "I'm sorry, Master Grayson, but he won't be able to make it."
Dick Grayson: "What?! That selfish bastard! He never cares about my feelings! He was the worst father ever!"
Alfred: "He's currently in a coma with a broken back. So, you know, thanks for not answering our calls for help when all the inmates in Arkham escaped and Bane destroyed your dad's dreams of always knowing when he's pooped."
Dick Grayson: "Oh. Yeah, um. Well. I was busy with Titans' business! We've been really busy! Titaning and stuff! Anyway, will you be here? And Jason? Err, I mean Tim?"

Anyway, the wedding winds up being a beautiful, romantic experience.

Oh, except for this part, I guess. I don't think the officiant usually explodes in a ball of flame at the conclusion of the vows.

At the point where the officiant blows up, the wedding sort of goes off the rails. Raven, Deathwing, and the Team Titans Judge and Jury attack. Everybody but Raven is defeated and you'll probably be surprised by what happens next if you haven't been paying attention to one of Marv Wolfman's favorite plot points.

Raven rapes and seemingly impregnates Kory at her wedding while everybody watches in horror. Well, everybody except Tim who watches in both horror and intrigue.

I don't know how much you can blame Raven for all the raping she's been doing lately. She was raised by Trigon who basically spends his time raping his way across the universe. She's just living the only way she knows how!

That's basically the end of the issue. Starfire is hauled off to STAR Labs to be studied. I mean cared for. And Roy Harper is told by his bosses at Checkmate that he needs to become leader of the Titans. I'm not sure if the marriage was legalized or not because the officiant never finished saying "I now pronounce you man and wife." I think that part is just show anyway. Once you sign the licenses and the witnesses sign "Ben Dover" to the certificate, the other shit is just pomp and circus stances.

New Titans #100: One inappropriate pin-up at the end of a comic book where the bride is raped out of one inappropriate pin-up at the end of a comic book where the bride is raped.

Why is Starfire ripping her bathing suit apart?!

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.