New Titans Annual #10

I'm sure Starfire is completely naked for important plot reasons.


Oh, I get it! Elseworlds stories are like Marvel's "What If...?" stories! So this Elseworlds story would be "What if Raven had huge tits?"


In this version of the DCU, colorists get so distracted by Raven's big tits that they accidentally color Raven's face the same color as Raven's clothes.


In this universe, Raven is played by Tina Turner. And Cyborg is related to Toys'R'Us.


Speaking of V'ic'tor's'ton'e, Raven turns him into Cyborg in this world. And she makes sure he has the biggest cock in all the land. "Booyah, I tuck it into my knee pocket. What of it?! Booyah!"


No wonder Raven had to make Cyborg's penis so long. Pantha is providing some really flaccid competition.

Raven is a sorceress queen who has turned a bunch of random peasants into her Teen Titans.

But she fucked up because she made Dick Grayson the dumb one. That's no way to convince her to let you out of your cage, dick!


Cyborg shocked that the six human people he saw in cages were "transformed" like him. I mean, I guess one of them was green? And one had a huge penis? Maybe that's it! He's pissed about Raven giving somebody else a huge penis!


In this weird Elseworld, Starfire wears more clothes than any other woman.


I didn't scan this to say, "Whoops! Never mind! She's hardly wearing anything!" Because even with her underwear riding straight up her ass, she's still better dressed than Raven and Pantha. I scanned this to say, "Whoops! I guess Cyborg and Pantha don't have the longest penises after all!"


Look at this guy casually running for his life! He's my second new favorite background character!


Right after this guy, Anguished Fat Man! He was from one of the early New 52 Action Comics.

The Titans escape Raven's clutches with Nightwing taking the lead.

I don't know why Donna looks so disgusted or how she's holding up Arsenal's rigid body. Maybe Raven put handles on his back?








Oops! Sorry! I got distracted by all the tits and ass.


This is totally not a metaphor for what I just did in my pants. What do you think I am? A twelve year old boy who doesn't own any better jerk off material than a 1994 New Titans Annual?!


Anyway, Raven kills Nightwing and, I guess, Boxing Helena's Starfire?


Look, Marv Wolfman. I think I know what you meant for Phantasm to be doing to Nightwing here but I can't do anything about it! I'm spent!

This is exactly the kind of sordid universe I'd expect from a DC timeline where the only thing that was changed was Raven's cup size.

Hee hee!


Double hee hee!

Trigon does come just like every twentieth issue of the Titans. You'd think they'd have some other enemies! I mean, sure, they have Deathstork but that's just so Trigon doesn't appear in every tenth issue. And also they have Brother Blood but that's so Deathstork doesn't appear in every fifth issue. And I guess they have the Fearsome Five and the Brotherhood of Evil! But that's just so Brother Blood doesn't appear in every third issue!

By fighting together, the Titans save the world. That's the message in every Titan's story! If you fight alone, you will be defeated. If you fight together, you will destroy New York and drive your parents and/or siblings back to Hell/Tamaran/Slade Industries/Dayton Enterprises! Go go Titans go! Is that their catchphrase?

New Titans Annual #10 Rating: I'll let this panel speak for my rating:

See? The colorist never recovered from seeing Raven's huge tits.

Team Titans #24

Zero Hour is here, business itches!

Ending sentences with "bitches" has always been a super fun way to emphasize a sentence and pretend that you're about to cap a motherfucker in the ass. But since I'm trying to stop using the word "bitches" and my friends all keep yelling at me that my replacement word, "retards," is way worse, I needed to come up with a word that rhymes with bitches. I'm not sure "business itches" works perfectly but it almost sounds like I'm jazzing up bitches in a white person trying to be more urban kind of way. And I don't mean "black" when I say "urban," although I wouldn't argue with somebody who says I did just that. I don't have time to go to law school at one of the top fourteen elite colleges just to learn how to argue that lies are truth and truth are lies! But I do have time to say, "We'll just have to agree to disagree!"

What about "Zero Hour is here, Quidditchers!"? No?

You know who the most tiresome people in the world are? People who constantly declare that we can't say anything anymore. You can say whatever you want! But you're expressing something inherent in yourself when you go to bat for specific things you want to keep saying. I don't know what the things people can't say anymore are because they never tell you specifically the things they want to keep saying that they can't. Which seems telling, doesn't it? It's as if they want their argument to seem reasonable by including a bunch of things that they can't comprehend people being angry at them for saying. Maybe things like "kittens" or "can of beer" or "onstage masturbation cage." But they never say anything that makes me think, "Whoa. You shouldn't say that," when they say that people can't say anything anymore. Give me some examples! But you know you won't get any examples because then they'll have to defend wanting to say some things that might make people ask, "What kind of person wants to keep saying that?!"

Some dumb people might feel the gears in their brain beginning to spring to life, leading them to respond, "But didn't you just say you're not going to say 'bitches' and that your friends yell at you for saying 'retards'?! See? You can't say anything anymore!" To those people, I'd just like to point out that A. I just said both of those words so you're wrong and B. I've made the personal choice not to use certain language in casual ways. My use of the word "retards" in the previous context was carefully chosen for the joke. You'll notice I didn't call anybody that no matter how slow the gears in their brains took to spring to life. Plus, I have also used the word "dumb" at the beginning of this sentence which would get some people up in arms at me. But even if they messaged me and said, "You're an ableist motherfucker, you motherfucker!" (but with a word that probably isn't shaming people who fuck mothers. I actually don't know any curse words that somebody can't make problematic with a hot take!), remember that thing I said about law school? I don't have time to learn to argue these things! Maybe at some future date, I'll come around to their way of thinking and stop calling stupid morons dumb (and maybe morons too (and stupid? Is stupid bad?!)) but until then, I don't feel like I can't say it just because some people get mad at me for saying it. I'll take the verbal haranguing and just get on with my life. And if I feel that they've made a great point, maybe I'll apologize. I mean, I won't apologize or admit I did anything wrong! But maybe I'll surreptitiously change my behavior in the future! We can't all be fucking Tumblr saints like Wil Motherfucking Wheaton!

Man, I really heard it that time. The term "motherfucker" is really problematic!

The people with the slowest gears in their brains probably just finally spat out the term "virtue-signaler" after reading all of that. Interesting how a certain type of people who think they can't say anything anymore have come up with a specific term to shout at people saying things they'd rather those people didn't say. It's weird how they ignore how being angry that they can't say certain things sort of signals their anti-virtue? I mean, that might not be true but there's an easy way to prove me wrong: be specific with the things you can't say when you say you can't say anything. If you just want to call your dog fat in public, you might want to realize that, by not expressing that specific expression, people might think you want to spout the n-word willy-nilly. See how maybe you'd want to clarify that? Unless, I mean, is it possible you just want to go around saying the n-word?

Normally, I'd actually type out the n-word in a conversation like this. But you can't say anything anymore! Without consequences, I mean! You know, I think I'd be fine with their argument if they just added "without consequences" to the end of it. It would be a hell of a lot more honest. "But it makes life so hard when you have to deal with repercussions!"

For transparency's sake, I just did a search of the word "nigger" on my site and found it used in seventeen different reviews (eighteen counting this one now too, I suppose!) which seems like an awful lot (even considering I've got over four thousand reviews. That's less than half of a percent! I guess I have to admit to being 0.5% racist now. Hmm, that seems like a lot written out like that. I am the monster everybody has been telling me I am!). Most of the entries seem to be discussions on the conservative use of the word thug as a stand-in for the n-word or discussing the "euphemism treadmill." A few of them are discussing Quentin Tarantino. At least one was me parodying Xbox users. Obviously none of them were derogatory or meant to be hurtful. But a few may have been too casual and edgelord-y in the mentioning of the word. I'd say out of those seventeen uses, only one really made me cringe. It was less the usage of the word and more the anti-Tumblr rant I went on that day. I almost sounded like one of those assholes who blames their retreat into right-wing fascism on being called out by social justice warriors! I must have had a bad day where somebody complained that I called a woman a barn owl and I had and I knew that I shouldn't have and I was acting defensive. Sorry about that, Internet! I'll do better!

I was going to link to some of those posts but then I thought, "Why should I?! If somebody is so obsessed with my use of a word, they should have to damn themselves by typing it into the search bar!" See? Sometimes using a word is a necessary evil!

Now that I've completely ruined my reputation and confused people with my personal non-rhyming slang "barn owl," I should probably read Team Titans #24. According to the cover, it has dinosaurs!

The weirdest part of Zero Hour was the laugh track.

Proclaiming the story you just spent years writing was so terribly written that only idiots would enjoy it might not be the great meta-dialogue you thought it was.

The editors at DC were like Australians importing foxes and cats to get rid of their imported rabbit problem. But instead of using invasive species to manage other invasive species, they decided using time travel and alternate timelines were the best way to cure the DC Universe of a time travel and alternate timeline problem. You would have thought destroying all of the alternate Earths would have taken care of the problems with alternate timelines. But you and the DC editors forgot that terrible writers would still use alternate futures of the same Earth to prop up their inability to write well. But also, since Crisis fucked up so many characters' points of origins (see my non-existent Infinity, Inc. reviews in an alternate timeline where I actually purchased those comics), Zero Hour was needed to just restate all the origins of all the characters. What better way to do that than to fuck with the main DC timeline?! What could go wrong (aside from losing all of the Hal Jordan fans)?!

Monarch explains that to create a world where he controls everything, he had to send 600 Team Titans into specific points in the past to change things just the right way for events to bring him to power. It's a good thing that, naturally, events happened to bring him to a point where he could send 600 Team Titans into the past to change the future that made his future control of everything possible! Fucking time travel. Suck every dick!

The issue begins like any other confusing, contrived, and convoluted Team Titans issue:

With a boy just recently resurrected getting trampled to death by mammoths.

The randomly resurrected people and feral mammoths probably weren't specifically part of Monarch's plan. But when you fuck with time, you're going to have to deal with some truly fucked up consequences.

Herald and Bumblebee save the rest of the pioneer family from being killed. But afterward, the racist pioneer calls Herald a derogatory name and he's all, "Their remarks were offensive as hell!" And Bumblebee's response is, "You've become so political since you reached legal drinking age." What the fuck kind of response is that?! How is not wanting to be called a racial slur political?! And why the fuck would turning twenty-one make any difference?! Maybe it would make more sense if I knew anything about Herald and Bumblebee. I think they were important to the Titans in the early series which I never read.

Meanwhile, dinosaurs are rampaging around Seattle's Capitol Hill district. And then Hero X, a Team Titan, gets eaten by a pterodactyl. I feel like it's supposed to be a funny moment but the laughs from the laugh track are missing and, I mean, a character just died. And that shouldn't be funny, even if the character was some jerk named Hero X.

Unsure what might be happening, Bumblebee and Herald decide to take the Team Titans back to New Jersey to regroup with the other teams.

Ha ha! Automation! Artificial Intelligence hasn't gotten any better in the future if it's coming up with terrible super-hero names like that. Also, not everybody is there, Herald. Have you forgotten about poor Hero X already?!

Ugh. The same boring dinosaur fights around earthquakes with Titans saving people at the last second happens over and over and over again. Finally, Terra says, "I think we were being manipulated like pawns on a chessboard!" And, in the future, Monarch answers her! "Oh, if you only knew the extent of it, Terra! How my confusing and contrived and convoluted plan worked to a tea! Or is that a tee? Oh, fuck it! Who cares?! I am Captain Atom and I will...I mean, I am Hank Hall, also known as Haw, and I now rule the world! I think. How does time work again? Shouldn't my plan have already come to pass since I'm in the future? Why am I the future me that existed before I changed the past and still exist now that I've changed it? No, no! Don't think about it for too long! Just think about the name I'll use after Monarch. It has to be dignified and glorious and intimidating! So far I'm having a tough time picking between Bloodfestor and Extant!"

Team Titans #24 Rating: F. What a terrible fucking end to a mostly terrible comic book. And I don't feel like I'm being mean or that my rating would hurt Jeff Jensen's feelings. He's the guy who called his own run on the Team Titans "confusing, contrived, and convoluted!"

Wonder Twins #5

Jayna just punched straight through her brother's butthole.

If you're a being who turns into water, your dick and butthole don't just disappear, right? They just become part of the water! So I'm almost certainly correct in my comment on the cover. Hopefully Mark Russell will explore this topic in a future issue. Until then, I'll be certain to tell everybody I know that Jayna basically fisted Zan. Luckily for the Wonder Twins, I don't know many people and also they are fictional characters.

This issue is called "Magic and Games." I think. It will probably take me less time to read this entire comic book than it took me to puzzle out the word "Games" in the font used for the title.

Sure, you can see it now that I already told you what it was! But it was difficult before I worked it out! Although I still wouldn't be surprised to learn the title is "Magic and Galljes" or "Magic and "Gaines" and that the second word is somebody's name.

Usually I don't comment on Mark Russell comic books because to comment on a Mark Russell comic book, you should probably be smart and serious. Sure, he's having fun and writing an entertaining book that I can easily use to make jokes about fisting incest! But he also writes sensitive stories about social justice and systemic bias and ethical dilemmas in changing times and, well, other stuff that I'm too dumb to even discuss in the most general terms! He's a smart guy which is why I hate him with a burning passion! But it's a good hate! It's the kind of envious hate that pushes me to my own Emerald Twilight! I probably won't wind up destroying an entire town and ruining my reputation and becoming the most vilified hero in our universe but I almost certainly will eventually become the avenging spirit of God judging everybody around me! Wait, I think I already am that! Whatever my point is, it's that Mark Russell writes good and I'm too weak to not despise him for it.

Polly Math has just won first prize at the science fair because her last name is Math. I guess Sandra Science didn't compete this year so Polly was the obvious next choice. Jayna wins second place because her project on fucking hot guys while being a nerd in high school fell apart when the guy she attempted to science fair fuck turned out to be a villain. It's also possible I'm confusing story lines but you have to expect that kind of thing! I'm not spring chicken! Remembering details between chapters that come out a full month apart has been nearly impossible for the last twenty years!

I shouldn't make fun of Polly Math's name because I have a name that people always try to make jokes about too. It's not Grunion Guy! You can probably find it if you do even the smallest amount of Internet research! I'm not going to help you though because I don't want to get called a Deaf Chef anymore!

Polly is upset that her father is working with Lex Luthor and the League of Annoyance. But Jayna has a plan to fix things! I bet her plan is to turn into a giant tortoise while Zan turns into an ice dildo and...wait a second! Why am I giving out good ideas that Mark Russell will just steal in a few issues?! Better to not speculate on things! Also, I mean, the cover shows Jayna going with the shark plan.

Okay fine! I'm finally interested in Fox News!

The most disturbing thing about people who watch Fox News is that they ignore five hundred other channels that are showing entertaining things on their television at the same time! Who chooses that shit over Comedy Central or the Game Show Network?! I haven't had cable for nearly twenty years and whenever I'm staying somewhere with cable, it's locked on the Game Show Network 24/7! Who the fuck chooses to watch state propaganda over old game shows?! Fucking psychopaths, that's who!

Polly Math's father wound up working with Lex Industries because only Lex Luthor hired African Americans, I guess? Hadn't he heard of STAR Labs?! Maybe Silas Stone and Sarah Charles fulfilled their quota?

I might be misreading this scene but I don't think I am because the white guys with white guys playing golf pictures behind them seem interested in Filo Math if he's Norwegian (so, you know, totally white!) and then when they meet him, they don't want to hire him. It could be that they really are concerned with his specialty! What could that be?! I mean, it can't be any worse than Silas Stone's specialty of turning his son into a cybernetic example of the castration of the black male in America! That's a really terrible specialty! Although Sarah Charles seemed to be pretty into it.

See?! This is why I can't review a Mark Russell book! He's making a great point about the systemic bias inherent in corporate hiring practices and I'm not taking it seriously! I mean, he isn't either, really? He's being light-hearted while still making a good point. Which is what I've done, I think, in my comment about Cyborg's lack of a penis!

The Scrambler wants to play a trick on society. He's a magician that believes people are frightened of magic and only like the part where everything is normal again.

Magician: "Is this your card?"
Audience Member: "Why yes! Thank God you picked my card! I was worried I was going to have to live in a world where my card wasn't picked!"

Maybe I'm not comprehending his point. Anyway, The Scrambler wants to do a trick where things don't ever go back to normal! He's a monster! Imagine picking the Three of Clubs and nobody ever showing you the Three of Clubs ever again! Ugh, I'm feeling faint.

To save Polly's Dad from definite prison time (or possibly, if Superman shows up, an eternity in the Phantom Zone. As if Superman can be bothered with Earth's judicial system! Pshaw!), Jan has challenged the League of Annoyance to a duel at the zoo. I guess if she wants to stress out all of the animals there with a big battle, who am I to judge? I mean other than being the real life version of Hal Jordan's Spectre, of course!

At the zoo, Jayna recruits a bunch of Australian animals to help fight which goes as spectacularly as you can imagine it would. And what I mean by that is that a koala is blown to bits. But I guess that's worth it in the grand scheme of getting Polly Math's father to stop working with the League of Annoyance. It's like that philosophical conundrum about an ant that sacrifices its life for even the tiniest amount to better the world. It's just an ant! It practically owes it to the universe to die for nearly nothing! What does this koala bear expect? It should get to live in luxurious confinement at the zoo and not die for a trivial reason? Stupid koala bear. Go fuck yourself, you selfish bastard.

The Wonder Twins defeat two out of three of the League of Annoyance members at the expense of just one koala's life and the bruised jaw of an innocent kangaroo. The third member, some woman with a Kryptonian cell phone whose name maybe I should remember, gets away to go regroup.

Sylvia is a racist that joined the League because she didn't like the demographics of her small town changing. She's startled by Filo entering the League's headquarters to pack up his stuff and winds up zapping him like she zapped the koala. Okay, I guess the koala isn't as dead as I first thought. I should have realize a Kryptonian phone is probably sending everything to the Phantom Zone. So once again, I, the Grandmaster Comic Book Reader, was correct when I speculated that the worst that could happen to Filo was prison or the Phantom Zone! I'm the smarterest!

Sylvia is caught on camera zapping Filo Math and then messes up in an interview when she kind of admits to having maybe zapped more than one black person with her phone off-camera? It's a real public relations nightmare!

But Lex can fix it! His greatest strength is turn public relations nightmares into public relations wet dreams!

Lex News turns Cell Phone Sylvia into a national hero. Because anything is excusable if you just say how scared you were! I mean, as long as you're white! It's scary being white! Sometimes you have to kill people with your legal gun while standing your own ground after confronting somebody for the most inconsequential reasons! It's just the way the world works! At least in America! Happy 4th of July!

Just in case some readers weren't smart enough to get that everybody blasted by Sylvia's phone went to the Phantom Zone, Mark Russell supplies us with an image of Filo and the koala and a bunch of Sylvia's other victims (hmm, all black! But that's probably just a coincidence!) in the Phantom Zone.

Polly, at the end of her rope with doing the right thing in an unjust world, decides to contact The Scrambler. I can't wait for her big magic trick to fix the world!

The Scrambler's big trick to fix the world is to threaten to scramble everybody's identity. Everybody's minds will switch around so that they're now in different bodies. That means the powerful might wind up being the poorest people in the worst poverty. And the only way he won't do it is if the powerful fix the world in thirty days. Seems like a good plan! Except I'm curious to see how they fix it. Most people's ideas of fixing the world rely on the current world still existing somehow. So the fix is handicapped from the beginning by needing to be built on the ruins of the old system. To truly make a new system that works, the old system must be completely razed to the ground. But nobody has the stomach for that. So we make exceptions and compromises, building the new structure on top of a rotting foundation. It's why DC's Universe fixes always fail. They rely on making things new and better but need to remain rooted in the past. Crisis on Infinite Earths was built on a world that still contained members of Infinity Inc. who suddenly didn't fit in the world anymore. So DC then had to do Zero Hour which told new origin stories but still refused to throw out everything that came before to simply start again. Even The New 52, which people hated because they felt it did exactly what I suggested (razing the shit to the ground), didn't work because, I believe, it didn't go far enough! It still accepted Superman had died. It still accepted all of Green Lantern's past. It still contained a Batgirl who was shot by Joker and became Oracle. It was still the DC Universe but with arbitrary and subtle changes that made no real difference except the jettisoning of a ton of history. So it didn't work for anybody!

Um, anyway, my initial point was that real life political structures and social dynamics and economic systems can never really be restructured in a meaningful way because they have to kowtow to older ways of thinking and doing things. The comic book stuff was just easier to write about! I'm sure Mark Russell will figure it out! Or he'll just have The Scrambler and Polly Math arrested and nothing will work out like it should and it will just be the punctuation on the idea that everything fucking sucks. Yay!

Wonder Twins #5 Rating: A+. Come on! Everything Mark Russell writes gets an A+! It shows how smart I am!

New Titans #114

This is it! The last regular issue of this comic that I own!

I guess the changing of the guard leaving Arsenal in charge was the last straw for me. Or maybe the last straw was that Pantha's tail hole on her shorts never ripped so that I could see her butthole. One of those two reasons is definitely why I stopped buying this comic though.

This issue is called "24 Hours" which makes me think of Gaiman's The Sandman which makes me think, "Why the fuck am I rereading this shit when I could be rereading that shit?!" Oh wait! I actually know the reason for this! It's because these Titans comic books were stored in a big old regular sized moving box that I wanted to get out of the way! Also I've reread The Sandman and I've never reread this. And since I'll be fifty in a little over two years, I should probably get all of the stupid time-wasting bullshit ideas out of my head now. Any writing projects I can't finish by the time I'm fifty, I'm abandoning. At that time, I'll just make up new ones that will only entertain me and a few other people. So if I've ever said anything in passing about something I was going to do, like finishing the Goggles Futures End story or my Fantastickal Fuck-Fighting Books, you'd better get your vote in now!

The issue begins at midnight with Changeling getting his ass beat by a dark silhouette who claims Changeling promised to "end her living days." I don't know who that might be or why this is happening. With Zero Hour beginning right around this time, my comic books might become complete nonsense. I just have to hope the comic books involved in that non-crisis-labeled crisis will have "Zero Hour Tie-in" labels on the front. I probably don't understand what's going on in this one because Marv Wolfman is being artsy. And fuck if I know anything about art! I read comic books for a reason, people!

At 1:10 AM, Starfire flies around wondering if Earth is really her home. Yes, it takes six panels for her to ask that question. But she's also being artsy in a poetic way! She uses phrases like "scarlet sea" and "delicious nectar" and "golden skies." It's almost as if somebody scoffed at Marv Wolfman when he mentioned he wrote comic books earlier in the week and he thought, "I'll show them!" Then he was all, "Hey! That issue by that new kid Gaiman was kind of artsy! It had those clocks that showed what time it is and the whole thing took place in only 24 hours and it was all filmed in real time although with all the cuts from one character to another, why did it even fucking matter? Oh wait, it's only 1994! I don't know who Jack Bauer is yet!"

At 3:36 AM, Pantha breaks into somebody's apartment. Supposedly it's the person who changed her from a person into a cat or from a cat into a person. But it isn't so Pantha gets to scream in existential angst which is the only cathartic release available to those of us who know nothing has any meaning and all of our clothes need to be tailored so the tail can stick out of them.

At 4:10 AM, Dick Grayson proves he's a master of disguise by first being unrecognizable and then being unrecognizable in a different way.

A true master of disguise! He's already showing hints of his ability to be Agent 37 of Spyral.

Notice how the panels are all wonky in the previous scan? I'm sure Marv Wolfman put a note in the script to the artist: "We're being artsy this issue! Art it up!"

At 5:20 AM, we finally learn what happened to Deathwing. I don't mean we get an explanation of what Mirage did to him and why he doesn't have testicles anymore. We just see that he's making an appearance so that the audience can go, "Oh, that fuckbunny isn't dead? Great."

The silhouette from earlier has dragged Changeling into Deathwing's bachelor pad. She's still just a dark profile but she mentions that Changeling is probably strong enough to accept her seed so it must be Raven. I guess being a demon from a dimension of empaths means you don't learn about the birds and the bugs. Unless this answers a question I'm sure I asked much earlier! Changeling can turn into a female version of any species! And Raven squirts semen because, well, she's Trigon's daughter.

At 6:05 AM, Arsenal goes jogging with Bill Clinton. Clinton messes up Sergeant Steel's plans to manipulate the Titans into working for the government by telling Roy that he wants the Titans to be completely independent but he hopes that they'll work with the government. This plot point feels like Marv worked himself into a story arc that he didn't want to pursue any more. It's not like the DC Universe needed another team working on behalf of the U.S. government.

At 6:15 AM, Garfield Logan finally gets laid.

Okay, maybe he doesn't get laid. But he definitely comes in his pants.

Do you think Marv Wolfman was in the shower when he thought, "Comic books have 24 pages. There are 24 hours in a day. Hey! I should steal an idea from Neal Gaiman!"

At 7:43 AM, Nightwing crashes through a skylight. Just like Batman taught him! I can hear Bruce now: "Good job, Dick! Now they'll have to call Wayne Skylight and Window Repair! Another payday for the Batman!"

At 9:00 AM (Eastern Time, Planet Earth, Sol System), Jarras Minion of some planet in the Alpha Centauri system watches his entire race disintegrate before his eyes. Probably a symptom of Zero Hour!

At 10:05 AM, Nightwing declares, "I'm not a doctor! I just feel like a doctor!" It's his philosophical explanation for why he doesn't use lethal force. It totally makes sense because Nightwing still punches the shit out of people just like how doctor's love to give shots and cut people open.

At 11:20 AM, Changeling begs to remain a virgin. He escapes but he has some missing time so he might also be pregnant. I guess I'll never know unless he starts showing in 24 hours! Or I'm curious enough to go buy some back issues. Ha ha! That was a joke! I have no curiosity.

Page 12 is noon, of course! Nightwing has lunch with a detective because Dick Grayson had the fear of Alfred beaten into him about sitting down promptly at noon for the midday meal. Twenty-four hours for Dick Grayson went like this:

9 PM - 4 AM: Risk life with grown ass adult man in bat costume.
4 AM - 8 AM: Sleep.
8 AM - 9 AM: Waffles.
9 AM - 12 PM: Training.
12 PM - 1 PM: Cucumber sandwiches.
1 PM - 5 PM: Study time.
5 PM - 6 PM: Tea.
6 PM - 9 PM: Try to evade Bruce and Alfred as Dick finds a quiet spot to masturbate.

At 1:30 PM, Roy has coffee with Steel. The government's final offer to the Titans: the government gives the Titans the Terraist's satellite, an Earthbound base, and money to pay off any lawsuits against the Titans and in return, the Titans promise to consider missions for the United States. What a terrible deal for the government! The Titans can just turn down every mission and the United States gets nothing for their investment. There must be a loophole. Steel reminds Roy, "You gotta decide fast!" As if it wasn't the easiest deal in the world to say yes to!

At 2:25 PM (Eastern Time, Planet Earth, Sol System), Jarras roleplays Kal-el's early days. As his world is destroyed (along with some visiting Darkstars), Jarras escapes in a pod called the Omegadrone. It's both an escape pod and a weapon! I don't remember the character Minion at all. Probably because this was the last Titans comic I read for decades.

At 3:55 PM, Wolfman reveals that Red Star has taken a job as a mall security cop. And I guess a babysitter as well since Baby Wildebeest is hanging out with him.

At 4:10 PM, Roy Harper signs the contract with the government even though he knows it's going to blow up in his face. Fucking leftist comic book writers, portraying the United States government as underhanded, manipulative bastards who don't give a shit who they hurt to get what they want!

At 5:20 PM, a bunch of Darkstars are killed by the rainbow spiral that destroyed Jarras's planet. The populace of the planet had been bred to be passive. So I guess the moral of this story is that hippie beatnik pacifists are only asking for trouble. Fucking right wing comic book writers! Well, at least Jarras has learned the lesson that peace is for dead people. The Omegadrone will teach him how to get revenge.

At 6:03 PM, Roy thinks he's going to get Wally West to join his government Titans team but he's really going to get Impulse. I know that because I looked at the future roster of this team: Arsenal, Damage, Impulse, Mirage, and Terra. No wonder I stopped reading it!

At 7:32 PM, Nightwing takes a shower. Naked! I know that's how most people take showers and I probably didn't need to emphasize it but he also jerks off so maybe I should have started with that.

DC canon: Dick Grayson jerks off thinking about puns.


And after he finishes.

At 8:54 PM, Dick Grayson turns in his resignation to Roy Harper. He's officially off the Titans! Good riddance, ya dumb jerk! If that even is you. Try looking more like Dick Grayson next issue, Dick Grayson!

At 9:20 PM, Red Star, Pantha, and Baby quit the Titans as well. Then they go on a romantic road trip which DC apparently didn't publish. There's an advert in this issue for a Green Arrow story arc called "Cross Roads" that the copy compares to Knightfall and which nobody fucking remembers (probably!) but DC never published a Red Star/Pantha team-up?! No, they were right. Just as I was typing that, I was thinking, "Fuck, I would never have purchased that shit."

At 10:10 PM, Changeling agrees to stick with the Titans. But he's full of Raven's disgusting seed, so he'll probably just turn on them immediately.

At 11:05 PM, Dick and Kory break-up. But not in person! Dick waits for her to arrive to a dinner where he can dump her but Kory knows better and just flies into outer space. I don't remember what happens with her but it's probably super boring. I'm sure she goes home, fights with Blackfire, fights some Gordanians or whatever dumb race always enslaved the Tamaraneans, and then remembers why she moved to Earth in the first place.

At midnight, Phantasm arrives to lead Harper and Logan into Damage #6. And then into Titans Zero Hour! Oh. So I guess I do have one more issue of this story arc to read: New Titans #0. I also have a Titans Elseworld Annual in the stack. Plus a Team Titans Elseworld Annual and one more Team Titans issue. And finally, before I can totally move on, Deathstork #0!

New Titans #114 Rating: C. The one hour per page gimmick really helps Marv Wolfman clean up a bunch of loose ends to get the Titans ready for a big group change in Zero Hour. Plus he was able to shove in the Minion origin story (which was really just Superman's origin). And I usually give the art a pass even when it's not very good (and I often ignore it when it's great!) but holy Lobo's bulging crotch, it was fucking terrible this issue. It was so bad that I'm not even going to remember who the artist was so that I don't have to feel embarrassed for them.

Team Titans #23

Redwing must have been furious when she didn't make the Birds of Prey roster.

The good news is that I'm almost done reading all of the Team Titans comic books I own. The gooder news is that I'm almost done reading all of the New Titans comic books I own! The most goodest news of all is that I'm still alive somehow. Although that's only good news in the sense that, by being alive, I can appreciate being alive. The news that I were dead would be just fine with me as well because I wouldn't have to hear it. The good news about the bad news of my death is that none of you would hear of it either! You'd all just believe that I got bored of writing comic book reviews and went off to live on a beautiful tropic island full of kittens.

After I finish reading Team Titans and New Titans, I'll have to dig out another old series to reread. I'm excited to find out what it will be!

I was on Twitter earlier and was perplexed by this person's response to a Tom King tweet. If a smarter reader than me could explain what he meant, I'd truly appreciate it!

My current theories: 1. He's just a Trumpist and knows Tom King isn't a white supremacist asshole so he simply assumes this tweet is somehow mocking Trump. 2. The Tweet didn't delve inside the mind of the protagonist thus relying too much on the reader using their own mind to form conclusions of the protagonist's intent, making it a 'difficult' read. 3. The person replying probably just responds this way to all of Tom King's tweets because Batman isn't punching enough villains these days.

This issue begins with Jensen practicing some of his beat poetry.

Snap! Snap! Snap!



Snap! Snap! Snap!



Snap! Snap! Snap!


Audience nods smartly while puffing nonchalantly on long cigarettes.

Redwing has transformed into a woman with the head of a bird and huge talons on her hands. If any of these Team Titans had a romantic interest in her, they'd probably be thinking, "Did her anus, vagina, and urethra just merge into a cloaca?" But apparently none of them do have that kind of interest because none of them are currently throwing up the way I am after having that thought. But now I'm also thinking of Hawkman and Hawkwoman's sex talk. "Let's kiss cloacae, baby!"

While everybody tries to pretend Redwing is still the same person she's always been (except grosser), Chimera reminds the Team Titans that other totally-not-monsters-just-because-they-look-like-human/animal-hybrid creatures are trying to kill them.

For some reason, Redwing attacks the other Team Titans. Maybe she's just trying to get them to admit that they all think she's a monster now. If that was her plan, it works because Lapidus is all, "If you're intent on proving you're as much a monster inside as well as out, then you'll have to go through me!" Idiot! You're not supposed to say she looks like a monster to her face! You're supposed to act more like her brother Prester Jon and avoid eye contact and tugging at the inside of your shirt collar and mumbling things like, "Yikes!" At least that allows you to deny your true feelings when she confronts you about why you're acting so weird.

Me at prom.

Sometimes I completely understand that I'm reviewing comic books that never wanted me as an audience. I don't care what young person is infatuated with what other young person, or how much bullshit drama one member of the team can create for no reason at all. If I was, I would be a fan of the Legion of Super-heroes. So if I hate this comic book with such passion that I've certainly spontaneously created at least five kidney stones within me, it really shouldn't reflect on the comic book at all. I'm sure somebody cares that Killowat has a crush on Mirage but he's also a racist piece of shit. I'm sure somebody cares that Terra has littered the Troy Family Farm with stone dildos because Changeling won't fuck her. I'm sure somebody cares that Prestor Jon has an issue with his sister because she doesn't look as human as she used to (while it's okay for him to look like Stretch Armstrong). But that someone is not me. I don't think it ever was me. Half the comic books I own were purchased because of simple momentum. I bought the first issue and felt compelled to buy the second issue and, well, fuck it? Why not just keep buying them no matter how terrible they were?! I know that doesn't say anything positive about my decision making but then I've also never claimed to be good at making decisions. The fact that I read every comic book of The New 52 for six or seven years proves that!

Prester Jon refers to Qurac as "hell on Earth" which Chimera has opinions on.

"Hell! What a western concept! But, I mean, you're right and I'm going to go along with that characterization so I don't even know why I pointed that out!" I didn't say she had strong opinions on it.

Chimera mentions that she last met the Team Titans in Team Titans Annual #1. Fuck! I didn't review that issue! I'm sure I own it but it might be stored with all of the Bloodlines Annuals. Well, I guess I can review it whenever I find it during my reread of all of my thousands of comic books from the last forty years!

It's true that I never expected Peter David's Aquaman but I certainly wasn't waiting for it.

Prester Jon tries to discover what caused Redwing's transformation (as well as that of the human/animal hybrids outside) while a young Quraci girl looks at Redwing and cries. I think it's supposed to be touching how the little girl can't communicate but she can feel emotions. Although it would be better if she could communicate because, for some reason, she knows the entire backstory as to how and why people became mutant animal monsters. Something about how aliens crashed in the desert and Circe saw they could be used to make human/animal hybrids but some of the aliens died in the desert and when Cheshire nuked Qurac, the aliens were atomized and everybody breathed in cremated alien space DNA. It's totally the kind of thing a little girl would know all about.

Chimera shows Killowat and Terra that the Americans have come to Qurac to save the oil and not the people. That sets off Killowat's Angry Right Wing Logic Centers.

Oh? Is criticizing America's foreign policy of protecting investments considered politically correct? Although doesn't this anger and argument seem tame from a 2019 perspective?

Anybody who begins an argument with "I refuse to believe" is a person with whom I immediately stop arguing. It's a great opening tactic because I appreciate your desire to not waste my time by immediately revealing that you won't be listening to facts and evidence. Also, "I refuse to believe America would rape a country of its resources at the expense of saving the people" may as well be a declaration that you spent most of your time in history class yelling, "Nyah nyah nyah nyah! I can't hear you!"

Not that America's public educational system was particularly great at exposing America's imperialistic abuse! There's definitely a reason right wing thinkers believe college educations turn people into leftists. Because it does! Leftists are just rational people who aren't viewing the world through the lens of preconceived opinions! College educations are less about broad generalizations and more about trying to put history in as much context as possible. Patriots are often as blind as people of faith. One of the conditions of being faithful is to not question your faith. It's right there in the word! So any examination of your faith is questioning that which you shouldn't question. Being a patriot is the exact same thing. If you question our government, you're against our government. There's no belief in trying to improve our government because it's an acceptance of flaws in the United States. Of course now that's simply become a way to not ever question anything a Republican does because obviously everything any Democrat does is completely wrong. It's believing in tribe over anything else. I am not a Democrat because I believe whatever the fuck every Democrat believes. Hell, I'm not even technically a Democrat! I am liberal, sure. But I don't support any idea or belief from what would be considered my tribe.

And neither are a lot of liberals which is why you have trouble with Democratic voter turnout. Every Republican nominee is practically interchangeable. As long as they spout the handful of talking points important to the accepted base (2nd amendment, anti-abortion, Christian values, white supremacy...I mean states rights!), they'll do. But Democrats have the constant fight over whether a candidate will lose voters if they move left away from center while hardly ever acknowledging how many votes they'll gain as they move left. I've always said they should abandon all those assholes at the center. If you're only voting Democrat because you support their social views but don't want higher taxes maybe you're actually a Republican. Because if the Democratic party moves further left and you abandon it because of taxes to side with the gun toting fetuses who support locking up refugees on our southern border, who the fuck wants you at that party anyway?!

Back to the comic book, the Team Titans speculate that the cremated alien DNA has combined with the tainted oil in Qurac and the metagenes in certain individuals to transform them into monsters. So now they've got to destroy all of America's profits by making sure the oil isn't sold all over the world. Killowat is all, "I can't believe we're going to save the world at the risk of America's profits!" I mean, he doesn't say that explicitly. But I can read between his racist and xenophobic lines.

Finally an argument that wins him over!

Look, I get being resistant to truth! Whenever I brush my teeth, I can't help thinking about the Barney song where they mime brushing with huge toothbrushes and sing, "While I'm brushing my teeth and having so much fun, I never let the water run!" And then I just let the water run! I know, I know. I'm a fucking monster!

Terra and Killowat solve the problem by putting the contaminated oil back into the ground. That seems scientifically sound enough that I won't bother questioning it like a college-educated leftist. But Killowat assures Chimera that she hasn't won the argument even though her argument was simply, "Maybe you should question your government sometimes, idiot."

Meanwhile the animal people attack the other Titans upstairs. The Titans can't kill them because they were once people (although I guess if they had always been sentient monster people, it would have been okay to kill them? Sometimes I'm not entirely sure of comic book superhero rules). They solve their problem by sending them into a Fairy Land via one of Chimera's portals. She was hesitant to do it earlier because she didn't know if what transformed them was catching. But now that Prester Jon somehow did science and figured out what happened, everybody agrees it's okay to banish them to a world where they'll never see their loved ones again and nobody will work out how to save them and they'll probably just turn on each other when they get hungry. Superman throwing every villain into the Phantom Zone has left a terrible example for young heroes to follow!

Oh the 90s! When every time anybody said anything, you had to wait a few seconds to see whether or not they really believed what they just said!

Later Killowat acts like a total jerk. But he acts like a different kind of total jerk than he usually acts like. So after he's done, he says, "Whoa! What just happened?! Is that shadowy person on the ground hiding behind the tree controlling me?! And who might it be?! ZERO HOUR!"

Team Titans #23 Rating: B-. They sure used to pack a lot of story and words into comic books, didn't they?! And for only $1.95! That's two dollars less than the crappy comics DC puts out today that have four less pages and far less story every month! And it's three dollars less than Marvel books! No wonder Marvel is more popular. People probably look at the price and think, "Whoa! I'm getting a whole dollar more quality out of this comic book than that stupid DC comic book!" It also might help that Marvel doesn't mind having synopses of the story to help new readers or old readers whose memories aren't that great anymore. DC refuses to do the same, instead relying on the writer wasting two or three pages of actual story where characters think about what happened in the previous issue. A lot of DC books suck in collected formats!