Justice League #33

I hate variant covers based on other current comic book stories.

You might think that if I hate a cover like this, I wouldn't buy the comic book with this cover. But that kind of thinking assumes I look at the comic books that the retailer shoves in my pull box before I buy them. That's a level of attention I rarely pay to anything in my life so why would I start with the comic books I'm buying? I also hadn't really noticed that all of DC's comics have crept up to five dollars. How is that fucking realistic? I'd rather they just shove more ads in! If the comic costs less, won't more people purchase it meaning more eyes will see the adverts meaning DC can charge more for ads?! I'm pretty sure I understand capitalism perfectly and that's the way it works. I also understand another aspect of capitalism which says I'm going to have to drop even more DC Comics from my pull list because my wallet has begun wailing intermittently and dripping blood.

I've been reading a lot of my newer comic books lately because I want to get to where I'm reviewing comics the week they came out and also because Eclipso is on the top of my old comic books to review stack and I wasn't impressed by the first issue.

This issue begins with the Monitor, the Anti-Monitor, and the World-Forger holding hands. Is it weird that the Anti-Monitor, who destroyed an infinite number of universes, now wants to save one? I suppose it's less about saving the universe and more about sticking it to his mother. I can totally get behind that.

I know you're supposed to say how much you love your mother and how your mother did everything for you and how she sacrificed and toiled and loved unconditionally so that you could be the person you've become. But can't we also acknowledge the hard times and the resentments and the screaming matches and the time you called her to thank her for the Christmas gift and she was all, "I know it's not what you wanted," and you were all, "No, no. It's totally what I wanted," and she was all, "But it's not the main thing you wanted," and you were all, "But it's totally what I wanted too," and then she was all, "You always have to be right, don't you?" and you were all, "What the fuck just happened?" and then you politely ended the call and didn't talk to her for another year or so. Because if you can't talk about the hardships, then where is the heart and meaning in letting go of the resentments and growing to appreciate that even if she started some seriously weird fights over nothing, at least she was there. Unlike that big fake, your father! Where the fuck were you, asshole?

Um. *cough* So.

Due to holding hands, they morph together to become the Omni-Monitor.

Is Scott Snyder suggesting children should band together and rise up to overthrow their parents? Even if it were to save the world, there's no way you'd get me to merge with my sister. Gross. Why is Snyder even suggesting such a possibility?! Weirdo.

John Stewart finally mentions he's an architect while speaking with Alan Scott. His days as an architect have been overshadowed by his days as a marine pretty much since the New 52 began. Although I'm not sure he's really concerned with his days as an architect when he follows up "I'm a soldier and an architect" with "Both work on the belief that every fight, every founding struggle, serves an overall climb." Maybe he's confusing a career architect with the more metaphorical use of architect when discussing the framers of the constitution or the founding fathers attempting to build democracy. I don't ever remember Mike Brady discussing his work as if every job were a fight or a struggle serving an overall climb. Mostly he was just desperate to impress his boss with new designs of theme parks as he pulled out posters of Yogi Bear.

The plan to defeat Luthor and Perpetua needs impeccable timing so of course one part of the plan fires off before it should. That part is Hawkwoman. Lex Luthor gets in her head and she flips the fuck out just the way a good Hawkperson always does. Now she might burn out all of her energy before Starman can set up a cosmic link between the Justice League in the past using the Conch of Arion to establish their position and the Justice League in the future getting their ass kicked by Brainiac One Million as Kamandi comes up with a plan to link with Starman. The plan is so complex I figured it needed an equally complex sentence to explain it.

Everybody in the past and everybody in the future are acting as if what they do is urgent. Why? Why is it urgent? The action happening in the present isn't happening at the same time as the action happening in the future and the past. The guys in the past can take years to get the job done and it wouldn't matter! Just because I, as an independent observer, am reading all of these story arcs at the same time, it doesn't mean the stories are happening at the same time. Starman can just contact the people in the future and the past exactly at the point they're ready for him whenever he thinks it's convenient to contact them! He doesn't have to wait until they accomplish whatever they're doing. Whatever they need done has already been accomplished! Especially the deed in the past but also the deed in the future, by the way all of this shit works. I mean, the future still exists for the Justice League to travel to so Starman must be successful in the present. Right?! Is that how time works?!

I know I'm discussing comic book time travel but I'd still like some kind of structure to the logic of it all!

It's always a bad idea to introduce more interesting characters as second stringers or background actors into the middle of an epic. Because now I don't give a fuck about Luthor and the Legion of Doom. I want more Vandal Savage and the Legionnaires Club stories!

Apparently everything is going wrong and the multiverse is going to succumb to doom. And only one kid can save it all: Kamandi, the last girl on Earth! But she realizes that she can't save the multiverse by herself because the multiverse can't be saved by just one person and also it can't be saved by just however many people compromise the current Justice League and Justice Society. No, the exact amount of people to save the multiverse includes Batman Beyond and his Justice League! Why they weren't helping before or why they exist in Kamandi's world, I have no idea. Maybe Kamandi jumped from one Brainiac jar to the next to find them? You know what, I don't care. I don't even care that Batman Beyond is entering into this comic book. I was never that interested in it and was even less interested in it when it turned out he was Tim Drake just before Tim Drake became a vampire and time traveled back to the twenty-first century to become Harvest.

Justice League #33 Rating: I don't know. Who am I to rate somebody else's work? If you enjoy comic book writing and art, this is probably an A. Unless you only like the specific comic book writing and art paid for by Marvel and then this is probably a big fat F unless you can think of a lower grade. Maybe you just love Snyder's work because you're James Tynion IV and then this is an Omni-A+. But then again, you might be a comicsgater who hates that there are so many female and black characters in this comic book which is obviously just pandering because when you think like a comicsgater, what else is there, in which case this is a big Cuck-F-Doodle-Doo! I don't fucking care what anybody thinks and I don't know why anybody cares what I ultimately think. Just read the stupid jokes I made about the comic and my parents and fucking be happy with that! I'm not here to tell you what to think otherwise! I'm probably even going to drop the rating part so that you jerks can start thinking for yourselves!

Batman Loves Superman #2

Hey DC! Stop portraying people who laugh as pure evil!

Now that I've just read this cover as Fatman/Pooperman, I can't get the thought out of my mind. I think my life is a version of The Matrix but I'm actually five years old in a kindergarten cubby hole dreaming my entire adult life. Man, I can't fucking wait to wake up and play another round of "Button, Button, Who's Got the Button?"

When playing online multiplayer games, I often think, "I would have been happy to simply play Halo 2 year after year." But I think what I really mean is "I would have been happy to play Button, Button, Who's Got the Button? year after year." Maybe every now and then, I wouldn't mind taking a break to play Four Corners for a bit.

The only proof I have that I'm not dreaming the life I'm currently leading is that I don't have the imagination to come up with Ann Nocenti dialogue. That's purely from outside my own head. Philosophically, that means I know the universe consists of at least two people: me and Ann Nocenti. Does that also mean I have a responsibility to mate with her? Not that it would be possible. Her sex talk is almost certainly a boner killer.

I don't know what genius centrist character speaks first in this comic book but fuck them.

People love to make statements that make them sound above it all. Statements that let them get away with sounding like a logical and rational person while really exposing the terrible things they believe. "Weapons are only tools." The "only" in that statement speaks volumes. They're defending weapons. Weapons are neutral. They're beyond blame. They're innocuous. Their follow-up statement providing evidence to bolster the first statement, "means to an end," shows that they don't give a fuck about context. What "end" are you trying to reach if your tools are weapons? Silverware are only tools as well, a means to an end, but we know that the end reached by silverware almost certainly is simply an empty tub of ice cream as opposed to a school full of murdered children. Oh no! Look at me bringing up murdered children to play on the emotions of the audience! How dare I bring in a real world example of an end that the means of these mere tools brings about! If your defense of weapons are that they're simply tools to be used to reach a particular end, you can't just ignore that the "end" you're discussing in the most general terms is violence. Weird that people who can't wait to be attacked so they can kill somebody and prove that their choice to carry a weapon was the right one often try to distance themselves from the inherent violence of their beloved weapon.

The person speaking is Commissioner Gordon who laughed last issue so he's obviously a monster. I guess he's trying to point out that the real evil has been locked away at Arkham and the tools the evil people used aren't dangerous on their own which is why they've been locked in an armory outside Gotham City. He's come to liberate them with the help of a mystery person who has a sort of claw hand (Black Condor?!). A good writer would reveal who it was because they know that would get the reader really excited about Batman and Superman's confrontation with them. A good writer continually gives up surprising information. A mediocre writer hides as much as possible from the reader because it's the only way they can make a story suspenseful.

Meanwhile, Shazam has begun calling himself "Earth's Mightiest Nightmare." See, he usually calls himself "Earth's Mightiest Mortal" so you can see how hilarious his wordplay is. But don't laugh because you don't want to appear wicked to the people around you.

Bullshit. Batman absolutely wants to fight him.

Shazam uses his magic lightning to try to destroy Batman but Batman just dodges because he probably trained with Himalayan Lightning Dodgers years ago. When Shazam uses his magic for evil, The Phantom Stranger's nose bleeds and Zatanna gets severe cramps. I guess magic in the DC Universe is like the Force in Star Wars. It's disturbing and shit.

Superman almost gets the upper hand but, as I pointed out how the exciting battle might go last issue, Shazam turns back into Billy Batson to remind Superman he's fighting a child. So Superman is all, "Aw, shucks! I didn't mean nothing! You can fight it, Billy! Stop finding things funny!" But then Shazam is all, "SHAZAM! Fooled you!", and Superman is all, "D'oh!", and Batman is all, "SMDH."

But remember! Batman is the king of the DC Universe! So he's definitely got a way to stop Shazam. I bet he's got a Bat-Monkey's Paw in his belt with two wishes left on it. Batman doesn't like to talk about the first wish and why Alfred now has to care for that tiny pianist living in the terrarium in the study.

Batman doesn't use his Bat-Monkey's Paw to save the day but if you thought that idea was completely ludicrous, you'd better prepare your mind for Joshua Williamson's solution.

Batman finds the Batman Who Laughs Batwing, flies it up in the sky where Superman and Shazam are battling, and then, um, I don't know. He launches himself out the cockpit window against the g-forces of the accelerating Batwing? I suppose Batman learned to do this while training with the Sheep Hoppers of Aberdeen?

Um. Wait a second. Is Batman the greatest detective or am I because I think I just solved the mystery of the six heroes turned into Heroes Who Laugh.

The poison batarangs all have the symbols of the hero they're meant to infect on them! Just look more closely at the molds you found, idiots!

Shazam escapes because Superman held back and because Superman had to save Batman after Batman thought he could beat Shazam by crashing through the sturdy glass of a jet's cockpit while it was accelerating while only having a boomerang as a weapon. I guess Batman is only as smart as the writer writing him. He should have used his fucking Bat-Monkey's Paw.

Later at the Bermuda Triangle Fortress of Solitude, Batman and Superman note that each Batarang Who Laughs has been infused with a specific Batman Who Laughs Juice based on the DNA of the intended victim. What they don't notice is that the Shazam one was a lightning bolt on it and the Superman one has the Kryponian symbol for hope (I know. Lame back story on the "S" on Supe's chest) on it and that they found the fucking molds for six Batarangs Who Laugh. Which means the answer to who else has been infected is in their stupid hands! Unless I'm supposed to believe that the symbols were carved onto the Batarangs Who Laugh after the fact. Which I totally don't even though that would probably be the way to do it seeing as how you're probably going to want to eventually make more than just six heroes laugh. My real opinion on this situation is that Joshua Williamson didn't actually think it through very well.

Batman and Superman don't know what to do so they decide to pretend Superman was infected by Shazam. Shazam knows he didn't infect Superman but I'm sure he won't say anything to the Good Guys Who Laugh and ruin Batman and Superman's surprise when Superman goes undercover to work with the Batman Who Laughs. I'm sure failing to infect Superman so that Superman would have to pretend he's the Superman Who Laughs and thus free the Batman Who Laughs so he can find out the Batman Who Laughs plans is totally the Batman Who Laughs' plan. Because whatever the heroes do to stop the bad guys in the beginning of a story is always exactly what the bad guy knew the good guy would do. They're evil geniuses, remember! And Batman and Superman fell for it!

Batman Loves Superman #2 Rating: C. If you didn't read this comic book yourself for a real world example, let me tell you how a mediocre writer writes a comic book: first, the bad guy attacks the heroes rather than doing something criminal or evil while trying to avoid the attention of the heroes. That's because a mediocre writer doesn't know how to write heroes discovering crimes being committed and instead need the villain to wave a lot and shout and say, "Hey! Jerks! I'm doing crime!" Or, better yet, have the criminal's entire plan simply be "I will antagonize the heroes for petty vengeance!" After that, the heroes will fail to stop the criminal. Depending on how long the story is, the heroes will either have to redouble their efforts and super believe in themselves to rally and win the day or the heroes will begin plans to defeat the villain. If they begin plans which make them seem like they're getting the upper hand, those plans will always be exactly what the villain wanted to happen in the first place. The heroes will then be defeated again just when they thought they were going to win! At that point, they'll probably need to do the rallying thing where they just fight a little bit harder than they did before and believe a little bit more than they believed before to show their strength of character and will. Because good always has stronger will and greater strength of character than evil!

I really wish a writer would simply come up with a genius plan by the villain that isn't simply the villain saying, "They're falling right into my plans," after whatever the fuck bullshit the writer wrote. How these evil geniuses can plan such complicated and intricate plans that rely on knowing exactly what every hero is going to do is beyond my limited comprehension. I might even say it's contrived bullshit!

Dial H for Hero #7

It's for You, God.

In the mid-90s, I worked with this dude Doug who was on capitalism's side in a debate we were having. He said, "What's a hobby you're really into?" And I was a big old stupid virgin so I said, "Magic the Gathering." And he said, "Well, if you lived in a socialist or communist country, you wouldn't have enough money for Magic the Gathering." I don't want to get into the weeds on this argument or how to defeat it (but I totally could and it involves two Black Vises and a Shivan Dragon). I just want to point out how now, in the twenty-tens, people's argument for defending capitalism's health care system is to tell everybody to stop spending money on their hobbies and the things they love so they can afford it. So I just want to say, "Fuck you, Doug."

As an aside, I'd also like to say "Fuck you!" to that guy in the Magic the Gathering sealed deck league who once cast the sorcery Winter Blast as an instant. Sure, it was my fault for not realizing it at the time but he was still one of those assholes who tried to get away with whatever he wanted whenever he could. Fuck you, dude. Oh, and also, "Ha ha!" Because I beat him with the last card in my draw pile: Ball Lightning. In your face, motherfucker!

I brought the Doug thing up because the first thing I thought when I picked up this comic book from the top of the unread stack was, "Could I afford health insurance if I stopped buying this comic?" If anybody knows any good health insurance policies for $3.99 a month, I'll be saving enough each month after dropping this title.

Why is Robby Reed in a vagina?

If you don't get the premise for Dial H for Hero, I'm not going to explain it to you. Because I don't get it. The title says "Dial H for Hero" but it seems like people are constantly dialing the entire word. I think there was even a time when you could dial HERO backwards to become a villain. But Dial O for Villain is a stupid name for a comic book (please don't use that statement as evidence that I think "Dial H for Hero" is not a stupid title for a comic book. I never fucking said that). I feel like one of the dials I saw in some version of this comic book only had the letters H-E-R and O or else why would I have tried to come up with all the other weird things you could dial, like OREO for a quick snack or HORROR for Cthulhu or HOHOHO for either presents or a quickie or EEEEE! for comic book reviews that often forget to review the comic book? Although I think this current series just has a normal dial on a normal rotary phone that's quickly becoming mysterious technology to young people.

The main reason I kept purchasing this comic book was for the fun origin stories in different art styles every time somebody used the phone. But it feels like that part of the comic isn't as prevalent now that the plot has really started rolling along. That's why this is my last issue. That and the need to afford health insurance!

This issue does practically the opposite of what I liked. It highlights a number of different new heroes but doesn't give their secret origin at all! Instead it's like a modern game show where the audience gets to learn all about the contestant when what the audience really wants is to see the contestant play a fucking game for money. I don't care if Tony had low self-esteem and was dating a jerk before he became Sir Prize. Tell me how Sir Prize became Sir Prize, you stupid fucking Howie Mandel of a comic book! Later we learn the girl who becomes Phantasma was tired of dealing with her Lex Luthor Healthcare provider. But I don't care about that! I want to know how Phantasma became Phantasm! This fucking comic book betrayed me! I can't wait to spend my extra $3.99 on corporate health insurance that will try their hardest to not have to pay my medical bills so they can reward their CEOs with more big bonuses.

Throughout the stories, a silent hero has been saving everybody without waiting for a word of thanks. In the end, it winds up being a dog. Boo! BOOOO! The problem with some writers is that they get all of their ideas from the Internet and this was absolutely the story thought up by somebody who has seen the "Dogs are too pure for us" bullshit all over the Internet. As if a starving dog wouldn't eat your face! Dogs aren't pure. They're just needy assholes!

This panel proves this comic book should be called "Dial H-E-R-O for Hero."

Dial H for Hero #7 Rating: C. I'm not anti-social justice story arcs in comic books. Hell, what else are superhero comic books supposed to be about?! Heroes fighting to keep corporate America and the patriarchy in power? Of course not! But what does irk me and it's why I'm no fan of writers like Humphries who seem to take most of their plots directly from Tumblr threads or Twitter memes. In this comic book alone, we have a gay guy in a slightly abusive relationship who eventually finds a group of weirdos who accept him for who he is, a woman angry at a health care provider not providing proper healthcare to protect its own bottom line, an angry youth who tries to use violence to get revenge and winds up being killed, and a fucking hero that's too good to be true because of course it's a fucking dog. It's like a comic book ticking all the boxes for maximum Tumblr reblogs! My issue isn't that somebody decided to write a comic book like this. My issue is that Sam Humphries only writes comic books like this. His Green Lantern with social anxiety was pure "Tumblr is going to love this character!" fawning bullshit. Most of my problem with the character (and this issue) comes down to execution. Just like when I pick up an Ann Nocenti book and know immediately that the characters are going to speak nonsense but still being open to a well written story if it happens (it never happens), I'm all for Sam Humphries impressing me with his "I'm writing for Tumblr" style. He was successful for six issues of this series (which it's too bad I wasn't doing reviews of at the time. So sorry, Sam!). I really enjoyed the style of this series. But this issue just reminded me why I was hesitant to buy a Sam Humphries comic book.

On the other hand, the dog meme translated into this story wasn't that bad! And how can I be angry at the health care story when I began this thing ranting about health care! And, ultimately, I approve of stories in which one person tells another person to be themselves. What better paradoxical advice is there (other than don't fuck your grandmother when you time travel)? It's just that I'm just a hyperbolic bastard who can only respond to how long of an eye roll a comic garnered from me. And let me tell you, that dog reveal was a pretty fucking hefty Liz Lemon eye roll.

Justice League Dark #15

Don't worry. This review won't concentrate on Detective Chimp's butthole. Probably.

It always surprises me when somebody criticizes my comic book review site as being biased. I mean, yeah! I never claimed it wasn't going to be biased. But the people who accuse me of bias always do so when I critique something they love. Nobody ever stands up for the things they hate when I shit all over them in an obviously biased and subjective way! At times like that, they simply respond, "Yeah! Ann Nocenti's mother's vagina was a portal from some hell dimension where random statements with no thematic connectivity are regarded as high art! Now Tweet directly at her and call her a nasty name!" What I'm trying to say is that I understand how people think. I once listened to that one Simon and Garfunkel song that says, "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. Mmmm mmmm mmmm mmmm mmmmm mmmm mmmm mmmm mmmmm mmmmmmmmm." How come the music producer didn't tell Si and Gar to not enjoy their delicious packed lunches in the middle of recording?

I'm sure I'm not the first to notice this but it made me laugh out loud for quite a while when I cropped the cover of Bridge Over Troubled Water.

I should publish all of my reviews in a manner that shows a side-by-side comparison of the review I set out to write and the review that winds up getting written. Because everything after the first sentence of the first paragraph was the train already derailed. Instead of bitching and moaning about the bias of people complaining about my bias, my brain immediately had to admit to its own bias! Stupid brain. You're supposed to hide my vulnerabilities and weaknesses to help me survive in this travesty of an attempt at polite society! How I didn't get the shit beaten out of me every other day in junior high I'll never know. No, wait. I do know how that happened. The few times people attempted to tease me, they were frustrated by either my lack of notice that they were making fun of me or my super aggressive flip-the-fuck out whirl of arms and fists and tears and screams. There were victims out there who both reacted appropriately and weren't deadly tornadoes of incomprehensible rage built up by an inability to understand how all of this human interaction was supposed to work! Sure, point out that I'm picking my nose in front of everybody but I didn't realize you were saying it to humiliate me! My nose needed picking and what was I supposed to do? Pretend, just like everybody else, that nobody picks their nose?! Okay, sure, maybe I could have realized I could have picked it in the bathroom or used a tissue or cared at all about how it looked to do it right there in front of everybody. I had the capacity to understand that because I certainly didn't jerk off in public! Usually.

See that? Did you witness my brain's betrayal just when I was calling out my brain's betrayal?! Don't tell people about my habit of picking my nose in public, you stupid squishy Judas! Just do what I tell you to do, asshole! No offense, asshole. You do everything just right. You're my second favorite body part.

Goddammit, brain. If you ask me to Google "chimpanzee butthole" one more time, I will stab you through my eye! I am not doing it!

Who am I kidding? I'm only human. I'll definitely be Googling "chimpanzee butthole" at some point today.

So Justice League Dark! Some paladin character I don't remember from the previous issue notices that there's an eclipse happening and he was just reviewing "astrological charts" which didn't reveal an eclipse was due. Bobo decides to argue with him.

I don't think Occam's Razor states, "If I can think of anything at all that's a way more mundane explanation than the one you have, my explanation must be the correct one." It's a little more complicated than "That sounds crazy therefore Occam's Razor states you're crazy or incompetent."

I'm not an expert on Occam's Razor so Occam's Razor states my explanation of it is probably incompetent or crazy.

Oh, the paladin was Doctor Fate sans helmet. I wish I hadn't been circumcised so I could call my unerect penis Kent Nelson and my erect penis Doctor Fate.

Anybody who follows me on Twitter is going to think they've already read this review because I just keep tweeting out all of my jokes from it. Oh fuck you! There have definitely been at least three actual jokes so far!

Man-Bat looks at the eclipse and begins thinking up a new formula. Occam's Razor says he's incompetent and crazy but I bet he just came up with a new Eclipso transformation formula just by looking at the dark moon. Is that how science works? You come up with a crazy idea first and then it's just a matter of mixing a few stupid chemicals to make that idea reality? Because if so, Eureka! I just came up with a serum that will allow me to suck my own dick!

Diana gives Zatanna and Doctor Fate a tour of her underground archive of magical objects.

I often give James Tynion IV a hard time but he can't be all Snyder-toadie theater nerd if he included the Ace of Winchesters in Diana's treasure hoard.

Diana's most dangerous item is Eclipso's black diamond. I'm currently rereading the 90s Eclipso comic book which was touted in the letters pages as being the first open-ended comic book focusing on a villain. I guess Deathstork didn't count even though he was an unrepentant pedophile. The series ran for 18 issues but I think I gave up on it around issue #6.

Swamp Things heads off to find Circe via The Green but instead he finds Jason Woodrue, the new Flower Elemental, making a deal with the Parliament of Flowers to make the world pretty. Swamp Thing tries to stop him but Woodrue infects him with The Rot. So now he can't do anything but decompose while Detective Chimp and Doctor Fate Lite (Khalid!) try to find Abby Arcane to help him. But before they can even begin that quest, Man-bat walks in with the new serum he easily invented because the hard part of science is the imagination to come up with the invention. His new invention is a Man-bat-bat-bat-bat-bat-bat-bat-bat-bat-bat-bat serum and it works terrifically!

Or terribly? I think it's a success. But maybe not.

Everybody seems to think Man-bat is under some kind of spell but they seem to have forgotten that he's insane. Unless we can't trust Batman's judgment on who is insane and who isn't. I mean, according to Batman, every villain that runs a gang is crazy and every thug in a gang is a criminal. Man-bat was kind of a lone criminal so maybe he's only crazy in the way all scientists are crazy? Is that a thing? I mean, Beakman was pretty fucking loony but Bill Nye seemed sane. Those are the only scientists I know.

Diana, Doctor Fate, and Zatanna begin a ritual using Eclipso's black diamond to teleport Diana to the moon where she can find the center of Hecate's power. I don't know if the creative team remembered how the 90s comic had Eclipso existing between panels to narrate or if their rendition of the ritual was just a happy accident because showing him trapped in the Black Diamond just translates into Eclipso stuck between borders.

Either way, kudos. Love this page. And I don't often mention when I love art and layout so you know I'm being completely earnest here!

Wonder Woman makes it to the moon but it's haunted by something terrible. I don't know what that something is. I guess I'll find out next issue if I remember to purchase Justice League Dark #16.

Justice League Dark #15 Rating: B. I like a lot of stuff going on this comic book because I like the characters so much. The creative team is doing a decent job although I'm not blown away. I'm not sure I get blown away by many comic books anymore. It's especially hard to think, "Justice League Dark really makes an insightful impact in the comic book landscape" when I'm also reading Chris Ware's Rusty Brown in which that kind of thing is happening every few pages. Maybe I shouldn't even compare the two! Just because they're using the same medium to tell their story it doesn't mean they should be given equal weight. One is mainstream entertainment and one is high art! I think. Maybe the mainstream comic is just telling a tense and action packed story and the high art comic just makes me feel like shit. So it's obvious why I think it must be high art! Anyway, go read Rusty Brown! It's terrific! And if you want to read this, it's worth it at 1994 comic book prices. So see if you can haggle this shit down to a buck seventy-five or so.

The Terrifics #20

Most of Plastic Man is up Mr. Terrific's butthole.

I love the word butthole. Some people think buttholes are gross but I think they're often adorable enough to be called buttholes. I'm not saying all buttholes are cute and adorable because as an Internet denizen, I have seen The Butthole That Shall Not Be Named. You know, goat.se. But I've also seen many, many beautiful and adorable buttholes too! What I'm trying to say is I hope we get to see Phantom Girl's butthole this issue.

Some people think it's weird and immature to be sexually attracted to cartoon and/or comic book characters. But I think it's a totally natural instinct for sophisticated and adult art lovers. Do you think cavemen weren't jacking it to cave art? Please. Half the markings on the wall are probably dried cum. I'm not ashamed of saying I would totally fuck Phantom Girl! I wouldn't say it to somebody I know. Or somebody I don't know. Or anybody in public at all ever. But I'll write it here!

I know what some of you are thinking: you're a gross pedophile. But Phantom Girl is actually quite old. Remember, she spent like seventy years in the Dark Multiverse. Also, even if she wasn't older than I am, she's a fucking cartoon character! I also wanted to fuck Sailor Mars! Unless I wanted to be Sailor Mars. It's hard to fucking tell sometimes! I think it was more that I wanted to be Sailor Mars so I could go around fucking guys like me. Man, to be a hot woman! I'd suck so much dick! I'm not saying I want to suck dick now, as myself. It's weird that that doesn't appeal to me. But being a woman and going around sucking tons of dick totally does appeal to me. That's probably a fairly normal fantasy, right? I bet part of the fantasy stems from the fact that there's nothing more overtly sexual than a rock hard veiny penis straining to be shoved in any opening it can find! So making a bunch of dicks cum has to be like everybody's number one fantasy, right? Also maybe putting two in your butt at the same time while sucking those dicks. Hey, I'm just as normal as the next guy!

All of that is to say I took The Terrifics off of my pull list. This will be my last chance to see Power Girl's butthole. Fingers crossed!

The Terrifics begin this issue by battling their Bizarro opposites, The Terribles. It's terrifically confusing. Or terribly not confusing? Jeez, I used to like Bizarro so much but I hate him more and more as I grow older. That wasn't me speaking like Bizarro. It's how I really feel. I'm speaking seriously. Believe the things I'm writing. I am not doing a Bizarro impression. If I was doing a Bizarro impression, it would sound like this: "Me totally joking when me not say me hate Phantom Girl's butthole." See? You can't even parse that, can you? But at least it's there in writing for everybody to plainly see my true feelings on fucking underage cartoon characters when I appear before a judge on whatever charges can be charged to somebody for that. "See, judge? I'm totally innocent of perversion! As you can see, me was totally joking when me not say me hate Phantom Girl's butthole!" And then when the judge looks confused and says, "Guilty!", I'll say, "Real guilty or Bizarro guilty?"

This is exactly the same sex speech I prepared for my butthole sex with Phantom Girl! Me am not rock hard right now!

It's weird seeing Mr. Terrible acting as if he's Mr. Terrific's opposite. I thought Mrs. Terrific was Mr. Terrific's opposite. He has T-spheres while she has T-cubes and he has T-balls while she has a T-box. Totally opposite!

The Terribles are trying to power a time machine with something from The Terrifics' headquarters. They get away with one of Phantom Girl's trinkets that allows her to contact The Phantom Zone. That's how she accesses her powers. It makes sense because they both have "phantom" in their name.

Is smell the opposite of sight? I would have guessed touch was the opposite of sight and taste was the opposite of hearing while smell was its own opposite.

The Terribles use their time machine to move themselves and everything around them (maybe the entire planet?) back to the Image 90s. The Terrifics wind up in more extreme uniforms with more pouches and tighter, more dynamic buttholes. It's a fucking dream come true!

You might be wondering how I know the buttholes of 90s Image heroes were so tight and dynamic. Just ask Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, or Todd McFarlane. It was the number one reason they began Image! DC and Marvel were adamant about Batman and Spider-man having totally loose buttholes. But the fan reaction to Todd McFarlane's new and improved Spider-man butthole sent shockwaves through the comic book industry. Who knew fans would be so rabid about heroes with tighter buttholes that they'd crash the entire market years later due to speculation! Everybody thought those foil butthole covers were going to be worth thousands of dollars thirty years later. Of course now we know a comic book will only become valuable if the character introduced in it somehow breaks out of the comic medium and becomes a film superstar, like Deadpool or Donatello Turtle.

Talk about tight buttholes! Those mutant turtles' buttholes were watertight!

The Terrifics spend a few pages reminding everybody how ridiculous life was in the 90s. People watched television on televisions that were totally different and they engaged in physical activities except ridiculous ones like rollerblading and they wore clothes but clothes that can be mocked by people thirty years down the line unlike the clothes we were today which will never be mockable. They also drink sodas out of glass bottles instead of different glass bottles and they said things like "Cowabunga is my butthole tight!" and collected things but dumb and valueless things like Beanie Babies instead of super valuable things like Heroclix and 90s comic books. Man, we were so dumb in the 90s! Ha ha! Idiots!

Look, I'm not saying I came in my pants at this shot of Phantom Girl's butt and her saying, "You want a taste of my dark matter touch." I'm just not saying it. In print.

The Terrifics continue to go back in time with The Terribles where their costumes keep changing by the decade. Phantom Girl is, of course, adorable in her Molly Ringwald look that you can barely see in the background of one panel but which I know by heart for reasons I won't go into but you can probably guess at. Why am I so fucking honest on this blog? Um, that was me being Bizarro! I'm totally not honest at all on this blog! It's all hilarious jokes!

The Terrifics #20 Rating: B+. I love Phantom Girl's butthole but I just don't love this comic book enough to keep paying for it. Even if I kind of want to finish this story. If a future issue does happen to show Phantom Girl's butthole, somebody please contact me and let me know! Thanks!

Inferior 5 #1

Hopefully this will be like when Giffen made the Legion of Super-heroes super fucking dark.

I have no fucking idea how the Inferior 5 fit into regular DC Continuity. They have to be from a different Earth, right? Earth Number This Is Fucked Up, probably. Dumb Bunny, Awkwardman, Blimp, White Feather, and Merrymaker make up the main roster of a team nobody was looking to have rebooted. I get it. They're so terrible that even they accept that they're terrible and so they came up with a self-deprecating name. I would have had Dumb Bunny come up with the name and they would be called the Inferior 4. But then I like jokes that are often seen as confusing or mistakes on my part when the reader, being so fucking smugly intelligent, isn't able to resist correcting everything they fucking read.

After their initial appearance and follow-up stories in Showcase back in the Sixties, the Inferior 5 never really took off. They had a maxi-series and then a few odd appearances that didn't last for more than a panel. I probably have a few of those appearances since one of them was the Oz-Wonderland war and another was in Grant Morrison's Animal Man. But DC, being so far up their own ass, was probably too afraid to touch the Inferior 5 for decades because they were too silly. I know DC tried to "make comics fun again!" in the 80s with titles like Booster Gold and Blue Beetle and Blue Devil. But those were real super heroes that weren't complete embarrassments. You can add humor to real superhero action and still feel like you've retained your dignity. But how can you publish something with a dumb blonde named Dumb Bunny who probably fucks like crazy (because of the rabbit theme and not the dumb blonde theme!) and a guy named Awkwardman who inherited a trait from his mother, a water hero, who had to "get wet" occasionally to stay alive? I know that's also an Aqualad trait but I just wanted to mention how the Who's Who explicitly mentioned Awkwardman's mother needing to get wet. So hot.

One of The Inferior 5's appearances was in The New 52's Bat-Mite #5 which I reviewed exactly inferior five years ago ("inferior five" is four).

The issue begins in a desert landscape on Earth Number This Is Fucked Up with some oddly shaped landscapes.

How many dicks can you find, kids?!

"How many dicks can you find, kids" is the least quotable line I've ever written.

The Kamandi just out of surgery cosplayer winds up getting exploded by the kid in the canvas sack face mask. You know the kid is bad news because he can make people explode with his mind. Although if you ran into him in the desert, you wouldn't know that immediately so I should have stated the other ways you can tell he's bad news so as to maybe avoid exploding. First off, he's a kid out in the desert alone. Kids by themselves are creepy. Plus he's wearing a canvas bag on his head. Canvas is always a warning sign that you might be dealing with cannibal hillbillies, especially when it's covering an almost certainly mutilated face. Also, the kid's canvas bag mask has a big red X on it. Anybody who's been through the American educational system has a strong aversion to red X's. Also spooky: the kid recites nursery rhymes. When you hear one of those, you know you're either about to die or laugh hysterically because did you hear how the Diceman said "cock" instead of "clock"?! How did we never stop laughing in the Eighties?! Oh, one more clue that not all is right with this kid: he lives in Dangerfield, Arizona. That's almost as big a red flag as some sweaty, long-haired kid in overalls from Back Swamp, North Carolina.

The story picks up with some nerdy kid (probably Merrymaker since he's the big virgin of the group) whining about how his dad died in The Invasion of Metropolis (what was that? Is that a reference to the beginning of The New 52 when Darkseid attacked Earth? Or is this a reference to the Invasion by the Dominators which was compiled in three way-too-long comics?). After the Invasion, he and his mom moved to Dangerfield, Arizona. Because who wouldn't feel safer in a place with a name that causes constant anxiety over a place where the greatest hero in the world lives?

According to the date on this calendar, the Invasion mentioned was the Dominator one which created the Meta-Gene explanation of superpowers which we recently learned was a computer jargon shortening of the term "metal-gene."

The calendar isn't the only proof that this invasion was by Dominators and not Parademons! By turning the page instead of trying to ferret out what's going on by examining every panel carefully and spending an inordinate amount of my short lifespan trying to guess what's about to happen instead of just fucking turning the Goddamned page and letting the writers explain it to me, I discover the Dominators are leading an invasion of Earth Number This Is Fucked Up. At least I think it's Earth Number This Is Fucked Up because the invasion seems to have worked. Superman is dead and most of the other heroes have been placed in a space gulag. Plus that kid in the canvas bag marking X's on houses seems to play an important role in the Dominator's invasion force.

Unless this is all just a comic book on Earth Number Main Earth?

Maybe I should turn some more pages!

But first, I just need to Google "Lisa Loeb's boobs."

The kid complaining about the Invasion comic book is named Lisa (no relation to Lisa Loeb's boobs) and she points out to the suspiciously bloody comic book seller with a light sensitivity named Vlad that the Invasion really happened. So I guess DC is simply profiting on everybody's pain and misery. I bet just to make the series even more painful and miserable, DC hired Scott Lobdell to write it.

Justin, the whiny kid from Metropolis, is being observed by some outside observers (as opposed to inside observers which would be, I guess, parasites?). He heads downtown where he's about to make contact with Dumb Bunny and Awkwardman! Except he doesn't. Man, I should probably read more than two panels at a time before writing anything. It would save everybody a lot of wasted effort, me with writing sloppy synopses of comics and the three people reading this having to fucking read this. But then I don't have any responsibility to anybody to make these "reviews" shorter. It's not my fault if somebody wanted to Google "Lisa Loeb's boobs" but found they didn't have enough time because they were reading this shit. That's their own fault for not prioritizing their desires! Googling "Lisa Loeb's boobs" was so important to me that I did it in the middle of this review! Come on, people. It's the modern age! You can view Lisa Loeb's boobs any time you want (through clothing, that is. I'm not advocating for searching for nude pics of Lisa Loeb's boobs which probably don't exist anyway and if you think they do, it was probably just Lisa Loeb's head photoshopped onto a naked torso).

Lisa has been uncovering clues to the weirdness of Dangerfield, Arizona because she dresses like Velma. Unless she dresses like Velma because she searches for clues the way her hero, Velma, searches for clues. I don't know enough about Lisa's backstory to say. It's possible Lisa isn't even aware of Velma and it's just Giffen spending some easy pop culture capital so readers associate Lisa with Velma and understand her more simply by looking at her image.

Here are a bunch of the clues she's uncovered that I didn't want to try to parse through my digressions and fascination with Lisa Loeb.

Billy Shanker, the kid with the canvas bag who says things like, "Oh! The three little kittens! They fucked their mittens! Oh! Look at the way I hold my cigarette! Boom!", murders Justin's mom and takes her corpse to some guy in a hazmat suit that might be a Dominator but also might be, seeing as how Giffen is writing this, Ambush Bug. Man I hope it's Ambush Bug!

Justin returns home to find his mother gone and the interior (five?) of his house covered in red X's. Oh no. That's a really bad sign! Not one black check mark in the bunch!

Some people might think Keith Giffen isn't the best artist in town because he's a writer and his art isn't for everybody. Plus he never puts any thought into his panel layout and just goes the same size boxes every time (sometimes in the six variety, sometimes in the nine). I happen to love his art so I'm not one of those people. But in keeping with a guy whose art isn't what people would call great (although those people usually love mainstream great garbage art like John Romita Jr or David Finch or Tony S. Daniel), Jeff Lemire draws the back-up story. I don't think that was an insult at Lemire's expense. If it was, I'm sorry because I was really just trying to insult John Romita, Jr and David Finch and Tony S. Daniel. The back-up story features Peacemaker whom I only remember by look.

According to the Who's Who, Peacemaker is a guy who loved peace so much that he realized sometimes he'd have to use extreme violence to ensure it. Also he suffered a head injury during Crisis on Infinite Earths which seems like a weird thing to mention in the Who's Who. "Trillions of lives were extinguished during the multiversal extermination event! Billions and billions of worlds destroyed! People's pasts erased in the blink of an eye! Supergirl and Flash and some other people nobody remembers killed! And Peacemaker suffered some head trauma." I suppose it's important to the character. Maybe it was meant to make him more extreme so he'd be relevant in the post-Crisis era.

Peacemaker is on a mission for Amanda Waller to find some super weapon that the Russians want. His search leads him to a bunker with a dead Dominator, a mysterious capsule, and a map leading him to Dangerfield, Arizona!

Inferior 5 #1 Rating: B+. I'm a sucker for Giffen stories and Giffen art. And Giffen stories backed up by Lemire's writing are probably even better. This one was pretty good so consider it evidence that my previous statement is almost certainly correct. One thing I like about Giffen is that he doesn't mind writing things that can be confusing on their first (or even second!) read through. He tells the story, makes the jokes, slowly unveils the plot, and to hell with anybody who doesn't want to invest a little time in making it all out. Seems to me, a lot of modern comic book readers could learn to love ambiguity. But they're all so desperate for the interior monologue of the main characters so they know exactly what to think after reading something. They're so coddled that they think subtlety is when a story explicitly shows them what's happening without the main character also explaining it in a monologue as they experience it. They wouldn't recognize subtlety if it...well, I mean, it's subtlety. It should be hard to recognize so I don't know how to finish that statement. Now go read Inferior 5 and hate me for recommending it when you're finished.

Eclipso #1

Remember the early 90s when DC desperately tried to make Eclipso a serious threat?

How often has DC given a villain a comic book series of their own? Deathstork doesn't really count because even though he's a murderous pedophile, he still tends to be portrayed as somehow ethically chaste. Why else would Superman and Batman continue to let him run around murdering people? It's because he always murders bad people whom Batman and Superman don't find worthy of their protection. I'm assuming Eclipso works differently but I can't fucking remember what his motivation as a super villain is. The cover says "The Face of Vengeance" so I'm assuming he darkens the souls of people who feel wronged so that they can claim their revenge. And while that sounds like a motivation that can make Eclipso an anti-hero, I'm hoping he doesn't give a shit if the person feeling wronged actually was wronged. He's practically the face of evil in the DC Universe in 1992 so he'd better get up to a whole lot of evil! Besides, isn't The Spectre the good guy who helps people get vengeance for being wronged? Or murdered? Eclipso can't step all over The Spectre's territory.

This series is by Giffen and Fleming so I'm expecting evil Ambush Bug. At least, that's what I'm positive I was expecting back in 1992 when I purchased this. I feel like I remember being disappointed in that it wasn't funny at all. I hope I'm re-disappointed in realizing my disappointment was a false memory.

Okay. Motivation spelled out pretty clearly on the third page.

According to this comic book, Eclipso killed the dove Noah sent out of the ark that time it never returned. This comic book doesn't mention the raven that Noah sent out and then refused to let back on the ark even though it was trying to warn him of the psychopathic asshole wading through the receding waters waiting to murder everybody on the ark. Does that mean Eclipso has some kind of relationship with God? Maybe Eclipso is the one who created the flood because God promised him everything would die in it. And then God fucking betrayed Eclipso and allowed a whole bunch of creatures to survive.

Although the most probably explanation of this moment is that Giffen and Fleming needed a quick way to portray Eclipso as some kind of legendary evil. What better way than to make him practically immortal and associate him with the greatest massacre in the "history" of mankind (perpetrated by fucking God himself, the diabolical monster!)?

In the present, Eclipso has taken possession of a South American guy with a grudge against his village. He was cast out for unknown reasons (probably really fucking good reasons!) but it was enough of an excuse for Eclipso to possess him to grant him vengeance. So I guess that's Eclipso's thing, just like I speculated based on the cover pretty much telling me exactly that. I'm good at understanding! Eclipso possesses people so that they can get revenge then helps them murder as many people as possible so that everything will eventually be killed. But can Eclipso really kill everybody on Earth during the finite amount of time during eclipses? I bet more babies are born during an eclipse than Eclipso can kill!

As Eclipso thinks about his recent past, the editor makes sure the readers know he's talking about the big blockbuster Eclipso event in the annuals. But he also mentions something that happened in Valor #1 and my initial reaction was, "Like fuck I'm going to read that." My second reaction was, "I'm pretty sure I own that comic book and it's in the current stack of old comic books to read." I hate myself.

Eclipso discovers that the people of the village he just murdered have stockpiled tons of cocaine. So now he's going to run a criminal drug enterprise to fund his murder spree. I suppose he can possess more than one person at a time with the use of his black diamonds. And I think he can continue to possess them even if there's no eclipse? But if that's the case, why the fucking stupid name? Maybe he's just more powerful during an eclipse. Or maybe the only way somebody can shake his possessing spirit is by exposure to sunlight. So he's really just kind of a shitty vampire.

Eclipso gives a little Eclipso history lesson for the newer readers.

"The dark side of the moon" doesn't actually mean it never gets sunlight, you stupid turd. The entire concept of his name comes from an event where "the dark side of the moon" is bathed in sunlight!

It could be I'm not parsing Eclipso's speech correctly. Maybe he means that by being banished to the dark side of the moon, he was forever having to hid from the sun whenever the dark side was turned toward the sun. Maybe he means he wasn't susceptible to sunlight until he was banished to the dark side of the moon. But then the assumption, I think, is that he was in the dark for so long that sunlight became his greatest weakness. There's a few possible interpretations here and while some people might like to give Giffen and Fleming the benefit of the doubt, I would rather rake them over the coals and call them fucking idiots.

Fucking idiots.

Eclipso abandons his possessed man in the hopes that the black diamond will pass on to The Count, the man who was using them to grow and process the cocaine. In works and The Count is an angry man who easily falls victim to the darkness in his heart. Now Eclipso is the kingpin in an international drug smuggling operation. Seems like a weird and boring place to start his super villain career but maybe drug smuggling stories weren't as played out in 1992 as they seem to be today. Or are they? People fucking still eat that shit up, don't they?!

Eclipso murders The Count's wife just in case any readers weren't sure if they should root for him or not. Certain readers almost certainly only began rooting for him after he threw The Count's wife out of the second story window. Here at Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea, we prefer to pretend that those kinds of readers don't exist. Oh, sure, sometimes I'll reference them if I want to mock their weaselly little beta cuck beliefs. Mostly though, I only remember they exist when one of them becomes irate because I called Deathstroke a pedophile. Imagine that being the thing I wrote that finally crossed a line for you!

Eclipso kills all of the drug lord's bodyguards and then takes over the town's sheriff when he stops by to investigate. The sheriff kills all of the cops so now I guess Eclipso has nearly conquered the South American country of Parador? What a dumb fake country name! I would have gone with Uruzil.

The next issue blurb just says "Eclipso for president." Man, that sounds like a dream compared to what we have now.

Eclipso #1 Rating: C-. I'm not impressed. Apparently in 1992, I was impressed enough to keep buying it. Or I was just intrigued by a comic book about a brutal villain. Either way, I kept buying it even after this mediocre start. Maybe I was supposed to be impressed by the way Eclipso sort of rules the minds of these men from between the panels. Or maybe I was supposed to appreciate his dark humor in the narration. At least I think it was dark humor. He did say "Not!" at one point. That was funny in 1992, right?