Second Coming #4

One day, I will be the guy missing his middle finger.

I was actually intrigued and interested in Watchmen until that third fucking episode. Silk Spectre's phone call to Mars was the worst joke I've ever heard. Maybe I wouldn't mind so much if she finished the phone call by saying, "I don't know why I keep calling you to ramble about stupid bullshit." But no. She says, "I don't know why I keep calling you to tell you jokes." What you fucking told Jon was not a fucking joke! Hey, Lindelhof! Maybe don't write your "jokes" yourself anymore. I get that the stories she had sort of had joke set-ups. But you know what jokes need? Punchlines! And, no, a punchline isn't fucking up the first joke and then surprising the audience by having the second joke just become part of the first joke! At best, she was telling a Shaggy Dog story because it was definitely pointless and rambling. And it was the kind of Shaggy Dog story that isn't a joke because there was no fucking punchline! I suppose maybe you wanted her to tell a parable and we, the audience, were supposed to suck in our breaths and look at the other dimwit watching this show seated next to us and say, "Whoa! She's not telling a joke! She's really talking about herself! And her relationship with her father! And her ex-lover Nite Owl! And her other ex-lover Doctor Manhattan! And that other guy! The Jeremy Irons' character! Profound!" But mostly we all just sat there not looking at the person sitting next to us because most of us watched this in the dark, alone and ashamed. And we didn't say those things not because there was nobody to say them to but because there's no possible way we would have thought them. I know I thought, "Shut the fuck up! Why are you doing this?! This is fucking stupid! Stop talking already! Can this show just be that background cartoon about the real Watchmen now?!"

And, yes, I'll probably keep watching. I am nothing if not a hate-watcher of popular media.

But enough about media I hate-watch. How about some media that I love-read?

Sunstar has lost Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ was arrested for being an annoying know-it-all vagrant. Man, I wish being a know-it-all were an arrestable offence! I bet my karaoke place would be less full of hipsters every night.

Sunstar enlists Night Justice and Lady Razor to help find Jesus Christ. Row-Bot decides not to help because Row-Bot is an atheist and also because if Row-Bot had too much panel time, the readership would be clamoring for a Row-Bot series. I mean, Row-Bot has only been in six panels in the first five pages and I'm already writing an email in another browser window demanding more Row-Bot.

Row-Bot will never get their own series because the people they rescue will have to sit on Row-Bot's face. Inappropriate.

Now I can't focus on anything except Row-Bot. I'm glad Mark Russell saved Row-Bot for this comic book instead of creating Row-Bot in a DC comic book and giving DC the rights to Row-Bot. Maybe Ahoy Comics now have the rights to Row-Bot but what is a small publisher going to do with those rights? Best for a publisher to just give the creator all rights so that the creator will keep their best ideas to publish with that publisher. Do DC or Marvel ever wonder why a publisher like Image Comics constantly publishes comics of greater artistic merit than they do? The days of giving your work to one of the Big Two simply for the prestige of publishing with them are long gone. If a publisher wants a writer to put forth their best effort, they've got to wine and dine those assholes.

Hopefully in a future issue, Jesus will try to walk across some water and He'll find He's lost the talent. But He never learned how to swim so He'll begin to drown! But then Row-Bot will save the day even though they're an atheist. They're still a hero even if they don't believe in the person they're saving!

Anyway, Jesus gets out of jail before he's Gomorrahed by his cellmate Pinecone. And then God meets Satan in a cafe in Berlin to discuss what they're going to do to keep the world from killing Jesus. Again!

Second Coming #4 Final Thoughts: I know I probably should have discussed more of this comic book than Row-Bot. But I don't like discussing comic books that are smarter and more earnest and kind and pretentious than I am. What am I supposed to write about when Jesus says profound and insightful things? I can't make them more profound and insightful by making a dopey comment about them! This is the kind of comic book that people should just read and stop trying to find out what it's all about by reading online reviews by people who are too dumb to appreciate anything in the story except a stupid robot/rowboat pun!

Justice League #34

If Doom wins then how come this issue isn't subtitled "Doom Risen"?

Ugh. How long has this Doom event been fucking going on?! My advice to Snyder: next time, make Lex Luthor smarter so his plan comes to fruition quicker!

Some of the Justice League are in the past hiding in Atlantis with the Justice Society as a captured Poseidon tries to destroy it. They need Vandal Savage's help to get the totality to the future so John Stewart convinces him by yelling, "Oorah!" Hourman and Alan Scott jizz their jeans over his masculinity and decide that maybe a negro member of the Justice Society wouldn't be such a bad thing. You might think I'm letting my cynical view of the world reinterpret the scene in a fairly unforgiving way but I assure you it doesn't come across much better than that. I wonder how they'd feel if John Stewart had convinced Vandal to help them using architecture metaphors?

Did I accidentally pick up the extra-gay version of this month's Justice League?

I think I accidentally stumbled into a new way for DC to make money. Forget variant covers and foil card insert. Why don't they put out extra-gay issues?! They could call one version the "Extra-Straight" version and the other version the "Extra-Gay" just so we don't get into the weeds arguing about why one is called the "Normal Issue." Although I think if two comic books existed that were slight variations of each other and one was the "Extra-Straight" version and one was the "Extra-Gay" version, it would totally be more gay to buy the "Extra-Straight" version. It sounds like that one is going to be full of shirtless men wrestling in totally non-boner inducing ways that are actually super boner inducing.

If DC won't take my super great moneymaking idea that will wind up selling a billion issues of Harley and Poison Ivy #1 (Extra-Gay version) then maybe I can trademark the idea of "Extra-Straight" comic books and sue all the Comicsgaters producing comic books. Do Comicsgate comic books have copy on the covers in huge fonts that say things like "No Gay Characters!" and "If a Character is Black, It's Totally Plot Related!" and "This Won't Pass the Bechdel Test. AT ALL!"?

I think I'm making Comicsgate comic books sound more interesting than they really are! I bet most of them are boring super hero punch ups where characters occasionally reference Pepe the Frog and fly through the air in a pose like they're heiling Hitler.

Back to the plot, is Barry Allen really interested in wearing his hair long? Why am I suddenly finding him interesting? I almost wrote "more interesting" but, you know, it's Barry Allen. The most interesting thing he ever did was appearing out of nowhere during Crisis on Infinite Earths and disintegrating.

Unless Barry was actually asking John if John thought he could rip Vandal's hair off of his head. Although that interpretation makes Barry more interesting as well. What I'm saying is this is the most interesting panel Barry Allen has ever been a part of.

Meanwhile in the future (if that makes any sense at all), Kamandi has gathered up heroes from various futures to RRHAAAOOOR! I'm told by editorial that "RRHAAAOOOR" means "kick some ass" in panther. How come it's usually okay to swear in a foreign language in an all ages comic book?

One of the "heroes" he brings is Lobo. So Brainiac is fucked.

An easy way to tell if a comic book fan is a psychopath is to gauge how angry they get at two things I love to write (largely for that reaction): Deathstroke is a pedophile and Lobo is the most powerful and most fuckable and greatest character to ever come out of DC. Along with websites that track known pedophiles in your neighborhood, I think we should also have a database of people who get irate at the idea that Deathstroke is a pedophile. They go fucking crazy defending a fictional character's reputation over something not worth defending! I might agree they have a point that using the term "pedophile" is misleading at best. He's more of a statutory rapist! But even that gets their Quixotic gears turning. Yes, I'm comparing myself to a majestic windmill.

The Lobo thing doesn't get people so incensed but it does bring out a lot of actually nerds who don't understand how much fun I'm having with my hyperbolic love of such a one trick character. My favorite thing about Lobo is that he looks cool in a way that doesn't look cool at all. How did they do that?! He's a hot clown! He's a MILF: mechanic I'd like to fuck! He's so over-the-top that I can't understand people who try to take him seriously. He's the greatest joke DC has ever played on their readers and I love him unironically. Also, you know Lobo leaves you satisfied after he fucks you. And I don't think it matters if you're female or male or space dolphin. He's gonna give it to you fucking good.

Twelve year old me would totally jerk off to this picture.

The pieces of the Totality are secured and all the Starmen throughout time are linked together psychically. It's their last chance! Perpetua is about to be defeated! I will ignore the cover and pretend that everything is going to work out and that Hawkgirl isn't going to fuck it all up with her desire to bash Luthor in the back of the head with her mace. Hopefully J'onn J'onzz will finally assert his will and get her back on track. Or else the multiverse is doomed! You know. Like Luthor has been trying to explain for forty-five issues.

Welp. Kendra fucked it all up. Perpetua is risen. All hail Doom.

Justice League #34 Final Thoughts: Okay, fine. The big plan failed and Doom won and Perpetua can now manipulate the multiverse however she wants. But there's one thing she forgot to do before declaring victory: she didn't kill Batman. What a fucking amateur move! The first villain to actually begin by killing Batman will be the first villain to completely take over everything. I guess that's why The Joker is the smartest villain in the DC Universe. He's doing the real work.

Wonder Twins #8

The British version of Polly Math isn't as clever because her name is Polly Maths.

Only one lesson ever made an impression on me in high school. In Physics, Mr. McFarland had a bonus question on a test. It had three examples of the trajectories and exchange of force between two billiard balls. The math was correct on all three examples and the question was, "Which one is actually correct and why?" The answer to the "Why?" part of the question Mr. McFarland was looking for was simply this: I've observed it. So while the math on the other two examples was perfectly fine, they were ways billiard balls never actually react. So when somebody talks about something like string theory and how it's a mathematical model that provides a theory of everything, I think about Mr. McFarland's bonus question. The math may be right but what does that matter if we can't see what the billiard balls are doing?

I'm definitely not being anti-science! I'm totally pro-science! I'm anti-math! Stupid numbers. Think they can solve everything! But they're as bad as alchemy. Have you heard about three being a magic number? Magic! Fucking math is all made up hocus-pocus nonsense, I tell you what. We think it's some kind of universal constant but remember "Little Twelve Toes"? That taught me that we can't even use math to communicate if we wind up meeting aliens with a different amount of fingers and toes than we have! I mean, I guess the people who understand math and who also write songs for children's television would understand them. But I just learned that aliens only visit hick kids who pretend they get the concept of a base ten number system!

Maybe I'm a poor example of a person who was meant to understand the math in Schoolhouse Rock songs. Hell, I didn't even get the point of "Conjunction Junction." I just liked singing about trains!

Please don't reply trying to explain any of this stuff to me. I play a guy far dumber than I actually am on this blog. Well, maybe not "far" dumber. But somewhat dumber! Which is the opposite of what hoity-toity Mark Russell does! I bet he's not as smart as he seems to be! Although it's tough to pretend you're smarter than you actually are. So it's possible he's a genius who also cares about making some kind of difference in the world, even if he is only writing funny books about the God-awful Wonder Twins.

I also don't want to hear people defending the Wonder Twins because I may or may not have always liked them although I definitely have never jerked off to any of them and that precludes Gleek.

I thought aging was waking up every morning because you didn't take enough pills the night before.

The worst part about aging is being too dead to see the youth who made fun of you for being old grow old and die themselves.

The sad old 48 year old guy typing this wants you to know that the sad old 48 year old guy in the panel is the principal of Zan and Jayna's high school. The librarian is also a sad 48 year old guy except not a guy and maybe not sad. She probably fucked the principal in high school though. This is probably a love story. Not one of those love stories that ends happily. More like one of those love stories where some lonely jerk goes to their 30th high school reunion and tells the person they had a crush on in high school that they never stopped loving them and the person they confess to says, "Did we know each other?"

I'm beginning to think I shouldn't be as proud as I am to guess where comic book plots are going. I'm fucking pathetic.

Don't worry. Principal Adultman doesn't admit to being a chronic sleep-creeper in the panel following the previously scanned bunch. He just says, "I'm a principal!" Although I totally would have been intrigued if he had said, "I was a sleep-creeper!" I would have thought, "Gross! What a jerk," and not, "Oh! I hope we get a flashback!" Because I'm a decent person who now knows sleep-creeping is wrong.

Principal Adultman wants to cancel his 30th high school reunion so he doesn't have to interact with Librarian Lost Love. I guess he's afraid they might play The Cure's "Last Dance" during the reunion which was playing the first time he finger-banged the librarian.

The principal confesses his love for the librarian and his subsequent failure over the years to get over it on the open school announcement microphone. So now the librarian knows things are even more awkward than she realized! Now she has to start preparing her speech about how there's no way he can love her because he doesn't know her and even if he thought he loved her in high school, she didn't love him. She couldn't love him because she didn't even know who she was or what she wanted and should she have to live with the unintended consequences of one moment where she really wanted to fucking cum on some guy's warm hand for the rest of her lives simply because that warm hand belonged to some schlub?! Maybe she's the type of person who doesn't prepare speeches and she'll just tell him to fuck off and get a life. Although she's a librarian so I think speeches probably excite her as much as the album Disintegration does.

Somewhere in the high school reunion drama is a story about Polly Math and her inability to forgive Jayna for putting her in prison and failing to save her dad from eternity in The Phantom Zone. But I don't think that's as important as that old guy still pining for a woman who forgot about him decades ago. Polly escapes prison or something. I don't know. I just skimmed those pages to get to the final embarrassing confrontation between Principal Adultman and Librarian Lost Love that Jayna is unwittingly setting up. She thinks she can prove people will always forgive each other. Ha ha! What a child!

Bah. Stupid Jayna being right.

Wonder Twins #8 Final Thoughts: I guess Mark Russell doesn't trade in cynicism. He's all about earnestness and optimism and hope and shit. Hey, I get that! It's totally the stuff I would aspire to if I wasn't such a lowly, scum-sucking piece of crap. But I'd still prefer for Librarian Lost Love to have been a bit mean. He treats her like a failed conquest for thirty years, making as if she's the reason his world has fallen apart and his time at work has uncomfortable moments, while she was just going on with her life as he grew smaller and smaller in her rear view and he expects her to do the heavy lifting of forgiveness?! Fuck that dude! Although, I suppose, if he didn't matter to her as much as I suspect he didn't matter to her, it's easy enough to just say, "Sure! You're forgiven. Now can you stop making things so awkward, you immature turd?" Anyway, I guess Polly is going to forgive Jayna soon because they're going to team up to save Polly's dad.

Metal Men #1

I only purchased this series so I could discuss how Doc Magnus loves shoving his responsometers up his ass.

Doc Magnus is gay, right? I'm not suggesting that gay people love to shove sentient spheres up their asses! That's just a Will Magnus kink. I'm just asking because I don't know that it's ever been verified canonically although all DC readers know he must be. Platinum has been trying to fuck him for decades and he's always responding, "No time, no time! This pipe won't smoke itself!" Plus, he had the opportunity to build five sexy female robots and one gay one that he'd constantly have to fight off but instead he did the opposite. Plus he's dapper and even though that's probably a stereotype that gay men are better dressers than straight men, I have to admit that I'm not dapper at all. And I would have sex with Platinum in a heartbeat! That doesn't mean it would take a heartbeat for me to consent to having sex with her. It means I would blow my load in a heartbeat if she consented to have sex with me. And, yes, I know she's a robot. And a fictional character. And a drawing. I'm just a very sexual being who isn't embarrassed to say, "I would totally fuck a cartoon character. Especially one named Erin Esurance or Shego."

I just recently reread the Metal Men series from 1993, which was only four issues, and I don't remember being blown away by it. So why did I pick up this one that's going to go for twelve issues and written by Dan DiDio? If I had a therapist, we'd spend a few sessions on why I do so many things that make me hate myself.

Dan DiDio. Di "D" io. Dan DiDDDDDDDDio.

He's talking to the responsometer shoved up his ass.

If I had a conversation with something shoved up my ass, it would go like this: "Mmmm. MMMMM. Oh. OH! Mmmmmm. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm yeah."

Sorry about that mental image. Oh, you didn't have a mental image until I mentioned the mental image? Sorry about that too.

As I was waiting for the above panel to scan, I rewrote Eclipso: The Darkness Within in my head where it ended with Doc Magnus shoving the black diamond up his ass and Eclipso being destroyed.

Oh! I just remembered what the 1993 Metal Men series was about! It was how the Metal Men weren't actually robots but the souls of Doc Magnus's friends transferred into casings made up of different pure metals! Doc Magnus is a monster! And, again, not because he shoves responsometers up his ass. That's just his Goddamned kink.

Some scientists. These gears will never turn!

I should probably blame the artist for the terrible gear layout instead of Doc Magnus. But isn't every bit of visual representation in this book reflective of Doc and his Metal Men? Of course it is!

Doc Magnus is angry at having gotten so many awards for building the responsometer. I'm sure it has nothing to do with somebody leaking why they were really invented and what he does with them. He's ranting at a Metal Person that I don't recognize. She looks like some kind of maid or nurse or nanny from a 1940s cartoon. Except made of metal. Maybe her name is Nth.

Meanwhile in Challengers Mountain, some frackers drilled into a pit of liquid Nth Metal. It doesn't look anything like Doc's psychiatrist robot so maybe she's Palladium. Although she looks more like a Ruthenium.

Doc remembers telling the Metal Men where they came from and it has nothing to do with implanting the souls of his coworkers and friends into machines. Instead, each of the robot's emotions are derived from Magnus as he put a little bit of himself into each creation. Apparently the greatest part of him he implanted in them was his low self-esteem because every year or so, they rise up and question him about what they really are. Geez, Metal Men. You're fucking robots with a fairly sophisticated but not perfect artificial intelligence. How hard is that to understand?! I guess I can't know how hard it is for artificial intelligence to understand since my intelligence isn't artificial. I don't think. Oh man. Is it?! Where's my Doc Magnus in whose face I can scream, "WHAT AM I REALLY?! WHY AM I HERE?! WHAT IS THE POINT OF HAVING SUCH A SENSUALLY SENSITIVE PROSTATE?!"

Oh, the robot Doc is ranting to is named Nameless. Or not named at all. One of those. I think she should be Ruthenium.

The Nth Metal asks for Will Magnus by name so he puts Ruth back in the closet (she's just a soulless husk) and heads off to see a natural example of his total technological failings. And he seems so jovial about it!

Metal Men #1 Final Thoughts: I hope Ruth becomes an important character later. Maybe a responsometer, hastily discarded from Will's ass, will fall off the nightstand and land inside of her. Then she'll power up and have all the memories of everything Will ever said to her, all of his most terrible secrets and shames. Then she'll become his nemesis but instead of inventing new evil robots made out of the more evil elements (like Neon, Xenon, and Seaborgium), she'll just hire a bunch of henchmen wearing cardboard robot outfits. Man, this writing comic books thing is fucking easy.

Review of The Twilight Zone, Episode Three, "Guns Don't Kill People. But Then, Apparently, People Don't Kill People Either."

Look, Rod. If I'm going to sound smart talking about your stupid little science fiction show, you're going to have to meet me halfway by writing smart episodes. If I have to sit through another rambling episode that doesn't know where it's going like "Mr. Denton On Doomsday," I'll be forced to pretend I know what I'm talking about so I don't sound stupid writing another review of another episode I didn't understand! And I hate pretending that I know what I'm talking about! I'd rather just know! I'm not too bright but my imagination is fucking dreadful! Don't worry though! I'm going to give you a fair shake and try to figure out what the fuck you were trying to do with this episode aside from make your version of a western.

The first thing to assume when figuring out what an episode of The Twilight Zone was about is that it's a morality tale. They're all going to have some sort of message for the viewer to ponder and take with them as they travel through life, like maybe listen to the crazy person on the plane or perhaps don't worry too much about death because while you're hanging from the bridge dying, you'll actually think you're having a grand adventure (it's a lesson Fred Madison learned well in Lost Highway! If you're about to die in the electric chair, just turn into Balthazar Getty!). Anyway, the easiest way to figure out the moral is to start backwards. Rod usually tries to help with a few closing words about how things are in The Twilight Zone. In this one, he's all, "Whoa, Nellie! Giddyup, I reckon! Pardners, lissen ta whut I gots ta say! Sometimes fate can pull a man outta some pit while also keeping some other young buck from fallin' in! Yee haw!" So that's the lesson, I guess. Sometimes an old person is pretty darn useless but they can still be a good example to the young. Maybe. I don't fucking know!

The next thing to consider is the actors. Did I recognize any 1950s actors from this episode? If so, then it must have been an important episode. I won't get into the weeds on the logic of that statement; you'll just have to trust that it's as factual as I can get. The only person I recognized, and he wasn't even the main guy, was Martin Landau. He played a huge dick whose role in the episode was to, um, be a huge dick, I guess? One thing I'll say for Martin Landau: I think he could fit a cantaloupe in his mouth.

Thirdly, you have to consider the paranormal aspects. In this one, some salesman named Fate drops by to give Mr. Denton a gun. The gun symbolizes his fight against alcohol and his struggle to regain control of his life. Except maybe it only symbolizes that in the first half. Because after Mr. Denton humiliates Martin and decides to stop being the town drunk, he realizes his life is now over. Why? Because Rod Serling has a weird idea about the Old West. Apparently in Rod's Old West, every gunslinger was constantly going from town to town fighting to the death with other gunslingers they heard were the best in that town. Why the fuck would anybody do that?! If I was a pretty good gunslinger, I'd only want to fight mediocre gunslingers! What am I going around risking my own neck for?! But Mr. Denton realizes people are going to come around challenging him now that he's not a drunk anymore and he's good with the iron! Is that a gun reference? I think it might be a golf reference!

So now we've got one story that kind of finished up and moved on to another one. Mr. Denton fought off his demons with a gun but now that gun threatens his life. Salesman Fate convinces Mr. Denton not to flee by giving him a potion that makes him the fastest draw in the west. Well, what a deal! Of course Mr. Denton is going to accept that deal even if he told that prostitute the story about killing the sixteen year old gunslinger that challenged him and how all the death led him to drink the rest of his life away. Why run away to save your life and stay sober when you're assured of being able to kill another jerk coming for you?!

Lastly, you need to think about how the big twist relates to the rest of the story (if there is a twist. In this one, there is! I think!). In this one, right before the final gunfight, Mr. Denton swigs his potion. But then he sees his young challenger swig the same potion! Oh no! Now they're both the fastest draw in the West! But they've gone too far to stop now. Besides, maybe one of those potions was to make the guy harder so he could fuck a prostitute after the gun battle. But neither was! Both were Dr. Fate's Super Fancy Speed-em Up Potions! So each gunslinger fires and shoots the other in the hand. The doctor rushes up and says, "Oh no! Now neither of you can ever fire a gun again!" And Mr. Denton says, "Yippee!" And the young guy says, "Aw, shucks!" But then Mr. Denton is all, "Be thankful, kid! You're life is going to be great now! Especially since we're in the Old West and there are prostitutes all over the place that can jerk you off since you can't even hold your tallywacker anymore!"

So that's the lesson, I guess. Violence is never the answer? And also drinking isn't the answer? And maybe running from a fight is also not the answer? But I bet smoking and fucking is still okay! Yippee ki ay!

Inferior 5 #2

How is this not an Ambush Bug comic book?

Sometimes when you rewatch every episode of The Twilight Zone, as I'm doing slowly, you laugh at the things people believed in the Fifties and mock Rod Serling for being such a pathetic, lonely, needy auteur. And other times, you watch an episode like "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" and you are reminded to think, "Oh fuck. Yeah. Society hasn't changed a fucking bit. What are we doing? Rod Serling was a pathetic, lonely, needy genius!" This isn't my review of "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" because I haven't rewatched that one yet. But you know why I'm talking about it if you actually read the words on the cover I just scanned. The other episode that's a stark reminder of the hell we're living in is "Living Doll." Fuck that doll. Can't a grown man hate his stupid step-daughter without being thrown down the stairs and killed?

I won't be watching another episode of The Twilight Zone until tonight. Until then, I'm going to read Inferior 5 and also spend about four hours at work because my fucking asshole boss won't let me take every single day off. Also I'm my own boss. Self-hatred is a thing we find funny in the 21st century, right? Ha ha! I'm a piece of shit and I know it!

And that's why the Inferior 5 were so ahead of their time! They knew they sucked in the Sixties and were okay with it! What a perfect segue into this comic book! I hope it doesn't get interrupted by another digression!

You know, I've had serious thoughts about doing a review blog where I review all of my old blogs. If I didn't think this current blog wasn't already too niche and mostly written just for myself, I'd seriously consider doing the next level blog that would alienate everybody still reading this one. Possibly even me!

Oh, um, so Lisa and her weird friend who has totally convinced everybody that she's not an alien by constantly reminding them that she's not an alien have finally made contact with the kid from Metropolis. His mother was recently killed by canvas-headed Billy Shanker. That means he's been irreversibly pulled into the plot of this comic book. You know who else is being pulled into the plot of this comic book that gives me hope that Ambush Bug might eventually be as well?

Brother Power the Geek!

I immediately realized this was Brother Power the Geek because I'm constantly looking for references to Brother Power the Geek in DC comic books. Also, I'm sticking with my guess that the mysterious guy in the hazmat suit is Ambush Bug. It might also be Jonni DC except the shape isn't exactly right. Unless she's no longer round because her body updates along with the DC logo.

Hazmat Bug leaves Brother Power to meet up with Jenny Shanker, Billy's canvas-headed little sister. She doesn't have a red X on her face so maybe she's not super terrible. She just has a creepy smile. And instead of repeating nursery rhymes about cats lying about their winter wear, she simply repeats names. Not great but definitely not as scary.

Billy is currently making friends with either a parademon or a roided out Ambush Bug.

Billy winds up possessing Ambush Bug Hulk and loping off into the desert talking about kittens and pie. I could have worded that differently so that it sounded super dirty.

Billy Ambush Bug attacks Justin (the kid from Metropolis who is probably Merry Maker), Lisa (who must be The Blimp?), and her weird friend Helen who must be White Feather. Awkward Man and Dumb Bunny are probably off making out behind the record store right now. Later, we'll see Dumb Bunny with a look of shame on her face and Awkward Man trying to catch a glimpse of himself in every window he passes to see if he's physically changed in the way he feels he has after losing his virginity. You know how long I looked at my naked self in a mirror after I lost my virginity? Probably pretty long because I was fucking hot in my twenties. I mean at fifteen!

Okay, I guess I don't have to pretend Helen is human to save her reputation among her friends. I was just trying to keep a secret for once in my life.

You know how people will sometimes tell you something but then they give you a list of certain people that can't know the information they've just told you? Yeah, fuck that. I don't keep a data base in my head of who can know what things I've been told. I've told everybody I know straight up: "If you have information you don't want somebody else to know, don't fucking tell it to me. Because I will fuck up. Like that time my friend Brent told me how his girlfriend Simone had a dream where she had me hide in the closet so that I could watch them have sex. And then at a beer festival where we were all hanging out, I brought up the dream to Simone. And then Simone looked at Brent like she was going to flay him alive. And I just kept drinking my beer and thinking, 'Well, Brent, you should have known better!'"

Hazmat Ambush Bug calls off Billy Ambush Bug because his threats against Justin and Lisa do not cause any meta-genes to activate. I mean metal-genes. Just because the characters in this story from 1988 don't know that the mega-genes are actually metal-genes, it doesn't mean I have to pretend ignorance.

Lisa explains to Justin that there are only five kids in Dangerfield, Arizona, and the fifth one keeps getting killed. Justin is the new fifth one and he seems to be so sub-par that Hazmat Ambush Bug's boss has decided not to have him killed. So Billy Ambush Bug heads off to put his canvas bag back on his stupid head.

I can smell the sex all over them!

And then a revelation: Billy and Jenny Shanker might be Brother Power's children!

Meanwhile, the Dominator trying to create a sleeper cell to renew the invasion of Earth has Justin's mother (who isn't as dead as I thought, I guess?). Contrary to what Hazmat Ambush Bug believed, the Dominator thinks that Justin's metal-gene was activated by the encounter with Billy Ambush Bug. But since he doesn't care about anything happening in Dangerfield, Arizona, he ignores the new information. Which he'll probably regret later because the Inferior 5 are going to rise up and save the world! Probably by accident.

In the Peacemaker back-up, we learn that Peacemaker's helmet can talk. Or Peacemaker's head wound received during Crisis on Infinite Earths makes him think it can talk. Either way, he's leaving Russia to go investigate Dangerfield, Arizona. But he won't be going alone! Unbeknownst to him, KGBeast is tracking him!

Inferior 5 #2 Final Thoughts: All you need to know about me as a comic book fan is that I prefer Keith Giffen's art to Jim Lee's or David Finch's or Tony S. Daniel's or Bryan Hitch's or John Romita Jr's (but, I mean, who doesn't in that case, amirite?!). And I also like the way Giffen tells a story. He doesn't give it all over easily. He doesn't explain every single thing in narration boxes. He lets the characters talk and he lets the action play out and he doesn't give a shit if the reader has to put in a little work to figure out what's going on. I despise people who want easy to read stories! Which is good because those people probably like Scott Lobdell and I'm happy to be a person who despises fans of Scott Lobdell.

The Batman's Grave #1

Does Batman have to crash through skylights looking like the Batman logo to protect his trademark?

The first thing I thought when I read the title of this comic book was "No shit. He's a serious motherfucker. We need a new comic book to tell us that? Sure, it's by Warren Ellis so it'll probably tell us in an entertaining way. But it's like DC 101! Batman is grave! He's super...oh! Does this mean like a cemetery plot? Never mind." My first thoughts are always rambling and protracted.

I know I should be reading this story a year hence when it's collected so that I don't forget every twelfth part before reading the succeeding twelfth part. But here I am being a dum-dum because I can't pass up a Warren Ellis comic book. I mean, I guess I can. I haven't been reading Trees. I'll do that one correctly and wait for it to be collected!

The story begins with Alfred wasting his last remaining years tending to the graves of Martha and Thomas and Bruce Wayne. Record scratch. Guy confusedly saying, "WHHHAAAAAAA?!" That's right! Bruce Wayne's grave, jerks! He's dead! Ha ha ha! I guess this series is going to be twelve issues of beautiful poetry about the life growing up around Bruce's grave, the exact opposite of the life that didn't grow around Gotham during Bruce's life. It's a morality tale in twelve parts! Or maybe Alfred just pisses on it every day. It's his symbolic statement about how Bruce Wayne pissed his life away beating up street thugs when he could have truly helped Gotham with his enormous inheritance.

Oh darn. He's not dead yet. I guess I have to wait another eleven issues before I can laugh like a nihilistic misanthrope.

I know I've been harsh on Bryan Hitch in the past but mostly that was due to his writing, I think. Luckily, he's doing art for a Warren Ellis story and as the most unbiased comic book reviewer on the Internet, I would never dare say a bad word about Warren Ellis or the artist working on his story.

Bryan Hitch nails Batman in the Batmobile. Superb!

A couple are attacked in an alley with their child and Batman rushes down to save them because it's the most important thing he can do. If he doesn't save every family mugged in an alley, what did his parents die for? After he severely beats the shit out of the muggers, he puts the responsibility on whether they die or not on the victims of the attack.

See? Batman doesn't kill people. The victims who refuse to call an ambulance after Batman mortally wounds them kill people.

Batman heads off to investigate a suspicious death because sometimes he remembers he's a detective and not just a vengeful demon of the night. The dead guy was either a huge Batman fan or a stalker. Either way, somebody killed him and left no evidence. Not even a riddle. Batman pawns the investigation off to Gordon and goes back home for some tea and a calm British scolding.

Ha ha. I was right about the scolding but I was wrong about the tea. It's all scotch tonight. Also, I absolutely nailed the reason Alfred pisses on Bruce's grave.

Bruce's defense for beating the shit out of people on a nightly basis is that the people he beats the shit out of made the choice to be human pieces of shit. "Not everybody broken by the system and trapped in an endless cycle of poverty decides to work for The Penguin, Alfred!" he whines while kicking at shadows. So Batman's argument is that if he used his resources to help lift people out of poverty, he wouldn't get to enjoy kicking the shit out of people who made terrible decisions out of desperation. Why does Alfred hate Batman so much that he'd try to make him give up his only hobby?

Batman gets tired of Alfred scolding him and goes off to think about the murder. He talks it through and somehow realizes the killer must still be hiding under the floorboards under the bed. I don't know how he came to that conclusion. Probably because he's the World's Greatest Detective and I'm just a dumb asshole who still reads comic books at 48. Having realized he must be correct in his assumption, Batman rushes back to the apartment to discover the weirdo murderer hiding under the floorboards. "I was lonely," he says. And Batman nods and goes, "I get that. Now do you want your teeth knocked out or your liver bruised?"

Batman's Grave #1 Final Thoughts: Just like we believe that Doctor House cannot figure out the medical mystery from all the evidence and only ever comes up with the answer through a flash of insight brought on by a butterfly flapping its wings in China, so we believe Batman can figure out the answer to a mystery without any actual evidence pointing to the solution. We all know gut instinct is more powerful than scientific evidence! And that's why Batman is the best! Because it's way easier to write a story where the person states the facts of the story and then suddenly looks up, snaps his fingers, and shouts, "A-ha!" Then he runs off to solve the mystery while the reader thinks, "Did I miss something?!" I feel like I'm getting awfully close to criticizing Warren Ellis! Maybe I should just shut up and trust that things will be explained next issue!