Alan Moore's Jerusalem: Book 3: Vernall's Inquest: Round the Bend: Line 4.

Line 4: "Canfind in this loquation now she gushes and runs chinkling from her silt and softy bed, pooring her harp out down an illside and aweigh cross the old manscape to a modhouse brookfast."

Non-Lucy-Lips Version: "Confined in this location now she rushes, (twinkling/chuckling), from her silky soft bed, pouring her heart out down a hillside and away across the old manor's landscape to a modest breakfast."

"Canfind"
Even though she has been locked away in this asylum (confined), she hasn't lost herself or her upbeat spirits (can find).

"loquation"
Like the brook she has become a metaphor for (beginning last sentence and continuing through this one), she babbles (talks; loquacious) constantly. This idea that she awakens with an upbeat disposition (considering that her medication is currently working) continues through this sentence in both the literal meaning and the Lucy-Lips version.

"Canfind in this loquation now she gushes and runs"
As a water way will speed up and become rapids as it becomes confined in a narrower space, Lucia, confined in the asylum, now gushes and runs from bed to breakfast.

"she gushes"
As in the way water runs and in the way a person talks exuberantly.

"runs chinkling"
I'm stumped on this one but at a guess (which, really, is most of this anyway!) it's probably a portmanteau of chuckling and twinkling. Both the laughter and twinkling (as in eyes but also as in the way water twinkles in light) showing her morning exuberance (gushes; loquation).

"from her silt and softy bed"
Continuing the imagery that Lucia is a flowing water source, her mind a fluid sluicing through the asylum. Bed, of course, doing double time in just its regular old meanings here.

"pooring her harp out"
"Pouring her heart out" continues the description of Lucia as an effervescent, talkative sprite running about the asylum's grounds. The Lucy-Lips version adds the layer of poverty to this image. She has and owns nothing but her own self here in the asylum. Pouring her "harp" out evokes her voice and enthusiasm as music of its own while also continuing the water metaphor as people often speak of the music of running water.

"down an illside"
In the non-Lucy-Lips version of this, we just see Lucia running down a hillside while "pouring her heart out" (which I assume means talking quite a bit about a lot of her inner stuff (thus the "loquation" bit)). But in the Lucy-Lips version, her heart can also be seen as "pooring" itself down an "illside," being that she suffers from the mental illness schizophrenia. So her thoughts and the things she speaks of can easily get away from her, maybe somewhat out of control. And, of course, we continue with the imagery of water cascading down a hill.

"aweigh"
As a ship heads out to sea, so Lucia's mind and heart float free from any solid berth.

"cross"
Remember! This is Northampton, the Jerusalem of England! So we have to keep that cross imagery in here, evoking a slight reminder of the monk bringing the cross from Jerusalem to the center of the land. Also the word can also evoke sailing across oceans and seas.

"the old manscape"
"Manscape" is probably a portmanteau of "manse" and "landscape." The "manse," in combination with the previous "cross," continues to evoke a religious sense to the scene. Perhaps the asylum is not just Lucia's home but her spiritual center as well, so a house occupied by her spirt or religious sense, or her manse.

"modhouse"
Madhouse. Alan Moore being a British child of the 60s, "mod" may also mean more to him here. But I'm not sure how unless Lucia suddenly hops on a motor scooter.

"brookfast"
Simply closing the sentence on more water imagery.

Alan Moore's Jerusalem: Book 3: Vernall's Inquest: Round the Bend: Line 3.

Line 3: "Her arouse from drowse is like a Spring, a babboling book that gorgles up amist the soils o' sleep, flishing and glattering, to mate the mournin' son."

Non-Lucy-Lips Version: "Her rousing from drowsiness is like a spring, a babbling brook that gurgles up amidst the soils of sleep, flashing and glittering, to meet the morning sun."

"Her arouse from drowse is like a Spring"
Here, we get an image of how fluid her consciousness exists between waking and sleep in the metaphor that doesn't quite exist. But what the words are actually saying is how her consciousness comes on like the Spring, an image that evokes an explosion of flowering and new life. "Arouse" and the fertility of Spring evoke sexuality as well. Spring, with the article "a", evokes the mechanism and the action as well as its other impressions, perhaps conjuring the image of Lucia leaping to wakefulness as well.

"a babboling book"
This chapter is about Lucia Joyce and, as such, will also reference her father James and his novel Ulysses (just as the rest of Jerusalem does!). "A babboling book" suggests the tome, Ulysses, since James Joyce's autographed copy to his daughter was inscribed "Babbo."

"gorgles"
Possibly a reference to Lucia's brother, Giorgio, whom Alan Moore intimates in the following chapter had an incestuous relationship with his sister. Alan Moore, as seen in his work From Hell, cannot keep himself from extracting lengthy fictional accounts of hinted at historical possibilities. So if somebody somewhere wrote that Lucia was perhaps a bit too intimate with Giorgio, Alan Moore has decided they were definitely fucking. Giorgio will feature much more prominently in this chapter.

"amist"
As a spray, percolating throughout a space. Here, it is possibly referring to Lucia's consciousness or perhaps the way the book Ulysses expresses itself to the reader.

"soils of sleep"
Once more evoking the idea of the unconscious as a place that is buried. In sleep, we are underground. Lucia's consciousness must rise out of this darkened Earth as a mist in a graveyard, perhaps to coalesce into her waking mind.

"flishing and glattering"
Lucia will often mix up two words like this, offering insight into what she's really thinking about. Here, at the beginning of the chapter where things are still relatively simple, it may just be getting the reader used to looking out for these mix-ups. As these are both nonsensical words, they may be suggesting real words such as "fishing" or "flushing", and perhaps "clattering" or even "flattering." Fishing could be seen in terms of the human mind, the wakeful mind being the fisherman and his line descending into the depths of unconsciousness to seek answers or memories. "Flushing" could also be seen in this way, perhaps the waking mind flushing the dreams and dark thoughts of the unconscious as one wakes to the world.

"to mate the mournin' son"
Possibly the first reference to an incestuous relationship between Lucia and Giorgio. Why Giorgio would be a "mourning" son, I have no clue. Perhaps a clue that the bit of Lucia's life covered in this chapter takes place when she returned to St. Andrew's Hospital after her father's death and not when she was first admitted there in 1936.

Alan Moore's Jerusalem: Book 3: Vernall's Inquest: Round the Bend: Lines 1-2

Line 1: "A wake, Lucia gets up wi' the wry sing of de light."

Non-Lucy-Lips Version: "Awake, Lucia gets up with the rising of the light."
Lucia wakes up at dawn.

"A wake"
The language of this chapter, the language which Lucia Joyce speaks, is that of her father's language from Finnegans Wake.

"wry sing of de light"
Wry seems to modify "sing of de light" or "Song of Delight." Two possible meanings seem to leap out here. Possibly Lucia wakes up in a state of delight characterized by a subtle sense of humor concerning her current state of affairs. On the other hand, she may find disappointment in what her life, her "song of delight," has come to. Ending with the word "delight" gives the reader a hopeful and optimistic feeling towards Julia but the invocation of the word "wry" throws a scanner in the works. This first line needs more context.

The current context, though, is that we know Lucia Joyce is waking up in an asylum. So perhaps she's making the best of things? Or is in a state of mind which doesn't even take into account where her body has been locked away by concerned family and friends.

Line 2: "She is a puzzle, shore enearth, as all the Nurzis and the D'actors would afform, but nibber a cross word these days, deepindig on her mendication and on every workin' grimpill's progress."

Non-Lucy-Lips Version: "She is a puzzle, sure enough, as all the nurses and the doctors would affirm, but never a cross word these days, depending on her medication and on her progress based on how every pill is working."
The doctors and nurses are puzzled by Lucia but they never get angry at her, at least not recently, mostly depending on how well her medication is working.

"She is a puzzle"
Nothing strange here but a simple acknowledgment that the doctors and the nurses simply can't get a read on Lucia. This also allows for some play further down the sentence with "cross word".

"shore enearth"
The shore is next to the sea or the ocean. The earth is solid ground. Perhaps this is an acknowledgment that, at least currently, she's slightly tethered, grounded. But she remains on the shore and can slip out to sea at any moment, meaning lost in her delirium and madness.

"Nuzis and the D'actors"
Lucia's paranoia paints the nurses as Nazis imprisoning and harming and experimenting on her. While the doctors may as well be actors pretending to help her but actually keeping her imprisoned and medicated.

"afform, but nibber a cross word"
The slight altering of "affirm" to express some "form," probably Lucia's in that her form here is a puzzle which the doctors and nurses are trying to solve. In this particular metaphor, she is a crossword which they are attempting to solve with a "nib" or a pen. This means that whatever word they guess cannot be corrected if, in the future, they find it was mistaken. They put their beliefs and assumptions, expertise and experience, ahead of actually trying to correctly solve the puzzle of Lucia.

"deepindig"
Lucia is deeply dug in. Who she is and her personality, her traumas and inner problems, are hidden deep within her just as all of her inner thoughts and traumas are hidden in deep in the language she speaks. Only by digging through her "Lucy Lips" can one extract what she's really thinking.

"mendication"
The idea that her medication is meant to mend her with a hint at "mendicant," or a person, most likely of a religious order, who relies on sustenance from begging. Lucia's condition is much like a religious ecstasy and she relies on the charity and goodwill of those around her to keep her fed and safe from her own delirium.

"every workin' grimpill's progress."
John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is one of the texts Alan Moore is in conversation with in Jerusalem. The rest of the title which is rarely given from A Pilgrim's Progress is "from This World to That Which is to Come." So the pilgrim is progressing from one world to the next, literally, in the book, from the material world to the spiritual world. It is the sole journey that matters to the religious pilgrim, how to navigate the journey while avoiding the pitfalls of this world, and Bunyan's book is an allegory for that journey. Here the work is hinted at but in Lucia Joyce's strange language. She, too, must be on a journey from one world to the next.

"workin' ... progress"
"Work in Progress" one of Alma's paintings in her art show depicting her brother's journey to the other world, his own Pilgrim's Progress. It's also a chapter title in Jerusalem (which makes sense since pretty much all the chapters in Jerusalem represent one of Alma's paintings in the show, as her show is a metaphor for Moore's book (just as Alma is a stand-in for Alan Moore)). Moore chose the phrase "Work in Progress" because it's also what James Joyce called Finnegans Wake as he was, you know, working on it.

Justice League America #26 (1989)

This issue has a hidden naughty word on it!

It would be easier to find the hidden word if this issue were called "Duck Hunt" but it's not. Here's a hint: the naughty word is a synonym of "barn owl."

Imagine if, in 1989, The Huntress had shot Batman in the face with a crossbow bolt. That shit would have sold more issues than when Superman couldn't even win a fist fight. I would have purchased multiple copies and wallpapered my room with that disastrous panel (except the one section of wall where my Poison poster hung).

I wonder why The Huntress was about to shoot Batman in the face in this scene. What was Batman doing to Blue Beetle passed out in trash? Do you think Batman is a sleep creeper? The correct answer to that question is "Obviously." You don't live in the same mansion as Dick Grayson and not caress that sweet butt at least once while pretending to tuck him in.

For the youngsters out there, that weird gray rectangle near Batman's foot is something called an "audio cassette." It was the MP3 of the late 70s and the early 80s. Maybe even later because CDs could never be trusted if you needed music while walking or running or biking.

This issue is called "Slice and Dice! or 'There's something very wrong with Blue Beetle!'" I don't know where the convention of naming a story like this comes from. Like at the end of The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, the narrator would be all, "Be here next week for Slice and Dice! or 'There's Something Very Wrong With The Blue Beetle!'" Except, in that case, both titles would be some dumb pun about how the current episode ended. I'd come up with some examples but I'm terrible at puns.

Currently, Guy Gardner is reading porn and yelling at the phone. No wonder Ice is going to fall hard for him. What a man!

Blue Beetle winds up picking up the phone because Guy Gardner was too manly to answer it. When he does, he winds up in some kind of post-hypnotic trance, leading him to stab Oberon and trying to kill Max Lord. Hmm, no wonder Max Lord eventually shoots him in the face.

See? This is why I like Guy! Instead of constantly harassing the women in the League the way Beetle and The Flash do, he simply compliments them on their attractive bums. Like a gentleman!

Before Guy Gardner can chase after Blue Beetle to figure out why he stabbed Oberon and what he may have done to Max, Fire explodes into green flames. It's not shown on panel but I know what's going on! My memory might be terrible but you don't forget when a superhero goes from wearing practically nothing to wearing absolutely nothing.

Turns out, Beetle stabbed Max as well. But Max went running out into the public because nobody would ever do anything crazy in public, right? There are witnesses in public! Witnesses who will witness your shame. It's the main reason I don't go out in public and I'm not even violent. I'm just very ashamed.

I bet Blue Beetle's final thought before he died was, "Hunh. This must be irony."

I've discussed this before but I bet mind control being an actual (and fairly common) thing in the DC Universe was just a boon to defense attorneys. "Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury. Have you ever heard of . . . MIND CONTROL!" Acquitted!

The Huntress arrives because she's on the cover. She decides to try to save Max for some reason. I guess that's what makes her a hero. She'll risk her life to save people she doesn't even know whereas I'll risk my life to save maybe 30% of the people I know.

Max Lord passes out in an alley from loss of blood. Then The Huntress knocks out Blue Beetle before he can finish murdering Max. That means it's time for another hero to wander on the scene and jump to some inaccurate conclusions.

Oh good. It's Batman. He never jumps to inaccurate conclusions!

Do you like how I pretended to have forgotten about the cover? That's called acting!

Batman's outfit is way too high-waisted to be a man's outfit. I think he accidentally put on Batwoman's costume.

Batman begins wrestling with The Huntress because Catwoman isn't around. While they're engaged in frottage play, Blue Beetle regains consciousness and starts muttering about doing a murder for the Queen. So I guess he's been hypnotized by Queen Bee, current ruler of Bialya. I'm not sure how "hypnotizing a person over the phone" is a power a bee-themed villain would have. A bee has never convinced me to do anything except run around screaming.

This is Beetle's head and shoulder but, for a second, my penis thought it was The Huntress's butt.

Batman knocks out Blue Beetle (but softly so that he doesn't become a completely different person for thirteen issues) while Huntress pulls a Batman on Batman and disappears. Everybody winds up back at the Embassy (rather than the hospital where Batman might have to explain some things and Beetle might get in trouble with the law) to discover that Oberon is in the hospital and Fire has been calmed down. What happened to her, people who read this comic book back in 1989 were probably wondering like crazy. Although Guy Gardner paints a pretty sexy picture of what happened to her.

Oh yeah! Fire and Ice and a dump!

I wonder if I can commission Frank Cho to draw the image that's burned into my brain right now? Probably!

The letters this month were from Steven Robinson of Chicago, Illinois; Jim Kelly of Freeport, New York; Derek VanDeweighe of Ontonagon, Michigan; Robert Knuist of Mountain View, California; Eugene Hoyle of Middletown, New York; Jeffrey B. Sparkman of Tracy, California; Jody Hamby of Robbins, Tennessee; and Binky. Robert almost acknowledges Bob Lappan the Letterer when he lists everybody by name until he gets to Bob and just fizzles out with "the rest of the crew." Which, Robert, took longer to type than "Lappan" (as he was using only last names). What a jerk.

Justice League America #26 Rating: B-. Batman didn't recognize The Huntress so I suspect this was her first post-Crisis appearance (other than maybe her self-titled series). Is she going to become a member of the team?! Well, I mean, why else bring her into it? Oh yeah! To sell issues of her own series! Man, now I feel manipulated! I'm dropping the rating on this comic book! Or did I? You'll never know if I was too lazy to actually change the rating! I hope to see more of The Huntress, if only to get better shots of her butt and clear my head of the Beetle's head and shoulders "butt" that kind of turns me on every time I picture it.

Justice League Europe #1 (1989)

Sorry to be pedantic but it's not really déjà vu when you're holding the thing that's obviously the source of the thing you have an overwhelming feeling has happened before.

This team is going to be so fantastic! They've got all the super-hero stereotypes: the guy in armor, the funny guy who can change shape, the other funny guy who can change shape, the reluctant hero, the woman with the big tits, the other woman with the big tits, and the new guy who's still trying to shake the reputation of how boring the old guy was. Oh, and Captain Atom. I think he's the guy with the atomic stick up his butt. Guaranteed he will be making zero jokes.

I've also just noticed this team has two brunettes (or would that be a brunet and a brunette? Does anybody fucking care?), two blondes, two gingers, and two guys with silver heads. Also Power Girl's hair is scaring me. In a different way than her tits are scaring me.

I dare you to find an opening shot of Paris in a DC comic book that doesn't include the Eiffel Tower. I'll fucking buy that comic off you for fifty bucks if you find one.

Captain Atom has taken on the mantle of leader of the European division of the Justice League. To remind everybody that their headquarters is in Paris, Captain Atom thinks, "In Paris yet!", while looking at the Eiffel Tower through the window. I can already tell I'm going to be fucking sick of seeing the Eiffel Tower in this comic book. I know he's the leader and all (because he just told me) but I hope I don't have to look at Captain Atom too much while reading this comic book. He's so disturbing! He's just a mass of too much muscle with a small little testicular shaped bulge in front and a bare if silver ass. By the look of him, I'm fairly certain he's either naked or covered in a thin layer of plutonium. Which means he's lost his dick somewhere. I'm not saying I want to see him walking around with his cock hanging out like Doctor Manhattan but I do think it would be far less disturbing than not having one.

Captain Atom meets Catherine Cobert, the Paris Embassy Chief. That means she's the equivalent of either Max Lord or Oberon. She's French which means she's super sexy and horny. All Parisian women are constantly horny because no matter where they look, they see the giant metal erection that's a symbol of their city.

Ralph and Sue Dibny arrive and I'm sorry to see Captain Atom's disturbing crotch and muscular ass leave the page as I'm forced to watch Ralph Dibny's disgusting six foot long neck wrap about Sue like an outtake from a Hentai cartoon. Ralph is grossing me out so badly that I'm going to go read Identity Crisis right now just to make him super sad.

I'm surprised Power Girl and Wonder Woman didn't rip off more dicks back in the day.

My joke about Wonder Woman and Power Girl simply being the big tits on the team was satire attacking the way comic books often depict women as simply male fantasies so stop calling my a hypocrite! As you can see from the way The Flash is portrayed, I was spot on with my satiric critique. And while you might just want to get angry at everything you read without actually thinking about it, blaming the writer for not make their statement clear, maybe try not being such a lazy reader! Or such an angry reader! You don't have to be instantly angry at something! That's what those asshole Comicsgaters do! I know you're full of youthful passions but maybe, just maybe, you can rein those passions in a bit before flying off the handle at everybody, just in case. I know there's a lot of clout to exposing allies on the Internet! But that's why all y'all angry youths get it wrong so often. Because you've got to be the first to "deconstruct" some ally's beliefs, causing you to miss subtle and hilarious critiques of pop culture like when I said Wonder Woman was just a pair of big tits!

Anyway, my main point is leave me alone! If you think I said something terrible, just re-read it while thinking, "This isn't so terrible. It's actually the opposite of terrible!" See? Now you understand me!

Animal Man and Rocket Red get to know each other on the way to the Embassy. They're both family men with wives and kids. How come Ralph gets to bring Sue to stay in the Embassy but they don't get to bring their families? I mean, other than Dmitri's family is stuck in the USSR and Buddy's wife probably has a job back in California. Isn't she a photographer or something? Been way too long since I read my Animal Man comics.

I think I had a caption for this but my cat, Gravy, is sitting four inches from my face and staring at me and it's freaking me out a bit..

The first meeting of the Justice League Europe and notice anything weird about the group (other than Animal Man trying to stare down Power Girl's top)? That's right! None of them feel like they need to use their powers in the meeting except for that disgusting Ralph Dibny! Nobody wants to see a five foot long neck! It's fucking gross!

Am I the only one who has an issue with Ralph's neck constantly elongated? It might be the childhood trauma I suffered from this picture:

I used to slowly flip through an old hardcover copy we had of Carroll's book until the pages would flop to this page. It would freak me out and I'd close the book and drop it quickly. But sooner or later, I'd be compelled to pick it up and have another look.

Another thing I used to do as a kid that would scare the shit out of me but I felt compelled to engage in the behavior anyway: I would stand out in the family driveway after dark with a flashlight and shine the light into the starry sky. I assumed something somewhere out in space could see the light and might follow it back to its source. My arms would erupt in gooseflesh and I'd flick the flashlight off and run inside before I could be abducted. But eventually, I'd find myself out in the driveway again, shining the flashlight into the sky while nearly shitting myself.

The teleporters in the Paris Embassy aren't working and they wind up frying Animal Man's luggage. At least I hope it was his luggage and not his little girl on a surprise visit. I bet Morrison suggested that so he could have some really great drama in his Animal Man series but editorial was all, "Are you fucking crazy?! We can't kill his daughter! Maybe his wife?"

In no time, the League has a mystery: a man drops dead in their lobby while looking for their help.

Goddammit Ralph! Just fucking walk around to the other side of the body like everybody else, you fucking freak!

I need to remind myself not to eat before reading another issue of this because my stomach seriously can't take all of this long neck business.

Power Girl quickly becomes my favorite member when she speaks truth to power:

Sue Dibny deserves to die for finding this shit cute.

Look, I like Sue Dibny! But she is going to die and there's nothing I can do about that! So I'm trying to come to terms with her death by convincing myself that she deserved it! And if loving Ralph Dibny isn't a sin, then what is?!

Oh, that's right. Wally West's attitude toward women is definitely one.

Was Wally's "I'm going to try as hard as I can to get into Wonder Woman's leotard" attitude funny in 1989? I don't have any memory of it so I'm thinking it was probably just a mundane comment. Just part of the normal workplace dialogue which women had to suffer through every single day. And if a woman said, "Hey, I don't appreciate that shit, buddy?", they were labeled uptight or a snob or frigid or a bitch. Because, of course, the guy didn't think of himself as a creep so how could his comment have been creepy? It was just some light-hearted flirtatious banter, you know?! Lighten up!

One thing I have noticed is that both Wonder Woman and Power Girl seem to simply ignore his lewd come-ons. I'm sure they've learned that to speak out is to face the passive-aggressive wrath of male coworkers who, limiting the ability for self-reflection, simply label them a humorless woman.

I can't scan every panel after the one with The Flash hitting on Wonder Woman but I assure you that nobody tells The Flash he's being a fucking lech.

Meanwhile, a mysterious man in a trench coat stands outside the Embassy and pushes the button on a small device. The device is a rectangular piece of metal with one red button and an antenna. If he's not opening a garage door, he's up to something terrible.

Not long after the button is pushed, an angry French mob rushes the Embassy, screaming something about Nazi pigs. Maybe they heard The Flash's comments and, even in France, they were just too sexist.

Captain Atom's first reaction is to irradiate (or disintegrate!) the mob.

The head on the end of the thirty foot neck yells to its teammates to not hurt anybody because they're civilians. Metamorpho complains that they might hurt him instead of, you know, turning into some kind of harmless gas that would put them all to sleep. He must know how to do that, right?! He's the element man! You'd have to be an expert on elements to have that job. Unlike me who would panic and think, "I don't know! Does krypton put people to sleep?!" Then I'd probably turn into boron and bleach everybody's hair.

I just pointed out that I wouldn't know what I'm doing as The Element Man so don't bother sending me a message about how boron wouldn't do that! How the fuck would I know?!

Shit. I might have accidentally poisoned them all but at least I'd be trying to do something!

Metamorpho has the power to subdue them chemically or to change into a cage to keep them from hurting themselves or others. Instead, he just decides to take a nap on their heads. At least Ralph is subduing people even if he's making me sick with his fifty foot long neck.

I guess Wonder Woman lost her lasso because she needs to use something else she just found lying around the place.

Oh god. That's Ralph's dick, isn't it?

Some of you might be thinking, "Why would you think that's a dick?" To which I'd answer, "Never you fucking mind."

Eventually, the civilians simply top being mind-controlled and confusedly go back to wherever they came from. Probably a café or a brothel. What else is there in Paris?

Captain Atom learns that the man who died in their lobby croaking out his last word of "Braces!" was a Nazi. And the French hate Nazis! Which means they should love the Justice League because the Nazi died in their embassy! But instead, they hate the Justice League because the Nazi went to them for help? I don't know exactly how it all works but the point, I think, is that somebody is trying to make the Justice League uncomfortable in Paris! How rude!

If I knew what super-villains were known for being rude and inconvenient, I'd take a guess at who was responsible. Maybe Mr. Nobody and the Brotherhood of Dada?! No, that would make this series way too interesting.

This first issue has some letters from people who decided to respond simply to the announcement that this comic book was coming out. They are from Buddy Ingram of Trussville, Alabama; Bill Froberg of Easton, Pennsylvania; and Michael Pickens of Newark, Ohio. I'd be surprised if any of them praise the letterer since they haven't even read this first issue. Although I wished that they had. Froberg takes comic books way too seriously and is all, "If you don't listen to my suggestions, I will not read more than three of your comics." And then Pickens is all, "You will have to come to terms with the point I am making in my letter or else nobody will read your book." Christ, chill out, my dudes! You might think you have reasonable and rational arguments but just remember that the subject of those arguments are people who absolutely defy reality and are illogical arguments all in themselves!

Justice League Europe #1 Rating: B. Not a bad start although it felt a little bit like the introductory paragraph in a high school essay that always explains that the writer is about to write an essay and could easily be dropped without changing the essay in any way. This issue was lots of moving into the Embassy and members meeting for the first time and The Flash nearly taking his dick out of his pants (or maybe he did but it was just too quick for anybody to see?). Their first encounter with a villain happens to be exactly the thing I hate about superhero comic books: the villain is targeting the heroes themselves. Which means the heroes, so far, aren't needed! If the villains are targeting the heroes then the heroes don't exist to save the world. They simply exist to save themselves. That bothers me way more than Ralph Dibny's elongated neck (which fucking bothers me to hell and back).

Justice League International #25 (1989)

Kevin Maguire nails the "I just shit myself" facial expression.

Twenty-five issues in and I just noticed that the "J" and the "U" in the title stand alone as the JLI abbreviation. Pretty sneaky, sis.

Ty Templeton pencils only fours pages of this issue and I think I know why.

He spent most of the month perfecting Ice's ass.

I'm only now just realizing that I read comic books for the butts.

Apparently Booster Gold and Blue Beetle are still working for that vehicle repossessing company because a call comes in for a big job. You would think Batman would put up some money to pay the Justice League a livable wage so that they can be ready to act when a crisis hits Earth. Didn't the recent alien invasion teach Batman anything? The world was almost conquered because Booster and Beetle were busy repossessing some drunk's minivan and Fire was at a modelling audition and Ice was filming a commercial and Mister Miracle was performing at a ten year old's birthday party and John Jones was investigating the possible infidelity of a wayward husband. Pretty sure superheroes shouldn't be moonlighting.

Beetle decides to fly the Bug to the job which seems like a weird choice if he's bankrupt. The fuel to fly that thing has got to cost more than they're going to make on this job.

These speech bubbles are coming out of the wrong mouths.

Is their a bigger sin in comic books than when the letterer places speech bubbles on the incorrect characters? I mean other than the sin of letting Scott Lobdell write the comic or Rob Liefeld draw it or Howard Mackie on punctuation.

This must have been the story arc where Batman went into therapy. Ha ha! Just kidding! He probably wound up having to fight a class action lawsuit in court for assault on half of Gotham's underworld.

Booster and Beetle have been hired to repossess a vampire. That must mean somebody owns the vampire. Which means Booster and Beetle are working for a slaver. Is this what Comicsgate means when they want to return to old fashioned comics? "I've had it up to here with inclusivity! Make mine comic books where heroes are involved in human (and vampire) trafficking!"

Booster doubts that vampires actually exist which simply makes the entire situation worse. Because that means they're simply kidnapping a regular old human and bringing them back into captivity! And here I thought Booster Gold and Blue Beetle were just a couple of fun loving dimwits. I had no idea they were also inhuman monsters.

Keep telling yourself whatever lies you need to to keep from actually caring, Beetle.

It might look like Booster Gold is having an attack of conscious in that last panel but I think he's just calling Beetle disgusting because he's planning on buying a bunch of Bob Dylan CDs.

The man who hired Booster and Beetle directs them to an abandoned sewage plant where the vampire has apparently taken up residence. The two of them treat it as a huge joke right up until they wander into a chamber full of human bones. I'm sure there's a rational explanation that doesn't have anything to do with an escaped hostage eating a bunch of other people.

Examining the bones more closely, Beetle realizes they're not human because they all have large fangs. Which totally means that no crime has been committed here. Pretty sure anything that isn't actually human can be killed and the law can't do anything about it. At least in the DC Universe.

The duo are subsequently attacked by the vampire they were sent to hunt although he seems less intent on eating them and more focused on getting them to just leave him alone. Which was kind of my point from the beginning. Why would these idiots take a repo job from some corporate CEO to hunt down a sentient being?! They're not bounty hunters hunting down somebody who skipped out on their bail! They're supposed to be out nabbing cars from people who have missed a few payments (which, look, I'm not totally on board with either, actually!).

He asks some fair questions.

This vampire sounds like me that time Jimmy Arthur chased me into a 7-Eleven and punched me in the face. My guess is this vampire is just about to smash Blue Arthur and Jimmy Gold over the head with his skateboard, causing him to bleed so badly that the cops who come by to investigate the fight will tell him, "You really fucked those guys up."

The vampire's name is Caitiff and he lets Booster and Beetle know it every time he makes a statement about himself. During his fearful rant, he admits that "This one can kill!" Yes, he speaks like a Khajiit. Anyway, that statement is all Booster and Beetle need to justify beating the shit out of him, kidnapping him, and taking him back to his captor. If I wanted to defend their actions, I suppose I could believe that they're too terrified by the idea of a vampire on the loose to reflect on their situation. Although shouldn't heroes be better than regular people who never, ever reflect on their situations and simply follow their instinctual drives based on selfish desires and irrational fears? Maybe this is why this Justice League never seemed very heroic. They were all just regular people doing stupid shit for selfish reasons.

Uh oh. This is beginning to sound like some kind of historical analogy. My Social Justice Warrior sense is tingling!

I was on the vampire's side until he got all judgmental about eating animals and then tried to defend his diet by saying he eats to survive. Welcome to the club, dickweed. Sure, humans don't have to eat meat to survive. But what else are cows going to do?! Survive in the wild on their own?! Good luck, dumb-dumbs!

Based on the whole "we eat meat to survive" defense, and based on the evidence that humans pen animals to slaughter them, do Booster and Beetle have to let the vampire go if they discover a bunch of people locked up in cages down in the sewer? They wouldn't want to be hypocrites, would they?

The main reason Booster and Beetle stop punching the vampire in the face is that he exclaims that they killed his wife and kids. So Beetle is all, "Whoa! This vampire fucks?! Who would have thought! He's hideous!" And Booster is all, "Yeah, but you never saw his wife, right? Probably a real vampire dog!" Although when is the last time a female vampire was ugly?! They're always super hot.

You cutting into a medium-rare steak versus Caitiff with his teeth stuck into the neck of a limp baby. Who looks worse?!

This is intolerable! I don't mind when super-heroes stop bank robberies and punch madmen in the face! But calling out eating meat?! Outrageous! I wish I was still a vegetarian so I could also look down on meat eaters right now! "Take that, you artery-clogged scumbags!" is probably what I would say while bathing in my feelings of superiority and righteousness! God, I miss those heady days! Totally worth not eating meat!

In the end, because the ethics of the situation just got way too complicated for Booster and Beetle to deal with, Caitiff falls in a pit while running from them and is pierced through the heart by a stalagmite. That's probably good enough to kill a vampire, right? Stake? Stalagmite? Practically the same thing.

Booster Gold believes Caitiff killed himself but Blue Beetle is all, "I don't want that on my conscious so I'm going to argue it was an accident!" Either way, they feel pretty shitty for causing this guy grief after all the grief he's already suffered at the hands of white Europeans. I mean men in general, probably.

Letters this issue were from Commander Anthony Gallagher of Melbourne, Australia; Charlie Harris of Tucson, Arizona; Sylvain Mallette of Spring Harbor, Michigan; Charles J. Sperling of Flushing, New York; Kip Talbot of Dayton, Virginia; Chris Gladis of Farmington, Connecticut; Tom Longfellow of Elkridge, Maryland; Jody Hamby of Robbins, Tennessee; and DJ of Clairton, Pennsylvania. Not a single one of them praised the Letterer. Not even a polite "and the letters were really clear and easy to read" after extolling lavish praise on the inker and penciller and writer and colorist. How sad must Bob Lappan have been for his whole career?

Just kidding! We have a first this issue! Charlie Harris doesn't praise any of the other people on the book and simply ends his letter with "By the way, Bob Lappan is a GREAT letterer in my opinion and I just wanted to say so." Who let that letter through?! Was Bob Lappan in charge of the letter column this month?! Seems pretty suspicious that somebody would just praise the letterer out of nowhere. Is Charlie Harris actually Bob's mom?!

Hey! I like all of those too! Why didn't I write this guy?! Probably because he didn't mention Halo.

Justice League International #25 Rating: B+. My favorite part of this issue was how Giffen and DeMatteis present an ethical quandary but decide it's too hard to come to some sort of conclusion so they just kill the guy who is making everybody start to feel bad about themselves. And afterward, Beetle and Booster just go off to have a beer to forget about the poor dead vampire guy. He was just the last of his kind and all, the rest having been genocided by humans. No need to worry about it anymore though! And it's not like Booster and Beetle ever dissected a vampire! Why should they feel bad that they just harangued the last of the vampire race into committing suicide?! That was his choice! They were just trying to help by punching him in the face a lot and then threatening to take him to STAR Labs where they totally wouldn't have exploited him and experimented on him cruelly! They're, like, good guys and shit!

Bonus Book! #13 (Justice League International #24) (1989)

Simon Bisley got in trouble for drawing a penis in Lobo's arm musculature but this Haspiel guy can just draw a penis right on Maxwell Lord's penis?

I'm judging this Bonus Book by the cover and this is my judgment. You know how you have that friend that's always talking shit and causing trouble? And you know how sometimes somebody reacts violently toward your friend being an unbearable prick to strangers? You know how you just shrug instead of having their back and thinking, "Yeah, well, what did they think was going to happen?" That's what I think just happened to Maxwell Lord. He's a fucking prick and the Justice League are probably kicking back at headquarters shrugging and saying, "What did Max think was going to happen?!"

See?! They're just watching dumb old sci-fi movies which Giffen and DeMatteis probably stole plots and quotes from.

Actually, this takes place before Max Lord is kidnapped. He's in the panel to the right, just after the spot where I cut off the scan. You can just make out his briefcase because I did a sloppy job!

I'm really not the person to complain about this but every single sentence of dialogue in this story ends in an exclamation point! At first I was all, "Why is this story about Booster and Beetle talking about television shows and movies so exciting?!" And then I was all, "Hey...I recognize this trick!" Half of my novels use an exclamation point at the end of every sentence to trick movie studios into optioning the rights!

This is the part where I might sometimes critique the art but fuck if I complain about any artist that worked with Harvey Pekar. He may have passed on but he still scares the shit out of me. Also I think Max Lord's nose is another penis.

The only sentences that don't end in an exclamation point end in ellipsis or a question. That means these characters are either shouting, questioning somebody, or questioning themselves. Fuck. I think I just described the way I talk.

I almost questioned how this robot, in 1989, could sound this animated with all the exclamation points. But then I remembered the Wizard of Wor arcade cabinet constantly laughing at me.

Max Lord was just kidnapped by that robot pretending to be a chauffeur. I'm less curious about who kidnapped him and why then I am about this robot's personal life. Is he only programmed to imitate chauffeurs? I'd like to imagine he has a rich and vibrant life on his off hours where he's married to a toaster oven that pretends to be a lawyer and has three electric pencil sharpener children.

While in the back of the limousine, Maxwell Lord thinks his first calm sentence: "Might as well get comfortable." Man, that's the only one I would have exclamated!

It was the time of the Romans!

Never mind that last caption. It was for me and like two other people.

I've matured so much over the last ten years that I'm not going to write an entire paragraph on this woman's ass. But I haven't matured enough not to be proud of my maturity.

Imagine being so wealthy that you didn't immediately have this thought when a fucking robot driving a limo kidnapped you.

"Oh, I'm being kidnapped by a robot! Must be run of the mill blue collar super villains! How embarrassing!"

The kidnappers, being so well-funded, have kidnapped Max Lord to become, um, even betterly well funded! They want half a billion dollars for his return. Who's going to pay it? I don't know. Superman? Does he have that kind of money? I bet he makes diamonds up his butthole while he works out on Dr. Shay Veritas's bench press she invented that lets Superman press the equivalent of five Earths so that he can drip one single drop of sweat and then refuse to towel off the machine.

As an aside that has nothing to do with this comic but does sort of involve Superman and one of my least favorite writers on his book, Scott Lobdell, I've now seen enough examples online where Scott Lobdell comments on a person's review of one of his books (usually when they're complementary (which is something that actually happens? I know, I was floored too!)) to be convinced he's read my reviews. So, because I'm maturing, I'm sorry for being such a huge hilarious jerk to you, Mr. Lobdell!

The kidnappers cannot convince anybody to pay them 500 million dollars so the people who hired them (and paid for the headquarters and the robot driver) fire them for not being able to get the money. Sure, I guess. But how is it the fault of the mercenaries if the amount you wanted for Max Lord is just too high? They didn't come up with the figures! And when the ransom isn't going to make a profit, they fire the mercenaries and probably stiff them too! Who works like that?!

Because the originator of the kidnapping pulls all funding, the mercenaries accept paying jobs from Maxwell Lord and he frees himself. So let me get this straight. A criminal organization spent a shit-ton of money to kidnap Max Lord in the hopes that they could make an even bigger shit-ton of money. But when nobody can get enough money together in 24 hours, they get cold feet and bail on the people they hired to kidnap Max. It's a good thing the story never reveals who the criminal mastermind of this plan was because their reputation would have been in tatters. They'd never get another gig as an antagonist in the DC Universe!

Here's a quote from the writer of this story:

I hope you finally got a chance to write your new story because this one where the hostage winds up being too much trouble for the kidnappers so they eventually pay to get rid of him was old when I first read this in 1989!

This was the final Bonus Book in DC's Bonus Book project. I'm sad that I don't have the Bonus Book with art by Rob Liefeld. But then that one was in Warlord and I never read that series.