Two-Step #1 (December 2003)

What's the word I'm looking for here? Oh yeah! AWOOOOGA!

I remember absolutely nothing about this comic book except the art style. When I found it in the stack, I simply thought, "Oh yeah! I remember those tits!" Maybe it has something to do with a genie, I think? I don't even remember the Cliffhanger publishing imprint of Wildstorm but I suppose I should since they also published two other comic books I read: Crimson and Steampunk. This title doesn't even get a mention in the Cliffhanger Wikipedia entry! I normally wouldn't trust myself on how memorable a comic book is but if it wasn't even given a brief aside in a Wikipedia entry on a publishing imprint that didn't even publish that many titles over it's five or so year life, it can't be that great, right? I mean, I trust Warren Ellis to give me something interesting and Amanda Conner to make my eyes come. But what's Jimmy Palmiotti doing on this thing? Did he add the swears?

The story begins in an alternate London of 2001 that looks like it was reverse-colonized by India. What I mean by that is everything seems to be based on India instead of hodgepodge of Franco and Germanic and Nordic and Roman and Pagan influences as opposed to what I think the real idea of "reverse-colonizing" might be: where the colonizers seem surprised when their homeland becomes less "home" than they're used to because all the immigrants of the places you've colonized have also made it home and brought a lot of their culture from their homeland. It's one of the things that seems to piss off racists even though it's like, "Hey, buddy? Maybe be mad at your racist predecessors for going around trying to take control of every country in their line of sight! Nobody in the countries you colonized asked for you to water down their culture with prudish religious ideas and milquetoast cuisines. But by invading their countries, they practically begged them to come live in theirs as well. Share and share alike, you know?"

What I'm trying to say is, "This London looks like my kind of town!"

Would I genetically engineer my cat to be a smoker? Yes. Yes I would.

Everybody is dancing and singing in the streets like they've been cursed by a dancing demon. No, something isn't right there. Maybe witches?

Oh wait! This really might be a series about a genie! Maybe my memory didn't fail me and this was somebody's second wish! Their first wish was for an 8-inch pianist for some reason. Or I could just accept the casual world building introduced visually in the first few pages.

The main character from the cover (the one without the tits) has been learning to fly. Mostly he's been listening to Pink Floyd and reading Zen Flight. But he's now decided the only way to do it, is to do it. So he jumps off of the roof of a building directly over the other main character (the one without the no tits). Her name is Rosi Blades and she's a cam girl. Oh man! Remember cam girls! No wonder she's doing that "put your dick on my tongue" Only Fans face on the cover! Because Cam Girls are the grandmothers of Only Fans!

Oh no! Y'all better stop boring Rosi because I do not want her to lose those flesh potatoes!

"Fart blood." That must be the part Jimmy wrote. For not remembering this comic book until I saw it, I absolutely remembered "fart blood." But, again, only after I re-read it. Which seems, to me, a terrible way to say you've "remembered" something. Oh yeah! That thing I just read and looked at. I remember it now that I've once again seen it and read it! Good job, brain! That was sarcastic, in case you didn't notice, brain, because you don't seem to be that with it.

Rosi has a little floating web cam that follows here around as well as a camera on her left eye and her right tit. I bet it costs extra to watch the feed from her tit. Sort of a premium kink channel. "I've always wanted to know what it was like to be a boob! Look at all the eye contact I'm making with pervy men!" Not that all men who look at boobs are pervs. Looking at boobs is an art. You can't just stare at the boobs divorced from the sex object they're on. I mean the person! The woman they're on! You have to admire them with the entire package. Keep the eyes roving. Head back to the tits a few times, just to make sure your initial impression was accurate. The same rule applies to admiring tattoos. You want to glance and scan, glance and scan. Staring too hard gives the impression you're judging the person!

One time I was walking through an airport and a cute woman was walking toward me. I looked her in the face but she was looking away. Then I looked down at her tits and back up to her face to find she was making eye contact with me at that moment. She had caught me looking! But then she smiled and I was all, "Is this love?" But it wasn't love. It was just a butterfly on a stupid meme.

Later, Amanda draws two cats fucking.

Feed 3, the one not quite focused on the chicken running by (because her boob is jiggling. It's unfocused in some shots and not in others. Because of boob jiggle!), is from Rosie's boob. Apparently she's got a camera in her ass as well (ROSI POV 4). I'm just kidding. That's probably the thing on her shoulder. But I wish I wasn't kidding.

I'm sure this had nothing to do with Amanda's Harley Quinn gig but nobody would be surprised if this was the reason she got it.

Remember Jenny Cam? Just slowly blink at me if you do so you don't throw your old-ass neck out by nodding.

So current-day London isn't just a big Bollywood movie. That's just this neighborhood. It seems what everybody thought of as online living spaces where anything can happen is how living in the 2001 London of this alternate world is. And Rosi here is already bored by all of it.

Rosi's stuck in an existential rut brought on by the constant need over the course of the year to keep her viewers excited and engaged. She's got Twitch burnout.

Stop looking up the cat's butthole. Check out the dog with the anal beads tail!

The guy who jumped off the building earlier (and, I'm assuming, flew?) goes running past Rosi as she knocked over by the guy he's chasing: some white guy with dreadlocks in a puffy jacket. He seems to have stolen something from flyboy. Rosi doesn't give a shit what's going on because it's excitement! She chases after to give her viewers a thrill and/or to fuck the good-looking guy.

See? Plus more jiggle footage!

The bad guy (you know he's the bad guy not because he stole something from Zen Flyboy but because he is white with dreadlocks) hits Flyboy in the bollocks and runs off into a club called Avant-Spook. That gives Rosi time to introduce herself to her soon-to-be new boyfriend.

I've decided I quite like Rosi.

I also have decided that I quite like Zen Flyboy.

While also liking Rosi even more, especially when she pulls out her wedgie.

I hope this series only went three issues or else I'm going to have to track down the rest of it!

Zen Flyboy introduces himself, on camera, as Tony Ling. So if he was a secret Zen Assassin, he's now a not-so-secret Zen Assassin. Rosi and Tony chase Dreadlocks through a fetish club and out the other side where they feel each other out for a potential romantic encounter later on.

Tony's game could use a little improvement.

I'm having trouble deciding what not to scan while reading this comic book because Amanda knocked it out of all the ballparks for this. I mean, she always does. But I guess I adore Rosi so much that it feels like Amanda's doing more work than she normally might. Plus that jiggle in the boob cam? So fantastic.

Tony shoots Dreadlocks' kneecaps out and he collapses to the ground. He's about to pull a gun and shoot Tony in the face when Rosi jumps up and down on Dreadlocks' head. While doing so, her boob cam catches a shot that I can almost guarantee has never been in a comic book outside of maybe an R. Crumb book.

Cat with a used tampon! Cat with a used tampon! *guitar riff*

After helping Tony retrieve the trombone case, Rosi learns that he wasn't retrieving it at all. Tony was stealing it from Dreadlocks. Well, I mean, how could anybody have known?! If you don't want everybody immediately assuming you're a douchey prick, don't be a white guy with dreads!

Apparently the item in the trombone case was headed to Reg Quarry, the leader of the Quarry gang. Tony was hired to make sure the item never got to Reg. Somebody really didn't want him to have whatever was in the case.

Reg's wife must have hired Tony.

There's a button on the willy that Tony tells Rosi to touch. But she's all, "I'm not touching it. You touch it!" Can she get more adorable? Tony also refuses to touch it but he presses the button with his gun and the penis plays "Ride of the Valkyries".

Now that Tony has what he was paid to get, and Rosi had a fun stream, the two decide they never want to see each other again. But they betray that feeling by each looking back at the other as they walk away (although at different times). What is this? The most vulgar romantic comedy meet-cute ever written? I hope so because it is so fucking cute and adorable. I'm going to get this comic book pregnant now.

Two-Step #1 Rating: A+. How could I not remember this comic book?! What is wrong in my brain that it doesn't remember something that I find this adorable now? Did I not find it adorable when I first read it? I must have because my tastes really haven't changed much at all! Although when I first looked at the cover after pulling this stack of comics out of the short box they were in, my brain did scream like a little girl first discovering whatever it is little girl's really love. Other little girls, maybe? That sounds right.

Deadman #4 (May 2002)

Mignola out here making this comic seem way more interesting than it actually is.

I shouldn't point to Mike Mignola as the reason I stopped reading this comic book but I will anyway. The last cover made me think, "This is going to be fucking incredible!" And then the story had nothing to do with Mignola's cover. And now this one? Look at this shit! What's this about? What strange supernatural space has Deadman found himself? I can't wait to read this story! But my supposition is that, like last issue, this will have nothing to do with the story inside. And my precious little thirty year old heart (at the time I bought this, I mean!) couldn't stand to be hurt a third time. Is it my fault for judging the book by its cover? For expecting it to be a blend of existential horror and supernatural terror? No, it isn't. I won't blame myself when I was clearly victimized by DC's penchant for having covers that don't match the stories inside. So what if they fooled me over and over and over again since I was a kid? Still not my fault! Look, if you eventually begin blaming Charlie Brown when Lucy's the obviously evil, lying jerk, I'm not sure I want to know you. You don't turn on the victim of perpetual criminals just because they've been victimized one time more than you think is reasonable. They're still the fucking victim, you empathy lacking turd licker!

What I'm trying to say is that nobody in the history of the world has been victimized as horribly as I have been throughout my life by DC's cover lies. I stand by that statement even if it means I sound as naïve and idiotic as Pink does when she sings a song called "My Vietnam" about, well, um, just living her life. Holy shit that wasn't just a dream I had? That's an actual song?! I take it back. I've barely suffered at all and DC's lying about their stories doesn't even move the needle on me! Also I just remembered what the Nazis did in World War II. Oof. What was Pink thinking?! (See how I deflected everything at Pink?! She can take it! She's rich and married to a guy who rides motorcycles and breaks all of his limbs regularly as a living!)

Last issue, we learned that the real villain of this series was a guy named The Sensei. Less said about him, the better. I thought Yellow Peril characters went out of favor in the '80s but it seemed the early 2000s was a whole Renaissance era for them. I'm not suggesting Asian characters shouldn't be villains. I'm all for every kind of person in the world being the evil monster behind all of society's ills! Just maybe don't go with the long fingernails and the Fu Manchu facial hair and the, you know, other exaggerated features. If Yellow Peril villains become acceptable in mainstream media, how long before we're seeing a new trend of golliwog dolls?

Okay, sure, Alan Moore introduced a golliwog character in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. But that's Alan Moore! If he's writing something racist or rapey or utterly inhumane, you give him the benefit of the doubt that he's doing it in such a smart way that you might be too stupid to understand how it isn't racist or rapey or utterly inhumane! He's a genius and a magician! You know how I know Alan Moore is a genius? Because he's the only person in the history of ever who explained magic to me and made me think, "Holy shit. He's right. Magic is fucking real." And I don't mean that in the way you think I mean it! Magic isn't real. It's a fantasy. But magic is real when it's not a fantasy but words warping reality just like, you know, a spell does! In other words, writers are wizards. Even Grant Morrison couldn't make me believe magic is real and they're pretty good at writing. It's just that when Morrison says something that blows my mind, I don't think, "What a great magician!"; I think, "What great drugs Grant does!"

What do you think Fox News and all that other propaganda shit is? It's a Mass Charm spell, binding the weak-minded and warping their reality. Donald Trump was a demon summoned by Right Wing Republican Grift being chanted over and over and over again until enough people believed in the power of those words. Boom! Demon summoned! Plus the added benefit of making people believe things that aren't real? You make them believe that the people who actually see reality are the ones being fooled into seeing a false reality! It's the perfect spell! Fucking assholes. Why'd they have to be so good at magic and controlling dimwitted morons?

Wow. I really went to sea on that tangent. Here's what I was going to write a few paragraphs ago before I was distracted by racism: "Last issue, we learned that the real villain of this series was a guy named The Sensei. This issue, we learn that Steve Vance thinks prison rape is kind of funny."

Granted, the guy doesn't actually threaten him with rape. So maybe Vance meant to imply this muscular guy plans on inundating the new fish with terrible puns.

While that guy about to wish he were dead because of all the puns being told to him while he gets raped was being thrown in his prison cell, he was screaming that everybody was going to die that very day. How does he know that? Well, the comic book is going to tell us because after that exciting opening page that uses one of the worst things that could happen to a person as a punchline, the story reverts to two weeks previous where we see this guy, in Europe, setting up a drug deal with a guy who looks like a cross between a fisherman, an academic, and a DILF.

Oh? Leash talk? My penis is listening!

While nefarious things are going on in Europe (bad nefarious things! Not the usual consensual sexy adult nefarious things that are always going on in Europe), Deadman has decided that he needs help finding the evil exiles of Nanda Parbat. But before he finds somebody to help him, he decides to possess Lois Lane to find out what getting fucked by Superman is like.

Holy shit. Lois is so fucking horny.

Lois grabbing Clark's tit as she pushes herself up against him from the back might be the sexiest panel I've ever scanned while doing this blog. And I know sexy! Haven't I scanned panels with dead Rose Wilson drawn by Paolo Pantalena before? You don't get sexier than that!

See? So hot!

Deadman gets tired of waiting around for the sexy times to begin because Superman keeps zipping out to save some idiot's life every few seconds. Lois, totally being used to these interruptions, probably has a vibrator inserted keeping her edging the whole time Clark flies out a window. She doesn't seem bothered at all by the constant interruptions.

Ignoring my bullshit, Deadman actually thought Superman could help him find the Nanda Parbatans but decided against it when he saw Superman is even too busy to fuck Lois. He'd probably ask Batman for help but I'm assuming Batman has either kept his secret identity secret even from Deadman or Deadman knows, from past experience, that Batman has a punch of Ghostbuster-style traps protecting every entrance to the Batcave.

See? Must be the ghost traps. Sounds like they're super painful.

Boston decides to visit Max for a little conversation via tape recorder. He doesn't learn much more than nonsense, philosophical hokum like good exists because evil exists and we choose our path due to free will and it happens because it happens. Max aphorisms don't literally help Boston but somewhere in the conversation, Boston has an "A-ha!" moment and takes off to follow a hunch. So at least there's that and none of the philosophical conversation needs to be carry any weight; it just gets to sound profound for a few pages before Boston forgets it all.

While Deadman is doing whatever he decided to do, Vector 9 and some other Rakvian terrorist hijack a submarine. They do this by pretending there's an emergency and getting the rest of the crew to abandon ship. That led me on a lazy rabbit hole exploration trip about escaping from submarines because my first thought was, "Subs have escape pods?" I can't say I'm confident on any of the information I found but it looks like subs abandoned the idea of escaping disabled submarines for outside rescue. It seems it's safer to remain in a disabled sub on the ocean floor and wait for rescue than it is to exit the sub and have to endure whatever conditions are on the surface while awaiting rescue. I'm not confident on that though, and I definitely haven't kept any timelines straight. I'm assuming Steve Vance did his research in 2002 and submarines were maybe using escape pods of some sort? Although wouldn't the crew of the Russian nuclear submarine, the Kursk, have used an escape pod if they were being used? Anyway, in the DC Universe, you can trick a submarine crew into abandoning the submarine and then take possession of the submarine yourself. Easy peasy!

No wait. What's the opposite of easy peasy? Hardy pardy?

Oh hey! A submarine plot point! And the cover? Sea of Madness! With Deadman surrounded by fish and bones! Is it going to actually be relevant?!

Oh! I knew I recognized that guy who plans on listening to his cellmate deliver fifty terrible puns per day. He was Frankie Serna's drug dealer who told them where to find all the people who purchased Hate Cocaine before Max and Boston left him for the cops. Now he's in prison with an understanding that the world will be brought down by Hate Cocaine (or something similar) soon. Deadman finally remembered him and thought, "Why the fuck not? This low-level criminal might know something. I'm all out of other ideas!"

I should applaud this comic book for wasting so many pages with Boston having no idea what to do next, just to make it more realistic. Most comic books would have had a television in a department store window broadcast breaking news which Boston would have coincidentally been floating by at the time so he'd immediately know what to do next. I usually criticize that kind of lazy writing while acknowledging that it's better than reading ten pages of the heroes not knowing what to do. But now I have proof that ten pages of a hero not knowing what to do is actually better than some deus ex machina newscast pointing them in the right direction. Because without this plot point of Boston being lost, we never would have seen how Lois fingers Clark's nipples and rubs her pudenda up against his rock hard ass as he cooks.

Deadman flies into the prison just in time to hear Serna's man lamenting how everybody is going to die. He does know something! So Deadman possesses the rap...er...punster to question Serna's guy.

Exactly the kind of plan somebody on cocaine would come up with and think it's great. Somehow, a bunch of other people bought into it too.

Serna's guy also knew the exact location they were going to rendezvous with the submarine. Luckily for everybody involved (the people of Glade City who now won't be nuked and Deadman who will be able to communicate with the ghosts), everybody aboard the submarine was killed. Deadman doesn't realize it yet but he's flying toward . . . a Sea of Madness!

Deadman locates the submarine using a power I didn't know he had: Dead Reckoning! When he gets there, he finds a rescue submarine hard at work collecting the nuclear sub from the dead man. It's captained by the Fisherman DILF from earlier, a guy named Vilos. I guess it was his plan all along to double-cross this Rakvian idiots so he could pocket all of Serna's drug money for himself. So the nuclear threat is still a threat since it's this Vilos guy who expects to get paid in a few hours. But nobody needs to worry about that with Deadman and his super powers of possession and dead reckoning on the case!

Deadman possesses Vilos to try to get everybody to stop stealing the submarine. But since Boston doesn't speak Rakvian, the rest of Vilos's crew turn on him and knock him unconscious. Deadman decides that maybe pure chaos (or MADNESS?!) is the way to stop this hijacking so he jumps from body to body, confusing everybody and turning the ship into a huge free-for-all brawl.

Vilos awakes to see the chaos and rushes off to escape. He knows it's Deadman who's probably causing the issues because his actual boss, The Sensei, has briefed him on their possible enemies. But in the end, Vilos fucks up. He learns a harsh lesson about underwater, submarines, and pressure. Like those poor billionaires on the Titan submersible! Rich in material goods, poor in risk assessment and gray matter.

Gross.

Deadman fails to speak with the ghosts of Vilos or the rest of his gang so he doesn't get any leads on The Sensei. Being that this is the last issue of this series that I bought, I'll just assume that Deadman grew bored of hunting down evil men from Nanda Parbat and just got on with his death.

Deadman #4 Rating: B. I'm not sure how to sum up this issue because I've been distracted the entire time I've been reading it by the cover of the next comic book in my stack. I'll just say three words and you'll understand why I couldn't stop staring at it: "Amanda. Conner. Boobs." Um, not Amanda's boobs! But you know how she draws! Imagine that with boobs! But also the character with the boobs has that now iconic Internet thirsty Only Fans girl look where they're kind of sticking their tongue out in that way that says, "I want something on my tongue and you know what it is it is your cock put it on my tongue." I can't wait to read that comic book so much that I've already forgotten all about this one. I guess it was decent? So decent I never bought the next issue! Was that a burn? boobs

Deadman #3 (April 2002)

Where'd Mike Mignola come from?!

Sometimes when I'm reading a series, I'll look it up on the Mile High Comics website just to see how many issues it ran and, sometimes, to see if the comic has any value at all. With Deadman, I discovered that the series only ran for nine issues and that there was a small bump in value on issues beginning with the third. Was that because of Mike Mignola's covers? I'm going to answer, "Absolutely. Without question. No doubt. The king of all undisputed facts." Along with that answer, I have a question: "Did Mike think he was doing a cover for Moon Knight?"

Last issue, we learned that a special chemical had to be added to cocaine to make the user paranoid. Was that ingredient just more cocaine? Did Duroc just invent more cocaine? No wait. I just remembered that his additive also makes the user more violent. So I think along with the extra cocaine, he added testosterone.

I've never done cocaine in my life because I only do things that interest me and talking one million miles an hour while your nose runs and you believe people are stealing your brilliant cocaine thoughts while you basically edge a heart attack doesn't sound fun. I was once at a party in the middle of the day (some older person's birthday? I didn't know anybody but the guy who brought me (Bob Henline, the not yet burnt and not yet a comedian guy you might have heard about)) and his cousin Derek. Everybody at the party was doing cocaine. The bathroom had black fixtures, black granite, and black carpet (YES CARPET I KNOW FUCKING GROSS), I guess so you'd never lose any of your sweet cocaine when you dropped it. Derek, Bob, and I had gone to the flea market earlier in the day while doing LSD. We peaked at the dirt mall so later at the party, I was just chilling, feeling relaxed and all smoothed out and just sipping the same one beer for however long we were there. Derek was busy trying to collect all the dirty prizes that came out of the adult piñata, like the wind-up, walking cock and the flavored condoms. And Bob found his way into the cocaine because he was sitting at the kitchen table telling incoherent stories at five million miles an hour. Everybody at the party looked at me like I was a narc but I couldn't be bothered because I was in such a blissful state. Coming down on LSD, before the physical weirdness sets in, is like meditation and massage combined. So fucking relaxing!

Anyway, don't tell Bob I told that story! If you do, I'll have to digitize my VHS footage of us from the place at the mall that let you make music videos! Oh wait. That's actually an incentive, isn't it? And I'd be punishing myself! Never mind!

I also surmised that this Battle Royale drug would wind up being snorted by big wigs in Hollywood, California. But it turns out, the drug has been dispensed in Hollywood, Florida! So once people start taking it, nobody will even notice. And, basically, that's exactly what winds up happening.

This is page two. Deadman already took care of most of the problem between issues.

I don't know how Deadman tracked down all of the Hate Cocaine. He probably has sources on the other side. You'd think Deadman would talk to a lot more ghosts than he does, don't you? Instead he just gets people killed, interacts with the ghosts of those people for the few seconds before they enter the afterlife, and then goes back to possessing somebody about to jerk off so he can get one last hit of human ecstasy. If I were Deadman, I'd hang out at haunted places, especially those where women were said to have killed themselves, and hit on them all night long. I'd bother them all night just ghost moaning, "Come on! Just touch it. Please touch it! Come on! I'm so full of ectoplasm I'm going to burst!" I'd be all up in the Amityville house trying to fuck that pig ghost. Christ, I'd be such a thirsty ghost!

Deadman possesses the guy on the Hate Drug and convinces the secretary to knock him out. I love the look and hand gesture of the guy getting smashed in the cranium with the LCD.

Come on, lady. You didn't smash him in the head with the tower! Just the monitor!

Boston and Max tracked down all the cocaine by threatening one of Duroc's dealers. Now they're hunting down the last of the buyers so that he doesn't bite anybody's face off. But being Florida, they can't stop everybody from biting off a face or two. Can you stop an avalanche? Sweep back a tsunami? People getting their faces bitten off is just something you have to live with if you live in Florida. It's on the state flag.

Boston becomes super depressed that more people have died and he couldn't save them. It's weird. He knows there's an afterlife but he's all butthurt when people get killed. Maybe he's jealous that they get to pass on while he has to remain on Earth with the only people who can see and talk to him being boring fucks like The Phantom Stranger and The Spectre. He probably hates seeing the souls of the recently departed fly off confused and scared and never having to hear The Spectre say, "There's nothing I can do! I can't interfere! My only duty is killing cops who actually feel guilty about the murders they constantly commit! Let's face it, it's a good job!"

Boston decides to stop Duroc's plan once and for all. He flies off to possess Duroc's right-hand man and shoot Duroc in the face.

Serves you right, you fucking pusshole.

Deadman has already killed two people in this series by possessing them and taking an action while in their body that leads directly to their deaths. But he can't shoot the main villain in the head? He's worse than Batman! Out of context, that sounds like the most obvious fact. Everybody is worse than Batman! But you know what I meant, right? I don't think you'd be reading my blog if you didn't have the ability to follow along with my barely coherent rambling bullshit.

Duroc already figured out that everything going wrong was due to Deadman possessing all of his underlings. So this was a trap! Duroc punches Deadman in the face, knocking out the man Deadman is possessing. That way, if Deadman leaves the body, Duroc will know because it will slump to the ground. He tells Deadman that he'll shoot Manos, his right-hand man, if Deadman leaves. Deadman surrenders in defeat. Earlier, before he got super depressed from seeing so many dead bodies, he would have attempted to wrestle the gun away from Duroc with little regard to whether Manos was shot or not. Earlier he had a secretary bash a guy he was possessing in the head with a computer monitor from the late '90s. You know how heavy those fucking things were? That guy's probably dead too! But now, with the fate of the world in the balance, Deadman's afraid to bring harm to his criminal host who is probably a murderer many times over.

To celebrate having finally captured Deadman, Duroc kicks a servant down the stairs.

This is how my family celebrates the resurrection of Jesus! Except with less chocolate eggs.

Easter at my house, we used to hang up construction paper cutouts of Pontius Pilate, Herod, and Judas Iscariot. It was to keep the ghost of Jesus away because I was terrified of ghosts and Jesus was like the most ghosty of all ghosts.

That guy getting kicked down the stairs might have seemed like a character driven moment to prove that Duroc was a big jerk. But it was actually a sneaky plot moment that won't mean anything to the reader until they get to the end of the comic book to find out who the true villain of this series is! Oops! I almost spoiled the big surprise twist!

Duroc leaves Deadman with two of his henchmen who don't know it's Deadman and just think it's their old buddy Manos. They don't want to shoot him but they also saw how Duroc just kicked an old man down the stairs for being terrible at his job. They definitely don't want to get kicked down some stairs so they keep their guns trained on Deadman and try to convince themselves that they will shoot him if he falls unconscious. Deadman takes advantage of their confusion, fear, and slight feelings of friendship with Manos.

Deadman is just a slightly better version of Jericho from the Teen Titans with a slightly worse collar than Nightwing's from the Teen Titans.

It's at this point, halfway through the issue, that the pacing of this story really goes off the fucking rails. I think it's because Vance only has nine more pages for Boston to defeat Duroc's plans and still introduce the actual villain of the story on the last page. So eight more pages! Plus, by the time you get to the final page, you realize these last eight pages with Deadman don't matter. Because Deadman doesn't do anything to defeat Duroc. Duroc has already been defeated by the old man he kicked down the stairs. But nobody knows that yet! Not even Duroc!

Deadman is defeated by this door.

Not being able to get through the door to stop Duroc celebrating with all the other Nanda Parbatans for their super smart drug ploy to rule the world, Deadman decides to go destroy their drugs. So I guess he does do something heroic even if he doesn't stop Duroc himself. Deadman also calls the police who arrive on the scene in less than a minute because this is a comic book and real world physics don't affect comic book plots. I know police responding to a call isn't actually a physical law of the universe but it might as well be! Cops suck worse than black holes!

After the police arrive, Deadman decides to go see how Duroc and his guests are doing. In ghost form, of course, because his corporeal host was defeated by a corporeal door. When he enters the room, he finds everybody dead! Murdered by each other!

Boston wants Duroc to look at Duroc's dead body with three faces in its mouth.

What Deadman doesn't realize is that the old man who was kicked down the stairs poisoned Duroc's wine with his Hate Cocaine! He also stole Duroc's ledger with the location of all the ex-residents of Nanda Parbat! Bumping into Duroc to steal the ledger is what got the old man kicked down the stairs. But he wasn't the mastermind of this plan. He was just the personal servant of the mastermind: The Sensei!

Censored for the use of Yellow Peril. We had enough of that shit with The Authority!

Deadman #3 Rating: C+. I can't decide if I liked the way this issue ended or not so I'm going to go with a slightly above average grade on this one. I don't like that Deadman, when he's given the chance to slow down and think, doesn't want to put the body he's possessing at risk but he often puts the body of the person he's possessing at risk anyway because he acts too much on impulse. He's like a person who takes three drinks out of a crystal goblet and then smashes it to the floor because he's through with it and there are about 7 billion more on the shelf that he can use for his next drink. I don't like how he's portrayed as fairly impotent. And it's not like he doesn't know it! He falls into Duroc's trap in this issue because he was trying to get a big fat boner of justice instead of not saving people constantly. Up until he falls into the trap, he's watched so many people die and caused a few of their deaths himself. He watched The Flash die. He watched Jason Todd die. He watched Superman die. He caused one of Mongul's guards to die. He blew up a graverobber. He got Duroc's pilot shot dead by Duroc. He got a Hate Cocaine user's brains smashed out by a secretary. He couldn't get to the last Hate Cocaine user in time and several people had their faces bitten off. He's just a fucking mess by the time he goes after Duroc directly. And he still couldn't pull the trigger on him. Maybe that's noble? Or is it just pusshole?

And now that I've finished reading this issue, I'm even more convinced that Mignola thought he was doing a Moon Knight cover. It had nothing to do with this issue!

Deadman #2 (March 2002)

TFW you realize you accidentally made Deadman's balls the focal point of the piece and you smash your iPad in frustration.

Last issue, we learned Deadman was dead. But we also learned that he used the name Deadman in his circus act. Maybe it was more apt then because he wasn't actually dead. Being dead and being called Deadman is what writers call a "hat on a hat." That's supposed to be a bad thing but I think a hat on a hat is funny. Although this comic book isn't funny. Or is it? Maybe I've been reading it like a supernatural horror thriller but it's actually a rollicking roller coaster ride of slapstick and snide observations and also a dwarf (but that's only for people who laugh at things that aren't actually funny because they think humor is just being mean-spirited. You know, like bullies on playgrounds and conservatives). I've been reading this as if Boston Brand were Colin Farrell dealing with the existential horror of having murdered a child while being forced to look at Bosch paintings instead of what the character really is: Chandler Bing wandering around an open house and touching everything with his dick.

See? This is too stupid and obvious to be profound. So it must be funny! Ha ha!

That was the opening line to this issue and I jumped down its throat before it even got a chance to expound on what it meant. That's because I'm a schoolyard bully with low self-esteem (but not a conservative because I have dignity and compassion and empathy and all the other emotions that make me human and not a nearly empty vessel whose only contents are a bit of essence that the French call "being a fucking jerk"). I'm sure Deadman will follow up this trite statement with a discussion on people who commit suicide. He'll be all, "They're so brave! But also so cowardly! How can they fear to continue life but be brave enough to face the mystery of death?! It's such a conundrum. Should we celebrate their bold spirit and adventuresome ways? Or should we use the opportunity to point at other depressed people and go, 'Don't be like stupid, stupid!'?"

No wait! I bet he's going to talk about daredevils! Yeah, that would be more apt to this comic book and way more funny than a discussion on suicide! Man, who would bring that up in a piece of entertainment? An idiot, that's who!

Ha ha! He's being sarcastic! Right? Isn't he?

I don't know what this comic book wants from me! Am I supposed to be having fun or am I supposed to be verging on a panic attack with all this discussion of my failing mortal body and what's in store for me? A long slide into misery and pain until death is the only thing I look forward to?! Jesus Christ, Vance! Hopefully Max does a little tap dance on page two so I can bust a gut laughing at the antics of the d...um...detective!

What Deadman is trying to say is that death is scary until life has become even scarier and then death is the only friend you'll have left. Especially since all of your other friends have stopped talking to you because you make them uncomfortable. Oh fucking Christ I'm the worst friend.

Boston's having all of these existential thoughts because he was just inside of a body that was torn apart by a bomb at point blank range. So he's all, "Yeah, that sucked." But at least he didn't die like the guy he possessed died! Imagine that? That guy didn't even get to experience his own death because Deadman subsumed his consciousness! Technically, the guy died the moment Boston Brand possessed him because that was the end of his personality and free will and choices and thoughts. He just went to sleep and the next thing you know, he was being blown apart. Hopefully he never regained consciousness as he died because imagine how confusing that would have been!

Oh yeah! I forgot this was a fictional world where people can have thoughts after they die. He gets to be scared and confused anyway!

I don't mind being an atheist in a world of believers. The only thing that rankles me even a little bit is that believers will never know they were wrong because they die and then no more thoughts. They don't even get a moment like this guy where they're all, "Oh shit! I died! And now my ego goes back to the oblivion of the time before I was born!" Of course, on the really fucking off chance that I'm wrong, Satan will be annoyed forever because there won't be an endless torture that can destroy the glee I'll have for realizing that my personality and ego get to exist for eternity! When I'm not being force-fed my own flaming shit, I'll be whistling the most jaunty tunes and trying to high five the demons farming the flaming shit out of my burning asshole. "Dude! I still exist! Fucking incredible!" Then to shut me up, a demon will probably shove his fat sweaty hog into my mouth and I'll wink at him and he'll think, "Shit. We got another one that can't get enough demon semen."

I bet it tastes like spicy pineapple!

Max survived the blast by hiding behind a bed which seems completely realistic because this is a comic book about a ghost. Also he's a small guy so he had less chance to get hit by shrapnel. Is that how explosions work? Did they ever test that on Mythbusters? Could a smaller guy survive a bomb blast better than a larger guy?

Boston and Max flee the scene of the murder (let's face it: they totally murdered that guy) so they don't have to answer to the cops because we all know the real bad guys are the cops, amirite?! Especially since this is a detective story. Way before all the fucking copaganda shows on television, the American people understood cops were corrupt assholes and if you wanted justice, you needed a hard-boiled detective on the case or a noble lawyer like Perry Mason. I wonder how many conservatives despise that they have to virtue signal their love for cops when they personally fucking hate them so badly? It's got to be like 80 or 90 percent, right? Man, cops fucking suck.

Before the guy blew up, he mentioned a name: Frankie Serna. Time to investigate that prick!

No, you saw him in Crusades when his name was Tony Quetone.

Deadman doesn't learn anything he expected to learn from visiting Frankie. He thought maybe he'd find out why Frankie would have a bomb and cash smuggled into the country in the fake legs of a circus performer's corpse. But Frankie doesn't helpfully reveal any of that and, I suspect, he'll never reveal it at all! Because what Deadman does learn is that he can't possess Frankie which could only mean one thing (I mean one thing that means anything to this comic book): Frankie is from Nanda Parbat! He's one of the thirteen or more ghosts of Scooby-Deadman! So now it doesn't matter what Frankie was up to because it's Deadman's responsibility to bring him to justice for just generally being an evil prick.

Deadman haunts Frankie's plane as he takes a trip to North Africa. Couldn't Frankie had made this trip on his private plane to pick up the cash and explosive himself? Or at least sent some men to do it? Why smuggle shit into the country in the corpse of some guy who died from a virulent disease? Oh! Don't mind how stupid I am. I just realized why he did all that. Who's going to look too closely at a corpse full of some deadly raging virus? You might follow this answer up with the question, "But why $10,000 cash? Way easier ways to smuggle that into America. I mean, do you even have to smuggle it?" But then you forgot about the package that blew up Deadman! The cash was probably an incentive to get some schlubs to dig up the body and retrieve the package. And the explosive was probably to protect the package in case it fell into the wrong hands. So the only real question left is this: what the fuck was Frankie trying to smuggle into America from Egypt? Well, there's only one sensible answer to that: Tutankhamun's penis. Obvs.

It's a conspiracy of Nanda Parbatans!

I can't wait to find out how Tutankhamun's penis fits into all of this!

That was a purposeful penetration joke. You don't have to respond in the comments with your more obvious one!

Duroc has brought together more Nanda Parbatans than just Frankie Serna: Dala, Zeta, Liu, and Adham. All aliases or sobriquets. That's probably because DC didn't want to introduce historical evil people into the comic book but still wanted to hint that these were all actual evil people. You can tell by how often I'm constantly repeating it, I don't know anything about history. Please list some evil historical figures in the comments and I'll steal them, re-edit this piece, and pretend I knew who these fictional characters were actual representations of.

Duroc explains his history and his plans. It's all handily laid out on one page so that I don't have to interpret it though my lens of lying, bullshit, and misunderstandings!

Duroc wants to turn the world into a Battle Royale.

I didn't italicize Battle Royale because it's become more than just the Japanese movie. It's basically the biggest form of social gaming right now. And, yes, I'm talking more about blocking people on Twitter than killing people in Fortnite. Ha ha! No I'm not. I meant the games.

As a really annoying young man who read too many National Geographic magazines, I had a major boner for Bonaparte. One time in Spanish class, we had to present facts about ourselves. One of mine was, "Yo quiero dominar todo el mundo." My teacher was all, "¿Como Hitler?" And I was all, "Como Napoleon." And he was all, "¿Cual es el diferencia?" And I was all, "¡Más diferencia!" Remember that thing I said about not being great at history? You can extrapolate that to my grasp of Spanish as well.

Duroc explains himself to his fellow Nanda Parbatans with a quote.

Take that, Neoliberals!

I'm not getting behind a quote and saying, "Yes! This makes sense of the world! It is now my foundational philosophy!" Because fuck that kind of rigid garbage thinking. But I will point out that this quote sums up just about every forum debate on the Internet between a "reasonable" liberal and an "unreasonable" progressive. Liberals are so smug in their arguments that basically come down to "Stop expecting the world to be better. Let's just try to keep it from getting too much worse." And the progressives are all, "Fuck that noise, you Status Quo motherfucker. Just because you're comfortable, you're okay with suffering on the fringes." And, sure, keeping the Status Quo is way better than every belief of a conservative American. But why get so fucking angry at people who demand a better world? Why are they always so much angrier at leftists than at Trumpers? Calm down, you Status Quotians! Maybe stop assuming everybody who just wants Israel to stop killing every Palestinian they can get in their sights are "HAMAS dick suckers"! Yeesh. What a bad look, dude.

Turns out Duroc has invented a drug that makes people violent and paranoid. It's absorbed through the skin and it was covering the paper on the explosive packages he sent out to everybody. I don't know what that plan was meant to do. "Oh look! The package I was sent by Duroc! Let's see what's in it. Oh, oh! Why am I so angry and paranoid?!" BOOM! And then Duroc meets with, um, nobody? Terrible fucking plan.

Duroc found all these Nanda Parbatans because he's the oldest of the residents of Nanda Parbat and he's super smart. So now he has a book with all the names and the current locations of every evil resident of Nanda Parbat. That would be really useful for a character whose main plot in the series is to capture every escaped resident of Nanda Parbat! But only if the series were to go longer than nine issues. So, basically, who the fuck cares if Boston Brand gets his hands on it.

Frankie Serna tries to betray Duroc by stealing the Battle Royale drug. But his men wind up contaminated by it and wind up breaking Serna's neck as they die from bullet holes caused by bullets out of Serna's gun. Deadman stands back aghast, both at the display of violence and at Duroc's plan, already in motion!

Oh no! Hollywood is about to burn down!

Deadman #2 Rating: B+. Oh man. Sorry for that last caption. I meant it as a funny joke about how writers and directors are probably the biggest coke heads. But since Hollywood is actually pretty much burning down right now, it sounds like it was in really bad taste. Maybe I should have left it without saying anything because most people will probably eventually read this post in the future, out of context for the Los Angeles fires! Too bad I also suffer from the biggest flaw of everybody on the Internet: the inability to delete comments! I'm just going to double down here in the wrap-up and guess that most people won't be too upset because I just explained to them that the joke wasn't meant to be offensive! See? All good! No reasonable person will be upset at me! But all the people who want a better world might be!

I just realized that if the Battle Royale drug did take effect in Hollywood because that's where most of the coke is snorted (I mean other than Wall Street and Washington, DC), it would look just like Fortnite! A guy in an Elmo costume would be shooting the shit out of a guy in a Spider-man costume as a guy in the Bruce Lee Kill Bill outfit does the fucking Running Man in the background.

Deadman #1 (February 2002)

Has the cover artist, Josep Beroy, ever been to a cemetery?

Whoever runs this cemetery has a cheap payment plan: just toss your loved one over the fence for twenty bucks and they'll bury them wherever they wind up. Or, since Boston Brand was buried here, maybe plotting a cemetery as chaotically as possible is just some circus tradition so ghosts and evil spirits can't find anybody's body to possess. Seriously, how does this even work? The tombstone underneath Deadman's right hand points in such a way that body it represents has been buried in Deadman's corpse's lap. This place is a nightmare.

This series begins with Deadman reliving his origin story which is also his death story (it's also Dick Grayson's parents' story but we'll ignore that for at least a couple of paragraphs). He's reminiscing with his pal Max as they sit at a Black Lodge bar and drink some beers. Max can see and touch Deadman so somebody's dreaming this or lost deep in their memories or put on the ring and went looking for Annie in the grove. I won't know unless I skip ahead a few pages and I'm not willing to do that for reasons that would probably become clear if you read all 4,000+ of my comic book posts or a lengthy transcript of my therapy sessions. No wait. Those are exactly the same things. Never mind.

So gay!

Of course! A near-death trance! That was my fourth guess! Did Max have to get naked to put himself in a near-death trance or was getting naked and putting the cum towel over his crotch just for easy clean-up? Is assuming they fucked while doing this assuming too much or did everybody think that? Deadman made it abundantly clear in the mini-series that he fulfills his basest desires by possessing people. But even I can't imagine that he pulls any Fermata shit and sexually assaults people just to get his rocks off. So getting his balls drained would make for a great birthday present, right? I suppose Boston sometimes just flits from suburban bedroom to suburban bedroom until he finds a couple fucking and then possesses one of them just to remember what an orgasm feels like. But when he possesses somebody, unless they're unconscious, they can still operate their voice! So that would probably ruin the mood if the person you're fucking starts yelling, "Get out of me! Get out of me right now! Why am I fingering my own asshole?!"

You know I'm clipping this speech bubble out of this panel to use the next time I read a Batgirl series.

Moira, the bearded lady, drops buy to hire Max to investigate the possible murder of one of their circus friends, Benny Molton, the twin limbless musician and brother of Lenny Molton (also a limbless musician). The super hot bearded lady decided to help Lenny because he had too few limbs to hire Max himself. That seems kind of ableist, no? Wasn't there that one guy without any limbs in Freaks who helped murder that guy and turn that woman into a chicken? That's pretty radical. I'd be hard pressed to murder anybody and I think I still have all of my limbs.

I'd want my dollar back if I went to see the Limbless Men and they still had a full set of limbs between them.

Something else I learned in the panel above: Deadman can speak through the person he's possessing even if they're conscious. I guess I don't know how his powers work at all. Maybe I'm thinking of the Pre-Crisis Deadman! No wait! I just realized of whom I was thinking: Jericho! And he isn't dead at all!

Lenny explains how he and Benny had a bit of a falling out when Lenny began fucking Moira, the bearded lady. Apparently Benny wanted to fuck her too but she only had hairy eyes for guys without arms. And Benny just had two too many of those. So he hit the road doing musical gigs on his own. Lenny hadn't seen him in four years when he got the news about his brother's death.

"If I hadn't slept with the woman he loved, he wouldn't have gone and eventually died many years later!"

It seems like Benny's case is open and shut, unlike his coffin which is just plain shut. That's the only reason Lenny feels like something fishy is going down: nobody would let him see the body. Why would he want to?! He caught the Mummy's Curse! He's probably so disfigured that he'd be unrecognizable anyway. But Max and Deadman decide to investigate so Lenny would stop crying. They never even ask Lenny if he masturbates with his feet! I mean, obviously he does and they probably already knew that from their time living with him in the circus. But they could have asked for the reader's sake!

Okay fine. He's recognizable. Disgusting but recognizable.

Discovering Benny's Mummy's Curse-riddled body inside the coffin isn't enough for Boston and Max. For some absolutely unknown reason that isn't explained in any way except that this issue is only half over, Boston feels like there's something fishy going on. So he decides to hang around the grave the night after the burial to see if anything happens. Again, he has no reason to believe anything weird will happen but guess what? Something weird happens! No, Benny doesn't crawl from the grave as a legless mummy. Two grave robbers show up to exhume his corpse. They open the coffin and Boston thinks, "I wasn't seeing things — he's got legs." Oh, well why didn't he say that earlier? Or tell Max about it? Why did he just say, "Hmm, there's still something screwy going on"? I feel like he's trying to make me feel stupid! But then, I feel that a lot about almost everything everybody else says. I wish people would dumb themselves down a bit more when I'm around. Frankly, it's offensive.

It turns out Benny's fake legs are stuffed full of cash! Probably stolen from a mummy! That's how he contracted the curse.

One of the grave robbers kills the other one and buries him alongside Benny, keeping the cash for himself. Deadman tails him back to his place because he's a huge pervert.

Deadman wrote on the mirror, "I know what you did!", in this guy's own semen.

No, wait, I'm wrong. He wrote something else.

Although I was right about the semen.

Max gets the criminal at gunpoint and forces him to confess the entire plan. In his post-nut clarity, he realizes he's been caught and explains that some guy named Frankie Serna gave him the job. "Dig up the body, keep the money you find, deliver the package you'll find in one of the legs to Frankie." Deadman decides he wants to see what's in the package and he possesses this guy one last time. It's the last time because the package is a bomb and it blows the shit out of him. Max probably survives because this comic book needs a living person to help Boston out.

Deadman #1 Rating: C. It wasn't offensive or anything. It wasn't poorly written. The art was pretty good. But overall, it was lackluster and boring. That might be why I only have four issues of this series. Apparently it only went to Issue #9 but I couldn't even give it that long. My guess is I was looking for more of a supernatural thing and this series leaned too heavily on the detective angle.

Dead Again #5 (October 2001)

Mystic characters are the centrists of the DC Universe.

I used to think business people didn't think twice about us artistic types who live life foolishly with the winds of whimsy blowing us in chaotic directions. It wasn't until the last decade or so that I began to realize they think about us all of the fucking time. They can't stop thinking about us. I always thought they were happy just making loads of money like it was their kink and they couldn't get off any other way. But that's not it, is it? They were bamboozled by society into thinking that they had to strive for more and more money, devoting all of their time into earning so that they'd eventually have some free time to live life. But then they saw all of these other people slumming it at jobs that didn't destroy their souls so that they'd have plenty of free time to pursue art or activities that they actually enjoy. They saw that money doesn't equal freedom; freedom equals freedom! And they thought, "We can't let these people get away with enjoying life. I fucked it all up so now I'm going to fuck it up for them too." And so they making money was no longer their kink; making the world way more expensive to fuck with the free wheelers was. And the reason they're all so into Artificial Intelligence even though it's a huge money sink that will eventually ruin the environment completely is because they can use it to punish artistic people even further. They've built a plagiarism machine that doesn't even make them money but they're super into it because, hey, guess what? Those people whose rent we've hiked astronomically who are struggling now to afford the basic necessities of life? We're going to start taking their jobs too! Ha ha! Suck it, you people who actually know how to enjoy life!

Maybe I'm being too paranoid but it just seems to me rich people aren't exactly having fun. Sure, they can buy loads of drugs and hookers. But guess what? Poor people do drugs and fuck too! They just do them for free or at lower prices. I think business people never learned to love anything at whatever crucial stage of development people begin to fall in love with artistic and enjoyable and time-wasting things. They were probably too busy trying to get their daddies to love them by reciting all of the presidents in order or starting up a shit small business that everybody would fawn over. "Oh look! Little William Brady the Third is selling bottles of Perrier in front of the house for twice their normal cost and the neighbors we paid to buy his product are queuing up like crazy! Eventually, we might be proud of him and love him if his success ever doesn't depend on our money!"

In this equation, the Middle Class are those who spent time doing their fun shit in their 20s and early 30s before throwing in the towel to earn enough for a house and family while trading in their passions for alcohol. Do I blame them for keeping this bullshit Status Quo that dumps on anybody who doesn't want life to be a constant struggle? Yes, yes I do.

Deadman and I have something in common because he's forgotten the first four issues as well. Sure, I just read them. But I didn't retain them! Who has the brain space for that? I have to remember the lyrics to every Schoolhouse Rock episode I saw as a kid and every Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints songs that told me to tell the truth and not to lie and taught me how to soak. I don't have any fucking space for something Steve Vance wrote. Who the fuck is this Steve Vance anyway?

Oh! Would you look at that? He wrote and illustrated some of DC's Big Books! That's cool, I guess. He's cool. You're cool, Steve. But you're still not getting any space in my brain.

Currently, Deadman is arguing with Rama Kushna.

Oh, you really, really wanted something. I guess it's okay to ruin somebody's life then.

I'm not saying Rama Kushna's right about Deadman interfering with this guy's life. Things happen all the time that we have no control over and who's to say one way or another who's responsible. But I do find myself losing some respect for Deadman when his argument against the potential idea that Boston may have fucked up this guy's life is "But I desired something!" People will choose to believe (or choose to pretend to believe) any old shit if it enables them to satisfy some desire of theirs. People are always discussing Red Flags and I think my biggest Red Flag is when people choose to disregard the consequences of their actions or beliefs because to acknowledge that those actions or beliefs are destructive would mean that they're going to lose something they desire. One of my favorite shirts is Fox Mulder's "I want to believe" shirt because I think it's a fitting sentiment that's more subtle than most people think yet easily digestible as a way of summing up Fox Mulder. I have had multiple people see the shirt and respond to me on the street, "So believe." And every time, I resist saying, "Fuck you! Wanting to believe isn't the same thing as being able to believe! Wanting to believe is expressing the melancholy and isolation of seeing the flaws in something that you'd love to believe like every other simpering chimp but can't because you respect truth and science and experience. But, man, wouldn't it be nice to believe in some really fucking idiotic shit! So relaxing!" But to believe in things that aren't real is to open yourself up to a shit world because you'll ignore horrible truths that might tear down the belief you desire.

What I'm trying to say is this: Defund the police.

Deadman finally gets a glimpse at the person behind the voice and it has not been Rama Kushna.

This is the first I'm hearing about Hal Jordan's love of the sun.

Hal Jordan probably loves the sun because it's sort of a green color. Don't argue with that statement, you common sense hooligans. Science rarely uses common sense! Do your own research like you all pretend you like to do to prove the thing you desire to be is true! Well, fuck you, motherfucker! The sun emits mostly blue-green light so that's what fucking color it is even if we see it as white or yellow or orange or red! You stupid motherfuckers. I mean, Hal Jordan loves the sun so much it must be true. Do you think he'd love a yellow sun? He'd be incapable of it do to the limitations placed on him by his job!

Hal Jordan takes a moment to stick his fingers in Deadman's eyes as proof that Deadman doesn't have eyes or vision or any senses or anything. Hal basically just shits on him and is all, "You're nothing. You're a ghost. Ghosts are simply regressive selfish thoughts that refuse to die. You see what you want. You hear what you want. You dress like a fucking clown because you're so wrapped up in the life you used to have. Why is anybody even reading this fucking comic book? It might as well just be 22 blank pages."

This is the first I'm hearing about Hal Jordan's love of the band Rush.

Hal Jordan, The Spectre, reveals that Neron stole Hal's soul when he died rekindling the sun. Fuck! I always knew The Spectre was some soulless asshole! He says his soul completed Neron's pentagram which means that Hal Jordan, as I've always suspected, is terrible at math. How has Neron filled out a five-pointed star with five available slots for soul cages with just three souls: The Flash, Jason Todd, and Hal Jordan? Even if time is so fluid that, technically, Deadman's soul is still in one of the cages as Neron completes his spell, that leaves one space left! Neron never caught five souls!

After restoring Deadman's memory, The Spectre pulls his usual Centrist shit and is all, "That's all I can do! I can't do no more! Bye bye, sucker!" So now it's up to Deadman to save the world by possessing, I don't know, a mostly naked chick?

Oh no! I've exposed myself for the Victorian prude I am by calling this woman mostly naked!

Look, I know Victorians were massive horndogs! I'm just doing what we're all supposed to do: pretend that the thing everybody is pretending is the way things actually are! I hate the Status Quo but sometimes I'll play along with it because we all share a common language and most of that common language is bullshit, lies, and misconceptions!

Deadman's friend was one of his old circus buddies who lived in Nanda Parbat with him years ago. He's a detective now so he'll certainly be able to track down Neron the demon! Easy peasy!

Oh. Actually, the dude is pretty smart. He figures out that since the world hasn't gone to Hell yet even though The Spectre told Deadman that Neron has completed his plans then it means Caldera has yet to sell his soul to Neron and the plan hasn't actually even gone into action yet! Remember how Neron kept talking about time being fluid and shit? He was giving the game away! Neron's plan now hinges on Caldera's death so all Deadman has to do is keep Caldera from dying (or making the pact with Neron) and Bob's your uncle! Did I use that stupid expression correctly?

Through some slight body possessing, minimal detective work, and some good old fashioned circus acrobatics, Max and Boston discover the location of Caldera. And just in the nick of time as Boston flies through the wall to see Caldera performing the ritual to sell his soul to Neron! Boston tries his best to stop the ritual but he fails. I mean, he fails to stop the ritual but he does delay Caldera long enough so that Caldera dies just before he lights the final candle that summons Neron. Now Neron has been summoned but there's nobody to do the deal with! So he just says, "Curses! Foiled again!", and disappears.

Oh, okay. It was Kilowog and Tomar-Tu who filled out the rest of the pentagram.

Later, Max points out that the reason Hal Jordan used Deadman in this time travel mix-up was because how could a ghost mess up the timeline? And Boston is all, "Yeah! That's a good point! I totally didn't posses that one lady to save her baby that Doomsday definitely would have killed and I didn't totally possess that one Mongul henchman so I could throw myself from a huge height to kill him! I totally didn't mess up the time line at all!" Actually Boston doesn't mention that stuff because it's embarrassing that he actually did fuck up the time line and ruined Hal's plans. I bet that baby he saved turned out to be Grail!

Deadman and Max decide to work together to begin a monthly series based on The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-doo. They're going to dedicate their lives to tracking down all of the evil people who escaped Nanda Parbat when it was destroyed. And I have a four issues of that series so we're not finished with Deadman just yet!

Dead Again #5 Rating: A. I skipped over it in my discussion but I really liked the way Max and Boston figured out that Caldera probably wasn't dead yet. See, Neron had recently battled the Justice League but he wasn't rhyming at the time. And rumor had it that Neron was demoted to rhyming demon after that battle. Which makes sense because one of Neron's reasons for this plot was to regain his lost power and more. So they figured all that shit that happened in the past was done by the future Neron who had just recently been demoted. Pretty decent take for a time travel story since most time travel stories suck at understanding time travel. I don't mind with this one though because I just figured Hell doesn't do time like everybody else. Why should they? That's Status Quo bullshit! That's Heaven crap! Hail Satan!