Ditko's World: Static #1 (May 1986)

I'm not smart enough to understand this, am I?

I don't know if I've ever read anything by Steve Ditko but my brain tells me I'm a fan of his simply because my favorite series of all-time is Peter Milligan's Shade the Changing Man, a character invented by Steve Ditko. And I only picked that series up when the first issue dropped because Shade had been on Ostrander's Suicide Squad. So if we work backward from Milligan's comic, my fave, to Ostrander's comic, my mainstream DC fave, and back to Ditko's Shade, I would probably find it mediocre! I'm just using mathematical graphs to produce logical results, you know. Or, and let's assume this is really the case, I would fucking hate it because Objectivism can kiss my puckered butthole. Now, I don't know for sure that Ditko's Shade the Changing Man had any Objectivist bullshit in it, especially since it was scripted by Michael Fleisher. I have to assume that Ditko's art and plotting of the story didn't hide any of Rand's idiotic version of nihilist existentialism in it.

But this comic? I'm fucking scared, man. Do I want to read a comic book written and drawn by Steve Ditko? Didn't I get enough slop philosophy splattered across my brain when I read Rand's Anthem and when my friend Soy Rakelson in high school used to try to gotcha debate me every chance he got? He was always derailed by my answer to his set-up debate question because it was never what he thought I would say and then he had to throw out his argument script. Like the time he asked me, "Do you think animals have souls?" And I answered, "Dude, I don't even think humans have souls." And he just looked at me like a dog that had his ball fake thrown one too many times and said, "Hunh," before ending the discussion. I don't want to paint Soy as a guy who followed Objectivism or even knew who Rand was in high school but he was definitely the kind of guy who would have celebrated her ideas if he'd ever read them. Has he read them? Let me check his Goodreads!

Soy seems to have rated (but not reviewed, the lazy bugger) every book he wants people to know he's read and one of those was Atlas Shrugged. But he only gave it three stars so I'm going to have to assume that he loves the selfish ideology but hated the way it was written. Maybe I should give him the benefit of the doubt and believe he outgrew his weird white whine views of the world and his constant need to debate dumb shit as he called himself the Defender of Western Civilization (which, admittedly, sounds really fucking bad in the current climate and, I'm hoping, he doesn't do anymore. I'd ask him but he disappeared in 2016 from social media when Trump got elected, probably because he didn't want to have to defend Trump but he also pretty much was on board with President Flopsweat).

Notice I just ignored the cover? You did? Cool! It's weird, right? Am I going to elaborate? Maybe later? Anyway, I am now going to attempt to read my first Steve Ditko comic book which I picked up at a garage sale for one dollar last weekend.

Stac Rae is an anagram of Caesar (with a leftover 'T'). This might not be notable because of the extra 'T' if not for Shade's name being Rac Shade, an anagram of Caesar (with a leftover "H" and "D").

I generally don't debate with people because communication is a sucker's game. The bit Ditko writes in the panel above is a good example of what I find so frustrating with talking to people. It sounds like Ditko and I agree: justice has become corrupted and generally ignored! But I've got a feeling we probably differ on our ideas of justice and what kinds of "justice" are being ignored. I have a feeling Ditko thinks more people should be killed for petty crimes while I think nobody should be killed for any crimes. At least not by the state, anyway! I'm not as ideologically pure as Jesus when it comes to redemption so if somebody wants to get vengeance, who am I to be all, "Don't throw that stone, you sinner," or whatever He said. Also, I've got no problem with somebody like John Wick or Daenerys Targaryen slaughtering hundreds or thousands of people because somebody killed their cute little fuzzy and/or scaly buddy. I get it, man. I get it.

Those heads on the front cover? They're allegorical representations of people in, and I'm going out on a quite sturdy limb with this assumption, an Objectivist view. You have the wishy-washy loser who society coddles, keeping him from ever achieving the greatness he could muster if he were forced to do it on his own. The happy one represents the Objectivist who sees things clearly. The angry one is the real bad guy, the Communist who celebrates the capitalist failure of others because he wants everybody to be equal. The hero is the optimist uplifting the downtrodden by not helping them at all but also not celebrating because they're too busy making that sweet, sweet capitalist cash by their own blood, sweat, and tears and with no help of anybody at all. And don't try to mention how much help they've gotten in ways that aren't even abstract but absolutely tangible, like born to people of average or better means, or being raised in a neighborhood that's properly taken care of by local or state government using taxes, or going to schools who are well-funded because they're in the right neighborhoods, or standing on the backs of all the scientists and philosophers and inventors who came before them. If some poor piece of shit didn't want to be a poor piece of shit from birth to death, maybe he should have squirted out from between the legs of some rich lady, you know? Idiot.

Oh, I mention them because they get an occasional comic strip throughout this comic book.

If you think this is profound and enlightening then you may have taken four or five serious blows to the head while growing up.

Most people can only argue philosophy in general terms like Ditko here because when you get down to the nitty-gritty details of reality, and actually have to speak on real subjects and how these ideas would play out in the society you live in, the philosophy doesn't hold any water. Ditko's arguing with Theoretical Strawmen here and tuning it, as best he can, to the idea of selling products in a capitalist society. So a four-times concussed adult reading this might think, "Yeah! I agree! If you sell Twinkies filled with shit, you deserve to fail! I don't want my taxes going to support your Shit Twinkies business!" But what's Objectivism is really saying is, "Oh? You were born poor from generations of poor people who had their wealth stolen from them and now you want the government to give you a hand out? No sir! I started a business with the money I received as an inheritance when my grandparents died so why don't you? Oh, too lazy, I bet!"

Okay, sure, I'm sort of doing the same thing there. Painting a general situation that portrays the world in the way that I see it. But I'm just arguing soft generalizations with soft generalizations! We can all play that shit. But at least I didn't write a book called Anthem that was lacking any kind of detail to support my points, simply labeling certain things as bad and then saying, "The society was based on this thing which I called bad earlier so that means the society was bad even if I didn't give any proofs or reasons for why or how that thing was bad. Also the main character who does everthing on his own actually winds up living in a house built by previous generations full of books and knowledge from other people who learns about pronouns only through these ancient books (after the woman he's with comprehends them better than he does) and suddenly proclaims that he did it all himself!" Sorry! I'm really just repeating my Anthem review now!

Back to the main story, Stac Rae works as an assistant to a Doctor Ed Serch who works at the Quest Research Lab. The story begins as the Doctor is being kidnapped by some men working for a mysterious The General. Stac and the Doctor's daughter Fera are currently on their way to the lab discussing, I don't know, Objectivism, probably.

Even Rand would understand this trope where the argument made by the guy is logical and the argument made by the gal is silly and irrational.

The ownership of the suit, Stac admits, belongs to the doctor. So when Stac admonishes Fera that the suit isn't hers to take or, that by taking it, she's somehow taken control of Stac's life and actions, he's admitting that it wasn't his to take either. So why does his theft of the suit trump Fera's theft of the suit when it belongs to neither of them? Why is she taking control of his life when she takes the suit but he isn't taking control of her life and actions (trying to keep Stac and the public safe from the dangers of an experimental suit) when he takes the suit? This is the problem with Objectivism. All arguments basically come down to "I want to do something and it isn't right if somebody or some government says I can't do it" (or the opposite where they don't want to do something, like mask, but other people and/or the government are admonishing them to do it for the greater good). Objectivism's main tenant is "Fuck the greater good. I gots to gets mine!"

Fera and Stac return to the lab to find the Doctor missing. But Fera doesn't suspect anything while Stac's Static-Sense is going crazy that something isn't right. A note left by the Doctor says he'll call. But even though Stac is suspicious, he can't find any proof that anything is actually out of the ordinary. Until The General calls and says, "Don't you dare try to find the Doctor! Don't call the police! We'll release him when we're done with him!" Then The General hangs up and is all, "Well, that settles that. They now know you've been kidnapped but won't do anything about it because I threatened your life as opposed to them not knowing you were kidnapped and probably wouldn't have thought much about it for a few hours, at least."

No! Not a power luster! *gasp*

It's hilarious how certain "ideologies" (in quotes because I'm actually discussing anti-ideologies) turn a person's brain into chunky gravy. Stac's entire thought process derives from believing some foundational idea and just processing everything through a veneer of the sweaty logic. "He didn't ask for money but everybody wants money so he must want the main thing that makes money which is the idea person behind it all which is how everything is produced — a smart person who definitely hasn't stolen anybody else's ideas — which means he's not capable of creating things so he must be trying to destroy things which means he wants easy power and money which means he's a DEMONrat! I mean a member of Buy Luxury Mansions! I mean a friend of hiLIARy! I mean a POWER LUSTER!" It's like they hear some shit ideology via a Rand book or FOX News which slides a cheese grater into their skull and every time they try to think, the grater jiggles up and down a bit and they just get dumber.

The General kidnapped the Doctor because The General has a sick weapon. You might think I'm being stupid but it's actually The General who's being stupid because he's really into anthropomorphizing deadly laser weapons. The first time he said it, I thought he was joking. But then he repeated it and instead of thinking he was some hack who thought his joke was so funny he had to repeat it until somebody acknowledged it, I decided he was completely insane.

Oh wait. I forgot the Doctor was totally into this sick weapon thing. Maybe that's just the way they say something is broken in their world.

The Doctor has a micro-specializer back at the lab so The General sends one of his henchmen to grab it. Of course it's a ruse! He knows that Stac will see the need for the tool as a call for help from Static! But now he just has to convince the most irrational woman in the world to give him the suit!

"Can't you see the logic? You're stopping me from making a decision by making your own decision and that isn't fair to me and my decisions!"

I can't wait for another "Heads" strip so I can learn why I should be so angry at taxes!

The Doctor decides to start curing the weapon while he waits for Stac to save him. Luckily, he finds several things wrong with it that The General broke himself to know whether the Doctor was being truthful. This leads the Doctor to think, "He's a master at being clever and counteracting the clever." Fuck, man, that's either the most clever thing I've ever read or the most counter-clever thing! I'm going to put it in my Bluesky bio!

I guess Fera gives in to Stac because he follows the henchman back to The General's secret lair and he's got the suit with him. While he looks for a way inside, the Doctor learns, with the Specializer he thought he didn't need, that many of the parts in the gun are defective. If he'd just done the obvious work, the gun wouldn't have worked anyway. But now he's going to have to fix it up completely, killing millions! Maybe. Or just, like, one really irritating squirrel? It's not like the Doctor knows what The General's plans for the weapon are. He might even be serious about sending the Doctor home after the sick weapon is cured! Just because some guy calls himself The General, has half of his brain showing through his skull, and kidnaps scientists while threatening the scientist's daughter with death, it doesn't intrinsically mean he's up to no good. He's just being productive!

By the time Static saves the Doctor, The General has amscrayed with the ungay. But Static knows how to find the information: torture and possibly killing! It's for justice and not because he just likes torturing and killing. And even if he did, isn't it his right to do those things?

I wish the Heads were here to tell me what to think about this.

Static catches up to The General who attempts to murder Static with his newly healed gun. He fails and Static manages to turn the gun on him, ripping him in half. Static figures without the gun and their leader, his followers will just sit around unthinkingly and collect welfare. Evil but not as evil as stealing gold from wealthy people using violence. Static collects the gun and takes it back to the Doctor who will make it sick again so the world will be safe from, well, one single threat. Hooray for free will and hard work or something!

Like whether or not to put an "e" in judgment.

The denouement portrays a scene where the Doctor wonders if he shouldn't destroy the suit because, like the gun, it could be used to commit unspeakable acts of evil. But Stac, who really, really, really fucking loves wearing the suit, tries to convince him that things aren't evil and you can't stop a new-born baby from turning evil so why not just let him keep the suit? He makes sure to throw in, as a major point of his argument, "Do gun triggers pull fingers?" Oh, wow, man! I thought Steve Ditko must be some kind of genius for all the work he's done in comics but it turns out he's just another 2nd Amendment chud with the most boring, cliché arguments that they all spew because they think in bumper stickers.

The story ends with Stac asking Fera why she's so sad and she's all, "Because I fucking listened to you and went against my beliefs, you asshole!" THE END!

But that's only ten pages! Still more to come! But first, next time in Static:

Five philosophies: 1. Objectivism; 2. A Terrible Philosophy; 3. Another Wrong One; 4. A Truly Despicable One Full of Empathy; 5. Socialism (Super Wrong).

After a one page comic strip featuring the Comic Kid who teaches us that emotion is built on logic and experience and aren't just feelings that can be fucked (is that what he said? I don't know. I didn't pay much attention to it because I distrust everything Ditko writes at the moment), the second story begins: "The Exploding Room". This one was drawn by Steve Ditko but the dialogue is by Robin Snyder. I don't know anything about Robin Snyder so I'm not going to celebrate yet.

Whew. Good thing I didn't celebrate. "The Exploding Room" was an eight page shit episode of The Twilight Zone about a hitman whose method of killing is blowing people up. As he goes about his day blowing somebody up, his path is almost crossed by a black cat, he breaks a mirror, and the man he does the job for doesn't give him the bonus he promised. What kind of idiot pays a hitman to blow somebody up and then doesn't pay them their full wage after? I guess he wanted to get blown up because that's what happens. But he survives for enough time after blowing out of the building to land at the feet of the Blow Up Hitman and express a dying curse that the hitman wind up exploding forever! And, for some reason, that's what happens. The guy falls asleep that night and just dreams of blowing up over and over again. Then the story ends and we're left to wonder if it was one night of bad dreams or he somehow entered The Mediocre Twilight Zone!

The final five page story, "Shag and the Uglies", makes absolutely zero sense. But a guy does push down a hot chick twice after she tries to slap him around. So that's cool! Or is it the opposite of cool? I'm so confused by how terrible the story was! The thrust of the story was that Jay (or "Shag" when he transforms) works security for some television variety hour. A guy in an ugly mask attacks the hot singer. Shag stops the attack but the guy gets away. Then Jay and his pals get together and go, "Let's be like Sherlock Holmes and solve this case!" And I guess they figure out who the attacker is but it doesn't fucking matter because he tries to attack the singer in studio again and is caught. So, um, what?

Yay! They figured out it was this guy before they caught him doing the same thing he was doing when they didn't know who he was! They're smart and it didn't matter at all! Hooray!

Ditko's World: Static #1 Rating: D+. I did not like it at all. What a waste of one dollar!

Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea: The Newsletter #4 (First Week of January 2018)

 

E!TACT! #4
Introduction, Batman #37, Justice League #35, The Wild Storm #10, and Other Assorted Bullshit
By Grunion Guy

Introduction

I'm a few weeks behind in my comic book reading because I've been rereading the Xanth novels (I believe I stopped reading them when I was too embarrassed to purchase The Color of Her Panties). And before you start in on the criticism of my reading choices, I assure you that I have a lot to say about these things that might assuage my seeming arrested development in literature choices! Somebody should use the Xanth novels for a master class on the male gaze in fiction and pop culture. It boggles my mind, with the kind of chauvinistic world view espoused by the novel, that A Spell for Chameleon received the Best Novel of the Year from the British Fantasy Society. Of course, that mind is being boggled from 2017 and as an adult. The book is forty years old and it shows. I can't help but wonder how much this book influenced my perception of the world when I read it (I think I was around twelve (I did not read it the year it came out so your math on my age is wrong. But not by much, actually)). Did I begin to mistrust my mother due to the influence of this series or was that really just based on her ever increasing bizarre behavior caused by my sister's spiral into teenage hormonal chaos? It's hard to say. But when somebody refers to "the male gaze," it isn't just about female superheroes in revealing clothing. I'll get more into it in a future post. Until then: comic books!

Batman #37

by King, Mann, and Bellaire

People exist on the Internet who claim to know good stories but then shit all over Tom King's Batman. It's nice when a review site hates on Tom King's Batman because then I know that review site is run by idiots. I should go back and review that issue where Catwoman wins a sword fight against Talia al Ghul because didn't that just set a lot of people's underpants on fire. It's like they think they're the most genius reviewer in the world by saying obvious things like "Tom King is shit because he wrote an inexperienced sword fighter beating one of the greatest sword fighters in the world." When I read criticism like that, I tend to think the person has low self-esteem and desperately needs to prove how smart they are. Because, yeah, duh! Of course Talia would have cut out Selina's heart in a few quick thrusts. But since she didn't, perhaps you should consider why Tom King wrote it that way. It's strange that people jump to the conclusion that the guy who wrote The Sheriff of Babylon would make such an amateur mistake as that. When a writer has shown their chops, you fucking trust that writer. Then you read that story and the only conclusion you can come to is that Talia wasn't trying to beat Selina. She was just baiting her for information and feeling her out. If Batman's going to marry her, Talia is going to want to know something about Damian's step-mother. At the end of the issue, Talia mentions to Batman how she approves of Selina, or how she likes her, or something. It's been a bit since I read it. Because that was the real point of the drawn out fight with Selina. To find out who this woman that Batman seems to love is.

Yes, I'm talking about the critics over at Weird Science. I sometimes read their reviews so I can shake my head in wonder at their incompetency. The other problems they had with that issue were why the Justice League wasn't waiting to battle Batman when he left the city and how they were all going to cross the desert again on just one horse. Unless it was two horses. I can't remember because who fucking cares about that kind of shit?! That's just the stuff you pick apart because you, for some reason, don't like Tom King. I mean, to be fair, I'd do it to a Scott Lobdell script!

I think part of the reason people don't like his Batman is because he avoids Narration Boxing. King stays almost completely out of the character's heads. So of course readers who have spent years knowing the exact motive of the character because the writer gives it to you in the modern day thought bubbles have their comprehension crippled when the author avoids doing it. And yet it makes a much better reading experience to not have the author hold your hand and spit on his finger and shove it up your ass as he wanks you off. I mean, that sounds like a pretty good experience too! But not while I'm reading.

The fact that the Weird Science blog loves Scott Lobdell so much makes my point, I believe. They love the finger in the ass wank job Lobdell gives. And he gives it hard, month after month!

While I'm on the subject of Batman, I should share KB's reply to Issue #2's Newsletter and my rant on James Tynion IV's Detective Comics #970. You'll notice KB thinks he's smarter than me. And, well, he isn't! I was going to type "Well, he is!" right there but my ego said, "NO YOU STUPID FUCKER! YOU'RE THE GENIUS!" Anyway, KB always has great insights into comic books. It's almost like he takes their pop culture importance way more seriously than I do! He hardly ever says things like, "I would fuck Tom King in the butthole if I ever accidentally stalked him home from a con!"

KB writes: "Thank you for sparing us the damage of reading Tynion IV's writing. I remember a time I thought he was a scrappy up-and-coming writer and I looked forward to his work. But whatever mojo he once had, he seems to have lost it."

Me: "Yeah. I remember when we thought he was going to do some good shit and then he made Talon undead. That comic was threatening to be interesting for an issue or two until he went in that direction."

KB: "It sounds like we run into the problem of, superhero comics can be a terrible place to explore the ills of society at large. The misogyny that's baked into our society is one thing; a guy protecting Gotham from everything that could destroy it because he's the only one who can is another. This is not to say that the Kates and Dicks and so forth don't do a good job, but we all know goddamn well that most of Gotham's survival is because of doings at the Batcave (and maybe 10% because the Court of Owls operates behind the scenes to keep their town profitable).

And also, let's go back to Why Batman Doesn't Kill The Joker: for all the ink spilled about how Batman is afraid to cross the line, the much simpler reality is, Batman doesn't see himself as an authority unto himself. Ultimately he submits to a system that has the power to incarcerate and, if desired, execute the Joker at any time. Batman operates to stop threats and keep Gotham safe (citizens and cops alike); beyond that he isn't interested in power. He works for the law; he isn't the law.

So if you're looking for a comic book analogue to power-drunk myopic sexist jerks, don't turn to the guy who built his life around using all his resources to keep law-abiding citizens safe AND make sure even criminals have their day in court (and, if they're willing to go straight, a job at WayneTech upon release)."

Me: "I could have come up with these insights if I'd wanted to! I mean, I love these points you've made. But you forget, in Tynion's world, Batman is an older white heterosexual male. So he's not as good a guy as you think he is! That's the end of my argument. That's just how it works. I don't have anything else to say because I already sound like an old, bitter, resentful white heterosexual male! But I'm not! I'm middle-aged!"

KB: "And delving into the real world, ain't it funny how morons on the Left dwelled and dwelled on Hillary's "corruption" -- 100% of which turns out to have been lies pushed by Republicans / Russians / Stein / Sanders -- while they barely paid attention to Trump's? I bet Tynion IV has a Jill Stein bumper sticker."

Me: "Whoa whoa whoa! Some of my Newsletter recipients might be Jill Stein fans! You can't say things like this! We're trying to make this a safe place for people who don't understand how stupid their political stances are! If you voted for Jill Stein, I'm not judging you! At least not openly! I mean, if we met in public and you mentioned you voted for her, I probably wouldn't be able to hide the disgust on my face! But you can't see my face in these newsletters, so totally believe me when I say I'm not making that face at all!"

I hope you bought all of that! It would be easier to pass off as the truth if I weren't so judgmental while reading every single stupid comic book I've ever read. I even mocked that Death Talks About AIDS comic from the 90s!

And now back to Batman #37! Just give me a moment to read it and see if I have any smarter than KB thoughts to share!

Nothing screams "METAL!" like everything this picture isn't.

I'm only a few pages in but I think I can understand why so many comic book reviewer nerds hate Tom King's Batman: IT'S SO FUCKING ADORABLE! I suppose this is the kind of thing they call "fan service" which, I mean, is that a bad thing? Because I'm being serviced like crazy here with how cute and adorable Superman and Batman and Catwoman and Lois are at the fair! I would think that "fan service" would be when the idiotic writer decides to make Batman and Superman punch each other in the face for fifteen pages...again! That shit is old! That's the shit that serviced my grandad's needs! Not that my grandfather was a grown man-baby stuck in a state of arrested development who could only find solace in the pages of a four color funny book! He was a war hero! I mean, he was in World War II. I mean, not like, fighting or anything. He had the sweet gig of chauffeuring for the army chaplain. Although he did introduce me to comic books, in a way. He used to drive around Santa Clara collecting newspapers for recycling. Whenever he got comic books in the stacks, he'd throw them in a box and store them in the garage. Those were the first comic books I read! Things like Hulk and Sgt. Fury, Agent of SHIELD. You know, shit!

Lobo! This comic book just got three times better!

This comic book has made me laugh about once per page.

Maybe that's my entire review? No wait! I have a good review: "If you really like to be entertained but you're a huge nerd who thinks they like whimsical things because you have a terrible drama student sense of humor but you actually hate real whimsy, you should avoid this comic book because it won't entertain you. It will just make you mad. You will be all, 'Why isn't Batman detectivating?! Why isn't Superman punching an alien in the dick?! What is with all this on-panel time with their love interests?! Gross!' But if you're super cool like me (the kind of cool that almost never leaves you as the wallflower at an orgy), this comic book could be your new best orgy partner!"

That review might sound confusing but it's actually one of my most comprehensible! Plus it has a little bit of Browningesque dramatic monologue!

Justice League #35

By Priest and Woods

Priest takes the style he used in Deathstork where he tells bite-sized morsels of story in one to three page chapters and applies it to the Justice League. By using this style, he seems to carve out more room to tell tales featuring ensemble casts where everybody gets a decent chunk of time describing their current problems and motivations. It fits really well around a group as large as the Justice League, a group that has so many marquee name talents. Like King's Batman, he's really concentrating on the characters and letting the plot resolve around the space he's made for the characters. It's so much better than just shoving every member of the cast into every scene and just making sure they each get one snarky line in combat.

Although it's probably too different for people who do blogs named after a movie from the 1980s. Was that reference too subtle? Probably if you write for that blog!

Although I do have one slight issue that has plagued my enjoyment of comic books for a long time. The story seems to be setting up one of those situations where the heroes become hated by civilians. I noticed that right off the bat because the story was called "The People vs. Justice League." I just want my heroes to be heroic, you know? I hope one of the new Metal heroes will be a hero that goes around killing people who get angry at heroes. His name could be Negative Reinforcement.

The Wild Storm #10

By Ellis, Hunt, and Buccellato

This comic series magnifies the main problem I have with comic books (as does Tom King's current maxi-series, Mister Miracle): a well thought out and deliberate story that is well worth your time and effort to really study closely suffers in the medium. This is a 24 chapter story which the reader must read in monthly installments. I'll be damned if I keep anything close to a reasonable amount of retention on the subtleties of the plot over that kind of time. If I were reading a novel and set it down for one month before picking it up to read again, I'd almost certainly start the danged thing over. Every scene, I need to strain to remember who the fuck each character is and what organization they work for and who runs that organization and whether or not I've come to determine if they're a mostly good or a mostly bad group. I suppose if you were a huge fan of the Wildstorm universe previous to this, it would be easier. But my knowledge of the Wildstorm universe amounts to the characters in The Authority (and maybe Stormwatch, since, well, you know), Grifter has red hair and hangs laundry on his face, and Zealot doesn't know how to apply her makeup. So you'd understand if I'm a bit confused by much of it.

But that hasn't decreased my enjoyment of this series (I mean, I don't think it has? Regarding Mister Miracle, I've been keeping each issue stashed in my bookcase so I can reread the entire series straight through when it's finished)! I appreciate writers who don't just treat their comic book writing gig as a chance to vomit up an action sequence every month tied together by ideas that wouldn't even pass for good Young Adult Fan Fiction. I want to read a story that's either been planned from the beginning or, at least, written to the end before being used for the comic (the difference being, if you can't quite parse my statement, a planned story is written based on an outline where the writer knows exactly what they want to happen and the journey the characters will travel to get to the end. A story written to the end can be the writer just seeing where it goes as they write it but know how it finishes before using it as a professional piece of writing so that they can revise and tweak it so that the character arc matters in some way. As opposed to...oh, let me just pick a random writer...Scott Lobdell who obviously writes a twenty page story every month that goes wherever his mind takes him and then begins a new twenty page story when it's time to write the next month's script which may follow the story from the previous issue in only the shallowest of paths). The thing is, I want a story to have a point. I want a story to say something. And, generally, when you're just writing to fill pages and collect a check, you're as blank as Hugh Grant at the beginning of About a Boy.

Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea was meant to be a reminder of each story from month to month. But I grew bored with that "book report with dick jokes in" style. So now I'm doing this. Anyway, another good issue that kept the story moving along. I think. Who is Bendix again?!

That was a joke! Of course I know who Bendix is! It's Kenesha/Savant that I have no past knowledge of! I keep thinking she's Angie when she's on-panel! Is that racist?!

Other Bullshit

The top of my stack has a few books that will probably wind up being blog entries: Metal #4, Michael Cray #3, and Doomsday's Cock #2. If that burns me out on talking about comics, maybe the next Newsletter will be about Piers Anthony's chauvinistic Xanth series.

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #32 (Late June 1992)

Shit about to go down! Batman finally faces a guy with a knife!

I wonder if this is the story about the first time Batman had to fight a guy with a knife? More likely it's about his first time facing the League of Assassins or Kobra or a bunch of guys with knives and kanji tattoos that read stuff like "This side up" and "impotent white guy" (so like Kobra or the League but more local and more lame). I'm suggesting Batman will be fighting a gang or an organization because the title is "Blades" and not "Blade". Although that might just be so Marvel doesn't get all up in their ass crack with lawyers. I could glance at the covers of the next two issues but I want to be surprised! Also, I'm already looking at the cover of the second issue in the story (because of the way stacks work) and it's no help.

Before we get to the comic book, I need to scan the inside cover advert because, hoo boy, guys. GUYS.

Intriguing! I didn't think I was into watching hot women take shits until just now.

I've often said that every single fucking company in the world needs a Department of Cynicism so that they don't wind up making hilarious errors like this advert for Catwoman: Defiant. Every department would just be a room full of the most clever and observant men and women that exist in every friend group (you're all thinking of somebody right now!) sitting around playing video games or Dungeons & Dragons. Every time the company comes up with an idea that's going to go out in the public, just slip it under the door. They'll pass it around and within a few minutes, you'll know if you accidentally just marketed a Fleshlight to toddlers.

I mean, that advert is super hot though. I can see why whoever okayed it was all, "PRINT IT!", without looking too closely because they just wanted to begin masturbating as soon as their office door was closed.

The issue begins (I mean after the Catwoman's ropy shit advert) with Batman investigating the scene of a long gun assassination.

Batman's smarter than I am so I'm not going to question "Bullets fired from a long-range rifle meant food left uneaten." I guess if somebody broke in with a pistol and shot them, they'd have finished their breakfast?

Mr. Lime, the assassin, can't be the focus of this book because a long-range rifle isn't a blade. Wait. Let me check something. Hmm, yeah, okay. Yep! The OED backs me up on this!

The OED is the Oxford English Dictionary, just in case that was a mystery to you. I feel like everybody knows that but then everybody I know also has a degree in literature so it's worth it to feel like I'm overexplaining. I hate to leave in an "IYKYK" moment. Whenever I see anybody take the time to write "If You Know, You Know" or the acronym, I get angry because I'm all, "You have time to explain! Stop gatekeeping your trivial information! Let me be somebody who knows!"

Let's contemplate an assassin that would take the name Mr. Lime. Is it because he fires bullets into people's coconuts? IYKYK!

You don't have to tell me I'm a hypocrite! I've known that for decades longer than you have!

As we, the readers, learn more about Mr. Coconut in the main panels of the book, long, vertical side panels on each page tell the story of a fop vigilante getting all dressed up like Porthos to make his Gotham debut.

I've never read The Three Musketeers but I have played the text adventure game about it which, luckily, managed to keep the memory of the novel alive! But I couldn't remember the names of any of the four Three Musketeers so I checked IMDB.

Normally, this caption would read, "Nice! Milla Jovovich is in this!" And then my dick would find out where it's streaming. But instead, this caption reads, "Second woman on the cast is just 'Blonde'. Fucking Patriarchy."

I'm sure Helen George was labeled as "Blonde" simply because the cast is probably listed in the order they appear on-screen? I wish IMDB had notations under each actors name in IMDB that read "Shows tits" or "Shows Dick (flaccid)". I think the only person with "Shows Butthole" would be Anne Heche in Psycho.

Batman begins his analysis of Mr. Lime with "The world is overpopulated. That is a fact." Since he's only thinking, nobody standing around him (meaning Alfred) mutters, "Nice. A billionaire hoarding resources that could be used to alleviate the issues with current overpopulation, making the current population actually sustainable, complaining about other people existing. Not a great look, Master Brood."

Bruce doesn't actually express an opinion on overpopulation other than labeling the population being too much over an unspecified number a fact. He's just coming to grips with Mr. Lime's reasons for killing, scrawling them down in his little Bat Notebook. Mr. Lime only kills people over the age of 63. He kills them in a variety of ways: rifle, slit throats, forcing cars over cliffs, hit and run. I guess he mails the police after to explain that any random death of an old person in Gotham was his doing. Or maybe he's just reading the obituaries and taking credit for when old people die? I bet it's some fourteen year old on some local Gamma World Bulletin Board dialing in and leaving cryptic, poorly spelled confessions in forum threads about turning toasters into explosives (in-game, of course! With flow charts and dice rolls and advantages for having certain mutations).

Later that night, The Fop makes his debut as he stops a mugging.

His actual name will probably be something like the Swashbuckler or the Devilish Dandy of Gotham.

His name is The Cavalier which I have to applaud for the various meanings that can be applied to it (probably not this one though: "an adherent of Charles I of England"). But to my credit, Merriam-Webster's online definition for its use as an adjective to mean "aristocratic" contains the example, "portrayed the plantation owner as a cavalier fop". His attitude as well as his dress speaks to his moniker. He acts as if he's filming a dramatic scene as he battles the muggers. By the time the police arrive, they're basically standing and applauding, throwing roses and hiding boners. Batman's going to hate that they love this guy!

Gordon wonders if this new vigilante will be trouble, especially since Batman's mind has been consumed with Mr. Lime. Gordon can't understand it because Gordon doesn't know Batman is secretly a young boy still nursing the wound of his parents' murder by a violent criminal. Gordon can't see that Mr. Lime represents every pain, every confusing thought, every grieving second of Batman's life. Is that why he's Mr. Lime? Because the lime's acidity burns when it gets in old wounds?

By the way, sometimes I get distracted while reading and reviewing a comic book. Most of the time, there isn't any external evidence to my having wandered off to fuck around on the Internet or play some video games or take a nap. But I just got distracted and there's physical proof of it. Here you go:

I'm so subtle!

Batman stops by Gordon's office to pick up police files on Mr. Lime. While he's there, Gordon points out that the people of Gotham really love this Cavalier guy. Batman's all, "If they love him so much, why don't they take him out behind the school and get him pregnant. Also, I'm not mad. Please don't print in the newspaper that I got mad."

Man, writing is easy when you just steal other people's jokes! No wonder ChatGTP can write so much so quickly!

Also, Batman really is mad. I think his eye was twitching when Gordon told him about the lovable scamp, The Cavalier. It's hard to know for sure because you can't depict with absolute certainty an eye twitching in a comic book panel.

Batman's notepad's getting a little scary when he starts sounding like Rorschach. Lines like, "But I'll win. I must. No more killings, Lime. No more tears. Too sad. Too sad." I guess it's not as poetic as a dead dog with his head caved in but Batman's new to this journaling thing.

Eventually, Batman "accidentally" runs into The Cavalier.

Oh, Batman! Remember this line 19 years from now when you finally learn about the Court of Owls!

I love how Scott Snyder's creation of The Court of Owls technically didn't retcon anything. We can always surmise while reading earlier issues that they've been in the shadows controlling things. And anything that does conflict with past events isn't a fault of Snyder's story; it's the fault of The New 52!

Batman pulls a card out of the authoritarian playbook (something he's often wont to do being, you know, a billionaire) and "allows" The Cavalier to remain in Gotham playing vigilante. But he only allows it because The Cavalier reminds him of the last happy moment of his life: sitting in a dark movie theater with his mother and father watching Zorro. The Cavalier does his cavalier thing and pretends to be gracious while also threatening Batman with a future battle of swords. Batman doesn't respond because Batman is simply thinking, "Um, like, yeah I'm way better at swords than you, you douche."

The Cavalier's secret identity is revealed to the reader: Hudson Pyle, stuntman. His plan was to make a name for himself as The Cavalier only to later reveal his identity when he became super popular. Then he'd easily get movie roles instead of just stunt jobs. But now that he's got a taste of saving people on the streets, he's not sure he wants to reveal his identity and move on to movies. He's considering giving that up to become Gotham's favorite crime fighter.

Batman probably already knows all that, or at least would know all of that if he wasn't so obsessed with the old person killer. This time, he set fire to a care facility for the elderly. Batman and the firefighters manage to save all but one person by the time the fire gets too out of control to safely enter the building. But Batman enters anyway! He's got to save the old person! Which he, of course, manages. Everybody at the scene begins to think, "Hey! Maybe this Batman isn't so bad. Would The Fop have gone in there under those conditions? Smiling and cocky and full of swagger? Surely not! But Batman? That guy doesn't care if he lives or dies! That's who I want to save me in a certain death situation!"

The issue ends with The Cavalier watching the fire from across the city, admitting to himself he would have been useless even if he had been there. Some things are better left for Batman; some things better left for The Cavalier. There's room enough for both in Gotham, thinks the Court of Owls, probably. But as he's contemplating his place in Gotham, he sees somebody jump from a nearby bridge! He swings in to save her on his Cavalierope only to find she didn't want to be saved. I mean, sure, at the moment. But she'll probably be grateful later.

Is this vampire Barbara Gordon?

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #32 Rating: A. What kind of rating were you expecting from a James Robinson/Tim Sale jam? It lives up to the credits on the cover. I don't know why Catwoman decided to take a shit on it.

Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography (July 1989)

The world was a better place when people accepted this person could be Superman's most dangerous enemy.

Once upon a time, Lex Luthor was fat and bald and had lost a hand to Krypto-cancer. He was the epitome of the greedy CEO who was shtupping his secretary, Scrooging his employees, and kicking every dog he could find. Being the worst person in the world wasn't about being athletic or having special powers or being charming or good-looking. Once upon a time, we knew who was the real enemy to truth, justice, and the American Way. Somewhere along the way, people forgot this piece of shit was the antithesis of everything good and they decided to elect him president.

I'm not talking about that time Lex Luthor was elected president of the United States of America in the DC Universe! I'm talking about Trump! But I don't want to talk about him anymore. This isn't going to be a review about that bloated, idiotic turd of a human being who's currently murdering fishermen off the coasts of Venezuela because he's the most unloved person who ever lived but the one who needs love and approval the most (which he gets from sociopaths). It's just that the use of gold for the cover font and the profile picture of an arrogant piece of shit made me think of that old fuck's dumb book from so many decades ago. But that's it! We're done with that now! No more mention of that piece of shit because we're here to have fun!

If I start a conversation with you by saying "Mister" and it's followed by anything other than "Big Dick", it means I don't want to fuck you.

Contrariwise, if I begin a conversation with you by saying, "Miss" or "Missus", it means I'm already about to jizz in my pants.

The police tape (a VHS tape because this was written in 1989, like eight generations and a billion mass shootings ago) contains a police interview with suspected murderer Clark Kent. Sure, we as readers know Clark Kent didn't actually kill anybody. But we as readers also know cops are terrible at their jobs and mostly solve cases using racism, gut instinct, and Magic 8 Balls. You'd think cops would do real investigative work when trying to solve murders because they love overtime pay so much. But they really only love overtime pay when it comes with doing basically nothing. Which is how they solve murders so, um, win-win, I guess? For cops, I mean! It's always lose-lose-lose-lose-die-lose-die-die-lose-lose-lose for the public when dealing with cops. The only way to win with a cop is not to play (I mean don't call their dumb shooting dogs loving asses. They're just going to make any situation worse. If I were being hunted by a Predator, I'd call Domino's delivery before I called a cop. And I hate Domino's pizza!).

"Your Honor, look how quiet this guy is! I rest my case!"

That bit depicted in the previous panels wasn't on the tape that Luthor received! That bit was behind the one-way mirror which the reader gets to be privy to because we're not watching the tape with Luthor; we've gone back to the original moment the tape was made. It's pretty complex story telling; you probably wouldn't understand it. Especially when the cops show Clark Kent a photograph of the guy he's supposed to have murdered and the perspective enters the picture and now we're even further back in time from the opening to when Peter wakes up after sleeping in a prophetic way (the way he'll wind up dying). This is more complicated than Memento, probably. I mean from what I've heard. I saw that in the theaters but it was like, um, hey? I think you got your reels mixed up?

Ha ha! I just lied again! This is from my Nice Alice and Death Rock Memento review from when I used to do movie reviews way back in the '00s when we actually still owned the No Apologies Press URL (thanks for existing, Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, so I could easily find this!):

"Well, I liked how he was basically a blank slate, personality-wise. He was an Everyman. He represented the way we all live our lives: in a desperate search for truth, for something solid to believe in. His life is a list of facts and categorizations. If he writes something down, it becomes the truth. We live our lives with contradictions and shifting perceptions. Black and white rarely exist for us. We have memories that we sometimes doubt. He has a line written on a photograph. Objective proof of the way his life is. At the end of the movie, his truth starts to waver, starts to become uncertain and ungrounded. The center of his life is falling apart. The center that is the fact that his wife was murdered and he is looking to avenge her death. And the end of the movie is actually the beginning of the timeline. So we see him at a weak moment, his facts betraying him, his memories unsure. At the beginning of the movie, he was completely sure of his reality. Everything was neatly stated, filed, categorized on his skin and photographs. But this certainty in his truth only comes, as we observe during the movie, by his own manipulation of facts and his own exploitation of his faulty memory. He plants so-called truths on his photographs and skin that will drive him toward a fulfilling reality: the killing of the man who killed his wife. And as we see, it doesn't really matter who that man is because Leonard has conditioned himself the way they try to condition Sammy to remember which blocks to pick up by electrocuting certain ones. Leonard is conditioned to hunt for his wife's murderer. That's all he knows how to do. He's an automaton at this point. And even when he's presented with proof that he has killed someone before that he thought was his wife's murderer (the picture of him pointing at the space on his chest where he'll tattoo the fact his job is done), he burns it and proceeds to set up Teddy as the guy he's looking for. The final proof that he's not really looking for the murderer is at the end, when he closes his eyes to see if the world goes away. He pictures himself in bed with his wife with the blank space on his chest tattooed with 'I have done it.' He doesn't want revenge. He wants his wife back. That's when he'll finally get the tattoo on his chest that lets him know his quest is over."

The guy in the photo's name is Peter Sands. He's a has-been reporter down on his luck. No job. No money. Divorced wife to whom he owes alimony. Oh, he's also a massive drunk. Exactly the sort of person Clark Kent would murder.

Desperate, Peter calls up every publisher he's ever worked with looking for an advance on any story he can make up in the moment. But nobody wants him because of that massive drunk thing I mentioned. Coincidentally, while getting turned down by every publisher he calls, one publisher who hasn't heard how drunk Peter constantly is, calls him fishing for an interesting book. On the spot, Peter decides he's going to do an unauthorized biography of Lex Luthor, not realizing it's going to get him murdered by Clark Kent later.

Please! I put a moratorium on mentioning that doddering racist, lady!

I don't know why Trump was ever famous but, as you can see, even in 1989, people knew he was the real world equivalent to Lex Luthor. I mean in the greedy and being a dick and a criminal department and not in the super genius inventor department. Definitely in the hating people who are actual heroes department because he's the most delusional narcissist in the world department and thinks all the accolades should go to him department.

Am I using "department" too much?

Back to the terrible police investigation by the usual terrible police who don't know how to do investigations, they've got some really damning evidence based on their bias and some wild speculation based on various works of fiction they've seen (not read. Cops don't read).

Oh come on! He could have written that for plenty of other reasons! Like the guy who shot him asked as Sands was dying, "Which reporter at The Daily Planet would Lois Lane never fuck?"

Back to the past, Peter Sands begins researching Lex Luthor starting with Lex's autobiography, Simply Brilliant. It's probably a good place to start if you read it carefully because no way Lex Luthor can't help bragging about any murders he did if you read between the lines and gather the subtext of things he's saying. Or he simply wrote stuff like, "I murdered X. Of course, I mean that in the metaphorical sense. Of course, I mean THAT in the metaphorical sense. Because I really did murder him. Literally double metaphorically, if you see what I'm saying. Look, I killed him and nobody can arrest me because I used to fuck young girls with them on this rich pedophile's island."

You're at an AC/DC concert?

Meanwhile, back in the present, the cops whine at Clark that he's being rude and making their jobs so fucking difficult.

"Look, you either confess now or you confess after we've held you in this room for 72 hours distorting everything you tell us and promising you that if you sign a confession, you can go home."

Clark knows he didn't kill this guy literally but may have killed him metaphorically (but not metaphorically metaphorically like how Lex killed that guy I made up). You see, Peter Sands invited Clark Kent to his house not for help on his book but for help on finding Superman. Peter explained his life was in danger from Lex Luthor and the killers on his payroll because Peter had found out too many true things about Lex. But Clark is all, "Whoa whoa whoa! Why do you think I, not Superman, would know how to get in touch with Superman, a man who is famously not me? Because if he were me, I could save your life right now but he's not me and my secret identity is super important (not Superman important! Ha ha!) so I can't just save your life right now, being that I'm not him, I mean. Let me leave you alone for a few hours while I pretend to go look for Superman because it's really difficult to get in touch with a guy who you totally aren't." So Clark leaves Peter's apartment and then Peter is murdered and begins writing, "Clark Kent is obviously not Superman or else he could have saved my life", on the floor with his own blood. But he dies after just writing Clark's full name.

After finishing Lex Luthor's autobiography, Peter Sands begins investigating anybody who's still alive who knew Lex when he was younger. That comes out to one person: an elementary school teacher. He doesn't get suspicious that only one person in all of Luthor's life is still alive; he waits until she explains that he probably got kids beaten up by grown men and possibly killed his parents. Then he begins investigating everybody tied to Lex's parents' life insurance policy and, hoo-boy, it sure looks like Lex murdered his parents! That's when he gets a phone call from a mysterious stranger who is all, "Stop investigating or we'll kill you. Unless you already figured out Lex killed his parents. Then we're just going to kill you anyway. Good day!"

Back at police headquarters in the present, the cops continue to act as if the first person they brought in for questioning is the murderer because, man, it's tough having to bring in more people. Also a waste of time when you can just frame whomever you first grab off the street.

Clark knows he's partly responsible for Sands' death so I hope they give him a polygraph!

Peter Sands, before he was killed by Luthor's men, decided he wasn't afraid of being killed by Luthor's men and continued his investigation. He remembered he knew a guy who worked for Luthor in the '60s who was also a Vietnam War Veteran and also a heavy drinker. So he tricks him into telling all of his secrets for a few beers while one of Luthor's men sits nearby listening. After the meeting, Luthor's guy runs down Peter's friend in the street, killing him. The police aren't investigating that murder because, I'm assuming, he was a Black guy? And probably because he was a Vietnam Vet? And, being 1989, maybe he was gay? Any reason so the police could convince themselves they don't have to care about that murder because they believe nobody else does either. Some of you are too young to remember Reagan's America but it sucked. It wasn't as bad as Trump's America, but it was full of vile, despicable people who were only governing for certain people. Yeah, sounds familiar, right? It's the kind of leadership that makes me drop friends and stop talking with family who continue to support it. Just vile people supporting other vile people for the most selfish and irrational reasons.

Only fifteen pages left so it might be time to summarize the rest of the story in the end of review bit, right? I mean, I don't want to spoil the ending where Lex Luthor heaves his horrendous form atop the woman who brought him the Clark Kent snuff film.

Gross.

Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography Rating: B. Okay, fine, Clark Kent wasn't killed on-camera by cops. He was saved at the last minute by one of Lex Luthor's lawyers so that Clark would owe him a favor. I thought for sure Clark Kent would come to his own defense by pointing out that the dying man wrote Clark's name with his non-dominant hand as you can plainly see without even knowing which of Peter Sands' hands was dominant because he's wearing a watch on the hand that scrawled Clark's name. Am I a better detective than the Metropolis police detectives? Yes, of course I am. Cops are terrible detectives. Instead, we learn the murder weapon was found and the prints on the blade were from a convicted felon who had fallen out with Donald Trump. So Trump had him framed for the murder and attempted framing of Clark Kent. Plus Lex Trumpthor probably had all the people Sands interviewed killed. In the end, Lex Luthor has gotten away with everything because he's a genius and Superman's a huge pusshole who was manipulated by a Lexcorps-made earthquake in Tokyo. Luthor controlled the whole thing! See, I had to stop calling him Trump as soon as I began talking about his genius plans to manipulate everyone. Trump only manipulates dimwits and fucknuggets whom he either has serious dirt on (probably Epstein-island related) or they're just so dumb and greedy, and their dad hated them so much, that they'll pretend to believe any piece of dog vomit that drips from Trump's dog butthole of a mouth. Was that a mixed metaphor? I hope not! My credibility as a proper writer could be shattered!

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #31 (Early June 1992)

Batman loves his fuzzy little screechy rabies guys.

Who in DC's art department or editorial, in 1992, decided that after 30 issues, the iconic look of this series should just be tossed out the fucking window like a reverse Batman origin? "What are you talking about, Grunion Guy? The logo looks just like it always did?" I'm not talking about the logo, Internet blockhead I just made up to argue with! Where'd the thin-lined rectangle go?! Look, I'll show you some examples.

This is the first issue. It established "the rectangle". It looks fucking stylish. But it gets better!

This smaller image inside a rectangle of solid cover, with the logo and title in blocks above and below the main image, was used for the entirety of the "Shaman" story arc. At issue #6, they changed this format by covering the entire page with the image.

But they left the original inner rectangle border! How fucking cool does that look?!

You can even see the rectangle use on Mike Mignola's cover for the first Annual which he incorporated into the art by having the lower edge disappear into the murky water that Batman is wading through. It just looks so streamlined and modern and some artists absolutely were working with it as part of the layout, as seen in Wagner's run, "Faces". But for some reason, after thirty issues, they dropped the design on this cover. Why? Who made that decision? Can they retroactively be fired for being lame and not with it? Man, I hope so!

This issue is called "Family" probably to bring to mind "Death in the Family" where the Joker treated Jason Todd's head like a sealed crate full of brains. And since these stories are "legends", maybe Jason Todd will be a main character in this. I'm assuming, by the title, that's how these stories worked at the time. They're not chronological but stories from across Batman's career without being grounded in any specific time.

The issue begins with a very serious Batman running through the jungle, bloodlust pumping through his normally bloodlust-free veins.

Please let him be talking about Batcow!

How often does Batman "want" to kill? Is he like Bruce Banner in that one movie and Batman's secret is that he wants to kill all the fucking time? That can't be true because he definitely loses his temper to degrees no regular mortal ever does without popping a mental gasket but he seems to have the ability not to kill as hardcoded as my ability to not shit myself while I'm sleeping, no matter how huge a shit I'm taking in my dreams. Batman's probably just being metaphorical and slightly hyperbolic when he says to himself that he wants to kill them. Up until the "they've taken you" bit, I thought maybe he was talking about ants in his kitchen.

Unsurprisingly, it's Alfred who has been taken. Batman decides right up front that he's finally willing to kill if that's what it takes to save Alfred. This might be why Jason Todd came back so angry. "Remember that time you were willing to kill to save somebody? And it wasn't fucking me, you piece of shit! *BANG*!" The bang was Red Hood's gun that he loves to shoot into people's faces and kill them dead. But not Batman because even if he's mostly mad at Batman, he just takes that anger out at the rest of the criminal world. Also, he can't hit Batman with a bullet! Nobody can. At least not mortally!

It seems Batman sent Alfred on a vacation to Corto Maltese where Alfred got into some trouble. So Batman is blaming himself instead of Alfred who probably did too much gambling, heroin, and sex.

Like Bruce Wayne cares if Alfred hears his fuck noises. As if Alfred doesn't usually sit in the cuck chair, just in case Bruce needs something during the sex. "A little more lube for your butthole, sir?"

Alfred disappeared two days into his vacation but Batman didn't notice until Alfred missed his flight seven days later. Batman says, "Didn't have time to check up on him." Oh yeah. He was fucking all week, wasn't he? Probably had Selena Kyle, Vicki Vale, and Jaina Hudson in bed with him for five days straight. Bruce probably didn't even bother to pick up Alfred at the airport since that's, you know, Alfred's job.

Realizing he was going to have to make his own tea and wash his own pants for the rest of his life, Batman decides to investigate Alfred's disappearance. He heads to Corto Maltese, stays in the same hotel, and passes around a lot of cash while asking questions to all the locals. He finally discovers one willing to tell him about the white man interested in visiting the Mayan ruins. So Batman headed into the jungle with a murder boner.

Even though I scanned the "New Girlfriend" question panel, I could not figure out this clue until Batman explained it.

Batman smiles at Alfred's naivete to not make girlfriend plural and heads into the jungle after him and his captors.

Batman catches up to the bandits in an abandoned rubber factory. After easily beating up most of them, he questions one and discovers that Alfred supposedly was killed by a snake bite! Batman doesn't immediately break down in tears but it's close. He also manages to not kill the guy who told him because he wants proof. But the guy tells him Alfred's body is in the next room but what's actually in the next room are more bandits for Batman to beat the shit out of. After that, the guy explains that they sold Alfred to a criminal overlord called El Vato. Guy Gardner?

"Okay, fine! Yes, Bruce Wayne wrote a birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein all about the first Robin nobody knows about!"

Man, that caption was too dark even for me. I'm sorry, Baby Jesus. I know you don't approve. On the other hand, I don't care what Baby Jesus approves of or disapproves of. He's just a baby!

I can't pray to adult Jesus because he's always depicted shirtless on the cross and, oh my, my thighs are already sweating. Madre de Dios!

I know, I know. Look at me, having a little fun with Christianity in what they'd deem to be a blasphemous or vitriolic way. No way! I love Jesus! But here's a little helpful hint to all the Christians who think both that America is a Christian nation and that Christians are the most victimized of religious people ever: of course you're going to get parodied and satirized and mocked when your religion is the standout, most vocal religion in the United States! What, we're supposed to go after Quakers when we do a little fun mockery? Pshaw! If we did that, you'd get jealous and upset that you were being ignored! I bet Jesus wouldn't get mad at me saying his athletic build gives me the hots! He'd probably blush and do a "oh you" hand gesture and then say, "But seriously. Get straight with God, sinner."

Batman sneaks into El Vato's encampment in some Mayan ruins and almost immediately falls into an ancient Mayan pit trap. El Vato strolls over with all his gunmen to mock Batman before killing him.

Batman's probably not crying. It's just the pit was full of stagnant water. And he fell in directly onto his eyeballs.

Batman does not get shot to death even though it seems inevitable at this point. Instead, he triggers a sonic device on his belt that causes all the bats in South America to come party down. He escapes under cover of bat and rushes into the ruins to find Alfred whom he finds almost immediately. Batman also finds some trucks loaded with guns, explosives, and drugs. He sets up a detonator to distract the gang members while they flee for a helicopter Batman saw earlier. The rescue and escape all work out after some explosions and fisticuffs and Alfred saving Batman's life.

You know Batman probably set this up to make Alfred feel good. Also those are the final panels of the story. That's how it ends.

It's easy to set up a situation like this to entertain people or make them feel like heroes when you're observant. I was once helping out with the Santa Clara Junior Theater when I was, I don't know, twenty-one, I think? At the end of the show, we were breaking down the Tom Sawyer set when I realized they were pulling the nails out of the house façade and that it was probably just going to fall forward when they were done. So I positioned myself with my back to the façade, lining up in the doorway so that the entire thing would crash down around me. Everybody screamed and then laughed and thought it was hilarious and I don't think anybody realized I set up the entire thing. Like Batman pretending he was about to die so Alfred could save him! I'm just like Batman!

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #31 Rating: C. It was a mediocre story which explained why Alfred doesn't go on vacation. Did we need that story? No but we don't really need any story, right? This could have been one of those great fucking stories that you remember for ever even when it wasn't needed for continuity or lore or to reveal some deep insight into the character. But it wasn't because it was mostly boring. Thanks, James Hudnall, for boring me! That being said, I'm going to immediately give James D. Hudnall another chance to impress me! This was the first comic I've reviewed by him but guess what? I've got another to follow it up immediately: Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography.

Judging by this cover, I might be taking the piss out of Donald Trump quite a bit next review. Or not. Fuck Trump. I don't want to talk about his moronic, spiteful ass.

Martian Manhunter: American Secrets #3 (November 1992)

I bet I'm the first person who completely understood these covers!

That caption is less of a brag and more of a declaration that comic book readers don't give a lot of thought to some stuff. Oh, sure, everybody thought about Watchmen! But that's because Moore shoved a fucking novel into the end of each issue and people were all, "Why are there so many words? Must be important!" Plus to my point, I'd say the majority of Watchmen readers at the time were all, "Hurr hurr. Rorschach is fucking cool, man."

As you may have heard, Charlie Kirk was murdered earlier this week and the GOP, whom I've recently mentioned have a tough time understanding reality, immediately used Kirk's death to weaponize their followers against Leftists and Liberals, even though their standard mantra after a gun incident is "Stop politicizing gun deaths with calls for gun control, you evil monsters!" But as I mentioned, they rarely understand reality so they were probably the only ones who didn't read about the killing and then turned to their partners and said, "It was probably a conservative with some kind of stick up their ass about the way Kirk Conservatives." My speculation at the time, which I didn't speculate on because I want to keep my reputation as a reporter pristine (What do you mean "delusional"?!), was that it was some Qanon soused Conservative who saw the Epstein book's release and got murder angry at Kirk for following Trump's lead and deciding that the Epstein files weren't important. Turns out it was just a fucking Groyper. Love that these fuckers keep shooting at themselves.

The main thing I wanted to discuss, because it's comic book related, has to do with Gretchen Felker-Martin and how Bluesky banned her and then DC dropped her Red Hood series. My introduction to this incident came when I saw this Skeet mentioning her ban:

Being that I'm only reading comics from 1992 currently, I had no idea Gretchen was a comic book writer.

Apparently Gretchen was banned from Bluesky for this post due to "glorifying death" which, by the way, wasn't against their terms of service until they decided they needed to ban people rightly acknowledging that Charlie Kirk was a piece of shit and his death was no loss to the world. But I'd also argue that this Skeet wasn't glorifying or making fun of his death anyway! It's a shot at Newsome and a joke about the jobs market. Here's my response:

Seriously! This is funnier and more complex than 90% of right wing humor that's basically just calling somebody a faggot or a retard.

I suspect that, like a majority of the Internet, the Bluesky mods' reading comprehension is sub-standard. I think they read this as Kirk's death was the silver lining. The job opening was the silver lining! Because so much unemployment! And it was a shot at Newsome for having fucking right wing demagogue on his stupid podcast! Glorifying his death it is not. Sure, there's a bit of a smirk about it in there. But it's just collateral damage and not the direct hit. So to speak.

Later, still not knowing who Gretchen Felker-Martin was, I saw that DC was canceling the new Red Hood series. I thought they were canceling it because Red Hood is the kind of guy who would write memes on bullet casings and shoot Nazis in the throat! I thought DC was all, "Oh shit! This is too close to the tragedy! Maybe let's give Todd a rest for a bit!" But no! Come to find out, it was Gretchen's book and DC was all, "We can have Gretchen write funny books about vigilante murders but God forbid she writes a funny Skeet that's assassination adjacent!" Jesus fucking Christ if I wasn't reading old comic books that they published by pedophiles which I'd already paid for, I might just have to boycott these fucking dum-dums!

Anyway, I think I have a 48 page comic to read and that rant just really ate into the word count. But that's okay because I've already said all the smart stuff I could think up about this book in the first two issues. I'm tired of trying to be smart so maybe I'll just make fun of J'onn's cock in this one. Remember, this thing is about white supremacy (you know what that is! The thing Charlie Kirk desperately wanted although apparently not strongly enough for his Nick Fuentes loving Groyper killer! I hope they just leave us all out of their little gun squabbles and just redden the streets with each other's blood, the dumbshits).

That's exactly what a lizard head would say, Doctor Lizard Head!

Doctor Mid-nite tries to convince Detective Jones that he didn't see any lizard heads at all. Was Doctor Mid-nite the man all the Men in Black were modeled after? The Doctor describes how the Justice Society were convinced and not at all gaslit by Hoover that they were the problem and that they should hang up their capes. So they did but they kept working with the government in secret to help maintain the status quo. See, being a flashy hero fighting societal injustice was just too subversive. That's because white people don't want super heroes beating them up for committing crimes which cops and politicians would let them get away with. So now the FBI want Martian Manhunter to work for them keeping the current status quo. They want order over justice and they're willing to burn the shit out of a Martian if he doesn't play ball.

Prelvis falls for the grift because this is DC Elvis's version of working for the FBI. But Detective Jones and Patty are forced to flee as the FBI sick Skeeter on them.

What the fuck is up with that kid?! He's definitely a Gerard Jones self-insert, right?!

Martian Manhunter flies out a window and into the Nevada desert with Patty Marie. Skeeter lies dead on the sidewalk thirty stories below.

He's no longer a little boy but he's also not a lizard head? What the fuck, man?

So Skeeter was a pervy old man who somehow looked like a little boy. I guess that's lizard head magic (and more proof that they're not just white supremacists but also pedophiles (although it wouldn't take much of anything to convince me that those two things often go together).

The FBI mobilize fighter jets to chase down Martian Manhunter. A brief dogfight occurs where one jet is destroyed by another jet's incendiary missiles. But Martian Manhunter and Patty Marie are caught in the explosion. The flames cause J'onn to drop Patty while also lighting Patty on fire so that J'onn has trouble saving her from the fall. They crash to the ground and when J'onn regains consciousness in the morning, Patty is dead. I guess the heroism is that he tried to save her at the risk of his own life. He mostly only failed because writing the rest of the story while he continues to protect this little girl would be a pain the ass. Best to put her out of her misery early and get on with all the alien on alien violence to come.

Oh, um, I guess it all plays into his past trauma too.

I probably shouldn't be the one hinting at another writer lazily scripting up plot points just to make telling the rest of the story easier. Especially when I'm about three pages away from just summarizing the last thirty pages in one paragraph, rating this whole shebang a "B+", and going to take a nap.

You didn't notice but I just took my nap early and had some dinner.

Jones dumps Patty's body next to the dead pilot. He notices some blue gunk leaking out of the pilot and realizes the guy is full of a weird blue fungus. As a scientist, he's basically forced to cut open little Patty too. He discovers she doesn't have the fungus in her. He surmises that some people are either immune to the fungus or too young to have been corrupted by the fungus or too rural for the fungus to have reached them, like Prelvis. He believes the lizard heads use the fungus to somehow keep people in check, to limit what they see (or control it, like people seeing Skeeter as a kid instead of a lecherous old man), and to cause them to spontaneously combust when they say too much. He finds surveillance photos of him on the pilot and a map of Cuba. One of the locations on the map is PTO Iberez, an anagram of a bunch of silly words Keene kept throwing at him, and Doctor Midnight as well. Detective Jones has finally found some real, non-holistic evidence of the alien invasion!

Detective Jones meets a Cuban Beatnik who tries his best to explain what's happening through metaphor and allegory. But ultimately he says too much and burns like Phil did earlier.

This poet less-than-subtly (thus the combustion) explains there's an alien invasion and the aliens are at PTO Iberez.

Detective Jones goes full on Tom Joad, declaring he'll be there when somebody combusts or when somebody gets taken by fungus or when somebody is told by some big-headed, small-faced moron to prove them wrong. But less metaphysically, Martian Manhunter convinces Castro and Guevara to send their guerilla fighters to PTO Iberez instead of Havana. Because that's where the true threat to the world lies!

While the lizard heads battle to protect their fungus mind control crops against the Cuban guerrilla fighters, Martian Manhunter and Prelvis infiltrate the Master Gardener's lair. It's probably time for the lead lizard head to explain why they want to control human culture to this degree but first they need to drop the big white supremacist line whenever they're criticizing somebody Other who speaks or acts against their race-based tyranny.

Only the very worst people expect gratitude from others, and expect others to be grateful for people allowing them to survive. Or earn a living. Or to merely be left alone. As if they spoon feed us everything. Fuck off!

The lizard head plan reads a lot like Peacemaker, Season One. The butterflies decided to take control of the Earth for the sake of the humans, to save the world and force everybody to live in peace. These lizard heads have basically the same plot. And, again, it sounds quite similar to certain white supremacists who are trying to force order through violence in America today.

Look, we've know the fascist playbook for decades. Centuries, even. It's no surprised Jones writing this in 1992 sounds so fucking familiar to today.

Speaking of fascists, I want to return to the revelation that the Charlie Kirk murderer was probably a Groyper and most certainly right-wing himself. I mentioned in an earlier American Secrets review how conservatives want to live in irreality and anything sniffing of actual reality is woke nonsense because they can't control that narrative. So what happens when they learn the killer was one of their own? They just fucking steamroll right over the fact and continue with their bullshit about leftists being violent and leftists having caused this and how leftists need to be violently punished. They have no ideology except hurting the Other that doesn't even exist. The Left they talk about is just more of their shared hallucination. It's no wonder so many of them love AI because it comprehends reality just as well as they do. They want so badly to be given the legal right to just up and murder any Democrat, Liberal, or Progressive they encounter on the street. They want us to be demons from Hell. Their world doesn't make sense without it so they grip as hard as they can at the belief that their enemies are out to get them. Instead, we're cracking jokes because a Nazi was killed by another Nazi. We're having fun with something that probably made the world better, even if it was done by another piece of shit. Oh? And because that piece of shit was a white MAGA Republican? Now they fucking have empathy for him.

A major problem with the Right is how they think they have sole ownership of laughing at people who get hurt or killed because it's not "politically correct" to do so. But they love if someone Other gets hurt somehow. Their jokes, in that regard, are absolutely fine. But when they see the Left make the same kind of jokes about one of them, they shit their pants. Not because they believe people shouldn't make jokes about people getting killed. They shit their pants because they can't imagine that we're having fun with it in a way that isn't completely batshit angry like how they do it. And they want to call us hypocrites when we actively engage in behavior they've been told we're against. We see them for who they are while they are, their lizard heads scowling and frothing and full of hate. But they can't see us because the fungus down their spine projects what they've been told by their thought leaders who we are.

Frankly, they're all mostly dumb as shit.

Anyway, surprise! The lead lizard head turns out to be something else altogether!

He probably, to keep with the metaphor, should have been a white Martian. I get why he wasn't though!

The lizard head warriors, not realizing that their master is actually a Martian too, accidentally burn him to a crisp when they turn their flamethrowers on him wrestling Martian Manhunter. J'onn only survives because Prelvis throws him in a canal nearby. But J'onn doesn't pass out until he sends a message to the lizard heads in jets to bomb PTO Iberez. They do it because they do whatever their leader tells them to do instead of thinking anything through.

Sometime after the world is saved, Prelvis dies in a plane crash. Or he died saving J'onn and the plane crash is the lie told to the public. Whatever the case, the immediate threat has been vanquished. But nobody can actually discuss it because the fungus still living inside them will burn them to a crisp. So now they have to wait a generation or two before super heroes can return to the world. Is this some kind of explanation of some continuity gap between the Justice Society's World War II exploits and later continuity? I don't maintain the entirety of DC history in my head so I have no idea.

The final page shows J'onn declaring that he's not a Martian anymore; he's a Beatnik. Ha ha! I wish that fucking character trait had remained!

Martian Manhunter: American Secrets #3 Rating: A. Good stuff by a shit pedophile. What can I say? Enjoy art but don't make a hero out of the artist, I guess? Everything else I need to say about this book has already been said. Plus I guess if I had any conservative readers (highly doubtful), I've probably lost them after these last few reviews. Or not! Prove me wrong!

No wait! Don't do that!

A Poem

Clubs
By Grunion Guy

I joined a club called "Fuck You, White Power Bitches"
It was a pretty easy club to join
It didn't cost me anything and I don't have to pay any yearly dues
Sometimes I have to speak up
So that, you know, white power bitches know I think they should go fuck themselves
But that's not too hard
It's even fun most of the time

The interesting thing about this club is that it accepts members from all sorts of other clubs
You can be both a member of the "Republican Club" and "Fuck You, White Power Bitches," if you want
I only mention that because it doesn't seem a lot of people in the "Republican Club" realize it
They seem to have a problem with the uncivil "Fuck You" part of the club title
When they should have a problem with the "White Power" people the club wants to go fuck themselves

I'm also well aware that some people have a problem with the "Bitches" part of the club title
But I'm part of the club "I Like Saying Bitches So I Refuse To Stop Saying It"
Even though it would cost me practically nothing to stop saying the word "bitches"
It's like how in high school in the 80s, I used to use "faggot" as a swear word
(Probably influenced greatly by Mark Knopfler's use of the word by his blue collar, computer animated characters singing "Money For Nothing")
Until one day, I finally realized how fucked up that was and, whether I meant it or not,
I was making the world a worse place by using that word when I could easily just be saying "shit"
Even members of "I Like Saying Bitches So I Refuse To Stop Saying It" are allowed to be a part of "Fuck You, White Power Dickheads"

You know what? I just decided to stop saying "bitches" because I thought about it for like half a second and realized it still costs me nothing to try and be a better person to my fellow human beings
When you think about it, it actually costs less to stop saying "bitches" than to have to say, "I'm using it in a non-derogatory fashion because language is fluid and shouldn't be a person-sized saddle we've strapped to our own backs but a tool we can rationally and systematically change over time" every single time that somebody within earshot hears it and looks at you horrified
It's much easier to not say it than to get into a debate about free speech with everybody you offend after using it
And pretty soon, you just stop using it which lowers the amount of systemic bias towards women by a small but not inconsequential amount

It's like every time you refer to a large black man as intimidating
You're increasing the systemic bias toward the belief that large black men are dangerous
You're actively making the world a more dangerous place for large black men
No matter how many people you assure that you were just making a dumb joke

You know what's even easier than not saying a hurtful word or continuing a harmful stereotype?
Decrying white power
It's actually much more work to have to explain why you won't extricate yourself from ties to white power every time you wind up publicly embracing some tenet of white power

I suppose I can understand how much you love trolling the Libtards with your 4Chan nonsense
It can be hard to give up things that make you laugh, like making up white power signs and then flashing them constantly
Afterward, you get to laugh at all the libs you owned by making them think you're a white supremacist
Because you acted like a white supremacist in public
Which is so funny because did they think you were serious? How dumb are they?!
Acting like a white supremacist and causing oppressed and under-represented people to feel intimidated by your actions isn't actual white supremacy!
I mean, it's the definition of it, I suppose
But if you think about it at all for any length of time, it was a joke!
Stop being so hurt by casual, jokey racism, you free speech haters
Is probably what you're typing right now on your Reddit board and your Twitter feed

Anyway, I have to get to my "Fuck You, White Power Dickheads" club meeting now
It's not a scheduled meeting, really
It's just me going outside my front door
And making the world a better place for everybody
Fuck you, white power dickheads.