Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea: The Newsletter #19 (Second Week of April 2018)

E!TACT! #19
Metal #6, Justice League: All Access, Doomsday Clock #4, Mother Panic: Gotham AD #1, The Hellblazer #20, Detective Comics #977, Justice League of America #27, Demon: Hell is Earth #5, Suicide Squad #38, The Terrifics #2, Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #4, and Deathstroke vs. Batman #30
By Grunion Guy!


Comic Book Reviews!

Metal #6
By Snyder, Capullo, Glapion, and Plascencia

Fact That Isn't Fun (It's Just a Fact, You Know?): Metal is the longest running six issue comic book series in DC's history that also has the most issues (well over six! I lost count somewhere around year ten).

But it's finally over, guys! I'm using guys the way the young generation use it after they've just gone to Wikipedia to learn as much as they can about a thing that somebody else mentioned in an attempt to pretend they always knew more about it than they originally did. I mean, I'm not completely using it that way since I haven't just read (and will never read) the Wikipedia entry on Metal. I probably couldn't even find the right one since it certainly disambiguates into dozens of different entries.

Today, I become a man! No, not because I'm going to finally have sex! I did that like four years ago. Today I'm a man because finishing this series feels like the biggest accomplishment of my life! After having sex, of course. Which is what really made me a man in society's eyes. Up until that point, I was just a loser virgin who could tell how every color of kryptonite affects Superman and how many times in the original Star Wars you can see the outline of Mark Hamill's cock through his pants.

Earth-Main-Earth has sunk into the Dark Multiverse. Wonder Woman and Lady Blackhawk remain the last hope for all mankind. And, I'm assuming, the entire Earth-Main-Earth universe. I'm never quite clear on how much the problems on Earth are affecting the rest of the universe. I think, as human readers, we're supposed to narcissistically believe that the fate of the entire cosmos hangs in the balance of what happens to Earth. Mostly I think all of the aliens would just like to see Earth-Main-Earth destroyed for good. There would be so much less drama.

Plastic Man finally wakes up to save the day and I lose all respect for this comic book. Nobody believes Plastic Man can save the world! He's the biggest joke since a few of those schoolyard jokes about the space shuttle Challenger disaster. Who came up with those jokes immediately after the tragedy? I bet it was some Deep State comedian who knew the Challenger was going to be blown up by government operatives and aliens.

Luckily, Plastic Man only saves the day for like a page. I'm not even sure why he was in this comic book. I'm guessing it was a drunken bet between Scott Snyder and Dan DiDio. Snyder was all, "I bet I can bring Plastic Man back into the DC Universe in a serious way." And DiDio was all, "No way. There's less chance of that than a comic book with two women in a romantic and healthy relationship not having a mature rating." And then Snyder was all, "If I fail, you can have James Tynion IV for a night." And DiDio was all, "Deal!"

After Plastic Man saves the day, Wonder Woman saves the day. But only until the real saviors arrive.

Monkeys and Batmen!

Now I'm pissed at DC Comics. They spent five years trying to sell everybody a historically watered down and less fun version of their comic book universe by claiming there were just 52 worlds. But all that time they could have been printing a comic book full of monkeys on a 53rd Earth?! Does DC have no actual business men running their business?!

Batman and Superman also return because I guess they're the ones who need to save the day. The monkeys and Plastic Man and alternate Batmen weren't actually important after all and never really appear again after that splash page arrival. They were the non-raisin bits of this Raisin Bran. Oh, I guess that would be the bran. Now, I like raisins as much as any other boring person but could any company in any of the 53 universes have come up with a more unappetizing name for a cereal? I mean aside from Grape Nuts.

Maybe I should give up on trying to determine who actually saves the day because this issue is just scene after scene of somebody arriving to save the day but then the day never actually gets saved. I guess they're all just making things more hopeful. Especially when The Joker saves the day. That's when every Fangender is supposed to go, "Did Snyder include his dick in this comic book because I think I'm supposed to start sucking it now?"

In the end, the Justice League pull some Sailor Moon shit and believe in each other and save the world while holding hands while remembering all the good times they had with each other, like the time Sailor Batman cheered up Sailor Wonder Woman, and the time Sailor Superman gave Sailor Flash a prostate exam.

Rating: There's the typical epilogue that explains things have only been saved (by fifty different people) for a short time because things are actually going to get worse than what they just went through. You know how stories foreshadow future events as they go along in an unobtrusive way that sometimes you don't even catch until a subsequent rereading? Being a comic book (and a Scott Snyder comic book, at that), this isn't like that. The story resolves with the heroes winning and then there's an epilogue where Batman says, "Things are just going to get worse!" and Lucius says, "Dream, where are you? OMG! There's a book missing in the library of books never written! What does it mean? Aside from it suddenly having been written or something." This is the part where I might wonder how comic books can keep escalating but I've learned that the escalation is all just an illusion. This seemed like the biggest threat to the universe since the last one but was it? They're all really just the same. The bottom line is that everything is always on the line. This story just made the 'everything' part bigger by removing the Source Wall, expanding the DC Universe, and creating a lovable Earth full of monkeys.

All in all, it was a big event that was quite comic booky. That's all I'm looking for. The main problem was all the tie-ins that didn't matter and didn't really add much to the story. DC should have just made this an eight issue series, folding Hawkman Found and The Wild Hunt into the main story. All of the other books should have been scrapped.


Justice League: No Justice All Access Page
By whoever writes this shit

Here's a quote about No Justice from Francis Manapul: "Anyone who has asked for Harley Quinn, Martian Manhunter, Starfire, Zatanna, the Atom, Raven or Doctor Fate to be in their personal Justice League will stand up and cheer." It's nice to see he's shooting for the smallest audience possible. I was almost cheering but he included the Atom instead of Lobo. Man, I was so close to being one of the three people excited for this!


Doomsday's Cock #4
By Johns, Frank, and Anderson

Based on this cover, the comic should be called "Rorschach's Cock is Long and Weird."

Doomsday's cock was going to be long and weird since Doomsday has never really had any motivation for wanting to kill everything. But being enraged at the universe for having a micro-penis makes sense to me. Not that I know what it's like to have a micro-penis! My penis is at least twice as big as a micro-penis. And that's when it's flaccid! I know I shouldn't brag about the size of my penis when I'm writing comic book reviews that will be read by comic book nerds. Although I'm mostly writing to fans of DC Comics who have the biggest penises of all comic book fans. I haven't done research on this fact but I have to assume that DC fans have to have enough self-confidence to be shit on by Marvel fans on the daily. And you know the only way people can have any self-confidence is by being okay with their penis size, right?

I don't know how women gain self-confidence. By knowing guys with big penises?

I should stop writing about big penises because I'm getting anxious and a little bit scared.

Let's talk about Rorschach for a second! I just read a comic recently where a character stole the Rorschach line about people being locked up in prison with him but I can't remember which comic book it was. I wish I could remember because I couldn't help thinking, "Why, as a writer, are you lifting that line for your comic book?! It's like one of the most famous comic book lines which means your entire audience is going to snort and scoff when they read it and think, 'What a hack!'" Why didn't the writer use something like "To be or not to be, that's a fairly relevant question"? Less people would have known where the author had stolen that line from than the Rorschach line! That wasn't really talking about Rorschach. I'm sorry for lying to you in the segue into that paragraph.

This is where I first realized the new Rorschach was the son of Rorschach's psychiatrist. Was it evident earlier than this? I mean, probably since there were only two black characters in the entire run of Watchmen and one of them died hugging an old white man.

The new Rorschach, Reggie, has wound up in Earth-Main-Earth's Arkham Asylum because he trespassed in the Batcave. I guess Batman sometimes doesn't give a shit about the rule of law and he just backdoors people he doesn't like into Arkham. It's probably where Rorschach belongs since he was driven insane by Ozymandias's fake alien attack on New York City.

Reggie has been placed in Arkham across from Saturn Girl so I guess it's about time we learn why she's the only member of the Legion of Super-heroes left in DC continuity. I bet it's because she's the only one Superboy had sex with. She probably read his mind when he was looking at her at age sixteen and thinking, "I'd like to have sex with her!" She was flattered because she was too naïve to realize he was thinking that whenever he looked at any female Legionnaire. Also Superboy probably had sex with all of them. Why wouldn't he? The Legionnaires fucked everything that moved! It's what the entire series was based around.

Reggie and Saturn Girl escape while Alfred worries about another one of Batman's choices. How could Batman stick some guy who knew his identity into Arkham without at least erasing his mind first?! Hasn't he learned anything?!

Rating: Four dogs with split heads out of five dogs with split heads. Maybe even four and a half dogs with split heads. This is the first issue that makes me think Johns has the chops to pull this thing off. This issue was the secret origin of the new Rorschach and it may have taken me an hour to read. That's a compliment! Some reviewer said of the first issue of this series that it was a page turner that the reader devoured unlike Alan Moore's. That praise didn't sit right with me because it just screams of fluff and the same old bullshit tropes to make readers think they're reading something exciting. I want a comic book that forces me to take my time with it and this issue was finally that. If the rest of the series tanks, it may have been worth it for this issue alone. Hell, Mothman's story could have been a stand alone mini-comic that I would have raved about for minutes. Perhaps hours even. The one downside is that it didn't mention Doomsday's penis once.


Mother Panic: Gotham A.D. #1
By Houser, Moustafa, and Boyd

Rating: This might be better than the previous version. It also might be worse. It's hard to tell after just one issue, especially when that issue spends the majority of time reminding the reader that Mother Panic has been dumped in an alternate Gotham in an alternate time and an alternate place. Batman has gone missing in this Gotham, presumed dead by The Joker who noticed that nobody ever stops him killing people any more. The city isn't run by Owls either. Instead, The Collective (the organization behind Gather House and turning Violet Paige into Mother Panic) has taken control, turning Gotham into a great place to live (as long as you don't mind pretending you're living in a great place that actually sucks lady balls). The art fits the book, the sidekick character might be reminiscent of Hit-Girl but more likeable and cutesy, and something about Mother Panic's uniform makes me want to fuck her super hard. Not that I've ever fucked anything super hard. Unless almost sticking my penis inside of a vagina as my penis unwound its spool of silly string is an acceptable definition of fucking hard.


The Hellblazer #20
By Seeley, Fabbri, Dalla Vecchia, and Strachan

Rating: The art is terrible. Just awful. Maybe, occasionally, there's a shot of The Huntress's thighs that made me appreciate The Huntress's thighs just a little bit more than I did before. But that was one panel out of twenty pages of panels. That's about all the rant I have in me on that.

Remember when I used to be so harsh on artists and writers that I'd go on for multiple paragraphs trying to think up unique ways to use time travel to prevent their birth? And now that I've got a more private place to do it, you'd think I'd get even more blasphemous in my descriptions of Rube Goldberg machines that would destroy the fertility of the artist's mother's ovaries. But instead, I can only seem to write the equivalent of a shrug. And I think I know why that is.

When I got back into comic books and first began reading The New 52, I decided to take my time with each issue. I wanted to read carefully and examine each panel with a critical eye. I felt there was a mystery to be solved in this New 52. DC had to have some kind of a plan for their new universe. There had to be a genius reason behind throwing out all of their continuity to rebuild their superhero playground. I haven't reread them but I bet a lot of my early reviews were fairly innocent and upbeat. The jokes were at my own expense, exposing how dumb I was, never faulting the comic book. I chose to believe that I just couldn't fathom the secret depths of DC's huge plan. But ever so slowly, I began to see past the veil. DC had no plan. DC didn't know what they were doing. DC had put no thought into their idea and hired some of the worst comic book writers of all time to help them pretend they were doing something special. It drove me crazy and I began to attack every thing wrong with a merciless fervor.

Fans of DC that had jumped ship because of The New 52 had no sympathy for me. "You should have known," they commented, not really caring to engage with me but needing an outlet to pretend the temper tantrum they threw dropping DC was actually an intelligent and well-thought out choice. But these people didn't get it. DC had a chance to do something wonderful. They could have begun The New 52 with the idea that Rebirth or something like it would eventually happen. They could have had a plan in place. Things could have been foreshadowed across their entire line of comic books. What the people who instantly hated The New 52 failed to understand was that I was doing the science. I was out there running the numbers and doing the math and trying to solve the mystery of what DC was doing. So when I discovered that there was no substance behind The New 52, I took the passion I had for researching the mystery and applied it to mocking the fuck out of them. So, yeah. I eventually reached the same conclusion as all the butt-hurt fans who suddenly didn't have Wally West to jerk off over. But those fans dumped DC from the beginning of The New 52 without proof of its poorly thought out structure. They didn't have the numbers and the facts and the research that I had to back the opinion that The New 52 failed miserably. They claimed to have hated The New 52 but none of them really had to experience it in-depth like I did.

But now that everything is back to normal? I just don't fucking care enough to call Davide Fabbri's mother's twat a superfund site full of dog paddling sperm where the only babies made could either be creatures like the one from the movie Prophecy (not The Prophecy! That one doesn't have the creature I'm speaking of!) or artists that make me wish I'd been born deaf, dumb, and blind. Mostly blind. But I'll take being deaf as well so that nobody can tell me how bad the art is. I don't know why I chose to be dumb too. Maybe so I have a better chance of being a super smeller?

"So what about the story?" nobody is still reading this to ask. Well, the story's okay. It's by Tim Seeley and it features John Constantine and The Huntress. That's a combination that makes it impossible for a story to be terrible. But this is a comic book which means 75% of the reason people are reading it is for the art. And that art is horrible.

P.S. It's possible the terrible art is due to inker Christian Dalla Vecchia or colorist Carrie Strachan. If that's the case, apply all of my insults to their mother's vaginas and send my apologies to Davide's mom's twat.


Detective Comics #977
By Tynion IV, Fernandez, Barrows, Ferreira, Kalisz, and Lucas

Rating: I'm going to drop this comic book because I'm sick of typing that IV after Tynion's name. Also, I guess, for some other less important reasons. One of them is that I'm tired of Tynion's Bat-stories. Here are some things which Tynion thinks makes a good story: smartest kid on Earth thinks up super smart stuff that could revolutionize everything but uses it to stop petty criminals in Gotham; smartest kid on Earth meets other smartest kid on Earth and they smart things up; smartest kid on Earth makes older people look stupid and bitter and gender normative; smartest kid on Earth acts boring and bland and makes me throw up five times from extreme boredom. "Maybe can we have less smartest person in the DC Universe stories?" I say as I sit eager to read The Terrifics #2 because it only features the 3rd smartest person on Earth. "I can't wait to see how dumb heroes tackle problems!" I exclaim while shoving five Oreos into my mouth so that the Non-Certified Spouse in the next room hears, "GRRBBLE GRPDT FLBABBLOLL *hack sputter choke*!" Should I be concerned that she waited for ten minutes of silence after choking on the cookies to check on me?

Gross.

Justice League of America #27
By Orlando, Petrus, and Hi-Fi

Rating: More time travel nonsense with an added side of "Earth superheroes exist because some proto-superguy came to Earth in the Jurassic period and left a footprint." What a time to have just lost Lobo! He'd be immune to Chronos's plan to erase the idea of Earthly superheroes! I knew the Justice League of America was fucked when Lobo chose to leave. Mostly I knew that because it would cause me to stop raving about this comic book and begin treating it like every other shitty DC title. He was this book's Kevlar!

I wish Steve Orlando's name was Steve Orlando IV so I would have a good reason to drop this book.


Demon: Hell is Earth #5
By Constant, Walker, Hennessy, and Sotomayor

Rating: This comic book just reminds me that there was once a Demon comic book written by Alan Grant and drawn by Val Semeiks that was so entertaining that I didn't mind that I wasn't getting laid. Later after I totally laid a non-made-up girl that doesn't exist just for the sake of the story and so that I don't suffer the embarrassment of being another virgin on the Internet, I came to the conclusion that the comic book was better. That might be a controversial opinion because according to everybody who has ever had an orgasm, apparently nothing is better than an orgasm. That's something that I probably agree with so now my argument has been completely invalidated since even I don't support it. Maybe I should stop discussing orgasms before you begin trying to picture the contorted face I make when my totally real sex partner makes me orgasm. Here's a clue to help you visualize it: Disney log flume souvenir photo.

I would love to reread Grant's Demon comic book (along with the later issues by Ennis and McCrea) but those comic books are still in the basement of the house in which I grew up. The good news is that my mother is driving up to visit this summer and she's offered to bring up more comic books! The bad news is that my mother is coming up to visit!

I haven't even read this comic book and I'm purporting to rate it. I'm beginning to wonder if I even need to read the comic books I'm reviewing any more. It would certainly save me a lot of money. And as an added benefit, I could start reviewing Marvel books too!


Suicide Squad #38
By Williams, Derenick, and Arreola

Rating: I forgot to take this off of my pull list. Maybe my subconscious won't allow it. I try to cancel it but then I black out and wake up naked in a pile of old Ostrander issues. Maybe if I get hypnotized, I'll be able to do it. Because it really needs to be done. This comic book is so terrible that I'm beginning to fantasize about an Ann Nocenti version of the Squad drawn by Brett Booth.


The Terrifics #2
By Reis, Lemire, Luis, Tarragona, and Maiolo

First let me offer congratulations to the creative team for making Linnya Wazoo, the only female of the group, super hot. That might sound sarcastic because what female superhero isn't super hot, right? But it's not sarcastic. That congratulations comes from the bottom of my heart and the tip of something else. Probably my brain but don't make me declare that while hooked up to a lie detector unless you want to be offended. And if you want to be offended, just accept that, yes, I meant my erect penis. But seriously, you try not having an erect penis when looking at Tinnya Wazoo in that tight uniform.

Mister Terrific's uniform is just as tight but that only suggests that he has no genitalia. That Linnya has no discernible genitalia is hot because my mind is going crazy imagining what a woman looks like down there. I bet a woman's private place is just an image of a naked woman, right? That would be hot on so many levels. Probably.

I felt guilty, ashamed, and reprimanded when Linnya said, "Don't look at me."

I had a huge crush on a girl named Marilyn Mendoza in junior high. She spent every lunch in the library so I would too so that I could stare at her (I was with friends, of course! I didn't just sit their creepily alone. I was creepy while with friends). One day, her friends noticed me staring at her. As she walked out of the library, she came past my table and said, "I don't like being stared at." After that, I was heartbroken but I basically abandoned my crush and tried to ignore her. I stopped staring and just tried to not die from sadness. A few months later, she walked past me as I was going into the school wing with my locker and she said, "Don't go in there. I think a fight is about to break out." But I said I needed to go to my locker. At least I think I did. I might have said, "Grbble snack pediddle." It was hard to tell with my heart beating so loudly and my love machine whirring back into action.

Some time after that, we were sitting across from each other in the library passing notes back and forth. At one point, her note to me said, "You're weird." I don't know what I wrote in response to that. She responded, "I like you anyway." I didn't even know how to respond to that and, weirdly, stopped passing the note back and forth.

Some time after that, she convinced her friends to join the P.E. class that me and my friends were signing up for. During that class, she tried to casually give me one of her school pictures and I, shyly and stupidly, laughed it off and didn't take it.

If you're wondering what the fuck was wrong with me, you're still miles behind the amount of thought I've put into that.

Some time after that, at the end of the school year, she asked me if she could sign my 9th grade year book. She wrote a long note that seemed a bit form-letter-ish but was sweet and way more eloquent than the "P.S. I'll miss you" that I wrote in hers. Her cursive was beautiful and immaculate and she surrounded what she wrote with junior high school 80's designs. After signing her name, she wrote, "P.S. Say hi to Kim for me! JK!" Kim was a girl I'd known since elementary school and we always sat next to each other in class because our last names were so close alphabetically. We were friendly enough that I guess it seemed flirtatious. Being an anti-social shy nerd, I couldn't flirt. Also I didn't even know what "JK" meant.

Some time after that, in the middle of summer after 9th grade, my friend Sal was looking through my yearbook. He said, "Who is this girl who said she loves you?" And I was all, "What are you talking about, you stupid illiterate idiot?" He showed me Marilyn's note to me and sort of mixed in with the designs she'd made, she'd written, "Luv you, kid!" I never saw Marilyn Mendoza again.

So you see, children! The moral of this story is to stop staring at women when they want you to stop staring at them and they'll fall in love with you so that you can throw the entire potential of a doomed and awkward childhood romance into the toilet with your weird behaviors! Isn't love grand?!

That short story was probably better than 95% of all of the comic books I've ever read over my lifetime. That might sound arrogant but I'm just stating the non-subjective facts. "Non-subjective" means "objective"!

Linnya tells her origin story to the other Terrifics and I think it's supposed to be tragic but I wound up laughing a lot. See, she was on vacation with her parents when some space problem cropped up. For some reason, the ship they were in had an escape pod which only had room for one member of the crew. I suppose that makes sense because why would a ship the size of a Volkswagen house another ship the size of a Volkswagen to escape in case something happened to the first Volkswagen? But then it doesn't make sense either because why have an escape pod that only allows for one person in a ship to escape? That's going to make for a seriously tense game of roshambo.

Anyway, Linnya's parents send her off in the pod which subsequently gets sucked into the space problem while the parents go free. I bet they were kicking themselves for weeks over that mishap.

Luckily Linnya aged while stuck in phantom form without needing to eat or pee otherwise I'd be feeling even more shame and guilt over the way her uniform fits. She doesn't say how old she is but she must be that perfect female age where she's old enough so that nobody can arrest you for wanting to engage her in adult pastimes but young enough that she's not yet thirty and gross.

I learned that women don't matter after thirty from songs by Marina and the Diamonds and Lily Allen. I don't think they were meant as criticisms of that way of thinking at all!

Metamorpho tries to touch Phantom Girl without her consent and his hands pass right through her. He then apologizes but not, I think, for the non-consensual attempt at contact. I think he's sorry that his hand passed through her titties. That does seem inappropriate.

Um, so, the Terrifics escape the Dark Multiverse and everything works out. And in only two issues! I mean, there is the problem that they can't wander more than a few dozen feet away from one another without all of them dying painfully. But that's just a plot point to force them to work together for the entire run of this comic series. It's not a real issue!

Rating: I hate this comic book way less than I hate all of the other comic books I'm reading (aside from Batman and Mister Miracle and Snagglepuss and maybe Eternity Girl). I might even sort of like this book even though it features Plastic Man. Plus there hasn't been a bum like Linnya Wazoo's since the early days of The New 52 Supergirl!


Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #4
By Russell, Stilwell, Feehan, Vazquez, Parsons, Mounts, and Campbell

Rating: This is the kind of comic book that will get reviewers straining their intelligence muscles. It's the kind of book you have to talk smartly about or else your review site will look like it's run by rubes. It's the kind of comic book that requires footnotes and mentions of how much you know about specific events in history and how they differ from their portrayal here. It's the kind of review that I'd never do. My only criticism with it is that the anthropomorphic animals don't wear pants and yet I haven't seen one animal ding-dong or hoo-ha.

I didn't realize while writing the above with left leaning comic book reviewers in mind that it would be even more true for right leaning comic book reviewers. But apparently this is just the type of comic book that gets them to write about how much they know about history so that when they say, "This comic book is boring," it will have more authority than just saying, "I disagree with the obvious leftist slant in the politics and the most damning critique I can give it is saying, 'Meh.'"

Sometimes I think if my mind were erased and I was left as a blank slate with no knowledge of how the universe worked or what exactly was going on, but I still understood language (only the English language, of course. What am I? Not American?!), I would know instantly which side of the political aisle I belonged on just by which responses from one side to the other I enjoyed more. So I wouldn't be moved by "You're just shocking to be shocking" (or, even better, "You think you're shocking but you're not," which is just another way of saying, "I was shocked but I don't want to admit that you shocked me." Although what is "being shocked" anyway? Isn't that what humor is all about? You don't laugh because you see the punch line coming. You laugh because it jumps out from behind a bush and shoves its finger up your ass. No wait. That probably isn't a laughing matter because I just realized that analogy is rape) but I would totally be won over by "You've probably never made a woman come." After which, I might have to concede that the lame argument about people being shocking just to be shocking might have a granule of truth. Although, having been accused of "being shocking for the sake of being shocking" by boring people on the boring Internet, I can say that, from my perspective, most people aren't out there trying to be shocking. A lot of us just don't hold anything sacred and say things that make us laugh, figuring other people will find it funny as well.


Deathstork vs. Batman #30
By Priest, Pagulayan, Paz, and Cox

How many times have Batman and Deathstork fought now? Don't they do it every six months or so? I think DC Comics has a permanent Google Calendar alert set for this event. Occasionally they'll trash the Batman vs. Deathstork event and ramp it up so that it's Deathstork vs. Superman. I think sometime in the early 90s, the decision was made to alternate which hero Deathstork has to beat to continually prove that he's the best super-villain in the DC Universe. Although I don't think anybody at DC has thought of him as a villain since just after he stopped having sex with a minor. Since then, they're constantly playing up his mercenary with a sense of ethics card. When he fights with heroes, it's understood to be some kind of misunderstanding.

I guess he sometimes battles Wonder Woman too but since Daniel or Finch or Mrs. Finch was writing that story, I've mostly purged it from my memory.

Rating: Batman finds evidence that Damian might be Deathstork's son. He's desperate to finally learn if he can write Robin out of his will and he's willing to murder Deathstork's ability to make money from murder until he clears up the confusing newly discovered DNA results. Deathstork's response is to threaten Batman and Batman's family because that's never caused the violence to escalate in the past. What is wrong with these two guys? They know exactly what to say to make a conflict between them last for six issues. That's just long enough to sell as a graphic novel later.

My only question with regards to Batman and Deathstork constantly fighting is why does Batman allow Deathstork to keep killing? Is it because Batman knows he can't beat him? Or is it the same reason Batman lets Jason Todd go on killing? And Wonder Woman (who doesn't kill as often but also doesn't see the problem with it)? Is it because Batman's war on crime is only a war on random crime? He doesn't want random people dying due to criminal activity but it's okay if a criminal dies due to their criminal activity? That seems about right. He's got an old school sensibility about responsibility.

Or maybe Batman just figures if Deathstork were really a problem, Superman would throw him into the Phantom Zone. And since that has never happened (unless it has?), Deathstork must be a pretty swell guy.

Deathstork and Batman didn't fight much in this issue so Deathstork vs. Batman has started off in a disappointing manner. But since Priest is writing this, I bet he takes a completely different tack with it. I bet Batman and Deathstork simply face off on a matter of philosophy. Instead of trading punches, they'll trade biting existential remarks about the other's ideology. Preferably while sipping cappuccinos in a Paris café.


Sorry for such a long newsletter that was all comic reviews. Maybe next time I'll just draw a bunch of sexy Dick Grayson pictures. Goodbye, jerkos!

Lando Calrissian and the Starcave of ThonBoka by L. Neil Smith (1983)

First let me get the petty gripes out of the way: the title of this book, like the other books, is terrible. But it's more terribler in a different way because according to the story, "Thonboka" means "starcave." My other petty gripe is that L. Neil Smith is a libertarian but that doesn't have anything to do with this book (unlike the last one which was all about how Lando couldn't get rich not because he was terrible at business but because taxes and government fees kept bankrupting him).

Now let me get to the petty gripes about myself: I know I read this book but I'm not sure I actually read this book. I was so not interested in reading this book that I thought about a lot of other stuff while reading it which isn't conducive to retaining and comprehending what's being read. I especially did this on the chapters about the bad guys because they were boring. And when have bad guys ever been boring in an adventure novel?! They're usually the most entertaining aspect of the book! Which probably explains why this book received two stars.

I understand that when writing a trilogy and after creating a super awesome bad guy in the first book (not my opinion; I'm putting myself in Smith's place), I would totally want to use that bad guy in the subsequent books. But also Lando's adventures take place in space which is a really big place. So you'd think that maybe he wouldn't run into the same guy three separate times. And also he wouldn't run into the new "bad guy" who is trying to kill his droid friend two times. But of course there are plot reasons why this happens and I will explain them in a new paragraph because I think it's time for a new paragraph? How do paragraphs work? Do you just think, "That's enough words all clumped together for now. Let's start a new clump"?

The plot reasons for Lando running into Rokur Gepta over and over again are that Rokur Gepta gets so butt hurt by Lando defeating his plans in the first book that he can't stop hunting Lando. Think about how pathetic that is. Rokur Gepta is thousands and thousands of years old and space is like almost as big as thousands and thousands of years but in parsecs (maybe bigger?). Why can't this super powerful being just be all, "Well, that one didn't work out. Guess I'll start a new super duper plan to take over the galaxy"? I guess the reason is that he's a gigantic immature baby jerk? What Lando does in the first book to this nearly immortal ancient being is the equivalent of an ant causing me to twist my ankle simply because I noticed it for a split second and tried not to step on it.

No wait. That's not a good example because if an ant did that to me, I would totally hunt it down and make its life miserable for two more books. Stupid ant. How dare it!

I would think up a new analogy but you probably get the point and I'm too lazy to come up with a new analogy. Also I want to spoil the end of this book now (and I haven't even discussed the space manta rays with microwave telepathy who shit illusory images of themselves and can sprint through hyperspace or Vuffi Ra's ancestors who are sentient space ships): Rokur Gepta is a gothic gerbil pretending to be a man. And Lando only defeats him by accident when a piece of space debris knocks him sideways and he accidentally shoots Rokur Gepta in the ankle which is the only place in the "human suit" where Rokur Gepta actually was. Is that a twist ending or is that an unsatisfying conclusion where Lando doesn't really solve his problems so much as have his problem solved for him? It's probably one of those and since I rated this book two stars, you know which one it is, right?

These books were supposed to be palette cleansers after spending nearly a year reading Alan Moore's Jerusalem. But, and this is another stupid analogy, instead of being palette cleansers, they were just a big bag of sour gummy candies of which I ate too much and now my stomach hurts and I feel terrible and I desperately need a salad. And by salad I mean a Thomas Pynchon novel.

Lando Calrissian and the Flamewind of Oseon by L. Neil Smith (1983)

I joked about not liking the first Lando book after discovering that L. Neal Smith was known as a libertarian science fiction writer. But that was a joke! I actually did like the first book! Not in the way I like a John Barth book, of course! I'm not a simpleton! I'm just an honest book reviewer who uses way too many exclamation points! But sticking with that honesty, I have to say this second Lando book was terrible. I used a period there to represent the gravitas I feel for having to report that a book I read and stuck with until the end wasn't worth reading nor sticking with to the end. It is a sadness which I will feel until the day I die (especially on the day I die because I'll be thinking of all the cool things I could have done instead of reading this book).

I can be absolutely sure that I wouldn't have enjoyed this book if I hadn't read that L. Neal Smith was a libertarian but I definitely wouldn't have found a number of passages as grating as I did knowing that he was. At the end of the last book, Lando Calrissian found himself a wealthy man. But when this book starts, he's practically a pauper because of taxes and government regulations and corrupt politicians. Sure, there's some hint that maybe he's not a great businessman. But there's an even larger winking suggestion that nobody can really be a great businessman with all of these gosh-darned government regulations and taxes! By gum, poor Lando couldn't even make it in business while starting out with a huge cash advantage. I guess the only thing he can do is go back to gambling because it's sort of illegal which means if he isn't caught, the government can't stop him from making a living at it! What a hero!

In the end though, we discover that the villain, Rokur Gepta (or whatever. I don't care enough to remember his actual name or, if I did get it right, care enough that I still remember it. Either way, I'll be haunted by it on my deathbed) was causing a lot of these financial problems for Lando. He was lowering market prices on fishing rods when Lando wanted to sell fishing rods. Or he was informing hangars that Lando was a smuggler so Lando would get hit with lots of petty surcharges. Or he was manipulating entire economies so that Lando would get the worst return on his investments.

In other words, Rokur Gepta is the most boring villain to ever be imagined by a libertarian science fiction writer. Lando was basically in a life and death struggle with a petty bureaucrat.

Luckily Lando's droid had once committed genocide on some backwater planet and the survivors of that genocide were hunting him down. I say luckily because that vendetta is the only reason there is any action at all in this book other than Lando cursing having to pay another docking fee for the Falcon.

In the end, Rokur disguises himself as an obese drug-addled bajillionaire (I use that word because the man is suspected to be the richest man in the galaxy. But he's dead now because Rokur killed him to pretend to be him so he could create a really elaborate ploy to get Lando into his grasp). He causes all sorts of chaos and murders dozens if not hundreds of people and ruins many of the lives of those left living, just to strap Lando onto a picnic table so he can get into Lando's head to try to make him cry. It works a little bit but Lando still gets away by sticking a chopstick in Rokur's eye. That leaves Rokur even more angry for a third book!

Look, I'm already going to regret so much wasted time when I find myself dying that I can't be too hard on myself that I'm going to read the last book of the trilogy. Maybe things will pick up!

P.S. You might be wondering why I gave this two stars instead of one. Well, I'm not sure I've read a one star book to the end yet! I mean, maybe Catcher in the Rye. But I'll have to reread that one to make sure!

Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu by L. Neil Smith (1983)

Lando Calrissian is much cooler than Han Solo. It's obvious the first moment you see him onscreen in Empire. I remember as a young eight year old, sitting in the dark theater with a couple of friends (Empire came out in an era when eight year olds could go to movies without parental supervision. I think. Who can remember? That was so long ago and I'm not even sure my parents were my real parents and not kidnappers who snatched me when I was wandering the streets as a four year old. Things were so lax in the 70s!), thinking, "This Han Solo is the coolest mambo jambo in the entire world!" And then this guy in a cape...a frickin' cape!...appears and I was all, "Han Solo is a dumb jerk! This guy rules!" It was obvious to me that after Leia said "I love you" and then Han said "I know," Leia should have replied, "I was talking to Lando."

Some people don't think Lando was cooler than Han and I don't understand those people. But I have to admit, I thought the Lando books would be a cheap imitation of the Han books because Han was in three of the original Star Wars movies while Lando was only in two of them. I was happy to be wrong. This book was much more entertaining than the Han books even though it has a terrible title. Also, the chapters are only six to ten pages long which really improves the reading experience! It made me feel like I was reading at a 12th grade level!

I just Googled L. Neil Smith to see if he was still alive and he's apparently known as a "libertarian science fiction writer." So I want to change my review of this book. I hate it now. Although it was actually kind of entertaining. Except now that I think about it and having nothing to do with discovering that Smith was a libertarian at all, the parts where Lando and the robot grow and shrink was stupid. What was that about?! Maybe it was a metaphor for government out of control and political correctness gone mad?!

In summation, the book was entertaining but I can't recommend it now that I know that L. Neil Smith is one of those people who demand that other people think they (the Libertarians) are rational but who aren't actually rational at all. Unless I've been mistaken all this time and what they want me to think they are is selfish. Because they are certainly that.

I'm still going to reread the next two books though. Especially since they were written in 1983 and nobody knew how to be an awful Libertarian back then. They were just terrible in a different way and liked to use phrases like "trickle down" and "Reaganomics." I hope the next two books aren't full of Reagan-era dog whistles!

Batman: Shadow of the Bat #14 (July 1993)

Was DC contractually obligated to do a story called "Freaks" once a year? If so, to who?! Tod Browning?

Once again, Brian Stelfreeze manages to capture Batman's expression at the exact moment he shit cums. If I could give a standing ovation over the Internet, I wouldn't do it because I'm lazy. That expresses how much I appreciate Stelfreeze's ability though, right? While I'm still sitting? Good.

The issue begins with Batman investigating a crime. Several bars were robbed in a concentrated area in Gotham (probably an are of the town that Batman's been ignoring so that real estate prices drop from the crime so Bruce Wayne can purchase all the property cheaply before Batman begins patrolling there again). As he thinks about the case, he puts on display his master detective and/or Graduate English Lit skills.

Only a reader of Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault would understand how "nondescript white male" and "Invisible Man" are precisely the same thing. In America, I mean.

Why does Batman look so smug and satisfied in that panel? He must be thinking how clever it was to equate a nondescript white male to the Invisible Man, especially while thinking about how the image was used for reverse effect by Ralph Ellison. Also, can using the eraser on the image to create glare be any more obvious here? It looks like I did it myself just now!

Dammit. Now my brain wants me to find an eraser and see what it would look like if I used it on this comic book. Bad brain! Stop being even dumber and more chaotic than usual! I need to shove some opiates into it to calm it down.

Batman begins stopping and frisking nondescript white males. Since this story is called "Gotham Freaks", my guess is that the nondescript white male is going to have a really fucking horrendously descript twin coming out of his belly.

Batman only encounters one nondescript white male while patrolling because, as Batman acknowledges, "they stick out like a sore thumb" in that part of town. Oh? What part of town are you patrolling, Batman? Hmm. Why do white men stick out there? Hunh? Explain yourself, you gentrifying racist billionaire!

Idiot! Don't give Batman clues as to your identity while you kick him in the chin!

Batman chases this guy down to the "fun fair". It's a place called "Gotham Fun Fair". It's a carnival or a theme park. Probably run by The Joker. When I think of a "fun fair", I think of some shitty little elementary school charity fiasco where they raise money by setting up stupid games, do Cake Walks, and send a metric ton of goldfish to their doom. The "Gotham Fun Fair" has a Ferris wheel and a roller coaster so I'm pretty sure it's more like a boardwalk, especially since it's on Gotham Bay. It also has an old-fashioned freak show where people say words that the kids today would rather throw themselves off of a cliff than ever say out loud.

I hope there aren't any gypsies on display!

Just so you know: I didn't type that word! I copied and pasted it from a racist government account on Twitter! I didn't even think it! I thought "the g-word" the entire time! So get off my fucking back!

The stupid M-word is offended by the guy calling him stupid but not because he called him stupid! It's because he called him a stupid M-word when he's actually a stupid D-word! Wait. I can say dwarf, right? Back in 1992, nobody cared about respecting what a little person wanted to be called because they were too busy debating the differences between a "midget" and a "dwarf". Seriously. I'm not being facetious. That was like a huge debate when adults got together over wine for more than an hour. Once people ran out of things to talk about, 100% of them would suddenly be all, "What's the difference between a dwarf and a midget?"

The three men hassling the little person threaten physical violence when he outwits them with the insults. But then the tall freak comes out and threatens to beat the shit out of them. Since they don't have an even taller friend to back them up, they skedaddle. That's the law of physical violence. The tallest person is always the strongest. This is where a young person would add "no cap" but I respect myself too much to use the lingo of the new generation. For shizzle.

Batman loses the nondescript white male in the sea of nondescript white males enjoying the fun fair. Being the great detective that I described him as earlier, he decides to go hassle the freaks in the freak show. Surely they're up to no good even if they're very descript white males (and some females).

I don't know why that middle lady is a freak. Because she loves to sit in carbonated water? Who doesn't?!

Imagine if Rob Liefeld had been asked to draw the lady in the tank. You'd definitely have to assume she was a freak for sitting in carbonated water because who would be able to tell Liefeld's deformed feet from his regular old boring feet?

The woman running the freak show, Gina Corolla, looks a little like a G-word so I'd like to move on quickly before the young people reading this get overly anxious about practically nothing. She yells at Batman for assuming her employees were criminals and drives him out. Her freak employees defend Batman's actions and she's all, "Yeah, I guess I'm just a little on edge because I'm horny."

"And I can't fuck any of you! Not because you're all weird! HR reasons! Power dynamics! It would be inappropriate!"

Just like the Flea Circus previously, the freak show's been losing money and almost insolvent. Of course it is! Just like the Flea Circus, nobody fucking wants to pay money for this stuff anymore! It's the late 20th Century! We're, if not better people, more apt to get an eyeful of weird shit on the television. And pretty soon the Internet! Nobody ponying up the bucks to see a fucking flea pull a wagon or to see a lady with a little extra skin between her toes. Although she is in a bikini and sitting in a tank of bubbly water. I suppose in 1992, I'd've paid to stare at that.

Just like the Flea Circus owner's grandson was robbing bars to pay for his granddad's debts, it looks like some nondescript white male might be robbing bars to pay for the Freak Show's debts. Come on, Alan Grant! You can't keep telling the same stories by replacing the nouns like some Comic Script Mad Lib! Although I don't actually know if the nondescript white male has been stealing for the Freak Show yet. That's me speculating and assuming again! Making an ass out of you and me and the speculum!

Just like in "The Human Flea", Batman suspects the person he spoke to while investigating the robberies isn't telling him everything they know. So he circles back to keep a close eye on the Gotham Fun Fair and maybe get a little more hassling in on the freaks.

Bruce goes undercover to stake out the Gotham Fun Fair from the inside. He's really staking all his chips on the freaks being behind this rash of robberies. He could patrol the neighborhood where the robberies keep happening and maybe run into the same guy he chased but why do that when he can pretend to be a day laborer and flirt with the hot freak show lady?

As an added perk, he gets to punch a guy just looking for some work right in the face. And his violence pays off!

Batman makes sure to think in one of his narration boxes about how he slipped the guy he punched in the face $100 to make up for it. Just like a rich guy. Thinks money excuses any behavior.

I suspect Bruce doesn't actually care too much about solving this case. I think he heard how horny this hot Gina lady was and decided he's pretty hot and horny as well. Why can't his detective work benefit his penis now and then, you know?

Bruce learns that one of the freaks, the guy with no arms and no legs whom they call Texas, hasn't been with the show long. Also, he's about the right size to fit in the duffel bag of the guy Batman encountered on the street. Also a guy with no arms and no legs is the perfect person to slip into a bar, crawl across the floor, climb the bar with their teeth and tongue and lips, pop open the register with their nose, hoover up all the cash into their mouth, and roll back out again without tripping any alarms. Or maybe he just unlocks the door from the inside after being shoved in a barely open window?

It's also possible that Texas is just Gina's ex-boyfriend with his head sticking out of a box with a fake torso on top. The perfect and not-at-all problematic disguise for a criminal!

Except now I'm just like Batman! Blaming the freaks for the crimes of just another nondescript white male! Because it turns out, Mike, Gina's "boyfriend", just walks into bars when somebody's got the safe open, commands them to give him the money, then makes them forget anything happened. He's got mind powers! No wonder Batman can't remember who he is! Or maybe simply because Batman threw him in jail five years ago and he was just a nobody back then.

Batman notices Gina sneak back to her trailer when the cops arrive to investigate some petty crimes at the Fun Fair. He follows her for one of two reasons. Either he suspects she's working with the bar robber . . .

. . . or he just can't get enough of that ass.

I was pretty sure it was the ass but then if he was following her to get a whiff of that tight caboose, he probably wouldn't be doing shit like this once he caught up to it:

Whelp, he's not getting any of that ass now.

Being an expert knife thrower, Gina manages to stop Batman from chasing down her boyfriend by pinning his cape to a wall. He points out she's just become an accessory to a crime and she's all, "You're trespassing, breaking and entering, assaulting me, threatening me, and you have no proof that anybody stole anything. Get the fuck out of my fun fair." And just like that, Batman slinks away, chastised. Is she Batman's most powerful nemesis?!

The Ranking
What a great story! It was so good the first time I read an Alan Grant story about an obsolete entertainment needing to turn to crime to finance its existence that I was all, "I hope he does another story just like it!" And oh lordy did he! But I didn't realize at the time that what the story was missing was a hot woman in tight pants who was so horny she was in emotional distress! I think I have a new type!

Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea: The Newsletter #18 (First Week of April 2018)

E!TACT #18
Story Time!, Deadman #5, Kick-Ass #2, Cave Carson Has an Interstellar Eye #1, Justic League #41, Batman #43, Grunion Guy's Musical Corner of Music Reviews, and Letters to Me!
By Grunion Guy!

STORY TIME WITH GRUNION GUY
"What If Pickle Boy Was the Writer and Grunion Guy Was the Assistant?"
By Grunion Guy

Grunion Guy was playing hockey like he loved to play because he was so physically fit. All the beautiful women were watching him and swooning. Also the ugly women who thought they had a chance with him because he was so sensitive and caring. He never pretended they weren't talking to him when they talked to him because some of them had really hot bodies. But then just as Grunion Guy was making the big play, he was hit in the head with the hockey thing! And even though Grunion Guy was super tough and rugged and manly, the hockey thing was hit with such tremendous force that it knocked him out for like no more than three seconds. But during those three seconds, he had the most horrific fantasy in his head!

[This is the part where the screen goes wavy and dark before opening on a brand new scene. Audiences should be a little bit confused but they've seen this kind of thing before, so you probably won't need to add a voice-over or captions to explain that we're now in Grunion Guy's fantasy!]

"Hey, dumby! Wake up and edit my new book, dumby!" Pickle Boy was standing over Grunion Guy, his bald head blinding everything around him which was a good thing because everything would be puking if they could see all of the sausage and egg bits that fell out of his breakfast burrito stuck in his goatee.

"Yes sir!" shouted Grunion Guy as he saluted and grovelled too. "I was just getting on that!" Grunion Guy sat up and glanced around for the book he was editing that had put him instantly to sleep. He finally saw the page on the floor, picked it up, and got back to editing it.

Eastworld
by Pickle Boy

"I am getting vacation!" sparked the protagonist who wasn't a robot. He robot danced to his suitcase and only malfunctioned twice on the way. "I go Eastworld today!" His name was Rob.

Tpn [svlrf yjtrr yord smf yep [sotd pg imfrterst/

"Oops!" thought Rob as he readjusted his fingers on the home row. "That's better!"

Rob decided to use the bathroom before catching the bus because that's what humans do. He pulled out his huge pecker which was totally a Mary Sue version of the writer's penis, just in case you weren't sure. Boy was it big! Pickle Boy big! It was the kind of pecker that peckers dream of having! Some would say it was the greatest and most human pecker of them all.

Before Rob could catch the taxi but after he had put his pecker away, the family pet died. It was so sad that the reader got super emotional. It really connected the reader to the story in a way that not having the family pet die doesn't do.

"Take me Eastworld," Rob told the train conductor. "Choo choo, righty-do!" said the Train Conductor. But then there was drama. "Wait. Are you sure you're a human? This train is only for humans!"

Rob smiled humanly. "What?! Of course I human! That almost insult but I think robots are nifty so then it complimentary!" Rob did the robot and winked. Choo-Choo the Train Conductor blushed. He could tell Rob had a great pecker.

The plane landed at Eastworld and Rob fell down the stairs. When he stood back up, half of his face hung off the metal frame but he hadn't noticed yet. But the audience noticed and were all shocked. This is dramatic irony! I learned about it from Grunion Guy who is the greatest writer of them all except when he's unconscious due to a hockey thing hitting his face.

"One ticket for human!" said Rob at the turnstile. The ticket taker was looking at the ticket in the way that ticket takers do. Then as the ticket taker handed the ticket to Rob, he saw Rob's robot skeleton. He screamed! Unless there have been too many male characters so far and then she screamed. Unless that's sexist and then I don't know what to do. Whoever directs the movie version can figure it out.

"What wrong?!" asked Rob, panicking as he did five million calculations in his head the way humans certainly must be capable of because wasn't he human? Wasn't he? Rob reached up and touched the part of his face that was hanging off the other part of his face. Then he felt the metal underneath and the horror dawned on him like the sun dawning on the day.

"NOOOOOOOOOOO!" screamed Rob as he fell to his knees in front of the Statue of Liberty sunk in the ground. "NOOOOOOOO!" The Eiffel Tower was also there and maybe a pyramid. "NOOOOOOOO!"

His last thought before he died of shock was this profound thought: how do any of us ever lmpe ejp er trs;;u strz@

The End!

Grunion Guy woke up because the story was so bad! All the hot girls and the ugly girls with the hot bodies and even some hot girls with gross body odor were standing around him. "Is his pecker okay?" one of them asked as she was trying to pull down his hockey pants.

"Wait!" yelled the referee! "Grunion Guy won the game because the hockey thing bounced off his face and into the score!" Everybody cheered and Grunion Guy's pecker was just fine.

The Real End!

Comic Book Reviews!

Deadman #5
By Neal Adams

Each of the previous four covers of Deadman have had some sort of gimmick to them. One glew in the dark. One had a see-through lion image. One had secret writing. One had The Spectre formed from other characters or something. I don't totally remember that one for sure.

This one is apparently an homage to Highlights for Children.

When I first saw this cover, I thought Neal Adams had finally finished having the stroke he started having while writing The Coming of the Supermen. "Deadman find Ra's al Ghul!" It's not like it was any less coherent than most of his tweets on Twitter. But then I realized the tagline was a command and spent all of three nanoseconds searching for Ra's al Ghul. Couldn't Neal have made it any harder? It's obvious that Ra's is up Deadman's ass.

Now comes the real chore: trying to understand what's going on in the fifth installment of this comic book. The first issue was really confusing because it was poorly written. But every subsequent issue has been exponentially harder to understand, both because I have to first comprehend what is going on and because I have to remember it too! It would probably help if I gave an ounce of shit about this story. I'm surprised I don't since I like DC's mystical characters. But Neal Adams isn't really writing about them. From what I can tell, he's just colored a whole bunch of dog turd bags the same color as Spectre, Etrigan, Deadman, and Zatanna.

Deadman uses the adjective "Brobdingnagian." I bet Neal Adams was jerking himself off while writing that line. "This won't be wasted on a bunch of illiterate comic book readers," he probably thought to himself as he jammed the butt plug a little further up his ass. I hope later, Deadman meets a horse-faced woman and uses the adjective "Houyhnhnmian."

Everybody is gathering outside Nanda Parbat for a reason I've completely forgotten to try to remember. No, that's a lie. I actively tried to forget to remember. That's different, somehow.

According to some samurai that I don't recognize, the army attacking Nanda Parbat (why is it attacking? I don't think Neal Adams explained that part. Maybe he explained it. But poorly) is composed of armorers, yeti, deformers, robotoids, zombies and, um, "stupid things." Checking my Who's Who comic, I don't find an entry on Stupid Things.

I wonder how Neal Adams writes a comic book in which he's also the artist. Does he do the art first, drawing whatever strikes his fancy, and then tries to make a coherent story out of the panels? Judging by how incomprehensible the entire story is, I wouldn't be surprised if that was his method. But even if he plans the story out, his dialogue is terrible. At one point, the samurai attacks a deformer and says, "Remove the bones before you swallow the fish, deformer. They tend to get caught in your throat." Why does he say that? What's he referring to? Does the samurai get his strength from giving out life hacks?

It took me way too long to understand why Doctor Fate said that last thing. But I still don't get why Neal Adams would write it.

Rating: This was one of those issues that gets shoved in when DC Comics demands a six part story from a writer who only has two to three parts in them. It's just a nonsensical brawl that keeps the characters from entering Nanda Parbat one issue too early. Plus the dialogue is worse than Pickle Boy's dialogue. I don't mean the dialogue he writes. I mean the dialogue he comes up with over a few beers. Talk about strokes!


Kick-Ass #2
By Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.

Today is new comic book day so let's count how many comic books I read last week. One! That was easy! It also might be telling. Is it time for me to stop reading comic books again? There are a handful I still enjoy, like Batman and The Wild Storm. But the main reason I can't stop reading comic books is that I'm afraid to break up with my comic book store again. It's too much pressure going in there and telling them to cancel my subscription box! Last time I cancelled back in 2003, Debbie acted hurt and shocked, as if it were something the comic book store had done. So I actually told her, "It's not you; it's me!" What excuse do I give this time?! Maybe I should just have the Non-Certified Spouse call up and tell them I died?

As of right now, I'm three weeks behind on my comic book reading. In a few hours when this week's books come out, I'll be a full month behind! I'm getting my ass kicked by comic books!

Oh! Speaking of ass kicking, I found my way back on topic! Let's just rate this thing and move on to the next one, shall we?

Rating: Patience steps up her Kick-Ass game by caring about the little guy. This is how you become a superhero in real life (because this comic book takes place in real life. You can't forget that. Not because you need to remember it to understand the comic book. You can't forget it because Millar constantly says things like, "This isn't like a comic book!" and "This isn't like in the movies!" and "This isn't like a book written by [Google famous author to put here before sending newsletter]!"). You begin due to desperate circumstances and then project your problems and needs on to everybody else. If extreme violence can solve your problems so easily, why can't that be used to solve all of the other people's problems too?! Nothing can go wrong with that philosophy, right?!

Anyway, it was pretty good. Not $3.99 good! But what can you do? Comic books are ridiculously priced these days. I guess you can stop buying them. But then you have to do that break-up thing and my stomach is hurting just thinking about it!


Cave Carson Has an Interstellar Eye #1
By Rivera, Oeming, and Filardi

The last Cave Carson series was about his impotence. It's a pretty sweet read if you're smart enough to figure that out. If you aren't as good at reading comic books as I am then you might have missed the significance of a man obsessed with drilling over and over again into deep caves. Now you're thinking, "Grunion Guy, that doesn't sound like impotence at all! Don't you know how to do it?" And I'm return thinking, "Pshaw! Of course I know how! Why would I even feel the need to write fake dialogues where I assure readers that I've totally done it a lot? So ridiculous!" Also you must not have read the series because it was about how Cave Carson couldn't spelunk anymore. I think "spelunk" is short for "sperm dunk" with an "L" added for some reason.

Since the first comic book's title was an anagram for "I c-ca-can see a very-y chaste boner," I bet this title has an anagrammatic clue as well! Let's see. Cave Carson Has an Interstellar Eye is an anagram of "An anal character's eye is never lost". Methinks I'm most of the way to figuring out what this comic book is really about!

Also I've apparently become one of those people who says "methinks!" Get me a fedora, stat!

Rating: It's weird in that way things are written when they want to be weird. That's a harsh critique and not a compliment. Also maybe it's not as harsh as it could be. Maybe it's not harsh at all? Anyway, that scathing review doesn't mean the comic book is uninteresting. It's just not as interesting as it was when it was about Carson's impotency. I'm not yet sure what this series is about. Maybe about loss and maturity? The entire thing might be about grieving the loss of one's favorite pet. That isn't as sexy as a limp ding-dong! But I'll probably give it at least one more issue.

P.S. I wrote the ranking before reading the back-up story. After reading the back-up story about Cave Carson's podcast, I can confirm the series is about loss. And still maybe about the loss of a pet! I'm sure I can force that view into the narrative.


Justice League #41
By Priest, Briones, and Cox

Rating: This comic book deals with super powered people and aliens and space travel that ignores physics and the Justice League trying to deal with international conflicts and the entire team's institutional racism yet the most unbelievable moment was when some guy was excited to see Aquaman. It took me right out of the comic book. Otherwise, it was a fun read! Especially the part where Wonder Woman was somehow shot. Priest doesn't think she blocks bullets simply because they can actually hurt her, right? Ignoring Kerry Callen's take on Diana's bullet bouncing, she probably deflects them in specific directions so that they don't bounce off of her body and kill an innocent bystander in the way they just bounced off of Superman and killed her. My guess is one went into her open mouth while she was yapping about saving children. I bet the inside of her skin isn't invulnerable. How else could she derive pleasure from fucking Steve Trevor?


Batman #43
By King, Janin, Petrus, and Chung

Rating: I haven't discussed the last few issues of Batman because I've simply been enjoying them. I suppose if there are people out there who can't stand King's Batman, I can't be bothered to mind. Contrary to the evidence presented in thousands of pages of comic book criticism over the last few years, I actually do understand what 'subjective' means. And I can live with people not liking Tom King's writing style because that means Tom King's writing style is there to be experienced. He reminds me why I once loved comic books. He doesn't write a person in a costume. He writes a character who happens to wear a costume. His dialogue is fun and serious and touches one in a way that I thought was a bad touch but I think it's actually the kind of touch most people crave. The current arc is a love story disguised as a villain taking over the world story and it couldn't be better. That's hyperbole because of course it could be better. All of the characters could be drawn naked and aroused.

Grunion Guy's Musical Corner of Music Reviews

Get Your Shit Together by Public Enemy
There's something incredibly Shakespearean about Public Enemy's music. It's like when Chuck D is rapping, you're all, "Fuck man. Fuck. This is profound! This is fucking American truth man! This is crazy." Then Flava Flav starts singing and you're all, "Oh yeah! This Shakespeare loved cock jokes too!" Mostly you forget Flava Flav is a part of this group when they're singing about serious shit like this. Occasionally you'll heave Flava Flav's high-pitched, sidekick exclamations ring out and I can't help laughing. Then I feel terrible because somebody might think I'm laughing at the serious lyric, "What you gonna do? What'ch you gonna do? If you'd been on that plane, both sides would've killed you too!" Mostly though, Public Enemy really understands when to play up Flava Flav and when to downplay him. He's barely even a blip in this song. I imagine he was just bopping along in the studio as this track was recorded without ever realizing his mic wasn't turned on.
Grade: A.

Never Say Die by Jon Bon Jovi
Most Americans think Bon Jovi was a huge punchline to the joke of 80s rock music. But we all know why Bon Jovi survived the death of that 80s hard rock genre; it was because he was a master of sex appeal and also wrote really catchy songs! This song is from the soundtrack to Young Guns II which was almost as good as the movie itself! This might be the worst song on the album (aside from the one without lyrics, "Guano City." Who listens to songs without lyrics?! What a waste of time!) and yet I still don't skip it when it comes up on my shuffle. Because even the worst of the best is still good! Some might say I'm a Jovi Lover and they have a right to their totally correct and non-spurious opinions. Let me share the glory of some of Jon's triumphs in lyrical beauty:

"Once I was afraid of love
But when it's your brother those things change.
Love is just another word for trust!
So hear me when I say, 'Never say, "Die!"'
'Never say, "No!"'
You got to look them in the eye and don't let go!"

Wow! That just gets right to the heart of sex shop glory hole culture! It's right up there with "Love is a Social Disease" and "Shot Through the Heart" (not to be confused with "You Give Love a Bad Name" which uses the lyric "shot through the heart")! I'm not sure why Bon Jovi included an anthem for living with and fighting AIDS in the Young Guns II soundtrack. But it works somehow!
Grade: B.

Saturday's Child by The Monkees
"You'll be called 'The Monkees!'"
"What? Why?"
"But not monkeys like you're imagining it! Monkees with two 'e's!"
"What? Why?!"
"You don't like it? The other three guys we're interviewing for the band probably love it! You should to!"
"Well, as long as we play catchy pop tunes that make all the girls go wild."
"You mean 'pretend to play!'"
"Wait. What? Why?!"

That's probably how Mike Nesmith's job interview went, right? Anyway, what about "Saturday's Child", you're probably thinking. Well, I'm probably thinking, "What about it?! It's kind of stupid." I don't even know what a Saturday child is supposed to be! Did people used to not only believe personalities were formed by astrological signs but by days of the week as well? What makes Saturday's child not break your heart like Thursday's child? Why is Wednesday's child so aloof?! And Sunday's child is way too into commitment. I guess Saturday's child is the one that will sleep with you on the first date and not care when you never call again. Is that love?

It's also a bit weird to be singing about loving a child.
Grade: D+.

Ubangi Stomp by Alice Cooper
This is Alice Cooper's version of an Elvis dance song. Alice Cooper did a lot of versions of other people singing songs that already existed. People don't realize this but Alice Cooper was basically Weird Al Yankovic drunk out of his mind. This song is from Lace and Whiskey which is an album that most people could hear any song from, be told it was Alice Cooper, and they would say, "Fuck you that's Alice Cooper." I guess maybe "Road Rats" or "It's Hot Tonight" wouldn't get that reaction. But that's just twenty percent of the album. Nobody would hear this or "My God" or "I Never Wrote Those Songs" or "King of the Silver Screen" or "You and Me" or "Damned If You Do" or "Lace and Whiskey" or "(No More) Love at Your Convenience" and think, "I know who sang that!" Except maybe "You and Me" since it was basically Alice Cooper's last big hit of the seventies and also because he sang it to Miss Piggy on The Muppet Show. This song is catchy and I would dance to it if I actually knew how to do the Ubangi Stomp. It probably involves a lot of stomping and racism.
Grade: B.

The Simpsons Halloween Special End Credits Theme ("The Addams Family" Homage)
I don't know why I haven't deleted this from my iTunes. I don't know why I haven't deleted all of The Simpsons special themes from my iTunes. Probably because I'm lazy. I'm not too lazy to hit skip every time one of them comes up on the Shuffle though. If you hear a "song" like this and think, "I need to hear more of that a lot of the time I'm living this finite life," then we don't have much in common. I mean music-wise! We probably have more in common in other ways, like how often we masturbate or how many burritos we can stand to eat in one day.
Grade: F.

What Am I Currently Reading?

This week, I finished reading Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers. Mostly it was a rehash of a few of the first series episodes with some minor and not so minor differences. Lots of the dialogue was the same in places but Red Dwarf's captain was a woman named Kirk rather than a bloated man with a pockmarked face. We also learn how Lister became a crew member and that his breaking of quarantine by smuggling the cat on board was done on purpose so he could be in stasis for the entire trip back to Earth. It was an easy and enjoyable read that actually made me laugh out loud in places which the television show doesn't really do any more. Well, maybe it does. But the way laugh tracks have aged makes viewing of old sitcoms really fucking difficult.
    What reading this book has taught me is that maybe the Xanth books aren't such quick reads after all! Either I'm not as big a fan of fantasy as I was at twelve when titillating descriptions of naked creatures caused me to take a short bathroom break (and that scene where Dor and Irene rip each other's clothes off in the moat in Centaur Isle probably fueled more bathroom breaks than any other bit) or the Xanth books just aren't as entertaining as I remembered them being. It's a slog to get through a Xanth book. I had to force myself to try to read at least one chapter every morning before bed (I work nights!). But I kept going back to the Red Dwarf book even when I could have been playing Fortnite! If you don't know what Fortnite is, that was meant as high praise!
   Next up on my to read list is Spiral by Koji Suzuki. It's the sequel to Ringu which everybody knows about. I think I'll reread Ringu first because it took so long to find the second book. Ringu was written in 1992 and it might be the best book on memes I'll ever read. Mostly because I'll never read another one.

Letters to Me!

KB writes: My mom took us to see Godspell on multiple occasions. ::shudder::

My reply: Ick! I hate when people equate Jesus Christ Superstar with Godspell. Although I think I owe my love of Jesus Christ Superstar to Godspell. At some point as a kid, I saw the end scene of the Godspell movie where Jesus Christ is crucified to a chain link fence by a bunch of clowns while the World Trade Center sits in the background mocking modern audiences. I was all, "What the heck was that?! It seems awesome!" The visual stuck in my head for years. I also knew the title song of Jesus Christ Superstar thanks to grocery store background music. I assumed the two were one and the same. After years of having that song and image stuck in my head, I eventually dug out my mom's VHS copy of Jesus Christ Superstar (taped from television, of course) and watched it. It was not the movie I remembered but I fell in love with it anyway. I loved the music and was fascinated by the sympathetic take on Judas.

Eventually I watched Godspell as well and was not taken in the same way. I also saw Godspell at least once in the community theater version because my friend Doom Bunny was doing the lights for it.

KB:

"took nine hundred and ninety nine comics but Superman finally realized that throwing criminals into the Phantom Zone was a dick move. His first (and possibly only?) step in correcting this attitude is letting Hank Henshaw out. After which Superman immediately imprisons him in an Inertron cell (unless it's Adamantium) and puts him into a hallucinatory state so he won't cause trouble. Jurgens seems to be telling this tale to show that Superman is too good to be corrupted like, in the other half of the story, Sam Lane fears."

So, using Black Mercies is evil, but a hallucinatory condition isn't? Though there is an interesting discussion to be had about whether it's merciful to let people live in blissful delusion. Even if you were to construct a hallucinatory setting where Hank Henshaw could grow as a person until he decided to foreswear evil, what happens when you yank the rug out from under him and tell him it's all been a lie? I guess that's an argument about practical application more than about morality, but it's still a question.

"Although, to be fair in a fairer way, Superman's foes always seem to escape from the Phantom Zone just like Batman's enemies escape Arkham. So Superman can either follow the law and the villains he captures will still escape, or he can imprison people illegally while they still manage to escape. Since nobody can keep a comic book villain locked up, Superman should at least choose the option that doesn't make him look like a fascist."

Gold kryptonite used to be a solution, yet Superman almost never used it. "Look, you lived your whole life on Krypton without super powers, you can live here on earth just fine without powers too. Trust me, you'll love the Denny's Grand Slam. And you can probably get rich going into tech companies. Stay away from Lex Luthor though, he'll probably want to vivisect you."

Me: Basically, I think DC's view is that if Superman does it, it's okay. If some other character who we aren't told by DC that everybody but Batman and Lex Luthor can trust implicitly for some reason does it, it's terrible and should be stopped immediately. That Gold Kryptonite solution seems particularly troublesome and hypocritical. If Superman thinks Kryptonians who abuse their powers don't deserve them, shouldn't he take the same hard line on himself? As soon as he realizes that he's constantly being manipulated to use his powers against Earth through magic or hypnosis or Joker serum or Doomsday viruses, shouldn't he also expose himself to Gold Kryptonite so he loses his powers forever? I suppose he has an imaginary whiteboard in the Fortress of Solitude where he keeps a list of all the pros and cons of keeping his powers. Once that list tips too far into the cons, he probably has a Gold Kryptonite suppository set aside.


Upright writes: Did you ever check out Anthony’s Bio of a Tyrant series? The only thing I remember is that Jupiter was the U.S., Saturn was the USSR, and Earth was India (weird). And a missile crisis, because Saturn, of course. And the guy was a tyrant but totally misunderstood like so many of them are! We can’t think beyond the present unless you can and then you’re Philip K Dick and he’s crazy until he’s absolutely not at all.

My reply: I never did pick that up. Which is weird because I read almost everything else Anthony churned out (for some reason. Let's not be too hard on twelve year old me! He may have been a smelly, know-it-all jerk but...well, maybe we should have all been harder on him, actually). Maybe since I'm reading all of his terrible stuff again, I should read some of his terrible stuff that I never read before!

Speaking of Philip K. Dick, I'd read more of his stuff but I can't remember what I've read of his and what I haven't. I really should have kept a list. Since he became so popular again in the whatever years he became really popular again, publishers seem to reissue his stuff over and over again. It's hard to tell when I see a bunch of new covers which ones I've read. Maybe I should just hit the library and go through them all. Then when I recognize I've read one, I can just return it without costing me anything! Except for the late fee I'll almost certainly accrue.

And that's a wrap on this week's newsletter! Goodbye, jerkos!

Han Solo and the Lost Legacy by Brian Daley (1980)

In this exciting adventure starring Indiana Jones in space, Indiana Jones (played by Han Solo) goes on a treasure hunt to find treasure. I don't think this is a spoiler because Han Solo isn't a rich bastard when we first meet him in Star Wars but he doesn't get a whole lot of treasure at the end. It turns out the treasure is so old that the things people thought of as "treasure" a long time ago in a galaxy sort of far away aren't worth much any more.

I guess I wasn't too woke as a kid when I first read this book because, back then, I don't remember constantly thinking as I read this, "What gives Han the right to take this treasure from the people who have already discovered it? When does a 'lost treasure' suddenly become the property of the people who found it rather than up for grabs to any person jerky enough to think they deserve it?" Han Solo and his treasure hunting buddies kill a lot of people who were just holding on to the treasure they found because Han Solo somehow decided the treasure didn't belong to anybody. How fair is that?! That penchant for believing treasure only belongs to the first white man that comes along to steal it is another reason this should have been an Indiana Jones book and not a Han Solo book. Aside from the lasers and spaces ships, of course. But how hard would it have been to just make the lasers into pistols and the space ships into zeppelins?

If you think I'm making a big deal over some some kind of newfangled social justice way of thinking then you're just pointing out that you're a jerk because nobody in their right mind (and I wasn't in my right mind at eight. I was in my eight year old mind. That kid also didn't understand how Dungeons & Dragons was about the human/dwarf/elf privilege to raid the homes of orcs and kobolds, murder them, and steal their life savings) should be able to read this without thinking Han Solo was being a gigantic, greedy butthole. Sure, he's never been too keen on following the law. But his moral compass has never been this out of whack. The labor droid Bollux shows more ethical clarity in this book when it tries to stop the war machine robots through diplomacy before resorting to violence!

I would like to get over this aspect of the book because aren't all stories about treasure hunters simply stories about people stealing artifacts from people with less power? Should I really be bothered by that?! I mean, I can get over Han Solo firing first and killing Greedo in cold blood because it was the only way he was getting out of that situation alive. Plus, bounty hunters know what they're getting into. And I'm okay with Han Solo breaking laws while smuggling because he knows what he's getting into and the consequences of his actions if he's caught. But I'm far less enthusiastic about a Han Solo who realizes the treasure he is after is in the hands of a whole race of people on a planet and he decides those people don't deserve the treasure simply because he wants it. And in quite a few cases, those people don't even deserve to live because they're using deadly force to defend the treasure which is theirs.

I'm glad Garfield has never shown this lack of ethics in his strips. He may be a cynical douche but at least he's just thinking his terrible thoughts to himself.