Constantine #11

Seems rational.

I don't think Constantine is in love with Zatanna at all! He's not even in love with the idea of being in love! He's in love with the idea that he might possibly be able to love somebody even though he's destroyed so many lives in his selfish need to become more powerful (while lying to himself that he's actually just trying to keep balance in the magic realm) and also in love with the idea that a good person might possibly be able to love him back if he hides his true self to her and himself. Or he might just really love the feeling of his penis in Zatanna's vagina. That's a pretty distinct possibility.

This issue no longer has the Forever Evil label on it but they're still going after The Crime Syndicate's Thaumaton to save their magical allies. Did DC just forget? Or did they figure they could drop that after Blight was defeated and Chris the Redeemer was brought forth unto the world? You know what. I don't care.

Remember last issue when I did it all in crayon? That was pretty good, hunh? I'm not doing that this time!

So Justice League Dark have found themselves in Nanda Parbat infiltrating The Crime Syndicate's secret magic weapon headquarters thanks to Deadman's cover as The Sea King. That probably won't last long though before Ultraman hears about his return and comes to investigate.

That's what I wrote in the last Phantom Stranger issue! That if they'd just taken the time to discuss the whereabouts of their missing magic friends, they'd have realized Nanda Parbat was the only place they could be! You know, after San Francisco!

As soon as the Mini-Justice League Dark enter the temple where Zatanna and the others are being held, they trigger a trap by Nick Necro (whom I might hate even more than Condor) that causes everyone but Constantine and The Nightmare Nurse to disappear. That's okay! All of the others minus Zauriel have their own comic books! They don't need to be running around this one for no pay.

The Nightmare Nurse looks like Sailor Boner here!

And here as well! Vampire Tig who?

While I'm busy falling in love with The Nightmare Nurse, John and Asa break through all of Felix Faust's mystical traps to find themselves at the doorstep of the Thaumaton. Strapped to this huge device are all of their mystical friends, enemies, and acquaintances: Black Orchid, Cassandra Craft, Shade, Enchantress, Blackbriar Thorn, Blue Devil, Papa Midnite, and more. Any magic person who is any magic person in the DC Universe is here. Except Zatanna. That's when Constantine turns on The Nightmare Nurse, punches her, and asks who she really is! Of course it's Nick Necro in disguise.

Well damn! No wonder I was suddenly all lustful for The Nightmare Nurse! Before this issue, I thought she was cute and adorable and sexy in that devil may care that she's a devil kind of way! But that mostly had to do with her character. Okay, sure. The cute little devil nurse outfit may have intrigued me a bit! But suddenly after the initial trap was sprung, she was Male Gazed up to the gills! Because that's the only way Nick Necro has ever seen her! As a sexual object! So when he tried to portray her himself, The Nightmare Nurse was suddenly causing man and lady boners to pop up all over the place! That's probably how Constantine knew it was really Necro in disguise.

Nick Necro: "Let's see. How do I convince everybody I'm The Nightmare Nurse? Short skirt which means multiple glimpses of my underwear! Oh yeah, that's fucking hot. My nipples need to show through my thick leather clothing. That's a must! Legs about a third longer than normal so it's noticeable but I don't look like a freak. Big heeled boots will help give a boost to my height and ass! Let's see...what did her hair and face look like? Damn. Fuck if I know. I mean, I remember she had tits. And lips! And tits. Bah, it'll only be John I have to fool! I'm sure he's never really looked Ana in the face either!"

John and Nick tussle for a bit before John disappears for a moment to get his bearings. Or his teammates.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, Nicky baby. Remember this isn't a Vertigo title anymore. You can't just go sticking your dick into any old magician you want while a nearly naked woman in bondage watches.

John beats Nick Necro easily because Nick Necro sucks. The only way I might be willing to read another comic book with Nick Necro is if he joins some kind of Loser's Club with Condor and Warrant. But Constantine forgets about Felix Faust who reappears and knocks out John. Although this is John's best tactic, right? He lets the other magicians punch themselves out before he comes back and kicks their asses. If only Ann Nocenti were here to remind me what that is called!

Or maybe Constantine really got caught with his dick out this time.

The rest of his team are close by because they've also been securely locked into the Thaumaton.

Constantine #11 Rating: +4 Ranking. I don't know if it's my fault recently for not enjoying Constantine or if Constantine just has been getting the shitty chapters of Forever Evil: Blight. But whatever was going on, that's in the past with this issue! I really enjoyed it for some unquantifiable reason although the art was a big quantifiable plus. ACO (or Aco? (Or aco?)) really got the job done! Especially those parts with Nick Necro wearing female undergarments. Ha cha cha cha!

Nightwing #28

The issues begins with Batgirl choking Nightwing as they fall from a great height. The reader is left to ask, "Why is Batgirl throttling Dick so passionately?" and "What did Grayson say to piss Babs off?" and "Is he still fucking living in Chicago?" The reader is not left to ask, "Will they survive?" because super heroes are always falling from the tops of buildings, especially members of the Bat-family. And has one of them, just one of them, ever died from a fall? I don't know. I don't think so. I'm not really a scholar of comic book history.

I forgot to ask one of the most important comic books questions which turns out to be the question that should have been asked: "Is that really Batgirl?" Because it's some thief named Spinebender that Babs and Dick battled many, many issues ago. I think they fought him in a food court. I think Batgirl was jealous of Raya. There was some drama or something. I don't completely remember.

I don't feel so bad not being able to remember everything about every comic book when Nightwing can't even remember everything about Nightwing.

Turns out Spinebender is a little bit pissed that he's dying because of Nightwing's method of subdual. I think that falls under the Bat-family No Kill Technicality Statement under the section entitled "You Brought It On Yourself." The full proviso reads, "If in the act of a crime, whether felonious or petty, the perpetrator of that crime is injured in such a way by the Bat-hero that the years of his life are subsequently shortened, the perpetrator will take full responsibility of his actions and subsume the blame for any and all injuries not leading directly to death. Any wounds sustained by the perpetrator of said crime that are not mortal in and of themselves but eventually lead to the death of the perpetrator due to doctor error or infection setting in at a later time or internal hemorrhaging due to the perpetrator's slow response time in getting help, are entirely the fault of the perpetrator who should have known better than to engage in illegal activities."

Spinebender has probably never read any of the Bat-Family legal documents so it's understandable that he just wants to take out his anger on Nightwing while ignoring the fact that he got himself caught up in a fairly risky business when he decided to begin robbing people.

Spinebender tries to kill Nightwing along with himself by electrocution but Nightwing gets away and Spinebender explodes into thousands of shards of glass. I wonder if Nightwing will feel bad about this at all?

Meanwhile Sonia Zucco is wrapping up some loose ends so she can fuck Dick Grayson without him weeping uncontrollably about his parents while his dick goes soft.

Dick doesn't seem to worry about the guy that just killed himself trying to kill Nightwing because Nightwing turning the guy to glass in a previous encounter caused a change in his biology that was killing him. But he is concerned with how many innocent people were injured and how much property damage was caused because the guy was expressly after him. I guess the Bat-family No Kill Technicality Statement absolves the Bat-Hero of feeling any human emotion whatsoever in the face of a tragic criminal death. Who cares what the guy's life was like or what his mental state might have been or if he was suffering from the side-effects of his medication or if he were being mind-controlled by an even worse Super Villain! Ultimately it was his choice that led him to the grave. Unless the reason he did it was because of that mind control thing.

As Dick heads home to his apartment in a normal way like he should be doing instead of going through his bedroom window in full costume, he runs into his soon-to-be-sidekick, Hummingbird! Also known as Jen.

Oh yeah! Taxes. Says the orphan boy that was taken in as a ward by the richest man in Fuckingsuperrichville. Bruce probably fell into his fainting couch every night, fanning himself and proclaiming, "My God, Dick! The taxes! The taxes! How are we ever going to get by with this great burden upon us?!"

Later at Dick's job, Sonia comes to see him wearing her short Burberry Trench with nothing underneath. She apologizes to Dick and then leaves with her shoes squelching from the aftermath of her lust typhoon. Dick listened to her apology with a raging boner pressed against the inside of his Levis. Neither one of them knew that with just one word, they could have been fucking on the bathroom sink. Instead Dick goes back to work rubbing his throbbing member up against the inside of the coffee bar while thinking about the smell of Sonia's inner thighs.

When Dick gets home and before he can rush to the bedroom to remove his now crusty boxers, his roommate Joey stops him with some horrible news about Jen's parents.

Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na HUMMINGBIRD! HUMMINGBIRD! HUMMINGBIRD!

Dick needs to console Jen since, you know, he's kind of been through this! And a guy that had also been through this helped him through this! It's a tradition! And since Jen knows Dick is Nightwing, she says, "Hey! You know how you got through this! Yeah, so I drew up these designs for a uniform and I'm ready for my therapy sessions!" And Dick is all, "Homina homina homina."

While Dick is off in the kitchen trying to calm his hominas, Jen takes off with his sticks because she told Dick she knows who killed her parents. That's when Dick also finds out who killed her parents because the description of the guy as a marked up tally sheet kind of only fits one guy.

Alan Grant Presents Mister Zsasz sponsored by Alan Grant's Comic Book Characters Created by Alan Grant.

Nightwing #28 Rating: +5 Ranking. I was really beginning to get bored with this book so thank Higgins and Dauterman for this issue. I think this is the first book I've read with Dauterman's art and I approve of it. I suppose I actually hated the change to Chicago less than the Prankster/Tony Zucco story. But I'm definitely ready for the Mature Audiences Issue when Sonia and Dick finally get together!

Suicide Squad #28

Who would win in a fight? OMAC's testicles or The Hulk's testicles?

So Forever Evil has been going on for about six years now but I think it's almost over! Rogue's Rebellion #5 is currently in my stack and it says "5 of 6" which means that series is almost over! And I'm making the assumption that Forever Evil must be ending sometime soon after that. Maybe a month or two after? I have a feeling that the current incarnation of the Suicide Squad is going to be obliterated by the events of this Forever Evil crossover. Why else is it the only regular non-Justice League book to have been sucked into the Vortex of Crossing Over? Even Nightwing's comic got out of telling crossover stories and he's nearly dead from Forever Evil!

Let's see who won the fight that began last issue, shall we? It was between OMAC and King Shark and Nutty Cuckoo Super King Shark. One other thing that is probably going to be important later is that Waller had just found Kevin Kho's virtual personality on The Thinker's laptop.

That's why I'm not successful! I don't keep a Field Journal! I'm always telling the Non-Certified Spouse that I need a scribe because I never remember any of the super hilarious things I say on a daily basis.

I bet Amanda Waller got the Journal idea from Slade Wilson! Amanda says it's a "mental journal" because Deathstork's Slade Wilson's War Journal always sounded really stupid because he wrote it in the present tense as if he were writing it as he was confronting Lobo. "So here I am standing here face to face with the most dangerous person in the...sorry, I just had to tell him to hang on a moment while I jotted this down for future reference. Who the fuck punches a guy as he's writing in his diary War Journal?" But I think she calls it her "mental journal" because it's totally crazy! Fun Fact: The Mad Hatter was originally called The Mental Hatter. Another Fun Fact: Whenever somebody begins a sentence with "fun fact," you can be assured it will neither be "fun" nor a "fact."

I suppose I'm obligated to begin Amanda Waller's Mental Journal now. Dammit.

Amanda Waller continues to drone on and on and on! She's far more verbose than Slade Wilson ever was! That first page of her Mental Journal was just two of twelve Narration Boxes full of her journal notes. And it was the two smallest boxes! No way am I going reproduce her entire Journal! If this were a paid gig, sure. No problem there! Maybe even if there were just some additional perks like free Oreos or hand jobs. Oh! Maybe if I work Oreos into every page of Amanda Waller's Mental Journal, they'll send me loads and loads of Oreos for the free advertising. I don't know who I'd have to appeal to to get the hand jobs though.

The gist of her mental journal is that, hopefully, King Shark and Nutty Cuckoo Super King Shark can distract OMAC long enough for Amanda Waller to shut the creature down. She was going to send it into some random dimensional portal that her team accidentally opened up a few years back but then she met Kevin. And Kevin thinks he can take back control of OMAC and save everybody's life.

I remember Kevin. And, for what it's worth, I am not optimistic in his abilities.

Luckily help is on the way!

Possibly. Who actually knows with this team?

The team parachutes into Belle Reve to help save the day. I think. Maybe they just came back to beat the shit out of Harley for dropping the Rocky Mountains on them. I'm sure they all have their own individual reasons for attending this gig. Steel's my hero of Page Six because he accidentally electrocutes James Gordon Jr. I'm glad I won't have to listen to that asshole for a few pages! Harley explains to the others that bringing OMAC back might have been a bit of a faux pas on her part and that maybe she acted a bit rashly. Especially because now he's teaching King Shark how to ballroom dance.

This won't end well.

The finale of the dance is a fantastic bit that puts one in the mind of humid summers on the New England shores watching a dog's carcass on the nearby highway get hit again and again and again by every passing motorist, until the dog becomes an unrecognizable red smear that stretches a dozen feet down the asphalt. It's grand! And terrifying! And also makes quite a mess since it involves Kama, King Shark's dad, being torn in two.

Next OMAC pulls out half an android from King Shark's belly which reminds me: what the fuck ever happened to Yo-Yo? He went from my most hated character ever created to my most favoritest new member of the Suicide Squad when it turned out he'd lived inside King Shark for many months. Being that his super powers were kind of Plastic Man-like, I can't buy that he actually died when Deadshot blew his head off. I'm sure he'll pull himself together at some point. Please?

Also whatever happened to Light Lime? She was still alive, right? I miss her!

OMAC manages to put the entire Squad down just as Captain Boomerang finally parachutes in. OMAC doesn't bother with Boomer and wanders off to find Amanda as Harley tells Deadshot the new plan: find some bullets to shoot themselves with. Hmm. That sounds like it solves all of their problems but what about the rest of the world?!

Oh. Okay. This had better work!

Deadshot puts one bullet in Harley, one in Amanda, and one in himself. And then everything goes black.

Suicide Squad #28 Rating: No change. How many times is Deadshot going to shoot himself in this comic? I didn't think the suicide part of the title was supposed to be taken so literally. Oh well. This comic book needs more Boomer.

Batgirl #28

I understand my flaws. So let me apologize right up front for calling Silver "Sliver" through a good portion of this commentary.

I've never put any real time into researching the common mistakes I make while typing and the reasons for them but I suspect they have to do with certain uppity fingers getting ahead of their slower partners and just not giving any fucks about typing the word correctly. When I type "mantis," it often comes out as "manits" on the first try. This seems to make sense because that "t" key is so fucking far away it might as well be on Mars. When I type "Deathstroke," there's a 50/50 chance it'll come out as "Deathstorke." This might also have to do with that Goddamned "t" key slowing shit down so much that the "o" beats the "r" to the punch. I should be okay with Sliver...well, that mistake just killed where that sentence was going! Typing is hard!

Actually, typing is one of the easiest things I've ever learned how to do. I took a typing class in seventh grade (on actual typewriters (although they were electric so I didn't have to keep banging the mechanism (whatever it's called) back to the starting position)) and then accidentally practiced my skills by playing text adventures on my Apple IIe until I was as good at typing as a sexist stereotype of a 1970s sexually harassed secretary. I had to dream about being sexually harassed though because that wouldn't happen until college. It could have happened earlier with a number of different partners but I was content in the Not Getting Any Trifecta of other interests: Warhammer, Masturbation, and Being Completely Infatuated With a Girl That Didn't Fucking Want Any of This. Perhaps all the masturbation and Warhammer was a turn off? At least I only did one of those things in front of her.

Is Batgirl (oh yeah! I also tend to type "Batgril" instead of "Batgirl" and I don't know what that's about. It could be I'm not concentrating very well because I always think "Batgorilla" before I think "Batgirl") done with all of her crossovers? We got Zero Year and Gothtopia out of the way, right? And the Wanted story arc is over as well, right? So I don't actually need to remember anything too important before reading this issue, correct?

Who the fuck am I talking to?

The issue begins with Mr. Uchida (Lord Google informs me that his name means "inner rice paddy." It must be a metaphor that I'm too thick to see right now. Maybe deeper into the story it will make sense. Or maybe I shouldn't trust that idiot Lord Google?) being bathed by Miss Targa (Lord Google informs me that her name means "shield." Now that name makes sense since she seems to be Uchida's valet and I'm pretty sure the number one job of a valet is to throw their life away to save the life of the person they bathe).

Why doesn't he just get that Bat App that updates Batfamily member locations in real time? I bet Sliver is a Luddite.

Now I'm just typing "Sliver" because I'm thinking of him as Sliver! Where's the button to recalibrate the human brain?

Batgirl is currently just doing the normal night out thing. That isn't going to a movie with her boyfriend and hoping he slides his hand down her inner thigh while she stuffs chocolate into her mouth. A normal night for Batgirl is running around from rooftop to rooftop, swinging from building to building, noticing people stalking her, hunting down college kids in Halloween Masks, and punching her friends in the face. Although when your friend is trying to catch up to you and can't yell "Hey you fucking idiot! Slow down!" because your friend is Strix and she can't talk, these kinds of things sometimes go down. Although if your friend is Strix, she can also take the punch to the face no problem. Although she still acts hurt like a Footballer hamming it up for a Red Card.

Of course she's okay! She's just trying to make you feel good about your weak-ass face punching skills, Babs. You're no Supergirl.

Strix wants Batgirl's help to find a missing 8 year old girl that can't speak. When Batgirl wonders why Strix wants her help, Strix takes out a pen and pad of paper to write down, "you = detektif." I guess Dinah finally cracked the seal on the Birds of Prey Treasury to buy Strix a pad to write on! It's only taken...well, I can't say how many issues it's taken because it took Strix's appearance in Batgirl to get her pad of paper! No more writing her messages on the walls in raccoon feces! Hey, I'm not making that up! I mean, maybe, just maybe, it wasn't actually raccoon feces. It could have been cat feces.

Batgirl's first detektif move is to call her BFF (Best Fremesis Forever) Daybreak aka Squirerise aka Knightfall aka Charise Carnes. She'd rather not call this woman that tried to have her killed multiple times but that's the hard knock life of a true detektif. You have to deal with a black and white world where you think weird shit constantly like "the dame in front of me had a long story but longer gams" and "I could tell by the sound of her voice that she was about to betray me. The cocking of the pistol was a pretty big clue too." And, like Batgirl here, you have to deal with "acquaintances" that usually would rather see you dead than help you out of a tough situation. The cops usually hate your guts too, so Batgirl is truly winning at being a hardboiled detektif.

Charise offers to help with no strings attached because a little girl's life is at stake and Knightfall truly thinks she's helping protect Gotham City. And maybe she is! I think her method is actually a little bit less violent than Batman's!

Meanwhile, Silver reveals that he's schizophrenic. He sees Batgirl and Strix as vampires feasting on the kids that they were tying up for the Gotham Police to find. I wrote a short story back in college about a schizophrenic werewolf hunter and it was basically this same idea. Although I always meant to flesh it out into a larger and more ambiguous story. Is there an actual murderer on the loose killing people with silver bullets or is he actually hunting werewolves which revert back to human form when killed? The main reason I could never get serious about writing the story was that I was too sympathetic to werewolves themselves. They aren't monsters or killers. They're just humans with a disease that makes them act horribly one or two nights a month. Just imagine if we killed everybody that acted like an asshole when they were sick! Barely anybody would make it to adulthood.

Silver might be schizophrenic but Miss Targa must simply be a complete psychopath to help this guy stake people all over Gotham. Unless Silver is the actual vampire and Miss Targa is his thrall. That's probably what's going on. He's just trying to save people from the same kind of torture that he's had to live with after becoming the living undead.

Since vampires have been mentioned, I'll throw in my usual Best Vampire Movie of All Time Plug: Let the Right One In. Holy fuck that movie is subtle in its horror! Part of its beauty over the American remake is, in fact, the subtlety in the way it lets the true horror of what's going on unravel in the mind of the viewer instead of spelling it out onscreen. I fucking hate that Hollywood has basically accepted that movies need to be aimed at the stupidest motherfuckers amongst us.

Later, Babs and Mary (Batgirl and Strix!) dress up like regular folk to go speak with Cissie Chastain the missing girl's mom.

This is Batgirl being a dick and/or trying to be funny. She did not forget. Unless I've forgotten what "eidetic memory" means!

I know, I know! It's just a figure of speech that slipped out before Batgirl thought better of it! Here's the problem with being facetious on the internet: you constantly have to explain that you actually knew better or get inundated with messages telling you how fucking stupid you are. Part of the issue is that most people don't think a person would actually put something out there that makes them sound like an idiot just because they think it is funny. You can imagine how often I get corrected by people! I once said that I was the biggest Alice in Wonderland fan of all time and that I even loved the second book, whatever it's name was. And someone came along and told me the name of the second book. Now, I wasn't trolling anyone! I didn't even expect anybody to take that seriously! I just thought it was a simple joke. But that's what happens when you put something out over the internet. You're going to get every reaction possible to what you've written. I've seen some people write really, really, really long-winded explanations because they try to counter all the ways people might possibly misread what they're saying. But it's just useless! Because you can't foresee the reaction of everyone! So I just say the foolish shit I say and let the dice come up snake eyes for whoever wants the dice to come up snake eyes. Hell, I've even responded to people facetiously thinking they'd understand that I'm not offended, even writing it in so hyperbolic a way that there's no way they can think I'm serious, and, of course, they still think I'm pissed off.

Here's a secret: if you can't tell if I'm joking or not, I'm probably joking. Not serious. Rarely serious here. Sometimes serious. But not often. Hardly ever angry (except at robots. Fuck robots). Total whimsical bitch. Can't take anything seriously. Possibly a medical condition. Don't mind me!

Batgirl's case ties in with Silver's obsession! That's fortuitous! Wait, let me check my dictionary. Yeah! Fortuitous!

The next few pages are the Batgirl versus Sliver pages. You know what? I'm just going to embrace it. His name is Sliver from now on. The next few pages are also the Strix versus Miss Targa pages! I don't want to shortchange Strix when she's been so gracious with her time and agreeing to guest star in this comic book. Besides, I think that's the more interesting fight. It's always the antagonist's right hand man that's the most interesting person anyway. Like Renfield! Or Muttley! Or Judas! Or Dr. Claw's cat!

Or maybe he just has a severe case of Vampire Testicular Rigor Mortis.

The Gotham City Police arrive and break up the fight. But Sliver lets Babs know that it doesn't matter because he has the Vampire Queen and she's rigged to blow at sunrise. Batgirl, being a much better detektif than I am, intuits that the Vampire Queen Sliver is speaking of is in fact Cissie Chastain. I don't know why Sliver thinks she's the Vampire Queen but if he's really schizophrenic, the reason will probably only make sense if I were on LSD. Although Cissie was kidnapped from a hospital so maybe she was getting a blood transfusion which tripped Sliver's skewed perception of reality (or maybe the objective perception of reality? How do I know? Who am I to judge which reality is least subjective?) and he believed he saw her feeding or giving her blood to infect others. Hell, maybe it's just as simple as Miss Targa having been in love with Cissie's dad but he rejected her because he was married. So Miss Targa found a crazy person to do her dirty work for her, telling him Cissie's dad was a vampire that needed to be killed and that Cissie was the Queen.

Batgirl #28 Rating: +2 Ranking. I hope next issue continues this story and not Batgirl: Forever Evil or Batgirl Meets Scooby Doo. I wish Gail Simone had chosen Condor as the guest star so she could have him killed. Man, I hate that guy. I really hate him! I'm not being whimsical or facetious here! If I met Condor on the street, I would shank his bitch ass without a thought! Seriously!

Green Lantern Corps #28

No sign of 2-6-8-1-7-9-5. Lame.

Once again the Green Lantern Corps have found themselves enmeshed in an intergalactic crisis! And once again, it's their own damn fault. The Durlans want them destroyed which means if the Green Lantern Corps didn't exist, the Durlans would be putting their time to better use. But the Green Lanterns can't just sit by and wait until they're destroyed simply because the crisis is their fault. So now they're off to find a rogue Durlan Green Lantern named Von Daggle. They need his help to identify shapeshifted Durlans that might want to assassinate Green Lanterns.

Oh yeah. A bunch of out of work Green Lantern villains decided to help fight in the war because the Durlans were dicks to them. So Bolphunga, Hunger Dog, John Stewart, and Fatality have tracked down Von Daggle in Sector 3502.

For a shapeshifter with an entire universe to hide in, he doesn't do a very good job of evasion. It might be because he's got an itch that needs scratching, if you know what I mean. And I mean drugs so if you thought I meant sex with children, go get help.

While Hunger Dog makes hunting Durlans easy so that John can take all the credit for finding Von Daggle, a Green Lantern I know nothing about named Soranik is kidnapped by some mysterious figures. The silhouette of the main one looks like a Blue Beetle with hairy arms so maybe she's a Black Widow? She has help from a big muscular guy because that kind of guy is always needed on a super villain team and another guy with severely bowed legs that is never needed for a super villain team. He might be some kind of insect alien. I have no idea who they are but then I don't even know who the Green Lantern is that they've stolen! Although she's from Korugar so I bet a lot of people mistrust her!

Back on the planet Muz, Von Daggle puts up a fight because the Guardians fucked him over for years. Why would anybody want to go back to that job? I mean besides Hal Jordan. It just seems like a gigantic pain in the ass where you're manipulated and lied to by your bosses day in and day out. Everybody in the universe wants to kill you and nobody ever thanks you for saving their planets. I've left much better jobs than that when my manager just looked at me funny! Or cried in my yearly review and refused to give me the raise I deserved because I didn't become her friend. And I couldn't go to human resources because my manager's sister was the head of the department! Fuck you, Barb Zilk! I'm glad that employee that was there for one day stole your credit card during a company meeting and ran out to the mall to blow your wad on Honeybaked Hams!

There's my girl, 2-6-8-1-7-9-5!

Salaak crashes into the table and almost harms my princess! He should be more careful where he lands when he's tossed unconscious into Mogo's gravity well from outer orbit. He informs Kilowog that the Green Lanterns have yet another crisis on their hands. Kilowog allows Iolande and Hwaal to try to save Soranik. Iolande is royalty and Hwaal is a meek little skinny guy that Iolande doesn't seem to have much confidence in. I don't know if it's because she knows he's a horrible Green Lantern or if it's because she's a stuck up twat. It's hard to say because I don't know any of these Green Lanterns! We're twenty-eight issues in and only just now getting to know the Corps! It's about fucking time! Thank you, Van Jensen, for remembering that this comic book isn't simply titled "John Stewart, Green Lantern. You Know. The Architect. He Was a Marine. You Know the One. The Black One. Yeah. Him." Kilowog also allows them to take a couple of villains along with them (Loragg and Zuree) because there's no possibility that they're going to try to escape. I imagine not all of the super villains give a shit whether the Durlans destroy the Green Lanterns or not.

Back on Muz, Von Daggle has finally run out of shapeshifting juice and allows himself to be captured because his transformations are now out of control. I didn't know Durlans needed to ingest radioactivity to transform! You learn something new (and entirely fictional so it won't help me in any life situation ever except maybe a very nerdy pub quiz) every day! But before Stewart and the others can take Von Daggle into custody, they're approached by a small army of Durlans. They want Von Daggle on their side as well. Mostly so that the Green Lanterns can't have him. I mean, really, they already have plenty of their own selves.

Finally, Lantern Soranik awakens to find she's been kidnapped by Arkillo. I'm actually surprised I remembered his name! He hasn't been around in a while. I guess no Yellow Lantern has! Did Sinestro send them out to find him a mate so he can restart the Korugan race?

Green Lantern Corps #28 Rating: +2 Ranking. A greater variety of Green Lanterns were mentioned in this issue than across all the issues of Green Lantern Corps and Green Lantern so far! I think. I didn't count or anything but it seemed like a lot of members of the Corps were getting some on-panel time. I like that! Remember Green Lantern Corps Quarterly?! This comic should be more like that one! Less Earthlings and more aliens please!

Kittens Getting Fucked Nasty #12

If DC isn't going to take this comic seriously, why neither am I!

The Justice League of America has now spent half of its issues with most of them lost somewhere and Stargirl running about in some kind of fake environment with Martian Manhunter. So this is where I'd usually continue with the what happened last issue segment but I don't care what happened last issue. I don't care what happened two issues ago. I don't care what has happened at any point of time during this comic book's run. I think. It's hard to remember when you obliterate every day with a steady dose of PCP.

Let's just pretend this comic book is a one shot and move on with our lives.

The issue begins with Stargirl remembering a memory she can't forget but one she's been refusing to completely remember for quite a number of issues now. I mean, if this story hadn't just started in this single issue one shot! Apparently some shit went down that was so shitty that she thinks she's too young to not want to remember it. You know, just like all those kids drafted to fight in Vietnam. But at least Stargirl had a choice to put on the uniform and fight. She had a choice which fight to fight as well! And now she's choosing to fight some more because she's tired of Amanda Waller just using her for press conferences. I'm pretty sure I inferred that from the story so far.

She's been making fun of an awful lot of people so far. In previous Star Girl appearances (probably also One Shots!), she's cracked wise about Clayface's appearance and Martian Manhunter's too! What a sassy little missy!

Stargirl escapes drowning because she remembers the memory she's trying been trying to forget that she wants to not forget to remember. It has something to do with finding something at her old house after meeting her first super villain.

Meow? Me-OW! Mrrrrrow? Pffft! Pffft! Me...ow? Puuuuurrrrrrr. Puuurrrrrrr! Me-me-me-MEOW!

Stop it! Knock it off! Get out of here, you stupid kittens! Nobody is fucking kittens in this commentary! That title was a joke! It was just showing how little I care about...you know what? No. I'm not explaining it to a bunch of imaginary, horny kittens! I have to mention how Despero flew off because he was satisfied that he had killed J'onn and Stargirl but then he came right back to stomp on J'onn again!

Martian Manhunter finally begins to realize that he and Stargirl are being manipulated by Despero. They probably escaped Firestorm and then had to be contained in some other illusory world, so Despero was brought in as a contractor for the Crime Syndicate. Or maybe The Crime Syndicate needs some information that Stargirl and Martian Manhunter have, so they were kept separate from Firestorm's Slash Fiction Matrix? But just knowing that he's being manipulated like a kitten, it doesn't help him beat Despero. I think he needs for Stargirl to forget about not remembering the thing she forgot so that she remembers to forget to not remember it.

How do you break the bone of a guy that can take the shape of anything? Like possibly the shape of a guy with no broken bones maybe?

Stargirl arrives to find J'onn smashed on the ground, dying. But he's dying slowly enough to tell Stargirl a fable about a Martian hero that sacrificed his life for no reason to save the lives of other Martians. Because he was pinned to a rock by an evil beast but the beast was pinned too. So he left it to die with him stuck to the rock. Although, being a Martian, I'm pretty sure he could have shapeshifted away from the tusks that had impaled him to the rock. Maybe they impaled his shapeshifting gland! There are too many holes in that story to be true! I think it's like the story of Jesus. It's just meant to make people buy into an institution that keeps the power and wealth in a few limited, manipulative hands.

J'onn sends Stargirl away so that he can die without her weeping and wailing over him. She heads to Los Angeles to find Firestorm as J'onn was hoping because he's probably beginning to realize that they're both inside some kind of simulation. Or something. It's either a simulation or it's a terrible story. Just like J'onn's stupid Martian parable about the warrior kid and the great evil beast.

Stargirl finally remembers the end of her memory and that's that her little brother was killed or kidnapped by the dark super villain that was her first nemesis. Maybe it was her little brother? Or maybe it was Sylvester Pemberton? It's hard to say since her memory isn't very clearly explicated. It's just kind of a mom saying "Your little brother" and her step-dad saying "It isn't your fault" and Courtney saying "NOOOOOOOOOOO!" But that makes as much sense as Courtney failing to stop Firestorm going nuclear while she distracts Despero for some reason leading to Evil being defeated. Perhaps it's because Stargirl believed she could save the day which caused Despero to believe she could save the day which distracted Despero's mind away from Martian Manhunter who is only pretending to die so that Despero will think he's dead and not stop Martian Manhunter from stopping Firestorm from exploding.

Unless it winds up being something else. I'm a Master Comic Book Reader of the North Wind and I'm confused!

Justice League of America #12 Rating: -2 Ranking. I don't really know what's going on here. I suppose I could be reading it as literally as it is presenting itself and believe Stargirl and J'onn actually did escape the Firestorm prison. Or maybe only Stargirl escaped and J'onn has merely been telepathically linked to her. Perhaps Despero was needed to keep Martian Manhunter trapped inside Firestorm. But now that Stargirl has distracted Despero, he will be able to free himself and the others from Firestorm. So Stargirl's journey is real but Martain Manhunter has been in her head the entire time. That's the most sense I can make of this comic book and that actually doesn't sound quite so bad as I've been making it out to be. But I'm still going to give it a -2 Ranking because this comic has probably been the weakest of all the Forever Evil tie-ins so far. It just feels like it's biding its time until the overall Narrative gets to a point where the JLA are needed to participate.

Superman Loves Wonder Woman #5

Does it literally? That's a weird name to give your baby.

Superman, being the gigantic naive fuck-up that he is, managed to give Zod access to his Phantom Zone Extraction Device and Zod immediately used it to free Faora. Meanwhile the entire world is fixated on Superman and Wonder Woman's romantic life. Has the media given them a cute nickname like Bennifer yet? Like Superwoman? Or Wonder Man? Also, was Bennifer (Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez) the first time that the media began talking about Hollywood couples by merging their names? Which has now become a huge thing where people just merge the names of any two people that they ship? If so (and I'm not doing the research to know for sure if it's true), that means Kevin Smith began this sick and disturbing codependent way of talking about couples! I'm pretty sure he coined "Bennifer" when working with them on Jersey Girl.

Wouldn't it be weird to be Jennifer Garner and have to hear people referring to her and Ben as Bennifer when everybody knows who the Jennifer part of Bennifer really is?

Wonder Woman has finally gone back to visit her family since she wasn't visiting them over in her own title although she did manage to get back to visit in her own title last issue probably so Azzarello could beat Charles Soule to the punch.

Hera's a big jerk! She knew cursing the Amazons to become living phalluses would be the worst.

So far, I've been enjoying Soule's version of Wonder Woman as much as Azzarello's version. Geoff Johns' version over in Justice League is a real ballbreaker though! She just loves to pick fights, doesn't she? Not that Azzarello's version isn't wont to punch a sibling in the head now and then (was that enough negatives in that sentence?!). But she's mostly tended toward resolving conflicts with compassion and smooth talk. But still, we all lose our heads now and again when having to deal with family. Especially when your family are arrogant narcissists that think turning their in-laws into snakes is a bloody good joke.

The only real problem with this comic book is that Superman and Wonder Woman are dating. But if that's what's happening, and it provides some well-written stories by Charles Soule, I'll go with it. But they have to get naked together at some point. Enough of all this kissing in costume! Get to banging on-panel already!

Wonder Woman is visiting Themyscira to talk to herself out loud. Maybe Superman's super hearing can't penetrate Themyscira's magical defenses, so she can express her doubts without fear of Clark hearing and getting all pouty. Although she probably doesn't have to worry about him hearing her right now because he's a little bit busy fighting the creatures that Zod set free from Superman's menagerie.

Mirroring Zod and Faora's escape from The Phantom Zone which Superman guards in his Fortress of Solitude, Wonder Woman discovers that something has escaped from Tartarus, home of the monsters, the entrance of which lies in the middle of Paradise Island and guarded by the Amazons. Now they're probably both going to give Batman a call and ask for help. Or maybe Wonder Woman will call Batwoman since she's helped her capture an escapee from Tartarus before.

If you don't need a lecture then don't call Batman! Sheesh.

Wonder Woman doesn't call anybody because there's no cell reception on Themyscira anyway. Instead she finds the escaped creature herself, stabs it in the head, and tosses it back down into Tartarus. She then uses her Lasso of Truth to secure the doors to the underworld because I guess her Lasso would really come in useful if only she still had it on her later on in this story.

Wonder Woman easily takes care of her problem so Superman is probably mirroring her results and easily putting Zod and Faora back into the Phantom Zone, right?

Forget how powerful the eye lasers might be, the real brutality here is the kicking.

People often talk about how violent video games are but none of that really bothers me because they're just games. But I recently found what I feel is by far the most brutal moment in my history of video game playing so far and it involves kicking. Stomping, actually. Xbox Live just recently gave away Dead Island for free to Gold Members and I've played a bit of it. I know you're fighting zombies but the most brutal moment I've ever experienced (which, obviously, makes me laugh like a demented madman) is knocking a zombie to the ground and then just stomping the shit out of it until it dies. Playing alone, this is sadistic. But playing in multiplayer with two or three other people standing around helping to stomp the shit out of this zombie? It's practically perverse in its brutality. Sure, these are zombies and I guess they deserve to die because they're not like us and who cares that maybe their motivation for eating people's brains is because rising back up as a zombie hurts like a motherfucker and they're just trying to euthanize all of us poor living souls and keep us from their pain and torture. But they're also human figures in bikinis and shorts. So it really just feels like you're a psychopath let loose in some tourist trap in the South Pacific. It does send me into paroxysms of laughter due to the exaggerated violence of it all. Make of that what you will, Doctor Judgypants.

Oh yeah, look at that. No reception on Luddite Island.

Wonder Woman finds Superman and saves his ass because he's more journalist than warrior. Wonder Woman tells Zod that "He is mine!" (referencing Superman, of course!) in Kryptonian and Zod is impressed that she learned the language for him. Are you kidding? Of course she didn't! All she needed to learn was "He is mine!" And now the Moulin Rouge soundtrack is going to be stuck in my head for yet another week.

Of course.

Okay, so maybe Diana isn't using her compassion to win this battle. But then you don't fly into a fight with hugs and kisses when you've just gotten a desperate call from Cyborg telling you that Superman needs help NOW!

Oh! I almost forgot Wonder Woman's best portrayal so far in The New 52: her guest appearance in Batwoman! That bit where she puts Pegasus out of his misery is just beautiful and heart-wrenching. The great thing about Wonder Woman is not that she is compassionate and refutes violence. It's that she has a belief system in place that allows her to run the entire spectrum. She kills when it is absolutely needed or her only choice. But it shouldn't be her first choice. Geoff Johns' Wonder Woman in Justice League just seems bloodthirsty. Azzarello's version is much calmer and she spends far more time talking and having tea with her loved ones than she does murdering monsters. Charles Soule's version? It's really kind of hard to tell just five issues into it and concentrating on her "love" of Superman. I really can't wait until they break up and things get awk-ward!

Superman Loves Wonder Woman #5 Rating: No change. I'm still waiting for Charles Soule to disappoint so I can pounce like a rabid dog and tear his throat out while ranting incoherently about his awful stylistic choices and his atrocious characterizations! I feel so much more comfortable when I can truly hate a comic book and its creative team.