Raven #3

Raven is taking Mimemistry.

High school would be so much better if they could pipe low levels of nitrous oxide into the classrooms. Also if they had capital punishment for bullies. And free candy.

Here's another improvement I just thought of: shifting classrooms by reputation! If you're kind to each other and engage in class, you get grouped with others like that, taught by the best teachers. If you're rude and mean and don't show any curiosity, you're tossed in a pit to die.

Currently in San Francisco, a huge white ball of light is engulfing the Embarcadero. It's the White Carnival but the reporters reporting on the scene don't know that. They don't know anything. One of them even says BART trains are being rerouted. Ha ha! What a stupid statement! As if they're probably even in service. Also how do you reroute a train?

I wonder what this guy was going to say before they took away his speech bubble?

The reporter with the BART information has more information that makes no sense. Like how this disaster just happened but the National Guard is on scene. As if...as if they already knew something like this was going to happen! The government is behind this!

This just in from 2017: Mary Tyler Moore just died. It's as if 2017 was all, "Hey, 2016? You thought you could make a statement? Well how about this metaphor!"

Raven is currently trying to save her friend Antt (remember! The spelling is super important!) from The White Carnival while hundreds of people gather around being a nuisance to emergency services. I think most of those people are reporters and their camerapeople.

Actually, he rapes them and then obliterates them.

While battling to save Antt, Raven winds up back in her room in her Aunt's house with no memory of the battle in the Embarcadero against the White Carnival. Mostly because The White Carnival wasn't ready to destroy her. Villains have a tendency to stick to really strict timetables. They should probably loosen up and learn to just kill the heroes when they have an opportunity.

It's really hard to concentrate on reading comic books when government officials are completely dismantling our country for the benefit of corporations and assholes. Maybe I should change the focus of this blog?

Over breakfast, Raven is reminded of the White Carnival by her Aunt's family. And she remembers it. So...um...what was the point of having her forget for about half a page?

The thing (you know, the White Carnival? Raven's Soulself? Cave Carson's impotence?) attacks Raven while she's in her room trying to remember. This causes her to remember and shout, "You tried to remove me as a threat by eliminating my memory of you. It worked...for a while." Yeah, for the while it avoided attacking her! So it's either stupid or Raven jumped to the wrong conclusion. There is a third option (and probably more but I don't have all day to think them up): Marv Wolfman doesn't fucking care about the story.

The Soulself wears Raven's terrible feather helmet so maybe this is Marv Wolfman stealing the whole Spider-man's black outfit is actually a Symbiote! Raven's terrible costume was the lost souls of Azarath corrupting and influencing her. Except she's still wearing it in this issue. I thought she had left it behind in The New 52!

Raven sees inside the White Carnival and realizes it's consuming people's souls. When it gets enough, it will destro her. Yeah, it's probably her costume. I mean her Soulself. Which hopefully has merged with her costume so it can be burned by the end of this series.

Also, just in case people reading this are thinking, "But where is Superman?!", a news report mentions that the Justice League is, once again, off-world. How come they're never off-world in their own comic book but they're always off-world in every other comic book? I think Cyborg just screens all the calls.

Meanwhile, some nobody super-villains decide to take credit for the White Carnival and ask for five billion dollars to make it stop. That's reasonable.

What Did I Learn?
This issue had nothing to do with high school so I don't think it's the most dangerous dimension at all.

The Ranking!
-1! I don't fucking know (or care) what is going on in this story.

Cave Carson Has A Cybernetic Eye #4

Cave Carson and the Chamber of Sea Creatures.

In this issue, Team EBX confronts Team Carson and comes away a better team. Team EBX is almost killed deep in the caves (one of the twins is murdered) but Cave Carson saves the rest. Most of the crew think, "Why are we after this Carson guy? He seems cool." But Ace the Corporate Sycophant points out that they have to continue to pursue Cave Carson because that's their role in the comic book. It looks like Cave will eventually convince the surviving members of Team EBX to join his crew and they'll topple Paul Has A Douchey Ponytail's empire. But first Cave Carson finds his wife's parents still alive and has to break the news to them that they lived too long because their daughter is dead.

What Did I Learn?
I'm sitting up in a tiny office with a space heater blowing warm, comfortable air all over me and I'm falling asleep at the keyboard. What I'm trying to say is that I've learned that I'm exhausted and it's time to go to sleep. I think Cave Carson is still having erection troubles. It's hard to tell since I'm not exactly thinking clearly. I'm so tired!

The Ranking!
No change.

Cave Carson Has A Cybernetic Eye #3

Have you ever had one of those not so fresh feelings?

I once said about starting feuds with comic book writers and artists that I don't partake in that kind of immature shit. I'll write my reviews and link to them on Twitter (sometimes? I usually forget it's a thing) but I never engage them directly to point out their flaws. Sometimes I'll praise somebody over Twitter and, as Gail Simone pointed out once, possibly tagging them in my blogposts is a form of trolling. I hadn't thought about it that way when I first began this blog; I just tagged everything so I could easily reference who wrote what previously, or what colorist worked on...oh, who am I kidding? I don't give a shit about colorists! Anyway, that's all changed now that we have a sentient pile of garbage in the White House who sends Gríma Wormtongue out every day to lie the American people. If Cullen Bunn really wants to see me at my most "pathetic, scummy, and desperate," he should watch me in action as I tweet insults at Trump and Spicer on a daily basis. I'm just trying to speak their language!

Just a reminder that this happened! I made it, Ma! I truly made it!

So Cave Carson is now an outlaw in both the literal sense of the word and the other sense of the word. Unless there's just one sense to the word. I mean, he's an outlaw because he stole a ship. But he's also an outlaw because he's cool and has a beard. So that's like two senses, right? But the sense that matters is the one where he committed a crime. He's stolen the Drill Machine from EBX and kept them from taking his daughter (which makes him the best kind of hero: the anti-capitalist anti-outlaw hero outlaw!). Now he's off to help save the Muldroogoons (I hope that's what they're called because I can't be bothered to look up how to spell their nationality. I think it's okay to not care because they're fictional) before EBX can take their oil or their unobtainium or whatever. Actually, I think I could have just said unobtainium but that would just seem like I was referencing Avatar and without the "oil" part, you couldn't tell I was also criticizing America.

Before I forget, I need to remind myself that this entire series is a metaphor for Cave Carson's impotence.

See? This makes total sense now, right?

That's my favorite thing to yell before I have sex! "Strap on! I'm going under! Is this where I should be? Have I lost my virginity yet? Oops!"

Oh! The Drill Machine is called The Mighty Mole. No wait. Is that Cave's penis? I guess it's both! Metaphor!

This issue is called "Deep Issues" because impotence isn't just surface deep. I mean, the main part of it is on the surface. You know the floppy part I mean! But that part is usually due to something psychological. And that means digging down to the root of the problem! You've got to spelunk until you can spunk again!

Cave and his crew burrow into the earth to try to evade the monster. They wind up in a cave with crystals that make worms grow larger. I have a feeling some of you have been rolling your eyes and making jerking off motions with your hands every time I mentioned how this book was a metaphor for impotence.

Now, I don't think you need to apologize since the proof that I was correct just keeps growing and growing (like the worms deep in Cave's subconscious which he imagines can grow big. Because that's what he most wants. See?). But you should probably allow yourself to admit that I might be the greatest comic book reader of all time.

After Cave Carson's big worms solve all of his problems, the team dig deeper into Cave's issues. We have seen explicitly what will solve his problem. But we still don't know what caused it and how Cave can get to a place where his worm can grow big again.

Meanwhile, Paul Has A Douchey Ponytail is organizing the EBX Team to chase down Cave Carson and not to kill him at all. In the old days, the crew would be a white guy with blonde hair, a white guy with brown hair, a black guy, a woman with blonde hair, an overly energetic kid, and an animal of some kind. But this is the modern era where representation matters! I mean, it mattered back then but only if you were white or the one black guy living in a white neighborhood. Now the team is a white guy with blond hair, a white guy with brown hair, a black guy, a brown woman, an Asian guy, and two majorly fucking hot twins. I mean I can't tell their race due to the red light and because Ace doesn't call them by name. I can't really tell the race of the brown lady either but her name is Marquez and I think only latinxes have last names with both Qs and Zs in them.

While taking a break deep underground at one of the Cave Carson Caches of emergency equipment, Cave hallucinates his dead wife and decides to have a visually symbolic moment.

Those crystals look like a bouquet of boners.

Here we see that if he could just get his wife back, his impotence would be cured. But that's impossible, right? There's no way she's still alive somewhere underground. Right?

Team Carson heads for Muldroog to discover that just about everybody in the city has been slaughtered. Next month is another mystery to discover.

There's also a back-up story that's the true secret origin of Green Arrow and it is my favorite Green Arrow comic of all time.

What Did I Learn?
I learned that impotence is a difficult thing to get past. Not that I've ever had to get past it! And even if I did, it's nothing to be ashamed of! It just means you suck at pleasing women. Ha ha! Loser!

The Ranking!
+1!

Cave Carson Has A Cybernetic Eye #2

Drilling your own cave isn't technically spelunking.

I'm not sure how I feel about Cave Carson drilling into the Earth. The Earth is round like an egg and often called a mother. Cave Carson is a one-eyed monster who loves to penetrate dark openings. Drilling down into my Mother against her will feels icky, especially when it's a Young Animal comic book. Because I know Young Animal comic books are supposed to mean more than what's on the surface. That's what this whole book about a spelunker is about! You're supposed to explore the deeper, darker hidden meanings in things! And when that deeper, darker hidden meaning winds up being the message "Fuck your mother," I feel a bit insulted. Does Gerard Way think I'm not man enough to insult my own mother? Fuck his mother!

This issue begins with the tale of how Cave Carson lost his eye. I'll sum it up in one word: carelessness! No wait! I have a better word: naiveté! Also maybe curiosity? Trust? Stupidity? Okay, I've discovered there are a lot of ways to explain why Cave Carson now has a cybernetic eye. I suppose you can't blame him. If I were crawling around a dark cave trying to avoid being killed by a Magma Troll, I'd probably assume the cutesy little robot orb with legs that dropped from the cave ceiling was friendly too. Don't believe anybody who might suggest I'd run screaming from the cave at the slightest sound and would never have even seen the cybernetic eye.

Fredric Wertham's anti-comic boner would have grown three sizes today.

This entire book is just a metaphor for Cave Carson's impotency, isn't it? He "retired" from exploring caves. His wife "died." He needs another man, Wild Dog, to operate his "drill." If you rearrange the letters in "Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye," you get "I c-ca-can see a very-y chaste boner" (said in a cave thus the echoes).

Cave Carson's daughter, Chloe, is out with her boyfriend shopping for podcasting equipment so her father can spend all the free time he has from not having sex podcasting.

Christ, Chloe! Do you have to tell everybody about your dad's condition?!

Last issue, Cave Carson uncovered a mystery! The corporation which trains all the young spelunkers is involved in evilness and treachery! What a shock! That's the theme to Doom Patrol too! That's two of the four Young Animal books that are against capitalism and corporations! Shade the Changing Girl is about how bullying is bad and Mother Panic is about how art is murder.

Cave Carson realizes he needs to fight back. Dammit. Why did I use that phrase, "fight back"?! Now I want to watch old episodes of Fight Back with David Horowitz! I wonder if there are any on YouTube? Excuse me while I dive into this nearby rabbit hole. Time and writing being what they are, you won't even notice I'm gone!

See? I'm back! I also took a few moments to troll Sean Spicer on Twitter. The only power I feel I have as an American is to belittle and humiliate these assholes' words and actions since they don't give a shit about anything other than themselves. They don't care if we call them on their alternative facts or that we're against the things they're doing that we can't stop. But I'm fairly certain Sean Spicer gets tired of people asking him how good Trump's hand-jobs are. I think the movement we need, as Americans (oh, I also invite people from around the globe to join in. I know Joel Lycett is already enjoying doing it), is for each of us to tweet some insult to Donald Trump and Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway once per day. Just let them feel our disapproval, even if it's just their assistants reading the Tweets. You have to make them funny though, especially if assistants are reading the Tweets. The more they get some good laughs out of insulting their bosses, the more they're apt to engage in tiny worker rebellions around the office.

Oh, um, anyway, Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye meets with Paul Has A Douchey Ponytail to discuss the problems between EBX and the Muldroogian Mole People. Paul is all, "Oh shit yeah! We totes knows what's going down, Cave! We're on it, bro! But we need your daughter to help!" And Cave is all, "You need a championship Kick Puncher?" But instead of asking Chloe for her help because she might say no, Paul decides to kidnap her and force her on his new Corporate Cave Exploring Team. Cave probably won't like that and he'll have to bring the entire organization down, John McClane style. Or Rambo style. I mean, take your pick. There are so many movies where one lone white man saves the world that nobody ever asks themselves, "Why are fucking white guys so Goddamned confident and arrogant?"

What a man!

Using her world-championship Kick Punching skills, Chloe gets away from the EBX Agents. Using his naughty pen, Cave Carson gets away from Paul Has a Douchey Ponytail. Oh, he also quits EBX and steals the Drill Machine. Time to get his Indie Kickstarter Cave Exploration Team going!

Cave picks up Wild Dog first because he needs a Republican on his team to kill indiscriminately. Being a Democrat, Cave Carson has to be particular about the people he can do violence to and sometimes it's better to just kill anybody who seems to be trying to kidnap your daughter. Killing anybody and feeling no remorse is practically Wild Dog's only super power.

Too bad for Cave and Chloe and Wild Dog, the bad guys don't just die when they're shot. They pop a pill and transform into a monster.

What Did I Learn?
I've learned that it's hard to read a comic book and write about it when you're busy reading your Twitter feed because you follow a lot of sassy monsters who don't take any shit from Twitter idiots. I've figured out the best way to use Twitter, by the way. You say things that are true. When somebody responds angrily with their anti-truths which they truly believe because they are desperately unsatisfied with who they've become as an adult, you don't bother engaging with them. You just tell them to shut the fuck up or call them a name and move on. Because trying to have a rational argument with an irrational person will almost certainly lead to high blood pressure and a stroke at a young age. People who don't know what they're talking about don't deserve dialogue. They need to be beat with the word stick, patted on the butt, and shoved along to the kiddy table.

The Ranking!
No change!

Kamandi Challenge Special #1, Part Three

I'm falling further and further behind on my comic reading because of this Kirby shit.

I know, I know. Jack Kirby was a god among nerds. But if he was so great, how come he's dead now?

The third Kamandi story is from Issue #60. Remember that issue? It's the one that contained a "mind-blasting new origin of OMAC by Jim Starlin!" Who decided that everything Jim Starlin wrote would be described as somehow melting or destroying a person's brain? Was his writing really that trippy? If so, I should drop this blog and start up a Jim Starlin only blog. I bet it would be like reliving my LSD days. I say that as if my LSD days are over. I sure hope they aren't!

This issue is in black and white. Was it this way originally or does DC think I'm going to adult color it?

This issue isn't by Jack Kirby at all, so why am I wasting my time? The credits say it's by Jack C. Harris, Dick Ayers, and Danny Bulandi. The colorist's name has been removed just like the color. I'm sensing there was a lawsuit somewhere along the way!

This issue begins with Kamandi falling into The Vortex. I think that's the name of a vortex.

This is not a vortex.

Jim Starlin's OMAC story must have been really fucking weird for it to get the label "mind-blastingly" over the Kamandi story. Kamandi enters the Vortex which carries her away to a parallel universe. But that's not the weird part. By the 70s, that was cliché by DC's standards. The weird part is when Doctor Canus and his friend Sherlock Dog (who has a sidekick named Doile) try to help their parallel universe friend Pyra not die from a lack of energy. To do that, they need the help of the mutants who managed to open the huge doors in the Wondrous Western Wall which led to the vortex. But the dog-men can't get close without their radiation suits which were destroyed by the energy of the vortex. And because of all that, Pyra's ship turns into a bug.

I should have stuck to my original idea five years ago: critiquing Penthouse Forum letters.

My mind is pretty well blasted already so I hope this Special doesn't include Starlin's OMAC origin. I don't know why it would unless the Kamandi Challenge is going to feature a heaping helping of the One Man Army Corps.

On her journey through the infinite reaches of all space and time, Kamandi learns that he gets to be the focal point on which all futures rely.

Yeah but if there are infinite realities where all choices are possible, doesn't she actually choose all of them and none of them at the same time? So none of this really matters!

I suppose I'm being too hard-headed and should probably work with the story. I get what the Voice is saying. All these realities exist but sometimes some special person or event can change them in ways outside of the usual "all choices exist as parallel" worlds paradigm. And Kamandi is that special person!

Sometimes I like to argue with and correct myself before I have to hear from a blowhard Internet Actually Nerd. Mostly because their responses are never funny. They really should work on their material. It might not be so bad to be Actually'd if I could have a laugh at the same time.

Kamandi's friends are about to be murdered by the Kangarat Murder Society while Kamandi runs off to a brand new Earth that never experienced a natural disaster linked with radiation. The last hope her friends have is that Kamandi will turn away from this last temptation, turn away from the voice of the vortex devil, and return to sacrifice herself for her friends. I mean, she won't really sacrifice herself. But she is giving up a world where she can probably wear something nicer than the crusty Daisy Dukes she's been wearing for years and where her hair won't be full of lice and where they probably still have toilet paper.

On Kamandi's way back home, he's grabbed by Brute and Glob who decide to take him to The Sandman. Oh. That's probably why this issue is being featured! So that people reading it can go, "Oh shit! That's where Brute and Glob came from?! A Sandman comic before The Sandman! It's so nice that new kids are being born all the time so that comic book companies can use the same characters over and over again so that they seem new but then older fans who never grew out of comics can be jazzed about seeing old characters done in a modern way! Or something!"

The Sandman decides that Kamandi needs to learn that whatever she's seen in the vortex is as real as whatever she sees in dreams. So not real at all? Anyway, it seems like an unneeded delay for Kamandi. She's just being hassled by some guy who feels the need to prove that his job is way more important than it actually is. Don't get me wrong, I love dreaming! But if the person behind my dreams was all, "Stop thinking of them as entertaining! They're fucking super important, asshole!", I'd just think he was a twat with low self-esteem. You can't force people to appreciate things the way you think they should be appreciated. I suppose this whole control freak side of The Sandman is reflected in Neil Gaiman's take on his Sandman.

To teach Kamandi the lesson that needs to be taught for some reason, The Sandman decides to show him a movie about the some war on Santa Claus. He wants Kamandi to "watch and learn what an alternate Kamandi named Jed once learned long, long ago." I hate learning things that other people learned. How is their learning relevant to my life? Boring!

Anyway, Christmas is saved and Jed manages to make it back home where she saves her friends and everybody lives happily ever after.

What Did I Learn?
The Glob and Brute story in The Sandman makes a lot more sense to me now! I mean, it made sense before in the context of The Sandman that a few nightmares had escaped and created their own mini-Dreaming while manipulating humans into thinking they were the real Sandman. Of course it makes this story a little bit darker than it should be knowing that this Sandman will eventually kill himself due to Glob and Brute's machinations! Oh, I also learned that Kamandi's grandfather was OMAC and that Kamandi's world is OMAC's nightmare of what the world will become if he fails to do his duty. I also learned that I can only take about three Kamandi stories before I get tired of writing about Kamandi stories and just sum up the last story in one sentence.

Lumberjanes Love Gotham Academy #6

And then they told ghost stories until the fingerbanging began.

The story about the thing with the spell and the ghosts and the party and stuff resolves happily with hardly any violence at all. Everybody is wise and understanding and kind and caring. I like cute and sweet sometimes too but this was bland and unsatisfying. It's like somebody took a diet cupcake and smashed it between the covers of a comic book and put it on the shelves to fool other people into buying it. Plus it featured fives issues of young people spending time in the woods with hardly any adult supervision and nothing sexy happened at all.

Oh wait! It's going to happen! Fingerbang city!

Nothing of the sort happens, probably because a big perv like me isn't writing it. Instead they all just tell each other how awesome they all are. Pee-yuke!

What Did We Learn?
Being nice to everybody is fucking boring.

The Ranking!
No change!

Earth Too: Society #20

How is this not over yet?!

So I guess we're not done with the everybody is afraid of superheroes stories yet?

It doesn't matter if they've seen Wonders or not, really.

This issue is a big fight with the Wonders coming out on top. Meanwhile the Bat-family are going to storm Ultra-Humanite's headquarters. Meanwhile meanwhile, Ultra-Humanite is going to unleash Green Lantern on the world so that he might destroy the Wonders. He's Ultra-Humanite's secret weapon.

What Did We Learn?
Why am I pretending this comic book is teaching the readers anything? I guess maybe it's teaching them patience as they wait for more actual plot each month? Perhaps it's teaching them to be frugal with their money by punishing them for blowing $2.99 on this boring garbage? I was really hoping it was going to get interesting on New New Earth 2 Too but instead it's just more of the same bullshit. Constant punching. Citizens afraid of superheroes. The barest minimum of story actually being told.

The Ranking!
-1! Look at that cover. Remember when Val-zod was a pacifist? I guess that twist was too hard to write around when 98% of all comic book problems are solved with violence.