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52: Month 9, Weeks 33-37 Roundtable
by Doom, the Red Fox, Bruce Banner, Dizz, Generalissimo Furioso, Nixon and Black Goliath
Doom: We're back, bitches! For yet another look at some of the worst comic books ever printed by DC, which says a lot about the lack of quality we're facing here, since the Didio era has been one long foghorn accented by a banana peel slip and a shattering of glass. And a donkey hee-hawing. Anyway, we hate 52. A lot. Yet we must finish these roundtables, or else we'll fail on our promise to do so. And we can't fail you, readers! That would be bad. Or something. So here we go again, to shuck and jive for your approval over some shitty, poorly produced but ultimately popular comics. The Daily Raider hate something popular? What a fucking shock.
"Sing along with Alfred" is a selling point for this issue. No, really.
WEEK 33
The Red Fox: Merry F-ing Christmas to everyone near and far. This week it is Christmas for all the superheroes of the DCU and everyone is overjoyed to get their presents, even if it is cancer (in the Question's case). We start this issue with Elongated Man robbing the Flash museum for some of his personal belongings while Batwoman is watching Alfred lead children in Christmas carols. Nightwing appears, giving her an authentic batarang. Luthor gives all of Infinity Inc. a new car. His improved image only lasts for moments as he orders the dissection of a boy who adapted his body in some way from the everyman serum. Isn't he just a regular Santa Claus? The Question acts cancer crazy; no wonder, because everyone is celebrating Hanukkah in the Kane household. And the Black Adam family goes to New York to show they are not evil as well as learn the TRUE meaning of Christmas. They all show their human forms and everybody laughs due to Osiris being in a wheelchair. Hilarious cripple! A dark cloud looms, however, as the Suicide Squad gets out of prison on a mission to take care of the family once and for all. My prediction: they fail.
As everyone well knows, Lex Luthor is an evil person, but I believe that I have finally found out why: he is jealous of Santa Claus. Now, hear me out. Lex gives out expensive presents to all his team members, he wishes he had long flowing hair like the jolly old timer, and he dissects humans for pleasure. Well maybe not the last part (Santa Claus is a celebrated humanitarian - remember, elves aren't people), but it does kind of make sense, in its own twisted way. He is trying to make everyone happy, but in doing so he kills a lot of innocent people. I think it makes him more sympathetic, just like Richard Nixon, Hitler and Jimmy Stewart. They wanted to make people happy; a lot of people just died unfortunately as a result of their methods. Doesn't mean we should hate them for it.
Black Goliath: Lesbian kissing scene. Diplomatic gestures by a world power. Megalomaniacs planning dastardly deeds. Sounds great. Just one thing. Since this is Christmas, we need the mandatory "happy, happy, snowy, Santa" issue. Not bad, but not great either. What? Nothing actually happens storywise? Okay, not a good sign, but not a deal breaker. Wait, what did you say? Lex not getting anything for Christmas is the high point of the story? Oh shit. Well, it's pretty obvious that this is a true lump of coal in the stocking. One last thing...if Nightwing was raised by Batman, how does he not know that LesboBat is a, well, Lesbo? Just wondering...
Bruce Banner: In this issue we found out Batwoman, in addition to being homosexual (and a minority rarely seen in DC comics - a woman), is also Jewish. Three strikes against her on the racist DC scoreboard does not bode well for her longevity as a hero. Token minority characters usually last only a few storylines before losing significance and falling into obscurity. Despite being hyped up as one of the biggest debuts in all of DC Comics, her role, even by 52's standards, is minute. Her entire role right now consists of beating up furry cronies of Bruno Mannheim, a job that could be done by any of the other dozen Gotham crimefighters. For example, Batgirl, her 'predecessor' of sorts, could have easily taken down the Intergang crime syndicate. Her experience far outstrips Kane's; yet Cassandra is turned into a cackling Bond villain whereas Didio gives Batwoman the marketing push. Ironic to see an Asian superhero replaced by a white one in the name of diversity. Her relationship with Renee Montoya proves to horny fanboys that all lesbian women are a) attractive, b) feminine and c) turned to heterosexuality by Nightwing (it has not happened yet, but mark my words, it will). DC's goosestepping towards diversity fails once again.
The humorous part of turning this Batwoman Jewish comes in when considering DC's inability to understand other cultures, despite the company literally being founded by Jewish writers and artists. Case in point: they draw the wrong number of candles on the menorah not once, not twice, but every time. It is not as though a menorah is some obscure object with no reference material to put it up against when pressed to figure out how many candles to put on it. Not only that, but since Giffen did breakdowns and another artist finishes, both artists never realized their folly, whether by their insensitivity or by their inability to count. I await the eventual DC misspelling of the Koran as "The Kuroeanefjasqngw", with a mosque being drawn as a synagogue. It is not as farfetched as you would normally believe.
Batwoman has more pagetime than who should be the true focus of the vignette, the Question. It is becoming more and more apparent that Vic Sage is nothing more than a mere plot device to help move along the Montoya character from point A to point B, like the mentor character in any movie about someone training to become something. I am surprised DC did not find some way to make him black before killing him off. In fact, Vic's whole cancer fever hallucination is just an excuse to give Montoya proper motivation to say things to Batwoman and lead to them kissing again. Hm. Making out with a tertiary damsel in distress character while your best friend is slowly dying. What a friend Montoya is.
On another note, apparently Cyborg and Firestorm spent Christmas together. I am not aware of any prior friendship between the two, other than both of them sharing the same skin color and being stuck together (thanks to the Zeta-Ray Beam) for a few weeks. The celebration is further made meaningless by the fact that Cyborg is offline. Ah, that explains it. DC: still as racist as ever.
Dizz: This issue brings up a great point. Christmas themed things ALWAYS suck. In this issue we have lots of 'Christmas cheer' and it just comes off as progressively more stupid each time it rears its head. I think the main reason people even thought about buying this comic was simply because Montoya makes out with another girl. GASP, I'VE NEVER BEFORE SEEN LESBIAN ACTION IN MY LIFE!! Oh wait, I have, and it wasn't in a fucking comic book either.
Nixon: Looks like someone didn't get the Batwoman is gay memo from DC. Nightwing's amusing bit on the rooftop with her proves he certainly hasn't had his female gaydar checked recently. "I got you...a gift...for my favorite bat...that's the most notable lesbian in the DC universe". Oh, Nightwing, you always go after those unattainable dreams. Shit, Batwoman knows what he's about, acting all stunned when he decides to giver her something. Clearly she doesn't want to break the news to him that her vagina is for vaginas only, but come on now, isn't it obvious? What other female supervillain would adopt a man's costume for her own? Oh, wait...
Doom: Goddamn. Who ever knew Christmas tales could be so formulaic, boring and stupid. Sorry, I was watching A Very Urkel Christmas. This issue sucks too, though. Since everyone else commented on lesbian Batwoman like the horny weirdos craving for action like they are, I'll recount my two FAVO-RITE plotlines, the Lex one and the Black Adam one. The latter continues the storytelling device of having the family go to New York City and various other USA locales instead of, uh, FUCKING RUNNING THEIR COUNTRY. Supposedly this is to increase their approval rating among non-fake-Iraqis, but I still don't see the point. It's not like Bush even tries to get other countries to like him anymore. Hell, he doesn't try to up his approval ratings among his citizens. To appear less threatening to the populace (apparently, they hate them with such intensity it made Sobek the alligator freak cry. PUSSY!), they unBlack Adam and turn into their regular forms of a normal woman, a semi-nude ancient Egyptian man, and a cripple. Sobek remains a monster. Hahahahaha, no one loves him.
Meanwhile, Lex Luthor's Christmas is quite a bit shittier. He gets his charges in Infinity Inc. cars (who knows why flying heroes would need cars, bur whatever) and they respond by buying him nothing. Not even a fucking toupee. What a bunch of spoiled bastards. He ought to give them a caning (not homosexual innuendo; this is DCU Luthor). Then he gets worse news of being unable to produce sper--er, gain superpowers. Yet good news occurs right after! A little boy regained his powers. Chop him up says Luthor, more concerned for his personal superpowers than the life of another. See, I don't understand why he wants powers. It's not like he can defeat Superman with them. The best he can do is emulate the shitty Mstrix-like fight scenes from that one Superman movie script. You know, the one where Luthor was Kryptonian and Krypton never blew up. Yes. A funny thing on the report Mercy gives Lex: the first two paragraphs say "Blah blah blah can't get powers body isn't capable of it" and then the rest is random gibberish text, which is fully viewable. Man, the 52 guy aren't even half-assing it anymore. They're quarter-assing it!
Generalissimo Furioso: The Martian Manhunter. Oy Vey! Yeah, it's come to this again. I'm going to cover the origin of the fucking Martian Manhunter, and it's stupid beyond all stupidity (MARTIAN VISION!). J'onn J'onzz is a Martian from Mars and supposedly the sole survivor of a telepathic plague (I'm guessing that viruses can exist on the mental plane now). After he killed the people responsible, he was left all alone on the surface of Mars, until he was zapped to Earth by a scientist and his wacky teleporter device. Of course, this being DC, everything goes wrong and his teleporter destroys itself in a big woosh, and this, combined with the fact that J'onn wasn't white, killed the Doctor by giving him a massive heart attack. This unfortunate series of events led J'onn to disguise himself as John Jones and become a police officer in Colorado of all fucking places (he can investigate the mystery of the missing mountain!). Why he never flew back to Mars is beyond me. J'onn then helps to found the Justice League and still faces discrimination on a daily basis because he's not white, even though he saves people (coloreds can't save people!). Due to recent events, his head looks more penis-like than ever.
Shouldn't they be celebrating KWANZAA?!?!!?
I GET IT, IT'S THE QUESTION'S BODY
WEEK 34
The Red Fox: What an adventure we have for you this week, folks, as the Black Marvel family gets ambushed by a bunch of jokers bent on tarnishing their names in the public's eye. Here Osiris and his pet alligator return from the Titan Tower only to be ambushed by a group of villains who take things a little too far. After his sister is threatened, Osiris kills a man which will later be played out on the evening news (WONDER WOMAN KILLING MAX LORD FLASHBACK). Meanwhile, the girls of Infinity Inc. are on a shopping spree, giving time for Steel to reveal to Natasha that his Luthor given enhancements have worn off, leaving her to question whether hers will as well. Kent is being interrogated by Luthor for Supernova's identity, if he is Superman or not, but finds out that he has to look under another rock. Due to this lack of information, Luthor gets angry and presses a button just as midnight approaches. Hmmm, I wonder what that could have done.
As it turns out, women, superpowered or otherwise, just love to go on those shopping sprees. The one in this comic was a little more important than those that people go on everyday. I mean, they are shopping for thongs; what could be more important than that? It seems, along with Luthor's other plans of late, everything goes horribly wrong, from the media circus to the whole Natasha/Steel conversation that take places. Perhaps Luthor needs to take out his frustrations on a shopping spree. If this were, say, a shopping spree to go get some comics, this would be a totally different story of course, as everything would be extremely orderly and uneventful.
Dizz: Teenagers are fucking morons, and the fact that most of this issue revolves around the spoiled teens of Infinity Inc. makes me incredibly angry. It is physically impossible for spoiled pieces of shit not to piss me off, and these pieces of shit are no different. THESE MOTHERFUCKERS WALK AROUND LIKE FUCKING CELEBRITIES WHILST FORGETTING THAT BEING A SUPERHERO REQUIRES YOU TO SACRIFICE EVERYTHING IN ORDER TO KEEP THE WORLD TOGETHER, NOT BEING PARIS HILTON 2 ELECTRIC BOOGALOO!!! Sorry, I have to stop now before I kill someone.
Nixon: Oh no, Luthor can't be a superhero. Guess that means it's back to villainy for him! Basically, that's what I gathered from Week 34. He did the whole creating a shoddy superhero team thing, got a bunch of bratty teens, and then found out the genetic alterations it took to make them can't work on him. No flying abilities, no deathray eyes, nothing. Just another billionaire industrialist with a superhero arch-enemy and armies of henchmen. Rather than being creative and using his money and technology to become a non-powered supervillain, he decides "Well, fuck, time to kill those bratty teens." Logical choice!
Bruce Banner: As the cover plainly shows, this issue details the ever looming demise of the Question for, again, bullshit reasoning. Comic book death rarely has any significance, but come on now. Question came back from obscurity to star in DC's biggest event and now he is being used as a plot device. His cancer death in no way lives up to Captain Marvel, Cigarette Smoking Man or anyone else dead from or dying from cancer. We had a few weeks of "I'm dying" and now the death. Combined with Greg Rucka's painful noir-lite narration (he knows how to write little unless choked by caption boxes of fake Raymond Chandler), the Montoya/Question serves little point. I doubt Montoya will do any crime solving once Sage passes away; Question keeps her on task as it is. Without him, I am sure she will pass the time by having sex with multiple women and drinking a lot. The 'death of close friend changes characters' works only if the character actually changes through the death. Although perhaps DC will change the character for legal reasons; Michelle Rodriguez must not be happy about the blatant copyright infringement.
And, since everyone else refuses to cover it...Steel. Steel has been slowly building a case against Lex Luthor, which he has now informed his niece Natasha of. One would think it would lead somewhere, yet the ending of this issue strongly implies all of Steel's work meant nothing, as Natasha lost her powers before she could confront Luthor in some way. Furthermore, it took Steel months and months of scientific tests and sleuthing to come to the conclusion that something is not right in Luthor's Everyman program. Anyone who read DC comics figured it out in 20 seconds, and Steel should have more intelligence to him than the average reader. He makes Ralph Dibny's detective case solving pace seem quick. So Steel remains a useless character who does little, means little and is overall an embarrassment to the African-American community. Black Adam is a better black hero than Steel is, and Black Adam is Egyptian.
Doom: The Suicide Squad vs. Black Adam family may in fact redefine how we think of Black Adam. What do I mean? Let me explain it to you. Black Adam is known for his propensity for ripping off the arms of people. He did it a lot early on in the series, but marriage and a 'son' and freak pet have made him too 'family man' to randomly de-arm people. However, Osiris picks up where his 'dad' left off by FLYING THROUGH Generic Suicide Squad Member #226. This means there's a new way for the Black Adam family to pummel evildoers for little to no reason other than the possibility of them killing the invulnerable and all-powerful Isis. No doubt this will be played on the news for weeks on end, as Amanda Waller intended. If I were the average American, I'd not cower in fear as the swarthy foreigner killed an all-American criminal, I'd cheer as a fresh faced youngster committed his first homicide. Isn't killing people in non-grave situations the American Dream? If not, it ought to be. Sadly, Osiris is still a pussy, as not a few pages before his journey to the center of the Suicide Squader, he begs Adam not to kill the SS.
Also, Lex Luthor is retarded for not asking Clark Kent about Superman's secret identity. This is fucking why he always get his ass beat by a guy wearing underwear over his pants.
Generalissimo Furioso: Week 34, and it's another round of Origin Stories for me to punch in the collective thought-crotch. This week it's Zatanna, aka The Backwards-Talking-Hot-Pants-Wearing Magician of the Justice Fucks. So yeah, something involving dad, magic shows, dad used to fight crime, blah, blah, blah. Somehow, magic powers are genetic (like hemophilia and dwarfism!), explaining why only lucky motherfuckers get to have them, instead of Joe Six-Packs like myself (who would use them to rape women who said no to them back in high school, most likely). Zatanna used her powers to try and find her dad, which led her to join the Justice League and do things like...wear fishnet stockings (to be honest, I'm damn sure she never really saved anyone or did anything interesting). She can make things happen by saying them backwards (i.e bats taht ofom! or sinep dnetxe!) and just always happens to show up whenever someone needs help with magical foes but can't get any of the cooler guys to show up.
Like father, like son.
$20 says the rightmost item on Lex's desk is used for sexual stimulation!
WEEK 35
The Red Fox: "Rain of the Supermen". What an awesome title. I mean they literally fall out of the sky, killing everyone in their path. Is that great or what! Anyway, onto business. The comic starts with a fat guy falling on a less fat guy, killing him utterly. As everyone dies, there is chaos in the world being that all of the everyman mutants are losing their powers and dropping out of the sky. Luthor doesn't really give a damn, so he just continues to yak away on his cell. Most people are rushed to the hospital by the real heroes along with Infinity Inc. who, miraculously, still have their powers. Hmmmm. Luthor blames all of the lost powers on a gene that rejects the enhancements but gives no explanation as to why they all failed at at the stroke of midnight on the new year. Y2K, perhaps? With this new turn of events, Steel is back, in human form, and Natasha begins to realize that Luthor isn't the nice guy she thought he was. I would think him being Superman's greatest foe would clue her in. The rest of the issue is dedicated to the space adventurers as they learn that Lobo is going to turn them in for the bounty Lady Styx put on their heads. What's the world come to when you can no longer trust a mass murdering evangelist?
The best part about this issue of 52 is how it shows how incredibly trigger happy the people at DC are, committing mass genocide whenever they can just for shits and giggles. Ever since I read Infinite Crisis (I know it's a scary thought), it has occurred to me that DC takes it a little too far when trying to weed out characters. There they killed many nameless, D-list, and otherwise made up heroes just in order to make the book more "interesting" and "important". And after this issue of 52, it seems to me that DC kills people for kicks. Why else would they have created, then killed, all of the everyman mutants? We already know that Luthor is evil. He and the Joker are the two characters everybody knows to be evil, despite 52 making it look like the American people don't know of Luthor's villainy. Luthor didn't do it because the Everymen were getting out of line, because there would have been a much more discrete way of doing it rather than killing everyone at midnight. The only other reason would be to reveal to Natasha that Luthor is, in fact, evil, but I believe that she could be convinced by something a little less severe than genocide.
Dizz: Apparently, taking away powers from morons who aren't trained to use them properly and such is evil. I guess the reader is supposed to go "OH SHIT, THANK GOD HE DIDN'T DO THAT TO INFINITY INC!!!!", but honestly I can't fucking stand those spoiled brats, as I said earlier, so that entire reaction never happened from me. Supposedly, Lex Luthor is really a hero in his own mind or some shit. It reminds me of the bollocks they tried to force onto Venom (LETHAL PROTECTOR). That aside, Luthor sucks as a competent villain, but succeeds in the whole 'EVIL INDUSTRIALIST WHO MONOLOGUES AND DOES NOT SO NICE THINGS'. He fumes, he winks at the audience, he has plausible deniability. I don't know if it's the writing or what, but I officially hate Lex Luthor now.
Generalissimo Furioso: So yeah, for once in the entire history of DC comics, the original Lex Luthor is acting gay, reminding me of a certain show on a certain network that I will not mention, for I hate it too much. For some reason, the writers have resorted to using Smallville gags, what with the inferring and the implying and the constant gayness of the bald man! Nowhere is this shown better than when one of the Infinity Inc. members (a hot one, mind you) says she could lick him and he replies "No thanks" or something gay like that. Who wouldn't want a licking from a female subordinate? The only way he could have been gayer would have been if he was wearing a half-muscle shirt and some hot pants, with a handlebar mustache and a book of the best works of Mapplethorpe.
Nixon: My favorite part of this issue was how all the F-rate characters are suddenly coming onto the idea that Lex might be deceiving them. That he might even be eeeeeeeevil. Well, no shit black girl who's Steel's niece. Thank you for the brilliant and heretofore unheard of insight. Lex might be evil. I'm writing that one down for future reference. I don't see how anyone in Metropolis could not know Lex is evil, what with that whole him being Superman's main villain since the days of Al Capone. But I guess I was wrong. Beyond that, Week 35 is a wonderful blend of terrible side characters whose life and death trials and tribulations barely matter, yet whose death will probably be bemoaned by fanboys who had just learned to love them. LEVIATHAN DESERVED BETTER! BRING BACK BUSHIDO AND BABY WILDEBEEST!
Bruce Banner: Since everyone else was captivated by the Everyman Project story (the first time it happened in 52's history), I will talk about the other plot receiving pages in Week 35: Lost in Space heroes/Lobo. As is customary with the b-plot, the heroes only get 4 pages as compared to the 19 pages devoted to Luthor, Infinity Inc. and people falling from the sky. In a twist totally unheard of from people lacking brains, Lobo is a turncoat as well as a bounty hunter. Who would ever expect the bounty hunter to hunt bounties? If this is what Grant Morrison believes is a twist capable of ending an issue, I fear what the workload DC thrust upon him has done to his brain.
Doom: One thing no one else mentioned was Hawkgirl's reappearance at the refugee camp (which looked more pathetic than New Orleans'). The reason this is worth mentioning is because the last time she showed up in the pages of 52, I'm pretty sure she was 20 feet tall. Did they not show her proper size being restored by a team of scientists? Will they explain how she became normal again in a lengthy miniseries designed to milk money out of stupid fanboys? Did her debigulating happen in 52, and I cared so little I forgot it? The world may never know. Shame. I wanted to see a few vignettes of The Incredible Adventures of Huge Hawkgirl. It'd be like the SNL sketch "Tiny Elvis", only the reserve premise, actually funny and not Rob Schneider-y.
LEX LUTHOR KNOCKED DOWN THE TOWERS
Finally, some killing.
WEEK 36
The Red Fox: What a week we have for you this time, folks. This issue marks the end of Lobo's vow of nonviolence as he takes the lost in space crew before Lady Styx. She insults Lobo as well as his religion which causes him to get a little bit stabby. They fight into victory, having Animal Man as the only casualty. I was really wondering when that guy was going to die. After all, what kind of power is the stench of a skunk while stuck in space? The Question is still going crazy in the hospital, so Renee decides to take it upon herself to bring him to Nanda Parbat which will, hopefully, safe his live. Good luck with that! Osiris is upset about killing, and how he can no longer be a member of the Teen Titans, but gets cheered up by his pet horrible lizard-man. I wish I had a pet lizard-man. The end of this comic has Supernova giving random technology to Rip Hunter the Time Master in order to prepare for their final battle. They know that Skeets can't find them in the bottled Kryptonian city of Kandor, but they don't know he's waiting just outside the dome. Uh OHHHHHHHH! I sure hope he doesn't knock it over!
The art in the comic this week is as poor as ever. When I first looked at the cover, my spirits lifted. "Perhaps they actually got a good artist!", I thought to myself. When I opened to the first page my hopes were dashed (that, and Doom reminding me that the same guy does all the covers), just like when I read my first issue of 52. Here the art is plain with almost no detail at all. Even some huge shading would have been acceptable. Everything from even a small distance away lacks detail, as in only having eyes, nose, mouth, and hair on a character, even though they have been used with far more detail in previous issues. It is very sad to say, but 52 actually had better art prior to this issue where they actually had some artistic talent inking instead of the fill in the box style that seems to be presented here. If given the same opportunity, a six year old could have done the same job.
Examples of bad art run amuck: page 16, last panel of Kate Kane (I think she went Transamerica); page 11's Kirby's Dream Land; the downright freakish Sobek on page 18's panel 2.
Doom: Oh, here we go. Another hero bites the dust (David Bowie reference unintended). This time it's Animal Man, because why the fuck not. After literal years of obscurity, he's brought back in an important DC event...only to be offed for no particular reason. Worst of all is his wife's reaction, who immediately knows her husband is dead despite said husband being MILLIONS OF LIGHT YEARS AWAY IN FUCKING SPACE. This type of writing doesn't pass muster in Hallmark movies, DC. He dies by, well, it's pretty hard to make out. There's this part where he yells "THIS IS WHAT I BELIEVE IN!" whilst holding a picture of his kids (which apparently was able to not, um, get lost of get torn up in 9 months), then an explosion. This kills/scares off Lady Styx and Flying One Eyed Guy, but poor Buddy foams at the mouth and dies. Whatever. He'll be back next week.
On another note, I've finally realized who Rip Hunter and Supernova represent: the Professor and Gilligan. Think about it. Supernova's job is to get supplies for Rip in order to stop...or...whatever. Probably to make a coconut time machine. Anyway, in the midst of this, Supernova gets sidetracked, involving himself in petty exploits like superheroism and possibly being a teenage girl's dead boyfriend (me? I'd say I was Superboy, and just never take off the mask, even when fucking). Thus, Supernova fucks things up just like Gilligan does for everyone on Gilligan's Island. As for who would be the Skipper, I think the answer is obvious, given the cliffhanger ending to this issue: Skeets! He's ready to smash open Kandor and womp the two with his oversized novelty hat! Even if my theory makes little sense, remember: it's more coherent than anything the greatest writers of DC could come up with while having the help of 10,000 monkeys on 10,000 typewriters.
Bruce Banner: From the department of putrid mistakes and lazy editing: one of the dialogue balloons that should be attributed to Osiris is attributed to Sobek. It is especially funny to see Sobek speak the line "They hate us, Sobek." Although for a brief moment I considered the explanation of Sobek speaking in the third person as well as self-referencing. I would not put it past Sobek, the worst of all characters yet to grace the pages of 52. That is saying something when other candidates include Batwoman, Osiris, Steel, Natasha Irons and...well, the entire rest of the cast.
Dizz: LOST IN SPACE AGAIN! It finally looks like its winding down, but that means it's going to be EXTRA BORING! Thankfully, this time before I could destroy the computer or myself, Lobo killed almost everyone. Now THAT'S what I've been wanting! I mean, come on, who REALLY wants to hear about the three super-stooges getting lost in space and attacked by fake-Galactus, and then escaping and just kinda wandering around? NO ONE BESIDES STEIBER!!! So, now that they've put Lobo back in his customary role of crazy mass murderer, you'd think it'd be better. WRONG!!! They try and put in schmaltzy emotion when Animal Man 'dies'. Fuck you DC, I don't want any of this emotion put into senseless violence!
Nixon: Note one: I fucking hate reading the Emissary of the Fish God's text. Dark blue text on a blue background? DC must hate my already poor eyesight. So other than struggling to read through that, Lobo killed people and Animal Man died. I was real torn up about Lobo breaking his vow of peace and Animal Man buying the farm...until I realized that before 52 I had no idea who those goons were. Then I stopped caring. Also, Vic Sage is dying of lung/brain cancer, meaning Doom's fake name for the shitty college newspaper might soon be dead for 2-3 months (brought back by fan demand!). Oh, and, uh, Superman has a city in a bottle in his Fortress of Solitude which Skeets needs. Of note, I remembered how in Red Son, Superman kept Stalingrad in a glass jar after Brainiac shrunk it down to screw with him. Man, what a much better and less confusing miniseries.
Generalissimo Furioso: Red Fox wrote about everything I wanted to write about, so I'll just cover the damn origin of a lesser-known hero again. This week it's Power Girl AKA Earth-2's Supergirl AKA material to jack off to. Anyhoo, this universe is too cool for there to be two Supergirls, so obviously one had to change their name to the ubiquitous Power Girl. Anyway, Power Girl has all the powers of a girl, meaning she has boobs and the ability to wear skimpy clothes to show them off. She also possesses the ability to receive massive amounts of cum and continue to get it in the cunt and ass. It's really something to pity, not enjoy.
See, Spade, this is what happens when you leave Farley in
charge of the bees bottle.
I AM SHOCKED AND SURPRISED.
WEEK 37
The Red Fox: To borrow a phrase from the Fanboy's playbook, "Worst issue...ever!" This week, on the live action comedy 52, Skeets has discovered where Time Master and Supernova have been hiding, so he proceeds to tip over the bottled city of Kandor. From the bottle, Supernova emerges only to be revealed to be Booster Gold, alive and with a very horrible time traveling answer for his death. This revelation is very poorly explained and very disappointing in my opinion, but there must have been somebody who enjoyed it. So, a battle between Booster Gold and Skeets ensues for a while until the eventual climax where Time Master traps Skeets in the Phantom Zone. Or does he? As it turns out, Skeets is able to eat the Phantom Zone (don't ask me how), and the defeated duo barely escape with their lives. Meanwhile, in Green Arrowville, Oliver Queen discusses the disappearance of Elongated Man with Black Canary. I wonder whether it is time to put his face on cereal boxes yet. Then the lost in space crew leaves Animal Man on a barren planet, just in case he does go all zombie on them, and leaves just in time for him to regain consciousness. Wait, two characters coming back from the dead in one issue? That is just too much.
As with every issue they appear in, the lost in space crew shows they are as inept as ever. This time, they leave one of their crew members on an empty planet with some aliens that most likely mean to do him harm. The necrogoo that Animal Man was shot with turning out to not turn him into a zombie was a very big disappointment for me personally, because now there will never be DC zombies running around. Looking at the sales of Marvel Zombies, it's just good business sense to zombify some DC heroes. The fact that the members of the group were so stupid as to, you know, not check his pulse to make sure that he was really dead baffles me to no end. I know most of them are aliens, but wouldn't you think Adam Strange could have at least tried. He could have at least felt for a vein. Hell, they don't even try to take his corpse back home, even though there is probably some simple way for them to isolate him in a ship. What, is there no airlock you could stuff him in? If he is a zombie, just flush him out. Idiots.
Dizz: If you all will scroll up a few pages, you will see that I complained that Luthor sucks. As expected, Skeets also sucks as a villain. He spends most of this issue battling Booster Gold, who unsurprisingly revealed he actually was Supernova. NOTHING LIKE A COMPLETELY OBVIOUS PLOT TWIST TO ADD TO THE INANITY, EH GUYS? So, Rip and Booster then project the Phantom Zone at him, but he 'eats it'. Let's think about that for a few seconds. A robot without a fucking mouth somehow eats a dimension. Amazing. Then Booster and Rip get the hell out of there, because they know they need to BEWARE THE INEXPLICABLY EVIL TIME TRAVELING ROBOT!
Bruce Banner: The quick resurrections of Booster Gold and Animal Man prove there are deaths more meaningless than Hawkeye's and Magneto's. For the former, the resurrection brings back respect to his character, albeit in a "I was only pretending to be an unsympathetic jackass" sort of way. Part of me doubts the original intention was to explain away all of his prick behavior before his death as "I pretended to be a dick to throw Skeets off the trail". No matter how complex and how intricately the death is 'undone', the storytelling still reeks of soap opera idiocy. When half the issue's action relies on a labored explanation of why a character acted the way they did, replete with flashbacks and JFK-like Zapruder footage, the concept is not strong to begin with.
The other resurrection, Animal Man, similarly fails in execution because he returns a few days after his death. Strange, Starfire and Lobo leave him after putting him on a desolate planet, and right after they leave he springs back to life. This means either the writing is poor, the 'death' is unexplainable, or the lost in space team hated Buddy. That and Ellen's "husband death sense" radar is not working correctly, as if he returned to life, there should have been a scene of her taking the laundry down and being filled with hope about her husband's return. A meaningless death with little to no coherent execution. As bad as recent Marvel/DC "blink and you'll miss it" deaths and subsequent resurrections. I must admit, however, the return of the aliens (featured in Grant Morrison's Animal Man) on the last page was a nice touch, and may be an indication that one of the storylines in 52 intends to go somewhere as opposed to go nowhere.
Doom: WILL NO ONE MENTION THE GREEN ARROW PAGES?! Uh, I guess I will, since everyone else's hearts are all aflutter over certain resurrections. Where's Ollie's parade is all I'm asking. Here we get some exposition about Ralph's whereabouts as well as some hinting (and by hinting I mean blatant clues) about Green Arrow having an undying passion to get into Black Canary's pants once again. Meanwhile, Green Lantern helps Star City's recovery, since Hal is better when seen and not heard. Something vaguely unrelated: Ollie mentions self-reliance as one of the planks of his mayoral campaign. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't self-reliance the plank used by Republicans and not Socialists like Green Arrow? Whatever. I've given up trying to make sense of this bullshit.
By the way, I did call the "Supernova = Booster Gold" revelation way back in Month 3. Yeah, bitches!
Nixon: What an issue of disappointments. Booster Gold, the "biggest name" to be killed in 52, isn't dead but is instead Supernova because he realized (with the help of Johnny the Time Travelin' Dude) that Skeets is actually controlled by evil or something but he certainly eats the shit out of the Phantom Zone which leads to us checking in on Green "Mayor Nagin" Arrow, who is concerned about some guy going rogue over his wife yadda yadda, Animal Man lives. Yes, he only stayed dead for a single issue. I mean, I know DC can't stand to keep people actually dead, but was Animal Man so much of a loss he could only be down and out for the week of Skeets going evil?
Generalissimo Furioso: MINORITY ALERT! MINORITY ALERT! BATTON DOWN THE HATCHES! WE GOT'S US A STEREOTYPICAL NEGRO HERO A' COMIN' OUR WAY! Yeah, so we got a underprivileged black youth with a abusive father and no way out. In the DC universe, that means he's going to become a hero (though to be fair, I can see why the dad was so pissed off; he's missing a hand!). Unlike other heroes who gave themselves powers through stupidity or genetics (just like the Aryan ideal), this kid manages to drive into a nuclear blast. But it wasn't any normal nuclear blast, this was the hero Firestorm being killed and going nuclear all over the place. In a new twist on the White Man saves Black Kid from horrors of Poverty story, the Old Firestorm merges with Black Kid and shows him how be a superhero. So the new Firestorm has all of the same powers that the old one had: Radiation Balls, Sucking up Radiation, and Being Black Superman (Cuz now Steel is Black Colossus!).
Apparently, all Phantom Zone prisoners are Asian. Oh, Krypton, you racist planet.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Generalissimo Furioso: Month 9, month 9. What can possibly said about month 9? I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's the single most retarded thing I've ever read in the entire history of mankind! Christmas idiocy, Suicide Squad shenanigans, the Everymen finally get what was coming to them, Booster Gold is Supernova and Skeets eats the Phantom Zone. It's like they gave a five year-old a crayon and a piece of paper and told him "Here's a list of characters no one cares about, make up a story with them in it" and let him go to work (Did I mention the kid is retarded? Because he is, severely so). But of course people will applaud DC for bringing these characters back to the forefront, despite the fact that they were never good enough for the forefront in the first place. THAT'S WHY THEY WEREN'T THERE, YOU FUCKWITS!. God, I just want to slam my head into a wall for five hours, just to see what it's like to be an idiot like the fans of this are (Don't bother arguing with me, enjoying this series removes your right to live as a human being. NOW GET TO PICKIN MY COTTON!).
The Red Fox: The holiday season has come and gone,
The Everymen have gone splat on my lawn,
Supernova turned out to be Booster Gold,
And Skeets ate the Phantom Zone,
Merry Christmas and happy new year,
This review is over,
I'M OUTTA HERE!
LEGEND OF THE DOG FACED LESBIAN