Random Comics Reviewed By Me. With SPOILERS. Trademarks held by whoever holds the trademarks.

The older reviews are gone because they made me ashamed and giggly at their awfulness. The new ones are just as probably worse. Hopefully in different ways, though. The newest reviews should always be on the top.

Green Lantern #9
Guy Gardner becomes Green Lantern of Earth. Unfortunately Green Lantern G'Nort chooses to tag along.
Notable bits include the guest appearance by Hal's ex, the one who comes to hate Earth, even though she's trapped on an alien planet.
Hal chews Guy out for raiding the trapped Earth people's stuff, even though Hal could bring loads of it from Earth to here. (Why he couldn't bring the people back is never clearly explained. Maybe Hal is drunk).
Guy trashes a communistic state's capitol, setting it on fire and presumably burning alive the peope trapped within.
You know, I really hate the Gaurdians. The blue midgets presume they know the best simply because they are near omnipotent and control the Green Lantern power. Guy, who is a homicidal maniac by the end of the story (having wiped out most of an island full of primitive natives) gets lectured to by the glowing green floating face of Papa Smurf and ends up getting stuck with G'nort. Despite the revelation that the Gaurdians know absolutely nothing about G'nort in the first place.
Great way to run a league of facists, there, little blue jerks. Allowing unrestricted access to your energy source is a FANTASTIC idea. What next, tell your mortal enemies about the rings only weakness? No, wait, the Green Lanterns themselves do that just fine!
Kilowog really needed to add a section to the training course called 'Shut The Fuck Up About The Ring's Weakness Against Yellow'.

Justice League Of America #96
We open with two burglars in Maxwell Lord's house. We learn, since burglarly doesn't involve being quiet (of changing out of street clothes) that Lord was involved in a large conspiracy where the players involved were named after playing cards.
The burglars are interupted by Vandal Savage's gay brother, Nimrod. (I don't know his name, I was just making it up). Nimrod kills the male burglar and lets the woman go free so she can tell everyone that 'Judgement' is coming. Is 'Judgement' the man's name? Do I care?
The splash page is Lord's funeral.
The opposite page is an ad for Street Fighter the movie. It has little to do with the comic.
Four or five or eighteen pages of subplots happen. None of them seem to have any respect for Maxwell as they all bitch and whine like children. Only seven out of dozens of attendees even bothered to wear black. Even Catherine wears orange.
And...uh oh! Here comes Gay Leather Boy! His name is in fact, 'Judgement'! Oooh.
Every super-being at the funeral lines up to pound on Judgement and make fun of his fashion sense. So quite naturally he kicks all of their asses. Haven't they heard of teamwork?
Much graveyard property gets destroyed.
Dr. Light uses her brains to beat 'Judgement', instead of wildling diving in like, for example, Martian Manhunter. J'onn, resorting to base fisticuffs? What about a brain fry?
Anywho, 'Judgement' was thought to have been nullified when Light's actions caused a massive explosion and a crater.
Catherine lectures Captain Atom on how the team should better be able to handle such attacks. Which is a good idea. So the crater is left unattended. What a bunch of jerks. They needed everyone to deal with the crowd (seven people) of terrified mourners? Most of the non-superhumans have encountered their share of deadly dangers. If a nut with explosive power could shake them up that bad then one has to start suspecting shape-shifter infiltration. (Which would explain the sad and pathetic way Gay The Atomic Wonder was handled).
BTW, look for Amazing Man to be White Uniform Man on the upper right of page 17.
After the heroes leave the gaping crater in the middle of the graveyard absolutely unattended, GTAW crawls out. I know that after a battle, the dozens of people involved look nowhere at the battlesite ever again.
Later, we join up with the current JLA HQ, which is a dangerous, unknown alien ship filled with mysterious and possibly deadly lifeforms from all across the galaxy. It has a transport beam that can pick anyone up from Earth and slowly take them up into it's loading bay.
Yaz, the inderteminate=gender-Oberon-replacement blabs some exposition before the JLA comes up in the beam.
Yaz gets yelled at and the other aliens are discussed. They can't afford to keep the aliens on the ship. Why? Who knows. Can they afford to kick them off? Which place on Earth can provide individual microclimates?
Maybe the ship costs money. Maybe Wonder Woman is worried about the risks of bad guys attacking the place. Maybe WW's leather bra is on too tight.
Back on Earth, 'Judgement' plays with his action figures and declares every member of the JLA is under the death penalty. I kind of agree, after their pathetic performance in the graveyard.
On the ship, we learn that the JLA doesn't have beepers or phones or pagers. When Maxwell Lord's doctor had some new info, he blabbed it out over the police radio bands. Presumably the doctor was then picked up. Private citizens breaking into police communications have got to have some sort of negative consequences.
One wonders how the JLA was contacted when Max was still alive? Did the doctor pay off radio stations to broadcast 'Hey, JLA, your mentor is this close to croaking'? Whatever happened to the contact devices that look like I.D. cards? Did 'Judgement' blows those up to?
The villian proceeds to make the ship explode. YAY!

Primal Force
Guest stars up the wazoo is not really a good sign. Jack O'Lantern and some mystical chick do a 'Christmas Carol' visit of various heroes as Jack is having a crisis of faith. Most of the scenes we see involve stuff that happenened in the hero's own books. A nice touch, but seeing as how the the events Jack views (the Coast City battle, Hawkman battling Hawkgod, Wonder Woman battling for her own position as Wonder Woman, Az-Bats) are low points in the hero's life it all just ends up leaving a bad taste in my mouth. (That, and the mouse I ate).

Doom 2099 #6
Doom of the future, who is allegedly Doom of today and Wire, net-hacker, have 'jacked in' to cyberspace. Doom's armor is under siege by a computer virus so the quite natural solution is not to re-boot or download Mcaffee 2099, but to download avatars of themselves into the net.
Okay.
They find themselves, after some chaos in a game simulation. Whee! Let's totally remove any source of suspense whatsoever by telling everyone there's no point in reading the story anymore! (I guess that's why the Holodeck malfunctioned so much).
Oh, my bad. The game sim, which has no 'off' button, can delay them, giving the virus a better chance of infecting Doom's armor.
Wee, we're cooking with gas here now! (And frankly, why are we supposed to care that Doom is trouble? Doom is a megalomanical dictator that rules by fear. He's a jerk).
After fighting a mis-done version of the Fantastic Four and a hilarious encounter with a first-generation Doom look alike, Wire finds the exit.
Which is a green button on the wall, clearly marked 'Exit'. Way to go, Wire, you have basic reading skills.
On the next page Doom's Vice President is incapacitated by a mysterious figure. (Way to not have bodygaurds, Veep!). The afro woman left to watch over Doom and Wire meets a different intruder. (Yay! Doom can be assinated!). It's some dude named Poet. He's not the one who zapped the Veep because that figure was bald and Poet looks to have several dozen dried out turds super-glued to his head.
An interlude shows us that *yawn* a business wants to end up owning Latveria, Doom's homeland. A holographic demon-looking dude reassures the CEO of the business that he does hold all the power. Because this demon is in fact the virus that is infecting Doom! OH GOD NO! A SENTIENT VIRUS! SHOOT ME NOW! SHOOT ME NOW! No, not with that. That's a G.I.Joe gun! I could put this in my mouth and still miss.
Anywho, back to cyberspace. Wire is actually surfing, so help me god. Doom floats around until they meet up with Duke Statosphere, the only halfway interesting character in the book. Duke is an internet legend, running back and forth and doing all the good things that need to be done online.
Of course he betrays them by well...um...making them stand next to the demon-guy. Though both have demonstrated the abillity to traverse cyber-space without needs of surfaces under them, they stand there like two statues until demon-guy blasts away at them.
Only now, contradicting what we've learned before, do we hear that damage to a cyberspace avatar can nuerologically affect one's physical body.
Sure, the game with the Fantastic Four might have had safety protocols (but if so, why not an emergencey shutdown?). But an interactive, holodeck type representation of the internet is inherently dangerous? An earlier page in this book mentions how Wire knows enough to disengage if things get hairy, but here demon-guy zaps him and knocks him out. This presumes that anyone with sufficent storage power could go rumbling through the internet, Ultima-like and slaying anyone that gets in their way.
The world of 2099 might not be the safest place ever but surely no one would let the whole internet deal degenerate that far. After all, rich people use the net too!
In fact, the last pages have the two zapped so bad that their entire body shuts down.
No emergencey disconnects in real life, either, I guess. The dialogue has one character screaming to poop-head to disconnect them, because they aren't responding to an overide. Shouldn't this kind of stuff be automatic? The computer can detect when the neural activity is going below safe levels.
Heck, Microsoft shuts down when you're doing nothing at all. Doom's technology, one hundred or so years advances, not being able to auto-disconnect is just silly.

Black Condor #4
This doesn't start out to well, with the splash page being a flying shark man heading straight for the view. He's screaming 'Where is the condor man', which is pretty impossible seeing as his teeth are all pointy and serrated and there is no evidence of a tongue.
Yes, I know were talking about a flying shark man but still. Just because we have fish monsters is no reason to suspend reality. The suspension of disbelief doesn't strech that far.
Shark-dude starts tearing up the waterfront, demanding Condor man be brought to him.
Quite naturally our hero arrive at his friend's Ned's house just in time to see a news report of Shark man brandishing and stop sign and clearly displaying he has no abillity to reproduce whatsoever. (Ned has a bandage on his head. Quite rare as comic book characters usually aren't hurt enough for bandages).
After Condor flies off to engage in another pointless fight, the hologram of the original Black Condor shows up to blather at Ned. Our injured friend is to be Condor's mention. Why? Who knows? Not him.
As Condor and shark dude engage in hysterical screaming fisticuffs (well, on shark dude's part) a mental patient with an afro bigger then most third world countries is let loose on the street. She only serves to telepathically distract our hero from his important mission of getting punched in the head.
Condor finishes up his fight and wanders off. The patient had almost been raped by a gang of thugs but mindlessly uses her powers to stop this. Most of the thugs die horribly. Condor finds this and is dutifully shocked. Oh no! What a cliffhanger!

Lobo #25
A bunch of Lobo's friends, those that haven't been fragged outright, throw him a suprise birthday party in Al's latest diner.
So naturally he blasts a few rounds right over their heads. Ha! I love Lobo. Not in that weird way because he'd kick my head in. But any comic book where drinking, fighting, drinking, fraggin' and more drinking is the order of the day is pretty fun in my book.
Sometimes Lobo can reaaaly stink, creative-wise but here's one of the better issues.
After nearly perforating everyone who cares for him, one of his buds waves a white flag in a bottle and yells that it's his friends. Lobo frags the bottles and screams, "I ain't got no friends!"
Peace is made and drinking contests start up. Even that dog that follows him around joins in.
Lobo gets a flamethrower, which he uses on a neighbor pissed about the noise.
Darlene, Al's waitress, gives him a bomb detector. It turns out that 'Another Bitter Foe' has sent a bomb disguised as present but that's okay. Lobo likes getting' blown up.
More drinking competitions.
Lobo's buddy Jonas gets Lobo the Brothers Kalashnikov. Lobo brutally murders all but one right there in the diner.
It's time for cake! Naturally a big busted stripper ops out. Lobo acts like an ass towards the girl and Darlene, prompting Darlene to leave and cry in the kitchen.
The two girls grab guns and decide to teach the men a lesson. They make them strip to their undies. In the resulting confusion, Goldstar (think Flanders with superpowers), before little more then a mindless lackey, gets his rightful memories back and is pissed. Lobo gets a beatdown.
He retaliates with the neighbor torcher, which only stuns Goldie. The diner catches alight and all the men must evacuate in their briefs. (Except the lone Brother Kalashnikov).
Lobo tries in his half-hearted way to apologize for wrecking yet another of Al's diners. Al says it's okay because the diner really was his present for Lobo!

Wildstorm Spotlight #1
It's the end of time and everything. Majestic attempts to deal with it all.
Bob Hope guest stars.

The Terminator LS. #3
John, Sara and a bunch of hopeless farts run around the desert hoping not to be killed off by two new Terminators.
The series is fairly insipid, the only likable characters being yet another homicidal maniac and the robots themselves. You don't exactly cheer for the good guys to be blown out of their socks but you start not caring sooner or later. 'Sides, knowing John and Sara will make it yet again screws up the suspense. It's like Star Trek novels. Captain Kirk is going to get out of the alien prison/escape the savages. Any security officers who come along trundle off to get killed in the first few minutes, leaving it up the dynamics of the story to make us care. I just didn't care.

Doom Patrol #45
A repressed homicidal homosexual before repressed homicidal homosexuals were passe, Ernest Franklin channels his insanity into a pure hatred of beards.

The Bearded Gentlemen's Club of Metropolis (way cool bit) hires Ernest to slay Niles Caulder. Niles, in a fit of lucidity (Niles doesn't pack a full picnic basket himself) had insulted the Club and they want him dead.
Ernest finds Niles at the local conveinence store, sparking off one of the coolest action scenes in comics.

Rogue. LS #4
Rogue deals with the first person her powers ever screwed with.
The art is okay. Weiringo is one of the few people at Marvel who understand that feet do not taper to a fine point, that they actually have substance.
This issue also has a cardstock cover. Marvel used to have cover gimmicks up the wazoo. This was an excuse to jack up prices and gave speculators something to drool and beat their flabby chests over. I hate speculators.

Hellstorm #17
A Vertigo book disguised as a Marvel book. They can do really creepy horror stuff when they set their mind to it. I still don't understand why they won't allow blood shown to actually be red.

Punisher 2099 #2
'X 2099' are series set in the Marvel Universe 98 years from now. It was rolling along, spitting out good ideas like tobacco chewing farmers in the mountains. Then, about three years later it totally fell apart. My theory is that they tried to apply current-time Marvel universe editorial policies to this future line. 2099 is a typical 'Coporations rule' and it's much more twisted then the one we're all familar with.
The police force is called the Public Eye and rules with legions of camreas set everywhere. (Sound familar?). You'll still get the best police protection possible...if you're paid up, that is.
Murderers can get off with a fine, if they are rich enough. They have their own ambulance service, which can go absolutely anywhere.
A black-carder, a term for the rich because of the I.D. they have, named Cron kills Jake Gallows' family for the hell of it. (And because he's insane as a duck on Quallaudes). Despite being a member of the Public Eye, Jake has to get over it. Cron's a black carder. What can be done? He paid his fine, so he can go.
Jake digs up some technoequipment. (The explanation for the bike being hard to view is perfect genius. The future may suck but the tech rules). Jake hunts down Cron at of all places, a fast food outlet and disposes of him with an old fashioned knife.

Punisher 2099 #3
The art in these Punisher comics goes from normal but gritty to 'Shit, the UPS guy is coming in ten minutes and I haven't finished page 3'.
We get a deeper look at Jake's motivations. A head-shrinker is prying around the Public Eye outfits and it getting real suspicous of Jake. He's too well-adjusted. Jake's gruff and grizzled Captain chews out the shrink for thinking too much, revealing the lovable side that all Captains have.

Six pages later he's laughing over the death of a non-Public Eye subscriber.

Punisher 2099 #5
There's a break-out in Jake's underground holding cells. Jake slaps it down through absolute pure intimidation.
He then goes out to slap around the local mafia. Goons from Alchemax (one of the ruling corps. find him).
The head-shrink pops by Jake's place for a visit. He manages to discombobulate and actually scare her. He's trying to be sarcastic but lets it slip that he's the Punisher. Though five pages before she had come to convince herself he was the Punisher, she loses it, swears and at him and slaps him.
Someone needs to stay out of the pill cabinet.

The last fourth is more fisticuffs and techobabble then drama, a foreshadowing of later years, where the series takes a turn for the "What is the writer smoking?".

2099 Unlimited #1
The Spiderman story is a messy, scary mangle of a story. The heavy is a man called 'Mutagen'. He's a keeper. His supervillian costume is a red hood with red tights. A yellow helix (get it?) snakes up his body from his ctoch to his bulging, steroidal neck. The insides of the loops are dark blue. When our man, who is black, starts out, the blue bits are still blue. On page 24, he gets white reptile skin and the blue is gone. The white still manages not to match with the rest of the ugly-ass suit.
His hands are withered and useless looking, though that's because of the artist and not any genetic defect on Captain Exposition's part.
Mutagen's psychosis drives him to wander the hospital Spiderman happened to be visiting. (Keep in mind it's a huge city of the future). Our Hero saves a girl from getting iced simply because she has a degenerative nerve disease that might be passed down to the next generation.
A well and good motive for an aspiring lunatic. Only, he might have succeded in his mission if he didn't, I don't, wear the ugly ass red tights outfit? A doctor's robe might just have gotten him a few murders before being punched out by our friendly neighberhood future wallcrawler.
The confrontation ends with Mutagen leaping out a window. Spiderman is only seconds away. Muties out of view so Spiderman, who can swing around cities and as we established before, crawl up walls, chooses NOT to pursue the homicidal maniac and comfort a crying woman.
Sorry, man, tears are no excuse.
A Hulk 2099 story follows but it manages to be more incomprehensible then the first, if that is even possible.

Harbinger #35
We start out with a fight between two telekinetic people. Faith, one of the few overweight people in comics, scream and run in panic. Yes, they have super powers but they also know when they are in over their heads.
Here is where it stops making sense. (To be fair, I've read a lot of comics while tired so it might just be me). Faith gets seperated from her friend and apparently goes into hiding.
The cover has Faith trying to fly out of the way of a launching space shuttle. This is the reason I picked it out of the bin in the first place so quite naturally the scene doesn't happen at all.

Legends Of The Dark Knight #31
LODTK issues are notorious for lots of talking heads, something this issue avoids. Alfred got captured while on holiday and Batman is his only hope, of course. Memorable for the fact Bats blows the living hell out of an ammo dump without knowing for sure whether anyone is inside.

Legends Of The Dark Knight #42
Unfortunately this issue is more of a gab fest then a telemarketer.

Demon #6
All singing, all dancing. Rhymes are hard enough to get used to, espically when the writer is just starting out. This musical about civil war in hell is just intolerable.
The non-singing bits are okay. Jason Blood, the demon's alter ego, Harry Matthews the pillow and Merlin the ineffectual magician are trapped in Hell.
Merlin attempts to cook up a spell to keep Jason awake. If he snores, the Demon will arise. Harry tells jokes while Merlin cooks up a greenish, smoking sludge garunteed to keep Jason awake for days. (After he escaped he sold it off as 'Surge').
The Demon deep inside Jason exercises enough control to make Jason smash the bottle and chug a flask that was hidden on his body. Merlin OBSERVES the flask might be a trick of Etrigan's. Instead of using the mighty magical abillities he demonstrates a page later to restrain Jason, he stands there gaping like Cletus, The Slack Jawed Yokel.
The Demon beats Merlin with his fists (???) and heads off to join in the chaos. Forces dispose Lucifer, who surrenders. I retreat under a table to smash my head on the floor and cry.

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