Green Lantern Secret Files and Origins 2005

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Green Lantern: Secret Files and Origins 2005!

This is one shot that had been sandwiched between the Green Lantern: Rebirth and the beginning of the immediately following Green Lantern reboot. I imagine this exists to completely catch new readers up on the circumstances that led up to the Rebirth arc, as well as other much-needed information before the new run kicks off proper.

At any rate, this one shot is along the road chronologically, so I must read it. And must read it I will. Thank you for joining me, and I’ll see you all soon enough for the real beginning of Green Lantern Vol. 4. I just need to, you know, catch up on what those fuckers Batman and Superman are up to these days again. And by “these days” I mean “1993” or thereabouts.

Green Lantern Secret Files and Origins 2005 [June, 2005]
Written by: Geoff Johns
“Flight / The Day Before”

Green Lantern Secret Files and Origins 2005
“Flight”

SPACE SECTOR 2814. EARTH. “We take it for granted. We take a lot of things for granted. It’s human nature. Get wrapped up in your own microcosm of life, never taking time to step out and look.”

“So this is it. Look. It’s what I did. It’s what I was finally able to do with a little help. I lost years of my life. Friends and family. But I got a second chance.”

Kyle Rayner is tagging along with fellow Green Lantern buddy Hal “Air” Jordan. As in, they’re flying through the “air”. Jordan is smiley and Rayner is not as smiley because he has no idea where Jordan is leading him. “You’ll know when we get there,” Jordan grins. But Hal, the strip club is THAT way!

Hal Jordan’s ring was given to him by a member of the Green Lantern Corps. A dying alien, probably E.T. or Alf. At first the ring was awkward, but in no time the ring became a part of him like that cancerous mole on his right buttock that he hasn’t noticed yet and will kill him in roughly six months. You hate to see it.

Hal Jordan was chosen. And he knows Kyle Rayner was chosen too, he just doesn’t know it yet. Jordan knows what Rayner doesn’t, being chosen and everything. Without Rayner, Hal Jordan wouldn’t been a sad sack on the couch eating Pringles. “The Green Lanterns would’ve been extinct.”

Let’s flash back to Hal Jordan’s Secret Files and, dare I say, Origins. He’s at the Edwards Air Force Base no older than, let’s say, 9 years old. His mom bends down on one knee and tells her son to stop walking to school. The bus stop is only three blocks away, kiddo. Take the motherfucking bus! “I like walking to school,” Hal says, and why shouldn’t he? Encourage the walking, it keeps you in shape.

Green Lantern Secret Files and Origins 2005

Your father is always avoiding the bus. What is it with you Jordan men and buses?

But no, he’s actually hiding something, isn’t he?… Mom tells him to hurry up to the bus or he gets no TV, but Hal has already bolted out the door and is running toward school.

Hal’s friends cannot believe their eyes! Hal Jordan? Running toward the bus?? That’s positively incredi– oh wait, he’s running past it. Heh, well, screw him. We’ll go to school without him if we need to.

Hal sneaks over to the restricted area of the base where he’s going to get rained upon by artillery fire! “I used to watch him every morning,” Hal thinks as he eyeballs a large fighter jet. “Quarter past seven he’d come climbing right over the horizon.” Young Hal drops his lunch on the ground and cheers! Hoots and hollers! Go Dad, you da man!

“Mom never asked where I spent the first fifteen minutes of every day. She was afraid to. Afraid of what it meant for the future.”

Later, while Hal puts together a really cheap-looking model airplane set, he overhears his parents having a tense conversation in their bedroom. Mom all like “stop encouraging the child” and Dad all like “no”.

“It was dangerous and sexy and fun when we were twenty. But now? With the boys… it’s not.”

“It’s my job, Jessica.”

Hal pipes in from the doorway. “I want to fly,” he says simply.

Ok son, here you go! *tosses kid out of the window* Flap those wings!

From that moment on, Mom drove Hal to school and Dad stopped flying in the mornings over the field. All parties were disappointed, but no one ever said anything. “The first five nights I cried myself to sleep.”

“The sixth night was different.” Dad creeps into Hal’s room at 2am. “Grab your jacket,” he says. Oh boy!

Green Lantern Secret Files and Origins 2005

You see what a finski can do to a guy’s attitude?

Daddy takes Sonny to the base where he bribes a guard with a crisp Lincoln. Really breaking the bank on that one, Pops. Hal admits that he’s scared as they traverse the dark, empty airstrip. “Don’t worry. You’re flying with me, son.” Ha, oh, ok that makes him feel better. He thought you were going to each pick a plane and do some dogfighting, but maybe some other time.

Hal is still terrified, and dare I say, to use a TomWritesAboutStuff trademark phrase, pooping his pants. Dad flips switches and revs the engine and shifts gears and tunes his radio to the oldies station and checks his windshield wiper fluid and makes sure his mirrors are all set and turns on his hazard lights. The plane makes a lot of scary clanging and bumping noises, but since Geoff Johns knows a lot about airplane tragedies he knows how to be ultra-specific with any impending fuel tank explosions. That doesn’t happen, though, unfortunately. “Hang tight. I’m taking you to the stars, kiddo.”

That’s unsafe, sir.

Hal kept this excursion a secret from Mom. He never told anyone until a fateful date with Carol Ferris “Bueller’s Day Off”. Hal takes her on a date and does the old bait-and-switch. Instead of a nice, romantic dinner at Faustino’s, he’s going to take her to the fucking airstrip so he can do loop-de-loops while she cries.

The same damn security guard is there 20 years later. Hal makes nice and the forces Carol to cough up the bribe money; 10 dollars this time. Inflation is a bitch.

Green Lantern Secret Files and Origins 2005

There goes my walkin’ around money.

“I’m not dressed for this, you know,” Carol complains. “You could’ve told me where we were going.” I’m with Carol on this one. Surprises are never, ever good. Surprise parties? No? Surprise blowjobs? …eh, still no. I gotta make sure I’m dressed appropriate for such an occasion. “I finally agree to go out on the town with you – not above it.”

Very funny, Carol. You’re a regular Brad Garrett, but I don’t watch TV at 3:00 in the afternoon and you should just suck it up and enjoy the ride. But no, this ain’t anything special anyway. She grew up on airfields her whole damn life, so being here sucks, Hal. It sucks like a surprise blowjob.

But because Hal is a smooth motherfucker, enough talking gets Carol thinking. She caresses the plane a little bit. “I thought she was going to slap me right then and there. But it came out of Carol when she got close to the plane. The little girl who lived to fly. Growing up on a tarmac all her own. When her father had his heart attack, Carol stepped in to run Ferris Aircraft. She hadn’t really been up in the air since.”

Next thing she knows, it’s bam, zoom, straight to the moon! And Hal takes her up into the cold, desolate night sky. And she loves it. She loves every second. She feels ALIVE, son. And they kiss, Hal away from the controls and the plane flying over residential zones dumping its poop water all over the place because Hal ain’t paying attention to the road. “Looking at it all now… looking at Carol. Letting her go was the worst mistake of my life.”

Even worse than chopping down the cherry tree and not being able to tell a lie about it?

The parallel to Kyle Rayner not knowing where Hal is taking him is funny to me. If I see a panel where they kiss up in the air I’ll post it here for posterity. They land at the airfield, lol. Sexy times ahead.

Green Lantern Secret Files and Origins 2005

So much like your father, right down to the unbridled hatred of buses.

Once again, a nice fat bribe sends these two onto the empty airstrip. One of these days the guard is going to prison for his many crimes. “This is it?” Rayner gripes. “You want to take me for a flight?” Pffft, not just any flight, m’boy. This is an evening alone with Hal “Sex” Jordan, and once you go Green you never go… Lean.

Being a Green Lantern trumps any stupid airplane, by the way. Those things can’t even reach the stars, no matter what Mr. Jordan told you. “Kyle coughs on the fumes when we start up. The suit doesn’t fit him right…” Already a fantastic start. “Soon as we break the sound barrier, he holds his breath.” Yeah, how did you know that if you didn’t hear it? OOOOOHHHHH. Then he feels the thrill. The thrill of flight. The thrill of spending a cozy evening with Hal Jordan. “YEAAAHAHAAA!” he shrieks with childlike glee.

“He shouts out into the stars… and finally learns how to fly.”

 

“The Day Before”

The second story begins with Kyle Rayner fighting an enormous, greasy space bug by conjuring up one of those vision thingies that the ring can do. Constructs? Is that what they’re called? It’s a polar bear, which is the natural predator of space bugs.

When the Green Lantern Corps was developed, the Guardians divided the universe up into 3600 sectors. Rayner is fighting the bug in Sector 3599 near the outer limits of the universe. Since he’s the only active Green Lantern, I guess he has to do his duty of saving all 3600 sectors from… giant bugs, I guess. A one-man wrecking crew, this guy.

Rayner smiles as he stands in a sea of other creepy crawley bugs. They’re the good guys. I’m sure they’re thanking him for eradicated the giant bug, but he can’t. He can’t speak their language of stars and moons. BUT THAT’S NOT A PROBLEM: Rayner’s Green Lantern secret decoder ring will save the day. Now let’s see here… Be Sure To Drink Your Ovaltine. Heeheehee. Also “Parallax is coming”. Yeah, no shit, we did that already.

Parallax ain’t nothing on Hal Jordan’s mind! He’s down at the airshow watching the F-15s fly around. He talks to a young boy about how he used to fly one of those bad boys until a mishap in the Air Force caused him to lose his penis and his balls. Now he just hangs around airshows talking to minors.

Suddenly, an airplane putt-putters and falls out of the sky. Hal wants to help, but the Spectre that possess him is like “fat chance, you’re not helping shit”.

Green Lantern Secret Files and Origins 2005

Boys, boys, cut out the fighting. Do I have to separate you two??

Spectre exits Hal’s body for a minute and begrudgingly saves the airplane. “Saving this man is a waste of time. He would have been welcomed into God’s Kingdom. Reunited with his father.”

Yeah, well, we’d all like to be welcomed into God’s Kingdom and reunited with our fathers, but sometimes that’s just not in the cards.

“While here in Italy – a boy rides his bike through the night and is struck DEAD by a drunk driver. The murderer has been arrested and imprisoned, but that is not enough. He must feel his insides pop open as his victim’s did. His rotten soul must be crushed like the boy’s skull. That killer will taste the vengeance of the Spectre.”

Hal does NOT like this idea. He thinks it’s rude, to say the least (and the most). “I won’t be part of your sick and demented justice!” Hal cries, even though he really has no choice in the matter. Possessed, remember? Even though he won’t cross that line, Spectre reminds him that he was the one who destroyed the Corps. He was the one who became Parallax. He needs Spectre to help fight it. He needs Spectre. And if that means we’re killing drunk drivers, then we’re killing drunk drivers. Get your coat.

NO! Still more resistance. Then Parallax takes over and jumps out of Hal’s body to taunt and mock him into a crying ball of mush.

And this is how it all began.

Final Thoughts

WHOA DOGGIES! I didn’t learn anything new, but gosh was this entertaining nonetheless. We’re going to keep moving along with the Geoff Johns run, but for now let’s see what that Batman dipshit is up to. Gotta keep rotating around or some of these superheroes might start taking it personally.


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The Eye of the World (Book 1) – Chapter 45: “What Follows in Shadow”

The Wheel of Time - Book 1 - The Eye of the World

We last left our traveling heroes at the edge of a crumbled Ways bridge! They have no way to get across on this path, and Loial starts freaking out that the Ways could crumble while they’re all in it, trapping them forever! Then Moiraine slaps him 47 times and points out that the stones around the bridge look like they’ve been weathered down over the course of years, not hours. Whew! Loial feels better! He still wants to go somewhere that’s at the end of a safer path, like such as Tar Valon. Moiraine is like NO! FAL DARA! Onward they go!

To rally the troops, Moiraine shares her feelings that Thom the gleeman isn’t actually dead. He’s still part of the Pattern, so expect him to show up in Book 9 juggling for heroin in the slums of Tear. Plus, that one Min woman’s visions had him woven into all this anyway. Mat says Min wasn’t having visions of anything other than getting reamed by Rand. Rand tells him to shove it. Rand actually wants to ream Egwene, but Egwene wants to get reamed by Aram. Then they all go to bed, and Moiraine does some magic Aes Sedai hoodwinkery to give the boys dreamless sleep.

The next day it’s more Travelin’ Thru the Ways. At some point they think they’re being followed. At another point they discover evidence that the Trollocs have been using the Ways to traverse the continent more quickly, proving that there’s a Waygate in the Blight. So that sucks. Later, Rand thinks he hears wind. In the Ways, that can only mean one thing: Machin Shin. The Black Wind.

Uh oh! Uh oh! Uh oh! Uh oh! They start running! Running running running! Escape the wrath of the wind! They make it to their Waygate, which is locked, so Moiraine attempts to blast it wide open as the wind gets closer and closer. Finally, they charge through the now-opened gate as Moiraine channels the One Power to send the wind some other way. I’ll tell ya, I live in Chicago. There’s no way that the wind in the Ways is more dangerous than the wind here in January.

The Black Wind has voices that say creepy things about stripping flesh from their bones and crocheting them into ugly Christmas sweaters. When asked what the Black Wind is exactly, Moiraine responds that she doesn’t know. Only that it’s either a trapped entity or one that was born within the degradation. Either way, don’t fuck with the Black Wind.

They’ve reached their destination of Fal Dara. I don’t remember what they want to do there! Maybe there’s a mall.


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Invincible, Issue #4

* Part 4 of 4 of the Family Matters storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Invincible, Issue #4! In the previous installment, Mark gets to hang out with his dad doing superhero stuff! They find a platoon of aliens emerging from a portal, which they fight for a little bit before the aliens get old and wither before their eyes. They retreat. Easy stuff, very anticlimactic.

Later, when Omni-Man flies to the mall and throws a kid with a bomb strapped to his chest up into the air. He explodes and harms no one, except for himself, but that’s the price to pay for having a bomb strapped to your chest. It’s not a moment later when a portal opens behind Omni-Man and aliens steal him through to another dimension!

So what’s next for Mark “Invincible” Grayson? Saving his father? Fondling his genitals? Choose your own adventure!

Invincible, Issue #4 [May, 2003]
Written by: Robert Kirkman

Invincible, Issue #4Robot is marveling at the technological handiwork of the robots with the video game console chips. Supremely advanced. Very impressive. Invincible interrupts his good time with a question with respect to his pulsating boner: “I’m trying to find Eve… do you know where she is?” Well, sonny, Eve and Rex are out on a “mission”, if you catch my drift. When Rex is done with his “mission” after 45 seconds, they’ll come back and you can see her then.

Invincible really really REALLY needs to talk to her, though. It’s super urgent. It’s, like, pants-wetting levels of urgency here. Someone is turning high school kids into human bombs for, you know, nefarious reasons. It’s spooky and awful. Robot already knows this because he’s perceptive and smart! Unlike Invincible, who is unobservant and dumb! Invincible is taken aback, but Robot had deduced this revelation by blah blah blahblah blahblahblah blah. He has a very lengthy explanation that I didn’t read because I have better things to do than read comics and write 2,000 words about them. I just… uh… I don’t wanna.

Eve and Rex have returned from their evening of “mission”ary-ing. “I think the mall bombings are connected to missing kids at our school,” Invincible blurts. After Eve asks who might be behind it, Robot tells them no and shut up and just go to bed and then go to school in the morning.

So they do, because Robot is the boss around here I guess. They should spray him with a dang hose.

Mark goes home to find his mother sadly watching TV at whatever ungodly hour it is. Mark’s all “what are you doing up?” and his mother is all “what are you doing up?” It’s a stalemate. “Just because you’re wearing tights doesn’t mean you don’t have a curfew,” she rebukes. Checkmate.

Of course, Mom is worried about Dad. Being whisked away to another dimension is always anxiety-riddled territory. Who knows what kind of otherworldly harems he might be missionary-ing in? “It’s going to be okay, Mom,” Mark tells her with a sincere side hug. “Don’t worry about Dad. He’ll be back…”

Yeah. In a casket.

Invincible, Issue #4

Who can think about mall bombings at a time like this? The chicken has been boiled! Like an egg. What came first? We’ll never know.

“I’m trying not to think about it,” Mark says of the mall bombings while holding a forkful of mushy chicken. Eve is less than happy about this deliberate avoidance. It’s unbecoming of a superhero, honestly. Mark argues that they have no leads. Eve agrees and puts a sock in it.

“I wish it were just a monster we could punch,” Mark sighs as they get up and dump their shitty cafeteria food in the trash. Eve agrees again. Thinking is hard!

Speaking of thinking, Mark goes to a boring class about Mayan mythology. Something about severed heads and spitting in hands to make women pregnant. Mark falls so asleep it’s so damn dull. He told Eve he was going to keep an eye on anything suspicious during class, but it’s hard to do that during some shut-eye. Mark is proving to be quite useless for this team. They should throw him down a well. Robot too after they’re done spraying him with that hose.

Mark and Eve’s talking has upset their teacher, who tells Eve that she needs to put a sock in it. He calls the two of them lovebirds, which I find rather inappropriate and is grounds for getting sprayed with the hose. In my opinion. The whole class laughs. Mark is grumpy. “She’s not my girlfriend,” he sneers. Doth protest too much, Marcus? Professor Dipshit is slightly apologetic, but he still says “muh class was interrupted”. Mark is salty. Grumpy and salty. Like Frylock from Aqua Teen Hunger Force!

Great, now things are awkward. Mark and Eve walk together in the hall with 1,000-yard stares and are likely contemplating taking each other down to the Bone Zone. Mark attempts to break the silence with uncomfortable banter, which thankfully doesn’t last long for all of our sakes! Eve gets a phone call from Robot.

Invincible, Issue #4

What’s uncomfortable? The weird warts y’all got on your noses?

“I have been using secondary operating systems to run checks on all employees of your high school. Teachers, custodians, bus drivers, everyone, and I– hold on.”

Oh boy, the SECONDARY OPERATING SYSTEMS are in use! Nerd alert!

Robot is in the middle of kicking some bad guy ass and he’s handling himself quite swimmingly. He launches back into his explanation of what he was doing, which boils down to “which adults at the school have the capacity to build a bomb?”

“Surprisingly, your physics teacher, David Hiles, is a former weapons engineer for Globaltech, a military sanctioned research firm. It’s not definitive evidence of his guilt, but I’m 99.8% sure that he’s who you’re looking for.”

DAVID HILES IT IS! Bombing kids is his modus operandi! Robot’s gonna call some cops! Mark and Eve, you two break into his house! Let’s do this thing! And after about 20 panels of them running around starting to do this thing, they finally get around to putting on their superhero jammies and doing this thing.

Invincible, Issue #4

Geek Patrol is here with our retainers and inhalers! Stand down, sir!

“What should we do now?” Invincible asks as they fly away.

“Ask him questions, I guess… according to Robot the police should be on the way. How dangerous could he be?”

They fly to David Hiles’ house. A completely egregious continuity error occurs, because Hiles is the same teacher who was explaining Mayan mythology. Apparently, physics teachers teach Mayan mythology at Carl Winslow High School.

“Well, I didn’t expect to get caught quite this early, and I certainly expected… more conventional authorities when the time did come,” Hiles drawls as he invites them in. He calls them by their Christian god-given names, which surprises them even though Eve doesn’t even wear a mask and Mark looks like a Mark-shaped bug. “Follow me,” he says, leading them into the basement, “I’ll show you the fourth missing student. I assure you, I have no intention of resisting.”

Well ain’t that ducky? “You see…” Hiles begins his sob story, “…it was the constant pestering and belittling from things like what you see before you that caused my son to commit suicide. My son’s suicide resulting in my divorce… and my divorce led me to losing my job.”

There’s an unconscious kid strapped with a bomb in the basement. His name is Derek. I know this because Invincible screams “DEREK!”.

Hiles just keeps talking and talking like one of those dumb villains. His sad little life was destroyed and he’s, apparently, taking it out on children. “Children that spend too much time at the mall… attend parties… consume alcohol… and play sports, when they should be studying and doing homework.” Wow, what a wet blanket. Wet with piss, no less.

Invincible, Issue #4

Gimme a kiss!!

So he turned these kids into bombs. A disproportionate response, but hey? Kids suck, what can we say? They deserve to have their guts exploded all over other kids who will also explode soon. It’s poetic if you think about it really, really, REALLY hard.

“I can’t think of a more appropriate end to my crusade…” Hiles rips open his shirt, revealing the Superman logo! Or a bomb. “…than the death of two superheroes!”

39 seconds left, but Invincible is tired of all the blithering and blathering from Unabomber Jones! He grabs the guy and flies through the roof, and we are exactly where we began at the top of Issue #1. “Y’know you really ruined my afternoon,” Invincible tells this wretched motherfucker as he flies all the way to some polar region and throws the guy like a… well, like a bomb. CHA-THOOM! We’re done here. Hiles is dead. Serves him right for calling him and Eve lovebirds. Spray him with the hose!

Invincible flies back over the Hiles’ house where Derek is getting loaded into an ambulance. “So… is it over?” he asks Eve. Whatever Eve’s superhero name is. I don’t remember. And yeah, it’s over. Robot’s gonna come by and do a sweep, the police are done. Time to go home, I guess.

Mark’s mom is still sad because her husband has probably been murdered by alternate dimension creepy crawleys.

“Hey, is Dad back yet?” Mark asks as he enters the kitchen.

“Not yet,” Mom replies glumly. “Go upstairs and clean up so we can eat. I thought I was going to have dinner alone tonight.” Pile that guilt on, Momma. It’s not like your son just saved a bunch more kids from getting killed or anything of that fashion.

Dad comes back. That’s anticlimactic. He looks sad. Mom looks sad. Everyone looks sad. It’s pretty sad.

Invincible, Issue #4

One big happy family!

“So…” Mom says at the table, breaking the hella awkward silence. “Anything interesting happen to either of you today?”

Mark speaks first: “I found out one of my teachers was turning my classmates into organic bombs in order to take revenge on kids he felt were like the ones who led his son to commit suicide. Apparently he turned himself into a bomb also, and tried to kill me and a friend of mine, but I flew him to Antarctica before he blew up so that he wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

Dad’s next: “I spent the last eight months enslaved by an army from an alternate dimension, although it seems much less time passed here. About a week ago I led a revolt against my captors and regained control of my powers. Today, a team of scientists from the rebellion found a way to get me home.”

…

“That’s nice,” Mom smiles vaguely. “Who’s ready for dessert?”

Final Thoughts

I’m a little bit torn on this series so far. On one hand, the story is interesting. On the other hand, the dialogue is dry and the art sucks.

That’s all you get from me.


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The Eye of the World (Book 1) – Chapter 44: “The Dark Along the Ways”

The Wheel of Time - Book 1 - The Eye of the World

This write-up is going to be shorter than usual because the group spends most of the time travelling through some Ways. The descriptions of this aren’t very entertaining.

Loial senses a Waygate in the basement of a shop, and Moiraine removes the wall to reveal the gate. Once upon a time, Waygates were vibrant and mirrorlike. This one is dim and dull. When Rand passes through the gate, he notices through the portal that those who haven’t yet travelled through the gate are moving very, very slowly. Time passes faster in the Ways. Or, rather, “the Wheel turns faster”.

They travel up and down and all around the Ways, going through passages and traversing bridges and going up and down various ramps. Loial leads the way. Eventually, they come to an impasse: A big, jagged break in the path that descends into nothingness. Everyone is sad. The end.


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Death Note, Vol. 2, Chapter 10 – “Confluence”

* Part 2 of 9 of Vol. 2 – “Confluence” *

Welcome to Manga Cum Loudly Presents: Death Note, Vol. 2, Chapter 10: “Confluence”! In the previous installment, Raito’s dad spills the beans about his involvement with the dangerous Kira, and that’s probably gonna be some foreshadowing with respect to his eventual, untimely, gruesome death!

The rest of the pages are filled with Raito’s scheme to milk Raye Penber with all the information that he needs to kill an entire group of American FBI agents. One of them was named Knick Staek. I immediately went downtown and changed my name to this and I’m drowning in an unprecedented amount of pussy as we speak.

So with the entire FBI squad out of the picture, Raito is certainly safe now, right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right?

Right-O! Tee hee.

Death Note, Vol. 2, Ch. 10
Written by: Tsugumi Ohba
Illustrated by: Takeshi Obata
“Confluence”

Death Note, Vol. 2, Ch. 10

Look at the sultry lady on the cover, complete with a kickass leather jacket and a can-do attitude! “For love…she treads on.” Could this be Raye Penber’s fiancée, out for revenge? Wearing her revenge jacket? Keep in treadin’, ma’am. Keep on treadin’.

A woman speaks to a bus driver outside the front of a bus. She shows the bus driver the photo of the young couple. “Yeah, that’s him,” the bus driver confirms…sorta, “The other passengers… I really don’t remember. I’m not positive, but it’s probably him.”

Awesome testimony sir! I can jot these notes down and wipe my butthole with it, as it will be put to better use.

“He boarded alone and yelled ‘Get down!’” he claims. Yeah, get down with your bad self. The bus driver then, honestly, tells the woman that he has no fucking idea who anyone was and what anyone did. He was too busy peeing his pants to take a look at anything. He wouldn’t even know any of them if he saw any of them. Does that help?

Great. Thanks. The woman walks away. “If I’m right, Kira was one of those passengers. And if that’s the case, that may mean that on this bus route…”

Revenge it is! A dish best served cold, they say. Penber’s unnamed fiancée is doing her own little snoopy investigation. Why doesn’t this woman have a name? Gotta be kidding me here.

While Unnamed Woman is on her mission, Raito reads a newspaper at his kitchen table. He’s probably enjoying the latest Garfield strip! That crazy cat! He loves the lasagna! “Raito, Sayu, help me with the winter cleaning,” his mom says while vacuuming.

I’m sorry, the “winter cleaning”, Mother? While Jon Arbuckle is falling down on the treadmill? Go entirely fuck yourself with your less-important business.

Death Note, Vol. 2, Ch. 10

Oh no, not Kouhaku! You can’t go up against Kouhaku! That would be Kou-razy!

It must be New Year’s Eve, because that’s when Kouhaku airs. I looked it up and it sounds like Japanese Idol, only it happens for a few hours before midnight and the winner gets to *squints* be launched into the sun with a very expensive rocket. And other stations are trying to compete with it? Utter nonsense!

Sayu wants to watch the Sun-Launching Japanese Idol Super Show. Raito tells him to tape the Kira broadcast for him. Dad’s not home because the Kira business is making him work all night at the office. Boning secretaries and eating pizza and watching singers burn up in the glowing orb in the sky

Here he is now! “We may be killed by Kira,” he says to his men. Why is this moron doing actual work right now? “The fact that members of the FBI were killed means that he will murder anyone who opposes him, in addition to criminals.”

Yeah, we know. It’s been like nine weeks of this. We know already. What are you even getting paid for?

Mr. Director Raito’s Dad allows anyone who doesn’t want to work on the case anymore to get reassigned. No penalties. No demotions. If you have family and friends BUT you’d rather be dead, stick around! I don’t blame ya.

Death Note, Vol. 2, Ch. 10

My meeting will be about firing everyone who doesn’t want to work on the case! Ha ha ha! That’s called power!

Director Yagami walks silently, alone, to his meeting. Something is fishy here. It smells like fish and I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. And I like fish. That’s how fishy this is.

Ok, it’s not fishy. It’s just a regular meeting. He returns to his “Get Reassigned if You Want To” room and there are only five people left. Blinky, Pinky, Inky, Clyde, and… Jonesy.

“Only five men,” Director Yagami furrows his brow meanly, “…no, five men who are willing to put their lives on the line to confront evil.”

Yeah, whatever man. This shit’s in the bag. I ain’t afraid of no psycho killer who can kill anyone automatically without even being there! Let’s get to work. Who wants some Hungry Man dinners? I’m buyin’!

“Including me, that makes six,” Yagami says, making it about him all of a sudden. But how are they going to do anything with only six people? How are the going to fudge all the paperwork? That’s an eight-man job!

Some smiley guy chimes in. “Director, if you include L and Watari, that makes eight.”

GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE! WHO SAID YOU CAN TALK?! OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT!!!

But yeah, you’re right.

“Hold on a minute,” pipes in Frowny Guy; he looks like Tony Shaloub, “L says that he trusts us, but we don’t trust him!”

Yeah, who’s this “we” business? Oh, the whole room. I mean, they’re all on board with trying to catch Kira. They’re all on board with doing what it takes to get him. They’re all on board with the grim fact that they might DIE in this pursuit. But where do they draw the line? L ordering them around without even showing his face!

And hey, I don’t know if L noticed, but there’s blood of 12 FBI agents on his hands. Not a good track record in the *checks watch* six days since this investigation began! He’s a real slut.

Director Yagami thinks his irate, incel men have a fair point. After all, L was the one who ordered the FBI here in the first place. Only he, around these parts, would’ve known who they were before they snuffed in Death Note-style! Ergo, L is a person of interest (implying that he’s at all interesting, which I do not condone).

Death Note, Vol. 2, Ch. 10

Moe, Larry, and Curly are starting to finally wise up a little bit.

Yagami gives L an ultimatum: get the fuck out of your mother’s basement and come help them in person, or take your Doritos and Mountain Dew elsewhere! There will be no trust long distance like this. Those relationships never work!

Time for L to play his hand. He has many hands. He’s going to play one now. Here it goes! Watari, turn the laptop around. No, that’s too far. Look, man, who taught you how to spin a laptop? Does L have to go there and do it himself? Jesus.

Instead of talking, L pulls up his AOL Instant Messenger window and chats with the room: “what happens from now on must be kept between the eight of us.”

OOOOOOOOHHH, SECRETS! No one can resist a good secret! Let’s have it! Spill! The detectives in the room are simply rapt with glistening attention! Even Director Yagami is agape with anticipation, conjuring up a thought balloon with a large “?” in it.

L types out a whole novel for them to read. It boils down to this: fuck you all, I’m not showing any of you my ravishing mug unless you earn it. Keep your family and friends out of our business forever. That also means the rest of your doughnut-eating colleagues. If you can’t handle that shit, then leave. For the rest of you, let’s move on.

Later, the Stupendous Six hold their own meeting in the hallway. “I’d rather forget partnering with L and just continue the investigation independently,” says one. “Given the way he works, we may end up meeting a double instead of the real L.”

Yeah, because the real L is a goddamned 14-year-old. He’s communicating to you all through his Xbox Series X.

Death Note, Vol. 2, Ch. 10

Because he’s in over his head on this one. A goddamned 17-year-old is besting a goddamned 14-year-old! Why are you all so dumb about this?

One dissenter believes that L is vital to their investigation. L should be involved at all costs, even if he’s on a couch jerkin’ it to episodes of Sailor Moon instead of paying attention to the lives of FBI agents, let alone pissant Japanese police detectives.

Yagami thinks and paces and hems and haws. “L has said since the start that he needs our assistance for the case,” he ponders. In fact, you might say that he orchestrated this whole situation! Just the eight of us and our little love-in, singing Kumbaya and eating S’mores. All the naysayers defected. One by one, they left. Now the TRUE BELIEVERS are left! The Chosen! The cool kids!

They all shuffle silent in either shame or boredom.

“In any case, if we’re going to work with L then I’m gone,” says one nameless loser. He walks away. Gone. And then there were seven. Sort of. Counting Watari and L. “But don’t worry. I’m not going to follow you guys or try to figure out L’s true identity,” he adds, exposing a little too much of his own hand. He’s got trip sevens. Not a very good hand at all.

The rest of the loyal team does an about-face and returns to the laptop full of juicy secret messages. It reads, missed capitalization and all, “Right now i’m in a room at the Teito hotel.”

Ooooh, sexy!

“I’ll be moving from hotel to hotel every few days.”

Ooooh, sneaky!

“From now on, the police building is only a headquarters in name.”

Ooooh, uncompromising!

“Instead, the true headquarters will be my hotel room.”

Ooooh, sexy!

Death Note, Vol. 2, Ch. 10

It’s orgy time, gentlemen. Pack a lunch.

Here’s the final set of instructions: split into two groups and meet by midnight, before the dang ball drops. Get the room number from Watari. Precautions must be taken so that Kira doesn’t see L’s ugly, pimply face. So they mustn’t be all together at the same time. You dig?

L, meanwhile, stares wistfully out his hotel room window. Nice view. Must be a penthouse suite. Stole money out of dad’s wallet again.

“Kira… for now we’ll just say we’re getting closer to each other,” L says to no one in particular. The window, I suppose. “Only now I have a clue about you given to me by the noble lives of the twelve FBI agents you sacrificed. Fine. For the first time I will reveal myself as L.”

Yeah, ok, for the first time you’ll reveal yourself as L. Sure. You should probably check as far back as Chapter 2, nerd.

L knows Kira can’t kill him if he doesn’t know his name. He says it out loud again. We’ve been through this 100 million fucking times already. No wonder this series is 108 chapters, it’s overflowing with clutter. You could trim this down to four chapters and still be annoyed by its repetitiveness.

And, of course, L can’t convict Kira if there’s no shred of physical evidence to prove anything. An impasse!

In the Yagami household, Ryuuku is watching the Kira news reports on a really tiny TV. The TV is making sounds like “CHEER” and “ROAR” so that you know the Kira news reports are a real ruckus.

Death Note, Vol. 2, Ch. 10

Ridiculous. This “humans are interesting” opinion is the least believable part of this whole notebook-kills-people story!

Raito thinks about inanities such as “why am I thinking of myself as a suspect these days?” and “how do I corner L into a corner?” and “what should I do next?” It’s like, do your homework you little delinquent.

“This is where the real fight begins,” he says ominously in a shadow. Oh good, I’m looking forward to a real fight. Raito will snap like a twig.

Two detectives, including Yagami, enter L’s hotel and make their way to his hotel room (where I imagine petals are being strewn about the bed as we speak). They rap on the door.

“L is on the other side of this door,” Yagami thinks, in case you forgot the path of the plot from three pages ago.

“I’ve been expecting you. Please come in,” L says, in case you forgot the path of the plot from three pages ago.

“AT LAST, THE FACE OF L!?”

Final Thoughts

Oh jumping Jesus, I can’t wait to see who it could be! I hope it’s George Foreman. That guy fucks.


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