Action Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #7 – “Superman’s Doomsday Decision” / “Meanwhile…”

* Part 7 of 8 of the Superman and the Men of Steel storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Action Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #7 – “Superman’s Doomsday Decision” • “Meanwhile…”! Yet another two-story issue, but I’m TOLD (or else) that we’re returning to the events of the main story. In the previous two installments (Issue #5 was the better of the two, Issue #6 was a dreadful abortion), we got some backstory about Superman’s sole journey from his destroyed home planet Krypton and his crash-landing on Earth. We also got a bit of backstory on Jonathan Kent and Martha Clark, Superman’s adoptive parents, and their history of infertility. There was also this whole fucking story about Superman’s ship getting its Kryptonite engine stolen and the Legion of Superheroes time travelling to help get it back that really ruined my enjoyment of life and reading and having eyeballs and I hope to never encounter such an atrocity again.

The real story, the one that is now continuing from Issue #4, involves some sort of Krypton virus thing that infiltrated Earth and corrupted a bunch of robots. There was a battle with robots that ended with most of Metropolis disappearing into some alternate-reality alien preservation containment thing. Superman is outside of this alien preservation containment thing, and Lois Lane and Lux Luthor are not, and Sam Lane wants Superman to help rescue these people (ESPECIALLY Lois Lane, being his daughter and all, not necessarily Lex Luthor, but whatever I guess, if you must).

And here’s the rest of that story.

Action Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #7 [May, 2012]
Written by: Grant Morrison
“Superman’s Doomsday Decision”

♫ City in a Bottle, yeah ♫♫ I’m sending out an S.O.S ♫♫ I’m sending out an S.O.S… ♫

The issue starts on the bridge, hopefully where we last left off on that particular part of the story, but this is Grant Morrison’s House of Whims and Chaotic Storytelling, who the fuck actually knows? Superman says he can see the alien spaceship that bottled up the city with his zoom vision, which Sam Lane snorts at and asks him to at least take some guns. “Guns are for sissies, General Lane” responds Superman, which gets him cancelled quicker than a *slur* on a *slur*! Sam Lane is still skeptical of Superman’s abilities and KINDLY REMINDS HIM that he can only go 600 mph anyway, and Dr. Irons estimates a needed velocity of 25,000 mph to do whatever the hell it is that he needs to do. Superman’s all “Challenge Accepted!” and starts galloping away.

As he runs at full-speed toward a make-shift launch ramp fashioned out of a flatbed dump truck, his shoes are hella falling apart, but I guess that doesn’t matter much otherwise to show the audience that he ran really, really fast. He successfully runs 42 times faster than he ever has in his life and makes it into space. He’s outfitted with a dang oxygen mask even though the rest of his body is completely exposed, which would render the mask completely pointless. But hey, I’m not the one writing this shitty comic book.

He gets absolutely fucking electrocuted on his way to the robot octopus ship, but he otherwise makes it there uneventfully. Once he’s there the robots immediately attempt to subdue and bottle him up, but Superman shoots his eyeball lasers at them. Other robots continue their battle cries of “SECURE.”, “PRESERVE.” and “COMPLETE THE COLLECTION.” while Superman looks for clues as to the whereabouts of the missing city. He wanders into a room full of giant jars with entire cities sealed and kept fresh, not a trace of botulism. That’s some nice canning.

He peers into one that houses a familiar city. “This is the place from my dream.” he says, brow furrowed like the amazing genius he appears to be and constantly proves time and time again. He has a brief glimmer of a memory about his life as a Krypton baby.

Kevin Spacey maintains his snark in even the most dire of situations. Now try it after getting #MeToo’d.

Meanwhile, in the Metropolis pickle jar, Lois Lane shakes her accusing finger at Lex Luthor. “I should have known you’d be involved in this, you bald bitch!” she should have said. Luthor remains calm and makes a snarky comment about how all the New Troy residents ended up on the streets of New Troy at the same time during a crisis. I don’t remember hearing about New Troy before but I’m sure it was name dropped 500 times over the last few issues and I was too busy drooling catatonically. One of the army soldiers that was with Luthor says “Hey, it’s just like Under the Dome or the Simpsons Movie”, so it’s nice to see that Stephen King exists in this universe. Luther tries to assess the situation, noting that he recognized the phrase “dwarf star lensing” as only being used by some smarty man named Professor Raymond Palmer during testing related to…uh…shrinkage. Luthor surmises that they have been shrunkaged. While Lane borrows Luthor’s binoculars, bowlcut Jimmy Olsen tries to point out the robot spiders that suddenly appear to be advancing on the hapless, bottled-up gang of sad-sacks. Panic ensues.

A group runs to the Glenmorgan hotel where Glen “Morgan” Glenmorgan himself is having a drink at the bar, wondering what the FUCK all the ruckus is about. Meanwhile, I don’t even care about that, I learn in this scene that his name is ALEXANDER Luthor! Are you kidding me? AHHHHAHAHA, JESUS! I never thought about that before. Luthor pulls out a phone, declaring that he has “the alien’s cellphone number on ringback”, whatever the hell that means in 2011, and Lois gets indignant and suspicious again about Luthor’s involvement in this whole dang mess.

Damnit, you can’t bullshit a bullshitter! I will double-bullshit you right back!

While Lex Luthor talks to some alien or something, Glenmorgan has a conversation with the bartender. Glenmorgan recognizes him. The bartender agrees that he should indeed recognize him. They start talking about silk ties, whatever, I don’t have time for this! Luthor argues with the alien that they had a deal: his survival in exchange for Superman. The alien argues that the deal has been honored. A robot spider breaks into the hotel; the army men shoot it with bullets from their bullet-shooting guns. Just outside the window the crew sees a giant motherfucking Superman guy. It’s Superman. Superman is peering into the bottle holding Metropolis or New Troy or Gotham City or Riverdale or who gives a shit.

Superman loudly demands to know who these alien entities are. They explain to him that they are colony of the Collector of Worlds are known as different names on different worlds: Yod-Colu -> C.O.M.P.U.T.O., Noma -> Pneumenoid, Bryak -> Mind2, Krypton -> Brainiac 1.0, Earth -> The Internet. Wuzza wuzza WHAAA?! They shove Superman into the side of the Metropolis/New Troy bottle, shaking the bejesus out of it. Superman asks what they want from him, and they simply say that the collection is incomplete without him. And, apparently, when these internet aliens tell him that he was born on Krypton, Superman is flabbergasted. I guess he doesn’t know this yet? Even I know this and I don’t know nuthin’! Keep up, smartypants.

The aliens refer to Superman as a “Level 8 Cuckoo raised on alien soil by Level 3 primitives”, which I think gives Earthlings too much credit. As an experiment of nature vs. nurture, the aliens decide to cut off life support for both the Kandor bottle and the Metropolis bottle, and instruct Superman to decide which one he’s more loyal to and wants to save. Kind of funny, you know, considering that all these aliens want to do is preserve these communities and now they’re playing some passive-aggressive game with Superman with them instead. Seems dumb. But hey, as I said before, I’m not the one writing this shitty comic book.

Superman gets all desperately high and mighty, refusing to choose. The aliens dangle the pros and cons in his face. If he saves the Kryptonian city, maybe someday he can restore the city, mingle among his people, and no longer be alone. If he saves the Earth city, ehhhhhh, I guess the people that are scared of him can continue being scared of him, making shitty weapons that don’t work to try to kill him all the time!

Stay tuned for more Feral Superman after these messages.

Since all the yokels in the Metropolis bottle can hear this conversation, they start manipulating this Level 8 Cuckoo by chanting his name over and over again. Personally, I’d smash that Earth bottle right then and there, but Superman is pretty stupid like a Level 1 Bog Beast and starts to feel slightly bad for all of them. Then he spots his beloved ship in the army truck in the bottle. “Okay. I made my choice.” Superman declares. The bottled-up Metropolis shitheads start getting mad thinking that Superman’s choosing Krypton-Bottle, but then Superman starts stripping and tells the aliens that bringing him onto their ship was akin to swallowing poison to see how it tastes. He’s still mad that these aliens were endangering lives to prove a point, so I’m guessing Superman’s going to start Hulking out or something. He takes the indestructible Superman suit that the aliens were holding onto, but I don’t remember that happening! I’ll take this issue’s word for it!

Luthor is still yelling into his phone. The alien informs him that both Krypton and Earth are doomed and their respective bottle cities are slated for permanent microstasis. Superman announces that he will be fighting for the honor of both worlds, and both cities have to go back to where they came from if he wins! The Level 2 Slugface is informed that the worlds are fucking gone, idiot. Well, Krypton is. Earth is not really fucking gone yet, but it’s getting there. Any second now. Yep…yeah…

Hold on, it’s happening…

Wait for it…

OK, in the next issue I guess.

“Meanwhile…”
Written by: Sholly Fisch

Ha, “Meanwhile”. Even Sholly Fisch is like “this is taking too goddamn long, it’s my turn again”.

Right away I’m thankful that Fisch explains to me what New Troy is. The heart of Metropolis! The center of business! The center of entertainment! Home to millions of people. MILLIONS! I’m new at comics, Grant Morrison, you gotta spoon-feed it to me instead of, you know, throwing characters at me named things like “Vxrpt” and “Kpl” while telling stories out of order.

This story is recapping the sudden disappearance of New Troy and Superman launching himself into space. While Superman is fucking around in space, there’s still stuff going down on Earth, and DR. JOHN HENRY IRONS takes this opportunity to start horning in on the superhero action! STEEL, baby. The DC Comics version of Iron Man, a literal ripoff who first appeared 30 years after Iron Man first appeared. Sad!

But, at this time, Steel doesn’t actually have a superhero name yet. He tells a guy on the bridge to call him “John”.

“There’s just one problem with suspension bridges: they start to fall apart when there’s nothing to suspend them.” he narrates, smartly.

As he’s avoiding falling debris trying to hold the bridge up — helmetless — he says he needs a helmet.

I promise I won’t drop it from thirty feet off the ground! Heh heh. Whoops! Uh.

When people approach the destroyed bridge trying to get into New Troy to see their families, that reminds “John” that he wants to call his family. He borrows someone’s phone and calls his niece. He spends a minute profoundly confusing her over the phone and then says “gotta go”.

As water starts flooding the hole left by the emptiness of New Troy’s disappearance, a ferry is caught up in the rushing waters. “John” uses the power of physics to push the ferry and redirect its course out of the way of the hole. “Who says you don’t need physics in the real world?” he says, like an asshole.

He realizes that there’s too much to do and being a superhero is hard. “Is this how Superman feels?” asks the guy who has been a self-labelled superhero for 15 minutes.

He sees the people of Metropolis pitching in to help each other out, which buoys his spirits. One guy is making a “what the fuck are you looking at?” face at him.

He concludes that it doesn’t take one hero. It takes millions!

I’m fucking puking right now.

Final Thoughts

I think I hate Action Comics! What a load of smarmy, cloying trash! Superman sucks shit! Steel is useless! I’m never reading this again!

See you in the next issue!

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Full of Hell, Parquet Courts, and Gojira

What’s up, nerds? Today I have albums from Full of Hell, Parquet Courts, and Gojira.

2022 is right around the corner and I still have 950 albums to review! But I’m optimistic.

Full of Hell – Garden of Burning Apparitions
(October 1, 2021)

20 minutes and 54 seconds is all you get from the fifth album by noisy grindcore outfit Full of Hell. That’s all you get and that’s all you need.

Grindcore’s purpose is to take you for a fucking ride. Garden of Burning Apparitions is a harsh and vicious, calamitous ride from beginning to end. The drumming is tumultuous. The guitars are restless, constantly cutting around abrupt turns, not sure whether to stick with sharply-edged technical riffing, or thick and sludgy pulsations, or everything in between. There may be a surprise around any corner: a bleating, squealing saxophone here, an atonal acoustic plucking of strings there. Sometimes there’s reverb, a lot of the time there’s feedback. Sometimes the music is so distorted into oblivion that it burrows into the speakers, bubbling and cracking with inhuman frequencies. There are so many goddamn ideas packed into this record that I would think even your grandmother could speak to its diversity.

Typical of grindcore “songs”, most of the tracks don’t crack the two-minute mark. Exceptions include “Derelict Satellite”, featuring three minutes of brutally chaotic screeching and clanging with an overlay of disgustingly sticky static, and the closer “Celestial Hierarch”. And although the lyrics are often intelligible, they’re sophisticated, philosophical and poetic. “The lines are blurring before my waking eyes/What worth has a tarnished soul in a multiverse chasm?” Oh man, I’m weeping already. It’s so beautiful.

This album isn’t going to change anyone’s life, probably, unless you’re a major outcast in your high school. But if you’re craving a quick burst of unbridled, skunky grindcore aggression before moving onto some Lucy Dacus, this is the 2021 album for you.

Early Verdict:

Parquet Courts – Sympathy for Life
(October 22, 2021)

You better believe I was excited about Sympathy for Life when I heard that the band was going full-David Byrne. I’ve been following Parquet Courts since Light Up Gold, and it’s been a real trip keeping up with each new release over the years. I’ve always appreciated the perfect balance they strike between indie rock and post-punk, and their willingness to keep casting a wider and wider net in order to drag in and incorporate additional styles.

I wouldn’t say the band is “lacking urgency” on Sympathy for Life, because that implies that they’re starting to phone it in. Which they aren’t. This record is ambitious. But it’s definitely more relaxed than we’re all used to, as evident by atypical slower-burners like “Marathon of Anger” (the most Talking Heads-y of tracks) and “Trullo”. Semblances of the old Parquet Courts are infrequent, but they’re there. The opener “Walking at a Downtown Pace” has a familiar muscular swagger, and the closer “Pulcinella” is standard fare balladry. “Homo Sapien” is the most obvious imprint of the old band; it sounds like something right out of Sunbathing Animal from 2014.

Almost everything else charts new territory, bringing in strong early-’80s synth-peppered worldbeat characters and rhythms. I can pinpoint direct influences from almost everything. The previously mentioned “Marathon of Anger” is addictive and multi-layered with funky slap bass, hazy guitar lines, atmospheric synthesizer drones, and plenty of electronic bleepin’ and bloopin’. It’s heavily inspired by Talking Heads’ Remain in Light and Speaking in Tongues, and during the chorus Andrew Savage sounds like Byrne while Austin Brown sounds like Morrissey. Or the other way around? Hard to tell, they both sound the same. “Just Shadows” is a chunky waltz that sounds like a Dukes of Stratosphear-era XTC song, with psychedelic garage guitar and a VERY Andy Partridge vocal style during its chorus. “Plant Life” is exactly the kind of Adrian-Belew-talking-over-a-hypnotic-worldbeat-groove that you get from “Thela Hun Ginjeet” off of King Crimson’s Discipline. Exactly. It’s a damn near-ripoff, actually, it least in terms of the concept. I like it, though! It gets a pass because I’m biased as fuck.

That’s enough words. This is a fun album! Parquet Courts always delivers.

Early Verdict:

Gojira – Fortitude
(April 30, 2021)

Much to the chagrin of their fanbase, Gojira do not like to make the same album twice. And with Fortitude, they’re leaning harder than ever into their transition from a hazy technical death metal band to a straight alt-rock/stoner metal band. Before long, maybe in three or four more albums, they’ll be indistinguishable from Mastodon…or godforbid, Queens of the Stone Age! Eek!

Nobody should be too surprised, Gojira has been an assorted grab bag of influences from the start. Their djenty riffs drew Meshuggah comparisons. Their groovy swagger drew Pantera comparisons. Their slow, atmospheric sprawls drew Neurosis comparisons. And Gojira could always homogenize these elements masterfully. Fortitude is an optimistic post-pandemic album. It’s a record very much grounded to Earth, bringing desperate laments of turmoil to the table while questing for the brighter side. Like a more technical Katatonia: progressive doom metal, perhaps? Said of Joe Duplantier, the band’s vocalist and producer, in an interview with a French-Canadian publication: “In an uncertain world, chaotic, I choose optimism by default.” The previous studio album, Magma, focused on the grief of loss following the death of Joe and Mario Duplantier’s mother, but now they’re ready to rise above and find the joy in life again. HOW INSPIRING. And if you’re not all-in by the time you reach the powerful, spiritual first lines of “Hold On” (“I’ve been grinding and grinding/Oh, ocean have mercy“), then you’re not going to like it.

This positivity is evident in tracks like “Amazonia” and “The Chant”. The former has the album’s most experimental and distinctive characteristic: the bouncy boinging sound effect. A true psychedelic desert rock experience! “The Chant” is introduced by the previous interlude, “Fortitude”, which sounds almost like a reflective, patient, gospel tune. “The Chant” is entirely clean singing, bringing to mind Opeth’s similar transition from death metal to progressive rock.

There’s plenty of the familiar Gojira to be heard here; lots of intricate drum fills and those slippery guitar breakdowns that I’ve come to associate with the Gojira sound. For people like me who’d rather hear a band continue to evolve in any direction with each successive album, Fortitude is yet another solid entry in a solid catalogue. For people who’d rather have their bands make the same album 25 times, there are millions of other metal bands doing just that as well. Hey, there’s a new Dream Theater for you. Go listen to that smoldering turd.

Early Verdict:

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Daredevil (Vol. 2), Issue #1 – “And a Child Shall Lead Them All”

* Part 1 of 8 of the Guardian Devil storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Daredevil (Vol. 2), Issue #1 (Legacy Issue #381) – “And a Child Shall Lead Them All”! In 1998, for the first time since Daredevil’s initial appearance in 1964 (and 380 issues later), the series was rebooted and relaunched as Issue #1…sorta. Legacy numbering was somewhat maintained, and after #119 issues of Volume 2 the series picked up where it left off at #500 in 2009. For this reason, I’ll note the Vol. 2 issue numbering and the legacy numbering for each issue. You’re goddamned welcome is what you are.

My only encounter with Daredevil in my entire life was when I barely paid attention to the 2003 Ben Affleck movie. I don’t remember anything about it except that he was blind. I don’t even fucking remember that he was a lawyer. That part is also important.

That’s all the preamble I can offer. That’s everything I know about this guy. I’m reading this series now because Matthew Murdock showed up in my readthrough of the first Alias story arc and, I figured, why the hell not? Let’s jump right in and learn more about this blind bastard!

Daredevil (Vol. 2), Issue #1 (Legacy Issue #381) [November, 1998]
Written by: Kevin Smith
“And a Child Shall Lead Them All”

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. WHOA. Hold on. Kevin Smith? THAT Kevin Smith? No one warned me about this ahead of time! I hate Kevin Smith and his oversized hockey jerseys and his kicked-off-a-plane-for-being-fat fat face and his lost-700-pounds-after-a-heart-attack feeble emaciated fuckin’ face, god fucking damnit. At least it was just this eight-issue story arc, but MAN this is probably going to be a hard sell for me now. God damnit. Uggghhh.

The issue begins with a long-ass letter addressed to Matthew Murdock from some woman named Karen Page. Apparently Murdock is a man of faith (as if Kevin Smith’s involvement didn’t make me groan enough already), and Karen Page was not. Not a man of faith, that is. Not a man of anything, I would assume! “When you go to Hell, I won’t be able to rescue you” Murdock would tease her. Page tells Murdock in the letter that she took a job at a morning radio station in Los Angeles, and that their relationship has been rocky lately anyway ever since he had to, uh, clear her of murder charges? I guess in the back of his mind, Murdock thinks there’s a possibility that she’s actually guilty, and this in turn makes her feel guilty about making him feel this way even when he puts 120% into helping her at every turn. Sounds like she’s a murderer to me! Such a Karen. Total Karen move, too, to write this whole letter out knowing he can’t fucking read it.

Moving on, narration drops some New York City facts on us: there’s a child born every 8 minutes, there are 218 hospitals that can barely accommodate this rate of population growth, every maternity ward is staffed with 8 – 12 nurses at any given moment, at least twice a day these nurses ruminate about needing a lighter workload, and at 11:49pm they get their wish! A nurse enters a maternity ward, says “Oh my…God!” and then “AAAUUGGHH!” behind the closed door.

Moving on, narration drops some high school student Gwyneth facts on us: she used to hate gym class, used to blame her period on a weekly basis and sit out, used to think her low gym marks were worth it, used to think that there would be no use for running and track after high school ended anyway, but now she’s running with a baby cradled in her arms wishing she had tried harder in gym glass. The 16-year-old’s parents were killed by some unknown men, and now they are chasing her and her baby down the streets of New York in a car for some unknown reason.

Don’t these dumbass criminal pieces of shit crack open a book once in a while? Or watch Clerks or Mallrats??

Kevin Smith sure likes to talk and write.

We cut to a Catholic church where Murdock is in one of those confession booths where the priest can slip his dick through if he wants to. He confesses that his girlfriend broke up with him six months ago and he’s having a hard time lately “remembering the Lord”. While the priest blah-blah-blahs a response, Murdock uses his Spidey-Sense to pick up on hapless teenage Gwyneth’s current peril. The priest still talks as Murdock tears off his civilian clothes and rushes out into the city, ending with “all it requires is a leap of faith”.

The next thing that happens is that Daredevil punches through the windshield of the car chasing Gwyneth and her baby. As he’s grabbing the driver by the shirt, he talks about his special metal-fiber windshield-proof costume and the fact that any damage done in the city during his crime-fighting is covered by the $1,000,000,000/year insurance policy that he helped broker for the city because he feels bad about all that damage that he does in the city during his crime-fighting. Catholic guilt!

Now that his threat is neutralized, the adrenaline rush goes away. Murdock thought a trip to the ol’ church would lift the spirits, but crazily enough it didn’t! As he turns to try to find the girl, he realizes that she’s gone. Daredevil’s irked! Now he has to explain to the police why he punched through a windshield for seemingly no reason! That’s an LOL.

Later, at the Law Offices of Sharpe, Nelson and Murdock (lol again that Murdock gets third-billing at his law firm), Murdock is at his desk moping about his breakup. He grapples with the irony that a self-proclaimed “man without fear” took an hour to drum up courage to get an item from the bathroom at his apartment that was designated as “her bathroom”. He finally decides to pick up his desk phone and call an old ex, Natasha, and before he dials he’s interrupted by “Foggy” Nelson (second-billed!), who arrives in his office with a woman named Lydia McKenzie primed and ready for some good ol’ fashioned divorce proceedings! Murdock instantly uses his heightened senses to determine that McKenzie’s pulse did not increase, meaning that McKenzie will not be a prospective girlfriend. Oh well, incel!

As Murdock talks to McKenzie, he suddenly senses the same heartbeat patterns he felt earlier from Gwyneth and her baby. He leaves McKenzie talking and trailing off as he walks away from her silently like some sort of ASSHOLE. He gets outside his building and realizes that he lost the trail again.

I hate it when it rains in the elevator and I forget to pack a fucking umbrella.

Meanwhile, across town, the two men that were in the car chasing teenagers and babies around are getting chastised by their bald and surly boss in a nice corner office. The two men take their lumps and leave, with Mr. Boss Man now considering getting involved in whatever it is that they’re doing since a) the girl got away, and b) Daredevil has been included in this situation. As he’s contemplating his next moves, we see these two dejected men drown as the elevator they’re taking gets filled with water. Mr. Boss Man tells his assistant / lackey / muscle / lover(?), Mr. Gabriel, that he had better shape up or ship out! Straighten up a fly right! If only I knew any goddamn Kevin Smith movie references that I can pepper this commentary with. MAGIC EYE SAILBOATS! Bleh.

Later in the evening, Daredevil is Daredevilishly prancing around the night in pursuit of this elusive teenage mama. As he’s hopping around buildings in impossibly provocative poses, he laments his failed relationship. “I tried never to judge you…” he says about Karen Page, like a good judgy Christian. Now, I don’t know how Murdock went blind yet, but he mentions an “isotope” which leads me to believe that it was radiation-related? He gets all sad that his other senses are so heightened that he can never remove Karen’s scent fully from his bedsheets, or uhhh I dunno, this is Kevin Smith, right? Why didn’t he mention something gross here like her period blood?? RIGHT?? Hhahah!! As he’s looking for the teenage runaway, he gets distracted by some rapey guy in the alley that’s attempting a real rapey good time. Daredevil hits him with some nunchuck thing and then breaks his arm quickly; this whole encounter probably took four seconds. He leaves the guy on the ground in pain, the woman standing there in a bewildered pose, and doesn’t say a word. In his mind he questions the existence of God. Yeah, THAT guy. That GOD guy.

Gwyenth the Teenager is sleeping with her baby in the meatpacking district. At 3am she sees, like, 40 fuckin’ angels in the sky. She thanks the lord and goes back to sleep. For a girl who watched her parents get murdered less than 24 hours ago, she’s pretty serene. Maybe she did it! Feh.

The next morning, at the Law Offices of Snurp, Churble, and Murdock, our favorite blind lawyer is like “I DON’T WANNA DO A DIVORCE CASE” but Foggy Nelson is like “I’M BONING THE CLIENT, DUDE, JUST DO IT! ARRRGGHHH”. But seriously, Nelson tells Murdock that this one’s different, and when Murdock tries to guess why, Nelson says her husband had her sterilized. Ha! Didn’t SEE that one coming, did you Murdock, you blind piece of shit! And, apparently, he sterilized her without her knowledge! Cool, huh? So what does that mean, he built a tiny robot to enter her body and tie up her tubes? Programmed a tiny robot to all sorts of tie up those tubes, huh? Murdock says “Hearing something like that makes me wonder…where do I stand on God?” and then the audience (me) responds with “enough already about the god stuff, think about something else once in a while. damn dude, that god guy really did a fucking number on you.”

IT’S THE BEATING OF THE HIDEOUS HEEEEEARTT!! …I mean, I think I hear something.

Suddenly, Murdock catches a whiff of his white whale and her, uh, little baby whale. He LEAPS into action! Nelson’s all like, sheeeeeit, you ain’t gonna go Daredevil on me right NOW are you? But Murdock’s not listening, he goes into this creepy trance every single time this happens! He pops open the office doors and there she is, standing right there, grinning wryly with a wry baby in her hands.

If it isn’t old Trinity from the Matrix 4, and her baby, Mickey Rooney circa 2011.

The girl is drawn like a 31-year-old. The baby is drawn like a 97-year-old. Murdock is just DELIGHTED, just pleased as punch, to be in the company of these two young whipper-snappers! He calls for some formula and a bottle of Yoo-Hoo and cancels all of his meetings and phone calls! As he attempts to shove Foggy Nelson out of the office, he asks Murdock if she’s a bit young for him. Murdock coyly responds with an “Out, you.” I imagine Nelson immediately calls the police at this point off-panel.

Here’s some stuff for ya: Gwyneth tells Murdock that she’s never had a fuck in her life! This baby was conceived without a father and born like Jesus Christ on the Cross himself! Her parents were murdered and she was chased, for whatever reason, all due to this immaculate conception! Murdock thinks she’s full of some dang beans! Except Gwyneth’s pulse has stayed steady and she hasn’t emitted a single pheromone the whole time she’s been in the office, so that clinches it! BABY JESUS! MOTHER MARY AND JOSEPH! HALLELUJAH! PRAISE BE TO- hold on here. Murdock asks what she wants him to do about it. Gwyneth is confused, says that about 40 fuckin’ angels showed up last night in a dream and said that Matthew Murdock himself would protect the baby. Murdock goes “uhhhhh, heh heh, well I can offer her LEGAL protection, heh.” She says the angels told her that Murdock is Daredevil. His response is BUHHH.

That’s a pretty strong accusation to wave around like that. Wave around like a bottle. Like a bottle with so much spilling milk…missy.

She quotes some bible shit at him, and he remains basically catatonic as she unloads the baby on him. “You’re in good hands, baby” she says, basically. And then really says “You’re our only hope, Mr. Murdock. You’re this world’s only hope.” Then she gets the hell out of dodge.

Final Thoughts

Immaculate conception! God! Jesus! The Devil! The DAREDevil! Something’s fishy here, ain’t it? I will say that I’m already less skeptical of this Kevin Smith run than I was when I started, so that’s something. I do like that it seems like everyone knows exactly what’s going on EXCEPT Murdock, so that’s cool and interesting and hey I already wrote an assload of words. See ya next time! Snoogins!

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Death Grips, Eminem – Revisiting the Hip Hop That Left an Impression, for Better or Worse

I started taking hip hop seriously in September of 2013. Maybe someday I’ll speak more on why I wasn’t taking it seriously before. That year was a bit of a renaissance for me; I found myself trying genres I had never considered before just for the hell of it. Industrial in the “old school”, “neofolk”, and “electro-” flavors. Female-fronted pop. Death metal. Post-rock. Black metal. Shoegaze. Breakcore. Delta blues. Psytrance. You see, I had always been a classic rock / new wave / post-punk / college rock guy growing up. Things can change if you care enough to make it happen. Remember that shit.

Arguably, hip hop was the biggest departure. I’m not a lyrics-minded music listener! I don’t respond well to poetry! I can’t relate with gangster shit! I didn’t grow up in a big city! Blah blah blah. I got over myself and here’s where I started:

Death Grips

Someday I’ll go see the big scary screaming shirtless tattooed man live, and then I’ll have reached the highest plane of enlightenment.

My first real, deliberate, open-minded encounter with hip hop was with Death Grips. As with anything else, I tend to enjoy the weirder, aggressive, atypical bands that skirt the confines of their respective genres before I ease myself into the more common, obvious, meat-and-potatoes bands. In 2013, when the coconut fell on top of my head and I finally explored the enormous and varied genre, Death Grips was just about the weirdest, most aggressive, and most atypical hip hop group there was at the time. That fact is still true in 2021, actually. And if you really, really, REALLY want to split hairs here, Death Grips isn’t even a hip hop group in the first place! I don’t believe they are; fucking fight me. They’re a hardcore rave rock band.

Everything about this group appealed to me. MC Ride (Stefan Burnett) and Zach Hill, these two seem to operate on a completely different plane of existence. Look up any interview on Youtube, they project this sizzling intensity that is completely unnecessary. It’s visceral. It’s admirable. It’s in their hyperactive, confrontational, belligerent music.

Exmilitary, their mixtape, was my first exposure to Death Grips’ caustic, obnoxious catalog, and it’s still my personal favorite. I have a lot of really pleasant autumn 2013 mental snapshots tied into those 48-minutes, and it’s going to take something truly incredible to topple it off my pedestal. Your Wu-Tangs and your Ice Cubes and your Kanyes and your Kendricks and your P-Diddies and your Snoop Doggies can all suck a lemon.

Eminem

No! Not that! Anything but the middle fingers! I feel thoroughly owned!

If Death Grips was my first deliberate encounter with hip hop, then Eminem was my first forced-upon encounter with hip hop! And then it took me 13 years to recover! I grew up in the Detroit area, and I was in middle school when Marshall Mathers was beginning his rise to prominence. I have little frame of reference for how huge this guy actually was in the early ’00s for the rest of the country, or even the world, but in my Detroit suburb he was everything to all the 13-year-old creepy, white, immature edgelords. And that’s because Mathers himself was a creepy, white, immature edgelord. He was a kindred spirit to many, and I knew a lot of really angry pre-teens who sympathized with every exaggerated feeling that Mathers put to tape as Eminem. Needless to say, I found it off-putting. To this day, Eminem’s music transports me right back to 7th grade like nothing else can. It’s not a good feeling.

My sister loved him and would play his stuff in her car. A high school friend idolized him and made up a story about running into him at the mall and sharing a cry together (seriously). Even my parents liked “Cleanin’ Out My Closet”.

Then the inevitable fall happened in the late ’00s, but Eminem continues pumping out critically panned albums to this day. It took me a while to circle back to Eminem once I got into the genre proper, but right now I’m sticking with his three-peat run of classics: The Slim Shady LP, The Marshall Mathers LP, and The Eminem Show. And even if these three records overwhelm my synapses with memories of ages 11 – 14, I can honestly find quite a lot to enjoy about each one. You can’t knock his unparalleled showmanship, that’s for sure. I’d love to see what Eminem slipping into self-parody sounds like, so eventually I’ll hit up his later career. With much gusto.

Other Quick Thoughts

Yo Mike Patton, if I outgrew you at 34 years old, what’s your excuse?

-Bands that sound like Mr. Bungle are still around and they still drop albums that sound like Mr. Bungle. 2021 sees new releases by French band 6:33 and Australian band Twelve Foot Ninja, and it’s like…I’m a little bit over this type of sound? I’m at the point in my life where my head is already filled with enough weirdo funky avant-garde metal to make room for any new or unheard versions. Did I grow up?

–The War On Drugs? Just like their last two albums, the newest release I Don’t Live Here Anymore is pretty hyped right now. There are only a few of their songs that I find indispensable (my favorite is “Under the Pressure”, the opener of 2014’s Lost in the Dream), but I often feel that I wish I liked them more than I do. As usual, I’ll keep an open mind with this new one, but, come on, the War On Drugs is spring and summer music. Dropping at the end of October? That’s fuckin’ insanity.

-Two months until the end of the year. My list of 2021 releases has now officially topped 400+ albums and there’s no fucking way I’m going to have time to listen to everything that has piqued my interest. 2021 albums will certainly spillover into 2022 for a month or two in my Newer Release Roundups, and I’m probably going to tack an extra update onto each week for quite a few weeks. Maybe Sundays? That would make the most sense. This blog has helped me tremendously with keeping up with new music. I’d be just another cranky “this was a bad year for new releases” kind of guy otherwise. We all have those friends. They suck.

And that’s a wrap! Thanks for “reading”.

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Action Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #6 – “When Superman Learned to Fly” / “Last Day”

* Part 6 of 8 of the Superman and the Men of Steel storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Action Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #6 – “When Superman Learned to Fly” • “Last Day”! Once again, two side stories that aim to flesh out more Superman backstory before we get back to the main plot. In the previous installment, we learn about the events that led up to Superman being launched alone from his exploding home planet, we see him crash land on Earth without a scratch, and we see Jonathan Kent and Martha Clark scoop the little pisser up and take him home. Some other stuff happens involving the time-travelling Anti-Superman Army in the Fortress of Solitude in the past and there’s not enough LSD in the world to help me comprehend any of that right now.

We also get an extended backstory of Jonathan and Martha’s failed attempts to conceive, which ends right before Baby Superman crashes in the field near the road their truck is stalled on.

I’m all for backstory! I love backstory! I don’t love time-traveling weirdos talking about green Kryptonite engines and tesseracts and sunstones and other hippie shit. Hopefully that stuff is kept to a minimum in Issue #6, but it won’t be. ACTION!

Action Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #6 [April, 2012]
Written by: Grant Morrison
“When Superman Learned to Fly”

Oh man, I don’t know how much more Action my mushy little Earth brain can take. A little man in a chair is talking to a large group about the big gray block on the desk in front of him that contains the green Kryptonite engine stolen from the Fortress of Solitude. Apparently, this little man can make the substance from this “limitless power source” that can kill Superman (or change him or make him horny or whatever you want).

He asks the Anti-Superman Army what they will give him in exchange. The Anti-Superman Army soldiers have speech bubbles that are the same colors as their eyes, and this may or may not be vital to this straightforward story! They all protest this little man’s devious tit-for-tat offer considering, well, they fucking took the engine in the first place. Where does this little guy get off! The little guy explains that he knows they are all looking for vengeance against Superman; it’s a common goal! He’s offering a piece of Kryptonite to each of them to do with it as they wish, all he asks is one favor from each of them: suck his dick! I mean, it could be. He trails off at that point and we move on to another scene.

Hey, I didn’t know Superman’s Fortress of Solitude was on some robot octopus floating around space. I thought it was, like, on a mountain? Am I stupid? Anyway, I guess we’re in the far past because a slightly miffed Superman is talking to the Legion of Superheroes, who just time-traveled and crashed his space pad with no warning. A Legion of Superheroes representative starts talking about tesseracts and the 31st century. She asks “The sunstone lattice is still alive and communicating, but without its K-Mineral power source?” and since only four of those words make sense to me I start glazing over and drooling. Superman calls someone “Cosmic Man” and another “Saturn Woman” and I start snorting, snapping me out of it.

The Moon Patrol is talking goofy talk again.

Again, I’m not in the right mood to attempt to decipher any of this blarney! Bottom line, Superman has a battery that these time-travelers need. Superman says he’s from five years in the future and has already seen the rocket in good shape, so he knows everything worked out and nothing’s wrong! Superman hands them a Duracell. Time for lunch!

But not so fast. There’s a real octopus hanging from the ceiling! Superman asks the octopus if he’s Erik Drekken. The octopus answers “HGMMBBLLBBLMMAH Heer R U UMMA OV 2morrow RACE !NOW!- GENis: ENCEPHalo SAPIENS tyrannus!” and I guess everyone including me is having a fucking stroke right now. What does this have to do with Martha Clark’s poisonous uterus??

On top of everything else, now we gotta deal with Cthulhu. SMDH

Superman starts beating up the cocksuckin’ octopus! Just punching it right in its squishy body. The Legion hangs back and starts commentating the fight, with one of them saying “We all know what happens next…you know why we returned to the past…THIS past…” Superman’s eyes are all aglow with fiery redness as he attempts to talk some sense into the big squelchy octopus. Needing its help or something like that.

Wrasslin’ dinosaurs! ACTION!

The octopus spits some alien dude out of its butthole and then Superman starts yelling at the alien. One of the Legion, meanwhile, figures out where the Anti-Superman Army is hiding (in the one place no one would ever look), and then Erik the Alien Dude turns into a dinosaur. And then Superman punches the dinosaur. I’m about ready to lose my fucking mind about all this.

After one of the Legion uses his lightning powers on the dinosaur, Erik is finally revealed for a second as some James Joyce-lookin’ nerd still talking crazy talk in his purple speech bubbles. He finally ends up turning into a worm, but the Legion Lady says she found the Kryptonite location in Erik’s memory.

Superman is concerned about all of Erik’s nonsensical babbling, something about the evil that’s inside of him. Legion Lady says this string of words: “Nimrod the Hunter used a teleport rifle to fire a microscopic lead pellet into your brain. The pellet’s hollow, and inside, there’s tesseract space big enough to fit 30 people”.

Good thing some time-travelers are around to know everything about everything!

Now, son, there’s a time and a place for backyard wrestling. We don’t want to start suplexing the bulls.

Flashback! Clark Kent’s a child wranglin’ bulls on the farm. He tells his pops that he’s been thinking a lot lately about that ship that brought him to Earth, thinking his real parents threw him away like the garbage that he is! Jonathan Kent assures him that, no way Jose! His real parents sent him away to Earth to do some good! Clark says “yeah you’re right!” and then asks his old man if he and Ma want to blast off into space with him if he ever has to go back. Jonathan Kent freaks out at the thought of ever travelling 2.5 miles away from his shitty farm, but then Clark reasons that he’ll never be going back anyway.

As we see a young Clark up in a tree shooting empty beer cans with his fuckin’ laser eyeballs, the Legion of Time-Travelling Dickheads is snooping in the distance. Present-day Superman is sensing this memory infiltration (or is it five-years-in-the-future Superman?), and the Legion informs him that this was the day they all met for the first time. The flashback shows the Legion giving him some super-secret decoder ring or something. The present-day Legion asks him if there’s anything is unusual about his memories, and Superman’s like “yeeeaaahhh, they’re unusual!”. I guess the lead pellet in Superman’s brain is affecting his memories, but he didn’t even know it was there because it’s unaffected by Superman’s magnetic detection abilities! Superman’s worried about this 30-person-lead-pellet expanding suddenly in his head, but the Legion tells him that none of these people want to be crushed by Superman’s impenetrable brain tissue! So they won’t. Now that Lightning Man has opened up a Time Bubble, and now that Legion Lady also has Erik Drekken’s tesseract key, she can sense her future self within the lead pellet within Superman’s brain! And Ho-Ly Shit I can’t fucking wait until this issue is done.

Next thing I know, the Legion Mofos pop into Superman’s brain to try to steal the Kryptonite engine back from the little guy that I still don’t know the name of. The little guy barely fights back and suddenly the engine explodes into shards of green Kryptonite. This makes Superman, uh, somewhat uncomfortable.

Gross, dude.

Superman tries to fight back against this unpleasantness, knowing that the ship needs the very same Kryptonite that’s currently killing him. Eventually, he breaks free of some purple Erik Drekken thing and is able to shove his hand into the ship. This gives the ship enough power to shoot the purple Erik Drekken thing with a beam of light. Somehow. I don’t know.

The Legion comes back and congratulates Superman for saving the past, which they always knew he’d do anyway, so never mind! Fuck it! They warp him away in a Time Bubble before the real present-day Superman returns. I guess. This story blows.

“Last Day”
Written by: Sholly Fisch

Yuck. OK, hopefully the backup story will make trudging through this wretched-ass issue worth it.

Clark Kent is drawn like Harry Potter. He’s selling his parents’ farm to some friend of theirs named Mr. Fry. After he gets the keys, he steps out for a bit to allow Clark to reminisce about the farm. And, oh man, does he ever reminisce all right!

You’re a wizard, Harry!

Lots of hootin’ and hollerin’ about all the antics Clark used to pull with his super powers. Kinda like the shit Harry Potter used to pull back at Hogwarts! Eh? Eh? Of course, there’s all the important lessons along with the way: “Bullies are bullies and you have to out-bully the bullies!” Stuff like that!

There’s also a memory where he’s playing with his friend Pete in the river or the creek or the sea or the fjord or whatever it is. Clark tells Pete he’s going to be a reporter, and Pete tells Clark that he’s going to “use his superhuman powers to secretly fight injustice” but then Pete remembers that he doesn’t have any super powers so he’s going to be a millionaire instead. Or work in his dad’s store. Clark boggles at him like a dummy.

And yet another memory where he’s hanging out with Lana Lang as a teenager on top of a barn. She’s drawn like a creepy, soulless Barbie doll. That’s about it.

GAH! Put it away! Get it out of here! There is no God! Help!

Back in the present, Pete and Lana show up to take Clark to the train. After a bout of talking and goofing and joking and japing and talking and joshing and goofing and raping, they notice that Clark’s barely even present in the moment as he continues to stares at some photos on the wall. They leave him alone. He smiles at them. He takes one with him and joins his friends outside.

Final Thoughts

HOW GODDAMN TOUCHING, HUH? What a fucking tumor of an issue. Remove it from my life! The real story continues in Issue #7, and I’ll see you then.

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Action Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #7 – “Superman’s Doomsday Decision” / “Meanwhile…”

Action Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #7 [May, 2012]
Written by: Grant Morrison
“Superman’s Doomsday Decision”

“Meanwhile…”
Written by: Sholly Fisch

Final Thoughts

Full of Hell, Parquet Courts, and Gojira

Full of Hell – Garden of Burning Apparitions
(October 1, 2021)