Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #6 – “Big Time Super Hero”

* Part 6 of 7 of the Power and Responsibility storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #6 – “Big Time Super Hero”! In the previous installment, Uncle Ben got got. He’s dead, AND we know it now! When Peter finds out that the perpetrator might be nearby, he scoots off Spider-Man style to try to kick his jerk butt! When he ruffles him up a bit, he learns that it was the VERY SAME criminal whom he let escape during another robbery, commenting “not my responsibility”. Ah, but the word “responsibility” is coming back to haunt him now! Now and forever! Everyone you love keeps dying, Peter! Who’s gonna be next? With great power comes great…something. I forget.

A lot has happened already in five issues! There’s a lot more story left, unless of course the next 100+ issues of Ultimate Spider-Man are entirely made up of just Levi’s and X-Ray Spex advertisements.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #6 [April, 2001]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Big Time Super Hero”

Oh boy, I completely forgot about J. Jonah Jameson as a Spider-Man character. A Spider-Man character extraordinaire, you might say. Well, YOU might not say it, but SOMEBODY might. (me). It looks like we finally get to see his first appearance in Issue #6. Mr. Jameson is shoving some newspapers in the faces of his willfully disengaged staff. It seems that all the competitive publications are printing front page news stories about this mysterious Spidered Man. And what is his newspaper, the Daily Bugle, printing as front page news? The Osborne family’s house burns down due to some lunatic pumpkin bomb-throwing maniac?? BOOOOO! That’s boring! Fuck that noise with 1000 toys, son! J. Jonah Jethro Jimbob Jameson wants his newspaper plastered with nothing but Spider-Man stories! Stories such as: Where did Spider-Man come from? Why is Spider-Man cavorting around town in his underwear? Is Spider-Man a mental patient? Is Spider-Man single? You can almost see that the artist might’ve drawn a boner on him. Look closely…yep, it’s there.

Boner sighted.

Speaking of cavorting around in his underwear, Peter Parker is in an attic or a garage or a shed hootin’ and hollerin’ in his tighty-whities over some dork science bullshit. I guess he, the 15-year-old teenager, has been spending a lot of his free time trying to work on the adhesive that his dad was working on before he died? Snooooze. Why isn’t this kid out egging cars or trying to get laid instead? It almost looks like he spooged all over a frying pan! So, I guess in this universe Spider-Man webs don’t actually come out of his wrists naturally? In this universe he actually has to sit down and do some science to make this web gunk and fill a spray bottle with it? He spends a lot of panels fetishizing this new spoogy super glue stuff, looking forward to tweaking the recipe to make it juuuuuuuust right with respect to elasticity, tackiness, strength, character, and panache, and flavor. He can’t wait to trial-and-error his way through it all! “Man, Uncle Ben would’a loved this.” he says, clearly no longer grieving probably 14 hours after the guy got killed. Aunt May yells at him to go to bed. Parker continues hanging from the ceiling, which isn’t where his bed is. It isn’t where his bed is at all.

It seems that Peter Parker didn’t get much sleep, because he’s snoring away at his desk at school while the student body gawks like crazed monkeys. One kid looks particularly intense and ravenous. Parker’s teacher yells at him, which startles the poor kid into breaking another desk with a heartily exclaimed “NNYAA!”. After the teacher threatens to tell the basketball coach, Parker tells her not to bother because he quit the team. This sends the local jocks into a tailspin of sadness hitherto unknown four issues ago! “It just wasn’t me,” Parker explains sheepishly. “Your uncle croaks so you can’t play ball?” Kong says, hilariously. Oh man, the fire in MJ’s eyes after hearing that one. Hoo boy. Oh man. Whoa nelly.

NOT PICTURED THIS TIME: A boner.

To make matters even more awkward and weird, Harry Osborne strolls through the school hallway like a distracted zombie wearing a shitty turtleneck. He keeps responding to statements like “We were worried about you!” and “I’m so sorry about your family!” with stuff like “Yeah?” and “Are you?” and “Why?”, so it’s like hey thanks for showing up I guess. And because bad luck comes in threes, enormous explosions rocket through the hallways throwing kids everywhere! Did Kong fart? NO! Harry Osborne, stricken with possibly turtleneck-related panic and trepidation, suspects that it’s the mysterious flying demon that scorched the Osborne mansion. Another explosion, as written in the comic book, goes “FRABOOM”. Harry thinks that this flying demon is trying to kill him again and yells for help.

Never fear, Spider-Man is here! We are treated to a full-page view of Spider-Man’s taint as he leaps forward to save the day! There are kids below him staring up at the taint too. It’s quite a taint.

Hold on, we are taken to the scene just moments ago with Peter Parker ducking into a restroom to change. As the fire sprinkler system rains water down on him, he runs through his anxieties about having to possibly explain why Spider-Man was in the school and if his peers will figure out his secret identity. Good thing kids are dumb, Parker, you would’ve been fine. He decides to duck back out of the building and change behind some parked cars. After the old switcheroo, we are treated to another identical page of Spider-Man’s full-blown taint, and we proceed from here.

Spider-Man scours the water- and smoke-filled school hallways on a MISSION to find a BAD GUY. One emerges from the smoke! He throws some quips at the hulking (edit: not the Hulk) figure towering before him, like “I wanna see your hall pass” and “Are you the new Home Ec teacher?” because comic book nerds who grow up to be comic book writers still like to put 1960’s comic book nerd humor in them. Spider-Man is awfully cocky for someone who has never encountered a real villain before, unless that villain is VIRGINITY then he is well-acquainted! This scary fireball-lancing villain wears a purple cloak and has muscular legs and a visible package. IS HE WILLEM THE FOE? Ha! See, I can be just as funny as Spider-Man.

Super-Man, proving time and time again, that he thinks he cute.

As he’s duking it out with the Deep Purple Fireball his inner monologue reveals that he’s actually one false move away from shitting his Spidey-Tighties, but he’s largely preoccupied with how the fuck he’s going to end this little encounter gracefully. This little dilemma eventually resolves itself, albeit without the graceful part, when our malefactor grabs onto Spider-Man and launches both of them through a brick wall and into the ionosphere. While getting taken way the hell up into the sky, Spider-Man gets a good look at the face of this goblin who is green…for lack of a better identifier how about we just call him the Green Goblin (yes, that’ll do)…and this goblin utters “PPPPRRRRKKKKEERRRR…” Oh my!

Final Thoughts

Man, watching the first Spider-Man movie from 2002 really spoiled a lot of the twists for me in this comic book series! Then again, this is Earth-1610! The Green Goblin could be Peter Falk for all I know. Peter Falk as Columbo. I read once that Peter Falk used to wander away between takes on the Columbo set and the stagehands always had to find him to bring him back. Wait, what was I talking about again?

I already know who the Green Goblin is! I have no speculations! See you in Issue #7.

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FACS, MIKE, and LUMP

This week I have new releases from FACS, MIKE, and LUMP. Today the semi-intentional theme was, obviously, ALL-CAPS FOUR-LETTER NAMES! Interestingly enough, I already reviewed MUSH in an earlier roundup and let’s never speak of that unpleasantness ever again.

FACS – Present Tense
(May 21, 2021)

FACS is a three-piece based out of Chicago who carry the torch of the darker side of post-punk and post-hardcore well into the 21st century. Officially coming together in 2016, the already-prolific band has released four albums in four years starting in 2018. Their latest, Present Tense, is the first album I’ve heard so far from them.

Being astutely well-versed in this particular genre, I tend to be hyper-critical. With their clattering, scratchy riffs, I hear a lot of the noisy industrial sensibilities of early Sonic Youth. With the sardonic vocals, I hear a lot of Steve Albini (more Shellac, less Big Black). To a lesser extent I also hear elements of Unwound, Slint, Gang of Four, the Jesus Lizard, and Polvo. All that stuff is kind of in the same camp.

After listening to Present Tense over and over, I’m left simultaneously appreciating what the group is doing here and fully emotionally underwhelmed. While I pretty much love every band that FACS is drawing their inspirations from, the nagging feeling that the project is nothing more than a heterogeneous mixture of the sum of its parts infringes upon my enjoyment. All I hear are Sonic Youth, Steve Albini, Unwound, Slint, Gang of Four, the Jesus Lizard, and Polvo, but I don’t hear FACS.

Since this is the fourth album and the band’s sound doesn’t seem to have elevated beyond its influences by now, that doesn’t bode well for my confidence that I’ll enjoy their other three albums very much either. Sorry, FACS.

Early Verdict:

MIKE – Disco!
(June 21, 2021)

I love the idea of a rapper named Mike who decided on a stage name of “MIKE”. There’s something endearingly no-frills about that. Add to the fact that, in every single picture of the guy, he looks like nicest, happiest, most impossibly stoned individual on the planet. I can’t find anything to dislike!

MIKE isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. His childhood was fraught with social anxiety and depression, complicated further by his family’s perpetual uprooting and relocating to completely new cities during his impressionable years. He looks to music to ground him as the only constant in his life.

Disco! is my first MIKE experience, and upon listening to the album the late, great MF DOOM kept coming to mind. Not with respect to flow and rhyme, of course, since the idiosyncratic DOOM was one of a kind there. But there’s this lazy, free-association flow over peppy and deceptively simple melodies that sound like cuts off of DOOM’S Mm..Food. A lot of these melodies have this happy, sunshine-y ’70s jazz fusion vibe while MIKE slurs his lines overtop. All the while it maintains this bedroom lo-fi aspect that keeps the music coated in a humble veneer.

Unfortunately, I really don’t know enough about MIKE to know how this album emotionally progresses from his yearly June 21st release check-ins, which tells me one thing: I need to listen to the other MIKE albums. And if I’m thinking that, then it’s a positive.

Early Verdict:

LUMP – Animal
(July 30, 2021)

“She’s Lump, she’s Lump, she’s Lump/She’s in my head/She’s Lump, she’s Lump, she’s Lump/She might be dead“

Laura Marling, who I know, and Mike Lindsay, who I DON’T know, team up for a collaborative project entitled LUMP. I’m not sure about the name, since I wouldn’t describe this music as particularly lumpy. But then again, what is? Frank Zappa’s Lumpy Gravy?

This is the duo’s second album, and the first word I’d use to describe the sound is “pleasant”. I know Marling’s solo music is mostly of the singer-songwriter acoustic indie folk ilk, and a lot of that is here with some very interesting mellow electropop flourishes that remind me of ’90s dream pop acts like Stereolab, Broadcast, Pale Saints, and a little Yo La Tengo. What I like about Animal is that the acoustic folk and the electropop elements are so seamlessly intertwined that it sounds more natural than one would think possible. It almost feels like they graduated from the Brian Eno school of tasteful and accessible electronic textures, which is the highest of compliments.

I’m not in love with this, though, for reasons my brain knows less about than my gut. The melodies aren’t very strong, and the arrangements, while diverse, aren’t vibrant enough for my grumpy ass to get completely gung-ho about. Still, I’m tempted to check out their self-titled debut and reevaluate the whole project at another time.

Early Verdict:

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Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #5 – “Face the Court (Part 2)”

* Part 5 of 6 of the Court of Owls storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman (Vol. 2) Issue #5 – “Face the Court (Part 2)”! In the previous installment, Batman is still being a really dumb dickwad about the legend of the Court of Owls even though some Court of Owls guy named Talon (from the Court of Owls) is exercising his Court of Owls agency by trying to kill Batman (as stipulated by the creed of the Court of Owls). Batman ends up in some place called the Labyrinth, where three dudes in masks are welcoming him to said labyrinth. Oh yeah, before Talon attacks him for a second fucking time in four issues, Batman was letting us, the loyal audience, know that he discovered stab marks and metamorphic rock dust on Alan Wayne’s dug-up bones. What’s going to happen next? Who cares! Read on.

Issue #5 is subtitled “Face the Court”, just like Issue #4, which means that there wasn’t any real “facing the court” happening yet. And if this particular cover is any indication, Batman’s gonna get some fuckin’ knives thrown into his neck! Oh boy! Is this the issue where he finally dies? Bye-bye Batman!

Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #5 [March, 2012]
Written by: Scott Snyder
“Face the Court (Part 2)”

We begin with a real sad sack Commissioner Gordon trying to signal Batman, but unbeknownst to him, Batman took a detour through some sewers instead, so Gordon’s getting stone-cold stood up right now. Lieutenant Harvey Bullock pops in to tell him that Gordon’s going to blow out the damn lightbulb if he keeps the Bat-Signal on much longer, but Gordon is stubborn and he’s leaving it on as a symbol of hope for the city. Amidst this discussion we see a montage of other heroes in the Batman family such as, uh, Batgirl and, uh, Batwoman? Also Nightwing and Robin, because I guess there’s always new Robins running around once old Robins die or go through puberty?

Meanwhile, we see Batman lurking around some labyrinthian shadows in a fugue state of COMPLETE AND UTTER MAAAADNESS! His suit and cape are in tatters. He’s scrambling around the darkness muttering about owls and being scared of light, all in a very un-Batman-like way. He finds a well-lit room in the maze filled with hundreds and hundreds of time-lapsed portraits of handsome beardy men turning into old, insane beardy men, and young pretty women turning into old haggard, but not beardy, women. I suppose this indicates that this is some sort of game for some sort of puppet string-pulling Gamemaster, and Batman is the current player. How’s Batman gonna get out of this pickle, huh?

Those are some really nice photo frames! I’m gonna have to find out where I can get these photo frames once I’m out of here!

As Batman stumbles around, he comes across a group of chess nerd-lookin’ guys in owl masks (or at least he thinks he does). He gets all paranoid now, yelling stuff like “THIS IS MY CITY!” and “I’M THE BIG KAHUNA AROUND HERE!” and “I KNOW EVERY NOOK AND CRANNY OF THIS STUPID HELLHOLE BETTER THAN YOU OWL CUNTS!”, and I may be paraphrasing a tad. He’s getting all insecure now, tripping around the hallways frothing and spitting. It certainly is a sad state of affairs. Every so often we see a panel with a big yellow “POP” that took me a while to realize it was a camera taking Batman’s photo and not, in fact, some popcorn being made somewhere. I don’t know WHAT I thought!

Fuck you, Talon, I’m the one who is supposed to win around here! Not you! WAAH!

Eventually, Batman comes across another well-lit room lined-up with coffins featuring portraits of adolescent boys and girls with one of them open and empty, wondering if this room is another shrine dedicated to pissing him off. After much more rambling still about how these mysterious Owls don’t own Gotham just because they’ve been there longer than he has, Batman starts hallucinating his own parents down in the catacombs. A terrifying display of his parents bloodily ripping themselves apart into blood-soaked owls causes Batman to be a trifle spooked!

Ahhahaha, oh Ma, it’s exactly how I remembered you!

*yawn* Buh? Oh yeah, some other stuff is happening too. He thinks he finds a trap door in the floor that will lead to his escape, but he ends up back in the portrait room again. There he sees a rather deranged photo of himself on the wall that’s the latest in a line of other deranged photos of himself on the wall. He shouts “NO!” at it. Things aren’t looking well.

Suddenly, Talon (the bad guy!) emerges from that shadows and stabs through Batman’s abdomen with a goddamned sword or some shit.

Meanwhile, the lightbulb in the Bat-Signal has indeed exploded, because why not? A policeman, Gordon, and Lieutenant Bullock wonder what do next, and a scrappy young Robin kid tells them to get a new one. “I SAID NOW!” he says. And that’s the end.

Final Thoughts

Well now, this wasn’t a very uplifting issue! A thrilling mess of hard-to-read panels and swirly art storytelling!

Ok, that’s not fair. An issue showing Batman’s slow descent into insanity was a good idea, and ending with what looks like an actual death scene makes the descent all the more pitiful and undignified. Batman seems truly defeated! Too bad that seven million other issues of comics related to Batman came out after this, so the impact of a Batman death scene is kind of lost on me, you know? But shame on me from not feeling the right emotions I guess!

But still, shit’s confusing and, apparently, this story arc ends with the next issue. How the hell are they going to wrap this up? Or maybe it will spill into the giant Night of Owls storyline that crosses over into forty other titles in the Batman franchise? I’m thinking it’s the latter. I have a lot of work ahead of me…

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Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #5 – “Life Lessons”

* Part 5 of 7 of the Power and Responsibility storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #5 – “Life Lessons”! In the previous installment, Uncle Ben got got. He’s dead, but we don’t know that yet. The issue ended with Peter showing up at his house after an evening of hopping around buildings and ruminating about normal teenage stuff like the sudden acquisition of many super powers. The house was surrounded by cops and barricades. We are left wondering what happened! But it was that Uncle Ben got got.

I already know how the aftermath of this inconvenient murder will play out, but let me go through the motions for the sake of entertainment. The things I do for my audience. *crickets*

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #5 [March, 2001]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Life Lessons”

The muscle-bound and sinewy teenage Harry Osborne is asleep in his bedroom when he is suddenly jolted awake by the screams of his mother. It seems like some flying demon is throwing fireballs all willy-nilly around Osborne Manor, rudely burning it down and scaring the be-jesus out of James Franco. Uhh…I mean, Harry Osborne. Heh heh. I thought at first that this was going to end up being some terrifying booze-and-heroin-fueled nightmare, but it looks legit. Harry screams for help into the night, clad in only his skidmarked underwear.

A distraught, doe-eyed May is talking to the police about how a murderer did a murder in their house. Actually, it was a robbery that turned into a murdery murder! Actually, we’re not supposed to know that quite yet. The robber was all “Gimme all your money!”, and Uncle Ben was all “Heh heh, now son, look at me in my oversized flannel Eddie Vedder get-up and tell me, and be honest now, tell me that you don’t have more money already than-” BAM! RIGHT IN THE FUCKING HEAD, BEN. One of the police officers is getting a call from dispatch assigning backup for a robbery at a Popeye’s a few blocks from the Parker house. With the possibility in mind that this could be the same guy who whacked Unky Ben, Peter BOLTS from the house and runs down the street while wriggling into his tight Spider-Man negligee. Whoa mama!

Nice gun. *chuckle* How about a game of Parcheesi??

The police are surrounding the criminal’s cozy little broken-down hidey-hole. The culprit, donned in a baseball cap, is muttering to himself about “pigs” and “pieces of garbage” and “Blue Lives DON’T Matter”, probably, when Spider-Man himself (it’s actually Peter Parker in a crafty disguise, shhhhhh) drops from the ceiling. The guy, terrified, starts shooting in Spider-Man’s direction with a dignified “NYYAAHH!” while the gun goes “BLAM”. The guy starts running away muttering, but Spider-Man throws, like, a tire, I think, at the back of his head. Angered, the guy lunges at Spider-Man, but our fearless Master of Spiders knocks him back with a sickening “POK”, which is probably the sound effect that happens when a weak-ass Tobey Maguire knocks back a weak-ass Topher Grace. It probably sounds like a tongue clicking. Also, fuck Blue Lives Matter! Terrible.

Finally subdued, Spider-Man takes a good look at this motherfucker’s stupid-looking face and realizes in a blue-hued flashback sequence that this was THE SAME GUY who PARKER DIDN’T HELP STOP while he was RUNNING AWAY from a CRIME HE HAD COMMITTED involving a ROBBERY and he got CHEWED OUT by some LOOKIE-LOOS who thought that a TEENAGER should have DONE SOMETHING to STOP HIM and nOw UnClE bEn iS dEaD because PETER PARKER fucks and sucks SHIT! AH HA HA HAA! While the police are wondering what’s going on in the hideout, Spider-Man is going through the guy’s wallet like a Fallout character looting a corpse. I think he takes his ID card and maybe some money and mints and an expired condom? Then he throws the guy out a window with a rope tied around his middle right in front of the cops. The guy’s all like “Buhhhh”.

Peter Parker is having a tough time with this letting-the-guy-kill-his-uncle revelation. In another blue-hued flashback, in case you don’t remember literally the previous issue, Parker goes over the last conversation he had with Ben before he stormed off in an angsty hormonal huff. Great power. Great responsibility. Something like that. Lessons Learned. Check that Issue #5 title, son. Parker has a big fat epiphany about this and now he’s truly a man grown as they say in Westeros!

POK!

On his sulky way home, Parker catches Mary Jane waiting on somebody’s steps. Possibly her own. Maybe Kong’s? Uncle Ben? Oh wait he’s dead. She asks Peter if he’s ok. He says “I ‘unno”. She says that May is staying with them. Peter says “Durrrr”. She says “Like, you can, uh, like, you can stay at our house? In my bedroom, maybe? In my bed? Nude? Sound good?”. Peter says “*cum*”. The End.

Parker’s gonna get some dead Uncle pity-sex.

Final Thoughts

Isn’t it so sad that Uncle Ben died? Now who’s going to make all the rice that comes in the orange box?! FAAARRT. What a great joke.

Is Peter Parker gonna bang MJ? Is Peter Parker gonna have some sex? Are Peter Parker and MJ gonna bang? Is Peter Parker going back to MJ’s house and then do some fucking? Is MJ gonna bang Peter Parker? All these questions and more will be answered in Issue #6 through Issue #160! Except the part about the sex.

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Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #4 – “Face the Court (Part 1)”

* Part 4 of 6 of the Court of Owls storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman (Vol. 2) Issue #4 – “Face the Court (Part 1)”! In the previous installment, Batman is struggling to admit that this legendary cockamamie “Court of Owls” nonsense is not actually a giant, steaming load of malarkey and horse-hockey! He creeps around his architect great, great grandfather Alan Wayne’s buildings and discovers secret hideouts by this mysterious order in every single building he investigates. He told Alfred to dig up Alan Wayne’s grave and then the building he was in blew up and he’s probably dead now. Is he dead? Do you think he’s really dead? Is Alfred boning Alan Wayne’s sexy corpse? Read on, gentle reader. Read on.

Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #4 [February, 2012]
Written by: Scott Snyder
“Face the Court (Part 1)”

The building is blowing up because Batman accidentally set off a tripwire and we see an action sequence of Batman befuddlingly escaping near-death as he throws out more Court of Owls lore at us. The Big Cheese of the Court of Owls is named Talon, and yes, he has secret bases in secret 13th floors in Wayne-constructed buildings all over town. Batman ain’t havin’ that! This is his town, Owl Motherfucker.

Cut to Bruce’s pad, where once again I’m confused about the characters because they all have black hair and blue eyes like some sort of clone experiment gone sexy…er, I mean, uh, gone wrong. Alfred had dug up the ol’ bones of Great Great Grandpappy Al, and Bruce is trying to analyze his gross old skeleton for…I don’t even know, owl DNA? To prove that the Court of Owls is real? Ah, ok, Bruce calls the other guy “Dick” so he’s either Robin/Nightwing or he’s just a dick. But that means Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, and Lincoln March all look the same. I can’t get over this shit.

Oh Grayson. You coy little boy, you.

Anyway, Grayson is concerned because Wayne is even more ruggedly disheveled than usual (you can tell by the artful stubble on his face) and that means he’s too obsessed with his work to sleep. Wayne is still convinced that the Court of Owls is a hoax, despite the evidence piled up to Mt. Everest in front of him, and reveals that he investigated the Court shortly after his parents were killed in a murder. We flashback to a scene of an angsty young Bruce making sullen faces while present-day Bruce talks about the suspicious circumstances surrounding his parents’ murder death killing. He talks about when he had told his dad that he heard about the Court of Owls and his dad had laughed in his FUCKING face. He talks about when they had discovered an owl nest in the attic. He talks about how, as a youngster, he took it as a bad omen. We see a montage of young Bruce with his cute little camera, “looking for clues”. Soon he would start to distrust the family, friends, and business partners associated with the Wayne dynasty. “No one could be ruled out”, he says.

Bruce’s young and scrappy detective work brought him to a place called Harbor House, noting that each and every one of his suspects had been tied to the club at some point. After a little snooping he discovers a windowless room at the top of the Harbor House tower that was likely a secret meeting room, because why not, right? “I had found the Court of Owls.” he triumphantly declared, only to learn after actually entering the room that it was covered in a million years of dust and cobwebs. He was so disappointed that he didn’t notice that the door to the room closed behind him. “I was locked in there for over a week.” he moans. LOL! Now that’s hilarious! That’s the funniest thing to happen in the series so far! “When Alfred finally found me, I was already comatose.” LOL! We have a new winner!

The Court of Owls strikes again! Fuck you, Bruce.

At the end, after a three-week hospital stay (LOL!), his faith in the existence of the Court of Owls had been irrevocably shattered. Grayson encourages him not to give up, which goes against his concerns about how hard Bruce has been working, but hey we can’t let our emotions stagnate between minutes! Gotham City is old as shit, there’s hundreds of years of secrets to uncover, son.

Bruce puts on his Batman pants and plans to meet our favorite Gotham version of the Cigarette Smoking Man, Commissioner Gordon, in a scary spooky alley. On his way, though, he decides to play in the sewers for a bit. So, remember early in Issue #3 where they show Alan Wayne raving in the streets and falling down a manhole? The cause of the death was, presumably, death by manhole? Well, Batman has another theory! He found tiny punctures in the man’s fuckin’ BONES. He was killed by knives! Perhaps owl knives?! But wait, he also found residue on his bones. Alfred’s crusty semen? Close! Dust from a metamorphic rock! OK, that wasn’t close. Sorry, I got excited.

Before he could explain why this dust was important, Batman gets ambushed in the sewers by Talon himself! Talon sings him a cute little song about owls while he pummels him into the ground. Batman falls through some sort of sub-sewer and he sees three guys in masks welcoming him to the Labyrinth. And not the David Bowie kind!

♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ Dance magic, dance/Put that baby’s spell on me/Jump magic, jump/Put that magic jump on me/Slap that baby, make him free ♬ ♫ ♪ ♩

Final Thoughts

Hey Batman, the Court of Owls is real you ninny! How’s that for a final fucking thought, bitch?

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Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #6 – “Big Time Super Hero”

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #6 [April, 2001]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Big Time Super Hero”

Final Thoughts