There is so much to unpack in this issue, I don’t even know where to begin. What is clear, is that this is no ordinary issue but a battle between Corporate Idiocracy and Artistic Integrity; with a little dash of Masonic Ritual thrown in. Tom King is officially on the front lines now in the fight against the Big Poo (DC & Marvisney) and the little comic writer guy. Let’s recap…
Tom King’s capes and tights stories in the past have basically all but sucked; sorry Tommy. He’s done some decent work on other indie comics but his biggest splat of poop came with his Batman/Catwoman maxi series. My goodness it was atrocious. It looked amazing but numbed your brain and depleted your wallet. Perhaps he was inspired by my last Tinder date.
If I’m King, I’m probably facing an existential crisis following that disaster. What the hell am I doing here? I’m like one more series away from turning into an inept version of Matt Fraction. So what does he do? Homie buckles down and starts up Love Everlasting with Image, an absolute Monstrous Grand Slam of a series.
DC notices and goes ‘Hmm, King is killing it – without us! This can’t be!’ Now what you have to understand about entities like DC, who operate like the US Govt, is that they don’t want you to thrive anywhere else but under their thumb. They would also rather that you self destruct while under their care so that you’re even more dependent on them for finding a way back. So what does DC do? They give King the keys to Dubz (Wonder Woman). Not only do they give him Dubz they give him Dubz right after their milestone 800th issue so everybody’s eyes are going to be all over him. DC probably had a straight jacket picked out for him. I bet they assumed he would crap the bed and have a nervous breakdown. Well guess what?
King knocked his first Dubz arc out the fucking park. It was the best Dubz story in over a decade. Not only that, Daniel Sampere, drew the shit out of the books. You had to keep flipping back to the cover to make sure it was a DC non-Black Label comic; what a triumph. Now one would think DC would’ve just said:
‘Oh well, electro shocking King in his loony bin cell would’ve been fun but hey, his Dubz run is selling like hot cakes, we’ll take the money instead’
They don’t do that. They saddle him with a punk ass editor who forces him to use a bunch or ridiculous second-rate loser villains that nobody has ever heard of to battle Dubz at the end of her first story arc. King somehow made it work although there was a point where one of the goofus doofus villains ripped the Washington Monument off of its base and threw it at Dubz; that’s how ridiculous it got. For King to put something so absurd in his wonderful story one would have to assume that DC probably had his nuts in a clamp or a vice – something!
Despite DC’s effort to sabotage this series I could honestly say I was still looking forward to the next issue. But what happens? We don’t get the next issue in the story, we get this issue. An issue that has nothing to do with what’s been going on. An issue drawn by a completely different artist! A complete fucking bonkers issue where Wonder Woman and Super Man go shopping for a birthday gift for Batman at a mall on another fucking planet.
WHAT? HUH?
Now, you could argue that ‘Hey, King probably needed a hiatus and DC doesn’t do hiatuses so he just threw this together while he worked on the second arc’. Well, you would be absolutely wrong. I have two theories on what happened with this issue behind the scenes.
KING FIGHTS BACK
King said ‘Fuck these idiots at DC. They just ruined a perfectly great story with their punk ass villains that Boom! or Dynamite wouldn’t even use in their comics. They don’t do hiatuses so I’m gonna give them this piece of swill and take my power back.
It’ll be like an ultimatum: Either get off my back and let me do my thing or you’ll get more Dubz and Supes go shopping and get mani-pedis. I’ve got my ‘Batman and the Flash end up in an Escape Room and can’t get out until Mr. Mxyzptlk rescues them’ issue ready to go. Ya got that DC? Fuck around and find out what I do with the Green Lantern at a spa day.
It’s a brilliant move by King, if it is actually his move. He hits the brakes on the story, which isn’t even close to being done, and gets Guillem March to draw him a bonkers AF ‘Supes & Dubz go shopping for Batz on a mall on an alien planet’ story. Real quick on March, it’s clear that when he’s drawing Dubz that if he can’t say ‘Yeah I’d bang her looking like this’ then he ain’t drawing the panel. Every panel with Dubz in it is like soft core porn: she’s bending, she’s pouting, she’s flexing, her mouth is open. You do you March!
Hubba Hubba, droool...
So, did King give DC the bozack or is it…
DC HUMILIATES KING
This is how the Masonic Occult Entertainment Industry works: If you want to get ahead and pass into true stardom you have to be humiliated first. It might mean wearing a dress if you’re an actor or being punked at an award show if you’re a musician or if you’re John Cena wearing a dress and being naked with flip flops at the Oscars. Wonder Woman #7 has a classic humiliation vibe about it. Did DC do this because they recognize King’s greatness now and are putting him through the paces to, I dunno, write the next Dubz movie? Or are they slapping him around like a punk and reminding him who butters his biscuit?
How is this comic a humiliation ritual? First of all, this is the type of comic you’d get at a retail store for free back in the day. Like, in the 70s or 80s if you spent enough at a Stop & Shop or Kmart they’d give you a free Spidey comic which had a crap ton of ads and a goofalicious story. Or maybe your Dentist would give you one of these free cheap corny comics at his office as he filled your mouth with Mercury. You were a kid and didn’t care. But now, DC just put King’s name on a comic that reeks of a cheap comic freebie.
One could also argue that Supes in this issue is symbolic of Tom King since Supes is made to look like a whiny little frou frou girly dude from start to finish. Maybe while King’s nuts were in a clamp DC Editors taunted him and said:
DC: ‘Not only are we gonna put your name on this piece of swill but your favorite character of all time, who you want to write one day, is gonna get a Mani Pedi with Dubz’
King: You wouldn’t dare!
DC: Show him the March panels
King sees the Mani Pedi scene
King: You Monsters!
The DC Editors slobber over the Dubz art.
King: Jesus! You turned Wonder Woman into an Only Fans streamer
The DC Editors dry hump the Dubz panels while King openly weeps.
My goodness, what the hell did they do to Supes? Right off the bat Supes and Dubz go to a coffer bar in the Alien Mall. Supes orders a “Decaf Coconut Milk Latte with Four Pumps of Caramel, Whipped Cream and Butterscotch Drizzle and a Coffee Black”. Somehow the Latte is pink despite the fact that there are no pinkish ingredients in it. Supes takes the girly girl drink and Dubz takes the ‘put some hair on your chest drink’. So Supes avoids the caffeine yet is okay with, I dunno, 750g of sugar? What message is that sending??
Of course next a Monster Alien has to find a tiny piece of Kryptonite so that Dubz can rescue Supes. I mean, throughout this issue is seems like Supes is glancing down the whole time, beating around the bush or frowning. He looks like me trying to figure out how to get a pretentious Creative Director on Raya to respond to my bland opening message. Then we get another scene of Supes ingesting something Pink, this time it’s ice-cream, while Dubz is having something Vanilla. Really? Like, how many pink ice-cream flavors in the Universe are there? Two? Three? I suppose it’s a Soy Oat Double Labia Spritzed Bubblegum Flavor with Blue Ball Sprinkles.
Next we get this:
The justification being that this nail salon on this planet is the only with the proper instruments with the firepower to get Supes’ nails done right. Supes, let me introduce you to a place called K-Town in La La Land. Just wander into any of the nail salons there and you’ll be greeted by a gaggle of elder Korean women who have every manner of tool to grind away at any finger nail or toe nail in the Universe while they gossip about you in front of your face.
Then after Dubz joins Supes for a Pedicure we find him sitting on the floor surrounded by kittens while Dubz looks on. She’s probably wondering at this point ‘Maybe my birthday gift to Bats is just me showing up drawn by Guillem March with a couple of black coffees with no Dubz panties on’. The issue ends with Supes and Dubz taking goofy pix in a photo booth for Bats.
Let me tell you something, as someone who has been put in the Friend Zone more times than Jerry Rice, Emmitt Smith and Walter Payton have found the End Zone, this is traumatizing/soul crushing Friend Zone behavior by Supes. You’re taking a Hot Babe with you to find a gift for a Dark Brooding Asshole who likes bad girls. The Babe is like ‘I really shouldn’t go out with the Asshole, I should be with the Good Guy, he’ll treat me better’. Once the Pink Drink is ordered her Pink Trinket is closed for business and all she’s wondering about now is ‘How can I change the Asshole into a somewhat nice guy after he bangs the living bejeezus outta me?’.
I don’t read Superman at all, is he always this much of a loser around chicks? Maybe King wasn’t traumatized by Supes in this issue. Maybe he was like ‘Yeah, and?’. If this is King’s ‘Eff you DC’ issue, maybe he was thinking ‘I’m gonna take Wussbag Supes and write a ‘Queer Eye for the Krypton Guy’ issue. Now before anyone rakes me over the coals for being, I dunno, a non-inclusive straight d-bag, I’d like you take video of a guy who’s interested in a hot babe engaging in the same activities as SuperMan does in this issue. If you can provide video evidence that you can buy a frou frou coffee drink, eat pink ice-cream, cavort with Kittens and urge said Hot Babe to get a Mani-Pedi with you and still end up somehow being her boyfriend or bangfriend – then I will agree with your assessment of me.
As it stands, this issue is a mind boggling assault on the senses. I’m sure once the dust settles they’ll create a docu-series about it on Netflix many years from now, detailing the epic battle between King and DC. In the meantime, we can only root for King, root for more Softcore March Dubz panels, and root for more guys acting like Supes does around hot babes – because it gives short guys who drink their coffee black an actual fucking chance.
Rating: 9.3 for Hot Dubz Panels, 2.2 for Supes Self Care Day
Verdict: Batman Bangs Dubz in the Unreleased #7.5 Issue
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