Darkseid's Couch

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée begin a month of allegedly-spooky tales with Ghost Manor no. 6! What is the ghost manor? What mysteries does it hold? Who's dealing with those ballooning estate tax payments? Find out (or don't) in this bevy of tales designed to chill the spine, clam the hands, and flop the sweat! First, an ornery hunter loses his mind when he peers into a dimension with way trippier visuals than this stupid one. Then, some guy dreams of digging his own grave, and not just by refusing to delete problematic Tweets! Finally, a cat destroys an unscrupulous attorney's life through a series of subtle, malicious attacks! Either that cat has an extremely strong moral compass or, alternately, he's just being a regular cat.

This time on the Couch: It's an extinction-level episode as Mike, James, and Shée wrap up Septembersaurus with Cadillacs and Dinosaurs no. 8! Hundreds of years in the future, humans emerge from a societal collapse to find that dinosaurs and all other manner of believed-dead varmint have reclaimed the earth! And they seem to be doing a pretty decent job with it! Of course, no human being is going to let some dumb animals bring unfettered nature back to the planet, so they immediately set about killing one another and finding innovative new ways to destroy the environment. The lesson here is that if you've been looking at the modern world and thinking that humanity may be winding down, don't worry: It's gonna take a heck of a lot more than global pandemics, unwinnable wars, and depleted resources to keep us from our meddling! As ever, (human) nature finds a way!

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée keep stomping through Septembersaurus with 1989's Dino-Riders no. 1! With all the problems in the world, the one thing everyone can agree on is that we're all in desperate need of more children's toy franchise ideas. Enter Dino-Riders, the story of a group of peaceful humanoids who travel back to the prehistoric era in a failed attempt to evade a gang of bug-eyed space bullies called the Rulons! With nothing else to do on account of there not being any internet yet, both groups decide to force the local dinos to wear battle armor so that they can expand their pointless power struggle into new and highly merchandisable vistas. Will either side address the Brontosaurus-sized ethical dilemmas inherent in turning peanut-brained animals into their personal armory via mind control? Actually... they kinda do! Wow! Now that's a twist! After 80 years of watching Batman beat up the mentally ill you start to assume the worst in these scenarios.

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée continue rampaging through Septembersaurus with Dinosaurs for Hire no. 1! People love smart social satire, and so it only follows that those same people would tolerate mediocre social satire. Enter Dinosaurs for Hire, a comic about space lizards coming to Earth and immediately finding gainful employment as well-paid government agents. On, like, the first day! They don't even know what country they're in yet and they're already doing better than you would in a dozen lifetimes! It's the perfect setup for some cutting commentary about modern society, which is probably coming in issue 2. For sure by issue 3.

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée hatch a month of dino comics beginning with DC Special no. 27! It's only the first week of Septembersaurus, but it may be the last if Captain Comet and his tighty whities can't figure out how to get some time-displaced dinosaurs back to their era! Hopefully the solution involves punching! Meanwhile, space adventurer and high school drum major Tommy Tomorrow is dealing with a comet-worshipping T-Rex/human hybrid with fantastic obliques! It's all due to the devious machinations of Chronos, an evil villain with access to all eras of time, yet he chooses to hang out primarily in the 1970s. Huh. Must be all the high collars and key parties.

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée absorb 1989's Quasar no. 5! From the outside, space investigator Quasar appears to have a pretty sweet life. He's an honorary Avenger, he runs a security firm, and his fashion accessories are on point. Unfortunately, like all of us, he's just pretending his life isn't an absolute mess of half-victories and soul-crushing compromises. In reality, Captain America has stuck him on janitorial duty with F-lister Stingray, his firm hasn't gotten a single contract, and now the Absorbing Man has stolen the power of his space bracelets! No wonder Quasar's ghost dad would rather hang out with the talking space log that lives in the Quantum Zone. Wait, what? More like Cray-sar, right?!

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée just say 'yes' to Captain America no. 378! The year was 1990 and the war on drugs was in full effect, empowering both heartless Nazis like Red Skull and heartless capitalists like the Kingpin to profit off of American puritanism. But in comics, unlike in the real world, there can only be one evil billionaire exploiting society's failings, and so the two villains agree to settle their differences with an old-fashioned underwear fight! When you're that wealthy, it's the only way to get excited about anything anymore. Unfortunately, Captain America accidentally smelled some marijuana smoke or something and demanded the Avengers immediately swap out his blood for some clean stuff, so now he's just a regular yoked-up dude with a shield! Can he break up the fight in time to lick George Bush's boots clean for his big meeting with Noriega? The future of drug-fueled imperialism depends on it!

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée get duped by Cain no. 1! You know, Cain? Like the guy from the Bible? Invented the concept of murder? This Cain is pretty similar, except instead of murdering his brother, he murdered about twenty minutes of anyone who picked up his book. In 1993, Harris Publications knew exactly what the kids liked. They just didn't know how to make it themselves. So, they did the next best thing: They cobbled together bits of 90s detritus and wrapped it up in a trench coat before setting it loose on an innocent comics-buying public. Can Cain overcome all the shortcomings of his derivative existence in order to fulfill his dream of having more than two issues published? Well, no, but even that first Cable series only lasted for, like, 107 issues.

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée glide into 1981's Moon Knight no. 7! Hey, it's another vigilante with dangerous mental health problems, like the Badger! Or Batman! Or the Doom Patrol! Or Rorschach or Daredevil or literally any other superhero whose name doesn't end in -uperman. Seriously, why does anyone do this job? In this issue, Moon Knight gathers up all of his split personalities and the random weirdos he considers his crew and heads off to the Midwest for an adventure in Chicago! What could be the crisis that's driving all of the fine citizens of the Windy City to madness? Is it the potholes so large that hitting them counts as international travel? Is it the CTA schedule that can be considered, at best, a loose suggestion? Is it the winters that feel like plagues that got deleted from the Bible for being too unrealistic? Yes.

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée get fussy while reading 1962's Batman no. 147! An evil scientist has de-aged Batman while allowing him to keep his adult mind and strength, which arguably makes him less like an evil scientist and more like the greatest person who ever lived. Nonetheless, Bruce Wayne won't tolerate being too short to drive recklessly through the streets of Gotham, so he'll don an adorable new suit and carve a path of pint-sized justice through the underworld to find the man who did this to him! Now if only he could figure out who got his nose! And in another story, Batman and Robin encounter a space farmer whose crazy freak plants are being used to help gangsters steal valuable jewels. Hopefully Bruce has good mental health insurance, because these are the kinds of adventures that are absolutely going to shatter Robin psychologically any day now.