Darkseid's Couch

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée dive into a month of water-themed comics, starting with Namor, the Sub-Mariner no. 35! Marvel's first mutant returns home to Atlantis to show off his radical 90s makeover, only to find that a woman claiming to be his dead mother has claimed the throne in his absence! Maybe it's all a big misunderstanding: It's super dark down there and nobody can hear...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée take a break from the totally sensible comics they normally read and try out Strange Adventures no. 52! A decade after World War II, Strange Adventures encapsulated an America obsessed with aliens, bombs, radioactive birds, and a few more bombs, just to be on the safe side. First, a man accidentally creates a species of giant malevolent parakeets. Next...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée get out their oversized magnifying glasses to look for clues in 1982's Ka-Zar the Savage no. 17! Bored of the Savage Land, Ka-Zar decides to get turnt on some mushroom soup and read trashy noir comic books. It's the same coping mechanism that got a generation of adolescents through the 90s. Unfortunately, since Ka-Zar and his lucky bride Shanna just ea...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée discover that the T-Force was inside themselves all along when they read 1993's Mr. T and the T-Force no. 3! Fashion icon Mr. T finally gets his own comic, which mostly features him beating up children and videotaping it. You'd think he'd prefer to make himself the hero of his own comic instead of a bloodthirsty public menace, but here we are. In this...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée pool their life savings to buy a Batarang after reading 1967's Batman no. 191! The Dark Knight is selling all of his batcrap because it might give him cancer, so it looks like we know exactly how much he actually cares about saving Gotham. Come on, Batman! There's always chemotherapy for the cancer, but the Joker ain't going into remission! Then, Alfre...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée journey to the center of their minds with 1988's Psychoblast no. 4! Brian Burke has everything going for him: A sweet janitor gig, tight glutes, and a head full of silver, flowing hair so glorious you'd swear he scalped Kurt Russell. The only problem? There's an amoral supernatural entity locked in his psyche that could be dictating his entire percepti...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée learn about friendship and eye-gouging with 1953's The Three Stooges no. 1! It's a collection of tales featuring everyone's favorite trio of careless knuckleheads who should've died a thousand times by now, Moe, Larry, and Shemp! The 1950s were a decade of economic prosperity, and Americans were eager to point and laugh at those who were struggling to...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée jam a childhood's worth of after-school specials into 26 pages when they read The New Wave no. 11! In 1986, Eclipse Comics seemed to be making books solely to broadcast their disregard for the Comics Code Authority. Case in point: When the New Wave decides to take a day off from whatever it is they normally do to visit the circus, all of the show's dir...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée step in a big pile of Miss America no. 1 and spend an hour trying to wipe it off on the doormat! Travel back to 1944 and witness (or don't) the biggest comic book gimmick of them all: Miss America's inaugural issue was the first book in the industry to actively force anyone with a perfunctory sense of empathy to put it down and go find something else t...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée learn there's no natural resource not worth profiting off of when they read 1984's Sun Runners no. 1! In some non-specified future, Sun Runners travel the galaxy capturing solar energy to sell to needy planets. Sometimes they even fix broken stars, although all that usually involves is unplugging them and then plugging them back in again. The team's ma...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée celebrate the start of a perfectly normal summer with 1992's Marvel Swimsuit Special! Whether you're into cheesecake, beefcake, or just any type of bulge, there's something for everyone when Pip the troll transports all of Marvel's biggest stars to Monster Island for a beach party! Of course, he had to use the Infinity Stones to force them to wear swim...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée vote to defund superheroes after reading the Mighty Crusaders no. 9! Some human flagpole who calls himself the Shield has straight-up murdered a jewel thief but sees no issue with this because he's from the '40s, when that kind of thing was totally acceptable. Unfortunately, it's now the go-go '80s, and vigilantism has been criminalized. Hey pal, you w...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée man their posts at the All-New Mantech Battle Board Playset for the inaugural issue of 80s action figure tie-in comic Mantech Robot Warriors! Proving that there's no concept too thin for a cheap promotional cash-grab, the Mantechs are three chill dudes whose dying carcasses have been horribly mutilated to fit them into interchangeable robot bodies! And...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée deal with their daddy issues while reading 1975's The Son of Satan no. 1! Daimon Hellstrom has recently found out he's the literal son of the devil, which everyone else had already assumed based on his name. Now Daimon will return to his mother's New England home to really "find himself," which means taking a spooky staircase down to Hell and telling h...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée fight over custody of 1984's Batman no. 377! Bruce Wayne has finally found a suitable new Robin in Jason Todd, aka Diet Dick Grayson. Jason is everything Batman looks for in a sidekick: He's tough, smart, and his parents are dead. It should be a match made in vigilante heaven, but there's one problem: Brooding goth supervillain Nocturna also wants adop...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée head down to the free clinic for a screening after reading the first comic book printed with real human blood, the KISS Marvel Comics Super Special! In 1977, trademark licensers and occasional rock band KISS decided to publish a semi-autobiographical comic based on their adventures. It's a pretty accurate depiction, except that the comic book version o...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée microdose 1968's Doctor Strange no. 171! After joyriding around the mystic realms for a while, Strange decides it's finally time to settle down and starts thinking about Clea, the one that got away. Or, more precisely, the one he let get captured by a nefarious demon a while back. This seems to happen to every sorcerer supreme right around the time the...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée join the babysitter's club just by reading Superman's Girl Friend Lois Lane no. 57! When a de-aged Superman unexpectedly shows up and starts trashing stuff, Lois competes with Lana Lang to see which would be the worse mother. Rather than try to understand the situation and protect Superbabe, they immediately jump to brainwashing an innocent child in th...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée give up on trying to make sense of 1987's Teen Titans Spotlight no. 11! It's another day, another dystopia when a series of almost unbelievably complex plot devices sends the Brotherhood of Evil into a war-torn alternate Earth! Don't worry, though, because this one has something no other Earth has: A jacked version of milquetoast Belgian comic strip ch...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée celebrate what may be the last Earth Day ever with 1992's Captain Planet no. 9! Gaia's finally had just about enough of this shit and has chosen five kids to combat the world's ecological ills! If you think that sounds like child endangerment, then congratulations, you officially know more about being a parent than the spirit goddess of Earth. Luckily,...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée take a rickety ghost train to the 1940s to check in on Will Eisner's classic Golden Age adventurer, the Spirit! Read along as the legendary hero snares criminals, fights birds, saves innocents, strangles a goddamn bird, solves mysteries, and refuses to confront the psychological underpinnings of his weird hatred of birds! Plus, pick up some style tips...

This time, on three different Couches spaced at least six feet apart: Mike, James, and Shée practice social distancing while doing a remote read of Judge Dredd: The Judge Child Quest no. 4! Welcome to some weird backwards Dr. Seuss world where some idiot human went and got himself infected with the exotic and terrifying Jigsaw Disease! As perfectly formed pieces of his body disappear, the question...

This time on the Couch: It's a double-sized quarantine special as Mike, James, and Shée try to find something to do to fill the long, existentially crushing days! In JLA: Created Equal, people are dying from a mysterious airborne virus, and the severity of it is denied by those in power until it's too late! That may seem oddly prescient, but it differs from our current reality in two important way...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée finish up 1997's Batman/Aliens crossover! As the page count drops, things are looking bleak: The Xenomorphs have killed half of the book's characters (don't worry, they sucked), a cave-in has left the survivors with little oxygen, Batman hasn't aired out his codpiece in like three whole days, and one guy lost his helmet. Fortunately, the Dark Knight ha...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée celebrate their 100th episode the way comic book nerds celebrate everything: Quarantined in as small a group as possible while getting overly excited about drawings of bulky dudes punching each other in the throat. In this first half of a two-part special, they'll look at the first issue of 1997's Batman/Aliens crossover! This one hits every requiremen...