By Dustin Cabeal

Take that Victory Gin! Yeah… fuck you and your cheap bottle that breaks at the most believable spot! Who drinks gin? People? I know people that drink gin! Why the fuck is that a cover! When is this comic going to do something? Huh? What’s that lady’s name? Why can’t I remember it? Also, I swear to fucking god if the Joker ends up being their son I’m going to go down to DC’s office and shit in their lobby!

Don’t get me wrong. Stuff happens in this issue. Some of it would be incredibly cool, but for some reason Johns’ pacing is dull. Instead of being a slow and methodical build towards the exciting part, like Comedian being alive some fucking how, in the last issue, it’s instead like, “Oh, that’s what we’re doing here?” Now they explain how he survives, but then what they fuck body were they dealing with in Watchmen? I guess I’m not supposed to ask questions like that.

The fight scene is admittedly cool and Oz getting away was classic superhero parkour. Lex was forgettable in that scene. Then there was the Batman, New Rorschach scenes. What a big ugh, what was worse was the ending. I don’t know what the fuck is up with DC and all their writers trying to make Batman as unlikable as Tony Stark but maybe don’t. There is a big fucking reason that no one that liked Iron Man before his dick move in the comics likes Iron Man in the comics anymore. The only Iron Man I like is the movie version, and I hate all the movie versions of characters. That’s how much I hate the comic version. Don’t do that to Batman. He doesn’t need to be an unlikable dick and DC is ramping up his dickness with Doomsday Clock and Dark Nights Metal. I wanted to like the ending between Batman and New Rorschach, but it was just out of character. Not just for Batman, but for DC.

Then there’s the Mine and his wife whose name I can’t remember, and no one seems to want to repeat since the first issue. If they bring up their fucking kid one more time… shit in the lobby. Two shits if I’m supposed to believe it’s the Joker or worse, that they stupidly think that. The Mine is okay, and they finally showed that he makes shit invisible or something. Overall though, their inclusion felt like a weird need to include over the top gore. That and since when do people get Joker tattoos and protect his territory? That was quite possibly the dumbest thing I have read in a comic in a long time.

It’s not possible to hate the art. Gary Frank is just pouring everything into this, and I notice the connections like one character with their hands raised and then on the next page and panel a different character has their hands raised as well. It’s probably his best work to date, and it’s honestly what makes me keep going with this series. I don’t care that it has a definitive ending if it didn’t have Frank’s artwork I would have quit after the second issue. But Johns’ obsession with paralleling Watchmen is restraining Frank as a storyteller. Sadly, nothing I say about Frank being held back by the script is going to change anything since it’s likely that the next three issues are already completed.

To me, this comic is pretty inoffensive when I think of it’s relationship to Watchmen. If anything it offends and bends too much of the normal DCU for no other reason than it can. What I can’t get over is that with all these marquee moments, it's still incredibly dull. Nothing has been so shocking or amazing that I’ve been like, “Damn Johns, you still got it!” Instead, it’s like, “remember Superboy Prime killing all those Green Lanterns and then later carving the “S” in his chest? That was pretty dope.” Though in hindsight he piggybacked on Kurt Busiek’s Superman story and killed that as well. Ah, comics, right? Work long enough, and someone will take a shit on your lobby aka story.

Score: 3/5 (For the art)

Doomsday Clock #3
DC Comics