TGH: Welcome back to another exciting Extreme Justice adventure!

DN: EXTREME
SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE: NAUSEA, DIZZINESS, ANAL LEAKAGE. CALL YOUR DOCTOR TO FIND OUT IF EXTREME WORKS FOR YOU

TGH: Last time, Captain Atom and his team finally got what was coming to them when a bunch of robots attacked them in direct response to breaking into their home. Then Captain Atom exploded like the true leader he is! The cover starts where we last left off, with Blue Beetle and Booster Gold sneaking through the sewers while some robot sneaks up behind them, I guess!

DN: So, on the cover, is Booster shooting or being shot?

QP: His chest is very shiny and reflective.

TGH: I think he’s scouting for clues with his chest light he had installed right now. For this issue, the cover switches from our normal yellow to a blue tone, perhaps to signify the deep sadness the team feels from the loss of Captain Atom, a brilliant and no doubt deliberate use of color.

DN: The cover is also not attacking the reader

QP: It’s attacking the person just to the reader’s right.

TGH: I actually have no idea if the robot on this cover even shows up in the actual cover, since the art is kind of a mess in parts, but we’ll get to that later.

QP: Well they don’t do a terribly good job drawing any of the robots in this book, so who even knows?

TGH: Also, I’m pretty sure I’m seeing this wrong but the robot looks like it’s wearing a tengu mask.

DN: You are correct.

BW: They’re REALLY pushing the whole “Iron Gold” thing on the cover, aren’t they?

DN: Unfortunately.

TGH: I thought for a minute that we were reading Gardner again, because we open with a recap of Captain Atom’s origin in case we were worried about how a dead man came to be. Props to Nathaniel Adam for having the balls to volunteer to have an atom bomb explode under his ass I guess.

BW: *Insert obligatory beans joke*

QP: They’re really trying to make us care about him now that he’s dead, huh?

TGH: So much that they wasted 2 pages on it.

QP: Oddly enough, I still don’t care.

TGH: Beetle is not doing his sexy dance this time, but Maxima is grabbing his left tit for some reason.

BW: Nothing says team building like a random purple nurple.

QP: Breast self-checks are very important for health management, even in men.

DN: Also, she has detached her arm, somehow.

BW: Maxima really does have the broadest power set.

TGH: Maxima is having none of this shit and starts mind-blasting the psychic robot. I guess someone has to die in order for her to get in the game.

QP: Everyone is very upset again. Maxima is so upset that her blood is boiling out of her mouth.

BW: Meanwhile the background is nothing but fire.

QP: I’m not really sure how they’re not all burnt to a crisp on account of all the fire.

TGH: Maxima is as powerful as Superman, so I’ll at least accept that this shouldn’t bother her that much. Booster has a suit, Amazing-Man is probably turning into fire or something, and Blue Beetle can use his spider-sense to dodge all the flames.

QP: If Pokemon has taught me anything, it’s that bug type heroes are very vulnerable to fire.

BW: And Captain Atom…WHOOPSY DAISY!

TGH: Captain Atom probably caused all of this fire.

TGH: Maxima only manages to piss this guy off, so he orders his grunt to self-destruct.

BW: Spoiler: He was going to self-destruct anyway. Because of FIRE.

QP: It’s not really self-destruction of someone else starts the fire.

BW: Point!

TGH: Maxima, forever helping, refuses to leave and just wants to keep fighting until they die. Luckily, Beetle waves his arms like crazy some sense into her.

BW: Beetle luckily does a flex pose to point the way to the exit.

TGH: Synapse (which I guess is that robot’s name) says that he wants to make sure the other robot’s death wasn’t in vain, as the team floats away to safety, rendering his death officially in vain.

BW: Whomp whomp!

QP: Elsewhere in the compound, General Synge has teleported to the Hot House, which makes you wonder why he even bothered flying to Mount Thunder in the first place.

TGH: His head (only?) man Jones fills him in on the situation in case the reader has fallen asleep already.

DN: The drawing of Synge is haunting. Like, I’m not sleeping tonight.

QP: I appreciate the inconsistent shading making him look like he forgot to put the eyeballs on his human suit when he got dressed this morning.

BW: No matter the art team’s weaknesses, they kindly provide a map of all these random areas whenever they get mentioned.

TGH: “Even though they control the brain, they have no idea how to use it” wins the award for unintentional sick burn.

TGH: Synapse comes flying/walking/being drawn in and Synge yells at him for being a fuck-up and letting his teammate blow up for no reason, which, you know, fair enough.

BW: Then of course, Synge tells him that his teammates should have self destructed sooner.

TGH: Then Synge explains his entire plan to everyone who is already deeply involved in it. And us, I guess.

QP: They go to great lengths to explain that there’s some shadowy conspiracy that they have to protect the country from, but never go to the trouble of explaining the conspiracy. It’s almost as if, and I know this sounds crazy, but bear with me, the writer didn’t have a fucking clue what was going on.

TGH: It’s like they had a crystal ball looking into actual 2016 politics.

QP: Sounds like Wall Street corporate shill talk to me, buddy.

DN: The way Campos draws Synge is legit worse than Dementor. And that is saying something.

TGH: At least Synge keeps his damn pants on.

QP: Synge looks like the shrunken head corpse from Beetlejuice in one panel.

TGH: Synge demands that more robots be activated but Jones points out that for some reason none of them are ready for combat, which, frankly, seems to be a real hole in their plan here.

BW: Synge won’t allow a little thing like logic to stand in his way though.

QP: He orders Synapse to go all Scanners on Jones.

TGH: Synge orders Synapse to go ahead and stretch Jones’s face and make his glasses vanish, probably killing him.

TGH: Meanwhile, back at The Brain, Amazing-Man is suddenly the smartest person in the entire comic by realizing that this entire situation has been stupid as hell.

QP: Somehow he is unable to sway the rest of the team.

TGH: He almost even gets Booster Gold on his side until Maxima calls them cowards, a man’s greatest weakness.

BW: Everyone argues with him to stay because…”plot”. Seriously their primary argument to staying in this situation is “plot.”

QP: “We might need you, even though we haven’t really needed you yet.”

DN: Maxima also has a 16-inch waist. Do Almeracians have organs?

TGH: They’re all in their chests.

QP: You mean in their boobs.

DN: They might have a few in their butts.

TGH: Beetle is really intent that there’s a conspiracy behind the conspiracy to stop the conspiracy.

QP: Which is a little weird, since no one has mentioned any conspiracies to him yet.

TGH: I think there’s a conspiracy in that panel regarding the color of his head. And I’m not sure how security robots preventing a break-in counts as something stinking, but here we are.

QP: Amazing-Man insists being a hero is not for him, but everyone argues otherwise. Look, don’t diss a person’s ability to self-evaluate.

BW: It’s too bad he didn’t have a buddy die five minutes ago to motivate…oh wait.

DN: Its like he didn’t read the job description for “fucking super-hero.”

QP: He probably did, I imagine it’s somewhat different than the job description for “super-hero.”

DN: …

TGH: Amazing-Man asks why they’re even doing this and Beetle goes to the old standard, “If we don’t, then who will?”  Which, coincidentally is also the answer to “Why are we robbing this bank?”

QP: Or, conveniently, “why are we invading this secret military base?”

TGH: They spend several pages browbeating Amazing-Man into staying,  which is kind of sad, honestly.

DN: Maxima has random pupilitis.

QP: He expresses concern about dying, and everyone’s like , “Oh, is that all?”

TGH: Booster laughs at him for being afraid to die.

QP: Eh, what’s a little death on the job?

TGH: Then Beetle looks at the computer and announces that the doors are all locked and nobody is leaving ever. Sure, Beetle.

BW: The Muzak in the Brain then begins playing an instrumental of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” for some reason.

TGH: Then Beetle manages to come up with a plan despite gathering no additional information.

DN: And then we get to the B-plot! Ronnie gets CHEMO! And this is more entertaining than the A-plot!

QP: Well it does have a talking robot buddy, so of course.

BW: Because no one else would go with him. How sad is Ronnie Raymond’s world?

TGH: Oberon couldn’t handle the heaviness of chemo so he stayed in the car (with the windows rolled down, of course).

BW: You just know he’s gonna crap on the interior anyway.

TGH: Or he’s in the supply closet, eating glucose packets.

QP: Ronnie doesn’t bother to mention his flying robot buddy to the doctor, leading to Skeets popping out with helpful information, only to drive the doctor to a coronary.

TGH: The doctor made fun of how much chemo is going to suck so he pretty much had it coming.

DN: But it’ll all be okay because Gene Therapy!

QP: It’s too bad the medical community didn’t bother to listen to this fictional robot from the future, we might’ve had this whole cancer thing knocked out by now.

BW: Sadly the doctor was actually referring to jean therapy, aka retail therapy, which doesn’t actually help anything.

TGH: Back at Mount Thunder, the robots are flying around looking for Extreme Justice, I guess, and the new guy starts doubting their orders since he wasn’t ready like poor Jones warned. I hope Synge is at least properly booting the other ones up right now while these 3 jokers are on the hunt.

DN: EXTREME
SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE: NAUSEA, DIZZINESS, ANAL LEAKAGE. CALL YOUR DOCTOR TO FIND OUT IF EXTREME WORKS FOR YOU

QP: Gee, I wonder what’s gonna happen with this clearly malfunctioning robot?

BW: The robots lampshade the plot almost instantaneously. “Don’t worry Synapse, these super humans are gonna come looking for trouble.”

TGH: While they’re on the hunt, Extreme Justice is hiding in some sort of nonsense grating on the ceiling because they came looking for trouble.

DN: EXTREME
SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE: NAUSEA, DIZZINESS, ANAL LEAKAGE. CALL YOUR DOCTOR TO FIND OUT IF EXTREME WORKS FOR YOU

QP: Man, who could’ve called that?

TGH: What the hell is that thing? The point of grating is for stuff to go into the pipe, but it’s on the ceiling, so everything would just fall through it. Clearly these artists are not city planners.

BW: Air intake maybe?

TGH: I’m sure they could tell us if we ever asked.

BW: I realize I’m giving them far more benefit of the doubt than they deserve when we see a flat-out McFarlane-aping shot in the next page.

DN: Well, at least they’re consistent in the way Maxima is drawn without a spine or organs.

TGH: Everyone comes falling into action. Blue Beetle is seconds away from very non-erotic asphyxiation. Tomorrow’s headline: Ted Kord Dead by Cord.

DN: Blue Beetle does not get how ropes work.

TGH: He’s so intense too, bless his heart. I appreciate how the next panel is pretty much him dead-falling to the ground after the laws of physics told him to go fuck himself.

BW: Sorry Ted, you’re NOT Blue Spider-Man.

QP: That’s a fappo moment if ever there was one.

TGH: Don’t worry, Beetle, you’ve only got 75 feet of rope before it tightens and saves you.

QP: Somehow he manages to land and run at the robots like he can actually do anything against them.

TGH: He’s just running as fast as he can to help his yelling.

QP: It’s nice that Maxima got the Phoenix Force for the duration of this arc. That’ll be helpful I’m sure.

TGH: His entire plan was that Amazing-Man borrowed Maxima’s powers so he could also use them on Synapse.

QP: Can…can he do that?

TGH: That’s his entire thing!

TGH: Beetle uses this opportunity to find a lamp post in the sewer and krang one of the robots.

TGH: The plan works for about 3 minutes, but then Synapse  gets mad and just shakes it off.

QP: It’s almost as if Amazing-Man doesn’t have a clue how to use those powers.

TGH: Beetle’s one weakness is that he counted on Amazing-Man to do anything, so of course his head sets on fire.

QP: Hey, what’s one more thing on fire, anyway?

BW: “What do I doooo?!”
“Stop, drop, and roll, for heaven’s sake!”

DN: This team kinda sucks.

TGH: Should’ve left when you had the chance, flame-head.

QP: Absorb the fire, dumbass.

TGH: He caaaaaaaaaaan’t because reeeeeeeaaaaasooooooons!

TGH: Booster demands that Beetle jump into Plan B, which is changing the color of his head again, BUT IT DOESN’T WORK!

QP: “We’ve got problems.” What? Really?

TGH: Amazing-Man takes the power of the nearest thing he collapsed next to and tries to fight again, while Booster and Beetle argue about how they’re going to escape.

QP: Stupidly, it looks like it’s a piece of wood, which isn’t gonna be helpful here.

BW: Because, shockingly, everything is on fire. Again. Seriously could NO ONE turn their pages in on time?

TGH: You’d think the fact that it’s already broken when he touches it would clue him into how it will fare.

QP: Or the fact that it is ON FIRE.

TGH: Sadly, we never get to see Amazing-Man explode into flaming splinters because Captain Atom appears out of nowhere!!!

QP: Oh thank God, a fiery Deus Ex Machina.

DN: Captain Atom returns: 2

BW: Atomic Boogaloo.

DN: We are on issue 3.

QP: He doesn’t really do anything though, just goes all Great and Terrible Oz.

TGH: For the record, a shitty robot with mind powers time-jumped him further than the actual nuke in issue 0. But not as far as the other nuke from his origin that sent him like 25 years into the future.

BW: Or the one that sent him to Wildstorm. Or the one that turned him into Dr. Manhattan. Wait.

TGH: Now that Captain Atom is back in town, will this fight continue for even longer? Will the base continue to constantly be on fire? And will Oberon finally find a forever home? Tune in next time on Extreme Justice!

DN: EXTREME
SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE: NAUSEA, DIZZINESS, ANAL LEAKAGE. CALL YOUR DOCTOR TO FIND OUT IF EXTREME WORKS FOR YOU