Okay, so Pirates 2: Dead Man's Chest came out this weekend, and you saw it (judging by the box office returns you saw it 5 times), and you either loved it or hated it. If you hated it... I just want to know what the fuck you were expecting. It was everything that the first one was plus more ass kicking. You're just one of those people who hates things once they become popular, aren't you...

Anyway, as Karen set up from last Friday, today's comic is part two of Death by Note. And it's about the manga Death Note, if you can't keep up. As previously stated (on Friday and on my reviews page on my old site), the first half of Death Note is brilliant. It's an incredible game of cat and mouse where both players are the cat. It may sound stupid, but that's really the best way to describe it. L and Raito are constantly at each other's throats, trying to take the other down, and both seem to be in the game solely for the satisfaction of winning... Then the series came to its halfway point and things went to Hell in a shit-basket. The second half of this manga seems to be written by a completely different person. New characters are added to the mix, and they are so poorly contrived, and so utterly ridiculous that I simply could not fathom what the hell the author was thinking.

Let me put it to you this way. Pretend that we got the first 4 Harry Potter novels as they were written. You read them and think to yourself "This is some awesome stuff! I can't wait to see how that genius, Rowling, ties everything up after Voldemort's resurrection!!" But then the last three novels end with Harry turning on both Ron and Hermione (and setting them both up to be killed by Snape), sacrificing Ginny to Hagrid's giant acromantula in order to be granted wizardly spider-powers, and then in his final battle with Voldemort Harry loses his mind and avada kadavras himself like a fucking moron. THAT'S the gist of how Death Note fucks itself in the ass in the second half of its run. Absolutely pathetic.

Seriously, stop reading right before the major switch in tone... You'll know it when you get to it. Just pretend that the last half (and especially the last ten chapters which are stinky-stinky poopy poopy [to be blunt]) never happened. Shhhh... Shhhhhh... They were all just a bad dream.

-the Rossman