Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #10 – “Teenage Wasteland (Chapter 4)”! In the previous installment, He Who Calls Himself Topher starts making out with all the Runaway girls because he is apparently irresistable. He looks like shit to me, but who am I to judge?

Tom, that’s who.

The whole issue was spent bickering and fighting, and now Nico’s about to get bitten by a vampire. This is already the final issue of the story! My money is on the vampire.

Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #10 [March, 2004]
Written by: Brian K. Vaughan
“Teenage Wasteland (Part 4)”

Bronson Canyon, California – 2:58am

“AIIIIEEEEEEEEE!” shrieks Nico as our eyebrow-pierced vampire friend bares his pointy-ass fangs. He spills the beans about the robbery, that the other two weren’t his parents. They were his minions, “two lowlifes I turned years ago.”

“Since when do vampires rob convenience stores?” Nico asks, lightening up a tad. Topher is onto her: get him talking so she can bide her time and figure out how to thwart him. Nothing goin’, sister.

Topher reveals that he was born in 1900, which Nico thinks is gross because she kissed a 103-year-old man. Anyway, he made a lot of money during the Great Depression and lost it all in the dot-com crash, and he’s used to a LAVISH LIFESTYLE. So, yes, robbery. What of it?

“If I’ve learned one thing in my long life, it’s that angst-ridden brats like you always have parent issues,” Topher smiles, explaining his reasoning for the bullshit story about his own evil parents. He likes Nico, though! She’s got moxie! Spunk! Chutzpah! And Topher is going to turn her so that she can help him kill the rest of her friends! Booyah! “Too bad that scary magic wand is still trapped inside your perky little chest, huh? How are you going to stop me?”

Like this: *kick in the groin* *dildo in the butthole*

Besides, Topher can give her a special gift! Immortality! Living forever is the sweet life. Just ask Angel or Spike or Dracula or… the sparkly Twilight vampire. It doesn’t matter if Nico doesn’t want to be evil, she’s not going to care once she’s evil!

So Topher bites her, but if you recall, the staff came out of her body when she cut herself on her arm.

Ergo, when blood is shed…

IS THAT A STAFF IN YOUR CHEST OR ARE YOU HAPPY TO SEE ME?! AAAHHHHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

“Oww! Man… will you look at that. It went clean through me and out the other side!” Topher looks down at the hole in his chest, slightly inconvenienced by the ordeal. “Sorry kid. Whedon got it wrong. Stakes don’t kill vampires, they just give us heartburn.”

Well shit. Now what? Decapitation? A day in the sun? An afternoon of Dr. Phil? All three? Nope, a day in the sun it is. And, unfortunately, dawn is still three hours away.

“Hey, Toph!” yells a voice. “You’re off the team.” It’s Alex with a torch, and he starts whipping it at Topher Grace, knocking him out. Nico has a staff in her chest and is happy to see him! She hugs him and tells him she loves him. He returns the love. Time to run before Eric Foreman regains vampire consciousness!

”The Hostel” — 3:14am

Molly, Chase, and Gert are fast asleep when Alex and Nico arrive hollering about getting the hell out of there. The three of them think it’s one, big, fatass joke. But, no, Topher’s a dang vampire and he knows where they all live and it’s time to am-scray. Not part of The Pride as far as they can tell, but he’s still an evil goose and he he knows where they all live and it’s time to am-scray.

“Well, look who came crawling back,” Karolina says, frowning, as she descends the stairs into the main room. Still salty about that Topher love, eh? Well, cut it out! Karolina, he knows where they live and it’s time to am-scray! When asked if Karolina can use her special alien lightbulb powers to fly her to safety, Karolina thinks she’s tapped out for the day until the sun comes back up again.

They don’t get to am-scray.

In what? In a pickle? Because, sir, you’re about to get briny! Or something.

“You forgot to fetch your stick, dog.” Topher waves the staff around willy-nilly, then smacks Nico across the room with it with a THWACK. Chase tries to douse Topher in fire with his high-tech gloves, but Topher is unharmed. “You’re even more stupid than your friends think you are,” Topher says before THWACKing him across the room next.

Now it’s Gert’s turn! She sics her dinosaur at him, but he handily grabs his tail and flips him over, crashing him through a table. This fucks with Gert’s “empathetic connection”, which is something I didn’t know she had with the dinosaur until this very moment.

Alex starts taking off a ring that is probably important, but he takes too long and Topher KRACKs him across the room. That just leaves Karolina and the currently sleeping Molly. Karolina insists that Topher bites her instead of Molly, but Topher thinks blondes are stringy and gross!

“Come on, Topher. I want you to kill me.” And it’s for a stupid reason: she doesn’t want to live in the world where there’s people like Topher and her parents and her friends’ parents and everyone’s parents and Ed Sheeran. “I’m not a good person. I just don’t want to be around to get worse.”

*jerkoff motion*

Topher gives Karolina a hickey.

Mmmm, tastes like chicken if chicken tasted like people.

And then Topher instantly recoils. “What the…? Sunlight. Your blood burns like…”

Flames start shooting out of his eyes and mouth. Then it’s out of control. Then he explodes into a pile of whatever.

“Did Topher just… spontaneously combust?” asks Gert.

“Karolina, how did you know your blood would do that to him?” asks Alex.

“I… I didn’t. I meant every word I–”

Before Karolina can finish the thought that she’d rather die than live…

[TOM’S NOTE: Remember when The Pride said that one of the kids is a mole? I think we may have found our mole. Just a hunch.]

…Molly wakes up with a jolt. Well, she’s been awake since Topher was biting Karolina’s neck. Ughh, things are too fucked up! Molly wants to see her mom and dad again.

“I know, Molly,” Nico says, hugging her. “I know.”

Los Angeles, California – The Next Morning

The Pride has tracked down Topher’s minions and they now hang upside from chains in a warehouse of sorts. They claim they don’t know where their kids are. They swear! “They took off with The One Who Fathered Us!”

Too bad Topher’s dead now. The two minion vampires can sense when one of their own gets slain.

OK, so they don’t know where their kids are. That’s fine. Mr. Minoru opens the room and lets in the sunlight. Dust. Ash. Pooped pants.

“Is it possible? Could our offspring have murdered one of these things?” asks Dr. Mrs. Hayes.

“You feeling it, too?” asks Mr. Yorkes.

“Indeed…” responds Dr. Mrs. Hayes. Then she smiles. “Pride.”

Final Thoughts

Does killing a vampire constitute murder? Would any jury convict anyone for such a thing? I’ve killed at least a million and I ain’t in the clink yet, dagnabbit.

Story’s over! We have a two-issue story coming up that I’ll right away, then I’ll onto UNCLE FEELY’S X-RATED PORNO COMIC EXTRAVAGANZA!!

Or maybe some more Ms. Marvel or something.