East of West, Issue #31 – “Watch Us as We Rob Them Blind”

* Part 2 of 16 of the The Apocalypse: Year Three storyline *

Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: East of West, Issue #31 – “Watch Us as We Rob Them Blind”! In the previous installment, a mortally wounded Narsimha aims to have a frank discussion with the leader of the crazy religious nutbags who bring the good Word of the Lord to them (and also tear down the Endless Nation’s Machine City.

We see a flashback of Wolf as a wolf fighting the Hellbeast as a Hellbeast. During the midst of the fight, an attached Ezra Orion is fucking screaming about Wolf losing the battle and getting killed. Wolf eats Orion, fulfilling the Prophecy that he who eats the Word becomes the Word.

So Wolf is now the Word. And now he is Narsimha’s enemy! Scandalous!

Oh yeah, the Horsemen are looking forward to Apocalypsing. As usual. They’re all frothing and popping boners about it, which is just very nice I say.

What’s next in this Final Year of the Apocalypse?! Will Archibald hump a dead ox?? Will Xiaolian hump a dead ox?? The possibilities are limitless!

East of West, Issue #31 [February, 2017]
Written by: Jonathan Hickman
“Watch Us as We Rob Them Blind”

East of West, Issue #31

We’re at the Black Towers, home of Andrew Archibald Chamberlain and his niece I-Forget-Her-Name. Candice? Camille? JETHRO? Constance, it’s Constance. And she has good news and better news for the President of the Confederacy! Archibald knows what the good news is already: his cabinet is top-notch. Real solid stuff. Couldn’t have asked for better advisors and yes-men. Good work.

Here’s the better news: Union President Antonia LeVay is asking for money. She wants the goods to fund her beekeeping hobby. Archibald clicks on a hologram and sees a very angry, shrieky-looking LeVay. “Now that is not the face of grace under pressure,” Archibald says snootily.

Constance guesses that the Union is getting hella overrun by Endless Nation assholes while a Civil War breaks out in her own nation. Definitely not a cool situation. There were rumors of funding from the rich-ass Kingdom of New Orleans, but they’d rather fund their own beekeeping hobbies. “So… are you going to help her?” Constance asked the fabulously-mustachioed one. Archibald gives a mighty “Hrmpt!” and answers LeVay’s Zoom call.

Sweet as honey, Archibald tells LeVay that he’ll help her with anything she needs. She thanks him profusely and asks for money please. Archibald renegs immediately on his “anything she needs” offer and tells her that there ain’t no coin for the beggars.

“There is something you need to remember,” she tells him. “We are part of a plan larger than ourselves. Larger than even our nations. We were both tasked with maintaining political order. The Horsemen demand order. And while you are succeeding, I am failing… Badly.”

East of West, Issue #31

The blue JPEG artifact lady is depserate for wrinkle cream.

Archibald practically jerks off with LeVay’s tears as lube and tells her to try another method of persuasion. She begs for help. He gets to brass tacks: what the fuck does she need the money for? The bees can keep themselves! LeVay needs weapons and soldiers. Archibald can spare weapons, but not soldiers. Hey, you’re Madame President of the Union! Instate a draft! Get some fresh-faced 18-year-olds on enemy lines!

She thanks him for the idea and then Archibald tells her to expect weapons within a day or two. After the call ends, Constance smells something fishy. “What are you up to, uncle?” she asks. “My dear… you wound me,” Archibald responds.

“Bite down until you feel bone.”

“Suffer your sons and daughters, for one day they will replace you.”

This has happened previously, but LeVay is astonished at how young all these rebels against the Union are. The police have isolated four individuals who “seem to be of some importance”, and LeVay begins talking to them.

“Talk all you want, there’s nothing you can say to change our minds… fascist!” yells one of the youngins.

“Do you really think you were freer when you weren’t in chains?” she asks, taking a police officer’s semi-automatic rifle and gunning down three of them. The fourth one, crying, gets hit with the butt of the gun before she runs away. “Let the word spread,” LeVay says.

One day later, the girl wakes up in a cell. Three of her rebellion buddies, free from their own cells, inform her that the police had nearly gunned down their entire lot. How many are left? About seven or eight, give or take. She is asked if they all should run. “They stole our city, wrecked our nation, and killed our friends. You want to run?” the girl asks incredulously. “Hell no. There is no running… we stay and fight. And we win or die.”

Sounds rather promising! Good luck with that! We’ll get back to you some other time, kids. Let’s go to the White Tower where LeVay looks like she aged about seven trillion years. Doma Lux is spread out on the couch seductively; the shipment from the Confederacy is on its way. Should be here within the hour. Lux congratulates LeVay on her “damsel in distress” shtick with Archibald. “Who said I was acting?” LeVay responds.

While LeVay prattles on about needing to win, the remaining members of the rebellion do a thing where they launch a thing into the air. They discuss their fortuitous situation that they have a nameless, faceless benefactor who continually funds their efforts.

The thing they launch in the air looks like a very large drinking straw. The four rebels are in their own shuttle attempting to dock onto the drinking straw. Their attempts are successful. Off they go.

East of West, Issue #31

We made it to Dairy Queen, boys! Blizzards for everyone!

“Three objectives: Eliminate the guards in the transport car. Capture the engine. Secure the cargo.” And make it snappy.

They cut through the hull of the drinking straw and enter the drinking straw. Staying alert and trying not to poop their pants too hard, the group looks for the transport car. The group finds the transport car. The girl guns down the entire group and announces through her comm that the transport car is secure, “but heads up. I think one made it out.”

The one that made it out gets shot through his fancy helmet visor and knocked off the drinking straw. It’s a ship, of course, but I like to keep calling it a drinking straw because that’s a really stupid phrase anyway. “Drinking straw.”

Next, the cargo must be secured, which means someone captured the engine! That’s good news! Even better news that this action sequence is decidedly almost over. They separate the cargo hold from the rest of the DRINKING STRAW, and one throws a bomb into the cockpit KILLING THE PILOTS OF THE SHIP. Only one guy is left and he’s a hostage. Now what? Who cares. It’s Doma Lux time.

“Aaannd I just got confirmation from aviation command… the shipment has entered our airspace.” Finally, a congratulations is in order! Here it is! Ahem… congr

“I must say, Doma, for those such as you and I who are heavily invested in the collapse… I am continually shocked by just how perilous the end times are,” LeVay says as she and Doma clink champagne glasses. “Frankly, when it doesn’t make me furious… I find it so very fucking depressing…”

“Are you a romantic?” one of the rebels, a lady with a mohawk, asks the remaining member of the ship. “Because if you’re not, you certainly should be. Romantics leave their marks on the world… And we’re about to write our names in fire across the sky.”

When asked what she means by this, she asks him if he ever cared about something so much that he was willing to suffer and die for it.

He says no.

East of West, Issue #31

You taste like Funyuns, cigarettes, and rubbing alcohol.

“This is how you die well… By taking the bastards with you.”

The rebels do a 9/11 into the White Tower.

Final Thoughts

Is this the end of Madame “Pinchy Face” LeVay and Doma “Sex Boner Nymphomaniac” Lux?

Is Archibald going to win this whole thing?

Is the Apocalypse just a front for a big surprise birthday party for Death?

Exactly three of those things are true! Haha haa, what?!


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Darth Vader (Vol. 1), Issue #10 – “Book II: Shadows and Secrets (Part 4)”

* Part 4 of 6 of the Book II: Shadows and Secrets storyline *

Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: Darth Vader (Vol. 1), Issue #10 – “Book II: Shadows and Secrets (Part 4)”! In the previous installment, Darth Vader is getting scrutinized by Thanoth the Inspector and he’s not having a good time about it. Meanwhile, Aphra is shoving millions of credits in this one dude’s face looking for information about a guy named Commodex Tahn.

Aphra thinks information about this guy will be very useful to Vader.

Because Commodex Tahn is/was a mortician on Naboo.

And Vader may want to see Padmé’s decomposing corpse, I guess? That would be a weird turn of events.

Darth Vader (Vol. 1), Issue #10 [December, 2015]
Written by: Kieron Gillen
“Book II: Shadows and Secrets (Part 4)”

Darth Vader (Vol. 1), Issue #10

A big elephant-looking alien surrenders to Darth Vader in the Dragon’s Mansion on Alpha Prime.

“Will you reveal to whom you sold explosives?” Vader asks.

“Yes!”

“A shame.”

This big elephant-looking alien is perhaps the Dragon and this is his Mansion. Vader cuts him down with a lightsaber, presumably killing him even though I don’t see blood pouring every which way. Thanoth is like wtf, the dude wasn’t going to explode the building! He didn’t even have a trigger! He was bluffing! Vader is like “eh”.

Well, the only way to go is forward, I suppose. Thanoth finds the Dragon’s vault full of sensitive documents and a stash of secret photos of nude Gungans. “Three failures and it will immolate its contents, I suspect,” says Thanoth. “Of the finest quality. It’ll take at least a month to open safely. I must try. Immediately.”

What’s the rush, homie? Ain’t no urgency here! In fact, opening the vault is dumb as shit! Let’s forget it entirely. Nope? Okay, okay, Thanoth is allowed to try it but he must not fail. That’ll learn ‘em. Heh heh.

In less than four seconds Thanoth cracks open the vault successfully.

Vader is nonplussed. As far from plussed as you can imagine! Thanoth has his reasons for cracking the keypad code as fast as he did, all of which are super boring and nerdy and not worth even mentioning here.

“You are… talented and persistent, Thanoth,” Vader compliments with the air of someone who is about 4 seconds away from decapitating a bitch with a lightsaber.

Darth Vader (Vol. 1), Issue #10

Let the showering of smooches commence!

Thanoth accepts the compliment and, of course, reminds Lord Vader that this persistence will help him uncover the core of crime! And also whodunit. “I will have to do this alone,” Thanoth tells him. “You cut a somewhat noticeable figure, Lord Vader… I also suspect the final step will involve a certain brutality. When the time comes, we must be ready to move with force.”

Vader just stares at him, probably popping a little stiffy over the word “force”, and then tells him to carry on. Then he says some vapid pseudo-intimidating shit and walks away.

On Naboo, in one of those cozy Nabooian royal homes, Commodex Tahn enjoys a lovely evening drink next to his faithful protocol droid WHEN ALL OF A SUDDEN HIS HOUSE GETS BOMBED! LOL!

“Defenses down. Destroy the droids. Shoot up the place. Stun only when you’re in range of the target. We need him alive.” Aphra storms the house with a small army of droids while Tahn runs to get his oversized gun. Lock and load, baby. *Clint Eastwood snarl*

Tahn doesn’t really get to use his gun much before BT-1 melts the sucker right in his hands. Aphra finds this less than amusing, but at least Tahn is alive. “Find whatever safe he has,” Aphra orders. “Get it open, Beetee. Clean it out. We need to make this look like a robbery.”

Tahn looks disgruntled!

Darth Vader (Vol. 1), Issue #10

I SAID SHUT UP! *knocks Tahn in the face so hard with the butt of a gun that he poops out his teeth*

When addressed as “Commodex Tahn”, the guy looks confused. Bewildered, even. Perplexed, you might say. Aphra tells him that you have to wake up pretty early in the morning to fool her into thinking that you ain’t Commodex Tahn, chief! Like, 7:45am. “You prepared Senator Amidala’s body for burial. We need your fond nostalgic memories of that sad time.”

Tahn is like “no way Jose” and stands his ground! Queen Amidala shat out diamonds and ambrosia and no one is going to sully her memory with betrayal and, er… nostalgic memories!

These two, Aphra and Tahn, they exchange some words about morality and honor and other useless horseshit. Between growing up in a galactic war and a bitter divorce between her parents, Aphra didn’t have much room for staying innocent. “The thing with wars,” she says, “if the war doesn’t get you, all the scum opportunists profiting from the chaos will. Raiders came in. Mom told me to run. I did. But I came back with this awesome cannon I found in a cave I was exploring and blew them all to pieces. I saved everyone.”

Aphra talks some more unprompted because that’s exactly what people tend to do in these hostage situations. Tahn apologizes for her less-than-ideal situation, but she tells him to stuff it. Everyone has a sob story. It was a war, dingus!

Amidala might have been a good queen, but she wasn’t a strong queen, was she? Strong beats good and weak any day! It’s like rock, paper, scissors only “strong” is the dynamite that blows it all up real good.

“Amidala was good and strong,” Tahn insists.

“Not strong enough,” replies Aphra.

Aphra orders O-O-O to torture the guy until he is willing to talk. O-O-O tortures the guy until he is willing to talk.

“Amidala’s hologram when she was buried made her appear she was still pregnant. But you, Mr. Mortician, were one of the very few people who had access to the body. You know the truth.”

Yeah! She was just fat! Cow City! Mooo!

Darth Vader (Vol. 1), Issue #10

TELL ME WHERE AL CAPONE IS BURIED! WHERE IS THAT FAT PIECE OF SHIT?

Hey Tahn, just confirm that Amidala had a son, ok? Amidala had a son who was taken away and let’s just cut to the chase here before O-O-O continues sticking his rusty razor-blade penis attachment into your fingernails.

Tahn confirms what Aphra already knows. Aphra thanks him for his services to the Great Almighty Empire of Pancakes and has O-O-O kill him. *dusts off hands*

O-O-O thinks they could have tortured Tahn for more information, but Aphra doesn’t need to know any more than she does: that some little pantswetter son of Queen Amidala is out there somewhere jerking off into a sock. “Vader’ll be glad to know the full story.” And then they fuck on out of Naboo and into our hearts.

Later, on Anthan Prime, Aphra reports what she has learned to Vader. Vader is like “cool”.

“…anything else on the to-do list, Lord Vader?” she asks. And yeah, we need to find the Death Star Blower-Upper. No shit and for real this time. Some Imperial officer is trying to find him too, and they need to find him first so they can, I don’t know, have a party. “The Ante was hinting he knows a lot. If Imperial intelligence has a lead, I’ll bet he’ll have better.” Vader huffs and puffs and takes out his inhaler. “You have the funds. Arrange a meeting. Offer what is required.”

As a side note, that Thanoth motherfucker is really getting in the way lately.

“Anything to worry about?” Aphra asks.
“I have no fears,” Vader responds. “He suspects nothing.”

Zoom into a fucking tracking device on Vader’s helmet.

Final Thoughts

DO YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST BUG DARK LORD VADER AND GET AWAY WITH IT? He will say really mean things to you and then you’ll be sorry.

Vader really cares about finding this Death Star kid. Maybe he should’ve been home throwing the ol’ baseball around when he was a kid instead of Dark Lording in the galaxy like he has something to prove (tiny penis).


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All-Star Superman, Issue #10 – “Neverending”

* Part 10 of 12 of the All-Star Superman limited series *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: All-Star Superman, Issue #10 – “Neverending”! As in, this shitty limited series is never ending. In the previous installment, a couple of arrogant blowjobs from Krypton, who happen to still be alive after floating through space for decades or something, decide to mosey on over to Earth where they intend into Kryptonize the fair city of Metropolis. Superman is like “DON’T IMPOSE YOUR CULTURE ON THESE INNOCENT PEOPLE” and slaps them like Will Smith slapped Chris Rock.

SO THEN WHAT? Well, Bar-El and Lilo are their names and getting weaker because of passing through toxic kryptonite clouds is their game. lol. So even in the yellow sun their shit is falling apart, so in a blatant act of plot-holing, Superman sends them to the Phantom Zone to recover and he’ll bust them out some day (he won’t).

There was a TO BE CONTINUED, which means there’s more of this story? Kill me now please!

All-Star Superman, Issue #10 [May, 2008]
Written by: Grant Morrison
“Neverending”

All-Star Superman, Issue #10

WHAT IS THIS NOW?! Holding up the Earth like that? Does this comic lay claim that Superman is GOD? I have a bunch of pamphlets here that say otherwise, fool. Namaste and amen.

At 7:02am, Superman lifts a school bus across the Pyramids of Giza. Then he visits a children’s ward of a hospital for some reason. Both these things happen for some reason.

At 11:25pm, Superman tearfully records his final will and testament. He sits in an uncomfortable stone chair and ponders laboriously. “There’s so little time left now,” he says, counting down the literal seconds before he keels over and dies hilariously. “The end is getting closer and there’s still so many things I’ve yet to achieve.”

1) Fuck Mars

2) Marry Jupiter

3) Kill Saturn

“The time-traveler Samson told me I’d complete twelve legendary super challenges before my death. I would answer the unanswerable question, overcome the tyrant sun, Solaris… even create life…”

These sure are some groovy SUPER challenges! Overcome the sun! Ha! Good luck! It’s what killed you, remember dingus? Hello?

Superman reckons he has accomplished seven super challenges so far. Five left to go. Let’s hop to it. Bucket list this bitch.

At 10:25am the next morning, Superman’s little city in a bottle Kandor, the council members prepare for a historic moment (the hilarious death of Superman?) while Superman watches through the glass and jerks off. Quintum bounds into the room dressed like a superhero; Authentic Kryptonian Formal Wear! Courtesy of nose-picker Jimmy Olsen.

Van-Zee of Kandor has signaled to Superman that they’re ready for Quintum. Ready for what? For him to squat over the glass and lay a big fat turd? It’s not like he’ll be much more influential or prophetic or anything like that. Look at the nerd, he looks like he’s going to hurt himself, you know, falling down a canyon.

Superman shrinks Quintum down to Kandor-civilian height and wishes him luck. WHY DOESN’T SUPERMAN JUST EMBIGGEN THE CIVILIANS OUT OF THE GLASS?! FUCK! THAT’S A GREAT IDEA!

All-Star Superman, Issue #10

Seriously though, there’s still time for a big, stinky dump all over the glass. It’ll be funny!

Quintum joins the Kandor council to discuss their favorite Family Matters episodes. A guy in green is like “HURF DURF AN EARTHMAN HAS NEVER JOINED OUR SECRET SPECIAL COUNCIL BEFORE HUUURRRGG” and then a guy in purple is like “thank you for joining us.”

Qunitum has some stuff to say about Superman’s FAILURE, for lack of literally any other word, to fix the city of Kandor and its citizens. I guess years of staring at it like a fishtank wasn’t good enough. “If you’ll hear me out, I may have a simple solution to your predicament.”

Simple, eh? And the smartest man on Earth couldn’t figure it out? The dude deserves to die.

At 12:01am, Superman continues his last will and testament. He basically launches into a soliloquy about how useless the humans are without him. Then he created an alternate Earth called “Earth Q” where he could study an Earth without Superman. He made Earth Q cube-shaped, which already adds an unnecessary variable to the equation. Smartest man on Earth indeed.

At 4:35pm (I’m assuming this whole dumb sequence is happening consecutively), Superman arrives at the site of a giant robot alien monster zombie pirate ninja invasion. “He tore the site apart looking for this — then just dropped it when the reporter got in his way. We thought it was some kind of time capsule. But see the date!”

“2312?” says Superman, slack-jawed. “A time capsule from the future, buried in the past?” Superman tries to get a glimpse inside the lead box with his x-ray vision (SCIENCE DISPUTE: x-rays don’t go through lead), but then the giant robot alien monster whatever returns with Lois Lane in its grasp!

All-Star Superman, Issue #10

Oh ho ho ho, no, that’s German for “The Superman, The!”

Superman is all “LOIS!?” and Lois is all “Uhm.”

“I AM THE TRUE MAN OF STEEL!” proclaims, what I can see with my own two eyes, a true man of steel, that’s for sure. “THE AUTHENTIC MAN OF TOMORROW! DO YOUR WORST.”

Superman plows through the head of this thing, splintering it into 100,000 pieces of shrapnel and revealing a Bernie Sanders-looking madman at the helm. “AAAAAAA!!” he wails.

“He’s on some wild electronic goose chase for Luthor,” Lois explains as Superman returns her safely to the ground. “It’s barely a story, Superman. The guy has Alzheimer’s.”

Lois urges Mr. Superb Man not to fly away just yet! Just so you know, Lois got in Machano-Man’s way on purpose to get your attention! Wubba lubba dub dub! Did it work?? “What does that say about how much we need to talk? Why don’t you want to talk?”

Um, ‘cause toots, stringing more than five words together makes his brain shut down and temporarily become a big pile of spaghetti. But, checkmate motherfucker, Lois knows that you’re dying of acute yellow sun exposure sickness radiation syndrome-itis! Superman looks to the fashionably-garbed Quintum, who cops to spilling the beans. It happened by accident, he swears! The conversation just went there. All like “Does this shawl make my big fat butt look fat?” and then I couldn’t help but respond with “NNNYYYAAAHHHHGGG SUPERMAN IS DYING LOL!”

All-Star Superman, Issue #10

No.

Superman conveniently starts hearing another damsel in distress, so he flies away. It’s some Hot Topic goth chick about to leap off a building. Alternative girls are the most troubled, you know. It’s science. Anyway, he stops her. Yawn.

At 11:00am (I get it, it’s out of sequence. I’m not putting extra effort into keeping it all together), Quintum talks to the round table of colorful Kandorians to lay out his idea to bust them out of Miniature Hell. None of them want to leave, they want their city and their culture to be preserved. One dude is like “BUT THE YELLOW SUN WILL GIVE US SUPERMAN POWERS, DOESN’T THAT SOUND POSITIVELY ENTICING?” but one called Than-Ar is like “as if!” “We will lose everything that makes us what we are.”

Yeah, ok sweetie. The adults are talking now. Time for a vote. All in favor of a pizza party, say “yay!” If you want anchovies, say “yee!” And–

“Van-Zee! Wait!” yells a loudmouth dressed like four others standing around him. “We understand Superman’s life is in jeopardy. We five of the Kandor Emergency Corps have a plan to save him. Will you lead us as you once did, Van-Zee?”

There’s always some altruistic bullshit in these Superman comics. Just once can’t someone be like “you’re interrupting my burger.”

At 1:36pm, Superman has repaired every single one of Earth’s bridges. All 150,000,000,000 of them.

All-Star Superman, Issue #10

You missed a spot.

Some other stuff happens at different times. Superman counts his DNA, or so it seems. The inhabitants of Earth Q look up at their god and point. At 5:13pm, Superman goes to Metropolis’ version of Alcatraz and fesses up to Lex Luthor that he’s dying. Superman’s dying, not Luthor. Luthor is as spry as a nubile, young, taut boy. “The world is yours, at least for the three weeks you have left before they execute you.”

Oh joy and yippee. Thanks for handing over this gay Earth that sucks. Superman challenges him to fix the world like he always said he would. Make it better, smartypants, I dare you.

“Lex, I know there’s good in you,” Superman says.

Luthor makes a face suggesting that he just farted and that the fart smells rotten.

At 11:59:59:980pm (!), on Earth Q, some hippie lady preaches outside some sort of pantheon.

At 9:10pm, Superman sprays the lead box with eyeball fire and reveals a hologram in a sphere. “GR8TNGS SPRMAN @ 2C!” the hologram says gratingly. “U DUNNO I – I DUNNO U GET I N-LISH TOK. I ROO MAC2 SPR-SCI-IST @ 24c. GR8-GR8-GR8EST GRANMO @ 21C OH LIFE 2 U, I 2 U I OH.”

Fuck this so hard, dude. The hologram says more but I have a headache and I’d rather jab a fork in an electrical socket and then pee on the fork than read more of it. At the end of it, Superman makes a contorted face of consternation and says “Solar Intelligence Systems”. lmao

At 11:20, Superman completes his eighth challenge: copying his entire eight-billion letter DNA code sequence into a book for Quintum so that he can use it to clone more Supermen. It only took Superman about 45 seconds to do it, which really ate into his squatting-over-a-bidet time.

At 6:45, Van-Zee’s team fails to fix Superman’s cells within his bloodstream. Oh well! Superman ain’t mad. He’s actually happy they tried! Thanks, tiny buddies. As a thank you, he sends them over to the children’s ward from earlier to save them from cancer, probably.

In the end, at midnight, Superman gives Lois Lane the headline of the century. It will surely make her a few smackaroos.

“SUPERMAN DEAD”

Final Thoughts

WHAT A TRIP. This one was actually good with the out-of-sequence storytelling. Thanks, Issue #10!


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Mr. Robot, Season 1 – Fight Club for Nerds

Through the Idiot Glass Disclaimer: There will be spoilers. If you’re even remotely interested in this show and you haven’t yet seen it, or if you’ll be mad if you accidentally read any possible spoilers about it, I’m going to chalk it up to “not my fucking problem”. You have been warned.
Discussion Subject: Mr. Robot, Season 1 (2015) (USA)

Mr. Robot, Season 1
My dad told me he watched some of this years back and thought it was good. I remember getting it recommended to me, but I had so much other stuff going on like “maintaining crippling sleep deprivation because of my decision to have a child” to get around to it.

Years later, a love of Severance brings me here. If I like that show, they say, I’ll like this show. Well, since I really, REALLY liked that show, then I wanna really, REALLY like another show too! Might as well be this show!

Etc.

The Premise

Meet the loveable and cuddly Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), a bug-eyed young man who looks 100x more like Freddie Mercury than some kid named “Elliot Alderson”. Elliot works at a place called Allsafe as part of the cybersecurity division. His favorite pastime is crushing up morphine and snorting it, so one can imagine that he spends most of his waking hours in a haze of paranoia and delusion. And anxiety and depression and hallucinations. He seems fun to be around, for sure. And people actually care about him, which goes against all the evidence displayed before me.

Mr. Robot, Season 1

Get up, punk! You’ve got some hacking to do!

Elliot gets recruited by a group of rogue hackers known as “fsociety”, lead by Mr. Robot (Christian Slater). They aim to take down the huge conglomerate E Corp (which Elliot refers to as “Evil Corp”) and cancel all debts across the world. E Corp is also Allsafe’s biggest client, so shit gets rather sticky.

While he’s trying to do his thing, there are other players in the game. Some are sympathetic, like Darlene (Carly Chaikin), a fellow fsociety hacker, or Angela (Portia Doubleday), a fellow Allfase employee. Some are antagonistic, like Tyrell Wellick (Martin Wallström), the Senior Vice President of Technology at E Corp who is willing to do anything (quite literally) to advance his position in the company.

OH YEAH, AND THINGS MIGHT NOT BE WHAT THEY SEEM! SPOILERS ABOUND, NIMRODS!

Mr. Robot, Season 1

Wait’ll hear about the twist, kid! You’ll be really mad at me then!

My Half-Baked Thoughts

After a brief obsession and two watches through Season 1 of AppleTV+’s Severance, my brain craved something similar. The trustworthy internet brought me to Mr. Robot, which is not even close to the same show at all! In fact, I felt ripped off within about three episodes into the season. What the hell was this show about twitchy twentysomethings and their drug addictions and their work addictions and their weird, anti-social leanings? What the hell is all this constant technobabble that means about as much to me as Geordie LaForge going off about graviton polarity distorters that are causing abnormalities in the molecular auxiliary regulator? This isn’t raising in me any existential or morality questions! Boo and hiss!

Mr. Robot, Season 1

If you breathe one more word about flux capacitors I will cut you like bread, son.

OK, well there are some morality questions such as “should I kill the wife of the guy that gets promoted to Chief Technology Officer” (some will say “no” to this, but it turns out that there are no other options apparently). The answers to these questions are, in my opinion, very cut and dry. It doesn’t leave much room for ambiguity.

The MEAT of the show is about Elliot’s various mental problems and his giant-eyeballed creepiness. In all honesty, this guy is so off-putting that I don’t understand why all these people are actually friends with him! His boss is like “you’re wonderful at your job” and Elliot answers with something like “I don’t think I want you to tell me that.” The guy is weird is alls I’m sayin’. But since this guy is as about an unreliable narrator as you can get, and he has some hardcore hallucinations, not to mention a morphine addiction, you learn as you course through the episodes that everything from Elliot’s point of view needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

Mr. Robot, Season 1

You’ve come a long way from blowing yourself up in Heathers, Bad Boy.

With all that being said, it never even crossed my mind that Elliot was Mr. Robot himself until the reveal. For one thing, I was too fixated on Christian Slater downplaying his “hey theeeerrree, I’m a bush league Jack Nicholson, and I’m the coooool guy of the show.” For another thing, once it was revealed that Mr. Robot was Elliot’s dead dad I was spending a lot of my brain energy on how a white-ass dude like Christian Slater could be related in any way to Egyptian-ass Rami Malek. How funny is that shit? This dude played notorious non-white Freddie Mercury and now he’s Christian Slater’s son! Hilarious!

Performances were decent, with most of my attention on Martin Wallström as Tyrell Wellick. The dude knows how express what I’m going to call “controlled chaos”. The dude is deranged as hell and yet he’s able to maintain a thoughtful placidity, like a true sociopath. Only occasionally does he fucking lose his shit, like slamming and breaking stuff in his house out of anger. Or beating up the homeless! Tyrell is the most compelling character, and although his fate is unknown at the end of the season, I very much hope that his role in Season 2 is just as sizeable! Good looking guy, too. He reminds me of an uglier version of me! Ha!

Mr. Robot, Season 1

Just another domestic dispute in the Wellick household. Nothing to see here, people.

I’m in no way doing a re-watch of Season 1. Maybe sometime down the line if I end up completely falling in love with the whole series (I won’t). With the knowledge that Elliot is Mr. Robot IN THE FLESH, I do wonder about the delicious breadcrumb trail they lay out that a second run-through would reveal. Does Elliot, at some point, throw up his hands and yell “I’M MR. ROBOT!”, because that would’ve been a large clue that I overlooked.

Worth the Watch?

I’m going to say yes, mostly because there are payoffs that make the story more interesting than the whole LET’S CRACK THE WAVEBAND INTERFRAME AND INPUT A PROXY ROOTKIT INTO THE WINSOCK SERVER stuff that takes up a lot of Elliot’s internal monologue. I will watch Season 2, I’ll say that much, although I’m not clamoring to do so. I just don’t know what they’ll end up doing except maybe make Elliot addicted to black tar heroin and we get to see him flop around like a fish for 40 minutes of each episode.

Mr. Robot, Season 1

My face after finishing Season 1.


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Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #12 – “Lost and Found (Part 2)”

* Part 2 of 2 of the Lost and Found storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #12 – “Lost and Found (Part 2)”! In the previous issue, The Pride learns that some idiot lieutenant hired other superheroes to find their kids. Unhappy with this, they shoot the guy in the kneecap and decide to take matters into their own smelly hands.

Meanwhile, the kids have decided to venture outside to look for some real crimes that they can do-good about, but then they get hassled by Cloak and Dagger. Cloak absorbs four of them in his cloak – Alex, Nico, Karolina, and Chase – and detects no actual blood on any of their hands. Then Gert and Molly show up to tear Cloak and Dagger brand new b-holes. The finest b-holes in town.

Let’s get those b-holes torn up.

Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #12 [April, 2004]
Written by: Brian K. Vaughan
“Lost and Found (Part 1)”

Runaways (Vol. 1) Issue #12

Van Nyus, California – 12:26am

“You know, it says a lot about my life that this isn’t the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” Dagger says as Gert and Molly stand there with Gert’s snarling dinosaur. Gert calls Dagger’s outfit “slutty”, to which Dagger readily admits that she has no self-respect. But she DOES have these bright sticks that she can fling and whatnot. Check it out! *fling*

One of these hits the dinosaur, which mostly just sends it into an irate tizzy. It appears that Dagger’s powers have no effect on the likes of prehistoric-type creatures! THWAP! That’s the sound of Dagger getting a torso full of dinosaur tail, sending her flying into a flagpole. “Easy, Old Lace,” says Gert. “She’s just a skinny little thing. We don’t want to break her in two…”

Cloak threatens death upon anyone who harms the skinny little thing. Molly cries for everyone to stop REIGNING BLOWS upon each other. “Just let our friends out of your ugly cape,” she yelps, tugging on it. Cloak warns that trying to pull it off is a futile exercise in stupidity and/or time-wastefulness plus maybe a little bit of arrogance and also MISPLACED FORTITUDE. “Not even a god has the strength to rend it from my–”

Whoops, it comes right off like a bedsheet. Cloak screams as blackness emanates from his chest, his arms, his eyeballs, and every orifice imaginable. Even the brand new b-hole.

Cloak looks like a total nerd now, stuttering, sweating in his denim.

Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #12

GUH! GUH! BUH! BUH! Where’s your inhaler, loser?

Molly apologizes to the guy; she didn’t know he wasn’t a monster. Cloak has reverted to the complete twerp he was before wearing the cloak in the first place. Please give it back to him. Please? He won’t actually kill anyone! Pinky promise!

“My mommy is a speech therapist. Maybe she can help you!” says Molly.
“Bruiser, your parents are psychotic supervillains,” Gert reminds her.

Dagger wants Gert to elaborate on this mumbo-jumbo. Gert thinks that their folks sent Cloak and Dagger after them. Dagger corrects her, it was the po-po. Whatever! They’re all in cahoots anyway!

After about fourteen seconds of talking, Gert convinces these two bounty hunters that they’re the good guys and their parents are the bad guys and now four of their friends are stuck in the fuckin’ Darkforce Dimension. What a drag!

The Darkforce Dimension – Beyond Time

“HOLY %*$#! WHERE THE #&@* ARE WE?” Chase yells eloquently. It sucks to be in the Darkforce Dimension, I can tell already. It’s all dark and cold. They can see their breath. Holy %*$# indeed, Chase. Holy %*$# indeed.

Alex maintains his obnoxious stoicism and claims that there must be a reasonable explanation. “The Cloak guy must have teleported us to… to Siberia or something.” Yeah, that doesn’t sound like any reason to be alarmed, I guess. In the middle of the coldest area of Russia? Across an entire ocean from L.A.? Good luck getting back, punk. Putin will never let you back out.

Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #12

Maybe this is the LSD dimension. My hands are so huuuge.

Nico deliriously comments about how “her knives” have shown her “her sins”. Chase’s magic gloves are too busted up to make a fire. Karolina’s powers don’t work. Wherever they are, they don’t have their powers! Their powers!

Suddenly, a loud “WHHOOOOOOOOOOOOO” pierces the air. Well, I guess a sound like “WHOOO” doesn’t pierce, necessarily. It kind of just lumbers through the air like an obese man lumbers toward a delectable cherry pie.

Oh shit, it’s demons. Demons have arrived. I guess they’re fucked. What are Gert and Molly up to right now?

“What do you mean they’re lost?!” Gert yells. It means they’re lost, dimwit. Molly ripped off Cloak’s cloak and the severing of Cloak’s cloak doesn’t allow Cloak to connect to the cloak’s Darkforce Dimension portal anymore.

Cloak.

“This guy’s outfit is like the mystical equivalent of a portal to the internet, but the server crashed, so before we can perform a search, we have to find a way to get it back online…” says Gert. “Right?”

“That was the worst analogy I’ve ever heard,” Dagger responds. “But it gives me an idea.”

I don’t know what about what Gert said gave Dagger this idea, but she wants to pump Cloak full of her light sticks in order to repair his link to the Darkforce Dimension. It’s a long shot, but at least it’s an idea, right? Maybe Burger King will help too. Or Koosh balls. Anything is worth a try, I suppose.

So she shoots him with light. He goes “GAH!”

In the Dragonforce Dimension, the demons have scooped up Chase and are preparing to eat him or fornicate with his butt or something equally unseemly.

Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #12

Don’t be melodramatic. Besides, Hell is hot, idiot.

Mr. Optimist Alex now thinks they won’t get out of this alive, so he tries to tell Nico something important… but then Dagger’s light thing works and Cloak’s cloak is back on and the four missing children fall right onto the Los Angeles pavement. The best pavement in the country. Good ol’ hard all-American City of Angels pavement. Why am I talking about pavement? What the fuck is my problem? You know what? Just click that “x” in the top right corner of your browser. That will be the best for both of us.

Dagger is sweating profusely, likely making hella pit stains in her perfectly crisp and clean white uniform. She asks if everyone is ok, and every is pissed off. So, yes.

Twenty-nine Minutes Later

Everyone is now all caught up. The kids have told their whole story up to this point, and Cloak and Dagger are now sympathetic to their wretched plight. “I’m good friends with the Black Widow,” Dagger offers. “I’m sure she could put you in touch with Captain America and those guys, maybe send them out here to clean house.”

Captain America? Yeah right, how’s he going to help? What’s he going to do? Pick his nose?

Alex would like this drooling doofus to help, though. That sounds awesome! In the meantime, Cloak offers to take the lot of them back to New York in his Cloak. Chase replies that he’d rather spend an evening at Neverland Ranch than step inside there again. Nico agrees. So, perhaps they’ll just lay low in Chase’s hideout until some superhero types come knocking on the door.

Chase is, however, verrrry suspicious of these two. Even after all the information they gave, he doesn’t want to give anymore information! Gert tells him to cool his fucking jets, brah. “[Cloak and Dagger] can assemble a posse in Manhattan, and we’ll go back into hiding until our ‘rents are in the slammer and the coast is clear.”

Karolina feels like a coward, but Dagger assures her that she and Cloak ain’t known nuthin’ when they ran away. Hell, they tried running away to McDonald’s! You can’t sleep in a McDonald’s! Not even in a Burger King!

The two teams part ways. “It was awesome to meet you, Cloak and Dazzler!” says Molly, which got an lol out of me. Dagger is less than amused. lol

Panorama City, California – 1:23am

The kids are driving back to the Hostel in Chase’s rape van. The group thinks they should celebrate with some food even though Alex “Wet Blanket” “Bedwetter” “Blanket Is Wet Because of Pee” Wilder is hesitant to spend anymore of their barely-earned money. I don’t know why at least one of these kids wasn’t able to steal some dough from their millionaire parents. Horrible runaways. Just pure crap.

Karolina reminds Alex that they’re going to be RESCUED, so they should all eat to their heart’s content. Molly agrees. Alex changes his mind! A harbinger of bad tidings to come…

Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #12

Let’s find an orgy!

UCLA Medical Center – 1:34am

Flores is holed up in a hospital bed with a giant case over his knee. An unknown call gives his phone a little ringy-dingy.

“Lieutenant Flores?”

“Speak up, kid. You’re mumbling. I can barely understand–”

“You’re the dork who sent Cloak and Dagger after us, right? I’m surprised our parents haven’t killed you yet.”

“Who… who is this?”

“Right now, I’m the only friend you’ve got.”

Yeah yeah yeah, you see where this is going? The rat tells Flores that Cloak and Dagger are hanging out in Van Nuys right now and they know about the Pride. So you’ve got a giant mess to clean up, sir. “Do something…” says Alex or Molly or Gert or Chase or Nico or Karolina, “or the next bullet will probably be to your brain.”

Van Nuys, California – Twenty-five Minutes Later

Cloak and Dagger are ready to head back to NYC. They feel stupid for being duped, but at least they have each other! And–

KASCHOWW! That’s the sound of a group of nogoodnik parents showing up to give them the business. Bound in a magic vortex, Cloak and Dagger are asked where the sniveling little children are. Molly’s mutant parents have scanned their memories; the duo hung out with the kids for a bit, but they have no idea where they went.

Well, instead of executing them on the spot, Mr. Stein suggests using that mind-wiping power that the Hayes mentioned earlier. Kind of a trial run! See if they melt in a pile of sticky goo or start listening to Crosby, Stills, and Nash, or something equally upsetting. “Hold them steady, Frank,” says Dr. Mr. Hayes. “If we cause one incorrect synapse to fire, we could lobotomize them both.”

Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #12

PURPLE! PURPLE!! NOOOO!!!

Cloak and Dagger collapse in a heap, so the mind-wiping was likely a success. Or they’re dead! Either way is a-ok.

“I don’t get it,” says Mr. Dean after the NYC superhero threat has been neutralized. “If one of our runaways is really loyal to us, why not call us directly? Or at least tell us where they are?”

Very good questions, I think. I know a good question when I see one.

“Yes, who in God’s name is our mole?”

My money is on the dinosaur.

Final Thoughts

The end of yet another storyline. Only six more issues left of this particular run of Runaways, which I’ll probably get to sooner rather than later. For now, maybe I’ll hit up all those Marvel comics where the Hulk humps a telephone pole for 700 issues straight.


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