The Great Hunt (Book 2) – Chapter 36: “Among the Elders”

All the Ogier ladies are staring at Loial because he’s an enormous piece o’ man. Loial doesn’t want to stick around, but he doesn’t want to meet the Elders either, so he pulls out one of his nerd books and buries his nose in it.

The meeting of the Elders! There are seven Elders total, just like deadly sins and/or dwarfs. The group has requested use of their nearby Waygate, but Alar (the eldest of the eldest of the eldest Elders) warns that the Ways are full of black goop that can steal their very souls, like an episode of Jerry Springer, if they’re not careful. Ingtar is like “I WOULD EAT A BRICK OF SHIT TO RETRIEVE THE HORN, MA’AM.” Alar is like “ok, you asked for it” and presents an Ogier named Trayal who traveled the ways and became a drooling baby. Verin inspects the drooling baby with her saidar and discovers nothing within him. No soul, no intelligence, no consciousness, no nothing. Eek, etc. Alar asks if they still want to give it a shot; she can’t stop them. They want to give it a shot. Alar doesn’t wanna let them, but must honor their wishes nonetheless.

But what of Loial? Isn’t he LOYAL to the steddings? (lol.) Rand and Co. demand that they need him, especially since he knows the ways pretty well. Like a human GPS system! I mean, Ogier GPS system. Alar is ok with this as long as they bring him back to the stedding before curfew. Loial is like “brrrt!” but Rand agrees.

Loial received a flower from Erith, so they’re going to get married by Book 11 and have a 400-page wedding. They all arrive at the Waygate, and they discover that it’s just as bloated with the black smoke as before. Rand suspects that the Black Wind must be following him, as if Padan Fain was able to tame it and instruct it accordingly. Verin reiterates that this is danged impossible, but it’s curious nonetheless.

Hurin remembers that Portal Stones are able to allow people to travel long distances in a short amount of time. Alar is like “oh yeah” and leads them to one of them Portal Stones.

They’re going to end up in another world! Probably Earth, New York City circa 9/10/01. Won’t that be fun for them?

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Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #44 – “Tampered”

* Part 5 of 6 of the Irresponsible storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #44 – “Tampered”! In the previous installment, Jean Grey, Kitty Pryde, and Storm ambush Spider-Man and Geldoff in order to try to have a little chat with the latter. When confronted by mutants about being a mutant, Geldoff faints.

Spider-Man gets a chance to mingle with these ladies! Spider-Man’s a big name in the X-Men world, that’s for sure. Superpowery without the mutant stuff. Exciting. They invite Spidey to meet Professor Xavier at the mutant school, but then Geldoff wakes up and blasts their jet to smithereens!

Storm has to choose between saving Spider-Man, who plummets one way, and the jet full of the others, which is plummeting the other way.

She’ll save both, of course. But let Spidey eat the dirt, if you ask me.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #44 [October, 2003]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Tampered”

That’s right, Spidey. Hump that X!

Aunt May gets a call later in the evening. She’s baking cookies with Gwen Stacy, which is something they apparently do every three hours. The call is from Peter Parker’s geometry teacher, who tells May that her delinquent nephew is getting his circles and his trapezoids mixed up again. Also, he didn’t show up for class today, even before the… ahem… emergency. The teacher pretty much tells May to figure it the fuck out before he gets flunked back to 1889. Then he hangs up.

May is tired, oh so tired, of this stuff. Gwen swears to her that she doesn’t know where Peter is right now. Honest to Satan! “We walked to school and that was the last time I saw him,” she tells May, mouth full of cookie. “I didn’t even notice he was gone until the teacher started yelling.”

Maybe the little panty-sniffer is downstairs in his secret teenage lab (of masturbation). After yelling through the door doesn’t work, May picks up a fire extinguisher and starts ramming at the doorknob. “PETER!” KANG! PETER!” KANG! PETER!” KANG! and so forth.

Gwen watches petrified that this 900-year-old woman is destroying her doors in pursuit of some rotten apple she calls kin. May descends the staircase…

Peter Parker, meanwhile, is having a dream sequence. I hate dream sequences! I’m rolling my eyeballs already! He’s sitting in a very comfortable lounge chair in a very cozy library reading about the Kingpin’s downfall and eating a bag of Twizzlers. A guy that looks like Professor X without the busted legs stands before Parker like a hologram. “Well, I hate to do this to you, Peter, but we really need you to wake up now.”

Peter Parker wakes up now, surrounded by X-Men.

Oh dear, my impossibly-ripped teenage body is exposed to all these very attractive people! Say it ain’t so!

The X-Men all look better-drawn than I’ve ever seen them before. All good-looking and shit. Even Beast! I wanna fuck that Beast. Professor Xavier introduces himself and his posse. Parker is beside himself with confusion. One minute he was falling to his death hilariously, the next minute he’s waking up naked in Professor Xavier’s bed. “Wait, what happened?”

Storm tells the story! It’s all very exciting, but you’ll need to get the comic book yourself to see the action, because I ain’t relaying it here. In short, the X-Women save the plane and save Spider-Man. Whew, now that we got that out of the way we can move on!

“Aaaand, you’re welcome,” Storm smiles.

Parker is livid, at any rate. “You took off my mask?!!”

Beast smiles. He’s got a stupid Uncle Ben ponytail. “We wanted to make sure you were still breathing.

Parker is still livid. “Man! I am trying to keep a secret identity here!! No one respects my secret identity!! No one!!”

Whine, whine, whine. Aunt May shuffles around the basement looking for clues. She makes suspicious faces while poking around some nonsense like tools and equipment. The computer has an early-2000s screen saver bouncing around. Making another legendary face, she tries the computer but it’s password protected. Defeated, May walks away. The comic makes a point to show the glass lens of the Spider-Man costume sitting right next to the keyboard.

At least Geldoff is having a good time.

Geldoff is in the room and he has been thoroughly sedated. Xavier put a happy thought into his brain (probably of him eating Hormel chili). Parker, now donned as half a Spider-Man, asks if this guy is a mutant or not please. This information better be worth falling out of an airplane for.

Xavier deflects the question and starts talking about why Geldoff interests him in the first place. You see, h– *snoooore*

You see, Xavier’s mutant-tracking system couldn’t detect Geldoff. In fact, it couldn’t detect if he was a mutant or a human! It’s very curious indeed. It’s never happened before. And even after upgrading the equipment to Windows 98, the X-Men still can’t get a good read on him.

Xavier has a guess, though. “…our young friend here has been the unwitting and undeserving guinea pig in a truly disgusting, mutant-related, genetic experiment.”

*snoooore*

What does this mean, Prof.? It means that someone messed with Geldoff’s mother’s placenta! Didn’t see that one coming, did you? “Placenta tampering is illegal in most countries,” Xavier says, dropping some of that placenta knowledge he’s been sitting on for a while now. “Including Latveria, where our young friend is originally from.”

Geldoff smiles placidly.

Someone somewhere injected Geldoff’s mom’s placenta with mutant juice back in the day, and if Professor Xavier ever finds out who he’s going to box their ears!

While Beast and Xavier talk over each other with words like “antigens” and “cytokines”, Spidey interrupts by asking what the fuck this kid is doing in Queens blowing up cars? And Xavier has a perfectly good response to this: the kid was abandoned in New York or something and his powers are finally coming out in puberty! Puberty is a hard time for anybody.

Anyway, the X-Men want to send Geldoff’s ass to a few labs that will then send their findings to the U.N. You thought he was a guinea pig before? Buddy, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

“What if this guy here doesn’t want any part of your agenda?” Spidey asks the Ex-Men. Xavier insists that it’s not a personal agenda, but a necessity of moral and ethical *snoooore*. “I bet, seriously,” Spidey continues, “I bet he wouldn’t want to have anything to do with any of this.”

Professor Xavier says that this is bigger than what Geldoff wants. Spidey says that his life is more important than whatever experiments they all want to perform on him. It’s really getting heavy-handed with the morals, but hey, I’m here for it.

“Isn’t this guy going to get a shot at a normal life?” asks Spidey.

“Define normal,” Beast responds.

“Exactly,” Xavier adds.

Jury’s still out on that decision, but whatever you say.

“Define this, fuzzball!!” Spidey cracks Beast right in the face, sending him flying. I laughed at that! Then Spidey grabs Geldoff and drags him away, unhooking him from the many nipple-suctions and wires. Xavier begs Spidey to be reasonable here! Spidey tells him to stuff it.

Not so fast, fucker! Scott “Pee-Pants” Summers blasts in Spidey’s direction with his plasma-vision. Spidey kicks him right across the face! I laughed at that, too! The X-Men can suck it.

Then he and Geldoff crash out the window! Escape successful!…

…except it was all just a thought that Xavier put in Spidey’s head. “Peter…what good would that do?” Xavier asks, smirking. Spidey looks sheepish.

“Peter, you’ve read my work. You know what my X-Men stand for… I promise that this young man will be treated with respect and that good, true good, will come from this. And as far as Geldoff’s rather ignorant point of view on the mutant experience… he and I, we’ll have to talk.”

Spidey looks like he’s been put in his place rather famously. Geldoff holds Spidey’s arm and tells him he wasn’t ever going to hurt him. He was just showing off! That makes it all better!

Kitty Pryde offers Spidey a ride back to Queens, but Spidey just about loses his shit. “Oh, my God!! What time is it??”

I’ll tell you what time it is. It’s time for a spanking! May waits for him in his basement. Busted again for the 40th time in this comic series.

Final Thoughts

One of these days May’s going to have to bring out the old whipping stick and cane that motherfucker until his butt implodes.

I’m not too heavily invested in this storyline because the Geldoff stuff seems secondary to the Peter’s-in-trouble stuff. This is why the storyline is called ”Irresponsible”. Little Peter’s a no-good ingrate and he needs to learn his place.

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Angel: After the Fall, Issue #2 – “After the Fall (Part 2)”

* Part 2 of 5 of the Volume 1 collection *

Welcome to Buffyness and Nightlurkers Presents: Angel: After the Fall, Issue #2 – “After the Fall (Part 2)”! In the previous installment… you know what? I don’t have my bearings on this at all so far. Maybe I need to read another issue to coalesce some of the crazy shit I’m already reading so far. Let me try a stab at it:

-Wolfram & Hart declared war?

-Angel can’t leave the building?

-Wes is a ghost?

-Gunn is some sort of rogue?

-Los Angeles is burning?

One to five of these may be entirely untrue! Let’s continue now before I implode like a Titanic submarine (topical).

Angel: After the Fall, Issue #2 [December, 2007]
Written by: Bryan Lynch / Joss Whedon
“After the Fall (Part 2)”

Angel is headed to Santa Monica, possibly to bone some yuppie pussy. He finds his car in the parking garage and tells Wes that he killed Burge’s Large Adult Son, which Wes boggles at. Burge’s son is like a tank! And you killed him?! LOL!

“Most of his remains are right outside if you need them for your report,” Angel tells him. I’m sure Wes finds joy in sorting bones. He likes to sort things. Now be a good lad and stay behind, k? Angel doesn’t need you for this mission, Wesley old boy.

Angel leaves the parking garage and chugga-chugs his way through the apocalyptic Los Angeles landscape. “Burge is a powerful lord. I killed his son. He’s going to want revenge, and he can’t take me. He obviously can’t touch Wesley. If he’s at all intelligent… and admittedly that’s up in the air… I know who he’s going to go after.”

Jeff Bridges?

“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT WITH CONNOR?” yells a rather buxom young blonde woman. Someone named Nina, an ex of Angel’s. I guess. I really need to watch the show again. She’s the werewolf who licked the girl in the last issue. Angel tells Nina that Connor needs to watch his back lest Don Draper fucks him up.

Sounds sexy. You can chew on my bloody meat any day of the week. *eyebrows*

Anyway, Connor’s not here, man. He’s in Westwood fucking some yuppie pussy. “A lord was killed last night,” Nina informs the One Whom Killed the Lord. Word gets around fast.

In Westwood, various demons who claim to be the new lord of Westwood are eating each other in order to claim to be the new lords of Westwood. “So many demons want the crown. So many people caught in the crossfire.” Angel stalks around looking for Connor while the streets fill with people trying to run away from demons while the demons do demon things. Angel enters the fray with his own various weapons: a crossbow, an axe, a toothpick. Other things found in a Swiss army knife. Tweezers.

Angel thinks it’s going to take a while before he earns Connor’s trust again. Meanwhile, Connor is beheading demons with a gaint sword. “Hi, Angel. What took you so long?”

Apparently, this killing of the lord’s son puts a big target on Connor’s head. Hopefully, and I mean this sincerely, someone decides the snipe the little creep. While they fight, Connor asks where Angel has been all this time. Angel responds by whipping his dick out and avoiding the question.

NOW some woman named Gwen enters the fight, blasting bitches with blue electricity. I really need to watch the show again. “I just found out where the lord was killed, and it’s messed up. And I’m well aware we’re in Hell and we see messed up things every day and I’m talking messed up in comparison to that.”

Gwen mentions a new player in town, and, I quote, “he’s out for blood”. And here I am thinking that everyone is out for blood. Jesus. That’s the only motivation from anyone here.

Or last night’s Salisbury steak.

Gunn’s the one out for blood. This is fine, though, because Angel and Connor already know the guy. He’s got Kr’ph’s telepathic fish flopping on a bed.

“What’s your name?” Gunn asks.

“George.”

“George, I’m Gunn. And I know what this is gonna sound like, but I promise you, I’m one of the good guys.”

Suuuuure, Gunny Gunn Gunn. You just keep right on lying your ass off. When Gunn tells the fish to trust him, the fish doesn’t trust him. George calls Gunn “the vampire who kidnapped me”, which Gunn takes offense toward. “Don’t call me a vampire. Don’t.”

“I spent a good part of my life dusting them. Best part of my life, actually. And then… I was fool enough to trust one.”

*note to self: figure out what Angel did to fuck over Gunn*

“Led me into a battle that ended with me being dragged away and turned while he played goddamn dragon-whisperer.”

…ok, so that sounds familiar? So Gunn’s, like, a good vampire? Does he have a soul? Speaking of a vampire with a soul, that Angel cat probably wasn’t a good guy to begin with. It explains why he’s even kind of shitty with a soul.

Then Gunn starts punching George while hollering about saving everybody. Doesn’t sound like he’s particularly interested in saving the fish, though. “IT’S NOT ABOUT THE SOUL! I’M LIVING PROOF OF THAT!”

After he’s done walloping the fish, Gunn apologizes. Then he grabs a large, glowing yellow orb and takes it to what looks like a couch surrounded by a slew of swirling, angry demons. Gunn’s gonna save everyone, and everyone’s going to thank his ass. “And two seconds after Angel figures it out… Angel dies.”

HOLY MOLY! WHAT A PICKLE! ANGEL IS ALREADY DEAD, GUNN, YOU IDIOT!

What? The illustrations? I agree.

Elsewhere, Connor wonders how the now-dead Kr’ph was able to become lord in the first place. Angel tells him he had the Eye of Ramras! Of course! The Eye of Ramras! I had one of those once, then I dropped it in the toilet. Anyway, the Eye of Ramras amplifies the holder’s power. It’s why Kr’ph, known pussy, was able to step up and be lord. It explains why he had a target on his back, too. Everyone wants the Eye of Ramras, toilet water notwithstanding.

Gwen knows that vampires are to blame for this. She knows this because she saw a pile of dead women with vampire neck bites!

“Any idea who did this?” Connor asks. Angel says no, but he lied. He lies a lot. Shitty person with a soul, remember? He puts his vampirely hand on Connor’s shoulder and asks him to go back to Wolfram & Hart and get his dragon. Connor thinks this is a silly request. Thinks the old man is off his dang rocker. But Angel insists. He’s going to leave now, but the dragon will know where to find him.

Connor thinks he’s cuckoo bananas. Don’t we all.

“All signs point to it,” Angel thinks. “It was bound to happen. Our paths were going to cross. I should have handled this before. No time like the present.” It’s going to be Spike, isn’t it? Angel’s old bone buddy. Billy Idol himself. The unknown, off-panel figure is surrounded by scantily-clad women who are feeding him blood from an ornate fountain. The vampire drones on and on about how great and powerful and superior and brave he was as he led everyone to battle. “I was perfect. When the smoke cleared, I looked the devil square in his big, red face and over Angel’s blubbering, I yelled ‘IS THAT ALL YOU GOT, MATE?’”

No, you reek of pig’s blood and Funyuns.

Spike is now revealed. He drinks heartily from a chalice while his women hail the nerd. “As a reward for my selfless bravery, Los Angeles was sent to Heaven.” Sounds lame.

Angel shows up with a big NOT SO FAST, CUNT. “After he led us to victory,” Angel claims, “we proclaimed we’d be friends forever and did a synchronized hand-jive at the big carnival. Hey, Spike.”

A woman lets the moody, broody vampire know that nobody gets to have an audience with Spike, their lord and savior. Spike agrees, and isn’t interested in Angel showing up just to fuck with his good fortune. Angel doesn’t even want to be here, but he has to be. Eye of Ramras!

A little late with the exposition dialogue, but Spike tells Angel that he’s sorry that Wesley died and that Gunn became a vampire. Angel tells him to cork it and then he punches him right across the jaw. “We all knew what we were getting into. We knew what could happen,” Angel tells the sniveling vampire. Spike still ain’t having it! There are going to be two hits: Spike hitting Angel, and Angel hitting the floor! Bam! Boom shakalaka! Woop woop woop!

And then Angel cracks him in the face again.

Eat all my shit, dirtbag!

So Angel hits Spike, and Spike hits the floor. That’s what happened.

Angel tries to tell Spike that a lord is dead. An Eye of Ramras was stolen. People are dead. There was an inscription on the walls written in blood in primordial Sanskrit.

“So where is she?” Angel finally asks.

Someone lifts Angel up off the ground. “YOUR PRESENCE IS IRRITATING MY PET. PERHAPS YOUR DISMEMBERMENT WILL SOOTH HIM.”

Remember Fred? Remember when she was blue? It’s Blue Fred.

Blue Fred was sexy.

Final Thoughts

It’s all coming together! And by that I mean that the entire cast of Angel has finally shown up!

Except for Lorne. And Cordelia. But who gives a shit about them?

Didn’t Cordelia die? Is that a thing that happened?

I’m hungry.

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The Great Hunt (Book 2) – Chapter 35: “Stedding Tsofu”

Eventually, the group travels from Cairhien and ends up at Stedding Tsofu.

The end.

BUT REALLY, FOLKS. Loial is very nervous about the stedding. He was exiled from his own stedding or he ran away from home or something, it’s thus far unclear. Obviously, since steddings have magic barriers that prevent Aes Sedai from channeling, Rand feels a weird emptiness when he enters. They are greeted by a young female Ogier, Erith, who Loial pops a big ol’ boner for. She brings the group into the stedding proper.

Loial does feel good to be back due to a phenomenon called “the Longing”, which is like a wasting disease for Ogier if they’re too far from a stedding for too long. Loial has not felt the Longing yet, and he assures his group not to worry (wait until Book 7 when Loial gets Longing Cancer).

They reach a cute little village that’s not very little on account of the Ogier aren’t little. Immediately, they see three young female Aiel warriors — Stedding Tsofu’s other guests. They’re all like “MEN WITH SWORDS!” and put down their veils and move in for the kill. A hubbub ensues, everyone gets riled up, and it takes another Ogier named Juin to jump and be like “chill the fuck out everyone, don’t forget the Pact”, which shames the Aiel women. They back off. Everyone backs off. Chills the fuck out. Remembers the Pact. And it is speculated by Perrin and Mat, once the women see Rand’s heron-hilted sword, that they’re looking for Rand. He Who Comes with the Dawn. They know this from the Aiel they met in Kinslayer’s Dagger while Rand was cavorting around Cairhien like a gazelle.

Juin leads the group to the Elders. While they wait, Loial continues to look very nervous as if any moment someone is going to go “THERE’S THE OGIER FROM STEDDING SHANGTAI! GET HIM!” and then they pelt him with bananas. Loial is also nervous because APPARENTLY female Ogier get to choose a marriage partner against the male’s will, and he doesn’t want some hot little thing to tie him down while he’s in Stedding Tsofu. Mat cracks up at this.

The Elders have arrived. They look like the Golden Girls. The end.

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