Batman Confidential (Vol. 1), Issue #4 – “Rules of Engagement (Part 4)”

* Part 4 of 6 of the Rules of Engagement storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman Confidential (Vol. 1), Issue #4 – “Rules of Engagement (Part 4)”! In the previous installment, Lex Luthor frames Senator Crabtree, Chairman of the Picking and Choosing Which Company Gets the Weapons Defense Contract Board, by pinning the prostitute murder from Issue #1 onto him. Batman is completely onto Luthor, so much so that he may as well have just planned and executed the framing himself. Gordon thinks Batman’s reasoning is flimsies, and since Batman himself was witnessed at the scene of the crime he’s going to do a lot more wriggling to get himself out of this than he has bargained for.

Meanwhile, Lex Luthor is searching for the notorious bat-like man and will succeed in his efforts by using one of his magic robotic Batman-sensing bats. It’s dumb as shit and I predict each issue left in the story will get progressively dumber.

I’m having a blast.

Batman Confidential (Vol. 1), Issue #4 [May, 2007]
Written by: Andy Diggle
“Rules of Engagement (Part 4)”

Batman Confidential (Vol. 1), Issue #4

“Welcome to Area One, General. I trust you’ll find it fit for your purpose.” Lex shakes hands with a guy who will use Area One to rub one out to his anime porn collection.

Area One is full of robots as part of Luthor’s defense system. The General is in awe of how big the army of robots is, and how quickly Luthor was able to put it all together. Lex Luthor’s head looks like someone grafted a shoe to a neck.

The General starts talking about the robots like he’s the General of Robots while Luthor dips out to make a quick phone call. “Sir, you wanted to be informed the moment we lost contact with the infiltration unit,” says Luthor’s lackey on the other end. This sounds like bad news but it is, in fact, good news. This means that the Bat-tracking device is tracking the Bat! Luthor smiles, showing off his 400 teeth. Time to proceed with the plan! *pulls out box of anime porn*

In the Batcave, Batman is readying his Batjet. Alfred is requested to make himself useful for once and help Batman get ahead of Lex Luthor. They’ve been behind the 8-ball this whole time! Let’s get in front of the 8-ball! We’re talking 9-ball here. “Now that they’ve won the defense contract, LexCorp is supplying G.I. robots to every military base in the country.

Stupendous, sir. Maybe you should’ve been better at sucking dick than your bald counterpart. At any rate, Batman wants to try infiltrating Area One to, I don’t know, see what he’s up to or something? Meanwhile, Luthor’s robot Bat-tracking bat device, which is very conspicuous, is scurrying around the cave spying on the two. It plugs itself into a keypad and hits the “KILL” button! This is bad news!

Batman Confidential (Vol. 1), Issue #4

Damnit, I was told it would be a bad idea to install that button on the keypad, but I wouldn’t listen! I wouldn’t listen!

Alfred and Batman hear a low rumble like someone had too much spicy chili for dinner. “ALFRED! MOVE” Batman shrieks, pushing his butler out of the way and bracing for the impact of a released missile. The missile hits the floor, making the tiniest explosion I’ve ever seen, harming nobody.

Back at the military base, Lex Luthor decides he wants to own the base and all the robots with it. I suppose this wasn’t actually a military base owned by the government, unless Lex Luthor owns the government, which very well may be the case. He presses four buttons on this clunky machine and overrides their command functions. They now answer only to Luthor. “Secure the site,” he smiles. “And give General Adams thirty seconds to run screaming from the perimeter gate. If he doesn’t make it in time, vaporize him.”

General Adams has a shadow cast over his face that makes him look like he has a rather impressively bushy Hitler mustache. “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?” he blithers.

“What you should have done a long time ago, General. Taking a stand.”

General Adams runs screaming from the perimeter gate. Look at that little nerd go!

Am I to understand the the missile that blew up covered the Batcave with bat shit? “The floor of the Batcave is submerged beneath twenty feet of guano. Writhing maggots. Flesh-eating cockroaches. Dead bats. Unpleasant, but deep… deep enough to cushion a fall.” Ah, I see now. The missile blew a giant hole in the ground and Batman never realized that his Batcave toilets never actually transported all that feces to the sewer system. An unfortunate oversight on the planning and construction of the cave. Alfred is going to hang by his shriveled little testicles about this.

Batman removes his grappling hook from his Swanky Utility Belt and intendeds to hoist his guano-saturated bulk back out of the hole. The jet is still “looking for targets”, including Alfred, who begins sprinting away from it as it shoots bullets North by Northwest-style. He doesn’t make it out of the cave, and in fact ends up holding onto a broken ladder hovering over the floor. Somehow. Batman is chasing the jet down and somehow lands right on top of it, intending to override the controls. This whole scene is immensely dumb.

Batman Confidential (Vol. 1), Issue #4

Sits. Shakes. Rolls over. Craps on the floor.

Batman eventually enters the jet and discovers that Luthor’s robot bat has plugged itself into the mainframe. He is terrified now that it’s going to do the same thing to the Batmobile, but Alfred emerges out of nowhere and steps on the fucker, crushing it beneath his shoe. “Filthy vermin,” he says, dusting off his hands like the badass that he is. Bruce Wayne’s got nothing on this pimp.

Captain Jimmy Gordon is stuck in traffic! The radio has no news of what’s going on, some announcement is taking up every channel. It’s Sex Luthor, and he rambles on and on about his plans for world domination. Here, let me cut out the important snippets of his monologue:

“Democracy isn’t working.”

“Our leaders have failed…”

“Monsters walk among us. Aliens and freaks.”

“We would never allow a rival nation to develop such catastrophic power.”

“Who are these people? Who do they answer to?”

“It is within ourselves that we will find the means of our salvation.”

“My G.I. robots have taken control of our army bases and missile silos.”

“Martial law has been declared.”

“My name is Lex Luthor.”

“My pants are filled with diarrhea.”

Here’s a shot of how worried Gordon looks:

Batman Confidential (Vol. 1), Issue #4

Nice Bono sunglasses, sir.

Final Thoughts

Whatever, man. This Lex Luthor cat ain’t gonna get away with it. For someone so goddamned smart he sure doesn’t get away with anything.

Except my heart.


Click here to ridicule this post!

The Shield, Season 1 – Corrupt Cops Be Corruptin’

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: The Shield, Season 1 (2002) (FX)

The Shield, Season 1
I’ve been wanting to watch this show ever since I started watching The Wire back in 2009. I heard that fans of one are usually the fans of the other. Once upon a time I loved The Wire like it was my own child, but I’m not expecting something nearly as dense or nuanced with The Shield. I’m also nervous that something that started over 20 years ago might not hold up, but I’ve had a good track record of finding shows from the early ’00s satisfying. The golden age of television started in the ’00s after all.

That’s enough blithering. Here’s Season 1 of The Shield.

The Premise

Another show about the LAPD. We follow Detective Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis), a dirty cop with a bad attitude! He does things his way and only his way, and no fucking white shirt in charge is going to tell him otherwise! Boy howdy! Yes sir!

The Shield, Season 1

Check this out, I’m a master of stand-up yoga.

One of the members of Vic’s little rogue troupe is Shane Vendrell (Walton Goggins, the worst name I’ve ever heard). He’s one ugly motherfucker. At times he’s even worse than Vic, who at least tries to handle his work with dignity. Shane will fuck strippers and pee on people.

You’ve got rookie Julian (Michael Jace) paired up with training officer Danny (Catherine Dent). This gets complicated because Julian kind of sucks at his job, has too much integrity to work with the system, and faces a few emotional breakdowns do to his homosexuality fighting against his strong religious beliefs. She’s nice to him.

You’ve got detective partners Claudette (CCH Pounder) and Dutch (Jay Karnes), the former being a no-nonsense, seasoned vet and the latter being the whitest guy on Earth. They’re both the best at what they do, it seems, even though Dutch gets nothing but ridicule from most of the rest of the precinct. He takes it in stride though, but at one point a serial killer taunts him and he cries in his car.

The Shield, Season 1

Oh yeah? Well, I have a witness that places you in the conservatory with the revolver. Motherfucker.

Then there’s Captain David Aceveda (Benito Martinez) who barely manages the precinct. He’s gunning for a council position, which means he wants to make a positive difference in the city by removing the corruption in his precinct and there’s no way that’s going to happen. Aceveda doesn’t like Vic because Vic is a dirty cop. Vic doesn’t like Aceveda because Vic is a dirty cop and he doesn’t want Aceveda to bust him. There’s a lot of tension between these two.

There are other main-ish characters, but they don’t seem to be as important in this leg of the series. Fuck ’em.

The main plot points of Season 1 are as follows:
-Vic kills a guy named Detective Crowley, who was chosen by Aceveda to dig up dirt on Vic. Ramifications abound.
-Julian witnesses Vic and his men stealing cocaine during a drug bust. After Vic learns he’s gay, he uses that information against him to intimidate him into keeping quiet.
-Vic’s son has autism.
-Vic keeps helping a crack-addicted prostitute named Connie, a woman who is not his wife.
-Dutch chases down a serial killer who has been murdering prostitutes.
-Dutch has the hots for Danny, who is fucking Vic. This actually isn’t that important.

The Shield, Season 1

Ma’am, “My husband wanted to watch Baywatch reruns” is not considered domestic violence.

My Half-Baked Thoughts

This holds up pretty for something that is actually older than it seems. This season was over 20 years ago. Time flies when you’re jerking off.

Right at the top, I’d like to express my utter contempt and disgust with Shane. Boy, I’d to crack him in his ugly face with a baseball bat. Just swinging it as hard as I possibly can. He always carries himself as Vic’s weaselly lackey, being an over-the-top tough guy to impress the actual tough guy. There’s a part where he pisses on a guy during a minor drug infraction that made me want to make him eat his teeth.

The Shield, Season 1

I don’t want to catch you jerking off in the cemetery again, Shane. Show some respect.

Dutch is someone I can relate with since I’m also a lame white guy who is good at his job, although he does have sort of a resting smug face and he constantly gets shit from the rest of the department. The funny thing is, he brushes off all the ridicule like it’s nothing, but the one time that he gets a standing ovation he immediately cries in his car! Go figure. That might have something to do with the serial killer nailing him down to a T during an interrogation, though. Father issues and all that, you know the drill.

I found the whole Julian gay-Jesus-freak arc uncompelling and off-putting. At least for now, but maybe it’s more of a product of its time. Six Feet Under did a similar arc at around the same time where David Fisher (Michael C. Hall) was trying to come to terms with his homosexuality with respect to his devout Christian beliefs, although I’m pretty sure that David Fisher didn’t attempt any sort of conversion therapy. By the end of this season of The Shield, Julian is all sorts of talking to religious figures and getting testimonies from “converted” homosexuals and praying for a love of the vagina. I predict his character arc will involve getting into a relationship with a woman he’ll barely kiss, marry her, have a baby, and hang himself by his belt in the office bathroom. He won’t even do it at home, he’ll do it at work where everyone will point at his limp body and go “hey, look, Julian hanged himself”.

The Shield, Season 1

IF I WANT TO WATCH BAYWATCH, I GET TO WATCH BAYWATCH!

The autistic son angle is interesting. Vic seems like a guy who would want his son to grow up to be some sort of football player / domestic abuser / confirmed heterosexual, so I can imagine how awful it must be for the chip off the ol’ block to have a developmental disability. I predict that Vic will starting really taking this out on his wife, making her feel guilty for producing a defective child. The season ends with his family temporarily moving out of the house anyway, perhaps Vic will never see his family again! Just one less thing to worry about, honestly. It would do this guy some good.

Special shout-out goes to Benito Martinez who I think is a godawful actor. His character is right out of a subpar Law & Order franchise where he’s all like “I wanna get a dirty cop off the streets” my “my honor and integrity will not be compromised”. The statutory rape subplot at least gives him a sordid past and moral ambiguity. I’m looking forward to a David Aceveda “redemption” arc where he literally chokes Shane to death with a belt in front of his weeping mother. I’ll forgive all the bad acting in the world for that.

The Shield, Season 1

I strangled Shane today right in front of his mother. It felt… I felt so powerful… like a unicorn.

Worth the Watch?

This show started over 20 years ago! Not bad for an early installment in the contemporary Golden Age of TV, as it were. I think it comes off as more campy than gritty at times, but I hear the show only gets better from here.


Click here to ridicule this post!

The Great Hunt (Book 2) – Chapter 10: “The Hunt Begins”

The Wheel of Time - Book 2 - The Great Hunt

And they’re off! Led by Ingtar, the group heads south on horseback. Perrin and Mat are being bitches and won’t let Rand ride with them, mostly because of his lordliness and his ornate clothing. When they stop for camp, Rand finds out that the only clothes he has packed are these frilly formal clothes. You know, the kind a lord would wear!

This one guy named Masema, he has never been friendly with Rand. Rand asks Ingtar what the ungodly fuck Masema’s problem is, and Ingtar tells him that he is no friend to the Aiel. And even if Rand insists that he is of the Two Rivers, Masema still sees the unmistakable black eyes and butt chin of the Aiel in Rand (lol, I’m just a-kiddin’. Something about the hair though. Who cares). Loial is all like “I THOUGHT RAND WAS AN AIEL TOO WHEN I FIRST MET HIM HEY EVERYONE LOOK AT ME I’M TALKING!”

The next day they find an abandoned Darkfriends camp. There are human bones by the firepit. Human bones and organs and eyeballs and fingers and pants that say “JUICY” on the butt. Hurin the Sniffer says they went the other way now, so they go the other way. Then after a while, they go the other way. Then the other way. And Ingtar gets pissed because this is a waste of time for everyone. Eventually, they find a deserted village. Not only deserted, but it looks like it was suddenly deserted. Like the rapture happened. Do they have raptures in the world of the Wheel of Time? I sure hope not, that would be ridiculous! Uno, one of Ingtar’s burly manly men, claims he sees a woman in white in one of the house windows. But when he barges his ass into the house, she isn’t there…

After crossing the river, the group finds two of Fal Dara’s guards, Changu and Nidao, hanging from trees and skinned alive. Everyone is like “gross”. They bury the bodies and keep on moving.

They find another similarly deserted village. Rand steps into a house and starts seeing visions of the family who used to live there and their last moments. This part of the book repeats the same paragraph three times as Rand keeps seeing the same vision over and over again. It won’t stop, and Rand freaks out. Eventually, he does something One Powery that allows him to break free from the loop and hobble out of the house. No one else experienced this weird encounter. Rand poops his pants.

They find a barn with a Myrddraal nailed to the door through its eye sockets. Something really, really fucked up must have been able to do this to a goshdarned Myrddraal! They move on again.

Moving on. Moving on.

Moving on.

*moving on*


Click here to ridicule this post!

Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #1 – “Pride and Joy (Chapter 1)”

* Part 1 of 6 of the Pride and Joy storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Runaways (Vol. 1) Issue #1 – “Pride and Joy (Chapter 1)”!

Having fallen HEAD OVER HEELS IN LOVE with Brian K. Vaughan’s Paper Girls, I needed a fix of both his writing and a coming-of-age story. The obvious choice here is the Runaways series.

I didn’t do any prior research on this series, and I don’t know what to expect. I don’t even know if these kids are going to be superheroes! They could start an Anime Club in high school for all I fucking know. And even though that sounds irrevocably shitty, I have enough trust in Brian K. Vaughan that he could even make a series about Anime Club and have it not suck completely.

I look forward to reading a lot of issues of this, thank you and hello.

Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #1 [July, 2003]
Written by: Brian K. Vaughan
“Pride and Joy (Chapter 1)”

Runaways (Vol. 1) Issue #1

See? What did I tell you? The girl on the cover has anime hair! She’s wearing steampunk anime clothes! This is gonna be some hella otaku shit, isn’t it?

Fuckin’ right away – RIGHT AWAY, PAGE ONE – there’s that dickhead Captain America and he’s fighting the Hulk with Daredevil. “If we don’t find a way to put the Hulk down fast, he’s gonna tear right through the White House!”

LOL, I hope so. Is this 2003? Punch his way right into George W. Bush’s private bathroom and strangle him with his own toilet seat. Anyway, Daredevil can’t help right now, Spider-Man is dead! He’s dead! He’s dead and I’m laughing!

“Don’t worry, gentlemen, I can handle this.” In walks the Invisible Woman, who isn’t invisible and looks quite bodacious, actually, you might say. “After all, there’s more than one way to sooth a savage beast.”

Cap calls this whole thing “retarded”. Invisible Woman isn’t part of this mission, and she’s out of character. “You’re supposed to be the Invisible Woman, not Mrs. Skank-tastic,” Cap says, face drooping comically.

“And just so you know, it’s not cool to use ‘retarded’ in a pejorative manner,” Daredevil informs Cap. “My cousin’s girlfriend is a retard.”

CUT! That’s a wrap, guys! Time to end this campaign, it’s dead in the water anyway. Let’s just let Hulk bust through the West Wing and kick Aaron Sorkin in the balls.

“Alex Wilder, get off that thing now!”

Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #1

Yuck! No son of mine is going to play an MMORPG when he could instead be looking at pornography like a healthy teenager.

Alex takes off his headset and scowls at his parents. Dad asks if this “M” “M” “O” “R” “P” “G” will cost him money. Yeah, Dad, it’s a birthday present and the subscription will last until your son’s death and beyond. Alex pulls back the curtain of his bedroom, revealing a beautiful view of a beach sunset. “Besides, we live in Malibu! What difference does a few dollars make?

It makes a lot of difference, punk! Now cancel that subscription ASAP or he’ll beat your Malibu ass with his Malibu belt! Now remember this moment, because this decision was made out of love even though this is literally the only way you have been able to communicate with all your friends at once. It’s called a chat room, son, and those are free. Now change your ratty Bruce Lee shirt before the evening’s guests arrive.

Dad leaves and Mom apologizes on his behalf. He just gets nervous before his big charity events where he rubs elbows with five other businessmen and cuts a few checks. Very relatable, you see. “I just wish I didn’t have to babysit your friends’ creepy kids while you guys get to hide in the library,” Alex grumbles.

*slap* *slap slap punch stab* *kick* Those kids aren’t creepy! And the work that Alex’s folks and their guests do is sensitive and needs to be done in private. The library is the only place you can go to by pulling back a sconce and revealing a secret passageway, and so help them God they only get to do that once a year. So cork it.

“Alex, you’re being obnoxious. The six of you have been having nothing but marvelous times together since you were all in diapers,” his mom argues. “And unlike your ‘internet friends’, those kids think of you as family. They can’t wait to see you!”

Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #1

Yeesh, that’s a creepy kid right there if I ever did see one.

THE YORKES RESIDENCE – 6:01pm

“If you guys are so obsessed with helping the poor, why won’t you let me join the socialist club?”

“Gertrude, as we discussed, while capitalism may be the unequal distribution of wealth, socialism is the equal distribution of poverty.”

I’m looking forward to seeing the coming-of-age story of six rich fucking punks from Los Angeles. That’s WAY better than four girls from suburban Cleveland any day, let me tell you.

Gertrude’s dad makes fun of her for being a sophomore. Gertrude schools her dad on the etymology of “sophomore”. And we’re done with the Yorkes for now.

THE DEAN RESIDENCE – 6:13pm

“Karolina, you’re an angel!” gushes a mom who looks like a mountain of plastic surgery. “Look, Frank, she made tempeh fajitas for the fundraiser tonight.”

Karolina with a K did make fajitas! It’s for all the vegans who are attending the event tonight, you know, since the Wilder family didn’t have much in the way of meatless, cheeseless, eggless bullshit last year. Frank takes a bite and requests some yeast flakes; a trick that Kim Basinger taught him. Hey, Alec Baldwin taught Karolina’s mom the same thing! Wow! Gag me with a spoon! We’re done with the Deans, fuck this.

THE STEIN RESIDENCE – 6:22pm

The Stein Residence has some issues.

Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #1

DO NOT EMBARRASS ME IN FRONT OF THE WILDERS. I’M NOT GOING TO WEAR MY BEST TANK TOP JUST TO LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT.

“That’s for talking back! You think straight C’s are funny? You’re becoming a dumb jock, Chase. Is that what you want to be, a cliché?”

“Well, you’re a nerd who punches like a girl… isn’t that a cliché?”

Fair point, and deep down I think Dad agrees. “Keep making jokes, big man. We’ll see how hard you’re laughing after we pull you off lacrosse.” That one did the trick. Chase’ll be good. He loves lacrosse! He gets to flick that stick around. It’s good stuff.

THE HAYES RESIDENCE – 6:37pm

“Dad, can we talk about my body?”

GLUG! Dad is like, go ask your mother, she’s a doctor too. We’re both doctors, but she’s a doctor! Go talk to her, she has the vagina. Please?

Molly is 11, and she’s having her period and stuff so Dad promises that, after the party, he and Mom will sit down with her have a talk about blood and tampons the moon and everything that goes along with becoming a full-fledged, disgusting woman. But until then, scram.

THE MINORU RESIDENCE – 6:49pm

“We are not going to be late!” yells the giant-mouthed patriarch of the household. Nico is holed up in her room, which has posters on the door like “ABSINTHE” and “KAT PISS”. She’s looking for her black nail polish, which Mom threw away. No kid of hers is going to go out looking like Marilyn Manson’s shitty nephew! Yes, I said “nephew”.

“Great, now I have to mix all my old polish together to try to make black!”

No way, Jose. Kids with black nail polish do hella drugs. Mom saw it on Oprah with Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz and Deepak Chopra and other really terrible people.

THE WILDER RESIDENCE – 7:25pm

Oh, we’ve been here before. Full circle. The party is in full swing, and Alex hasn’t left his room yet because he doesn’t want to mingle with all these rich fart-smelling dipshits.

Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #1

Ahoy, you fart-smelling dipshit!

Everyone is there but the Minorus, who are ready to show up quite fashionably late. Alex comes downstairs all sulky and wearing his best “PAYCE!” t-shirt.

The Minorus have made it! Nico walks in behind her parents and Alex pops a boner. She’s dressed like, well, the goth chick from the comic book cover art. She hands Alex back some DVDs she borrowed and he’s all like “uh buh buh buh”. Her nail polish looks burgundy. “Are you ok?” she asks, staring into his eyes with a wry grin. “You’re acting all Keanu.”

Well, for starters, Nico looks hot now, so he’s into that. Second of all, *boner*. Third of all, uh…

Karolina pops in to compliment Nico’s new threads. Molly wants to ask Gertrude (or “Gert”, the ugliest nickname in the world) about girl stuff, to which she responds with a hearty “Under no circumstances.”

Well, now that we’re all settled and our bellies full of shrimp cocktail, it’s time for the adults to pull back that sconce and hang out in the library, ahem, conduct important business (i.e. drop a lot of acid). Kids, hang out in the game room and please don’t start any fires! The game room has no emergency exits! *wink*

THE GAME ROOM – 8:46pm

The game room is full of arcade machines of games called things like “OH BOY!” and “BUSTIN’ CAPS” and “BLAHH”. The six of them sit on the couch looking bored out of their minds and quite antisocial. Seems awkward. Nico breaks the ice with a big yawn. Gert agrees with the sentiment. Chase wants some beer. Alex suggests making the most of it until their parents are finished with their orgy.

Oh wait! *lightbulb* here’s an idea! “Let’s spy on the ‘rents.”

“THE ‘RENTS”, how quaint! Nico doesn’t want to spy on no ‘rents, but no, it’s totally cool! There are a ton of security cameras and secret passageways and stuff! They caught Alex jerking it in the attic once next to a pile of vintage Beanie Babies. “My dad doesn’t know I found this when I was snooping for Christmas presents a few months ago,” he says, pressing a button and opening up a secret door that leads to, presumably, the boiler room or the yacht or whatever else they may have in their house.

Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #1

Chase is looking to get punched in the face again, I see.

THE CORRIDORS – 9:15pm

“This is like the haunted mansion at Disney,” Molly complains. “Only boringer.”

The corridor has windows, but Alex assures the group that the ‘rents are probably too high on fentanyl to even notice. Plus, they’re one-way mirrors.

“Can I hold onto you Alex? My night vision stinks,” says Nico innocently.

*boner*

At last, they come across a wall adjacent to the library. They can hear their ‘rents hootin’ and hollerin’.

“…if we’re satisfied with Mr. and Mrs. Dean’s plans for our off-world enemies, I suggest we move onto The Pride’s final order of business.”

Buh-what? Off-world enemies? The Pride. Too much fentanyl right in the ol’ nutsack, Dad. Everyone but Mr. Wilder is dressed up costumes and/or scientist garb. “Is… is that my mom and dad?” Karolina asks, looking at her plastic parental units.

“Are you guys thinking what I’m thinking?” Alex asks the group.

“Yeah, our parents are totally gay,” Chase responds eloquently. Welcome to 2003, everyone.

“No… they’re superheroes.”

The group brings into the room a scared-looking young woman with bluish hair and bluish lipstick. Alex tries to usher young Molly out of the corridors before something happens, but Molly is insistent that she wants to see the superheroes. Karolina tells her that their parents are “putting on a stupid play” and that they’ll go back and fix her hair (“What’s wrong with it…?”).

“Is that a working girl, Wilder?” asks Mr. Yorkes. “I thought you and your wife only handled drugs and gambling in this town.” Pffft, step off his fentanyl-filled nuts, Yorkes. After all, Wilder doesn’t question what he does in the fourth dimension, does he? No sir!

“Alex…” Nico hesitates. “What if they’re not good guys?”

DING DING DING! Of course they aren’t! They’re going to kill this prostitute for personal gain, can’t you see? The Drs. Hayes start flashing some telekinetic eyebeams and restrain the young woman. Their mysterious machine is geared up and ready.

Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #1

Or The Red Baron or Dr. Evil or Harrison Ford.

Mr. Minoru starts reciting some ancient words from some ancient tome. “I want you to know that you’re helping us forge a better tomorrow for our children,” Mr. Wilder says, lifting up the sad woman’s chin and glaring right into her eyes. “On behalf of The Pride,” he brandishes a knife, “we truly appreciate your sacrifice.”

SHUNK! Right between the ribs, motherfucker! This chick is going down! Then someone behind a mirror screams. “What the hell was that?” asks one of these bad guy mofos.

Gert and Chase stare through the mirror in disbelief while Alex desperately holds Nico’s mouth shut.

Final Thoughts

Dark times ahead already! My guess is that the parents either find out they have been eavesdropped upon by their children and start trying to chase them down, OR the six of them decide to run off on their own volition. Either way… here come the Runaways!

I look forward to seeing what happens next.


Click here to ridicule this post!

Fray, Issue #5 – “Chapter Five: The Worst of It”

* Part 5 of 8 of the Fray limited series *

Welcome to Buffyness and Nightlurkers Presents: Fray, Issue #5 – “Chapter Five: The Worst of It”! In the previous installment, Melaka Fray has enough flashbacks about her twin brother Hatch that we now know the whole story: Icarus confronted them, Melaka couldn’t stop him, Icarus bit Hatch, Melaka fell off a building, Hatch died, Erin blames Melaka. A sad story. We’ve all been there.

The encounter with Icarus was curious because he knew Fray’s name. Her reputation precedes her, and a little chat with Gunther reveals… nothing. But Fray gets knocked out during a Lurk fracas and Icarus takes her to his Master.

His Master is Hatch!

Eeek! Who saw that coming?! Not me, and I have an IQ of 303! Let’s see how Vamp Hatch is going to fuck with Melaka’s mind and cause her to cry and stuff. That’ll be fun.

Fray, Issue #5 [December, 2001]
Written by: Joss Whedon
“Chapter Five: The Worst of It”

Fray, Issue #5

Loo is getting bullied again. I hope this kid eventually faces her enemies and eats them alive, literally. Just sinks her teeth into someone’s fucking neck and sucks their blood out, just like a… a… um…

“I’m a Lurk! I’m a Lurk! I’m ‘a eat you!” yells the kid, chasing Loo around while she screams. This poor kid with the milky eye and the stumpy arm.

The kid trips over a rock, and then Loo jumps on his back. “I’m Mel! Can’t a Lurk in the world hurt Mel ‘cause she’s the slam!” Holy shit, I love that, “the slam”. I’m going to start using that in my daily life.

Loo recounts the tale of how Mel fucked up Icarus, but this other kid didn’t hear it that way. Loo gets mad! How dare you say a word about it? Loo was there, and she’s got Urkonn Goat-Face to corroborate the dang story! Zip the lip, son!

“My mom says Lurks are people God got sick of,” says the kid, mopey.

“Not even,” argues Loo. “It’s a social disease. You get it from making with people, then you want blood and all.”

Nope, Lurks are ‘cause of God, and one’s probably going to eat Loo if she doesn’t watch it. She yells as he walks away. She’s got Melaka, and ain’t no Lurk gonna mess with Loo lest it gets a face full of Melaka’s fists.

She sits alone, doubting herself a tad. TOM’S PREDICTION: Lurks are going to get Loo and Melaka won’t be around to stop them. How sad is that shit going to be?

Fray, Issue #5

Kiss me, you beautiful fool.

Vampire Harth sits atop a tall tower of scaffolding. “I’ll tell you the truth, Mel… I really missed you,” he smiles before leaping down gracefully from the tower.

“My brother has been dead for four years,” Melaka thinks, staring at her brother who hasn’t aged a day since she last saw him.

“It’s confusing, I know,” Harth says, brow furrowed. “And it’s not easy to explain. I guess we’d start… I guess we’d start with my death.”

DEATH FLASHBACK. Icarus gets bitey bitey, Harth gets bitey bitey. “It hurts, you know,” he tells her. “My throat torn open, the animal’s teeth scraping bone it was so eager to suck out my blood.”

Before he knew it, he was dying… and then, like a brief moment of total clarity, he knew what he had to do next. And that was rip a chunk out of Icarus’ cheek with his teeth. So he did that! And Harth smiles with bloody teeth.

Then he died. Like a chump.

“How did you know?” Icarus bends down to talk to the now-deceased. “How did you know you had to feed to become one of us?” Oh ho ho ho, Harth knows much more than that! You just wait and see.

“You don’t dream much, do you, Mel? I dreamed. Always. Before my earliest memories of the world, there were the dreams. There was the girl…”

Ooooooh, the girl? Was she the slam??

“She was different every time. But the same. A peasant, a priestess… hundreds of girls, from times we’ve forgotten, worlds we couldn’t picture. She was me. She wasn’t me. I loved her.”

What the fuck are you talking about, bro? Did getting vamped up screw with your head?… aside from the obvious.

“I killed her.”

Keep it in your pants, homeboy. You ain’t making a lick of sense besides. Mel seems to know what’s going on, being a twin and all. Twins have that creepy telepathic shit going on. Harth always thought that she and he were two halves of the same person. Probably because they are. Twins are creepy.

Fray, Issue #5

Some choose to look like David Duchovny. These are the most based of all…

Harth flashes Melaka the ol’ vamp face. He’s not one to bandy that about, though, because he thinks he’s better than that. Resting vamp face isn’t befitting of a man of his stature, the One Who Will Lead. Ah yes, mentioned in the previous issue, the One Who Will Lead is the biggest threat that must be stopped. Sibling against sibling, the oldest rivalry in the book. Literally. That whole Cain and Abel thing, right? That was a thing early on in a book.

“This world belongs to the demons. They were banished, exiled by one of your ambitious predecessors.” I can hear the sneer in Harth’s voice, but he might just be hungry for some Ben & Jerry’s. “I will open the gateway, and bring back the old ones.”

Melaka is turned away from him, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“And everyone you love will die screaming.”

She refuses to believe that the old Harth isn’t in there somewhere. “You only think those things because you’re infected. My brother would never hurt anyone.”

HA! Ain’t you watch Buffy? The only thing vampires want to do is hurt people! And watch Passions.

Melaka learns first-hand that, yes, Harth would hurt someone. He punches her right in the stomach as hard as he can. WHOMP. She gasps for air on the floor. “I love you, Melaka. I’ve never felt closer to anyone. I watched you. I knew what you were before you did. You wasted your talent grabbing for Gunther, so I used you to complete my collection.” Harth motions toward the very artifacts that Melaka was paid to steal. “The pieces that will help me open the gateway. Thanks to you, I have them all.”

Grabbing for Gunther. Tuesdays on FOX.

Melaka desperately grabs Harth’s shirt. She won’t let him hurt anyone! She can’t! She won’t! She shan’t! She couldn’t! She don’t!

Harth punches her right across the jaw, then throws her aside with incredible force! “The only question is, what do I do with you now?”

Fray, Issue #5

That’s going to tickle in the morning. So not the slam.

Harth had sent Melaka flying so fast and hard, she crashes right through the wall, then the ground, then lands facedown in the sewer water. “Oh. Okay. Oops,” Harth says, obviously not intending to possibly kill her… but he knows she’s not dead. He would know if she was dead! He’s got that, you know, death spidey-sense.

She flows out into the river, defeated! She lost the battle, but oh, she will… also lose the next battle. Then the next. Then she won’t necessarily win the war. She’ll just delay it.

Erin is returning to her Uppers apartment after a long day of Being a Cop. She is telling her partner, Broder, to give her a ringy-dingy if anything comes up. And also…

…someone’s in her apartment…

…Erin draws her gun, ready to blast some sap into a thousand bits and pieces…

…it’s Melaka…

BLAM!

Just kidding! She looks rough, though, like a blast from a futuristic laser gun would be just what the doctor ordered. “Erin, I’m… I’m sorry,” she cries. Then she catches Erin up on the current business.

“But he’s alive.”

“Not alive. You don’t understand.”

“I guess I don’t. He’s got infected, he’s a Lurk. But there’s gotta be a cure for that, right?”

“You ever hear of one?”

A lot of this breakdown involves convincing Erin that Harth is a vampire and that Melaka is the Slayer. It sounds like a bunch of malarkey. Not the slam.

The weird wrench in all of this is that they’re twins. He had the dreams, the knowledge, the heritage. That shouldn’t have happened. Melaka has none of that, but she has the strength. Something’s fishy, at any rate. It stinks like Gunther.

Erin doesn’t want to hear any of this. How is she supposed to trust her degenerate sister anyway? Just look at her hair! It’s two colors!

Fray, Issue #5

We’ve never seen eye-to-eye! That’s why I’m doing something with my life (Slaying) and you’re just a fucking asshole loser piece of shit (Cop).

“You’ve never had anything but contempt for me since the day Harth died and you know what? You’re probably right!” Erin doesn’t have anything to say to this, so she just lets Melaka keep on yackin’. It doesn’t matter if Erin doesn’t believe her, because why should she, but there’s no way in heaven nor hell (and don’t get me started on Hades) that she’s going to come into her apartment and make up stories about goblins and ghoulies. She needs help is what she needs. This much is true.

“He said everyone I love is gonna die screaming.”

“So I guess I’m safe,” Erin grins. Then she immediately regrets saying it.

Whatever then, you do you. As long as you don’t try to stop her. “I think we’ve got a war coming,” Melaka says as she walks out. “And I can’t win it.”

Erin tells her that Gunther gave her up. Don’t trust him.

“I don’t trust anyone,” she says simply. And she closes the door.

Melaka returns to her shithole neighborhood. Urkonn has been worried sick, young lady!

Fray, Issue #5

Well, shit.

Urkonn wasn’t the only one looking for Melaka. Her whole apartment has been ransacked. And they left a message in the form of a poor, little dead girl. Even Urkonn looks horrified, which isn’t much of a stretch anyway.

Melaka, emotionless, stares down at Loo’s body. Then she gets up and walks toward the large hole in her wall. “He said it. He said I couldn’t protect anyone. He was right.”

“I’m not even a real Slayer. All I can do is fight. So it’s time I started fighting.”

“Time to let them know I’m in this.”

“Urkonn…”

“It’s time for war.”

Final Thoughts

First of all, I’m mad that Loo got killed.

Second of all, like I said, she ain’t winning no war. There’s no such thing as winning this war! She’s going to delay it, then get killed, and the next Slayer is going to take her place. My guess is Taylor Swift XIV, her great great great great great great… you know what I mean.


Click here to ridicule this post!