Have Yourself a Merry Little Munchausen

As I sit here this morning with a mug full of Very Irish Coffee (a thermos full of Irish whiskey with a teaspoon of Folger’s), looking out the window at the majestic Chicago scenery (a 120-foot back alley full of the entire city’s garbage), and enjoying the peace and serenity (my two children screaming about mittens at 7:30am), I look to my daily dose of completely insane non-political Fox News stories.

What’s in the news in the last week?

November 25, 2022
Minnesota mom allegedly took son’s blood, forced siblings to dispose of it in scheme to fake illness

A Minnesota woman charged with child torture allegedly stole her son’s blood and treated her two other children for medical conditions they don’t have. Jorden Nicole Borders, 32, is charged with three counts each of child torture and stalking in the alleged abuse of her children: an 8-year-old girl, and two boys, ages 9 and 11, Fox Minneapolis reported.

Authorities began investigating Borders after the 9-year-old boy was being monitored by doctors. His hemoglobin numbers kept dropping, with Borders claiming the hospital was removing too much blood. However, her children told authorities they saw her take blood from their brother and put it in a cup and had them flush it down a toilet, a court complaint states. They said she would often do it before doctor visits.

Munchausen by proxy statistics

This Sex Distribution graph shows that Munchausen by proxy perpetrators get WAY more sex than the victims.

Ay Carumba! The article goes on to describe the anguished child’s account of his mother asking him to not tell anybody about this as she continued to drain his body of extremely vital fluids. Now, I’m no child psychologist. I barely even know what my own children are saying when they ask vague, incomprehensible questions like “can I have some food?” or “why is there a pile of hay on my bed?” But wouldn’t it be very difficult for a 9-year-old to pretend everything is ok when his mother is literally removing blood from his body on a daily basis? Perhaps Jorden Nichole Borders expected the children to be way too lethargic to be able to string two coherent words together.

What do they call this? Munchausen syndrome by proxy? Making up fake symptoms or causing real symptoms to make it look like the child is sick in order to garner sympathy from family, friends, colleagues, pastors, teachers, police officers, construction workers, hobos, heroin addicts, and mimes? I suppose some of these horrible people have a really good imaginations, ones that are beyond “my kid has a cough”. It makes me want to look up other Munchausen by proxy cases for… uh… research purposes.

  • Wendi Michelle Scott – “Intravenously fed her daughter magnesium and withdrew blood to make her appear sickly and caused her daughter to suffer from severe diarrhea, blood loss, vomiting, high fever, and a rapid heart rate.”

This lady sounds like a trip, man! I would think there would be much easier ways to fake a child’s illness that doesn’t involve a collection of hypodermic needles and an ample supply of liquid magnesium. For example, one could feed him or her nothing but Saltines, Styrofoam packing peanuts, and a delicious cocktail of Diet Pepsi and Drano. Watch that hair fall right out their head in massive, tufty clumps!

Doctors were at a loss as to why Scott’s daughter was diarrhea-ing all over over the place. It was suspected to be leukemia, but when America’s top doctors were unable to cure any mysterious symptoms through various blood transfusions or digging her bone marrow out with ice cream scoops, they had no choice but to pump her full of radiation over and over again to drive away that nasty invisible killer! Too bad that only increased her risk of cancer. Gotta spend money to make money, I always say.

In the end, Wendi Michelle Scott got hers. 15-year prison sentence, which is actually over in about a year or two. No one decided to inject Scott with magnesium, or even some of the heavier elements on the periodic table, even though she probably deserved just a little bit of it. Just enough for some of that revenge diarrhea.

The Act - Joey King

To be completely honest, this is a pretty good Phil Collins impersonation.

  • Dee Dee Blanchard – “Dee Dee, a Hurricane Katrina survivor, faked multiple chronic illnesses of her daughter, Gypsy-Rose Blanchard, both for sympathy and charitable benefits. Her abuse of Gypsy-Rose led to the girl eventually aiding a secret boyfriend in the murder of Dee Dee, after which the abuse was finally discovered. Gypsy-Rose’s experience has been dramatized in movies and TV shows.”

They dramatized this one in the Hulu series The Act, which I have avoided seeing because Joey King has an upsettingly round head! I’m sure this whole story is painstakingly re-enacted down to the finest details, including the parts where “Gypsy hid in the bathroom and covered her ears so that she would not have to hear her mother screaming” and that Gypsy’s boyfriend stabbed Dee Dee “17 times in her back while she was asleep” and that “afterwards the two had sex in Gypsy’s room”. How deep were the stabs? In which sex positions did these two lovebirds perform their lewd, primal copulations? Watch The Act to learn this and much, much more! Or less!

At any rate, Gypsy’s childhood was plagued with poisons, unneeded wheelchairs, home diagnoses of multiple and/or missing chromosomes, frequent visits to the Special Olympics, and superfluous anti-seizure medications. About half of that sounds like the sweet life, but in later interviews with Gypsy she claims she had a bad time through most of her childhood? Sounds to me like we have a real whiner on our hands.

  • Shauna Dee Taylor, “A Floridian woman who medically abused all 10 of her children, with a specific fascination with their internal organs; she poisoned her infant daughter in a 2013 incident and caused the child to suffer liver damage, setting up a sympathy donation fundraiser page online for the child.”

We have a winner! First of all, be wary of women with three names. They will Munchausen by all kinds of proxy with you and their kids. Second of all, Florida! Third of all, ALL 10 of her children! ALL TEN! You would think the older kids from this second-rate Duggar clan would have caught onto the bullshit and tried shielding the younger kids from the same damage, but they were so Munchausened that they didn’t even know which way was up anymore.

Munchausen by proxy statistics

I’ve never heard of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, but I’d bet that it doesn’t contain any rampant child abuse scenes or any magnesium-injection plot points.

Here’s a bonus fourth-of-all for ya: “specific fascination with their internal organs”. I suppose this actually means a specific fascination with irreparably damaging their internal organs with cocktails of insulin and milk, Tylenol iron supplements, and, I shit you not, currency. Pennies and dimes. A family containing ten children was well off enough, apparently, to sacrifice loose change to the literal bowels of younglings!

Here’s the kicker for me. Shauna’s husband Bill suspected that something was amiss, to put it lightly. Even after having three of his children removed from their custody by the state, Bill was heard to say during an interview “On the several visits to the emergency room, I was scratching my head thinking, my gosh. How could all my kids have such severe medical issues?” Not reported was Bill’s affinity for swallowing his own coins, as well as buckets of lead-based paint, causing him to go blind and deaf and becoming a quadriplegic with mental regression to that of a 5-year-old autistic child with 14 extra chromosomes and a belly full of ball bearings.

I hope these three accounts have brought to your attention the dangers of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Perhaps this informative post will allow you to avoid the pitfalls and traps that these three women have stumbled into, and that you can be successful in your own pursuits to poison your innocent, unsuspecting children! I do what I can for the people.

Paper Girls, Issue #11

* Part 1 of 5 of the Paper Girls Volume 3 storyline *

Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: Paper Girls, Issue #11! So good of you to join me again after the most briefest of hiatuses. Unless, of course, you’re stumbling upon this after I burned through the series. In which case, don’t listen to me. Time is a circle! And since the Paper Girls TV series dropped on Amazon Video in late July, I figured I really need to watch that ASAP… and to me, “ASAP” means “as soon as I finish the comic series”. So I gotta get going.

In the previous storyline, three out of four girls are transported to the Year 2016. Mac died of cancer in the early ‘90s. Tiff no longer lives in Stony Stream. Erin not only still lives in Stony Stream at age 40, but she also still works at the newspaper. She is unmarried and riddled with anxiety.

However, Old Erin proves to be a useful ally, and she helps the troupe of preteen paper girls to the next point of their adventure, likely killing herself AND her helicopter pilot younger sister Missy in the process.

After jumping through a time portal hovering above downtown Cleveland, the girls land on a mysterious hill with a mysterious crop-circle type impression of a demon goat holding an apple. KJ is there, and she claims that she hasn’t bumped into any other human being since she arrived at this mysterious point in time.

Let’s crack open Issue #11, which will introduce more questions than are actually answered! Ahhh, I missed this.


Paper Girls, Issue #11 [February, 2017]
Written by: Brian K. Vaughan

Paper Girls, Issue #11

Whoa doggies! A semi-supersized issue! You know what that means: a 5,000 word write-up! Strap in, dorks, I might be in rare form this time. (Unlikely)

Is that tattoo-faced Erin in the bushes? Badass, yo.

The very first panel shows either a clod of dirt or a large poop ball hurling through the air. The disgusting wad of whatever smacks KJ in the back of her head. She is playing field hockey. She is being picked on.

“Whoever threw that is a dead woman,” she snarls.
“I’d like to see you try, kike,” a mean girl says smugly, surround by other mean-looking mean girls. Sorry for writing “kike” on my blog. That’s not nice.

KJ is beyond shocked that she was even called this.

“You heard me, KJ. That’s what the ‘K’ stands for, right?”

Wow! Rude! Hella rude! KJ is gonna tell Coach right away and she’ll beat your ass ruddy, she will! Make no mistake, sister! It’s Chinatown, bitch!

“Coach?” this awful blonde girl sneers, “She’s the first person we heard call you that.”

Well that sucks. KJ starts running toward her enemy in a feral rage, wielding her stick like a baseball bat.

“Karina,” an old woman, KJ’s grandmother, appears out of nowhere floating five feet off of the ground, “save your hate for the real monsters.”
“Those girls are monsters, Bub!”
“They’re cowards little one.”

Listen to Bub, KJ. Bub’s been around the block a few times. And by that I mean, she’s been pushing her “Bubble’s Depo” cart around the block a few times. Google that.

“Give them nothing but your pity,” Bub tells KJ, putting her hand on her shoulder and revealing the Auschwitz tattoo on her arm. 11706.

Wait a minute. Something’s not right… and it’s the number.

“The worst is behind you, Karina. Right behind you.

Paper Girls, Issue #11

Gah! Goddamnit, Bub! You know I hate it when you do that.

Right behind KJ are the mean girls, and they turned into hella zombies speaking that hella alien language that’s popular with the teenagers these days. All four of them spit red blood-like liquid at KJ, which traps her in a wash of the stuff not seen in such an overwhelming manner since the blood elevator from The Shining! Except with, you know, maybe more blood actually?

KJ wakes up from her dream. No apples in KJ’s dream, just antisemitism and drowning in blood. Wholesome stuff, really. “Can’t sleep either,” Erin asks, sitting against a fallen tree trunk with an open Cleveland Preserver chock full of the newsiest news that money can buy. A bonfire crackles. Tiff is sound asleep. I don’t know where the fuck Mac is.

The girls are camping out in the same clearing in the forest where that time-and-space traveling capsule was located. The one where those Teenage Mutants helped Erin survive her gunshot wound.

After Erin comments that they’re still living whatever nightmare KJ may have had, KJ responds that there are scarier things than being lost in the woods in some unknown timeline.

“At least we’re stranded on dry land,” KJ says, stretching and putting on a jacket. KJ doesn’t swim, she’s afraid of the water. She watched a cousin drown in a pool when she was in first grade.

Heh. Awkward… uhm…

“Hold on,” KJ gapes at her sort-of friend, “are you seriously reading the funnies? At a time like this?”

Yes! Yes she is! That Garfield, he sure likes his lasagna! Hahahaha! Don’t get in his way! LMAO LOL! “I’m trying to figure out what the heck time this even is,” Erin says as KJ notices she’s been reading the newspaper from November 1st, 1988. That’s yesterday. So it’s the day after yesterday. Which is today. Case closed! Not the the day after tomorrow, though. That’s Jake Gyllenhaal and Emmy Rossum. And it sucked.

Paper Girls, Issue #11

ACK!

But yeah, Erin’s not really trying to figure out what day it is. She’s reading the funnies. And she claims that she likes Crankshaft more than Calvin & Hobbes, which is complete fucking blasphemy and I fucking hate Erin now. What a horrible little whore.

KJ just now notices that Mac is missing, but no worries! She’s just chilling alone by the nearby river catching fish and floating around and swimming upstream to mate. That’s not good, though. She shouldn’t be alone. Well, she should be alone to mate. Well, no she shouldn’t. Also, she’s 12. So stop thinking about that so much, you awful person reading this right now. I’m calling the police.

Does your prison have WiFi? Good! Let’s continue then. Tiff stirs and wakes up. She gave Mac her flashlight, so she should be A-OK. Also, Mac’s tough and she’ll punch any beaver that looks at her funny.

“So what, we promised to never split up again,” KJ shouts incredulously at the half-asleep Tiff, who is opening one eye at her. Annoyed. Mac can take care of herself. She’s punching crocodiles. Relax.

Erin pipes in to tell KJ that she offered to accompany Mac, but she wanted to be alone. Probably to think about all the cancer she’s going to have. Just riddled with so much cancer. Packed to the gills. “I think maybe she had to go number two,” she says, staring back down at her newspaper while KJ and Tiff look at her like they want to throw rocks at her head.

Mac is indeed by the river, staring down forlornly at the single cigarette left in her pack. Cancer stick or no cancer stick? Save it for later? Eat it now? What’s the point, she may as well just kill herself. Just attach a rock to her legs and jump in that river. I told you she was hardcore.

Paper Girls, Issue #11

Gesundheit! Want a cigarette?

Well, getting surprised from behind by a bow-and-arrow wielding… Erin-looking girl wasn’t expected to be in the cards today, that’s for damn sure. But here she is with a necklace made out of computer chips and some tribal tattoos on her face. “H’achti roo!” she hollers. Mac stays frozen in her spot.

“Look, I have no clue what you’re saying, but I just found out my expiration date, and it’s already way sooner than I’d…”

Mac is distracted by a red shooting star. Or, at least it looks like a red shooting star. Wild Erin calls it a “Pentago”. I think I had that for dinner last night.

While Wild Erin is distracted, Mac knocks her bow away and the arrow flies into the trunk of a tree with a big, loud THWOK! I think I had that as a side dish.

Ok, fuck it, we don’t need weapons. Wild Erin lunges at Mac and wraps her hands around her throat. “RRAIIIIE!” Wild Erin screams while Mac is all “blub blub blub hrrrk blub”.

Good timing! The other three girls emerge from the woods to watch Mac getting choked out! “Stop staring… and coldcock this bitch!” Mac yells while KJ stands petrified, unable to perform the requested coldcocking.

It’s because… wait for the reveal… wait for it…

Wait for it…

I’ll go grab a snack. I’m feeling leftover pentago with a side of thwok.

OK, I’m ready now. Whew, I feel better! It’s because Wild Erin has a baby strapped to her back.

“Jahpo! Nee… nee mahdi Jahpo!” she yells, possibly angry because she thinks someone’s gonna steal her baby? Not today! This ain’t Raising Arizona with Nicolas Cage! Well… wait… maybe it is?… no, no it’s not.

The three girls tell Wild Erin to cool her jets. Mac, now relieved of her choking out situation, starts getting back up. I’m starting to realize that this woman may not be a Wild version of Erin after all. BUT, I’m going to continue calling her as such until I’m proven otherwise! It’s only fair.

Paper Girls, Issue #11

Whoa whoa, hey, whoa. Not in front of the children, now.

The four of them stupidly assumed that this baby was Wild Erin’s brother, but they were boobily mistaken. Probably ‘cause she’s, like, twelve years old. Just like them. And, as far as they all know, they’re not mothers themselves. It seems strange! Odd, you might say. “We don’t even know when this is,” Tiff says, “Maybe children had children a million years ago.”

“Or, maybe this is what happens in a million years,” Erin argues, always the buzzkill. Mac wants to talk about the red shooting star, but the sudden KRAKs in the woods are a matter to attend to immediately.

“Muire!” Wild Erin exclaims. “Muire feeh!”

A massive yeti-type thing emerges going “GAHHRRE!” and it’s very scary looking. These girls should probably run away. They should run away from the muire feeh right now.

It knocks Mac in the river. While the three girls scramble to find something to save her, Wild Erin tugs at her arrow in the tree. KJ sadly hands Tiff her field hockey stick, but it’s not for what you think it is. KJ jumps in the river! How’s that for a good friend? I wouldn’t jump in the river for nobody, that’s for sure. Damn skippy.

Somewhere else in the woods, a large capsule descends from the sky and scopes out the environment. Radiation is minimal. Atmosphere is breathable. Climate is comfortable. Time to get out!

The door of the capsule cracks open with a big hissing sound. A lady who looks like P!nk emerges from within. Or maybe La Roux. She’s cyberpunky, darn tootin’.

Paper Girls, Issue #11

Stay tuned for Art Bell at 11:30, with special guest Alf!

She hops out with hover boots and scopes the land out. She records her notes for posterity, perhaps to become famous someday to be the “woman who invented time travel”. Dr. Qanta Braunstein. She arrived safely and successfully at her target date…

11,706 BCE

Exciting!

Final Thoughts

11,706 BCE, huh? Let’s look that up…

Domestication of the goat! Domestication of the sheep! Oh man, this is going to be epic!

The Eye of the World (Book 1) – Chapter 11: “The Road to Taren Ferry”

The Wheel of Time - Book 1 - The Eye of the World

Yet another short chapter where not much happens, so I’ll use this first paragraph to talk about how great mostaccioli is. Some may swear by the humble penne, but mostaccioli reigns supreme. Are you a macaroni fan? Bourgeois. Perhaps you enjoy a longer pasta, such as linguine or fettuccini? Disgusting. Rigatoni? Don’t make me laugh. It is, and it will always be, mostaccioli.

These nine pages are spent horsing around. By that I mean, the seven travelers are on horseback riding due north toward Taren Ferry. By the time they get to Watch Hill, a town that is enjoying their own untainted Bel Tine, the horses are fatigued and three inches from death! That’s ok, though, because Moiraine has those fancy Aes Sedai powers that can pump these horses full of magic coffee and get them back up and moving in two shakes of a Warder’s tail.

Speaking of Warders, this Lan guy is really fun to be around. He’s always cranky, and I hope someone has the good sense to throw him down a well by morning.

During the course of their travels, another Draghkar starts swooping around and scaring the holy peanuts out of the horses. It takes about four pages before they’re unspooked, and by then Moiraine and Lan are nervous that the dreaded Myrddraal is now hot on their heels! Fear not, troupe, for Moiraine rolls her 49-sided die and casts MAGIC FOG over them. They make it safely to Taren Ferry!

Rand has heard stories about Taren Ferry: the people there are scoundrels and petty thieves! They won’t be staying long, though. Lan hammers on a ferryman’s door and pays him a handsome sum to run a ferry across the river. It has never happened during the night, but there’s a first time for everything! After licking his gross lips, the ferryman agrees to arrange for a trip across the river.

The adventure continues. If I were them, I’d scour Taren Ferry for a few bags of some good, good mostaccioli!

Sucky Funnies for November 27, 2022

Happy Three-Days-After-American-Thanksgiving! I got plump upon turkey and potatoes to be sure, and now I’m enjoying my last day of freedom before I return to the torturous drudgery of an average work day at the salt mines. I’m the one that mines the pepper, which is much harder to find.

At least I have the Sunday funnies to take my mind off of things for a spell. I hope you enjoy tepid family entertainment as much as I do not.


Pardon My Planet

Pardon My Planet - November 27, 2022

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If it wasn’t obvious enough who the intended demographic is for this section of the newspaper, here’s a Steve Miller Band reference. A song from almost 50 years ago. This will almost certain get the usual clientele frothing with nostalgic joy in the comments section, which I don’t read anymore because I can’t take anymore jubilations from Betsy out of the heartland of America. Or Fred talking about his lawn tools.

I don’t think Maurice over here should be worrying about what people are or are not calling him right now. He should be worrying about where his spacecraft is, because I don’t see it within the 15° angle viewpoint I have, which means it must have fallen into a crater and exploded into a billion chunks of shrapnel. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened if there was a little less midnight tokin’.


Judge Parker

Judge Parker - November 27, 2022

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Now this is funny! Judge Parker brings the laughs today as Sam and Gloria, two characters I had to look up, survey the body count! Hey, let’s not call the police, they may want to us to talk about our involvement with the cartel, and that wouldn’t be jake!

I wonder what it would be like to actually follow a strip like Judge Parker and experience the continuity in real time. One strip, one day at a time. There is a non-zero chance that someone is heavily invested in this, and are pissing their pants at the thought that these two faceless characters will find themselves in hot water that they won’t be able to escape from. Already preparing the dedication on the shrine in their closet.


Beetle Bailey

Beetle Bailey - November 27, 2022

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STAR EXPLOSION BOMB KNIFE SPIRAL GRAVE SKUNK SKULL W/ CROSSBONES LIGHTNING THREE EXCLAMATION POINTS

This must be a reference to 145 years ago when Sarge was yelling at Beetle for his gross incompetence way more than he does these days. Classic Cursing. A “golden oldie”. A real “blast from the past”. So retro.

Avengers Assemble (Vol. 2), Issue #7 – “Zodiac (Part 7)”

* Part 7 of 8 of the Zodiac storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Avengers Assemble (Vol. 2) Issue #7 – “Zodiac (Part 7)”! In the previous installment, this particular Avengers team has already been assembled and the other 28 Avengers don’t get to come and they’re all salty about it. They should’ve at least brought along Spider-Man, who would’ve done backflips while saying snarky somethings in their little ears. Their loss.

The Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy intend to fly to the Badoon planet to start beating up Badoons when a Badoon warship starts Badooning the shit out of their own ships. The Avengers are like “HEY, GUARDIANS, SIT THIS ONE OUT OK, WE GOT THIS” but then Hawkeye accidentally jettisons all of them out into space and now Thanos’ Cosmic Cube is glowing like crazy!

It’s really funny.


Avengers Assemble (Vol. 2), Issue #7 [November, 2012]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Zodiac (Part 7)”

Avengers Assemble (Vol. 2), Issue #7

COVER ART ANALYSIS: Thanos has a Star Trek borg eyeball while staring maniacally at his enormous fist with the pretty gem-knuckled gloves containing the heavenly souls of five angry Avengers! This means that the bad guy is happy and winning and the good guys have been launched into the vacuum of space. LOL!

Thanos has summoned the elders! He’s not allowed to summon the elders! It’s dinner time, and this is rude! “How many times must the universe punish you for your ways?” asks one elder. “You are truly mad,” says another elder. “What do you have there, Thanos?” asks yet another elder. “When am I going to find a better dang job?” asks me, preoccupied.

Thanos cannot WAIT to show them was he has. Check it out in all its cubey glory: a cube! But not just any cube! It’s a special cube! Eight corners? Sure. Six faces? Of course. Twelve edges? That doesn’t sound right, let me check really quick. *cube blinds Thanos permanently* Yes! Twelve edges!

“A Cosmic Cube?” asks an elder (the Collector) with little emotion.
“Yes,” responds Thanos, holding it up.
“I’ve never seen that one before. What do you want for it?”

Pfft. This Collector elder just wants to collect things? Anything and everything? He can collect my nuts.

Another elder is skeptical. That’s not a real Cosmic Cube! The Collector isn’t listening, he wants that cube! He has many trinkets to trade, “But I don’t have the Infinity Gems, if that’s what you’re after.”

Thanos cares not for Infinity Gems at this moment! He wants one thing and one thing only! He slowly unzips his pants… then he zips it back up. “That it was I who ended your existence!”

Avengers Assemble (Vol. 2) Issue #7

That does say “…That it was I who ended your existence!”, just in case you can’t read 0.25pt on my shitty blog.

Then he ends the elders’ existence! Certainly, ending their existence means they’ll never know that Thanos was the one who ended their existence because they no longer exist to know that. Technicalities.

The souls of the elders’ bodies are getting sucked into the cube, which I would have thought would be a good thing for Thanos… but his eyes are bulging and he’s belting out a strong “NOOOO!” So it’s bad instead? Did he want it the other way around: The cube splintering into many cubes which would suck themselves into the elders’ bodies? Or did he want the elders to suck themselves, and–

Elsewhere in space, there’s a group of Avengers and Badoon looking like dead meat floating around.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. Command. This is Natasha Romanoff – the Black Widow – broadcasting to you from Mapped Sector 97.”

“The mission has failed. I repeat: the mission has failed.”

S.H.I.E.L.D. now needs to come into space and collect their asses. By the way, Thanos still has the Cosmic Cube and he’s going to keep doing mean things with it.

Black Widow is the only one conscious. Outfitted in a state-of-the-art space suit with a vacuum hose and a miniscule tank of oxygen, she attempts to float around to try to revive some of her buddies. She starts with Hulk, the guy who will need the most oxygen and will likely start thrashing out of fear, surprise, and pent up sexual frustration. She fills him with just enough oxygen to keep him awake and then she throws his ass back over toward the ship. He grabs Thor on his way.

Next is Captain America! He is revived, and now the space-suited Guardians have arrived to help collect these lousy Avengers.

Hulk smacks Thor to wake him up, still in deep space, and points to an oncoming army of laser gun Badoons! Egads!

Avengers Assemble (Vol. 2) Issue #7

Pew pew pew! Bang bang bang bang bling blong bling blong! Moo! Bleat! Moo moo moo!

Fighting ensues in the middle of space, so that’s neat. It looks like they were able to neutralize the threat bewilderingly quickly. One moment the Badoon army is shooting off lasers, the next moment there are bolts of electricity coming out of what appears to be a Babylon 5 type space portal? Or maybe out of Thor’s hammer without Thor even striking the hammer? Then all the Badoons are floating around like “oh shit we’re dead now I think”.

The Avengers are all still alive and well. They haul their deep space butts back into their large jet with the “A” on the tail (“A” is for “Avengers”, or perhaps “Applesauce”). Black Widow saved the day! Hurray and huzzah! Excelsior! Wubba lubba dub dub!

Oh no, but where are Iron Man and Hawkeye! This is a problem! We need to go back and– oh, they’re with the Guardians? Well that was a real suspenseful four seconds. They look dead though. Maybe they’re both dead. I hope Hawkeye is at least dead. I don’t like Hawkeye, he seems like an annoying fifteenth wheel.

The Guardians twist and turn and weave around the lasers of whomever is left actually shooting them. Get the medpacks ready! Iron Man is going to need a whole slew of tongue depressors!

Avengers Assemble (Vol. 2) Issue #7

I’d make an Air Supply joke, but Family Guy already made an Air Supply joke and, therefore, it’s beneath me.

Raccoon Dude starts bickering like a cranky old woman, but Chris Pratt Quill reminds the little fucker that these Avengers are running out of non-liquified organs and they need to get them to safety stat! But, alas, the Guardians ship starts getting bombarded with Badoons! Badoons upon Badoons!

Thor makes a Thor pose and smashes his hammer, sending more electricity buzzing through space. The Badoons get blown. Out. They get blown out. Then the Guardians close their hatch. WHEW THAT WAS A CLOSE ONE. A CLOSE ONE, YOU GUYS.

Rocky Raccoon makes an observation that their Badoon ship was more packed to the gills with Badoonsies than usual. Everyone ignores him. Hawkeye and Iron Man look quite dead, so they need to get the medpacks stat. Hawkeye needs gauze!

Also, if these two are dead, that’s going to be a bad look. The Avengers will take advantage of some of that tried and true eye-for-an-eye justice.

There’s more fighting. Just more and more fighting. People waited a whole month for this issue back in 2012 and only a small handful jerked it through all the fighting. The rest jerked it afterward and wanted their money back, but you know what they say: You jerk it, you bought it!

Hulk asks for permission to smash, and Golden Boy Captain America allows it. On his way to smashing he gets shot by lasers, but the thing about Hulk is this: uhhhh, lasers can’t hurt him! So shut up.

Star-Lord! That’s Quill’s nom de plume! I remember this now from falling asleep through the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie! Star-Lord asks if the other Avengers are ok, conveniently hiding the fact that Hawkeye and Iron Man are totally decomposing as we speak.

Avengers Assemble (Vol. 2) Issue #7

Panels like these make up most of the issue. Disorienting. Terrible.

They need a better plan than the current one, which is trying to outrun Badoonville. They need to find a way to destroy this clown car of a Badoon ship. I predict that there’s a portal in the ship that’s allowing soldier after soldier after soldier into the fray. The better plan has already been determined right after it has been stated that they need a better plan! The plan will involve Hulk and Thor, because they are the two most dispensable now that Hawkeye and Iron Man are biting the Heaven curb.

Haha, ok, nevermind, the two of them have just bolted up screaming. “WHANNANNNAAA!” and “OH, WHAT THE FLARNNNAAA!” are what Brian Michael Bendis had chosen to put in their little speech bubbles. This means the medpacks are working. I’ll just move on.

So here’s the plan: Thor and Hulk are going to do their smashing to destroy the internal power source of the Badoon ship and implode the bitch. AND, take them both out in the process hopefully! Let’s get to work!

The Guardians have a “better” plan that won’t result in two deserved deaths: everyone is going to have to jump into their ship because the Avengers ship (“A” is for “Abysmal”) is most definitely not going to make it out of the implosion sucking situation. Them’s the breaks. The Guardians’ ship is better though, they have a pool table with blue felt on it!

Avengers Assemble (Vol. 2) Issue #7

I’m very sorry, I don’t speak Vin Diesel.

Groot “I am Groot”s his way through the conversation about the plan, and Raccoon Sir translates. This is not his fight. A conscientious objector, huh? There’s a good lad.

Thor makes his way toward the core for some power source smashin’, but then he goes “AGH!” because he gets shot with a Stargate staff weapon. Three Badoonies aim their weapons at him.

“You know not who you attack, vile one,” Thor says, obviously pissed off but he doesn’t really want to show it.
“We know who you are, Odinson,” responds Badoon #1.
“And this day, you have declared war on the Empire of the Badoon,” chimes in Badoon #2, “Know – the Earth will burn for this.”

Badoon #3 doesn’t have any lines.

Hulk makes short work of these three. He lunges with all his 9,500 lbs of bulk, likely crushing them into goopy paste. This gives Thor the chance to reach the big, swirling, incandescent gas ball that is the central power source. He twirls his hammer daintily and shoots electricity at it.

“Here we go.”

An explosion.

Next thing I see is that Thor is safely aboard the Guardians’ ship. We see nothing about this happen. Mark Bagley obviously had no idea how to draw the thing that Brian Michael Bendis had no idea how to describe, so here we are.

“Can we go home now?” Hawkeye asks after Black Widow comments upon the most insane thing she has ever seen.

Star-Lord makes a salient point. This was just one Badoon ship. They have about 779 more. And they’re not going to take too kindly to having one explode. That’s gonna be a pickle. Especially since it took for-fucking-ever to make it happen.

Well, that’s not the biggest concern at the moment. Thanos appears. He’s huge. He’s got a powerfully glowing chest. He looks mad. He’s also see-through. So you can’t punch him.

Final Thoughts

Where are the Zodiacs? I miss the Zodiacs. They were fun. These Badoons can make like a tree and “leaf”! Sorry for the language. I mean no offense to Groot either, by the way. Maybe.