Sucky Funnies for May 8, 2022

Yo, it’s Mother’s Day. While you were spending the day feeling guilty that you weren’t doing enough for your own mother to make her happy on this fake holiday, I spent the day reading Sunday comics with my phone off! Ha ha ha! Am I being facetious? You’ll never know, will you?

Mother’s Day is a big day for two different types of newspaper comics punchlines: the ultra-sappy ilk, or the mom-does-too-much-and-we’re-gonna-make-her-do-more ilk.

Here are three that I thought broke the mold this week.

Herb and Jamaal

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Herb and Jamaal breaks the mold today because of its complete disregard for the holiday! I’ve personally never seen Herb’s wife and I’m not entirely convinced that Herb and Jamaal aren’t romantic partners. I’ve seen plenty of Father’s Day strips where Herb’s shitty kids make him shitty breakfast in bed, but I’ve never seen anything about Mother’s Day. This strip continues my suspicions in the forward direction.

Moving on from the observation that Jamaal is clearly looking for support from his unempathetic romantic partner today, I’m fascinated by the device Herb is using in the last panel. Is it supposed to be some kind of machine that balances the accounts for their diner? Is it a giant, bulky tablet computer that just plays Scrabble? I want an answer to this immediately.

darcyandsimon: “Too true. I often let my brain wander off when my friends launch into interminable stories…then of course I realize I can launch just like they do! What a service we provide for each other!”
EMGULS79: “If I hadn’t perfected the skill of being able to do that, there would be times when I simply wouldn’t survive! Some people talk WAAAAY too much.”

That’s right, Herb and Jamaal is such a who-cares comic strip that it only gets two comments total! Don’t worry, there’s enough banality there to last a lifetime.

Blondie

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Fuckin’ Blondie. It tried so hard to make the ultra-sappiness endearing but, instead, it’s cloying and idiotic with no self-awareness whatsoever. “Here’s a personalized throwback card,” says Blondie’s robot daughter, who was likely born in 1822 before photography was even invented. Check out Blondie’s 10,000-yard stare on that card. That’s the face of someone who regrets her entire existence.

Someone needs to throw Dagwood off a bridge. He made her a charm bracelet with a bunch of food on it? Does Blondie even eat? Sounds to me like it’s just a bunch of shit he wants her to cook for him tonight.

Also, someone glued Blondie’s middle two fingers together as a hilarious prank.

Do Tell: “Happy Mother’s Day to all the snarkers who are moms and to all the snarkers who are just bad m u th as.”
G Bruce Hollett: “Later on, Dagwood says: ‘I made you a d i l d o from a foot long hot dog’. Blondie says: ‘Ooh, that will go where no man has gone before!’”
Robert Elliott: “I’m sure that there must be some out there, but I’ve never been to a restaurant that had an older bald-headed man as a waiter before! As the Seinfeld group would say, ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with that’!”

Thanks for the contributions, you loathsome rubes. The Herb and Jamaal section is looking a little empty, maybe you could try your comedy routines over there?

Family Circus

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Not THIS is funny! The family cat reminisces, just like she does on every Mother’s Day, about the exact moment she was torn from her own mother for the rest of her life by this abhorrent family! Funniest Family Circus in centuries!

Chucky Quartarolo: “What kind of sick, effed up message is this?”
Do Tell: “That night, KittyCat and her friends from all around the neighborhood drag each melonhead out of the house by their blankets, and find them a new home at the local dump.”
Rick Tengle: “If Thel were pro choice, there would be no Melonheads, but now Justice Alito will now allow Lazy Jeffy to recycle more panels from pre Roe V Wade”
agent222: “Nice acting job, Thel. But we all know you wish you could ‘rehome’ the melonheads, if not dispose of them in a more permanent way. (And, maybe Bil as well.)”

Can’t argue too hard with some of this sentiment, except for the weirdo pulling the pro-choice angle into it. Get off the internet for a few days, Rick.

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Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #15 – “Confrontations”

* Part 2 of 8 of the Double Trouble storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #15 – “Confrontations”! In the previous installment, Peter and MJ get a little cozy during a pep rally. They meet some blonde goth chick named Gwen Stacy who just transferred schools. That shit wasn’t interesting!

The real meat of the previous story was the Doc Ock stuff. He’s been in a coma since we saw Norman Osborn’s destroyed lab in Issue #4. The explosion caused some metal arms that Ock uses for delicate experiments to be fused permanently to his torso. Not only that, but he can control them too! Far out man! He’s not happy about it, but I’m sure he’ll come around! Any minute now…

Oh yeah, and Kong puts his dick down long enough to figure out that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. And you know how Kong talks and talks and talks and talks, right? So, yeah, that’s not good for the Spidey Boy.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #15 [January, 2002]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Confrontations”

See? I bitched about it before, but these covers suck ass. Why I gotta see so much of Spider-Man’s crotch? Am I being punished?

We open with a scene at a house of a young blonde woman exercising in her bedroom while talking on the phone. I have no idea who she is or how old she’s supposed to be. With the way anyone is drawn in this comic, she could be 13 or 58. She is suddenly startled by a loud crash somewhere in the house. She heads to the stairs, where she sees the following sound effects and speech bubbles emanating from somewhere on the lower floor: “SCCRRAAPE”, “THUMP”, “FUMP”, “Gaaaggh!”, “Huggnh”. Next she sees a shadow of, oh I don’t know, a steel octopus tentacle perhaps?

Next she sees the shadows of THREE MORE! Eek! Fump! Now she’s really worried, sweating like a hooker in church? A killer in church? Anyone in church, really.

The last thing she sees is a tentacle going straight for her face!

Fump!

Exhibit A: Parker is spidery. Exhibit B: Parker is a man? OK, maybe it doesn’t check out.

Now we’re at school, and Kong didn’t waste any time at all. “Peter Parker is Spider-Man,” he tells his faithful, bowl-headed friend Flash Thompson. Now Flash, we all know Flash right? Classic Flash, he tells Kong that he’s whacked out of his mind! Flew the coop! Into the looney bin with you, my bald compadre! Kong tells him to stifle and hear him out, but Flash just gets LOUDER! That’s when Liz shows up to join the conversation, and Kong presses on.

“Remember when the dude got bit by that spider?”
“When?”
“On that field trip, last semester.”
“Oh yeah — that was funny.”
“Well…”
“Well what?”
“He’s Spider-Man.”

And it kind of goes on like this for a bit. Good thing for Parker that no one is gonna believe this bald mofo. Flash shows him a bee sting and tells him that he’s not Bee-Man. They all glance at blissfully unaware, smiling Peter Parker across the hall. He looks like a stoned worm. “That is not Spider-Man,” Flash insists with all the evidence anyone could possibly need 20 feet away from them.

Kong ain’t done! “How do you explain the desks he broke?” he asks, and Classic Flash, always the skeptic, he just chalks it up to Parker being a spaz.

Kong still ain’t done, goddamnit! “And what about all of a sudden he can play basketball so good?” This kid’s desperation is causing some grammar fluctuations. Flash says he wasn’t even that good. Kong is like “‘fraid so”. Flash is like “‘fraid not.”

Also remember that time that he flailed around and pooped on the floor in the cafeteria and then he slipped on the poop and then fell in the poop?? Classic.

Kong is NOT FUCKING DONE! “Oh! Hey — What about when he flipped me over? Right here in the hall.” He has him now, there’s no way his friend is going to be able to- “Dude, he got a lucky shot in. Did the same to me that one time,” And Kong’s like yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah YEAH YEAH YEAH! YEAH! YEAH! YEAH MAN! YEAH! He broke your hand! Boom! But Flash isn’t budging. Even Liz has to side with Flash on this one.

Kong is done now.

But Liz nudges Kong, “Well, there he is. Go ask him.” Flash has a better idea than that: kick him in the nuts. “If he’s Spider-Man, you ain’t even going to put in a dent.” And Kong, as salty as he may be right now, positively salivates at the thought of punting the twerp’s nuts to Jupiter. So he makes his way over to Parker’s locker, where Parker has spent the last 45 minutes digging through for, I dunno, ear medicine?

As Kong approaches, Parker (his back turned) starts gettin’ all tingly! Spidey Sense! He makes a face that looks like Kong already kicked him in the nuts, but his nuts are still intact and Kong’s another couple of steps away. MJ is in the hallway too, glancing over. And in those moments, those precious few moments, Parker decides to let his nuts take one for the team to protect his identity.

You had it coming.

Luckily, it’s only Parker’s butt and not his nutz. But man, it hurts! He lays it on thick, starts crying in the hallway and asking why Kong did that. “Ow! Owy ow!” he was known to say. Kong is horror-struck, but Flash is cracking the fuck up. Even MJ seems to be slightly smirking!

Parker’s white knight comes strolling by. “What exactly is your problem, fatboy? You ever do something like that again…and I’ll stick you like the fat pig you are!!” No, it’s not Uncle Ben, he’s dead, remember? No, it’s not Kong, idiot, Kong’s the one getting threatened. NO, it’s not Jon Snow, go fuck yourself! It’s Gwen Stacy, and she pulls a knife on the bald bastard! Right in front of everyone, right there in the hallway, right here in this post-9/11 world.

A teacher pushes his way through the crowd of kids and demands to know what the dealio is. Gwen drops the knife on the floor, presumably by accident, which lands with a clang. It’s more like a CLANG! It definitely wasn’t a fump. Everyone stares at Gwen with what I would describe as “serene, placid worry”. Even Kong doesn’t look THAT alarmed. The teacher drags her away while tut-tutting. “Great way to start at your new school. Second day here.”

Back at the house where Tentacle Man fumped around at the beginning of the issue, a detective named Captain Stacy (*snicker*) investigates the completely trashed bedroom. Gwen’s dad, yo. He gets a call from the school about his daughter’s delinquent behavior. He tells the principal to call his wife, because he’s busy trying to solve Octopus Crimes at the moment. Tough titties, sir, the principal is talking to you anyway, really giving you the business about your teenage daughter’s stabby stabby knife threats. Captain Stacy tells the principal to go screw; put her back in class and it will be dealt with at home. Go fuck a duck.

Captain Stacy steps outside the house, which is mobbed with police and news crews. Ben Urich, Daily Bugle, the guy Peter Parker sent Wilson Fisk-related snuff footage to, wants to ask Stacy some questions. Stacy tells him to go screw! Go fuck a duck! Thanks to him, Fisk is nowhere to be found and now there are hundreds of underlings running around town like it’s the Wild West. Urich is persistent, but he doesn’t get a peep about Mr. Octopus from the likes of Captain Stacy.

We cut to downtown where a big guy, who looks identical to Kong except for a stupid ponytail, is running away with a woman’s purse. Don’t worry, ma’am, Spider-Man’s on the scene! And he’s looking to take his Kong-aggression out on some Kong-lookin’ sap.

When the reaction is “gunk!”, that means we’ve officially run out of pain noises.

Spider-Man does some fancy web work and throws out some devilishly snarky quips and bing bang boom threat eliminated, purse retrieved. “Justice has been done. All is good in the world,” Spider-Man announces as he hands back the purse. The woman, and the crowd behind her on the street, gapes at him silently. She runs away without a word. “Alrighty then…” says Spider-Man, Pet Detective.

♪♪ “This is what it sounds like when doves cry.” ♫♪♫♪

He tries to speak to the rest of the crowd, but he gets no response from anyone. They all look like Spider-Man is going to explode green acid goo all over them any second. Even J. Jonah Jameson is there looking like someone took a big watery dump on his breakfast. “Hey…” Spider-Man gets right up in his doe-eyed face “Aren’t you J. Jonah Jameson, Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Bugle? Aren’t you the guy printing all that totally made up garbage about me…just to sell newspapers? Well…I only have one thing to say to you…”

And Jameson, he doesn’t even blink. He continues staring at the masked teenager as if he’s about to get his mouth fucked shut.

“Love the paper! It’s hysterical.” Spider-Man beams as he does cartwheels and backflips up the side of the building. Jameson unclenches his butthole. He calmly instructs his crew to go back inside the building and- FUMP!

He conks his head tripping over the webbed purse-snatcher still stuck on the street.

Back in Jameson’s office, he tries to get the scoop from Urich about Octopussy. Urich tells him, after a cursory investigation of the background info, that the man who had rented the house before the now murdered woman had rented the house was none other than Osborn Labs’ Dr. Otto Octavius! Woop! He’s dead right? Died in that explosion? Nope! He’s very much alive and tentacled. Urich tries to tell them that he’s not dead, but everyone in the office hoots and hollers their skepticisms. Flash Thompson may as well be here too, he’d be in good company with these naysayers.

I’M LOOKING FOR THE TRADER JOE’S! SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME FIND THE TRADER JOE’S! I WANT SOME SCALLION PANCAKES!

“A few weeks ago I came in here and told you that my sources confirmed that Octavius was taken to a government hospital / medical facility somewhere in South Jersey. Code name: Octagon,” Urich claims. And those same sources called him yesterday to inform him that Octavius escaped from there after murdering some jerks. Pah! Jameson says his story is full of holes! Like a Michael Bay movie! He says this! Poor Michael Bay just tries to make movies for really, really dumb 15-year-old boys, let’s not criticize his objectively horrible filmmaking! How unfair!

Urich gets haughty and starts shoving it in Jameson’s face that HE broke the Fisk story. HIM! So eat his turds! Urich’s right about this. There’s something fishy going on here. Something smells. It stinks. It stinks really bad. Time for some journalists to dig it out of the dirt and show everyone.

Meanwhile, action shots of Octavius scuttling around town are shown as Urich and Jameson argue. Scuttling around town looking like a bowl-haired dumbass.

Urich has so many questions that are unanswered: What happened to him? If he murdered the woman, why? Is there something at the house that he needed? Did she kill him to eliminate the witness? For what reason? Where’s my coffee? Is my hair on fire? Where’s my hair? Why? Huh? And so on.

Final Thoughts

The Octopus Man seems to be a villain!

I hope Peter Parker gets kicked in the butt again in Issue #16.

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There Are Simply WAY Too Many Flag Rules (Part 1)

The most beautiful flag you’ll find from ANY country in the whole WORLD…in North America…that’s north of Mexico and south of Canada.

My conservative parents have always been really into American flags. Like, a little too into American flags. They weren’t kissing American flags like Donald Trump (as far as I was aware), but each of them spent more time thinking about American flags than the average American. For example, I consider myself an average American and I usually spend exactly zero nanoseconds per month thinking about flags of any kind, let alone flags of a specific country, let alone the Official Flag of the United States of America and Its Various Oversea Territories™. Does that make me a horrible American? A horrible human being? A horrible oxygen-breathing creature, one who seems to survive on this planet for no other reason than depriving necessary oxygen to the planet’s more worthy creatures? Probably! I hope so!

My mother has a running list of her favorite American flags in the tri-country area. Usually, the larger the flag, the more she likes it. Her level of enjoyment over a single flag is directly proportional to both its size and proximity. You can be sure that if she was completely rolled up in a flag the size of Lake Malawi, she’d be ecstatic beyond her wildest imagination even as she slowly suffocates to death!

Donald Trump Making Sweet, Sweet Love to the Stars and Stripes

The smelly meatloaf man making sweet, sweet love to the ol’ Stars and Stripes.

My father, while not necessarily as big of a fan of the appearance and aesthetics of the American flag as my mother, still reveres the red, white, and blue eyesore as a symbol of unflappable patriotism. Not a military man by a long shot, he is perhaps the most well-informed civilian in the country with respect to the United States Flag Code. His first duty as a citizen is to always, always, ALWAYS, ensure that the many flags adorning his suburban residence are clean, bright, situated correctly, with not one single thread askew or marred by unseemly dust or errant chili stains!

Obviously, growing up in such a household, I was often imparted with flag-related knowledge and required, at all times, to pay the respect that the piece of cloth rightfully deserved, else I’d be shipped off to some other territory on Earth full of American flag-hating heathens, such as Iran or Medicine Hat, Alberta. Suffice to say, I’m not much of a flag enthusiast. I never really was.

One thing did stick with me, though. All the fucking etiquette rules. There are ten sections of the United States Flag Code, all laboriously outlining very strict protocol when handling, presenting, looking at, talking about, or being within 15,000 feet of a flag. I didn’t do much research on the flag codes of other countries, there may be possibly international flag codes with even more mundane and numerous guidelines, but I doubt it. The United States of America is a pretty fucked up country.

Allow me to go over each section of Flag Code so that I can mock them relentlessly. If my mother or father were to stumble upon this post, I would surely be excommunicated from the family for eternity with no chance of rekindling the millions of shattered fragments.

So let’s do this!

§1. Flag; stripes and stars on

Section 1 tells you exactly how many stripes are on the flag, how many stars are on the flag, the colors of the stars and the stripes, which way the stripes are oriented, the widths of the stripes, the size and spacing of the stars, and the permissible dimensions and proportions of the flag.

OK, I suppose all that is important. Otherwise the flag could look like anything! This rule can stay.

Section 1 prevents the American flag from looking like this! Sadly.

§2. Same; additional stars

Hold the phone, the Flag Code has an entire section devoted to “oh wait, what if we add more states?” Not only does that smack of poor planning, but it seems like something that could just be tacked on as an addendum to Section 1! Especially, especially, since Section 2 is only one sentence long! Shorter than this stupid paragraph! Unnecessary. Lose it.

§3. Use of flag for advertising purposes; mutilation of flag

Don’t go mutilating the flag now, son. Section 3 specifically prohibits disrespecting the flag via means of capitalistic gain or even just plain ol’ degrading the flag physically or emotionally! As in, don’t use the flag to sell your shit, and don’t be mean to the flag. You are not even allowed to verbally insult the flag or throw any shade with respect to its design or its color scheme.

Of course, Section 3 is a big block of text full of thorny verbiage to wade through such as, and I quote:

“…or to which shall be attached, appended, affixed, or annexed any word, figure, mark, picture, design, or drawing, or any advertisement of any nature; or who, within the District of Columbia, shall manufacture, sell, expose for sale, or to public view, or give away or have in possession for sale, or to be given away or for use for any purpose, any article or substance being an article of merchandise, or a receptacle for merchandise or article or thing for carrying or….“

And it just keeps going on and on! I had a stroke reading it. There’s a good chance I didn’t interpret it correct, but perhaps it’s the government’s fault not making the law easy enough for a dumbshit American like me to be able to decipher. Ignorance is always a defense!

§4. Pledge of allegiance to the flag; manner of delivery

Here’s a rich one. Not only do you have to say all the words of the interminable pledge that we all had to learn by heart and recite robotically in public school every morning, but you must say them while standing at attention with your right hand over your heart. Anyone wearing a hat must remove said hat and drape it over the left shoulder with the same hand that is being used to also clutch your titty, so good luck with that. Military personnel get special privileges and can render their corny military salute in lieu of titty-clutching. Anyone caught jerking off while reciting the pledge of allegiance will be rewarded with a Medal of Honor and a coupon to Outback Steakhouse.

Yeah right, buddy. Perhaps this kind of horribly offensive salute would fly in the likes of Tajikistan, but not here.

§5. Display and use of flag by civilians; codification of rules and customs; definition

You want to fly your own flag, hoss? Well, you can’t just do whatever you want with it. You can’t pour glitter on it, run it up a flagpole covered with Spongebob stickers, and shoot it with a gun a few times to break it in. You gotta follow all the rules! If you don’t follow all the rules, the Flag Brigade is going to be notified via transmission chips implanted in each flag by Vietnamese five-year-olds in decrepit sweatshops, wherein they will administer punitive measures in an ironic fashion. For instance, if you decide to put bullet holes through your flag, the Flag Brigade will declare that the flag can put bullet holes through you. It’s only fair.

If you follow all the rules with pitch perfect precision, then the United States law protects your freedom to fly an American flag on your property. No one can tell you not to. Not even your neighbor Brad, that fucking pinko commie.

§6. Time and occasions for display

Here we go! This is a nice and meaty section! I’ll have to break this one down, there’s just too much gold here:

You’ve got to be kidding me. Have you read ANY of my words? Off to jail with you.

–It is the universal custom to display the flag only from sunrise to sunset on buildings and on stationary flagstaffs in the open. However, when a patriotic effect is desired, the flag may be displayed 24 hours a day if properly illuminated during the hours of darkness.
Well, then! If it’s the universal custom, one that the entire universe is on the same page about, then who am I to argue? I also wasn’t aware that the American flag is frightened of the dark, but at least there’s a rule written in place to keep the flag from freaking out “when a patriotic effect is desired”! Be sure to grab a group of buddies in order to take turns shining a flashlight on the damn thing during the evenings. Work out a schedule if you must.

–The flag should be hoisted briskly and lowered ceremoniously.
Under no circumstances shall you hoist the flag ceremoniously, nor shall you lower the flag briskly. Doing so will alert the Flag Brigade, who will perform brisk hoists and ceremonious lowerings of your skidmarked underpants. Wedgie-style.

–The flag should not be displayed on days when the weather is inclement, except when an all weather flag is displayed.
Why not make every flag an all-weather flag? Perhaps I live in Seattle, where there is inclement weather roughly 440 days out of the year! Why did the local Wal-Mart even sell me a crepe paper American flag? Seems kind of rude.

–The flag should be displayed on all days, especially on New Year’s Day, January 1; Inauguration Day, January 20; Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, third Monday in January; Lincoln’s Birthday, February 12; Washington’s Birthday, third Monday in February; National Vietnam War Veterans Day, March 29; Easter Sunday (variable); Mother’s Day, second Sunday in May; Armed Forces Day, third Saturday in May; Memorial Day (half-staff until noon), the last Monday in May; Flag Day, June 14; Father’s Day, third Sunday in June; Independence Day, July 4; National Korean War Veterans Armistice Day, July 27; Labor Day, first Monday in September; Constitution Day, September 17; Columbus Day, second Monday in October; Navy Day, October 27; Veterans Day, November 11; Thanksgiving Day, fourth Thursday in November; Christmas Day, December 25; and such other days as may be proclaimed by the President of the United States; the birthdays of States (date of admission); and on State holidays.
Hey, did you read all of that? Jesus Christ, someone should tell the government code writers that when you say “the flag should be displayed on all days”, you don’t have to name additional days! “All days” implies “ALL days”! Ugh! Grrr!

–The flag should be displayed daily on or near the main administration building of every public institution.
What if a public institution doesn’t have a main administration building? What if the institution is a campus of 200 smaller administration buildings? What if the institution is an ant farm?

–The flag should be displayed in or near every polling place on election days.
Why? Just in case the average dumbass citizen forgets which country he or she is voting in?

–The flag should be displayed during school days in or near every schoolhouse.
I need to hear more about the specifics regarding displaying something in the building. What constitutes a proper display inside? Does it meet requirements if it’s not visible to most people? What if the school hangs it in the boiler room?

My main takeaway from this is that if you live in Utqiaġvik, Alaska, where there is 66 straight days of polar night, flying the flag with proper illumination becomes a dangerous gamble! You better just say “fuck it” and move to another country at that point where you can fly a flag with less micromanagement.

You think we’re done? Hell no. There are still five more sections to go! And the next couple are a doozy. Stay tuned for Part 2, when I really dig into the anal retentiveness of USA’s flag worship! It’s been quite a ride already.

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Detective Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #1 – “Detective Comics”

* Part 1 of 7 of the Faces of Death storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Detective Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #1 – “Detective Comics”!

I didn’t get enough of a Batman/Joker fix with The Man Who Laughs, so I’m continuing my New 52 adventure with the big, fat Detective Comics reboot! I’m sure it will be lukewarm and disappointing, but you get what you sign up for.

Detective Comics are to Batman as Action Comics are to Superman. I still don’t know why exactly there are 1,500 Batman-related series with “BATMAN” in the title and, yet, Detective Comics still continues to churn out Batman stories as well. What distinguishes the Detective Comics stories from the rest? Is there more of an element of MYSTERY and CASE-SOLVING involved? I’m already quivering with orgasmic anticpation!

Detective Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #1 [November, 2011]
Written by: Tony S. Daniel
“Detective Comics”

Cool! A bloodied Joker feasting on a pile of severed doll heads. What’s not to enjoy already?

“One-hundred fourteen murders over the past six years. That’s nineteen murders a year. And I can pin them all on him, even if the courts can’t,” speaks a voice (possibly Batman, or Stevie Wonder!) while we see what looks like a lifeless, bloody visage of the Joker himself supine on the ground, mouth stretched into a grinning rictus. “His modus operandi changes with the wind…and it’s been windy in Gotham City.” OoooooOOOOoooh, poetry! *fart*

Usually, his murders are haphazard and patternless, but in the last month there’s a been a string of homicides wherein the the bodies were mutilated, and the organs and parts of their faces removed. Some had even been old acquaintances. Some victims received calls from the same room in a transient motel in the lower east side before their deaths. That phone was just used again 15 minutes ago! Batman on the prowl! Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na segue!

And the Joker’s not lifeless and dead! Quite the opposite! He’s alive and trying to fight some large, bald guy with a torn-up eye mask garment that is either made of leather or, possibly, human skin! “Mr. Joker, I know you weren’t expecting me, but I was given orders! You were supposed to be in the loop!” This large guy knocks the clown all around this industrial basement, crashing into walls and boxes, emptying his face of precious, precious blood with each successive punch to the fuckin’ jaw! ACTION! ACTION, BABY!

He’s really letting this green-haired bitch have it, but then Joker cracks him back with his own face.

You hear that? That’s the sound of me breaking your skull with my own teeth, Daffodil!

Against the wall, Skinmask tells Joker that he’s his biggest fan. Joker brandishes a knife and thanks him profusely. “Allow me to sign my name for you, then…” and he starts stabbing the unholy piss out of him “…over and over and over and over and OVER AND OV–” Joker is distracted at this point by a flying bat-shaped surveillance drone.

“A man should be able to slaughter in peace!” Joker cries while this drone hovers ten inches from his face. I suspect that, any second now, Batman is going to present his trademark complete disregard for finely-festooned, artisan windows with delicate–

Yep, there he goes, crashing into the motherfucking place, scattering glass everywhere like a complete asshole. At the same moment, a bag that Joker hurled toward the window explodes in a fireball. Doll heads scatter around the room. Looks like it’s gonna be one of those comics. One of those exploding bags full of doll heads comics.

Joker leaps out the window and runs away. Savoring the moment, Batman finally knows he’s going to nab this sucker…and then the PUTRID voice of a SNIVELING CHILD behind him interrupts his good time. A little girl hides under a crate, crying. “Please don’t let the Joker kill me, too!” she whimpers, unaware that the fire is now an even bigger threat. Also, she’s lucky that the caped crusader didn’t just say “fuck it” and start following the clown around town.

But perhaps he just should have! Armed Gotham City police break down the door leading into the room. “STEP AWAY FROM THE GIRL, BATMAN! HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM! NOW!” The girl coughs in the smoke while Batman starts pummeling the police while shouting “ACAB! ACAB!” loud enough to start car alarms on the street. These bitch-ass police don’t even try to stop to help the girl, so Batman has to instruct a detective named Barnes to take the girl out of the building. Then, Batman starts heading down the stairs baiting the police into leaving the burning building as well.

Finally, all that “shooting-bullets-into-civilian-buildings” training has paid off!

A hovering helicopter spots Batman running down the stairwell. Needless to say, they find this man running around in tights a big enough threat to completely obliterate this building with semi-automatic fire. The bullets go “BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA” as it punches through concrete. Oh he’ll be praying to Buddha all right.

“Who told those morons to open fire?” asks a sexy Jim Gordon, red-mustached as ever, on the building’s ground floor. Why, it was Mayor Hady! Gordon’s gonna have words with that fat cat. Why are we blowing up buildings in pursuit of Batman in the first place? We’re supposed to be better than Detroit! In Detroit, the mayor orders the police to kill little kids who are holding too many hot dogs.

Batman’s booking it back to Wayne Manor in his Batmobile. It must’ve broke its wheel, ‘cause, you know, the Joker got away. Batman’s trying to process the events of the evening, mostly this one: why was the Joker completely naked? Ha! Was he? Here, let me go back and check…oh baby…yeah, that’s the stuff.

But there are other things that are more important I GUESS. Who was that skinmask guy dead against the wall? Even the cowled one couldn’t tell if it was made of meat or skin or something equally weird and gross. He plows his Batmobile right into the side of a mountain, but it’s a hologrammed doorway. He plows his Batmobile right into a cave wall, but it’s a hologrammed doorway again. Alfred appears in this part of the underground cavern. He’s the third hologram, but Batman doesn’t plow into him. Maybe he will later after a lovely candlelit dinner.

Alfred informs him that a certain MISS RIVERS is frazzled. She rang for the young buxom Bruce Wayne twice already. He mustn’t keep his date waiting. *wink* But Batman has no time for dates with women named Charlotte Rivers! That’s a bastard name if I’ve ever heard one, over by the House Tully neck of the woods! Bah! “Send her something nice from me. Write her my deepest apologies,” Batman demands aloofly of Alfred. Alfred’s gonna draw penises in the margins of the letter, I’m sure of it.

Yuck. Spray it with Lysol.

Some back and forth ensues about how Bruce is a shitty romantic partner, then it’s onto business: “Right now my problem is the Joker. He’s added another victim,” Batman whines as he puts the Joker’s big, ugly, gross, herpes-riddled face onto one of his many BatConsole Windows 3.1 computer monitors. If he doesn’t figure out what the FUCK the Joker’s doing this time, or why or how or FROM WHENCE, then “the blood is on my hands”. Pffft. Whatever. Move to Florida or something, Brucey.

GOTHAM CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT! Jim Gordon doesn’t want to convince his men to stop hunting down the Batman again! It’s like, what the hell, comrades? I’m in charge! Listen to meeeeee! Plus, Batman’s the only knucklehead in the city who actually helps Gordon solve cases in the first place! Gotham’s police force is full of a bunch of doorknobs.

Gordon has been shooting the big, bright Bat-Signal in the sky for at least 44 hours. “What took you so long?” he gripes when Batman finally graces him with his presence. Gordon’s not happy, these murders don’t look good. And usually murders don’t look good anyway, but these really don’t look good. The mayor is extra ornery about these murders since it’s campaign season in about six more terms, so they need to fix this shit quick or else they’ll elect Donald J. Trump Jr. in a landslide.

Batman isn’t worried, the city needs him. No one is going to get rid of Batman! Except that the police destroyed a building with helicopter bullets trying to kill him two hours ago.

Gordon’s got some info on the girl: Olivia Carr, 11 years old, and she was with her uncle tonight. The unnamed uncle was Meat Face. Batman wants to interrogate this kid, but Gordon won’t allow it. “She’s already been picked up by a family member. She was helpful, surprisingly. Says she overheard something about the Joker staying above the Roscoe Pharmacy…” Gordon keeps talking but Batman already fucked off into the night.

LOOKS LIKE WE HAVE A DETECTIVE MYSTERY ON OUR HANDS, FRIENDS. GOOD THING WE’RE READING DETECTIVE COMICS!

Swinging around the city, Batman airs his befuddled concerns. Why would the Joker just throw out his location all willy-nilly? Unless he wanted to trap someone! Ha ha, not Batman, though. He’s wise to ALL traps. Can’t rule out the possibility that the Joker’s using Olivia Carr to misdirect anyone who asks her questions. Can’t rule out the possibility that Olivia Carr is a hand puppet stuffed with plastic explosives and large cartoon anvils.

Outside the Roscoe Pharmacy, a team of armed Gotham Bulls in a China Shop are ready to break into the building and smoke this clown out without any real proof that he’s there. Harvey Bullock is leading the raid! He looks fat and unwashed and stubborn. I think we may have seen him during the Court of Owls storyline. Gordon tells him to take the Joker alive, and Dent promises that maybe he might possibly be alive when they’re done with him. Tee hee.

He giggles, talks, AND poops!

Batman, on an adjacent building rooftop, turns on his “binocular thermo-imaging lenses” (*jerkoff motion*) and sees the Joker through a window giggling. He’s sitting still. Unnaturally still. Like a big exploding puppet stuffed with plastic exp- SKABOOM!

That’s the sound of the fake Joker going off, killing all of Bullock’s men and destroying the building. Batman leaps from his post and crushes a cop car upon landing! Take that, Popo! In the crowd, he notices a purple-garbed individual faced away from the scene.

Batman drops some fun facts on us. During a crisis, an innocent person will immediately a) verify his/her own safety, b) become curious about the crisis, and c) rubberneck like the dickens. This purple guy ain’t doing none of that. This purple guy looks guilty. This purple guy is trying to run away.

The purple guy is the Joker. He’s the Joker. I solved the mystery.

Joker boards a train. A little girl asks her mom why there are so many strange-looking people on the train today. The correct answer is “because it’s Gotham”, I don’t even know why this girl is even asking. Joker thinks she’s talking about him, but she calls someone a “giant Bat-Monster”, which causes Joker to look toward the door at the end of the train car.

It’s Batman. I solved the mystery.

Batman warns the riders of the train to leave immediately, but the Joker is already 90 steps ahead of him and unleashes some gas from an unknown source. “We should share a laugh or two…hehehe,” he says like a smiling…pun…guy. Batman tries to fan the fumes away from everyone, but the toxin has already started making him dizzy. “But I can take it. I’m Batman,” he tells his reading audience, insulting everyone’s intelligence.

Except he’s clearly addled as he tries to fight Joker on top of the speeding train. Joker sticks two knives in him before Batman cracks him in the jaw.

Batman ain’t smart! He hasn’t even picked up on all of Alfred’s obvious advances!

“Anyone else would kill you.” Batman grimaces at Bozoface.
“That’s your problem. No guts.” Joker responds while whipping out a joy buzzer and electrocuting the pus out of our “hero” over here. “I, though, don’t have that problem. Which shouldn’t come as a shock to you!” Did you hear that sound? That was the sound of me groaning all the way from Chicago.

Batman’s all kinds of incapacitated at this point. “There’s a bigger problem than me in Gotham City, Batman. Haha,” says Joke Boy as he lunges at Bat Boy with a giant kitchen knife, “But your tunnel vision’s kept you from seeing the bigger picture!”

At the last second, Batman grabs the Joker’s knifin’ arm and flips the bitch off the roof. He wouldn’t have done that if wasn’t 100% sure he would live, certainly, but Joker fell pretty far. In real life he’d be dead as shit! But this is a cartoon! And cartoons are for babies. Listen, the Joker falls and crashes and he’s not dead. That’s all you need to know.

Joker wakes up, so to speak, bound in a straitjacket within the hallowed halls of Arkham Asylum. The police want to pull his ass out there and transfer him to Blackgate Penitentiary. “Tell them there’s not a snowflake’s chance in Lucifer’s toilet. He’s my patient,” says Dr. Arkham, who I never actually knew was a person before. Also, I bet Tony S. Daniel thought of that “Lucifer’s toilet” line when he was 16 years old and he finally had a chance to drop that puppy in!

After Dr. Arkham makes his point that the Joker is just sick, not evil, and Batman did the right thing by bringing him to Arkham’s Shitty Asylum, the dumbass shows Clown Boy some kindness and leaves him alone.

No rest for the wicked, Chief.

Darkness. And then a knock on the door. “You made it,” says the unknown visitor. “I said I would be here,” responds Jokey Jokester.

Then they exchange a rather confusing dialogue that, I assume, we are completely not at all supposed to know the full details about whatsoever. The unknown man claims to be the father of the guy Joker killed early. So he is Olivia Carr’s uncle’s father. This guy, “the Dollmaker”, wonders why Joker wants him to perform this ensuing procedure instead of his son. After all, Sonny Boy was the best in the biz. Joker is all like “DON’T QUESTION MY METHODS! YOUR PUNY LITTLE MIND CAN’T EVEN BEGIN TO FATHOM THIS WHOLE PROCESS. GET ON WITH IT, DOLLMAKER”

So the guy is like “fine” and he literally slices off Joker’s face with a knife. The final panel is a large, bloody, sliced-off mask of a disgusting Joker face. Off-panel, Joker describes the procedure as “fangasmic”. A rebirth is celebrated.

Final Thoughts

What the ungodly fuck? I love it! Sounds like this will truly be a wild ride!

I already enjoy this more than the Batman Court of Owls storyline. Don’t disappoint me, Tony S. Daniel, if that is your real name. The “S” stands for “Suckin’ muh dick”.

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Drug Church, Animals as Leaders, and Jack White

One third of 2022 is over. After taking a quick break from brand new music and revisiting some of my old favorites, it made me take a step back and realize how few of this year’s releases are on regular rotation right now. Even the best of the best that 2022 has so far given me feels somewhat disposable these days. Animal Collective’s Time Skiffs, which currently fights only a small handful of others for the top spot of my current list, seems disappointingly stale. Already a product of its time. The beginning of February seems like so, so long ago…

Perhaps I’m fatigued. My new release absorption rate is slowing down. I think I’ll temporarily scooch backward to a biweekly schedule until I can muster up a usual appetite for brand new albums. Let’s hope it’s just the shitty weather bringing me down, and not the democratic backsliding happening in real time right in front of my eyes in the stupid country I live in!

But speaking of needing something to perk me up, the new Drug Church album is fucking excellent and I recommend it heartily! Also, today I feature new albums from Animals as Leaders and Jack White. Those I’m not as excited about!

Drug Church – Hygiene
(March 11, 2022)

I became a congregant of the Drug Church with 2018’s Cheer. It’s a struggle to find some real resonant modern hardcore without the nagging, sinking feeling that you’re listening to a group of insufferable scene kids. Risky gamble, this post-hardcore business. Drug Church is great, though, they mix in a lot of grungy, alt-rock flavor to make it sound not so…soaring and childish. And singer Patrick Kindlon has a voice that reminds me of Steve Albini, or David Yow, or even, dare I say, BILL GRABER from the fantastic ’90s Minneapolis post-hardcore group Arcwelder! Check their stuff out, they rule too.

Hygiene, the band’s fourth album, really ups the ante on melody. It’s like they’re trying to get away with how musical their brand of punk can get before it’s just straight up rock and roll. Occasionally, it almost even reaches The Police levels of new wave sissy punk! And I love every minute of this. When that squealing industrial feedback first hits on the opener “Fun’s Over”, that’s when I knew the fun was beginning! So to speak.

But, man, this thing is just chock full of impossibly catchy hooks and surprising minor key riffs, one strong track after another. “Detective Lieutenant” has a great, swirling melodic lead guitar lines. “Plucked” has these tight, guitar-forward licks that sound in good company with the peak thrash metal heyday of the ’80s. Production is slick, massive, and meaty!

The lyrics! Poetic and abstract, for the most part, and supremely miserable. Here are a couple choice passages! From “Tiresome”: “There’s nothing there but air/A void where ambition ain’t/A damp seat of bad thoughts/A rotted body you came across“. From “Athlete on a Bench”: “Verse, pre-chorus, chorus, and bridge/Writhing within a narrowing niche/Bridge, chorus, coda, and end/I’m living between shrinking margins.” Now imagine Henry Rollins yelling all this instead of yelling about TV rotting your brain in 1981 and you’ve got a fairly accurate picture.

Fantastic album. S-Tier for 2022, certainly.

Early Verdict:

Animals as Leaders – Parrhesia
(March 25, 2022)

Not only is “djent” a bad word in many metal circles, but it’s also such a broad descriptor that it’s essentially useless until you actually hear the band’s sound with your own ears. You can boil it down to “sounds like Meshuggah”, but even then it’s not an entirely rigid frame of reference. PAR EXEMPLE, Animals as Leaders doesn’t sound like Meshuggah, but they are one of the primary groups of the djent scene. Djenters as Leaders.

So after absorbing a wealth of djent for years and years, my personal definition of djent is as follows: futuristic technical mathcore somewhere between metal and metalcore. Glad I could clear that all up for ya! It’s a genre phenomenon that petered out on gaining new recruits by the mid 2010s, but those that established themselves early on are still steadfast in their djenty endeavors. And those that established themselves even earlier aren’t pigeonholed as mere followers of a fad. Lucky for Animals as Leaders, they escape this criticism.

This fifth studio effort sounds like their other four. Instrumental music showcasing metal-adjacent technical virtuosity and collaborative synthesis. The palette of sounds is nothing short of vibrant and immediate. It’s a veritable soundtrack to a sci-fi epic. A futuristic cyberpunk video game. Shimmering liquid guitar tones. Crisp jazz drumming. Tight arrangements. They’re good at what they do.

However, the best criticism I can give this record is that it exhibits a certain amount of warmth that most metal-adjacent progressive music lacks, and for that I can’t praise them enough. That being said, on a completely emotional level, this music does nothing for me. I can appreciate the atmosphere and the musicianship, but there’s nothing here that I will ever grab onto and cherish forever.

It makes good background music for reading East of West, though!

Early Verdict:

Jack White – Fear of the Dawn
(April 4, 2022)

I have always been indifferent about Jack White, and at worst a little contemptuous. A lot of that is due to him being from Detroit, my own neck of the woods, and I’m automatically wary of anyone else from Michigan because they tend to love Michigan so goddamn much. Jack White looks like he likes Michigan a lot. Jack White looks a lot like people I went to high school with. Ugh.

Jack White certainly tries his best here to prove how uncool it is to listen to Jack White in 2022. It appears that he’s going all in with the blue hair, forever christening his fourth solo album with cartoonish cover art depicting, among other things, his AZURE LOCKS. With art like that, one might think they’re about to hear some dark cabaret. But no man, it’s even weirder than that.

It took me a while to let my guard down, but I think I like this! It’s like he’s pulling in White Stripes-era garage rock and fucking it all up with crazy, squonky, distorted electronics, a mish-mesh of not readily mish-meshable genres, and noisy, squealing, wah-wah guitar solos. He’s loud and slightly out of control. And at first I was embarrassed for this 46-year-old manchild, but every time I listen to this I get more and more intrigued at how each track seems to slide into the next all sneaky-like, or how his fusion of hip-hop and blue-eyed soul crooning seems to impossibly work in spite of everything going against a fucking fusion of hip-hop and blue-eyed soul in this day and age. Even the totally lame warped dance beats and obnoxious flourishes of Speak & Spell voice chip modulation sound pretty interesting after you get used to it.

The bottom line here is that Jack White is clearly putting everything into this, and that’s why I think it succeeds. You can hear it in his voice, in his energy, in all his ambitious musical ideas. It’s so earnestly tasteless that I can’t help but enjoy it for the guilty pleasure that it is. Hey, the heart wants what it wants!

Early Verdict:

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Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #15 – “Confrontations”

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #15 [January, 2002]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Confrontations”

Final Thoughts