Detective Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #1

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”

Detective Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #1

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.

Detective Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #1

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.

Detective Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #1

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.

Detective Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #1

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.

Detective Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #1

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.

Detective Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #1

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.

Detective Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #1

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)

Drug Church - Hygiene

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)

Animals as Leaders - Parrhesia

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)

Jack White - Fear of the Dawn

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 #14

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #14 – “Doctor Octopus”

* Part 1 of 8 of the Double Trouble storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #14 – “Doctor Octopus”! A brand new storyline for your reading pleasure. And I do mean “pleasure” wink wink. In the previous story arc, Peter Parker learns about Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin of New York City, and aims to take him down. After a couple of failures, Parker finally smartens up and pulls off a successful heist. He steals incriminating security footage of Fisk murdering an associate and sends it to the Daily Bugle, where Parker has a job in IT. Last we see, Fisk is hiding out on some remote island. He’s out of the picture. For now.

The storyline ended with Parker revealing to MJ his secret identity. They almost kiss. And then Aunt May is the hanky-panky police, but all is well with the world.

But not for long! Parker’s world is going to get rocked again! Let’s read all about it.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #14 [December, 2001]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Doctor Octopus”

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #14

Yeah, see? Doc Ock is gonna start beefin’ now. I saw the second Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movie in the theater and I haven’t seen it since! There’s something about a bridge, right?

Parker and Friends are sitting in class and their teacher has a fun assignment for them! They all get to do an oral report, in character, as a superhero! They can make one up, they can “use one of the real ones that seem to be popping up all over Madison Avenue”, but they have to describe who they are, what they do, and how they came to be! That doesn’t sound very educational at all.

The kids can do whatever they want. Wear costumes, bring props, get bit by spiders, break into office buildings, beat up bad guys, climb the walls, shoot lasers from their eyes, turn invisible, accidentally get your uncle killed, etc.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #14

It’s not required, porky, but knock yourself out if you can cram yourself into one.

Kong’s wearing a Slipknot shirt, the dopest of bands for children in 2001! The teacher warns him that his stupid ass is close to flunking, so take this not-at-all-hard assignment seriously. Parker keeps shooting dopey grins at Mary Jane “A Redhead That Even Dick Grayson Can’t Bone” Watson.

Elsewhere, at a lab that is probably not Osborn Labs because Norman Osborn destroyed it being a goblin, two scientists are typing things into computers and talking about Ashley Judd and Molly Ringwald while a man lies unconscious on a hospital bed next to them. The scientists are taking care of him, presumably running tests on him as well.

One of them tells the other to check “Doctor Octopus’ bedpan”. This causes Otto Octavius to stir. His eyes are completely wrapped in bandages.

He’s not happy. His mutterings are getting louder. “Mmff — why did you call me Doctor Octopus? My name — my name is Otto. Why did you call me that?”

The two scientists just stare at him, mouths agape, eyes as large as dinner plates but still three times smaller than, say, your average anime character. This time Doc Ock bellows: “WHY DID YOU CALL ME DOCTOR OCTOPUS?!!!?” And, naturally, the reveal is that ol’ Otto has a large metal plate affixed to his torso, complete with metal arms. Now that I think about it, we haven’t seen him at all since the Osborn Labs disaster, correct?

Well, he’s better now!

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #14

Just a giant diaper overflowing with “presents”.

Blissfully unaware that YET ANOTHER new enemy is gonna rock his world pretty soon, Peter Parker and his braindead peers attend the school pep rally. MJ and some other girl, I forget her name, let me look it up…Liz…are talking about how totally bogus and gnarly and gag-me-with-a-spoon these pep rallies are. Kong, meanwhile, is bitching about the superhero presentation assignment. “What does it have to do with anything?” he complains, and I have to concur with King Kong over here for once.

Everyone else agrees that this assignment sucks eggs, but Parker doesn’t speak up. Some other kids get mad at Flash Thompson for flapping his gums about mutant horniness, especially Liz, whose uncle from Washington is missing. I’m not sure what this has to do with horny mutants, but I think Liz yelled at everyone to shut the fuck up about Spider-Man in a previous issue somewhere? She sounds touchy.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #14

Flash has an excuse to show up to school as “Flash but with a visible erection”.

Kong starts thinking, which is never a good activity for him. “All these superheroes and mutants and stuff…what if it was like in Ghostbusters when it was like — a sign. Like some bad news was coming…what if that’s why all these people keep popping up?” And then MJ chides him for working in Ghostbusters to make a point, but Kong’s got the right idea here! Something fishy is going on. There may even be a superhero among them! Right in their very group! Nerding around.

Hey, Kong’s just saying to do something. Keep an eye out and all. Parker, irked, finally speaks up; he compares Kong’s rhetoric to Nazi Germany and purging the land of Jews. “Well, yo, the Jews never had big, red laser beams shooting out of their eyes. I think,” Kong responds, quite seriously I might add. He’s fucking unnerved, this guy. This 400-pound, bald, muscle-bound teenager is quivering. He whispers to Parker that there’s something odd in the air, the tension, that they’re in trouble, that it just feels weird that there are all these superpowered mofos hanging around town. That’s all. If anyone would understand, it’s Peter Parker the Normal Kid Without Powers!

It’s at this point that some blonde punk chick butts into their conversation. She’s leaning against the brick wall, alone, and wearing a studded halter top thing with leather pants. No one says a word while she speaks. “How do you think the dinosaurs felt just before the meteor hit? I mean — they were just, like, standing around and all of a sudden it’s like: oh @#!!$, we’re extinct.”

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #14

Good thing that life doesn’t really have to be about doing something that another person can’t. Personally, I can’t do shit!

She goes on about how this situation is similar. Humans are extinct, they just don’t know it yet. They can’t fly around, they can’t walk on walls, they’re not as evolved. The difference between humans and dinosaurs is that the humans are aware, so they can try to do something about it before it’s too late, right? And what are “powers” anyway? Kong’s a strong muthefucka, but does that make him superpowered compared to everyone else? Really makes you think, huh?

This leads into her theory: everyone has a super power. Can you play guitar? Super power. Are you good at football? Super power. Math? Power. Whatever you can do well, that’s your power, man. So do what you’re good at, fuck the mutants. Bing bang boom. Done and done. Nothing to worry about.

Everyone else around her is just staring at her amused. She introduces herself as Gwen Stacy, this is her first day at Spider-Man High School, and she walks away given’ the boys something to look at yaknowwhatimsaying? Parker’s practically drooling all over his own little penis as I type this. Gwen looks 28 years old.

Back at wherever the hell Doc Ock is holed up recovering, a group of doctors/scientists and gun-toting tactical unit types are standing around his bed. Doc Ock’s eyes are still bandaged. “Ughh…Hello? Hello?” he asks, obviously somewhat aware of a whole room of people cramping his style at the moment. “Where am I? What’s going on?”

So this Doctor Pym guy, he asks Ock if he remembers what happened and how he got here. Ock says he doesn’t even know what “here” is, and he can’t see, and also he feels nauseous, and also he has metal tentacles! Wait, no, he doesn’t say that, he doesn’t even know that yet, heh heh. Pym tells him that Ock suffered severe optic nerve damage and now bright lights are a problem. He’s not blind, though, not like that Daredevil loser!

Pym asks again what he remembers, and it’s nothing. It’s nothing, ok, a whole lotta nothing. Stop padding out my issue of Ultimate Spider-Man #14, Doctor Pym. He finally tells him that a very serious accident at Osborn Industries has left him in a coma.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #14

Space aliens? Communism? Lakes in Cameroon that burp up giant, village-killing bubbles of carbon dioxide? A lot of stuff, actually. This list just keeps going on.

Ock tries to grapple with this fact, understanding that Norman Osborn fucked everyone over with his stupid “inject me with my own DNA” experiments, and then he realizes he has some shiny new apparati attached to his person. “…aah! Oh my God!! What is this? What is this??!!” he shrieks while the other doctors and scientists shoot each other guilt-ridden shifty-eyes. Ock bellows for the second time in ten pages. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!!!”

Octopus Man is livid, sir.

Pep rally time! The outdoor event is replete with teenage boners as the student body stares at, well, the student bodies! Particularly of the cheerleading squad. Parker and MJ, sitting side-by-side on the bleachers, slowly creep their hands toward one another. It takes about 40 panels, but they finally meet in the middle and start holding hands amidst shouts of “Let’s go seniors, let’s go!!” The peppiest of cheers.

Pym continues giving Ock the great news! The explosion at Osborn Labs, the one caused by some goblin asshole, it was a cool explosion! Doc Ock has these metal arms that he wears sometimes for his more delicate experiments (?), and the cool explosion caused these metal arms to fuse to his skin (??). The doctors and scientists have been monitoring Ock’s recovery and have determined that Ock’s metal arms have locked into his central nervous system and now he can control them (???).

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #14

Just imagine how many pickle jars you’ll be able to open now, sir!

Ock’s barely listening to this. He asks where he is, but he’s told that’s classified information at the moment. So then Ock demands to have his eye-bandages removed, and they others like “the optic nerve damage, sir, your eyes are too sensitive”, but Ock screams at them like a big scary, squelchy octopus, and they have no choice but to give in to his octopus demands.

A lo’ and behold, Ock continues to freak out. Pym finds all sorts of silver linings in these dark cloud times, though! “We hope the scientist in you will be able to find the exciting possibilities that this accident has brought into our lives.” They all look forward to working together. Octopus Man is less than cheerful about these circumstances. “So what you’re saying is — that I was found like this — and then left like this…to see what would happen?” he snarls, eyes all fucked up and scarred and shit. The other doctors look at each like “BRrRrrrTT”.

Ock continues with ferocious intensity. “That is what you’re saying, yes? You could have gotten these arms off me but you decided not to? Who the @#$$! are you?? Who?” This is when some Stan Lee-lookin’ dude chimes in to tell Ock that they’re part of a government agency, and that’s all they can say, and that anger is normal, and feel your feelings! Let your freak flag fly! At this point, Ock is tired of hearing any of them yap, and he picks up that Stan Lee-lookin’ dude with one of his metal arms and pushes him straight against a wall, impaling the sucka. Understandably, the rest of them are a bit startled!

We end at La Casa de Kong, where he’s lounging in a bean bag chair with a Maxim magazine draped across his NOFX shirt. He’s thinking hard again; what have we said about thinking? You’re gonna break your shitty little brain.

We are treated to a montage of flashback panels showing all manner of events from the last thirteen issues: Parker freaking out at school and breaking his desk, a mysterious and puny wrestler defeating Crusher Hogan, that nerd kid getting bit by the spider, and Spider-Man himself leaping in to save the day at the school during Norman Osborn’s goblin fuckery.

Kong rubs a couple of brain cells together and a lightbulb goes off in his head: “Whoa…”

Final Thoughts

The school dumbass figures it out first!

I don’t know why Otto Octavius is so upset. Just think of the possibilities that having metal arms can bring a person! Reaching higher places. Bending stuff. I’m sure there’s more.


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East of West, Issue #12

East of West, Issue #12 – “The Night Before”

* Part 12 of 15 of the The Apocalypse: Year One storyline *

Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: East of West, Issue #12 – “The Night Before”! In the previous installment, the various world leaders prepare for their meeting at the Wall, a neutral zone of sorts surrounding and restricting access to the Armistice. Symbolically, it’s a location where the warring nations can call a truce and settle differences in an even-headed and diplomatic manner. It’s not going to fucking work. All these people are out for blood.

That’s about it. Tensions are palpably high! I’m looking forward to this one. We’re gonna find out who the snakiest of snakes are, and it’s probably Archibald. I mean, duh.

East of West, Issue #12 [May, 2014]
Written by: Jonathan Hickman
“The Night Before”

East of West, Issue #12

“Revenge is for the righteous.“

Darn tootin’. So I didn’t mention Peter Graves in the last issue, which is crazy because it was a missed opportunity to make a lot of Airplane! jokes. He accompanies Madame LeVay and Miss Lux to the Wall as a representative of the Union. In a flashback, there’s some serious BDSM shit going on with Lux and Graves. He’s on his knees, all nude and gross, while she stands over him and stuffs a sizeable oval-shaped electronic device down his throat. “I know how you like to please me, Mister Graves…I want you to open wider,” she instructs while he gags and writhes.

Lux gets elbow-deep down his throat, pushing the device deep into his ugly, smelly-looking, wrinkly body. She interrogates him in a rather verbose full-page spread. In summary, she asks if he’s heard of a man named Jakob de Fontagnes. Because he shouldn’t have; just like most doctors, he’s a subtle murderer. Eventually, a younger protégée caught de Fontagnes red-handed, so to speak! It seems this Jakob douchebag enjoyed sewing up foreign objects in his surgery patients. Small, diseased rodents. Dying birds. You know. For fun. One day, de Fontagnes had a bout of food poisoning, and this young understudy had to perform an autopsy one one of de Fontagnes’ patients who died on the operating table. Needless to say, it didn’t end well for Jakob McFaganotes.

East of West, Issue #12

Hey, this is how I used to end my Ted Talks.

What’s the point of all this? Lux finds this DeFooginsnoogin character fascinating. “He hid the object of their death inside them,” she says, doing her best to land the parallels here between Graves and DeFtones. To really drive the point home, she slaps Graves, punches him across the jaw, and kicks him up the chin. SLAP. KRAK. WAK. Shit’s wack all right.

Lux “kindly” reminds Graves that he will be on his best behavior at the ol’ Wall meeting. She vouched for him personally to Madame LeVay, so don’t fuck this up, you gross old man you.

Yeah, ain’t that the kind of family friendly comic book entertainment we’ve all grown to cherish over the last eleven issues?

The leaders and their various lackies sit around a large ring-shaped table. LeVay stands up at her seat and announces the beginning of the diplomatic proceedings! This should be good. I predict Archibald will pull out a glock and start capping motherfuckers left and right.

“We were summoned by a nation…and all other nations have answered.” LeVay says tartly, considering this whole proceeding a waste of her very valuable time. Time she could be spending killing civilians or bossing around various Horsemen.

LeVay bluntly asks Xiaolian WHY, exactly, they’re all here in this pit together right now, having to talk to each other and exchange “pleasantries”.

Xiaolian’s like “yeah, that’s fair”. She gets honest with it. “My father always insisted on directness when dealing with matters of…grave importance.” So let’s cut to the chase! No point in beating around the bush!

It’s Wartime, baby!

*intermission music*

“Man is a most complex simple creature. See what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.“

East of West, Issue #12

Ehhhh, darrrrr, huurrrrrr, buhhhhhh

LeVay is like “War? What is it good for?”. But, actually, she smirks and coyly asks what war Xiaolian is even talking about? “This one. The one we’re about to make. The one between the Chosen… and the righteous.”

That giant oaf of a hunched-over Black Towers president, whatever nation that might be I don’t remember just give me a break, asks who here is even Chosen and who here is righteous? What does that even mean? What’s even going on? Where are my pills? MABEL! MUH PILLS!
Xiaolian is respectful of Burkhart’s ignorance. After all, this unseemly shit has all been festering in the darkness. Only special people know what’s going on here, sir. “To know the Chosen, one must either be Chosen…or have been marked by them in some way,” Xiaolian explains all serious-faced like this is a serious matter or something.

Burkhart whispers his continued confusion in Archibald’s direction. Archibald is sitting there acting like he, too, is bewildered and concerned. Like the proverbial snake in the grass! “She’s got spiders in her head…and cobras in her mouth,” Archibald warns mysteriously. The crow flies at midnight, don’t forget that one neithers.

“Does the House of Mao lack the courage to point their finger directly at those they accuse?” questions Madame LeVay, arching an eyebrow and sitting back with a smug satisfaction. Gotcha! Put that in your pipe and crush some heads.

Xiaolian points at LeVay. LeVay gets feral.

“Hrrrn. Idle threats are one thing… Be careful what you risk.” LeVay snarls through her teeth. Xiaolian ain’t afraid! Magic hands, bitch, she will rip that stupid head right off your scrawny turkey neck. “When I take your head…I will carry it around with me like a purse,” she shoots back at LeVay with a demeanor of complete serenity.

LeVay loses composure completely and starts howling at the Mao woman. John Freeman VIII has had enough of LeVay’s shit and tells her cork it! He slams his fist on the table with a WAK! Let’s move on!

Bel Solomon asks Freeman if the Kingdom has any opinion to speak on. No. 9 starts whining and bitching for about seven words before No. 8 tells him to cork it, too. Everyone here requires a corking! “He [the king] sits above the concerns of elected officials. So today, I am only here to listen,” Freeman tells the rest of the council rather shortly. He will relay the skinny of the meeting to his dad later. Then, and only then, will the Kingdom form an opinion. So don’t do anything stupid because he’s going to hear about all the stupid shit that goes on here.

“Your father…always waiting to see what cards the other men hold,” Solomon comments snidely. And you know how the saying goes: you really showed your hand…when you played your cards. Hmm. Ahhh. Yes.

Tensions seem high.

East of West, Issue #12

♫♫ Get outta my dreams… Get into my car ♫♫

Freeman warns Bel to watch his tongue. Lest we forget, there’s some unfinished business between them. Bel’s psychotic inner child freaks out! He drowns out the voices by calling attention to the presence of the Endless Nation! What’s up, fellas? Got something to say? Heh heh.

One of the Endless Nation representatives is some dude with half his head roboticized. He’s got electric wires coming out and shit. It reminds me of how they have Death’s son hooked up in the Lair of the Beast. “The data is incomplete. Ethereal. All scenarios remain nebulous.”

So that’s cool. The future is unknown, big whoop. Join the club. Xiaolian requests the Divination Special from the Endless Nation. That and $4 will buy you a Grand Slam Breakfast at Denny’s. Another dude, the Shaman (who also looks like some freak decked out in robo-apparati) starts spewing some gobbledygook about statistics and probabilities. It sounds like House of Mao has the upper hand here, though! Best not fuck with Xiaolian, guys. Come on. Just go home.

The Main Endless Nation Honcho, he glares at Xiaolian and provides the human element to the Endless Nation’s opinion. “My projection? This…all of this…is a performance meant to induce a particular outcome.” Ding ding ding!

Bel Solomon can’t hold his tongue any longer. Oh man, politicians politicking? Lies upon lies? Good gravy, man, what a fucking bombshell. Tell us more about it, please! How enlightening!

Be that as it may, Bel Solomon found the Shaman’s nonsense intriguing. In a nutshell, if the Endless Nation and the Republic of Texas remain neutral, then conflict will be impossible to escalate. Cool. Bel’s on board, but his inner voice finds such a neutrality preposterous! What makes a man turn neutral, asked the great Zapp Brannigan once. We are still figuring that out, Zapp. We are still figuring that out.

President “Gallant” Burkhart agrees. No conflict! For the common good. *snort*

East of West, Issue #12

Strong words coming from a fucking DEAD MAN.

Archibald does not like this one bit. That’s just what he needs right now is his sappy commander-in-chief ruining his game by being nice and reasonable. “Mister President, I beg you do not commit us to a course of action that limits our–” Archibald starts, but he gets cut off. Archibald takes it stride, already plotting his next murder…

Burkhart makes a formal stance against Xiaolian’s call for war. “Today, I will stand against this aggressive display of…irrationality,” he declares with hesitant conviction! Nice use of gendered language there, President Mustache. It’s gonna be fun seeing everyone fight over who gets to kill you.

Xiaolian tries to calmly bring attention to the stupidity of this sit-here-and-do-nothing attitude from some of the world’s greatest nations. LeVay gets her dig in: “The argument is over, and you have lost. Learn to live with it, you impetuous child.”

Good thing LeVay doesn’t get to see how Xiaolian would react to this, because a blinding flash of white light and a deafening BOOM fills the room.

One of Bel’s men draws their guns and pulls the hammers. John Freeman does the same. Xiaolian and her people also ready their weapons. The Endless Nation covers themselves with force fields. Miss Lux sits there emotionless, perhaps a little impatient. It is revealed that Peter “Have You Ever Seen a Grown Man Naked?” Graves’ head was blown right off his body in an explosion of gore and various lengths of intestine! LeVay is completely horrified and nonplussed for the briefest of moments before pointing a bony finger at Mrs. Mao. “YOU DID THIS!!!“

Lux smiles. “No she didn’t,” she thinks to herself.

Xiaolian tells LeVay that SHE’D be the dead one if she did this, make no mistake.

East of West, Issue #12

This man owed me fifteen bucks, missy, and someone is going to have to cough it up!

Archibald is all “now you’ve gone and done it!”, since President Burkhart is now inexplicably bleeding out of every head orifice you can think of. Two deaths for the price of one! Xiaolian says there’s more of that where it came from! War, remember? She wants it bad.

The Endless Nation, still in their protective bubbles courtesy of a talking, floating orb, speaks up. Xiaolian’s father was an honorable man, but it seems none of this honor was passed down! First of all, lady, you committed regicide, mmmkay? Second of all, ma’am, something fucking fishy is going on here. YO! BRAINIAC! CRUNCH THE NUMBERS!

“Internal explosive ordinance triggered remotely. Heart rate spike and sudden blood loss. Short-range signal. Sharp-edged weapon. The synopsis is conclusive. There were two murders with two differe–”

BLAM!

Bel Solomon unloads his gun through the floating orb, which cancels the force field, and the bullet continues right through Endless Nation Brain Man’s Big Brain, Man.

We see a vision of the possession situation happening with Bel Solomon. It’s Cheveyo of the Endless Nation, who got sniped on Bel’s orders in Issue #10. Cheveyo’s got a beef with his own people! They cast him out because he’s old-school; didn’t like all the new technology his people were embracing Luddite-style. So fuck those guys.

East of West, Issue #12

Ugghh, cut it out, you’re gonna bring the All Lives Matter jerks out of the woodwork with this one.

Bel Solomon stays silent and deranged while Cheveyo goads him to explain the real deception: the one coming from the Endless Goddamn Nation.

Cheveyo twists Bel’s nipple to get him to talk. “Thu– there is…deception here,” Bel mumbles, but his face is pushed down into the table with a sickening KRAK by his own henchman. Bel continues to try to speak in Cheveyo’s words even though he’s got a mouth full of fine artisan wood. Wink.

So guess what, Toots? Bel Solomon shot at the Endless Nation, so now neither of them are going to be able to maintain their neutral cahoots plan! “You wanted a war, Xiaolian? Now you have it.“

The two alive Endless Nation representatives leave.

Now, finally, it’s Xiaolian’s turn to smile.

Silently, she carries herself with the poise of a world leader who got exactly what she wanted and takes her leave while everyone else…well, the ones who are still alive and conscious and sane and alert, maintain their positions around the table, speechless.;

“The petals of Lotus turned red. For they were dipped in blood…and stained forever.”

And that’s all she wrote!

Final Thoughts

Fuckin’ A, man. Remember when I was reading about Dick Grayson rejoining the circus? What a pile of shit something like that really is compared to something like this.


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Sucky Funnies for May 1, 2022

It’s officially May and it’s still 50°F in Chicago. For those of you in, like, Perth or London or Pyongyang or literally any other city in 192 other countries in the world, that would be 10°C. It could be worse, but we’ve had one warm, sunny day in six months and I’m getting antsy to stay inside during a beautiful day instead of staying inside during a dreary day! Ha!

How about some Sunday funnies to cure what ails me?

Tina’s Groove

Tina's Groove - May 1, 2022

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Can you believe if this were actually real?! What if you went to your favorite casual restaurant this weekend and were treated to an updated menu full of passive-aggressive symbols next to all of your favorite options?! I’d certainly have a chuckle!

I don’t know anything about Tina’s Groove, but it apparently ran from 2002 – 2017 without making a single impression upon my mushy little comic-reading brain. I don’t think my newspaper had it. So, I suppose they still run old strips. Unlike other defunct comics that still run old strips, Tina’s Groove doesn’t even try to line up old dates with current dates, it seems. This particular comic is from April 29, 2007! It least run 2011. That lines up with 2022 nicely!

See, this is the shit I’m ranting about today. I must be tired.

meloidogyne: “Maybe there could be a poultry symbol to indicate that all ingredients are fresh and there are live chickens in the kitchen!”
activist1234: “Indeed! We all need to be reminded as to what goes on in the kitchen. Perhaps a rain cloud to indicate server spit on our food.”
Jogger2: “Before I read the caption, I thought the tile symbol was a cracker.”

Gotta side with Jogger2 on this one. I, too, thought it was a cracker. That is, until I read the caption as well! Then I didn’t think it was a cracker anymore!

Crankshaft

Crankshaft - May 1, 2022

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First of all, shout-out to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers! They don’t get much recognition outside of…well, Crankshaft, I guess. I thought this strip was based in Ohio? Perhaps loyal readers can send in their college and professional team sweatshirts for Jeff from Crankshaft to wear live in the Sunday strips. Kind of like Tim Allen with Home Improvement, shilling all those colleges in Michigan all the time.

Second of all, no one looks good in their driver’s license photo. It’s one of those indisputable laws of nature. My advice is to lean into it next time. Wear a clown wig, or cover yourself in blood. Or both! Then when a fat fucking cop pulls you over for a traffic violation, you both can have a good laugh before he shoots you in the face.

Woonkers: “You stay in shape because it’s good for you.”
Kitty Morrissy: “Staying in shape doesn’t have much to do with a face photo.”
J. J. O’Malley: “Well, next time you could try not going to the DMV looking like Sally Jessy Raphael circa 2001.”
Steve Henry: “Well I could shave your behind, and you could learn to walk backward. I already shave down there. So you are saying walking backward will make me look more attractive? Yes, and if you bend over while doing it. You might be able to work at the Valentine.”

Steve Henry oversharing, making it weird, being a crass, gross loser, and maintaining complete inscrutability at the same time. Cheers to Steve Henry!

Edge City

Edge City - May 1, 2022

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See! Edge City ended a while back too, but they line up the dates! Make some notes, Tina’s Groove. They picked a May 1st! Granted, it’s from 2002, and May 1, 2002 was a Wednesday, but hey! This looks like a Sunday strip! And that’s what matters to me.

There’s nothing really of note about the punchline here. I just wanted to bring attention to Len Ardin eating an entire jar of pickles. Since Edge City portrays the mundane lives of a Jewish-American family, and since dill pickles are kosher, this only makes sense! However, Len’s going to have to get some blood pressure medication soon if he makes a habit out of it.

Robert Elliott: “She’s telling him that Carly is signed up for soccer camp. Since he is her soccer coach wouldn’t he already know that?”

I don’t know, Robert Elliott. You raise a very good point. Perhaps you should write an angry letter to Edge City headquarters and complain about this discrepancy within the rich Edge City canon.


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