Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #4

Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #4 – “Escape”

* Part 4 of 7 of the Last Daughter of Krypton storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #4 – “Escape”! In the previous installment, Supergirl tells Superman to fuck off once and for all! She flies back to Siberia to try to find the pod she landed on Earth in. At the impact site, some douche named Simon Tycho contacts her via TUPAC HOLOGRAM and lures her to his fancy schmancy space station. In space!

There he does, like, two experiments on her before she starts tearing holes in the walls. She finds her pod in one of the space station rooms, but a mYsTeRiOuS sUbStAnCe on the pod makes her weird and sick!

Because it’s Kryptonite, dummy.

Simon Tycho is Supergirl’s Lex Luthor except he totally wants to fuck that shit. Gross! She’s too young, dude! Stop!


Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #4 [February, 2012]
Written by: Michael Green & Mike Johnson
“Escape”

Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #4

“They took their best shot… Now it’s KARA’S TURN!”

Kara’s turn to what? Fuck some shit up? She already has. You mean she’s going to fuck more shit up? Excellent!

“Sir, we are already gigapascals past the ultimate tensile strength of any material known to science.” alerts Miss Thorn to Simon Tycho as they try to stretch the shit out of her superhero uniform. As someone whose actual job involves testing the ultimate tensile strength of metals, that’s pretty goddamned indestructible. Most types of steel don’t get much past 2 gigapascals before breaking. BUT, enough of my shoehorning of dorky knowledge.

Tycho is excited! He’s already trying to figure out how to replicate the material and make a ton of money off of it. Thorn reports no lasting damage to the station or The Brain (the weird humanoid jelly that Supergirl fought in Issue #3), so all’s well that ends well! “I think she’ll behave from now on.” Tycho declares as we catch a view of Kara floating in stasis within a diabolical space tube. They placed the Kryptonite pod near her, and all she can feel floating there is pain.

It’s pretty fucked up.

Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #4

Hard to be guilty of transgressions when you’re floating in a tube all catatonic-like. Believe me, I know.

Miss Thorn asks what’s next, and Tycho’s got some plans for this runaway teenage guinea pig, but that will come later! Ha ha ha ha! HA HA HA HAA! They walk away. They don’t laugh, though. I’m laughing. Because one of the soldiers that tracked Supergirl down in Siberia, the one who was lifted out of his metal suit by Supergirl, attacks a fellow soldier by the door that leads into Kara’s containment chamber. “Just hang on…” he says as he gets near her space tube and punches a few buttons.

Kara can barely keep her head up, but she recognizes him. “He must be here to finish the job.” she thinks as this guy lifts her out of the tube and carries her away. He tries to talk to her, but, of course, English ain’t her first language. “This isn’t what I signed up for, miss. I thought Mr. Tycho was a genius. Thought he was gonna help the world. Not torture innocent people.”

He helps her to her feet and they walk through the hallways of the station to the evacuation pods. She realizes that he’s helping her, but she can’t believe it! Why would anyone help anyone in this godforsaken hellhole? She starts to feel better as they move farther from the Kryptonite pod.

And that’s good! Because they run into Tycho and a group of gun-toting soldiers. So hopefully she has the strength to, like, give these guys the ol’ one-two. A nice Glasgow smile! A Colombian necktie! A Cleveland steamer!

Mr. Tycho is not pleased with this unfortunate scene before him. “Y’know, Jacobs,” Tycho begins calmly, “I love initiative in my employees. I really do, and you’ve obviously got that in buckets. But the whole ‘screwing with my boss’s plans for the future of the human race’ part?” Ha, well, the man makes a fair point, wouldn’t you say? Gotta carve into this alien chick to learn more about the universe, I always say! Tycho instructs his man to shoot Jacobs on the spot. And he does.

Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #4

He died doing what he loved: getting SHKOWed in the chest.

Before she can even process what’s happening, Kara gets cracked upside the head with the butt of a gun and one of the men starts to take back to her chamber. That’s not going to work very well, though, since he’s pretty far from that Kryptonite. Suckers. She breaks the guy’s arm like a twig and starts running toward the rest with a new sense of reinvigoration! “Kal-El…or the man who claimed to be Kal-El…was right. I can feel the yellow sun fueling me,” Kara thinks as she puts on her best stern gonna-tear-your-asses-up face and then starts tearing up said asses.

She plows through the rest of the men standing in her way and runs off, leaving them all writhing on the dang floor like a pile of ninnies. Tycho struggles to regain his composure, and alerts Thorn that the “visitor is loose” (and the “visitor” is currently zipping around the hallways like a flying…uh, girl, I suppose). He tells Thorn further to put the whole station on lockdown and bring the “artifact” (dildo).

Of course, we all know that Kara’s going to beat these punks! For one thing, there are plenty of Supergirl issues left. It’s not like they’ll kill her off and put in Cathy from now on. ACK!

Kara zips to the tensile testing station and retrieves her uniform. Now the fun begins!

As she cracks heads and elbows necks, Supergirl feels powerful and confident. Who wouldn’t? She’s got a taste for blood now!

Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #4

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Their bullets can’t hit what their eyes can’t see. Etc.

Tycho and Thorn are in an office using holograms to look for her, but it doesn’t matter. She comes to them crashing through the wall, making her signature entrance like Rude Kramer. Giddy-up! Supergirl floats there in front of them while Tycho stammers out a gambit: “Stop! Before you do anything– I have something you want.” he smirks fiendishly and holds up the “artifact” (dildo). Supergirl gasps.

“That’s a sunstone!” she tells herself, “Father must have put it in my pod! He must have put a message on it for me!” She freezes and stares at him. Tycho will throw it to the floor and bust the thing up into a million pieces if she doesn’t tell him what it is and how to use it. Ahh, Tycho you devil!

Supergirl brings herself down to the floor as an act of cooperation. Tycho keeps asking her questions about the object that she doesn’t understand anyway. He speculates that it’s a storage device holding plans for world domination, or perhaps specifications for a crazy alien weapon. Supergirl just wants to grab the thing when he isn’t looking and fly the fuck away, but she doesn’t want to risk destroying it in the process. OHHHH, THE CONUNDRUM!

Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #4

Not shown: Tycho pointing to large diagram of the female reproductive system.

While walking down the hallway, Tycho balances the object on the tip of his finger like a crusty asshole. After fiddling around with it a bit, he claims to have retrieved coordinates to a place in space way, way, waaaaaay far away. Super far. You know where Mars is? Farther than that! Jupiter? Look, honey, we’re talking way farther. Uranus? I could go on and on.

This location is way outside the map. “I’m guessing that’s where you’re from.” Tycho declares with the most punchable face I’ve seen in a comic book thus far, and I’ve read seven Nightwings! Supergirl doesn’t give a shit, she’s still plotting how to snatch this thing from Tycho and break away from this shitty floating space popsicle stand.

Tycho looks her up and down some more with those creepy steel-blue eyeballs. “The thing is, you are much more interesting than anything on this crystal. I want to know your secrets.” Tycho wants to get all up inside her! Gross! He strikes a deal with her: he’ll give back the object (“artifact”) (dildo) in exchange for a drop of her blood. Sound cool?

And although Supergirl can’t understand a word this motherfucker is saying to her, she senses a big “screw this” moment and zaps the floor with her laser vision, right in front of Tycho’s feet, creating a large, round hole in the floor. “Ha! Nice shot! Might want to work on your aim, though.” Tycho scoffs triumphantly, but the wind is taken out of his sails when a panicked Miss Thorn informs him that Supergirl aimed right for the central core! Ha! Eat dick, losers.

Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #4

Unless, of course, you want get seven kinds of fucked up. By my count, you’ve endured only four kinds so far.

Shit starts blowing up around the station; Tycho cowers on the floor. Supergirl grabs his arm, rips the “artifact” (big red Krypton dildo) from his hand, and warns him not to come after her again. And, you know what, it’s going to be pretty hard for Simon Tycho to even try because his big, ugly space station is going to blow to kingdom come while he’s still in it.

A still-panicked Thorn implores her boss to evacuate, but Simon Tycho ain’t letting some ANGSTY TEENAGE GIRL run the show! He’s never evacuated before in his life! Except his bowels, which he’s probably doing as we speak. Tycho thinks he can tap a few buttons on the computer to fix everything, but Supergirl did too much damage. “BA-BOOM”. That’s the sound of the space station exploding. “BA-BOOM”. We see a silhouette of Tycho getting dismembered, and then a shot of the space station going kablooey, and then Supergirl floating in space going “buhhhh” as she watches, like, four million people die because of her.

Supergirl’s like “oh shit”, but then gets over it quickly when she remembers that she successfully retrieved the sunstone (BIG RED DILDO). However, oh damn, there’s a crack in it! It must’ve happened when she crash-landed in Siberia. We’ve all been there, sister. I’ve broken quite a few sunstones in my day, crashing willy-nilly on all those alien planets.

She entertains the idea of asking Superman for help, but she still doesn’t trust him. So now what? Perhaps she can try flying home? Yeah, good luck. It might take you a trillion years. Pack a lunch.

Later, elsewhere, the very much alive and not obliterated Miss Thorn wakes up a sleeping, apparently not obliterated, Simon Tycho. She informs this living corpse that the station was destroyed, and he was severely injured, but don’t worry! They fused what was left of his body with the Brain! Cool, huh? So it’s all good! The dude looks like garbage, and that’s saying something because he already looked like a large pile of garbage to begin with.

Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #4

Gross. He looks like boxing mannequin.

One of Tycho’s guard dudes is in the room, all banged up, arm in a sling, blood on his uniform. Tycho garbles a question at him: “You fuhhh… fought guh… girl… b-blood on you… your blood?” And the guard says “No sir! Negative sir! That is not my blood sir! I think it’s the girl’s blood sir! The girl bled her blood on me sir!”

Tycho starts snickering. This guy is all fucked up, missing an eye, has no penis anymore, and still thinks he has the upper hand.

“I win,” he manages to eke out, smiling, looking like a large pile of shitty stinky garbage.

Final Thoughts

This is way better than the first New 52 Action Comics storyline. Way better. Hopefully it stays that way for two more issues! Pressure’s on, Supergirl. Make me proud, son.

East of West. Issue #9

East of West, Issue #9 – “Hunter”

* Part 9 of 15 of the The Apocalypse: Year One storyline *

Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: East of West, Issue #9 – “Hunter”! In the previous installment, Death and his cronies spend two days descending some beneath-the-lake stairs and he finds what he’s looking for: a chained-up naked lady with a throbbing external brain and tentacle eyeballs! We can’t all be so lucky. Her name is Oracle, and after a fair trade, she’s going to help Death find his son.

Meanwhile, Madame President Antonia LeVay made a promise to her Horsemen buddies that she’d keep the peace among her people. So she imposes martial law and then personally goes down to the street and kills a few rioters in order to make an example of them.

Just another day in 2064! Year 45 of the Covid Pandemic! I wonder if that’s mentioned at all in this series.


East of West, Issue #9 [January, 2014]
Written by: Jonathan Hickman
“Hunter”

East of West, Issue #9

Crown Prince John Freeman of the Kingdom of New Orleans (I call him Lenny Kravitz!) rolls off some broad in his big regal bed in his castle, or whatever. We haven’t seen him since Issue #6 when Ezra Orion set up that “there’s a traitor among our ranks” congregation and Chamberlain threw Solomon under the bus.

Freeman is nude in front of his massive 2000″ TV (he got it from Frank), where Madame President Shooter McGavin’s big, pinched face is all over the screen. She asks Freeman if he can be counted on. “Fool of a woman,” he mutters to himself as he starts getting dressed, “Trying to make her weakness mine…”

His lady’s in the bed. “How many times are you gonna watch that?” she whines at him. He whines right back: “If I linger over making a decision, it isn’t because I’m indecisive. Sometimes there are greater concerns…like exposure and keeping my head attached to my neck.”

“Well then, tell me Prince…can you be counted on?” his nude sex lady asks. And John Freeman is like “Who cares? Who gives a shit? I’ll end up talking to dad about something he couldn’t give two shits about. Plus, that guy barely has any clout anyway. This is stupid.” I mean, he’s a little bit more articulate than that but I like my words better.

And Freeman’s nude sex lady tells him that he can’t be counted on anyway! He’s untrustworthy, he’s a rogue, he’s erratic, and, at his very best, he’s a scoundrel! She walks up behind him and hugs him as they both look over the balcony at the astonishing city that New Orleans has become in the futury future over here.

“I can be counted on…for the things that matter.”

What fairness is this? Blindness in a world full of people refusing to use their eyes?

East of West, Issue #9

Oh look, I’m getting another premonition…yes, you will give me $400,000 in cash…what’s that, another premonition?…and some Olive Garden gift cards.

Death and Oracle, millions of miles below a lake or somethin’, need to work out a deal. Death needs to find his son, you dig? And Oracle’s gonna help. “And in return I’ll give you whatever it is you want. It’s my whole proffer…you won’t do better than that,” Death propositions like a real smooth operator. “And if I want more?” Oracle asks, grinning a sickly grin under her godawful little tentacle eyeballs. “Not gonna haggle,” Death answers simply. “Got somethin’ on your mind, let’s hear it.”

And Oracle chokes out some sinister laughter. She sees everything dingus, and she already sees what Death is willing to offer, and it fucking sucks ass! He’s gonna start groveling and begging and crying and weeping at her, it’s a real sorry sight to behold. Oracle goes on to say that there’s a version of Death who, out of pride, gives up and takes his business elsewhere. He will return months later with less than what he has now. That’s the dumb Death. The other version of Death will pay Oracle’s price now, and he will continue his journey with way more hope to succeed. In both cases, Oracle’s price will be the exact same, so Death is better off just paying it now. Don’t be a bitch. This is a warning!

And Death is like “Just tell me what you want, you old hag.”

East of West, Issue #9

Freedom is overrated. I want a motherfucking dinosaur.

And Oracle is like “NO! Not yet. I want to string you along just a little bit longer! FIRST, I want you to ask for forgiveness! Ha! THEN, I want you to try to guess what I want! Ha ha! Go on, now. HERE’S A HINT: penis in the vagina! Or do I? Heh heh, here it is right here, sir. Come say hello!”

Yeah, anyway, Death has a lot more patience with all this than someone in his situation should, I would think. He plays along, takes off his hat, etc. “What we did was wrong. We thought it was the right thing to do…but that was a simpler time. I regret it…and if I could take it back I would.”

“That sincere enough for you?” Death snarls, “Now what’s it gonna be?”

They lean in closer and closer to each other’s faces. They’re practically smoochin’ at this point, no kidding. The panel after the one shown above shows their mouths about an inch away from each other. “So what then?” Death asks once more. “I want what I lost.” Oracle responds, finally. “I see…but I want to see again.” These responses come over a flashback of an angry young woman surrounded by the earlier incarnations of the four Horsemen. War is shown to jump on top of the woman and rip her eyeballs from their sockets.

Death is taken aback, now horrified as one socket’s-worth of Oracle’s eye tentacles start poking and prodding around one of his own eyeballs. With a “SPLURT”, she extracts Death’s eye right out of his head. It pops itself into place within her own wretched skull.

East of West, Issue #9

The flirting is starting to get a little out of hand.

“Yesss… That’s better. Now… about your son…”

JEEZUS H. CHRIST, sir. Yeah, let’s move on from that for now goddamnit. Crown Prince John Q. Honeybottom, Zoë Kravitz’s dad, hangs out in the entertainment district of New Orleans. He listens to a jazz guy doing his jazz thing, bleating and blorting on a trumpet, while another guy who claims to be another John Freeman tries to talk to him: “Nine. I’m John Freeman the Ninth… and very soon, I plan on being the Eighth.” Listen, this twerpy little masturbator doesn’t even look like he can wipe his own stupid butt yet, even I’m annoyed already.

The John Freeman we East of West fans all know and love, Mr. Eight, tells this kid to go screw! But this kid will NOT go screw! Mr. Nine over here has been training with warmasters and vampire slayers and Mr. Miyagis across this whole Kingdom! You don’t wanna fuck with him, bro. Mr. Eight groans and says “Fine. Outside.”

East of West, Issue #9

The “best warmasters”? Like who? Steve? Steve is terrible!

Outside! Mr. Eight has his back to the kid and starts schooling him on what it means to be Mr. Nine, the ninth prince in a prosperous kingdom. It means you are wealthy beyond belief and you are not important enough to be ever bothered by anybody. You can literally do anything with your life. “In truth… I envy you. Which is why I find this all so disappointing. You’re too young and too rich to be covetous, brother. So let this be a lesson… LEARN. YOUR. PLACE!”

And with each word, Kravitz takes out each one of Mr. Nine’s bodyguards with blasts from his Chosen guns! He blasts clean through Nine’s leg, amputating it right at the…something. He ain’t got much of a leg left, that’s for sure.

“Remember what I taught you here today… Or when I become king, there will be one less prince in the court.”

Nine cradles his gross stump.

Large white transition page with gray text ahoy.

There is the throne. Then there is everything else.

So now we learn that Kravitz himself is a covetous douchebag, missing the irony completely I imagine. I’m looking forward to seeing how this completely backfires on him by Issue #25, where he’ll be discovered dead in a pool of his own urine. And by that I mean someone forces him to piss into a wading pool until it’s full enough to be forced to drown in it. Death starts getting creative.

So now, Prince Freeman the VIII requests an audience with the king at the Royal Palace. Per one of the royal lickspittles, the king was expecting him. Freeman’s like “no shit, dork” and he makes his way into the royal-ass chambers.

“Perfect Father, Lion to the People… Your Majesty… I present your son… The Crown Prince, John Freeman.” *blorting trumpets* And lo, HE IS ANNOUNCED. Johnny Boy bends his knee to the king. “Hello Father, it is good to see you.”

And before I even turn the page on this book, you better believe we’re going to get a heaping helping of Daddy Issues. East of West should be renamed.

John Freeman Numero Uno looks like a fat, angry pharaoh. “You’re late,” he grunts. King Slouchy asks his sexy vizier how many other sons he has, not counting this whelp before him. “An impressive fourteen, Your Majesty,” she replies. Pops tells Freeman 8 that he better get cracking, that’s a lot of siblings to slaughter to earn the throne. “I would think that would add some urgency to your steps.”

East of West, Issue #9

“We ask you humbly: don’t scroll away. We depend on donations, but fewer than 2% give.”

King Grump is wise to his son’s motivations and asks him to play LeVay’s message to him. The vizier reminds Freeman 8 that “all communications belong to the State – the State is the King – the King must know all things”. ROLL THE TAPE! And Freeman 8 is like “oh shit, ugh, shit shit shit”.

We get to see LeVay’s full message to John Freeman VIII from the beginning of the issue. Her big, emaciated face fills up the royal chamber. “Crown Prince Freeman… I am contacting you on a most urgent matter.” she begins, and then it’s all BLAH BLAH BLAH from there!

Long story short, she informs him about the upheaval and unrest going on in the Union. It’s all very sad. Economic collapse is imminent, and that sucks. Now’s the time for some damn assistance in the name of the Message! After all, the Chosen all need to work together, ya know? So tell your fat dad to cough up some money to help her country. Peace.

Dad’s hardly impressed. “What is this? More of your religion?” he asks poutily. “I cannot help what I believe, Father. I believe what I was taught…” Sonny Boy counters, “You always made sure I had the very best of teachers.”

King Dad has nothing to say about this immediately. At least not in front of the vizier. “Leave us.” he instructs, and she gives Freeman 8 a flirty glance before she steps out. She wants that dick, son.

We’re behind the curtain now, friends. “I have never minded your dalliances with… your faith. We all need our secret passions, the necessary distractions from this cruel and unkind world…” Father Dearest begins. Some day, though, you’ll be king. Even though you have seven brothers ahead of you to kill and seven brothers behind you that will try to murder you in a wading pool full of your own piss, you’ll be king some day. So grow the fuck up. Also, I’m worried that you’re not taking this seriously!

“Do you doubt my loyalty, Father?”
“Do you not give me a reason, my son?”

Freeman 8 argues that his decision to help the Union in the name of the Message is not wrong. After all, he always thought that alliances must be maintained, no? “Not always.” says Mr. King. He tells his son about the Civil War, the fake alternate history Civil War. I don’t remember much about it! You can read about what I had to say about it in the first issue. The freedmen whipped some ass and were able to keep a generous portion of land that they earned with blood. Decades later, after securing control of most of the Gulf of Mexico (or whatever it’s called in 2064) and reaping its sweet, sweet, oily benefits, the Kingdom of New Orleans is now hella powerful. And the Union sucks and has no money.

So here’s the deal: a lot of shit is going down. The Republic of Texas has closed its borders. The Endless Nation is starting to stir the pot. House of Mao is going to start fucking with everyone soon. In fact, they already have. Under Xiaolian’s rule, she’s already called in her debts from the Union. No ifs, ands, or buts! That’s why they’re currently falling apart! “War is…inevitable. Soon everyone will be forced to choose sides – and to choose between the many things that pull at them. Including you and I,” warns the Cuddly Pharaoh.

So, snotnose, don’t give in. The Kingdom of New Orleans needs to keep their position, their power, and their wealth. Now’s not the time to finance some shithole like the Union just because some stupid lady in charge of some shithole like the Union is using religious bullshit to schmooze money out of us!

So don’t let her.

East of West, Issue #9

Here, son, try buying them with a few of these Olive Garden gift cards I got from the Oracle!

Final Thoughts

Quite an unexpected twist to see the Freeman Father and Son relationship not completely strained to predictable limits.

It’s also fun to see more of the political drama surrounding the Seven Nations of America. The story is getting denser and denser, my friends. Like a nice fruitcake.

Sucky Funnies for April 10, 2022

I don’t feel like writing much today! I’m going to let the good folks of the GoComics.com and ComicsKingdom.com comments sections do most of the legwork for me today! I’m gonna take a nap!


Arlo and Janis

Arlo and Janis - April 10, 2022

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Arlo and Janis rarely has a detectable punchline, so about 95% of the fun comes from reading the online comments from all the barely-literate Boomer generation representatives of the Sunday comics fandom. These online comments usually come in three flavors: a) the people who actually admit to not understanding the comic, b) the people who mistakenly think they understand the comic and try to supplement the strip with their own raucous comedy routine, and c) the people who mistakenly think they understand the comic and try to get a conversation going about something mundane that, at best, corresponds tenuously to the strip’s subject matter or, at worst, is just a bunch of aimless bitching. Let’s see a little bit from all three!

C:That’s the hole thing?
JessieRandySmithJr.:Not sure I get it. Is it spring yard work time for them?
ChessPirate:As Captain Ahab would say it: ‘He breaches!’
its just me:No shadow, they should go back to bed for more hibernation.
assrdood:We had one unseasonably warm day back in late March. Worked outside all day. Now, I feel like I’m all over it for the season.
david_42:Yesterday we filled about 20 new containers with potting soil, added compost to a similar number of older containers and planned to transplant vegetable plants today: it railed all night, it’s cold and rainy now, with more cold and rain in the forecast … for the next week.

Hey, this is fun! I’ll do this from now on.


Mother Goose & Grimm

Mother Goose & Grimm - April 10, 2022

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Ooooh, check out the sassy snap from Mother Goose! Let’s see what the public has to say about this!

Max:When the chick is away, the boys don’t play.
Michael Alan:Miss Campbell is always in the soup.
gstove9999:Miss Campbell is the reason for all the gossip. She should keep her shades down.

Well. that was boring! I was hoping to find a lot of self-loathing misogyny and maybe some weird oversharing such as “I’d fuck that bird”. Maybe next time we’ll try a little harder.


Mary Worth

Mary Worth - April 10, 2022

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Now we’re talking! It’s good to see that this Mary Worth storyline about Toby’s accidental inappropriate relationship with one of her students hasn’t moved along one bit since the last two times I covered it! For all I know, this has been going on for a straight year now!

I’m going to skip the part where Toby’s nightmares bear the emotional complexity of a child’s anxieties. Bring on the comments!

snickers:Meanwhile, Ian is dreaming about touring the Calvert whiskey distillery.
The Real Bill:Ahab’s corpse lies motionless.
Funkaholic:‘It’s goose bump time at the old plantation.’ – Jack Whitaker (?), the 1975 Masters
snark attack:I actually did fall out of bed once while dreaming that I was falling…I landed on my shoulder, and it hurt for weeks afterwards!
Walter Hammann:Wow, that s some nasty fall. Hopefully, Toby didn’t land on her coccyx. I’ve landed on my tail bone after a fall a couple of weeks ago and it’s still sore. I recommend sleeping with a heating pad and applying some Voltarin gel 4 times a day. Also, if Ian is agreeable, he can insert his fingers up her anu$ and massage her coccyx.

Wow! Heh heh! Take it easy, all you bad boys and girls!

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #1

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #1 – “Meta Morphosis”

* Part 1 of 5 of the No Normal storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #1 – “Meta Morphosis”!

I don’t know Ms. Marvel. I know Captain America, Miss America, and Captain Marvel, but I don’t know anything about Ms. Marvel other than she’s a Pakistani-American teenager, and neither of those things might have been true ten years ago. THIS incarnation of Ms. Marvel is a Pakistani-American teenager, and that sounds too absolutely different from what I’ve been dealing with so far to pass it up now.

G. Willow Wilson grew up in New Jersey with white atheist parents. She converted to Islam at age 21. I suppose that’s close enough. Get a Pakistani-born Muslim woman writing Ms. Marvel one day. SOMEONE GET NIGAR NAZAR IN HERE. For fuck’s sake.

Anyway, I expect a coming-of-age story where a New Jersey teen shoots lightning out of her eyeballs, smiting her bullies with surreptitious glances during geography tests. Let’s see how off the mark I am with this one.


Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #1 [April, 2014]
Written by: G. Willow Wilson
“Meta Morphosis”

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #1

Young Kamala Khan is at a place called “Easy Greasy BLT” where she all but has her nose pressed against a hot case filled with bacon sandwiches. “Delicious, delicious infidel meat…” Kamala mutters to herself while her friend, Nakia, chides her by her side. The cashier needs them to shake a leg, because, I don’t know, why would he give a shit? At all?

Kamala calls Nakia “Niki”, which she doesn’t like. “Sorry. Nakia. Proud Turkish Nakia doesn’t need ‘Amreeki’ nickname. I get it.” Nakia tells her to go get some veggie bacon. Bruno, the cashier, grits his teeth as a young woman named Zoe enters this fake-ass Subway.

“Zoe, every day you come here, and every day I tell you this isn’t Starbucks.” moans and groans the facepalming Bruno. Women! Always wanting coffee! Ha! Zoe looks like she weighs about 70 pounds. Now another guy, some jock in a DAVID LETTERMAN jacket walks in to ask Bruno if he’s going to “the party”. Bruno’s answer depends on what the “meathead quotient” is gonna be.

I’m going to stop right here for a moment. I’m only about nine panels in and this is the most John Hughes high school bullshit I’ve had to endure throughout my comic book reading journey so far. Here’s how real high schoolers talk: “uuhhhh, there’s a fart in my butt.” “Yeah, your face looks like a fart in your butt.”

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #1

Wooo baby! Let’s see just how racist we can get!

So everyone in this Marvel Universe Subway Shop (with its own in-universe Jared Fogle pedophile mascot, I’m sure) knows each other. The jock asks Kamala and Nakia if they’re allowed to come to the party. Kamala frowns and says she isn’t allowed. Nakia isn’t going if there’s alcohol. Zoe starts running her mouth about Nakia’s headscarf like a dumbass gawking at a zoo animal. Nakia is patient, but cold; lets Zoe know that her dad actually wants her to stop wearing it. “He thinks it’s a phase.”

Josh, the jock, tells Zoe that class starts in 10 minutes so they’d better go. She throws out a few effusive, giant-smile goodbyes and they leave. “I hate her,” broods tall, swarthy, ratty peach-fuzz-faced Bruno. Kamala says she’s nice, but Nakia scolds Kamala’s naïveté. “You are not allowed to defend Zoe Zimmer. Even your sad nerd obsession with the Avengers is less irritating.”

Great, the main character in this series has a sad nerd obsession with the Avengers. Booooo. Boo to that.

The girls leave the store to make their way to school, with Bruno following suit after a quick shift change. “Let’s face it, my chances of becoming an intergalactic superhero are even slimmer than my chances of becoming blond and popular,” Kamala mopes. Well, good things come to those who wait, Kamala Khan. Pretty soon you’ll be smiting your bullies with lightning eyeballs, I assure you.

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #1

I wonder if Planet Unicorn is in the middle of a global warming crisis.

Later that evening, Kamala is reading through her own Avengers fanfic that she had posted to freakingcool.com! Go ahead and click that link, it’ll take you somewhere freaking cool! I promise!

The Avengers are battling a massive, pointy, dragon-like creature! Captain America! Iron Man! A lady with a giant spiky club! Captain Marvel? I still don’t know any of these superheroes, you guys. But when Mother Khan calls her daughter down to dinner, Kamala tells her that this particular fanfic got almost 1,000 upvotes so far on Freaking Cool! Mrs. Khan is frowning, obviously uninterested in online matters. And who could blame her? It’s all just Twitters and Snapchats and Ask the Jeeves Man. “I didn’t understand one single word of that sentence.” her mother snorts, “I thought you were up there doing homework.”

They both slump their way to the dinner table, where Kamala’s older brother, Aamir, is already praying at the table all garbed up in Islamic attire. Their dad is wearing a dress shirt, tie, and slacks. “Prayer is noble, but when you spend all day praying, it starts to look like you’re avoiding something. Like finding a job, for example.”

Aamir is ready with a smug retort. He tells his father that he’d rather not offend Allah with a profession, like his, that benefits from usury. “My job at the bank allows you to sit here at home contemplating eternity, beta,” Dad says without batting an eye. I see the Khan family dynamic is rife with petty passive aggressiveness, just like my own, so it’s certainly relatable! Mrs. Khan is supportive of her slacker-ass son, but Mr. Khan huffs.

Kamala takes this opportunity, which I can already foresee is the very wrong moment, to ask her father if she can go to that party tonight. “That depends, what’s the meathead quotient?” asks her father. HA! Wouldn’t that be something? No, he shoots it down almost immediately.

“Come on, Abu! I’m sixteen! I promise I won’t do anything stupid! Don’t you trust me?!” Kamala gripes, and even though her dad starts his reply with “Of course I trust you, beti”, he finishes with a couple of points that suggest that, no, not really, he doesn’t entirely trust her. Or any boys that might be there. Classic dad stuff! Classic fat dad stuff! Classic fat banker usury dad stuff!

“Look at your friend Bruno – working hard for his family and getting top grades…does he complain?” he says, and Kamala has had about enough of this conversation. After pointing out that Bruno’s a boy, and that Kamala would be likely allowed to go to the party if she were a boy as well, she excuses herself from the table and heads to her bedroom. Looks like Daddy’s going to be the first to get smited once Kamala falls in a nuclear reactor, or whatever it will be to cause her to gain her powers!

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #1

If you get your homework done fast enough, we’ll also allow five minutes of something rated PG-13.

“It’s just a party. One party. It’s not like I’m asking their permission to snort cocaine.” she mutters on her way upstairs, although even I know that asking to go to a party with boys is a slippery slope to that sweet, sweet nose candy! Why, just the other day I was playing a game of Outburst Junior with the fellas and, haha, well, one thing led to another.

Here comes the part where she wishes that she wasn’t so different from all her high school friends and peers. SHE’S the only one who doesn’t have permission to attend health class! SHE’S the only gets packed deep-fried, greasy, gross pakoras in her school lunch! SHE’S the only one who celebrates the “weird holidays” (i.e. September 19th, Talk Like a Pirate Day?). WELL NO MAS, SASSAFRAS. She’s going to be normal for one night! She sneaks right the fuck out of this House of No Goddamned Fun Whatsoever to go to what will probably be the Party of No Goddamned Fun Whatsoever (the Libertarian party).

We are treated to a full-page spread of the party in progress. It’s on the grass by the waterfront. The music goes “BOOM BOOM SHAKA SHAKA”. There is a man on fire in the corner of the page. Kamala, alone, approaches Josh, Zoe, and their circle of popular kids. “Oh my God! Kamala! Hi!” Zoe gushes, “I thought you weren’t allowed to hang out with us heathens on the weekends!”

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #1

Obviously, Kamala is merely spitting it out in protest of Russia.

Continuing this so-far uneventful trope of a story, Josh offers Kamala a drink. When asked if there was any alcohol in it, Josh just says it’s orange juice…plus some vodka! HAHAHA! IN YOUR FUCKING FACE, YOU STUPID NON-CHRISTIAN GIRL! Josh and another douche do a mid-air chest bump while Bruno, Mr. Khan’s secret crush, barges into the circle to demand from Josh what his CUNTFUCK problem is. Zoe tells Kamala that she smells too much like curry, so they’ll be standing somewhere else now.

Bruno walks away with Kamala and asks her if her parents know she’s at the party right now. She answers in the negative; Bruno advises that she leaves before the meatheads get too drunk and rowdy! That’s when the roofies start coming out! Har har, but seriously. Josh himself is probably weighed down by his pockets full of roofies. She should walk into the ocean with them Virginia Woolf-style.

Kamala starts getting short with Bruno, insists she’s not a child, insists she can take care of herself, and then takes a little bit of aggression out on him. “God, you sound just like my parents. Too bad you’re not Pakistani. Otherwise they’d totally throw me at you.” And as Kamala stomps away, Bruno, under all the “BOOM BOOM SHAKA SHAKA”s, softly says “Yeah…too bad.”

At this time, a large, billowing, ominous fog rolls in from the direction of the city and starts enveloping the partygoers. Everyone seems only minorly concerned. Bruno yells for Kamala, but she’s already huffily walking back home. She feels like a dang fool trying to fit in with all the other kids! What was the point? The fog around her grows more and more dense; she feels drunk. Could one sip-and-spit of vodka cause this? OoooOOOooooo, all woozy!

Thump. That’s her passing out alone on a street corner.

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #1

RIP Kamala Khan, 1998-2014. The role of Ms. Marvel will now be played by Peter Dinklage.

She is awoken from her sluggish, sloshed slumber by a beam of light from the heavens! She sees a vision of her beloved Avengers reciting an old Urdu Sufi poem. Kamala’s like “what the shit is this?” She’s incredibly suspicious of this bizarre vision, especially after Captain Marvel claims that they are all “faith”. Captain America tells her to start using her noggin’. “You thought that if you disobeyed your parents – your culture, your religion – your classmates would accept you. What happened instead?” Kamala admits that they all laughed instead; that it gave Zoe permission to make fun of her all racistly! But that’s not the point, it’s not like she feels entirely Pakistani anyway! She’s from Jersey City! She likes Avengers movies and, like, I don’t know, Pokemon! And skateboards! And Dr. Pepper Red Fusion! Remember that stuff? That was some good stuff. Kamala probably never actually had that, they discontinued that a long time ago.

Why am I here jawing about Dr. Pepper when Kamala Khan is SEEING VISIONS OF SUPERHEROES? “I don’t know who I’m supposed to be,” she laments, and when asked who she wants to be, she immediately answers that she wants to be them…except her costume would involve wearing giant wedge heels! And the three Avengers available – Captain Marvel, Captain America, and Iron Man – are like “ok!” and with one caveat: it’s not going to turn out the way she thinks.

The Avengers disappear. Kamala stands alone on the street corner. The mysterious fog envelops her and creates a cocoon. She busts her way out of the cocoon. Reborn!

She regrets her wish immediately.

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #1

Don’t you hate that part of high school when you pass out in the middle of the street and become a spandex-clad superhero? Embarrassing.

Final Thoughts

Cool origin story, bro. A teen movie where the teenage girl gets magic powers only because she worships the Avengers so much.

Rocky start! But intriguing. I look forward to seeing where this goes. I still want to see some smited bullies! There’s still plenty of time for that.

Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #3

Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #3 – “Memento”

* Part 3 of 7 of the Last Daughter of Krypton storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #3 – “Memento”! In the previous installment, Supergirl kicks Superman’s ass for 20 pages and it’s the most fun I’ve had reading a comic book in my entire life.

That’s it. You’re caught up.


Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #3 [January, 2012]
Written by: Michael Green & Mike Johnson
“Memento”

Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #3

I hope Supergirl’s horror upon learning that Krypton has exploded leads to more of her slamming Superman through other various major world landmarks! I guess a stranger, who claims to be your baby cousin, informing you that your home planet is gone and everyone you ever loved is dead might be justifiable cause to fuck up the messenger. That’s my opinion, at least. Too bad it won’t likely happen anymore. Supergirl seems to have calmed down for now.

She says she wants to laugh about all of this, like it’s some crazy jokey joke time, but “there’s something in his voice. Like he can only ever tell the truth.” Ah, perhaps she is commenting upon the wooden acting of Christopher Reeve! I agree! But he’s dead now, and so is your entire family!

But no, there’s still some fight left in her and I’m starting to get bored. How many times can they really go back and forth like this? I’ve got chili cooking on the stove! I don’t have time! Supergirl demands proof. How is she really supposed to go by his word? Superman is not smart, he doesn’t know more things than anyone else in the room at any given moment.

Surely there must be a record of her family somewhere, right? If she survived inexplicably, then they must have too! Wrong! No record! It doesn’t make sense that you’re here on Earth and you haven’t aged a day while your infant cousin is now, like, 49.

Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #3

Yeah right, honey. Do I look like I’m smart enough to pull off a plot like that? I can’t even tie my own shoes.

She’s had enough! Bah! Pah! “I’m going back to find my pod. I’m getting off this planet and I’m going to find the truth.” she spits at him, but he is like “no way, honey, I’m a man and I need to protect you now.” Superman then changes the subject by pretending to hear calls for distress off in the distance, so now she has to come with him to help! Supergirl asks why the fuck she has to come help, and his answer is something along the lines of “Because we’re powerful here! We must help!” It’s like, thanks Mr. Morals. Maybe I want to eat Funyuns and watch Buffy Season 3, which is one of the better seasons. It has the Mayor.

And Supergirl, she’s like “Help THEM? What about KRYPTON? What about ME?!”, and Superman reminds her, in case she forgot, that Krypton exploded and everyone she loves is dead. Supergirl says “fuck off, hoser” and starts flying away to find her pod. Superman uses is special yellow-sun-enhanced telepathic powers to tell her that he can still talk to her no matter how far away she flies (haha, great), and that she better start lightening up fast or this world’s gonna eat you alive.

In no time at all, Supergirl finds her Siberian impact site. The pod, though, is gone. Someone took it. Someone took the pod. Someone was like “I want this pod.”

She loses a modicum of hope, but then some flying metal orb swoops in and clicks on a hologram for her to watch. Oooh, a movie. Let’s see what the feature presentation is!

Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #3

This guy looks like a total douchebag. Some real Armie Hammer gettin’ swindled by Mark Zuckerberg energy.

Yuck, a guy named Simon Tycho? Pass.

Simon Tycho speaks English, and Supergirl doesn’t speak English. No one in Siberia speaks English. He blah-blah-blahs in English about watching the skies and keeping track of anything that falls to the Earth’s surface, from space rocks to Kryptonian teenagers. Tycho catches on that she can’t understand his mofo ass, so his hologram shows her a scale model of the pod that was taken from the crater. He explains, in English, that the pod is safe, but her internal monologue doesn’t trust this cracker whatsoever. And she can throw him pretty far, so that idiom wouldn’t work in this case.

Simon Tycho wants to continue this conversation elsewhere, so he goads her into following his cute metal orb. They both launch into space where Supergirl is led to a space station. Tycho’s current home. He’s gonna continue Englishing at her. I hope she throws his ass through the wall and straight into Jupiter.

We find out that Simon Tycho is the unseen man from the end of Issue #2. He was happy about an artifact that was retrieved from Supergirl’s pod (it looked like a dildo). He stole Supergirl’s dildo. That’s not cool at all, man.

Tycho is talking to his assistant, Miss Thorn, about Supergirl’s possible connection with Superman. “Is she related to Superman somehow? Sister? Maybe an ex-girlfriend? Seems a little young for that.” Tycho muses while Thorn is bored. Thorn announces Supergirl’s arrival onto the space station.

They have her stand in a large docking station, with the endless space behind her. They start bombarding her with laser-shooting robot butterflies! Certainly! The lasers heat up the room to 1000 degrees Celsius, but Thorn points out that Supergirl’s body temperature is exponentially higher – higher than can be produced with the butterflies, like it’s building up from within her. Supergirl gets pissed off and crunches a butterfly with her hand.

Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #3

Nah, let’s keep going. I’ll kill this whole station in the name of *checks notes* …”scientific discovery”.

With Thorn being the voice of reason, Tycho calls off the butterflies before shit explodes like, you know, a Supergirl Home Planet! Supergirl realizes that she was heating up too fast to not be dead right now, and that’s weird! This is all good stuff. Very essential experimenting going on. A lot is being learned here.

Tycho moves on. “Send in the Brain.” he demands, even after Thorn insists that the Brain is still in its experimental phase. It turns out to be a creepy, squishy, translucent humanoid thing. It goes “shlorrp” and Supergirl has a tough time with it. While she keeps trying to punch this walking sack of goo, Tycho gets a phone call from the United States president. And he’s all snippy about it, too. He’s like “I’m busy, cuntface.”

Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #3

Let this be a lesson. Wait until college before getting shlorrped.

Meanwhile, Supergirl is trying not to get completely absorbed by this squishy bitch. Tycho yells at the president, tells him he’s stupid and hangs up. “God, America’s annoying.” he pouts, and returns his attention back to Supergirl vs. the Brain. The Brain is winning, and he’s put out a bit: “…I’m disappointed in our cute new find.”

Supergirl’s getting all sorts of suffocated by this blob, but she doesn’t give up. She builds up a ton of strength and blasts them both through the wall of the space station, out into the vacuum of space! That’ll do it! The Brain wasn’t built to withstand space! Take that, Brain! You just got skullfucked.

With that pesky dingus out of the way, Supergirl returns to her original mission of finding her pod. Remember in Issue #2 when she had x-ray vision for a few seconds and freaked the absolute fuck out? Well, she tries to deliberately channel that power again. Now that she’s outside the space station, floating around, she concentrates on the walls to see if she can spot her pod. She finds it right away. Cool.

Next she laser-eyeballs her way through the wall to make her way to the pod. It looks like a geode. She stares at it and goes “huh…so what’s all this then?! OI!”. Did her father make this piece of shit and launch her to Earth? So many questions! Well, just the one, actually.

Supergirl reaches out to touch it, but the veins in her hands start glowing this strange yellowish hue. She screams and collapses in front of the pod.

Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #3

Ahh, I see you’re praying. Don’t mind me.

Tycho tells her, in English, that he suspected this yellowish substance leaking from the pod was fuel. She looks sick as a dog. “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you. Believe me…” he grins FIENDISHLY, “I have your best interests at heart.”

Final Thoughts

YEAH YEAH YEAH, KRYPTONITE. I GET IT.