Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #65 – “Detention”

* Part 5 of 6 of the Carnage storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #65 – “Detention”! In the previous installment, Gwen Stacy’s fuckin’ dead, Peter Parker is fuckin’ losing it, Curt Connors is fuckin’ sorry, and MJ is fuckin’, like, there. And now Connors’ partner Ben Reilly stole a vial of Parker’s blood? Come the heck on, sir. I thought we talked about this!

Parker vows to quit the Spider-Man thing, but how could he quit? We still have a trillion issues of Spider-Man and counting to go! Keep those spandex on, citizen!

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #65 [November, 2004]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Detention”

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #65

Guess who landed themselves in Saturday detention? Parker, MJ, Liz, Flash, and Kong. A real breakfast club. Flash doesn’t have a stupid bowl cut anymore, but he does look like Vanilla Ice. Kong is still bald.

“What’s lil’ Parker doing?” Flash asks MJ as Parker sits at his desk catatonically.

“Leave him alone, Flash.”

“Guy’s in a coma.”

“Stop it!”

Flash gives the silence about five seconds to breathe before saying “I think he’s dead, too,” all snidely. Even Kong is alarmed that Flash said this. “Dude…”

MJ launches herself out of her desk chair and looks ready to choke a bitch. “You’re deranged!!” she says, pointing a finger right in Flash’s face. “You’re sick!! You’re the reason we’re all stuck here all day!! You!! And you still don’t get it!!”

Flash thinks they’re all here because MJ is crazy. Nobody can agree on anything! Frustrating! Being a teenager sucks!

Pardon the pun, but FLASHback to yesterday! Parker and MJ are cleaning out Gwen’s locker. The principal offers his ear if Parker ever wants to come to the office to talk. Then he says “let’s do this and just get it over with” about cleaning out Gwen’s property and leaves them to it.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #65

Hey, we’re like a couple-a musketeers! Maybe even three of them!

MJ and Parker find a photo of the three of them taped inside the locker. “She did like us,” MJ says, boggling at the photo. Parker starts looking like he’s going to break down again, which is a perfect time for Flash “Wedgie Patrol” Thompson to show up. “What’s all the drama?” he asks, butting in. Kong stays back as MJ tells Flash to butt the fuck out.

“What’s going on?” asks Flash.

“We’re cleaning out Gwen’s locker,” says Liz.

“Oooh, free stuff? Do we get to take what we want?”

“Go away.”

“Fine, fine.” Flash starts walking. “By the waysky, great job on keeping an eye on her, Parker. Well done.”

Now this is the part where MJ goes crazy, as Flash purports! She grabs the oversized geometry textbook from Gwen’s locker, revs up, and… well… you know.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #65

I got your hypotenuse right here, motherfucker!

One thing leads to another, pretty soon Flash is accidentally on top of Kong while MJ is purposely on Flash pulling his hair. Parker tries to pull MJ off and BOKs a teacher right in the chin, sending her flying back against the lockers.

And the rest is history! *opening credits song*

So whose fault was it? Let’s just say it’s God’s fault for creating this gay Earth and let’s move on.

Back in detention, MJ asks Flash straight up why he acts like an asshole. Sure, for attention, but let’s put that aside. “I mean, a girl died. Someone you know… died! She’s dead. Gwen’s dead and you just keep busting on everyone like it’s some big funny ha-ha. I really want to know… why are you doing this?”

Yeah, that’ll work. Flash just scowls and tells MJ to shut up, but MJ persists and you can see Flash’s tough-guy exterior start to waver. And, of course, wouldn’t you know it, MJ figures it out. And it’s such a shocker, I mean really. Who could have seen this coming? My balls have been launched into space over the revelation. “You liked her,” MJ says, eyes wide. Flash hangs his head down.

Now, over the course of the last 40 issues or so – whenever Gwen showed – there have been instances where Flash tried to talk to Parker alone. But Parker always shut the asshole down. I always wondered what he wanted, and now we all know. MJ knows too, and she’s smiling a little too widely at this. “You were going to tell him that you liked Gwen. You were going to ask for advice or ask him to tell her.”

Flash gets mad. “Shut your face!” he says like a bully in a PG movie. MJ gets that devilish twinkle in her eye and goads Flash to admit it, but he doesn’t take the bait. Flash the Virgin tells everyone to shut their chow holes and he slams his way out of the room.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #65

Girls are icky!

Three hours later, he’s still gone. “I didn’t mean for him to wig out,” says MJ. “I thought we were going to have, like, a moment… or something. I thought I actually got through to him.”

Kong assures the rest of them that Flash is just loud. He’s not a bad guy. And this is when Parker pipes in for the first time. “Yes, he is.”

Taken aback, Kong starts telling Parker to just sit down with him and talk for five minutes, but Parker won’t hear it. “Kong, I’ve known Flash Thompson since I was seven years old. And I’ve met a lot of bad people… He is a bad person.”

Well, that settles that! Flash = Bad. Who wants Detention Cake?

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #65

And sometimes they get trapped in carbonite by Dark Lords!

Oh, we’re not done? Parker launches into a big soliloquy about Flash’s shittiness and how he sucks and picks his nose and his dad probably beats him within an inch of his life every Thursday like clockwork. Right after Wheel of Fortune. How he’s going to grow up and go from a shitty kid to a shitty man. Because this is the only way he knows how to act, and it’s encouraged by people like *thumbs at Kong* this walking blowjob. “He’s going to grow up to be a full-grown greedy, mean, selfish liar. The world is filled with them. The world is being run by them. And your ‘friend’ is one of them. You need to learn this and learn it fast.”

Kong gets defensive and asks Parker if he, too, is one of these people who gets stepped on by people like Flash to get ahead in life. And yeah, Kong, your best friend treats you like crap. “He hangs around with you- I’m sorry, but he hangs around with you solely to make himself feel superior. And the truth is- you’re 10 times the guy he is. But you let him treat you like this. You let him.”

Tough talk. “What about you, man?” Kong asks, staring daggers at Parker. “What kind of person are you?”

Parker looks down and prepares himself for the most poignant panel in the history of Ultimate Spider-Man. “I’m nothing.”

BAZINGA!

Then MJ asks “What about Spider-Man” and throws Parker off. At this, Parker runs out of the room. MJ follows even though this is DETENTION and tries to get his ATTENTION before they all get a SUSPENSION.

“Peter, I’m sorry,” MJ says.

“I’m not mad at you.”

“Then what are you?”

“I’ve just had it, MJ. It’s too much.”

Spider-Man couldn’t save everyone, yada yada yada. MJ tells him that he wasn’t there in any case of someone getting hurt or dying. “Why are you making it your fault?”

Parker’s not listening. He argues with her and then swoops away fully Peter Parker-garbed. From a rooftop, he sees muggers trying to rip off a woman’s purse. He takes advantage of this situation and lets off a little steam.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #65

YOU WANT TO GET FUCKED UP?? YOU WANT TO GET FUCKED UP?? I’LL START FUCKING A BITCH UP!! I’LL START SWINGIN’!!

“You have to change!! You hear me!!” Parker screams like a complete wacko lunatic. “Today!! Right now!!”

He forces the thugs to apologize, then he tells them to go do something better with their lives. The woman thanks him profusely, and Parker seems to get a slight “aha” moment, but then frowns HARD and leaps back up to the roof of the building.

“Why did I just do that?”

…

“I’m sorry, Gwen.”

Final Thoughts

Whoa mama! This kid is losing his marbles! Looks like Spider-Man’s next mission will be to keep Flash Thompson from fucking a corpse! See you in the next story!


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The X-Files – Season 1, Episode 14 – “Gender Bender”

The X-Files

“A religious sect member capable of changing gender becomes the prime suspect in a murder spree.“

Damnit, this is going to be one of those really bad ones, isn’t it?

The episode opens in a dance club, but there’s a closeup of an eye filled with colors like in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Young people are dancing and having fun. A sultry woman approaches an even more sultry man and grabs his hand. She does some eye flirting and whispers sweet nothings in his ear before leading him to a hotel room. They do some PG sexual relations and the guy is all like “wow that was incredible, wow my orgasms, wow”. She walks away to bathroom, and silhouetted in the doorway she appears to choke him out telekinetically. He dies and froths at the mouth.

The X-Files, Season 1, Episode 14 - Gender Bender

Is it a man? A woman? Kenny G? Who knows?!

Then this woman bends her gender! She really gends her Bender! And then puts on clothes. Cue the music.

The crime had happened in Germantown, Maryland. Witnesses report a man and a woman entering the room, and then a single, different man leaving! Bizarre stuff, but I’ll be dollars to chocolate donuts that Mulder has already cracked this case handily. He scoops up a small sample of the dried, pink froth off the guy’s mouth and keeps it for, you know, posterity.

Cause of death was “blowin’ an artery”. Must’ve been some good sex, heh heh heh HEH HEH HEH HEH HAHAHAHA!! HAHAHA!!!!! HAHAHAHAHEHEHAH!!!!

Scully wonders why the fuck the FBI needs to be involved, but she should know by now that this is going to turn into a hella X-File. Five similar deaths in the last few months, all during sex, all with the froth on their mouths. Two women and three men. Each body showed huge amounts of pheromones; 100x more than normal. The pheromones contain human DNA, but Scully is already skeptical about that. Studies show that humans may not even secret disgusting pheromones!

Pfft. Shut up, Scully, and pay attention. The killer keeps hitting cities going south, so the next stop is, I dunno, Raleigh, North Carolina maybe? Who cares, it’s time to talk about the religious sect. A similar death occured about a year ago outside the sect. They’re like the Amish only creepier, if you can believe it. Sorry to any Amish who might be reading this on their computer made out of tinker toys.

The sect is called “the Kindred”. Scully and Mulder shove off to the small town outside of the sect to talk to some locals at a general store. The owners of the establishment don’t mind the sect one bit; they bring in tourists. In fact, they have photos on the walls of sect members from the ’30s. They’re creepy. You can tell it’s ominous because the ominous music plays, this is how you know how to feel about them! Hey, there goes a group now on horse and buggy. Everyone wave and throw your tomatoes at them.

The X-Files, Season 1, Episode 14 - Gender Bender

According to this map, the Kindred Sect is just up the hill. Next to the Arby’s.

Scully and Mulder leave the store to try a chat with a few of the women, but they’re deliberately ignored. Mulder follows them into the feed store while Scully attempts to chat with one of the younger, more autistic members of the sect. She tries some friendly banter, but he looks like talking to a woman is causing him to cream his pants and he stays quiet until he is asked what his name is. It’s Andrew, and he’s not allowed to talk while in town. She shakes his hand, he starts rubbing it, and Scully looks like she just got pumped full of pheromones. Loaded up. Mulder breaks up the enchantment after leaving the store, and the group leaves on their carriage.

I remember this episode now. It sucks ass.

The FBI agents decide to follow them through the woods to their faux Amish camp. They think they get lost, but they start getting flanked on all sides by a group of members. Scully announces that they’re here to investigate a murder, but Brother Ishmael over her warns them that their weapons are forbidden here in the merry old land of the Kindred. Scully and Mulder just want to ask a few questions but do give up their guns after it is clear that these people are not going to stop bothering them about it. “There’s no reason to be afraid,” says Sister Abby, one of the more congenial members of his little Hell Clan, as she and the rest of her group leads Mulder and Scully into the camp.

The X-Files, Season 1, Episode 14 - Gender Bender

I’ll have the potato skins, and Agent Scully will have the mozzarella sticks.

They enter a house where a table is set and ready for supper. They all do a quick prayer, but Mulder notices one guy coughing his lung out at the table. “We’re looking for someone we believe may have come from here,” Mulder says as every starts scooping mush onto their plates. Scully wants to show them some pictures, but Sister Abby insists that they don’t allow pictures. It’s like, first the guns and now the pictures? Are these people vampires? Do they believe in the soul-capturing powers of Kodak film? Scully’s starting to get peeved until Brother Andrew pipes in with curiosity. The agents offer to show one of them some video surveillance. This guy has committed five awful, murder-y crimes and he will do it again (or your money back).

It’s at this time that a particularly dour looking motherfucker slams his hand down on the table. “Your world does not interest us! We have no need for for your violence or your questions!” Everyone takes in the awkward silence, then Sister Abby stands up, confronts this loud asshole, and puts him in his place. The coughing guy starts choking, and the people stop Scully from performing the Heimlich maneuver under the pretense of “outsiders do not interfere with our way of life” or some other weird nonsense. It’s starting to appear that none of this is worth it whatsoever.

Mulder and Scully get kicked out of the camp and escorted to their car in the rain. “Do you believe all that ‘we take of our own’ business?” Mulder asks Scully, and the answer is obvious. Someone needed taking care of and nobody took care of him! That’s a D- reaction! Mulder isn’t taking this and decides to sneak back into the camp in typical, quintessential Mulder fashion.

The X-Files, Season 1, Episode 14 - Gender Bender

Fucking sucks that we weren’t invited to the Creepy Cult Barn Party.

The house is dark and silent. “Maybe they went to the movies,” Mulder quips. I laughed at that. There’s light in a nearby barn, so the agents creep on over to take a closer look at the ritual unfolding before them. Mulder, ever so curious, sneaks into the barn after the group leaves to investigate a cellar. Scully keeps on peaking, but is stopped by Brother Andrew and his pheromone injection!

“I can give you information,” he tells her after the commercial break (buy war bonds!) and then leads her away. Mulder traverses a dark, narrow underground tunnel and discovers the members chanting and murmuring. Andrew tells Scully that he knows who did the murders. It was his best friend, Brother Martin. “I called him Marty,” he says fondly even though this guy murdered people like a real Marty.

Something gross is happening in the basement. The people are rubbing oil on the dead body of the choking man.

“I need to show you something. Something about Marty,” Andrew says as he barricades the door of the room they’re in with a chair.

Mulder investigates once the people leave the little chamber. Some sort of makeshift cocoon like a sarcophagus covered in clay.

Marty had magazines! Magazines from the other world! He liked the slickness of the paper and the garish, nude ladies within.

Mulder hears approaching footsteps. He’s fucked. He tries running toward the entrance, but there are footsteps coming from there as well. So he jumps through a man-sized hole in the clay tomb, successfully hiding, and discovers that the dead man looks like a woman now. Cool stuff, this gender-bending cult. I wonder who came up with this stupid idea in the writer’s room.

“How did he kill his victims?” Scully asks Andrew. “Does it have something to do with the ceremony in the barn?” Andrew starts rubbing Scully’s hand again and she stares at him with dreamlike vacancy. “Marty is different,” he explains. “We’re all different.” Then he kisses her, and she’s thoroughly seduced! Sex time.

The X-Files, Season 1, Episode 14 - Gender Bender

I named my penis “Marty”.

Mulder interrupts the coitus, so to speak, and throws Andrew off of her. There is a group waiting outside. “I told you not to interfere,” says Sister Abby coldly. There’s a 20-minute staredown before Mulder and Scully walk away back off the camp.

“What the hell were you doing back there?” Mulder asks her.
“I don’t know,” Scully replies hazily. She’s all flushed with primality. It’s disgusting.

Next we’re back at the loud club where a guy attempts to speak on his brick-sized cell phone. A “woman” approaches and seduces the guy with a simple touch on the hand. They go off for some lewd business.

When asked what Mulder saw in the cellar, he tells Scully that it was “Brother Whatshisname in a gopher hole in the wall — buried alive.” He looked like he was pumped full of hormones, the kind that makes a man into a woman or vice versa and this episode is teetering on offensiveness but it hasn’t crossed the line yet, luckily.

A cop stops the couple in the far mid-fuck. While the “woman” talks to the officer, the guy starts convulsing hilariously! The “woman” then kicks the cop’s ass, turns into a man just long enough for the convulsing guy to get a nice, hefty glimpse, then runs off.

“Her touch was electric,” the guy says to Scully and Mulder in his hospital bed. Other than that, nothing unusual! Ha ha ha. Oh wait, he’s remembering something. She turned into a man right before his eyes! Crazy stuff. Off the record right? No homo, Mulder. Please don’t tell anyone. There’s the offensiveness I’ve been waiting for!

The gender bender has taken another victim. He/She monologues toward the corpse about how much “your world” is filled with “pleasures” that “our world” doesn’t have, unless you count “praying to Jesus” and “being rude and snotty” as pleasures.

The rest of the episode sees Scully and Mulder spending suspenseful minutes chasing down the gender bending killer, ol’ Marty. A few Kindred motherfucks are there while Marty is apprehended, and Andrew tells Scully not to hurt him. He knocks the gun out of her hand and they all run off without a trace.

Scully, Mulder, and the local police drive on down to the Kindred camp, which is now completely deserted. The barn is completely sealed off. “I don’t understand how they can just disappear with no means of transportation,” Scully says as the duo runs off through the hayfield. “No earthly means of transportation,” Mulder says, finally shoehorning the alien angle into the story.

They come across a large, empty, matted-down UFO-shaped crop circle in the field…

The X-Files, Season 1, Episode 14 - Gender Bender

This could have come from anything, Mulder! This could have been the local ruffians throwing around a giant manhole cover.

Next Time on the X-Files

Season 1, Episode 15 — “Lazarus”
Scully dies and is brought back to life by a secret, magic alien elixir Mulder found under his kitchen sink.


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Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #936 – “Army of Shadows”

* Part 3 of 7 of the Rise of the Batman storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #936 – “Army of Shadows”! In the previous installment, Batwoman’s training is so hard that everyone mumbles and grumbles. Tim “Red Robin Hamburgers” Drake has a genius grant for Cum Dumpster University and doesn’t have the heart to tell Batman. Kate Kane has what appears to be daddy issues.

Batman is investigating something called “the Colony” based on a Jean-Paul Valley semi-conscious outburst, but now he has a run-in with robot Batmen. This is what he was afraid of, and we’re only three issues into the story!

Alfred showed up for a couple panels, too. I feel that this is noteworthy. Moving on.

Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #936 [September, 2016]
Written by: James Tynion IV
“Army of Shadows”

Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #936

Kate had a really shitty drill sergeant. Verbally and emotionally abusive; called her worthless, an idiot, a cunt (probably). “I’d made the mistake of telling him what I wanted. To be a leader, like my father. Tate never let me live it down.”

She once spent an evening reflecting. Wondering if this is what she wanted to do. Personally, I wonder why anyone would want to do it in the first place. Fuck all that noise entirely! Anyway, she had gone to a bar and closed her eyes listening to the music… when Sergeant Tate showed up right behind her.

“You want to know why I did it? Sometimes you need to shout until they cry.”

And they have a nice little heart-to-heart about why all this abuse is actually a good thing. It’s very touching (?)

In the current day, Kate is sitting in a bar with her ex-girlfriend Renee chatting about how she’s finally doing something she really wants to do with her life. How important it is and how great it feels… “But it’s not working. I feel like my hands are tied behind my back.”

Renee is grumpy and gets up to leave. Kate has always been a leader. Just fucking lead! Don’t ask for advice, worthless idiot cunt! And so on and so forth. It’s very touching (?)

Later, at New Batcave HQ, Red Robin and Batwoman watch Batman get his ass fully kicked by 50 robots on their giant monitors.

“Pretty damn bad.”

“My God… they beat Batman. When did this happen, Red Robin?”

“Three hours ago. He was en route back to the Cave.”

Batwoman notices that the robots are fighting with military precision! “They’re part of an organization named The Colony,” mansplains Red Robin. “That’s all we know.”

Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #936

It’s every man for himself now, Red Robin. I’m getting away from this shit, one-way ticket to Nepal.

It’s time for Red Robin and Batwoman’s heart-to-heart, all like “Batman said you were in charge, right? And then he made all the decisions! But hey, trust the guy. Let him be a frustrating jerk, ok? But since Batman got fucked up, it’s time to step up and make a decision.”

So Batwoman smiles and decides to make some calls to Orphan, Spoiler, Clayface, and… uh… her dad. She calls her dad to say “I MADE DECISIONS!” He’s happy for her. It’s very touching (?)

Orphan leaps onto the roof and dons her mask while military jets fly overhead.

Spoiler was jostled awake and dreads another nightmare training session, but she perks up when she sees Batman getting his ass entirely kicked by 50 robots on their giant monitors. “Is that Batman losing?!” she asks incredulously even though I’ve witnessed Batman losing on many occasions. He let a little girl die in The Long Halloween for criminy’s sake!

The gang is all rounded up, and Batwoman makes her speech: “Batman didn’t want me–”

Hold up, I’m not rewriting all that! Here’s the gist: these Batmen have been trained to find all of them and kill them. The robots are the reason Batman brought everyone together, and now that Batman seems to be out of the picture, it’s up to them to survive without him! Also, she brought in an expert to help: MR. JEHOSAPHAT KANE, HER DEAR FATHER. Please clap.

Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #936

I can’t think of a taller drink of water, myself! It must be the sexy genitals.

Mr. Colonel Kane enters the room with big “oh look at me I’m a tough guy” steps. Red Robin correctly guesses that a platoon was made in Batman’s likeness because “who better?” Then why are they trying to take down the guy they based themselves on, smart guy? Batwoman correctly guesses that maybe Batman is in the way of something. So why are they after Batman’s Dream Team? Clayface correctly guesses that maybe they’re in the way of something.

Orphan hasn’t shown up to the meeting yet because she thinks she can take on 50 robots by herself. We’re going to see how that all plays out and–

“Orphan isn’t responding,” Red Robin says while trying to get ahold of her on the Gigatron Orphan-Finder 5000 Computer. But then the Teratron Orphan-Finder 8000 finds her on the roof battling robots. “Oh God, they’re here,” Red Robin moans.

Col. Kane is like “STAND BACK, POOPYPANTS” and lowers the defensive shielding, allowing the robots to crash through the glass ceiling and descend upon our heroes. This totally smacks of Bad Guy shit, but I’ll allow it for now. Let’s see how this plays out!

The heroes scramble for a fucking plan. They’ve already taken over the computers, so doing anything remotely useful is completely out of the question.

Orphan comes down from the roof, and Col. Kane orders the Batmen open fire on her. Batwoman says “NO!” really loudly like it’s going to make a lick of difference. Luckily, the rounds are just sedatives. “It’ll wear off in minutes,” Col. Kane says. “She’s an impressive one, though, isn’t she? Secure a perimeter around them,” he addresses his robotic crew. “I want to talk.”

Red Robin encourages Batwoman to get her father talking forever so he can have time to get the systems back online. “Forever” is just about how long he’ll need, too. Fortunately for Red Robin, Col. Kane loves to hear his own voice.

“Kate, years ago you–”

Hold up! I’m not rewriting all that! Basically, he says that Batman influenced both of them. Where his daughter wanted to be like him, her father wanted to harness that potential into a Giant Robot Army! “We’re fighting a war on a scale he can barely comprehend, against a foe he’s ignored—and that war has come to Gotham!”

Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #936

You need a spanking and to be put to bed without dinner, and no more TV or video games. Worthless idiot cunt.

Col. Kane goes on to say that all this was what he was training Kate for. Leading a real army! Is she in or out? And she can bring her little friends along too! They could learn a thing or two about not being shitty sidekick-caliber losers.

“We have a problem,” announces one of the Batmen on the computer. Red Robin has been trying to download an internet on the computerweb. He smiles triumphantly that he hacked into their Colony network and put a nasty virus in it! Ha ha ha! And—oh no! It didn’t work! Augh!

So Clayface absorbs his buds within his disgusting, slimy, muddy bulk while Batwoman condemns her father. An escape hatch opens below and they all fall down.

“Should we pursue?” asks one of the Batmen.

“The strike is tomorrow,” responds Col. Kane. “We need to crack the Bat-Computer to finalize our targets. Get our best men in here now, and get this system back up and running.”

“And what about them?”

“She can say what she wants. She knows the truth now. We don’t need to pursue. She’ll come to us.”

It’s very touching.

(?)

Final Thoughts

Oh, and I’m supposed to care about any of this? This is supposed to be Detective Comics, son! Show me some detective work! Someone grab a magnifying glass or something or I’m out.


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Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #64 – “Carnage (Part 5)”

* Part 5 of 6 of the Carnage storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #64 – “Carnage (Part 5)”! In the previous installment, Gwen Stacy died. She died! She’s dead! The escaped Venom Monster killed her! Ha ha! What?!

So they have this to figure out! Everyone’s in a tizzy! What’s going to happen next, I tells ya?! Aaauugh!!

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #64 [October, 2004]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Carnage (Part 5)”

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #64

Spider-Man has had it with this red Venom Beast! *punch*

But yeah, we pick up right where we left off: Peter Parker giving Curt Connors the business until Venom Beast pops out of the bushes ready to choke some idiots. The idiots stare at it as it walks toward them.

Parker panics and asks Connors what the thing does to kill people. “I’ve- I don’t know-” Connors stammers. “The last time I saw it – it was the size of a gerbil. I – I don’t even know what we’re looking at.”

We all get to see what it is that they’re looking at. Right now! In real time! Venom Beast shapeshifts into a fluidy, tentacled Peter Parker. Just like the real Peter Parker, it utters “Beh… beh…” repeatedly. Then it turns back into its horrific regular visage and tries to splat Parker with a horrible, sharp-clawed appendage. “Beh!!”

Beh, indeed.

Parker cartwheels and flips out of the way of the attacks while Connors looks on in shock. “Oh my God! Oh my God!” Connors keeps saying, rather unhelpfully.

“Conners!” Parker yells, including an ‘e’ in the name that doesn’t actually exist. “Can you destroy this?” Connors just looks at him blankly. “Get back to your lab!” Parker yells. “Get in your car and back to your lab. I will meet you there with this thing and you better have a way to kill it!”

Duly noted, son. Perhaps there’s a letter opener on his desk that he can use to give the ne’er-do-well the ol’ stabby-stabby. Meet you there!

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #64

DURR!

Parker continues fighting the thing unsuccessfully. Punching its squishy glowing face and trying to put it in a half-nelson and giving it a wedgie even though it ain’t got no underpants. He bitches and moans in an internal monologue about how shitty Connors is and how he didn’t sign up for any of this while making a huge ruckus at 4am. One guy even leans out his window to tell the kid to shut the fuck up. But he’s Peter Parker. He will never shut the fuck up.

“This is what it has come to?” he thinks. “This is what Spider-Man has brought to the world? A thing! With my face on it! KILLING PEOPLE!!”

Power and responsibility and all that. Uncle Ben is spinning in his grave. Like a top! Can you imagine?? And—wait, what’s that? The Venom Beast suddenly stops fighting. It turns around and flees. Before Parker can say “hey, wait, don’t, I’ll suck your dick if you don’t leave me here” the Venom Beast crashes on top of a cop car, totaling it in front of a couple of coppers who just picked up some fresh donuts. Parker follows, but gets tossed into the windshield of another occupied car. He bounces around traffic for a bit, wasting time, while Venom Beast sucks the cops dry. Yeah baby.

Parker watches in horror while, before his very eyes, the Venom Beast turns these two pigs into white beef jerky. All while looking like a jacked, nude Peter Parker. Indecent is what it is, actually. I’m throwing up right now. Beh… beh…

Elsewhere, and by “elsewhere” I mean “at the lab”, Connors enters elsewhere and spots a glistening, shirtless Peter Parker waiting for him in the dark. “It’s done,” Parker glares alarmingly.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #64

It turned into this insufferable dork with the acne and the miniscule penis.

Parker, who is probably an imposter, describes his fight with himself. “It looked like it constantly needed to rebuild its damaged DNA matrix by feeding off people. I think it needed me in particular because we share DNA. That’s why it was at my house. I don’t know if it knew why it was coming at me or not…”

He goes on to explain a realization. It wasn’t a damaged version of himself he was fighting. It was his father!

Connors looks at him like “Beh…?”

After a time, Parker regained composure and started fighting it again. It’s not really his dad! This was just some sort of bastardization whose ass he was about to kick! Rawr! So Parker continued to do just that. There’s a montage of him fighting the Beast, culminating to an uppercut to the teeth that knocks it down a fiery pit. It tries to grapple its way back up, but no success. It falls into fire. It’s dead.

Or is it…?!

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #64

We were supposed to be partners in crime! We were supposed to be bros! Now what? Who am I supposed to bro down with now?!

So Parker yells in Connors’ face while the latter tries to apologize for his silly shenanigans. “YOU!! KILLED!! GWEN!!” Parker screams, revving up for the punch that will push Connors’ teeth back through his skull so hard that they’ll land in Paraguay. But then… he stops himself and starts sobbing while Connors looks thankful that he wasn’t just disemboweled though his mouth.

The next morning, Connors arrives at the 11th precinct to confess to the murders of 1) Gwen, and 2) whoever else.

Parker is up at 7:42am sitting and frowning shirtlessly on the foldout bed. MJ pads up in ladybug slippers and asks if he’s ok. After a shaky exchange, Parker tells MJ that he’s done being Spider-Man. For real this time. It’s a real racket, and he just wants to do his physics homework and jack off like a normal teenager, is that so much to ask?

The police are at the lab questioning the Dean, who insists that the professors have been free to perform their own experiments without admin oversight. Ben Reilly shows up all “whuzzat!” when they tell him that Connors has been taken into custody for the *flips pages* murder… of… *flips pages* Phil Hartman? Whoops, wrong file.

Anyway, they’re closing down the lab for good. Find a new job, Reilly. The Dean seriously tells him this. Don’t professors teach? Isn’t that a thing that professors have to do since they’re, you know, professors?

Ah well. Reilly asks if he can go in and grab his stuff, which he is allowed to do.

So what does this slick fucker do? He pops open the refrigeration unit and takes the tube full of Peter Parker’s blood.

You know, like an asshole.

Final Thoughts

OK, fine, perhaps Curt Connors’ intentions were good, albeit misguided. But what about this Ben Reilly guy? Speaking of which, why are there so many Bens in Spider-Man? Ben Reilly. Ben Urich. Uncle Ben. It’s a conspiracy of Bens! Let’s get to the bottom of this first, then if we have time, maybe we’ll work on the Venom Beast problem.


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Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #935 – “Apocalypse Now”

* Part 2 of 7 of the Rise of the Batman storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #935 – “Apocalypse Now”! In the previous installment, Batman collects a small army consisting of Batwoman and a few other no-names in order to go against Forces of Ev-il. Why? Because Batman discovered a drone that looked way cooler than any technology he knew about, so now he’s scared.

But he should be! Someone is raising an army themselves of robot batmen. All Batman has to do is knockout a satellite or something and take these robots offline! That’s my idea, at least. Batman will likely have a worse idea, like punching his way out. Always with the punching.

Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #935 [August, 2016]
Written by: James Tynion IV
“Apocalypse Now”

Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #935

More like Defective Comics. Ha! The members of the Unnamed Squadron of Dunces are running around like chickens with their heads cut off as they scramble to fight a trillion Jokers. A gaggle of hyena-laughing Joaquin Phoenixes. Red Robin, Cluemaster, and whomever else is involved. I don’t remember, nor do I care. “This is too much,” Red Robin whines. “Shut it down!”

Batman furrows his already-furrowed brow and tells him that the session isn’t over yet. Red Robin overrides the program and the Jokers melt into horrible visages that poof into eventual nothingness. The crew leaves the room dejected. “You let us run three hours, Batwoman,” Red Robin grumbles. “These are attacks designed to stump Batman. You could have hurt one of us.”

Batwoman has her reasons for pushing her charges to their absolute fucking limits. She needed to see how they would act when pushed past the point of exhaustion! Did Red Robin still have time to whip his dick out and jerk off? Yes?? Then he wasn’t tired enough! Learn how to get so exhausted that you can’t even jerk off, then you jerk off through the exhaustion! Fundamentals! Basics! Let’s take it to the top, people!

After going to each person one-by-one and telling them when they suck so hard, Batwoman accuses them all of not taking this seriously. And don’t tell her that Batman would never push anyone this hard! Batman’s a pussy. Batwoman is here to make sure your puny bodies are whipped into shape.

Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #935

So make like Tommy Wiseau and get your ass back in The Room!

Cluemaster, who now goes by Spoiler for reasons that are befuddling to me, proves that she isn’t taking this seriously: “We’ve all been in the thick of it before… Look, we’re in this crazy awesome new superhero base. When do we get around to some superheroing?”

Red Robin points to every bell and whistle in the new base and compares it to the Batcave. As in, it’s better than the Batcave! For one, it’s not underground. For another, it’s right in the middle of the city! They can get anywhere in two minutes!

Batwoman takes a look around at the $460,000,000,000 worth of equipment and architecture and sneers. “If you have an issue with Batman’s rules, you can tell him yourself. I have places to be.” And she fucks on out of there, leaving the rest of the crew simpering in their pooped pants.

Well, pooped pants or no pooped pants, Red Robin decides to take it upon himself to confront Batman:

“Look, I don’t want to question your methods–”

“Of course you do.”

That shuts up Red Robin for about three seconds before he presses on with his incessant whining. And another thing, they should be out there. What threat is so huge that it’s keeping everyone from being out there right now, and inside fighting make-believe Jokers? Hmm? Eh? Huh? “What do you know, Batman?” he asks as they enter a shithole of an apartment building.

“I know that something is very wrong here. It’s where Jean-Paul Valley’s been living for the last three months. This is Azrael’s base of operations.” Batman opens the door to a stained apartment with a shrine to the Jesus cross on one end of the room, and a whole hospital room setup on the other end.

“Right now, it’s Dr. Thompkins’ secret clinic that’s keeping her patients who don’t jump off roofs by choice,” says the doctor snidely as she cares for a patient in hella traction. Batman needs to talk to Jean-Paul, but the kid is nearly dead and can only speak by pointing his eyes at a card that says “BEES”, but only if needs to indicate bees. “He needs to be taken to a real hospital, Bruce,” says Dr. Leslie Thompkins, who has got a good head on her shoulders. Batman is like “fuck real hospitals”.

Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #935

If you keep speaking in riddles I’ll smother you with a pillow.

“Shadows… shadows under the surface… think they’re fighting a war… what they’ll do… unforgiveable… the colony… COLONY IS HERE.” Jean-Paul’s eyes widen. Thompkins tells the Batfella that the kid needs his rest, especially since he’s talkin’ cockamamie. Batman knows when he’s not wanted (haha, that’s not true at all!) and leaves with Red Robin.

Batman’s gonna do some info-digging on this “colony” thing. Red Robin, you can help by going the fuck home. Red Robin doesn’t go the fuck home, not until he gets an answer as to why he was brought in for this mission in the first place. So Batman nuzzles his little half-boner for a minute.

“You always insisted you weren’t Robin… you always kept yourself at a distance… I respected that, but I need you to know. You were Robin, to me at least… You don’t have to pull away anymore, Tim. You can come in. Gotham City is safer with you in it.

“…thanks, Bruce.”

Red Robin later returns home to his Spoiler girlfriend Stephanie Brown. She asks why he didn’t tell Batman what he wanted to tell him. Tim lifts his shirt, revealing 12-pack abs, and frowns. One genius grant a year from this university, and it’s a fast-track to working with the best scientific minds in the country… so, yeah, there’s that… but also… you know… uh… Gotham City, y’know? And–

Tim is down to his underwear when a rapping on the window gets their attention. Orphan is home! But Steph kicks her out so that she and Tim can bone down on each other. “I thought Batman set her up with her own place?” Tim asks as Orphan swings back out to the city. Well, Orphan doesn’t like being alone. Go figure.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Tim feels that he owes Batman, and that he owes Steph, and these are two bad reasons to not go to College State University U and earn that degree! She thinks he’s scared to go to college! Is that what it is, Tim? You fuckin’ afraid?

They laugh before something lewd happens. We need to move on now.

Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #935

Don’t you dare tell me what I know to be true! Arrgh! I hate it when people tell me true things!

Kate Kane returns to find her dad getting fancy for the dinner with the joint chiefs! Snazzy bowtie and everything. Looking like quite the penguin, sir. He can tell that Kate’s not feeling 100%, so what’s up, kiddo? Gotham City’s a shithole? Tell me about it.

Mr. Kane talks about how when his sister – Kate’s Aunt Martha – started dating Thomas Wayne, the two families were beside themselves. This was some Capulet/Montague shit! The Kanes and the Waynes have been at each other’s throats for generations! Anyway, Mr. Kane took Martha right in front of the family crest and reminded her that Kanes stand together! That’s why they’ve always been a good military family! The Waynes? Pffft. They’re a good blowjob family. Fuck them. “Their motto might as well be ‘We Stand Apart’. And Bruce… Batman… he’s the worst of the lot. Sure, he’ll partner up when he needs to, but wars are fought with armies, not lone men. The war he’s fighting, he can’t win.”

Kate starts to open her mouth to disagree, but holds back. He doesn’t want to defend Batman in front of her father, obviously. TENSION IS IN THE AIR.

Elsewhere, Batman is returning home via Batmobile. He’s on the horn with Alfred, who needs to tap into the Batinternet and find something on “The Colony”. Alfred accepts this tedious tack with nothing short of direct scorn. Then Batman notices something on his radar… “My sensors tell me I’m alone on this road… I’m not alone.”

And, indeed, two fancy flying cars flank the Batmobile and crash into it. He maneuvers out of the way and, eventually, escapes. Sort of. There’s an explosion that happens that busts up his ride, but never mind! Batman got out safe.

And in front of robots.

Detective Comics (Vol. 1), Issue #935

JUDGE DREDD IS TAKING YOU IN.

Final Thoughts

The Rise of the Batmen! That’s it. That’s all I’ve got. See you next time, Batfriends.


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