Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #67 – “Jump the Shark”

* Part 2 of 6 of the Superstars storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #67 – “Jump the Shark”! In the previous installment, it becomes apparent that Peter Parker and Wolverine switched bodies somehow. The issue is chock full of antics, like “Wolverine cuts off a finger” and “Peter Parker goes to school lol”. Not much else happens, but Parker Body does have eyes on the teenage girls, which is creepy.

I realize now I should be calling them Wolverine Brain and Parker Brain. Too late now!


Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #67 [December, 2004]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Jump the Shark”

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #67

The car that Wolverine Body totaled contains no survivors. Just kidding. Everyone survives for some reason. The cops are like “is anyone hurt?” and the one dude is like “there is a car on me.” Ah, it’s Wolverine Body trapped under the car, and cops tell him to come out with his hands up and no funny mutant business, please. Wolverine Body removes the car from his person and looks up at the cops like a scared little child. Because he is a scared little child. Little pants-pooping Parker.

Meanwhile, Parker Body’s class stares at the carnage out of the window. He grimaces and hangs his head down in embarrassment as the students are like “lookee there” and “wowzers!” The teacher tries to restore order, but it ain’t working.

“Whoah, you see who the dude is?” says one kid.

“Is that the guy from the X-Men?” says another. Parker Body facepalms himself into singularity and runs out of the room, drawing the attention of MJ.

Wolverine Body tries to talk nice to the cops, but they’re all a hair away from slamming their knees on his neck. “HANDS OVER YOUR HEAD!!” one says. Wolverine Body complies, but (painfully) SNIKTs out all his razors. Now the cops are telling him to drop the claws while they call for backup. “I think they’re attached,” Wolverine Body says as they continue to tell him to lose the weapons. After unsuccessfully keeping the claws at bay, Wolverine Body decides to make a run for it. Meanwhile, Parker Body is staring at the scene in abject horror from behind a tree.

Wolverine Body gets tased. Parker Body knocks his head against the tree in frustrated disgust. The cops grab Wolverine Body and push him into the car, but Parker Body runs out to try and stop it. As the car drives off, Wolverine Body advises the kid to not go out in public without the costume. That’s important, because if everyone knows that Spider-Man is Peter Parker then the Feds will try to harness his dick and balls for science, as we all know.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #67

Oh sure, I’ll just put on the spandex and reverse time. Nice plan, Colonel Einstein.

In jail, Wolverine Body gets one phone call. He decides to get the Xavier School of Rampant Child Molestation on the horn. I guess they keep the main phone in the hallway where just anyone can pick it up and start talking, because Kitty Pryde happens to walk by it as it’s ringing.

What ensues is 100 panels of Wolverine Body trying to convince her that it’s Peter Parker, that they switched bodies, and that Wolverine’s body is really smelly and itchy, and that he’s in jail, and that – hello? Why are you laughing uproariously?

Storm grabs the phone from Pryde and starts talking, but the police tase Wolverine Body through the bars because he accidentally SNIKTed again. By the time they switch bodies back, Wolverine’s going to have uncontrollable epilepsy!

In a back alley, Parker Body contemplates putting on the skimpy costume. “I’m not wearing this stupid thing,” he says as he pulls on only the mask. He adjusts the cans of web goo on his wrists and starts climbing the wall. “Look at that – he’s got little sticky spider fingers. Cripes! That is creepy.”

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #67

Squashed like a fucking spider!

We are treated to a few hilarious pages of Parker Body trying to web his way to the next building with absolutely no success. I won’t spoil it here, but penises are a’floppin’!

Wolverine Body enjoys the peace and quiet of the smelly, pee-soaked jail cell until he catches the newly-arrived Parker Body kicking cops’ asses. Like, handily. Like, they’re all unconscious now.

“Oh my God!! What did you do??”
“Come on!!”

“What did you do?”

“Let’s get out of here!”

“You beat up the police!”

“Just a little, come on!”

He tells Wolverine Body to flick out a claw and pick the lock. So he flicks out a claw and punches through the lock, which is close enough. Wolverine Body flails around because he caught a rogue bullet in the forehead. So Parker Body pulls it straight out with his hands! Surprise! That doesn’t hurt at all, right? Quit crying!

“Bub! You are taking very bad care of my body,” gripes Parker Body. “I asked you to do one thing and–”

“Where’s my costume?” Wolverine Body interrupts. Parker Body pulls off his masks and says, yeah, he’s not wearing the fucking costume. And he calls the mask smelly, which prompts a complete defensive rebuttal from the kid in the smelly body. “You need to do a full body shampoo, man. You need to wash everywhere!”

They yell at each other about what each did wrong for a bit. Went to jail this. Beat up the police that.

“Kid, I need you to think. What were you doing last night? What is the last thing you remember doing in your own body?” And Wolverine Body says he was doing homework, talking to MJ on the phone, jacking off, and reading The Hobbit. Nothing about this weird body swap is his damn fault! It must be some eerie mutant shit going on, courtesy of the Xavier School of Fingerpainting. “Why do I even have to argue this!??! You know this was your fault!”

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #67

You’re going to do what to my face?… You did WHAT to the car?! Keep it in your pants, man.

Arguing doesn’t stop until they hear a nearby giant boom. It’s the guy from another storyline with the magic sound guns. I’d link the storyline, but I don’t fucking remember where he was from anymore! But he’s trying to rob a bank and it’s not working very well because Wolverine and Peter Parker are there to fuck things up for him…

…until they start bickering again. Parker needs to go through puberty. Wolverine needs a bath. Then Parker Body shoots the Electromagnetic Man in the chest with web gunk and Wolverine Body smashes him in the face with a fist. Business as usual, yo.

Luckily, they’re saved by the newly arriving, impossibly attractive X-Men. With a wry smirk, Jean Grey approaches Wolverine Body and is like “LOGAN, I TOLD YOU IF YOU HIT ON ME ONE MORE TIME THAT I’D DO SOME FREAKY MIND POWERS ON YOU, AND YOU HIT ON ME, SO I DID SOME FREAKY MIND POWERS, AND THAT IS WHY YOU’RE IN PETER PARKER’S BODY.”

So the two of them yell at Jean Grey to fix it. Wolverine Body tells her that she ruined his life. She tells him to cork it as she touches both their foreheads and does the boogity boogity.

It works.

Peter Parker is like “everyone hates you guys not because you’re mutants, but you’re $%!$ $@^# @^#!^! ^#!&!#^! #^!^@!&@ !@^!&#&$*!” Then he flies away crying his eyes out.

“How was high school, Logan?” Cyclops asks. Wolverine smiles instead of sneers, so it must have been fun enough!

At home, Parker apologizes to MJ about being a jerk, because he most assuredly was. They embrace in a hug, then MJ tells him the following:

“That thing you tried to do this morning, can we not do that till we’re older?”

PARKER MAKES A FACE.

Final Thoughts

Hooooo-weeeee!! How’s that for a yarn, goddamnit! Now that we’re done with that unpleasantness, we can move onto other stories like “Parker sat on a thumbtack” and “Wilson Fisk killed the entire population of Queens by farting”.

Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #614 – “Chapter 7: The Joke”

* Part 7 of 12 of the Hush storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #614 – “Chapter 7: The Joke”! In the previous installment Bruce’s wonderfully dull evening at the opera is interrupted by that damnable jester Harley Quinn! And not only is it interrupted, but bullets start flying. Seems a little too off the deep end even for Quinn, right? Something sardine-y is going on here.

But that’s not the best part! Thomas Elliot gets shot in the chest by the Joker! The Joker! I can’t wait to see what’s up that guy’s sleeve. He always makes me laugh! HA HAAAA!!


Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #614 [June, 2003]
Written by: Jeph Loeb
“Chapter 7: The Joke”

Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #614

As usual, per the cover art, Joker looks gross and I don’t want to fuck him.

Batman has known Joker longer than any other Gotham villain. They go waaaaay back; back when they were both pooping in their diapers. And that was just a year ago! Batman is still peeved that the Joker shot Barbara Gordon and left her for dead, that really ruffled his feathers. “Deemed ‘insane’ by the courts, he never went to jail for the crime.”

Little is known about the Joker’s origin, and he likes to keep it that way, for real. And while Batman is remembering all this helpful information for us, the readers, he is pummeling the shit out of Joker’s face to the point where Joker is begging him to stop.

Joker killed Jim Gordon’s ex-wife. Joker beat Jason Todd to death. And now he killed Thomas Elliot! That’s the last straw! *pummel*

“Stop…. stop… stop…” he says. But Batman will never stop.

Not until the artists run out of red ink for the comic book.

Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #614

Get ready to poop out all your teeth, you green-haired ninny!

“Batman… I… I… I’m innocent,” Joker gurgles, rictus smile, bulging eyes, handsome…uh…makeup. “Ya see… I didn’t kill this guy.”

Harley Quinn emerges behind Batman with an oversized novelty hammer, hissing at Joker to be quiet. Batman is too distracted to notice… until the last second, when Batman ducks and Quinn smashes Joker’s arm instead. Whoops!

Quinn is about to start beating up Batman for questioning Joker’s innocence for even a fraction of an iota. But Joker insists that Batman check his gun – nothing but blanks! Batman doesn’t care! He pushes Joker up against the wall by his spindly little clown neck. He thinks of Batgirl, how she used to love and laugh and now she’s holed up in her apartment playing stinky Oracle.

All because of this one asshole. Mr. Jokes himself. “And I tell myself that Barbara would understand what I have to do tonight.”

Batman is just about to break out the brass knuckles when Catwoman wraps her cat-o’-nine-tails around Batman’s neck. “I don’t want to fight you,” she says. “I’ll do what I have to do to keep you from doing something you’ll only regret.” But Batman thinks he won’t regret nuthin’. He wants to force-feed the Joker black bean chili until his gut explodes.

Catwoman persists because she knows, if the roles were reversed, that Batman would butt his way in and try to stop it.

Now Batman thinks about Jason Todd and his puny little bashed-in face. He should never let him be Robin. Dick Grayson has skills. Jason Todd had anger issues, and that’s really it. Not enough of what it took to be Robin. And for that, Batman bears responsibility for Todd’s death. Good riddance is what I say!

Batman stops Catwoman by punching the absolute fucking shit out of her very injured shoulder.

Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #614

A man after my own heart!

The pain is so intense that Catwoman is rendered unconscious and/or completely dead, it’s hard to say. But one thing is for sure: Batman doesn’t want Catwoman to be his next victim. If that happens, where is Bruce going to get some PUSSY?? PUN INTENDED!!! *rimshot*

The distraction has led to Joker running away down the alley hootin’ and screamin’. But he doesn’t get away. “There is nothing I can do to him that would cause him the agony that he has brought upon others,” Batman says as he unzips his pants and lubes up his dick. “But I can come close.”

While Batman fantasizes about how he’s going to murder Joker, someone from behind starts firing a gun yelling stuff like “STAND UP AND PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR!”

“I may no longer carry a badge, but I still believe in the policeman’s oath to protect and serve. All I can do is appeal to you through our friendship. I wouldn’t let you do this when he shot my daughter… killed my wife. I don’t know how I could stop you, but I won’t let you throw your life away.”

This fucking guy? He doesn’t understand shit.

After some tough talk about how Batman is not a killer and never will be, and if he will be then he will be brought to justice, yada yada yada, Batman stands up and all but puts his head on Jim Gordon’s shoulder.

Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #614

Yeah? Would an innocent guy be bleeding all over the wet pavement? Didn’t think so.

“It was from an alley like this one that a man with a gun emerged from the darkness and murdered my mother and father. In that single moment, my childhood ended. I made a promise on the grave of my parents that I would rid this city of the evil that took their lives. Tonight… I nearly became part of that evil…”

Somewhere, in the far off distance, a man flips a coin in his hand…

Final Thoughts

Batman is such a pussy, dude. Why wouldn’t he kill Joker? Everyone could pretend a bus hit him or something. Pretty clean and cut and dry to me, in my opinion. No more Joker. Bye bye. So simple.

Ugh.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #66 – “Even We Don’t Believe This”

* Part 1 of 6 of the Superstars storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #66 – “Even We Don’t Believe This”! In the previous storyline, Gwen gets killed by a horrible laboratory experiment! No foolin’. She’s goddamn dead, and Peter Parker is really getting sick of everything breaking bad since he started the whole Spider-Man gig in the first place.

So he vows to quit.

Or does he?

Gwen’s dead, you guys. This is some real shit. Parker is a depressed lump now. He’s a useless sack of dog bones! Go stick your head in the toilet, kid.


Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #66 [December, 2004]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Even We Don’t Believe This”

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #66

It’s a sunny Friday morning and Peter Parker is sleeping with his jeans half down, exposing his polkadot underpants. Aunt May yells at the little fucker to get the fuck up, because there are boxes to pack. Well, May will be packing boxes. Parker will just be packing fudge. Get to school kid, you’re bothering me.

An anxiety-heightened Peter doubles over on his way to the basement to check on his super secret Spider-Man-type shit. He opens a Geometry book and opens his eyes in horror. “Oh no…” he thinks as Mary Jane shows up in the basement to give him the ol’ fuck-me eyes. She gives him a big fat hug, and Parker smiles wryly.

Something’s going on and it’s not only fishy, it stinks like fish, it does!

Meanwhile, a disgustingly-jacked Wolverine wakes up in his stinky, sweaty apartment. Or at least it appears to be Wolverine. This particular Wolverine has never woken up and looked like Wolverine before. He comments upon his rippling muscles, his atrocious body odor, his impossibly hairy hairiness, and… what are these things between his fingers?

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #66

Ooof! Tetanus shot time!

“What do you mean you’re not going to school?” asks MJ.

“I’m going to pass on all that,” responds Parker.

“Is something going on?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Do you know?”

“What?”

“You tell me.”

“What are we talking about?”

“You tell me.”

“Are you going back to being Spider-Man?”

“What?”

“Do you have to go out as Spider-Man?”

“Spider-Man, yes.”

This goes on for some time. The gist is that the costume is at MJ’s house and he needs her to scoot that stupid little butt of hers over there and grab it for him. “Trust me – high school is a colossal waste of time. You’ll see when you get older. There’s nothing there you can’t learn on a good hunt.”

Parker leaves MJ confounded as he slips back into the basement where he hears Aunt May hollerin’! Someone’s on the phone for him. It’s the Daily Bugle. Get it while the gettin’s good, it’s probably J. Jonah Jameson putting you on Sewage Treatment Plant Opening Day correspondent duty.

Parker grabs the phone and is met with the yelling cacophony of Wolverine on the other end of the line. “Is it you? Is it you? What did you do??”

The smarmy, sneering kid asks who the FUCK he’s talking to. And the pieces are all coming together! Peter Parker is Wolverine. Wolverine is Peter Parker. “Why am I in your body? Why am I looking at you in a mirror of some gross hotel in the middle of God-knows-where? What did you do to me? What kind of mutant virus did you infect me with? Why am I in your stinky dog body? Are you in my body? Are you–”

Fuck.

OK, here’s the plan, dipshit. Parker Body is going to go to school. He’s going to go to school and he’s going to do book learning and he’s going to stare at all the jailbait, sound cool?

“No.”

Well, that settles that! And I—HEY!

Parker Body says he’ll meet Wolverine Body, but Wolverine Body says he’s cut ten days this semester already and he can’t miss more school. So just go.

“OK, all right, where is it?”

“Just follow the kids. Ask someone, not my aunt, walk out of there without talking to her.”

Then they go their separate ways after Wolverine Body accidentally chops the phone in half… and, uh, severs his little finger.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #66

Whoopsie-doodle! Another boner!

Luckily, Wolverine can regenerate a finger in about ten seconds, so all is well.

At school, MJ catches Parker Body staring at the cheerleaders and drooling like a registered sex offender.

“Where’s your book bag?” she asks.

“Book bag?”

“The bag with your books in it.”

“Dunno.”

“Are you okay?”

“Not even a little.”

Parker Body tells MJ to go play with her Barbie while he has stuff to do. MJ hands him a book bag with his costume in it. He stares at it with a shrug. “That ain’t happening.”

Long story short, Wolverine Body catches Parker Body whaling on a school security guard on the grounds! D’oh! He asks Parker Body what the ungodly fuck he thinks he’s doing. Confrontations abound. Wolverine Body tells his counterpart that he needs to go to class post haste! No skipping!

“I came to the building. You said go to the building. I saw your mouthy chick. What else you want from me?”

“They take attendance in the class!! If I skip… I’ll get expelled!!”

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #66

One more accidental SNIKT from you and it’ll be your ass on a platter.

Eventually, Parker Body is persuaded to go to class. You know, for the lols. He shows up to class and immediately gets up to pee, much to the chagrin of the teacher. “Mr. Parker, the bathroom is for students who come to class on time,” he says. Then he tells him to plant that ass back in his chair or so help him god he will expel him so fast it’ll launch his poop to the ceiling. Parker Body makes the most sourpuss face I’ve ever seen and he sits back down.

Behind him, Flash Thompson flicks his little ear and snickers. Parker Body turns around and growls, causing Flash’s eyes to grow to the size of dinner plates.

45 minutes later, Parker Body has learned a lot about E. E. Cummings! Meanwhile, Wolverine Body hides behind a dang tree wondering if he should call the X-Men about this monstrosity. His train of thought is cut off by a police chase where the passenger of the car is trying to shoot the cops with shitty little pistol. Wolverine Body, impulsively, SNIKTs and leaps onto the car. He fucking smashes into the windshield, tumbles backward, smashes into the fucking cop car’s windshield, and eats it on the road. The car flies into the air and plummets toward Wolverine Body, who looks rather forlorn at that particular moment.

The students in the classroom have gathered around the window. Parker Body frowns heavily and calls the kid an idiot.

TO BE CONTINUED?? Ah yes, to be continued!

Final Thoughts

This is exciting, isn’t it, folks?! Is Parker Body going to statutory rape a teenage girl? Is Wolverine Body going to cut off is dick just to see if it will grow back? All this and less in Issue #67!

Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #613 – “Chapter 6: The Opera”

* Part 6 of 12 of the Hush storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #613 – “Chapter 6: The Opera”! In the previous installment, Batman fights Superman and wins.

An issue called “The Opera” sounds infinitely exciting. I can’t wait to fucking read this garbage. I hope Pavarotti makes an appearance in all his fat glory.


Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #613 [May, 2003]
Written by: Jeph Loeb
“Chapter 6: The Opera”

Batman (Vol. 1), Issue #613

Wonderful. Catwoman’s dead. Harley Quinn’s got an oversized novelty gun aimed at Batman’s head from a poster on the wall. Things are getting grim in Gotham. For once.

Bruce Wayne is at the Gotham City Opera House where he’s fidgety and antsy because he’d much rather be prowling around as Batman. Every second not out there pounding the pavement is another second that his antagonist will either get away with it, or harm more people, or cancel Severance. And believe me, you don’t want any of those scenarios.

Alfred makes a quip about Batman cavorting around in his pajamas, which is exactly the same joke I’ve made about almost every superhero twenty-five times. Alfred is the fucking man.

The intrepid butler asks Bruce to please make it until at least intermission. And Lucius Fox wants to speak with him after the show, something about *rifles through notes* WayneTech business. Cancel? OK. How about Selina Kyle joining you this evening? Does that tickle your scrotum, sir? I mean… fancy?

Bruce doesn’t like the silence of his opponent. He also doesn’t like the way the silence is silent. As if they were instructed to be silent. By an even more silent boss!

Anyway, it’s showtime, baby. “Bruce! Really glad you could make it,” jubilates Dr. Thomas Elliot, Surgeon Extraordinaire. Selina is there with her sexy pixie cut, so all is right with the world.

Bruce looks positively bored already as he and Selina take their seats. His father liked the opera; the whole tragedy and sadness of it. Only fitting that the dude got a BULLET in his BRAIN. lol.

Bruce whispers to Selina, asking how she knows Thomas Elliot. She doesn’t. She knows Leslie, and it’s that old hag’s benefit. She’s here as her “date”. Thomas shushes them because the stupid opera is going to begin.

The fat guy in the Pagliacci costume literally bangs a drum and yells “I’VE RUN OUT OF RICE KRISPIES!” I kid you not. I’d take a screenshot of it, but I don’t wanna.

I’d rather show this one:

Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #613

Good opera brings a single tear to my eye.

Well, if it isn’t Harley Quinn in the costume! She pops out of it looking quite not-fat-at-all, as it were. Holding her giant stupid gun, she is quick to remark “OPERA, SCHMOPERA!” as goons in masks in the orchestra pit pull out their own guns. “Ladies and jerks, there’s been a slight change in tonight’s show,” she says, smiling in that way she always does.

Thomas Elliot, safe upstairs in the box, announces that he will Call The Police! But then Harley Quinn does about forty somersaults in the air and kicks the phone out of Thomas’ hand. Maybe Thomas shouldn’t have yelled his intentions. Maybe the police would be here by now if he didn’t say anything out of his dick-filled mouth.

Bruce knew that Harley Quinn was working with Poison Ivy. And now that Ivy is back in Gotham, so too is Quinn. She gets up in Bruce’s frowny face, then she gets up in Selina’s icy face, then Leslie goes “WAAAHH PLEASE DON’T HURT ME!”, but Quinn sets her sights on Thomas’ pretty green Lifesaver-looking necklace pendant. Bruce recognizes that from when they were kids; it was a gift to Thomas from his mother. Bruce tried to roughhouse to steal it once and made Thomas extremely pissy angry.

Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #613

Mmmm, is that sour apple?

Quinn, of course, steals it away from him right now in the present at this juncture. The next thing everyone knows, Quinn flips back down to the stage and opens fire in the crowd along with her goons. Of course, since this is DC Comics, no one dies. They just run around hollerin’.

“Harley has never tried something this… big,” thinks Bruce. It’s quite uncouth of her, actually, if you think about it.

Selina yells at Thomas to keep down, but the dude gets up and tries to make his way to the stage to steal back the necklace. “No one takes from me. No one.”

Selina turns around to talk to Bruce, but he gone. Leslie thinks he stepped out to powder his butt, but in actuality he went to go dress up as Batman (after powdering his butt). Batman descends upon the stage, chuckling to himself that he didn’t actually make it to intermission like Alfred wanted.

Batman keeps the orchestra pit goons at bay with all manner of useful bat goodies: mace, smoke, flash grenades, batarangs, toothpicks, and bottles of sweet, sweet hooch. After the goons are rendered coughing and sad, Batman chases Quinn backstage. His cape is full of bullet holes, and he spends more time ruminating upon who orchestrated this stupid robbery instead of actually stopping the robber. Quinn shoots down a few sandbags, crushing Batman’s skull into pebbles. “Ugnn…” he says as if it barely hurts. Cool thing to happen following head surgery, but this isn’t the first time he should have died since the story started.

“Ivy and I had a sweet thing going before this whole mess got started – maybe I should go off-book and blow your brains out and end it right now!” she cackles. Oh, please do! I want to see that in the worst way.

But, unfortunately, Catwoman leaps onto stage with a roundhouse kick to Quinn’s face. Then she rips one of her stupid jester bells off, which makes Quinn sadface. Batman gets back into the fray, and between he and Catwoman, Harley Quinn is neutralized!

The crowd goes wild!

Catwoman is bleeding all over the place, so Leslie comes down to help with her trusty first aid kit that she happens to have on her person for some reason.

And a defeated Quinn escapes with Thomas’ necklace.

Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #613

Get back here, you mentally-challenged chimpanzee.

Batman kicks the door leading to the rainy alley, but Quinn is now nowhere to be found.

But he finds someone else.

“No!”

“NO!”

Oh yes!

Thomas Elliot lies dead on the street with a bullet hole through the chest. Cackling above him is a maniacal clown kind of person.

It’s Joker Time, Babydoll!

Final Thoughts

Finally, we’re going to get some Joker action in this bitch. And not a moment too soon; all these C-list Gotham villains are really starting to stick in my craw. Harley Quinn?? Get the fuck out of my face with that shit.

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 4), Issue #12

* Part 6 of 6 of the Civil War II storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ms. Marvel (Vol. 4), Issue #12! In the previous installment, Kamala done fucked up and now she’s outside the good graces of both Captain Marvel AND her best ol’ buddy Bruno. Bruno is so upset, in fact, that he’s planning on getting a scholarship for a school in Wakanda! She may never see him again!

Kamala is a sad sack and this whole issue will reflect it. Someone stop her before she ties up a very fashionable noose.


Ms. Marvel (Vol. 4), Issue #12 [December, 2016]
Written by: G. Willow Wilson

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 4), Issue #12

Kamala doesn’t pass through security so easily at the Newark Liberty International Airport. “Let me guess,” she says scornfully. “There’s some kind of security alert for a random guy named Khan?”

The security officer admits that that’s true, and we here reading the comic are clutching our pearls and screaming RACIAL PROFILING! Satisfied that Kamala isn’t going to do a 9/11, the officer gives her back her passport and she’s on her way.

“This is the first time Ammi and Abu have let me travel alone,” she thinks. She’s headed to Karachi to visit about 30 family members, and it will be nice to get out of Jersey City for a little bit. Away from Ms. Marvel responsibilities and Stinky Bruno and anything and everything!

But then she sees Bruno in the airport heading for the Birnan Zana, Wakanda gate. They catch each other’s eye, and Kamala looks mortified. Time to find a new best friend! You like MMORPGs, right Kamala? School is full of incels who are into that nerd shit!

Soon enough, Kamala is on her own plane to Pakistan. 21 hours and two layovers later, she arrives at her destination. Mirka Andolfo, the comic book artist, made Pakistan tinged brown because any country with brown people in it also has brown sky, of course.

“KAMALA!” yells about… yep, about 30 people in the airport. Kamala looks nervous. It’s her mom’s mother as well as every other bum in her extended family. “Here’s the nice thing about grandmas,” she says. “No matter how far away they live and how long it’s been since you saw them last, they always make you feel like you never left.”

 Ms. Marvel (Vol. 4), Issue #12

Eep! Oh no! Family!

HOW TOUCHING. Everyone call your grandma right now and say hi before she gets dementia.

Kamala hasn’t been in her grandmother’s house since she was about nine or ten years old. Her grandparents got married and moved into the top floor. Then their kids got married and they moved into other apartments; pretty soon the whole house was lousy with relatives. Kamala recalls that her mother was pregnant with her in this apartment building, so technically it’s her first home. Maybe. Not really, though. I wouldn’t count it.

Grandma – Naani – shows her her bedroom for the next month: her mother’s room when she was a girl. Kamala gets settled in while a cousin or something bitches about getting his room stolen. Kamala confronts the teenage boy, who gets extremely nervous. “It was my mom’s room way before it was yours,” Kamala tells the boy as she displays some bored-Garfield-lookin’ eyes. “Who are you, anyway? Are we related?”

He introduces himself as Kareem, a sister of an aunt of a friend of a brother of an uncle of a friend or something. Not technically related, so they’ll be fucking pretty soon. “I’ve been living here while I study for my university entrance exams,” he smiles as they introduce themselves more pleasantly. But then he gets chewed out for speaking to a girl in his indoor clothes! D’oh!

The guy blushes and grimaces and shoves off while Kamala laughs. “See you, Kareem.”

Later, Kamala tries to blend in by wearing traditional Pakistani clothing, but she fumbles her Urdu words and Naani lowered the spice level in her food to “white people levels” (Wonderbread and mayonnaise is on the menu today!) Overall, she’s having a hard time relaxing. In America, she’s too Pakistani. In Pakistan, she’s too American. She doesn’t belong anywhere!

 Ms. Marvel (Vol. 4), Issue #12

Not getting blown up by errant cartel activity would be a good start.

And after some sage advice from Naani that amounts to “cork it”, Kamala relaxes a little bit. That is, until a giant BOOM rings in the air. This basically amounts to “oh, that’s just the silly cartels!” who are blowing up hydrants so that people have to buy water from them. “I’m not Ms. Marvel this month,” Kamala thinks. “I’m not here to super-hero. I’m here to unplug, reconnect with my family, and try to figure out what to do with my life.”

For a while, she’s fine. She integrates nicely into Karachi society, she listens to her Naani’s stories, she drink chai tea, she eats exactly zero McDonald’s hamburgers, she rides horses, hangs out with that Kareem kid, and does all sorts of touristy stuff. “I try to sort out my head,” she says. “But no matter how many lists I make and how much I cry about Bruno and Captain Marvel and everything that’s happened, I feel like I’m drifting.”

Ms. Marvel! Kamala! Karachi! Jersey City! Too much to separate! Agh! Agh! Agh!

Another BOOM occurs, this time right outside the apartment. Kamala looks over the balcony and sees a bombed hydrant. Kareem looks over his own bedroom’s balcony and tells her that this has been happening a lot over the last few weeks. “I hate that you have to see these things,” he says. “The corruption, the chaos… so many people are leaving now to get away from it. Going to the UK or the U.S. or the Gulf. Sometimes I think ‘If everyone leaves, who’s left to fix things?’”

 Ms. Marvel (Vol. 4), Issue #12

کراچی کے شہریو، کبھی خوفزدہ نہ ہوں! یہ محترمہ مارول ہے!

Well, that tears it! No more of this not-superheroing fuckery! Ms. Marvel is going to go be Ms. Marvel now for the greater good of the Karachi people! “I stake out a neighborhood on the outskirts of Karachi where there are known to be illegal subsoil wells… which, okay, I had to Google. I don’t have to wait long until I spot what I’m looking for.”

It’s a van with a sign on the side that says “GABBAR SINGH IS MY COPILOT”, which is something that I had to Google. Ms. Marvel lands on the roof of the van with a THUMP! and grabs two of the three guys inside with giant hands. “You’ve blown up your last fire hydrant, you wannabe Robin Hoods!” she yells as the third guy — the driver – careens off the side of a cliff and lands 50,000 feet below. “This is it,” she thinks. “This is what I’ve been missing. Some good old fashioned bad-guy butt-kicking.”

She declares herself MS. MARVEL, whom the fellas don’t know or recognize. Not the effect she was going for, but hey! At least she maintains a commanding presence and – oh shit! Knives! Run!

With a SPAK! and a SPAK! and another SPAK!, knives hit the ground. The assailant who is scaring the four individuals is none other than Laal Khanjeer! The Red Dagger! He has a belt fulla knives and he looks handsome with his bandana covering his mouth! “Where did you come from?” he asks Ms. Marvel. “What are you doing here?”

When Ms. Marvel asks him the same question, the Red Dagger tells her she patrols Karachi like a superhero. He tells Ms. Marvel that her involvement is making a big mess of things. Step off and stay in your lane, lady.

 Ms. Marvel (Vol. 4), Issue #12

Can’t just fuck shit up in your own country? You have to travel to the Eastern Hemisphere too?

Ms. Marvel looks sheepish and apologizes. While these two exchange pleasantries, the water bandits tiptoe away without further harm. Ms. Marvel and Red Dagger shake hands and she is off on her own again.

“I think it’s time to go back to Jersey,” she thinks. “I didn’t find the missing pieces of my life in Karachi, because the missing pieces aren’t part of a place. They’re part of me. They’re things only I can figure out.”

The next morning, after exactly 45 minutes of sleep, Kamala steps out of her bedroom to see Kareem enjoying, sleepily, his own cup of chai. They flirt for a moment, Kareem gets a boner, that sort of thing. She realizes that Jersey City is her home, and she needs it just as much as it needs her!

And so on and so forth. The end.

Final Thoughts

WHAT ABOUT BRUNO? WON’T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE BRUNO?

Envisioning a new Bruno series where he’s in Wakanda getting into all sorts of crazy hijinks with Black Panther. Maybe he won’t try to blow anything up anymore, but we can only hope.