Spidey’s always been my guy.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: 1995 (Page 2 of 3)
The big three, as far as Marvel’s concerned. The full appellation might be “the big three that can’t quite sell their own books real consistent-like,” but we won’t hold that against them.
Marvel Fun Fact: all three of the heroes pictures are uncircumcised, so you’re looking at a twelve-skin.
Ben Parker? Really? Aunt May-bangin’, lesson-teachin’, bullet-catchin’ Uncle Ben?
If you say so.
Listen: you knew Mickey didn’t like mustard on his baloney sandwiches, but you put the mustard on anyway, so now Mickey’s a nine-foot emerald ragemonster, and he’s going to do things to you.
Like I said, it’s nice to see some representation for the backbench, but–and I am a man who used to manage a comic book store–I have no idea who these people are.
The only thing I remember about the Rawhide Kid is that in the edgy, anything-goes Aughts, Marvel did this “mature” comic where he was gay, and hey: gay dude in the Wild West–could be interesting, but the thing looked like it was written by the twelve-year-old everyone’s pretty sure is gonna shoot up the place one day:
“Hey, rawhide Kid. Are you going to pull out your gun? In a gay fashion?
“Why, YEEEEESSSS. Here it is, it’s my gun, lah-dee-dong. Do I smell man-butt?”
And so on for another twenty pages.
(Also, here’s something personal you didn’t know about TotD: I punched the guy who wrote this in a Los Angeles bar.)
These were the Skrulls, who have testicular chins. They were also shape-shifters, if I recall, and were used as Deus ex Machinas any number of times. (“It was a Skrull after all!”)
Victor, Victor, Victor. First of all, his super-villain name is Dr. Doom because his real, actual, swear-on-my-dong name is Victor von Doom. That’s his name because the guy who created him, Stan Lee, spells subtle with an exclamation point.
Doom is the most wonderful character in comic books–perhaps in all of Western Literature (harrumph, harrumph; tweed, tweed)–due to his utter lack of self-awareness. This is a man who invented a working time machine (sound familiar?), created artificial life, and gone toe=to-toe with Death himself. (in the Marvel Universe, Death is a guy who gets into fistfights).
What does he choose to do with these abilities?
Launch the Baxter Building into orbit. He has done this on a number of occasions, to the point where you start wondering about the psychology behind it, maybe it’s a dick thing, but he does it a lot. It’s kind of Doom’s fallback position–toilet overflowing: blame Richards, launch Baxter Building into orbit. Doom’s launched that damn building into orbit so many times that The Thing has begun accumulating frequent flyer miles.
PLUS, he’s the ruler of Latveria, so Doom’s got diplomatic immunity, and that’s what he chooses to do? Hurl skyscrapers into the wild blue yonder? HE INVENTED A TIME MACHINE and this was his best plan. Now, if I had diplomatic immunity, it’d be nothing but long afternoons at the supermarket showing my testicles to strangers, but I’m a doofus. This was a guy whose armor could go full-on with Iron Man
And how does diplomatic immunity even help with the throwing buildings into space thing? I don’t even know if that’s a crime.
Dr. Doom : Reed Richards :: Healy : Bobby
We stay in the Fantastic Four’s playground with their first super-villain nemesis (their first, and perennial, nemesis being Reed Richards’ hubris), the Mole Man.
He was sort of Dr. Moreau in the Center of the Earth. He raised or hatched or grew or whatever an army of little spastic yellow people and a few monsters, and occasionally he would sneak below Manhattan and steal the Baxter Building.
It’s nice to see him on the pass, though: he’s completely C-List. I’m pretty sure Daredevil could kick his ass. The Marvel Universe was full of jobbers: Spidey’s were the worst. the Shocker, Sandman, freaking Hydro-Man (worst name ever). Plus the seemingly endless animal bad guys that got a few one-liners and a snoot full of webs each month: (Doing this from memory, I promise: let’s see how I wasted my childhood) Vulture, Grizzly, Beetle, Rhino, Lizard, Tarantula, Scorpion, Doctor Octopus, Cobra, Chameleon. One might or might not include the Red Ghost and his Super-Apes, which were an actual team of apes with super-powers that used them for evil and were also communists. I swear to every god there is that what I just wrote is a fact.
p.s. I was at this show. I was not invited backstage.
When Galactus (you remember Galactus–we just talked about him: giant, purple, hungers?) came to eat Norrin Radd’s homeworld of Zenn-La, the young astronomer saved his world by becoming Galactus’ herald. Just the teeny-tiniest drop of Galactus’ energies, known as the Power Cosmic, gave Radd the powers of the Silver Surfer, but he had to leave his home, and his beloved: the alluring Shalla Bal. Thus, there was quite a bit of moping.
Honestly, the Surfer made Hamlet look like Leroy Jenkins. If he had hair, he would have an emo-cut. When the joint gets to him is when he starts reciting his poetry and showing you his “history of self-harm, written ‘pon mine very flesh,” which is a single faded scar-ish thing that you’re pretty sure he told you was from opening a can of tuna when he was drunk.
Plus: the Power Cosmic, not cosmic power. Never cosmic power: that just sounds dumb, man. Don’t be plebian.
It was THE POWER COSMIC, and it flows through the Marvel Universe (well, one of them–the details are truly excruciating) like The Force flows through the SWU: Odin, Galactus, all your godly-type dudes are chock to the brim with the Power Cosmic, which has never been fully explained and acts mostly as Plot Juice. Having the Power Cosmic is pretty much the same as being really good at wishing.
Galactus is everyone’s favorite: a being of nigh-on infinite power who wandered around the galaxy in a warship the size of a solar system eating planets. The last survivor of the previous universe, Galan of Taa now–and I’m not shitting you–eats planets. He pops in, unannounced, and starts yelling, “GALACTUS HUNGERS!” and tries to nomnomnom until the Fantastic Four show up and beat his ass again.
Also, he has a ‘G’ on his chest. For ‘Galactus.’
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