The Boys #6
I walked into the store one day to pick up my comic subscription, and started flipping through to see what books I had. I saw the
cover of ones of my books and asked my boss "This isn't what I think it is, right?" His response was "It's exactly what you think it
is." I was shocked, probably more shocked than I should have been, given what the book was.
This cover might look harmless if you hadn't read issues 1-5. I assure you that anyone who read those issues and then saw this cover knew exactly where that hamster either had been or was going. After this issue was printed, DC announced they would no longer publish this book. Apparently, none of the editors thought there was anything wrong with having a book full of violence, swearing, and anal rodents, but someone high up in the company must have found out about it after this issue was printed. Fortunately, it only took a month to get a new publisher, as the book was really popular. With covers like that, who can wonder why?
I scanned a copy of this for work a while back, and I couldn't believe it when I saw it. Yes, Donald Duck is on the beach where they are charging 10 cents to look directly at the sun with a telescope. The interesting thing is that the cover depicts the sun being magnified and burning Donald's butt, but they completely ignored the more realistic danger of going fucking blind. It hurts to look at the sun without any sort of amplification, so I'd like to think no one would be stupid enough to try this in real life, but I know that's not true. Maybe the sun burned much cooler in 1960 when this was published.
I tried to write a full article on this book, but it's terrible. I literally could not finish reading it. As the cover shows you, Spider-Man teams up with the cast of Saturday Night Live. I can't figure out what universe this is supposed to be taking place in. The book begins with Peter Parker and Mary Jane attending a taping of SNL where they see Stan Lee, creator of Spider-Man. He even acknowledges that Stan Lee created Spider-Man, despite being Spider-Man. If that weren't bizarre enough, the entire plot revolves around the notion that somehow a package that was supposed to be delivered to the Silver Samurai gets shipped to John Belushi instead. Since it's illegal to open other people's mail, it was presumably addressed to Belushi as well. It's a simple mistake to make, of course. Samurai and Belushi are both seven letters, and they both have a U and an I in the same place. In fact, you'd be stupid not to make that mistake.
Yes, that's Wolverine's skeleton, and yes that happens in this issue. Despite the banner that says "Casualties of War", Wolverine does not die, however. Apparently Wolverine's entire body can be disintegrated, but as long as he has some bone marrow left in that adamantium casing, he's fine. That's some DragonBall Z bullshit right there, like when they had to fight Cell. I guess his brain must have been safe too, because I'd like to think that if he had to grow a new brain from scratch that he wouldn't know anything. I should also know better than to apply logic to this situation.
If you read my blog and Syd's articles, you undoubtedly already knew this book existed. It never stops being hilarious, however. Not only does Archie come face to face with The Punisher, but it's such a captivating storyline that it can't be told in just one book. Not only that, but there aren't any ads in the books either. It's 96 pages of Punisher on Riverdale action. It'd hard to believe that something like this could happen, but it was published at the time that violence became somewhat acceptable in comics, so they only way to sell books was the have The Punisher or Wolverine in every single book. This book must have some die hard fans, though, cause when my girlfriend and I went to an advance screening of The Incredible Hulk in Boston, there was a guy there with the Punisher/Archie tattoo. No, I'm not joking. There's a good chance you've seen a ton of people either wearing Punisher shirts or with that skull tattooed on their arm, but we actually saw someone with the much happier collaboration version. I'm sure it's a great conversation starter with people who don't know what it is, though. "Hey man, what's with your Punisher skull? It looks like it just smoked a couple bowls!" Of course, all this talk of The Punisher brings me to the last book...
Yeah, it's exactly what it says. After like ten years, this book was just reprinted a couple weeks ago so I picked it up. I have to say that it's actually an excellent read. As ridiculous a concept as this is I thought it would be tough to pull off, but he nailed it. I don't know what else to even say. Spider-Man? Dead. Hulk? Dead. Captain America? Dead. Blade? Well he was already dead, so they don't really cover that. Basically, the Punisher kills everyone. Except civilians, cause he's cool like that. Well I hope you enjoyed my two-part entry and all of the pretty images. I'm sure it was a nice departure from nothing but big blocks of text. So until next time: help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered.
Shouldn't an anthropomorphic duck wear wants?
© 2008 by Dr. Jeebus