Thanksgiving Turkeys: Codpiece

Since most of our other Thanksgiving Turkeys have been quaint, charming artifacts of comics' sainted Silver Age past, why not wrap up our holiday-themed, lame-villain retrospective with a jarring and abrupt 180-degree turn into the land of 1990's adult-themed comics?!? That's right, folks, we're celebrating Thanksgiving with CODPIECE, the Vertigo penis-villain!

After being absorbed into the "mature readers" Vertigo line, Doom Patrol just kept gettin' weirder and weirder. By Doom Patrol #70, the "team" consisted of the severed head of the Chief, a disoriented and hallucinating Robotman, ape-faced Dorothy Spinner and her creepy little puppet avatar-monkey-thing Charlie, and a couple of bandaged yuppie sex-ghosts. So when an embittered inventor with a persistent inferiority complex created a giant robotic schlong to compensate for what was lacking "down there", he was kind of at a disadvantage, still being the least weird thing in this particular comic.

For the record, a lesbian transsexual in a frog mask defeated the boner baron by dissolving his mechanical manhood, before being invited to join the Doom Patrol. Codpiece is shit out of luck when it comes to ever appearing again, given how unlikely he is to be needed in a Vertigo line that has moved on to such fare as Fables, Army@ Love, and DMZ; and how unlikely he is to be used in the DC Universe due the fact that he can't fight Batman because he wears a giant mechanical penis.




Happy Thanksgiving from Again With the Comics!


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Thanksgiving Turkeys: The Asbestos Man

Speaking of turkeys, how much of a turkey do you have to be to give yourself a terminal illness dressing up in a gimp suit in order to fail at robbing banks? Don't ask the ASBESTOS MAN. He's undoubtedly dead of Mesothelioma, courtesy of his poorly self-designed asbestos clothing sending millions of jolly, microscopic fiberous visitors to his lungs, lo, those many years ago when that punk ass Human Torch beat him so very, very easily. Sadly, it would be a race between the chrysotile fibers strangling his lungs and the fibers burrowing under his skin as to which horrific form of cancer would take him first skin or lung, if not both. Such are the horrors and consequences of unsafe asbestos handling.

Whats wrong chuckles, all this talk of Asbestosis got you down? Am I "bumming you out"? Harshing your buzz ?!? GOOD !!

ASBESTOS SAFETY IS NO JOKE, JUNIOR.

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Thanksgiving Turkeys: MODAM

As if one MODOK wasn't enough, a second one almost may have been MODAM trouble than she was worth! I'm all for equal rights, but did we really need a chick version of MODOK? I think not, my friends, I THINK NOT.

MODAM stands for Mental Organism Designed for Aggressive Maneuvers), or perhaps for M'oh DAMN, you ugly! MODAM did serve the vital function of Aggressively Maneuvering Mentally in MODOK's stead for that dreadful decade or so that he was "actually dead" in continuity, but you know, there's nothing like the real thing, baby...

FUN FACT: This delicate little flower may or may not in fact be ANT-MAN'S first wife! The believed-deceased Maria Troyvana reappeared in Pym's life for a time before turning out to be a spy, then being mutated into S.O.D.A.M. (Specialized Organism Designed for Aggressive Maneuvers). When MODAM appeared later, it was assumed that she was a further mutated Maria/SODAM, but then that was further thrown into question when X-Men foe Omega Red, spreading mutant ambiguity with him like a contagion, interrupted a battle between MODAM and Iron Man, to confront MODAM and accuse her of being Olinka Barankova, a spy-type lady who had betrayed-him decades ago. As far as I know, they never went anywhere with that plotline, save to muddy up MODAM's story a bit, for no apparent reason. Anyway, I prefer to think that Ant Man used to bang MODAM, basically.








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Red Hulk's Offensive Line

I am a staunch advocate of the law of comics that states that for every super hero team, there must be an equal and opposite super-villain group (see Four, Frightful). Which is why I'm unduly delighted to see the Red Hulk and HIS new allies, the OFFENDERS set to make their debut in HULK #10 as an evil cracked-mirror counterpart to Hulks old non-team, the DEFENDERS. I have no idea where Terrax, Baron Mordo and Tiger Shark, not to mention the Silver Surfer, Namor and 70's-masked Doctor Strange are supposed to fit in with current storylines, but Jeph Loeb never let continuity or story logic stand in the way of what is, admittedly, wicked-kewl eye candy.





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Thanksgiving Turkeys: The Whirlicane

Proving it is possible to simultaneously suck and blow, I bring you WHIRLICANE, the next in our 2008 line of turkeys. Whirlicane combined a hideous costume, a laughable name, and mediocre powers to create a villain so unmemorable, so pedestrian, that even Dan Jurgens and Eddie Berganza wouldn't touch him. The Whirlicane was lucky if he got eaten alive by anti-matter in any background panel of Crisis On Infinite Earths. Pathetically mismatched against Superman in the first place, his only major appearance found him an afterthought in a story where 95% of Superman's mental energy was devoted to trying to reveal his secret identity to a sick ten-year old child.

Action comics #457 is, of course, most famous for this beloved Internet favorite:

Hahaha. Oh my. No, but see, Superman's not gonna rape anybody. After an encounter with Whirlicane, Superman flies to the hospital to visit his old friend Pete Ross, whose son is dying. Jon Ross has some unspecified disease, and has lost the will to live, but Pete says that Jon idolizes Superman, and a visit might help the boy pull through, and oh yeah, could you maybe reveal your secret identity to him since that's all he ever talks about? Thanks! Superman agrees to try, but the kid won't believe him! So Clark takes Jon with him through a typical day while the skeptical kid debunks his repeated attempts to prove that he is, in fact, Superman.


Superman also is trying to track down Whirlicane, who managed to escape him earlier:

That right there is about as good as it ever got for the Whirlicane. Suffice to say, that Superman returns later, with Jon in tow, to round up Whirly in a particularly show-offish manner designed specifically to amuse the kid. Then they return to Clark's apartment, where Jon is finally convinced that Clark is Superman by snooping around in his medicine cabinet and finding... NOTHING! The kid reasons that only Superman would have an empty medicine cabinet, and therefore Clark is Superman. The kid regains the will to live, cue happy ending, and Whirlicane is never seen again. At least not until now, with his inclusion in our hall of turkey infamy! Congratulations, lame-ass!

About That WATCHMEN Movie...

I once wrote that I didn't want to see a Watchmen movie made, but after seeing some of the posters and stills from the upcoming Zack Snyder helmed Watchmen movie, well, I could be wrong... The movie looks slicker and faster-paced than the graphic novel, but it would have to be, if they hope to get the whole story in. I don't worry that a bad movie will ruin Watchmen; I'm right in the middle of re-reading it, and it holds up just fine twenty-three years later, but I'd like to see a well done movie, too, of course. The movie will be its own thing, and as a movie, it...actually looks pretty damned impressive:

Of course, looking good is one thing, but will it be coherent? That remains to be seen. What do you folks think? I figure a Watchmen movie would probably get made sooner or later, and this one actually looks better than we had any reason to expect, so great! There was also once a much worse version in the works, apparently, so it sounds like we dodged a bullet. But hey, this is the Internet, so if you disagree, what are ya waitin' for, get to fuming impotently, already!

There's No Fu Like an Egg Fu!

It's that time of the year again my friends; time to break out the diseased blankets, don our itchiest Pilgrim garb and load up on giblet-y rhubarb pie and gingerbread stuffing. Time to boil up another old Tom turkey and bake another beet loaf. Time to gather together with family, friends and frightening, unshaven, wild-eyed strangers. Time indeed, to gather 'round the table and share another bounty of crappy, crappy Thanksgiving Turkeys, Again With the Comics style.

Yes, for the month of November, we have another horn of plenty...plenty of lame-ass turkey super villains, that is! And what better way to start the feast than with a villain who indeed serves as an ingredient in the preparation of many a Thanksgiving day feast! An egg can be used to make stuffing or pie, but for WONDER WOMAN, an egg can only make...MURDER!! Without further ado, EGG FU:

Egg Fu's story is online, but son, it is damn near unreadable. Bob Kanigher (Script) and Ross Andru (Pencils) brought us the debut of Egg Fu in Wonder Woman # 157 and 158 in "I, the Bomb!" In the story, Wonder Woman is a human bomb, charged with dangerous energy. She can't touch anyone or kiss Steve Trevor, or she'll blow them up. we know this because she tells us repeatedly, over and over, again and again througout the first part of the story. Then Steve Trevor Gets explodey, too but they still cant kiss, and we hear about that for most of the second issue until they find and brutally murder Egg Fu:

Damn! Wonder woman just cracks his muthafuckin' haid open, then flies off laughing in her invisible jet. That, my friends, is hardcore.

Don't Worry, though, pals! Kanigher had a whole carton of evil eggs at his disposal, and before you know it, another smaller and more mobile Egg Fu (the Fifth!) was on the loose in Wonder Woman # 166:

Kanigher and Andru did double duty on Metal Men for DC, and in issue #20, of that even more off-kilter title, they faced a challenge that every storyteller confronts sooner or later. A giant cannibal robot, a giant birthday cake. And the Metal Men acting as robot "birthday candles" for the giant cannibal robot's giant birthday cake. But who could serve the giant cannibal robot his smaller-robot studded cake? WHO? Why, an enormous, bespectacled, Asian super-egg, of course. Duh.

Ha ha! Look at that cannibal robot licking his lips! He sure loves to eat cake. And Robots. Beside going back to the Egg Fu well a third time, Dr. Yes also incorporates that evergreen comic-writing crutch of awkwardly shoehorning in an otherwise unrelated pop-culture reference, in this case the then hot James Bond "Doctor No" film, in hopes of reeling in a few extras sales.

Egg Fu has returned to the DC Universe in recent years in the pages of 52 and Checkmate. He's all sadistic and scary now, and sadly, seems to have ditched the prehensile mustache:



As for the future, I'm not sure when another Egg-Fu will appear, but rest assured readers, that if one does, albumen-tioning it here, at Again With the Comics!