Wowser Will Outlast Us All

Pincus Popnecker's old college roomie Pud Bimbo shows up for a visit in Herbie #15, and sheds some light on why Herbie's father looks down on him so much. It seems that back in college, ol' "Schlemiehl" Popnecker was himself a "Fat Little Nothing!

Well, at least he left that show-off chihuahua behind forever, grew up to shed the pounds and become an accomplished(?) adult, right? RIGHT?

WOWSER YET LIVES, BY CRACKY!

Haw! Serves 'im right for being such a mean-ass hypocrite! Every time he's bitching at Herbie, he's actually bitching at his past self, man. This is actually about as close to a "deep revelation" as you ever get in Herbie comics, and quickly turns to wacky hijinx. as Pincus and Pud compete in a series of athletic events to prove who is manliest before the beauteous Mrs. Popnecker. Throughout, of course, Herbie cheats outrageously and wackily to help Pincus win.

Now that I'm forty, I need to start peppering my speech with "by Cracky", by Cracky! Might be time to cultivate a long white beard, too, come to think of it.

All art from "Call Me Schlemiehl!", written by Richard E. Hughes, Illustrated by Ogden Whitney, reprinted in the Herbie Archives, Vol. 3

Best Alternate Future Wolverine EVER.

There are plenty of Alternate Future Wolverines to choose from. You can have your classic "Days of Future Past" Wolverine, with his greying sideburns and eventual noble sacrifice, or maybe you prefer the "Old Man Logan" Wolverine, currently traveling a ruined future America in the Spider-Mobile with Hawkeye, but for my money, you can't beat Earth X Wolverine:


Fat, lazy, drunken Wolverine may be the best Wolverine of all. As seen in 1999's Earth X #5, Wolverine and Jean got together and eventually turned into The Lockhorns. According to the text piece following the story, Jean Grey and all of the other telepaths have lost their powers, so shes stuck rolling her eyes at the 181st retelling of the time the old gasbag fought the Hulk.

Earth X was a decent series that crawled up its own arse and birthed a whole franchise of sequels that I couldn't keep up with, Universe X, followed by Paradise X with a whole bunch of spinoffs as I recall. I'm not sure if I want to know what became of the battling X-Bickersons in the increasingly convoluted saga, but if you know, please share in the comments!

Legion of Superheroes: the Polar Boy Years

Pause for a moment to pity poor, poor Polar Boy. Brek Bannin left his home planet of Tharr with dreams of joining the Legion of Superheroes only to be rejected by the snotty future teens. After decades of toiling in the Legion of Substitute Heroes, he finally got called up to the big team in 1985's Legion of Superheroes #17. He soon ran for and won leadership of the team in issue #36, a meteoric rise for this former joke of a character.

Little did Polar Boy know he was to preside over the END of the Legion of Superheroes. Well, one of many ends, anyway. In this case, longtime Legion scribe Paul Levitz was leaving the book, and the Legion series was winding down, ending with the Magic Wars, and beginning a grim deterioration of the team that preceded Keith Giffen's notorious "Five Years Later" Legion reboot.

So Brekk ended up leading a depleted Legion into unavoidable catastrophe with no hope of success. At least Giffen was there to draw the hell out of it. He was experimenting with his style at the time, and I was really digging the sleek, Kevin Maguire-inspired work. I especially liked the crazy new matching uniforms that everyone else, including the characters, seemed to hate. Well, I thought they were kind of cool, anyway.

The in-story reason for the costumes was great, too. Everyone was mad at Polar Boy about the uniforms, but they had been designed and produced by the weird little Validus-Computo homunculus that Braniac 5 had left running the lab at the time. Even when they "win", some guys just can't win.



Not-really-related, but hilarious: And what, you ask, was Bouncing Boy doing during all of this? Running the Legion Academy and Rocking a Paul Blart-esque mustache, of course!

Lost in Translation

You know, I never could warm up to Laurel and Hardy, really. But geez, Germany, this seems a little harsh...











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SCPA NSFW

Say what you will about MAMMOTH MISS, the bitch sure can give a blow job.


...See, because she's a female dog superhero with super-blowing powers, which she is applying to the perfectly innocent job of inflating party balloons, so technically, I'm not being a horrible, disgusting filth-pig. Much.

Yes, I'm blathering about Krypto and the Space Canine Patrol Agency again. Meet Mammoth Miss, the identically-powered girlfriend of brave, deceased Mammoth Mutt. Just the fact that a morbidly obese female dog superhero with super-blowing powers named Mammoth Miss exists at all is enough to warm my cynical, brittle old heart. Her gassy debut is just part of "Danger of the Doom Statues", the last, but far from least of the weird and wacky SCPA stories stories, previously featured HERE and HERE. More soon, amigos!