Wails From the Past: 2

Ancient Texts from the Only Redeeming Feature on Facebook: Facebook Memories
October 28th Edition

October 28th, 2021 There's big money in not making the world better.

October 28th, 2021
If Manchin and Sinema didn't exist, some other currently cowardly Democrat would feel obliged to step up to make sure their party didn't get too progressive.

October 28th, 2020
Nobody unfriended me after I asked conservatives to stop stealing my good time vibes so there are definitely a few liars and thieves on my friends list.

October 28th, 2018
"I was even more dubious about the other part of Cancer Research UK’s criticism: “staggering”. Is it staggering? Was anyone at that charity staggered? Did they expect better from Philip Morris International? “What a big advertising budget you have, Grandma!” “All the better to dispassionately address our products’ health implications with!”

I don’t believe they were staggered and it’s a mistake to pretend that they were. It’s totally the wrong way to think about a corporation. Everything a corporation says is hypocritical unless it’s “our entire raison d’être is to maximise profits”. They hardly ever say that and who can blame them. But that’s completely what they exist to do and that’s fine, as long as we’re wary and make sure they observe the law." -- David Mitchell, Guardian Column 28-10-2018

Followed by this additional comment:

"What I think Cancer Research UK should have said is this: huge corporations like Philip Morris International spend a lot of money on research, so if they think this tawdry attempt to curry favour will work, then it probably will. Significant numbers of people will be fooled into believing that a company, the main product of which has caused millions of premature deaths, can have its customers’ health interests at heart. Significant sections of the public are listening uncritically to what corporations tell them and taking it at face value. That is nothing less than a national education emergency." -- David Mitchell continued!

October 28th, 2014

My one true love best boy Judas Soliloquy Velociraptor. I guess this pic was an obituary post because he'd just died on the 25th. I love him so much still!

October 28th, 2012
Flash 13: Another comic that used the title Gorilla Warfare. And it was on the last page to avoid spoilers! Link to the Comic Review!

October 28th, 2010
#6 From Burton: "An Arab holds that he has a right to marry his first cousin, the daughter of his father's brother, and if any win her from him a death and a blood-feud may result. It was the same in a modified form amongst the Jews and in both races the consanguineous marriage was not attended by the evil results (idiocy, congenital deafness, etc.) observed in mixed races like the English and the Anglo-American."
[This is not part of the memory! Just clarification for what this is: This was a footnote from Richard Burton's translation of The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night. His notes are often fascinating. And racist. Although far less racist than the mainstream thoughts of British people at the time. He was actually pretty progressive, what with translating The Kama Sutra and developing some kind of Columbia House Book Club to get around obscenity laws when publishing it!]

Jonah Hex and the Shadow of Death #1 (2026)

What's with the daisy, pussy?

Jonah Hex and the Shadow of Death #1 (10/7/2026)
By Michael Walsh, Toni-Marie Griffin, and Becca Carey
Cover by Michael Walsh
Edited by James Reid and Brittany Holzherr

Like I'd ever call Jonah Hex a pussy! Are you kidding?! Motherfucker isn't even real and he scares the shit out of me. If I had a Babadook living in my house, it would be Jonah Hex. I mean that in the way that I interpreted the movie which might not have been correct. The kid was scared of the Babadook but he also loved it, right? They were like best friends but in that way where your best friend constantly makes you shit your pants? Because I want Jonah Hex to be my best friend and I wouldn't mind having to clean my knickers out every night for the privilege. I mean my pants! Obviously I don't wear knickers. Ha ha. That would be ludicrous!

I probably interpreted The Babadook that way because my heart wouldn't let me actually understand the movie. It was protecting me and my brain was its accomplice constantly telling me, "This is fun! Look at all the fun they're having! Ha ha! Such a silly Babadook!"

I've had a fascination with Jonah Hex for my entire comic book reading life and yet I haven't read a whole lot of Jonah Hex titles. I loved his aesthetic and his stoic solitude and the way his face somehow melted or something. I never quite understood what was going on with his lip or cheek or whatever. I'm not sure what ultimately kept me from buying everything that Jonah Hex was in being that I loved him so much but I think he felt too far outside the genre and the overall continuity of the DC Universe and also he was a dirty Confederate. Like, if I only had a couple of dollars to spend on comics, I'd spend them on comics where I knew the characters definitely lived in the same time and same reality (and didn't fly the Confederate flag) because there was a chance (or my imaginative belief) that they could run into each other and team-up. But Jonah Hex wasn't going to hang out with Batman. At least not usually! I did very much enjoy when he hung out with Arkham in The New 52! All Star Western was probably my favorite comic book of The New 52 (that or Demon Knights!).

A couple of weeks ago, I found a bunch of Jonah Hex comics from the '60s or '70s in some back issue boxes at an old junk store. This month hasn't been great on the amount of extra spending cash in my pockets so I didn't grab any. But maybe next month I'll go back and grab a bunch. I did manage to throw some money at a local comic book store for this new one though! What could I do?! Stupid DC Comics deciding to start up a bunch of series of my favorite characters this year: Doom Patrol, Lobo, The Demon, and Jonah Hex! I had to at least give them all a chance, right?

I can't say yet if I liked this book but judging by this first page, I'm going to love it!

That caption was my way of saying, "Hey! I love this art style! Thick, wonky panel borders please me! And the colors are fucking toning the shit out of the tone! Also a cowboy talking about crapping his pants? More, please!" Here's proof that I love thick wonky borders because I used them for the border of my change-on-every-reload-of-the-page pic for my defunct website, Places & Predators! Now that's just where I host all the pics for my comic book reviews!

This is a ghost story. A ghost story about the ghosts of those Jonah killed constantly haunting Jonah Hex. A ghost story about the undying ghost of Jonah Hex himself, doomed to haunt the Old West. A ghost story about the Old West itself, dying a slow death from change and technology and the influx of civilization.

God I love him so.

Michael Walsh nails the tense, haunted atmosphere of a creepy frontier town filled to the brim with characters that verge on stereotypes but just in the right way so that they're recognizable but more than what they seem: the tough jerk pushing everybody around, the timid bartender, the flirtatious whore, the precocious stable boy, the haughty sheriff, and the weird, witchy girl with the flowers who wants her father killed. They're expected but they're off in just the right way; a Western town brimming to the rim (and the slightest bit over, precarious, held back from spilling by molecular forces) with unheimlich. And the panel layouts! Fucking majestic. I love when an artist isn't afraid to work small (so much like Moritat in The New 52 All Star Western! Glorious!), allowing for panels that view the action from a ways back, letting Hex and the weird girl interact at a distance to the observer. The characters express so much in art that isn't overworked; Walsh does just enough of everything. The emotion on the face of the dead boy Hex killed! Exquisite!

I'm not sure yet who the narrator is. Perhaps Charlie the stable boy. Or Annie the weird girl. Maybe the ghost of the boy Hex guns down at the beginning who haunts Jonah's dreams. But the narrator explains the story of Jonah Hex in an ambiguous way so you don't know what's truth and what's legend. Has death left Jonah Hex to fend for himself? Does he keep dying and coming back? Or is that just the legend because he survived being crucified in the War, because he's survived so many gun shots, so many flames, so much pain? And does it matter?

By the end, we seen the antagonist but I'm not quite sure who it is. Is it the pastor who brought the bell to this strange town to "bring the Lord" to it? Or is it a manifestation of the killer inside Jonah Hex that he's fighting so hard to bury beneath the boards of the shack he's come to live in? And what is the thing haunting Annie and pretending to be her father?

The Ranking!
I'm fucking hooked. What a beautiful fucking comic book! I should scan in one more page just to show what I can't possibly praise enough because I don't have art words in my dumb brain!

God that hostler! Fucking goosebumps inside my spine!

Hitman Annual #1 (August 1997)

Tommy never looked so cool. What a great fucking cover.

Hitman Annual #1 (August 27th, 1997)
By Garth Ennis, Carlos Ezquerra, Steve Pugh, Carla Feeny, and Willie Schubert
Cover by Laurel Blechman
Edited by Peter Tomasi and Dan Raspler

Laura Blechman, who did the cover here, apparently did a bunch of covers for the "Weird Western Tales" section of the "Pulp Heroes" Annual event. A lot of covers across the event look fucking cool but I missed all of the others because I don't think I was reading many comics in 1997. I kind of have a big hole in my pop culture knowledge around the years 1996 and 1997 because I'd finally left home and was traveling in my VW Bus. I think a bunch of comics I own from '96 and '97 were picked up later as I tried to catch up on all the series I'd been reading before I left my home town. During my road trip, I got by on reading mostly collections, mainly Sandman and Astro City. I was still picking up some comics along the road because I do remember reading a new issue of House of Secrets while lying in the grass in a park in Snoqualmie, Washington, after having a chile relleno for dinner at the Double R Diner (or, um, Tweedy's, I guess?). I think it was around the time Rain and her friends were traveling down the coast from Seattle to San Francisco, exactly the opposite of the route I'd just taken.

This is an annual so don't expect me to care much about it even if it's the best thing I've read since [INSERT NAME OF SMART BOOK HERE. DO NOT FORGET AND LEAVE THIS IN, YOU BIG STUPID. AND, NO, CAVE OF TIME IS NOT SMART. I WONDER IF I CAN READ MOBY DICK IN THE NEXT SIX HOURS?! MAYBE IF THERE'S A FIGHTING FANTASY VERSION OF IT?!]!

I've been finishing up my Dungeons & Dragons campaign the last two weeks which seems to have been a waste of time because two weeks ago I sent out an invite to play to my potential players and not one of them has answered. Do people not read e-mails anymore? Even people who I expressly told "I sent the email!"? Should I reconsider my friendship with them? It's hard to be friends with somebody who has so many friends that you're just another one of the incessant pulls for their attention but they're basically your only friend. It's a terrible power dynamic for the loser with only one friend!

Dammit. Now I'm crying! Maybe Tommy can cheer me up by killing people!

It's going to be hard to read a Western Tale after reading the ultimate Western Tale, Danielewski's Tom's Crossing.

That was the first page of the comic book which obviously isn't where the story begins. You'd know that if you were familiar with the "in media res but only for the first page and then right back to the absolute start of the media" method of writing comic books. For the 21st Century youth who have only ever purchased their comic books already bagged and boarded on the shelf (because what do they think their local comic book store is, a lending library?), this was a marketing gimmick. They knew a kid would pull a comic book off the rack to check it out and that first page had better be a fucking doozy or else the kid was going to stuff it back into the overfull rack and go for the EC comic book with the nearly naked woman smoking a cigarette while giving her aggressive male suitor (probably a werewolf or vampire) an injury to their eye. Oh man. Yeah. That's the stuff, by God! I'm practically burning down my local grocery right now thinking about it!

The issue really begins back at Noonan's where Tommy and Natt are watching marathon of Spaghetti Westerns. Django Eviscerated is mentioned and I assumed it's a made-up title but being that old footsucker put out that movie Django Unchained, it sent me on a mini-research bender looking into the ties of the name Django and Spaghetti Westerns. I grew up in the '70s where every Sunday you could catch a Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Western on a local station on rainy Sundays but I never thought too much more of them past that. So looking them up now, there's like five thousand movies about Django! Should I start a Django podcast?! Obviously I won't because speaking is not my medium; I need the time and comfort and long, five-hour breaks taken in the middle of a sentence that blogging allows. But if I did, I'd definitely begin with Nude Django or Brand of Shame if you're a push-your-glass-up-your-nose smarty pants know-it-all!

Hey! I'm technically an adult!

Natt and Tommy discuss The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and the way Clint Eastwood talks through his teeth for a couple of pages and I think that was mostly because Garth wanted them to say "Clint" a lot and was just hoping for some runny inks on the lettering.

Tommy gets a call to do a job in the American Southwest and, because it pays enough, he takes it. Tommy takes an awful lot of jobs that promise a lot of cash and then he hardly ever gets paid. He really should be taking at least half the pay up front on these gigs.

Oops! Sorry. With all the southwest imagery and Spaghetti Western themes, I didn't realize he was actually heading into the lush forest areas just across the bay from Berkeley.

This is the DC Universe so I know it has different places and geographies than the real world. So when Tommy mentions that he's just a few miles from the Rio Grande and then he travels to Tiburon which has a distinctly American Southwest look to it, I probably should assume there's a town in the Southwest named Tiburon and that he isn't off to have shoot-outs with ex-hippies and acidheads.

Tommy begins the trip by throwing a grenade in a truck with three Mexican guys. I know that sounds bad but hear me out: they were laughing at him! They called him a gringo! I mean the G-word! Sorry for using the Hard-O there! Also I think they threatened to break his legs and also we have yet to be privy to the conversation Tommy had on the phone back at Noonan's Maybe the person on the phone described these three guys and said how they were tormenting the town and murdering and raping and Tommy believed the voice on the phone and so, um, justice? Is that how justice works? You believe one side and never hear from the other side before throwing a grenade at them? I think that's justice. It's definitely the way I act when I'm the Hero in a computer role-playing game! Offer me a reward and some experience to murder somebody? Yes, please! Do I need to hear the other side of it? No way! Justice!

See? If this old white cop told Tommy some Mexicans were causing trouble, then it must be true!

I'm getting the distinct feeling this began as a Jesse Custer story!

The Mexican guys survived the grenade and only lost their truck so the sheriff doesn't see any reason to arrest Tommy. Especially since Tommy is working for him. He's law enforcement and if law enforcement wants to blow up your truck for no reason, your truck is going to be blown up and people online are going to defend it by typing shit like, "If you didn't want your truck to be blown up, maybe don't do whatever you did to get it blown up!" Then they'll hit the enter key and walk away thinking they're the smartest person on the planet with a logical mind that would rival any Vulcan in the universe. Then they'll have sex with their gun (no protection, of course, because that's the only declaration ever made by the Catholic church that they'll listen to because it aligns with their "I ain't wearing no damn condom!" stance) and "forget" to put the child support check in the mail again.

I'd say that I just made a Strawman argument if everything I just typed wasn't so fucking accurate!

I can't believe I never knew this existed. Stupid life-changing road trip in my VW bus!

This is an annual meaning that it's longer than normal. And since I make so many digressions, I always wind up writing about the first 20 pages and then summarizing the last 20 pages in one paragraph. So let's try something different! I'm going to read about 20 pages now, summarize them, and then get back to digressing about the end of the story!

I would summarize the story but I keep getting distracted by the advertisements! Here's another one that has me thinking, "How much extra cash do you have in your pocket and do you think the Local Comic Book Store has any Scare Tactics comics in the back issue bins?!"

This comic book exceeds your recommended daily allowance of tits.

The sheriff's hands aren't entirely clean in all the shit going down in Tiburon since he's taking money from the Mexican crimelord, Santiago, to look the other way. That's why he paid $90,000 to hire a hitman to take care of his problems. I haven't got to what his problems are yet but I have a sneaking suspicion they might just boil down to "The Mexicans are taking over!"

So the long and short of what Tommy's gotten himself into for 90k: a developer bought up a graveyard in Tiburon to turn into a mall. They're supposed to relocate the bodies but they're actually just burning them as they go. The problem the Sheriff and Santiago have is that one of those graves hides a coffin with two million 1905 dollars inside. Sure, it's about 15 years past the end of the frontier but criminals and gangs and cowboys still rode where they could, especially if they got wind of some hotshot tycoon keeping his cash on a train running about the country. They rob this guy and bury the money in a marked coffin. Now, ninety years later, that coffin is going to get dug up and the money isn't going to have rotted away because maybe it's all in gold or something and Santiago and the Sheriff both want it. But the Sheriff has all the leverage because he's got spies in the construction company and even a spy in Santiago's organization. So Santiago has hired some super-powered somebody to help secure the money. And the Sheriff heard about a guy who murders super-powered somebodies and decided to hire him. And that's why Tommy's in Marin County: to help a Sheriff steal a long lost cache of stolen money! It's so fucking typical that my guess is Tommy isn't going to wind up helping either corrupt side. But he'll do enough to try to earn his 90k, at least.

Tommy meets a man who "fought" in Desert Storm, part of my friend the Well-Done Comedian's 82nd Airborne, so they can have a little discussion about black and white and good and bad and how those getting paid to do the dirty work get fucked left, right, center, and super center (you know, right in the starfish). After that, Tommy gets a glimpse at Santiago's new muscle.

He's impressive! A little cavemanesque with a bit of a post-punk hairstyle. But impressive!

Santiago threatens Tommy with Manko but Tommy threatens Santiago's dick with, um, I don't think Tommy names his guns so let's just say Little Tommy. Santiago decides he likes having a penis and calls off Manko for now. Besides, it's not even high noon yet.

The art in this issue is begin tag-teamed by Carlos Ezquerra and Steve Pugh. I'm not super familiar with Carlos Ezquerra. Very familiar with Steve Pugh. You can tell which one is doing the art each chapter because Ezquerra's men who aren't regular characters of the series all have squashed noses and his stubble is realistic. Pugh's art has a more animation style quality to it and Tommy shaves a bit better. Both of them are fairly decent at drawing a racist Mexican stereotype though!

Ezquerra makes me think this is a Steinbeck adaptation; Pugh's makes me think Looney Tunes.

Pugh's also makes me think he was using Cheech Marin as his reference.

After seeing Manko at work and seeing what the dispute is over and realizing any escalation in violence is only going to make everything worse for the regular folks of Tiburon, Tommy declines the contract. Once again, he's not getting paid. And after paying for bus fair all the way across the United States, he must be out about 25 bucks! But maybe he'll stick around to help on his own terms, right? Or be forced to stick around but not actively choose sides? It'll be one of those because the comic book doesn't end after Tommy declines with a page of him on the bus heading back to Gotham.

Upset that Tommy won't be doing his bidding and being a corrupt piece of shit, the Sheriff tips off Santiago that Tommy's leaving. Santiago sends all of his disposable soldiers to murder Tommy but Tommy is all, "I guess I'm doing a bunch of killing for free. Again!" Then he high fives Judd Winick for the "Again!" joke and starts putting bullets in Mexican's heads. But even Tommy isn't good enough to take on a whole army by himself. He's eventually captured.

Stupid corrupt sheriff! I knew I didn't trust him when I saw in that first panel that he was old and white and a cop!

For some reason, the Mexican guys do not kill Tommy. They just leave him in the desert to die. I mean, I know the reason. Tommy isn't allowed to die until Issue #60. Or Issue #59 if Issue #60 is his wake at Noonan's or something. I don't remember. But still, it just seems weird. Like how in The Walking Dead the people who we're supposed to believe are the bad guys never wind up killing Rick and his people but Rick and his people always wind up murdering the shit out of everybody we're supposed to believe were bad. I mean, even Negan's response of smashing Glen's head to a pulp was restrained next to Rick murdering so many of his people! But we, as the audience, are supposed to feel like that was over-the-top because we loved Glen so much! He was such a good boy doggy boy man child boy! Who would kill Glen?! Must be the worst person in history who maybe also just saw a bunch of his people blasted into shit by a rocket launcher or had their throats slit in their sleep! I don't remember how much of what I'm describing was from the comic and how much was from the television show. It's all kind of the same thing to me now.

I will say this: having Negan kill Abraham before he kills Glen in the television show was genius. Because it pulls the rug out from the feet of all the comic book readers who were all, "Here we go! Glen's going to get it!" And then, instead, it's Abraham who gets it! And they're all, "Holy shit! No way! Whew, I'm glad they chose not to kill Glen!" And then Negan is all, "You know what? Let's do one more!" And then everybody is all, "OH MY GOD NO GLEN!" Man, so good.

Tommy's rescued by 82nd Airborne and explains that these guys kill all of their enemies by taking them out to the desert and not killing them. So that explains that perfectly! And then he's all, "You know Manko? He was one of my Desert Storm buddies! I lost partial use of my legs and he became a braindead greased lightning monster!" Also 82nd Airborne called back to Noonan's and left a message for back-up! I hope we see Six-Pack and Baytor in cowboy hats and chaps!

Yeah, man. That's what happens when you don't kill a bitch. They don't get killed!

Only Natt arrives as back-up which seems short-sighted. But then this was probably written before Baytor stayed on Earth and Six-Pack showed that he's, um, somewhat, um, competent. I think I've chosen the wrong words to put there. Anyway, Natt also brings some more firepower to help. So instead of standing there with an old revolver against modern weaponry like on the first page, Tommy now has an Uzi and a fat friend with a shotgun.

Finally, Tommy has a The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly showdown with Manko.

Sure, there's supposed to be a third guy but this isn't an exact retelling of the moment.


Oh wait! There's the third guy! Still, um, not um, exact.

Meanwhile, the sheriff digs up the coffin and finds the two million dollars has rotted away. Man, you'd think somebody would have been smart enough to realize that was what would happen, hunh? I guess that's why he and everybody else in this shithole town use violence to solve their problems. No offense, Tommy!

Tommy winds up burying the Sheriff in the grave with the money and then he and Natt go back to Gotham. Still broke.

The Ranking!
For an annual, this was really good. But then Garth Ennis always seems to take whatever he's writing seriously. He never treats part of the gig as something he has to do that he's not interested in. He just writes a story he's interested in writing! Good for him! Also good for Carlos and Steve because sometimes annuals can get by on the most adequate art. But this looked good! And fun! And mean!

Wails From the Past: 1

Ancient Texts From the Only Redeeming Feature on Facebook: Facebook Memories
October 21st Edition

October 21st, 2021

This caption isn't part of the memory. Just wanted to say I drew that Green Gryphon logo myself!

October 21st, 2020
I've been "caught" "masturbating" on film thirteen times and let me tell you "twelve" of those times I was "tucking" in my "shirt."

October 21st, 2019
I will fight you to the death in support of saying "DC Comics" over just "DC." It's absolutely not the same as saying "PIN number" and "ATM mouth."

October 21st, 2019
People love to make statements that make them sound above it all. Statements that let them get away with sounding like a logical and rational person while really exposing the terrible things they believe.

October 21st, 2019
I think my life is a version of The Matrix but I'm actually five years old in a kindergarten cubby hole dreaming my entire adult life. Man, I can't fucking wait to wake up and play another round of "Button, Button, Who's Got the Button?"

October 21st, 2019
It would be narcissistic for me to remember every single word I've ever written!

October 21st, 2019
"You know why I don't punch people on the street? Because then I'd be like people who punch people on the street!" is a pretty lazy code of ethics. Even "I don't punch people on the street because I don't want to be punched on the street" would be better and even that's pretty much the bare minimum of being a good person. How about Superman doesn't treat bad guys like they treat people because he follows the teachings of Jesus, especially the bit about how the man with no sin should cast the first stone. And, no, that doesn't mean righteous people get to act like assholes, Tumblr. It means everybody should have a chance to redeem themselves and their past horrible behavior. It's an anti-death penalty statement made at a public execution. And it's not because Jesus doesn't want people to become like the convicted! It's because he understands that everybody throwing rocks has, at some point, done something for which they've needed forgiveness. And the only way to get forgiveness is to earn it through works and actions. And you can't do that if a bunch of self-righteous assholes on Twitter murder you with stones.

October 21st, 2019
The Jedi's main weapon is the lightsaber which looks like a baseball bat. Did none of them ever think, "Hey! The Death Star looks like a giant baseball! What if we build a really fucking huge lightsaber?!"
Comment by me underneath this: "Shit, their training apparatus was a mini-death star that shoots lasers that Jedi must block. How could they not think about making a massive lightsaber to block Death Star bolts?! Fucking idiots. Dark Side all the way!

October 21st, 2019
At least one Jedi uses the Jedi mind trick like Rohypnol.

October 21st, 2019
Been binge watching RuPaul's Drag Race so now every single RuPaul song is stuck in my head.

October 21st, 2019
If I were a wrestler, my catchphrase would be "Taste the painbow!"

October 21st, 2018
It's a call for civility if you're a Republican trying to get somebody to stop saying things you don't want to hear. But it's political correctness gone mad if somebody tries to tell them to stop saying things they love to say.

October 21st, 2018
Conservatives don't flinch when the government makes laws that screw a segment of the population. But if a thirteen year old on Tumblr tells them they can't say retard, they think it's the end of the fucking world.

October 21st, 2012
My 24 Hour Comic Book for 24 Hour Comic Book Day
LINK!

October 21st, 2012
Three hours left to ink. This is the scary part. Should I have left all of the inking for when I was dead tired? #24hcd

Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions: Chapter 1

One could do worse than have a wardrobe full of t-shirts with Vonnegut quotes on them.

Chapter 1 begins like this:

This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast.

I don't know if mentioning the two characters are white is a tell that this book will have a little something to do with race relations in America or if it was more of a habit of writers living through the Civil Rights era. People don't often think of bias stemming from what is left out of what is said and assumed by the listener (I mean people who aren't Foucalt and Derrida). But Vonnegut could have left out the adjective "white" and most readers would have simply assumed the two characters were white being that they weren't described using a different adjective. This is a foundational part of systemic racism and also homophobia and all the other Othering that takes place in America. So to come right out and state that two of the central characters of this novel were "fairly old white men", Vonnegut's making a narrative choice and a declaration of perspective. These two characters are experiencing America through a very particular lens: white, male, and older. People didn't use the word privileged in 1973 the same way we regard it now in 2026 (or did they? What the fuck do I know?) but it's what Vonnegut's pointing out. These two men who are experiencing bad shit in America are doing so even though they're from a privileged class. They have some bad shit going down in a country Vonnegut's about to take the extreme piss out of for the rest of the chapter. The decentered point here, the unspoken bit, is, "Now imagine if you aren't male or white or older. Hoo boy!"

The Preface of this book explains some things about the book from the author's point of view. The first paragraph of the second chapter gives a tiny little synopsis of the story about to be told. I'd argue the book doesn't really start until the second section of the second chapter when Vonnegut begins with his tried and true classic method of slapping you in the face to get your attention:

Listen:

I didn't say it was a hard slap. But it's an odd thing to say in a silent medium. As a pedant, one knows it should be "Read:". But Vonnegut wants to remind us that we're being told a story in a grand oral tradition. And that we should pay attention. I'd probably have started with "Listen, Motherfucker," but then I never learned the definition of subtle. My role model for how to act out in public was Tanner from The Bad News Bears.

After the "Listen" part, Kurt Vonnegut punches America in the teeth, pushes her to the ground, and begins kicking her in the ribcage. Good for him.

I'm being hyperbolic and misogynistic. Although, to be fair to me (for once), the misogyny is only because we are raised to view America as feminine. The hyperbole, to be fair to me, is just my way. Sure, Kurt doesn't beat the shit out of America in this chapter. He just points out how fucking silly and arbitrary the things we're supposed to believe about it actually are. Kurt just wants people to realize, before he tells his story about America, that when you celebrate patriotism and all of America's trappings, you're worshiping a clown that keeps falling down and shitting itself. But it's not the country's fault! It's the people in charge who have said, "This is the way things are and these are the things you should believe, no matter how stupid we've made them!"

Here is another quote presented as evidence to the things I've written so far that lacked evidence. I will not tell you how the one provides evidence for the other for it is abundantly clear to me and so if you should ask me, "What does this have to do with the other?", I would sneer and believe you to be a dunderheaded illiterate.

The undippable flag was a beauty, and the anthem and the vacant motto might not have mattered much, if it weren't for this: a lot of citizens were so ignored and cheated and insulted that they thought they might be in the wrong country, or even on the wrong planet, that some terrible mistake had been made. It might have comforted them some if their anthem and their motto had mentioned fairness or brotherhood or hope or happiness, had somehow welcomed them to the society and its real estate.

Kurt concludes the bit about America being silly by suggesting the national motto may as well have been "In nonsense is strength." But he's not done putting the screws to the myths of America. He's got some pretty hefty ones to go, some that idiot conservatives in 2026 would suggest were not even considerations until the radical left logged onto tumblr and began spouting them. But they've always been known because they're Truths which people in power who want to control and manipulate the way people see the world simply want to obliterate from mass consciousness. So Kurt goes on to discuss how a lot of the nonsense we learn about America isn't just silly; it's actually evil.

For example, teachers of children in the United States of America wrote this date on blackboards again and again, and asked the children to memorize it with pride and joy:

The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them.

See? This is why conservatives cannot like Kurt Vonnegut, no matter what they might think. To belong to their tribe, they must adamantly refuse to believe actual Truths about the world. They must openly espouse only what other members of their tribe espouse lest they be discarded like, well, like somebody who won't espouse the beliefs that conservatives have determined all conservatives believe. It's telling that conservatives came up with the term "virtue signaling" since signaling their "virtues" is all they do. It's how they think everybody acts because they know that if they don't wave a flag or praise God or kiss the ass of every military member they see in public, they'll be shunned by their peers. So they simply believe everybody is faking their lives to fit into a tribe. It's a pity they can't just be themselves and enjoy what they want without the constant fear of being abandoned. I think it's also why they strive so hard to make laws that force people to live and act in Christian or Conservative ways. Because they're angry that other people actually choose to be happy and joyful, that people simply do things that they want to do without fear of being disowned or despised.

All of this is evidence leading up to Kurt's conclusion about the terrible secret of this country and the men who founded it. Listen: it's racism.

Here was another piece of evil nonsense which children were taught: that the sea pirates eventually created a government which became a beacon of freedom to human beings everywhere else.

Actually, the sea pirates who had the most to do with the creation of the new government owned human slaves.

The sea pirates were white. The people who were already on the continent when the pirates arrived were copper-colored. When slavery was introduced onto the continent, the slaves were black.
     Color was everything.

It's at this point when Kurt puts on his steel-toed boots and really gets going on America's midsection. I was wrong about my hyperbole being too hyperbolic. Kurt just begins by writing, "Look at all this nonsense! Silly America!" And then he continues to point out how all of that silly nonsense was in service to a bunch of evil, greedy, selfish sons of bitches who fucked over the entire world to line their own pockets. And how those men and that world had a direct connection to the America of 1973, no matter how many brainwashed Christian dunderheads loudly proclaimed, "America is the greatest country on Earth!"

This isn't a review for R.F. Laird's The Boomer Bible but I might as well make it one even if R.F. Laird seems to have become a typical white reactionary who lost his mind. It's hard to believe how easily some people lose the plot of reality, especially when they wrote something so cutting and truthful and heartbreaking as The Boomer Bible. Also, I never received my $10,000 for finding the secret Christian symbol in the text, Laird. I mean, it was the same secret Christian symbol that Philip K. Dick saw after the pink light scrambled his brains and the secret Christian came to his door with his fish necklace. But, you know, I still figured it out! Pay up, buddy!

I mentioned The Boomer Bible because the Old Testament of The Boomer Bible discusses the history of civilization by telling the history of each Chosen Nation as it rises to power and then falls from its perch. It does this in incredibly hilarious and vulgar ways. A good example of the humor of the book is how one of the early chapters is The Book of Greeks. Following the Book of Greeks is "The Book of Romans. Otherwise known as the Second Book of Greeks." The final "historical" chapter in the book is The Book of Yanks because, well, they were, at the time, the current Chosen Nation and seemed like they would be for some time yet (is that time still? Or did it end in 2016? Or, more probably, 2001, on a particular morning in September). Kurt plays up this whole America as the Most Chosen Nation myth by pointing out how America became the richest nation in the world by simply threatening other nations with bombs and guns and "their capacity to astonish".

Nobody else could believe, until it was much too late, how heartless and greedy they were.

And so, you know, it continues to this day. I would say fuck Trump and Hegseth and Miller but I'm really more angry with all the idiots who bought into all of their bullshit and lies. So many friends and family members I had to abandon because they simply showed themselves to be gigantic dunderheaded illiterate non-thinking assholes. Buh-bye!

That "buh-bye" was me saying goodbye to all the useless trash whose time as my friends and family members is now done. It wasn't me ending this blog post! Kurt's not done with Chapter 1 yet! Although he is done bashing America, for the most part. He explains Communism which is just a scary word that was hijacked by more evil, nonsensical people when it really should have just meant "government based on the common good; on community; on acknowledging that nobody does anything by themselves, no matter how much Ayn Rand you've read (especially when Ayn Rand's own words in her stupid boring stories actually argue against what she thinks she's making them say! Have any of the people who worship her read Anthem? Do they fucking understand it says exactly the opposite of what she and they all think it does?! God, it's wall-to-wall illiterate dunderheads up in this house of a country!)". He points out that babies were being born into poverty all over the world and still Americans refused to help them because there was no law saying they had to help and they should only help if they want to but all the people with the money to help simply didn't want to, no matter how Christian they were. Perhaps because of how Christian they were!

The point of all of this is to begin the story by stating that Dwayne Hoover, the white Pontiac dealer, was incredibly wealthy when he met the incredibly poor Kilgore Trout, the white science fiction writer. These two characters are the main protagonists of the book although, in reality, all the characters are the main protagonists of the book, what with it being a Kurt Vonnegut novel and all. Also the black Wayne Hoobler whom we have yet to meet. Or Bunny. Or the bartender. Look, man, I can't remember the names of all of the main characters! A lot of people live in Midland City, Ohio!

I think there was more about Trout's ideas making Dwayne crazy but since that's going to be shown in the story later, maybe I'll save talking about it for then!

Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions: Preface

Cover design by Bob Giusti

[This is not a review of the novel. This is simply commentary as I read it. Those looking for pat answers and explications of complicated themes from an academic perspective should move along to some dry and boring Kurt Vonnegut Wiki.]

All speech is political. It can't help but be. But there are those who believe in words like faith and loyalty and patriotism who would have you believe otherwise so that only the things they believe should be spoken about are deemed civil and polite topics for conversation. Talking about heterosexual relationships isn't political; talking about gay relationships is. Discussing raising a baby isn't political; speaking about an abortion is. Bragging about your new rifle you were using at the gun range earlier that day isn't political; bringing up mass shootings is. Calling certain topics political, when all topics are actually political, is just a means of controlling what topics can be discussed openly in a mainstream, status quo environment. It's why one of the most common reactions to a book being banned is "Why the fuck was that banned?!" Most people just aren't searching for things to label as political; they're just living and reading and enjoying life. People who rely on an audience to make a living often discuss how they keep politics out of what they do because they don't want to lose half of their audience. But that's also political and will lose you half of your audience. Especially these days. Just ask Ed Sheeran.

Kurt Vonnegut begins his book entitled Breakfast of Champions with a blurb that, if this were any other author, would feel like a lawyer made them put it in.

The expression "Breakfast of Champions" is a registered trademark of General Mills, Inc, for use on a breakfast cereal product. The use of the identical expression as the title for this book is not intended to indicate an association with or sponsorship by General Mills, nor is it intended to disparage their fine products.

Vonnegut knows he's in the right to use this phrase as the title of his book (aside from how much better the slogan works for a martini than a bowl of shitty flakes) and he also knows that corporations are fucking lunatic bastards who try to squash anybody that might seem to be infringing on their trademark. So he kicks the legs out from under their lawyers and says, "This book is going to deal with things that a massive corporation that doesn't want to be associated with those things might get antsy about. They don't want you to think about race and poverty in America when you sit down to eat their stupid, boring fine product which you have to add a ton of sugar to. They don't want to be seen as political so I'll state right up front that this book doesn't have anything to do with them." Except Kurt knows that's not what he's saying at all. This has everything to do with them and all the other advertisers who don't want anybody to attach any politics to their product lest a boycott ensue.

What Kurt's doing here is making sure that the reader connects the advertising phrase to this book while explicitly saying that the book isn't connected to it. He wants the reader to understand capitalism is at the heart of what is happening to the people in this book. Capitalism and American exceptionalism. Because if an advertising phrase from corporate America had to be chosen as a National Advertising Campaign for the good old U.S. of A., "Breakfast of Champions" would be a frontrunner.

And, I mean, that phrase, "fine products". He's just kicking them in the balls at that point.

Next comes Kurt's explanation as to why he dedicated the book to a 40 year old widow he knew when he was 16, Phoebe Hurty, which — and even though I just re-read this bit a few days ago, I'd forgotten about when I began this commentary about what topics are deemed appropriate in polite conversations — reemphasizes the point in my initial thesis. Or my first paragraph blather. The bullshit my fingers typed out while showing grave disdain to my brain?

Phoebe Hurty wrote ad copy for the Indianapolis Times. Are you sensing a bit of a theme yet? I wonder how long it would have taken Kurt Vonnegut to write an entire novel that would cause a person to see Mad Men for what it truly is: a bunch of chimpanzees trying to look smart in tailored suits while getting smashed out of their gourds and fucking whatever moves. I mean, Mad Men was that to me when I watched it. But it was still great television! But it felt a bit like watching The Sopranos. I knew audiences were out there falling in love with the main character without understanding how fucking terrible the main character was. While watching Mad Men, I pretty much only liked Stan and Sally's weird neighbor friend.

Oh, sorry! Fucking digressions. Kurt gives an example of Phoebe's ad copy for a sale on straw hats: "For prices like this, you can run them through your horse and put them on your roses." Honesty in advertisement, I suppose. Also, both of these discussions Kurt begins with help to emphasize the name he uses to sign this preface. But first, more about Phoebe! Especially this bit which brings tears to my eyes whenever I read it because I love her so much for it. If one had to worship, they could do a lot worse than Phoebe Hurty.

She was funny. She was liberating. She taught us to be impolite in conversation not only about sexual matters, but about American history and famous heroes, about the distribution of wealth, about school, about everything.

It's odd that I choose to mention worshiping this excellent woman when what she teaches Vonnegut and his friends is simply this: hold nothing sacred. (Although, yes, Vonnegut mentions at the end of the Preface what he holds sacred. But he also reminds the people reading that he's terrible at being impolite the way Phoebe Hurty was.)

Some might read the idea of "holding nothing sacred" as having cynical feelings toward everything and believing in nothing. But that's not what I mean (I can't speak for what Phoebe Hurty meant, knowing her for only a scant few pages from a book written in 1973 about a woman from Kurt's memory of 1938). I mean you must even be able to see the humor in the things you hold most dear. And when I say "humor", I don't mean the schoolyard bully shenanigans that the most ignorant members of society believe constitute the bulk of humor. Humor isn't laughing because you made somebody's day worse. I mean seeing the ludicrous in the divine while still somehow embracing that which brings you awe. I mean that in as secular a way as possible, just in case you thought I suddenly found Jesus like my dumb childhood friend, Bob Henline. I guess his comedy career was getting too expensive and his most viral Instagram post caught on with religious nuts so now he's all-in on praising Jesus. This is just his fifty-five year old version of eating a moth at that Halloween party to impress us all when we were in our 20s.

Fuck me do I ramble. Christ!

Vonnegut's description of Phoebe as graceful in her impoliteness forces me into another digression about being an edgelord. I have, in my time, been accused of being an edgelord. But I think Vonnegut puts his finger on something that I've noted about being an edgelord, or as Kurt comments on it in 1973, being impolite. The difference I found in my "edgelord"ness versus an actual edgelord is that I find my way to "edgelord" topics naturally and by following a path through humor. If I become impolite in my commentary, it's at the service of thoughts that made me laugh, or got me thinking, or felt needed to be said for context of other ridiculous things I said. Actual edgelords, or those who have no grace in being impolite, begin with the thought: "How do I get people to react? How do I offend? What will get me a response?" Some people don't notice the difference between graceful impoliteness and edgelordism because they believe that their reaction is the deciding factor. If something offended them or made them angry, that thing was said purposefully to garner that reaction. Some people are not as perceptive as Kurt Vonnegut and, well, you know, um, me!

Vonnegut moves on to explain why, in this novel, he expresses a belief that human beings are machines. He provides ample evidence to back up his opinion that we are subject more to the whims of nature and chemicals and a body that we have less control of than we think we do than we are subject to the commands our brains issue. His conclusion — a conclusion of a man who saw his mother commit suicide, who suffered from depression himself, and who saw his son deal with schizophrenia — is thus:

So it is a big temptation to me, when I create a character for a novel, to say he is what he is because of faulty wiring, or because of microscopic amounts of chemicals which he ate or failed to eat on that particular day.

Here is Vonnegut's illustration of an asshole from the Preface. I don't remember when I first read this book but, like never forgetting "Out vile jelly!" after my first reading of King Lear, it has never not been at the forefront of my brain.

Kurt goes on to explain why he wrote this novel, a novel that he feels terrible about. He decided his brain needed a spring cleaning and he resolved to get out all of the useless junk that other people had shoved into it, leaving them in this novel. So here's more stuff that makes me cry.

The things other people have put into my head, at any rate, do not fit together nicely, are often useless and ugly, are out of proportion with one another, are out of proportion with life as it really is outside my head.
     I have no culture, no humane harmony in my brains. I can't live without a culture anymore.

Okay, sure, that's scarily close to the beginning of some spree killer's white supremacist manifesto! But take it in context and from the fifty year old man who is lamenting what he's grown up believing was "American culture" to only realize that none of it makes sense, none of it scales correctly, and most of it is ugly and useless. Most of what he's discarding is a product of capitalism, advertising, and systemic racism. He's writing this in 1972. I bet this Kurt Vonnegut would later love the short-lived disco culture.

So that's basically the premise. He goes on to shit on Veterans' Day because it's a lousy, self-serving version of the world's Armistice Day created after The Great War ended. And then he signs the Preface, "Philboyd Studge". That name, he explains, he got from a friend who said reading a particular book felt like it was written by somebody with that name. Maybe the friend was just pulling that name out of a forgotten corner of his head, part of his cultural detritus picked up and stored within his brain, and he only meant the book was tedious. But the name comes from a short story from The Chronicles of Clovis by Saki. "Filboid Studge" is the name of a shit cereal that becomes a wild success because of the advertising slogan.

Cereal. Advertising. A shit product.

Apparently Kurt Vonnegut recommends two kicks to the balls. Just to be fucking sure your opponent stays down.

Hitman #20 (November 1997)

Wasn't I just complaining that Catwoman's suit never tears in the right places? MEOW!

Hitman #20 (September 24th, 1997)
By Garth Ennis, John McCrea, Carla Feeny, and Willie Schubert
Cover by John McCrea
Edited by Peter Tomasi and Dan Raspler

It's been about 20 days since I read Part Five of "Ace of Killers" so don't be surprised when I can't remember what the fuck was happening. I guess the cover explains it all. Tommy fucked up by trusting Etrigan and now Tiegel's underwear is showing. Catwoman's underwear would be showing as well but she apparently doesn't wear any. Did I say "MEOW" already?

Tommy gave Etrigan his heart back so now The Demon can rhyme again. In exchange, Etrigan shit in Tommy's mouth and called it chocolate cake. Is that a saying for when a person doesn't want to use the phrase "Indian giver"? Although I have to admit, I always thought "Indian giver" meant promising a Native tribe something and then completely screwing them to send them down a Trail of Tears. But I guess it has something to do with the way Native Americans had no concept of foreigners being able to own things in their land? Anyway, now when somebody screws somebody else over super badly, you just say they took a shit in that person's mouth and called it chocolate cake. If you want, you can say that's a Cherokee saying. But it might not be and you might be a terrible person if you claim that. What do I, a terrible person, know about not being terrible?!

While Tommy, Nat, and Tiegel are all about to get fucked by Mawzir and his Gotham henchmen, Catwoman finds herself lost in the catacombs beneath the church and Gotham.

She was so close to discovering the Court of Owls here!

The reason I haven't been reading comic books is because I've been working on a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. I just turned 55 at the end of last month and I really want to spend a bunch of my old man time like I spent my tweenage time: acting like a huge fucking dork. At least I think I've improved my Dungeonmastering game! Although I can't really say that until we play our first session and my players are all, "That was amazing!" and "I had so much fun!" and "Show us your tits!" One of my players is an asshole.

Baytor reappears with the ammunition for the Ace of Winchesters and Etrigan is all, "Give me those back, you, um, thumbtack!" But Catwoman suddenly shows up and is all, "Put them in my mitts and I'll show you my tits!"

I should apologize for mentioning showing tits in two separate paragraphs that have nothing to do with each other except for tits being shown. My brain is currently salami. I just discovered Zero Sugar Vanilla Shot Monsters and I'm training my brain to exist on ten Monsters a day. It seems to think it's a great idea but my heart is like, "Fu...fu...fu..." *gasp gasp gasp gasp "Fuck you!" Too bad for my heart, it's like eight or nine on my list of favorite organs so it can fucking deal with ten thousand milligrams of caffeine. I think the bigger problem is the 170% of my daily Sodium allowance coming from that much Cream Soda Monster. I could try to cut salt out of every other aspect of my diet and also sleep in a desalination chamber. Would that work? I'm not a scientist or a doctor. Hell, I'm barely a human being. But my brain had that thought so there must be some logic to it, right?! Isn't that how scientists come up with theories? They wake up after a weird dream, mutter, "Hmm, interesting," and then write a thesis without doing any work at all?

Sometimes I hate when I'm writing something because I know I sound like the kind of online assholes whom I think are assholes because they write that kind of thing online but without any self-awareness at all. "Me and ChatGPT came up with a Theory of Everything because I thought, 'Hey, this sounds scientific!', and then ChatGPT said, 'You are truly on the cutting edge of the most divine and Messianic thinking I've ever seen! If nobody but me believes you, remember you still have that gun I told you to buy, right?'"

Anyway did I mention Baytor gives Catwoman the ammunition so he could suck dem titties? And then she gets them to Tommy because Mawzir decided to toy with Tommy instead of killing him. Classic Nazi demon mistake!

Catwoman is not dropping a cat-turd on Mawzir to defeat him. She's just getting in position to claw out his eyeballs.

The Ace of Winchesters turns Mawzir back into five Nazis. Before Tommy gets around to shooting them in their dumb Nazi faces, he and Tiegel shoot all the henchmen in their dumb following Nazi orders faces. It's a bloodbath after which Tiegel and Tommy don't fuck. But they do kiss passionately which, being that this isn't a Vertigo comic book, is probably all they're allowed to do. Especially in the same issue with all the blood and murder and Catwoman tits and swastikas. You've got to draw the line somewhere.

It's weird to think some stupid fucks would get angry about Tommy shooting Nazis.

One of the reasons I like Garth Ennis is because Garth Ennis writes stories that say, "I'm going to make my politics known and if you get pissed off about it, suck my fucking dick." Like earlier in the series, he made a disparaging comment about Margaret Thatcher and somebody in a later letters page wrote in, "I'm going to overlook Ennis's overt liberal pansy politics so that I can keep pretending that I'm a decent person that this kick-ass writer wouldn't despise!" And Peter Tomasi was all, "Sorry we pissed you off, you stupid prick! Keep reading, I guess?"

I may not be remembering all of that correctly but that's good enough for my agenda which is to point out that some people are stupid fucks who don't mind admitting in public that they're stupid fucks. Also, it's a weird premise I just came up with that Garth Ennis was showing his politics by having Tommy kill a bunch of Nazis. In 1997, that was probably standard fare that most people would know better than to push back on. Although that one fucking idiot wrote in to Tales of the Teen Titans to complain about Starfire beating the shit out of all them white South Africans in that one story. So they were out there! I suspect way more terrible letters were read and binned by comic book editors than the public ever got to see.

Etrigan returns to Hell and lets Jason Blood come back when Natt threatens him with the Ace of Winchesters. Then we get to see that nobody in Section Eight died although several of them might be dead within the hour.

I'd suggest they were hallucinations but Natt and Tommy sort of comment on them enough that I think Section Eight is actually there.

The Ranking!
Anyway, they all seem to survive and they get away before the cops arrive and Baytor gets put up in a backroom at Noonan's where he'll also have a job soon. Catwoman takes off with a promise to call Monaghan if she needs somebody killed and Tiegel takes off with a promise to give Tommy a chance. Etrigan lets Tommy knows he likes him and Tommy keeps the Ace of Winchesters for later. There's just one last thing to appreciate before I end this post.

Bueno's "Bueno!" is the "That's what she said!" of 1997. Except Austin Powers came out that year so, um, never mind.