Superior Foes of Spider-Man #10

Spider-Man! Spider-Man! He lives in a garbage can! Spins a web every night! He's strong to the finish because he's the Spider-Man!

This comic book came out two weeks in a row! What the fuck is that about?! Well, as I begin to read it, I kind of begin to get what the fuck it is all about! Last issue concentrated on Captain Boomerang as he dealt with all of the criminals he's pissed off. As he was getting one Criminal Overlord that wanted him dead pissed off at another Criminal Overlord that wanted him dead, he ran into three other members of the Sinister Six driving around in a school bus loaded with children. It looks like this comic book is going to be about how those guys got themselves into that situation and should end with them picking up Boomerang. Which is kind of cool that these two issues came out right on top of each other since the stories are running parallel.

This issue begins with Overdrive, Speed Demon, and Beetle telling stories about the biggest jerko heroes they ever bested in combat. The first to go is Overdrive as he tells a story about getting one over on Hercules.

Does Hercules always sound this idiotic or is this because he's basically being written by Overdrive? I hope he's always like this! I like it!

Overdrive runs but Hercules eventually catches up. But he doesn't recognize Overdrive because Overdrive has put on a helmet by then. So Hercules, being a big dumb lummox, just asks him if he saw a villain run by. Overdrive points the way and story over!

That story doesn't really make Overdrive seem brave or heroic so I'm willing to bet it's all true! Hercules is an idiot!

This is why Superman doesn't get enough credit for how hard his job is. He probably gets his ass beat 90% of the time because he's going easy on a new villain, pulling his punches because he doesn't want to kill the guy. Meanwhile the villain is going gangbusters all over Superman's face. And just because the villain is super strong, it doesn't mean the villain is invulnerable! So Superman has to steadily increase the power of his punches little by little as he takes a serious beating! Every day Superman is walking a tightrope between getting killed and winding up in jail for manslaughter.

Next, Beetle tells her story about how she beat Daredevil! Her story takes place in court as she went toe to toe with blind Matt Murdock! And since there were rumors that he was Daredevil, she kept trying to trick him into revealing that he had some kind of super senses. But when everything she tried failed, she decided to call in a favor and have The Looter cause a ruckus outside of the courtroom.

Stupid Murdock! Your most important job is putting the criminals away after the criminals have been captured! Jerko!

Lastly, Speed Demon tells his fantastically amazing story about when he beat Spider-Man! Or a different time when he came out on top over The Thing! Or when he iced The X-Men! Or how he cleaned The Avenger's clocks! But his best story was how he got revenge on Hercules for sucker punching him!

Didn't Hercules get the clap from one of his twelve labors? Something about the Stygian Bull? Or Stymphalian Birds? It sounds like you can get clap from those!

Of course that's Hercules walking into the bar bringing the gift of battle. It ends there because do we really need to see these poor guys get their asses beat by Hercules? And by poor guys I mean Beetle and Overdrive since Speed Demon, as usual, runs away instantly.

Even without Nick Spencer writing, this comic wins most whimsical of the week! That's a new award I just decided to give out this week and will forget all about next week! On a positive note, this was the last comic book from the batch delivered on March 19th. So now I only have the comic books that came out last Wednesday! I'm very nearly caught up again! I'd high five all the readers if all of my readers were less than five years old. Otherwise I'd have to high five you and then judge you for being old enough to know better.

The Superior Foes of Spider-Man #9

Fact: I am 100% on Crane Games. One play; one prize!

This is the story about my crane game win:

I have a pet penguin. His name is Schnabel and I hatched him about fifteen years ago. I hatched him out of a plastic bag after his birth mother, Arby's, abandoned him. He's tiny and he's stuffed and he's got a huge attitude. This is Schnabel in a Monkey Puzzle Tree:

Schnabel spends a lot of time at home now but he used to go with me everywhere. He sat on my knee way back when he was first born and watched The Phantom Menace in the theater. He wasn't too thrilled with it but he was dying to see the movie in the trailer with the penguin that said, "Slide." So he was the main reason I wanted to see Fight Club before I even knew anything about it. Because there was a penguin in it. But this story isn't about Schnabel; it's about a crane game.

One evening, the Non-Certified Spouse and I went to a nickel arcade with Schnabel. Just inside the lobby was a crane game and inside the crane game were stuffed Killer Whales. Schnabel is terrified of Killer Whales for good reason. When we lived in Lincoln, Nebraska, we tried to convince him that he was safe from Killer Whales being that we were landlocked pretty much as locked in by land as we could get. But he wouldn't be calmed. He got out the phone book and started paging through the white pages until he screamed and dove under a pillow. He had found an entry for Whaley, K. in the Lincoln phone book. From that point on, he would never feel safe again. Until he saw that crane game and decided to take destiny into his own hands. If he could reverse fate and be the penguin that caught a Killer Whale, he would be king of everything! He already had a small posse of gang members, swords, vests, crowns, and treasures of all kinds. But now he pictured himself riding on the back of a Killer Whale as well! He need never fear again!

So I helped Schnabel take control of the joystick and paid for the only crane game I've ever paid for. And Schnabel caught that fucking Killer Whale and rides it to this day. That's why he doesn't go out as much. He's not afraid to stay at home because, you see, he has his own Killer Whale.

And to answer the one question probably left in everybody's minds: yes, we took him to see March of the Penguins. And of course Fight Club! He's seen a lot of movies in his time.

Last issue ended with Boomerang about to get his brains blown out. This issue begins with the biggest fucking bullshit ever to grace the first page of a comic book!

Even my fucking penguin knows this is bullshit!

Look, I get it! I really do get that I'm reading a comic book! But some fiction and fantasy needs to have some kind of basis in reality if you're trying to tell a story set within the fuzzy parameters of that reality! Now, if Boomerang had some form of super speed, maybe I'd go for this. But even then I'd bitch! Because Bullseye, knowing he might have to shoot a speedster at some point, would definitely use a gun that shot bullets at faster than Mach 1 so that the Speedster wouldn't have time to react to the sound of the bullet being fired before he was dead! It's simple logic! I didn't invent logic!

If you don't like logic, do you like experiential knowledge? Because I'm willing to give volunteers boomerangs and see if any of them can block bullets as I shoot at them. First I should see if I'd be responsible for their deaths or if science is a reasonable excuse for murder. I'll get back to you on that.

Bullseye is properly pissed. This is probably the last time he ever appears in this comic book where the laws of physics simply don't apply. Although I have to admit that I'm not that familiar with the Marvel Universe! Maybe bullets travel much slower in this Universe! Hmm. I forgot my motto for today is "Ignorance is its own reward." So I should allow myself to remain ignorant of Marvel's Universal Laws and pretend that bullets travel super slow here! There! Now I don't mind this beginning as much as I previously did! Oh ignorance! You're the best!

Anyway, Bullseye could learn a lesson here! Become the star of your own fucking comic book and you suddenly have the possibility to come out victorious in any confrontation you can think up! And Boomerang has apparently been dying to show up this bastard for awhile now.

No wonder he was a constant loser! Look at that joke of a costume! Also look at how you spell "loser," you losers.

Boomerang blocks a couple more bullets with a boomerang which lends more credence to my theory that bullets are really slow in the Marvel Universe. I actually like that! I hate reading comic books (and watching movies but how about we leave that rant for another time?) where bullets are flying all over the place and somehow the hero outruns them or dives for cover or walks nonchalantly down the street never being hit by a single bullet. But if the bullets are really slow? Holy shit! Totally believable! Bullseye is an idiot! If he were a smarter Marvel villain, he would have based his gig around a deadlier weapon! Can you believe some idiot is running around using a gun as a weapon in the Marvel Universe? What a dope!

Meanwhile it's Movie Night with Hydro-Man and Shocker! But Shocker currently has company in the form of an asshole disembodied head, so he tries to send Hydro-Man away. Besides, he brought that stupid Katherine Heigl movie that Boomerang loves so much! The one about the romance that is an unexpected romance or something? But Hydro-Man kind of needs structure in his life and missing movie night sends him spiraling into a really negative space.

Seriously? If this is the kind of shit that goes on in the lives of super villains, I have no idea why most comic books are about super heroes! These villains' lives seem way more entertaining!

Hydro-Man ultimately learns that Shocker is keeping an old man's head in his closet, so that's probably going to have to be explained later. In the meantime, Boomerang and Bullseye are busy having their huge macho showdown! Bravado will be bravadoed! Bullets will fly! Boomerangs are going to twirl with that weird floppy motion! Girlfriends are going to be sacrificed!

Does Fred think she'll come back to him after this? Does he think everything is a boomerang?

Shocker soon discovers that he's in big trouble when his "pal" Hydro-Man sneaks out via the toilet to go sell some information about one C-List Villain and a certain old man's head he's keeping in storage.

Boomerang and his date wind up bound and gagged as Bullseye calls Owl to come down so he can find out from Freddie where his painting has gotten too. Boomerang doesn't have it but he knows who does have it. And since that person is Chameleon, Boomerang realizes he has a chance to convince Owl that he was never a part of the heist in the first place. Of course Owl isn't going to believe this load of bullshit without proof! So a plan is concocted!

Surprise! Somebody in the Marvel Universe wasn't actually who you thought it was! Fool you once, shame on Marvel! Fool you five bajillion times, shame on, well, I guess Marvel still. Bastards. I bet the Bullseye L.M.D. is actually Chameleon!

Boomerang's plan works perfectly since his Camerang has no audio. So he manages to get video of The Face of Victor Von Doom hanging behind the Chameleon and then tricks the Chameleon into wearing Boomerang's face. Owl gets pissed. Boomerang gets thrown out. Everything is working out nicely for Boomerang! Sure, he still doesn't have the painting or the head or any money to show for all of this work. Yet! He'll get there! But first he has to deal with one other problem that suddenly comes up.

The fuck?

The Superior Foes of Spider-Man Rating: This is the funniest comic book going right now. That I'm reading! I have to assume Deadpool is pretty funny since he's supposed to be and he's being written by a professional comedian. But this one is full of the chuckles.

The Superior Foes of Spider-man #8

Why are these guys all so fucking short?

A friend loaned me The Superior Foes of Spider-man #1-7 and I read those without reviewing them because do I look like I have all the time in the world? It took long enough just to read those seven issues carefully! I didn't get any commentaries written yesterday which means I've disappointed nearly the entire internet. Except for the self-righteous assholes that don't think I'm funny. But fuck them, right? Totally. Right up the nose with a rubber ho's...well, I don't know. Dildo? Nobody ever finished that rhyme for me when I was a kid. Dicks. Why were people always hiding things from me? Why wouldn't my cousin Jerry tell me what a virgin was after we saw Clash of the Titans in the theater? And whenever I asked my sister what a period was, why did she keep saying the dot at the end of a sentence? Actually, I'm glad she didn't tell me that one. It would have just led to more and more questions that I probably wasn't ready to hear. What's menstruation? What's a vagina? Why would you tell a six year old something so horrifying?!

Not that menstruation is horrifying! I mean, it is but I don't want anybody thinking that I actually think that! I don't need angry messages pointing out that I'm a sexist pig! I already know that! Tell me something I don't know! Like what a virgin is! I've often been told that I'm one but nobody gives any specifics! It could mean right-handed for all I know!

Remember how I've often complained that there are not enough whimsical comic books? Make that number one less than not enough now because this comic book is pretty funny! It's got this guy Boomerang that is running a super villain crew called The Sinister Six but there are only five members in it! That's not laugh out loud funny but it is cerebral humor. You have to do math to get the joke but it's worth the effort once you finish counting on your fingers! He throws exploding boomerangs just like some guy in DC whose name I can't remember. He just recently changed his outfit and thank fucking Christ he did because that costume with the gigantic boomerangs for nipples was just awful. I'd forgotten that I knew who Boomerang was until I saw him in his old costume and thought, "Oh yeah! I have about eighty-five of his Heroclix! I even have the one that has his name Fred Myers on the base instead of Boomerang! Oh yeah, also his name is Fred Myers. That's pretty funny because you can find it at Freddy's. But only if you're on the West Coast and possibly the Northwest Coast! If you live anywhere else, you have to shop at Kroger's and I don't know if you can find it there."

I still have more to say about Boomerang! So he wants less people on The Sinister Six because then the cash they steal can be split less ways! So he later locks Shocker in the trunk of a car and pushes it into a river because Shocker knew too much! Shocker is a coward in a quilted yellow costume that has a power that I don't quite understand. He punches hard or something? Anyway, he saw Boomerang making a shady deal with Chameleon and Boomerang didn't think that was cool or funny, so he tried to kill him. It did not work and instead of dying, Shocker found the Head of Silvermane! That's a Legendary Artifact that allows the user to rule all of the gangs of New York. And since New York is the only city in the Marvel Universe, that's really powerful!

Also on the team are the other guys that I'll mention later because that's probably enough recap for now because remember that thing about not having all of the time? I have barely half the time left that I had when I was a born! So I need to get cracking! One last thing: Boomerang has recently betrayed his entire team so that he could make off with the actual prize he's been after for seven comic books: a painting worth thirty million dollars called "The True Face of Doom!" Or something.

See? Shocker has the head! The head is a dick!

Boomerang is currently getting his ass kicked by Chameleon's thugs because Boomerang was supposed to have this head. And the other members of the Sinister Six that were trying to steal the head (Speed Demon, Overdrive, and Beetle) are being rescued from the grip of Owl by Tombstone, Beetle's dad. These are a lot of Marvel characters that I don't know about. Boomerang is the only one I know and only because I have the stupid plastic figure of him!

Now everybody wants a piece of Boomerang because he owes everybody a piece of himself! Except for Shocker. Shocker doesn't want to find Boomerang and Boomerang doesn't owe him anything. Except maybe an apology for trying to kill him. But Shocker is the one with Silvermane's head, so he's actually the person everybody should be looking for. That should solve everybody's problems. And then they can forget the past and become The Sinister Six once again! Or not. It's not like this comic book is called The Sinister Six! Although it does have Spider-man in the title so I am kind of expecting Spider-man at some point.

Chameleon steals Boomerang's Portrait of Doom while Boomerang is sleeping off a few punches to the face. After Boomerang wakes up to find his score gone, he decides to go on a date with a bartender he met a few issues ago.

Forget that other score! This one is better!

But then he asks "Now what if I told you I was a super villain?" and the date promptly goes to hell. But only for a second! Fred's derailed train gets right back on the track ready to chug along into the tunnel territory.

You know the hottest show on PBS? Thomas and Friends! "They're six! They're three! They're one! They're four!" Or something. Whatever. All I know is they go in and out of tunnels all fucking day. That's a metaphor for sex! I know that's a metaphor for sex because another metaphor for sex is when you put your index finger into the hole formed by the index finger and thumb of your other hand. Unless that is sex. Is that sex? Have I been seeing sex all this time and not being turned on by it? No, no. It must be a metaphor because people always do it with their clothes still on. And I'm nearly positive that sex happens without your clothes on. Maybe with your socks on. But that's it!

The date ends with Philly Bartender Whose Name I Forgot If It's Even Been Mentioned At All In Any Issue So Far giving Boomerang advice on being the best super villain he can be! If she's going to date a criminal, he'd better at least be an ambitious criminal! They kiss and the issue ends with Bullseye on the roof across the way with Boomerang's head in his sights. Yeah, Owl wasn't very happy about his painting being stolen so he decided to call in a professional killer. And I don't think Bullseye ever misses! Boomerang had better hope Spider-Man is swinging by for some reason!