Yesterday I was buying some Amazing Spider-Man back issues from a used book store that started carrying comics. I've talked some serious shit about comic stores, but I'll give them this: For the most part, the anal shopowners, though obnoxious, have their shit together and manage to keep things in order. This place, which probably makes more money selling shot glasses with hilarious slogans and knock-off violins (who the fuck is buying those, by the way? Does that really strike you as a wise idea?) than they do old comics, so the section is a little disoirganized. After spending ten minutes looking over an issue I couldn't find on my list before realizing that it wasn't there because the Spider-Man on the cover was actually a Spider-Girl, complete with different costumes and about as much femininity as can be draped in spider webs, I found this gem:
Now, I'm certain that something like this has not passed by the comics community unnoticed . By which I mean I'm sure there are 40,000 snarky blogs about it already. But hey, this is my snarky blog, and I'll do as I please.
The story begins with our friend Galactus, devourer of worlds. He's about ready to eat an entire inhabited planet (inhabited planets being the only thing that fuels him) when the planet's residents decide to blow themselves up. So in the first couple pages, we've got an entire planet, presumably a billion people, making the decision to commit suicide rather than being devoured.
I know that sounds like boring background nonsense, but it becomes important once we get to the giant space Twinkie.
Yeah.
The blast also killed Galactus' herald, so he has to find a new one and starts heading for Earth to do just that.
Cut to planet Earth where Peter Parker and Aunt May are at the circus. Without doing the math, I would estimate that 65% of Marvel comics published in the 70's and the 80's used the circus as an element in some way. Also at the circus, conincidentally sitting right next to Mr. Parker, is the Fantastic 4, including Franklin Richards, the son of Sue and Reed Richards.
Now, why a boy who grew up with a stretch man, a rock man who could lift a barge, a man who can fly around in fire that is always burning without consuming him, and a woman who can become invisible, why a boy who grew up with that would have any appreciation for the circus is pretty much beyond me. He lives in a world where mole men attack and cosmic rays are a thing. This seems to be above and beyond the circus on every level other than the enslavement of elephants, whichcircus people treat like go karts.
Regardless, the Fantastic 4 gets a call and has to leave. Franklin wants to stay and watch the circus. Auny May, bothersome old biddy that she is, says that she would be happy to watch the boy. Sue Storm isn't apt to leave her son with a strange woman, no matter how old she may be and how tight her hair bun might be pulled. However, Spider-Man shows up and vouches for Aunt May. His identity is secret, they don't know how he could possibly know about her, and she barely hides her disdain for Spider-Man, but that's good enough. To the Pogo Plane!
Of course, just as the FF leave with Spider-Man in tow, Galactus shows up and picks Franklin Richards to be his new herald. Springing into action with surprising gymnastic aplomb, Aunt May dives in front of...the magic rays that turn someone into a Galactus herald(?) and turns into...
I have to say, I think Galactus is headed for a serious discrimination lawsuit of some kind here. Why would his herald need to be transformed into a babe in a skin-tight getup? I think if the job is flying through space and letting people know their planet is going to be eaten, it could be Danny Devito. Aerodynamics are of no concern where there is no air to dynamic.
On the plus, I'm pretty sure that I now have an explanation for Helen Mirren.
Galactus tells Golden Oldie that it's time to get her newly tightened ass in gear and find a planet that's good eating, but before she can go Franklin Richards makes a suggestion:
At first I thought this was a page added in, one of those Hostess ads they would do, one-page comics where Dr. Octopus would be foiled only by his abiding love for gas station pastries. In fact, it would be pretty awesome to recreate those ads, but instead of having them be their own comic, disguise them to look like a continuation of the comic the reader is looking at which ends with someone saying the phrase "fruity deliciousness." Sort of like how you'll read an Esquire article about the best watches and in the middle some asshole sticks in an ad for a watch that is suspiciously similar in layout and coloring to the actual article. I suspect play MOST FOUL, Esquire.
Galactus eats the Twinkie. Now, in terms of scale, this would be like me eating a Twinkie that was about the size of...hmm...a Twinkie that could fit in my pee hole, let's say, which is smaller than a Tic-Tac. I know this based on a failed Tic-Tac-based, pre-oral-sex freshening-up tactic that didn't quite work out.
Enter one of my least favorite characters: Goofy Galactus.
Okay, he has bad decision-making skills when it comes to headgear, and he is in purple, which is not a respectable male color. But he does eat inhabited planets to live, a subject which has incredible depth that has only really been explored by the animated Transformers feature film. So when you goof-itize him, it kills it for me just a little bit.
So at this point Golden Oldie is scouring the globe to find more Twinkies, enough to satisfy Galactus. Instead of going to, I don't know, a FACTORY she goes door-to-door collecting the Twinkies people have. She stops at her boyfriend's house where they have this discussion:
Alright, she's been Golden Oldie for about ten minutes at this point, and the only thing she's lost is the politeness that previously kept her from rummaging in other peoples' cupboards for snacks and the opportunity to see a clown drive an elephant in a circle. Oh, and her oldness. So I guess this comic DOES address the age-old question "Would you trade in your manners for minor rudeness in order to live forever with superpowers?"
Of course, the pee-hole-sized snacks aren't enough in any quantity, so Golden Oldie has to head into outer space in search of inhabited planets. Instead, she finds a giant space Twinkie that was created by this Doughboy/Michelin Man hybrid who was exiled from his planet because they thought his idea of putting cream inside sponge cake was insane. Which it is, however on the insanity scale I find it relatively harmless. If I can choose to give a criminal a shiv or a Wilton wand, I know which way I'll go.
Something about the Michelin Doughboy does seem a little off, though, besides the crazy eyes, and I think I figured out what it is: I can accept that you made a giant space Twinkie, but why in the name of all that is holy would you need to shrinkwrap it, and how would one even go about it?
Fortunatley, Galactus shows up, Golden Oldie hooks up the Doughboy as the new herald of Galactus (proving my point about Danny Devito as a viable candidate) and the two head off towards domestic bliss.
Oh, also, Franklin Richards absorbs Aunt May's power so that everything is back to normal.
Then we have the final page, which reads like a storyboard for the movie Inception, dreams inside dreams inside dreams.
Peter Parker wakes up and says, What a terrible nightmare. Then, an editor at Marvel wakes up from THAT dream and does the same thing. Then, the editor-in-chief wakes up from THAT dream. This continues down through Stan Lee, after which it circles back around, Galactus wakes up, and asks his hearld, Nova, to get him a warm glass of milk. Then, the readers wake up collectively in their homes and think, oh thank goodness, it was only a dream.
Yeah, thank goodness it was only a dream. It's always been a dream of mine to buy a comic book that had no grounding in reality, no sense, and that, based on the knockoff name, even the Twinkie corporation felt was a little too off-base to advertise in. A company that mixes chemicals to make phallic spongebread n' cream products felt that this comic book was too left field for them.
What did we learn?
We learned that the Twinkie is a food with the nutritional value to power not just a man, but a living manifestation of the elements themselves. We learned that even the oldest of the olds can be transformed into a hot babe with the mere application of cosmic powers and the removal of her pupils. We heard a cautionary tale about baking taken too far, a lesson that could be applied to numerous boutique cupcake shops and Food Network programming slots. We learned that some companies really SHOULD implement mandatory drug testing.
But most of all, we learned that Googling "helen mirren" with safesearch off is a great way to temper the disappointment of a crappy comic book.
We went from planetwide suicide to giant space Twinkie to very old woman in a bikini in a couple dozen pages. The Power Cosmic truly does some amazing things. Including the two worst panels I've ever seen if you take the dialogue out of context. I'll let you decide which is worse.
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