Yes, it takes three to tackle Satan – one for each leg and one up high – but more specifically, weâre talking about the Satanic Panic. It was a hilarious and ridiculous nationwide witch hunt that spanned all of the 1980s, and the inherent comedy of panicky idiots seeing the devil in nerd games was only slightly dampened by the many, many real lives it ruined.
Itâs a manual for gullible therapists on how to coach attention-seeking adults into bad improv about the devil, and itâs full of illustrations youâd only pretend to put on the fridge even if you loved your lobster-clawed blind child very much.
Our fine Patrons get the bonus episode, where Jason sticks around to watch Aquaman do very little in a confusing tale of Super Friends! And donât forget to buy Jasonâs incredible new book, Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick, wherever incredible new books or dick punches are sold. Please also subscribe to our podcast wherever podcasts or dick punches are subscribed to, and leave a review! Be sure to mention that it DEFINITELY DOESNâT sound like weâre all a bunch of fuckinâ dweebs who the devil would never hang with. Clarify that it DOES NOT sound like that.
WE LOVE YOU, SNAP-SNAP, BUT THESE ARE OVEN DRAWINGS.
Hereâs a short list of some of my favorite comedy resources:
-When a corporation decides to do a comic book.
-Long roll calls of characters by people who ran out of ideas before they started.
-Boring organizations deciding itâs time to get âbadical… to the extreme!â
-When somebody wildly overestimates their own value and plummets straight into the dirt.
Every one of those things, on their own, is a recipe for hilarity. Now meet all of them rolled together: The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool Adventurerâs Club!
âThis canât be exactly what it looks like,â youâre thinking. âThereâs no way you found a superhero comic about staple crops.â
And youâre right. Tragically, youâre right. I did not find the comic books. Those were all lost to silo fires and farm suicides. I only found the promotional material for the fan club of the comic books. This is a new type of sadness scientists have been working on by nesting layers of sadness atop one another until they form a strong and flexible weave of despair. They call it Sadophene, and itâs so durable theyâre using it to hold together Elon Muskâs quivering ego.
The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool Adventurers were like The Avengers for 4H kids whoâd been kicked in the head and left their imaginations on the hoof of a milking cow. The goal of the Adventurers wasnât to get kids into farming, it was to show farm kids how awesome their lives already were. They did it through pogs!
If youâre not familiar, pogs wereâŚ
Wait, what the fuck were pogs? No, I lived through this. I should know this. I had pogs. They were a game or something, right? Y-you pogged? Did we pog each other? Holy shit why did we buy so many circles of cardboard with pictures on them?
Imagine the child these pogs were made for. The bowl-cutted, overall-clad, ricket-afflicted boy sitting alone in a windblown field in central Canada cupping a soggy King Wheat pog, his most treasured possession. If I was making an arthouse film about hell thatâs how Iâd show you the Fate of the Unlearned — the section of limbo where good people who just never heard of Christ go, to suffer in the absence of something they never knew was missing.
Hey speaking of obscure parts of hell, imagine the poor freelance comic book artist who took this job and actually had to pen character arcs for barley. They sure knew their demographic, though. They didnât call these things activity books:
They were called âThings To Do When Youâre Bored Booksâ because they knew calling these sad time-killers âactivitiesâ would be an actionable false advertising claim. In Quebec they were called âLa Mort De Ennuiâ and to this day Montreal existentialists write bitingly ironic ukulele songs about them for their six YouTube subscribers.
Those are your villains: The various molds and insects which can spoil a harvest. These are comic books for children about wheat fighting mold, and I donât know a single better way to tell a kid that you lied when you said they could be anything they wanted. You could say âIâm sorry Young Callum, youâll never be an astronaut. Youâll go to the University of Regina for two semesters, and then youâll move back home and drive your daddyâs pickup truck when he dies,â or you could just give him a Saskatchewan Wheat Pool Adventurerâs Club membership and let his dreams wither naturally on the vine.
Look at these thrilling Things To Do When Youâre Bored!
-Discover âthe Mighty Sproutâ in a powerful science project!
-Check out the âA-MAZE-INGâ Wheat Story!
-See inside a seed cleaning plant!
Hand a boy these and he will forget all about hope. He probably wonât even dream in color anymore. If you toss a kid one of these books and he has an absolute blast âseeing inside a seed cleaning plant,â then you need to get out of the house, barricade the door, and burn it down. An alien has cuckoo-ed you and tricked you into raising their offspring. Young Callum is excited about learning these processes because you are the crop, and the harvest is coming.
Letâs explore another of my favorite things: Roll call time!
Wendy Wrangler is a country singer whose tunes âwrangleâ her opponents. Yeah, okay. That scans. Good work, anonymous Saskatchewan freelancer. Buy yourself a pint of Everclear and drink it straight, you earned it.
Fantastic Flax can âblend in like a chameleon,â which is… is it because you can mix flax into so many things and it just kind of disappears? Iâm being very generous by doing that legwork for this comic book, but okay.
Now, following this template, what kind of powers would you say the Oat guy has?
Awesome Oats can see into the future? Like⌠oats, do? Is this why itâs impossible to get the drop on a bowl of oatmeal? Is it because the only reason people eat oatmeal is they have the foresight to realize theyâll struggle on the toilet later if they donât? It is not explained!
Bearded Barley is from Asia! All of Asia. Still white, though. He can talk to animals! Like barley can! And his horses pull his chariot at the speed of light what the fuck? Where did that come from?
Maybe Iâm not giving this writer enough credit and theyâre sourcing these powers from Asian (non-specified) folklore about the ancient Barley gods, or maybe he only knew two things about crops and hoped everybody else knew less so theyâd just roll with the horse stuff.
Canola Crusher is from South America! Like canola! Thatâs why all of his dialogue sees him slipping into and then clumsily explaining basic Spanish! (Spanish is what South Americans call Mexican. -Editor)
Penny Pulse uses the secrets of herbs and spices to heal, just like the Middle East taught her. The middle east of Ireland, by the looks of her. Yes, she harnesses all the exotic healing spices of Dublin, like âsaltâ and âfried.â To be fair, 1990s Saskatchewan wasnât exactly brimming with diverse life models. Itâs entirely possible they thought âredheadâ counted as a race.
Letâs jump over to the villains:
Grasshopper overeats, which is totally in line with the theme, but right at the very end they tack on âthinks heâs better than everybody.â You know, like those arrogant fucking grasshoppers.
Rustin infects plants with her corrosive touch, which makes sense — sheâs supposed to be leaf rust — but then sheâs also a super genius? You think leaf rust is smart? You think farmers hate leaf rust because itâs a liberal? This is a weird dig to slip into a childrenâs educational comic no matter how little respect you have for dirt folk.
Blotch is the natural enemy of Bearded Barley, which he communicates by threatening to âget my sticky disks into your beard.â I can only assume âdisksâ was a typo there. His bio goes on to explain heâs âa great athlete, but a jerk. He stays up too late at night!â Iâm not sure what it adds to the character, that we now know Blotch likes to facefuck bears and also has a sleep disorder, but there was only enough space for like four sentences and these were deemed two of the most vital.
Ergot is a master hypnotist which — once again being super generous here — I guess could be an allusion to the hallucinogenic properties of ergot? Also she lies, cheats and steals just like that no good degenerate fungus. Oh, holy shit, wait: she replaces baby wheat kernels with her own evil children!
Your weird plantchild who loves the seed cleaning process – youâre being ergotted! Tell Young Callum to fetch his favorite toy (the shovel) from the basement and start pouring the gas. I know itâs hard to start over, but Lord knows itâs not your first fungusboy, and if you donât plow and rotate the ashes it sure wonât be your last.
Weâre so desperate for new comic book properties youâd assume the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool Adventurers would be slated for a September release on Disney+ already. But no, somehow they went under despite all of their massive early success:
23,000 members of the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool Adventurers Club! Thatâs officially an army. A whole army of grainwashed children willing to die for your wheat consortium. And led by a madman so zealous he began to dress as King Wheat! What could have derailed this unstoppable phenomenon?
Nothing but a modest fee.
A grain conglomerate asked children for their attention — at a time when video games and television and just much better comic books existed — and by some miracle they got it. And then they also thought kids would pay for the privilege? $10 is an extremely modest fee, itâs true, but what family would get that bill and happily pay it just so junior would never again be without his seed cleaning plant tours? Only a family already ruled, absolutely devoured by Ergot Cuckoos could be tricked in this manner.
And if you were counting on the Ergot Broodâs loyalty in exchange for including Queen Ergotâs seed packets in every Things To Do When Youâre Bored Book, then the jokeâs on you: She cheats and lies! Like all rye-based fungus!
… This article was brought to you by a hot tip from the Hot Dog Tipline, and by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Nick Ralston, also known as the heroic RADICAL RICE whose superpower, of course, is CYBORG FINGERS.
The 1980s were very worried that Satan was trying to get at their kids through nerd shit. Comic books, cartoons, and Dungeons and Dragons were all being influenced by the devil, because he needed dorks in hell to help invent the internet. The 1990s were very worried that our nerd shit would become Satan, and this mostly manifested as movies about the evils of virtual reality. None represented that extremely stupid genre as boldly and with their pants down as Lawnmower Man, a movie about your garden-variety idiot who becomes the digital devil thanks to video games. But weâre not here to talk about that.
The rogue video game scientist was played by Pierce Brosnan who brought a lot of class to this movie about evil polygons stealing our town dullards. The slow-witted Lawnmower Man was played by Jeff Fahey, and the movie handled mental disability with all the grace and subtlety one could expect of the â90s.
Maybe thatâs fine. The movie isnât making fun of a specific birth defect or anything. They donât specify whatâs wrong with him, heâs just medically dumb as shit. Exactly smart enough to mow lawns, no more, no less. Like thereâs a whole breed of maintenance dummies who like the taste of paint and keep Americaâs infrastructure sound. They call him the Lawnmower Man because he mows lawns⌠and also because he lives in a garden shed, and also because he prays to a cross he made out of lawnmowers, because this was originally a Stephen King joint and I love the man, I honestly do, but heâs never met half an idea he didnât think could be 47 pages.
But again, weâre not here to talk about that. Weâre also not going to discuss how Pierce Brosnanâs character gets so excited about finding a largely unclaimed idiot that he immediately straps him into a VR rig and starts making him smarter by firing up the Make Smarter program, which consists of a brain and a hand that you use to grab Smart from the menu and drop it onto Brain.
Smart is the little red blotch. Be careful not to drag Grail onto the brain or youâll wind up with a deluded video game messiah, possibly even some kind of Cyberchrist. Oh, and obviously donât drop Mantis on there. Honestly, I donât know why Mantis is even still on that menu — how many fat-fingered video game scientists must be pincered in half before we move âForge Mantis Manâ to its own menu?
Iâm sorry. We arenât going to talk about any of that. We certainly wonât cover how all VR in the film has to take place while wearing a Tron suit in a spinning gyroscope.
The VR so complex it has to be run by military-grade supercomputers even though it looks like a screensaver that came pre-installed on a Ukrainian bootleg Dell.
âIs Doll computer; is just as good! You will be eight-tittied purple balloon in world of Peeps. You will love! $40. Follow to alley.â
Oh man, we are definitely not going to talk about the bored housewife who canât wait to molest a yard dope.
At this point enough Smart has been dropped in Lawnmower Manâs brain that heâs not getting lost in closets, but he is still way below the line of informed consent and the bored housewife knows this. She has to teach him how to kiss, even though sheâs clearly still sticky from a threeway with Dunning and Kruger, because she thinks kissing is when one person sticks their tongue out like a curious earthworm and the other glomps it down like a hungry robin.
Then she stops sucking off his tongue like a frightened anime girl trying to placate a Decepticon and starts teaching him basic concepts:
And none of this is played for horror, or even laughs — itâs supposed to show the audience how much heâs grown: That he finally hit a maintenance groupieâs low bar for molestation, the ultimate goal of all grass morons and pool dipshits. Hereâs the very next scene!
Letâs not talk about that.
I bet you think weâre going to talk about the VR sex scene, where Lawnmower Man lures his new girlfriend into the virtual world so he can segue out of real sex and into clumsy cybersex, the exact opposite dream of every computer engineer who worked on this film.
It looks like you wiggled the N64 cartridge while the intro was loading. Like something youâd see rendered by a water-damaged demo 3DO in a shuttered K-Mart. It looks like you failed a puzzle in Myst, but I assure you thatâs supposed to be hot. Even when they grind so hard they meld together into a sexual cyber-dragonfly…
The soaring and explorative soundtrack tells us: This right here, this is the beauty of love in the age of computers, and not an unpopular Moby video that even MTV2 wonât play.
Then Lawnmower Man gets so carried away with gyro-boning that he turns into an Oddworld enemy and barfs stupidity on his girlfriend-
Until she turns into a bed idiot.
You know me pretty well. You almost certainly thought I was going to talk about that. I am not. Iâm also not going to cover the way Lawnmower Man develops psychic powers by playing video games two hours a week:
And oh shit, I would love to talk about the time Pierce Brosnan says…
And Lawnmower Man ominously whispers…
But thereâs no time to even mention it!
Because immediately afterward he turns fully evilâŚ
And burns a priest in his church using the power of computer-fire.
Lawnmower Man gets revenge on his gas station bully — natural predator of the maintenance idiots — by mowing the manâs brain with his VR powers, which canât be exactly what it sounds like, surely, but it is.
It is.
Obviously Lawnmower Man turns into a floating virtual head.
Of course he kills a man by turning him into bubbles.
It almost goes without saying that he attacks a private security team with cyberbees.
If you can follow narrative arcs at all, youâve already assumed that Lawnmower Man uploads himself into the supercomputer — which actually withers his body in real life since computers drink blood — because he wants to be the internet.
Only he winds up looking like an early Aphex Twin video and moving like a puppet whose master is fighting off cyberbees.
We cannot discuss any of that stuff, itâs all irrelevant, because what we absolutely have to talk about is the chimp murder.
Zoom in on a lab at night, two scientists arguing:
Theyâre fighting about the ethics of science as an engine of war. Weâre led to believe this is a super soldier training program, and then…
No, itâs so much bigger than that. Theyâre deciding the fate of the best damn chimp Pierce Brosnan has ever had the pleasure of knowing. He loses the argument, of course, and we smash cut to a supercomputer using virtual reality to train a chimp for cyberwar.
Listen, what does a chimp care for graphics? Everyone knows the chimp eye canât see above 10FPS. Why burn out your supercomputer rendering his little chimp hands when itâs widely known that great apes only care for gameplay? Strap the little bastard into that K-Mart waterlogged 3DO and heâll be all-
I mean if you want to see something really funny you can make a little Tron suit for his chimp body and strap him into a gyroscope. If you wanna mess with an ape, that is like the second best way to do it. The best will always be basic sleight of hand. You ever done magic for an ape? They love that shit! Whereâd the banana go? They have no idea. They donât even have a guess. They just assume youâre a fruit wizard and they go nuts. But this is pretty hilarious, too:
You know this chimp fucking dominates at LAN parties. Little screeching son of a bitch hauling a gyroscope and an 8-ton supercomputer down the basement stairs just to dominate Devon at Quake II. Look how tiny that hitbox would be. Itâs like heâs always Oddjob.
But whatâs the number one danger in teaching a chimp how to use a gun? Right. Itâs that you taught a chimp how to use a gun.
So when the chimp picks the lock on his own cage and dresses up in his best mallsoldier gear, you know somebodyâs about to get their ass shot and their face torn off.
He fires up his APE HUD, which is weirdly full of human words instead of icons of different tire swings and various states of chimp genitalia.
Then he steals a rent-a-copâs gun…
And hereâs the best scene in movie history.
Remember, this is not within the VR program. This lab actually designed an augmented reality helmet just for combat apes, and then left it around unattended. You canât even blame the chimp for this. This is an elaborate suicide-by-chimp scheme gone awry. Pierce Brosnan was two offices down with a half-empty bottle of bourbon and an insurance plan that pays double if a zoo animal accidentally discharges a gun in the workplace and heâs wondering whatâs taking Mr. Tickles so long when heâs never been more ready for the void.
Combat Ape flees for the exitâŚ
But oh no, another security guard spots him, takes aim…
And itâs game over, Combat Ape.
RIP, we should have known you better. This movie should have been called Combat Apeâs Big Adventure, like a hyperviolent Curious George, and it should have ended with you bringing video games back home to your troop. But instead the saga of the digital murderchimp has ended in tragedy.
Then the title pops up.
THEN THE TITLE POPS UP.
All of this happened before the title! This is the cold open for Lawnmower Man! Scientists trained a warchimp to destroy robot gorillas in virtual reality so it stole a mallcopâs gun and murdered its way out of the lab, only to die at the exit.
But thatâs not what I wanted to talk to you about. I only want to talk to you about the combat apeâs adorable little âwhatâs up now, motherfucker?â head nod before he pulls the trigger.
You have used your eyes to ingest far more than the FDA mandated Maximum Ocular Hot Dog Intake (2 franks/day). Letâs give them a break and switch to cramming tubed meats straight into your earholes. Itâs Podcasting Day! Today the illustrious David Bell arrived on a palanquin carried by six fit eunuchs cut solely by natural causes (the rarest and most prized of all) to grace us with his royal presence.
You might know him from Gamefully Unemployed, the excellent podcast empire he co-dominates with the cruel but beautiful Tom Reimann. Whether itâs Story Mode or Hype Cast, We Just Watched⌠or Fox Mulder is a Maniac, he casts pods so frequently you honestly have no excuse not to have heard and loved one by now. I would not admit to that in public if I were you, Iâd just correct it right away.
Listen to it with both ears so it feels like we have you surrounded! Then please subscribe at your preferred service, donât forget to leave us a review, and tell a friend or respected enemy about us. We really need your help to grow this podcast, and those are by far the best things you can do for us, who have given you so much and only ever asked for more in return.
Malibu Comics had all the quality control and undeserved tragedy of a child sweatshop but without the child part or the undeserved part. If you used gestures and crude pictograms to describe a good comic book to a Sentinel Island native who knew nothing of the modern world, they would kill you with a spear. And when they got back to their village they would describe a Malibu title perfectly, and their whole society would collapse because of your interference. And yet, because weâre talking about the 1990s – when everybody suddenly realized nerds had money, but had no idea how to get it – Malibu managed to get their hands on some major IPs. Capcom actually trusted them with Street Fighter at the peak of its popularity. Hereâs the cover of that very first issue:
The art was pretty good for somebodyâs nephewâs first try at airbrushing the side of a van, but weâre going to be here all day if we make fun of a Malibu artistâs liberal interpretation of âhuman face.â Story and character are not a fighting gameâs strong suit, so it often falls to the adapter to fill in the blanks, and Malibu has a caulk gun full of their own feces for that purpose. Most of the characters are non-entities, and manage to be inoffensive. Even⌠awesome?
Balrog is only in this book to do two things: Explode testicles and give Mike Tysonâs lawyers an easy win.
Look at him just CHUDDing Kenâs airborne dick into the stratosphere. I actually have to give that one to you, Malibu: CHUDD is indisputably the sound testicles make as they break the sound barrier. What was Sagat thinking here? Sagatâs entire fighting style is crazy high kicks that expose his dong. If we could jump to Balrog-vision for this panel youâd see a glowing red spot on Sagatâs crotch indicating the weak point.
Zangief also escapes the Malibu treatment. Heâs only in the comic for a few pages, and all he does is dominate this weird bearhog monstrosity because thatâs how Russians train to do anything. You want to be a Russian pilot? Better learn how to clothesline a bear so hard his testicles explode. Twice.
These are the only intentionally awesome moments in this comic, because Malibu used all the rest of their pages to drive Street Fighterâs characters into the ground like a Russian introducing himself to a fully-testicled bear. Malibu even got particularly brazen in one issue and tried to use Street Fighterâs popularity to boost their own shitty characters⌠while insulting Street Fighterâs.
The Ferret was a thinly-veiled ripoff of Wolverine, as roughly 97% of all new comic book characters were in the â90s. He stands out for looking the dumbest and having the lamest name, as well as a secret identity that could be best described as âTampa flotsam.â He doesnât even try to justify his existence in these pages. He meets E. Honda on a plane and then embarrasses them both into a fat joke cut from a Chris Farley sketch for being too disrespectful to other cultures.
Letâs establish a little background: Ryu and Ken are the main characters of the Street Fighter universe – rival fighters from the same school with radically different philosophies. Ryu lives only for the fight, while Ken wants to use fighting to achieve glory. Guile is usually a central character in American adaptations, because heâs an unremarkable white army guy — the official mascot of the western world. Chun Li is usually a central character in any Street Fighter story, too – she just wants to avenge the murder of her father. Got all that in mind? All right, now blow it straight out your ass. Fuck you for even knowing it. Here are those characterâs very first appearances in their own comic.
So Ryu is a superpowered MRA now? Heâs an incel who figured out how to fire literal blue balls at the women who deny him?
Nah, theyâre just playing around.
Ryu isnât a molester — heâs just the kind of guy who does viral prank videos followed rapidly by viral apology videos, and Chun-Li is an arrogant dangerslut. She wonât put out for a mere slap on the ass, but infuse it with your chi and light it on fire first and sheâs a Slip âN Slide. That is slightly better than Mystical Karate Rapist and his victim, but itâs weird you set that bar in the first place, Malibu.
Thereâs no bait and switch with Guile, though. This is his actual introduction:
They didnât rework his role in the comic. Heâs still supposed to be a good guy. And his very first appearance shows him wildly overreacting to an extremely common accident, and then using his superhuman fighting skills to cripple every barfly in sight. Now, passions were surely running high – dude in the hat went from zero to chairstrike in no panels. But the actual offender did nothing. He didnât even get a chance to apologize before Guile started taking teeth for trophies. And itâs not the drunks that escalate the fight from here — Guile keeps demolishing uncles until the whole bar is trashed and everybody in it has to steer with a straw.
Guile is boring. His whole fighting style is based on squatting and testing his opponentâs patience. Give him Lululemon and a Passatt and heâs the biggest bitch in a Scottsdale yoga class. But heâs still meant to be a hero. The âintro with a bar fightâ thing is a cliche way to introduce a tough guy character, but those heroes only defend themselves. They knock out everyone who comes after them and leave a few bills on the counter to cover the damages — theyâre so used to being attacked that they have a bar destruction budget. They donât follow up that barfight by using their superpowers to demolish a small business and then give the owner a concussion.
All of which Guile does.
Holy shit!
Guile really brought the war back with him, huh?
Thereâs no way to spin this that isnât psychotic.Thatâs the full interaction – the owner didnât pull a gun on him, or jump in the fight. He got three lines which he used to ask for reasonable compensation, then ask a superman why his familyâs only source of income just exploded, and then describe the sound of his brain bouncing off his skull.
I really have to reiterate: These are the introductions.
Iâm not skipping around to show you the worst parts — the first few issues are all just debuting the many characters of Street Fighter and explaining how theyâre all insane now. Chun Li thinks safewords are only for first dates, Ryu responds to rejection with fireballs, and Guile thought First Blood was hilarious. Wait, weâre still missing our other main character, Ken Masters.
Letâs see how heâs doing.
Ken gets scalped in the first issue.
Iâm not exaggerating.
It is not implied.
Comic books and video games are not just for kids, but remember that this was 1993 when yes, they were. Society sure thought that, anyway. Iâm not saying thatâs right, Iâm just saying that when your dad bought you a comic book because you were extra brave at the dentist you probably didnât expect to see Kenâs bloody scalp on the last page.
The Malibu Street Fighter comic book adaptation was a lean and mean affair. It only lasted three issues, but Malibu managed to degrade every single character in it like the writers owned stock in World Heroes and were hoping to retire.
So how does this epic saga end? The same way most Malibu comics end: Abruptly, and with a written apology.
Holy shit! They really copped to it!
â… due to complications with Capcom and their dislike of our adaptation of the most popular game in the world, concluding with this issue, Street Fighter the comic book has officially been cancelled. We formally apologizeâŚâ
You never see this kind of honesty. Malibu straight up admitted in plain terms that they got almost immediately fired for sucking too hard.
At a video game adaptation.
In the 1990s!
Just for reference, here are the cast from the Street Fighter movie adaptation, who did not get fired by Capcom for sucking too hard:
Say what you will about Malibu — for example, theyâre the comic books you find on drugstore shelves in plywood towns built for nuclear bomb testing — but you have to give them some credit for owning this. Any other company, any other anybody would not clarify in the first sentence that they got fired for doing a bad job. The phrase âcreative differencesâ exists solely for this exact scenario. They could have said anything and yet when kids flipped over the last page in issue #3 they saw âhey, sorry we shit the bed here sport, but if itâs any consolation we just got real fired for it.â
And then they go on to explain the rest of their terrible story! That they just got fired for!
Nobody dunks on Malibu like Malibu.
Things to note:
They spelled Chun-Li wrong, in bold, in the header of her section… which consists only of her name. This is not a localization issue: They spelled it correctly in the text below, and all throughout all three of the comics. They just figured âshit, we already got fired — like fuck are we spellchecking our middle finger on the way out.â
They were going to introduce their own Street Fighter, because when you have no idea how to adapt a story you resort to shit like ânew characters with an easier narrativeâ and âevil clones.â
They were going to introduce evil clones.
Ken isnât actually dead, heâs just bald now. Thatâs how Malibu thought scalping works, like itâs a rowdy haircut.
I worry intensely about the little section in Ryuâs breakdown where they repeat — three times — that Ryu would definitely, for sure resolve his relationship with Chun-Li. I know Malibu. I know what that means. That means full penetration. Maybe you think thatâs hot, but keep in mind theyâd hire somebodyâs cousin to draw it and it would wind up looking like two trees fighting.
…And then Malibu has the absolute balls to cap it all off by saying you can pay extra for super exclusive Gold Editions of the series! The series so bad they got fired in the middle of an issue and had to end it with a written apology! The apology youâre reading right now! Haha remember? This is still the apology! Thatâs how the apology ends! By trying to sell you a goldfoil version of the apology!
Those Gold Editions cannot exist. Nobody owns those. Nobody fell for that. If you bought these they were lost at sea when you tried to start your own island. They perished in the fire with you when you tried to deepfry a turkey in the bathtub. 100% of these comics were lost to idiot tragedy.
But listen, if you somehow survived that blaze and have gone mad from the pain, from the rejection and the mockery of your hideous scars, if you have gathered together the sad pieces of your old life and retreated to the storm drains with them and somehow still have the Gold Editions of Malibuâs Street Fighter comic book woven into your shrine of the Above Times, I will buy them off you for two shiny bits of mirror and a photo of a sunset.
Standing offer. I await your carrier rat.
… This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, 3 Finger Louie: Who would like to apologize for this crappy dedication and also offer you the opportunity to buy a gold-foil special edition of this dedication.
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