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Nerding Day: Pin-Up Pete
Author: Dennard Dayle
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Good morning! Ever read comics by the American Nazi Party?
Wanna see their spin on Superman?
Today, we meet Whiteman. No new slurs, but a marathon of the classics. Brace your soul, it’s swastikas all the way down.
And part of a series! The Stormtrooper—a magazine I hope you don’t know—loved this shit. Here’s John Patler’s thoughts on hair:
Economic anxiety’s wild.
Traitors claim nothing’s uglier than hate. Patler’s pen defies them. I respect alt and cape art more after watching him botch both. That’s how you keep bloodlines pure: an unfuckable back catalog. Like most enemies of mixing, Patler has no offers.
Outside-goers take this for granted, but hate melts your brain. Fades take less time than this sentence, and smart bigots upcharge. Yet Stormtroopers choose poverty. Baffling. Whatever color your robes are, I hope you see that labeling the “blood splotched operation room uniform” ruins perfectly viable hate speech.
Put on your lunatic goggles: what’s “50 Evil Facial Expressions to Make While Cutting Nigger Hair” doing here? The power fantasy’s the joke–why remind readers they pay for Mein Kampf picture books? Making faces behind the enemy is less Varg and more Vance.
Still, this has educational value. De jure segregation puts this in police stations, and de facto segregation keeps it there. Badges let Stormtrooper fans live off their passion. Helpful, after your barber shop defaults.
Per tradition, this strip follows wounded eulogies for White America. Fair, given the Great Purge of 1866. The last ten blondes cower in the gutters, fleeing the Million Sentinel March. To honor the fallen and his employer, Patler challenged censorship. With a little less subtlety than modern martyrs:
The noses only get worse from here.
Nazis haven’t changed much–it chafes with the premise. They only leave manji off today’s hats to cut costs. The American Nazi Party chair, George Lincoln Rockwell, liked these strips enough to make Patler an editor. We’ll come back to that. For now, imagine the staff that couldn’t compete with “Lesson in Free Speech.”
Then there’s Whiteman.
That’s Captain Marvel.
Yes, swastika, bleak hatred, ant genitalia, etc. But the fucking master race ripped off the wrong superhero. The rest of this stillbirth cites Superman, and we have Captain Marvel’s design and gimmick. Whiteman looks like Billy Batson with worse parents.
As for Whiteman’s day job: turns out that dairy supremacy predates imageboards. Radio, even. So your worst neighbors are dumb and dated. Fresh ideas are vital—that’s why they let Clarence into meetings. No one outside of real estate puts up his numbers. I’ll admit it here: we’re really stealing their jobs.
Evil Superman technology’s peaked. In the present, not this shit. Patler left “Uber-Vision” on the table, so I wonder why we’re even here. After Stormfront, this isn’t even the best nazi Superman gag.
Honestly, most dialect writing attempts read this way to me. Sissynecks are rare. It’s the third rail of dialogue. You can do it, people have, and I’ll be impressed if it works. Just like juggling knives.
Our hero leaps into free speech.
White Jesus wept.
I shouldn’t give Patler’s heirs on the podcast circuit help. But I’m stuck with their work for the long haul, and would love to focus more on their dead souls than craft. Put your innocence and murders on two separate pages. At least throw a beat panel in there. I know you have Billy Batson Clark Kent jokes to mangle, but “Black people burn down their own churches” needs time to breathe.
There’s no gun throw gag, because that’s a Superman thing. We do, however, name-check the Man of Steel. The joke has a Bizzaro sniper’s precision.
That’s our warm-up antisemitism. A quick lap to numb the spirit, before jumping to the “jew from outer space.” Direct quotes, not scare quotes.
Alright, the human decency filter isn’t working out. From here we’re all in. I’ve raved about breaching hell for years, and now it’s time to dig. Here’s the alien. Your imagination wasn’t far off:
Remember the good times, back in “You Can Cut Nigger Hair?” Brighter days. Maybe we can inch back to that innocence. Until then, we have the core of microthought: Jewish warlocks summoning Black people like the Putty Patrol.
I never got that theory’s appeal. It weighs simple, ancient hatred down with a billion canon questions. Most race warriors treat hate like mountain climbing anyway. You do it because it’s there.
For parity: here’s the more literal hate crime I cut earlier.
Fun fact about Patler: later on, he tried the changed man routine. It sounded like horseshit, but it stuck. Today he’s a lynchpin of the Southern Poverty I’m fucking around. Pat’s face turn lasted an interview. Today, he’s riding the Trump train right off a cliff.
Anyway, blood libel Zedd makes his monster grow.
Supercoon’s hard to describe. I’ll borrow the technique of an old master.
More on that conviction later.
Another tip for Freedom Caucus creatives: the same tip. Focus. There’s no reason a five-page screed can’t just open on Megaminstrel or Space Scapegoat and stay there. The actual hook is a caped race war. Or rather, tap-dancing followed by a felony. I could get better Aryan tracts from black undergrads for a rec letter. I might make that a contest.
Whiteman and Supercoon face off for the fate of nothing. I’m typing a lot of words for the first time, so I’m hyped. The rest of this cafe is too– half the crowd’s spectating over my shoulder, and tense. Even the staff!
Ready for the showdown?
My demands? Bring back Uber. It’s this conflict by sane adults. In 1945, a desperate Wehrmacht figures out Captain America juice. Forcing the US to use a black supersoldier they didn’t even want to make. It whipped, and then died of Publishing Disease. Tons of great work dies young, while The Stormtrooper ran for three years. Now the world must pay.
Pat had three semi-coherent lines, and couldn’t choose. Been there. Help me pick one:
A) Pat’s really letting Walt Disney down.
B) Pat writes the way he thinks I swim.
C) If an Aryan president gave the State of Thule before a hundred Aryan senators and reporters from ANN, The New Berlin Times and Fox News, Patler would still own none of the Earth’s wealth.
Forget nukes, we have a more pressing issue.
What’s going on here? What in birthrate panic am I looking at? Supercoon’s drifted from racial insult to visitor from the ocean floor. There’s a line between caricature and cosmic horror. Unless you’re the OG, I suppose.
Back in the action, Whiteman’s in trouble. But also fine, because he’s a genius. But doomed, because the enemy’s extra-genius. Fascism’s a dense continuity snarl in dire need of a reboot. Sadly, the fans don’t care for big changes.
Let’s see his perfect/futile plan.
Maybe psychic poison-tasting has warped me, but I expected more pop from this fight. The devil’s present, but Patler’s a weak vessel.
Put your lunatic goggles back on. This was a campus handout; Patler wants to make young failures laugh. How do you botch racism plus golden age comics? Superman’s funny by default, if you actually read. And bigotry’s loaded with stock imagery. Merging hate and dorkdom opens infinite gates to comedy hell. What’s the Beer Hall of Solitude like? What specific nazi/minstrel themed powers could these two have? What ends would Blackface Bizzarro pursue? I had answers to all of these before reading panel two.
I guess that’s nazi effort. Lightning out the gate, followed by meth withdrawal.
“Splurp” is great, leaving us with a final score of 1. I give comics five points for existing, but life finds a way. Somehow, Patler will die thinking he’s better at this than Art Spiegelman, or a child with chalk.
Unlike Patler, we have a punchline. Ready?
His semi-talent made Patler The Stormtrooper’s best and only cartoonist. But all submediocre things end. Did hackwork kill The Stormtrooper? Shame? The FBI? No, extra no, and raspberry noises.
The Stormtrooper was the private soapbox of George Lincoln Rockwell. Each issue opened with a prose poem against colors darker than porcelain. Or, for Stormtrooper insiders, darker than untouched toilet brushes. Rockwell liked white pride, but loved Rockwell. As his stock header demonstrated:
A birthday party Goebbels. Larper is our era’s best insult, capturing the transparent performance infecting everyone but larpers. But Rockwell was right—America had a pack of mindless, subliterate chimps running wild. One killed him for his ideas.
I like a happy ending.
“Thanks an awful lot” shows real creative improvement. Right before John entered public housing in Supercoon’s striped uniform. Likely blaming aliens. While jurors didn’t dig “my boss wasn’t enough of a nazi,” as a motive, I might’ve let it go. It’s the best joke Patler ever wrote.
I feel you, failure hurts. But more anger won’t fix this. Only education. I’ll take the metaphorical/literal bullet for all of us.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme:Â Uhhh… um… who is…. holy shit, who is least likely to sue us for saying they sponsored this? Wait, Timmy Leahy! It’s Timmy Leahy. Thanks for bringing us this article, Timmy Leahy!
Meet the ultimate team-up: Honda, the Department of Transportation, and death. Supergirl watches.
Feels right. Still, I should check my guidelines.
Hot. We’re clear for liftoff. This propaganda is Supergirl’s best car content, short of chucking Fords at Superman for Darkseid/Luthor/kicks. Fast times—she’s usually calmer, only not at all. But you’ve met Supergirl.
Maybe propaganda sounds loaded for “wear this to live.” But it’s a neutral concept. A genre, really. Propaganda isn’t instantly wrong any more than satire’s instantly right. Sucking shit doesn’t make The Babylon Bee a cookbook. Today’s plea for spine preservation is elite propaganda.
These alien animals don’t respect our freedom. This screed shows what happens when you let the nanny-starship tell you how to die. I regret only having one skull to give blurry Instagram clips. If you’ll trade your rights for brain fluid, you deserve blimble florp funnel cake.
Counterpoint: Bizarro no need coward hat! Bizarro do mob heelflip and tag Thrasher! All public park moms clap for Bizarro!
But who cares what I think? The transportation secretary’s here with star power. Like her boss Reagan, Elizabeth cares about povvos dying on her watch:
Double the odds! Based on my bestselling Math Protocols, that’s six times less death. I’m convinced. Though I preferred Doomsday’s pitch:
That’s a recolored Hulk joke. Like Doomsday.
Kara’s day opens with a little apocalypse. An earthquake ravages the West Coast, and she has heat vision trickshots to try out:
It’s a fun sequence. I could fret about deep fried truckers, but I’m only a Level 3 unpleasable fuck. Advantage: Kara.
Still, her messiah act is no excuse for standing up Steve. Infrastructure implodes every day. Where will she find a new Steve? Also, this is Steve:
He’s just like you! You can date Supergirl, followed by whatever else happens to Steve. Maybe a love square with Donna Troy and Nightwing? Pick Nightwing. It’s not just the face, he tends to get through reboots intact. If nothing else, avoid lesser Green Lanterns. They die at X-Men rates with half the style.
With Super-Math, Kara finds Steve’s love is only worth a few dozen lives. Work comes first. I’ve been there, only work was Googling synonyms for “horror.” And then Googling replacements for Google. Bing was born dead, and Presearch is starting to piss me off.
Steve spirals. By sidekick standards, he’s been left at the altar.
Ellen’s his little sister. PSA world is half superheroes, half perfect children, and half drug dealers. No substance abuse in sight yet, so my Super-Math works out. Unlike Steve’s dreams.
Poor Steve. He thinks Supergirl’s out of his league instead of his species. A classic, enduring dilemma. You might remember Steve from American Honda Presents DC Comics’ Supergirl. Particularly his confidence:
The resolve of a hero. With nothing tying him down, Steve soars to his destiny.
Kara doesn’t know what she’s missing. Slates this blank turn into gods at least twice a year. Superman’s watched Pa Kent get powers more often than he’s peed in Luthor’s coffee from orbit. Steve’s one crossover event from the Throne of Light.
Of course, first he has to get to heaven.
Again: it looks bad, but this could be an origin. Most Static Shock episodes opened with incidents like this. The victims were robbing banks and pitching spin-offs by the first break.
The banks are safe today.
It’s a drunk driving PSA too! Two birds, one Corona. I dig that efficiency, though Honda won’t. We’ve killed a free sequel by aiming high, and marketers hate that shit. Brands prefer forty versions of one line, plastered across every subway in civilization.
He’s off to the Phantom Drunk Tank.
If I were a shadow wearing human skin, I’d laugh. I’m not. This is very sad. I’m frowning. I hate this tragedy, and wish it were different. Nothing’s funny about escalating to DUIs faster than a speeding bullet. My empathy’s more powerful than a locomotive. We’ve leapt dull pacing in a single bound.
At this point, PSAs have a choice. Ten pages of hugs and funeral planning, or blooming into insanity.
Comics are everything love promised.
But really, smart choice. I prefer Kryptonians to most people. But they’ve got intense baggage for a safety PSA: they’re all fucking invincible. It’s like Tony Stark telling me to drink carefully, pay taxes, and retire from film with dignity. Or to avoid enslaving supervillains for a national freak-hunt. What the fuck, Tony? Were the demo Sentinels red?
The chase above unfolds in Steve’s coma. Battle for Neptune seems to be Furiosa in snow shoes, which justifies itself. But there’s a reason: seatbelts.
Steve suffers survivor’s guilt:
Inaccurate survivor’s guilt. A good therapist will tell you that’s all survivor’s guilt. Nah. Some people earn their seat at Noir Happy Hour. The paid leave, less so.
Supergirl, broken by secondhand false grief, announces her retirement. She’s a teenage immortal, so it’s unclear how she’ll spend eternity. But without Steve, the good fight’s over.
So it goes.
Hopefully the chain reaction stops here. If Superman gives up because Supergirl gave up because Steve gave up, this’ll be history’s darkest DUI. Does LexCorp have a brewery?
Clark suggests an alternative.
I’m in.
No, really. I’ll always indulge the Fortress of Plot. There’s a whiff of metafiction to Superman hoarding unsorted cancer cures. Think of all the bullshit you accrue in one mortal year. I’ll go to hell with half my games unplayed, half my books unread, and all my nudes set free. Superman chucks Excalibur onto The Pile and promises to try pulling later.
That said, I came fully loaded to mock this plan. But I don’t have a better one. Kara’s 19 with a braindead boyfriend. Not joining a cult’s a win. We almost got a preview of her stint as Apokalips’ bouncer.
In fact, I’d point the alien armory at trifles. Why stand in line? Everyone between me and a blueberry bagel can hang with Zod. And everyone glaring when I add bacon cheddar cream cheese. Phantom Zone. With lox. Phantom Zone! You think I can’t feel your hate? You think I don’t know?! Phantom Zone for you ALL.
Media’s crazy. If this panel didn’t exist, I’d still assume the Inception Booth worked that way. It’s an unquestioned rule in my head. Don’t point guns at yourself, try not to die in the dream machine, and stay far away from your parents during time travel. Unless you want hemophilia.
Supergirl enters the cleanest teen psyche on Earth. Maybe that’s Steve’s appeal: it should be a horrorshow. Instead, he imagines life as a title character. A ronin of the wasteland. A hero of the people, with goggles no one laughs at.
A hero still holding the line against seatbelts. This might be art.
It’s art.
In Steve’s defense, this is essentially his afterlife. Imagine getting infotainment after a lifetime of theater toil. I’d be murderous, if I weren’t clearly in hell for t-boning an innocent drunk driver.
While the kids enter a torture loop, Clark supervises.
What the fucking what? Darkling get off your ass, stop the ten ongoing genocides, and then help Kara. At least Batman’s downtown when Robins explode. Superman would empathize from a lawn chair.
Honestly, this is where Evil Superman riffs fall short. Sure, there’s money in genocidal Superman, pervert Superman, or whatever Snyder tried. But consider TV binge Superman. Week-long lunch break Superman. “My train was late” Superman. A Kal-El knockoff whose adventures are League of Legends, a nap, DOTA 2 (he plays both, for peace), and posting “Luthor’s out of control,” on LexChat.
After all, isn’t your only real beef with Superman that he wasn’t there for you?
The torture-loop loads the next level, wherein Steve’s a whipless Indiana Jones. Whips resemble buckles, and Steve’s faith is strong. He can’t reach a higher plane if he’s tied to this one.
I’m torn. This scene has a sane, correct point. It’s also arguing against no one. The standard line against seat belts isn’t “the road is made of marshmallows.” It’s “fuck off.” This is the first PSA to need a dumber, ruder strawman. Steve should’ve been melted for saying “kiss my human ass” four too many times. But that’s a different PSA.
Scratch that. Forget the PSA we could read. We have Supergirl vs. Final Destination.
Where did the latest truck come from? Look inside. There’s a light untouched by hate, pain, or my usual tone. An unmarred seed of joy. That’s where Steve’s trucks come from. Santa might be driving.
Fighting death would be easier. DC death’s punchable, just faster than Mayweather. Instead, Kara’s trying to make her boyfriend smarter. That’s beyond Supergirl. Based on Milton, that’s beyond God.
The deathloop shifts to crime noir, a lane with more pastiches than entries. Meet detective Steve. He’s doing alright, if you ignore the dying.
It’s hard to read. Guilt’s eating him alive.
He trips over Chandler prose for a spell before returning to his muse: speeding. Steve never wakes up without a plan. Mornings are for hitting on aliens, and the rest is introducing cars to walls.
So far, Honda’s taught me to change for no one. Steve’s partying across hell. Or, I daresay, moron Valhalla. Pleas from his sister, space girlfriend, and dying brain bounce off him. He’s free. And like all free creatures, he gives it away on a whim.
Just in time for his afternoon death.
The collision’s for show/hilarity. Clipping the holy belt wakes Steve up. Forget all that shit about guilt, we’re all about adherence. Steve needed to get with the program. Kara, naturally, is relieved by her new Save/Death ratio.
Honda’s done, so I’ll fill in the denouement. Kara thanks God for saving Steve. While flattered, Superman admits Kara did all the work. All of it. With Steve’s one trait fully tamed, Kara dumps him for a flying centaur.
Take it or leave it. Either way, we never see Steve again. And Supergirl dies a year later.
Good times. Yet I don’t feel 100% safety-washed yet.
Guess that’s all. Fun recap, everyone. I hope you enjoyed the lighter mood: next week we’re sprinting beyond hell.
P-pretty strong. I have a thriving, intact shoulder.
Alright, I was wrong about Kryptonian PSAs. “Do you even lift planets?” is a golden public safety angle. Megalomania goes down smoother than pretending Supergirl fears anything that’s not green or bald. Sure, you might feel insulted. But does the Department of Transportation really give a shit? They’re just here to stop you from becoming roadkill.
My bad, Supergirl doesn’t think you’re a pussy. She thinks you’re a slow pussy.
This approach makes me grin like a balanced person. If anything, this section’s too soft. Lean in to Galadriel mocking hobbits. “Can you melt trucks? How many gods have you maimed? If we high-fived, would anything be left to bury?” It writes itself.
Deathloops are fun, but I really wanted you to know Supergirl thinks you’re a bitch. And cares. Wear a seatbelt, or watch your glass bones shatter.
DC’s taken on a few other causes over the years.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme:Alex Knollenberg, who never wraps the cord to the blinds around his neck since that very special issue of Spider-Man with Gwen Stacy.
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