Category: NERDING DAY

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NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: The Incredible Hulk Hostess Snack Ads 🌭

Sometime during my career of making jokes about weird things I accidentally became the planet’s preeminent Hostess snack ad expert. It wasn’t hard. I mean, collecting and cataloging them took several years and thousands of dollars, but they aren’t complicated. A superhero would run into a problem they’d normally solve with violence, and instead throw a cupcake at it. They were stupid and insane, but sort of took place in a universe with rules. Except when it came to the Incredible Hulk. Despite appearing in a dozen Hostess ads, Hulk never figured out what the hell was going on or what he was supposed to be doing. Today, on this Nerding Day, we’re going to go through all 12 of them in chronological order in an attempt to prove my academic thesis:

Hulk’s first try at selling snacks took place in November, 1975 during a disaster called THE INCREDIBLE HULK™ AND THE TWINS OF EVIL!

Hulk is getting bashed in the face by Abomination and Wendigo while he complains about the unfairness of having to fight two bad guys. Hulk’s strength comes from rage, not from pouting about the rules of a forest monster fist fight, so he loses. He loses so badly he’s not even mad about it, because that would have made him strong enough to win. The other monsters leave whiny Hulk for dead.

Two unsupervised children find Hulk’s body and nurse him back to health with pie, a thing he is learning about for the first time. One thing you’ll notice about Hulk in any media is his dumbness is never consistent. One minute he’s debating the merits of honorable punch duels, the next he’s like “WHY IS FOOD.” Speaking of food, Hulk’s not supposed to eat the snacks. Marvel and DC had an editorial mandate with Hostess about the superheroes never eating the products themselves. This was probably so the characters could also sell diet shakes or whatever, but Hulk never got the message. He would eat the pies all the time. It’s kind of like how directors tell Zach Braff not to mention butt stuff and every commercial is like, “I’m Zach Braff, and these four fingers have been in three buttholes. Deep and moist, I explore for Goodyear Tires.”

Hulk, a creature who speaks English, tells the boys he is happy and thankful and they respond by saying, “There’s no way to know, but I think in its own way, the monster is thanking us!” That’s because these are darkly unnatural. Speaking of, do you know how you become a Wendigo? You eat the flesh of man! Even by the child safety standards of 1975, these tender, meat-filled children should not be out here alone! And this comic ends with Hulk heading off to a suicide mission against Wendigo, his last act being to clearcut a highway leading right back to his delicious friends. This is not how you sell pie. This is how you sell vacation packages to Wendigos.

In July of 1976, they gave Hulk a chance to sell cup cakes in THE INCREDIBLE HULK® AND “FRIENDS!” It starts fast with Hulk already on The Toad World and he’s been captured and put in a cave. And I know what you’re thinking, but Toad World caves are immune to headbutt. Hulk can’t Hulk his way out of this jam.

A native toad rebel frees him, offering him a Hostess cup cake. But this is Hulk. “What is this?” he asks about the common food he’s eaten many times and sells professionally. It’s got to be a disappointing response for a freedom fighter who went to so much trouble finding the Earth creature one of its home planet’s caked cups here on Toad World. Only to hear “BAH! BEAUTIFUL WOMAN, HULK NOT GIVE SHIT ABOUT STAR MUFFIN.” This would have had the same effect if it was a fermented Blorb egg or a loose gloveful of toad snot. Hulk doesn’t care.

Wow, it worked! After one cup cake and a hole, Hulk agrees to take Friendly Unnamed Toadman’s side in a planetary war! That’s where the ad leaves us, but only a lunatic would think this is the end of the story. They’ve put Hulk in some unknown sector of the galaxy about to jump into a coup screaming “HULK HERE FOR HELP CAKE MAN, WHICH YOU HIS ENEMIES!? HIM HAVE METAL HAT, BLUE SHAPE, NO OTHER FEATURES!”

I don’t know how the great toad uprising went, but a few months later, in September of 1976, Hulk would be back on Earth to market Twinkies in THE INCREDIBLE HULK® VS. “THE GREEN FROG”.

The Mad Magician is destroying the city as a gigantic frog! This isn’t one of Hulk’s many enemies. He was invented specifically for this, and you already know all that has ever been written about The Mad Magician. What he is, though, is the perfect unstoppable threat to throw a Twinkie at and save the day. This is Hulk’s chance to show everyone he’s capable of being a snack spokesman!

No, Hulk just splams him in the neck and we watch The Mad Magician unfrog and die. It was the very first, most direct thing the dumbest superhero thought of, and it worked. It’s not much of a story, but it’s so spectacularly not a Twinkie ad that one of the children watching him choke his last breath has to go, “Oh, right! The point of all this! Y-you saved ‘Twinkies,’ Hulk!” This isn’t advertising. This is, at best, a vigilante killing near a product.

In February of 1977, Hulk tried again in THE INCREDIBLE HULK® AND THE GREEN THUMB.

Hulk wakes up the same way he always wakes up– confused, in a strange place, and with a supervillain. This time it’s Cousin Betsy, The Plant Lady, who wants him to come live among her vegetables. And to Hulk’s credit, he replies, “Fucking what!? No.”

Then Hulk grabs the nearest artichoke man and shakes him until treasure comes out. Oh, right, this was supposed to be an advertisement for treats. Some time earlier the artichoke man hid some stolen pie in his head? Okay, great job, Hulk. But it’s not quite anything. It’s more like a commercial where someone says, “The darkness calls with the voice of ten thousand horses. Turn the page with anal, anal me… Zach Braff for Goodyear Tires.”

Despite not getting the hang of this at all, Hulk tries selling pies again in May of 1977. Here’s THE INCREDIBLE HULK® IN FORGET-ME-NET:

“Absent Minded Mac” has built a “forget-me-net.” The author knew these names were so strong they didn’t need to bother with an explanation, and they were right. Mac watches a campus full of students shrug and he shouts, “This is my most evil device… I think?” So the author is having fun. Maybe too much fun, because Mac’s other weapon is salad tongs:

The author makes a good point here– a forget-me-net only makes Hulk more Hulk. They make another good point as well– mental illness is no match for Hulk. This is legitimately a batshit idea to attack Hulk with salad spoons. What’s his plan? To delicately grab one of the green tank-man’s 14 rippling abs? Let’s reveal the very next panel to see if that works out:

In a vanishing point between moments, Hulk has already torn apart Mac’s net and made him into a spring roll. “SQUIIIISH!” say his ribs and organs. So the day is saved. Mac created a dumbness net and accidentally used it on the one superhero who likes that. This story has everything. Comedy, mystery, and an ironic fate for the villain. You know what it doesn’t have? Fucking snacks.

Oh, right. Pie, everyone! Let’s remap the neurons in our brain, starting with pi– wait, what did that guy say?

In October, 1977, Hulk tried selling Twinkies again with THE INCREDIBLE HULK® IN UP A TREE!

Hulk wakes up in a tree getting rocks thrown at him by cavemen or unfinished mutates or something. “THIS AM SO TYPICAL HULK,” says Hulk.

These beings are such a non-threat to Hulk it doesn’t even occur to him to defend himself. He has to talk himself into a reason to smash the poor creatures and he lands on, I quote, “HULK’S FEELINGS HURT.” It’s a tragic look inside a tortured soul, and oh shit. You know what it’s not? A Twinkies ad.

In what I think might be his way of trying to change what he had done, Hulk goes back up into the tree and starts dropping snacks. “HULK NOT KILL YOU, NUDE MEN. LOOK, HULK WAS IN TREE THROWING TWINKIES WHOLE TIME. THEY BUY IT, HULK NOT BELIEVE THAT WORKED?”

In May of 1978, Hulk turned the Hulk up to maximum for THE HULK® IN “LEAVE ME ALONE”.

Hulk wakes up in a public park and immediately starts throwing trees and boulders at the nearest noise. Women and children. That is a 3000 pound rock he is throwing. After that hits the playground, the world’s foremost puzzle owner won’t be able to reassemble the remains into something 47 grieving parents can bury.

“Please don’t kill us for having a picnic,” say the innocents to Hulk. This is no way to reason with Hulk, because he says:

“WHAT IS FUCKING ANYTHING,” demands Hulk. This is Hulk’s seventh Hostess ad and he actually says the words, “WHAT IS HOSTESS FRUIT PIES?“

In a way, Hulk is learning. If you look at the structure, THE HULK® IN “LEAVE ME ALONE” is a perfect Hostess fruit pie ad. A terrible threat emerges and the heroes stop it with delicious pie. The only thing Hulk got wrong is that he’s not supposed to be that terrible threat. It’s also possible everyone in this universe is fucking with him because that guy is holding a cherry pie and telling Hulk, “This one’s apple.” Or maybe these ads are being told from Hulk’s perspective and he isn’t remembering any details correctly because they’re the last flutters of brain activity from a man dying of intense radiation poisoning.

These are things to keep in mind as we read THE INCREDIBLE HULK® CHANGES HIS MIND! from March, 1979.

Hulk loves smashing trees and finding unattended children, but this is the first time he has ever done both with one punch.

The little boy who fell from the tree explains the basic concept of friendship to Hulk, riding him and tossing cup cakes to the only people stupid enough to still be in the park during a Hulk rampage. “We appreciate the moist cake,” the men tell the mysterious shadows. “Whatever threw us food has the voice of a boy and the explosions of a Hulk!” the men agree.

“WOW, HULK UNDERSTAND FRIENDS NOW,” says Hulk, being very wrong. “HULK PROBABLY COMPLETELY DIFFERENT HULK TOMORROW, THOUGH,” says Hulk, finally getting it. Oh, and here’s something fun you can try at home. Pick up a 7-year-old with one hand and absent-mindedly karate chop a tree into shrapnel with the other. Congratulations, that boy is dead in ways we have no names for. People won’t even know what you’ve done. They’ll ask why you’re transporting stew in a pair of children’s jeans.

Let’s try again. October, 1979: THE INCREDIBLE HULK® AND THE ULTIMATE WEAPON!

Two scientists in an unfuckable haircut contest have unleashed some kind of super tank! Now, Hulk, focus. This is a Hostess fruit pie ad. You’re going to want to tempt the pilot out of the ultimate weapon with the luscious, juicy tas–

God damn it, Hulk.

Sure, fuck it. Everyone have an unrelated pie.

In June of 1980, veteran spokesperson, Hulk, became one of the rare superheroes to star in ten Hostess advertisements. Let’s see how Hulk does in THE INCREDIBLE HULK® IN “HULK GETS EVEN!”

Someone drives straight through Hulk, loudly explaining how they’re having such a good day that murdering a guy, even an ugly one, isn’t going to put him in a bad mood. Now, Hulk, listen. I know you’re confused, but this is the part of the ad where you throw a Twinkie to the bad guy an–

You know what? Close enough!

Hulk was starting to get the hang of this! Until August of 1980, when he returned for THE INCREDIBLE HULK® VS. THE ROLLER DISCO DEVILS!

This is precisely the kind of situation that calls for a fruit pie. A group of noisy roller skaters calls for snack diplomacy, not violen–

Oh my god, Hulk, no. Hulk, what have you done!?

There’s no way those men are alive, and it is the worst kind of dead. And they were crushed into a mass roulade grave with no idea what was happening. They were having the time of their lives, skating to their favorite song, everyone thinking they’re tough… then they were made liquid by a sudden crushing darkness. “ALL DEAD, HULK NOW EAT PIE,” says Hulk. And yes, murdering six men for rudeness is bad, but again– eating the pies is the one thing Hulk wasn’t supposed to do.

“GIVE HULK ERASER. SEE, NOW HULK NOT EAT PIE. IT THAT SIMPLE, PUNY REALITY.”

By now it’s clear Hulk can’t do this. He killed a goddamn roller skating club and ate a pie, and they had to cut one of those things out. This is like filming a commercial where Zach Braff holds a cat underwater and says, “I’m butt man and butthole man Zach Braff, and I’m killing this cat for Goodyear Tires,” and then bleeping the word “Goodyear.” They gave Hulk one last chance in October, 1981 in the breathtaking and final Hulk Hostess ad… the masterpiece, THE HULK® VS. THE PHOOMIE GOONIES.

Of all the Hostess ad openings, this has the best world building. Bruce Banner looks at a post office and in only two thought bubbles you really understand how hard it must be being Hulk. “I could work there! This will be gr– wait, no, they’ll probably ask me if I’m the Hulk during the interview. My entire life is a hopeless wreck.” And he’s right. Hulk exists only to stumble into nightmares and walking into the post office only to turn around and walk out was more than enough time for him to spawn some unthinkable insanity.

The Phoomie Goonies, a three man revolutionary government and maybe some kind of Marvel executive inside joke, take everyone hostage. “Oh, great. Just what this day nee– ME AM HULK NOW,” thinks poor, puny Banner.

If any other superhero else threatened to squeeze you through an “out-of-town” slot, it’d be cute banter, but Hulk definitely means it. This would have literally been his seventh straight Hostess ad with a crushing death if he wasn’t stopped by a little boy offering a fruit pie solution. You’d think the kid would be terrified, but a post office full of machine guns and an Incredible Hulk was a very ordinary day for an American boy in 1981.

“We surrender for fruit pies!” wheezes the third Phoomie Goonie, choosing their words deliberately to help Hulk get it. As if he can explain in five words what the snack company has been trying to get Hulk to understand for six years. It’s the light, flaky crust that stops villainy, not the crushings. Stop killing every man and tree, Hulk.

The police let the seditious conspirators keep their fruit pies and Bruce Banner turns directly to us to say, “I’m going to invoice the Phoomie Goonies for those pies and my fucking shirt.” And then he definitely thought, “No, no, that will mean including my real name and address! The bank will have forms! Questions! Damn it I can feel i– ME AM HULK AGAIN. WOW, WHAT JOURNEY. OH, IF ONLY HULK SMART ENOUGH FOR PERFECT GOODBYE WORDS.”

…

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Matt Reiley, our most luscious and juicy Hot Dogger.

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NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: German Disco Christmas Star Wars 🌭

All of Europe saw Star Wars and thought “Yes! Let’s do exactly that, except three minutes long, it’s a musical, and we’re not going to watch Star Wars first!” The French were densely French about the whole thing, the Dutch were weirdly Italian about it, and the Germans put them all to shame with a disco musical Star Wars Christmas special in 1980, easily four more things than any one thing should be. It sounds like I’m criticizing it – no, this fucking rules.

The whole show is attempted murder on an epileptic, a full-on sensory blitz in every direction while all of your favorite Star Wars characters’ cousins embarrass themselves at a wedding. I’m sorry I sound derogatory when I talk about things I love – I’ve been on the internet too long and now affection and disgust are the same thing. But thanks to A German Disco Star Wars Christmas, I now understand that any Star Wars without twerking in it is a lesser Star Wars.

That’s a twink Luke Skywalker – an impressive feat since Luke Skywalker is already a twink Flash Gordon – backing it up on a sexy gender-swapped C3PO. Hold on, I don’t call her “sexy C3P0” to shame her, the costume isn’t over-sexualized or anything – I’m just inserting my personal bias, hopefully later into her personal BIOS.

Darth Vader is one of cinema’s most iconic villains, but I’ve always thought it was a missed opportunity not to have him Funk That Shit.

Look at Chewbacca feeling himself!

That’s my exact walk when I land the dog poop bag in the garbage can with one shot.

I love Chewbacca, Space Bigfoot feels like a character pandering just to me. Although Chewbacca was created five years before I was born, so I guess it’s the other way around. If you gave me this version when I was a kid, this pure confidence Chewie radiating sexual charisma on the dance floor? I have a feeling my sexuality would’ve turned out different. You throw him together with that hot C3PO from earlier? I’d have to start a DeviantArt account.

Hit me up at DidItAllForTheWookie, commissions start at $5 for explicit, $50 for non-explicit.

There’s only one thing missing here. But we can’t ask for it. It’s too much.

There’s a finite supply of good in the world and we mine it with every wish that comes true. When there are shoeless children picking through landfills for salvageable lithium, it would be irresponsible to burn what scarce charity remains for something as selfish as breakdancing Yoda.

Oh fuck, I said it out loud. I’m so sorry, kids. I’ll make a donation to whatever hospital is working on a cure for Battery Feet.

Breakdancing Yoda appears only in a transitory shot, half in shadows, never fully opaque – either they’re trying to use a visual medium to explain this is a dream best left to dreams, or else they know the costume sucks but nobody cuts Breakdancing Yoda.

Speaking of background characters stealing the show, this fucking Stormtrooper.

This is Disco Vader’s big moment, the ultimate dance battle concluding with a hard vogue by the main villain on center stage. And he’s being absolutely dwarfed by an NPC with Merge Ahead arrows doing the Locomotion.

There’s no way anybody involved in this watched more than the trailer for Star Wars before dropping $400 on a movie-accurate wookie, and $3.50 on a Star Goblin costume from Spirit Halloween. The choreographers seem to think Han and Chewie are the main characters, they even get center stage for the final back-to-back freeze that ends the show.

Twink Skywalker over there is barely an afterthought, he doesn’t even get to hold his lightsaber for the big climax. I wrote eight jokes for this space and deleted them all because I’m growing as a person. Han and Chewie also get the ending skit, where Vader comes out to join the cast bow and Han pretends to be terrified-

I know what the choregrapher’s thought process behind this was: “This is cute! Let’s do it!”

But by carrying the kayfabe beyond the performance and into the bow you’re breaking the fourth wall. This changes the fiction. These are no longer dancers coming together to pay homage to Star Wars, but the actual characters from Star Wars putting aside their animosity to honor a shared passion for boogie. Han being explicitly frightened of Vader means no peace was brokered here, the dance is over and they are going right back to murdering each other – even though they all now know the exact shape and feel of their enemy’s gyrating package.

Also I’d like to admit that I was wrong earlier: Chewbacca starts barking at Vader like a poodle in this skit, so nobody involved in this even watched the trailer.

A gorgeous German woman comes out to thank the performers, and she’s immediately smitten with Vader. Another bullet in the chamber for my argument that nobody here knew what Star Wars was. In 1980 Germany, you had to be very careful about your symbology. Star Wars is not oblique, the Empire are Space Nazis and Vader may not be their Hitler, but he’s at least their Rommel.

If anyone involved in this performance had actually seen Star Wars they’d know having their blondest German hussy paw at Vader’s control panel is a direct violation of the Potsdam Agreement.

Whatever. It’s a lone misstep in what was otherwise a beautiful moment that we will all share forever.

If only the article stopped here.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t learn German for this column and YouTube Translate thinks they’re talking about sausages and making motorcycle noises. I found this video with no contextual information and my research told me only that it was around 1980, German, a Christmas special, and magical.

There’s another segment after the big dance number that I can’t be 100% certain is from the same show. But is it crazier to think Germany did two skits in one special, or multiple Disco Star Wars Christmas specials?

This one features a man named Ilja Richter, quick research tells me he was the host of a program named DISCO.

Followup research tells me that he’s extremely punchable.

You don’t need audio to know exactly how that sounds, and that it triggers an attack mode in the human heart. He’s performing a musical comedy sketch, which mostly means mugging over clips from Star Wars. I’m going to assume YouTube is wrong again and that he’s not singing [bird noises] and Auto Translate Not Available, so it’s probably a bunch of shitty Star Wars puns.

Eventually they run out of stock footage and cut away to a fussy little man hanging from a cardboard moon.

He’s restless and unhappy with his legs like a gassy infant, he’s wearing golden pajamas and sings a sulky song like one might hear from an unappreciated gnome in a Christian cartoon about pride. We slowly zoom on our sleepy space prince while Ilja croons softly, as if to say “let’s look in on the lil’ fella without disturbing nappy time.”

There’s no dignity in this, it’s the kind of thing a dinner theater actor would fire their stripmall agent for, it’s- holy shit, there’s no way.

It is. It’s actually Mark Hamill. In 1980. After the release of Empire Strikes Back, the second installment in the Star Wars trilogy. If this was after the first Star Wars, you could understand it. Maybe they didn’t know what they had yet and were willing to debase themselves for promotion. But no, by 1980 Mark Hamill was the lead in the biggest franchise in movie history and had known that for years. Germany somehow got hold of arguably the greatest cultural icon of the last five years, gave him golden toddler pajamas, then asked him to sit on a cardboard moon and act like a spoiled brat who’s mad about pie.

AND HE SAID YES.

Actually, he said-

Haha, do you know what a good sport Mark Hamill is? He’s done any number of self-effacing Star Wars sketches. He played the most pathetic version of himself in a Simpsons episode about a sad dinner theater play that-

Holy shit is this what that Simpsons episode was about??

Mark Hamill is such a good sport he was in a disfiguring accident that almost sidelined his entire career and he cracks jokes about it to this day. For him to grumpily admit – only when specifically called out in a way he couldn’t deny – that this was him and that he hated doing it? It’s like getting Randy Quaid to storm out of the opening ceremonies of a Phoenix boat show – it shouldn’t be possible, this is his home, it’s where he’s comfortable, and he needs that money for traffic court.

The sketch continues to be incomprehensible, partly because I don’t speak German, partly because clarity was a cornerstone of the Nazi movement and Germany was forced to disavow it as a condition of surrender.

A snowspeeder zooms up, which, we’re in outer space guys, that’s not how a snowspeeder works- no, that cannot be my problem with this. Because a beauty queen is riding on the back of that speeder – I have to assume she’s Miss Star Wars – and the pilot pantomimes like he didn’t know she was there. I guess pageant winners skitching through the void is a common nuisance in this universe? I don’t know. I only know two things: In the 1980s a subpar man never missed a chance for a grope, and that’s Ilja Richter in that helmet.

He quickly ducks out to let Mark Hamill take his woman, which I have no comment on.

There aren’t many men who could sell losing a woman to a gold lamé moon infant, but Ilja Richter is definitely one of them.

There’s a musical tone shift, the vibe grows darker. It’s Darth Vader! He’s here to…

Play a few sour notes on a trumpet? We linger on this far too long for it not to be the punchline. Whatever is happening here, it was the point of the sketch. There’s some chain of comedic events that necessitated finding a toddler Mark Hamill on the moon, giving him a beauty queen on a snowspeeder, and then Darth Vader being bad at trumpet.

No! Don’t do the wrap-up head tilt, that can’t be it. You can’t leave this comedy puzzle in my head, I’m as unable to solve it as I am unwilling to let it go. Wait, just wait, let me guess – in Germany “trumpet” is slang for penis and their word for “moon” kind of sounds like their word for sex-theft, so this is some kind of Empire Primae Noctis. It’s because Star Wars is-

Stop parade waving like this is the end! Is it a reference to a folk tale I don’t have the cultural context for where a grumpy moonboy is punished for stealing trumpets by harlots from beyond the stars. Is that why Vader-

Please stop zooming out, please don’t do this. You can’t leave me here, is it just that it’s funny Mark Hamill stole Ilja’s girl? Is it that Darth Vader can’t play a trumpet through that helmet? Fuck! FUUU-

…
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Haught Phart, who’s also called The Boogie Wookie but for unrelated, more tragic reasons.

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NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Snailiens 🌭

As we’ve established, everyone wanted a piece of that delicious Ninja Turtles pizza pie in the early ’90s. So the creators of Snailiens must have thought, ok, what made the turtles so huge? They’re little green guys with shells… what else is small, green, and has a shell? Snails! It’s snails, goddamnit it! And uh… they’re aliens! Snailiens! We’re gonna be rich! By god, boys, in a year’s time we’ll be doing lines off a novelty coffee table shaped like a giant snail.

And so, the Snailiens were born. The influence of the Ninja Turtles is obvious in their designs, being four muscular green dudes with no noses. Rather than masks, the Snailiens have color-coded facial hair. Only it’s not hair, exactly, it’s sort of like a bony protrusion. Which is the closest they get to having shells. Honestly, they don’t look anything like snails. They look like weightlifters who were transporting barrels of acid and had a terrible accident. The fact that the Abraham Lincoln one is wearing a singlet only furthers this impression. Oh, that’s right, there’s an Abraham Lincoln one:

Sold as cheaply-made rubber figurines, Snailiens were compelling not for their inherent quality but for the boatlands of garbage they came with. My grandmother bought me one of these things from a Toys ‘R’ Us in the early ’90s, and it included a veritable deluge of plastic crap to inspire the imagination of lonely and socially maladjusted children. In addition to the figure, you got snap-on armor, a little sidekick, two rubber “satellite” projectiles, and a hard rubber half-sphere called the “Turbo-Flex Shell.” (Everything was Turbo, it was the ’90s.) What it looked like was an undressed maniac, a non-working diaphragm, and the baby they made:

By turning the shell inside out then placing the sidekick figure or the satellites inside, you could then invert it and launch the projectile at some hapless Snailien’s enemy. The packaging insisted that you not aim the shell at animals or people, and rightfully so — it was effectively a small rubber bullet. Hell, the generic versions of these toys are actually called “eye poppers.” Imagine: a ’90s remake of A Christmas Story where Ralphie shoots his eye out with a Snailien. Ah, what could have been.

The Snailiens also came with trading cards and a comic book explaining their backstory. See, there’s another dimension six feet below San Francisco, there’s a war going on down there, and it’s explained across this pile of debris:

The hideous Lunarticks and their leader Zug plot to invade Earth and have selected the tiny city of Snail Francisco as their first target. Whether there’s another outer space in the dimension under San Francisco or they’re coming from another planet in our dimension is kind of unclear. Who cares! We’ve got aliens, dimensions, kids love all that horseshit.

The Lunarticks and their allies, the short-statured “Infects,” begin their assault on Snail Francisco. The city’s occupants, who are, as you might expect, snails, put out a distress call. The Snailiens, who I guess are aliens but also live in the subterranean dimension under San Francisco, respond and fly their ship, the S. Cargo (boooo) to help out the besieged citizens.

But while they’re kicking Lunartick ass, one of the kids who lives in the regular human San Francisco finds their spaceship, thinks it’s a cool shell, and takes it to his room. The Snailiens are thus stranded on Earth, where they help the citizens of Snail Francisco resist the Tick invaders. Said citizens “knight” them with names found on coins that have fallen into their world because they can’t pronounce their “Snailienese” names, and they become Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln. Because they’re not just another Ninja Turtle knockoff. They’re more like a local car dealer’s President’s Day Sale parody of a Christian parody of the Ninja Turtles.

The toy line included the four Snailiens as well as four of the Lunartick villains: Zug, Armokillo, Drool, and Blastar. Each Snailien and Lunartick had their own little buddy who could be fitted into the Turbo-Flex Shell and sent careening across the room, or simply be attached to the character’s armor like a stupid little baby. The commercial did its best to make them seem cool, with animated depictions of the characters throwing their rubber shells around and a song describing them as “Supersonic Shell Fighters,” but this looks like single Go-Bot dads trying to identify a testicle in a police lineup. This fucking sucked and every kid knew it.

“Give them a bounce, they’ll blow you away,” the ’90s toy commercial announcer excitedly intones, as a Snailien’s little buddy is seen smashing through a window. Immediately after, we see kids cowering in fear from the supersonic shell onslaught. Sure, there were warnings not to point these things at other people, but they knew what they were doing.

It seems like a silly and cheap attempt to cash in on a trend now, but I have to admit that I adored the Snailiens as a child. I only ever had the one, but how many toys came with their own comics with elaborate backstories involving subterranean dimensions populated by insect people? Maybe a dozen? How many toys had cool plastic armor suits you could snap on and off, giving your non-articulated Snail man essentially two different outfits depending on the social and/or combat situation that your imagination placed him in? Still a lot, sure! But how many snail-based superheroes were there? Only these. And I loved these little bastards.

But despite all of this — the comic, the high potential for injury, the term “Turbo-Flex Shell,” the Snailiens, very much unlike a snail climbing up a wall, didn’t stick. They were relegated to the memory hole of history, never even receiving a cheaply-produced animated TV pilot to be discovered by someone with a VHS ripper and a self-hosted website in the early 2000s. So thoroughly has history forgotten the Snailiens that there are zero results for “Snailiens” on every major illustrated pornography search engine. There are over 100 results for Street Sharks on e621, but zero for Snailiens. Hell, there’s art of the Creepy Crawlers television series on Deviantart — god, I’m going to have to get into that sometime — but none of Snailiens. Is it because of all the mucus? No, no, I’m seeing a lot of results for that.

Woe unto the Snailiens! Woe unto Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln, the defenders of Snail Francisco! Woe unto these musclebound mollusks, these gastropods with gains. Are there none who wish, within their secret hearts, to feel their strong yet tender embrace? Nay, there are none. And so, their story ends. Here lie the Snailiens — nobody wants to fuck them.

But here’s where things get really weird. Nowhere in the thriving Snailiens online fandom seems to mention this, but like TMNT, Snailiens were based on a comic. And while the Ninja Turtles were changed slightly in the process of becoming Saturday morning cartoons, the Snailiens became utterly unrecognizable from their source material. See, according to artist Dwayne Ferguson (art director on the ’90s Mutant League TV series), the Snailien toys were based on characters from his Hamster Vice comic, a series about hamsters with guns and sometimes also breasts.

In a parody of Aliens, he had his protagonists travel into space to rescue kids captured by the “Snailien Queen.” Ferguson wanted to get some toys made, ended up working with a company called J.P.I. International Corp, and the Snailiens as I and six other people now know them were born. Here’s how the original looked:

Ferguson points out that the toys bore little resemblance to his original work and notes this kind of thing happens all the time in comics adaptations. For instance, how Rogue became a lot younger in the X-Men films, or how Harley Quinn turned into a camgirl. But in this case it really does feel like some toy company executives liked the name “Snailiens,” realized how big the Ninja Turtles were, and decided to dump everything but the title. In popular comic terms, it would be like if the first Spider-Man movie had been about a terrifying arachnid monster that kidnapped children to feast on their bone marrow instead of a kid who makes homophobic remarks to Macho Man Randy Savage.

At some point, Snailiens were acquired by a company called Abrams Gentile Entertainment. I’m not sure whether this company even exists anymore, but they seem to have bought up a number of children’s properties that were popular to varying degrees in the ’80s and ’90s. In describing Snailiens, AGE’s site says that it “takes the classic ‘snail out of water’ backdrop and places our intergalactic team of out-of-the-world Snailiens on Earth’s insect populated Snail Francisco where they match wits and kicks against the nefarious Lunar-Ticks.” Snail out of water? Fuck off, man.

In addition to Snailiens, their website boasts their ownership of Sky Dancers, Bucky O’Hare, Van-Pires (god, there’s another I’m going to have to cover someday), and even Visionaries, which they claim has a live-action film in development from the producers of Transformers. Remember the Visionaries? They were action figures with holograms in their torsos. Not really surprised that franchise failed to make a resurgence with the ’80s cartoon revival of the 2000s. Given how hard Michael Bay’s Transformers was to look at, can you imagine what he’d do with characters made of fucking holograms?

Today, if you’d like to own a Snailien of your very own, you can expect to pay many times the original retail price on eBay. The rubber used to make the Turbo-Flex Shells have rotted and cracked, the plastic pins on the armor suits have snapped off, and the vast majority of the trading cards and comics have since been discarded and recycled into toilet paper or those communist newspapers they hand out on college campuses (the toilet paper of Freedom).

But the Snailiens live on. In an often misattributed quote, existential psychologist Irvin Yalom says you die two deaths — one when your heart stops beating and another when someone speaks your name for the last time. In writing this piece, then, I have kept the Snailiens alive a little longer. They may crave death, these supersonic fighters, but they cannot taste its sweet fruit. Not while I’m around, anyway. Live, unfuckable snot monsters! Live!!

…
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: AnAndy, also known as the Visionary with a mustache.

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NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Mary Kate and Ashley in Action – Fast Food Fight!

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NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Stardust, Part 2 🌭

So! We meet again, do-gooder. Last week you fell under the power of Stardust the Super Wizard, a superhero with the abilities of Superman cubed but the mercy of the square root of Ghost Rider.

He was entirely the product of Fletcher Hanks, a cartoonist who dreamed of a finer world built on the skulls of all who opposed him. But we realized something along the way: Hanks understood superheroes better than almost anyone.

Some call Hanks the Neil Breen of comics. Others say the Rob Liefeld of the FDR era. Personally, I think he’s the Mark Millar of the DTs. All I know is a pickled brain tried to imagine the perfect man, and created a bloodthirsty scourge of his chosen people’s enemies for children’s entertainment.

Stardust operated on a simple premise: can Angry Drunk Superman experience dramatic tension? Laughably, no. Yet what Hanks failed to comprehend about drama, he perceived about melodrama. Other superheroes of the time stopped chubby gangsters from stealing helium to ransom the city’s parade balloons. A Hanks crook carpet-bombs the western seaboard to make the President miss his nap, leaving a rudderless America unable to repel Martian invasion. And it was all a distraction to swindle a savings & loan’s safe out of its Save Miami From Mutant Sharks Ray.

We left off with a promise that Stardust would return to fight a warlord named Lepus.

 

Ah, well, Hanks probably got drunk and wandered away from that idea.

The Emerald Men of Aspus want human slaves, and the best way to get some is to tow Earth into their janky asteroid belt. They can fly through space, so maybe Stardust finally faces a real threa—

Nope.

Like who doesn’t plot a righteous democide after three drinks?

Is anyone else worried what a bored Stardust will do once he’s murdered all the real threats? Mark me: in a year’s time he’s going to be combing through your town’s voter rolls with his psychic iPhone for thoughtcrime.

I found it! I found the Lepus story!

Without a trace of irony Lepus-the-Fiend uses Type II-civilization science to make the universe wild and primitive. It’s up to Buzz Crandall, Venusian Cop, to stop—hold up, who the fuck is Buzz Crandall?

We can’t say for sure that Fletch drank himself under a deadline, much like yours truly a month late with a two-part comic book article. But the signs say he repurposed a half-drawn Stardust story for this assignment. You didn’t even blink until I showed you the title page.

I mean look, here’s the telltale starburst:

Anyway, Lepus is going to smash planets two and three together. Buzz is too busy rescuing his pretty Science-Assistant Sandra from Lepus’s hideout to save civilization. Fortunately:

Missed! Buzz averted nothing! What a shitty Space Patrolman. You suck, Buzz, I hope you die of space-ebola. We’re only alive because Lepus failed trig.

Lepus dies off-panel without destroying a single civilized planet. Odds are high the wildman was a patsy who accepted some advanced tech from his friend “Buzz” in a sting to set up a big bust. Is space patrolman just an undercover identity for Stardust?

In fact, those planets missing each other? That reads like every Silver Age story where Clark Kent can’t change outfits without Lois Lane catching him, so he surreptitiously uses super-sneezing to blow JFK’s toupee off. I’ve got five bucks says Stardust is so overpowered his idea of a mild-mannered cover persona is “intergalactic space cop.”

If not, that means Stardust stories are insane, but also Hanks at his best. Stardust is the strip he dried out enough to pour his passion into. How many times do you think William Hanks switched his son’s behind with a sapling while making him recite the Book of Revelation, that junior’s only creative successes were exertional violence?

Because the Lepus story got bounced, Stardust takes a non-Hanks field trip. Moloka is a solar pirate who burns planets to death for fun and money. Admittedly badass.

To defeat him, Stardust poses as a murder-genie. From punching distance, he convinces Moloka to blow up the Earth, intending to redirect the ray at its wielder. It’s unnecessary, risky, and offers no payoff to a guy with a track record of showing up late: the perfect Stardust threat response.

Stardust outraces a beam traveling 10 million times the speed of light, and it’s proof that he’s using the dev settings on the simulation. How does any gangster have a prayer against a superhero with 10 million infinite masses? His very existence is a bullet through the fabric of gravity. If you stand near Stardust, you’re sliced into 22 different dimensions, all of which deserve punishment for noticing the outline of a woman’s bra strap in church. He’s only a giant because his body contains the mass of 10 million unfurling Big Bangs suppressed by his constantly flexing abs.

Well it’s not Hanks, but it’s a fitting move to maroon the tyrant on the dead planet he once ruled, especially since it was functional 20 minutes ago. Guys, I think Stardust did another genocide.

Oh shit! The Super-Fiend just genocided Mars so it would make a better bullet to fire at Earth! I’m invested.

What if Stardust comics are openly terrifying, yes, but secretly terrific? I know we’re all here to watch a cruel god smite those who defy the American narrative, but this is such a ‘00s “widescreen comics” plot device. If you just challenged Stardust a little and hired Bryan Hitch to draw these world-ending threats, you’ve got the vanguard of 21st-century comics.

This is personal; Stardust had been saving those Martians to massacre for himself. He uplargifies the Super-Fiend to give him a fight.

Stardust shoves the Fiend’s face in the mountain of charred Martian corpses where he will live out his days. Remember, these are the same Martians who took a swing at the Earth after Stardust averted their World War. What’s their deal? The secret narrative of Martian colonization and genocide is the real intrigue through the pages of Stardust. How many societies call it their graveyard now? Stardust is public domain, so this may be canonically how Martian Manhunter’s society died in the DCU.

All life is precious to Stardust except on Wednesdays.

THIS is the guy who gets solitary confinement? The genocide king? He’s punished with the exact scenario Clipp aimed for as victory, but I guess it’s different when the whole planet smells like freezer-burned corpses.

Stardust detects an ambitious robbery scheme disguised as Die Hard 0: I’m So Hard From Your Dying. He rushes to stop it in his “transparent tubular special,” a sort of cosmic body condom that lets him fly faster than light, but only like Michael Phelps making fun of a dolphin.

 

Ah, the timeless New York dream. This Kurd came here with nothing but the clothes on his back and the skull on his face. Now his Vanuatu-sized army is herding the cops into a bombable mass so he can plunder every safe in the city. I’m fine with it if he starts with Wells Fargo. Let’s see how well his GTA dreams go for him, following an appearance by Injustice Superman (blond skin DLC).

Stardust, you sicko, you’re into this.

Look how self-satisfied he is. I’m not saying terrorists don’t deserve this, but maybe we shouldn’t send the bully who can only get erect when he knows civilians are watching him cripple our mortal flesh.

Anyway, he hauls the surviving terror-crooks to exoplanet Scrooge.

Methodist Hell is just Mormon Heaven with sharing.

Dr. Kaos is an Earthman who has conquered Venus as part of his plan to conquer Earth.

Sorry, but what else is relevant? This plan is so stupid it rules.

He spends way too much time breeding plants to engorge and domesticate giant vultures that will attack everyone on Earth. Everyone except—oh no: The Girl.

The Girl has no name, no identity, and no parents or home as of thirteen seconds ago. The upside of lacking a personality beyond “pretty” is you recover from trauma easily, which makes life more convenient for men, which improves your odds of marrying well. And may the Devil help her, because Old Testament God has one weakness, and it’s our fine American Earth-wombs.

It takes Stardust two panels to subdue Kaos and two pages of showing off for the woman whom Kaos has abducted to be Empress Trafficking Victim I. Thankfully, she’s saved, to live in isolation on a completely different celestial body. And yeah, consent is the mitigating difference, but I’m not sure I trust the snap judgment of anyone whose feet haven’t even touched the ground since their parents were supersonically bisected by the vine-amped vultures of Venus. You know, that old chestnut.

Everything about this is suspicious. One or both of them is certainly plotting to kill the other. Listen, Stardust, I’m sure your dick is perfect, but it’s still not a functioning brain. Best-case scenario, a man the size of a sedan discovers, via geyser of blood, that his chosen virgin wasn’t a gynoid programmed thusly:


if cervix=unruptured.true
Print:”You call that a jolly thrust? Golly gee, I thought you were a real man!”
Else:
plutoniumOvary.DETONATE

If you want a portrait of our vindictive sun-god, Stardust turned Kaos specifically into a worm that can survive space and re-entry to be eaten alive.

Kaos is secondary, because the real punishment is about to occur on Stardust’s private star, which is sometimes an asteroid, and is also not a burning ball of gas. Or maybe it maintains a low temperature that gently warms its rolling hills, I don’t know the basics of solarforming, you tell me. All I know is it has fields, and plowing season starts tonight.

We all know a Bluebeard when we see one. She’s correct not to fret about the death of all she loves when Homelander 0.5 is about to insert a 2-liter penis inside her.

Nazi traitors are everywhere! Which—New York was holding Bund rallies this same year, and we’ve all stopped talking to our relatives these days, so: fair. But these ones have stupid tanks!

You all saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier, right? Okay, it’s that. Bomb New York, cripple the military, overthrow the USA, roll out the Nazi-red Hitlercarpet. Yew-Bee has thought of everything, except what he will scream forever when Stardust captures him.

I don’t know why Stardust hates this guy so much when Yew-Bee gave him the thing he most wants: an excuse to torture his inferiors for eternity.

Also, he shows off his iPhone:

This is the second-weirdest death in Stardust’s scrapbook. After transmogrifying all the goons into icicles and melting them, the Blue Atlas turns his attention to the leadership.

They’re chased by a panther (Stardust), and this is all really starting to feel like Biblical allegory. Star-panther drives the rats into the sea, then churns the ocean to drown them in a Stardust-related ocean churn. You know, so they can’t swim to land and form a rat Fifth Column.

We’re not done!

Picture being so old-time reserved you’re a founding member of the FBI. Suddenly a 9’ splendid blond beast teleports into your office while you’re plotting to round up all the fishy types (pinkos, flits, non-whites such as Italians). He flings a rat with a sulky old man’s head at you, then walks through the wall.

You want to scream, but you know he hears all and sees more. “Thank you,” sputters your ancient limbic system’s defense mechanisms, “Thank you, Stardust.” The Italians will know your violence tonight, as your conscious brain screams to assert a rational order. How can you explain to them that their sacrifice is the only thing keeping you sane?

The Fifth Column arc continues with a domestic Nazi plan to blow up power plants and cripple the govern—Oh, come on! It’s appalling how often Hanks foretold the 21st century’s problems, minus the iron fist of an aloof-at-best science-messiah to save us.

Stardust has his hands full because he has to repel a full-on invasion of South America PLUS the Axis has allied itself with Martian Sky-Demons. I don’t know their story. All I know is Mars treats Earth the way America treats Mexico.

I can’t lie to you, this issue rules. It’s straight out of a Grant Morrison issue of Justice League, minus any stakes. Stardust psychically scans the entire planet for disloyal Nazi swine, then ray-beams them to a decoy Earth that he made to trick the Sky-Demons. Millions of Bund-holes are bombed by their own allies, who fly away convinced they just trecimated humanity.

But there’s still the problem of the invading Axis. To deal with it, Stardust—Oh, no.

Say hello to the Sixth Column, Stardust’s private child army. He abducts thousands of boy soldiers, imbues them with his powers, and orders them to slaughter the field. These lads can’t be older than 13. He’s drowned their childhood in blood.

The Stardust Youth form transnational Sixth Column chapters to intimidate dissenters, and Stardust flies home, this once breaking his rule about only smiling when an audience watches him bully the helpless.

The Fifth Column wants to take over U.S. business, so they do it in the most Fletcher Hanks way possible: targeted missile strikes on the U.S. from Europe.

In this world, every crime is a Nakatomi Tower. If you want to steal candy from a baby in Stardust’s world, you throw a rock at a truck. In the commotion of the truck swerving into a ditch, you adopt the baby and send it to Swiss Business School to major in Chocolate Studies with a minor in Wonkalogy. Then you send a fleet of planes to bomb its house. Anyway, now the army of teen snitches has fascism leotards. And telepathy. Oh no.

Stardust gave teenagers ESP. Teenagers! The most notoriously emotionally unstable people in life’s journey can now hear what everyone thinks about them, as they tilt headlong in America’s most repressed era. I’m sorry, do you know what happens if you give American teen boys Jean Grey powers? Because in the same strip he gives them telekinesis, too. Imagine Scott Baio’s Zapped! but scaling up its crimes against humanity.

And I’m sorry, but every one of these kids looks like the bassist in a 1987 new wave band called Freeing Tanith.

One of the boys fucks up and thousands die! Stardust does nothing to prevent it! This is exactly how two U.S. wars have started. Oh well.

While his boy soldiers round up disloyalists, The Anti-Fascist Fascist hangs his enemies in midair, and—oh my God. He blows through them like a baseball bat through cake. Every one of these boys is an accomplice to grand-scale murder! Say, this is great fun!

I mean it’s Nazis, so I’m not sad, I just think the children weren’t required for our bloody work. This feels like death-grooming to spread the war crime culpability around.

I’m not confident you’re ready for how weird this one’s going to get. Don’t blame me for the fugue state you’re willingly striding into.

Mastermind Destructo has a ray that can suffocate every elite in America simultaneously: industrial executives, bankers, FBI agents, Secret Service, and all three branches of federal government. Sir, I will give you fifteen dollars for three minutes with this ray right now.

The Secret Army/Fifth Column alliance is going to be so mad when all of their undercovers get snuffed. It’s the kind of superheroics we wouldn’t see again until The Authority, but hold up: turns out this isn’t one of Stardust’s allies:

Okay, from that perspective they do look a little like the bad guys.

Stardust loves ironic punishments, but focuses on the unironic aspects. Are you ready? No, you are not! Get set! And! BEHOLD!

Ha ha ha ha! What a bully, the people’s hero. And yet, there is a very good chance Stardust possesses a device that allows him to read this column, and the trans-membrane ray technology to come here and punish me for it. Who cares? You’re the worst of C’thulu’s children, Stardust!

Reader, you just let your guard down! That was the normal part!

Stardust has a pet mutant that he feeds heads. This giant is the superhero’s version of my dog knowing he gets toast crust. Again, this comic makes perfect sense if you’re a minister’s drunk son.

And still, there are more sinners who need the stern hands of an angry god!

A thousand minds, but only one undying shriek.

You did it! You survived Stardust Madness! The Space-Wizard at his weirdest was no match for your fortitude!

BETRAYAL: That was merely preamble to his most elaborate torture yet.

A gangster whose name is definitely not reproducible here plans to rob the U.S. Bullion Depository four ways at once by gassing Fort Knox. Stardust’s Illegal Brain Surveillance Ray alerts him to the plan.

Man, Hanks must have been so ticked when James Bond made millions doing his exact plot.

Stardust arrives quickly enough to save the gold, though not the poisoned soldiers from a bludgeoning. He really is the Captain Planet you’d get when a DuPont, a Dulles, Douglas MacArthur, and the remains of Joe McCarthy’s liver hastily join rings over the backstabbed corpse of the Heart kid.

Stardust has thus far revealed his true nature, but only now, in his final kill, do we glimpse his true form:

That hand! That horrifying hand! I’m sorry. You came here for comedy! I’m sorry! I’m sorry. I’m sorry—

This is like the Harlem Globetrotters versus only the retired Washington Generals. The entire time Stardust taunts him with promises of undying agony. He’s plainly showing off for the girl, unless she’s already hanging undead in his species’ mating web, her bloated abdomen undulating with Star-babies chewing their way out. The only space aliens who do this kind of thing stem from the Warhammer/Doom/Lovecraft outerverse.

As the Earth itself pays the wages of the Tough Babies’ sins, Stardust keelhauls our villain through the island’s underwater caves, flips its landmass, yanks him back out, and then, only then:

He wanted gold. But he never considered the supreme irony that it might be a gigantic golden mollusk!

A lot of Stardust adventures end with him tweet-lighting the sky. Sometimes they’re useful messages like “Tidal wave threat over, cease your panic-crimes,” but mostly it’s unhelpful grandpa observations, like “Don’t trust your neighbors, they eat fermented cabbage.” Nothing compares to his final message of hope to the people:

Showily curb-stomping someone who’s no threat to him, then broadcasting to the world how great he is for doing so well past reason. Stardust really is a hero for 21st-century America. And you survived him. I’m so proud of you. That’s it. That’s all the Stardust in existence. You’ll never gaze upon him in fear again!

You should read Brendan’s superhero conspiracy comic now so you’re caught up when Stardust appears.

…
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Toasty God, who once turned all children into knives and used them to eviscerate Meepo, the Blood Freak whose only two weakness were child-blades and democracy.

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NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Stardust, Part 1 🌭

Hey, you—with the love handles: how would you like to fistfight Old Testment God?

That was the trick question asked in each issue of Stardust the Super Wizard, a comic about an omnipotent, unelected space-sheriff who only had one combat level, meaning horrified mobsters suffered the same ferocious punishment as galactic warlords, and it was The Infinity Gauntlet #4 treatment.

Sorry, I forget some of you don’t speak superhero. I’ll explain. Alcoholic comic artist Fletcher Hanks arguably created the first superheroine, Fantomah, but his second-most famous work was Stardust the Super Wizard, a misanthropic asshole’s version of Superman wearing Batman’s utility belt.

Stardust had every power except empathy, no weaknesses, and even less drama. No matter what the peril, he had a ray or gas to solve it. He was said to be invulnerable, dodged every attack regardless, and was proportioned like the Titan who bullied the Gigachad in high school. It’s unknown if Stardust had any weaknesses, because the one time an opponent landed an attack, Stardust let him do it just to toy with his hope of survival. I’m highly confident he’s related to the Engineers from Alien, given that he’s 9’ tall, and despises all the parts of humanity he can’t seed with his starspawn.

Also, Hanks put all of Stardust’s physical stats into the X and Y axes, leaving him with no Z for the ass:

“The most remarkable man that ever lived” is an all-seeing, all-powerful sky-wizard who lets bad people hurt good ones so he can mangle crooks for committing crimes he could have stopped. The superhero genre was still in the neonatal ward when Fletcher Hanks realized it was Gods vs. Mortals, and decided Mortals needed more body horror to tamp their big ideas.

I hope it helps you make sense of why your grandparents vote the way they do. Because of their choices, all of the 1930s’ sci-fi nightmares are just the 2020s’ everyday slog. Hanks was a 1940s gonzo cartoonist and a 1930s abusive father, so he was a torturous Da-Da who made torturous dada; yet somehow he predicted our entire stupid existence.

Stardust can eavesdrop on the entire universe and flies 10 million times the speed of light, but never arrives in time to save the man in the street, just the elites. If you wondered why God lets bad things happen to good people, it’s to justify the murders and mutilations he’s plotting in his lab. Phobos University awarded him an honorary doctorate in devising punishments for the crimes he let happen. It’s like, torture for poetry’s sake, man—you dig?

Like most superheroes, Stardust has a code against killing: it disrupts his important work of mutilating still-screeching criminals. He might grant you eternal life, but only so you could suffer forever for kidnapping a billionaire. Stardust stories are duller than the knives his readership uses to make their victims squirm more, because to Hanks, narrative is just build-up. The real attraction is incommensurate retaliation. It’s the “Matt Foley, Motivational Speaker” of superheroes, but instead of crashing through a wall at the end, we’re all cast into hopeless agony.

If Stardust caught you jaywalking, he’d transform-ray you into a blue jay, and then tear your legs off. “You, who sought to be king of the crosswalk racketeers,” growls this parody of art deco, “You shall never walk again!” Then he’d fling you across the galaxy to Cybertron, so you could be stepped on by cars for a million years. It was a drunk’s idea of irony, and it was hatefully rad.

Got it? Now let’s look at the highlights reel from The Further Adventures of Young YHWH, all of which perfectly predict the 2020s.

Stardust enemies tend to declare themselves the enemies of civilization, and want to return to a savage state when they can enslave everyone else.

You know, typical enemies-of-America stuff.

First off, Will Eisner fixed this panel; I’d put $100 on it. The Eisner studio was practically teenagers, and in walks this middle-aged lush mumbling, “Kids whaddaya do a supes hero ok I’ll super you this man of star-metal skin f’r $20 and rum,” then immediately draws all of his characters facing away from the camera.

One Eisnerian correction later, The Secret Army sees a headline that says “Wizard-cop incoming at framework-breaking speeds to mercilessly annihilate crime” and recognizes it as the hornets’ nest they want to roundhouse. Forgivably, they have awesome weapons.

Suddenly: common sense! It doesn’t last.

“Oh God. Oh no. We’re fucked, we’re all fucked, it’s seen us, save yourselves with cyanide.”

Six pages in, Stardust has already floored the pedal to Spectreville. We’re still shaking hands with this new superhero, and suddenly he’s murmuring beneath a sweaty brow about the divine wind reaping the wicked.

Our—well, not hero, but our featured deus ex machina—brings the feds up to the roof to gawp at these men reliving the horrors of their crimes for five minutes. This is what people did for fun in the age before television.

Would it surprise you to learn at this point that Fletch’s dad was a 19th Century Methodist minister? I’m going to assume the method was locking Hanks in the closet to contemplate why sneaking a second fistful of rye flour for morning stirabout was the devil’s breakfast.

To prevent meddling, The Notorious RtB plans to capture Stardust with glue, wind machines that aren’t fans, and magnets. Rip, you moron, those are what you use to catch vermin in a produce warehouse, and Stardust is powered by the energy of an unreachable sun.

World War II’s barely begun, but Rip-the-Blood wants to get a global conflagration going by kidnapping the president via fake Japanese plane. What the hell? Stardust debuted two years before Pearl Harbor.

Anyway, he kidnaps the president like it’s nothing.

Stardust never administers one punishment when nine will murder that man so hard his atomized remains think twice about ever forming covalent bonds with known felons. Stardust makes Rip-the-Blood watch as he blows up the man’s (occupied?) munitions factories, then flings his accomplices into space to die.

I can’t lie, this is great. Only when Rip has nothing left does Stardust hurl him into the sea, a.k.a. the space of earth. It’s a slow death for warmongers. Suddenly, I’m listening to what this peacenik space-fascist has to say. Do the Bush administration next!

Stardust casually leaves to end another world war on Mars, off-panel. Or at least talking about it loudly. This is the kind of thing witnesses clearly remember you saying before you commit a premeditated crime: “Time to go tutor some blind nuns how to bake bread for the poor! Goodbye, everyone! I am leaving the party now, at 9:05 p.m., a forty-minute spatial tubular from my private star if I break all universal constants!” A month later, the bodies of four dozen cosmic terrorists are found drifting in Martian orbit, screaming endlessly in quantum-superpositioned flames.

Ummm…wait. I don’t like where these are going. All of 1939’s imagined threats are our real ones: air pollution, megastorms, rising seas, war profiteers, overpopulation, overheating Earth. At one point a global pandemic stops all industry. We get the worst of the Space-Wizard’s world minus the terrifying benevolent tyrant to save us.

Most Stardust foes employ a private army to increase odds of survival when he inevitably turns their weapons against them. The Demon is the first idiot to take on Stardust with nothing more than an assistant, which means he has to eat a city-killing tidal wave all by himself. Stardust sidearms him headlong into the force of all the hate in the cosmos, but feels there’s important work left to be done in desecrating his body.

The Giant has a lot of subtextual backstory. He’s older than Babylon, the same size as Stardust, and the only person who knows how to disrupt the blue Atlas’s technology. He has a very supportive friend named Kamet. He hates Chicago, so you’d guess he’s from Milwaukee, but he loves slavery, so you might figure Baton Rouge. Anyway, he’s retired to the Southwest, like all old people.

Can’t believe we’re all gonna die at the hands of a guy with a pro wrestler mullet.

I don’t think I’m conjecturing too much that these two are the same ancient race, making Mad Gobi the Sinestro to his Green Lantern, the Venom to his Spidey, the Brockbaby to his Seanway. Maybe that’s why Stardust is oddly restrained for once.

Either it’s professional deference or these monsters can’t die. Then again, maybe our space cop figured no point in a harsh lesson when the guy’s just pressing the gas to our destination.

Racketeer Wolf-Eye and his Crime Wizards, a.k.a. the Miracle Men, have a vacuum ray!

They’re kidnapping elites like “automaker Henry Lord” to destroy the economy. Oh, boo hoo, did a union-busting Hitler-patron dangle in the sky for a bit? My heart, she shudders for that poor, parboiled Nazi.

Without titans of industry to do whatever the telegraph version of shit-tweeting is, the economy tumbles. The dismantling of public transit is delayed an entire week now! But this being Fletcher Hanks, he’s nested at least two extortion schemes in this kidnapping.

Seems like that ray could just vacuum up the money and resources directly, but no one consulted me about my hobbyist schemes to assault billionaires.

Wolf-Eye embiggens himself with a growth ray (now his third super-science ray) but is immediately shrunk by Stardust’s “Fuck your ambitions” ray into a little guy.

It’s unclear if the superhero drops Wolf-Eye off with the Feds or the interplanetary police, but at least this crook’s not doomed to live forever in contemplation of his agonies. Stardust must recognize and respect a fellow ray-pervert.

This one’s not by Hanks, so we don’t care! But he’s an Earth warlord who subjugated Mars.

Let’s see how Superman vs. John Carter fan-fiction shakes out.

Hahahaha, look at these giant feebs, I’m glad they’re dead.

This is what happens when you stop body-shaming people for being different and marry someone for their oversized mind. Martinious conquered this planet by seizing control of its economy entirely through milk money muggings. Thank goodness Captain Eugenics shows up to kill them in the sixth-most horrific manner possible.

Boy, this one tapdances on the thorn of “Is it a slur or does he travel the byways?” You can’t outright say Hanks strips are racist, but then again, Stardust might have eradicated all the other races already.

Here it is. This is the dumbest plot any comic crook ever farted out, and I’ve read villains who want to turn all water on earth into gold. Three idiots with a little knowledge want to halt the Earth’s rotation and send everyone else sliding off at 800 mph so they can keep all the good stuff. They chain themselves to the wall while—wait, this can’t be right…“half a billion” humans rocket to orbit. Is that what they thought overpopulation was? Dear lord. We are a cancer of the earth’s biomass. The Demon wasn’t wrong, he was just inept. To my point:

Orbis non rotat, orbis non sufficit. This is the most realistic panel in the entire series, even though it’s suddenly the lost Canterbury Tale.

The world might have stopped turning, but Clipp doesn’t. Stardust sidewinds him into space like M. Bison.

Then chases him down to inter him in agony.

This is it. Peak stupidity provoking peak cruelty. This is Stardust’s The Creation of Adam, his Purple Rain. A plan this dumb requires a complete syllabus of crime does not pay. Everything after this is going to be weird conceptual stuff that has fans saying “His old stuff was better.”

And we’ll see those avant-garde kills when Stardust returns next month to fight Lepus the Super Fiend! This one is a rare 1900🌭 two parter!

Brendan quit Twitter, but his newsletter now lives unobtrusively in your inbox.

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