Our nerd readers had it so good in 2022. Which is weird because 1900HOTDOG is almost entirely staffed by ass-crushing muscle studs. Weird. Anyway, here are our best Nerding Day articles.
There aren’t a lot of people who would go over to their friend’s house, take a picture of his girlfriend’s jigsaw puzzles, make fun of them for 3000 words, and then publish that shit on their actual wedding day. But Seanbaby is that person. Congratulations to everyone who knows him.
Never trust a puppeteer. And okay, right now you’re either saying “duh,” or some kind of plastic clacking noise as your kidnapper’s strings manipulate your jaw. Either way, the puppets are coming for all of us and articles like this will at least give you a fighting chance.
It’s hard to believe Marvel comics ever survived an era when one of their professional writers could tell an editor, “What if, like, a morbidly obese woman took out Canada’s top superheroes? And I don’t mean she’s got amazing powers and unrelated obesity. I mean she just has obesity. Oh, obesity powers! That gives me a good idea: SQUISHY SUFFOCATION BOOBS. Anyway, I’ll have it on your desk by EOD.”
It’s the story of 28 episodes of cartoon vehicle combat, but in many ways, it’s the story of everyone. We all wear masks to hide our true selves and control our transforming motorcycle. Honk! Honk! It’s M.A.S.K. coming at you at number 4 on our year end Nerding Day countdown! And bow wow WOW, it’s a real hot dog sizzler! What’s happening, help, text NO to +1900468 for a chance to free me from this! Standard rates may be human toes.
We celebrated an entire Anime Week this year, and Sean did his best to dodge it. He thought writing about a terrible anime drawing book would technically count, plus keep him away from the impenetrable perversion of Japanese cartoons. Unfortunately, he stumbled onto a book grifting conspiracy far more perverse and unethical than anything he could have imagined. He fucking knew this was going to happen during Anime Week and still hasn’t forgiven Brockway for it. Happy Hot Dog Nerding Days everyone!
Who would win between Spider-Man and Urkel? Picture it. The proportional strength of a spider driving a fist through young Steve Urkel’s skull. Officer Carl Winslow saying, “I didn’t see a thing,” as he stuffs a bag of fentanyl into the dead body’s accordion. “Must have been a drug killing, Spider-Man. We’ll take it from here.” He fires a round into the boy. Another. “Did I do that? DID I DO THAT, YOU SON OF A BITCH!?” Spider-Man watches, almost sexually.
I’m trying to set the tone for what we’re doing today. This is a gory examination of a comedy crime scene. I pitted Spider-Man 2: The Joke Book (2004) against YUK IT UP WITH URKEL: Hilarious Urkel Jokes (1992) in a joke book-off to the death.
Using methodology any researcher would call reckless, I have developed a system to compare novelty joke books. I call it F.U.C.K. T.H.I.S., and it measures the eight things shared across the genre:
F.orlorn Desperation
U.nlubricated Nameplay
C.onfusion
K.indergarten Puns
T.ortured References
H.orse Corpse Beating
I.mpenetrable Esotericism
S.tupid Bullshit
There comes a point in every joke book when the author is just done. There is no whimsy left within them. If you’re ever in a prison camp and being ordered to write 101 Spider-Man and Urkel jokes, be afraid. Your captors are well-trained torturers. So let’s look at some of the agonizing joke attempts that sputtered from these writers as their brains gave out, starting with Spider-Man 2:
You can really feel the struggle here. “It says here Peter Parker is good at science… is there something there? No. Nothing. Unless? No. Wait! Physics…al? Is that something? ‘I would like to order a bag of physical things,’ said science-expert Peter Parker at the thing store. Oh, god, I’m so close. Isaac Fig Newtons maybe?”
This shit isn’t even spidery. If Peter Parker was failing class he could feel “spi-dirty,” or “like he’s been paralyzed by neurotoxin and getting digested alive.” You’re not going to land on funny, but you want to at least land on something that won’t make the listener say, “You’re a fucking monster for reading that.” If you told me Peter Parker felt “Physic-ally ill” about almost failing class, those would be the words on your unmourned grave.
This is hard to look at. The writer ran out of ideas, but then remembered there was a pretzel cart in Spider-Man 2. “This might be something,” they figured. But they were wrong. These are the final thoughts of someone being choked to death at an Auntie Anne’s for the crime of being too fucking stupid to live.
What really pisses me off is I can’t tell if the unrelated picture of a disgusted Alfred Molina helps or hurts these jokes. I’m being stupid. Helps, obviously.
There’s an iconic train sequence in Spider-Man 2, and the author celebrated it with an entire section of train jokes(?). They finished one before their mind gave out. This goddamn idiot asked what Spider-Man would be if he had fallen on the train tracks, the things he was already on in the scene they’re referencing, and the answer was “Hero-ick.” That’s closer to a warning sign than a punchline. If my grandfather told this joke I would cry, holding his hand so he knew someone was with him.
With its skeletal hands, Spider-Man 2: The Joke Book clawed at any tiny plot element. And since space riddles are apparently easier to write than Spider-Man riddles, Mary Jane’s date with an astronaut dominated almost a third of this book. It wasn’t exactly “out of this world.” Watching this author exhaust every pun for every side character is like watching a deep sea crab pick through the silt for shark diarrhea. Let’s move on to Urkel.
Spider-Man 2: The Joke Book is only a long series of riddles. It’s one bad idea executed terribly. But YUK IT UP WITH URKEL! is thirty bad ideas executed terribly. Here they decided there should be a chapter for Urkel magic tricks without considering what that meant. It meant they had to come up with a “dorky” version of magic. Of magic! Magic was invented by equatorial weavers as a way to dry local panties, and this author tried to make it nerdier. Their mind shattered against this task. “Maybe Urkel plans a rad rap party? A-and vandalizes it? Then polka please help. Please help me.”
There’s a chapter where Urkel runs an advice column, which is a fine framework for comedy. But instead of his zany perspective leading to outrageous advice, they just use the format to smear a limp Family Circus caption across fifty words. If you adapted a suicide note into a fart I would say, “You stole every element of that idea from YUK IT UP WITH URKEL.”
Urkel dedicates one section to mean shit you can say to people because he is not the hero. He is an abusive sex pest with no social skills or external sense of self. But Urkel’s tired list of canned insults would absolutely dominate Spider-Man 2 in a war of words. If you told the Spider-Man 2 joke book “you’re sharp as a basketball,” it would reply “one basketsmall step for man, one giant three from outside because Mary Jane dated an astronaut, but Peter wishes he was an astro-naught.”
So F. goes to Urkel.
Legally, a joke book is allowed to contain up to 25% of unlubricated nameplay, which is the main subject’s name squashed into a different word with no reason or goal. That means if you’re writing a Q*Bert joke book, someone can just eat a fucking Q*Burger every 4 gags. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m only saying that what Spider-Man 2 and Urkel did here was technically legal.
This idiot author got so excited about how many words start with “man” they gave their financially struggling character from Queens a Manhattan apartment with a fireplace. The worst thing you can be when you’re a joke this bad is also wrong. Does this look done to you, Thea Feldman, author of Spider-Man 2: The Joke Book? A kid might read this, you piece of shit. I mean, the depth of this failure… that Spider-Mantel line is the entire origin story for a serial killer who hunts joke book authors. And maybe he’s right.
Thea is not above adopting a Frankenstein syntax to force a triangle joke through a square hole. Me think not worth all effort. I’d almost respect her more if she wrote apologies instead of these sad punchlines.
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Look, I’m truly sorry. Like with the pretzel cart, I assumed I would eventually come up with something. You deserve better than half-finished Spider-Man knock knock jokes.
Um… Look, I’m truly sorry. Like with the pretzel ca–
No. I appreciate you trying, but this isn’t that.
Okay. Now the structure is fucked up. And you know what? My son hasn’t smiled since he learned Peter keeps a picture of Aunt May on the Spider-Mantel. Screw your apology.
Who are you to judge me?
The guy who wasted $3.99 on a book, that’s who!
The guy who wasted $3.99 on a book, that’s also a dipshit prick.
. . .
We’re now reading YUK IT UP WITH URKEL, and oh my god, look at this Urkelplay. The first one is so magnificently specific you couldn’t get it wrong. The second one requires you to imagine a hippo attack, but a long, gentle sitting kind, and it’s by a hippo who speaks the tongue of man well enough to know “uncle” is a cry for mercy, but if someone’s name is close enough to that, they’ll scream that instead. This joke book doesn’t give a fuck, a much more likeable kind of lazy. Look at this:
America made a coin in honor of Urkel and called it the nurkel! They pulled the uterus out of the middle school girl he stalks and called it an urkelectomy! This is breathtaking. I have to see more.
Dear God… Urkelonymous. And t-they just fucking added “Urkel” to the end of Thomas Jefferson. There are no rules here.
Spurkelers. There’s no context where these things sense. There are no people to whom you could ask these questions. What is happening? These aren’t… they’re not anything! This is an 80s comedy where a chimpanzee researcher’s floppy disk labeled “ALL HUMAN KNOWLEDGE” gets mixed up with one that says “1.44MB OF THE WORD URKEL.” It’d be called Party Ape University 3: Advanced Urkelnomics, and if I’m imagining entire screenplays based on three pages of your joke book you win. A giganturkel victurkely for Urkel.
The most common reaction to these kinds of joke books is “huh.” But sometimes, when things go really wrong, it becomes “huh?” Let’s look at some of the question mark ones.
What the shit? What happened? Oh. Oh, I see. You ATE a clock. And you’re not you; you’re Peter Parker, the superhero who never ate clocks before now. And I guess it was the world’s last one? It’s a lot to surprise your readers with, Thea. You led me into a weird maze and the prize for solving it was finding out the saddest truth. So let me return the favor, Thea: you have the sense of humor of a pediatric urologist being convicted of malpractice.
Your name is Pizza Parker? Motherfucker w– oh my god, no, Pete’s a Parker! Wow! It’s not a joke, but I do feel like I unlocked a gate in a God of War tutorial.
When it comes to pointless, baffling entries with no attempt at jokes, Urkel is a powerhouse. His book is filled with incoherent punchlines without setups, probably transcribed from Family Matters episodes, and here is a casual reference to him blowing up half of Chicago with a volcano in 1988. “Is killing an American city a joke?” thought the author. He couldn’t have expected an answer, but the unknowably dark series of events leading to this moment in his life whispered back, “YES.“
What the shit are you talking about Urkel? How did you do this? This is hyperbole without the hyperbole. You were so short no one could… determine your shape? See you? What? And this wasn’t a weak one at the tail end of a dozen “I’m so short” jokes. This was the only mention of Urkel’s height in the book. Which means someone had to come up with one short joke and it was, “I tell ya, I was so short that when I walked… it looked like I was not walking. What else? Oh, I saw your mama the other day and she was so fat she was bigger than everything else. Thank you, good night!”
In the middle of YUK IT UP WITH URKEL!, there was this picture of him in a dress with no context, caption, or explanation. So now I’m doing the same which means in the category of C.onfusion, it’s another unbelurkable performance from Urkel. He leads Spider-Man 2 by three points.
Ugh, puns. Fuck this.
Jesus Christ, the tragedy on display here. “I guess mortgage payments do make me antsy. Oh, aunt-sy! I see, because I have a nephew? I guess being an aunt sort of defines me. I could never have kids of my own, but back to what you brought up: bills, and how it’s very funny when two words sort of sound alike.”
I promise you would never forgive me if I posted more Spider-Man 2: The Joke Book puns, so let’s get right to Urkel.
This is an aggressive amount of puns. The writer of YUK IT UP WITH URKEL! seems like they’ve been waiting their whole life for this moment.
This is gruesome. They are taking violent, blind stabs at wordplay. But it’s not a struggle like in Spider-Man 2: The Joke Book. It’s like something inside them has finally been set free and they do not give a shit about us. This has the energy of a hallway fight scene. YUK IT UP WITH URKEL! is battling its way out of a prison guarded by puns. It’s brutal and effective and fuck any homonym that gets in its way.
My god… it’s glorious. Marvurkelous. What could stop this force of punning terror? Spider-Man 2 with its pretzel and Spider-Mantel bullshit? Ludicrurkelous.
Sometimes you sit down to write a joke book about Spider-Man or Urkel and realize you only know three things about those characters. And none of them are funny. What do you do? I’m excited to show you!
“Spider-Man is a good jumper, see, so this… t-this is a Spider-Man joke right? He loves spring because of jumping! When people think of Spider-Man they think, ‘webs, pretzels, springs.’ No? Okay, sorry. Lesson learned…
… I’ve learned nothing! Fuck you, he springs! And also, you know his self-doubt? Here’s a joke referencing that! He’s a baloney hero, no the sandwich, I’ve lost map, no English, which is the way funny?”
I can’t stand this. Watching Thea limp from one concept to another is like watching a one-legged cat crawl after a cyanide pill on a string.
You know when you’re watching a boring movie with someone and they say, “I’ll be right back, you don’t need to pause it,” but then they come back, ask what they missed, and it’s too dull and annoying to explain? This is the Spider-Man 2 joke version of that.
“You didn’t miss much. Spider-Man is strung out because he’s tense, and he makes webs, but webs have threads, and another word for thread is string. So then they added an out to it to make the phrase ‘string out’ and you’re all caught u– you know, we can watch something else if you’re not into it.”
By all that is holy, look at this. The author of YUK IT UP WITH URKEL! knew they had to squeeze in Urkel’s catchphrase, and this is what they came up with. They put it at the end of a Shakespeare quote without changing anything else. “– Romeo Urkel” they added to make it somehow more than perfect. This writer is nothing close to a genius, the opposite in fact, but they are an Urkel joke savant. I am in awe of this.
The score is 5 to 0, Urkel. Spider-Man 2 can’t win and there is no reason to go on, but a big part of these joke books is…
“I love Spider-Man jokes so much I can forgive forty pages of bug puns,” said no one ever. And yet here we are, looking at a book written for only that person.
Peter works for The Daily Bug-le. This unspeakable fishwife added a hyphen to the name of the actual newspaper Peter Parker worked at and called it a joke. This is a dumber version of nothing. It’s like asking what Professor X’s favorite letter is and the answer is “X, only a different font than you’re thinking of.” What kind of mind is this? Did she get this book published by winning some kind of Most Time Spent Dead After Drowning Sweepstakes?
If you ever watched Urkel’s show, you might remember a running gag where he pestered Laura Winslow for her love. This is the origin story of that– she came into his view and he literally charged her the moment she let her guard down. It was only his hilarious clumsiness that saved her from a groping, and we’re done with the joke. I hope the others aren’t this problematic…
… okay, I wouldn’t say this is exactly Urkel trying to hire a child prostitute, but I’d see your point if you put it that way.
This one feels like … a mistake? Does she mean “The Sound of Silence?” I know it’s not like me to split hairs during an Urkel joke, but I’m not really connecting with his sex pest material. Also, why is the photographer still taking pictures of this? Buddy, you have enough to make the arrest.
Let’s go on to another chapter. Oh good, the next section is about wacky gadgets Urkel has invented. Maybe we can move away from stalking the teen girl and get back to a zany Urkel messaround.
This is cute on the surface, but if Urkel is building contraptions to unfog his glasses, it implies he’s already built at least five devices to keep his genitals in check. Laura Winslow is in a lot of danger if any of these poorly built machines fail.
So let me get this straight. Your teachers, at least once a day, force you to write “I will not make goo-goo eyes at Laura Winslow during class” and you’ve automated it? So the school faculty is fine with sentencing for sex crime convictions being carried out by robots? This is lunacy, and not the good kind. Who thought it was a good idea to add a boner to Urkel?
Let’s try to reset things with some Urkel math problems. Surely these couldn’t all be about harassing Laura Winslow.
God damn it, Urkel! I take away all points. The score is now 0 to 0 in a contest between two serious assholes.
Imagine you were writing these books. For weeks your whole life has been pushing words around based on suspenders or objects Doctor Octopus has thrown at Spider-Man. You have lost track of what normal people think and feel. You start typing things like this…
These jokes are garbage, sure, but worse when you consider you have to set them up with, “Hey, do you remember a lot of specific elements from the 2004 film Spider-Man 2?” At this point it feels like Thea is trying to see if there’s any combination of words over which God will kill you. “The Tritium from the plot of 2004’s Spider-Man 2 fueled Doc Ock’s passion, you coward! What does it take for you to do something!?”
Thea spent so much time struggling through Tritium puns that she started associating Dr. Otto Octavius, the octopus-named man with eight arms, with electricity. To her, simply mentioning his name sets up the punchline of “something electricity!” As for Spider-Man, she has become fixated on how he’s always busy. So eventually her go-to joke becomes asking about Peter and answering with “time concepts!” It’s like running into Bill Cosby and saying, “Hey, you were in Ghost Dad. Guys, it’s the star of Ghost Dad! So what have you been up to since then? What’s next for Ghost Dad?”
These are technically jokes the same way it’s technically not a federal crime to marry a donkey. I wasn’t expecting approachable, broad comedy in a Spider-Man 2 joke book, but outside of the people who saw the movie fifteen minutes ago, who are these donkey-marrying jokes meant for?
Let’s check back in with Urkel.
Spider-Man 2: The Joke Book would mean almost nothing to someone unfamiliar with the movie, but YUK IT UP WITH URKEL! goes even further. It rejects the very concept of a non-Urkel context. The idea of something not being Urkel is the joke. This was not a book designed to be taken out in the world to make others laugh. This is a black hole of Urkel, and everything entering its event horizon is torn apart by the cosmic Answer: What does this have to do with Urkel?
Sometimes these bad jokes can make you groan or wince, and that’s fine. But what is never acceptable is when the perfect reaction to a punchline is, “Well, yeah. You fucking idiot.” Let me show you.
Well, yeah. You fucking idiot.
I mean, what else would it be? His name is Ock and there’s a month that literally starts with that sound.
It felt like a trick. Like the answer had to be Ape-ril because he tested his crushing strength on apes or something. I’m trying to picture the face of a child who hears “Ock-tober.” Or worse, hears they are right when they answer, “It couldn’t b– it’s not October is it? No. No, they wouldn’t do that.” If this was YUK IT UP WITH URKEL! the answer would be Urkeltember next to a picture of him watching Laura Winslow sleep. Speaking of, let’s see some Urkel.
Urkel will take the dumbest goddamn idea and torture it to death over the course of 100 words, and I think I love it. This is a magic trick where the trick is that it isn’t a magic trick, the premise doesn’t work, and there’s no punchline. A person who has seen a joke before couldn’t write this. This is raw misunderstanding and bewilderment, and it’s beautiful. It’s like a dog who doesn’t know enough about bowling to know how to miss. As long as Urkel can escape this section with no sex crimes, he’s the clear winner.
Malibu Comics was a 1990s imprint that specialized in ripping off better comic books without ever reading them. For example, their Wolverine knockoff was called The Ferret and they were only joking if you asked them “wait, are you joking?” A typical Malibu title made it to three issues before ending in a profuse apology and a hand-drawn coupon you could exchange for a better try next time.
Today we’re talking about the second iteration of Firearm, which started off as counterfeit Punisher and then became something… more? Less? Hornier, that’s the word I’m looking for. Firearm made it to the end of its epic 5-issue run though, so everyone at the Malibu offices got a personal pan pizza. Don’t worry: We were still owed and did receive several apologies.
The core story of Firearm is wildly unimportant: It’s a brainwashing deal where a superspy for one agency is, unbeknownst to himself, actually just a cover working for a rival agency. It’s the plot of the third episode of the tenth La Femme Nikita reboot on TBS. Alias would spice this up with something about Donatello’s Grail. You would change the channel on this unless Nic Cage showed up in an unusual wig. We’re not concerned with the plot, we’re concerned with the character dynamics.
It’s been said that you really only need one personality trait to make a truly great character – that was said by Malibu writers right before apologizing for getting canceled again. Let’s meet our protagonist, Peter Lopez – can you spot all one aspects of his character?
Our hero is a glum sadsack with a gorgeous and supportive wife, trapped in the rippling body of an adonis, his every inch covered in high tech weaponry. Pity him. “If I don’t contact my friends first, we’d never talk again,” he mutters, cyberblasting a city block with his atomic eye. I don’t know who greenlit What If Eeyore was the Punisher? but that’s one of those ideas like anal sex or renting a jetski that’s exactly as much fun as it sounds.
Here’s Peter’s first day on the job:
He thinks he probably shouldn’t stand in front of an obviously trapped door, doesn’t believe in himself about it, and eats lasers for his lack of self confidence. The very first thing he says to the man trying to kill him is “be careful of my soft parts I do NOT have superpowers,” then gives up on a fistfight midway through to instead mope about losing. How does he turn it around? Well, Firearm ran in the early 1990s, back before we learned the hard way it wasn’t awesome when you pushed a useless sadsack so far they snapped.
Peter accidentally burns a man with superpowers he never knew he had; his immediate impulse is to apologize. Then he decides no, you know what? For the first time since he held the door open too early and that old woman had to jog the last few steps into the Red Robin – he’s NOT sorry. With all the righteous fury of a thousand Mormons, he declares he’s not putting up with this CRUD any longer, puts a quarter in the Almost Swear Jar, then goes ballistic.
Brigham Youngblood’s berserker rage doesn’t last long. Here he is, pitying himself again for not-
For holy shit, for not taking a Junior High school girl’s virginity?? I don’t care if he meant “when I was also in Junior High” – an implication he has done nothing to earn – this is not a normal deathbed regret for a grown man with a wife and child.
Anyway, he finds time to pity himself once more before exploding.
That should be the end. And in a typical Malibu title, it would be. There’d be a black textbox pre-emptively blaming the audience for not liking the first issue and then an apology for the rude textbox on the next page. This is a self-contained story so far: Man sucks, dies. It should be the PSA they show superpowered children teaching them the first step to heroism is believing in yourself. But no, he lived through the blast.
Don’t worry, nobody hates that more than Peter.
Let’s cut straight to his wife calling him a sissy:
Peter wakes in the middle of the night, unsure of who he is but instantly sure his wife doesn’t like to be naked near him. The explosion reawakened his real identity, James Hitch, a psychotic badass buried underneath 210 pounds of insecurity muscle.
Hitch comes complete with a brand new Hitachi to satisfy his brand new wife, and a brand new name: Firearm. Hitch is everything Peter is not, here he is proving that:
He walks away from an explosion, threatening passing coyotes who better not even think about learning English. Hitch infiltrates Peter’s agency, kills a dozen men, and steals some kind of prototype. Now Peter and Hitch have to work together just to survive! I can’t even imagine a way to make you care about that- wait, Nic Cage in an unusual wig.
We’re only talking about Firearm because they’re doing Double Impact! But in one body! They’re doing long lost twins meet and are total opposites but find they have to work together, only they share the same dick. They share the same dick! THEY SHARE THE SAME-
You’re just not reading a Malibu comic unless the first issue ends with an admission they didn’t tell the story very well, and then some light begging for another chance. It’s a bold tactic they use for everything from storytelling to third date sex to ad copy.
Malibu kindly includes a “back-up story” in case the first story doesn’t work out, and I guess it doesn’t, because they felt the need to include a back-up story: Alec Swan is a hardass private detective giving LA a Yelp review while mangling henchmen (unrelated).
Kids! We know we let you down with the confusing Firearm,Issue #1, but… but do you want to know more about Alec Swan’s feelings on frozen yogurt? Come back in two weeks!
Disappointed? Don’t be!
The next issue sees him coming around on frozen yogurt!
Haha I thought I was kidding!
It turns out this killing spree was all to get some compromising photos of a woman’s husband for a divorce. You know, the basis of every private detective’s career – which they usually accomplish with a camera, killing zero people, earning possibly $200 if there’s embarrassing roleplay. The only thing this whole back-up story accomplishes across five issues is Alec Swan coming around on fro-yo and becoming medium-okay with the Mexicans in his neighborhood.
Alec Swan is maybe also Firearm? The first version of Firearm, who was a non-superpowered Punisher knock-off that killed superheroes. So I guess he quit killing superheroes to become a private eye and lent his identity to a different murderer, who himself lent his body to a coward. Confused? Don’t be! Just go ahead and don’t be.
The spy agency discovers Peter/Hitch’s treachery thanks to the one thing you can never cover up: your high school yearbook. I don’t know why I’d be kidding about that but it feels like you think I might be-
They convened a meeting of the top brass to assess the authenticity of every “have a great summer” in Jefferson High’s Thanks for the Memories, 1982. This is the thrilling storytelling you can only get from two issues and a sorry of Malibu Comics!
Wait, what was up with Peter having fire arms (fuck you) when Hitch doesn’t? Malibu is glad you asked:
Curious? Don’t be!
This is actually a great try for Malibu, and I would’ve redeemed one of my apology coupons from Exiles for this – but we haven’t even gotten to the core of Firearm. Which is the intense homoerotic dynamic between Peter and Hitch…
While living in the same body. They share the same dick! And they both want it! They share the same dick! THEY SHARE THE SAME-
I’m getting carried away.
The implied metaphor, if I was being so generous as to credit a Malibu comic with having a metaphor, is that Peter is having a gay awakening. But out of attraction for himself? And I guess he’s also being dominated by another man, so he’s a psychic sub within his own body?
Aroused? Don’t be!
Because we’re not done yet, this love story goes triangular when both men fall in love with Peter’s wife, and then folds itself through the 4th dimension when she in turn falls for both men-
Hitch throws Marilu a fuck at first just to keep her on his side, figuring if he makes her cum he can use her later. What he doesn’t know is that up until now Marilu thought orgasm was the state above California. She is instantly hungry for more Hitch cock, even as she’s also instantly sure this is a psychic imposter puppeteering her real husband – the oral gave it away, you fool!
So what’s Marilu’s next move? To investigate the true nature of this imposter? To call a theoretical mathematician to figure out which consents have been violated? To immediately do it again? To immediately do it again.
Peter watches, trapped inside his own eyeballs as Hitch satisfies his wife and Peter immediately understands he’s bullshit – his thoughts are in green above, Hitch’s reply in orange.
Peter: “Release me! Let me take over!”
Hitch: “Haha fuck that, Peter, you’re like my father. Just an absence where a man should be.”
Peter: “Oh shit you’re right! I’m sorry, I’ll go hang out in the parts of our brain that we never use, with long division and how to perform oral sex on a wife. Hey, what’s up, long division! Where’s oral s– oh.”
Of course we’re not done learning sexual trigonometry: Hitch’s former lover Claire returns, turning this inverted romantic tesseract into a quantum love polychoron.
So Hitch has fallen in love with Marilu, who is married to Peter, the other man in his body. Peter is in love with Hitch, the man who owns their body and uses it in ways Peter has only read about in Quantum Leap slash fiction. Marliu loves Peter, but wants to live atop Hitch’s dong now that he’s shown her the power of medium thrusting. Claire is in love with Hitch, and possibly vice versa, but she wants Marilu dead-
This is it, Malibu! This is the prime storytelling you’ve been missing. This moment is critical drama: does Hitch return to his old life, or does he give up control of the body to save Marilu, even though nobody, including the other owner of this body, wants that?
Intrigued? Don’t be!
It’s a spinning top ending. We cut to the Lopez family much later: Peter seems to speak in his own voice, but calls Marilu by her full name which, much like standing up to the mailman and having sex on a weeknight, is something Peter never does. Marilu notices this, but does not call it out – perhaps happy that one of the best murderers in the world psychically destroyed her husband to pilot around his corpse so long as he brings her to climax every Wednesday after Jeopardy.
Anyway, they get hot dogs!
Maybe this made more sense if you read the first Firearm, which… had a prequel comic book that came packaged with a movie that was a prequel to the prequel comic?
So this is the movie that came before the comic before the first comic and explains the back-up story in the second comic, you know, the one about frozen yogurt!
Confused? Don’t be! Stop being that!
I’ll explain everything next time on Firearm, Part 2: Firearm 1 Part 0 the Movie! I’m sorry, I fucked up that title. I’ll get you a free coupon for my next try.
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This article is brought to you by our fine sponsors and Hot Dog Supremes: Timmy Leahy and Matt Reiley, trapped in one body THEY SHARE THE SAME-
Imagine you wanted to build a Lord Of The Rings resort, but you don’t want to pay Lord Of The Rings licensing money. What do you think the best solution to this problem would be? Build another kind of resort? Raise money? Or, write a terrible Lord Of The Rings fanfiction with the serial numbers filed off and base the resort on your very own IP. Since option three is both stupid and still illegal, you’ve probably guessed I’m going to talk about that one.
Nestled deep in the enchanted hills of Knoxville, Tennessee sits Ancient Lore Village. A fairytale themed resort based on the book Bokee’s Trek: Outcasts Of Inner Earth, a book with two Amazon reviews and a grand total rating oftwo and a half stars.
You might be thinking; sure, this sounds like something someone would try to pull in the 1970s when no one would find out about their little illegal theme park until it had been running for thirty years and the original Bokee character actor was long dead of syphilis. Part of what makes this resort so unique is someone had the audacity to try it in the year of our lord 2021. In 2021 they built a resort around a book with one positive review that said they didn’t like the book, but the resort made them feel like a real Hobbit. Hobbits don’t exist in Bokee’s Trek.
I agree the book does have a good premise. It’s about a magical guy traveling around a world of fairytale creatures on a noble quest. It’s the premise of Lord Of The Rings. Katy should try reading that because Bokee has nothing on Frodo. For one thing, Bokee looks terrifying.
Most of the creatures in the book are non-copyrightable fairytale staples like leprechauns, gremlins, yetis, etc. It does have some LOTR crossover species, including Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs… you know, the free ones. If you add big hairy feet to those leprechauns and make them high as hell, the Tolkein estate is coming for you. There’s exactly one species created for the series. They’re called Willows, and they’re just elves with weirdly long earlobes and arms. Stay tuned for my next great character: Tall Mickey Mouse.
I barely have words for how bad the writing in this book is, and it’s my whole job to have words for bad things. It reads like a hotel brochure, occasionally interrupted by yetis that the reader probably doesn’t care about except to hear about the exact dimensions of their house. As we all know, the most entertaining part of any fantasy story is the painfully detailed mathematical statistics.
So, a Willow converts to precisely two yards, or “this is pointlessly useless” in English.
That’s not very much in WoM dimensions, but very spacious in Willows. Maybe? The point is, they use our exact same rulers, but call it a dumb name every six feet. Which are often used as a unit of measurement anyway by the author instead of Willows, so what are we doing here, fucking Bokee?
This man is just pulling from the building instructions for the resort as he half pays attention to his Hobbit rip-off book. I’m surprised he didn’t throw in that the home decor was from a mystical Homegoods by TJ Maxx. The endless buffet in the Gremlins Village was an unbelievable $14.99 gremlin dollars on the weekends.
The moral of Bokee’s Trek is supposed to be about all races coming together peacefully. Something we need more eighty-year-old white men to write about, in my opinion. According to the Ancient Lore Village website, the author was inspired to write Bokee’s Trek after joining his son on the campaign trail and finding, “There was so much hatred, intolerance, and misunderstanding of others.” His son was a Republican candidate for governor who spent 19 million dollars on his own campaign and lost because he ran so many negative ads against his opponents that it just convinced everyone he was dick. Tennessee Republicans thought this guy was too cruel to be the governor. That’s like being told to calm down by Kanye West.
I hate to analyze this truly terrible book from a literary perspective because it doesn’t deserve it, but the moral of the story is not that all races should just get along and love each other. Bokee lives in a world where all the different creatures are separated by a magical mist they can travel through, but their God OOoomah has told them not to. Bokee defies God, and travels through the mist to meet the other creatures, but they are mostly all scary, weird, and terrible to him.
The other fairytale creatures know they aren’t supposed to communicate with each other, so they treat Bokee as a curiosity. They creep him out and play terrible tricks on him. The Leprechauns turn him into a foot, and the Gremlins hang him upside down from the ceiling and laugh at him. These creatures can’t help it. It’s in their nature. The moral I’m getting from the story is: look, we all know minorities are scary, but we gotta rise above and try to get along with these creeps, I guess?
Leprechaun nationalists, please stop disfiguring and torturing me and let me go home. Thanks!
Although it may be true there wasn’t enough thought put into this book to have any real moral at all. This man named an elf Brigadoon. He named an elf after a famous play that’s been adapted to both film and television multiple times? He gave the fairies Asian features and then named one of them Ube, a purple yam used in Filipino cooking. He named a yeti Blowdon and didn’t write LOL after it.
Lots of the creatures have animals in their village, and the animals are always dogs with wings. He had one idea for a mythical animal, and he stole it from pegasuses, and he couldn’t even steal a second thing for another mythical creature? Here I’ll do it in three seconds: fire breathing dog, very tall dog named Clifford, dog that is smart enough to use a toilet. Simple, elegant, cool ideas that took me thirty seconds. Here’s a description of the Dwarves’ dog and a picture of the Fairies’ dog so you know I’m not exaggerating.
“Why am I typing all this? It’s just a goddamn bulldog, reader.” – Bokee’s Trek
The Gremlins also have a dog that’s described as being so beautiful because the gremlins are so ugly, and OOoomah wanted them to have something beautiful to look at. Then the writer threw in a photograph of what is clearly his own dog. So, it’s just a regular pretty dog. The mystical creatures created for this book include an elf with long ears, a dog with wings, another dog with wings, and a regular dog.
I guess if you’re writing a book designed to rip off Lord Of The Rings and teach people to be nicer to your angry son, you might as well throw in a humble brag about your hot dog while you’re at it. This Hank Hill ass author grows more Hank Hill by the second as he rounds out his story.
Bokee’s Trek ends with him returning home and getting exiled from his village into a fiery unknown. However, on the path to the fiery unknown, they run into all of the families Bokee met on his journey who were also exiled for talking to Bokee, and they all end up in a new valley where a directive from their God OOoomah tells them to start a new world together. Then this fellowship, you might call it, of generic fairytale creatures and one long-armed freak make a ring of homes near a waterfall in Tennessee, the famous land of equality. That way, people can “see that different people can live in harmony together and possibly change their paths to the acceptance of all as one race.”
Just think, if people had been nicer to Randy Boyd on the campaign trail we might not have this wonderful book, and the resort that came from it. It just goes to show you that sometimes people really do deserve to be bullied, and good things can come from bullying them.
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