Category: PUNCHING DAY

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PUNCHING DAY

Eliminator

Malibu Comics was a slipshod comic imprint from the ‘90s held together by duct tape and a stubborn unwillingness to recognize failure. Their greatest lasting impact on society was teaching Child Brockway to hate. Malibu’s entire business model was based on tricking confused grandmothers into buying the wrong comic book for their sick grandchild. It was a whole publishing line built on the cynical exploitation of dementia, and the only reason its president, Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, is not in jail today is because he has never missed a single payment of unwanted babies to Balphas, the demon who presides over Backwards Wishes.

Eliminator ran for four issues, which is what we call a ‘Malibu success.’ He was a mash-up of Iron Fist and Deathlok, which you might recognize as “the dude from the shitty Netflix show” and “I don’t.” Malibu was so low-confidence they couldn’t even steal the good characters. Buying a Malibu title was like buying storebrand ramen – don’t lie to yourself that you’re saving pennies here; you’re doing this because you hate yourself somewhere between Face Tattoo and No Note Suicide.

Eliminator’s powers were “Robot Arm” and “Maybe Karate.” His costume was a leotard, a blouse, and his secretary’s makeup but you’ll have to wait six more images for that joke to pay off. Eliminator was a mercenary, just like every generic comic book character in the ‘90s, but he was an especially shitty one who only went after Zumba instructors that stole Quickbooks passwords.

Eliminator had a motorcycle that changed into whatever was convenient at the time, so long as he techno-fingerblasted it a little first.

It was not the only finger-blasting going on in the transmogrocycle. 

Eliminator was a mash-up of things the ‘90s were all about, but didn’t age well: transformers, mercenaries, cyborgs, white guys doing karate, and banging your assistant. 

Either Eliminator sarcastically called her Laquita, which would make him very racist, or the author named her Laquita, which would make him very racist, or Laquita was a common and entirely accepted name in ‘90s black culture, which would make me very racist. Let’s check: A quick google first asks me if I meant La Quinta:

The ‘baby names’ robot tried to ask me if I was fucking with it, but was not programmed with the proper words to accuse:

And Urban Dictionary, as always, makes me regret looking at Urban Dictionary:

So let’s drop this whole debate and just agree on one thing: It is never acceptable to call a woman “queet.”

The whole series, all four of it, is chock full of racial stereotypes. There are two latino characters in this book: one of them is in a gang and one of them used to be in a gang. They are brothers. 

Here’s one of them stumbling across a beached shark and thinking 1. “My gang would love this shark,” and 2. “We could sell sharks, that could be our gang thing.”

The central villain for the entire series was:

Malibu combed through the great bible of comic book names and couldn’t believe their crap luck: Cyborg was taken, Metalman was taken, ManBot was taken – wait for real, fucking manbot was taken??? They flipped the page in frustration and noticed one conspicuous absence: Mannequin. “Oh well” is the official Malibu slogan. It’s on their business cards. All four of them.

Thus ends the compelling origin story of Mannequin, the half-man half-robot named for an inanimate bust whose only purpose is to wear clothes. He does not wear clothes. 

So yes, there’s a lot wrong with Eliminator, but nothing touches the dialogue:

Every quip was pulled from a rejected Friends spec script, “The One Where Chandler Is Maimed in a Sweater Accident and Has to Be Rebuilt With Robot Parts.”

This is what passes for wit in a Malibu title:

You traveled so far for something so lackluster and it didn’t even land. You’re like a plane crash in Auckland. That’s one of our latino characters spending yet another of his action scenes running from and fighting the police, who are only in this comic to arrest the other latino character but can’t tell the two apart. So at least Malibu did their research on real police procedure. Here’s how Former Gang Member deals with the intense fear that his brother, Gang Member, might already be dead:

I’m telling you, that’s a Chandler line. Not a good one, but that is definitely pulled from somebody’s đŸ’–đŸ”F●R●I●E●N●D●S F●O●R●E●V●E●RđŸ”đŸ’– GeoCities fansite. Try it, read every joke in Chandler’s voice and then pretend Matthew Perry frowns and adds “we can beat that one, surely?”

“Genie’s Weenie” is not a canonical reference to something in this comic. That is a standalone line. That is an actual thing that Eliminator yelled while jumpkicking a cruise ship samba coach. It’s not a callback you don’t get, it’s just the product of a tired and overworked brain that probably shouldn’t have been doing this in the first place, much less have been doing it nonstop for eighteen hours. That brain wanted to go back and give this a second pass, but it already wrote ten issues that day and it still needed to help brainstorm 700 new titles for Malibu before it could earn a bathroom break. “A…a magic mom?” That brain oozed. “How about like a little kid who turns into a superhero oh fuck that’s Shazam, fuck I am getting so fired and I need this Work Experience credit if I’m ever gonna graduate from DeVry’s Program for the Comical Book Arts.”

But they did publish that brain’s exhaustion-farting idea sludge, and that brain did get its credits, and it did graduate with Extra Stickers from DeVry. And that brain? Why, that brain was a little someone named Roland Mann.


You haven’t heard of him. This was the best thing he ever did.

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PUNCHING DAY

Let’s Read: The Bible, Self-Defense, & Martial Arts

Should a Christian learn martial arts? It’s the question asked by nobody, victims of Methodist spin kicks, and the cover of The Bible, Self-Defense, & Martial arts by David Alexander (2019). Hold on– 2019? No one checked with God if Karate was okay until last year?

The ABOUT THE AUTHOR says “David Alexander is an author of numerous publications focusing on His passions in life. He is a non-denominational Christian and expert in Shukokai Karate.” It’s weird how David capitalizes His pronouns just like His martial arts ethical consultant, God, but it’s probably an honest mistake and not a delusion of grandeur brought on by the high of finishing a 29 page book. If you’re wondering, the other authorings he publicated so numerously were two pamphlets about Chrstianity and a printed pdf file of high block instructions. So “His passions in life” seem to be only those two things, and judging by his “publications,” Jesus would think this guy sucks and could just kick His ass.

The back of the book warns the reader, and it’s not lying, that it only contains Bible quotes. Aside from a two page introduction and a dedication to his mum and dad for driving him to Karate class, it is 40ish lines he found by word searching the Bible for violence. If some apostle ever mentioned blood, it’s in here confusingly, pointlessly, and without annotation. I learned more about God’s stance on martial arts when I held my fists to the sky and demanded to know why He gave me such terrible power. And His only answer was 15 more ninjas, Amen.

But still, we’re here. We’re reading this 29 page book put together by God’s laziest fan and Karate’s most reluctant orange belt. Let’s take a look at which verses he thought explained punching’s place in God’s plan.

This is a wonderful sentiment and the kind of situation that could call for martial arts. I doubt Jesus would say, “You used WHAT to rescue the weak and needy!?” when you came back covered in pulverized wicked. Still, it illustrates how unclear scripture can be. Jesus might have meant rescue them with some kind of stealth balloon mission or political pressure. To make matters more confusing, “The Hand of the Wicked” is the technique I use to pull out a handful of my enemy’s liver. If that’s what you’re up against, you’re fucked, Christian Karate pamphlet owner. The ethics of entering your cat stance will never come up while your eternal soul is floating above your pussy remains. “At least you didn’t try,” the voice of Saint Peter will say. “Anyway, welcome to Heaven, where all Karate moves are high blocks.”

These are the two parts of the Bible you were probably expecting in a book claiming to be about the morality of violence– the time Jesus got slapped and the time God said “eye for an eye.” The fact they were jammed right next to each other without context is outrageously unhelpful. It’s not crazy to interpret this as both “enemies deserve only sass” and also “kill that fucker and keep his teeth and feet.” The only clear message here is Christians can do whatever the hell they want because it’s easy to figure out how God said it was okay later.

You shall not murder? Tell that to my left front kick, Moses. Too late! Guess I’ll tell it to your widow whose name I’ll Google n– THARBIS!? You married a woman named Tharbis? Moses, how are you giving anyone advice when you’re having desert sex with something that sounds like a scoop made for boiled cabbage. Tharbis is the response I’d expect if I pointed to myself and told a rock monster, “Human.” How did you even romance a Tharbis? You can’t order flowers for her. The card would read, “All my love, OUR STORE POLICY FORBIDS THE PRINTING OF FOUL OR DEMEANING WORDS.” Tharbis is like the fart sound in a Greek comic strip. “You shall not murder?” More like, “You shall fuck thyself, Tharbis lover.”

It’s hard to picture anyone failing at their job harder than the guy collecting Bible quotes about Karate and including this one about loving everyone. If you asked a priest if it was okay to practice martial arts and he said this shit, you’d punch him for not listening. This is like checking with your doctor if you can eat red meat and him saying, “Tharbis used to love frisbee golf, Aneurysm Frankenstein.”

David doesn’t always let weird Bible verses fester unexplained. In a few cases he’ll come in like this and offer his interpretation. And I think I’m being fair when I say what he took from the Book of Chronicles was this: God doesn’t condemn you for killing, but He would prefer it if someone else built that church. That, a minor restriction on religious structure building codes, is the closest thing to consequences this goddamn idiot found for karate murder after a lifetime of theology and a digital Bible with 2019 search technology. So if you’ve spent this entire article with a tiger claw strike hovering above your enemy’s heart and waiting for the go ahead, go ahead. Even by the least generous interpretation, God baaaaaarely gives a shit.

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PUNCHING DAY

The Comic Strip

I’ve never met anyone else in real life that remembers The Comic Strip and this anomaly haunts me. The show’s existence is easily confirmed on the internet, but the second you bring it up face-to-face, it’s like you made a Pants Chapley reference. Did it leave no lasting impression on anyone but me? Was I the only one who watched it and survived to adulthood? Were there coded flashes in the animation that provoked a kind of late-onset Crib Death? Is this a Candle Cove scenario? Am I revealing a complicated and whimsical dementia, or was there a period in the late ‘80s where Child Brockway and a handful of others picked up transmissions from a parallel, inferior universe? One similar to ours in a superficial way, but somehow worse on a fundamental level — every detail carefully and minorly incorrect, like some kind of cartoon Toronto? 

Like I said, a quick Google will explain that The Comic Strip was a half-hour long cartoon variety show which consisted of rotating 10 minute segments — but can you guys even see that image? Are these search results just for me? I called my wife into the office and she watched me type every single letter in “TigerSharks” and then asked me what the ThunderCats were. We’re now getting divorced for several reasons, but are my perceptions tainted here? Am I trapped in the prison of my own mind like some kind of bullshit cartoon Shutter Island? There’s only one way to tell, and that’s to write an entire column about Street Frogs, then come back and check the comments to see if they’re all complaining about how we write about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles too often.

Every one of The Comic Strip’s “properties” were just one letter to the left of an existing show. They were the “is Sierra Mist okay?” of Saturday morning cartoons. And the reason this falls on Punching Day is because I want most to talk about Karate Kat. The ‘80s loved three things in equal measure: talking cartoon cats, karate, and pure cocaine. They could only make a cartoon openly about two of those things, and had to leave the third to implication.

It was a pretty strong implication. 

Karate Kat dressed like every guy you knew who was definitely holding cocaine, but he acted like every guy you knew who was definitely holding cocaine fifteen minutes ago:

“Karate Kat” is not just a descriptor of his ability and species, it’s also his first and last name. It’s like if I changed my name to Painthuff Man — that is a fully accurate encapsulation of all that I am, but it does take some of the mystique out of my spinning transformation sequence. 

Karate Kat dressed like Joe Piscopo and sounded like Joe Piscopo doing a Sylvester Stallone impression right before you asked “is that supposed to be Dolph Lundgren?” The show’s central villains were Big Papa and his two henchmen, Boom Boom and Sumo Sai. 

Did you already guess, based off of that screencap, that Sumo Sai was going to be a bit of a problem? Guess again, motherfucker — he is a huge problem. 

Sumo’s voice actor sounds like somebody told him there’s an Oscar for cartoonish racism and Clint Eastwood got disqualified that year. He turns every syllable into eight syllables just so you’ll have more time to process how much he hates the Japanese. Sumo was both a chauffeur and a sumo wrestler, and if the sushi craze had hit a few years earlier, you can bet he would’ve been rubbing raw fish on his genitals while hard-pronouncing every ‘L’ in the word “WARRIOR.” 

But somehow I remembered Karate Kat fondly. Perhaps the show was so moving to Child Brockway because I was absolutely certain that one could major in Karate. Karate in the ‘80s had the same publicist as Algebra in the ‘90s — “one day you’ll need this. Your life will depend on it. No follow-up questions.” The ‘80s were so insistent on the flexible importance of karate in your daily life that I didn’t even question it, but I have literally never had a non-drunk reason for a spinning jumpkick, and that means 30% of my education was a lie. It didn’t matter that the only joke in Karate Kat was that Karate Kat was bad at Karate, I believed in him — I sat in front of the TV every morning taking careful notes: “Sometimes be bad at Karate?” I scribbled. “Distraction or humility? Combo into MONTAGE???”

Next up was TigerSharks, which was kind of a SilverHawks ripoff which was actually a pretty impressive trick to pull since SilverHawks was a ThunderCats ripoff. 

Child Brockway did not care: if you had a ragtag team of anyone that transformed into anything, I was there for it. TigerSharks seemed custom-designed to test the limits of that claim. 

“You like transformations?” TigerSharks sneered. “How about unlikable dipshits turning into, I don’t know, fish? Yeah? You into that? How about not even cool fish? How about one girl transforms into an Angelfish – the ‘I guess that’s okay’ main attraction of every dentist office aquarium? Still rad? How about one fat old man transforms into a walrus so shitty he still has to use a cane underwater? You’ll buy that toy, you little fuck. You wretched little squirming fuck.”

I mean, the TigerSharks lived on a planet called Water-O and transformed using a device called the Fish Tank, so this premise was almost certainly conceived of by an embarrassed cartoonist caught jerking it to his own hand-drawn fish pornography. He panicked out a hasty explanation for this: 

And it fooled nobody at first, so he had to keep pressing the issue, hoping that actually getting the cartoon made would save his marriage. And it probably didn’t work on his wife, but it sure worked on me: I watched some aquaphiliac’s jerk material repurposed into spite merchandise by child-hating executives and I was happy to do it. I would’ve bought the TigerSharks cereal, if they had succeeded enough to have a cereal, which they didn’t. And that should tell you something since even Rainbow Brite got a cereal.

Then there was Mini Monsters, which existed so you had time to take a shit between better cartoons. 

Better cartoons like Street Frogs! 

Street Frogs was clearly a very loose attempt to capitalize on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, from a time when confused TV executives could only take wild stabs in the dark, trying to pin down which word the kids were so nuts about.

“Is it the ‘teenage’ part? Let’s make everything from 1987 to 1995 about teenagers, just in case. Mutants? Maybe. Let’s come out as ‘pro-mutation’ for the next six years. Okay, it’s definitely ‘ninja’ — greenlight everything you can about ninjas. What is Victor Wong doing? Because now he’s teaching three white children about ninjitsu and I don’t give a fuck that he’s Chinese, Gary! If I wanted an Oriental Correction I’d pay ten dollars extra at the massage parlor. What about turtles? Maybe the kids are into terrarium animals? It’s a longshot, but there’s an extra ten grand in the budget so here comes Street Frogs.” 

Do you want to know what Street Frogs was about? There’s only one line in the theme song, and it explains everything:

“Who can do hip hop better than a frog can? Street Frogs!”

That is artfully bare storytelling. I am a sucker for expository theme songs — if I had my way Game of Thrones would have started with a twenty minute guitar jam breakdown of the whole plot that rhymed “flayed man” with “splayed Bran,” and Street Frogs is the pinnacle of this artform. That is indeed all the show was about: hip hop frogs just having a good time — no adventures, no fights, no story, just feel-good slices of life from a universe where minorities were amphibians but nothing else changed. It sounds like the first draft of a vile David Icke rant, but the show was utterly charming. 

And man, just
 fuck you, Child Brockway. You went hard for Karate Kat when you could’ve been all about this? If I had replaced every cell in my brain dedicated to karate with learning how to execute this Dr. Slick intro instead, I would have died fifteen years ago from a lethal combination of pussy overdose and funk poisoning. 

That is, of course, if the show even existed in this sad timeline we dwell in. Because honestly? I just wrote 1400 words about The Comic Strip, and an animated lineup consisting of Karate Kat, TigerSharks, Mini-Monsters and Street Frogs still sounds like an entertainment lawyer forced me to change all my references to real ‘80s cartoons.

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PUNCHING DAY

PoxCo Regional Wrestling Magazine

Mysteries are all around us. What made that noise? How did this wrestling magazine from the wrong dimension get here? Others? Thank you for joining us for another Punching Day at 1-900-Hotdog.

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This article was brought to you by our fine patron and Hot Dog Supreme, DatFMCobalion: Who once saved two internet comedians from a sexy jet-ski accident and all he got was this lousy credit.

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PUNCHING DAY

Night Man 🌭

Night Man is a superhero TV series that debuted in 1997: the year the ‘90s finally went too far, and we all realized they had to be put down. The show is about Johnny Domino, which is the most ‘90s name I can possibly imagine, and he is a professional saxophone player, which is the most ‘90s profession I can possibly imagine. It’s like the producers of Night Man knew that the ‘90s were winding down so they had to pack every trope they’d been too embarrassed to use into one show, because they just felt that this was the last year you could unironically wear Hypercolor and it was sort of like the moment you realize an old dog is on the decline.

If Night Man feels like a cheap store-brand ripoff of Batman that’s because this is a Malibu title, and Malibu is the Malt-O-Meal of comic imprints. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Eat shit, Malibu. I know the company is defunct, I know that society and good taste and justice have won out, but this is like hunting Nazis in 1960s Argentina. You’re not allowed to just commit atrocities and retire. This is Hunters shit, and it’s not over until I knock on your door with a copy of Mantra and a pistol.

Anyway here’s our protagonist:

There is no need for time capsules: That image explains everything about the ‘90s in the most brutally honest way possible. Back then we liked generic, hairless men stripping down and struggling with basic communication. I blame the unrealistic standards Van Damme set in the ‘80s. Look at that zany window graphic: You could put a photo of the Armenian Genocide in that frame and saxophones would play while it answers a phone in a towel. It is an inevitability.

I’m pretty sure the rippin’ saxophone theme is supposed to be Night Man himself playing — remember, that’s not only his profession, but his passion. Here he is just hanging out and noodlin’ a “sexy night in the big city” style sax riff in the middle of a crowded cable car.

If you play an instrument on public transport, you are a fungal infection in the dicktube of society. It is literally a captive audience and you are exploiting it for attention you obviously could not earn fairly. If there was any justice in this world, God would strike you down for doing this kind of shit, and there is justice in this world, because that’s exactly what happens.

Night Man is almost immediately struck by lightning, which sadly does not fuse his saxophone to his lips so that he becomes a jazz monstrosity, and racks up a lifetime of tired nurses explaining to horrified newbies that one â™ȘDOOTâ™Ș means Sax-face is hungry while two ♫BLATS♫ is for ‘full diaper.’ 

Instead, the accident grants Johnny psychic powers. Well, psychic power. You see, now his brain is tuned to the frequency of evil, like evil is a radio station and Night Man is a knob in the other sense of the word. I’m not making any of that up — the creator of Night Man is barely making that up. That only technically counts as imagination, and would earn you a C- on Reading Rainbow even though none of the other children are getting a grade. 

Here’s the face Night Man makes when he listens to KEVL.

He looks like you just told him for the very first time that some letters can represent numbers. He looks like the news just broke into Baywatch to announce that the president cancelled surfing. That’s the expression you’ll find on every personal trainer’s face when you tell them you’re not interested in a free session. 

‘Evil frequency detection’ is his only innate power, but you will still see Night Man flying, going invisible, and firing lasers because at least one producer realized ‘fuckably dumb dude discovers the concept of subterfuge’ only worked for Burn Notice. The whole pilot revolves around Night Man gaining his superpower, then immediately using it to go after a suit that gives him better superpowers. And it’s the suit that really draws the Batman comparisons Night Man is in no way prepared to make. Johnny Domino is clearly supposed to be a suave Bruce Wayne-like figure, but his every expression is ‘unfrozen caveman encountering robot dog’ and he drives a Plymouth Prowler: The official car of regret. 

Prowlers were only bought by paunchy old white men in the early stages of dementia who’d temporarily forgotten what cool looked like but still felt pressured to take a hasty guess. Prowlers look like John Waters turned into a car, Turbo Teen-style, but lost all of his charm in the transition between man and machine. 

Hyping up the Prowler as a bitchin’ new supercar really nails down the window this show operates in: The world was only stupid enough to think Prowlers were cool for like two weeks in the Spring of 1997, and never again, and then so far the other direction that it actually undid those two weeks and I started off this sentence telling you the truth but now it has become a lie.

It’s clear they got that Prowler for free in a promotional deal, because Night Man had a budget of “whatever Hercules: The Legendary Journeys didn’t use” and they might have been… proud of it? Most other shows in the ‘90s had just discovered two things: CGI and the fact that they had no budget for CGI. Most of their rendered abominations were backgrounded, blurred, darkened — Night Man had no such shame, which should surprise none of us after Hunk McPecs answered a phone in a towel then hopped in a Prowler. 

Here’s Night Man bringing its fire to the pilot episode:

That would earn you a “Pass” on your proof-of-concept midterm in a computer animation class held by the Night School program at your local YMCA, and Night Man is so proud of it. It’s almost touching. It’s like they couldn’t bear to hurt the feelings of the special effects department, who might have failed out of ‘coloring time’ in kindergarten but it never stopped them from trying. It is very weird how prominently and unnecessarily Night Man uses CGI — they set their show in San Francisco then filmed it in Canada and rendered every set piece in the barn-studio of Bulgaria’s lowest bidder.

It doesn’t surprise me that Night Man couldn’t afford stock footage of the Golden Gate Bridge, but it does surprise me that they couldn’t even afford “overhead establishing shot of railing and water.” 

You couldn’t afford to be on any bridge? You couldn’t even afford to put a bannister next to a river? Maybe you shouldn’t be making a show then, Night Man. Maybe you should be saving up for the bulk box of Hot Pockets — yes, it sucks that they only have Philly Steak and Cheese, but it saves you 20 cents per Pocket and you can use those savings to buy the film rights for a better Malibu franchise.

Night Man has the craziest priorities in both budget and writing. He hardly ever uses his powers for Nightmanning — he’ll fly to a crime but not during one. He’ll shoot a laser to knock down a ladder so he can climb a building to punch a guard even though he has a laser and can also fly. Night Man reserves his powers exclusively for mundane insanities, like creating a holographic duplicate of himself playing saxophone and then abandoning it:

Really, the only subpar ‘90s staple this show is missing is…

David Hasselhoff agreed to be the central villain of Night Man’s two-part pilot on two conditions: One, that he only has 14 seconds of screen time and two, that nobody mentions his character exists, even when they’re talking to him. I don’t think he even has a name, and he does less than nothing before he dies. Hasselhoff shows up at the very end of Night Man to say one and a half things, then be thrown out a window in a way that makes it look like he slipped on a rollerskate they didn’t have to CGI, but also couldn’t afford to.

And the show ran for two seasons!

So the answers to the questions I know you’re asking right now are “yes, I will be writing about Night Man again,” and “no, I won’t stop just because this column doesn’t do well,” and “yes, this is how I’m going to be for the duration of the site, even if you threaten to quit paying me because of it.”

I will absolutely sacrifice my own financial stability just for the chance to dunk on Malibu some more. I’m not the hero you need, but I’m sure as shit the hero you deserve.

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PUNCHING DAY

Probably True Stories of ’90s Action Stars Giving Script Notes 🌭

During the ’90s, all the best action movies were assembled from five different scripts and trying to be thirteen different things. This meant catch phrases and deranged one-liners would appear with no warning or setup as if they came from a completely different film. It was the best. We all know Con Air was written by dressing researchers up as the devil and asking schizophrenic patients to watch breast implant surgeries, but who caused all the strangeness in those other ’90s movies? I should also mention the casual, whimsical racism because it’s going to come up. So ends the thesis statement of this, another 1🌭900🌭HOTDOG masterpiece:


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