Malibu Comics was a slipshod comic imprint from the â90s held together by duct tape and a stubborn unwillingness to recognize failure. Their greatest lasting impact on society was teaching Child Brockway to hate. Malibuâs 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 âMalibu success.â He was a mash-up of Iron Fist and Deathlok, which you might recognize as âthe dude from the shitty Netflix showâ and âI donât.â Malibu was so low-confidence they couldnât even steal the good characters. Buying a Malibu title was like buying storebrand ramen – donât lie to yourself that youâre saving pennies here; youâre doing this because you hate yourself somewhere between Face Tattoo and No Note Suicide.
Eliminatorâs powers were âRobot Armâ and âMaybe Karate.â His costume was a leotard, a blouse, and his secretaryâs makeup but youâll 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 â90s, 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 â90s were all about, but didnât 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 â90s black culture, which would make me very racist. Letâs check: A quick google first asks me if I meant La Quinta:
The âbaby namesâ 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 letâs drop this whole debate and just agree on one thing: It is never acceptable to call a woman âqueet.â
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.
Hereâs one of them stumbling across a beached shark and thinking 1. âMy gang would love this shark,â and 2. âWe could sell sharks, that could be our gang thing.â
The central villain for the entire series was:
Malibu combed through the great bible of comic book names and couldnât 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. âOh wellâ is the official Malibu slogan. Itâs 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, thereâs a lot wrong with Eliminator, but nothing touches the dialogue:
Every quip was pulled from a rejected Friends spec script, âThe One Where Chandler Is Maimed in a Sweater Accident and Has to Be Rebuilt With Robot Parts.â
This is what passes for wit in a Malibu title:
You traveled so far for something so lackluster and it didnât even land. Youâre like a plane crash in Auckland. Thatâs 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 canât tell the two apart. So at least Malibu did their research on real police procedure. Hereâs how Former Gang Member deals with the intense fear that his brother, Gang Member, might already be dead:
Iâm telling you, thatâs a Chandler line. Not a good one, but that is definitely pulled from somebodyâs đđ”FâRâIâEâNâDâS FâOâRâEâVâEâRđ”đ GeoCities fansite. Try it, read every joke in Chandlerâs voice and then pretend Matthew Perry frowns and adds âwe can beat that one, surely?â
âGenieâs Weenieâ 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. Itâs not a callback you donât get, itâs just the product of a tired and overworked brain that probably shouldnât 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. âA…a magic mom?â That brain oozed. âHow about like a little kid who turns into a superhero oh fuck thatâs Shazam, fuck I am getting so fired and I need this Work Experience credit if Iâm ever gonna graduate from DeVryâs Program for the Comical Book Arts.â
But they did publish that brainâs 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 havenât heard of him. This was the best thing he ever did.
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