Comics ain't for kids no more

When you think of comic books most everybody says Batman, X-Men, Superman and the occasional weird anime comics with naked school girls getting raped by demonic tentacles. But nowadays there are some pretty good ones out there that have gotten me back into comics. Comics are considered lame and nerdy and hinder my ability to get laid I know... but hear me out.

When I was a kid I had a limited knowledge of comics and stuck to the basics of the aforementioned X-Men, and Spider-Man volumes with some DC characters like Batman and Superman thrown randomly into my collection, which was not too shabby for a 10 year old. But alas, I grew out of the adventures of Wolverine, Cyclops, Nightcrawler (most badass btw) Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, and Peter Parker like all maturing boys should do. Actually I just became more involved with partying and drugs and alcohol, so my money went into that. But I digress...

Fast forward to last year, while at a party chatting with a friend I haven't seen in a long time, the drunken conversation somehow got to the topic of Zombies. I was then informed that a comic had been out for a while called The Walking Dead, which I will get to in a minute. So I went to the all-powerful internet to further my knowledge of The Walking Dead. What I found was an amazingly well-written storyline that in my opinion had some very memorable and fucked up moments. (And yes, that spoon was used to gouge out his eye). Luckily the series had been going for a while so I was able to download a butt-load of issues from some torrent sites. Instantly, I was hooked. The story begins as our "hero" Police Officer Rick Grimes, wakes up from the hospital after being shot in the line of duty. He has no idea what happened or where he is, and worst of all the Zombie Apocalypse has already begun. He barely escapes the hospital and comes the the horror that his wife and son Carl are missing and possibly flesh eating zombies. So he does what any family-man on a mission in a zombie infested town does... grabs a shitload of guns and ammo and sets out to find his family. I won't spoil the details but they are happily reunited for a time. They meet up with some other survivors who are just trying to make it in this crazy cannibal world the planet has now become. For a time they seem to be doing an OK job surviving and keeping sane. At least some of their party keep their sanity for the most part. They stumble upon a prison and for a while life is good. They are reasonably protected by the prison walls and have several facilities at their disposal. At least as good as it can be with the constant threat of getting your brains eaten by a rotting, walking corpse. Some messed up stuff happens at the prison but again, I won't spoil the details. After a while they become restless and set out to find more survivors to maybe try and rebuild civilization. But what they find is anything but civil. They encounter another group that have barricaded a whole town and are relatively safe for the time being. Safe from zombies at least. The town is run by a guy who calls himself The Governor. A sadistic man who used fear and murder to somehow rise to power. This monster was doing several fucked-up things that I have never expected to read in a comic book. For instance he had a bunch of severed zombie heads in fish tanks in his room and pretended they were tv's. He would keep his zombified daughter chained up in his room and feed her body parts, which might be understandable for a parent to not want their child to die, but it was not paternal love that kept her around. There were weird child molestation undertones which were later confirmed when he pulled out her teeth so he could make out with her without being bitten. Among those crazy things you could add torture, rape, and cutting off Rick's hand to The Governor's repertoire. He also would hold gladiatorial games for his own entertainment that would pit a human against a horde of the undead. 99% of the time the undead would win. Don't worry though... he got his in the end. This storyline has been the main arc of the series so far. The comic itself is black and white except for the covers, which are in full color. The art is amazing and shows detail and emotion worthy of any gallery. And usually at the end of every issue is a portrait of a random zombie covered in blood and gore. I highly suggest you give this comic a chance. There are several books out that have numerous issues jammed into a sort of encyclopedia of the series. There are currently 61 issues out, and I bet almost all of them are online for download, if you know where to look. Easily a 10/10. I will most definitely be getting all the issues from now on until the end, and you should too.

Next on the list is Y: The Last Man. Hands down, the best comic series I have ever read. The story is about a 22 year-old amateur escape artist named Yorick Brown. The story follows his misadventures after a mysterious epidemic kills every mammal with a Y chromosome in the entire world, except for Yorick and his Capuchin monkey, Ampersand. For those that were wondering the ampersand is that thing above the 7 on the keyboard. Yorick and Ampersand, along with Agent 355, an ass-kicking government agent from a super secret branch of the government called the Culper Ring go with Dr. Allison Mann, a brilliant geneticist. The four venture out to find Yorick's girlfriend Beth, who was in Australia at the time, who Yorick was about to propose to minutes before the epidemic wiped out half of humanity. Agent 355 and Dr. Mann are also trying to escort Yorick safely to Dr. Mann's main laboratory halfway across the world so they can try to save humanity. Several obstacles get in the way of their goals including crazy bitches trying to kidnap and/or kill Yorick and Ampersand. One group that stood out was the Daughters of the Amazon. These brainwashing dykes have totally lost it and see the epidemic as God's will. Their initiation is very severe. Every Amazonian had to cut off one of their titties to be accepted into the group. Which Yorick's sister, whose name was Hero, was recruited into. Yorick's trials and tribulations stretched over a couple years. Some filled with happiness, but most filled with sadness and death. It was a little while before he was finally exposed for being the last male alive. And things only got worse from there. I give this comic an 11/10 because of so much written in these pages. The writing is awesome and I found myself laughing out loud at some of the situations and wise-ass remarks made by Yorick. Some of the best art I have seen lies within these pages. Not whatever this new modern art bullshit which looks like someone drank a bunch of paint and diarrhea-ed all over a canvas, I'm talking about real art. The covers of almost all the issues try to incorporate the letter Y in them, and are some of the coolest scenes I have ever seen. I know I am jumping on the comic community bandwagon saying that this comic is badass, but I am doing so because it really is that good. I command you to find it and read it right now.

Last but not least, Preacher. This is the most fucked-up comic I have ever read. I can think of at least 4 guys who had their dicks cut off, bit off, ripped off, and chemically burned off. The story follows down and out hard drinkin' Reverend Jesse Custer. Who one day while in service at church, suddenly gets possessed by Genesis, the spawn of a demon and angel doing the no pants dance. As soon as Genesis is born, God high tails it out of the kingdom of heaven. Genesis is said to have the same power level as God and the Lord is scared shitless by this. After everyone in the church but Jesse is vaporized, the good reverend goes out on a quest to find God and ask him how he could abandon so many people who blindly believe in him, and try to make him go back to Heaven. He is armed with what is called "The Word". Which means his eyes turn red, and so does the word bubble text, and whatever he tells you to do, you fuckin' do it. No matter how messed up it is. He told a cop to go fuck himself, so he cut off his own wiener and shoved it up his own ass. He told another guy to stay on the beach until he counted to three million grains of sand. It took him about 8 months and totally messed him up for the rest of his life. He is joined by his estranged girlfriend Tulip O'Hare. She is a super tough gun-toting no-bullshit bitch who had the unfortunate experience of accidentally killing her father while he was dropping a deuce on a hunting trip when she was a teenager. They are also joined by Cassidy, a 200 year old Irish vampire that drinks like a fish and has done every drug imaginable. And at one point he sucked dick for coke much like Bob Saget. Throughout the series it seems like Jesse is personally pissed at God. Which he has a perfect right to be. His totally fucked up childhood raised by a sadistic grandmother, and two of the most fucked up rednecks you will ever see. Jody, a man who is basically impervious to pain who beats Jesse senseless every day, who also killed his parents right in front of him, and TC, a person who has a personal mission in life to bang every animal and inanimate object in the world. This comic has the most unique characters I have ever seen in a story. Such as Ass-Face, a teenager who tried to blow his brains out much like his beloved Kurt Cobain. But instead of killing himself, he only grazed his own face with a .12 gauge shotgun and mangled his features forever. Almost every time someone would see Ass-Face for the first time, they would barf all over the place right in front of him. The main antagonist for most of the series was Herr Starr, a sadistic German high ranking assassin in a secret society called The Grail established to preserve the bloodline of Jesus Christ. The bloodline ended when Herr Starr declared himself the leader of The Grail and dropped the super obese bulimic Allfather on top of the last relative of Jesus who is now retarded from all the years of inbreeding to keep the bloodline pure. Herr Starr definitely got it the worst throughout the comic. His bald head was cut by Jesse to look like a giant wang, he was one of the dudes who lost his manhood, and he also lost a leg and and eye before his demise. Oh, and he was anally raped a couple times too... yikes. Some minor memorable characters include two former servants of God who come to earth to sample all pleasures humanity has to offer since God left heaven. Two "sex detectives" who were hired to find Jesse but just ended up raping everyone they questioned about his whereabouts. And many others. This series was very good. The character development and situations were very well written. I give it a 9/10. It did lose a point because of times in the story where is was going purely for shock value as opposed to quality, but still very awesome.

Yeah... so that's it. Hopefully you were inspired to take a gander at these titles. I guarantee you will not be dissapointed.

My Shitty Little Angel

MZ's very own Joey Bag-O-Donuts wrote this short piece of fiction as a tribute to Chuck Palahniuk's "Guts". He has since been trying to force it on new people even though it's not very good. Good for a laugh at least. -J.O.

*****

When I was 15, I was really into practical jokes. That year I found myself totally unprepared the day before April Fool’s Day. I had already exhausted all the best pranks I knew. Last year, I wrapped saran wrap around my toilet seat and my mother found my little brother crying because he shat all over himself. The year before that, I fed my cat fishing line and watched as my parents chased him with scissors to cut off the shit trailing behind him. I needed something new, still involving feces though, it seemed to be a recurring theme in my life. Everybody loves poop.

I looked to the internet for answers. There were sites dedicated to lists and lists of the dumbest pranks I had ever heard of. Switching the bags of cereal between boxes so that Cheerio’s would come out of the Lucky Charms box. What the fuck is that? Who cares? I needed something bigger, something toilet related. So I googled “toilet pranks”. 

The page that came up was really poorly put together. The font was a shade of the same color that the background was and I could barely make it out, but there it was.  My mischievous prayers had been answered by the same all-knowing deity that showed me my first vagina, the internet. Right there on my computer screen was the best prank I had ever heard of. It was called “The Upper Deck”, it involved someone shitting into the upper tank of a toilet, the tank that you were not supposed to shit in. This seemed simple enough. The really great part is that every time someone flushed the toilet after that, instead of clean water flooding in and sucking down the waste, more shit would flood in. Then once the victim realizes what has transpired, they have to take the lid off and pull the shit out with a glove or a spoon. This would be my greatest moment. 

The mechanics of the prank were easy and it took no planning whatsoever, aside from maybe eating a lot that day. I just needed to choose a victim, not someone necessarily deserving of it, just someone who would be really disgusted by it. I racked my brain for a little while and realized that one of my friends’ mothers was particularly obsessive about keeping the house clean. You could even say that she was obsessively compulsive about it. I’m sure she would have a nervous breakdown if her toilet bowl kept filling with shit every time she flushed.

My friend’s name was Nick, he was the one in the group that everyone secretly hated, but we weren’t mean enough to completely kick him out of our group. Freshmen year was bad enough with a group of friends, I couldn’t imagine doing it alone. I called Nick’s house and asked if I could come over the next day after school, he asked his mother and she permitted it. My evil plan was coming together without a hitch, and I was so thrilled I could almost shit.

That day I made it a point not to do number 2 at school, and I ate as much food as I could. I knew that I would have to shit anyway, but I wanted it to be an extra special shit. I didn’t want anything to come between me and the glory that awaited me. I daydreamed through all my classes. I was too excited to pay attention to algebra or french. I had my eyes on the prize.

Finally the last bell rang. Nick had never felt so wanted by any of our friends. I tracked him down within 30 seconds of school’s ending. He was in the pick up zone out front, waiting for his mom. I pounced on him like an excited dog, grabbing his arm and jumping up and down. He was a little shocked. I began talking enthusiastically about how much fun we would have that day. Nick seemed confused but played along. He was a loser, but he wasn’t dumb; he knew that he was lucky to have a friend like me.

Nick’s mom came through the big front parking lot of my school in her shiny silver Lexus. I jumped in the back seat, Nick jumped in the front. His mother asked how school went in a very forced, uninterested tone. Nick didn’t even bother to answer. I barked out that it was great. She just looked ahead, focused on driving. What a bitch. Desecrating the toilet of this unpleasant woman would be my defining moment. 

When we got to Nick’s house, his mother told me I had to take my shoes off before I went into the living room. Almost all my friends’ moms had this same rule about the nice carpeting in their houses, but when she said it, I got pissed. I kicked my shoes off, purposely showing my disgust for her house rules. Just more fuel for the fire, I thought. I had never noticed I hated her so much, I remember thinking about how ugly she was. I wondered if this was how she looked when Nick’s dad married her or did she deteriorate over time due to the stress of raising kids. Maybe I was just focussing on all her flaws so I could convince myself that she deserved to have someone shit in her upper tank. This act of tom-foolery was going to happen regardless, even if I hadn’t considered her a miserable bitch. 

Nick talked my fucking ear off. I just zoned out like I always did back then. I did it to my parents, my teachers, and almost all my friends. I just played video games and nodded occasionally, sometimes muttering one word answers so that he would think I was listening. I pretended to focus on the video game only as a cover. I was really using my peripheral vision to see where his mother was. She was still too close to the bathroom. I needed to wait till she was far enough away that there would be absolutely no chance of her coming in. She seemed like the type who wouldn’t knock. That bitch! Having your friend’s mom walk in on you using the bathroom is brutally awkward, but today it would be catastrophic. I can’t imagine anything worse than your friend’s mom catching you perched over the wrong part of her toilet with a shit half out of your ass.

The phone rang and Nick’s mother picked up. It must have been one of her dumb housewife friends, she started chatting about the stupid bullshit that housewives use to distract them from their own mundane lives. This was my chance. As she left the room with the phone to her ear, I handed the controller to Nick. While I stood up, I interrupted him in mid-sentence without even making eye contact. I said I had to use the bathroom. Barely keeping the smirk off my face, I shuffled across the linoleum kitchen floor. I hadn’t realized how bad I had to shit while I was sitting down. I began to rush a little bit, my socks were so new that they hadn’t been worn in at all. I slipped a little on the kitchen floor, almost falling down, I grabbed the doorknob to the bathroom and pulled myself across the shiny floor. I thought to myself that Nick’s mom probably cleaned every surface in the house like 20 times a day because she had nothing better to do.

I closed the bathroom door behind me, and, much to my chagrin, I saw that they had a bunch of stupid knickknacks on top of the toilet cover. Little white angels, all in different prayer poses. I took them off one at a time, I made it a point to put them down on the floor in the exact order that they had been on the toilet. I wanted to leave things the way they were, without leaving any traces. I pretended to be a ninja in there; silent and deadly. I took the lid off of the upper tank and quietly rested it on the floor. Then I put the seat down and climbed up, aiming my ass over the open tank.

It was more straining than I had anticipated. I had held it for too long, now I was compacted. After straining quite a bit, I had made some progress, but it wasn’t going to be a quick, easy shit. I took a deep breath and pushed as hard as I could for as long as I could. I kicked one leg out in frustration as I let my breath out. All my weight was on my other leg, and my brand new sock slipped off of the toilet lid. With a loud smash, I fell down onto the toilet. Pieces of porcelain scattered all around me as I bounced and started to fall toward the hard tile floor. Of course the stupid fucking angel knickknacks were lined up in perfect order right in my path. They hit me in the side all at once and shot out around me in different directions. There was water and broken porcelain all around me, I could hear footsteps right outside the door. I didn’t even try to move. 

After a few seconds, I got used to the temperature of the toilet water. It was cold, so I noticed the difference when a warmer liquid began pooling against my leg. I put my hand down and touched the puddle. It was blood. I lifted myself up enough to see the disgusting puddle of shit and blood forming around my legs. I gagged a little, I had never seen anything like that. I was still in shock so I couldn’t feel where the blood was coming from, but I knew it had to be a deep cut; there was a lot of it. I shifted my weight back down onto my side and just laid there in my puddle of blood and shit. I knew I was bleeding from somewhere, but I didn’t have the motivation to investigate any further. I remember thinking that it couldn’t be any vital organ, probably just my thigh or my ass cheek. I would probably need stitches, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

Then there was a quick knock on the door and I anticipated shame worse than anything I had ever felt before. It was Nick’s mother. She asked if everything was alright and then just walked in with Nick behind her. Their eyes widened simultaneously as they observed the pathetic display in front of them. I was laying on my side, squealing in pain, surrounded by little angel knickknacks covered in blood and shit. The broken porcelain was everywhere; the mix of piss, blood, and toilet water was almost covering the entire white tile floor. I couldn’t have said anything even if I wanted to; the fall had knocked the wind out of me. I couldn’t even make eye contact with either of them, I just stared straight ahead at one of the shit-covered angels, thinking that this was Karma. 

It seemed that Nick’s mother couldn’t even comprehend what had just happened. Her OCD compelled her to just start cleaning around me, acting like I wasn’t there. She seemed to be mumbling to herself as she picked up the pieces of porcelain and tried to put the toilet back together. She whispered to Nick to go get her the crazy glue, he ran off toward the kitchen, leaving me alone with her. Then she grabbed a rag and started wiping up the toilet water and blood. I thought to myself that this bitch was actually going to make me beg for help. She was more worried about her fucking bathroom being clean than she was about the bloody, shitty deviant literally wallowing in his own filth on the floor. 

Nick came back with the crazy glue and handed it to his mother. She was really about to start working on the toilet, I couldn’t believe it. I had gotten enough air in my lungs to whisper: ”It’s serious.” I guess it didn’t hit her until I spoke, she started bawling and dropped the crazy glue. She couldn’t handle the fact that her bathroom was destroyed and there was nothing she could do to fix it right now. Then she just walked into the kitchen with her hands on the sides of her face, I assumed she would call an ambulance or my parents. I could just barely see through the crack in between the door and the wall that she was just pacing in there crying to herself. I sighed in disbelief and looked up at Nick. He didn’t know what to do, it became obvious then that I would have to direct him if I was going to be rescued. 

I sat up to tell Nick to call 911 because I was hurt. When I shifted my body, the blood leaked even faster, it seemed to be coming from my ass. I couldn’t see it, but Nick could and he started crying. Seeing the look on his face scared me, I started crying too. Then I screamed for him to do something and he ran to get the phone. Thank god, I thought. This was the worst thing that had ever happened to me, but at least I wasn’t going to die here, bleeding to death out of my ass. 

After way too long, the ambulance arrived. I could hear their voices in the kitchen. When they asked Nick’s mom what happened she just started ranting about how much it would cost to fix the toilet. After an awkward pause, they realized she would be no help, and they walked past her. Nick couldn’t do anything but point at the bathroom doorway where watery blood was starting to leak into the hallway. When they saw me they knew there would be no point in asking questions at the moment, they had to get me out of there. When they lifted me up, more blood shot out and I fainted. 

I came to in the ambulance, the shock had worn off and I could feel everything. The pain was so bad, I couldn’t even tell exactly where it was coming from. I could hear them talking about testicular torsion, and atrophy. I had no idea what these words meant but they sounded horrible and they were a clue as to where the blood had been coming from. This was enough to get me crying again and, in an attempt to console me, the female EMT told me that my parents would be waiting for me at the hospital. The idea of them seeing me like this just turned my slight whimpering to an all out hysterical fit. After about five minutes, I couldn’t cry anymore and I was silent for the rest of the ride.

When I got to the hospital, I did everything I could to avoid eye contact with everyone that I passed, including my parents and the doctors. My parents were told to wait in the lobby of the emergency room, and I was a little relieved by that. The doctors told me that I had ruptured my scrotum and I would need surgery right away. I cried uncontrollably again until the drugs kicked in. 

I was out of it for the next few days. When I finally became coherent, the first thing I saw was my father leaning toward my hospital bed with my mother crying in the chair next to him. Instead of waiting for me to explain how this happened, he just started talking with a seriousness that I had never seen from him. He proceeded to ask me if I knew what a eunuch was. I had no idea, but I was still euphoric from the drugs they had given me so I just assumed it was something good. It sounded like a good word. With a nervous grin stretching across my face, I asked him to enlighten me.

My father continued and I slowly began to make the connection. I was sure he must be fucking with me. He was just trying to scare me, to teach me a lesson, I thought. Trying to make sure I would never try a stunt like this again. 

Just then, the doctor came in with his face hidden by his clipboard. He pulled it down to reveal a very concerned expression and began telling me that time was a huge factor in my little accident. He said that if I had made it to the hospital only a few minutes sooner things would have been different. My dad leaned back into his chair, putting his arm around my mother. He began to cry too and then I knew he had been serious. I instantly blamed Nick’s mother. She had started cleaning instead of calling 911 right away, I had to tell Nick to do it. That dumb bitch had castrated me with her OCD.

The doctor went on to tell me that severe blunt trauma to the spermatic cord was an injury that needed immediate medical attention. He said that there was a very short window of time in which to save testicular function. Then, he handed me a pamphlet. Through the tears forming in my eyes, I could just make out the shapes of a bunch of happy men playing football and smiling. I wiped my eyes and saw that it was some eunuch support group flier, telling me that I could still have a fulfilling life without a working dick. I thought this was a joke, but when I opened my mouth to laugh I just starting crying even harder. 

After they gave me some time to flip through the pamphlet and ask some naive questions, they pointed to my clothes and told me I could get dressed now. I stood up slowly and shrieked in pain. It felt like my legs were tied together, I couldn’t walk right. As I shuffled slowly toward the nurse who was holding my clothes, I started to get hysterical again. I slapped my bloody clothes out of her hands and onto the floor. From one of the legs of my pants flew a shitty little angel. It slid across the floor until it bounced off of the doctor’s foot. Everyone’s eyes followed it the whole way. 

I laughed. A great big delirious chuckle had forced it’s way up from the bottom of my lungs. I couldn’t stop it. When I tried to, it just made the muscles in my face hurt. Everyone else in the room was perplexed. I just kept laughing like a mad man, staring at the shit covered angel with tears leaking down the side of my face. 

**************************

That was the last time I ever laughed like that, it’s been ten years. Sometimes, when I listen to the sad stories of the other eunuchs in my support group a nervous giggle comes up as I think to myself that I’m not like them. I always manage to choke it down just before everyone turns to look at me. There is no prank that would ever make me laugh as hard as I did that day at the hospital. I kept the angel, unwashed, in a plastic bag. For the first few years, I would look at it and almost smile, but lately I just use it as a visual aid when I have to get up and tell this story to new group members. After telling the story about a hundred times, it’s pretty easy to pretend that it’s a work of fiction or that it happened to someone else. Then I go home, high on pretending, and I try to masturbate. The reality hits me all at once when my dead dick doesn’t respond to my best efforts at arousal. Then I just hold my shitty little angel and cry until my ribs hurt.