Thursday, November 09, 2006

My Dinner With Antron

membroshead Hey, guys! Don't panic... I know I usually only show up to deliver messages like "Jeremy's computer crashed and there'll be no more blogging for three-and-a-half years" or "Blockade Boy went out line-dancing with Battallion and that was a week ago and we haven't heard from him since" but this time I'm just here for fun. Blockade Boy thought you might like to hear about my visit with my cousin, Antron, "the" Antron, the one from "Micronauts" #36 (December, 1981).

Antron was in town on a sales call -- he works as a rep for a company that sells those vinyl deals that separate ceramic tile floors from carpet in office buildings -- and he invited me out to dinner. It was great seeing my cousin, especially because I don't often get the chance. When we were larvae, my parents and his parents got in a huge fight over a liverwurst sandwich someone had dropped on the ground at a picnic and that led to a lengthy estrangement. At age twelve, Antron witnessed both his folks getting stepped on by a fat guy at the beach. Antron quickly found himself homeless. Unable to find employment both because of his speech impediment and the racist propoganda put forth by the Royal Family, he developed an addiction to sugar water. To support his habit, he fell into a life of crime. Swept along by the revolutionary tide of the new Baron Karza administration, Antron cleaned himself and joined the military. I only saw him once during this period. I was shocked by how much he'd changed. Formerly a very solemn but sweet young man with bright twinkles in his eye-facets, he had become a grim, strident fundamentalist who had even taken the extraordinary measure of shaving off his sweet man-perm (the traditional hairstyle of our people) and painting his carapace dark gray in order to emulate his hero, Baron Karza. He was like a stranger to me.

Since the collapse of Karza's regime and the new spirit of egalitarianism and economic freedom that has spread over our land, my cousin has abandoned his Karzist philosophies and reinvented himself once more. Now a happy and successful vinyl... um, thing salesman, he divides his time among work, charitable causes, his wife and egg-sacs, and, of course, maintaining his kick-ass man-perm. He looks back on his days as a revolutionary with both pride and bemusement, and he had some interesting tidbits about the famous counter-revolutionaries known to your planet as the Micronauts, and especially about their leader, Commander Rann.


antron1

"Rann was a racist dickweed-dickweed," said Antron. "Sure, he was a big-big astronaut hero but his political views were as provincial as they could get-get. He just couldn't believe someone-someone with our background could engage him in a fair fight. I remember a Microverse Today article where he said he thought all the insectoids fighting-fighting for Karza were grown in a test-tube or something. Jackass-jackass. I could hold my own with that brain-dead space-jockey because I got educated-educated -- something that was illegal when the Royal Family was in power. Karza did-did everybody a favor when he wiped out those throwbacks. And then we were left with their skanky-skanky daughter, what's-her-name with the hooker wig... bah!

antron2

"I remember when I had a shot-shot at Rann. Just the two of us-us, mano-a-pincer. It was sweet-sweet. My squad-squad had followed the Micronauts to Earth and had them cornered in a school, which was I thought was delightfully ironic-ironic. I pinned him against a wall-wall and grabbed a spiky Earth artifact to finish him off.

antron3

"And then I don't-don't know what happened. He flipped me around in some kind of freaky ballet maneuver and stuck my ass in the wall and I do mean-mean my ass. It took-took Lobros and Centauria to pry me back out. It was-was humiliating. You know-know, I still get cramps back there when it rains?" Antron silently chewed some of the lima bean we'd been dining on, and I could tell his mind had drifted back, to another time, to another life, when he'd been a warrior. He didn't say much the rest of the evening. I may not see my cousin again for quite some time, but I have no doubt that I will see him again.

He's a survivor.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

That was actually weirdly poignant. Well done, Comrade Antron!

Jon the Intergalactic Gladiator said...

What a spectacular display of skill -- Rann fired the jets on his backpack.

Anonymous said...

Antron was the shiznit-shiznit. I had a plastic effigy of him (complete with terrifying eyebolt accessory) that my parents got me the night we went to see Star Trek: The Motion Picture in the theatre. Sounds like a nice guy.

Nepharia said...

"I pinned him against a wall-wall and grabbed a spiky Earth artifact to finish him off."

I imagine he looked a lot like one of my kids' drawings when he got done with him, eh?

Jedi Healer said...

Sounds like someone going to be hurting in the morning.

Bully said...

Membros, has anyone ever told you your head is a delightful, puzzling maze? It's true! I spent several happy minutes with that picture of your head and a crayon. Yay!