Nude Fight!

I don't consider myself to be a petty individual, but I mightily enjoyed the subtle bitch-slapping the Wasp received in "Micronauts" #42 (June, 1982).

The set-up: Doctor Nemesis (Who? Precisely.) trains his super-shrink-ray on the Wasp's person but only manages to zap her dress into some microscopic nether region. Using her power to dwindle down to Mischa Barton-size wasp-size, she realizes that underneath the dress she wasn't wearing a costume. Or a bra. Or panties. (Oh, God, I just realized -- the Wasp is the Marvel Universe version of Tara Reid!) And to top it off, she has to deal with the stuttering, verdant horniness of alien insect-man, Bug. Who isn't nearly as creepy as this Bug. But still. I assume he's really into plastic surgery scars.

*SPROING!* Immediately after using her vast knowledge of alien erogenous zones to give Bug an instant hard-on, the Wasp takes off, smiling cruelly (panel not found, but trust me on this one). And she's wearing a cocktail napkin. Glorious. You know what might have made this even better? If it had been one of those novelty cocktail napkins with the dirty jokes on them. Ah, well. *sighs wistfully* And might I ask how she managed to get that ragged piece of paper to stick to her bulimic body? Is her perspiration wildly out-of-control, like Whitney Houston's? Is the spray-on tan not dry yet? Or did some wads of spit-out quiche inside the napkin act as a makeshift adhesive?

And now for the capper:

"One costume's as good as the next!" That's exactly right, honey, because they all suck. I also like how she realizes she's "put on a pound somewhere" and the very next panel is centered squarely on her ass. Thank you, Gil Kane!

My Dinner With Antron

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.

"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!

"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.

"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.

One Size Fits Small

Ah, the X-Men school uniform: the Yugo of superhero costumes! Plain, ill-fitting, and offered with your choice of alarmingly pointy mask or skull-pinching cowl, the standard X-Men uniform can instantly frumpify any hero! Even fruit-striped babe Marionette, noseless faux-Klingon Acroyear, pistachio-skinned Tourette's sufferer Bug, fairyland hottie Fireflyte, ass-kicking lump o' carrotcake dough Huntarr, and... well, Commander Rann was kind of a pill to start with, so he doesn't really count.

The above panel can be found in "The X-Men And The Micronauts" #2 (February, 1984), written by Chris Claremont and Bill Mantlo with pencils by Butch Guice and inks by Bob Wiacek and Kelley Jones. Remember when Guice used to draw like that? Kinda chunkier, with a lot more bounce and verve, and not so stiffly realistic and dependant on photo reference? *sigh* I miss Chunk-style Guice. I mean, I can understand if he doesn't want to draw like that anymore, but I don't find his current style to be an improvement. The characters look rigid and awkward and a bit splintery, like they're constructed out of something that at any second could snap apart and embed itself in my eye. And the faces are usually dour and glum and lifeless, like the people are all posing for a passport photo that never gets taken. Bleh. Come back to us, Chunk-style!

Anyway, this comic has a crazy amount of mental/spiritual possession going on -- even for a Claremont book! The Micronauts are mentally enslaved by that Entity guy, and the Entity guy has taken over Professor X, plus the issue starts with one of Claremont's patented nightmare sequences, in which Bug gets transformed against his will into an actual bug and Marionette is made to dance around like an actual marionette. It's so obvious; why didn't anybody think of that before? Oh yeah. Because it's obvious. Effing Claremont. (Get well soon! My thoughts and prayers go out to you! Just don't ever write any more comics, ever, ever again, okay? Thanks.) But here's the cherry on Claremont's Infinitely Rehashed Plot Sundae:



Baron Karza in Kitty Pryde's body. I know what you're thinkin'. And it means you're going straight to Hell. See you there!

This is from Kitty's "Ariel" phase, between her "Sprite" and "Shadowcat" identities. I remembered it as being somewhat unattractive. Imagine my astonishment to reread this comic after twenty-odd years and to discover that it is, in fact, a complete eyesore. The fit: baggy. The color scheme: lime and cantaloupe. And the facepaint! Ye gods! Thank God Kitty was on a team that went out on missions instead of doing on-the-spot emergency work like Spider-Man. ("Somebody help! The 1st National Bank is being robbed!" "This sounds like a job for... Ariel! In about half an hour, which should allow me to find a women's bathroom that doesn't have a huge line in front of the door and to get my face made up just exactly right... y'know what, better make that forty-five minutes... everybody just stay where they are, alrighty? I'll see you again in about forty-five minutes... or maybe an hour. Just to be safe.")

And now, a Valentine's Day message from Hannibal Lecter.