The Squallid Perfume of Depravity

Rancid Cranium

DC's hostile takeover bid to try and buy Finch's Electricals on the Edgeware Road, in Harrow, has backfired, with the Middlesex-based company turning the tables and attempting to buy the struggling comics company by offering Warner Bros. execs free DVD players with bluetooth headsets.

John Finch, son of the owner, said, "We're throwing in a load of Scandinavian and Balkan gay porn films, we should own Superman by the end of the week. One of the first things I intend to do is write Superman and change his name to Superior Man and his secret identity to John Finch, electrical engineer by day, cool dude at other times." John Finch is 16, he works in the shop on Saturdays and school holidays.

Aluminium Doorstep

The big Marvel news this week is the release of Batman #1. When asked by reporters about the probable legal implications of releasing this particular comic, Joey said, "So, you don't want to hear about Superman #1, Wonder Woman #1, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, Justice League of America and Blue Devil number ones, then?" The gathered press looked stunned...

"Look, we fucking own everything, if not legally then morally. DC has been shit for years; it's run by a bunch of gay cowboys with less combined talent than I have in one of my fecal stools. We're just going to do it right."

"When approached, Bob Wayne hid behind a palm tree and only spoke through a third party, "We sent a lawyer over there last week but he disappeared and we had the Danish pastries returned, uneaten. We might have to go to court over this one, but we're a little concerned about bias on the part of the judge, Supreme Justice Ralph Disney. Now, please go away, I have need to urinate and I won't do it in front of you."

Back at Joey's Deli, the fat man was inserting matchsticks up his nose using just his tongue; the press were eating from in between his toes. "Marvel's Batman will be the one everyone will remember in 467 years time. Our Batman focuses on Brad Wayne, a young street punk who gets bitten by a radioactive mutant bat, while his godparents are brutally murdered by a man that plays deadly practical jokes with fish. We don't need no stinking Jim Lee."

What's Superman about? Cried a voice in the wilderness.

"We wanted to do something really different with Superman, so we changed his costume slightly and Clark Kent is now MC-K and is a Metropolis DJ working for Radio Planet . He's cool and everyone knows he's Superman except his parents. His major villain is a bald guy with loads of money called Les."

Collagen Enema

Dark Horse, always at the forefront of world comics, is to adapt the world famous cartoon from Belarus, пятно. It tells of the philosophical musings of a black spot on a silk shirt belonging to a well-to-do lady. Regarded by many as the ultimate comic book experience, it is regarded by others as complete and utter wank.

An Admiration for VSPs

Despite having sold more comics than a dairy sells milk; Mark Waid is about to embark on a personal quest of his own after announcing he was taking a break from comics to go in search of his original penis.

Waid discovered recently that when he was 6, his parents had his abnormally large penis removed, for the safety of everyone, and replaced with the penis of a 5 year old child that died in a tragic drowning accident - after accidentally setting fire to his child, Hank Cunstrum of Widge, Idaho, threw his son, Ralph, into a very deep lake, but forgot to take the child's callipers off, so the weight dragged him to his death.

The recipient of Waid's penis is currently serving 27 life sentences for aggravated rape, kidnap, attempted murder and flashing; all charges happening since he received Waid's penis.

"It's not like I want it back or anything," said Waid from his floating sky mansion, "I'd just like to see how its done without me. I don't expect we'll be going out to dinner, but I think we can... iron out some of the problems that have grown between us."

Scottish Lager?

Alan Moore has been issued with an ASBO after repeatedly attempting to turn his neighbour into a frog and performing lewd acts against the man's privet hedge. "I don't care how popular he is. I found him trying to suck the eyeballs out of my Yorkshire terrier and he was chanting about some fucking goddess of light who will take away the dark. If the man wasn't so big and weird looking I'd call him a big poof. He hangs around with darkies too."

The local ASBO shop refused to comment, but one of them said, off the record, that they were thrilled to have someone of Moore's stature on their books. "He brings a whole new meaning to ASBOs; business is expected to boom!"

Titular handclappings

The industry is still reeling from the news that Erik Larsen has died at his home; good money was that the 54 year-old artist would die in a prostitutes bed in East LA. One bookmaker claims they could end up with profits in the hundreds of millions of dollars, especially as Marc Silvestri had all but assured investors that Larsen had been having so many palpitations during oral sex with a specific prostitute called Slack Alice that he didn't expect he was live to see the next watermelon harvest.

Larsen's wife was unavailable to comment, but Savage Dragon sent a communique to us via electronic wizardry, "The news came as a shock to me, but I'm now free to find an artist who actually draws me like I look."

Savage Dragon currently hosts Celebrity Squares for the CW.

Pro-Celebrity Bukakke or Bukkakeru

Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes never said it, but, boy do them jiggaboos sing and dance. Image Comics is to produce an entire series based on the history of breakdancing.

Raster My Quim

Pretty much every copy of Marvel's latest blockbuster has been bought up, prompting the world's largest company to go back to the printers for 2nd printings. The book, which came out last month, is one of the company's new line and was not expected to be as successful as it turned out, with an initial print run of only 15,000,000. A further 10,000,000 copies are being printed with the cover logo in red instead of the initial blue. A spokesman for Marvel said they were delighted with the reaction. "All of us here at Marvel are delighted with the reaction," he said.

Lipids

Hellgirl Burlesque Porn Extravaganza in 3D is further proof that Mike Mignola has sold out big time.

Duck Balls

Georges Jeanty would like people to stop going on about the fact he once worked with retards before getting into comics. "It's really depressing, y'all. I had tu wipe their asses for thim, ma drawn finger was alaways covered in sheeit. I like drawing them comics, I do."

Oo-er, Missus

Fantagraphics is releasing Dave Cooper's new book The Times I Had Sex with God which could cause outrage in the Christian church because of the fact the book's protagonist actually has a love affair with the omnipresent one. When asked to explain his book to a confederation of church people in Utah, Cooper masturbated furiously and quickly climaxed; he then gathered up his spent seed and began to wipe it in the eyes of the nuns. Remarkably, this obscenity was greeted with a round of applause and one young girl defecated on a man of God's shoe. People didn't approach Cooper because he was still grinning.

Next time: the story I forgot mid-sentence; DC attempts to hit back at Marvel in the face of a massif takeover bid, new titles include 22 top secret projects and a leaked plan for the office Christmas party; Andrew Wildman discovers he's only given employment because some people think he has a cute arse; a frank and sometimes painfully erotic interview with a young Polish girl, who may or may not have been married to pal Joey; and will you have this dance?

It's Show Time

Elephant Tits

Joyce Chen has become the first woman to win the Nobel prize for Comics since it began in 2008.

Ms Chen won the prize with fellow American Ben Raab for their separate work in comic governance. The Nobel Memorial Prize in Comic Book Art is the last of the sixty-two Nobel prizes announced this year. Since 2008, it has gone to Americans 24 times.

Last Friday, US President Barry Obamalamadingdong was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize - though this aroused some controversy, especially as the favourite, Jim Shooter, mysteriously disappeared prior to the announcement in Stockholm.

BBC Comics editor Stephan Flangers said the judges had rewarded work in areas of comics whose practitioners' "hands were clean" of involvement in the global ink crisis.

'Great surprise'

The comics prize was not among the original Nobel awards, but was created in 2008 by the Swedish supergroup Abba in Alfred Nobel's memory. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited Chen, who lives in Indiana, "for her analysis of comic governance," saying her work had demonstrated how having a great set of tits can strongly influence these Swedish judges.

Chen told Swedish television that she was "in shock" at being the first woman to clinch the award, adding winning had been a "great surprise and now all she wanted to do was go back to her hotel room and masturbate furiously to several orgasms". This was met with howls of approval from the Swedish guys.

Lime Sausage

The number of new comicbooks released fell slightly in August to 53,000 from 56,000 in July, the Council of Comics Counters (CCC) says.

That total was still 29% higher than in August last year. But the CCC's figures indicate that sales may have reached a plateau, with first issue buyers still having to put down very large deposits to ensure they get the right books.

The value of total first issue releases, which includes reissues and reprints and buy-to-invest deals, was down 36% on a year ago.

'Utter horse cock'

"Comics purchase activity has revived from its moribund state at the beginning of the year," said the CCC's chief comicist Pablo Escobar Gonzalez Nudd. "It will be utter horse cock to suggest, with seasonal ups and downs, that we won't reach our targets of counting comics. The good news for publishers is that comics purchase activity is now on par with equine porn."

The CCC's figures show that in August the average first-issue buyer was also buying large quantities of soft tissue and handy wipes. Two-thirds of all comics deals currently available stipulate clean hands and a certificate of non-self-abuse from a sanctioned doctor.

Astro Panther

Just when you thought it was safe to find black heroes passe, Marvel conjures up more amphetamine fuelled action.

Marvel's promise to release over 3000 new titles a year continues apace with the release on Monday of Astro Panther, which follows the adventures of a panther in space. Also on Monday are Spider-Man: The Toilet Diaries #1, Scabies Dancer #1, The Avengers: Korvac Again, FFS #1, and Gamma Toad #1. On Tuesday: Luke Cage: Hero for Hanging #1, Scarlet Witch: Porn Wars #1, The Unconvincing Iron Man #1 (one of Marvel's new line of asking anyone who fancies having a go at producing a comic to have a go) and The Human Slug #1. On Wednesday there's another 16 new titles coming out, the highlight being The Acrylic Spider-Man. Thursday's highlight is hidden by towers of dross and Friday sees the new series from Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely - Earth P. More of that in the next story.

Envelope Obliteration

Still reeling from the world's reaction to the first fully washable porn comic, the two hottest properties in comics move the goalposts so far apart you can see tonsils.

Morrison and Quitely are the two biggest names in comics; maybe not the longest, but certainly worth more per square millimetre of letter than almost anyone else, release Earth P on the Marvel Outrageous Frontiers Imprint this week. This top secret project has even been out of bounds to me and all the offers of sexual favours under the moon and stars couldn't persuade the normally persuadable to part with gems of wisdom and spoilerisms. But now I can reveal the story in full...

Earth P is a What If the planet accepted paedophilia as the norm and the worst offenders were the super powered beings, because they can get away with it. Written with the intention of showing the world just how cruel and nasty nonces are, but could fall foul of the newly-formed Comics United in Decency Committee or CUNT DC because of the graphic depictions of spit-roasted 9 year-olds and setting an entire issue from the perspective of a 12 year old rent boy's anus. Morrison told me to 'fuck off' when I contacted him, but his sister Mary said it all springs back to his days when he was abused by Mark Millar's father.

Drain Cooler

The hometown of Superman could be demolished for a new housing estate for Metropolis; can Smallville halt the march of time now that Jonathan Kent is dead and Clark is working as a stripper in Montana? We sent Don Brabbage, our new intrepid reporter to find out. Unfortunately he was hit by a truck just outside Metropolis and died on his way to the hospital and as I still have several restraining orders preventing me from going to Metropolis that's the end of that story...

Stadium of Minge

John Byrne's latest offering pits a 200 foot tall Amazon woman against a midget with foetal issues; is Byrne just fucking mad or is there a method to his depravity?

Mott and the Midget is the a new Dark Horse series from master of blah, John Byrne. The Walsall born naturalised Canadian with a beard hatched the new series after dreaming he was being eaten by his wife's engorged and giant vaginal labia. Byrne said of Mott, the 200 foot tall heroine in the series, "Mott is a 200 foot tall heroine in this series and naturally if she's 200 feet tall then everything about her is going to be proportionately massif, innit?"

When asked about the midget, Byrne said, "Small chaps, under 3 foot tall. You must have seen them being thrown about bars in Australia. All the rage in the late 80s, I even had one in Alpha Flight." What does the midget do? "Oh, bonza, I understand now, mate. Imagine a hippo and one of those birds that feed off their backs? Yeah? Well, this isn't like that. This is about a woman in search of proper feminine hygiene aids with a cunt the size of your bathtub. The midget likes hiding in tight warm places because of his fear of otters. Instant smash hit that's why I'm doing all the lettering in marker pen."

Strange and Beautiful

Duvet thefts are on the increase and fingers are being pointed at Stan Lee, despite the octogenarian being given immunity from prosecution.

Peter David is the latest 'big' name to sign a petition to have the former head of Marvel jailed; is this the right thing to do with a living legend? "No. Categorically not. If this man had been alive during the second world war he would have joined in the holocaust willingly!" Shouted David down the phone at me. But he was alive during the second world war, he won 42 silver stars. "That's neither here nor there, he's antisemitic or whatever the word is and this incident with the duvets proves it without a doubt. Can't you see that?"

A Corsican banker called Leopoldo, who might really be Russian, had his mobile phone stolen near Lee's house in December and claimed he was mugged by a man who looked like a shredded wheat and the colour of amber. Photofit pictures suggest that if it wasn't Lee it was possibly Tom Cruise.

Scrambled Legs

Research shows that 86% of comicbook creators earn less than $4.23 a month and many will starve by 2011.

With over 2¼ million artists, writers, inkers, colorists, letterers, editors and gophers currently working in the USA alone, it is feared that unless the major publishers can continue to produce 20,000 new comics a year, many will starve or even end up eating rats.

Of the 14% that earn more, only 3% earn enough money to maintain their mansions, the other 11% can just about pay the mortgages on their ocean liners. George Twatt of the CBLDF said that unless publishers start producing more comics, people will die. "Unless publishers start producing more comics, people will die!"

Next time: pictures from Colleen Doran's Ann Summer's Party; photos of Scott Summers' birthday party and some handy tips about how to get blood stains off your ceiling; the large intestine of a small mammal examined and the small intestine of a large mammal eaten after pickling; Image Comics employ a crab and IDS publisher William Christenson finds his belly button.