"My Comic Book Hit List: Part 2"
7/7/08
by: Protoclown

It's been just over a year since the first edition of my Comic Book Hit List, so I figured it was about high time that I revisited the ol' kill sheet. There are, after all, a lot of lametastic assholes still running around in my comics, and nobody's doing a gods-damned thing to stop them. Enter me, the guy who, upon receiving employment at Marvel or DC Comics, will hereby make these empty vows (like a politician!) to kill the following characters whom I cannot stand.

As one man's shit is another man's desperate means by which to chase a stinky five-minute high, I'm sure that some of you are bound to disagree with my choices, and that's perfectly fine, as long as you agree to Paypal me $10 for each character thus disagreed upon and publicly admit that you are wrong. (Note: I probably wouldn't actually kill many of these characters if I got a job with one of those comic companies, and some of them I don't hate nearly as much as I pretend to, so wipe away those tears, lil' camper!) Some of these characters have been killed before, or perhaps are even currently dead, but since they will inevitably return anyway, I'm including them on my list regardless of their "current" status.

Speedball/Penance

I don't know anyone who doesn't hate Speedball, a jackass kid who got bombarded with a "mysterious other-dimensional energy source", which granted him a ridiculous costume and kinetic forcefield powers. Doesn't sound so bad so far, right? Well, for some bizarre reason, whenever he uses his powers, he bounces around surrounded by those colored balls that you find at the Playland ball pit at McDonalds or Burger King. Naturally this power manifestation would attract children, and in that costume? I think you know where that's going to go.

To make matters more annoying, Speedball is the lone survivor of the disaster that sparked Marvel's big Civil War, which has left him feeling completely guilty, seeing as how he is partly responsible for the deaths of over 600 innocent people, many of whom were kids who only wanted to play with his colorful balls. So his response to this is to create a new costume and persona for himself, named Penance, which he feels will act as suitable punishment for his horrible crimes against humanity, seeing as how the inside of the costume is completely lined with painful spikes, which is a stupid enough idea before you consider that he kind of forgot to leave any eye holes to see out of in his mask. May as well have called himself any of the following names instead: Captain Emo, Gothicus Maximus, Crybaby Sadface, or the Slitter.

Ultra-Humanite

I've made clear my hatred for super-smart gorilla characters before, and how many of these assholes do we really need in comics anyway? I don't really care if he is one of the first comic book super-villains ever, I just can't stand him. I mean, look at this guy. He used to be a regular (albeit super-intelligent) human in a crippled body, but after Superman kicked his ass around the block a few times, he had to transfer his mind to another body. He's done the mental musical chairs several times before settling on the body of an albino gorilla, where apparently he has decided to stick around (for some reason) ever since. And what the hell kind of name is "Ultra-Humanite"? Is he trying to say he's "more human than human" or something? Considering that he was calling himself that back when he still was a human, it doesn't even make sense on an ironic level, unless he was being ironic about being ironic, or presciently ironic or something.

Toyman

How someone like Toyman could have survived decades of being one of Superman's recurring villains is a mystery to me, since the most limp-wristed, namby-pamby punch from the Man of Steel would have completely excavated his face. And yet, he has endured since the 1940s. I can accept him as a Golden Age villain, because there were plenty of ridiculously cheesy concepts back then, but why does he keep popping up today? He frequently menaces Kal-El with a menagerie of deadly toys and his horrendously bad hair. You would think that Superman of all people could have more worthy villains, but alas, he has very few. The majority of them tend to be like this goober here, whose most recent revamped origin has him being a toymaker driven mad by the death of his wife in a car crash. Toymaker would make a truly worthy villain for an asshole like Speedball up there, but not for Superman.

Mysterio

As a general rule of thumb, people who wear fishbowls on their head do not tend to come across as particularly menacing. It's a rule I've lived by for years, and it's served me well enough so far. Mysterio, however, seems to feel differently on the matter, because he's been wearing this bold glass-dome purple cape ensemble since the 1960s. A former special effects artist, Mysterio has been menacing Spider-Man for years with his impeccable sense of style, when it seems to me that he would be more effective as a villain and would menace far more people if he simply teamed up with George Lucas and made a movie, preferably something with "Star Wars" in the title. He's died several times in the comics, only to have some other asshole take up the mantle, or to be somehow resurrected with half his face missing (oooh! A special effect!).

Vulcan

Vulcan is the most boring recent addition to the X-Men mythos, and has been revealed as the totally unnecessary third Summers (Cyclops, Havok) brother. He has "energy manipulation" powers, which are just oh-so-original, and he seems to use them primarily for fire-based effects, which is clearly something we haven't seen a million times before. When his existence is discovered by the X-Men, it is learned that Professor X sent him and a bunch of other untrained kids on a rescue mission to save the original X-Men, but since things didn't work out, Xavier erased everyone's mind (yay, mental rape!) of the whole incident before sending in the All-New, All-Different X-Men back in 1975. So Vulcan is pissed, and he reminds us of this by shouting repeatedly about how pissed he is while flying around and incinerating things. That's pretty much all he ever does. It got old. Fast.

Karnevil

This boy scout gone bad was part of a mystical villainous cabal known as The Pentacle. They say that he was sent to Hell once, but he was kicked out because he scared the Demons too much. Yeah, right. Like I'm supposed to believe anyone dressed like that is capable of scaring a twitchy kitten, let alone the minions of Hell. He's a big fan of the Joker, and upon meeting him for the first time, he informed the Clown Prince that he was a great admirer of his work and that he was going to be honored to kill him some day, a threat to which the Joker responded with derisive laughter. If only the Joker had pulled out the gun he was packing and blew him away, it would have saved me the unfortunate trouble of having to read more panels infested by this sorry chump.

Master Mold

I hate hate hate the Sentinels. The idea of giant purple robots (who look like they're related to Galactus) created to hunt down and exterminate all mutants is so ridiculously stupid on so many levels, given that they cannot pursue their quarry as soon as they do something crafty, like, oh say enter a building. Their only response to this deft evasive maneuver is to lift the roof off, which they always do, which results in tremendous amounts of property damage. Not to mention that the idea of giant robots stomping around on public streets "for our safety" is completely retarded. The only thing dumber than the Sentinels is the idea that they're created by an even more-ludicrously larger Sentinel, who basically just sits around shitting out normal-sized Sentinels all day. Shits them out. I wish I was making that up, but I'm not. What does he do, eat the raw materials required to make them?

Granny Goodness

I don't give a damn if she was created by Jack Kirby, just fucking look at her. Granny Goodness is the trainer of Darkseid's elite soldiers on Apokolips, but she looks as though she'd be much more at home being the wicked stepmother in a Disney cartoon, perhaps something where she's mean to puppies, or sends our protagonist to bed without supper. She tortures and brainwashes to turn Darkseid's warriors into fanatically devoted followers, but every time she appears in a comic I'm reading, I feel like I'm the one being tortured. She's super strong, tremendously evil and supposedly bad ass and totally threatening, but I will never, ever, ever take an elderly fat woman wearing body armor and a cape seriously. An old lady wearing this get-up could break into my house and threaten me with a gun, and I still wouldn't be able to do it. It's just never gonna happen. I would die first.

Arcade

If you think that building a funhouse of death traps to send your meddling do-gooders through sounds like a cool idea, congratulations: you're twelve! Arcade (portrayed above by Kristin Dunst) is primarily an X-Men annoyance, though at one time or another he's tormented most Marvel super-heroes with his ridiculous "Murderworld". Frankly, there's only one villain I'm interested in seeing putting his heroic foil through the paces in a murderous amusement park, and his name starts with a "J" and ends in "oker". Arcade looks like the kind of guy who should be selling popcorn with Orville Redenbacher, or telling me to "step right up" and throw a ring around a glass bottle to win a giant stuffed animal that I don't really want and then have to carry around the goddamned park with me all day but that I'm not going to win because the game is rigged anyway, not someone who should be feared, or even remotely respected.

Toad

Ah, Mortimer Toynbee. With a name like that, how could you have ever gone so wrong? Toad was one of the original members of Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (named thus so that humanity wouldn't judge them unfairly, I'm sure), and was aptly named, because he was basically Magneto's wretched toady, shuffling around like a hunchback, calling him "master" and the like. His appearance in the comics has been updated from pudgy ren-faire reject to marginally less embarrassing after the release of the first X-Men movie, but he's still a worthless, pathetic character with nothing to offer anybody, except possibly in the realm of cunnilingus, what with that crazy long tongue of his and all. Take a good long look, ladies, and just think about it.

Though there are plenty of other characters that deserve to be beaten with the death-stick, I will leave you with these ten for now. I've got to save some for future installments, after all. Let me know in the comments if you disagree with any of my choices, but be sure to explain why (and don't forget to Paypal me the $10). And by all means, if there's anybody you feel deserves a place on a future edition of this list, feel free to make suggestions!

Found any weird, bizarre, stupid or funny comics that
should appear in a future "Tales From the Longbox" column?
Email Protoclown and let him know!