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2002-06-24 - 5:54 p.m.
Threat for the Week: "Click, click BOOM!"
:: Wheel is biking down the sidewalk. The air is warm, the sky is bright, puffy clouds scud through the air like opium-laced wads of undyed cotton candy, green parrots spiral up into the air as he coasts by, belting out a merry tune ... ::
Wheel: You say "Shark," I say "Hey, man,
Bicycle! Bicycle! Bicycle!
:: Wheel's carefree jollity is tragically cut short as he comes to an interesection, however. For as soon as he does, a large pickup truck roars up, blaring ... ::
Truck: Click, Click, Boom!
:: The truck, of course, pulls well past the stop sign clearly posted at the intersection and roars ahead of the thick white line and all the way through the neatly-demarcated thoroughfare intended for use by pedestrians and cyclists who have the misfortune to be riding along U.S. 41. The driver, spitting a wad of chaw out the window, laughs raucously at the earnest bicyclist who screeches to a stop to avoid being smeared across the vast hood of the truck. Wheel waves cheerfully at the driver who nearly slaughtered him like a bike-riding dog in the street as the truck pulls away, headed to the nearest child porn outlet to pick up entertainment for the drivers Neo-Nazi meeting that night. ::
...
:: Wheel is biking down the sidewalk. The air is warm, the sky is bright, puffy clouds scud through the air like opium-laced wads of undyed cotton candy, green parrots spiral up into the air as he coasts by, belting out a merry tune ... ::
Wheel: It's all about The Game, before life can rest... :: Wheel's bike is a dull matte black, slung low and shady, with wide handlebars and strange sleek silver whip antennae folded back along the sides. The bike features a translucent heads-up display and an on-board computer, and the wheels are a wild blue blur of crackling energy. Wheel is tearing along the sidewalk with his heavily-armored Hawaiian-printed longcoat flying in the roaring wind, a pair of bright red SmartGoggles protecting his eyes. Suddenly, a pick-up truck roars through the clearly marked pedestrian road lines and sits idling in the crosswalk, blocking Wheels progress. Wheel calmly draws his bike to a smooth stop as the driver caws with laughter and digs a calloused finger into his vast nose. Wheel, still cool as a cup of electric Kool-Aid, reaches into the pack slung across his shoulders and pulls out a snub-nosed bullpup mini-grenade launcher. The driver only has time for one brief shriek of horror as Wheel levels the gun at his open passenger-side window and pulls the trigger back through two positions, launching two tiny high-explosive grenades from the over-under barrel. ::
:: The tiny grenades fly in and blow the driver into a hail of meaty fragments roaring around in the firestorm that erupts inside his enormous truck. The force of the blast rends the cab in twain and then the oversized novelty gas tank blows, raising a bright toadstool of fire and oily smoke that can be seen as far as Siesta Key. A single burning tire rolls out of the conflagration and lands at Wheels feet. Wheel leans down and ignites a cigarette off the flames, puts it between his lips, and then realizes he doesnt smoke, tossing the thing over his shoulder into a storm drain. Pushing a toggle on his left handlebar, he creates a beam of sonic force which screams out with a banshees demonic rush, smashing the flaming debris out of the crosswalk, sending it spiralling into the northbound lane of U.S. 41, where it lands on an oncoming fuel truck, turning all four lanes into a hideous hellstorm. Wheel calmly kicks his bikes ride systems back online and continues rolling to Eckerds to pick up some cough syrup and a box of Dots. ::
Say, you know what you kids need to hear about? My favorite comix! Sure, thats what youve all been waiting for. I can hear you out there in the darkness, panting like jackals, just waiting with bated breath for Wheel to toss out a top ten list to join the mouldering heap of a million trillion top ten lists which have come before it, taking one more spark of creativity down out of the ever-dimming heavens, and sucking a few more minutes out of your lingering existence before the blue-helmets come crashing through the windows to haul you off to Freebooter Camp Epsilon.
Jolly good.
1. The Flaming Carrot: The first and foremost, always. Created by the grand master of the absurd and the worlds last surviving commercial Dadaist Bob Burden, the Flaming Carrot is quite possibly the only perfect comic book ever created. Regarding the adventures of a man whose brain is permanently warped by comics and chooses to take up a life of crimefighting wearing an enormous carrot mask with a torch set into the top, the Flaming Carrot ranges the gamut of humor, adventure, action, and pathos, and features a supporting cast so amazing that they made a movie about it, incidentally one of my favorite movies ... Mystery Men
2. The Invisibles: Grant Morrison spent a decade or so dabbling his fingers into the strange, dark waters of the worlds of conspiracy occultism and cross-generational mystic tradition, and then smeared his hands across the pages of The Invisibles. The first story arc has the rather extraordinary cast (at time even self-consciously extraordinary) communing with the psychedelic godhead of John Lennon, encountering an orphanage run by extradimensional insectoids with a penchant for dissection and the devouring of emotions, and chasing down the head of John the Baptist in the small French church which serves as the setting for the famous conspiracy pop thriller Holy Blood, Holy Grail in Rennes-les-Chateaux. After that, it gets a tad odd.
3. Transmetropolitan: Warren Ellis took his extraordinary skills with dialogue and ridiculous settings and used them to mutate a Hunter S. Thompson character into a futuristic outlaw of a blatantly marketable rebellious temperament. Spider Jerusalem might be a commerical bastard with a silly name, but the comics are still some of the finest writing available. I think the two promotional books I Hate it Here and Filth of the City demonstrated that Darick Robertsons art is also a key aspect of Spiders success. Others might disagree, but theyd be wrong. Ha!
4. V for Vendetta: In my exalted opinion, easily Alan Moores best one-shot. I love The Watchmen as much as the next fanboy, but V said everything of any use that Watchmen tried to say and said it a lot more elegantly, without all the fooferah and background noise. Its a crystalline note of a graphic novel.
5. Ambush Bug: Easily the best thing Keith Giffen ever spat out, and one of the few things that prevented discriminating lunatics from tearing D.C. apart at its rotten seams prior to the advent of Vertigo and WildStorm. Ambush Bug was a fairly simple villain at first, a looney with a suit that allowed him to teleport, who then evolved into a wacky sidekick for Superman before taking a very interesting plot turn and realizing he was in a comic. This has been handled quite cheesily in the past. Ambush Bug did it better than anyone. Ever. And that includes Cerebus, the snodgy little grey bastard.
6. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Alan Moore cannot be human. The man simply knows too much. When the Revolution comes, one way or the other, I will find myself in a cell with him, come hell or high water. Whether it be a revolutionary cell or one of stone walls and iron bars (which do not make a prison, nor a cage, but make a fine cell), Ill have this man to talk to. I want his secrets. This comic is for children who read the Classics Collections so promulently available for youth what the roof of Sistine Chapel is for a recluse who intently studied Scripture. A beautiful work of art representing all that is best about the literature, and combining it in new and thrilling ways.
7. Planetary: A nice little twist on global conspiracies, done by the inimitable Warren Ellis. A spin-off of sorts on The Authority, which was itself derived from StormWatch, which in turn came from Youngblood, which Rob Liefeld based off of The New Mutants, which was a spin-off of X-Men, the movie version of which starred Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, and who ALSO appeared as Leopold in Kate and Leopold alongside John Rothman, who appeared in 1997s Picture Perfect with Kevin Bacon, who appeared in 1995s Murder in the First with Stephen Toblowsky, who appeared in An Alan Smithee Film: Burn, Hollywood, Burn! with none other than BILLY BARTY, who appeared in Lobster Man from Mars with Philip Proctor, who was in Bio-Dome with Kylie Minogue, who appeared in a video tribute to Nick Cave along with Warren Ellis.
8. E.C.s Tales from the Crypt: The best horror comics of the middle of the century put out by one of the most entertaining men who ever lived, William Gaines. Gaines died not too long ago, topping off a decade of toppled icons. The comics are still some of the most wonderfully gory on the market, and are available in hardcover.
9. What If ... ?: Has had some extraordinarily bad writing, but has also given some writers a chance to flex muscles they dont often to get to use at the House of Ideas. My favorite story is still the one where the Red Skull finds Captain Americas iceberg first and clones himself a new body off Americas DNA, and becomes President of the United States, turning it into a new Nazi utopia. The end of the comic features a revived Capn America going down in battle and slaughtering the entirety of the upper echelons of the autocracy, alongside a cobbled-together team of Avengers consisting of: a bearded, hunted Namor whose Atlantis has been ravaged; a Thor rescued from an experimental lab; Logan as the Wendigo, which he became because in this universe there was no Hulk to stop the ceremony, the Hulk having been killed earlier; Frank Castle wearing a suit of Tony Stark designed Iron Man armor with a skull on the front, turned from the forces of Nazism by Americas iron will; and Sam Flip Wilson, known once as the Falcon, who uses a murdered Hank Pyms pills to become Giant-Man. Riveting stuff, and theres a lot of issues almost as good.
10. Top 10: I had to put it here. Just to be ironical. Another Alan Moore masterpiece under his own Americas Best Comics imprint, about a police precinct in a city populated entirely by costumed superbeings. Very tongue-in-cheek, with more references than you could shake a stripped old-growth forest at.
There, children of the Revolution. Dont you feel edified?
Tune in next week for Thierry Meyssan, a breakdown of summer cinema, lamenting about being penniless, and perhaps a little lesson to be learned.
Same Wheel-time.
Same Wheel-channel.
- Viva el Wheel! 
 
*****
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