MiSTed: The Rangers of NIMH II, Part 5

We’re up to the midpoint in David Gonterman’s The Rangers Of NIMH Part II. The whole of the MiSTing should be at this link. If it’s not, I’ll be embarrassed and maybe someday fix it.

So far in The Rangers of NIMH Part II, some of the NIMH mice have got together with some of the Rescue Rangers. They’ve agreed to check in on the Rats of NIMH. And now, the midshow host sketch.

---

[SATELLITE OF LOVE. Mike, Tom, and Crow are standing around, hurting. Mike is holding an envelope.]

TOM: Relax, Crow. Dr. Forrester *did* warn us.

CROW: [hyperventilating]

TOM: Crow?

MIKE: Hey, Crow! Cool it!

CROW: [forcing himself to speak] I… cannot… go on…. must… give… up…. lost… will to… live….

TOM: Hey! Crow! The fanfic’s hardly even *started*!

CROW: [gasps in pain]

MIKE: Crow, Crow! I know something that will cheer you up… [waves envelope in front of Crow’s face] It’s a letter!

CROW: [quiets.]

MIKE: That’s right. Calm down. Let your breath come easy. You’ll be all right.

TOM: What’s the letter say, Mike?

MIKE: [opens the flap and pulls the letter out] It’s a letter from one of our fans! This is the part of the show where we take a question from our loyal fans and try to answer it. OK. This comes from little Billy in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. He’s asking a question about the heroine of today’s fanfic…

CROW: Gadget Hackwrench?

MIKE: No, the *real* heroine of today’s fanfic, Mrs. Brisby.

CROW: Oh.

MIKE: He writes: "Dear Joel…"

BOTS: *Joel?*

MIKE: OK, so it’s been sitting around for a while. "You know a lot about movies, so maybe you can answer my question. Why is it that Mrs. Brisby, from ‘The Secret of NIMH’, always wears that red cape of hers wherever she goes? I asked my parents and they looked at me kind of weird; I don’t think they know."

TOM: All right; a good question. But first, little Billy, is it a *cape* or a *cloak*?

CROW: I think it’s a cape.

TOM: I dunno… seems more like a cloak to me…

MIKE: Leave it aside, guys. Answer his question.

[The bots start thinking.]

CROW: Oh! I know! I know!

MIKE: All right. Crow?

CROW: Billy, it’s just like that ghost story we all heard when we were kids. That cape is *actually* holding Mrs. Brisby’s head on! If she were ever to take it off, her head would roll away!

MIKE: Good answer. Seems likely. Hmmm…. anyone else?

TOM: Oh! Pick me! Pick me!

MIKE: Servo?

TOM: Billy, Mrs. Brisby always wears that cloak…

CROW: Cape.

TOM: That *cloak*, because it complements her eye shadow.

MIKE: Mrs. Brisby wears eye shadow?

TOM: Sure. Didn’t you ever notice?

MIKE: No, but *you* would, Tom. Well, personally, *I* know *exactly* what’s going on. Mrs. Brisby wears a red cape as a political statement! Sure, by day she *seems* a timid little field mouse, but by night she conspires in an underground movement to overthrow the tyrannical rule of the human dictator Farmer Fitzgibbons and establish a socialist rodent’s republic! The red cape is a token of party loyalty!

CROW: But the cape in today’s fanfic is *blue!*

MIKE: Oh. Never mind.

TOM: Hey, I know! Little Billy, Mrs. Brisby wears her cloak – don’t say it, Crow – because it *identifies* her! It sets her apart; it lets you know she’s not an ordinary field mouse, but a soul, a monad, an intelligent entity. It’s a symbol of her personification and an expression of anthropomorphism. It’s like Wagnerian drama; that cloak is Mrs. Brisby’s "leitmotiv".

MIKE: I think maybe you mean "kleidmotiv", Tom.

TOM: Whatever you say, Mike.

CROW: Hey, why don’t *you*, the readers at home, tell us what you think? The question is, again: "Why does Mrs. Brisby wear that red cape ofhers wherever she goes?" Send your replies to:

[Cambot flashes the Info Club address on the screen, Crow recites it]

MIKE: And if you’re that weirdo who’s been sending us all of those postcards that say, "Because Zena Bernstein said so," stop it. It’s not funny. *We mean it.*

BOTS: Yeah.
[Movie sign activates]

[ To Continue … ]

---

The only thing that I might possibly explain is that Zena Bernstein reference. I don’t get it either. Maybe something somebody’s friend was doing? Sorry. Catch you next week.

In Which I Am Slain by 1935

So, you say Charles Schulz was a big fan of this Skippy comic strip Percy Crosby wrote, huh? Does it show?

Percy Crosby’s Skippy for the 15th of July, 1935, reprinted the 23rd of June, 2023. Just jab me in the gut why don’t you?

What’s Going On In Alley Oop? Why is Alley Oop in space now? April – June 2023

Alley Oop, Ooola, and Doc Wonmug are on a spaceship from the planet Warth, the other intelligent species in the galaxy. The Warth ship has found a crisis in the center of the galaxy and needs Our Heroes, and their time-travel abilities, to resolve it. And who is it attacking their spaceship, if Earth and Warth are all the species in the galaxy? That has, as of my writing, yet to be revealed.

This should get you caught up to Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop for late June of 2023. If you’re reading this after about September 2023, there should be a more up-to-date plot recap here. I’ll also keep you posted on breaking news, should it break. Won’t fix it, but I’ll let you know about it.

Alley Oop.

3 April – 24 June 2023.

My last plot recap came near enough the start of the story, so let’s not consider that old stuff. Alley Oop and Ooola were back in ancient Moo, ready for some quiet time. Alley Oop’s cave is blocked up by all sorts of official-looking signs he refuses to read. He supposes if it matters someone will come talk to him. Someone finally does. He’s from the bank, and they’re foreclosing his cave. Also, Moo has banks now, and foreclosure. Also they’ve shifted from a rock-based to a coin-based economy, wiping out Alley Oop’s fortune. So, the bank tows Alley Oop’s cave away.

Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop for the 22nd of April, 2023. I try to pick these excerpted strips for being plot-bearing; among other things, it makes the Fair Use case stronger. But I was mighty tempted by the strip from the day before, where Alley Oop demands help because “I’m confused and loud!” That’s made me giggle every time I’ve read it. Anyway, the woman — whose name turns out to be Gorra — makes friends with the saber-toothed wolf, Doodles. So that’s nice.

In the impound lot Alley Oop discovers a lot of Moovians have lost their homes. Or, well, had their homes swiped out and now they’re impounded. Oop’s first thought is punching, of course, but there’s a limit to what you can do with that. He goes to our time to get help from Doc Wonmug. Uncharacteristically for a STEM jerkface, Doc Wonmug sees someone else’s misfortune as a chance to get smug and lecture as if poverty were a moral failing.

So back to the past, then, and punching. Alley Oop decides he’s going to destroy banking. Since there’s only one bank in the world that shouldn’t take long. It’s a little confusing starting. But Wolfa, inventor and manager of the bank, sees reason quickly, and shuts the thing down. She goes on to build new homes for the unhoused, although it takes a long time to chisel out a cave.

---

And that resolves things. In the transition week we learn while she was offscreen Ooola started a bank, a nicely underplayed punch line. The new and current story started the 22nd of May. Mysterious gifts have appeared in the Time Lab: a “Space Pilot Test” arcade game. It’s not a test of their abilities as space pilots; it’s a goodwill gesture from Qqqcgg of Warth. Qqqc for short.

Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop for the 21st of June, 2023. So, first, I like Qqqc’s design, and most of the design of the Warth spaceship stuff. I think Sayers and Lemon might too; the past month has had a lot of spot jokes about spaceships and future-y tech like virtual-reality volleyball and stuff. It’s also avoided being particularly snarky or wacky, and I’ve enjoyed this nicer-but-still-silly tone.

Warth scientists have discovered the black hole in the center of the galaxy. Big deal, so have we, right? Ah, but: up until recently the black hole was plugged up. Someone or something pulled out the cork and the whole galaxy will drain in a couple years. I know, I know, this sounds like a Larry Niven “Known Space” story but I’m not going and checking either. Anyway, Warth has the starship technology to get there. Doc Wonmug has the time travel technology to … not quite sure. But when the Warth spaceship USS Gomblex comes under attack, it sure seems like time travel’s a convenient way to escape. But will they be able to? And will they be able to go on and save the universe? Only time travel will tell.

Next Week!

Yeah, I’m surprised I’ve never used that line before too. Anyway next week, I get back to Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom, weekday continuity. We can see whether the Ghost has walked out of Gravelines Prison. Also, who has walked with him. And whether they’re alive to speak of. Join me for more tales of Captain Savarna blowing people up in a week, if all goes to plan. Thank you.

The Guy Who Used to Draw _Beetle Bailey_ Had an Elegant Way to Avoid Drawing Squirrels

So in keeping up with my increasingly unfair assessment of Beetle Bailey and its squirrel appearances. So how about this: a comic strip in which no squirrel appears, and the comic strip is not Beetle Bailey? Ah, but it was drawn by Mort Walker, the extremely talented and successful cartoonist behind Beetle Bailey who published Boner’s Ark under the name “Addison” so it wouldn’t be so obvious he drew like half the comics on the page. And here, in a comic from July 1977, we see a way of handling the squirrel-drawing issue:

Mort Addison Walker’s Boner’s Ark for the 28th of July, 1977, reprinted the 17th of June, 2023. The idea seems good but, let me tell you, this is just going to slow the squirrel down a little, and not many times. You’re going to want to try rubbing that concentrated chili powder stuff all over your head. Don’t poke it in your eye, and when you do, after you’re done washing it out? Don’t poke it in your eye again trying to explain what you did to cause so much commotion.

This settles one question about how you might draw a squirrel in the Beetle Bailey style, at the cost of two other questions: wait, there was a squirrel in Boner’s Ark? Are you sure? Three questions: are you really, really sure? And one follow-up, are you sure you’re not thinking of that koala named Cubcake or something like that?

If I May Further Explain Matters

While you may grant my excellent reasons for getting those books about sand and commercial packaging, you might be asking me, “But Joseph, why didn’t you pick up that 200-page book about screws while you were at it?” Or you might use other words intending a similar effect. I don’t mean to argue trivialities. The answer is simple, though. I already have that book, snagged from my Dad when he was moving and needed to offload some books. Also, uh, Dad, if you’ve been looking for that Witold Rybczynski book (One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw), uh, I have it in a box here somewhere. Let me know if you need it.

Statistics Saturday: Some Things You Might Have Heard About

• Baseball
• Gary U.S. Bonds
• Pittsburgh
• Lettuce
• Apollo (ancient Greek god)
• Apollo (NASA project)
• Apollo (19th century thoroughbred racehorse)
• Ernest (camp-goer, other-places-goer)
• Apollo (World War II-era United States Navy submarine tender)
• Apollo (early-20s US record label, late-20s US record label, mid-40s US record label)
• Plastic storage bins
• Apollo (Harlem theater, New York City)

Reference: How We Got To Coney Island: The Development of Mass Transportation in Brooklyn and Kings County, Brian J Cudahy.

To Put an End to These Scurrilous Rumors Before They Start or You Even Hear of Them

Yes, I just bought a book all about sand, but understand, I also bought a book about commercial packaging. Also, in a radical departure for me, neither book had a subtitle promising it was the thing “that changed the world”, although the sand book does promise to reveal “how it transformed civilization”. The packaging book doesn’t make such grand promises but it does say there’s a secret meaning to cans and tubes, so that’s something.

MiSTed: The Rangers of NIMH II, Part 4

I have a slightly shorter bit of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan fiction this week. David Gonterman’s The Rangers Of NIMH Part II is not so naturally divided as all those Arthur Scott Bailey novels, so it was either a really long segment this week or one short and one normal one next week. I’m always going to pick the option that fills more of the content hole, so here we are. The whole of the MiSTing, however many publication dates I drag it out to envelop, should be here. If it’s not, you know who to blame.

Last time on The Rangers of NIMH Part II, Mrs Brisby has found her great-grandson Jonathan and they’re all hanging out with Gadget, Monterey Jack, and I guess Zipper. The remaining Rescue Rangers (Chip and Dale having joined the Rescue Aid Society) decide they’ve had enough of Disney woke-ness and go to Thorn Valley to see what’s happening with the Rats of NIMH. Doesn’t that sound exciting? Here goes.

---

> ____________________________________________
>
> The foursome loaded up the Ranger Plane with whatever they would hold
> them for a few days.

CROW: Comic books, video games, pocket CD player…

MIKE: Food?

CROW: Nah, there’ll be some somewhere.

> "Don’t worry about the rest, guys," JB told them,
> "I’m sure they’ll help with the rest." And prepared to fly to Thorn
> Valley.
>

MIKE: Thank you, oh God of Pointless Narration.

> Montey: "What’s with the blindfold, Mrs. Briz?"

CROW: [Mrs. Brisby] I’m hoping the firing squad gets me before my character is completely destroyed by this fanfic.

>

> Jennifer: "Oh? You’ve gotta excuse me, I’m still a touch afraid of
> heights,

CROW: You mean, somebody’s actually going to stay in character…?

MIKE: [Mrs. Brisby] Hey, you’d be an acrophobe too, if you were only 3 inches high!

> but I’ll be okay as long as I don’t have to see it.

MIKE: Uh-huh.

CROW: Get the feeling "The Bob Newhart Show" should come with a warning that that isn’t *real* psychotherapy going on?

> Little
> Johnny here can lead you there."

TOM: [singing] Johnny, angry Johnny!

>
> Jonathan hopped in next to Gadget–the pilot–while Monterey and
> Jennifer took the back.

TOM: It’s Gadget out in front, Jonathan keeping close behind, Monterey and Jennifer bringing up the rear as they go into the first turn…

> (It was by this time that Zipper finally showed
> up, whom Montey quickly called him to come before they left the fly.)

MIKE: And I was SO concerned about Zipper, too…

>
> "I know the place like the back of my hand."

TOM: [Maxwell Smart] Now can someone help me find the back of my hand?

>
> Gadget got ready to take off, but she had to stop to let a flock of
> crows to pass.

CROW: Hey, look, Gadget! Ten points!

>

> Montey: "Crikey! What did they do? Build a skyway by our tree?"

MIKE: [radio announcer] Traffic will be tied up on Skyway 101… a murder of crows is passing through. I advise an alternate route for all sparrows, paper airplanes, balsa wood gliders, and Ranger Planes.

>

> Jennifer: "Oh, be patient on them, Monterey. Some of my best friends
> are crows."

MIKE: Brandon Lee?

TOM: That lame singer with the dreadlocks?
[Tom and Mike look at Crow]

CROW: It’s not ME, guys!!

>
> Gadget and JB gave each other a ‘Is she crazy or just senile?’ looks.

TOM: She can be both, and more!

>

> Jonathan: "Tell me about it? Sometimes I don’t watch myself and

MIKE: Feel ashamed.

> wonder that the Scientists shot *her* up with."

CROW: And when was Mrs. Brisby treated by scientists? Sometimes *I* wonder what they gave Gonterman!

>
> Jennifer’s laugh caught her off-guard

TOM: Aaaah! Don’t hit me!

> for the rush from the Ranger Plane
> taking off for the skies, and heading for the countryside,

ALL: [ Engine sputtering noises, followed by plane falling and crashing noises. ]

> rising in
> altitude for the long trip to what they will find to be the planet’s
> largest rodent community.

CROW: Well, second largest, after Ypsilanti, Michigan.

>
> ============================================
>
> All right, True Believers. Let’s see how long I can bring *this* baby?

TOM: So far, it’s been about since the dawn of time, by my watch.

MIKE: Longer, for me.

>
> And this time, I don’t see anything–or any ONE–to piss me off and stop
> me.

MIKE: [Waving hands in the air] Yo-hooo! Gonterman!

CROW: We’re over here!

TOM: Let’s get out and hope he’s heard us.

[They leave the theater]

---

[ To Continue … ]

---

Let’s see what riffs need explaining or thoughts I have about it. Oh, love the datedness of the pocket CD player we suppose the Rangers of NIMH bring along. I know the riff about The Bob Newhart Show was mine, but I’ve never been happy with it. Something in the reference is off. I wonder if the other riffers had anything on that line, and what riffs that might have beaten. Maxwell Smart asking help finding the back of his hand is mine, of course, but it’s swiped from some episode of Get Smart!. Worked well there and it works here too.

The riff about Ypsilanti is mine. At the time I wrote it I’d never been there, nor had any reason to think I ever would. I did have a couple Michigan friends who’d talked about the place and it’s got a nice funny name so there you go. The town is kind of Brooklyn to Ann Arbor’s role as Manhattan. I think it’s got a pinball barcade and everything now.

Fear of Throwing Out

It sure looks like every other house on the street had a big, big week for cardboard boxes. All their recycling bins have been stuffed to overfull, lids propped open with the ends of boxes both large and large in number. Us? We’ve got just the usual couple of things, filling up maybe half of the recycling bin and that’s with the shampoo bottles we have to recycle this week. It’s got me worrying there was something going on that we didn’t know about, where everyone should have gathered all the cardboard everywhere to toss out, and now we’re looking unsocial. We’re not refusing to participate in your cardboard-box-based event, whatever it is, neighborhood! It’s just nobody told us to get something to throw out is all.

What’s Going On In Olive and Popeye? Is Olive Oyl dead? March – June 2023

Well, probably not forever, no. But a development in Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye has seen her body limp on the ground, with a ghostly form standing over it. This is what convinced me I needed to do a recap of the last couple months of story there. All my plot recaps for the twice-a-week Olive and Popeye strip should be here, however long I run them. If enough keeps happening, I should do another plot recap somewhere around September 2023, unless plans change.

Olive and Popeye.

28 March – 20 June 2023.

So the big jaw-dropping development came in a pair of Tuesday strips, ones done by Shadia Amin, starting the 6th of June. Olive and Petunia are on some expedition in a cave — Popeye wanted a break — and some giant wormy monster grabs Olive from above. Petunia beats it off with a stick, and it drops Olive Oyl’s body. But she’s … ghastly?

Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye for the 13th of June, 2023. Shadia Amin’s work. Uh … congratulations to Olive Oyl for achieving the goal of being impossible for Popeye to hit on two counts?

One of the magic cave leeches ripped her soul out of her body. Should be something they can put back. Also, while there’s no reason to think the comic will do this? It suggests that it could do a body-swap story, a kind of story that as far as I know hasn’t been done in Popeye before. Could be fun. (Yes, of course I remember the Jack Kinney cartoon I Yam Wot I Yamnesia. That one sure acts like a body-swap story, but the ending makes sense only if it’s a personality-change story … I’m not sure. It’s a Jack Kinney cartoon, of course the logic flies off the rails.) Anyway it’s at least rare for Popeye and conceivably a first for the comic strip.

Besides that … well, it is hard to say anything’s quite so important, is it? A lot of it has been Popeye’s surprisingly large family for an orphan getting settled in together. Poopdeck Pappy and Whaler Joe continue their tussle for the affections of Swee’Pea. And he sees the advantages in having two jealous grandfathers. Popeye’s mother Irene, Aunt Jones, and father Whaler Joe are keen to spoil Swee’Pea, but only to a point. He’s still figuring out what his bounds are.

The other development, the one that would be the lead if Olive Oyl weren’t ghostificated, involves Brutus. That may need some explaining. For the 1960s cartoons King Features created Brutus, a character legally distinct from Bluto, to be Popeye’s nemesis. This because King Features didn’t realize that Bluto had appeared in the comic strip first, and therefore was not the property of Paramount Cartoon Studios. In the late 2000s Hy Eisman decided that Bluto and Brutus were brothers and both could appear in the strip. The difference between them has settled on Bluto being the aggressive one, and Brutus being sort of well-meant but hapless.

Brutus and Olive Oyl have the idea Olive’s cousin Sutra Oyl (one of Bobby London’s characters) and Linden (Randy Millholland’s character) would be a cute couple. Linden is the Sea Hag’s intern. And, turns out, they do like each other. Nice to see.

Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye for the 23rd of May, 2023. Shadia Amin’s work. This one strip also does a good job explaining how Brutus in the comic strip works.

This by the way adds to the count of story comics featuring lesbian relationships ahead of Mary Worth.

Besides all that, there was an eight-week ongoing story in Randy Milholland’s Sunday-only Thimble Theater comics. This story, “The Secret of Goonhalla”, saw all Goons everywhere — every kind, including Sea Goons, Moon Goons, and the off-brand Goons from the Gene Deitch cartoons — kidnapped by Trivicus, “cosmically appointed collector of all obscure knowledge”. He wants the location of Goonhalla, a thing nobody has ever heard of before. This because Trivicus’s boss, the Grand Archivist, keeps making up stuff for Trivicus to find. It’s to get his underling out of his hair, but Trivicus keeps finding the named things somehow. Alice the Goon and Popeye work together to snag Trivicus silly, and foil the whole plan. And, Trivicus and the Grand Archivist get assigned to organizing the Library of the Goons. Or, Goonhalla Library, as they’re naming it. So Goonhalla’s been found after all. I like the logic of this punch line.

Next Week!

It’s the other comedic serial story strip! Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop takes on banking and the black hole eating the galaxy! I’ll share what I know about this in a week, all going well. Take care.

In Which I Am One Again Shamed by _Funky Winkerbean_

My love asked me who the character “John Howard” was in Funky Winkerbean and I … I knew and could tell. Not, like, instantly, no, but I still didn’t need nearly long enough to remember who this guy and what his deal were.

(He was the Comic Book Guy. I mean he was the mopey sack of white guy who ran the perpetually-failing comic book shop, not any of the other estimated 84 mopey sacks of white guy who were also in the comic book industry in the strip. Also, I’m sad I didn’t think of the word sequence “mopey sack of white guy” when the comic was still a going concern.)

Why You Might Want to Not Read _Mary Worth_ a Couple Weeks

I apologize for the warning on this being a little late. I suppose I hadn’t realized the comic strip was actually going there.

People who are sensitive to pets in danger might want to take a pass on reading Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for a couple weeks. The story under way has seen Saul Wynter’s dog Greta abducted being used as a bait for dogfighting matches. I expect that everything is going to turn out all right, at least for the dogs given names on-screen and shown to us. The strip just isn’t that dark ^[*], you know? But getting to all right seems likely to go through some distressing moments, and you should consider whether you need that in your recreational reading. (I’ll have a similar warning when I get around to the plot recap for the last couple months.)

^[*] Yeah I remember Aldo Keldrast, who stunned us all by dying. But that was a long time ago. And he was set up to be a person you would feel relieved was dead, even if you wouldn’t wish that and would feel bad for feeling that relief. The strip is not going to do a thing to make you feel relieved that someone’s pet dogs die. Anyway, if you’re sensitive to this kind of animal endangerment, think about whether you want this in your comics.

Statistics Saturday: Maximum Safe Viewing Distances

Thing	Safest Viewing Distance
Dolphins	93,000,000,000 light-years (approximate)
Balls (base, basket, foot)	93,000,000,000 light-years (approximate)
Karaoke night	93,000,000,000 light-years (approximate)
Cholinergic-type chemical synapses	93,000,000,000 light-years (approximate)
Amaryllis bulbs	93,000,000,000 light-years (approximate)
Safety instruction	93,000,000,000 light-years (approximate)
Groundhogs	93,000,000,000 light-years (approximate)
Spelling bees	93,000,000,000 light-years (approximate)
Those little swinging-ball things you see on business executive’s desks in movies from the 80s to show they don’t have enough real work to do and watch the balls swinging back and forth instead	93,000,000,000 light-years (approximate)
Star Trek: Insurrection	93,000,000,000 light-years (approximate)
T-shirts	93,000,000,000 light-years (approximate)
Time zones	93,000,000,000 light-years (approximate)

Reference: Priceless: The Myth Of Fair Value (and How To Take Advantage Of It), William Poundstone.

In Which I Am Foiled as Usual

I was putting together a joke about how you know, the existence of the word “bundle” means there must be a word “bund” that it’s the little version of, but then I went and looked up the etymology and it turns out yes, that’s literally how English got the word “bundle”. At least, it got that through an assist by Dutch. Once again I am foiled by the eternal enemies of Dutch — the official language of funny words — and looking stuff up. There’s no justice.

(Sitting down, trying to think of there’s any way at all to make a joke based on I-1095.)

MiSTed: The Rangers of NIMH II, Part 3

Feel like late-90s-vintage Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan fiction? Then I have some good news, as I’m sharing the MiSTing of David Gonterman’s The Rangers Of NIMH Part II. The whole of the MiSTing, however many pieces it takes, should be here. As I’ve mentioned, I wasn’t the lone writer of jokes for this. Kevin A Pezzano and Christopher Street also contributed riffs, and Håkan Svensson both wrote riffs and did the work of editing them together ino a whole. I found notes that say this was first published in January of 1998, by the way, which should help you judge the timeliness of the riffing.

Last time on The Ranges of NIMH Part II, Mrs Brisby, of Secret fame, visited the Rescue Rangers. Chip and Dale have left the group, but Jonathan Brisby, Mrs Brisby’s great-grandsome, has joined. Also, someone’s prowling over the remains of the NIMH laboratory destroyed in The Rangers of NIMH Part I, and they’ve been noticed by the Rats. And now you’ve got the backstory; run! Run like the wind!

---

> Jennifer continues her story over hot tea.

MIKE: Interior, Ranger Tree. Jennifer continues her story over hot tea…

TOM: I think we’re back to narrative, Mike.

> "I used that stone to move
> my old farm home–by myself, no less."

MIKE: [Mrs. Brisby] And then I used it to defeat the Khanate of the Golden Horde singlehandedly, before I took on Saddam Hussein and Theodore Kazynski, who had teamed up with a zombie Stalin, and…

> Montey: "I believe you lass. We’ve seen that stone in action.

CROW: [Monty] It’s almost like a rock.

TOM: Sorry, Mike. It’s a script again.

>

> Jennifer: "Hmm-hmm. And later on I realized that I’m still having it’s
> affects,

CROW: Why, just last week, it made me wear silly hats!

> and it’s not just these burn marks on my hands. It changed me,
> inside.

MIKE: It gave me a chewey nougat center.

> It did to me . . . what the experiments from NIMH did to my
> husband."

TOM: [Jennifer] It changed me from a likeable character to one of Gonterman’s!

>

> Gadget: "Golly!"
>
> JB: "Yeah. Imagine the blow-away when she passed that blood test.

MIKE: She never expected to have blood!

> She has the same effects as the Rats had. Not only had she grown more
> intelligent, but she also got a longer lifeline.

CROW: And she got a neat collectible dinner plate.

> But that little
> feature was a little bittersweet."

TOM: Just *try* to bake with it!

>

> Gadget: "How come?"
>
> JB: "Statistically, Country Mice don’t live as long as City Mice. It’s
> probably an environment thing. I was raised in the city, so I can’t
> speak for them, but that’s the reason why Mrs. Brisby

MIKE: So, JB isn’t on first-name terms with his own family?

> outlived three out
> of her four kids, and a vast majority of her grandchildren."

CROW: [Jonathan] Funny how they all left everything to her in their wills. Oh, well. More tea, anyone?

>

> Gadget: "Oh."

TOM: [Gadget] That cleared up things a *lot.*

>

> Jennifer sighs: "I often dreamt of growing old, while the man that I
> love remained a young mouse.

MIKE: So who, exactly, does she love – a man or a mouse?
[The bots chuckle.]

CROW: Are we men, or are we mice?

ALL: Men! Mice! Er….

> I didn’t expect to see the dream from the
> other end.

MIKE: That’s an awfully long sigh.

> It wouldn’t have been that bad if I didn’t have to bury my
> children, and not the other way around.

TOM: [Mrs. Brisby] Especially since the dirt didn’t muffle their cries and pleas for several days!

MIKE: Woah, that’s dark!

> But then I was able to see
> him." She points to Jonathan.

CROW: [Jennifer] Boy did *I* feel like a chump.

> "Little Johnny here looked and smelled
> exactly like my husband.

MIKE: But… her husband had been dead for years.

> He even has the spots on the right places. I
> simply *had* to give him his name and amulet."

TOM: Because Johnny’s *MOM* had nothing to say in the matter?

>
> Monterey and Gadget was listing to her story with relish. JB, however,
> has heard this story a million times, and was patiently waiting for her
> to finish only to humor his Great-Grandmother.

MIKE: Okay, when the main character is bored with the story, that’s a good time to quit.

> "Well, there’s more to
> you showing up than just to tell my new friends how you threatened to
> fry everyone with The Stone unless you call me Jonathan Brisby."

CROW: So she’s the muscine Marrissa?

TOM: You expected anything else?

MIKE: [singing] She’s Jenny — watch out or she just might kick your ass…

> He
> took out a paper from his vest. "Justin’s pining away for

MIKE: The fjords?

> this report,
> ain’t he?"

TOM: [Justin] Oh, report! I love you so! When will you come and rescue me?

>

> Jennifer: "He’s not that bad, JB! He knows that you’re with your
> friends and will bring it to us when you can . . . especially with you,
> Gadget. Is it true, that your father . . . "

CROW: [Jennifer] …lived in eternal shame about his daughter?

>
> Gadget nodded. "Yes’m, I’m a NIMH Rat too.

TOM: [Gadget] Well, a NIMH *mouse*, anyway.

> Dr. Ages found that out.
> Daddy was one of the ones that got sucked down the vent and lived."

MIKE: [Gadget] He died three years before I was born.

>
> Jennifer ah’d. "I know some of them did survived.

TOM: I’d knowed some’d of’d them’d did survived!

MIKE: Lay off a bit, Tom. The grammar and spelling aren’t *that* bad.

> I know that one of
> them actually mailed himself to my old home.

TOM: Do you send a plot point first, second, or third class mail?

CROW: A third class stamp for a fourth class story.

> Why we at Thorn Valley
> ever heard more of them, I don’t know."

MIKE: Personally, I blame UPS.

>

> Gadget: "Hmm…You know, I’ve been thinking of going to Thorn Valley
> with JB, even if just to visit, but I don’t know.

TOM: Visit beautiful Thorn Valley this summer! See the spectacular rushing rivers and the pastoral green glens!

CROW: Not to mention the budding civilization founded by sentient rats!

> What about the Rescue
> Rangers?"

TOM: Killed in Vietnam.

>

> Montey: "What about the Rescue Rangers, Gadget Love?"

CROW: [Gadget] Oh, they were always hanging around backstage at our concerts…

>
> JB, Gadget, and Jennifer turned to see the Aussie Mouse, who was looking
> melancholy outside a window.

MIKE: This is like one of those quantum universe stories where it’s told in every verb tense.

>

> Montey: "This place can’t hold anything for us anymore, Mates.
> Especially from what I hear from the Disney Brass.

TOM: What I hear from the Disney woodwinds is more encouraging, but…

> You know that Fringe
> Crap I’ve been telling you about? Miramax? People from the American
> Way?

CROW: Nike? Sun? Resnick’s Troy Mattress Warehouse? White Castle?

> All this Political garbage that Michael Eisner brought with him
> that’s got a stranglehold of that company? Well, it’s getting worse,
> and it’s making Uncle Walt turn over in his urn. Heck, even Mickey
> Mouse left Disney over it, finally."

MIKE: Woah! Looney screed out of left field, guys! Duck!

>

> Gadget: "He finally left? Golly!"

CROW: Well, golly gosh darned gee whiz bang it all.

>

> Jonathan: "You’re kidding. That mouse *made* Disney."

TOM: …out of bubblegum and bailing wire! A miracle of animatronics!

>

> Monterey: "I’m as serious as one of Walt’s strokes. He’s roaming the
> US looking for talent

MIKE: What? He’s overlooking the whole Internet?

TOM: Yeah, how about that.

> to make his own little kingdom the way his old man
> would make it. I hear he’s hooking up with a FanFict Web Writer from
> St. Louis first.

CROW: Note to self: Put Saint Louis, Missouri together with Roanoke, Virigina on the "things to do when we get a laser on the satellite" list.

> Maybe we should hook up with something else as well,
> like the Legendary Rats of NIMH. Do you think they won’t mind the
> Rescue Rangers moving to Thorn Valley?"

MIKE: Isn’t that where the Herculoids lived?

>

> Jonathan: "I dunno, let’s ask them."

TOM: Okay. You got the Herculoids’ phone number?

>

> Jennifer: "I’m sure they’ll won’t mind."

MIKE: I’m just saying, you really should ask Mightor — they could have plans.

>

> Gadget: "Then let’s do it!"

TOM: All right, but it’s your mess when those gelatenous things slime you.

[ To Continue … ]

---

To the explaining of riffs. Mm. Boy, we really hit the ‘we hate this character’ riff a lot. I’d like to pretend that I held back on that class of riff, but I know at least one of these (“but you, we hate!”) was my contribution. I’m pretty sure “it gave me a chewey nougat center” is one of mine too; that’s got the tone of me being silly. I definitely did the riff observing that JB “isn’t on first-name terms with his own family”, the sort of little meaningless quirk of writing that I love catching. Noting that Gadget was a NIMH mouse, not a rat, was also my keen insight. “The muscine Marrissa” is yet another reference to the Marissa Picard “Kids Crew” fan fictions and if it seems to you we spelled “Marrissa” different last time, uh, look, a big distracting thing!

We also whiffed on spelling “Theodore Kaczynski” but there my excuse is we published this before Google was even a thing. You know what it was like using a search engine on a misspelled name in 1997?

Sun here was Sun Microsystems, makers of some of the most gorgeous computers of the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. We had lots of them at the grad school I was attending in 1997. Resnick’s Troy Mattress Warehouse was a mattress company in Troy, New York, back in my grad school days. Imagine the commercials for someplace burned into my memory, decades later, as Resnick’s Troy Mattress Warehouse. You know the place exactly, now. Saint Louis was David Gonterman’s home at the time. The reference to Roanoke, Virginia, is to Stephen Ratliff of, once again, the Marissa Picard stories. The Herculoids were a group of action-adventure heroes on a prehistoric planet in one of those 1960s Hanna-Barbera shows that were three unrelated-series shorts patched together. Mightor was one of the other shorts in the series. I don’t recall that they ever crossed over directly but there was this one Space Ghost multi-part adventure where he popped in on all the other action cartoons of the time, so they both probably got some screen time with him.

The Synthesizer Lifts From Gustav Holst, Though, Those Will Stay Timeless

Sorry, I was just struck by how when the movie The Right Stuff came out, it was about events that happened from 36 and 20 years before. If you were to make a movie with the same premise today it would be about events that happend from 76 to 60 years before. And these numbers are only going to increase as we go into the future, or decrease as we go into the past.

What’s Going On In Judge Parker? Why is April Parker out of CIA jail? March – June 2023

A shade-wrapped CIA agent offered April Parker her freedom last month in Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker. She accepted. April Parker has obvious reasons not to want to be in Secret CIA Jail for spy crimes. Agent Shadewrap’s motives are revealed to us, and to her assistant. She has some kind of special job she wants April Parker to volunteer for. Shadewrap also wants Parker to feel she has no choice but to work for her. So April Parker has to give up on her outside life, which won’t happen while April fantasizes about being free and having everything go swell. So this release is meant to drive April into despair. Also the arms of yet another CIA type building their little fiefdom of personally-loyal operatives.

This should catch you up to mid-June 2023 in Judge Parker, your home for comic strip couples awkwardly reconnecting. If you’re reading this after about September 2023 there should be a more up-to-date recap here. I’ll also pu any news I hear about the comic at that link. And if you’d like a link for all my story strip recaps, here it is. I hope hat helps you following things.

Judge Parker.

19 March – 10 June 2023.

In the epilogue to the previous story, Abbey Spencer took in Eric Duncan, sole survivor of Judge Duncan’s murder spree. He does well with the horses. And Abbey likes having traumatized foundlings around again, now that Neddy’s in Los Angeles and Sophie’s in college.

Neddy, in Los Angeles, is torn between emotional peaks. Her and Ronnie’s show was cancelled, just as the series about the secret life of April Parker was in preproduction. But Ronnie and Katherine Bryson married at last. And a guy who seems pleasant but is named ”Declan” talks with her. No signal where that’s leading.

Francesco Marciuliani and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker for the 3rd of April, 2023. Ronnie is right about this not being the moment, but I do believe in Neddy as someone who can’t wait for an appropriate moment when her brain is on a Mission.

Sam Driver, in-between finding excuses to hang out at Abbey’s, partners with Gloria Shannon for his … investigative lawyer stuff or whatever he does. And Shannon, showing remarkable grace toward a guy who got her husband killed, suggests hiring the suspended Detective Yelich. They need help with some client we haven’t heard anything more about.

So what have we been hearing more about? Shade-wrapped agents in CIA Secret Prison, for one. Agent Shadewrap, who’d arranged April Parker’s arrest, has an offer for the framed super-hyper-ultra agent. The CIA, in their first intelligence screwup and boggling failure of oversight in history, missed April Parker passing her cache of secret documents to Randy Parker. That cache was what Neddy and Ronnie used to start their second season. The CIA, having finally got around to their Tubi account, discovered the show and wants it buried. Leaning on the producers to cancel the show is easy enough. For April Parker, though …

Francesco Marciuliani and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker for the 22nd of April, 2023. This has got me wondering what kind of protective case they’ve put on that Secret CIA Prison phone there.

Agent Shadewrap’s offer is April Parker can go free. If she can keep her mouth shut about all this, then they’ll find a use for her talents. Or she can stay in Secret Prison forever. April accepts the offer and calls Randy Parker, who … can’t talk right this minute. This was, for me, the high point of the story as it’s the sort of fumbling awkward thing that’s comic yet real. Randy doesn’t want to talk to April, agenda unknown, while Charlotte can hear. (She hears anyway.) It takes longer than April and Agent Shadewrap figure for him to drop Charlotte with his father and get some privacy. Good comic action there.

Less comic: Charlotte doesn’t want anything to do with her mother. Randy says she needs time, and leaves her with Abbey, who’s really getting back into foundling-care. But April sees Charlotte’s point. She despairs that between the whole CIA thing and then taking Randy and Charlotte to live in secret with her mother for a year has wrecked life forever. This we learn was Agent Shadewrap’s plan: when April learns there’s nothing for her on the outside, she’ll be a wholly committed Sith Agent.

Francesco Marciuliani and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker for the 28th of May, 2023. Is … is that Secret CIA Guy there playing Neopets? Is that how he’s staying awake in that dark room listening to people he doesn’t know all day?

Is the plan going wrong? Because Charlotte nags Abbey to bring her back home, and Randy sees this as a family triumph. It’s not smooth, but April has reason for hope.

Meanwhile Abbey, enjoying the part of kids where you interact with them for a while and then they go home, turns the Spencer Ranch into a day camp. The first day goes great, and Sophie comes in to talk about how terrified the kids are of horses to find Abbey and Sam making out. And that’s where we stand in mid-June.

Next Week!

I wasn’t sure all that much was happening in Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye … but then something startling dropped today. So I’ll look at that twice-a-week strip next week, if all goes to plan. I mean my plan. Anyone else’s plan is their business.

Truly, the Most Funky Winkerbean of Feelings

Jeez, just been thinking how it’s been almost six months now since I had any reason to be angry at or annoyed by or all smug about Funky Winkerbean. I feel so much like I want to point out how people don’t work like that, but I don’t have any that that’s enough that to be like that about. But I want to feel annoyed in exactly that way and none of the comic strips are stepping up to it.

This Budes Very Well

Feeling very excited about getting a grant from the Institute of Theoretical Wordology (they’re still working on the name). English has got words for the short and long form of almost every vowel in the form b-d: bad, bade, bed, bead, bid, bide, bod, bode, and bud. If we can find where the missing ‘bude’ has gone and what it should mean we’ll get bonus points and I’m excited to be part of the search! Yes, we are all aware that Bude is the name of a seaside town in Cornwall, but that doesn’t count because every sound is the name of a seaside town in Cornwall. There are four Cornish towns whose names are the sound of sneezing so hard you fall down the stairs. I mean a real word, and we’ll find it yet.

Statistics Saturday: Ranking of I-995’s

There are no I-995’s. Not ones that are planned but not built, not ones that were built but were decommissioned, not ones that are cosigned so completely nobody sees any but an alternate name for them. No, I-995 is a mere figment of the imagination, an Interstate name reserved for creators of fiction who need a road but don’t want an actual road to get unwanted attention from people pulling a joke. In this regard it is like I-238, another rank fiction. Or like I-911, which all logic tells us should have been the name of an X-Files ripoff show that bounced between UPN and the WB for a couple years in the late 90s and early 2000s until it became too tasteless to carry on. So go, create your fictions with I-995, secure that you are adding to the vast tapestry of the world’s culture in ways that are approved by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. Rejoice!

Reference: Sovereignty and an Empty Purse: Banks And Politics In The Civil War,Bray Hammond.

Again, in Case You Need to Know Exactly Who I Am

I was slow to wake this morning because I was in the middle of a dream when the alarm went off. In the dream, I was explaining some important things about the constitution of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the 17th century to someone who had made an uninformed joke about the University of Kraków. Anyway, I just had to finish up a couple quick thoughts about the functioning of the Liberum Veto before I could turn the alarm off and join the waking world so I’m sorry to my love for unintended wakings-up.

[ Who are all these people who don’t know who I am by now? ]

MiSTed: The Rangers of NIMH II, Part 2

Welcome to this reproduction of the 1998-ish Mystery Science Theather 3000 fan fiction The Rangers of NIMH II. With part two here, we finally get past the host sketch and into the story proper. The whole of this MiSTing should appear at this link. As mentioned last week, I was only one of four riffers for this piece. Håkan Svensson edited together my, Kevin A Pezzano, and Christopher Street’s riffs to make this reasonably coherent whole.

While there was a whole Rescue Rangers/Secret of NIMH fan fiction before this, I think the story holds up on its own. The opening seems interesting enough before you even know what’s going on. So let’s jump into the theater and the start of David Gonterman’s story.

---

[Our heroes enter the theater]

TOM: Mike, if Dr. Forrester ever shows us that Batman movie, promise you will kill me first.

MIKE: You know you can count on me, pal.

> The remains of the lab is combed over by a vanload of scientists.

MIKE: They’re covering up the lab’s bald spot.

> They
> picked that place clean,

CROW: They left not the tiniest piece of flesh on the bone.

> searching for anything they might be interested
> in.

TOM: Mmm… Month-old Chinese food… some Lego blocks… big box of toothpicks…

> But, all they can do is look at each other and shake their heads.

MIKE: Wow, they didn’t waste any time getting to the meat of the story, did they?

CROW: More like the disgusting intestinal flora of the story.

>
> They’ll won’t find anything of interest there as much as they won’t know
> that they’re being watched.

MIKE: Hey, I think the narrator’s gonna spoil the story for us! Where’s the netiquette and spoiler space, bucko?

TOM: I take it this is Gonterman’s idea of subtle foreshadowing.

>
> Especially by a rat with a holographic gyroscope.

TOM: [chuckling] Isn’t it cute when they try to use science?

CROW: He’s looking through the gyroscope and… yes! There’s the pole star, right where he left it.

>
> Another rat, much younger than this rat in question approaches him.

MIKE: "Thank you, Ratbert, but we’re *not* hiring right now."

>
> "All of the captured rodents are recovered and accounted for, Justin."
>
> "Good going, Rasco.

MIKE: Rasco P. Coltrane?

TOM: Hyuk hyuk hyuk.

> Er, anything left for these scientists?"
>
> "No way. What we didn’t pick up, that Zannie dude in that freaky armor
> picked up. Even though he didn’t get the formula, he sure runs a tight
> ship."

TOM: [singing] If they could see me now, out on a fun ship cruise! I’m wearing stupid armor and killing who I choose!

> "Hmmm, all that’s needed now is for Jonathan to contact us.

CROW: Or we could go drinking instead.

> Where’s
> that mousie at?"

TOM: [robotic monotone] He’s got two turntables and a microphone.

>
> "He’s still hooked up with those Rangers I told you about, I suspected
> he’d stay, with what I’ve heard from the grapevine."

MIKE: Also, the azaleas are planning a rebellion. November 17th. Spread the word.

>
> "So have I. Ras, that tree the Rescue Rangers lives in isn’t far from
> where Mrs. Brisby is visiting.

CROW: And launching her ten-city concert tour!

> Send word to her and tell him that we
> need to talk."

CROW: "Send word to *her* and tell *him*"? Could we have antecedents for these pronouns, please?

TOM: Ah, that David Gonterman. Changing characters’ sex in the middle of sentences again.

MIKE: Up to the usual business, I see.

>
> "Will do."

MIKE: And no slapping him this time.

> _________________________________
>

> FoxFire Studios Presents:

TOM: [singing] The fox, the fox, the fox is on fire…

> The Rangers of NIMH II:

CROW: Where Rangers Dare.

> Gadget Hackwrench and the Rats of NIMH

MIKE: [Art Fern] Starring Fay Wray, Doris Day, Charles Kay, Ernest Jaye, and Splats the wonder pigeon.

>
> Based on ‘Chip ‘n’ Dale’s Rescue Rangers’ by The Walt Disney Company
> and ‘The Secret of NIMH’ by Sullivan-Bluth Studios

MIKE: Thankfully, Gilbert managed to extricate himself before the terror began!

TOM: What, Gonterman’s so ashamed he didn’t even want to put his name on it?

>
> __________________________________________
>

> Part 1:
>
> "Yoo-hooooo, over here, you silly humans!

TOM: Silly human LAAAAAADIES!

> Yer ain’t gonna find anything
> over there! Ha-ha, made you look!"

CROW: And Pee Wee Herman teams up with the Rescue Rangers.

>
> Jonathan Brisby was having some yucks

TOM: That’s pretty much my response to this whole sordid business.

> at the expense of the scientists
> and what he calls their ‘Stupid Human Tricks.’

MIKE: And you thought Letterman was going downhill *before*!

>
> Gadget Hackwrench was mere

TOM: I imagine she *was* mere. She *is* a mouse, after all.

> standing by and giggling at her new
> boyfriend’s comical teasing.

TOM: Then she noticed Jonathan.

>
> Monterey Jack was inside fixing up his prized Cheese Chowder when he
> heard a knock on the door.

CROW: Touch of parmesean and a little sprinkling of arsenic… heh heh… They’ll never see it coming.

> He opened it to find a shy field mouse in a
> flowing blue cape.

CROW: [mouse] Trick or treat for UNICEF!

TOM: [mouse] Want to buy some Mouse Scout cookies, mister?

MIKE: [mouse] Have you given your heart over to Jesus? Here, have a pamphlet!

>

> Montey: "Hello, ma’am. Something we can do for you?"
>
> Mouse:

MIKE: Mystery Mouse, enter and sign in, please!

TOM: Oh, joy. "Mouse"! Yet another fascinating character brought to you by the FoxFire Studios!

> "H-hello. Is this the Rescue Rangers–"

TOM: Only tangentially.

>

> Montey: "Right you are miss. Come on inside. I’m Monterey Jack."

MIKE: [Mouse] But I just… I’m only looking for the library… uh…

>

> Mouse: "Thank you. I’m Jennifer, and I’m looking for my great-
> grandson, and I’ve heard he’s here. Jonathan Brisby by name."

CROW: He’s a subplot, by trade.

>

> Montey: "You’re heard right, love. I’ll whistle him down for y-y-y-y-
> y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y"

TOM: Someone hit Monty, he’s skipping again!

MIKE: Why not go straight to the source and hit the author?

>

> Jennifer: "Pardon?"
>
> Montey: "Your great-grandson?"

CROW: No, my great-grandson.

>
> She nods.
>

> Montey: "Then that makes you–"

MIKE: Gonterman’s dumbest plot device yet!

>

> Jonathan: "Grandma Jenny!"

MIKE: So, JB Junior is the great-grandson of the original Jonathan, but Ms. Brisby is his grandma. Great attention to detail here.

TOM: I just noticed, guys: this fanfic has gone from narrative to script form all of a sudden.

CROW: Ah. This *really is* a sequel to "The Rangers of NIMH".

>
> Jennifer turned around to see

MIKE: A new car!

> the mouse she was looking for, the two
> greeted each other in a hug.

CROW: Hi, I’m Jenny, and I’ll be your family for this evening.

>

> Gadget: "You know her, JB?"

TOM: [Jonathan] Yeah, I know her! She’s my great-grandmother!

MIKE: Sheesh, hasn’t she been paying attention?

CROW: Have you been, Mike?

MIKE: Touché.

>

> Jonathan: "Yeah, I do. Gadget, Monterey, this here’s Jennifer Brisby.
> She’s the widow of the original JB."

MIKE: [Jonathan] And several other rich mice with large insurance policies that died mysteriously. Go figure, eh?

>
> She curtseyed.
>

> Montey: "Too-la-loo, you look exactly like the one in the Movie, Mrs.
> Briz."

TOM: Except you, we hate!

>

> Gadget: "Golly, if you’re his great-grandmother, you don’t look the
> age."

MIKE: Well, except that the gestation period for mice is twelve days.

>

> Jennifer: "Why, thank you. But really, you should thank this stone
> Little Johnny wears."

CROW: [Jonathan] Grandma! You promised you’d never tell anyone about my little Johnny!

>
> She lifted it up with one finger, and it flashed,

MIKE: [amulet] Hey! I’m the *real* star of this fanfic!

> making her jerk her
> hand back, as if she touched something unbearably hot.

TOM: No, no. Only daddy touch.

>

> Jonathan: "The amulet’s kinda developed a ‘tude while I’ve been weaning
> it, Grandma.

TOM: I hear the amulet even has a tongue piercing.

CROW: Sheesh, magical stones these days!

> That’s why I always wear these gloves, you see?"

MIKE: It’s not cause the animators can’t draw hands! I swear!

>
> Jennifer was cooling her finger with her mouth. "And be dressed like a
> Toon? No thank you."

CROW: [Jennifer] I *like* wearing pants!

---

[ To Continue … ]

Perhaps it’s my fading memory of glory days but I think a lot of the riffs this section were mine. I always did tend toward the saturation-bombing approach for riffing and one good thing about collaborative MiSTings is an editor would trim out the weaker stuff. The one about “isn’t it cute when they try to use science” is definitely one of my riffs and I think it was nominated for a best-riff award when Web Site Number Nine, back then the depository for MST3K fan fiction, started giving out awards. As fun a riff as it was, I always felt a little guilty that it seems like there might be something one could reasonably call a “holographic gyroscope”, probably measuring orientation by differential changes in coherent light. As far as I can tell, though, there isn’t any such a thing yet, so the riff stands.

The Art Fern riff was one of mine, and one of my favorites because I feel like I nailed the voice of both the Brains and of Johnny Carson’s character. It was weirdly hard to write because I felt some need to stick to actual actors with names that rhyme with “Wray”, and scoured the Internet Movie Database. Thus how Charles Kay and Ernest Jay got summoned from obscurity. Not answered: how I failed to think of “Danny Kaye” and “Alice Faye”. I apologize for my mistake, but I imagine Charles Kay and Ernest Jay appreciate being thought of.

The riff about wearing gloves because the animators can’t draw hands has never made sense but I stand by it anyway.

Statistics May: How Twitter Knocked Out My Readership Last Month

I have not used my @Nebusj account on Twitter in years. Safari decided it wanted to interact with it very slow, if at all, and while I could have just used Firefox instead I didn’t. Since that time, all I’ve tweeted there has been from an automated post relay that WordPress offers. Well, recently, Elon J Fudd, Billionaire, who owns a mansion and a web site, decided to charge way lots more for the tools to run this service. And the service said, ‘nah’, and shut down in the middle of the month. So my biggest act of promoting myself, letting this automated tweet go out once a day, vanished mid-month.

So this should explain why my readership was way down in May. According to WordPress there were 4,451 page views here in May, the lowest monthly total in a year. And there were a mere 2,537 unique visitors, also the lowest monthly total in a year. Seems easy to explain, doesn’t it? The loss of that link sank me below the 5,385.5 views and 2,905 unique visitors I’d have expected as the median monthly readership. Or the 5,510.3 views and 2,975.2 views and visitors of the arithmetic mean month. Easy!

It bothers me that I didn’t get to take the snapshot one minute sooner, so I wouldn’t have the empty bar of June 2023 hanging around the right there. But no, I don’t have any reason to think I’m not basically neurotypical, why do you ask?

Only maybe not so. WordPress lets me look at readership figures by day, by week, and by month, and the daily and weekly figures have a weird result. They don’t look much different before May 16th — the Twitter cutoff — and after. The two full weeks after the 16th were busier than the two full weeks before. If I am missing “deserved” readers, it looks more like because I didn’t have an extraordinary peak week, like I did around Easter with the Easter-egg-dye-color report. Well, not every month can be me patiently explaining to readers that no, The Phantom is not dead.

What was most popular around here in May? Me admitting I only got this one Far Side in 2020. But of the things published in May, here’s the top five viewed pieces:

• Did I Just Discover Something About Charlie Brown’s Family?
• The Guy Who Draws _Beetle Bailey_ Has Seen More Squirrels
• What’s Going On In Gasoline Alley? How could Walt Wallet have met Abraham Lincoln? February – April 2023
• MiSTed: The Tale of Grumpy Weasel, Chapter 25
• Starting to Think the News May Be Bad

And, of course, what people consistently want to know about are the story comics and what’s happening in them. My plan for the next couple weeks is to cover these comics, in this order:

• Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker (13 June)
• Shadia Amin and Randy Milholland’s Olive and Popeye (20 June)
• Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop (27 June)
• Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom (Weekdays) (4 July)
• Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy (11 July)

I’m still experimenting with Olive and Popeye as part of the rotation; I’m not sure it has quite enough story to deserve this. But I’ve been rooting for Popeye to return to the pop culture so will give him a chance. I’m also really, really thinking about doing Rip Haywire recaps. Going to have to see if I can do a test run on that.

Again, I’m sorry the map isn’t larger, but for some reason WordPress thinks the important thing is having plenty of whitespace on their maps.

There were 88 things as good as countries sending me readers in May. Here’s who they were:

Country	Readers
United States	2,997
India	142
Canada	137
Australia	120
Brazil	113
United Kingdom	113
Germany	106
Italy	69
Philippines	62
Finland	41
Norway	38
Spain	35
France	32
Mexico	32
Poland	28
Sweden	27
Romania	21
Bangladesh	19
Japan	19
Denmark	18
Argentina	15
Netherlands	14
South Africa	14
El Salvador	12
New Zealand	11
Peru	11
Thailand	10
European Union	9
Portugal	9
Hong Kong SAR China	8
Malaysia	8
Nigeria	8
Serbia	8
United Arab Emirates	7
Colombia	6
Croatia	6
Israel	6
Morocco	6
Belgium	5
Ireland	5
Jamaica	5
Kenya	5
Ukraine	5
Algeria	4
Greece	4
Indonesia	4
Puerto Rico	4
Saudi Arabia	4
Singapore	4
Austria	3
Dominican Republic	3
Ecuador	3
Georgia	3
Russia	3
Venezuela	3
Albania	2
American Samoa	2
Bahamas	2
Bulgaria	2
Chile	2
Costa Rica	2
Estonia	2
Hungary	2
Kuwait	2
Mali	2
Palestinian Territories	2
Seychelles	2
Slovenia	2
South Korea	2
Antigua & Barbuda	1
Armenia	1
Bolivia	1
Bosnia & Herzegovina	1
Egypt	1
French Polynesia	1 (*)
Guatemala	1
Honduras	1
Martinique	1
Oman	1
Pakistan	1
Slovakia	1
Sri Lanka	1 (*)
Switzerland	1
Taiwan	1
Tunisia	1
U.S. Virgin Islands	1
Uruguay	1
Vietnam	1

I agree, that’s way more readers from Sweden and from Argentina than I would expect. Once again, I’m never going to turn away a reader, but I feel myself such a provincial interest I’m stunned I Have anything to say that could interest anyone in Bangladesh.

Pakistan and Sri Lanka were single-view countries in April 2023 too. I didn’t keep track of what single-view countries were in March. Sorry.

If you’d like to be a regular reader here, I’m sorry the last bit of my Twitter presence is gone. You can sign up to get posts delivered by e-mail, using the little box in the upper right corner that says ”Follow _Another Blog, Meanwhile_ via Email”. Or you can use the button above that to add this blog to your WordPress reader. You can use https://nebushumor.wordpress.com/feed in your RSS reader to get essays in a nice, organized fashion in your own reader, too. Please choose as fits your needs. I’ll be around a while yet.

What’s Going On In Gil Thorp? Doesn’t Martinez Know You Can Have Two Starting Pitchers? March – June 2023

One thread in the baseball-season story in Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp is that Valley Tech coach Luke Martinez isn’t giving his son, Pedro Martinez, chances to pitch. He’s got a foreign-exchange student, Kwan Tak, who’s hogging all the glory. But you need more than one starter for a baseball team, and Pedro Martinez was bred to be a hall-of-famer. He’s got allegedly a 90 mph fastball; between Kwan and Pedro, Valley Tech should be winning games they aren’t even in. I saw one Gil Thorp commenter ask whether Henry Barajas even knows how the game is played.

I imagine Barajas does. There are a couple things going on here that you might miss if you aren’t reading three months’ worth of story at once. While you need multiple starters, there’s the starter you give the most important games and there’s your second-chair. And that hurts. And Luke Martinez is busy screwing up his relationship with his kids, including Pedro Martinez. The last we saw him on-screen, Pedro was upset that his father had made their win against Milford all about his coaching, rather than Pedro’s playing. Pedro didn’t play basketball for Valley Tech, a gap you might have thought was just because not everyone plays every sport. Except that last month Marty Moon asked Martinez why Pedro didn’t play. That attention makes the picture clearer.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 19th of May, 2023. I understand the desire, to avoid apparent conflicts of interest, in Coach Martinez deferring to his assistant in formally deciding to replace Pedro with Kwan. However, Kwan is still Kim’s cousin, so the problem remains. Anyway, between this and the Marty Moon line about Pedro not playing basketball we get that the relationship between Pedro and his father is getting explosive.

The picture: Pedro Martinez is angry at his father. He didn’t play basketball, either on Pedro’s or Luke’s initiative we don’t know. Now? It appears Coach Martinez wants a more compliant pitcher than even his own son. Whether he’s actually not playing Pedro at all, or whether he’s benching Pedro for the bigger games, is ambiguous so far. Pedro’s sense of rejection is understandable to me.

So this should catch you up to early June 2023 in Gil Thorp. All going well, I’ll have another plot recap by September 2023 at this link, so look there if you’re reading this in my far future. And if you need to catch up more quickly. Now back to the sports department.

Gil Thorp.

13 March – 4 June 2023.

My last visit to Milford saw the basketball season nearing its end. To seal up an undefeated season, assistant coach Emmett Tays brings in a friend. It’s special celebrity guest star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar! Who gives advice about outlasting the competition; he recommends it, himself. (Later, for Free Comic Book Day, we get special celebrity guest star Steenz, Heart of the City‘s cartoonist. And we get one more special guest star in the window of strips I’m discussing.)

The competition will be a tough one: Valley Tech versus the undefeated Milford for the 2023 Boys Basketball Championship. The game starts, reader time, the 24th of March. (Marty Moon says he’s joined by “the legendary Lachlan Maclean”, a name unfamiliar to me. A commenter at GoComics found that he’s a Louisville, Kentucky, sports reporter, so counts as our third celebrity guest star! Let’s give him a big hand and congratulate the strip on more celebrity ‘gets’ than Dick Tracy managed this cycle.) It’s a hard-fought match, both teams playing well and Coach Martinez not being all weird about Gil Thorp. It’s either team’s game until an accident with one minute left to play. Rodney Barnes — who with Tobias Gordon was selling vape sticks to support the sports program — collides hard with a Valley Tech player. He’s knocked out hard enough Tobias starts giving CPR. Rodney’s taken off by ambulance, and he’ll be in the hospital until the next storyline starts.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 4th of April, 2023. That was a surprise and part of me was expecting that Rodney might die here. Don’t tell me it can’t happen; Neal Rubin had a very effective storyline where a player-character got killed in a freak traffic accident, and Barajas is more eager to take narrative leaps than Rubin.

After Rodney’s taken away — and they get the news he’s conscious — the teams agree to finish the game, telling one another it’s what Rodney would want. So he would: Milford gets the final basket and tops a perfect season with the local championship. Martinez congratulates Gil Thorp on a good game, “but know this … this ain’t over,” causing people in adjacent comics to roll their eyes. “C’mon, mate,” Ginger Meggs chides. “You don’t have to be all weird like this. Cricket wallaby billycart.” But he does, and he’s only going to ramp it up for the baseball story.

---

The baseball story — also, Chapter 3 of Henry Barajas’s first year here, “The Prestige”, begins the 12th of April. There’s miscellaneous little pieces of business. Coach Thorp’s kids are still hanging out with Luke Martinez’s kids. Martinez’s younger kid wishes his dad were nice like Gil Thorp. Marty Moon asks Luke Martinez why Pedro — signed up to be Valley Tech’s star pitcher — didn’t play basketball. Marty’s so used to being told “because shut up is why” he doesn’t even register there’s a story there. It’s right up there in my prologue.

But he does find the long-simmering story of the vape sticks. A leading comment from Gil Thorp sends Tobias freaking out that someone knows what they’re up to. He’s swears that he’s out, even if Rod won’t quit yet, just as Marty Moon snaps pictures of their dealing.

Mimi Thorp’s on the golf circuit. She gets a bouquet of roses and a supporting card on the start of this tour. They’re from Ericka Carter, who’d been giving her lessons.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 1st of June, 2023. The strip from November 16, 2022, saw Keri slug Dorothy for not-undeniably-laughing-at-her. And before you ask how Keri didn’t serve detention for that: Gil Thorp called in a favor, and Keri got mandatory counselor visits but not detention yet.

And Keri Thorp, playing on the girls’ team, has a strange encounter with her bully Dorothy Wolfe. Wolfe’s been pitching a great season, topping it with a no-hitter. Someone on the losing team congratulates her with an elbow into the chest. It starts a brawl, and Dorothy’s stunned when the rest of the team comes to her defense. Wolfe hugs Keri, who startles me by thinking, “She even smells pretty”. It’s a gentle open to a much-needed Pride Month. Also between this and Ericka Carter, Mary Worth has like 350 years of social catching-up to do.

The central sport of all this is baseball, or possibly softball. Someball, anyway. Gil Thorp’s having some trouble finding a pitcher. Kaz gives his old boss one more good tip by reminding him of Greg Hamm, star of Neal Rubin’s final story for Gil Thorp. And Hamm is up for a special guest appearance, giving faintly Yoda-ish lessons about how to feel the air, the sunlight, the position of the catcher. And to make your pitches count; you don’t know how many you’ll get.

Luke Martinez, meanwhile, is almost sick for choice in pitchers. His own son would be killer enough. But Martinez goes all the way to Korea, to coax assistant coach Kim’s cousin into coming over as a foreign exchange student. He offers the promise of being a hugely noticed fish in their pond. Martinez even shows off that he speaks Korean to do this. I like learning buffoon-leaning characters like Martinez have unexpected skills. I assume he’s doing all this on his dime. I can’t imagine Valley Tech has a huge recruiting travel budget for the boys baseball team.

Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp for the 3rd of June, 2023. I’m not sure whether Coach Martinez is genuinely blown away by Kwan’s wit, or is supporting him for doing this well in wordplay in a foreign language. Absent contrary indications, I’m going to suppose Martinez is impressed Kwan is joking like a native speaker and building him up for that.

Kwan Tak, “The Korean Nightmare”, comes to Valley Tech. Martinez bunches his own son to start Kwan, raising eyebrows from Gil Thorp and scowls from Pedro. Kwan — staying with the Martinezes, for that extra dose of energy — gets along great with Coach Martinez. But also (we learn this week) feels isolated and pressured by his family. They have unrealistic high expectations for accomplishment in the field of high school baseball.

And this, more or less, is where we’ve reached by early June. I don’t know how much of this will wrap up before Barajas’s one-year anniversary of the strip, coming up in five weeks, but we’ll learn together.

Milford Sports Watch!

Who’s Milford playing? Who’s Milford talking about? These teams, and these days. If you want their win-loss record you can work it out from here.

• New Britain (13 March)
• Oakford, Central, Jefferson, Valley Tech (20 March)
• Jefferson, Valley Tech (24 March – 8 April)
• Oakwood (26 – 27 April)
• Bobcats (boys and girls) (2 – 5 May)
• Goshen (9 May)
• Valley Tech, Goshen (20 May)
• Jefferson (26 May)

Next Week!

It’s spies! And betrayals! And family intrigue! And probably a three-month jump ahead to the next season! Three months of Francesco Marciuliano and Mike Manley’s Judge Parker gets reduced to like 800 words next week, I hope. See you then.

I Understand There Was an Apple Thing Today

Even though I haven’t — yet — got Apple sending me a bunch of e-mails with the subject lines somehow a different color from normal suggesting I buy a thing, I know something happened. Mostly I can see that everybody I know online is surrounded by people angry about Apple. I feel like it used to be Apple would do these things and people would sometimes be not-angry about it. But that was also back when Apple had a market capitalization of their unreturned pop bottles. And back then their big announcements were things like they had a search box called ‘Sherlock’ and it would tell you when movies were at the nearby movie theater, if you wanted to log in and wait for the thing to take as few as three hours to get the current movie listings. This was better than checking the listings in the Albany Times-Union, though, at least if you didn’t live within a 90 minute drive of the Albany Times-Union delivery region.

The Strangest Comfort of My Life

I went and checked and it turns out I don’t remember the theme to It’s A Living nearly as well as I thought. Mostly what I remember is the chorus about how “it’s … a living” and that bit about a bed of roses. So, good, I guess, that I don’t have that taking up otherwise useful space in my mind but then why do I remember anything at all about the theme to the sitcom It’s Your Move? It’s not just because it had a checkerboard for its opening credits, right? It can’t be just that?

Statistics Saturday: Ranking of I-895’s

Location	Ranking
Delaware	Relegated
Maryland	The fast food place made an extra bag of fries by mistake, you can have it
Massachusetts/Rhode Island	Imaginary
New Jersey/Pennsylvania	Waffle fries
New York	Steak fries
Virginia	Curly fries

Reference: Falling To Earth: An Apollo 15 Astronaut’s Journey To The Moon, Al Worden, Francis French.

But the Main Thing, I Suppose, Is

Sorry, I’m feeling humbled right now. It’s struck me that if I were cast into a Yesterday-type scenario, cast into a world eerily like ours except where none of the Beatles songs were known, I’d be hard-pressed to reconstruct “Eleanor Rigby,” one of the greatest expressions of the alienation of modernity. And yet, I’d be in great shape if the world needed the theme to It’s A Living, a short-lived early-80s sitcom brought back for first-run syndication for the latter half of the decade for no reason anyone ever wrote down so they could remember.

MiSTed: The Rangers of NIMH II, Part 1

With the conclusion of my all-new original Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan fiction, The Tale of Grumpy Weasel, what better to do this week than start sharing a vintage one? And so I bring you the circa-1998 MiSTing of The Rangers of NIMH II, an original fan fiction by David Gonterman.

This MiSTing is different from ones I’ve done before in that I didn’t write the whole thing. A popular thing to do, especially for high-profile fan fictions, was collaborations. The process was about like you’d imagine. Everyone participating would take the original fan fiction, add their own riffs, and then an editor would merge them all into a collective whole. I only edited a couple — maybe only one? — joint MiSTing myself. The work of picking riffs was not bad, just not something I found fun.

Ah, but offering riffs? That was a great joy and I never tired of that. I was fortunate to get on several big projects, including a bunch of the famous Stephen Ratliff “Marissa Picard” stories — and, yes, The Rangers of NIMH II.

The Rangers of NIMH, part I, was one of the gold-standard MiSTings. David Gonterman and Paul Lapensee’s premise was elegant in its simplicity: team up Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers with the mice and rats from The Secret of NIMH. In the first part of the story, uh … I think Chip and Dale get accepted into the Rescue Aid Society (from The Rescuers/The Rescuers Down Under) and past that all I remember is that Gonterman didn’t have tight separation between his opinions and his character’s opinions. Don’t worry; there is nothing you need to know from the original (on which I did nothing) to follow the second.

Håkan Svensson was the editor for this MiSTing, and I believe wrote all the host sketches, but I could be wrong about that. Kevin A Pezzano and Christopher Street were the other riffers. I remember working with Pezzano on something but forget what. I don’t think I did any other MiSTings with Street.

I don’t know just how many installments this will be, because the fanfic doesn’t lend itself to nice discrete units the way Arthur Scott Bailey’s novels do, and it’s too hot and I’m too lazy to decide how to split up the whole thing right now. The whole of The Rangers of NIMH II MiSTing should be at this link. Thank you. And now, our story …

---

MiSTed by Joseph Nebus, Kevin A. Pezzano and Christopher Street

Edited by Håkan Svensson

---

[Season 7 opening theme. Open on the SOL, which is covered in art materials. Pencils and half-open bottles of ink everywhere, bristol board pages with half-completed comic pages adorn the walls, and scattered comic books lay about. Tom and Crow are in deep discussion.]

TOM: Okay, okay…so in the first panel, Marrissa stands like Superman…

CROW: Yeah! In a strawberry-colored wedding dress!

TOM: Oooh, good one!

[Mike enters.]

MIKE: Hey, guys. What’s with the mess?

TOM: Oh, well, Crow and I came across this old stash of small-press comic books…

CROW: Graphic novels!

TOM: Comic books!

CROW: [shouting] Graphic novels!!!

MIKE: Woah, woah! Calm down! Actually, they *would* be comic books. Graphic novels are those large, single story squarebound collections that… [trails off after noticing that Tom and Crow are staring at him] Okay, the whole question is academic. But what does that have to do with what you guys are doing?

CROW: Well, I remember all the great small-press comics that I used to read, and I figured, hey… *I* can do that!

TOM: Yeah, all you need is an idea and cash for the printer.

CROW: It’s like fanfic writing… but with *money*! Just look at this comic!

MIKE: "Crossed Swords" [flips it open] "with real dungeon adventure inside". This looks like it was done by two 12 year old D&D; geeks! The "dungeon" makes no sense, and the art resembles my little brother’s doodling during math tests!

CROW: Yeah, isn’t it great? It’s fan fiction with bucks! If *they* can have a comic, so can we!

TOM: And to save us the trouble of coming up with ideas on our own, we decided to actually make comic adaptations of fanfics!

MIKE: Oh boy…

[commercial sign]

MIKE: Uh-oh… We’ll be right back.

[commercials]

[SOL]

TOM: All right, where were we?

CROW: Marrissa was just about to order her crew to sterilize the surface of a nearby world, in a gigantic splash page!

MIKE: Guys, this will never work! Who wants to read a comic about a group of teenagers with uncanny abilities that routinely save the entire world from stupid villains with even stupider plots, amidst much death and destruction?

TOM: You mean like in any X-Men book, Mike?

CROW: Or Troublemakers?

TOM: Or Gen 13?

CROW: Or Teen Titans?

TOM: Or Akira?

MIKE: Never mind.

[Red light flashes]

MIKE: Besides, the Evil Ones are calling.

[Deep 13]

DR. F: Ah, yes, Mike and the mechanicals. You should consider yourselves very lucky, since you will have front row seats today, when I launch the scheme that will give me control of the world!

[SoL]

MIKE: Let me guess… Mind-control rays through the ethereal waves?

TOM: Fluoridation of water?

CROW: Worldwide transmission of dumb puppet shows?

[Deep 13]

PEARL: Clayton, they’re *mocking* you!

DR. F: Don’t worry, mother, they will give in once they experience the wrath of… the *Sequelizer*!

[The first bars of Bach’s "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" play as Dr.
Forrester uncovers a machine behind him.]

DR. F: As you all know, the sequel to any work is more often than not worse than the original. Now, imagine what would happen if someone would invent a machine that would automatically produce a sequel to anything fed into it?

[SoL]

CROW: They would make it head of a major movie company?

[Deep 13]

DR. F: No, it would allow me to weaken the minds of everyone by flooding the world with the most putrid works ever filmed or written! Allow me to demonstrate. [Dr. F holds up a videotape.] This is a tape of "Batman Returns," a movie with at least some good qualities to it.

[He feeds the tape to the Sequelizer. Wisps of steam shoot out from it as
its cogs grind loudly. Finally, the sequelizer stops with a hiss as it
spits out a new tape, which Dr. Forrester holds up to the camera.]

DR. F: It’s "Batman Forever," a movie with not so many good qualities about it! To save time, I prepared the machine with "Batman Forever" earlier, and it spit out "Batman & Robin"! Now, just imagine what would happen if I fed the machine with *that*!

[SoL]

MIKE: Uhhh…

[Deep 13]

DR. F: Well, guess what, you don’t have to guess, because I already did it! It’s "Batman: The Final Frontier" starring and directed by William Shatner!

[SoL]

TOM: Mike, I’m scared.

MIKE: Me too. Please, Dr. Forrester, we’ll do whatever you want, just don’t show us *that*!

[Deep 13]

DR. F: Of course I wouldn’t! I’ve got evil on a *much* grander scale lined up especially for you!

PEARL: I’m proud of you, Clayton. I just didn’t think that you were capable of *that* much evil.

[She pinches Dr. Forrester’s cheek.]

DR. F: [embarrassed] Whatever. Anyway, I’m going to give you a special treat since you piled up Deep 13 with waffles in the last MiSTing. [He puts on a rubber glove and carefully picks up a zip-locked plastic bag marked with skull symbols. The bag contains some sheets of paper.] This is a hardcopy of "The Rangers of NIMH," that… *remarkable* fanfic by David Gonterman and Paul Lapensee, and there are no points awarded for guessing what I intend to do with it.

[SoL]

MIKE: No!

TOM: Don’t!

CROW: You are meddling with powers you cannot *possibly* comprehend!

[Deep 13]

DR. F: [grinning even more evilly than usual] Just watch me.

[As Dr. Forrester feeds the fanfic to the Sequelizer, its cogs start to gain speed, accelerating beyond control. The chugging of the Sequelizer rises in volume in a crescendo, until it blows up spectacularly in a cloud of smoke.]

DR. F: Oh, poopie.

PEARL: Clayton, you tampered in God’s domain again, didn’t you?

DR. F: Do I ever do anything else, dear mother? [He picks up some pieces of paper which miraculously survived the explosion and faces the camera holding them.] Why don’t you take a look at this? It’s not much, but I’m sure there’s enough hurting in there for a whole Marrissa story.

[Sol, lights and buzzers go off]

ALL: WE’VE GOT INCREDIBLY LAME FANFIC SIGN!!

[ 6 … 5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1 ]

[ To continue … ]

---

Post-segment thoughts … I assume “Crossed Swords” was an actual comic that Svensson (or one of the other MiSTers) was annoyed with. I never saw it myself, but what’s fan fiction for if not taking out your petty quarrels with stuff? And that “Sequelizer” device sure hasn’t lost any of its comic punch, has it? And I, sincerely, have a lot of good things to say about Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. I probably would have held back on saying “incredibly lame fanfic sign”. Besides being ableist, we chose to spend our recreational time reading this. Should have shown some respect. But I probably did a copy-editing pass on this back in the day (I usually did) and I didn’t fight it then, or didn’t fight it enough to change it, so I own it too.

Oh, the Marissa thing that Tom Servo and Crow start off on? She was the nigh-invulnerable protagonist of a long line of the gold standard of MiSTed fan fictions. A human being, her favorite drink was strawberry juice. In the stories we were riffing around this time the still quite young Marissa was finally getting married to another star of the series. That’s why she has a strawberry-colored wedding dress.

My Favorite _Raising Duncan_ Strip Just Reran

When Chris Browne, longtime artist of Hagar the Horrible, died earlier this month I mentioned my fondness for a particular panel of his wholly original strip, Raising Duncan. The strip ran for only a couple years, and GoComics has decided to keep it in endless repeats. I’m glad for this, as they recently got to that favorite strip of mine, and I wanted to share it here:

Chris Browne’s Raising Duncan for the 2nd of April 2002, and reprinted the 30th of May, 2023. (Original run here, though it looks just the same.) Duncan is the cute dog sleeping in the first panel there. I am surprised this hasn’t been used as an anniversary-card comic, though.

That isn’t to say the strip doesn’t have a good number of ‘husband’s a lunk and his wife is the tolerant sensible one’, but it’s quite gentle and kindly, in a way it’s easy to get wrong. I recommend at least one read-through of the comic.