I came across the Dragon Name Generator. You type in a name and it gives you a “totally original name.” I typed in Agent Orange and got (I kid you not) Bucky the Flaming. Agent Orange responds.

&*(# you and your Wisconsin football too. I’ll give you flaming Bucky.

“He was like that when I found him, officer.”

Any “Dragon Name Generator” that gives overwhelmingly mammalian names like Bucky is highly dubious.

Then I put in “Jacob Mallow,” just for kicks. It gave me “Lady Predash the Weak.”

Acceptable.

I also approve of the Singapore Idol Stagename Generator, which turns Agent OJ into the appropriate “Quick End” and Courtney McMaster into “Empty Vessel.” However, it turns Captain Carnage into “Disco Boy.” To its credit, that is only a few letters away from the correct “Destruction Boy.”

And I also enjoyed the Science Fiction name generator, but its Alien Name Genator is awful. Its Cyberpunk feature is far superior, not least of which because it spat out Clockwork Orange once. >”-[ [ [ [ ~~~ (that’s a smiling alligator in case you couldn’t tell… nimrod).

Comic book readers have often wondered what is it about New York City that causes so much bizarreness to happen there.  Superhero Nation finally answers this question by turning to the New York Historical Society.

Which leads us to our quote of the day.

In 1626, either the Shinnecock or Canarsee Indians sold present-day NYC, a spirit-cursed mosquito pit, to the Dutch for $24.  One of the strongest misconceptions in American history is that it was the Indians that got swindled.

— Agent Orange

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
–Diogenes

Sir? I still need to see your passport.

–an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement official

I was doing a search for Smokey Bones and came across this comic devoted to Olive Garden.

“Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.”

–Aldous Huxley

“More like our sanitarium.”

–Paingod

“Charlie, come out and getcha whoopin’.” Also notable for someone cheating on Mr. Met.

“It’s not new age mumbo jumbo.  All of his wisdom is golf-course tested.”   Also notable for the funniest use of a prop in any television ad.

“Adam Sandler’s a star now, and no one had heard of him until I beat him up in Happy Gilmore.”  Also notable for Bob Barker winning World War II.

“Don’t be a lollipop.“

A tree’s a tree. How many more do you need to look at?

–Ronald Reagan

Ohio and Stanford’s trees play football. About as well as you’d expect, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

–Agent Orange

Our resident mutated alligator, Agent Orange, offers this look into the brutally competitive world of reptology.

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I came across this ESPN commercial featuring a brawl between Steve Irwin and a certain Florida football mascot. It’s reasonably hilarious. Unsurprisingly, Albert the Florida Gator puts the screws to him in ~5 seconds.

Speaking of AFG, he has his own Myspace page.  Incidentally, Albert and his long-time mistress Alberta can be hired out for private events. Understandably, AFG doesn’t come cheap. Even his gesture gets its own Wikipedia page. Hell. Alberta costs $250 an hour. Speaking of the Gator Chomp, see also The Curse of the Gator Chomp, inflicted on players that mock the Gator Gods at their own peril. Sebastian “Worst First Round Draft Pick” Janikowski has never been the same.

Speaking of Gator Haters, we have this amusingly depraved comparison of Gator pep rallies to Nazi events.

Remember, it’s not a real party unless there are muzzles and reptiles in t-shirts.

“The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot.
E. M. Forster

“If you think ‘the queen died of grief’ is a plot, you wouldn’t last ten seconds in Surf City. The Queen iced her husband to claim control of the underworld. And now she’s got a deathray, probably pointed at a city Americans care about or Paris. That’s a plot.”

–Captain Carnage

On a whim, I was thinking about downloading the pilot to Bleach, which is a ghosts-and-spirits anime series, on Amazon.com.  (It’s free).  Some quick observations:

1. The preview sounded bad.  I decided not to download a free episode.
2. The preview sounded so bad that I actually felt bad for the announcer/narrator, who had to use his Always-Excited Announcer/Narrator voice to deliver lines like “But when she touches him with her sword, Ichigo absorbs most of her power and he too be-comes a Soul Reaver.”  The narrator gamely tried his best to put an unusual inflection on random words, to distract us from how inane the plot sounds, but you can tell.  You can tell that he was really thinking “Sweet Christ, even the Sarah Connor Chronicles wasn’t this bad.”

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

–Friedrich Nietzsche

I save the day by wasting many, proving reptilian awesomeness. There, I only needed ten words.

–Agent Orange

You’re despicable.

–The Superhero Nation writing staff

Vantage Point and Harold and Kumar 2 are on the board today.

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Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

Philosophy: giving up on the concept of truth.

–Jacob Mallow

Capital punishment: giving up on the concept of Mallow.

–Agent Orange

Diplomacy, Superhero Nation-style: simultaneously offending the religious, the nonreligious and death penalty opponents.

Rumsfeld only realized at the last second that he had left his blue-and-red suit at home. Even Captain America was sympathetic.

The picture was used in a 2005 Washington Post article on Defense-Marvel cooperation. On the Superhero Nation Scale of Cluelessness, I give its author a 7 out of 10.

1. “It’s clobberin’ time!” is the first sentence. Ouch. Even if the article mentioned The Thing, that would be inexcusable.

2. “…Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (normal human strength, no known superpowers)…” Heh.

3. Use of the phrase “G-man”: solid. Use of the phrase “G-man” to describe a government bureaucrat: questionable.
4. “Either Marvel Comics is really hard up for readers and needs an ultra-dynamic, Pentagon-heavy publicity gimmick to boost its sales, or Rumsfeld is finally ready to admit that only a superhero can extricate us from Iraq.” Translation: I don’t write for the editorial page, but I want to.

Catastrophe: I need advice.

Bartender: Don’t take vodka as a chaser.

Catastrophe: More, uhh, substantively…

Bartender: Don’t drink and drive.

Catastrophe: …

Catastrophe: I need a new advisor.

Bartender: That’s the spirit.

Dr. Darpa: Virtually every Office of Special Investigations agent uses a firearm as his primary weapon, but the vast majority of our kills are executed with non-gun weapons.

Captain Carnage: Every one of the criminals we deal with has steel-like skin, dodges bullets like they’ve gone out of style, or both.

Dr. Darpa: Over the past twelve years, I’ve been modifying tank-mounted machine guns to compensate for those unusual characteristics. I have created a handgun so horrifically lethal that Congress has limited its sale to NATO countries.

Captain Carnage: You mean…

Dr. Darpa: The Western Cannon.

Captain Carnage: I thought it was a myth!

Dr. Darpa: Mythically deadly, perhaps. With a full mound of ammo, it weighs roughly half a ton. It has three rates of fire: “full automatic,” “wall of lead,” and “dodge this.”

Captain Carnage: The assassins have bugged your car with a tracking device. Driving it could be highly dangerous, particularly if you believe really strongly in that whole no-killing thing.

Lash: …

Lash: What do you have in mind?

Carnage: If you lend me your keys for the day, I have someone in mind whose skills will discourage anyone from tailing you ever again.

Lash nervously hands over his BMW keys.

The next morning, a smoking and sooty Agent Orange approaches Lash.

Lash: Dear God. You were the driver? Do you even have a license?

Agent Orange: I have good news, bad news and worse news. Which would you like first?

Lash: … there’s bad news besides learning you were the driver?

Lash: …

Agent Orange: You definitely won’t save a bunch on your car insurance.

Lash: The worse news?

Agent Orange: It won’t be an open-casket funeral.

Lash: …

Lash: Dare I ask what the good news is?

Agent Orange: Captain Carnage bet that open-road road tests are so easy that even I could pass one. I sure showed him! Hah. He didn’t even know that alligators are green-red colorblind!

Later, Lash confronts Captain Carnage.

Lash: You handed my BMW over to a goddamn lizard.

Carnage: It proved surprisingly easy to determine who was attempting to follow his… unorthodox driving style. We made four arrests. So his skills proved quite effective.

Lash: Which “skills?” I’ve definitely ruled out anything driving-related.

Carnage: Limb-regeneration and gullibility.

Lash: Gullibility?

Carnage: Did you know license tests occur on country roads in the middle of the night and are graded by SWAT officers in helicopters?

Lash: …

Lash: I hate you.

A commenter asked “what do they teach at the Office of Special Investigation’s Chariots of Fire Driving Academy?” A very good question.

[start scene]

Agent Black is waiting in the CFDA’s front-lobby, which looks like an airport terminal. Beyond the glass walls, cars chase each other on a practice course.

CFDA RECEPTIONIST: I’m sorry, we’re out of spaces for the Defensive Driving course. Can I interest you in Offensive Driving? Just sign these liability disclaimers.

BLACK: What do they teach in Offensive–

A car triple barrel-rolls onto the car it had been chasing.

BLACK: …

BLACK: Do you have a pen?

Agent Orange:  At the Office of Special Investigations, “Chariots of Fire” isn’t just a classic
film.  It’s also the name of our driving school.

Agent Orange: In Canada, keep your friends close and your automatic weaponry closer. The nation is a rabbit’s den of sinister plots and dark secrets.

Agent Black: Canada has dark secrets?

Agent Orange: The darkest!

It’ll have ridiculously confusing time travel, wholly implausible use of a space station as a doomsday device, and more national landmarks than you can shake a standard-issue NASA laser pistol at. But Hollywood will want a name that can appeal to a global market. I’ll call it… Planet of the Capes.

In comic book stories, “Boy Scout” is generally used as a pejorative for any character that’s too heroic (usually Superman). Maybe knocking the Boy Scouts isn’t a good idea…

Boy Scout Grabs Attacker’s Knife, Saves Maldives President from Assassination.

I wonder which Merit Badge he was going for.

How will the assassin explain this to his boss? “I was about to stab Gayoom. And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for that meddling kid!”

The UN plans to “use Spiderman to fight evil,” according to the Associated Press. (Wait, doesn’t the UN already have its own superheroes?)

The article mentions that…

John Bolton called it an “act of desperation… you can have Spiderman in a comic book all you want, but it’s not going to change public perception.”

John’s wrong. Adding Spidey to a comic book always changes public perception about its quality. For example, take Spiderman: Get Kraven. It made it to issue six, out of a scheduled seven. Get Kraven would not have survived to two.
Just how bad was Get Kraven?

Get Kraven #1

Makes you wonder what they did for 2-6, right?

Savor excerpts of a review of #1:

It works, in the same way that selling Pokemon toys to children works. The characters don’t go challenging any boundaries, except those of good taste.

Spidey’s appearance is best quickly forgotten…

Get Kraven #2

Incidentally, the mini-WTC logo is the only reason this comic should not be burned.

Excerpts of a review:

it’s about as witty as two-day old vomit down the back of the sofa. It’s as funny as a draft notice in 1967 [hey!] It’s as clever as a Ph.D thesis in pig-latin*…

Namor swims up and gives him some advice about Hollywood…

SUMMARY: Renting a bungalow. Scott Baio. Six pages.

*Which is different from regular theses… how?

Get Kraven #6 (skipping 3-5 for everyone’s well-being)

Wait… the WTC logo is gone.  Light it up!

If you actually bought this, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Here are some excerpts of a five-star review of #6.

The Rothsteins weren’t the head of the snake. They need to go to Beverly Hills…

It turns out, Ned is playing a role playing game with the Chameleon because it’s healthy, according to his shrink. The Chameleon snaps, he takes a spear and runs towards Al…

The story ends with Nickles [THE F***ING DOG] wondering that this was supposed to be a seven issue series. And that it’s weird that he waited to the last page to talk!

Anyway, the point is that Spidey got Get Kraven to issue six. After that, world peace should be a snap.

In any case, he can sell a comic that will be heavy on the preaching and light on the miracles.

There are mad scientists. There are political scientists. At Superhero Nation, you get the worst of both worlds.

(Maybe this is why we haven’t had a mission statement up to this point).

“Dallas Police, Officials Discourage Random Gunfire.”

Uhh… what were the Dallas police doing before?

On a side-note, I think the Dallas police will find that it’s easier to cut murders by reducing targeted gunfire.

Quote of the Day:

Agent Orange: Few things are more pathetic than the crocodile terrorist. Yep. They can’t even do that right.

And they talk like thisssssss…

We already knew that mammals > crocodiles, but this also indicates that mammal-insects > crocodiles. But Spiderman foolishly let the crocodile escape, which is further proof that alligators > mammal-insects.

No one on the Superhero Nation editorial board is pleased with the way football has gone this year.

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Why are peace talks held at summits?  Because things can only go downhill from there.

Mike: You’re positive you’re not an alien?

Catastrophe: Do aliens frequently speak fluent English?

Mike: Decryption programs applied to radio transmissions can do surprising things.

Catastrophe: I was checking football club rankings when you found me. Unless aliens are frequently interested in football…

Mike: You’d be surprised. You follow football?

Catastrophe: Sometimes. There aren’t any good teams around here.

Mike: Name three.

Catastrophe: Good teams? Arsenal, Man U and Newcastle.

Mike: Please. If you ever need to make up sports teams in the future, I recommend going with animal names, not randomly selected adjectives and nouns. “New castle?” “Man you?” That doesn’t even make sense!

Catastrophe: …

Catastrophe: You don’t get out much, do you?

This is the final part of a four part series. You can see part 1 here.