When last we left our intrepid stuffed bunny explorer, we were experiencing a severe case of authorial smack-down, wherein he gaver us the hand while we considered of enacting scenes from "Pulp Fiction". Only instead of a samurai sword and a gut-wrenching case of involuntary S&M, we had a tire iron and a gut-eating case of zombies. It would seem that cooler heads prevailed and we decided to go with the disguise option instead. Now we get to see if this Matt Youngmark fellow is a kindly old guiding-force wizard or a reader-hating attack weasel.
Wahoo, wizard it is! At least until he makes us get our brains eaten in the next installment. Though that has eerie similarities to being a Kardashian-watcher now that I think of it, what with the involuntary brain-melting and soulless husks wandering about.
But I digress.
Getting zombie in my eye brings to mind the one "Super Friends" tip I remember from when I was a kid. If you're too young to have seen it, "Super Friends" was the only comic book related entertainment we had available to us, which in a way is like finding a starving person in the desert and giving them nothing but Ex-Lax to eat. It was that bad. For those of you who will disagree with me in the comments, all I can say is "Wendy, Marvin, and Wonder Dog."
Anyway, periodically the Super Friends would pop up before commercial breaks to give the youth of America some kind of helpful hint. "Don't eat kryptonite" was the Superman one, or maybe "No one will recognize you if you get glasses." Memory fades, but the installment that sticks with me the most was actually from Aquaman. He helpfully told us that if we had something stuck in our eye, we could pull our top lid down over the bottom lid, which would make our tears start to flow, washing out the offending bits.
Which works! It's proof positive that television can teach you things, parents, so suck on THAT, FCC!
Of course, being a cynical little bastard even then, I kept wondering how in the world Aquaman would know this. I mean, dude lives in water, how often does he need to generate more water to wash out his eyes? Plus, fish don't have eyelids!
As you can see, I was destined to be a Comic Con attendee even before Comic Con existed.
Somehow I have managed to drive myself completely off the rails (yeah, why doesn't Aquaman do a PSA for the well-known underwater railroad system! Or "How to survive in a desert"?!), which were rapidly whisking us down to Decisionville. So what'll it be, my fellow stuffed zombie hunters? Do we run squealing back to King Arthur of Atlants to yank on our nylon eyelids to get that zombie right out of hour hair, or do we gut it up and wander on into Coptown?
For those of us whose parents wouldn’t let us have comic books in the 70’s the Super Friends were the best we got. I remember waking up early on Saturday mornings and hoping desperately that the Flash would be in this one.
Me too! I love me some Flash. I remember getting irritated when they went all Justice League and started having dozens of people on the team. Like the Native American Giant Guy and the Japanese Samurai Whirlwind guy and a bunch of others I never heard of. I’m like “You are cutting into prime Flash time here, people!”
Apache Chief (who may or may not have been Apache, or a Chief) Samurai, and El Dorado. Until then, the only minority on the team was Black Vulcan so they wanted to add some color. And apparently they just couldn’t find any people of color in the comics to use.
Anyway, for the story at hand, I said go into the police station. What, exactly, are we expecting to find in an alleyway to wash our little bunny eyes with?
Where did the disguise option come from?!?!? I mean, it’s not a bad idea if we were to wonder out of town, but to just shamble up to the police station? We’re liable to get shot on the way in. Run like hell and get that eye cleaned out before we develop Zombie Pink Eye!!!!
The only thing we’re likely to find in an alley is a bottle discarded by a wino. Washing rotten guts out of our eye with rotgut is unlikely to help the sting. A police station, on the other hand, probably has a proper eyewash station.
Maybe I’m not feeling it today, but having read ahead, neither of the entries had me howling with laughter. I mean, there were some funny bits, but…
Still, the more interesting option still seems to be trying to tough things out, and stay in character until we get to the police station. And as others have pointed out, what exactly did we expect to wash our eyes out with out on the street anyway?
I say we continue to the police station. We already went to the trouble of befouling ourselves with innards, we might as well see it through. As to the Superfriends, it’s a pretty sad state of affairs when you realize that Marvin, Wendy and Wonderdog were so lame, they actually replaced them with the Wonder Twins.
Yeah, I totally got the ending of Night Of The Living Dead vibe the second I saw this was an option.
Don’t forget Gleek. You know, because I haven’t forgotten Gleek, and so if I have to remember him, you have to too. *sigh* Stupid space monkey.
I always thought of Gleek as an anime refuge to the United States. Like, he was Snarf’s awkward brother who couldn’t get work on a Japanese series.
Plus, I always wondered where the Wonder Twins kept that water-carrying bucket when it wasn’t in use. And come to think of it, why didn’t Zan just turn into an ice bucket? Or ice harness or rod or any other easy-to-carry solid shape, instead of just “water”, requiring Gleek to whip that bucket out of his butt?
Oh god, Gleek. I love how Hanna-Barbera was so lazy that they basically just cloned Space Ghost’s teen sidekicks, (one of whom I just found out was voiced by Otter from Animal House! Mind = Blown) down to the space monkey pet. Ah, Hanna-Barbera. The mark of quality.
One good thing came of the Super Friends: an awesome episode of the modern Justice League where a version of the Wonder Twins were a force to be feared.
I’ve seen 28 days later, and just in case Matt did too, I’m voting we take a detour to the nearest eye-wash station…
A force to be feared? They both got taken down, easily, by Aquaman. Though it was DCAU Aquaman, who’s a lot less useless than comics or Superfriends Aquaman, so maybe it’s not as bad as it sounds…
They were causing a lot of havoc before Aquaman showed up. At least I feared them.
Zan DID turn into an Ice Harness (or saddle or some other such) on a few occasions. And I seem to recall him turning into an ice creature (like an abominable snowman) at least once. But that may be me misremembering things.
But yeah, it was usually in the bucket. The cool thing is, the Mattel action figures of the Twins came packaged with a bird for Jayna to turn into, and a Bucket o’Zan for Gleek to carry. AS well as Gleek himself (if you got the San Diego ComiCon exclusive)
At this point, I can’t imagine getting into the police station and not getting shot. Mad, flailing panic it is!
As ever, I am letting Aquaman be my guide. Not the eyelid-pulling thing, but continuing calmly on, shuffling along like an undead shambling thing with one closed eye. You know…like Aquaman. Wait, I kinda lost the thread of this somewhere…
The zombie juice won’t kill us just because it’s now also in our eye.