Two must see's of the week:

Sonic Youth on a really cool radio show promoting their new album and generally being dorky.

Bill Griffith finally explains Zippy the Pinhead. I don't know if that makes it better or worse, but I still love it.  ¶ 1:18 PM 0 comments

  So this is kind of long, but here it goes.

A couple of posts ago, I was raving about the fantastic Gone and Forgotten. It really is. Fantastic I mean. So, in this article, he goes off about an issue of Legion of Super Heroes where readers sent in their own costume designs with predictably sad results.

Now a little background here. Legion was a personal favorite of mine as a young lad. Even though the stories were inevitably cheesy, I loved how inventive the super heroes here. Which was also their downfall. Some of the stupidest heroes of all time were LSH super heroes. Bouncing boy (yeah, he got big and fat and bounced), for example. Or Karate Kid who, in a group with people who could shoot fire, fly though asteroids, and change any element into any other element, knew Karate. Yep, he had the same super powers as the 12th grade kid who stopped getting pushed around quite so much.

Anyway, the absolute nadir of awfulness for LSH was Matter-Eating Lad. Yep, just say it a couple times. Matter-Eating Lad. I had this giant-size issue (second one down on this page) that listed all the LSH members and their powers. The picture of Matter-Eating Lad was him, in a jail cell, eating his way out. Possibly one of the funniest things I had seen to that point. It became a watchword with me and my friends. Whenever we wanted to point out something that was incredibly horrible, and trying really hard to be cool, we'd just say "Matter-Eating Lad", and fall into hilarity.

So in this GAF article he point to a page that refers to (and thankfully does not include) a fan-written story about a member of the Legion (Element Lad) who has a gay fling with....(wait for it).... Matter Eating Lad!

This really deeply freaked me out and I wrote the editor a letter (sorry it's the returned version, I emptied my sent mail):

> O man, I really can't believe you linked to information about that Paul
> Decker story. My head is reeling. And not because I care what brand of
> equipment Element Lad prefers, but that the story was about a
> relationship between him and Matter Eating Lad! AAAAAAAAAAAA! Look, I'm
> presuming that any good sexual relationship is going to involve some
> sort of oral activity, at least kissing And here's one of the most
> creepily powerful superheroes in the universe putting his tounge and who
> knows what else in the way of a mouth that can EAT ANYTHING EVER MADE!
>
> Besides, he way outclasses Matter Eating Lad, power-wise. That would be
> like Wonder Woman throwing Aqualad a quickie.
>
> Heading off to take several showers and/or thorazines
>
> _Morgan

The editor (and I presume sole propieter) wrote me back, and he was really cool about it, so here, I'm putting it up:

For the briefest second, I read the "Subject" line as the "From" line
and thought that Paul Decker was writing me ... ME, a simple midwestern
rabbi-turned-cowboy looking for love amidst the hurly-burly daily grind
of a city populated solely by deadly robots ... and I spazzed a little.
Just a little.

I'm no Legion historian, but I'm fairly sure that Tenzil Kem never had a
romantic interest in the classic Legion tales. That's probably because I
suspect there's a regional taboo against going down on your partner.
Unless there's more than Matter-Eating to Bismollian biology than we've
been told, such as cast-iron cooters and indigestible dongs.

See how insidious it is, pondering comic book porn ... ?

Selah!
-Jon
Your Humble G&F Editor

So, to sum up. Cool site, freaky stupid hero, disturbing sexual images, over-long story.

Welcome to my world.   ¶ 9:15 PM 0 comments