Countess Influencia has arrived — and Fairmount City’s heroes are already under her spell.
As her livestreamed crime spree unfolds, the heroes of Justice Ltd. are doing what any brave, noble defenders of justice would do in a moment of crisis: They’re staring at their phones, smashing the Like button, and assembling in her comments section.
Only Captain Heroic seems immune to her influence. Why? Because the last thing waiting on his phone is a text from Miss Match that reads: “We have to talk.”
And sometimes, emotional avoidance is the only thing standing between civilization and total collapse.
Dear Pentagram Forum
If you enjoyed the illustration that parodied those old “Dear Penthouse Forum” letters, the following exclusive post takes the joke all the way.
The short story tells the entire encounter from start to finish — the setup, the invitation, the escalation, and the kind of filthy left turn those letters always seemed to take when you realized you were no longer in the “saucy anecdote” section of the magazine.
This one is pure retro smut nostalgia: A horny little time capsule from the era when “I never thought this would happen to me…” was basically the Bat-Signal for bad decisions.
Transcript
Panel 1
A large monitor displays footage of Countess Influencia hovering over Fairmount City.
Several Justice Ltd heroes are gathered in the room, but instead of leaping into action, they’re all staring at their phones. Pink hearts stream upward from their screens.
Amazing Amazon: She’s… weirdly compelling.
Elastic Man: I only ‘liked’ ironically.
Wingman: I subscribed UN-ironically.
Captain Heroic: Why isn’t anyone… y’know… assembling?
Panel 2
Amazing Amazon: We are assembling.
Elastic Man: In her comments section.
Phenomenal Lass: Grab your phone and join us.
Panel 3
Captain Heroic remembers his last text from Miss Match: “We have to talk”
Cap, in a narration box: I… uhhhh… turned that off for a while.
Panel 4
Captain Heroic, flying into action: Who knew emotional avoidance could be a superpower?
Phables reaction
It seems as if my first
Phable of the New Year has already irked a reader or two. For example, Brendan not only wrote me an e-mail, but linked to his blog as well:
Twice in the same “Phables� strip, Brad Guigar writes, “Only a mom knows how sometimes the fear of one’s own death has nothing to do with one’s own life.�
Right, “only a mom� has any sense of responsibility or devotion to the family. “Only a mom� knows what it’s like to have children who depend on you for everything from daily meals to moral guidance to help with homework. We fathers have nothing to do with our families: why, if you took away the paycheck we contribute, what else do we offer, other than nothing? We don’t have any involvement with our kids, other than providing half their chromosomes. And since we’re not moms, none of us dads have any idea of how “fear of one’s own death has nothing to do with one’s own life.� Read the
whole post. (Warning: Very strong language.)
