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?
‘For Better or For Worse’… Not Retiring After All
Here’s some pretty amazing news….
[
E&P]
Millions of readers will breathe a partial sigh of relief when they learn that Lynn Johnston won’t completely end “For Better or For Worse” around the time it turns 28 this September. Instead, the strip will continue as an old/new hybrid that has little precedent in cartoon history.
“I’ll be flying by the seat of my eraser,” joked Johnston, whose comic is one of only five with more than 2,000 newspapers. Details were still being worked out when Johnston spoke to E&P, but it’s possible the hybrid “FBorFW” will focus a lot on Michael Patterson and his family, who are about the same ages Elly Patterson and her family were when the comic started in 1979. Elly is the mother of Michael, who was a little boy in the early days of “FBorFW.”Read the whole
story.
Alan Gardner, of the
Daily Cartoonist, summed up my feelings very well:
…I’m a bit worried about the execution of feature. As much as I’d miss the Patterson family – and I truly would, I was also happy to know that Lynn was going to end the strip so that it doesn’t turn into a tired ol’ legacy strip and to have 2,000+ openings for other features to grow would have been exciting. I guess I’ll have to see what the feature will look like before passing such grim opinion.Read the
Daily Cartoonist’s full take on the news — as well as Tom Spurgeon’s
reaction in the Comics Reporter.
