Chapter 17 | Page 13a: All you need is love. And lube.

They say all you need is love… but nobody ever said it had to be part of a company-wide initiative approved by Dr. Muskiday.

After yesterday’s emotional-cloud chaos, Dr. Muskiday has a solution — and let’s just say it’s less “scientific breakthrough” and more “HR nightmare waiting to happen.”

According to Muskiday, the only way to overpower the micronanos is to flood them with a stronger emotion than anger.

And that emotion is…

LOVE.

Dr. Muskiday is doing his absolute best to frame this as a team-building exercise.

With benefits.

Iron Dragon is on board — and he came prepared. (And he's prepared to come.)

But will the gang go along with it?


 

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Transcript

Caption:
The next morning…

Lightning Lady:
I thought these clouds were gonna dissipate!

Catnip:
Doctor Muskiday thinks he has a solution…
You’re not gonna like it.

Cassie Cruz:
We gotta flood the micronanos with emotions.

Giant Tess (angry):
No problem. I’m plenty mad already!

Holo-Clone Miss Match:
There’s one emotion more powerful than anger: LOVE.

Dr. Muskiday:
Before you say anything… just think of this as a team-building exercise.
With benefits.

Iron Dragon (holding a box containing, lube, lace and sex toys)
Exactly! It’s like a “trust fall.”
But horizontal.


Detailed Alt Text

A wide, single-panel comic labeled “The next morning…” shows a group of supervillains gathered in an office area at Evil Inc. Several characters have floating pink “emotion clouds” above their heads—visual representations of their feelings caused by Dr. Muskiday’s Project SMILE.

On the far left, Lightning Lady (a blonde woman in a blue-and-yellow costume) gestures in frustration, saying she expected the clouds to dissipate. Next to her, a curvy woman in a tight black catsuit — Catnip — leans forward, explaining that Dr. Muskiday has a solution that won’t be popular.

Cassie Cruz (a confident woman in a business outfit) stands near the center, explaining that they need to “flood the micronanos with emotions.” Around him, multiple characters display different emotional clouds—confusion (question marks), anger (red symbols), and even a skull icon—hovering above their heads.

Giant Tess, the superhuman resources manager,  responds angrily that she’s already full of rage. Dr. Muskiday’s holographic assistant counters by declaring that love is a more powerful emotion, with the word “LOVE” appearing large and bold in the panel.

Iron Dragon tries to convince the group that this should be viewed as a “team-building exercise… with benefits.” In his arms is a box containing lube, lace and assorted sex toys.

TV Horror Hosts… for the geezer-impaired

In Friday’s post, I referenced a topic — TV Horror Hosts — that I was told some of you weren’t familiar with. I guess I’m getting old… For you non-geezer-types… back in the day, they used to have late-night TV shows that would present re-runs of old sci-fi or horror movies. This American pop-culture craze was spawned in 1957, when Screen Gems released a bunch of old Universal Studios horror movies to  television stations and encouraged the concept of having hosts for the presentations. As the concept evolved, these TV horror hosts would begin doing short sketches and bits as “bumpers” to the TV commercials. Pretty soon, people were tuning in to watch the hosts — not so much the movies these characters were hosting. And keep in mind, this was the Golden Age of TV. Pre cable. So every major media market had its own TV horror host. For example, in Cleveland, it was the cult-favorite Ghoulardi… … and there was Philly’s own Roland, who morphed into Zacherle. (He took his show to a national audience as Zacherley at WABC-TV in New York)… The very first TV horror host was Vampira. You remember her from her role in the Ed Wood classic, Plan 9 from Outer Space. …and her spiritual successor, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark… For The Munsters star, “Grampa” Al Lewis, it was a chance to revive (resurrect?) his career… And who could forget the brilliant send-up of TV horror hosts by Joe Flaherty as SCTV’s Count Floyd. “Ooooh! That’s scarey!” Me? I was a faithful fan of Commander USA’s Groovy Movies in the 1980s. He is one of my all-time favorite TV Horror hosts. In fact, the starburst design on Commander Heroic’s costume — heck, the name itself — is a direct homage to the good Commander. A few of the classic horror hosts have tried to reproduce their early success by self-broadcasting on the Web. (Sound familiar webcomics fans?) I’m not sure how successful they’ve been, but I do know that pop culture’s cyclical nature promises a return… someday… somehow. So in true 1950s sci-fi fashion, I’ll just wrap this up like so: THE END . . . ?