Chapter 17 | Page 2b: The Ol’ Battle Ax

Posted on December 11, 2025 by Brad Guigar

The #GuigarChristmasCountdown Rolls On

Every day until Christmas, I’m releasing a brand-new holiday single-panel gag — and this year’s batch has already included:

  • Overworked elves

  • Malfunctioning snowmen

  • Questionable reindeer behavior

  • And Santas who are absolutely phoning it in

Next week’s cartoons keep the absurdity rolling. If you’re counting down to Christmas with me… buckle up. We’re not even halfway to the weirdest ones. Catch them on Bluesky, Patreon chat, or the Evil Inc Subreddit.

TRANSCRIPT

Panel 1 (Later)
Hailey: “Come on, Rose! This is a big opportunity for me! Just tell me what Cap’s ‘usual’ is!”

Panel 2
Rose (from inside the storage closet): “Fine. He loves chicken soup — extra crackers — and a tall lemonade.”

Panel 3
Rose: “Say… do you think you could open the door now? There’s not much air in here.”

Panel 4
Hailey: “If you look in the corner, you’ll see an old battle ax.”

Panel 5
Hailey: “There’s no battle ax in— Oh.”

Panel 6
SFX: KRAKK

Panel 7
Rose (calmly): “Thank you!”

Review: Blackest Night #1

Posted on July 30, 2009 by Brad Guigar

So, I’m feeling pretty stupid right now.

I mean, for quite a while I’ve been writing in this blog about my excitement about the upcoming Blackest Night event. It’s been on the horizon for some time, and I gotta say, the dark theme really appealed to me.

And, to be sure, the recent lead-in in Green Lantern #43 and, truthfully, the first several pages of Blackest Night #1 set a tempting scene that promised to meditate on death in the comics (and, in so doing, death in real life).

So imagine my chagrin when I reached the end of Blackest Night #1 and find out that this seemingly innovative, depth-plumbing series is, in actuality…



…that’s right: it’s DC Zombies.

Quick recap for the newcomers: Marvel Zombies was a five-issue limited series published from 2005 to 2006. Written by Robert Kirkman with art by Sean Phillips and Arthur Suydam, it spawned a series of non-continuity stories around the concept of all superpowered beings on Earth becoming flesh-eating zombies after being infected by an alien virus.

I lack the gene that makes me fascinated by zombies. I cringe at the Marvel Zombies covers. I… I just don’t get it. I don’t like zombies and I suspect they don’t like me.

But, I’m in the minority. These books sell very well for the House of Ideas.

So, silly me for not seeing it sooner. In this atmosphere of watching the Big Two chase each other’s tails (Marvel’s Lethal Legion mirroring DC’s Secret Six, for example) DC’s brave new concept is merely a re-tread of one of its competitor’s successful concepts.

A bunch of dead DC heroes and villains are being resurrected by the Black Lantern and reanimated, zombielike, to do battle with the living.

Sigh. And I didn’t even see it coming.

No wonder zombies don’t like me. No brains.