BOOJUM!: Conrad Being Spoiler-y

Conrad, Being A Completist

Has the complete collection of "The Boys", that being the incredibly violent, sweary and salacious comic as created by Garth Ennis and Darick Robinson. It is not for boys, or girls, nor for faint-hearted adults. GE did a complete hatchet-job on superheroes, and both DC and Marvel probably look on his creation with a great deal of bilious antagonism. Which is a great name for a villain, if you're looking. Art!

"The Boys stood over the corpse of Bilious Antagonism"

Conrad is aware of the television series, and has seen Season One and Two. I'm not sure if I'd want to watch any more as it diverges ever more from the comics. The trade-paperbacks have been out since 2012 so I'm not bothered if you don't like seeing SPOILERS because you should have purchased them long ago. Art!

Here you see "The Seven", whom are a corporate superhero team in the service of Vought-American, and yes, they're a not-too-subtle riff and spoof of the Justice League. Whom you see here are Jack From Jupiter, The Lamplighter, Black Noir, The Homelander, Queen Maeve, Mister Marathon and The Deep. Homelander is the definite leader of the 'team' and is a grade-A homicidal psychopathic monster, who covers it well. He can fly, is of course - obviously! - possessed of enormous strength, is practically indestructible and, most tellingly, can shoot laser beams from his eyes. What Superman might have been with no morals, conscience or empathy, and a contrast between someone raised in a lab or raised on a farm. Art!

Big, beefy and burny burny burny

I'm not going to go through a shopping list of his monstrous acts as we'd be here all night, just that he's a truly awful human being.

Okay, thought Vought-American almost as soon as they'd artificially created him in a lab, "Qui custos ipsodiet?". Which means 'Who watches the watchmen', and it has a certain familiarity to it. Meaning, 'we've created this immensely powerful superhero who is almost unstoppable, so - how do we stop him?'

This is where the SPOILERS come in. Yes yes yes, one method would be to create a counter-balancing team of CIA-sponsored agents, whose brief was to keep a very wary watchful eye on the supposed superheroes VA were churning out. What do you think that first picture on this blog is there for?

No. What you do is clone the original and then have him shadow your Horrid Hero, hiding in plain sight. Art!

Meet Black Noir, rendered non-anonymous. The thing is, Black Noir is even worse than Homelander, who at least retains a sense of rationality and proportion. BN's favourite gimp game was to dress up as Homelander and commit evil deeds, spurred on by the voices in his head. I dunno, maybe one of his powers was being able to pick up radio transmissions and it sent him completely hat-stand?

Presumably Vought-American kept tabs on BN, although perhaps they just crossed fingers and kept their distance? because getting anywhere near him would be hazardous to health. Why did they tolerate their secret weapon being an utter fnorping lunatic?

Well, another SPOILER for you, it doesn't go well for either Black Noir or Homelander when the mask (and gloves) come off. Art!

I think that's as large as we want it to get.

So, my point, and I take an enormous amount of pleasure in taking so long to get there, is that VA created Black Noir to take care of Homelander.

Right. What then?

Do they just assume that both will destroy each other? Kind of a zero-sum game. This is taking a mighty big risk. Having a flying, laser-eyed almost indestructible lunatic on the loose after he offs Homelander might be a cure worse than the disease. So, why wasn't there a 'White Blanc' there to take out Black Noir? Hmmmm perhaps because then you'd need a 'Green Verte' to take out WB, and so on and so on in an ever-expanding spiral.

Well, thanks for reading my thoughts as generated whilst walking Edna this afternoon.

Ambrose Bierce is 182*.

Karelia!

I know, it sounds like the battle cry of Italian irridentists of the 1860's, charging boldly into action behind Garibaldi, determined to sweep the last vestiges of French occupation out of the Land Of The Romans.

Alas not. Well, perhaps not 'alas'. Art!

As you can see, Karelia is currently split between Finland, the land of lakes, and Modern-day Mordor, the land of jakes. The Finns, because they are an industrious and diligent people (when not drinking vodka for breakfast), have kept their part of Kar up to scratch. Not so the orcs. Art!

For your information, this is one of the better-kept and more modern Ruffian houses in Karelia. Yes, they really do live as if it was 1924, or even 1824. Their toilet is doubtless hidden behind this giant shed. Art!

Here is a bucolic Finnish Karelian village, out in the boondocks. Note the - gasp! - metalled road, the neatly-trimmed gardens and the general lack of squalor. Art!

This is the East Karelian flag. It is now being seen amongst soldiers in Ukraine, who unveil it behind the lines, or wear it as a badge. And, twist in the tale ending, these are soldiers in the Ukrainian army.

"City In The Sky"

Arcology One is down, de-orbited mostly successfully, without many deaths, and the waiting Australians are ready to help.

She passed the binoculars over to Ace, who whistled long and loud at the fantastic view.

‘That’s why they dumped the water,’ she mused. ‘Soften the earth, make it easier to land – wow, it’s still pushing downwards!’

Seconds later the mushroom-shaped upper part of the base-ship thumped down into the giant muddy slurry replacing the earlier, quieter waters, sending tonnes of slimy mud in a pulsing circular torrent out across the plains. Baulked by this sudden stop, the sphere scraped slowly down the side of the curving structure, at an angle, before gently settling into a final bed of mud that cushioned the shock of landing. A full half-minute later the power-plant began to settle onto the Nullarbor Plain, until Infrastructure blew open descent-bags that cushioned the engine section, cushioned it completely well clear of the desert floor. This was good news, since the Australian outback didn’t need decorating with the exotic by-products of a nuclear fission motor.

‘Made it!’ bellowed Ace, jumping up and down with delight. She tore off down the rise towards the stationary convoy, waving her arms like a windmill.

She raced up to the wagon carrying Alex with no ceremony, throwing pebbles at a window.

‘Alex! Alex!’ she shouted. ‘Come on, talk to me, you piker.’

'Piker' is used here as a term of affectionate abuse.

"The War Illustrated Edition 190"

We've not had pictures from this edition for a while because there's always been another item featuring military mayhem, and you can have too much of a good thing. Art!

There's a lot to unpack here. This is a South Canadian Sherman tank, in the service of the French 2nd Armoured Division, whom were probably very grateful to get South Canadian kit in exchange for their British versions, as being beholden to Perfidious Albion kind of rankled. The Dieuxieme were the first Allied formation into Paris, as it was felt that they might want to greet their fellow countrymen ahead of the British or Canadians. The Teutons, for the most part, didn't put up a lot of resistance, as they were clearly outnumbered, outgunned and facing extremely vengeful Gallic soldiers out to wipe the floor with anyone who looked funnily at them.

Meanwhile, In Modern-day Mordor -

Here's another provocation deliberately mounted by NATO in order to have Tsarievitch Putin sleep uneasily in his bad tonight. Art!

Predictably, that under-achieving wino Medvedev read about this and got on his high horse in the narrow window between last night's hangover wearing off, and this morning's pint-of-vodka-breakfast. Art!