Dan Liebke's Astonishing Tales

Starring Rorschach as Splotchface, Dr Manhattan (Jon Osterman) as Megasmurf, Nite Owl (Dan Dreiberg) as Captain Pudgey, Ozymandias as Lord Smartypants, The Comedian as The Dead Comedian and The Silk Spectre as Bimbo Lass. For more information on these people and more, consult the scorecard

It’s the beginning of the review of Issue 4 and we’re about to enter the nutty psyche of MegaSmurf.

It’s the end of this review and I’m looking forward to next issue.

It’s the middle of this review and I’m making a tasteless joke about nuclear bomb victims.

This is the kind of nonsense we have to put up with from MegaSmurf …

And so forth. This is the kind of nonsense we have to put up with from MegaSmurf who sees all time and space as one.

He’s so wacky.

Anyway, it turns out that in his youth, MegaSmurf was the son of a watchmaker, and took great joy in taking watches apart, and then putting them back together, until his father (in a rather unclear mode of reasoning) concluded that Einsteinian physics had rendered the entire watchmaking profession obsolete.

“Perhaps that would be so if we were all moving around at 90% of the speed of light, father,” says MegaSmurf. “But in our universe, where the Newtonian approximation is more than adequate, watch repair remains a valid and worthwhile trade.”

“Enough of your lip, young lad.”

And so MegaSmurf becomes a nuclear physicist and joins a facility which specialises in tearing things apart with rare nuclear particles.

Good-o.

It’s the middle of this review and I’m making a tasteless joke about nuclear bomb victims.

It’s the end of the review and I’m looking forward to next issue.

It’s the beginning of the review of Issue 4 and we’re about to enter the nutty psyche of MegaSmurf.

Also working at this nuclear facility is some chick who buys MegaSmurf a beer, immediately seducing him with her brazen alcohol purchasing. She deliberately breaks her watch and MegaSmurf takes the opportunity to say ‘hey, I can repair that for you’ and then ‘hey, but I need to do it in my bedroom’ and then ‘hey, it’s impossible to repair watches unless you’re completely naked’.

MegaSmurf’s smooth lines work a treat and so they’re now a couple and that’s nice. But then stupid old MegaSmurf manages to lock himself in one of those pesky nuclear particle object destroyer rooms and, you guessed it, is swiftly blown to pieces.

It’s the middle of this review and I’m making a tasteless joke about nuclear bomb victims.

Sensibly, however, he doesn’t let this stop him, and rebuilds himself into a superbeing. Now, if only the people of Hiroshima had thought to try this…

It’s the middle of this review and I’m making a tasteless joke about nuclear bomb victims.

It’s the end of the review and I’m looking forward to next issue.

It’s the beginning of the review of Issue 4 and we’re about to enter the nutty psyche of MegaSmurf.

So now MegaSmurf has adopted his blue, omipotent phase and goes about dazzling everybody with his ability to see into the future and do long division in his head and build machine guns with his telekinesis. All very impressive stuff, and the other heroes are so impressed that they just pretty much give up and retire.

Except for The Dead Comedian who is just far too funny to stop. Also, Lord Smartypants and Bimbo Lass make their debuts, with Lord Smartypants impressing MegaSmurf with his nous and Bimbo Lass impressing him with a variety of other qualities.

So pretty soon, MegaSmurf has dumped his beer-buying chick and moved onto Bimbo Lass. Which makes sense. He also reminisces about the day he won The Vietnam war and the day he dispersed a riot and the day he went to visit Lord Smartypants who lives at the South Pole, kinda like the anti-Santa Claus. But instead of reindeer and elves, he has a genetically mutated lynx. Obviously.

It’s the end of the review and I’m looking forward to next issue.

It’s the middle of this review and I’m making a tasteless joke about nuclear bomb victims.

It’s the beginning of the review of Issue 4 and we’re about to enter the nutty psyche of MegaSmurf.

He also reminisces in passing that being a superhero is now illegal unless you’re The Dead Comedian (who is dead) or MegaSmurf (who now lives on Mars). Obviously, nobody has told Splotchface about this legal detail. He doesn’t seem like the kind of man who accepts bad news well.

And then MegaSmurf celebrates the end of the issue by building a giant crystal house out of the sands of Mars, an idea he got from watching Superman: The Movie.

Not a bad little issue. A little bit of a spinout, what with MegaSmurf’s disdain for chronological order. I give it 8 out of 10, a score that applies throughout all time and space.

It’s the middle of this review and I’m making a tasteless joke about nuclear bomb victims.

It’s the beginning of the review of Issue 4 and we’re about to enter the nutty psyche of MegaSmurf.

It’s the end of the review and I’m looking forward to next issue.

Next Issue: Both Lord Smartypants and Splotchface are attacked! Will this senseless violence ever end?!?

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