Dan Liebke's Astonishing Tales

Time to find out what makes Splotchface tick. Helping us in this task is a prison psychiatrist named Dr Sensible.

Dr Sensible starts (rather sensibly) by holding up some splotchey inkblot tests for Splotchface to try and interpret.

Dr Sensible is thinking of Mickey Mouse. Not at all sensible, Doc.

(He’s also irritating Splotchface by calling him ‘Walter’ instead of Splotchface. Which, to be fair to Splotchface, would get on my nerves also. It might be tolerable if Walter was Splotchface’s real name/secret identity. But it’s not. Dr Sensible is thinking of Mickey Mouse. Not at all sensible, Doc.)

So, anyway, Doc shows Splotchface some splotches.

“What do you see, Walter?”

Splotchface sees a dead dog with a carving knife through its head.

“Some flowers?” he says. Oh Splotchey. You’re never gonna get better if you lie to your

shrink. You know that.

He shows Splotchey another. “What’s this one?”

And it’s barely a splotch at all. It’s a very clear rendition of Splotchey’s whore mother having sex with a client. So that’s a bit cruel of Doc Sensible. Splotchey thinks to himself about what a slut his mother was and about the time when he was eight and she slapped him around when he interrupted her while she was, ahem, conducting business.

But then he lies again and says that it reminds him of a butterfly. Oh Splotchey, ya big nut.

But Dr Sensible takes Splotchface at, um, face value and thinks he’s making progress. He heads home and brags to his wife about how fantastic a shrink he has and his wife celebrates by having frenzied sex with him.

Poor old Splotchey, though, doesn’t get to have sex with anybody. He gets taken back to his cell where he has to listen to the taunts of all the other prisoners saying that they’re going to kill him and make him his bitch and so forth. So perhaps his lack of sex that evening is not such a bad thing after all.

Next day Splotchey and Doc Sensible have another chat and Splotchey tells him about his early days. Firstly, how when he was ten he dealt with a couple of bullies by burning their eyes out with cigarettes.

And then he revealed the chilling tale about where he got his mask from. Mail order apparently.

And that’s the end of that shrink session. But not the end of action for the day, because while Splotchey’s trying to get some grub one of the other inmates threatens to slice him open with a knife. Obviously, Splotchey has no choice but to throw hot cooking fat all over him.

When will these people learn? Don’t pick fights with Splotchey.

Well, Doc Sensible hears about Splotchey’s cooking fat exploits and gets all down in the dumps. Maybe he’s not the greatest shrink that has ever existed. His wife senses his doubts and therefore doesn’t have frenzied sex with him that night. That’s where self-doubt gets you, Doc Sensible. Outta the sack.

He just liked dressing up in a trenchcoat and mask and hanging out with Captain Pudgey and The Dead Comedian.

Next day, Splotchey tells Doc Sensible a little bit more about his early days fighting crime. In those days he was not so much interested in butchering the underworld. He just liked dressing up in a trenchcoat and mask and hanging out with Captain Pudgey and The Dead Comedian. (He was also a big fan of The Dead Comedian’s wacky sense of humour. I’m sure the respect was mutual and that from up above, The Dead Comedian’s looking down, splitting his sides at Splotchey’s hilarious hot fat antics.)

But then Doc Sensible, showing some of the sensibleness for which he is named, shows Splotchey one of the splotches he showed him before and says ‘hey, enough of this pretty flowers nonsense. What do you really see?’

So Splotchey tells him the story of the day that he tracked down some child kidnapper (obviously the kidnapper wasn’t a child. The kidnapper was an adult who kidnapped a child. Splotchey doesn’t clarify this point, but I think Doc Sensible got it anyway) and found that the (adult) kidnapper had cooked the child up and fed the child to his dogs.

While The Dead Comedian would no doubt consider this to be a hoot of the highest order, it freaked Splotchey out a bit so he killed the dogs and then handcuffed the kidnapper to his stove and burnt the building down.

And from then on he was a lean, mean, hoodlum-slaughterin’ Splotch-machine.

Ooooooooooooooo-kay.

It’s all a bit much for Doc Sensible, though, who goes home and gets in a fight with his wife and then sits around being depressed and freaked out. Well, Doc, that’s what you get for trying to cure somebody like Splotchey. Let that be a lesson to you next time.

And that’s it. Another fine issue, with Splotchey’s black and white outlook on life taking centre stage. Given this black-and-whitedness I feel that the only applicable grading system for this issue is pass-fail. And it passes. Good stuff.

Next Issue: Captain Pudgey and Bimbo Lass get it on! Oh, Pudgey. You’re mean, moody and magnificent.

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