Dan Liebke's Astonishing Tales

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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

Okey-doke. So MegaSmurf has teleported Bimbo Lass to Mars where they are about to discuss whether or not MegaSmurf should get off his big naked blue butt and save Earth from impending nuclear war.

It’s a worthwhile topic for debate to be sure. MegaSmurf is arguing that why should he bother when, y’know, there’s all kinds of cool stuff on Mars to check out. Bimbo Lass is arguing that, hey, humans are kind of interesting also. Or at least she would be, if she weren’t dying of oxygen deprivation.

… MegaSmurf doesn’t want to be seen as winning by default …

Allowing one’s opponent to asphyxiate is considered by most professional debaters to be a little against the spirit of the contest and MegaSmurf doesn’t want to be seen as winning by default so he thoughtfully creates an oxygen bubble for Bimbo Lass to breathe within. She throws up and abuses him.

So the debate begins…

MegaSmurf: Boy, humans are pointless. You will soon surprise me (and, indeed, the greater comic book reading public) by telling me that you’re sleeping with Captain Pudgey.

Bimbo Lass: Oh man… not this time screwed up stuff again. Can’t you just live in the moment?

Then MegaSmurf says “Hey, why don’t we tell your origin story? What’s the first thing you remember?”

And we have a flashback scene to when Bimbo Lass was just a kid and she was woken up by The Original Bimbo Lass and her husband fighting about the fact that Bimbo Lass wasn’t his daughter.

No surprises there, surely.

After this little flashback, Bimbo Lass decides to tell MegaSmurf that she’s shagging Captain Pudgey.

“You’re what?!!?!?” splutters MegaSmurf, visibly upset and stunned and nauseous.

“Man, you’re a headcase,” says Bimbo Lass.

MegaSmurf recovers nicely, turns the tables, and says “Allrightey then… if you’re sleeping with somebody else, then I see absolutely no point in saving Earth because you were the only person I cared about and now I don’t care about you either. So there.” And he pokes his tongue out.

“This is nuts,” says Bimbo Lass.

MegaSmurf then makes his fortress of solitude (this conversation all takes place in MegaSmurf’s fortress of solitude… should have mentioned that earlier) fly. Just ’cause he can.

And then it’s time for a flashback to when Bimbo Lass was 13. There’s a bit of a reunion of the old superheroes, including The Original Bimbo Lass and Captain Pudgey Senior. Bimbo Lass has been training for a superhero career, but kinda becomes wary when she sees precisely how pathetic all these old superheroes are, especially Mosquito Man who is just completely bonkers.

This flashback turns out to be not a particularly good one for Bimbo Lass’s argument of humans having worthwhile lives and being, like, worthy of rescue from a nuclear apocalypse and MegaSmurf swoops on her crass error.

“See,” he says. “Look at these cool canyons.”

Boy, what a nerd.

Bimbo Lass retaliates by unleashing another flashback of the night when she bumped into The Dead Comedian.

“Hey,” says The Dead Comedian. “You’re real purty. Just like your mother used to be.”

“Yes, I know,” smiles Bimbo Lass. (She is, as yet, unaware of The Dead Comedian’s hilarious rape of her mother.)

The Original Bimbo Lass … shoos him off with a broomstick.

But then The Original Bimbo Lass shows up and smacks The Dead Comedian with her handbag and shoos him off with a broomstick.

These random flashbacks are not providing any kind of coherent argument, so MegaSmurf continues to refuse to save humanity. Bimbo Lass has pretty much had a gutful by now, so says ‘allrightey, Mr Predestination, how about you just tell me how it all ends…’

“Okey-doke,” says MegaSmurf. “You end up crying. I return to Earth amid millions of corpses. Future hazy. Most likely because of E-M radiation of a nuclear warhead. Then I shoot somebody in the snow. Tomorrow’s lotto numbers are 3, 5, 9, 27, 28, 33.”

Bimbo Lass jots the numbers down then decides to have another flashback about the next time she saw The Dead Comedian, after she’d been told about his rape joke.

She was drunk and abused him and called him a rapist. The Dead Comedian took it all on the chin and then unleashed one of his typically witty one-liners.

“Hey, I only raped her once.”

Oh Dead Comedian, you’re an absolute hoot.

And then we end the flashback and Bimbo Lass tells MegaSmurf to send her back home in time for the lotto draw.

“Okay then,” says MegaSmurf. “But only if you come to a startling understanding.”

“What do you mean by–” begins Bimbo Lass, and then pauses, before coming to the startling understanding that, in fact, The Dead Comedian, in perhaps his best joke ever, is Bimbo Lass’s dad!!

Well, ya gotta know that annoys Bimbo Lass no end and she bursts into tears. Which is by far the most effective ploy imaginable because while MegaSmurf may be an omniscient supergod, he’s also a guy and, as such, putty in the hands of a crying babe. He agrees to save the Earth if she’ll stop crying. But to save some sort of face, he puts forth a completely illogical basis for this decision, citing a fundamentally flawed probabilistic argument.

Bimbo Lass smiles to herself. “Sucker,” she thinks.

And that’s it. An okay kind of issue, redeemed by the big shock conclusion and Bimbo Lass’s cunning use of tears. Let’s give it a big Martian B minus, shall we?

Next Issue: Splotchface solves the mystery!!

Related Pages

If you hated this, you'll probably also hate:

1. The Watchmen Files, Issue 7: Captain Pudgey and Bimbo Lass Get It On
2. The Watchmen Files, Issue 4: The Secret Origin of MegaSmurf
3. The Watchmen Files, Issue 6: The Secret Origin of Splotchey
4. The Watchmen Files, Issue 11: The Secret Origin of Lord Smartypants
5. The Watchmen Files, Issue 2: Flashback… What A Feeling!