Part Two

MARMADUKE BEEF: A LIFE IN COMICS

a short story

PART TWO

Welcome back, loyal Fanster! I missed ya :-)
:-)

So you wanna hear more of what The Big Red Dog has to say, huh?

First, I wanted to thank you for all the wonderful comments that have been coming in, expressing your support. :-)

And to address a couple of questions:

Major_T0m: I agree: I was against marrying Samson off from the start! That was a Rink Ross legacy cock-up that I had to clean up. By that point, the damage was done. And giving Delilah powers was just obviously wrong; that's why we decided to just kill her off. She was just too ruined by that point.

GreenKidLover57: Some vitamin E in the afflicted area should clear that right up. Take it easy, buddy ;-)

Kickybootsorpheus: Hey, kiddo! :-) I always love meeting women who read comic books ;-) Do you wear glasses too? They're so cute, they make women's faces look adorable and serious, like a little kid playing professor. ;-) ;-) Where do you live?

Straight_Up_EggsNY: You piece of HUMAN EXCREMENT!!!, I'll find your goddamn account and have it closed down. You don't think I can? You COCKSUCKER. Stately Comics fucking owns the FUCKING telephone company, don't fuck around with me. I'll find out where you live. I'm looking it up right now. Have a GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP, you piece of shit cocksucking TWATT-licker -- hope you don't get a knock on the door. ;-) I'm looking it up right as I type this. All I got to do is tell the police that I make Green Kid comic books. They'll shove a table-leg up your ass. ;-) ;-) ;-0 c=3

*** *** ***

I lived with my mom in our Brooklyn apartment through the earlier part of my twenties. She was still real sad about my dad's dying and all. Plus, I was saving money. There was some talk about attending college, but back then you really didn't need to do that stuff like today. For example, you could become the vice-president of a large oil concern, or perhaps steel or corn, and the subject of who or what famous college you attended would never even come up. As my daddy always said, no fancy-dancy university degree was worth even a few years of good old fashioned EXPERIENCE!!!

MARMADUKE'S LESSONS 3
"Develop street smarts."

In that vein, I sought EXPERIENCE in my field of choice -- comics. There was no question, but comic books were going to be my occupation for the rest of my life, and that if anybody got in the way of that, I would destroy them. (supervillain joke)

*** *** ***

I got into The Biz (as it's known) the way so many have done: through the letter columns.

Dear Mr. Eldwidge,

What can I say!!! The latest issue of THE GREEN KID was another HOME RUN right out of the park and into Aunt Prudence's pumpkin patch next door.

I especially loved how you expanded the role of LIVINGSTON THE CHAUFFEUR!!! It was great to see him get in on some of the action, even though he bumbled it as usual!!! But he means well, that Livingston!!!

SOME PEOPLE say that they prefer The Green Kid from the 1950s, but I agree that this is the SUPER-SCIENTIFIC ERA OF STATELY COMICS, and that The Green Kid, like so many others, needs to move with the times!!!

But please, Livingston, baby, don't you ever change!!!

Your Pal!!!
Big Red
Brooklyn, NY

*** *** ***

I remember Eugene Eldwidge -- everybody called him "Oog" -- as an erudite man filled with a love of comic books and all of fantasy. It is not an understatement to say that, for a period of several decades, Oog WAS Stately Comics.

A true professional, Oog answered every one of my letters with a neatly typed missive upon Stately Comics stationary. I saved them all. My ex-wife threw them all out, in order to get back at me, but I can still remember the paper. White, thick, with little quilty pieces embedded, absorbent. The heads of Green Kid, Samson, and the others crudely but charmingly printed on top, like medieval woodcuts. Whoever put their images on there cut off all their ears, and I remember that vividly.

Finally, the GOLDEN DAY!!! I had been silently hoping for (but dared not audibly declare, as my mother tended to put her curse on my dreams) arrived!!! I received another letter back from Oog -- this time, inviting me to be a Stately comics intern!!!

Oog wrote that he thought I was polite boy with a good use of caps.

*** *** ***

I was so excited, I went right into the cabinet and finished off my ma's Bushmill. Luckily, I had a whole two weeks to get out of jail. I told them that I just upset because my daddy had just died in the war. They never checked it, and I've used that line several times hence, and they still never checked it.

But daddy's just happy to be remembered, I guess, in that funny way that LIFE provides each of us.

*** *** ***

The offices of STATELY COMICS were, to be honest, not what I expected. Somehow, I pictured Oz, and what I got was more like Broadway Danny Rose. But it's not the outer trappings that define a business, it's their people.

Oog took me and the two other new interns aside that first day, in his office closing the door. Oog's face took on a grim countenance. I was afraid. I was afraid that he'd notice that I, in contrast to the two teenagers, was 25 years old and looked 40. I was afraid of a lot of things. I was afraid of what would happen if I found out that he was really a dirty rotten liar (OF COURSE HE WASN'T!!! BUT A REALLY GREAT GUY!!!). I was afraid of what I would do to him.

Tension mounted.

*** *** ***

Still, we waited. Then, Oog took a key out -- plainly, to show it to us -- and opened his top desk drawer. He took out from the drawer an old photo -- a sepia-toned postcard depicting a native woman nude from the waist up with teats down to her navel. I couldn't tell if it was a real jungle she was surrounded by or not because the palm fronds looked a little too waxy.

The caption on the postcard read,

"Wish you were hear."

We interns just looked at the picture, silent. Oog betrayed no emotion on his face as to what he thought of the image, and what he expected of us.

But then he got that twinkle, that sprightly crinkle, in his eyes. It seemed as if years of age had suddenly lifted off this man. He threw back his head and boomed with laughter.

Oog, he was alright. It was his way of letting us know he was cool. We got to look at as much postcards as we wanted, in the sanctuary of his modest, windowless office. Sometimes we could borrow the key from him and see the postcards by ourself, or even in pairs.

These were the best days of my life, bar none.

*** *** ***

"Gossamer," Oog would say to me (he called me that after that red monster in the Bugs Bunny cartoons), "I know Stately doesn't seem like much sometimes. But we are the modern religion, so to speak."

He tossed a sheaf of mimeographed paper on the desk. The edges of the paper on the top and bottom were torn and rough. They were held together on the side by three metal grommets.

"I'm telling this only to you, because I know you are old enough to understand. Also, I like your use of caps."

Oog pointed to the stack of paper.

"You know what this is? Talking points. The spooks. What's The Green Kid's logo again, Gossamer?"

"Red, White, Blue and Green."

"And keeping it that way, Gossamer. Capitalist manifesto. Heroes."

He opened up his top desk drawer and pulled out a postcard all done up in gawdy Fifties colors. A brassy blond hula-hooping naked. Mossy lush beaver. No actual caption, just the word "FLORIDA."

Oog held the post card between his middle and ring finger, drew the edges of his mouth tight.

"Things are changing, Gossamer. I can feel it. I'm getting old."

*** *** ***

"You have a good mind, Gossamer."

*** *** ***

Now, I'm not by any means a religious man!!! Parents never observed, never forced me, and for that I'm GRATEFUL. I don't need some sort of FAKE MORALITY dictating my life. But, in my years as a traveling salesman, I've spent many a lonely night in the local Motel 6's of the 52 states. Common denominator, not counting lousy whores? (joke)

They all had Bibles. Little green ribbed ones, ones painted in gilt and woodtone.

Turn to the story of Esau. Red, hairy, a natural leader. Samson with shorter hair, virtually.

Tricked. By fucking Jacob.

*** *** ***

Rink Ross was just bent and twisted, evil from the word GO!!! He was BORN EVIL!!! You know the stories where somebody goes back in time to kill Hitler as a child?

Rink Ross was a turtle-neck wearing, long-haired, cock-sucking, double-cock-sucking sonofabitch who was a so-called "wunderkind" at Stately. Only 21 years old, and already was in charge of the entire Samson line of comic books. Prissy fruit four-eyes with a degree in basket-weaving shoved up his ass. Obviously, he was NOT from the SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS, so it was up to me to school him and knock him if need be.

Rink would pontificate ad vomitum about THE RULES OF COMIC BOOKS!!! The "art" of comic books. Like he was back in the fucking university. He'd lay the art out on the big table in the production room, squint at the pages and count panels. "Too many panels." "Too few panels." "Why did you put a panel here?" "No panels." And he'd actually send some of the artists back, so they could fit his loon theories.

Rink and his fucking bottle of Windex, how he would wipe his table down every morning, washing off our grubby fingerprints, our breath. His little patch of fucking land.

THE RULES OF COMIC BOOKS!!! BY RINK ROSS!!!:-) :- )
:-0c=3

And my point was, and always will be -- comics are just big, dumb fun for boys and men with bad childhoods and plenty of wood to smother.

*** *** ***

It's true. Bad childhoods. They either got beat up by their dads or were bedridden with consumption and couldn't play in any reindeer games. Once, many years later, we were eating lunch at the Stately lounge and it turned out that everybody at that table was either beat by his dad or had tuberculosis as a kid.

It got to the point, you could get a general picture of a man by whether he was beat or an invalid.

Rink, he was just born bad. I'm not a religious man, but some people just have the Satan in them. Like Brandy Winestine.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

*** *** ***

Comic books are supposed to be warm milk, not a complicated martini. Placebo. Placating. Comforting, and it's not rocket science. It's not rocket science to see that it's just about two men beating each other.

We, as a species, are like cavemen in Gucci suits and Nike sneakers. Breasts are for squeezing; that's why they're made round and soft. Fists are for hitting; that's why they are made hard and powerful. It's in our genetic predetermination. We can't escape it.

At least I'm honest about it.

Hey, fuck you.

*** *** ***

"Rink's Rules" ruled Stately. Though older than him, there was nothing I could do. I was just an intern. I had to eat shit and smile doing so.

But what really disappointed me was Oog. How did he let this go on? It seemed like as each day passed, he was removing himself more and more from the Stately picture. And it was clear as crystal to me what was going on -- that the Rinks of the world were winning. >:-(

I didn't know what went wrong!!! I thought that day Oog talked to me, showed me the memos from the government, told me he liked my mind -- I thought that meant something. That I was in line.

The night before I quit Stately -- well, not really quit, as they never paid me -- I waited until everybody went home, then took out my schwang and started rubbing it all over Rink's office.

It was a clean schwang, but it was just the principle of it. I rubbed my schwang on Rink's desk, section by section, methodically, so there was no place on that formica that didn't bear my schwang-skin. Occasionally, a hair would come loose, and I gleefully allowed them to lay where they wished. Schwang on Rink's stapler, schwang on the Scotch tape (that left hairs for sure, and skin). Schwang on the papers, on the artwork, rubbing my schwang over Green Kid's face like it was Silly Putty. I pulled off my pants and dunked my balls delicately in his coffee cup. Sat bare-assed on his chair and farted.

Then for the frosting on the cake (literally, sort of). I pulled out that postcard of "FLORIDA" that Oog showed me that time in his office. The one with the hula hoop. And I pleasured myself and shot a load in Rink's goddamn Windex bottle. I shook that fucking bottle, so my spooge and the blue liquid combined. A cascade of bubbles rose in the plastic container, like champagne. It was almost beautiful.

But it wasn't ENOUGH!!! :-(

My need for revenge, for justice against Rink, was insatiable. I needed it like people need sex.

And I would have it, courtesy of a voodoo queen in an Alabama swamp.

Part One

MARMADUKE BEEF: A LIFE IN COMICS

a short story

PART ONE

Greetings, comic book lover! My name might be familiar to you from the credits of countless funny books. "Hmm," you might say, "Marmaduke Beef, Editor. Who is that guy? What does he do? Does he draw the pictures or write the words?"

Well, fanster -- I do neither.

*** *** ***

My nickname in the industry is "The Big Red Dog," and as you well know that's from the children's cartoon "Marmaduke." I've also been called "Beefcake" by some of my female admirers -- but that's a whole different part of the blog! Whoa -- can I even say that???
;-)

*** *** ***

I know the fashion nowadays is to write these MUCKRACKING INTERNET STORIES full of slander and scandal. Well, I can tell you right now, if that's what you've come here for, you can just leave now. I don't believe in that sort of YELLOW JOURNALISM!!!
>:-(

But if you want a STORY! filled with laughter, love, a few tears, and many laughs -- if you've ever read a comic book, watched a superhero fly faster than a speeding plane, and imagined, just for a second, that it could be you --

THIS IS THE INTERNET DIARY YOU WANT TO READ!!! :-)

*** *** ***

To be honest, the Internet bores me and I haven't really paid much attention to it. I like e-mail, but that's it. To tell you the truth, I really sort of hate the Internet!!! I think it's overrated. :-(

But you know, SOME PEOPLE!!! have seen fit to use the Internet as a way of bullying others, to hit. And I always hit back. Always remember that.
!!!
:-(

*** *** ***

My Dad was a traveling salesman who was prone to the drink, and he beat us. But I don't think I ever got a beating I didn't deserve. Some of the ones Ma got seemed unprovoked, but she really didn't get them that often, and I could have imagined things.

You know, in this touchy-feely age of "free to be you and me," I think we lose perspective on what it takes to really raise a child. Sometimes, kids act really stupid and don't listen. Some people really need the stupid beat out of them, or they grow up to be unproductive members of society. This extends to every facet of life. How many homeless people, for an example, would have learned to stay in school and not get on the drugs if they had only received a bit more discipline at home?

I know some people may say, "Oh, Big Red, he's just a big grumpy bear!" But sometimes, you need to be Grumpy Bear. And I don't think I've done a single thing in my entire career that was over-the-line or not called for by the immediacies of the situation, and you can ask anybody working for me if that is the case.

Because the secret is: comic people, they're just like children. Sometimes, they just don't listen.

*** *** ***

Dad died when I was 8, and I barely knew him. A drywall fell on him. My Ma couldn't even sue the landlord because the drywall was there illegally, put up so we could have a TV room. But the beatings stopped. And that is another lesson:

MARMADUKE'S LESSONS!!!

#1

"It can look like chocolate, but really be shit; or it can look like shit, but taste like chocolate. YOU REALLY CAN'T TELL UNTIL YOU TRY!!!"

*** *** ***

I don't remember much about my dad, except for the comic books. My dad would buy comic books from the cigar shop all the time. Sometimes, he'd even let me read them. His absolute favorite was "The Green Kid," the kid with the chlorophyll veins. On the other hand, I was always partial to "Samson's Mighty Swing." I used to picture Samson taking his mace and beating The Green Kid into a verdant smear on the pavement.

Just kidding -- I really loved my father. We used to joke all the time.

*** *** ***

Back in those days, you could buy a whole comic for 10 cents. It was the era of the giants, of the heroes. Women were soft and feminine. And perhaps there was even more brotherhood and kinship between the races -- the blacks, the jews, the Italian, the Irishman -- than there was today.

Because kinship back then was REAL, NOT DICTATED!!!

*** *** ***

Yours truly, Big Red, was actually part of...a gang! Can you believe it? Just like that lovable pile of rubber Tireman was with the Dyre Avenue Gang. In fact, Tireman, like Samson, became quite an inspiration for me. Looking at my body in the mirror, I imagined my myriad of imperfections and puckerings to be merely tires -- vulcanized rubber. A queer twist of fate that perhaps placed me outside of the realm of mere humans...but made me more of a hero because of it.

*** *** ***

We used to beat up transvestites who ventured into the neighborhood, and guys that sort of looked Korean. It was not a case of discrimination, as the "hate crime" was not invented yet. These were not the gays you see now, like Richard Chamberlain. Every gay that managed to get in the neighborhood was up to no good -- heroin needles, kidnappings for sex, kinky sex crimes. Trannies with ill-fitting wigs and slim, pointy boots. We had kids playing in the street all the time, and us older boys, we were like the cops. Because we had to be the cops. But we didn't know from gay. We didn't even know what "gay" was.

As for the orientals -- that I really regret today. But there was a war going on.

*** *** ***

Never had a problem with blacks -- never never never. They stayed in their neighborhood, and we stayed in ours.

I love black people, they are a fun people with a rich history and great music. Occasionally, I will even hire one of them to draw my comics.

*** *** ***

My mother, bless her soul, was the light of my life and my greatest supporter. I was so sorry that my dad was so mean to her, and a lot of that was my mother making me feel sorry about it just it case I forgot sometimes. She had a way of stopping in the middle of her housecleaning and letting out a punctuated sigh that just about tore me up. She had a way of making me feel loved. But she was also sort of nuts.

But it was so hard getting away from her -- I guess because she was just so wonderful.

*** *** ***

My Ma never slept with another man after my dad passed on, and to me it was one of the greatest displays of love and devotion one person could have for another -- to deny herself like that. She told me that she was just glad not to have that thing inside of her anymore, because she never liked it and she never understood why women would want it. She was full of off-color jokes like that. I think that's where I get my yen for comedy from.

*** *** ***

By the time I was 17 years old, thick red curly hair covered a good portion of my body. In fact, my hairline seemed to be a good 1-2 inches lower on my head than the rest of my classmates. I could grow a full beard, if I wanted -- and if I did so, my bare forehead was merely a little strip, a band-aid above my eyes.

But what would Samson do? Wouldn't Samson be so hairy? Wasn't it a sign of hyper-masculinity? And wasn't that something to be proud of, indulged in -- encouraged?

See that's a lesson I've learned:

MARMADUKE'S LESSONS!!!
2!!!

"Make the most of a shitty situation."

*** *** ***

I looked like a fucking monster as a teenager. Nobody wanted to lay me, and I'm not so stupid as to not understand why. But that's just like women. They don't look at the inside. They just want things. Very, very few are that rare breed known as "ANGELS."

And ANGELS -- demure, full of purity, with a good heart -- are what I always looked for.

MARMADUKE'S LIFE LESSONS #3: "Aim high."
;-)

*** *** ***

It was only through the four-color map of the comic book that I glimpsed the potential of another world. I hungrily eyed that world as an escape hatch from the monotony of my daily life and surroundings. Little did I know what would be waiting for me -- my DESTINY!!!
:-)
:-)
SIT TIGHT, FANSTER!

*** *** ***