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Showing posts with label pep. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pep. Show all posts
Usually, the 3D nature of Pep covers helps the Shield. But on the cover of 39, perspective turns against himlike some sort of artistic auto-immune disease. It's distorted his limbs and jerked them to angles so painful even the Shield can't help showing it on his face. Psst! Shield! The lipstick doesn't help...
Plus, it's obviously thrown off his aim, so he completely missed hitting Attila the Vampire Cat-person Voodoo Japanazi Who Gets His Workout Gear from the International Male Catalog.
Dusty the Boy Bondage seems to have nodded off, or may have already died from having his entire brain exposed. Oh, unless that's his hair. Dusty's lucky! He might have been in danger if Simitar-san hadn't just been shot by Ayikanasiyu, the World's Most Awkward Marksman/Chaffeur and his inable female lookout, Seen-us DeMilo.
One benefit to the perspective though: the odious Hangman is trapped on an Escherian stair/ledge, with zero clearance and steps that approach but never arrive down at the groundfloor action. The farther he is in the background the better. In fact, without my reading glasses, I'd swear he was just a color-reversed Silver Age Batwoman.
Not even Archie's blatant attempt to overwrite this Pep cover with his self-aggrandizing advertisements can dim the glory of this eye-popping scene. Archie; post no bills!
The Hangman -- who doesn't look anything like Batman -- is where he belongs: in the background, sequestered from the rest of the scene by the boundary created by the cannon. At first I thought the Hangman was going to take that Nazi and do a Bane-style backbreaking maneuver. But then I realized he's in the middle of enacting a much more horrible punishment: he's forcing the Nazi to stare up at the ineffable horror of the name of ARCHIE, the Fuhrer of Riverdale. You think that Nazi's wearing jodhpurs? Think again; just like his soul, his body has evacuated itself when faced with the existential terror of the Andrews Abyss. Shame on you, Hangman (who is not designed to make you think of Batman at all)-- that's a fate too cruel to impose even on a Nazi.
Dusty's having a high old time, having switched out his starched cape for a parachute, as he plummets down to --
hm, well, judging by the file of tanks on that long pink winding road, he's the Grand Marshall at the parade celebrating the repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell".
And the Shield? The Shield is no-nonsense this month! He has ZERO tolerance for Nazis who dare to steal American culture by doing the Lady Gaga Bad Romance Dance at their National Socialist Rallies. "You'll not be filming THIS choreography, Leni Riefensthal!" he shouts.
Usually I make fun of the Shield's apparent fondness for golden showers as a form of punishment, as this month's yellow cover reminds us. But, gosh, he's got other tricks up his sleeve-- specifically, his FIST! Watch him shove his fist in that aperture, causing the cannon to explode back on to its owner...! "And THIS one's for the Future Farmers of America!" he cracks.
Wow, is it warm on this cover, or is it just me...?
Phew! That cover is SUCH a relief. The Shield, with heavily inked musculature (even in his hair!), is pole-vaulting into a hay-carpeted redoubt teeming with Japanazis, who are apparently in the midst of boring to death some bound Americans, several of whom have already nodded off. Dusty, his cape in extra-starched glory, is socking Tojo Junior in the jaw with, um, a Nikon camera? It's hard to tell, but I'm sure Dusty is indulging in adolescent war-time smack-talk: "Turns out your inferior foreign electronics are good for something after all, Colonel-san!" And the odious Hangman is relegated to the background, busy casting shadows and mopping up the also-rans. ALL IS AS IT SHOULD BE on the cover of PEP!
You see, I had this horrible nightmare last night. There was this red-haired beaver or woodchuck or something in black pullover with an R on it, and he was using his buckteeth to chew away at the cover of a Pep magazine, just chewing it all away, and as he chewed it, it was killing off each character as he ate their picture on the cover, first the Hangman, then Dusty, then the Shield, with finally nothing left to stop him from consuming the entire soul of the nation=== the surreal horror of it was overwhelming.
Phew! Thank Jove it was just a dream...!
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