Toasted!Zine #10 – Welcome the new boss…

The Great Comixtreme Column Switch 2003 continues, and Blake Petit is sitting in at the Toasted! office this week, filling in for Brandon Schatz. But wait, wasn’t Brandon given the ol’ heave-ho last episode? Read on, young squire…

When Meagan Clarke got into the Comixtreme offices the next day, there was somebody new fiddling with the lock to Brandon’s old office. The larger, fuzzy gentleman had his key in the lock, but it wasn’t turning properly, and he was clearly growing frustrated.

“Why isn’t this blasted thing working?” he muttered.

“Darren’s got it rigged,” she said. “Who are you.”

“I’m Blake,” he said. She stared at him blankly. “Blake Petit. I write the Everything But Imaginary column and the DC advance reviews around here.”

No response.

“I did my ‘Hamlet’ in Comixtreme Idol! Remember? Green tights? Glow-in-the-dark skull? ‘Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him, Horatio! A fellow of infinite jest--”

“Oh, right, Blake Petit,” Meagan muttered. Her mind was still a bit cluttered with what had happened with Scott the day before, the same day Brandon got canned for failing to make 600 views in his column. It had been an eventful week. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Doug asked me to come in and try to get Toasted! straightened out,” Blake said. “A task I’d be more than happy to perform if I could only get this stupid door open!”

“Darren!” Meagan shouted, banging on the door. There was a shuffling sound inside and the door was opened a crack. A groggy-looking Darren Jess peered out.

“Yeeeas?” he said.

“Let us in, Darren,” Meagan said. “Some of us still want to do some work.”

Darren slid the door open and Blake and Meagan walked into a mess of epic proportions. Posters hung askew on the wall, crushed beer cans littered the desktop. Beneath the carpet was an odd, mattress-shaped lump.

“What can I do for you guys?” Darren muttered.

“Clear this stuff out of the way so I can get to work,” Blake said.

“Who are you again?” Darren asked.

Blake sighed. “To be or not to be, that is the question! Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end the--”

“Right, right, the Shakespeare guy. The one who spends half his time talking about some 3-D Radio play he wrote and the other half talking about Donald Duck comic books.”

“Carl Barks was an unappreciated genius,” Blake snapped. He sighed and looked around the office. “What on Earth do you people do here all day, anyway?”

“Sit around with their pants around their ankles,” Meagan grumbled.

“Let me rephrase that,” Blake said. “What are you supposed to do around here?”

“It’s a standard comic news column,” Meagan said. “We collect information from press releases and the Internet and do a little commentary on it.”

“Well, that sounds easy enough,” Blake said, knocking a few empty Pabst Blue Ribbon cans from the office chair and sitting down at the computer. “Let’s see what I can come up with.”

Everything Peter David writes cancelled

In a shocking move, Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Dreamwave Comics and Dark Horse Comics announced en masse Wednesday that every title Peter David currently writes is being cancelled. According to the press release, this cancellation affects “Captain Marvel, Fallen Angel, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and maybe Spyboy, unless we cancelled that already, we can’t really keep track.”

“Peter David consistently writes some of the smartest, funniest, most intelligent, most thought-provoking comic books in America,” said Marvel President Dan Buckley. “Naturally, we had no recourse but to cancel them all.”

“We have nothing but the utmost respect for everything Peter writes,” said DC President Dan Didio. “Therefore, the devastation must end.”

When asked for comment, Peter David moaned, grumbled a derogatory comment about Republicans, and went back to working on the fourth novel in the Sir Apropos of Nothing series, which currently has more copies in print than the past six months of all his comic book titles put together.

The press conference was frequently punctuated by maniacal laughter coming from a broom closet with a hand-stenciled label marked “B.J.” taped to the door. Buckley hit the door with a mop handle and shouted, “Shut up in there!”

In response to the mass cancellation, CrossGen publisher Mark Alessi announced that David’s next project, Admiral Cherubim of the Samurai Espionage Squad, will be released under the Code 6 imprint.

“It’s a great title,” Alessi said. “We expect it to be cancelled next week.”

Spawn reaches issue 1000 in solicitations, issue 147 expected for publication ‘any day now’

Todd McFarlane’s Spawn reached the landmark status of being the first American comic book to solicit its 1000th issue last week, beating out expected frontrunner Action Comics by over 180 issues. This announcement was only slightly marred by the fact that Spawn #147 has not yet been published.

“This is huge for us here,” McFarlane said. “We’re very proud of the consistent quality and great storytelling that has marked Spawn for 1000 issues now. And let me tell you, since Chuck Austen took over the scripting chores with issue #821, it’s been better than ever.”

In a related story, McFarlane said the Spawn story he is writing and drawing for the Image 10th Anniversary Hardcover will be finished in short order.

“Fans are really going to love this story,” McFarlane said. “I think we may be able to get this book into the stores by 2006.”

Tarentino to direct Howard the Duck II

Riding the wave of Marvel comic properties being made into blockbuster motion pictures, Quentin Tarentino has been named as director for Howard the Duck II: The Revenge of Dr. Bong.

“This is gonna be great, see,” said Tarentino. “I’m gonna make Howard a hard-boiled Duck of the 21st century. There’s gonna be lots of guns and blood and stuff. We’re going to bring back the duck.”

Samples of the script released include Dr. Bong asking Beverly, “Is there a sign in my yard that says ‘dead quacker storage’?” and a ferociously violent battle at the 1976 presidential convention. The film will star Pam Grier as Beverly, Russell Crowe as Dr. Bong and Danny DeVito as Howard.

Bye to the new boss…

“These are the stupidest press releases I’ve ever read,” Blake said. “Where are we getting these things from?”

“Most of them are e-mailed to us,” said Meagan.

“From who?”

“Um… I’m not sure.”

Blake turned on Brandon’s computer and brought up Microsoft Outlook. “Here they are,” he said. “And look, all of these press releases are coming from the same IP address. Does that look familiar to you?”

Meagan looked at the screen for a moment, then her face flushed red.

“DARREN!”

“That’s it,” Blake said, picking up his briefcase and storming out of the office. “I can’t deal with this idiocy. I’m going to ask Doug for either my own column back or a raise.”

He walked out, slamming the door hard behind him. The glass cracked down the center and a few shards fell to the floor.

“Are you happy now, Darren?” Meagan asked.

“Not really,” Darren said. “I never even got to challenge him to a game of ‘Ankles’.”

The preceding is a work of fiction and satire, and is therefore protected by things like copyright law, which Blake M. Petit once wrote a term paper about. So if you’ve got a problem with it, don’t complain to him, talk to Dr. James Stewart at Nicholls State University, because he gave Blake an “A” on that paper.