Hello and welcome to Mister Kitty's Stupid Comics #500! Thanks for coming with us on our journey through piles and piles of stupid comics. It's been a long trip and it took us a little while to find our voice and to really nail down what we were going for here, but I think we've settled into what I believe is the broadest, goofiest, best 'making fun of comic books' feature on the internet. Remember the Mister Kitty Stupid Comics policy - these are all comics that we personally own, that somebody paid cash money for at one point, that were put out into the world for the masses to read and maybe enjoy or maybe just judge harshly, judge harshly not as commentary on the individuals involved in its creation, but purely as physical objects, as badly printed marks on cheap paper. What we do, we do out of love, because we love stupid comics.

That being said we reach another milestone here in that this particular Stupid Comic, brought to us by Sean of Davis CA, thank you Sean, stars someone we've actually met in person and who is a perfectly fine human being, who's entertained thousands with hard work and dedication to her craft, and it's probably not her fault that the comic book she was involved with was stupid.


If you were an anime fan in the late 1990s, you couldn't avoid Apollo Smile! Yes, Apollo Smile, "the live-action anime girl", whose dance moves and electronic music projects blasted across stages at mid-sized anime conventions and soundtracks of films like "Days Of Thunder"! This NYC based performer developed a fan-friendly sci-fi persona, debuted at the Anime East convention, parlayed her comic-con appearances into basic cable gigs hosting anime films on the Sci-Fi Channel and being interviewed by Space Ghost, and then, as the century turned, suddenly Apollo Smile had vanished, leaving behind only VHS memories and two issues of her very own comic book. Or "manga/comic" as the cover would have us believe.

So. Who is Apollo Smile? What makes her tick? What insights will this manga/comic deliver to us, her fans?


Well, after page one, we know that somewhere in deep space, inside reality as we know it, there are cats. Which we already knew, but okay.


Somewhere in deep space in reality as we know it, a big guy sits in front of a pond on board a space ship. Maybe two big guys. It's hard to tell. And our heroine - Apollo Smile - sneaks around in the underbrush around the pond. So first off a pond on board a space ship is one thing, but landscaping it with bushes and trees is just ensuring you'll have to bring an entire crew of groundskeepers along with you on your voyage into deep space in reality as we know it.


Only the true power of manga/comic can really use a full page to fully give us the entire cinematic spectacle of a woman jumping into a pool. Thank you manga/comic.


Weren't you surprised when the woman in the bathing suit jumped into the pool? Who would have thought such a thing would happen?


So let's meet the rest of our spaceship crew: Apollo Smile, Big Guy, Overcoat Sunglass Man, and Talking Computer. And a cat.


Uh oh, we're only six pages into the important "goofing off in the pool" sequence when suddenly the computer detects another spaceship!


Meanwhile on another planet, namely, R'Hlaulg, the capital city of Whuarf XVI in the Cat Puking Noises star system, amazing feats of exposition are taking place. What's so amazing about this exposition, you may ask?

Well,
every word balloon is typeset in exactly the same way so that the first line is always one word.

This
makes dialogue very awkward to read and really halts any narrative momentum that this comic might be trying to build.

It
also highlights the typos, run-on sentences, and general stiff informational dumping nature of this conversation. But at least we know two hundred thousand fans have already paid to see Apollo Smile! They couldn't print it if it wasn't true!


Uh oh, check out the evil twins from Sailor Moon R! One of whom has something really, really wrong with her arm! Why, I bet as entertainment industry executives, they're totally evil and will be doing evil things to try and destroy Apollo Smile! I betcha!


And if we check out the last panel here we see that there's an arm of what's probably a dead guy that they sucked the very life force from on the floor of their space limo! HOW EVIL. Of course, this is the planet Hluck Hluck Barf, who knows what customs or morals are like on other planets, maybe this is perfectly acceptable behavior.


Back in outer space we see Team Smile, who are NOT dentists, prepare to board the derelict space ship in the hopes of finding the horrifying space monster that invariably lurks inside derelict space ships. You'd think these astronauts would learn to just avoid derelict space ships, but no.


Heads up people! I've got diaminate glycerils! I'd better get to the doctor right away and get that checked out! Haw haw. No seriously, diaminate glycerils are used for hydraulic systems in space ships and they're extremely volatile under zero pressure, which unfortunately there is an awful lot of in outer space, which would make diaminate glycerils a really, really poor choice for use in any sort of hydraulic system meant for spaceships. I'm just saying. You know what else is a poor choice?

Starting
every one of your word balloons with one word, as this comic continues to do, for some reason involving the limitations of 1997 graphic image production software, or maybe just obsessive-compulsive behavior on the part of the typesetter. Also of note is the attention directed towards Apollo Smile's "hand cannon" which was sold to her by a man named Chekov. It's his gun.


Why look at that, a giant plasteel cage that once held an extremely dangerous space monster. I wonder if we'll be seeing any space monsters on board this derelict space ship. I wonder.


Oh my god an entire space dining room full of space corpses including a girl who was wearing an Apollo Smile tour '99 t-shirt, which would be worth fifty or one hundred bucks on eBay, if it wasn't ripped and covered in space blood. They're gonna pay for this! Whoever "they" are!


I'm kind of liking Big Guy's space suit here, which clearly reveals the designer's inspiration - walk into the kitchen, open up the cabinet, spot that colander, bingo.

Getting kind of bored waiting for that space monster, fellas


NO SHIT there's something in that derelict spaceship with you, Fake Trigun Man - it's a space monster and we all know it's there. Quit wasting our time! Make with the space monster!


FINALLY! Space monster!


Remember all those late 80s video games where you'd walk around the 8-bit space station shooting space monsters? Here you go.


Hey look it's that hand cannon thing that our attention was directed towards earlier in the comic. We call this 'foreshadowing' boys and girls.


And that means a biiiiiiig explosion. Here's a tip for aspiring cartoonists - if you can't figure out how to fill up two or three pages, just make a big explosion.


Explosion continues! It sure is big!


Explosion III: The Search For Filling Pages.


"well there's not much more we can do here," says Big Guy, implying that they did, in fact, do something other than wander around a derelict spaceship and shoot a space monster. Sure, it took 27 pages, but that's the magic of "manga/comics" in action! What's next for Apollo Smile? Well, hosting cartoons on basic cable. No, I mean Apollo Smile the comic book! What's next?

Well,
you'll have to see next week's Stupid Comics to find out! Join us then, won't you, and look out for derelict spaceships and space monsters!

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