You may have heard of the reknowned folk music group The Irish Rovers, now get ready for the much less reknowned Ohio Rovers, which, judging by the cover, is a couple of heavily armed teenagers, watched over by some head-shaped cumulus clouds. We are assured our two proto-Columbine boys are not heroes, but, for the purposes of our weekly Stupid entertainment, will have to do.


I wonder if, after this guy gets shot, someone comes and repaints the population number on that sign? "157" is a weirdly precise number for a town so small it barely even merits a "welcome to" sign.


Before you can get your hopes up that this comic is full of zombie(?) shooting action, you are met with helpful exposition provided by Jackie Gleason as Sheriff Buford T. Justice.


Some of you may have thought I was going too dark with that "proto Columbine" crack but look, when you name your first issue after a song about a literal school shooter, which is a direct quote from the shooter herself, what am I supposed to do? I'm only human!


Yeah, kiddo? Well, I thought Cleveland changed their baseball team to the Guardians, but here we are.

I'm going to go ahead and say this comic is from 1987, when the outcry about Cleveland's previous team name and mascot wasn't nearly as well-known as it would get in the 21st century, so it's possible the author and artist weren't making any political statement by having their character wear the hat but uh... well, bookmark this part for later.


Like many post-apocalypse dystopia stories, the principal characters, good guys and bad guys alike, always seem to find time and resources for excellent grooming, hair care, and nickname-adjacent costuming. No one can clean the trash off the school hallway floors but they got all the time in the world to shave their hair into perfectly-spaced little rows.


Little guy, you gotta stop remarking upon how uninspired your own comic book is, you'll never get to 100 issues like this!

And no, the Cinderella Kid didn't shoot those guys, he hit them with his guns, which, sure.


AHHH I recognize this classroom! Didn't realize the TRS-80 Whiz Kids were in a post-apocolyptic dystopia but... it tracks.




Also, let this be a lesson: using your guns as billy clubs poses a serious risk of shrinking your legs, or possibly making your upper body bigger, not sure.


Don't worry, that's not a gun in the teacher's holster, it's just a powerful taser. Hey, I thought this was supposed to be a dystopia?!

So is "Harlequin" his hostage's real name or is it just another cool nickname? Or have I been wrong this whole time and no one's got nicknames, they're all really named things like "Reptillia" and "Special Ed"?


It's nice of the crazy guy to provide us more helpful exposition; also curious about the set up of this two-way intercom system. Pretty sure all the schools I went to only had the one-way kind.


So our heroes... sorry, not heroes... are sent to the cafeteria with a trank gun and, presumably, a hall pass.


Ed tries to distract hostage-taker Mouse by getting him to drop more expository dialogue, though I would say paying teenagers a bounty to shoot disease-riddled zombies and arming teachers with tasers isn't really "going through the motions of being civilized". Then again, I question exactly how much of a hellscape this supposed post-apocalypse could be if they still have operational McDonald's restaurants and regular television broadcasts. Like, Ohio is supposedly closed off but supply chains and trucker routes are still sufficient to keep fast food franchises supplied? I mean, we had a much less lethal pandemic a few years ago (don't know if anyone remembers? Corono something?) and it was a supply chain disaster! Are they sure they didn't just seal off this one town because it really, really sucks? And if so, what are those Big Macs made of? YECCHHHH

Though I don't think the sick people are zombies after all, I think they're just really sick and dying which makes shooting them like at the beginning of the story kind of a weird thing to do but after all they're not heroes!


Oh good, Mouse is going to give us even more exposition. Awfully cooperative of hostage Harlequin (obviously not the much cooler Harley Quinn, who I imagine would've crushed Mouse into dust well before things got to this point) to stay absolutely silent as her captor gives us this valuable information, which can't be easy since she's also graciously allowing us a peek under her skirt...

...wait, no electricity?? How the hell do TV and that two-way intercom work?Did they uncover the source of energy used by The Flintstones? Well, they seem to have at least one policeman now so I guess they fixed the electricity too.


YES YES explain in detail exactly who the Rover Boys are, to Special Ed, who appears to be one himself, and presumably is the same age as Mouse and thus remembers everything that happened, and most likely knew the Rover Boys personally. Tell us, I mean him, all about Red Rover and all his friends, like Wingface and Painted-On-Bodysuit Lady!


Man, forget about the Goths and the Satanists, I wanna hear more about the "BOB" attack squad


Remember, this is still Mouse talking to Ed in the school cafeteria while the hostage sits quietly, taking it all in as Mouse goes on, "and then Enemy Nine told Red Rover 'I can feel it... I'm going to KILL people...'" and so on and so forth


"'YEAARRGH' yelled Enemy Nine, and his machine gun went 'BRAK AK AK'" Mouse continues, as his hostage quietly files her nails and Ed shifts uncomfortably from one foot to the other, wondering if the tranquilizer dart will get Mouse before he can put everyone else to sleep with his monologue.

Also, was all this taking place in a tiny town with 157 occupants?


Well, no wonder Wingface wore that "kinda queer" mask, it looks like it was surgically attached to his face. Looks pretty painful to remove it! However, I'd say re-enlisting sort of is co-opting into the system by definition, isn't it? Then again there's scare quotes around it so it looks like they're arresting him? But why call it a conscription truck... at least Scofflaw had the dignity to just get plain old assassinated alone in her bed.


Ed, at any part of this multi-page exposition, you could've jumped in with "I KNOW dude I was there too". Any time!


No one knows if anything is out there? Does that mean Ohio McDonald's franchisees don't have to pay their franchise fee anymore? Man, it's just too bad that even with TV they can't receive broadcast signals from out of state, I mean a decent pair of rabbit ear antennae used to get you signals from like 2 states away, back in the pre-apocalypse era.


So... they don't know if there's anything outside of Ohio, but they know the president is now in West Virginia? Is it specifically the President of Ohio?


If this comic had been written within the last 4 years it'd be some tinfoiley "Plandemic" anti-mask, anti-vaxx stuff, but since it's the 1980s we'll just throw in some fun references to "welfare queens" who keep having babies and being all slutty and stuff AND THE GUBMINT PAYS THEM FOR IT!!! so that's fun.


Hey! You got your small-government Libertarian in my anti-psychiatry Scientologist! No, YOU got your anti-psychiatry Scientologist in MY small-government Libertarian! It's delicious!!

Harlequin is, in this moment, every woman cornered at a party by either a Libertarian or a Scientologist.


Finally, Mouse is put out of our misery with the trank gun


Afterwards the boys reward themselves with a visit to the aforementioned Blue Sisters who... YIKES


Yes, the professional teen (?) welfare moms are also the first characters of colour we've seen in this comic, aside from a few background army men seen in flashback. And YES one of them is named "Midnight". But it could be worse! I assume.


You can tell Sacree's the smart one because her nipples don't show through her dress


Mouse's lengthy expository monologue made it sound like the welfare mom dropout program was totally voluntary but Midnight (ugh) here seems to be suggesting it's forced solely on black women... starting with 10 year olds...? Well, they're awfully cheerful about it.


I mean, that's probably more than he was good for before the lobotomy.


Comics hack: When you don't have quite enough to fill out the last page of your story, just make a big black panel over a caption telling the next episode title!

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