“What better way could there be to commemorate 230 years of sacrifice by American soldiers than to continue recapping a hateful and paranoid anti-government comic book?” I asked myself this morning. And after coming up with seven or eight dozen ideas, I decided that the poem I posted Friday would be enough, and I’d just go for it.
We pick up at Atoz A to Z books, where Reagan and Mommy walk away to make space for one Noor Ilham and family. This is clearly Mackey’s one-and-only noble attempt to prove that he doesn’t hate all Muslims, and here’s how he does it: Noor is trés Westernized – trendy blazer, tiny little eyeglasses, John Corbett’s hair. His wife is wearing a shawl of some sort of silky, neo-traditional design, to show that the Ilhams aren’t too Westernized, and therefore can still represent All The Islamic World.
I’ll remind you that the central tenet of this comic is that political correctness is the evilest thing on earth.
Anyway, Sean autographs Noor’s book, noticing that it has been inscribed “From your wife Rahma and your little conservative, love always.” Wow, so much to ponder…first off, why “your” wife? Is there another Rahma he knows? Secondly, who in the hell would identify their baby that way (and it’s definitely a baby – Rahma’s holding him). I guess because it’s a political book, that makes a little bit of sense (like if you were giving your husband a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book, would you inscribe it “from your little socialist”?),but only if it’s ironic, and I think the point of the whole world this comic is that conservatives don’t have a sense of irony.
Noor realises with a start that he forgot to bring Sean’s first book, but Rahma reminds him that it’s in the car, because nothing sucks more than being caught in line at McDonald’s and then thinking, “shit! I could be reading about why Noam Chomsky is a more dangerous man than Kim Jong Il right now!” and it’s best to always be prepared. Noor trots off to the car, while Rahma crashes the Exposition Truck into her hagiographic conversation with Sean, to let us him know that Noor is a bio-mechanical engineer who specializes in cellular bionics, and if this smacks of Cyber-Sean goodness, just be patient.
In a very confusingly-laid out page, the following happens: along the left side, there are four panels of a Muslim man (we know this because in panel four, he says “Allahu akbar”) pulling a comically Looney Tunes-looking bomb out of his jacket. On the right, Sean glances over to his right, while making a torturously unfunny joke about Oscar Goldman, the scientist behind the Bionic Man (AKA the Six Million Dollar Man, but maybe that was copyrighted). This bit serves one purpose, which is to explain why Noor has the nickname “Oscar” when we see him in 2021. Oh, spoiler just then.
Sean’s spidey sense gets all a-tingle, and he trails of while rambling about the goddamn Six Million Dollar Man, in a series of panels that move us closer to his piercing blue eyes, and firm chin, and we are again reminded of why the real-life Hannity enjoys this comic so much. Then we move back to find that Sean is looking at the Muslim, making not even the slightest effort to hide his bomb, while nobody notices. Sean pulls Rahma and Little Conservative to him, apparently hoping to shield them with his body, although given that we will shortly find that he survives and they do not, it’s a bit likelier that he used them as a shield.
Noor walks out to the car as Narrator Reagan tells us that “what followed, few saw coming. We tried to placate our enemies’s wrath.” Meanwhile, a hand drifts in to adjust Noor’s glasses. It can’t be his hand; arms don’t bend the way that arm would need to bend. I’m seriously going to try to scan some pages before I wrap this up next week, I promise.
“It didn’t work,” Reagan continues as the bookstore explodes in a full panel image that makes my job easier.
“Rights are like anything else which has been lost…” Reagan non sequiturs (when this is all over, I’m going to reconstruct the entire letter and see if it makes even the slightest degree of sense) as Noor climbs over smoking rubble past a half destroyed Sean Hannity standee to find his book. Sean’s inscription, by the way, is “To Noor ‘Oscar’ Ilham, Sean Hannity, You’re a great American.” Now, I know that all rubble looks kind of similar, so I’m not sure that this part is intentional, but I definitely got this 9/11 vibe from the ruins, especially because there’s that “fluttery paper” thing happening. And if so, bad cricket Mr. Mackey. Noor looks around at the destruction, and then gets a bad case of gas pain (at least, that is how I interpret his look of “grief”) as Reagan continues YET AGAIN, “…often, they can never be recovered.” Actually, rights can be recovered once lost, and it’s called armed revolution.
Elsewhere, a taxi plays some pundit’s bloviating about Ann Coulter’s new book, Liberals, Can’t Live with Them, Can’t Shoot Them, and boohooing about how the liberals are calling it hate speech & therefore not covered by the first amendment, and I need to reread it, because I can’t conceive of any way in which fantasizing about the death of your political opponents in the title of your book doesn’t count as hate speech. The pundit continues that he knows the liberals “like I know ever square inch of my glorious naked body.” So it’s Rush, then. Gotcha.
“They will not rest until they’ve silenced us all…krrrzz” continues Rush. The cab’s passenger, who we can just barely tell is Liddy, asks to be let out. As someone comes on to explain that the feed has mysteriously disappeared, the cabbie (who looks like Sam Gamgee dressed as an orc) apologizes for the crappy radio.
It was only at this point that I realized there was a plot to kill all the leading right-wing pundits, and that Sean was the target of the bookstore assassin, not Noor. I was angry to realize this.
Liddy wanders through an abandoned lot where he has no reason to be, and notices a thug with a scimitar. “A scimitar?” he wonders. As do I, becuase they rampaging Orientalism for the next few pages is truly something to behold.
Liddy reaches into his coat as two swordsmen rush him. But he is cool and collected as he quips, “didn’t you ever hear the joke about the Islamofascist that brought a sword to a gun fight?” I think that out of all the sentences I have ever encountered in my life, that is the one least like anything you might chance to encounter in reality. Bonus points for “Islamofascist that brought a sword,” and not “who brought,” because “that” is never used for a person. Very subtly racist, sir; I salute you. And I salute your total lack of knowledge of English grammar.
“Here’s the punch line,” Liddy continues as he fires at the man behind him without even look, scoring two headshots, because he is a badass. He then shoots the other swordsman in each kneecap. He snarks that the Islamofascists owe him a dollar for bullets. As the kneecapped swordsman writhes in pain, Liddy gets an idea.
Much later, a truck comes to the warehouse where Liddy has been waiting for something that we still don’t remotely understand. A man in a blood covered apron comes out and gives Liddy a bag and bucket of…something!…while Liddy whines about the man’s lateness. The man explains that traffic is awful; we are given to understand it’s because of the exploded bookstore, and therefore the world is just so small, after all, isn’t it?
Anyway, Liddy finally pokes around the warehouse that he came to so that he could be ambushed (seriously, I have no fucking idea why he’s here…I’d think it was to intercept an Al Qaeda shipment, but we soon see that he doesn’t know what the shipment is for). He spies a box with “Harley Davidson” stencilled on, and pries it open.
He is shocked to find a mint-condition 1930 bike inside, which is showcased in a simply goofy panel in which Liddy is backlit all God style, and the bike is positioned for maximum glamour and sexiness. It’s obvious from reading that Liddy is Mike Mackey’s favorite character, and this sequence is the stupidest example thus far of the manliness-fetishization that’s been going on throughout.
Liddy starts, I shit you not, caressing the bike, and promising that he won’t let them take it to Saudi Arabia. Then he addresses the Muslim whom he locked in a car trunk. It’s writing things like that sentence that make me wonder why I still blog. Any, Liddy has this little freakout, where he says that the assassination attempt as one thing, but “condemning a Harley0Davidson to a life in the desert…I don’t think I can tolerate that. The Muslim man refuses to talk, and Liddy continues on: “Do you know what sand does to an antique engine? Sand sticks to oil like…”
Okay, here’s the thing. The comic takes a turn for the actively unpleasant right about now, and I don’t really want to end here, but I certainly don’t want to start off with this. And I really don’t want to snark about it, because it’s just fucking nasty and vicious. So just the description: Liddy takes the bucket he bought from Mysterious Apron Man, and we now see it’s full of blood. He finishes the simile: “Sand sticks to oil like pigs’ blood sticks to skin.” We don’t actually see him splash the blood on his victim, but instead cut to him pulling a pig skin out of the bag. He grabs the Muslim, who begs to spared, as Allah will not let him into heaven if he’s unclean. Liddy threatens to duct-tape the skin on the man if he doesn’t talk. For what its worth, there’s a lot less blood on the Muslim than there was in the bucket.
Liddy asks who sent the assassin, and he replies that Bin Laden did, as part of a plot to kill several people all at once. Liddy runs to a television and turns it on to hear a news report about Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Laura Ingraham all having died in a string of anti-conservative murders. This makes Liddy angry, and he admits to only having been bluffing about the duct-taping of pig skin. He grabs a nail gun. “You see, I don’t have any duct tape!” he says as he stands over the Muslim with the pig skin.
I am fairly confident that Liddy’s torture and mistreatment of the Muslim was meant to be a rousing, exciting moment of audience identification. It’s a bit hard to tell, though, because in the last panel, his eyes are white and soulless, and it looks kind of like a still from a slasher movie. Either way, it’s horribly offensive and unpleasant. And people actually think this way. America, fuck yeah.
Next time: in 2021, Sean gets a new and better arm, and Alan Colmes has somehow become the primary news voice in America.