That’s what Korben Dallas would call a big badda boom, Walter White fulminated mercury, and Screen Junkies a supercut.

And Dark Punishing Knight would definitely call not gay.

Page Eight Notes:

• That brings issue #003 and the original run to a tweaked close with two new and wholly rewritten pages (for those keeping count). Meaning next week is undiscovered and long awaited country.
• Ah yes, and the above GIF was lovingly hijacked from Equity.Guru.

For the few of you who read this issue before the relaunch, this page plays out just a smidge differently than it did before.

Originally, Calgary tells Demon to, “Go to hell.” To which Demon responds by gutting him like a fish, akin to what Bullseye did to Elektra once upon a time.

Powerful and shocking? Absolutely.

Magic? I would say not.

In the intervening years I’ve pondered these final published pages from the original run, and something in the back of my brain kept telling me this wasn’t the right way to close out this issue and this epic fight.

So forgive my George Lucas moment (above and lovely retconned from The Geek Twins), but I hope you’ll agree that I made the right decision. And if you don’t, wait until next week.

Page Seven Notes:

• You will notice this page features five, count’em, five panels. Six is probably the absolute max I can pull off in the space I’ve allotted because this page is pretty crowded. But I also had a lot of dialogue to deal with and this felt like the most expedient way to do so.
• “…gestures with his right hand and lit CIGARETTE.” Let me be clear. I do not condone smoking. I understand it. And I’ve had my own battles with Mr. Butts over the years. But this is a hero from a bygone era. To some extent, an anachronistic era for many of us now. But back then it was all about the cigarettes and the scotch, especially for for someone like Calgary. As for gesturing with a cigarette, let’s check in with Rust Cohle about that.
• Hercule Poirot. Tony Randall. Albert Finney. Peter Ustinov. David Suchet. And most recently, Kenneth Branagh. Not exactly bloodthirsty or full of profanity, but there did feel a kinship with the classic drawing room scene.
• I wasn’t planning on using profanity in dpk431, but this moment felt right, much like the judicious use in Breaking Bad as a result of AMC’s limit of three curse words per season. If I’m counting correctly, I just used my whole allotment on this page, motherfucker!
• The one True Cross is most definitely a thing. A disputed thing, true, but still a thing. Much like the Kreuzpartikel or fragment of the True Cross in the Schatzkammer, Vienna. Just in case you think I made this up out of whole cloth (there’s a Shroud of Turin joke in there somewhere.)
• I was tempted to have Calgary use “The Clapper” for the final panel, but a finger snap felt more elegant. Six of one, I guess.

I’ve always liked the concept of a final coffin nail before dying. Of course in Constantine (the film, not the series), Keanu had slit his own wrists (and tendons) which is why the delightful Peter Stormare operated his lighter for him in a way only Lucifer could…

I mean, they don’t call him the Dark Lord for nothing.

Page Six Notes:

• Moi? Vamp? Perish the thought.
• “Any final words?” What a beautiful concept — to leave the world with one final epitaph. In the world of film and television, there are far too many brilliant examples to choose from, so allow me to mention one that springs immediately to mind, that wonderful speech from Blade Runner (spoilers!). My favorite from real-life? Probably Humphrey Bogart with (reportedly), ““I should never have switched from scotch to martinis.” Or perhaps Dylan Thomas (whoever he was) with (allegedly), “I have had 18 straight whiskies, I think that’s the record.” The man ain’t got no culture! Mine? I would hope it would be as profound as something Carl Sagan once said, but in all likelihood, it will be something along these lines.
• Oh, and the image above was lovingly hacked from a Russian website filled with lovely popups for auto-downloading anti-virus software and naked women. Don’t believe me? Then click said link at your own peril.

Perhaps not as epic as the Hulk beating up Loki (“Puny god!”), but Demon’s beat down of Calgary is pretty ugly. A phrase known as contradictio in terminis, or more colloquially an oxymoron or simply a contradiction in terms. Other examples? How about such oxymora as jumbo shrimp, airline food or in my experience, an Amtrak schedule.

What can I say? Words are my thing. How can I not get distracted by cool latin phrases and little known plurals?

My point, and I did have a point, is that this page is supposed to be hard to look at. This is as savage a beating as one is likely to ever witness. And unlike Loki, Calgary is not a god. At least not physically.

Oh, and the above awesomely animated GIF was lovingly taken from Reaction GIFs.

Page Five Notes:

• So about those page and panel layout descriptions. I am guessing everyone is getting as bored of them as I am. Especially since we’ve seen most of the page layouts numerous times in the past however many months. So to streamline the process and to give myself more space to describe the contents within each panel, I am hereby retiring page layout descriptions. Requiescat in pace. That’s all she wrote.

I feel the same way, Naruto. I feel the same way.

Oh, and the above image was lovingly ripped off from GIPHY’s Pain GIFs.

Ripped off. Teehee!

Too soon?

Poor Calgary. Just can’t catch a break from me.

Page Five Notes:

• I’m going to wager that this panel is going to be a helluva lot of fun to draw. The closest thing I know of is Colossus tearing off Wolverine’s leg in Ultimate X-Men #97. Of course, the Hulk did much worse in Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk. As for real-life examples of legs being torn off, well, I only have one link for that.

I don’t know much about how a wooden leg is attached to one’s body, but the concept of Demon staring confusedly at what he thinks should be a regular, everyday, bloody, torn-off leg, but is in actuality a non-regular, non-everyday, non-bloody, torn-off leg with lots of non-tendony straps and velcro delights me endlessly (above and lovingly pulled from London’s Science Museum). But then again, I do consider Breaking Bad a comedy. Maybe not a romantic comedy, but the bathtub sequence still kills me every time. So there’s that. Which, oddly, was the name of my old podcast.

Page Three Notes:

• “It’s a wooden leg, you idiot.” Might be my favorite line of dialogue to date.
• “Oh crap.” You may remember, that used to be Calgary’s catchphrase, but it later evolved to “Not good.” So think of it as his backup catchphrase. An understudy catchphrase, if you will. Crap!

Let’s see.

Awesome dialogue, check.

Great villain, check.

Stunning turn of events, check.

Lovingly made off with from the Disney Freak’s Blog.

I am very happy to announce that I have stumped Google with the search term “SHHHLURPPPP SFX.”

It’s been a long time coming, but I can finally cross that pup off my bucket list (as memorialized above and lovingly downloaded from Quick Meme).

If these things amuse you as much as they do me, try removing the “SFX” from the search term and we leap to three (!) web results. Two for this video comment:

I think the Tamil film industry is living on boobs, just like Bombay lives on thighs, and Punjabi on assssss (shhhlurpppp) hehehe

And one for this:

: whats that sound?
guy beside me: err that was you shhhlurpppp – ing your saliva

Hopefully, Google will spider my post in a few weeks, and I can OWN that search keyword “SHHHLURPPPP.”

Page One Notes:

• SHLURP, the more sedate version of my SFX, has a few more results (72,500), and seems to not only be a British brand of vaping juice, a delectable Philippine milk tea, and the German version of Lickitung, but also a sound effect for Hidan from Naruto. Yeah, I’m that amused easily.
• “TENDRILS begin to reattach…” is, in effect, the reverse of this classic shot from John Carpenter’s The Thing. Not to be confused with Pingu’s The Thing.
• “Deliciously evil grin.” Gotta start with Hannibal Lector, the original and the brilliant television version. Then Calvin. But this wonderful anime piece may best epitomize exactly what I am looking for. <grin>

The cover to dpk431 #003 is intended to be an amalgam of posters from the immortal Rocky pentalogy. Though I guess if we want to be accurate, we’d need to include Rocky Balboa and call it a hexalogy. Or maybe even a heptalogy if we count Creed. Seriously this is the crap I think about when I can’t fall asleep at night. But back to Rocky…

• Rocky: I tried to lean into the look and font of the original Rocky poster, using Arial Black as the primary font. And when I say Rocky, I mean Rocky Balboa, not this guy. Or, now that I think about it, this one.
• Rocky II: Next, I attempted to mimic the Rematch of the Century template (left and lovingly pirated from DVDs Release Dates), using Rockwell Extra Bold to mimic the closed II.
• Rocky III: While not apparent on my version of the cover, I want to capture the face-to-face aspect of Rocky Balboa vs. Clubber Lang, if and when I get someone to draw Calgary vs. Demon nose-to-nose for the final version of this cover. My prediction on that?
• Rocky IV: I love the reversing of colors from the original, the white font now on black background.
• Rocky V: Nothing. Not even I couldn’t enjoy that one. And I grew up in Philly.

Cover Notes:

• Not depicted is Dark Punishing Knight, his head jammed in front of the poster with a stupid grin and double thumbs up. Not enough to obscure the view, but not a Kakashi cameo either.

I love the use of repeated panels in comics.

Dave Sim was the first I saw do so, with Cerebus — specifically in High Society (above and lovingly homaged from Thoughts of a Workshy Fop), along with his countless other panel experiments.

Bill Watterson used the same effect in Calvin & Hobbes to make a point about the size (or lack thereof) of comic strips in 1987.

In the late ’90s, Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon did a variation on the them with Preacher… to varying degrees of comedic effect. And scene.

More recently, Brian Michael Bendis employed similar techniques on his various Avengers runs.

And I would be remiss if I did not mention Robert Kirkman poking fun at the practice in Invincible.

Page Eight Notes:

• “Demon blood everywhere,” is a tip of the hat to the greatest Robot Chicken skit of all time.
• “PACKING PEANUTS float sequentially and serenely…” There is a method to my madness. Calgary just bought the the Holy Blunderbuss of Antioch, right? And was in the process of unpacking the thing when Demon arrived. So when he fired it, it was stilled packed tight with residual packing peanuts. Pretty cool, right?
• “Headless body of DEMON sits up…” Another tip of the hat, this time to the original Halloween. Spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen it (shame on you!), but this clip is priceless, incorporating actual audience reaction from 1979.