TBT #28: Supervillain Advice Columns

I don’t know what happened here. I sat down to write something typical. Instead I completely geeked-out and wrote something that most people will probably find more weird than amusing! But then, I often think people find ME more weird than amusing, so perhaps writing like this is a good fit for me. Regardless, I promise next week will see something more normal. Or, at the very least, less geeky. Thanks this week go to the following advice columns: Savage Love, Ann Landers, Dear Abby, Love Emily and Aspasia & Fern.

Here are The Best Things for February 5, 2005.

Vandal Savage Love

By Vandal Savage

I have long enjoyed your advice, humour and politics. But I never thought I, a well-adjusted hetero chick, would need your advice. All that changed a few months ago when I got married.

It took time for me to adjust to being with a man who had no fantasies. Now I know that he does have fantasies, but I feel too bad about our relationship to take advantage of it! How do I get over being hurt about being lied to? Why in the hell would he lie when I shared my dirty thoughts with him? I don’t get it, and I don’t know what to do about it.
- Miserable, Mad and Married

MMM,
Pfah. I spit on the trivial nature of your question, as it ignores both the scope and nature of time itself. For you see, MMM, when you have lived as long as I, and experienced all that I have experienced, one ultimately comes to the conclusion that questions of the heart, of the body, and even of the spiritual soul, are completely irrelevant. You are nothing but cosmic dust, MMM — you and your husband — and to see you so enveloped in such an unimportant matter only gives credence to my feeling that humanity as it exists today is weak. You exist to be ruled — by your feelings, by your insecurity and, yes, in time, by me. Soon, MMM, this planet will be mine.

I called Cynthia Hawthorne, sociologist at the University of Miami, for further information on your foolish problem. “Men,” she said, “tend towards finding the idea of fertility in women attractive. It’s something that operates on an instinctual, or bestial level. There’s nothing abnormal about a man of any age finding a post-pubescent teenage girl attractive.” I then attempted to use my newly forged relationship with Ms. Hawthorne as means as attaining a position of the board of directors at the University where she worked. It was my intention to use the position as a stepping stone to further political office, all culminating in my taking my rightful place as ruler of this country, and, later, this oft-conquered planet.

Ms. Hawthorne hung up on me before I could finish detailing my plan. The disrespect shown today will not be forgotten. In 200 years, when the earth is nothing but volcanic ash and rivers of tears, I will find her children. And I will destroy them. They will know my name as Savage: Vandal Savage.

I hope this helped and good luck, MMM.

The Other Side

By Harvey Dent

After my father passed away, Mom offered my brother the downstairs apartment of her home. Mom lives upstairs and agreed to let him live on the ground floor for the first year rent-free. After that, he was supposed to start paying rent.

I hope you will print my letter so my brother will see it and maybe it will shame him into shaping up. — Long Island, N.Y

Dear Long Island,
If there’s anything I learned working as District Attorney in Gotham City almost a decade ago, it’s that staying silent never works. Dropping subtle hints or being passive aggressive are also generally ineffective ways at dealing with a problem that is bothering you. Tactics like that generally lead to a complete communication breakdown, meaning the situation only gets worse. The best advice I can give is to tell you to sit down and talk with your brother. There may be a reason for his inaction. Whether they be emotional, spiritual or physical, you owe it to your brother to hear him out before condemning him. If he won’t communicate with you, or seems stubborn, then STAB HIM! Stab him again and again! Revel in his blood! Stab him and shoot him and kill him and make him pay for what he has done to your dear mother! Scum like your brother are a disgrace to family! Kill him and sell his valuables! Do it before it’s too late.

Dear Victor

By Victor Von Doom

DEAR VICTOR: My boyfriend is obsessed with large breasts and constantly “hints” that I should enlarge my 34Cs. Lately he has been coming home late and telling me that he’s been working overtime, when I know for a fact that he’s been hanging out with his ex-girlfriend, a stripper with 38DDs.

I love my boyfriend and don’t want to lose him, but I’m not sure about enlargement. If it’s the only way I can get him away from her, I guess I’ll do it. What do you think, Lord Doom? — NOT BUSTY ENOUGH IN PHILLY

Dear Not Enough,
The ever-benevolent DOOM offers a unique perspective on matters of love: having recently tracked down and incinerated his lost love, he then crafted magick-enhanced armor from her bodily remains. While Doom’s subsequent attempt to seek vengeance on the false hero Richards and his inconsequential family ultimately resulted in failure, the events did lend DOOM a new outlook on relationships between men and women.

DOOM appreciates outward beauty but reminds all his Latverian subjects to be mindful of the importance of inner beauty. Intellect is the ultimate arbiter of our worth in the universe, and thus should be the foremost genesis of any attraction. However, should your so-called “boyfriend” be a man of extraordinary intellectual worth, then you should not hesitate to scar, alter or sacrifice your body in order to please or pacify him. Men of tremendous character MUST be appreciated for all they offer the world. So says DOOM.

The Opposite Sex

By Edward Brock

Dear Venom,

So, me and this girl have been dating for about a month. This week things suddenly became very awkward between us. Usually I give her a ride home after school, but yesterday she blatantly avoided me and went home with another girl. I just don’t understand how she can go from ‘I’m grounded and I miss you so much’ on the weekend to avoiding me after school on Monday?

VENOM RESPONDS: We are VENOM. We will answer your questions on the condition that you are an innocent, otherwise we will EAT YOUR BRAIN. There exists no reason why this woman should ignore you save for that meddling PARKER. Parker seeks to discredit, steal and harm all that is innocent in the world. We have seen him steal our life away and harm thousands as that interminable WALL CRAWLER. The world shall become purified once we snack on his brains and burn his bones. While we have been bested by the accursed INSECT in the past, we will taste victory in our coming battle. This woman you seek to fornicate with will return to you once she sees the WRATH OF VENOM. Parker will be destroyed. Please send your thanks to VENOM c/o THE OPPOSITE SEX, P.O BOX 456 New York, NY.

Galactus Talks Sex

By Galactus, Devourer of Worlds


Dear Galactus:

Experimenting college guy

Hail “College Guy”,

In all my travels across time and space, I have heard nothing of these strange practices. As I am more a force of nature than a living being, such things as copulation are foreign to me. Galactus is eternal, subsisting on those planets who no longer serve purpose to the expanding universe. I have targeted your planet — “Earth” as you call it — several times, but each time have found reason to spare your world and those species who inhabit it. One of the many times I encountered your “Earth”, I was moved so much by a description of a human emotion known simply as “love”. I spared your planet because it struck me as something unique to your world, and anything unique in the universe must be spared.

However, your description of an “Eiffel Tower” fills me with great doubt. How could such an activity have anything to do with love, the emotion that so moved me? I was told by the ambassadors of your planet that copulation was an expression of love, and I am puzzled as to how such activities as the “Eiffel Tower” could be at all related to this love.

I am greatly concerned. If I do not hear satisfactory explanation for this contradiction, I will have no choice but to select your planet for termination once more. My herald will arrive shortly, signaling that the time of Galactus is at hand. Construct your “Eiffel Towers” now, earthlings, while you still can. Soon you will be devoured.