Falcon Presto. Alfonso Crept. Frances Ploot. Preston Falco. The four of them crack reporters in a cracked world. These people bring you the stories no one else dares to.
Presto - former Marvel employee, fired for knowing too much. Has a really big nose.
Crept - ex CIA agent and bullshit world record holder. Picks at his feet.
Ploot - sophisticated, buxom, an arse to kill for and an ability that we can only talk about on www.sexmeupbaby.com.
Falco - one of the other three writing under a bad pseudonym.
These are Spoof Central - be afraid or just piss off!
As Spoof Central continues its interviews with the five most important people in comics, we were scheduled to have a groundbreaking interview with Jim Mooney, but unfortunately Jim is otherwise engaged at the moment and has promised us an exclusive interview for a future day. For those not familiar with Jim's work he drew Spider-Man, Man-Thing, a lot of romance comics, and after his death went on to be a famous porn star, teaming up with Jack Kirby and John Buscema as a titanic tag-team with orgasmic qualities. Jim is also famous for that thing he does with his ears.
This left us with a void to fill. Jim, who is currently having a post-death relationship with Devin Grayson, thought that a good filler page would be an interview with the man recognised by many as the fattest person in comics (not including Peter David, Len Kaminski or Mike W. Barr). Mark Waid is also known for his vicious temper and his open-toed sandals.
We sent Lance Fostrop to talk to Waid, but he hid himself in the toilet and passed this note out to our esteemed interviewer. Here is what is says in full with only the really bad insults made worse.
My memories of The School For Gifted Twats are dim and vague and distant. Zammo McGuire, Miss McCluskey and a sausage flying across a dinner hall on the end of a fork are about all I can remember. Maybe it's better that way. I was definitely much shorter.
After leaving school I went to St Cuntus's College which, back then, was a prestigious institution for gifted renegade youngsters run by an enigmatic bald man in a wheelchair. It was a busy time for me: I learnt how to yodel in pig Latin, invented a new type of nasal contraceptive and devised many of the bad puns and cheap gags that I still rely on today. Due to these extra-curricular distractions, though, I sadly neglected my academic studies and, even now, have trouble spelling words that start with the letter G.
Following High School, I spent three years at the University of Spoons studying History and Advanced Oil Change Techniques thanks - in no small part - to a groundbreaking student exchange programme sponsored by the local branch of Kwik Fit Euro. During these years, I developed my social skills, going to pubs and "nightclubs" [an early-90s term for "Clubs"] as often as three - and sometimes even four - times a day. I met many people who became lifelong friends, did many things that became lifelong habits and fell in love, constantly.
At university I formed my first band, a genre-busting four-piece combo called "Thus Spack Bacharach." Sadly, the world wasn't ready four our unique, post-industrial easy-listening sound which seamlessly combined the hardcore, discordant nihilism of Fields of the Nephilim with the Pringle-sweatered post-war optimism of Matt Monro. We split after our third gig, when even our blistering rendition of "Do You Know The Way To San Jose" - featuring a pneumatic drill on a rusty tin bath as percussion - failed to incite so much as a stage-dive, crowd-surf or clap.
After graduation - and the subsequent incident with the shoes - I moved to Tangiers and spent several happy months working as an assistant manager at a low-rent, late-night rendezvous absinthe den ['The Absinthe Makes The Heart Grow Fonder Bar', Upper High Street, Tangiers]. I still have many fond memories of the bar and its colourful clientele, which largely consisted of journeying fugitives, fidgeting journalists and dead Victorian novelists. Sadly, due to an administrative oversight on the part of the Greater Tangiers Municipal Council, absinthe dens were inadvertently nationalised and I was forced to flee the country.
[Accidental nationalisation was a regular occurrence in Tangiers. It was not uncommon for local residents to wake up one morning - invariably in March - to find that their home or business had been turned into a public utility or a municipal building. Occasionally, this would happen to people: on one occasion, a visiting Moroccan chiropodist found himself reclassified into a government department. This was so commonplace in Tangiers that the subject often found its way into the plotlines of local soap operas, the lyrics of pop songs and the ingredients of food].
I then moved to the quaint Eastern European principality of Gertrudestein. Known as Sergeieisenstein during the Soviet occupation, the region's President was a former Politburo Chief who convinced the local inhabitants of his democratic credentials by trimming his eyebrows as a concession to Glasnost. There, I helped set up 'The Tower of Bagel', the nation's first all-nite bakery and delicatessen [cakes and savoury snacks had previously been banned under Soviet rule, while warm bagels were tolerated, though grudgingly]. It was during this period that I met Olga Sonitchka-Maurypovichka, a beautiful, classically-trained accordion player who yearned to be a waitress. The eldest daughter of a family of High Society Cossacks from the upmarket Ural Mountain region, Olga was mysterious, and yet enigmatic. She had the kind of body that would make heads turn in a spinal injury ward, and the kind of teeth that could make a man believe in flossing. Inevitably, I set about wooing her. Every night for a month I stood outside her apartment block in the rain - gazing wistfully at that lone, illuminated window on the top floor - until I realised she was living in the basement. Eventually she invited me in, but only after I serenaded her with my heartfelt rendition of Sacha Distel's "This Guy's in Love With You", accompanied by a bicycle chain and a metal bin lid.
Despite all the terrible things that Olga Sonitchka-Maurypovichka subsequently subjected me to, I still have fond memories of our time together. I remember the time both of us skipped merrily through the cobblestoned streets of the Old Town, only to be pulled over by a traffic cop for speeding. And I still smile wistfully as I recall the time we tried to bake a Vattern soufflé using nothing but olives and woodchip.
Olga encouraged me to bake with wild abandon and treat the oven like a big, hot canvas. For my part, I taught Olga to break free from the conceptual straitjacket of melody and learn to think of the accordion as an odd-shaped pie. In the end, we broke up over musical differences: I caught her having secret liaisons with the entire woodwind section of the local Philharmonic.
Sadly, I had no time to grieve. The President of Gertrudestein issued a decree outlawing certain types of lederhosen and then unveiled a new national flag depicting a napkin set against a turquoise backdrop. While there was some popular support for tighter lederhosen controls, the people were violently opposed to the napkin's prominence in the new flag, especially as the traditional national symbol was the serviette. Unpopular dissent soon escalated into a popular uprising. Revolution gripped the nation as mobs took to the streets, the streets took to the hills and the hills fled to the border.
As is so often the case during times of violent social upheaval, cake sales plummeted. Luckily, the market in puff pastry and other savoury snacks flourished and I soon became the main provider of Cornish pasties, pork pies and spicy lamb samosas to the hard-pressed rebel forces. This, of course, made the shop a target for the government troops, and - after a protracted siege that lasted an entire busy lunch period - I was captured and declared a prisoner of war.
Luckily, I had a smart lawyer and managed to be reclassified as a prisoner of conscience. Within days I made my first escape attempt, convincing a guard that I had a clear conscience and thereby making myself technically invisible. Sadly, I was recaptured within minutes after inadvertently remembering a regrettable incident from my youth. Eventually, I was freed as part of a prisoner-exchange programme and released in lieu of a noodle vendor who'd been supplying Chow Mein to the government troops.
By 1997 I found myself washed-up on the shores of Sutton Coldfield, a leafy, suburban separatist state in the English Midlands. The country had changed beyond recognition whilst I'd been away. The Tories had been deposed, Princess Diana had gone to Jesus and nobody knew what a Global Hypercolour sweatshirt was any more. What's worse, the locals' obvious disrespect for me could not hide the contempt they truly felt. I was accused of being an economic migrant, a socialist voter and even a bad satirist. I soon won them over, however, by reviving my music career and touring the local pubs and clubs as part of a Marcel Marceau tribute band.
It wasn't long before my luck ran out. I became embroiled in a bitter legal dispute with a former business partner over the ownership of an on-line barbershop and, more recently, have had to face a class action suit lodged by people I've irritated over the years.
[Mark Waid is the author of the bestselling novel Shoegazer, The Dancing Fool - a poignant historical novel set during the turbulent late 1990s - and the creator of Stonebroke, the popularly obscure comic-strip described by one critic as "Mad Max meets On The Buses." His forthcoming autobiography, "Destiny Tied My Shoelaces Together", will be published in June. Waid is also the creator of the Fantastic Four and don't let that fucker Stan Lee tell you differently.]
Spoof Central is sponsored by Gripper's Haemorrhoid Creams and the bassoon player from the Milwaukee Male Voice Choir. If you believe the link to this column and comics is tenuous, to say the least, then you need to expand your mind. Might we suggest ingesting some deadly nightshade, or having sex with a funnel web spider?
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