A galactic cartel threatens to corrupt an entire system, and the United Galactica’s only hope is a pair of loose cannons with nice legs and big guns.
For Doom 2 and Gzdoom
Comes with the full mod, plus readme file, plus add-on mod for other mapsets.
comedy
All posts tagged comedy
It’s difficult to believe that I’ve somehow managed to round up one of the most obscure and difficult-to-collect toy lines of the 90s…yet here it is: the Ultimato, the rarest bastard of the Killer Tomatoes action figure line!
And what an awesome piece he is! He stomps around on green, leafy ED-209 legs! He’s got a furious, demonic skull-face, scowling so hard his cheeks are cracking! His alien-like claw-tongue lashes out to grab hapless humans and reel them into his gullet! He even comes with a hilariously terrified cop, Officer Bookum!
It’s hard to believe any killer tomato can compete with my personal fave, Missing Tomato Link and Tara, but he’s coming damn close to being my favorite of the lot.
Best of all, he completes the Killer Tomatoes collection, which now sits proudly on my shelf, joining the Mighty Max collection as yet another testament to tenacity. At long last I can close the book on Killer Tomatoes.
After I dunno how many years of keeping my eyes peeled, I finally snagged my Killer Tomato holy grail — the Missing Tomato Link — before someone else did!
Yes, he’s insanely rare. Yes, I opened the package. No, I don’t feel the least bit of shame or guilt. This thing is too awesome to leave sealed in a plastic prison.
He has one of the coolest head sculpts of the toy line, and he’s also one of the ultra-rare “walking” tomatoes with arms and legs. More importantly, he comes with everyone’s Killer Tomatoes waifu, Tara Boumdeay!
He’s actually listed as a good guy, a misunderstood monster of vast intelligence and class. Or something to that effect. Either way, he sure has a thing for Tara. And who wouldn’t, with a butt like that?
He happily joins the Killer Tomatoes collection. Now all I’m missing is Ultimato, the rarest of them all. Even if I never find him, I’m content to finally have Link and Tara at last.
The base tomatoes are now assembled. All that’s left is to acquire the impossible rarities Missing Tomato Link and Ultimato, both of which I missed on ebay by about two weeks despite my daily searches!
Mummato was sold to me in a lot with another Zoltan. He’s the only other tomato not made of red plastic: he’s actually molded in white, and the red bits are painted in. He also has a small bite range not unlike Tomacho, but I love his ridiculous skully, bug-eyed grin. Why a tomato would be mummified is anyone’s guess: maybe Dr. Gangreen experimented on a tomato preserve from a pharaoh’s tomb?
He comes with Fireman Hoser, one of the few human victims who look more likely to wet themselves than fight back. It’s hard to find him and Mummato together these days, so I’m glad I managed to get this carded specimen.
I remember being excited when I found Zoltan in the stores as a kid. He was my fave killer tomato for some reason, and as you can see, he’s also the biggest by a large margin!
Due to his bulk, his card is designed differently from the others: he’s actually got a plastic bubble on the front AND back of the card, which his giant butt punches right through. He’s a mean tomato to behold, with his mohawk and eyepatch and giant maw full of crooked teeth.
He comes with Ranger Woody, which I found odd. I always thought the leader of the killer tomatoes would be paired with Wilbur Finletter, leader of the tomato resistance. It does make it so Wilbur is easier to come by, though I wish they’d done the same for Tara Boumdeay.
Zoltan dwarfs the other domatoes, and his mouth is probably big enough to bite them as well as the humans. He’s definitely a welcome addition to my ever-growing garden.
I stocked up on the four common tomatoes in the AotKT toy line, and managed to preserve the packaging while removing the toys.
Everything about these things is a pleasure to look at, especially the bright red and green colorscheme. They just look great when piled together. The concept alone is hilarious: rubbery monster fruit whose jaws can gnash on their itty bitty human victims. All the characters have so much personality it’s almost precious, even if the paint jobs on the human figures leave something to be desired.
Even the packaging explodes with character. A panicked mob fleeing down the city streets, with giant killer tomatoes munching on the card (even leaving teeth marks and “biting” onto the display hook). The backside gives a silly scenario of the featured characters in a conflict, in something of a news blurb style, followed by the rest of the figure lineup. I always eyed those walking tomaters jealously, since we never EVER saw them in stores anywhere. I was lucky enough to find a loose and complete Phantomato on ebay, which started my collecting craze for these toys (I had most of them as a kid, but eventually gave them away).
Each card also has a unique diagram of the featured tomater using its bite action.
Beefsteak is arguably the scariest of the base tomatoes. He has an eerie grin akin to an alligator, and his creepy, staring eyes make his misshapen face even more monstrous. His victim is Wilbur Finletter (sans parachute, thankfully), one of my favorites of the human figures.
Tomacho is the nicest-looking tomato, and as a result he has the smallest bite. He battles a bat-wielding Chad Finletter. I like Chad’s colors, but his “flat” pose makes him hard to stand up.
Ketchuck is an ugly sonofagun, and the first of these toys I ever got when I was a kid. As an adult, he’s probably my least favorite because of his dumb face. He comes packaged with Dr. Putrid T. Gangreen, creator of the tomato menace. They painted over his mustache, which somehow results in him looking like a yellow-skinned burn victim. I might try to find a way to remove the paint a bit to make him look more authentic.
Fangmato was the only green one of the toy line, and her face is one of the best tomato sculpts by far. The paint between her eyes has a habit of wearing off for whatever reason. She terrorizes Igor, Gangreen’s bumbling assistant, who is another favorite sculpt: screaming uselessly and throwing up “jazz hands” while the rest of the humans look ready for a fight.
It’s a fun toy line overall, and looks great on the display shelf. Here’s hoping I can get my hands on the more elusive figures, especially Missing Tomato Link and my KT waifu Tara Boumdeay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GOmrIk9Hds
All Gabe Hemingway wanted was to meet his celebrity crush at Comic Con, yet the supernatural bad luck he’s carried his entire life kicks things into overdrive when he’s adopted by a lunatic wizard and his Egyptian priestess partner to track down supernatural smugglers. But perhaps this meeting was a blessing in disguise…
The origin story of Gabe is an original radio play written by myself and Midnight Marinara MC David King.
For Heretic (requires gzdoom)
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Play as Mick Chaos, brother to the slightly demented Dr. Chaos, and shoot your way through three action/puzzle maps as you solve whatever weird inter-dimensional kerfuffle the good doctor has caused this time. Features a new weapon and a new monster. Read the included pdf for the detailed story, helpful clues, and useless trivia.
Bungalow of Dr. Chaos – Mick returns from the Great War to find a letter waiting for him from his brother Dr. Chaos, begging for his help in closing a series of unstable dimensional portals.
Dr. Chaos Strikes Back – Mick is perturbed to learn that the Turkish bath he helped Dr. Chaos build is being used by the doctor to deliver water to a dying desert planet, with predictable space-time continuum disrupting results. Now the bath house/dimensional engine has gone haywire and must be shut down before worlds collide.
City of Chaos – Mick accidentally breaks a delicate dimensional device in the city of Dander, Norway and splits the city into three different timelines. He must explore them to find the missing pieces of the machine and restore the space-time continuum.
***
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Mickey Chaos has his hands full once again. His brother Dr. Chaos has taken their sister Didi on an expedition to ancient Mars, back when the planet was teeming with life. Unfortunately the martian locals stole the Flux Accelerator’s five “time batteries”, stranding Didi on an alien planet with no way back home. With only enough juice left for a one-way trip, Mickey now must collect the batteries, repair the Accelerator, and bring Didi back to earth before Mom has a heart attack.
Four more maps to explore hub-style: a treacherous valley split by countless waterfalls, an ancient city collapsing into lava, a decrepit castle full of cultists, and a vast underground cannibal lair. Several new enemies, including dinosaurs! Use the Tome of Power to turn Mickey’s Colt .45 into a crowd-shredding Tommy Gun!
Got a Goodreads account? Enter this giveaway for a chance to win both Bishop & Holiday books, autographed by me! Interdimensional travel, red tape in the afterlife, mythical babes, three-headed dogs, alien spiders, and daemonic possession: all in a day’s work for the Bishop & Holiday Paranormal Agency.
Dr. Henry Holiday sat in his laboratory, fanning through his annotated collector’s edition of Abdul Alhazred’s Necronomicon, muttering the title of each chapter as he scoured the book for the incantation he needed. On the workbench beside him sat a metal dish resembling an ash tray, in which a pile of chalky, bluish powder sat waiting.
Edna Bishop entered the lab without knocking, as always looking like a tall, slender Egyptian supermodel. She paused as she entered to recoil from the smell: the room was thick with a strong and inexplicably fruity odor that tickled her nose. She eyed the doctor’s suspiciously moist and muddied loafers.
“Didn’t know you were back already,” said Edna. “How was your cousin’s funeral?”
“Depressing,” he said with disinterest.
Edna moved to the tray on the workbench and poked her fingers in the blue powder, stirred it around, then smelled it on her hand. She winced as the same fruity smell assaulted her nostrils. “What are you doing?”
Dr. Holiday grabbed Edna’s sweater sleeve and gently pulled her backward with a look of mild annoyance on his face. “Ah, don’t…touch those salts, please.”
“Salts?”
He stared at her in bewilderment for a moment, as if she had a giant, alien bug crawling on her head. Her raven black hair, despite being expertly cut just below the jawline, still bounced with almost unnatural downy softness.
“Your hair is different,” said the doctor.
Edna cocked an eyebrow. “It’s been different for two weeks.”
“I never noticed.”
“Shock and awe.” She gestured to the blue powder. “What are these, bath salts?”
“They’re Cousin Friday’s salts,” the doctor explained. “I need to call her up and ask a few important questions.”
Edna blinked, still wiping her hand on her slacks. “Whaddaya mean, ‘Cousin Friday’s salts?'”
“Unfortunately,” said the Doctor, still irritably fanning through the tome to find the incantation he was looking for, “she’s kinda hard to reach at the moment, being dead and all.”
Edna suddenly went very pale and her eyes became the size of golf balls. She held out her salt-soiled hand in horror, as if it had turned into a monster. “Whaddaya mean, ‘Cousin Friday‘s salts?!’”
Dr. Holiday looked at his partner as if the woman had just asked where poop came from. “I refined her former vessel into summoning salts so I can contact her spirit from across the astral plane. How else am I supposed to talk to her without swimming through endless Infernal Red Tape?”
Edna pointed at the blue dust. “That’s your cousin Friday?”
“No, those are her summoning salts. Friday is sitting in relative comfort on the first circle of Inferno by now, where all benign fools go after death. What I’m doing is similar to recovering her old, discarded phone, hotwiring it, and using it to send her a text.”
“You ground her corpse into a powder, and now you’re gonna call up her ghost!”
“I only borrowed a finger! You know how hard it is to make an effective summoning salt from one measly finger? It’s tedious and time-consuming enough, even without drawing the protection circle, which I don’t want in this case because I actually want her to recognize me. She’ll be panicky enough when I call her up.”
Edna threw up her hands and stormed out of the lab.
Dr. Holiday sighed and muttered, “Nobody appreciates necromancy anymore.”
When he found the incantation, Dr. Holiday punched it into his Triumph XP — the most expensive and sought-after digital fetish on the market, a hybrid of wand and spellbook. No sooner had the device uttered the incantation in its grainy digital voice, a trail of green smoke rose slowly from the blue salts and gradually formed the spectral shape of Cousin Friday, still wearing the chic party dress she wore in death. The dainty twenty-year-old redhead looked, to put it lightly, horrifically distressed.
“D-Doctor…?” whimpered Friday. “Is…is that you?! Oh thank god! You gotta get me outta here!”
“Friday, calm down. I need to ask you–”
Friday didn’t hear him over her own shrill voice. “They got me locked up in a tiny cage in Hell, and it smells godawful, and there’s millions of other caged people all around me, and they keep makin’ with this pitiful wailin’ and mopin’! I dunno how I got here, and I’m really scared and I just wanna come home!”
“Friday, you’re dead. You can’t come home. Now please–”
Friday did a dead-on impression of a sad-eyed basset hound. “Can’t come home?! Ain’t you, like, a wizard? Ain’t that how you called me? What am I doin’ in Hell, anyway?” She covered her mouth with a start. “Is it ‘cos I never went to church?”
Dr. Holiday removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Friday–”
“Or is it ‘cos of Angie? It wasn’t my fault Angie died! I mean, yeah, I coulda called 911 and maybe it woulda saved her, but I didn’t, like, murder her! I wouldn’t figure–!”
“Friday, calm down. It is perfectly normal to end up in Hell first thing. Everyone goes to hell for at least a week or so. I’m just calling on your mother’s behalf, to straighten out a few financial messes you left for her to clean up. For starters–”
Both ghost and necromancer froze, and stared blankly at one-another for a long, silent moment.
Dr. Holiday slowly pointed his finger at his spectral cousin. “Hang on a sec…you told me you found Angie dead.”
Friday squinted at him. “Hang on a sec, you mean everyone goes to Hell? What kinda bullshit system is that?”
“Don’t change the subject,” said the Doctor, leaning closer to the ghost. “You mean Angie was alive when you found her? Not dead?”
The ghost looked at the Doctor, then at the floor, then back at the Doctor. “……Yeah…”
“And you could’ve called for help, and could’ve saved her life?”
The ghost looked at the floor. “…..I guess so…”
“But you didn’t?”
“She was a bitch!”
Dr. Holiday held his head in his hands and let out a long, tired sigh. “‘Fraid that complicates things a bit, Friday.”
The shadows of the laboratory leapt off the walls and took the tall, robed shapes of three Infernal Harvesters, each breathing plumes of smoke from their blackened, skullish faces. Dr. Holiday made no motions or gestures to suggest he was the least bit surprised.
The first Harvester said in a hollow voice, “THIS SOUL IS DAMNED BY ORDER OF HIS EXCELLENCY MINOS. DO YOU KNOW THE PENALTY FOR VOLUNTARY NECROMANCY?”
The term “damned” was a serious one in Inferno: it referred to non-Limburbians, or inmates who were sentenced to the city of Dis, comprised of circles Six through Nine. As in, people who were being punished for genuinely evil acts.
Dr. Holiday cleaned his glasses nonchalantly. “This is all just a big misunderstanding, fellas. If you’ll just let me exp–”
The rest of his sentence came out in a wheeze as the first Harvester slugged him in the stomach. The other two stuffed his barely-conscious form into a large black sack.
“THAT’S WHAT THEY ALL SAY.”
~=o=~
1
THE MAD PRINCE
The original phone conversation went something like this:
ringringring
ringringring -CLICK-
“Bishop & Holiday Paranormal Agency. This is Edna.”
“Ah, greetings and salutations, Edna! My name is Virgil. I represent the Interior Ministry of Inferno, and the Infernal branch of Inter-Dimensional Tours Inc.”
“Whatever you’re selling, we’re not interested.”
-CLICK-
ringringring
ringringring -CLICK-
“Bishop & Holiday Paranormal Agency.”
“It’s Virgil again. Please don’t hang up. This is a long distance call from the First Circle, which is costing me a lot of ducats.”
“Please state your business quickly, then.”
“Are you the manager of Bishop and Holiday?”
“I’m Bishop, the co-owner.”
“Ah, then you are the company’s afterlife attorney, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Yes. I’m also balancing our books right now. What is this about, please?”
“We have a client for you, recently deceased. The subject claims his sentence is unreasonable, and requested an afterlife attorney to help clear up the matter. He’s asked me to hire you on his behalf, as you are highly favored by Ma’at, Patron of Law and Order, and Nephthys, Counselor of the Dead.”
“Is he aware of our court fees, dimensional transit expenses, etcetera?”
“Yes. He says he’s a former client.”
“Really? What’s his name?”
“The Mad Prince Dante.”
-CLICK-
ringringring
ringringring -CLICK-
“Bishop & Holiday. Edna speaking.”
“How do you stay in business when you keep hanging up on clients?”
“Now look here: whatever Dante was doing when he died, I can assure you he went to the right place. Kindly remind him of the restraining order we filed against him two years ago, after he tried to produce a Broadway performance of The King In Yellow.”
“Yes, he told me all about it. He also told me you haven’t had a client in two months, and could use the money badly.”
Silence.
“…Hello?”
Frustrated silence.
“Edna? Are you still–?”
“Yes, yes, I’m here. I’ll be at the Infernal Hall in a few hours for a paid consultation. Make sure he knows it’s a consultation only, and that I haven’t agreed to anything else yet.”
“That sounds reasonable.”
“Tell the Mad Prince he’ll cover my travel expenses regardless.”
“I’ll tell him. I think he’ll be quite relieved to see you!”
-CLICK-
~=o=~
Mike's Toybox 