The Peanut Gallery’s Top 10 Nonessential Cartoon Superheroes

Superheroes have certainly taken the spotlight lately. Whether it’s the impending appearance of characters like Thor, Green Lantern, and Captain America on the silver screen, or the debut of newest Batman cartoon to gobble up the attention of children nationwide, the worlds of comic books have for the past decade reclaimed the attention of the masses. It has suddenly become not only okay, but academically encouraged, to discuss the excellent works by Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Grant Morrison, Jeph Loeb, Neil Gaiman, Mark Millar, and Alex Ross.

Armed with this fact, and mentally prone to huge tangents, I decided to reminisce a bit about the good ol’ days. No, not the days of being an awkward comics fan with no one to talk to! I’m talking about the cartoon years where the success of Darkwing Duck, Batman Beyond, and X-Men: The Animated Series caused non-superhero cartoons to take notice and create their own spoof heroes.

The following is a tribute list to the 10 best nonessential spoof heroes found throughout television history. Key word: nonessential. This means no Hong Kong Phooey, Duck Dodgers, Freakazoid, or the aforementioned Darkwing Duck. These are the unimportant, the silly, the dumb, the UNSUNG heroes of all animation land!

10. The Coon (South Park)

Leave it to Cartman to create a single episode hero that perfectly captures all the nonsense inherent in being a superhero. Of course, this is Cartman we’re talking about, so The Coon naturally becomes a villain before the show ends, teaming with ‘honorable mention’ list members Professor Chaos and General Dissarray to rid the town of true hero and fan favorite Mysterion. Given the success of this episode, I’d have to imagine this isn’t the last we’ve seen of The Coon.

9. Mermaid Man (Spongebob Squarepants)

Only a show as rampantly stoned and homosexual as Spongebob would cook up a character like Mermaid Man. Dressed like Aquaman, spoofing Adam West’s 1960′s Batman, and wearing a set of Ariel’s boob shells and my grandmother’s slippers, Mermaid Man is a nursing home resident convinced to un-retire by diehard fan Spongebob. Many old man jokes ensue.

8. Valhallen (Dexter’s Lab)

The “Viking God of Rock” is everything you’d ever want out of a mock hero: Bitchin’ guitar, trendy speech patterns, and kick ass hair! When teamed with the unflinchingly American Major Glory and the Infraggable Krunk, the trials of everyday will be defeated…ish.

7. Powdered Toast Man (Ren & Stimpy)

His alter ego is that of a youth-friendly deacon and he flies by either launching himself from a toaster or unloading an ungodly-powerful fart. What teenage child isn’t going to find this to be hilarious?

6. Bionic Bunny (Arthur)

A sentimental pick, this Superman knock-off is the favored hero of Arthur Read and Buster Baxter. What made the character so cool was the sneakers. Suddenly, I didn’t feel silly running around wearing blue long johns, skiing gloves, a red sheet, and my Converse high tops while in public. Why? Because a anthropomorphic superhero did so, too.

5. Duff Man (The Simpsons)

Narrowly beating Radioactive Man and Bartman for a spot on this list, Duff Man wins because of one word: THRUST.

4. Ambiguously Gay Duo (Saturday Night Live)

Here’s a fun fact I just discovered: Adam and Gary were voiced by the two greatest Steves all-time, Stephen Colbert and Steve Carrell. This only makes this cartoon skit featuring one supervillain’s obsession with outing his two arch-enemies as gay that much more hilarious. Additionally, if I may be serious for a second, this show made it okay to be gay and possess super powers. Prior to this, gay super heroes were taboo. After this show, heroes and their sidekicks were free to proclaim their unadulterated love of each other. Friend-of-friends unite!

3. Super Cow (Cow and Chicken)

God bless this flying, oddly Spanish, heroic Cow. Armed with her udders of justice and a pro-wrestling moveset, she has on countless occasions rescued the scrawny Chicken from the evil clutches of the Big Red Guy…I feel like I just experienced a fever dream. I definitely took too much peyote.

2. Gizmo Duck (Duck Tales)

Who knew that all it would take to turn a lame-duck accountant into Iron Man is the phrase “blathering blatherskite”? The great protector of Scrooge McDuck’s vast wealth, Gizmo Duck is completely inept at his job, but his costume is AWESOME.

1. Quail Man (Doug)

Perhaps the most-used nonessential superhero costume come Halloween (just ahead of Duff Man and the Ambiguously Gay Duo, of course), Quail Man is tops on this list because of what he represents: The desire of every young child to create a heroic alter ego for themselves. Quail Man proved you didn’t need awesome gadgets or a bad ass tailor. All you really needed to do was misplace a few pieces of clothing. A cute dog also helps.

How’s my driving?! New oil leak in Gulf

I hope someone got the tag numbers of whatever drunk and belligerent asshole rammed his boat into a wellhead just off the Louisiana coastline.

The Coast Guard is responding to a new oil leak on the Gulf Coast.

“It’s apparent that some type of vessel has hit the well head, has laid it over,” said Donald Nalty, COO of oil spill cleanup contractor ES&H, who just returned from a flyover of the site in single engine seaplane. “It’s probably about a four inch casing and it’s spewing out oil and natural gas.”

That’s right, spewing! It’s raining natural resources on the bayou and you!

Something like that...minus all the celebrating. And white people.

So what’s worse? A GIGANTIC, nature destroying leak caused by procedural incompetence, or a sprinkler much closer to land caused by what I can only imagine is either a teenager without a boating license or an old geezer who confused the gas for the breaks?

Perhaps even more importantly, why is only Fox News covering this? Looking at the picture hosted on their site, it’s obvious that by comparison this is hardly ratable as a “disaster” when held up next to it’s Gulf-Coast-murdering brother a few miles away. Are the people at CNN, NPR, USA Today, and MSNBC just so disenfranchised by such “small” leaks that they could care less? Or is Fox News being its typical self and trying to stir up more anger from it’s predominantly southern redneck audience?

If you ask me (and I know you do, because you love hearing me!) this is just another example of how pig-headedly dumb we choose to be. Think about this, folks. One bad driver just caused another environmental problem. One oopsie. The likelihood of this getting any coverage beyond a 100 word article on a very biased website? Zip. Zilch. Zero. Why? There’s no ratings in it when compared to the big fish that is BP and Event Hori – d’I mean Deepwater Horizon. News outlets know the average American won’t give two flying shits. They rather yell “HURRR DURRR” at the big target and ignore the underlying problem.

What exactly is that problem? We really don’t give a shit unless it directly affects us OR is made a big issue by our friends at Fox, CNN, NBC, etc. Fox says hate Obama, people say “YEA FUCK THAT GUY!” Keith Olbermann says “gay rights!” and suddenly we have a war between GLBT sympathizers and haters. Someone in prominence raises enough hell, and the lemmings respond.

No news outlet will two give flying craps about another relatively small leaking well, so neither will we. When’s football season start again? Fuck Donovan McNabb.

Useless Debate of the Week: Is cheerleading a sport?

On Wednesday, federal judge Stephan Underhill laid down the righteous right hand of the law and decreed that cheerleading was NOT a sport. Take that, feminist movement!

Judge Underhill ruled that Quinnipiac University in New Jersey could not replace its women’s volleyball team with a competitive cheering squad, saying cheerleading is “too underdeveloped and disorganized” to be treated as an official collegiate sport.

Clearly the good Judge has never taken part in the collegiate Beer Olympics.

Is it at all surprising that Fox News managed to not only make this a front page news item on its website, but also succeeded in getting “experts” to deliver their own viewpoints on this dramatic ruling by the American judicial system?

ACLU staff attorney David McGuire, a co-counsel in the case, said critics of the judge’s decision aren’t seeing the big picture of the effect it has in protecting Title IX and ensuring that schools are providing the appropriate number of male and female athletic opportunities in proportion to the number of male and female students at the school.

The crux of Mr. McGuire’s argument is that the Honorable Underhill’s ruling prevents Quinnipiac from misrepresenting their true number of opportunities available for female students. Keeping cheerleading out of the school’s official athletic system prevents a loss of opportunities for female athletes.

I’ll let that sink in.

We live in a country where high schools and colleges have school sponsored teams for golf, bowling, curling, and dodgeball to name a few. All those sports require of you is either a desire for abuse or the ability to roll something across the floor. Cheerleaders? All they do is attempt their best contortionist poses, hurdle through the air as dynamically as a skirt wearing torpedo, and build pyramids without the use of mortar or slaves.

For shits and giggles I looked up Quinnipiac’s athletic department. They have 11 female programs as opposed to simply 7 for men. Where in the hell does McGuire’s ACLU-jargon-spewing equality statement apply in this instance?

Alright, Gallery Members! I put it to you. Is cheerleading a sport, or simply a public tryout for Hooters girls and Playboy bunnies?

Grand Theft Steinbrenner

For those of you who didn’t know, 2010 is the year to die.

In a brilliant display of the stupidity that dominates the chimpanzee meetings on Capitol Hill, this glorious year someone let the post-mortem estate tax, more lovingly called the “death tax” by some members of our great nation, expire. Cease to exist. Disappear. Thus, instead of getting taxed on the money you were taxed on, if you happen to depart your fleshy shell within the next 6 months, your family inexplicably will receive the entirety of your estate.

Now, for a great deal many of us, this’ll only amount to a few thousand dollars (chump change, right!??). For the members of the Steinbrenner family, the rear admirals of the Yankee pirate fleet get to take to the seven seas with Scrooge McDuck-ian amounts of loot. In layman’s terms, the federal government’s minor oversight just lost them an estimated $500 million. Oops.

Well, the United States can’t have rich people dying without paying the Charon toll, can it? Suddenly there’s a huge rush to augment the return of the Death Tax in 2011, with both sides taking their obvious stances. Democrats are nihilist that wants the monies so they can go all Karl Marx on the American elite and Republicans are ready to lynch a few minorities to prevent their rich guy dollars from being used by the federal government to assist minorities.

And thank GOODNESS for our taxpayer dollars being spent on such an important debate now…you know, before Bill Gates or Warren Buffet buys the farm.

The Hostile Takeover

Hello, ladies! Welcome to a new Peanut Gallery. A fresher Peanut Gallery. MY PEANUT GALLERY.

It appears the previous proprietor of this lovely establishment has moved on to greener pastures and left me in charge of the nut house. You can find him at his narcissistically named new location, The Flex World Tour. He’ll be taking some of the more “intelligent” post topics with him – namely the ‘Experiences’ and ‘Practical Hippie’ discussion threads – and good riddance! Many an avid fan of this site became disenfranchised by all that smarty-smart crap. This is the Peanut Gallery, not some stupid attempt at intellectual conversation regarding the significance of Robert Heinlein’s obsession with blonde-headed bimbos. You want bad sex jokes, awful cartoon references, rants unrelated to the topic at hand, and acknowledgement of global stupidity on a daily basis.

And flagrant cursing. Afterall, what the fuck would the Peanut Gallery be without that?

In honor of our previous head nut, and to commemorate the beginning of my despotic rule, here’s a little diddy that sets the mood for things to come: