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Welcome back to another edition of Wacky Comic Wednesday! I’ve decided to pick up where we left off with our favorite punk hamster and review Clint the Hamster Triumphant #2 of 2. In case you missed the first segment, click here to familiarize yourself with the first part of the story, as well as a brief bio on writer Don Chin, penciler (and ComicAttack.net’s very own Ink Stains author) Ken Meyer Jr., and inker Mike Dringenberg. Then come on back this way to catch up with part 2.

The story picks up right where #1 left off- in Bangkok with Clint dangling from a rope that’s attached to the landing gear of a helicopter that belongs to the evil transvestite, Queenpin Wilhelmina Fisk! Did you get all that? Clint’s opening monologue sets the stage for those readers who missed out on issue #1, “There’s a transvestite crime lord steering dis whirlybird that wants me dead… people call him the Queenpin. The scumbag just killed the only friend I had in Bangkok- tossed him into the choppers spinning rotor blades. It was an ugly sight… oh, and while I’m on the subject of ugly sights, take a look at my face and remember it… this is my story… this is my comic book… this is my buck-fifty now, Sucker!!! I’m Clint, Adolescent Radioactive Black-Belt Hamster!” Yeah, he’s bad ass.

Clint tries to get to Wilhelmina by climbing the rope, but the he/she cuts the line, causing our hamster pal to crash through an office window and disrupt the work of a poor janitor. Never in my life have I heard the exclamation “Buddha’s Bones” before, but prior to Clint crashing through the window, the janitor says this as he lets out a sigh, and for some reason this tickled my funny bone to the point where I found it worth mentioning in this review. Anyway, Clint eventually jumps into a passing plane (which has a banner in tow citing the credits of the comic), coming face to face with a new sidekick, A.J. Brillo. His last sidekick was a small rat named Curlektra who was the friend mentioned in the opening monologue, but A.J. (a human) is a stylin’ suit wearing pilot and the master of Kung-Shu (a very technical form of podiatric combat) who looks a whole helluva lot like a young Jay Leno. A.J. used to dust Wilhelmina’s pot fields, but when she blew him in to the Feds, he has been looking to settle the score ever since!

By splattering their plane’s windshield with a black goo, Wilhelmina causes the boys to crash into a nearby jungle river, allowing her to narrowly make an escape (and doing anything ‘narrowly’ is difficult for this fat person to pull off). Despite being temporarily stifled, the duo refuse to give up on their hunt of Fisk, as A.J. remembers that the tranny used to have a Jungle Retreat she liked to frequent. They find the Retreat, taking on the disguises of transvestites (so as to fit right in with everyone else), and Clint makes the observation that the place looks like it was taken directly out of the movie Apocalypse Now (hence the homage for the issue’s cover design). The only differences being that the Retreat is full of trannies, and the weird cult rituals are more bizarre in nature than frightening. Bizarre might be an understatement as the people there repeatedly listen to the song Karma Chameleon by the Culture Club, and make exclamations like “Hey sailor, wanna dock your ship in my port?”  and “John Wayne was a fag!”, so you can only wonder what the heck is going on over there…

Now at this point in our coverage of the comic, we have to revert back to one of the questions posed in the write up of issue #1; what does Clint have to be so triumphant about? Well, if I were to answer that question, I’d be giving the ending away and that just isn’t any fun. All I’ll say is that he and A.J. come face to face with Wilhelmina for the last time, and I think Clint’s cause for jubilation may be because his solo adventure has come to an end… 

The story also contains flesh eating piranhas, a guy named Dieu (who despite his namesake seems to be a constant victim of Murphy’s Law), and a metal dog and his poodle friend who traverse a river on their boat. It’s pretty ridiculous, but the best scene involves the creators themselves. Yes my friends, writer Don Chin, penciler Ken Meyer Jr., inker Mike Dringenberg, and letter Kurt Hathaway all make an appearance in this comic! It’s easily the most entertaining part of both the Clint issues, and feels like that scene in Gremlins 2 when the critters take over the movie theatre and start making shadow puppets on the screen. Yeah, it felt like that only instead of Gremlins, it was terrifying renditions of the creators! Ok, they weren’t terrifying just funny as hell.

The scene starts out in total darkness as both Ken and Dringenberg comment about how great it is that they’re getting paid to basically do nothing (because they’re the artist and the inker and the page is just black). Then Kurt Hathaway shows up and is mocked by the other two as they call him a “drone” for being a letterer. Kurt proceeds to beat them both up. Turning on the lights, Don enters the room with a crap load of McDonald’s, and when his inker and penciler can’t work due to the beating they just took, Chin flies into a rage. Hathaway tries to whistle his way out of the room, but Don gets a grip on the letterer and kicks the crap out of him. Yeah, the two and a half page scene is totally unrelated to the events going on with Clint, but it definitely shows why Don was hired to write for Cracked magazine!

Now onto some quotes from the issue:

“Hey, pal, do me a favor and follow that chopper! I got a score to settle with the fat tub of lard inside!” – Clint

“We’d be getting into some heavy bush, got a machete?” – A.J.

“I hadn’t seen such pathetic apparel since The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” – Clint

“I was a backup kicker for the Raiders in ’70… until I got busted on a drug rap!” – A.J.

“Yeah! I feel like John Byrne already!” – Ken Meyer Jr.

So there you have it; a complete review of the two issue Clint the Hamster Triumphant mini series! Be sure to check in to Wacky Comic Wednesday next week when we explore the notion of hot naked babes in space. Oh yeah.

Andy Liegl
andy@comicattack.net