So the gangsters who lifted Joe (the Shield!) Higgins' idiot sidekick, JuJu the G-man, in Stacey's department didn't kill him after all, even though he can totally identify them. What idiots. Must be racketeers.
So when Joe shows up, he immediately does what Betty should have done in the first place: calls the police.
Huh. The Shield is supposed to be set in Washington, DC, but if that were really Washington, DC, somebody would have already knocked JuJu off it for standing on the wrong side of the escalator. Probably a hurried heavy-set woman wearing a pantsuit and sneakers.
LOL, you fell for it! The hero never calls the police, because that would end the story. Instead, he goes to see the President of the Store. I honestly didn't know stores even had presidents. Maybe it's a Washington thing I don't know about.
But first, a stop at the Seven Floor: Miniature Boats, Velocipedes, and Matricide!
Pictured: the impassive apathy of the world's least concerned bicycle and boat. I think they're in it together, frankly.
Yes, there lies a woman who's entire face has just been burned off with acid.
"My mummy's sick" ranks up there as one of the great understatements of all literature along with "Moi dyet bolen" in Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin. Nice of Joe to clarify the situation for the boy, though. "No, no, sweetie; your Mommy's not merely sick. Her entire face has been burned away with acid. And the sooner you come to terms with that the better." Joe's old-school, folks.
"Whoa, Sonny! You just killed your own mother in one of the horrible and painful ways imaginable! That's what happens to little boys who don't study their irregular verb patterns!"
So, after buying little Orestes an impassive bicycle and toy boat to calm him down, Joe goes right to the police because people are dying like flies at Stacey's.
Or, he goes to chat with the President of the United Stores of America, instead.
Ugh; racketeers. I should have known. It's always racketeers.
What is that horrible creature next to the boat? It seems to have the body of an animal, the face of a child, and George Washington's hair. It's like a bizarre sphinx, or manticore, or chupacabra, or something.
ReplyDeleteSounds like "mummy" has a promising career as a super-villain ahead of her (c'mon, acid in the face doesn't kill anybody in a golden age comic book except at the END of the story, and sometimes not even then):
ReplyDelete"The Shield will rue the day he lay hands on and potentially bad-touched the son of...Bare-Face!"
Racketeers? Seriously? Rampaging through Macy's is going to get them...what?
ReplyDeleteUgh. I'll bet "something" will happen to that racketeer-hating manager. Maybe he'll end up bent over his desk after it's position at a strange angle.
ReplyDeleteWhy, what a bizarre and unlikely theory!
ReplyDelete