Microkhan by Brendan I. Koerner

The last week’s been mighty rough, as we suffered through an illness akin to that which Pip endured toward the end of Great Expectations. Yet just as Dickens’ hero pulled through the ordeal to hear the joyous news that Joe and Biddy got married, we have come through the other side with lifted hearts and sky-high spirits. We’re not quite ready to get back into the thick of Microkhan, but a relaxing Easter weekend with the clan should do wonders for our mental clarity. In the meantime, we hope you can sustain on one of our all-time favorite April Fools jokes, which we’d like to file under “How We Wish This Was Real”: the tale of an obese superhero named The Gormandizer:

The Gormandizer was Frankie Franklin, a competitive eating champion whose specialty was hot dogs. In the first issue, Frankie accidentally ingests hot dogs that have been irradiated by nuclear waste. Rather than dying of radiation poison, Frankie gets super powers, with the ability to eat anything at all, from nuclear waste to oil, to Twinkies.

Being the owner of an electronics repair shop, this new power serves him well, as he is able to easily dispose of waste that is otherwise regulated by government bureaucrats in the newly-formed EPA. Frankie’s shop becomes the cleanest in the Hell’s Kitchen area of New York City, which leads to some serious questions for the regulators.

In the first issue, Frankie Franklin gets his new powers just before he is abducted by aliens who have selected him to be earth’s champion in an intergalactic eating competition. He has to out-eat representatives of 75 other planets, and the planet of the loser will be destroyed.

The Gormandizer not only doesn’t lose, but he actually wins, eating thousands of living “skunkrabbits.” And thus is born “a hero with bite”!

Back here next week with posts about Hittite sports, nocturnal banditry, point shaving, and chess hustling, among myriad other topics. ‘Cause we’re about to put the “daily” back in “Daily polymathism since the Year of the Ox.”