Falcon Presto. Alfonso Crept. Frances Ploot. Preston Falco. The four of them crack reporters in a cracked world. These people bring you the stories no one else dares to.
Presto - former Marvel employee, fired for knowing too much. Has a really big nose.
Crept - ex CIA agent and bullshit world record holder. Picks at his feet.
Ploot - sophisticated, buxom, an arse to kill for and an ability that we can only talk about on www.sexmeupbaby.com.
Falco - one of the other three writing under a bad pseudonym.
These are Spoof Central - be afraid or just piss off!
In the first of who knows how many important interviews, the Spoof Central crew were charged with tracking down the most important people in comics history, whether these people are alive or dead. Once located these living legends of comics had to be subjected to the most severe interviews of their lives. None of this Wizard-like pandering, we want the answers to the questions that are bugging the fans the most.
Where better to start than with possibly the greatest living comics writer. Alfonso Crept travelled to Ohio for a rendezvous with Tony Isabella. The two met at Tony's favourite place, a park bench overlooking Franklin D. Roosevelt Elementary School playground.
AC: My God, Tony, you look awful. Are you still on crack?
TI: Cold Turkey man, it's a bummer.
AC: Well I'm glad to see that you're trying to clean up your act. I heard stories of you begging for food outside convents recently. Is this true?
TI: I'm afraid so. times have been hard. I had to sell my wife and children last fall, but unfortunately I couldn't get a good price and all the money has gone.
AC: I find this hard to believe. I'm sitting here talking to the man responsible for BLACK LIGHTNING, the most critically-acclaimed comic of all time, the biggest selling comic series ever published, with over 20 millions copies of each issue in print and countless second, third, fourth and fifth printings, plus counterfeits in circulation. How on Earth have you got to this situation?
TI: It's the price of fame, Fons.
AC: Don't call me that.
TI: What?
AC: Don't call me "Fons."
TI: Oh, sorry.
AC: How was it the price of fame. Every book you touched was an instant hit. Sons of the Tiger, um... and all the others you did as well. How can a man who has 97 of the top 100 selling comics of all time be a destitute bum (with limited internet access) when idiots like Todd McFarlane and Jim Lee are living in mansions made from virgins' skin?
TI: I had an argument with DC about creator rights. I'd originally written it into my contract that BLACK LIGHTNING would become my property in the event of a number of things happening. If the book should exceed 10 million sales, be optioned for a series of major blockbuster motion pictures, or if Marvel offered me the chance to write BLACK PANTHER. DC's best offer was for me to continue writing BLACK LIGHTNING while developing BLACK CANARY, BLACKHAWK, BLACK ORCHID and BLACK CONDOR comics. This was totally unacceptable and even when DC tried to buy BLACK GOLIATH and BLACK KNIGHT from Marvel to sweeten the deal I felt that they weren't offering me the best deal.
I had it written into my contract that if I was dissatisfied with anything I could walk from the comic and it would cease to continue. I invoked this clause in my contract, but the bastards had a counter clause that my lawyers didn't see. This was if I wasn't writing the comic all monies would revert to DC. The entire $400 million I made from DC and BLACK LIGHTNING is in limbo while we fight in the courts.
AC: Surely your lawyers could wangle it to at least give you some money for a bath, some food and to do your laundry.
TI: My lawyer is my ex-wife. She keeps all the money and is using it to try and buy the kids back from the North Korean family that has them in slavery.
AC: That sounds really boring. Tell us some more about the end of BLACK LIGHTNING?
TI: [laughs]
AC: Why are you laughing?
TI: Don't people do that in interviews. You can put in [laughs] between two square brackets and it looks like we're having a good time.
AC: ...
TI: oh...
AC:BLACK LIGHTNING?
TI: It is heartening to know that there are so many people out there constantly bombarding DC with requests to bring back the series, or at least allow me to finish the story I was halfway through when I walked out on the book.
AC: Remind us about that?
TI:BLACK LIGHTNING was trapped in a wet cardboard box. If he uses his powers he fries himself and all the supporting cast, who have had their nipples wired to jump leads also connected to BLACK's scrotum (the source of all his power is his electric scrotum - the nexus of where his powers flow). The villain, who has so far only been seen in the dark is really Darkseid, who plans on using BLACK to kill Superman and rule the West Coast gambling casinos.
AC: Sounds positively riveting.
TI: I was also planning on introducing a new character called BLACK WHITENING - the absolute antithesis of our BLACK, who has the power to completely bleach things from 50 yards.
AC: It isn't a well known fact, but you are in fact Afro-American, aren't you?
TI: Yes. Because of a rare disease when I was a child I ended up looking like an American of Italian descent. it's a gene thing.
AC: I completely understand. How did you end up with the name Tony Isabella?
TI: My real name is Delroy Crosby but I kept getting bullied at school, so my mama changed my name and sent me to live in Ohio. I was originally from Louisiana.
AC: Positively fascinating. So why aren't you working for anyone else?
TI: I've had offers. Plenty of them. Marvel offered me either the X-Men or Spider-Man but I figured they couldn't handle the following I bring with me. Could you imagine what Bill Rosemann would have been like had I been writing X-Men and sales began to exceed 25 million a month. Yeah, I could have single-handedly saved Marvel from bankruptcy several times over, but they screwed me over.
AC: This is the BLACK GOLIATH incident isn't it?
TI: I don't want to talk about it.
AC: But that administration is long gone. Why have you got a problem now?
TI: Marvel has refused to release any of my original scripts. I've heard tell of writers selling scripts on e-bay for as much as $5 and I'd like a little cut of that myself. But Marvel steadfastly refuse to release any of my scripts. They claim they were binned in 1987, but my spies tell me differently.
AC: What exactly do your spies tell you and for that matter who are your spies?
TI: I can't tell you that or people will find out and my line into Marvel will be lost forever.
AC: When are you going to reveal to the world that you are actually Alan Moore and you've been writing under an assumed name for 25 years, while employing an actor in Northampton to pose as the writer?
TI: Probably now as you've just spilled the beans to millions of readers.
AC: In BLACK LIGHTNING volume 1 issue #6, one of the panels doesn't look as though it was drawn by Trevor Von Eedon. What's the score about that?
TI: I think you'll find it's Von Eeden.
AC: You don't hear much of him nowadays, do you?
TI: That's because I was him as well.
AC: Nice weather here.
TI: Yes, it's a pleasant spot. I sometimes bring donuts and a bottle of Thunderbird.
AC: That sounds good.
TI: The bagels at the shop at the corner are pretty good too.
AC: That was a pretty good BATMAN story you wrote.
TI: I can't recall ever writing BATMAN. I'd like to, but obviously there's this problem with DC. It didn't help matters when I ghost wrote all of Dan Jurgens' "Death of Superman" issues.
AC: Gee, that sounds like fun. Um... Have you got a big comic collection.
TI: About 100,000. I once sold a copy of ACTION COMICS #1 for $5 billion.
AC: No disrespect Tony but this is going nowhere. You might be a god amongst lowly mortal comics writers, but you just haven't got anything interesting or anecdotal to talk about. I'm sorry mate, but I've had more ... frission ... with planks of wood.
TI: OK. Sorry.
AC: Not your fault mate, it might be the water here in Ohio. Or maybe it's that pretty blonde down there on the basketball court. Have you seen the way her shorts have ridden up and she isn't bothered that most of her arse is showing?
TI: Now you know why I'm here rather than writing BLACK LIGHTNING.
Alfonso Crept is being held in a Police Station on the outskirts of Ohio for lewd and profane behaviour. Tony Isabella is being presented with an honorary Oscar at the 2004 Academy Awards for the inspiration behind many of the last 20 years blockbuster movies and because the comics industry doesn't have an award worth a hill of beans.
DISCLAIMER: All material in this article is fictitious & solely for the purpose of entertainment. Names are fabricated and any similarity to real persons are coincidental, except in those cases where known public figures are being satirized. Comments & opinions are those of the writer(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of any other person or organization.
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