If the comics are a guide (and they might not be), that won't last for long. Even in the comic where the gun game came from—in an issue and by a writer that are not exactly kind to red—Punisher acknowledges that when it comes to hand to hand combat, he never really has a chance.

Can we all take a moment to appreciate how much better this episode handled the Punisher's Dilemma than the comic? I know that Garth Ennis hates superheroes and that it happened in a Punisher comic, so DD couldn't just win, but having DD shoot the chain and break out was so much better than what happens in the comic.

Fractions are the devil's numbers and decimals are just as bad. Until that movie makes another $2 million the multiple is countless.

Oh yeah, I can't and won't defend the writing ethos that determined that all sentences should end with exclamation marks! I actually found it comical for a while! But it's one of those things you're glad to see go!

Stan Lee's run on X-Men is also enduringly awesome. The first 66 issues are just pure fun. A few years back I tried to read the X-Men from start to present, and I think I bailed sometime in the mid-to-late '90s. And what I missed wasn't Claremont—it was Lee.

Also: the Stan Lee runs on most of the iconic Marvel characters are hellaciously underrated. The man is a mascot these days, but he made comics as fun as they've ever been for decades.

Is there anywhere you can get the omnibus for less than like $500?

It is bizarre that of all the groups of survivors, none appear to be cohesive military units. The only unit that we've seen survive so far was promptly massacred by the Governor.

You're moving the goalposts. Even assuming, arguendo, that a twinkie is not candy (which it totally is), what about chocolate wafers or those gross individually wrapped cookies they sell at checkout counters or these abominations? None of those are food, not even dessert, all of them are bread-based. There are at…

You go to stand-up shows and then shout the comic's catch phrases during the routine, don't you? Are you also Rick James, bitch?

I enjoy Ennis, and he's written some killer one-shots and miniseries, but he has strong tics that show through in everything of any length that I've read by him. I can enjoy Preacher, Hitman and his run on Punisher with Steve Dillon, and recognize that they're fundamentally kind of second-rate.

Black powder can work in cartridges (though it is less stable and more likely to result in misfire and a lot of other bad things), but it's less powerful, so you'd need to adjust tension on springs in the recoil mechanism and things of that nature. Not impossible, but complicated and difficult. You'd also have to…

If you ever serve me a Twinkie or Ho-Ho after a meal, you had better be my kindergarten teacher and "a meal" had better have been a peanutbutter and jelly sandwich and a box of milk, Ms. Fields. And you can, of course, buy Twinkies and Hostess Fruit Pies and everything else I listed from the wire racks in drug…

Twinkies, Ho-Hos, wafers (e.g. Kit-Kats), cookies, Hostess fruitpies et cetera et cetera

Cake and fruit-based candies. I guess "fruit-based" is a subset of sugar, but I think it would have to be an early branch under sugar, but cake/bread-based candies and chocolate candies are clearly distinct from pure sugar-based candies.

I mean, you did click on a column about a man with an asshole for a face, so you can't really be mad about on-topic posts.

SPOILERS

Ted Cruz wishes he was that likable looking.

I've found that some Scots/Welsh/English prefer the term "British," as the others have ethnic baggage to them. I've also found that the British have an almost unparalleled ability to create and police shibboleths.

Ennis is pretty terrible at keeping British/Irish slang out of the mouths of his American characters, though. I mean, "Spacker Dave"? Who was the UK ex-pat who coined that one?