Stan Lee's Rabbit, Run!
A tale for the ages that could only have been brought to you
by Stan "The Man" Lee and "Jovial" John Updike! You'd
better be wearing retina condoms, reader, or this story will impregnate
your eyeballs!
Though the world may mock washed-up basketball star Harry Ansgstom, soon
it will marvel at the awesome might of – The Rabbit!
The sleepy little town of Brewer, Pennsylvania shelters a mystery. Here
Harry Angstrom has struggled to make ends meet, in his second-rate marriage
and his Magi-Peel demonstrator job. He little suspects the shrouded secret
that the mysterious Reverend Jack Eccles conceals behind the golf course.
Until one day – destiny!
The Secret Origin of the Rabbit! Searching for his place in the universe,
Harry climbs Mount Judge and is bombarded with mega-neutrons, which transform
him into The Rabbit, the sensational character find of 1959! Soon, he leaps
tall mountains and dodges his middle-class obligations! Face front, true
believers! This is one axon-stripping masterpiece you won't forget!
In this issue – a baby dies! Not a hoax! Not an imaginary story! Rabbit
only wants to use his stupendous powers to beat the snot-headed neighbor
kids at basketball, and to make part-time hooker Ruth do an Unseemly Jeremy
with him. But when Harry abandons his wife Janice for the third or fourth
time, she drowns their baby. Nothing will ever be the same!
Why – has this happened? Harry demands. The double-jointed fire hydrants
and stooped used-car lots don't answer. Why, why, WHY? What is life? Why
do we suffer? How can a man have so much power – and yet be unable
to save his drowned child?
Harry finally learns a lesson that he will carry with him forever: "If
you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price."
What follows is pulse-pounding action in the mighty Updike manner! Hold
onto your hat, readers! Harry discovers the Reverend Eccles is really the
cloaked miscreant known as... the Cowslip! He finds a cryptic note: "When
the Cowslip swallows the Elder – everyone in Brewer will die!"
The Rabbit must untangle this epistemological brain-twister. But even he
could never expect that the Cowslip will launch his devious plan during
the funeral for Harry's dead baby!
Unmasked – By The Cowslip! The Cowslip has built a giant eldritch
sphere of institutional nihilism, and he plans to drop it on the peaceful
town of Brewer. Rabbit tries to confront the Cowslip, only to be defeated
and unmasked!
Harry escapes the Rev. Eccles' death traps. He realizes that if he runs
at three times the speed of sound, he can create a moral vacuum –
and drain off all of the energy from the Cowslip's lethal giant golf ball.
Run, Rabbit, Run! Ah, run. Runs. Running! Run run rrrrrrrrrun. Sweet panic,
it works!
The town is saved! 'Nuff said.
Next: Rabbit Redux by Frank Miller. Sometimes a man has to kill a whole
lot of people to get his goddamn family back. Rabbit teams up with Skeeter,
a veteran with a raw angry gun hand, and Jill, a knife-spitting stripper
who'll make you a fancy present of your own man-parts. Together, they'll
take on every stinking bent bastard in the law-forsaken town of Brewer -
even if they have to burn it all down. It's blood for blood, and by the
gallon. Don't screw with this Rabbit, or he'll run you over.
Charlie Jane Anders' article about feminism and superheroes appears in the July/August issue of Mother Jones. Her other writing has appeared in McSweeney's.net, Pindeldyboz, Zyzzyva, Salon.com, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Wall Street Journal. She's the author of Choir Boy and the co-editor of She's Such A Geek. And she hosts the Writers With Drinks reading series and publishes a national magazine, other.