Footballiversity #4
Multiversity is an ongoing DC comics series written by Grant Morrison. Every month sees a story in a different version of the DC universe (eg kids of the well-known heroes who have nothing to do because their parents created a utopia where the bad guys can never win) loosely tied around a seemingly haunted comic book. Footballiversity and the various numbered Footballiverses are a shameless rip-off of the comics device (found elsewhere too, of course) of using parallel universes when you have nothing else to write about, and is an idea that came to me while reading Multiversity, although in a parallel universe Grant Morrison got the idea from me.
Footballiversity #4 – Footballiverse 42
February
In essence, Footballiverse 42 is to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy what a pirated copy of The Lego Movie is to the real version of The Lego Movie – noticeably worse in quality and at least partially suspect in the eyes of the law. The character of ‘Arthur’ is a metaphor for the general public; he is relatively unimportant, is largely unaware of this, and all of the action goes on around him.
“Maybe it was just an honest mistake,” Arthur suggested.
“Don’t you understand?!” wailed Jose BeeMouBrox, his three arms waving, one head sulking while the other spoke “It’s a conspiracy against me. They’re all in on it! The Restaurant at the End of the Footballiverse messing up my takeaway order is just a small part of it. 30, 33, 43, 69, man, that’s all I’m saying.”
Paul the Perpetually Miserable Android appeared on the bridge of the spaceship (the League of Gold).
“Life,” he said in his robotic Scottish drawl “Don’t talk to me about life.”
This was the last morbid straw, and he was immediately replaced by the Sirius Cybernetic Corporation’s latest model, HappyChappy Tim, who, although technically an upgrade, was arguably more useless and annoying than his predecessor.
HappyChappy Tim, in an attempt to please his new owners, began to hit his small robotic hands on the League of Gold’s console.
“Wait, what?” Arthur said, moving across the bridge “What are you doing? You don’t know what you’re doing. Stop it, stop it now.”
“No-brainer, Giant big club, 13 cup finals, gilets up fifty percent, lift and passion, hashtag LADbantz 2.0,” the HappyChappy burbled as his small plastic fists randomly pounded buttons.
One of HappyChappy Tim’s hands hit the switch to turn the League of Gold’s Improbability Drive into overdrive and, rather improbably, Nigel Pearson suddenly appeared on the ship’s bridge. Not being used to space travel, he stumbled and fell into the water cooler in the corner of the room, taking it and himself to the floor, water spilling everywhere.
Amongst the liquid dihydrogen oxide, ‘Big Nige’ wrestled with the large bottle that was now increasingly not containing the water that it was meant to contain. He slipped and splashed, eventually managing to pin the remnants of the water cooler beneath him.
“Wha- What the hell are you doing?” Arthur said, having just managed to prize HappyChappy Tim away from the control console.
Big Nige straightened up, smoothing his club-branded tracksuit, water streaming off it.
“Don’t worry about me,” he chuckled to himself “I can,” he paused for what he must have thought was dramatic effect “Handle myself.”
At that moment, HappyChappy Tim escaped from where Arthur had restrained him, although given that that was under the watch of Jose (who was more concerned with trying to convince that the bridge’s automatic doors of the conspiracy against him) it wasn’t particularly surprising that he got away. Babbling happily to himself about something meaningless, he managed to hit the Improbability Drive button again which, this time, supremely improbably, turned the whole event into words on a screen.
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“Issue 5: March” coming 1/4/15 APRIL FOOLS. No, seriously, the next one’ll come out on the 1st of April and may or may not be April Fools themed now that I’ve realised it’ll come out on that day.
