Major Bummer

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Major Bummer was a humorous comic book produced by DC Comics in the late 1990s. It was created by writer John Arcudi and artist Doug Mahnke.

[edit] Story

Two alien college students (named Zinnak and Yoof) are doing their thesis on heroes in Earth culture. To further their study, they send through the mail EEM's or Extreme Enhancement Modules that, when opened, attach themselves to the heart of the recipient endowing them with superpowers.

The main character of Major Bummer was Lou Martin. Lou was a slacker who, due to the incompetence of Yoof received an EEM instead of Martin Louis, an upwardly mobile young lawyer and philanthropist. Lou received a new muscular body that is inhumanly strong and has super-human intelligence. Unfortunately, because Lou is so lazy, he is only able to use his intelligence either subconsciously or during moments of extreme concentration. Despite this flaw, Lou was an erudite and intelligent individual already. The great irony being that his limitations were always his own fault and he enjoyed being a slacker ; unlike most superheroes, gaining powers was actually an inconvenience to him. Lou's EEM was designed to attract trouble and the other superhumans whom Martin would have chosen to lead.

The other "Superheroes" included : Val Andrist, the environmentalist daughter of an Ice Cream magnate who could fly, Francis Dutton, an aromatherapist hippie with a sonic scream, Lauren Isley, an elderly woman who could predict the future (but was so absent-minded she got confused with the past), a cat that became a giant when scared (it opened and ate her owner's EEM by mistake, later adopted by Lauren) and "Gecko", a nerdish man who could stick to walls and took the concept of being a superhero too seriously.

The EEM's were also gifted to a group of supervillains and attracted to one another in order to ensure battles would occur (most notably the loser-turned-monster Nunzio whom Lou accidentally brain damaged via unintentional electrocution). Other stories involved a Nazi dinosaur from a parallel universe named Tyrannosaurus Reich, a demon-possessed toddler, alien worms that ate everything, an overly adoring fan of Lou's that tried to kill him to make him more famous and an alien time traveler that destroyed time leading to Lou's future self recruiting the present day Lou to battle the time traveller.

Major Bummer was cancelled after issue 15 due to poor sales although it had a cult following- "Sales were bad and there was just no way to keep this book going", wrote editor Peter Tomasi in the final letter pages of the last issue.