BOY WONDER by Paul Cunningham On the rags of skin comic near the central brain-float there is an ink belching shadows and a bedfellow leaving baskets for the hand holding no pen. It is an early life for the catcher in the comic rye—we’re all sitting on the sidewalk when the police find us and we’ve done something side-curved which is at least worth an illustration. Keep the rags in the airtight envelope—keep immortal the plastic sweetheart. Undrape the young and lift the rag gauze. Rob the local bank wearing a cape. Boy wonders and beach maidens. Masked vigilante and sharp-hoofed kingpin working over the tortoise, steering the hare. Inviting the police squadron to lie on the floor and accept a word bubble spasm—convert their proud salutes into walls of jingling silly—honking sexless birds of blue and red. City council quits the secretary-over-the-desk regatta to sip coffee while witnessing the oblique boy wonder gambol along in a taut red leotard. Boy wonder in the singing alley. Boy wonder crawling the lips of rooftops. Mechanical villain breeding mechanical moths in the cosmos of drifting enormity. Boy wonder is carried off by mechanical moths and de-feathered as a bravura blood feast—the pink cooked robin.