FORGOTTEN FOES : DOCTOR WOEMAN

It's about ethics in gaming.

Boody Rogers is best known for brazenly bizarre comics, and the stories which ran in BABE - DARLING OF THE HILLS are no exception. A sort-of fever dream take on the cast and settings of Li'l Abner, Babe was an inhumanly strong Okie who lived in a gender-bent Dogpatch, complete with adoring weirdos of the opposite gender constantly throwing themselves at her feet, a crusty pair of hillbilly parents and everyone speaking in a gen-you-wine par-lance of thuh hills, as it were.

Babe's world was also bedecked with landlocked mermen, three-footed caveboys, cross-dressed celebrities, practically-mutated hillfolk and, in one particularly timely adventure, gal-hating scientist Doctor Woeman!

I'm so confused by that simile.

Debuting in Babe No.7 (July-August 1949), the bedeviling doctor - resembling a single-toothed Sivana, frankly - is shown hammering out a sinister concoction from a recipe "discovered in the ear of a dead indianwho was clawed to death by a black cat on Friday the 13th beneath a step ladder!!" Comprised of an ingredient list which, according to the doc, contains beetlenut, blueberry, beeswax, buffalo horn and baby's breath (which is my signature mix at Pinkberry), the serum possesses a single power - to turn women into men!

Why? Well, Doctor Woeman hates women. "My biggest regret is that my mother was a woman!" he shouts at his YouTube subscribers. "I can't bear to even think of women -- they nauseate me" he adds in a video which he's mistitled "Feminazi Rebuttel," I assume.

The doctor's serum works out pretty well, transforming his brutish assistant Throckmorton from lunk to lovely in a single swallow, which I'm sure is the title of a specialty video somewhere. Dubbing the drink "Womanminuswo," Woeman takes his act on the road,  forcing his gender-switching liquid down women's throats, which is ALSO I assume the title of a specialty video somewhere. Maybe a whole series.

Rampaging crusader for "Not All Men!"

Woeman eventually ends up in Babe's hometown of Possum Holler, where the aforementioned three-legged caveboy puts the fear of God into the doc by destroying his flivver with a massive club, and AGAIN that's probably a specialty video although we're getting into very obscure territory here. That, in fact, turns out to be the end of the Doctor's big plans, having left his serum behind and not having the material to make another batch (it requires very specific blueberries, apparently).

In his absence, Babe's parents take turns swiping swigs from the left-behind bottle, producing something not unlike a hillbilly version of Running Up That Hill, while Babe herself takes a dose just long enough to become a muscular, dress-wearing heavyweight boxer for a few madcap pages. My guess is that the doc is happily ensconced somewhere in an apartment with milk crates for furniture, posting things to 8chan that no sane human being would want to see, diligently hating women and cruising Craigslist for buffalo horn. Which, again, is I assume the title of a specialty video.