Greetings, citizens of Gotham! It is I, Buddy Standler, the Condiment King! You mayo may not have heard my fearsome moniker before…. Oh, come now, you mustard of me at least once or twice. Well, please endeavor to ketchup and follow along, for mine is a tale to relish!
I may not be one of The Batman’s most well-known foes, but I was once a famous stand-up comedian! It is that saucy scoundrel the Joker who generally gets all the credit for my brilliant life of crime, but it was I and I alone who concocted my fiendish weapons. In one, ketchup! In the other, mustard! Tell me, would you relish an altercation with me now???
I know I already did a relish pun, but there really aren’t a terribly abundant number of things that qualify as condiments, so don’t be salty with me if I repeat a pun here or there.
Say, that reminds me: do you know the difference between jam and jelly? Well, I can’t very well jelly my foot up Robin’s ass, now, can I? AH-hahahahahahahahahaaaaaa!!!!!
That joke was about Robin because he and Bat-Girl are the only ones who come to thwart my diabolical schemes anymore. Batman apparently has bigger fish to fry. Yeah, real world-class fiends like Kite-Man and the Penny Plunderer. He steals pennies, for chrissakes, and Batman is willing to run up and down the streets of Gotham fighting that idiot, but when I’m terrorizing the city, he just sends Robin, or Bat-Girl if the Boy Fluffer is too “busy.”
We all know what they’re up to, lettuce not pretend otherwise.
I know lettuce isn’t a condiment, but just let me have this, okay? I’m a broken man.
My weapons have been known to cause anaphylactic shock, an often deadly allergic reaction, yet where am I in all the many successful adaptations on television and film? Egghead is just a bald guy who really likes eggs, and he was portrayed by no less a star than Vincent Price! Mr. Freeze has the entire concept of cold from which to fashion his puns, while I must struggle to think of something to do with “chutney,” and he is portrayed on film by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the greatest Hollywood action star of all time! The injustice knows no bounds!
You would think they could have at least put me in one of the Suicide Squad movies, but noooo!!! Polka-Dot Man was in the latest Suicide Squad, but not I! No, never I, the Sultan of Sauce, the Head Honcho of Horseradish, the motherfucking Condiment King!
Alas, it is true what they say: you never get a second chance to make a first impression. And my first encounter with The Bat was not so smooth. No, it was chunky salsa indeed. It started so well, with my meticulously crafted speech: “Ah-ha! The big bad Bat-guy. I knew you’d ketchup to me sooner or later. How I relished this meeting. You, the dynamic Dark Knight, versus me, the conceptual Condiment King! Come, Batman. Let’s see if you can cut the mustard!”
Brilliant, I know. But then, when he chased me to the roof of the restaurant I had been successfully robbing, using its own saucy supplies, I foolishly backtracked and slipped… in a puddle of my own ketchup… and fell, nearly to my death.
But I learned something that night, oh yes, something I will never forget in all my storied life of creamy crime….
Ketchup is fucking slippery!