So I opened the door the other day, and standing there on the stairs was my evil counterpart from the Mirror, Mirror universe:  goatee, eyepatch, agonizer, duffel bag.

“My girlfriend kicked me out,” my evil twin said.  “Can I crash on your couch for a little while?”

“How long’s a little while?”

“In Mirror, Mirror terms?  Until my slow-acting poison kills you and I take over your life.”

“Two weeks, tops.  No poisoning.”

My evil twin stood on the porch for a few minutes, scratching his goatee.  “Okay, but you can’t tell anyone else from my universe.  I’ll really get in trouble for it.”

“Deal.”  I stood to one side and waved him on in.  “It’s not like I ever see any of those guys.”

Later that night, we ordered pizza and sat around watching TV.   My evil twin stood over the pizzas rubbing his hands.  “Which one’s mine again?”

“Hello?  One of us had to order the evil pizza, remember?”

“Oh, right.  The pineapple/anchovies.”

 “No, that’s mine,” I said.

My twin looked at the other pizza.  “What’s evil about pepperoni and sausage?”

“You insisted the guy making the pizza be flogged while he made it.”

“I can’t believe we had to pay extra for that,”  My evil twin said, putting a slice on his paper plate.  “In the Mirror, Mirror universe,  you can request extra floggings with every meal.”

“And your chances of being poisoned in a restaurant are, what?  One in six?  Maybe it’d be lower if you didn’t insist on brutally beating the people preparing your food.”

“What’s the point in going out if you’re not going to treat yourself?  Besides, a one in six chance of death aren’t such bad odds.”

“Those are terrible odds.”

“About the same as eating out in Oakland,” My evil twin said, and took a bite out of the pizza. “Mmmm, you know, you can really taste the flogging!”

“What I don’t get about the Mirror, Mirror universe,” I said as I reached for another slice and he stole the remote, “is how it works.  Is it just that everyone who’s good in our universe is evil in yours?  Or is it like the Bizarro Universe, where day is night, and cats chase dogs, and Star Trek: Voyager was watchable?”

My evil twin shrugged, and dabbed at his eyepatch like it was a napkin.  “I couldn’t really tell you,” he said.  “I don’t watch a lot of TV.”

“Okay, that would lead me to believe it’s like the Bizarro Universe,” I said.

“I’m usually too busy reading comic books.”

“Okay,” I said.  “So it’s not like the Bizarro Universe.”

“Boy, this is good stuff.  Sure you don’t want a slice of my poison?”

I looked at him.  “You mean, pizza?”

He blinked at me.  “Didn’t I say pizza?”

“No, you said poison.”

“Heh, heh,” my evil twin said.  “Old reflex, I guess.”

“So you were saying you usually are too busy reading comic books?”

“Oh,” my evil twin nodded.  “Right.”  He took another big bite of pizza.  “Of course, everyone reads comic books.”

“Now I’m back to believing it is the Bizarro Universe.”

“Yeah, comics are big.  Huge.  Our TV shows come from them.  Our biggest films come from them.  Everyone buys them.”

“Really?”

“Seriously.  The top-selling comic sells, what, gosh, I dunno.  Eighteen, nineteen million.”

I dropped my slice of non-evil pizza into my lap.  “Million?”

My evil twin nodded again.  “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

I pulled the slice off my lap and tossed it on the open lid of the pizza box.  “I have absolutely no idea how that could even be.”

“It’s pretty easy, actually.  Comic stores, kiosks, vending machines, morning delivery—the comics developed from the newspapers, were used to sustain them, and basically outgrew them.  I don’t know if anyone reads the paper that comes with them anymore.”

“My god,” I said.  “It sounds like Heaven.”

“Yeah, if you weren’t such a little girl about getting poisoned, you could probably visit.”

“Well, I suppose I—wait a minute.”

“What?”

“Is this some sort of trick to get me to go to your Mirror, Mirror universe and you end up taking over my life?”

“I am shocked that you could even think that of me.”

“But that is your little plan?”

“What?  No, no.  I swear on—on—uh…”

“Yes?”

My evil twin held up one hand and said, “I swear on my crusty eyepatch that all I was doing was talking about comics and not scheming to take over your life.”  He took the piece of pizza off the pizza box and began eating it.  “It’s not like your life is so great or anything.”

“Well, which one of us could afford the pizzas?”

“I told you.  That was just a little screw-up with the evil temp agency.  I’m sure the check will be deposited by tomorrow.”

“So what’s the biggest selling title?  Superman?  Batman? Or would that be, like, The Adventures of Luthor, and Joker?  Eightball?  Evil Eightball?”

My evil twin thought for a few minutes.  “I guess the biggest seller at the moment is, maybe, Pac-Man.”

“What?”

“Yeah, although it’s a tough call, because it and Mario Adventures have been trading off the top spots the last few years.  Very fierce competition.”

“Mario?  The charming racist stereotype with the hammer?”

“Yeah, although these days it’s been Luigi’s book. Ever since the funeral.”

“The funeral?”

“Yeah, The Death of Mario?  The biggest selling comic of all time?”

“What?”

“You guys didn’t hear about this?  I can’t believe the bias in your news media.”  My evil twin sighed, as if he was going to explain something basic to someone very stupid.  “Mario died fighting a genetically created menace called Doomsdonkey Kong.  And now it’s this big “World Without Mario” storyline where Luigi, the Doki Doki guys and a few other mysterious figures have to keep all the toilets unjammed and the buildings un-mushroom infested.  And there’s a tie-in to Yoshi’s comic, which hasn’t been particularly connected to the Marioverse for a while because it’s been exploring all these strange links between Sarasland and Yoshi Island.”

“And that sells eighteen million copies?”

“At least.  Yeah, it’s pretty big.  But I think Pac-Man is bigger these days.”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

“Yeah, ever since Pac-Man had his jaw broken by El Azul Fantasma, and the rest of the Pac-Man Family had to cover for his absence.”

“My God, I can’t believe it.”

My evil twin rubbed his hands and took another piece of pizza.  “I know!  Everyone was shocked that he picked Pal, that green ghost from the Pakupaku Order to replace him, rather than Jr. Pac-Man.  I mean, what was he training him all this time for?”

“I’m aghast.”

My evil twin leaned close.  “Just between you and me, I don’t think it’s going to get any better than when Clyde wanted to prove to Professor Pac-Man that all it took to become a ghost was one bad day, and then crippled Ms. Pac-Man.”

I put my head in my hands.

“Of course, now Ms. Pac-Man is seen as a rather inspiring figure for the disabled, what with her ability to oversee the Ghost Mazes and help guide the other members of the Pac-Man Family.  Which I guess is better than seeing her as a female figure maimed by male insecurity.”  The Evil Twin chewed serenely for a minute.  “Not like the Legend of Zelda books where Zelda is as much a dominant character as…”

 “Please,” I said.  “Just stop. Stop. Please.”

“What?”

I couldn’t bring myself to lift my head.  “First, those are all old DC storylines.  Old.  Like almost ten years now.  Just ripped off from Batman and Superman.  Secondly, they all sound super-idiotic with video games characters in them.  I can’t believe that seventeen million people read about Pac-Man having his jaw broken.”

Why?”

“Because they’re video game characters.  They don’t mean anything.  And they’re for children.  I have no idea why children would read books with such depressing morbid storylines, and I have no idea why adults would read books about empty brightly colored children’s characters.  I just don’t understand how anyone could like them.”

“Well, I guess there’s just a lot you don’t understand about the Mirror, Mirror universe.  We’ve grown up with these characters.”

“I guess.”

“Plus, you know, again, it helps that there’s distribution everywhere.  And they’re underwritten by the corporations that publish them.  Nintendo publishes the Mario comics and they’re these huge books, but only a dollar.  They make the money on the games, not on the comics.”

“They must lose money by the ton on them.”

“They do okay, they just don’t make huge profits.  Their overhead is low.  Lots of old stories get republished for kids.  No worries about continuity.”

“Do the creators see any money on those?”

“Creators?  What creators?”

“The comics must be created by somebody, right?”

My evil twin shrugged.  “Some guy getting flogged, I guess.  But you never see any credits in a comic book so I guess nobody ever thinks about it.”

“No wonder you guys just rip off storylines from DC.”

The evil twin nodded.  “Sure.  We rip off all your guys’ comics.  Why not?  After the huge success of the Who Pacs the Pacmen? miniseries, I think it seemed to everyone like the smartest thing.  Even that Mario-Clone storyline went well for us.”

 “It sounds horrible.”

My evil twin sat back on the couch and dabbed at his eyepatch, a piece of cheese caught in his goatee.  “Why?  The comics sell great.  Isn’t that what’s important?”

“I guess,” I said.  “I don’t know.  I feel horrible thinking about it.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it,” my evil twin said, and licked his fingers.  “That’s probably just the slow-acting poison.”