Now you know I don't like to alarm people, despite the fact that I've announced the end of the world three of four times in this column, but I have to say, from all indications and a very reliable source: the end times are here.  Like the last few pages of same fevered jack tract, our world is about to bust apart, the forces of Hell will claw their way through our streets, and we may not even get a chance to see The Towers on the big screen before it happens!

I found all this out just the other day, as I was flipping through Previews and assembling the new comics section of this very issue.  Suddenly, the phone rang by my computer, and I answered it, fully expecting it to be a recorded message telling me that I should either vote for a certain candidate, stay on line for an account representative about a certain bill, or call a certain family members (my parents have retained a very first-rate agency to make sure I stay in touch). 

"Mmmm-yellow," I said into the phone.

"Yeah, is dis Jeff Lester?" the voice was naturally gruff, although it sounded as if the person was trying to speak softly.

"That's right," I said.  "Who's this?"

"I'm not at liberty to say.  Call me an admirer of your work--you're not afraid to write about the tough issues in comics, and I've got a story the regular media would never touch."

"Really," I said.  "Well, what kind of story is it."

"You're in it pretty deep, Pal.  All of us are.  I have evidence that the U.S. government has been engaged in a decades long experiment in mind control using comic books."

"Go on," I said.  It sounded like your usual load of hooey, but something in this guy's voice sounded sincere.

"Okay.  Back in the late '40s, the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency had been impressed with the popularity of comic books during wartime, their ability to appeal to both solider and children, and their overall success in keeping morale high.  A plan was hatched to study the long-term effects of comic books on the personalities that read them, a plan that Harry Truman himself had personally authorized.  And so Operation:  Harry's comics were born."

"Okay," I said.  "Go on."

One of the first things this operation did is buy up the rights to a certain popular serviceman comic strip from World War II, and start publishing his exploits as a civilian.  Coded messages about this hapless serviceman prepared the way for excursion in Korea.  And when we did enter the Korean conflict in earnest, this cartoon character re-enlisted, providing the conflict with mass popular approval and also, conversely, greater popular approval."

"This doesn't sound familiar to me," I admitted.  "I don't think I've ever hear of Harry's Comics."

"Of course you haven't.  That would be far too straightforward for dose creeps.  No, they took that name and twisted it slightly, made it a bit goofier."

"Goofier?  Wait," I leaned forward in my chair.  I realized I had been sitting on an action figure.  "Do you mean Harvey comics?"

"Right on de button, pal.  Sad Sack was Harvey Comics' first big success, as well as that of the agency.  As a result, they launched the second stage of their plan, in '53, after having trained professionals spend five or six years working up a slate of characters.  Some of them were clearly designed to program kids into being ideal citizens; others were designed as certain dead ends, reflecting traits children would never take to heart."

"Why'd they do that?"

"They're like controls.  They couldn't limit how many kids got the comic books, so they thought they'd measure efficiency by comparing the spread of "popular" ideas to "unpopular" ones.  The base spread of unpopular ideas would be the baseline for the average spread of these ideas if the comics hadn't come out.  They had estimates worked out.  The stupid bastards," the voice paused for a long moment, and I could hear nothing but dead air on the other end.  "They though they knew everything."

"What did you say your name was again?"

"Heh.  You're good, pal.  I never told you my name.  Why don't you just call me L'il Informant if it makes you feel any better."

"Yeah," I said.  "That just rolls  right  off the tongue.  I will."

"You do dat." 

And from there, L'il Informant talked for the better part of an hour, with me only asking for the occasional clarification.  He told me how Harvey Comics had been too popular, how they had been too successful, and even the books that they had set up to test for false positives had succeeded  far beyond what they had planned.

"All of it was scarfed up," L'il Informant said.  "They knew Richie Rich was going to be a hit and inspire a new generation of money-seekers, but who'd a thunk a devil wearing diapers would inspire an entire generation of Satan worship?  By the time the late '60s rolled around, the project was clearly out of control.  You had Hell's Angels, you had hippie chicks gobbling up any dot-shaped piece of acid they could see, you had rock groups trying, like that ghost with the hat or those cousins of Casper, to scare the hell out of everybody.  I'm telling you, pal, you know what Altamont was?  Altamont was one giant issue of Harvey Hits gone amok."

"So what'd the Agency do?"

"What'd it do?  It didn't do anything.  It was tabulating the results.  It was adding up the tallies.  It was believed that greater media saturation--what the eggheads today would call branded cross-platform synergy--would touch off even wider memetic dissemination.  They weren't too thrilled that they had a bunch of burgeoning deviants on their hands, but on the other hand, it was balanced by all the bankers and MBAs they were turning out.  And they were making a good profit on the stuff.  I know some guys think that the Agency never could have expanded their operations as dramatically into the Latin American theater if it hadn't been for the success of Richie Rich and Casper comic books."

L'il Informant went on to tell me the Harvey planners had only launched one more major idea.  Jackie Jokers. 

"God, Jackie Jokers," I said.  "I barely remember him. "

"That was the idea, champ.  Jackie was designed to be even more forgettable to the conscious mind than the other Harvey characters.  Most people only  remember Jackie,  after years of painstaking therapy and recovered memory treatment.  Jackie Jokers  came on the scene in the late '70s and was sort of the cheese flavored yin to Richie Rich's salty cracker yang.  Whereas Richie was ostensibly the Poor Little Rich boy, Jackie was the most famous kid in the world, a world-famous comedian and star of stage and screen."

"Was he high-concept, too, supposedly  hating the spotlight just like Richie was supposed to be a poor little rich boy?"

"Ahh, whatever.  Those high-concept things were just to make sure you got both sides of the crowd.  You got the kids who wanted to be rich, and you got kids who hated rich kids, to pick up the book.  Richie Rich hated money like John Belushi  hated cocaine.  As for Jackie clearly loved every bit of the fame and fortune thrown his way, and would promptly break out a gag, song, or bad pun at the drop of a pin:  Jackie was, basically, the Jay Leno of his day, if Jay Leno had been a young boy  in a red turtleneck trying to look like Liza Minnelli."

"You know, I always thought Jay Leno himself looked like a Harvey comics character."

"Yer a riot, buddy.  A riot."

On he went some more, the night getting darker somehow as he spoke.  Even though Harvey Comics, the MK-Ultra of kid culture, went under in the mid-'80s (a successful  attempt to avoid government scrutiny in the wake of the Iran-Contra scandal), its effects continue to reverberate through my generation's zeitgeist.  Richie and Jackie, child paragons  of  money and fame, programmed, on the one hand,  all the grasping, money-hungry day-traders (and Enron executives) on Richie's side, and the entire cast of Survivor on Jackie's.

"Do you think it's a coincidence all those Goth kids sprang up after years and years of Caper comics?  They may all dress in black and pretend to be vampires, but that's only because, again, Casper was designed to sink  below the level of conscious thought, and operate  as a recurrent memetic loop."

"Okay, wait," I said, "this isn't Grant Morrison prank-calling me again, is it?  Grant, I told you, I know I still owe you twenty bucks, but--"

"Shaddap.  Let me finish.  They don't remember Casper, except maybe with a sneer, but who do you think the original Goth, a  pale kid who had no friends and was DEAD, actually was?  Where do you think the most odd  excesses of your generation have come from.  The Wicca movement?  Wendy, the Good Witch.  Diaper Play?  Baby Huey.   Martha Stewart ?  So frightening it took three Harvey characters to shape her:  Little Dot, Little Lotta, and Little Audrey combined into one not-so-little empire of obsessive collecting, food preparation and male competitiveness. "

"So why are you calling me about this?" I asked.  "Why now?  The damage has been done, right?  It can't get any worse, since there's a whole generation of post-Harvey kids grown up and taking their place in society now."

"Well, dat's just it.  Now dat there's an administration more receptive to the Harvey Comics operation,  they're gonna try and make a comeback.  You think it's an accident the recent  rally on the Stock  market coincided with Forbes' Magazine listing Richie Rich as the World's Second Wealthiest  Fictional Character?"

"What's next?"

"I'll tell you what's next.  Look on page 401 of this month's Previews blackline, buddy."

I turned the pages warily, as if a snake might leap out.  The  page I wanted was stuck together, so I had to tug at it to see the page.  When I did, I gasped involuntarily.

"Yeah, dat's what I'm talkin' about."

It was the very image  of the Antichrist:  The Jackie Joker Mini-Maquette.

"Consider yourself warned, pal.  It's gonna get a lot scarier after this."

"Wait!"  I yelped.  "Who are you, really? Why did you tell me all this ?  What can I do?  You didn't tell me all this so I could do nothing, right?"

"Well, what can you do, buddy?  What can you do?  Now I gotta am-scray..."

"No, you can't!    Tell me who you are so I can go to the media, or I'll--I'll turn you in.  I'll call the people at the CIA.  I can describe your voice!  They'll catch you.  Your only chance is to blow the whistle."

There was an angry pause.  "What are you trying to do," L'il Informant said.  "Scare me?  Well, I'll show you how to scare somebody..."

Suddenly a dead-white mouth jutted out of my phone.  "BOO!" It yelled at me, in the voice of the Apocalypse, the voice of death, the voice of empty rage.  My heart froze in my chest as I fell backwards off my chair.  I may well have blacked out.  All I know is when I looked up at my desk, my heart was running a mile a minute, I was covered in sweat and someone had replaced my blood with ice water.  There, floating above, the phone, was a malevolent freckled face, paper-white but also translucent, with a tiny hat on top of a nearly hairless head.  The face glowered at me proudly.

"Now, dat," the face said with a sneer, "is how you scare somebody, pal."  And with that, he was gone, dematerialized through the phone, leaving me with hair that stood straight up from my head and still can't be combed down..

Not that anyone can tell the difference, of course, but if you see it looking a bit taller than usual, that's why.