“Willie, Waylon, Kris and I weren’t just good friends who loved to make music together. We’d also been wrongly accused of a crime and imprisoned, promptly escaping to the Los Angeles Undergound. If you had a problem, if no one else could help, and if you could find us, maybe you could hire… the Highwaymen.”
“I’ve had a lot of loves over the years: Gospel, country, rockabilly. But my greatest passion is and always has been Donkey Kong.”
“Elvis was bigger than any of us. Wasn’t another like him then, and there won’t be one like him ever agian. There was one sorta like him for a while in ’82, when that Gypsy woman’s curse caused him to rise from the grave, walkin’ the Earth in search of his blue suede shoes, but me, Carl Perkins and a shotgun took care of that.”
“The first time I met Bono, he asked me to play a song with U2. I looked him up and down and said ‘Son, I ain’t never played with a man couldn’t beat me at NBA Jam Tournament Edition.’ A half hour later, I was in the studio to record The Wanderer. It’s gotta be the shoes.”
“It’s one of the hard truths about our industry, but it all just comes down to the facts: Hank Williams would put up a good fight, but in the end, you’d have to give it to the Macho Man Randy Savage.
“Sometimes, when the pressure of the road gets too much, I go to a place where the pain can’t reach me. It’s called Faerûn, and it’s the one place where I can set aside Johnny Cash the musician and just be Faltres, the half-Drow Rogue/Fighter whose hit dice are only matched by his dedication to the path of Chaotic Good.”
“Jerry Lee Lewis is a calm, impeccably rational man.”
“When it comes to religion, some men are born believers and some are born atheists. Me, I was born a Juggalo.”
You should hear about the time he walked into a gypsies’ tent with a food stamp, and walked out with a magical lamp.
SOLD!!
“There’s lots of folks who think my relapse into painkiller addiction was due to a brutal ostrich attack, but it ain’t so. The only thing those beautiful animals got me hooked on was Viagra.”
“The real reason I got into music was because of the hockey night in Canada theme song. As a youngster I would listen outside my daddys window to the music every Saturday night and get inspired.”
Slow clap for Mr. Sims.
To an old Cash fan like me, this is utterly hilarious.
…well it would be if not for the blasphemy (against Cash, not God).
I would like to think that he’s reading this and laughing; except that he doesn’t really get all the jokes, lol.
“I hadn’t been more scared since me and Bruce Lee were chained together knee deep in mud and shit. We just stood there, watching as the viking horde came roaring over that horizon…well, I guess that’s a story for another time.”
Your Forgotten Realms reference makes me very very happy.
Putting down Zombie Elvis should be one of your upcoming Action Age comics! Me and Johnny Cash can share story credit!
Huh. And I always thought Elvis went out after teaming up with JFK to fight an Egyptian mummy in an east Texas retirement home.
The Man in Black is indeed down with the clown.
Greetings Mr. Sims. I would be willing to pay up to FOUR dollars a month to purchase your fine stories of The Highwaymen and how they would help bring justice to the world. For a small fee. Thank you and God bless…
Did you ever read Manly Wade Wellman’s John the Balladeer stories? Country guitarist fights off weird Southern occult menaces. The first stories were written before Cash recorded, but Wellman later said he imagined John as a young Johnny Cash.
So Johnny Cash is the nexus of all realities.
Makes sense.
Pure, undiluted win. I nominate this as a weekly feature.
“Of course, I loved June Carter, don’t get me wrong. She was my light and my inspiration and the reason I kept going. But even she knew there was a locked away place in my heart reserved for someone else. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t get Wilma Flintstone out of my mind.”
“Tammy Wynette! You have to get out of here! Your vagina is haunted!”
“Now, I loved laudanum about as much as the next person, but my real addiction…. the monkey I could never get off my back no matter how hard or how long I fought… was Choco Tacos.”
Holy crap, that NBA Jams reference killed my shit. For some reason I really hope Johnny put in the code to use George Clinton.
This was so funny that I couldn’t help but read it aloud in my Cash voice over and over… I finally stopped when I realized my girlfriend had left, taking all of her things and the cat with her.
That part about Cash being a juggalo strikes me less as a joke as it does outright character assassination.
This entry is the bee’s knees. Well done, Sims.
You win again, Sims.
I hope you have the original edition with illustrations by Ralph Steadman. His drawing of Johnny during his time on the Luchador circuit is priceless.
“I’d say the crowning achievement of my life was seeing Christopher Lambert play me in the movie of my life, Folsom Prison Blues…but in the United States, that movie was called Fortress.”
Unlikely? I’m pretty sure all of this happen. It sounds like Cash.
I particularly enjoy the presence of Carl Perkins in the Zombie Elvis legend.
Utterly, completely, hilarious. Goodness. chuck Norris, eat your heart out.
This is maybe the funniest entry you’ve put out since the Bruce Wayne/Richie Rich mashup.
“Losing my brother hurt just as much as the process of having adamantium bonded to my bones, maybe more.”
John the Balladeer is true metal. A country music singer battles the forces of evil and the occult with the power of his silver stringed guitar and homespun esoteric knowledge in the Carolinas, all the while humming a little ditty about pretty girls that he can never have.
The best story is “Vandy, Vandy”, where a warlock has a small community at bay, and John summons the spirit of George Washington from a silver dollar to backhand the warlock straight to Hell.
I’ve been struggling ever since reading this post to not visit all the internets comic battle boards to ask those so inclined to argue who’d win a battle (both regular and `of the bands’) between the higwaymen and the a-team.
man I need to track down those John the Balladeer stories
Johnny did name his kid after John Carter (and himself, but he mentions liking the John Carter books), so he has nerd in him
“I suppose it was my courtship of June Carter that influenced my heartfelt recording of ‘Ring of Fire’. Or, possibly, it could have been that venture into the ninth circle of hell to rescue Ernest Tubb’s soul from the clutches of Old Scratch that influenced me most. It’s hard to say after all these years.”
“It was my faith in Jesus that kept me from that dark, lonesome place my heart would yearn to go. That and my kick-ass collection of Micro Machines.”
Johnny Cash was indeed a complex man.
“The Master of Life’s been good to me. He has given me strength to face past illnesses, and victory in the face of defeat. He has given me life and joy where other saw oblivion. But, most importantly, he has given me the power to communicate with the creatures of the sea. You haven’t lived until you’ve told a shark to fuck himself – and it understands you.”
I don’t know if I should thank you more for referencing Macho Man or ICP.
Now I can’t help but imagine Cash’s creepy low voice busting out super-slow melodic versions of their songs. “We, the wicked, jug-ga-los /who jug-gle those who live like hoes / and choooooooooooooose / the express route / straight down the spiral twist…”
Johnny Cash IS.
Johnny Cash WAS.
Johnny Cash WILL BE.