Worthless Online - About - Spencer: The Egomaniac

"Slim pickens."
—Spencer Harter Higgins

Who be ‘Worthless’ Spencer?

Unlike Worthless Ben, who lives comfortably inside a thousand different monstrous suits that both scare and delight and blend perfectly like a prism of awful (but enticing) cosmic colors fading on the edge of an event horizon, Worthless Spencer embodies only a few different roles in one very complex and blue-headed shell.

#1: First and foremost, he’s the lovable loser. Are you familiar with this archetype? In history, he’s been portrayed by such fictional wonders as Guybrush Threepwood of the Monkey Island computer game series; as Ben Stiller in any of the movies where he plays an awkward, happy-go-lucky good guy (see Something About Mary and Meet the Parents, but also all the rest because that’s pretty much the only character he plays); as Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp who appeared in almost all of Charlie Chaplin’s films (including The Tramp); as Peter Sellers’ first and best and only version of Inspector Clouseau (not Alan Arkin, nor Roger Moore with a voice change, nor Roberto Bennini, and especially not Steve Martin). You know—that guy who, for some completely incomprehensibly unknown reason, is fairly upbeat in the face of so much pain, rejection, and staunch inner turmoil.

#2: The other very important role that Spencer embodies is that of the egomaniac. You might think it’s impossible for an egomaniac to loathe him/herself as much as Spencer does, but that’s just because you know less than shit about egomania (not to mention Spencer) and you’re likely still in high school, middle school, elementary school, or none of the above. Hard as it might be for you baby geniuses to believe, Spencer simultaneously loathes and loves himself so fucking much that the two emotions are constantly in flux, battling one another back and forth, with neither side winning nor losing for all eternity. It’s a neverending battle, not unlike The Neverending Story, but very unlike The Neverending Story II: The Next Chapter starring that suicidal Sea-Quest kid, co-starring The Flash as the father and a fourteen-year-old Jonbenet Ramsey as the girlfriend, and directed by T. George Miller, that asshole Australian who cashed in on his name and nationality because they were coincidentally the same as that of legendary filmmaker George Miller (of Road Warrior fame). But I digress.

#3: Then there’s the Atheist version of Spencer. This is best explained with a comic. Or two.

#4: The last and least hilarious role that Worthless Spencer plays is that of the faux genius, which is semi-related to his egomania and entirely related to his delusions of grandeur. There are numerous strips throughout Worthless history where Spencer tries and utterly fails to do something genuinely meaningful with his sad sack of a life, and the best part is—he thinks he does! He actually thinks that he’s accomplished something amazing every time he tries. Sure, he talks a big game, says all the right things (although someone should let him know that the proper synonym for toilet is “lavatory,” not “laboratory”), but when it comes down to actually doing something special—something worthwhile that no man has ever done before—he fails spectacularly. Over. And over. And over again. The Neverending Story Part IV: Rise of the Big Fucking Emo Bitch.

What does Spencer love most in the universe?

Spencer loves, in no particular order: anything with a vagina, including animals and real dolls; attention; politics; cornrows; fake earrings; being pretentious; Carl Sagan; making obscure references that nobody cares about; rambling on about various social and political issues with little authority; Civilization 2; but most of all, himself. No more, no less.

The Many Visual Versions of Worthless Spencer

What are your favorite Spencer moments in Worthless Comics History?

Worthless Spencer is no slouch in the good-comic-moments-having category. Truth be told, he’s one of my favorite characters.

By the way, this list, like Ben’s before it, is going to be long, wet, and bloody, just the way Spencer likes it. So for those of you who have to meet your hooker in five minutes at the Prostitute Hotel on fifth and Whore St. and just want something fleeting to enjoy, I refer you to the comics archives. Just pick a strip at random. It probably won’t make any sense to you by itself, but I’m okay with that. Disappointed, but okay.

(FYI: To avoid overlap, some of my favorite Spencer moments will go unlisted because they’re also my favorite Ben/Dan/Bradyn/Hass/StuartBaryd moments and are, thusly, already listed.)

“Spencer Realizes Ben Actually Killed the Verizon Man.” Huh. Well. That’s a…isn’t this a pickle? I, uh, just read this comic and I—ha-ha-ha—realized that it’s actually more my favorite Ben mome than my favorite Spencer mome. What do you know? Well, I do apologize. Profusely. On both knees. Nothing to see here!

…Except a completely awesome Ben mome, that is!!!

“Sure, Wei’s a Jerk, But Spencer Loves Every Second of It.” This is where the masochistic side of Spencer really starts to take shape. I mean—the guy is clearly a “glutton for punishment,” as old people everywhere say. In this case, quite literally. And physically. And verbally and emotionally and mentally and spiritually. (But most of all sexually.) He’s just a freak for the pain, especially when that pain is delivered in the feminine form of a 30-inch stiletto mangling his man-meat. I recall, back when we were roommates, that he used to moan in his sleep: “Soon the pain—becomes—the pleasure! Ungghhhh! Ooo, yeah, cut my nipples off! Huff, huff, huff. Bark, bark, bark. I’m a doggy now. Take me for a walk.” Et cetera. You have no idea what kind of nightmares I experienced in that room as a result. Just try and sleep around that kind of shit, I dare you.

“Spencer Loves Having Things Inside His Asshole.” (There appears to be a theme developing here…) There’s just something about this comic and Spencer’s role in it that has me laughing every time I read it. That horribly dejected look on his face. The innocent way that he whispers, “Is not,” like his whole fucking body will fall apart on a molecular level if he says a single word more, or louder. Does he honestly think that Dan might be in his asshole? Or is he just immensely worried that Ben will spread that rumor like pneumonia and he’ll never be able to get rid of it, socially, for the rest of his life, like herpes? It’s so depressing and hilarious, all at the same time. (Which is really what Worthless Spencer’s all about, if you ask me.)

“Spencer Hates Jesus—WITH A VENGEANCE!” I love this comic without abash. The idea came to me one day when we were discussing how precisely to present Spencer’s Atheism to the readers. I thought for a moment, “Why would Spencer hate Jesus so much?” And then it hit me: his darling wife and young look-a-like child had been savagely murdered by that crazy, old Jesus, and Spencer has been hunting him down ever since! (Like an action-revenge movie starring Charles Bronson and Sally Field.) As you can very plainly see in the last panel, we explained the comic away (in continuity) as being Worthless Ben’s interpretation of Spencer’s reasons for why he hated Jesus, and for some reason he’s reading his interpretation like a Christmas story in an empty room to an empty corner decked out in shoddy Christmas lights. Don’t ask me why, I’m just the writer.

“Spencer Lerrrrvvveessss Politics!” The Return of the Draft storyline is where Spencer really starts to shine as a character, perhaps most prominently in this comic. I wrote everything in this comic except for Spencer’s huge, honking monologue, so I asked Real Spencer to write something political for Worthless Spencer to say. He happily obliged and sent me, without a doubt, the most grammatically incorrect and linguistically clunky political speech in the history of George W. Bush. I mean, really, really, really, really ridiculous and overwritten and overcomplicated and not at all aesthetically-pleasing (the reverse, in fact—it was very aesthetically agonizing). The point is, I had to use the general gist of what he gave me and rewrite it so it wouldn’t kill our readers seven days later.

“Spencer Doesn’t Know What ‘Bugged’ Means.” Though, to be fair, why would he? It’s not like he’s a human being who’s lived and interacted in this world for the better part of three decades.

“The Scooby-Doo (Draft) Ending.” This is the second of the big three endings for the Return of the Draft! storyline, and it’s also one of my favorite Worthless comics, period. See, it’s hilarious because it’s making fun of twist endings—which are usually stupid—and it’s making fun of stories where the nerdy kid in high school gets revenge on the jock asshole who tormented him years later. Wow. So many layers going on here. Put me down for one Nobel and thirty Pulitzers, please. Also, one of them porno awards.

“Spencer VS. A Bottle of Ranch Dressing.” Spencer loves to prove how zany and macho he is by drinking bottles of various sauces that sometimes contain worms—usually in front of big crowds who don’t care in hopes that they will care (and maybe even love him a little). In this two-parter, Spencer drinks an entire bottle of Hidden Valley ranch (at a Chinese restaurant “for men,” for some reason) and it takes him on a wild, raunchy ranchy ride. Let this be a warning to all of you.

“Spencer and the Time Machine!” Unfortunately, I couldn’t narrow down my favorite Spencer moments from Tales Through Time!, so I just threw in the whole damn story instead. Spencer wants to go back in time to stop himself from getting acne—hey, we’ve all been there—so he tries (and fails) to invent a time machine. Keep reading for at least five-hundred other fave Spence momes, and maybe more.

FYI: For those of you that don't have the pleasure of knowing the actual Spencer Higgins, rest assured that he is a much better and less pathetic human being (perhaps even to the point of being good and not pathetic, respectively) than what was portrayed in the preceding about page. Understand, people: all of this Worthless-Spencer-ribbing (as is the official term) has been done A) primarily in jest and/or B) at the emotional expense of the character of Worthless Spencer as opposed to the human being that is Real Spencer.