AS ALWAYS, THERE’S NO WAY ANY SATIRIST CAN COMPETE WITH REAL LIFE FOR ITS PURE ABSURDITY: As Tom Wolfe wrote in the liner notes to the Bonfire of the Vanities, “We live in an age in which it is no longer possible to be funny. There is nothing you can imagine, no matter how ludicrous, that will not promptly be enacted before your very eyes, probably by someone well known.”

Remember the Kronies superhero parody video from a few years ago?

Here’s a headline at Motherboard today: The Military-Industrial Complex Is Marvel’s Newest Sponsor.

Up until now, Marvel Comics only had one arms manufacturer in its roster of superheroes: Tony Stark, better known as Iron Man. Now, it has two.

On Friday, Marvel announced that the company is “joining forces” with Northrop Grumman, manufacturer of the Global Hawk surveillance drone and the fifth-largest arms manufacturer in the world.

The company has already released a comic book starring a new team of heroes who work for Northrop Grumman, called Northrop Grumman Elite Nexus, or N.G.E.N. You know, like “engine,” as in the engine of the B-2 Spirit, a stealth bomber that Northrop manufactured for the US government and dropped bombs over Kosovo and the Middle East.

The comic is titled “Start Your N.G.E.N.S! Part 1,” which means that there’s at least one more part coming in this series, god help us, if not more. The first installment sees a pair of Northrop Grumman operatives teaming up with the cast of the Avengers, one of Marvel’s hottest properties at the moment.

The comic is also marked “all ages,” which means that children can and probably will read this. In short, it’s a marketing tool aimed at kids to get them to think favorably of the military-industrial complex. Nice.

Indeed. Perhaps it’s a way to begin to make amends for veering so deeply into SJW territory in recent years.