Goosebumps #25: Attack of the Mutant

Skipper is your ordinary pre-teen boy, except that he is obsessed with a comic book series called The Masked Mutant. He reads every new issue as soon as it comes out. One day he takes the bus to the orthodontist and meets a girl named Libby. He picks on her for reading what he considers lame comics, but they get along.

He gets the next issue and sees the villain’s hideout, which looks like a huge pink fire hydrant. Later, he sees the same building in his town. Libby has no idea that the building appears in the comic and tells him that the building has been there since before she moved to town last year. When he goes back, the building is gone and she tells him that they tore it down.

The next issue shows the villain throwing an invisibility cloak over the building. He sneaks inside with Libby and sees a weird flash go over him. He loses Libby inside, but finds a bunch of back and future issues, plus drawings. He realizes that the building is home to the printing company, finds Libby and runs away.

The next time he sneaks inside, he finds issues that show him as a character. He runs home, grabs the new issue and sees him listed as the main villain of the story. He runs back to the building and sneaks inside again. He finds the Masked Avenger, the hero of the book. Skipper unties the hero and helps him escape.

They go after the Masked Mutant and the Avenger runs off in fear. The villain fights with Skipper and reveals that when he felt the weird flash, he was actually scanned into the comic book. Libby rushes in with a toy gun and says that it is a ray gun. She tells him that it’s a comic, so everything is real. She shoots the gun and he dies.

Libby turns the gun on Skipper and transforms into the Mutant. Turns out that the other guy was one of his workers and he posed as Libby the whole time. Skipper tells him that he is actually a superhero named Elastic Boy and attacks. He confesses that his weakness is sulfuric acid and the Mutant transforms because he has the power to transform into anything. The Mutant dies though because for some reason he can’t transform from a liquid state.

Skipper happily runs home and plays Frisbee with his little sister. They head inside, where he starts cutting pieces of chocolate cake. The knife slips and cuts his arm, but instead of blood, he bleeds ink. With a startled look, he decides that he better look at the new issue and see what happens next.