Not even their three-year spree as the bete noirs of horror culture has prepared them for the Lovecraftian intrigue looming ahead and the creeping chaos that licks at their heels.

When last they'd driven this long and this hard, it was in a triumphal spirit of westward-ho. They'd broken the bank in Gotham's speculation-bloated casino of commodified transgression -- and skipped out just before the comic market collapsed.

The wind had been at their backs in those bounteous days.

Their bank accounts had been fat, a perpetual bud of $600-an-ounce hydroponic simmered in Joe Christ's ProtoPipe -- and moreover the prosperous horror couple had vacated their Lower East Side apartment owing the landlord approximately $2000.

Not in their beeriest, most hypoglycemically delusional moments had they considered the possibility of looking back with anything other than a sense of good-riddance on their former Clinton Street flat.

Nor had they anticipated finding themselves blasted by market forces that only a year previously had blown so beneficently.

The wind now is definitely in their faces -- and pissing into the wind does not come easily to the penile amputee, His suety wife, or Scrapple.

Inarguably, Joe Christ has stretched His credentials as underground entertainer to their very limits.

The tightly wound, intricately woven fabric of His mythology -- fabricated at such astronomical, and irrecoverable expense, to not only Collins' career but her bank account -- seems to be unraveling in several directions at once.

There was His dream of establishing an outpost of porno- psychedelic popism in Denver. It was a dream that died hard.

With boasts and bluster, He had uprooted wife and dog and gone forth to establish a Joe Christ ministry in the Rockies. The plan also involved establishing a westerly variant of Greenwich Village's Psychedelic Solution poster emporium. He would be naming His enterprise the "FLICK" gallery -- designed to read as "FUCK" from a distance.

Denver -- known for its cheap rents and Satan-friendly underground scene that included a local Temple of Psychick Youth coven -- seemed, at first glance, a natural backdrop for Joe Christ's vision. Denver's real estate community evidently felt otherwise, and the "FLICK" gallery passed forthwith into a vale of oblivion much like that which had claimed His genital.

Then there was the unpleasantness at the Lion's Lair, a dive bar on Denver's East Colfax strip where dark ironist Boyd Rice had an occasional DJ gig spinning sides by vanished novelty acts such as the late Tiny Tim and Mrs. Miller.

This was what Rice remembered: "Joe Christ would send girls into toilets to write strange rumors about him on the wall. He was also bragging that he drank piss. Someone called His bluff at the Lions Lair. I know the girl whose piss Joe Christ drank."

Soon thereafter, Rice added, Joe Christ was sprayed with chemical mace outside the Lion's Lair -- bringing His Denver ministry to an indecorous end.

And so it is on this angst-ridden ride back from Denver that the hefty Mrs. Christ first finds herself seriously considering the wisdom of appearing nude as a quadriplegic rape victim in her husband's videotaped medical farce Crippled. And had her ignominious starring role in Crippled somehow contributed to the death of Swamp Thing? In a corporate misdecision by DC Comics that typified the industry's boom years, Collins was brought in as writer of the Swamp Thing series at Issue #110. By Issue #139, DC Comics would remove Collins as Swamp Thing writer.

Few would argue the eerie parallels between Swamp Thing and Collins' marriage to Joe Christ. Not only were both of them genital nullo cases -- but both of them had run for governor, Swampy in Issue #112 and Joe Christ in Texas. Moreover, Issue #132 of Swamp Thing contains the dedication "For Joe Christ, Husband Extraordinary". On the same page, Swampy notes, "THIS IS THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE ...I'VE MADE LOVE...TO MY OWN KIND."

Grimacing they drive, into the wind -- the car interior redolent of methane and ammonia, strewn with beer cans, hemp seeds and convenience-food droppings. These familiar surroundings fill Collins with a sudden sense of longing for the Clinton Street apartment they'd so idiotically abandoned. There is the sound of Scrapple farting. They drive.