Book Review: Cast a Bigger, Badder, Better Shadow: The Official Autobiography of Quincy Forbin Jambres Junior. Quincy Forbin Jambres Junior. (2024, Jambres Press)

I’m kicking this off by saying that I never paid any attention in high school. That’s when I even bothered showing up. By senior year, I was shuffling into like two or three classes a week. The fun ones, like shop, creative writing, independent art, you know what I mean. Sneaking heaters behind the bleachers between hiding from the Creature Feature teachers. I am proud to say that I never missed out when the cafeteria had “breakfast for lunch” with these hashbrown cakes. Those heart-clotting pockets were my jam. Tasted like absolute heaven, especially after steamrolling heady nugs in the school parking lot.

Okay, okay. I know all you Bangerheads are like: Hold up, wait a minute, what tf do Zweibel’s slacker stoner high school days have to do with this column’s Banger?

Just give me a second. I’m laying a foundation here. And it’s because Cast a Bigger, Badder, Better Shadow: The Official Autobiography of Quincy Forbin Jambres Junior by Quincy Forbin Jambres Junior (2024, Jambres Press) taught me more than anything and everything I ever didn’t learn in high school.

I can totally see a lot of young Zweebs in l’il Quinjo (that’s what I dubbed him in my head). So get this: L’il Quinjo dropped out of school when he was only twelve. But unlike what the Zweebster would’ve been doing at that age, like owning Silent Hill and Resident Evil 2, l’il Quince went out and got himself a full-fledged adulting job. Shit’s wild. Like seriously? Why ditch a nightmare for actual hell?

That’s Quincy Junior for ya. This kid gets a gig working in the Commercial Lyeing Division at Jannes & Jambres Charted & Consolidated Commercial Chemicals, Industrial Dyes, and Press Forging, Incorporated. You gotta remember that this is 1939, and those four great founders — Jannes, Jambres, Maplemay, and Haversmore — had just established the City of Orange Forest with a few hundred people less than 15 years before this all took place. The book says that by 1939, there were a few thousand people living in and around the growing city, pretty much all of them either working for the company or married to someone who was.

But yeah, nah, not gonna lie, OF sounded like the absolute dumps back then. There was a main street and some of the pics in the book made it look decent enough, if you didn’t know any better. Only one store that did everything, from selling produce, meats, and staples to offering lines of credit for washing machines, shoes, medicine, radios, and refrigerators, and it was also the post office. You had to use company scrip to buy any of it, but thankfully, the shop also served as the local payroll office. The little city also a penny theater and a brothel district. So I guess that’s something fun. But everything was still super undeveloped compared to the coastal regions or booming industrial centers.

But nah, yeah, still, it was in that dump on the border separating Past and Progress where commercial lyeing gave l’il Quinjo a golden opportunity to peddle his wares, scrubbing away dirty laundry and cleaning up dirty deeds. More importantly, it let him hone his know-how and chisel his biz grit.

But maaaan. So, armed with that now legendary honed know-how and chiseled biz grit, along with his natural plucky can-do attitude, this kid Quincy worked his way up from a 12-year-old drop-out and commercial lyeist to obtaining the Orange Forest Goal one enterprising rung at a time on the ladder to becoming CEO of Jannes and Jambres Chartered Consolidated by the time he was 23! That alone is unreal.

Yeah, so the book’s thick and chunky meat comes in the chapter titled “A Turbo Combo Breaker Versus Firebrand Boardroom Forces,” which chronicles his rocky rise to power.

See, the board wasn’t on board with onboarding a 22-year-old as chairman of the board. Well, half of the board. Following the unexpected death of Quincy Junior’s father, Dr. Jambres, in his office in 1949, the company’s executives quickly splintered into two combative factions: The Companymen and The Firebrands.

The Companymen preferred a peaceful transition of executive authority by preserving the established line of succession. The Companymen maintained that it was, after all, an overzealous 18-year-old Quincy Junior who miraculously snagged the War Production Board’s final contract in 1945 that dished out the dough to complete the Tetracitys Industrys Press Forge. And that press forge was the big ol’ red bulb needle that put Orange Forest on the world map back in the fifties.

Then there were the Firebrands who propped up a pretender candidate for CEO.

“Are you a Companyman or a Firebrand?” The question split the city in half. It turned Dogcatchers against Milkmen. Grocers against Auto Mechanics. Everybody against Orange Forest Law Enforcement Corps (OFLEC) Enforcers. Remember, this was still 1949, so it was before the first issue of the Orator ever dropped. But I know if the paper was around then, the publication would’ve been proud Companymen supporters.

Protests and riots ensued. Hundreds of violent and rabid unAmerican criminals were arrested in the streets by heroic OFLEC Enforcers. Most of North Zembla set ablaze and charred to a crisp. The sum of the devastation was horrific and tragic, with forty squared buildings destroyed, twenty squared people injured, and five squared people killed.

In the midst of this corporate and civic upheaval, the city’s fiscal fathers and economic elders huddled up and formed the Grande Armée of Fraternal Forester Executives. Quincy Junior didn’t ask for it, but the order voted him in as its first Grand Bonaparte. Once Quincy Junior, ol’ l’il Quinjo, donned that fresh hat and became the Grand Bonaparte Jambres, dude suddenly became the one guy holding at a dry party. Out of the city’s woodwork come swarms of veterans, all recently returned home from WWII and innately seeking strong leadership and executive direction and standing ready to uphold the idea that one day maybe they, or their children, or perhaps one of their great-grandchildren’s grandchild might obtain the Orange Forest Goal.

The Grande Armée, led by Grand Bonaparte Jambres, quickly delivered a decisive turbo combo breaker against the Firebrand’s boardroom forces. Those Firebranders who didn’t cowardly flee or bravely “fall on their briefcases” were offered the choice to swear fiduciary fealty to the rightfully seated CEO Quincy Forbin Jambres Junior.

Speaking of, we’re talking about the same dude who modernized the company’s clunky old-timey name into Tetracitys Industrys, by far the best name for the company so far. And it had the sickest brandmark. I actually have a foam mesh trucker’s cap with that brandmark, and I wear it all the time. You can find them on the Orforcorp Company Store page, along with a buttload of other dope swag, and all at super reasonable prices.

Andbutso as we wrap up this banger here, back to the book with ol’ l’il Quinjo’s deathbed reveal that had me like whoa. So check this: Turns out back in ‘49 Quincy Junior funneled some of that remaining WFP coin into the initial seed investment used to launch the Orange Forest Orator in 1950. As some say, sometimes you might learn something new every now and then when you read something stuffy more than some of the way through.

If you want to know more about how the world operates, how to be a better businessman, how to be a better human… if you want to cast a bigger, better, badder shadow, then this is mos def the biggest, baddest, bangest bang for your buck for you to bang out. Until then, my rad comrades, keep it banging!