We've been hearing a lot about huge bonuses being paid to top executives of failed companies that were bailed out with taxpayer dollars.

The justification has been that these companies can't be run without a "talent pool," and that these bonuses, not to mention huge salaries, are necessary to retain it.

But I love the recent New Yorker cartoon by Robert Mankoff, in which a woman is saying to a man at a cocktail party, "True, a salary cap on Wall Street may limit the talent pool, but, on the other hand, if they get any more talented we'll all be broke!"

And some of these same companies, lo and behold, also owe back taxes.

As a man on the street in a CNN interview said (more or less), "I don't get a bonus, and I've got a salary I can barely live on. And who's really going to bail me out of my mortgage? Not to mention that if I 'fail' and owe back taxes, the government will go after my salary, far from giving me billions of dollars." (He didn't even mention that the current bailout of failed companies is coming out of his own, hard-to-spare tax dollars.)

Fact: The peak income for 90% of Americans, when adjusted for inflation, was in 1973! Did you know that? In other words, only the rich have been getting richer for 36 years.

And do they need to be as rich as they are? No way. Let's be very generous, and cap all individual incomes at $500,000 per year. That should still give the rich twelve-room houses with swimming pools, vacation condos in the Caribbean, Armani wardrobes, a couple of Mercedes(es), etc.

But they need far more than that, don't they, to be the "talent pool?" And of course, isn't there the old argument that the far more they get, "trickles down" to the rest of us?

Bullshit. If you're not "talented" at $500,000 a year (and I'd venture to say that some of us are talented at almost nothing), you'll never be. And in any event, if you take a piece of the pie that's maybe a hundred times what the rest of us receive, you're not admirable at all. You're a rude, greedy pig at the dinner table - or a monster.

Not to mention that, as someone has so aptly said, "It's not trickle down, it's trickle on." (If that's too subtly-said, read, the very rich are pissing on the rest of us.)

But whatever one might say about the current system, the bottom line, as we're experiencing in this present catastrophe, is that it hasn't even worked! "The Emperor has no clothes."

To go back indeed to that New Yorker cartoon, the obscenely-overpaid "talent pool" has now added insult to injury, by taking the rest of us, especially, down with them! (For their part, it's just maybe give up the condo and one of the cars, poor guys.)

Not to mention those of them who've actually indulged in criminal activity, however to land in country-club prisons, while the poor out-of-work slob who desperately lifts a wallet in a train station goes to a hellish one.

And very arguably, the lowliest person who balances his or her household budget, is a far better financier than these guys who lost America billions. By their obscene pursuit of wealth, they've devalued everything.

But maybe I digress. Because this is supposed to be a humor column (though it's usually wryly so), and I did set forth a title, "The Bonus Avenger."

So here we go, with that.

Those of us who are in the horror fiction field know some special things.

Such as, when a wrong is to be righted, it isn't soft, it isn't Robin Hood, folks.

It's blood and guts, and the more the merrier. We cut (!) to the chase!

As I see him (or her), The Bonus Avenger isn't like Superman, but more human (and blue-collar, and imperfect), like Hancock.

His suit is beige, a bit soiled from hard work, and the logo on it is, okay, a dollar sign with a circle around it and a slanted line through it.

Can he fly? Does he have superpowers? Don't know. But he can do what needs to be done - while the rest of us are still hypnotized by the bullshit the very rich have fed us.

The Bonus Avenger dramatically enters the off-limits haunts of the foe, causing total consternation among pot-bellied senior executives (and complacent politicians) who are lounging poolside with their trophy wives. (Or maybe playing golf, like Nero fiddled while Rome burned.)

He conjures up (maybe he does have superpowers) a hologram of a poor slob who does real work but is now even broke due to these monsters, but that doesn't do it. (Guilt is something these humanoids are birth-deficient in.)

He asks them, point-blank, to at least give back some of their ill-gotten gains, but they still look at him like he's from another planet.

And finally, like all good superheroes, he offers them a last chance at redemption, a la Clint Eastwood: "You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?"

But they still don't reply. Instead, they call for Security. But it doesn't arrive in time.

Because The Bonus Avenger's logo quickly changes..

Because the slanted line through it is now a knife - dripping with blood.