Stiffs on patrol – Adam-12 #2
A little under a year ago I took a brief look at an Adam-12 comic. I haven’t sat down to watch the show in a long, long while. I still hold the Jack Webb police franchises in high regard, in spite of their many faults. While I prefer Dragnet, and watching Webb walk was arms that don’t move as he moves deliberately toward his marks, Adam-12 was a bit more dramatic endeavor. It was still a square affair, but compared to the adventures of Detective Friday it was Hill Street Blues.
The endings if the two stories in this issue (“Assassin’s Target” and “The Lady and the Landlord,” both illustrated by Jack Sparling) really drive in this Stiffly Stiffington vibe. In the first, Officers Reed and Malloy find themselves bodyguarding a threatened foreign dignitary, and one that isn’t all that fond of their protective embrace:
I guess they were distracted by the candelabra.
Several close calls later, they finally lure and entrap a sniper with the simplest of ruses:
These guys never give it a rest, do they?
In the second tale, the partners get the rather thankless task of kicking an old man out of his apartment:
That chore done, they come up against a snippy blonde reporter and her camera:
If I were them, I’d be tempted to take that camera, throw it to the ground Sonny Corleone style and toss a few twenties on it as payment. But Reed and Malloy are so upright they can withstand the slings and arrows of a snarky public. You have to admire them for that.
That isn’t the last time they encounter this comley member of the press corps– they later catch her speeding:
Now, with their curiosity roused, they follow her to secluded house and inside find her going all Chuck Norris on some dudes:
Turns out she’s been investigating a real estate scheme, one that involves the landlord from the old man eviction and some other unsavory sorts. All the crooks are clamped in irons and the day is saved, but not before a little banter to end the issue:
Once again — they just don’t quit!
I’m not nuts about the art or the somewhat predictable stories in this comic, but my heart is somehow warmed by its relationship to the Webbiverse, a fictional place where the L.A.P.D. was always a beacon of virtue and justice. Methinks the Rodney King mess wouldn’t have happened if Friday, Gannon, Reed and Malloy were on the job.
I’m going to end this post with one of my favorite little bits of obscure pop history. As a kid I loved the Dan Aykroyd/Tom Hanks sequel/parody/homage to the original Dragnet series. It came out back in Hanks’ goofy Joe vs. the Volcano years (his equivalent of Picasso’s Blue Period, I guess), and over the closing credits there was a half-ass rap “sung” by the two stars. Hearing Hanks bellowing “City of Crime” in full-on ham mode was memorable enough, but never (NEVER!) in my wildest dreams did I imagine that there was an accompanying music video:
I realize this clip isn’t all that germane, but this post’s subject matter is as close as I’ll ever come to having a legitimate reason for sharing it. Hanks cage dancing in tight shorts and “Walk[ing] like an Egyptian” needs to be seen by as many eyes as possible. Long live Pep Streebeck!
I forgot to throw this one in with the other day’s Wonder Woman #21 post. Ah, the time when a kid could get excited by a fresh pair of Thom McAns…
Damn you, sneakers. You ruined it for everyone.
Brought to you in part by old white women – Wonder Woman #21
I picked up this oldie a couple of weeks back, and it now takes an honored spot as the best conditioned Golden Age comic that I own. If you look closely you can see a small tear on the botton of the front cover, and that’s pretty much the extent of the wear and tear that this thing’s accumulated over the years. Because it’s in such nice shape, I’m a bit hesitant to plop it onto my scanner to mine it for some material, but there are a couple of things I think it’s incumbent upon me to share. Not really story stuff, but some of the more incidental material. Duty beckons, and the call of something this old timey cannot — CANNOT — be resisted.
The inside of the front cover was the first thing that caught my eye:
The Alan Scott Green Lantern promo on the right fills me with joy (and when you see Doiby Dickles, chances are you’re back in comics prehistory, my friend), but the “Editorial Advisory Board” on the left is what really grabs your attention. Perhaps I’m being unfair, and I’m sure I’m undercutting their likely sterling credentials, but I can’t help but picture the women safeguarding the minds and morals of 1940s youth as being exceedingly prim.
Here are a couple of ads that can be found within, two that I thought were entertainingly indicative of the times. First there’s jowly Alabama football coach Frank Thomas shilling for Wheaties:
I realize that he was endorsing this venerable breakfast food based on his coaching credientials and not his personal athletic prowess, but I find it hard to take anyone with that much underchin baggage seriously when promoting a “healthy” food. He looks like he subsists on a diet of egg yolks. Who’s next? A pro bowler with his finely chiseled, beer-powered physique?
Second, there’s this grammatically questionable ad for radio hobbyists:
I’m reminded of the dusty junk I used to find in my grandfather’s basement.
Now that I think about it, I suppose I can throw in a couple of interior scans from “Wonder Woman and the Adventure of the Atom Universe.” Why not? Scripted by William Moulton Marston with art from Harry G. Peter, it has Wonder Woman and an assortment of companions travelling to the titular realm and battling the evil Queen Atomia and her robot minions.
Oh, and it contains enough requisite lassoings to staisfy latent bondage fetishes. Can’t forget that.
This was my first Golden Age encounter with the Holliday Girls, Wonder Woman’s young college assistants. The most famous of this trio was/is Etta Candy, who’ll be showing up in that David E. Kelley WW show — if you’re not familiar, I’ll give you one guess which one she is:
“Plump” just doesn’t seem to cut it here, does it? And the “WOO WOO” gets old. Fast.
I did enjoy seeing Steve Trevor kicking a little ass side by side with his Amazon love. All too often it seems he’s crammed into a “dude in distress” paradigm flip, but not here:
I realize the immediate context is innocuous, but the “strap on” utterance makes me titter. Maybe its all the bindings that preceded it.
All in all, this is a proud addition to the Blog into Mystery archives. It’s rare to see a reasonably priced issue this old, and even rarer when I can actualy scrape together the money to buy it. For the moment, I am content.
And I think Wonder Woman’s Golden Age boots are the best.
YOU could help solve a mystery…
Over the past week or two I’ve been absolutely DEVOURING old Unsolved Mysteries segments on YouTube. I loved the show as a kid/teen, and I miss so much Robert Stack’s authoritative “Voice of God” narration over the reenactments. The program usually sent a cold wave rippling down my spine — the music and the horrible, random acts of violence profiled (not to mention the alien abduction bits) were enough to give me the most chills I’d had since The Incredible Hulk, when, in the very early days of my life, Bill Bixby’s white transformation-eyes would send me racing for the safety of my father’s lap.
I mean, just listen to the throbbing, creepy music that opened the early seasons of UM:
The reason for this post is the following segment, which profiles the somewhat mysterious demise of George Reeves, once the most famous portrayer of Kal-El/Clark Kent/Superman. You know, until a fella by the name of Chris — with a very similar last name — rolled into town and made us all believe that a man could fly, or at least look like he was flying whilst suspended from wires:
I have an embarassing confession to make. When Stack suggests that a woman may have been behind Reeves’ death, and then menacingly posits the question of “But what woman?” at the 1:38 mark, I actually — and I swear to God on this — thought to myself:
Star Sapphire? Maxima? Bizarro-Lois?
This leads me to two conclusions. One, I’m a fucking idiot. On oh so many levels. Two, I need to get out more. I get out a good amount already, but apparently I really, really need to get out more. More more more.
The segment is admittedly a bit glossy when it comes to nitty-gritty details, but there’s plenty of places out there to learn more about the suicide/unsuicide of Reeves, including a (sadly) Ben Affleck-infused Hollywoodland. Here’s a link to the relevant Wikipedia entry to get you rolling on your Reeves-sleuthing if you’re so inclined.
And, for no other reason than the fact (FACT, I say) that Robert Stack was the man, I’ll leave you with this:
Rex Kramer’s abrupt abandonment of his positive reinforcement strategy at 4:05 gets me every single time. Every. Single. Time.
The word “slapdash” comes to mind
I discovered these rather tattered little items in a bargain bin a couple of weekends ago. I was intrigued by what the hell they were, as I’d never heard of an “Elson’s” before, nor had I ever encountered these comics. There are a few odd things about them. First, they each contain complete pillar to post reprints of several contemporaneous (1980) DC comics titles. When I say complete, that’s what I mean — everything right down to the ads (often repeated in the issues reprinted) and letters columns. Second, though I was only able to pick up the first and third editions (there were six), all the covers contain the same art with only a different colored background to demarcate the difference (and something in me rebels at the thought of the Joker, Penguin and Riddler charging alongside our assemblage of heroes). Third, the inside covers are utterly blank — all-white like a really lazy Rothko painting. Fourth, there’s no price anywhere on or in them. Maybe you had to haggle over the amount like you were buying fruit in some Calcutta bazaar.
Finally, the back cover has this little bit of marketing propaganda from Elson’s, which was apparently a chain of newstands:
If I were Elson’s-Man, or whoever this guy is, I’d be tempted to blurt out “Well you need a shave too, bitch…” to that shrew behind the counter.
These are somewhat unique. Not all that scintillating, I’ll grant you. But unique. I actually showed these to a comic store owner friend of mine, who’s been in the business for a good long while (measured in decades, not years) and he had never seen them before.
Perhaps Elson’s didn’t do the briskest business back in the day.
I don’t know what it says about my generation, but Beavis and Butt-Head spoke to us. Some might take that as one more milepost on the decadent decline highway. Not me. I always found them quite hilarious. I was a big fan of theirs (and other MTV cartoons) back in my late-teen years in the mid-90s (anyone else remember The Head?), and I remain so to this day. I can recall coming back to school one fall and finding all the numbnut classmates of mine proclaiming “Fire! FIRE!” and “I am Cornholio!” — I wasn’t so much a fan of that mindless aping, but the original? That I could always get behind. It was just so full of colorful secondary characters that can make me laugh simply by thinking about them: tremory Principal McVicker, Mr. van Driessen, the Hank Hill prototype Tom Anderson, tough guy Todd, wimpy Stewart, and icy Daria, who was spun off into her own series like the Jeffersons.
The show still gets the occasional bouts of criticism, mostly from people that haven’t seen a drop of it. Was it mindless? Yeah, it was, but it was smart mindless. There’s a big difference, and Mike Judge’s later career, with a cult classic like Office Space and the long-running, stout-heartedly funny King of the Hill, have confirmed his comedy bona fides.
But two morons on a couch was what started it all for him. I defy anyone to watch “Beard Boys,” which chronicles Beavis and Butt-Head’s attempts to pick up chicks with glued-on hair, and not chortle merrily:
“Wanna, like, stroke my beard?” is still quoted by me in appropriate (and inappropriate) situations. Despite my current lack of a beard.
I also really loved the way that they’d take a page from Mystery Science Theater 3000 and comment on music videos, rambling in tangents, sometimes endorsing the videos’ coolness and at other times cutting them down to size. Here they are riffing on a few from my all-time favorite band, R.E.M.:
Oh, how I loved it when Butt-Head would slap Beavis.
Considering the enormous popularity that this pair enjoyed, it’s no surprise that they had a comic book. If you get big enough, you get one. That’s the law. Look it up.
Adapted comics never seem to live up to the original properties, a failing I’ve chronicled here on this blog. This attempt is no exception, though it does a much better job of mimicry than others. Writer Guy Maxtone-Graham did a passable job emulating the Judge dialogue, while artist Rick Parker (who tackled the art throughout the comic’s run) did his damnedest to capture the humor of the crude animation in still, regular panels.
Let’s have a quick gander.
Here’s the duo are wearing out their welcome at their “friend” Stewart’s house during Thanksgiving dinner:
And here they are at a fashion show figuring out a rather ingenious place to put discarded press passes:
Notice that they aren’t wearing their usual AC/DC and Metallica t-shirts? Some rights issue perhaps? Lars Ulrich augmenting his usual douchebaggery (Wonder A-Hole powers, activate!) by blocking their use? Inquiring minds want to know!
And, just for a reminder that this comic bears the Marvel imprint, here’s the morons doing to the Black Widow and a couple of her superhero gal pals what they always did with rock stars:
Finally we have the rather unique letters page(s) — most of the missives have the look of hastily written ransom notes:
While this comic is no substitute for the show, reading it definitely rocketed me down memory lane. The MTV connection meant there were more video game and music ads than usual, and seeing promos for Mortal Kombat II and the Woodstock ’94 album took me right back to my last years in high school, for good or for ill. I could almost remember my old locker combinations.
Beavis and Butt-Head are making a comeback this summer, and I for one shall welcome their return. I applauded Judge when he decided to pull the plug on them in the late 90s when they were still quite popular — it’s always nice to see something end at its peak — but the new crop of pretentious pop and rock stars richly deserve the skewering that only these dolts can offer. It takes one to know one, and it takes idiots to adequately ridicule idiots.
Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, beware.
Maybe this Snake trickery was one of the reasons why the Joker finally murdered Robin.
When I was in college I had something called a “Square One,” which was essentially a Rubik’s Cube where you not only had to align the colors, but also had to take its irregular jumbled shape and make it a cube. I think I used it as some glorified paperweight, but I had a roommate who picked it up one day and rarely put it down when he was home from that point on. He looked like a squirrel working on a nut when he was going at that thing.
I admired his patience. Within minutes I usually throw things like these across the room in a frustrated rage.
I liked Bizarro when I was a kid. Now, as an adult, I can’t stand him. Reading that “Bizarro-speak” makes my brain hurt, giving me a headache that threatens to have a Scanners-style finale. Not only is the verbiage vexing, but the rules of the Bizarro World are also maddeningly inconsistent — as Elaine Benes once said when Jerry was explaining how Bizarro says “hello” when he wants to say “goodbye”: “Shouldn’t it be ‘bad-bye’?”
Plus there’s the Bizarro version of the Justice League, a seen on this cover and briefly at the outset of the inside story — here’s a bit from the first part of our tale, which I’ll deal with in a moment:
While I appreciate that the “Bizarro-Yellow Lantern” has adopted a candle for his symbol, aren’t we dealing with a double negative here? You know how when you multiply -1 by -1, you get 1? At least, that’s what it was when I learned my ‘rithmetic. Same here, right? A Bizarro-Yellow Lantern would be Green Lantern. Right?
I feel one of those Scanners headaches coming on.
On a lighter side-note, while Bizarro-Aquaman should perhaps be called Bizarro-Landman under the whacked logic on display, I personally have always thought of the real live Joe Frazier as an actual flesh and blood Bizarro-Aquaman, as evidenced by his near drowning in the swimming portion of the old ABC show Superstars:
You watch that and almost hope that Jim McKay throws down his microphone, strips down, jumps in and drags poor Joe to safety. You can’t punch water, champ!
All right. Enough stalling. I’m going to try to sum up this story. If I make it through to the end of “The Bizarro-Buster is Loose!,” by Cary Bates, Curt Swan and Dave Hunt, then you’ll know that my head hasn’t done this:
As you can see from the earlier image, all is not well on Bizarro’s (square) planet. Everybody’s blowing up and disappearing, including his coworkers:
“Molekule Narrowcasting.” I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Bizarro isn’t a complete moron, as evidenced by a rapidly-reached solution to this quandry:
There’s then a brief little interlude on Earth at the Global Broadcasting headquarters, where Morgan Edge is escorting some contest-winner kid around the offices and introducing him to the various TV personalities, whom he (the kid) backhandedly insults without fail. I get the feeling there might have been a similar occurence in the real DC offices, one that forced Bates to vent his spleen in this forum. Maybe not. Whatever the case, Clark Kent tears ass out of there before he falls in front of this little snot’s acid tongue, and when he reaches the greatest man-cave on Earth (sorry, Batman) he finds his robot guards destroyed. The list of suspects that could do that is pretty short, and he soon comes across the culprit:
Bizarro is then consumed in short order by the creature behind the Bizarro-genocide, which is one of the goofier looking monsters you’ll ever see:
It’s true — you are what you eat.
Superman tracks the monster back to Bizarro-World, but there’s another bunch of baddies there, green things that look like the goobers that latched onto people’s backs in the “Operation — Annihilate!” episode of Star Trek. They don’t get along with the Bizarro-eater:
Maybe there’s some Scrubbing Bubbles in them, too.
Supes makes one of those snap command decisions of his, and decides to side with the Bizarro-eater (rooting for the underdog and all that). He helps it defeat the goobers, but then:
All the Bizarros are back — we can rejoice. But who was responsible for all this nonsense?:
So Bizarro-Lex is a good guy — makes sense. I wonder if he and the elder Alexander Luthor from the Crime Syndicate-infested Earth-3 ever got together to compare notes? Anyhoo, this Lex created a way to pool the collective energies of all Bizarros so that they could better combat these invaders that he had spotted through his telescope. Bizarro-Lex — he’s a hell of a guy.
Finally, Superman has his fill, and I’m utterly sympatico with his departing thought:
I need my Bizarro doses to be very — and I mean very – limited. I understand his honored place in Superman’s sometimes odd roster of villains, and I don’t begrudge him it — there’s perhaps no better symbol of the Silver Age of Superman, and I normally have a soft spot for villains that are mirror images (Reverse-Flash, anyone?) of their opponent heroes. But that backwards baby-talk crap (which is all-too reminiscent of those horrific Superbaby stories) drives me up the wall after about ten seconds. Nails on the chalkboard, you know? Me am very happy. Now I’m doing it! Dammit!
Also, I have a minor quibble with the ever-dependable Swan, whose art on the Super-titles was constant as the northern star. Bizarro’s “Bizarro #1” medallion appears and disappears at a couple of points in the story, an upsetting lack of continuity that seems easily avoidable. It gives a sloppy appearance to one of DC’s preeminent titles, and upsets me to no end. Lord knows I make enough typos on just this blog, but I curse myself every time I come across one that makes it out. I expect more from Julius Schwartz and his boys.
Then again, maybe I’m just in an easily annoyed mood, and there’s no need to get all in a twist. That’s possible.
Thanks, Bizarro. Now you’ve got me pissed at Curt Swan. Of all people. See what you’ve done?
Batman Pez all around!
Is it wrong to say that I’d like to eat some Pez that came out of a Wonder Woman dispenser? It sort of is, right?
Out of the shadow and into the light – Starslayer #2
This one of those issues where the backup grew to greater fame than the feature, kind of like how The Simpsons quickly outpaced its old Tracey Ullman Show stomping grounds. I don’t think anyone would confuse the Rocketeer with the commercial juggernaut that Homer and family has become, but at least people have heard of it. Not a whole lot have heard of the Jolly Roger and its scantily clad captain.
Remember when The Rocketeer hit the theaters? I know I’m getting older when I have to pause and reflect that some folks reading this blog might not have been BORN in 1990, but I was around and aware back in those prehistoric olden times. There was one hell of a marketing campaign for the flick, and it was good to know that a comic book hero besides Batman or Superman was actually getting some time on the silver screen — there was a paucity back then that’s hard to believe in this age of comic-film saturation. Too bad the movie fell like a lead balloon. Or a rocket pack that was out of fuel. It kind of had a Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow thing going on — both were tributes to and evocative of the serials of yore, both were intended to found movie franchises, and both seriously underperformed.
I also seem to recall it getting a few more mentions back several years ago when the first promotional clips for Iron Man premiered — cries of “It looks just like The Rocketeer…” were heard across the internet.
I never actually read any of the original comics that spawned that film, at least until about a week ago. I bought this issue of Starslayer out of a bargain bin just for the curiosity factor. I kind of like Mike Grell’s stuff, and it got my hard earned 50 cents on that recommendation alone. I’m not sure that this issue was the best jumping on point for a reader — it’s exposition heavy, and is perhaps the wordiest per capita/per page thing I’ve ever seen. It measures up well with the preachiest and most verbose of Cerebus comics — Dave Sim would be proud. I’m hesistant to dismiss Starslayer as “The Warlord in space.” There are certainly differences and our hero is pulled from the past into the future instead of into a subterranean realm, but… Well, what the hell — it’s The Warlord in space.
I had no idea going in that the Rocketeer made his debut here, so it was a somewhat pleasant surprise when I saw the back cover:
This opening installment moves incredibly fast, but that too is reminiscent of breathless old serials, where in 15 minutes you could go from a scientist’s lab to a lost underwater civilization. Here the good guys discover the stolen jetpack, get it working and put it to use in the span of 6 pages, all so we can get to the meat, otherwise known as this:
Dave Stevens’ creation has become one of the more well known independent comics properties, largely due to the film adaptation. I hadn’t realized that Mr. Stevens passed away a couple of years ago. It’s always a shame when someone goes so long before their time, but it must have been very gratifying for him to see his comics creation reach Hollywood when Spider-Man, the face of the gargantuan Marvel machine, would take ten more years to reach cinemas.
Still waiting for that Starslayer pic.
I’d like to see him square off with Apache Chief – Black Goliath #4
I’m getting this one in just under the Black History Month wire, and I don’t know why, but there’s perhaps no better symbol for a sinister and malevolent “whitey” than the Stilt-Man, whose name I’ll hyphenate in this post despite its unhyphenated status on the cover and in the title. More on that whitey stuff in a moment.
Black Goliath, with his 70s-era prominent collar, is yet another in that long line of African-American heroes to have their skin color emblazoned in their names. I cringe every time I see that old trope, but it’s an unavoidable part of comics’ evolution. For this particular hero, here’s the opening blurb from this issue to give you his gist if you’re not familiar:
“Enter Stilt Man — Exit Black Goliath,” written by Chris Claremont with art from Rich Buckler and Don Heck (and a cover featuring the distinctive flat-tipped fingers of Jack Kirby), doesn’t quite rise to the level of Blaxploitation, but it has its moments. In case that “up out of the ghetto” stuff needs some reinforcement, we early on get the stock low-life black characters — the strung out punk and his girlfriend straight out of racial stereotype central casting:
Blessedly, we’re not subjected to much of that. The bulk of the action is centered around a meaner, nastier Stilt-Man, whose robbery of a bank (I appreciate how he always sets his sights low) brings out Black Goliath to stop him. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t have any beef with the Stilty, and I always take pleasure in the opportunities his suit provides for artists to flex their perspective muscles. But he’s also always struck me as a perhaps one of the “whitest” of Marvel villainy’s lower rungs. A stiff. Think about it — no self-respecting brother, Asian, Latino, Martian or whatever would be caught dead in that suit. He’s Whitey McWhite-White. And I say that as a stiff white man.
In other words, he’s a perfect foil for this “up from the ghetto” hero.
You can’t go wrong with some outsized panels to contain these two behemoths, and in that vein I dig this two page centerfold:
Some guys look at centerfolds of naked women. I look at centerfolds that have giant black men grappling with men on stilts. To each their own. I like the way Goliath is proportionally big, but Stilt-Man is clearly an armored but normal-sized man with long legs. It’s a nice little contrast.
The battle is about what you’d expect from these two, i.e. a lot of punching and jibber-jabber, though I did admire the simplicity of Stilt-Man’s ace in the hole ploy to defeat this hero:
Luckily for Goliath, he has a soft landing. The battle continues, and the issue ends with Stilty banishing Black Goliath to another dimension with a new ray-gun, a move that Rom would make famous in later years.
I don’t really have much to say about this comic, and, apart from the contretemps with Stilt-Man, it wouldn’t have a whole lot to recommend it (perhaps there’s some interest in terms of comics archeology, since Claremont’s script is an early on and predates the days when his name would be synonymous with The Uncanny X-Men). Black Goliath, or Giant-Man, or just plain Goliath, whatever alias you want to call him, never had that much traction in the Marvel Universe, though he was killed quite famously by the Thor clone many years after his debut.
If I’m not mistaken, he was buried at his giant size. I take a morbid amusement in that. Perhaps Stilt-Man attended the funeral in a dark suit that had pants with a twenty-foot inseam. I take more amusement in that.
I’m looking at the Spider-Man in the mirror…
There are few routines I loathe more than my morning shave. I have thick stubble and I shave my head, two factors which combine for a long, arduous process. I think a Hulk mirror might make it all more palatable.
Book ’em, Quisp – Aquaman #7
Aqualad makes Robin look like the Bill Buckley of sidekick wordplay.
I try very hard to love Aquaman. I’ve always felt bad for him. The man is royalty and one of the (supposed) big guns of the DC hero inventory, yet he’s a joke. A punchline. The kind of guy you see and start to laugh, even if you aren’t really sure why. I’ve never thought that all that was fair, and it seems that he’s never ever received the treatment that he deserves. How many times have they tried to relaunch his title? Fifty?
That old Alex Ross stand-up of Aquaman from about 10 years ago (one that was incorporated into a Justice League montage that graces my home office) really sums up what the guy should be about — regal, a bit haughty, a bit detached, a bit arrogant, but every bit the hero:
Plus he should always wield a mean-looking trident.
So I have a soft spot for Aquaman. Then I travel back in time to the carnival of delights known as the Silver Age, and I reevaluate that affection. Enter “The Sea Beasts of Atlantis,” written by Jack Miller with art from Nick Cardy.
My first quibble is that Aquaman (as is often the case) is portrayed as not being master of his own domain (in the literal sense, not the Seinfeld sense):
Isn’t he supposed to have command of all sea-creatures? Is it “All sea-creatures, just not big, useful ones”?
The big beasties are attacking ships, and it turns out that their underwater food supply has disappeared. Instead of getting his wet ass kicked some more, Aquaman gets a little intelligence from his oceanic answer to Mr. Mxyzptlk and Bat-Mite — Quisp:
Quisp is a water-sprite who looks like a cross between an ElfQuest elf and a troll doll, and he can manipulate, you guessed it, water. He needs to soon, because when Aquaman and Aqualad go after Captain Clay — who’s the one that’s been manipulating the sea-beasts by hoarding their food source — they’re immediately snared:
Our heroes, ladies and gentlemen.
Quisp to the rescue:
Clay is captured, and Quisp tee-hees him to the nearest Coast Guard cutter at Aquaman’s bequest. One might think that this has been a full enough day for our Diluvian Duo, but unfortunately there’s been an umpteenth coup d’etat in the undersea world (seriously, both Marvel’s and DC’s Atlantean governments were toppled every other issue — they were worse than Italy’s post-war regimes). This revolution doesn’t dispatch the old-guard with a guillotine, but with a decidedly aquatic alternative:
Hey, where’d the green tights go?
It’s at this point that Aquaman AT LAST does something useful:
The rebellion is then crushed. All in an aqua-day’s work.
Aquaman might be a hopeless cause. I’ll admit that. When The Abyss came out years ago, I remember there being talk about how an underwater movie was destined to underperform — everything just moves too slowly when it’s submerged. Perhaps there’s something in that idea that applies to our poor orange- and green-garbed hero, and for that matter his Marvel kinsman. Cardy tries very hard with his art (and I like the malevolent giant sea-horsey looking thing on the cover), though it’s a rather thankless task to make this stuff energetic. He manages to get Quisp the sprite to look, well, spritely, but keeping the comic’s engines running is too tall a task to put on that little guy’s tiny shoulders.
I guess we have to add this to the long litany of Aquaman fails.
In a final insult, I damaged this comic when I was putting it back in its mylite. You can see the crease on the lower left corner of the cover in the scan at the top of the post. The cover tore off of the spine and folded over. That made me angry. Very angry.
You know what? I give up. Fuck you, Aquaman. And the sea-horse you rode in on.
Now comes with fists for headlights!
I had a couple of these Corgi things when I was a kid — the “Supermobile” and the van. Both baffled me. First, I never understood why Superman, even if he was stuck under a red sun, would want something that had fists poking out of the front. Stick a laser there or something. Second, my young mind could never figure out what the van, despite the Superman indicia on its side, had to do with the Man of Steel. I think my grandmother told me (it was part of a small arsenal of toys at her place) that he was inside it, which led to long spells of me peering into its lilliputian windows for evidence of a red cape and blue tights. A vise may even have been used to cracked it open in a desperate bid for answers.
The Supermobile made an appearance in an actual comic (Action #481). It was revealed that it was made from Supermanium. I think that about sums everything up with the Supermobile, don’t you?
Man-iphant? Ele-man-t? – The Savage She-Hulk #17
Here we go, plumbing the depths of ridiculous costumes. You can practically hear the Marvel staff sitting around the Bullpen one brainstormy afternoon:
“How about a rhino?”
“No, you idiot. We’ve already done one of those.”
“Well, okay. How about something that’s not real. Like a unicorn.”
“No, we’ve done one of those too.”
“Oh. Wait, I’ve got it. An elephant!”
“An elephant? An elephant? Are you kidding me? An elephant would make the… You know, it just might work.”
It doesn’t. But not for a lack of trying.
The saga of Jennifer Walters is known to all. Gifted/cursed with Hulk powers through a blood transfusion from gamma-irradiated cousin Bruce Banner, this legally-minded young woman grew to great size and strength and I’m sure was an answer to many a young man’s erotic prayers. I much prefer the later skin-tight costumes that She-Hulk would sport as she became more comfortable in her own green skin — they’re far superior to the torn white one-piece that she always wore in her “Savage” days, her version of purple pants. The pubescent in me sees that old-timey garb and irritatedly asks, “Why the hell isn’t it ripped more? Why the hell can’t I see more skin? Dammit!”
But let’s get back to that “Man-Elephant” thing. “Make Way for the Man-Elephant” (written by David Anthony Kraft, layed out by Mike Vosburg and finished by Frank Springer) serves the dual purpose of introducing a new pseudo-villain and resolving She-Hulk’s legal difficulties. The latter is forgettable. So on to the former.
Here’s the inventor of the elephant suit, Manfred Ellsworth Haller, to explain some of the motivations involved in his bizarre creation:
You know that old line, the one about how pets and their owners start to look alike? Perhaps it applies to animal power suits and their inventors as well. It certainly looks that way, what with Manfred’s ear hair and Zippy the Pinhead skull structure (and I like the elephant tie, too).
He offers his services to track down the fugitive She-Hulk, but the local district attorneys aren’t inclined to accept. Mr. Haller then decides to answer vigilantism with vigilantism, and goes on T.V. to issue a challenge to his quarry — this also gives us a chance to get a little more low-down on that suit:
She-Hulk doesn’t technically answer the challenge (she doesn’t even know about it), but in one of those cosmic comic coincidences she stumbles upon Haller at the appointed time and place. They immediately thrown down — how does the suit hold up in action, you ask?:
Using the trunk like an anaconda doesn’t cut the mustard, so next comes…:
I have a feeling I’ll be using the phrase “coup de gas” in gatherings with male friends for years to come.
The gas attack ultimately fails, so Haller turns to more cowardly stratagems, like using his tusks as grappling hooks and dropping his fat elephant ass on She-Hulk’s head:
That doesn’t work either, and it’s all downhill from there:
When your opponent is flipping you around like Bamm-Bamm would, then something has gone horribly, horribly wrong with your plan.
Mercifully for Haller, the authorities show up to let She-Hulk know that she’s clear of all the charges, and Haller sees the error of his ways:
And that’s pretty much it.
Sometimes I get up on my high horse and criticize comics for being too silly. This is not one of those times. I’ll grant that the elephant suit is dumb, but it’s a good kind of dumb. Yes, I’m saying that even in the face of its red underpants. There’s all that remarkable about the art or story, but I still liked reading this — when Haller started using his tusks as grappling hooks, well, at that moment life didn’t seem so hard.
In other words, I don’t think this comic is going to make poor old Joseph Merrick roll over in his grave.
Jared
blog into mystery 