Impulse request...

[glprime]

In response to one of silverzeo's requests, here's a snippet from an early Impulse issue dealing with a supporting character's home life. While a little bit after-school-special, as TV Tropes says, Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped.



Preston's been called into the Assistant Principal's office.



The Man asks Bart to try and get closer to Preston, and possibly find out what's going on. Bart instantly tells him that what's being asked is a ridiculous invasion of a student's privacy and more than a little gross for him Bart agrees.

Preston drags Bart along into the (nearby?) swamps of Manchester to go looking for a supposed local "monster." Preston claims he's going to use the footage to move to Hollywood and hit it big. Bart doesn't have the heart to tell him that dropping out of school is soooo cliched for a kid in his situation a bad idea. They notice some spooky fog lights and Preston panics and tips the boat. Bart struggles to find him amidst nasty bog water and meddlesome snakes.



Uh oh. Dad's pissed.

Bart sees Preston the next day.



My god... BACNE!!! okay, I'll stop...

So Bart heads out to the swamps to find Preston, who of course has run into the real swamp monster, which turns out to be a kid younger than both of them afflicted with severe acromegaly (who'll probably die within a year, Waid tells us, just to make Bart feel like more of a jerkass for defending himself from the rampaging youth).

There's some lame attempt at an "every son deserves to be loved" aesop (how is letting your kid wander around the swamp and get chased by amateur cryptozoologists being a loving parent?), which sends Bart into dark!Robin mode.







Yeah.



Well... that kid's gonna need some counseling. But then Bart's not really one to lecture people on mommy issues.



This was one of the first issues of Impulse I grabbed from the longboxes at my LCS waaaay back in like '96/'97.



7.6/23 pages from Impulse #6 under the cut.

Comments

[ravenous_raven]

Aww, Bart! And the mother battering Preston instead of the father was an interesting twist and had some good foreshadowing.

[silverzeo]

I read the wiki page and I thought it WAs Dad before the big reveal.

[kd_the_movie]

I can honestly say I didn't see that twist coming.

[majingojira]

Motto.

[taggerung301]

same here

[jelly_ace]

Wow. That's a nice twist. Goes to show there's no gender gap in domestic violence.

I really love 90's hair Bart. For some reason.

[glprime]

I never got how no one recognized him with all that hair. It's not like you see anyone else wearing it!

Then again, all the Ramos Faces look nearly the same.

[minervasolo.livejournal.com]

to be fair, Carol (his later girlfriend) did.

[silverzeo]

Thanks for the post. I really want to learn more about Bart's history in his run, as it is ignore like Superboy's.

Shame that Preston, along with Carol and Evil-Eye, have been left on the cutting room floor in today's continuity.

Also, the assistant principal's office looks alot like my old grade school principals office. Filled with superhero memorabilia, old toys, though I have raised eyebrows about that McD's Happy Meal. Anyone else remember the 7-Up mascots, along with the old Kit-Kat jingle?

How did Bart and Mom settle with Bart staying in the past/present?

[glprime]

Not that up on Impulse to say definitively, but I've got an issue where he visits his mom in the far future, so I'll look into that tomorrow.

[swingbound.livejournal.com]

I'll assume you mean Bart and Bart's Mom (Meloni).

Don't wanna steal glprime's thunder so I'll just give the short-short version: Basically, Bart's maternal grandpa's a dick and kinda forces them into the whole different era deal.

[iluvpurplegoats]

I'm going to jump on the bandwagon and say that I too was surprised by the turnaround, though in a way - and this might sound a little twisted - I'm glad it turned out to be the mum. A lot of media nowadays usually have the father as main the abuser, but as we all know that sadly isn't the case and it gave this story a good twist and added more realism to it.

P.s. I was planning on writing this comment after these scans were first posted, but I clicked on that TV tropes link instead. I've only just got out. I think some people might still be stuck in there though...

[glprime]

Then it is all going according to plan...

If you only read the Useful Notes, Real Life and You Fail ____ Forever entries, you'll find a huge amount of practical knowledge.

[valtyr]

A lot of media nowadays usually have the father as main the abuser, but as we all know that sadly isn't the case and it gave this story a good twist and added more realism to it.

Really? I didn't know that. Do you have any sources on that? I don't know a great deal about child abuse statistics.

[bluejaybirdie]

I don't know about any statistics, but I can promise you it happens in real life more commonly than you'd expect. I was abused by my mentally ill mother and I have a friend who lives with her divorced mom who beats her when she's drunk because the friend reminds her mom of her dad.

[comicoz]

If you replace her fist with a chankla (sandal), that'd be typical in my in-laws houses...