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scans_dailyPREVIOUSLY ON BUNNY THE CHAMPION SUPER:
Mysterious forces from space are hitting the planet Earth-C, bringing both help and harm to its talking-animal denizens. While meteors grant super-powers to a lucky half-dozen, hourly ray-blasts from Pluto are causing hundreds more to revert to the behavior of their primitive ancestors. Dogs start...BARKING. And CHASING CARS. Brrr, freakish!
Another entity from space is the hideous, pink, five-fingered monster called Superman, who keeps getting dizzy spells in mid-feat, leaving the eager-for-action Captain Carrot to hop up to the plate in his place.
The two heroes head off to the stratosphere to get to Pluto, but to do so, they need to get past a space-barrier encircling the Earth, a barrier that flummoxed Superman before. It does not go well.
The use of cartoon physics here is somewhat, uh, selective. Cap can hop up to the stratosphere no problem, and later he'll handle conditions on Pluto just fine, but falling back to Earth-C could be fatal. Unless you're caught by Pig-Iron, a giant super-pig with steel arms, which actually seems like it might do more damage to you than just hitting the ground? But no. It's fine. It's fine.
At one point, Gerry Conway was slated to write this series--he worked with Roy Thomas and artist Scott Shaw! on the original designs. Cap should be grateful for the switch, since Conway is notorious for using a burst of realistic physics to DOOM a falling character:
The comic then falls into a rhythm as formulaic and convenience-based as it is efficient and entertaining, a regular cycle of physical challenges, introductions, and origin vignettes, with everyone being right where they need to be to move the plot forward at all times. We meet Alley-Kat-Abra (Felina Furr), Fastback (Timmy Joe Terrapin), Rubberduck (Byrd Rentals), and telekinetic Yankee Poodle (Rova Barkitt). The air is thick with pun-filtered pop-culture references:
...
...
I could talk your ears off about these characters and their inspirations, I really could, but I should leave some fun for the commenters and some juice for upcoming issues. Let me just say I appreciate that Byrd and Rova may be showbiz phonies of the first order, but they also really seem to care about each other even before they start livin' that hero lyffe. I don't ship it, but I like that "humanizing" touch.
Alley-Kat-Abra gets the group back to the barrier, which takes them to Pluto, where they reenact the scene on the cover...
Because this is a series about super-animals and Roy Thomas loved his deep cuts from comics history, the tentacled bad guy is Starro. This Starro:
Or at least an outgrowth of him. I'm gonna be straight with you: I've had four decades to research it and I have no idea what "free-for-all" Starro is talking about. He tussled with Aquaman in Adventure Comics #451, but he ended that battle fully intact. "Free-for-all" implies a multi-hero-versus-multi-villain conflict, but none of his early JLA appearances match the description either, and 1982 was too early for any megacrossovers. Maybe nobody remembers it because it never was a comic? Unclear.
Let's cut to the climax. Cap has remembered something important from his experience writing and drawing a super-hero team book: superhero teams need to act like teams. No one is listening to him. Except Starro, oddly enough.
After the team kills Starro like a slug buried in salt, which Superman does not mind at all, he blesses the group as the guardians of peace and justice on their world. Cap accepts this blessing in a mellow mood. With a whole super-group--and a planet--to look after, he no longer has the luxury of being a hothead.
The story ends with the promise of a new challenge to the group, which has already subverted the United Species of Hammerica, back when that looked like a hard thing to do:
But I mean...come on. These guys just trashed an ALIEN INVADER. They can handle some guy sitting in a chair with the lights off, right? They'll be just fine as long as they keep internal conflicts to a minimum and don't let this big win go to their heads.
Next issue: I jinxed it. :-(
Mysterious forces from space are hitting the planet Earth-C, bringing both help and harm to its talking-animal denizens. While meteors grant super-powers to a lucky half-dozen, hourly ray-blasts from Pluto are causing hundreds more to revert to the behavior of their primitive ancestors. Dogs start...BARKING. And CHASING CARS. Brrr, freakish!
Another entity from space is the hideous, pink, five-fingered monster called Superman, who keeps getting dizzy spells in mid-feat, leaving the eager-for-action Captain Carrot to hop up to the plate in his place.
The two heroes head off to the stratosphere to get to Pluto, but to do so, they need to get past a space-barrier encircling the Earth, a barrier that flummoxed Superman before. It does not go well.
The use of cartoon physics here is somewhat, uh, selective. Cap can hop up to the stratosphere no problem, and later he'll handle conditions on Pluto just fine, but falling back to Earth-C could be fatal. Unless you're caught by Pig-Iron, a giant super-pig with steel arms, which actually seems like it might do more damage to you than just hitting the ground? But no. It's fine. It's fine.
At one point, Gerry Conway was slated to write this series--he worked with Roy Thomas and artist Scott Shaw! on the original designs. Cap should be grateful for the switch, since Conway is notorious for using a burst of realistic physics to DOOM a falling character:
The comic then falls into a rhythm as formulaic and convenience-based as it is efficient and entertaining, a regular cycle of physical challenges, introductions, and origin vignettes, with everyone being right where they need to be to move the plot forward at all times. We meet Alley-Kat-Abra (Felina Furr), Fastback (Timmy Joe Terrapin), Rubberduck (Byrd Rentals), and telekinetic Yankee Poodle (Rova Barkitt). The air is thick with pun-filtered pop-culture references:
...
...
I could talk your ears off about these characters and their inspirations, I really could, but I should leave some fun for the commenters and some juice for upcoming issues. Let me just say I appreciate that Byrd and Rova may be showbiz phonies of the first order, but they also really seem to care about each other even before they start livin' that hero lyffe. I don't ship it, but I like that "humanizing" touch.
Alley-Kat-Abra gets the group back to the barrier, which takes them to Pluto, where they reenact the scene on the cover...
Because this is a series about super-animals and Roy Thomas loved his deep cuts from comics history, the tentacled bad guy is Starro. This Starro:
Or at least an outgrowth of him. I'm gonna be straight with you: I've had four decades to research it and I have no idea what "free-for-all" Starro is talking about. He tussled with Aquaman in Adventure Comics #451, but he ended that battle fully intact. "Free-for-all" implies a multi-hero-versus-multi-villain conflict, but none of his early JLA appearances match the description either, and 1982 was too early for any megacrossovers. Maybe nobody remembers it because it never was a comic? Unclear.
Let's cut to the climax. Cap has remembered something important from his experience writing and drawing a super-hero team book: superhero teams need to act like teams. No one is listening to him. Except Starro, oddly enough.
After the team kills Starro like a slug buried in salt, which Superman does not mind at all, he blesses the group as the guardians of peace and justice on their world. Cap accepts this blessing in a mellow mood. With a whole super-group--and a planet--to look after, he no longer has the luxury of being a hothead.
The story ends with the promise of a new challenge to the group, which has already subverted the United Species of Hammerica, back when that looked like a hard thing to do:
But I mean...come on. These guys just trashed an ALIEN INVADER. They can handle some guy sitting in a chair with the lights off, right? They'll be just fine as long as they keep internal conflicts to a minimum and don't let this big win go to their heads.
Next issue: I jinxed it. :-(
no subject
Date: 2024-06-16 12:23 am (UTC)And also that it's something similar that's made Starroffspring turn out so snarky.
(Ordinarily, I wouldn't be sure. Starro's a lot more menacing when it can't speak, and is just this giant starfish that latches onto people's faces, but given the setting, being comedic while still a figure of menace works for it. Starro with the menace played completely straight right off the bat might be a bit jarring.)
Liking the randomness of who gets what powers, so a martial arts instructor becomes a magician. Because that's the logical choice!
(Not, say, imbuing her with the ability to focus strange energies so as to make her fists and feet as unto iron.
That'd just be silly.)
Speaking of deep cut, Yankee Poodle's inspired the look of Stargirl, but Young Justice (the show, not the comic) has Courtney starting out as a social media personality.
That YJ and its deep cuts...
no subject
Date: 2024-06-16 12:45 am (UTC)In contrast, although Pig Iron looks a little like underground cartoonist Gilbert Shelton's Wonder Warthog, I imagine that's more of a coincidence.
Similarly, I imagine that the "Mallard Fillmore" depicted here probably wasn't the inspiration for the right-wing syndicated strip by that name. I mean, it's not that hard a pun to come up with if one knows one's U.S. history.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-16 01:05 am (UTC)Wouldn't rule out Wonder Warthog as an influence...Scott Shaw! came up from underground comix, so it's more than possible.
Looking up the Mallard Fillmore strip, I see it got its start in the early 1990s, so this was about a decade too early to be taking cues from that!