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scans_dailyE. Nelson Bridwell was a noted writer of humor, superheroes, and superhero humor from the 1960s to the 1980s, as well as an important figure in DC editorial and just a general all-around fan's fan. As a writer, he was known for stories in Superman and Mad as well as the creation of the original Secret Six and the Inferior Five.
Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew: The Oz-Wonderland War Trilogy would be his last major writing work.
Rather than wait for Roquat to slip them another clue, Glinda has another idea:
The Book of Records isn't much more straightforward than the other clues they've gotten, but you know this can't be too easy:
Dorothy figures out that the transformed Wizard must be in the Deadly Desert, the sands of which kill any living thing on contact. Fortunately...
The silver slippers are not some plot of Roquat's: they were the magic shoes that Dorothy used to get herself home in the original book, which fell off en route. (They were changed to ruby for the movie.)
The Scarecrow realizes that if Roquat is mono-focused on the Captain, he might be vulnerable to attacks on other fronts. Little Cheese and Mister Horse pool their efforts:
The Tin Woodman takes the cap, and with it the ability to command the monkeys:
Of course the Tin Woodman is concerned about the welfare of the monkeys, the same monkeys who destroyed him in The Wizard of Oz. He's got a heart, remember?
Captain Carrot plucks a white-whale figurine from the desert sands, and Glinda and Alley-Kat-Abra revive him:
As you may recall, the Wizard's not really a wizard. But Roquat doesn't know that, and it distracts him long enough for the monkeys to evacuate the city. And by the time he's realized that...
With the magic belt restored to Glinda, Roquat now has no hope of victory. But even in defeat, he hopes to cost them:
(Just great moments all around here: the resolution with the winged monkeys, Roquat's pathetic, childlike shouts, Dorothy still Dorothying, and Glinda being as stern and perfect as Renaissance-sculpted marble.)
Captain Carrot elects for the Zoo Crew to skip the victory party since he's got a deadline. As the Zoo Crew arrive back on Earth-C, Cap learns this was a deeply unpopular decision:
("Why don't you get a NEW JOB?")
Even Little Cheese balks when the Captain tries to draft the Zoo Crewers into helping him ink some panel borders. (Man, the comic art process has really changed since 1986--even since 2006.)
I have a feeling carrot-lovers did not deluge them with mountains of missives. But it may not have made a difference. E. Nelson Bridwell, plotter/co-plotter of this series and creator of the Inferior Five, would've been the natural choice to do a follow-up...and sadly, he'd be dead in less than a year, shortly after a surprise diagnosis of lung cancer.
Still, one can take some consolation in the fact that Oz-Wonderland let him realize a personal dream, a dream he'd held since his boyhood days in the 1930s:
This would be the last Captain Carrot story for roughly twenty years. Not a bad way to go out.
As ever, the best joke of this funny-animal superhero series was that it did superhero stuff as well as its "serious" contemporaries. It had flaws to which I'll cheerfully admit, and YMMV about its humor. But it was good-natured, bursting with creative energy, and never, EVER boring.
Can I give evidence of this? Can you quantify interestingness? Well, its first twenty issues rolled out forty different named villains, plus unnamed villainous "species" like yolk-monsters and snowbirds. Most were brand-new or borrowed from unexpected sources.
I challenge you to find any other comics series that can claim to maintain that 2-to-1 ratio for even ten issues, without using villains its protagonists have fought before in some other series. There may be some out there--it feels like something Jack Kirby could do--but very few, I'd wager.
No, not a bad way to end things at all. But a fan always hopes for more. For those twenty years, I'd remain frustrated that--outside of fan work--there weren't any more Captain Carrot stories of any kind.
Next: Be careful what you wish for.
Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew: The Oz-Wonderland War Trilogy would be his last major writing work.
Rather than wait for Roquat to slip them another clue, Glinda has another idea:
The Book of Records isn't much more straightforward than the other clues they've gotten, but you know this can't be too easy:
Dorothy figures out that the transformed Wizard must be in the Deadly Desert, the sands of which kill any living thing on contact. Fortunately...
The silver slippers are not some plot of Roquat's: they were the magic shoes that Dorothy used to get herself home in the original book, which fell off en route. (They were changed to ruby for the movie.)
The Scarecrow realizes that if Roquat is mono-focused on the Captain, he might be vulnerable to attacks on other fronts. Little Cheese and Mister Horse pool their efforts:
The Tin Woodman takes the cap, and with it the ability to command the monkeys:
Of course the Tin Woodman is concerned about the welfare of the monkeys, the same monkeys who destroyed him in The Wizard of Oz. He's got a heart, remember?
Captain Carrot plucks a white-whale figurine from the desert sands, and Glinda and Alley-Kat-Abra revive him:
As you may recall, the Wizard's not really a wizard. But Roquat doesn't know that, and it distracts him long enough for the monkeys to evacuate the city. And by the time he's realized that...
With the magic belt restored to Glinda, Roquat now has no hope of victory. But even in defeat, he hopes to cost them:
(Just great moments all around here: the resolution with the winged monkeys, Roquat's pathetic, childlike shouts, Dorothy still Dorothying, and Glinda being as stern and perfect as Renaissance-sculpted marble.)
Captain Carrot elects for the Zoo Crew to skip the victory party since he's got a deadline. As the Zoo Crew arrive back on Earth-C, Cap learns this was a deeply unpopular decision:
("Why don't you get a NEW JOB?")
Even Little Cheese balks when the Captain tries to draft the Zoo Crewers into helping him ink some panel borders. (Man, the comic art process has really changed since 1986--even since 2006.)
I have a feeling carrot-lovers did not deluge them with mountains of missives. But it may not have made a difference. E. Nelson Bridwell, plotter/co-plotter of this series and creator of the Inferior Five, would've been the natural choice to do a follow-up...and sadly, he'd be dead in less than a year, shortly after a surprise diagnosis of lung cancer.
Still, one can take some consolation in the fact that Oz-Wonderland let him realize a personal dream, a dream he'd held since his boyhood days in the 1930s:
This would be the last Captain Carrot story for roughly twenty years. Not a bad way to go out.
As ever, the best joke of this funny-animal superhero series was that it did superhero stuff as well as its "serious" contemporaries. It had flaws to which I'll cheerfully admit, and YMMV about its humor. But it was good-natured, bursting with creative energy, and never, EVER boring.
Can I give evidence of this? Can you quantify interestingness? Well, its first twenty issues rolled out forty different named villains, plus unnamed villainous "species" like yolk-monsters and snowbirds. Most were brand-new or borrowed from unexpected sources.
I challenge you to find any other comics series that can claim to maintain that 2-to-1 ratio for even ten issues, without using villains its protagonists have fought before in some other series. There may be some out there--it feels like something Jack Kirby could do--but very few, I'd wager.
No, not a bad way to end things at all. But a fan always hopes for more. For those twenty years, I'd remain frustrated that--outside of fan work--there weren't any more Captain Carrot stories of any kind.
Next: Be careful what you wish for.
no subject
Date: 2024-07-29 03:12 pm (UTC)Harsh veer into melancholy though...
Fifty six. Dang.
It's a shame, a team-up between the Crew and the Five sounds like it would've been tremendously silly.
(Can't recall the last time those chumps even got a starring role. Merryman had a memorable moment in Morrison's Final Crisis, and there was an issue of Brave and the Bold where they almost foiled a purse-snatcher... who turned out to be Batman, but apart from that? Nada.
But that's modern DC. No fun allowed.)
Lil' Cheese may mock Nome's magic picture addiction, but in these days, when phone addiction is a real thing... well.
Don't mock the afflicted, Lil.
That's another foe the Crew have tried to deal with by throwing their weakness at.
(Maybe it's a good thing they never had to fight Superman. Probably would've just tried to run him through with a chunk of kryptonite...)
Couldn't we just pretend that this was the last big thing the Crew did and leave it at that? Let them have their zany ending?
no?
no subject
Date: 2024-07-29 06:34 pm (UTC)"Couldn't we just pretend that this was the last big thing the Crew did and leave it at that?"
Ha ha, sometimes I do! But I am a bit drawn to the challenge of talking about the Zoo Crew's depressing "dark" period and their strange present. I think it might lead me to a couple thoughts about superhero comics in general. We'll see if that turns out to be a good decision!