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scans_dailyEver since their original series ended, the Zoo Crewers have suffered enough untimely deaths--and other serious blows--to qualify as an endangered species. It's hard out there for a funny DC character, even if cartoon physics and constant reboots--or, if you prefer, a series of Crises--keep on bringing you back.
But the real test of a sense of humor is to maintain it in adversity, right?
We've covered the Crew's two biggest downer storylines, their Dark Age--"Whatever Happened to Captain Carrot?," with its Watchmenesque betrayal and The Final Ark, with its environmental catastrophe and transformation of the surviving Zoo Crewers. To sum up the rest, we'll start with the early stuff but bounce around a little in time before we're done.
In 1991, Scott Shaw! was laughing off the very idea of some kind of "gritty comeback" for the Zoo Crew--"until DC gets REALLY desperate!" He even foreshadowed what the title of that gritty comeback might be!
By 2000, Shaw! was working with Comic Book Resources columnist and future scriptwriter Gail Simone, whose "You'll All Be Sorry" made fun of industry trends like Dark Horse Comics' slew of Aliens comics and crossover comics. They worked together on a cover and script sample from a comic too ridiculous to be real, playing out the thought experiment with Mad Magazine-style irreverence...
...but then, "Whatever Happened to Captain Carrot?" started out as a joke pitch too.
CBR no longer has a place for such work (as I write this, its lead article is a story about Cheers and Frasier), but the Internet Archive has all the carnage recorded here.
That same year, Shaw! contributed a page to World's Funnest, in which Mxyzptlk and Bat-Mite's fight escalated into destroying every reality that'd fit between its covers.
Eh, it'll be fine.
In 2012, Robot Chicken: DC Comics Special held a funeral for Captain Carrot in similar spirit. At 61 seconds, it's short enough not to stretch the joke too much. These specials would also be the only televised appearances of the Zoo Crew, not counting bits of background detail or subtle references.
But by that point, some kind of "death of the Zoo Crew" was no longer too silly for DC Comics to contemplate. It had done "Whatever" and The Final Ark, and soon, it would show the Captain's first encounter with the Zoo Crew's deadliest opponent in the modern era...
Harley Quinn.
She first met Captain Carrot in Convergence, a 2015 series in which a godlike being forces his chosen representatives of different universes to fight. Loser gets their whole place destroyed. You know the drill. (Convergence #1)
When Harley is appointed, she's in no shape to fight. Ivy and Catwoman need to get her primed for combat, even if the moral cost is high (Convergence: Harley Quinn #1):
Cross-dressing Nightwing? I mean, let's not rule it out altogether, I think it'd be great for Gothamites' morale if you--okay, fine, fine...
In another Convergence book, one of the Zoo Crewers works to end this whole vile system--and we'll get to that one. But in Convergence: Harley Quinn #2, Harley is the underdog and the Zoo Crew are the heavies. All you have to do is read the title to know who's gonna come out on top here.
I do admire Harley’s disinformation-based strategy. You wonder why more super-people don’t just lie about their abilities. Sun Tzu would approve.
Alley-Kat-Abra’s efforts to help the Captain don’t really amount to much in the end, but it’s so nice to see her acting like herself again that I’m giving them some attention anyway. Pig-Iron gets a couple of good moments too, though I wish he’d been rendered with more bulk.
After they help each other survive the crash, there seems to be an unofficial truce:
I think there are two valid readings here. One, Harley knows Ivy’s carrots were poisoned and is acting disingenuous to the last. “Maybe I was ‘brains.’” Two, Harley’s been innocently sharing snacks that Ivy prepped for her, and Ivy knew Harley well enough to have engineered this outcome from afar. “What's up? You look terrible!”
It’s also a little ambiguous whether the Captain will survive. "Character realizes he's been poisoned and then isn't seen again" is usually storytelling code for "Character ded," but Cap's super-physique might downgrade this attack to just a debilitating sour-tummy. For all its talk of mass killings, Convergence has a surprisingly low body count overall. Still, Cap's whole universe gets rebooted at the end of the event, so it actually wouldn't matter much:
In 2023's Harley Quinn #28-31, Captain Carrot and Harley meet again, and both have changed quite a bit. Captain Carrot is now the bulked-up bundle of positivity he's been since the reboot, and Harley, living with Ivy, is more of an anxious disaster bisexual.
Her chaos energy is more of a factor than ever, but this time it's a problem for her and Captain Carrot both. Fighting Two-Face for her life, Harley ends up messing with the multiverse by accident:
The fish reminds Harley uncomfortably of her days with the Joker...
But as you may have guessed, it’s really from another world.
In #30, we catch up to the other side of the fish's story, and get a little action with the full Zoo Crew, not just the Captain. Tini Howard’s treatment of the Zoo Crew is more improvised than researched, though, and while I try to be a flexible and forgiving reader, this one's a little too much of a dagger in my old shipper's heart:
“Cat Hell” is a pretty great concept, and there’s precedent for Fastback and Captain Carrot ribbing each other about speed...
But come on, guys, come on. Yankee Poodle is NOT a giggly little ingenue, she’s saucy, sassy, snarky, and sophisticated. One doesn't ask a lady her age, but she has been around:
And if she ever did make a move on Rodney, you freakin' know Abra wouldn't be giving that an approving smile. I know Rodney's personality has changed, but there's a certain ascended-nerd, heroism-loving core to him that's still there, so I can accept that. This? Bridge too far.
In any case, the battle against Backseid doesn't go well, thanks to Harley plucking away the fish at just the wrong moment:
Later...
(Okay, I admit I laughed anyway at Rodney destroying the stuffed Yankee Poodle in his anguish. I'm a complicated guy sometimes.)
Howard does have an interest in doing right by the Captain in his modern incarnation, and she lets him transcend the narrative...eventually:
A couple of issues later (#33), the Captain has occasion to mourn someone else—someone with a connection to Harley.
At this point, though, it is kind of weird seeing him struck by grief AGAIN, after we've learned that the dead don't die on Earth-26. And it's quickly made clear that Harely Quinn (Harely, not Harley) will be no exception to that:
...will have nothing more to do with Captain Carrot, so we’ll stop there.
Not every Captain Carrot appearance of late has revolved around death and destruction. There was one story in 2023's Legion of Bloom featuring him as a father--we'll get back to that one, I'm still saving a little for the last few installments.
And in 2019's Dog Days of Summer #1, Captain Carrot, President Superman, and Judge Dredd--sorry, I meant Atomic Batman, don't know HOW I got those two confused--face off against a Zoo Crew turned evil (well, cartoon-evil) by their world's angry sun. Little Cheese shows off a previously unseen power to take out Supes, and then the trio's down to two. This is basically a buddy comedy, with CC teaching the grim, grokkin' Atomic Batman how laughter leads to outside-the-box solutions:
Still, by now, you're probably seeing some limitations to the "cartoon physics" approach. If Zoo Crewers can do whatever and bounce back from anything, then what really matters? Why care about any stakes or apparent deaths that will be forgotten by their next appearance?
But there was one 2020 story that made use of the cartoon-physics thing to create stakes--because the Captain let his world's seeming invulnerability lure him into complacency. A seed was planted when the Captain met "main" Justice Leaguers Barry Allen and John Stewart in 2019's JLA #26:
Arthur Adams, who had sent the Captain Carrot comic a drawing before the start of his career, contributed a gorgeous variant cover for the story itself. And James Tynion IV knew how to lend some weight to the script (Dark Nights: Death Metal: Multiverse’s End):
When we catch up with the Captain, he's throwing himself into his work:
That’s kind of what life is like as a DC superhero these days, isn’t it? Just chugging along and hoping the next reboot will be kind to you. While the Captain gets put through the wringer here, he ends the issue hopeful and unbowed, commanding the respect of the Green Lanterns who once didn't know what to make of him.
“Guys like Superman? They look up to me.”
(Honestly, I'm almost as impressed by Guy Gardner here. He's come a long way from his days as icon of toxic masculinity, even if he does revert now and then.
But that's another talk.)
Still, I feel like the "Captain Carrot's world is destroyed" stories need at least a ten-year gap between them to be effective. The Captain himself died once again alongside DC's biggest heroes in 2022's JLA #75, "Death of the Justice League," so there hasn't even been a two-year gap between Zoo Crew deaths of late.
Not every 21st-century appearance by Zoo Crewers involves any of them getting killed--but so, so many do! To some degree, that's related to what seems like a company-wide creative rut. DC is putting out a lot of good individual stories and character arcs, but on the macro scale, almost everything it's had to offer of late skews into another version of Crisis on Infinite Earths. The company's current "All In" project doesn't seem to be breaking out of that pattern.
The Zoo Crew's Cartoon Age is still a big improvement over their Dark Age, and one can't just wish their Classic Age back into existence. Still, it may be time to imagine a fourth age for these characters, one in which they carve out more of a place of their own.
And maybe one where the Captain spends a bit more time with the Crew. That way, the rest of them would get more attention, making them less vulnerable to seemingly arbitrary changes. ("Innocent little" Yankee Poodle? I ask you...)
Next: A quick roundup of the Zoo Crew's solo activities. I mean, it's got to be quick, 'cause there's not a lot.
But the real test of a sense of humor is to maintain it in adversity, right?
We've covered the Crew's two biggest downer storylines, their Dark Age--"Whatever Happened to Captain Carrot?," with its Watchmenesque betrayal and The Final Ark, with its environmental catastrophe and transformation of the surviving Zoo Crewers. To sum up the rest, we'll start with the early stuff but bounce around a little in time before we're done.
In 1991, Scott Shaw! was laughing off the very idea of some kind of "gritty comeback" for the Zoo Crew--"until DC gets REALLY desperate!" He even foreshadowed what the title of that gritty comeback might be!
By 2000, Shaw! was working with Comic Book Resources columnist and future scriptwriter Gail Simone, whose "You'll All Be Sorry" made fun of industry trends like Dark Horse Comics' slew of Aliens comics and crossover comics. They worked together on a cover and script sample from a comic too ridiculous to be real, playing out the thought experiment with Mad Magazine-style irreverence...
...but then, "Whatever Happened to Captain Carrot?" started out as a joke pitch too.
CBR no longer has a place for such work (as I write this, its lead article is a story about Cheers and Frasier), but the Internet Archive has all the carnage recorded here.
That same year, Shaw! contributed a page to World's Funnest, in which Mxyzptlk and Bat-Mite's fight escalated into destroying every reality that'd fit between its covers.
Eh, it'll be fine.
In 2012, Robot Chicken: DC Comics Special held a funeral for Captain Carrot in similar spirit. At 61 seconds, it's short enough not to stretch the joke too much. These specials would also be the only televised appearances of the Zoo Crew, not counting bits of background detail or subtle references.
But by that point, some kind of "death of the Zoo Crew" was no longer too silly for DC Comics to contemplate. It had done "Whatever" and The Final Ark, and soon, it would show the Captain's first encounter with the Zoo Crew's deadliest opponent in the modern era...
Harley Quinn.
She first met Captain Carrot in Convergence, a 2015 series in which a godlike being forces his chosen representatives of different universes to fight. Loser gets their whole place destroyed. You know the drill. (Convergence #1)
When Harley is appointed, she's in no shape to fight. Ivy and Catwoman need to get her primed for combat, even if the moral cost is high (Convergence: Harley Quinn #1):
Cross-dressing Nightwing? I mean, let's not rule it out altogether, I think it'd be great for Gothamites' morale if you--okay, fine, fine...
In another Convergence book, one of the Zoo Crewers works to end this whole vile system--and we'll get to that one. But in Convergence: Harley Quinn #2, Harley is the underdog and the Zoo Crew are the heavies. All you have to do is read the title to know who's gonna come out on top here.
I do admire Harley’s disinformation-based strategy. You wonder why more super-people don’t just lie about their abilities. Sun Tzu would approve.
Alley-Kat-Abra’s efforts to help the Captain don’t really amount to much in the end, but it’s so nice to see her acting like herself again that I’m giving them some attention anyway. Pig-Iron gets a couple of good moments too, though I wish he’d been rendered with more bulk.
After they help each other survive the crash, there seems to be an unofficial truce:
I think there are two valid readings here. One, Harley knows Ivy’s carrots were poisoned and is acting disingenuous to the last. “Maybe I was ‘brains.’” Two, Harley’s been innocently sharing snacks that Ivy prepped for her, and Ivy knew Harley well enough to have engineered this outcome from afar. “What's up? You look terrible!”
It’s also a little ambiguous whether the Captain will survive. "Character realizes he's been poisoned and then isn't seen again" is usually storytelling code for "Character ded," but Cap's super-physique might downgrade this attack to just a debilitating sour-tummy. For all its talk of mass killings, Convergence has a surprisingly low body count overall. Still, Cap's whole universe gets rebooted at the end of the event, so it actually wouldn't matter much:
In 2023's Harley Quinn #28-31, Captain Carrot and Harley meet again, and both have changed quite a bit. Captain Carrot is now the bulked-up bundle of positivity he's been since the reboot, and Harley, living with Ivy, is more of an anxious disaster bisexual.
Her chaos energy is more of a factor than ever, but this time it's a problem for her and Captain Carrot both. Fighting Two-Face for her life, Harley ends up messing with the multiverse by accident:
The fish reminds Harley uncomfortably of her days with the Joker...
But as you may have guessed, it’s really from another world.
In #30, we catch up to the other side of the fish's story, and get a little action with the full Zoo Crew, not just the Captain. Tini Howard’s treatment of the Zoo Crew is more improvised than researched, though, and while I try to be a flexible and forgiving reader, this one's a little too much of a dagger in my old shipper's heart:
“Cat Hell” is a pretty great concept, and there’s precedent for Fastback and Captain Carrot ribbing each other about speed...
But come on, guys, come on. Yankee Poodle is NOT a giggly little ingenue, she’s saucy, sassy, snarky, and sophisticated. One doesn't ask a lady her age, but she has been around:
And if she ever did make a move on Rodney, you freakin' know Abra wouldn't be giving that an approving smile. I know Rodney's personality has changed, but there's a certain ascended-nerd, heroism-loving core to him that's still there, so I can accept that. This? Bridge too far.
In any case, the battle against Backseid doesn't go well, thanks to Harley plucking away the fish at just the wrong moment:
Later...
(Okay, I admit I laughed anyway at Rodney destroying the stuffed Yankee Poodle in his anguish. I'm a complicated guy sometimes.)
Howard does have an interest in doing right by the Captain in his modern incarnation, and she lets him transcend the narrative...eventually:
A couple of issues later (#33), the Captain has occasion to mourn someone else—someone with a connection to Harley.
At this point, though, it is kind of weird seeing him struck by grief AGAIN, after we've learned that the dead don't die on Earth-26. And it's quickly made clear that Harely Quinn (Harely, not Harley) will be no exception to that:
...will have nothing more to do with Captain Carrot, so we’ll stop there.
Not every Captain Carrot appearance of late has revolved around death and destruction. There was one story in 2023's Legion of Bloom featuring him as a father--we'll get back to that one, I'm still saving a little for the last few installments.
And in 2019's Dog Days of Summer #1, Captain Carrot, President Superman, and Judge Dredd--sorry, I meant Atomic Batman, don't know HOW I got those two confused--face off against a Zoo Crew turned evil (well, cartoon-evil) by their world's angry sun. Little Cheese shows off a previously unseen power to take out Supes, and then the trio's down to two. This is basically a buddy comedy, with CC teaching the grim, grokkin' Atomic Batman how laughter leads to outside-the-box solutions:
Still, by now, you're probably seeing some limitations to the "cartoon physics" approach. If Zoo Crewers can do whatever and bounce back from anything, then what really matters? Why care about any stakes or apparent deaths that will be forgotten by their next appearance?
But there was one 2020 story that made use of the cartoon-physics thing to create stakes--because the Captain let his world's seeming invulnerability lure him into complacency. A seed was planted when the Captain met "main" Justice Leaguers Barry Allen and John Stewart in 2019's JLA #26:
Arthur Adams, who had sent the Captain Carrot comic a drawing before the start of his career, contributed a gorgeous variant cover for the story itself. And James Tynion IV knew how to lend some weight to the script (Dark Nights: Death Metal: Multiverse’s End):
When we catch up with the Captain, he's throwing himself into his work:
That’s kind of what life is like as a DC superhero these days, isn’t it? Just chugging along and hoping the next reboot will be kind to you. While the Captain gets put through the wringer here, he ends the issue hopeful and unbowed, commanding the respect of the Green Lanterns who once didn't know what to make of him.
“Guys like Superman? They look up to me.”
(Honestly, I'm almost as impressed by Guy Gardner here. He's come a long way from his days as icon of toxic masculinity, even if he does revert now and then.
But that's another talk.)
Still, I feel like the "Captain Carrot's world is destroyed" stories need at least a ten-year gap between them to be effective. The Captain himself died once again alongside DC's biggest heroes in 2022's JLA #75, "Death of the Justice League," so there hasn't even been a two-year gap between Zoo Crew deaths of late.
Not every 21st-century appearance by Zoo Crewers involves any of them getting killed--but so, so many do! To some degree, that's related to what seems like a company-wide creative rut. DC is putting out a lot of good individual stories and character arcs, but on the macro scale, almost everything it's had to offer of late skews into another version of Crisis on Infinite Earths. The company's current "All In" project doesn't seem to be breaking out of that pattern.
The Zoo Crew's Cartoon Age is still a big improvement over their Dark Age, and one can't just wish their Classic Age back into existence. Still, it may be time to imagine a fourth age for these characters, one in which they carve out more of a place of their own.
And maybe one where the Captain spends a bit more time with the Crew. That way, the rest of them would get more attention, making them less vulnerable to seemingly arbitrary changes. ("Innocent little" Yankee Poodle? I ask you...)
Next: A quick roundup of the Zoo Crew's solo activities. I mean, it's got to be quick, 'cause there's not a lot.
no subject
Date: 2024-08-05 08:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-05 11:29 pm (UTC)Two is that since Rodney clearly changed in the 2014 reboot, it's logical to think the other Zoo Crewers have changed as well. I can't even fault that logic, but if you change them in a way that I can no longer recognize the core of the characters, then I ain't gonna like it.
Of course, no one cares what *I* think, but it also seems like it'd make it more difficult to sell Showcase collections.
no subject
Date: 2024-08-06 12:12 am (UTC)