Sibling rivalry, Hardy style... with added deathtraps!

[icon_uk]

So far this weekend, I've made a post which looked at the public reaction to superheroes in the MU which has had some fascinating discussions arising out of it, and a post from Micronauts in which m'learned friend whitesycamoreraised some intriguing points of the treatment of those perceived as "other" in fiction.

This time though, I'm not going for the deep or the meaningful, I'm going straight to cute guys tied up...

Now I don't know how many of you have siblings, I have more than one myself, and I love them all, but one of the things about siblings is that we argue... A LOT... usually over unimportant stuff that we forget about by the next day but we argue, we squabble, we "debate heatedly". It's sometimes fun, often cathartic, and, on mercifully rare occasions (in my experience), destructive.

So one of the things that always irked me a little about the Hardy Boys was that they NEVER seemed to argue. They were always in agreement, always on the same page. Even when steps were taken to differentiate between the personalities of the brothers (Joe being impulsive and intuitive, Frank analytical and logical) they were always in perfect sync with each other that it sort of set my teeth on edge.

Gerry Conway took over writing the Hardy Boys graphic novels from Scott Lobdell as of the last issue, and one of the first things he did was change that...

Sometimes all it takes is a poik in the wrong place....




11 pages from a 64 page Graphic Novel.

As you can see from the cover it's all gritted teeth and garb apparently nicked from Street Fighter, or possibly in this iteration, Double Dragon.









Yay! Fiendish deathtraps are back in vogue (Not that they ever went OUT of vogue to me! :) )





Awwww, pouty Hardy Boys are so cute...

There is a plot to go with the bondage, with the brothers, who despite their filial loyalty ARE getting on each others nerves something chronic (Joe is tired of being the little brother who Frank orders around and gets no respect, Frank is finding Joes impulsiveness aggravating) getting involved in a reality TV show about family rivalry which is having a few to many "accidents"

There's also a nice moment where their father tells them they need to take someone with them to the game to keep them both in check and from sniping at each other too much, someone "Who is as cautious as your mother and worries about you as much as your Aunt Trudie"... and both brothers immediately think of their old buddy Chet Morton.

Clues pile up, as do accidents, but they have difficulty communicating to each other...



Case in point, Joe acts on a hunch and finds a suspect, but in doing so, derails one of Franks plans, and he doesn't take kindly to it.



Oooh, now that's just NASTY Frank, and really asking for it.

Alas (or possibly fortunately) before they can completely come to blows, the shadowy figure in the booth hits that ominous looking switch and...

Now, can you also spot the difference in the before the capture, and the after the capture scenes?







Certainly one of the more painful escapes they've made over the years, and they've made a LOT of them...

They find the villain of the piece, but that person has already been killed by an as yet unknown third party, and it looks like they'll have to team up with Nancy Drew to sort things out, and her first job is going to be stopping them killing each other one feels.



Actually, it looks like her first job is some serious laying on of hands, which is perhaps not the most obvious move, but one I certainly can't fault her for....

Oh, and the difference I mentioned... Note that they're wearing completely different clothes in the deathtrap than they were when they were zapped, so the villain of the piece not only captured our studly young duo and put them in a perilous predicament, but took the time to strip them both and put them in new outfits beforehand. And as they go from one piece singlets to what look like martial art gear, that implies who ever did it didn't just put more clothes over what they were wearing, but stripped them RIGHT DOWN... That's either kinky on a level even I've never considered, or ever so slightly awesome!

Comments

[q99]

They look rather attractive :)

[salinea]

awwww adorable ♥ I do love me some bickering siblings dynamic.

[turtlefu]

I kind of wish we could have gotten a Hardy Boys graphic novel that wasn't so derivative of manga.

Or was it just a one-time thing because it was a parody of Street Fighter?

About them agreeing: some brothers really are like that. I know twin brothers who are different in personality but always on the same page.

[icon_uk]

The art has been very manga-esque since the relaunch a couple of years ago, though this one has been a little more out there than most with the REALLY wild hair. It's the same artist, but a new writer so he may have asked for a different look and wilder hair

[big_daddy_d]

Soo...any idea why the Hardy Boys look like they belong in Street Fighter?

[icon_uk]

Joe's super-Saiyan hair IS inexplicable, but the outfits are part of the TV show I guess.

[ukefied]

Ahahaha love it. XD The Hardy Boys will always be precious to me, and I've been enjoying the graphic novels of late.

[icon_uk]

Very appropriate icon! :)

[tsunamiwombat]

I've got such a raging clue right now.

[proteus_lives]

I would LOL and love a grim 'n' gritty Hardy Boys with an appearance by Nancy Drew.

Someone contact Frank Miller/Garth Ennis and Mark Millar. Ha!

[icon_uk]

What, wasn't the proposed Tom Cruise/Adam Sandler "The Hardy Men" movie enough of a horrible thought for us all?

How Millar would depict Nancy Drew is terrifying to think of.. Sin City: Bayport, is actually making my minds eye boggle. And the things he hint at the whole Fenton/Frank/Joe triangle is creeping ME out.

[halloweenjack]

You know that, no matter what, Nancy would end up in a brothel, addicted to crystal meth, until it was Ennis' turn and then all of a sudden she has a Desert Eagle .50 mag.

[whitesycamore]

I think a relative gave me a Hardy boys book once when I was a kid, because they knew of my affection for Mystery Solving Teens! But sadly I remember it being really sucky... They had this wordy friend who supposedly "talked like a book," but in actuality he just talked like a dick.

They were all written by ghostwriters though, right? So I guess they were probably of variable quality.

Also, even at age nine I was probably mostly dissatisfied with the book because the bondage-peril was not titillating enough, and as everyone knows that is THE ENTIRE POINT of mystery solving boys.

[icon_uk]

Yes, the Stratemeyer Syndicate used ghostwriters, but a lot of them were the same person anyway, Leslie McFarlane being the most notable for the Hardy's.

And given the extent of some of the perils the boys find themselves in (knocked out, drugged, tied up, gagged, tied to harbour supports to drown with the rising tide, nearly blown up, hogtied by an evil rodeo clown, to name but a few) you must have been one REALLY jaded 9 year old! ;)

[greenmask]

YOU TAKE THAT BACK ABOUT PRESUMABLY CHET MORTON!!!

[greenmask]

Oh the Hardy Boys. I love them. I cannot get over this art but I sort of want to, to find out what mah boyyyyz are doing these days.

I mean, they weren't as exciting as Hal and Roger Hunt, but they got in a lot of peril and solved a LOT of mysteries. And they had cars!

Does Tony Prito appear in these new comics? He was specified as handsome, with curly hair. I had a fondness.

I dunno why they're talking about telling mom anything though, she barely ever registered int he stories. Worry about what aunt Gertrude will say!

[icon_uk]

It's actually slightly creepier these days with the boys working for ATAC (American Teens Against Crime) a covert government organisation run by their Dad, which they work for, but which their mother and Aunt Trudy (now reimagined as a much younger woman rather than the classic "battleaxe with a very well hidden heart of gold") known nothing about.

Don't recall if Tony has shown up in the GN's, probably, at some stage...

Oh, and just so you don't go into complete withdrawal

[arilou_skiff]

I don't know the Hardy Boys, must be an anglo thing.

Did read a bunch of teen detective stuff of variable quality. (Wahlströms Ungdomsböcker... With green spines for boy's books and red for girl's... Although given that I A) inherited them from siblings of both genders and B) would read anything with text in it, I didn't care what was what)

[icon_uk]

You might know them under another name, but they did come out in Sweden as Broderna Hardy

and judging by the name across the top of the book in that link, it may well be them! :)

[jarodrussell]

I suppose it's a bit...wrong for me to hope the cover of that cross-over book is Nancy saying, "Step aside, boys, let me show you how a real teen detective gets kidnapped."

[djt2445.livejournal.com]

If the boys weren't growling at each other like wolves about to determine who the alpha male was, I'd say your hopes weren't too far off from the usual Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys teamup tv episode in the 70s.

[endis_ni]

You've convinced me that deathtraps are like Earl Grey with lemon and one of those silver Rolls Royces from the 30s. A well-made deathtrap is a classic forever!

[icon_uk]

Indeed! :)

[wonderwomanhero]

I never got to read When The Clock Ticked or whatever it's called, but I heard it's the one book in the series where they are bound and gagged the longest.
Icon, they aren't gagged! When will they be gagged, lol?

[icon_uk]

Well, it's certainly got one of the best covers for it, as this post demonstrated, and it also shows the Graphic Novel Hardy's gagged, albeit in a rather unusual way... with all the grabby hands...

Not sure if it holds the record for the longest, scene, I think that may be held by" Rough Riding", where they're hogtied by an insane rodeo clown who makes Joe tie Frank up, then ties Joe up, and even includes a loop of piano-wire from their wrists to their throats so if they struggle, they'll cut their own throats! (And that's not even how he plans to bump them off, he's going to send them over a cliff in a burning car)

Other contenders from them as a duo include the "tied to the harbour supports" scene in "The Mystery at Devils Paw", and for Joe solo, the original text of "The Melted Coins".

But it's even more fun to combine my pecadillo's, no? :)

[kaete]

Funny you should mention that you were bored by brothers being in agreement all the time - one of my major pet peeves with families in a lot of genre fiction is that they seem to be at each others' throats ALL THE TIME, especially if one of them is unfortunately female.

With my brothers we were basically the three musketeers and never had a fight past age 4, so I hated that the most common family depiction in comics seems to be enemies or very argumentative.

[baxter2814]

Well, I find there's a big difference between close families who bicker a lot and families who seriously don't get along. I like the former a lot, but I agree that the latter is seriously overdone.

[karunya]

Mmmmm! I don't remember them looking quite as good on the book covers in my elementary school library! Time to introduce these classic characters to my nieces.

[icon_uk]

Oh I think they were always embodiments of what well scrubbed, non-threateningly good looking young men of whatever era they were in would look like, from the suit and tie wearing 20's, to the "Leave it to Beaver" 50's, to the Shaun Cassidy and Parker Stevenson 70's, to the 90210 80's and now the manga-style 00's and 10's! :)

They're pretty/hot heroes for all seasons, so to speak! :)

[wonderwomanhero]

Icon you should post more about them.

[icon_uk]

I would, and could post the odd scene or two, like this one, but many of them are whodunnits, and I really hate spoiling mysteries for people who haven't read them. In Batman comics it's usually more simple, the clown did it, or the guy dressed like a penguin, but a proper mystery? I don't think I have it in me to tell someone the end like that... at least I hope not.

[baxter2814]

Bickering siblings are always my favorite thing ever. (Guilty of being one myself, so I can relate). In my mind, this kind of arguing is not some precarious happy medium between hating each other and agreeing with each other all the time, it's kind of an indicator that two people like each other so much that even though they do argue all the time, they still don't want to part ways, which IMO is more indicative of a close relationship than one where they always agree.

Kinky deathtraps ever go out of style? Bwa ha ha ha ha! I find your lack of faith disturbing. ;D

[icon_uk]

Agreed. The brothers each (separately, and not to each other) go out of their way to stress that they do still love their brother, but that they're just rubbing each other up the wrong way all the time. Chet speculates it's because they are together ALL THE TIME; they're at school together, at home together, solving cases together (I think they don't share a bedroom at home any more, but wouldn't swear to it) that would be enough to drive anyone nuts eventually.

Even their father has admitted (to Mrs Hardy) that he, along with everyone else, tends to think of them as "The Hardy Boys" rather than as two individual sons with their own opinions and approaches to life.

[halloweenjack]

Maybe it's the manga influence, but I am not at all fond of that version of Nancy--way too girly. Oldskool Nancy Drew was much more mature in her appearance. I'd... forgive me... I'd rather have Sk8ter Grrl Nancy than this one.