icon_uk: (Default)
icon_uk ([personal profile] icon_uk) wrote in [community profile] scans_daily2011-05-23 12:36 am

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

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 [personal profile] 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!
q99: (Default)

[personal profile] q99 2011-05-23 01:29 am (UTC)(link)
They look rather attractive :)
salinea: (stfu)

[personal profile] salinea 2011-05-23 01:51 am (UTC)(link)
awwww adorable ♥ I do love me some bickering siblings dynamic.

[personal profile] turtlefu 2011-05-23 02:08 am (UTC)(link)
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.
big_daddy_d: (Default)

[personal profile] big_daddy_d 2011-05-23 02:57 am (UTC)(link)
Soo...any idea why the Hardy Boys look like they belong in Street Fighter?

[personal profile] ukefied 2011-05-23 04:22 am (UTC)(link)
Ahahaha love it. XD The Hardy Boys will always be precious to me, and I've been enjoying the graphic novels of late.
tsunamiwombat: (Default)

[personal profile] tsunamiwombat 2011-05-23 06:08 am (UTC)(link)
I've got such a raging clue right now.
proteus_lives: (Default)

[personal profile] proteus_lives 2011-05-23 07:02 am (UTC)(link)
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!

[personal profile] arilou_skiff 2011-05-23 10:05 am (UTC)(link)
It's very explicable: It's not standing up it's hanging down. They're upside down!

[personal profile] whitesycamore 2011-05-23 10:22 am (UTC)(link)
I had a similar moment of realization Re: Goku hair.

[personal profile] whitesycamore 2011-05-23 10:30 am (UTC)(link)
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.
greenmask: (Default)

[personal profile] greenmask 2011-05-23 12:22 pm (UTC)(link)
YOU TAKE THAT BACK ABOUT PRESUMABLY CHET MORTON!!!
greenmask: (Default)

[personal profile] greenmask 2011-05-23 12:28 pm (UTC)(link)
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!
greenmask: (Default)

[personal profile] greenmask 2011-05-23 12:30 pm (UTC)(link)
I did wonder, but Chet was the one who (in my memory) was the most bumbling in speech, more likely to use out of date phrases or terms of whatever trade re: his hobby of the week. I'd assume that Phil was just clever, clever enough to know how to talk like a usual teen.

[identity profile] djt2445.livejournal.com 2011-05-23 01:10 pm (UTC)(link)
... and then you look at Nancy Drew: New Cases Files 3: Together With the Hardy Boys, and you realize it's Nancy Drew doing the holistic healing thing and you're just waiting for the hair to go down...

[personal profile] whitesycamore 2011-05-23 02:18 pm (UTC)(link)
Hee, but unless they rendered these perils pictorially (preferably with lots of side-parted hair, v-necked sweaters with collared shirts, and noble young handsome-in-a-fifties way visages in distressed but defiant profile) it just wasn't the saaaaaame - and this particular book that I had didn't. I prefer to think of myself as just a very discriminating nine-year-old, not a jaded one!

[identity profile] djt2445.livejournal.com 2011-05-23 02:19 pm (UTC)(link)
... and then she tests out why they're called the Hardy Boys, eh?

(You really should post a picture of that cover here- I can't work out how to do it.)

[personal profile] whitesycamore 2011-05-23 02:20 pm (UTC)(link)
Ok, ok, I will allow that maybe Chet Morgan (?) is not an annoying dick in most of the other Hardy boys books! (I was going to be all stubborn about it but the all-caps frighten me).

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