A whole lotta toys UNIT:E and... I really DO have the best friends

[icon_uk]

I've been meaning to post properly from this for a while now, and now have TWO very special reasons to do so.





A one-off special comic produced for the 2011 New York Comic Con, UNIT:E was a sort of excuse to canter through a significant number of their dormant licensed properties, and boy did writer Andy Schmidt deliver that in spades!!

We open with a young man awakening in a spacecraft that has arrived in the Sol solar system where he is met by a rather odd couple of associates... (There is a sort of secondary narrative in the lower panel of most of the narrative pages, flashing back to the young man talking things over with his father many years before, as his Dad tries to pass knowledge of his own heritage down to him)



Synergy is, of course, the self aware artificial intelligence that was the hologram generating power behind the career of Jerrica Benton aka Jem.

This is the Synergy doll from 1987 and later this year, courtesy of Integrity Toys THIS is Synergy too.

MInor aside is that Synergy's origin always felt slightly odd in the show, she was designed and built by Jerrica's father as an experimental audio-video entertainment synthesiser with holographic projection capability, and was, at one point, noted as being a couple of decades beyond anything else that existed, but we never found out exactly HOW Mr Benton was able to make so many breakthroughs.. Maybe she IS an alien AI who happened to pass by Earth and stuck around... who knows?

Anyway, that aside about the holographic purple chick to one side, back to the story....

The ship has arrived near Earth, and our hero has a question.




Note that Synergy sort of dodges the question there! :)

They manage to avoid an assault on their spaceship from (unseen by us) attackers AND dodge an asteroid field. Once they're safe (for the moment) hero-boy asks Synergy for more information about these heroes she's found...

Check THIS spread out folks...



So, amonsgt others we have the GI Joes, Transformers, MASK, Action Man, a Candyland fairy, Jem, a Battleship in space, He Man and Battle Cat (or close approximation thereof since they're not Hasbro properties), a dwarf from "Dungeons and Dragons" and others... (Also "As you wish" is Synergy's most common respsonses to Jerrica's instructions in the Jem cartoon)

And this is the reason I posted this.... I recently got a chance to purchase the pencils for the above pages (my first double page splash!) and it's rather awesome IMHO... but as proof that I DO have the absolute best friends, a buddy in the US who took delivery of the pages because the seller wouldn't ship to the UK, discovered that the inked pages were also available from another seller and got them for me as a surprise present! Enjoy! :) (I know I do!)

We then get some single and double page introductions to some of the above (Not those with current series or active toy lines, so the Joes and the Transformers have that as their only appearance)

Stretch Armstrong is mentioned as the first public superhero on Earth and gets a two page spread.

The police guy in the full face helmet in the spread above isn't a member of the C.O.P.S., as I had expected, but a new iteration of that OTHER acronym named team - the Mobile Armored Strike Kommand... aka M.A.S.K.



Next up is Jem herself.. alas the artist only reproduced the poses of Jem and Jerrica from the old doll boxes, so I don't feel too bad about trimming it... Synergy introduces her as "She is Jerrica Benton, but that is only for now..."



So.. Jerrica Benton as Lynn Minmei? :)

Since Action Man is British, I'm including his page, just because!



Dr X is the regular bad guy in Action Man, though Action Man... sorry THE Action Man being a lineage rather than an individual, and Dr X being a rogue Action Man is new...

Battleship: Galaxies gets a look in

And then this impressive double page spread!



Time Travellers, Space Gliders, Baron Karza, Biotron, Microtron... the non-Marvel-created gang is all here!

Mention is also made of a shadowy, unknown group called Unit:E... explorers who investigate "The Eerie, the Else and the Eternities of Infinity" and who operate out of Skybolt, a "phase station" floating in the Slipstream. Synergy can't detect them there, and when our hero asks how he's expected to find them she replies "You're not. If you do your job properly, THEY'LL find YOU"

And I include this page for the chutzpah of the concept, if you're going to throw EVERY character concept into the mix, why stop before you get to the truly oddball, like Princess Lolly!



(I suppose if you're powerful enough, eccentric choices in apparel are your prerogative)

That leads us on to Primordia, a name that Hasbro has licensed, but never, AFAIK, developed. It's outlined here as a weird world full of giant plant and animal creatures that seem to be a bit daikaiju-ish. And it's not clear whether they'd ever be an ally, or more of a threat in their own right.

Our hero isn't overly impressed with these heroes, most of them seem so... frail. Synergy points out that they're his only hope of defeating his enemies. and reminds him of what his father had said to him in the past, about seeking true heroism above anything else, to gather heroes, to reclaim his world, and in the process, restore the honour of his own title;



as ACROYEAR!

(Not to be confused with Marvel's Acroyear, a very different sort of race)

So that was fun wasn't it? A one off romp with some big ideas, some fun nostalgia and nothing more expected of it..

Comments

[bewareofgeek]

I'm pretty sure that "He-Man" panel is actually Drizzt Do'Urden. Hasbro must have the Forgotten Realms toy license.

And you left out that the titular "Unit-E" is almost certainly CENTURIONS. (Unit Extreme?).

[icon_uk]

Wasn't sure about the Centurions, partly because their base is named Skybolt, rather than Skyvault, but you're quite possibly correct.

[jmacq1]

Hasbro actually owns Dungeons and Dragons outright, including all its' campaign settings except Dragonlance. They bought Wizards of the Coast several years back.

And yeah, the general concensus among toy geeks is that Unit-E was intended to be a reimagining of the Centurions.

As a toy collector, this little one-shot was all sorts of cracktastic goodness, the only downside being that it was, in fact, a one-shot, and despite some solid reinventions for old franchises, there was no indication that Hasbro intended to follow up on any of it.

Then again...there's apparently an Action Man movie in the works....

[selke]

I'm actually digging the Synergy design. Thanks for sharing! :D

[icon_uk]

It is rather funky isn't it, I like that she's not a complete person, but floating interactive body parts... though she should have kept the headband and chest symbol...

[dewinged]

Hrm. Everything else, they seem to keep to established Lore. But M.A.S.K gets a complete reimagining. Darnit.

[icon_uk]

I'd say Jem and Action Man both get reimagined (Synergy as alien AI, and Action Man as an earned title stretching back centuries)

As a red-blooded Britishman and child of the 1990s, I have only this to say...

[captainbellman]

What, no Mighty Max?

Re: As a red-blooded Britishman and child of the 1990s, I have only this to say...

[icon_uk]

Whilst I thoroughly endorse your taste in toy/cartoons (Tim Curry AND Tony Jay = Awesome), Mighty Max was a UK originated toyline distributed by Bluebird Toys over here, and Irwin Toys in America (and progenitor toyline Polly Pocket was distributed by Mattel in the US), so not a Hasbro propery

[citygod]

Does that Action Man have bendy grippy hands? A speaker in his chest? A tab on his side? If not, he's an impostor and this isn't canon.

[silverzeo]

Syn says she constucted the image, as there is nothing of ActionMan on film... though I do hope they end up with the CGI sports-star Action Man with the calculator-mind instead of the G.I.Joe knock off one....

[icon_uk]

Eagle-Eyes or nothing!
!

THe Anwser to Synergy...

[silverzeo]

ODT Part 1: Rock 'n' Shock by *TF-The-Lost-Seasons on deviantART


ODT Part 2: Gimme a Gimmick by *TF-The-Lost-Seasons on deviantART


ODT Part3:She's got the Power by *TF-The-Lost-Seasons on deviantART


And a little fan-crossover

noks holos n synths OH MY by ~kaeae on deviantART

Though yeah... I kinda have to ask... Synergy seems to have limitless potential with her abilites... but what does Jerrica use her for? ... to become someone else for a reason that hasn't been explain (is it illegal to BE in the band that your company owns?) and to keep a secret from her boyfriend who she could have told at the start of the whole "Jem" thing but doesn't for some reason never explained and continues to dig her hole even deeper by not telling him and begins to have him cheat on her while she cheats on him and him... and she was even told by Synergy that her boyfriend loves her no matter WHO she is because he loves her solely but she still doesn't tell him....

Also... I kinda wish for a "Happy Ending for Team Rocket episode" thing for the Misfits, you know, when they get the happy ending while the "heroes" get the short end of the stick for the change... cause we do get reasons to sympathize with them, like how Pizazz's anger comes from her mother walking out and her father's failure to even care for her, but we never had an episode to like them... except when they showed up at the end of the show itself...

And to end this... has anyone figured out how that "Behind the Music" episode worked out? Was it a show for the bands or the show itself? If ever case, did the Misfits and Stingers knew Jem's secret? And how come everyone else looked and talk to the camera while Jem couldn't? And did the opening was really interrupted or did they just played the intro again to interrupt it? Was it one of those meta-comedy things that the Garfield the Cat tends pull on his show? Or what?

Re: THe Anwser to Synergy...

[dewinged]

I saw these, and they're awesome, but where's the next parts? What happens next?

Re: THe Anwser to Synergy...

[icon_uk]

Fun comics! (I've also seen the Sixth Doctor/Jem crossover (Mel is a fan of the group, the Doctor is more interested in how they have hologram-tech)

And I suspect that given Synergy's abilities, Cold Slither are about to find more stage affects than they counted on, and rather hostile ones at that.

On the plus side, they should think themselves lucky they didn't interrupt a Misfits concert, Pizzazz would introduce them to more pain than any three ninjas.

Jerrica created the Jem ID because she A) was an up and coming executive and didn't think anyone would take her seriously if she entered as herself, and B) she only intended Jem to be a one time deal to win the Battle of the bands, then discovered she'd have to keep it going for six months because of the deal Howard Sands offered.

And yeah, not telling Rio from day one was a shitty move solely for plot momentum.

Re: THe Anwser to Synergy...

[icon_uk]

Jerrica's reluctance to tell Rio would have had an interesting underpinning based on comments from Christy Marx about an episode that was planned but never made.

Rio would have formed an attachment to a kid at Danse's "Haven House" a home and drop in centre for runaways and street kids. We'd have found out that the kid had an alcohlic father, and that Rio had a similar past, and as well as explaining why he was always hanging arounf the Benton household (aside from Jerrica herself, Emmett and Jacqui were sort of surrogate parents to him) a result of his father never keeping promises about giving up drinking, or being there for him when he said he would be (because he was drunk) etc, Rio had an absolute loathing of deception and lying, which he views as a sort of betrayal.

The one and a half times we saw Rio really blow his top (which didn't involve someone he cares about being threatened) are both based on discovering someone lied: One when Kimber, when she accidentally made dates with two guys for the same night, but hadn't told either of them that she was also seeing the other leading to a fight, and the half, when Synergy allows Jerrica to make a dry run of telling Rio the truth by creating a projection of him which will, based on her knowledge of him, react as he most likely would (he doesn't take it well)

So not telling him the truth from the outset was a very, very bad idea for Jerrica and at some level she knew it.

Re: THe Anwser to Synergy...

[jmacq1]

I apologize if everyone here already knows this, but it's always been interesting to me as an adult because I didn't realize it as a kid.

Sunbow (the company that made pretty much all the Hasbro-based toons of the early-mid 80's) actually made several nods to a "shared universe" between the shows during their many runs. Most of the links fell between the two "biggest" of course (G.I. Joe and Transformers), but Geraldo Rivera-like character "Edgar Ramirez" made appearances on G.I. Joe, Jem, and Inhumanoids (and maybe Transformers but I didn't follow them as much so I'm not sure). Additionally, the late-addition Inhumanoids character "Saber Jet" shared a "real name" with the G.I. Joe pilot character, Ace, and may have been intended to be the same character.

With G.I. Joe and Transformers it was all but spelled-out. In the later seasons of Transformers the character of "Marissa Fairborne" was intended to be the daughter of Flint and Lady Jaye from G.I. Joe, and an elderly Cobra Commander (in an absolutely hilarious getup) makes an appearance in one episode as "Old Snake", even going so far as to try to give the old battle-cry but having it interrupted by a fit of coughing.

Of course, from Sunbow's perspective these were likely just fun little easter-eggs for those kids that were old enough (and geeky enough) at the time to appreciate them, but it's fun to speculate.

While it's most likely simply a case of recycling trademarks, C.O.P.S. also may have (intentionally or otherwise) served as an indirect sequel to G.I. Joe, with several of the C.O.P.S characters sharing "file names" with G.I. Joe characters, and the leader of the team (Bullet-Proof) possibly having been a member of G.I. Joe's "Drug Enforcement Force" in the past (They even made an action figure). Of course, none of this was explicitly spelled out, but a fair number of fans speculate that basically if you add "Jr." to a few of the C.O.P.S. characters' real names that the Joes may have had a lot of kids joining that organization in the future.

[werehawk]

Who is the plant monster in the top right corner of the spread?

Great post BTW - very enlightening!

[majingojira]

They are from an obscure Hasbro toy line called "The Inhumanoids" all about monsters rising up from the depths and a war to stop the worst of them.

[jmacq1]

And only now, after several read-throughs, do I realize that Acroyear's sword has the symbol of the Arashikage Clan (Snake Eyes/Storm Shadow from G.I. Joe) on it.

Nice touch. Makes virtually no sense, but nice touch.

[icon_uk]

If you're even vaguely affiliated with GI Joe, including merely appearing on the same panel as them in one one-off comic, you're automatically a ninja.

[sir_mikael]

Omg MASK!

[icon_uk]

Something for everyone with Unit:E! :)

Action Man?

[big_daddy_d]

He's back? Hell yes!! I love Action Man!

[endis_ni]

Woah, my childhood just showed up!

I have a BSc in Artificial Intelligence. Looking back now, it's really, really obvious who put that idea in my head...

[icon_uk]

I confess, based on some of your comments on other posts in the past, I've been waiting for you to show up on this post! ;)

[generator_rex]

I think I see Tatsurion the Unchained from Kaijudo: Rise of the Duel Masters. He's the monster next to the M.A.S.K. dude.

[halloweenjack]

I'm terribly amused that they've got a Candy Land tie-in; the game was a favorite of mine when I was very young, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that absolutely no strategy is involved.

[icon_uk]

If they can make "Deal or no Deal", a "gameshow" despite the fact the game is made up entirely of random chance that the player can't even begin to influence, anything is possible.