Worlds Greatest Comic Magazine

Anyway, on to The Diabolical Duo Join Forces, a clumsy, clumsy title for a disappointingly lackluster story. Though it’s a Lackluster Lee/Kirby story so that means it’s still pretty friggin’ bonkers.

Anyway, the issue opens with the FF returning to their apartment headquarters (finally revealed the be the World Famous Baxter Building) in order to answer some fan-mail! Reed explains that the reason everyones costumes aren’t destroyed by their powers is because of the Unstable Molecules he invented, and Ben get’s some hatemail from the Yancy Street Gang. That’s three firsts in the same issue, heck almost the same page.

But the mood is immediately soured when Reed points out that, despite being superheroes, their first two Major Villains, Doctor Doom and Namor managed to get away from them, and who knows WHAT dastardly plans they could be up to now!

Which then cuts away to Namor frolicking with dolphins. Dude just needed some time to himself to get over the grief of seeing his civilization destroyed and he calmed right down. Sadly, that doesn’t last long, as Doctor Doom (still flying in his shark-helicopter) tracks him down and follows him to Atlantis.

Doom wants to team up with Namor since, out of everyone on Earth, Namor is the closest there is to a peer for him. Or at least Doom considers him the least farthest thing from a peer he could consider having. Anyway, Doom grants an impassioned speech about how tragic it is that Namor lived to see his entire civilization destroyed while he was suffering from amnesia and how its even more tragic that Namor isn’t devoting himself to destroying the surface world all the time in order to avenge it, and BOY OH BOY would it set the souls of his lost people to ease to know that the Fantastic Four (except Sue, of course) were dead and buried.

Dooms laying it on kinda thick, but it has the desired effect, as before you know it, Namor is 100% in Dooms camp, and Victor reveals the secret weapon he’s invented to kill the FF once and for all; a small, but absurdly powerful magnet called a Grabber.

The next day, Namor just walks up to the World Famous Baxter Building and demands to be let inside to meet the Fantastic Four in order to declare a truce between them all while declaring everyone on the street to be Peasants and fools and pretty much immediately marking him as the Namor we all know and love today. Well, some of us know and love.

…marking him as the Namor that is acknowledged, let’s say.

While the FF argues amongst themselves about whether or not to trust Namor, he plants the Grabber in the corner of the room and, after Reed accepts that they should at least try to trust him, it activates, and Doom uses its irresistible magnetic pull to rip the Baxter Building out of the ground and throw it into the sun!

Namor is, understandably, kind of cheesed off that to learn that he was just a disposable pawn in Dooms revenge plan, so he makes the truce he falsely declared official, and teams up with the FF to stop the rocket Doom was controlling the magnet from. Which is handy as the vacuum of space is much more inviting for someone with aquatic powers than it is for someone with the ability to control heat, stretch far, or Is Strong.

Namor tears apart Dooms rocket (after jumping straight up to it after leaping out of the Baxter Buildings pool like a dolphin), and kicks Doom out of the airlock, directly into a speeding meteor that carries him farther away from the Earth. A fate that, even by the spurious logic of silver age comics is pretty much As Dead As You Can Be. Then Namor reverses the Grabbers pull and settles the Baxter Building gently back into its foundation, before leaving, mentioning that he’s definitely going to try to kill everyone later.

And the entire population of New York collectively assumes that a building being ripped out of the ground by a Science Wizard, sent into space, and then gently replaced by the King of Atlantis was just the usual kind of stress-related mass hallucination you’ve come to expect from living in the Atomic Age, and go about their day. God, I love Marvel New Yorkers.

Next Time: The Day the Earth Stood Still

Fourth World Recap

Back to Supermans Ex-Pal Jimmy Olsen (they’re friends again) with The Saga of the D.N.ALIENS, which picks up right where the last issue left off; with a Hulk-like Jimmy Olsen clone fighting a Captain America-like Manhattan Guardian in the depths of The PROJECT, with the Newsboy Legion, Jimmy and an enervated Superman watching.

The Newsboys are transfixed, and Scrapper Jr. says “Take it from Scrapper, this is a Scrappers Scrap!” and I can’t really tell if I love or hate that line of dialogue.

Guardian and JIMMY HULK THE MURDER MACHINE are too evenly matched (one’s fast, one’s strong), but luckily the fight is resolved when a platoon of ant-sized Scrapper clones parachute in and drop bombs full of sleeping gas on HULK JIMMYs face, and then blasting him with enough liquid nitrogen to freeze him with ice as strong as steel. Regular Jimmy apologizes to Superman for being a jerk after Superman risks his life to protect him from the Kryptonite-powered HULK JIMMY.

Back at the Evil Factory, Simyan and Mokkari are getting chewed out by Darkseid, because every part of the Hulk Jimmy plan totally failed, and we’re also shown a whirlwind tour of the Evil Factory, and learn its purpose is to create specialized monsters and spies for Darkseids conquest of Earth (how “a factory that cranks out monsters every month” isn’t the driving force behind every superhero comic I’ll never know. Power Rangers does it!) and that it’s an Sinister Counterpart to the DNA Project. And I mean “Sinister Counterpart” as literally as possible. They took every inch of the place and mirrored it. Complete with it’s own Mountain of Judgement and Zoomway and Wild Area inhabited by a Biker Cult.

Unfortunately for Mokkari and Simyan, they’re not nearly as good at cloning as PROJECT is; as HULK JIMMY was as intelligent and useful a minion as they’d been able to create, so instead, in the tradition of all good and proper monster factories, they took a basic human template and set all the creation sliders to maximum and hoped that the resultant mutant would be enough to demolish PROJECT.

Meanwhile, at PROJECT (I’mma just call it Cadmus from now on. The all-caps is starting to wear on me), Superman gives Jimmy a tour, explaining that they’ve not only been able to create perfect human clones (in regular and fun-size. The Guardian is a clone of the original Guardian who died only recently), they’re mastery over DNA also allows them to create improved humans, such as the super-genius Hairies (so called because they have hair-trigger brains, not because of their pelts) and even edit it further to create creatures not recognizable as human; such as the head technician Dubbilex;

Despite looking like that, Dubbilex is, in fact, a good guy.

Back at the Evil Factory, the egg that Mokkari was bombarding with strange radioactive mists has hatched giving birth to The Four Armed Terror!

Which may be the least imaginative name Kirby ever came up with. And since this is a series with people named Scrapper Jr., Darkseid and DeSaad, that’s saying something.

Smiling Stans Favorite Son

Folks, we’ve seen some pretty kickin’ rad/crazy-ass stuff in the first quarter of this series. We’ve seen redundant dinosaur armies, men made of bees and whatever kind of nonsense was going on in that Sunfire episode. But this one… hooooooboy.

Seven Little Superheroes
Written by Doug Booth

In which all at least one, perhaps, of your favorite superheroes battle the Chameleon, channeling both Dracula and Agatha Christie.

The episode opens with a shot of The Chameleons Haunted Castle in the Middle of a Lake during a thunderstorm (the best possible establishing shot) within which the Chameleon himself is speaking to nobody in particular about his nefarious plan to lure seven super heroes to his lair and kill them one-by-one in increasingly elaborate deathtraps. This is noteworthy because, for no reason at all, Chameleon speaks in rhyming couplets, and because while he is doing so he is executing little tiny statues of each of those super heroes with unrelated deathtraps. This ranges from shooting lightning at a little Namor doll, too opening a trap door beneath a Shanna the Jungle Queen so that it drops into a teeny tiny lava pit while cackling madly. Also, The Chameleon sounds like Mr. Slate from the Flintstones trying to sound like Dracula. He also changes his appearance to match the different heroes as he’s talking, just in case you weren’t quite able to guess what the Chameleons gimmick was from his name.

It is so beautifully nuts that this has become my new favorite Crazy-ass thing to happen in the first three minutes in the series.

Anyway, cutting away from the Haunted Castle and the Rhyming Dracula dressed like Cobra Commander to New York the Spider-Friends are… just running around pointlessly. Not even trying to justify it by saying they’re “on patrol” or talking about how web-swinging clears the ol’ head or anything. They’re just tearing ass through the city like a bunch of hyperactive toddlers.

The Chameleon apparently predicted this and left written invitations to his secret villain lair on WOLF ISLAND exactly where they happened to be wandering at the time. Spider-Mans invitation is upside down under an eave of a building where he stopped to catch his breath and everything.

Also, Iceman crashes into both Firestar and Spider-Man because he was reading the note while he was piloting his glacier through a crowded street instead of watching where he was going.

Dammit, Bobby.

Peter explains to Aunt May that they three of them have been invited to a Secret Get Together on WOLF ISLAND MANSION and she insists they take her dog, Ms. Lion, with them. Because Aunt May is old and kind of crazy.

Later, the Spider-Friends (and dog) arrive at Wolf Island Mansion and note that it looks exactly as you might expect a place called Wolf Island Mansion would. Iceman freezes the lake so they can all cross which causes Namor the Submariner to burst out of the water, call Iceman a damn fool and express his general displeasure that the mysterious summons to Wolf Island he received also included D-listers like the Spider-Friends, then he storms off to the mansion on his own.

Inside the mansion, the Spider-Friends meet the rest of the guests; Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme, Captain America: The Living Legend and Shanna the She-Devil who… nobody in the show knows about either (according to Wikipedia, she watched her father accidentally kill her mother with a gun when he was trying to shoot her mothers pet leopard, so she decided to become a conservationist and went all jungle-y to fight Poachers.) Then the Chameleon breaks in over the loud speaker to tell the assembled heroes that he is going to kill them one-by-one and give the audience a brief synopsis of each characters powers. Except Captain America, who he just calls a “super-fool”.

Namor doesn’t really want to bother with fighting the Chameleon, and he CERTAINLY doesn’t want to hang out with Iceman, so he decides to just leave, wherin it is revealed that the Chameleon has put a forcefield over Wolf Island because That
Is How
The Chameleon
Rolls

Namor yells at the force field a bit and then the Chameleon chimes in again to give another little short poem about how he’s going to kill everybody.

Seven Little Superheroes, in quite a fix.
One will meet fire, and then there will be six.

Since everyone now realizes that they have to fight the Chameleon they opt to do the reasonable thing and immediately split up. That makes sense when fighting a master of disguise, right? Anyway, the Submariner explores WOLF CASTLE a bit and finds an Olympic sized swimming pool in one of the rooms, and immediately goes for a swim in it. For those not familiar with the comics, Namors powers are fueled by continued exposure to water. But the swimming pool was a trap! A CRAZY ASS trap!

It wasn’t full of water, it was actually full alcohol, which dried up the Sub Mariner, and then a secret LIGHTNING CANNON built into the ceiling shot electricity into the pool setting it on fire!

HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS! THAT JUST HAPPENED!

On the rooftop, Spider-Man is checking around to see if the Chameleon is… just standing around up there, I guess. He isn’t, but he stumbled into another of the Chameleons traps by falling into the mansions chimney. It’s not the flashiest trap, but it hinges entirely on the fact that Spider-Man is awful at his job and thus, it works flawlessly. The Chameleon copies Spideys appearance and leaves him there in the chimney.

Meanwhile in the… jungle (?) Captain America has teamed up with Iceman, presumably because Iceman needs constant supervision. This was a wise decision since Iceman immediately steps into a trap, like, two seconds after Captain America tells him to be careful of the traps they were about to walk into. Cap tries to save him but trips a different trap that causes wooden spikes to rain from the trees (??).

Luckily, just then Spider-Man shows up and tells Cap to leap into a nearby pond because he’ll be safe there. Cap does so and WOULDN’T YOU KNOW IT, it’s actually a pit of quicksand. Spider-Man makes a half-hearted attempt to save Cap with a webline, then runs away laughing when it fails. Somehow, during all of this, nobody thinks that Spider-Man might be the Chameleon in disguise, despite the fact that his eyes are glowing, and his voice has a spooky re verb and the fact that he just buried Captain America in Quicksand and laughed about it.

Though, to be fair, a lot of that can easily be chalked up to Spidey being bad at his job.

The Chameleons deception is revealed when Aunt Mays dog shows up right the hell out of nowhere and growls at him. Also, Firestar and Dr. Strange show up, realizing that the “Let’s Split Up” plan was awful. The Spider-Friends (and tagalongs) follow the dog back to the mansion where Spider-Man is just now climbing out of the chimney. Iceman freezes him solid on the spot thinking he’s the Chameleon again (who… just trapped himself, I guess? I don’t know, I don’t try to understand Icemans thought-processes) and then apologizing when he realizes he almost killed his friend. For the second time this afternoon.

Meanwhile, at the mountains (…how big is this island, seriously), Shanna is… wandering around when suddenly she falls into the next of the Chameleons traps when the entire mountain falls into a drain hole and I am not exactly sure at what I am looking at here. Anyway, Shannas dead. Whatever. Moving on.

The Spider-Friends run off to save Shanna after Dr. Strange gets a telepathic message that she’s in danger (just go with it) and they follow what appears to be Shanna but is actually Chameleon. The dog barks at him again and the Chameleon opens a tiny, dog-sized trapdoor underneath it before running into a cave network in the mountains that have not been flushed down the drain.

Firestar chases the Chameleon while everyone else busies themselves with the dog-rescue attempt. Seperateed from the group, Firestar is beaten when Chameleon opens all the caves secret Liquid Nitrogen vents which is pretty lame compared to every other trap he’s used so far, I have to admit, and dumps her into an empty room.

Chameleon, after changing into Firestar sends a giant robot cyclops after Dr. Strange. The remaining Spider-Friends realize that Firestar is Chameleon in disguise when she does not immediately start setting the robot on fire, but by then it’s too late and the cyclops eats Dr. Strange. Also, Shanna turns up alive after surviving “somehow”. They all chase the Chameleon but Shanna falls down a lava shaft in the middle of the pursuit. I’m not really sure why she even bothered to survive the first trap.

This alos means that Spider-Man and Iceman are the only superheroes left. Lordy. Lordy. Lordy.

Iceman immediately tries to break the forcefield, presumably so he can leave and go get some DECENT superheroes to pal around with, and gets shot by a Heatray for his troubles and tossed into a room adjacent to the one that Firestar was being held in.

Firestar wakes up from her gassing and does what she does best, which causes Iceman to think that the Chameleons plan was to boil HIM. So he cranks up his ice powers to cancel them out, which starts to freeze Firestar again.

Holding back the snark, that’s actually a pretty good plan for Chameleon. The back-and-forth goes on until the temperature changes burst the water-pipes over Firestars room, flooding her and tearing down the wall. Iceman sees his mistake and gets a floor-mounted blowtorch in the face.

Spider-Man starts wandering Wolf Castle trying to find ANY of his friends and falls into YET ANOTHER trap door landing in the web of a giant robot spider. Spidey destroys the robot with an exposed electrical cord and the explosion tears down the wall where the rest of the shows special guest stars are being held prisoner; Iceman in a cage of fire, Namor under a sunlamp, Firestar encased in ice and everyone else in a cage that I THINK was supposed to be electrified, but wasn’t because nobody bothered to animate that part.

Chameleon takes this time to start the islands Self Destruct and goes off to leave in his custom-built Helicopter that says “THE CHAMELEON” in bright red letters. Spidey frees his friends (and Iceman) and Dr. Strange teleports everyone to the roof. I have no idea why he didn’t think to do that earlier, would have saved everyone a lot of grief.

Iceman freezes the helicopter in midair, the rest of the superheroes board it, and Aunt Mays dog out runs a fireball and then everyone laughs because the episode is over. Presumably the Chameleon is hauled off to jail.

‘Tis the Season

I don’t think you’re merry enough. I’ll TEACH you to be Merry. I’ll teach your grandmother to suck eggs!

Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers presents

I’m Dreaming of a White Ranger

We open at Ernies Juice Bar and Gym, with a great many precocious children alternatively singing Christmas carols and Hanukkah songs, even School Bullies-turned-Civic Defenders, Bulk and Skull have shown up to play Santa for the wee chill’rens and it’s all as merry as HELL, except for the one sad little girl who has nothing to be happy about because her father is working on Christmas and nothing, not even topping the official Juice-Bar Christmas Tree can snap her out of her funk. It’s as tragic as the dickens, and a tragedy that Pink Ranger Kimberly can relate to, since her parents are also out of the country in Paris or some such.

But having the WORST TIME of all on this Christmas Eve is Lord Zedd, within his evil Moon Base. But unlike SAD CHILD and the Pink Ranger, Lord Zedd is planning on DOING something about his holiday blues; specifically, he is going to STEAL CHRISTMAS!

“This year, I am going to take over Santas workshop and force those good-for-nothing elves to make some REAL toys” he snarls, producing an evil hypnotic Dreidel.

Less then five minutes in and we have a Best Line of Dialogue.

Zedd sendsRitas Evil Skeleton Brother, Rito to the North Pole to begin Ruining Christmas.

“Next year, Santa, you won’t have to check your list even once, because all the worlds children will be naughty!” Zedd laughs, dramatically.

At the North Pole, some of the Elves are worried that they’re a little behind schedule when there is a tap-tap-tapping on the door and in walks an evil Skeleton with a Laser Sword whose introductions are interupted by Santa;

“I know who YOU are, Rito Revolto, you’ve been a very Naughty boy this year!”

The Elves and Santa are initially reluctant to build evil mind-control toys to distribute to children all over the world, but it turns out that when you’re an evil skeleton with a laser sword, it’s really easy to coerce people.

Zordon catches wind of a threat to Santas livliehood and summons the Power Rangers to the Command Center, which gives them a chance to ditch SAD LITTLE GIRL who is still whining about her dad working on Christmas. The Rangers teleport to the Command Center and Zodorn gives them the skinny in the most expediant way possible;

“Rito has taken over the North Pole, he’s captured Santa and is forcing the elves to Mass-Produce Lord Zedds Evil Christmas Toys”

Oh… my God… that is the best line of dialogue ever written. Or it would have been if it wasn’t followed up by this;

“Because of a combination of the North Poles unique polarity and a cross-current of Holiday Magic, you’re Morphing Powers will not work.”

Tommy is unwavering in his conviction to Save Christmas;

“That’s a chance we’ll have to take. Santa is way too important. We have to save him!”

The Rangers are then teleported to the North Pole where it’s… presumably less cold then you might expect, since nobody really takes the time to put on a coat or anything, and see the terrible state of Santas Workshop;

Ritos minions are all forcing the elves to build the Evil Toys while Santa is tied up in boughs of holly and being smacked with a Nerf Bat every time the Elves slow down production.

Upon seeing that the Rangers are involved now, Zedd sends down Goldar to help Ritos Evil Christmas Plan. Because Goldar is not a known dangerous adversary who has been pretty soundly beaten an average of once every episode up to this point, so he would certainly be an asset in a battle with a comic-relief villain.

The Rangers formulate a plan that if Christmas Magic is interfering with their powers, that, logically, it stop Rito from being able to do anything either; their plan works when, after goading Rito outside of Santas Workshop, he utterly fails to shoot any lasers at them.

The Rangers defeat Rito and Goldar by chucking a lot of snowballs at them while the Evles, free of their skeleton overseer take back the Toyshop with Home Alone style traps and tricks, freeing Santa, and destroying all of the Evil Toys. Elliciting a heartfelt “Bah! Humbug!” from Lord Zedd.

It’s… not really the most noble defeat they’ve ever had.

Back at the North Pole, the Rangers help to repair all the damage that Zedds minions, and refill Santas Sleigh with Good Toys;

“I never would have Saved Christmas without the help of the Power Rangers” Santa says, handing over a special sack full of toys for the Sad Children at Ernies Juice Bar.

Santa also makes a special delivery to the moon where he gives Zedd back all the Evil Toys, Rito and Goldar exchange gifts for their Secret Santa exchange, and Zedd grumbles that “Christmas gives me the willies”

Back at the Juice Bar, Sad Little Girls father showed up after all for some reason. Maybe he got fired or Santa Magic or something? I don’t know. He asked her to buy him some Hot chocolate, so probably the former. Also, Kimberlys parents showed up despite being in Paris so… that’s even more confusing?

Then Sad Little Girl (did she ever get named?) and the other Non-Specifically Sad Children all gather round to sing Silent Night.

And THATS how you save Christmas without a Megazord.

Banded Together From Distant Galaxies

The Time Trap

Buckle up kids, because things are about to get dumb.

Opening, as always, at Fort Vadershroom, this week it’s Bizarro doing the complaining. “Me sick of losing to Super Friends. Me going to back Bizarro World where everything backwards. There, Losing mean WINNING!”

Bizarro has the best dialogue in this show.

Anyway, it’s Grodds turn for expositing their evil plan this week, and he’s built a TIME MACHINE that looks like a key ring fob.

MEANWHILE, AT THE HALL OF JUSTICE

The Superfriends receive a call form Black Manta, who announces that he is presently robbing a boat. It’s obviously part of a Legion plan to lure them away, but I like to think that Manta just calls them up to announce his evil plans from time to time just so Aquaman feels more helpful.

Anyway, of course it’s a trap, and Aquaman and Apache Chief (no idea why he came along), along with Black Manta and Giganta are all sent to 70-Million BC by Grodds Car Starter/Time Machine.

Apache Chief figures that they travelled through a time vortex and is immediately proven right when a WATER DINOSAUR (it looks like a pleisiosaur, except with vampire fangs) shows up to eat them! Manta and Giganta (or Gimanta. Ooooh, that’s a shipping name!) leave them to their fate to dig up buried prehistoric treasure!

Anyhow the dinosaur ceases to be a problem the moment Aquaman remembers that controlling sea creatures is, like, the only thing he can do. He also figures that the best way to employ this is to control all the nearby fish, rather then the dinosaurs for reasons that are best left to the imagination of the viewer.

Meanwhile, Manta goes ahead and starts stealing diamonds from the site of future diamond mines while the Super Friends are distracted. I’m not really sure if that counts as a crime? I mean, sure, the whole Butterfly Effect thing comes into play, but certainly no more severely then it would have for the dinosaur fight a minute ago.

Anyway, when a supervillain is doing anything, so a superhero has to stop them. So Apache Chief and Giganta fight. Or at least she knocks down some rocks and then she and Manta travel back to the present, leaving Apache Chief and Aquaman in prehistory.

MEANWHILE, AT MOUNT RUSHMORE

Captain Cold is going to… erm… steal… it.

He is going to steal Mount Rushmore, one head at a time.

Anyway, this time Samurai and Green Lantern are on the case, and again, they wind up falling into a TIME DOOR, winding up in Camelot!

Which is also in North Dakota? I guess?

MEANWHILE, AT THE HALL OF JUSTICE

Batman and Robin get word (from the chief of police, because Gordon was on lunch or something, presumeably) that Gorilla Grodd and Solomon Grundy are breaking into the Gotham City Treasury.

Anyway, it is YET AGAIN, a trap to leave several Superfriends in the distant past, this time, Ancient Rome (Which was DEFINITELY not in Gotham City) where Batman and Robin are immediately pursued by Legionary Soldiers. At around this time, the rest of the Superfriends realize that they’re co-workers have all vanished off the face of the earth.

MEANWHILE, IN THE TIME OF KING ARTHUR

Captain Cold and Sinestro sneak into Camelot and rob King Arthur of all his gold coins. Green Lantern tries to stop them but, well, he’s awful at his job, so he does not. Moreover, the Knights of the Round Table arrest him for the theft.
MEANWHILE, IN ANCIENT ROME

Grodd just stole a statue. Which is much less impressive then Cold stealing an entire mountain, five minutes ago, but it’s still a crime so Batman tries to arrest him.

Which of course, fails due to Grodds time machine and Batman too is blamed for the theft.

“Grodd did a masterful job of framing us” Batman says. And, you know, he’s not wrong. Green Lantern, sure, I could see him being mistaken for the thief since the odds of there being two brightly colored magic ring-wielding people running around Feudal England are remote. But it’s very difficult to mistake Batman for a literal giant gorilla who can talk.

Anyway, Julius Ceaser decides to sentence them to being eaten alive by lions.

MEANWHILE, AT THE LEGION OF DOOM!

Grodd is pretty pleased with himself, since his plan has managed to get the legion a mountain full of diamonds, chests full of gold and a statue, AND he managed to get rid of half the Justice League. Not a bad days work by any measure. But Grodd doesn’t like just call it a day when he’s done a pretty good job at crime, so he sends the Legion back in time to the Gold Rush and steals all of Californias gold!

MEANWHILE, IN THE AGE OF DINOSAURS

Aquaman actually manages to save the day when he and Apache Chief find the future site of the Hall of Justice, and Aquaman buries his communicator (with its one-hundred-million-year battery) in the ground with an alarm set to go off in 70,001,978 years and 252 days.

The Internet tells me that he set the alarm to got off on September 9th, 1978

Anyway, it works, and when Superman finds a buried radio he immediately figures that the Superfriends have been kidnapped and left for dead in prehistory. And, knowing that, Superman just zips around the planet so fast he winds up in 70 Million BC and rescues Aquaman and Apache Chief.

Which means that Bizarro can as well, so it’s a bit of a mystery why Grodd needed to build a time machine at all.

Anyhow, now that they know what’s happened Superman uses a Geiger counter to find the batteries in the Superfriends’ radios (which were presumably buried with them, wherever they died in the past?) in order to track them down, go back in time to save them before they died.

And if Superman can travel back through time this easily to right wrongs, then, well… it kind of raises some questions about how he chooses to operate.

Anyway, with the Superfriends reunited, the Justice League computer announces that the Legion is probably going to rob the gold out of California, so the Superfriends use Green Lanterns ring to go back there and thwart them.

Anyway, there’s the usual no-stakes-raised fight scene, and AGAIN, the Legion gets away (the Superfriends just plum forgot that Grodd had a time machine…)

Green Lantern just watches them leave (because he’s awful) and vows to stop them… in the future.

Worlds Greatest Comic Magazine

A big part of the appeal of reading old comics like I’ve been doing with these threads, is seeing how characters have evolved over time. I’ve already pointed out how shocking it is to see Ben be a violent monster, when I’m used to him being a lovable grump, and Sue being a simpering doormat instead of The Best Mom Ever. But sometimes… sometimes a character is established right from the get-go. Sometimes, you learn everything you could possibly ever need to know about a character from the first panel.

And this is the very first thing we see when the Fantastic Four become The Prisoners of Doctor Doom!

It opens with a wizard wearing robot armor, surrounded by magical tomes, and a cutom chess set of the FF, created solely so that Doctor Doom, who speaks in the third person and brags about how great he is, can illustrate how they are naught but pawns to him.

Except for the vulture, if this panel showed up in a comic that came out this week, I would see nothing remotely unusual about any of this.

Anyway, one day, a typical, increasingly violent squabble between Ben and Johnny is interrupted by a giant shark-shaped helicopter appearing above the World Famous Baxter Building (still as-yet unnamed), which drops a bomb that covers the entire building in an electrified, fireproof spider-web. Which, understandably, surprises three quarters of the Fantastic Four.

Reed reacts with a somewhat bemused “Oh right, that guy.”, and then explains that, back in college, his roommate was a guy named Victor Von Doom, one of the greatest scientific minds of all time, and an aspiring evil wizard, who was expelled after one of his experiments backfired and left him scarred. And Doom always blamed Reed for the experiments failure and vowed revenge.

Then just plum forgot alllll about him until just now.

Anyway, Doom takes Sue hostage, so the rest of the FF will listen to his demands; first he’s going to take them back to his castle of Doomstadt in Latveria (well, “Doctor Dooms Castle”, and “Far away”, at least), and then he’s going to use a time machine he invented to force Ben, Johnny and Reed to travel back to pirate-times and steal Blackbeards Treasure Chest. Or else he will resume having successfully kidnapped Sue Storm!

And before anyone can say “Wait, you invented a WHAT?”, Doom presses a button on his throne (of course Doom has a throne), and the Fantastic 3/4ths immediately find themselves in THE AGE OF PIRATES! Where Reed immediately beats up a couple of scurvy sea-dogs and steals their clothes, as giant blue onesies with a big 4 are pretty conspicuous even in 1960s New York, let alone The Age of Pirates.

The threes investigation into the whereabouts of Blackbeard, and his fabulous chest, doesn’t go well, as their first instinct is to go to a bar and accept the first drink offered to them by weird, creepy old sea-thieves sitting in a shadowy corner, and are drugged and wake up in the cargo hold of a pirate ship.

This crew of pirates, however, are only used to fighting European merchants and occasionally one another, and not superheroes, so they get beat up REAL bad pretty quickly, and immediately appoint Ben their captain so he’ll stop clobbering them.

And to prove his pirate credentials, Ben also immediately leads them into a victorious raid on another pirate ship, where he steals enough treasure for the whole crew, leading them to praise him father, and give him the nickname of Black Beard (because of his disguise).

Ben briefly considers staying behind in Pirate Times as he’s a respected historical figure, as opposed to a furious rock monster who has a dehumanizing nickname, but the choice is kind of taken away from him because Doctor Dooms time machine wears off and the group are sent back to the present. Also, a tornado struck the ship and blew the treasure to the bottom of the sea. And also presumably killed the crew.

Back in the present, Doom is initially overjoyed to get Blackbeards treasure, as it contains some magical gems that would make him all powerful, only for Reed to reveal that Doom never said anything about bringing home the treasure, only the chest, so he dumped it all out and brought home the box. Doom is, understandably, flustered at RIIIICHARRDSSSS’ actions, so he decides to just suck all the air out of the castle and murder everyone inside it.

FOrtunately, he forgot about Sue (everyone forgets about Sue), so she turns invisible and, finding Doomstadts control room, reactivates the air and disables the traps in the castle. A brief fight breaks out where Ben punches Doom to pieces, revealing him to have been a robot all along (right from the getgo, we have Doombots to blame for Dooms failures). While the real Doom flies away on a jetpack, with Johnny too exhausted to pursue.

Johnny DOES burn the castle to the ground in the attempt, and also manages to turn the moat around the castle to glass by heating it up enough which… is not how fire works.

Next Time: Playing to Our Strengths

‘Tis the Season

The Real Ghostbusters Presents…

X-Mas Marks the Spot

In which The war on Christmas is fought and won.

The Real Ghostbusters was one of those exceedingly rare cartoons based on a movie that often somehow managed to be at least as good as the film that spawned it. And since that movie was Ghostbusters, that’s saying more then a little, that is.

We open on a snowy mountain pass as the Busters are on their way back from a house-call. The boys a little bummed out, partly because they didn’t get paid for this assignment (Ray accidentally singed all the fur of the clients cat) and partly because they’re working on Christmas Eve. All except Peter though, who merely scoffs and says that it’s just another day. It turns out that Peter is down on the Holidays because, as a child, his father was never home to share them with him.

For those who aren’t familiar with minor characters in 25-year-old cartoons, Peters father was a traveling con-man who was constantly run out of town for trying to sell holistic ghost repellant and such.

I love this show and everything about it.

As they try to make their way back to New York in a driving blizzard, the Ecto-1 breaks down and they’re forced to proceed on foot to the nearest service station.

And this is where things get amazing.

As they wander through the Blizzard, the Ghostbusters manage to overlook a huge swirling wormhole right in the middle of the pass and wind up walking straight into what Egon (correctly) identifies as a a town in Victorian England. As they wander through the town looking for a phone to call a tow-truck, they pass a butcher selling a Christmas Turkey to Bob Cratchett, an employee of a greedy money lender named Ebeneezer Scrooge, and Tiny Tim, his invalid son.

You can probably guess where this is going, and it gets better.

As they continue to walk through the streets, Egons PKE Ghost-Detector starts going nuts, and they watch the ghost of Jacob Marley fly out of a window, and three unimaginably powerful spirits enter the building.

Seeing a chance for an easy job, the boys run into the mansion and see Scrooge being confronted by the Ghost of Christmas Past, Present and Future. The Ghostbusters do what they do best and capture the Ghosts, who don’t even put up a token resistance, other then saying

“This Christmas, and all Christmas’ to come will pay the price!”
to which Peter replies “Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard that before.”

I love the idea that Ghosts often threaten to ruin Christmas when being captured. That just feels so immensely right.

Scrooge is elated that four young men in jump suits just ran into his bedroom and blasted ghosts with lasers, right up until Peter gives him the bill for the extermination job. Miserable old sinner of a Miser or not, Scrooge raises a pretty solid point that charging people to save them from otherworldly terrors, and threatening to put them back if they don’t pay up is a might bit of a dick move.

Nevertheless, and true to form, Scrooge does pay for the job and hands over a nickel. But it’s in perfect condition and minted in the 1830s. They’re kind of satisfied with that figuring that the coin was probably worth a lot.

After learning that Scrooge hasn’t even heard of a telephone, let alone own one, they decide to walk back to their car and are surprised to find the blizzard gone and the Ecto-1 in perfect working order.

Egon muses that something about everything they just went through seems familiar, but can’t put his finger on it.

Egon is the smart one, you see.

Meanwhile (?), back in the 1830s, Scrooge has flown his windows open and shakes a vengeful fist at the sky;

“So, you’re not so powerful as I thought. Well, NOBODY interferes with Ebeneezer Scrooges sleep. From this day forth, it is WAR!”

You guys, Scrooge just literally declared War on Christmas after calling out Jesus.

My heart has grown three sizes larger having witnessed that.

Back in New York, Egon loads the Ghosts of Past, Present and Future into the Containment Unit while everyone else heads out to get a Christmas Tree, except, as they walk the city streets, they find something amiss; not only is everyone in the city surlier then usual, and automatically responding to every utterance of the word Christmas with “Bah! Humbug!”, but Fifth Avenue is also entirely undecorated.

They realize whats happened when they pass a bookstore with a display of what has become the best selling novel of the past 150 years; A Christmas Humbug; written by Ebeneezer Scrooge; in which Scrooge reveals that her personally defeated the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, and also declared and won the War on the Christmas.

Ray immediately puts two and two together;

“Oh no… We just Killed Christmas”

Oh man you guys… this episodes only half over and we’ve already had about three or four Best Things Ever.

Back at the Firehouse, they arrive just in time to learn that Egon has already locked Past Present and Future into the containment unit, and there’s no way to get them out without also releasing every single ghost they’ve ever busted. Since that includes, among other things, the actual, literal, Cthulhu, they decide on a different, crazier plan;

Peter, Winston and Ray will go back through the time-portal to fill in for the missing ghosts to show Scrooge the error of his ways while Egon puts on a diving suit and uses Science! to temporarily turn into a ghost, enter the Containment unit with a life-line and haul the Trio to safety.

While Egon searches Ghost World for the three recent inmates, the machinery keeping him from un-ghosting himself starts to break down, and Slimer dedicates himself to extinguishing all the electrical fires while Janine helps navigate.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Busters have no problem heading back in time to Victorian England and begin their plan of Spectral Harassment on Scrooge; this leads to Peter putting on a tu-tu and being hoisted outside Scrooges window while saying “Boo”

While the rest of the Busters efforts at duplicating the Ghosts of Past, Present and Future are fairly lackluster compared to the real thing (such as making Scrooge wear a viewfinder and running him around on a swivel chair to relive his past), Egon successfully finds the real Ghosts and hauls them back to New York shortly before every single thing that has ever died chases him down and kills him.

Egon and the spirits return to 1830s England just before the time-portal closes and the ghosts take their rightful place as Scrooges moral compass. Scrooge seems annoyed at being forced to be harassed by the dead for the third time in one night, but whatever, he’s a jerk.

Present also mentions that this whole rigamarole with the time paradoxes and such forth was all to teach Peter a lesson to appreciate Christmas, even IF his father is a known con-man.

Back in the Present, everything is back to as it should be, with carolers outside the Firehouse, caroling and nobody yelling “BAH HUMBUG” whenever the word “Christmas” is uttered.

As the Busters lean back and bask in the warm feeling of a job well done, Winston makes the comment that he thought that everything in a Christmas Carol was a work of fiction, not something that literally happened, and he wonders what else must really be true.

And then Santa Claus flys by the window, telling his reindeer to giddyup.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you make the Best Christmas Special ever.

Fourth World Recap

The debut issue of Mister Miracle, The Murder Missile Trap (amazing) is… A weird one. If I weren’t already familiar with MMs whole thing, I’d wonder what it was doing as part of the Fourth World, based on the first story. This one is one of those Golden Age style first-issue, no origin type of debuts that Gone & Forgotten covers.

One day, a passing orphan, Scott Free is walking down the road when he sees the worlds greatest escape artist, Mister Miracle (and his assistant, Oberon) preparing for their next big show. He also misreads the situation and thinks that Mister Miracle has just been murdered by a flamethrower-wielding dwarf. No sooner does he realize his mistake than the pair of them are attacked by thugs sent by Intergang!

After Scott helps fight off the criminals, Mister Miracle (real name, Thadeus) gives his backstory (professional escape artist, dead son, planning a comeback tour, owes money to Intergang) and we also are introduced to the guy who put the hit out on Thadeus (Steelhand, so called because he has a hand that is made of steel. Seems to think this is a better super power than it is), after placing a bet about a deathtrap that even MM wouldn’t be able escape from.

After Scott Free shows off his own skill at escaping from traps (with explanations that nobody quite believes, but admit are only implausible, not impossible), he helps Thadeus set up the deathtrap to practice on. Steelhand, however, decides to hedge his bet and just shoots Thadeus from afar rather than risking losing the bet. Then he retires to his hideout where he wiles away the afternoon arm-wrestling robots.

After Scott eases Thadeus’ passing with the help of a strange machine he has strapped to his shoulder (a Mother Box), he puts on Thadeus’ costume and decides to scare Steelhand into confessing to murder. I guess… This part of the plan seems kind of ill-conceived. Steelhand instead captures Scott and straps him to the warhead of an ICBM that Intergang just happens to have lying around and shoots him straight into space in order to get rid of him once and for all (!!!).

Scott somehow manages to escape (again offering non-explanations for how he can pull off seemingly impossible escapes) and then proceeds to beat up Steelhand, since, again, having one metal hand is not a very good power, ultimately capturing m and throwing him off to the police, vowing to take up the mantle of Mister Miracle, and also the friendship of Oberon, in the fight against injustice.

Except for the presence of Intergang and a Motherbox, there’s little to connect the issue to the Fourth World. On the other hand, nothing else has done so good of a job of establishing why I love Intergang as an antagonist so much; they couldn’t possibly think any smaller. Intergang has an ICBM LAUNCH SITE and uses it to fix a bet.

Smiling Stans Favorite Son

SWARM!
Written by Dennis Marks

In which the Spider-Friends do not battle the actual Spider-man villain named, Swarm, because an Evil Nazi Scientist made out of Evil Nazi Bees would be straining credibility, even by this shows standards.

The episode opens with Stan “The Man” Lee narrating about how cool outer space is! HELL YES! This is already my favorite episode! While The Smilin’ Man is going on and on about how Outer Space is both COOL AS HELL and full of Incomprehensible Evil, a meteor that the camera is tracking crashes into a farmyard. A farm, that borders the observatory where the Spider-Friends are on a College-approved Field Trip, no less, under the keen tutelage of some Sciencey-joe named Professor Wells.

The rest of Peteres classmates are pretty non-plussed since the meteor hasn’t landed to anywhere within miles of anything, but Firestar opts to change into her costume and save the day from the peril of her not setting anything on fire within the first three minutes of airtime.

She warns a plane away from the impact zone of the meteor by flying up to the pilots and waving them away (the pilots are pretty non-plussed by this, but considering how Firestar is saving a plane this way an average of once an episode, I guess it’s standard training procedure.) and she gets a face full of meteor for her trouble.

At the impact zone, the meteor has hatched into a blue gas that hypnotizes bees from miles around that all join together into a giant Man Made out Of Bees that starts yelling “SWARM!”. This is FAR less silly then the comics version of Swarm.

Upon seeing a ten-foot tall man-shaped Bee swarm rise out of a meteor containing an unearthly glow, the Farmer who owns the land throws his pitch fork at Swarm and yells “Get your Bees out of here, Mister!”. Which works every bit as well as you might expect. Swarm shoots eye-beams at the farmer who promptly turns into a giant bee-man, then shoots eyebeams at the bee-hive that originally spawned Swarm and made it grow huge.

Seeing Swarm appear, then turning a farmer into a Bee-Man, then turning a Bee-Hive into a building while laughing evilly was all the convincing that Firestar needed that she has a supervillain to fight, so, expectedly, she tries to set Swarm on fire. Unexpectedly this plan totally fails and Swarm overpowers her, and she returns to the Observatory knowing that she doesn’t have a chance against Swarm on her own, she’ll need help from Spider-Man and Iceman.

Which I believe qualifies as being this episodes single dumbest decision from any given Spider-Friend, but I digress.

Back at the Observatory, Peter is using his webshooters to screw with Flash Thompson, and, upon hearing that trouble is afoot, he immediately runs home. Iceman was napping.

Since Firestar put more emphasis on finding her useless, useless team mates then warning anybody, at all, about the whole alien bee-monster thing, the rest of their classmates immediately head to the Meteor where Swarm wastes no time in turning the entire class into more Bee-People.

Firestar shows up again to take another shot at fighting Swarm on her own and, again, her fire atttacks prove to be totally ineffective against the bugs. Thus proving Pokemon wrong. Despite the fact that it was winning handily, Swarm decides to call in reinforcements out of regular, common bees. He shoots eye-lasers at the bees which causes them all to grow Gigantic, and Swarm then sends all the Now Giant bees out to kidnap everyone in New York and turn them into YET MORE Bee-people.

Spidey and Iceman fight off a couple of bees before making theirt way to Swarm. Swarm asks that the Spider-Friends join his Hive and let it grow to consume the planet, and SPidey shoots back that Human Beings have individual minds, not like Insects, and Swarm and the Bee-people all start shooting eyelasers at him. Possibly because that was pretty racist from a Space-Bee standpoint.

Anyway, Firestar and Iceman both get hit right away and turn into Bee People (and also adding flight and Bee-centric Eye-lasers to their existing power sets) but Spider-Man does not, because he already has bug-based superpowers. Really, that’s the explanation given. Spider trumps bee.

Realizing that now the entire world is counting on him to save the day, Spider-Man immediately steals a car and runs away, rationalizing that Swarm must be radioactive, and that if he can shield the radioactivity away from him, then everyone will stop being Bees.

Spidey drives to the University Physics Lab to get some Lab but, because he did not bother to STOP driving his stolen car when he go to the building, instead opting to drive THROUGH the hall, he immediately loses control and drives out through the window, where the stolen car crashes into a flaming wreck in the middle of the football field.

Spider-Man is a hero, and he will save us all.

Spidey escapes the flaming wreck and tricks Firestar and Iceman into following him into a lead-lined room and, against all odds, his “I bet Lead cures Space-Bees!” plan works and they go back to being human. Well, Mutant. Whatever.

Back at the Hive, which has now grown to dwarf most of the surrounding area, the Spider-Friends concoct a plan of wearing contact lenses and fake antenna to disguise the fact that they are NOT bee-people any more so they can sneak into the impact site and steal the meteor that created Swarm. This plan works perfectly despite the fact that Spidey wasn’t wearing wings as part of his disguise and he wasn’t chanting Swarms name.

Firestar takes the Meteor back to the observatory while Spidey and Iceman fight Swarm. A fight which consists of them running away and leading Swarm and his… swarm directly to that same observatory. Not without Iceman knocking down a wall for no reason first.

Firestar has loaded the meteor into a rocket that the observatory has for some reason and, after starting a brushfire to distract Swarm, shoots it back into outer space.

With the meteor back in outer space, the energy holding Swarm together dissipates and he resumes just being regular bees, the Hive shrinks back down to being bee-hize sized and all the Bee-People go back to being regular people.

And so, everyone is happy. Except the guy whose car Spider-Man stole and wrecked. And whoever owned the observatory which was demolished by space-Bees and set on fire.

Join us next time as we see a veritable WHO’S WHO of Marvel super heroes.

‘Tis the Season!

As anyone who has had any conversation with me that’s lasted longer then two seconds can accurately surmise, I likes me some Christmas Specials but, like Eggnog, they are limited to only the last few weeks of the year, or else they go bad. And, I figured “What about all those poor shmucks who are merely stuck watching Stop-Motion Rudolph save Super Racist Santa on TV every year?”.

And so, because this is the season of giving, I have opted to watch some of the truly magnificent ones for you. You’re welcome.

G.I. Joe Presents…
Cobra Claws are Coming to Town

In which Mutt learns the true meaning of Christmas.

Let me start off by saying that the title of this episode is a huge disappointment. I was expecting Cobra to start manufacturing thieving toys to steal things from everybody on Christmas Morning, or that the Commander has Santa imprisoned on Cobra Island and is using his Sack of Toys to build weapons or something. None of that happens. What DOES happen is sufficiently more crazy though, so I am okay with it.

We open with Shipwreck, Covergirl and Dusty returning to the Joe Base with a wagon full of toys from the GI Joe Toy Drive. Just as soon as Shipwreck finishes yelling at his parrot for singing Jingle Bells, the Joes come under fire by Wild Weasel, Cobras ace fighter-pilot with a code-name that would be silly even if he was not a pilot.

The Joes are plainly out matched, since Wild Weasel has a fully armed jet dedicated to ruining a toy drive and they have a jeep and a singing parrot, and wisely choose to run away. After a few minutes, despite Wild Weasel having them pinned inside a box canyon and… you know… totally defenseless otherwise, he just ups and leaves. The Joes are confused, but don’t look a gift horse in the mouth and drive off back to Joe Base.

Turns out the whole Cobra assault was not as it appeared, however! Their goal was not to destroy the childrens toys, instead, Firefly snuck in from behind to add additionaltoys! Evil toys, with sinister eyes that intermittently glow green and beep.

Now, I should point out that Cobras plan here revolved entirely around the Joes choosing to flee into this one specific canyon when under attack and none of the Joes opting to turn around at any point to notice Firefly, a man wearing grey camouflage in a brown canyon rummaging in their trunk.

Back at the base, nobody mentions the weird Cobra attack, or pays any attention to the beeping, glowing toys, instead Duke decides to yammer out some exposition to Covergirl; all but, like, six Joes took Christmas off, and the base has an impenetrable shield so if Cobra attacked, they would be totally safe. It would kind of suck if Cobra attacked anybody else at all, mind, but Dukes okay, and that’s all that matters. And so, secure with the knowledge that these six particular are safe as long as their defenses are in place, they head in for Christmas Dinner.

Now stay with me here folks, because this episode is about to get a little convoluted and a lot crazy.

At dinner, Mutt mentions he doesn’t like Christmas and goes off to sulk on his own, with his dog trailing right behind him. Here, as he approaches the toys for Christmas delivery he reveals his tragic backstory; when he was a child, his parents decorated the house and wouldn’t give him a chance to help.

And… that… that’s it.

That’s the core of Mutts pathos.

Fortunately, just before the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future show up to show Mutt that… that’s a totally stupid reason to hold a grudge against a holiday, he notices the one thing that nobody else in the Joe Base realized; that rocking horses with evil glowing eyes that beep are atypical in many reasons. In this particular case, it is atypical because it’s a Trojan Rocking Horse full of Microscopic Cobra soldiers who have all been shrunk by Destros new Shrink Ray.

HOLY CRAP THAT JUST HAPPENED!

The Wee-Vipers, lead by Tiny Baroness and Travel-size Major Bludd disable the bases defenses and the rest of Cobra pours in through the doors, and, after being returned to normal size, pretty much immediately take over the Joe Base. Which isn’t terribly shocking since it was 6 people eating a turkey dinner against several hundred masked terrorists, robots and tanks.

With the Joes soundly beaten, Cobra Commander shows up to reveal the true extent of his sinister plan; he is going to steal all the Joes vehicles and use them to attack a nearby city, complete with a video of Duke (actually Zartan in disguise) declaring war on Christmas everyone. Then, he has all the Joes strung up on hooks in the meat cooler and leave them there to freeze to death while he… err.. ruins their reputation. Posthumously.

Unluckily for CC, he didn’t count on Shipwreck being so eager to leg-wrestle with a slab of beef;

And because he was stupid enough to leave the keys to the handcuffs in the room. With a little bow wrapped around them and a note that says “Happy Holidays”.

Cobra Commander is, in several ways, not very good at what he does.

The Joes run off to try to stop Cobra but find out that they’ve all already left to attack the city, except Destro, who they overpower pretty easily despite the fact that they’re all unarmed and he has a Shrink Ray. Destro is beaten up pretty severely and the shrink ray is demolished, but not before Shipwrecks parrot gets a Grow-Ray in the face which apparently doesn’t affect him.

The Joes reason that, since Cobra stole all THEIR vehicles to attack a city, it’s only fair that they steal all of Cobras vehicles to attack them. Which they do, and which works startlingly well; the Joes are considerably more skilled at using Cobras machinery then Cobra ever was and all except the Commander in Dukes Sky-Striker are swiftly defeated.

Secure with the knowledge that none of the Joes wouldn’t shoot down the Striker while he had Duke hostage inside it, he prepares to strafe the Joes, all is lost. And then a Christmas Miracle happens.

Remember when Shipwrecks parrot was shot by the defective Grow Ray and it didn’t do anything? Turns out it was doing a lot, and it just needed some time to get fired up; Polly has grown Kaiju-sized, burst through the Joe Base wall and forced the Sky-Striker to the ground after Cobra Commander sees the gigantic bird shrieking at him and he (understandably) freaks out.

And so, the day is saved. Except that everyone in America just witnessed Duke hijack every TV screen in order to declare war, and then saw GI Joes attack on a city thwarted by Cobra forces saving the day.

Oh but there’s more good news; the sight of a fifty-foot parrot singing Jingle Bells and scaring the crap out of Cobra Commander was all it took to teach Mutt the true meaning of Christmas and chase away all of the terrible memories of his tragic past.

HO! HO! HO!