Banded Together from Distant Galaxies!


The World’s Deadliest Game!

Look, I didn’t put that apostrophe there. If it bugs you, take it up with the Hanna Barbara of 1978.

As per usual, Fort Vadershroom emerges from The Dismal Swamp (with different stock footage!) and a new meeting of the Legion of Doom is called to order; and this time it’s Brainiacs turn to be the plan-guy; a plan that will kill the Super Friends and have everyone pay them to do it!

First, with Black Vulcan, Hawkman and Wonder Woman are building a space station for Nasa, in space, and Brainiac uses an Inviso-ray to make the entire Earth vanish and, while they’re distracted by that, The Toyman will lure them away to an ENTIRE PLANET HE BUILT! INSIDE A BLACK HOLE! FILLED WITH TOY-TRAPS!

I have no flippin’ damn idea how he managed to do any part of that!

And while THAT’S going on, The Riddler will lure all the rest out of the Superfirends on “a wild goose chase that ends OUTSIDE THE UNIVERSE!”

So the Legion is definitely thinking big this week.

So anyway, phase one works fine, the Earth completely disappears and the three Superfriends opt to just head off in the direction of Toymans fake distress call rather then double-check to see if the Earths still there. I mean, the moon is still there, nothing changed its orbit or anything. And they’re able to move faster then the speed of light anyway, so its not like it would take long just to look around…

But anyway, the Superfriends travel to the distress call and SURPRISE it’s a black hole, and it’s got a planet in it. And that planet is full of deadly traps. Because the blackhole wasn’t good enough for Toyman.

“If my instincts are right, this must be the work of The Toyman” muses Wonder Woman, wandering through a giant, murderous pinball machine on a remote-control planet built into the middle of a black hole.

MEANWHILE, AT THE HALL OF JUSTICE…

The rest of the superfriends are getting worried since Hawkman, Wonder Woman and Black Vulcan haven’t been seen in hours, and also the Earth turned invisible for a short while, when The Riddler hijacks their TV to taunt them with a fiendish puzzle!

Riddler wasn’t trying very hard this time, so Batman pretty much figures out immediately that “A Million years ago it was a trickle, hurry or your friends won’t be worth a nickel!” means that they have to hurry to the Grand Canyon, and the nickel mine buried within it.

And so they rush off not thinking for one second that maybe, JUST MAYBE, Riddler wasn’t just tattling on the Legion for no apparent reason, and that leading the entire Justice League to the bottom of a mineshaft could possibly be a trap.

So anyway, leading the entire Justice League to the bottom of a mine was a trap, and Captain Cold and Scarecrow (why Scarecrow?) bury them all alive and also dump a tidal wave on them for good measure.

The Legion also forgot that the Superfriends have at least three super-strong dudes on screen at any given time, and one guy for whom “Swims real good” is his entire deal. And apparently the Superfriends did as well, since Green Lantern is the one who saves the day here.

After they escape, the Riddler offers his next sinister clue; “You better tighten your belt!”.

Which of course, means that the Superfriends are to travel to space and explore Orions Belt.

MEANWHILE, IN THE MYSTERIOUS BLACK SPACE PLANET!

The captive Superfriends are still exploring Planet Murder Toy when they come across a giant dollhouse which is, of course, home to a gigantic mechanical baby. They flee the Giant Mecha Baby by running into the house where Toyman shows up in person (somehow?!?) to taunt them; The black hole is about to close, trapping them on Planet Murder Toy… FOREVER!

MEANWHILE, ON ORIONS BELT, IN A PLANET ORBITTING ITS HOTTEST STAR

The rest of the Superfriends are having difficulty finding their captive pals since, well, they aren’t there. And The Riddler would never lie, so it can’t be that, but then they get help from Empress Zana, ruler of Orions Belt. Deadly help! For Empress Zana sprays them all with pollen that will turn them to stone! Luckily, The Flash and his molecules are too fast to turn to stone, so he spins around everyone until their molecules also speed up and then everyone leaves, like nothing happened.

What is even going on in this episode?

As they leave the not-even-pretending-there’s-drama-with-a-commercial-break-perfil of Orions Belt when the rest of the Superfriends run smack dab into a satellite with the Riddlers face;

“Follow your noses and you’ll hit your mark, somewhere out in the dark!”

So now everyone knows to start searching in black holes because why the hell WOULDN’T Batman just immediately guess the answer to the Riddlers puzzles, regardless of how dumb they are.

MEANWHILE, AT THE LEGION OF DOOM!

Lex Luthor calls up… the entire human race, and announces that he’s taken the Super Friends hostage, and he’ll free them in exchange for All the Money in Every Bank!

“And it won’t be PLAY money” cackles the Toyman, and I’m glad he doesn’t show up more often. His voice is really annoying.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN SPACE!

Superman and the Green Lantern just pop into the middle of the black hole like it isn’t any big deal and, using GLs power ring, they fuse together into Super Greenman (this is a thing Green Lantern can do?) and NOW they have enough power to just mosey on back out of the black hole.

Finally reunited, the Superfriends return to Earth, and visit the International Airport, where the Legion is having all their ill-gotten gains sent. There’s the usual non-violent fight (Superman picks up and throws the entire airport at one point), but Brainiac uses his inviso-ray to turn the Legion invisible so they all get away again.

Justice Has Prevailed! But… for HOW LONG!

Worlds Greatest Comic Magazine

 

Oh dang, we’re about to establish us a Marvel Universe, Y’all! And get to enjoy our heroes standing on some seriously shaky ethical ground. All this… and MORE in The Coming of the Sub-Mariner

Picking up where the last issue left off, the remaining Fantastic Three briefly recap the to one another that Johnny, fed up with The Things short temper and constant attempts to murder him (a legitimate gripe), has abandoned the Fantastic Four forever. And they also figure that they’re not nearly as effective a superhero team without him, so they mount a city-wide search for the youth. Which consists of Sue just wandering the city while invisible, looking for him (and periodically freaking people out by drinking sodas), Reed grabbing people off motorcycles and asking them if they’ve seen anyone with unusual abilities, and Ben bursting into the garage that Johnny spends most of his free time at, fixing up hot rods.

Awww, they fight a lot, but Bens the only guy who gets him.

Unfortunately, the reason they fight a lot is because (back then) Ben had a hair-trigger temper and is as strong as a dozen bulldozers, and it looks very much like Ben is going to murder Johnny wielding a car like a club, knowing that Johnny can’t fight back because of all the gas and oil in the garage.

Aunt Petunias fav’rite nephew has… quite a ways to go to being the Lovable Grump we know today.

Johnny, again, pretty understandably, doesn’t want to be near Ben at all, so he flees the garage (yelling “FLAME ON” while using his powers for the first time), runs off to a homeless shelter, where he finds a bunch of residents hassling am amnesiac, delirious man, and he calms the (increasingly violent) crowd down by explaining that the delirious homeless man just needs a haircut to become sane again (look, it was the 60s, we didn’t have a good handle on mental health solutions back then), and offers to help by burning the mans beard off by turning his hand into a blowtorch.

And upon realizing that the clean-shaven homeless man looks weirdly similar to Namor: The Sub-Mariner (who Johnny knew about from stories Sue used to tell him, and also, presumably, from History classes), Johnny decides that the bset thing to do would be to toss him into the Ocean, figuring that being exposed to water would jar his memory and cure his amnesia. Or, if it’s not Namor, drown him. You know, whichever.

For those not “in the know”, Namor is basically exactly Aquaman, rightful heir to the throne of Atlantis, half human on their fathers side, able to replicate fish-traits and communicate with sea-life. Key difference is that Aquaman has a shirt and pants, as opposed to tiny shorts and sometimes a vest.

Fortunately-(ish), Johnny Storm did not drown a homeless man on the grounds that he looked pretty similar to a superhero nobody had seen in twenty years; the sea water revived the homeless man who WAS, as it turns out, Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner. And he quickly swims off to Atlantis to be reunited with his people… only to find the city is a radioactive ruin, completely abandoned by the leaderless Atlanteans. And he immediately declares war on the human race, and swims off to find the Horn of Atlantis, a mystic trumpet that can summon and control the gargantuan amphibious monster; GIGANTO, which he then unleashes upon New York! All within, like, four panels. It’s VERY concise storytelling.

All the while, Johnny is still standing on the Shoreline, incidentally, thinking “Hmm, hope I didn’t just kill an innocent man for no reason”.

Anyway, Johnny quickly realizes he made a terrible mistake (in fleeing from an abusive home…) and summons the rest of the Fantastic FOur to help deal with the mile-tall whale-monster about to attack the city. Regular weapons can’t penetrate Gigantos hide, so Ben steals an atomic warhead (from where?!?) and opts to hop down the monsters throat and detonate it near its heart. He also deals with some shipwrecks inside Gigantos stomach, as well as some giant bug monsters, because Jack thought this issue wasn’t cramming quite enough stuff), which injures Giganto badly enough to knock it out, but not enough to kill it.

Namor isn’t fazed, and is about to use the Horn of Atlantis to just summon some more giant monsters, enough to bring humanity back to the stone age with the havoc they wreak (dollars to donuts, this is because Jack wanted to draw cavemen hiding from sea monsters), when he sees Sue, and immediately falls in love; promising to stop his war on humanity if she marries him.

She’s about to agree, since her happiness isn’t worth the lives of the entire human race, when Johnny intercedes, by flying around Namor and Giganto fast enough to create a vortex that flings the two of them clear across the planet, losing the Horn of Atlantis in the process. Namor vows revenge/marriage on the Fantastic Four/Sue, and Johnny rejoins the team.

Awwww.

Next time: The secret true history of Blackbeard the Pirate!

Smiling Stans Favorite Son!

SunFire
Written by Christy Marx

Featuring Sunfire, nobody’s favorite former X-Man, and a profound lack of knowledge on how fire works from any member of the shows writing staff.

The episode opens with Iceman watching a meteor shower and noticing that one one of the meteors is about to hit New York. You’d think that some astronomer somewhere in the world would have already noticed that weeks ago and let, like, Reed Richards know about it or something. Anyway, the news that the city is about to be destroyed causes Firestar to suit up and immediately save the day, since she’s the only Spider-Friend that takes her job seriously. She does so by setting the meteor on fire. Since when all you have are fire-powers, every problem is something combustible.

Rather then, like, explode the meteor or anything like that, she increases the meteors heat until the rock grows wings and then steers it out over the East River and explodes it there. I… what? We’re two minutes and change into the episode, including the title credits and we’ve already hit the Craziest Damn Thing Firestar has Ever Done threshold.

Firestars…. completely inexplicable superheroics do not go unnoticed in Japan by Shirow Yoshida, the OTHER Fire-based mutant hero, Sunfire, or his Sinister Uncle who lounges around his Supervillain Base in Samurai Armor, flanked by Robot Minions.

It should be noted that Sunfire has no idea that his uncle is actually a bad guy at this point.

Uncle Badguy demands that Sunfire go and kidnap Firestar so they can use their combined Fire-powers to power up a perpetual energy machine. After Sunfire leaves, Bad Uncle reveals to… his robots… that his real plan is to use their combined fire powers to revive a giant fire monster he has sleeping in his basement.

Meanwhile, back in New York, the Spider-Friends are attending a carnival. Firestar and Iceman use their powers with Great Responsibility to screw with park goers while Peter fails utterly to win a stuffed bear for Aunt May. Exhausted from watching Peters repeated failures to do anything right, and she opts to go have a nap on the first seat she sees. Seriously, she’s in her jammies and everything.

Naturally, the first chair she finds is inside a helicopter which promptly takes off with a sleeping old lady in the front seat (…) and then, because in comic books, Helicopters have a 100% crash rate, it starts to crash. Firestar leaps to the action, and tries to save the helicopter by… well… setting it on fire.

The damnest part of it is that this plan works perfectly. Sunfire, who was showing off his Robot Minions to carnival goers, shows up to help Firestar by… also setting the helicopter on fire and restarting the stalled rotors with yet more fire.

Fire… is pretty magical, guys.

Iceman recognizes Sunfire from his X-Men days. Firestar invites Sunfire to dinner, which causes Peter and Iceman to immeidatly go out of their way to try to upstage him and impress her. These plans fail since in addition to being a powerful mutant with flight and heat-generating powers, Sunfire is also a master of Akido and knows how to pronounce dog breeds.

Sunfire is summoned back to his nice old uncles Supervillain Base and Firestar tags along. While Sunfire goes off to meet his uncle, she turns on a TV and promptly gets attacked by Robot Samurai for her troubles.

This is a TERRIBLE first date by any standard.

She incinerates the robot before Sunfire can return and their secret identities are kept safe. Not VERY safe, since there’s a robot who has been melted to slag by her feet, but if Sunfire can overlook that, so can we all.

Back at the Apartment, Firestar is wistfully looking out the window thinking of Sunfire, and Sunfire, still trying to kidnap Firestar has opted to turn to Sky-writing to get his message out. Which works perfectly.

Their second date (which, as far as Sunfire knows, is their first) works better and they have a romantic evening of saving planes by setting them on fire. Meanwhile, Spidey and Ice-Man decide to check out Sunfires Uncles factory under no assumptions of him being a super-villain and under every assumption that Sunfire is making time with their lady-pal! They immediately get captured by Uncle Bads Samurai Robots because… this is Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, and nobody is good at being a Superhero. Iceman gets away from the Robots and leaves Spider-Man behind because he is an even worse superhero then Spidey.

On his way out, Iceman runs across Sunfire, who has finished his date and wanted to tell BAD UNCLE that his plan to woo fair-lady Firestar is going off without a hitch.

And he also immediately sets Iceman on fire. Automatically making him my favorite character in the show. While the two of them are busy fighting, BAD UNCLE slips a Mind-Control Hat on Icemans head which makes him pass out.

Firestar is juuuuust about to agree to help BAD UNCLE with his Perpetual Energy Fire Monster plan when one of the Robot Minions decides to take over the large TV screen and announce that Spider-Man and Iceman are still unconscious, and Firestar then decides that she has to save the day again. While she starts Flaming On, Sunfire does too and that was the Firemonster needed to wake up.

Sunfire FINALLY realizes that BAD UNCLE is a bad guy and goes ahead and beats up some Robot Samuroids and frees Spidey and Iceman so they can all fight the giant fire monster. Which BAD UNCLE is controlling with an Atari joystick, while shouting “DESTROY! EXPLODE!” into its ear using a jetpack.

I love you, Bad Uncle!

The Fires, Sun and Star, bemoan the fact that the monster stole their powers and Spidey has the brilliant idea of using the leftover energy from the Reactor “It’ll refuel your powers for sure! If it doesn’t Kill you first!”. He says that second part with a lot more menace then was really needed. Luckily, it works perfectly and nobody dies. Then everyone fights more robots because… there was still a few more minutes to fill for the episode. Mostly using the same animation from the last time it happened.

Back outside, the Spider-Friends decide its time to fight the Fire Monster by having the Fire-twins create huge flaming tornados in the river which suck up all the water and then throwing all that water at the monster and I’m not even sure if using fire as a channel for moving water is even the stupidest thing I’ve seen so far in this episode.

With the monster defeated, Bad Uncle is rounded up by the police and sent to a Crime Hospital to cure his being crazy. Sunfire goes with him and so, Firestar resumes being a swinging single.

And so the day is saved, and the only ones hurt were the thousands of people in New York city who were either crushed or set on fire by the monster. A heroic end, to a heroic day.

MOVIE TIME!!!

Buddy, you might like Godzilla. You might love Godzilla.

But if you haven’t opened your heart and let Godzilla 2000 into your life, you don’t know jack squat about Godzilla. Before I saw this movie, my exposure to the Atomic Dad was just in catching the movies being rerun on Space as a wee-un. And believe me when I tell you that watching Godzillas Revenge and Monster Zero with commercial interruptions does precious little to endear you to the franchise. Then I saw this movie as one of the very first DVDs I rented. And I said “Okay, I guess this series is my entire jam, now.

I also liked the cartoon based on the Matthew Broderick movie, I guess.

With perhaps the exception of Final Wars, I don’t think there’s another Godzilla movie that perfectly encapsulates exactly what I love about that big ol’ lug.

The movie opens with a father/daughter team of Adventure Scientists, who work as Kaiju Storm-Chasers who have teamed up with a plucky reporter to get the Big Scoop on Godzilla, and his fascination with smashing down nuclear power plants, in a sequence that is Basically Exactly Jurassic Park, if the T-Rex was four-hundred-feet tall.

I count, like, four things in that paragraph that make me throw my arms into the air and go “wooooo”.

While they’re doing that, a BADSCIENCEMAN, Mr. Katagiri (easily in the top 2 Best Human Characters in the franchise) has launched his own secret project; examining a weird meteor he found buried deep underwater. A Meteor that dug its own dang self up as soon as they shone a flashlight on it, and which seems to be tracking the strongest source of light around.

Later, Godzilla is expected to make landfall on Japan itself, so the military gets there first and launches a plan involving special missiles designed to go through Godzilla “Like Crap Through a Goose”, and involving a great many bad-cg explosions and bad CG helicopters. This plan to kill Godzilla with missiles works precisely as well as every other plan to destroy Godzilla with missiles, but does distract him while the giant meteor (having been exposed to sunlight) suddenly wakes up, grows a giant laser and chases down Godzilla and blasts him clear over the horizon; sheds its rocky exterior to reveal itself as a bad CG Spaceship pilotted by the villainous Millenials, and parks itself right over the cities TV tower.

Science Dad puts aside his antagonism with him and teams up with BADSCIENCEMAN to study the Godzilla giblets that were blown off during the fight. Together they learn that Godzilla can heal super quickly (thanks, guys. Never realized that before). Meanwhile, the giant Bad CG spaceship uses a series of electrical tentacles to eat all the data on the internet, so it learns that Godzilla has unnaturally effective healing powers as well as a (newfound) hankering to hunt down and destroy powerful sources of energy, and decides to wait around for Godzilla to invariably show up and then steal his DNA to make its occupants invulnerable nuclear dinosaurs as well.

The military also tries to attack the spaceship by planting bombs in the building its parked over top of and I’m honestly not sure how they thought that would help, but it gaves us an exciting bomb-escape sequence for Science Dad, who was still in the building at the time.

Then Godzilla shows up for round 2 against the spaceship (“There’s only one thing on Godzillas mind, Revenge“) which manages to go even worse for him; the aliens advanced laser weaponry knocks G around like a pinball and its otherwordly skill at computer hacking lets it control every fiber-optic wire in the city and uses them like ropes to hold him down.

I’d question how hacking a computer lets you control the wires it’s hooked up to, but, well, obviously it does work exactly like that so who am I to complain.

With Godzilla in a severe state at having been knocked down, the Millennial ship shoots out more electro-tentacles and steals the regeneration right out of Godzillas DNA, granting the Millennials the power to assume their Final Boss form; GIANT ARMORED FROG ORGA, who kind of looks like Cloverfield, if he hit the gym a lot and took some protein supplements.

Orga trounces Godzilla pretty handily since his regeneration factor is even stronger than Gs, and he grows stronger with every bite of Godzillas tasty hide he takes. And so he decides to end the fight quickly by doing the single stupidest thing any villain has done in any movie I’d ever seen; and tries to swallow Godzilla whole.

Not quite realizing until the last moment, that, well, Godzilla can shoot nuclear fire out of his mouth. And his body is quite radioactive. So he dies.

Then Bad Scienceman pulls a cigarette out of his pocket and stares at Godzilla as he approaches. And Godzilla looks back at him. And then punches him right in the face.

And then we’re treated to one of the greatest scenes in cinema history;

As we witness scenes of Godzilla furiously destroying what little of the city survived his fight against Orga, one of the Science Lads pines “It’s ironic, that ship was buried on Earth for 70 million years… and Godzilla destroys it the very next day.”

“We scientists produced this Monster, Godzilla. And ever since, we’ve tried to destroy him.”, states another while Godzilla continues wrecking the city with no resistance.

“But why, why does he protect us”

further scenes of Godzilla laying waste to the city

“Because, there’s a little Godzilla inside each one of us”

Godzilla roars and releases a blast of flame, turning the city to ashes, theme-song kicks up as the end credits roll.

And I stand up and start applauding and shouting for an encore.

I give this movie one hundred thumbs up and nominate it for a Nobel peace prize in the field of cultural impact.

Fourth World Recap

Kicking off The Forever People with In Search of a Dream. Forever People is also the one big gap in my Fourth World knowledge. My only exposure to them was in the one episode of Young Justice they showed up in, and all I know about the book is that it’s generally regarded as the lesser of the Fourth World series, though it has extremely good villains (including my favorite New God, Glorious Godfrey).

But none of that now, this is all about bringing in the Forever People themselves; who appear in Metropolis via a Boom Tube (which, for its first appearance, warrants two solid pages worth of onomatopoeia and Kirby Grandeur), and riding a futuristic vehicle; The Super Cycle. And we’re also introduced to the Forever People themselves, though they don;’t get much characterization in their debut issue; Big Bear is loud and excitable, Serephen is a telepathic cowboy, Vykin the Black is… black, and Moonracer is also a member of the team. And after they appear and nearly drive a pair of teenagers off the road in fright (saving them with the power of the living computer called The Mother Box), they announce that they traveled to earth from Supertown in pursuit of the fifth member of their band Beautiful Dreamer, who is being held captive by Darkseid somewhere near Metropolis.

Meanwhile, back at the Daily Planet, Clark Kent is feeling glum after conducting an interview with Rocky Balboa (!?!?) when he realizes (all of a sudden) that as he is a man with super powers, he simply can’t relate to an average man, like Rocky Balboa and is all alone with no one he can really consider a peer. Superman apparently forgot about, like, any of the people he hangs out with at his other job. And also forgot about the reason he has a mild-mannered reporter as an alternate identity.

Just then Jimmy Olsen (this story must take place just before the whole Wild Area thing) and reveals he just got a scoop about these wild space teens from a place called Supertown, and Superman decides, then and there, that there’s nothing in the world more important to him than moving to a town that sounds like it’s full of super powered people, and he flies off in pursuit of the FOrever People, unfortunately grabbing the attention of Intergang, and their (currently nameless) leader Bruno “Ugly” Manheim, who answer to Darkseid directly, and who has gifted them with weapons of otherworldly power.

The Forever People decide to trust Superman immediately once they see that Intergang is trying to kill him and that Superman is strong enough to withstand Apokoliptic weapons, and agree to take him to Supertown once they finish saving Beautiful Dreamer. Luckily, between the technology of the Mother Box, and Supermans abilities, they’re able to find the bunker where Dreamer is being held captive. Unluckily, the bunker is protected by lethal Radion Gas (a poison potent enough to kill a God) and also Graviguards; alien monsters adapted to life in gravity fields thousands of times stronger than Earths.

Things look dire until the Forever People use the power of the Mother Box to combine into one; Infinity Man (or possibly Infinity Man is a another guy who appears in exchange for the Forever People, it’s kind of vague) and Infinity Mans vague, but enormous power is enough to beat all the Graviguards, and also call Darkseid out of hiding, and admonish him for kidnapping Beautiful Dreamer and trying to use her unique brain chemistry to unravel something called The Anti-Life Equation.

Darkseid is happy to relinquish Dreamer as, while her brain is capable of understanding the Anti-Life Equation, it’s also impossible for him to use any of his machinery to extract that information from her, and there’s no point to using her as a captive any more, and departs for Apokolips. Darkseid also boasts a pretty different design than usual in this book. Honestly, I’m a bit disappointed it didn’t stick around longer; dude looks good in a cape and long pants.

Anyway, true to their word, the Forever People open a Boomtube to Supertown for Superman to visit, which he almost does. But he reconsiders when he realizes that this Darkseid fellow has designs to attack the Earth and he can’t bring himself to leave it undefended from a menace like that for even an instant.

And, on the whole, I can kind of see how Forever People got its weaker reputation if this is the inaugural effort. It introduced a lot of pretty important bits of the Fourth World mythos, but none of the heroes made any particular impact and Superman acted kind of like a giant dingus the whole time through. Also; Infinity Man looked kind of stupid considering what a Big Deal he’s treated as.

And that one was short, so I’ll read the next issue too and…
Oh… wow

So next is the first issue of The New Gods, Orion Fights For Earth. And at first I was going to make some kind of goof about it sounding like a Little Golden Book title. And then I turned the page and saw this;

That’s Page One

And what followed was 23 pages of Kirby, at his Kirbiest, Kirbying harder than he’s ever Kirbied before.

This is the Superstar Ultra of Kirby, played on a pink DS. That’s how Kirby this thing is.

It’s also the best introduction we’ve had yet to the whole concept of the Fourth World, an introduction to almost all of the most important characters in the saga, and heaps of Orion just wrecking dudes. Also, reading this with Kirbys run on Thor still fresh in my mind, it is blatantly clear how much of it inspired this.

Short version of the BOMBAST illustrated above is that the Old Gods who represented Good and Evil had one final, apocalyptic battle that broke their world in half; the good side eventually reforming as the peaceful planet of New Genesis (very obviously Asgard. Like, straight up, “I think Kirby just reused some sketches of the place he already had), and the dismal perpetually on fire Apokolips (Hell… it’s just Hell)

Anyway, one day in space, Orion (God of War, and wielder of The Astro-Force) received a summons to his home world of New Genesis by his buddy Lightray (God of… just being everybodys pal?), as the leader of the Gods of Genesis, High Father (Odin, if he calmed down a lot) has found a prophecy written by a Giant Flaming Hand connected to The Source; the force that created the universe itself that is kind of implied to be capital G-God.

Remember what I said before about the Fourth World being a Space Opera that is also a Biblical Epic?

Anyway, Orion is pretty curious/enthusiastic about the prophecy (Which simply says “Orion will go to Apokolips. Then to Earth. Then to War”) but is also greeted by the laziest New God Metron (God of Being a Smarty Pants. And also slouching in a space-chair). Metron and Orion plainly don’t get along well, at all, but the reason for their animosity is left unexplained; save that Metron teases Orion about his heritage and his pursuit of knowledge unleashed some great threat.)

So Orion flies off to Apokolips, and then spends the next dozen-ish pages just beating the ever-loving hell out of armies of Parademons, and Darkseids dimwitted, but horrifically powerful son, Kalibak the Cruel. And he also finds that Darkseid and the worst of his generals have already left Apokolips for Earth.

Metron shows up again and explains that Darkseid has the knowledge that vestiges of the Anti-Life Equation, capable of eradicating free-will, can be found in the minds of human beings, and he’d been secretly abducting humans for years trying to find it, before deciding to expedite the process by conquering the Earth first. Orion frees the captive humans and helps them escape back to Earth via a Boomtube, but winds up trapped on the planet along with them, secure in the knowledge that Darkseid is somewhere on the planet and vows to find and kill him.

So…. yeah…

That’s a dang good bit of comic booking right there.

Fantastic Four Recap

Another major milestone issue, except this time with a villain who I don’t think ever even showed up again (Wikipedia confirms he did, but barely has enough appearances to count as a recurring villain); The Menace of the Miracle Man (no relation to the time Alan Moore thought he was making a deep statement by making Captain Marvel an asshole).

The issue opens up with the FF enjoying a strangely caustic stage magic show hosted by… The Miracle Man, a combination of David Blaine, Don Rickels and Count Dracula. And whose act apparently consists of finding the most famous person in the audience and threatening and insulting them to the point where I think it’s legally permissible to punch him. He also invites Ben up on the stage and taunts him personally showing off how weak The Things strength is compared to WIZARD POWER. He also forces Ben to shed his disguise, and this is back when he was ashamed of being a rockman, so that’s just flat rude.

Also, Jacks started drawing Ben as a rockman now, as opposed to some kind of giant walking callous, and Stans softened up his speech, talking in a much more casual, contraction-rich way. He’s still quite a ways away from The Platonic Ideal of Benjamin J. Grimm (idol o’ millions), but he’s made his first steps on that path.

As they leave the show (in the first sppearance of the Fantasticar, usiing its original bathtub-design), Reed mentions that he’s glad that The Miracle Man is just a gigantic asshole, and not a criminal, because someone that good at stage magic would be an unbeatable foe. And the words aren’t out of his mouth before we cut to MMs dressing room where he proudly announces (to nobody) that now that he’s embarrassed the Fantastic Four in front of a paying audience, the time has come for him to become a criminal!

But just before he does, we cut back to the World Famous Baxter Building (still not named as such, but confirmed to be half an apartment building that Reed leases out, and which is full of advanced research and crime-fighting technology. And also a single ICBM. You know… just in case.), and find out what Sues been doing in her spare time; stitching together specialized for the FF, because if you’re going to be a crime fighter, you gotta have costumes.

She has no problem making costumes suitable for herself, Reed, Johnnys individual powers but her outfit for Ben is immediately shredded by his weird anatomy. And this is long before “Unstable Molecules” were the explanation for superhero costumes, so she did this all by hand… so… damn, that’s crazy-impressive.

Anyway, at around this time, Miracle Man puts the first phase of his master plan (which really just seems to be “General Mayhem”) into motion by bringing a giant monster marquess outside a theater to life, and having it go on a rampage through the city, and eventually attack an army base on the outskirts of town.

The FF are called in but aren’t able to destroy the monster until after it manages to steal an Atomic Tank for Miracle Man. The Soldiers on the base also mistake Johnny for a second monster, and hose him down with fire retardant foam, which is really more embarrassing than harmful. And during the fight, Sue (being invisible) follows the Miracle Man back to his hideout; a crappy junkyard.

Hey, this issue is finally giving Sue stuff to do!

Her subterfuge doesn’t last long, however, when Miracle Mans dog starts barking at her (“A dog would never growl at nothing” thinks Miracle Man, a guy who has never met a dog). ANd relaizing that “Hard to see” is not the best super power to bring to the table against a Wizardly Demigod, Sue calls the rest of the FF for help with her personal flaregun that shoots giant flaming 4s into the sky (it causes less of a panic this time). Also Miracle Man hypnotized her, so maybe it wasn’t just self preservation. Honestly hard to say.

Anyway, the rest of the FF shows up and a fight breaks out (Miracle Man disguises a machine gun as an oversized key, and I’m just left to wonder why…) that eventually becomes a high speed chase, between Miracle Man in an atomic tank and Reed Richards in a busted up old race car, that ends when Johnny flies out ahead and blinds Miracle Man with a brilliant flash of light. Which also robs him of his powers since, as Reed explains (absurdly); if Miracle Man were a real wizard (or Miracle Man, as the book keeps insisting is the proper terminology) he wouldn’t have bothered with a machine gun or running away or anything; no he was just a world-class master hypnotist, capable of putting a whammy on an entire city. And not someone with super-human abilities. And since he’s blind now, he can’t hypnotize anyone.

See, it’s all science, not miracle.

And that would be the end of it, except that Ben and Johnny then get into an argument about who gets the credit for ctaching Miracle Man, a continuation of their argument earlier in the issue that ultimately proves to be too much for Johnny, and he quits the Fantastic Four!

COULD THIS BE THE END OF OUR HEROES?

Banded Together From Distant Galaxies

Invasion of the Fearians!

Opening as per usual, in the Mushroom-Vader Legion Base, Gorilla Grodd is complaining about Luthors leadership, and is bored with the boring and predictable crimes they’ve committed so far. Bear in mind that this is the second episode, and the first involved hypnotizing the entire Justice League to commit felonies so they’d be arrested, and using their absence to mutate/put a hat on every single human being so they could steal the entire planets commercial wealth.

So… Grodds got some pretty friggin’ high standards. But then again, he’s a super-intelligent ape from the invisible utopia of Gorilla City. So… I guess he has a different standard on what would be considered “imaginative”.

Luckily, Captain Cold has a solution to their problems, as he’s been in contact with the Fearians, the natives from the planet Venus. I… don’t know how or why he would be doing this. There’s a bunch of Legion members who hang out in space all the time, but not him. He just shoots ice at stuff.

Anyhow, the Fearians have some pretty simple requests; make the planet hotter, wetter and more full of vegetation, like Venus, so they can conquer it. more easily, and in exchange, they will help the Legion defeat the Superfriends.

The Legion was really only paying attention to those last four words, so they go right ahead with it.

Captain Cold starts off by building a giant version of his ice beam and uses it to freeze… like… the entire continental United States. Seriously, like, five or six cities encased in glaciers before anyone said “Hey… HEY! Quit it!”

Since Cold is Flashs enemy, he runs over and save the day by… well… running around everything really really fast until he changes theirs molecules. That’s pretty much all Flash knows how to do in this show, and BY GOLLY it works. “COMPLETELY UNAWARE”, says the narrator, whom I love, “THAT HE’S CREATING VAST QUANTITIES OF STEAM!”

And, of course, this was only phase one, phase two involves Black Manta… well… I’m not really sure how to phrase this… so I’m going to just come out and say it…

Black Manta sets… the pacific ocean… on fire

S-somehow?

So anyway, Aquaman leaps at the chance to be useful and, after crashing Mantas ship, he puts out the flaming water by using his AQUATIC TELEPATHY to summon whales to make tidal waves capable to extinguishing flames. Also, coincidentally, flooding the entire West coast.

That’s not me being snarky, this is literally what happens. This is plot-relevant. Aquaman destroyed the entire pacific rim.

The Superfriends are AWFUL at their jobs.

Anyhow, plan 3 involves Sinestro using his Yellow Power Ring to summon dozens of giant asteroids to smash the planet. And so, Hal Jordan, the one Superfriend who is vulnerable to the color yellow and one of at least four who can travel through space, decides to save the day. Because he’s a damn idiot.

Sinestro also locks Hal into a yellow-light prison and starts spinning him super fast because… he’s… a jerk? But this plan backfires because he got spinning so fast he entered blue-shift, so Hal could break free easily.

And I will tip my hat to you on that, Superfriends writers. That was nicely done.

Anyway, Hal still can’t do anything about the meteors so he just opts to use his ring to move the Entire Earth a a bit over so they miss it entirely. And then he forgets to put it back.

Man… Hal… man…

That ain’t like forgetting to put the milk back in the fridge, you know?

Anyhow, back at the Hall of Justice, and after congratulating themselves for the worst imaginable job of saving the planet, the Superfriends realize that, no, they’ve actually been doing a terrible job of saving the planet this week, and they’ve successfully transformed the Earth into Venus 2. (The actual term used, and yet another reason I love this stupid show.)

“It’s almost as though we’ve been responsible for all that’s been happening” exclaims a shocked Aquaman.

Also, the Justice League Computer has a thermostat reading the current temperatures of Canada, Russia, Taiwan and New Jersey.

Hell of a thorough computer you built there, Batman.

Anyhow, making good on their end of the bargain, the Fearian leader shows up and encases the Superfriends in an indestructible force-field and just, you know, leaves them there while the Legion takes over Washington DC. Also, Brainiac made robot duplicates of all the world leaders… because… the writers wanted to remind the kids at home that the Legion has an evil robot man on staff?

Anyway, to make up for his gigantic idiocy from earlier, Hal uses his power ring to turn the Superfriends invisible, tricking the Fearian Leader into thinking they escaped, so he’d drop the forcefield. Which works, and he gets sent back to Venus. Also, not really sure if he suddenly became two inches tall, he’d always been two inches tall, or if the scenes perspectives just went screwy.

With the Fearian defeated, the Superfriends go about fixing all the damage they’ve done (and which they’re still blaming the Legion for) and they’ve ALSO rounded up and dismantled all of Brainiacs androids. Off camera. I have no idea why that plot-point was even introduced.

So anyway, there’s the usual G-Rated fight scene that follows, and then Luthor turns the dome of the capital building into a rocket ship and blasts off, leaving Superman to vow that justice will never rest!

But… for how long!

Smilin’ Stans Favorite Son!


The Fantastic Mr. Frump
Written by Christy Marx

In which the Spider-Friends battle one of the most unstoppably powerful foes the Marvel Universe has ever seen, and also Dr. Doom shows up.

The episode opens with Dr. Doom performing what passes for an Evil Magical Rite on a Childrens Program form the early 80s on the top of the Haunted Mansion he built to serve as the Latverian Embassy in the middle of New York City. Which should tell you everything you need to know right away about Dr. Doom, in case you were not familiar with the man or his works. He stands on top of his Haunted Mansion for a bit and shoots at clouds and tells his assistant, Boris, to go fetch him a magical amulet that will grant Doom the POWER OF THE UNIVERSE. Boris, incidentally, is Dr. Dooms butler, and he dresses pretty much exactly like a Nineteenth Century European Aristocrat. He’s great.

Boris goes right ahead and steals that amulet without any fuss whatsoever, from the Dinosaur Exhibit at the Natural History Museum (?). The Spider-Friends didn’t show up at all save for Aunt May yelling at them to bring an umbrella.

Meanwhile, while Dr. Doom has been busy granting himself the POWER OF THE UNIVERSE, the Spider-Friends were at a Basketball game and are on their way home, just in time to meet the episodes true villain; Mr. Frump after he has been fired. And fired so badly that his former employer had picked him up and literally thrown him out the door. Peter recognizes Frump from when he used to run errands for Aunt May and then gives a half-hearted apology that he lost his job, and Firestar perkily says that she’s sure his luck will turn around soon.

Sure would be wacky if Doom acquiring All The Power of The Universe had any impact on Mr. Frumps poor fortune, huh.

The Spider-Friends then decide to race back home and change into their costumes in the middle of the street, mainly because they don’t give a flat-damn about keeping their identities secret, and Spidey barely go two feet before realizing that Dr. Doom is doing… something… and opt to fight him instead.

I mean, yes, he was doing something evil, but he didn’t know that before clobbering him. Seriously, Spider-Man straight up says “I don’t know what he’s doing, but anything Doom’s doing is worth UNdoing!”. then knocking him off the roof. I’m deducting a point just for jumping to conclusions, you dink

Surprisingly absolutely nobody, Doom drops the amulet off the roof and it lands right on Mr. Frump, granting the mopey old sad-sack All the Power of the Universe.

At this point, Iceman and Firestar both realize that Spider-Man has been out of sight for more then eight seconds, so he’s probably getting beaten up, so they rush off to find him and help fight Dr. Doom. Where they are promptly beaten senseless. DOOM does not care how dangerous his opponents are, he brings his A-Game to all his battles.

Frump, meanwhile, applies for another job and, when he tells his prospective employer to “Bug Off” he is slightly surprised to see the guy suddently turn into a beetle, and when he tells some annoying children to “go jump in a lake”, they promptly attempt to drown themselves. Momma Frump didn’t raise no fools, and he soon realizes that he is The Most Powerful Being in the Universe.

It should also be noted that after nearly murdering two children, and turning a man into an insect, he began to sneer with malice. And then manipulate the universe itself into giving him a free hot dog.

Back at the Doom fight, Doom has beaten Iceman with heatrays and freezes himself when Firestar does what she does best and SETS HIM ON FIRE. Seriously, watching Doom fight is like trying to win an “who would win in a fight” arguement with a seven year old.

Frumps still going around making his every whim come true (he went from “Hot Dog, please” to “GILDED CARRIAGE WITH MIGHTY STALLIONS” in one-wish flat) and then requests someone who would actually be his friend (it was a kitty named “Mabel”).

Aww, it would be sweet if he hadn’t just killed several people with petty insults.

Back at the HAUNTED MANSION, the astoundingly one-sided fight between Dr. Doom and several nincompoops is halted when Doom notices that the dramatic thunderstorm they were fighting in has suddenly become a land of Pretty Clouds and Rainbows and realizes that the Powers of the Universe have gone to some shmoe, and leaves the Spider-Friends alone for the moment. But not before using his armors weapons to incinerate some of the nice carpet that was replacing the sidewalks.

Frump has really weird tastes.

Finding Frump (or Frump summoned him, its not really clear which), Doom immediately starts toadying up to Lord Frump (as he now insists on being called), which means that Frump would feel obligated to use ALL THE POWER OF THE UNIVERSE to help Doom because he is a nice old man at this moment. And he opts to use his Cosmic Powers to summon up the Spider-Friends and kill them nice and proper for his new friend. Which he proceeds to do, and Frump and Doom share a hearty laugh.

Frump then decides to conjure forth Aunt May, since she was the only (non-cat) living thing to ever be nice to him. She is understandably upset to have been suddenly teleported across town and made witness to three dead Superheroes and a laughing wizard in Science-armor, so Frump revives them to make her happy. And takes away their powers, to make Doom happy. Also, despite lacking super-powers, Iceman is still a man made of ice and Spider-Mans webshooters stopped working despite there not being anything super about them.

Also, Frump has again upgraded his title to Lord Frump: Master of the Universe.

Frump also starts wishing for increasingly pointless things, like “All the Money in the World” and “a Super-Duper TV set” before Doom snaps at him and insists that he build a Colosseum so he could force the Spider-Friends to fight mythological creatures for his amusement.

Doom is a man with high ambitions.

After setting Genghis Khan, a Cyclops and Cerberus on fire frump gets bored and summons up the Weirdest Thing in the Universe, which is some kind of Lovecraftian monster mostly made up of tentacles. Aunt May reacts POORLY to being forced to watch while a Shuggoth eats the Spider-Friends and points out that Lord Frump: Master of the Universe is kind of a dick. Frump decides to set her mind to ease by turning into “Wonderfrump: The Most Powerful Superhero in the World” who promptly defeats the alien and then whisks Aunt May off to the sky.

Doom politely points out to the Spider-Friends that Frumps gone nuts and they should put their differences aside to save the world from him. The Spider-Friends agree because… it’s not like they’ve been doing so well up until now.

Doom tricks Frump into reversing the amulets magic away from Frump and into himself. Because the spell took a couple minutes to kick in, the Spider-Friends break the amulet again denying Doom All the Power of the Universe and turning Frump back into an unemployed sadsack and all the people Frump accidentally killed are back to life and everyone forgets the whole thing happened.

A Happy Ending for Everyone!

MOVIE TIME!!!

So Robocop is one of my favorite 80s action movies (and action movies in general), and I really can’t fully express how much of what makes Robocop work wound up in The Running Man. It’s more of a Robocop sequel than any of the actual Robocop sequels.

It is the distant future, 2017, a dark and fanciful future where ones media presence is more important than their morality, and an militarized police force wages war against peaceful protesters.

One such police officer who DID NOT wish to shoot hundreds of unarmed civilians with a helicopter is Arnold Schwarzenegger (Ben Richards). And for his insubordination, he is framed for the crime of shooting them anyway and thrown into the hard labor camp of Bakersfield Illinois, where he winds up pulling off a jail break with his friends Black Guy, and Glasses Guy who are part of a secret Resistance cell.

Arnold flees back to LA (a city of perpetual darkness) and finds that his brother, who he was expecting to live with, in hiding, has been arrested and killed for… some reason or another (he never comes up again) and his apartment has been rented out to GIRL. GIRL winds up being Arnolds love interest in this movie, even though he spends all their scenes together either threatening or assaulting her. He attempts to use her to flee to Hawaii, but he’s recognized and arrested by security at the airport.

And this is where the movie transforms from a doofy, if enjoyable, action movie about a rebel in a dystopian future into Robocop, with the introduction of Richard Dawson (Damon Killian), Amercias favorite gameshow host, and the MC for The Running Man, a homicidal gameshow where condemned criminals flee for their lives from armed murderous assailants for amazing prizes like “a trial by jury!” or a trip to sunny Maui! And Richard Dawson figures that a Muscle Giant, and famed murderer like Arnold would be great for ratings.

Meanwhile, while Arnie is being prepped for showtime (a process that involves poking him with needles while he goes “ANGH ANGH ANGH” a lot), GIRL sneaks into the Running Man studio and finds incriminating evidence of a cover-up that proves that Arnold didn’t kill anybody (any of the people he is accused of killing, at least). It’s all secretly stored in a folder that might as well have been labeled “Incriminating Evidence” in a bold 14-point font.

Arnold is in the Running Man, where he’s tasked with simply running to the exit of the labyrinth along with his rebel friends, BLACK GUY and GLASSES GUY (who were also picked up off screen at some point) while a cheering audience bets on how they’re going to die, and receiving valuable cash prizes. All the while being hunted by the Stalkers; professional killers based on the classic elements; Professor Sub Zero, Dynamo, Fireball, Commander Steel and Buzzsaw (chainsaw element), all of whom Arnold kills while delivering beautiful/terrible one-liners.

ALong the way, however Glasses and Black Guy are tragically killed (by lightning bolts and an unseen chainsaw wound, respectively), and Arnold vows to finish their fight and bring down the oppressive TV station that has enslaved America. Additionally, Black Guy, with his dying breath, says “Don’t let us down, I don’t want to be the only asshole in heaven”.

Meanwhile, GIRL is captured snooping and accused of… nothing particularly bad, but Richard Dawson announced all of her minor transgressions in a scary voice, so the audience will turn against her, and also sends her into the Running Man, so she won’t get a chance to reveal what she learned, and she runs into Arnold again while he’s fighting Buzzsaw and Dynamo, and they eventually find a secret Rebel Army that’s been hiding in the middle of the Running Man arena.

Sidenote: I keep almost typing “Hunger Games” instead of “Running Man”. Just throwing that knowledge about me out into the world.

Thanks to some things that Glasses and Blackguy noticed while they were busy running and dying, they learn that the transmitter that the TV studio has been using to send out propaganda is in the Arena itself, and they now have the secret code they need to hijack the signal and send out their own messages.

Richard Dawson, having lost all of his Stalkers to Arnold Schwarzeneggers mighty fists and one-liners, decides to cut his losses and televises Jesse Ventura beating an Arnold body-double to death in an arena so he’d stop inspiring the rabble to oppose him. The implication being that afterward he’d kill Arnold in some other, less TV friendly fashion. Also, while this is being aired, the Running Man cheerleaders put on funeral clothes and have a sad, sexy dance to eulogize poor Fireball, Buzzsaw and Professor Sub Zero

This inspires Arnold and Girl to lead the rebels into an all-out assault on the TV studio, resulting in a fairly weak and uninteresting gunfight, and GIRL having a second battle against a still-not-dead Dynamo where he tries to rape her (oh… thanks movie. I almost forgot about your hostile attitude to women for a moment there) and she responds by electrocuting him to death with the buildings sprinklers.

Arnold and Richard Dawson have their final confrontation, Richard tries to explain that it was nothing personal he was just looking for some good ratings, and Arnold throws him down the tube into the Running Man arena, where Richard Dawson then explodes. And then Arnold Schwarzenegger looks at the camera and says “That hits the spot”.

And everyone in America starts cheering and applauding Arnold.

Smash Cut to End Credits