POBB May 30, 2018

Pick of the Brown Bag

May 30, 2018

by

Ray Tate

Welcome to the Pick of the Brown Bag.  It’s a monster issue due to an abundance of DC Specials.  So, let’s get right to it.  This week’s batch of reviews includes Amazing Spider-Man Renew Your Vows, Aquaman and Jabberjaw, Black Lightning and Hong Kong Phooey, The Doomsday Clock, The Flash and Speed Buggy, The Green Lanterns Annual, Super Sons and Dyno-Mutt and Sheena Queen of the Jungle. I’ll also peruse the new book Titan from Amigo Comics.  If you haven’t the time for the meatier reviews, check me out at Twitter: #PickoftheBrownBag.

Captured and tortured by so-called civilized men and a crackpot female scientist, Sheena must save her friends that the Caldwell group use as hostages and bait for folk legends come to life.

These are the South American cryptozoological wonders known as the Malpinguari.  A biological impossibility.  People nevertheless report sightings of the beasts if not actual attacks to this very day.  

The creatures in Sheena though alien in design are still just animals.  They’re not a malevolent intelligence like the face stealers from the previous story.  They pale in comparison to the monsters of humanity on parade.

Writers Marguerite Bennett and Christina Trujillo revel in portraying every loon from Caldwell as a skin bucket holding and exuding slime that fluctuates from a standard level of evil.  They operate on a scale that you can imagine exists but you would be hard pressed to believe in.  It’s this kind of hyper-reality that takes Sheena beyond the expected.

Even the flunkies of Caldwell suck as human beings.  

Sheena fights the beasts and the monsters with bodacious martial prowess courtesy of Maria Sanapo and Vincenzo Acuzanzo.  Both artists gel and produce quality illustration.   Along with colorist Ceci De La Cruz.

Sheena wants to battle these things alone, but her friends will have none of it.

Trujillo and Bennett contrast the vileness of the villains with the camaraderie of Sheena’s allies.  Bennett and Trujillo opened this tale by introducing a native friend named Lirio.  They spiced the narrative with a subtext of unrequited romantic feelings.  Lirio furthermore expressed jealousy over Sheena befriending the male guest star Chano who accompanied Sheena in her debut.  

Lirio however does not hesitate when risking her life for Chano.  It’s not just the right thing to do.  Lirio knows that for some reason Sheena thinks Chano is important, and she knows Sheena would feel pain should Chano suffer.  Lirio’s depth and empathy makes her a winning new cast member.  You genuinely care what happens to her.  Chano is third tier  all the way, but there’s a lot happening in Sheena.  So you can’t fault the writers for favoring Lirio.

I don’t know what to make of Titan.  On one level, the story takes place in an industrialized science fiction universe like that of Alien.  Only far worse.  

Yeah, he’s not getting a father’s day card any time soon.  Heraklion's daughter Titan is the heroine of our story.  She is a space explorer but apparently destined for so much more.

Titan loses time while surviving on a world her tech argued essentially M-Class.  The planet proved to be dump, but while there, something strange occurred.   

That phenomena instituted dreams that fused Robert E. Howard with H.P. Lovecraft.

Technically you can argue the phantasmagoria is only Robert E. induced.  H.P.  shared his mythology freely with a circle of authors published by the ground-breaking Weird Tales.  Howard produced a collection of Cthulhu stories, and the primitive trappings lean more toward his milieu rather than Lovecraft who preferred his horrors to attack contemporary life.  

Scribe Colleen Douglas intends for Titan to be a mature exercise and not a ripping yarn as some of the Weird Tales really were.  Douglas insinuates chemical or technological sex slavery, attempted rape as well as a salacious power class.  

Titan is readable with above average artwork from Andre Stahlschmidt.  Mostly the premiere is all setup for things to come.  As such, it’s too early to recommend the book or discourage the reader.  

The Green Lanterns Annual introduces one of the first Green Lanterns appointed by the little blue guys.  He’s a figure of legend that the current Lanterns including our stars Jessica Cruz and Simon Baz fete.  

This celebration will naturally include speeches.  The fact that Jess intends to give a speech rather than duck out of it indicates the amass of character development that numerous writers contributed.  Practically every talent respected Jess and her personal problems.  As a result, she’s come a long way.  

DC architect Geoff Johns Introduced Jessica Cruz in Justice League as the new Power Ring.  The League believed Jess possessed enough will to control the parasitic alien that inhabited the cosmic jewelry.  Not only did she succeed.  A genuine Green Lantern ring recognized and bonded with her.  Through therapy, her relationship with her partner and adventure, Jessica overcame most of her insecurities or at least blossomed away from the major ones.  Now, she’s giving a speech.

Diggle gets points for making the speech an outright disaster.  Jess has come a long way, but she’s in no way a super confident extrovert.  Naturally, after the social catastrophe, she just wants some alone time.  The planetary remains expresses other ideas.

Diggle brings good natured humor and a sense of science fiction wonder to a script that illustrator Mike Perkins is more than able to visualize.  Adam Troy embellishes the lush greens and rich flesh tones.  It’s really a joy to be carried through this exotic journey of Jess’ discovery, and not one sour moment spoils the fun.  This is a perfect Green Lantern story.

Speed Buggy was an awesome Hanna-Barbera cartoon that followed the Scooby-Doo formula.  The meddling kids consisted of Tinker a racer and progenitor of Speed Buggy, his pit crew—Mark and Debbie—and the chug-talking car his own bad self.  It’s fitting that the Flash races Speed Buggy in this special.  Flashes from Jay Garrick to Wally West accepted every challenge from every fast contender: Superman, Supergirl and now of course Speed Buggy.  

Written by Red Hood and the Outlaws' Scott Lobdell, The Flash and Speed Buggy is actually a lot more than the title race.  Lobdell teams up with Brett Booth, for a story that with its topsy turvy backgrounds is more than a little in the artist’s wheelhouse.  That’s not an easy transition to connect.  Booth’s artwork is singular.  Speed Buggy offered a very straightforward streamlined design.  Most of the tale however takes place in the Speed Force or in an arena that couldn’t be reached by any other means.  For the record, sometimes Booth’s art can be just as effective in the “real” world.

The subject matter of Flash and Speed Buggy will also surprise the reader on both fronts.  Lobdell sets the story in an ideal Flash world.  I’ve already elaborated on Wally West’s return to the DC Universe, but Lobdell creates a backdrop in which he apparently never left.

Linda possesses memories of Wally and she.  She's still in a relationship with him.  Not so in the paradigm of the current DCU.  Linda does not know Wally apart from her most recent encounters.

DC gave Lobdell and/or Brett Booth some incredible license.  All the Titans are together with no miasma of trauma that split them up in the first place.  

All the Flashes some with redesigned uniforms are present and accounted for, rooting for Wally.  This was probably the way to go.  Nobody wants a story that’s not about Wally West and his re-entry to stop with needless explanation or even sadness over what Wally lost.  The Flash and Speed Buggy is supposed to be a lark, and it is.

From the perspective of Speed Buggy's world, the special provides a satisfying origin that makes what we simply thought true apocryphal.  Tinker in fact did not create Speed Buggy.

Here’s where things get clever.  Giving over the Speed Buggy engineering reigns to essentially a nobody instead of the beloved Tinker character can be considered sacrilege if not for several twists.  The scientist Dr. M. Blanc, yes, that's him, isn’t a mad genius, but an actual pursuer of knowledge.  He wants to explore the Speed Force and created Speed Buggy as his vessel.  His personality also syncs with somebody who might imagine a Speed Buggy.  In fact Wally and Blanc butt heads early in the story.

Clearly this is not you’re average scientist.  Blanc though is in unfamiliar terrain, and his breach of the Speed Force grants a major Flash villain the leave to create some familiar henchmen.  At this point, Speed Buggy really becomes the beloved cartoon sleuth of the television series.

In last week’s excellent Scooby-Doo Team-Up, Dyno-Mutt was blissfully unaware of the Dynamic Duo.  For Super-Sons, writer Peter Tomasi recreates Blue Falcon and Dyno-Mutt as superheroes in the context of Batman’s World.  To that end, he retroactively adds their participation in Batman Inc.

Batman Inc. started at the close of the Post-Crisis era while Barbara Gordon was still crippled.  I had instituted a personal boycott against DC.  So I never read a single issue of Grant Morrison’s run of Batman.  However, I was aware of Batman Inc. and amused by Morrison’s cheek.  Through Batman Inc. Morrison actually payed homage to the Golden Age Batmen of All Nations.  The Batmen debuted in Detective Comics number 215 in 1955. 

In a nutshell, Batman and Robin inspired numerous international heroes such as the Gaucho that overtly patterned themselves on the Caped Crusaders.  With an increment of change, the Blue Falcon and Dyno-Mutt would have thrived in the Silver Age Batmen.

Because the New 52 is more dramatic but kinder than the Post-Crisis, I actually believe Blue Falcon and Dyno-Mutt could be tweaked to stand among the champions of modern day DC Comics.   Super-Sons and Dyno-Mutt  however isn’t supposed to be anything remotely serious.  It’s a blend of everything from the Dyno-Mutt cartoon and the New 52.  So Tomasi darkens Blue Falcon’s and Dyno-Mutt’s cheerful Hanna-Barbera parody of Batman something fierce.  This flourish makes the whole presentation that more absurd and riotous.  

The story begins with Blue Falcon’s alter-ego Radley Crowne as a boy genius being persuaded to see the softer side of things.

Time passes rapidly across the panels.  Before you know it, the adult Radley must not only deal with the murder of his parents but also the impending euthanasia of his dog as well.  

Radley decides that he lost too many people.  He will save his best friend.  He integrates his technology with the hound to create a cyborg he dubs Dyno-Mutt the Dog Wonder.  Radley takes the guise of Blue Falcon and with Dyno-Mutt dedicates his life to fight against crime.

The Super-Sons portion of the story starts with a funeral.  The Kents want to teach son Jonathan a lesson about death and the human custom of an open casket.  

Fortunately Robin rescues him from his discomfort, and the two quickly unite with a damaged Dyno-Mutt to save Blue Falcon from his arch-enemy.

Perhaps the weirdest part of the story involves Damien Wayne respecting the cartoon characters.  Damien is a surly little bastard who expressed his disdain for Superman.  Batman and Huntress, who is kind of his sister, are the only heroes he showed any open deference to, until now.

The Super-Sons take Dyno-Mutt back to Falcon’s headquarters.  There they learn what happened to Dyno-Mutt’s partner.

Being mind-controlled by a nemesis or a pesky red meteorite is an occupational hazard for a superhero.  Tomasi freshens the elements with a doozy origin story for the Falcon’s foe that at once ties into the Falcon’s history and gives his enemy a rationale beyond larceny.  Make no mistake.  All of the Blue Falcon’s villains were in it for the money.  There was no deep rooted psychological bias.  That’s for modern villains, and that’s what we get.  The chains link, but gentle reader, this is one goofy idea.

Tomasi ends the story with an audacious move that actually dares to be contextually sensible and emotionally gratifying.  Not just within this bizarre reimagining but also within the cartoon world of Blue Falcon and Dyno-Mutt. The sheer lunacy of Peter Tomasi’s story combined with a steadfast realism to the artwork by Fernando Pasarin, Oclair Albert and Gale Eltaeb make the Super-Sons mind-blowing Laugh-a-lympics.  See what I did there?

Set in the 1970s a neophyte Black Lightning finds himself on the opposite end of a beat down from a triple threat.

Wait, says you.  I know the Bronze Tiger and Cheshire, but who on earth is Professor Presto.  Why he’s an arch-enemy of that “Number One Super Guy” Hong Kong Phooey.

In the cartoon, Hong Kong Phooey voiced by the late, great Scatman Crothers whom you still hear while reading, is a mostly incompetent martial artist that’s secretly aided in his crime fighting by a cat named Spot.  Oh, but HK is a different sort of animal in the Black Lightning special.

Not only is Hong Kong Phooey a supreme fighter; in the cartoon he uses a manual that he pulls out before striking to immediately plan his moves.  He’s also versed in the mysticism associated with the martial arts.  The God Fist is in no way a send-up of Iron Fist.  It’s instead just one of the many silly deus ex machina found in a plethora of chopsocky cinema.  I remember one nutty flick where the Bruce Lee knockoff used Chi to rupture organs without actually hitting anybody.

Bryan Hill will be taking over Black Lightning’s exploits in Detective Comics.  It’s therefore surprising that Hill’s debut as a Black Lightning writer casts the DC character in the shadow of Hong Kong Phooey.  It makes perfect sense for the story but it's still eye-brow raising that DC would allow one of their recent CW successes to flicker.  It's another example of the freedom given to the creators behind these specials.

Hill’s reworking of Hong Kong Phooey isn’t nearly as delirious as Tomasi’s Blue Falcon and Dyno-Mutt, but it’s pretty damn funny anyhow, especially with Denys Cowan and Bill Sienkiewicz gritting everything up.  

In the cartoon police operator Rosemary had a crush on  Hong Kong Phooey, who secretly worked as a janitor in the background of police headquarters.  In Black Lightning Rosemary is Hong Kong Phooey’s star pupil and possible love interest.  No, it doesn’t matter he’s a dog.  It never did.  So why should this be any different?

The move is simultaneously progressive and ludicrous.  In the cartoon, Rosemary seldom found herself in any danger.  In Black Lightning and Hong Kong Phooey, Rosemary's promotion leads her to the position in which all superhero love interests eventually find themselves.  Bargaining chip.

The false drama continues as Hong Kong Phooey reveals his secrets one after another.  Alternately, Hill beefs up Black Lightning as no mean electrical engineer.

Historical readers will remember that Black Lightning originally channeled electricity from a lattice lined into his costume.  He wasn’t always a meta human.  Lightning lends Rosemary the above pair of gauntlets to even things out.  Some might argue that it's sexist to amp Rosemary up to martial artist just to require the special need of high-voltage gloves to win.  If she weren't fighting Bronze Tiger and Cheshire I'd agree.  Besides, she and Black Lightning require the intervention of Hong Kong Phooey, "Quicker than the Human Eye."

Regular Aquaman writer Dan Abnett enjoys a quiet moment away from his epic Atlantean story crafting.  He takes Aquaman back to his roots in Amnesty Bay.

He's just a regular old superhero seeking to help out old friend and schoolmate Sheriff Erika Watson.  The shark trouble naturally spoofs Jaws, and in the prologue Abnett and stellar anatomist Paul Pelletier nod to the recent Blake Lively vehicle The Shallows.  These apparent obvious send ups fall by the way side when the meat of the story levitates on by.

Erika's reaction is so utterly brilliant.  Never has the hint of a swear word been so beautifully placed in an all-ages comic book.  This gets to the question of what the hell is Jabberjaw in the first place.

Jabberjaw is the name of the shark drummer in The Neptunes.  No, no, pumpkin.  Don't try to make sense of it.  Embrace it.  It happened.  Jabberjaw really was a cartoon from Hanna-Barbera that attempted to cash in on Jaws and Rodney Dangerfield in the most insane of ways.  Even among talking cars and mystery solving dogs with speech impediments, Jabberjaw is a cartoon that really makes you question whether or not somebody might have been snorting a flounder.

Aquaman and Jabberjaw meet minds and dope out that the angry sharks pertain to something going on with a portal to the future.  So begins our adventure properly.

Abnett wierdly creates an environment where sea dwellers became second class citizens to humans.  This constitutes an even more bizarre team-up between oddball villains.  

Aquaman discovers that in the tradition of the pre-Crisis, the earth of Jabberjaw knows him as a cartoon character similar to an ocean-preserving Smokey the Bear.  Abnett thus takes the opportunity to return all the way back to Aquaman's New 52 beginnings where the Sea King finds his status as a superhero doubted.  Dude punched holes in Nazi subs.  Nevertheless, the Neptunes' look speaks volumes when they witness the Aqua-moves.

As with Black Lightning and Hong Kong Phooey Aquaman and Jabberjaw concludes with a short story by Jeff Parker and Scott Kollins.  In the former, Jason Blood conjures the Funky Phantom to examine the second amendment for bunch of gun-nuts.  He finds the second amendment good but the nuts less than righteous.  In Aquaman and Jabberjaw, the Spectre and Shazam test humanity's nobility through Captain Caveman.  No, really.  If that doesn't whet your appetite, maybe you've picked the wrong hobby.

Jody Houser with the busy Scott Kollins in Amazing Spider-Man Renew Your Vows flashes back to Peter's and Mary Jane's vacation cruise.  This issue is pure comedy, and it's a pretty hilarious one.  Right from the start, Houser identifies the totally inappropriate Annie-sitter that Peter lined up.

In the tradition of Caddyshack, she then introduces Peter and M.J. to a couple of snobs that dislike superheroes and much of everything else.

Houser reminds the reader that this is a superhero book, and orchestrates a close encounter of the wet kind.

If you've got a sea monster, Namor cannot be far behind, but the way Houser delivers the punchline is completely unexpected and laugh aloud funny.

Doomsday Clock focuses on the stupid, stupid Supermen Theory that's got everybody in a tizzy.  So, here's the gist.  The government made the majority of superheroes, and this puts the rest of the heroes in the spotlight.  Have they been lying? If not, did they know? If the Superman Theory is a lie, then who is behind it?  As a bonus, the production of superheroes squares the U.S. against Russia who have a handful of their own defenders.  The result is an artificial parallel with the Watchmen's earth, and the nuclear destruction that followed.

I just want to scream.  If I didn't know any better I'd swear that this book was written during the Post-Crisis.  It's like Legends only without the talent and Identity Crisis with it.  So somebody in the Justice League betrayed their teammates by working with the government to birth meta humans.  Shit.  It's Snapper Carr, isn't it?  He betrayed the League once before, and Johns can't wait to bring up the history.

Still.  I doubt my original supposition is correct.  There's a lot in here that just doesn't gibe with that mostly nauseating era of comic books.  Lex Luthor appears to be a respected business man with the unfortunate past hobby of attempting to rid the world of Superman.   Superman's compadre Batman seems like the Batman from the Justice League and the New 52.

He's no fan of Conrad Veidt who's wanted for the attempted murder of Lex Luthor.  Veidt and Batman share a philosophical conflict that results in the expected physical confrontation.  

Saturn Girl is surprisingly cold blooded about the fate of one individual that winds up in Rorschach's embrace.  

The old man is Johnny Thunder.  The Justice Society appears to have vanished again, and that could tie in with the events in The Button.  It would be nice if something did.

I really wish people would lay off Johnny Thunder.  He seems to be the go-to guy for duplicity.  He's either got a grand inferiority complex, or he's jealous of the way the original Black Canary outshined him in the JSA.  I mean honestly.  It's just getting old, and there is no original Black Canary in the New 52.  Besides, she wore fishnets and men comprised the majority of the JSA.  Wonder Woman would certainly be a Black Canary booster.  It's just ridiculous.  Johnny Thunder used to be pretty likable.  His team-ups with Black Canary a hoot.  Can't we bring that Johnny Thunder back? We have Booster Gold for crying out loud?

As you can see from the review, I'm becoming less of a fan of The Doomsday Clock with each issue.  It started off so well, but it's going to take a lot of momentum to pull out of the tail-spin.