You know this reminds me of one of those Mort Weisinger-era Superman stories where that would be sold as "The Marriage of Superman and Lois Lane" only for it to be a hoax, dream, or imaginary tale. Why someone would try this trick on a mid-to-late 90s comic fans baffles me.
Loved the little Nintendo Power ad in the middle of it. Also they actually somehow managed to make Joxer more ineffective than in the show.
Anyway I noticed that DC's bringing back some of the Archie superheroes in August, so maybe you might want to crack into that Mighty Crusaders trade down the line. :p
Ah, Topps comics. I remember when I collected all the early issues of "The X-Files" comics due to the sure-fire worth down the road. That was about as good of a call as this comic.
Seriously, pointless comics are probably the worst. Kind of like a bad drama, there is nothing to laugh at or get all that mad at. You're just like 'wow, I could have done so much more with my time.' This sounds like the 'Monster A-Go-Go' of tie-in comics.
I am so glad to see your review of that comic in so many ways. I led to so many side thoughts of some of your comments.
SPOILER SPACE NEW BATLESTAR GALACTICA FOR ANSWER #!
1) I have to admit, I always had a problem with the costuming. Did they even try to have Greek based costumes? Ere they so obsessed without being called “sword and sandal” that that avoided having sandals? They looked like people out of a Renaissance Faire, when they should have looked like people out of out of a Hellenistic Faire. Eve though I acknowledged its quality, I always reacted to Ms. Lawless’ other series, [The New] Battlestar Galactica. Every time I saw a necktie, I went nuts. Even having established what turned out to be the connection between the New BG world and our own time, to think that something specific as the modern business suit with necktie developed independently. Well ,m let’s just say that it would take BG’s God-Or-Whatever to purposefully intervene in history to make that in any way plausible. (I heard Ron Moore said that having been the “Margaret Meade of the Klingon Empire,” he wanted to go the other way with a culture -- to have it become extremely normal. But to have something long ago end up creating a culture just like ours (even having a character named “William,” who was called “Bill” -- how often independently a culture to only come up with the name “William” (for a man) but shorten it by adding a letter “B” to the “ill” of William??? Why does the “B” come form???) is less plausible than having bat’leths as swords and creatures with crinkled foreheads.) Sorry, but I have to get them out in the open. However, like New BG, Hercules/Xena didn’t have costumes that fit their eras, yet the show’s eventual quality still made me overcome (to a not, not-quite-accepting degree) the problems.
2) As to the cover, you mention that it had “so much text.” So much text that it looks like. . . Warrior. (I’m just sayin’)
3) When you mentioned Hercules talking about his father’s sexual conquests, I couldn’t help but think out hot THE DECENDANTS OF IO. My introduction to Greek mythology was “The D’Auraires’ Book of Greek Myths”.” That is book is not a comic book. But like comic, it was a book with fairly simple text and a lot of art. Their balance wad more they than art, but the balance was closer than, say, ”Bulfinch’s Mythology.” Every story was told in a small amount of words than was typical in a comic -- trough hot as small a number of words as a wrestler-written comic book -- each story had a “full page spread” next to the first page of text. And even when aren’t s full page spread on other pages (which their often are -- even a few two-page spreads), there are many small illustrations next to words. And they’re excellent. To me, the Green pantheon illustrated by the D’Auraires are the Greek pantheon. (You ay they’re fictional? What a weird thing to say.)
(BTW, the D’Auraires’ also illustrated a book of Norse mythology, just as good, which also set my image of the Norse pantheon.)
Anyway, one of the things that always fascinated me about Ancient Greek theology and the D’Auraires’ Greek mythology book in particular was a illustrated family tree pit roughly in the middle of the book. There were two main trees in this illustrated there it a few more ‘shrubs.” But the main tree was the tree that started with Io. Io was a woman who Zeus felt an attraction for, Zeus then turned into a bull and abducted it. Her eventually fathered her child. (I assume he changed back from being a bull for that, but your mythology may vary.) Anyway, that’s all very well as far as illegitimate children go, but their great- great- great- great- great- great- grandchild (acceding to the D’Auraires’ genealogy) was named Danaë, and she was a princess who attacked Zeus’ attention. And he fathered her child, Perseus (the defeater of Medusa, and eventual husband of that woman/constellation/galaxy, Andromeda.) One of Perseus’ and Andromeda’s granddaughters married one of their great-grandsons. And those staggered descendants parented a son, Iphiclese. But Zeus, feeling n attention for a familiar line of dent, cuckolded hi own male double decedent with his own female double descendant, and father Heracles/Hercules. Therefore, Hercules is no merely the son of Zeus, he’s the great-grandson of Zeus, the Great-Great-grandson of Zeus, and several other decedents of Zeus. And the thing is, you can actually deduce this from the story and the illustrations, but the story never mentions this fact. Nor does the story dwell on the fact that Zeus father children of two of his sisters an one first cousin.
Rami never seemed to mention this pat of the story. At least as far as I saw. Nor, BTW, did Disney. Yea, right. Hera was Hercules’ mother. ;-) Were you, O House of Mouse, going to mention that Zeus & Hera (joint parents of Ares, Hephaestus, & Hebe) are siblings, that their parents were siblings, and that according to some mythological stories that the mother of Zeus’ and Hera’s mother was the sole parent (i.e. no father) of the male god who fathered Zeus and Hera’s parents by his own mother?
3 1/2 ) (Another line of descent from Io led to Semale, a princes of Thebes who attracted her own ancestor Zeus as a lover. Their son, Dionysus, did quite well in the Greek Pantheon.)
3 2/3) BTW, when you mention his wife, Hera. His SISTER-wife, Hera. Don’t forget he left, or should I saw SWALLOWED his first wife (his first cousin on both ides) Metis, mother of Athena I ode rot marry her. At the time Metis, had assumed the form of a fly. (You knew an old god who swallowed a fly, but he was immortal, so he didn’t die.) Actually Zeus kinda gave birth to Athena, after Metis gave bit to her. . inside Zeus’ brain. Prometheus drove a spear into Zeus’ head to let Athena out.
;-0 Greek mythology is so crazy!!!!!!
Anyway remember that Hera wasn’t the first, and she cid take over her own and her husband’s own double first cousin as Zeus main wife, so don’t feel TOO bad for her.
(It always struck me that one aspect in the rise of Christianity in the Greco-Roman world was the novel idea of having a god who wasn’t a sexual pervert.)
4) Oh you silly, Linkara. The pink smoke wasn’t liquid in a bottle or Rain’s forehea. It was Jeannie having lost her bottle. Will Dr. Bellows find out about her?
5) The whole idea about people in towns only having one subject of conversation reminded me of console Role Playing Games. Click on the X or A button rot whatever for a console game, and the same character will almost always say the same thing Even if they’ve already “said” it to you ten times in a row.
5) I’d say I hate to be pedantic, but I don’t. (See the first subject of the conversation on your recent Made of Fail conversation) Furies (o r Erinyes ) had a specific role. Their role was to punish those who committed sins against the natural order As Wikipedia puts it “The Erinyes often stood for the rightness of things within the standard order; for example, Heraclitus declared that if Helios decided to change the course of the Sun through the sky, they would prevent him from doing so. Predominantly, they were understood as the persecutors of mortal men and women who broke natural laws. In particular, those who broke ties of kinship through murdering a mother (matricide), murdering a father (patricide), murdering a brother (fratricide), or other such familial killings brought special attention from the Erinyes”. Wikipedia earlier says that the Furies also push those who make false oaths which , considering what Heraclse & Xena are doing, might very well fit their behavior. Put another way, perhaps the reason the Furies or Fury) did what they (or it) did was because all the other weddings wee fake weddings, too.
6) Foked!!! I bet you were waiting for Spoony to release that video just so you could include that word in yours.
7) Wait Hercules can’t fly? So he’s not the son of the only scientist to realize what the earthquakes on his home planet signify for. . .? Oh, right. I was thinking of a more modern mythology.
PS A few post back I asked you if my message was too long. I guess I know know what that limit is. ;-)
Good job with the review, Linkara. It was interesting to see you tackle a very pointless comic and still made it funny.
One thing I want to add is on the cover itself. The idea of using photo-shopped images has been done before. Back in the 70s' or 80s' Marvel Comics did have a cover of Amaving Spiderman and Capatin America where the heroes did look real. By the way, that cover by Alex Ross looked truly awesome.
Actually, more then anything, the random anti-male tirade mid comic reminded me of the fearsomely awful Image comics "event" Babewatch.
If I recall correctly the gist of the whole "event" was that some witch, who may or may not have been important before, hates Image's Wonder Woman rip off and also incidentally hates men, all men, for some reason. Anyway she casts a spell that turns every man who Fake Wonder Woman has ever met into a woman.
That's it, that was the entire plot. I mean, clearly, this was just an excuse to get more Liefeldian bosoms per page then any story arc before but the whole thing was so sexist, so poorly done, and so ill conceived that it makes Amazons Attack look like high art.
It read like freakishly perverse fan fiction (but I repeat myself). And now that I think about it I think it is definitely deserving of the full AtFW treatment.
Once again, you did an excellent review.
ReplyDeleteOh boy... this is horrible, this is cruel, this is EYE CANCER!! No serious, which devil made them create this abomination!?
ReplyDeleteUhh... this is horrible, but you made a great review ;)
Well, at least their marriage wasn't erased by a deal with the devil. :P
ReplyDeleteYou know this reminds me of one of those Mort Weisinger-era Superman stories where that would be sold as "The Marriage of Superman and Lois Lane" only for it to be a hoax, dream, or imaginary tale. Why someone would try this trick on a mid-to-late 90s comic fans baffles me.
ReplyDeleteLoved the little Nintendo Power ad in the middle of it. Also they actually somehow managed to make Joxer more ineffective than in the show.
Anyway I noticed that DC's bringing back some of the Archie superheroes in August, so maybe you might want to crack into that Mighty Crusaders trade down the line. :p
Ah, Topps comics. I remember when I collected all the early issues of "The X-Files" comics due to the sure-fire worth down the road. That was about as good of a call as this comic.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, pointless comics are probably the worst. Kind of like a bad drama, there is nothing to laugh at or get all that mad at. You're just like 'wow, I could have done so much more with my time.' This sounds like the 'Monster A-Go-Go' of tie-in comics.
Archie Meets the Punisher was also labeled as a #1.
ReplyDeleteI secretly hold out hope there may one day be a #2.
Ugh, my ex was obsessed with Xena. I'm thinking she'll actually like this comic. (^_^)
ReplyDeleteThank God I was too young for all this crap (was 12 in 2000). But looking at this, I didn't miss much.
ReplyDeleteWere these series any good? They were always on the local channels at around 5-ish.
Keep up the good work.
"Archie Meets the Punisher was also labeled as a #1."
ReplyDeleteArchie Meets The Punisher?
...
ARCHIE meets THE PUNISHER?! That's like My Little Pony meets Batman.
Well, I didn't watch Hercules or Xena either, so don't feel bad Linkara.
Pointless Feminism/Anti Male proclamations? Oh lord, it's Amazons Attack all over again.
ReplyDeleteI am so glad to see your review of that comic in so many ways. I led to so many side thoughts of some of your comments.
ReplyDeleteSPOILER SPACE NEW BATLESTAR GALACTICA FOR ANSWER #!
1) I have to admit, I always had a problem with the costuming. Did they even try to have Greek based costumes? Ere they so obsessed without being called “sword and sandal” that that avoided having sandals? They looked like people out of a Renaissance Faire, when they should have looked like people out of out of a Hellenistic Faire. Eve though I acknowledged its quality, I always reacted to Ms. Lawless’ other series, [The New] Battlestar Galactica. Every time I saw a necktie, I went nuts. Even having established what turned out to be the connection between the New BG world and our own time, to think that something specific as the modern business suit with necktie developed independently. Well ,m let’s just say that it would take BG’s God-Or-Whatever to purposefully intervene in history to make that in any way plausible. (I heard Ron Moore said that having been the “Margaret Meade of the Klingon Empire,” he wanted to go the other way with a culture -- to have it become extremely normal. But to have something long ago end up creating a culture just like ours (even having a character named “William,” who was called “Bill” -- how often independently a culture to only come up with the name “William” (for a man) but shorten it by adding a letter “B” to the “ill” of William??? Why does the “B” come form???) is less plausible than having bat’leths as swords and creatures with crinkled foreheads.) Sorry, but I have to get them out in the open. However, like New BG, Hercules/Xena didn’t have costumes that fit their eras, yet the show’s eventual quality still made me overcome (to a not, not-quite-accepting degree) the problems.
2) As to the cover, you mention that it had “so much text.” So much text that it looks like. . . Warrior. (I’m just sayin’)
3) When you mentioned Hercules talking about his father’s sexual conquests, I couldn’t help but think out hot THE DECENDANTS OF IO. My introduction to Greek mythology was “The D’Auraires’ Book of Greek Myths”.” That is book is not a comic book. But like comic, it was a book with fairly simple text and a lot of art. Their balance wad more they than art, but the balance was closer than, say, ”Bulfinch’s Mythology.” Every story was told in a small amount of words than was typical in a comic -- trough hot as small a number of words as a wrestler-written comic book -- each story had a “full page spread” next to the first page of text. And even when aren’t s full page spread on other pages (which their often are -- even a few two-page spreads), there are many small illustrations next to words. And they’re excellent. To me, the Green pantheon illustrated by the D’Auraires are the Greek pantheon. (You ay they’re fictional? What a weird thing to say.)
(BTW, the D’Auraires’ also illustrated a book of Norse mythology, just as good, which also set my image of the Norse pantheon.)
Anyway, one of the things that always fascinated me about Ancient Greek theology and the D’Auraires’ Greek mythology book in particular was a illustrated family tree pit roughly in the middle of the book. There were two main trees in this illustrated there it a few more ‘shrubs.” But the main tree was the tree that started with Io. Io was a woman who Zeus felt an attraction for, Zeus then turned into a bull and abducted it. Her eventually fathered her child. (I assume he changed back from being a bull for that, but your mythology may vary.) Anyway, that’s all very well as far as illegitimate children go, but their great- great- great- great- great- great- grandchild (acceding to the D’Auraires’ genealogy) was named Danaë, and she was a princess who attacked Zeus’ attention. And he fathered her child, Perseus (the defeater of Medusa, and eventual husband of that woman/constellation/galaxy, Andromeda.) One of Perseus’ and Andromeda’s granddaughters married one of their great-grandsons. And those staggered descendants parented a son, Iphiclese. But Zeus, feeling n attention for a familiar line of dent, cuckolded hi own male double decedent with his own female double descendant, and father Heracles/Hercules. Therefore, Hercules is no merely the son of Zeus, he’s the great-grandson of Zeus, the Great-Great-grandson of Zeus, and several other decedents of Zeus. And the thing is, you can actually deduce this from the story and the illustrations, but the story never mentions this fact. Nor does the story dwell on the fact that Zeus father children of two of his sisters an one first cousin.
ReplyDeleteRami never seemed to mention this pat of the story. At least as far as I saw. Nor,
BTW, did Disney. Yea, right. Hera was Hercules’ mother. ;-) Were you, O House of Mouse, going to mention that Zeus & Hera (joint parents of Ares, Hephaestus, & Hebe) are siblings, that their parents were siblings, and that according to some mythological stories that the mother of Zeus’ and Hera’s mother was the sole parent (i.e. no father) of the male god who fathered Zeus and Hera’s parents by his own mother?
3 1/2 ) (Another line of descent from Io led to Semale, a princes of Thebes who attracted her own ancestor Zeus as a lover. Their son, Dionysus, did quite well in the Greek Pantheon.)
3 2/3) BTW, when you mention his wife, Hera. His SISTER-wife, Hera. Don’t forget he left, or should I saw SWALLOWED his first wife (his first cousin on both ides) Metis, mother of Athena I ode rot marry her. At the time Metis, had assumed the form of a fly. (You knew an old god who swallowed a fly, but he was immortal, so he didn’t die.) Actually Zeus kinda gave birth to Athena, after Metis gave bit to her. . inside Zeus’ brain. Prometheus drove a spear into Zeus’ head to let Athena out.
;-0 Greek mythology is so crazy!!!!!!
Anyway remember that Hera wasn’t the first, and she cid take over her own and her husband’s own double first cousin as Zeus main wife, so don’t feel TOO bad for her.
(It always struck me that one aspect in the rise of Christianity in the Greco-Roman world was the novel idea of having a god who wasn’t a sexual pervert.)
4) Oh you silly, Linkara. The pink smoke wasn’t liquid in a bottle or Rain’s forehea. It was Jeannie having lost her bottle. Will Dr. Bellows find out about her?
5) The whole idea about people in towns only having one subject of conversation reminded me of console Role Playing Games. Click on the X or A button rot whatever for a console game, and the same character will almost always say the same thing Even if they’ve already “said” it to you ten times in a row.
5) I’d say I hate to be pedantic, but I don’t. (See the first subject of the conversation on your recent Made of Fail conversation) Furies (o r Erinyes ) had a specific role. Their role was to punish those who committed sins against the natural order As Wikipedia puts it “The Erinyes often stood for the rightness of things within the standard order; for example, Heraclitus declared that if Helios decided to change the course of the Sun through the sky, they would prevent him from doing so. Predominantly, they were understood as the persecutors of mortal men and women who broke natural laws. In particular, those who broke ties of kinship through murdering a mother (matricide), murdering a father (patricide), murdering a brother (fratricide), or other such familial killings brought special attention from the Erinyes”. Wikipedia earlier says that the Furies also push those who make false oaths which , considering what Heraclse & Xena are doing, might very well fit their behavior. Put another way, perhaps the reason the Furies or Fury) did what they (or it) did was because all the other weddings wee fake weddings, too.
ReplyDelete6) Foked!!! I bet you were waiting for Spoony to release that video just so you could include that word in yours.
7) Wait Hercules can’t fly? So he’s not the son of the only scientist to realize what the earthquakes on his home planet signify for. . .? Oh, right. I was thinking of a more modern mythology.
PS A few post back I asked you if my message was too long. I guess I know know what that limit is. ;-)
So the gods themselves descend from Olympus for this event, and all the help does is moan about how annoying they are?
ReplyDeleteGeez...
Good job with the review, Linkara. It was interesting to see you tackle a very pointless comic and still made it funny.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I want to add is on the cover itself. The idea of using photo-shopped images has been done before. Back in the 70s' or 80s' Marvel Comics did have a cover of Amaving Spiderman and Capatin America where the heroes did look real. By the way, that cover by Alex Ross looked truly awesome.
this wasn't so bad. it wasn't horrible, but coming off of something like Warrior and Amazons Attack, yeah we have seen worse
ReplyDeleteawesome video and review!
so until Neutro challenges Godzilla to a basketball game, MAKE MINE LINKARA!
Here are those two issues I talked about before:
ReplyDeleteAmazing Spiderman #262: http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/thumb/2/2c/AmazingSpider-Man262.jpg/300px-AmazingSpider-Man262.jpg
And to my mistake the issue with Cap was actually an issue of Marvel Team-Up #128 (aka Spiderman teams up with another Marvel character):
http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/marvel-team-up/128-1.jpg
To be fair, the Spiderman looks the most stylish out of all the live action comic covers I've seen.
Actually, more then anything, the random anti-male tirade mid comic reminded me of the fearsomely awful Image comics "event" Babewatch.
ReplyDeleteIf I recall correctly the gist of the whole "event" was that some witch, who may or may not have been important before, hates Image's Wonder Woman rip off and also incidentally hates men, all men, for some reason. Anyway she casts a spell that turns every man who Fake Wonder Woman has ever met into a woman.
That's it, that was the entire plot. I mean, clearly, this was just an excuse to get more Liefeldian bosoms per page then any story arc before but the whole thing was so sexist, so poorly done, and so ill conceived that it makes Amazons Attack look like high art.
It read like freakishly perverse fan fiction (but I repeat myself). And now that I think about it I think it is definitely deserving of the full AtFW treatment.
Please Linkara, rip Babewatch a new one for us.