Monday, August 24, 2009

Air Raiders #1


This comic is full of air! No, seriously, there's a lot of air in this comic.



With apologies to Azerth.

39 comments:

Truce Weston said...

first! No way in heck! But awesome video there, Mr. Linkara! Always knocking out quality stuff, each and every time!

I never heard of this, and feel bad you had to read it, to make this video, because this was bad!

So until someone tells me, when Jedis go to the Dark Side, does that mean they vacation on Apokolips? make mine linkara!

Michael Adama Geist said...

I know it's an odd comment to just add at random, but if someone wanted to suggest a bad comic for you to review, eventualy, how would we best contact you about it, and/or send you a comic?

Anonymous said...

Sweet video - I'll get around to buying "Revolution of the Mask #2" as soon as I can :)

And call me simple if you will, but I wouldn't have thought you'd need to buy hookers. You have a sizeable number of fangirls, you know, and I'm sure that most of them would do the job for free. There's a money-saving suggestion for you, eh? ;D

Alex Stritar said...

I can't believe I never noticed your alternating patern!

Great review, as always. Or should I say "great AIR review". Haha, I can't believe I said that.

ezim93 said...

I guess you can say this comic is full of hot air.
...
I'll just crawl into the corner and play the new Batman game.

日本文化のマニアック said...

Good review! Rather silly comic book, you managed to make it interesting. "Food Raiders" might be silly, but I think "Water Raiders" has a ice ring to it.

My real question for you, though, is about the recent reveal on the new Batgirl. Thoughts? Opinions? Frustrated sounds of rage?

Lord Napsack said...

Ah, Linkara, muy bien. Loving the little advertisement at the end xD

But I have to say, at the beginning of the book I'd've thought it better if the entire atmosphere contained gasses that made it impossible to breathe or no atmosphere at all. At least no gasses would meant it was freaking cold and thus the protective armour would look less silly as they'd need lots of clothing to be warm!

Plus, it would have meant they had to wear some form of gas mask, in which case it would be easier for *insert ridiculous villain name* to control the poor people as he would need to supply oxygen tanks for the people to survive, thus being able to control the people in a feasible way as well make more sense.

Plus, the villain would then maybe be able to have a small vice, like his own little garden in which only he was allowed to enter, which could then be used to make him seem more of a bastard and maybe make him go a bit insane, like Adam Susan with Fate.

Sorry for the long post, just got a bit annoyed at the complete idiocy of the writers. But I suppose it is marketed towards little kids who'd be interested only in the whizz-bang nature. But even that seems lacking, and they'd be confused by how air is so versatile. I guess it's just something we have to take as a given, eh?

Mountain King said...

If you want a REALLY bad Marvel toy tie in comic look no further than the Transformers Generation 2 series. Seriously imagine Lifeld drawing Transformers... I'm not kidding.

Anyway fun review, I'm surprised your sanity survived, I don't think mine did:-

How do you control air? True trees are a major source of oxygen but not the only one. You'd have to burn everything down, even moss, mould and plankton. There wouldn't even be plants for the people or animals to eat. Thus mass starvation, or in this world was air all you needed? if so what was in that air?

Excuse me, I think the left side of my brain just tried to jump out of my right ear. Great review as all ways.

Seth said...

Airlandia is going through a recession.

The Air Market Bubble Burst because of Air-backed security derivatives by the Air Banks that didn't hold enough reserve Air. And the Federal Air Reserve flooding the market with cheap Air causing Air inflation.


P.S. ALF would have fit better then PETA.

Will Staples said...

The comic had a vaguely interesting premise, but man, did the execution stink.

And what with all the talk of air and wind, I give you major props for not making any fart jokes. You're a better man than I, Linkara.

Anonymous said...

Wait... Freeze Breeze? As in THIS?

http://www.homedepot.ca/wcsstore/HomeDepotCanada/images/catalog/17051.35218_4.jpg

I always knew there's something fishy with it... At least Airlandia won't smell like turd.

Justin said...

Great as always Lewis. ^_^

As for the comment about not having face covers, I was annoyed by the same thing here recently while watching Classic Doctor Who: Fifth Doctor. Then in one story they did have covers, but it was said the helmets had force fields, so they were able to have the face covers off. Make up your damn minds lol. :p

James said...

If I may borrow a line from Morbo:
"AIR DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!"

Good god... comics based on toy lines are as horrible as movies based on video games. And loved the Spaceballs reference.

Rikonius said...

It's good that this comic is obsessed with air, because it sucks.

Anonymous said...

Actually the whole controlling air as a resource or rather oxygen nixtrogen has been in certain science fiction works. Namely it takes place on planets, colonies, space stations in which air has to be produced from certain minerals, trees to produce oxygen cannot be grown due to lack of necessary soil/environmental conditions.

As for air mines there are certain substances especially on the moon that can be mined to produce breathable air. http://www.physorg.com/news169216598.html#top describes some of the research.

Oh btw this extracting oxygen out of moon rocks as a possibilty to get enough oxygen to setup a base or colony on the moon has been known for decades.

Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque said...

Fuck yeah, ROM Spaceknight is awesome.

Queen Anthai said...

Okay. Dude. I'm only up to the title card AND YOU ARE PLAYING A POISON SONG.

YOU ARE THE AWESOMEST PERSON ON THE INTERNET.

Slade Dreizehn said...

once again, another fun vid. while i primarily watch these for the amusement, there is always something i can pick up about what not to do when making a comic.

till next bro

aa97464 said...

"Where air is more valuable then gold!"

Despite being readily produced by any civilization with basic knowledge of even the most rudimentary of scientific processes and being the 3rd most common element in the universe!

Though to be fair Linkara, they could be miners who mine ore containing oxygen (for instance, bauxite is mostly Al(OH)3) and farmers operating algae growth operations.
The air refineries are presumably to handle the aforementioned ores being converted into a gaseous form.


Incidentally, I'm going to start calling ice cubes "petrified clouds" because it sounds so gloriously pretentious ^_^

Scott Andrew McArthur said...

How dare you speak ill of David Lynch. Good review.

Rachel said...

Dude, did you just diss Lynch? Bah. Now I wanna go watch Blue Velvet again.

Unknown said...

Been waiting for ya to review this one. Awesome review! The first time I watched a review for this comic it sucked! Yours was way better Lewis! BTW, would you recommend Micronaughts or any other toy-based comics?

Paul S. said...

I believe Marvel's STAR imprint came about due to Jim Shooter trying to fill a void in the market after Harvey Comics went under. In fact one of Star's original characters, Royal Roy was a pretty shameless copy of Ritchie Rich.

Another great review by the way. There's no shortage of really bad 80s toy-tie-in comics out there perhaps in a future episode we might see a review of "Atari Force."

Anonymous said...

That was air truly airmazing airview of an airtastic aircomic that airvolved air.............AIR!

J-Naps said...

i love how people randomly shoot off missiles in the domes, considering they need air for the chemicals to combust, thus making the explosions

not only do the explosions not happen, but if there was enough air for them to, the all the air would get sucked up constantly and everyone would suffocate.

another great review as always

The House of C.R.P said...

Damn is this comic full of hot ai-*BANG*

Anyway, some of these plot elements could have been better if this was a comedy-adventure, but when you try to take them seriously, it just falls apart.

Lotus Prince said...

I love how the girl's name is Saira. Get it? Because it WOULD be "Sarah," but we're talking about AIR here! It's only natural for her to be named "air," only with an S and an A to sandwich it, so the average reader doesn't notice! Get it? GET IT?!?!

The Trembler said...

Another good one. You weren’t as outraged by this one’s bad worldbuilding as by the illogic of the Batman comic, but it still had the righteous edge that all your best videos have.

I have a tendency to see how I can make logically problematic stories work, particularly -- though not only -- when I have an interest in the story. And perversely enough, being featured in one of your reviews, makes each of these comics a little interesting to me. Not that I’d buy them or want to read more but. . . well you know.

So I thought about this world, doing some extrapolation of what the facts you listed seem to suggest to make the situation make sense.

First of all, if breathable air is rare, it is by default the most precious substance around. Given a desire to live as long as possible and choice between only having air, water, or food, what would you do? (Arguably, water *might* be able to sneak by air in value because the oxygen could be separated out, and by being more dense than air, it is more compact. But that makes it air in disguise with a second vital use.)

I have to assume that this world’s Great Disaster changed the atmosphere and probably killed off most plants alive at the time. It didn’t get rid of all air, but removed/changed most breathable air. Outside you have an atmosphere, but you can’t breathe it. But there must be carbon dioxide, otherwise no plants. (Unless their plants do this differently, which makes any extrapolation useless.) So Arazar didn’t choose to use air (unless he purposefully caused the Great Disaster); he just exploited it and his coincidentally(?) appropriate name.

There must be breathable air in the protected dome. (Perhaps the air hoarder was sucking into a tank and going to use it outside the dome or sell it to another for outside the dome use; more like an air thief or air poacher, but whatever.) Presumably, inside the domes, people must have to pay exorbitant rent or be a valuable/high ranking subject to Arazar. The first group would fit the “Free Air for Free Men” protestors; the second group would fit those watching the juggler and smiling. Maybe oswm of the village isn’t under the dome, and the villagers must wear masks there; aybe the loss of the tanks took their entire air supply, and they needed to use thiet own personal supplies. Why the villagers would thank the Air Radrs instead of hating them for that. . . I don’t know, poor reasoning skills due to oxygen deprivation.

Depending on how logical one’s trying to be, outside the domes, except near real forests, there must be no one living, or they constantly must be buying or stealing air.

Air mining: Other commenters covered it.

Air refinery: Using a loose definition of a refinery, I suppose it could be a factory that produces oxygen form water and other compounds with oxygen,

Air farmers: Makes more sense to farmer air, since plants release oxygen. Makes more sense if you don’t forbid plants, but it could be a kind of metaphor or a technological air creation system. Maybe they allow, in controlled amounts, foul smelling algae but not pretty trees.

Personally I think the writers just stole the actually sensible Star Wars notion of Moisture Farming on desert planets and Kessel’s Spice Mines but didn’t work the details out. In any case, using all of them without explanation (and you’d actually have to use one of those places as a setting for the explanation or risk being superfluous) sounds as stupid as you suggested.

However they do it, there must be enough oxygen to allow a population to survive and trust in their future possible survival but not be comfortable or feel safe form bring cut off/kicked out.

The Trembler said...

Credits or coins make more sense than air as the direct medium of exchange, because air takes up so much space and is so easy to loose due to a leak. But it also makes sense that just as out money was once backed by gold, theirs is backed by air. (In their circumstances, air makes more sense than gold ever did.) I can’t help but whimsically imagine a Dome Knox on Airlandia where they store the air. Anyone can exchange a credit (only an accounting make instead of a coin, or is there a credit coin/bill?) fir a credit’s worth of air. Still, just as people did buy things with gold directly, so people could buy with air if they had a container on them.

So anyway, yes, there probably are air accountants.

Petrified can mean a specific process. But it has been expanded into a metaphor for the simple state of freezing in place. I can give geographic (aeriographic ?) names artistic license. If they ever came up for a reason why the clouds are frozen, it probably would be stupid though.

Two final things: Again, assuming their biology is like ours, a lack of oxygen would have major affect on the food supply. Those two guys under the dome should have been starving; in fact, so should the juggler and all the rest. That problem is compounded if there are few plants, though perhaps other, unpopulated (why?) parts of the planet have plants. Still, an absence of local plants would make food hard to find inside Arazar’s domain. Including meat -- even meat from exotic animals that didn’t breathe oxygen. Unless there are animals that live off magnetism or specific other chemicals, like those creatures by the deep ocean vents. That ever mentioned? Their science better be pretty fantastic to manufacture safe food without oxygen. Yet limited (perhaps by law) in not having simple ways of separating oxygen from carbon dioxide.

In fact, Arazar’s moral problem isn’t the rationing of air. That seems to be a necessity. It’s the injustice of his rationing (and his government in general) and the fact that he’s forbidding one of the easiest ways to replenish the supply in order to maintain his power. Air should be more evenly distributed, but given the current circumstances, it can’t in any way be free (as far as amount per person goes), even for free men. I hope the Air Raiders realize that and set up a reasonable, to-be-phased-out rationing plan (and probably birth control to keep the air breathing population from shooting up) sin between working on their reforestation initiative.

Once again I thought about a comic you reviewed more than the writers. (So did you; you must’ve though of it more than I did.) But then, I find doing this fun. And I find your videos taking apart bad comics fun. Keep up the great work!

Sieg-sama said...

Great review.
And geez, all that AIR stuff is just dumb.
Oh and if there are freakin' forests outside of towns, why not just evacuate people there? That would be way easier.

MetFanMac said...

Gee, that's got to be the least motivated henchman I've ever seen (the one who gives up on following the Air Raiders through the WTFPetrified Clouds with a single expository sentence that sounds like he's just being sarcastic).

Anonymous said...

Hey, Linkara!

Have you ever considered doing an episode where you answer folks' questions about comics? Sort of a Comic QnA with Linkara?

There's a lot of stuff about comics I sure don't get. Like... what exactly is the difference between "magic" and "extra-dimensional" power in the DCU (other than one can hurt Superman and the other can't).

Anonymous said...

Yep, I agree; from what you have shown this is indeed a bad comic.

I don wonder, though, how many successful comics based on toys have been made.

We of course have the Ur-examples of Transformers and G.I. Joe (and you mentioned one of my favorites, overlooked by many: Rom, Spaceknight! ^_^).

Aside from those three, though, I can't think of any others (although there probably was He-Man and Thundercats commics out during that time as well).

As an aside: One of the things I liked about Rom was that in one storyline it actually encompassed the entire Marvel Universe, and had a semi-permanent affect on the X-Men (Forge making a Neutralizer that was accidentally used on Storm, taking her powers [and turning her into a Punk Rocker?!]).

Anonymous said...

It would have work it everyone lived in dome cities and the Barons's home domes have trees and what not and transport air back and fort (co2 to the trees, o2 to the others) and make the people pay for it via rent, like Judge Dredd's Luna City.

Dave said...

I can't believe no one but me made a "Cosmic Boy! NOOOO!" reference when "Rokk" showed up.

shikome kido mi said...

I assume they got their armor form the same people as the Imperial Storm Troopers.
What was with those outfits? Well, they limit our periphereal vision and make it easy for infiltrators to get in because no one can see our faces, but at least they stop blaster bolts... no, wait, they don't.
Okay, maybe military grade blaster bolts can get through armor but at least we're protected from your average rabble armed with improvised weapons like sticks and rocks...
Except a bunch of teddy bears proved that wrong in the third movie.
Imperial Storm Trooper armor, it's bulky and awkward with no protective value at all, but it sure makes your minions look like bad guys. Buy some today!

Bazookoidben said...

Air accountants? What about air guitar salesmen?

I think these guards must be wearing re-sprayed Storm trooper amour, they die in less than a punch...

Gyre said...

This comic failed from literally the first panel. That is really bad.

Bekah said...

That's your bedroom? *Flanders faint*