TRULY GONE & FORGOTTEN : SKYBOY

Hold it, these aren't my two favorite heroes. I like meatball marinara and the Subway club.

Superman has adopted more alien babies than Madonna and Angelina Jolie combined, which is a shit joke if ever there were one. Like, I know I was the guy who made it, but I just want you to know that I know how absolutely abysmal it is. "Gosh, celebrities adopted a child, how gross." The worst. Leno hackery, that one. Let's start over.

Yep, he's a real pip.

But it's true. Superman has historically had a predilection for "adopting" (legally or informally) any wandering alien kid who crosses his path. This is everything from exiled Earthboy Johnny Kirk, to an unweeping alien satan child in the Seventies, to two hot teenage blonde imps called the Ogies which is something the law should get involved with investigating. 

Also joining the bottom shelf of the Superman Family is Skyboy who, like most children in superhero comics, plummeted out of the clear blue in a speeding, out-of-control rocket from space, in the pages of World's Finest Comics vol.1 No.92 (Jan-Feb 1953, "The Boy From Outer Space").

While Batman and Superman are performing stunts at an air show -- and, presumably, crime runs rampant in Gotham and Metropolis -- they notice a plummeting, shredded rocketship descending earthwards in the company of the meteor which apparently wrecked it. Inside, they find the form of an unconscious, amnesiac child which, for a certain type of individual who inarguably belongs in jail, is like Christmas in July.

"Such as a single serving or fun-sized planet."

Devoid of memory, the child nonetheless displays super-powers on par with Superman's own. Dubbing the little weirdo "Skyboy," instead of "Roy" or "Kevin" or something like a normal person would do, the Man of Steel unquestioningly adopts the tyke as his kid sidekick. That sort of immediate paternal affiliation speaks volumes as to Superman's character, such as his selfless devotion and sense of sacrifice, and also that the dude is like incredibly lonely is my guess.

Complicating Superman's sudden foster-parent situation is that a number of high-profile copper robberies are happening around town, drawing Batman and Robin to the scenes. Their keen deductive skills nail down two facts: whoever is stealing all the copper has tremendous super-strength, and also they leave their fingerprints behind. Impressions of their fingerprints, I should say, I don't think they were leaving their actual fingerprints. It's not like they worked in a pineapple cannery.

When Batman reluctantly accuses Skyboy of the robberies, it leads to a genuinely touching portrayal of mutual shock and dismay between the two crimefighters and the recently abducted/adopted mighty-moppet. Not believing it could be true, Superman attempts to shock Skyboy's memory back, which is dumb and dangerous buy hey, it was the Fifties.

"It's been a really emotional day."

Neither lightning nor volcanic explosions do much to shake Skyboy out of his amnesia, but Superman threatening to crush him with the same meteorite which caused his amnesia in the first place seems to do the trick. Either it worked or the kid was faking all along and preferred not to get smooshed in the punim by space rocks, because his memory's back!

It turns out that Skyboy is actually Tharn of the planet Kormo, the son of a lawman who inexplicably sent his unsupervised son after three dangerous Kormo criminals as they fled to Earth. The copper-thieving confusion seemed to arise because the criminals in question were after the element - precious on their world - and because everyone on Kormo has identical fingerprints! Just like how all Earthlings have identical wrinkles on their testicles. Don't believe me? Ask a stranger on the bus.

Anyway, Tharn is shipped back to Kormo with the three thieves unconscious in the back of his ship, unescorted and unarmed. Frankly, it seems like Tharn's having a real hard time finding a responsible adult anywhere in this corner of the galaxy. He's going to be a real mess when he grows up.

"Well, you haven't got my panache, kid, but you're all right"

THE UNCANNY X-MEN AT THE STATE FAIR OF TEXAS

For my money, not enough superhero comics take place at prominent state and county fairs throughout the United States. Who wouldn't want to see The Teen Titans Take In The Michigan State Fair, Spider-Man in Danger At The Putnam County Jubilee, and Lady Death: Blood Red Corndogs of Hell? I know I wouldn't, that's one, me, right here.

That's like Dress Barn but for horses.

However, there's always The Uncanny X-Men At The State Fair of Texas, a joint production of Marvel Comics and the Dallas Times Herald which possesses such a mouthful of a title that I could meet my word-count if I just cut-and-pasted it about five more times.  The Uncanny X-Men At The State Fair of Texas The Uncanny X-Men At The State Fair of Texas The Uncanny X-Men At The State Fair of Texas. See?

Marvel's uncanny mutants find themselves in the land of Big Tex and deep-fried brownie batter thanks to the desirable young prospective mutant super-character Daniel Wiley, aka "Eques," a horse-happy Dallas resident who also happens to have one of the most absurd mutant powers of all time. In moments of stress or intense concentration, he can transform himself into ... a winged centaur! Weirdly, this makes him the second superhero centaur in comics, that I know of. There might be more. This could be a sub-genre for all I'm aware.

Whatever the case, Magneto of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants Local 809 tries to recruit the kid/foal into his crew, because I guess if you've got a human Toad and a fat guy on your team, you're willing to settle.

The X-Men are also hot on Eques' well-groomed tail, seeking him out at the expansive fair where he's been working in the horse exhibit. This turns into a tour of the Fair, as you imagine it might from the example set allllll the way back in the two issues of World's Fair Comics produced by National Periodical in the late Thirties. That there's a precedent for this which dates back all the way to the origin of the genre is humbling. We've come so far and accomplished so little. Let's shut it down.

"Not counting all those guys with clock gears glued to their hats"

Colossus in particular, having been born and raised a product of Soviet Russia, is portrayed as constantly gawking around the fair. Everyone else is fairly blase about the Lena Horne concert, the replica pioneer homesteads and the State Fair's signature enormous mechanical homonculus Big Tex, but Colossus is walking around for the most part with his mouth agape. There's a pretty great scene where Professor X chastises Colossus for lingering at the auto exhibit, and then a few panels later has accompanied him to the Cotton Bowl. You get the feeling that he had hurt Colossus' feelings and was making it up to him by taking him to the game and buying him the largest sweatshirt in stock. I bet he ate like five corndogs.

The book ultimately descends into a pretty typical fight scene, with Eques changing sides to the good guys and retiring from superherodom in the space of like two panels. It's worth mentioning that Magneto is defeated because Big Tex kicked him in the butt. How did the X-Men pull that off? It's because Big Tex is secretly alive and hates evil, or possibly because he's a big fan of centaurs. It's genuinely hard to say, but the smizing rictus of Tex's face winking at the audience is the stuff of nightmares. That one panel alone might very well earn this book the accolade of being the most terrifying comic ever committed to paper.

Terrifying metal titans and deep-fried Coke! The Texas State Fair really does have it all!

"See you in hell!"

IF YOU SEE SWAMP THING, SAY SWAMP THING: FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE

With superhero television programs blowing up in the last few years, recaps of superhero television shows have become all the internet rage. Other sites, however, are hobbled by the need to cover shows which have been "recently broadcast" or which are "any good at all." But who covers the uncoverable? That's why Gone&Forgotten chooses to cover the 1991-1993 USA Network live-action Swamp Thing television series in a feature I like to call "Swamp Thing In The Way She Moves" or...

If You See Swamp Thing, Say Swamp Thing

A walking salad bar, a plan - Panama!
Season One / Episode Three : From Beyond the Grave

Grandma snuffed it between episodes, but she's still sticking around to make life difficult for Anton Arcane and his creepy-peepy fingers.

Jim and Tressa visit Savannah's grave, indicating for the first time pretty much whose funeral it was that everyone was attending last episode. I mean, I know they mentioned it, but it was almost sub-sonic --- plus, this time we learn that Savannah lived to a comfortable old age of (subtracts 1930 from 1990) ... sixty. Well, at least it ... was a full life.

Tressa is startled the next morning by Everett Baxter (Brett Rice), a greased-up convenience-store pickled wiener in wire-frame glasses. Sweating pure salt brine, Evvie delivers unfortunate news in the form of an eviction notice and a previously-unrevealed codicil to her mother's will dictating that (A) Tressa gets nothing and (B) get the fuck out of my house.

"Good morning, I'm a Vienna Sausage in a suit. Have you heard the good news about Jesus Christ?"

This sends Tressa and Jim on a quest to find what they know to be grandma's legit will, hidden somewhere in the swamp or the house or possibly in the sky, for all I know. Emotional dismay over the confusing revelations visit upon both Jim and Tressa complicated and terrifying dreams. Jim just gets scared by grandma leaning in too close for a kiss from her favorite (?) grandson, but Tressa gets a full-fledged late-series M*A*S*H quality series of night terrors, and even gets to haul her dead mom's disembodied arm out of a hole in the mud. Neat!

A slightly tone-deaf figure approaches Tressa from behind, singing this popular ditty I'm sure we'll all remember from Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve:

See the ship
Hear it speak
From deep down in the hole

See the ship
Hear it creak
It has a secret to unfold

AWWWWW SUFFRAGETTE

And guest-starring grandma as the ghost of Huckleberry Finn

Even in her waking world, Tressa is getting haunted by off-key ghosts. Even worse, Anton Arcane shows up to hissingly libido-ize the whole scene, and to drop major hints that he arranged for all this alternate will nonsense.

In literally the funniest bit of physical action I've seen recently - and definitely on this show - Anton confronts Baxter as the lawyer pulls an all-nighter at his office. Before he even speaks, the first thing Mark Lindsay Chapman's Anton Arcane does is to tip Baxter's desk lamp backwards 90 degrees, so that the light is shining under his chin like a flashlight during a scary story at camp. And then he launches into his very intimidating confrontation with Baxter - this is fine over-the-top evil guy comedy. If the show keeps it up, they may end up having something here (I strongly suspect they won't have anything, but I live in hope).

Genuinely funny.

Jim serenades Swamp Thing with the most musically-incompetent version of the song so far, and then Tressa demands an encore so, frankly, every character on this show clearly hates the audience and is punishing them.

Still, time is running short - very short, considering the running time of these episodes - so Jim gets to have a dream which explicitly explains where the actual will is hidden, and even then Swamp Thing has to straight-up tell him "Look, it's right here, I'll get it for you" before Jim even gets close.

Jim and Tressa hop into the swamp, unaware that they're being hunted by oily human pluot Baxter, armed with a child's bow and arrow set. It's the SOUTH, Baxter, get a rifle. Even that bird man from last episode got a rifle.

"I said, have you heard the good news about Jesus Christ!!!" 

When Tressa believes she's found the will's hiding place, Jim's contribution is the troubling admission that he can't really tell the difference between dreams and the waking world. No time to act on that obvious cry for help, though, as Baxter comes trundling through the forest, firing blunted plastic arrows at the duo. This would be a good time for Swamp Thing to get off his grass and contribute something to this episode besides kibbitzing kids' dreams, but it's Jim who manages to stop the chaos by hucking thick chunks of wood at the evil lawyer. No Jim, you promised, no more knocking the skulls of middle-aged men wide open with branches!

The injured Baxter is set upon by alligators, after which Jim and Tressa visit grandma's grave and leave her hat and stuff just lying in the nearby dirt. IN BETWEEN THESE SCENES, however, is a twenty-second interlude during which a shirtless Anton Arcane performs Hotspur from Act 1, Scene III of Henry IV in his laboratory/cave thing, shouting at the top of his lungs, turning over tables, and accidentally looking right into the camera at least three times. It's baffling, and I have a strong suspicion that someone said "Mark, we need you to show how upset Arcane is at the undermining of his plan, but we don't have any lines written. Can you fake it?" and it went from there.

Yup, right into the camera, there.

Still, easily the best scene of this episode, which is now over. See you in two weeks!

TRULY GONE & FORGOTTEN : THE DEFENDERS OF DYNATRON CITY

Hold on there ... the Incredible Hulk is only thirty? That guy looks wrecked.

Your Humble Editor has never been much for video games. They represent a general blindspot in my upbringing, and the fact is that I couldn't tell the difference between your average Battletoad and your Aerosmith:Revolution X. My only experience with video games comes in the form of happy memories of urging Pac-Man to speed along on his lightcycle to save Zelda from Donkey Kong while knocking hamburger toppings down a ladder in my favorite game, Robotron 2084. Happy days.

Uh-oh, this is gonna have to be reported to HR.

With that in mind, then, it's only by reputation that I'm aware of Defenders of Dynatron City as a video game. I am aware that it was a Lucasfilm product, and that it was apparently met with great disappointment by an enthusiastic coterie of the burgeoning gaming community, owing to what I am reliably informed was "balls-crap-dingus-shitheap controls."

Defenders of Dynatron City, however, is resonant in my mind in its comic book incarnation, released over six issues by Marvel Comics between February and July of 1992. It's primary selling point was scripting by Steve Purcell, a LucasArts regular who also boasted having created Sam & Max:Freelance Police, arguably the most absurdly funny comic book the medium had produced in at least two decades, if not ever. I'm a fan.

Unfortunately, what is such a boon when working with other creators was a bane when involving Purcell, whose wit blossoms when left to his own devices. Pairing Purcell with both a co-plotter (although that credit might have merely been a courtesy for the game's creator) and an editor watered down much of the impact of his premises and jokes. There's also the possibility that the often-surrealist, manic and frequently alarming banter which worked so well between two characters in Sam&Max or Purcell's excellent Gumby Winter Special is watered down when spread evenly over six characters instead of two ... even if one of the six is a speechless dog.

This joke feels very edited.

The adventures take place in the eponymous Dynatron City, an atomic-powered metropolis whose citizens prefer as their beverage of choice Proto Cola -- a radioactive drink which causes extreme mutations when imbibed or even spilled on inanimate objects. Yeah, but we have Coke Zero.

The Defenders were comprised of happily self-decapitating hero Jet Headstrong, the object of his affection and sort-of deadly land-lubbing industrial mermaid Buzzsaw Girl, a mutated toolbox called Toolbox, a mutated monkey called Monkey Kid, the faithful Radium Dog and Ms.Megawatt (voiced by Whoopi Goldberg in the television adaptation, as if Theodore Rex wasn't enough of a prestige role for her).

Opposing the Defenders was the huge-headed menace of Dr.Mayhem and Mayhem's robotic assistant -- and pure, undistilled Purcell joke, unless I miss my guess -- Atom Ed, the floating head.

The series didn't have much to do, with only six issues in the run supported by an unreleased tv special and a universally panned game. I don't pretend to know the intricacies of Disney's constant, voracious acquisition of entertainment properties, but I believe these now reside in the Mouse's gloved hands and could, therefore, be suitable fodder for a revival.

You could certainly make a better game now, I assume (I only play Minesweeper), and the superhero craze doesn't seem to be dying down in any short order, so the possibilities for the characters appearing across multiple media seems likely. It would be nice to see it given a greater chance, although all of this speculation is predicated on bringing Purcell back to work his highly amusing magic. As for the game platform, do people still use Colecovision? I'm up for that.

P-S-Eh? : 13 WAYS NOT TO BURN YOUR HOME!

14. Never invite a fire imp into your home

Danny Blaze was a short-lived Charlton comic featuring the fire-fighting adventures of its eponymous hero. Being in the fire prevention biz, Danny Blaze also came complete with handy hints on how to avoid burning your personal domicile and everyone in it to ash. Number three, urging you to have your last cigarette of the day before you go to bed, rather than as you lie in it dozing, is particularly of-the-age (one hopes), even among portable stoves and giving matches to children as though they were a Christmas present. I strongly suspect you'd find the same "Why should I wear a seatbelt, it's the other drivers who need to wear seat belts" type complaining about being asked not to smoke in bed. "I don't have time to smoke AND go to bed. Anyway, it's other people who need to be concerned about smoking in bed, I know what I'm doing" *FWOOOOF* and then they and everything they ever owned can share the same urn.

Other ways to not burn your home:

15. Erect bonfires away from bedrooms, closets, and master bathrooms
16. When barbecuing or grilling, take it outside and use an actual grill rather than a pile of hot coals poured underneath a radiator.
17. Do not store hot ashes and burning lumber in your linen closet, or anywhere else you already store towels.
18. Do not substitute wallpaper paste with Sterno.
19. Your arsonist cousin "Buggy" is a bad choice for a housesitter.
20. Replace wall-mounted torches with less fiery sources of light.
21. Never anger Hephaestus, the god of fire and blacksmithing.
22. Offer burnt sacrifices only on your outdoor altar. Reserve your interior altar for small offerings of gold and wine.
23. Do not set your house on fire.

I hope that helps, stay safe kids!

TRULY GONE & FORGOTTEN : GRANNY GUMSHOE

One of the most charming aspects of the Golden Age of comics was the presence of genuinely well-crafted humor features, particularly as so many of them existed before the realm of self-satire overwhelmed the offerings of the oeuvre (and before superhero comics proliferated in such abundance that even the most stoic and stalwart superhero became effectively a parody of itself, although that's a topic for a different discussion). Unbeholden to precedent, humor features like Gill Fox's excellent Granny Gumshoe -- which ran a respectable fourteen consecutive appearances in Quality's National Comics starting in issue number 57 (December 1946) -- were able to provide comedy on its own terms, although Granny racked up a number of her own thematic, weirdo villains.

Granny likes to jump boxers and beat them in the face
with a hammer, which is why we took her to live in a home.

An amateur octogenarian sleuth (by which I mean an amateur sleuth who was also in her apparent dotage, although thinking about it I suppose we're all amateur eighty year-olds when we get there. Who gets paid for being old?) living with her granddaughter "Lippy Lu" (I'm assuming that's Lucy Liu's mother) in the quiet suburb of Weston. 

Despite her advanced years, Granny Gumshoe (her actual last name) was both an inventor and a detective, solving murders and robberies in the otherwise quiet borough. Part of the charm of the character resided in her turn-of-the-century garb and accouterments, appearing as she did a bit like Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey, only (slightly) quicker to slug someone with a cocked fist. 

The other winning component was her impressive rogues gallery, a catalog of which could easily fill its own collection of accolades. My personal favorite is Mr.Worm (good morning, how are you?), an apparently boneless accountant who only discovers his rubbery resilience when he tries to snuff himself by jumping from a ledge forty stories up. He develops an immediate crush on Granny, in front of whose car he had the poor taste to land. To be honest, I'm feeling a little warm to the old broad, myself. Worm goes on to propose to the old bird, despite landing in jail for robbery, by slipping through the bars of his prison cell, squeezing into a drainpipe and popping out of her kitchen faucet. 

And you've got spinal trauma.

Visually, it's all the treat of Jack Cole's Plastic Man, and it's kind of a crime that it hasn't been collected and reprinted. DC may currently own the Quality characters (and other assets), but the original stories having fallen into the public domain doesn't give them much of a financial incentive to collect, remaster and release dedicated volumes of these obscure creations.

So, faded into obscurity with Granny are the femme fatale Mademoiselle Angora, the hollering Screaming Percy, the murderous ventriloquist dummy Splinter, the mad reformer Dr.Crud, the brutal boxer Rocky Granite, and composer Ludwig Cymbal who happens to own a voodoo doll of the Earth.

One of the refreshing elements of Granny Gumshoe was that she wasn't portrayed as frail, daffy or weak. Part of the humor obviously comes from the inversion of those expectations, but mostly it's just rewarding to see an action hero - however intentionally comical - in the pages of a comic who isn't a burly, bare-chested he-man. Comics could have probably used a few more Granny Gumshoes, in whatever form they took.

MR.T AND THE T-FORCE

I used to carry the trading card from this issue around in my wallet until I accidentally sent
it through the washer. I bet Mr.T is woefully disappointed in me now.

If you've been a comic fan of any note and have been on the internet for any reasonable amount of time, then you have already been made copiously aware of the presence of a comic starring 1980s television and film icon Mr.T -- and his T-Force, of course -- written and produced by Neal Adams and his Continuity Studios for NOW Comics, in the creator's inimitable style.

Well, I say "inimitable," but of course garden-variety schizophrenia and cocaine are plentiful in this great country of ours. We could probably recreate the script for any given Neal Adams comic with a dedicated weekend, a word processor, and a hotel room no one will ever be able to set foot in again without a hazmat suit.

Still, the comic in question is the topic of no end of internet "Worst Comics Ever Published" lists, or "Weirdest Comics Ever Published," or "Celebrity Comics You Won't Believe Were Actually Published," or "Most Valuable Pokemon," if the list in question had been abysmally researched.

What you might not know about Mr.T and His T-Force, however, is that it ran more than the single issue so often referenced in laugh-packed listicles (as many as fourteen issues, possibly, according to some sources, which is a weirdly ambiguous piece of data considering the nitpickery of comic collecting fandom. I say it's only ten issues, because that's all I've ever found). More than that, Neal Adams and his signature style of free-association banter and hyperactive scripting only hung around for two issues. Afterwards, writing was handled by vets Mike Baron and Chuck Dixon (and "Aubrey Singer," a writer of whom I'm ashamed to admit I'd never heard of before) and moreso -- brace yourselves -- they actually did a really good job with it. There's no reason that Mr.T and His T-Force should have been even a remotely readable comic ... but it was.

Like most anti-drug comics, the main failing of this book is that it makes drugs seem way cooler than they really are.

It's certainly not a book that has a lot to offer anyone old enough to rent a car, mind you. It's definitely intended for Young Adult audiences, but it's a solid read for those kids. After the first two issues, I suppose.

Mr.T debuts in the pages of his eponymous book duking it out with drug dealers, which is pretty much what you can expect a black protagonist to do in a comic book a solid ninety percent of the time. Comics might have a representation problem, as it were. In any case, T has more on his mind than slugging 'slingers -- for one thing, he's armed with the most heavily-loaded video camera on the market. Apparently engineered to look like a crazy gun, it's actually just a straight-up cassette recorder with which he documents the misdeeds of the criminals he encounters.

T also recruits troubled youngsters for his T-Force, which is refreshing because I thought his T-Force was going to turn out to be a greasy area on his forehead and nose, or possibly the spot where old, stretcher-out boxer briefs get bunched up between your ass and crotch. Nope, the T-Force is basically a boys and girls club situation, not a white cloth clusterfuck around the taint, I'm happy to reiterate.

The first breathless adventure establishes T as a two-fisted social worker tackling the city's drug problem one gold-plated knuckle punch at a time. He ends up facing an absurd cabal and a fourteen-foot tall Colombian named The Incan who either has a hand replaced with a gun or just a gun you hold like you're gutting a Thanksgiving turkey. He's got his hand so far up that gun, it's basically a Muppet.

I suspect you really would be the laughingstock of the department if you called in anything on Mr.T.
I hope the power doesn't go to his head.

Adams ends his association with Mr.T by having him convert the Incan to nicety and disrupt the drug scene, which leaves not much for Baron, et al. Not known as a writer whose portrayals of race one would reflexively refer to as particularly "sensitive," putting Baron on a book with a black lead had a lot of potential for mishap. Instead, he's abandoned most of his pop culture, martial arts and jazz and regional references, and concentrated instead on Mr.T as a troubleshooter and a role model. If the book under Baron has any particular close relation, it's his work on The Flash, a character-driven drama about how the individual interacts with responsibility.

Even one tricky scene turns out to be the series' most appealing -- when Mr.T is hassled by the fuzz for being "a black man casing a mansion with binoculars," the situation resolves peaceably with the cops iterating their respect for the prominent social activist and Mr.T acknowledging how unsettling his appearance and behavior might appear to passers-by (why the cops have to run Mister T's license to know who he is, that's a question for another time).

Respect -- both for the main character, and for the subordinate members of the cast -- seems to be the central component of the book, a trait which Dixon in particular continued during his run. More PSA than straight adventure, Mr.T and His T-Force is a surprisingly enjoyable read, for the right audience. Whether it deserves its weirdo rep is another question -- the answer to which is "despite everything, yes," because when is anything involving Mr.T fighting crime in the streets not going to be at least a little absurd?

IF YOU SEE SWAMP THING, SAY SWAMP THING: FALCO

With superhero television programs blowing up in the last few years, recaps of superhero television shows have become all the internet rage. Other sites, however, are hobbled by the need to cover shows which have been "recently broadcast" or which are "any good at all." But who covers the uncoverable? That's why Gone&Forgotten chooses to cover the 1991-1993 USA Network live-action Swamp Thing television series in a feature I like to call "Swamp Thing Old, Swamp Thing New, Swamp Thing Borrowed, Swamp Thing Blue" or ...

If You See Swamp Thing, Say Swamp Thing
The saga of three-hundred pounds of potatoes on a mission to rid a Universal Studios backlot of evil.

Season One / Episode Two : Falco

In which grandma doesn't make it out of the pilot episode alive.

There is apparently a controversy surrounding the appropriate viewing order for episodes of Swamp Thing, which is as sad a sentence as I'm able to construct without involving the words "baby shoes" in some capacity. 

That one person sat down one day and figured out the discrepancies in the broadcast versus the story order of USA's live-action Swamp Thing television show already constitutes a gross deficit in the overall achievements of human history. Once you've got more than a handful of people arguing about it on Wikipedia, the collective man-hours expended to figure this out obviates all human accomplishments since the industrial revolution. Thanks to the folks who figured out the Swamp Thing running order, we're back to living in the age of steam, which is good news for a whole swath of cosplayers.

Still, for the purposes of this recap, I'm using the running order as collected on the Shout! Factory DVD set. If you don't think this is appropriate and have your own theory as to the proper order in which to watch Swamp Thing, I ask you to gaze deeply into the faces of your loved ones and ask yourself if this is really how you want to spend your life.

As for me, I'm already a deficit on human history, so let's discuss "Falco!"

Your hero, Atlanta Falco.

Sadly, this does not introduce the Austrian-born performer of "Rock Me Amadeus" and "Vienna Calling" into the world of Swamp Thing, except in my fanfic. It does, however, open on a funeral. Whose it is, they don't really bother to tell the audience, so it's up to you to scan the crowd and see which of the not-yet familiar faces from the pilot may be missing from the crowd. Could it be th - no, nevermind, Jim's right there, rats.

A hidden figure takes some potshots at the assembled mourners from behind a tree, meaning that either the Fred Phelps folks are really upping their game or someone's trying to streamline the whole funeral process by getting as many mourners in the hole along with the casket as possible.

If I told you this was a shot from an early Coen Brothers film, you wouldn't question it. 

The shooter turns out to be Falco (Peter Mark Richman), who's chased off the scene by a pair of armed sheriff's deputies who happened to be in attendance. Falco eludes their blind, wild gunfire and deposits his would-be murder weapon in a hollow tree trunk. Enter, at this point, Swamp Thing, who'd previously spent the episode squatting behind a tree and peeping in on the proceedings (He has to check for evil!). In this episode's brief display of Swamp Thing using his swamp powers, he makes a tree grow out of the rifle stock, ruining legal evidence of an attempted homicide. Oh you Swamp Thing!

Back at the wake, we learn that it was grandma who'd recently kicked the bucket, thus undoing the conclusion to the pilot and dragging Tessa back to the swamps she was so eager to escape earlier. Arcane -- probably the number one reason Tessa wanted to beat cheeks for Philly in the first place -- uses the memorial service as another opportunity to put his creepy fingers on her and speak in a gross sex-whisper about bringing her a condolence casserole.

Thanks to Jim's mumbled description of the shooter, Arcane has figured out that he was the target, and that the shooter must have been one of his escaped, mutated subjects. This sends him to a featureless basement with a slide projector, the images from which he views with the smoky dispassion of a first season Don Draper. The slides show pictures of all of Arcane's half-animal test subjects, and are clearly the polaroids taken at the show's initial makeup test. They're all in a featureless hallway, lit by fluorescent lights, and at one point there's a pig guy standing in front of a door which I'm sure is janitorial closet or a darkroom. Probably there's a mole-woman standing five feet from craft services.

"I'd give that a couple of minutes before you go in there!"

Back in the bog, Swamp Thing and Falco confront one another over the matter of Falco's fucked-up gun. This leads to what is easily the best exchange in the show so far:

Swamp Thing: Hell is a word which comes easily to you.
Falco: It's where I live!
Swamp Thing: You're not from this neighborhood, then.

Ah, the Dorothy Parker of the swamps.

Unable to trump Swamp Thing's wit, Falco chooses to counter with a shocking personal revelation. Arcane turned him into a half-bird creature, but - surprise twist - he originally WAS A BIRD! ::reggaeton airhorn:: Revealing a muppety, feathered right arm, Falco spits angrily about the fate that grounded him and turned him into a human being, and then cements his point by choking a nearby mutant passer-by half to death. Falco gets slugged by a rock and Swamp Thing leaves him in the swamp to sleep it off.

Jim kneels in a cramping huddle at his grandmother's grave, puffing his face like a confused balloon in what I assume a sociopath thinks "grief" looks like. Swamp Thing gives him a pretty depressing pep talk and then Jim runs home to find his mom chugging Anton Arcane's hors d'ouevres down her pretty throat like the conveyor belt at Lucy's chocolate factory job. This is not a euphemism... yet.

Confused and excited, Jim hops in a nearby boat and promptly eats swampwater a troubling twenty feet from shore. The still, clean water notwithstanding, Jim drops like a fucking stone - his most entertaining cry for assistance being "Hey! Help!" said as if lightly annoyed towards an inattentive cashier.

"Dang! Rescue me!"

Falco sees the drowning boy and rescues him, providing bird CPR with his wookiee arm. It's in this moment that he comes to some great conclusion about mercy and vengeance.

Swamp Thing (voicing the wisest question ever asked of mankind): Can a bird save a boy's life?
Falco: When he started to breathe ... I realized I had made him live again. It was like I was flying!

Cutto: stock footage of a bird flying and the inventory sound clip of a hawk screeching, pretty much the same one as they used to use on Johnny Quest. And then ... credits. Once again, please always remember that USA Network's live-action Swamp Thing television does not have a lot of time, and so you'll have to get used to episodes just sort-of ending without a lot of resolution. Like this article! See you in two weeks for Part Three!

True to his raptor origins, he consumed his bloody prey.

TRULY GONE & FORGOTTEN : ROBBIE THE ROBOT AND PROFESSOR BRAINSTORM

Henry Boltinoff is rightfully celebrated at DC Comics for penning a veritable army of half-page gag features throughout its silver age titles. From Cap's Hobby Hints to Vic Varsity to Super-Turtle, he practically owned the inter-story pages huddled above the ads for Palisades amusement parks and Superman on TV (all of which is long-overdue for a remastered collection - the comics, that is, not the ads).

Less celebrated, however, is the work of Hi Mankin, whose scientific-themed Robbie the Robot and Professor Brainstorm strips filled half- and three-quarter-pages in Strange Adventures...

Having made a career largely on Looney Tunes strips, western comics and animation storyboarding (you'll find his name in the credits of many an original Johnny Quest episode), Mankin had reportedly begun his career with a one-day stint in the Siegel/Shuster studios. Personal conflicts left him seeking the door, which has unfortunately robbed us of his energetic cartooning having graced a full-length story of the Man of Steel.

Professor Brainstorm is a spin on the absent-minded professor gag, although his particular issue seems to revolve around his contrary nature more than his memory lapses.

As for Robbie, he emerges fully-formed from his origin story, in which a scientist builds him to take over day-to-day distractions -- like eating, sleeping, and watching TV. Basically, it's like the guy who invented Soylent, taken to an even more absurd end.

Likewise, Robbie also seemed to wander the world indulging in other quotidian tasks which his inventor couldn't be arsed to deal with, such as watching movies and attending boxing matches. And getting drunk af.

Mankin didn't leave much of a legacy at DC, but he has a plethora of crime and western comics floating around, including having produced a lengthy stint of Roy Rogers comic strips for King Features. It seems like he'd be a good pick for a nice career overview volume, in which Brainstorm and Robbie would definitely have a place ...

SUPERMAN V BATMAN : THE SAGA OF SUPERMAN VS BATMAN

"And I will WRECK his senior portrait, too!"

It was Frank Miller and Lynn Varley's The Dark Knight Returns which popularized, in the minds of fandom, the apotheosis of the Superman/Batman rivalry. Of course, the Man of Steel and the Caped Crusader had fought one another countless times in the past, but Miller's first genuine magnum opus (and say what you will about the fella, he's had a few) introduced the central conceit which has entranced the often-resentful, adolescent emotional intelligence of the typical comic book fan -- that Superman and Batman hate each other.

Batman, drilling dirty peepholes.

Since then, the duo have come to blows, metaphorically and literally, on dozens of occasions. It's a pretty good guess that if you saw both of them in a square-bound prestige format comic book, they were going to throw down somewhere on the interior. Prior to these grim and gritty days, however, Batman and Superman turning on one another (this is distinctly opposed to "turning one another on," a subject for a different blogpost, possibly on Tumblr if not DeviantArt) was the exception rather than the rule.

Take, for example, World's Finest Comics vol.1 No.153 (November 1965), an imaginary story which postulates the existence of a world where Batman believes Superman to be responsible for the death of Thomas Wayne (Not Martha, though. Superman has standards), and dedicates his life to destroying the big lug.

The idea of Superman and Batman becoming bitter enemies was so unusual and jarring that it had to be consigned to a non-canonical story. Put that in your bat-pipe and super-smoke it.

In the story, Thomas Wayne appears to have survived the holdup which saw him and his wife killed before their son's eyes in mainstream reality ... Mom, however, snuffed it, just a like a Disney cartoon. Devoid of matrimonial bliss, Thomas Wayne turns his attention to the next-prettiest raven-haired nymphet of his acquaintance, the teen defender of Smallville himself, Superboy.

Developing an anti-kryptonite serum in his laboratory, Wayne is reluctant to hand it over until it's been tested, despite Superboy's desperate need for the protective measure. Denying the frustrated Boy of Steel apparently results in Wayne's death later in his laboratory, smacked straight-up dead as a blue-and-red streak vanishes into the night with the formula safely tucked under his wing.

At this point, fate does what fate does in these comics, and Bruce Wayne dedicates himself to a life of fighting crime -- specifically to develop the skills to defeat Superboy, prove his guilt, and bring him to justice.

Okay, get it out of your system.

Another feature of this reality is that the now-grown Superman is like basically the nicest, most beloved person on the planet. When Batman adopts Robin as a crimefighting partner, the Boy Wonder bails on the arrangement when he discovers Batman's red-hot hatred for the Metropolis Marvel. You'd think Robin might go off to warn Superman about his ex-boss' plans, but he actually just fucks off into nothingness, after posing for the internet's favorite Batman picture.

Meanwhile, Superman is literally doing such incredibly nice things like saving a South American village from an army ant invasion while refusing to harm the ants, instead building an ant-bridge for their needs. I'm sure they'd probably just eat the bridge, but it's a nice thought and it works the first time, at least. He also gives Batman a "flying belt" from another planet, just because Batman seems nice.

How does Batman repay this generosity? Well, he shoots Superman with radioactive tracking doohickeys, breaks into the Fortress of Solitude, slugs Superman with a kryptonite batarang and teams up with Luthor, of all things. Once you've teamed up with Lex Luthor, you can all but guarantee that you're on the wrong side, ain't you?

Luthor puts Superman in a green kryptonite isolation tank, all the better to ask him difficult quiz questions for cash and prizes. He also accidentally lets it slip that he's responsible for Thomas Wayne's murder, not Superman, and then just sort of idly kills Batman for the heck of it.

In the final panel, Batman's life-force fades away, as the Dark Knight perishes in the arms of his one-time enemy. "If this had happened differently, we could have been a great team" he chokes, somewhat presumptuously given that he just spent twenty years trying to railroad Superman into jail. This is just the kind of nice guy Superman is, though, that he doesn't just hurl Batman's corpse into the sun out of spite. It's what I would do.

Yeah, phew, thank goodness this will never happen.