IF YOU SEE SWAMP THING, SAY SWAMP THING: RITES OF PASSAGE

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 used to like to call a dumb pun kind of title, but I've run out of those, so I just call it ...



This episode of Swamp Thing turns out to be something of an endurance test, on account of how we spend most of the episode watching a pair of shrill, pampered Mean Girls fail to die in the depths of the swamp. Oh, and also Will learns a lesson about coddling up to the rich and powerful.

We're introduced to Hillary Matthews (Kimberly Stephenson) and Ashley-Dane Lansbury (Christie Lynn Smith), two characters who could change names with their performers and no one would even think twice about it. I have no idea what the quantitative difference is between a Hillary Matthews and a Kimberly Stephenson, either one of those could be the fictional character. This is some Black Mirror material we're onto here, folks, keep a hold of your hats ...

Settle down, ladies!

The young women in question are on a field trip with the rest of their academy of perpetually uncomfortable looking girls. They're on a trip to the scenic mud-waller of Houma as a reward for doing very well in a contest about Walden, I believe. Maybe "Wall-E." I heard "Walden," but it's a crapshoot. Anyway, what a prize!

The evening before they leave for their trip, Ashley climbs a muddy cliff in the dark so as to steal naturally-growing diarrhea daisies which she intends to stuff into the breakfast meal of their chaperone, Miss Bartholamew [sic] (Annabelle Weenick), and knock her down with a case of the green apple splatters. This causes Miss Bartholamew [sic] to become [sick], leaving the girls on their own. Most of the class bails on the exciting boat tour of Louisiana toilet plateaus, but Ashley and Hillary still want to go -- they have a SECRET!

Swamp Blossoms

The secret is that they're stealing into the swamp so as to perform a magical ritual called something like the Test of ... A Ball? Test of Shuballba. Shebulba. She-Bop. Kabong. Something like that. The ritual -- which has to be performed in the middle of a got-dang swamp for some reason that I'm sure these privileged suburban kids know -- grants the users their greatest desires. Hillary wants Jason Preistly, Ashley wants a Fulbright Scholarship. Well, start concentrating your education towards the promotion of international good will through the exchange of students in the fields of education, culture, and science, young lady! And as for you, Hillary ... look, we all want Jason Priestly. But does Jason Priestly want us?

At some point in the episode, Swamp Thing decides that he'd like to pull some pranks on these spoiled brats, so as to teach them about how you shouldn't trust a swamp monster or whatever. It seems that the young ladies are products of wealthy, influential homes. Hillary's dad is a Senator who gleefully takes advantage of the Unions. Unsurprisingly, they spend whatever time they don't spend complaining about the swamp insulting Will instead for being redneck trash. Yeah, well, The truth is, they could use a good scaring -- may I suggest a close-up view of a guillotine?

But Swampy is as much interested in teaching Will a lesson as the girls. He explains that the young women are the daughters of influential people, and will one day inherit those privileges, so they must be guided and shaped into responsible adults. "Terrifying them in the swamp" appears to be the primary pedagogical tool in hand, but he also keeps trying to get Will on board his tres Bougie after-school special.

Painstakingly capped at the moment of pretend vomit.

Will just can't see past his jealousy of the nice life those wealthy girls have and, in its way, isn't that just as much an injustice as ::literally opens any copy of any newspaper from the last twenty years to absolutely any page and randomly points to a lone paragraph which inevitably underlines a significantly and objectively greater injustice::, ne pas?

The means for scaring these nitwits straight is to taunt them with the story of a loose maniac named Bill Jo Tillman and a lot of wind, which I still maintain is Swamp Thing farting. They also do some grade-A Christian Haunted House gags, like dragging Will into the swamp by his feet and rustling bushes, probably to underline the dangers of, uh, hip-hop music or something. I am drifting off at this point.

Occult campfires!

Oh, I should mention that I think the actresses are fine, by the way. The script is a deep-fried turd wrapped in poop-flavored panko, but they're doing all right. Kid actors, you know, they do all right. As good as anyone else on this show.

So, after dragging Will through the shrubs and farting on them, Swamp Thing mostly just hovers in the bushes as the girls grow increasingly despairing and bedraggled. This might be a turn on for the perverted old turnip, now as I think about it. Maybe this is how Swamp Thing gets off. Will shouldn't have to get lectured by a kinky succulent.

The girls do eventually grow so disconsolate and forlorn in the swamp that they give voice to their greatest regrets. Ashley learns about not taking shortcuts and promises not to keep stealing vodka from the freezer and filling it back up with water which is a thing you cannot do because it will cause the contents to freeze solid. This is why we need to bring back Drunk Mentorships in America's high schools. Put an end to rookie mistakes like that. OH, and Ashley said something about hugging her brothers and sisters more often so, hats off, Swamp Thing, these kids are ready to run the nation!

Heather is such a huge idiot that she originally tried to use one of those trees as a weapon. 

Still, Swampy is really short-shrifting these girls. The last group of swamp wanderers he wanted to teach a lesson, he had holograms and time travel! These girls get gas and leeches. And when you think about the return on investment ... I mean, Ryson was still a killer, but these girls develop survival skills because they became maybe three percent less selfish? A hologram might've knocked 'em over to five percent!

Actually, we ultimately know that the girls have learned the lesson because, when Swampy and Will are making it seem like Billy Jo Tillman is approaching them from behind a bush, Ashley knows to use a branch on the ground as a bludgeon instead of ripping a branch off a live tree and using that as a bludgeon. Passed with flying colors!

I dunno. Will reveals it was all a gag, Ashley finds an opportunity to mention that her hero is Florence Henderson (???), then the episode ends with Swamp Thing deciding that Will didn't learn the lesson he was supposed to learn, so he starts using the Billy Jo Tillman laugh and the swamp farts on Will, cut to credits.

On the plus side, Will was doing his comedy sidekick routine with Durock's Swamp Thing, and that's been pretty welcome since "Dead & Married." And I guess this episode said something important about the Upper Class, which is "they don't learn much and who cares if they did anyway?"

"Alec, is that you? I can smell you."

MICRONAUTS MONDAY: 41 - EVERYONE'S LITTLE IN LIDDLEVILLE!

Micronauts vol.1 No.41 (Apr 1982)
Writer: Bill Mantlo
Artists: Gil Kane and Danny Bulandi
Letterer: Novak & Albers
Colorist: Sharen & Warfield
Editor: Al Milgrom
EIC: Jim Shooter

I admit it; that cover gives me an erection. I don’t know if I realized that I harbored such a desire to see Acroyear is sword-on-sword combat with the powerhouses of the Marvel Universe amidst a flaming background of dramatic Gil Kane-drawn heads, but I do. Also, please notice that even Kane has no idea what Devil’s design is supposed to be so he just gives him a much better one and moves on with his life …

The Micronauts check in with The Endeavor, hidden in the sewers beneath the Baxter Building, only to find it imperiled by torrential rainwater! In fact, the subsequent flooding claims the Micronaut’s ship. As it takes on water, Bug and Microtron hurry to load the crew’s essential supplies into the compact Astrostation. A sudden swell floods the hatch, Microtron is drawn underwater and it’s Bug who promptly leaps to the roboid’s rescue. After tense minutes, however, Microtron surfaces, bearing the waterlogged and unconscious – but otherwise healthy -- Bug.

I described the above without any gags or exaggeration for a reason, but hold on a second …

Meanwhile, why am I delaying the good stuff? The Endeavor is swept under the waves, the final reminder of Arcturus Rann’s life as an explorer for the glory of Homeworld. This leaves the tight confines of the Astrostation to transport our heroes to Castle Doom, the place which Ben Grimm of the Fantastic Four had suggested as an incredibly irresponsible solution to the Micronauts’ problem. Yes, Ben, perhaps they should seek some sort of assistance from your greatest enemy who lives in an impenetrable castle halfway around the world in the loose hope that he might be working on some sort of device to send the Micronauts home anyway? Don’t you have Hank Pym’s number?

"HAHA BITCH I AM TAFFY NOW!"

Back on Homeworld, Duchess Belladonna wiggles her borrowed body into the throneroom of Force Commander, the now-whackadoo Prince Argon. The newly-re-minted Duchess literally proposes a cunning plan to Argon – get hitched and rule the Microverse together! Argon agrees, but boy is he a terrible jackass about it.

For the most part he’s willing to go through with it, if only because he feels that the sight of Slug (the former resistance leader whose body now houses Belladonna) wed to the tyrant of Homeworld will shatter the Resistance’s morale. The other reason he’s laffin’ about it is HE IS NOW PINK SLUSHIE. Argon is pure energy now, whose dreams of power go far beyond human comprehension. He will still take time to belittle you, though, that kind of petty managerial power never goes out of style.

While Argon screws his helmet back on, we pan down to the dungeons. There, we find Prince Pharoid and the body of Duchess Belladonna, imprisoned. But wait – that’s Slug in Belladonna’s body! Why?! I would have thought they’d just kill the body donor, or kill the old body, or whatever. It’s a clear security breach.

Getting into Castle Doom is, naturally, a bit of a plastic hassle. They get in after Acroyear proves his bona fides by headbutting a wall into not existing, definitively. From here on out, the book is mostly a sequel to an episode from John Byrne’s impressive run on Fantastic Four, specifically issue No.236. We’re in a town of tiny robot duplicates of a bunch of a people, built by Phillip “Puppet-Master” Masters, previously used by Doom to kill his foes AS HE WILL, thanks for sending the Micronauts here, Ben.

I have limited interest in the sequel elements of the story, because they really don’t belong to the Micronauts in any substantive way. This story is a battle between Puppet Master and Doctor Doom for control of Liddelville, a prize which I suppose is worth having … if you’re really into H/O scale trainsets and such, you know. God, I hope Doom is into trainsets.

The Micronauts largely serve as handy receptacles for exposition, and to draw fire whenever Doom gets fancy. Among the many instruments of warfare launched at the Micronauts by Doom, I have to admit some fondness for the “Surface-to-Air Doombots,” which is lovely phrasing. I hope Mantlo came up with that one.

It's a playset.

The cover teased a fight between my man Ayo and the baddest mother in the Marvel Universe, and it delivers – if briefly. I can’t help but imagine that a version of this same story now, in the age of uncompressed storytelling, this fight would talk more than a full issue to resolve As it is we get about four pages and, rather than gas on about it – you wanna see?

That's pretty much the end. I almost changed allegiance when Doom burned Devil, especially after he called him out for that dumb catchphrase. Doom’s got his good qualities too, you know.

Speaking of Devil, the big pink Tropican who’s been awkwardly failing to fit into the team for the last several months, ends up asking an interesting question: “What is there for a poor Devil to do among the Micronauts!”

Well, buddy, let me tell you.

The answer is nothing. Devil has been around for nine issues at this point, and it’s impossible to say what role he fills on the team. He’s a physical powerhouse, but Acroyear already fills that role. He’s mechanically inclined (for some reason), but that’s what Microtron’s here for. He’s a sexist jerk to Marionette, which is nobody’s job but it’s just gross, plus he always calls her “my lady,” so that’s another point in the “L” column. Oh, and the text refuses to refer to him as anything except a jester, despite the fact that he never says or does anything funny.

And, of course, the Micronauts already have a jester who is funny, unpredictable, physically comedic and a good and loyal fighter to boot – Bug! Some work had previously been done to create tension in the team by having Devil and Acroyear grow closer as Bug felt more shut-out. I would bet that the reason it hasn’t manifested as a full plot device at this point is that it makes no sense – particularly after a previous issue regaled the reader with the story of Bug’s and Acroyear’s battle-bred bond.

Devil’s personality has two settings: complaining and boring everyone while he rattles on about his own abilities. He is the Ignatius J.Reilly of the Microverse. Which could also work, but he’s not a comedic character – his appearance alone is so intimidating that the comedy options are limited.

Gosh, yeah, what could any guy
possibly want with her?

And let’s talk about that look: The magenta is of a whole different palette than the other Micronauts, his loincloth is absolutely nonsensical, and there’s an uncanny valley element to his face which is just never addressed.

But the absolutely galling thing about Devil is that he had a perfectly scripted exit just sitting there. When his eternal partner, Fireflyte, whose soft music could quell Devil’s raging animal nature, was reunited with the Enigma Force – that was when Devil should’ve fucked off, narratively speaking. He contained no mystery for the readers to unravel, at that point – it’s not a matter of asking “will he revert to his savage nature without the soothing influence of Fireflyte,” because we already know that the answer is “Yes, he will, we just said as much.”

That would have also been a perfect arc for Devil, whose race – when we first met him -- had devolved into a culture obsessed with play and deliberately kept in an infantile state of unearned contentment. When Fireflyte leaves, Devil and his entire race must now contend with an uncertain future and an existence in which happiness must be earned, and the darkness in one’s soul must be contended with instead of avoided.

Instead, he’s hanging out here, sleeping on the Endeavor’s couch and eating Acroyear’s leftover hoagie from the fridge while standing over the sink. Up above, I described a scene where Bug tries to save Microtron from drowning but is saved instead. That scene works because it plays around with all sorts of irony and tension; Bug is a cynical wiseass who acts unconcerned and lackadaisical. But when one of his teammates is in danger, he leaps to the rescue despite having to submerge himself in water, which his race despises. At some point, he loses consciousness and is himself rescued, tagging the conclusion to that scene not only with relief but with humor, to reassure the readership that the status quo hasn’t been changed and Bug had enough dignity stripped away so as to continue being a cynical sass-pants.

That scene wouldn’t work with Devil because there’d be nothing to build from. He already jumped into a raging torrent to save Bug, we know he’d help Microtron. If Microtron ended up saving Devil, it wouldn’t be a funny scene, because Devil wouldn’t have preceded the danger with flippancy. There wouldn’t be a satisfying symmetry in the conclusion.

You can try that out with any really good scene in this series – put Devil into one of the roles and see if it plays the same way, if the necessary elements are even conceivably there. Can you imagine Devil fighting Doom up there, complaining the whole time about how he used to just sleep all day on Tropica? Where would be the tension and the anticipation? What are his character traits and how do they shine in conflict? Man, I’m sorry, I love this book, but Devil is uniformly awful.

Also his catchphrase is so stupid.

ANYway. Puppet Master uses the confusion and fire to take control of Doom’s tiny robot body, during which time the Micronauts, quickly and without comment, fuck right off because not one whit of that was their bees-wax. Good fight, though!

TRULY GONE&FORGOTTEN: WHAM-O GIANT COMICS PRESENTS MARK OF THE SUN / UNEXPLORED

Weird original draft of Bowie's "Space Oddity..."

Mark of the Sun
w/a Mike Arens

Former Disney animator Mike Arens provides one of the most distinctly Golden Age-like stories in the expansive catalog of Wham-O Giant Comics genres. A space adventure featuring unlikely aliens in over-simplified conflict use a luckily gifted human as the go-between, using only a pretty specific set of superpowers to save the day. This all should be part of the Hero's Journey, I think. Steps 3 through 7. Why do we even need to visit the innermost cave? Let's simplify this...

Colonel Ray Starkey undertakes an incomprehensible space mission which sends him speeding past Mercury and right into the sun. Unless that was part of the plan, I don't think you can consider his inevitable fiery death to be "a roaring success." Take the L, NASA.

Rather than fizzling out like a sparkler, Starkey is rescued by the people who live on the sun, the Sun-People, and their King, the Sun-King. Although they don't mention it by name, I bet I can guess what they call their cities, their, police, their dogs and their bathrooms. None of these comic book alien races ever know when to let a prefix die.

I'm not sure that they heard him.

The Sun-King warns "Star-Key," as he calls the errant astronaut, about the menace poised by the Kelp People. A wet race of world-conquering, shape-changing aliens, they infiltrate distant worlds, cool them down dramatically with extra-terrestrial fog machines and rising damp, and kill the native populace. Starkey is given a "Sun Disk" (see?) which allows him to retain the powers temporarily granted him as he walks on the sun. He'll retain these because his mortal form will be powered by his "Sun Body" (SEE?) and will draw strength from "heat, flame or the sun wherever it shines on Earth."

Starkey gets back to Earth and, unsurprisingly, finds loads of Kelp People freezing Earth with their chilling fog. They're being led by Dr.Waterman, a bulb-headed, pointy-eared sinister-type who has a mole on Star-Key's team of Kelp People Beaters. Nonetheless, the Sun-Disk and the powers it allows Starkey to employ -- including the straightforward "Ask the Sun-King to materialize and take care of my problems for me" power which actually if he used it first, they'd be done with the Kelp People.

The visible crop of Kelpies are put down, leaving Starkey and his pals to relax on the warm, sunny beach - anathema to Kelp People. But under the water, a cliffhanger is brewing. Too bad a lack of a second issue kills 'em once and for all.

He did it!

Unexplored
w/a Dennis Ellefson

Another CARtoons alum provides a half-page gag strip with an EC Comics twist. Tiny aliens land on a sphere, believing they've discovered a new asteroid -- only to find that they've landed on a baseball, and the game is in play. Besides having the trademark ironic ending, the strip also has a visual sense which recalls the EC stable, Wally Wood in particular. And since it's a half-pager, heck, here it is:

IF YOU SEE SWAMP THING, SAY SWAMP THING: RETURN OF LAROCHE

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 used to like to call a dumb pun kind of title, but I've run out of those, so I just call it ...

You may recall Carter Sinclair LaRoche (Don Hood) from the earlier Swamp Thing episode "Better Angels," which also introduced the character of Dr.Ann Fisk (Janet Julian, who is not in this episode). Well, he returns! Thanks everyone, that's it for this summary, ciao!

When we last saw Laroche, he was freshly betrayed by Anton Arcane and sent to the local Nut Hut to deal with his psychotic breakdown, caused explicitly by the magic swamp powers of Swamp Thing. Arcane who had formerly been LaRoche's partner in a scheme to turn Houma into a bayside resort which, according to the photos they were showing during the episode, sure resembled the Universal Studios backlot.

You can practically make out the refreshment stand in the background.

But I digress. LaRoche is still in the booby hatch when the episode opens, although we only explicitly learn that a little later on. In fact, we begin with Anton Arcane on vacation in a sunny locale at the Garden of Allah in West Hollywood. Well, I saw he's in California and all that, but the Garden of Allah was torn down in 1959. He is, in fact, actually in -- wait for it, this might blow your mind -- the recreation of the Garden of Allah on the Universal Studios backlot! Well hell, I didn't see that coming!

And neither does Roxanne, a casually passing blonde beauty in an immodest bikini whom the doctor picks up while lounging on the patio. Arcane has really come a long way since he was hypnotizing runaways into non-consensual trailer sex. He's grown.

"Hat-wearing shadow, darling, is that you?"

He's also beaten within an inch of his life. As Roxanne sneaks out of Arcane's hotel room in the middle of the night, another figure slips in -- LaRoche! Or, at least, LaRoche's shadow, and he's here to beat up Anton Arcane!

Meanwhile, back in Houma (about a hundred and fifty feet away elsewhere on the Universal Studios backlot, I mean to say), Will has picked up a job at the local insane asylum! Good gig, if you can get it. Maybe the inmates remind him of his brother, Jim. Anyway, Will is a handyman there, volunteering for Dr.Williams (Allison McKay), the asylum administrator. What Will isn't expecting is that Carter Sinclair LaRoche is still an inmate at the facility, although he's picked up a super new skill -- hypnosis! Old school hypnosis, too, the "wave a gold watch" kind, and it's powerful enough that he can capture minds forever and also show up on the other side of the country and beat dudes up shadow-style.

As for Swamp Thing, he's off doing reverse farts in the middle of the muck-waters. This is his fashion of cleaning up a toxic chemical spill, although I couldn't stop imagining that this was just reverse-footage (I mean, it was, of course) and all that toxic garbage was just going up his butt. Enjoy the mental image.

Jacuzzi Thing

LaRoche manages to hypnotize Will, a task I bet an infant could accomplish. You don't even need to hypnotize him, you just tell Will "When I snap my fingers, you'll be a chicken!" and then you don't even have to snap your fingers before he starts clucking and digging in the dirt. This helps keep Swamp Thing busy as Will takes a chainsaw to the smaller trees and brush in the swamp. Not the greatest menace ever faced on the series, but you certainly do get to see Will try to kill Swamp Thing with a chainsaw. It goes poorly for Will.

(He does have the best line in the whole episode, though. At one point, he's livid with frustration and righteous indignation, and exclaims "I'm tired of my friend going through his days as a plant!" Aw man, Swamp Thing thought you loved him for his soul, Will. That's gonna hurt).

I think he's just bored, but whatever works.

The reason that LaRoche is in the booby hatch, by the bye, is that he's maintained the "illusion" that the swamp hosts a man-monster with magic powers who has it in for the former land developer. Weirdly, he actually thinks he hallucinated Swamp Thing too? So when Swamp Thing finally heals from Will's vicious shrub pruning and the toxic swamp enema, he just sort of walks in front of LaRoche and sends the guy screaming back to useless insanity.

OR HAS HE? Because Anton Arcane STILL HEARS LAROCHE IN HIS HEAD! For the few seconds between the end of the episode and the roll of the credits, anyway. I feel like he'll be back to normal next episode ...

"So long, folks!"

MICRONAUTS MONDAY: 40 - THE FUGITIVES, THE FRENZY AND THE FANTASTIC FOUR (WELL, ALMOST)

Micronauts vol.1 No.40 (Apr 1982)
Writer: Bill Mantlo
Artists: Gil Kane and Danny Bulandi
Letterer: Novak & Albers
Colorist: Bob Sharen
Editor: Al Milgrom
EIC: Jim Shooter

The legendary Gil Kane picks up penciling duties but the un-nuanced hand of Danny Bulandi is still inking, and – to be frank – you are fucking kidding me. Kane’s art is famously dynamic and bold, but Bulandi’s lines literally enervate them. I will tell you that, every now and again, some of Kane’s original pencils shine through Bulandi’s heavy handedness, and it’s heartbreaking.

Anyway. Last issue, the damaged Endeavor was washed into the New York City sewer system, providing a momentary distraction for thousands of alligators and underground mole bums. Bug is victim of a dumb little accident – Mari sees a rat lurking towards Bug, shoots the rat, the rat falls on Bug and knocks him into the sewer. Nice shot, Mari! Two for one!

Devil leaps into the water, leaving Acroyear – as the only other unnaturally strong member of the team – to hold onto the Endeavor’s line. As if that weren’t dumb enough, Devil goes on to complain about how much he hates water. THAT IS LITERALLY BUG’S DEAL. That is not your bit, Devil. Also, Devil failed to save Bug (he’s fine now), so he continues to be a useless magenta Pokemon.

Speaking of Devil, the constant attempts to get him to bond with Acroyear is getting embarrassing. “We’ve made quite a team since the day I first met you in Tropica, Acroyear” he says at one point. If that was a pick-up line, sure, yeah, I like it. If it’s what passes for Devil’s dialogue, no. No thank you.

While Ayo and Devil play Abbot and Costello in the sewers, Bug develops some leadership skills, although he kills a telephone operator to do it. More to the point, he figures out how to use a pay phone to dial information and uses it to get directions to The Baxter Building. Along the way he shoots his rocket-lance into the receiver and I think deafens an operator? Anyway, beside the point – they’re going to see Reed Richards because they can’t go home with the Endeavor wrecked unless he helps them!

But Reed and the family are out tonight, only Uncle Benjy and his nephew Franklin happen to be home. And Uncle Benjy’s drunk! Well, he’s asleep anyway, leaving Franklin to welcome the Micronauts and show them his collection of Micronaut toys A-GAAAAIIIINNN aw it’s fine. Bug kills one of them and it’s cool.

Franklin knows od a tiny ship of his father’s which the Micronauts could use, but they discover that the ship is being attacked by Antrons! Last seen when battling the Psycho-Man a billion issues ago, these Antrons are Body Bank productions, courtesy of Argon – and they’re eating the ship! Well heck!

There’s a fight scene which is good but not particularly awesome. Well, I say that, but there is a whole page where Bug sings a gross song about murdering Antrons set to the tune of Johnny Comes Marching Home Again:

The Antrons came marching ten by ten, hurrah *tik* hurrah!
The Antrons came marching ten by ten, hurrah *tik* hurrah!
The Antrons came marching *tik* ten by ten, til my rocket-lance brough their march to an end
An’ they all fell *tik* dyin’ down on the ground when I scrambled their *tik* brains!

Bug is dark.

While everyone is doing their part – Franklin wipes out a platoon of Antrons by shooting them with a fire extinguisher – Rann begins to realize that his telepathic powers seem to be coming back. As those had previously been the product of his psionic relationship with his long-deceased roboid pal Biotron, the returning skills bear the mark of MYSTERY!

Eventually, they get some help from The Thing, who cleans up the invading Antrons but can’t save the ship. Instead, he gives the Micronauts incredibly bad advice in the form of flying over to Dr.Doom’s castle in Latveria, breaking in, and hanging out in the very tiny town he’d built with which to trap the Fantastic Four. I can see no way that wouldn’t work out and also understand completely how that would help the Micronauts (I do not actually).

Over in the lettercolumn, someone’s got rave reviews for the Death Squad and – I think – Fan Art! Oh my god, that can’t be for real. And if it is, jeez, how bad I feel for that kid.

Plus ... bonus pinup!

TRULY GONE&FORGOTTEN: WHAM-O GIANT COMICS PRESENTS THE YOUNG EAGLES/EXPERIMENT IN SHOCK

The Young Eagles
w/a Andre LeBlanc

The Young Eagles ends up being one of the two stories in this collection which most puts me in the mind of the British boy’s weeklies for which I possess quite a bit of fondness. That being said, it’s also one of the thinnest entries in the catalog, particularly at three whopping pages largely spent depicting a dogfight. That’s why they get to share their entry with another feature. Let that be a lesson to you.

The adventure is billed as “Two young Yanks flying and fighting in the skies of France during World War 1,” and it delivers exactly that and … not much more? It does what it advertised it would do on the tin, I’m not complaining. It’s not the fault of “World War I” or “airplanes” that they’re not as inherently weird as a radioactive superhero or a stone ornament that comes to life. They’re doing the best they can!

"The short fat one ... enhh, he's doing all right."

The two young Yanks are Dan Winchester and Bud Hammer, former French Legionnaires serving in the Sahara, as they will do.  Once they survive the grueling, often fatal training sessions for their airborne crates, they’re apprenticed to a French flight whiz given to wild over-reaction. “I, La Fitte” he hollers in frustration, “Nursemaid to greenhorns who think they are aces! There is no justice!” He literally just met them.

La Fitte  leads Dan and Bud into a dogfight with a passel of German planes, resulting in the usual assortment of dangerous dives, unlikely tricks, and “this old crate is coming apart” or something like, if not in so many words.

Don’t let me make you think that this strip isn’t worth it. Andre LeBlanc was a ghost or primary artist on a raft of popular comic strips, was formerly apprenticed to Will Eisner, and therefore knows his stuff top to bottom. The light coloring is also appealing, and really stands out from the rest of the often-dark book – an airy palette for a tale of air fighters, that’s a canny decision on LeBlanc’s part.

Experiment in Shock
w/a Bruce Steffenhagen

A staple in Hot Rod magazines and, most famously, CARtoons, Bruce Steffenhagen tries his hand at a comically gory haunted house tale. Young Rodney Throgshire is left the family mansion in his uncle’s will, with the typical rider that he has to spend a full night in the mansion to inherit it blah blah blah. You know the drill.

Therein he finds an increasing number of baffling supernatural phenomenon; the servants all look like monsters, even though their reflections seem normal. The clock runs backwards. Paintings in the hallway of celebrated relatives look like monsters, too. Um, there’s a dragon in the garden, but it was actually kind of sweet. ANYWAY, the gimmick is that the rich uncle’s jilted half-brother, Black Barney (I’m not gonna do a joke here, because the field is so broad and clear and I want you to have a chance; go for it).

Barney is undone by his own cruel inventions – the family dog, transformed into a gross beast, causes Barney to stumble into his own machinery, dying and reversing all the evil stuff in the process. But the clock, it turns out, ALWAYS ran backwards! That’s an unusual punchline, but there it is and we’re done.

It often feels that way around the holidays, yeah.

IF YOU SEE SWAMP THING, SAY SWAMP THING: PAY DAY

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 used to like to call a dumb pun kind of title, but I've run out of those, so I just call it ...

This one might be a little difficult to cover, inasmuch as really nothing of note happens in the episode aaaaaand I think this was just an inventory script that they slapped a Swamp Thing-colored patina over. Hey, that'd be verdigris, right? I've been wondering how they make that stuff...

Vicious killer Ryson (Robert S.Woods) strongarms a pair of his fellow prison inmates -- the handsome and recalcitrant Citrano (John Loprieno) and the made-for-TV Leonard Small named Seifert (Bryan Michael McGuire) -- into staging an escape. Citrano has his misgivings and Seifert is terrified of the alligators populating the Houma swamps, but they allow Ryson to call the shots. After the murder of one of the least-attentive prison guards in television history (Geoff Koch), the trio escapes into the bog. Oh and, naturally, they're intent on retrieving a stash of stolen loot which Ryson had previously hidden after a big job.

"...or behind the Water Stunt Show set."

Swamp Thing happens to witness the escape, although what he was doing at the prison is a whole other question. I like to imagine that it was visiting day and that he knows a fern in there who's in for mail fraud. Thanks to the magic of television, anything's possible!

Despite witnessing the escape, Swamp Thing decides to let the killers flee unimpeded into the swamp, so that he can teach them some ambiguous lesson about making better choices in life instead of stopping them. I will tell you now that one guy has already been murdered because Swamp Thing wanted to wave an after-school special under these guys' assorted noses, and another one is gonna eat it about twelve minutes further into the episode, and those deaths are on Swamp Thing's mossy hands.

Entranced by the chain-link fence, Officer Lookaway meets his fate.

Like I say, it's hard to describe this episode because it's boilerplate television. Three cons escape from prison, go after the hidden cash, and increasingly come to blows, murdering some folks along the way. What mixes it up is the hovering, disapproving presence of Swamp Thing, judging the baddies and picking them off one by one as they travel. It's like Predator meets Down By Law starring a bunch of congenital idiots.

Personality-wise, Citrano is a man full of regret for the crimes he'd committed, including the unwitting participation in the murder of a bank guard or something. What was particularly odd about Citrano was that he so resembled Will Kipp (Scott Garrison) -- not literally, but in the sense that he was the same kind of generically handsome basic cable actor -- that I wondered if this might have ever been considered as a Will-centric episode. If you recall, Will was complicit in the near-deadly assault on a video store owner back in Philadelphia, and this script might have been penned under the idea that Will's arc would have landed him in prison, if just for a little while (which would have explained why Swamp Thing was hanging around). But then again, if the career of Mark Wahlberg has taught us anything, you can badly assault any marginalized individual and still get to be on TV if you really want to.

One of the great things about this show is the set is so small, you have to huddle up to walk through the "swamp."

Seifert is the lumbering man-child so common to these types of stories. He's the Delmar. I'm always taken back by the inevitable scene involving these characters in which they longingly describe what their lives will be like once they get the money -- all the people they'll show up, thinking about the looks on their faces. Whatever, the guy's an idiot, he's gonna spend it all on lottery tickets. He also really is obsessed with alligators, to the point that his constant alligator conversation seemed to imply a Chekov's Alligator situation which never materialized.

Lastly, Ryson, as deadly as his homophone implies. Ryson is overly aggressive, hot-headed, and continually gurning in that fashion of TV psychopaths. He'll also be responsible later in the episode for murdering a fisherman whose only error was stumbling across the cons raiding his campsite.

"Seifert turning himself in for the murder of the fisherman" is the modern day "Truth Emerging From Her Well To Shame Mankind"

Swamp Thing manages to scare Seifert and Citrano straight using little more than the intimidating quality of fresh fruit, but Ryson requires time travel and solid light holograms. I DID NOT KNOW THAT SWAMP THING COULD DO THESE THINGS, but he does, so I guess I'm the dope. Ryson is shown the disapproving hallucinations of his pre-adolescent self and his childhood dog, both of whom express their deep disappointment in adult Ryson's criminal activities.

Then, Swamp Thing uses Superman: The Movie powers -- or Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut powers -- to reverse time and put everybody back in prison. Seifert and Citrano have learned their alternate-timeline lesson, but Ryson does not, and he gets murdered. Swamp Thing lacks a lot of imagination to not be able to find a way out of this prison escape without someone being murdered.

You come to me, on the day of my daughter's wedding ...

I had some time to think about Swamp Thing as a whole as I watched this episode, and I began to realize that it is absolutely wrong to suggest that Swamp Thing (the series) fails in its primary goal: to entertain. The fact is that it's insanely entertaining, in the same sense that Schumacher's Batman & Robin, or the classic Manos The Hands of Fate are entertaining -- they don't just pass the "so bad it's good" bar, but rather they're so bad that they cannot be judged by critical standards, but spur a lot of thought about critical elements of the show. It's entertaining, this show! And that's what it's out there for. It just so happens it's not very good, most of the time, but who cares? Mission accomplished, USA Network's early 1990s Swamp Thing television show, I think you're all right.

"Arf."

MICRONAUTS MONDAY: 39 - STARTING OVER

Micronauts vol.1 No.39 (Mar 1982)
Writer: Bill Mantlo
Artists: Steve Ditko and Danny Bulandi
Letterer: Jim Novak
Colorist: Bob Sharen
Editor: Al Milgrom
EIC: Jim Shooter

Okay, so, let’s say you missed all the alerts and warnings about the Micronauts’ upcoming exclusive availability. Perhaps you somehow didn’t register that the book is only available through subscriptions and the Direct Market. Perhaps the in house ads and lettercol announcements weren’t enough. Perhaps it would have been better if there had been a narrative element in an earlier story which explained it! That would be handy, because if they waited until this issue to inform the readers of the change in the clearest possible venue, well, it’d be too late. How would they know where to buy the comic.

"Excuse me as I drop cigar ash on these original Kirby pages"

BUT WAIT THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT THEY DID! The weirdest opening sequence in any issue of the Micronauts starts here, outside the modest storefront of the New York comic shop “Funny Business” (“Catering to the Comic Book Connoisseur”) into which Micronaut fans Donna and Chris are walking. As they enter, Donna is painstakingly explaining to the absolute dullard Chris that the Micronauts, owing to their discerning (read “small but vocal”), will now be available only at shops and by subscription. The store’s cigar-smoking owner (that’s gonna lower the resale value of these comics, pal) adds that newsstands were always unreliable, anyway.

This is so odd, and you wonder how they’re gonna get to the main story – which they do by having the owner hold aloft a copy of Micronauts which proceeds to glow and become a portal allowing the Endeavor to burst into the shop! And like the last time Ditko joined the book, Bug gets into a fight with a bunch of Micronauts toys! I’m sure the toy collecting community in the Marvel Universe searches fruitlessly for an unblasted Force Commander figure.

Oh, and I can’t recall if this came up before, but we’re informed that the “HMS” in “HMS Endeavor” stands for “Homeworld MicroShip.” I love how the Micronauts all know that they’re tiny, even when they hadn’t ever left the Microverse. 

And chill.

They leave the shop in utter chaos, and take a quiret moment to catch the readers up on everyone’s current damage and concerns. We establish that Rann and Mari are still fucking (they hadn’t seemed particularly close these last few busy issues). Meanwhile, Acroyear is still bereft over the loss of his homeworld, his mate Cilicia, and his being branded a traitor by his people. Bug is doing nothing. Devil has been paired up with Microtron because it honestly feels like Mantlo is trying every possible combination with this guy and just nothing is sticking.

Back on Homeworld, Huntarr is confessing to Force Commander his failure to kill the Micronauts. Rather than being blasted to atoms, Huntarr is forgiven and sent back to the Body Banks to get a little weirder. Oh, and this reminds me that Huntarr invokes the name of Sepsis, Goddess of Rebellion, as he leaves the scene and … I don’t know, that seems ballsy to me? I don’t understand Microverse theology. 

While we’re in the royal chambers, the spidery old broad Belladona hobbles in, creaking like an army of old chairs at a fat man’s convention. She claims the body of Force Commander’s former betrothed and rebel leader Slug as her own, planning to transfer her mind into Slug’s young body. Watch what happens closely, the rich buying political dissidents so as to wear them like long underwear is the next stage of Capitalism, I promise you. 

Behind the curtain of Argon’s bedchambers stands Lady Cilicia, Acroyear’s one-time intended. She has been pressed into an alliance with Force Commander and agrees to send a squadron of Acroyear Elite warriors to Earth to finish the Micronauts once and for all.

The subsequent battle takes place at a construction site; setting the stage for another one of those fights were tiny everyday objects become weapons. I’m sort of okay with that in general, and it’s okay here, except that things at a construction site are sort of famously large? “Bring in the very small backhoe, you know, the one my dog can hardly drive? Yeah, my toy Pomeranian, Lucy. Right, that backhoe.” And then there’s a backhoe in a shoebox and they build an industrial park with it.

Devil continues to irritate me, and I’m just waiting for a chance to go off on the pink idiot. Although Devil is “a jester,” he enters the fight cracking no jokes, wiseassing not at all, and not doing anything acrobatic or exciting when fighting his foe – he just hucks rivets at them. Meanwhile, Bug is leaping around, smartassing and shooting dudes in the back of the neck with his lance while still smartassing. We don’t need Devil on this team if his role is just to be the guy who says he’s what another character actually is.

The battle is overwhelming the Micronauts, but luckily it’s interrupted by – construction workers! Oh yeah, now it’s sexy! Baffled by the sight of tiny aliens roughhousing where they work, the guys make a snap judgment (based on Marionette being a tiny hot blonde, as stated explicitly) to join the side of the Micronauts instead of the elite Acroyears. How they could tell one from the other, I dunno. Maybe they hit Funny Business on the way back from lunch and picked up a copy of the book.

Then there’s a lot of Acroyears getting smashed by sledgehammers and other reminders that Bill Mantlo is a dream and you know it.

Unfortunately for our heroes, they end up getting swept into the sewers after the fight, complete with a heavily-damaged Endeavor. This makes Rann say his mother’s name as an epithet, and I confess that I really just don’t understand this universe’s theology.

They're gonna GET Sepsis.

Meanwhile,  in the lettercol, someone finally gets around to fancasting a Micronauts movie!

Oh, and a bonus pinup!

TRULY GONE&FORGOTTEN: WHAM-O GIANT COMICS PRESENTS TOR

He's a growing boy!

TOR AND THE MAN FROM AEONS
w/a Lou Fine

Some beautiful artwork on this piece from the great Lou Fine, as though that were some sort of surprise. It’s almost frustrating how lovely the rendering and storytelling is in this two-page tale, knowing how much gas Fine still had in the tank, with a heart attack only four years in his future. Then again, that’s sort of true of everybody, so … I guess we should all get back to work instead of wasting time doing whatever it is we’re all doing right now?

Back to Tor, however. Despite having his name in the masthead, Tor doesn’t show up almost til the end, has no appreciable dialogue, and fulfills the role of genie more or less.

AEONS is The Atomic Expeditionary Overseer for Nuclear Services, and the Man From it is Commander Briggs. The lantern-jawed Briggs pilots the Cobalt, a multipurpose craft capable of descending into the ocean, traveling on land, or flying, just like any car can presuming you don’t want it to be drivable in two out of three of those circumstances.

Answering to Briggs are Hawkins, a first mate or something, and Explorers Scout Sandy Powers! Briggs explains patiently that the Pentagon – his bosses – wouldn’t have allowed them to take an underage Explorer Scout on this mission if it were in any way dangerous. And while it didn’t start out as a dangerous mission, it takes that turn by panel ten. Briggs, very responsibly, accounts for the safety of his juvenile charge by going ahead and putting the ship in danger, and then warning Sandy that he “may never be able to mention this part of the voyage to [his] own parents.” Mr and Mrs Powers, please come collect Sandy.

He'd say you shouldn't tell your parents.

Deep in an uncharted cave, to which I would not personally have brought a child, the crew of the Cobalt meet the world-conquering General Hong. For a Yellow Menace/Red Menace (perhaps I should shorten that to Orange Menace, insert your Donald Trump gag here), Hong isn’t portrayed in anything like an egregious manner, which is an insanely low bar to meet but here we were in 2018.

Before being captured by Hong and sentenced to death by Gamma Ray Gun – you may never be able to tell your parents about this one, Sandy – the Explorer Scout had discovered a tiny “stone doll” depicting a caveman-type character. In fact, it looks like Fred Flintstone crossed with the Venus of Willendorf. Quite a find! We’ve finally proven that mankind descended from Barney Rubble. I suspected all along.

The radiation from the Gamma-Ray Gun has the effect on Tor of turning him into a highly destructive giant. He basically single-handedly destroys Hong’s entire base, although Briggs really takes the fucking credit for it in no small way. Once Hong’s headquarters are destroyed, Tor politely returns to the size of one of those cheap toys you get out of a machine for a quarter at the supermarket, only he probably has enormous B.O.

Possible future adventures are left open when a relatively incurious Briggs posits “I was wondering … if the gamma-ray gun made Tor grow, would the smaller laser pistol, the small nuclear gun, have the same effect on him?” Well heck man, you’re the one with a small nuclear gun I assume from that sentence, let’s find out!

I, too, am too huge and unpredictable to be allowed on a submarine.