All-Star Goddamn Batman and Dick Grayson, Age Twelve

Oh, Frank.

Frank, Frank, Frank.

Frank, what the hell happened to you? You had a successful run on Daredevil that revitalized it, created a fan-loved character (which sadly led to a crappy movie version of that character), and once upon a time you could draw without everything being so blocky and stylized. And then you made The Dark Knight Returns, one of the most quintessential Batman stories of all time. You paved the way for comics to be recognized as a serious medium and championed creators’ rights.

And then you made Sin City and it all went downhill from there.

Oh, sure, Sin City is a fantastic take on noir-styles in comics and some of the stories are even entertaining, but it set a precedent for you that you haven’t gotten away from since. All of your artwork since Sin City has followed that same blocky, noir style even when it’s in color. Sin City established the idea that you couldn’t write a female character who wasn’t a whore. You’ve spent so much time working on Sin City that it’s become your standard mode of writing, with choppy, brief sentences that have become a parody in themselves of the grim ‘n gritty era, which you yourself derided as “stupid.” In 1985, you said that “Batman is as good and pure a superhero as you can find.” Well, twenty years later, you seem to have forgotten that. The Batman in this book is unheroic, psychotic, and in some parts seems pedophilic, even.

The All-Star books were meant to be DC’s answer to Marvel’s Ultimate universe – new series depicting superheroes starting their careers in a modern setting without decades of continuity to discourage new readers. A new comic reader can start fresh without having to worry about extensive back-story and situations that they may have never heard of. And considering Frank Miller’s more-hits-than-misses track record with Batman, it seemed like a natural fit for him to write this series, right?

The Sin City style is in full force in this series, with sexist portrayals of women, dialogue that seems schizophrenic at times or just repeats itself for no discernable reason, and plot points that sometimes feel like they were lifted directly from Sin City. The only saving grace on the book is Jim Lee’s gorgeous pencils. The book has been rocked with delays since day one. Since the book premiered in 2005, at the time of this writing, only four issues of the series have been released, but considering the content I can actually see that as a blessing.

There are actually two covers available for it (albeit promotional materials combined the two images into one) of the same Gotham City background while one cover features Batman and the other Robin. As I said above, Jim Lee does fantastic work (I’m particularly fond of his work on “Hush”), though I’m confused about why they felt the need to split the two characters so that they both had the cover devoted to them. I’d think it would make more sense actually to, as a buying incentive, have it be more like a two-part cover that could be combined into one, but hey, what do I know?

We start the action off with a young Dick Grayson performing a mid-air leap. The first thing one notices about this is that Dick is wearing a rather unusual green outfit with a stylized golden “G” on his chest (and making me think for a brief moment if Dr. Wertham wasn’t onto something in Seduction of the Innocent given the contents to come). I am a little curious about why the change in the outfit. It’s possible I’m wrong, but I always thought that the Robin outfit was an homage to the outfit Dick wore when he was in the circus. If that was the case, then why the green outfit, especially since the Robin costume only has green in the pixie boots, short pants, and gloves (none of which are in this outfit). Dick states in our ever-helpful narration boxes: “This should get me KILLED. But it WON’T. Not that I can BREATHE with my HEART fighting it out with my ADAM’S APPLE, just now–” And suddenly I have the image of the Star Trek fight music playing as a twelve year-old heart and an Adam’s apple duke it out in a wrestling match.

Dick goes on to talk about how much he loves his parents and how they’ll always catch him and in the last panel, it shows Dick with his arms spread wide, a happy smile on his face, and a narration box saying, “I fly.” I actually have to admit, this opening sequence does work really well, unusual costume aside. However, the writing problem of Frank Miller rears its ugly head right here as Dick has apparently contracted Torgo syndrome: “They’re always there for me. They always catch me. Mom and Dad. They always catch me. They’re always there for me. They’re always there for me.” So, they’re never there for you, then?

Flip the page and now we have moved fully into Frank’s fantasy world of how women are supposed to be. It’s a full-page shot of the Millerverse Vicki Vale. She’s strutting around a large apartment (with huge, uncurtained windows behind her) in pink underwear and holding a martini. The narrator boxes give us this helpful insight into her character: “Vicki Vale. Columnist. Gadfly. Dictating. She’s trouble. The kind of trouble you want.” Yes, boys, she’s only there for your pleasure. And what is Ms. Vale dictating? “So we got ourselves a Man of Steel in Metropolis – And why do we call him a Man of Steel? That does bring certain thoughts to mind.” What magazine does she work for, anyway? Superhero Innuendo Monthly? ‘In this issue – Diehard and the reason we want him fighting crime for us.’

As an aside, when people often cry sexism in comics because of skimpy outfits or skinny bodies, a common reaction is for people to cry out, ‘But men have it bad, too! Men wear skintight outfits that show off muscular bodies that we can’t hope to compare to!’ They don’t really get the problem. It’s not that the outfits are skimpy. It’s impractical, but that’s not the issue. The issue is that women are drawn that way purely for the titillation of the male reader. There is no friggin’ reason for Vicki Vale to be sauntering around her apartment in her underwear. No reason.

But perhaps I’m being too harsh on Frank, I mean it’s not like he’s having Vicki Vale’s ass talk to us or anything and- oh, never mind. Flip the page, last panel: Vicki Vale’s buttocks, the focus of the shot, conversing with us. And while I could go on a lengthy diatribe on just that section, I leave it in more capable hands here.

As for the text itself, Vicki continues talking about how Superman is so much better than Batman because of his mightier penis. “So Metropolis gets a Man of Steel. And what do we get in dear Gotham City? A damn flying rodent. Who doesn’t even fly.” So, wait, does he fly or doesn’t he? “A goddamn Bat Man.” Anyone who’s been hanging around the comics community for the past two years will know what that line foreshadows. Slutty Vale continues: “This loser throws a few other losers through a window and we’re supposed to swoon?” Well, you’d know losers, Vick. “Sometimes I despair, dear reader. Sometimes life seems to hold no meaning. They get a Man of Steel. We get a flying rat. What’s a poor girl to do?” Perhaps she could realize she doesn’t need men to validate her own existence and- ah, you get it.

Vicki goes on to pull a Jim Carrey as she speaks through her rear about how much Bruce Wayne is hot (oh, irony, hahahaha!). She’s interrupted by her buzzer and suddenly she starts complaining about how loud the buzzer when really we know she’s just upset that someone got in the way of her almost masturbatory thoughts about men she’d like to sleep with. As it turns out, it’s Alfred, who says that Bruce Wayne is requesting her presence. And like Pavlov’s dogs, Vicki scurries at the sound of a bell at the prospect of being with her man. In a two-page spread, we see Vicki trying on a variety of perfectly reasonable outfits, albeit now she’s also changed her lingerie to black (since she’s a slut and all). Throughout it, she says no less than four times: “I’m having a date with BRUCE WAYNE.” She settles in a cleavage-exposing white outfit that Emma Frost would blush at.

Alfred is our next victim of mischaracterization as Vicki comes down to meet the car and Alfred actually refers to her as “love.” Alfred informs her that they’ll be attending the circus and Vicki could care less since, as shown above, she only cares about the fact that: “I’m having a date with BRUCE WAYNE. How cool is THAT?” I don’t know how cool it is. I mean, I don’t even know who it is you’re having a date with. What’s his name?

Cut back to the circus and Dick is performing a complex maneuver. And what are his thoughts on the matter? “They’re always there for me. They always catch me. I fly.” GAH! We’re nine pages in and besides for Vicki’s penis monologue I think we’ve had a grand total of four sentences in this story which are repeated ad nauseum. Dick fails to grab the next swing bar and starts to fall, prompting audience members to start saying “My God!” Yes, every single one of the speech balloons that are reactions to this either are just or start off with “My God” and I started to wonder if there was a Monolith somewhere that I wasn’t seeing on the page. I will say happily that one of the balloons says, “My God this is horrible” and making me think the editor had slipped it in to give their own commentary on the issue.

Vicki is of course naturally worried about the child who is plummeting to his death, but Bruce reassures her that the kid knows what he’s doing. Dick suddenly grabs a grappling hook and rope from his armpit[!], tosses it up to the swing bar[!!], and manages to stop his free fall[!!!]. As I’ve said before, I’m not a scientist, but it seems to me that suddenly stopping yourself while dropping like that is probably not good for the muscular structure. Furthermore, other than to show off that the kid already has talents that will come in handy when he becomes Robin, why isn’t there a safety net for the trapeze? In other comics I know it was said that they had removed it since this was supposed to be a complex, death-defying stunt to impress the audience, but no dialogue here indicates that’s the case here. And while it’s certainly cool that Dick can accomplish such a move, wouldn’t a net be safer than storing a grappling hook in your armpit flesh? I mean it’s got to be uncomfortable.

Back to Vicki and Bruce, where Vicki comments that Dick’s amazing and in a very creepy moment, Bruce replies: “Yeah, I’ve had my eye on him for awhile. He’s something, all right.” Vicki, for once acting like the woman she’s supposed to be based on, questions him on that comment. However, she quickly succumbs back to the Vicki Vale of Earth-Miller when Bruce smiles at her and replies, “I’ve got an eye for talent.” Bruce Wayne: Agent of NAMBLA. Vicki realizes something’s up, but she’s too gaga for Brucie to make the connection: “I’m having a DATE with BRUCE WAYNE.” I’m sorry, I really can’t follow this plotline, is she on a date or something?

The Flying Graysons take a bow, but then suddenly bullets strike Dick’s parents and kills them. What I don’t understand is the necessity to change this little detail of Dick’s origin story. Originally, Mob boss Tony Zucco was trying to extort money out of the circus and they refused to budge, so Tony put acid on the trapeze ropes, killing both of them. This would only leave circumstantial evidence pointing him to the crime. Instead, we now have a shooter who struck down the parents for reasons a new reader doesn’t know and is a major lapse in logic for the criminals, since anyone who brought a gun to the circus and then had to take aim to kill them as well as they did would’ve been spotted almost immediately committing the deed. In any case, Bruce looks in shock at his dead parents as Bruce’s thought captions fill us in:

“He doesn’t understand. He can’t possibly understand. I couldn’t, when it happened to me. And I don’t know why this was done to him. I can’t know why. Not yet. But I know exactly THIS MUCH: The boy has entered MY WORLD. And he’ll never leave it.” Well, you’ve heard it, folks: if your parents are murdered, you are now officially a part of Batman’s world. But it’s okay, they know you there.

Bruce slips off from a shocked Vicki Vale as he too falls prey to Torgo syndrome and repeats in his narration captions: “There’s no way out.” Apparently making us believe that Bruce can find a hidden spot to change amidst the chaos of a heavily-packed circus tent, Frank has Batman suddenly appear and instantly find the shooter as he flees the scene. He tosses a batarang into the guy and apparently he even put snake poison on the edge of it [!!]. Batman identifies him as a minor thug. “Yeah. Caught myself a six-and-a-half-foot-long MINNOW. There’s a lot of FOOD CHAIN to work my way up. But first — the KID. Dick Grayson. Age Twelve.” No, don’t interrogate him, you dick!

Meanwhile, Vicki’s trying to get the cops to get Dick Grayson, Age twelve to a hospital, but the cops are strangely adamant about it. They say he’s in good hands, but Vicki states: “Yeah, I’ve seen what you cops do with your hands. What girl in Gotham hasn’t? And who knows what you do to little boys?” Um, Vicki? He’s a dirty cop, you really can’t shame him. Furthermore, if Vicki’s accusation is true, why in the hell is she writing a stupid gossip column about who’s got the world’s finest crotch when she could be printing the truth about Gotham’s cops? The cop hits Vicki across the face and she spits blood out of her mouth. “Gotham’s FINEST. It wouldn’t be LADYLIKE to say finest at WHAT.” Considering her behavior in the previous pages, I’m not sure what her definition of “ladylike” is, exactly…

Actually acting like a competent individual for a moment, she commandeers Bruce’s car and Alfred comes along for the ride. She pursues the cop car, assuming that the cops are planning on beating up Dick and that she can get photographic proof of the cops assaulting a defenseless minor, thus having a felony crime that would get Washington’s attention. Dick argues with the cops about how his parents were murdered, but the cops tell him he’s remembering it wrong. He even tells them that “I saw the man who did it. And I can identify him.” And again, I have to shake my head in disbelief since the cops wouldn’t have had to rough up Dick if they had just cut the ropes instead of shooting them in the middle of a crowded circus tent! Furthermore, how the hell could Dick see who it was that did it?! When his parents were shot, he was taking a bow with his eyes closed and only looked up when he heard the bullets being fired and hitting his parents in their heads. There were hundreds if not thousands in that tent – how in the heck could he have seen who did it after just glancing up?!

Vicki Vale thinks to herself: “I don’t get it. Why KILL two AERIALISTS – then use the COPS to do LORD knows what to their BOY? It doesn’t make any SENSE. It doesn’t make any SENSE.” Vicki, I know it doesn’t. Vicki, I know it doesn’t. A swarm of bats suddenly flies down into the gulch where the cops have brought Dick. Batman tells us: “I knew these cops would take the boy to the GULCH. So I set up my SONICS. Bats like my SONICS.” Personally, I like Knuckles, but I haven’t played in awhile so- oh, what? Oh, well, I much prefer thinking about SEGA games than I do about this…

The bats attack the cops, who subsequently decide to flee. Batman stops the sonics and- Oh my lord… He drives the Batmobile through the cop car and splits it in half! I am just… Wow. I don’t think even Diehard’s mega-crotch produced as much of a ‘what is even the hell’ reaction from me as this just did. The physics of it are baffling. The ethical implications are mind-numbing. The sheer mischaracterization in it has got me wishing I had the safe, reliable days of Youngblood. I will admit, upon looking at the special edition of this issue and the original script that Frank Miller had written, he only writes that the Batmobile (the cool version from the 1950s) should smash through the cop car and utterly demolish it. I’m just trying to wrap my head around how Jim Lee went from “utterly demolish” to “slice the car in two.”

Batman picks up Dick Grayson, Age twelve by the collar and tells him, “On your feet, soldier. You’ve just been drafted. Into a war.” Thanks for the clarification, Batman, because I thought he was getting drafted into the NFL! And thus our first issue ends. And somewhere, Bob Kane is crying.

All right, so I want to hear some opinions – should I move on to #2 of this dreck or hold it off for another occasion? Tell me or else I’m going to launch a battering ram through your car that’ll inexplicably split it in half.

Kind of self-explanatory, isn’t it?

The title really says it all, doesn’t it?

Oh, but it gets sooo much better, folks. Solson Publications is a now-out of business comics company in the ‘80s that had such stellar titles as Codename: Assassin, Reagan’s Raiders (a comic, of all things, featuring our former president as part of a commando superhero team), Daffy Qadaffi, other various titles, and of course the subject of today’s burning. And while certainly members of the team just for this book are worthy of scorn, the former President of Solson comics, Gary Brodsky, deserves the most.

He is scum.

He is John Norman level of scum. He is the-oppressive-laws-against-women-in-Saudi Arabia-level scum. While it would be one thing to simply approve of this book (cheesecake for the sake of cheesecake exists even in Marvel), but what is the good Mr. Brodsky up to these days? Here is a selection of book titles from his site: How to dominate women, The Castration of the American Male, Dogs are like men, Cats are like women, How to use Black Magic to get women, Get any Woman to do Anything… Are we seeing a pattern here? The man is a misogynistic pile of crap and I don’t feel any shame in calling him that. I’m not going to link to his site, since I sure as hell don’t want people to give this bastard any more attention than my spittle and rage.

There are tenets of feminist philosophy (I’m disassociating with feminism itself here, since the definition of feminism is simply thinking that men and women should be treated equally) that I do not agree with, but man-oh-man it’s comics and individuals like this and him that make me want to.

Moving on away from the scumbag, I’m sad to say I don’t know much about the other individuals involved in this tripe. From what I’ve read, much like Greg Land of today, artist and creator of Sultry Teenage Super Foxes (hereafter to be referred to as STSF) Rich Buckler has a history of tracing behind him, but it’s lesser-known than more recent ones and from what I can tell from the limited research I’ve done, it wasn’t an extensive and common practice for him. Currently he’s doing surreal paintings and selling them from his site. The credits say that the script was by David George, but I can find no proof of this person’s existence so I’ll have to assume it’s a pen name for one of the other individuals involved in this fine work.

The other artist I can find very little about either is Chuck Wojkiewicz, albeit it seems that he has worked for DC before. Scott Nickel is still around, though, and apparently once joked about making a modern version of STSF or even Reagan’s Raiders using the current Republican President.

As for Solson comics itself, it was born out of the late ‘80s in the desire to mimic the success that black-and-white publishers had been having in the recently-budding direct-sales market. As such, this will also be the site’s first black and white comic.

And here we have the cover to Supreme Power #6- erm, I mean to our subject today (although that issue has a strikingly similar cover to this…). Unsurprisingly for the title, we have our heroines all wearing bathing suits of some sort. The woman in blue’s outfit, while looking nice stylistically, is still swim-wear if ever I saw it and does have the problem of really, REALLY huge boots. To make matters more confusing, one heroine isn’t even looking out at us like a group shot should, instead waving towards a jet that is, for some reason, on the cover. The woman in yellow has a boob window, of course, and the woman in green is… hell, I don’t know WHAT to call that outfit. It’s not helping that I can see her nipples poking through, but needless to say I’m just shaking my head here.

And before anyone cries out that these kind of outfits, “distract the enemy,” allow me to point out the fact that any villain worth his money isn’t going to give a rat’s ass if they’re in body armor, much less these outfits – they’re going to be running like hell and shooting back at whoever’s pursuing them because they don’t want to get CAUGHT. They’ll shoot at a superhero whether she’s starkers or fully-covered because they know what’ll happen if they don’t.

We open our story to an Air Force base where four women are waving goodbye to a group of pilots in their jets. The narration captions begin: “July. It means summer heat and clear blue skies here at Rutgers Air Force Base.” Really? I thought it meant giving, not stealing. “To Jasmine, Sheena, Amelia and Candy it means vacation – away from boarding school… and here on base, where their fathers work year round for Uncle Sam. Oh! It also means pilot watching.” Wait, their fathers work as pilots and these girls watch them? If it’s in a ‘oh-my-god-they’re-hot’ fashion, then eew. If any other fashion… well, sorry but that just sounds boring as hell. At least Hal Jordan’s group has interesting crap happen, like the occasional spaceship crashing into them. The narrator continues: “July is spent gazing dreamily at the cream of American manhood.” Okay, don’t EVER say ‘cream’ or ‘manhood’ again, okay? Ugh, I can just feel the oily touch of Gary Brodsky on this crap even if he didn’t write it.

“Today, alas, the girls are watching the pilots leave base on a five day mission. Five days is a long time in July – with no pilots around especially!” Yeah, I can remember back when I was a kid and I just kicked myself in July because there were no pilots around to watch. I mean, what’s not to like, eh? Mid-air refueling, sonic booms that shatter your eardrums… On that subject, five days on a single mission DOES seem like an awful long time to be away. Are they planning on staying up there the whole time or will they actually be stopping at other air force bases?

And already we see the real flaw behind black and white books – while stylistically they can work for something like Maus or something with a hint of color like AntiBunny, in a superhero book (intended mostly for action), it can get really difficult to keep track of which characters are which judging primarily on the hair style.

In any case, Amelia sighs and proclaims she misses one of the guy’s already. Jasmine rolls her eyes at her and says, “That is so high school! And you look like someone just shot your poodle! Play hard to get – for a change.” Nothing like being independent and not requiring a relationship, eh? “I thought we were in high school, Jasmine.” Ah, yes, nothing says high school quite like women who look like they’re in their mid-twenties. Two of the women wave at some mechanics nearby and Jasmine is unimpressed. “And just look at you two! Waving at mere mechanics! My God, they’re enlisted men!” GASP! Oh my God, what’ll the girls in baking class think?!

Jasmine proclaims that she’ll settle for no less than “An officer! A pilot!” Much like the narrator of Thunderstrike, Jasmine seems to have a problem with sentence fragments. One of the mechanics leers at the women and asks how a guy is supposed to work when the women are so distracting. Oh, I don’t know, perhaps by focusing on the task at hand instead of thinking with your other head? An MP stops the women, proclaiming them to be in a restricted area. As they turn to leave, the women wave to the mechanics, one of whom stupidly smacks his buddy across the back of the head as he turns.

The women manage to sneak away from the MP into a hangar and Candy is surprised by a jet that’s covered in tarps (USELESS FORESHADOWING!). The others drag her back along so they can escape and Sheena leads them along like a general. Speaking of which, when they get out of the hangar, somehow her father (a General at the base), is suddenly standing right behind her in a car that anyone could’ve seen coming a mile away. The others remark ‘humorously’: “Yowsa! Yowsa!”[??] “Ha-Ha! Sheena, you sound just like your father!” “Yeah, Sheena, and umm… Speaking of your father…” The narrator informs us quite casually, “Oh, well. Looks like they’re out of the frying pan…” Oh, those crazy wimmins – what sorta trouble will they get into next! Hahahaha- someone please kill me.

Sheena’s father reads her the riot act while the other women snicker. When he’s finished, Sheena makes a ‘sad puppy-eyes’ face at him and says, “I’m awful sorry, daddy. I was just showing the girls around. I didn’t want to be any trouble…” Yes, ladies, when men aren’t lusting after you, you should use your soft, submissive faces to try to calm those raging guys down! What’s particularly stupid about this panel is that the word balloon she’s using is dripping down like she was saying something scary, so any effect for ‘cute’ they were trying to go for is lost. The General isn’t buying her sad face, but instead of rightfully carting the women down to a less-restricted zone and punished for trespassing, he instructs her to guide his new aide, Barry, around the base. Barry is a dorky guy with glasses whose first panel appearance has him bonking his head against a car roof. The women all think about what a nerd or geek he looks like, except for one who has the image of a number two pencil for the guy’s head, which I presume is the artist’s way of drawing ‘pencil-neck,’ even though it would’ve just been simpler to write the words out.

The narrator informs us in a new establishing shot that the unimpressive building before them is, “The Air Force Advanced Aerial Combat Training Center – the most advanced facility of its kind on Earth! “C.T.C.” for short.” Um… shouldn’t that be AFAACTC if that was really its full name? Barry says he’d better get used to living in the area since he’s working on Project Valkyrie. When they ask him about it, Barry informs them on what Project Valkyrie is: “It’s a plan to give women advanced aerial training – in case the country should ever need female pilots.” Well, that makes sense, I suppose, given that-

Wait, WHAT THE FUCK?! I have made it my deliberate goal to ensure I don’t swear a lot in these reviews, but seriously, that statement deserves a complete Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot. There already are female pilots, you jackasses! And what the hell is it about women that prevents them from being perfectly acceptable as pilots in cases other than emergencies?! I’m sure Grace Trout, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Lilya Litvyak, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton can rest easy knowing how much their work is appreciated today.

Admittedly (after doing a little research), while there were female air force pilots at the time this comic was made, female aviators were not allowed to fly in actual combat. They did anyway (and participated in Panama, Grenada, and Desert Storm), but combat records excluded them. In 1993, this law was repealed and women were rightfully allowed to fly combat missions. However, the wording of the dialogue above makes it sound like there aren’t any female pilots at all and that they’d only need them in an emergency!

As Barry is shown around the building (and I must ask why civilians are showing him around), one of the women reveals for no explicable reason that Jasmine’s got a photographic memory (USEFUL FORESHADOWING!). The women play around with him, taking his I.D. badge and clip it to the back of his jacket. They get away by proclaiming, “Oh, gee! Look at the time! We gotta go and, uh… do our homework!” Barry protests that it’s July and Candy responds, “Well, we’re sorta(sic) slow. We need a real heard-start!” Tee-hee! It’s like they’re smart but they’re not! Tee-hee! …somebody PLEASE KILL ME. Barry takes off his glasses and, shockingly, he’s a dead ringer for the recently-deceased Maxwell Lord from DC comics.

Cut to “New Orleans, Louisiana. July 14.” My name’s Friday – I’m a cop. The narrator pipes in about the sweltering heat of the city and that some sections have less tourist attractions than others, showing a street that features signs like, “Topless & Bottomless,” (A rather fitting description of this comic…) “French Style Entertainment,” (Jerry Lewis? This IS a backwater place…) and “Discoteque(sic) Upstairs.” Wow, who knew Discotheques were such a hotbed of drugs and prostitution? We switch to a sign that reads “Madame Rotunda (oh, that’s subtle)” and inside there’s a woman with the standard trappings of a palm reader’s house – crystal balls, candles on skulls, and incense. Madame Rotunda herself is practicing magic while wearing a ridiculous skull helmet on her head.

And it seems my sentiments are the same as her’s, because as we flip the page she thinks, “This ridiculous headdress is about to kill me! And the heat! None of this is working… I should- No! I mustn’t! I must not give up! For the sake of my baby, my sweet Audrey, I must not give up!” The narrator exposits that Rotunda’s daughter died two years ago and now she’s seeking a way to summon the dead. She finally managed to “pierce the veil” and her spirit rises to… well, I’m really not sure. Another problem of black and white comics is that it’s hard to tell what it is we’re looking at in more detailed settings. What I can see is a weird building with a cross-symbol at its top and a bonfire going on in a lake. Rotunda realizes that something has gone wrong and something explodes out of the building. It appears in the visage of a flaming skull as the narrator explains, “The freed thing bridges the intervening gulfs of inner and outer space[??], following the silver thread of Madame’s Spirit… to New Orleans. To Madame (is her first name Madame or something?). Home.” And for some reason that just baffles the mind, the narrator then asks, “Mommy, it followed me home. Can I keep it? [?!?!]”

As Rotunda tries to fight the demon in her head, the demon proclaims that it can give her anything she wants, including vengeance. After she agrees to this, Rotunda transforms into a skinny, hawt version of herself with odd barbed boots, arm warmers, bra, and panties. Oh, and the panties have a cape running down the backside ala the Princess Leia gold bikini. Since she had to take off her robes in order to reveal this ensemble, I can only presume she was wearing this outfit before she was attacked by the demon, so eeewww on so many levels. To add to this wonderful imagery of turning a woman into a sex object is this wonderfully subtle dialogue from the narrator: “The invader wins dominance. Free at last, after so long. Let the universe tremble again.”

Cut back to the Air Force base. The narrator informs us that this is the lab of Dr. Francis Hobble and where the General and Barry are now wanting to see a demonstration of his work. The sample that they’re using is- ugh. It’s four ounces of dog feces. Folks, I don’t know what is more disgusting – the sexism or the attempts at humor. The doctor gives them goggles (“The goggles, they do nothing!” joke in 5…4…3…) and the narrator informs us, “Switches are thrown… and beams of dazzling brilliance lance down onto the sample…” I was unaware that dazzling brilliance had been harnessed into an energy form. “…Bathing it in Eldritch fire[??]… Altering it at the fundamental level!”

Barry is shocked to discover that the dog feces have become gold[!!!]! Barry speculates that it must require lots of power, to which Dr. Hobble affirms, “When we operate the device, every light is dimmed by the power drain[!!!]!” WHAT?! An alchemy device, something that alters dog turds into friggin’ gold, something that changes the atomic structure of one completely different item into another only drains enough power to dim some lights?!?! It gets better, folks.

We get a cost breakdown for the machine, that the apparatus itself cost “millions” and that converting the sample cost around $65,000. “It’s not a cost-effective source for gold, of course, but the theoretical ramifications are enormous!” Not cost-effective?! Once you HAVE the machine, getting the back pay for it is simple once you make gold of equal value! And where does the cost of actually converting the material come from?! Is it the power drain?! Now, I’m not a scientist, but it seems to me that if you hooked it up something that produced an awful lot of energy, say a nuclear power planet or a geothermal plant, the power cost would be minimal at best! Now, there is an economics problem of making more gold and thereby flooding the market with it, but a device of this power has other uses.

Even if garbage itself is not a big issue in the United States thanks to the fact that landfills are plowed over and converted into methane power plants, wasteful material like feces, polluted water, or chemical byproducts of other industrial manufacturing could be converted into whatever materials you need at any moment and subsequently sold to anyone who needed them! And what does Barry have to say about such possibilities? “No way they’ll fund it this year[!!]. It’s just too theoretical[!!!].” Too theoretical?! They made friggin’ dog poop into GOLD!

Jasmine comes in, apparently the daughter of Dr. Hobble. He vents that his grant for the alchemy machine won’t get renewed. He talks about the possibilities of such a machine: “I mean, consider the transmutation of living tissue! Men into supermen! The power of creation could be in our grasp!” We could even turn a manwich into a meal! Oh, and by the way, that “power of creation” doesn’t make you sound megalomaniacal. Nope. Not one bit. Jasmine tries to reassure him that everything will work out while at the same time thinking, “This gives me an idea!” Why do I get the feeling this idea involves costumes that make no sense and sultry looks at readers?

Back in New Orleans, we have a full page of narration talking about homeless people that Rotunda (“Or whatever is now calling herself by that name” as the narrator says) is picking up the homeless and prostitutes to be possessed by other demons. Naturally, these new women are also wearing ‘80s bikerwear and supervillain outfits as Rotunda teaches them to read. One of them has a Bizarro moment as she proclaims, “It are simple! I are figure in wordglyphs already! Me is ready to go out!” Woman = dumb, apparently, otherwise why wouldn’t these demons already have knowledge of speech and reading like the spirit who possessed Madame Rotunda?

Rotunda sells all of her possessions in order to obtain all the materials she needs, including a computer (and making me sigh in nostalgia for the old days of Vic 20s and Commodore 64s. Ah, the good old days…) which she uses to gain access to Project Valkyrie. The password for project Valkyrie? Valhalla. You know, that ‘military intelligence’ oxymoron is looking more bleak every day…

Back at the Air Force base again, the women are sneaking around and go into a storage closet using Jasmine’s father’s I.D. card. Barry tries to follow them, but the door shuts and locks before he can reach it. Jasmine explains to the others about the transmutation device, and now I can only recognize three of the women because they’ve changed their hair styles. And the only one I can recognize is because she’s the only one with black hair. They identify themselves through their dialogue to one another and Amelia expresses concern about the prospect of using the device to transmute themselves into superbeings. Jasmine replies, “Oh, Amelia, don’t be such a wet blanket! This is my big chance to become a superior being, and you are not going to ruin it for me!” Jeez, I can’t tell if this is unintentional misogyny for implying that women need devices to make them into equals/superior to men or just Nazism for implying a superior being at all.

Sheena pipes up with this gem of wisdom: “It occurs to me, ladies, that a superior being would stand an awfully good chance of getting a date with a pilot!” Yes, because God forbid these unnamed pilots might want to date you for your personalities. Oh, wait, you don’t have any. You’re just dolls meant for the enjoyment of men who only care about scoring dates with me. I remember now. I’m serious, someone knock me out or something. Outside, Barry struggles to get the control panel for the door off so he can break in, rewiring it.

Jasmine explains that “Jack” (whoever the hell that might be) showed her how to use the device (FORESHADOWING JUSTIFIED!). Okay, that might explain how it’ll turn you into gold, but how in the heck do you know how to turn yourself into a superpowered being? The others pressure Amelia into getting onto the platform with them and one of them gives this bit of sage advice: “Come on, Amelia! Do you want to sleep alone for the rest of your life?” AGH, THE SEXISM! The goggles, they do nothing! See? Told you it was coming up.

Amelia thinks for a moment that it’s likely to toast them, but since they’re her friends, she’s got to stick by them (yeah, because it’s okay to give into peer pressure when it’s your friends). “Okay, I’m coming… but if this kills us, Jasmine, so help me, I’ll kill you!” Hahahaha, oh, my sides are splitting! Oh, wait, that’s actually my wrist. I’m trying to cut myself on the pages.

Barry manages to get in, but it’s too late. The device activates and all the electronic devices in the area start to short out and explode. The roof explodes and the four women ascend as Barry beholds a woman standing over them with yin-yang symbols all over her. Barry looks up in shock and thinks, “What was that thing I saw standing over it all? It looked like a woman, but… fifty feet tall!?” Quick, someone call Allison Hayes!

On the next page, we reveal the women in all of their new outfits (two of which sport huge boob windows, one a glorified bathing suit (as mentioned above), and the other with multiple holes going down the center). The narrator explains that, “The warm night breeze breathes its approval over them. They are gifted with a bond that reaches in and grasps their hearts. Tonight, they have been made into earth’s avatars.” Jeez, and now I want Aang to show up and slap the writers around for this trash…

The narrator continues: “The planet, from its core to the ozone – is alive, and it smiles on them, for it is theirs and they belong to it!” So, wait, the women belong to the Earth, or the Earth to the women? I’m confused. And hungry. The narrator explains the new powers of each of the women:

“Sheena is gifted with incredible strength, drawn from contact with the mother planet. While she touches the Earth, her blood and body sing with power!” As long as she’s not singing like Yani, I’ll be happy.

“Amelia is joined to the water. Joyfully, it comes to her call – eager to caress – or to strike!” Ah, sexy, sexy violence. Joy. “The waters of the world are hers to shape as she will. They cry out for her touch.” And I’m crying out for an end to this crap.

“Jasmine is now the bride of fire.” Because, you know, women can’t be independent, they have to be brides of something. “Her body is a channel for the power and heat locked inside the Earth. Sweltering, locked away from the light…it seeks release through her!” Jeez, how many double entendres can they fit into a single comic?

“Candy rides the winds tonight. They wrap around her soaring form, at once like silks, like a powerful steed, like a lover’s touch (THREE sexual images in one sentence. I don’t drink, but man do I need a beer). From the frigid winds that whip around mountain peaks, to the slow smoke-laden air that roils through dimly lit city hollows to the air scirocco that rides the desert dunes… She knows them all now. They call to her: “Come. Ride. Soar.” She nods and smiles and promises: “Later.” Then she hastens back to the scene and her friends.” You know, suddenly a walking stick that turns a guy into Thor isn’t such a bad idea, after all.

Barry makes himself scarce as the women practice their new abilities, setting down to talk for a minute. And what do the ladies want to do with their newfound abilities, powers, and responsibilities the likes of which no person on Earth has ever seen before? Why, get men, of course. “I say we meet those hotshots tomorrow right as they land – then wham! Show our stuff!” You could’ve done that just by NOT getting superpowers and lifting your tops.

The next day, the General is understandably peeved about all the damage to the lab. And what does Barry have to say on the matter? “I had no idea that what we are doing would be of interest to saboteurs.” Guys, it’s a machine that can turn anything into something else. Did you really think that this wouldn’t be the least bit enticing to thieves, spies, terrorists, etc.?! The eponymous Jack mentioned earlier says that most of the damage was superficial and that nothing was wrecked permanently. Dr. Hobble worries that they won’t be able to repair any of the damage without funding, but Barry states that now that the Russians are interested in it, that they’ll get more funding. He does say that it’s unlikely that the Russians themselves did it (but that doesn’t prevent you from lying about it…) because they would’ve taken information and destroyed the lab more efficiently. Because Soviet operations in the late ‘80s were going soooo well.

Barry requests to be in charge of investigating and informs the General that Project Valkyrie will be landing shortly. Wait, I thought we only gave them womenfolk jobs in an emergency! The STSF wait outside as the pilots land, ready to reveal their new abilities, but then Project Valkyrie lands and the female pilots all leave the plane and, of course, immediately hook up with the male pilots, much to the chagrin of the STSF. The ladies all grumble about this development as Major Burns, the female commander of Project Valkyrie, reports for duty to the General. And had this been a porn comic, I’m sure we’d see a bulge coming from the General’s pants right now as he grins stupidly and says to her, “Welcome to Rutgers. And please, call me “Hal”!”

Ha-ha! Oh, men ogling women is funny! And women only talk about men when they’re in groups! Yeah, part of me is laughing – the part of me that likes to blow stuff up in first-person shooters. Anyway, that’s the end of the comic, with a blurb for next issue that raises these thought-provoking questions: “What are the sinister plans of Madame Rotunda? Who are the Vampires of Venus[??]? How can I join[???]? What will Candy, Jasmine, Amelia, and Sheena do?” And who are the Overlords of the UFO?!

And just to cap off the stupidity, there’s an ad on the next page for this very comic, with a picture of the jackass Gary Brodsky proclaiming, “From the comics company that dares to have a personality!” Yeah, and that personality is one that thinks women are objects to be owned and dominated and that their only thoughts are for getting dates.

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go watch some Buffy.

The Next Generation of Zeroes!

For those not aware, back in the 1990s, a group of artists at Marvel (including Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, and others) left the company out of dissatisfaction over payment policies and ownership rights. They banded together under a new company, calling itself Image Comics, and devoted themselves to having a place where creator-owned properties could flourish with more of a focus on artwork than on writing. A lot of them were met with varying successes or failures and some have managed to survive even today.

However, a lot of them really tanked, including the subject of today. Youngblood #1 was the first comic to be released off of Image’s line and while I haven’t read many of Image’s titles, I think it’s fair enough to say that it’s probably one of the worst. Even forgiving the artwork of Rob Liefeld, the story itself is poor and its characters are a bunch of unlikable, generically pissed-off individuals who embody pretty much the entirety of the Dark Age of Comics. They killed, they used guns, they didn’t have strict moral codes, and they all had the same perpetual scowl throughout their tenure as ‘heroes.’

Now, I will tell you that I have a love/hate relationship for Liefeld. From what I’ve read about him, the guy’s a really enthusiastic, upbeat person who can be a real pleasure to work with. But on the other hand, his artwork really sucks. Sure, he’s got a basic idea of proportions and shading and all, but when he tries to apply it to superheroes, it just leaves one with a bad taste for what they’ve just seen presented to them. As such, while I will be insulting the artwork throughout this review, please know that I don’t hold it against Rob that much.

Youngblood was heavily criticized in its time for its extensive use of profanity, gore, and general bad writing, bad artwork, and complete lack of connection between the reader and the character. I don’t know if Liefeld expected these guys to really be the next Superman or Captain America in terms of their legacy on the American public, but really their tagline should’ve been ‘The Next Generation of Zeroes!’

The cover’s one of your dime-a-dozen group shots, except the composition leaves much to be desired. Even ignoring Liefeld’s tendency to feature all of his men as over-muscled bodybuilders or his women as busty, spineless sex objects, the coloring on our ‘heroes’ has them blend into one another, making it sometimes difficult to see where one begins and the other ends. Also, it should be noted that you can’t see the eyes of a single one of the ‘heroes,’ as if they didn’t have any at all. And boy do I envy them for that.

Right before the first page, there’s a cardboard “profile box” featuring the only female hero of the Youngblood “Home Team” Vogue. Here it is revealed that underneath her patriotic [!!] and independent skin beats the heart of a Russian defector. Because, you know, when I think patriotic I think a purple and white bodysuit, clown face makeup, and huge shoulder pads, too. Also, we learn that not only was she a world class gymnast by the age of 13 [!!!], but in her civilian identity she runs a successful cosmetic company [!!!] AND she is adept in most major forms of martial arts! Take THAT, Keanu Reeves! I wonder what exactly is her “civilian identity” since the profile box says that her real name is “not revealed.”

The first page opens up, according to the comic, in Washington D.C. at 12:17 PM. A man and woman are out shopping and the woman, revealed here to be named Shelly, is in shock that she’s shopping on her lunch hour with her boyfriend. We get a smattering of tiny bits of exposition as we learn the man is named Jeff and that Shelly “Wouldn’t believe the reports we have to fill out!” Yeah, those TPS Reports are a bitch. We learn that Shelly works as an assistant D.A. Oh, and as you can see here, just like on the cover, Jeff has no eyes. Look out, Dr. Mid-Nite – there’s a new blind superhero on the block!

On the next page we see the first example of Rob Liefeld’s incredible artwork as a supposed thief runs past several mall walkers down the escalators and Jeff leaps down to apprehend him. We can see that a black hole has opened up right at his crotch, since all the lines appear to be sucking down right into it. His hips are pushed out at odd angles while he leaps from an implausible side angle, only for the next panel to see him tackling thief from a straight angle at the thief’s back. While Jeff berates the thief with this splendid dialogue: “‘Tis the season for giving, not stealing!” (Even though from the establishing shot and your clothes it looks like it’s mid-July!), a voiceover box reveals that, “A good hero can never let a crime go unpunished.”

We cut up to an assassin lining up a rather bizarre looking gun that looks more like it’s designed for caulking than long-distance shots. A voice warns Jeff of the danger and I’m sure it was meant to come from Shelly even though the dialogue balloon seems to indicate that it came from the assassin himself. While Jeff’s body now looks like it’s ballooned so he can be an extra in Weird Al’s “Fat” music video, he grabs a pen from his pocket and tosses it at the assassin [!!]. This somehow hits the assassin back with enough forces as to knock him off of a ledge (and making physicists’ heads explode around the world) and into a pool of water below. A bunch of onlookers reveal that our friend Jeff here is Shaft (SHUT YOUR MOUTH!) and Jeff begins to search the body. And by search, I mean he holds out his hand towards the body and says, “No I.D. No pulse. No answers.” From what I’ve read, Youngblood came about because Liefeld had been interested in doing a Team Titans book for DC and that Shaft here was supposed to be Roy Harper. As such, it’s quite a shock to learn that Roy Harper can search bodies by just looking at them.

A reporter suddenly appears, revealing he had been following Shaft with his cameraman. He asks Jeff (now to be referred to as his codename Shaft), “Are the rumors true that Youngblood has been sent overseas to deal with the Crisis?” And suddenly we cut to the Anti-Monitor laughing as he stomps on each member of the ‘next generation of heroes.’ Well, not really, but we can dream, can’t we? Before Shaft can answer, he gets a call from ‘HQ’ and apologizes to Shelly as he runs off. Shelly looks dreamily at her boyfriend and says, “Go nail ‘em!” And if that means nailing our skulls with the artwork, trust me, he’s already done.

We cut to “Baltimore, Maryland. 12:32 PM” as we meet Bedrock, the grey momma’s boy who’s eating a lunch as he gets the call to come in to the HQ, as well. He even asks to be excused as the mother says how proud she is of him. And by the perpetual smile on her face I’d think The Stepford Wives had been made into a comic book if not for the fact that even though it’s the ‘90s, she has a head of ‘80s hair.

We then cut to “Arlington, Virginia. Underground. 12:44 PM” and I start to wonder what the hell’s taking HQ so long as they appear to be calling their agents in ten-minute intervals. Anyway, in ‘Underground,’ we meet the next Youngblood member – DIEHARD – WITH A VENGEANCE. Okay, it’s just Diehard, but seriously, did Rob even think about these names as he was planning this? Oddly enough, Diehard here speaks his thought captions with <> bars, as if they were being translated. And what is this oh-so-useful dialogue we get from this mysterious, eyeless character laying on a multicolored slab? “I am needed. This time, I must make better use of my freedom.” …WITH A VENGEANCE! Okay, I promise to stop now.

Cut to almost half an hour later in the same location, only “Aboveground” now, where the buzz-cut Youngblood member Chapel is in bed with a naked woman as he gets his own call from HQ. He tells her to leave and that she should leave her number. The next page suddenly shows Chapel in his ‘iconic’ costume, a leather jacked, red pants, skull facepaint, and a gun right out of Men in Black. His inner monologue gives us this insightful wisdom – “You gotta give ‘em hope. As Shaft would say, ‘it’s good PR!’” Is it too late to hate these guys? No? Good.

Cut to five hours later [!!!] as we see Vogue hopping around rooftops of Washington DC, revealing she knows she got the call a few hours ago. “Shaft’s probably pacing the halls by now. They think I’m at their beck and call. Let ‘em wait!” Jeez, can you imagine if a member of the Avengers pulled something like this? “Yeah, Captain America, I know Galactus was attacking, but I’m not at your beck and call!”

We finally cut to what I can only presume is ‘HQ,’ since there isn’t an establishing caption box to reveal this. Shaft’s coming in and we see him walk up to a huge-ass computer console where a normal-looking woman and a person with a much better costume than the rest of the Youngblood team named Photon stands. Shaft suddenly acts like a complete asshole as he says for no particular reason, “Oh, so we get the pleasure of your company tonight, Photon?” On the next page, the rest of the Youngblood team shows up and Shaft berates Vogue for being late. Before they can get in a good little dialogue about what exactly our fearless team leader will do if she shows up late again, the woman at the control chair reveals that there’s a request for assistance coming in. And suddenly I’m tilting my head and wondering what the heck it was that required Youngblood’s presence five hours ago that they were all called in for.

Shaft asks what the situation is and the woman at the console (who also is apparently suffering from the same disease that affects the eyes of our heroes) reports that one of the Youngblood’s transport vehicles is under attack. She says it’s “Strongarm and Gage!!! The Four!” Erm, it’s actually only two, and why the need for three exclamation points? While Vogue tries to cover up that bit of idiotic dialogue by asking, “Didn’t we put two of them away?” Diehard and Chapel say that Strongarm and Gage are attempting to make an escape attempt. For what, themselves? Sure, we find out in the next page, but still, the way they say it in these pages makes it sound like they’re escaping, themselves, by attacking a- ah, screw it, why am I giving this more thought than the makers of this comic did? We do get an EXTREME!!! close-up of Shaft’s face where we can see that he does in fact have eyes.

Cut to some random street in what I can only presume is Washington, D.C. since again, the establishment captions have completely vanished on us. We do get captions of a few bits of dialogue, albeit they’re all colored white, so we have no idea who’s saying it unless they say the other person’s name:

“Let’s make this one quick, team! The Four have never really been that tough.”
“I want Strongarm this time.”
“He’s all yours, Die Hard (sic).”

Strongarm and Gage turn out to be more genuine Liefeld creations, with Strongarm being an overly-muscled guy who appears to have no joints for his arms while Gage resembles a combination of Deadpool from Marvel and Gizmo from D.C. (albeit with more guns). Both also, sadly, have been afflicted with what I’m going to be calling Youngblood’s disease, where eyes are either nonexistent or just poorly drawn. We see four completely identical cops running at the two, but nothing ever comes of them. Gage calls out to the truck: “Deadlock! Starbright! Stand back! Stand back!”

Strongarm rips off the door of the truck, revealing Deadlock and Starbright and I have to say, they actually have semi-decent outfits, albeit Deadlock seems to have an inexplicable ponytail coming out of the back of his mask that’s suffering from Dilbert’s tie syndrome by defying gravity. Of course, this brings up the question of why the heck these two are even still in costumes if they were in custody. Starbright asks if there’s any sign of Youngblood, to which Deadlock replies, “Dah! The mere mention of that name boils my blood!” Oh no, mein blood, ack! Help, comrades, I’m vaguely European and my blood is boiling!

Starbright tells him to “keep it in check” [??] and that their plan depends on it. Gage gasps and calls out, “Four o’clock! Four o’clock! They’re here! They’re here!” There is no way out of here. It’ll be dark soon. There is no way out of here. Three arrows hit the ground. Okay, Shaft can kill a guy standing a hundred feet away with a pen using his free hand, but he can’t hit a couple of guys with a bow and arrow?! Okay, admittedly, his bow doesn’t have any string (as indicated by the cover and a page that’s coming up), but still…

And in the panel below- oh my goodness. I can’t believe this. My mind hasn’t been this blown since Mr. T punched a shark in the nose on his cartoon. Diehard has flown down and from the angle of the shot, the way his arms and legs are inexplicably behind his body (thanks to the superb pencilings of our good Mr. Liefeld), by the way Strongarm has suddenly been knocked back with a trail of blood from his mouth, and by the way Diehard’s package has been drawn so that we can tell it’s bulging out, I can only come to the conclusion that DIEHARD JUST SMACKED STRONGARM IN THE FACE WITH HIS CROTCH. Diehardcock proclaims, “This makes us even!” and suddenly I understand fully what Diehardbody did with his freedom the last time. And now I really want to have Liefeld cut out my eyes like those of the Youngblood.

Diehardon punches Strongarm (this time with his fist) while shouting, “I’ve been waiting for this day! And this time you won’t be as lucky!” I don’t think any of us want to be THAT lucky. And finally, we cut to a two-page spread of the other members of Youngblood rushing out at the Four. Oh, and check out the cops in the lower-left corner who have oversized legs and arms that for some odd reason are extended out away from them like stiff boards. Perhaps they’re imitating what one of Liefeld’s men would look like if they had muscles like that in real life?

Whew! That issue just lasted forever, didn’t it? Well, at least it’s over and- oh, no. Turning the page, we see some upside-down pages. Yes, folks, in a rather bizarre bit of page construction, what we saw on the first front cover was actually just the Home Team of Youngblood and now we have to FLIP THE COMIC OVER and read it from the back to see the rest of this exciting tale.

Diehard, please kill me now with your mega-crotch.

Okay, in theory, this is a neat idea – two teams that alternate whenever there are missions on the home front or missions that take you away from the immediate area. The problem is that this can also be a radically stupid idea.
1. It’s hard enough to balance a team book, what with ensuring that each character gets some spotlight time and making sure that each has a unique characterization. Usually teams of 5-7 are best. But Youngblood gives us TWELVE characters and puts them all in the SAME book. That means there’s only so much time that can be devoted to any one character, since there’s limited space on each flip-side of the book to tell the story in a 22-25 page comic.
2. It’s a bad idea to put both stories in the SAME BOOK. It’s possible to have two different teams with similar names, like having a Justice League America and a Justice League Europe running at the same time, or a The Avengers and a West Coast Avengers running at the same time. But with Youngblood, the two teams mean that the missions are going to be really short and, again, little time for characterization. Back-up features work because they’re short supplements, a small story within a large story, but these are both of equal size and we didn’t get any resolution on the Home team of Youngblood. The story just stopped.
3. It’s especially bad to do this for a first issue. First issues are supposed to get the reader acclimatized to these characters and their situations, give us some idea of what their deal is and why we should like them. But this book just has the characters thrust into one action situation to the next without any real chance for substance. Are the Youngblood a government organization? Are they the world’s only superheroes?

Anyway, with all that in mind, let’s move into the Away Team section of Youngblood.

The cover on the back is a little bit better off than the Home Team’s, with a little more uniqueness to the characters and even some symbols for them. The colors don’t seem as subdued.

Inside, we have yet another cardboard profile box, this one for the Home Team’s leader Shaft (wahki-chicken, wahki-chicken). Apparently he’s an experienced FBI agent who was chosen to replace an unseen character named Battlestone as leader of Youngblood (Say, Rob? Why not have an ORIGIN STORY for your entirely new universe and characters, eh? No? Fine…). It says that his weapon of choice is a “specially-crafted bow and arrow,” which makes me think it must be special if it DOESN’T HAVE A STRING.

The first page of the other side of Youngblood starts off with six television screens displaying a news report. I’m reluctant to call it ‘talking heads,’ though, since every time a person is on the screen, they look like they’re sleeping! Yes, not only do they have their eyes tightly shut, but their mouths are clamped firmly down even though there are both speech bubbles AND caption boxes that indicate that people should be talking! The speech bubble for the news announcer doesn’t even have an arrow connecting it to him! For all we know, they’re just putting Bob Squarebody there on the screen while he took some NyQuil and someone else is trying to make it look like they’re actually talking.

Apparently the situation as they describe it is how a radical leader of a terrorist group named Saddam Hussein- erm, I’m sorry, that’s Hassan Kussein (who’s also sleeping, by the way) has taken control of several Israeli territories. The President is sending in a specialized task force to deal with it. We switch to live feed from a reporter on the field and despite the fact that his mouth is actually open, this poor reporter’s eyes are just as shut as the others, indicating he must be sleeping, too.

The next page is a double-page spreading featuring the arrival of the Away Team of Youngblood, which features a character not seen on either cover – Combat! Well, actually, in all fairness, he DOES appear on one of the covers – the one with the Home Team. But he’s not wearing the ridiculously goofy and huge helmet he’s sporting here that makes him look like a giant tuning-fork. Additionally, he’s holding a huge pink gun in his hands and while I’m sure it was meant to look cool or badass, really it just makes me wonder if it’s just a giant frosting dispenser. To make matters worse, while the other members of Youngblood are leaping down from helicopters in relatively the same direction, Pinky the gold salad fork here is dropping down facing the wrong way plus scrunching his body as if he were sitting on a toilet.

Cut to the next page and now Combat’s gun is like three times smaller than it was in the previous page (but still Pink). Combat announces shock that there were more than what the Briefings said there would be. Cougar, who is of course not Wolverine at all, has a brief conversation with Combat (who’s sporting childbearing hips in a couple of these panels) about how he treats war like a game:

“Got more toy soldiers to play with!”
“War’s just a game to you?”
“Yup. Otherwise, this wouldn’t be fun, Coug!”
“I gotta admit, this gets me pumped!”

And suddenly we’re in a Jane Fonda video. Thanks, Cougar. Well, actually that would explain why all of these losers are so muscle-bound. Must be really tough to keep up that figure. On the next page, the de-facto team leader Sentinel (who is obviously not Iron Man) explains that this is only the first wave and that and it’s revealed that Combat wasn’t paying attention during the Briefing. Oh, and his gun has turned into another size, this time about 2/3 of the original size. Let’s see – he doesn’t pay attention to briefings, he has a size-changing gun, he’s got to be uncomfortable to be with in an elevator due to his size, and he treats war like a game. The next generation of heroes, ladies and gentlemen!

On the next page we catch up with the other members of the Away team. Psi-Fire just kind of floats in the air with his hands by his side as he flies alongside Riptide, who is herself riding on a wave of water. He ‘cleverly’ quips, “I should’ve bought this land! I’ve always wanted beachfront property, babe!!(sic)” Riptide, echoing the sentiments of every human being on the planet, responds, “Shut up, Psi-Fire!”

Following along is the other team strongman Brahma, and he- OH MY GOD, THERE’S A BLACK HOLE FORMING IN HIS MOUTH! Well, okay, not really, but it sure as hell looks that way. He complains, “These soldiers are worse than flies!”[??] and Riptide responds that she needs him to keep swatting them since it’s taking all of her concentration to form waves in the middle of the desert. And already I like Riptide, even in spite of the fact that her outfit (while somewhat appropriate given her powers) is a bathing suit and she has no eyes. Not only did she tell another guy on the team to shut up, but her powers are actually decent as she even uses the water stream to punch some enemy soldiers.

They close in on their target, a small building without much security (to help obscure Saddam- er, Hassan’s location). The group leaps in close to the building only to be stopped by an energy field that’s being fired upon by a group of large robots[!!!]! Psi-Fire is fine, however, and he creepily exclaims that he can take Hassan out from the states. The energy field doesn’t affect him and he looks up at the camera, reveling actually quite frighteningly with his lack of eyes and exclaims that he “wanted to do this personally!”

Meanwhile, Combat and Cougar have suddenly engaged with other high-tech robots and Cougar asks, “Is your little brother beating up on you again?” Huh? Oh, I get it, Combat’s a robot… or a cyborg. In any case, Combat gets all pissy (probably because he lost is helmet) and starts laying the smackdown on the robot. Sadly, it’s a rather unimpressive battle, since instead of seeing the robot get dented or mangled, we instead just see him getting hit with a couple hard ‘punch’ starbursts that could’ve happened had this been an organic opponent. Cougar stops Combat from killing the robot (Or is it a mech? We can’t actually tell), and tells him it “isn’t Katella.” It would’ve been nice to know just what the hell Katella is, but I’m sure that was supposed to be part of the ‘mystery’ that draws readers back for more of these ‘exciting’ adventures.

We cut back to Psi-Fire and Kussein with the would-be dictator pleading for his life. To Liefeld’s credit, Psi-Fire actually looks pretty normal here, with the buff Psi-Fire having realistic muscle proportions. However, since I’m sure Liefeld was trying to get the effect of Psi-Fire focusing more on his psychic abilities and not his physical prowess, the effect is sadly lost. To make Psi-Fire even more unpleasant, he proclaims, “I actually admire what you’ve done here in this backwards country. It’s just that mine pays me more.” Kussein tries to say he’ll give him more money, but Psi-Fire isn’t interested. Instead, he gives a little psychic attack to Kussein’s brain and much to the surprise of every reader of the book, we get a close-up shot of Kussein’s eye – wow, it actually exists! But then we cut to the next page of Kussein holding his head in pain while Psi-Fire says that he does this kind of stuff for free (then why was he talking about how he’s better paid in the USA?) and with pleasure, allowing Kussein’s head to blow up off-panel and shoot blood everywhere.

Combat and Cougar enter, saying with rather mild annoyance, “he did it again!” Combat says it’s impressive as the other members of Youngblood wake up and also express their eye-rolling disappointment over the fact that he killed him. Brahma just stares at the body as if Gary Coleman had slapped him in the face while my favorite character Riptide sums it up with an irritated, “Oh, way to go!! Brilliant!” Iron Man- er, Sentinel says it’s time to leave and they should call the clean up crew.

And the final page? A shot of US (sic) Today saying that Kussein’s terror ended in his suicide. The newsprint says that he apparently unpinned a grenade in his mouth and that a suicide note was found nearby. Our heroes, ladies and gentlemen – they’re murderers, liars, and support other killers. Isn’t it just the stuff of legends? Also on the page is a hinting that the former leader of Youngblood, Battlestone, is still at large with private “Brigade,” possibly hinting at future things to come, while a side-story on the newspaper features a little jab at Marvel, the company that produced such a fine, fine artist as Mr. Liefeld.

Well, there you have it, folks – heroes that will no doubt live on for decades to come! Take that, Teen Titans! Take that, Avengers! Hell, take that, Defenders!