Strange Team-ups, Part IV: Spyboy / Young Justice #3

My books have melted together in the Texas heat!

Writer – Peter David

Pencils – Todd Nauck & Pop Mhan

Inks – Jamie Mendoza & Norman Lee

Letters – Clem Robins

Colors – Guy Major

Editors – Phil Amara & Eddie Berganza

April 2002

Back near the middle of Summer, I put a majority of the Crapbox into storage.

I kept any books I was working on articles for or ones that I felt were coming due for a review soon and took the rest offsite. The reason was the imminent showing of my house for sale.

Frankly the Crapbox takes up a bunch of space.

Like more than TEN longboxes and growing.

I've found a source of ever-flowing crappy comics and one-offs and old stuff and hidden gems and…well, I'm kinda addicted at this point.

So they had to be tucked out of sight or else people couldn't walk through certain sections of my former home.

The house sale went fine by the way, and my hiatus caused by the subsequent move and resettlement. Approaching this weekend, I found time to finally crack the cover of a few of the boxes of comics and what to my eyes should appear?

Melted comics!

Yes, melted.

How else could we explain the oddity found above? Image comics Peter David creation Spyboy melded into a story with Peter David's DC squad of junior, teenaged-but-NOT-AT-ALL-Titanee Young Justice? I mean this is something not found in nature.

  

But since it is here, I suppose I should review it. Sadly I am bouncing in at issue three of a three part arc, so I really have missed all the setup. Here we have Young Justice's nemesis Harm, a guy I know nothing about. He's the guy with the black bat-smear across his face and the goofy bondage look. Harm has demon powers he got from an actual demon named "Buzz". No, I'm not sure what medication Peter David was on when he came up with that name.

The four-armed guy behind him is his current hench-thing, Rip Roar, who would surely be named "Fore Arm" or "Four Play" had he been created by Rob Liefeld. What I'm saying here is that David has good days on naming characters too. Rip Roar is the son of Darkseid (yes, THAT Darkseid) but he is estranged from his dad for reasons not discussed here.

On the other side of the aisle is the pixie-like Annie Mae, an immortal genius with some magical powers and a gift for using technology. She's rumored to have caused Spyboy's Mother's demise and caused other havoc for the "Spy" peoples.

Most of that havoc was wrecked with the help of her ally Slackjaw, a humanoid shark. Slackjaw is riding shotgun on this adventure, as we shall soon see.

Harm is about to drop all of Toyko into a sinkhole of truly hellish proportions, and that doesn't sit too well with Annie Mae, not that Harm takes much notice.

Where are our heroes? Funny you should ask that. All of them are fighting mini-me duplicates of each other in a series of panels that are both silly-cute and deadly-dangerous. It is interesting to note that once you put all the characters into the same frame, you realize that Peter David was going for the same vibe with both books at the same time. Sort of like all his work from these years had the same artistic tone. Almost like say…Pablo Picasso going through his Blue Period. Or me that Fall that I ate nothing but Taco Bueno bean burritos.

Probably the less said about that time, the better.

Anyway, David is going for an all-ages adventure with some very tame dicey bits thrown in, like this part there from Spyboy to mini-Spyboy.

Cute and boarder-line PG-13. Kind of skirting the edge. Then we do silly stuff with Impulse and Superboy that has no rating higher than G for general audiences.

It makes for a fun series of panels that are light-hearted silliness. I say this even as Spyboy is dealing with the duality of his existence as a normal high school student and as the highly trained sleeper agent for S.H.I.R.T.S. (Secret Headquarters International Reconnaissance, Tactics, and Spies – see I CAN read Wikipedia when necessary).

Meanwhile, Slackjaw decides he's had enough of this talk of Tokyo going down (even though he wanted to level most of it in his first Spyboy appearance, seems he's rethought most of that). He tries to take on Rip Roar, who has apparently trashed him before. 

This time works out a bit differently.

Did I mention Slackjaw was part shark? I did. Okay, then. THIS bloodlusty behavior is totally in character.

As that throwdown-showdown is taking place, Annie Mae, oh she of short stature and questionable reputation, freezes the bad guy Harm in place with some magic of her own. Right after he pulls this little number out and starts waving it around.

Um, save something for the heroes of the book to do, okay guys?

  

As I say that Arrowette and Spyboy's friend Butch are having a heart-to-heart about how they feel a bit out of touch with their more powered teammates. Impluse's mini rounds the corner and Arrowette creates an oil slick sending it smashing into a building. Then Spyboy shows up only he's out of his sleeper mode and is just plain Alex Fleming. Which is unfortunate as Robin is about to be axed by mini-Spyboy, at least until Spygirl performs some very tricky lawn bowling with her tiny clone.

Which works but also ends up being a mistake, as said tiny clone unleashes a deadly toxin capable of killing everyone for miles around. This causes a panic which totally helps Harm ("helps Harm"? *shrugs*) attain his goal of opening his supernatural hell hole.

 

We get a joke about New Jersey followed by Secret, Young Justice's Teen made of smoke and also Harm's sister, doing a bit that riffs off the line just made two panels before…

 …and then everyone realizes they are not in fact dying as the gas was harmless, but meant to cause widespread emotional distress necessary to open the rift wider.

Secret explains that she can pinpoint where the "Master" who is manipulating all of this is, and her teammates unexpectedly turn their back on allowing her to teleport them there with her power. Namely because that power ends up making the teleportee feel like they've been run through a ringer. 

So they man up and do it anyway, right? That's what you expect. Except they don't. Her own teammates decide to NOT trust her. And Spyboy, only he isn't Spyboy because he is still in his Alex Fleming headspace, JUMPS in instead of Young Justice. This is the only piece of this whole story that feels wrong. The idea of these young team books are that the principles learn lessons and trust each other more, not less.

By the time they arrive, however, Annie Mae has made her escape and Slackjaw is ready to jump on anyone. He tackles Secret and they start to scrapping. Same with Spyboy and Harm. 

Harm about slices him in half, but Alex proves he's a test of Harm's metal. While this goes on Secret makes a discovery about Slackjaw.

Yeah, that don't make much sense. Anyway, back to the other combatants. 

This neat little trick turns the tables on Harm with the good ole sword-point through the heart bit. Seems kinda drastic, but Spyboy does deal in criminals that would murder millions of people much more often than I do, so we can go with his decision to straight up murder the bad guy.

And with this quick (and I do mean quick) one page exit this odd melding of two completely unrelated books ends. The book felt light on character interactions and very much a fluff piece, but if you were fans of either series do yourself a favor and pick them up. 

As for me and The Crapbox? I am going to see if I can find a few "unmelded" books to review next. Wish me luck!

(and thanks for continuing to read this blog! Promise I'm back until the next big move.)

Horror-ible, Part XXII and Strange Team-ups, Part III: Freddy vs Jason vs Ash: The Nightmare Warriors #2

Halloween POST-A-DAY, October 18, 2016

Groovy, Baby!

Wildstorm and Dynamite Entertainment pulled off a modest miracle for horror fans back in November 2007. The book brought together three iconic horror movie character for one epic six issue throwdown. It was extremely popular.

Then in 2009, they did it again.

The horror icons are: Freddy Kruger, the dream essence of a burned up child murderer who kills people with his glove full of finger-knives; Jason Voorhees, the undead hockey-mask wearing drowning victim who hacks people to death with a machete; and Ash Williams, the lovable idiot-hero of the Evil Dead movies who dismembers the undead with a wrist-mounted chainsaw.

I can tell already this review is going to end up pretty messy.

But what the hey! We've made it this far and are still kicking around. Might as well go for broke.

Both series were penned by James Kuhoric and Jeff Katz, who do a good job of keeping these three true to their origins yet also workable in a blended reality fashion. Both also featured Jason Craig on pencils who likewise made a good impression with these. Not much else to his credit, which is kind of a shame.

To catch you up on things, since this is the second series of these three celebrities existing in the same universe, as of the closing page last mini Ash used the Necronomicon (my favorite of all 'nomicons, by the way) to banish Freddy to the Deadite world. Afterward Jason and the book were frozen underneath Crystal Lake.

Since then a whole whopping one issue has seen some changes here as the Government of the United States in the personage of one Director Gordon Russell has seen fit to retrieve the evil book and the killer from the frozen lake. While Director Russell makes off with the tome, the agents sent to retrieve Jason instead wake him and are killed. Freddy uses his dream power to contact Jason and, assuming a likeness of Jason's mother, convinces the undead psychopath to go after Ash Williams.

Ash meanwhile has found happiness with Caroline, believing all the undead fighting is behind him. He is visited by a reminder of the past in the form of Doctor Maggie Burroughs, who is gathering survivors of the two murderers for some mysterious purpose. Audience members who know her connection to all this can sit down. I never made it that far in those particular movies. Anyway, Ash declines and heads to the store, leaving Caroline alone.

As he returns to find Jason has severed Caroline's head, he is confronted by Caroline's Father. He blames Ash for his daughter's death. He flees just before police arrive, his narrow escape observed by a mysterious figure in a green hummer.

At a secure government facility, Director Russell is using a translation program and a red glowing robot laser to read the Necronomicon. Wonder what that's all about.

Ahh, so it's gonna be one of those…The government is amoral and will use any means necessary to defeat its enemies. Great. How many zombies are they going to conjure up?

THAT is a decidedly smooth and alive version of Freddy Krueger you have there. I have a lot of questions about how you do that.

Maggie, our mysterious doctor with a similarly mysterious reason for gathering up survivors of prior horror movies, er… killer's attacks. Wakes up from a dream at that moment with something that seems revealing.

Huh? We'll leave that for a future issue to explain, because at that moment several cameos by actresses from the sequels of the Freddy and Jason franchises come in.

I'm going to admit to two things here: 1.) I'm not a big enough horror nerd to know any of these people by name. I'm sorry. That may make me a huge wussy, but the honest answer is that I thought most of them would get killed off in the opening moments of the next sequel anyway. I just never paid that close attention.

Also 2.) Once I realized this was where the story was going, I had to go look all these people up. Because I figured that was why they were included. A little bit of horror movie fan service that I felt the need to validate. Because I'm sure it took some work to get all this right.

So we have a couple of them here:

Rennie Wickham, one of two survivors from Friday the 13^th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

Tina Shepard, the telekinetic\psychokinetic from Friday the 13^th Part VII: The New Blood

Meanwhile Ash boards a train to crash Maggie's little soiree in hopes of getting some answers on where to find Jason. Which would be right outside the train window, if he looked up.

 

Jason decides to follow Ash and jumps on with some hobos on a commercial train. And I have just gotten hypertension, because there is no way he could have known these two trains would end up in the same city. Just like NONE. But he kills a couple of people and I'm all in favor of that since we are now up to page 10.

First the old "machete through the skull…"

Followed by the old "shoved out a train car door so your head and shoulders end up taken off by a railway warning sign".

*Ahhh* Looks like the story is finally getting on the right track here.

This Father and Daughter pull up to Doc Maggies and it is none other than Stephanie Kimble from Jason Goes to Hell: the Final Friday and her Dad Stephen (which is a departure from the Steven spelling in the movie version). Stephanie is actually Jason's cousin, which means she gets "Jason-sense" in that she can feel when he is about to murder someone. 

That means when she goes inside the house and has an episode we know that Jason is stalking these thugs who are forcing this poor girl to perform oral favors on them.

Except that dude. He's not going to have anything to orally favor ever again. I think his friend sees what I mean.

 

Jason uses the guy's head as a bowling ball to take out the third rapist and who wouldn't really. I bet it goes real fast with those flames painted on the side of it. While the guy tries to stand, Jason steps on his skull and crushes his cranium.

I'd love to say this works out well for the young lady, who was just minding her business when the jerkwards tried to sexually assault her, but this IS a horror movie franchise tie-in comic book and..

Sorry sister. Them's the way the cookies crumble. This issue is a little Jason heavy, which is fine as I can only assume the other five give equal weight to the others.

Sensing I was just about to say that, the book shifts over to Freddy, in orange prison fatigues and asking for a cigarette and a light. He has a thing about fire you know. The government leans on him a bit for his secrets. He appears to be toying with them.

Maggie is eyeing two new arrivals while this goes on: Alice and Jacob Johnson, Mother and Son survivors of A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: Freddy's Dead.

The store clerk we know to be Ash, so who is the misfit? Have to find out as we go since…

Yup, the agency wants Jason. And we know where Jason is. He's following Ash. Following him straight to the door of…

I'm a HUUUUUGE Bruce Campbell fan and you can just here is voice all over that. But of course if Ash is here then Jason can't be far behind.

Oh! Here we go! Steven or Stephen or whatever your name is…get out of the way honey…

Ohhh…Dang! Too late. Get out your score cards, kiddies. Ash is going for his chainsaw and we all know what that means…

Jason is gonna get plowed over by a Hummer? No, that can't be right. Who is driving this thing?

Ahh…Tommy Jarvis Jason's nemesis who has been in (and survived) Friday the 13^th: The Final Chapter, Friday the 13^th: A New Beginning, and Friday the 13^th: Jason Lives. And that's where we end this.

I have to cop to owning all of these in trade form. They are great if you enjoy even one of the movie franchise (and I like all three, but have a particular affinity for Evil Dead). At a discount bin price, they make total sense. Even at regular price they are a ton of fun. So pull your chair up to the fire and hunker down with the trade. You'll be glad you did.