Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Mounting a Serpent-Nose, and other tales...

               Back for more? I didn’t scare you off? Things didn’t get too weird for you last time? Well, that’s encouraging. Strap in folks, it’s time for some woolly mammoths as we venture into issue #2 of DC Comics’ Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Fetish fuel
 The issue opens to reveal Anthro the First Boy. From what I can discern, either he and his spouse are Cro-Magnons and the rest of his people are Neanderthals, or the two are Homo Sapiens and the tribe are Cro-Magnons. Either way, they look like a single generational long jump from the rest of their community. Essentially, they look like contemporary blonde teens in loincloths. I feel like I’d be doing you a disservice if I failed to mention that his wife, who is very blonde, has a high ponytail, and wears big hoop earrings. It was the 80s of the prehistoric era.


Cavegirls just wanna have fun!
Meanwhile, the rest of their tribe are full-on cavemen, complete with sloped foreheads and beady, close-set eyes. This is admittedly a shoddy interpretation of evolutionary theory, but as far as comic book-based conceits of story-telling goes, it allows to an amusing and interesting set-up.  If you grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons in the 90s, you’ll recognize this as similar to a show called “Cro”…
Or it would except for that whereas Cro was mentored by talking mammoths, here Anthro is diverting a stampeding herd of them. He calls them “serpent-noses,” which is actually kind of charming… and kind of dirty, now that I think about it. He mounts one in the process—the mammoth, not its serpent-nose (add in the fact that he is wearing quite the skimpy loincloth and this could sound highly porny)—and almost immediately gets clunked in the head by a low-hanging branch and is thrown to the ground. He gets up and sees a futuristic cityscape beyond anything he has ever seen, but it is gone by the time the rest of his tribe reaches him. All his kinfolk are content to celebrate the averted stampede, except for one, whom I’ve named “Tiny Cave Tim” due to his smaller size and use of a crutch, appears confused because he alone notices that the herd of mammoths has vanished.
               Meanwhile, and by “meanwhile,” I mean in the far-flung future, in that cityscape Anthro saw, the 30th Century’s superteam, the Legion of Superheroes, are nearly worn out from their search for Dawnstar, whom Harbinger recruited last issue. As the word “legion” suggests, there is a ton of named characters, so for the sake a brevity (I know, not my strength, but I’m trying), let me just say that for the most part these characters all have very Golden/Silver Age names that for the purpose of the story tells you everything you need to know about what they can do, if not who they are: Collossal Man, Phantom Girl, Lightning Lass, Wildfire, Chameleon Boy, and Braniac-5. I know they have an animated series I’ll probably end up recapping, so I don’t feel quite so bad about short-handing them now.
Their search effort is halted when they get a report of a herd of woolly mammoths that has mysteriously appeared. They stop military forces from mass shooting the herd and the troops are only too happy to oblige. Before the Legion can stop them (although they’d started a well-coordinated attempt), the mammoths vanish from sight. Braniac-5, who functions more or less as the Legion’s comptroller/tech support, tells them to forget about the prehistoric pachyderms because his radar just picked up signs of an anti-matter field headed to earth that could potentially destroy the entire universe.
             

  From there, we transition to the present of Earth-1, where the Joker is up to his usual routine (and looking mighty fine in a high-collared purple trench, I might add) and Batman is doing his by the numbers thwarting of Joker when suddenly the Flash appears looking like a chilling apparition. Bats is surprised because the Flash vanished some time ago. Joker is surprised and indignant, basically saying that heroes have some underhanded secret agreement with each other. This I find odd because I always figured it was public knowledge that the JLA exists and are pretty much on each other’s speed dial. Batman sends Joker packing and devotes his attention to the Flash, who grows more chilling with each panel, growing increasingly emaciated in each panel as he delivers portents of doom for the entire world until he finally vanishes. Batman doesn’t know what’s going on, so we can predict a pretty cranky (well, crankier than usual) Batman for the duration.
More impressive than Batffleck's nightmare any day.


The Monitor’s Exposition
               At last we arrive at the Monitor’s space craft, where we left him and his handpicked team of superheroes last issue. Wolfman does an excellent job of filling the space with imagery of what could be just a page of Monitor and a dense collection of word balloons. 

Beautiful symmetry down below as Harbinger's ragtag team takes stock poses.

This is the time for what we’ve been waiting on for the past issue and a half for: answers. He explains that 1,000 universes have already been destroyed by the anti-matter force, previously referred to in my first post as the “White Nothing Eraser.” The typical superhero/villain banter keeps interrupting The Monitor. It’s barely tolerable. This sort of thing usually works better in character-driven books, where we feed from the characters dynamics and personality quirks. This just feels like a writer stalling.
Lyla, meanwhile, once again in her pink flowing robes, has a panel where she feels an unknown energy and animosity growing inside her.
Back at the totally productive briefing session, Monitor manages to explain to the assembled doubting Thomases that he assembled them to be his initial vanguard against the END OF EVERYTHING. No pressure. No really, no pressure because he has every intention of gathering more heroes as the need arises. Don’t get too attached to this lineup. All that time spent establishing who these people are was fairly unnecessary, come to think of it.
Lyla returns, once again dressed as her Harbinger persona. You might be asking yourself, “why did they have that costume change? Was there any purpose for her to appear in her pink robes since she was in her cosmic swim suit at the end of last issue.” To be honest, you’d probably be giving it more thought than the artist did. Harbinger explains their mission: five focal points across time have had power bases implanted in them that need to be protected from the shadowy forces that attacked them last issue. Anyone who has ever played a protect/escort mission in a video game knows the world of suck that these guys are in for.

Lyla can be pretty passive-aggressive when
she's not in the mood.
As she briefs them, Fabio the Magician (I think his real name might be Arrion, but honestly, does it matter?) senses darkness within Harbinger. Blue Beetle asks what are the locations of these power bases, but Harbinger opts to just send them in there blind. Granted, that is seriously a dick move on her part, but I grow weary of the tedious questioning of exposition that can occur when 15 disparate characters are all put in the same room and given instructions without establishing a pecking order. Alone with the Monitor, Lyla’s thoughts reveal that she has given into the malevolence growing inside her and that she must betray him.

Elsewhere, far on the other side of the cosmos, the Guardians¸ better known as the bald blue hobbits who give the Green Lanterns their orders, gather and discuss the incontrovertible fact that universal Armageddon is nigh and they need to assemble the full force of the Corps to combat it. Before they can move on from the brainstorming phase of the plan, something ka-booms and they are all caught in the blast of the explosion.

Back on Earth-1, Superman is responding to a rendezvous summons from Batman. Superman is totally that guy who will drop whatever he’s doing when his crush texts him. Although, to Batman’s credit, they meet up in Metropolis atop the Daily Planet building, so maybe they’re mutual crushes/secret boyfriends. Sorry, I know we’re still in the wake of Batman V Superman, but I am much more content to be really shippy.  Although, when your civilian identity has a private jet and you’ve both been known to work from orbiting space stations, assembly location is probably a moot point.

Batman fills in Superman about his vision of Flash. Bats tells Supes he fears the worst. As if on cue, Pariah appears. If this were in live-action, I’m sure he’d have a hokey leitmotif or maybe an audience “whoo,” like an annoying neighbor on an older sitcom He tells them he needs them, as they have been legendary on his world since before his exile. Remember this, because I will be coming back to it. Before he can tell them much other than the standard “world is doomed” message, he vanishes, presumably being pulled to the next doomed Earth.

Even in the future, there are towering
phallic structures for your amusement.
We cut to a future which the narration goes out of its way to be vague about. In the background of the establishing panel, we can see the Statue of Liberty jutting out of the background, which would normally make me feel we are in a future where we are ruled over by apes. I would that is, if it weren’t for the giant golden cyberpunk monolith dominating the page. Scaling it on a vine is a strapping young man in a loin cloth and I know what you must be thinking, and no—Anthro the First Boy didn’t get lost in time like those wooly mammoths. Instead we have Kamandi the Last Boy. Nice sense of symmetry, putting them in the beginning and end of the same issue—very alpha and omega. They are pretty similar, admittedly, except Kamandi has golden blonde instead of sandy blonde and his loin cloth and boots are blue. Remember, kiddies—wear brown loincloths in the past and blue ones in the future. That’s how you’ll fit in when time traveling.

Komandi covers up his gorillism pretty poorly.
Kamandi’s vine snaps when a shadow creature phases through it, but instead of falling to his death, he is rescued by the convenient arrival of the Superman of Earth-2, who is surprised Kamandi recognizes him. We can extrapolate that the main Superman had future caveman adventures at some point. Dawnstar and Solovar joins them very soon after and Komandi confuses the king of Gorilla City for one of Czar Simian’s henchapes. Yes! Score a point for me on the Planet of the Apes prediction! When Solovar tells him that he isn’t even from this time period, he says, “Your eyes are different from the other animals’. Warmer… more trusting.” You know when a bigot tells a member of a particular minority “You’re one of the good ones?” Yeah, I’m getting that read off it. He come off as backpedaling, no doubt spurred on by not wanting to offend Solovar or, more to the point, Solovar’s incredibly powerful Kryptonian travel companion.


Dawnstar notices some things are askew as they fight off the pack of shadow creatures and everything about it leads her to suspect The Monitor, but Earth-2 Superman advises her to focus on the task at hand for now. The shadow creatures abruptly disembark and Dawnstar makes prolific claims of being able to find them anywhere. Solovar reminds her that the last thing that they need on a protect mission is for someone to go all Leroy Jenkins on the respawns and leave their protectee vulnerable.

Back on The Monitor’s space vessel, Harbinger is even more consumed by the evil coopting her delivering a pretty standard villain monologue to nobody in particular. I would say not bad for her first day as a baddie, but she thinks most of this little monologue except for the last word, “death,” which she shouts so loudly everyone in the remaining multiverse probably heard her. Subtle, Harbinger. Real subtle—especially for being an undercover villain. She is still doing his bidding until the time is right. In this case, doing his bidding means fetching the Luthor baby who was retrieved off panel. She is surprised however to find a ginger-headed five-year-old where a gingerbaby was supposed to be. And the right half of his body looks like a starscape.
Lyla is worried she's stuck with a ginger toddler.


               Arion, Obsidian, and Psycho Pirate have been sent to Atlantis. I’m guessing this is Arion’s Atlantis partially because it’s top side, but mostly because its denizens recognize him. It does however have another gold cyberpunk spire dominating its skyline. PsyPi rhapsodizes over all the emotions he can feel and Arion threatens to open a can of whoop-ass should PsyPi try anything. Inside the citiy, Arion catches up with a Lady Chian, who appears to be a lady warrior type and presumably Arion’s love interest. Obsidian pulls Arion aside and tells them PsyPi is missing.

               PsyPi really just needed a good sulk. An emotion-controlling villain doesn’t do well with others or with an altruistic mandate. His need for emotions is growing. Just then, there is a green flash and PsyPi smells terror. Oh hai, Pariah! Before Pariah can get too far with his usual doom portents, PsyPi decides he’d be much better off with a debilitating case of the giggles. Pariah’s laughing face will be fueling my nightmare for weeks to come. I do this for you, readers. 
Nightmare fuel.
PsyPi is bombarded by a magic attack, by Arion, who along with Obsidian, have tracked him down. Turns out however that putting the whammy on Pariah has the side effects of increasing his powers, so PsyPi puts all of Atlantis, including Arion in an intense state of terror. The narration gets pretty purple. “They all suffer the swelling, growing fear… Their hearts explode with every painful beat… Every terror, every nightmare, every agony, is relived, and relived, and relived. He is the mage of Atlantis, his power knows no equal here. Yet Arion’s sorcerous spells are cast awry by the darkling horrors gnawing at his brain…” Obsidian takes Arian into his shadow form because apparently that provides immunity to emotional manipulation. PsyPi is all set to take out his anger at Arion on all his fellow Atlanteans when he vanishes in a cylinder of fushia energy.

               The next thing PsyPi knows, he’s in a black void, where he is addressed by an unseen second party who has recruited him away from the Monitor to serve his purposes. This voice doesn’t take any of PsyPi’s bullshit. When PsyPi insists he show his face, the other takes away. It is just gone, like an unfinished drawing. The voice gives him the options of dying without a face or serving him. And in true c-level villain fashion, PsyPi buckles pretty quick.
Pycho Pirate: born with a will of vermicelli.

               Back in Monitor HQ, Monitor bemoans the loss of PsyPi, as he was apparently very crucial due to his empathic powers being especially important against the enemy, who is one of emotions. Also, because for some reason, he can’t tap Raven of the Teen Titans. Instead of fixing the problem, he asks Lyla to get him the file on the new Dr. Light. It’s time for him to create her. It wasn’t until my second time through that I realized how timey whimey this moment was.

               Back outside the city of Atlantis, Pariah is shaking things up by, you guessed it, spouting off about the end of the multiverse. This time however, we get one new bit of info—he’s from the first Earth that fell. He tells them that he appears wherever tragedy is about to strike. And this world is probably not going to last much longer. Arion and Obsidian are pissed because the Monitor promised them that coming here would help save the day. Well, yeah, if you guys had been guarding the golden spire thing instead of dicking around with Atlanteans and getting into fights, it might have worked. The proverbial car only works when put it in drive, guys.


               Meanwhile, the Monitor despairs at how weak he is growing, how fast his foe seems to be progressing, and he hasn’t completed the new Dr. Light projected yet. Elsewhere, Harbinger reports to her unseen new master/manipulator about the Monitor’s progress. The unseen voice takes time to gloat over how big, bad, world-shatteringly evil he is, while the Monitor’s thoughts appear in narration boxes, praying that Lyla break free of their foe’s control, for all their sakes. Monitor, it seems has known the whole time. Both the Monitor’s and the unseen foe’s speeches, though, feel unnecessary, like they had to have some dialogue to justify devoting the entire final page of the issue to the admittedly spectacular example of cosmic art. The Bronze Age was a different time. Nowadays decompressed storytelling results in a given comic having about as much written text as 3 pages do have in this one.

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