Review of Juvenile Humour, By Johnathan

My own juvenile humour, that is. I'm unloading all of the comic book panels that I set aside specifically because they made me snicker like a 13-year-old in Health class. They've always seemed a bit out of place when put in a review with more innocent panels, so I figured that I'd get them all over with at once. So ignore the cultured, mature portions of your brain, settle back and enjoy these bits of puerile wonderment.

Okay, so first up is some bathroom humour:

"Thanks for saving us from being ridiculed because our fire station burned down, Superboy! Now all we have to live down is the fact that you peed all over us!" I know it only works if you don't look at the picture too hard, but I like this one. I am entirely certain that a superpowered teenage boy would take any opportunity to pee out fires. It's just a given.

JOHN APPROVED

Lord knows I love Matter-Eater Lad, but this is an instance of him believing the anti-Bismollian propaganda that his powers aren't good enough to qualify him for Legion membership. Even as he makes a pretty good case for his inclusion in the group he's convinced that the only way he'll be able to keep his membership is to pander to Sun Boy's sick sense of humour. Don't do it, Matter-Eater Lad! With every iron bar you pretend to fellate you'll lose more and more of your self-respect! Take the moral high ground! Take smaller bites!

NOT APPROVED

You're gonna have to click on this one. Go ahead, I'll wait.

You heard the man, he can take it from both sides. In fact, Silver Age Superman was so invulnerable that a threesome involving a helicopter and a gorilla was the minimum that he required to achieve satisfaction - why else do you think that he avoided shacking up with Lois or Lana for so long?

JOHN APPROVED

Booster Gold gets flashed by an android. This was from the start of the 'wacky' Justice League days, so I'm not too sure whether it was intentional or not. Whether it was or it wasn't is immaterial. What matters is that Booster's got a great look on his face. More villains should run around naked, if only for the added element of surprise. Plus, Superman would look super-uncomfortable if he had to fly a naked Lex Luthor to the police station.

JOHN APPROVED

Uh, Supergirl? You should look just a bit less pleased with yourself while you explain that sort of thing.

I've got a theory that Saturn Girl's telepathic powers let her know exactly what Supergirl was about to tell her and that she interrupted so that she wouldn't have to hear it spoken aloud. And then she put Proty II in a safehouse until the Legion could work out some way to get through to Supergirl about the concept of 'dating within your species.'

NOT APPROVED

These guys are from an Atom backup story in Action Comics from the early eighties:

The Atom interferes with Plan A, so the muscle-bound bad guys charge off to the bedroom for Plan B. "Okay," you say, "this is kind of amusing when taken out of context. But why have you included it here, among so many scintillating examples of humour at its highest?" As usual when I put words in your mouth, I'm glad you asked. This panel belongs here because when they come charging back out of the bedroom they're dressed like pirates.

See? Now that's funny.

JOHN APPROVED

Last one, this time from an issue of The Brave and the Bold featuring Karate Kid, who's come back in time to clear up all of the dangling plotlines from his canceled series, and Batman, who's just doing his thing.

I'd just like to draw your attention to the fact that the cover page for this issue, seen here:

could and should be the poster for a softcore porno movie.

Batman! Karate Kid! Their forbidden love threatened to destroy society as we know it! But they refused to be stopped, refused to dampen the white hot passion of their hearts, choosing instead to dampen the white silk sheets of their beds!

Together, they are Terrorists of the Heart!

JOHN APPROVED

Review of the Super-Human Detritus of the Thirtieth Century, Part 8, By Johnathan

I've had the pictures ready for this one for like a week now but just couldn't bring myself to write it. "Why?" you ask, in tiny, review-starved voices. I'll tell you why: it's because today I'm reviewing three of the most boring-ass characters in the occasionally spotty history of the Legion of Super-Heroes. I'll let Sun Boy introduce them:

You might notice a lack of thirtieth-Century zazz to their names. Not a Querl Dox or Reep Daggle in the lot. This is because they were created by fans of the Legion, whose names were warped into futurespeak. I'm sure that Bob Cohen was thrilled, but Bobb Kohan just doesn't do it for me, hero-name-wise.

One of my biggest problems with these characters is the way that they're drawn - they just bore the hell out of me. Look at Nightwind and Lamprey: identical comic book bimbos with different dye jobs. This was a pretty lousy period in terms of Legion art - nobody even bothered to think up a kicky little eel logo for Lamprey. They didn't even make Crystel Kid's hair look all faceted. Lame.

Is Nightwind hitting on Blok?

As you might have guessed, these three placemats applied for Legion membership at the same time as Blok and failed mightily. First, though, they listened to him tell his origin story. After a while, an emergency call comes in and the applicants are taken along due to the fact that not enough Legionnaires are on hand. Gah! I'm boring myself! I hate these three so much!

They fly to the emergency, sporting all of the colours of the rainbow.

And get squashed like bugs in about four seconds. Hey, weird - I've been looking at these three's lame costumes a lot more than I'd like (you know, so I can complain about them) and I just noticed that Lamprey's breasts change size in, like, every panel. It's kind of eerie - maybe it's one of her powers?

When I finished this comic I was under the impression that this was the last I'd seen of these lame-ass characters. They'd shown up and tried their best and been dismal failures. I wasn't even curious about their powers. Then, just eleven issues later (LSH No. 283, if you really want to subject yourself to it) they show up again. It was like Reverse Christmas.

This time, we get to see their fantastic powers:

Crystal Kid fires gooey-looking beams that turn things into crystal, yawn. I mean... yawn.

One second.

Took a little nap there. There is nothing exciting about turning things to crystal, especially in the Legion. Plus Element Lad can already do that, so this kid shouldn't have gotten within five hundred metres of the place. Plus:
He's super over-confident. And:
His power only works as long as he's concentrating on it, which seems like adding insult to injury. "Sure you've got a lousy power, kid, but at least it doesn't work very well, right?"

Wildfire takes a dip in the surprisingly deep Legion fountain, where he encounters Lamprey, who has all of the standard "underwater hero" powers (that's superstrength, plus the ability to swim) and electricity-shooting:

I'm not sure if she's ever seen a lamprey eel - my guess is no, as they're almost indescribably hideous. In any case, her powers are somewhat better than poor Bobb's. There is one drawback, though:

It's not just a case of artistic license - she really is firing rings of electricity. Moreover, those rings are big enough that Wildfire can step right through them (Though not very well. By my reckoning he's about to get ringed in the knee, thigh and crotch). Plus it's implied that she's not too good at maneuvers out of the water, which puts the kibosh on roughly 98 percent of Legion missions.

Nightwind flies and fires wind out of her feet. She gets some credit for not wearing clothing that is the same colour as her skin but that's about all I'm willing to grant her.

So anyway, Wildfire trashes the three of them. Then this happens:

The girls try to kiss Wildfire and he goes nuts! Personally, I think that it's because he saw that wink thing. Nightwind's wink is terrifying! That one staring white eye? Gives me the heebie jeebies. He says it's because of his Tragic Past, but I don't buy it.

Anyway, what with the terrible costumes, the lame powers, the stupid names and the fact that they mostly get their asses kicked and listen to exposition (Wildfire tells them a story too), these three jokers are:

NOT APPROVED

But finally getting them out of the way? That's JOHN APPROVED from here to Tuesday. So... for two days.