Future Zoo: Review of the Taroc Creature, By Johnathan

From the same issue that brought you the Strangest Clock in the Universe, the Taroc Creature!
A wee bit of setup: a few issues back Lightning Lad had sacrificed his life to prevent Saturn Girl from sacrificing her life to keep someone from dying. I know, I know, sorry. It's much more clear in the comic book. Prophecy is involved, which always muddies the plot-waters. What's important is that Lightning Lad dies and, like, two pages later they're wondering if there might be some way to bring him back. In Adventure Comics No. 312 they really get to work on that problem and scour the galaxy for possible ways to sin against nature and take the very powers of God into their sweaty teenage hands - something they never seemed to get around to doing for Ferro Lad. Or Invisible Kid. Or 1/3 of Triplicate Girl, Sun Boy, Karate Kid or 1/2 of Duo Damsel. Man, the Legion really blew its altruism wad (so to speak) on this resurrection.

As a part of the whole "tamper with forces heretofore reserved to the Almighty because we miss our electricity-spewing friend" plan the Legion look up any and all references to resurrection in their Mechanical Librarian and then go on a gigantic cosmic scavenger hunt to round up all possible ways that they could create a blasphemous, soulless parody of their friend. Among the leads that are followed up on is the mysterious Taroc creature. Let's watch:

The Taroc is known for dying and then somehow coming back to life again and so Saturn Girl and Mon-el take a trip to their very yellow planet, in hopes of... uh... I'm actually not sure what they're hoping for. I mean, unless the things come back to life by means of a magical sprite who roams their planet dispensing miracles of rebirth. Possibly they hope to use advanced future science to infuse his corpse with Taroc genes? That would work, right? Anyway, it would work on Star Trek - you'd just have to run him through the transporter a few times afterward.

As far as alien monsters go, the Taroc creature's fairly boss. The 'fat pteranodon' body and snake head are solid creature fare and I appreciate how the ones that are at rest have adopted the vulture pose as their own. What reall sells me on these things, though, is the purple hands that they have at the ends of their wings. Since they're obviously useless while the Taroc is in flight, my imagination tells me that the creatures use these hands to play cards. In fact, Taroc society's basic unit is the bridge group, and the outcomes of trials are decided by playing a form of poker known as 'Bgtzl Hold 'em'.

Not sure what happened to Mon-el's face but it sure is creepy. Also: haven't there been Taroc creatures on every bit of high land pictured so far? why did he leave Saturn Girl on that peak? Is it because he has no eyes?

"It seemed to die a natural death, of old age... but really I fried it's brain with heat vision. Clever, huh?"

You know, I'm kind of sad that they didn't try this method of reviving Lightning Lad. Seeing a tiny red-haired dynamo burst out of their dead friend's back would have been just the thing to help the Legionnaires shake off the blues.

Even if I wasn't incredibly fond of the Taroc creature's hands and love for Eucre, its disgusting method of reproduction (plus the fact that it seems to be made of papier mache) rate a solid

JOHN APPROVED.

Bonus:

Space Serpents! I can't remember (nor do I care to check) why the Legionnaires needed to go to the Great Interplanetary Post Office on their search for a way to turn their dead friend into a mockery of human form and feeling, but when they do they see that it's being attacked by "Space Serpents, able to live in space and to eat metal and stone! They must be from another universe!"

Great Jumping Suns indeed, Lightning Lass. I do have to say, though, that that's a pretty good guess. I mean, you took a pretty bare set of facts and extrapolated the fact that these generic dragony things were from another universe? Phew. I gotta say, you're a better guesser than me. I think that you're almost as good as Superboy:

You superpeople and your Occam's Razor. I'll never know how you do it.

Anyway, Space Serpents, being from space, have never encountered anything like Sun Boy before. Because space is cold and dark - there is no sunlight. Sunlight is on planets, not space. Space is cold and the sun is warm.

The completely generic dragon-monsters get driven off in a pretty hokey way, but there's still one left and it's in a room with some guys. Since flinging bolts of lightning around willy-nilly might hurt the guys an alternate plan is thought up:

The Space Serpent is fooled by Proty. Oh, god. these things are so boring. I can't even be scathing. They're just dragons that eat post offices ("They must be from a universe of rabid letter-writers, Sun Boy!") and they're dumb. Yawn and yawn.

NOT APPROVED.

Future Zoo: Review of the Parakat, By Johnathan

As I mentioned in the previous post, Superboy was hitting on a sweet piece of Xanthu named Zynthia in order to make Lana jealous as a lesson to her for trying to make him jealous. Meanwhile, Jughead was judging a hamburger-eating contest at Pop's Chok'lit Shoppe but was having a hard time paying attention to the contestants and not the food.

The writers of this comic have made an assumption that the one thing that teenage girls want is for their beaus to give them things, and especially things that require the use of superpowers. This may be true, which would explain my dating track record in high school. In any case, the girls keep asking Superboy and Star Boy to do things like making huge gemstones or glowing dresses. This is cool, but then Zynthia pulls out this request:

Dude! What? You want a tiger? Why the hell do you want a tiger? Is it just as proof that Superboy likes you enough to do things for you, like the time a girl got me to eat a worm? Because there are things that you can get him to do that won't screw up a tiger's life. You could get him to, say, eat a worm. C'mon, it'll be hilarious!

Since Zynthia isn't as cool as me (or that girl I mentioned), Superboy goes after the tiger. And then we learn why it's called a Parakat:

It's a terrible pun! Xanthu was settled by punsters! Or perhaps just punster zoologists. Stopping only to diss the poor creature a little, Superboy leaps into action!

Y'know, someday someone's going to try this in a Vertigo comic and there's going to be all kinds of severed tiger tail action. Seriously: I don't think that most animal tails are built to withstand that kind of stress. Okay, maybe monkey tails, but they're prehensile. This poor critter's going to need some sort of therapy after all of this is done. Hopefully it doesn't need the tail for balance or anything.

Stunning revelation! The beast is sentient!It totally formed a sentence all on its own! Seriously, if it just mimicked human speech like Superboy assumes, wouldn't it be saying something like "Argh! It got my leg! My god, the pecking! Sweet moons of Xanthu, it's mimicking human speech while it eviscerates Larry!" and so forth? I mean, when does a bird-faced tiger hear the word 'dizzy'? Stupid anthropocentric speciesist Superboy doesn't see things that way, though, and promptly enslaves what is clearly an oppressed species to begin with (you can be damn sure that they didn't think up the name 'Parakat', for one thing).

And so the noble Parakat, feared throughout the Jungle Mountains of Xanthu, is reduced by an uncaring Superboy to the status of greeting card. The poor beast, a great leader among his people, was later slaughtered in order that Zynthia might have a Parakat-skin bikini and seat-covers for her Sky Canoe. Plus her father used the skull for an ashtray. Parakat-skin clothing soon became the height of fashion, resulting in rampant poaching. Today (well, a thousand years from today) there are less that 47 Parakats remaining in the wild. Thanks, Superboy.

The Parakat is JOHN APPROVED. Zynthia? NOT APPROVED.

Future Zoo: Review of the Invisible Eagle, By Johnathan

Man, I love thinking up new things to review. Since I just kicked off the 'First Impressions' series I might as well start this one, too. 'Future Zoo' is going to feature the wild and wacky creatures of the Thirtieth Century. Since most of the beasts so featured only appear for a couple of panels the review will be short, which will make for a nice break. Plus, as if that wasn't enough, I'll be starting another series of wee reviews featuring the astounding technology of the future as well. It'll be astonishing!

Okay, so we're kicking things off with the Neptunian Invisible Eagle, from Adventure Comics No. 247, the very first appearance of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Superboy's on his way to save a rocket ship that's sprung a leak as a part of his initiation when he hears some exposition:

I guess that finding the eagle is slightly more urgent than a rocket running out of fuel, but seriously: if the vehicles of the future can't stand up to a collision with one bird then standards have gone way down hill. Where is the chicken-cannon of yesterday, ye mighty men of the future? Your hubris shall be your downfall when next the ducks do migrate.

Anyway, why the hell is this invisible thing in a zoo? That's just stupid - you could probably fit like four regular eagles in its cage, and being visible, they're way more interesting.

That's not a bad plan, Superboy! You probably could have done it with your ice breath but, you know, full marks for effort. As for you, Invisible Eagle:

NOT APPROVED.

The issue also featured some Generic Sea Monster action, notable mainly as an illustration of the fact that Saturn Girl's powerful telepathic was originally used mostly to control various monsters:

As far as sea monsters go, this one's pretty cute.

And helpful! Sea monster, you're JOHN APPROVED.