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Showing posts with label Jean Loring. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jean Loring. Show all posts
I promised you a denouement of what I learned from our recent "The Attack of Jean Loring's Brain" week here at the Absorbascon. And so...
#20. The brain has a heart.
And it has pin-lighting. Who knew?
#18. Aquaman does performance art. With octopuses.
Can't you just see all the beatniks and hipsters snapping their fingers as they watch? "Dig that crazy octo-art; go, daddy, go! This was completely worth the trip from Soho!"
#15. Either Captain Comet or Aquaman ...
cannot count.
Just because you're a telepath doesn't mean you're intelligent. "Aquaman! On my mark, count backwards from 20 the divisors of 180...!"
#12. There's no romance in piracy.
Ha! He's obviously never seen Lucas Entertainment's "Cabin Boy Fever"!
#10. The JLA teleporter is ridiculously slow.
Recomposition = decompression.
Three panels of exciting teleporter action?! Jeez, who designed the damned thing, Brad Meltzer?
#9. Aquaman quotes Winston Churchill. To himself, silently, inappropriately, and for no apparent reason.
That why Aquaman is so much cooler than I. I probably would have thought something more like, "Polka-dot pirates with clipboards, what the--?!"
#6. The undersea kingdom of Lemuria has absolutely no zoning laws.
"Welcome to the terrible undersea kingdom of Snowglobia; I am King Kane, and these are my daughters, Princesses Glycerin and Princess Rosebud."
#5. Aquaman has a very strange idea of ...
"subtle".
Huh. Sure looks like a 'frontal assault' to me.
#4. Captain Comet squats to pee.
And in the family room, too!
And last but not least:
#3. The Atom is a total drama queen
Jeez, no wonder he married Jean Loring.
So the Wind Pirate is using his Kirby Cube to take over the earth, which will be destroyed in less than three hours by Jean Loring's brain, which the Atom has entered to try and punch out the crazy evil.
Have you ever wondered what the inside of Jean Loring's brain looks like?
It looks like Frank Stella ate and threw up the collected works of Dr. Seuss.
Well, no WONDER Jean Loring's insane, she's got a slice of kiwi stuck in her brain. Atom takes a right at the kiwi slice, follows the fettucini-brick road along the Sea of Go-Go Checks and finds...
a giant pearl of crazy-evil. Which he goes inside. And punches.
And, pathetically inadequate word though it is sometimes... meanwhile...
Aquaman beats the crap out of the pirates...
"Time--to teach--these rude Parisians-- a lesson!"
and Captain Comet sweats.
Comet; we all loved Johnny Storm, stop obsessing over it.
Ray's punching treatment works,
It's not easy to get inside your girlfriend's head. It's even harder to get out.
... and Jean Loring's brain stops destroying the earth, and the Wind Pirate ... well, um, I think he blows up along with his ship. Or escapes. To come back when someone finally lets me write Aquaman.
See? I told you!
Well, the world's is safe, the Atom takes some aspirin, and Jean Loring lives to terrify the world another day. What else is there?
Next time, we wrap up with:
The Top Ten Things I Learned from The Attack of Jean Loring's Brain.
I did not say that.
While the Wind Pirate is bloviating in his Kirby Cube high above the earth, where is Jean Loring?
Yes, Atom, we know; that's the problem. More specifically, she has, for no apparent reason, magically appeared in the undersea kingdom of Lemuria.
Oh, Name-Or; you say "hopelessly" like it's a bad thing.
There, when she sees her One True Love, Ray Palmer, again,
she's shocked back into sanity and they have a tearful lover's reunion...
"Today's episode is brought to you by the letter E."
Psych! You didn't really believe that, did you? This is Jean Loring, people!
Atom's buddy Aquaman, of course, always knows the wrong thing to say:
"Terribly disturbed? In a psychotic state? Um, yeah, Arthur, that's the Jean Loring I know. Who do you think bought me this tie?"
So, the Atom decides to just shrink down and punch the Crazy Evil out of Jean Loring's brain,
while Captain Comet gets his hair done. Really.
"In my business, you meet so many interesting people; bobby pins, please.
But the most interesting ones are the mutants."
Well, yes, all this Wind Pirate nonsense is very interesting but the re--
JULIUS H. SCHWARTZ,
WHAT THE FLYING FOO-HA IS THAT?
If Jack Kirby and Jim Steranko had a baby,
that's pretty much what it would look like. At birth.
Oh, silly me. That's the Wind Pirate's ship. With a big Kirby Cube. You know, I could swear one of my elder brothers had a black light poster like that.
Wait, what's that he's saying?
"MORE POWER! I WANT THE WORLD TO TREMBLE! NATIONS REDUCED TO HYSTERIA! ONLY WHEN THE EARTH IS IN A STATE OF TOTAL CHAOS WILL THE MOMENT BE RIPE FOR PLUNDER!"
What a silver-tongued devil the Wind Pirate is! Now wonder Bosun is in love. By the way, if you didn't know a moment could be plundered, well, you learned it here first. Really, some clever writer needs to bring back the Wind Pirate and put him on into a villainous Stentorian League with Dr. Domino, Dr. Polaris, and Sunspot. Oh, and Solomon Grundy, just for laughs. Nah, scratch that; a clever writer could never do the dialog.
Anyway, where's the real threat in this story? What's become of Jean Loring's brain?!
Oh, that!
Well, Captain Comet did the only humane thing....
He shoved his fingers in Jean Loring's brain and killed her.
Gee, if only someone had done the same thing to T.O. Morrow's other abductee, the Meanest Woman Alive, Iris West.
Oh, wait; that's right...
Someone did.
P.S. Just kidding! As if that goober Captain Comet could possible stop Jean Loring's brain! It will return in the next episode of...
THE ATTACK OF JEAN LORING'S BRAIN!!!!
So, last time in "The Attack of Jean Loring's Brain", we explored the mystery of who was watching Aquaman get his ass kicked by a tornado via a spy-eye screen. We determined that it wasn't Name-Or from the hapax legomenon kingdom of Lemuria, or Flunk Flashman of the Secret Society of Super-Villains (even though both of them did have spy-eye screens and were watching the Battle of the Brain Bowl [Jean Loring's Brain, 54 - Earth, 0])
So who IS this mysterious figure?!?!?
If I had a toady, I'd make him wear a magenta beret and sweat-cuffs, too.
Oh, I'm sure most of you have already guessed! It is, of course...
THE WIND PIRATE!!!!!!!
Okay, fess up; NONE of you guessed the Wind Pirate. That's because, like Lemuria, the Wind Pirate had never been heard of before and hasn't been heard of since. But I'm sure you can guess his story. He's your basic "Navy weather scientist who, because he was too valuable, wasn't allowed to go to sea, which is all he ever wanted, and who has therefore now gone insane with pirate-mania, and has an abusive relationship with his sidekick." He's been taking advantage of the chaos and weather instability caused by the attack of Jean Loring's brain to make his own ill-timed bid for world domination; the time to conquer Earth is not about three hours before Jean Loring's brain completely destroys it.
And, meanwhile
there's poor "Bosun", the sidereal sidekick of this psycho space pirate! So enamored of the Wind Pirate, 
"And you will kneel, and tell me that you love me...."
but so ill-treated
Bosun gets Ye Olde Bitch Slappe
even when it's just verbal abuse.
"Shut up, you toady, I'm watching Aquaman's ass. I mean, Aquaman's ass get kicked!"
It's sad, too, because Bosun's obviously really hot and the Wind Pirate is, well, Sonny Bono in a Gilbert & Sullivan production. The whole thing is very Harley/Mr. J "Mad Love"...
*Sniff*! "I... don't know how to lo-ove him..."
"But there's so much more I want to show you, Cap'n! The Cherry Blossom Festival! The Ile de France with all the gulls around it! Niagra Falls...!"
Tragically, it's not to be. There's no romance in piracy, folks.
So, when we last left Jean Loring's brain, it was buffeting Aquaman around like a wet ragdoll, forcing Captain Comet to think about Thomas Aquinas, driving the Atom into a violent sexual frenzy, and indulging in an orgy of destruction by means of unnatural disasters.
Speaking of destructive orgies and the resultant unnatural disasters...
Wally will sleep with just about anybody, won't he?
Again?! You young people are insatiable!
Such is the madness that Jean Loring's brain inspires in others!
Meanwhile, 
Sigh.
Sigh.Meanwhile, someone is...
watching Aquaman's ass get kicked, via one of those omnivident cams that Lex Luthor used to use on Challenge of the Super-Friends. You know, the kind that can watch whatever action the reader is seeing, no matter how unlikely it is that a camera would be able to zoom in on that action, at that angle, at that time. I don't know what they call in in the DCU, but in our world we call it "Google Earth".
But... who is watching Aquaman?!
Is it... this guy:
Nothing says high-tech like a fishtank full of Kirby dots and a digital crossword program.
Nope. That's just flashy Flashman and the Funky Bunch (a.k.a. the original Secret Society of Super-Villains).
For those (mercifully) not familiar with him, Funky Flashman, a cheap conman character, was a 70s-era DCU parody of Stan Lee. There’s one severe problem with that concept: you can’t parody Stan Lee. Stan Lee is one of those few people (like Sammy Davis, Jr.) who serves as his own parody. Parody is dependent on being able to exaggerate something’s characteristics to the point of being ridiculous. But that is where Stan Lee STARTS; there’s simply nowhere to go with a Stan Lee parody. As a result, Flunky Flashman isn’t a fun and naughty guilty pleasure; he’s just exactly as annoying as having Stan Lee running around inside your comic book story. C'mon, DC; even Marvel knows that Stan Lee should be limited to cameos. Absinthe is sipped from a cordial glass, not chugged from a keg.
Anyway, although Funky Flashman does have a spy-eye and is watching the Orgy of Destruction (tm), he and the Funky Bunch aren't paying any attention to Aquaman. They're all focused on Captain Comet, their arch-enemy. By the way, just for your own reference: if your arch-enemy is Captain Comet you just might be incredibly lame.
So is it perhaps... this guy:
It is time we used... an unnatural dramatic pause.
Nah, that's just Nameless Plot Device Guy from the fantastic underwater civilization of Lemuria. Duh!
What, you’ve never heard of the fantastic underwater civilization of Lemuria, the Atlantis of the Pacific, which has devoted itself to studying science in isolation, for the last one million years? Don’t feel bad; that’s because Lemuria had never been heard of before in the DCU and never since.
Actually, it's too bad; the idea of an antipodal competitor to Atlantis was a great one. And, unlike the DCU's other undersea cities, Lemuria was based on a real-world legend. Oh, well, I guess it was destroyed by wave of anti-matter; or a wave of Gil'Dishpan soldiers; or a wave of some writer's hand. Quite of lot of authorial hand-waving in this story actually.
For example: why are the Lemurians involved? Because Jean Loring, courtesy of her brain, just magically popped into one of their undersea cities a couple days ago. They recognized her instantly by her hopeless insanity:
Whaddaya mean, "at the moment"? Like, the last ten years?
No, it's not that Lemurian guy. Jeez, it's awkward to keep calling him "that Lemurian guy". I can't believe the writer didn't give him some name, or-- Oh, wait. That'll work! We'll call the undersea civilization's leader who enjoys watching Aquaman get his ass kicked ...
Name-Or.
Anyway, it wasn't Name-Or, although he also does have spy-eye tech (even though he lives at the bottom of the ocean) and has been using it to record Aquaman getting his ass kicked by a tornado, and uploading the video to DCUTube.
So, if it wasn't Funky Flashman or Name-Or watching that screen... who WAS it?!?!
We'll find out in the next installment of ...
THE ATTACK OF JEAN LORING'S BRAIN!!!
Hey, Ray! Remind us why the planet is about to be destroyed? What's the problem again...?
Thanks, Ray!
So, the Crazy-Evil in Jean Loring's brain is now armed with the ability to destroy entire planets. Which it starts to do pretty much immediately.
In case you don't recognize it, that's Captain Comet's butt. There are so many natural disasters, the situation is so bad that the entire JLA is busy handling it. And by "it" I mean "the situation" not Captain Comet's butt.
As a result the only otherwise unoccupied hero is Captain Comet. Does THAT tell you how bad it is when Jean Loring attacks? That the only person left to rely on is Captain Frickin' Comet?
We'll skip -- mostly -- right over the part where some of our heroes try to deal with some of the disasters. In short, Aquaman gets his ass handed to him by a tornado.
Aquaman is, apparently, not smart enough to simply go underwater when a tornado at sea is headed his way.
And neither, apparently, are whales. Or giant pink clams.
Can't really blame the clams, though.
Giant pink clams in NYC harbor... who knew?!
Meanwhile,
I said, MEANWHILE, while Aquaman is doing an interpretative dance in front of the Statue of Liberty...
"I call this dance
The Time I Got My Ass Kicked by a Tornado in front of the State of Liberty!"
... the Atom is beating the crap out of a little girl.
Attaboy, Atom! Prof. Palmer just hates truants.
Oh, and the Atom also runs a tanker train full of oil into an earthquake caused by Jean Loring's brain.
That might have been easier, Ray,
if you hadn't insisted on remaining at six inches while doing it.
Meanwhi--I mean-- Anyway, Captain Comet is jealous. Aquaman is doing the aquadance in midair above Liberty Island and the Atom is indulging in catastrophic explosions and child abuse. They have ALL the fun! So Captain Comet decides the best way to be useful while Jean Loring's brain orgiastically destroys the planet is to ponder the works of Thomas Aquinas while a Japanese village is incinerated by a lava flow.
Such thinking is impossible for anyone but the King of Dorks.
With Jean Loring and her crazy-evil brain destroying the world, Ray does the only sensible thing a rational scientist would do under such circumstances...
throws himself at Italian science-babe Enrichetta Negrini in a crazed eruption of long-smoldering desire.
"Can you handle all six inches of me, baby?"
And what does
think of all this?
Oh. Yeah. Right. I forgot.
Not much.
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