"Shut up and fly, Beetle!"
Hey, I haven't posted scans in a while, have I? Let's fix that.
As you probably know, Ted was originally created over at Charlton Comics in the 60s; some years later, a bunch of Charlton heroes were sold to DC. Ted is arguably the biggest name in the bunch (it's either him, Captain Atom, or the Question), which should tell you what level of comics stardom we're talking about here. The others are Nightshade (<3!), Peacemaker, Judomaster, Sarge Steel, and Peter Cannon...THUNDERBOLT.
Anyway, every so often DC teams these guys up, and in 1999 they got a miniseries called L.A.W. (Living Assault Weapons), because DC wanted to let people know how bad it was going to be right up front, I guess. I finally read it, and...yikes, you guys. And not even in a fun way! Mostly it's just racist and poorly paced. AND NOW I SHARE IT WITH YOU.
(Peter Cannon...THUNDERBOLT didn't make the cut for this series for some reason, even though he has the best name in the world. Come on, say it with me! Peter Cannon...THUNDERBOLT!)
(Also, um, this comic has some seriously racist depictions of Asian people. Just warning you.)
Oh man, this is going to be so bad.
I'm pretty sure Plas's last line in the first panel is about masturbating. I mean, "scrooch gun"? What?
I've included the second panel because "moonquake" is a fabulous word and I don't see it used nearly enough.
That's Vic, btw, still crushing hard on Ted. "Ted Kord was unavailable for comment...no matter how many times I called him...even though he promised we'd be buddies now..."
I feel ya, Ted. Douchey middle aged white guys attempting to deploy street lingo make me sick too.
LOLOLOL BOOSTER WOULDN'T LET TED PUT HIM IN HORRIBLE 90S ARMOR ANYMORE SO TED DID IT TO THE BUG INSTEAD
P.S. Ted stole half a billion dollars from his company to do that. Ted belongs in jail.
BEST/WORST COSTUME EVER.
ILU Ted.
This is probably the grossest flirting I've ever read.
ILU Teeeed.
Haha, everyone hates Ted.
Hey! Dudes! Are you old and unpleasant? Do you disrespect other people in their place of business? Do you refuse to refer to minorities by socially acceptable terms? Then you too can get an implausibly hot woman half your age to throw herself at you within several hours of meeting you! That's totally how the world works and not the fantasy of an aging comic book writer.
...Ick ick ick. I need to wash now.
So, okay. I feel like I need to prepare you for this. Besides being grossly sexist, this is also one of the most racist comics I've ever read, and I'm including stuff from the 40s in that assessment.
See, the bad guy is a dude called the Avatar, who, with the help of his Indian minions, starts taking out military outposts around the world. Of course this is unacceptable, so the government has Sarge Steel work with this giant Peacemaker facility to stop him. They call in Nightshade to find the Justice League, who are trapped on another plane of existence, and Ted and Question for their crucial wisecracking and cryptic responding abilities, I guess.
Meanwhile, Judomaster is in Nanda Parbat, where no one ages, when he hears about a disturbance in the Force or whatever, so he joins our ragtag group of heroes. And that's when we find out that Avatar is actually Judomaster's old sidekick Tiger, a Japanese orphan he took under his wing back in WWII while appropriating the hell out of Japanese culture. (Think the Short Round to Judomaster's Indy, but more awful.) US immigration wouldn't let Judomaster bring Tiger back to the States with him after the war, so they roamed the world learning about martial arts until Tiger was finally like, "Um, I never actually wanted to do this, so bye." And then I guess he went crazy and evil?
Anyway, I felt like you needed that background before I showed you this:
WHAT THE HELL, DC.
(I should also note that the traitor in the Peacemaker organization is an Indian woman. So literally every villain in this series is of Asian descent, and every character of Asian descent is a villain. But the white guy whose entire existence consists of appropriating Asian culture is the hero. FUUUUUUUCK YOUUUUUUUUUU.)
I don't think his outfit is racist, I just think it's amazing.
Hadley is Ted's least favorite Charlton friend.
(His name is Hadley "Rip" Jagger but he's called Ripley throughout the series. Whooops.)
Oh! This! So I guess they were like "Oops, this whole story is about Judomaster and Sarge Steel, maybe the other characters should feel ways about things?" (Except Cap, who spends the entire series as literally a blob trapped in a diamond, and Question, who does basically nothing.) So we get this amazingly pastede-on subplot where Ted is having nightmares about how he apparently could've totally saved Dan but didn't, just because? And then it's paralleled here because he invented the thing the Avatar is using to kill people, just like he invented Jarvis's robots? Whatever, the point is we get sad inappropriate face-touching in the death scene, and J'APPROVE.
Also of note: Ted's adorkable space suit.
AND IT JUST HAPPENS TO BE DAN'S DEATHIVERSARY. WHICH IS JUST REVEALED NOW. Oh man, contrivance. I love it.
Okay, but actually as terrible as this comic in, it fits really nicely with the Ted meta in my head. HE JUST WANTS TO RETIRE, DAN. WHY WON'T YOU LET HIM RETIRE?
"I will teach you how to forgive. Specifically, how to forgive me. For all that shit I pulled on you your entire childhood. You should definitely forgive me for that. P.S. I'm great."
Why don't more people call him Dr. Kord? More people should call him Dr. Kord. (Booster sometimes calls him the Love Doctor, but that's completely unrelated.)
AND EVERYONE STILL HATES TED. THE END.
Next up: More Jaime? More Guardian/Heat Wave? More Superman? Silver Age Green Lantern? I have quite a backlog of scans at the moment.
As you probably know, Ted was originally created over at Charlton Comics in the 60s; some years later, a bunch of Charlton heroes were sold to DC. Ted is arguably the biggest name in the bunch (it's either him, Captain Atom, or the Question), which should tell you what level of comics stardom we're talking about here. The others are Nightshade (<3!), Peacemaker, Judomaster, Sarge Steel, and Peter Cannon...THUNDERBOLT.
Anyway, every so often DC teams these guys up, and in 1999 they got a miniseries called L.A.W. (Living Assault Weapons), because DC wanted to let people know how bad it was going to be right up front, I guess. I finally read it, and...yikes, you guys. And not even in a fun way! Mostly it's just racist and poorly paced. AND NOW I SHARE IT WITH YOU.
(Peter Cannon...THUNDERBOLT didn't make the cut for this series for some reason, even though he has the best name in the world. Come on, say it with me! Peter Cannon...THUNDERBOLT!)
(Also, um, this comic has some seriously racist depictions of Asian people. Just warning you.)
Oh man, this is going to be so bad.
I'm pretty sure Plas's last line in the first panel is about masturbating. I mean, "scrooch gun"? What?
I've included the second panel because "moonquake" is a fabulous word and I don't see it used nearly enough.
That's Vic, btw, still crushing hard on Ted. "Ted Kord was unavailable for comment...no matter how many times I called him...even though he promised we'd be buddies now..."
I feel ya, Ted. Douchey middle aged white guys attempting to deploy street lingo make me sick too.
LOLOLOL BOOSTER WOULDN'T LET TED PUT HIM IN HORRIBLE 90S ARMOR ANYMORE SO TED DID IT TO THE BUG INSTEAD
P.S. Ted stole half a billion dollars from his company to do that. Ted belongs in jail.
BEST/WORST COSTUME EVER.
ILU Ted.
This is probably the grossest flirting I've ever read.
ILU Teeeed.
Haha, everyone hates Ted.
Hey! Dudes! Are you old and unpleasant? Do you disrespect other people in their place of business? Do you refuse to refer to minorities by socially acceptable terms? Then you too can get an implausibly hot woman half your age to throw herself at you within several hours of meeting you! That's totally how the world works and not the fantasy of an aging comic book writer.
...Ick ick ick. I need to wash now.
So, okay. I feel like I need to prepare you for this. Besides being grossly sexist, this is also one of the most racist comics I've ever read, and I'm including stuff from the 40s in that assessment.
See, the bad guy is a dude called the Avatar, who, with the help of his Indian minions, starts taking out military outposts around the world. Of course this is unacceptable, so the government has Sarge Steel work with this giant Peacemaker facility to stop him. They call in Nightshade to find the Justice League, who are trapped on another plane of existence, and Ted and Question for their crucial wisecracking and cryptic responding abilities, I guess.
Meanwhile, Judomaster is in Nanda Parbat, where no one ages, when he hears about a disturbance in the Force or whatever, so he joins our ragtag group of heroes. And that's when we find out that Avatar is actually Judomaster's old sidekick Tiger, a Japanese orphan he took under his wing back in WWII while appropriating the hell out of Japanese culture. (Think the Short Round to Judomaster's Indy, but more awful.) US immigration wouldn't let Judomaster bring Tiger back to the States with him after the war, so they roamed the world learning about martial arts until Tiger was finally like, "Um, I never actually wanted to do this, so bye." And then I guess he went crazy and evil?
Anyway, I felt like you needed that background before I showed you this:
WHAT THE HELL, DC.
(I should also note that the traitor in the Peacemaker organization is an Indian woman. So literally every villain in this series is of Asian descent, and every character of Asian descent is a villain. But the white guy whose entire existence consists of appropriating Asian culture is the hero. FUUUUUUUCK YOUUUUUUUUUU.)
I don't think his outfit is racist, I just think it's amazing.
Hadley is Ted's least favorite Charlton friend.
(His name is Hadley "Rip" Jagger but he's called Ripley throughout the series. Whooops.)
Oh! This! So I guess they were like "Oops, this whole story is about Judomaster and Sarge Steel, maybe the other characters should feel ways about things?" (Except Cap, who spends the entire series as literally a blob trapped in a diamond, and Question, who does basically nothing.) So we get this amazingly pastede-on subplot where Ted is having nightmares about how he apparently could've totally saved Dan but didn't, just because? And then it's paralleled here because he invented the thing the Avatar is using to kill people, just like he invented Jarvis's robots? Whatever, the point is we get sad inappropriate face-touching in the death scene, and J'APPROVE.
Also of note: Ted's adorkable space suit.
AND IT JUST HAPPENS TO BE DAN'S DEATHIVERSARY. WHICH IS JUST REVEALED NOW. Oh man, contrivance. I love it.
Okay, but actually as terrible as this comic in, it fits really nicely with the Ted meta in my head. HE JUST WANTS TO RETIRE, DAN. WHY WON'T YOU LET HIM RETIRE?
"I will teach you how to forgive. Specifically, how to forgive me. For all that shit I pulled on you your entire childhood. You should definitely forgive me for that. P.S. I'm great."
Why don't more people call him Dr. Kord? More people should call him Dr. Kord. (Booster sometimes calls him the Love Doctor, but that's completely unrelated.)
AND EVERYONE STILL HATES TED. THE END.
Next up: More Jaime? More Guardian/Heat Wave? More Superman? Silver Age Green Lantern? I have quite a backlog of scans at the moment.