Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Review of Tedium, By Johnathan

Hey, all. Remember how I said that the posts would come fast and furious once I finished that SARLSH malarkey? We,, I probably should have added an "unless I get tied up in the longest and thired-most-hellish move of my life" caveat. Because that's what happened. On the up side, it's done, I have a new cat roommate, and the Internets are back in town. I guess I could have written some stuff while I was offline for later posting, but that smacked of effort, man. One thing, however, did stick in my tired, bitter craw: last week's Action Comics No. 864. Well, one aspect of it, at least (Lightning Lad vs. Batman was great). Let's watch:

So the big-reveal surprise villain in Action Comics this month was a) not a huge surprise and b) the friggin' Time Trapper. I hate the friggin' Time Trapper. He was an interesting villain for all of three Silver Age stories, I swear, back when he was basically just a reason that the Legion could go into the past but not the future, even with all of their Mighty Technology. In fact, he was entertaining for exactly one story, the one that also introduced the equally-hateful Glorith, when he managed to turn a third of the Legion into irritating babies and kicked Invisible Tot around. Ever since then, the Time Trapper has functioned almost exclusively as a gigantic, nigh-unbeatable threat, trotted out to shake up the status quo with a few shocking deaths or resolve some continuity point with a time quake or something. He's featured in more angsty, dreary storylines than the entire cast of Dawson's Creek. And no matter how many times he's tediously defeated, he just keeps coming back - which isn't much different than, say, Darkseid, but at least Darkseid is fun.

BAH! NOT APPROVED.

Well! I was certainly filled with vitriol, hey? Needed a little more sleep? Well, I'm well-rested now, but I basically agree. Every time the Time Trapper shows up in a story I heave a little sigh and prepare to slog through some boring comic book. It's like... like reading a late-eighties crossover event. Or 8 out of 10 early Image comics. Don't get me wrong, I'm not writing this story off just yet. I'll be the first one to applaud if anything interesting is added to ol' TT's story - I just ain't holding my breath.


This is what I meant when I was talking about him kicking Invisible Moppet. Kicking Silver Age DC toddlers = comic gold! This one instant of the Time Trapper's life is:

JOHN APPROVED

4 comments:

Jeremy Rizza said...

"Angsty, dreary storylines"? Well, NO WONDER Geoff Johns has a hard-on for the guy! Maybe he can trot out that "I want to defecate on your soul" nonsense that he's always having his bad guys say.

(Freakin' Johns...!)

Skeleton Munroe said...

What does the living embodiment of Entropy poop out?

This might not be a bad Time Trapper showing - you never know, right? Judging by the monologues that the guy spewed out over the course of that issue, though, this might be a long-winded couple of months.

Still, he claims to be responsible for the Bizarro World and Legion stories that we've had recently, and those have been pretty great. I'll just keep my low expectations and hope to be pleasantly surprised.

naladahc said...

An in a perfect world, we'd have a modern reenactment of this scene in Legion of Three Worlds with the Time Trapper just kicking all the Legionnaires in the ass.

I would love to Perez draw 100 pages of that!

Skeleton Munroe said...

HA!

"Legionnaires, sound off!"

Cosmic Boy! *BOOT*

Saturn Girl! *BOOT*

Sun Boy! *TWO BOOTS*