Thursday, February 23, 2017

Brave and the Bold #54(part the last)

And we've finally, FINALLY made it to the end of the very first Teen Titans story ever made! And the very first story to feature the amazing Mr. Twister! Okay, that second one isn't nearly as important as the first one. But somewhere, somewhere on this planet there is one lone person, one lone voice that is cheering the first appearance of Mr. Twister. Probably, right? I mean, people have terrible taste, it stands to reason somebody out there likes our boy Twisty McTwist. Yeah, Twisty McTwist. I said it. Now, let's get down to brass tacks as they say... Brass tacks? The hell?!

The Brave and the Bold #54(June 1964)

Summary: Okay, with the kids safe thanks to Aqualad and the herd of whales(...), Mr. Twister decides to just destroy the town of Hatton Corners and has it rain sand. Because tornadoes can do that? Okay then... The sand begins to pile up, but Kid Flash dashes around the town and drags the sand after him, leaving the town sparkly and clean. Nice going, Kid Flash! Mr. Twister decides to up the ante by sending a deluge of rain upon the town. Within moments, the town is hopelessly flooded... Or it would be if not for Aqualad and a whale with a huge horn on it's face... Wait, that's a real thing?! Let's check wikipedia, it's never steered me wrong yet... Well I'll be damned, a narwhal is a real thing! Okay, so the narwhal dives to the bottom of the flooded town and drills a hole in the ground, which allows all of the water to rush underground, um, unflooding the town... Yeah, that's not a real word, but it's as good as I can come up with at the moment.
Aqualad riding a narwhal.  Totally not erotic at all...

So with his first two attacks foiled, Mr. Twister brings out the big guns and has it rain fire on the town... Really?! This is starting to sound like one of those horrible movies on the Sci-Fi channel now! Not only that, but Mr. Twister blasts Aqualad and Kid Flash with lightning bolts to make sure they wouldn't be able to thwart him again. Mr. Twister ignores Robin because he doesn't have any powers, and as such is deemed no threat. However, the cold, bitter hand of irony strikes when Robin snatches Mr. Twister's enchanted staff away from him with a “bat-rope”(you know, as opposed to one of those lousy regular ropes), which was the source of Mr. Twister's powers. Robin tosses the staff into one of the fires Mr. Twister started(double irony!!), destroying the staff and ending the threat of Mr. Twister.
Um, so Robin was okay with killing Mr. Twister?  

And that's that, Johnny Law takes the defeated Mr. Twister away, the teenagers return to the town, and the parents are happy to have them. Huzzah!


Thoughts: What can I say? It was stupid, mindless, 60's fun! I'm a sucker for these sort of comics. Most of it didn't make sense, like Mr. Twister getting his powers when he enchanted a magic staff with a magic Indian potion... Or Mr. Twister making it rain sand, and then FIRE... Plus, Mr. Twister's motivations were kind of all over the place... First he wanted passenger pigeon feathers. Then he stole the town's teens and had them build him a tower to nowhere. Then he just decided to destroy the town? Like why? What did he want? I kind of think he really just wanted the feathers for that dumb cape he was wearing, which is kind of sad. If he would have just gotten his feathers, none of the rest of that grim tale would have unfolded. But then we wouldn't have any Teen Titans comics, so I guess it's a good thing passenger pigeons went extinct. That's another thing, I learned a lot from this comic! Dead passenger pigeons, narwhals, whales moving islands, Indian potions, caves, this comic taught AND entertained me! So nice job, DC from the 60's. I tip my imaginary hat to you!

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