We rip into Marvel’s attempt at Gargoyles. Disney wanted more money, so we have this. It’s not canon, per Greg Weisman, the series’s creator. Thank goodness, because the characters don’t act like they should. It’s like a parallel universe. These are actually pretty fun to mock because they aren’t “real.”
In this issue, Demona and Xanatos are up to a nefarious and inefficient scheme to…do something. It doesn’t matter what. Point is, there’s action and snark. Well, the comic supplies the action and I supply the snark.
Miss last week’s? Read Phoenix review.
Gargoyles Clan-Building: Issue 1: “Fiends in High Places”
Reason(s) for existence: Disney wanted to make more money.
Main antagonist(s): Demona, Xanatos
Time(s): Between Long Way To Morning and Reawakening
Location(s): NYC, NY, USA
Here we are with the very first of Marvel’s Gargoyles comics. We start with a heck of a cover. Everyone is so ripped that their muscles are about to explode, and Goliath somehow ended up with elbow fur.
Anyway, as with many comics, we have a narrator. Right now, it’s from Elisa and her diary. Because, you know, everybody in the 1990s kept diaries. Back then, people didn’t want other people to read them, because they put secret-y secret stuff inside.
But I digress. Elisa is explaining what’s going on, and randomly yelling words. At least that’s the sense I get when I see the randomly capitalized words in her narrator bubbles. I’m used to them just being bold and italic.
Elisa’s dressed as a construction worker, or a comic-book artist’s idea of a construction worker, and is shooting at some sort of armored gargoyle thing. The gargoyle thing is blasting a guy with a green beam. The guy is not having a good day.
Elisa’s rambling on in her head, or diary, or whatever. Then she gets shot by the green goo. Wait, this isn’t a slime-time gun from Nickelodeon. No, this is an electro ray. But not a freeze ray.
As Elisa is running / getting zapped by the ray, Matt shows up. He’s also dressed as a construction worker, and striking a pose.
Apparently the uniform for construction workers is a vest, t-shirt, and jeans. Oh, and gloves. Gloves with little seams on the back, like from Mickey Mouse.
He is absolutely no use, because the scuffle above him knocks a tool box onto his head. The helmet only does so much for him.
Back-up number two arrives in the form of Goliath. He and the armored fiend fight. But he ends up having to save Elisa and letting the robot / armored person get away. By the way, it’s not Xanatos. It’s not his classic armor.
The ever-grateful Elisa gets in an argument with G, who should have apparently stayed in the Clock Tower while Elisa got slaughtered. She’s trying to keep the Gargoyles from being implicated in the recent disappearances, though.
You see, the company RTC wants its new building built very quickly. So it’s ordered ‘round the clock construction crews. That’s a little odd. At night, some of the workers have been disappearing.
They’ve been telling Captain Chavez that it’s a gargoyle. They use the Daily Tattler as evidence.
Apparently Captain Chavez is now reduced to taking reports from looney witnesses. Also, she must be half troll, because her skin is gray. You might want to have that looked at. And her hair is black, unlike the Chavez we’re used to.
Elisa wanted to investigate the disappearances, because gargoyles were involved. But for once, Chavez didn’t let her investigate every crime in the city. That is, until she agrees to go with Matt. Two detectives can totally handle this alone.
They easily get a job on the construction crew because they have no experience at the job. No, sorry, they get it because a lot of guys have been leaving after the disappearances.
Then the robot thing pops up. And they’re all caught up.
Except for poor Matt. Elisa suddenly remembers he got conked. Thanks, Elisa, I’d love to have you as a partner. I could be laying there dying and you’d be taking time to argue with your boyfriend and then explain the entire plot.
Elisa is suddenly kicked out of the narrator role, in favor of… Nobody. Because it’s now the villains’ time. We are out in an oil tanker or other large ship in the bay. Xanatos and Owen are checking out some nefarious and wholly unrealistic (for Xanatos) plot. The scheme is one that is going to cost a lot of resources and one I can’t imagine Xanatos wasting time on.
Turns out the disappearances of the men are his doing. Or rather, Demona’s doing. She’s snagging them as test subjects. Now, I know that in the TV series, Xanatos was all right with Severius using bums as subjects for the mutagen. But from what we saw, they were willing, at least at first. Also, nobody cares if some bums disappear. And also, bums are kind of out of it anyway. Xanatos does have some standards, and one of those is to not drawing undue attention. Grabbing construction workers who have family and relatives and tax returns is not low-key. At all.
Getting back to the scene at hand: Xanatos is wearing a purple suit jacket and some sort of really odd turtleneck undershirt. And he’s got black hair. I like the black hair. I do not like the purple. It looks like it might be velvet. It’s so dark that it’s only purple on the edges where the light hits.
Owen isn’t much better. He’s wearing a double-breasted pinstriped suit. Pinstriped. Why isn’t he carrying a Tommy Gun? And wearing a fedora? Pinstriped…
Demona is checking to see if Elisa is still alive. She’s in a rage to find that the Detective is alive and detecting.
Apparently she was trying to immobilize Goliath with that neuro phaser energy beam. It’s a weapon that Xanatos’s people came up with. But it’s not powerful enough. Xanatos says to relax. His people will build a better one. And they both have a lot to gain from this “project.” So Demona shouldn’t get too snippy with him. By the way, it’s called the Medusa Project. That doesn’t sound good. Medusa had snakes for hair and could turn you to stone with her gaze.
Demona is plotting to grab Goliath.
Elisa gives us a nice recap of what happened in Awakening. We have a rather fetching image of Xanatos pointing dramatically while wearing a purple bathrobe and striped pajama pants.
In the clock tower, the clan is trying to figure out what’s going on. They can pretty much narrow it down to Xanatos being involved. But they always blame him, even if he isn’t involved. They’re pissed because the disappearances are making them look bad. It’s like how in The Edge Xanatos framed the gargoyles for his reclaiming the Eye of Odin.
But never fear, Lexington has a modem! He reveals this like it’s the most amazing thing ever. He goes on to explain that he has Googled, or the equivalent of that in the mid ‘90s, the RTC company. It stands for “Roman Ten Company.” Of course that’s an X. Well, I don’t need a publicly available database, which is what he’s searching, to tell me that it belongs to Xanatos Enterprises. Lexington says that the X is commonly used as a logo for subsidiaries of Xanatos Enterprises. This is inaccurate. Gen U Tech and Scarab Corp do not bear any similarity to an X logo.
The gargoyles decide that whoever kidnapped the worker will be back.
Elisa and Matt decided the same. Matt is ignoring doctor’s orders and coming anyway.
Elisa thinks she has enough firepower because she has a revolver that has hollow points. Ooh, hollow points! How scary. Like I can’t get .22 and 9mm hollow points. I think the artist may be trying to imply she has a Smith & Wesson 500, since the revolver has quite a long barrel. But the design isn’t right for the Smith & Wesson 500, even if it does have S&W on the side.
Side note: Matt has decided to get a 1911, upgrading from his revolver a few pages ago.
Sure enough, the robot thing is back. It zaps Matt. He’s such a helpful partner.
Elisa manages to shoot the mask off the perpetrator. It’s Demona. Goliath arrives, but not in time to save Elisa.
Back-up comes to help Matt.
Demona drags Elisa onto a ship where Xanatos security forces are waiting. Goliath busts in and helps rescue her. She in turn rescues the guys who are in cryogenic storage. By the way, cryogenic storage doesn’t really work, and it’s not what you use to keep people in a temporary stasis. Just drug them. Roofies, mate, roofies.
Elisa thinks this might be evidence they can use against Xanatos. Yeah, considering it’s his security guys, his ship, and these are the kidnapped workers. But I’m sure it’ll all be avoided somehow, like his many other schemes. Or like on X-Files.
We’re back to the no narrator. It’s a Xanatos Tag Ending. This might not be canon, and the villains might act totally over-the-top, but at least this is like the show.
Xanatos says they haven’t lost much. All he needs is a gargoyle to experiment on and humans to test the fruit of those experiments on. Oh, well, when you put it that way, no problem! I’ll order them off Amazon right now.
In order to get the gargoyle part, he’s hired Doctor Phobos, who manages the special projects division. This is so wrong. Dr. Sevarius manages it. Anybody knows that. And “Phobos” is a dumb name.
Dr. Phobos is doing a project on “cellular replication.” I don’t know what he’s talking about, but it’s probably like cloning. It’s inaccurate anyway, since cellular replication happens in your body all the time.
Xanatos is still wearing purple. He’s got a corrugated gray sweater underneath. And his hair tie is white.
Final Thoughts
Purple. Pinstripes. Armor. Wut.
A lot of this issue went to backstory. Typical first issue. Then it introduces our villains’ new scheme.
Tune in Tuesday: We learn more about what the mustache-twirling villains are scheming, which may or may not involve moose and squirrel.
Thoughts? Comment!