New York is a dangerous place, even if you’re a gargoyle. The clan faces off against Dracon, while Elisa hunts evidence against a murderer.
Miss last week’s? Read Always Darkest Before the Dawn review.
Gargoyles Clan-Building: Issue 3: “Rude Awakening”
Reason(s) for existence: Disney wanted to make more money.
Main antagonist(s): Dracon and Co
Time(s): Between Long Way To Morning and Reawakening
Location(s): NYC, NY, USA
Here we are at issue 3. It’s called Rude Awakening.
Elisa is still narrating. We get the visual while she supplies audio of what happens to Lexington. He wakes up just as Dracon is about to crush him with a fire iron. Lexington is amazingly alert for just waking up.
Lexington knocks a statue onto Dracon, then – we cut to the clock tower.
Elisa is just waking up from where she fell asleep waiting for the gargoyles to wake up.
She fills them in on the murder of Price, that gun running idiot of Dracon’s.
Everybody’s worried about the trio, too.
Brooklyn is waking up in a warehouse. The night watchman starts shooting him.
Back to Lexington. He gets away, but not before Dracon and his pal tear up some of the hotel’s statuary.
Lexington returns to the Clock Tower and tells everybody what happened. Elisa needs the gun and the bullet from the murderer. The gun is under the sewer grate, and Broadway has the bullet.
We have a side plot of Bronx chewing gum.
Broadway, meanwhile, is waking up in a lawn-art store. He doesn’t do it very stealthily. He manages to break some of the statues.
The owners, an older couple by the name and Sol and Sophie, spot him.
At the clock tower, everyone is wondering about Brooklyn and Broadway. Also, Lexington realizes that his tracker bracelet came off. Not sure how this happened. It was on before he woke up. Maybe he lost it when he turned to flash? I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention.
Brooklyn escapes from the overzealous watchman. However, apparently it’s a very still night so there isn’t much wind to glide on. I don’t know, I sat through the entire Gargoyles TV series, and this was never an issue. I think this is just a convenient plot device.
Dracon is figuring out that he can use the tracker from Lexington’s wrist to find the other gargoyles. I’m not sure how he knows this. I guess he thinks that if there’s one with the band, there must be more.
The phone rings. This of course is Elisa, distracting them.
She gives the Gargoyles a signal that she’s going in. It looks like the telephone sign.
Fighting ensues.
Elisa leaves. She goes home, and Beth arrives soon after.
The gargoyles get the bracelet back, but it comes too late.
Dracon and his goon, though injured, are still thinking straight. Dracon has Glasses pick up one of those wristbands. Apparently it’s not radar that it uses, it’s radio waves like a tracking collar. Except apparently it doesn’t need an antenna like a tracking collar receiver. Whatever. They figure that they can send it to the same frequency and find the gargoyles. Well, I hope nobody else is using that same frequency, you’re not out of range, and no structures block the waves.
Brooklyn uses downwash from the helicopter to glide to a bus. But the Clan sees him before he can go through the tunnel to Queens.
Unfortunately, Dracon’s guys are watching them. They figure the garg’s are going to split up.
Apparently Broadway got along great with Sophie and Sol, because they’re packing him with food.
Meanwhile, Brooklyn is facing off against Dracon’s thugs while Brooklyn attempts to retrieve the murder weapon.
Goliath and Lex get Broadway.
But then Dracon, Glasses, and another thug roll up. They fight. They destroy property. Then they knock out the perps.
Broadway hands over the bullet.
With the gun and bullet, Elisa apparently has enough to convict the murderer. Sure, whatever. Go on and try it.
Ten miles out into the ocean, the Gen U Tech ship is dumping its failed test subject. They give it to some guy in a speedboat. Now, I don’t know why you wouldn’t just incinerate it or throw it in the waste grinder on the ship.
Not surprisingly, the test subject wakes up from unconsciousness, bashes through the box they had her nailed in, then attacks the poor idiot driving the boat.
Final Thoughts
I think everybody knows how I feel about Dracon. He’s pretty flat for a Gargoyles antagonist. Also, he’s a gangster, and those just get too stereotypical for me to be interested in. I was never a Sopranos or Godfather fan. Maybe because I spent fifteen years in Florida with a bunch of New Yorker Italian transplants?
I’m beginning to suspect that the connection between Gen U Tech and Dracon – that he was getting them test subjects – is the writers’ dubious and heavy-handed way of linking the two plots.
This one had more comic relief than what I’m used to. Unless I’m dealing with something that’s supposed to be funny, I’m not a big fan of scenes or characters that exist solely for laughs. Witty humor that took effort to develop is far more satisfying.
Tune in Tuesday: we see what becomes of this new chick, who is part gargoyle. The trio is quite taken with her, but she’s not quite what she seems.
Thoughts? Comment!