INEXPLICABLE OBJECT OF THE WEEK
Week of 7/23/00:
WEEK 119
Tod Holton, Super Green Beret
Quick! Fill in this blank:
"GI's ambushed by the enemy!
This calls for--"
No matter what you choose,
I guarantee that it won't be anywhere near the first thought that leaps into the mind
(if that's what you'd call it)
of Tod Holton, Super Green Beret.
Yes, folks, we have something very special here.
Feast upon the scene: Tod Holton, Super Green Beret, is breaking a guy's neck as he kicks away his gun as he knocks him into this guy's head who's apparently three feet tall as he flings up (or down--hard to tell from the inept artwork) yet another guy as he rubs his tummy as he pats his head while a gigantic dust bunny attacks his beret.
And below it are the words "True Combat Action."
I've bought comic books where I've hated the writing or the art, but this is so, so horrific an atrocity that it's not so much an Inexplicable Object as a potential trial at the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. I also ended up immediately hating the colorist, and the letterer, and the company that put this out, and the Comics Code Authority for approving this bile, and The Big Bang for creating a universe that would allow a Tod Holton, Super Green Beret comic book to exist 15 billion years later.
Oh, yeah--the question:
"GI's ambushed by the enemy!
This calls for--"
"...MAGIC MONKEYS to appear!"
If you'd locked me in a room the day this comic came out and refused to let me leave until I'd answered that question in Holtonese, a third of a century later I'd still be in there.
You'd think from the title that Tod has the powers of Superman.
No, he has the powers of GOD.
A really stupid, goofy God.
I mean, the machine guns aren't stopping the Viet Cong, so chimps throwing coconuts will? Or, ha ha ha, a gorilla will stop the guerillas with a primate bitch slap. Tod hasn't even the meager imagination to make it a GIANT gorilla, which would've given the writer the chance to work another stupid pun into the script. He could be called "King Cong"! Or "Donkey Kong the Cong Conker"!
I bought this little 1967 gem thinking "There's got to be a panel or two of utter stupidity in here."
EVERY panel of this comic could be an InExOb in and of itself: The writer's a hack, the artist is a drunk, the colorist is a racist, and the letterer only took the job so he could save up enough money to someday buy a dictionary. So--
Here's every panel. 15 web pages worth.
Enjoy, and keep the ibuprofen handy.
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©2000 Bill Young