Author: Merritt K

Categories
NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Insektors 🌭

In the early ’90s, computer animation was still in its infancy. Shows like Transformers: Beast Wars and ReBoot by Mainframe Entertainment and the decidedly more Christ-like Veggietales from this period have managed to stick in the public consciousness, but one CGI TV series from the era seems to have slipped out of history: Insektors. Produced by French studio Fantome in 1993, Insektors features all of the classic themes of early ’90s children’s entertainment: bugs, environmentalism, and the forcible conversion of your ideological enemies to your — the only correct — world view.

Starring a walking stick insect named Fulgor (David Gasman, who also voiced Goku in a bunch of Dragon Ball Z movies and has somehow appeared in every game by Quantic Dream), Insektors is the tale of the sunny, color-loving Joyces and their struggle against the villainous Yuks. It was a pretty standard set-up. The Yuks are industrialist bugs who have mined all of the coal out of their side of the planet and are now turning their sights on the abundant flower stalks in Joyce territory. It was very evil, and the exact same business model as most of the show’s sponsors.

What do they need all of these resources for? Building giant war machines to collect more resources, for one, but more importantly to throw into a giant furnace to keep their Queen warm. Is Insektors thus a metaphor for the real-world colonialist adventures that have fed the insatiable desires of the metropole through history? I’m going to say that yes, yes it is. Americans want low gas prices and the big insect Queen wants to stay warm. Same thing. Anyone telling you differently is about to throw you into an oven to keep their Queen warm. The oven knows it’s the bad guy by the way:

One might ask why the Queen doesn’t simply move someplace warmer than the Yuk’s frigid swamp. First off, maybe she likes it in the swamp. Maybe the swamp has good schools or it’s really walkable or something. Second, it’s implied that the Queen is in fact so cold because of how evil she is. This suggests that, were the Queen to cease in her quest for domination and destruction, she would be relieved of the very conditions which make it necessary in the first place. Oh, the irony! The cruel, probably not intended, Shakespearean irony!

Meanwhile, the Joyces are sustained by The Great Prism, a magical entity that can spontaneously grow plants. As it turns out, it’s rather easy to be pacifistic naturalists when all of your needs are supplied by an omnipotent crystal god. 

The Joyces spend their days embodying Marx’s adage of the man in communist society who spends the morning gardening, the afternoon making music, and the evening gathering pollen for the semi-sentient terraforming prism at the center of their culture. And we should follow their example. Let’s all work together and worship the prism.

It may seem like the Joyces are carefree layabouts who look like characters from a local exterminator commercial, but they aren’t idiots or cowards. When the Yuks start encroaching on their land and cutting down their flower forests to fuel their furnaces, they square up against the invaders with a ferocity that belies their beneficent image, like a drunk guy at Santacon.

Given how Insektors was aimed at young audiences and that it was developed well after the heyday of violent ’80s cartoons, Fantome seems to have been interested in portraying conflict in a way that didn’t rely on fisticuffs or laser battles. Thus, the Joyces resist the Yuks through technology like Fulgor’s Kolor Guitar. Behold:

When strummed, this instrument produces blasts of colorful energy which are harmless to Joyces, yet send Yuks into laughing fits. Rather than kill or maim, these weapons seem to literally convert their targets into peace-loving Joyces. An ethnic bioweapon, yes, but one where you can sincerely add the words, “wait let me explain.”

We should really stop to think about this for a minute. Mind controlling weapons were pretty common in ’90s cartoons, but they were typically wielded by villains. For one thing, it’s dramatic when a hero is turned against their allies. For another, bending the very will and identity of a living being is usually understood as pretty fucking evil. While plenty of kids’ stories end with the villains seeing the errors of their ways and recanting, few of these come to Jesus moments happen because the characters in question got hit by a personality-warping rainbow money shot. I hope. I actually don’t remember how Care Bear tummies worked.

The Yuks, those miserable bastards, don’t take this subversion of their free will sitting down. They have their own weapons called Koal Juice Guns, which cause depression in any Joyces they hit. Additionally, they’ve got a machine called the Dark Box they toss their incapacitated goons into to turn them back into sad industrialists. Presumably, they could also use it on Joyces to make them into Yuks. Again, the show was just acting out the best-case scenario for its advertisers.

So we have two civilizations — one industrialized and militaristic, the other nature-loving and peaceful. And both of them are armed with weapons that don’t outright annihilate their foes, but rather strip them of their very being and make them more like their wielders. Imagine living in this world, where in every conflict with your enemy you risk not just injury or death but the complete reversal of your personality. In their effort to make Insektors less violent, Fantome inadvertently created a vision of a hellish existence where the self is as fragile as the petals of a flower. It seems like something Philip K. Dick would come up with, not Saturday morning cartoon fodder.

Insektors isn’t all psychological horror, though — it’s also got some interesting worldbuilding. In the episode “Planet Karbon,” for instance, Prince Acylius of the Yuks has run away to live with the Joyces, preferring their music and color to his people’s… toil and misery, I guess. And yes, okay, that’s the exact same thing the show always does, but when he’s shown the Great Prism, Prince Acylius touches it and triggers a giant sky beam and booming voice that tells the story of the planet. 

Once upon a time, it seems, the only living things in the world were the Yuks. Then the Great Prism fell from space and introduced color and plants. While most were disturbed by this new presence, a few overcame their fears and were rewarded with the “awakening of their souls.” Which looked like the loading screen for a 1995 CD-ROM encyclopedia.

They developed a new way of life and became the Joyces. This is a fun kind of inversion of the typical “advanced” industrialist society versus the “primitive” hunter-gatherers. It suggests that the Yuks are the backwards ones, sticking as they do to their timeless plan of burning stuff for fuel until there isn’t any left.

That said, what exactly is the message here? That you should embrace novelty? That mysterious and incomprehensible sky shapes are to be trusted without question? Or is the Great Prism meant to stand in for clean nuclear power, perhaps? Was Insektors propaganda meant to get children onboard with fission reactors? Admittedly, probably not. But like all good art, it makes you wonder, right?

Lacking the brand recognition of Beast Wars and the on-trend computer theming of ReBoot, Insektors isn’t as well-remembered as its contemporaries. Maybe that’s because of how little of it there was — Fantome only produced 26 episodes, each of which is 12 minutes long. Maybe it’s because the characters look like first drafts of the cast of A Bug’s Life. Or maybe it’s because “Insektors” sounds like the name of a toy line of insect-themed superheroes sold exclusively at K-Mart for a few months in 1990 that six undiagnosed bug fetishists on the Internet are absolutely obsessed with to this day.

Insektors was released outside of its native France in both the UK and North America, and received two different English dubs. I grew up with the North American version, but watching it on YouTube it does seem that the UK version is the superior one even though it’s a little less faithful to the original. The voice acting is generally higher quality, and there are a lot of fun little bits that didn’t make it to the North American dub. 

For instance, in the NA dub a character complains that he’s allergic to flowers when caught in some rapidly-growing plants. In the UK, the line is “I’m in the Day of the wretched Triffids!” It’s truly a sad indictment of the state of American education that children of the ’90s wouldn’t get a John Wyndham joke.

And it isn’t just the voices or tenor of the humor that changed across the two versions — each region got different names for all of the show’s characters and locations, making the Wikipedia page for the series a real mess. Most of the differences aren’t especially notable — the Yuks become Kruds in the UK dub, and Fulgor is named Flynn — but there’s one crucial difference. 

In the UK, the evil Queen Bakrakra was named after a certain medical device. She isn’t Queen Krutch, or Queen Kannula, or Queen Kautery. Her name is Queen Katheter. In their effort to make Insektors more amusing to an audience of wry and sardonic children, the UK was, quite literally, taking the piss.

…

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Yossarian, who brainwashes squares with a guitar the old fashioned way: By fuckin’ shreddin’ it.

Categories
NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Balloonatiks 🌭

Who were your favorite superheroes in the 90s? The Power Rangers? The X-Men? How about the Balloonatiks? What’s that? You don’t remember the Balloonatiks?

Maybe you could be forgiven, considering that I am literally the only person on the planet who does. The Balloonatiks were a superhero team with a difference. Unlike, say, the Avengers, they were made out of balloons instead of the more traditional meat and bones.

You’ve got Flator, the macho jock of the bunch. He can inflate or deflate himself, but apparently can’t entirely control his power — he literally grows or shrinks in response to praise and criticism, respectively. He also wears huge sunglasses and pump-up sneakers, because he’s a totally cool ’90s dude– a terrible affliction when your super abilities are powered by compliments. Is there a darker backstory than this? Flator needs love to survive, and he’s the fucking worst.

Next, there’s Airhead. He’s your typical brainy character and he kind of reminds me of Widget the World Watcher. His power is inhaling and exhaling with great force. I guess you could say that Airhead both sucks and blows. I could have said the same about Flator, but that would have killed him.

Ballooney, whose name means Humaney in our language, is the joker of the crew. He can bounce around and roll himself into a bowling ball, which is apparently not only his special ability, but his hobby. It’s outrageous that any creator would see Ballooney and think, “Yes, this idea is coming together. I should keep going.” But they did.

Every ’90s superhero group needs The Girl, and The Balloonatiks have Squeeker. You know how balloons are squeaky? Well, that’s Squeeker’s power. Her bows are “supersonic superspeakers,” so you know she means business. We’ve covered all aspects of the balloon so far: insecurity, blowing, bowling, and noisy. What could be next?

It’s Stretch. He’s… well, he’s a cowboy balloon. He says cowboy stuff, like “y’all jus make me wanna rope a goat.” Is that something a cowboy would say? The Balloonatiks would certainly have you believe it to be. Stretch can, as his name implies, stretch out. He also has a sentient water balloon companion/gun that lives in his holster. The mask covering his face has its own face, and I think that’s worth repeating. The mask covering his face has its own face.

The Lex Luthor to the Balloonatiks’ Justice League is The Needler, a man in a shiny suit who is by all accounts a balloon fetishist. You know how there are poppers and blowers? He’s a popper. Just unashamedly horny for popping in his bio.

He’s accompanied by “Secret Agent” Barb Wire and here I want to point out that The Balloonatiks predates the Pamela Anderson movie by five years, though Barb Wire had already been the roller derby name for every city’s Barbaras for over a decade. Barb considers herself the “Queen of Pop,” which means ruining balloons makes up most of her personality. Their minions are the robotic Pinheads: Sticky, Tacky, and Al, a naming convention absolutely not ripped off of Pac-Man’s ghosts.

The Balloonatiks launched in 1991 with a single comic issue, written by the franchise creator as well as then-Chairman and CEO of Balloonatiks International, Inc, Tony DiIoia. Unlike the Conservation Corps, which I was able to find online, no scans of The Balloonatiks exist on the internet, so I had to purchase a copy myself in order to read it. The issue came packaged in a plastic envelope sealed with a sticker informing me that this was a Collectors Edition of Balloonatiks #1 and retailed for $4.95 US. With shipping, I paid nearly double that, so I guess it’s retained its value.

Removing the comic from its sealed packaging felt like a momentous event. For all I knew, nobody but the people who worked on this thing had ever seen it. The excitement drips off the first page, printed in all-caps and informing us that this issue is only the beginning of the adventures of the Balloonatiks. It’s even signed and individually numbered by DiIoia — I’ve got 853 of 1000. They really had high hopes for these sentient latex golems.

The comic begins not with The Balloonatiks themselves, but with The Needler and Barb Wire celebrating as they watch the Pinheads popping the tires of cars, their ultimate plan. And these low stakes are making Barb extremely horny. All in all, it’s a perfect intro. May it give everyone prickly heat.

Meanwhile, Dr. Sigmund “Pop” Swellhead, the world’s only “latexologist,” is working in his lab when he and his assistants/maybe grandkids find out about the traffic situation on the news. What’s a balloon-obsessed scientist to do? Why, put out an inter-“gallactic” S.O.S. on the “balloonicator,” of course!

Far away on the planet, sigh, Noollab, the Grand Exalted Windbag has a problem: The Balloonatiks. I have to admit, it’s a pretty bold move to have your superhero team be introduced as so fucking terrible that their home planet wants them gone. They’re apparently causing all kinds of problems on Noollab, so the G.E.W. is more than happy to pawn them off on Earth when he gets Pop’s distress call. 

The Balloonatiks don’t seem to get along very well, either. Flator blames Airhead for their predicament, while Squeeker goes off on Flator for being a meathead. And here’s something I hadn’t considered going into this: when a water balloon calls your balloon mother a whoopie cushion, is that a slur?

Regardless, The Balloonatiks travel to Earth and land in Dr. Swellhead’s balloon store. Swellhead goes by the nickname “Pop,” but they have no time to take the bait for this obvious dick joke. They’re terrified of the fleshy creature that stands before them. And who can blame them? They’ve gone from a planet where everything is made out of clean, colorful rubber to one where people and animals are made out of wet, filthy muscles and guts. If The Balloonatiks had been a bigger property, we definitely would have gotten an IDW reboot in the 2010s where one of them develops a compulsion to purge the world of unclean flesh.

Pop says he’s filled the Balloonatiks with “balloon juice” and gives them a supply to keep on hand. It is never explained what balloon juice is or why it is necessary. Is it required to stabilize The Balloonatiks on Earth due to the different atmospheric conditions of our planet versus Noollab? Is it a lube? Is it some kind of food? Is it a chemical Pop invented to keep The Balloonatiks under his control, which is why he’s so insistent that they consume it everyday? Is it a sexual lube? We will never know. But I feel like we landed on balloon sex lubricant.

While this transpires, The Needler watches from his villainous base of operations, the Haystack. He’s pretty committed to his bit, I’ll give him that. He’s apparently somehow already familiar with The Balloonatiks, but decides to take the fight to them in order to use their powers to take over the world. I thought his deal was that he was just an extremely specific kind of Joker who liked popping things, but I guess he’s got bigger ambitions. Good for him.

At this point in the comic, we get a two-page spread informing us of the exciting Balloonatiks products to expect in the future. I have no idea whether there were ever Balloonatiks toys, keychains, “Flator’s footwear,” or drinks (???). I do know, however, there was Balloonatiks bedding, because my parents bought it for me from a Costco in the early 90s, and it’s the only reason I’m familiar with them. Thanks, mom and dad — I wouldn’t be here without you.

The Needler sends his Pinheads to attack the Balloonatiks, so I guess his plan to use their powers to take over the world still works with their ruptured remains? Flator makes a snide comment about not having been deflated yesterday, which raises some questions about the Noollabian reproduction process. Some details seem intentionally wrong as if to wink at adult readers, “Yes, this is all a sex thing.”

The Needler bursts in with a static ray gun because everything here is exhaustingly on theme, and we learn his origin story. Pop popped a balloon in his ear at his 10th birthday party, and now he’s obsessed with the sound. This sounds pretty weak, but to be fair, consider that the most famous comic book villain’s most well-known backstory is “fell in some chemicals.”

Things look bad for our heroes, but then Squeeker says she “needs” Flator and calls him a “handsome hunk of He-Man,” which makes him get bigger. I’m not sure they considered the implications here. Or they very much did and their intended audience is, ngghh, almost there.

Flator pumps up his shoes, because it’s the early ’90s, and he and the rest of the crew kick The Needler’s ass and somehow reinflate all of the popped tires in the city, which again, were the stakes.

The Needler and Barb Wire (who didn’t get to do much) re-state their intention to destroy The Balloonatiks, and we’re out. It was an utter bankruptcy of ideas before they finished a single issue.

Balloonatiks #1 came with a poster and map of Noollab, featuring locations like “Big Knot” and “Inflation Station.” Moving on.

The comic also included a balloon featuring a print of the Pinheads on it, but when I tried to pull it apart to inflate it, the decades-old rubber, which was sticky and probably toxic, tore. They should have gotten some of Dr. Swellhead’s non-deflatable latex!

We never got another issue of The Balloonatiks comics, but the franchise didn’t die there. There was a Balloonatiks float with some Pinhead balloons in the 1992 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and Mr. DiIoia has tried to resurrect the concept a few times over the decades.

During the first effort to bring the Balloonatiks back in the mid-’90s, some of the character names and details were changed, as evidenced by the archived Balloonatiks site. Flator and Airhead are pretty much the same, but the other characters got some added details. Squeeker’s bio, for instance, explains she can not only crack glass or hypnotize her foes with her sonic powers, but also “turn on fax machines.” Even for the ’90s, that’s pretty lame. Creatively speaking, it has real “looking around the room at my day job” energy.

Perhaps because they realized that “Ballooney” was a terrible name, that character became “Bouncer.” In this iteration, he’s a big round guy who apparently gets picked on for being fat. First of all, not cool, other Balloonatiks. Second, he’s literally a balloon. Balloons are round! Bouncer can still roll around, but he can also impersonate people now, which feels less like a superpower and more like a weak party trick.

Finally, Stretch became L.A. Tex. His name doesn’t make any sense unless he’s like, a Texan transplant who lives in the valley, but that doesn’t matter — there are balloon puns to be made, damnit. Tex’s bio informs us that he “wishes he was born a cowboy instead of a balloon,” which is an immensely depressing sentence.

This revised Balloonatiks line-up starred in a 1996 cartoon Christmas special on Fox Kids in which The Needler and Barb Wire kidnap Santa Claus. The Wayback Machine’s snapshot of the official site around the time also features some newspaper-style comic strips featuring Flator and the gang. They are tragic. They’re like Family Circus if it was more sexist and -for absolutely no reason- everyone was balloons.

These efforts were evidently not enough to win America over, and The Balloonatiks once again sank into obscurity. But even this, this catastrophic failure, was not the end of The Balloonatiks. According to an old press release, DiIoia relaunched them in 2006. These new Balloonatiks were, as was the style in the 2000s, teens who transformed into CGI balloon-based superheroes.

Flator, Bouncer, and Squeeker were still there, though they’d been completely redesigned. Airhead had been turned into “Airbrain,” an objectively worse name. And L.A. Tex/Stretch? He’d been obliterated, stricken from the pages of history. In his place was Sparky, a second female Balloonatik with powers over static electricity. There was also a balloon frog.

As far as I can tell, the CGI teen Balloonatiks show never aired, but there were a few DVDs produced around 2010, and you can watch some clips as well as the intro — which is allegedly by Ray Parker Jr. — on YouTube. And that appears to have been the last hurrah for our inflatable friends.

The Balloonatiks site seems to have finally gone down in 2021. What happened to Tony DiIoia? Who is he, and why was he so passionate about balloon-based superheroes? Are we going to pretend we don’t know it’s a sex thing? Where did the money for all of this come from? We may never know. DiIoia has a LinkedIn account, but hasn’t posted in a while. (His experience is listed as “ceo” of “Kids projects.”) It seems like he’s possibly involved in an animation studio that does NFTs. Balloonatiks NFTs when, Tony? At the very least, give us that gritty reboot I mentioned. I don’t want to have to write Balloonatiks fanfiction, but I will if I have to. Consider yourself warned.

Merritt K is a game expert and designer. When praised, she can inflate in order to blow down enemies and doors.

Categories
NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: The Conservation Corps 🌭

In the ’90s, most children knew the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from their TV show or traveling musical act. Or their toys, video games, or snack crackers. Maybe their clothing merchandise or gelatin dessert, but there was a whole other world of ninja turtles running parallel to ours no one knew about. The Archie Adventure Series’ Eastman and Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a place where ninja ideas unfit for pasta shapes were sent to be rendered into nunchuck lubricant. Case in point: the Conservation Corps.

Playing into the milquetoast environmentalism that solved climate change in the 1990s, the Conservation Corps is how a grandmother might remember the Captain Planet episode where she had to be defibrillated. We first meet them when the turtles prank their ninja master with water balloons (impolite plus an unthinkable environmental crime) and see a news report about a massive oil spill:

They immediately decide to head over to try to help. The question of how four mutant turtles with ninja weapons are going to meaningfully assist in such an ecological disaster is left to the reader.

The alien, a generic Abin Sur nerd named Benevolence, arrives on Earth to help spread the good word of eco-friendliness. Unfortunately, he immediately crashes. His first act of environmental outreach is becoming a pile of burning, biohazardous waste. His second is sending out his “Enviro-Pods” to transform normal animals into ecological superheroes. They are: Water Buffalo, Firefly, Stone Hedgehog, and Green Horn (he’s a rhino).

It’s a foolproof plan. “Star creature, you have a one day lifespan and a brain that recognizes only threatening movement or edible poop. I give you the power of unlimited fire!” Anyway, the confused living weapons soon find themselves helping the ninjas with an oil spill. Which is lucky because, again, the turtles and Splinter brought four stabbing weapons, five sticks, and a rowboat to deal with a million gallons of crude oil in the deep sea.

Speaking of threats, a superhero team is only as good as their nemesis. The turtles had the fearsome Shredder and his Foot Clan, plus Krang, the Rat King, and a whole mess of memorable minor antagonists. So who do they need the Conservation Corps’ assistance to defeat? Who is the threat the turtles have to job against to get the Conservation Corps over?

Oily Bird. I’m not kidding. He’s a bird who got some oil on him, which somehow transformed him into a giant creature capable of controlling oil all over the world. How the Corps even get to the scene of the turtles’ fight with Oily Bird is wild in itself — they’re taken into the mouth of a transdimensional being named Cudley the Cowlick that appears as a giant floating cow head and spat out near Splinter and the boys. Being eaten and squirted across time by the living embodiment of cow judgment was the ’90s TMNT comics version of “yadda yadda.”

Oily Bird’s final gambit is to try to launch the Earth towards the sun by propelling it with an enormous oil geyser, but they manage to foil his incredibly unlikely plan with the power of teamwork. And when I say teamwork, I mean everyone took turns hitting him in the eye with weapons and rocks. There’s no clearer way to describe their plan than “Let’s go beat the shit out of that fucking duck.”

Cudley the giant floating cow head takes him back to the alien’s home planet of Danopaulus which sounds stupid and is going to sound worse when you learn the series creators are named Dan Nakrosis and Paul Castiglia. Ah, but Benevolence had sent out a fifth Enviro-Pod and there are only four present members of the Conservation Corps, so they say their farewells to the turtles and go looking for their lost “brother.” They don’t seem to have a choice here. It’s worth mentioning they call the drunk driver who rewrote their DNA this morning, “Sire.”

From there, the Conservation Corps got their own short comic series at Archie Comics. And if you go into these thinking there aren’t a bunch of short strips inserted throughout where Archie characters get terrorized by recycling fairies, you have made a terrible mistake.

In the first issue, the Corps are transported back to Danopaulus and we learn Benevolence attempted to warn his fellow citizens of the consequences of their exploitation of nature, but nobody listened. No one listened to his rants on window slits shouted from his space bed! “Limp right wing talking points,” they replied!

This is a species with intergalactic teleportation technology and orbs that turn any animal into a loyal, fuckable superman and they’re bickering about how clean air regulations might hurt the economy? This could have been a substantive take on what beings would do with unlimited muscled buffalo men, but no, they just do a cartoon fascism. They arrest Benevolence, the Corps, and anyone else opposing the empire. That’s the cliffhanger– sanctimonious knockoffs thrown in jail on a world that makes no sense. And they wrapped it up with an announcement for Conservation Corps trading cards. They really thought these guys were going places, huh? There’s also a couple of ads for something called Brach’s ROCKS. It was a candy named “ROCKS” that looked so much like rocks that 80% of its marketing was dedicated to explaining to the consumer it wasn’t, like, really rocks.

In issue two, Water Buffalo finally discovers the Corps’ lost brother, and it turns out it isn’t a brother at all! It’s a humanoid, female shark. With breasts. Some might say luscious ones.

Sky Shark is immediately suspicious of Water Buffalo and the whole Corps nonsense, but he takes her back to Danopaulus, where remember: Benevolence and the impossible animal superheroes have been captured by the government. Their evil plan? They’re going to convince the public that everything is fine through the use of devices generating subliminal messages that trick people into seeing beautiful landscapes instead of the blasted hellworld their planet has become. The villain is basically Space Reaganomics with a very dumb magic trick added.

I understand not everyone has the vision of “what if a shark had tits,” but you’ve got technology that can cause mass hallucinations and this is what you’re doing with it? You could have convinced the population to eat Brach’s ROCKS and then made Brach’s ROCKS out of factory runoff, wait, did I just figure out the Brach’s ROCKS origin story?

How is the government going to deal with Benevolence and his mutated animal squad? The same way the sister of a protagonist in an Ari Aster movie might do a murder-suicide on her family: with deadly, odorless carbon monoxide. Sky Shark and Water Buffalo locate the Corps and rescue them, but they’re not out of the woods yet because Sky Shark reveals she wants to fucking eat people. It’s played for… laughs?

Jesus Christ, someone who worked on this book was really horny for this shark. It’s very distracting, but with the help of the people who were inspired and not at all horrified by a bunch of talking animals, they rise up against the government and destroy the subliminal transmitters. But we’re not quite done yet. Remember Oily Bird? Someone named Malevolence turned him into a cyborg, and he’s now Robo-Oily Bird! The confrontation has to wait until issue three, however. We’ve got kids to scam with an ad for the Olympia Sales Club! Remember that? I can’t imagine being an adult in the early 90s and having every nephew, niece, and neighbor’s kid try to sell you stationary so they could get a Game Genie or copy of Mall Madness.

By issue three, things are getting real. The Conservation Corps must do battle against the first foe they ever faced, now souped-up with radicool robotics. “How did we beat the duck last time?” they think. “Oh, yeah,” they remember.

Even the zero Conservation Corps fans would expect this to be an issue-spanning epic battle, but it’s actually over pretty quickly. Robo-Oily Bird tries ’90s misogyny at Sky Shark, she asphyxiates him, and we’re out. 

We learn that Malevolence is Benevolence’s brother, and the Corps return to Earth to prevent it from heading down the same path as Danopaulus. Based on everything we’ve learned, the simplest way to do this would be to lead a coup against governments around the world, but since it’s the ’90s and papa Archie likely wouldn’t approve of a comic promoting ecoterrorism, they’re going to encourage kids to sort their paper and plastic instead. Basically, the message is that we will only meaningfully fight climate change when it is a sexist duck.

But the issue’s only halfway through! Now we get a frame story where a horrifying-looking kid named Frankie is telling us all about how he met his pals, the Conservation Corps. Who’s Frankie? Why, he’s the human friend of the Conservation Corps, of course! Here, I’ll let him explain it. Well, not “it,” but literally all other things starting with dinosaurs.

Frankie tells us about a meteor crashing into Kearny, New Jersey and somehow reviving a T. rex skeleton, which reforms itself using a styrofoam cup. The champion-named Strannofoamus Rex then goes on a rampage across New Jersey, and we get some pretty funny reactions from around the country. You’ve gotta feel bad for New Jersey at a time like this — they get hit by a meteor, then have to deal with a rampaging dinosaur skeleton, and the White House is joking about nuking the place. Even the Corps doesn’t want to help. Our national policy for a New Jersey emergency is to pitch jokes to Jay Leno.

Of course, they eventually do show up to take on the ecological menace. Firefly wants to roast the bastard to death, and I can’t say I blame him — if I could light things on fire with my mind, that would probably be my go-to solution as well. But Water Buffalo, that wet blanket, points out that burning styrofoam is bad for the environment. Firefly had no idea– a troubling reminder that these powerful beings are only a few days old and just one of them knows not to eat people or burn toxic waste.

But no fire means, shit, then how are they going to deal with the situation? We will never, ever find out, because issue three ends on a cliffhanger. The cup dinosaur is killing New (ha ha) Jersey, Frankie is getting called away by his off-screen mother, and there was never an issue four. It was as predictable as it was not disappointing. The Corps were left frozen in the early ’90s forever.

I should mention that this was not a low effort production. In every issue of the Conservation Corps, well-known guest artists were called in to illustrate the characters in their own styles. Some of these are pretty fun, like Fred Hembeck’s art of the Corps playing golf.

This means the batch of guest art at the back of issue three is the last time anyone ever saw the Corps. So, how did Archie see these characters out? Did we get another scene of them with the Ninja Turtles? Maybe a fun illustration of them helping out at a local recycling program?

No, it’s a pin-up of Sky Shark by, I’m fairly sure, Amanda Conner. Statistically, this was the sexual awakening for at least one furry, right? I desperately want to meet the person who realized what they were into through a mini-series about environmentalist anthropomorphic animals who team up with the Ninja Turtles. On second thought, maybe I don’t.