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Nerding Day: Paparazzi Samurai 🌭
I’ve covered a number of different children’s properties created by Marty Abrams and his production company, Abrams Gentile Entertainment. They brought us, among other things, Dragon Flyz and Sky Dancers, Van-Pires, and Snailiens. In short, their MO was to invent toys which could injure children, and failing that, to create the kinds of television shows that would only ever exist as half-remembered dreams in the minds of adults years later until some asshole wrote several thousand words on each of them. But the stories of AGE’s tangible successes are perhaps less interesting than those of their many, many failures.
See, ever since I discovered that AGE’s site was somehow still online, I’ve had a white whale of sorts. Go to their brands page and among the listings for “Happy Ness,” “Popcorn Pretties,” and the Power Glove (far from the most bad thing here), you’ll find one for something called “Paparazzi Samurai.”
As best as I could tell, Paparazzi Samurai was an attempt to create a line of nonviolent boys’ superheroes. See, the ’90s were a brutal period. We weren’t yet making cartoons about how it was ok to have feelings or be different. Cartoons were about solving your problems with lasers, adamantium claws, and giant robots built like dinosaurs. Mainly, though; they were about selling toys.
Enter the Paparazzi Samurai. Instead of shooting bad guys, they “shoot” the truth! But there were no Paparazzi Samurai toys on the shelves of Toys R Us. There was no Paparazzi Samurai cartoon. An entry in the 1998 International Television and Video Almanac claimed that there were 26 episodes slated for production. Oh, Marty, were you ever so young and hopeful?
Allegedly, AGE produced a comic strip starring the characters for publication in an issue of “Movies” magazine, which seems to have been one of those little booklets you could pick up for free at theaters in the ’90s and 2000s. Not only can I not find this issue anywhere, I can barely find evidence that Movies magazine existed in the first place. There are tiny, indecipherable shots of the pages on AGE’s site, along with slightly more legible art of the three main characters, so the comic almost certainly existed, but it appears to have been lost to time.
I’ve stewed on this for over a year. I’ve tweeted about it, dreamed about it. I don’t think Paparazzi Samurai is important “lost media,” but something about it consumed me. Therapists tried and failed to convince me to let it go. It cost me relationships — I’d wake up in the middle of the night, hollering, “It’s TMZ for kids – Get the Picture!”
On a recent trip to New York, I sought out the office building that, according to Google, Abrams Gentile’s office is located in. “Why, there haven’t been Paparazzi Samurai here in 50 years!” The security guard, who was also a ghost, told me.
I desperately wanted to write about this… show? Comic? Stillborn concept from the mind-womb of Marty Abrams? But there just wasn’t enough to go on.
Until now.
AGE’s site, as outdated as it is, doesn’t have embedded links to YouTube for its video content. Instead, it simply presents a link asking you to download Quicktime Player. I figured that any original video files might have been lost to link rot, until on a whim I decided to poke around with Inspect Element. What I discovered shocked and delighted me: a 240p, two a half minute long live-action trailer for Paparazzi Samurai.
(Of course, then I realized if you open the page on Chrome rather than Safari, which I still use, like a total asshole, it automatically downloads the video. But it’s still not like anybody but me has ever thought to seek this shit out.)
I have uploaded the video to YouTube for posterity.
And now, let us begin.
We open, with an echoing gong, on an elderly man sitting amidst a number of candles. He appears to be of Chinese extraction, wearing a traditional changshan and rounded hat.
Samurai, it must be said up front, are not from China. And this was the late ’90s— Americans were starting to actually know the difference between China and Japan by then. But I digress. If we get stuck on which cultures Paparazzi Samurai is insensitive to and in which ways, we’ll be here forever.
“In our short time together,” our man tells us, “I have taught Felix, Al, and Maurice many things.” We get our first look at the Paparazzi Samurai here, or should I say, our proto-paparazzi. See, these warriors of photography aren’t just desperate ghouls seeking out compromising pictures of celebrities to pay their alimony bills. Neither are they, like the Power Rangers, teens with attitude.
Make no mistake: they have no attitude. They are attitude voids, into which all attitude is helplessly drawn. They are full-on dorks.
It’s hard to tell from the low resolution, but one of them inexplicably appears to be a balding, elderly man of at least 50. They have terrible posture and dress sense and lack any knowledge of personal hygiene, as the master explains.
But he has taught them much, in addition to the importance of deodorizing one’s balls. He has taught them right from wrong, good from evil. And also a bunch of photography stuff.
Here’s where I wish I had the design bible for Paparazzi Samurai, because I would love to know more about this mentor guy and why he is so invested in the personal development of three dudes he seems to fucking hate.
The textual setup is going for Karate Kid, but the fact that he’s teaching them to stealthily take photos lays bare a darker possibility where he’s convinced three socially awkward men that snapping shots of nude celebs for his personal use is actually a moral good.
Maybe I’m making a mountain out of a Morita stand-in. Or am I?
“Their mission: to expose themselves — excuse me, to expose the truth,” our guy continues.
I’m not sure how many people that line made it past in the production cycle, but regardless: it was too many. Maybe nobody knew how to say no to Marty Abrams after Van-Pires. When the guy who invented automotive vampirism tells you to put a joke in your video pitch about how maybe the three men whose superpower is taking photographs of depressed celebrities walking to the store in sweatpants also reveal their genitals to unwilling audiences sometimes, you don’t question it. You just fucking do it.
It’s like George Lucas telling you to name your protagonist “Darth Icky,” except you actually listen to him. Marty Abrams invented the modern action figure!
The master — who in this short video remains nameless — finishes explaining that through forbidden Eastern wizardry and a cocktail of untested Western research pharmaceuticals, he has created a trio of picture-taking supermen. I mean, he doesn’t come right out and say that, but it’s implied.
The Paparazzi Samurai wield great power — taking pictures of things — and are charged with an equally great responsibility — coincidentally, also taking pictures of things.
“The truth is out there,” the master says. “They just have to take a picture of it…
and see what develops.”
For an AGE production, that qualifies as decent wordplay. These are the same people who wrote the dialogue in Van-Pires, which was 95% car puns.
Anyway, it’s time for the big reveal! Let’s get a look at those beautiful boys. PAPARAZZI SAMURAI ROLL CALL:
Felix: love the filmstrip belt and bandolier and the camera belt buckle. One note, though, buddy: that is entirely too much shmeat. You look like you’re a novelty superhero created for an overly ambitious ’90s porno, which, for all I know, is maybe what Paparazzi Samurai was originally going to be.
Al, fantastic energy you’re bringing here. Really getting into the whole martial arts angle with that pose. Not getting the photography angle so much outside of the filmstrip headband.
Maurice: you’re killing it, baby! Wonderful filmstrip suspenders. The vibe I’m getting here is “rarely-picked character from a third-rate Mortal Kombat clone that everybody hates.” Perfect.
Together, these three jamokes are the Paparazzi Samurai!
Do we have a theme song? You better believe we do.
PAP-PAP-PAPARAZZI
SAMURAI
WHEN EVERYTHING CLICKS
AND YOU SHOOT TO STILL
YOU GOTTA GET THE PICTURE
OR SOMEONE ELSE WILL
COME ON
YOU ALL KNOW THE DRILL
SMILE, GET FOCUSED
THAT’S THE GREATEST THRILL
WE GOT THE FILM WE GOT GUTS
WE GOT REALLY COOL PHOTO STUFF
What kind of “photo stuff?” How about Felix’s camera belt buckle, which turns into a hundred rotating cameras.
I hear you: that’s fine for taking a 360-degree panorama of everyone’s crotches, but it’s not splashy enough. Splashy, huh? How about the same spinning camera ring… attached to an umbrella for some reason?
GOD IS DEAD AND MARTY ABRAMS HAS TAKEN HIS THRONE. HE IS THE INVENTOR OF THE MODERN ACTION FIGURE. IF HE WANTS A RING OF CAMERAS ATTACHED TO A CAMERA COMING OUT OF A BALD WHITE SAMURAI’S HEAD THEN THAT’S WHAT HE’S GOING TO GET.
You cry out for more. Give us more cool photo stuff, Marty. He has heard your pleas. No superhero is complete without a cool car, right? How about a big yellow taxi?
Sorry, I meant to say “a big yellow taxi that’s also an entire movie production crew.”
WE’RE THE GOOD GUYS OF COURSE
WE’RE THE PHOTO FIGHTING FORCE
WE DON’T HURT NOBODY
BECAUSE WE GET OUR KICKS
EVERYTIME THE CAMERA CLICKS
Right! It’s easy to lose sight of in all of the camera puns, but the whole idea of Paparazzi Samurai was to create a non-violent superhero team. They don’t solve problems with their fists, they—
They immediately fuck everything up by using their fists?
Here’s what happens: the Paparazzi Samurai somehow hear Steven Seagal steal a little girl’s ice cream cone in a park. They burst out of the woods, and Felix does a bunch of flippy karate nonsense before palm striking the ice cream off of the cone, essentially escalating dessert theft into a midday park brawl for no goddamn reason.
But don’t forget, they have cameras!
They take their shot, and…
I didn’t cut anything out here. The Paparazzi Samurai pull out their cameras and snap a picture of the ice cream criminal, at which point he is instantly bound and gagged (with film, natch) while the unattended child is left sitting atop his helpless form, ice cream restored to its rightful owner.
What are we to assume here? The simplest and most logical explanation is that, blinded by three simultaneous flash bulbs, the villain was stunned and quickly hog-tied, after which the Paparazzi Samurai went and bought the girl a new ice cream cone. But there’s another possibility, which is that they’re so good at taking pictures that they can actually alter reality to suit their whims. Both scenarios are somehow more stupid than the other.
And is that really the stakes we’re going with? A girl had her ice cream stolen? Not to get dark here, but of all of the possible outcomes of a strange man interacting with a child in a New York City park, that’s got to be one of the best ones you could hope for.
The thing is, camera-wielding superheroes isn’t one of those concepts that’s doomed from the start, like teens who turn into car monsters and fight space alien car vampires. Maybe one week they head to a conflict zone to document human rights abuses, and another they’re looking into political corruption that goes all the way to the top! Really, there’s countless possibilities.
Hell, they could have had a crossover with Van-Pires where they were trying to prove the existence of Tracula and his minions but were frustrated again and again by the fact that, as vampires, they didn’t show up on film!
Instead, they wave their cameras around midtown Manhattan while doing martial arts stunts, punish a strange man for stealing ice cream, and no third thing.
So, fine, not the best proof of concept. And sure, Paparazzi Samurai was basically a nothingburger of an idea topped with madness and confused Orientalism, but it was arguably more of a premise than many of their properties, which were just first drafts of wordplay that somehow made it to production. Van-Pires, Snailiens, things of that nature. They were riding high in the ’90s! They should have been able to pull it off.
Well, I did some digging and discovered they filed the trademark for Paparazzi Samurai in 1996. Maybe something happened around then that convinced them the premise of a team of “non-violent” paparazzi superheroes was a bad idea?
Oh. Oh no.
Imagine, if you will, Marty Abrams coming into work one morning, high on the success of Dragon Flyz and Sky Dancers — the lawsuits for the injuries they caused are still years off. Imagine him looking forward to a bright future, a world in which non-violent photo-taking superheroes displace the Power Rangers as they had done to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in turn. For the first time since his fraud conviction in 1982, things are really looking up for old Marty.
And yet, he’s surprised to find the mood in the office glum. Is Debbie out with the flu again? Did Steve’s pet turtle die? He sees the headline on the newspaper his assistant leaves on his desk.
His future comes crumbling down around him.
On August 31, 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales was killed in a car crash in Paris. The cause of the crash would be the subject of countless conspiracy theories, but is generally believed to have come about due to a combination of her driver’s drunkenness and close pursuit of her vehicle by overzealous paparazzi.
The many worlds theory postulates that all possibilities occur in parallel universes. If this theory is true, then there is a world in which Princess Diana did not die in that car crash. In that world, Paparazzi Samurai was made. It might even have become a huge success.
In that world, people speak of Felix, Al, and Maurice in the same reverent tones as we speak of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael. Paparazzi Samurai has been rebooted a half-dozen times. Abrams-Gentile still occupies that midtown Manhattan office space. A different world? Certainly. A better one? That is left as an exercise for the reader.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Kyle Campbell, aka Blast Off, leader of 1986’s hottest new cartoon astronaut squad, the Immortals!
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Nerding Day: Pokemon Black & Blue
Now that we’re all aware of Chicken Girls The College Years: Sponsored By Takis, I think it’s time to wade you into Brat TV’s less chicken flavored offerings. Three years ago, an executive at BratTV, who was probably a fourteen-year-old former Vine star now far past his prime, saw the show Charmed, a vehicle for witches to be horny, and thought this would make a great show for kids! They barely even needed to change the name. They just called it Charmers because legal said Li’l Charmed, like Li’l Archie, was absolutely off the table. It’s not Charmed, it’s just another entry into the four women holding glowing orbs genre. It’s Orbcore!
Even though Charmers debuted twenty-three years after Charmed, its special effects are about what you’d expect from a ’90s show. This show seems very affordable. It takes place at a summer camp, so the costume budget went to a box of t-shirts, each teen getting their own color like Power Rangers, only by personality instead of race.
Charmers also saved on set design because they shot the child actors at an actual abandoned murder shed.
The rusty shack budget for season one of Charmers was paid for by Starbursts and they should have been swimming in nightmare shacks with the way these children pushed Starbursts. Every heartwarming moment of the show was mumbled through an enormous wad of original flavor or limited time all-pink Starburst brand fruit chews. It’s basically the only food the children on this show consume. This summer camp is exclusively feeding these kids Starburts. It’s possible they’re not really fighting demons; they are all going mad from malnutrition and diabetes.
The plot of Charmers is that these sugared up children are witches, sometimes. They only have the budget for occasional witchery, so a lot of the show is about explaining why they don’t have magic right now, or why their magic isn’t working for some reason. The four main characters are the inhabitants of Bunk 15 at the not-at-all-ominously named Camp Whispering Sky: Senna, the powerful one, Colver, the nerd one; Flori, the hippy one; and Zaria, the goth one. Senna arrives at camp with telepathy, and the other girls say that she is a “natural witch,” but after episode one, this telepathy disappears, and Senna’s power is revealed to be a magic shield in season two when the girls all get their individual powers. Telepathy would be very helpful to these kids multiple times, but sadly, the sugar amnesia wiped it away. Damn, you, Starbursts.
Instead of battling an expensive new demon every episode, they battle one demon per season, starting with an evil witch/demon who crawls out of a wardrobe set up in the nightmare shack. This demon is the reason for the show’s best line: “Wait, the demon, it’s heading straight for the talent show!” The girls dashed to rescue the demon from half hearted teenage dance routines, but they were too late.
The girls manage to vanquish the demon because, for that episode, they have demon-vanquishing powers, which are later forgotten about. The banishing only sends the demon back to the nightmare shed, though; it’s a light banishing. She can send a new demon through the wardrobe that possesses the campers, and the campers it possesses still love Starbursts! Sorry I haven’t mentioned Starburst in a while. You should know that they are still very present in the story and even demons love them!
I don’t think Starburst considered how demon-possessed children would meld with this product. In fact, the whole tone of the show is pretty all over the place. They couldn’t decide how high the stakes should be for the teen witches, so sometimes it was, “Wait, the demon, it’s heading straight for the talent show!” and sometimes it was, “The demons are trying to open a portal to Hell and destroy the earth.” They never officially say Hell, though. The demons are trying to open a portal to…wherever the demons come from. It could be a Pottery Barn.
You could tell in season one there was a complaint, probably from Starburst corporate, that it’s a little weird and extra scary to have children fighting full-grown adult women. So, in season 2, they made the main villain a child with a permanently bloody mouth who unhinges her jaw and vomits bats. Sooooo much more comforting than dub step Daenerys Targaryen.
They also have one of the children get physically injured for the first time in season two during a tragic capture-the-flag explosion. It’s so artistically done. The camera lingers on his bruised hand, still clutching the flag, as if it’s a commentary on man’s incessant need to conquer. If only he hadn’t captured that flag, he might still be alive!
To further lighten up season two, Charmers also added two older camp counselors to the cast, John and Jean. I thought Jean had the fakest French accent I’ve ever heard, but I looked him up, and it turns out he’s actually a famous French TikToker with 13.8 million followers who, at the time of filming, was married to the actor who played John in real life. They announced their divorce shortly after Charmers season two premiered, blaming the pressure of social media stardom for ending their relationship. You guys, I think Charmers ended that marriage.
The addition of the older camp counselors made the children’s demon-slaying seem more supervised. Maybe there wasn’t someone they could go to and say, “Help, there’s a portal to some unspecified place that’s spitting out demons everywhere!” but they could at least say, “Jean, this 29-year-old woman has wandered into camp,” and there would be some help available.
Like The Chicken Girls The College Years, Charmers is presented in ten-minute increments, but they fit a lot more plot into those ten minutes and the cast is more expansive. Each of the four main girls is given an issue to deal with over the two seasons, but once again, the tone of the issues is weird. Colver wants to be more confident, and Filori feels guilty for distracting her mother and causing a car accident that killed her brother. Some don’t have enough Starburst fruit chews. So there’s just a little bit of disparity between the issues they face.
The reason for the camp being filled to the brim with demons, Unseelie fairies, and ancient half-dragon kids making friendship bracelets along with the other campers is that Sinna’s natural witch magic is a magnet for darkness. Don’t worry, though; the girls can handle it. Remember that wardrobe in the shack in the middle of the woods that was a demon portal? They closed that right up with some loose lumber, nailed randomly in any which way. Problem solved. Demons are no match for witchcraft and Home Depot.
You would think that one of the camp’s two staff members would have some questions about the satanic wardrobe but they unequivocally do not. When the girls vanquished the talent show demon in front of everyone, they won the talent show. The general consensus was that their talent was “cool special effects,” which is also what I would say if I set a woman on fire on stage in front of an entire summer camp. The kid who got exploded during capture the flag was written off as a freak lightning strike. The sudden appearance of tons of bats from the girl’s mouth was probably sold to parents as animal husbandry and karaoke.
Charmers seems to have slowly lost its audience over the course of the series, beginning season one with 1.8 million views and ending it with 625K. It turns out that when you take away the weird horny plots and cute outfits, Charmed kind of sucks. Staring into the dark nexus brought to you by Starbursts just wasn’t the dark tone for a cool teen show the Brat TV audience was looking for. So I’ll leave you with one of the most touching quotes from the show. “You don’t need to use magic to be something you’re not. You are a pink Starburst, amazing, exactly the way you are.”
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Timmy Leahy, who was in turn sponsored by new Wow! Only Timmy Skittles: Unlock The Tangy Chew of Timmy Leahy!
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Mascot Week: Volto From Mars 🌭
Mascot Week ends here, the only way it ever could: VOLTO FROM MARS.
Volto From Mars was created in 1944, a rocket age champion of man’s imagination. He fell from the sky in soap, hunting the stars for cereal grains! And I’m not summing anything up; that’s his full origin story. This is how the world met Volto:
Volto’s people travel by exploding bubble, but the kind of exploding you can do next to a kid’s face. Children are best friends with professors, but the kind you go camping with. It’s the kind of bold storytelling that seems sarcastic today. He came from that direction and wants some fucking cereal. But okay, okay, fine. Volto knows you Earth monsters are going to have a few questions. Without being asked, he answers the most pressing one:
“SILENCE WHILE I EXPLAIN! ON MARS WE USE FOOD, AND I NEED THE FOOD FOR EATING! OKAY, WITH THE WEIRD STUFF OUT OF THE WAY, MY PEOPLE ARE ALSO MAGNET– OH, GOOD, YOU WERE ALREADY CARRYING A BOWL OF CEREAL.”
Volto finishes a bowl of Grape-Nuts Flakes, and thanks the Earthlings for recharging his magnetism. It sounds ordinary to you and me, but the professor’s keen intellect picked up on the multiple times this alien screamed about recharging his magnetism with cereal. He asks what the hell that could possibly mean, and we are introduced to the best part about Volto as a superhero: he is a full idiot and makes everything worse.
If you ask him, “What do you mean by magnetism?” he answers, “HOW SHOULD I EXPLAIN THIS? OH, I KNOW, WATCH ME PISS OFF THAT LION.”
I don’t know if this is normal on Mars, but Volto screams ‘VOLTO’ to infuriate wild animals, and Volto screams ‘VOLTO’ to pull children. Grape-Nuts Flakes could have sold cereal with a cute cowboy or a peppy train conductor, but instead they made this. What a perfect mascot. He needs your product to live and his adventures have three simple steps: shove it, yank it, forget it. He’s a magnet, but more like the idea of a magnet. To Volto, danger and cereal are the same word. Not philosophically, but because he is always confused. I love him, and we’re now going to look at every single ad he was ever in.
Volto would go on to have 19 more appearances across four different comic publishers, but the creators didn’t know that. So in his second appearance, they treated it like it might be his last. They raised the stakes to this: all possible things going wrong at once. A little girl is playing on a highway, about to be run over by a truck. An unmanned truck. An unmanned dynamite truck. It’s hopeless. Her only way out would be some kind of star man who attracts children with his right arm. Hold on, wait a minute.
You’ll notice Volto, the weirdest goddamn thing in our solar system, is always worried people will forget about him and his magnetic powers. Speaking of forgetting, the dynamite truck, Volto.
Speaking of forgetting, Volto’s magnetism! Be you truck or girl, remember it! This seems like an ordinary Martian punishing an abandoned dynamite truck with Grape-Nuts magnetism, but I think it’s important in understanding how his powers work. If I remember, Volto can attract and repel any material, but it seems like he must do both, one time each. Otherwise, I think even Volto would have thought to attract the dynamite truck to a stop rather than repel it into a farm and hope for the best. I mean, let’s take the boy’s word for it that this cargo truck of explosives didn’t kill ten cows and a family of thirty-five; this is still a decision you only make if your powers have strict rules. I know we have a lot to remember already, what with Volto’s left arm repelling and Volto’s right arm attracting, but it’s the closest thing Volto has to a weakness.
Speaking of forgetting, I remembered Volto’s other weakness. Once he uses his powers, he needs to recharge with Grape-Nuts Flakes immediately. So, lady, I’m glad you’re enjoying your lesson on Martian biomagnetism, but go get a bowl of cereal. Volto might die. And little girl, there’s no other lesson to take from this incident. Keep enjoying the highway with the energy you get from Grape-Nuts Flakes, the swellest cereal you’ve ever tasted!
There’s nowhere up to go from a DANGER EXPLOSIVES truck rolling into a child, so Grape-Nuts Flakes didn’t try. In his next adventure, Volto from Mars and his friends meet a purse snatcher. Admittedly, he’s pretty goddamn serious about it, but a mugger throwing a knife is the tutorial mission for a magnetic superhero. His lifeless body is being held up like a fish in Volto’s attract hand two panels later:
Like his magnetism, Volto’s confidence in his audience vanishes when he’s hungry. At the start of the comic, Volto’s like, “I’m from space, you get it.” But after a couple arm zaps, he’s like, “PLEASE REMEMBER, MY PEOPLE HAVE MAGNETIC POWERS, WHICH AGAIN, ARE RECHARGED WITH YOUR PLANET’S CEREAL. MY PLANET, OF COURSE, IS MARS IF I HAVEN’T MENTIONED IT, WHERE MAGNETISM IS COMMON AND ENCOURAGED, BUT REQUIRES GRAPE NU– SORRY, LET ME START AGAIN.”
“Jesus Christ, they know. Shut the fuck up, we’re trying to do a commercial,” interrupts the boy. He can’t work with this madman, and he’s already lost his mind with frustration. “THE CEREAL IS SIZZLING WITH VOLTO-ENERGY!” he shrieks at the reader, a legally actionable claim of magnetic powers he’ll have to retract next adventure. Speaking of, their next adventure sucks.
The boy and Professor have taken Volto on a South American jungle hike and a boa constrictor has wrapped itself around their pack mule, and this can’t be right… nothing else? The stakes are 43 cruzeiros of mule rental deposit? I’m here, from Earth, and I’m not sure what the crisis is. Volto is a visitor from the stars hearing the names of these moist shapes for the first time as he watches them make love, presumably as is their Earth custom. What is he expected to do? Watch a snake burst as it tries to swallow 800 pounds of donkey and 200 pounds of Grape-Nuts cargo? Intervene? Fucking how!? Space magnetism against a snake and mule fight? Can you hear yourself?
Wait, that’s really what he did? Volto’s repel arm uncoils boa constrictors and ignores mules? Even for 1944, this is desperate nonsense. “Nothing Detangles a Knot of Flesh Like Some Nerd Yelling About Magnets” sounds like a late entry in a Cracked article called “5 Things I Learned at an Insane Clown Posse Show.” It sounds like something Bill Nye’s wife would confide in a trusted friend. This writer was given the task of coming up with something exciting to defeat with magnets, with no limitations of scope or reason, and he came up with “Nearby Snake in the Caper of the Botched Mule Kidnapping.”
Oh no, the mule is frightened. My god, will this heart-pounding crisis ever slow down. Quick, Volto, do something to calm it down. Yes, that. Rip it into the sky with your animal-terror beam. Beautiful.
Because all the good men had left for Normandy, this script was approved and illustrated. Volto’s magnetism now canonically straightened snakes, pulled children, killed muggers, enraged cougars, and calmed donkeys. Also, it seems like Volto isn’t friends with these two people he’s always with? He interrupts the boy’s sales pitch to say, “VOLTO KNOWS WHAT GRAPE NUTS ARE, UNMAGNETED WORM, THEY’RE THE ONLY REASON VOLTO CAME ON THIS BULLSHIT TRIP.” The boy’s sales pitch, by the way, now clarifies “Grape-Nuts Flakes may not give you Volto’s magnetic power.” He’s also softened the description from “swellest cereal you’ve ever tasted” to “Tastes swell!”. It’s a cowardly admission by a browbeaten boy, which is why I’m giving this ad, “Untitled Snake One,” the lowest possible Volto From Mars score: The World Is a Little Less Magical Because of It out of 5.
Let’s do a good one!
Oh no! There’s a tree in the road! They’re going to be late for the train! Damn, nothing to be done. Unless… I don’t know… unless I’m forgetting something?
Oh, right! Volto’s magnetic power! I won’t forget it again. But I worry that while I’m remembering how Volto’s left hand repels, I’ll be forgetting something else. Oh, gracious! Where’s my bag?
Oh, hell yes. The Volto magic is back! He used his magnetic powers fueled by Grape-Nuts Flakes to rescue forgotten luggage! The end, buy cereal, what an adventure! Somehow, in only three issues, Volto has gone from Amazing Mars Hero to Pretty Handy Guy To Have Around. It feels like the next adventure will be him going into a gas station and screaming, “Remember, when I say ‘Volto’ my left hand rejects this flavor of energy drink! See? When I say ‘Volto’ my right hand attracts the bathroom key!” And maybe his creators sensed that because the next one they put Volto at ground zero of a full-on terror attack.
A gangster drives up and throws a bomb at city hall while announcing, “Fuck you, Mayor, I am doing this for crime!!” And any other moment of any other day, it would have been a flawless plan. Unfortunately, he didn’t notice the bodybuilding alien in the vampire shark hat standing in the way. You probably don’t remember, but this is Volto, and he has the exact right powers to throw a bomb somewhere else. Let’s recharge our magnetism with some cereal!
Oh right, the gangster. Thanks, kid! It seemed insane at first, but I’m starting to like how the Volto team shares a single hippocampus and only one of them can use it at a time. And it’s nice to see these adventurers getting some non-luggage work. So let’s see, we’ve done mountain lion, dynamite truck, street crime, jungle, luggage, terrorism… oh, shit. It’s time for shark!
Somehow this ended up less dramatic than the missing suitcase. There was no way of knowing this beforehand, but when the crisis is shark and your left hand launches sharks, your adventure is over by the second panel. Unless I’m forgetting something dizzy dames did in the 1940s?
I honestly think fainting is pretty reasonable here. This woman learned Martians were real and sharks can fly while she was already in the middle of a shark attack. “I’ve got this,” says the little boy to an on-duty lifeguard and a superhero with lady-pulling powers. And Volto, Worst Wingman from Mars, responds,”REMEMBER, SON… YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN… MY RIGHT HAND COCK BLOCKS! SORRY, ON MARS, WHERE WE EAT FOOD FOR MAGNETISM, WE SAY ‘SON’ WHEN WE CAN’T REMEMBER SOMEONE’S NA–” Hold on, does Volto not know this kid’s name? Wait a minute, do I? I… I don’t! Let me go back through these… oh my god, they never mention one. They forgot to give Volto’s sidekick a name!
In his next adventure, Volto ruins what would have been a bull national holiday. I don’t know all the rules for ritual bull murder, but this seems like cheating. At the very least Volto stole a moment sports fans have been waiting for all their lives. Volto, your heart is in the right place, but this is a profane violation of our natural order, like interrupting a state execution or preventing a juggling accident.
You may have noticed that up until now, Volto stories don’t have titles. For instance, this one is called “VOLTO FROM MARS” rather than “Volto in… Robbing a Man of His Fated, Glorious Death!” But this is the last time they do that. From now on, the writers use titles, and like Volto From Mars himself, they immediately fuck it up.
“Our first title! What should it be? Wait, I’ve got it: VOLTO FROM MARS in VOLTO’S WEIRD MAGNETIC POWERS PROTECT A MERCHANTMAN IN SUB-INFESTED SEAS…”. What the hell kind of title is that? That sounds like it should be followed by the words “a.k.a. 熟女 Japanese Bathtub Moms 3.” Ridiculous. I also reject the premise that Volto is “learning every minute.” The title of this says he’s there to protect a merchantman in sub-infested seas, and he doesn’t recognize a torpedo, the first and only thing they would have explained to him. And I wasn’t the only one disappointed. After this embarrassment, the military demoted Volto to Assistant Fruit Helper, the actual plot of his next story:
“HELLO, READER, BOY OH BOY ARE YOU ABOUT TO SEE CROPS AND MAGNETS BUT TO GET TO ALL THE ACTION YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO KEEP READING BECAUSE THIS IS STILL THE TITLE OF THIS VOLTO ADV–” oh, hey! Look at that! “Jimmy!” They gave the kid a name!
The moment the boy is given a name, God sends an unexplainable rock to kill him. You’ve seen the storytelling standards for Volto adventures, but there may never be a worse adventure premise than “sudden rock while picking peaches.” If I was telling this as a bedtime story, my daughter would say, “I hope mommy’s next husband has a soul, daddy.”
In an exciting turnaround, Volto picks fruit! They spin it like Volto saved the troops here, but good fucking luck getting five baskets of 1945 peaches across the Atlantic before they turn into toilet wine. There’s nothing better than Volto From Mars. He used his powers to pick peaches, pointlessly, and his sidekick almost died. It might be why Grape-Nuts switched to no mascot at all shortly after this.
Next up is the story known simply as “VOLTO FROM MARS in VOLTO UNLEASHES HIS MAGNETIC POWERS TO HELP JIMMY AND INTELLIGENCE AGENTS CAPTURE A DASTARDLY SPY RING..“
Readers today might have trouble relating to the rockcitement of wartime peach picking, but busting up dastardly spy rings is timeless. A classic adventure story! Now, let’s see… who would be spying on us in 1945? Oh n–
Oh, gracious! I forgot about racism. Let’s maybe skip this one.
Hey, Volto got his pilot’s license! I’m sure he and Jimmy will find some fun adventure in… a 1945 unexplored jungle. Oh n–
They immediately find a race war. Great job, Grape-Nuts.
Volto’s arms attract and repel when he says ‘Volto,’ but he also attracts accidents and repels reason passively, at all times. His adventures always start with disaster, usually something basic like a peach accident or an ethnic canoe cleansing, but sometimes, rarely, we open with him riding neck-first into a noose while screaming, “BANDITS ARE STEALING THE SACRED DIAMOND FROM THE ANCIENT TEMPLE!” You never know when he’s going to be awesome because he sucks or awesome because he’s awesome, and here it’s sort of both because they introduce an entirely new element to a Volto From Mars story:
Volto’s in trouble! We get to see how he uses his keen Martian mind to get out of a jam!
Oh, that makes sense. Volto sat still and waited for his natural accident summoning ability to summon a second disaster. And even he seems surprised it worked. He had absolutely no idea he was immune to lightning before this. Everything else here seems normal, though. His left hand repels, Pedro mus’ run weeth the diamond, I think we can move on to the next one.
Volto’s natural disaster magnetism is so powerful he is about to have a head on collision on a roller coaster. This is a child’s idea of how roller coasters work. It’s a note Steven Seagal would give in a movie called Six Flags of Death. “In the rescue scene, Mr. Seagal wants to ride the roller coaster too,” his agent would say before holding a finger to his ear and adding, “… and we’ll need 12 more feet of party sub.”
Volto immediately reverses the direction of a speeding roller coaster, far beyond the safety regulations of 1945, and ejects the shattered remains of an unrestrained wom– wait a goddamn minute. That’s the woman who was sitting behind him! Let’s get another look at her. Volto, can you grab her?
Yep, that’s her. And she’s definitely dead.
This makes no sense, even for Grape-Nuts Flakes. I’m worried maybe these are all hallucinations Volto is having while his body is being torn to bits by a savage beast…
Oh gracious! I think I was right! Luckily, this camper recognizes the struggling remains of Volto and fixes that bear with a rock!
That is one hell of a bear fixing, random passerby, but Volto has a particular way he does things, probably because of his memory issues. I’m worried someone else taking the first action in one of his comics could really fuck up his rhythm…
… I’m sure it’ll be fine, though.
In VOLTO FROM MARS and the case of HIS STRANGE MAGNETIC POWERS SAVE AN ARSENAL AND BRING CRAVEN CRIMINALS TO JUSTICE, it opens again with Volto in trouble. These saboteurs must have caught him when he wasn’t full of Grape-Nuts Flakes, his one weakness other than bears, memory, ropes, social cues, or a minor change in routine!
No, never mind. It was part of his plan to let them tie Jimmy to explosives to make sure these were the culprits tying children to explosives. And now, when those fools blow the arsenal, they’ll be blowing themselves right into Volto’s trap! I can’t believe I’m saying this, but maybe Volto should go back to saving peach orchards from loose rock? It seems like he was at his best when he went outside and someone said, “Look up! Hey! A piano!” For instance, look what happens when the Volto writers try to do a plot:
Volto’s boy sidekick and “Joe” are behind enemy lines saving “Lily” from sabotage kidnappers? This is several too many things and none of them are Volto. And by the way, there’s no way anyone could be expected to know Lily. She has appeared one other time in the Volto saga, maybe, when a woman named Lily was knocked out of a canoe back in “VOLTO AND JIMMY ARE FLYING OVER JUNGLE IN A HELICOPTER.” So if it’s the same woman, and it might not be, it’d be like the lost luggage returning for a cameo.
Anyway, here we are, Voltoless, but we’ve found our target. Joe moves into the second phase of Operation: Hot Lily: not realizing there would be two bad guys and shouting “WE’D BETTER GET VOLTO!” before leaving the woman to be tortured. And it takes Volto zero panels to arrive because he was right behind them the whole time:
“REMEMBER! I AM WITH YOU!” Everyone always forgets Volto’s left hand repels (when he says ‘VOLTO!’) and Volto’s right arm attracts (when he says ‘VOLTO!’), but now they’re forgetting Volto is there at all. I’m sure it was a one time thing. I’m sure nothing strange is happening. I’m sure it was a one time thing. I’m sure nothing strange is happening.
“You eat Grape-Nuts Flakes like ice cream,” says Jimmy’s mother, who I guess exists.
“What an insane thing to say. By the way, I have no interesting facts about Grape-Nuts Flakes or which Martian abilities it fuels,” says Jimmy, maybe forgetting something. Or someone.
“A meteor! If only someone could repel it! Aargh, I’m talking crazy. Just outrun it!”
Oh yeah, Volto! We’d forgotten about you. You threw the meteor at people, by the way. I guess when I forgot about you I also forgot your first magnet always makes the situation worse.
Hmm. You know, I think the title VOLTO FROM MARS in… “VOLTO’S OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD MAGNETIC POWERS CONQUER A FIERY INFERNO IN THE TIMBERLANDS OF THE GREAT NORTHWEST… SAVE JIMMY AND THE JUNIOR RANGERS FROM A TRAGIC FATE.” is so thorough we don’t even have to read this one.
“Can I hop in your top secret experimental rocket plane, Joe? I’m only ten, but I eat cereal!”
“Sure, Jimmy! You’re never more than five seconds from an unexplained catastrophe! Mess around in there.”
“AIIIIEEEEEE, I’M RIGHT HERE! WHY CAN’T ANYONE REMEMBER ME!?” shrieks Volto in what would be his final adventure. The memory-eating parasite Volto unknowingly(?) brought with him from Mars has completed its job. No one will ever know what happened here. Still, despite having every last thought scraped from his mind, Jimmy sensed what was happening. Something primal told him this was his last day at work and he should not give a fuck. And when he delivered the final Volto Grape-Nuts Flakes slogan, he did not.
Ha ha where am I, who am I, this cereal is THE NUTS.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Joshua Graves, ALL JOSHES SHALL BE SPARED.