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Indie Icons: Savage Dragon #2

Posted on November 9, 2015 by

Remember, when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles teamed up with Savage Dragon and fought a giant stone gargoyle? No? Unfortunately, Indie Icons remembered for you. Let’s get strange with The Savage Dragon #2.Our tale opens, with a large amazon women walking into a police station. It turns out, she is a super hero named Dart, sent to the Chicago police department to cover Savage Dragon because, he left for New York to help solve a crime there. Two main things stick out about this scene. First, her super hero costume rides so high up her butt, there is no possible way it is comfortable or functional when fighting against criminals. There’s a high likelihood something she doesn’t want exposed, is getting exposed. Secondly, every male cop in the precinct has apparently never seen a woman before and freaks out at the sight of her. Jaws drop, coffee mugs shatter on the floor, and old timey cat calls are thrown out. I’ve never been to Chicago but, I can only assume this is accurate and old timey cat calls still happen there all the time.

She politely tells them all to go to hell. I can’t really blame her for that. She also has darts attached all over her arms and legs. I respect a hero that committed to their name gimmick. A crime comes across the police scanner, sending Dart into action which we never get to see. Instead, we finally get introduced to Savage Dragon. He is standing on a rooftop by a gargoyle with the Ninja Turtles coming up behind him. It looks like the group is all set up for a nice friendly stake out. Then, the Ninja Turtles just start beating the hell out of the Savage Dragon.

Luckily, he ripped the sleeves off of his suit so he can kick proper ass. Suns out, business casual guns out. The Ninja Turtles jump on Savage Dragon’s back and they are out for blood. These are not your friendly Saturday morning cartoon Ninja Turtles. These Ninja Turtles are not afraid to actually use there weapons. This Leonardo will stab you with his swords instead of just punching you while holding a sword. They do not play around. The only problem is, these are also the Ninja Turtles who all wear the same red masks. In honor of that, let’s play a little game. Which Turtle is the butt-head and which is the pompous jerk?If you guessed Michelangelo was the pompous jerk and Donatello was the butt-head… you might be right? I have no idea. I couldn’t figure it out. Back to the story. With the Turtles trying to kill him, Savage Dragon pulls out his comically large gun to start shooting. Leonardo quickly ends this plan and cuts the gun cleanly in two. This doesn’t matter. After being stabbed with a sai and swords, and beaten with nunchuks and staffs, Savage Dragon tosses all four of the Turtles off of the roof and into the alley below. It turns out, the Turtles thought he was the giant gargoyle monster that has been tormenting New York City recently. Savage Dragon actually takes this pretty well and forgives them for the beating they just delivered to him. He is outrageously forgiving. Like, nun level forgiveness.

If you’ve read Indie Icons before, you know I’ve never been in many of the situations I write about. This is just as true here. Surprisingly, I’ve never fought a foursome of Ninja brothers. But, if they tried to kill me, and then I threw them off a roof, I think we would have trouble being friends. Savage Dragon is a much better person than I will ever be. He agrees to help the Turtles find the giant gargoyle monster and then, he is getting the hell out of New York. Luckily, it doesn’t take long to find the creature. He was actually just hanging out a block away from them.It really makes me wonder how Savage Dragon is a cop in Chicago because, his detective skills seem very poor. I can’t imagine that thing is too hard to see when it’s flying around the city. Another fight quickly ensues. The Ninja Turtles recklessly jump on the monster and just start stabbing away at it. Savage Dragon apparently likes this strategy. He jumps on the gargoyles arm and starts punching it violently in the wrist. The creature is very annoyed by this and casually throws him away. The Turtles continue punching but, they can’t seem to break through the gargoyles hard exterior. It also breaths fire randomly, which is pretty cool. All of this begins to annoy Savage Dragon. He just wants to go home. So, he one punches the entire monster into rubble, making the Ninja Turtles look pretty pathetic in the process.Leonardo tries to explain to Savage Dragon, that the reason there was a giant stone gargoyle flying around is because of magic. Savage Dragon thinks this is stupid and doesn’t even pretend to believe what he’s saying. Considering he’s a muscular dragon cop who just fought with four talking turtles that know ninjutsu, it’s really strange he finds magic hard to believe. While this is all happening, a scantily clad woman, who may be senior citizen, is watching creepily from around the corner. I wish I could describe her any other way but her large head of spiky gray hairs leads me to believe she’s old. But, her gravity defying bosom says otherwise. I’ll let you guys take a look and decide for yourself.The Ninja Turtles begin trying to figure out where the creature came from. Savage Dragon doesn’t care. He just want to head back to Chicago. They say their goodbyes and Savage Dragon goes on his way, happy that he got to punch a statue to death and even happier to be heading to his own bed. But, before we can celebrate too much, we quickly cut to a farm in DeKalb, Illinois. A young boy is knocking on the door but, no one seems to be answering. He opens the door to see if anyone’s home……and sees a large puddle of blood. Judging by the rotting corpse, whoever is in that closet is doing something they’re not supposed to. Why can’t Indie Icons ever end nicely?

Indie Icons: Youngblood #1

Posted on November 2, 2015 by

What happens when Indie Icons looks back at one of the flagship titles from Image Comic‘s creation? Nothing good. Absolutely, nothing good happens. Let’s get into the strange, shall we?

The story opens with a group of heroes in the dark dimension of D’Khay. And, for your guy’s sake, I’m going to get this out of the way right now because they don’t explain it for a long, LONG, time. Each superhero in this comic is part of the Youngbloods. There are at least twenty separate heroes in this story, all infiltrating something at some point too. It can get pretty confusing. Because of that, nobodies name is actually that important. For example, the man below’s name is Wildmane. I refuse to call him that. He will now be known as feral Wolverine. By the hounds of perdition’s flames indeed. The team, poignantly named the Death Squad, continues to murder their way through the base they are in. Killing becomes so easy and boring to them that they actually start getting mad when someone doesn’t leave enough people to slaughter for the rest of the class. One person is particularly responsible for killing too many people too quickly and that is one Jackson Kirby. I really hope this is an homage to Jack Kirby. If it is, it is the most over the top interpretation ever. It’s also my favorite. Let’s compare.

Basically, twins. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a picture of Jack Kirby carrying comically large guns the size of his entire torso but, I’m sure there’s one out there somewhere. The Death Squad continues moving through the base, killing everything in sight as they’re known to do. After clearing the hallway, they all jump in unison and become frozen in air. Why you ask? Because, Lord Darkthornn has trapped them in what he calls crash limbo. Who is Lord Darkthornn? I have no idea. He says he wants to conquer Earth but then, we never see him or any of the other characters we just met ever again. I’m sure it pays off at some point in a later issue but, I only just finished the prologue and I’m already getting exhausted. OK, which Youngblood is next?Oh, yes. Shaft. He has no pupils in this picture but, no one actually addresses the reason for this. It seems like he can see so, maybe his power is having really white eyes? I don’t know. We’re introduced to Shaft in the middle of an argument with his super model girlfriend. He is upset because all of the paparazzi are following him around. Then, he sees a man steal a woman’s purse and the hero in him finally comes out. He tackles the purse snatcher and punches him right in the face. That is until he realizes it’s just a young kid. He quickly figure out it’s a set up and spots a sniper off in the distance. Shaft does not play these games. He takes a pen out of his pocket and throws it right into this man’s heart.

I guess he really does have pupils. Maybe, his power is being able to throw office products incredibly accurately? The paparazzi quickly surround him. It seems they were waiting for a moment just like this to make themselves known. They ask a quick question about the man he just killed but, that’s all just to butter him up for the real questions. No one really cares about the random dead guy or public murder they just witnessed. They want to know if there is a classified mission going on in Iraq. Shaft ignores them and runs away while his super model girlfriend laughs psychotically in the background. Now, I’ve never been in one of these situations but, it seems like they best way to get information from someone isn’t to try and trick them while they under a high amount of stress. I’ve also never killed anyone. I just imagine that it’s really stressful. I’ll be honest, I just write funny articles on the internet. Sure, there’s some office products throwing. But, normally, no one dies from it. Let’s look at a fun picture to get Indie Icons back on track. This is Thomas. He is so mad that he doesn’t have enough combos in his video games that he can’t even eat cereal properly anymore. I can’t say I blame him either. Combos are serious you guys. After this, we are quickly introduced to the rest of the main team. I mean, I think they’re the main team. They’re on the cover at least. Next, we have the Die Hard unit who is, what looks like, a muscular robot hanging out in a basement in Arlington, Virginia. After that, comes Chapel. His introduction shows him planning on having sex with the woman in his bed until they both die. I wish I was kidding but this is the actual conversation.Might as well, right? He then puts on his uniform and screams angrily at the woman on the bed, asking her if this turns her on. He seems like a really unstable fellow. We then get a few panels of a woman dressed in purple jumping out of a balcony. Who is she? No idea. And that’s the main team. Shaft arrives at Youngblood headquarters and, on the local news, he sees that the Youngblood operation in Iraq has leaked. They plan on destroying Hassan Kussein’s meta-munitions program apparently. It looks like it’s time for the team we have spent the last few pages to finally get into action and save the day! What? That doesn’t happen at all? There’s another team of Youngbloods still!?

An entire, I can’t believe there’s more, new team of Youngbloods land on Iraqi soil and just start laying waste to everything in front of them. They are looking to rescue a target being protected by Kussein. While making their way through the desert, the large Youngblood wearing a giant golden helmet turns out to be an alien and swears revenge. Revenge for what? Revenge on who? I…I just don’t know. So much is happening right now. I’m feeling overwhelmed and there aren’t anymore fun pictures to save this article. Let’s just keep going.

We cut back to the main Youngbloods still sitting at headquarters and trying to figure out if the leak of information is their fault. They decide to go to the hangar bay for some reason and that’s that. We cut back to our team in Iraq, continuing to murder Kussein’s army. They begin to get a bit paranoid because this seems too easy. That is, until they hit a trip wire energy grid that fries their synapses on contact.This doesn’t effect psi-fire, whose glowing feet you see above. It just makes him angry. We don’t quite get to see this play out though. We first cut to the White House, where the president is freaking out about the Iraqi mission leak. And, that’s it. Do we finally start wrapping up this comic which, at this point, has about 4000 loose story threads? Of course not. The story returns to the main team who are flying over a prison transport at the exact moment a few super villains begin to try and break the prisoners out. And, being Youngblood, there isn’t just one or two villains. There is an entire team of bad guys because this story needs all the characters it can possibly find. And, finally, we get to see the main team in action. The heroes on the actual cover of the comics. The one’s we bothered to learn a bit of backstory on. Look how promising this action pose is. It looks like some serious business is about to happen. It doesn’t. We don’t see the main team again for the rest of the issue. We cut back to Psi-Fire who decides to tell Kussein about how he killed his parents by making their heads explode. He then tells him, and I’m not making this up, it’s “better than sex”. I don’t have any words for whats going on at this point. He eventually makes Kussein’s head explode for what I can only assume is because he is sexually excited by the dictator? It’s really weird you guys.The rest of the team is not happy about this. They actually start freaking out because he just randomly murdered a country’s dictator but, they quickly get over it. With Kussein and his army out of the way, the Youngbloods can finally grab the target they came for. You never get to see that though. This is where the story ends. Nothing is resolved. I’m confused. I’m tired. Indie Icons will be back next week with a comic that is not Youngblood. Never again Youngblood.

Indie Icons: Ninjak #9

Posted on October 26, 2015 by

Comics are strange sometimes. Here at Indie Icons we celebrate each bizarre moment. Like when Ninjak was a college kid who got his powers from a Ninjak video game and then, a man with a tiny body and enormous head tried to kill him by bringing him into the same Ninjak video game. This story sounds right up Indie Icons’ alley. Let’s see how this goes. I’m guessing not well.

Our story opens with Ninjak on the roof of a building, trying to come up with a new super hero name. The company that made the video game he got his powers from is threatening to sue Ninjak for using their character’s name and costume. What kind of sick company would try and sue someone simply for cosplaying? Acclaim. That’s who. If you don’t remember Acclaim, that’s OK. I could barely remember who they were until I realized they made Turok 2: Seeds of Evil. That game is amazing and if you own a Nintendo 64 and love fun, you need to buy that right now. So, what happened to Acclaim? This game happened to Acclaim.

It’s hard to regain your credibility after that. But, back to Ninjak. He comes up with the new identity of Black Belt. This makes sense. His outfit’s black and he’s a ninja. I will never fault a hero for picking a sensible name. After the evil that is Acclaim is established and we have a new name, it’s time for Ninjak, or Black Belt, to go do hero things. Luckily, right below the building he’s standing on, a group of rival gangs start trying to kill each other. We never actually find out who these gangs are though. They are just lovingly referred to as “Immigrant Gangs”.

Ninjak begins doing what Ninja’s do. People get kicked in the face, smacked with a wooden staff, and he even has a pair of nunchuks he uses to bruise a whole lot ankles. He is also, apparently impossible to shoot. There is no one who should ever escape this situation. How is he dodging that!? He’s not even moving at the end! I can accept Storm Trooper accuracy to a certain point but eventually, someone has to accidentally hit our hero right? No. No they don’t. Ninjak uses his super power of never being shot and dismantles Immigrant Gang 1 with ease. For some reason, Immigrant Gang 2 is not very happy that their rivals have just been defeated. They decide the best way to get revenge against Ninjak is to just back their car into him as hard as possible. Normally, Ninjak could just walk out of the road and be fine but, someone left their baby in the middle of the street during a gang battle and it’s right in the path of the car. The parenting in the world of Ninjak is just atrocious. Being the only responsible being in the city, Ninjak does the heroic thing and pushes the stroller to safety. What? He doesn’t do that at all?

He just decides to cut the entire car completely in half. It’s a bit aggressive but, I’ll be honest, if I could, I would do the same exact thing. After all of that, the police finally arrive and Ninjak runs down an alley to escape being arrested for saving everyone. It’s at this point Ninjak shows off his power of undressing. His costume disappears into a cloud of green smoke and he finds himself in the clothes he was wearing before his outfit. Sure, this power doesn’t help with fighting crime but… I can’t think of anything. That’s a really useless power. Although, looking at the villain of this story, he really doesn’t need many super powers.That my friends, is Kraniak. He is a man with a head so large, that his body literally cannot bear the weight. This requires an amazing helmet that holds his entire tiny body off the ground. It also has two enormous chicken feet on either side so he can walk. He answers to a swarm of hairy robot bugs who are not pleased that he keeps losing to Ninjak. They threaten to take away all that they have given him. I assume this means his walking helmet. I also assume it means that, the only way he could move would be to roll on his face while his body dangles helplessly from his neck. Spoiler alert. We never get to see him roll around on his face. It’s a huge letdown.

We quickly cut to Ninjak in his dorm talking to a woman wearing part of a shirt and very tight pants. This does not interest Ninjak though. He doesn’t have time for attractive women on his bed. He’s trying to play the Ninjak video game. This is his downfall. His video game decides it’s time to play him… I’m really sorry guys. I’m not proud of that pun.A giant blue tenticle pulls him into the Ninjak video game where Kraniak is waiting for him. The entire plan centers on Kraniak raising the difficulty two levels higher than the highest “Shogun Samurai” difficulty. He’s hoping that Ninjak will fail and be killed by the numerous monsters he goes up against. He also takes away all the magic food in the game which you can use to turn the monsters against Kraniak. This is all very important to the narrative but, the best part of all this is Kraniak sitting in the most absurd attempt at a villain’s throne I have ever seen. His plan is quickly foiled when Ninjak begins to chop away at the black twigs holding his throne in the air. Kraniak and Ninjak begin to fall and end up coming through one of the giant monitors that line Times Square. Oh, they are also as tall as sky scrapers for some reason. Honestly, after the last Indie Icons adventure, I’m starting to believe more and more that no one in the 90s understood anything about how computers work.

Now that they are all the size of Godzilla, they just start destroying the hell out of the city. A giant purple monkey grabs a tanker truck and throws it at Ninjak. His first reaction is to grab a giant screen off the side of a building to block his face. This causes an unnaturally huge explosion and Ninjak finally realizes he should move and stop randomly destroying New York. But, not before a tiger with green tentacles grabs him and launches him miles into the sky. The more I type this the more I realize how absolutely out of hand this story has gotten at this point.Ninjak lands in an empty construction site and decides that the only way to defeat Kraniak is to overload the game. The same game that they’re no longer in because they’re back in New York… I think. I’m actually not sure what’s reality at this point so let’s just keep going. He ties every single monster to a crane. A crane that each of them is significantly taller than. Kraniak doesn’t seem to actually realize this and freaks out. Ninjak puts the cord against a light pole and yells reboot. This sends Kraniak and his monsters to…limbo? They just kind of disappear. I don’t know anymore. Ninjak is then spit out of his computer and lands face first onto his apartment floor. He uses his magical undressing power and sits very contently as he soaks up his great, sort of, victory. Except, he forgot about the true enemy…Acclaim! If you’ve learned anything from Indie Icons this week, its to never, ever trust anything Acclaim has ever done. Except, Turok. That game is awesome.

Indie Icons: Armorines #2

Posted on October 12, 2015 by

Comixology currently has over 75,000 comics and it is now my job to dig through them all and find the strangest, most outrageous, and most fun comics deep within the depths and bring them to you at great danger to my own personal sanity. This week, we follow a small group of elite soldiers called the Armorines, as they look to steal a nuclear core from a submarine. This seems like a pretty straight forward, simple mission, except for all of the mutated shark monsters and a whole lot of bad decisions.We start our story on a helicopter that’s flying off the coast of Australia, where the crew is frantically screaming for the Armorines to respond. It is also interesting to note, that everyone on the helicopter looks exactly like they are all failed versions of Cyclops who were just not cool enough to be in the X-Men. And that’s saying a lot. If you have awesome eye visors and are still not cool enough to beat out Cyclops, then there’s a problem. (Side note: I’m not a huge fan of Cyclops.) Also, their computers show them nothing more than giant orange and yellow pixels which seems…very useless. But hey, it was the mid 90s, computers were still young and clearly not everyone understood how they worked.

We soon discover that the reason the Armorines are ignoring Cyclops’ siblings is because, they are busy fighting giant mutated sharks that look like they are decaying in the water. Apparently, they have been hanging out too close to the sunken underwater nuclear sub but, they shouldn’t be too much of a problem. The Armorines have a suit with giant glowing swords and ion cannons that shoot from their arms. They should be fine right? Right?

No. It won’t be alright because the Armorines for some reason brought down a group of divers who decided to put some foam on the top of some tupperware containers and smash it onto their face as a diving mask. They don’t have any useful weapons or protection either but, damn it if they aren’t brave to the point of stupidity. After the Armorines fight off a few sharks, the remainder start to feed on what’s left of the dead. This gives the Armorines and friends the perfect opportunity to enter into the safety of the sunken sub through a large hole in the side. With all of them finally in the ship, they do what any sane person would do in this situation. They leave the ship to go stab some more sharks. The problem is, our friend Tristan forgets his has no stabbing weapons but shows a lot of bravery by playing chicken with one of the mutated monsters.

The lesson here guys, is to never play chicken with a shark, especially one mutated by nuclear radiation. And if you do, bring more than bravery to the fight. It’s not as effective as you may have been told. This finally leads to everyone deciding to enter the submarine and stay in the submarine. Lessons are being learned. The team of Armorines quickly splits up, one to grab the nuclear core and another to plant explosives on the ship. Why? No idea. I guess there is other important information on there that they just don’t feel like carrying around and explosives seem like more fun. It’s not a terrible argument.

Before anything else happens, we get a quick cut away to the captain of the warship floating above the Armorines. He is getting word that his men are being eaten by sharks and vows to see reinforcements. He says its time to bring in the special rescue team. It seems like these are a very important unit, who only come when situations are extreme, so I assume these are some tough people. The problem is, the captain never actually sends any help. Or the special rescue team is actually nowhere near the coast of Australia, and they’re still on the flight over while the Armorines are working. This would have actually been a great time for the rescue team to come because, a giant Hammerhead has made this ship his home. And he does not like intruders.

He also has a very cute mutated stingray best friend which is nice to see. Even mutated creatures need friends. The shark quickly eats a scuba diver, again making me question why they were brought along without an armored suit. The shark then makes the mistake of attacking the Armorine who pokes out his eyes, instantly killing him. Incorrect fact of the week: All of a sharks vital organs are located in its eye and if poked the entire creature dies. A second hammerhead comes and is quickly stabbed. This leads to one of the Armorines deciding it is time to leave the ship even though they haven’t accomplished their mission yet. He quickly learns that there are consequences for slacking off at work when, what appears to be, Mother Brain from Metriod zaps him with a laser and kidnaps them.

No one really seems to notice this, as the very next page they are lifting the nuclear core into a transport helicopter above. Then, the most ridiculous thing in this comic, a comic that includes mutant sea creatures and a giant brain like alien ship with tentacles, happens. Four dolphins randomly appear wearing harness and ready to help the divers not quite qualified enough to be Armorines. These dolphins were apparently trained by the Navy for situations just like this. And, while this may seem strange to… well, anyone really, the divers are only shocked because they thought the Navy abandoned the dolphin project a long time ago. It’s never really address why there was a dolphin project in the first place but, I need to hear that story. Hopefully, whenever Hollywood gets a hold of the Armorines license they’ll add that in as a gritty flashback.

A few dolphins get needlessly sacrificed but, the divers eventually escape with the help of a few Armorines who have come back to murder a some more sharks before they decide to finally call it a day. Then, we get back to the Armorine that went off to set explosives in the submarine that I completely forgot about because, his job seemed pointless to start with. After seeing how he handles his escape, I’m not surprised they sent him off on a useless mission because he is not good at things. The Armorine leaves the ship but, not before being speared into the submarine by a shark that nuclear radiation has clearly given the skill set of Goldberg.

This destroys his propulsion system but, not his cannon, which he uses to blast the shark through the face, essentially disintegrating it. Now, I may not be a scientist, I may actually have a degree in history, (Yes, history. Leave me alone.) but, I think all of that heavy metal armor he is wearing should drag him to the bottom of the sea. Or, he has incredibly strong legs to overcome the force pulling down on him. It turns out to be the latter as he casually swims to the surface. He did accidentally hit the submarine with his cannon blast though, sending it over the edge of the cliff it was on. He seems pretty distraught about it too, even though it blows up 50 feet further down from where it was originally going to blow up but, I’m not an Armorine so maybe I am missing something. And so, I guess the day was saved? They captured the core, a large amount of innocent men and dolphins dies, and they blew something up. Alright, so they really didn’t save anything but they’ll need to do some saving here soon. Remember that guy captured by the Mother Brain ship? Yeah, here’s where he ended up…

In a room completely filled with corpses. Yup. Welcome to Indie Icons.

Indie Icons: Monkey Man & O’Brien #2

Posted on October 5, 2015 by

Comixology currently has over 75,000 comics and it is now my job to dig through them all and find the strangest, most outrageous, and most fun comics deep within the depths and bring them to you at great danger to my own personal sanity. After last week’s discovery of one of my favorite comic book characters ever, it only felt right to continue my hunt for more great monkey characters hidden throughout comic history. This led me to a comic which I never would have dreamed possible, where a giant woman, and an even larger anthropomorphic monkey, fight off an army of frog people called froglodytes, Monkeyman and O’Brien. This premise sounds awesome until you realize the froglodytes are the absolute WORST invading army in history.

The story opens with Ann O’Brien and Monkey Man, aka Axwell Tiberius, holding a press conference because everyone is wondering who these people are and where they came from. And, this is helpful because, I was wondering the same thing when I realized O’Brien was twice as tall as anyone around her and Monkey Man was clearly wearing a custom tailored suit. Why is she so large and where does one get a suit that big? While the latter is never answered, which is a crime, we do get quite a bit of information. Mostly, that O’Brien can do a standing shoulder press of 1,600 pounds but still likes to go to regular gyms so other people can quiver in fear of her.

The explanation for where Monkey Man comes from gets incredibly sci-fi heavy to the point where it seems like our friend Axwell is just throwing science like words around to confuse all of the humans. It definitely confused this human. But, to try and summarize, Axwell is from another dimension when his planet is populated by creatures that look like gorillas but are actually genetically more like humans. This is where I had to stop because I thought that we were super closely related to primates as it was so, it seemed like a weird distinction to make. Naturally, I did a bit of research. Fun fact of the week! While 70% of our genome is closer to chimpanzees, of the remaining 30%, 15% of it is closer to gorillas while the remaining 15% is very similar to both chimps and gorillas. Who knew? If you want more on that check out the article here.

Anyway, back to the story. Monkey Man was chasing a criminal through terminus, which is the inter-dimensional no man’s land that separates all other dimensions where apparently he works as a cop. It was at this exact moment, that O’Brien’s father built an extra-dimensional exploration device and he got caught in the tractor beam. And, why is O’Brien so large? Did she just happen to eat a lot of protein as a child? Does she have acromegaly like Andre the Giant? Has everyone around he just shrunk to minute proportions? No, she just got some radiation from her dad’s machine and it made her an unstoppable juggernaut. It’s a very disappointing explanation. They also fought these things last issue:And all of the reporters were pretty happy about it so it must have gone well. After a solid amount of backstory, we finally get to the froglodytes and their very, very, phallic shaped space ships.

The froglodytes have decided to invade Earth because, their home planet of Devonia is over populated, so they need to find new swamps to live in. Their evil plan centers on melting the polar ice caps with bombs and flooding the planet. They can then enslave the humans and live happily ever after. There’s only one problem. Their ship scans the planet and realizes there is only one threat on Earth that could possibly stop them; Monkey Man. They then begin the worst invasion ever by teleporting Monkey Man to their ship, rather than say, using one of their bombs on him while he stands helplessly in the open. Before he disappears from the conference, O’Brien jumps on his back because of, what I can only assume is, serious separation anxiety. Also, no one at the conference seems particular shocked by anything that’s going on.

The froglodytes trap them behind a force field and begin an extremely long monologue about who they are but, really the only important thing to note is that phallic ships have been part of their culture for a very long time.

At this point their entire plan quickly falls apart when O’Brien decides she is bored and just shoves her way through the force field holding them. The froglodytes did not have a backup plan in place for if the greatest threat to their conquest ever got loose in their ship, and they are absolutely horrible at crisis management. All the frolodytes just begin screaming at each other to stop them but, none of them actually do any stopping. Also, O’Brien may have some serious anger issues because, she does not wait around before she starts punching everything within reach and using one of the most underrated insults in all of human history.

Weenie. If one word truly encompasses the froglodytes, that’s it. The beating continues for a few more pages before Monkey Man begins to reprogram their ship, while O’Brien continues to search the craft for more frogs to feed her blood lust. There is also a page about the head of the fugitive that Monkey Man was chasing, being attached to a robot body in an underwater fortress but, it’s not really important so we’re going to skip over it because, there is only so much sci-fi insanity I can keep up with at a time. O’Brien eventually runs out of bodies to pummel and asks Monkey Man to send her to the bridge to get the captain because, smashing low ranking frog soldiers is fun but, smashing a captains face? That’s where the true fun lies. While she continues her crusade to destroy the jawbone of every frog in existence, Monkey Man teleports monstrous fireflies from…somewhere, the size of the froglodytes ships to destroy them because dragonflies eat tadpoles. Oh! Their ships are supposed to be tadpoles. Not…never mind.

Monkey Man then runs to the engine room so he can punch a few frogs because O’Brien had probably told him how much fun it was and also, takes time to reprogram their engines. At the same moment, O’Brien has finally been bested by being dog piled on by at least 13 frogs. The froglodyte’s finally have done something right and they take a moment to cackle and celebrate their brilliance. The captain prepares to execute O’Brien but, not before drifting into another long monologue. Apparently, breaking into long winded rants is just a big part of the froglodyte’s culture? This gives Monkey Man enough time to teleport O’Brien to the ship hanger where they casually steal a spacecraft and fly away.

Naturally, O’Brien is satisfied with what they’ve done because she has met her skull smashing quota but, Monkey Man does not think so small. To make sure the worst alien invasion of all time is officially over, he uses the froglodytes’ main ship to capture every other vessel in a force field and then sends them back to their home world at light speed, where he assumes they will get punished for their failure. It’s kind of a risky plan hoping that they don’t actually gather more frog soldiers and just come back but, it’s only a three issue series so I am assuming Monkey Man knows they won’t have time to make it back before the finale. Our heroes fly away victorious after having saved the earth one punch at a time.

I totally forgot about the weird monster from the beginning of the issue. Apparently, it’s coming back. I don’t know if I can handle another Monkey Man and O’Brien issue so soon. No comic, it won’t be OK and I am very afraid.

Graphic Policy must regretfully inform you that in his terror Kenny Coburn has locked himself in the hall closet and, says he will not be leaving until he doesn’t have to read anymore monkey themed comics. We will break in and have him writing more Iconic Indies by the end of the week.