Today's issue was bagged with the Code: Blue cover showing, otherwise I might not have thought to grab it. From 1995, Thunderstrike #16, featuring "Grudge Match!" Plot and script by Tom DeFalco, plot and pencils by Ron Frenz, finishes by Al Milgrom; and "Krask Force" Written by Roy Thomas, co-plotted by R.J.M. Lofficier, pencils by Larry Alexander and Grant Miehm, and inks by Charles Barnett.
The lead story was mainly about a long awaited rematch between Titania and She-Hulk. Although Titania and her man Crusher "Absorbing Man" Creel were on parole and supposedly trying to go straight, her loss against She-Hulk haunted her. Crusher reaches out to Thunderstrike, to contact She-Hulk and arrange the bout; although Thunderstrike had his own problems, like trying to keep tabs on super-powered alien Stellaris. They meet at the Delacorte Theater, but agree to let Thunderstrike use his
Stellaris makes things worse by zapping the Absorbing Man, although later he's unable to take her "too different too alien!" power. Meanwhile, while Titania was stronger than She-Hulk to begin with (at least that's what She-Hulk thinks, and may not always be the case) this time she had stacked the deck, with "sonic field enhancers" making her ten times stronger. Except she's not any smarter: She-Hulk maneuvers her into punching a rock wall and getting stuck, then punches Titania over the horizon line. Actually, that's not quite right: on the next page, Titania lands right on Thunderstrike's head! You had the whole desert to launch her, She-Hulk, c'mon.
The back-up "Double Feature" features Code: Blue, the SWAT team called in for super-powered threats in DeFalco and Frenz's books. They haven't been used as much outside of that, but the Marvel wiki mentioned them arresting Shocker and Speed Demon, and I wonder if that wasn't in Superior Foes of Spider-Man somewhere. But I mainly bought this issue because it featured the armored Daredevil on the cover, and I wanted to see how said armor fared under another artist's pencils. And...enh. The shoulder pads don't look great. Oddly, since this story features armored DD, he wasn't a lawyer at that time; but there is a ton of legalese in this story! Foggy Nelson and Code: Blue's Lt. Stone are giving a deposition, in a lawsuit against the city, brought by the law firm of Krask & Krask. (They argue that the city may have acted negligently, by sending Code: Blue instead of actual super-heroes to deal with a rampaging Doombot; and may have a point...) The depo is interrupted by the return of daddy Krask, an obscure villain from Thor #172, now an energy-being!
Meanwhile, at a press conference, the mayor (a bland and generic one, but better him than Giuliani) announces the disbanding of Code: Blue; because Thor and Thunderstrike work for free, it wasn't cost-effective, etc. Then with Krask threatening to wipe out all of Wall Street's computer data, the mayor's assistant tries to call in the Avengers, and gets Hercules, who doesn't give a goat's crap what happens to computers. Over a barrel, the mayor reinstates Code: Blue; who, with Daredevil and a squad of bean-counting civil servants, force Krask onto a CD; and the Krask brothers are forced to take a settlement for a measly half a million. Aw, too bad!
1 comment:
Ha! Now this is some comical shit right here.
I may have to find a scan of Titania landing on Thunderstrike's head, because that shit sounds hilarious AF.
Hercules response is pretty much what you'd expect, but no less funny. Maybe the guy should've called the Vision or Tony since that seems to be more up their alley.
Goddamn DD's armored look looked horrible without Scott McDaniel's drawing it. That page further nails that point.
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