The Titans join the Peace Corps in an issue brought to you by the Peace Corps. Hey, the Peace Corps is cool. This message also brought to you by... the Peace Corps. Look, I'm not really knocking the Peace Corps, but I wonder how many Titan fans joined up to help people in the Third World after reading this issue. They drone on and on about it so much that... hold on, I'll be right back...A cold shower does wonders for deprogramming a conditioned brain. So whenever I get the urge to join the Peace Corps or play World of Warcraft, that's what I must do. So back to our story.
Bob Haney calls it "The Beast-God of Xochatan", but I prefer to call it "The Teen Titans fight a giant Conquistador robot". Hey, I give credit where credit is due, and that Beast-God thing appears only in Act 3 and on the cover. Strange, because I would have though that a giant robot that looks just like Cortez would have been a greater draw. Ah well. What do I know about 60s audiences anyway? (Well, for one thing, I know a heck of a lot of them must have joined the Peace Corps... unless they had the cold shower technology down already.)
So like I was saying, Robin enrolls the Titans in the Peace Corps without their permission and they're off to South America to help build a dam or something. My favorite part of this sequence is how their adult counterparts learn about this. (Note that in the Titanverse, newspapers are faster than CNN.)
Batman prefers reading his news hanging from a gutter pipe.
In Central City, people can't be bothered to read the paper, so it's all ticking marquees.
Paradise Island seems to keep at least ONE man around. And his sole job is pleasuring the Amazons... with news from abroad! Not sure Paradise Island qualifies as a Third World country though, Hippolyta!
NewsI don't even know where to begin about how Aquaman gets his news... Look! Aquababy! And that appears to be his ACTUAL NAME!So the Titans go down to small town Xochatan, where the natives are superstitious and the Peace Corps guy in charge is called - and I kid you not - Juan Valdez. (Before you defend Haney by saying something like "It was probably before the coffee thing", I say thee NAY! Juan Valdez started peddling coffee back in 1959. Common enough Hispanic name, sure, but in comics, if you've got a common name - like John "Martian Manhunter" Jones or John "Red Tornado" Smith - it's usually a pseudonym. These are stories where "Ebenezer Scrounge" and "Brom Stikk" are supposed to be the standard!) And then, just as my digression was making you reach for that cup of 100% Columbian, a GIANT CONQUISTADOR ROBOT ATTACKS!
The Peace Corps, it's also about fighting Spanish explorers!Thankfully, the Titans are parachuting down to the site at that very moment ("Xochatan - There's no airstrip and no roads, but we'll drop you off anyway!") You can probably guess what happens next: The robot disappears inside a mountain, but Robin figures out the illusion, so it comes out again and Kid-Flash digs a big pit and they trip up the Conquistabot into it. Then some bone ugly animals with human faces come out of a pyramid and Wonder Girl flashes Kid-Flash some morse code on her bracelets and... Well, I guess you wouldn't have guessed all that.But who's behind it all? It's Don Matanzas, and he's having a Scooby-Doo moment. Let's listen in:
How not to get an entry in Who's Who in 3 easy lessons:1. Never make up your mind about your gimmick. Spanish conquistadors or Aztec gods? Science or Magic? It's all good.
2. Dress like Shakespeare's evil brother.
3. Attack the Peace Corps.
The Peace Corps: IT. IS. DEFENDED!
Comments
Great blog. Just found it, and (obviously) am working my way through the archives.
Funnily enough, I've spent the week pondering what to do with the Kirby meme you started at the Olde Comics Blogge, but your own entry is pretty much top of the pile already, and rather in line with my own recurring jokes about Stan Lee.
Maybe I'll think of some non sequitur over the weekend.