The Comic Review #112: Spitfire and the Troubleshooters #1 (1986)

I know I said it would be DC Heavy for a little while but I figured alternating through the rest of the New Universe Stuff would work better. I want to widdle down that giant list I made at least somewhat this year. So we have already reviewed two new universe titles from our friends at Marvel Comics. Star Brand, and Mark Hazzard: Merc. Both of which I enjoyed reading. I guess you will have to keep reading to find out! After this one we will have five more to talk about. That works pretty well because I have five DC heroes I want to alternate with! Hooray for things working out and everyone out there being happy! I like being happy! I also like unnecessary additions to a paragraph to make it look longer and therefore make it look like I put more time into this review! Isn't that sneaky!?? It would be if I didn't call attention to it!

So a quick rundown on what the new universe was. It was something for the 25th Anniversary of Marvel Comics. It was created by Jim Shooter and several others. It was to create new heroes that were more down to earth and all that. It did not really last very long as the entire thing was over in three years, ending in 1989. Mark Gruenwald would bring back some of the characters in his Quasar run and maybe we will take a look at those stories after we have done finishing up discussing these stories. Eliot R Brown who created these characters with Jack Morelli was born in 1954 and found himself a job at Marvel Comics being an assistant to Tom DeFalco. He worked behind the scenes mostly it seems. He is credited for the idea and plot but Gerry Conway wrote the script to this issue. Gerry Conway is a legend of Marvel Comics and DC Comics creating Vixen, Power Girl, The Punisher, Firestorm and a bunch of others with a bunch of artists. One DC Comics writer who did only one thing for Marvel wrote later issues of this comic but we are talking about issue #1 here. Not issue #6.

 So this comic starts off with Karl Swensen being murdered by a man in a robotic suit. He was looking for something within his lab, as he takes a safe out of his desk. Then we go to see the Troubleshooters a multi racial group INCLUDING white guys which is the most 1980s/1990s kinda of multi racial group. There's a black lady, an Asian dude and three white dudes.  They are doing a wacky 1980s prank and it doesn't include sexual assault! Now that's progressive! They are building a tractor in Dean Dibbles office! They are also working at M.I.T. I know a SAUCY MAN who works there. HE IS MY FRIEND AND I LOVE HIM. Ashley Swensen comes in and well despite being a teacher agrees to help bim becuase really who the fuck would respect a man with the last name Dibble. That's the name of the police officer from Top Cat and Top Cat never gave that man a break. So fuck this Dibble too! GIVE HIM HELL TROUBLESHOOTERS.

So she goes outside his office and sees him and two police officers. This admittedly was good for the Troubleshooters because they got to pull off their prank and get out of there but the police officers are there to talk to her about her father's death. She does not take the news well (and neither do the Troubleshooters who are listening in on the ledge!) We then get a smash cut to her funeral where KROZE tells her she has until 10:00 to remove anything that her dad owned from his property or it's his forever! She goes to her fathers house and lab which was on his property, she checks his computer and finds an message from her dad, it says not to trust KROZE and it's 10:00 so she couldn't read any more. The security guy shows her the door. Tells her she has to talk to Kroze to read more. However the son of a bitch is in Europe. 

She then realizes she HAS to read the message and like any responsible teacher she decides to talk to her students about it. She then says they can't help her and it was wrong of her to help them. However these RAPSCALLIONS decide to help her anyway.  She gets into her dad's house without being seen because a bomb was placed somewhere else. It was placed by the Troubleshooters! Now they are really doing 1980s pranks! They are trying to get into a safe but Ashley Swensen tells them to leave! they argue and she realizes they can't leave so they literally turn her dad's labratory into......three trucks. the kind truckers use to haul things. I don't know what they are called. Oh and she shows them a robot like Iron Man only shitty. 

They drive the LAB TRUCKS away and they don't drive out of town or anything just to some canyon place. Ashley gets into the MAX ROBOT PROTOTYPE #2 and starts smashing the canyon to create a base for them. Of course the bad guys lead by KROZE (not his actual name apparently but I don't care enough to figure out what his name was) and this leads to a fight between the PROTOTYPE #1 owned by KROZE and PROTOTYPE #2 with ASHLEY. The fight in the air, the ground and even in the sea. You can tell I'm not in love with this comic book because I want to get this review over with. What can I say, I either get really angry at things I don't like or just want them over with. This is one of those I want it over with. They stop KROZE and move on. They drive away out of town this time to get a good place to set the TRUCK LAB up in. I am just glad I am done with this.

I did not really enjoy this comic book. I did not really get any kind of a feel for any of the characters. They were honestly quite boring characters. the art and everything is really good, just I do not care about the characters and that is the worst thing in any story. I also felt that the LAB TRUCKS were some kind of weird ass pull to get the Lab out of where it was put. Gerry Conway wrote 15452068209420 comic books over his career and really the ranked from quite excellent to uh, not excellent. The original plot from Eliot R Brown and Jim Morelli didn't really help.  I did not hate this comic book as you don't really see me getting mad about it but it is clearly the worst new universe title I have read right now. You are really better off reading any Iron Man comic being published in 1986 over this.

FINAL THOUGHTS: I hope the rest of the new universe titles are better than this one. Read Iron Man instead. Or watch the Transformers.