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September 10, 2021 at 11:16 pm
The only thing that he has ever conveyed in any of this Atomic Comic trash are the Ideas. That’s it. Here’s the name of the book, here’s the cover to the #1 issue, and everything else – story, marketing, advertising, criticism, reception – is irrelevant.
Banana Jr. 6000
September 11, 2021 at 9:20 am
…“This superhero is based on air” is not a story. It’s not even a character. But whatever, give us the goddamn Sunday comic book cover already so we can get this shit over with.
You asked for it, Banana Jr. 6000! Meet…DDCTDR ATMDS! Those who read Funky only in the Sunday funnies won’t have the benefit of knowing the backstory of the Doctor’s fascinating origin. I think they’d be more likely to assume the this comic’s title character was the figure flying in from the right. The one on the left looks more sinister, and appears to throwing off a whole bunch of “killer watts!” Nobody should be shocked that Batty uses the reality bubble at lower right for three weak electrical puns. Two puns, actually: Pete’s not pronouncing it “revolting.” He’s literally revulsed. Pete is as sick of these two as we are.
Son of Stuck Funky 
WOw, so here’s the first ISH of your new super-hero! OOOH
And you’re showing him three quarters view. OK–you’re saying the villain is more important.
–In your ORIGIN issue.
Here’s the thing about comic book origin stories. Either they are front and center, or they are shot from behind for the mystery reveal. Only an idiot would have a 3/4 view. Which means, Tom Batiuk is saying that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby are idiots.
Oh, also, your “hero that has to be contained in a plastic bag” has his face right there. I mean, his unexposed face.
I have to assume that Atmds was working for the (obviously) Air Force on some sort of top-secret project involving some kind of top-secret militarized air, where he was exposed to some sort of air that turned him into, well, air. Then they caught him in a shop vac or something until they made him his special air suit. It’s a real flimsy premise, sure. But that’s never stopped TomBan before.
If you had a superhero who was made of air, why would you build him a special suit so he can throw things? Any person with two arms can do that. Jjcjtr Atmjs can’t manipulate objects, because he has no mass. And I don’t mean he doesn’t even lift, bro, I mean he literally has no mass. Wouldn’t he much better suited for stealth missions? He could go through an opening of any shape, exist almost anywhere, and his very nature makes him undetectable. You’d have to give him some weaknesses, but I think this is a pretty good starting point for a character.
TVTropes has “Crippling Overspecialization”, where characters have skills that would never actually be useful. The classic example is Aquaman, whose top talent is interviewing fish. You have to find something else for him to do, or contrive a story where he can use it. The Uhttomicq Qomiqz world suffers from Cripping Underspecialization. No matter what backstory or traits a superhero has, they all do the same thing: put on a suit, punch people, and appear on the “No. 1” cover.
Crippling Overspecialization is the main reason I could never take the X-Men (both good and evil) seriously… And I will die on that hill.
Hmmm. A superhero consisting solely of air presumed to be “he/him”? Having a sealed suit shaped in the form of a hugely muscled yet non-existent male body? I suppose that is better than she/her-air housed in a suit with cliché double-D boobies.
Just thought of the original conception of Marvel’s Guardians of he Galaxy, whose Major Vance Astro had to wear a protective suit because he was a 20th Century man in the 31st Century; without it, the exposure to air would reduce him to dust.
Each of the original Guardians — Martinex, Charlie-27, Yondu and Vance Astro — were the last of their kind. You could build on that in their adventures. What is there to build on here?
Something/Anything? asks Todd Rundgren to sheer silence.
“Killerwatts” remind me of a 1967 issue of *The Challengers of the Unknown,* with the title “The Kook and the Kilowatt Killer.” (#57, if you’re interested.)
“The Kilowatt Killer” was actually named Power Man (beat you to it, Luke Cage!) and the “Kook” was Tino Manarry, Challenger Red Ryan’s younger brother, who thought his brother Red’s death was the fault of his fellow Challengers. (Tino, real name Martin, was also a rock and roll star with several patents to his credit. Only in comic-books!)
In point of fact, DC had killed off Red because they thought he wasn’t doing much for the series…only to bring him back five issues later because readers demanded it. (When last I looked at a Challengers story, DC had decided that the way to handle Red was to make him someone whom you would love to hate. That was in 1991; I’m not sure what’s happening now.)
Jack Kirby, the model for Phil Holt, created the Challengers, of course. Phil, like Red, returned from the dead.
Challengers of the Unknown! I followed them through at least one change of uniform. Like Adam Strange, their stories seemed able to go absolutely anywhere.
Banana’s link (hah, I support a labor-rights org called Banana Link) led me to a 73-item list of electrically powered characters, including Killerwatt, Killawatt, and at least two Kilowatts. And again, 60-80% had better costumes than the half-arsed gimp suits Holt seems to favour.
The Challengers recognized that they lived on borrowed time…but never investigated where that time came from. Maybe it was too dangerous to learn. (Sort of like the Voice offering to let Jim Corrigan go to his eternal rest just when the Spectre was needed to save a life. Naturally, the Spectre had to refuse, and the Voice said it was his decision.)
Adam Strange’s adventures have a definite pattern: he catches a zeta-beam to take him twenty-five trillion miles to the planet Rann, he arrives in the midst of a crisis threatening the world, he deals with it and then the zeta-beam wears off, returning him to Earth. Lather, rinse, repeat…
Still, Carmine Infantino (yes, Tom, the original *Flash* artist) drew the stories…Alanna, Adam’s ladyfriend on Rann, was gorgeous…and Adam used his brain to defeat the menaces, consistently, knowing that his fists and a ray-gun could only do so much. I enjoyed them very much.
The Justice League of America thought enough of him to invite him to their 100th meeting celebration (couldn’t make it, zeta-beam had him off-world) and attended his wedding to Alanna.
“Bring out the gimp in a better costume!” (line not in “Pulp Fiction”)
Every time there’s a Sunday comic book cover I’m going to post this, because it hasn’t been wrong yet:
Oh no! What if Killerwatt ionizes Dr. Atmds? He brought Phil Holt back from the dead for this? Sitting around in a comic book bullpen exchanging moronic wordplay-based gags is BatHam’s ultimate comic book fantasy and, true to form, it’s unimaginably boring and quite stupid, too. He creates an entire comic book-related sub-universe full of comic book writers and comic book artists and comic book fans and THIS is where his imagination takes him. It’s just so unfathomable and off-kilter, yet fascinating in a perverse kind of way.
I know what this reminds me of. It’s the cover of the instruction manual for a role-playing game that has no licensed characters.
And that’s a real GURPS manual cover. Look how perfectly that image fits! I didn’t even have to recolor anything.
Looks to me like Dr. ATMDS has laser beam nipples like the Pale Force heroes!
This exists:
https://comicvine.gamespot.com/killerwatt/4005-20117/
Congratulations, Flash and Phil! You’ve invented a comic book villain who has existed since 1999. And wears almost exactly the same suit.
It occurs to me that the letters in _ _ C T _ R A T M _ S could be J’s, with really big serifs. So his name could be Jjctjr Atmjs. Maybe he’s Estonian. I ran it through Google Translate, and it pronounces it “YIKE-tyart-mi-ess.” Apparently the “A” is silent. Which is far more backstory than Tom Batiuk gave this character.
Those white gogo boots Doctor Atmos is wearing are really cute. When I was in high school the majorettes wore boots like those. I wonder if Holly can teach Doctor Atmos the flaming baton trick. He can use the skill as an offensive weapon.
Killerwatt is wearing white gogo boots too. There must have been a sale.
Doctor Atmos: “I love your boots. Where did you get them?”
Killerwatt: “I borrowed them from my sister.”
When did Flash and Phil discuss giving Doctor Atmos his own title? Wasn’t the idea to put Doctor Atmos in a team with The Subterranean, The Scorch, and a yet-to-be-named water-based superhero? Wasn’t the group supposed to be called ‘The Elementals’?
Slow down and take a breath, Batty. You’re all over the place like a hyperactive child.
Yeah, really. It’s the story we skipped over a whole second week of what it calls brainstorming. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining.
Sorry if any comic book people are enjoying this story arc, but less is better.
Of course, that can be said about any of Batty’s story arcs. Undeserving Les, boring Funky, or comicsturbation it’s like choosing between a punch in the face or a kick in the stomach.
I can only assume that, next month, we’ll get another week of Atomik Komix strips to introduce the water character. And then we’ll get the actual team-up issue the month after that. Something to look forward to, eh?
I look forward to that about as much as I look forward to a dental cleaning.
Looks like you’re right. That appears to be a Vintage FW Melinda Budd in the SOSF banner at the top of the page. A Melinda flashback? Hopefully, we’ll be spared from the Flash/Phil stuff for at least a week.
I’m really confused.
I can’t figure out if Batiuk actually takes pride in this shit, or if he’s flipping all of us the bird and hoping he’s amplifying universal misery.
I’m confused. Which one is Doctor Atmos? The guy shooting pink stuff or the guy shooting baby blue stuff?
Neither one looks like Phil’s sketch to me.
The pink one is presumably Doctor Atmos, because he has a bubble helmet and no visible face. The blue one is Killerwatt, because he’s all lightning-y.
Your comment got me thinking more about the colors in this cover. When I try to picture a character with “wind powers”, pink is not the first color that comes to mind. It feels like the colorist chose pink purely to contrast with Killerwatt’s blue, which seems backwards; surely they should have picked a color scheme for the hero first, and done the villain afterwards. And then the title text is blue, which naturally leads people to think that the blue guy is Dr. Atmos. And (moving away from colors) the name “Dr. Atmos” by itself suggests “atmosphere”, which suggests weather powers, which can easily include lightning.
All of that leads me to ask: are we sure the colorist knew which character was which?
This raises a good point. How is this a good comic book cover when it’s not even clear which character is Doctor Atmos?
It’s a poorly designed layout. My eyes first went to Killerwatt because he’s in the foreground. That’s most likely why I thought he might have been Doctor Atmos
Commenters the other day pointed out that having a containment suit is a weakness. How about that fishbowl? The bad guy shatters the fishbowl. Doctor Atmos dissipates into the air, battle over. Why does he need a fishbowl? Without eyes, he doesn’t need something to see out of, does he?
Doc Atmos had better watch out: Too much pink energy is dangerous!
1. I’m going to keep on asking: WHY is this being published by Atomikkk when they could get infinitely more distribution and sales with one of the major brands instead?
2. I thought all these elemental guys were part of “Team Sub-Terranian?” Shouldn’t you at least introduce them through the main title character before offshooting them into their own individual issue?
3. That Killerwatt dude looks an awful lot like Dr. Light…
4. I still don’t know what superpowers a dude made of vapor is supposed to have… I’d have thought being made of vapor meant he could change his form and stealthily get to places without being seen? Instead he’s an old-fashioned punch-’em-up muscleman?
5. I don’t get it… If Batiuk loves comics so fucking much, why not wrap up the Funkyverse in a neat little bow and crossover to making superhero comics full-time? So what if no publishing company will touch him? Just release the comics online like anybody else…
I actually reported today’s FW to the Marvel Comics infringement web page at https://www.marvel.com/help/category/11/topic/29. I got an automated reply to the effect of “we can’t correspond with you about any investigation that may occur as a result.” Probably won’t amount to anything.
For the record, I don’t think Batiuk intentionally used the existing character. I think he’s so untalented, uncreative, and lazy that he built a weeklong arc about creating something that already existed.
Late to the party here but have to add this – among all the other problems of the cover why is Dr. Atmos – who is made of air – standing on the ground and the bad guy is the one flying?
It doesn’t make sense. None of the rest does either but wanted to point that bit out.
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