Let's check in with Art Baltazar and the DC Super-Pets

Devoted link-followers may recall a post I did for Robot 6 a few weeks ago about Picture Window Books' DC Super-Pets series of easy-reader prose books by illustrator Art Baltazar and different writers.

At the time, I'd only managed to track down three of the first wave of six books (yet more are forthcoming). Well, this past week I managed to find two more of those initial six books through my library's inter-library loan program: John Sazaklis' Royal Rodent Rescue, in which Streaky the Super-Cat tries to foil Catwoman's cat Rozz's Metropolis crime spree, and J.E. Bright's Heroes of the High Seas, in which Aquaman's pals Topo, Storm and Ark stop Black Manta's pet mantas from destroying Atlantis.

As a regular reader of Baltazar's Tiny Titans, in which a kitten version of Streaky regularly appears, it was neat to see a grown-up Streaky in Royal Rodent Rescue—along with a grown-up Supergirl, who is mentioned teaming up with Batgirl at one point, but is only drawn by Baltazar at the beginning.

Here's what Baltazar's non-Tiny Supergirl looks like: Sazaklis writes Streaky the Super-Cat a lot like a regular cat, with Streaky regularly stopping to curl up and take naps between super-acts.

For example, while napping at the Fortress of Solitude, he hears an alarm signaling a break-in at an appliance store in Metropolis. He flies there to see police already on the scene, so goes into the store and takes a nap atop a TV.

The villain of this piece is Rozz, a female cat who is apparently original to the book (I don't remember Catwoman having a cat by that name, anyway). Oddly/adorably, she dresses up just like her master Catwoman, making her a cat wearing a cat-suit: The book suggests that Batgirl is Catwoman's archenemy, not Batman, and when she sees Batgirl and Supergirl teaming-up in Metropolis on TV, Catwoman decides that means the coast is clear for a Gotham crime spree.

Rozz, on the other hand, decides to journey to Metropolis and try her paw at crime there. Her main crime, the one referred to in the title, is kidnapping the pet hamster of visiting royalty and holding it for ransom. The highlight of the book, for me anyway, was the scene where Rozz breaks into a TV station and communicates her demands to the viewing audience at home. But, because she's a cat, it's just a bunch of meowing (to everyone who isn't also a cat, like Streaky).

Heroes of The High Seas was the one I was most looking forward too, as it featured my favorite of the pet-having superheroes, Aquaman. There's Topo, a Silver Age Aquaman character (who apparently functioned as a one-cephalopod band in the comics, just as he does here!), Storm, the name of Aquaman's giant sea horse from those crappy old Aquaman cartoons, and the new character Ark, a little seal, whose presence here instead of Tusky (Aquaman's walrus sidekick in the same cartoons Storm used to appear in), sort of confused me.

Here's a nice image in which you can see all three super-pets, as well as Aquaman's whole court, as drawn by Baltazar: Baltazar makes some very, very strange choices in his character design for some of these animals. Ark, for example, seems to have legs in almost every drawing of him, with knees and everything, giving him the appearance of a humanoid seal instead of a normal seal. And I had no idea what species the two villains, Misty and Sneezers, were supposed to be until the text revealed that they were rays.

Take a look: Personally, I would have guessed "ghost cats." I worry that some day some kid is going to grow up thinking manta rays look like gray ghost cats because of this book.

I'm still on the look out for the final of the first six books, Midway Monkey Madness, which features Beppo The Super-Monkey, Gleek and the Wonder Twins from Super Friends and Gorilla Grodd. And the next round looks even more awesome, with books featuring Hoppy The Marvel Bunny, The Green Lantern Bug Corps and even Krypto's pals in the Space Canine Patrol facing off against villainous cats from The Phantom Zone!

Apropos of nothing, here's an Art Baltazar drawing of Wonder Woman riding her kanga Jumpa:

It's from the DC Super-Pets kids book, The Fastest Pet On Earth. Perhaps understandably, the Amazons' use of a giant species of kangaroos native to Paradise Island as mounts has been alternately downplayed and abandoned within most of the publisher's comics, with horses replacing the kangas. I say understandably because 21st century comics have a much lower tolerance of silliness than those of the 1940s, when Wonder Woman and the Amazons' kangas first emerged, and also because little girls really, really like horses, so maybe the best superheroine in the world should hang out with horses (and/or unicorns and/or pegasuses...pegasi?...instead of giant, rideable kangaroos).

Anyway, Jumpa stars in The Fastest Pet On Earth, and she differs from the Golden Age Jumpa in that she dresses a bit like Wondy herself, and is more of a character than a means of transportation.

Here's how J.E. Bright, who wrote the Baltazar-illustrated book, described kangas:

Like the smaller kangaroos from the mainland, kangas were built for jumping. But unlike Jumpa's kangaroo cousins, she didn't hop to get around. Instead, she ran on her powerful legs like a speedy dinosaur.

So I guess maybe they're kind of like the Tauntauns from The Empire Strikes Back...?

At the beginning of each volume of the Super-Pets series, there's a two-page "super-pet hero file" highlighting their powers, abilities, owner and their height compared to heroes and villains.

Jumpa's "bio" states:

Kangas are found only on Paradise Island. Like kangaroos, kangas can leap long distances, but they're also super-speedy. These heroic hoppers are the royal rides of Wonder Woman and other Amazons.

This concludes today's post about the indigenous wildlife of Paradise Island.

Meanwhile, at Robot 6...

I have a post about Art Baltazar and company's DC Super Pets line of children's books for publisher Capstone. Above, you can see how Baltazar can make even a Geoff Johns-created, Shane Davis-drawn burning blood puking cat into something cute and charming.

Review: Lockjaw and The Pet Avengers Unleashed

The original, 2009 Lockjaw and The Pet Avengers series was an extremely Marvel Universe-dependent affair. The cast, of course, was comprised of various animal heroes associated with various Marvel characters—The Inhumans’ teleporting bulldog Lockjaw, X-Man Kitty Pryde’s dragon Lockheed, The Falcon’s falcon Redwing, Ka-Zar’s sabre tooth cat Zabu, Speedball’s cat Hairball, a frog with Thor’s powers and costumes called Throg and Ms. Lion from Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends—and the plot involved them going on a quest to assemble the Infinity Gems before cosmic villain Thanos could put them in his gauntlet and rule the universe or whatever.

The 2010 sequel series, Lockjaw and The Pet Avengers Unleashed (Get it? Because two of them are dogs, and dogs wear leashes?), is much less dependent on Marvel continuity, and perhaps ironically, seems a lot more reader friendly—at least up to a point.

The conflict in this outing is that half-frog, half-god-like superhero Throg feels out of place, neither true frog nor true god, but finally finds acceptance among his fellow mythological creatures, like the Yeti. In doing so, he stumbles into a world where such fantasy creatures have all been sent, a world where they’re under threat by a mysterious, unseen foe.

When Throg leaves Earth, his old teammates must reunite and try to find him, and, along the way, earth gets invaded by fantasy animals and, later, the things from their world that were harming them in the first place.

Writer Chris Eliopoulos’s plotting is fairly strong, though the twist at the end seemed a little tired and overused to me, as well as coming a bit out of left field (Of course, if this is a kids comic, I don’t suppose it matters so much if many other stories have similar elements, since this may be the first time in their younger lives they’ve encountered it). The characterization of some of the principals helps sell it all quite well, and I think the story is actually at its best when we’re just sort of hanging around Ms. Lion and Hairball as they attempt to be animal superheroes in New York City.

That pair has, by far, the most defined personalities among the cast members, even if their personalities are sorta simple—Hairball, the cat, hates the dog; Ms. Lion, the dog, is dimwitted and enthusiastic—and they get the most panel-time.

In fact, one of the weaknesses of the scripting is how unnecessary much of the cast seems. If Redwing, Lockjaw and Zabu weren’t in this comic at all, it wouldn’t change a thing—their few lines would just be spoken by someone else. That’s a challenge of writing team comics—especially super-team comics, as teams as stacked with powers as, say The Justice League and The Avengers really shouldn’t need to have folks like Superman or Sentry standing around constantly—and I guess it holds true for team comics featuring superhero animals.

Ig Guara’s art is, again, superior. He draws perfectly realistic animals, but without sacrificing their ability to emote in ways that seem both animal-like but easily readable. And Big Two super-comic artists who can do very realistic while still maintaining the vibrancy of a living, breathing, done-by-human-hand drawing are increasingly rare.

Much like the first volume then, this is pretty fun all-ages adventure; a not-great comic with an awesome premise and extremely polished execution that make a few flaws seem particularly forgivable.

**************************

I read this story not as it was originally published, in serial comic book form, but in a trade. I read the original series in comic book form, and regretted it when I saw all of the nice variant covers that were being produced for it, variants that I assumed were included in the trade.

So this time I waited for the trade, so as not to miss out on Robert Langridge’s totem poll variant or this neat dogs-playing poker riff. I know the incentive for doing variant covers at all is that it helps the publishers sell more books to their retailers, but it has the opposite effect on me, and I wonder if it incentivizes trade-waiting among more readers than it manages to sell issues to readers? (It’s such a weird business model really, with publishers selling to retailers, not readers, and retailers selling to readers, so the publisher/reader relationship isn’t as important as it might be otherwise).

The advantage of my waiting for the trade is that I did indeed get all the covers without having to buy two copies of some of the issues, and I also got two other, shorter stories.

The downside? Marvel published the trade at a smaller, not-quite-digest size, which didn’t serve the art and thus the comics all that well, since they were created for the larger dimensions (which I’ve already discussed a bit here).

So I’m afraid I still can’t quite figure out the best way to read these things.

The serials come out more frequently and are at a size more complimentary to the content, but they’re also full of ads, missing some content (variant covers, at the least) and, in most Marvel cases, are more expensive.

The trade is generally cheaper, has more content (here, variants and back-ups) and can be purchased without a trip to a comic shop (45 minutes, for me), but (again, in this particular case) the artwork is ill-served by the size.

So, those back-ups?

The first is by Eliopoulos, writing and drawing, and was originally published as part of the $4 Tails of the Pet Avengers: The Dog Days of Summer one-shot, from last July. It’s actually a Franklin Richards, Son of a Genius story, drawn in Eliopoulus’ Bill Watterson-inspired style, and starring Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman’s young son, and his robot nanny HERBIE.

The inadvertently create a giant garbage monster, and the Pet Avengers show up to help.

It’s a pretty fun, funny little story, and it was a pleasure to see Eliopoulos drawing the Pet Avengers. Check it out:He also does an excellent job with Puppy, a puppy with similar powers to Lockheed (and a similar tuning fork on his head), really capturing the not-giving-a-fuck of certain dogs.Finally, there’s a four-page short entitled “Hulk-Pet Avengers,” which gives us an opportunity to see another artist’s take on the characters—that of Dario Brizuela.This one’s written by an Audrey Loeb, whom I believe may be related to that other comic book writer named Loeb (it would certainly explain why this not at all funny or even very good story got published), and, like so many comics written by people named Loeb, it’s sort of a nonsensical mess.

A little kid Hulk who is blue—Blue Hulk apparently only exists in these shorts, where he tends to hang out with Red Hulk and (Green) Hulk, neither of whom are present here—is hanging out and watching TV with the Pet Avengers. Here, they can talk to non-animals, like Blue Hulk.

Actually, all of them can talk, even Lockjaw, who can’t talk, even to other animals. It’s…it’s just weird, really. Like someone in old time Hollywood writing a script for a short film featuring the Marx Brothers, and including plenty of lines for Harpo.

Anyway, the TV watchers see an ad for some place called Ice Cream Mountain, which is apparently a literal mountain of ice cream, and then they try to go there, but talking Lockheed’s teleportation powers get scrambled by lightning, so they teleport to a few other places first, on the way encountering the Red Ghost’s Super-Apes, which is kind of cool, I guess.

(Disclaimer: If Audrey Loeb is Jeph Loeb’s young daughter and only, like, a grade schooler or something, I apologize for being mean. If she’s over 18, then never mind—it’s just the story I’m judging, not the person, obviously. And the story is no good.)

An important update on the state of squirrels in the Green Lantern Corps:

Last week I noticed a strange change to the cover of Tiny Titans #28, which I discussed at some length on Blog@Newsarama. The solicited cover featured the Green Lantern Corps' longtime alien squirrel character Ch'p on it.

But the one that shipped had a different alien squirrel character on it, B'dg (Which the Internet told me is pronounced "Badge." Apparently the rules of apostrophe pronunciation in the DC Universe are remarkably consistent from planet to planet).

At the time, I wondered aloud about the change.

Well I just recently received clarification from the person in the best position to know about any last-minute changes to the alien squirrel superheroes appearing in Tiny Titans—Tiny Titans writer/artist Art Baltazar.

Here's what Baltazar had to say about the change:

Ch'p was changed to B'dg kinda last minute during the action of making the Tiny Titans! I was told by my awesome editors and...GEOFF JOHNS!...that Ch'p got killed! OH NO! What are we gonna do now?! I really liked Ch'p too. B'dg became the new Squirrel GL in Ch'p's place. So, B'DG it is! I never heard of B'dg so I had to get reference and read about him and stuff. Now, I like him alot. He even thinks of humans as pets. AW YEAH SUPER PETS! PLUS! B'dg is tied into the DC Super Friends kids comic and has a better chance of getting a toy from Mattel. It's true.

So there you have it. R.I.P. Ch'p. And, um, "Aw yeah, Bd'g."

Ten things I learned from the Marvel Pets Handbook

1.) That horses—winged, horned or otherwise—are measured to their withers to determine their height. And the withers are, apparently, the highest point of a horse's shoulders, or where the two shoulder blades meet. I did not know that until I looked it up after reading this handbook.


2.) The Marvel multiverse may be even more complicated than the DC one. DC Comics used to get a lot of flack for how complicated their shared setting was, considering the fact that it consisted of alternate dimensions with alternate versions of the same characters, and that they were permeable enough that the Supermen of Earth-1 and Earth-2 were pals, and characters like Red Tornado and Black Canary could immigrate between the two. Prior to Crisis on Infinite Earths, they were designated by numbers or letters—Earth-4, Earth-S, Earth-X, etc.—and, after a few years of fiddling with it, it now seems like they're using just numbers, and that there are 52 different earths.

How many different Marvel Earth's are there? I don't know. The main Marvel Universe is usually referred to as the "616" universe, or "Earth-616." But in the handbook, other earths are referred to with this formula, and I have no idea what any of these are. Earth-78411, Earth-929, Earth-311, Earth-700089, Earth-691, Earth-148611...and so on. I'm not sure how the designated numbers are arrived at, but as you an see some are as long as six digits.

I imagine there's also a handbook that defines all of these, but I haven't got that one.


3.) NEXTWAVE is apparently considered continuity/canon. Even the bit with Devil Dinosaur at the end. That DD, however, was allegedly "a clone of Devil."


4.) Dick Ayers draws an awesome gorilla. Look at this thing, one of the "Beasts of Berlin" from Tales to Astonish #60:
I like how fast and rough the art is. It looks like Ayers drew it from memory, rather than photoreference, and came up with something that looks awfully close to a gorilla, without being too faithful to what gorillas actually look like.


5.) The Montauk Monster is obviously a relation to Droog, Russian scientist The Gremlin's bioenginnered dog.




6.) The Punisher used to have a dog, with a Punisher logo dog-chain. In the handbook's introduction, it is noted that "the notion of a super-pet—one who shares teh powers/appearance of its master–is particular to the publications of a certain Distinguished Competitor." Superboy had Krypto the Super-Dog and Beppo the Super-monkey, Supergirl had Streaky the Super-cat and Comet the Super-horse, Batman had Ace the Bat-Hound. There are a few of those sorts of pet analogue super-pets in the Marvel Universe, including Speedball's cat Niels/Hairball and The Sentry's Watchdog (although the Sentry is simply a Superman stand-in). If you would have asked me a couple weeks ago who the last Marvel character who would keep a dog version of himself around might be, I probably would have said The Punisher.
But I would have been wrong. Apparently in the early '90s Frank Castle rescued "a particularly savage rottweiler" named Max from a drug dealer, nursed him back to health, gave him a Punisher branded collar, and used him as a watchdog.

I don't think Punisher's Max ever appeared in the Punisher MAX title, but I still have a few trades to go before I finish that series. Maybe someday someone will do a Max MAX series...


7.) Loki is a lot weirder than I thought. I probably knew this at one point, back when I was a kid and would read encylopedias of Norse or Greek myths from the library, but Odin's eight-legged horse Sleipnir has a pretty weird parentage. Apparently the Big O wagered Freya in a bet against a frost giant who disguised himself as a stonemason. Loki knew that the giant's horse did most of the work, so to stop the giant from successfully rebuilding Asgard's walls in the bet-upon time-period, Loki "took the form of a young mare, and lured the stallion away...when Loki returned, he brought with him an eight-legged colt."

Soooo apparently Loki's tricky plan to stop the work was to transform himself into a female horse, let another horse fuck him, and then give birth to the baby horse he got knocked up with while seducing the giant's horse...?


8.) There are half-gorilla, half-lion monsters in both the DC Universe and the Marvel Universe:




9.) The Nazis were so evil and so monstrous, that even their pets were evil monsters.
Even the one's with femine names. (Or does "Teena" mean "Eight-legged Death" in German?)


10.) There is a ton of potential for future Lockjaw and The Pet Avengers sequels, if the first series sells well. A trip to asgard alone would supply Lockjaw and company plenty of animals to meet, team-up with or butt heads against. And there are more than enough pets of super-villains for The Pet Avengers to come into conflict with The Pet Masters of Evil.

Two things.

1.) Is Ms. Lion transexual? He's male, but dresses as a female, with pink bows on his ears, and uses a feminine modifier on his name. Of course, if he was a physically male dog that identifies himself as female, he would he be so quick to answer "yup" when asked if he's male? (Can the other animals, all being of different species, with the possible exception of Lockjaw, who's kind of a special case anyway, tell what gender he is?) Or is Ms. Lion perhaps a transvestite, a male dog who enjoys dressing as a female dog, and has adopted a more colorful female name, for the fun of it? Whatever the case, Ms. Lion is a ground-breaking character, the first transgendered or cross-dressing one in Marvel's character catalog (That I know of, anyway).*


2.) How is it that Ms. Lion knows Peter Parker is Spider-Man? Did Mephisto's mind-wipe mojo somehow not affect him?



(Image from Marvel's Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers #1, drawn by Ig Guara)



*Or, more likely, writer Chris Eliopoulos is just using the scene to humorously point out that Ms. Lion is so stupid that he doesn't even realize that "Ms." is an article used by females, and that pink bows are associated with female characters rather than male ones, especially in the cartoon character business. Each of the "Pet Avengers" is given a single character trait, and Ms. Lion's is stupidity.

So I understand the Obamas are looking for a new dog...

Provided they don't have their hearts set on one that's both three-dimensional and, what's the word, real, then I might have a few suggestions...


Krypto The Superdog

Breed: Kryptonian

Current owner: Superman

Positives: Has all of Superman's many powers, only scaled to dog proportions, making him an ideal guard dog, watch dog, bloodhound and, should the need arise, attack dog.

Negatives: Would be difficult for human owners or handlers to take him for flies into outer space for exercise, or throw trees for him to fetch; could render the president's secret service detail superfluous, costing hundreds of them their jobs



Ace, The Bat-Hound

Breed: German shepherd

Current owner: Batman (estranged)

Positives: Batman would likely be willing to give Ace up, given how the Dark Knight tends to be ashamed of his occasional canine sidekick and is constantly trying to distance himself; an experienced tracker, Ace could help find people when the president can't (Look out, bin Laden!)

Negatives: Previous owner was kind of insane, so Ace might have a difficult time adjusting to living with a normal family that never wears capes or assaults anyone; background check could compromise Ace's secret identity, and thus that of Batman



Rex, The Wonder Dog

Breed: German Shepherd

Current owner: A national treasure, Rex is owned by us all

Posiitves: A superb polymath and jack-of-all-trades, Rex's skill set and resume are unparalleled by any dog in history (and, come to think of it, few humans); in addition to being an excellent guard dog, he could easily fill in as a nanny for the girls, a secret service agent, White House chief of staff, Secretary of State, Vice President, or whatever Obama needs, really

Negatives: It might not do to have the First Dog showing up the president of the United States, and the fact that Rex would likely crush the back of al Qaeda, capture bin Laden, turn the economy around, solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and invent a new source of cheap green energy within his first 100 days pretty much guarantees he'll be making Obama seem incompetent in comparison.



G'Nort Esplanade G'neesmacher

Breed: G'Newtian

Current owners: The Guardians of the Galaxy

Positives: As a biped that can speak English and has opposable thumbs, G'Nort needs little in the way of care, and could be more useful than most first pets tend to be(he could feed himself, reach things on high shelves for the girls, etc.); his magic wishing ring is sometimes referred to as the "most powerful weapon in the universe" and can create any form of energy and matter in any amount, so long as he has the necessary willpower and imagination

Negatives: Past unsavory personal connections include Guy Gardner, The Scarlet Skier and Justice League Antarctica; allegiance to an immortal race of remote, controlling aliens may present the appearance of a conflict of interest; less intelligent than most species of earth dogs; a little of him goes a long way



Lockjaw

Breed: Attilanian giant bulldog

Current owner: The Inhuman Royal Family, or possibly Ben "The Thing" Grimm

Positives: An exceptionally good dog for watching after the daugthers of the powerful; has experience working with ruling families; in addition to his great strength, his ability to teleport would be a useful form of transportation for the president; would be the first First Pet with a tuning fork in its head

Negatives: His great size may be problematic, potentially causing damage to the White House; the United States and the Inhumans have had several recent conflicts, and it may be impolitic to invite one of them to live in the White House; drools



Scooby-Doo

Breed: Great Dane

Current owner: Some beatnik

Positives: Master of disguise (for a dog); will do absolutely anything for a scooby snack; can talk (albeit with a speech impediment); friends with ghost-breakers Mystery Inc., who could prove useful in solving the mystery of the White House ghosts

Negatives: Extremely cowardly and somewhat paranoid (Get ready to hear “Sp-Sp-Spirit?!” every time you mention “The spirit of bipartisanship," Mr. President-Elect); needs held a lot; enormous appetite could put an unusual strain on the White House's pet food budget



Dynomutt, Dog Wonder

Breed: Android

Current owner: The Blue Falcon/Radley Crown

Positives: As his dog hair is synthetic, he's hypoallergenic; miraculous system of transistors allows him to telescope his limbs to great lengths and pull a gadget for almost any emergency out of his chest; worked for the first black mayor in a Saturday morning cartoon; former All-Star Laff-a-Lympic athlete; his partner Blue Falcon says he’s “as strong as a train…fearless, scare-less” and “a go-go dog person” (that’s a compliment, right?)

Negatives: An inveterate bumbler; kind of an idiot (for a talking android dog); has an extremely annoying laugh; has amassed a long list of goofy but potentially dangerous villains like Madame Apeface, Queen Hornet, The Red Vulture, The Glob, Fishface, Lowbrow, The Blimp and so on; according to his partner Blue Flacon he has “a so-so brain” and is “a little too careless”



Goofy

Breed: Human canine hybrid

Current owner: The Walt Disney corporation

Positives: Has opposable thumbs and walks bipedally, so he can manipulate most basic tools; can dress, feed and walk himself; can speak (although mostly just says “Gorsh!” and “A-hyuck hyuck”)

Negatives: Severely mentally retarded (or possibly brain-damaged); unsavory associations include a gigantic rodent and a duck with severe anger management issues



Snoopy

Breed: Beagle

Current owner: A depressed, round-headed grade school student

Positives: Good with kids; extremely affectionate toward little girls; quite a dancer; his Easter Beagle schtick would be a hit at White House lawn Easter egg rolls and hunts

Negatives: Prone to hallucination and elaborate delusions, has trouble separating his imagination from reality; ties to MetLife may present conflict of interest when the new president tackles health insurance reform

Super-dogs are super hard on cities

The second story in Age of The Sentry #2, "The Secret of Area B," featured plenty of panel time for Watchdog, the blue-caped corgi that is Krypto to The Sentry's Superman.

As I've mentioned before, I think the concept of a dog with Superman-like powers is absolutely terrifying, something made quite apparent in Mark Russell's apocryphal prose stories The Superman Stories, one of my favorite Superman stories of all.

In their Sentry story, writer Paul Tobin and artist Michael Cho manage to capture just how problematic a super-powered dog would be in a few background gags while Sentry is looking for his superhero peers, who keep mysteriously ditching him.

Here's what Watchdog's super-pee could do to a fire hydrant:

Can you imagine how many fire hydrants, mail boxes and trees he probably destrorys every single day in that fashion?

And here's what his super-jaws could do to a piece of whatever building he decides to chew on when Sentry's distracted:

Two more Golden Age super-pets

Alan Scott's canine companion Streak the Wonder Dog wasn't the only Golden Age superhero animal sidekick that Les Daniels, Chip Kidd and copany highlighted in The Golden Age of DC Comics: 365 Days, that book I keep posting scans from. Space is also allotted to Ace the Bat-Hound and two much less-familiar super-pets, one of whom I'd heard of but never seen, and another I'd never even heard of.

The former is Robbie the Robot Dog, the unimaginatively named robot dog of the Golden Age Robotman (not to be confused with The Doom Patrol's Robotman, Cliff Steele, although their origins are quite similar). The original Robotman was scientist Dr. Robert Crane, who had developed a robot for use as a full-body prosthetic. When he was fatally wounded by crooks, he had his assistant stick his brain in the robot body, and thus became an automaton avenger.

He first appeared in Star-Spangled Comics, and later in Detective Comics. (More recently, he was in 1981-87 series All-Star Squadron, James Robinson and Paul Smith's dark 1993 Elseworlds series The Golden Age and (extremely) briefly in Geoff Johns and Lee Moder's short-lived Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. series and Robinson's Starman (though in non-Robotman bodies).

Robbie hasn't gotten around quite as much since the close of the Golden Age.

Here's a 1944 image by Jimmy Thompson:


And here's another Thompson image, from 1947:


More than fifty years before the AIBO! I don't suppose there's much hope in DC reprinting any old Robotman stories, but the art in those panels really is quite charming.

The other super-pet is Airwave's parrot, Static. Or, as Daniels refers to him, "Static the Proverb Parrot." Daniels also goes on to say he was "essentially a pest whose only talent was squawking homilies mixed with wise-cracks. (Having lived with a parrot for two years, I can attest that "essentially a pest" is a good description of any pet parrot).

While I have never read a single Golden Age Airwave story, I've long wanted to, as he seems like such a delightfully weird character.

Law clerk Larry Jordan fought crime using the cutting technology of radio, building himself a costume with dials and antennae on the ears which allowed him to intercept police radios and phone calls. To get around town, he would roller-skate atop the telephone wires. (His grandson is the current Airwave, who had actual superpowers instead of radio-based gadgets. He was a JSA reservist who's been MIA since Infinite Crisis).

The original doesn't pop up very often, although Brad Meltzer did just namedrop him in DC Universe: Last Will and Testament. An Airwave Chronicles or Airwave Archive repring project eems even less likely than a Robotman one; maybe DC could put together some kind of Golden Age sampler someday to include the likes of these guys...?

Here's a 1945 George Roussos image of Static lookng on at Airwave's radio-ears in action:


And here's a 1946 image by Harris Levy, demonstrating how color-coordinated this duo was:


Hmm. Alan Scott's dog Streak, Robotman's robot dog Robbie the Robot Dog, Airwave's parrot Static, Batman's canine crusader Ace the Bat-Hound, Dr. Midnight's owl Hooty, The Shining Knight's pegasus steed Winged Victory, Red Bee's prize bee Michael, Manhunter's dog Thor...that's more than enough for a Golden Age version of the Legion of Super-Pets.

Is the world ready for All-Star Squadron of Super-Pets? I know I am.

The other other wonder dog

In tomorrow’s Teen Titans #62, writer Sean McKeever and artist Eddy Barrows will be introducing Wonderdog into mainstream DCU continuity. (You can read five pages of the issue, during which Wonderdog appears and gets his name and cape, here).

This Wonderdog is, of course, the one from the early ‘70s iteration of Super Friends, the green-caped anthropomorphic dog who hung out with his fellow “junior Super Friends” Wendy and Marvin (whom Geoff Johns added to the Teen Titans line-up after the “One Year Later” jump.)

When McKeever and Teen Titans editor/DC muckety-muck Dan DiDio first started teasing about a wonder dog joining the team, I was initially worried they might have been talking about the DC Universe’s greatest hero, Rex the Wonder Dog, who had previously been hanging out with teenage hero Hero in the pages of Superboy and The Ravers, and Hero subsequently joined a Titans West team that never appeared after their origin story, which Johns co-wrote. So you see, Rex is practically a member already.

(Well, “worried” is probably too strong a word, but I really rather like Rex the Wonder Dog, and would prefer to see him stay in limbo for now rather than suffer the indignities of having to hang around Wendy while she’s dressed like this, or be forced by Clock King II to fight to the death against Ace the Bat-hound in a prelude to Final Crisis or any of the other horrible things that could befall such a character in one of DC's team books).

So last week when I was reading through The Golden Age of DC Comics: 365 Days by Les Daniels, Chip Kidd and Geoff Spear (i.e. That Book I Keep Posting Scans From), I was surprised—no, shocked—to find that there was apparently another wonder dog in DC’s character catalogue, and this original DC wonder dog was actually the pet of one of its Golden Age superheroes, Green Lantern Alan Scott.

Ladies and gentleman, are you familiar with Streak the Wonder Dog?

(Above: Page from 1948's All-American Comics #99; scan lifted from Sleestak)

Debuting in the late ‘40s as the superhero slump was beginning, Streak was the creation of Robert Kanigher, and was introduced in the pages of Green Lantern as GL’s dog.

Here’s the cover of 1948’s Green Lantern #30, which featured “The Saga of Streak”:
(I’m not sure who the curvy dame on the other side of Scott is, but I bet she helped sell just as many issues as the dog trying to deposit his bone at the bank did).

Four issues later, Streak is back on the cover, and what’s this? Green Lantern is not:


Streak also got the cover to himself on 1949’s Green Lantern #36 and #38, the very last issue of this volume of the comic.


Oh man, poor Alan Scott. Hal Jordan fans might have thought they had it bad in the '90s when their Green Lantern lost his book to a brand-new young upstart character like Kyle Rayner, but at least he didn't lose the book to his dog.

Now, if that last cover, featuring a German shepherd perched atop a car full of escaping crooks, reminds you of the sort of thing Rex the Wonder Dog might have done in one of his adventures, there’s probably a good reason for that. According to a 2006 installment of Comic Book Urban Legends, Streak stories continued in Sensation Comics for a while, until Kanigher redeveloped the crime-fighting canine wonder dog concept and launched The Adventures of Rex The Wonder Dog. So does that mean Streak and Rex are related? Has Roy Thomas written a story about this?

Here are two interior images of Streak, culled from The Golden Age of DC Comics. First, despite being leashed and tied up, Alan Scott’s dog wins again, convincing Alan Scott’s secretary to stay on the train they're riding on:


And here’s Streak thinking human thoughts:


All of the above images, by the way, are drawn by Alex Toth. No wonder Streak the Wonder Dog look so wonderful...

"The Tornado's Pets"