FF's Impish Mort

Well, it has been a while hasn't it? Randy is once again correct, as our last Mort was indeed Vartox, the hero of Tynola, a planet "trillions of miles from Earth". His story is meant to mirror the life of Superman in many ways, insofar as his home planet was destroyed and he was the last survivor. He swears to uphold his adopted homeworld of Tynola just as Superman has become Earth's greatest hero, even though he really isn't from Earth. His physical appearance is meant to resemble Sean Connery, and his name is an allusion to the movie Zardoz, in which Sean Connery wore a similar outfit. This, of course, begs the question of where Vartox is today. My guess is that he is sitting on a couch somewhere, balding and hurling insults at Alex Trebek every day when Jeopardy comes on.

Okay, let's move to the Marvel longbox for our next mort. I doubt he is as obscure as some that we have shown, so tell me what you can.

Murdering Mort (now with even more chest hair)

Randy scores with the 3-pointer this week (sorry to the Mav fans for whom a Basketball reference is a cruel reminder). Last Week's mort is Deathwing, a Hypertime version of Dick Grayson who becomes a stooge for evil Raven late in the New Teen Titans run. His story is actually more complicated than that, having served as part of the Team Titans, time travelling heroes from the future sent back to stop the birth of Donna Troy's baby, since he would grow up to be the evil Lord Chaos. Except, he wouldn't apparently, as Lord Chaos and the Team Titans were created by former Titan Monarch as Sleeper Agents to turn the tide of battle against the heroes during the Zero Hour event. Except, not all the Team Titans were part of the plan apparently, since when Monarch was defeated, all of the Team Titans that he created dissappeared, but Deathwing didn't. It was later learned that he was plucked from our time line by the Time Trapper in an effort to create his own sleeper agents to counteract the sleeper agents of Monarch during the Zero Hour event. Confused, yet? This is why the Teen Titans line folded.

There are few things better than Silver Agey Superman goodness. The Mort above is one example of it. Who is he?

Not Such a Good Night-Mort

The Jurgens / Perez era Titans was doomed from the start (which is hard for something that has the name of George Perez attached to it). Nobody was clamoring for a total rewrite of the once powerful Titans regime (The best selling title of the 80's. It beat out the X-Men, seriously!). What fans did want was a return to the hey day of the series, with Robin, Wondergirl, Cyborg, Changling, and all of the other characters who had become famous through the pens of Marv Wolfman and George Perez. What they got was a whole new cast of virtual unknowns (although in fairness, characters who kept the spirit of the original title). All of the morts pictured (with the exception of the Atom) had the same origin. Their mothers were abducted by the H'San Natall alien race and impregnated in an effort to raise sleeper agents that would rise up at the precise moment and betray the earths super humans and allow the aliens to take over the earth. So the Teen Titans are human-alien hybrids with great storyline potential to examine the whole nature / nurture debate. Untapped potential, sadly. Anyway, the 96' era Teen Titans were:


Joto (in the Hoodie)- Isaiah Crockett has the power to generate great amounts of heat. He also has the odd ability to send out "Heat Pulses" that worked kind of like a Bat's sonar and enable him to see images that he couldn't really see (I know that makes no sense, so read an issue or two of the series to figure it out). To me, he is the best of the bunch, since Jurgens didn't rely on the, "Hey, he's black" trick to define his character. In other words, they didn't need to show Joto playing basketball or listening to rap or any of the other things we white people assume about African Americans in order to establish his character. Isaiah is level headed, calm under pressure, and far more than any of his compatriots, cut out for the super hero game. He even died and came back to life, so he's halfway there.

Atom (The Little Dude)- Yup, that's good old Ray Palmer, except that during Zero Hour he was reverted into a teenager. He led the team, if by lead you mean throw fits every time his teammates didn't recognize that he was a former Justice Leaguer. At one point, he also gained the ability to grow really big as well, but Superman "healed" him of that at the same time he was "healed" of his youth.


Prysm (The glowing Purple Chick)- Prysm is an interesting exception to the rest of the group in that, while the rest of the abducted mothers were returned to Earth, Prysm's mom stayed with the Aliens and Prysm was raised in a virtual reality world (which may be the third biggest indicator that you are reading a 90's book behind Ridiculously large guns and crappy Rob Liefield art). She is very naive about the ways of the world, but can fly and project energy bolts.


Risk (Look, with two arms!)- Cody Driscoll has tremendous speed, strength, and stamina (although not enough to keep Superboy from pulling his arm off). He was portrayed as the Big Man on Campus type, although ironically he was also portrayed as coming from a lower income, single parent family, which added some depth to what could have been a very flat character.


Argent (The pale one with the rainbows and no sense of modesty)- Toni Monetti can create constructs of Silver Plasma (much like the Green Lanterns, but without the silly aversion to yellow). Unfortunately, she wasn't very creative and usually used the power to make shields or slides to aid in transportation. She began as the most one dimensional of these new Titans, a rich party girl, a precursor to Paris Hilton if you will, but after Joto's death, she rededicated herself to the job of being a Titan, and was the only one of the group to serve in the Titan's later incarnations.


One of the things I loved about this series, and I hope that it shows in my synopses, is that the characters had a depth of emotion that is somewhat uncommon. No one's personality is easy to sum up, and even in 25 issues the characters developed beyond what you would assume. All in all, well worth the read.


Okay, new mort, also from the Titans family. Be careful with this one, as it is not who it appears to be (or is it?)