Brave and Bold #3: The Fatal Five
Let's just talk about the Fatal Five here in this month's issue of The Brave and the Bold. I'll have more to say about all the pre-Zero Hour stuff in a little while.
So let's see. The Lord of Time, not seen in quite a while (no pun intended), comes back in time to secure the Haruspex (something that will enable the reader to see the future). He brings with him "the scourge of the 31st century". Creative license? A version of the Fatal Five hasn't been seen yet in the 31st century. This Fatal Five resembles the pre-Zero Hour version visually (see examples below, click to enlarge).
With a little artistic license, it appears to be the same one (though the B&B Emerald Empress has a design on her forehead identical to that of the Persuader's Atomic Axe, while the old Empress always wore a headband).
Post-Glorithverse, they all got new costumes and Tharok got un-dead (I forgot how) and started wearing a wife-beater shirt. Also, by this time, Validus had gotten cured, so they had a new character named Mordechai as the second cover in this series, but he's not relevant to this discussion.
After the Zero Hour reboot, they kept the same costumes as their Glorithverse counterparts, except for the Empress (not Emerald any more, and dressing in fetish wear):
Anyway, so these new guys seem somehow to be the old guys, prior to Tharok's death (theoretical question - if your doppleganger kills you, is that a homicide or suicide?). And I guess we can also chalk up to artistic license the fact that Mano looks like Ghost Rider with a fishbowl on his head.
Batman knocks out the Lord of Time with a boot to the head, a left roundhouse, and a right uppercut, but his time travel equipment initiates a fail-safe and returns him to his home era (whenever that is). Tharok notes that being stranded "wasn't part of the deal". Hmmm, I wonder what their end of the bargain was. The issue ends with Batman and Tharok getting merged. (Does that make him The Composite Batman? Or maybe Batman + Tharok = Batroc? Maybe not.)
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2 comments:
As I recall, there wasn't much of an explanation behind Tharok's return. He had been held captive in Leland McCauley's "collection of artifacts" for the prior X-number of years. I think McCauley just had one line of dialogue to the effect of "Oh, I grabbed him right before he blew up and have held onto him all this time." (I'd have to reread it to be sure, but I think it's fairly accurate; I remember thinking it was flimsy at the time.)
This issue was nice because I had just read the "Let's Blow Up Tharok" extravaganza, in which he had finally really endeared himself to me. I'd just started to miss him and he showed up again. Timely!
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