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Description

The cover image to my latest chapter in Smooze's story. I liked how it turned out so much (and it's the entire reason I'm writing the story) that I decided it was worth posting on its own (especially since DA doesn't display story covers once you click on them). I'm not one to keep up with memes, since they rarely reference things I'm familiar with or invested in (me loving the Star Wars Prequels is why I like the "Anakin gives no answer to bad question" meme), but I was always aware of "Me and The Boys," because I'm a lifelong Spider-Man fan (Spider-Fan). When Springleaf was overrun by pollution Pokemon in Nature Month Part 2, I got the mental image of Smooze recreating this scene with a Weezing and Garbodor and got to work thinking of a 4th member (it was almost a Shiny Muk until I discovered Revaroom). Slight tangent, but Revaroom was made the leader of The Boys because Muks, Weezings and Garbodors are all living pollution, but Revarooms create pollution (and, given their Pokedex entries, may actually combine liquid, gas and solid pollution all in one creature); if I went with a Shiny Muk, the leader probably would have been the Shiny Muk to mirror Smooze; might have been Garbodor in some hypothetical version of a quartet that lacks both a Revaroom and Shiny Muk, but no real reason for that.

So, I loved the idea of "Smooze and The Boys" so much that I sought out Spider-Man's 60's cartoon, despite me never having been interested in it before for perceived-goofiness...Slight tangent again, but the show debuted in 1967 when Spider-Man himself debuted in 1962, which I think makes him the first superhero to have a TV show debut the same decade of his creation and in such a short time after his creation (the only other heroes I can think of with a same-decade TV show are the Ninja Turtles), which tells you just how quickly and how hard America fell in love with Spider-Man (people like to cite She-Hulk, but Spidey was the real "Deadpool before Deadpool," given he turned the superhero genre on its head by being a kid with a serious chip on his shoulder and poor decision-making rather than a responsible adult you could look up to and he was tearing people to pieces with words before Deadpool was a pouch in Rob Liefeld's eye!)...Okay, not-so-slight-tangent over, the cartoon is much better than I thought it'd be! Spidey's razor-wit is spot-on, J. Jonah Jameson is funnier than Team Rocket (which is essential when he arguably shows up too much and it's almost jarring hearing him invent reasons to blame Spider-Man for things on a weekly basis) and the Green Goblin is so oddly competent, witty and interesting as a villain despite him not being Norman Osborne in this series (I think the show predates that revelation, meaning it definitely predates "The Night Gwen Stacy Died")...Seriously, all of Spider-Man's villains on the show normally just give him alliterative insults or synonyms for "fool" as their dialogue (which is spot-on to their characters), but Goblin matches the Webhead quip for quip and seems to have this odd effect where he puts Spidey into such a foul mood that he doesn't even want to joke around anymore even as Goblin keeps joking circles around him...Despite the show predating Goblin's rise to prominence, it's like it had vague Force Visions of his importance to come and always made sure to write him well, even if never directly called him Spidey's arch-nemesis or really viewed him any differently than the other villains.

I watched every episode featuring the characters used in the meme and the episode the meme comes from originally as research to see if anything about how the characters are written or what their episodes' plots are about could give me insight on how to write Smooze's story and its co-stars because I expected the show to be incomprehensible buffoonery, but some memes actually wound up being grossly exaggerated (like the one of Spider-Man sitting at his desk with his own picture...because it's actually Betty Brant's desk at the Daily Bugle and it's a picture of Jameson...Spidey also isn't sitting at the desk, he's crouching behind it as Electro shoots lightning at him; the scene ends with the Jameson pic getting hit and Spidey remarking, "It couldn't happen to a nicer guy," which cracked me up). Not that the show is compelling drama (aside from its adaptation of "Amazing Fantasy #15") or has a lot of good choreography (though, fights with Goblin are consistently good), but it's not the slack-jawed guffaw-fest I expected it to be and thus, none of the villains were helpful guides on how to write Smooze's adventures or its friends. The only meaningful connection between my drawing and the meme is that Smooze is not an original member of Menasaur's gang the way that Rhino is not actually in the episode "Me and The Boys" comes from and was Photoshopped in the way Smooze was inducted into the gang after it was already established...Granted, Smooze was always going to be Rhino in this pic because of their body-types and Rhino having the doofiest smile in the picture (though, the meme takes a very quick frame in the real scene and it didn't look this goofy for any noticeable amount of time in the episode...I can't speak for Rhino's smile, as I don't know what episode it comes from). Other than that, the best you get is Tomax and Xamot are Electro because their smokestacks are similar to his mask-bolts, Menasaur is Vulture because Vulture looks the meanest in the meme (not that it translates to Menasaur's face) and Pizzazz's Garbodor ears are coincidentally similar to Goblin's ears.

The weirdest thing about this meme and its relation to Smooze's story, however, is what you don't see...Or rather, who you don't see. Green Goblin, Electro, Vulture and Rhino all get two stories to themselves before the episode the meme comes from (not that Rhino is relevant to it, I just thought it an interesting note, considering he's not in the episode but still "fits the criteria" to make it into the meme), but they're not actually the leads of this episode. Given that the Spider-Man cartoon was only 5 years into Spidey's career (which meant he only had 60 or so issues out at the time, only halfway to killing Gwen Stacy and even less than that to debuting Venom), the show made up quite a few of its own villains (including in the very first episode, where the second story is about an ice-monster I have no clue about). One of these villains was Dr. Noah Boddy, whose only good quality is that his name is a pun on him being invisible...because the guy's a bore otherwise, as he has no other powers, has the personality of a stuffy college professor and doesn't even have a character model (the closest I've seen him get is being caught halfway through reapplying his invisibility process to himself and was thus a wavy mass of gray energy and another time being completely webbed up and the webs perfectly outlined his body to show you its shape). In any event, he breaks Goblin, Electro and Vulture out of jail (who were all still in their suits...despite Vulture and Goblin's powers coming from their suits) despite the fact that his only episode prior to that one ended with him getting arrested to (not that continuity is a huge deal in the show, but I wanted to complain about it, heh heh) and organizes them under his own leadership to eliminate Spider-Man. The show presents him as smarter and more dangerous than the other three despite Electro's power output and Goblin and Vulture having invented all of their own weaponry and their master plan is weird and would have worked if Boddy just let any one member kill Spider-Man when they rendered him vulnerable in their opening gambit rather than drag things out and give Spidey a chance to devise his own plan. It's a real disappointment, given the other episodes I saw, and was exactly the kind of thing the memes made me think the show was like (Boddy's debut episode is also dull)...But yeah, the character who made the meme possible is not in the meme despite the meme going out of its way to include a character who isn't even in the meme's episode. And I don't mean that Boddy is in the scene with the others and you just can't see him, he's off-camera talking to them and the screencap was extended to make room for Rhino.

In summation: Spider-Man's first show is way more enjoyable for curmudgeon Spider-Fans like me than a lot of other Spider-Adaptations and the meme faces turned out horrifying despite me trying to keep them goofy. Smooze scares me, Tomax and Xamot are body-horror and Pizzazz looks like he's mean to kids. Menasaur, the meanest of the bunch, is sadly only scary because of how much work I had to do to draw its face. Thank you for reading my Ted Talk.

Description

The cover image to my latest chapter in Smooze's story. I liked how it turned out so much (and it's the entire reason I'm writing the story) that I decided it was worth posting on its own (especially since DA doesn't display story covers once you click on them). I'm not one to keep up with memes, since they rarely reference things I'm familiar with or invested in (me loving the Star Wars Prequels is why I like the "Anakin gives no answer to bad question" meme), but I was always aware of "Me and The Boys," because I'm a lifelong Spider-Man fan (Spider-Fan). When Springleaf was overrun by pollution Pokemon in Nature Month Part 2, I got the mental image of Smooze recreating this scene with a Weezing and Garbodor and got to work thinking of a 4th member (it was almost a Shiny Muk until I discovered Revaroom). Slight tangent, but Revaroom was made the leader of The Boys because Muks, Weezings and Garbodors are all living pollution, but Revarooms create pollution (and, given their Pokedex entries, may actually combine liquid, gas and solid pollution all in one creature); if I went with a Shiny Muk, the leader probably would have been the Shiny Muk to mirror Smooze; might have been Garbodor in some hypothetical version of a quartet that lacks both a Revaroom and Shiny Muk, but no real reason for that.

So, I loved the idea of "Smooze and The Boys" so much that I sought out Spider-Man's 60's cartoon, despite me never having been interested in it before for perceived-goofiness...Slight tangent again, but the show debuted in 1967 when Spider-Man himself debuted in 1962, which I think makes him the first superhero to have a TV show debut the same decade of his creation and in such a short time after his creation (the only other heroes I can think of with a same-decade TV show are the Ninja Turtles), which tells you just how quickly and how hard America fell in love with Spider-Man (people like to cite She-Hulk, but Spidey was the real "Deadpool before Deadpool," given he turned the superhero genre on its head by being a kid with a serious chip on his shoulder and poor decision-making rather than a responsible adult you could look up to and he was tearing people to pieces with words before Deadpool was a pouch in Rob Liefeld's eye!)...Okay, not-so-slight-tangent over, the cartoon is much better than I thought it'd be! Spidey's razor-wit is spot-on, J. Jonah Jameson is funnier than Team Rocket (which is essential when he arguably shows up too much and it's almost jarring hearing him invent reasons to blame Spider-Man for things on a weekly basis) and the Green Goblin is so oddly competent, witty and interesting as a villain despite him not being Norman Osborne in this series (I think the show predates that revelation, meaning it definitely predates "The Night Gwen Stacy Died")...Seriously, all of Spider-Man's villains on the show normally just give him alliterative insults or synonyms for "fool" as their dialogue (which is spot-on to their characters), but Goblin matches the Webhead quip for quip and seems to have this odd effect where he puts Spidey into such a foul mood that he doesn't even want to joke around anymore even as Goblin keeps joking circles around him...Despite the show predating Goblin's rise to prominence, it's like it had vague Force Visions of his importance to come and always made sure to write him well, even if never directly called him Spidey's arch-nemesis or really viewed him any differently than the other villains.

I watched every episode featuring the characters used in the meme and the episode the meme comes from originally as research to see if anything about how the characters are written or what their episodes' plots are about could give me insight on how to write Smooze's story and its co-stars because I expected the show to be incomprehensible buffoonery, but some memes actually wound up being grossly exaggerated (like the one of Spider-Man sitting at his desk with his own picture...because it's actually Betty Brant's desk at the Daily Bugle and it's a picture of Jameson...Spidey also isn't sitting at the desk, he's crouching behind it as Electro shoots lightning at him; the scene ends with the Jameson pic getting hit and Spidey remarking, "It couldn't happen to a nicer guy," which cracked me up). Not that the show is compelling drama (aside from its adaptation of "Amazing Fantasy #15") or has a lot of good choreography (though, fights with Goblin are consistently good), but it's not the slack-jawed guffaw-fest I expected it to be and thus, none of the villains were helpful guides on how to write Smooze's adventures or its friends. The only meaningful connection between my drawing and the meme is that Smooze is not an original member of Menasaur's gang the way that Rhino is not actually in the episode "Me and The Boys" comes from and was Photoshopped in the way Smooze was inducted into the gang after it was already established...Granted, Smooze was always going to be Rhino in this pic because of their body-types and Rhino having the doofiest smile in the picture (though, the meme takes a very quick frame in the real scene and it didn't look this goofy for any noticeable amount of time in the episode...I can't speak for Rhino's smile, as I don't know what episode it comes from). Other than that, the best you get is Tomax and Xamot are Electro because their smokestacks are similar to his mask-bolts, Menasaur is Vulture because Vulture looks the meanest in the meme (not that it translates to Menasaur's face) and Pizzazz's Garbodor ears are coincidentally similar to Goblin's ears.

The weirdest thing about this meme and its relation to Smooze's story, however, is what you don't see...Or rather, who you don't see. Green Goblin, Electro, Vulture and Rhino all get two stories to themselves before the episode the meme comes from (not that Rhino is relevant to it, I just thought it an interesting note, considering he's not in the episode but still "fits the criteria" to make it into the meme), but they're not actually the leads of this episode. Given that the Spider-Man cartoon was only 5 years into Spidey's career (which meant he only had 60 or so issues out at the time, only halfway to killing Gwen Stacy and even less than that to debuting Venom), the show made up quite a few of its own villains (including in the very first episode, where the second story is about an ice-monster I have no clue about). One of these villains was Dr. Noah Boddy, whose only good quality is that his name is a pun on him being invisible...because the guy's a bore otherwise, as he has no other powers, has the personality of a stuffy college professor and doesn't even have a character model (the closest I've seen him get is being caught halfway through reapplying his invisibility process to himself and was thus a wavy mass of gray energy and another time being completely webbed up and the webs perfectly outlined his body to show you its shape). In any event, he breaks Goblin, Electro and Vulture out of jail (who were all still in their suits...despite Vulture and Goblin's powers coming from their suits) despite the fact that his only episode prior to that one ended with him getting arrested to (not that continuity is a huge deal in the show, but I wanted to complain about it, heh heh) and organizes them under his own leadership to eliminate Spider-Man. The show presents him as smarter and more dangerous than the other three despite Electro's power output and Goblin and Vulture having invented all of their own weaponry and their master plan is weird and would have worked if Boddy just let any one member kill Spider-Man when they rendered him vulnerable in their opening gambit rather than drag things out and give Spidey a chance to devise his own plan. It's a real disappointment, given the other episodes I saw, and was exactly the kind of thing the memes made me think the show was like (Boddy's debut episode is also dull)...But yeah, the character who made the meme possible is not in the meme despite the meme going out of its way to include a character who isn't even in the meme's episode. And I don't mean that Boddy is in the scene with the others and you just can't see him, he's off-camera talking to them and the screencap was extended to make room for Rhino.

In summation: Spider-Man's first show is way more enjoyable for curmudgeon Spider-Fans like me than a lot of other Spider-Adaptations and the meme faces turned out horrifying despite me trying to keep them goofy. Smooze scares me, Tomax and Xamot are body-horror and Pizzazz looks like he's mean to kids. Menasaur, the meanest of the bunch, is sadly only scary because of how much work I had to do to draw its face. Thank you for reading my Ted Talk.