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Zen the Intergalactic Ninja #1
By Geoff Hoppe

August 15, 2007 - 23:31

Zen Comics
Writer(s): Steve Stern
Penciller(s): Ross Andru
Inker(s): Mike Esposito
Letterer(s): Bill Yoshida


zen.jpg
Couldn't find a pic of the cover, so this old school video game ad will suffice.
Ah, the early 90s. The latter half of Bush no. 1’s administration. New Kids on the Block. Styrofoam containers at McDonald’s. My heady first-grade days, full of juicy-juice fueled benders on the blacktop. And cartoons, hordes of them, from the sublime (remember Tale Spin?) to the ridiculous. Ridiculous offender #1: Captain Planet.

As if speedos weren’t already fey enough, Captain Planet had to traipse about the interstate picking up litter at the behest of Oprah Winfrey (Gaia). Not much can be said for CP. He employed child labor (the Planeteers). He had a mullet. He failed to make decent use of Ma-Ti Ki, the heart Planeteer*. One thing, however, keeps Captain Planet from utter lameness: he wasn’t Zen, the derivative intergalactic ninja.

Zen: the Intergalactic Ninja, a 25-cent gem from the bargain table, was published, inauspiciously, under the Archie Adventure Series label. Getting the guys who make Archie to publish an adventure comic is like hiring Mickey Rourke as your beauty consultant.

Anyhoo, as the story goes, Zen, a smurfy blue telepath with the vocabulary and mannerisms of Wolverine, saves some random blond Aryan kid from Lord Contaminous, an evil being made of trash. Turns out that the Aryan kid (his name’s Jeremy, like it freakin’ matters) is the Starchilde. This is a major plot point, but I forget why. Jeremy and Zen recycle some crap and make a team of eco-friendly heroes out of it. The Gordons, Zen’s employers, order the new team to defeat Lord Contaminous and his pack of pollution-themed villains. The story comes to a cliffhanger end when I try to kill myself with a potato-peeler and break it in the process.

Worth the money? Just for giggles, I’m going to keep typing “no” until you stop reading. No no no no no no no no no no no no no NO no no no no no no no no no no no no no no

*Ma-Ti Ki could have been bad@$$. Need to beat a baddie, fast? Just get Ma-Ti Ki to use his Heart power and make a rhinoceros-in-heat hump the villain to death. Nuff said.


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