NEW CAPTEEN CARROTITANS #16/0

Two odd tastes that don't go at all together.

This is an abridged edit of a piece I wrote here. The version at the link is aimed at comics fans and thus goes into more detail: this version is about half as long and for more general consumption. Try the full version if you really want to go into the weeds!

Comics! They're weird.

Captain Carrot, aka Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew, is the world’s first and longest-lived funny-animal superhero team comic book. It is my favorite comic of all time, partly because I imprinted on it before I developed any critical faculties whatsoever, but also because it is amazingly weird in ways that only comics can be.

And nothing about it was weirder than how it was introduced. DC Comics gave it a big push by inserting a 16-page preview of it right in the middle of New Teen Titans, their biggest, edgiest hit.

The results definitely got attention, but there were some minor issues of tonal dissonance. Imagine if Warner Brothers had a new Bugs Bunny series to promote, so they inserted a new cartoon short with Elmer Fudd right at the midpoint of an episode of Game of Thrones.

I...I mean...check this cover out, would you?

The main image: Starfire, absolutely hysterical with rage and pain, ready to answer one murder with another.

The margins: more hype than a carnival barker. There are no fewer than THREE DIFFERENT USES of Captain Carrot's name, along with two different spellings of "preview," some hype for the Titans too just so they don't feel left out (comics' most sensational super-team! MORE PAGES! FROM THE NEW DC! From the New DC AGAIN!!), and a thumbnail version of the cover shown here:

New Teen Titans #16 (1982) is the story of a doomed whirlwind courtship between Starfire and ordinary dude Franklin Crandall.

He seems too good to be true, and he sure is. Plot twist #1: he’s a spy for the Titans’ enemies. Plot twist #2: he’s gone too deep and now he’s really falling for Starfire, not just pretending to. Plot twist #3: he is naive enough to think he can walk away from this job and remain alive.

You can guess how that works out for him. The cover image above paints a fairly accurate picture of the climax: Starfire is all “kill revenge grahhh,” and her teammates are like “heroes don’t kill, we can’t let you.” She ends up not killing Franklin’s killer, who dies anyway for violating his evil organization’s esprit de corps. It’s a tale of heartbreak with seamy undertones that’d earn it a “teen-plus” rating if published today.

Meanwhile, in that promo insert, Clark Kent has stumbled into Toontown:

Roy Thomas’s co-creation Roger (Rodney) Rabbit is a typical early-middle-age cartoonist, i.e., a simmering cauldron of rage barely held in check by his terror of authority figures. Whether this is a confession of sorts from the mild-mannered Roy or inspired by others he met in the biz, I couldn't say. (Consulting writer Gerry Conway and primary artist Scott Shaw! also had some input into the character’s development.)

Having gained temporary superpowers from biting a radioactive carrot, Roger wastes little time suiting up. A plague of primitive behavior has started to uncivilize the civilized animals of his world. Dealing with this lets Roger work out his frustrations in a more constructive way, though he continues to chafe at Superman’s instinctive condescension. (Or, if you prefer, call out his casual speciesism.)

The craziest thing about this promotion?

It worked.

Sales for Captain Carrot were robust for its first year or so, and this promo has to have been one of the reasons why. The audience for New Teen Titans...actually bought this. Comics fans do love it when comics try to accomplish new things with the form, and CCAHAZC was like nothing else on the market.

In conclusion, these two tales were as different as photorealistic night and cartoon day—except they were both about a hotheaded superhero who, despite the intervention of a more morally centered hero, wanted to bust loose from all constraint. Oh, and the titles:

I'm guessing comic-book writers of a certain age really loved the old movie Hercules Unchained.