As you may recall, I--GAARD!--have been trying to prove snell wrong, by finding Marvel characters lamer than GAARD!
It's been a long trek, but at least, I--GAARD!--have found what may be the lamest villain ever. I speak, of course, of Kleezar, the Parasite of Eternity!!
Oh, GAARD can hear the quibbling already, that this was technically not a Marvel story, and hence not a Marvel character. Hogwash!! The story starred the original Human Torch, and guest-starred Captain America and enigmatic Sun Girl. That's as Marvel as it gets!! So travel back with GAARD! to the misty days of 1948....
How lame is Kleezar? The story refers to a "power so monstrous, so overwhelming." Well, let's take a look:
and
Oh no, he makes cats beat up milquetoasts, and turns horses into "fiery beasts of destruction." Now, 1948 was back in the past, but I'm confident that our automobile culture was far enough along that a few uppity horses hardly presented a serious threat to Earth.
But the crisis is severe enough to call in our three heroes. And Dr. Jefferson reveals that the animal madness is caused by "rays" emanating from Jupiter! And it's only a matter of time until it effects humans!!
Well, there's only one solution: the Human Torch must fly to Jupiter!! Yup, all the way to Jupiter. Afire the whole way. Hmmm, no wonder the Russians beat us to the punch with Sputnik...
But GAARD! digresses. It turns out the rays are caused by a "pool of peril," which is ruled over by Kleezar and his space parasites!! On the surface of Jupiter...
OK, so Kleezar, "nomad creature of madness," is a bat/werewolf/dragon/armadillo thing. And they dared call GAARD!! lame?? Meanwhile, let's see how the Human Torch is doing on his flight through the vacuum of space:
Ooooooooooh kayyyyyy. Anyway, so fatigued is the Torch from his journey, that Kleezar and his hordes whoop him pretty good. Kleezar monologues:
Fortunately for the Earth, a meteor storm arrives. Check out the description:
Yes, all of infinity is threatened by fire-rain!! And it wipes out all of the parasites except Kleezar!! Who shows off his villainous laugh:
HAA! HEEE! HA! HO! Oh, c'mon, man, GAARD! looks like Doctor Doom next to this guy...Anyhoo, the Torch gets his flame back, destroys the pool, and Kleezar meets his final doom:
So the Torch flies back to Earth from Jupiter...oh, dear, my brain hurts. But amidst the (apparently) many clouds of outer space:
But he won't die, because Captain America is on the job (and not giving up, like in Civil War...):
Yes, the Human Torch fell--FROM JUPITER--and CAPTAIN AMERICA CAUGHT HIM!!! And they were able to carry on completely "manly" repartee afterwards, too!!
So confronted by some scientifically illiterate, vaguely homo-erotic heroes, Kleezar's plan to accidentally flood the Earth with madness rays fails because, well, because he's lame. Parasite of eternity, my GAARD! ass...
But thank the heavens Sun Girl was there...
The magnificence of Kleezar, Scavenger of the Stratosphere, is from Human Torch #33 (1948), as reprinted in Giant-Size Avengers #1
It's been a long trek, but at least, I--GAARD!--have found what may be the lamest villain ever. I speak, of course, of Kleezar, the Parasite of Eternity!!
Oh, GAARD can hear the quibbling already, that this was technically not a Marvel story, and hence not a Marvel character. Hogwash!! The story starred the original Human Torch, and guest-starred Captain America and enigmatic Sun Girl. That's as Marvel as it gets!! So travel back with GAARD! to the misty days of 1948....
How lame is Kleezar? The story refers to a "power so monstrous, so overwhelming." Well, let's take a look:
and
Oh no, he makes cats beat up milquetoasts, and turns horses into "fiery beasts of destruction." Now, 1948 was back in the past, but I'm confident that our automobile culture was far enough along that a few uppity horses hardly presented a serious threat to Earth.
But the crisis is severe enough to call in our three heroes. And Dr. Jefferson reveals that the animal madness is caused by "rays" emanating from Jupiter! And it's only a matter of time until it effects humans!!
Well, there's only one solution: the Human Torch must fly to Jupiter!! Yup, all the way to Jupiter. Afire the whole way. Hmmm, no wonder the Russians beat us to the punch with Sputnik...
But GAARD! digresses. It turns out the rays are caused by a "pool of peril," which is ruled over by Kleezar and his space parasites!! On the surface of Jupiter...
OK, so Kleezar, "nomad creature of madness," is a bat/werewolf/dragon/armadillo thing. And they dared call GAARD!! lame?? Meanwhile, let's see how the Human Torch is doing on his flight through the vacuum of space:
Ooooooooooh kayyyyyy. Anyway, so fatigued is the Torch from his journey, that Kleezar and his hordes whoop him pretty good. Kleezar monologues:
Fortunately for the Earth, a meteor storm arrives. Check out the description:
Yes, all of infinity is threatened by fire-rain!! And it wipes out all of the parasites except Kleezar!! Who shows off his villainous laugh:
HAA! HEEE! HA! HO! Oh, c'mon, man, GAARD! looks like Doctor Doom next to this guy...Anyhoo, the Torch gets his flame back, destroys the pool, and Kleezar meets his final doom:
So the Torch flies back to Earth from Jupiter...oh, dear, my brain hurts. But amidst the (apparently) many clouds of outer space:
But he won't die, because Captain America is on the job (and not giving up, like in Civil War...):
Yes, the Human Torch fell--FROM JUPITER--and CAPTAIN AMERICA CAUGHT HIM!!! And they were able to carry on completely "manly" repartee afterwards, too!!
So confronted by some scientifically illiterate, vaguely homo-erotic heroes, Kleezar's plan to accidentally flood the Earth with madness rays fails because, well, because he's lame. Parasite of eternity, my GAARD! ass...
But thank the heavens Sun Girl was there...
The magnificence of Kleezar, Scavenger of the Stratosphere, is from Human Torch #33 (1948), as reprinted in Giant-Size Avengers #1
4 comments:
Awesome. I was thinking about taking a look at this old story myself (you got it from a backup story in a Giant-Size Avengers, right?).
The "HAA! HEEE! HA! HO!" has always killed me.
Yup, Giaat-Size Avengers #1, the one with Nuklon and the Whizzer, where we learn that Whizzer and Miss aAmerica were Scarlett and Pietro's parents...until they retconned that away...
Sad admission...until I pulled it out, I hadn't read this story in nearly 20 years, and I misremebered his name as Kleezor, not Kleezar...I must turn in my FOOM badge...
The story with Nuklon and the Whizzer is a Bronze Age favorite of mine. A great mix of action and angst as only Marvel could deliver it.
I don't know what you're talking about...both GAARD!! *and* Kleezar rock SHIT!!! :D
Just give him a catchier name ("Kleezar the Destroyer") and/or name his species as a whole ("The Kleezar?") then add in a origin backstory re: nomading/space-parasiting, as well as some freaky idiosyncratic "habits" for his species (like flying or hanging upside down bat-style and/or breathe fire or acid breath dragon-style and/or being able to roll into a spiked ball armadillo-werewolf style) and the "space-parasites" could enter Marvel's extended pantheon of alien species to rival the Kree, the Skrull *AND* the Shi'ar!
It'd be easy to reveal that they're not "from" Jupiter, but that a small handful of them got stranded there on their intergalactic "nomading" after abandoning their home galaxy due to space radiation or something, and that there's many more bands of them out there who are despised and unwelcomed wherever they go as lowlife "space-parasites" and/or tolerated as intergalactic refugees, with a small council seeking to reinstate their sovereignty among the galactic states and a radical off-shoot taking a more extreme approach through war-mongering and espionage (which, of course, counteracts the diplomatic approach of their comrades, etc, etc).
Diplomatic immunity sessions between the Kleezar and Shi'ar ambassadors, with a ticking nega-time bomb (that only deals in abstract random integers, so you never know exactly *when* it's going to go off) hidden under the holo-table that threatens to destroy the *ONE CHANCE* at a negotiable peace for the displaced Kleezar and instead start a war which will spread to engulf the Earth itself? Tell me that isn't worth *at least* a back-up tale? :)
Myself? I'd reveal that the Kleezarian homeworld was made out of some kind of actual "sponge"-like material and that their region of the galaxy was noted for siphoning energy and resources from any other orbits that it came into contact with, and that its location was not fixed in space so it roamed freely...see? Nomadic. Space. Parasites. :P
And GAARD!! will *always* be awesome, of that you have my word :D
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