Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Tales From The Quarter Bin--Rima #7

Man, If I had read this as a kid, I might have been seriously traumatized--maybe even enough to actually behave better.

Let's start with a great Joe Kubert cover:

Stephen Colbert's least favorite Rima coverFollowed by a not-quite so impressive bear drawn by Nestor Redondo:

Admit it...it looks like a guy in a bear suit!I kid, Nester, I kid...no one draws better bears than Kubert...

Rima and her Aryan hunk boyfriend Abel come running, and Abel's just not sensitive to the bear's needs:

I'm a civilized white man--I HAVE to shoot wild animals!!OK, the dead bear looks pretty goodIt turns out the boy is named Cecil, and he's accompanying his rich, jaded mum on a South American safari:

Does she actually have the Vapors?!?Rima stalks off because she senses "foreboding evil," and we find out that, for once, a 1970's DC cover didn't lie to us:

Child, you have limited intelligence, don't you?Belted a bear cub unconscious?!? From now on, you're Cecil Boone!!

Ida, even though she's married, occupies herself with seducing Abel, apparently not worried about catching whatever jungle STDs he might have picked up from Rima:

Satin cover comes sooo in handy on a South American safariCecil Boone, however, is feeling neglected and hurt by his mother's flagrant flirting:

Kid...I'd avoid oracles, if I were youCan you say Oedipus, anyone? Well, Cecil Boone decides to act out on his spurned mother-lust:

Dude, don't just throw them away...do you know what their pelts are worth?!?
Jungle gay bashingOK, he's a homophobe as well as a dickweed...And I know officially apologize for my crack about Redondo's bear:

Raaaahhhhrrrr!!Fortunately, Rima leaps in to save the day...

Beware of Rima's attitude on who deserves to die, Abel....(that's foreshadowing, people!!)But that night, Cecil Boone escalates his Hannibal Lecter tendencies...

As opposed to non-volatile gasoline...
True Jungle Fact: Crocodiles hate gasoline:

Impish?!?!? In the murderous Mxyztplk sense, maybeLet's see...mother issues, tortures animals...what's left on the future serial killer's checklist?

Arkham for this guyOh, right, firebug!! Congratulations Cecil Ted Bundy Boone...you've made it!!

Unsurprisingly, the fire gets out of hand, reaching the shoreline and threatening the camp. And Mother realizes that maybe, just maybe, a cuckoo had flown over Cecil's nest:

Too busy having to sex to notice her kid is bug-fuckFortunately, Rima shows up again, to save the day:

Yes. let's trust the counter-intuitive advice from the uneducated savage
Wading into gasoline filled water to avoid fire...Rima not smart..or is she??Uh, Rima, wasn't the water filled with pissed-off crocodiles??

Rima=UatuYes. Oh yes.

There you have it, folks...our hero does nothing, just sits there and watches while Cecil becomes Gator Bait, eaten up between panels...doesn't lift a finger. But it's OK, you see, because he really just murdered himself!!

In a way...you turned him into a serial killer!C 'mon Robert Kanigher...sure, Cecil was 3/4 of the way to Charles Manson...but this was 1975. You call the story "The Imp," you present him basically as just a rascally Dennis the Menace...did you have to let him die, and so gruesomely? Jeez, he was 10 years old! Especially since later, you acknowledge his "evil" was due in part to how he raised:

Ahh, finally, some moral culpability!The real finale of our story? Abel is turned on by watching children eaten by crocodiles:

Child killing is SUCH a turn-onAfter reading this tale of implied adultery, animal torture, and child murder, I had to double check the cover:

A great doctoral thesis would be to find the EXACT point when The Code stopped actually reading the comics submitted to themYup, there it is. Look, kids--comics!!

Bonus postscript:

This guy WOULD not dig Geoff Johns' Green Lantern stories...Rima is one of the only comics that would not look better as black-and-white?? Well, Steve Lambey must really love the DC Showcase phone books, then!!

This was the final issue of Rima. No animals were harmed in making this blogpost. Kids--don't pour gasoline on crocodiles, or you'll end up as dinner.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

As I'm reading this, I'm thinking-"This li'l bastard is going to get into trouble that Rima will be forced to pull him out of. Let the little shit die!" And damned if they didn't!
This is quite an amazing outcome for the time.
Larry E

Sea-of-Green said...

Wow. And to think I thought the little girl in the original Jurassic Park novel was obnoxious!

ShadowWing Tronix said...

At least she improves. This kid died as he lived...a dumbass.

Keith said...

I just wanted to say thanks for one of the best and funniest posts I've read in a long time. Your take on Rima is hilarious! Thanks for sharing and thanks for the laughs.

Warren JB said...

Jungles... bears... jaguars... I really hope that when you said 'South Africa' it was a typo of 'South America'.

snell said...

Of course Rima is in South America...I'm just a dumbass.