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00:00 Cosmo the Mighty Martian issue 1. I'm reviewing this because it's by Ian Flynn.
00:05 It starts with a bunch of narration from Cosmo introducing vital exposition for the franchise,
00:11 which includes introducing the characters.
00:14 Even though there's a more natural way to give us this information and narration text boxes are boring.
00:20 I never expected Cosmo to have any friends with him. The series could probably work without them.
00:27 His mission is to seek out new adventures across the galaxy.
00:31 It doesn't seem like that's a mission from a higher official and more like it's a personal goal.
00:37 I can understand if his mission was actually to explore and map out uncharted territory
00:44 after it's been confirmed that the atmosphere is breathable and so on.
00:48 It's explained that a stereotypically evil Queen Hepzir of Venus
00:56 has sent her battle princesses to terrorize other worlds.
00:59 This has to be either an alternate universe where Venus is perfectly livable or one where Venus was terraformed.
01:07 It's always better to just give your alien planets new names for this very reason.
01:12 Speaking of that, Cosmo's Martian, so it can't be the Mars we think of.
01:17 And I have to assume that the princesses aren't the heir to the throne.
01:21 They'd still be if the heir died, so I guess the royal family's big enough that it has nothing to worry about in risking the deaths of its princesses.
01:31 Cosmo's working with the convenient token,
01:34 omnidisciplinary scientist friend, Medulla.
01:38 His token pet dog who has awful looking eyes with no eyeballs, even though we're supposed to like him.
01:46 Orbee, who's lazily only described as his best friend, so he needs an establishing character moment more than ever.
01:53 And Astra, his fearless pilot.
01:57 Orbee's the starter of Orbity from the Jetsons, and Astra sounds like Astro.
02:03 And Cosmo's the first name of Mr. Spacely, but the Cosmo franchise predates the Jetsons.
02:10 They're just easy names to come up with for sci-fi characters to the point of being cheesy.
02:15 The narration says they've got a Captain Max, and it flatters him excessively, so of course it's him who's talking.
02:22 As he's playing with action figures resembling Cosmo and his friends, while Cosmo's recording a message.
02:29 Fortunately, it's immediately explained properly why these toys exist.
02:34 An announcement tells them their spaceship is getting close to Ceres, another place we know is uninhabitable in real life.
02:43 The more uninhabitable places are used, the more confusing it gets.
02:47 But at least I can assume that a witch made them livable for the sake of other witches.
02:52 But of course it's sloppy world-building to not explain that.
02:56 He thanks Astra, and he gives the order to assemble in the planning room, which implies that he's the leader.
03:03 And "Captain" is just a confusing honorary title, as the actual Captain doesn't take his job seriously enough to get annoyed with this.
03:12 They act like friends, and a panel's wasted on exposition that was already established a panel ago.
03:17 And Cosmo says their enemy has a supply of something called Aphrodite, so it's probably a love potion.
03:25 If an alien was going to use a different language than English to name something, why would she choose to draw from any language besides her native alien language?
03:35 She wouldn't have any emotional connection to Greek mythology like those in Western culture do.
03:41 So this isn't really clever.
03:43 What's kind of clever is that saying names like "love potion" can mutate people into smirking monsters.
03:49 So it's not just a love potion.
03:52 It's something to make them love being evil and obeying the bad guys.
03:56 So this isn't really new.
03:59 In fact, it's exactly what Queen Robotina from a Sonic Super Special could do on her own.
04:04 Surprisingly, soap and water from a Super Soaker is able to cure the mutants.
04:10 At least that's creative too.
04:12 We don't know what the Aphrodite is made of, so I could buy that it could have that kind of chemical reaction with it.
04:18 Cosmo tells his friends they'll split up into teams.
04:22 Astra comes off like she'll just be the stereotypical level-headed girl who always knows best,
04:28 and looks down on one of her friends at the drop of a hat, so I don't see the point in her existing if it's the same character we've already seen a trillion times.
04:37 And there's no likability in her so far.
04:41 We see a few spaceships head out of a bigger, green space station,
04:45 as there's narration describing their plan that just bores me, as we're gonna see it happen anyways, so I put it there.
04:51 The uncreatively named Max Strongjaw isn't used to how a spaceship flies since it got repaired.
04:58 And Medula's made to look incompetent because she somehow didn't think to give them more leg room in a super-advanced spaceship.
05:06 And Cosmo's the one telling those two to focus.
05:10 They both seem childish to me.
05:12 So far, I don't see the point of Orbe.
05:14 Some lasers happen, and the spaceship easily flies away, avoiding them.
05:20 And Medula gives out pointless exposition that at least tries to do world-building, but fails for not making any sense.
05:28 There's no way that only left socks would be made in a place.
05:31 There's no way the Zerats would import only right socks instead of left socks too from Earth.
05:38 There's no way the term "Harvester" would be used instead of "Importer".
05:42 And I also don't buy that there'd be 70 ways of them saying "Hello".
05:46 Also, the fact that she even brings up that aliens can have different languages makes me stop holding back on asking why these aliens speak English, of all things.
05:56 Carl Bullers wrote aliens better, because he'd care enough to explain that a universal translator was a common thing they could put in the ear.
06:06 Even regular Archie comics did that at least once.
06:09 And Zerat is a stupid name, because with it starting with "Z", it's not clear how you're supposed to pronounce it.
06:15 And it's bad enough Queen Hapster's name is hard to pronounce at first.
06:20 The story's trying to make the fact that she's interested in another culture into a joke, because supposedly makes her a geek for caring about totally minor things irrelevant to her and her friends.
06:32 Even though it'd only be seen as geeky because they're aliens.
06:35 And aliens wouldn't see aliens as a geek thing so much as a normal part of life no different than people from other countries.
06:42 And everyone cares about minor irrelevant things.
06:46 Some just care about different things than others.
06:48 The spaceship flies towards the base, and Esther wonders why Cosmo gets to hog all of the action.
06:56 Predictably, the spaceship realistically is shot down by lasers right away, as it could easily be seen just by looking in the sky, and it made no attempt at concealing itself.
07:06 You'd think after all their adventures, they'd have the best of anti-radar tech.
07:11 And if Medua could invent the impossible, why not make the spaceship have a way to go invisible?
07:17 It should be established that that's either impossible, or the resources to achieve that are too hard to get.
07:25 It makes me wonder how they can keep repairing the spaceship literally every time, if they crash it every time.
07:31 Cosmo somehow thinks the villain hasn't mobilized her forces already, even though he flew up to the base in a spaceship, and the base knew to shoot him down.
07:41 Until she shows a real personality trait beyond "against him".
07:46 I'll just call her "the villain".
07:48 And that goes for every other villain here.
07:51 With all of his experience with adventures, you'd think he'd learn that the villains have their forces mobilized already every time, and expect that.
07:59 So, the only personality traits for Cosmo so far are "he's serious, but impossibly stupid".
08:07 And the only thing interesting about his character is he's the only main hero who's not a token.
08:12 These characters seem uninteresting despite being aliens.
08:17 The soap and water don't affect the monsters because they're a different species from the one that the soap worked on.
08:23 But the way she explains it, she's saying different species react differently to the same mutating thing.
08:30 And that doesn't necessarily mean they'd have to be immune to soap and water curing them.
08:35 Apparently, soap and water only cured the previous aliens because it caused a chemical reaction with the stuff already in their bodies, that created a cure for the brainwashing potion in them.
08:48 It seems too fictiony that the villain lets the heroes boringly complain among themselves about not having a plan B, instead of telling the monsters to attack them right away.
08:58 If Medulla's supposed to be smart, it sure is a shame that she wasn't smart enough to come up with a plan B for them to do right away, and that she isn't the leader if she thought to warn them about this.
09:11 Cosmo says this makes things more exciting.
09:14 It's revealed that the big bad of the series used to have a crush on him, and she asks what she ever saw in him, with the writer being too lazy to explain it.
09:23 And just because the villain's young, there's embarrassing, cringe-worthy dialogue from the villain and her monsters somehow, as if she altered the brainwashing potion in her own way, like a master programmer.
09:36 Some slang is fine, but this is the wrong kind to use, especially since it isn't even working in context.
09:44 As it makes no sense to call experienced adventures "noobs", even though they are unrealistically acting like it.
09:51 As the writer writes characters to be like "galant", so naturally these guys are idiots past the point of my sympathy too.
09:58 That's why they somehow didn't even think to bring staffs with them to attack.
10:03 And you'd think a guy called Matt Strongjaw would be able to attack these guys with super strength.
10:10 I mean, it's not a realistic world, so you could buy that.
10:14 And why would the monster ask one of them if he's mad, if they're clearly not mad but scared?
10:20 It's cringe-worthy to use a meme without it fitting the context.
10:24 There are plenty of young characters in Flynn's stories, and most of them don't talk like this, so this is no excuse.
10:31 Let's mention he should know most gamers don't talk like this because he's a Sonic fan.
10:37 Surprisingly, Medulla came prepared, and she seems to be a rip-off of the genius girl from the Boom Crew.
10:43 Because again, she talks in a lot of big words, and it's supposed to be a joke at her expense.
10:48 It does it better than the Boom Crew so far because I understand everything she's saying.
10:53 But like in that show, she should know she has to dumb things down for idiot friends.
11:00 She's using hacking talent to get past the bad guys' insecurity.
11:05 But instead of this being about making her competent, she just correctly guessed the password on the first try, which Tails already did,
11:13 rather than putting a lot of hard work into it and using expertise.
11:17 I'm still waiting for these people I'm supposed to care about and respect to be awesome, which is how you're supposed to earn that respect.
11:26 Astro's starting to annoy me already with just the second use of the words like "clockwork".
11:32 Already I never want to hear those words again.
11:35 It'd be more natural to say "go figure".
11:38 It'd be more natural for the token moody character.
11:41 I guess she's too emotionally attached to her friends to quit her boring job she hates.
11:47 Or more likely, she doesn't know what other job she'd be happier at, since she's shown no love for her friends so far.
11:54 She tells a rip-off of Rush who reminds me of the wolf from Okami to watch the door.
12:00 The heroes find the most uninspired of new information, that the bad guys are planning to mutate even more people on specific planets, which they could've assumed anyways.
12:09 Including Saturn, which I have to assume was terraformed by a witch too.
12:13 I know the first story in Cosmo the Merry Martian from the 40s took place on the moon with moon people, which was so silly that's why I didn't read it yet.
12:23 But that's no excuse for constantly using planets we know are uninhabitable as inhabited planets.
12:28 That died out in sci-fi for a reason.
12:31 You wanna update the franchise so bad, giving the characters redesigns and the new comic the name Mighty Martians to appeal to kids?
12:38 Why not update it in a common sense way that involves good writing?
12:41 Astro's somehow stupid enough to ask why the villains are doing something that'd make people to their unquestioning slaves.
12:49 And she doesn't look like she's just asking that because she can't relate to being heartless either.
12:54 She's just missing the point.
12:57 She at least adds more world building by saying that the Venetians think they're the best looking in the galaxy.
13:02 And Medulla agrees.
13:04 I assume this means the Venetians are the most racist aliens in the galaxy.
13:09 But even then, every alien species would think they're the best looking in the galaxy, because they'd be most attracted to other members of their species.
13:17 So making people hideous mutants is just a side effect.
13:22 I guess one they're trying to get rid of, if that's what she means by they're trying to perfect the thing.
13:27 Why didn't Astro just assume the Venetians were making people ugly on purpose to make themselves the only good looking species?
13:34 So far, Astro looks like an idiot who only thinks she's intelligent.
13:39 And we're supposed to think so because she's a girl, so of course she's the only level-headed one.
13:44 You're failing when the only main character I actually care about is Medulla.
13:48 And that name sucks too, because it's not clear how to pronounce it.
13:52 I wish it was pronounced "Mah-DOO-luh", because that sounds cool.
13:55 If it's "Med-DULL-uh", it's unimaginative to make her dull as a joke.
14:00 But ironically, she's the only character here who's not dull.
14:04 Even if she still seems like a paper-thin token herself.
14:08 I want to know how they met her more than any other character, because of how convenient it is that they have such a genius friend.
14:16 And by convenient, I mean fiction-y.
14:19 She says that conveniently the Venetians don't have any battle plans for Mars, which is the homeworld of both of them.
14:26 Even though Medulla just said the Venetians were the best looking species, as if she was one.
14:32 So is she the descendant of Venetian immigrants to Mars?
14:36 Anyways, you'd think the main character's homeworld would be targeted more than any other.
14:41 Especially if the big bad is his pissed off ex-girlfriend, giving her reasons to target him more than others.
14:48 Which she needs, because the heroes don't exactly look like a big threat to the villains like you'd expect for main characters.
14:55 Only Medulla is, because she uses hacking skills to get some data.
15:00 Why does she need to be reminded that she could get it by using the Codebreaker stuff she learned about when she's the genius programmer?
15:08 That's an unfair forced way to try to make Astro look smart.
15:12 Medulla ends up seeing her friends on the security camera footage.
15:17 And Team Awesome ends up looking like a childish name, overestimating their abilities.
15:21 Why would they even call themselves that if they don't have weapons beyond the super soakers?
15:27 Maybe don't have the first mission we see of the heroes make them look like unprepared amateurs who run away from the bad guys.
15:34 The first thing a character does that matters is his establishing character moment.
15:39 And it might take a while to live it down if it makes a fool out of him.
15:43 This is basic writing 101.
15:46 I'd expect the heroes to all have weapons.
15:48 Don't the main characters in Star Trek go to planets with weapons?
15:52 Astro has a lightsaber, but that makes me wonder why the rest of them don't.
15:57 I have to assume the heroes don't have the hard to get resources or time to make more lightsabers.
16:03 But without that explanation, Medulla can end up looking like an idiot too for leaving most of her team unarmed.
16:09 If they don't look stupid, if we keep assuming they usually have weapons, and just inexplicably left them at home.
16:16 I shouldn't have to constantly say "I have to assume" in the first issue of a kids' comic.
16:23 Which is supposed to establish things.
16:26 Astro having a lightsaber means she's fine with lethal force.
16:30 Astro tells the pet to follow her, and of course it knows perfect English because it's...uh...an advanced alien.
16:39 Why did she have to tell the token smart character to download the rest of the data to the stupidly named spaceship?
16:45 She'd know that.
16:47 So the battle princess says she wants to upload the heroes into a VR game to keep playing with them like this.
16:54 But how is she having fun just sitting still on something doing the running for her?
16:59 She's doing nothing!
17:01 She might as well ask to go horseback riding.
17:04 Then she conveniently is able to somehow find out that Medulla and Astro were spying on her database.
17:10 I have to assume she found this out instantly for it to make sense, but there's no indication of that.
17:16 And in fact, the pet shows up right away.
17:19 And it's doing a giant spin dash because the Sonic writer's writing this.
17:23 At least it's more interesting for a pet than it just using the same abilities that the wolf from Okami did.
17:30 But it's embarrassing when the main characters with speaking roles have to be saved by their pet who looks more badass than them in their first issue.
17:38 This should have been established as their first adventure.
17:41 She gets sprayed by water so high pressure that she falls off as the monster falls over.
17:47 And I look confused as Max puts the visor on and orders the monsters to stand down.
17:53 And they do.
17:54 Because apparently it's a command wand.
17:57 Why would you call something that isn't held in the hand a wand?
18:01 At least that's creative, but everyone would find it confusing.
18:05 Speaking of confusing, why would they even need a command visor?
18:09 If I thought that was the whole point of mutating them?
18:12 To brainwash them into being obedient to them.
18:16 I guess the command visor doesn't work unless you're a mutant.
18:20 And it's creative to have that extra step, so it's technically a good thing.
18:25 Why do the monsters know to put their hands up without being told to?
18:28 All Shed does is call the heroes' hats unjustifiably.
18:33 And that alone causes the token kid to talk like she was swearing instead of instantly spraying her.
18:38 So thanks to his idiot's ball, after all of his adventures, she has time to grab him by the arm.
18:45 Sure is convenient that she doesn't take the time to snap his neck or something and all the time the heroes are wasting time talking to her irresponsibly.
18:54 As if putting a kid in danger wasn't already making them irresponsible.
18:58 That's what Rick does with Morty and he's demonized for it.
19:02 It goes without saying that you need to have Orby establish what he's good at in the first issue.
19:09 Cosmo looks like a wuss by not instantly shooting her with soap if he knows soap in the eyes hurts.
19:15 Why would he hesitate?
19:17 Sure it'd be a little gruesome, but it's better than him doing nothing.
19:22 And it'd be better dialogue if he simply said soap in your eyes hurts.
19:27 She then creates a portal and throws Orby in front of the aliens on her spaceship after telling them to set course for Saturn.
19:34 Not like I see a reason to care which exact planet she mentions.
19:38 I know nothing about it and where it is in this comic.
19:41 As far as I'm concerned, every alien planet is the same.
19:44 It sure is convenient that rather than her killing him right there,
19:49 she tells them to take him to the brig while she thinks about what to do with him.
19:53 Because somehow the Queen's minions don't already have a plan for that after all the adventures Cosmo had.
20:00 It's so sloppy.
20:01 It almost makes me wonder if the writer doesn't care about this franchise.
20:05 Cosmo pets his dog and the girls get given exposition.
20:10 It's good that Max gives orders to the Seerids to exercise, eat right, and get plenty of sleep until the heroes can come back and cure them.
20:19 It's certainly interesting to see a hero do unnecessary brainwashing.
20:24 Even if I already saw Tonic do that in AOSTH.
20:27 Cosmo apologizes for no apparent reason as Astra helps him up saying they need him for no reason.
20:34 Showing a heart for the first time.
20:37 But it looks like she only cares about him and Orby.
20:41 We see Orby strapped to a metal chair and while he tries to manipulate she into putting him into a non-scary video game like a farming sim,
20:50 he obviously wouldn't screw it up by calling it non-violent and calm.
20:55 Instead he'd say that farm work would be exhausting for him, so it could be torture.
21:01 She wants to interrogate him and threatens to mutate him otherwise.
21:06 I just barely care about him.
21:09 But the story didn't show him doing anything good and barely gave him a personality.
21:14 So even Charmy from early Archie is better.
21:17 And he reminds me of Charmy's B-friend Mello who got a drug overdose.
21:22 With his small size and not showing his eyes.
21:25 Also I hope she does put him in a video game because it'd be boring if she didn't.
21:31 This was by Ian Flynn and The Stunt as I was told it did.
21:36 My sympathy for the main cast gets nearly destroyed in the first issue as it makes almost all of the stereotypical main characters look like impossibly incompetent idiots.
21:46 Which isn't even justified by keeping it simple and having it be their first adventure.
21:52 And only the girls are really spared this fate.
21:55 Which just seems like pandering.
21:58 But all Medulla accomplishes is successfully guessing a password on the first try.
22:04 Instead of doing hard work.
22:06 All of these characters seem like one dimensional stereotypes.
22:10 Except Cosmo who still seems like the stereotypical dumb main character in a kids' action series.
22:17 With him wanting the mission to be exciting.
22:19 Orbee and Astra did exist in the original Cosmo comic.
22:25 But the fact remains.
22:27 I don't think one dimensional friends of Cosmo are really necessary when the story could be entirely focused on Cosmo's experience with the aliens that he meets.
22:39 And world building the planet he visits.
22:42 It seems like all the other characters in Cosmo contribute is padding out the story because he has to talk to them.
22:50 With only Medulla being useful.
22:53 Imagine if Cosmo was as smart as her.
22:56 If he had been the one doing the hacking.
22:59 That'd have been better because he's supposed to be the most important character.
23:04 The Sonic characters make up for being nothing but one dimensional because they're usually shown accomplishing useful things effortlessly.
23:11 Fighting.
23:12 Like I expected here.
23:14 But all the heroes here did was spray water at a villain with cringe worthy gamer dialogue.
23:20 But hey at least this meant the villain had a personality trait besides being evil.
23:26 As lame as she is, she's still a creative villain and barely interesting enough.
23:31 But she only captures the most predictable person to capture ever because he's somehow stupid enough to just make a taunt he wouldn't make instead of spraying her.
23:42 Too bad he can't progress to the next plot without an idiot ball.
23:46 It's too bad the heroes are too self-righteous to have the common sense any sci-fi heroes would have and bring ray guns.
23:55 Or at the very least, staffs to attack with.
23:58 Instead of having to run away and let their spin dashing pet save them.
24:02 I know nothing about these characters' backgrounds like would be helpful for getting me actually invested in this world.
24:09 Because I'm sure Cosmo could be a fantastic franchise if it cared about making sense.
24:15 I have to assume they're all orphans but even then they'd be assigned foster parents.
24:20 Although I might just be making a wrong assumption that most of them are teenagers.
24:23 Why are they being allowed to go on these space adventures?
24:26 They aren't working for anyone, are they?
24:28 How old are the other spaceships?
24:31 Maybe they should have been established in the first issue.
24:34 Because with these kinds of designs, I'm assuming that Cosmo and Aster are teenagers.
24:40 And that means it doesn't make any sense that they have a spaceship and are going on these adventures.
24:46 (upbeat music)