Attack of the Slitha Monsters #1

Yesterday, I mentioned I was working on a big post.

Well, I decided it was a bad idea to cram 80 images-even relatively small ones-into a single post, so it has become four posts, which would take up, well, the rest of this week. So, here we are, part one of "Attack of the Slitha Monsters..."

...which is a terrible title.

You might want to take a minute to look at the post I did on this series, Skysurfer Strike Force, before you plunge into this, because there was so much stuff that I hardly paid attention to the regular cast, and I can imagine going into it cold might be rough.

We start in Denver, Colorado, where a building is inexplicably sinking underground in what somewhat resembles an earthquake.

Since it's Denver, where huge earthquakes don't randomly steal buildings, they decide to call in special investigators, which for no apparent reason are our protagonists, the Skysurfer Strike Force.

Of which these guys are two.

(These two are "Air Enforcer" and "Soar Loser"-no, really. Although "Soar Loser" has green hair in a different cut when he's in costume.)

They head out in their airship to Denver, and on their way there, meet the villain Cybron's airship by a huge and rather stupid coincidence; i.e., padding.

However, this does give me an opportunity to introduce perhaps my favorite of the henchpersons in this series, the bioborg Grenader.

He explodes when his pin is pulled, just like a real grenade.

Fortunately for him, he regenerates no matter how he gets exploded.

What I really like about Grenader is that he shows no signs of being upset by being exploded all the time; he's rather cheerful about it.

Anyway, this fight accomplishes nothing but embarrassing everyone involved, as Soar Loser pulls Grenader's pin and tosses him into a mountainside, while a couple of the Skysurfers get grabbed by grappling hooks and dragged butt-first for a few miles through the snow. (It was hard to get good screens of that, so I didn't bother.)

They get to Denver, where they investigate in a way that doesn't seem to me to be very bright or clever:

Wouldn't it make more sense to be wearing your skimpy yet impossibly protective armor while running around in a big hole in the ground that might have been left by an earthquake?

Eh, whatever. Let's move on to the next bit.

Cybron is just chilling in his underwater base, when all of a sudden, these... things show up and attack it.

Y'know, just completely at random, without any warning.

So of course, it has absolutely everything to do with the plot of the episode, 'cuz that's how this works.

When Cybron's goons defend his base, Lazerette, the smart one, gets kidnapped, and then treated in a horribly sexist fashion.

I mean, despite her rather dumb name, Lazerette is voiced by Venus Terzo, who also voiced Black Arachnia in Beast Wars-i.e., she is pretty much pure sexy femme fatale.

Except in this episode, she gets smacked around and browbeat by a bunch of ugly, subhuman looking guys.

This is Dargon, leader of the evil people who control the big freaky things, which come from underground.

If you think he looks a bit like a reject from the '80s (this becomes more apparent in a minute), he happens to share a name with Dargon of the Shining Realm, leader of the good Sectaurs from the Sectaur series. I'm generally inclined to think this must be pure coincidence, but there's evidence later on that it might not be (more on that later).

Another of the underground villains is this lady, who has several fairly minor speaking parts but is never referred to by name-for obvious reasons, I like her, though.

Anyway, Lazerette recovers from her earlier fit of non-action girl-ness and manages to talk Dargon into-ack!

I suppose I should mention that the animators for this show often, erm, showed signs of wanting to draw more women than they actually got to, shall we say. Lazerette goes back to a... less insane size in a moment.

Anyway, she talks Dargon into wanting to meet her leader, Cybron, because heroes always fight each other and then team up, while villains always team up and then fight each other. (It's cartoon and comic book LAW. Except that they don't follow it in this show, but more on that later.) Dargon threatens her with a spear, because, y'know, Freudian undertones.

Anyway, back in Denver, another building gets hilariously stolen. (Was anyone in any of these buildings? We don't know, they never bring it up. Which, in the '90s, was at least sort of code for "yeah, there were people in there. AND THEY ALL DIED.)

They discover, naturally, that big darned worm monsters are causing the trouble, because, y'know, what other kind of monsters would steal buildings?

Team member Sliced Ice uses her ice sword to shoot ice and freeze the tail of one of the worms, causing it to shatter.

Yes, seriously.

Don't worry about the worm, though-it's pretty durable.

Yes, it just grew its entire tail back without any apparent difficulty.

However, while the worm wasn't much affected, the worm's riders (because of course there are riders) decide that these silly flying guys have too much firepower, and that they must retreat.

What really amuses me about the worms and their riders is that the pods that attach to the worms look rather like they're parts of Cobra vehicles from the G.I.Joe toyline.

The worms beat a hasty retreat.

There follows a rather silly chase scene down an inexplicable huge tunnel such as always appears in series with underground action.

The worms have a big pod that's mounted on them like a saddle, which only occasionally shows signs of being useful in any way.

There's also a pair of gun turrets on the head-that's where the two guys from the earlier screen sit, and implicitly command the worm from.

Anyway, there's a moment of zany worm-chasing antics where Crazy Stunts (yes, they actually call him that) uses his grappling gun to lasso one of the worms, and there's some cartoony, silly antics.

Ultimately, they lose the worms in the tunnels when one of the worm riders shoots out the ceiling and causes a cave-in.

And there we are, almost a quarter of the screenshots I've taken for this down.

Come back tomorrow, when I go through about the same number, and get all the way to the second episode.

-Signing off.