A long time ago, I discussed briefly my circa-2005 ideas for rebooting Impulse with a new character, as Bart was Flash and Wally was dead (followed, of course, by Wally being Flash and Bart being dead. They trade off every so often.) One of the stories I really wanted to do featured another Teen Titan, the extremely short-lived Young Frankenstein, who made exactly one appearance in the “World War III” mini-series before dying when Black Adam ripped his arms off. (He got better in time for “Final Crisis”, but still hasn’t been what you’d call a major character.)
I wanted to use him for two reasons: One, death should be no impediment to a character who’s a walking reanimated corpse, and two, THERE IS A CHARACTER NAMED “YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN” IN THE DC UNIVERSE AND NOBODY HAS MADE A MEL BROOKS JOKE ABOUT HIM. So my idea was that Impulse would be fighting a mad scientist who was working on (among other things) making an army of undead soldiers, and she’d help free Young Frankenstein from his lab, where he was being studied in hopes of extracting the secret of his resurrection. And Impulse, on hearing his name, simply would not be able to let it go. She’d keep calling him “Fronkensteen”, referring to herself as Eyempulse, and yes, there would be a scene where they fought mutant wolves so that when Young Frankenstein shouted, “Werewolf!” she could reply back with “There!” And the whole time, Young Frankenstein is just giving her the blankest looks ever, but she simply cannot stop herself because she is teaming up with Young Frankenstein, and really, could you?
And at the end, after they defeat the mad scientist and prepare to go their separate ways, she’d say, “See you around, Young Fronkensteen.” And he would rear up to his full height and shout, at the top of his lungs, “MY NAME…IS FRANKENSTEIN!!!!!!” And Impulse’s eyes would get huge and terrified, and she’d begin to apologize…before realizing just what he’d said. She’d shout, “Hey, wait a second!” but he would already be off, singing to himself, “When you’re blue and you don’t know, where to go to why don’t ya go, where fashion sits….PUUUN ANNA RISS!”
I may just be weird, but it still gives me a chuckle.
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You can never have too many Mel Brooks shout-outs.
When Marvel first revealed that both Kitty Pryde & Ben Grimm would join the Guardians of the Galaxy, my first immediate response was JEWS! IN! SPAAAACE!!!
This sounds like something PAD would have written. And that’s high praise from me.
Man, Impulse.
I love how DC spent many years slowly building him up as a character, establishing a fanbase, doing the necessary long-term spadework required to create a solid superhero property in the modern age.
And then killed the fuck out of him, because he wasn’t created pre-Crisis and that made him irrelevant and disposable, amirite?
Tell me about it. Nu52 sucked if you had any favorite characters made in the 80s or 90s. While I’m glad they’re done with it, I still don’t have much interest in DCU proper right now.
Someone tell me when DC get around to re-launching a version of the Legion that isn’t complete and utter garbage.
The Nu52 version being cancelled was a mercy to all involved.
As for how they treated the rest of their characters, from what I’ve seen it’s exactly as Murc stated above.
Plus the whole Geoff Johns/Dan Didio creepy determination to drag the entire universe back to when everyone loved Barry and Hal… *shudder*
If there’s been anything good since the cancellation of the Legion, by all means, let me know.
For some reason, I finally got around to reading the first six issues of Johns’ “New 52” JLA run and… Oh boy. Johns writes a good Barry Allen, but that’s the only nice thing I can say. His attempts to make Hal Jordan seem like the coolest guy on the team were mixed, at best.
Johns oversells his favorite characters so much that it ends up backfiring and making them seem kind of lame. His take on Cyborg, for example, was just so tone deaf. There was no need to give him a connection to Darkseid and New God technology. All he had to do was write the guy consistently with what Wolfman and Perez used to do back in the day.
Or that allegedly cool scene where Aquaman summons sharks to eat some of the parademons. Oy…
So, now we have this weird thing where it’s basically the Super Friends turned into a dumber, less impressive version of The Authority (how they were in the Warren Ellis run). With Batman cruising around with his mask off because revealing his secret identity in a really out of character way somehow galvanizes everybody else into wanting to work together.
Then you’ve got that weird take on Wonder Woman and Superman having some anger issues and a willingness to destroy other people’s property that feel really out of character.
Or the fact that everybody else is okay with Wonder Woman and Aquaman killing parademons right in front of them and Batman doesn’t even say anything (unless I missed that part… some of the word balloons were hard to read on my laptop screen).
How is any of that better in any way than the stuff that came before? Other than the fact that it’s easier to ignore the stuff that Johns and DiDio don’t like?
You know what the New 52 could use? Some characters like Impulse to keep it from seeming like the stupid Ultimate version of what DC was like before Johns got popular.