Strangled
"Strangled" is the fifth issue of the Gargoyles: Bad Guys comic by SLG, and Chapter five of the Redemption story arc.
On August 31, 2008, SLG's license to produce single issues of the Gargoyles: Bad Guys comic ended. The material that would have made up issues five and six was included in the trade paperback collection, Gargoyles: Bad Guys - Redemption, as "bonus material".
| Crew |
|---|
|
Contents
[hide]
Solicitation
What's on the mysterious island that the Squad has so desperately been trying to reach? Who sent the flying Robots? And how much does Dingo know about their attacker – a figure from his past?
Summary
Main Plot
Twenty-nine hours earlier, Hunter briefs the Redemption Squad about the Illuminati Society and the island stronghold they will begin to infiltrate in “Strangers”. In the present, Dingo and Matrix free Hunter from one of the robots, who promptly leaps to attack another. Yama's throwing stars destroy a robot behind Fang. The Squad destroys the last of the island's robots and they enter inside the stronghold. They are ambushed by Mistress Doll, Mistress Quickly, Bardolph, Points, and Pistol; the last of which Dingo recognizes as an old accomplice of his. Pistol's presence prompts another, Dingo's old father-figure, John Oldcastle, now known as Falstaff. The Redemption Squad is promptly welcomed to Eastcheap Isle.
Subplots
Harry Monmouth as a child is taken under the wing of John Oldcastle twenty-nine years earlier, after (unbeknownst to Harry) Oldcastle murdered Harry's mother, Mariah. Whatever his motive, it doesn't stop Oldcastle from mentoring the future Dingo into a life of crime.
The Story
As Hunter struggles within the grip of Attack Robot #4, Dingo (while wearing his Matrix-covered exo-frame reshapes into a flying javelin as they rocket towards the robot, severing its arm. As the forearm falls, its grip loosens and Hunter begins to fall before being caught in the air by the duo of Dingo and Matrix. Dingo's arm reshapes itself into a gatling gun and fires a volley of explosive bullets, destroying what's left of Robot #4. "Lucky I was in the neighborhood, eh?" he asks his leader. Hunter sighs with relief and agrees before recomposing herself, boasting that she had the robot right where she wanted it before pushing him away and leaping towards another flying robot below. Dingo mutters to himself about how difficult it is to impress her.
The story then flashes back to Sydney, Australia, twenty-nine years prior as a young Harry Monmouth happily runs home, bragging about the 100 he just got on his math test. But an older family friend, John Oldcastle shuts the bedroom door behind him and tells Harry that his mother is gone, that she took off again. Harry is sullen but not surprised, his mother always wanted to be as free as the wind - a free spirit, as he crumples the test in his fist.
Returning to 1997, Hunter holds on to Attack Robot #3, draws her gun and blasts it in the face. The robot twists upside-down in the air.
The story flashed back to Paris, France, a mere twenty-nine hours ago where Hunter now briefs all four other members of the Redemption Squad about the Illuminati - a secret organization that is trying to take over the world. "Seriously?" Dingo scoffs, but Hunter is deadly serious. Their intelligence has discovered an Illuminati island stronghold and their mission is to take it down. Yama is less than pleased that Fang will be joining them on the mission. But the mutate grins mischievously that he has the tengu's back.
Returning to the very present, Fang is alarmed as Yama's throwing stars whiz just past his head, piecing the eye of Attack Robot #5, which then falls to the island below and explodes on impact. Yama swoops to the ground and lands before a sealed steel gate. Two smaller Sentry Robots (#9 and #10) emerge from the rocks and Yama swiftly severs #9's head with his katana. Sentry Robot #10 grabs the blade and shatters it in its hand. Yama's eyes burn red as he leaps on the robot and tears it apart with his bare hands, growling "that was my good sword!" Attack Robot #3 crashes to the ground as Hunter leaps from it and lands on the ground near Yama as the rest of the Redemption Squad converge before the gate. Dingo attempts to help Hunter to her feet as she pulls away from him, while Matrix separates itself from Dingo. The gates then open up revealing darkness within. Dingo warns the team that it could be a trap, but Fang sarcastically asks "you figure that out all by yourself?" But Hunter draws her gun, locks and loads and goads the team into entering. The gates slam shut behind them and a terrified Fang mumbles "mommy..."
Flashing back to Sydney, Harry sits dejected on the front steps to his home as John Oldcastle tries to comfort him. Oldcastle reminds Harry that his mom was quite the handful but he'll still miss her. Harry is sure that his mother will eventually return, and Oldcastle agrees before offering to look after Harry until she does. Oldcastle assures Harry that he's grown quite fond of him. Harry steps to his feet asking Oldcastle if he's a molester. Oldcastle reminds him he's not, just "a simple thief." Harry agrees to go with the man, but only until his mother comes home.
Flashing forward to the present, Matrix illuminates the dark chamber with its body, before morphing its hand to a hi-tech torch. They proceed forward and come upon a gigantic banner of a pyramid with an eye at its apex. They're definitely in the right secret lair. Suddenly a blade is thrown through the air, nailing Fang across his hand, the mutate cries out in pain as he drops his gun. Enraged, the mutate begins generating an electric charge only for a young, scantily clad woman to drop down from above and use fancy gymnastics to knock the mutate out. Dingo draws his weapon and confronts a large man with a scarred face who proceeds to spit fire at him. As Dingo dodges, another woman runs into him at high speed. Yama draws another sword as a swordsman approaches him carrying two blades, he then parries strikes from both Yama and Matrix. Finally, a gun man confronts Hunter, but Dingo recognizes the man and identifies him as "Pistol". Pistol blasts Hunter's weapon from her hand with ease as Dingo calls out to his old friend, John Oldcastle.
As Dingo calls his friend's name, he flashes back to Oldcastle teaching him how to sheet, training him as an acrobat, shocking the older man with his new mohawk, Oldcastle spotting him as he lifts weights, and the two of them along with Pistol hijacking an armored truck as Harry Monmouth grows from boy to man, and John Oldcastle grows older, his hair going gray and his gut increasing in size.
"Harry my lad," John Oldcastle calls back as the fight stops, "is that you?" The lights come on and John Oldcastle sits upon a throne, a mug of brew in his hand as the two women cuddle up affectionately with him. He tells Dingo that nobody has called him 'John Oldcastle' in years and introduces himself as "Falstaff, King of Thieves!" Falstaff gets to his feet welcoming Dingo and his friends to Eastcheap Island as he pulls Dingo into a great big bear hug.
As Falstaff embraces his old protege, he himself remembers back to twenty-nine years ago, as he heard a young Harry Monmouth coming home while he strangled his mother, Mariah Monmouth, to death in her bedroom.
Review
Review by Todd W. Jensen
In Chapter Five, the Redemption Squad's battle with the flying robots becomes the main story at last, rather than the frame to the story of the Squad's formation – though we still get several flashbacks. We now learn that the robots were guarding a secret Illuminati base on the island, that the Redemption Squad had been sent to take down.
Greg Weisman had mentioned at "Ask Greg" that the Director (the Squad's hidden superior) was at war with the Illuminati, but even without that revelation, sharp-eyed readers would have been able to predict our leads going to battle with the Society after "Estranged". Hunter and Castaway's parallel questions to each other about their mysterious backers, and the Casablanca Hotel's echo of the Hotel Cabal, signaled that, especially to everyone in the audience who knew about Greg's philosophy that a good antagonist should reflect the protagonist.
As the Redemption Squad fights the robots, and enters the Illuminati's island lair (complete with a tapestry bearing the familiar one-eyed pyramid symbol), a new set of flashbacks appear, this time to Dingo's childhood in Australia, when he was still "Harry Monmouth" and had not yet become Dingo. His mother Mariah (apparently a single parent) disappears; we see his shock as he comes home from school to find her missing (the shock stands out all the more since, just before he learned she was gone, he was shouting in joy over the high grade he had received on his math test – and then crumples the test up as the news hits him). John Oldcastle, apparently a friend of the family, takes Harry in and raises him – but also trains him to become a thief like himself. Oldcastle seems friendly and pleasant, despite his criminal ways – but on the last page of this chapter, we discover with a shock Mariah's true fate, and the role that Oldcastle had in it.
Oldcastle's role in Dingo's life proves relevant when the Redemption Squad are attacked by a group of mysterious highly-skilled operatives, and Dingo recognizes one of them, Pistol, as one of Oldcastle's old gang, like himself. Oldcastle is indeed the leader of the Squad's assailants, only he has now changed his name to Falstaff, and even resembles (both in appearance and dress) his namesake from William Shakespeare's history plays remarkably well. In these final two chapters, Greg Weisman draws upon Shakespeare once more, bringing one of the Bard's most famous characters into the Gargoyles Universe to stand alongside Macbeth, the Weird Sisters, Oberon, Titania, Puck, and the ColdTrio in their "Othello-Desdemona-Iago" moments – to my delight.
The chapter continues to contain many delightful details, such as Fang sitting by himself at the Squad's conference table in Paris, looking perfectly at ease even if nobody else is thrilled with his presence, or the look on Oldcastle's face when Harry first sports his mohawk. And the story moves forward effectively to its climax....
Featured Characters and First Appearances
| Gargoyles | Humans | Others |
|---|---|---|
|
|
Tidbits
The Redemption Squad's continuing battle against the robots (up until the point when the doors slam shut behind them) is adapted from the leica reel.
The young Harry's remark about his mother Mariah, "She's the wind", is a reference to the song "And They Call the Wind Mariah".
"John Oldcastle", Falstaff's original name, was the first-draft name for Falstaff in William Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part One. The original John Oldcastle was an early 15th century English knight, a former friend of Prince Hal/Henry V who rebelled against him after becoming a Lollard (a religious sect in late medieval England founded by John Wycliffe, a sort of proto-Protestant movement that wanted to curb the power, wealth, and luxury of the Church and translate the Bible into English) and was executed in 1417. The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, an Elizabethan history play, portrayed Oldcastle as one of Prince Hal's friends but gave him only a small role; Shakespeare, when he wrote Henry IV, Part One, developed him into the familiar comical figure of today. However, apparently to avoid trouble with the real Oldcastle's descendants (who were prominent at court), Shakespeare changed the name of his character to "Falstaff" (a few traces of the original name survive in Henry IV, Part One, such as when Prince Hal calls Falstaff "my old lad of the castle"). In the epilogue to Henry IV, Part Two, Shakespeare even stresses that Falstaff and John Oldcastle were separate people. (When the Admiral's Men, a rival acting company to Shakespeare's troupe, the Chamberlain's Men, put on a historical drama about the original John Oldcastle in 1599, they stressed in the prologue that he was nothing at all like Falstaff.)
Falstaff's gang of thieves (Mistress Doll, Bardolph, Mistress Quickly, Points, and Pistol) are all named after associates of Falstaff in Shakespeare's Henry IV plays. See their individual entries for further information. Eastcheap also owes its name to these plays; it was the part of London where the Boar's Head Tavern, Falstaff's favorite haunt, stood.
See Also
| << Previous Episode: "Redemption" Chapter Four: "Louse" | Next Episode: "Redemption" Chapter Six: "Losers" >> |
