Writer: J. M. Sweet and Jack Staten Monahew
Pencillers: Kenton "J.C." Washam and J.M. Sweet
Letterer: Shane T. Eaton
Colorist: Theo A. "Jet" Swann
This issue opens with Jimmo narrating over shots of the exterior of an apartment house, calling himself "a minor player in a great drama" as he introduces his story. He tells about his childhood, being raised by his older sister Penyem after his parents were killed in a car crash. In several flashback sequences throughout the story, he reveals how he got his powers, how he and Penny became estranged for many years, and how he came to join the Treehouse Warriors.
Jimmo tells how, many years after abandoning him, Penny sent him a letter asking him to come to Biloxi, Mississippi to see her and finally settle matters between them. Upon arriving at the college campus where she lives, he learns that Penyem is looking for a bit more than his forgiveness: a friend from school is deathly ill and nearly incoherent from an unknown contagent, and she needs the benefit of her brother's experience to save her life.
Jimmo realizes that the girl has not been physically poisoned, but her condition is the result of contact with a madman who seems to have the power of hypnosis...and furthermore, there may soon be other victims lest he act....
BABF09--heroes appear in chibi form
Family Ties was the name of a sitcom from 1982 starring Michael Gross, Meredith Baxter-Birney, Michael J. Fox, Justine Bateman, and Tina Yothers. It's perhaps most famous for the iconic painting of the Keaton family portrait in the opening cred roll.
Jimmo's real name is revealed as James Fenimore Segal.
page 1.The line about "each redshirt and Rosencrantz, every hourse-courser and stormtrooper" refers to minor players in Star Trek, Hamlet, The Strange Case of Dr. Faustus, and Star Wars, respectively. Jimmo is indeed a minor Warrior; not counting short fillers and nonspeaking cameos, he has only appeared in two stories up until this point in the series. His character is explored a bit more in-depth: he is a white mage with the power to heal minor wounds (first seen in this story) and perform simple spells. Although in very early sketches he appeared as a normal boy based on the writer's childhood chum, the artist quickly found him to look too similar to Billy and Josh the way he was drawn, thus the two were difficult to tell apart. Jimmo was redesigned to look like Orko from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and he given similar magical powers. This story tells how he recieved both his powers and his new form from a dying alien named Barbaeus--a boboka'--who had crashed to earth (a reference to the origin of the Silver Age Green Lantern, Hal Jordan).
Fulkes University--based on artist and editor's J.M. Sweet's alma mater--first appeared in his short story "The Kestron Lenses". Penyem Segal's name appears in a byline on the online archives of the school paper, The Champagne Island Dispatch, based on the Arkansas State University Herald. Penyem's body model was a classmate from Sweet's days at
Mississippi County Community College. Early costumed sketches of her suggest she was originally intended to be a militant feminist villain until the idea for this script was concieved.
page 6. The scenes of storm damage shown are actual footage of post-Katrina New Orleans.
The girl Jimmo is called upon to heal was modeled after Sweet's fellow staffer at the Arkansas State University Herald. The line "No-b.s. Cat Urich" is a slyly-buried anagram for her real name. In fact, Leo Greer's dialogue on page 22 also contains an anagram of all the names of the 1997 Herald editors, and the doctor's first victim was also drawn to look like his real-life counterpart. Greer himself is modeled after the associate dean of judicial affairs at ASU, a man Sweet made the unfortunate acquaintence of following his termination from the campus paper and has often described as "a balding orangutan in a cheap suit". Lee's likeness also appears in photorealistic form for several panels in #21, as Hiss Hole's disguise.
While most of the drug slang listed on page 10 is real (and several words refer to the same items), several items are entirely fabricated or used for comic effect. "Spaceballs", for example, refers to the the title of a Mel Brooks movie, and "Connecticut Yankee" refers to the Mark Twain play A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
page 11. The cover of Penyem's book is a fairly good parody of the kind of thing Harlequin, a company known for steamy romantic pulp novel, routinely puts out. Note, also, on the cover is a picture of editor J.M. Sweet and a former girlfriend, and the fictional female author's name is an anagram of "Jonathan Sweet".
It's revealed that Jimmy Segal knew Jon when he was very young, but they fell out of touch until many years later, where a chance meeting after both had gotten their powers rekindled their old friendship.
page 13. The "Gurgle" search engine is a parody of Google.
page 19. J.R. Stroop first devised a color-based test to gauge the discrepancies in competing visual and cognitive perceptions in 1935. The Stroop task is very much as Jimmo describes on page 21, although of course without the screaming zombie.
The villain Dr. Nicholas Gregory, a.k.a. Rasputin, was first introduced in a Sweet story called "Beautiful Dreamer". The character's m.o. draws elements from both Batman's nemesis The Scarecrow and Dick Tracy's enemy Influence. His name, as noted in the story, is borrowed from Grigori Rasputin, the mad 19th-century monk of Russia who was said to have mystical powers of hypnotism and divination.
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Starring...Jimmo! This issue features that madcap magic man embarking on his first solo mission to the wild, untamed, steamy jungles of...college! When a university coed is rendered her nearly comatose by a mysterious poisoning, our favorite mini-mage has to get to the bottom of it...as well as come to grips with his own strange origins and the sister he has not seen in five long years.
