Captain Maggot is up to his old tricks again--this time fishing for trouble in protected waters! The Warriors race to table the old sea salt...but when their fearless leader goes overboard, will their goodwill mission sink like the Titanic? And just who is that shadowy figure who keeps tailing our hero--friend, or foe?
____________________________________________________
Capt. Maggot is dressed and posed as the Gorton's fisherman, a seafaring ad mascot who wears a yellow rain slicker. Ironically, the Gorton's of Gloucester corporation was accused in 2005 of illegal whaling, a charge it has scrupulously denied. The EPA filed a suit, though it was later dropped.
Title: "Fishy Business"
Story (out of 24 pages): 24 p.
Writer: Tawana and Che Most
Penciller: Matt W. Jeschonek
Letterer: J. Antwon Shea
Colorist: Annette T. "Jo" Shaw
Summary:
The gang is taking a well-deserved break from crimefighting. It looks to be, sun, fun, and nothing but miles of calm ocean ahead for our heroes on their vacation cruise. However, when Jon hears a troubled cry somewhere over the Carribean, he immediately flies to the rescue. He finds a dolphin tangled in a fishing net--even though these are federally-protected waters and it is illegal to fish in this part of the ocean. As he frees the dolphin and returns to the lido deck, he muses, I had the strangest feeling...someone was watching me. Later, Jon researches local canneries and learns that Corsair Canning has recently opened shop in the area, and doesn't seem to be playing by the EPA's rules.
Josh takes this opportunity to introduces the team to Crook Buster 2.0--rebuilt from scratch after being blown up in "Jiggawatt!" and newly-upgraded--by helicoptering it onto the ship in autopilot mode. The Warriors head out towards a forboding plant on an island miles offshore. There in the company's offices they find an old "friend" of theirs, Sidney "The Weasel" Schlenker. However, Schlenker insists he isn't their guy, only a paper-pusher. His partner, who "likes to be close to his work", is the real brains behind it all.
Said partner is none other than Captain Maggot (first seen way back in #5). Switching the new van into raft mode, the team sails out to nearby Buccaneer's Cove, where Maggot's ship--the S.S. Corsair--is docked. Maggot is less than pleased to see Jon. After a heated exchange of both words and fists between the Warriors and Maggot's crew, the cruel pirate cuts free a support beam from the sail, which knocks Jon over the side of the ship. He falls, unconcious, into the ocean, sinking below the surface. Declaring victory, the lecherous old pirate takes Angela as spoils of war, declaring she shall be his bride come evening.
Josh, Ben, and Billy are left to die on a barren lick of island in the middle of nowhere (which in true Belch Dimension fashion sets up the obligatory Gilligan's Island joke). On board Angela is looking at spending the rest of her days as the captain's concubine. Still, she is certain--despite all appearances--that Jon is still alive and will come for them. She clings desperately to this tiny bit of hope as she awaits her impending nuptuals to the captain...but with the rest of the team in exile, and their fearless leader dunked in the deep, all looks bleak....
Notes:
Deleted scenes:
A brief exchange where, after Ben is singed to a heap of ash by Josh's suntanning lotion formula, Angela hands Josh an old metal pail to put the remains into. Billy (who is visibly seasick) then comes up and asks if anyone has seen his barf bucket.
A flashback describing how several Cobra Clan operatives stole a cannister of mutagen from a genetics lab. While the Warriors were fighting with them, the container broke and the goop spilled into the sewers. This was intended to be expounded on more in chapter two. However, the whole subplot was cut, having Jon refer to the spill only as a "class 6 mutagen", with no explanation as to how it got into the sewers other than as "industrial runoff".
After Maggot and Jon tear away their shirts, Josh rips off his. Ben gets excited and rips Billy's off, but does it too exuberantly and takes off a layer of skin with it, exposing his bare skeleton. Angela then looks at the reader, folds her arms, and primly says, "Don't expect me to rip my shirt off."
An entire scene where Angela feigns illness...then, when the ship's "doctors" (really Jon, Josh, and Ben in disguise) come to "treat" her, she disguises herself as Dr. Ruthless and escapes off the ship--leaving her wedding dress propped up on a chair stuffed with seaweed and grass as a decoy--was excised, and, according to editor J.M. Sweet, a new "punched-up" ending was written at nearly the last minute.
page 3. The joke about Corbett Canning on Jon's computer screen is a reference to Boston Corbett, the fanatical, self-styled, hyperreligious sargeant who shot Presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth (though some sources claim it was really his double James W. Boyd) at Garrett's Farm in 1865.
page 5. "Sidney Schlenker" is named in honor of Sidney Shlenker, an actual person who in the late eighties brokered a now-infamous Memphis land deal involving the
Pyramid and Mud Island, among other ill-fated investments. One of Schlenker's aliases, "Vic the Slick", refers to a character from Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego; another, "Sid the Squid", was apparantly a favorite of the Warner Bros. writers; it was used by two minor hoods in Batman: The Animated Series and one of Slappy Squirrel's villains on Animaniacs.
page 6. Jon morphs into Popeye, even uttering the spinach-munching sailor's famous phrase "I yam what I yam".
page 10. A cutaway shows Billy watching "Ernest Goes to Hell" (which is also mentioned at the Champagne Island Dispatch) on cable. Though no such Ernest film exists, there was a final movie, Ernest the Pirate, to be released. The sudden passing of star Jim Varney in 2000, however, shelved the project yet-unfinished, and there seem to be no plans to complete or release it.
page 12. Billy's and Josh's exchange refers to a running gag on F Troop, a sitcom set in the Civil War, starring Forrest Tucker, Larry Storch, and Ken Berry as the bumbling but well-meaning Capt. Pomfritz. Cpl. Agarn (Storch) would frequently be called dumb by his commanding sargeant (Tucker). Moments would pass (often a whole scene change would occur) before he would holler "Who says I'm dumb?!?", indicating his rather slow thought processes.
A second F Troop ref is seen later on page 23, when one of the pirates is firing the ship's cannon. In the series, when this happened, the cannon's wheel would break off, and it would fall to one side and shoot a ball, which almost always knocked down the camp guard tower.
This marks Bob Denver's second appearance in the series (page 13); he was previously seen as Meynard Krebbs in "Little Romeoh-No".
page 15. Angela's wedding gown--and even the expression on her face--are nearly identical to one of the rejected dresses Lois Lane models for her upcoming wedding to Clark Kent in the "Superman: The Wedding Album" special put out by DC (Dec 1996).
page 21. Billy sings the opening bars to Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" while they launch an attack on the pirates. This song is perhaps most well-known for being the score to the famous
Viking Kittens video.
page 22. "Captain Stubbing" is a spoof of Capt. Merrill Stubing, played by Gavin McCleod, of The Love Boat.
page 23. The "Mr. Ledger" in another cutaway gag is a reference to the untimely death of actor Heath Ledger (Monster's Ball, Brokeback Mountain) on Jan 22, 2008. It was ruled a suicide from an overdose of prescription barbiturates.
This
Site has been designed for 800x600 resolution and Macromedia
Flash Player 5.
________________________________________________________________________________
Captain Maggot is up to his old tricks again--this time fishing for trouble in protected waters! The Warriors race to table the old sea salt...but when their fearless leader goes overboard, will their goodwill mission sink like the Titanic? And just who is that shadowy figure who keeps tailing our hero--friend, or foe?
Capt. Maggot is dressed and posed as the Gorton's fisherman, a seafaring ad mascot who wears a yellow rain slicker. Ironically, the Gorton's of Gloucester corporation was accused in 2005 of illegal whaling, a charge it has scrupulously denied. The EPA filed a suit, though it was later dropped.
