Drawn by: Neal Sternecky
The Warners have found a new way to earn money. Yakko is sitting at a booth (made from an Acme TNT box) with a sign, "SEE the STARS $10". He's taking money from a happy customer. Dot is ushering the next happy customer in front of Wakko, who's spitting on his hands and getting ready to pick up his mallet. The last happy customer is staggering off with a lump on his head and stars everywhere. Plotz is looking over the whole scene from his office window, shocked.
The Bigwig Club has asked Plotz to coordinate a celebration of the olden days of black-and-white silent comedy. He doesn't intend to let his complete lack of knowledge of the subject get in his way, either - he plans to hire an expert. Dr. Scratchansniff points out that the only people still at WB who know anything about those days are the Warners. They hear their name and barge in, offering to help. Plotz wants no part of that, and rushes them out of his office.
The Warners just know Plotz will get everything wrong, so they decide to help out whether he likes it or not. As the guests arrive, they steal an old film from the vault, and hold a seance in order to bring the spirit of old comedy back to life. They succeed: out of the old film canister pops black-and-white versions of the Warners themselves. The modern Warners manage to catch the old Warners after they prove to be just as zany as themselves, and they go to the party.
The party is bombing. Plotz' expert is a boring professor type who talks about symbolism and has put everyone to sleep. The Warners - all six of them - arrive, and the old Warners start to show everyone just why the old cartoons were so funny. Media mogul Ted Turnover decides he can make lots of money making new movies with the old Warners...all they have to do is colorize them and dub in voices. The old Warners object, saying "only sissies are in color!", and the modern Warners take offense.
It's a fight of Warners against Warners, and an even match - until the old Wakko pulls an Acme Turbo-Hose Color Sucker II vacuum out of his bag. The machine will suck the color out of everything, and the modern Warners must do something. They trick the old Warners back into their old film by way of a movie projector, and Plotz and another mogul come into the projection room to see the old Warners on the screen. Plotz orders the modern Warners to get the old Warners back, and makes them responsible for their behavior.
Ted Turnover is a reference to media tycoon Ted Turner. The Warners are dressed (or, in Wakko's case, possibly undressed) in black as they commit the movie heist. Yakko's greeting to the old Warners is a misquote from the Beatles' I Am the Walrus. The modern Warners wear modern US Army uniforms, and the old Warners wear WWI-vintage US Army uniforms.
Penciller John Costanza got Dot's hair right this time, unlike Guitars and Cadillacs, his first effort. The old Warners' noses are drawn in gray. In the cartoons, their noses are always red, even in black and white. Wakko's nose is drawn too short as shown from the rear. (page 3) Coloring errors: The old Yakko's chest is white in one panel on page 4, and his tail is white in the last panel on page 8. The old Wakko's gag bag is brown. (page 10) Costanza can't seem to decide whether Dot's tail should pass through or under her skirt.The Warners are riding bicycles around the inside of the tower. They get hungry, and decide to order a pizza...but there's a problem: The telephone hasn't been invented yet. They decide to go visit the gadget guy, Alexander Graham Bell. Bell is in his lab, having decided that the world isn't ready for his latest invention: the television.
The Warners arrive and ask to use a phone so they can order a pizza; of course, Bell is clueless, since he hasn't invented the telephone yet - but quickly figures out that the real problem is that he needs two telephones. After the Warners string telephone cable, they demonstrate the telephone by ordering their pizza. The telephone pregresses over the next several days, with the Warners in the thick of things; they find their niche as operators in the growing network.
Their position as operators allows them to invent the crank call, and they have fun bothering everyone that has a phone. Finally, Bell has enough when he gets called out of the bathtub, and kicks the Warners out of their job and back to the tower. They still want to order a pizza, though...
The program on Bell's TV is a Pinky and the Brain cartoon. Sign advertising the phone: "Available in trim-line and regular" The tower is there, even though there won't be a studio around it for many years; instead, open farmland and a barn is shown. The dial telephone wasn't invented until many years after the telephone itself. Dot's tail is missing in a couple of panels on page 17. (RO) The Warners are shown wearing headphones in what would be the normal place for a human. Unfortunately, that's not where their ears are, and so they'd be getting the sound in the side of their head. The headphones should be at the top of the side of the head, at the base of the ears. (page 24)Acme Labs management is holding a press conference to announce that they have been receiving communications from Venus, promising that the Earth may already be a winner in the Cosmic Clearing House sweepstakes. Two mice will be sent to deliver the entry. After the press conference, the managers go back inside the building and reveal that that's a ruse to hide the lab's real intent: to obtain parts for the Mega Mind-Blinder from the Venusians.
The Brain decides to take the place of the other mice on the trip to Venus in order to gain control of the machine. He and Pinky manage to make the switch, and are launched on schedule for Venus. They reprogram the rocket and take a shortcut, then land and find the inhabitants.
The inhabitants turn out to be cats, who have just discovered the feline equivalent to Domino's Pizza. They try to crack Pinky and the Brain's helmets, thinking they are shells, and that gives the Brain time to outwit the cats: he takes off his gravity boots, and has Pinky do the same, so they float out of the cats' clutches and back to the rocket. They return home, to begin planning for tomorrow night.
Brain's travel book: Venus On $5.00 A Nanosecond The Brain cuts their escape holes in the shape of their silhouettes as they float out. Graffiti on a rock: Faces of the Warners, with the caption The Warners were here! Once again, writer John Walker has the strange idea that Pinky uses British slang. This is the second story he's done that in (the other is Rewriting History). He also invents even more nonsense words for Pinky. Brain's comment about "we would have been there light-years ago" is incorrect; a light-year is a measure of distance, not of time. (JK) It would be difficult to portray Venus any less accurately: It's perpetually cloudy and hot on the surface, and there are few craters to be found. It also has gravity of about .8 of Earth's, so no gravity boots would be necessary to stand on the surface. The Brain is trying to turn on warp speed when he calls for an emergency bailout.