Animaniacs: November 1996
Cover
Drawn by: Miran Kim
This cover, a parody of the covers for The X Files comics, almost, but not quite, completely defies description. It's a combination of collage and painting, with the Warners, an alien, skulls, an explosion, a worm, and sheep. The title is shown in silhouette over ghostly green light, as is the subtitle, "The Y Files".
The Warners are painted in standard model-sheet poses, probably the best choice for an artist new to working with them. They're quite well done. Kim is the regular cover artist for The X Files, and this cover is dead on.
Credits
Synopsis
FBI agents Fox Mouldy and Dana Scowly are investigating a report of a crashed experimental plane, or maybe something else... Typically for the pair, Mouldy is the aggressive one. He forges ahead, only to slip and fall down an incline. He finds the downed craft, all right: it's the WB water tower, which Wakko has crashlanded along the Oregon coast. Just as Mouldy goes up to the door, it falls open on him, knocking him out and sending him into a pair of strange dreams...
Sheep! and Little Green Mice are shown here...
When Mouldy wakes up, the tower is gone. Scowly catches up with him again, and doesn't believe his contention that they've encountered extraterrestrials. As they walk back to their car, we see the story's writer, who thinks he's pulling the strings, but the editors have other ideas...
Did You Notice...
The art is a collaborative effort between longtime Warners penciller Neal Sternecky and Charles Adlard, who was the regular artist for The X Files comics when this issue was produced. Each artist uses his own particular style, and the result is visually striking: the FBI agents look like real people, and the Warners look like toons in the real world. The resulting effect is one of the best in the series.- Mouldy and Scowly represent The X Files main characters Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. The characters, as in the comic of the same name, are drawn to look like David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, the actors who play those roles.
- The scenery looks much like coastal northwest Oregon: hilly, sandy, wooded, deserted, much like the area outside Astoria.
- Wakko's jacket, helmet, and goggles are standard wear for an open-cockpit airplane pilot...and quite useful, as the air gets pretty cool once you get a few thousand feet up.
- Dot is hardly the first to fall for Duchovny.
- Writer Dave King really does live in Leicester, England, and the Warner Bros. offices are (of course) in Burbank. The time difference between the two locations is correct for that time of year, as well.
- The two editors are intended to represent WBWP editors Robert Graff and Katie Main. Neither one smokes, however.
Technical nits
I'm not sure this counts, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who wishes this could have been longer.
Credits
Synopsis
Outside a little town in Ohio, a farmer's drive in the country is abruptly ended when his pickup encounters a flock of bouncing sheep. He is forced off the road, his truck heavily damaged. The FBI calls in Agents Mouldy and Scowly to investigate, but they've been temporarily replaced by the Warners after Mouldy's accident. They're sent to Ohio, but before they leave, a tall man with a bad cough and a trench coat tries to dissuade them, with no success.
They arrive in Ohio and start looking around, eventually finding a witness who directs them to the crash site, stopping only to do a gratuitous parody of Friends along the way. They're about to give up when the local sheriff (who has a familiar cough) catches up with them. He denies seeing anything strange, even when confronted by a tree that seems to grow white fur. They decide to return to town in the sheriff's car, to head off whatever it is, and arrive just in time to see the bouncing sheep for themselves. Wakko dives in and diverts the stampede, saving the people in its path.
Yakko notices that the sheep have molted, and calls for analysis of the wool. The county's crime lab is convenientlyout of commission, but Wakko pulls one out of his gag bag, and Dot goes to work on the analysis. She finds that the sheep's DNA has been altered by the addition of elements from the rubber tree. It so happens that a liquid rubber factory is located in the town, and they go off to get some answers.
They find more then they expect at the plant: there's an armed guard outside. The plant scientists wave him off, and Yakko begins their discussion by accusing them of being a secret government agency doing gene splicing experiments. The scientists react by seizing Dot and threatening to change her DNA to rubber...but they've made a crucial error: they call her Dotty. she escapes, turns the gene splicer on them, then play a little basketball with them before turning them over to the police. As the Warners head back to the Warner Bros. lot to resume Wakko's driving lesson, the two guys with the bad coughs reveal themselves as aliens, and discuss their plans to take over the Earth.
Did You Notice...
- The Courier-font typed labels showing where the action is happening are a standard feature of The X Files.
- Dot's comment about the director's dress refers to long-time FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who had a fetish for cross-dressing.
- There are several oddities nobody notices in the background in Ohio; ghosts in a store window, an unidentified monster in the woods, crop circles on a farm, and a local woman being sucked up (presumably) into a UFO.
- Pinky and the Brain pass through town on a bus as the Warners arrive.
- Yakko's comment that "not all FBI agents are lucky enough to have their siblings abducted by aliens" refers to the background of The X Files: Agent Mulder's sister disappeared mysteriously, and he believes that's how.
Technical nits
- Aranda still has trouble with Warner faces; there's not a neutral expression in the house, even when clearly called for. He does generally get unusual expressions right, however.
- The X Files is published by Topps Comics, not Marvel. (Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, or if Topps is related somehow to Marvel...JM)
- Several store signs are blank, even though it appears they were intended to have something on them.
- Coloring errors: Dot's tie isn't colored in in the fourth panel on page 7; Yakko's face is blue as he's jumping out of the car on page 9; the local woman's shadowed skin is green for no apparent reason in the middle of page 10.
Credits
Synopsis
A visitor to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming is awakened from a sound sleep by the sound of all of the cheese in his refrigerator being mysteriously levitated out, and straight through the roof of his cabin. The wave spreads throughout the park...
Our favorite lab mice interrupt tonight's planning for global domination to watch a TV program, which turns out to feature the disappearing cheese. The Brain concludes that this is a sign from extraterrestrials seeking their prophesied leader - and that that leader is him. He has been always been a bit skeptical of his supposed origins at Acme Labs, after all, as it does not explain his superior intelligence (or, for that matter, Pinky's intelligence) very well at all. He decides that they will have to go visit the site of the abducted cheese to contact the aliens.
They adopt the identities of two missing (and familiar) FBI agents. They take a bus to Yellowstone, and find the deserted cabin, which contains little of value except for a note marked Top Secret. The Brain ignores the note, concentrating instead on the scorched tops of nearby trees, which suggest a UFO might have hovered over them. Just then, a man falls from a nearby tree with binoculars in hand; he claims to be birdwatching, then leaves in a hurry before they can question him. They settle down by a campfire to ponder their next move.
The cheese they munch by the fire turns out to be the next clue: it's known for its distinctive aroma, and is only made one place: Fenigburg, Wisconsin. The Brain quickly decides that's their next stop. They are given a ride by a passing motorist, who is convinced that Pinky is really a pregnant FBI agent - but he takes them the wrong direction, toward Nebraska instead of Wisconsin. They finally arrive, several hours later, at the cheese factory, which turns out to contain all the stolen cheese. As they're studying this, mysterious lights appear overhead; the Brain waves to them, thinking they're the extraterrestrials looking for him to lead them, but they depart, leaving him disappointed. They turn out to be helicopters with the same people whohave been thwarting him all along. The mice return to the lab to plan for tomorrow night.
Did You Notice...
- Prophesied leaders: The Dalai Lama is spiritual head of the Tibetan Buddhists, and the current holder of that title is a well-known and well-respected figure; someone who'll play Batman for more than one movie would be a Good Thing for Warner Bros., as they've had three actors in four movies (Bruce Keaton, Val Kilmer, and George Clooney).
- The crew-cut and mustached person who watches the mice looks, in the first shot, like the fabled J. R. "Bob" Dobbs of Church of the Subgenius lore. All he needs is his pipe to be complete.
- The Brain's disguise as Fox Mouldy isn't very successful, and not just because he's a mouse; Pinky's rather cute as Dana Scowly, however.
- The fat guy in the white jumpsuit is Elvis Presley, of course.
- Eurodisney has been a rather spectacular failure, drawing far smaller crowds than its planners had predicted and losing large quantities of money.
- This is not the first time Pinky levitates things by telekinesis; he also does it at the beginning of Fly, in Pinky and the Brain episode 11.
Technical nits
- The residents of Gallifrey are not Whovians (that term refers to the fans of the Doctor Who science fiction TV series), but rather Time Lords or Gallifreyans. There is no reference to a Lord Tempus in the series. (MK)
- The highway running through Yellowstone National Park is US Highway 89, not Interstate 89 (which is in Vermont). (BD)
- Walking 200 miles in 14 hours is quite a feat for a human, let alone a lab mouse.
- This one usually pertains to Dot Warner...but Pinky's tail passes through his skirt on page 23, and under it on page 29.
Jay Maynard, jmaynard@phoenix.net
Last updated 20 January 1997