Friday, March 09, 2012

That cell doesn't have a toilet, but you don't think of the Surfer as having to use one...


Concluding the "Dynamo City" saga, Silver Surfer #43, "Termination" Written by Jim Starlin and Ron Marz, pencils by Ron Lim, inks by Keith Williams. The Silver Surfer waits in a cell for trial, with his friend Zeaklar. The old-timer was knocked out last issue, and still hasn't regained consciousness. Having nothing left to lose, the Surfer fights the guard robots, and gets nowhere.

Knocked out again, the Surfer wakes up midway through the trial, as the robot prosecutor accuses him of attempting to murder the Great I. (The judge and jury are robots as well, which again makes me think Dynamo City's upper class were all robots, exploiting the meatbag peasants.) The Surfer exclaims he did not, and the Great I is a vegetable anyway; but his remarks are stricken from the record. For good measure, the defense attorney is unplugged, since it would be a waste of power, the judge tells the Surfer he's guilty as hell. Finally bound and gagged, a litany of witnesses for the prosecution testify; some of whom had actually met the Surfer. The jury renders the verdict:

The Surfer and the still-out Zeaklar are taken to the Termination Platform. While he never thought he'd go out like that, the Surfer does seem to be at least a little relieved that his ordeal there will be over. Worse, Zeaklar finally wakes up, and the Surfer has to tell him they've been tried, found guilty, and about to be executed. Oddly, he's not worried, as the Termination Platform lights up...

...and teleports them into space! While Zeaklar has to suck vacuum for a few seconds, the Surfer's powers return and he creates a cube of oxygen for him. Zeaklar had realized the Surfer was slated for execution, then remembered the method, and that it wouldn't hurt him. He was also smart enough to realize he could get out as well, if Dynamo City wasn't smart enough to use an alternative method of execution. Which is exactly what the arriving guard robots suggest: being sore losers, they try to take the Surfer and Zeaklar back. As you might expect, the Surfer isn't having that.

Destroying the robots, and reconstituting his board, the Silver Surfer plans on tearing Dynamo City apart. Zeaklar protests, and the Surfer asks how, since he was held there for ten years? (It was three years! That's the second odd number error in this storyline...) Zeaklar points out the city's got a ton of robots, and at some point the hull would get breeched, killing the people. The Surfer agonizes over that for a moment, but the only move left is to walk away, giving the cheerfully freed Zeaklar a ride home.

So, what's the moral of Dynamo City? Bureaucracy is evil, but doesn't think outside the box? You can't lay faith in any outside force saving you, since like Drax, it could be hopelessly inept. Ditto any appeal to authority, the I's not listening. Or, is the moral that the only way to deal with a corrupt system is to fold and walk away? I like to think the moral is that when the Surfer was forced to be Galactus's herald again, Dynamo City was the first place they went.

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