"Iron Doom" (MST3K Comics)

Issue Number:  5
Release Date:  March 20th, 2019
Adapted From:  Johnny Jason, Teen Reporter #2; Black Cat Comics #1; Horrific #2
Original Publication Dates:  July/August 1962, June/July 1946, November 1952

Looks like my fears that Crow's Horrific tales were being cut off last issue were premature, since Synthia devises a way to get the slouching bots back into their respective positions.  Crow gives us yet another Horrific tale to climax us this time, and while it's his weakest and somewhat most incoherent yet, it's a devilishly playful read, if nothing else.

But first we are long overdue to check in on Tom Servo's Johnny Jason, Teen Reporter story, and for me that highlighted this particular book.  After Servo and his actress companion crash land, they camp out and try to survive the night, only to be kidnapped by the same men who tried to kidnap her in issue one.  Finally some plot movement happens!  I really found myself enjoying this portion of the issue, of which the totally quaint and keen 50's tale really suits this mockery format, and hanging around with Servo for a good chunk of time after spending so much of the comic run ignoring him really hammers home what I loved about this comic from the beginning when this story introduced it to me.

More Servo and less Jonah, please.  If this comic series has any fateful flaw it's that it has too much of Jonah's adventures in Black Cat Comics, which usually feel incoherent, aimless, and lacking in the comedic writing.  I find myself frustrated when I'm into Servo's story only to switch to the less consistent vigilante tale.  This issue concludes Buddha story from the previous issue, which basically just amounts to Black Cat beating up bad guys.  Toward the end it feels like it's starting another story, with Black Cat being kidnapped by some bad men and her father getting stabbed, but Kinga and Max cut away because of course they did.

That random cut away kind of describes the last third of the book as a whole, which is a little chaotic and confusingly put together for me.  Crow is back in Horrific, giving us a taste of a tale called Iron Doom, which is about...I'm not really sure.  It seems like a man has inherited a family castle which he desires to turn into a horror museum of some kind, and when he comes there he find a dead body, of which he kills a caretaker over for some reason and discovers there are ghouls who live in the basement...?  This is a case where I really wish I read the original story for a point of reference, because the storyline here lacks any sort of narrative logic and I'm not sure how we get from point A to point B in it.  To make matters somewhat worse, Kinga comments that maybe Crow is manipulating the comic into an entirely different story, which is really hard to tell without knowing how the original story goes.  I can tell something went haywire at some point, but it's hard to figure out if it's Horrific's bad writing or just MST trying to convey a concept that doesn't seem to play that well in paper form.

The one proper saving grace of that last story is that Crow is by far the most fun character in this comic series, so even if his story lacks, it makes it difficult to completely flounder.  But as I look at the issue as a whole, I got one solid story and two mediocre ones, and feelings of incompleteness to all three.  The sole reason this issue might be worth picking up is just how little we've seen Servo until this issue, but the issue as a whole isn't the full package.

Average