2022 #4: Quest for the Crystals, Part I
Upper left corner:Mar. '95, 4
Top center: 2022
Top right: 50 cents, SA logo
Lower right: Quest for the Crystals, Part I (with new Metamorph window!)
Analysis:
In a bold break from established tradition, the cover of this issue tries something that no 2022 cover has ever tried before: depicting a random battle between our heroes and some generic minions.
Cybre uses his extendable robo-arm to grab a bog person, in what is undoubtedly the most normal thing any of them are doing on this cover. Meanwhile, Tarian dodges a high-kick that was thrown ten feet away from him by diving forward just to dive under it, while shapeshifting into a bog person himself mid-jump. Apparently he likes confusing his teammates. Lavor attacks a bog person with a sword he has for no adequately explained reason. Said bog person breaks the laws of perspective by leaping over Lavor and his sword, presumably still on the same plane as him, only to deliver a jump-kick to Shockwave, who is clearly standing six feet or so behind them. Shockwave counters by using his shockwave power, which won't actually come into play or be explained in the comic itself until next issue. Meanwhile, in the background, the Trifor...er, Powerball watches ominously, while Scratch tries to air-dry his nails after just having painted them blue, only for random festively-colored lightning to get in the way.
As for the "new Metamorph window," I'll just discuss that when it actually comes up. Until then, rest assured that it is quite underwhelming.
Lavor: So you're saying that Scratch has the Powerball...
Tarian: ...and you need our help!
Analysis:
"That is the single dumbest story I have ever heard. Please get the hell out of our base."
Panel 1, Shockwave: Yup. Look, this sword is worthess now, but when added to Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water...
Panel 2, Shockwave: It is a mighty blade!
Analysis:
The fact that its current form is described as worthless tells me that Heart has already been added. Also, he forgot the "gay-looking" after "mighty."
So wait, exactly where did this whole plot point come from? He wasn't carrying anything like that in the last issue, nor was it mentioned as part of the already-ridiculous crystals/Powerball/Amulet of Xorg story. Is there some sort of legend where he who can pull the Sword from His Own Ass shall become King of all England or something?
Panel 1, Lavor: Lava counts as fire, right? I can do that.
Panel 3, Shockwave: Ahhh...yessssss...!
Analysis:
Lavor doesn't feel like doing some ridiculous quest for the Relic of Fire, so he comes up with a way to singlehandedly shave about two issues off of this arc. Lavor is awesome. Now, why can't they just bury the sword in the ground, then run it under a faucet, then swish it around in the air a bit to complete it? Lavor just demonstrated how forgiving it is as far as its elemental augmentations.
Panels 1 and 2, sound effects: Rrrr, Rumble, Rumble
Panel 3, sound effect: Splish!
Analysis:
Unfortunately, the fire thing was the only brief moment of insight the heroes are allowed to have, and it is now questing time to get the other elements. Scratch helpfully constructs the towers where all the elements are presumably held, for no particular reason. One would think "here's where you can get the next pieces of quest item to power up your mystical sword" wouldn't be something a villain would go out of his way to advertise.
Also, note that he built temples for Earth, Wind, and Water, but he didn't build a temple of Fire. He couldn't have known that the heroes found a way to just shortcut that one, so clearly he is allowed to just be a jerk and not give them an obvious way to get that one. This, of course, only reinforces the original question of why he did build temples for the other three.
Sound effect: Zzz
Analysis:
Shockwave can somehow detect that Scratch is building temples, but finds the whole matter about as exciting as we do.
Shockwave: Our first stop is the Earth Palace!
Someone(?): Let's go!
Analysis:
Oh, sorry, they're palaces. Because calling them temples would be a Zelda ripoff, and obviously we can't have that.
I have no idea which of the other heroes said "let's go!" but does it really matter? Every single one of them is completely blank, personality and character-wise, with the arguable exception that Lavor has (so far) been lucky enough to get most of the "I'm tired of this crap" moments.
Panel 1, Shockwave: Hmm....
Panel 2, sound effect: Slap!
Analysis:
Impressively enough, Shockwave only needs a few moments of careful consideration before deciding that the sword might fit into a niche that is shaped exactly like the sword. He's so smart, he only needs two minutes at most to figure out the relationship between keys and keyholes.
Let us step back a bit and examine this whole tem...palace thing again. Looking back at the previous panels, the three palaces Scratch built all have sword slots, but the swords are wildly different shapes. Elemental augmentations change the shape of the sword, which should have happened when Lavor added fire to the basic version, though the basic and fire versions are suspiciously identical. At any rate, the sword slots make it clear that the only way into any palace is to have the right sword, but Scratch never made a palace of Fire, therefore this whole thing never should have been able to get off the ground, but Lavor's short-circuiting that entire process once again calls into question why the hell the other palaces were made. This plot is already an irrecoverable mess on its first issue, and this ends up being the single longest arc in 2022's entire run.
Also, Shockwave's glove randomly disappeared.
Panel 3, sound effect: Thud
Analysis:
After entering the Earth Palance, they walk past something that's supposed to be a hieroglyph or part of the wall somehow (you can totally tell by how blocky it is) when suddenly, it comes to life and attacks! It opens by clubbing Cybre over the head with what I really, really hope is its arm, but based on how bulgy the underwear suddenly is, I fear it's not.
Also, Lavor broke his leg, and Shockwave's glove is back.
Panel 2, sound effect: Twak!
Analysis:
Lavor is about to skip the overly prolonged fight and just throw lava at the bad guy again, but the bad guy interrupts him by attacking Shockwave. This makes almost as much sense as the fact that Shockwave being clubbed over the head makes a "Twak!" sound.
Panel 1, captions: Metamorph, Tarian, Change
Analysis:
And here we have the new, super-awesome Metamorph window, which turns out to be nothing more than a gimmicky panel with various keywords written around it to show when Tarian changes shape. Sure, he's turned into Lavor before, but this time, he METAMORPHED into Lavor. I am fairly certain that this is the first, last, and only time this ridiculous gimmick is ever used, so don't worry.
On the other hand, I'd like to take a minute to wonder about Lavor. He is, of course, a living lava monster, given life by the perfectly reasonable explanation of a random lava plume falling through the roof of the SCIENCE building at the base of Mt. Lava (the most active volcano) and landing in a box of DNA. However, there another major problem with him besides his backstory: how many pieces of himself can he throw before he starts to run low? Does he have some sort of infinite ammo code for himself? And that's not even getting into the question of how he stays molten and never has to worry about cooling and turning into lava rock.
All this is questionable enough with Lavor alone, of course, but having Tarian shapeshift into him only raises several orders of magnitude more questions. Tarian is gearing up to throw a piece of himself like Lavor is. Tarian is (usually) not a lava monster. Even assuming Tarian can somehow superheat himself just to make the form work, how does Tarian cope with detaching and hurling pieces of himself?
Oh, whatever.
Panel 1, sound effects: Smat, Tssss, Tssss
Panel 3, sound effect: Boom!
Analysis:
Tarian recognizes that Lavor has the mystical power to end battles quickly (unless Shockwave gets taken out) so he decides to go for double the Lavor power. Of course, two shots to the stomach only seem to injure it a little, and it's Cybre, finally recovering from what may or may not have been bad touch, who ends this with such a hard punch that the thing explodes. Yes, it only took four issues, but Cybre--admittedly with heavy assistance--actually beat someone.
Panel 1, floating eye thing (?): I shall give your sword the power of Earth!
Analysis:
Apparently the phallus-wielding hieroglyph guardian was actually the boss of this palace, despite the fact that it was located about two feet inside the entrance, and it was destroyed in under a minute. Well, they got the power of Fire by just letting Lavor do it, so one supposes that the bar hasn't exactly been set very high for the challenges. I'm the one who wrote this comic however long ago, and even I don't know what that eye is supposed to be--I really want to say it's some sort of incarnation of the spirit of the Powerball or something, but I'm far from certain on that.
Anyway, unlike the last change, this one actually changed the shape of the sword like it was supposed to, so now it conveniently fits in the slot of the next palace. Way to design a security system, Scratch. And way to use the big magical sword for anything other than a key that just sits there while you explore inside the palace without it, heroes.
Also, Shockwave's glove is gone again.
Shockwave: The orb of courage!
Analysis:
Wait, wait, wait. First off, are they crystals, or orbs? This unbearably long arc is entitled is the Quest for the Crystals, and they were described as such before, but now they're orbs? Also, they have one of the orbs/crystals already? You might be asking yourself how they could get two of the four elemental powers and one of the three orbs in the very first issue of this arc and still have the arc be as long as it is, to which I will assure you that their luck at actually getting things runs out very, very soon. I was clearly the master of pacing.
Shockwave: We've rescued 1 of 3 orbs! This doesn't break the Powerball, though. Its power is still in Scratch's evil hands. We must rescue the other 2, then the amulet.
Analysis:
Shockwave decides to give such a long speech to the rest of the team that I barely had room to draw his head in the corner there, yet all of that text can just be summed up as "nice work, but there's still more to do."
Shockwave: Our next stop should be the Palace of Wind!
Analysis:
And so, our heroes go to the Palace of Wind after having triumphanty cleared the Earth Palace. Apparently even being consistent with whether it's the X Palace or the Palace of X (along with whether they're crystals or orbs, and whether the sword needs a special quest for elemental power or if just having Lavor touch it works) was beyond me. The rest of the team looks slightly irritated, but more or less resigned to the fate of being Shockwave's muscle while he leads them on this quest, being the most important spotlight-stealing character without actually personally doing anything in a fight. Even the arc villain was retconned into being Shockwave's brother. Oh, well, such is the life of a lesser character. Maybe if they're good, they'll get to have cameo appearances in 2022 Origins: Shockwave when it hits theaters.
Panel 1, sound effects: Boom, Boom, Rumble
Analysis:
The Earth Palace of Earth, or whatever it is, crumbles to the ground for no particular reason. The Eye of Sauron looks on in mild irritation. "Those darned heroes, always knocking over things and never cleaning up their messes before moving on," it seems to think to itself.
Someone (?): Bog people!
Caption: To be continued.
Analysis:
The issue abruptly ends when Scratch conjures up (you can tell it's him conjuring them up due to that inset panel with his hand there) a few bog people to harrass the team. "Bog people!" someone on the team observes--again, it doesn't matter who, because they're all identical. Bog people, of course, are minions. Flunkies. Ending the issue on this note and pretending it's suspenseful is like trying to make one of the disc swaps on a console RPG happen during a random encounter. "Can Cloud and his friends defeat the swarm of four DvlBunnies? Tune in next time for the thrilling conclusion!" Of course, having said all that, that just makes it that much sadder that the next issue is mostly going to revolve around the team getting their collective asses kicked.
Next issue: The team spends most of the issue losing to a random encounter, and the plagiarism does the impossible and becomes even more blatant!
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