Today, we look at how Morpheus from The Sandman shocked Ambush Bug by actually having a sense of humor.
In every installment of I Love Ya But You’re Strange I spotlight strange but ultimately endearing comic stories. Feel free to e-mail me at brianc@cbr.com if you have a suggestion for a future installment!
With The Sandman in the news because of the hit Netflix series, I thought it would be fun to head back thirty years to see how Morpheus made an amusing cameo in the pages of the Ambush Bug Nothing Special #1 by Keith Giffen, Robert Loren Fleming, Al Gordon, Anthony Tollin and John Costanza.
HOW DID CONTINUITY BECOME ONE OF THE KEY JOKES WITH AMBUSH BUG?
Ambush Bug was originally created by Keith Giffen for a DC Comics Presents story that he was drawing that Paul Kupperberg was writing. They were looking for an offbeat villain, so Giffen came up with Ambush Bug, who was basically like what if Bugs Bunny was a supervillain. The editor of DC Comics Presents, Julius Schwartz, liked the character and asked Giffen to do a new story with the villain, this time written and drawn by Giffen (with Paul Levitz, Giffen's Legion of Super-Heroes collaborator, doing the script, as the issue saw Superman team up with the Legion of Substitute Super-Heroes to stop the Bug). The character was now popular enough that Giffen decided to make him a superhero, and after a number of guest appearances in Superman's titles, Ambush Bug received his own miniseries.
The first Ambush Bug series (by Giffen and scripter Robert Loren Fleming) was a hit, and it firmly established one of the main jokes involving Ambush Bug, which is that he was aware that he was a DC comic book character. That was particularly significant in 1985, when the miniseries came out, as DC was in the middle of the Crisis on Infinite Earths, as well as the corresponding maxi-series, Who's Who in the DC Universe. You see, the idea was to reboot DC's continuity in Crisis at the same time that DC's history was being detailed in Who's Who (even as people's histories were being altered). So Ambush Bug played around with the idea that not every character would be remaining in continuity after Crisis, and so Ambush Bug decided to show how those characters were dealing with being essentially erased from existence. It's a really clever, sharp commentary on the very notion of comic book continuity.
Well, seven years later, after DC's continuity had been firmly rebooted, another interesting thing was starting to pop up regarding continuity. You see, slowly but surely, DC was drawing a line in the sand between its mature readers titles and its regular superhero comic books. The concept of Vertigo had not yet been introduced, but even before those titles were officially made part of its own imprint, called Vertigo, those other comics were BASICALLY in their own little world. For instance, John Constantine was pretty much off-limits for books outside of Swamp Thing and Hellblazer. Amusingly, Grant Morrison then had to introduce a stand-in for John Constantine in the pages of Doom Patrol, but then Doom Patrol ALSO became a mature readers only comic book, and thus, the stand-in that Morrison had created was now ALSO off-limits when Phil Foglio figured he'd use the stand-in for a miniseries, knowing he couldn't use Constantine himself (I detailed the hilarity in an old Comic Book Legends Revealed)
In any event, with these books now being kind of sort of "off-limits," continuity-wise, of course Giffen had to poke some fun at that idea, which he did in the 1992 Summer Special, Ambush Bug: Nothing Special.
HOW THE SANDMAN'S MORPHEUS PROVE TO AMBUSH BUG THAT HE HAD A SENSE OF HUMOR?
Ambush Bug is out of work, so he looks around the edges of the DC Universe to find a job, including visiting "off-limits" characters like Swamp Thing and the Doom Patrol, and, of course, Morpheus, who he tries to appeal to by wearing the superhero costume worn by the Joe Simon/Jack Kirby Sandman in the 1970s...
Ambush Bug suggests that Morpheus' comic book is too serious, and that he is in sore need of a wacky sidekick.
However, Morpheus takes umbrage to Ambush Bug's suggestion that he has no sense of humor. Therefore, to prove him wrong, he then uses his powers to cover Ambush Bug in feathers and send him to a "pluck your own poultry" farm...
Ambush Bug had to admit that Morpheus showed him.
WHAT ROLE DID DEATH FROM THE SANDMAN PLAY IN AMBUSH BUG'S ONE-SHOT?
After some more misadventures, Ambush Bug found himself in basically comic book limbo, which was just nothingness. He then ran into Morpheus' sister, Death, who was busy because so many people were dying in DC's Summer crossover at the time, Eclipso: The Darkness Within. She thought that this WAS a Summer Annual, but it was just a one-shot special...
Ambush Bug is shocked to learn that he was neither on the list of people alive in the DC Universe OR the people who were dying that Death had to collect. He was truly in limbo - not even a part of the annual crossover event!!
Luckily, Robert Loren Fleming, the scripter of the story, was organizing the Eclipso crossover (with Giffen co-plotting the event), and so Ambush Bug headed off to see his own scripter to see if he could find a way into the crossover (he could not).
This was as really fun one-shot, and it was very nice to see DC's "out of bounds" characters get to play a role in one of these Ambush Bug specials. It was cool of editor Michael Eury to set that up.
If anyone has a suggestion for a future I Love Ya But You're Strange, please drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com! Happy birthday, again, Albert!