I’ll get back to talking about Strondovarians in the future, but they aren’t the only life on Gurx, so we should periodically look elsewhere. The Strondos consider themselves the dominant species on the planet, but there’s also the Bwotel, which is the Strondo word specifically for Gurxian animals (alien animals are called Pwotgedda). The Strondo word for the kind of Bwotel that live in a particular region is “Bwotyax” and the word for the oceans under the Slimelands is Chagheam. So today, we’ll look at:

Bwotyaxchagheam

Most of the Chagheam is under a layer of slime so thick that no sunlight reaches it. But along the shores of the slimelands there exist a lot of animals who want to live off the nutrients in the slime. In this scene we have a colony of Twooay sending gatherers out to harvest from the bottom of the surface slime while potential predators swim nearby.

Twooay

Twooay are an aquatic kind of Vootuph (four-sided animal) that live in tunnels on the ocean floor. They are eusocial creatures that can live in massive colonies. Seen here are members of the gatherer caste, sent out to gather slime and return to the tunnels where it is stored and used to feed the colony. Their mouth is in their backside, on the opposite side of their four-segmented eye, so when they reverse up to the slime to take some into their mouths, they can keep watch for predators. There are also worker Twooay, that dig the tunnels and place rocks near the entrances to help protect them and will come out to fight when the colony is threatened. And, of course, there is the parent caste, who exist to be taken care of while they reproduce.

Ubeelih

Ubeelih are an example of Lapaouger (six-limbed animal) that did not evolve to live on land, but instead to become aquatic killing machines. Their lower limbs have fused into a streamlined fin, and their top limbs into grasping appendages that can grab prey and hold them in place while the Ubeelih feasts. As with most of the creatures on Gurx, the Ubeelih have no teeth, but they do have inward facing barbs that can make it very difficult for prey to escape once grasped. Solitary animals, there are a lot of types of Ubeelih across the oceans of Gurx. The one in this image is a juvenile from a species that stays close to the slime shores and preys on the life that come there for easy meals, such as Twooay.

Loyoloy

In the scene above, a Loyoloy can be seen moving through the strands of Haara, plants that grow from the sea floor up into the slimelands on the surface. As we move inland from the shore of the slimelands, Haara get more dense, but here there is room enough for a large Loyoloy to float about freely. A creature similar to what we call jellyfish on Earth, Loyoloy get extremely large as they age, so while they can excel in the darkness of the Chagheam while they’re young, they eventually get too big to easily move through Haara, so they come out to the shore.

In issue number 104 of Spectacular Spider-Man, in which Peter Parker for the first time takes an interest in Rocket Racer as a person instead of just as a punching bag, he learns that Robert Farrell is really smart.

It’s absolutely the sort of thing I want in a Rocket Racer story. Bright young man ruined by the society he lives in and his attempts to better things get him painted as a criminal. My only problem with this is the comparison to Reed Richards. For those not in the know, Reed is Marvel’s superest super-scientist. He’s the type who can do ANYTHING science-related as if by magic. Create a spaceship? Open a gateway to another dimension? Hypnotize aliens into thinking they’re cows? Sure. And what do you want him to do in the afternoon? All fields of science are open to Reed Richards.

Bob doesn’t need to be THAT smart. I like him better at a more realistic (for comics) depiction of a super-scientist. Let him be more comparable to Peter himself. Bob should be good at aerodynamics and engineering and computers, but if you need him to do stuff chemistry or botany or whatever, let that be outside of his scope of knowledge. I am Rocket Racer’s biggest fan and I’d hate to see him trapped in the “Smartest Man On Earth” pit that people like Iron Man fall into. I can say this: Any character who Marvel has claimed to be “one of the smartest people on Earth” is not someone I care for.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that there’s another good take on this whole thing in an issue of the Ta-Nahisi Coates run on Black Panther. A supervillain named Thunderball (a personal favourite from his appearances in Damage Control) is lamenting that before getting into the dumb villainy gig, he was a respected scientist, known as “the Black Bruce Banner” to some. T’Challa, the Black Panther, notes that the “prisons heave with Black Bruce Banners.” So many people who had so much potential, wasted because of the system in which they live.

Super-scientists like Reed Richards are great for big cosmic-scaled tales, but Rocket Racer’s story belongs at street level. He’s a genius, but his focus is on struggling against society in a valiant effort to make things better for his loved ones. Reed Richards could probably destroy capitalism overnight if he wanted to. Bob needs to struggle. If we want a character similar to Bob to play on the grander scale, use Thunderball! This is an amusing request because Thunderball has probably thrice the appearances that Racer does and is infinitely more likely be be used in a comic than Bob is, but I’m still right.

Incidentally, while seeking images for this post (I need something better than pictures of comics taken by my phone, after all), I went to an illicit site featuring comics scans. There, beneath the scans of the issue of Spectacular Spider-Man, was a four-year-old comment saying “Somehow, I liked Rocket Racer better when they weren’t trying to make him sympathetic, and he was just a two-bit punk. Now, he’s going to turn into a hero soon enough. Ugh.” and “And what is this about Rocket Racer making his gear in a junkyard? I could have sworn in his earlier appearances it was mentioned that the Tinkerer provided his gear based on his specifications.” I’m not going to engage with an ancient comment in that shady corner of the Internet, but I’ll sure as heck do it here on mine: Spectacular Spider-Man #104 is Racer’s fourth appearance. Appearances two and three both included his mother’s illness in the plot. The first appearance was four pages long and included the fact that he made his own equipment. If this were a comment about modern comics, I’d be sure the commenter was just being a racist bemoaning “wokeness” ruining the genre. As it is, I just have to assume they’re an idiot who has out-sized nostalgia for the cover to Amazing Spider-Man #172. So, that’s my rebuttal to some jerk on the Internet. This is why you’re not supposed to read comments on the Internet, especially not on illegal scan sites.

Today’s Beekeeper, Ken Oliverti, appeared in a movie called Deadly Invasion: The Killer Bee Nightmare, a horror thriller made back when concerns about killer bees were all the rage. Ken is a member of a family of quite successful Beekeepers, who have been working in the town of Blossom Meadows for generations. They have hives all over the valley with an estimated 25 million bees. Ken doesn’t need to wear a mask or gloves while handling the combs, saying “If you’re comfortable around bees, they’ll be comfortable around you.” The business is so successful that he has to travel the country (including to San Francisco, where he met his fiance Linda) and he’s taken a class about the dangers of killer bees, so you’d think he’d be exactly who you’d want around during a killer bee movie. There’s only one problem: he’s not the protagonist. And any apiarist who isn’t a protagonist is gonna have some problems!

Ken and Linda’s wedding is held outside on the land they own, not very far at all from some of their hives. The music is loud, which disturbs the hives. But, it turns out that several of the hives’ queens have been “Africanized” and the movie tells us that Africanized honey bees gets pissed off way more easily, so of course they immediately attack the wedding. Ken does try to wave get the guests inside, but the real heroic moment at this wedding is when the bride uses her veil as a mask and goes to rescue her soon-to-be step-son Joshua, who has been attacked. That woulda been a real proud moment for a Beekeeper like Ken, if he’d done it. But we’re never told that Linda is a Beekeeper. She’s marrying into the family, sure, but she’s not on the job yet (though I sure hope she got into the family business after the events of the movie).

Still, I could forgive Ken missing a chance to have a cool Beekeeper rescue if he was otherwise impressive. Sure, he’s part of a successful apiarist family, but he failed to even suspect that his own hives were turning on him. And then, when Blossom Meadows was Deadly Invaded by a Killer Bee Nightmare, Ken just took his family out of town. I get it, honestly I do. Josh had been hurt. Getting out of town makes sense. For an ordinary Beekeeper. But not the cool kind Beekeeper we look for around these parts.

Two Honeycombs out of Five. The rating of perfectly ordinary Beekeepers.