A. "Captain, the fabric of reality is unraveling, possibly past the point of repair."

    B. "Captain, the fabric of my impossibly long and impractical cape is unraveling, possibly past the point of repair."

    C. "Captain, I sense [clutching forehead] PAIIIIIN..."

    D. "Captain, when Quinn the Eskimo gets here, all the pigeons gonna run to him. With Uzis."

     However, she also fell victim to something which I dub Thomas' Inverse Law of Excessive Ease. To wit: "When a magician's power could end a menace in a manner that would be 'too easy,' storytelling-wise, then the magician's power will suddenly fail to have any positive effect whatsoever."

     This rule was applied so liberally, in the early days, that Abra was honestly wondering why she even bothered to show up. You felt so BAD for her after a while. She was the Charlie Brown of magical super-heroes.

    As if that weren't enough, her magic wand seemed to have, quite literally, a mind of its own... or HER own, as Abra consistently called the little mystic stick "Wanda." In one story, we learned that feeding Wanda carrot energy is a very, VERY bad idea, along the lines of feeding your dog amphetamines.

     Still, their performance (Abra's and Wanda's) improved significantly by series' end, so it was clear that they weren't just keeping Abra around for her looks. Although those looks WERE worth keeping her around for, by all indications.

     She does nothing for me personally, but the evidence seems overwhelming. Of the two distaff members of the Zoo Crew, she was the one the Captain fell for, the one all the male Crewers wanted to team up with, the one who was constantly mobbed by adoring males in her civilian identity. We know very little about standards of beauty on a world where giraffes lie down with hippopotami, but perhaps the big green eyes had something to do with it. Or maybe it was the fact that she meditated so much, you hadn't a clue what she was thinking; woman of mystery. Or maybe it was the fact that she practiced Kat Fu in her spare time, and could therefore kick your ass, which is a turn-on to a surprising number of guys I know.

     (Yes. "Kat Fu." Yes. I know. I KNOW.)

     This attractiveness often worked against her as much as for her. We've already been over the Captain's interest, but she also attracted the attentions of one of the worst harassers outside of the movie "Enough."

     Here's the deal. Something's wrong with TIME ITSELF on the Captain's world. All the watches on the planet have stopped. Nothing cooks. No deliveries get completed. Your job actually seems to take even LONGER than before.

     Abra traces the problem to another dimension, where they confront the Time-Keeper, a collector who's caused the problem by collecting a few seconds of time itself. Apparently, spacetime is a very FRAGILE thing: take a few seconds away, and the whole thing comes tumbling down. But when the Zoo point this out to the Keeper, he treats them like a bunch of tree-huggers and eventually appears to VAPORIZE all of Abra's colleagues, leading to this classic exchange...

     So it's true. Purty furries DO attract all sorts of plushie perverts.

     Eventually, Abra manages to con her friends free... and then comes her method of dispatching the Time-Keeper, which just has to be seen to be believed.

     So don't hate Abra because she's beautiful. Leave that to Yankee Poodle, that other distaff member, who was far more flawed, mercenary, obnoxious, and phony... and the best comics character of 1982. Go to Part 4 to learn why...