In 1970, Stan Lee gave Roy Thomas a pedigreed poodle named Samantha. Roy dislikes poodles, but (apparently) doesn't feel he can refuse such a generous favor from his boss.

     Eleven years later, Roy argued with Jeanette Kahn, his poodle-hating NEW boss, about the inclusion of one "Yankee Poodle" into the Zoo Crew. Good thing he won that one, because of all the Crew Y.P. turned out the most... HUMAN.

     Funny-animal or otherwise, superheroes just don't DO certain things.

     They do NOT demand all media rights to a superhero team upon joining.

     They are NEVER past the prime of their lives, ESPECIALLY if they are female.

     While Superman and Spider-Man are journalists, and even bend journalistic ethics by reporting on their own adventures... NO superhero works for scandal rags like "The National (H)enquirer..." much less sells them information about his or her closest FRIENDS.

     But Y.P. never did follow any rules but her own.

     She repeatedly announced her civilian name was a "household word," her profession was "celebrity interviewer," and her.mostly-telekinetic powers were "animal magnetism." She mocked the Captain's naiveté and the other boys' lack of sophistication, but saved her sharpest barbs for Abra, who had committed the unpardonable sin of being prettier. (Abra, it should be added, gave as good as she got.) And though super-heroing is by its very nature nonprofit, the best stories left it unclear whether the Poodle was really trying to help her fellow furries, or just building up good PR for the Big Exposé.

     She only seemed to have one real friend, inside the Crew or out of it, and that was Rubberduck. An action-movie star who was starting to fall on hard times, Rubberduck took to heroics like... well... like a duck to water.

     The slam-bang crash-boom flicks that he had starred in previously, as both actor and "stunt-fowl," were almost as good a "training" for superhero battles as Roger Rodney's comic-book career. But Rubberduck wasn't nearly a GOOD enough actor to distinguish his behavior in costume from his behavior in his more famous civilian identity.

     Oh, did we forget to mention that Rubberduck was in reality "Byrd Rentals," who bore a passing resemblance to Burt Reynolds, known for such slam-bang crash-boom flicks as Cannonball Run and Smokey and the Bandit?

     And that Yankee Poodle, behind the mask, was "Rova Barkitt," whose name just happens to sound a bit like gossip columnist/entrepeneur/"celebrity interviewer" Rona Barrett?

     Picture it. You're a famous 1980s personality like Barrett or Reynolds, and you think you've protected all rights to your name and likeness, and then somebody gooses you with that "satiric intent" clause.

     Oh, well. That's show biz.

     In the next two episodes, we finally get to the payoff from that "historians off their rockers" thing we set up way back on Page One, learn why retarded superheroes outclass smart ones, and just for variety's sake, go to the single most DISTURBING moment in the series.

     You only THINK it's been kooky, up to now.