CAPTAIN CARROT AND HIS AMAZING ZOO CREW was not a series free of flaws, and it had awkward moments mixed in with its glories.

     ...Kinda makes Clark Kent's secret identity look downright impregnable, doesn't it?

     This hit-or-miss aspect was at least partly due to the incredible number of substitute writers, substitute artists, and fill-in features that checkered the series' run. Roy Thomas and Scott Shaw, except for one or two slips, wrote and drew their creations very well. The same could not be said of some of their colleagues.

     But that's not a hard-and-fast rule. THE OZ-WONDERLAND WAR, which barely involved either Roy or Scott, was arguably the series' peak.

     And I'm still trying to figure out exactly what Roy was thinking when he had the Zoo Crew pummel a Hollywood-style agent, seen below, apparently for the crime of being an annoying sleaze. I mean, sure, we've all WANTED to do this, but the Crew are supposed to be BETTER-behaved than we are, right?

     Of course, it IS mildly amusing, in a Wile E. Coyote sort of way, but it's out of tune with how good the series could be when it took itself JUST SERIOUSLY ENOUGH. The delicate balance between serious themes and ridiculous aspects is a difficult one to strike in ANY superhero series not aimed strictly at children. Now make it a FUNNY-ANIMAL superhero series not aimed strictly at children. Really, what is remarkable is not that CAPTAIN CARROT stumbled, but that it succeeded as often as it did.

     But then, a lot of creators do their best work when their imagination is going hog-wild. And though it followed what Peter David describes as your basic superhero plot (hero hits villain until villain stops moving), CAPTAIN CARROT was unquestionably an IMAGINATIVE series.

     There was a whole WORLD in there!

     A world in which walking, talking animals were actually the LEAST remarkable thing! A world of timelost barbarians and thuggish movie monsters, of bizarre alien eggs hidden on Earth by bizarre alien bunnies, of time masters and Wuz-Wolves and nudist telepaths and fifty-foot-high rubber tires! A world whose magical portals to Oz and Wonderland seem as natural as air...

     Scott Shaw, who eventually wrote as well as drew, had a rare gift for packing the page with interesting visuals, and managed to make the Crew's world almost as exciting and bustling as our own.

     Today's comics, good or mediocre, can usually be boiled down to central themes.

     PREACHER: "God is hard to find."

     SUPERMAN: "It's not always easy being a near-omnipotent being. No, really."

     X-MEN: "Racism sucks."

     CAPTAIN CARROT AND HIS AMAZING ZOO CREW: "Hoo-HAH! Is this one wild, weird, WONDER-FILLED world we done thunk up, or WHAT??"

     I know which one inspires ME, whenever I sit down to write something cool. CAPTAIN CARROT had the power to build worlds of imagination... and the power to teach OTHERS how to build those worlds.

     Now THAT'S a super-power.

     Go back to the start of this article.