Wednesday, May 12, 2004

The spy who made me jealous

I know I haven’t posted here in a while, but the latest Alley Oop story line has just been too awful for words.
Let’s see if I can summarize the past eight months in a few paragraphs...
The idiots at the time lab have finally returned Alley Oop to Moo where he finds that during his lengthy absense a new character named Dolf has moved in on his territory by charming the citizens of Moo, befriending King Guz and, to top it off, is courting Oop’s longtime girlfriend Oola.
One might wonder at this point why the time mavens can’t return Oop to Moo closer to the time that he left so that his absense wouldn’t be noticed. I mean, it’s a time machine for crying out loud! But nevermind.
And so naturally Oop’s first reaction is one of intense jealousy and anger. He is so distraught by the notion of a competitor for Oola’s affections that he gives up on asking Oola to marry him (She has been his steady girlfriend since the strip was started in 1933 and he is just now getting around to thinking about matrimony??) and he doesn’t even bother to let her know that he is back from his recent spate of time travelling. Instead he decides to take off on a pointless trip to nowhere with his one remaining true friend - Dinny the dinosaur. But before he can take off for good he spies Dolf wandering about and decides to stalk him. Based on no evidence whatsoever, Oop is suddenly convinced that Dolf is some kind of villian who is up to something. Oop soon runs into his friend Foozy and in no time at all has convinced him - still based on no evidence - that Dolf is bad news and they start plotting ways to foil Dolf’s nefarious plans.
Things are getting a little creepy at this point with Oop conspiring against this poor guy for daring to court his girlfriend while he’s been gone when the authors decide to give the readers a broad hint that (gasp!) Dolf really is a bad guy and so all of Oop’s worst suspicions are dead on. (Note to future spies who want to help overthrow the Moovians: Don’t get Alley Oop jealous and you will never be found out.)
As it turns out, the nefarious Dolf has been drugging King Guz - using a truth serum made by the wizer - in order to learn the position of his troops guarding the border between Moo and Lem.
So now catching up to present day we find that Oop has singlehandedly ordered all the troops to be repositioned without even telling King Guz what he is doing or why and is preparing to set a trap for Dolf.