Plot
The first issue, "Hey, You Sank My Battle-Ax!", revolves around Ambush Bug trying to solve the murder of Jonni DC, a female version of Johnny DC. Through the course of the story, Ambush Bug encounters such DC Comics characters as Yankee Poodle, Egg Fu, Ace the Bat-Hound, and 'Mazing Man. Through the course of his investigation, he is pursued by his evil sock, Argh!yle!, and his minions bent on Ambush Bug's destruction. Also pursuing him is "Go-Go Chex", a mysterious being whose face is completely covered with the checkerboard pattern that appeared at the top of DC comic covers during the 1960s; he constantly speaks in 1960s phrases and slang, and refers to everyone around him as "Wonder Chick". Occasionally, the Source Wall, as a sentient slab of concrete, appears vacationing across time and space in places where Ambush Bug passes.
The second issue makes fun of Zatanna's mindwipe of the Justice League of America, Rama Kushna, OMACs (who appear to take the places of all normal, background humans), Babe the Blue Ox from Jack of Fables, the Space Ranger, the Green Lantern Corps, Zook, Mr. Nebula, and Blue Beetle's death. Go-Go Chex continues to pursue Ambush Bug. In the Mr. Nebula segment, he briefly takes on the uniform of the Amber Butane Corps, a lampooning of the Green Lantern Corps that wields a sentient lighter instead of a ring.
In the third issue, Ambush Bug discovers that he and Dumb Bunny (of the Inferior Five) got married in Las Vegas while he was drunk. He spends most of the issue running from one reality to another trying to find a way out of his marriage; along the way he encounters Neron (whom he asks to nullify his marriage in a spoof of Spider-Man: One More Day), Darkseid (whom he goes to a Karaoke bar with), Super-Turtle (who wreaks massive destruction, à la Superboy-Prime), Jerro the Merboy, the Odd Man, and Go-Go Chex and his assistant Saki Toomi ("Sock it to me").
The fourth issue starts by referencing a mistake made in issue #2, where one page was printed without its dialogue balloons. DC editor Dan DiDio takes responsibility for the mistake despite having nothing to do with it, a jab at the angry reaction from fans when certain characters were changed or killed off without him having anything to do with it. Dan DiDio is crushed and killed by a falling Ambush Bug, and Argh!yle starts to believe that he and Ambush Bug are actually one and the same. The issue continues mostly without Ambush Bug for the first half, focusing on lesser characters Argh!yle and Mitsu Bishi as a parody of the series 52. In trying to find Ambush Bug they feature Golden Age Robin, Renee Montoya, and most of the main characters from 52. Near the end Ambush Bug chats with Argh!yle on Wonder Woman's invisible speaker phone and confirms that he is alive and is not Dan DiDio. He then gets kidnapped by the Ambush Bug Revenge Squad, who argue over obscure comic quotations while Ambush Bug gets bored and escapes.
The final issue of the miniseries had been delayed for more than six months for undisclosed reasons. Fans have speculated that the delay was related to the departure of DC’s Senior Coordinating Editor Jann Jones from the company, as she was included in the story as a character. The final issue of the series was released on October 28, 2009.
Read more about this topic: Ambush Bug: Year None
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn;
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)