One of Life's Trying Questions

I gave myself a slushy headache today thinking through one of life's unanswerable questions and decided to put it up here at Dim City in the hopes that some of my faithful readers would chime in with their opinion. It's not easy for me to ask for help in these matters, because usually I can fend for myself and opine on things as serious as this with little or no outside influence. But...(deep breath)...

Here goes:

Which cartoon character did more irreparable harm to the series on which they appeared?

In this corner...you have...

The Great Gazoo

Nothing great about this visitor from the great beyond, I'm afraid. OK, here's a great idea. Here's a cartoon about THE greatest modern stone age family ever. Let's introduce an outer space green floating apparition that only Fred and Barney can see. What? You don't have a shark that Bam Bam can water ski over while wearing a leather jacket? For one episode, I can understand...OK, they had an e-coli batch of brontosaurus burgers or something and they were so delusional they saw this friggin thing. But making him a recurring character? Inexcusable.

Let's look at why:

• He kept fucking things up for Fred and Barney and showing up at the very wrong time. Kinda like when your little brother used to come into your room, without knocking, when you had Cinemax After Dark on and visions of Shannon Tweed in the back of your head where your eyes were.
• Only Fred and Barney could see him. That joke lasts for about the same amount of time it took you to read it, which is, not nearly long enough.
• No originality. They had a chance to blow the doors off of animation and really give this thing the Alien treatment. Instead, they caved and completely stereotyped it. Little. Green. Man. Ooooh! How cutting edge! Let me guess...he has a "ray gun" and drives a "flying saucer" too! Space aliens everywhere protested, holding signs like "Zetoxians are people too" and "Aliens don't kill people. Uranium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulators kill people". Hey, no one likes being labeled. Not even alien freaks from another galaxy. Thank goodness, decades later, The X-Files showed us all that not all aliens look like little green men with antennae sprouting from their helmets. Oh no. They all look like naked grey pygmies with giant heads and huge black eyes.
• Far be it from me to criticize the great Harvey Korman, but he voiced Gazoo like something from Queer Eye for the Straight Anachronistic Space Being. Mike Tyson has a more manly husk.
• Any Flintstones character that makes me long for the days of guest stars like Ann-Margrock (I was a kid...I had no idea who she was even supposed to be!) and, heaven forbid...the fucking GRUESOMES, has to suck copious amounts of ass.

Yet I still watched, which makes me as idiotic as Joe Rockhead.

In this corner...

Scrappy Doo

Man, those cats had the life. You had the Mystery Machine, one of the best methods of transportation ever. You had Scooby and Casey Kasem-voiced Norville "Shaggy" Rogers, two stoner buds who wanted nothing more than to kick back, mellow out to some Dead, and eat Scooby Snacks. Then you had Daphne, the hottest cartoon character ever. THAT'S RIGHT! I said it! And I'm talking to you, Judy Jetson, Betty Rubble, and ALL of the Pussycats! And then you had Velma, the lesbian. And finally, Fred, the swinger. Oh come on. Look at him. Nothing screams "swinger" more than a orange scarf tied around the neck. Well, other than a scorching case of genital warts, but I digress.

OK, once in awhile, between the drug haze and the orgies, they went out and busted nefarious innkeepers, or museum curators, who used otherworldly hoaxes to scare the bejeesus out of the innocent town folk (not to mention Scooby and Shaggy) and commit crimes. And these evildoers would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling kids.

And forget Scooby Dum for a second because no one remembers Scooby's smart-as-a-box-of-hair inbred hick cousin. But Scrappy frickin Doo??

Those guys were doing just fine for themselves. Sure, Scooby and Shaggy always smelled of patchouli. Velma was trying pull off the whole Rosie O'Donnell thing, and Fred was desperately trying to convince Daphne to join him and the couple he met during the last caper for a little Eyes Wide Shut party. But things were just fine. No one got hurt (again, except for maybe Fred's scorching case of genital warts) and I can't recall a single bad guy that escaped unpunished by the local sheriff. But then comes Scrappy Doo.

Like Gazoo, this runt got the group into more trouble than he was worth. Nothing worse than a pain-in-the-ass yapper dog with a Napoleon complex. Anyway, even more annoying than his mere presence was his war-cry "Puppy power!!!!" Puppy power?? What the fuck is that??? The only puppy power I'm aware of is the scent when one of these ankle-biters drops a surprise of recycled Chuck Wagon in my slippers. Puppy power, my ass. Not to be confused with "Punky power!", by the way, which was the war-cry of the strangely non-combative Punky Brewster. And to add to the myriad of differences between the two, I severely doubt that Scrappy Doo later had to undergo plastic surgery to reduce the size of her noteworthy yabahos.

The prosecution rests.

In the final corner of the great Triangular Triumvirate of Suck are...

The Wonder Twins

The Justice League of America.
Superman. The Man of Steel.
Hawkman.
The Green Lantern.
Flash.
Captain Marvel.
And even...
Wonder Woman.
These names strike fear into the hearts of villainy everywhere.
Zan.
Jayna.
Gleek the Space Monkey.
Not so much.

While all of the aforementioned were kicking evil's ass in the air, on the ground, and under the sea, these three fuckos would, like their two opponents in this Suck Contest, get themselves into trouble and have to get bailed out by the real heroes and stars of the show.

Let's see...to engage their twin powers, they needed to do the now patented "knuckletap" (illustrated above), which has been passed down to fratboys across this great country along with the ability to become a complete fucking jackass in the blink of an eye. The twins' "superpower", however, was their ability to change themselves into other things. With limitations, of course.

So, Lex Luthor is about detonate a million kiloton atom bomb and Zan bellows. "In the form of....that annoying drizzle that causes your wipers to make that terrible scraping sound when you try to clear your windshield!"

Kick ass, Zan. That'll get 'er done.

And then his equally useless twin squawks:

"In the form of...a sight-impaired, crippled lemur with problem flatulence!"

Atom bombs are no match for blind, hobbled, marsupials that you don't want to be stuck in an elevator with.

And what's up with the fucking monkey that squeaks like a dolphin on like four espressos. Maybe it's his job to keep Fred from Scooby Doo away from Jayna.

So, those are the three nominees. Who do you think sucks more and why?

And no write-in ballots for Coy and Vance from The Dukes of Hazzard. They weren't cartoons. They were real people.

Get voting, dum dum,
- Dim.