We were walking past a carnival ride today and noticed a “Danger! High Voltage!” sign on the back of one of those Ring of Fire thrillers. The sign reminded us of a crazy song by the Detroit nutcake rockers, Electric Six. The eclectic electric boys formed a band back in the 1990s and fused a bunch of different genres into an interesting mish-mash of frenetic energy. Not familiar with them? They’re kind of like Jack-Ass meets Borat.
And a few minutes later, one of us plastered these good folks with regurgitated cotton candy and Sno-cones. Sorry folks. Vertigo.
In 2003, the band birthed their biggest hit to date, “Danger! High Voltage!” It quickly climbed up the charts in the UK and eventually became a minor sensation in the US. The song is just so much goofy fun.
On the opposite side of the world from Detroit, a small country named Latveria exists . It’s squished between Romania, Hungary and Serbia and it’s controlled by a megalomaniac named Victor von Doom. Vic is a gypsy by birth and is probably the world’s most famous and accomplished Roma. Of course, it’s unfortunate that he chose a life of villainry. Gypsies already get a bad rap for their penchant of taking advantage of rubes, which incidentally are found in spades at, you named it, carnivals. See how everything comes full circle at Comics A-Go-Go!? We couldn’t make this stuff up, for crying out loud.
Anyway, Dr. Doom, as he prefers to be called (although most scholars, including Dr. Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four, don’t acknowledge his diploma given that he earned it from West Szeged-Zhrbkadzrg University which is still not accredited), is mostly known for his attempts at world dominance and his shady real estate ventures. One interesting fact is that his famous iron mask isn’t actually for covering up alleged scars acquired from an alleged industrial lab accident as is commonly reported. It’s actually just an affectation. As one of his former servants confided: “He’s actually a rather handsome chap but he’s very self-conscious. He’s never liked his nose and feels that his cheek bones are too delicate giving him a somewhat effeminate look. Of course, those of us that worked for him at the Doomstadt castle never thought of him as anything other than a man’s man. Um, no, not in that way, actually. That didn’t come out right. Can we turn off the tape recorder and try that again?” It’s ancient history now but the tape recording wasn’t erased and the servant (what was her name, by the way? anyone?) has been missing for some time.
Nobody lights up the night clubs in Latveria like Vic “Doom Dancer” von Doom.
In the mid 2000s, Doom got his mojo on, went into the future and then backwards in time, empgregnated Sue Richards/Invisible Woman and sired a girl named Valeria. It was kind of a messed up time and somehow Victor got involved with some scheme in hell and, bam, Franklin Richards ended up there for a period. It was during this whole crazy time that he discovered the music of Electric Six and chose to make their hit “Danger! High Voltage!” his theme song. He would blast it out of his Doom-mobile as he drove through the streets of Doomstadt, scaring the bejeezus out of the locals. Vic was always good for a few laughs when times were dull.
And also, Victor von Doom has mommy issues.
Since we’re on an Electric Six kick, let’s do some bonus work. Favorite song of Captain Zapp Brannigan from Futurama? You guessed it: “Dance Commander.” It’s rather unfortunate actually. Zapp is a Grade A weasel and “Dance Commander” is a rather likable song. Of course, band leader Dick Valentine‘s dancing in the video doesn’t help the cause any.
Leela, I am your Love Commander. Yeah.
And here’s one more for the road. Although they’d released music previously, the Six’s first major album was the superb 2003 release Fire. It’s a veritable treasure trove of aggressive dance hits. The album closes on a milder note, however, and this is actually our favorite among favorites.
We don’t know which superhero might list “Synthesizer” as his or her or its favorite but if we had to guess we’d definitely say it wasn’t Wolverine‘s. He hates synthesizers. They make his teeth hurt.
C’mon. You can’t ignore his techno, Logan.
By the way, we just have to say Guy Perry’s fetching beach ensemble may not be for everyone but then again, not all the ladies (or lads) are there for the surfers.
Oops. The sun isn’t a vampire’s friend. Guy Perry applied plenty of SPF 1200 during the “Synthesizer” shoot but it still wreaked havoc on the … guy.
Lyrics to Electric Six’s “Danger! High Voltage”
Fire in the disco
Fire in the taco bell
Fire in the disco
Fire in the gates of hell
Don’t you want to know how we keep starting fires?
It’s my desire, It’s my desire, It’s my desire
Don’t you want to know how we keep starting fires?
It’s my desire, It’s my desire, It’s my desire
Danger! Danger! High Voltage!
When we touch, When we kiss
Danger! Danger! High Voltage!
When we touch, when we kiss
When we touch
Danger! Danger! High Voltage!
When we touch, When we kiss
Danger! Danger! High Voltage!
When we touch, when we kiss
When we touch, when we kiss
Don’t you want to know how we keep starting fires?
It’s my desire, It’s my desire
Don’t you want to know how we keep starting fires?
It’s my desire, It’s my desire
Danger! Danger! High Voltage!
When we touch, When we kiss
Danger! Danger! High Voltage!
When we touch, when we kiss
When we touch
Danger! Danger! High Voltage!
When we touch, When we kiss
Danger! Danger! High Voltage!
When we touch, when we kiss
When we touch, when we kiss
No more
Fire in the disco
Fire in the disco
Fire in the taco bell
Fire in the disco
Fire in the disco
Fire in the gates of Hell
Gates of Hell
Today’s favorite song post is for Marvel’s Strong Guy. Big he may be but he’s light on the toes when the club music is pumping. Nn-ss-nn-ss-nn-ss-nn-ss. Chaka-chang!
Deee-Lite was a kitchy sort of silliness comprised of DJ/singer Lady Miss Kier who fronted the band, Japanese psychedelic DJ Towa Tei, and Ukranian Super DJ Dmitry. Towa left the band after the first two albums and was replaced by DJ Ani, a lad from Kansas City. Lady Miss Keir was from the miserable east-Ohioan city of Youngstown, so apparently even the Midwest can produce interesting cultural something-or-others. Of course, both Kier and Ani ended up leaving middle America for the happy-happy-joy-joy land of fun in the best city on the planet (according to those that subscribe to the idea that New York City is in fact the best city on the planet).
Who be he? Deadpool is a mercenary. He is a smart ass mercenary. In the movie X-men Origins: Wolverine, Deadpool was played by Ryan Reynolds. Also a smart ass.
Billy was born in 1955 and started his musical career with an early version of a band that ended up being Siouxsie and the Banshees. Ready for another coincidence? Idol’s next band (and the one that helped launch him into solo stardom) was called Generation X. Over in the Marvel Universe, Deadpool has a seven-degrees-or-less-of-separation tie to a Generation X as well, in the form of an X-Men spin-off comprised of a group of mutant teenagers. We would love to write some sort of story around the connection but … whump! our legendary laziness has set in again. Suffice it to say that these sorts of connections are “uncanny.” See that? That’s a play on the X-Men’s titular* adjective. How funny is that? Not much? Yeah, we didn’t think so either. Moving on.
The 1980s had been a special time for Elisa. Hopes, dreams, ambitions, loves, adventures … she had it all. After college, she began a scrappy and rapidly accelerated career as an investigative reporter. For Elisa, the pursuit of the hard story was life juice. Like a lot of journalists, she wasn’t always sure her motivations were altruistic (did she really believe in the creed of uncovering truth, no matter what, or was she sometimes more concerned about getting the satisfaction of nailing a story for personal ambition?). The fact that she questioned her ethics at all was a sign of her core morality — something not common among her fellow newshounds.
It was bound to happen. She’d been warned, by both those that meant to protect her and those that meant her harm, that her flame would burn out very quickly if she strode too quickly and too deeply into the infected underbelly. Her predicted demise, a mysterious murder, was tragic not just for the loss (or at least significant change) of a robust and meaningful life but because it also dropped a heavy hammer back down on the era of openness and decency that was peaking its hopeful and shining head out of the grey mass of detritus suffocating the city.
In corporeal life, Elisa Cameron was tough and hardworking, but she also knew how to have fun. As a young and vibrant college student in the mid 1980s, she would spend weekend nights enjoying a social life with friends and trendy strangers. New Wave music was all the rage and its infectious party atmosphere was hypnotic to Elisa. She frequented the dance clubs in Arcadia’s “City Lights, Sinful Nights” district (a hotspot for Arcadia City University students). The sounds of ABC, Spandau Ballet, The Blow Monkeys, OMD, Simple Minds, Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, and many, many more flooded the clubs and streets. Elisa loved it.
The Furs formed in the UK during the late 1970s and were prominent until the early 1990s. They are probably best known for their hit “Pretty in Pink” the titular theme song for the John Hughes movie (incidentally, Elisa hated one of our Hughes’ favorites,
What the creators didn’t know was that Captain Marvel had acquired the power to detach his dingle all on his own. There was a storyline about it in issue #5 but the title was cancelled before he could show his unique skill. The incomplete pages for issue #5 (very capably penciled by Captain Marvel himself) have been lost although there is some suspicion that they ended up in the hands of Tom Cruise (we chose to malign him because we just saw Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and, well, let’s just say we laughed a lot when we don’t think we were supposed to laugh). Years after Captain “Split” Marvel lapsed into the dark blur of history, King Missile wrote a song about genitalia separation. When the song came out in 1992, the former Captain Marvel was a retired Brigadier General and was hitting the lecture circuit as a very minor celebrity. As the song gained some traction on the charts, Marvel enthusiastically endorsed “Detachable Penis” in his ill-received memoirs, My Left Foot … Where Were You Last Night?
For our next installment of a Toon’s Fave Tune: Dazzler ♥ My Heart Will Go On (Céline Dion). Because her special ability is to convert sound waves to light, the purer the sounds, the more powerful her energy. Unfortunately, because Céline’s song is an onslaught of cacophony, Dazzler made the dubious mistake of using it in a recent X-Men rumble room exercise and had her ass handed to her by Husk*. Dazzler’s favorite song is particularly danceable but she puts on quite a light show when she’s out doing Karaoke.
Here we see Dazzler’s look get an update in the late 2000s. As a character though, she’ll never shake her roots. She’s still a roller-skating disco goofball. Having said that, as difficult as it is for a character with an unfortunate background to overcome its origins, Dazzler’s got nothing on this schmuck. Seriously? SERSIOUSLY?!!!! But yeah, it’s a toss-up between David Hasselhoff as Colonel Nick Fury (the tough as bull’s balls bad-ass of S.H.I.E.L.D), and the illegal-in-48-states version of 
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