"Urban Legend"
Writer: Adam Beechen
Artists: Carlo Barbieri, Walden Wong(i), Heroic Age
Publisher: DC
Menuedo sounds like a word describing something an animal leaves for an unsuspecting human to trod upon. It's true definition is far worse. Menuedo was an early sign of a virus, the virus that led to a late eighties outbreak of boy bands that inflicted homogenous, spiritless noise on an unsuspecting public. Appearing at the cusp of the Reagan years, Menuedo consisted of a group of effeminate hispanic boys who attempted to sing and dance on an awful variety show targeted at kids. Fortunately, kids were much smarter than programmers thought they were, and Menuedo earned an ignominous death.
The essence of Menuedo lived on through Vibe, one of the worst super-heroes ever created. An embarrassing conglomeration of stereotypes, Vibe was the break-dancing, soul-patched super-hero who talked hispanic jive and had a problem with authority. His sense of dress was abhorent, and he to this day is the only super-hero whose crime is wearing a neckerchief. Neckerchiefs are fine if you're a cowboy, but grown men who intend to fight crime should not wear neckerchiefs. Scratch that. Grown non-cowboys should not wear neckerchiefs.
Vibe as a hero was like the earth in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "mostly harmless." That he was a member of the Justice League, or the Detroit Justice League, as abashed comic book apologists like to refer to the incarnation, indicates an act of desperation born from the era's editors' proprietory attitude toward the use of big guns like Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman in team books. Vibe's best moment occurred during The Crisis of Infinite Earths when the Son of Menuedo inexplicably ambushed Plasmus, a very deadly member of the Brotherhood of Evil. His second best moment occurred during the post-Crisis, when he was mercilessly killed by one of Professor Ivo's robots.
It may seem that I have a bias against Vibe. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I had no feelings about him whatsoever--live, die, whatever. Toward the end though, I saw him shining in the function of being the team jackass. Every team should have one, and given Batman's rejoining the Justice League shortly before the Crisis, Vibe provided some nice friction against the more authoritarian Dark Knight. That said, there's no doubt about it that Vibe was a joke of a character. Any one of the members of the Giffin, DeMatteis, Maguire League could be taken more seriously, and I include G'nort in that tally.
In the pilot episode of Justice League Unlimited, no doubt the comic book community did a group spit-take when they noticed Vibe alive and well passing by Green Arrow and Green Lantern on an opposite motorized walkway. The joke had become a sight gag. This issue of Justice League Unlimited Adam Beechen does the unthinkable. He rewrites Vibe as a serious super-hero, and son of a...it works.
Beechen chucks everything that was bad about the character. Gone is his embarrassing street lingo. Instead, he speaks perfect English. Beechen doesn't resort to the chestnut of divided loyalties. Instead, Vibe is a member of the Justice League. He likes being a Leaguer. He interacts smoothly with the League. They in turn respect him. He does not serve a function. He is not the team jackass. He instead is a whole person who fights crime. He feels no kinship for the street gang the Lobos. Instead, he treats them like the idiot criminals that they are. Vibe does not represent fad culture. He no longer exudes the stink of Menuedo.
Frankly, just making Vibe into something that can be admired would have earned this book five bullets, but Beechen also has Vibe resonating in a clever plot that begins in the gutter and escalates into a very unexpected place. That's not just a robot on the cover. It's a special kind of robot. Its name if not design will be familiar to fans.
Timm and company gave us a glimpse of Vibe, and here Carlo Barbieri and Walden Wong finish what they started. The pre-Crisis/post-Crisis Vibe was known for being short, scrawny and ugly. Barbieri and Wong beef up the character to match the Timm model. He furthermore towers over everybody but the other super-heroes who are represented on the cover. Gone is the awful soul patch. Clean-shaven, Vibe ranks among the un-repulsive male Leaguers.
Beechen, Barbieri and Wong reinvent Vibe, and damn if they don't succeed.
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