Comics Review: The Simpsons #212

Did Monty Burns become Zordon?

 Spoilers Below

Lisa Simpson is in Burns’s office, because he decided to fund Lisa’s all-electric car, because he’d make money on the car as well as the energy it takes to charge it. Lisa is then charged with hanging up fliers to promote the unveiling. Meanwhile, at Moe’s, Homer is expecting a regular only night, but he started a trivia night instead. After failing miserably, he gets home to have Lisa make him smarter. The crowd is going crazy, which means Burns sees dollar signs. Later, Burns is in his pool of cardboard lightning bolts, when Tex O’Hara tries to buy Burns out of the auto business. That just pisses him off, and Burns sets the electrified dogs after the guy.

The next day, Homer is still bummed from trivia night, when Lenny and Carl tell him some fun facts from their juice. He’s loving it, because he thinks this is fast track to smarts. Tex is looking on, trying to find his way to the control panels, and he smashes it, making the entire town lose electricity. Burns is trying to catch up to him while the tycoon makes a getaway, but the car is losing steam quickly. They end up agreeing on a winner take all battle to the death. Meanwhile, Homer is trying to find more fun facts, but ends up spending $13,000 on juice, while Frink is working on upgrading all of the systems for Burns’s battle. Homer makes it to Moe’s, but Moe trashed trivia night due to no booze getting sold.

On the other side of town, Burns is getting ready for the battle, when he transforms his car into a mega bot. Frink shows up, pissed that Burns’s check bounced. So, the tractor trailer turns into a robot as well! The fight goes back and forth, spilling nuclear waste all over the place. Lisa is pleading with Burns to stop, but he says this is all Lisa’s dream. Smithers takes Lisa, as the robots crash through the arena, smashing all of the cars. Homer confronts Burns, and wants in on the A-Story since the B-story flopped.

This distraction leads to Tex taking over and getting the upper hand. Lisa goes to turn off the robot, but it’s password protected. The security question is “A wooden puppet made to dance,” and marionette wasn’t it. Homer reaches into his collection of fun facts, and comes quockerwodger. That works, and the robot falls ontop of the oil-bot. A few weeks later, Lisa is happy again, because everyone has to ride bikes since they were all at the derby and their cars all got destroyed.

I was into this issue from the cover. Big giant robots are just too freaking sweet. And then, I got to the story. I was not digging this at all. We have an antagonist that I had to dig deep into the Simpsons wiki for, because I have NEVER seen him before. The catalyst is Lisa trying to save the environment, and we’ve gotten derivatives of this many times before. The only saving grace  is the robot fight, because the story finally picked up a bit. This story was boring, with not much to redeem it. At least the cover looked good, right?