One thing you’ll learn from the newest installment of DC’s weird, junk-food specialty project: Harland Sanders is like a Kentucky Fried Christ who died and came back to life to spread the gospel of finger-lickin’ poultry parts. The letter column says so.
KFC: The Colonel Corps follows up on last year’s bizarre story that introduced dead restaurateur/corporate mascot Colonel Harlan Sanders as a super-ornery character in the DC Universe. It opens with the Colonel having a dizzy spell and then getting a visit from an alternate-reality version of himself:
Colonel Sunder, the finger-lickin’ fiend who got his guess-what-chicken-butt kicked last year, is messing with the minds of Sanderseseses all over the multiverse, stealing crucial secret-recipe knowledge from their white-haired noggins. Sanders-Prime and his distaff analogue decide to use a Flash and a cosmic treadmill to traipse through time and space, gather allies and find out what’s going on.
Every reality in the DC multiverse freaking loves Kentucky Fried Chicken. How could they not in a comic created to shill for the world’s leading purveyor of secret-recipe frankenfoods? So what kind of Colonel-tastic variant superhero abominations do we meet in KFC: Crisis on Infinite Colonels? Let’s see:
Hardcase Harland, a police detective in the reality where Gotham by Gaslight happens. His billy club is more like a drumstick of doom for ne’er-do-wells.
Koln-el, a Sanders-alike in the Kingdom Come reality who’s apparently of Kryptonian origin. Now we know who was in charge of the commissary in Superman’s gulag…
Kolonel, bipedal fowl resident of the post-apocalyptic Kamandi universe. Yes, this ‘hero’ is a man/bird hybrid who slaughters and fries his genetic cousins for mass consumption.
Teen Colonel is the chibi-inflected cartoon Harlan who lives in the Teen Titans Go universe. Don’t confuse him with….
Colonel Lad, a 31st century descendant with creepy facial hair who somehow is not a member of the Fatal Five.
There’s more but this comic is free and you should really go taste the grease yourself. Once the multiversal squad is all assembled, they take the fight to Col. Sunder and his new compatriot Colonel Grodd, another bad-guy version of Harland Sanders.
Chicken-fried combat ensues, the good guys win and contractually-obligated corporate sloganeering gets blurted out.
I keep telling myself that these DC + KFC comics are bad for me, just like the artery-clogging meals peddled by the multinational fast food chain. But I couldn’t stop reading the Double Down of superhero advertorial comics. I feel guilty in my brain and hungry in my gut. Good thing I live in a place where the Colonel has real competition.