KFC has been killing it with their marketing from their Twitter following eleven Herbs
and spices to their recently released official dating sim, but I want to talk about a marketing
stunt that people seem to have forgotten about that went on for THREE whole years!
I’m talking about the KFC comic trilogy from DC Comics!
Now funnily enough, KFC’s interest in comics actually predates their deal with DC.
In 2015, the company produced a short comic called "The Colonel’s Adventure Comics",
featuring the early life of Colonel Sanders.
The issue didn’t cover his entire history though.
Heck, it didn’t even get to when he started getting into the chicken business, but the
cliffhanger promised to continue the story which… it never did.
This might have been because DC was clearly into the idea of KFC comic books because just
a few months later at the New York Comic Con, they debuted their first team up, The Colonel
of Two Worlds.
You see, the DC multiverse canonically has Earth-3, a universe where character alignments
are swapped.
That’s why the main antagonist of this book is the dastardly Colonel Sunder.
Now the official press release from DC Comics says that this harks back to a 1960s KFC comic
book called “The Not-So-Great Impostor”, but I tried to find more information about
it online and got nothing.
I even reached out to KFC directly for comment, but no luck.
Come on guys.
Release the Sanders cut.
Anyway, Colonel Sunder is all about doing things the easy way, unlike the the hard working
Colonel Sanders from Prime Earth.
Sunder came to the main reality to earn a quick buck by recruiting The Flash’s villains,
The Rogues, to… open and work at a fried chicken restaurant.
Seems like an awful lot of work for a lazy dude that’s quickly trying to get rich.
Well at the very least, we know that Sunder’s food is cheap factory made crap so there's
that.
At the same time though, Sunder was using the restaurant as a base of operations for
a massive crime spree enacted by his dozens of henchmen.
Now Sunder has the aesthetics of a DC villain down because when they’re on the job, his
goons wear matching uniforms that clearly give away who they’re working for.
Regardless, Sunder is doing a pretty alright job of being a crime lord since when The Green
Lantern and Flash teamed up to stop one of these robberies, Hal mentions that there’s
been a four hundred percent spike in crime.
It makes sense why Sunder is raking in a comically large pile of money.
All of this crime and awful food was really starting to ruffle the feathers of Colonel
Sanders.
His public image was being tarnished.
After all, he’s an upstanding citizen and his food is lovingly made the hard way.
The Flash and Green Lantern were not going to cut it.
The Colonel needed to take matters into his own hands.
Sanders bust into the fast food stronghold, but was met by its defenses.
Frozen chicken turrets and a pink slime ray.
The best thing ever was when the Colonel’s suit was ruined so he rips it off to reveal
another suit underneath.
If you’re wondering what all of the DC characters were up to… it's not much.
Green Lantern pretty much vanished and The Flash was relegated to keeping civilians out
of harm’s way while the two Colonels duked it out.
The Rogues stayed out of the conflict entirely with Captain Cold remarking that colonel outranks
captain.
After defeating his doppelganger, Sanders LITERALLY throws him back to Earth-3 and serves
up a hot meal to both the heroes and villains.
He even shows his generous side by employing The Rogues at a KFC instead of sending them
off to jail.
Now that is some Kentucky fried justice.
This first issue was ridiculous and over the top and honestly, I wouldn’t have it any
other way.
I especially love that they really adapted the Colonel into a proper comic book hero
which is more than evidenced by an included character break down.
Naturally, Sanders gets his powers from his secret blend of eleven herbs and spices and
he has three million dollar inspection spectacles with a heads up display, magnification, and
can see across multiple wavelengths in addition to an x-ray function to find empty stomachs.
He also has a fountain pen filled with gravy because of course, a signet ring that detects
those using the Easy Way, a special cane that has a button to remotely activate any deep
fryer, and his ribbon tie can be detached to tie up criminals.
Now apparently the Colonel also has a breading basket made out of Inertron and this is a
VERY deep cut into DC Comics lore, being an extremely powerful metal from the future.
Additionally, Sanders has a pocket square that was made by S.T.A.R.
Labs with the ability to fold space so that it can be eternally clean and he also has
a special watch that’s based on a Mother Box that can keep time in fifty two universes
with a special alarm specifically for Crisis events.
Now that watch must have been beeping when the second of these books was released at
San Diego Comic-Con in 2016.
It’s Crisis on Infinite Colonels!
Colonel Sunder is back and he’s teamed up with a dangerous new ally, a psychic gorilla
named Colonel Grodd.
The two of them have teamed up to unleash a psychic attack throughout space and time,
but first, I have to be a pedantic nerd and spend a stupid amount of time complaining
about and then explaining a very minute continuity error.
You see, on this page, we’re shown that the Colonel Sanders that we’re following
is the same as the one from the previous book, but it mentions that the reality is Earth-1,
the one that we live on.
This is wrong on two levels.
As previously mentioned, the last book took place on Prime Earth A.K.A.
Earth-0.
This is the main DC Comics continuity ever since the Flashpoint event.
Earth-1 on the other hand is a completely different universe and it’s where the Earth
One graphic novels take place.
Not only that, but Earth-1 is not where we are supposed to live.
That is actually Earth-33 or Earth-Prime which is not to be confused with Prime Earth.
Earth-Prime and Prime Earth are two different universes because the DC multiverse is massively
complicated.
Anyway, Colonel Sanders suddenly experiences a bout of nausea and passes out and he wakes
up to two strange women, The Colonel and The Flash of the gender swapped Earth-11.
They reveal that other Colonels from throughout space and time have similarly suffered from
this psychic attack and they have each forgotten all but one ingredient of their secret blend
of eleven herbs and spices.
The only logical conclusion is that they need to use The Flash’s Cosmic Treadmill to travel
time and the multiverse in order to find nine other Colonels to complete the recipe.
This includes the steampunk Earth-19, Kingdom Come in Earth-22, the animal inhabited post-apocalyptic
Earth-51, the 31st century, the Bizzaro world of Earth-29, and the unnumbered universe of
Teen Titans Go! along with some other ones that were visited off panel.
Since most of this book was spent assembling the Colonels Corps, the fight against Sunder
and Grodd was super quick, but we do get this fun scene of Grodd messing with Sanders’
mind by showing him his greatest fear, becoming a worthless lay-about who does things the
easy way.
Of course, Sanders has one of the greatest willpowers in the universe and he easily broke
through this mental manipulation and saved the day.
Now remember that because this willpower is super important to the final issue in the
trilogy.
Obviously, it’s hard to escalate things further when the previous issue spanned the
multiverse so that means that “Across the Universe” that was released at San Diego
Comic-Con in 2017 featured a team up between The Colonel and Green Lantern.
This issue is pretty straightforward.
After the universe hopping adventure last time, the Colonel realized that there were
other worlds and universes that are crying out in hunger.
That’s why he wants to send his new Zinger Chicken Sandwich into space.
After the crash landing of his unmanned space ship, The Colonel teamed up with the Green
Lantern Corps to send thousands of sandwiches throughout the universe.
However, they were stolen by the greedy Orange Lantern, Larfleeze.
In order to help investigate, Hal had his ring make a temporary copy of itself, allowing
The Colonel to channel his great willpower as a Green Lantern for a short while.
Oh and of course the ring changed its shape into a KFC bucket.
The two Green Lanterns confront Larfleeze with Sanders using his ring to make weapons
like silverware and a massive drumstick, but when Larfleeze realizes that Sanders is the
creator of the Zinger Chicken Sandwich, The Colonel stops all of this conflict by teaching
Larfleeze how to run a KFC of his own.
IN SPACE!
And with that, the day is saved and Colonel Sanders is named as an honorary Green Lantern.
At the time of this recording, it’s been a couple of years since we’ve gotten our
annual KFC comics and that is a real shame in my opinion.
This is the kind of crazy nonsense that you can only get from the medium of comic books.
So here’s to hoping that DC and KFC are going to partner up once again.
If you’re new to the channel then this is my show called “Because Comics”, where
I take a look at all of the crazy, strange, and straight up bizzare things that make comic
books… well… comic books.
So if this fascinated you then I highly recommend watching the rest of the show or maybe even
subscribing if you really enjoyed it, but anyway, I hope you learned at least a little
something new and hopefully I’ll see you next time.