Fossil 'n Foam is the second story in Conservation Corps #3 and the final story featuring any of the team.
Appearing in Fossil 'n Foam[]
Major characters[]
- Firefly
- Green Horn
- Styranofoamus Rex (debut)
- Water Buffalo
Minor characters[]
- Dan Nakrosis
- Frankie (debut)
- Kearny Police Department
- Snuckles (debut)
Locations[]
- "Bible Belt"
- Egypt
- Hollywood, California
- Japan
- Kearny, New Jersey
- New York City
- South Pole, Antarctica
- Washington, D.C.
Synopsis[]
A boy wearing a Conservation Corps t-shirt and holding a Green Horn action figure, Frankie, invites to share the story of how he met the Corps to the readers.
He introduces the concept of dinosaurs and how the bones of many of them after they died lay undisturbed under the ground for millions of years, until a meteor hit a garbage dump outside of Kearny, New Jersey. The meteor continued to travel beneath the surface until it buried itself into the skull of a tyrannosaurus rex. The newly undead beast began to pull itself together, but as its skeleton was incomplete, it began to use styrofoam from the dump above to replace any parts that were missing. Thus, this "Styranofoamus Rex" was born anew, ready for its rampage upon Kearny.
A dog named Snuckles goes to retrieve a newspaper, when suddenly he sees the beast and scampers off, whimpering. The dinosaur continues to wreck the town, being unphased by the oddly double-gunning police officer, and picks up their patrol car in its mouth.
Meanwhile, news gets out quickly about the monster. At the White House, the president suggests nuking Jersey if they can't stop it using conventional weapons, to which a military general responds that The Pentagon has been recommending that for years, regardless. In Hollywood, a director is distraught that after they spent hundreds of millions of dollars on making dinosaurs for "his movie", there's one walking around Jersey for free. He wonders if they can sue since he believes they own the trademark for dinosaurs altogether.
A televangelist in the "Bible Belt" proclaims the dinosaur as a sign of the apocalypse that he has predicted, and tries to upsell his book on the alleged prediction. a cartoonist dozes on his work while Dragnet plays on an unseen television. And finally, the Conservation Corps learn about it from their headquarters at the South Pole, at least reaching the ears of someone who could potentially do something about the problem.
Firefly, Green Horn, and Water Buffalo arrive above Kearny and Firefly suggests just burning it up with his flames. Water Buffalo angrily shoots him down, saying that burning plastics and poly-styrene would just release toxic gases into the air. Green Horn comes up with a plan, which starts with him distracting Styranofoamus Rex with insults and gestures... and suddenly Frankie is cut off from his story by his mother calling him.
Notes and trivia[]
- Readers are encouraged to write in to Archie Comics to tell the editors that they want to see the rest of the story, but that plea was apparently not successful enough for that to occur.