Filing Cabinet of the Damned

FCBD is an event I usually avoid. Comics and I are well acquainted, and I feel like a dork for taking the free books. The event is an outreach program, and believe you me, comics “reached” me a long time ago. Spread the four-color love to the heathens, I say. I’ll come by next week for my regular binge.

Despite this, last Saturday's FCBD saw me venture into a comic shop to pay my respects to two fellows I knew only by reputation. Big Monkey Comics of Georgetown was open on that beautiful Saturday afternoon, and it held two Legends of Bloggitry: the store’s manager, Devon of Seven Hells, and the store’s owner, Scipio of the Absorbascon.

Both men proved to be more than willing to take time out of their very busy day to chat with yers truly. As their blogs would lead you to believe, these men know their stuff. The three of us yakked about comic blogging and the powerful symbolism of Hal Jordan getting hit in the head. We threw around our ideas on what makes for good comics, the value of the modern age of comics, and how one pronounces “Busiek.”*

Moreover, as the three of us approach comics from different angles, our conversation left me with a number of ideas for future posts. Wedged into my own corner of comic book fandom, I can’t help but appreciate alternate views of the medium and the genre. Scipio’s understanding of the Big Two got me thinking about my own tastes and interpretations. While I agree with him that Vibe is a character of great potential, there are other areas where we do not see eye-to-eye.

It was a good FCBD. I contributed an apropos “Simpsons” reference. Devon made many fine points and at one point lept over a crouching customer with fluid athleticism. And Scipio? Scipio omnes sale superabat.

An embarrassing postscript: proving that I have the manners of an ill-tempered goat, I forgot to buy anything at Big Monkey, despite hogging two hours of Scip and Devon’s time. Nice, eh?

D’oh!

At least I didn’t compound the oafishness by taking any free comics or belching audibly.

That’ll be next year.

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*According to Big Monkey, it’s pronounced “Byuu-sek.” Works for me, yo.
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Mephisto #1: Robinson, the Man of Mystery

Page one, panel one: A young man in a sweatshirt points a revolver at the reader. He looks nervous. We can see him from the waist up. He’s standing on a stage, with the footlights covering his left half in light and sinking his right half into shadow.

A caption reads: “This man has paid three hundred dollars for the chance to kill Mephisto.”

Panel two: From the head-level of the theater-goers, we see the crowd staring up at the gunman, excitement evident on their faces. Standing next to the gunman is a beautiful woman in a rhinestone-bedazzled outfit. One of her arms is raised high, the other is parallel to the stage floor; she’s “gesturing magically.” We can tell by her navy blue skin and unusually smooth facial features that she’s a mutant.

The narrator goes on: “Stage magic is huge these days. In the last fifteen years, the fantastic shoved its way into people’s lives. Monsters. Robots. Aliens from outer space. We resent it. We want to reclaim the fantastic for ourselves. To see an ordinary man, like us, do the impossible. Even if it’s all phony.”

Panel three: A black and white panel showing a man in a turn-of-the-century Manchu robe lying prone on a stage. Black blood covers the chest of the robe, pouring from a hole in the center of the man’s chest.

The narrator continues: “Though it's not just that. Everyone here knows the bullet catch is a trick. Everyone here also knows that it’s gone wrong in the past and killed magicians. Everyone here relishes the possibility of it happening tonight, deep in the parts of themselves they’d rather not admit.”

Panel four: Close on the gunman. He’s sweating badly.

The narrator continues: “That man loaded the gun himself with six bullets of his choice. He fired a few shots into a block of gel to test it. Nobody touched him, the gun, or the bullets since he got onstage. He even scanned Mephisto with a mutant detector to prove he’s gene-normal. All possible avenues of cheating have been cut off.”

“Right now that man is thinking what everyone else in the crowd is thinking.”

“How will he escape? I've seen the act a dozen times, and I've got it figured out."

"What’s the trick?”

Pages two and three: Double-page splash. The picture is drawn from the foot of the stage, on the right-hand side, where the gunman and Tamara, the Lovely Assistant, stand. The gunman fires. Tamara looks freaked out. The crowd, visible on the fringe of the page, looks freaked out too. The magician, dressed in a red tuxedo, is falling backwards. He’s been shot in the face.

The one and only caption reads: “There isn’t one.”

The title of the issue runs across the top of both pages: ROBINSON, THE MAN OF MYSTERY!

(I’ll stop with the script style of writing now, or this thing will be ridiculously long.*)

After lying still for a moment, the magician lifts his arm, reaches into his mouth, and holds up the bullet. He then stands up and bows. The magician's name, according to the narrator, is Robinson Yeung, popularly known as Mephisto. We see he's a handsome Asian man of indeterminate age.

We jump ahead in time to see the narrator, an attractive woman in her late thirties, approach Mephisto and Tamara in a hotel restaurant. Yeung is wearing all white, sipping a drink. The narrator tells us that Mephisto is on the last leg of his national tour, “The Gentleman from Hell,” and that this is her one shot to get help.

She introduces herself to the duo as Fabiana Downs and apologizes for the interruption. Mephisto is friendly, Tamara less so. Fabiana mentions the beauty of the bullet catch. She adds, "I've figured out how you do it." Tamara's eyes widen; Mephisto remains calm and amused. Fabiana continues, "Other magicians can't figure you out. They say your tricks are impossible. Background checks on you can't find anything beyond seven years ago."

Fabiana leans in close to Mephisto and whispers, a wry smile upon her lips, “You really are the devil, aren't you.”

Mephisto and Tamara laugh. “Of course,” he says.

Fabiana asks, "Can I buy Your Infernal Majesty a drink?"
Fabiana explains to the magicians what she's after. Two years ago, her husband George staked the future of his mattress store on a new product, the King Vibro Sleep-o-Tron. The product failed to catch on, and worse, the local chain stores were taking away his business. In desperation, he tried a dozen silly schemes, all failures.

George went so far as to try sorcery. “The crazy thing was,” Fabiana explains, “the sorcery worked.” Competing stores suffered from mysterious mechanical failures and flu outbreaks among their staffs. Then there was an inexplicable shift in taste among the locals, and the King Vibro Sleep-o-Tron was the bed everybody wanted. All of the sudden, Downs Beds was booming. “It was great,” she explains.

Tamara asks, "So?"

Fabiana looks away. "The magic became too much. George's lost his mind. He wants to use his magic in all sorts of awful ways, and he's threatened me. I think he wants to kill me."

Tamara responds, "Why should we care?"

Mephisto ignores his assistant and leans forward on the table, his eyes fixed on Fabiana. "We can't have that."

Tamara looks at Mephisto as though he's lost his mind, though she says nothing.

The scene shifts to a McMansion in St. Petersburg. It’s nestled in a community of McMansions, next to a golf course. An alligator swims in a water hazard. Fabiana's narration explains that she and George bought it a year ago, just as their success began.

Mephisto and Fabiana head into the backyard, where a tired-looking man in his late forties sits by a pool. He's wearing a salmon-colored golf shirt and chinos, both of which strain at the seams to contain the man's corpulence. "George?" Mephisto asks. He holds out a deck of cards, a large smile on his face. "Pick one."

George ignores the magician and instead addresses Fabiana. "Who is this?"

Fabiana ignores her husband and speaks to Mephisto, her eyes wild. "Take him! He's been holding out on you! Take him and let me go!"

George struggles to his feet, sweating and yelling. "What are you talking about, Fabiana? Who is this guy?"

Fabiana shoves Mephisto in the back, towards her husband. "Take him! He's evil and deserves what you can do!" She then points towards George. "This is Mephisto! He's come here to take your diseased soul to hell, where it belongs!"

"My preference is for slight-of-hand," Mephisto states. "Would you care for tickets to a show?"

Fabiana loses her grip. "You...fraud! George, get him!" George tells her to do it herself. In a rage, she reaches into her purse, pulls out a small revolver, and points it at the stage magician.

The gun flies out of Fabiana's hand and hangs in the air. It then disassembles into its component pieces and falls to the patio cement.

For a moment, no one speaks or moves. Then Fabiana clutches her husband's arm and yells for Mephisto to take George, not her, as George was the one who stole lives, and she was forced to help. George yells back that it was all her idea, and that she lured people to their traps.

She calls him a liar. He retaliates by using a hint of magic to hurl her onto the grass, akin to a hard shove. With this exertion of mystic power, George glows a little and loses some of his ample body fat. George then faces the magician. With a grunt, he grips Mephisto with solidified magical power and forces the stage magician into the pool.

George glows and slims as he uses his power to throw various objects into the pool on top of Yeung: a gas barbeque grill, lawn furniture, and so forth. The now-thin George yells to Mephisto that drowning is a horrible way to die, and that it should take a long time.

Fabiana rejoins her husband, speaking to him as though he were a child throwing a fit. She cajoles him to calm him down, sounding terribly phony. They bicker as Mephisto drowns. We see that George is not insane, but he's close. Determining who's the dominant member of the couple is far from clear.

The water from the pool explodes upward! The grill, the lawn furniture, the table rocket from the water. Following them is a levitating Mephisto. He looks pissed.

The couple flee and head into their house. They reach a room bare of furniture or ornamentation. Instead it contains arcane markings spray-painted upon the walls, a smattering of tools, and two dozen earthenware jars, each one the size of a child, scattered around the floor. "I'll get the hammer!" Fabiana cries. She grabs a sledgehammer from the wall as George positions himself in the middle of the room.

Mephisto walks through the house, taking his sweet time.

Fabiana smashes open a jar. Out of it comes a disembodied soul. George pulls it towards him and absorbs it, growing fatter. In a panic, she smashes more and more jars. George inflates and crackles with mystic energy. As Fabiana raises the hammer to smash another jar, George lets out a howl. He cannot contain the huge influx of mystic energy.

An arc of power courses off of him and strikes a jar, then another, and another. Every jar shatters.

The room is lost to a whirlwind of angry souls and mystic energies. George inflates more and more.

Mephisto reaches the door of the room.

And George explodes.

A brief time later, Fabiana awakes. She can feel the life leaving her body. She grows cold and sees that most of the house is gone.

From out of the rubble, Mephisto approaches. His face and body show several long cuts. The various cuts bleed in different colors: red, black, green, and gold. The many hues run in streaks down his white clothing.

Mephisto kneels beside her.

Fear fills her eyes as she whispers her last words: "You...the devil..."

Emotionless, he replies, "You'll find out."

He stands up and leaves her. She dies amidst the debris.



To be continued soon in Mephisto #2: Fatima the Dancer

NOTE: The index to "The Champions Project" can be found here.

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*All that text on page one shouldn’t be too much. According to an interview with Alan Moore I dug up, Mort Weisinger, the legendary editor of DC Comics in the fifties, had a strict rule of no more than 210 words on a page. More than that, he insisted, would overwhelm the pictures. Page one of Mephisto #1 has 204 words. So it’s yappy but not over the limit.
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Sorry about the lack of posting. Real life has taken me by the upper lip and pulled me around something fierce. Actual important crap, serious events concerning life, death, and finances have kept me from blogging.

I must say, I much prefer four-color comic book DRAMA! to the real thing. My everyday life plays much better as light comedy than heavy drama.

Plus a spate of long-assed workdays lately haven't helped the noble cause of blog blather. Ugh.

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For the three or four of you who actually read 'em, the next two entries in "The Champions Project" are just about ready.

Mephisto will be played pretty straight. I'm gunning for coherency and a sustained mood, neither of which is my strong suit. We'll see.

The mood of The Reject is best summed up by the first story's title: "City of Lights, City of Bees!"

In said story, I promise you Paris, a Nazi made of bees, Karkas (that big red dude on the right) wearing a moustache while being interviewed on French television, and a robot Tyrannosaurus Rex destroying the Hotel de Ville with his sonic breath.

It's time to Bring the Wacky.

Putting up first drafts of writing projects is more nerve-wracking than I expected. Even glancing at the bits later, I can see weak spots, dropped subplots, and outright holes. I comfort myself by saying I would fix it in rewrite, if I were rewriting anything.

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For your viewing pleasure, here's a picture of Batman and his Evil Universe Counterpart, Cody.

In the picture, Bats is demonstrating to Cody the value of stuffing the secret compartment of one's belt buckle with a survival kit. If you look closely, you can see it holds a Swiss Army knife, food for three days, a rebreather, a signal flare, novelty prophylactics, a pad of sticky notes, a Svengali deck of trick cards, an English-to-Basque dictionary, all six of the starting lineup of the 1979 Philadelphia Flyers, a surface-to-air missile, and a quarter for phone calls.

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Essential Thor Volume 1 is boring and silly. Essential Thor Volume 2 is kickass.

Volume 2 shows Kirby gone wild. (Thankfully, his shirt stayed on. Perhaps had we offered him more beads?) He unleashed the crazed mythological imagery that he later brought to his Fourth World books. The stories in Volume 2 grew away from the series' earlier approach of "man acts as pagan god" and its repetitive plot hinge: "must...regain hammer...before sixty seconds...elapse!"

Instead, Kirby shifted the focus of the series to the world of Asgard and all manner of things divine. The comics revel in the grand sweep and strange feel of Norse myths.

Ya know, the only other period of Thor's history that was kickass was the Simonson period, when Walt took the same angle.

I'm just sayin'.

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A blog I greatly enjoy is "Management by Baseball." Jeff Angus uses baseball to explain business ideas, and makes a lot of sense. If nothing else, one's success or failure is pretty obvious in baseball, making it an excellent source for seeing what works and what doesn't.

Angus uses a term (which I think he coined, but I'm not sure) that could be well-applied to fanboy discourse. When writing about managers who refuse to change because "it's always been done like X in the past," folks who hate anything different, he refers to them as "bitgods." It's an acronym for "Back In The Good Old Days."

Granted, I'm a fan of old-school comics, but bitgods drive me freakin' nuts. Ever forward, ya bastids.

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Several of Steve Ditko's later creations had secret identities as television newsmen: the Question, the Creeper, Shag... He seemed to love the idea of the noble and dogged crusader who would dig for the truth and then broadcast it to all. Plus stomp hippies. Ditko's heroes loved to stomp on hippies.

Then there's the great fictional anchorman of our times, Ron Burgundy. Burgundy, ably played by Will Ferrell, was a great newsman and a fine human being. Plus his apartment smells of rich mahogany.

You can see where I'm going with this, can't you.

Oh yes. And it's so very right.

The Question, starring Will Ferrell.

"You stay classy, Hub City."

It could work...the crackpot "objectivist" philosophy Ditko infused into the character...the "faceless man" jokes his mask would inspire...the warped conspiracy theories...

Vic Sage, crusading reporter and self-appointed "Last Honest Man" declares war on the underworld of Hub City, convinced that an alliance of hippies and traitors are poisoning hair products and using the Mafia to distribute their foul chemicals. During his hippie-stomping activities, he trips across an actual criminal conspiracy, though he can't tell nor can he understand it...

Yes...it could work...

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A careful combing of the works of Ovid, Homer, Stirluson, and Marvel Comics has convinced me that only three things separate me from pagan godhood.

What keeps me from joining the Norse Gods in Asgard?

First:
When Thor swings his hammer in a circle around his head, he can create whirlwinds, draw down thunder, breach dimensional barriers, and travel through time.

When I swing my hammer in a circle around my head, I annoy my wife and scare the cats. Not one whirlwind.

Stupid hardware store clerks! I specifically asked for the enchanted hammer that only the righteous could lift and that could...oh, never mind.


Second:
I lack the fuzzy slippers of the mighty god of wisdom, war, battle, and death, Odin.
How could I possibly have them? They are wrapped in mystery! Do they have vinyl non-skid soles? Or are they perhaps rubber? I do not and cannot know! And thus I am denied divinity!

Cruel fates!

Third:
I could never get away with wearing this hat. It's far too rock star for a puny mortal such as myself.

Were I to dare such a feat of fashion splendor, surely the jealous gods would strike me down as a threat to their fabulousness.

Tempt not the gods, my brothers. Do not attempt to wear such a hat.
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The Black Knight #4: The Black Knight Must Die!

Splash page: In the wreckage of an apartment building, a scrawny blond-haired man dressed in surgical scrubs points at the reader. Though is face is mostly covered by his surgical mask, we can tell he's angry and more than a little crazy. Floating in the air around him are a half-dozen large firearms, all pointed at the reader too. The captions tell us that we're looking at Doctor Danger and the Invisible Gunmen.

Voice balloons appear in thin air near the guns. "Let's get him!" "Bloodbath, baby!" "Locked and loaded!" "Aaaahhm the human weeeeedgie!"

And one big voice balloon comes from the Doctor himself. "THE BLACK KNIGHT MUST DIE!"

On the next page, we see James Gates, the Black Knight, on the ground, trapped in the debris from the fight. His thought balloons fill us in. "Crazy...shooting up Baldwin Park...why can't I hit the gunmen..." He is not armed with the Ebony Blade. Instead he has his photonic shield and a lightsaber of sorts. "Computer systems in the armor gone all wonky..."

The guns open fire. The Black Knight raises his shield and saves himself, though the shield shorts out afterwards. Doctor Danger raises his arms in a strange pose and howls.

Gates then recognizes the patterns in the wonky sensor readings. The "doctor" is at the center of a strong, highly-focused magnetic field. "Oh hell yes," James thinks. He pushes a button on his arm.

The guns fall out of the air. Doctor Danger looks around, terrified.

The Black Knight gets up. "There are no invisible gunmen. Just magnetic fields and ventriloquism." Without ceremony, he belts the villain. Doctor Danger drops. The Black Knight shakes his head. "Weak."

As he crawls out of the wreckage of the apartment building, the Black Knight sees the Ebony Blade, half-withdrawn from its scabbard. He leaves it.

Later that day, Dr. James Gates commiserates with Jivraj Mehta in Jivraj's apartment over bad coffee. Gates is pointing at the screen of his laptop computer. "Look at the news. 'Black Knight Stops Gunman.' 'Black Knight Fights Loony.' Since I'm a black man, I have to be called 'the Black Knight,' don't I. Gotta make sure to work 'black' somewhere in there." Gates is wearing several necklaces and bracelets, all of weird design.

Mehta bites into a scone. "Isn't that what you call yourself?"

"Yeah, but I didn't tell anyone at the scene. They just dubbed me that. Couldn't be 'the White Knight' or the 'Shining Knight," oh no. Black Knight."

Jivraj thinks. "Why are you running around like a superhero anyway? Can't help your chances for tenure."

"It's either punch out super-lunatics or kick the hell out of the faculty." Gates gets up and goes to Jivraj's refrigerator. "Which would be--"

He opens the refrigerator door and the Ebony Blade falls out of it.

"Damn," he mutters.

We then move to a montage of the sword appearing in weird places in Gates's life. In the trunk of his car, in his bed, everywhere.

The montage ends with James alone in his apartment, the Ebony Blade on his table. His eyes are fixed upon it, deep concentration evident upon his face. Unlike before, when Gates's apartment was bare of ornamentation, the walls are now covered in pictures and crude geometric murals that mimic the patterns on his bracelets and pendants. Throughout the room are mystic trinkets from cultures around the world: African, Asian, Native American.

"You can't get away from it, Jim," comes a voice from behind.

Gates doesn't turn around. "Dane, why are you here?"

"I broke the curse twice. It always comes back."

Gates stands and faces the ghost of his cousin. "Merlin sent you."

"I understand you better than he does."

"Tell him to find someone else." Gates turns back to his table. The ghost of Dane Whitman disappears.

We then see Gates in his full armor, driving a rusty Toyota Tercel. His thought balloons clue us in: he can feel in his mind that Merlin will give him one last chance. To prevent other people from getting hurt, James has decided to give his answer at the Salton Sea. It's the largest lake in California, the product of an accident in 1905. Fed entirely by farm runoffs, the lake is saltier than the ocean, of unstable size, and unable to support life.*

The sun sets. On the shore of the dead lake, the Black Knight is ready, the Ebony Blade in his hand.

Merlin appears, his lime-green leisure suit glowing in the moonlight. "Come, my knight."

James Gates raises the sword to an on-guard position. "No."

Merlin's rage distorts the world itself. The lake bursts into flame. Ground buckles and ripples. And the ghosts of every single Black Knight in history materialize. Their armors and looks vary. All of them carry copies of the Ebony Blade.

"KILL HIM!" cries the sorcerer.

The Black Knight does his best to protect himself from the army of spectral Black Knights as the world buckles around him. Surfing the crest of a wave of rock, he slices at a pair of sixteenth century Black Knights. The blade passes through them. The only part of the ghosts that feels solid are the sword blades.

A few of their swords do find their mark, slicing open Gates's powered armor and cutting into the man himself. Yet he does not die. The protection of the Ebony Blade keeps him alive.

Merlin growls at him, "Over a thousand years and not one man has proven fit to be the Black Knight! Each one a waste!" Merlin then beckons down lightning. Struck, Gates falls. He rises, still alive.

The sorcerer's rant continues. "Whitman was too willful! Garrington too foolish! And you! You ungrateful child!" The flaming water of the Salton Sea takes on the shape of a humanoid creature, three hundred feet tall. The flaming water creature lashes at Gates. "I have made you a man! The song of battle echoes in your once-cowardly heart! And still you would deny me!"

The battle pauses for a moment. Gates is surrounded by the ghosts of previous Black Knights. For the first time we can see the faces of a few Black Knights. James sees Dane Whitman in the forefront of the ghosts. Whitman locks eyes with Gates and whispers, "Through me..."

A light bulb goes off in Gates's head.

He charges at the Black Knights, swinging his sword and letting out a battle cry. He passes through the ghosts. His sword swings accomplish nothing. But neither do theirs. They can cut him, they can inflict great pain upon him, but since he holds the Ebony Sword, he cannot die.

The Black Knight tears through the last of the ghosts and comes face-to-face with Leisure Suit Merlin. He raises his sword up high...

Merlin raises his hand to catch and shatter the blade...

And in a big splash page, James Gates, Ph.D., kicks the old man square in the nuts.

Merlin topples over. The ghosts of the Black Knights gasp in unison.

Gates towers over the fallen and injured old man. "Maybe I'm stuck with the sword and the curse. But I'm not stuck with you. I'm done."

He then faces the shocked ghosts. He cries out "It's OVER! THE BLACK KNIGHT IS DEAD!"

A chorus of ghostly cheering rises from the shores of the Salton Sea.

We then jump to a calm suburban morning. Darrell is reading the LA Times with his wife, Janice. "Got a call from Jimmy yesterday," Darrell says.

"How's he doing?" she asks.

We see the front page of the paper. It's Gates in a slightly modified version of his battle armor, using the Ebony Blade against the Bi-Beast in the middle of the LA Freeway. The headline reads "New Hero 'The Swordsman' Saves Commuters."

"He says he's doin' great."

...

To be concluded in The Champions #1, in a few months!

Come back next week for the next issue in the Champions Project, The Reject #1: The Demon in Cell Thirteen!

NOTE: The index to "The Champions Project" can be found here.


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*Okay, okay, in the real world, the Salton Sea isn't dead yet, though its salinity is rising rapidly. In the MU, I'm declaring it to have already become a giant freakin' dead zone. Maybe that's where HYDRA dumped its munitions waste or Tony Stark's ill-fated waffle empire had to dispose of its petroleum-based faux-maple syrup.

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My inner Beavis must have its day.

Thus, I give you...The Atom.

Hehhehehehehehmmmheheheheh. He said...he said... hehehehehemmmheheheh!

And...uh...nice butt, dude. Yeah!

Hehehehehehehmmmheheheh!

Maturity will return with later posts. Relative maturity, at least.

A disturbing confession: I have Beavis's hair. Seriously.

The only member of the comic blogosphere who's ever seen me in the flesh is Devon of Seven Hells. He could probably vouch for my Beavis-do, provided he remembers my brief visit to Big Monkey Comics.

The ladies, they love the Beavis 'do. The sniggering immaturity and nose-picking, not so much. But the hair? Drives 'em wild.

(I could also be described as a possessor of "the Terry Long look," but he's too dang skeevy. I'll stick with Brother Beavis. There's more dignity in the nose-picking couch-surfer than the creepy ex-professor-guy.)

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Apologies to Dial B for Blog, from whom I copped the panel. He avoided the sniggering jokes. Me, I have to drag everything down and ruin it for everybody. Because that's the kind of man I am. Heh.
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Moondragon #4: I and Thou

Splash page: Moondragon kneels in tall grass over the body of Alice Coughlin. Alice has a long bar of metal protruding from her back. Blood covers her back and forms a pool around Moondragon's boots. Captions read: "Moments ago, Alice Coughlin was impaled. Nearly slain twice before by strange beings for reasons unknown, she has been under the protection of Moondragon. The Priestess of Pama employed Alice as a way to understand humanity."

Moondragon has a single thought balloon: "Disappointing."

Another caption reads: "Her understanding is incomplete."

On the next page we see the Laughing Killers from the previous issue emerge from the smashed-open entrance to the MegaMart. They are silent. Moondragon comes to her feet and assumes a fighting stance. When the nine Laughers see that Alice is dying, they turn from Moondragon and walk away into the parking lot. As they leave, Moondragon feels the psionic jamming from the attackers fade away.

She scowls. "I'll follow them later," she thinks. She then turns back to Alice. Alice has not yet died, but it won't be long. Frustration etches Moondragon's face. More than anything, she's burning with curiosity about who would go to such lengths to kill such a useless person as Alice Coughlin, fake psychic. Two armies of orangutans, a group of nine laughing middle-aged superpowered assassins...she had to know.

She places one hand upon Alice's bloodstained face. Before the woman dies, Moondragon decides, she will perform one last probe of the unremarkable woman's mind.

We see a small checkerboard montage of Alice's life: childhood, marriages, and so forth. No luck. "Alright," Moondragon thinks. "To the depths." And so she digs herself deep into the core of Alice's mind.

Double-page splash. Structured exactly like the double-page montage of Moondragon's life back in issue #1, we see the full scope of Alice's life.

A lot of it is less than pretty, and most of that is Alice's own doing. We see that Alice is greedy, a liar, and dishonest. Her life is pathetic, shallow, and venal. And yet it no less a treasure for all that. Despite her shabby character and foolishness, her life is beautiful. It has a value beyond price. And we see that though her story is different from Moondragon's, the feeling is the same.

We come back to Moondragon, kneeling beside Alice. Tears stream down the heroine's face. She still does not understand why Alice was attacked, but she now knows Alice as well as she knows herself. For the first time, Moondragon sees Alice as a person instead of a puzzle, an impediment, or a joke. The Priestess of Pama has discovered what humanity is, and that, despite her longstanding resistance to the notion, she is a part of it.

Using her telekinesis, she withdraws the spear from Alice's back and does what she can to keep her newfound sister alive.

Meanwhile, three police cars squeal into the parking lot of the MegaMart in front of the now-silent Laughing Killers. Six police burst out of the squad cars, guns drawn. They yell at the Laughers to halt.

All nine middle-aged killers begin to laugh again.

We jump back to Moondragon, lost in concentration. She's trying to suture together Alice's ruptured organs and stop the bleeding with her telekinetic powers. Large patches of dirt and blood stain her white sci-fi outfit. Grief and loss distort her face.

Cracks of gunfire draw her attention.

We see what she does: the police officers are being manhandled by the Laughing Killers. One has levitated a squad car nine feet in the air. Another is arcing lightning bolts from her body. A short man has lifted an officer above his head. Laughter barks across the asphalt.

Until a mud-caked sci-fi superheroine tears into them. Her kung-fu skills unloads generous portions of whoopassedness to two of the Laughers. They skid across the asphalt, losing a bit of skin. We see that beneath their skins is metal, blood, and a green viscous liquid.

Moondragon fights harder than we've ever seen her. Her psionic powers muted by whichever of the nine cyborgs is the psi-jammer, she has only her physical skills to take care of business. As she fights, dodging lightning bolts, punching men in the head, and flipping around, the captions tell us what she is thinking: I will protect my sisters and brothers. Every single one of them. I will die if I must, but I will not let a single one be hurt. Not one. Never. These sentiments are spread among panels of carnage.

The floating squad car hurls towards Moondragon. She dodges it as it smashes against the pavement. The car flies at her again, this time sideways. She leaps at the car and passes through the smashed-open driver's side window. Her momentum and the movement of the car help her pass through the smashed-open passenger window as well. She hits the ground, rolls, and comes up with a devastating punch into a cyborg woman's face.

As the cyborg woman collapses, Moondragon feels the psionic jamming stop. She hit the right one at last.

"Now, you animals," Moondragon declares. "It ends."

She levitates all nine cyborgs and smashes them together with a mighty WHOOM! She then "switches off" their minds and drops them to the asphalt.

One of the officers approaches her and asks her if she's okay. Moondragon looks back to the spot where Alice lay. "I don't know," she says.

We jump to a hospital. Moondragon has a few gauze pads and whatnot stuck to her face. She's in a waiting room, fear and impatience evident in her manner. As she paces, she barks at the hospital staff. (She's come to appreciate the value of human life--that doesn' t mean she's mellowed in the least.) She sits down and fumes. Her telepathic abilities have told her that the surgeons aren't done yet with Alice. They think she'll pull through, but aren't sure.

A middle-aged man takes a cup of coffee from the nearby machine and sits next to her.

It's John Massero.

"Alice Coughlin," he says. "Amazing."

Moondragon looks up in surprise. "Who are--"

"About thirty years ago, Alice turned down a boy named Warshaw for a date." Massero drinks his coffee. "He holds a hell of a grudge."

Moondragon rummages through her memories of Alice. "Charlie?"

"Yeah."

The fury in Moondragon's eyes is enough to blister the page. "Charlie did this? Because of high school?"

"Yeah. He wanted to 'get even' with her before his big move."

Moondragon makes two fists. "Where is he?"

Massero smiles. "I'm going after him. You want in?"

We end on Moondragon and John Massero shaking hands. Oh yeah, she's in.


To be concluded in The Champions #1, in a few months!

Come back in two weeks for the next issue in the Champions Project, Mephisto #1: Robinson, the Man of Mystery!

NOTE: The index to "The Champions Project" can be found here.

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The fellows of Ye Olde Comic Blogge presented a challenge. They wrote:

Hypothetical situation: Due to diminished readership and rising paper costs, it has been decided only fifteen comic titles will be published from this day forward. You have been charged with the decisions of which titles shall be printed and what creative teams will be assigned to them.

Imagine it.

The Great Comic Cataclysm so long predicted has come to pass: The Dorkpocalypse.

We’ve finally Killed Comics.

Out of the chaos, Marvel and DC have been purchased by a single investor.

Me, Harvey Jerkwater! HOO-HAH!

I'm the god! I'm the god! I've got the keys to the kingdom! BWAHA-HA-HA-HAAAAA!!!

Ahem. Please excuse me. Power always goes straight to my head.

Back to the challenge.

As other folks have done, I’m imposing the “no indies” rule here. It's far too depressing to consider them gone as well. No, it’s more fun to romp in the four-color fields of the Big Two.

Hey, my blog, my interpretation.

In this crazy land of my imagination, Dark Horse, Oni, Image, AiT/PlanetLar, and their bretheren all thrive. They laugh and cavort around the corpse of the Great Two-Headed Beast, and the biggest selling comics of the day are the smash hits Elk’s Run, Action Philosophers, and The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius.

...man, wouldn't that be beautiful?

Anyway, to work!

THE REORG:

In what is a likely futile attempt to reach out to non-comic readers, I would do a couple of things.

Step one: Broaden distribution as best I can. Perhaps it’s impossible, or at least impractical enough to kill my company in a month, but hey, it’s my damn fantasy. A mammoth internet presence, issues for sale hither and yon, all those expensive ideas I like to pretend I could make work.

As part of this notion, my “final fifteen” are partially shaped by my idea of what might sell to those not already soaked in the nerdy brine of comics. If the Dorkpocalypse happens, it’ll be because fanboys are no longer enough to support the industry. Catering strictly to us would be foolish. I'm gunning for the outside world. It adds a challenge to the game.

Step two: Destroy all continuity. Y’hear me? It’s all gone! All gone! Everybody’s starting at #1 with a clean slate. This doesn’t mean every comic has to start with an “origin” story. The All-Star line's approach of “hit the ground running” is acceptable. Also, mucking with the old stories and changing longstanding situations is just fine.

Step three: Expand the length of the individual issues. I’m adding backup stories, because I like them and because it might help sales. (This may be cheating.) The team books won’t have backup stories, since they need more space. A comic would clock in at about forty pages; the lead story would get thirty, the backup ten.

Step four: Tear down the DC/Marvel wall. It’s all one company and all one world now. No sense keeping things separate anymore.

THE BOOKS:

1. Action Comics
Lead feature: Superman
Last son of a dead planet, last hope for the human race: Superman, the greatest superhero of all.
Written by: Grant Morrison
Art by: Frank Quitely
Yes, yes, a predictable choice. Hadda do it. All-Star Superman is a great freakin’ time, so I’m not messing with it.

Backup feature: Iron Man
To preserve his life, technological genius Tony Stark built a suit of high-tech armor. To make that life worth living, Stark pilots the armor in the cause of justice.

Written by: Karl Kesel
Art by: Leinil Francis Yu
Dammit, I loved Kesel’s writing, so he gets a job under my insane regime. Yu’s work on Superman: Birthright showed a flair for techno-doodlery. That’s the kind of cat I’d want on Iron Man.


2. Detective Comics
Lead feature: Batman and Robin
The roughest city in America is protected by a legendary pair of vigilantes. Crazed villains, deathtraps, gangsters, dark and grimy alleys, it's here.

Written by: Paul Dini
Art by: David Mazzuchelli
Dini’s past work with Batman was great. Mazzuchelli’s art is well-suited to the character. I probably couldn’t get him, but dammit, I’d try. Maybe the Dini-Mazzuchelli combo is a bad idea. But right now, I like it.

Backup feature: Daredevil
Everyone’s favorite blind lawyer vigilante, kicking ass and taking names in the Bronx. The series will be akin to Batman's, but with less detection and more boot-to-head.

Written by: Kelley Puckett
Art by: Jock
Puckett’s an underrated writer. I like him, consarn it. I think he’d bring a cool martial artsy vibe to Daredevil. Jock needs no explanation.


3. Captain America and the Falcon
New York City’s high-flying hero, the Falcon, makes a shocking discovery. While whooping villainous heinie, he finds a cylinder containing the first super-hero of all: Captain America, who’s been lost since 1945. The Falcon revives the Captain from suspended animation and they form a mighty duo.

The Falcon, the reincarnation of the Egyptian pharoah Khufu, feels a bond with the Captain, as both are warriors out of time. Best of friends, boldest and bravest of heroes, Cap and the Falcon are here to punch villainy in the nose!

Written by: Mark Waid
Art by: Joe Bennett
Waid’s previous work on Cap was great stuff. And I dug Bennett's work on the recently cancelled Captain America and the Falcon series, so I'm giving him the gig back.

Backup Feature: Shazam!
Teenage Billy Batson needs speak only one word to become Captain Marvel, the World's Mightiest Mortal. Mightier than Superman, younger than Spider-Man, the good Captain's trying his best.

Writing and art: Darwyn Cooke
The Big Red Cheese needs art and writing filled with charm and wonder. So I'd bring in Cooke. Light-hearted fun.


4. Wonder Woman
Diana, Princess of the Amazons, comes to the Man’s World to teach the Amazon way and bust skulls. Not necessarily in that order.

Written by: Steve Gerber/Mary Skrenes
Art by: Ryan Sook
What Gerber and Skrenes would do with Diana, I don’t know. But man, I’d love to find out. Sook’s work on Zatanna makes him a likely sort for the gig, I figure.

Backup Feature: Hawkwoman
Shayera Thal, a policewoman from the planet Thanagar, is in exile on Earth due to her resistance to the despotic rule of Onimar Byth. Using the wings and weapons of her position, she fights for justice on Earth and in space!

Written by: Andy Diggle
Art by: Pascual Ferry
Yes, I’m reuniting the team from Adam Strange: Planet Heist. Their collaboration was killer. More, please.


5. The Green Lantern Corps
Others participating in this meme have said that the idea of the GLC is a great one: space-spanning brotherhood of cops/knights with magic rings? Sweet. Chewing it over, I gotta say—the blogosphere is right. Consarn it, let’s make it work. GLC will focus on Earth’s GL, John Stewart, with lots of other GLs turning up and even starring once in a while.

Written by: Gail Simone
Art by: Steve Rude
Stories will range from earthbound mysteries to big outer space epics. I have faith that Simone could do a fine job with it. As far as Rude? He probably wouldn’t take the job, but if he did, oh my. Love that guy.

Backup: The Flash
Wally West is the second generation Flash. He’s not the serious hero his uncle Barry was. Throw in a hidden city of talking gorillas, time travel, a crazed Rogues’ Gallery, and Wally’s cracked love life, and it’s one heck of a ride.

Written by: Dan Slott
Art by: M.D. Bright
The Flash works best when handled lightly; thus, Slott. Bright is an underrated artist and I want him back in Big Time Comics.


6. The Amazing Spider-Man
Rebooting yet again. Think of it as “Ultimate Spider-Man version 2.0.” Spider-Man's story starts from zero, with a young Peter Parker just getting his powers.

Written by: Roger Stern
Art by: Ron Frenz
Roger Stern was one of my favorite Spidey writers, and Frenz a favorite Spidey artist. (Yes, I grew up in the eighties, why do you ask?) I think they’d produce a killer book.

Backup: The Hulk
RAAAR! Within us all dwells a raging monster. In the case of Bruce Banner, sometimes it gets out and breaks stuff. Purple pants and property damage a’plenty!

Written by: Grant Morrison
Art by: Norm Breyfogle
Oh why not. Breyfogle’s big sweeping style would mesh well with the Big Green Monstah. Can you imagine setting Morrison loose with the Hulk? Ye gods. He’s a tough character to write well. So let’s give him to the guy most likely to do something wacky and cool.


7. Supergirl and the Legion of Superheroes
The heroes of the thirtieth century have found their inspiration: a time-displaced Supergirl. Space-spanning adventure, soap opera out the kazoo, love, hate, betrayal, things going “boom,” Supergirl and the Legion is crammed with all of it.

Written by: Allan Heinberg
Art by: Amanda Conner
I don’t read Heinberg’s stuff, but the blogosphere has spoken and pronounced him great. This book sounds like a good fit for him. And from what I’ve seen, Conner’s art would fit the stories well. So there ya go.


8. X-Men
The standard X-squad: Cyclops, Phoenix, Wolverine, Storm, Beast. You know the drill. Angst! Alienation! Action! Tormented love! A bald guy!

Written by: John Ostrander
Art by: Jim Lee
Ostrander’s shown an excellent grasp of character, which any X-writer needs. He’s imaginative and willing to expand the envelope of superhero books. So hell yes, he’s hired for the X-Men. As for Jim Lee? Well, let’s give the kids what they want.


9. Justice League
Roster: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Captain America, Iron Man, The Falcon.
The world’s greatest super-team. All for one, one for all, and so forth.

Written by: Kurt Busiek
Art by: George Perez
Busiek would kill with this team and the free rein he’d have. This is the Big Action Comic of the line. Perez? The man's damn good with team books, so why not give him the Big Team Book?


10. The Defenders
Roster: Dr. Strange, She-Hulk, Big Barda, Plastic Man, Green Arrow, Spider-Man, Vibe.*
The Defenders are the polar opposite of the JL: a disorganized team of heroes who don’t take orders well and hold together because they need each other. They bringeth Two-Fisted Action and buckets of The Wacky.

Written by: J.M. DeMattis and Keith Giffen
Art by: Kevin Maguire
This light-hearted book will reunite the Bwah-ha-ha team of DeMattis, Giffen, and Maguire. Damn, I love their stuff.


11. Fantastic Four
The world's foremost explorers of the unknown, a family of scientists and adventurers, the idols of millions: The Fantastic Four.

Written by: Walt Simonson
Art by: Tom Grummett
Simonson's FF run was sheer freakin' gold. Since he's on tap for another book as well (see #12), Grummett will handle the art duties. I have a big warm spot for Grummett's art. Good solid stuff.


12. Warlord
Pilot Travis Morgan’s plane crashes north of the Arctic Circle. Lost and freezing to death, he stumbles across a cave. Morgan steps into the cave for shelter and instead plunges down, down...and lands in another world. Travis Morgan is trapped in Skartaris, the world on the inside of the Earth’s surface, where dinosaurs live, magic thrives, and danger lurks at every turn.

Writing and art by: Walt Simonson
Oh hell yes. Sword-n-sorcery. Dinosaurs. Machine guns. Lost worlds. This is right in Simonson’s wheelhouse. Warlord used to be DC’s top-selling title. I betcha it’d stand a good chance of making a comeback. Why? Sword-n-sorcery. Dinosaurs. Machine guns. Lost worlds. Hoo-hah!

Backup feature: Wolverine
The X-Men’s big name in solo adventures. Ninjas, superspies, sex, violence, all the good stuff. Give the readers what they want!

Written by: Doug Moench
Art by: Bryan Hitch
Moench did fine work in a similar vein for Moon Knight and Master of Kung Fu. Let's give the old pro a shot. Hitch's art is frabjabulous, and I had to put him somewhere. The semi-realism of Wolverine's milieu should suit Hitch's style.


13. Jonah Hex
Wearing a gray hat and a half-scarred face, the bounty hunter Jonah Hex wanders the Old West, making as honest a living as he can in a corrupt world.

Writing and art by Howard Chaykin
Hex is about cynicism with a hint of dark humor. Pull a dump truck of cash up to Chaykin’s house and I’m sure he’d do this book justice.

Backup feature: Sgt. Rock
World War Two action from the grunt's perspective. Nothin's ever easy in Easy.

Written by: Garth Ennis
Art by: Steve Dillon
(With stories by Joe Kubert whenever he damn well wants to draw one.)
Ennis loves his war comics. Dillon not only has a fine history of working with Ennis, he’s one of the best artists for regular people in the business. How could they not get Sgt. Rock?


14. Vertigo
An anthology series of more serious comics. Creator-owned work.

Written by: Steve Gerber/Mary Skrenes, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Darwyn Cooke, Mike Mignola, etc.
Art by: various
This would be the slot for Hard Time, but I bet that Gerber and Skrenes’s upcoming conclusion will be too good to mess with. Instead, the first arc in Vertigo is whatever those two feel like making. Later stories will be by whomever feels like producing one, with a nod towards the old Vertigo crew.


15. Static
Working-class kid Virgil Hawkins is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mutagenic gas is released in his vicinity. But something unexpected happens: he gets electrical powers. To protect the city of Newark from the monsters spawned by the same gas that created him, he becomes the superhero Static.

Written by: Dwayne McDuffie
Art by: John Romita, Jr.
The original run of Static was real good. Then throw in the character’s recognition value courtesy of the cartoon, and you’ve got a comic that I would predict to be a top seller, given a decent marketing push. McDuffie co-created and wrote the early Statics, so I’d love to get him back. (I think he may even own the property, so all the more reason.) Romita’s art is always kickass. (Original Static artist John Paul Leon would be most welcome if Romita didn’t work out.)

Backup feature: Teen Titans
The sidekicks and underage heroes band together in the cause of awesomeness and coolosity.

Written by: Gail Simone
Art by: Mike Wieringo
Robin, Cyborg, Raven, Starfire, Kid Flash, Beast Boy
I heard good things about Simone’s run, I dug Villains United, and her many blogosphere postings show her to be a good egg. So dang it, Gail gets a second gig. Ringo’s art has a cartoony flavor that would sit well with the Titans, or so I believe.

...

Man, this is tough. A lot of big favorites of mine got left out. This lineup shuts out piles of great writers and artists, leaving them on the side of the road to curse my name. I kept trying to figure out where to put guys like Priest, Byrne, DeFalco, and Englehart. Sorry, guys. Given that my reorg would, of course, be a smashing success, all of those folks would be hired immediately for new titles.

-------------------
*Yes, Vibe. Really. Vibe would fit right in with my version of the Defenders, meng! Scipio of the Absorbascon has convinced me of his value as a character. Besides, he’d fit right in with the team I’ve chosen.
Every super-team needs a breakdancer. And you know the interplay between Paco and Peter Parker would be schweet.
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The cartoon sexuality of Red Sonja got me thinking about which women in comics appealed to yers truly.

Most comic book women were designed to appeal to men. Despite this, they almost always fail to leave any sort of lasting impression.

Then there are the women featured in Will Eisner's classic The Spirit.

One reason for their lasting appeal lay in Eisner's art. His cartoony style allowed for a range of expression and emotion that gave the women distinct flavors. Not only did they simply look different from one another (a rarer condition for comic women than you'd think), they carried themselves differently.

Distinguishing one Jim Lee replicant-girl from the next is nigh-impossible unless you go by costume or hair color. Distinguishing Ellen Dolan from Nylon Rose from P'Gell? No challenge at all.

Eisner patterned many of his women on movie stars of his day. The brilliance of this plan was that it ensured each woman was beautiful in her own distinct way. Silk Satin was Katharine Hepburn; Sand Saref was Lauren Bacall; P'Gell was Marlene Dietrich. The cartoony abstraction of his art made the effect work, as he took only the rough outlines of the actresses and the essence of their appeal. Readers respond to the qualities of the actress, but aren't pulled out of the story by thinking, "hey, that's Rita Hayworth."*

Consider that women designed to be sexually alluring fill the pages of many modern books. (Hey, an entire genre of comics are known, at least in my own head, as "Hello, Boobies!" comics.) Also, soap opera elements continue to abound in the four-color world. Despite both of these factors, romance itself in mainstream comics is rare. In The Spirit, romance was a common subject. The titular hero's ongoing courtship of Ellen Dolan was a charming story element, and it was frequently complicated by the presence of other women vying for the hero's affections. (Though it must be noted that none of the others stood a real chance. The Spirit was a man who loved women, but he was not a cad.)

The romance was often fun, as well. The interplay between the Spirit and the women in his adventures tended to be playful and more than a little charged with sexual energy. Has there ever been a masked hero who has been portrayed covered in lipstick marks than the Spirit? That man's been kissed more than a president's ass.

Romance infused one of the most famous scenes in The Spirit's history, the climax of the first Sand Saref story. We read how Sand and Denny Colt grew up together in a rough part of Central City. Then one night Denny's uncle, a palooka working his first burglary, gets caught by a police officer and his best friend: Sand's father. To avoid capture, one of the thieves shoots Officer Saref. A few days later, Denny's uncle cannot take the regret and kills himself.

Out of the tragedy, Denny is driven to a life of law and order. Sand spurns that same law and order as false promises. He grows up to become a detective and later the Spirit. Sand grows up to become a criminal and a spy. After the war, she returns to Central City, involved in a deal for a secret chemical weapon. The Spirit intervenes, and the story ends thusly.** (click on the picture to enlarge)

The scene is cheesy, sure. Affecting and memorable as well.

Eisner wasn't afraid to have characters fall in love or show affection. Neither action is or was common in other comics, despite their value in developing characters and heightening reader interest. Placing his women in romantic lights, Eisner enriched and broadened their characters as well as increased their appeal.

It also made the Spirit himself a more involving character, but I'm writing about the ladies today.

The women of The Spirit demonstrated many sides of themselves within their stories. One issue centered on Silk Satin and her newly-adopted daughter, Hildie. Within a very few pages, Silk is shown as a mysterious spy, a rival for the Spirit's affections, a beautiful woman with a hint of goofyness, a doting mother, and, in the story's climax, a stone-cold killer when called upon to protect her child.

Her character varies within the story but within a believable range. That she can go from amusing come-ons to the Spirit to capping goons from the shadows makes her feel more real, more memorable.

The modern comic conception of alluring women is rooted in simple physical aspects: big boobs, tight clothing, long legs. Most four-color women are an undifferentiated blur of fantasy elements, designed to appeal to one's glands. These characters tend to be simple and free from angularities. Smooth as billiard balls, their characters slip from your mind because there's nothing to hold onto.

Eisner's approach was that a woman's attraction is in large part rooted in her personality, in who she is beyond the pretty face. Their rough edges and sharp angles make them easy to grip in your mind.

The Spirit's women linger in your head, each one her own character, reaching and inflaming different parts of your mind. Just like the real thing.

Will Eisner must have known and appreciated women. He created quite a batch of great ones.

Mmmmm...women.

--------------------------
*Photo-referencing pulls me out of stories something wicked. "Hey look, it's Clint Eastwood! No, wait, he's Jonah Hex. No, wait, he's Clint Eastwood playing Jonah Hex!" Gack.

**A young Frank Miller later swiped the story and adapted it to one of his first issues of Daredevil, changing Sand Saref into his signature character, the assassin Elektra. This is not a dig on Miller. It's a good story to use, he made it his own in Daredevil, and dang it, swiping from Eisner shows good taste. I only bring it up because Miller has credited the Sand Saref story in interviews.

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Back in the Bad Old Days, I had a couple of friends who dug Beverly Hills, 90210. Said girls were most fond of Luke Perry and his smouldering misunderstood rebel character, Chad Squarejaw or Hairdo Stevens or whatever it was. I didn’t understand his particular appeal, but then again, I didn’t have to.

Then after a particularly insightful episode of The Simpsons, an idea came into my noggin. Lisa Simpson developed a crush on a Bad Boy, and I got it.

I asked said friends if the appeal of Hairdo Stevens was the fantasy of “he’s so sad and tormented and alone…but if he met me, it’d be different. I could tame him and make him happy!” They nodded, a little ashamed.

(I then regaled them with the melonheaded notions about girls that danced about the heads of teenage boys, and they felt better. We drew comfort from the fact that the genders are all too alike in their gifts of stupidity and self-delusion.)

Why bring this up? Because I just saw an article on Newsarama plugging the latest issue of Red Sonja, the popular cheesecake sword-n-sorcery comic. Next to it ran a big ol’ banner ad for the comic. In both, Sonja, as per usual, was wearing a bikini made of quarters, posed in a way to combine sex and violence as much as possible. And I thought about ol' Luke.

Red Sonja, the She-Devil with a Sword, has had a bunch of series over the years. Why does she keep coming back? Granted, “hot redhead in wee metal bikini” is a concept that kinda sells itself, but lots of cheesecakey characters disappear without a trace.

Why Sonja? Because of the Luke Perry Effect.

A key aspect of Sonja’s character is that she was badly scarred in her past, and thus will never give herself to any man who cannot defeat her in battle. Thus, like Chad Squarejaw, she walks the lands, righting wrongs and slaying bad guys, forever alone. A smouldering misunderstood rebel character…

“But with me, it’d be different…I could tame her,” thinks the horny fanboy. “I’m not like those guys…she’s unspoiled by the brutish men of that time…if she came here, she would so dig me.”

To convert my notion to math: Red Sonja = Luke Perry + Boobs - Fashion Sense + Stabbing * (Virgin/Whore) ^ Ass-shots.

Yeah, it's all kind of obvious and I'm treating this like a brilliant revelation. Sorry 'bout that.

...ya know, I used to be a fencer. I am now kicking myself for not forcing everyone at the fencing school to address me as "Harvey Jerkwater, He-Devil with a Sword."
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Moondragon #3: “Slaves of the Laughing Death!”

Splash page: Moondragon, in her full science-fiction regalia, reclines on a ratty couch in a nondescript living room. Her feet are on a coffee table. Nearby is Alice Coughlin, leaning forward in her favorite easy chair, peppering Moondragon with questions.

"You were in the Avengers? Is Thor as hot as he looks on teevee? You grew up in outer space? What's it like to read minds? Does Hawkeye have the tightest butt, or is it the Falcon? Do you have a jet pack? What's being an Avenger pay?"

Accompanying the chatter is Moondragon's train of thoughts, shown in balloons around the page. "I could snap her neck. Or one quick blow to the temple. Burn out her brain with a psychic bolt, perhaps?" Yes, she's thinking of all the delightful ways to kill this annoying woman.

On the next page, we see a car driving along an Indiana road, with nothing but cornfields as far as the eye can see. The driver of the car is laughing. He sees another man on the side of the road. The man on the side of the road is also laughing. The driver pulls over and the man on the side of the road gets in the car. They drive away.

We hop back to Moondragon, who is stalking back towards her spaceship, the Sensia. Moondragon fumes that the only way Alice could be related to the end of the world is that she makes armageddon seem a good idea. Woodrow Wilson Jones was insane, fixated on the annoying Alice, and conflated her with the end of the world. Simple as that. Mystery solved.

Meanwhile, Alice trails behind her, still spouting questions. "Have you ever saved the world? Can you shoot laser beams out of your eyes? Why'd you come to Earth? To save me from the killer monkeys?"

At this, Moondragon wheels and points a finger at Alice. "NO! I DID NOT COME TO EARTH TO SAVE YOU FROM KILLER MONKEYS! BE SILENT!"

Alice looks indignant. "Then why did you come to Earth, Miss High and Mighty Superhero?"

Moondragon furrows her brow. "I came because..." Moondragon stops and taps her foot in impatience. "One last time," she thinks. She peers into Alice's mind, just a quick glance. We see it as a smear of images: a little girl's face, a house, a tree, a man's face, assorted bits of everyday life. "Hm," she thinks. "Follow me," she says. Moondragon enters the spaceship and motions for Alice to join her.

Inside the Sensia, Alice is flabbergasted by the alienness of the ship. Moondragon keeps a psychic "ear" open for Alice's reaction to learn how a normal human would react. She invites Alice to join her in a psychic union, where she could show Alice a vision of her homeworld.

Alice demurs. "Psychic? You mean, for real?"

"Yes. Not like you."

Alice fails to register the insult and accepts the offer. Annnnnd...zango! We see the two of them in ghostly forms on the rocky surface of Titan, standing in shallow pools of liquid methane. The atmosphere is a hazy orange. The giant face of Saturn covers most of the sky, its rings cutting giant arcs across the expanse.* "This is Titan," Moondragon states.

Then their ghostly forms sink through the surface and pass into the technological wonderland carved into the rock below. "This, Alice, is my true home." Alice lets out only a small "woooo!"

Meanwhile, we see a middle-aged woman ride along a suburban road on a bicycle. She is laughing hysterically as she passes a sign saying "Welcome to South Bend." In another part of town, a laughing middle-aged man gets off of a train.

Moondragon and Alice leave the Sensia. Alice's mind is blown. Moony is observing the results and thinks to herself, "Disoriented, as expected. Hm. An odd fold in her ninth subconscious refractor. Interesting. What about intra-human contact? Yes." She then opens her mouth. "Alice, may I drive your car?"

Alice tries to speak. "Whuh?"

"Your car. May I drive it? I...have never piloted such a vehicle before."

"Sure!" a woozy Alice responds.

We find that while Moondragon was not lying, she was able to cadge enough information from Alice's mind that "experience" was unnecessary. Instead, Moony takes advantage of Alice's confusion to drive her to the local MegaMart.

"You know, my daughter Shelley works here," Alice notes.

"Really?" Moondragon pretends to be surprised. "Perhaps you can say hello. I'd like to see how normal humans go about their lives and conduct their business."

The interior of the store stretches as far as the eye can see. Clothes, groceries, consumer goods of all types explode across the page in a riot of color. People stare at the tall bald-headed woman in the weird costume and cape as said woman strolls past cereal boxes, bicycles, and firearms.

Meanwhile, a cluster of seven laughing men and women, none younger than forty-five, enter the MegaMart.

"OH GOD, GET OUT OF HERE!" comes a cry from off-panel. Alice and Moondragon look to see a pregnant young woman behind the photo developing counter. She looks like a younger Alice, with smaller hair.

We see an ugly reunion between a clinging and aggravating mother and her estranged daughter. Moondragon stands aside, observing the family drama. Shelley's anger at her mother at first seems extreme, until Alice launches into a tirade of self-pity and accusations. Both Moondragon and Shelley wear disgust on their faces. Mankind, Moondragon decides, has very little of value to teach.

The laughing people take positions around the MegaMart, keeping their eyes on Moondragon and Alice. They're suppressing their laughter to light chuckles.

Alice's daughter yells at her mother to get out. "You're not getting near my son, and you're not going to screw up my life again!"

Before Alice could yell back, a kitchen knife flies past her face. Laughter echoes throughout the MegaMart. Moondragon grasps her head in surprise; psionic jammers are filling the area with "mental white noise," preventing her from using her psionic powers.

Nine men and women emerge from between the rows of goods. Several are armed. All are at least forty-five years old. All are now laughing at the top of their lungs.

A laughing woman charges at Alice, a fireplace poker in her hand. Moondragon recovers herself in time to grasp the assailant's wrist and throw her. Moondragon then leaps a few feet into the air and kicks an attacking laughing man in the head.

It does little good. Moondragon notes that the man's head reacted like it was made of metal. "Robots?" she thinks. Shelley ducks behind her counter.

Two laughing men stand side-by-side and point at Moondragon and Alice. Metal racks and cans fly at the two women. Grabbing Alice and leaping aside, Moondragon avoids the barrage. Shelley lets out a yelp as the debris slashes apart the far side of her counter.

For a few pages, we see Moondragon and Alice dodging and darting through the MegaMart, avoiding the dangers of the laughing killers and their strange powers. Some hurl fire, others use magnetism, others are just plain strong.

Moondragon and Alice reach the front of the store and find that the glass doors are shut and locked. Moondragon picks up a metal sign and hurls it through the glass.

The two burst into the open ground and run. They bolt into a grassy area.

We hear two sounds: "zzzzip! thup!"

Alice falls over.

Moondragon stops and looks down. Alice is face down in the tall grass, a long and wide metal rod projecting from her back. Dark maroon blood spreads out from the injury. If she's not dead yet, it won't be long.

The Dragon of the Moon thinks, "How rude."


To be concluded next Friday in Moondragon #4, “I and Thou”

NOTE: The index to "The Champions Project" can be found here.

-------------------------
*I'm pretty sure you can't see Saturn from Titan's surface, the atmosphere is too thick. But it'd make for a killer visual, so I'm saying you can.

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The Black Knight #3: Hell Goes Round and Round

The story opens in Dodger Stadium. The Dodgers are losing to the Washington Nationals.* We jump into the stands and see, in the cheap seats, Dr. James Gates, the Black Knight. Next to him is his friend Darrell. Darrell is much better dressed than James, due to his having a regular job and a decent paycheck.

James tells Darrell that “I inherited a couple of things from my father. I got high blood pressure, bad teeth, and an undying love of the Dodgers.”

Darrell laughs and asks about the elder Mr. Gates.

Before James can answer the question, he sees a Dodger baserunner get picked off in a steal attempt. He yells “AW, COME ON!” Then he sees a man seated two rows in front of him yelling at a boy. The boy begins to cry. Gates fumes. And fumes. And fumes.

Splash page: The pipecleaner-thin physics professor leaps from his seat and tackles the yelling man. Everyone looks horrified. Gates is insane with rage. He craves to spill the man’s blood amongst the peanut shells and plastic beer bottles on the floor of Chavez Ravine.

Darrell pulls his loony friend off the yelling man and hustles him to the exit before security can arrest them both. They drive away, Darrell berating his friend. “You’ve cracked, cuz! Too much time in the lab! You were never like this in school! You need to get the hell away from here!”

James pulls out a small blue vial wrapped in twine and drinks its contents. He then calms down and admits that Darrell is right.

The ghost of Dane Whitman leans forward from the backseat of the car. “It’s not because of Los Angeles, James. You know that.” As James tries to ignore the ghost, he pulls out a pendant of strange shape and clutches it.

Darrell notices the action. "Jimmy, you gone and found Jesus?"

James opens his palm and shows the pendant. It's a ball made up of pebbles and a small coin with arcane characters scratched onto it, all fused into a single glob. "I...it's...it helps calm me down."

Darrell laughs. "A magic charm, right? Janice has one kinda like it. Lookin' into the occult now? Man, you are crackin' up, cuz. You get that from the bruja in San Dimas?"

Gates nods and changes the subject. “There’s a company in San Diego that’s been after me for a year. Thinkin' about lookin' into it.”

“San Diego! Perfect. Jimmy, you gotta at least check it out. Get away. Stop bein' a doormat for once in your life and take charge.” Darrell pauses. "Make that twice. Hoo, did you see the look on that guy's face when you jumped him? I knew it was just a matter of time 'til you snapped, Jimmy. Though I always thought you'd've flipped out back in high school."

The ghost says nothing.

We jump to San Diego, in a small office tower. It's the headquarters of Initech, a successful new high technology firm. James is in an interview with Louisa O’Donnell, head scientist. They’re walking through a massive lab, with all sorts of giant comic book doohickeys, dinguses, and thingy-mo-bobs throughout the lab. He asks her, “So…your focused plasma project, that’s—“

“Right up your alley, Mr. Gates,” she answers. “It’s based off of the same research you were pursing at Boomtown.” An anti-grav platform the size and shape of a surfboard floats by, with tiny dancing robots on it. She leads him into Conference Room A.

Conference Room A is filled with men in yellow jumpsuits and bucket helmets sitting around a long table. James's eyes grow wide. All he can manage to say is "Uh..."

One of the yellow-suited men stands and offers James his hand. "Dr. Gates! Welcome! We are all admirers of your research, particularly your recent work in Chicago." Yes, Initech is a subsidiary of everybody's favorite would-be world conquering army of scientists, Advanced Idea Mechanics (more commonly known as AIM).

Another yellow-suited man speaks up. "Look, you're not up for tenure at Caltech. The best you can hope for is to float from job to job for the rest of your life. AIM offers something better. Join us and be a part of something. Change the world."

James clenches his teeth. The bloodlust boils up in him again. "Don't you mean conquer it?"

The room bursts into laughter. James grows even more angry. O'Donnell explains that AIM is no longer interested in world conquest. "We are a place where scientists are respected and well-compensated, not cogs in an industrialist's machine or forced to teach slack-jawed teenagers.

"Why don't we let the chairman talk it over with you," she says.

The massive oak doors of the meeting room open. In floats MODOK, the Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing.

"Good afternoon, Doctor Gates..."

James quakes with rage as he hears one of the AIM scientists chortle and say, "C'mon and be a buckethead! We got dental!"

We jump to that night. The Black Knight is in his full armor, complete with sword and other goodies, atop a high-rise across the street from the Initech building. "Some job interview. MODOK? AIM? Oh hell no. A secret army and its monster leader? Time to bust up whatever crazy scheme they're working on."

He aims his wrist-mounted rocket grapnel launcher at the Initech building. Before he fires, he notices the ghost of Dane Whitman on the rooftop with him. Both he and the ghost are silent. Gates turns back towards the Initech building and admits to himself, "If I don't hit somebody soon, I'm gonna explode."

With a whoosh, a clink, and a whuzzawhuzzawhuzza, he zips across the gap between the buildings. A thin wedge of energy from his photonic shield cuts open a hole in a window, and he slips inside. A silent page of the Black Knight skulking follows. He uses the jet-dart grapnel, the leaping capabilities of his armor, and the sensors in the suit to avoid security and deep into the Initech tower.

He reaches the main lab. "Enough subtlety. Let's break stuff," he thinks. The Black Knight draws the Ebony Blade and cuts open the massive steel doors in a single swing.

Inside the lab is MODOK, his eyes fixed on the Knight. "Doctor Gates, there is no need for this." A dozen AIM troopers emerge from the shadows and point their rifles at Gates.

Gates feels a rush of righteous fury build in his chest. "Oh, I think there is." He leaps towards MODOK.

Bullets ricochet off his armor and shield as he Brings the Pain to the lab and its residents. His thought balloons and behavior show that he is trying to avoid killing the bucketheads or MODOK. He's using the flat of the blade, the strength of the armor, and sundry weapons he cadged from Boomtown. How much he's in control of himself is debatable.

As the Smackdown progresses, MODOK yells that he had scanned James's mind during the interview. "I know what you are, James."

A charge of psionic energy bursts from MODOK's headband. The Black Knight bursts out of a window of the tower. He plunges five stories onto the asphalt of the building's parking lot. Due to the sword's protection, he is able to get right back up.

MODOK floats down from the building. "Doctor Gates, I can feel the righteous anger in you. You're certain that you fight for justice."

The Black Knight charges MODOK, only to be telekinetically hurled into a nearby pickup truck.

The Knight gets up and raises his sword. "You are a villain. You want to--"

MODOK interrupts. "Develop better ways to mine platinum? Create nanotech to replace damaged nerve cells? Make a great deal of money?"

Gates lowers the blade. "What?"

"We're out of the world-conquering business, James." MODOK levitates his way back into the building. "We'll keep your resume on file."

The Black Knight stands alone in the parking lot of Initech, confused. Then the ghost of the first Black Knight and the old man in the leisure suit emerge from the shadows. The ghost speaks up. "Thou'rt a coward and a weak reed shouldst thou remainest here! The blade itself sings of vengeance in your heart! Slay the monster!"

James ignores the ghost and looks at the old man. "Then what? Another fight? Another killing? Another cause I know to be just and beautiful in my heart because it lets me hit people?"

The old man speaks. "Listen to the words of your master, the sword's forger, the sorcerer Merlin. Black Knights have risen and fallen, and I have guided them all. Only I know the emptiness in your heart and the rage that can fill it. I can lead you to glory."

Gates takes off his helmet. "Fighting without end? Lost in anger forever?"

The ghost says, "Hold thy tongue! Merlin is wiser than thou knowest!"

James approaches them both. "Why me? Why did you curse me?"

Merlin replies, "That is not for you to know."

The Black Knight raises his sword before the two figures. Without a word, he plunges the blade into the asphalt of the Initech parking lot.

James Gates walks away. Merlin's own rage grows. The mightiest sorcerer on Earth will not stand for such disrespect.


To be concluded next Friday in The Black Knight #4: “The Black Knight Must Die!”

NOTE: The index to "The Champions Project" can be found here.

---------------------------
*Go Nats! WOOO!

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Okay, okay, okay, I'm a slackass.

I thought I'd be able to knock out my workmanlike issue summaries on Fridays. That's not gonna work, what with me being gainfully employed and all.

From here on out, new "issues" of The Champions Project will be posted on Saturdays. The Black Knight #3 and Moondragon #3 will be up tomorrow.

In the meantime, here are a bunch of old-school robots.

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Do you realize that not one superhero has a costume that includes a hat like the Buckingham Palace guards?

Ridiculous.

The latest Spider-Man costume redesign should have included one.

"It's Spider-Man! And he's wearing a two-foot-tall fuzzy hat! RUN!"

How much would that rock?

The answer: a lot.

...

A bad idea, but hey: given that the big Marvel Comics crossover event this year is called "Civil War," wouldn't the Marvel Earth later be infested with Superhero Civil War re-enactors?

"This is Steve, from Minnesota. He'll be Wolverine. We've duct-taped some kitchen knives to his forearms, so be careful, they're sharp."

"Hey, Murray! Your costume isn't authentic! Iron Man's armor didn't have hip-pods during the war!"

"Honey, you know I'd love to fix the deck, but you know that this weekend the fellas are re-enacting the Battle of Issue Six, and I have to be there! I'm Graviton!"

Oh yeah...that'd be annoying.

...

From the Nerd Herd, a recommendation: The next Essentials volume that should be put together is "the Essential Adam Warlock." It'd contain:

Fantastic Four #66-67
Thor #165-166
Marvel Premiere #1-2
The Power of Warlock #1-8
The Incredible Hulk #176-178
Strange Tales #178-181
Warlock #9-15
Marvel Team-Up #55
Avengers Annual #7
Marvel Two-in-One Annual #2

That’d give you the three important stages of the character:

--Adam Warlock as the blank slate known as “Him,” when he was a superhero Frankenstein.

--Adam Warlock as the hero of "Counter-Earth," when he was a superhero Jesus. The parallels were naked, and his story came complete with crucifixion and resurrection. Yes, really.

--And the Adam Warlock of the legendary Starlin run, which was a damn fine slab of comics.

The volume would be 29 issues of regular comics, plus two annuals. I think stories were short during much of this run (17 pages each, not 22 or 26), so it'd be a long-ish Essential, but it'd fit into one volume.

Man, that'd be schweet. Ranging from Big Kirby Action to Severely Whacked-Out Message Comics to the zenith of Cosmic Comics, it'd be a hell of a read.
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The Black Knight #2: The Fist of Six Fingers

Splash page. James Gates, dressed in the armor he wore at the end of last issue except for the helmet, points the Ebony Blade at the reader. We're in his disheveled apartment. We can see walls bare of anything except a movie poster and an odd stain. He yells "I AM NOT THE BLACK KNIGHT!"

The next page shows at whom he is yelling. The old man in the green leisure suit stands beside the ghost of the first Black Knight. The ghost replies, "The blade, the curse, and the title be thine, my son."

Gates yells back, "Keep them! I don't need a curse right now!"

The ghost points to the sword. "The blade's power came with a price, lad. Each life you claim with it enlarges the thirst in your soul for more."

"So I'll become a psycho-killer if I use this thing? Forget it! I'm the wrong man!"

The ghost replies, "Thou'rt indeed of my line and a bold warrior!"

James, who is both a black man and a mighty nerd, points to his own face. "Your son?"*

"Aye, thou'rt a descendant of Sir Percy of Scandia."

James lowers the sword. "Huh. You must have thousands of descendants."

The old man in the leisure suit says, "Yes, but we needed you."

James places the sword back in its scabbard. "Why? What about the real Black Knight? That guy who's in the Avengers. He knows what he's doing. Get him."

The man in the leisure suit sets his jaw. "He died."

We jump to the next day, where James is in a discussion with a member of the Caltech faculty, Doctor David Austin. Austin, a stooped over man with a snow-white combover, sits amidst a pile of papers, books, and computer parts. "Jimmy!" the professor says. "Glad to see you made it out of Boomtown okay! Did you save any research projects?" Before long, Austin's disdain for James becomes obvious. Gates has a passive nature, and we see how he shrinks before authority figures.

As he treats James like dirt, we see Austin tinkering with a small mechanical doodad on his desk. His left hand wears a black glove. The professor ends his rude speech by telling Gates that he'll be needed at the wreckage of Deep 13 the next day. "The morons removing debris have no idea what they're touching. They'll destroy everything valuable if we aren't careful." James says he'll be there.

"Good," says Dr. Austin. "That'll do just fine."

Gates leaves, and we see David Austin's right hand emerge from below the desk. It too wears a black glove. But the right glove has six fingers.

We next see Gates talking to Jivraj Mehta in a campus eatery. Jivraj tells James that both Horst Bausch and Hugh McKittrick were badly injured in the collapse of the lab, and that the entire lab area has been sealed off by SHIELD. Horst died in the night, Mehta says. "And I'm not sure, but I don't think Hugh's going to make it either." Anger grows in Gates's eyes until it explodes. The scrawny Gates lifts up a nearby chair and throws it nowhere in particular.

Mehta looks at Gates as though Jimmy's lost his mind. Two students who were nearly hit by the thrown chair approach, angry. Though they are twice Gates's size, the pipecleaner-thin professor not only stands his ground against them, he acts as though he craves a fight. Confused by the disconnect between Gates's appearance and his behavior, and keeping in mind the dictum "never get into a fight with a lunatic," they step back and leave.

Gates returns to Mehta. "Deep 13 is still a danger, isn't it. Half a dozen experiments in there could still be live, couldn't they." He's not asking these as questions. Jivraj can't answer, as Gates's behavior scares him.

Night falls. We see an armored figure slip into the wreckage of the labs. Gates takes a collection of weaponry and tools. Among his swag includes a photonic shield projector, a small rocket-dart grapnel rig, a handful of prototype crowd control gas grenades, and sundry other goodies.

The knight, angry and bound to destroy whatever dangers lie in Deep 13, uses the leaping power of the armor and the grapnel rig to ascend the mountain of rubble. Upon reaching the summit, he finds something he did not suspect. A small transdimensional portal is in operation. At the nearby controls is Dr. Austin.

Rage fills the Knight. He leaps and draws the Ebony Blade.

And stops cold in midair.

We see that Dr. Austin has raised up his ungloved right hand. The hand is made of clear crystal, with strange colors refracting from its many facets. "Right on time," he laughs. "James, I never thought you had it in you. I'll restart time around you and let you drop, but if you try anything, I'll simply freeze you again."

The Black Knight finishes his drop. He does not move to attack. Instead he waits.

Dr. Austin smiles. "Good, good. You killed Samael, who would have saved us all. But I suppose if you were stronger than him, then you're more suited for the job." Then the Great Villain Monologue begins...

We see that Dr. Austin was a key member of the Deep 13 research team. An impossible glitch in the dimensional portal technology sent him hurtling into it himself. "I have no idea how," he admitted. "Did it reach out and grab me? Did I simply trip and fall? It doesn't matter." In this alternate dimension, the Steve Ditko-esque strangescapes and illogical perspectives drove him to near-madness.

"Then I saw it. A floating sphere of liquid." Drifting towards the disoriented professor was a sphere of undulating liquid. The troughs and peaks of its surface waves caught his eyes. "Can you believe it, Gates? Liquid time! To even say the words sounds stupid, and yet I knew it as well as I knew my own name, the instant I saw the sphere!" Dr. Austin watched as the sphere passed by him in space. It lurched towards him, and he threw up his right hand in defense.

"When I withdrew my hand, it was this!" He holds up the crystalline hand. "I became inextricably bound with time itself, and the end of time." How he returned to Earth he is not sure. He woke in his own bed, with only the crystalline hand of six fingers as proof of his nightmare.

"I spent days studying it, Gates. Days. The different facets showed me different pieces of time. Can you imagine? All of history, all of the future, all mine to see!" His face darkens. "But there is no future, Gates. We are at doomsday.

"On my palm I can see the the entire past of the human race. From ape-men to astronauts, primitives to poets. On the back of my hand? Horrors. Nothing but horrors.

"The end of the world is here. Doomsday is only a few months away."

He explains that he pulled Samael the Blind God from an alternate dimension to fight the coming menace. "He would have protected me," Austin says. "But now you can."

The Black Knight says, "What about stopping this doomsday? If a big snake can fight it--"

"It can't be stopped! But you can protect me!"

The Knight raises his sword. "I think I'll destroy that portal instead. Keep any fresh monsters from coming through. That'll help."

Dr. Austin freaks out. His crystalline hand glows and strange creatures from Earth's past materialize around the Knight. A dinosaur or two, lions, monsters, the works. The Knight turns on his photonic shield and hurls himself at the beasts.

Three things happen during the fight:

1. The Black Knight handles the creatures easily, relying on the Ebony Blade and the super-strength from the powered armor. He slices them apart.


2. With each beast slain, his bloodlust grows stronger. His speech grows more and more clipped, until he only grunts.


3. Throughout the fight, the professor's age shifts wildly. He becomes young, then old, then young, then old, faster and faster.

Finally the Black Knight reaches the Six Fingered Man. The professor is now a frail and ancient figure. He cannot lift his crystalline hand, as it's become too heavy for him.

The Black Knight removes his helmet. His eyes are bloodshot and open very wide. He raises the Ebony Blade above his head to strike the professor.

Before he can bring down the sword, another ghost appears to James. It's Dane Whitman, his predecessor as the Black Knight.

"James...no...you've only killed beasts...if you kill a human, the curse can never be lifted..."

After a moment of hesitation, James Gates brings down the sword and kills the Six Fingered Man, who had just become a teenage boy.

The Black Knight then falls to his knees. His hands shake and tears streak down his face. He can feel the dark liquor of murderous rage infuse his very soul. And he is afraid.


To be continued this Friday in The Black Knight #3: "Hell Goes Round and Round"

NOTE: The index to "The Champions Project" can be found here.

-------------------
*Yes, James Gates is a black man. I meant to mention it in issue #1, but when you're posting nothing but first drafts, stuff slips through the cracks. Dang it. I also meant to make a point of Gates's nerd-itude. These are the risks of writing real quickly.

Making a black man into the new Black Knight could be the product of cluelessness, a bad case of overblown irony, or both. For what it's worth, I do have a reason for it; it's not just a thrown-off irony spiral. The issue of the name will come back later on, and there will be a definite resolution to the issue. It will not be a running gag. I have a plan. Hopefully a good one.


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Hey, just like a real comics company, I've fallen behind! Dang it.

"The Black Knight" #2 wasn't working, so I had to scrap the whole piece and restart it. Rather than reach my half-assed standards, it barely managed to achieve a quarter of an ass. Can't have that, dang it. The improved version will be up on Monday.

So instead, here are three pictures of an American icon, Whiplash the Monkey Cowboy.




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Moondragon #2: The Strange Secret of Tommy Callahan!

Big splash page. Six orangutans wearing suicide bomber vests stand atop two Studebakers that they’ve crashed into the front of a chain diner. They wear hardhats with small speakers mounted on either side. The speakers yell: “HEE-WACK! EVERYBODY DIES NOW!” Alice and Moondragon are in the foreground. Alice says “Tommy?”

Captions on the page read: “The place: South Bend, Indiana! The situation: Suicide-bombing apes! The time left before everybody dies: Two seconds!”

The next page is a series of panels, each one with a wee “ticking clock” showing how much of those two seconds are left. Moondragon tries to “push” the apes away with telekinesis, but finds she can’t. They have some sort of mental “fuzz” around them that prevents her getting a firm “mental grip.” Instead, she mentally grabs the people in the diner and flings all of them, and herself, outside.

The timer in the captions hits zeroes. The diner explodes. The people, however, are safe on the opposite side of the parking lot.

The folks pick themselves up, confusion all over their faces. Moondragon thinks it over for a moment, then yells “Amazing! We were all blown clear!” Her narration explains that she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself, and such a ruse was easy enough. The diner patrons and staff are too stunned by events to think about how absurd that would be.

We see Moondragon and Alice get into Alice’s car. In the background we can see police cars and fire trucks. “That was one hell of a thing,” Alice says. “What’re the odds of that happening? Phew! We are the luckiest--”

Moondragon interrupts her. “Who is Tommy?”

Alice looks confused and fidgety. “Uh...um...Tommy? Tommy Callahan? We dated a couple of years ago.”

“And where is Tommy now?”

“Not real sure.”

“He’s tried to kill you twice in one day. Using apes.”

Alice looks shocked. “You think he’s tryin’ to kill me?”

Moondragon cannot hide her disgust at Alice’s combination of idiocy and denial. Her narration states, “I should leave her here. A man who goes far enough to train assassin apes is not going to stop with two failures. Letting her die could only be a boon to my species.”

Alice speaks again. “Heather? Can you help me?”

Moondragon sighs. Her narration reads “A psionic link between apes. Hm. If nothing else, I have to know.” Her dialogue reads, “Yes, I can help.”

The next morning, we see Alice’s hatchback pull up to a large fenced-in compound in the Indiana countryside. The fencing is twelve feet high and curves inward at the top. Inside the compound are two small houses, several sets of scaffolding standing by themselves, and a large Victorian manor house. Alice says, “His mom said he’s lived and worked here for over a year now.”

Moondragon’s narration says that her telepathic abilities detect nothing but the psychic “fuzz” that made the orangutans impossible to fling around. “This is it,” she says.

They approach the gate of the compound. “Uh…Heather?” Alice asks. “Is it such a smart idea for me to come along? I mean, he is trying to kill—“ She is cut off by the squeal of the gate opening. Pulling it open are a pair of orangutans.

Moondragon says nothing. Alice drives into the compound.

The car is met along the road by a collection of orangutans. Most are in some form of human garb—mechanic’s jumpsuit, tuxedo, a t-shirt saying “It’s Not a Bald Spot, It’s a Solar Panel for a Sex Machine,” etc.

“Get out,” says Moondragon. “We’re here.”

Alice and Moondragon get out of the car and survey the scene. Forty orangutans surround them. A loudspeaker atop a nearby house turns on. “Welcome, Alice! And your strange friend! You’ve made it so easy for me! Thank you so much! Shall I tear you apart now?” The orangutans look at the duo with identical expressions of bloodlust upon their faces.

“By Pama,” Moondragon says. “The apes…all share a single human mind. One consciousness spread across them all.”

Laughter comes from the speakers. “I don’t know how you can tell, but that’s right! Now die! Die at the hands of the Monkey Mind!” At this, the orangutans step as one towards the duo.

Alice screams real loud. Moondragon pulls off her wig and leaps at the nearest ape. “His link is strong. But I can sever it…” She lands in a handstand on one ape’s head. “If I can get close enough.” She vaults off the ape's head and lands in a crowd of them. The apes stop and look in unison at the one that Moondragon touched. Thirty-nine apes move as one. The other scratches himself, a quizzical look on his face. “Yes,” Moondragon thinks.

We then get a big action scene of her jumping and darting through the crowd of apes. Before long, she’s touched and mentally freed each one. (No, we don’t have to see all thirty-nine get freed.)

The work complete, Moondragon approaches the house with the speaker. She kicks down the door. Inside is a handsome man in a three-piece suit, sitting alone in a wingback chair. The man begins to speak. Moondragon ignores his words and stares at him with a furrowed brow. Then her narration says “Ha!”

She kicks him in the head. He falls over.

And his skull swings open on a hinge. The handsome man was a robot. Inside his head is a tiny cockpit. Strapped into its seat is a four-inch high ape-man. Moondragon pulls him out and holds him in her hand. “Hello, Tommy.”

Alice bursts into the scene. “TOMMY?” She sees the tiny ape-man and shrieks. “What happened?”

The ape-man squeaks “He said he’d fix me! He said he had a cure! He promised!”

Alice looks at Moondragon, confused. Moondragon leaves without a word, handing over Monkey Mind to Alice. She strides towards the manor house. On the porch is another man. He too is dressed in a three-piece suit.

This man, however, is anything but handsome. His features are disproportionate and non-symmetrical. Veins are visible through his skin. He drools a little.

“Hello, my dear lady,” the man says. “And who might you be?”

“I’ve destroyed your monkey handler,” she responds. “A sad little man.”

“Indeed he is,” the man replies, "though his talents are invaluable. Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Warren Harding Jones. The Over-Man. Your master. And please do not try anything untoward, for I am more than equipped to kill both you and the troublesome Ms. Coughlin.”

Moondragon probes the man’s mind. And she begins to laugh.

The Over-Man lurches to his feet in a rage. “DO NOT LAUGH! I am the superior man! The product of generations of my family's scientific eugenical breeding! I am pure! I am greater than you! I am this world’s rightful master! I AM THE FUTURE!” With his last declaration, he produces a small revolver from his pocket and aims it at Moondragon.

“You,” says Moondragon, “are a pathetic, inbred little monster.”

Jones’s eyes fill with tears. “I will stand...at the right hand of the…of the…”

Moondragon projects her thoughts into his mind. ”You are less than nothing, you demented worm. I am the Dragon of the Moon!”

Terror fills the few functional brain cells in Jones’s head. He runs inside his house, past Rube Goldberg devices and half-built, rusted-out robots.

We next see Alice enter the house. She finds Moondragon in the kitchen. Jones is on the floor of the kitchen, his head wrapped in aluminum foil. He rocks back and forth, clutching his shins. “Get out of my brain, get out of my brain, get…”

Moondragon acknowledges Alice. “This…man…was behind the attacks. His brain is too addled for me to determine why.”

Alice looks on in shock. “Heather…who are you?”

Moondragon stares at Jones. “When I peer into his mind, all I can see are images of you and the end of the world. To him, they are one and the same.” She levels her gaze at Alice. “The important question is, Alice, who are you?”


To be continued next Friday in Moondragon #3: “Slaves of the Laughing Death!”

NOTE: The index to "The Champions Project" can be found here.

Click here to read more!

Yesterday I severed a longstanding link between myself and the comics community.

For fifteen years, I have shared a powerful bond with one of Marvel Comics’ great icons, the Thing.

But no more.

Behold, the bashful, blue-eyed Thing, idol of millions:

While I too remain bashful, blue-eyed, and the idol of millions, I am no longer a proud Brother of the Monobrow. His craggy uni-brow still runs proudly across his rocky visage. Mine is gone. Now I have only a craggy duo-brow across my own rocky visage.

A close personal friend of the Lovely and Delightful Mrs. Jerkwater is an aesthetician, and yesterday offered to cleave my brows in twain via the hot-wax-and-cloth-and-yank-and victim-yelling method. In a fit of madness, I accepted her offer.

Now the bridge of my nose stands naked, exposed to the elements. Now my brows number two. And now my special link to The Thing is gone. Alas.

On the other hand, it has been made known to me that the ladies tend to prefer a man who has not one, but rather two, eyebrows. Thus did I assent to the mutiliation of my manly monobrow.


I’m sure Ben would understand.

(NOTE: That "click here to read more" link dealy is acting strange. Anybody out there in internet-land know how I can have that link appear in posts that are actually split into two parts? Aargh.)

Click here to read more!

The Black Knight #1: The Black Knight Must Die!

Humanoid monsters shriek in terror and wave their crude weapons in the air as the Ebony Blade slices through their number. Dane Whitman, the Black Knight, carves his way through a crowd of the frightening creatures. As he swings the sword, we see knives and assorted weapons sticking out of his body, and he doesn’t care.

Narration explains that the wielder of the Ebony Blade can’t be harmed. Whitman, a longtime superhero and member of the Avengers, continues his never-ending battle for justice. He is now battling a coven of demi-men on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, protecting the nearby villages from further attacks of the marauding monsters.

Among the monsters stands an old man. The man is dressed in a lime green leisure suit and lacks a single hair on his gnarled head.

Leisure Suit Man moves towards the Black Knight, murder in his eyes. The Knight swings his sword at the strange man.

Splash page: the Ebony Blade shatters into three pieces against the old man’s palm.

Whitman collapses and dies without a sound.


“That’s impossible,” mutters a voice as we look at a jukebox-sized piece of techno-doodlery.

A caption explains that we’re now in Pasadena, California, at the California Institute of Technology. We pull back to see adjunct applied physics professor Dr. James Gates staring at the new Z-Machine that graduate student Jivraj Mehta has been using in his experiments for six months. “Four billion degrees Kelvin?”

Mehta rubs his head and whistles. “That’s two hundred and seventy times hotter than the core of the sun!”

Gates looks puzzled. “Jivraj, what did you do to this thing?”

The two men stare at the machine in silence. The silence is broken when a red sphere the size of a golf ball splats into a wad of goo against the back of Gates’s head. Howls of laughter follow. We see two other grad students on the other side of the lab holding ping-pong ball guns loaded with these spheres of goo, both men doubled over in laughter. One of them cries “HA! Dead fish stench for a week! Revenge is mine, Jimmy!”

Gates rushes to a nearby workbench and brings out an intricate catapult he made from stray lab supplies the night before. A small lab fight breaks out.

Another caption explains that we’re in the upper levels of the Caltech Advanced Applied Research Lab, which, due to its focus on military technologies, is known to its staff as Boomtown.
The combatants, and we, move to an outdoor restaurant. Jokes fly back and forth about the discoloration and rank smell of the back of Gates’s head created by the “Whiffy Ball.”

Hugh McKittrick says, “Jimmy, man, you’re lucky that I only used a level one stinko-shot.”

“How bad can it get?"

"Up to level ten. A number one smells like rotten fish. Number five is worse than a week-old moose corpse covered in fresh dung.”

“Number ten?”

“You don’t wanna know.”

Gates laughs. “You’re brilliant, or stupid, or both. And I will get my revenge.”

The graduate students chat about their projects. Gates is their favorite professor, as he is as not much older than they are, and just as poor, and he usually has keen insights into their research. At this lunch, Mehta, Gates, and McKittrick are swapping ideas with Horst Bausch, who is finishing a prototype of metal and plastic synthetic muscles for use powered armor. The work is based on the work of that loony prodigy and legend of Caltech, Stuart Clarke.

During a lull in conversation, the topic changes. “What about the project in Deep 13?” Mehta asks Gates. “Word has it that the stuff down there’d blow our minds.” Gates admits that he has no idea. It’s way more secret than anything they'd ever let him touch.

The readers, however, get to see Deep 13, a large cylindrical building made of reinforced concrete in heart of Boomtown. We see a team of scientists farting around with a transdimensional portal. It fizzes and pops! The power spikes! And nothing happens. Yet.

That night, Gates returns to his grubby apartment and sits down upon a mound of dirty laundry he's pressed into service as a chair. As his butt drops into the filthy mound of cotton, he feels something odd. Gates reaches inside the mound and finds a sword with a jet black blade that's been broken into three pieces.

Recognizing a prank when he sees one, he wracks his brain to figure out why anyone thought the gag was funny and who would have done it. “Horst? Eric? Hm.”

We see him a week and a half later in his wee cubby in Boomtown. Gates pulls out the sword from a duffel bag and examines it. It felt odd in his hand, and so he figured it was worth a closer look. He thinks how a week’s worth of scans with lab tools can’t place it, nor is he able to break off even a microscopic a piece for closer analysis with any tool in the lab. His mind sinks into the problem, fascinated. "It looks like the sword used by that guy in the Avengers...what was his name?"

As he ponders the “prank” sword, Deep 13’s scientists shriek in terror. Something is crossing through the portal. AAAH!

Boomtown’s central tower shatters, and out of it rises a monster. We can see it only in silhouette, the sun behind it overpowering our “eyes.” The beast has the body of a giant snake, with the head of a lion. And it is angry.

Gates’s section of Boomtown collapses, raining debris. In the chaos, he sees that the exit is blocked by huge slabs from the concrete ceiling and that many of his compatriots are injured.

His mind races and an idea hits him: Horst’s armor. He clambers over the debris and locates the unfinished prototype in the neighboring lab room.

Familiar with the design due to long talks with Horst, he dons the suit and turns it on. He finds it isn’t fully charged, and one of the arms isn’t functional. Hoping for the best, he uses the legs and one good arm of the suit to lift up a giant smashed pylon, opening the way out. The other scientists who can still move help one another shuffle down the hallway, taking with them as much research as they can carry. Gates leads the way.

The hallway roof shatters in front of them, and in comes the head of the monster: a lion’s head with milk-white eyes. Its giant head blocks the passageway. Gates can see that the creature is blind, and that it is sniffing the air to locate prey.

Gates grabs the Whiffy Ball gun from a shocked Hugh and fires a pair of level ten stink spheres into the creature’s giant nostrils. The beast retreats from the hole in the ceiling, howling and cursing in a strange language.

The graduate students emerge from the wreckage of their building and flee. Gates looks back and sees that a handful of the Boomtown scientists have broken out their research projects in an effort to stop the beast. Lasers, fireballs, Kirby Krackles, all strike the beast to no effect. It roars that it is Samael the Blind God, and it will destroy the unrighteous.

Gates stares in wonder, torn between wanting to help and wanting to run like hell.

Before he can decide, a vision appears to him. A ghostly knight, bucket-helmet and all, speaks to him. “The blade!” it says. “The forge!” The ghost-knight draws forth his phantom sword, which shatters into three pieces in mid-air.

For another moment, Gates stands stock-still, the word “guh” written across his face.

Then we see him running back through the ruined hallways and into Mehta’s lab, certain that (a) he’s losing his mind and (b) his idea might work. He finds the pieces of the sword and locks them into the magnetic containment field of the Z-Machine. One mighty blast of the hyper-heated plasma later, the sword is somehow, despite all logic to the contrary, once again whole and unscathed.

The scene moves to the exterior of the Boomtown complex. Samael is chewing a bus in half. From a nearby rooftop, Gates prepares himself. “Oh man,” he thinks. "Bad idea, bad idea, bad idea..."

He redirects all of his armor’s power to the legs, then leaps at the beast. He arcs thirty yards in the air, and as he reaches the beast, stabs down with the sword into the creature’s serpentine body. The blade slices through the monster's hide with little resistance. Gates slides down the creature’s length, the sword cutting open the beast as he goes. (Only a little bit of blue ooze spills out of the beast, so it’s not too disgusting.)

Gates reaches the ground as Samael the Blind God falls dead.

Gates is shaking from the excitement and fear, hoping that somebody, somewhere will buy him a drink.

A gnarled old man in a lime green leisure suit appears behind Gates and puts his hand on Gates’s shoulder. “Upon your head now hangs the curse of the Ebony Blade.”

Gates whirls. “The what?!”


To be continued next Friday in The Black Knight #2: The Fist of Six Fingers!

NOTE: The index to "The Champions Project" can be found here.

Click here to read more!

Moondragon #1: Plague of Apes

Page one: a small starship lands on the outskirts of South Bend, Indiana. We read narration: “I return to the planet of my birth.” Out of the ship strides a six-foot tall white woman dressed in nondescript jeans, sneakers, and a t-shirt. She is bald as can be. The narration continues, “Though it is not my home.”

The bald woman surveys a suburban housing development in the distance as she pulls on a brunette wig. “Nor am I one of them.” A gentle breeze blows as she watches a school bus roll past and laughing children run by. Disgust flits across her face.

“A plague of apes,” she fumes. The woman introduces herself to the reader. She is Heather Douglas, known as Moondragon.

Pages two and three: Double splash. The scene is inside a giant metal dome. Smooth metal sculptures and wild green plants curve throughout it. A bolt of Kirby Crackle energy arcs across two poles in the background. Stone sculptures that resemble tiki gods occupy key portions of the floor, fountains of mercury pouring down the sculptures, forming gleaming rivers and pools. Strange and beautiful humanoid beings costumed in garish outfits fly and run around the scene. The scene is big, bold, and striking. The goal is to make the reader think “woo, that sure is somethin’.”

In the foreground of this magnificent scene, we see Moondragon walking straight towards the reader in her normal attire (the science-fictiony thing depicted here). She is also big, bold, and striking.

Her narration explains that her home is on Titan, a moon of Saturn, where she was raised by the Priests of Shao-Lom. Yesterday, she tells us, she came to the Dome of Pama, a great unease weighing upon her.

We see her talk to the High Priestess of Shao-Lom, seeking to understand her disquiet. The Priestess suggests Moondragon meditate for six hundred years. She then points to a quiet corner of the Dome, where a collection of Titanians sit, lost in nigh-eternal trances. “They grow wise, and over the centuries the disquiet in their minds returns to silence. Join them and know peace, my daughter.”

Moondragon grows angry. She reminds the priestess that her human lifespan is measured in decades, not millennia. The priestess, confused, begins to spit out non sequitur homilies. Moondragon leaves, seething. The Titanians cannot understand the problem, she decides, much less provide an answer.

A montage shows us her life as she remembers it. Orphaned as a child by the insane space god Thanos, she was rescued by his father, Mentor, and brought to Titan. She was raised in a city hidden below the surface of that distant moon, where she was trained in the arts of the mind and the body. Upon reaching maturity, she fought Thanos himself, stood alongside the superheroes of Earth against cosmic menaces, tried and failed to become the Celestial Madonna, declared herself a goddess of an alien world, suffered punishment for her hubris from the Norse Gods, defeated the monster known as the Dragon of the Moon, died, was reborn, and returned to Titan, a great and mysterious hunger gnawing at her.

(Yeah, she has a convoluted and wacky history, even by comic book standards.)

Her narration continues as we jump back to the present. Moondragon is walking through a residential American neighborhood, watching the people. Human nature, she notes, is alien to her. Yet she herself is human. Life among the primitives, she decides, may provide an insight to her problem. She selected the city of South Bend, Indiana, because it was her mother's ancestral homeland.

Her stroll stops at a house. In its yard is a sign: “Madame Alice: Psychic.” Moondragon’s curiosity gets the better of her, and she enters the house. Perhaps another telepath like her might be of aid?

Inside she finds Alice Coughlin, “psychic,” offering advice to an elderly woman. A quick mind-scan by Moondragon tells her that Alice is a giant fraud. A big-haired, ugly-sweatered, too-tight-jeans-wearing, fraud. Moondragon takes a seat to wait for her “reading” and fumes. “Ridiculous,” Moondragon thinks. “Humans. They let themselves be fooled by—“

Before she can complete her thought, four orangutans bearing spearguns, their pelts smeared with peanut butter, burst into the house. The four apes wear hardhats with speakers mounted on them.

Their speakers boom out in unison: “ALICE! WE’VE COME FOR YOU! SOCK HOP TIME!”

One ape fires a spear at Alice. It creases the air and flies towards the woman’s heart.

Until it is caught by Moondragon.

Still dressed in normal clothes, Moondragon unloads one standard barrel of industrial-grade, kung fu-flavored whoopass upon the orangutans. Spears fly through the air, and she either catches or deflects them all. She uses the cords trailing from the spears to tangle and trip the apes as she flies around and punches the animals out. The old woman and Alice are paralyzed by fear.

Once it’s over, she looks at Alice and scans her mind. Alice has no idea what’s going on. The apes are impervious to Moondragon’s powers, what with being apes and all.

The old woman coughs and asks Moondragon what she was doing there, and if she’d like a mint.

“I’m here to…get advice from Madame Alice. And no, thank you.”

Alice and Moondragon decamp to a nearby chain diner. They mention that Animal Control took away the apes, and wonder at the strangeness of the attack. “That was incredible,” Alice says. “And where did you learn that karate stuff, Heather? That was amazing!”

“I grew up...abroad,” Moondragon explains. An incurious Alice considers this explanation enough.

As the sun goes down, Moondragon’s contempt meets with her curiosity, and she prompts to Alice perform an impromptu “psychic reading” in the diner.

Alice isn’t just wrong, she’s hilariously wrong. (“You are a kind and humble person…You should go back to your boyfriend. He is sorry, and he loves you very much.” Moondragon, a lesbian who is anything but kind or humble, says nothing and tries to look astonished at Alice’s “insights.”)

As Alice yaps, Moondragon ponders the mystery of the orangutan attack. A deep scan of Alice’s mind produced nothing that would be a clue as to the apes’ master. She sees that Alice’s daughter Stacey is estranged, and rightfully so, but not dangerous. Alice's ex-husband Bob wouldn’t bother to train and dispatch a hit squad of apes; he’d just yell at her.

The scene jumps to the outside of the diner, across the street to a Studebaker museum. We see the silhouettes of orangutans messing with the cars.

Back in the diner, Moondragon discovers the wonder that is strawberry rhubarb pie. Humanity, she realizes, has its charms.

Then a pair of 1955 Studebakers crash into the front of the diner. The cars are filled with orangutans, all wearing hardhats with head-mounted speakers and vests made of plastic explosive. All of the speakers cry out “HEEEE-WACK! EVERYBODY DIES NOW!”

Alice rises from her seat. “Tommy?”

Then the diner explodes, desecrating the Indiana night with fire, debris, and small chunks of roasted ape.

To be continued next Friday in Moondragon #2: The Strange Secret of Tommy Callahan!


NOTE: The index to "The Champions Project" can be found here.
Click here to read more!