David Dee wrote:

Just ask Hitler. His brain is in a jar somewhere.
It's always Hitler's brain.

You mean he isn't--THE HATEMONGER in this universe?

His personality could switch clone bodies, though, which is why he kept
popping up despite there actually being a body on hand when HM bit it. I
swore good old Arnim Zola had that brain in a jar somewhere. Then the Red
Skull stuffed it in a fake Cosmic Cube. Not sure where it is now.

Or Dr. Sun, but I digress.

Actually who I was thinking of, believe it or not--the
idea is an encounter with Sun a while back has set off
the Inu-Yasha/Hikaru debate on life as a brain...

I actually liked Dr. Sun. One of the few villains to realize vampires have
nifty abilities in mind control that could be brought under his control.
Although after he made the comic version of that Saturday morning atrocity
H.E.R.B.I.E, he had to die.

do the job, one clumsily thrown slow projectile
will."

"I might luck out," grumbled Yuri.

Hit a vulnerable point. Yep.

With an unwieldy projectile going very slowly.  Yep.

It's like an off speed pitch. It catches people off guard.

Hikaru blinked. "Amnesia?"

Nadia stared at him. "You seem skeptical."

"It's greatly overrated," noted Hikaru,

Namor suffered repeatedly from it. Three or four
times, I believe.

I'm refering to the first case, where the Human Torch
found him as a homeless man, and snapped him out of
it.  In about a panel.

Actually, given Namor's predicament, that probably would work. Espcially if
Destiny's mental block had worn down over the years. The catch is Namor had
two or three other memory losses in his silver age title's run. In a way, I
guess it was an Achillies Heel of his, which is a unique problem for a super
hero.

They don't write them like that anymore.  And that's
probably a good thing, when you get down to it...

Bah, it was fun, as opposed to, say, Ann Nocenti's run of using Daredevil as
her personal soapbox in ways that made Marvel's early anti-communist themes
seem downright sublime. And don't get me started on Ellis and his run on
Iron Man. You got to love his Micheal Moore clone accusing Stark of not
helping the world. Sure, if we discount the, oh, three hundred or so times
he actually physically saved it, and ignored all the charities and
technologies that he's been shown over the years of doing, then yes, I
suppose designing a landmine would make him pure unadulterated evil CEO
material. *rolls eyes*

Grandis scowled as he hacked up a large bit of
mucus. "Honestly, grandfather, that is disgusting."

Agree. Don't seem too many old villains like him,
though. I like him already.

Well, his father WAS a WWII supervillain, after all.
Which means Maynard is now getting on in years
himself.

Actually you shouldn't use that as a standard. Assume the current RM is the
same age as the contemporaries he's fought. Otherwise Stark was wounded in
Nam, Ben Grimm and Reed Richards fought in WWII, etc.

 And what drew me to Maynard was his insane

criminal scheme of going from town to town,
hypnotising his audience, and then having the Circus
steal as much money and possessions as they could
carry, a scheme that was not only impractical--it was
incredibly underwhelming.

But that was the fun of it. He was never more than a low level thief, and
never aspired to be more. He knew his place in the scheme of things. You got
to respect that.

Grandis groaned. "You want me to get the snake,
don't you?"

Heh. It always was an incredibly lame ability of
hers, snake charming.

What made it worse is they didn't even bother to give
her any other abilities, like say, being a
contortionist, or an acrobat.  Nope.  She had a snake.
That was it.  (Also, she was a woman, which stopped
Spider-Man from decking once in the Ditko days.  Ahh,
the 60s...)

I'm currently rereading my run of Avengers (have to do something with my
completed comic collection) Having fun, too. Some of those stories I've only
read once. Up to their fight with the Keeper of the Flame and Prince Rey.

"Among other things. I'm exceedingly versatile."
Hikaru shrugged. "Actually I'm practically
omnipotent, given ideal time and circumstances."

But then, aren't we all?

In comics?

No, I meant in real life. Under the right conditions, I could be
omnimpotent. It's just a question of finding those right conditions.

 Just about.  That said, some heroes are

more so than others.  Dr. Strange is one of them...

"Grandfather," said Grandis in choked tones, "the
damn snake's trying to strangle me."

Heh

Which hits my biggest objection to Princess
Python--snake-charming isn't actually commanding the
snake--it's not freaking out as the snake wraps around
you.  It just looks impressive to onlookers because,
in all honesty, how many people are willing to drape
themselves in snakes?

Actually it was revealed at one point she has some very low level mental
ability to control animals, which is why snakes can actually obey her verbal
orders, despite the species being too stupid to understand a verbal order.
It's not useful for much of anything else.

"I can't help my nature," replied Hikaru. "Though
the fact you used the word 'patronizing' will cut
down on my condescending."

"What if I use the word 'hemorrhage'?" asked Nadia.

Heh. She's as nasty as he is

Well, she is this universe's equivalent to one of
Marvel's biggest snobs.

Heh. True. It made him refreashing, in many ways. As did the fact the
Invisible Girl had the hots for him for a while. She wasn't above being
attracted to his confidence and power. ^_^

By the way, I think we could have used a better

description of Grandis here.

I think you're right.  Thanks for the recommendation.

I should have mentioned it earlier.

"It is strangely lovely, is it not? I wonder if it
is ready for-THE HERALD OF GALACTUS?"

Hmm. I already had plans for Big G and the Surfer, so
I'm assuming this is  some poser. I guess we'll see

Yep.  This is the Herald of a different Galactus.

Hmm. That should be okay. I'm now toying with the idea of there being two
others copping his act (No, neither of them are the Whoopi Goldberg-actus
who popped up in Power Pack a million years ago.)

Anyway, Surfer was a valuable on-off component of the
Defenders, and is still strongly identified with them,

Strong enough to have been in that Defenders revival a while back, the one
where they became The Order and tried to rule the world. Sort of like an
more honest version of 'The Authority' when you stop and think about it.

so I needed some character to refer to that.  Rest
assured--it's not this universe's equivalent to the
Surfer.

I'm aware that some people may not like the story
choices I've made in this chapter,

Eh. It works for me, and you can't please everyone

Well, thanks, and I know, but I still want people to
like this story.  And sometimes, I'm very sensitive to
negative criticism.

I might be doing the same thing in a few upcoming chapters. I've been
hinting at it, especially in the last chapter when I was showing some of
what was going on in the world. I want to go against the grain and do
something a little different, but it'll probably hack some people off. Then
again, it would be dishonest of me to avoid doing something that would make
the story stronger simply because some people might be irked by it. And it's
not like I'm getting paid or anything...

Anyway, I've started on the next chapter and hope to work on it soon.

DB Sommer



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