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The Hooded Hood Chronicles #18: The Hooded Hood and the Return of the Lair Legion Friday, 10-Dec-1999 19:38:19
The Hooded Hood Chronicles #18: The Hooded Hood and the Return of the Lair Legion Hmm. This story’s been going on for quite a while. Better try something different to wake the readers up. I know, let’s try using different comics styles, see how the tale would have been spun if it was presented in different titles. Let’s start with Kurt Busiek’s Astro City: The plot so far is that by temporarily exiling the heroes from the Parodyverse, the Hooded Hood has managed to gain control over the continuity stream, a control which he will inevitably consolidate in a very short time to make him supreme ruler. In the meantime he has taken over the world governments and instituted a series of reforms to sort out world poverty, war, pollution, and dog fouling. Now the Legion are back and intend to stop him. Meanwhile, Zemo, who is the focal point of the Hood’s revenge plan, has reacted badly to all of this and has therefore arranged for the world-sucking Galactivac to come and destroy the planet rather than allow the cowled crime-czar to triumph. So we have the Lair Legion arriving in Herringcarp Asylum, the Hood’s shadow-laden headquarters (imagine a gothic old mansion drawn by Neil Adams) to battle their enemies the Purveyors of Peril. And we have Galactivac landing in downtown Paradopolis and setting up his world-sucking apparatus atop the Parody Tower. So, in the best traditions of Astro City we will open our story from the perspective of a man in an office in a different town working his way through a pile of official documents. Herbert Philip Garrick was a contented man. Every day for twenty years of his government service he had diligently written little memos about the changes to procedure and policy which he felt would improve his country. Every day he had passed them to the President’s office. And every day they had been ignored and unacknowledged. The memos about compulsory DNA registering to bring down crime. The memos about a seven p.m. curfew for under 21’s. The memo about licensing super-heroes so that they would be under the supervision of a responsible adult. And then three days ago he had been summoned to the Oval Office and his memos, all his memos, were there on the President’s desk. And the man in the President’s chair had promoted him and put him in charge of doing all the things it said on the notes, right down to the proposal about ensuring that lady superheroes wore costumes covering all their flesh from neck to toe and the one recommending that the heroes should have to use sensible super-hero names (hence Banjoooo was now Sea Monkey Lad, Fin Fang Foom was Large Dragon Man, and the late spiffy would be referred to as Useless Boy). So Herbert Garrick had begun his new career, as hard-case jobsworth for, well, if not the President, at least the man in his chair, the Hooded Hood. There was a lot of paperwork to make it happen. But Herbert Garrick liked paperwork. Then his day started to slide downhill. The ground trembled, there was a huge crunching sound echoing across the city, and a bloom of smoke rose up towards Capitol Hill. “Tch,” Garrick frowned. He carefully put his pen in the correct section of his desk pen-holder and touched an intercom button. “Ms Prendergast, what is the nature of the unseemly and unauthorised explosion that has just occurred?” he checked. “Sorry, Mr Garrick,” the secretary, wearing her now-uniform maxi-skirt answered. “A large helicarrier has just crash-landed on the House of Congress.” “Drury!” Garrick snarled, his blood pressure spiking upwards at the thought of that maverick, cigar-in-no-smoking-zone-chomping, never-seemed-to-shave-properly director of the Super-menace Principal Undercover Directorate (SPUD) causing damage in Washington without a permit. He strode to the window and focussed the binoculars he had correctly requisitioned (as a tool against senior government officials committing fellatio with research assistants) upon the mangled and brimstone-scorched wreck of the great flying fortress. Drury was most undoubtedly there. Somehow the man’s shirt had been reduced to tatters, but he stood atop the multi-billion pound wreck of the government’s most expensive ordinance (and who was going to fill in the insurance forms, Garrick fumed, answer him that?) with a large gun in one hand and a cigar between his teeth and he sprayed bullets at one of the small number of devils from the pit which had clung on as the SPUD carrier had escaped from the demonic netherworld where it had been trapped. Overhead a winged, armoured figure, once known as Darkhwk but now classified and properly spelled as Flying Armoured Man battled a many-tentacled horned thing with no regard for city air traffic ordinances. And behind the agent of SPUD three young women in totally illegal superhero costumes – well, more or less in totally illegal superhero costumes – were polishing off the last of the marauding fiends. Henry Philip Garrick was not going to allow this kind of thing to disrupt the plans he had for an orderly new world. Bad News Phil picked up the phone and ordered Ms Prendergast to summon the Purveyors of Peril to take these perpetrators into custody. “I’m sorry, Mr Garrick,” his assistant told him, “but the Purveyors are unavailable at the moment on account of being locked in a life-and-death struggle with the returned Lair Legion over at Herringcarp Asylum.” “No!” snarled Garrick. “This just isn’t happening. The world was becoming so orderly. And now those… those Legionnaires and Drury have returned to… to have adventures all over it. Well I won’t allow it. Ms Prendergast, put me through to the Hooded Hood himself.” There was a short pause for telephony, and then the rich Latvian tones of the Hooded Hood filled the earpiece. “This is the Hood. I am unable to come to the telephone just now as I am away crushing my enemies. More specifically, I am seeking out Baron Heinrich Zemo so as to wreak my terrible revenge upon him. Please leave your message after the beep.” Garrick savagely terminated the connection. “The world is going mad,” he complained to Ms Prendergast. “Yes sir,” she agreed. She chose her moment and tone carefully before telling him about the world-eating cosmic entity that had just alighted on Parody Tower. OK, enough of that style. Let’s do a bit of Christopher Priest from Black Panther: SLICES AND DICES AND CHOPS ALL IN ONE Lisa was outnumbered twelve to one and she was pretty sure that they weren’t going to play fair. At the forefront of the advancing Purveyors of Peril was Mother Whipcord, and the very sight of the strict, frowning disciplinarian nun was enough to spin Lisa into a series of unexplained flashback panels. There was little, innocent Lisa, orphaned, separated from her beloved brother, disappearing through the darkened doorway to the Little Sisters of Discipline Orphanage, about to receive her just punishment for the sinful wearing of a flowery dress. And there was Lisa, all grown up and rebellious, first donning the studded leather costume of the world-famous superhero (although she gave it back to him afterwards). And Lisa and Jarvis, together, the core of the Legion, standing in triumph over the ruins of many Manga caricatures after the International Incident. And finally, Lisa alone, her life shattered by the arrival of Melissa, Jarvis’ true love from another timeline, and the return of Mother Whipcord and the Sister of Discipline. Even now, Mother Whipcord was unwrapping the holy-water soaked cat o’nine tails and stalking towards the abandoned heroine and saying the dreaded words, “Lisa Waltz… you have been a very, very bad girl.” Appendage Man snickered. He was going to enjoy this. “I get to keep the head for my collection,” HeadCase reminded them. “Then I get dibs on her poor broken heart,” PsychoAcidPervGrrl! asserted. “I want to throw it at Jarvis!” YOU NEVER GAVE ME A SINGLE SUNSET Lisa knew that she was finished. She had made her choice and it was going to kill her. The Hooded Hood had allowed her the chance to reign in his perfect world of no free will, and she had chosen to oppose him. She had decided that in the end she had to be true to herself. There were more inexplicable recap panels from other parts of the story. Lisa watching as her older sister, the diabolical Dr Moo, Magna c-- Laude from the Little Sisters of Discipline Orphanage, geneticist extraordinare, came a very definite second in the ambush Lisa herself had prepared. The mind-controlled Lair Legion were Lisa’s tools, and Moo had no chance against the robot precision of the superteam’s attack. “Lisa! What are you doing!” Moo had called as she tried to evade the Gaaahhhh! blasts and the Spank Ray and the repulsors and the Jarvis bolts and Mjalcolm. “I am remembering all those times that you and your minions attempted to kill me,” Lisa answered. “And I am giving you some payback before slaughtering you.” Moo was pinned down beneath Sersi and Fin Fang Foom. “Lisa! How can you do this? You’re the nice one!” “I am the nasty one now,” Lisa had explained. “They took everything from me, so now I have nothing more to lose. Die, sister!” But even then Lisa hadn’t been able to finish it. Moo languished with the other members of the Scourge of the BZL in some pocket dimension behind one of the asylum doors at Herringcarp. And Moo was worried about her sister. Then there was the image of the Hooded Hood standing beside Lisa on the balcony of the White House, the crowds cheering his ascendancy because even now he had that much control over the populace of the Parodyverse. “There is much we still have to accomplish, Lisa,” the cowled crime-czar had confided in her. “With your assistance we can make this universe work properly. We can create one pristine strand of continuity in which there is no error, no pain, no suffering.” “No choice,” Lisa had pointed out. The Hooded Hood shrugged. “Choice is a small price to pay for universal peace,” he judged. “And at least here you have a place. Here you are needed.” Lisa remembered her so-called Legion friends. When she had been all alone in the helicarrier interrogation centre with that nightmare from her childhood, Mother Whipcord, where had those friends been? When they went to face the terrible Yurt had they even bothered to call her? She had been left imprisoned, confined with the woman who now had Jarvis’ love. Did they need her in any way? “Do… do you need me?” she asked the green-eyed figure. She was almost afraid of the answer. And last there was the picture of the Dark Knight, beaten but not broken, hung in chains after Lisa herself had betrayed him to the Hood. And his words still echoed in her ears, the words which had made her give up the last person who cared for her because it was the right thing to do: “I am a man who believes in very little these days…but I do believe in Lisa.” Finally, back to Lisa, about to die horribly at the hands of the Purveyors of Peril. Lisa doing what she always had done in moments of grave danger, summoning help from her friends, forgetting that they were her friends no longer, that they were but mindless pawns under the control of the Hooded Hood. And the Lair Legion came. Lisa had no way of knowing that at that very moment the real Legion were returned to their bodies by a complicated chain of events involving spiffy, Visionary, Fleabot, NTU-150, the SPUD helicarrier and all the other stuff that went on last chapter. But that moment Lisa was to find out that her friends were, in fact, very much there for her. Now a quick reprise in the style of modern Mark Waid Captain America. Let’s see, we need a hero with no superpowers against a cosmic villain that all common sense indicates would mulch him, with a universe at stake… spiffy stood on the burning brimstone fields of the abyss wondering about the sudden lack of powerful Legionnaires to fight the insanely irritated archfiend Mefrothto. He had no way of knowing that NTU-150 had managed to reverse the transportation effect which had brought them all here, and that the Legion were now off to comfort Lisa as described in the previous section. All he knew was that he was in deep, deep trouble going one on one with a very pissed Prince of Hell. spiffy decided it was time for some old time religion. His prayer went up with all the fervent desperation that a man who his about to be on the receiving end of a three hundred yard long pitchfork can muster. Then the cathedral fell on Mefrothto. spiffy’s view was that this was a miracle. Even if he had been aware of the mechanics of the appearance of a large ecclesiastical building directly over the head of the Lord of Fibs, namely the requirement for equal masses of matter to swap planes to enable the helicarrier’s dimensional jump, the fern-boy would have been inclined to give some kudos to the Big Guy. Of course, there was still the little matter of the infinite legions of hell who were now surrounding spiffy in an impenetrable circle. “Back,” spiffy warned them. “There’s more churches where that came from.” They all knelt down and paid him homage. “Um…?” A rather attractive young demoness with bat wings and a taste for red leather and lace stepped forward. “Hail, master,” she purred. “You have conquered the dread lord and have become ruler of this tier of the underworld.” “I… I have?” “Yes,” promised the succubus. “Now all here are at your absolute command, and an infinity of pleasures are yours.” She breathed deeply. “What would you like to do first, o master?” spiffy began to smile; but before it became a grin he felt himself fading out. “What’s happening?” he demanded. “It seems as though you are being summoned away,” the attractive demoness pouted. “It would appear that you are being… rescued from hell.” spiffy felt himself vanishing, going to the place where he would meet and be saved by Hollywood V. “Noooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!” Then we could do Paul Jenkins’ Inhumans. That means that there should be loads of characterisation but nothing ever happens. I know, how about: Visionary looked around him. There was a lot of corn. “Fleabot?” “Visionary.” “What just happened to me?” “I think you were possessed, went to hell whilst your body talked to the Shaper and the Chronicler, went to hell physically as well as spiritually, joined up with your body, met Cheryl, rescued the Yurt, got hit a lot, and then came back here,” Fleabot assessed. “I thought so. Was that spiffy there?” “Yes. His last words were, ‘Tell the Legion they’ve got to…’” The corn waved in the wind. “Fleabot?” “Visionary.” “Do you think we should go back to Cheryl?” “Do you?” The corn waved some more. But what we really want to see is the big battle between the Lair Legion and the Purveyors of Peril, which means that we have to turn the rest of this episode over to Lee and Kirby, ‘cause after all these years there’s still no-one does a massive superhero fight scene batter than Stan and Jack. Let’s start with one of those scenes where the heroes and villains line up opposite each other in an improbable line-dance formation. This allows the reader to remember who is who and which side they are one. And because each of the Legion has an enemy plucked from an alternate timeline to face them we might as well introduce them in pairs. That disgusting thing with all the extra limbs and, um, bits, is the appalling Appendage Man. The dragon facing him and trying not to get too grossed out is Fin Fang Foom, last of the Makulans. That’s Makulans, an alien draconic race, not the Red Indians who wore those funny Mr T haircuts. The strange purply-blue smear silhouette is the physical presence of Gromm, the Living Flatulence, one of the ancient evils, as anyone who has been trapped in a locker room jockstrap hamper will attest. His adversary is the king of the sea-monkeys, Banjooooo, who has been genetically bred in some timelines as a guardian against the return of Gromm. That’s why sea-monkeys have no noses. The two large muscly blond men whirling weapons round their heads are Hämmerblade and Donar. Both are thunder godlings and both are getting cross. Both are shouting things like, “Vile impostor, prepare to eat mine weapon!” Hämmerblade is the one with the fancy braids in his hair. Donar is the one with the bits of last night’s feast in his. The undead cyborg thing is Expired Warranty, a techno-geek with the ability to cause all mechanical devices to malfunction. Across from him is NTU-150, an armoured superhero with the ability to cause only those devices he made himself to malfunction. PsychoAcidPervGrrl! faces off against her alternate-reality half-brother almost lover CrazySugarFreakBoy! Don’t ask. Hatman, the Lair Legionnaire, collects hats and can gain the abilities of the person whose hat he is wearing. His Purveyors of Peril counterpart, HeadCase, collects heads and gains the abilities of whoever’s head he is wearing at the moment. Talk about having to go one better. The guy in the white disco suit with the gold medallions is Partycrasher, an Austernal like his adversary and date for tonight, Sersi. Already his prehensile chest hairs are reaching out for Sersi’s own famous chest. However, he is about to ask her out for a burger, which given Sersi’s recent experience is going to be enough to send her absolutely postal. Speaking of which, Messenger is facing down the mutated dog-things Rottweiler and the Terrier. Try thinking of Wolverine without the charm and eloquence and you’re not too far off Rottweiler. Terrier is much the same but due to his size can’t attack above waist height. Since they outnumber Messenger two-to-one it looks like Starseed will have to join in here as well. Starseed is pretty miffed that he hasn’t got a counterpart of his own in this group, on account of Jarvis forgetting to put his name on the list of current Lair Legion members a little while ago. Rocket Racoon and Turbo Treesloth are both kinds of vermin with jet packs. One of them is an irritating little deviant of little value to society and the other is the bad guy. Mother Whiplash of course seeks out Lisa. She knows that the errant young woman has always been terrified of her, and she enjoys it so very much. Finally, the young lady in the black velvet is, of course, the svelte VelcroVixen. She’s facing her counterpart, the morning-suited leader of the Legionnaires, Jarvis. There’s time for a little dialogue here. Vixy: “So, you came back for more, eh’ Jarvy? You never could stay away.” Now she expected Jarvis to say something back like, “I’m going to send you away for good this time, VelcroVixen.” Actually, being in a completely foul mood, he actually said, “F*$% you, bitch!” and hit her. The Purveyors of Peril were pretty certain that they had the advantage even then. After all, in the timelines they had come from they were familiar with battling these foes. Since being recruited by the Hooded Hood they had practised annihilating the team again and again in different timestreams; this was just one more Legion. What they had not realised was that this Legion had just been through a series of increasingly tough trials, against the Yurt, the Sentinoids, alternate timeline hells, even Mefrothto and his hordes. This team was really, really, fed up with it all and they were just spoiling to express their irritation on the nearest supervillains. And, of course, this time the Lair Legion has The Plan. You know, The Plan… the one that hero groups always use when they’re up against foes who know their every move. The everyone swap their bad guy to the left plan. Hence Fin Fang Foom went straight past the twitching Appendage Man and breathed on Gromm, the Living Flatulence. Hence the really huge explosion as flammable gasses backflashed through Herringcarp Asylum. Starseed dropped his Gaaahhhh! shield as soon as the flames subsided and punted the Terrier before it could start trying to rape his leg. Expired Warranty tried to reach NTU-150. If he could just take out all of Enty’s circuitry before the fight proper began he could claim the first kill. He actually ran into two hundred and sixty pounds of combat-trained postman with a very special delivery. And not one of Messenger’s abilities depended on high technology. Messenger had an old-fashioned low-tech whup-ass for him. HeadCase put on his Hulk Hogan head and leaped over towards Hatman. Banjoooo intervened and knocked his block off. PsychoAcidPervGrrl! avoided Space Ghost’s clumsy attempts to interpose himself between her and CrazySugarFreakBoy! She had unfinished business with her bouncing brother. “Hey, Dreamy!” she called. “Time for a second date!” But just then she was seized by a fast moving bundle of fur and smashed through the roof of Herringcarp Asylum. “Did someone say… a date,” leered Rocket Racoon at fifteen thousand feet. That left CrazySugarFreakBoy! free to irritate Turbo Treesloth. “C’mon, Turby! Even if you have got lame powers and a pretty poor costume you should be able to do better than that! Man, you aren’t gonna make my villains top ten even though I haven’t fought ten villains yet!” Jarvis sidestepped a savage charge by the Rottweiler and power-blasted him through a wall. “Bad dog!” he said almost by reflex and left NTU-150 to follow up with his repulsors. The butler looked around to see how the battle was going. Hatman had his fashion critic’s chapeau on and was savaging VelcroVixen’s choice of ensemble, makeup, and accessories. It looked as though he had her on the ropes with some telling comments about the choice of blusher. Space Ghost and Mother Whipcord were mutually flagellating each other; that was merely a contest of endurance. Lisa was involved in another trial of stamina with Appendage Man. The multi-membered monster had never been forced to try and retreat before. Elsewhere things were getting a little out of hand. “Sersi! Remember the plan!” Jarvis called out as he saw the Ausgardian batter Partycrasher through a wall. “Take someone else on, someone who doesn’t know your weaknesses!” “He used the b-word!” Sersi shrieked. She transmuted the west wing of the asylum into special sauce to drown the groping little weiner. “Hey, hon, I was only glub,” Partycrasher glubbed. He had never faced a Sersi in burger-counter denial before. “Donar! The plan!” Jarvis tried again, noticing the semi-god of thunder still battling against his counterpart Hämmerblade. “Thou castest me from yon Legion, with loss of expense account privileges,” Donar reminded the LL’s leader. “Therefore thy plans mean naught to me.” Jarvis had been hoping that wouldn’t come up. Donar just continued to introduce his adversary to the joys of Mjalcolm. “Have at thee, foul hairdressing Liefield version of mineself! Come and have a go if thou thinkest thou art hard enough.” More of the roof caved in as PsychoAcidPervGrrl bounced down and steadied herself against the wall. “Important note for future confrontations,” she announced. “When you seduce Rocket Racooon at fifteen thousand feet and then grab the rocket pack off the little rat and leave him to plummet to his death, remember that he can operate the thing by… remote… control…” Then she slumped onto the floor. Rocket Racoon jetted down through the rafters and slipped his phone number into her cleavage in case she wanted to call him when she woke up. “Hey, RR!” CrazySugarFreakBoy! shouted. “I guess you’re a lot more manoeuvrable than this Turbo Treesloth character! I just did the old get-him-mad-so-he-charges-at-me-in-front-of-a-wall trick and look!” CSFB! moved to one side to show the hind quarters of a stunned rodentiform protruding from the stones of the ancient asylum. “If his head’s sticking out the other side we could put a frame round it with a little title underneath,” Rocket Racoon considered. “Let’s do it!” CSFB! agreed, and the two of them bounced away to find the other end of their adversary. “Looks like they both ended up with a piece of tail,” Messenger commented, dropping the pulped and unconscious form of Expired Warranty onto the ground, neatly wrapped in brown paper and string. There were a series of additional explosions from the basements where Foom was still pursuing Gromm the Living Flatulence and inflaming the situation. Banjoooo was likewise still battling. “How many heads does this guy have?” he complained, decapitating Marilyn Monroe. He had absolutely no wish to see what was up HeadCase’s skirt. The Donar / Hämmerblade conflict was just about to reach a climax as well. With hammer and pick hopelessly tangled up and impossible to see in this bloody storm, the two immortals we getting down and dirty. And those fashionable braids on the sides of Hämmerblade’s hair made perfect handles for Donar to grab hold of them and bring his opponent’s face down into contact with his own forehead. “Thou hast broken my node!” Hämmerblade complained as he bled onto his tunic. “Thy nose ist going to be the least of thy problems, buddy,” Donar promised. “Anybody need help?” Starseed asked, flying down to the wreackage of the main fight with the Terrier wrapped inside a lamp-post, which seemed like poetic justice. Jarvis checked. Hatman had VelcroVixen in tears now about her choice of eyeliner. Donar and Hämmerblade were disrupting the entire weather system of the Northern Hemisphere. All those butterflies that caused storms had given up and gone home to their larvae. NTU-150 was busily demonstrating to Rottweiler that adamantium claws conduct electricity. Appendage Man was lying spent and panting trying to fit three dozen cigarettes into mouths he had grown for the purpose but not having the strength to do it. Space Ghost lay tied up in Mother Whiplash’s cat o’ nine tails. And Partycrasher was… well, it involved lots of masonry and swearing. Wait a minute, Jarvis’ mind said, go back to that bit about Space Ghost. Space Ghost was tangled in the Little Sister of Discipline’s whip. Mother Superior was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Lisa. The Hooded Hood approached the Portal of Portentousness, the ultimate product of his reality-retconning abilities. He was supremely indifferent to which team defeated the other in the battle outside. The actions of the heroes were irrelevant now. It was time to consolidate this timestream as the one and only strand of Parodyverse continuity. A cloaked figure stepped out of the shadows to bar the cowled crime-czar’s way to the Portal. “No further,” the Dark Knight warned. “So Lisa did free you,” the Hood commented. He thought a bit more and added conversationally. “I quite liked the name Ebony. Or perhaps the Ebon Knight?” The Dark Knight ignored this reference to his recent identity debacle. “I said… no further. It’s over, Hood.” The Hooded Hood considered this. “No. No, I don’t think it is. You renounced your role as Chronicler of Worlds and your replacement cannot interfere in this isolated time-strand. Nor can the new Shaper, or Shifter, or any of those self-important ultimate power types. I have won.” The Dark Knight swayed as his injuries told on him. He was more injured than a Frank Miller character. “I must stop you.” The Hooded Hood gestured and the Dark Knight was gone. “Full marks for style. Lacking in content,” he considered. He turned to the glimmering Portal. “Now,” he proclaimed, “for Zemo.” Herbert Philip Garrick’s day was getting worse and worse. Now, as well as that giant cosmic vacuum cleaner setting up its attachments in Paradopolis he had Dan Drury pacing up and down his office contravening the smoking regulations. He had already set the sprinklers off twice. “Lissen up, Garrick, ya four-flushin’ two-timin’ one-testacled desk-tyrant,” Drury grizzled. “We got one major bad guy figgurin’ to suck up all life on th’ planet and we ain’t got time to worry about the paperwork. Just sign it.” Garrick glanced down at the paper that the woman in the improbable cat outfit was holding before him. Just that one costume broke around sixteen of his new superhero decency regulations, without even starting on the outfits worn by Cheryl’s two ladyfriends Tina and Melissa. “It’s just a standard waiver,” Cheryl, Director of Public Relations for the Lair Legion assured him. “It indemnifies us against claims for any minor property damage to the city, the helicarrier, the Sentinoids, civil servants…” “No civil servants have been damaged, have they?” worried Garrick. “They might be,” warned the Scarlet Melissa. And the missing Legionnaire? Well, we don’t have much time this episode, so let’s just give him/her one line, shall we? “Hello, Galactivac, you uncute bunny-menacing villainous villain. Yo is here with a clever suggestion for you to be thinking about.” The Hooded Hood stepped through the Portal of Pretentiousness and almost tripped over the unconscious form of the superhero Goldeneyed. The cowled crime-czar was in a bizarre futuristic laboratory full of clunky gizmos of indeterminate use. In the distance a plexiglass window looked out over the planet Earth. “Wake up,” the Hood commanded Goldeneyed, arranging it so that this was the exact moment that the reality-hopping hero would come to his senses. “I thought I had ensured your absence from these events,” the Hood accused . “The… the Baron brought me back,” Goldeneyed remembered, staggering to his feet as he realised he was once again in the game. “He made me transport him here, to this vast spacecraft, to meet some cosmic entity who vacuums all life from whole planets.” “Zemo sought out Galactivac,” the Hood realised. Then he glanced through the window again. “And he had led him to Earth.” “He said he would see it destroyed rather than let it be ruled by some guy called the Hooded… Hood,” Goldeneyed ended rather lamely as he noticed the grey mantle and the glowing green eyes beneath the prominent and shadowed hood. “That’s right,” Zemo proclaimed, making a triumphal entrance at exactly the right moment. “Hood, you once accused me of not having the ruthlessness necessary to see a masterplan through to its final bitter consequences. I really must offer you my thanks for helping me to finally do just that.” “Galactivac is loose on Earth, by your doing,” recognised the Hooded Hood. Zemo nodded and gestured to the blue orb beyond the spacecraft’s window. “It’s your planet,” the Baron pointed out. “How are you going to save it?” In our honestly-final instalment: Galactivac takes a herald! Lisa and Mother Whipcord together again for the last time! Cheryl vs Garrick! The Lair Legion against the Living Death that Sucks! And the final fate of… the Hooded Hood! The final chapter should be out before next weekend. Applications for the post of herald (with resume and references) should be made by Wednesday. Galactivac is an equal opportunities destroyer. And some comments from the BZL’ers: The Hooded Hood and the Return of the Lair Legion (The Hooded Hood) (30-May-1999 11:59:58) Damn you!!! You keep making us wait for the end of this story!!! It's the story that refuses to die!!! And of course, we have no choice to wait, because your writing is that damn good!!! Watson, you heartless bastard!!! DAMN YOUUUUUUUUU ... (n/t) (CrazySugarFreakBoy!) (30-May-1999 14:26:05) You know how it is. The first chapter's free. Then, when you're hooked, the price goes up. Soon you'll sell you own for a single paragraph. Then you're on the streets turning tricks for sentences. Just say no. (n/t) (A health warning from the ever-helpful Dr Valium) (31-May-1999 05:56:50) *Sigh* Beyond magnificant, Ian. You possess more talent than Appendage Man possesses, er, appendages! But please tell me you're not going to leave us after the final installment!!! :-( (n/t) (Lisa, wondering if Sally intends to break absent-minded Ian's fingers after the conclusion... ) (30-May-1999 14:29:53) Damn corn!!.A kaleidoscopic story HH! :) (n/t) (Yo using funny words..) (30-May-1999 16:04:26) So HeadCase is a twisted version of me? Eww... (n/t) (Hatman, going up against "Seismo, The Tectonic Man" in the next issue of Tales of the Hat) (30-May-1999 18:12:15) I have no idea how you(or anyone)could top this,and I don't care.;) (n/t) (Jarvis) (30-May-1999 20:13:33) Cheryl vs. HPG? Now *that* sounds like entertainment! (n/t) (Visionary, looking forward to it.) (31-May-1999 12:04:04) A reprise of the final battle-royale between the Lair Legion and the Purveyors of Peril, courtesy of the Hooded Hood |
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