#133: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Interview With the Archvillain, or Q. and A. with the Hooded Hood.

#133: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Interview With the Archvillain, or Q. and A. with the Hooded Hood.

The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom
Who's Who in the Parodyverse
Where's Where in the Parodyverse

Daniel Frolich, the Paradopolis Herald: First off, I’d like to thank you for granting me this rare, perhaps even unprecedented, interview.

The Hooded Hood: You seemed very persistent, Mr Frolich. Few journalists have attempted to breach Lair Mansion security to interview an archvillain staying in their guest quarters. The effort seemed to require a commensurate response.

DF: Uh, thanks. So you describe yourself as an archvillain?

HH: You may regard it as a whimsical ironic statement of self-depreciation and metatextual awareness if you so choose, Mr Frolich.

DF: Um, okay. So Mr Hood, why is a self-proclaimed archvillain lodging with the foremost superhero team in the Parodyverse?

HH: They have a surprisingly good wine cellar. Also, Herringcarp Asylum is still being reassembled to its former complexity after damage it sustained during and after the Technopolis conflict. Since I provided invaluable support for our brave heroes in that confrontation and since, they have kindly reciprocated in offering me accommodation while I recover. I’m not their only houseguest.

DF: No, there’s apparently an… elder slime of some sort?

HH: I believe the correct term is loathsome elder slime. A fragment of the Manga Shoggoth. I expect the Lair Legion will overlook his previous enslavement of mankind on behalf of his creator-masters the Fairly Great Old Ones and offer him membership before long.

DF: The who?

HH: Never mind. It literally didn’t happen now, except in certain places when the stars are right.

DF: You… retconned this?

HH: No. That’s all cosmic history under the bridge. I didn’t even have to play pooh-sticks with it.

DF: Okay... So you’re hanging out at the Lair Mansion, with the Lair Legion. And they’re not, for example, arresting you?

HH: There are no charges outstanding against me, Mr Frolich. In what way have I broken the law to warrant such outrageous treatment?

DF: Well, there were the two times you took over the planet. And that day you got pissed and decided to wipe out the Parodyverse.

HH: Neither of those are actual crimes in the law books, Mr Frolich. International law is sadly underdeveloped on our world. Interplanetary law is non-existent apart from a few covert treaties your government does not wish you to know of. If I ever elect to take control over the planet again I promise I will amend these omissions.

DF: But why stay at the Lair Mansion? Doesn’t it make you uncomfortable surrounded by your enemies?

HH: Indeed not. Many of them afford a considerable source of amusement. I’m looking on the whole episode as a kind of holiday.

DF: So you’re not, perhaps, “plotting their downfall from within, by manipulating the deeply stupid dork Goldeneyed while Finny’s off discovering his inner dragon,” or something?

HH: I see you have been speaking off the record to Nats.

DF: I never said that. But the Lair Legion does seem to be in a state of transition right now, and it’s not clear to the general public what’s going on. Since the death of Hatman there’s been a couple of well-publicised arrests of team members on pretty serious charges, and rumours of other stuff being hushed up with the Sorceress.

HH: And do not forget the suggestion that Visionary is pregnant with dull thud’s love child.

DF: There’s a rumour about that?

HH: You’ve just heard it, haven’t you? That’s a rumour then. As for the legal problems distracting our glorious heroes just now, I’m sure everything will be straightened out in time for them to save the world next time it’s required. The authorities seem much more accommodating when alien invasion fleets start circling the upper atmosphere. The red tape gets much much shorter.

DF: A lot of readers will be fascinated by your insights into the members of the Lair Legion. Can I take you through the roster and ask you to say a little bit about each one for the record?

HH: Proceed.

DF: Well, let’s start at the top then. Fin Fang Foom, the team’s increasingly-absent leader. How do you rate him?

HH: I’d say that the Makluan currently has a fine mind and clear goals that he has not yet communicated effectively. At the moment the dragon we call Fin Fang Foom has recognised the need to change the way he operates and interacts. Such transitions are always awkward, but I watch with interest to see how he addresses his situation. I also expect he’ll have to decide shortly whether to revert to his old ways, which will be an entertaining conflict.

DF: And his deputy? Is Goldeneyed in your pocket, as everyone is saying?

HH: Everyone called Nats, you mean? Goldeneyed has had leadership thrust upon him in a crisis unlike any the team has faced before. He is manfully trying to address a chaotic and changing circumstance by thinking outside the norm. It does credit to his intellectual rigour that he is willing to consider suggestions from sources that would not traditionally be acceptable in determining the future of his team.

DF: You mean you?

HH: Goldeneyed and I have enjoyed a number of lengthy and vigorous conversations. We disagree on a number of key issues, but I’m pleased to note that some of my observations have been of value to him.

DF: Like the proposals to extend the team’s membership, with a junior team and a number of other branches, maybe a hundred or so heroes and supposedly-reformed villains joining the group?

HH: You read the press release from the Office of Paranormal Security regarding the situation in Badripoor. If Count Armageddon can gather together a small army of superhuman villains to menace the planet, it behoves the heroes to recruit a similar cadre to contain the threat. That is merely one example of the situations in which we find ourselves in this brave new world.

DF: And Visionary is really the man to train the new generation of superheroes that’ll become the Legion’s new recruits?

HH: I can think of no-one I would prefer do see doing it.

DF: Moving on with the team. We’ve seen the very public arrests of Falcon and Trickshot…

HH: The Falcon is the newest probationary member on the Lair Legion’s roster. He recently requested that I undo a retrospective continuity change that somewhat sanitised his origins, preferring to deal with the complicated consequences of his humble beginnings.

DF: Him being a punk criminal in Hell’s Bathroom, you mean?

HH: In part. The Falcon, whose real identity is Samuel Wilson Jr, by the way, has recently reacquired a younger sister, Belinda, whom he treated somewhat poorly in his former pre-heroic life. He has a good deal of reconciling to do. It should keep him busy, and off the SPUD active members roster, for some time to come.

DF: And Trickshot?

HH: I arranged for the Legionnaire Trickshot to shift here from another reality wherein he had been a member of that world’s greatest heroes. There was indeed a Carl Bastion here…

DF: Carl Bastion?

HH: Trickshot’s real name. The Trickshot of this world was a nonentity would-be hero who was betrayed and murdered by his wife, the spy and assassin Contessa Natalia Romanza.

DF: Is that why the Legion Trickshot – I mean the guy we know today – tried to murder her a few days back?

HH: It very much seems that way, doesn’t it? CrazySugarFreakBoy! seems convinced that somehow Trickshot has an evil double, perhaps the other Carl Bastion returning as an undead to wreak vengeance.

DF: Right. I’m guessing the undead theory is to do with whatever weirdness happened in Gothametropolis a week back, with all the claims of walking dead and stuff. Which brings me to whatever happened with the Sorceress.

HH: Whitney Darkness took the funeral of Hatman rather hard. She made an unwise pact with Blackhurt, Prince of Fibs, offering him control of her body for twenty-four hours at some future time of his choosing in exchange for the power to raise the dead.

DF: That’s pretty unwise.

HH: Indeed. But I suppose even the Prince of Fibs can be a fool some days.

DF: I meant unwise for Sorceress. What…?

HH: Whitney Darkness is a very powerful worker of magics. Her father is the current sorcerer supreme of the Parodyverse, Xander the Improbable. Her grandmother is a witch in every sense of the word. Her grandfather is Sir Mumphrey Wilton, who holds the Chronometer of Infinity and has a somewhat paternalistic attitude towards his family. Who was unwiser to enter into this pact, Ms Darkness or Blackhurt?

DF: I don’t understand. Who are these people?

HH: It’s not relevant just now. Xander and Wilton are off-planet. It will be a while before we see the fireworks from that particular conflagration.

DF: I take it she couldn’t raise Hatman from the dead, though. Sorceress, I mean.

HH: Absolutely not. It is quite impossible.

DF: Any comment about your fallen foe, the capped crusader?

HH: He is brave, loyal, fair, earnest, committed, and predictable. He is sorely missed.

DF: You speak as if he’s not really gone.

HH: As long as he is frozen in our memories he will never truly be dead.

DF: The other missing team members? Dancer? Ziles?

HH: The Probability Dancer has gone off to become the Herald of Galactivac, the Living Death That Sucks, a horrible fate for both parties. In her absence her little sister Kerry has been gifted with her probability powers. That should prove explosive.

DF: You mean the younger sister of Bean and Donut waitress Sarah Shepherdson, don’t you?

HH: That is precisely what I mean, As for Ziles, she is wrestling with a dilemma as to whether to return to her homeworld and die to save it or not.

DF: What? How’s that?

HH: Xnylonia is succumbing to the influence of id-creatures known as the Gahream. Ziles remains uncontaminated, and therefore is the only remaining person with the disciplines to combat them. However, to do so would undoubtedly require her to spend herself to the uttermost. A sacrificial offering.

DF: That’s… not good. What about Pegasus? She’s a traitor to the Legion?

HH: She is a complex, ancient creature of great passions and potential. She elected to save the Legion without asking the cost, and now she is facing a spiral of consequences. She is pursued by the immortal Wilde Hunt, and it is only a matter of time before the scent her trail again. She has incurred the wrath of her chosen masters, the inhuman Constellation. She has rekindled the enmity of her former husband the King of Stories. It is only a matter of time before she comes and begs for my aid.

DF: And will you help her?

HH: I may provide what she asks for, given an appropriate reciprocation.

DF: Moving on again, dull thud?

HH: Is not a member of the Lair Legion. The symbiotic mutated tapeworm in his stomach is them member, being the more presentable of the duo. Cressida is an interesting character of whom there is much yet to discover, particularly of her former existence before her current incarnation.

DF: She’s been around before, in other people’s stomachs?

HH: She has a more complex history than either she or her current transport system yet realise. Even the Lair Legion should be spotting the clues sometime soon.

DF: That’s… well, this is going to be a Pulizer-class exclusive! Let’s see. We haven’t yet covered Yo or Lisa.

HH: There are very few people who have not covered Ms Waltz. Yo is an intriguing concept – literally – and is often underestimated because people cannot distinguish simple from stupid. It is always a mistake to underestimate the pure thought being. I am pleased s/he is once again active with the Legion. It provides texture and colour to their misadventures.

DF: They do say that you and Lisa…?

HH: They do not say it within my hearing, Mr Frolich.

DF: Right. Yes. Er… What about CrazySugarFreakBoy! then? Some people say you really hate him.

HH: They would be in error. I do find Dreamcatcher Foxglove difficult on many occasions, but he continues to be a source of fascination and amusement.

DF: He calls you Hoody.

HH: He has a distinctive patois I do not recommend others attempt to adopt.

DF: So you like him then?

HH: I find his situation to be ripe for entertainment. Surrounded as he is by a miscellany of dysfunctional personalities, working for billionaire Gideon Book who is secretly his archenemy the Word, having impregnated Pelopia, Book’s hidden daughter…

DF: Wait! You’re claiming Gideon Book is actually the Word?

HH: It would be apparent to all if they only considered it. Shall we move on? Time is pressing, and I have to go complicate the lives of Mr Epitome, Messenger, De Brown Streak, and Amazing Guy before teatime.

DF: We’re at our last member. Nats seems to be cropping up in our conversations quite a lot.

HH: That is because William Reed is dissatisfied with the changes Goldeneyed is proposing. He styles himself “the old guard” and would prefer the Legion to remain an exclusive clique of well-meaning friends. That was why he helped you bypass the mansion’s security systems to come and challenge me on these matters in the court of public opinion.

DF: What? No I… well, it’s in the public good to know…

HH: I decide the public good, Mr Frolich. It’s in my job description as an archvillain.

DF: Yes. Er… but people will be very interested in what you have to say. Fascinating insights. Historic record…

HH: History is mutable. Insights are relative.

DF: But when these things appear in my paper, the revelations you’ve given me today, the secrets behind what’s really going on in the Lair Legion…

HH: You think I’ve told you what is really going on? Fin Fang Foom is possessed by the Devil Doctor and seeks to impregnate a generation of super-powered women to spawn new bodies for himself. Deadshot preys on everybody Trickshot holds dear then plans to slaughter the irritating archer slowly and painfully. Ziles’ father Lord Oosama is plotting her death. Dancer must confront her darkest terrors or become the greatest mass-murderer in history. The Librarian will struggle to save the library in his charge against the greatest battle-fleet ever assembled. Blood and death and tears and battle and more and more, until the ending of the world! And even then I have not told you what is really happening!

DF: But… they say you always tell the truth.

HH: I never tell a lie, Mr Frolich, and I never break my word. I said I would grant you an interview, and I have.

DF: Yes. Thank you. I’d better be…

HH: But…

DF: But what? You said. You said you’d talk to me. For my paper.

HH: I never said you would print it though. What paper, Mr Frolich?

DF: The Paradopolis Herald!

HH: There is no such publication, Mr Frolich. The main papers in the city are the Paradopolis Times and the Daily Trombone.

DF: But I work for the Herald! I’ve been there for seven years.

HH: There is no Herald, Mr Frolich. There never was – now. And there is no you.

DF: Please! I was only asking a few questions!

HH: Questions can be very dangerous, Mr Frolich. Answers are even deadlier. But you know that now. Goodbye.

DF: Wait! I…

HH: You are a spare half hour in my busy schedule, a valuable hole in my calendar. Nothing more. Now where did I leave my newspaper? I believe I have time for the crossword puzzle.

Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2003 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2003 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.