Epitome Comics #4 “Trouble at the Waterfront”



Three vans pulled up to the dockside warehouse. The waiting guard pressed a button and its door rumbled open. Silently they drove inside, their headlights shining on a recently moved cargo “can”. Several men exited the vehicles and made their way towards it.

“Hm, my dog smelled something rotten down at the docks, but she never told me it was bad fish,” Mr. Epitome smirked from his station atop a stack of nearby crates.

Antonio “Tony Porpoise” Porpossi spun to face the costumed vigilante, “Aw, no!”

“Up there! He’s up there! Shoot!”

The Exemplary Man waited as the hoods emptied their rounds into him. Meanwhile, an American bulldog leapt from outside and crashed onto one of the vans. She growled.

Glory, the Dog Dynamo, had arrived.

She sprang at the assembled mafiosi and attacked. Like a white and brindle bulldozer she smashed through them, sounds of terror filling the air.

Mr. Epitome shifted his focus to the container. His pale blue eyes squinted, seemingly staring through its metal exterior. Leaping down, he crossed the battlefield, casually flipping aside two of the vans that blocked his path. Grabbing the front of the “can” he ripped the door up and off as easily as one would tear free a Post-It-Note.

Moans and cries could be heard from the dozens of women who had been trapped inside. The conditions of their cramped living space was severe enough to test the stamina of even the Man of Might.

“Human trafficking,” Epitome turned and glared at Tony Porpoise. His eyes shimmered with a nimbus of light. The smuggler felt his hand growing very warm, and then stared in shock as the gun he carried melted to slag.

In a blur Mr. Epitome was upon him. He grabbed the halo brace that supported Porpossi’s hydrocephalic head and jerked it violently.

“Aigh!” the lord and master of Parodiopolis’s dockyards squealed.

Without taking his eyes off Porpoise, Epitome whistled for Glory’s attention. A flick of his gloved finger toward a nearby Port-A-John was enough to convey his message. The dog sped over to the structure and twisted the door open.

Mr. Epitome threw his captive into the water closet. He would repeat the process with the rest of the gang until they were all stuffed inside. He slammed the door shut and spoke to Glory again, “Chains.”

She ran to the edge of the of the wharf and snipped off a length of the heavy links with her jaws. After dragging them over to her master she made several circuits around the Port-A-John until it was securely bound.

“Good girl,” Dominic complimented before kicking overfilled outhouse into the water. He watched it bob and sink to the bottom. After what he felt was a sufficient amount of time he grabbed the end of the chain and dragged Porpossi and his men out of the water. It was just a taste of what the gangsters’ captives had been through, but it would have to be enough.

The women began to nervously poke their heads out of the cargo container they were imprisoned in for what must have been weeks. They were speaking a Slavic language Epitome could not translate.

“Glory, go home and bring back the black satchel I put under the bed,” he whispered to the bulldog after a quick skritch behind her ears.

Mr. Epitome watched her go, and then turned back towards the women. Hopefully one of them understood enough English for him to explain what was going to happen next, and that while they probably weren’t going to be staying in America, at least they would not be leaving empty handed.



Next: “A Boy and his Dog and the Girl Next Door”