Now, this was a lot more fun to read than the Parody War. I guess I prefer my fiction to be more Lee/Ditko than Millar. (Speaking of which, I caught a three second clip of one of the West/Ward Batman last night - enough camp to house a country).


From a plot point of view, this is all a good thing, although I doubt that Vish sees it that way.


No. They will think it is funny and pathetic. Initially, at any rate.


Oh, for a picture!


I remember that piece you wrote in Follies where Lisa and Asil discussed this very matter.


Actually, I am fairly sure that Lisa has some restraints. She probably uses them a lot.

>     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Something’s very wrong with our computers,” frowned Hammond Stein, hammering the keyboard in his main laboratory. “Something’s over-riding our systems, corroding our firewalls…”

Vista?

>     ... Another globe ignored its instructions and instead seared directly into the last guardsman, taking command of the nervous system around the guard’s right hand, twisting the weapon round to point at the guard’s abdomen, then forcing him to squeeze the trigger.

Hmmmm. I can see a power struggle in the future...

>     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Scarlet Shackles of Saggeroth,” Regret recognised. “Ooh, they always get me hot! I think it’s the way the serpents slither. You should try the full-body variation sometime.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Really?” asked Asil, interestedly.

The second paragraph is somehow more disturbing than the first...

>     Ã¢â‚¬Å“De Soth, I presume,” Tom asked the warlock who had just captured them. “I heard that Hagatha Darkness had turned the rest of your family into goldfish.”

Snakes, as I recall...

>     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They don’t know about the Box,” Regret supplied. She’d been fully briefed before she’d been sent to seduce Tom Black. “It appears every now and then containing some dark item or cursed object or something, then vanishes again. That’s all the Heck-Fire Club know. This time it brought you your gift.”

Is the implication that regret knows more?

>     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A few.” Tom smiled back at Asil. “We all have our secrets. I have the mystery of the Judas Box. You have Lionel Lodestone’s left ear. Friends keep each other’s confidences, and know when not to push.”

Half of his left ear. I hope she preserves it properly.

>     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They were a bit preoccupied,” Tom noted. “Apparently there’d been signs and portents of some great evil coming into the world. All the taps in Montreal poured out blood for twenty minutes yesterday. Everybody in Copenhagen forgot the word ‘photocopier’. The Mona Lisa wept mustard - the report doesn’t say if it was English or French mustard. A secretary at the Daily Trombone gave birth to a two-headed coypu. J. Jonah Jerkson is blaming Goldeneyed.”

Sounds more like business as usual. After all, codes twenty-seventeen and twenty-one seventeen were suspected of being:

• Invasion of inflatable women
  
• Space ghost locked in a public lavatory
  
• Suspected treacle volcano
  
• Attack of sentient laundry
  
• Giant lions

I can't see why there isn't a code for J. Jonah Jerkson blaming Goldeneyed either. It happens often enough.

>     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re very arrogant for an sad old man,” Anna Salem noted. “You think your magic pocketwatch will protect you from the greatest telepath of the age? Or protect your little Legion from the wrath of the Knights of Heck-Fire?”

Don't they think about why he's a sad old man? It's the Cohen the Barbarian thing all over again.

>     Mumphrey joined the others at the window. “Hmph,” he said. “Looks very much like a freak gust of wind has lifted your luxury pleasure yacht from its moorings, blown it across the city, and by a remarkable chance of fate has dropped it directly on top of your Heck-Fire Club residence.”

Several times?

>     Sir Mumphrey whirled Slaughter round and pinned him to the wall by the throat. “Now listen very carefully, you little pissant,” the eccentric Englishman warned, bringing his face right up to the Black Emperor’s. “If you ever come to my attention again – ever – I will see you destroyed. No law, no protocol, no clever defence, no politicking will save you. I will have you dead. You and your Club will stay quiet and keep to your place or the Lair Legion will grind you into the dirt. Do you understand me? If your next words are not ‘Yes, sir, I understand you,’ then they will be the last words you ever utter.”

As has been said, people expect Mumph to play by the rules. They forget what is going to happen if he doesn't.

> Illustration by Dancer

Yay!