Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Simultaneously The Greatest Heroes And Greatest Threat In The DCU

Let's start with the second-to-last page from Secret Six #19. That's it directly below. Click to enlarge.
We have this bearded fellow in a black t-shirt with a boater hat* telling Catman they have his son, blah, blah, blah, threats made with a cheerful attitude, you know the shtick. When I first saw him, I was focusing on who he reminded me of, and that would be these two fellows (again, click to enlarge):
Those are the Heterodyne Boys, as seen in the Munden's Bar back-up in GrimJack #40 (written and drawn by Phil Foglio, inked by Julie Ann Sczesny). Girl Genius Online says they've been incorporated into the history of Girl Genius, but are essentially completely different characters from these two blokes. All that remains is the name and them being good guys.

In this story, Bill (in the boater) and Barry (sporting the beard and "3.14" shirt) are zapped into another dimension by Dr. Mongfish, who can't have them interfering with his plan to steal Ohio**. Naturally, the other dimension is Munden's Bar, where they upset a patron by leaving a motorcycle tire in his drink, and when they thwart his attempt to eat them, he winds up dead (he's the fellow Gordon's declaring deceased on the page above). Before they can take on the assembled riffraff, Phaeton, Lord Protector of Cynosure arrives and sends them back home. Their world has no shades of gray, and they would have fought everyone in Cynosure. As avatars*** of good, they can't lose, so they'd have destroyed everything. Having explained this to Gordon (and rebuffed Gordon's offer of a free drink for saving the bar from destruction****), Phaeton leaves. Back in their world, Bill and Barry capture Dr. Mongfish and note they can use his machine to go back and help Phaeton clean up Cynosure, as he was probably too proud to ask for help.

Clearly what happened is they made the attempt, but were accidentally fused and tossed through the Breach into the DC Universe. The weird energies of the Breach have altered them so that they're still avatars of good, just violent and cruel avatars of good. The Six are villains, or at least they certainly fit the definition of "evildoer" they supplied Gordon with*****, so it's perfectly reasonable for he/them to pursue the Six.

He has Bill's hat, Barry's beard, a body type in between the two, says stuff like "mate" and "love", whereas those two said things like "old sport" and "old fruitbat", he clearly enjoys his work, and if you squint at it, and were charitable, you could call letting a kid live in exchange for the deaths of killers redressing the karmic balance. The chap is Heterodyne Boys, indubitably******.

Which means the Six are screwed. Oh well, they had a nice run, but sometimes you come up against the avatars of good, and what can you do but tip your cap and say "Good showing, old bean"?

In case you're interested, you can read the whole Munden's bar story at this address. It's better than my attempt at a summary.

* I had to look that up online, as "straw hat", which was the term I was thinking of, didn't seem quite right. I really like the term "boater hat". Don't know why, just do.

** Even Cleveland?

*** Barry says he doesn't feel like an avatar, to which Bill responds 'Well, 'av a tar is better than none.' Ow, the pun! I bet Peter David is mad Foglio beat him to that one. Or did he?!

**** Because Phaeton is an uptight dick.

***** Namely, someone who isn't good.

****** OK, I can't explain why they've added to other guys to the mix, or all those armed covert ops guys, but I'm trying to have fun here, don't ruin it.

2 comments:

Matthew said...

*Cough* You might want to check that last link, Calvin.

CalvinPitt said...

Matthew: Damnit! Once again, spelling defeats me. Thank you.