The same morning that Terry Vance did LIVE WITH MITZI AND VERL to promote his one man seminar on top secret "super science" Bobby Wright was seeking the advice of the only two people in the world he knew that knew more about superhero comic books than he did. The school day was crawling by until lunch when all the middle school grades got to mingle. The two eighth graders he wanted to talk to were usually in the corner of the cafeteria working on their sketchbooks.
Kurt and James were heads of the school Fantasy Fiction club, the Comic Book Creators Society, the Arnim Zola Defamation League, the Bring Back FIREFLY Browncoats and at least four other small cliques that Bobby couldn't remember the name of. He did know that they made it to every single comic book convention and Avenger fan club meeting in the State of New York and had since they were ten or so. That qualified them as the best experts that Bobby had easy access to.
Kurt was tapping his pencil on a notepad jotting down notes as he spoke. "OK, there are two new vigilantes working in New Jersey. Marvel has the licenses to the Fantastic Four, Avengers and MOST of the real ones locked up. Maybe we can get THEM to work with us? If we're going to publish it ourselves…"
James was sketching Thor wrestling a giant snake that was swallowing The Incredible Hulk. "I'm telling you, we're better off starting from scratch. Distinguished Competition Comics has been doing just fine with Superman, Batman and the rest of the fictional heroes since forever. We can make up something and sell it as well as they can sell The Doom Patrol. Probably better, we're awesome. I still think we can turn JUSTICE & VENGEANCE into something huge."
"um… guys can I ask you something?" Bobby had beaten Mr. Hyde into what the Daily Bugle called a "coma" in the morning paper, but he was still nervous talking to guys in the next highest grade. "How do superheroes get to team up? Are there like rules or something?"
Kurt and James locked eyes and said in unison, "They fight."
James counted off on his fingers. "Spider-man meets the Fantastic Four, they fight. Captain America meets Daredevil for the first time, they fight. Iron Man meets ANYONE in the Avengers the first time they fight a while. In the Marvel version of the news stories, it happens all the time."
"Why? Aren't they on the same side?" Bobby asked confused. "I mean they watch the same news we do, before they meet they know who everyone is?"
Kurt looked at the ceiling deep in thought. "Keep in mind it isn't like Hawkeye can just ask el Aguila to pull out his driver's license. And ANYONE can make a costume. Last week I saw a girl dressed as Valkyrie from the Defenders and she was….. just amazing.. So I guess they HAVE to see if it's really who they think it is by a test of skills and powers."
"Plus it's more fun to draw people fighting," James agreed. "What's more fun to read, two people in disguises swapping code words or whatever, or a couple pages of Daredevil and the Punisher slugging it out on the rooftops? I know I'd rather draw Batman testing the karate style of The Question than taking his fingerprints."
"The who? I don't read the made up stuff," Bobby said. "Who's The Question?"
"Come to our next DC Comics Trivia Club meeting, I'll loan you some trade paperbacks. You should read the fictional stuff, since they can't get sued or beat up by walking WMDs," James said while quickly sketching a man in a suit, with a blank featureless face stepping from a cloud of mist, gloved fists ready for action. "I heard that Victor Von Doom threatened the staff of Fantastic Four when they made an issue about how he never earned the title "Doctor."
Bobby nodded. "And the Black Cat slapped Keith Pollard on the street a while back. Said he made her ass look fat." They all chuckled.
"Why do you ask," Kurt inquired. "You never make it to our meetings, but I heard you've been bringing up super-stuff in class. You interested in getting more into the hobby?'
Well gee guys, I just found out I can fly fast as a jumbo jet and lift abandoned cars like they were soda cans, so I thought I'd fight crime? No, he was NOT going to say THAT… Bobby thought of a lie and he thought it up quick. "I'm going to the Big Applesauce Convention in Manhattan Saturday, and I'm going to try and pitch a comic book story I've been writing. An original super, all my own, just to see if anyone thinks it's any good. I can't draw it well enough to do the art work but I have some stories written." As long as they didn't ask to SEE his stories he was going to be….
"Do you have your scripts with you?" Kurt said just as James asked "Where's your sketchbook?" Dammit, Bobby thought.
MEANWHILE, AROUND THE NEW YORK METROPOLITAN AREA…
Eugene Mason, who recently had been going by the name Crimebuster after lucking into finding the spare costume and equipment or a missing minor league superhero was having a lousy week. He'd been a promising new name in costumed crimefighting for a few weeks there, ostly hunting wanted crooks for rewards from the police and bail bondsmen. He'd messed up by competing with Heroes for Hire and when all three had been hired to deal with a terrorist takeover at Madison Square Garden, he blew it and Cage and Rand had come out looking like geniuses.
It hadn't been exactly fair, Mason thought. He'd gone in, rescued some hostages, taken down some very well armed terrorists, and even found their HUGE TIME BOMB before Heroes for Hire did. The only problem was Mason didn't know how to disarm a bomb. (POWER MAN AND IRON FIST #105)
He dragged a few remaining hostages out with him, ran out of the building in front of a dozen news cameras yelling IT'S GONNA BLOW, GET DOWN! and dived behind a car….
If the damn bomb had actually blown up, he'd have looked like a hero. But somehow Cage and Rand disarmed the bomb, and the news had a field day making Mason look stupid. CRIMEBUSTER COWARD? Had been the headline that stuck in his craw the worst. I mean come on, he SAVED AT LEAST 20 PEOPLE! Didn't that count for something? Apparently not! So a month later he was sitting in a busted down apartment building, about to kick in the door of a bail jumping drug dealer worth a $5000 bounty. He'd hoped to be offered a slot in the Avengers by now, and NOW look at him.
One busted down door, a two minute fist fight and a pair of handcuffs later, he was sitting in the apartment's kitchen holding his capture at the point of his high tech trick pistols, waiting for a police wagon and watching LIVE WITH MITZI AND VERL. This kid was some sort of genius, talking about how he'd improved a bunch of illegal super-science and was going to show it off tomorrow at Empire State University. No mention of security precautions. Mason hadn't been in "the game" long, but he had been a small time crook before he decided to try and turn things around. And his petty crook sense was tingling. Back in the day, he'd have JUMPED at the chance to steal an improved set of Shocker's gauntlets, and whatever else was going to be shown off. Heck, he was half tempted to steal them NOW and he was reformed. Mostly anyways…
Eugene KNEW in his bones SOME geek was going to try and crash the party and steal the goodies. And thanks to his body armor and high tech guns, he could probably take down said geek, claim a reward, and get his career back on track.
He glared at his prisoner. "You know convict, you might be famous. You'll be the second to last person I bust before I get invited to the Gol-Dang Avengers."
Also…
Jack Monroe, the former Bucky, partner of "The Captain America of the 1950s" was in his Brooklyn apartment, paid for by the FBI and SHIELD ever since he had been unfrozen from cryogenic suspension, brainwashed along with his Captain by HYDRA and used as living weapons in their scheme to… Jack couldn't really care WHAT their stupid scheme had been. He just knew that he missed the old days. Though as far as HE saw it, the old days were a few months ago. (Captain America #155)
He and Cap had a bad reaction to their version of the Super Soldier Formula and had started seeing Commie spies and Nazi saboteurs EVERYWHERE. The FBI had taken them down with tranquilizer darts as they were beating up some Chinese American dry cleaners, screaming something like "WHERE ARE THE TOP SECRET FILES…. And then they had woken up to some torture, brainwashing, and being told decades had passed them by, and by the way take these anti-psychotics or back into frozen sleep you go, and we won't tell you where William Burnside, your Captain America and your best friend is so stop asking.
The past few months had involved medical treatments to counter the side effects of the Super Soldier Serum, counseling to cope with the whole "Rip Van Winkle" thing, and a ton of education and training to help him fit in to the modern world. When he felt ready, the FBI had given him an offer to become a full time agent again, in recognition of the time he had helped save the United Nations and half of Manhattan from a Stalin era bomb plot. It was a good offer, and he looked forward to feeling like he was making a difference, saving lives, protecting his country again. He listened to the television as he read up on recent history, still trying to get his head around a world with no Commie menace to speak of. And his old instincts suddenly kicked in, listening to the local NEWS AT NOON show discussing some sort of lecture happening at Empire State University tomorrow. Something about an expert who had studied high tech criminals, improved their inventions, studied their methods and improved them.
Back in the good old days, that person would have been kidnapped by spies, his inventions taken and used for…. Something awful.
He hit the speed dial number for his therapists' office. "This is Jack Monroe. Please tell Dr. Kafka I need to reschedule tomorrow's appointment. Something has come up. No, it isn't an emergency exactly. But I think it's important to my progress. Yes, tell her I want to go to college. Thank you." Jack grinned. He'd thought about looking up the "real" Captain America sometime soon to try and find his place in the world. But maybe it was time to strike out on his own, see if his old instincts were still any good.
And also….
Norton Fester, the Looter, the Meteor Man, or "that damned lunatic" as some in jail had called him, was busy ripping the door off of a hidden sub-basement bunker in a warehouse in the Bronx. Ever since Elias "Egghead" Starr had very publicly gotten himself killed, Fester had been methodically going through every abandoned-looking building anywhere near any of Egghead's many public crimes. Starr had been a brilliant scientist and researcher before his fall from grace, and had always used top notch cutting edge equipment. Fester on the other hand, had always had to make do with whatever he could cobble together.
SKKKKREEEEEEEKKKKKK…. As the metal plating parted a spray of bullets fired into his body armored chest. "HEY QUIT IT! I'M THE METEOR MAN, NOT THE COPS!
The guns exhausted themselves. A prerecorded voice announced "Password must be spoken within ten seconds or poison gas will flood this building. Ten, nine…"
"Ah jeez… um, "I hate Hank Pym?!" Norton guessed, ready to run at the first hissssssss of gas that he heard.
"Password accepted, welcome ally of Elias Starr, the Napoleon of Deceit greatest criminal mind of the age!"
Norton always had been surprised that his luck was either VERY good or VERY bad, never anywhere close to the middle.
After several hours tinkering around, he had gotten a good idea of what was left in Starr's old hideaway. Some of the equipment would be useful for his work researching the interaction of dark energy and unstable molecules, since Egghead had studied Pym particles for years searching for ways to turn his hated enemy's most famous discovery against him.
The base was run by a fairly basic artificial intelligence that Starr had probably stolen from somewhere, and Norton had been throwing questions at it as he worked, looking for clues to other resources Starr had left behind, hidden God knows where.
"OK. What was Starr working on most recently?"
"The master mind of the underworld was researching ways to prolong human life. To this end he was going to force his enemy Pym to work with him to develop a way to make the old young. "
Nothing Fester cared about. He hadn't seemed to age a day or get sick since he had been exposed to unstable molecules in the gas within the meteor he had found years ago that gave him his abilities. "What other programs were you equipped with than security and data management?"
"This unit was tasked to review relevant news, public speeches, police records, corporate email records and so forth, to locate potential targets for the master criminal of the century to exploit in his goals."
Now that sounded promising. "What is the most recent such target you have acquired?"
The computer listed several such items, which Norton intended to look into. A shipment of AIM materials coming into Newark airport, Roxxon's newest attempt at synthetic vibranium was to be tested in their Catskill Mountains factory, and a name he knew all too well.
"Professor Terrance Vance has announced the unveiling of several recent marvels of engineering he will display in a lecture tomorrow at ESU. Vance is a child prodigy known for his involving himself in a wide variety of research including the work of Abraham Erskine, Heinrich Zemo, Daniel Ironwood, Philo Zog, Phineas Horton and many other names on my preferred item list…."
"STOP…: Norton shouted. What had that young fool DONE! Norton needed to meet him, look at his notes, find out how far he had gotten with Ironwood's last work, since it would complete Fester's own work explaining just how that meteor had changed him, how it had probably been created, and how to duplicate all of it experimentally to PROVE that Norton Fester was a genius once and for all.
OK, sure he had tried to kidnap Vance once from a cab. And he had broken into his workshop to look at whatever notes he could find. But he hadn't planned on HARMING the fool. And now he had practically dared every two bit mask in the world to come for him, in an effort to get the next great wave motion gun or whatever Vance was going to show off.
Fester had started the week planning on kidnapping Terry Vance and stealing his research notes. Now he was possibly going to have to bodyguard him. Not how he had expected his week to go…
"Computer, I need an inventory of everything my, um, ally and role model Elias Starr has left available for his friends that, wish to humiliate Ant Man and bring him, let's say ultimate suffering?" Fester was hopeful the computer had been programmed with Egghead's known love of flattery and pointless revenge.
"Yes sir!" the computer chirped happily, eager to go to work on it's number one task, somehow making Pym's miserable life even a little worse.
And….
Melanie was playing chess with "Mr. Power Man" as her big brother and the Heroes for Hire team discussed Terry's big speech tomorrow. Melanie was glad she and Bluebeary had been invited, she had only had to fuss and pout a little for Terry to bring her. She liked having a wizard for a big brother, especially one she could get to do what she wanted most of the time.
Terry was listening as the two bestest heroes in the whole world if you asked her were going over their plans to keep her brother safe. They had friends that would be outside the building looking for anyone dangerous, names like "Octavius" and "Klaw" and "The Owl" went by without impressing her. She didn't know who they were, but she was sure they didn't scare Luke Cage and that was what mattered most to her.
Her parents had been hurt by bad people, and no one was there to help them. But Luke would never let anything happen to her new family, she was sure. She took Luke's bishop in a move her brother had taught her and giggled.
"Can I go see you protect my brother from the bad guys tomorrow? PLEEEEEEEASE, I won't get in the way, I won't fuss or cry a BIT…." She announced as she put Luke into check for the second time.
"What do you say, Mr. Power Man," Danny Rand said with a grin to his partner. He rather liked how uncomfortable Luke was with having such a huge fan of his work and he was a tiny bit jealous.
"I don't know, it might be dangerous. Will you do as you're told, stay close to your brother if anything happens? And it's up to your parents really."
"YAAAAAYYYYY!" Melanie ran off to ask her mom and dad and she knew she could get them to agree. Terry had upgraded Bluebeary with what she called "crazy purple knock out gas" that could shoot from his mouth, so she knew her wizard brother had planned to protect her well. He had his secret gadgets that he had made, and hidden on himself in his watch, his cell phone, the pens in his shirt pocket. He even had a magic wand up his sleeve, since she had told him wizards HAD to have magic wands.
Tomorrow was going to be the best day EVER.