The Spot—inept body teleporter! The Kangaroo—inventive jerk!
The Gibbon—overweight bumbler! The Grizzly—uneducated halfwit!
Together, they form the least qualified, most mismatched team of never-weres!
They are...
The Legion of Losers!
Issue #1: Stupid Is as Stupid Does
Your typical author's note: I wrote this a few years ago for a fanfiction group site (Alternate Marvel) and got a couple issues in before I lost free time and couldn't continue the project. I planned it to be a four-issue series, so this is half finished. If I get enough feedback saying I should, maybe I'll finish it up. So if you like it and want more, say something.
Your typical author's note take 2: I know a couple years ago, Marvel Team-Up ran a serial named 'The Legion of Losers' from issues 15 to 18, something like that. This group included Speedball, Darkhawk, Sleepwalker, Terror Inc., and a few others. This isn't them. There was an earlier group called the Legion of Losers that showed up in a couple issues of 'The Spectacular Spider-Man' in the 90s. This is a retelling of their origin. I even jigged around with their personalities a bit. Consider this an alternate reality version of Marvel's characters. Just to clear up any confusion.
Your typical author's note take 3: At this point, I probably don't have to mention that I don't own the characters. Marvel does. On with the story...
In front of the Washington Mutual bank.
"What do you mean 'your bank'?" the Kangaroo asked, and that made the Gibbon groan, placing a hand over his head as if to wipe a dream from his sleep. No, this was real. His heart coughed as the Kangaroo continued, "We were here first. We signed this bank out, and we're gonna rob it." He crouched as if ready to pounce. The Gibbon had never seen the hydraulic boot lift the Kangaroo kept mentioning, but assumed it would probably smoke and explode at first attempt.
The bear man—the Gibbon recognized him as the Grizzly, another old-time Spider-Man pincushion—looked up, raising a finger with a broad smile over his goofy face. "Hey, I have an idea!"
"You finally accepted the fact that you need a bib?" the white-and-black splotched man asked in reply.
"No, Spot, but thanks for the tip. I mean, we could rob this bank together! Like, team up!"
The Kangaroo looked at the white-and-black man—the Grizzly had called him the Spot—standing tall before him. "Huh? Team up? Who is this nimrod?"
"He's actually an ignoramus," the Spot responded.
The Kangaroo turned to the Grizzly, and the Gibbon stepped lightly to beside him. "There's not enough to share between the four of us."
"Actually," the Gibbon started, "there's plenty o—"
"Besides, we had this bank signed out yesterday!"
"You're an idiot!" the Spot responded with callous anger. "You had all the banks signed out yesterday!"
"So how'd you find us here?"
"Easy," he responded. "I checked out your account. I figured you'd go for your home branch."
"What?" the Gibbon boomed. "Is it common practice for you idiots to rob your home branches?"
The Spot looked at the Gibbon. The Gibbon could see his eyebrows blink underneath his mask, once, then twice as he paused. "What's the problem with that?"
"I thought I was as low as it could get," the Gibbon huffed and threw his arms in the air as he clenched his eyes shut tightly and spun around. "You're all idiots! No wonder Spider-Man kept beating you."
"Spider-Man never beat me," the Kangaroo replied weakly.
The Spot turned to the Grizzly. "I'll teleport in and unlock the bank from the inside. You wait here."
"Hey, did you not hear us?" the Kangaroo said, stepping forward with both fists wavering in small circles. Until now, the Gibbon thought that movement was only for cartoons; now he knew: The Kangaroo was to be taken as seriously as Elmer Fudd. But the Kangaroo continued. He shook noticeably and opened one fist to point at himself. "This bank is ours. Ours."
The Spot sighed, visible irritation revealed through the full-facial mask he wore. A man dressed as a kangaroo was about to fight a man dressed as a Dalmatian, with a grizzly bear and a monkey sitting at the sidelines. If only the Rhino and the Scorpion were here, there'd be an entire zoo full of Spider-Man villains. At least the Rhino and the Scorpion would give them class.
Oh well, it was better than waiting in unemployment lines. The thought of unemployment lines made his muscles relax to the point that he almost released the contents of his bladder.
"All right, all right," the Spot responded, waving both hands in the air. "Fine. We can fight it over."
"S'fine by me," the Kangaroo responded. He raised his fists again, and the Spot did likewise. The Kangaroo crouched—was he readying his hydraulic boots?—and tightened those less-than-effective fists into white-knuckle balls. He turned back, looked at the Gibbon and asked, "Are you in this or what?"
The Gibbon snapped to attention, his face suddenly becoming alive instead of dry with a permanent scowl. All thought of unemployment lines dissipated, and his muscles clenched tightly. "Huh? You serious? Let them take this bank. We'll get the next one."
The Kangaroo's back erected. He turned, shaking his head in an obvious arrogant annoyance. "That's not the point. This is a matter of principle."
"Look, I think we threw out principles around the time we started discussing robbing a bank, and then moreso when two grown men decided they would pummel each other into gelatin over who gets to do it," the Gibbon replied. "No way am I going to justify these buffoons by getting into a fistfight over rights to rob a bank. There's a perfectly good ING Direct down the street—"
"Are you in this or what?" the Kangaroo replied.
The Gibbon's scowl returned. He looked at the Grizzly, then at the Spot, at the utter stupidity of the entire situation. But was this how he was going to start things? Was this the precedent by which he would escape from the sameness of life, the utter despicable, boring sameness given his every second? His heart dropped. No. He shut his eyes firmly, the dread of tomorrow returning in clutching, cold claws. He had to make a change, point his life in the right direction. And if pointing his life in the right direction started with a juvenile fistfight between four grown men, then so be it. "I'm in."
"Good," the Kangaroo replied and turned back to the Spot.
The Gibbon rolled his head around his shoulders, first back, then forth, then side to side. He performed a series of light jumps, followed by taking the exaggerated stance of a runner preparing to break out of the starter gate. Then he stretched his arms back, attempting to touch his fingertips together though he knew it was impossible.
"What's this?" the Spot clamored, pointing an open Dalmatian hand at the Gibbon, who looked up with all the disrespect and hatred that Satan held for human life rolled into one short moment. "What are you doing?"
"I'm stretching. Go bark at a fire." The Gibbon relieved his arm-stretching to push his shoulder blades back as he bent at the waist and attempted to touch his toes. He didn't make it far; his gut posed a great detriment in even locating his toes, much less touching them.
"You're... You're stretching?" The Spot smacked his hands on his forehead and pivoted in a half-circle. "I—I can't believe you're stretching!"
"You serious?" the Kangaroo bellowed as he turned and looked at the Gibbon with nothing but shock and disbelief in his wide, disgusted eyes.
The Gibbon stood. "I stretch before every fight. What else would you have me do? No sense in pulling a muscle just because I didn't stretch." He stood, breaking from his stretcher's stance to point at the pair. "Look, if you don't stretch before you fight, you might as well write off the rest of your week, bank robbery or no bank robbery."
"I can't believe this!" The Spot turned back, then looked to beside the Gibbon where the Grizzly stood. "And what do you think you're doing?"
"It sounds like a good idea," the Grizzly replied. The Gibbon looked at the Grizzly, watching as the Grizzly mimicked his moves by bending as far down as he could, then standing up and pushing his arms backward against his shoulder blades. If it was entirely possible, the Gibbon thought the Grizzly was even more inflexible than he. The Gibbon continued by kicking high and backward, catching his foot in his hand and forcing his leg up. He broke wind as he did. Oops.
"Oh, fine," the Spot replied, waving his hands as if worshiping gods he probably didn't believe in. "Why don't we all stretch before the big fistfight then, how about that?"
"Stupidest idea I ever heard of," the Kangaroo muttered as both he and the Spot assumed straddling stances.
For what seemed like more than a few minutes, the four would-be bank robbers each took his own pattern of exaggerated stances and form-jutting poses, grunting and sometimes breathing erratically to force their limbs into contorted postures probably not met in decades, for the Gibbon ever since embarrassing eleventh-grade gym classes.
He'd hated the word 'wedgie' ever since.
"Okay, are we done?" the Spot asked, shaking his head floppily on his neck and then jumping like an inexperienced boxer before the ring of the bell. "We're done, then?"
"Now we fight," the Kangaroo replied. "Good." He took his ready stance, again those balled fists raising to attention as if threatening more than the stray dog watching intently from across the street. Even so, the Gibbon thought the Spot was more likely to hump a wall than that quivering mass of undernourished flesh with floppy ears that whimpered as its head pointed downward.
The Kangaroo and the Spot stepped rightward in a slow circle that meant no more than the dance of two grown men ready to roll around on the dirt like highschoolers. Their scuffed shoes stepped simultaneously, both reaching a half-circle and still facing each other.
"I like applesauce," the Grizzly interjected.
"Shut up," the Kangaroo and the Spot snapped without turning from each other, both still scowling with lowered bodies and heavy breathing. At least this was a nice lapse from the identical, unbreakable pattern of the Gibbon's life: two grown men in a fistfight in front of a bank.
Suddenly a shadowed figure leapt from a line of hedges surrounding the bank's parking lot. The figure, dressed in a dreadful purple-and-white mockery of fashion, smacked onto the pavement with booted feet that almost slipped from underneath him. He sprinted toward the bank, seemingly ignorant of the four costumed men—and the Gibbon used the word 'men' loosely—almost fighting mere feet away.
"By my enhanced strength, I shatter through this windowpane!" the runner exclaimed before smacking into a large window among a series that lined the street-facing side of the bank. The window gave way to a reverberating tremor, no more than if a bird had struck it, before the purple-and-white man hit the ground, his back against the sidewalk.
"What was he trying to do?" the Gibbon asked as the crackpot groaned, his weakened struggle to right himself done without result. He approached the downed crackpot, now noticing a small white pistol held loosely in his right hand with fingers almost uncurled around its trigger and butt. The Gibbon heard the footsteps of the others following behind him, and soon all four peered down at the man who fluttered in and out of consciousness.
The Gibbon recognized him. "It's the Looter."
"The Looter?" the Spot asked, looking over at him with one eyebrow curved underneath his mask.
"The Looter, yeah. Spider-Man fought him a few times."
"Oh, great, another Spider-Man bad guy." The Spot smacked his forehead. "And vying for this bank. In case this Looter wakes up, can you beat him?"
"Spider-Man compared me to him once."
"What'd he say?"
"He said I could never beat the Looter."
"And Spider-Man's a good judge of skill," the Grizzly added.
"Go back to thinking about your applesauce," the Spot snapped, then turned back to the Gibbon. "Maybe we can drag him off to the side and let him wake up tomorrow next to a robbed bank."
"Wai-wai-wait," the Kangaroo interjected, holding a palm up and looking at the Spot. "Suddenly we're all helping each other out? I don't think so. Seems to me, I was just about to clean your clo—"
The howl of sirens rose from the nothingness of the silence, a sound ripping apart the wind that until now had reminded the Gibbon of tape hiss on an old cassette. "Hey, wait," the Gibbon said, suddenly alert, perking his ears and putting a hand up. "Wait."
The night stillness did nothing to calm the cutting whoop of the approaching sirens now seeming more like a gale of cacophony than what had risen from nothing. Oh, no. The sirens were nearing.
Painful shockwaves stabbed the Gibbon's heart when he saw the red and blue circling lights, then the screeching tires that slammed onto the curbside in front of the bank only a few feet away from them. The Spot and the Kangaroo turned quickly and lowered their fists in time to watch a squad car rend the bank's lawn into dirty patches. The doors slammed open and two uniformed men spilled out.
The Kangaroo wore a panicky expression while the Spot looked as if he'd seen this sight a thousand times. The Grizzly looked enraptured at the thought of applesauce. The Gibbon felt a vice grip remorselessly squeezing his heart to mush, his legs buckling at the thought of trading jail for his life of monotony.
"Free-ee-ee-ee—" The cop stabbing the air with his gun faltered, a confused visage replacing the maddened expression he had before. He tilted his head to one side and looked to his partner, speaking unheard words before stepping around the car door he had used for cover. His partner still threatened them with his pistol, but the cop now approaching them seemed sure-stepped.
"And you gentlemen are...?" he asked. He possessed a broad-boned face with built shoulders capping muscular arms and a wide frame, ending in feet that looked like they could kick through a rhinoceros. He holstered his gun as the Spot stepped around the fallen Looter to speak to the officer, a finger pointed for threatening emphasis.
Oh, this was not good. The Gibbon didn't know much about the Spot, but knew that he and cops probably socialized as well as sterodic pitbulls. From the first word the Spot spoke, the Gibbon sensed his angry intention. "We're—"
"Officer," the Gibbon interrupted, circling around the Spot and shoving him backward. "Officer, we're just—we're—we're—" What could he say? What the &# could he say? Suddenly the sameness in his life, the utter lack of excitement that had stone-framed his entire day into a rock-solid nightmare seemed almost bearable. No way could he face jail. No! He wouldn't go back! He was no good at selling his body for protection or holding the soap. What would he do? Run! He'd run and let these guys take the rap and never look back and—
"Did you guys just take out the Looter?" the cop asked, looking up at them with suspicious eyes. The Gibbon looked at the Spot, then at the Kangaroo, then at the officer. "You just saved the bank from being robbed?"
"I guess, uhm, I guess we did," the Gibbon stammered. With no word of a lie. Almost.
"Well, congratulations," the officer replied, a slight smile crawling across his lips as he looked back at his partner who seemed more relaxed than when they'd first arrived. He turned back to the Gibbon and took his costumed paw to shake it, then turned to the Spot who stepped back arrogantly.
"Wait," the Kangaroo started and stepped forward. He quizzically moved his head leftward though his eyes remained focused on the cop. "Do you even know who we are?" he asked.
"No," the officer replied. "Never seen you before. But thanks for helping us out. It's nice to see up-and-coming men looking after the common folk instead of hitting the high-profile threats like Doctor Doom and the Green Goblin. I have to get back to my car, call this in and have a paddywagon pick this guy up. But, thanks." He turned and walked toward his sedan.
"What just happened?" the Spot asked, looking at the others. The Gibbon just nodded in disbelief, letting a silent moment drop.
"So, anyway, about applesauce—"
The Spot's apartment.
"Our bank robbery was foiled by a guy calling himself the Looter of all things?" the Spot asked, circling his couch for probably the twelfth time. "What exactly did he loot today?"
The Kangaroo sat on one of two rather uncomfortable sofa seats, peering down at a picture frame holding what was obviously the picture it had come with, a five-by-eight inch portrait of a happily married couple still in their marriage digs. The more the Kangaroo knew this Spot, the more he thought the arrogant terd was no better than a slug. He looked around the room, everywhere his eyes stopped making him more nauseous than before. The pale green wallpaper that peeled at the corners, the torn and outdated furniture, the lack of cleanliness... everything in the room made it spin hopelessly in his nausea as if he hung immediately outside the eye of a tornado. He looked at the Spot, derision marking his face. This guy and this guy alone was responsible for botching his and the Gibbon's hit on that bank. If not for him, they could have been far from the bank by the time the Looter had smacked into that window like a drunken hummingbird. He threw the picture frame aside.
"Yeah, and the cops think we captured him, think we protected the bank," the Gibbon replied, seated close to the Kangaroo on the other rather uncomfortable sofa seat, a mismatched brown and red pair. "They think we're the good guys. And you know what? It felt good to be the good guy for once."
"Speak for yourself," the Spot replied. He chopped the air with one hand. "Ain't no way I'd feel right being the good guy. There's a whole world of money out there to be stolen, and I'm the guy who's going to do it. I hate—despise—the idea of being the good guy." The Spot looked genuine in his hatred.
"No, really, how many times has Spider-Man beat up on you guys? The bad guy thing never worked. For any of us."
"Hey, Spidey never beat up on me. How many times I gotta tell you that?"
The Gibbon looked brimming with new passion, restored life. He breathed faster now, or at least that's what the blubber looked like to the Kangaroo when it shook. He stood, almost launching himself at the Spot with a newfound enthusiasm that was shriveled and dead when he had met this man in the diner not long ago. The Gibbon grabbed the Spot by the shoulders. "Think about it. People would root for us for once! We wouldn't be the idiots everyone spat on, the losers no one would miss if we vanished into thin air." He paused. "We'd be the losers everyone cheered for." He turned to the Kangaroo. "We'd lose on the right side of the law."
The Spot shook out of the Gibbon's hold. He backed away, smacking the Gibbon's hands out of the air with a disgusted look. "I ain't gonna be the good guy! I lived that life for far too long. I hated it. Never worked for me." He turned away, walking toward the fridge. "Get outta my apartment."
"But..." The Gibbon paused for a second, a sly smile creeping over his face. The Kangaroo had never seen such an inspirationally devilish smile on a man. "But think of the money we could make."
The Spot stopped. It took a moment for any other movement to register, for any other sign of life to animate the otherwise motionless tableau with one foot almost half-stepping in the air. Then he moved, turned, looked over to the Gibbon. His eyes flickered to the Grizzly and the Kangaroo, then back at the Gibbon.
"That's right," the Gibbon continued, stepping toward the Spot. "Think of the endorsements we could make, the television deals we'd sign, the fans that would pay thirty dollars for an autographed t-shirt of your spotty face on it. Wouldn't you love to have your forty-dollar name scrawled illegibly under the armpit of someone's hoodie?"
The Spot looked like he was smiling. He still wore his mask, but the suggestion of a curling mouth played across it. Dollar signs almost bulged out of the slot machine wheels the Spot's eyes had become. He was taken. "Just to have my name scrawled illegibly under the armpit of someone's hoodie," he repeated, those dollars signs ringing the bells of riches in his head so loudly that the Kangaroo swore he actually heard them. Soon nickels would spit out of his mouth. Oh, well, at least he'd be able to yank down the Spot's arm.
"That's right," the Gibbon replied, then looked back at the Kangaroo, then at the Grizzly. He disregarded the Grizzly, who was peering down at his thumbnails, probably fascinated by their symmetry. All it would take to win the Grizzly was to feed him more applesauce. "What do you say? We'd be the losers that New Yorkers could root for. A team of them, or a... a... legion."
The good guys. Being the losers that New York could root for. Meh. It beat watching what was on cable.
He hated reality TV anyway.
Next issue: Probably more of the same bumbling nonsense but with a few new jokes. And probably someone scratching his nuts. Is your curiosity piqued yet?