PANEL SIX: FOOT ON ANTHONY’S THROAT — He is GENUINELY CHOKING. We can’t see WHO’S DOING IT.
THROWBACK (OP): Oh, man, you are SO DEAD.
NEXT ISSUE: THE PLACE OF FLIES
PAGE 22
(This is going to be a page representing the PLUSDOTCOM website: It should LOOK like an ENTERTAINMENT SITE — LOTS OF PICTURES, POINTLESS
GRAPHICS, Etc. It will have a tie-in to the story, and we’ll probably have one page each issue. Here’s the first article, just as an example.) SPECIAL ALL–VILLAINS ISSUE! THE SHADOW CIRCUIT — A GRAY MARKET FOR EVIL?
People think of supervillains stealing bullion from Fort Wayne or holding the world to ransom with giant laser weapons, but in an exclusive for PlusDotCom, investigative reporter K. Allen Lilly says that many professional bad guys and gals reap a sizeable income from the Shadow Circuit, lecturing and consulting with other criminal organizations, foreign governments, and a few “straight” businesses that don’t mind having a reputation as “sharks” in mainstream corporate waters. Disgraced former governor and international arms dealer Hart Huon is of course the biggest act in this shadowy world, but such criminal masterminds as General Disorder, Maxim Nachtigal, Professor Tyrus Trinch, and the frankly frightening Silas Winter also command big appearance fees and are reported to be booked months or even years in advance.
“It’s a wonder some of them even bother with regular crime anymore,” says reporter Lilly. “Trinch or Huon could live the rest of their lives on under-the-table appearance fees from straight corporations and legitimate governments. If they’re committing crimes or fighting superheroes, it’s ‘cause they WANT to.”
(READ ARTICLE)
HEROES BELIEVE A HIGHER POWER HELPING THE HORROR
The powerful lawbreaker known as the Horror is responding well to a dose of religious education, according to a spokesman for Regent and his fellow born-again Christian hero, the Flag.
“He’s not mindless,” the source told PlusDotCom, “and he didn’t want to be a villain. Ever since the original accident that made him what he is, he’s had moments of sanity and remorse. Regent believes he has a responsibility to use his unique position to minister to lost souls, not just imprison them, and Flag has agreed to throw his own popular name behind a campaign to rehabilitate human-plus prisoners through faith.”
Not all the members of United Powers agree with Regent and the Flag, however: other sources suggest that Twilight Man, who captured the Horror in a televised battle on top of the San Amaro Bay Bridge, has announced his disenchantment with the project, suggesting the superstrong criminal is only pretending to feel sorry about his numerous crimes to get more lenient treatment.
(READ ARTICLE)
BAD BOYS AND BAD GIRLS
Highlights of the Year in Villainy, including Butcher Baker’s spectacular airport robbery, Knave of Hearts pre-empting the Super Bowl, and unforgettable video of the pitched battle between the Chain Gang and Force Five that leveled Jefferson City Hall — as well as a look at our Young Villains on the Rise at work and play, and new and fascinating killer faces like Hooligan, Fog, Toxin, and Murder One
(READ ARTICLE)
If they’re mad, bad, and dangerous to know, PlusDotCom’s got ‘em — in the SPECIAL ALL–VILLAINS ISSUE!
Tad Williams
A Stark And Wormy Knight
The Thursday Men
“ Y OU KNOW ANYONE FAMOUS NAMED ‘ M ONDAY’?” Liz asked.
“You mean like Rick Monday? Used to play for the Dodgers back in the ‘70s?” That was from Ted the technician. I never cared much about baseball myself.
“Okay,” said Liz. “So that’s one for Monday. And there’s Tuesday Weld, the actress.”
“I thought of another one — Ruby Tuesday, that Rolling Stones song,” said Ted, and began to hum it — or at least he hummed what he thought, in his tuneless way, it sounded like. He’s a decent enough kid and a pretty good technician, but if the BPRD ever fires him he’s not going to be making a living on the pro Karaoke circuit.
“I thought we were going to play cards,” I said. My cigar had gone out and I couldn’t find my lighter. “What is all this crap?”
Liz kindled her fingertip and re-lit my stogie. “I’ve just been thinking about the days of the week and people who have them as names,” she said. “Wednesday from the Addams Family. Robinson Crusoe’s Man Friday.”
“No!” shouted Ted. “Has to be Joe Friday! From Dragnet.”
“You weren’t even alive when that was on,” I growled.
Liz went on as if we weren’t talking. “And there’s Baron Saturday — he’s one of the voodoo gods, I guess you’d call them. You know about them, right, HB?”
I have had more than a few strange adventures in the New Orleans area over the years. “Yeah. But that doesn’t mean I want to talk about it. What’s your point?”
“And Billy Sunday was a famous evangelist or something — my grandmother used to talk about him.” She frowned. “But I still can’t come up with a Thursday. I don’t think there are any.”
“Ooh, I thought of one,” said Ted. “There’s a pretty famous spy book called ‘The Man Who Was Thursday’.”
“Yeah, but it was just his code name,” I pointed out.
Ted looked at me in surprise. “You read G. K. Chesterton?”
“Does that seem so unlikely?” I put my cigar in the corner of my mouth and did my best to look intellectual — not that easy to do when you’re seven feet tall, literally ugly as sin, and red as a fire truck from head to foot. “But I’ll give you a real one, if you promise to shut up and play some damn cards. Grayson Thursday. In fact, there were a whole bunch of Thursdays, when you get down to it.”
“It doesn’t count if nobody’s ever heard of them,” Liz said, pouting. She makes those grumpy-kid faces, you almost forget she could napalm a city block if the urge took her.
“But it does sound familiar,” said Ted. “Why is that?”
“Maybe you read the file,” I said, knowing he probably had. The kid studied up on me when he came here like a Yankees fan memorizing all the stats of his favorite player. When it came to me, he could tell you the BP|RD equivalent of my on-base percentage or average with runners in scoring position for every year of my career.
Hey, I said I didn’t care much about baseball, I didn’t say I didn’t know anything about it.
I looked at the two of them. They were waiting expectantly. “Crap,” I said. “We’re not going to play cards, are we?”
“Come on, tell about this Thursday guy,” Liz said. “If I know who he is, then maybe it’ll count for my list.”
“Wait, was that back in the 80s? The guy with the magical grandfather clock?” Ted said. “I think I remember…”
“Just shut up,” I suggested. “And keep it shut. I’m the one telling the story.”
It was the first time I’d been on the California coast above San Francisco. It’s interesting how quick you can go from a place packed with people and lights and car horns and things like that to the middle of nowhere. Once you get about an hour or so north of the Golden Gate Bridge, most of it’s like that — the kind of place where you realize you’ve been listening to the seagulls and the ocean all day and not much else. Or at least that’s how it was when I went to Monk’s Point back in early March of 1984. Maybe it’s different now.
Albie Bayless met me off the BPRD plane at Sonoma County Aiport. Bayless was a former reporter with the San Francisco Examiner who’d retired to his hometown a few years back and taken over the local shopper, the Monk’s Point Beacon. He’d had some past contact with the BPRD and me — you remember that Zodiac guy, the murderer everyone says he was never caught? No, nobody knows the BPRD had anything to do with that — I didn’t file an official report on that one. Probably never will. Anyway, when Bayless stumbled onto the weird death of Rufino Gentle and what happened after, he called my bosses at the bureau and suggested they send me out to have a look-see.
Bayless was wearing shorts and had grown a beard. He looked a good bit older and saggier than the last time I’d seen him, but I was there to work with him, not marry him. “Still got that bad sunburn, I see,” he said as I came down the ladder. Funny guy. I squeezed into the passenger seat of his car and he filled me in on details along the way. The town was called Monk’s Point because there used to be a Russian monastery out on the rocky headland overlooking a dent in the coastline called Caldo Bay. The population of monks had dwindled until the last of them went back to Russian at the end of the 19th century. Later the monastery was turned into a lighthouse when the Caldo Bay fishing industry hit its stride. Those glory days passed too, and the lighthouse was decommissioned in the 1960s. The property on the point now belonged to some out-of-town rich guy who hardly anybody ever saw. But the place itself had a bad reputation going back even before the Russians arrived. The local Indians had been a tribe called “Zegrado”, which, Bayless informed me cheerfully, was a corruption of the Spanish word for “cursed.”