SG/REPOST: Sporkman Flashbacks #1

Greg Fishbone gfishbone at gmail.com
Sun Dec 30 13:22:05 PST 2007


SG: Super Seven #14 (November, 1994)

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

   Sporkman will resume next week, so here's some filler to ring in the new
   year.

   This is Mickey Dunne's first ever appearance, in Episode #4 of my "Super
   Seven" series, posted to Superguy on 10 November, 1994. The episode was out
   of continuity, which is why Mickey is described as being eight years old
   even though he would have turned nine in late October.

   The Super Seven were a group of underappreciated college-aged superheroes
   battling crime on the turf of the Great and Mighty Spoonman (who was only to
   happy to take credit for their exploits). At this point in the "Dead at 21
   Days" storyline, the Super Seven had been infiltrated by Underling Number
   Six who had taken the place of a presumed-dead heroine named Sunbeam.
   Hilarity and angst ensue. The Super Seven were familiar with Mickey's
   father, who we will see again in a future episode of "Sporkman."

   Enjoy!


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                         DEAD AT @ 21 DAYS
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                          SUPER SEVEN #14
                         DEAD AT 21 DAYS #8
        Copyright 1994, Greg Fishbone, all rights reserved.


   Mickey was a superhero, and he looked every inch the part: bulging
muscles, spandex suit, and perfectly coifed hair.  Mickey was more than a
person, he was a force, a force for justice and peace and the violent
destruction of any evildoer who got in his way.  With almost no conscious
effort, he soared through the air, burst through layer after layer of
upper atmosphere, and broke free of the Earth's gravitational field.
Starlight burned into his retinas, and the universe unfolded in front of
him, beckoning...

   And then, Mickey woke up, and once again he was merely a young boy in
Spoonman pajamas.  He looked around his room, taking a quick inventory,
and noticing that everything was the same as always except for the
costumed woman standing just inside his bedroom door.  Satisfied, Mickey
closed his eyes again for exactly ten seconds before bolting upright and
looking back over at the strange woman with surprise and amazement.  The
moonlight coming in through Mickey's window was just enough to allow him
to see that she was, in fact, still there and that she was, indeed,
wearing a skin-tight outfit complete with cape, boots, and gloves.  He
watched her for a moment, as she continued to stand at the slightly ajar
door, looking out through the crack.  Finally, he summoned the courage to
speak.  "Who--?"

   "Shhhh!" she said, not even bothering to look over at him.

   Mickey pinched his arm to make sure he was not still dreaming.  "Ouch!"

   "Quiet!" the woman whispered insistently.  "Do you want them to hear you?"

   "Um...  Who?"

   "The burglars who are breaking into your house."

   "Burglars?!"  Mickey jumped out of bed and grabbed his baseball bat.

   "Wait, wait," said the woman, motioning for him so stay back.  "My
teammates have everything under control.  My job is to keep you in here
and keep them out there so that nobody gets hurt."

   "What about my mom and dad?"

   "Someone is looking after them as well.  You have nothing to worry
about; we're professionals."

   Reassured, Mickey dropped the bat at the foot of his bed and
cautiously approached his protector.  "I've never met a superhero before,
up close like this.  When I grow up, I'm going to be a hero, too!"

   "That's so cute," she said, rubbing her fingers through his hair,
which was not quite the reaction Mickey was looking for.  "I'm Anode,
from the Super Seven," she told him.

   "Oh, wow!  My dad hates you guys even more than he hates Spoonman!"

   "Your dad?"

   "Captain Dunne.  You've met him, right?"

   "Oh, sh-- uh, sugar!"

   In another part of the house, Anode's twin, Cathode, uttered a similar
epithet.  "What's wrong?" asked Magnoboy.

   "Complication, guys.  Do you know whose house this is?"

   The lights flicked on, and a powerfully-built man with a military
hair-cut and large caliber pistol appeared at the top of the stairs.
"Captain Philip Dunne, Dillweed police!  Who's down there?"

   "Nobody here but us superheroes," the Human Microwave muttered under
his breath.

   "Where's Sunbeam?" asked Magnoboy.  "She was supposed to keep the
parents in their room..."

   "She said something about having to find the little girls' room,"
Cathode told him.

   "Step out where I can see you!" Dunne called, clicking off the safety
of his gun and taking two steps down the stairs.  The three superheroes
in his living room pressed themselves against the wall, out of the
captain's line of vision, concentrating on making no sound, and praying
that Dunne would go back upstairs.

   "I messed up, didn't I?" asked a voice up on the second floor.  Dunne
turned to discover that Sunbeam was standing a mere five feet away.
"This costume isn't very easy to get in and out of...  Hey, you're
Captain Dunne!"

   "You!" shouted Dunne, pointing his gun at Sunbeam.  "I should have
figured that you weren't really killed by that oatmeal creature!  Why
can't you spandex-suited vigilantes stay dead like normal, decent folk
do?  Why do you insist on coming back to life again and again like it's
some kind of damned video game that you can keep plugging quarters into?
And what the hell are you doing in my home in the middle of the night?"

   "Um, which question do you want me to answer first?"

   "Good enough distraction?" asked Cathode.

   "Works for me," said the Human Microwave.  The three heroes quietly
crawled out of the living room and made their way to the back of the house.

   "Nick said that the burglars were back here somewhere," said
Magnoboy.  "Pretty big house for a cop, eh?"

   "He's a captain," Cathode reminded them.  "There!  I think I hear them!"

   Back in Mickey's room, Anode and Mickey heard the creaking of
floorboards just outside in the hall.  "Are those the good guys or the
bad guys?" asked Mickey.

   "I'm not sure," Anode told him.  As always, she was receiving pictures
from her twin, but it was hard to tell where the three heroes were
without knowing the layout of the house.

   "Well let's go outside and see!"

   "Too dangerous for you.  I can't let you out of this room until we're
sure it's safe."  Anode went back to the door and peeked out through the
crack, but whoever had been there before was now gone.  The blow to the
back of her skull came as a total surprise, and she fell to the floor,
unconscious, before the event could even register in her mind.

   "Sorry about that," said Mickey, guiltily fingering the baseball bat.
He looked down at the fallen heroine, amazed that it had been so easy to
knock her out.  "Mental note, obtain invulnerability at some point," he
told himself.  Then he opened the door and stepped out into the hall,
looking for a piece of the action.

   In a nearby part of the house, Cathode, Magnoboy, and the Human
Microwave burst in on two burglars who were in the process of dismantling
the Dunne family's home entertainment system.  "Hold it right--  Ouch!"
exclaimed Cathode, suddenly grabbing the back of her head for no apparent
reason.

   "What's wrong?" asked the Human Microwave, deeply concerned.  The two
crooks ran out of the room through two different doors, while the heroes
were too distracted to pursue them.

   "It's Tracy," said Cathode.  "She's in trouble!"

   "What about the kid?" asked Magnoboy.

   "I think somebody is in the room with them; he's knocked Tracy out!
Quick, where's the boy's room?"

   "Um, back this way, I think."

   "No, it was through that hallway over there, wasn't it?"

   "This place is a maze!" Cathode exclaimed.

   "Then let's split up," Magnoboy suggested.

   "Right," the Human Microwave concurred.

   *Wake up, Tracy!  Help is on the way!* Cathode thought, as hard as she
could.  The mental link she maintained with her twin allowed them to
exchange senses, to see, hear, taste, smell, and feel whatever the other
experienced, but never to trade actual thoughts.  Cathode's thoughts, as
always, echoed through her mind alone, and from her sister she received
nothing.

   Upstairs, Sunbeam was trying her best to keep Captain Dunne busy.
"You still haven't told me what you're doing here," he said, tapping his
foot expectantly.

   Sunbeam shifted into her photon-form and floated into the air, holding
her arms out toward him.  "I am the Ghoooooost of Labor Day Past!
Ooooooooooh!  Oooooooo-ooooooh!"

   "Look, Little Miss Lightbulb, or whatever you call yourself, I'm not
playing games here--"

   "Repent, Philip Dunne!  Repent!  Aaaaaaaahooooooo!"

   "Do you know what the mandatory sentence is for--  What was that?"

   "What?" asked Sunbeam.

   "That noise."

   "Oh, that was me."

   "It came from downstairs..."

   "Didn't know I was a ventriloquist, did you?"

   "I'm going down to check it out," Dunne announced.

   "You'll have to go through me first!" Sunbeam declared, floating
forward to block his way.  Dunne stepped through her body and proceeded
down the stairs.  "Well," she said to herself, "I guess that's one of the
drawbacks of being made entirely out of light particles..."  She turned
and floated after him.

   Down in the kitchen, the Human Microwave realized that he had made a
wrong turn somewhere.  There was nothing for him to do but go back and
retrace his steps, but first he decided to open the fridge and look for
something to drink.  After all, a superhero with a parched throat was no
good to anybody.

   "Let's see...  Milk, O.J., purple stuff...  Hey, what's in here?  All
right, it's Sunny Delight!"  He took a long chug, straight from the
bottle, and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his costume.  In the light
from the refrigerator, the Human Microwave saw a shadowy form moving
through the next room.  "Kind of short for a burglar," he said to
himself.  "Must be a midget..."  He dropped the juice container and took
up the pursuit.

   Mickey continued through the house, oblivious to the superhero
following one or two rooms behind him.  His father thought that the house
was secure, as burglar-proof as a residence could be without an alarm
system, but his father knew nothing about the broken lock on the picture
window in the utility room.  Mickey used it on occasion to sneak into and
out of the house, and he knew that any burglar worth half his salt would
be sure to find it as well.  Sure enough, Mickey burst into the utility
room just in time to see one of the burglars moving toward the window.
Mickey ran forward to attack, but the man was able to grab him, pinning
the boy's arms to his sides as he tried to wrestle the bat out of his hands.

   A beam of concentrated heat struck the burglar in the face, and he
staggered back, letting Mickey go.  Mickey turned around and whacked the
man in the knees with his bat, then jabbed him in the stomach, and
finally brought the bat crashing down on the burglar's head.

   The Human Microwave was impressed.  "Who are you?" he asked.

   "I'm Bat-Man," said Mickey, swinging the bat for dramatic effect.
"Tell your friends about me!"

   "Cute."

   Mickey frowned.  "I'm not supposed to be cute; I'm supposed to be
menacing!"

   "Keep working on it, kid.  You do nice work -- for an amateur."

   "That's what dad calls all of you guys," Mickey told him.  The second
burglar ran into the room, saw his fallen comrade freely bleeding from a
gash on his head, took a look at the Human Microwave, and decided to turn
tail and keep running.  "Come on!" shouted Mickey.  "Let's get him!"

   "Wait, hold on!" shouted the hero, but the boy was able to dodge
around him and out of the room before he could do anything.  "The kid's
pretty quick," he remarked, as he turned to follow.

   Several rooms away, Captain Dunne and Sunbeam were making their way
through the dining room.  "Burglars?" Dunne asked.  "You claim that
you're here because there are burglars in my house?"

   "That's right."

   "Even if there are burglars here, that falls under police jurisdiction
-- unless they're some kind of costumed superburglar freaks.  You hero
types always seem to attract that kind of unbalanced individual in great
quantity."

   "No," said Sunbeam, "as far as I know, these are just your
garden-variety burglars--  Well, maybe not *garden*-variety.  I mean,
they don't steal vegetables or anything, unless they really want to that
is..."

   "What are you babbling about?  The fact remains that you should have
called the police to deal with this crime.  Civilians are just not
trained for this kind of thing, no matter what planet you were born on or
what kind of radiation you've been exposed to.  It's not just any
person-on-the-street who can effectively run down the criminal
element--"  A burglar raced into the room and down an adjoining corridor,
followed quickly by an eight-year-old boy with a baseball bat.

   "You were saying?" asked Sunbeam smugly.

   "Mickey!" Dunne exclaimed.  He started after the boy, but collided
with the Human Microwave, who was running after Mickey from the other
direction.  The two of them tumbled to the ground, knocking over four
chairs from the dinette set.

   "Are you guys all right?" asked Sunbeam, as she helped them to their feet.

   Captain Dunne glared at the Human Microwave.  "You see?" he asked.
"All you people are good at is getting in the way and obstructing justice!"

   "You obstructed me first!" the Human Microwave protested.  By this
time, Mickey and the burglar were too far away to catch.

   Back in Mickey's room, Magnoboy discovered Anode's prone body.  After
determining that she was still alive and breathing normally, he looked
around the room.  The boy was missing, and there was no sign of a
struggle -- well, no sign except for Anode lying face-down on the carpet
with a nice lump on her head.  The only reasonable explanation he could
come up with was that the boy had done this to her himself.

   Magnoboy moved Anode to the bed and wondered whether it would be
better to shake her awake or just let her lie there.  Anode solved this
dilemma for him by opening her eyes and turning her head of her own
accord.  "Are you all right?" he asked her.

   "I have a little bit of a headache," she told him.

   "Did the kid do this to you?"

   "Yeah."  She rubbed the back of her head.  "The little monster wanted
to go out and play hero.  Can you believe that?"

   "Most of the time I can't believe that you and I are running around
playing hero," he told her.

   "Say, Mark?"

   "Yes, Tracy?"

   "Why are we doing all of this again?"

   "You mean risking our lives for people who don't appreciate us?"

   "Yeah."

   "If I told you that with great power comes great responsibility, would
that be a good enough answer for you?"

   "Nope."

   Magnoboy leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead.  "Why don't
you sleep on it until Nick and Tom get here?"

   "Good idea."

   Magnoboy pulled Mickey's covers over Anode's head and walked over to
the window, wondering what Taximan and Mr. Plasma would think when the
returned and saw what a mess this simple burglary had become.  As he
stood there, admiring the moonlight, the remaining burglar ran into the
room and found himself trapped in a dead end with a superhero.

    Before Magnoboy could do anything, the desperate man pulled out a gun
and leaped toward the bed, putting the muzzle up against Anode's covered
form.  "Don't move, hero, or this innocent kid gets it!"

   Coils of electricity snaked out around the crook's arm, wrapping
around his neck, and pushing him back.  Anode popped out from under the
covers.  "Who are you calling innocent?" she demanded.  She never got an
answer, because Mickey ran into the room at that very moment and bashed
the bad guy into unconsciousness.

   "Ahem!" said Anode, reaching out with her hand.  Mickey smiled
sheepishly and handed over the bat.

   "You're going to be a fine superhero some day," said Magnoboy, "as
soon as you figure out who to hit and who not to hit."

   "Sorry about that," said Mickey.

   "All right, what's going on in here?" asked Captain Dunne, as he burst
into the room, along with Cathode, Sunbeam, and the Human Microwave.

   "I caught a couple of burglars, dad," said Mickey.  "Oh yeah, and the
Super Seven helped a little."

   "This kid's going to be the next Spoonman," Magnoboy said to Kyle.

   "I guess we'll be going now, sir," said Cathode.  "Unless you want to
press charges against us, that is."

   "Not this time," Dunne told them, his voice surprisingly warm.  "But
if I ever catch you guys in my house again, I'll lock you up in the state
pen until you're the first superheroes on social security!"

   "We get the picture," said the Human Microwave.

   After showing the Super Seven out of the house, cuffing the burglars,
and calling for a patrol car to take them in, Philip Dunne returned to
his son's room.  "Well, Mickey, I guess you've learned a thing or two
from the old man after all, eh?"

   "I guess so."

   "I'm proud of you, son.  Some day, you're going to make a good cop!"

   "Cop?  That's what you think," said Mickey, under his breath so that
his father could not hear.  Captain Dunne kissed his son goodnight and
left the room.  Within minutes, Mickey was sound asleep.

   On a high plateau he stood, his hands on his hips, his cape flowing
majestically behind him.  Mickey the Great, Mickey the Invincible, Mickey
the Superhero!


POSTSCRIPT:
   For anyone who's ever wanted to write for Superguy but didn't know where
   to start, Preteen Patrol franchises are now available--inquire within!

-- 
Greg R. Fishbone - http://gfishbone.com
* Author: THE PENGUINS OF DOOM - http://septinanash.com
* President: Class of 2k7 - http://classof2k7.com
* ARA: New England SCBWI - http://nescbwi.org



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