LNH: Limp-Asparagus Lad #58

[Martin Phipps]

On Jan 28, 2:22 pm, "Saxon Brenton" <saxonbren... at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Limp-Asparagus Lad #58
>     "Arrgrrh!" cried Irony Man, his flight path becoming erratic.
> "No... Not... mind control... again!" The job of net.heroing meant that
> he had encountered this before, and it went without saying that he had
> always found it frustrating. He'd set up protections in his armour
> against it, but for the most part it was limited to electromagnetic
> effects and some types of psi. As he felt his mind slipping away, his
> last thought was, .oO( Must... find... a defense... against... magic...
> as well. )

The original concept for Irony Man according to the first roster 
posted back in 1992 said "Just like Iron Man... but different" so we 
can be forgiven for presenting the character as an almost ripoff of 
his inspiration.  A later roster entry specified that he was able to 
"Emits and detects irony".  He seems to be doing both here, both 
emitting irony and noting that it is ironic.

I snipped the part where the former Devos regained their senses and 
combined their will with the Legionaires present to fight off Simion.  
It reminded me of the scene in Peter Pan where the audience is 
supposed to help Peter Pan get better.  Not that I ever saw the 
cartoon or the live action movie: I just seem to recall that scene 
from a story book version I read when I was a kid.

>     The Great Apes are a late inclusion, incidentally. I'd always
> known that the Devos where harnessing some sort of phenomenon for their
> ray guns, and after the LNH finished off the Devo vs Creato fight in
> Net.ropolis a strike team was going to go and find it and disable it to
> prevent a repeat occurrence. But I realised that I needed to build to
> some sort of climax from the fight in the middle chapter. Then, while
> finishing off #57 I read through #56 to see if there were any plot
> points to refer back to, I saw that one of the Devos had sworn by the
> Great Apes, and I though, 'Oh cool, I can pastiche the Great Beasts from
> early years of the first volume of _Alpha Flight_'.

I forget.  Was the Great Bear from New Mutants #18-19 or so one of the 
Great Beasts.  I remember Snowbird battling an arctic beast in a 
snowstorm in Alpha Flight during Assistant Editor's month.  Did Byrne 
actually get paid to submit white pages?  We never did get to see 
Shroud battle Cloak at midnight during a new moon.

Martin