LNH/Contest: Legion of Net.Heroes Volume 2 #46: A 24 Minute Comic

[Saxon Brenton]

[LNH][Contest] Legion of Net.Heroes Volume 2 #46:  A 24 Minute Comic
     
     
___  ___________________________
| |-|                           \  
| |-| []                        /                #46
| | | [] egion of               \       'A Spoonful of Mischief'
| | | []__ [] []   []  []       / (Part of High Concept Challenge #26)
| | | [___][ \[]et.[]__[]eroes  \  
| | |      []\ ]   [ __ ]       /    written by and copyright 2012
| |-|      [] []   []  []       \           Saxon Brenton
| |-|___________________________/
| | 
| | 
| | 
| | Cover shows three lemurs.  One of them is wearing glasses, one of 
| | them is carrying a bottle of grape juice, and the third has a spoon.
| | 
| | 
| | 
|_| 
     
     From the personal files of Cheesecake-Eater Lad:
     "I knew things were going wrong when I heard the 'Frink' from the 
back of the LNH-HQ's walk-in refrigerator store-room.
     " 'Who's there?' I demanded.  The only reply was muffled giggling. 
Some supervillain or other, no doubt.  Well, just because the head-
quarters of the Legion of Net.Heroes attracted villainous ne'er-do-wells 
like flies didn't mean that they'd be allowed to get the better of the 
heroes.
     "I backed into some shadows and then silently leapt up onto some 
tall shelving.  Okay, yes, I know I'm a bit overweight.  But my ninja 
training gives me stealth that my opponents usually don't - can't  - 
credit to a fat man.  
     "I ghosted along, following the sounds of the giggling until I came 
upon my opponents.  They were a trio of lemurs (one of them wearing horn 
rim glasses), and they had stolen several bottles of grape juice.  More 
importantly, they somehow knew I was there, and had shaken up one of 
the bottles until it was full of pressurised carbonation bubbles, and 
then they unscrewed the top in my direction.
     "I catapulted out of the way as the fizzy, grape flavoured soft 
drink fountained and splattered all over the shelving where I had been.  
As I flew through the air I threw a number of spoons at them.  I may not 
be as good at spoonjitsu as Decibel Dude's girlfriend, Samantha Spoon 
was, but the spoons hit their mark squarely into the wall on either side 
of the three lemur’s heads, and then stuck there, quivering with a 
satisfying malice.
     " 'All right, that was just for starters,' I said, as I lightly 
bounded down to the floor with enough spoons for a second volley if it 
became necessary.  'Do you surrender?  Or do I have to get rough?'
     "The troublesome trio of lemurs put up their hands in a sign of 
surrender as they decided not to be troublesome anymore."
     
     
     "So that's what happened," Cheesecake-Eater Lad said as he finished 
his story to Occultism Kid and Fearless Leader.  
     Occultism Kid nodded.  "I think I know what's going on.  You're 
aware that the Superguy altiverses have had very little activity over 
the past few years?"
     Cheesecake-Eater Lad nodded, somewhat sadly.  There were so many 
story imprints that had dwindled away from lack of interest over the 
last twenty years.
     "Well, apparently some of the lemurs have been abandoning ship, 
heading off to other imprints," said Occultism Kid.  He looked pointedly 
at the three lemurs, who were now watching the net.heroes from inside a 
steel cage box.
     "Well by rights we should deport them back to their home 
dimension," said Fearless Leader.
     "That's hardly fair if their universe is about to run down from 
lack of interest," protested Cheesecake-Eater Lad.
     "I hardly think the altiverses are in any danger of dying," said 
Fearless leader.
     "I agree," said Occultism Kid.  "If nothing else, the squirrels 
don't seem to be particularly worried, and they've got a far better grip 
on the metaphysics of these things."
     "Okay, so let's get the paperwork sorted out for sending them 
back...  Hey, we've they go?" demanded Fearless Leader as he suddenly 
realised that the cage was empty.
     "Look!" said Cheesecake-Eater Lad, pointing at a hairpin on the 
floor.  "They must have picked the lock!"
     "I'll  use a spell to track them," said Occultism Kid.  "They can't 
have gotten far."
     
     
     They hadn't, but they didn't need to.
     The troublesome trio raced down the halls (tripping up Bad-Timing 
Boy in the process) when they came to an open door.  A door that 
shouldn't have been open.  They scampered inside, and came face to face 
with the awesome contents of the Legion's Plot Device Room.
     "Woooo," the lemurs went.  Then they heard the Legionnaires in 
pursuit behind them.  They ran further into the Plot Device Room, and 
happened upon an inter-dimensional portal generator, which most 
certainly shouldn't have been on like that.  They raced towards it.  
Along the way one of the lemurs picked up one of the numerous artefacts 
that were stored in the room: The Spoon of Destiny of Looniearth-A.  And 
then the three lemurs and the Spoon went through the portal into 
Looniearth-20, to make mischief in a brand new imprint.
     
     
=====
     
Character credits:
     Cheesecake-Eater Lad created by Matthew Jotham Millheiser.
     Fearless Leader created by Dave Van Domelen.
     Occultism Kid created by Josh Guerink.
     
Author's notes:
     Written for the 26th High Concept Challenge: a 24 minute comic 
starting with the line "I knew things were going wrong when..."
     This is the second story I tried for HCC26, and was written in 24 
minutes exactly.  (Editing, spellchecking, and copy'n'pasting in the 
logo took extra time, naturally.)  The first was a story involving a flying 
cargo ship caught in a silt storm in a fantasy setting, but I ran out of 
time about halfway through, indicating that I really didn't have a 
proper sense of how long it would take me to whip off a particular 
amount of text.
     Only after I finished writing did I realise that Occultism Kid's 
summary of the lemurs isn't actually all that complete.  Yes, they're a 
running gag, but upon reflection and after some fact checking it could 
be accurately said that their original home is the usenet newsgroup 
alt.fan.lemurs.
     (Handwavy rationalisation)  From there they spread out, 
including to the Superguy writing group mailing list (which as far as 
shared universe writing group's go is rec.arts.comics.creative's elder 
sibling, and for the last few years has been on low ebb and kept alive 
mainly by the efforts of Gary W. Olson).  (Even more handwavy 
rationalisation)  If we posit that only a few of the more panicky Superguy 
lemur population have decided to bail, and that some have gone 'back 
to the old country', then this explains why only a small number have 
turned up elsewhere.
     By contrast the various factions of squirrel super scientists and 
magicians showed up mainly in Dvandom's old _Crazy Guy_ and 
_Exarchs_ series for the Superguy imprint.
     Anyway, the premise - that some but not all of the lemurs are 
starting to abandon Superguy for still active imprints - is an off the 
cuff piece of silliness that I threw out sometime last year.  The notion 
of throwing the whole mess into the brand new LNH20 imprint to 
further complicate the 'Spoon Of Destiny' cascade is a piece of 
mischief that occurred to me within the last hour.
     What, you though the story title referred to the *lemurs* making 
mischief?
     
     
-----
Saxon Brenton   University of Technology, city library, Sydney Australia
     saxon.brenton at uts.edu.au     saxonbrenton at hotmail.com
"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex
world of jet-powered apes and time-travel." - Superman, JLA Classified #3