LNH: Classic LNH Adventures #30: Retcon Hour Odds and Ends

Arthur Spitzer arspitzer2 at gmail.com
Wed Aug 24 19:07:51 PDT 2016


In this weeks reposting of stuff you can find in the eyrie archive
https://archives.eyrie.org/racc/lnh/
we have the eleventh chunk of Retcon Hour.

For the 26th issue Peter "Tick" Milan gives us Decibel Dude
& Vigilante Guy #0 where the duo find themselves on an
alter.net Looniverse gone wrong.

And finally the 27th issue gives us LNH Comics Presents #22
by Martin Phipps where Doctor Stomper explains it all.



              _						
             | |      Classic			
             | |                      =
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             | |__   | [] |  | [] |  | |  | [] |  | _ \  

             |____|   \__]    \__ |  |_|   \__/   |_|\_\
                                 ||
                                |_|  OF NET.HEROES

                                     ADVENTURES #30


                         =====================
                           Retcon Hour OMEGA
                         =====================




From: Jeff J McCoskey <jjmcc at ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.creative
Subject: LNH/REPOST: RETCON HOUR EPILOGUE (TEB #10)
Date: 28 Feb 1997 17:45:13 -0800



Author Credits:  RH30.5 -- Pete Milan, RH31 -- Martin Phipps


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(>)             Decibel Dude & Vigilante Guy #0     (<)
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Would you believe...one more Retcon Hour tie-in?

                INSPIRED WEIRDNESS PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS
                       DECIBEL DUDE & VIGILANTE GUY
                                 ZERO

                          "NO  ALTERNATIVE"

                          Continued from
                          RETCON HOUR OMEGA

   With a flash of light, Decibel Dude and Vigilante Guy found themselves
in a city out of nightmare. The skies were a sickly, dirty red. Fires
burnt out of control. The screams of the damned filled the air.
   "We must be in California," remarked Vigilante Guy (who was still in
his retconned uniform of Ranch Dressing Man), gazing at the horrific
landscape. Decibel Dude stared, open mouthed, at the spectacle before
him.
   It was LNH headquarters.
   But it wasn't.
   It didn't look like a building so much as it looked like a large
scab. If Francis Bacon had gone out one night and gotten blind stinking
drunk on a mixture of Zima and Jagermeister, and then had finished off the
evening by downing a few hits of acid and hitting himself sharply on the
head with a railroad spike, he still could not have come up with something
as evil-looking as this structure.
   Where once, there had been a large plaque, proclaiming "Legion of 
Net.Heroes Headquarters," there was now a wooden sign written in blood.
"Legion of Net.Villains. Piss off."
   Next to the sign was a head. On a spike. Decibel Dude flew up for a
closer look.
   The head stared stupidly through little piggy eyes. It hadn't been 
chopped off--it looked as though it had been torn from the body. It was
the head of Ug, the Henchman That Time Forgot.
   "My God..."
   "Enjoying your handiwork?" D-Dude looked down to see a tall guy wearing
a cowboy hat, with a beer belly and a Confederate Flag T-shirt.
   "Rebel Yell?" D-Dude blurted out.
   "Now what in the hail yew callin' me that fer?" the faux-Reb asked.
"Ever' net.villain knows mah name's Redneck!"
   D-Dude landed next to V-Guy, both of them completely astonished.
   "Red...Redneck?!" they both asked.
   "Shore, yew knew that, dintcha?" asked Redneck, belching loudly.
   "Wow," whispered Vig, "Here on reverse-world, the upstanding hero called
Rebel Yell is a poorly constructed stereotype from 'Deliverance!"
   "Thank you, Kid Exposition," hissed D-Dude. "Yes, of course, Redneck!
How could we have forgotten. So what's up?"
   "Ultimate Ninja's havin' a meetin' tew discuss these here retcoons...
I mean cons. Retcons. Hurry up! If yer late, yew have tew commit ritual
seppewkew!"
   "You do realize Scav's going to kill us. You know this, don't you?"
asked Vig.
   "Ixnay on the fourth wall."

**********************************************************************

   Redneck led the heroes down a dark corridor, complete with more heads
on spikes. The putrefying remains of Deja Dude adorned the outside of
Ultimate Ninja's office.
   "This is strange...this isn't the reverse world from 'Mirror, Mirror' or
Flame Writer," asked Vig.
   "I don't think there's a Captain Oblivion on either of those worlds. 
Hard to believe I have to recruit the doppleganger of my worst enemy..."
   Redneck opened the door and ushered the heroes in. They gasped at
what they saw. Where before there had been the best and the brightest of the
Looniverse's heroes, now they were knee deep in filth. Spikes and leather
were the order of the day.
   A woman wearing an outfit seemingly entirely composed of spikes stepped
up to Vig, slapped him in the face and gave him a long wet kiss.
   "How's it going, handsome?" she asked, baring her very, very sharp
teeth.
   "Uh...do I know you?"
   "You'd better, after the welts you put on my back last night."
   "Warbabe?!" D-Dude said. "I thought you were with the Load Island
Renegades!"
   "Where have you been, chump? Everyone knows I dumped those losers a 
long time ago, when they tried to rebel against Ultimate Ninja. Didn't
you see Swordy's head on one of those spikes?"
   D-Dude peered out in the hall again. The heads all belonged to net.
heroes. There was Swordmaster, Digressor, the Squeaking Flying Rodent,
Easily-Discovered Man, Bad-Timing Boy, and Deja Dude.
   "See what happens when you try to fight City Hall?" asked Warbabe. She
slapped and kissed Vig again. "I'll see _you_ later, big boy."
   Warbabe walked off as Vig tended to his face.
   "Sweet Jesus," he growled. "If we stick around here much longer,
I'm a dead man." D-Dude scanned the crowd and spotted a familiar face.
   "Catalyst Lass! Sweet, innocent Catalyst Lass? Come on, Vig. There's
no way Catalyst Lass could be a net.villain. Hey Cat!"
   Cat turned and peered at them.
   "Yes?" she asked.
   "Well...er...I was just wondering how you were doing!"
   "Wouldn't you rather hit your partner in the face?"
   "You know, I would," said D-Dude, and he turned and gave Vig an uppercut
that sent him sprawling.
   "Now wouldn't you enjoy letting me kick you in the teeth?"
   "That _would_ be good fun," said D-Dude, smiling widely to give
Cat's boots more room to work.

************************************************************************

   The two heroes awoke to stinging slaps.
   "Awake and give tribute to our leader!" the net.villains shouted.
   The net.villains all stood and faced the podium, arms raised in salute.
In walked Ultimate Ninja. Curiously enough, he looked exactly the same.
   "You may begin," he said.
   "WE PLEDGE OUR LIVES TO THE LNV!
    WE PLEDGE OUR LIVES TO ULTIMATE NINJA!
    WE PLEDGE OUR LIVES TO INJUSTICE, CRUELTY AND RAGE!
    LONG LIVE THE LEGION!"
   "You," said UN when it was over. "You didn't say the oath."
   He was pointing at Vig.
   "Oh. Er...didn't I? I'm sure I did."
   "Do you doubt the word of your leader?"
   "Well...er...no...I mean, it's possible I forgot some of the words,
people forget, don't they..."
   "Hold him."
   Sarcastic Lad and Master Blaster grabbed Vig from behind.
   "Time to pay the piper, girlie," growled Sarc.
   "I've been wanting to snuff your tired ass for a long time," snarled
Blaster.
   "Fellas! Fellas! Can't we all just get along?"
   "Now," said UN, drawing his sword, "recite the oath. If you fail,
you will be executed."
   "Okay, okay! Uh...er...I PLEDGE MY LIFE TO THE LNV! I PLEDGE MY LIFE TO
ULTIMATE NINJA! I...er...I PLEDGE MY LIFE TO BADNESS, EVILNESS AND RICH,
CREAMERY CHEESE!"
   "Prepare to die!"
   "No, wait, I'll get it! I PLEDGE MY LIFE TO SPOONS, POKERS AND OTHER FORMS
OF CUTLERY!"
   "Your soul will rot," growled UN.
   "I PLEDGE MY LIFE TO MANNY, MOE AND JACK!"
   UN raised the sword, ready to bring it down on Vig's neck, when he found
himself slammed across the room by a blast of white noise.
   "Release him," D-Dude growled. "Now."
   Sarc and Blaster immediately released Vig and trained their very large
guns on D-Dude. "Time to suffer, monkey boy!"
   "WOO! WOO HOO! WOO HOO!" D-Dude dodged the deadly display of...of...hey,
aLLiterative Lass, you got a work for "gunfire" that begins with "d"?
   Meanwhile, Vig leapt into the crowd of net.villains and began whaling
away on them all. "Camon, Cheesecake Boy! Ahmina shove that thing so far--
OWW! Panta! Leggo my leg!"

****************************************************************************

   Meanwhile, in a pocket dimension...

   "First to...simplify things." wReamus Maximus readied the ring,
and things started shifting
shifting
                                             shifting
                shifting
                                                          shifting
shifting around.
   "What's he doing?"
   "Silence, whelp! Is it not obvious? I'm eliminating all these divergent
timestreams. When you're going to be supreme ruler of a universe, you like
things neat and tidy. So I'm eliminating all those annoying elsewhirl
events <blip>; this `Deadmeat' Earth <blip>; and all the other annoying
divergent earths I can! <blip> <blip> <blip>
 
   Actually, it wasn't <blip>. It was more of a slow fade.

******************************************************************************

   Decibel Dude and Vigilante Guy found themselves in a corner of the hall,
with the net.villains closing on them.
   "I want the ears," growled UN.
   "Dibs on the fingers," said Cat.
   "The bones are mine!" hissed Panta.
   "My powers are drained...how about you?" asked D-Dude.
   "Oh, sure, if you think a bottle of ranch dressing will scare them off."
   Just then, the corner they were backed into fell backwards, and the
heroes went with it.
   "Where'd they go?" asked Sarc.
   "Find them!" shrieked UN. "A thousand drachmas for the net.villain who
captures them?"
   "Er...how much is that in American?"
   SLASH!

******************************************************************************

   "AHHH! I'VE FALLEN INTO THE INKY VOID OF COLD, UNFORGIVING SPACE!"
   "No you haven't," came a female voice. A light was shined in Vig's face.
   "Who are you?" asked D-Dude.
   "You can call me the Whip. Come on." There was the sound of bare feet
on wet cement. "This is an escape tunnel. Do you know Captain Oblivion?"
   "Yes. We're here to recruit him," said D-Dude. "We come from another
world, where this is the headquarters of the Legion of Net.Heroes. And it's
from this world that the retcons are coming from."
   "Could you take me with you?"
   "I don't know."
   There was a blast of light, and the heroes stepped out into the light.
   They were in a chamber that would have made the Marquis de Sade a bit
uncomfortable.
   "What in...hey, Whip--"
   They turned and saw her for the first time. She was the doppleganger for
the Looniverse's Whip, but much changed. She was wearing lingerie, for one.
She was skinny and jittery. Her face bore many scars.
   "My God...what--"
   "You could say I'm Ultimate Ninja's special friend."
   "You sure slave isn't the right word?" asked Vig.
   "Vig, don't help. Look, Whip, we need to find Captain Oblivion. Where is
he?"
   "He's on his way. I summoned him on my communicator when you turned up.
He's been expecting you. I was part of the rebellion that UN squashed.
Swordmaster, Deja Dude, Easily Discovered Man--they were all trying to stop
the tyranny of the LNV. But now nothing can--"
   There were horrifying shrieks from outside. The three heroes ran to
a window and gaped.
   A wall of pure white nothing was approaching the headquarters, wiping out
everything in its path. One blue speck in the distance was visible.
   "That's Captain Oblivion!" Whip grabbed her communicator. "Captain, they're
here!"
   "Excellent," said Capt. Oblivion. "Tell them to sit tight. I'll be right
there to aid in the struggle."
   And then the door flew open.
   Ultimate Ninja strode in and grabbed Whip by the neck.
   "Traitorous little witch," he snarled, and tossed her in a corner.
   "We don't have time for this," shouted Vig. "Your entire world's about
to be destroyed!"
   "Perhaps. But I will have the satisfaction of seeing you go to your
death first!"
   WHOOSH! Captain Oblivion landed beside D-Dude and Vig.
   "Hello there, fellas," he boomed. "Looks like it's time to take out the
trash!"
   "HA!" shouted UN. "You will never defeat the Legion of Net.Villians! We are
everywhere! We cannot be stopped! We--"
   A gurgling sound rose from his throat. He fell over, a sword protruding
from his back. Behind him stood the Whip.
   "You'd better go," she said.
   "Entity!" said D-Dude. "Get us outta here!"
   And with a flash of light, they were gone.
   For a moment, Whip was surprised she hadn't gone too. She gazed out the
window at the onrush of nothingness.
   "Ah, well," she said. "Could be worse, I guess."
   And with that, the world ceased to exist.

*******************************************************************************

   RETCON HOUR
   Epilogue 7

   "Well, we survived our first crossover, D-Dude," said Vig, grabbing another
slice of pizza from the pan.
   "I guess. I just feel bad that Entity didn't bring Whip with us."
   "Well, it could be worse. You know, there's a theory that there can never
be two versions of the same person in one plane of reality."
   "So?"
   "So I didn't see any evil versions of us when we were there."
   D-Dude thought about that for a moment. Then he ran for the phone.
   "Samantha, honey? Hi. It's Nick. Tell me...have I been acting strangely
lately?"

Peter Milan
The Tick
pmilan at fscvax.fsc.mass.edu



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       ----|\      |\--+  +---                               
      |    |  \    | | |  |   |
      |    |    \  | | +--+   |                                         
      |    |  |\  \| | +--+   | COMICS PRESENTS #22
      |    |  |  \   | |  |   |
      |    |__|__  \/  |  |   | Doctor Stomper in "Seminar"
      |           \|___|  |___|         
      |_____________\          

The Seminar Room, Legion Headquarters:

  Legionaires filed into the room and sat down.  No one knew how many
would show up: apparently everyone was curious to hear what Doctor 
Stomper had to say about Retcon Hour; it soon became clear that some
would either have to stand out in the hallway or hear a second hand
account of what was to be said.
  Deja Dude got up in front of the crowd.  "We're all happy to have
with us today Doctor Vincent Stomper of the Legion of Net.Heroes..."
  "We know who he is!" Sarcastic Lad complained.
  Deja Dude pursed his lips.  "In that case, Doctor Stomper, you may
begin."  Deja Dude sat down and Doctor Stomper got up.
  Doctor Stomper walked over to the overhead projector, turned it on
and placed a transparency on it that showed everybody the title of
the seminar: "Time, Continuity and the Effect of Retcon Hour".  He
spent a second or two trying to achieve the optimum focus and then
turned to face his fellow Legionaires.
  "The title of my talk today is 'Time, Continuity and the Effect of
Retcon Hour'."
  "No kid--!"
  Everybody applauded Inaccoustic Kid for using his power on Sarcastic
Lad.
  Doctor Stomper replaced his first transparency with one that gave an
outline of his talk.  "I'm going to start by giving two alternative
explanations of how time works and will proceed to show that they are
not as incompatable as you might think.  I will then discuss the
implications this has on 'continuity', specifically with regards to
Retcon Hour."
  Doctor Stomper's next transparency showed a series of straight lines
labelled 'Looniverse', 'Mirror Looniverse', 'Reverseworld', 'Mirror
Reverseworld', 'Wackiverse' and 'Acroverse'.  "We see here schematically
how the varient Looniverses existed in parallel.  However..."  Doctor
Stomper produced his next transparency.  "If we go back far enough we
see that there was originally _one_ Looniverse with the various 
alternate Looniverses diverging from the original Looniverse at
different times in Looniversal history."
  Nit-Pick Lad raised his hand and Doctor Stomper acknowledged him.
"What about different dimensions?"
  Doctor Stomper mused for a moment.  "There are such things as 'Pocket
Universes' that would exist separately in different timelines if at 
all: these are universes unto themselves that exist as a result of the
fact that we are able to perceive only three of the ten spatial 
dimensions that arise naturally in realistic Superstring theories."
Doctor Stomper smirked.  "Alternatively I could justify their existance
by providing the appropriate metric from General Relativity --"
  "No... thanks... that's quite alright," Nit-Pick Lad said, withdrawing
the question.
  Doctor Stomper went back to what he was saying.  "The obvious question
is 'Which reality is _real_ -- if any -- or are they all equally real?'
Before I address that question, I will first explain the 'many worlds'
interpretation of Quantum Mechaincs.
  "In Quantum Mechanics, quantities can only be assigned values
_after_ they are measured, where the term 'measurement' includes any
observable event, say for example the emission of photons as a result of
an electrons striking a cathode ray tube.  The actual path of any one
electron in the tube is not observed, only the effect they have on the
screen.  The 'many worlds' interpretation of Quantum Mechanics suggests
that there exist an infinite number of realities all of which have the
same observable events; in the present case, we have electrons in 
different realities taking different paths to hit the same point on the
screen.  Each of these infinite number of realities is equally real
and has to be considered when performing calculations in quantum
mechanics.
  "What we sometimes forget, however, is that we, ourselves, are 
composed of _billions_ and _billions_ of individual sub-atomic 
particles undergoing quantum interactions and that the definition
of 'measurement' is sufficiently vague that the 'many worlds'
interpretation of Quantum Mechanics would seem to imply that there
are an infinite number of Earths in an infinite number of Looniverses.
  "Thus we avoid the issue of what's real and what's not real: all
realities are equally real, the only difference being that some
realities are far removed from what we, ourselves, perceive as
reality.  Any questions before I go on?"
  Most Legionaires just sat dumbfounded.
  "Good.  Now, a less well understood phenomena is time travel.
Logically, you _can't_ travel back in your own timeline: you have
to travel to a different timeline or else violate causality... BUT
from the 'many worlds' interpretation of Quantum Mechanics we could
argue that the different timelines are in fact different realities
and, thus, observable events in each timeline would ultimately have
to be the same.  Thus, the alternative timeline and elastic time
interpretations of time travel need only differ with respect to the
scale used to describe what's taking place."
  "Wow... that's really deep," said California Kid.
  "You mean you're actually following this?" Kid G asked.
  "No... but it _sounds_ really deep."
  Doctor Stomper continued.  "Now... let's consider what we mean by
a 'retcon'.  On the large scale, continuity exists in the 'many worlds'
interpretation because the same events occur in all realities.  On
the small scale, there is _no_ continuity: time and space are quantised
into individual, discrete 'issues' and it is only when we go to the
continuum limit and establish a history that we actually have 
established continuity.  The effect of Retcon Hour was, then, 
essentially to change the scale at which continuity is perceived:
suddenly the entire history and future of the LNH was up for grabs...
so to speak... as though nothing had been established.
  "This happened as a result of the destablisation of the Looniversal
Anchor; continuity was temporarily recovered when Continuity Champ
Junior first donned the Ring of Retcon... only to be purposely reformed
by wReamicus Maximus when he took the ring for himself.  With VAMMO
Woman herself serving as the Looniversal Anchor, we were able to once
again perceive continuity.  At the same time, while wReamicus Maximus
was able to destroy various alternative Looniverses (including the
divergent timelines created by the Time Crapper's time travelling)
VAMMO Woman was able to combine all the varient Myk-Els from those
realities into a single Myk-El, one which was the sum of all Myk-Els
and, thus, couldn't be retconned because there were no divergent Myk-Els
to draw from.
  "Now things are back to normal... except two minor retcons...
depending upon your point of view, of course."  Doctor Stomper produced
another transparency.  "One: the afforementioned return of
Myk-El and two: the introduction of new Net.Heroes including
Kid Macro, the Unlikely Aliens and the Legion of Occult Heroes.
  "This concludes my talk on 'Time, Continuity and the Effects of
Retcon Hour'."  There was some applause.
  Deja Dude stood up.  "Any questions?"  There were none.  "In that 
case, I'd like to make an announcement: as you know, various LNH 
subgroups have been created, namely the Net.Patrol, the Saint Squad,
the Drizzt Defenders, U-Force, Dvandom Force, Generation Y, the
Load Island Renegades and, now, Unlikely Aliens and the Legion of
Occult Heroes... so, now that subgroups are the 'in thing', I've
decided to unofficially create two new LNH subgroups, the Green Team
and the Red Team."
  "WHAT?!" several people in the audience asked.
  Deja Dude just smiled.  "The Green Team will consist of Doctor
Stomper, Browsing Boy, Linguist Lass, aLLiterative Lass, Catalyst Lass
and the Hooded Ho''od Win and will appear primarily in this book while
the Red Team will consist of myself, Irony Man, Master Blaster, Sister
State-the-Obvious, Ordinary Lady and Innovative Offense Boy and will
appear primarily in LNH Unadjectivated."
  "Actually, in the title 'LNH Comics Presents' it is 'LNH' that is
the adjective," pointed out Grammar Lad.
  Deja Dude smiled weakly.  "Thank you."
  "Does this mean you're reserving these characters?" Net.iquette Lad
asked.
  "No... just stating an intention to use them... although co-ordinating
with others would be nice."
  Self-Righteous Preacher got up.  "Does this mean that you are, as they
say, a Writer Character in the literal sense of the term?"
  "Well... yes."
  "So you're responsible for the content of individual issues?"
  "Not all of them."
  "What about LNH 87 and 88?"
  Deja Dude nodded.  "Yeah.  That was me."
  Self-Righteous Preacher gritted his teeth.  "Deja Dude, hereby accuse
you of distributing pornography on the net!"

TO BE CONTINUED IN LNH #89!


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(>)                 RETCON HOUR FIN                 (<)
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(<) (>) (<) (>) (<) (>) (<) (>) (<) (>) (<) (>) (<) (>)
-- 
     Jeff J McCoskey       |M|   "Preservatives might be preservin' you all:
        DoD# 750A2         |c|   I think that's somethin' you mighta missed."
   jjmcc at ix.netcom.com     |Q|   -- Jefferson Airplane
           >>your Ad here!  low $$, commensurate visibility<<

==========
Next Week: Finally with Retcon Hour over we can get to
LNH Triple Play #5 which *ahem* deals with more Retcon
Hour stuff..
==========

Arthur "Same Classic Channel.  But Same Time?  Probably not." Spitzer


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