LNH: Retcon Year #1

[Jeanne Morningstar]

1991. A time when no colors were too bright or too clashing, when 
morally ambiguous mercenaries weren't afraid to misspell their names and 
carry guns that were too big for them, when muscles were huge and 
weblines were advantageous. When the Ninja Turtles were just going out 
of style and the X-Men were just coming in. When Valiant was into its 
first brush with relevance, and Image was just a gleam in Rob Liefeld's 
cybernetic eye. When you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a trading 
card series. When the Berlin Wall had just down, capitalism had won the 
Cold War, history had ended and everyone had to figure out what was 
coming next. When people bought and bagged and never read comics with 
million-copy print runs in the certainty they'd be valuable later. When 
everyone was obsessed with slime for some reason.

And when a new generation of heroes were just getting started in 
Net.ropolis...

LNH Non-Comics Presents
A Better-Late-Than-Never Production
Celebrating the 25th anniversary year of rec.arts.comics.creative (which 
I somehow didn't realize until just now)...

LNH: RETCON YEAR
Book One: Spring
Chapter One: Say Cheesecake!

****

APRIL 27, 1991:

A dark shadow darted across the rooftops of Net.ropolis. He then 
collapsed and started panting. He wondered how, with all the running and 
swinging around they did, net.heroes ever had the energy to do anything 
else. He looked down at his belly, instantly regretful of putting on 
spandex. I don't really look or feel like a net.hero, he thought. No, he 
told himself, a net.hero looks like whatever a net.hero looks like, so 
if I am one, I do.

He couldn't help but see Burp Tower looming in the distance, like a 
glass and steel middle finger raised at the whole city. A manifestation 
of the pure, ugly, overwhelming power of the biggest land developer in 
Net.ropolis, Y-Plex Burp. He'd knocked down the Net.ropolis Grand Hotel, 
one of the city's most beloved landmarks, to build it.

When you were one of the richest and most powerful men in the city you 
could be called something like Y-Plex Burp and no one would ever ask you 
what it meant. You could have the power to shut down a much-loved 
restaurant on a whim because you didn't like the food, and because it 
was only making a reasonable amount of profit and not infinite profit. A 
restaurant which happened to be the favorite of one C.E.L. Spender. And 
that was what finally motivated him, after years and years of 
daydreaming about it, to become a net.hero: the man called Cheesecake 
Eater Lad.

He was a chef from a family of chefs that went back to the founding of 
Net.ropolis, beginning with the very first Cecil Spender, whose pies 
were so delicious that the very smell of them caused British soldiers to 
drop dead from ecstasy. C.E.L. Spender's father could make any dish out 
of any ingredients. He had once made an omlette out of burnt tires and 
poison mushrooms for the Queen of England, who had pronounced it the 
most delicious thing she'd ever eaten. C.E.L. Spender had all the 
overwhelming talent of his family, but he could only make one thing. He 
could not craft casseroles, omlettes, crepes or bouillabaisses. He could 
only make one thing: Cheesecake. From the first cheesecake he ever made, 
at one year old, he was clearly the greatest cheesecake maker in the 
world. He could make any kind of cheesecake, including varieties that 
had never been imagined before and were clearly impossible, and he could 
make anything into a cheesecake. But that was all he could make. The 
whole rest of the culinary world was cut off from him.

He might have called himself a mutant if he wanted to boost sales on his 
comics (everybody loved mutants; nobody wanted to be one of those uncool 
Avengers) but it didn't really make him feel any better. He had a highly 
overspecific skill set which meant that he couldn't really make it as a 
chef but he couldn't really make it as anything else, either. Then one 
day, he logged onto his local BBS and found a file called "Superguy 
Digest," and suddenly he had an idea.

He'd never really felt like he fit into the culinary world that his six 
brothers accepted without question. Because of that, he wasn't just 
going to go along with the fact that rich people could buy up something 
that meant a lot to people and shut it down on a whim.  Corruption is 
everywhere now, goes all the way to the top... And he was going to stop 
it. With the power of cheesecake. Somehow.

Cheesecake Eater Lad pulled a grapnel cheesecake out of his hammerspace 
satchel and threw it at the side of the building. It exploded into a 
rope made of hardened sugar. The problem was these were single use. You 
couldn't reload a cheesecake, of course, that would be silly.

He pulled himself up onto the ledge and peered through the skylight 
(thankfully, mobsters tended to carry out their operations in buildings 
with large skylights that vigilantes could look in through). Of course. 
Trading card counterfeiters. When the new wave of net.heroes had 
started, the city had responded by banning comic book trading cards. But 
that only meant that the mob got into the business of illegal trading 
card joints.

Cheesecake-Eater Lad threw himself at the skylight. It didn't budge an 
inch. "What the hell was that?" said one of the mobsters below. CEL 
wiped the sweat off his brow and shook his fist. You couldn't really 
take a class to be a net.hero. You had to figure out all by yourself 
things like how to jump through skylights, hitting them hard enough to 
create a dramatic trail of shattered glass but not actually hurt 
yourself or anyone else.

CEL was tempted to just cut his losses and go home but he'd spent all 
this time running around rooftops and climbing up buildings so he didn't 
want to let that go to waste. "GERALDO!" he shouted, and flung himself 
at the window one more time. It was a perfect hit. The glass shattered 
perfectly around him as he descended through the window, making a 
perfect landing. The mobsters gasped in awe. "It's one of those goddamn 
net.heroes!" said the first mobster. "It's uh..." He rummaged through 
the cards. "Cheesecake-Eater Lad!"

Cheesecake Eater Lad stood silhouetted by the moonlight. He froze up. 
He'd thought up a lot of good dramatic speeches on the way over, but now 
that he was actually facing the criminals he wasn’t sure what to say. 
"Uh... you’ve been killing a bunch of people and you should maybe stop."

"Like hell we will! Waste him!" The mobsters (there were maybe four of 
them) raised their machine guns. Cheesecake Eater Lad yanked a smoke 
bomb cheesecake out of his hammerspace satchel (you can't put 
cheesecakes in an utility belt, that would be silly) and flung it at 
them. The smoke burst out and made them cough and rub their eyes, 
stopping them in their tracks. Unfortunately it also did the same to 
Cheesecake Eater Lad. He assumed as a net.hero he'd be immune to them. 
Oh well. Back to the drawing board. If he made it out in one piece.

The mobsters closed in on him. He could make out their outlines in the 
dark. Now would be a perfect time to hit them... but he couldn't. The 
problem was, he was basically a nice person who didn't like hurting 
anyone, which would do him well in most walks of life but made it a bit 
hard for him to be a net.hero.

In the thick smoke he heard a gun go off.

I guess my trading card won't be too valuable after this is done, he 
thought...

****

YOU HAVE BEEN READING
LNH: RETCON YEAR #1
Funded by the Katzenjammer Grant for Procrastination

STARRING:

Cheesecake Eater Lad.....................Matthew Jotham Millheiser
Y-Plex Burp........................................Cap'n Quaaludes
J. Random Mobster #1-4..........................Jeanne Morningstar

So yeah. I'm aiming to get this out once every two weeks. I'll be 
posting the first two chapters sequentially and then alternating with 
Victory (so Ic an keep the same numbering, which is pleasing to my 
autism brain). I'll be aiming to focus on one scene/major turning point 
per chapter, sometimes splitting them up into two if they get too long, 
as this one did. No schedule survives contact with reality, of course, 
but I am trying to move toward posting shorter units I can get out more 
quickly. Breaking the Kirby barrier, as Michel Fiffe called it.

Next: Another net.hero enters the fray!

-- 
Jeanne "The Dark Space Princess Knight" Morningstar