LNH: System Corruptors #38

[Jeanne Morningstar]

System Corruptors #38:
"And the RobGoblin Will Get You If You Don't Watch Out!"
A pre-prelude to Leadership Cry.sig Net.ropolis 2023
by Jeanne Morningstar


It was 2020, a week or so after the end of the sabertooth crisis, and 
Occultism Kid had not been sleeping very much. They'd holed themself up 
in their mentor's former quarters, and begun slowly cataloguing all the 
magical tomes, talismans and trinkets he'd left behind. At some point, 
this was going to belong to one of the newbie LNHers who'd come in, and 
they had to make absolutely sure there weren't any lingering imps around.

"Does anyone really need that many scrying stones?" they muttered to 
themself (they hadn't talked to much of anyone else over the last few 
days). They didn't notice the knock on the door, or the person who'd 
come through, until she was right beside her.

"Boo!" said Painful Pun Person. Occultism Kid almost dropped the crystal 
ball all over the floor, but a telekinetic spell salvaged it. A narrow 
escape–it  would have spilled crystallized time all over the place, 
which was a real pain to clean up.

"What are you doing here?" She turned to the door and frowned. "Door 
Warden? Why did you let her in?" The Door Warden let out an incoherent, 
mournful grunt.

"It's just, you haven't been around much and I wanted to make sure 
you're OK."

"I'm perfectly fine," said Occultism Kid. "I just have some important 
duties to carry out. I'm cataloguing my mentor's magical artifacts and 
taking inventory of the long-term spells he created. Now that Occultism 
Kid--the previous Occultism Kid--has... passed on"–for once, they didn't 
actually mean "dead," but the grief was still there–"there's the danger 
that some of the spells he created will be undone. And he cast spells to 
banish some of the most powerful magickal entities in all of creation."

"So... that could be bad, huh," said Painful Pun Person.

====

Meanwhile, in the lowest depths of Hell, Steve Diamond, owner of Diamond 
Comics Distributors, was watching as Nick Spencer, noted comic writer, 
failed city-councilman and hipster bar owner, or at least the Celebrity 
Avatar of same, was still digging a hole. [See Another LNH Title? 
Really? FCBD Special--Footnote Girl]

"Look, forget it," said Steve Diamond, while looking at his phone and 
commenting hornily on bikini models' tweets, as he was wont to do. "We 
are at the bottom of Hell, the lowest point of existence there is. 
There's nothing below this."

"No!" said Nick Spencer. "I must keep digging! I must." With his spade 
he hacked futilely away at the earth. And then--

Hell itself shook, and a crack opened in the ground, letting out a 
baleful orange light from below.

Nick Spencer jumped up and down and shook his spade. "Ha! I'm right! I'm 
right! I'm always right!" He began to descend into the crack.

"Ah..." said Steve Diamond, "I don't think this is a good idea," the 
first time in his life he'd ever spoken those words. Still, he didn't 
have anything to do except desperate thirst tweeting, so he followed 
Nick Spencer down.

Beneath the crack they found they found a place full of ruins, but the 
background was strangely sketchy and seemed to disappear sometimes. 
Wandering around were bizarrely-drawn echoes of everyone they ever knew, 
with hollow eyes and excessive scratchy lines all over their bodies.

"Where are we?" said Nick Spencer.

"I think I know," said Steve Diamond. "This is the place they tell 
little baby demons about to scare them so they'll be bad. The Realm of 
the Senseless. Home of the..."


Above them they saw a huge sphere seething with green energy. It spoke:


I AM THE POWER LIEFELD

I DRAW WITH A THOUSAND PENS

I SHOOT WITH A THOUSAND GUNS

I MARCH WITH A THOUSAND TINY FEET

"My god..." said Nick Spencer.

"No," said Steve Diamond, "pretty much the opposite..."

THE MOMENT HAS COME. I AM FREE. I WILL RISE UP AND TAKE MY REVENGE UPON 
THE LEGION.

Nick Spencer jumped up and down and waved his arms. "My Lord! My Lord! 
Give me your power, so I can take revenge on all those on social media 
who mocked my stories!"

The green orb rose past him and ignored him completely.

"I knew this was a bad idea," said Steve Diamond.

Nick Spencer picked up his spade and began to try digging even deeper.

====

Meanwhile, far above, RobGoblin was tossing and turning in his sleep.

He was dreaming the worst kind of dream: a dream about the good old 
days, the days of the 90s comics boom, when covers were shiny and 
holographic, guns were big, and you could make a lifetime's worth of 
money off a mint condition copy of Youngblood #1.

That was a good time to be a Liefeld-inspired villain, back when Liefeld 
was the number one hot comics artist and star of jean commercials. Sure, 
everyone on the Net hated Liefeld, but they all bought his comics anyway 
so they could complain about them. That commercial had inspired 
countless young men to draw loud, violent, incoherent comics in search 
of a career--and young Bob Nilbog to build an array of Liefeld-inspired 
devices, becoming the RobGoblin!

Now, no one cared about comics anymore except as fodder for mediocre 
movies. Everyone was obsessed with these things called "NFTs," which 
RobGoblin could never figure out what they even were. They didn't even 
have cool holograms!

He saw some kind of sickly green light shining on him, stirring him from 
his sleep.

AWAKE ROBGOBLIN... AWAKE... I HAVE RETURNED!

"Go away," he muttered, "I'm trying to catch some zs..."

THE TIME HAS COME FOR YOU, ROBGOBLIN, TO RECLAIM YOUR DESTINY... 
REMEMBER... REMEMBER...

He remembered.

He remembered the first time the Power Liefeld came upon him, filling 
him with otherworldly power and purpose and even bigger muscles. It was 
perfect, glorious, and then... And then that miserable Occultism Kid had 
cast a spell on him, making him see himself the way others unenlightened 
by the gospel of Liefeld saw him. He rejected the power in immediate 
revulsion, and became a mere mortal again. [Kid Kirby and Sing-Along 
Lass #3-4]

When the Power came to him again, he both yearned for it and rejected 
it, and the inner conflict literally split him in two. Where his demonic 
ultra-Liefeldized counterpart had continued to ravage the Net as 
RobGoblin, his human self had joined Daisy Dukes's team of undercover 
net.villains as the pseudo-heroic Robgoblin Hunter. [A light retcon of 
Manga Girl #15-16 and Malingerer Lad and Teenfactor #9–ed.] In time, the 
two had joined together again, no one knew how–such is the way of 
Liefeld–and the power was lost.

But now... Now, the self-loathing had vanished completely. All that was 
left was the all-consuming hunger for the Power.

RISE UP... RESTORE THE REIGN OF HOLOGRAPHIC COVERS... YOUR TIME HAS 
COME! RUB THE BLOOD!

"Yess... Yesss..." said RobGoblin. "YESSSSSS!"

A huge explosion of infra-demonic fire incinerated RobGoblin's crappy 
apartment and all the buildings in the vicinity. (Don't worry, they were 
empty.) What stood in the center was RobGoblin, transformed: now wearing 
an executioner's hood and carrying a bloody axe (where the blood came 
from wasn't clear), like Crypt in Extreme Sacrifice. [How do I remember 
this? Why am I letting plot points from Liefeld comics take up space in 
my brain? Why am I like this? Ah well–yr humble author]

"I am reborn!" he shouted, to no one in particular. "The Power Liefeld 
courses through my veins! I am more powerful than ever before, for I 
am... OMEGA ROBGOBLIN X-TREME! I will rule over all Earth and Hell! The 
Legion will pay for their sins... and wherever he is, Occultism Kid 
shall know pain, as I bathe my axe in the blood of his apprentice..."

Far away, in the LNHQ, Occultism Kid twitched. "Did you hear something?" 
they said.

"Nope," said Painful Pun Person.

TO BE CONTINUED...
IN THE LIMINALS #11!

Notes:

The first "tie-in" issue of Leadership Cry.Sig, sort of. I won't do 
nearly as many of these as I did for HHS–my plan is to try and finish 
off the handful of issues I started which lay out what the post-HHS 
status quo is, now that we're messing with that.

The portrayal of the Power Liefeld is based on the One Below All in 
Immortal Hulk.

CREDITS:
Robgoblin: Jeff Drizzt Barnes
Painful Pun Person, Occultism Kid III, Steve Diamond: Jeanne Morningstar
Occultism Kid II: Josh Guerink
Door Warden: Paul Hardy
Power Liefeld: Jameel Al Khafiz


-- 
Jeanne Morningstar
Chief Procrastinator, Commission of Ecumenical Translators

I believe the hyperbole
I see the fourth colour
--King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, The Fourth Color