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A Story from my Comc Book Setting

Started by Xenolith, October 01, 2009, 02:58:10 PM

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Xenolith

On May 3, 1964, at 5:30 PM, television anchorman Roger Miller broke into my regularly scheduled program to announce that four costumed men were holding police at bay on the steps of City Hall.  He said the men were demanding a ransom for the safety of Mayor Willis and the City Council.  I jumped up out of my chair and hustled toward the back door.  My wife, Linda, cussed me out as I ran through the house.  I gave her a peck on the cheek before leaving.  I hopped on my bicycle and tore off down the street as fast as I could.  I heard Linda call out, ?Be careful!? from behind.  I rode my bicycle downtown as fast as I could travel.  I wanted a good seat for the show.

Traffic wasn?t too bad until I reached Plum Street, where the Goldman?s super-market sits on the northeast corner.  Beyond that spot cars were locked bumper to bumper all the way down to Main Street.  The cars were all empty, as you?d expect, because everyone was heading down to City Hall as fast as they could get there.  I continued on my bike chuckling to myself.  I?d be home and sleeping before they got their cars untangled.  I learned that the hard way when Crowbar Conrad and the White Shield tangled at the Prairie State Bank a few months ago.  That was quite a show.

I found a spot that gave me a good view of City Hall.  Police had the area cordoned off and the crowd was packed around the barricades.  It?s a good thing I?m taller than most folks because I don?t have to push my way to the front to see the action.  The police do their best to protect the public from harm, but sometimes the fight gets out of hand and spills over into the crowd.  They do a pretty good job of guessing how far to keep folks back though.  I?d like a better view, but I don?t want to get hurt, either.  I?m just here for the show, like everybody else.

From where I stood I could see Mayor Willis? face pretty clearly.  They had him trussed up with some rope.  The City Council was lined up with their back against the big marble lion statues that sat on both sides of the front steps.  There were tied up the same way the Mayor was tied up.  They all looked pretty upset.  There were four costumed characters mixed in with them, too.  Nobody in the crowd knew who they were.

The one closest to me was a blond haired giant that paced back and forth at the bottom of the stairs near the fountain.  He was the one doing all the talking.  He had a nice voice.  He?d make a great tailback for Prairie State.  He looked like the kind of guy that?d push your mother down if she was walking too slow in front of him.  He had a real powerful presence about him.  He wore a black and gray costume with a long cape.  There was a silver omega on his chest.  We all called him the Omega Man because he didn?t give out his name.  New ones were always exciting.

Up at the top of the steps was a young guy with red hair and a yellow costume.  He had a fireball on his chest, so that?s what we called him, Fireball.  He looked pretty agitated most of the time and kept looking at the crowd like he was going to zap one of us.  I didn?t look at him very long because I figured he would see me over the heads of everyone else.

The third guy stood stock still with his arms at his side.  He was real skinny and it looked like he was wearing armor.  He was all black and gray, like Omega Man, except he looked different, too.  I?ve got pretty good eyesight, and I could swear the words ?Baron 6? were written across his chest.  I thought that was pretty strange since I had a Baron 6 camera back in my utility closet at home.  I told the folks around me what the words on his chest said, but they were as confused by that as I was.

The fourth guy was the furthest from me, and was probably the strangest looking of them all.  He had a shiny silver jumpsuit and long, silver-white hair.  He was either real tan or his skin was orange-brown, I couldn?t tell from where I stood.  I looked at him for a long time and I tell you what, he didn?t move, didn?t blink, or even look interested in what he was doing.  He just stood there with his arms across his chest and stared straight ahead.  He was the scariest of the bunch for sure.  The folks in the crowd called him Ol? Silver or just Silver.

Well, Omega Man was walking back and forth, talking and waiving his fist in the air.  I wasn?t close enough to hear him clearly, but I caught bits and piece of what he was saying.  He said he was demanding a ransom from the City or else he and his pals were going to start dealing with the City Council one-by-one.

Well, what normally happens next is that one or more of our heroes show up and beat the tar out of the bad guys, so we waited patiently for the show to begin.  People kept coming from all directions to crowd around City Hall.  At one point I guessed there was probably a few thousand folks standing around steps to City Hall.

A fella next to me made a comment that we should probably pay them folks for getting rid of the Mayor and City Council.  He didn?t mean anything personal by it, but it was kind of a mean thing to say.  Lots of folks laughed though, and I did a little.  He looked a little embarrassed by it.  He probably regretted saying it.  I would have.

About that time the action started.  I didn?t see what was going on at first, but I heard a big whoop from the crowd.  Omega Man was gone.  I looked around but couldn?t spot him.  The folks in front of me were getting riled up and the crowd was roaring so I knew something was happening.  After a few anxious moments I saw the Omega Man fly through the air like he?d been tossed out of a moving car.  Then I saw the White Shield stand up and charge after the Omega Man.  I let out a holler at that.  The White Shield was one of my favorites.  Those two were going at it like a couple of wildcats.  I could feel butterflies in my stomach because I was so excited.

I snuck a peak at the other three bad guys to see if they were going to interfere.  They all started toward the fight but then stopped.  Omega Man must have called them off.  He sure seemed like the type of guy that would want to beat a man with his own fists.  He looked like a real grinder.
All of a sudden I heard the crowd start yelling, ?Titan!?  Whoo-boy, Titan is one of the big guns.  If he was here then there was going to be something to see.  I looked over to where some folks in the crowd were pointing and saw Titan wrestling with Baron 6.  Titan was probably taller than me and all muscle.  I didn?t think there was anyone he couldn?t beat in a wrestling contest and I?ve seen him stop a moving vehicle with his bare hands before, so I figured this Baron 6 fella wasn?t going to last long.  

Now, I like Titan as much as the next person, but the White Shield is my favorite so I turned back to watch that fight.  Just as I did so though, I felt heat on my face like I was standing next to a blow torch.  I looked back at Titan and saw that he and Baron 6 were engulfed in a ball of flame.  People started screaming.  I was scared, too.  Somebody came running out of that fireball, but I couldn?t tell who it was. Whoever it was plunged into the fountain at the bottom of the steps to City Hall.  Smoke and steam billowed into the sky.  At the top of the steps I saw Fireball smirking and  Baron 6 stood next to him glowing red-hot.  There were charred stains on the white marble of City Hall.  I glanced at Silver, but he stood there like he was a statue.

A cheer rang out and turned my head back toward the fountain where Titan was climbing out of the water.  His hair was burned off but he didn?t look to bad otherwise.  I found myself hollering ?Get ?em, Titan!? over and over again.  Titan launched himself at Fireball and drove him back against the walls of City Hall.  It was quite a leap!  Titan had Fireball locked up in a bear hug and I could see Fireball was really struggling to get free.  All of a sudden Fireball went up in flames.  The crowd gasped in amazement but Titan hung on and kept squeezing.

Omega Man and the White Shield were still going at it.  They both looked worse for the wear but neither of them slowed up a bit.  They were throwing some heavy lumber, too, neither one trying to block or dodge the other one?s punches.  I liked that.  I found myself liking Omega Man just a little.  It?s hard to knock a man with that kind of grit.  Still, the White Shield was my favorite and I was rooting for him fiercely.
Well, this was a real tussle and I was happy to be there alright.  It was a good thing Silver wasn?t getting involved, and that Baron 6 wasn?t very useful, because Omega Man and Fireball were giving just as much as they took.  Fireball was saying something, I don?t know what, and he seemed to get brighter and brighter all the time.  I could see the heat ripples coming off of him.
 
For some reason all of a sudden I remembered the City Council and Mayor were up there in all that mess.  I looked but couldn?t find them.  I smiled to myself assuming they had run away during the fight, but then I saw Whitey, the White Shield?s teen-aged side-kick, sneaking up on Baron 6 with a couple live electric cables in his hands.  I?d bet my last dollar that Whitey had snuck them folks off when everyone else?s attention was drawn to the fights.  He sure is tricky.  I still laugh when I hear the story about how he tricked Crowbar into punching a transformer with his bare fist.  I heard he said Crowbar had a ?shocking experience.?  That just slays me.

Whitey zapped Baron 6 right off the steps and onto the street near the crowd.  Folks started cheering like crazy.  Some of the folks in front near the barricades said that Baron 6 was a machine because he was broken up on the ground.  I guess there were gears and wires sticking out of him every which way.  Whitey must have figured out Baron 6 was a machine and that?s why he zapped him with those electric cables.  I don?t know how he figured that out, but I guess that?s why they call him the boy detective.

The White Shield was putting his final touches on Omega Man?s face by the time I looked back.  Titan was dropping Fireball to the ground.  His flame had gone out.  Smoke rolled off Titan but he didn?t look to shabby otherwise.  All three of the heroes then faced off against Silver.  Shield was saying something to him but I couldn?t hear what, and Silver said something back.  The crowd was cheering in anticipation for the final round.  I was too.  I heard myself yelling out, ?C?mon Shield!  Get ?em!?

The heroes were closing in and the crowd was going wild, but that Silver devil just stood there like he was waiting for a bus.  Titan made the first move by wrapping his arm around Silver?s neck, but just as soon as he did that, a bright white light blinded me and I had to cover my eyes.  By the time my vision came back I could see the fight was over.  Titan, Whitey, and the White Shield stood on top of the steps, recovering from the white flash.  The police were doing likewise.  All of the bad guys were gone.  I turned this way and that hoping to spot one of them running away, but there were no signs of them anywhere.  

We all stood there for a wile, wondering what would happen next.  I looked back to the heroes but they were gone.  The police chief got on his bull horn and ordered us to disperse.  I rode my bike back home and waited for the 10 o?clock news to come on.  Linda warmed up dinner for me and I told her about the fight.  The news didn?t report anything new.  I went to bed thinking about that fight and lay there for quite a while before dozing off.  
The morning paper called the bad guys the Fatal Four because they threatened to kill the Mayor and City Council.  It was a good name, I guess.  Kind of dramatic if you ask me, but they didn?t, so there you go.

BlueBard

Not too bad, Xenolith :)

I like the perspective from a "cape-watcher".  I think it would have benefited from a little more dialogue, and maybe a little more about the people in the crowd.  I'd think that anyone crazy enough to gather around to watch super humans fight probably has other idiosyncrasies that would be interesting.  Where are the guys with video cameras?  For that matter, where were the news reporters?

Minor quibbles, though.  I liked it.
STO/CO: @bluegeek

Xenolith

Thanks.  I read a lot of silver age comics and I'm always amazed by the number of folks standing around watching, which is directly opposite of modern comics where nobody is in the area unless they are the victim of a crime.

docdelorean88

I always loved the cape watchers too! This has finally inspired me to continue writing my heroes' stories, hopefully with some success. I tend to write in the third person, but first person flows so well. Hmm, there might be an experimental story in the works now. Great work! I would love to see some specific designs of these people btw, i love the characters, especially Whitey(if only for the name).
"Roads, Where we're going we don't need... Roads"

Xenolith

The not-so-ironic thing about Whitey is that he is black.  I'm guessing his last name is White.  A long time ago when I started fleshing out my Silver Age world, I thought that eventually the White Shield would come under some serious fire because he was a blatant and unapologetic racist.  He protects white people, and that's about it.  White would go off to Viet Nam and come back a changed man.  He and the White Shield would then have a big throw down and the White Shield was going to die.  It was a total cliche, and I was never happy with that.  

One day out of boredom I did a little Google-fu and found out that White Shield was the name of a Native American chief.  He has a rather interesting quote attributed to him,  "I Have a Red Skin, but My Grandfather Was a White Man.  What Does it Matter?  It Is Not the Color of the Skin That Makes Me Good or Bad."  So after reading that I could hardly have a white character called the White Shield that was racist.  And, I didn't want my comic world to be so serious.  Racism?  Not in my world. Plus, I have no intention of moving past 1965 at this time.  I like my heroes heroic and my villains not so evil.

So, I recreated my back story for the White Shield.  I decided his origins were in the pre WWII period when super-heroes fought the mob and mad scientists.  At the time of my stories he is in his early 40s and is a bit of an icon for America.  Prior to becoming a hero he was an honest, likable agent for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in River City (my fictional DC-esque setting) who dealt with the local Native American (or Indian as it were) tribe.  Well, one particular day the Tribe was going to sign documents with a large oil company to develop oil wells on Tribal lands.  I can't recall the White Shield's alter ego right now, so lets call him Ted.  Ted was going out to the meeting to make sure the Tribe was well represented and that no tom-foolery was going to happen between the Tribe and the oil company.  Ted was a friend of the Tribe, and Chief White Shield was like a father to him.  Ted arrived at the meeting early and he found Chief White Shield lying on the ground in a pool of blood.  The other elder members of the Tribal Council were all dead.  Ted rushed to the Chiefs side, and finding him barely alive, asks what happened.  The Chief tells him that white men carrying guns came to them a few minutes ago and demanded that the Tribe sign over the rights to their land, or else.  The Tribe refused, so the men shot them all down and presumably left.  Ted vows revenge against the thugs (the Chief gives him enough information to make a good guess as to who was behind it) and before he dies the Chief says to Ted "It is not the color of my skin that makes me good or bad, it is what lies within my heart.  Do not judge men by how they look, judge them by how they live."  So, with this very important moment etched in his memory forever, the White Shield became one of the first super-heroes to don a mask and fight crime, helping anyone in need no matter what color, religion, age, or sex.  Of course political affiliation goes right out the door, because the White Shield fought Fifth Columnists on the home front during WWII, and of course nobody likes those dirty Reds in the '60s.

In the '60s Ted still works for the BIA, and still fights crime as the White Shield in honer of the long-deceased Chief.  I haven't figure out the back story of Whitey, Boy Detective yet, but he is like Robin with the brains of Batman.  A little bit like the Star-Spangled Kid because the White Shield will follow his lead knowing that Whitey has things under control.  The White Shield is not dumb, but he isn't as smart as Whitey.

My ultimate plan is to develop a web-comic set in this little world featuring stories written and drawn by me.  Well, things came up and I haven't quite started on it yet, by 2009 isn't quite over and I still might get something done before the calender reads 2010.

My friend said he was stunned that I wrote something with such poor grammar, but then he figured out that I was trying to capture the voice of an everyday Joe in River City.   I hope it came across that way as you read it.  I hope you do go on and create your own stories.  You never know where you'll end up.