It is time yet again to delve into the dark underbelly of the caped and cowled super beings. Yes, the terrible world of the super-villain. In order to better understand their evil order we will pose simple moral questions to them and take what we can from their responses.
Scenario: You are at your weekly poker game with three friends. Everyone is drinking and having a good time, talking about the past week and what they are up to these days. Your friends confide in you that they have been making good money “running errands” for a local gangster. They drunkenly let details drop about a big heist they have planned to impress their new boss. Throughout the card game almost every detail is about the time and place of the crime is recklessly imparted to you. What do you do?
Rama Tut: After I have determined what possessed me to play this strange game you call Poh Kurr I would formulate a plan to use my dominion over time to play a game that is truly fun. Perhaps I would transport the lot of them to ancient Egypt, I got my start there you know, just to mess with their minds. Nothing is quite so much fun as watching displaced souls wandering through the plaza of a city like Memphis or Hieranknopolis. Lost in another country and another time with all of their vaunted modern conveniences lost to them. Or perhaps I might just push them forward in time to the day after they planned their heist. This is always a good one if the day of the operation is as crutial as the time of day. If not a full day into the future, even just an hour or so can throw off a well laid plan. I am really starting to like this Poh Kurr game after all!
Magpie: Gimmie, gimmie, gimmie, gimmie! I don’t care what they plan to steal, I want in on it! I love to steal. Anything, everything! I will steal what they steal from them if I can! I have three storage buildings in town with nothing in them but things I stole that I can’t remember why I took them. So why wouldn’t I want to be in on their big score. It doesn’t matter to me if it is money or jewelry, guns or furs, baby bottles or boa constrictors, I want to steal it all!
Batroc: Unless zee heist they plan involves leaping I really don’t care what they are up to. I have far too many schemes of my own involving zee Avengairs or Capeetan America after all! And all of my plans naturally involve leaping. It’z what I do! It is what I’ve done for zee last 30 years! Leaping about! And on zat note, do you know what really pizzez me off? Zoze young punks you see zees days leaping and hopping from one building to zee next. Zeir so-called parkour! Zey act like
zey invented leaping or zomething!
Shade: Anywhere else in the world, with the possible exception of
Paris (and then incumbent on my mood), their actions would be of little consequence to me. After all, absent villainy would there be need of heroics? Now if this were in
Opal City that would be quite a different matter indeed. In such a case I would take it upon myself to teleport into their midst and exact terrible retribution upon them with my shadow demons. This may garner me some considerable scrutiny on the part of the O’Dares, but it is of little consequence. My Opal would be rid of a threat to her purity and would have a compelling new entry for my journal. And a good excuse to indulge in little absinthe afterwards.
Arnim Zola: Well that certainly all depends on what they are planning to steal. If they have an angle on some high tech merchandise – something publicly known from Stark or perhaps clandestine weaponry from A.I.M. – then I would arrange to get to that coveted technology before them. I would love to get my hands on some Stark or A.I.M. stuff! Do you have any idea how hard it is to obtain? Nobody can get near it! The closest I have ever come was picking up a stray neutron ray blaster that the Defenders missed when they cleaned out an A.I.M. compound near
Los Angeles. Hercules, the big oaf, had tossed a guard so high that he landed on the other side of the fence and his blaster was still laying in the vacant lot nearby the next morning! Yeah, I like going out to survey the aftermath of super-hero battles, so what? It’s called “beachcombing” and you never know what you might find. I have a genuine Spider-Man web-shooter cartridge I found after he fought the Juggernaut! What do you have?
Green Hornet: I would endear myself to them, see if I can get “in”. I am always enthusiastic when it comes to the criminal enterprises of others. I like to get in the middle of things. Find out who’s who, work my way up the chain to meet the boss. It is best to know all of the players when you are counted among them I always say. I sure hate it when the cops come muscling in on things and break up the whole gang top to bottom, though! Then I have to drive around with my partner and find some new bunch of crooks to hang out with!
