The Powdermonkey Years

After I graduated in 96, I couldn't just go into a full blown Super-Villain career. Have you ever wondered why some villains seem to stick around for years and years no matter how silly they are while new fresh villains only commit one crime and then seem to dissappear? It's a simple answer really- Villains engage in vicious New Villain culling. It's true. Villains actually have a higher defeat record of other villains than most heroes. It's not out of jealousy or deathray envy although it is the case with Gigantus. No, most villains cull other villains for safety reasons.

Let me put it this way. You're Cat-Burglar and you've worked years to establish your cat costume, your claws and your cat motiff for all your crimes. The Big City Musuem is going to have a display of gems with Cat names as a special theme starting on Nov 15. You've mapped out when the gems are being delivered, slept with the chief of security to get a copy of his fingerprints in order to frame him, outfitted your gang with a custom made cat ears and you've arranged for a fire to break out at the orphanage to keep City Defender busy for the time of the crime. Everything is planned and perfect for your crime. Unfortunately, Dark Newbie picks Nov. 14 as the night he is going to break in and steal the Egyptian thingamigjig that's been there for ten years. Dark Newbie succeeds in stealing it which means the police is crawling all over the musuem, the chief of security is sweating over his one night stand and decides to come clean and resign and Nosy Nose, the ace reporter is standing vigil over the musuem. That's not even taking into account that City Defender is now looking at the rest of the musuem and seeing that the cat theme gems are going to be there tomorrow so he makes a note to himself to patrol near the musuem all week, looking for YOU.

See why it is easier just to drive by Dark Newbie's not so secret lair and drop a few bombs on him?

One of the benefits of attending an evil college is that I had a few references for when I graduated. I was able to join up with Diva Pain, the militant feminist revolutionary. I have to say that I didn't agree with all her politics, but kidnapping male models and destroying the Playboy Mansion was pretty fun. Diva Pain never killed a henchwoman but she was a bit touchy feely if you get my drift. I found it a small disadvantage when you keep in mind that she had an excellent 401K and dental plan. It was a shame when she renounced her evil ways and went to live on Herland. She was real nice about it and didn't seem to be too bothered when the rest of her henchwomen went on to other villains.

After Diva Pain I signed up with Professor Malice. Diva Pain had been good to me but I really wanted to work with another inventor type. Professor Malice was working on his three year project to take over the world with nanobot mind control implants, so it was a good time to fine tune some of my own technology as well as learn about the human brain.

The Professor was 80% robot at that point so he left the actual crimes to me and his other underling, Jaser, the human laser. Those were the days. The Professor would need ten tons of steel with a side of three psychologists and off me and Jaser would go. We'd do our daring crimes, return to base and spend the rest of the day watching Xena and Hercules. Sometimes the Professor would need a lab assistant and I would get some on the job training. He was nice enough to let me use his spare robots for parts. Thanks to the Professor, I finally got my Bots the artifical intelligence they needed to not run right into a hero's razer edged boomarang.

I don't need to recount how Meta-Corp caught wind of Professor Malice's scheme and tracked him down to the secret lair. Suffice to say, that was one long bad day for me and Jaser. Meta-Corps came blasting in, destroying robots, our carefully built traps and Jaser's lifesize Lucy Lawless poster. I personally managed to knock out the speedster Warp, but then who hasn't? It didn't make up for Shamballah blasting me with those weird energy beams of her's. My hair smelled like lotus flowers for months afterwards. Jaser luckily managed to grab me and run away, leaving Professor Malice alone to fight Meta-Corp. The Professor lost of course, but man, he came close.

Jaser wanted to go on a crime spree with me but I turned him down. A pirate has to know when she is not ready to be a Captain you know? I signed up with Warstrike and that was the smartest thing I ever did.

Now I know Warstrike is known mostly for being a crazed gun toting maniac in a battlesuit but let me tell you something about Warstrike you don't know, the guy is more paranoid than an FBI agent with a sister abducted by aliens. He plans EVERYTHING, terrified that some hero is taping into his mind through a secret radio wave. Warstrike would make endless back up plans, some of which he would only do in writing or sometimes in hand signals. Working with him taught me to get ready for anything. You never knew when you had to uproot the secret lair and move it across the street because Warstrike thought the mailman was onto us.

I worked with Warstrike until last year when he got obliterated by a runaway bus. It was one of those freak accidents that really weirded you out. We had just come out of Applebees and were crossing the street when BLAM!, dead Warstrike. The rest of his henchmen just stood there looking at his twitching corpse. The bus stopped and the driver was screaming in shock. Heck, some of my fellow employees were screaming too.

Being the senior henchman, Warstrike's gang looked up to me to be the leader so I did the only thing I could think of. I whipped out my patented Blastket and shot my coworkers down in the street. I then stole Warstrike's wallet and escaped to the lair. I spent the next hour trying to drain as many of his bank accounts as I could before running off to the Caribbean. By the time the police and local heroes realized that Warstrike was now roadkill, I was sipping rum on a sandy beach while a native boy massaged my feet. Now that's how a modern day pirate should act.

As you can guess, my loot finally ran out. I've come back to the states and I think I'm ready to be my own Captain. I've been the loyal crew member for too long. I've been lucky in that I really haven't had a bad boss, but these schemes have been silly. Mind controlling the world? Like some hero isn't going to notice that? No, it's time to do some really smart plans. Something that will keep me in gold and rum for the rest of my life. Something that will make my parents proud to have a pirate daughter. And if I run into a loyal cabin boy along the way? All the better.