Don't Mess with Princess Projecta

[auggie18]

Nemesis Kid has just killed Princess Projecta's husband.


Big mistake.






 

Comments

[gunny]

oh my. I never noticed the Beast/Wolverine demon image before until now.

also, WHERE DO HER ORGANS GO!? Have they been shoved up into her chest!?! Looks so horribly painful.

[grazzt]

I really love Nemesis Kid's "I have erred" face. You rarely get to see the exact moment when the antagonist of a story realizes he has lost.

[mrstatham]

"Y-You broke his neck."

Yes, because what she REALLY should've done was stand there and let him batter her.

[mrosa]

Hey, at least their reaction was a lot better than Superman admonishing Wonder Woman for saving his life.

[icon_uk]

I don't think he's querying her action, but her achievement.

She managed to break his neck by SQUEEZING. Not by twisting, or using leverage, but "simply" by applying pressure, from in front of him, with both hands on either side of his throat. That would be an incredibly difficult thing to do, and the strength required would be, I think, truly exceptional. He's stunned.

He might also be surprised as hell that anyone could actually kill Nemesis Kid like that. The whole point of his power was to negate the flashy powers Element Lad and co take for granted, he's stunned that Projectra proved to be that much of a badass normal, which is a fair point as she'd never really be shown to be that violent or brutal before (not without cause I grant you, but him being surprised isn't really a surprise).

[alan_smithee]

Eh? She twists it off-panel - what you think the KrRAK is for?

[icon_uk]

But normally when you see such a thing being done (In movies etc I hasten to add), the person doing the snapping is behind the victim and has a point of leverage around the person's neck. She is still managing to achieve it open handed from the front by gripping his throat.

[jlroberson]

I think that's really more an issue of Lightle's issues early on with anatomy and character posing. He did get better later, but at this time his drawing was 2/3 surface, and his anatomy was very awkward, though the finish obscures this.

[jkcarrier]

On the other hand, if Nem Kid's powers don't work against "badass normals", how did Karate Kid lose to him in the first place? It's an emotionally powerful scene, but as you say, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense on a mechanical level.

[skjam]

My fanwank of this is that Nemesis Kid could have defeated Projectra physically if he hadn't taken the moment to gloat. But he thought she was all illusions, so when she didn't wimp out, but went on the psychological offensive, NK froze just long enough for her to get a firm grip, and then it was all over.

[grazzt]

Or his powers only work against the greatest threat a person poses. He can't counter her hand-to-hand because his powers are tied up dealing with her illusion abilities, and he doesn't have enough control to make a switch.

[icon_uk]

His powers do work against badass normals, because he'd applied his power (To develop one power to counter his opponents abilities, or in the case of multiple opponents, teleport away), on KK and got "Immunity from getting my kidneys punched out through my spine. As that is "all" (with no disparaging meant) Val Armorr had to bring to the table, then that wa all they wrote for KK

He applied his power to Projectra and got "immunity to illusions", which left him wide open to physical assault. Another second or two to trigger his power again would have saved him, but....

[shadur]

But it's hard to concentrate on triggering your power when an enraged monarch has Her hands around your throat and is squeezing.

[icon_uk]

That's how you tell professional supervillains from the also-rans.

[shadur]

Or in this case, the should-have-rans.

[icon_uk]

Bad-dum-Tish!

[silicondream]

Nemesis Kid's power works on everybody, but it's not always a perfect counter. Karate Kid himself had a pretty good previous record of overcoming NK's temporary abilities. He developed a strike-proof forcefield, Val crushed it. He developed the ability to shoot atomic blasts, Val dodged them and KOed him. Possibly his power has trouble against sufficiently versatile opponents, or opponents whose full range of abilities are not "obvious."

This was just the one time Nemesis Kid scored the perfect counter-ability against everything Val could do, and then he didn't get quite as lucky against Jeckie.

[kenn_el]

Karate Kid's 'powers' haven't always been well-defined. When he joined you had to have a legitimate super power to be eligible for membership. Over time it became written as really well trained, but I think there was a threshold where it crossed that Nemesis Kid's power was able to kick in against.
Nemesis Kid was also defeated at one point by Duo Damsel, simply because there were two of her (though, by definition, he should have been able to counter by splitting himself; no one ever seemed to get him quite right.).

[halloweenjack]

The real error is in having a big dramatic sound effect. It's possible to kill someone just by pressing hard enough on the front of their throat to collapse their trachea.

[icon_uk]

That would leave him alive for longer though wouldn't it, and make a tracheotomy a possibility. They went for the dramatic moment.

[silicondream]

Jan's probably thinking that since Nemesis Kid was frozen in terror at that point--I mean, he's not even trying to pull her hands away, let alone hit back--Jeckie could simply have knocked him cold.

[drexer]

"Do any of you dare call me wrong?"

No lady. No argument over here. I'll just be here sitting calmly and quietly, thank you.

At what point in Legion publication history is this situated? I know little of LoSH other than the Great Darkness saga, and I really do need to expand upon more worthwhile stories.

[icon_uk]

1984 or so, this was the first arc of the Baxter series, featuring a new, expanded verson of the Legion of Supervillains.

[jlroberson]

And part of a really good period for Levitz, though that really began with the Computo annual and the Great Darkness Saga, when he started to inject a real layer of danger and dread into the series--and also made the Legionnaires more individualized than they'd been before him, not an easy feat with a cast of so many. This is the period on which most of whatever cred the series still has is based upon, at least in a story sense. Previous fan-favorite runs were mostly based on artwork. True, Levitz and Giffen were both responsible and Giffen's art was a fan-favorite, but without the strength of Levitz' plotting & characterization, it wouldn't be so fondly remembered as it is.

Then again, this was also one of the first series to first kill off and then mutilate one of its major characters(Lightning Lad)--in fact, one of the first major super-teams in which it was totally possible anyone could die, though it didn't happen often and sometimes it would just be one of Triplicate Girl's selves.

PS

[jlroberson]

And it also established the Legion of Supervillains for the first time as actually being pretty damn scary. Well, nobody can help Radiation Roy, but other than him I mean. Although it's interesting how quickly the plot forgot them once Nemesis Kid came into it. He kind of used them as a stepping stone into the spotlight.

Re: PS

[icon_uk]

Don't forget Ron-Karr, with the power to flatten himself like a piece of paper.

Somehow, having the same powerset as Flat Stanley doesn't really automatically make you ripe for a career in supervillainy.

[bruinsfan]

I love that years later she kind of nonchalantly tossed Nemesis Kid's reanimated corpse into a fire and put an end to him, just after he'd gotten done beating the stuffing out of Laurel Gand.

It's a shame the Green Lantern Corps never recruited her, with courage and willpower like she's demonstrated.

[jlroberson]

Well, the GLC no longer existed by her time. There was only one and he was in hibernation or isolation. In any event, at this point in DC, I'm pretty sure they were no longer a going concern in the 30th century.

[perletwo]

That's correct - bringing the PTSD'd Last Lantern out of retirement to stand with the Legions was a key plot point of Legion of 3 Worlds, and then in the reboot just after 3 Worlds, there was a whole arc with the Dyogene emerging to find an ur-Lantern to face down the chaos-critter that came out of the Time Institute's attempt to look at the beginning of time - that ended up being Mon-El. At the end of that the Dyogene took back the ring and declared the Legion worthy successors to the Corps.

[icon_uk]

Not the case at the time this was written, the Corps was still active, but was banned by UP statute from operating in UP space after the whole "GL who ended up becoming Universo"'s incursion

[jlroberson]

I did not know that. Looking it up, I see he's another of the "but I just wanted to see the start of the universe" crew. Man, those Guardians sure were strict about that shit.

[icon_uk]

Since it would, in all probability, lead to the wiping out of all existence, you sort of see their point.

[jlroberson]

And I've never been clear on that: just WHY would it do that anyway? As "because the Guardians say so" no longer really applies to anything, I wonder.

[bruinsfan]

Originally it was looking back to the beginning that "unleashed evil into the universe," later defined as splitting the one universe into thousands of parallel worlds and creating the Anti-Matter Universe.

Post-Crisis, it was retconned in Ganthet's Tale as the Guardians covering their true origins with some sort of timestream-wide illusion to prevent enemies from striking at them in the past when they were less powerful. Krona's attempt to peer past it (and a modern day Guardian & Zamaron's attempt to thwart him) resulted in billions of years worth of potential energy being leached away from the beginning of time to its end.

[jlroberson]

So it's another chapter of "The Guardians: Physics Doesn't Work That Way." ;)

[perletwo]

Yeah, the very last scene of the issue has the castle janitor or equivalent sweeping the corpse out of the courtyard and musing on what the dumbass dead guy thought was so damn important as to do all this.

[shadowpsykie]

wow.... that nearly turned me straight....