JSA: Skin Game - Part 1

[espanolbot]

Prior to the reboot, the regular folk of the DCU always seemed to have a close relationship with their superheroes. However, this combined with the DCU's almost universally awful rich people leads to things getting dark. Sometimes this results in jerks like the Black Hand, who consist of billionaires who playact as supervillains for fun. Other times... they get these guys...

The story begins with Pieter Cross, aka Doc Mid-nite (superhero surgeon) recounting the urban legend regarding organ thieves. You've probably heard some variation of it, someone meets someone at a bar, gets drugged and the next thing they know they're waking up in a bath tub full of ice with their kidney missing.


Huh, you'd think that they'd put bandages or something on the wound, instead of just stitching them shut.

It seems that Argus, a superhero whose power is having supervision, has had his eyes stolen. And he's not the only one, with multiple other heroes and villains also being the victim of similar gruesome assaults. Some of them are relatively minor, such as British superheroine Godiva having her hair stolen, but others such as the cryokinetic Icemaiden having her skin flayed or the supervillain Peregrine having her wings removed. Mid-nite heads off to interrogate Roulette, a JSA villain who specialises in abducting superheroes and forcing them to fight each other for profit. He reasoned that as someone who routinely exploits superhumans, Roulette may have heard or whose behind the organ thefts. And after roughing up one of her henchmen with his medical knowledge, she gives him a name.







Wow, Mid-nite's a dick! However, Roulette isn't a woman who likes being strong-armed, so she rings the woman in charge of the thefts in advance of Mid-nite's arrival to warn her.

Mid-nite, however, has worked out what's happened, or at least part of it. He realises that there has been a person who has stolen people's bodies before, indeed, even an ape-like person who has done so (although he specialised in brains).

That person being the Ultra-Humanite, who appears to be advancing on Mid-nite in the form of a dude with superhero gorilla's arms grafted onto him...

To be concluded.

Comments

[randyripoff]

Is this in the right order?

[espanolbot]

Yup.

[yvonmukluk]

Really? The roulette page looks out of order.

[q99]

You know, it strikes me as impressive to even *find* Roulette. Because if the heroes knew where she was, that'd rather be top on their 'people to shut down' list.

(One does kinda wonder how clients know without tipping off non-kidnapped heroes. Ah well, I guess just too fun a concept)

[espanolbot]

Most of the time she seems to target people low enough on the totem pole of visiblity that no one really notices if they go missing (see her abducting the Superbuddies with the logic that they're Z-list losers no one would ever miss... despite them including Mary Marvel at the time).

Most of the time it tends to vary with the writer, with her DCAU version using a mixture of willing down on their luck heroes and villains initially, until she starts using mindcontrol to make higher profile Leaguers come to compete at night when they think that they're actually at home asleep (such as Wonder Woman, Vixen etc.).

She basically runs on the same logic as Eternal Winter, Onomatopoeia, and Prometheus in his Cry for Justice period. They target low-end superheroes as there are frankly a lot of them, and they're easiler to disappear than, say, Superman or the Teen Titans.

This stands in contrast to Marvel during the Avengers Arena storyline, where Arcade kidnapped and killed tons of relatively high profile teen superheroes, and none of their higher profile friends and mentors cared (even after finding out what happened after the event). The one exception being X23, 'cause she's Wolverine's daughter/sister.

[q99]

-Most of the time she seems to target people low enough on the totem pole of visiblity that no one really notices if they go missing (see her abducting the Superbuddies with the logic that they're Z-list losers no one would ever miss... despite them including Mary Marvel at the time).-

Yea, the first matchup we saw was... Firebrand and a Checkmate Knight? Not even a proper hero, the latter.

Still, *heroes* care about Z-listers once they do find out what's happening. After the JSA incident she really should be high enough on the priority list that *if* you know where she is, you swing by with a team.

-This stands in contrast to Marvel during the Avengers Arena storyline, where Arcade kidnapped and killed tons of relatively high profile teen superheroes, and none of their higher profile friends and mentors cared (even after finding out what happened after the event). The one exception being X23, 'cause she's Wolverine's daughter/sister.-

Note, Pym (and I think Tigra?) did check mid-event, but were thrown off by a Mettle-bot.

Afterwards... the kids went underground, and the mentor side wasn't really followed up on.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Not only that, but the fact that Dr. Mdnite would then make a deal with her and allow her to go free.

I mean, I know he wants to find out the responsible party, but he really oughta be more concerned with someone who *makes* corpses than someone who exploits them.