Fricking heroes.

[colonel_green]

Four scans from Incredible Hercules #140.
 

So things are going south for our heroes as they fight to stop Hera from destroying the world and building a new one; we've pretty much shed all the guest-stars at this point, as Herc and Cho go after Hephaestus and Delphyne. Hephaestus monologues about his backstory: mom tossed him off a mountain at birth, then on recognizing his craft skills made 'amends' by marrying him to a completely faithless woman who found him physically repulsive. At his wedding, he caught sight of Athena for the first time, and was enchanted; surely the goddess of wisdom, of all people, would see past his ugly exterior and love him for who he was. He constructed his greatest work, the aegis, for her, hoping that all that bling would open her heart to him. That, of course, didn't work out ("In retrospect, perhaps my advance could have been perceived as inappropriate."). So he decides to settle for using her petrified body as a caste for the world's ultimate sex toy.

Herc and Cho are captured:





Now that was cool.

Delphyne now intervenes (apparently that's some powerful gun she's got), demanding that he stop and reverse the petrification thing; apparently, killing her (or whatever) is okay, but not using the corpse to make a companion robot. That's where she draws the line...'kay.

Even as this happens, the device is activated, and the world begins to disappear. We now join Kid Zeus and Hera:



I like how they write Hera here; she's not all bad, and Zeus is really at the root of most of her issues.

Typhon, however, declines to stop the machine, and reveals that the bands that Pluto placed on him to make him obey Hera don't actually exist anymore (I'm not clear why; either because they stepped into Hera's new world or because Pluto's power was dethroned when Herc and Cho went to Hades several issues ago). Typhon says that Gaea created him to destroy the gods, and now that he's got his finger on the trigger of the ultimate weapon, he feels inclined to use it. And then he blasts Hera's head off, laughing maniacally. 


  char: hercules/marvel, char: amadeus cho, char: hera/marvel, char: hephaestus/marvel, char: delphyne gorgon, char: typhon, creator: greg pak, creator: rodney buchemi, title: incredible hercules, publisher: marvel comics, char: zeus/marvel

Comments

[neuhallidae]

Okay, I laughed hard at the button bit. I love it so much.

[anoolka]

That bit was genius :D

[sailorlibra]

It was a perfect scene. Especially how Hephaestus doesn't seem at all surprised by their reactions, just disappointed.

[hyperactivator]

I thank you for this.

[pyrotwilight]

So it worked because they hit the button at the exact same time?

[colonel_green]

Yep.

[outlawpoet]

building synchronized switches that lock each other out at first press, and don't have timing problems (AND always have a winner at ties) is actually kind of difficult, and scales with the number of switches you need hooked up and if they need logic of other kinds (enabling conditions, enabling different number of switches, and things like that).

I know someone who actually gets paid pretty well to make that gear for game and reality tv shows.

So oddly, it's kind of realistic that this death trap would have that kind of flaw, if stumpy there hadn't spent the time to get it right.

[mullon]

Wow, Hera's kind of lame.

[lamashtar]

Hunh?

[jarodrussell]

If cell(0).button = true Then
    cell(1).lock = true
    cell(0).lock = false
ElseIf cell(1).button = true Then
    cell(0).lock = true
    cell(1).lock = false
Else
    cell(0).lock = true
    cell(1).lock = true
EndIf

If you're going to be stupid enough to leave your heroes a way out after you have the blond, at least run some basic tests on your code. It's not like you don't have a gajillion bots that can stand in each cell and press the button. GEEEZ!

[porcupine_advocate]

Race condition, perhaps. If the code is called when the button is pressed, it's plausible that each locked their own door first, then unlocked the other door. Voila, both unlocked.

[jarodrussell]

"If you're going to be stupid enough to leave your heroes a way out after you have the blond, at least run some basic tests on your code. It's not like you don't have a gajillion bots that can stand in each cell and press the button."

[colonel_green]

I think you're overthinking a fairly straightforward gag/sentimental moment.

[glprime]

In regular superhero comics, yes. When mind puzzles are explicitly used in a story context by brilliant thinkers, no, there is no over-thinking.

[lamashtar]

Hephaestus is a fine mechanic, not a brilliant thinker.

[glprime]

"Mechanic" is a little bit below what he's capable of. Like "I made golden cheesecake robot helpers" below.

Given his level of acumen, he should've known enough to test out what he made for such errors.

Again, it ruins the dramatic tension, but logic hits a big giant wrench when people create traps without thinking through their flaws. A superior engineer (not to mention an engineering GOD) would not have put together something with a distinct wiring/command error.

Unless he meant to.

[lamashtar]

It was my impression he did. Deathtraps aren't as much fun if you can't laugh over someone's grave how they COULD have saved everything if only they had been a better person, et cetera...ie. Mephisto explains to Azmodeus in Ghost Rider how they both could have won and been free of their curse if only they had taken the higher road instead of trying to 'win' against each other, rather than Mephisto.

[jarodrussell]

Overthinking would be me asking why Heph needs a stone Athena for his mold when he could have equipped his drones with LIDAR and used the data to Photosynth a mold. That is overthinking it. What I did was merely a peer review.

[crinos]

Or better yet: Just flood both rooms with nerve gas immediately and forget the button dilemma altogether.

I mean honestly, Hephaestus has no one to blame but himself for this one.

[jarodrussell]

Then it's not a deathtrap.

[tanetris]

Gears grindin'
Ropes bindin'
Coils windin'
For a super sap
Deathtrap

[yaseen101]

Let's see....

-Nope still not going back to shipping Amadeus/Delphyne. It will take a lot more than that to convince me otherwise.

- Awww, I liked that moment between Hera and Zeus. Though, now it makes me think of Hera as a pedophile for some reason.

-Loved how Amadeus and Herc escaped the 'deathtrap'.

- Hephaestus you goddamn idiot! You captured and had ATHENA captured and with you the whole time. That's something a lot of people dream of but can never accomplish.

[bruinsfan]

Though, now it makes me think of Hera as a pedophile for some reason.

Hey, consider that he's her little brother, whom she married after he rescued her from their dad's gullet along with their other siblings. To escape the massive relationship dysfunction among Greek gods you have to go back before Gaea started giving birth to the Titans.

[kiwibird]

If you really want to get into it, Hera wasn't even his first wife. That honor goes to Metis, you know, the one he devoured because it was prophecized that if she gave birth to a son, said son would depose of him the same way he deposed of his own father. Hera was actually wife number three, and even then, she only married him to hide her shame after he disguised himself as a lame cuckoo to get close to her before turning back into his original form and raping her. So yeah.

[autumn_lily]

"Frickin' heros."

Bwahaha!

[nothingbutcake]

That was so great.

Although I am a little disappointed with this Hera.  I guess Zeus always was her weak spot, ever since he first became that cuckoo bird.

[silicone_soul]

This is silly. Buttons are not how one escapes dungeons.

I hope they at least rained beatings liberally down on Hephaestus for playing such a trick.