Tales of the Parodyverse

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killer shrike
Sat Dec 11, 2004 at 11:21:59 pm EST
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The Adventures of Alcheman #14, A Crisis Crossover
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The Adventures of Alcheman #14: A Crisis Crossover



With All Apologies to Grant Morrison: The Incredible Secret Origin of the Alcheman Dynasty



Previously: See Crisis of the Infinite Parodyverses #3


Alcheman appeared in the fog-blanketed plain with a comical pop, quite in contrast to his departure, when he had been reduced to a molten pool of slag by the attacks of the villainess Duplicate Death.

Michael spent several moments gasping for air. Then, once he had recovered from the trauma of being liquefied he tried to get his bearings. It proved to be a difficult task, as the billows of chilling mist prohibited the young man from being aware of his own two feet. Such a limitation would make reconnaissance difficult.

He groped his way along the soft, spongy earth. Gradually, the ground began to slope upward, and the haze cleared along with it. Alcheman had come across a hill, on which sat a gnarled stump, on which sat a gaunt, moping figure in a flamboyant black, red, and yellow costume. When he saw Michael he stood and executed an especially arch bow.

“Greetings, stranger. I am the Bipolar Buccaneer. Welcome to Comic Book Limbo.”

“Oh. Hello. My name is Mi- Alcheman. Did you say Limbo?” the neophyte hero sighed in resignation, “I was hoping I wasn’t dead.”

“Who said anything about being dead?” the man took hold of his cape with both hands and wrung some of the humidity from it, “You’re not dead. You’re worse than dead. You’re forgotten. Wait: Alcheman? You’re an Alcheman? Oh, mymymymymymymy! That means its time. Board up the windows and stock up on bottled water, people of the Parodyverse! It’s time for another Crisis!”

Michael watched the Bipolar Buccaneer live up to the first three syllables of his title, as he gadded about the hill madly. Alcheman gave the strange man a minute to work through his mania before stepping in his path.

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I will require further explanation. What do you mean by ‘another Alcheman’? I was unaware others had used that particular nom de guerre before me.”

“Of course you were unaware, my precious poppet. You forgot them, just like your world forgot them. Everyone has forgotten them,” the Bipolar Buccaneer sniffed, “except for me.”

“I still don’t understand. How could we forget?”

“Thuderation! You really are a rookie. Even the Adamantium Age Alcheman had a clue as to what I was talking about, and he was a drug-addled sociopath. Very well, from the beginning then:

“The Parodyverse is made up of stories, right, and at times these stories contradict one another. Or worse, complicate the Narrative, the overall arc of this reality. When that happens the Higher Powers make an effort to sort things out, to streamline them. Then we have a Crisis.”

“Higher Power?”

“The Creators of the Parodyverse. The muckiest of the muckety mucks. They decide who lives and who dies, “the Buccaneer grinned evilly, “and who is forgotten.”

“Ah,” Alcheman said, clearly unconvinced. His companion noticed, and took umbrage.

“You doubt my word?!” he removed a green-tinted lens from his pocket and affixed it to his right eye, “Let my Medusa Monocle show you!”

There was a flutter of light and energy, and a man appeared. He was dressed in blue and brass, and wore a cape even more impressive than the Buccaneer. Grasped in his hands was a long staff, topped with a glowing black stone.

“Tell him!” the Bipolar Buccaneer commanded, “Tell him who you are!”

The brawny figure hesitated, but pulled off his cowl. Michael found himself staring at a man who could be his twin, if he were ten years older. The recent arrival spoke.

“I am Michael Wooster, the first Alcheman. And I am sorry to have to meet you like this. In fact, I am sorry we have to meet at all.”

*****


“This is fantastic,” Michael shook his head and stared at the trio of Alchemen the Bipolar Buccaneer had summoned. The second arrival could have passed as his twin, except for the lack of tattoos that ringed his biceps. The last called, a fidgety, glowering version of Michael, had skin art to spare, though the periodic table was drawn in a circular pattern onto his bare chest. He also sported numerous piercings and enough chain to anchor a battleship.

“We all share the same identity, and yet we are from different eras in time. This is fantastic!” he repeated.

“There are many differences, both subtle and otherwise,” the staff-wielding Alcheman explained, “For example, my powers come from the Philosopher’s Stone, which I discovered in the Lost Tomb of Aristotle, and allows me to transmute the atomic structure of others. And to fly, for some unfathomable reason.”

“With a @%&*@! cape like that, of course yer gonna fly,” the leather clad Alcheman pointed out, “I was bioengineered to be able to assume my trans-forms. You clowns had a mommy and daddy, I was born in a vat.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. It must have been difficult for you,” Michael sympathized.

“Don’t feel too sorry for him,” the Alcheman who most resembled Michael interjected, “I was an orphan, raised only by my frail Aunt Agnes, and I didn’t turn out to be a vicious thug.”

“Yer a mopey, passive aggressive #$%@&&!”

Michael interrupted, “Wait, Aunt Agnes? But Agnes is the name of my mother.”

“Yes, as was mine, God rest her soul,” the senior Alcheman withdrew a pipe and turned some of the heath to smokable tobacco with his Staff of Aristotle. After lighting up he continued, “As I said, there are differences.”

“Do any of you have sisters?”

“Not unless you count Tru-Dee and Jen-Eee, biomolecular constructs I freed from the group that created me. There watcha call Hermetic Homunculii, which is so stupid a name you’d think it would come from Gramps’s era!” the pugnacious Alcheman pointed a finger at the eldest.

“Both Silver Age Alcheman and I were only children. But we all had an iterations of Honoria Sesselby in our lives,” he smiled wistfully, “What a grand woman. Best assistant a fellow could have had, even if she was always getting into scrapes well over her head. I really should have married her, when I had the chance.”

“I was on my way to propose to my Honoria, when that butcher Honig made off with her. I tried to stop him, but… but…”

“But Honig threw her off the Engleheart Bridge, and you were unable to save her,” the nose-ring wearing Alcheman finished, “Heard it. My Honoria worked for my Honig. She was a cybernetic killing machine called War Chest. A real tiger in the sack. Your Honoria any good at bumpin’ uglies, Rookie?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Michael said defensively, “But this Honig you two have mentioned. Is his first name Cyrus?”

The Silver Age Alcheman had recovered enough from his melancholy to answer, “Yes. Cyrus Honig: King Bee of the Hub for International Vice and Espionage. He was my greatest enemy.”

“Honig was the Chief of Operations for Project: Bumble Bee, the group that built me and other meta humans. He’s a slimy @#$%&*!”

The Golden Age Alcheman frowned, “I arrested a bootlegger named Honig once. A particularly unpleasant chap. He wound up drowning in a vat of his own concoction.”

“Well, that seems to prove that the Cyrus Honig I have met clearly cannot be trusted,” Michael was relieved that his instincts had been right.

“So you believe, then,” the Bipolar Buccaneer spoke up at last, “You know this to be true.”

“It seems so. Though the situation is unfathomable: that the Parodyverse has had three Alchemen and all have been forgotten, erased from existence.”

“Four,” the Buccaneer corrected, as he loomed over Michael, “Four Alchemen. You’re one of them now, Wooster, a pawn in a grand game designed to reshape the Parodyverse. And like all pawns, the only thing you are good for is being sacrificed.”

Michael tried to respond, but found himself frozen in place. The gaze of the Buccaneer seemed to paralyze them. He felt himself weakening.

Then, there was a flurry of motion as the other Alchemen dog-piled on the Buccaneer.

“No! Not this time, monster! You will not claim another one of us!” The Golden Age Alcheman vowed, beating the twisting form of the man who ruined him with his staff.

The dark-themed Alcheman rabbit punched the Buccaneer “Yeah!! I’ve been waiting for years to %4&* you up!!”

“Michael, you must escape this place. Break the cycle! Don’t let the world forget us!” the Alcheman who reminded Michael the most of himself plead as he joined the fray.

The Bipolar Buccaneer snarled and tore his attackers to fragments. He had grown in size but had diminished in color, become a blotted out depiction of what he once was. A shadowy parasite.

A Hero Feeder.

“Time to go, Alcheman,” the creature announced in a ghoul’s voice, “No more tales for you.”

“No! I will not! I must exist, harder than I’ve ever existed before!!”

Michael concentrated, trying merely to occur, to be a part of the Parodyverse. He focused on the team ups he hadn’t had, the times he would save the world, the moments of death and resurrection and even retroactive continuation. And then, with a pop, over the disbelieving screams of his would-be consumer, he escaped.

*****


“Michael,” Honoria said softly as she stood over the burnished pool of titanium that was once her childhood friend. She was incognizant of the EMS technician who was shouting questions at her, and not just because she was still suffering the effects of the sonic attack made by Duplicate Death. The distraught Honoria rubbed her faced and blinked back tears.

There was movement in the melted steel. It began to roil, and then shrink and then flow upward until it took the shape of a brawny young man with elemental symbols drawn on his arms.

“I will remember!” he shouted skyward. After he made his declaration he looked about sheepishly, embarrassed by the spectacle he had just made.

“Michael!” Honoria gasped, and ran to him. The pair hugged fiercely.

“Uh, hey, so, you two know each other or something?” the paramedic asked.

The two looked at each other, realized what they had just done, and quickly separated.

“We need find out what happened to the others. Miss Waltz, Trickshot, and –“

“I am seeing someone,” Honoria blurted.

“Oh. What?” Alcheman tried to make sense of his friend’s non sequieter.

“Never mind,” the statuesque blonde, “The others. Let’s see what we can find out about the missing Legionnaires.

Michael Wooster nodded, “You’re right, ah, citizen. We can’t let the heroes down.”

None of them, forgotten or otherwise.

What the F---? Footnotes

It’s a sign of a bad story when the author has to close with an exceptionally long piece of post-script exposition explaining the point of it, but I felt particularly self-indulgent today, so I wrote it anyway.

Major chunks of the tale have their roots in Grant Morrison’s work in the comic Animal Man for DC. Buddy Baker, like Alcheman, was a bit of a second string character who was in a bit over his head. At one point he travels to Arkham Asylum and meets the Psycho Pirate, a major player in the company’s own Crisis on Infinite Earths, which Scott is doing a parody of. If you want to know what role PP played in Crisis, keep an eye on how Scott uses Chronic, there are some eerie similarities.

Psycho Pirate is the one person who remembers the Crisis once it is over, which he means he remembers all the characters wiped out by it. He attempts to bring the characters back, but his plan is halted, though I don’t remember how or why.

Late in his series’ run Animal Man himself journeys to Comic Book Limbo, where he meets quite a few of DC Comic’s then forgotten characters. Guys like the Red Bee and the Gay Ghost. Buddy was trapped there once, wandering around, waiting to be used by a creator. He leaves Limbo and ultimately confronts his writer, Grant Morrison, and gets him to undo one of his plot points, which was murdering Buddy’s family.

Still with me?

So what I did in honor of that story was combine the two ideas. I made my own version of the Psycho Pirate, the Bipolar Buccaneer, and put him in Comic Book Limbo, which has shown up a few times in Parodyverse stories. But my version turned out to be an especially warped Hero Feeder, which are also another PVB staple. He claims to have remembered previous “Crises,” and had fed off of the characters who were lost in those cataclysms. The three alternate Alchemen were supposed to represent different comic book eras, Gold, Silver, and Adamantium (or Dark or Image) Ages. I could have stuck another era in there, between the last two, but in my opinion that age isn’t too different from the Silver. Of course, others may disagree.

Were there other Crises? I don’t know. The entire story can be easily discounted if it conflicts with any of Scott’s plans. It just seemed like a fun tale to tell, and a way to pay homage to a story that did the same for the original Crisis, so I did it. Hope you liked it.





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