Post by redsycorax on Sept 25, 2020 4:15:29 GMT
Come with us now to a justifiably obscure corner of the Dork Multiverse, where heroes that really, really shouldn't exist unfortunately do. Yes, unfortunately, there's yet another low-grade Batman rip off looming in the distance, and boy, do I mean looming. On Earth-158, Bruce Wain vowed to avenge the death of his parents when they were killed by runaway diet signage. As a consequence, Brucey really piled on the pounds and became a Corpulent Crimefighter. While pondering on what identity he should assume, he saw an obese bat try to fly and then keel over from the effort: "That's it! I shall become... Fatman!!!" Although he already was, and had been for several years. Although he was a multiple millionaire several times over, Fatman posed as a circular clown, until the Jerker got jealous due to the theft of his own schtick and kicked Fatman out. While long runs were exhausting for him, Fatman's body was an asset, particularly when he threw his weight around, although the Fatrope needed to be particularly reinforced to carry the bulk. Shortly after all this, Bruce encountered Dack Greenson, a rather obese boy whose trapezee artist parents were inadvertantly killed when he tried to participate in the act. Dack became Fatman's crimefighting companion Bobbin, the Boy Lardass.
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"Mawster Bruce?" Alfred Largepenny, Bruce Wain's faithful retainer and the only other person on Earth-158 who had worked out who Fatman and Bobbin were, which gives you some idea of the average IQ of the inhabitants of Blobham City, cleared his throat.
"Yes, Alfred?"
"I'm afraid Mawster Dack broke the Bobbin batpole again."
"Well, at least it's better than getting stuck in the entrance hole the way I did last week. How much do we owe Blobham City Greaseworks again?"
"You're a multi-millionaire. Why do you care?"
"Because we might need it to fight our old enemy the Greased Pig again."
Alfred rolled his eyes: "Mawster Bruce, you do realise the Greased Pig is even more unfit that you are?"
"It's lucky that most of my rogues gallery are. The Dodo, The Wriggler, Felinity...the only exception is that anorexic twerp the Jerker. No wonder he's always so miserable. Incidentally, is there any word on his current whereabouts?"
Bobbin appeared from underneath the Fatmobile:
"Apparently he captured a couple of wholesome teenagers from the quaint town of Dolton, Betty Majorette and Jon Whist, and exposed them to an hour and half of sheer misery and depravity before the Fun Police caught up with him, although he may have impregnated Betty. No-one's quite sure, given the high average weight of our world's inhabitants tipped it over on its axis twenty years ago."
"Enough expository dialogue, Dack. Into the Fatmobile for no reason whatsoever! In about three minutes, our weekly supervillain encounter will justify it!"
"Gravity buffers to power! Velocity boosters to speed!" And with that, the Fatmobile rolled laboriously out of the Fatcave beneath Portly Wain Manor, with Blobham City only fourteen miles away on their special road, given the jumbo size scale of the Fatmobile which required it. While Fatman was driving, Bobbin looked at the supervillain register:
"Captain James D. Pork of the Starship Unimpressed?"
"Nope, I'm afraid not. Remember, he also extrudes into Earth-55's dimension and he's behind bars over there right now."
"Hey, yeah, with that thin Bat Woman married into those New England undead family, the Warlocks."
"Mushy Ace of Clubs?"
"No, she went into liquidation due to a diet reduction programme gone hideously wrong, last year."
"Golly, Fatman, why can't people accept their god-given obesity? Why do they have to resort to perverse, unnatural dieting practices against the will of God?"
"Now now, Bobbin, no value judgements. Eccentric though dieting is, they're entitled to their beliefs about human morphology."
"Gee, Fatman, now that you mention it, I was being a judgemental fool. Ah. Wait a minute, this isn't one of ours. Fatman! It's from that strange alternate universe, Earth-Blue, the one where everyone is always depressed. The home of..."
"Yes- our counterpart crime fighters, Sadman and Sobbin." Bobbin remembered. The Dork Multiverse could certainly be repetitious sometimes, and extremely unoriginal, although he supposed alternate universes were entitled to contain some recurrent themes (such as neverending and overworked Batman parodies-Ed). Instead of the extremely high average body weights that were the norm on their own alternate Earth, on Earth-Blue, everyone had a chronic serotonin shortage and everyone read Kierkegaard or Scandinavian crime stories, watched Ingmar Bergman films and any other colour than black was forbidden. Earth-Blue wasn't always that downbeat- its World Church had persecuted anyone who was depressed, leading to a revolutionary Glum movement. In 1945, international melancholism triumphed against the Smilezi regime of Happy Germany, led by the tyrannical Adolphe Smileyface. Sure enough, the interdimensional bleedphone intoned the harmonic sequence of Earth-Blue:
"Sadman, old chum, what can we do for you?"
"Bad news, Bruce and Dack. It's my arch enemy, the Dead Parrot. He's escaped from the Clear De Moon prison on Luna and somehow made it to a transmatter cube. We think he may be headed to your alternate Earth."
"But why?"
"We think he may be trying to smuggle antimelancholic drugs into our Earth. Of course, they're forbidden here, but... if those drugs got into public circulation here, the whole miserabilist system would be undermined. Moreover, there may be a reciprocal trade in illicit rapid diet chemicals from our Earth to yours, which means that your own obesocracy could be endangered."
"Leave it in our hands, Sadman. We'll get to the bottom of this."
BLOBTHAM CITY HALL:
"Ha ha ha ha ha! Dietophobic duo! You're too slow for me, you enormous fools!"
"Body negativity is the last resort of the incompetent, Jerker."
"You cannot fool my scheme to flood our world with diet programmes! Soon, you will be anomalies in a slimmer, more health-conscious world!"
Abruptly, due to morbid obesity, Fatman fell over and died instantly from a cardiovascular infarction. Which wasn't all that unusual on Earth-158, however, given that its colossal fat intake limited most human life spans to about forty years of age. Bobbin threw himself at the Jerker and quickly subdued him and the plan to make Earth-158 slim down and get healthier died in its tracks- which, unfortunately, is what most people on Earth-158 tended to do. Yes, I know this is a truncated story, but there was little other way out of this. And so, Bobbin became Fatman II.
THE END
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"Mawster Bruce?" Alfred Largepenny, Bruce Wain's faithful retainer and the only other person on Earth-158 who had worked out who Fatman and Bobbin were, which gives you some idea of the average IQ of the inhabitants of Blobham City, cleared his throat.
"Yes, Alfred?"
"I'm afraid Mawster Dack broke the Bobbin batpole again."
"Well, at least it's better than getting stuck in the entrance hole the way I did last week. How much do we owe Blobham City Greaseworks again?"
"You're a multi-millionaire. Why do you care?"
"Because we might need it to fight our old enemy the Greased Pig again."
Alfred rolled his eyes: "Mawster Bruce, you do realise the Greased Pig is even more unfit that you are?"
"It's lucky that most of my rogues gallery are. The Dodo, The Wriggler, Felinity...the only exception is that anorexic twerp the Jerker. No wonder he's always so miserable. Incidentally, is there any word on his current whereabouts?"
Bobbin appeared from underneath the Fatmobile:
"Apparently he captured a couple of wholesome teenagers from the quaint town of Dolton, Betty Majorette and Jon Whist, and exposed them to an hour and half of sheer misery and depravity before the Fun Police caught up with him, although he may have impregnated Betty. No-one's quite sure, given the high average weight of our world's inhabitants tipped it over on its axis twenty years ago."
"Enough expository dialogue, Dack. Into the Fatmobile for no reason whatsoever! In about three minutes, our weekly supervillain encounter will justify it!"
"Gravity buffers to power! Velocity boosters to speed!" And with that, the Fatmobile rolled laboriously out of the Fatcave beneath Portly Wain Manor, with Blobham City only fourteen miles away on their special road, given the jumbo size scale of the Fatmobile which required it. While Fatman was driving, Bobbin looked at the supervillain register:
"Captain James D. Pork of the Starship Unimpressed?"
"Nope, I'm afraid not. Remember, he also extrudes into Earth-55's dimension and he's behind bars over there right now."
"Hey, yeah, with that thin Bat Woman married into those New England undead family, the Warlocks."
"Mushy Ace of Clubs?"
"No, she went into liquidation due to a diet reduction programme gone hideously wrong, last year."
"Golly, Fatman, why can't people accept their god-given obesity? Why do they have to resort to perverse, unnatural dieting practices against the will of God?"
"Now now, Bobbin, no value judgements. Eccentric though dieting is, they're entitled to their beliefs about human morphology."
"Gee, Fatman, now that you mention it, I was being a judgemental fool. Ah. Wait a minute, this isn't one of ours. Fatman! It's from that strange alternate universe, Earth-Blue, the one where everyone is always depressed. The home of..."
"Yes- our counterpart crime fighters, Sadman and Sobbin." Bobbin remembered. The Dork Multiverse could certainly be repetitious sometimes, and extremely unoriginal, although he supposed alternate universes were entitled to contain some recurrent themes (such as neverending and overworked Batman parodies-Ed). Instead of the extremely high average body weights that were the norm on their own alternate Earth, on Earth-Blue, everyone had a chronic serotonin shortage and everyone read Kierkegaard or Scandinavian crime stories, watched Ingmar Bergman films and any other colour than black was forbidden. Earth-Blue wasn't always that downbeat- its World Church had persecuted anyone who was depressed, leading to a revolutionary Glum movement. In 1945, international melancholism triumphed against the Smilezi regime of Happy Germany, led by the tyrannical Adolphe Smileyface. Sure enough, the interdimensional bleedphone intoned the harmonic sequence of Earth-Blue:
"Sadman, old chum, what can we do for you?"
"Bad news, Bruce and Dack. It's my arch enemy, the Dead Parrot. He's escaped from the Clear De Moon prison on Luna and somehow made it to a transmatter cube. We think he may be headed to your alternate Earth."
"But why?"
"We think he may be trying to smuggle antimelancholic drugs into our Earth. Of course, they're forbidden here, but... if those drugs got into public circulation here, the whole miserabilist system would be undermined. Moreover, there may be a reciprocal trade in illicit rapid diet chemicals from our Earth to yours, which means that your own obesocracy could be endangered."
"Leave it in our hands, Sadman. We'll get to the bottom of this."
BLOBTHAM CITY HALL:
"Ha ha ha ha ha! Dietophobic duo! You're too slow for me, you enormous fools!"
"Body negativity is the last resort of the incompetent, Jerker."
"You cannot fool my scheme to flood our world with diet programmes! Soon, you will be anomalies in a slimmer, more health-conscious world!"
Abruptly, due to morbid obesity, Fatman fell over and died instantly from a cardiovascular infarction. Which wasn't all that unusual on Earth-158, however, given that its colossal fat intake limited most human life spans to about forty years of age. Bobbin threw himself at the Jerker and quickly subdued him and the plan to make Earth-158 slim down and get healthier died in its tracks- which, unfortunately, is what most people on Earth-158 tended to do. Yes, I know this is a truncated story, but there was little other way out of this. And so, Bobbin became Fatman II.
THE END