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(If you just want to skip all this annoying text stuff and see the pic, scroll down to near the bottom of the post.)
I admit it, I’m easily distracted from doing the comics I know people are eager to see continued, but… The other night, I had an idea for an illustration I suddenly wanted to do. At first glance it bears some resemblance to a drawing I’d done and posted to the Wreck Shop board some time ago, that featured Dyna the Damsel Dynamo being bombarded by powerful electrical bolts. This time, thouigh, I wanted to raise the stakes a bit.
Having finished the picture, then, I wanted to "flesh out" the story a bit: how had she come to this desperate situation, and who was responsible? I decided it might be cool to recycle some of the elements I’d first proposed for Starburst, a previous superheroine I’d done a few pictures of and typed out some story notes on but never got around to finishing anything on. I "stole" an armada of aggressive aliens, the "K’thalac’th", that had been at the heart of Starburst’s origin (scrapped because the plot was beginning to resemble too closely the movie Independence Day (ID4)), and the (human) villain I’d intended as that series’ "Lex Luthor" analogue, "Dr. Devin Mortham". And I plugged in a new character, "Dr. Samantha Cooper", who would befriend Dyna during the course of their struggle to drive the aliens off the Earth. (Similar to, but not as deep as, the friendship between Tetsuko and Dr. Sonya Gannon.)
So, we pick up the story just after Dr. Cooper has been captured by the K’thalac’th. Dyna has not been heard from for some days now, and Samantha is concerned…
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(The chronicle of Dr. Samantha Cooper’s confrontation with the K’thalac’th continues…)I was seated in an uncomfortable metal chair, in front of a gray metal door of some sort. Before I could spend much time wondering what was about to transpire, however, another door opened to one side. Two more of those hideous aliens strode in; between them, swaggering in with a snide, self-satisfied smirk on his face, was none other than Dr. Devin Mortham himself!!
Instantly, I realized why the K’thalac’th invasion had been so successful, how they’d seemingly been able to anticipate and counter our every move against them: Mortham had turned against his own people – hell, his own species! – and fed critical technical and strategic information to the invaders! My vision turned red with the anger and hatred I suddenly felt for him, and only the presence of the alien guards surrounding us both prevented me from springing from my chair and attempting to choke the life out of him! As it was, I could only sneer at him, trying to communicate nonverbally the hatred and contempt I felt for him.
He must have seen my expression, for he stopped about ten paces away from me. "Before you get judgmental, Dr. Cooper, I think you should know that you owe your continued existence to me. You were marked for extermination because your extensive scientific knowlegde and brilliant intellect might have been used to oppose the K’thalac’th. I prevailed upon them to spare your life."
"At least this catastrophe has had one good effect," I retorted. "It’s the first time I’ve ever heard you compliment my intelligence, and acknowledge that I am at least your equal in the brains department."
Mortham snorted. "I’ve acknowledged no such thing, Doctor. I am still your superior in every area of intellectual ability."
I practically shouted at him then. "Then why are you collaborating with these monsters, these, these abominations against nature who want nothing more than the complete extermination of the human race?"
"That is where you are wrong, Samantha. The K’thalac’th do recognize the value of keeping a few specimens of humankind alive. We do have our uses, in limited numbers. Certainly not for our technological advances, since their science has progressed exponentially beyond ours."
"Well, this will all be a moot point once Dyna has figured out a way of destroying your precious K’thalac’th!"
Dr. Mortham looked at me; looked at me with that smirk he always wore every time he thought he held the "ace card" – some unrevealed or esoteric point of fact in our previous disagreements – and I wondered what unpleasant surprise he was about to spring upon me. "Interesting that you should bring up the subject of the much-vaunted ‘Damsel Dynamo’, Doctor," he said. "It is, indeed, beause of Dyna that you are here." He gestured toward the metal door that my chair faced. The two halves of the door began to slide into the walls, revealing that were actually shutters covering a large window of thick, transparent material that, I was willing to bet, was many thousands of times stronger than glass or any other subsitute for glass. As more of what lay beyond the window was revealed, I gasped in frightened horror!
The window opened into a tall, cylindrical chamber. Suspended in the middle of this chamber was Dyna herself! She’d been stripped naked. Her hands and feet were encased in heavy machinery that stretched her limbs out like a medieval rack. Her skin was bathed in a sheen of sweat, and her muscles swelled hugely, as if she was concentrating all her effort into trying to bend her knees or her elbows, to pull herself free fom her bonds.
My mind was so fixated on this impossible sight – the mighty Dyna, held hepless in a giant machine – that I almost didn’t realize that Mortham was speaking. "Imagine the K’thalac’th’s surprise that the ‘secret weapon’ this planet had planned to deploy against them was a living being. You see, Doctor, once they began to realize that nothing in Earth’s arsenal could harm them, and that indeed Dyna was the only opponent they’ve encountered that has been able to cause them any damage at all, the K’thalac’th have been studying Dyna carefully, assessing her strengths, her powers… and her weaknesses. They have used their findings to build this cell, which has one purpose and one alone: the capture, restraint, and eventually the destruction, of Earth’s only effective weapon against them.
"Those ‘shackles’, if you will, that Dyna’s hands and feet are encased in, are composed of an alloy unknown on Earth, and indeed beyond our capability to produce even if we could analyze it and discover its properties. This alloy is hundreds of times harder and more durable than even our titanosteel, and consequently on an order of magnitude heavier. Her hand shackles, for example, each weigh 325 tons. They are attached to special force-feedback sensors which can detect and measure the amount of strength she’s using to try to overcome her restraints, and compensate by increasing the amount of power to the yokes. Try as she might, then, she is absolutely unable to muster the strength to escape their trap.
"But the K’thalac’th can marshal almost unlimited power against her… as you are about to see." As he finished speaking, I saw movement in the walls surrounding Dyna. Circular ports were opening, and massive spike-like electrodes protruded into the cylinder.
The electodes suddenly glowed white-hot, and gigantic bursts of enrgy lashed out, striking Dyna’s naked body like demonic lightning! Her face, already grimacing with concentration on her efforts to keep the machine from tearing her apart, now contorted into a rictus of intense agony!
"Those hyperplasma blasts are capable of disintegrating three-foot-thick walls of titanosteel on contact. It will be only a matter of time – perhaps mere minutes – before even Dyna’s impressive invulnerability will succumb." Mortham turned back to me, that smirk still on his lips. "And before you begin to speculate whether the K’thalac’th can generate enough power to destroy Dyna, let me assure you they most certainly can. The beams that Dyna is withering under even now represents an amount of power equal to the entire output of every electrical plant on the planet. And yet it consists of only a small fraction of the K’thalac’th’s potential output. If the power of that beam has to be increased a hundredfold, a thousandfold, even ten-thousandfold, to destroy her, the K’thalac’th are most capable of generating it."
I could feel tears rolling down my cheeks as I faced Dyna in her plight. How could even she survive against such odds? And if she died – as now seemed inevitable – what chance did the human race stand against the invaders?
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(cross-posted to the ReXtra forum)(If you just want to skip all this annoying text stuff and see the pic, scroll down to near the bottom of the post.)
Written materal is most excellent – can never enough of DCM’s work.
😯 <<< had to re-screw on my sunglasses after seeing the artwork. 8)
“I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.”
~ Mark Twain / Samuel Clemens (1907)
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