Post by redsycorax on Mar 31, 2023 2:36:25 GMT
Across the more ridiculous areas of the multiverse, there unfortunately are beings almost completely unlike Batman when it comes to competence, intellect and fashion disasters. They still look roughly like bats, but the question of whether they're supposed to evoke fear or dread within the criminal element or not is a moot point in some contexts, and doesn't arise at all in others. In a multiverse which has just gone through a hideous Crisis that involved unliving, unthinking and inhuman billions of gibbering Jimmyolsens, is it now prepared to face... The Revolting Bad Batman Impersonator Uprising
!!!!
+++
EARTH-CLANG:
On an alternate Earth where traffic lights are aqua, purple and grey instead of red, orange and green, where large roaring spheroids routinely apprehend people for minor dismeanours and summary offenses and where it's open season on Easter bunnies every early April, exists someone almost totally and completely unlike the Batman that we're approximately familiar with. For, on this world, Bruce Wayne once mused: "Criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot. I must become a creature that strikes fear and terror into them by my very appearance and behaviour. That's it, I shall become..."
And thus was born that Caped Confection, Liqourice Allsort Man! [Now stop it! That's just silly and frankly, it's abusing the very concept of alternate Earths to have such a ridiculous scenario in place anyway. What on Earth do traffic light colours and ripping off the Rovers from Patrick McGoohan's sixties television masterpiece The Prisoner have to do with parodying Batman, anyway?- Author]
EARTH-55:
It was a meh day in Slotham City and the Caped Criminal, Badman, was cruising the streets in his Badmobile, looking for members of his Rouge Gravity to annoy and counteract. However, they'd all unionised and gone on strike over the fact that they weren't being paid royalties from the sixties television series based on his inverted morality vaguely Batman-like character. He'd recently had to bury his undead second incarnation of Robber the Boyish Plunder, Albumin Hapennysworth, when he'd grown too corporeally discombobulated to do anything useful alongside him. While Barbarella Google, aka Badgirl, was sometimes engaging in criminal activity alongside him. life was no fun in Slotham anymore. Anyway, an inconvenient temporal cataclysm had happened when the Jimmyolsen Plague had convulsed the Dork Multiverse and one of them had married Sir Snodgrass Slotham, one of the city's founders and turned out to be a cross-dressing reporter for Ye Slotham Sidewinder, the colonial error edition of the city newspaper. Suddenly, his Badcellphone chimed and he answered:
"Yes, Commissioner Lays?"
"Badman, it's a You impersonator. He's currently holding up the First Slovekian Armadillo Bank on Cataplasm Street."
"I'll be right there, Commissioner. Huh! No-one horns in on my territory, thanks very much!"
As the Badmobile hurtled to a stop, Badman couldn't believe his eyes! Why, this impostor was dressed in a nauseatingly sunshine yellow accoutrement, and had a smiley face where his Batfink emblem should be. Badman scowled at Funnyman (for it was indeed the Earth-Beep character) and prepared to throw a Badarang at him. Funnyman noticed:
"Seriously dull costume scheme, dude. Can you tell me why you're gazing at me with that hostile expression?"
"Look, buster, Slotham City is mine, see? I'm Badman, the sole supervillain allowed here and I don't take kindly to competition. Also, you're too old to be an adolescent side kick."
"I'm from an alternate Earth where I'm the sole supervillain who basically runs Mathog City. I think we must be parallel selves. Is your secret identity hsst hsst?"
Badman did a double take: "Wait a minute! No-one knows that apart from Badgirl and my goody two shoes reformed ex-companion Lightpower, formerly Robber the Boy Plunder!"
"I was stimulated by a smiley face to assume my identity. I assume it was a Batfink judging from your chest insignia?"
"Is this going to be yet another one of those multiversal pile-up events? I think we need to be very careful about those. Look what happened to the Jimmyolsens last month."
"My evil plan is more modest. We assemble about three other evil bat-eared supervillains and become the Foetid Five!!!"
"That's an appallingly lame title for an assemblage of bat-themed supervillains, but we can quibble about that later. At least we'll be rid of my appalling enemies, the Freedom Brigade of the United States."
"Ah. In my case, it's Straightman, a pallid-faced straight-laced clown archetype who got employed by Mathog City Police Department due to an equal employment opportunity program open to clowns."
"All right, I'm with you. Where do we go next?"
And with that, the two vaguely bat-themed characters vanished into the void of bleedspace...
EARTH-SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPEALIDOCIUS:
[I know, I know...anyhow, on this particularly unlikely alternate Earth, Mary Poppins trained thousands of airborne nannies to attack the Kaiser's Germany, with the outcome that it ended World War I earlier than on our world. At which point, it got into an airborne nanny arms race with the Soviet Union. Also, there are talking animals. And a particularly weird bad Batman impersonator. See for yourself...Author] As Badman and Funnyman swung high over Ohmgat City, they encountered yet another one of their bizarre brotherhood. Below them was a rolling ruffian, who was none other than: "Ballman!"
"Who are you two strangely clad people? Ohmgat is mine! All mine! With my rolling shtick, created when I was bitten by a radioactive football, I cause terror and anarchy in this town!!!"
Funnyman and Badman looked at one another: "False alarm. He's villainous, but he doesn't have pointy ears on his cowl. There must be something wrong with the selection algorithm on our transmatter device..."
"Sorry, Ballman. No hard feelings, but we were looking for a supervillain with a pointy eared cowl. You're the wrong sort of cheap derivative parody, sorry..." And with that, they dematerialised. Microseconds later, the entire universe was wiped out by the Crisis on Incomprehensible Earths for being so utterly implausible as antimatter storms and red skies roiled around it.
EARTH-SPLOT:
"Ah. There's a convenient pointy eared cowled person. Hey there! We're on the look out for a suitably fiendish supervillain of a certain sartorial type to join our elite organisation!" When the figure turned to face them, Funnyman and Badman were startled to see this bad Batman rip-off was wearing a batkini and had a fishy tail:
"Greetings, Terrainians. I am the seductive Singing Fishtail Pointy Eared Cowl Man! I rob banks underwater! People are stunned at my outlandish uniform!"
"Uh, thanks but no thanks, Singing Fishtail Pointy Eared Cowl Man. Say hello to the Camp Aquaman With A Beard next time you fight him?"
"What is wrong with the algorithm on this thing?!"
EARTH-VEGAN:
[On countless alternate Earths, veganism is mandatory and eating meat is outlawed. However, this particular one really takes the plant-based cake...-Author]
"Crimefighters are a cowardly superstitious lot. But what shall I use to frighten them into avoiding it? A brussel sprout! That's it! I shall become Brussel Sprout Man!"
"But are brussel sprouts really frightening?"
"Especially to small children who don't like them for dinner! And he has the pointy eared cowl. I think we've found the third member of the Foetid Five, Funny Man."
EARTH-SLAP:
All around them, the trio saw nothing but desolation and ruin. And then, Funny Man, Badman and Brussel Sprout Man suddenly saw why. There was no-one with any hair in sight! For this was the fearsome, abandoned alternate Earth of the DC Baldies, where a brutal hairotoxic virus destroyed all superbeing hair and somehow caused the collapse of civilisation and near extinction of humanity. The planet was overrun by gap-toothed, bald, wrinkled, doddering bald superbeings determined to proselytise for their hairless horror lifestyle. And predictably, leading the resistance was someone who looked almost completely unlikely Batman. For this was... Bapman, the Belligerent Bunfighting Brute of this world!!!
"Hi. Can't stop to talk, I've got a Baldie Apocalypse to frustrate."
Badman shivered. So this was what Earth-55 would be like if balderastoholophiliacs got their way?! Despite being a hardened supervillain who had no compulsions in ripping off the Batman archetype, even he had its limits: "Dear Cod. T-they destroyed it all! Oh, the humanity!" Even the Statue of Liberty was bald, and its crown had fallen off.
"We can't let you stay here, Bapman. Eventually, those mindless shambling hair haters will corner you and shave you and then you'll be one of them, without taste, without hair, without aesthetic appeal, without a mind, without any audience..." Funnyman said, leading Bapman to reconsider. And so he did, becoming the fourth member of the Foetid Five!
EARTH-OOPS:
[Look, who classified this for the Heisenberg Alternate Probability Index anyway?! These alternate Earth labels are getting fairly deranged, even by the standards of this thread. Oh. The person who entered this in the database was allergic to pickles, and inadvertantly... ah well, never mind. Deep breath. On this alternate world, alternative singer Laurie Anderson was Extraneous States of Columbina Chancellor and had been repeatedly re-elected, given the absence of term limit legislation in the ESC. Anyhow, the arcane French philosophy of deconstruction was endemic on this particular Earth and had resulted in (you guessed it) a deconstructed evil Batman impersonator.-Author]
"Crimefighters arose to fight an upsurge in hostile interpersonal deviant acts, which I and others like I perpetrate. I must become a symbolic bodily duplicate of a creature that causes the emotions of fear and terror due to turbulence in the amygdala, the relevant part of the brain. But which one shall I duplicate? Ah, that's it! I shall become a Small Flying Rodent Like Creature Though It's Actually An Example of the Species Chiroptera Male Hominid!!!"
By the time that Small Flying Rodent Like Creature Though It's Actually An Example of the Species Chiroptera Male Hominid had finished his needlessly protracted introduction spiel, the other four realised that SFRLCTIAEOTSCMH had a unique characteristic- and it lay in his laborious and pretentious prolonged deconstruction of the categories that he had decided to embody. Fortunately, Badman had a Bad Human Voice Volume Control in his utility belt and used it to mute SFRLCTIAEOTSCMH so he wouldn't annoy the rest of them. And thus, the fiendish quintet was assembled! Badman, Funnyman, Bapman, Brussel Sprout Man and SFRLCTIAEOTSCMH laid in wait in the Dork Multiverse, ready to rain death, darnation and deviancy down on its inhabitants as ... The Foetid Five!!!
THE END [12.30 PM, APRIL 4, 2023]
!!!!+++
EARTH-CLANG:
On an alternate Earth where traffic lights are aqua, purple and grey instead of red, orange and green, where large roaring spheroids routinely apprehend people for minor dismeanours and summary offenses and where it's open season on Easter bunnies every early April, exists someone almost totally and completely unlike the Batman that we're approximately familiar with. For, on this world, Bruce Wayne once mused: "Criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot. I must become a creature that strikes fear and terror into them by my very appearance and behaviour. That's it, I shall become..."
And thus was born that Caped Confection, Liqourice Allsort Man! [Now stop it! That's just silly and frankly, it's abusing the very concept of alternate Earths to have such a ridiculous scenario in place anyway. What on Earth do traffic light colours and ripping off the Rovers from Patrick McGoohan's sixties television masterpiece The Prisoner have to do with parodying Batman, anyway?- Author]
EARTH-55:
It was a meh day in Slotham City and the Caped Criminal, Badman, was cruising the streets in his Badmobile, looking for members of his Rouge Gravity to annoy and counteract. However, they'd all unionised and gone on strike over the fact that they weren't being paid royalties from the sixties television series based on his inverted morality vaguely Batman-like character. He'd recently had to bury his undead second incarnation of Robber the Boyish Plunder, Albumin Hapennysworth, when he'd grown too corporeally discombobulated to do anything useful alongside him. While Barbarella Google, aka Badgirl, was sometimes engaging in criminal activity alongside him. life was no fun in Slotham anymore. Anyway, an inconvenient temporal cataclysm had happened when the Jimmyolsen Plague had convulsed the Dork Multiverse and one of them had married Sir Snodgrass Slotham, one of the city's founders and turned out to be a cross-dressing reporter for Ye Slotham Sidewinder, the colonial error edition of the city newspaper. Suddenly, his Badcellphone chimed and he answered:
"Yes, Commissioner Lays?"
"Badman, it's a You impersonator. He's currently holding up the First Slovekian Armadillo Bank on Cataplasm Street."
"I'll be right there, Commissioner. Huh! No-one horns in on my territory, thanks very much!"
As the Badmobile hurtled to a stop, Badman couldn't believe his eyes! Why, this impostor was dressed in a nauseatingly sunshine yellow accoutrement, and had a smiley face where his Batfink emblem should be. Badman scowled at Funnyman (for it was indeed the Earth-Beep character) and prepared to throw a Badarang at him. Funnyman noticed:
"Seriously dull costume scheme, dude. Can you tell me why you're gazing at me with that hostile expression?"
"Look, buster, Slotham City is mine, see? I'm Badman, the sole supervillain allowed here and I don't take kindly to competition. Also, you're too old to be an adolescent side kick."
"I'm from an alternate Earth where I'm the sole supervillain who basically runs Mathog City. I think we must be parallel selves. Is your secret identity hsst hsst?"
Badman did a double take: "Wait a minute! No-one knows that apart from Badgirl and my goody two shoes reformed ex-companion Lightpower, formerly Robber the Boy Plunder!"
"I was stimulated by a smiley face to assume my identity. I assume it was a Batfink judging from your chest insignia?"
"Is this going to be yet another one of those multiversal pile-up events? I think we need to be very careful about those. Look what happened to the Jimmyolsens last month."
"My evil plan is more modest. We assemble about three other evil bat-eared supervillains and become the Foetid Five!!!"
"That's an appallingly lame title for an assemblage of bat-themed supervillains, but we can quibble about that later. At least we'll be rid of my appalling enemies, the Freedom Brigade of the United States."
"Ah. In my case, it's Straightman, a pallid-faced straight-laced clown archetype who got employed by Mathog City Police Department due to an equal employment opportunity program open to clowns."
"All right, I'm with you. Where do we go next?"
And with that, the two vaguely bat-themed characters vanished into the void of bleedspace...
EARTH-SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPEALIDOCIUS:
[I know, I know...anyhow, on this particularly unlikely alternate Earth, Mary Poppins trained thousands of airborne nannies to attack the Kaiser's Germany, with the outcome that it ended World War I earlier than on our world. At which point, it got into an airborne nanny arms race with the Soviet Union. Also, there are talking animals. And a particularly weird bad Batman impersonator. See for yourself...Author] As Badman and Funnyman swung high over Ohmgat City, they encountered yet another one of their bizarre brotherhood. Below them was a rolling ruffian, who was none other than: "Ballman!"
"Who are you two strangely clad people? Ohmgat is mine! All mine! With my rolling shtick, created when I was bitten by a radioactive football, I cause terror and anarchy in this town!!!"
Funnyman and Badman looked at one another: "False alarm. He's villainous, but he doesn't have pointy ears on his cowl. There must be something wrong with the selection algorithm on our transmatter device..."
"Sorry, Ballman. No hard feelings, but we were looking for a supervillain with a pointy eared cowl. You're the wrong sort of cheap derivative parody, sorry..." And with that, they dematerialised. Microseconds later, the entire universe was wiped out by the Crisis on Incomprehensible Earths for being so utterly implausible as antimatter storms and red skies roiled around it.
EARTH-SPLOT:
"Ah. There's a convenient pointy eared cowled person. Hey there! We're on the look out for a suitably fiendish supervillain of a certain sartorial type to join our elite organisation!" When the figure turned to face them, Funnyman and Badman were startled to see this bad Batman rip-off was wearing a batkini and had a fishy tail:
"Greetings, Terrainians. I am the seductive Singing Fishtail Pointy Eared Cowl Man! I rob banks underwater! People are stunned at my outlandish uniform!"
"Uh, thanks but no thanks, Singing Fishtail Pointy Eared Cowl Man. Say hello to the Camp Aquaman With A Beard next time you fight him?"
"What is wrong with the algorithm on this thing?!"
EARTH-VEGAN:
[On countless alternate Earths, veganism is mandatory and eating meat is outlawed. However, this particular one really takes the plant-based cake...-Author]
"Crimefighters are a cowardly superstitious lot. But what shall I use to frighten them into avoiding it? A brussel sprout! That's it! I shall become Brussel Sprout Man!"
"But are brussel sprouts really frightening?"
"Especially to small children who don't like them for dinner! And he has the pointy eared cowl. I think we've found the third member of the Foetid Five, Funny Man."
EARTH-SLAP:
All around them, the trio saw nothing but desolation and ruin. And then, Funny Man, Badman and Brussel Sprout Man suddenly saw why. There was no-one with any hair in sight! For this was the fearsome, abandoned alternate Earth of the DC Baldies, where a brutal hairotoxic virus destroyed all superbeing hair and somehow caused the collapse of civilisation and near extinction of humanity. The planet was overrun by gap-toothed, bald, wrinkled, doddering bald superbeings determined to proselytise for their hairless horror lifestyle. And predictably, leading the resistance was someone who looked almost completely unlikely Batman. For this was... Bapman, the Belligerent Bunfighting Brute of this world!!!
"Hi. Can't stop to talk, I've got a Baldie Apocalypse to frustrate."
Badman shivered. So this was what Earth-55 would be like if balderastoholophiliacs got their way?! Despite being a hardened supervillain who had no compulsions in ripping off the Batman archetype, even he had its limits: "Dear Cod. T-they destroyed it all! Oh, the humanity!" Even the Statue of Liberty was bald, and its crown had fallen off.
"We can't let you stay here, Bapman. Eventually, those mindless shambling hair haters will corner you and shave you and then you'll be one of them, without taste, without hair, without aesthetic appeal, without a mind, without any audience..." Funnyman said, leading Bapman to reconsider. And so he did, becoming the fourth member of the Foetid Five!
EARTH-OOPS:
[Look, who classified this for the Heisenberg Alternate Probability Index anyway?! These alternate Earth labels are getting fairly deranged, even by the standards of this thread. Oh. The person who entered this in the database was allergic to pickles, and inadvertantly... ah well, never mind. Deep breath. On this alternate world, alternative singer Laurie Anderson was Extraneous States of Columbina Chancellor and had been repeatedly re-elected, given the absence of term limit legislation in the ESC. Anyhow, the arcane French philosophy of deconstruction was endemic on this particular Earth and had resulted in (you guessed it) a deconstructed evil Batman impersonator.-Author]
"Crimefighters arose to fight an upsurge in hostile interpersonal deviant acts, which I and others like I perpetrate. I must become a symbolic bodily duplicate of a creature that causes the emotions of fear and terror due to turbulence in the amygdala, the relevant part of the brain. But which one shall I duplicate? Ah, that's it! I shall become a Small Flying Rodent Like Creature Though It's Actually An Example of the Species Chiroptera Male Hominid!!!"
By the time that Small Flying Rodent Like Creature Though It's Actually An Example of the Species Chiroptera Male Hominid had finished his needlessly protracted introduction spiel, the other four realised that SFRLCTIAEOTSCMH had a unique characteristic- and it lay in his laborious and pretentious prolonged deconstruction of the categories that he had decided to embody. Fortunately, Badman had a Bad Human Voice Volume Control in his utility belt and used it to mute SFRLCTIAEOTSCMH so he wouldn't annoy the rest of them. And thus, the fiendish quintet was assembled! Badman, Funnyman, Bapman, Brussel Sprout Man and SFRLCTIAEOTSCMH laid in wait in the Dork Multiverse, ready to rain death, darnation and deviancy down on its inhabitants as ... The Foetid Five!!!
THE END [12.30 PM, APRIL 4, 2023]