Spymaster is a Marvel villain who’s had several incarnations, with the first one being the most unfortunate, costume-wise:

Let’s say you want to be a master of industrial espionage, someone whose mission it is to infiltrate the most secure locations in the world undetected, and you’re trying to decide on your costume’s color scheme. You first settle on lots of blackish-blue, which makes sense as you’ll be skulking in a fair number of shadows. But let’s see, what accent color should we choose? Something subtle, something that says “Don’t look over here, nothing to see!”, something that’s … yellow! Bright, cheery, neon yellow! You know, like canaries use to stand out from the riot of colors in a jungle when they’re trying to attract a mate.

So now you’re in your very inconspicuous black and electric yellow, and it’s time to accessorize. But you’re not sure what to pack, because hey, multiple targets and challenging security systems and whatnot, right? In which case you pack your handy-dandy “Electric Plug With a Handle“. That way, no matter what appliances you might encounter during your nocturnal espionage, you can plug them right in. There’s nothing worse than midnight corporate skullduggery interrupted by a Mr. Coffee that’s got no juice.

Now you’re almost set, but before you can start your super villainous career you really need a logo, something that makes you stand out, because if there’s one thing a spy desperately craves it’s to be instantly recognizable to anyone who somehow penetrates the sun-like glare of your color scheme.

Of course you must keep in mind that you’re a high-tech spy, not some mundane little third-world CIA hack. So naturally you choose a kitchen knife for the primary element of the logo, as nothing says “Silicon Valley” like an apple corer. Then, to set it off, you put it over a world-shaped blob with lines all over it, to signify that while you’re aware there are such things as longitudes and latitudes, you’re not actually in on where all those continents and stuff are. Better just to make it all “ocean” and let someone else figure out the details. I mean, that’s why they make spy secretaries, right?

I’m delighted to announce that this week’s Caption Contest is celebrity guest-judged by The Mighty God-King! He’s graciously taken a few moments from planning his takeover of the Legion of Super-Heroes to come up with the blank panel for this week, and will decide on the winner. Come up with the funniest replacement dialog for the balloon and you’ll win a free custom black and white illustration of whatever you like (within reason). And if that means Rex the Wonder-Dog with a Legion flight ring, then so be it!

The rules are simple:

1. No more than three entries per person.
2. Leave your entry in the comments to this post.
3. Keep it clean, the kind of thing that would be appropriate for a prime-time broadcast tv show. Only funnier. MUCH funnier.

And if you get the chance, head over to MGK’s site, which unlike this one features actual thoughtful commentary on a wide range of issues besides just people in spandex hitting each other. Apparently there are more than four colors in the world, who knew?!

The winner of Caption Contest 25: Clown Town is … Jose Inoa!

I liked the idea of a Vegas show focused on abusing the audience. Besides the regular audience abuse inherent in a Celine Dion show, of course. Congratulations to Jose, and many thanks to everyone who entered. Other honorable mentions were:

• Kaiju: In soviet russia, clown laughs at you!
• Ian: You want a balloon animal? I’ll make you a frickin’ balloon animal!
• JonnyDemon: Go ahead punk, call me Ronald again.
• Aulianas Telus: Buy a Big Mac. NOW.
• DJAdmiral: I’m going to make this a birthday you’ll never forget!

Jose wins his own free custom black and white illustration of whatever he likes. Check back in a bit for Caption Contest 26, and your chance to win!

I don’t think anyone noticed, but I didn’t publish a “Monday Mashup” last week or today in favor of exploring the “Comic Book Improv” concept instead. So I’d like to take this chance to get your thoughts on the whole Mashup experiment. Was it good, bad, or indifferent? Would you like to see it return, or stay blissfully dead? If you want it to come back, what did you like or dislike about it?

For the first Comic Book Improv, apparently I will be creating a short comic book featuring the origin of “Stonewall” Jaxon, PI. Set in a major Earth city, at some point Stonewall will encounter some Ninja cheerleaders.

You might be asking yourself, “Self, how does that make any sense?” And your self will say “Dude, seriously, quit talking to me, it’s weird.”

Tune in next Monday to see the results of this first experiment! It’s not often you get the opportunity to see someone potentially fail so massively, so don’t miss it.

Super powers are usually presented as all up-side. But there are always drawbacks to any ability, and this week I got to thinking about what powers would have their pluses outweighed by their minuses.

Here are my thoughts on them, I’m curious to hear how you parse out the choices.

• Immortality: The drawback here is having to see all of your loved ones, all of your enemies, everything you ever knew or loved turn to dust in what will feel like the blink of an eye. That would suck. And you’d want some way to make sure that not only would you be immortal, but immortally young. Living forever as a shriveled, disease-ridden, pain-wracked husk is not exactly optimal.
• Precognition (ability to see the future): If you know how everyone around you — including you — is going to die, wouldn’t that ruin your day? And if you knew in advance what everyone was going to say or do, with no surprises ever, life it seems would hardly be worth living.
• Super strength: I would be terrified of crushing my loved ones when I went in to hug them. Or of killing someone accidentally with an incautious swing of the arms. I’d feel like a bull in a china shop, constantly on edge.
• Telepathy: I’m pretty sure we’re all better off not knowing what we’re all really thinking.
• Time travel: The Butterfly Effect would be a huge pain in the butt here, as I’d come back to my regular timeline only to discover that something I did in the past accidentally killed off all of humanity. Oops. No thanks, I can do without that level of responsibility.