Countess Influencia has arrived — and Fairmount City’s heroes are already under her spell.
As her livestreamed crime spree unfolds, the heroes of Justice Ltd. are doing what any brave, noble defenders of justice would do in a moment of crisis: They’re staring at their phones, smashing the Like button, and assembling in her comments section.
Only Captain Heroic seems immune to her influence. Why? Because the last thing waiting on his phone is a text from Miss Match that reads: “We have to talk.”
And sometimes, emotional avoidance is the only thing standing between civilization and total collapse.
Dear Pentagram Forum
If you enjoyed the illustration that parodied those old “Dear Penthouse Forum” letters, the following exclusive post takes the joke all the way.
The short story tells the entire encounter from start to finish — the setup, the invitation, the escalation, and the kind of filthy left turn those letters always seemed to take when you realized you were no longer in the “saucy anecdote” section of the magazine.
This one is pure retro smut nostalgia: A horny little time capsule from the era when “I never thought this would happen to me…” was basically the Bat-Signal for bad decisions.
Transcript
Panel 1
A large monitor displays footage of Countess Influencia hovering over Fairmount City.
Several Justice Ltd heroes are gathered in the room, but instead of leaping into action, they’re all staring at their phones. Pink hearts stream upward from their screens.
Amazing Amazon: She’s… weirdly compelling.
Elastic Man: I only ‘liked’ ironically.
Wingman: I subscribed UN-ironically.
Captain Heroic: Why isn’t anyone… y’know… assembling?
Panel 2
Amazing Amazon: We are assembling.
Elastic Man: In her comments section.
Phenomenal Lass: Grab your phone and join us.
Panel 3
Captain Heroic remembers his last text from Miss Match: “We have to talk”
Cap, in a narration box: I… uhhhh… turned that off for a while.
Panel 4
Captain Heroic, flying into action: Who knew emotional avoidance could be a superpower?
DC tease
[
Newsarama]
Last week Newsarama got you a close-up look at the teaser image DC Comics distributed hinting at a future storyline or storylines. We also got DCU Executive Editor Dan Didio to agree to answer 20 of your best questions about the image… Read the
entire story.
True to form, Didio does more teasing than telling, but it’s still an awfully interesting read. You really have to hand it to the folks in DC’s marketing department. They are
killing Marvel in promotion. The only time I’m reading about
Civil War is when they’re announcing that another issue is going to blow a deadline. DC knows that half of the joy of a good mystery is the tantalization — the tingly sensation of
almost knowing the answer. And they’re using some really creative ways of delivering that tingle to as many readers as possible.
