Brace yourselves loyal YouAreComic readers, I'm about to use two phrases that you never thought you'd hear used in a single sentence - 'Old Dazzler Villans' and 'awesome'.
Believe it or not our awesome comic-book moment for today comes from Avengers:The Initiative #27 which features the tragic (yet awesome) story of dodgy old Dazzler villans Johnny Guitar and Doctor Sax.
What do you mean am I serious? Of course I'm serious?
Is that really their names? Of course that's really their names, you think I could make up something that great?
Check them out:
Okay so before we even start these guys have two strikes against them. One, they're music-based super-villans which always instantly makes you lame unless you're the Hypno-Hustler. Two, they can't even take Dazzler even though she was still in her roller-skating Disco phase.
However what they have going for them is a guitar that shoots steel shattering sonic blasts, a brain scrambling sax and a loyal, true friendship that keeps on ticking through musical obscurity, small-time crook-dom, Dazzler-delivered beatdowns and finally a place in Taskmaster and Constrictor's Shadow Initiative.
Unfortunately this Shadow Initiative deal turns out to be a just another dead-end that Johnny has convinced poor old Doc Sax to follow him into. First he talks Doc into leaving his kids to join a crappy rock band. Then he leads him into a life of small potatoes crime. Then he convinces him musical-themed super-crime isn't lame. Now he's got Sax and him a spot on a team that Initiative bigwigs Taskmaster and Constrictor plan to use as cannon fodder when storming the Negative Zone prison which has been over-run by the Fantastic Four's most awesome mane-sporting villan Blaastar the The Living Bomb-Burst!!
This is the the moment that a story about hoary old Dazzler villans goes form 'eh?' to 'awesome'. Johnny doesn't want his oldest friend to get killed in some alien dimension because of him. However he knows that Doc won't leave him to go it alone. So:
It's a pretty incredible moment. Up until this point Johnny Guitar has been nothing but a user trying to get ahead by cutting every corner and making every easy choice, dragging his unfortunate, protective friend into one scrape after another. Here we see that despite his questionable actions in the past Johnny and Doc's friendship goes both ways.
Rather than see Doc die, rather than deprive Doc's children of their father any more than he already has, he picks a fight. He leaves his friend thinking he's the selfish jerk he has always been...to save his life.
Sadly Johnny dies almost the instant he sets foot in that alien dimension. But despite the less than stellar life he led, the less than impressive prowess he showed on the battlefield, the less than perfect cover he used to do of Skynyrd's Freebird....Johnny Guitar died...a hero.
I'll have to sign off now because I'm kinda welling up he - -er - -I mean there's...um...something in my eye. You guys run along to your local comic-book shop and buy this book.
Godspeed Johnny Guitar, wherever you are, say hello to Jim Morrison for me.
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