InsaneJournal

The Blue Beetle's Enemies, Part the Next: Doctor Alchemy and the Madmen!
(yeah, Doctor Alchemy's a Flash villain. Not all of his villains are original to the series, but they fight Beetle nonetheless.)

so, after the Incendiary Man's vanishing (complete with a "We found no body in the fire", leaving him open to a return, which he apparently pulls off as a kill-people-with-fire-for-hire guy at a time down the road), it's time for one of the several foreshadowings laid out over the past two issues to pay off.






hah, failed robbery.

so yeah, that's Doctor Alchemy- we saw him earlier, pretending to be just another weird-haired janitor at the Chicago STAR Labs facility Takamoto runs.

His Philosopher's Stone's crapping out, as evidenced above. He needs something to renergize it- something like, say, the energy-generating volatile promethium Takamoto's purchased from Steve Dayton's Dayton Industries.

And since Takamoto's shipping it over to Ted's company for them to alloy it with a titanium-vanadium blend to create " a new kind of armor plating " (a move that'll come back to bite pretty much everyone involved in the deal in the ass), Alchemy's got a new place to hit.

But with a malfunctioning object of power, he's gonna need some help... and who better to turn to in the Beetle's town for a group of agressors than the Madmen?




(christ, man, shave your eyebrows. srsly. though it's not like Fleeter's facial hair is any better.)

so, anyhow, subplots continue to develop.

Ted's receptionist Angela Revere steals parts from the company's workfloors for her villainous uncle David, Chicago P.D Lt. Maxwell Fisher begins to hound Ted for his involvement in the mysterious death of Dan Garrett, and KORD chemist Jeremiah Duncan's own troubles spill over into the workplace.

oh, and another delivery is made to KORD...



subplots develop, and then...



the madmen, ladies and gentlemen. still as mad as they ever were.

the alarms still go off, though, alerting ted and lieutenant fisher:



ted has lcd displays in his desk.

with apparent touchscreen functionality.

AWESOME.

(that's about the only reason to include this scan, really. that, and the hilarity of the outfits ted kord chooses to wear of his own free will.

didn't know ted was going for the " Per Degaton at the park in winter " look. )

it's a fictional desk almost as awesome as Lex Luthor's.

so it's off to contend with Fleeter's Madmen:



i do not want to know what she's going to do with that.

probably whip his nether regions with it, casino royale style.



ted has a security system worthy of a supervillain.

neat.

anyhow, the madmen fuck about more and more, but they're ultimately routed.

Fleeter gets a hold of a giant gun from the company's experimental weapons design labs (rolled out as part of the security system- it's nice to see a security system potentially able to stall superhuman threats, isn't it?), but is soon bested:



realizing that the Madmen were a distraction, Ted hoofs it to the newly acquired plot device, to discover... Doctor Alchemy!

and that's when we cut to issue four (with about 6 scans from three's at-least-18-page story.) where the not-really-a-Doctor proceeds to drop exposition on himself (" Apparently, my fame hasn't spread much beyond Central City... ") and get Ted to clue in on what exactly the source of his powers is.

" You're fast with that rock, Doc... but I've seen enough Clint Eastwood movies... "



Alchemy then proves that, if nothing else, he knows how to use transmutation creatively:



" I could turn you... " reminds me of what Composite Superman once said to his Kryptonian half:

" I could use Element Lad's power and turn the Earth below you to Kryptonite, but that just wouldn't be fun... " full marks for inventiveness almost worthy of scribblenauts, zero marks for not finishing the damn job when you could've.

anyhow, it's time for more subplots to progress: Jeremiah Duncan's troubles, Angela Revere's continued petty theft, Ted's relationship with KORD second-in-command Melody Case (complete with an oddly funny line: " [You're not gonna lose me] - unless I accidentally roll behind the refrigerator or something! "), Lt. Fisher's investigations into the Pago Island incident, and the archeologist Conrad Carapax attempting his own investigations of whatever Dan Garrett must've found on that island...

oh, and Doctor Alchemy fucking about in his low-rent Chicago apartment, having re-energized his stone with the tiny piece of volatile promethium he stole offscreen:



and so he tries to absorb inhuman power into his flatscan body:



which ends up doing this to him (also, a Vic Sage cameo, which leads into the next bit):



doctor alchemy's headed to STAR Labs to use an experimental generatior to siphon off the power he's absorbed (apparently, having a near-limitless energy source within you doesn't do too much good for your internals), but is confronted by Ted, who thinks he's there to screw with more shit (though considering that Alchemy tries to kill him immediately, they're kinda both to blame for what's to come):

anyhow, they have a fight, most of which I can't post because, you know, image limits (but hey, it's incentive to track this down, if you're THAT interested):



and cue the WHAT HAVE I DONE speech:



woah.

well, considering that this Doc Alchemy would work out to being a subconcious psychic construct of the first one... it's not really that much of a loss.

anyhow, we close on reporter Vic Sage wanting to find out more about the Beetle.. " ... as the Question! "

which should lead us, next time, into... THE MUSE!

... but I think someone's already done that, for different purposes, so I'll probably go for THE CALCULATOR!

in his ridiculous keypad-chest outfit.

but it's also a look into the life of a career henchman, so it should be fun.