Linus Eckles is from an episode of NCIS: Origins, which is a the procedural cop show I guess exists.

Linus Ackles keeps bees. He’s a quiet detail-oriented type who keeps to himself mostly. He’s had some trouble with the law, has been to prison, but on the outside he mostly just cares for his bees and works on his little projects. One of his projects is a car bomb that he uses to kill a lawyer. That’s what gets the show’s cast involved in his business.

You see, Ackles believes he is on a mission from God. He was stalking this lawyer guy and discovered that he, a defender, was having an illicit affair with a prosecutor, which means that all the cases those two lawyered at each other were actually marred by a conflict of interest. Ackles thinks this is wrong, as per his mission from God, so he went all vigilante on them (with an eerie calmness, rather than Beekeeper Rage). The cops in the show are baffled at the idea that Ackles wants to right a wrong that happened to people he didn’t even know, but such it is. Ackles actually just saw that something unfair happened and he wants to remedy that.

Except for one thing: Ackles did know one of those people. One of the lawyer’s previous defendants, one who the lawyer failed, was in prison with Ackles and became a preacher in there. He was the one who got Ackles interested in God and he was the one who convinced Ackles to stalk the lawyer in the first place which allowed the affair to be discovered. This kinda removes any actual supernatural God intervention from Ackles’s mission, doesn’t it? The plan works, though. This guy gets set free because his case was declared a mistrial. I don’t know if this guy was a recurring character in the show or just there for one episode, but either way his freedom at the end shows that Ackles was a success.

Ackles does not get free. When the cops solve the mystery of the lawyer bombing they raid Ackles’s home and arrest him. Knowing they were coming, Ackles freed his bees so that they would be able to go on living while he went to jail, since he doesn’t deny his guilt in the slightest. He even apologizes on behalf of the bees if any of the cops got stung. The guy is just wholly bought in on the worthiness of his mission and caring for his bees.

Three Honeycomb out of Five. It’s a low three, but he just barely makes it, largely in part because when the preacher guy gets out of prison, a bee flies by as if checking in on him. It may not even be one of Ackles’s bees, but I take it as one and I say that this proves the hive is keeping an eye on the guy whose freedom was apparently worth that of their keeper. If this show wants to prove this bee is NOT doing that, well someone will just have to let me know.

David Vincent and the Invaders working together? I never thought I’d see the day!

This one starts with a couple of doctors. By that I mean that they are two doctors, but also they are a romantic couple. One of the doctors is killed (by an Invader, naturally) leaving his fiance Maria behind. The cops do manage to arrest the Invader, though. This is all happening in a small town called Carterville or something, which is in a relatively isolated valley and that’s the important part.

David Vincent recognizes the murderer as an Invader he encountered in some off-screen adventure, so he’s asks the local Sheriff to just check the murderer’s pulse. Vincent knows that the guy won’t have a pulse, proving he isn’t human, but the Sheriff and Maria assume this is some scam to get them to do something illegal to their prisoner that will lead to a mistrial. Vincent also calls in the Air Force to investigate, but that gets intercepted by the Invaders and they come to town posing as the Air Force. But things change when the murderer makes a run for it and gets gunned down in front of dozens of witnesses and then burns up in the manner that the Invaders do. Vincent has what he wants: people are now willing to believe him.

With that, and with people he believes are the Air Force on the case, Vincent is feeling good. But when an earthquake blocks the way out of town and something shuts off everything mechanical, so nobody can escape, our hero realizes that something is up. And the only new faces in town are the Air Force, so he puts two-and-two together and confronts the Invader in command.

This is where the episode becomes fascinating to me. David Vincent and the Invader posing as Captain (or whatever rank) named Taft. Vincent immediately understands the situation, that they’re going to wipe out the whole town to cover their secrets. Taft acts perfectly civil to Vincent and admits that yes, they are going to use some kind of fancy mist that makes humans remain perfectly still (but which the Invaders are immune to) and then blow the dam, which will flood the town and be blamed on the earthquake. Vincent uses logic to say that it’s too many people, it will lead to investigations and the Invaders don’t want that. Taft agrees, and he admits he doesn’t expect to get out alive himself since he has to be punished for messing up enough to let it get this bad. Taft admits he’d love a better way to clean this up, but if Vincent can’t do it soon, it’s flood time.
So Vincent and aliens work together to try to find a way out that works for both sides. Vincent tries telling everyone that it was all a hoax, but their plans keep failing.

Finally Vincent points out that the Invaders could use their hypnotism crystals to make everyone forget, but he is told that it doesn’t work like that, even if the town forgot the day they knew the aliens were here, the memories would come back. In the end what they have to do is have the aliens bring their biggest, most powerful version of their hypnotism tech and mass hypnotize the town into reliving the day they lost, but with Vincent changing his own actions so that the day goes differently. I can’t see this as a perfect result, but it is good enough for the Invaders, who let the town live.

Taft and the other aliens here still come across as the usual Invaders, but they’re willing to work with Vincent out of self-protection and logic. There’s no sympathy to their actions, but it makes sense to them in this case. And it made an interesting episode.

Twenty-one years later in the Bronze Age, a funeral happened.

Old Mr. Carmine had died. The news reports said that he died of Acute Kidney Betrayal, but his friends suspected the spleen was in on it too. Either way, he was dead now so everyone figured it was Funeral Time O’Clock.

Back when Old Mr. Carmine was just regular Mr. Carmine he had been one of the co-inventors of the Frisbee, as came up in Part One. The decades since then had been good ones for Old Mr. Carmine, which is nice because he’d had a rough life before that. By the last year of his life he was the seventh-richest person in his home village of Ploip and he wasn’t even much of a jerk about it. People would often say of him “Of all the seventh-richest people of any given a place that I’ve met, he’s the best!” That’s why his funeral had very little vandalism and a handful of actual mourners.

At the funeral, Old Mr. Carmine’s business partner Kredick put his hand on Old Mr. Carmine’s coffin and whispered some tearful goodbyes to his friend. He was gaunt figure with long white hair and sharp teeth. He had not visibly aged a day since he had first met Mr. Carmine, for he was a vampire! Lightning streaked across the sky and thunder made a big boom too. It was creepy, but kind of cool.

Then Kredick turned away from the coffin toward the pews, his billowing cape flowing as he moved. He looked at those who joined him in mourning. Clarice was there, of course. She was Old Mr. Carmine’s eldest daughter, and the only one of the three Carmine children who had not left town to join the illegal surf-fighting circuit.

The staff from the Frisbee factory were there as well. There were only ever a few workers at the Frisbee factory, since all they needed to do was buy a thing of butter and take the lid and sell it as a Frisbee then repeat the process. A few years back they’d nearly doubled the workforce when they hired someone to wipe off any butter that got stuck on the lid, but it was still not exactly creating a lot of jobs for the village. But the people who did work there liked it well enough and bothered to come and pay their respects.

Oh, and also Ken was there. Kredick forgot who Ken was, but was sure he’d seen him around before. Maybe at Sally’s thing at the aquarium that time? Whatever. He wasn’t important to the story, but it was nice of him to come out.

Kredick looked upon these mourners and their sadness. He wished he could say something that could make sense of the tragedy, but no words came to his mind except “arable” which was a word that came to his mind a lot, but which did not seem to pertain here. He took his seat.

Kredick hated death. As an immortal vampire he had witnessed the loss of many people over the centuries, while he himself remained in his state of perpetual undeath. So many dead. Eleanor Frisbee, his true love. Johnny Squeables, his bookie. Traffic Cone, his dog. And now Old Mr. Carmine, his friend and business partner. That’s like four. “Death is really starting to cheese me off,” he thought to himself as he brooded. Of all the vampires in the world in those days, Kredick was among the most talented brooders.

Later, at the reception after the funeral, Clarice, who had noticed the brooding, approached Kredick to ask how he was holding up.

“mphoudoink?” she asked. Her mouth was full of little sandwiches, but Kredick got the basic idea.

“I am as well as ever, my friend, for I am dead. Eternal. Unchanging like the dust of the moon.”

“butymphochompifsmm,” she said.

“That is true, but–”

Ker-smash! The window had shattered as a dark figure jumped through and landed crouched in the middle of the room! The small crowd gasped and shouted, even Ken.

This new figure stood up straight and looked directly at Albatross McGee from the factory and pointed a long, clawed finger at her. “Wait,” said the figure. “You’re not the one.” He crouched back down, shimmied a little, then popped up again facing Kredick this time and pointed a long, clawed figure at him. “You,” he said “prepare to die!”

“Mortez!” said Kredick, who immediately recognized his old enemy from the end of Part One. An enemy he killed two decades ago! How could he be here now?

“I’m a vampire too!” said Mortez. Lightning and thunder went again but it was more threatening than atmospheric this time.

“Oh!” said Kredick.

Mortez had prepared a speech that would have explained how he came back as a vampire, why he waited until Old Mr. Carmine had died to get his revenge, and how he preferred muffins to puffins, but he never got his chance to give it. He didn’t realize that in the years since the invention of the Frisbee, people had gotten really good at throwing things. All the mourners except Ken started throwing their shurikens at Mortez the moment they realized he was a vampire. Seconds later Mortez was dead again.

“chplshlunklebm,” said Clarice as she put some more little sandwiches in her mouth.

“You got that right,” said Kredick and gave a joyful thumbs up.

So that’s how Kredick decided that death wasn’t all bad, because it could happen to people who were trying to get revenge on him. That boosted his mood for a while.

Eventually Clarice retired from her job as an astronaut, which gave her time to pick up some butter for the Frisbee factory, so Kredick gave her full ownership of the operation. Her family would go on to run the factory until the end of the Bronze Age when it was bought by Waffletaster Incorporated and sold for parts. And that is why Frisbees are so expensive now.

And as for Kredick? There are those who say that even to this very day he resides in his creepy mansion and watching over the village. Among those who say that is Kredick himself.

Patrick D Ryall, the D is for Coriander

Okay, obviously this has been the Summer of Sleepwalker, but that doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to think about Marvel’s most important character.

As of right now, the Rocket Racer and Sleepwalker have not met. What does PDR, a fan of both characters, think about that? PDR thinks that’s fine. Not all characters in a shared universe should meet one another. If every superhero goes to parties with every other superhero, it makes the universe feel small and I don’t like that. My opinion is that there is no great reason that the worlds of Sleepwalker and the Rocket Racer need to cross over.

Okay, but that’s not much of a post. What if PDR was REQUIRED to make a story where the two of them crossed over? The way I see it, we have two options: A retro-style story set in between the comics from the ’90s, or one in the Marvel Universe of today.

For the former, we’d want it to fit into the early days of Sleepwalkers comics, when things were episodic. In that era Sleepy was not well trusted at that point and Bob was taking jobs as a bounty hunter, so lets say someone puts a bounty on the strange green alien guy and Bob goes for it. There would have to be a flying chase scene. Maybe Sleepy could use his warpbeam on Bob’s skateboard, which brings Bob to despair. When he explains to the alien that he needs the board to make money and support his family, Sleepwalker can help Bob and then Bob lets him go. It’s an easy standalone story.

But what would I do in the present? Gotta go with a miniseries. I’d want it to be kind of cyberpunk, since that’s my take on Rocket Racer, but with the supernatural weirdness of a Sleepwalker story. With that in mind, let’s say that a massive tech company is using some kind of otherworldly power generate their “augmented reality” tech, and it acts the way so many comics from the ’90s thought virtual reality could, and alters the physical world. And let’s say they have some equivalent of a data center that is absolutely wrecking some town.

Rocket Racer wants the tech for himself, both for financial reasons and to stick it to the company in question, and so he is doing a heist that involves hacking into some kind of cyberspace scenario. Meanwhile, Rick Sheridan and Sleepwalker have come to town to investigate the weirdness. In the standard tradition, the heroes tangle at first, but then realize they need to come together against the baddies. Let’s reveal that the rich idiot running the company wants to rewrite reality in a manner more suitable to his preferences and now he has a reality distortion field that makes him the big villain of the story.

Throw in a supporting cast of townsfolk who oppose the data center and some weird cybernetic monsters for everybody to fight. I’m sure there’s a way to tie Rick’s love of movies into the cyberspace stuff. Finally, I may not love when this happens, but we could probably pull off a climax where the heroes are fighting the villain in a big special effects landscape, but it kinda makes sense given the cyberspace setting. In the end, probably Bob gets his hands on the tech and wants to use it to better the world, but someone else (maybe the villain’s downtrodden assistant?) snatches it and uses it to erase the otherworldly power-source itself. In the end, Bob isn’t any better off personally, but he and Rick and Sleepwalker get to enjoy the townspeople’s celebrations.

It could work. There are wrinkles to iron out, but it could be made into something. Maybe I don’t think these characters should cross over, but it wouldn’t be unworkable.