Dark, Brooding, Mentally Disturbed-Man

The story so far!

This comic is designed to be readable on a strip-by-strip basis. In theory you don’t have to know anything about what has come before and you can still get the joke and be up to speed on the “story” within 2 or 3 strips - but in case you still want to know, here’s anything important that’s happened up to now (in about 4 short paragraphs):

Steve Smith is the super-hero Dark, Brooding, Mentally Disturbed-Man. (DBMD-Man)

He had gotten a job working as a lab assistant to a mad scientist named Dr. Knox, who created an “evil” opposite clone of him named Bright, Cheery, Mentally Sound-Man. (BCMS-Man)

DBMD-Man had his “powers” taken away by a psychiatrist. (His only power is being dark, brooding, and mentally disturbed.) He then quit the super-hero business and BCMS-Man inherited his role and his sidekick, Gee-Whiz Boy (the 2nd in a line of Gee-Whiz Boys, real name: Cube). Cube was also an assistant to Dr. Knox.

Steve Smith had started dating Janice Silverman, a reporter, but that ended when he recovered his mental-disturbedness and returned to super-heroing. He gained a new sidekick, a girl also being called Gee-Whiz Boy (the 3rd), and embarked on a quest to regain his wrongful place as the city’s top super-hero. In a confrontation on a TV talk show, DBMD-Man got BCMS-Man committed to a mental hospital and Cube (Gee-Whiz Boy the 2nd) was mortally (??) wounded by flying glass.

DBMD-Man’s actions attracted the attention of the U.S. government, which sent the very powerful super-hero Really Good-Man to issue a warning to DBMD-Man to keep a lower profile. When he was unable to do this, a showdown ensued and DBMD-Man died! What happens now???

TIP: The entirety of Chapter 2 is a loose parody of (or an homage to?) The Dark Knight Returns. No, no, not the recent Dark Knight movie, but the graphic novel by Frank Miller that tells the story of an older Batman returning to action in a strange, 80’s-style future. Hopefully everything still makes some sense without knowing that comic, but reading or re-reading it would help.

The story so far!

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