Today we learn the importance of hiring a contract lawyer to read over your grants/contracts. It will keep you from becoming a revenge-crazed nerd who breaks a gang out of prison and thinks he can take over the identity of a billionaire.
Miss last week’s? Read The Pack Attacks review.
Gargoyles Clan-Building: Issue 8: “Terror in Times Square”
Reason(s) for existence: Disney wanted to make more money.
Main antagonist(s): The Pack, VR-X
Time(s): Between Thrill of the Hunt and Reawakening
Location(s): NYC, NY
Volume eight, Terror in Times Square. The cover is dramatic, but I do have issues with the characters’ stances. First, there’s Goliath, who though he’s in the background, looks way bigger than he should. The podium and stage he’s crashing is made of a wet paper bag. Then there’s Fox. She’s jumping around in high heels, apparently dodging Dingo, who’s skidding underneath her. Ah, and Xanatos. I have flinched and jumped and dodged a lot in my life (often on the softball field, where in hindsight I suppose I should have gotten under the ball). Now, I’ve never had a giant gargoyle slamming down behind me, but if I did, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have one foot down, one foot up, and be arching my back like somebody jabbed me in the lumbar spine with a knife. The normal reaction for startled humans is to hunch up, thus protecting our delicate underbellies.
We are back with Lexington, who is unaccountably broken up over killing Wolf. This kid grew up during the Middle Ages. He fought during the Middle Ages! Yet you’re telling me he’s broken up over killing an enemy? If you’re really, really hopped up on the urge for revenge, I’m pretty sure you’d be feeling elation at this point. Regret might come later, but not right now.
The Pack starts to close in around Lexington, but Broadway hops in. Broadway punches Jackal in the face. This should really have broken the guy’s jaw, yet afterward, they’re all perfectly fine. Including Wolf.
Turns out Dingo was using the hologram projector to make it look like Wolf was dead. Evidently it also messes with the subject’s mind. That would explain why Lex thought there was no pulse.
Back at the Clock Tower, Elisa is looking nothing like herself and smiling like she’s a Disney princess from the ‘60s. This is while the clan is telling Lexington he shouldn’t feel bad for killing Wolf. Ah, the good old days! Nowadays we’d have to cry around about the fact that a murderous sicko like Wolf died by the violence he so loved. After all, I’m sure Wolf was only a murderous sicko because he grew up in a broken home in a rough neighborhood,
In the Eyrie Building, Xanatos is musing about the vision of his father, and seething over the Pack attacking his company. He’s a smart guy, so he figures that they’re connected. He also knows that Fox is capable enough to stay in control of the situation.
Elisa is going to Rikers Island to check on the Pack. She uncovers the hologram. So you’re going to tell me that the guards went this long without checking the cells or wondering why Fox wasn’t eating? Elisa asks for CCTV video tapes.
The Pack has a new hideout, this one in a car repair shop. Dingo’s doing squats while Wolf is lifting an axle as a barbell.
Dingo explains that they’ll get enough money soon to get a better place.
The rest of the Pack is growing antsy. They want to know who they’re really working for. They don’t like working for people they have not met. They don’t know, remember, but they’re working for Xanatos. Only Fox knows.
Dingo wanders off into the street, disguised. Then he drops his Dingo form. Now we get his history. He was a teen genius who had no life other than making holograms. Finally he was able to make a working projector. That’s when Xanatos Enterprises via Scarab Corporation gave him a large grant for further research. But this kid didn’t bother to get a contract lawyer to read over the grant. Turns out that just as if he worked for a corporation or a university (didn’t he watch Big Bang Theory?), all his patents belong to that parent organization. Naturally, he’s pissed at Xanatos for not carefully explaining every bit of the contract to him. Certainly, it’s all a huge trick by the evil Xanatos!
VR’s main plan is actually pretty good though. He wants to steal Xanatos’s identity. He’ll drive him insane, first though. That’s the bit I take issue with. See, if you drive someone insane, they won’t be able to work at their J-O-B. If you then take over their identity, you’re going to have to clean up the mess that their craziness caused. I suppose it might cover some of the things you don’t know, like old friends and childhood memories that could blow your cover. You can just say, “I don’t know, I forgot all that after I lost my mind for a little while.”
Unfortunately for him, Fox is on top of the building, watching him. Because obviously the best way to watch somebody is by moving from the top of one building to another when you’re not a gargoyle. I also have to question Fox’s choice of wardrobe. She’s wearing those weird double-booted high heels. Actually, I’m not sure if those orange bands around her thighs are from the shorts, leggings, or what. Also, the Pack has been arrested. Everybody knows this. So why on Earth would you be running around in your Pack costume? I guess it is New York. People might think she was cosplaying.
She gives Xanatos a call. He’s quite grateful for her warning.
Owen interrupts, and Elisa rams past him.
Elisa shows Xanatos security tapes from the prison. It has the VRX kid plainly not being Dingo. I gotta wonder, didn’t any of the cameras see the inmates walking out?
Xanatos of course denies all knowledge. He says he has a lot of enemies who have grudges. And shouldn’t she be questioning the people who robbed him, rather than harassing him?
She gets touchy and tells him not to come to Times Square tonight. Apparently that’s when the Pack is going to strike. There’s some sort of event planned. Xanatos announces he’s going to go anyway. Or at least he’ll prepare for it.
Elisa stops at a diner to get food for the clan. I’m not sure how she affords it. While she’s there, she sees Halie, the guy she was with at the diner when Matt was along. The guy’s with a woman. She gets depressed by the fact that he has a girlfriend. It’s not so much that she wanted to go out with him, but that she doesn’t have any sort of social life. Now, I’m sorry, and I might be wrong, but did you have a social life before you met the gargoyles? Cuz you were able to drop everything and become their babysitter when you met them. So don’t blame it on the clan.
Elisa fills them in on what happened. Goliath says Xanatos really does seem to be the victim. Hudson comments that if they’re not battling him, they’re battling for him. If you can’t beat them, join them.
Meanwhile, Demona is reading scrolls that the Chinese yacht owner gave her. Apparently there’s a big crime syndicate that’s also a cult. They believe that a winged one will come. Demona answers the description. And there’s also a prophecy of a new winged one to be born.
Dingo / VRX shows the Pack his new invention. Not only does it make a virtual reality image, or a hologram, it messes with people’s minds to drive them insane.
The Asian crime syndicate wants to buy it. As a demonstration, VRX wants to attack Xanatos tonight in Times Square.
Speak of the devil: Xanatos is in Times Square at the Tech for Tots event. He’s introduced as a billionaire philanthropist. I don’t know, I think genius, billionaire, playboy philanthropist might be better.
Elisa is watching. She has night vision goggles that also pick up heat signatures.
Xanatos is starting his speech. Meanwhile, the Pack is starting their attack.
Then the Gargoyles drop out of the sky.
Dingo / VRX hits Xanatos, who’s on stage, with the virtual reality mind scrambler. It incapacitates Xanatos.
Fox has had enough of this. She kicks VRX in the back of the neck. This messes up his holographic disguise.
The Pack is about to take out VRX in revenge, but the clan steps in.
Elisa goes to check on Xanatos, but finds he is a hologram. You didn’t actually think he’d put himself in harm’s way, did you?
Fox is about to shank VRX when Hudson stops her. He says justice will deal with the kid. What Justice? You mean my tax dollars paying for him to be in a Country Club of America prison for a few years?
This gives him the chance to grab the remote. He vanishes.
Xanatos gets up and thanks them. But Elisa can see through the goggles that this is VRX, who’s holding a gun on them. Bronx leaps in, not fooled by technology.
Xanatos is watching from the safety of his limo a little way off.
After the danger is dealt with, he emerges. He vouches for Fox, saying she warned him about what was going to go down. That way he was able to plan for and contain a threat the police couldn’t handle.
He’s still unsure why this freelancer kid wanted to kill him. Honestly, he probably doesn’t know. He gave the twit a contract, and it’s the responsibility of the contract recipient to read that contract. This is kind of like when Tony Stark brushed off Killian, the inventor of Extremis. Or when Demona had no idea who the Hunter was and why he had a grudge against her. Or when Goliath had no idea who Vinnie was.
Xanatos isn’t going to press charges against the Pack. They were coerced into raiding his company.
Fox says she only broke out to keep the rest of the Pack out of trouble.
Xanatos then warns that the gargoyles had better be on their way before the cops get there.
As Elisa is leading the handcuffed Fox away, Xanatos and Fox exchange a warm look.
Final Thoughts
Now we know how the writers of this comic think they can weasel this whole plotline into the established TV plot.
The best part of this whole story is Xanatos and Fox protecting each other. Neither is particularly worried about the other, as they have confidence in the other’s skills. But when the time comes, they have each other’s backs. They are the consummate team.
Fox and Xanatos both have painful moments here. Fox, when she thought VRX attacked him, and Xanatos, when Fox went back to prison. But they get a vague Happy Ending, because Xanatos was fine, and Fox now has more ammo for an early parole.
As for VRX, he’s one of these brilliant idiots. Smart enough to make this epic hologram projector, but not smart enough to read a basic contract. Sad.
Tune in Tuesday: When we catch up with the dastardly Demona and her diabolical dealings.
Thoughts? Comment!