The Infamous Professor Fear

Terrorists Do Not Have Super Powers

2009-11-20T13:48:00.000-08:00

I'm sick of hearing people suggest that it's "too dangerous" to put the 9/11 terrorists on trial in New York, as if somehow their very presence on US soil will cause a disaster. Now if, like my friend and colleague Dr. Plutonium, they had nuclear reactors in their stomachs, and their burps and farts were atomic blasts, I could see being afraid to bring them here (or to any country that serves fast food), but these are mere mortal mass murderers.

Likewise, I am vexed by the objections to moving Guantanamo detainees to supermax prisons. This week, Senate candidate, Mark Kirk claimed that if suspected terrorists are brought to Illinois' Thomson Correctional Center, "the Chicago metropolitan area will become ground zero for Jihadist terror plots."

Please, it's maximum security. If it's good enough for mobsters, and killers who chop people up and eat them, it's good enough for a wannabe shoe-bomber. Let me tell you from personal experience, even if you have a mind-control ray, an army of mutant henchmen, and have already replaced most of the guards with android lookalikes, it is very, very hard to break out of prison.

And really, what are the other options? Place them in suspended animation and launch them into space? Too expensive. Banish them to a parallel dimension? Yeah, people in parallel dimensions just love it when we send them our super-villains. Talk about a foreign relations nightmare!

What I find most surprising is the suggestion that it would be better to execute terrorists without trial. Rounding up people and killing them is not how America deals with it's enemies; it's how I deal with my enemies. The supposed leader of the free world can't just adopt the practices of a super-villain. There are union rules against it. Be warned, America; should you abandon your founding principles of due legal process, I will do nothing short of filing a complaint with the Super-Villains Guild, and not even Pres. Obama will be able to stop me.

Thanks for the Memories

2009-03-31T08:33:00.000-07:00

When I learned that Dr. Jordan Ray was on the brink of inventing a cold fusion reactor, my course of action was clear. Certainly, such a device could solve the world’s energy problems, but in the wrong hands it could be a terrible force of destruction. I was determined that those wrong hands would be mine.

My henchpeople and I broke into Dr. Ray’s lab to kidnap him and steal the invention. I was startled to discover not only that Dr. Jordan Ray was a woman, but also a ridiculously hot woman. How could one person corner the market on so much brains and beauty?

While she was chained up in my basement, I tried to ask her out, but it seemed like we’d really gotten off on the wrong foot. If only we could have met under different circumstances.

That’s when Dr. Peculiar, my head scientist, revealed his new invention. It was a little wand you stick up someone’s nose, administering a shock to the hypothalamus that erases memories. I jammed the brilliant little device right up Jordan’s nose and wiped out enough memories to convince her that I’d never done any harm to her, that she was staying in my underground fortress of her own free will, and that I was a mild mannered English teacher.

We started dating, but she kept asking difficult questions. “What is an English teacher doing living in an underground fortress?” “Why is an English teacher amassing an army of robot monsters?” “Hey, is that the Twilight Avenger strapped to that table? And isn’t that saw blade getting awfully close to his—holy mother of @#%!”

I always tried to come up with some clever excuse about making visual aids for my students, but it was so much easier just to stuff that thing up her nose again. Unfortunately Dr. Peculiar and I hadn’t anticipated the effect of repeated memory wipings. Within a few weeks this brilliant scientist was a complete imbecile, with no ability to remember anything, and I was the one forgetting what I’d ever seen in her.

There was nothing for us to talk about anymore, and the sex wasn’t even any good because she’d even forgotten how to do that. I had to talk her through step by step, like Father O’Conner used to—I’m getting off track. The point is, it was time for me to get rid of her, so contrary to what you may have read in the National Inquisition, I was the one who gave the anonymous tip to the League of Righteousness.

Within half an hour, Captain Muscle smashed through my wall to rescue her. That big lumbering oaf! I left the front door unguarded and wide open, and he still had to come through the wall. I suppose it’s the only way he knows to enter a room.

Dr. Ray never did finish that cold fusion reactor, but I hear she’s launched a very successful modeling career. And apparently she’s dating Captain Muscle.

As for the memory device, after mistaking it just once for my nose hair trimmer, I’ve lost the ability to distinguish between them, and have therefore given up on both.

Prof. Fear's Disney Vacation (or Bringing Whores to the Happiest Place on Earth)

2009-03-17T03:29:00.000-07:00

Having been foiled at my most recent plots to take over the world, I reluctantly decided that I should start with a smaller world after all, and resolved to conquer the entire World Showcase at Disney's Epcot Center. As my tanks rolled in, the eleven nations quickly fell before me, their armies substantially smaller than those of the countries they represented. Even the vikings of Norway offered disappointingly little resistance. The entire conquest took less than an hour, which included a stop in the Magic Kingdom to ride Pirates of the Caribbean.

As I surveyed my conquered territory, I was puzzled by Disney's choices. Out of the entire world, only eleven countries are recreated, and the first is Canada. Really? Canada? Were they thinking, "Hmm, what's a far-away, exotic location that most Americans will never get a chance to visit in real life? I know, Canada!"?

There's not a single African nation in the World Showcase. Africa is only the world's largest inhabited continent, home to fifty-eight nations and roughly a tenth of the world's total population, but it scarcely bears mentioning compared to the mysterious wonder that is Canada! For that matter who needs India? The only attractions of the Canada Pavilion are a restaurant offering "traditional Canadian cuisine," a short film featuring Martin Short, and a performance by men in kilts (Huh? Why kilts in Canada? Because there is no Scotland and you had to have kilts somewhere? Because Canadians are cross-dressers? What am I missing?)

What makes even less sense is the United States Pavilion, which is designed to give you the uncanny impression that you are actually in America, and still somehow fails. I was expecting to find animatronic fat people watching TV and talking on cell phones in their cars, but instead there was just a colonial building and an a cappella group called Voices of Liberty (whom I promptly executed, to much applause).

My victory was complete, and the World Showcase was mine, but there was something creepy and wrong about all these happy little countries. There were no cheap, prescriptionless drugs for sale in Mexico. There was no weirdly repressed pornography in Japan. I set about to change this.

Step one was bringing prostitutes to the France Pavilion's Pigalle district. Wishing to hire from within, I auditioned numerous smiling, chipper, Disney "cast members," and selected a bright-eyed group of male and female aspiring whores. Unfortunately, that's when Spectacular Man showed up.

I had been careful to jam the League of Righteousness's satellites so they would have no idea what I was up to, but it just so happened that Spectacular Man was headed to the theme park for a vacation. I suppose I should have taken him at his word when that reporter asked him, "Spectacular Man, you've just foiled Prof. Fear's most recent attempt at world domination, what are you going to do next?" and he answered "I'm going to Disney World."

What followed was the usual struggle where I, a man of supreme intelligence but only average strength, attempt to contend with someone who can crush a VW on his forehead. You can guess who won. I am writing this from my cell in maximum security, super-villain prison. Fortunately, my loyal henchpeople are already on their way to break me free. The one bit of good news from all this is that several of the Disney cast members I mentored have gone on to pursue actual careers in whoredom, and that I consider quite a victory.

Illustration by Christie Allan-Piper

It's an honor to be nominated, but the awards committee will face my wrath.

2009-03-05T07:05:00.001-08:00

March is awards season for super-villains. Everyone knew the Joker had Best Individual Villain wrapped up at this year's Crimey's, but I really thought I had a shot at Best Villainous Group.

With the Legion of Doom and the Cosa Nostra in decline, the time seemed right to start my own criminal cadre. Recruiting talent was the easy part. As dean of the Fear Academy for Super-Villains, I already had some of the finest criminal minds on my faculty.

The hard part proved to be selecting a name. "Lords of Chaos," "Emissaries of Destruction," and "The Horde of Despair," were all taken by so-called death metal bands. I take umbrage at describing a mediocre genre of music as "death metal," a term that should be reserved for something like high doses of mercury secretly added to the coffee of a major donut chain by a criminal mastermind sometime next week (Oops! **SPOILER** alert!).

Discovering that everything with real menace had been taken, we settled on the Council for Unparalleled Nationwide Terror, somehow oblivious to the unfortunate acronym. Through theft, extortion, and conspiracy, we we succeeded in absconding with over $160 billion worth of ill-gotten gain-- an amount so massive as to guaranty us the Crimey Award-- until last week, on the eve of the awards ceremony, when the executives at AIG succeeded in persuading the Treasury Department to commit another $30 billion to their bailout, bringing their total to around $180 billion stolen from the American public.

When AIG was announced the winner, I was incensed. Granted, these pasty executives had made off with more money than we did, but surely creativity should count for something! The Council's schemes involved releasing radioactive monsters on major cities, making evil genetic clones of world leaders, and opening portals to parallel dimensions. But no, apparently the dollar figure is all that counts!

As Lex Luthor and Halle Berry pre-

sented the AIG execs with their trophy, I still held hope that I would win the Best Gloat Award. That's the prize for the villain who most flagrantly rubs his victory in his opponent's face. When I had that bird-lover, the Golden Eagle locked in my dungeon, I forced him to watch me eat a conturduckenary, which is a canary, stuffed inside a duck, stuffed inside a chicken, stuffed inside a turkey, stuffed inside his own pet condor. And then I nailed his girlfriend. But no, AIG won Best Gloat for using their bailout money to pay themselves bonuses, take lavish public trips, and (as was reported last week in the Wall Street Journal) send billions to banks overseas.

But there was still one category I knew AIG could not rival the Council in: Most Evil Costumes. Those gray flanneled executives could not possibly contend with my sinister, purple cloak, the Green Knight's armor, or Dark Shadow's mysterious shroud of fog. Unfortunately, the award went the Lords of Chaos. I don't wish to appear a sore loser, but be assured that heads will roll.

Illustration by Christie Allan-Piper

Curses! Foiled Again!

2009-02-22T13:01:00.001-08:00

The details of my most recent, and near successful attempt at world domination, and my downfall at the hand of the Golden Eagle-- that feather-headed do-gooder from the League of Righteousness-- have been so sufficiently documented that I scarcely need address them in my "blog." However, I do take issue with some of the mainstream media's coverage of the events.

The National Inquisition, that contemptible bastion of yellow journalism, ran the headline "Eagle Bravely Takes on Fear in Heroic, Rooftop Battle." While it is accurate that the Golden Eagle and I fought on the ledge of a skyscraper, it is worth pointing out that the Golden Eagle CAN FLY, whereas I cannot. I will leave it to you to decide who showed greater bravery. Also, the "heroic" battle consisted largely of a quick, and unexpected blow to the groin. I may be old-fashioned, but somehow I fail to see the heroism in a sucker nut punch.

Unfortunately, this was not the defeat that inspired me to write this post. After evading the authorities, I went to drown my sorrows at the Dastardly Scheme, a super-villains-only bar on the Lower East Side. It was there that I encountered that apiary criminal vixen, the Queen Bee.

Typically, I avoid insect-motifed villains, as they tend to take things a bit too far. If she heard me groan as she ordered "a stinger, with a drop of honey," she must have taken it as an invitation, as she turned to me and said, "So, the Infamouzzz Profezzor Fear... There's quite a buzzz about you."

Now don't get me wrong. A well- crafted pun, cried out in the heat of battle, is the hallmark of a classy super-villain, but in off-hours, you've really got to give it a rest. I immediately tried to make it clear I wasn't interested. This probably gave her the wrong idea, as that's exactly how you're supposed to act when you are completely interested. I suppose the only way to be sure of being left alone in a situation like that is to bust out with a marriage proposal, but as I didn't, she kept on.

"Too bad about your fight with Golden Eagle," she said. "I never liked that guy. He gives me hives."

I lit a cigarette, hoping that if I blew smoke in her face, she'd grow drowsy, and I could make a clean escape. Instead, she just moved closer. Of course she couldn't just walk over to me. She had to circle the whole room in a weird, elliptical pattern, steadily getting closer with each pass.

I have to admit, there was something hypnotic about her movements. Not that many women can look sexy in black and yellow, horizontal stripes, but the Queen Bee was pulling it off. As she finally landed on the seat beside me, I caught myself thinking, "Now that my plot to take over the world has been foiled, maybe it's time to move on to Plan Bee."

And that's when the most annoying super-villain of all walked in: the Cock Blocker. Honestly, I'm not sure what he's after. He doesn't rob banks. He doesn't try to take over the world. He's just always in the way, standing there smugly in his cockscomb cowl. He came straight for us and wouldn't stop telling long, boring stories about the most decidedly unsexy subjects... his grandmother's bed rash... small business tax incentives... how many germs are in the human mouth.

Normally, I have an excellent tool for getting out of uncomfortable conversations, but the Golden Eagle had confiscated my disintegration ray during our fight, so I just had to let the Cock Blocker babble. The Queen Bee suddenly remembered what a "buzzzy, buzzzy" morning she had ahead of her, and started to leave. I was about to ask for her number, when the Cock Blocker had the audacity to ask for it himself! She declined, and it just would have been too awkward for me to have pressed the matter further.

As I watched the Queen Bee and the Cock Blocker depart separately, I quietly sipped my cognac, and plotted my revenge. I am biding my time, but soon the Cock Blocker will rue the day he ever crossed my path. And as for the Queen Bee, I will possess her, and next time, no one will be to stop me!

Illustration by Christie Allan-Piper