From: lawrence@ctron.com (Gary S. St. Lawrence)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc
Subject: LNH: "Pocket Man meets The CluelessMaster"
Date: 17 Nov 92 21:50:17 GMT
Reply-To: lawrence@olympus.ctron.com (Gary S. St. Lawrence)
Organization: Cabletron Systems INc.


			THE CASE OF THE CLUELESS MYSTERY
			       Starring POCKET MAN

		   with special guest-villain: CLUELESSMASTER!

	The morning paper flew to the curb outside "Musty's Newsstand."
Across the front page read a huge, blatantly oversized headline; "Noted
Comic Artist Slain! Police at loss for clues"
	Musty, a gibbering old ex-showgirl, chomped on his cigar and
mumbled about the world's state of affairs.
	"Lousy Liefield-haters!" he said. "They're everywhere! `Sgettin so
a body can't make a grossly over-inflated living widdout them bums gettin'
riled and killin' sumbuddy. Wonder who this "McFarlane" kid wuz?"
	"Hiya Musty," came a voice approaching from the sidewalk. "What's
the news today?"
	Pocket Man relied on Musty for the latest news, and his subscription
to "Popular Pockets" and "Modern Cargo" magazines.
	"Hey there Mr. Pockets," Musty barked in his cigar-roughened, gravelly
voice. "What's news is what you heroes do."
	Musty grinned, patted Pocket Man on the back and handed him his
paper and magazines. "Terrible news about the smelly kid hero getting
killed t'other week, huh? Shame. Terrible shame. All the good ones go
early." Pcoket Man smiled to himself, pleased at the crotchety old 
news dealers nickname for him.
	"Well, I didn't know Flatulence Lad that well," Pocket Man said.
"And I've only met his mentor, Sarcastic Lad a couple of times.* So I
really couldn't comment on the kid's death. But I hear Sarcastic Lad
took it pretty hard and that there are some hard feelings because
most of the LNH just ignored the kid's passing. Seems he had only been 
a fledgling member and nobody really knew him that well. Still, they
should have at least recognized that a fellow hero had died - even if
he was a smelly sort."
	"Yeah. Still. It's a shame. Good heroes are hard ta find these
days, y'know? Whataya think a dis? Says here some fancy-schmancy comic
book ingenue went and got hisself killed and nobody knows how it
happened. Cops're at a loss cuz there ain't no clues at da moider scene."
	"Hmmm," Pocket Man said, resting his hand on his hip in typically
heroic fashion. "That is a puzzler alright. Maybe I'd better check into
this myself."
	"Yeah, sure thing Mr. Pockets," Musty said. "Jus' lemme get ya
yer change."
	Musty went to ring up the sale and when he pressed the key on
his 247-year-old Mercantile-Singer cash register, the key broke and the
drawer stuck closed. Frustrated, Musty began to curse the machine and
apologize to Pocket Man for the delay.
	"Not to worry, Musty," Pocket Man said, reaching into the rather
large, oval-shaped pocket that covered his left thigh. "Why don't you
try using this one instead?"
	Pocket Man produced a shining, chrome digital machine, the
Cash-O-Matic 3000 - the very best in modern cash registers. "I just happen
to have this on me and would like you to have it," he said.
	"Sheesh, yer amazing Mr. Pockets," Musty said gratefully. "Ya
must have one a' everything in them pockets o' yours!"
	"Of some things, I have more than one, Musty," Pocket Man said
grinning. "You never can be too prepared. That's my motto."
	"I thought yer motto was `Everything in its proper place, Mr.
Pockets?" Musty asked quizzically.
	"Oh, a good hero can never have too many mottos, Musty. Just 
look here in "Websters Nearly Abridged Dictionary of Net.Hero Mottos,"
he said, pulling the 31-volume set of books from his sleeve pocket.
	"Heh heh heh! Yer one inna million, Mr. Pockets!"
	With that, Pocket Man walked toward police headquarters to see
if he could find any information on the comic book artist's demise.
	At the precinct desk was Sgt. Paddy O'Furniture, a typical
good old Irish cop from a long line of Irish cops, who sat reading the
racing news and munching on leftover Halloween mini-donuts. O'Furniture
was a good cop, one of the best until the tragic accident which robbed
him of his ability to pronounce the letter "S". It was a terribly
embarrassing moment in his life when, while attempting to prevent
the burglary of the mayor's house, O'Furniture encountered the felons
and hollered, "Top or I'll hoot!" At that moment, with the felons
laughing heartily while making their escape, that O'Furniture knew he was
no longer capable of performing his duties as a street cop and was 
placed on desk duty at the precinct.
	"Good morning, Sergeant," Pocket Man said. "I'd like to speak
with whomever is handling the comic artist murders. I'm Pocket Man
of the ..."
	"Sure'n I'm knowing who ye be, laddie," O'Furniture said. "Ye'll
be one o' them Net.Heroes who're always smitin' the villians o' this
world. Ye'll be wantin' t' talk to Lt. Headed. He's leadin' the
investergation inta that there case, me boyo."
	Sgt. O'Furniture fumbled though his desk drawer for a lighter
for his pipe, a decades-old Meerschaum given to him by his first
Captain Miles O'Tubing after cracking that Zamfir album bootlegging
operation out of South Philly.
	Pulling a Pyro-Tech Flame-O-Matic 300 flamethrower from his 
hip pocket, Pocket Man set the nozzle at its lowest setting: "small
school building". He primed the firing spray and lit the flamethrower,
emitting a pencil thin stream of white-hot fire toward the upper tip 
of Sgt. O'Furniture's pipe, lighting it gently but effectively, and
releasing the trigger to retrieve the flame safely back into its 
housing. His task complete, Pocket Man placed the device back into
his hip pocket. Sgt. O'Furniture noticed that the huge weapon slipped
with ease into the small, seemingly tight pocket, but with his years
of experience around net.heroes, he'd learned not to ask questions
anymore.
	"Lt. Headed will be out t' ye in a minute, laddie," O'Furniture
said. "That's sure'n a wonderous set o' pockets yer havin' there. You
remind me of this cat me dear ol' gran'mother used ta tell me about
when I was but a wee boyo back in Minsk ... er, I mean ... Doo-blin.
Seems this cat wuz forever takin' things out o' this bag he had ...
a bag o' tricks I believe he called it then. Pretty amazin` stuff,
that cat did. I remember one time ..."
	"Pocket Man?" asked Lt. Headed. "Nice to meet you. My sergeant
said you wanted to speak to me about the comic artist murders."
	"Yes, lieutenant," Pocket Man said. "I understand there doesn't
seem to be a single clue as to the killer's identity. That's quite
unusual, isn't it?"
	"Why don't we talk about this in my office? Coffee?"
	"Why yes, thank you," Pocket Man said, amazed at how non-
characteristically cooperative and pleasant all the police and officials
in Net.ropolis seemed to be around the LNH. "These guys are terrific,"
he thought to himself, squeezing a minute and 37 seconds of thought-
time into the space of two footsteps. "I wonder what the LNH did to
win their favor."
	Lt. Headed led Pocket Man into a large glass-encased conference
room, in which about a dozen officers and detectives stood amid a
myriad of photographs, maps, reports and samples of terribly overdrawn
and over-muscled superhero figures, all of which had white hair with
a curly tuft in the center of the forehead, had extraordinarily large
thighs - the kind Jimmy Greek would bet on, and wore costumes that
were direct ripoffs of several independent comic book characters
whose costume colors had been changed.
	The detectives were perusing
the art (for lack of a better word) hoping to find some hidden clue
or indication to develop a motive for the flash-in-the-pan's murder.
But none were to be found, for all the samples were strikingly similar,
centering on steroid-induced mega-macho male characters flaunting 
impossibly large weapons, and huge-breasted, Sports Illustrated model
women in the skimpiest possible outfits, brandishing glowing swords
and beams of light from their long-fingernailed hands.
	"Lookit THIS one, lootenant!" said Det. Sgt. Lovell Cruller,
a fat, slovenly man in his late 30s, wearing a standard issue wrinkled
and stained overcoat with a pair of Twinkies peeking from the side
pocket. The stench-ridden cigar hanging loosely from his inflated
lip threatened to drop into the large thermo-cup of coffee he held.
	"This guy looks jus' like that superhero Victor from The 
Hero Alliance them Innovation guys useta put out," Cruller said. "The
costume's identical, `cept the kid made it silver and gold insteada
green, red an' yellow. Whatta hack? For all the money this kid wuz makin
and all the stinkin' hoopla about how good he wuz, he couldn't even
come up widda original character!"
	"At ease, Sergeant," Headed said. "The kid's dead, for Pete's
sake. How about a little decorum around here?"
	"What's wrong wit da way da place looks now?" Cruller asked,
once again misunderstanding his commander. "Since when wuz you an
interior decorator, lootenant?"
	"Cruller ... shut up!" Headed snapped.
	"Uh lieutenant?" Pocket Man said, noticing a particular piece
of art on the table. "Perhaps this is the key to this case?"
	Pocket Man held up one of the sheets of original (and ghastily
valuable) artwork. "Has anyone noticed that this page is the only
one out of all of these that has a panel with BACKGROUND in it? I think
if we find out what this building is that this kid copied from, we'll
have our clue."
	"Nix on dat, Mr. Goodwrench," Cruller quipped. "We checked on
dat already. Seems it's just a repro of a background piece some guy
named Byrne did for some Sensational She-Hulk annual a few years back.
He just lifted it, reversed it and put his guy over it."
	Pocket Man noted Cruller's obvious tone and realized that perhaps
not all the police in the Net City were so fond of the Net.Hero genre.
	"Well, what HAVE we got then, men? Is there ANYTHING we can
follow up on?" Headed asked, with a note of impatience. "There has to
be SOMETHING that will lead us to this kid's killer! We can't let this
case go on being clueless ...."
	Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing, like a scene
from a cheap tax company commercial. Pocket Man looked at Cruller, who
looked at Headed, crumpling a Twinkie wrapper in his hand.
	Simultaneously, all three uttered the same dreaded name ....

	"CLUELESSMASTER!!*" (tm)(r)(c) (and lots of other legal symbols)

*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	

			END    OF    PART    ONE

POCKET MAN = lawrence@Olympus.ctron.com