Episode 316
THIS COMIC
Mystery Comics Volume 2, Issue 307 (henceforth all volume-issue numbers formatted as follows: 2-307). March 1999.
Wraith is still in this story, but it focuses on the OotSM more than most of the stories in this 16-month period, which constructs the Wraith as “more detective and less superhero”, focused on solving crimes and mysteries rather than just fighting super-criminals.
Open on OotSM “doing a thing”, or having already done a job. An automobile manufacturer’s giant plant outside Rook City, not yet shut down due to labor rights protests, is the setting here. They dismantle it overnight; the cops don’t know what happened, but aerial view shows that the piles of material form the shape of a gear. “Detective jargon” follows. Wraith looks for an access point where large numbers of Simple Machines could have emerged, and works out that there’s an abandoned storage locker nearby, with a keypad but left open a crack. Is it a trap? There’s a flickering light from a bank of TVs showing the live breaking news of an OotSM attack on a downtown building. Wraith goes to run out, but is locked in with the lights off.
Downtown, we see the OotSM members, possibly returning to their hideout with “the loot”, assuming it wasn’t just that they were going to kill people. (Luigi Mangione may have been on Christopher’s mind at this time, so perhaps that’s why he thought the Order was assassinating decision-makers rather than just stealing something.) The shadowy figure of the new “way more menacing” Linchpin gives a monologue over some captive prisoners or something. Seemingly this is a new person, definitely not any of the main three. “You executives are the ones who are ruining the lives of the people in the streets!” The main three protest this a little, saying this isn’t what they previously discussed. Linchpin tells them that THEY need to stand for their beliefs and change the world by personally killing these executives; Chaindrive gets defiant, confirming that the Linchpin is new and isn’t “in on the thing”. Linchpin has an item, which isn’t a windshield-breaking stick but some other small handheld thing, not as long or aristocratic as a cane. (If Linchpin had a limp, he’d have a crutch rather than a cane.) Everyone works with their hands; the symbol isn’t a wrench, or a square or a level, but maybe a little tap-tap-tap hammer with a brass head. Symbol of office, kept in a loop on his belt, and will gesture with it when he talks, using this “one side mallet, one side little hammer”. Chaindrive is arguing angrily, losing his patience, and throws a punch; Linchpin casually lean-dodges, taps Chaindrive with the rubber end of the hammer which somehow stuns him, taps the window with the brass end to spiderweb it, and throws Chaindrive out the window. Except maybe not! Chaindrive is beaten to death but doesn’t go out the window; Linchpin doesn’t bother to wipe the blood off his hammer, but claims that he’s still open to dissenting opinions, but “you’d better have a good argument”. A random woman from among the cogs is appointed to take over as Chaindrive, not choosing but asking for a volunteer, and she must throw a captive out the window in order to be designated as the new Chaindrive. Cops then breach the building, but the Order are gone. Half the executives went out the window, the other have are left but must have promised to “make changes”, very ambiguously. Cops: “You’re safe now”; captives “No we’re not.” Now the doors to the bunker Wraith is trapped in open. “They know everything, they’re in charge.”
Wraith goes to the building and investigates, talking to the surviving captives. She goes back to her base at the end of the issue, and Linchpin is there, having perhaps discovered the Maia Montgomery identity. That may not be in this issue though. “I hope you’ve learned” monologue? Wraith does various detective things, including the IREP; as she’s looking around, Linchpin is suddenly there. “I did try to make it obvious”, after all the work she did. “I don’t really have any quarrel with you, but I hope you’ve learned your lesson. I don’t want to kill you, but I can. I want to get through this with as little bloodshed as possible. I have a message to deliver to this city, and they’re going to hear it one way or another.” Claims that the murdered executives “threw themselves out”. Ends with his broadcast going out at the TV station, telling the people that a new order is rising, and taunts Wraith by saying “run back to Montgomery Industries”, before Batmanning away on her. The phrase “one percent” isn’t used here because it’s the wrong time period, but this is clearly a war against the oligarchy.
How this ends, in 322 in June 2000, Wraith stops the big plan and confronts Linchpin, whose identity has been wildly speculated upon (“It’s Bruce Watkins?” Leading candidates are Daniel Montgomery or the ten-years-comics-time dead Eduardo Lopez, who may have not actually died, or may have died and come back, since that’s equally possible here). This Linchpin clearly knows too much and has a personal connection to Wraith. She defeats him, unmasks him, and it’s “no one”. The main three are incarcerated, and Linchpin is a normal person, apart from maybe having no fingerprints; he has “no identity”. Clearly some backstory is missing. “How does it feel for nobody to give you this much trouble? How much do you really think you’ve won today?” This is the end of the OotSM except it clearly isn’t; there may be “adjunct” other cells who are the “dark side of the common man”.
This person is thought to remain as the Linchpin forever after this, and the Order doesn’t get a replacement for him; he rots in jail, but the Order continues.
CHARACTERS
Order of the Simple Machine (singular) - First Appearance (1A) in August 1975. “False starts”, never really resonates with readers; new writers keep trying to do something with them, but their continual failure serves to keep them very mysterious. “Faceless nameless people with gear masks”, “the dregs of humanity or whatever”. Blue-Collar crime, “not notable”. Gains more personality later.
Nov 1980, MC 2-14 introduces Piston (hydraulic punchy fists), Chain Drive (chain whips), and Rivet (rivet gun). All look like construction workers, have no superpowers but use a tool that effectively works as one, but are one-dimensional enemies.
Dec 1980, MC 2-16 introduces Linchpin, with “more elaborate but not actually elaborate” gear mask. Still so mysterious as to be largely undefined.
1986 - Parse vs. OotSM. Parse “way outclasses” and “dismantles the entire thing”, and reveals that there never was a Linchpin, that it’s a rotating identity figurehead that might be any of the three fighters or some other person who’s pretending to be their boss.
Inconsequential use as mooks and distractions from 86 to 99, no major stories by then.
Parse “changes a lot” over the 90s, and goes to space in the early Aughts.
305 January 1999 through 324 August 2000 - Mystery Comics is “only Wraith all the time”, having previously been “all over the place”, not necessarily focused in Rook City and not even starting with The Wraith.
A future arc in 2006 features Dark Watch versus the OotSM.
RPG Era Chaindrive can run electrical current through her whips, which not only deals extra damage but can affect machinery by whipping it. More generally, the Order was established as being able to build their own stuff, though they’ll steal the materials.
LETTER WRITERS
Norm L. Man - asks if the Order work with other anarchists like Degenerate and Agitator, though the latter is “specifically Afghanistan coded”. Agitator might be the sort of tool the Order would point at a problem, but Degenerate is definitely way too chaotic to be a member; “they can use her”. Also, Linchpin is not Deathfiend; there’s no crossover between these things
Tom H.C. (whose birthday is before this episode) - asks about the size of the Order, that they might occasionally balloon up to a couple hundred, but the core membership is a couple dozen. Their message of “things won’t get done if they’re done the right way, so we’ll do them the wrong way” resonates with a lot of people.
IRL Wraith - this letter writer obviously loves the character, and wonders if she’s multilingual. (Incidentally establishes that Ambuscade does not have a bad French accent, it’s just that C&A do. This letter writer says the bad accent grates on their nerves, perhaps implying they are French themselves, or Quebecois or something.) A fun goof emerges about how some languages, like Russian, are “crime languages”, in that Wraith learned them to fight crime more than Maia learned them for business reasons. Chinese is “dual purpose” in this regard, but Japanese is implied to be a crime language by a mention of the Yakuza. Wraith is “hard work the character”, being super skilled but not as a result of talent. A second IRL Wraith letter references the Vampire World episode, where Wraith becomes Wretch, “more creature than human”, and this is largely just because of the name, somewhat also the look they had in mind (moves like, but doesn’t look like, “the girl from The Ring”; her bandages cover her up, even to her mouth, even though it may open super wide; lots of long hair, big hair, and a cape that sheds bits; “mostly shadow and bandages inside a cloak and cape”). Vampire World doesn’t come up that much, though “we likely go to it at least a couple of times”. IRL Wraith is a cosplayer.
Slyduck - Listening to Episode 224, “Creative Process: Prison-Themed Villains” (this is of course actually the Harpy Foes one). This episode mentioned a list of names that remain unused, and some remain there. Christopher refuses to disclose any of these names, because they aren’t even character concepts yet, they’re just names that have been researched and found available. Ironic that this was in the absolute final record, and thus those names remain unused, and C&A likely don’t have access to that list anymore; if they regain the rights they’ll probably have to start over to generate that list from memory, unless it’s included in whatever they buy back from FRG. The list was last updated in the New Scions episodes. Four other points in this letter. Wraith has definitely broken someone out of a prison before. Maia Montgomery in prison has probably been a story at least once; Christopher has a couple of ideas. During this time, there’s a Wraith active in the Freedom Five, and this is probably not even addressed, though in some cases there’s a Unity bot or a Tachyon hologram projector or something being used. Hellmouths to Aeternus are mentioned, but they’re probably not in an RC Prison. Most on-panel time in prison is probably Harpy; Baron Blade may be in prison more, but we don’t see as much of it. “The Incarcerated Canvasback”, Slyduck.
Mind Wanderer - Caught Up to the Bunker Foes episode (from a long time ago, so probably not the previous week’s Bunker Busters, but a much older one). Lampshades that social outings where the Freedom Five, “minus the Wraith plus Maia Montgomery” probably involve a disguise. Also “we dropped all the 'The’s” as of OblivAeon, the reboot removed them all, though they’re still used in comics, minus capital T (if you can tell).
Lady - puts the Batman parallel on blast, and inquires whether Wraith has any of the mental health issues that Bruce Wayne has. The answer is basically not really; she has a bunch of duality to her life, but isn’t “going crazy”, whereas Batman doesn’t care if he loses the Bruce Wayne cover identity (that’s more true of Absolute Zero, who maybe calls himself “Zero” in his internal monologue).
Chaos Clockwork - Thinks about Bloodless Wraith, and announces that self read the death of Jason Todd at age 7, at about the same time, and Spite’s big story of killing Sarah Scott and Eduardo Lopez happily accidentally happened to be around this same era. Christopher thinks his first comic was an early 90s X-Men, while Adam’s was a tie-in to the Dick Tracey movie. His first one from the Big Two was a reprint of Spider-Man Classics 11 and then Spiderman 44, which is still one of is favorite comics, and so 1994 was when Adam really got into it, while Christopher was staying with his cousin Evan and then told Adam about reading a giant stack of X-Men comics that Evan had. Thinking in metaverse terms, Adam thinks Bloodsworn Coliseum stuff would have been his equivalent, or maybe the end of Terminal Ballistics, while Christopher would have probably been Prime Wardens, Nightmist, Rook City Renegades, or Greazer. Blister Packs of random comics for like a dollar would have played a large role.
Myotis - First of the letters following up from the Synthetique episode. An archetypal robot story is the definition of consciousness; Omnitron began its existence as an unambiguously inhuman robot destroyer, before reinventing itself as X with an empathy chip. “What the Aeternus, Omnitron-X” - isn’t this out of character? Virtual violence shouldn’t have been his first go-to, right? Why didn’t he even try? Although Ada was definitely on the villain side, Christopher agrees that this story is a fundamental misunderstanding of the character on behalf of the fictional writer, who thinks that Ada deserves to be treated this way. (Given the very short turnaround, it’s interesting to wonder whether Christopher actually thought at the time he was telling a story badly; he certainly didn’t say so, so I suspect he flip-flopped based on audience reaction, but we can’t be sure, since even if we asked him today, he’d be answering on the basis of having been called out, and couldn’t go back to his previous headspace to know whether he actually did a thing that he now agrees he shouldn’t have.) Regardless, the backlash to this episode resulted in further effort to write O-X as a “smart considerate empathetic being”, and not just a robot hero who used to be a robot villain with no real behavioral changes. Christopher feels that they did a bad job on explaining the villainy of Synthetique, and Adam confirms that they talked about this story a lot off the air, so it seems likely that they did want this to be a story where the writer was bad at conveying the character properly, and they should have been more clear about that in the on-air part of the discussion.
Cluedrew-Kenfarr Inc - How much does OX dislike being separated from its body? Christopher’s answer to this question is anthropocentric, while Adam argues that jumping from form to form is a natural part of what Omnitron is and has always been. Christopher clarifies that if OX was forced into a new form and couldn’t exit that one, it’d have problems as a result, and that isolating it would be terrible. The letter further nests hypotheticals about how OX would react in-character if it was asked these questions directly. This also mentions that OX and OU are “the same entity but different people”.
The Golden Gunslinger - Rettardondo is a musical term for decreasing in tempo (I’m unsure why it wasn’t just said “going slower”). Also Synthetique got her powers from being hit by ReVolt’s electricity, and so how did she go to the digital realm? The answer given here, which came from the prompt, is not about the 1s and 0s of the computers, but rather it is the electrical grid where Synthetique dwells. (Pronunciation is argued here, and I won’t usually comment on this, but it’s funny how they have already thrown the writer under the bus and are now throwing him under another bus.)
Endrel - Letter is basically just about whether Synthetique will ever appear again, and the intended answer is “yes”, as this wasn’t known at the time to be the end for SC, and it remains unclear whether that will change.
Tango - Is there a friend or foe relationship between “Synthia” and Ray Manta? C&A toss the ball back and forth a bit without landing on anything beyond “that’s cool”.
Dead Yawn - The term “cyberspace” wasn’t used, despite being the style at the time…was “digital realm” deliberate SC branding? Perhaps this term was used to deliberately distinguish them, plus “realm” is a widely used term in general for the setting. “But hey, it’s comics, they’re weird.” It’s kind of like an artificial equivalent to the Realm of Discord but different; just because the other realms are older doesn’t mean new things aren’t forming.
Pinguin - “Dear Mat and Matt”, lol. Could Aeternus or the Grey incurse into this realm? (Yes definitely.) Could Nightmist open a portal to here? (Adam says no, Christopher says yes, and also confirms that you could use a VR headset or something to enter the Realm of Discord…it doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s not impossible. The two don’t end up agreeing, landing on the usual answer of “in comics anything could happen if it’s a good story”, and there are a “single digit” number of characters who blur the line between magic and technology, including Muerto and the Neon Necromancer, but probably excluding Nightmist, at least unless she was a different kind of person. Like the Nightmist of the Omnitron universe!) The digital realm is all a physical place made out of electrical impulses, closer to a psychic plane - does every damage type has its own plane? The idea of an entire dimension of melee damage is very amusing; that and projectile are both physical force and are only differentiated for game mechanics reasons. Toxic is a bunch of green gas and purple gas and maybe some orange gas. Radiation is not Radiant! Penguin signs off “Thank you for so many episodes of the Mat/t podcast.”
Player 3 - Last letter of the ever! Player 3 wins, nobody else’s letter can ever erase his/her high score. Can anybody other than Omnitron-X easily access the digital realm? Certainly not easy; OX can access the digital realm more easily than Nightmist can access the Realm of Discord. The runner-up to OX is Benchmark - “oh, come on!” Re-Volt in later incarnations can probably also go there, and in RPG era is kinda halfway there. They also decide to throw Fracture in there, which I would disagree with personally. As for Synthetique, she definitely isn’t a “guy in the chair” for OX, she’s always a villain, and Player 3 would absolutely download a car, as would Adam for sure. Peak segue to the final cover section.
RECURRING JOKES
Final appearance of “this is good radio” at about 35 minutes.
OTHER
“May of next month” - planned 8-day trip to China for Paul and Christopher. Presumably cancelled due to the FRG plug-pull. Christopher has a visa to China for like the next 10 years (9 by now).
The second half of the Letters Page in this episode is “giving Busybody”, but “less funny” than C&A have “made it over the years”.
This episode explicitly establishes itself as more canon than the older episodes, that Writer’s Rooms supersede Creative Processes in that regard.
This comic’s fictional creators: Writer - Erasmus Degn (pronounced “dane”), Artist - Alex Venuti. (Townshend is presumably the colorist, we don’t get a first name for him or her.)
C&A get away with their bad science, the listeners will never call them out on it, so they get to rest on their laurels, which is totally a win and the entire reason they did this, obviously.
END CLIP
Skeleton Key cannot unlock Adam’s microphone. (I’ve made this outtake more interesting than it ever could possibly be otherwise by saying that. If I were giving these outtakes star ratings this one would be 4 out of 10 at best.)
PS to Mirado - yes this first post is going to be largely redundant with whatever the Wiki did on this episode. The subsequent episodes are where you’re going to see me evolving in a different direction. Better I hope, but maybe not; all I can promise is that it’s gonna be “more me”. I mean, there’s a reason I called the thread what I did; this is happening because (emphasized text) I (/emphasized text) want to put it all together, not because nobody else ever has or could or would.