"MUAH HA HA" The Mind-Master laughs in triumph as the Heroic League sat down to eat their dinner on the floor. He stood in the entrance to the Heroic League's Hall of Trophies. The only person who could hear the evil laughter of the Mind-Master was Duncan, the faithful butler of the Heroic League. The Mind-Master held a hand of jewels in his hand. The Heroic League, minus one, sat several feet away, eating a gigantic feast that was visible to no one but themselves. In one hand, then Mind-Master held a bag of precious gems, and in the other he held a wave decoherencizer.
The Heroic League continued to jovially eat their dinner, which celebrated the anniversary of their formation. 10 years ago, each member of the Heroic League had gone to the same charity ball at the New Urbanopolis Museum on Christmas Eve. The Mind-Master had broken in, stolen some priceless jewels and then hypnotized the crowd into giving up their valuables. But the Mind-Master had no idea that in that crowd, the future members of the Heroic League were all present, in their civilian identities. In fact, the Heroic League themselves were not aware of this fact until they all came out, in costume, to fight the Mind-Master. He was defeated, and sent to the State Pen. Every Christmas Eve, the Heroic League ate a Christmas dinner to celebrate their victory over the Mind-Master, and the formation of the team. And just about each Christmas Eve, the Mind-Master would attack their headquarters, the HeroDome, to try to get revenge on the team.
Each year, he would fail, because he forgot to take account of one factor: the presence of GammaGirl, the secret weapon of the Heroic League. Her body and mind were made out of pure gamma energy, after her encounter with a meteorite made of blue cobalt. Since her mind was made out of Gamma energy, it couldn't be influenced by the Mind-Master's mental powers. But this year, the Mind-Master had brought the wave decoherencizer, and scattered GammaGirl into incoherent radiation, and then hypnotized the Heroic League into believing they were eating a happy Christmas Dinner!
"MUA HA HA" he laughed again, looking at Duncan, the soft-spoken and seemingly modest mannered butler of the Heroic League. "I have let you, a mere human with no powers, stay unhypnotized so you can view MY GREATEST TRIUMPH! But I should thank the Heroic League. If they had not stopped me ten years ago, I would be happy to be a petty criminal, stealing jewels! But now, I realize I have a greater destiny: TO CONTROL THE WORLD. Now that I am in the HeroDome, I will use your secure link with the world's leaders to talk to them all at the stroke of midnight, and hypnotize them and TAKE OVER THE WORLD. And I will leave you, puny Duncan, to view it all as it happens! And here...here is a bag of puny jewels, which I used to seek after! I give them to you as a PARTING GIFT!" With that, the Mind-Master turned and left, throwing the bag of priceless jewels on the ground, and leaving Duncan alone in the Hall of Trophies. On a large closed-circuit monitor, he could see the Mind-Master in the center of the HeroDome, waiting for midnight. He walked over to the members of the Heroic League, but they were happily eating and drinking air, and congratulating each other on another year of heroism. One even jokingly said he was glad this was one of the Mind-Master's years off! Would Duncan, with no powers, despair?
BREAK FOR COMMERCIALS: SELL GRIT! IT PAYS
At the stroke of midnight, the Mind-Master pushes the emergency button that brings up the video link with the world's most important leaders. Will the Mind-Master triumph? At first, the monitors flicker on...and then, they go dark, and out of the panel jumps a being of pure energy. "Wait...NO! It can't be!" The Mind-Master shouts! "GAMMA GIRL!" And then, he turns around to see the members of the Heroic League, around him. "Game's UP!" Sky-Man, the leader of the league says. As the league ties up the Mind-Master, and leads him away to prison, they ask a smiling Duncan how he did it.
"Not having powers doesn't make me powerless!" Duncan said. "I knew I had to return Gamma Girl to her coherent state! It was easy...Mind-Master must think that all I do here at the HeroDome is scrub the floors!" The Heroic League laugh: they know that Duncan is the main technician for the league, and used to be a secret agent. "All the materials I needed were there in the Hall of Trophies: I knew that first I had to receive the waves of GammaGirl, so I used the old helmet of Sky-Man's sidekick, Radar Lad, with its radar antenna. But I knew that the radiation was on the wrong frequency, so I had to build a transformer. I used the extending, copper whip of our enemy, The Lion Tamer. I wrapped the copper around until it transformed her Gamma body into visible light. Then I used the super telescope of the space pirate Crystal Beard to focus those lights down."
"That is very clever, Duncan. But...even as visible light, GammaGirl would still be dephased. How did you get rid of the uncoherence?"
Duncan held up a priceless diamond that the Mind-Master had thrown on the ground. "Luckily, the Mind-Master gave me the answer to that problem himself! I used a collection of these priceless jewels to refract out the incoherent light, so that I could reform Gamma Girl's body. If he hadn't gloated like that, he might have actually won". The league laugh heartily, and then look around, and realize that Gamma Girl, their mysterious member and "secret weapon", has disappeared.
Just then, Duncan's meek, mild wife, the only other non-superpowered person in the HeroDome, rushes in, holding some pies.
"Hello Everyone! I hope you had a good dinner, and I brought dessert!" Sky-Man and the rest of the Heroic League shared a hearty laugh. "Oh, Christine, you always miss the fun!". Duncan turns away from them and winks.
Fin
What I am trying to do here:
When given this assignment, I thought of several ways to do it. I am very familiar with various eras in comic book history. At first, I thought of doing a knock off of the grim and gritty era of comic books. I almost thought of a way to work in a Rob Liefeld reference, besides I couldn't think of a way to make a joke about Rob Liefeld and breast cancer that wasn't tasteless. Or, really, that was as tasteless as it should be. So I turned towards the Silver Age of comics. As someone who has had a deadly, degenerative illness in my own family, I have thought of the Silver Age before. The Silver Age was an era of unbridled optimism in progress and science. If Mister Fantastic was designing myelin, it wouldn't demyliante. He would include some unstable molecules in the structure, and ZING! it would work right. So I wanted to right a story where SCIENCE WORKS, and works the way we want it to. A world where a zany Rube Goldberg contraption with some scientific terminology thrown in, can actually save the day. And a world where the villain loudly announces his plan and then leaves you alone to find a way to defeat him.
So: I hope that Grundoon's problems disappear in eight pages, and that her illness turns out to be just another gloating, meglomaniacal villain that can be felled quickly by a clever plan.