When Tangents Attack: Those Malevolent Mondays

 (originally posted on the 15th of July, 2017)

PART ONE: THE INCEPTION.     The Monday Family are a lineage of villainy and supervillainy which stretched back centuries and extends across the world... and beyond.     Before we get to that, though, a bit of a preamble. This is basically a bit of self-indulgence where I attempt to describe how me brane works.     I was playing a game of 'Mutants and Masterminds', a superhero RPG by Green Ronin. In this particular bit, I was playing a teenage would-be superhero called Lifeguard, a student at an exclusive school for exceptional students - not all the students were superhumans, but enough were. One of the problems with Lifeguard was that his ‘superhero-ness’ was being addressed, but his ‘teenager-ness’ was being neglected, so I created a coterie of pals for him to hang around with.     Initially, I was trying to make them more realistic, but eventually, I realized that I wanted them to act more like a Jack Kirby-style ‘Kid Gang’ like The Boy Commandos or the Newsboy Legion, and to that end, I started looking at what archetypes I needed, distilling it down into a ‘Talky’ One (Gabby, Alfie) a ‘Fighty’ One (Scrapper, ‘Brooklyn’) and an Egghead (‘Big Words’, Percy).

(Joe Simon & Jack Kirby's 'Boy Commandos' and 'Newsboy Legion')

    In the end, I distilled it down to three...     The first was a Japanese student, Yas “Gomi” Takada, who started as the Fighty one, but became the Talky one when I reinvented him as a teenage ‘Fixer’ who could get you cheap electronics, bootleg DVDs or hard-to-find concert tickets.     The second Evan Feinberg (who for ages was listed as ‘Kid Dorkin’) was based on a strip by Evan Dorkin called “How To Get Your Ass Kicked” in his series ‘Dork’ about his career as a loudmouthed kid who continually provoked people into kicking his arse. He started out as the Talky one, but became The Fighty One. A would-be comedian and class clown with a bad case of ‘small dog syndrome’, a hatred for injustice or unfairness and a distinct lack of knowing when to keep quiet and when to speak up.     The third one - The Egghead - was, for ages, a poorly-defined Filipino Comics Nerd, but eventually in a weird flash of insight became Peter Mundy, a quiet, pale, sickly-looking kid with pale hair and ice-blue eyes.     And that’s when it all started. Usually, it only takes one thing, and the floodgates open, and Peter was it.     Originally, I had his name down as Peter ‘Moon’, but then changed it to ‘Mundy’. I described him as “Super-smart kid, bit of a musical prodigy. Very overprotective parents who homeschooled him and have hot-housed him a bit. Shy and quiet, but very pleasant and friendly.” And underneath, in block capitals, “BULLETPROOF CHEERFULNESS”.

    My brane started making connections. Was his name ‘Moon’ (which is mysterious and exotic) or ‘Mundy’ (Common, short for ‘Mundane’)? Both? Maybe the parents had changed their name? They’ve only recently arrived in the city, so maybe they’ve moved from somewhere else - why? Something to do with Peter? His parents seem frightened. Are they afraid FOR Peter, or OF someone else?     Ideas were firing off and linking up thick and fast. I’d been thinking of Peter as a teenage version of Doc Savage’s aides Long Tom (the sickliness and pallor) and Johnny (the thick glasses, big words and general nerdiness), but then I realized he was actually more like Doc’s Nemesis, John Sunlight - a notorious supervillain!

    So the parents had changed their name to evade a supervillainous relation. Recalling Fantomas and Fu Manchu, I cast Peter’s mother as a hitherto unknown illegitimate daughter, of no real concern to our arch-villain. But a GRANDSON… that was something different. And of course, the name Mundy wasn’t changed from ‘Moon’ (though later, of course, I would realize that it had been). It was changed from Monday…     MISTER Monday, to be precise.     A classical arch-villain of the Moriarty, Doctor Nikola, Fantomas, Doctor Phibes school. Definitely a name to inspire dread amongst the force of law and order and the criminal underworld alike.

(L-R: Professor Moriarty, Doctor Nikola, Fantomas, Doctor Anton Phibes)

    And THEN, I thought… wait, if Mister Monday wants Peter as a sort of apprentice/heir, then maybe the genetic seeds of supervillainy live inside him. Maybe that’s why his parents are so protective - not because they’re scared of what the world would do to him, but of what he could potentially do to the world.

    Maybe that’s why they’ve raised him to be so cheerful and friendly, so meet antagonism with good humour and forgiveness, because if they hadn’t, he’d be liable to respond with an overwhelming capacity for revenge. What if, behind the pleasant, shy, smiling face, there was a genetic time bomb of evil waiting to go off?

    And maybe, if there are three generations of this particular line… maybe there are more…? My brane was REALLY bubbling now… PART TWO: A LEGACY OF EVIL.     Having determined that one of my character’s high school chums is actually the heir to a terrifying legacy of arch-villainy, it only remained for me to outline the various nefarious deeds of said legacy, and possibly to trace its origins.

    In the default ‘Mutants and Masterminds’ Setting - usually referred to as the ‘Freedom City’ or ‘Freedomverse’ setting - there is a hidden city on the dark side of the Moon called Farside City. The ‘Farsiders’ are unnaturally tall and slender, willowy, with pale blonde hair and very large, almond-shaped pale eyes. They have access to advanced technology, and many display psychic abilities. Their most venerated object is a mineral they refer to as ‘Moonstone’ which greatly amplifies this psychic ability.     Now, with that out of the way, onto the villainy.

    The recorded legacy of the Monday (Moon, Mundy, etc...) Family began with Jacob Moon, an Elizabethan Astrologer and Sorcerer. At some point, he establishes contact, or is contacted by a number of mysterious beings which he believes to be ‘Angels’. They claim to have come from a Silver City somewhere beyond the Moon. He learns their language and some of their abilities, intending to make use of him as an advance agent for a possible invasion? Their motives are not made clear. He is also granted a talisman - a crystal ball (Moonstone) to aid in his quest, and to allow him to communicate with them.     His scheme is opposed, and eventually thwarted, by Gentleman adventurer, Sir Edward Dairing (an ancestor of one of my other characters, Sir Richard Dairing, a.k.a. Golden Age Superhero, Lord Lionheart), who is aided by a Mysterious Traveller (an unnamed Doctor Who analogue).     In response to this, the ‘Angels’ curse Moon and his linage to live like beasts, preying on his fellow men as wolves do the beasts of the fields. A kind of ‘internal lycanthropy’, where the exterior remains the same, but they gain the heart of a vicious predator - a Gentleman Savage, if you will.

    There are vague rumours, however, that Jacob was not the first to have dealings with the Farsiders. Stories of a distant ancestor who vanished, abducted by ‘fairies’ and came back ‘strange’, his skin and hair grown pale overnight and with a peculiar fascination for the moon. Possible indications that the family bloodline contains at least some Farsider blood. Even the last name ‘Moon’ may indicate interrelations further back along the family line, not to mention the family’s tendency towards pale skin, ice-blue eyes and light blonde hair. But these rumours can neither be confirmed or denied.

    So, the family’s lineage of strangeness may be much longer, but their lineage of villainy began with Jacob, and in the subsequent decades and centuries, there are few cruel, malevolent and treacherous pursuits the family does not engage in, and almost no corner of the world not tainted with their evil.     Members of the family have been recorded taking part in the vicious suppression of the Scots and Irish. They’ve sold opium in China, using the resultant resources to form a Bandit Empire. In Africa, they participated in the slave trade, as well as bolstering local warlords, smuggling diamonds, looting tombs for valuable artefacts, and inciting tribal conflicts.     War has always been good to the Mondays, when they’re not inciting them through espionage, blackmail, assassination or other forms of treachery, they’re profiting off them. At least one family member, or their agents, has been involved in almost every conflict for the last five hundred years, usually playing both sides against one another. Treachery is kind of a Monday Family signature, and their loyalty is inevitably only to themselves. Everyone else is prey to be destroyed or a sucker to be fleeced. They have been Smugglers, Pirates, Slave-Traders, Agents Provocateur, Thieves, Assassins and Scoundrels of all types.

    Aiding them in these endeavours was a Secret Order, The Selenite League, operating on a cellular structure through a network of intermediaries. In fact, most operatives will trace their operation back only as far as the intermediary in charge, assuming them to be the final boss. Aside from vary few, the cast majority of those employed by the League are blissfully unaware of its very existence.     The League’s structure is largely unknown, and changes over time. Several times, it has been “destroyed”, only to reappear elsewhere and resume operations, with the destroyed operation turning out to be no more than a vestigial limb. The league’s heyday was during nineteenth century. The Napoleonic Wars, with the then pre-eminent member of the Monday Family assuming the role of the world’s pre-eminent spymaster, enriched their coffers tremendously, and the subsequent growth of empires and pillaging of Africa, India, China and South America transformed the League into a truly worldwide criminal empire. By the close of the 19th Century, there were three separate men (brothers and half-brothers) using the ‘Mister Monday’ name, and all pretending to be the same person*. For the sake of discussion, they will be referred to as ‘The Mastermind’, ‘The General’ and ‘The Map-Maker’.

    Two of these men ran afoul of a cabal of heroes led by the original Lord Lionheart (a.k.a. Sir Montague Dairing), a masked agent of the British Government. He, and several others had, in battling various Selenite League-related operations, had come to the same conclusion: that the organizations they had battled were merely the outflung tentacles of a larger beast, a monstrous kraken of crime lurking deep beneath the surface, and each had determined to bring the beast to light and see it destroyed once and for all. This international band of detectives, scientists, mystery-men and adventurers harried the League for the better part of a decade until finally, high in the skies over Paris, they managed to defeat Mister Monday (The Master-Mind), who plummeted to his death from his flying doomsday engine.

(Lord Montague Dairing, a.k. Lord Lionheart I)

    In seeking to avenge his brother, The General, having lost many of his criminal resources, but maintaining his influence in the fields of subtle political intrigue, corruption, blackmail and espionage, drew a monstrous plan. In avenging himself against the nations of all those who had killed his brother, he would have to inveigle all the nations of the world into bloody conflict. The Mondays needed to regain their stature, and had always thrived in war, so he would engineer a war unlike any the world had ever seen - a War To End All Wars!

    It was during this Great War (1914-1918) that the General met his end, due again to the actions of Lord Lionheart (who remarked, “Now, I understand why we had so much trouble with you - there were two of you the whole blasted time!”), and with this, The Selenite League finally met its end.

    The third, and now, only Mister Monday (The Map-Maker), unlike his half-brothers never felt the need to be seen to rule. An organization like the League meant for bigger profits, but also greater exposure, and when you have hundreds or even thousands of agents, each one could turn out to be the weak link that could bring it all down.     From now, on, he would run his own operations himself, and use only as many agents as needed, but first, he would need to go underground. Move silently and re-coup his losses. His main advantage in this was that everyone assumed he didn’t exist, and with the dissolution of the League, this was confirmed... ________________________________________________________________ * - the idea of three criminal masterminds sharing the same name was stolen whole cloth from an essay by Win Scott Eckert caled ‘Who’s Going To Take Over The World When I’m Gone’, from the book, ‘Myths For the Modern Age’, where he postulated that there were three men sharing the name and identity of James Moriarty.