Chaotic Evil

Page 244

Chaotic Evil
Cartoon Brian

Chaotic Evil

Original Release Date: February 28, 2012

Cue the villains' reveal of their master plan. Are you noticing a trend? Every volume of Mike and the Ninja has the main villain(s) doing this. It's fine, I guess. At least they're honest in sharing their goals. Still, I approached it more or less the same way every time. I feel like I could have been more creative. Or, The Six could have been saavy villains and just not said anything about it. Then again, they are mad, so they also probably don't have the good sense to keep quiet. Maybe they feel like Mike deserves an explanation since his DNA is the lynchpin in their plan coming together.

Despite the bad news, this page is not without some jokes I really like. First, there's the Diet Fresca reference. This stems from when I used to go to my friend Lucas's house when we were in high school. His family always had Fresca on hand, and I would always drink it. I didn't even like it that much! It's like it was a battle between myself and the Fresca--one of us would outlast the other! Fresca inevitably became the butt of a lot of jokes, including this one. Mike's matter-of-fact observation that there are only five scientists when Rodney reveals themselves as The Six cracks me up, as well. It's a small detail I probably would not have called him out on if I was strapped to a metal operating table. In fact, I may not have even noticed. Last is Julia's mention of only getting five nuggets in a 6-piece. Don't you hate that?!

The last observation on this page is another parallel in all three Mike and the Ninja books: The Chaos Drive, a rather large, main-reactor type of device, just like Pratt's death ray core and Bob's negative emotion antenna. My only excuse is that I love the visuals these big doomsday devices produce, and so they always subconsciously find their way into my stories.