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The Question v.1 #9

The Question v.1 #9“Watchers” - Oct. 1987

Script: Dennis O’Neil
Pencils: Denys Cowan
Inks: Rick Magyar
Lettering: Gaspar
Colors: Tatjana Wood
Editor: Mike Gold
Cover: Denys Cowan & Bill Sienkiewicz
Published by DC Comics

The Question checks his watch from a rooftop as he looks down on the situation below. A midnight meeting between some drug dealers and Izzy O’Toole, chief of police detectives, starts with a briefcase containing $20,000 and a kilo of cocaine. The drugs and money are a payoff for the department to look the other way, but Izzy’s not turning a blind eye. He pulls his police revolver out and the men’s hands go up. One of the men, behind Izzy, brings his hand up with a gun in it. The Question strips the gun away and takes down the rest of the gang.

Izzy wants to know why the Question is following him. The Question says it’s a matter of curiosity — he wanted to know what Izzy was going to do. Izzy confides that he didn’t bring back-up because he didn’t know himself until he was in the moment. Sage arrives at dawn to find Tot still awake, looking at bugs under the microscope. He asks Tot for a moment to talk, but the moment is interrupted by a gas bomb crashing through the window.

Two men come into the house wearing gas masks. One heads for the unconscious Tot, but Sage, holding his breath, defends his friend by kicking his opponent in the gut. The other intruder stands back, summing up Sage. he comes at him with a barrage of blows and kicks that Sage dodges, but one man has a gas mask and the other doesn’t. The lack of oxygen takes its toll on Sage and he quickly falls in battle.

Sage awakens to the smell of rotten oranges. Sunlight pours through the window, and Sage surmises that he’s been unconscious for three hours or more. Tot’s gone. Sage devotes a spot to the missing scientist on the next night’s news — complete with a pencil sketch because Sage couldn’t find a photo — and, after a confrontation with Finch, decides to investigate on his own.

Feeling bad about knowing next to nothing about his supposed friend, Sage stops at the neighbor’s house t ask about a plumbing van he recalls seeing parked on the street. She warns him about martians and hippie rays, but eventually turns over the license plate of the van. Sage has Izzy run the plate, which, it turns out, belongs to a top-secret government agency that’s not supposed to exist anymore — from a lab where they experimented with LSD as a truth serum.

Sage drives to the nearby city of Fairview, where the lab is located, encounters an electric fence, and decides to change into the Question. He climbs the top of a nearby pole, thanking the Fairview comptroller who took the money that the city designated for putting the electric lines underground to Rio with a pair of cocktail waitresses. The pry bar does the trick and the Question soon finds himself over the fence, smelling oranges. The green van he remembered from Tot’s house comes barreling at him and he barely jumps out of the way as it crashes.

The martial artist stumbles from the van, and the Question takes him out with a kick. But no sooner has he delivered the blow than he begins to feel as though he’s suffocating. He rips at the mask and tears it free from his face as the thug comes running back. Sage takes a foot to the face and as he rubs his eyes, he begins hallucinating. He sees Tot, crucified on an orange tree, asking who he is. Sage attempts to answer the question, but winds up asking only more questions about his own identity. As he walks toward Tot, the ground opens into a neon chasm with flames below. Sage falls over the edge, catching himself on a limb that bears a single strawberry. As Sage eats it, the thug crushes his hand and he lets go, falling into blackness.

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The Question v.1 #8

The Question v.1 #8“Mikado” - Sept. 1987

A man hangs suspended over a vat of boiling water, begging for his life. Nearby, a man in a theatrical Japanese mask controls the rope that lowers the man into the bubbling cauldron.

That was Tuesday. On Friday, Vic Sage sits in the hospital, waiting for a tetanus shot after having a stab wound stitched up. As the doctor administers the injection, Sage tells him he was mugged. A nurse interrupts to tell the doctor of a patient, a man brought into the burn unit — ironically, the father of a baby that was had been treated for scald wounds the previous week. Tot picks up Sage outside, pondering the coincidence.

A half-starved woman and her two hungry children sit watching a large man eat a veritable feast. He puts a whole turkey leg into his mouth as he tells her that if her kids haven’t had a bite since Sunday, she should bite them. He shoves a plate of spaghetti into her face: “Let ‘em lick it offa ya.” He threatens her against going to the hospital or social workers again, and heads out the door. A man offers him a lift. The sweating fat man climbs into the truck and finds himself facing the man in the Japanese mask. The masked man pulls a tranq gun and shoots the fat man in the neck. The masked man takes him to an alley, cuts his vocal cords so he can’t scream, and then, showing him the knife, asks, “Do you know what the word flense means?”

When the police find the fat man, he’s 250 pounds lighter. One of the cops calls in a tip to Vic Sage, who passes the news on to Myra. The reporter and the mayor trade jokes about “Hubbies”: ex. “What happens when a Hubbie doesn’t pay his garbage bill? They stop delivery.” Sage asks what the police are doing about the murder, and Myra tells him that the police chief he recommended, Izzy O’Toole, has enough on his hands trying to clean the department of corruption.

Sage confers with Tot while practicing his martial arts. There are two possibilities in the case. The first involves a drug dealer operating out of the hospital. The second, he says, he doesn’t want to think about. Interviews with the victims reveal a regular M.O. that Tot informs Sage comes from the Mikado, the Gilbert and Sullivan play.

Sage makes the change into the Question as two muggers prepare to make a robbery. Their target turns out to be the doctor who stitched Sage up. one of the muggers reverently lets the man pass, calling him a saint. The next potential victim they encounter turns out to be the Question. He beats them to the ground and then asks for the name of their drug dealer. They take him to the hospital, where the dealer lies in a hospital bed. He reaches for a gun, but the Question knocks it away from him with a bedpan. “Hit me wid a bedpan. What kinda thing you call that?” “Appropriate,” says the Question. Meanwhile, the Mikado removes a healthy kidney from a crooked doctor who did the same to a woman who later died in pain from complications.

Sage tells Tot that he’s ruled out the drug dealer, leaving only one suspect: Spaulding, the doctor who stitched him up. As the Question, he pays a visit to Spaulding, waiting on him in the dark. As the lights come on, he tosses the doctor the Mikado mask. Sage tells the man he’s not a judge, he’s just curious. Spaulding offers a drink, which the Question refuses. Spaulding asks about the absence of the Question’s face, but the Question cracks wise. Spaulding says he was once a joker, before things “stopped being funny.”

Spaulding sneaks the tranq gun from a drawer and shoots the Question with it. As the Question lays numb, waiting for the doctor to administer a lethal injection, Spaulding discusses the reason he became the Mikado: he became a doctor to alleviate suffering, but realized that those who caused the suffering never suffered themselves. And there were always new victims. As he lowers the needle to the Question’s arm, he apologizes for having to kill an innocent bystander.

“Not innocent,” says the Question, as he recounts a number of vile acts he committed in his youth. “You’re making a point?” asks Spaulding. The Question then talks about the number of good deeds he’s done since beginning as the Question. “Do I deserve to die?” he asks. “I’m not innocent.”

Spaulding backs away, taking a swig of whiskey. Spaulding says he’s never hurt anyone gratuitously, and that he may be the only person who can honestly say that. “Maybe saints can’t understand ordinary, tainted humans,” the Question offers. “Maybe not,” Spaulding says, “Maybe that changes them into sinners.” The tranquilizer is wearing off as the doctor puts on the Mikado mask. “My object all sublime / I shall achieve in time — to let the punishment fit the crime,” he recites as he jabs the lethal needle into his own leg. He falls to the floor.

The Question stands, removes his mask, and goes to the bathroom to wash his face. When he exits, the Mikado is gone. “Deep inside himself, he feels the beginning of laughter….”

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The Question v.1 #7

The Question v.1 #7“Survivor” – Aug. 1987

Script: Dennis O’Neil
Pencils: Denys Cowan
Inks: Rick Magyar
Lettering: Gaspar
Colors: Tatjana Wood
Editor: Mike Gold
Cover: Denys Cowan & Bill Sienkiewicz
Published by DC Comics

The head of Hub City’s illegal gambling operation, a man named Volk, is retiring, and after surviving an attempt on his life, he decides to make a deal with the Mayor. The Mayor however, shows up to the meeting drunk, and Volk refuses to do business with his wife. Desparate for help, Myra turns to freelance reporter Vic Sage to try to get access to Volk.

The man who funded the first assassination attempt on Volk plans to do things right the second time. He sent his nephew first, an amateur. Now he’s hired three out-of-town gunmen.

Myra confides in Sage that she’s doing all that she can to hold the city together. As he stares out through the blinds on the window, expecting more, that’s all she says. When he prompts her, she tells him he was gone for a year and she had to move on — her marriage may be a forced sham, but she still respects the vows.

Sage gets no further than Myra did, however. Volk refuses to talk to him, and threatens him with death if he attempts the interview in person. Sage converses with Tot on the subject of superhero ethics and “goes inside.” Across town, the crime boss who hired the hitmen finds out where Volk is and plans to accompany the killers to kill him personally. Volk, in the meantime, goes about his business, spending the day with a prostitute.

It’s not Sage that shows up outside the Savoy hotel looking for Volk, it’s the Question. He climbs the fire escape and, as he approaches Volk’s window, a whip crashes through the glass and grips his throat. Volk hears the man say “I am not your enemy,” and believes him. Volk grants the Question the interview and gives the history of his life — a gypsy travelling through Germany. Wounded and orphaned, he was raised by Bavarian wolves. Volk says he’d planned to inform on his competitors — they were corrupt — until he saw that the Mayor too was corrupt. And weak.

Outside, hired killers lurk in the hallways. Volk tells Sage to go, but Sage promises to stay and help. Volk takes out one of the hired killers and a henchmen with a rope dart, and the Question fights the other who comes in via the fire escape. After knocking the killer’s weapon away, the Question watches his opponent lower into a martial arts stance. The Question makes short work of him: “Better stick to guns!”

The last killer takes a look at the bloodshed and decides to cut town, leaving the crimeboss on his own. The crimeboss fires into the room with an uzi, but Volk uses the whip to steal the weapon away. As Volk chokes him, the gangster pulls a pistol from his pocket and fires into Volk’s torso. The gangster falls down dead, and Volk stumbles away injured. He tells Sage to go to Bavaria, where he’ll find a tree like a question mark. “Someone should know the truth…” Volk dies.

Sage turns down a job from the station manager Finch to go to Bavaria. At the root of the tree, he finds a paw print and a V. Behind him, a wolf with the same scarred eye as Volk lingers. “Someone should know,” says Sage.

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The Question v.1 #6

The Question v.1 #6“…That Small Rain Down Can Rain…” – July 1987

Script: Dennis O’Neil
Pencils: Denys Cowan
Inks: Rick Magyar
Lettering: Gaspar
Colors: Tatjana Wood
Editor: Mike Gold
Cover: Denys Cowan & Bill Sienkiewicz
Published by DC Comics

Junior Musto suspends a bottle of acid above his face, wondering about his father. “What will happen, father? When that acid hits my face? Will it sear and shrivel and burn and scar? Will I shriek like a girl? Or will I be brave and manly? Will it disfigure me? Make of me a monster? Then will you love me, father?”

In his mind’s eye, Junior relives the abusive moments — the vicious taunts, the punches, the cigar stubbed out on his brow — given out by his own father. The acid drips and splashes across his forehead.

Tot Rodor looks out the window at the rain, pondering the forecast. Rain’s good for the farmers only sometimes, says Tot, citing the presence of sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxide in “acid rain.” Sage puts on his Question outfit, mentioning that Hub City’s prime pollution offender is the McVey corporation, which he’s also investigating for reported ties to terrorists.

Junior Musto stands with his back to the vial of acid, wrapping his face in bandages. He finishes, takes the bottle and corks it. “Father!” he calls.

Vic Sage finds the security guard at the McVey factory knocked out, and decides that the time for the Question has come. He applies the mask and releases the binary gas to become the faceless hero. The workers at the plant are gone, and a single light shines in the building. “A place to start,” thinks the Question.

In the office where the light glows, Benno Musto pummels the already-bruised face of a young businessman. As the young man spits blood, he says to Musto that the beatings won’t do any good. “Maybe not. But is fun,” says Benno. Having sent all the workers away with a bomb threat, Benno could kill the man if he wanted. But first they must talk. A shipment of farm supplies arrived in South America containing only farm supplies — and not the guns that had been promised. The young man tells Musto to blame his father.

The Question leaps down through the skylight and takes on Benno and his two thugs. The thugs go down easily, but Benno comes back for a second round, choking the Question from behind. The Question spins him around, and kicks him in the face, but finds himself with a knife in his back. The businessman buries the blade a few inches into the Question’s back before taking a chop to the face. The Question cracks Benno with a wooden chair, shuts out the lights, and makes a getaway. “You shouldn’a stabbed him inna back. Inna throat is better. Safer,” Benno tells the young man.

Sage sits at the KBEL studio going over footage about the McVey Corporation. The elder Angus McVey, the archive footage tells him, turned over the company to his son Farley and retired. Finch interrupts the viewing to fuss at the now-freelance Sage for not sticking to his assigned work. Sage exits from the viewing room and finds himself in the presence of Myra Fermin, whom he describes as running the city. She says her job only involves taking care of her sick husband, and shakes off Sage’s attempts to ask her to dinner.

Farley McVey, the young businessman, says his father found out about the terrorist dealings and stopped shipment. But there’s one mutually amicable solution for he and Benno: to kill his father, Angus McVey. Junior Musto, lurking outside, hears McVey’s idea and decides to take action.

Sage and Tot drive down the road to Feeleyville, as Tot questions Sage on how he handled his hospital visit. Sage says he told the intern who stitched his stab wound that he’d been mugged. The intern advised calling the cops, but then quickly followed up: “Why bother?” Sage “goes inside,” for a bit.

Junior Musto arrives at Angus McVey’s home with a dire message: “I’ve come to kill you.” McVey takes this statement in stride, inviting his would-be murderer in for tea. He converses with Junior as they drink. As bad as Farley is, Angus says, he’s not the worst thing that Angus must take responsibilty for. The 15,000 acre estate where the old man has retired languishes under the constant assault of pollution — the pollution caused by the McVey Corporation. Angus asks what Junior has to say, and the potential killer with the bandaged face asks, “Why don’t you like your son?”

Sage comes out of his trance with the realization that Farley and Benno plan to rub Angus out. They stop at a gas station to ask directions, where the attendant says they’re the third people to ask about the McVey farm today: “The first was all wrapped in bandages — second look like his thumbs was busted….”

The busted thumbs of Benno Musto hold a pair of binoculars, staring in through the windows of the McVey place. He spies the bandaged Junior in the fedora and trenchcoat and mistakes him for the Question. He calls for a rifle and rings out bullets that crack the teacup in Junior’s hand. Sage hears the gunshots and orders Tot to call the cops. “Why don’t you find them with me?” Tot asks. Sage, already in his featureless costume considers, then says, “No. I’ve got to know what happened.” “As always,” replies Tot.

Benno calls for an uzi and orders his two other thugs to fan out. Inside, Angus believes it’s Farley himself and Musto promises to shield the elder McVey from his bad son. The Question takes out both thugs as Benno prepares to enter the front door. He riddles the door with bullets from the uzi that sail over the heads of the prone Angus and Musto. Benno kicks in the door, and Junior fires a shut that catches him right in the gut.

Junior walks through the front door and sees who he’s shot. “Father?” He kneels, removing his hat. “I guess I fouled up again.” He begins to remove the bandages. “But look…” As the layers come off, the grotesque face peeks through. “…What I did.” His lips are curled back over gums and teeth. “Not a sissy-boy’s face anymore.” He removes the final bandage to reveal the horrible face beneath: “Now do you love me?”

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This month’s Recommended Reading: The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim

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The Question v.1 #5

The Question v.1 #5

“Cityscape” – June 1987

Script: Dennis O’Neil
Pencils: Denys Cowan
Inks: Rick Magyar
Lettering: Gaspar
Colors: Tatjana Wood
Editor: Mike Gold
Cover: Denys Cowan & Bill Sienkiewicz
Published by DC Comics

Hub City began when Gaston Hupert, one of Jean Lafitte’s officers, stood proclaiming, “I shall build a mighty city here, the hub of a mighty empire.” Seconds after, he was stabbed to death by his own men, who blamed the murder on Indians.

A hundred and seventy years later, scrubbing woman Maud Frawley waits for her bus under a memorial statue of Gaston. Three thugs demand her money, and the Question appears, taking them down easily. Is Maud thankful? “Gid oudda way,” she tells the faceless hero as she walks to her bench.

The Question walks to the car of his friend and mentor, Aristotle Rodor, Ph.D. The city is going to hell around them, Sage says, and he blames himself for burning down the mayoral mansion and eliminating the city government. Tot tries to commend him, saying that the Times called Hub’s city government the worst in history. They tune into the news, where Mayor Wesley Fermin blames Communists for the fire and the fact that the city’s firemen and police are striking.

Tot and the Question find themselves driving through a looting zone of mad crowds smashing and gathering. Drive on, says Sage. He needs to find a fight he can handle. He spies Lt. Izzy O’Toole of the Hub City police department, the “Lousiest cop on the force. If I had to pick one man to represent everything that’s wrong with this town, it’d be him.” Maud continues to wait at the bus stop, not knowing that the drivers won’t brave Hub City while cops are on strike.

At the Kessel building, Francine Tolchuk doesn’t want to brave walking home. Her boss, Bernie Josephson offers to let her sleep on a couch in the office. Izzy O’Toole walks down the street below, past crimes in progress, thinking that the system forced him to be as corrupt as he is.He’s looking for something. Josephson is looking for something too, through the crack of the door as Francine Tolchuk undresses. He approaches her, pulls her near to him, forces her down on the couch, and she rakes fingernails across his face. Maud still waits in the cold.

Tolchuk calls Josephson disgusting, and he asks forgiveness. She’ll give him pity, but not that. He walks to the roof, disgusted with himself. He stands on the edge and waits. Maud waits. Myra Connelly waits. In her warm apartment, Myra goes to slice a piece of angel food cake, and finds herself staring at the knife, remembering another bit of cutting she did recently. She knocks the cake to the floor and starts talking to herself, defending her murder of Reverend Hatch.

Bernie Josephson jumps. In the final half-second, he changes his mind. Two punks find his body ont eh sidewalk and start going over his body for valuables. Izzy O’Toole watches from the shadows and decides to act. He pulls a gun and the thugs don’t take him seriously. “I’m a cop. This is what bein’ a cop is.” One of the thieves bites his arm, and Izzy drops the gun. He trips over a looted television, and one of the thugs draws down on him. “He broke my leg one time I didn’t give him money. ‘Member that, Izzy? You shouldn’ta done that, Izzy, ’cause what goes around comes around.”

“Some call that karma,” says the Question. He disarms the thugs and starts to head on his way. Izzy stops him and asks where he came from. The Question says he was tailing O’Toole to catch him taking graft. “Wha’d you say if I asked who you are?” Izzy asks. “Something enigmatic!” replies the Question. The Question leaves the lieutenant to call a morgue wagon for the suicide victim. “Hey No-Face, I owe ya,” says Izzy. He turns to the dead body of Josephson: “Hell, maybe I owe you too!”

The Question climbs back into Tot’s car, where Tot tells him that the governor plans to send in the National Guard. He says he’s taking the Question home, but the Question refuses. “You’re too tired to stop me,” Tot says. The weary Sage removes his mask. “Good point,” he says.”

Tot attempts to absolve Sage of his guilt, but Sage claims that it’s still his fault. “I’m a journalist by profession. A journalist’s task is to tell the truth, tell it long and loud and shrill until people do something about what’s wrong.” “You tried,” says Tot. “No, not hard enough. Me and others like me…we didn’t do our jobs. Or things wouldn’t have gotten this bad.” Sage plans to get his job back the next day. “It’s important, Tot — the truth-tellers are always important…whether they’re scientists wrestling with quantum mechanics or philosophers riddling the meaning of life or just working stiff reporters pounding the police beat….” “Amen,” says Tot.

The National Guard arrives at midnight and re-establishes an “uneasy peace.” Francine Tolchuk wonders how to tell her friends, her fiancé, about what happened. Bernie Josephson has no questions anymore, but his wife wonders where he is and why he hasn’t called from across the city. Izzy O’Tooles ponders being a good cop. Myra stares out at the snow seeking answers. And Maud waits. “Maybe she’ll wait forever.”

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First appearance of Izzy O’Toole.

This month’s Recommended Reading: Any Eighty-Seventh Precinct novel by Ed McBain

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The Question v.1 #4

The Question v.1 #4“The Sacrifice” – May 1987

Script: Dennis O’Neil
Pencils: Denys Cowan
Inks: Rick Magyar
Lettering: Gaspar
Colors: Tatjana Wood
Editor: Mike Gold
Cover: Denys Cowan & Bill Sienkiewicz
Published by DC Comics

The Reverend Hatch is onto The Question — or should he say Charles Victor Szasz, or Vic Sage? “By all these he is known. But whatever he is called, he is mine enemy.” Hatch believes Sage was sent by the “Dark Master” because Hatch has not been wicked enough!

Jake still wears the bandages from the fight he had with the Question in issue #2. He tells Donny, another of Hatch’s thugs that the Reverend’s belief of the Question being a ghost aren’t true: “We didn’t kill him good enough is all.” Jake wants to grab what he can and quit the operation, but until he can, he’s got secured “beefed up to the max.” He asks the location of Hatch’s in-pocket policemen, and the thug tells him that the Reverend sent them out on a job.

The two cops watch a little girl building a snowman through binoculars, planning a kidnapping. Their only hesitation — a nearby nun and the man who’s helping the little girl stack the snowman’s head. Vic Sage asks the girl, Jackie, what she wants to call the snowman. “How ’bout Frosty?” she replies. “Frosty, huh? Kinda catchy. I like it. Like it a lot. You may have a great future as a copywriter,” Sage says. The nun recognizes Sage from television and asks if he once lived at St. Catherine’s. Before it was called a “special residence,” he says. Back when it was just, “a plain old orphanage.” The residency faces financial problems and may be shut down, the nun confides.

The two policemen interrupt the conversation to say they’re taking Jackie to her mother. When Sage intervenes, one policeman shoves him. “You wish you hadn’t done that,” Sage says. “You mean you wish I hadn’t.” “No,” says Sage as he swipes a hand across the bridge of the policeman’s nose and flips him over his back, kicking his gun away, “You wish you hadn’t.” But Sage has no choice but to let the policemen take Jackie, as the other cop puts a gun to the nun’s head. One of the cops kicks over the snowman on the way out.

Sage figures out they’re taking Jackie to control her mother Myra, the Mayor’s wife. He climbs in the Volkswagen and gives chase, but the oil gauge reads empty and the engine seizes up. He returns to Tots house for some yoga and regrouping. Tot questions Sage’s motives — was his love for Myra that great? No, says Sage, it has something to do with kids being pushed around, and governments betraying their constituencies.

Meanwhile, at the Mayor’s mansion, Jake recounts the day’s events. The cops reunited Jackie with her mother. The Mayor got drunk and wandered around talking about Teddy Roosevelt. And Reverend Hatch — interrupts the play by play. Jake tells Hatch it’s time they settled up. He accuses Hatch of being in the operation for more than money. Hatch agrees, and says he’s after power. He capitalized on using the weak mayor — who at that moment stumbles in and begins to protest that he deserves respect, before Jake knocks him out — to carve a path to the White House. Jake calls him a fruitcake and says he’s leaving the next morning.

Mayor Fermin wakes up and finds his way downstairs to his car, driving it through the front of the garage, the gate, and into a tree across the road from the estate. As the guards rush to help him, the Question looks on.

Hatch meets Myra upstairs and orders her to dress Jackie in a new suit of clothes. He expects her to be ready by midnight. Myra asks why. Genesis 22, replies the Reverend. He walks out of the room to instruct his men on where to place an altar.

Outside the Spot Bar and Grill, two policemen find an empty place where their car once was. Coincidentally, Vic Sage drives through the front gates of the Mayoral estate, claiming he’s been sent for to take the detoxing Mayor Fermin to the hospital.

Jake crouches in the darkness downstairs, his face lit by the blowtorch he uses to crack the safe. Donny keeps lookout, and sees Myra walking down the hall. She heads to teh library where she pulls a copy of the Bible to find Genesis 22: the chapter where God calls for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. “Hatch! Hatch…you bastard!” she yells.

Sage parks his car behind the Mayor’s house and transforms into the Question. Hatch has Myra bound, as she tries to talk him out of his plan: “The Lord was only testing Abraham…he stopped Abraham from killing his son. The cracked theologian replies: “To be precise, an angel stayed Abraham’s hand — and if an angel appears tonight, my hand will likewise be stayed. Barring that unlikely event…” and he shows Myra a long, sharp knife.

Donny continues his lookout role downstairs, until he sees — “Naw…it ain’t possible.” A gloved fist sends him flying as the Question enters the room, asking where Myra is. Jake jumps up with the flamethrower, and the Question knocks it away from him. The flames go dancing across the room, finding a pair of drapes to ignite. Sage continues the fight with Jake until the thug runs himself into a brick wall. Donny pulls a gun that misfires and the Question knocks him out too. The fire’s already too large to contain. The Question has to find Myra.

Myra continues trying to talk the Mayor out of whatever he’s planning. He reveals that he’s not a real minister — he was kicked out of seminary for mental instability. He fooled his way into the army, where he realized his true lot in life — bringing about corruption until God has no choice but to rain down fire and brimstone. The master demands a sacrifice, Hatch says, and it’s to be Jackie. He prepares to stab the girl, when the Question appears in the doorway speaking his name. Hatch falls to his knees and asks who sent the Question.

The Question frees Jackie, and turns to Hatch as smoke fills the room. “I want to kill you. …But if I did, I’d become something I’d despise…Something like YOU! Something base and cowardly and vicious. Something corrupt…And so I’ll let you live.” He drops the knife and tosses the minister behind him. Myra scrambles on the floor and finds the knife. “I won’t!” she yells, plunging the knife through Hatch’s back. “In the story…the Bible…there was a sheep caught in the bushes…it became the sacrifice,” she tells the Question.

The Question hands Jackie over to a pair of firemen and tells them she’s been drugged. He turns to leave but Myra chases him. “Don’t you have anything to say?” she asks. “Better you than me,” he replies.

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Jake revisits the mansion to recover the loot in The Question Annual #1

This month’s Recommended Reading: Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman

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Genesis 22

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The Question v.1 #3

The Question v.1 #3“Suffer the Children” – Apr. 1987

Script: Dennis O’Neil
Pencils: Denys Cowan
Inks: Rick Magyar
Lettering: Gaspar
Colors: Tatjana Wood
Cover: Denys Cowan & Bill Sienkiewicz
Published by DC Comics

The Question stands above the grovelling figure of Reverend Jeremiah Hatch, demanding that he pray. The faceless man is not being facetious, the narration informs us. “Did he come here to kill this man? He was certain that when the time came for him to decide, he would know. That the moment itself would sup[ply the answer. But it has not — is not.” The Question seeks enlightenment, so he tells Hatch to pray.

Listening for a sign, the Question only hears the sleet falling outside, and the crackle of the fire. Then, a voice: “Who are you?” Myra appears in the doorway. The Question does not answer, but only speaks her name: “Myra.” Then, a sudden movement…the Reverend swings a smoking steel poker at the hero’s head. The Question ducks it, and shoots a foot straight into Hatch’s solar plexus. The evangelist falls back into the fire, igniting his coat, and runs for the window. As he crashes through it, the alarm blares.

Myra takes the Question by the arm, leading him to her room before the guards arrive. “Why are you helping me?” he asks. “Because maybe you can help me…whoever you are,” she says. The guards demand to check her room, but Myra calls their bluff by stepping into the hallway in a skimpy bustier. The sheepish guards retreat. “Creeps,” Myra mutters.

The Question questions the name the guards used, “Mrs. Fermin.” It’s a forced marriage, says Myra. He threatened to hurt her daughter Jackie otherwise. “Mayor Fermin?” No, says Myra. Hatch. Myra offers a tip: Hatch plans to blow up a schoolbus full of white children to frame a local black leader. She asks the Question to stop the planned murder. “It doesn’t bother you that I have no face?” the Question asks. “Hell no. That’s one less thing you have to worry about saving,” Myra says. She leads the Question out the back way, and asks him to hit her. She shows the guards her bruise and misdirects their attention while the Question leaps over a fence to escape.

Meanwhile, in Hub City, Benno Musto speaks harshly of his son, Junior, “An abortion that lived.” When the boy attempts to stand up to his father, Benno punches him in the face and knocks him to the floor. Then, Benno delivers a surprising order: Junior is to plant the bomb on the school bus. If he fails in his mission, Benno tells his thug Pedro, “shoot him. With my gun. And leave him.”

Vic tells Tot about the planned bombing, and also of his inability to call in outside help: local cops are on the take, and the feds wouldn’t move without more information. There’s only one chance, with dozens of schoolbuses — the local school garage. But whether to go as Vic Sage or the Question? As Sage prepares his costume, Tot asks where he’s been for the last year — Sage seems quieter, deeper somehow.

The Question goes to the bus garage, where the watchman informs him that he’s the second nutjob to have shown up that day. Sage asks for the schedule and the watchman tells him there isn’t one — today’s a holiday, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. But a bus recently left to take a group of kids from the suburbs to see the black leader make a speech. Sage adds up the facts and realizes that someone must have been sent to distract the watchman while the other planted the bomb.

The Question tries to keep calm while racing the Volkswagen down snowy streets, shutting out images of the potential disaster, as well as his childhood in the orphanage. Using the techniques taught by Dragon, he relaxes, “Because there can’t be any mistakes.”

Hatch’s thug Jake questions Myra about her helping the Question escape the previous night. He holds a picture of Jackie in his hands, and tells her that ever since Hatch came back from the hospital, he’s been muttering about ghosts. Jake threatens Myra again and rips the picture. She asks, “Jake, are you badly injured?” With a concussion and a fourteen-stich laceration — Jake replies in the affirmative. “Good,” thinks Myra.

Junior and Pedro follow the schoolbus. The van wouldn’t start and delayed them ten minutes — Junior’s fault, mocks Pedro. Junior sits calmly with a stack of dynamite in his lap, in case the planted bomb doesn’t go off. “Jou gonna blow ‘em up weeth dynamite, hunh?” asks Pedro, “Jou a goofball, Junior.”

Sage, somewhere in his subconscious, recognizes the green van following the bus as one that he saw pull out of the garage. He rams the bug into the side of it, unsure why: “There had to be a connection. That will be later. Now–he simply knows he must act.” He runs to the van, pulls Pedro through the door, knocks the detonator away, and beats Pedro to a pulp. Junior climbs to the top of the bus and, as the Question tackles him, thrusts the dynamite through the bus window. The Question swings in, grabs the dynamite, runs from the bus and throws the dynamite away just as the fuse runs out. Big explosion.

Later, the police have arrived, but have only gotten reports of a guy with no face from the kids. “Drugs, you ask me,” says one of the cops. But he finds something resting in the lap of the tied-up Pedro. A blank white card that starts to smoke, revealing — a Question mark!

A safe distance away (passing by Cowan’s Bar and Magyar Art Store), Sage recounts his mistakes: he could have simply pulled the fuse from the dynamite. Losing his relaxation meant losing his concentration. And the card? “Grandstanding.” He drives to the orphanage, where he asks to see Jackie. A nun directs him to a little girl building a snowman. He introduces himself. Jackie and her friends ask him to build a snowman with them. “I don’t know if I can,” Sage says. “I’ve never built a snowman.” Then he smiles: “I’ll try.”

The narration comments: “Odd that he hasn’t noticed until this second, the storm has stopped. The sky is clear and soft, the snow creaks and crunches underfoot, and he can feel the crisp air to the marrow of his bones. And he thinks: Childhood is an interval between nothingness and disillusionment. An interval of innocence. The glorious morning is an interval, too. There has been grief and violence in the past and there will almost certainly be grief and violence in the future…But for now, he is building a snowman.”

Gallery

Trivia / Minutiae

The Mustos first appeared in Green Lantern #97, also written by Denny O’Neil.

This month’s Recommended Reading: Golf in the Kingdom by Michael Murphy

Relevant Links

Denny O’Neil

Denys Cowan

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dc comics

The Question v.1 #2

The Question v.1 #2“Butterfly” – Mar. 1987

Script: Dennis O’Neil
Pencils: Denys Cowan
Inks: Rick Magyar
Lettering: Albert De Guzman
Colors: Tatjana Wood
Editor: Mike Gold
Cover: Denys Cowan & Bill Sienkiewicz
Published by DC Comics

Vic Sage floats at the bottom of the river, almost lifeless. His subconscious struggles to maintain a hold on the land of the living and he sees faces — Myra, Tot. He drifts into nothingness before being jolted awake by pain. Slipping in and out of consciousness, he questions his own identity as Tot looks on, and tries to remember what happened to him. He flashes back to the night on the pier: the beating by Shiva, then Jake with his lead pipe, the Reverend Hatch looking on, Baby Gun and his tiny pistol, and finally, the ice-cold plunge into the river.

“I was dead.” Yes, says Tot, but Shiva rescued him. She dove for ten minutes trying to find him, and he was saved only by a biological phenomenon known as Diver’s Reflex — when drowning in cold water, the body isolates oxygen to keep the body alive. Sage continues to struggle with figuring out his identity — who is Tot? Why was he shot (he survived as the .22 bullet flattened against his skull, traveled between bone and skin and exited in the back), and most of all, why does he remember wearing a mask?

Meanwhile, at the Mayor’s mansion, Wesley Fermin admires Myra on television as she reports the disappearance of fellow news anchor Vic Sage. Hatch puts two and two together and comes up with the identity of the Question.

Sage dreams of Batman, a shared bust on a pier. He’s awakened by Tot, who explains that Shiva left a series of maps and notes in Mandarin Chinese. The discussion is interrupted by Batman, who belittles Sage, calling him an “arrogant, incompentant dilletante.” Batman sets out the terms: If you’re going to be a hero, then stop playing at it and take it seriously. In a blink, Batman is gone. Tot was asleep. Was Batman really there at all?

Tot dresses Sage with a pair of casts, and walks him outside where they hear a helicopter descending. The pilot drops Sage off in the middle of nowhere, where he meets a wheelchair-bound man in a small cabin. The man, named Richard, offers to teach Sage the ways of the warrior, but first Sage must chop wood. Sage doubts he can, but as he swings the axe, he finds his physical healing process has begun. But, as Richard says, “It’s your mind that needs work.”

Sage spends the next year under Richard’s tutelage, training his mind, his body and his soul, until one day while tilling the garden, Richard announces that school is out.

Sage must make his own way, says Richard. Sage’s passion isn’t fighting, it’s his curiosity, Richard says. But Lady Shiva, lurking in some nearby shadows, disagrees. They duel, and though Shiva wins the physical battle, Sage leaves her wondering where his real priorities lie. But she still refuses to answer his questions.

Sage hitchhikes back to civilization, where he finds his suit and fedora waiting for him in Tot’s closet. He refamiliarizes himself with the featureless mask, and breaks into the Mayor’s mansion.

Meanwhile, Reverend Hatch tells Myra stories of his days as a chaplain in Vietnam, where he realized his true mission: “To hasten the corruption, to nurture the foulness until the Almighty has no choice but to rain down fire and brimstone….” But the monologue is interrupted by…someone singing Danny Boy.

The Question appears before Hatch. “What do you want?” Hatch asks from the floor.

“I want you Reverend,” the Question replies. “I want you to pray.”

Gallery

Trivia / Minutiae

Richard Dragon was created for a novel by Dennis O’Neil and James R. Barry – 1974’s Dragon’s Fists, which seemed to take cues from both Bruce Lee and Remo Williams.

This month’s Recommended Reading: Movements of Magic: The Spirit of Tai Chi Chuan by Bob Klein

Relevant Links

Denny O’Neil

Denys Cowan

Views From Other Sources

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dc comics

The Question v.1 #1

The Question v.1 #1“The Bad News” – Feb. 1987

Script: Dennis O’Neil
Pencils: Denys Cowan
Inks: Rick Magyar
Lettering: Gaspar
Colors: Tatjana Wood
Editor: Mike Gold
Cover: Bill Sienkiewicz
Published by DC Comics

Hub City Friday, November 21, 10:45 P.M.: Charles Victor Szasz has exactly 25 hours and 15 minutes to live.

A man in a blue fedora and matching trenchcoat stands in the rain outside a shack on the wharf, his face shrouded in shadow. Inside, three men huddle around a card game, the smoke from their cigarettes rising toward the light suspended a few feet above their table. Charles Victor Szasz has been waiting, tensing his muscles, preparing himself for violence: “That he may die is of no interest to him in these charged seconds. Here, now, he is fully alive and that is what matters…”

A voice on the TV inside announces a special report from KBEL’s Vic Sage, and as if this were his cue, Szasz puts a foot through the door of the shack, stating plainly that the men inside possess a tape cassette that he wants. The men stand, as the television in the background discusses civic corruption, and challenge the intruder. Szasz responds by elbowing the largest of them so hard that the thug’s skull cracks the television as he falls. A second man advances, swinging wildly. His punch misses, but Sage’s counter-punch connects. A woman looks on silently, with a hint of a smile at the corner of her lip. Szasz swings a chair at the third man, knocking a small pistol from his hand, then uses the remnants of the chair to knock his opponent to the floor. He takes note of the woman: “You’re staying out of it, lady. That’s smart.” She replies, still Mona Lisa smiling: “I despise violence!”

A pair of hands come down to meet the base of Szasz’s neck. He drops to the floor, where his agressors pick him back up again. The largest of the men, recovered from his earlier encounter with the television, grips the man’s face with both hands: “Let’s see who he is!” But whatever covers Szasz’s face won’t come off. Distracted by the mask, the big man finds himself the target of a kick to the face, his nose and teeth crushed, and Szasz pushes off to throw himself and the man holding him through a table behind them. We see that Szasz has no face. An elbow to this other man’s face, and all opponents are down. “Barbaric,” says the woman.

Szasz goes to the thug who couldn’t connect with a punch, and demands the tape. The man concedes defeat and pulls the desired object from a safe. “Mister, givin’ you this is prob’ly gonna get me bad hurt. So answer me this…who are you?” In response, Szasz hands him a blank white card that starts to smoke, slowly revealing — “Question mark?”

“You are half right,” says the woman.

11:01 P.M.: Charles Victor Szasz has 24 hours and 59 minutes to live. Climbing into a red Volkswagen Beetle, Szasz speeds away. He’s enveloped in a ring of yellow smoke, and reaches up to remove the featureless mask. He passes a pair of cops doing sixty, and out of boredom, they decide to pull him over. But Szasz can’t trifle with traffic tickets. He pulls the gear shift and rockets away from the cops. “He’s doin’ over a hunnert! Gotta be!” says one of the cops as they stop the chase.

Szasz arrives outside of KBEL studios as the weather report comes on. A producer named Finch is calling for the head of Vic Sage, who’s due to go on in six minutes. Szasz, nee Sage, enters the production room and hands the tape to the news director, instructing him to play it during his spot. “Mr. Sage…your script…” says the assistant director. “I’ll ad-lib,” Sage replies. “Your make-up.” “I’m beautiful just the way I am…” Sage replies without irony.

News anchor Myra Connelly introduces Sage as the weather report ends. The tape contains footage of the Hub City Commissioner of Schools snorting cocaine with a woman who Sage ties to a man who he believes blackmailed his way into a fat building contract with the school system. Shadowy figures watch the report on a big screen. One asks, “What do you think, Reverend?” The reverend replies: “Lamentable. Most Lamentable.” Sage concludes his broadcast with a dig at local government: “The decent people in this town are paying for services that don’t exist while the political slugs get fat. Why doesn’t Mayor Wesley Fermin do something about it? Is he lazy, stupid…or worse?”

Perhaps worse. Mayor Fermin is infatuated by Sage’s co-worker, Myra Connelly, and ignores Sage’s words as he watches the news to get a glimpse of her. He wonders aloud if he could meet her, and the Reverend, sitting on the couch beside him, says, “Ask and ye shall receive.”

One of the thugs from the wharf appears and asks what to do about Sage. The Reverend suggests getting him fired, but the thug cites Sage’s ratings as a good reason the news station would keep him on. Perhaps, ponders the Reverend, Lady Shiva should teach him a lesson. Shiva, the woman who watched the earlier battle, agrees to do whatever they ask of her, “Provided I wish to.” The thug accuses her of standing by idly while the “no-face guy” beat them to a pulp earlier. Shiva replies: “I provide my services for a fee. I do neither less nor more than I am requested. I was not requested to protect a videotape — nor to nurture the inept.”

But how did Sage know where to send No Face to find the tape? It must’ve been Milty Cohen, says the thug. When we meet Milty, he’s drenched with sweat with his back against the brick wall of a Hub City back alley. Jake, the big thug from the docks, introduces him to Baby Gun. Gun can’t talk at the moment, because someone busted his jaw. But Jake describes the M.O. for Milty — Baby Gun is named for his 4.5mm air gun. He likes to get close, says Jake, as we see the gun against Milty’s temple. Jake drops ash from his cigarette as Milty is blown away.

“Quiet too. Sucker don’t hardly make a sound,” he says.

Gallery

Trivia / Minutiae

Vic Sage’s real name is established in this issue as Charles Victor Szasz.

Sage is seen smoking for the only time in this issue. He doesn’t quit soon enough, however, as 20 years later, in the series 52, he’s diagnosed with lung cancer.

This month’s Recommended Reading: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig

Relevant Links

DC Comics

Denny O’Neil

Denys Cowan

Bill Sienkiewicz

Views From Other Sources

Got a review? E-mail us!

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miscellaneous

How to draw the Question JLU/Timm style

Welcome to the VicSage.com drawing corner! Today we’ll be learning how to draw the Question in the Justice League Unlimited / DC Animated Universe / Bruce Timm style.

The cornerstone of this style is simplicity, and we find that the Question’s faceless head can be drawn in about 10 simple steps with a few consolidations here and there. Let’s begin, shall we?

STEP ONE: Start with your basic egg shape, slightly elongated. The Timm style makes use of wide jaws, though the Question has a small head and a thinner jaw than many other JLU characters.

STEP TWO: Square off the bottom of the jaw, using two angles starting a little under two-thirds of the way down the head that come to meet a straight flat line for the chin. The chin line should be about as wide as the Question’s mouth would be, if he had one, roughly half the width of the head as a whole, but centered. ERASE the curve of the egg shape that still exists below your new, squared jawline.

STEP THREE: Add some ears. These should be about a quarter of the head in height — “C” curves that go up and away from the head and then gently slope back down to just above where the squared jawline started.

STEP FOUR: Draw two lines that begin by following the curve of the top of the ear to represent the top ear ridge, and very gently curve them down to rest on either side of the horizontal chin line (But line yours up better than I’ve lined mine up here).

STEP FIVE: Add an ellipse starting just above the ears that sticks out about two and a half ear widths on either side of the head. This is the rim of the fedora and the thickness you draw it with depends on the angle of the Question’s head.

STEP SIX: Draw a half-ellipse connecting the top of the previous ellipse at points on either side of the head with the bottom of the ellipse.

STEP SEVEN: Using gentle (moreso than my scratchy lines here) reverse curves, expand the half-ellipse to meet the big ellipse at its outermost points. ERASE any part of the ellipse that’s inside the headshape below the expanded half-ellipse. Also erase the small bit of headshape that’s inside the expanded half-ellipse.

STEP EIGHT: Draw two vertical lines from the hat rim ellipse on either side of the headshape, ending just below the top of the headshape. Connect the two with a horizontal line that curves just above the top of the headshape. ERASE the top of the headshape inside the curvy rectangle hatband you just drew.

STEP NINE: Extend the hatband’s vertical lines upward about half the distance of the hatline. Connect these extended lines with a long, stretched out, upside-down “W” line.

STEP TEN: Clean up all of your lines and draw in the small details — the black patches for hair just above the ears, the little hump of cartilage in the ear (”C” curves that start about halfway down the ear, connected at the top, but not the bottom), and the hat fold (like an X separated on its connecting angles and spread an eye-width apart). Drawing clothes might also help — the shirt starts with a wide curve roughly mimicking that of the original headshape before it was squared, and the collar is made by another wide “W” line which has a higher center vertex; the tie is a pair of diamonds, a small symmetrical one, and a taller one that’s most often hidden by the suit; the trenchcoat lines start below the ears and come down to wide points, and the shoulders start part of the way down those lines almost even with the chin.

Now that you’ve drawn your Question, color it in! Here are some common colors used in the series — but remember, the brightness of the colors depends on the lighting in the scene:

  • Trenchcoat/Fedora Blue – RGB (R:48 G:58 B:107), HEX: #303a6b
  • Shaded Trenchcoat/Fedora Blue – RGB (R:32 G:34 B:72), HEX: #202248
  • Hatband Blue – RGB (R:32 G:34 B:72), HEX: #202248
  • Shaded Hatband Blue – RGB (R:16 G:16 B:16), HEX: #101010
  • Shirt Orange – RGB (R:156 G:126 B:92), HEX: #9c7e5c
  • Shaded Shirt Orange – RGB (R:121 G:88 B:47), HEX: #79582f
  • Skintone Brown – RGB (R:120 G:102 B:92), HEX: #78665c
  • Shaded Skintone Brown – RGB (R:95 G:72 B:64), HEX: #5f4840
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