[ WP ] You 're a comic book nerd who has been trapped in a comic book universe . Now you 're being hunted by both heros and villans because of your knowledge of their secret identities .

`` SLASHER DISCOUNT SPECIAL! Cobalt Crusader, 100 % off! Simply enter `` crazyhack'' at checkout to save!'' 
 
 Huh. 100 % off. Jason Mumford had every Cobalt Crusader already, even if they were n't his favorite. In fact, one of his letters to the editors, published in a full-paged rambling diatribe at the back of Issue # 4, hung proudly on his refrigerator, sandwiched between a Christmas magnet, a faded tomato-paste stain, and a calendar opened to July of last year. But 100 % off is too good a deal to resist, and so Mumford buys it, enters the requested code at checkout. The word `` crazyhack'' spills out on the screen... 
 
 Suddenly Mumford's falling, until a short while later he lands on his back. The midday concrete, mixed in with the oily sweat of his undershirt, scorches his back, and he rolls to his side, gasping for breath. 
 
 When his vision finally focuses, some minutes later, he recognizes the skyline in an instant. The X-Life Building to the east, the Silver Projects an imposing grey brick dominating sight, the Anyville Herald building slicing the air like a barber's blade... he's in Anyville, home of the Cobalt Crusader and dozens of his cellophane. But how? Was his medicine acting up again? 
 
 His stomach rebels. Crawling to his knees just enough to put distance between himself and the ground, he promptly throws up. 
 
 He hears, from the corners of his ears, the sounds of feet landing on the pavement with metallic thuds. A polished pair of boots, bright red, materialize near the top of his vision. Mumford recognizes their design immediately - the Vulcanizer. It's the Council, then! Truly, Mumford needed to talk to his doctor about this at his appointment next Tuesday. 
 
 `` Have no fear, human. The Council defends the lives of the strong and the weak alike. You are safe with us.'' 
 
 He's even got the same hopelessly stale diction from the later Crusader series, Mumford remarks to himself. You'd think if my brain saw fit to warp my reality into my comic fantasies, it would, at the least, bother to write a better Vulcanizer. The Vulcanizer from the early issues, when he still had that aura of grittiness about him... 
 
 `` Sir, the nerd reader's flying off the charts. I think we may have a Superfan.'' 
 
 `` A Superfan?! Abacus, check the readings again. I want to be sure.'' 
 
 Mumford, having cast off lunch already, starts on breakfast. Abacus runs the nerd scanner again - it hums an ominous red, flashing iconographic skulls in place of the usual numerical readout. The collected superheroes, five of them now, exchange nervous glances. 
 
 One of them -- the Auroch Boyar, bull's horns wrapped spiraled and triumphant around her head -- turns to her neighbor, anxiety in her voice. 
 
 `` What does this portend, Shibboleth?'' 
 
 The leader, Shibboleth, wrapped in the purple cloth of a royal centurion, turns a curdled frown. 
 
 `` These strange oracles, humans they call themselves, fall into our dimension as droplets of a consciousness beyond us. They hold the keys to our world, to our doings, to our inevitable ends. And this one, should the nerd scanner we acquired from the Essences read correct, holds enough knowledge in his brain to end us all, should he fall into the wrong hands.'' 
 
 `` What can we do, then?'' 
 
 `` We can arrest him... or we can end it.'' 
 
 `` End it? Are you insane? The Council defends life. It does not end it!'' 
 
 `` If ending one will save all, do we not do what we must? Is that not why we assemble, to defend the many from the all-powerful few?'' 
 
 This was too much, Mumford thought. Any with half a brain towards comic aesthetics knew that the Council had some of the worst dialogue in the entire Cobalt Crusader series, and it was bleeding through here. End him now, if need be, but enough of this script! 
 
 `` The Vulcanizer is Eric Capone! Shibboleth is Nancy Shuje, daughter of the Cobalt Crusader! The Auroch Boyar is...'' 
 
 The Auroch Boyar drops a hoof upon Mumford's head; he falls to the ground in a muffled heap. 
 
 `` The decision is clear.'' Paladin, the only hero who had n't spoken yet, issues judgement, her voice ringing with clarion truth. `` The road ahead is difficult, yet we must cleave to it without wavering. The alternative is death. We must...'' 
 
 Mumford, Paladin, and the rest of the Council are destroyed in one Power Blast. A skull-faced villain runs up to inspect the scene, a lanky assistant following behind him, tripping on his own footsteps. 
 
 `` You were right, Optimizer! We did it!'' 
 
 `` Of course it worked, Squat. We simply needed to find somebody sufficiently dangerous to where they'd have to consider killing him, and their own conflicted moralities would do the rest. Give heroes an ethical problem, and kill them while they attempt to work it out. Oldest trick in the book.'' 
 
 `` Optimizer, did you consider that, by ending the lives of our opponents in one blow, you'd eliminate the need for villains in Anyville, thus ending the series and our lives by extension?'' 
 
 `` That's ridiculous. They'd never...'' 
 
 At once, with their biggest superfan dead and their major protagonists out of the picture, the cord is pulled on the Cobalt Crusader series. Optimizer and Squat, now canceled, vaporize out of existence.
