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Ruthless Ro-Man was the second full-length story in the Kaza’s Mate, Gwenna web comic. As the title implied, it featured a rebooted version of the titular antagonist of the infamous 1953 B-movie Robot Monster, evidently under the common misconception that he was in the public domain.
It also featured appearances by multiple public-domain superheroes and the first appearance of Jenny Everywhere in the series, albeit in cameo form as a patron of the Adventurers Club.
Contents
Plot
The story opens with Kaza and Gwenna at home, atypically getting dressed in formal clothes. They are picked up by Wimberly and driven to the Adventurers Club, where the Commissioner is already waiting to tell them of a surprise: two of Gwenna’s friends from her high school years in Pinefield are here, Deena and Junior; Gwenna delightedly greets them and introduces them to Kaza. They only begin to chat when the wall of the building explodes, revealing the Ruthless Ro-Man, a ray-gun wielding extraterrestrial who announces that he has returned for revenge upon Kaza.
After a brief, inconclusive skirmish Kaza is knocked unconscious and Ro-Man makes off with Deena as bait, to lure Kaza and his allies into coming after him (having confused Deena for Gwenna). When Kaza recovers consciousness he agrees that allies are necessary but so is speed, and thus, heads off to follow Ro-Man. Gwenna brings everyone up to speed on the situation, explaining that Ro-Man is an alien who tried to invade Earth several years earlier and was repelled by a gathering of heroes, the Space Patrol , and Stardust the Super-Wizard. She calls up a satellite view on her laptop by accessing the network of the superhero team, the League of Champions, and finds Ro-Man’s flying saucer only a kilometer away.
Wimberly drives Gwenna and Junior out to the spaceship, where they find a giant lizard. It spits acid and is bulletproof but the timely arrival of the superhero Dynamo keeps things from getting out of hand. Dynamo promptly explains that Ro-Man is an energy being, only riding the gorilla-shaped alien body for convenience, and the helmet shields it from outside electromagnetic influences. Meanwhile Kaza has found Ro-Man’s former host Hezton and has been filled in on this as well; Ro-Man has moved on to possess Deena, whom he still believes to be Kaza's mate, hence thinking there would be particular cruelty in killing him in that form.
Ro-Man attacks, but Deena’s body is not accustomed to combat; at four-to-one odds, Ro-Man is soon overwhelmed and is goaded by Gwenna into attempting to move to another body. Just as planned, Dynamo’s superpowers disrupt Ro-Man’s energy form and Junior catches him in the discarded shielding helmet. Hezton is helped back to the flying saucer, where his injuries can be tended, and the ship automatically leaves for home. In the aftermath, Kaza apologises to Gwenna for letting his past cause their date to go out of hand, having been shaken by his glimpse into Gwenna's pre-jungle life, but she dismisses his worries, assuring him that she does not regret a single thing.
Worldbuilding
Universes
- This story takes place in Reality Z-25 31-H. Although Ro-Man is described as coming from “another world”, it is to be assumed that this is merely a grandiose way of referring to another planet, instead of painting him as an interdimensional threat, as he is also stated to be native to a planet in the Crab Nebula.
Jenny Everywhere
- This story features a cameo by a version of Jenny Everywhere, sat at a table with Sven Allestädes. It is to be assumed that she is the version previously seen in COMIC: Ghost Story and whose villainous doppelgänger had just been come recurring in The Cosmic Beholder. However, her costume is depicted differently from the usual, with a yellow top instead of black and an orange scarf.
Other
- Stardust the Super-Wizard is described as a “cosmic being”. Though distant and mysterious, he seems to be benevolent.
- The League of Champions, seemingly the planet's foremost superhero team, is currently “off-world”. Gwenna has access to their satellite, however, suggesting she is an occasional member. The story never clarifies whether the League is to some extent the same as the gathering of hero including Samson, Blue Beetle, Flame Girl, Zanzibar the Magician, Dynamo and Kaza and Gwenna themselves, who fought off Ro-Man's prior invasion, although Dynamo was not “off-world” until his appearance in the present-day portion of the story, instead informing Gwenna that he was “tied up in San Francisco”.
Continuity
- Gwenna rejoices with Kaza on Page 2 about the expected lack of “mad cultists, filthy poachers or mercenary leaders” at the party. The Serpent Cult, and a a mercenary, appeared as the villains of the previous Kaza's Mate, Gwenna story COMIC: The Serpent Sorceress.
- Gwenna is depicted with light brown hair in the first few pages of this story, and then dark, reddish-brown hair for the rest of it. This change brings her to a stage intermediate between the black hair she sported in COMIC: The Serpent Sorceress and the red hair she would have in the rest of the series. Black-haired Deena, when divested of her clothes, thus becomes a dead ringer for Gwenna in The Serpent Sorceress, thus potentially justifying Ro-Man's mix-up between them as him being familiar with Gwenna's prior appearance. However, this hypothesis is complicated by the fact that Gwenna already has dark red hair in the brief flashback to Ro-Man's first attempt to invade Earth “a few years ago”.
- As in COMIC: The Serpent Sorceress, Gwenna is oddly addressed as “Miss Davis” by both Wimberly and Commissioner Smedley, despite being married. It may be that “Mr Kaza” sounded silly and that Kaza doesn’t use the name Kyle Elsworth in the jungle – or perhaps their marital status had not been settled at this point.
- Seen in the Adventurers Club are Jenny Everywhere, Sven Allestädes, and Herbie Popnecker, though none of them have any influence on the plot of the story. Sven had made his sole prior appearance in COMIC: Enchanted, introduced as an old friend of Jenny as she had previously appeared in COMIC: Ghost Story. Herbie Popnecker would go on to make multiple other appearances, in Kaza's Mate, Gwenna and beyond, as an acquaintance of Jenny's.
Behind the scenes
Read online
The story can be read on the Kaza's Mate, Gwenna website starting here.