Road Trip Of No Return (comic story)
Road Trip Of No Return was the first story of “Issue 5” of the Tales To Behold subseries of the webcomic The Cosmic Beholder. Written and drawn by Paul Hoppe, it was released both in webcomic form and in a limited print run.
Contents
Plot
Captain Evening, Merv the Griffin, the Blue Knight and Armstrong Fatbuckle are enjoying a quiet road trip around the countryside, rebuilding their sense of community and trying to get over the trauma of losing Jenny. However, on one pit-stop, Captain Evening gets accidentally knocked out by a branch. When he comes to, the other Odds seem to have disappeared. He is soon confronted by a party of police officer, led by a young, female Sheriff.
Although the two police officers patrolling with her, Ben and Bill, are skeptical of the Captain's explanation that he's “on a road trip with a skeleton, a griffin and an immortal knight” who “just vanished into thin air”, the Sheriff decides to split up from the two men to help the Captain look for his friends while they continue with their routine mission looking for a coyote which supposedly killed some sheep in the area. She is quick to confess to the Captain, once the two policemen are out of earshot, that she doesn't really believe him, but merely thinks wandering around with him will be “more fun” than sticking with her subordinates.
As they walk past a fenced property, the Captain spots the Odds' van in the courtyard and persuades the Sheriff to break in with him. Peeking through a window, they spot Armstrong and the Blue Knight tied to chairs, as well as a large stockpile of drugs. They are both knocked out from behind, and, when they come to, find that they too have been brought inside and tied to chairs — by none other than Ben and Bill, who've been running a successful drug-trafficking racket by reselling confiscated drugs to dealers. Once he gets the two corrupt cops to confirm that they have no special powers and used tranquilizer guns plus the element of surprise to take out the other Odds, the Captain effortlessly breaks out of his chains.
A fight breaks out; Ben seems to sneak away, but soon returns, crazy-eyed and with needles sticking out of his neck, revealing that he has taken on the identity of the feral supervillain Druggo, who gets superpowers when he's high — also confessing that it was him who attacked the sheep, instead of a coyote. Although he gets a few good punches in at Armstrong and the Captain, however, once the Sheriff frees the Blue Knight so she can join the fight, the Knight immediately realises that Druggo does not actually have super-strength. They lay him down in one punch, explaining that he “doesn't have any superpowers at all — he was jut really, really angry and really, really high”.
While Bill and Ben are taken into custody, the Sheriff thanks the Odds for their help, finding herself dwelling on the fact that she could have remained blind to the corruption happening right under her nose if not for their appearance. Captain Evening suggests that she join them at the creek where the Odds had ordinally camped out, for a relaxing midnight swim. As they frolic in the water, they discuss ways to deal with having been betrayed, something the Captain is now intimately familiar with. When his thoughts lead him to state that “sometimes, all you can do is just keep going”, he sits up and realises that he should take his own advice and return to New York with the Odds: “there's work to be done”.
Worldbuilding
Jenny Nowhere
- The version of Jenny Nowhere who formerly belonged to the Odds team, and recently died, is alluded to, though not named.
Universes
- This story takes place entirely in Reality Z-25 31-H.
Other
- The Odds have a bespoke car, a van called the Odd Mobile. It is painted with the name as well as Captain Evening's moon symbol.
Continuity
- Captain Evening's opening narration recalls how they recently “lost a friend”, and he later tells the Sheriff that he knows how she feels when she shares her heartbreak about a close co-worker having been deceiving her for years. Both of these things allude to the revelation in COMIC: Meanwhile, In Queens that the “Jenny Everywhere” who'd been part of the Odds all this time had actually been a disguised, malevolent Jenny Nowhere, and to her subsequent death.
- Evening recalls how Professor Madison advised the remaining Odds to take a vacation for the sake of their mental health, which occurred in COMIC: Journey Out Of Misery.
- The pointedly-nameless Police Sheriff introduced in this story, who displays a surprising talent for acrobatics, later resurfaced in COMIC: Season of the Witch with the brand-new superhero identity of “Jung-La”, having quit the police force as a result of realising how corrupt it was in this story.
- The Odds' triumphant return to New York was later seen at the end of COMIC: Epilogue to Destruction.
Behind the scenes
Read online
Road Trip Of No Return is available online on the Cosmic Beholder blog.
