June 17, 2002

In the 1950s, an eccentric recluse lived on a small island that you never heard of in the Florida Keys, quietly doing genetic research. People nearby heard strange noises into the night. The result of his research was a small dog, an eighth of an inch long, that coiuld jump real far and run real fast. He gave it to his daughter Mary to play with, and she named him Bobo.

Bobo was only the first, though. Pretty soon there were hundreds, then thousands of the small dogs. Too late, they discovered that the dogs were dangerously radioactive, they bred like rabbits, and lived in huge colonies like bees. They over-ran the island, infesting homes and businesses, forcing evacuations.

By 1972, the island was deserted except for the scientist, his daughter, and a small squad of mercenaries brought in to hunt down the microdogs. With biohazard suits and blowtorches and freeze rays and also those really cool flying jet packs, they slaughtered all but one colony, which continued to breed and grow and once more threaten the island.

Then, Mary revealed her own secret, that she wasn't a girl at all, but a being from an energy dimension sent to protect the microdogs, and her whole body became a swirling mass of energy that sucked all the microdogs into her home dimension. The microdogs were really smart, like people, and the radiation they gave off was just their way of saying "Hi there, how ya doing?"

The mercenary hunter guys just didn't know. They were sent in by the invisible government ninjas to eradicate the threat posed by the microdogs, and that's all they knew.

And so, when Mary became a huge energy tornado and sucked up all the microdogs, there was only one mercenary hunter left. That was me. And I laid there in a coma alone on the island for four days. And when I woke up I saw on the windshield of my car a little twig shaped like a claw with three talons.

I took it as an omen, and I decided to become The Claw.

And my right hand is made of the strange cohesive energy that Mary was made of. And my eyes pulsated with it too. I live in the shadows, in back alleys, in the violent twighlight zone underground world that normal, decent people don't like to admit exists. A world where life is cheap, and death never comes easy.

In the darkness, I fight evildoers wherever I can find them. The psychopathic Russian mobster who dresses like a clown and for some reason likes to be called "Mayor McCheese". The Bulldog: Who sounds like a really cool super-villian but is really just a regular mean bulldog who bites people and is really hard to catch. And I tangle with assasins and jewel thieves and villians every night, knowing that I'll never make up for all the little dogs I killed who were really smart like people even though I had no way of knowing about it.

And I'll never be free of the invisible government ninjas who shadow my every move and follow me from town to town in search of the elusive one-armed man who can clear my name.

O yeah, there's this one-armed man I forgot to mention.

Ordinary people need not fear the Claw! I go where I'm needed, befriending the friendless, bringing hope to the hopeless, and defeating the, um, the defeatless. And then I vanish inbto the shadows and because of my hypnotic super-powers no one remembers me except as a kind of hazy dream.

Actually, you may think that this is all long and stupid, but most of it really did happen. I mean, except for everything before the part where the twig fell on my windshield, and everything after I thought of the really cool name. And, o yeah, the part where it happened to me. Actually it was a guy I met once but haven't seen in 15 years, and since I haven't heard of The Claw since then, I guess he never did anything with it. So I decided to become The Claw, except I lack the motivation to do anything beyond just drawing this picture.