Stupid criminals (a short story)

[liabrown]

My contribution for Piper's b-day.

Comments

[miss_device]

I love how the sound produced by Piper travels at the speed of... light. xD
And that Piper transformed Barry into a sucker, using his pipe (and if you knew what "pipe" means in French...). Awesome.

Thanks for sharing !

[liabrown]

Re 'pipe' in French, I just looked it up, and...I see. Learn something new every day :>

[miss_device]

See ? That's why I was a bit incredulous at first when I learned who Piper was. It was something like "One of the few openly homosexual super-villains, the Pied Piper is very dangerous and can do wonder with his pipes."
I have to say it made me laugh.

Then, discussing with a French friend about Countdown, I told her "and then, he blow up a whole planet, just with a pipe !" and... yeah.

[liabrown]

Maaaaaybe you should use the word 'flute' when talking to French-speakers about him in the future :D

[madripoor_rose]

That was almost a good plan!

Thanks for sharing, never saw these before.

[liabrown]

It would have been a *great* plan if he'd just killed the Flash instead of dragging him through town. Why possibly-kill him after the fact when he could have done it before?

...sorry for channeling inner-Roscoe there.

[aprilmaples]

Were they always this kill happy back then? Piper at least, I assumed that he was just messing with Flash when he said that he might kill him.

[liabrown]

It really depends, because to be honest you see conflicting information. Reading the stories literally, they certainly do seem to be honestly trying to kill the Flash sometimes. However, at other moments they a) don't seem terribly surprised or upset when the Flash survives their traps, b) are shocked when it does seem like he died, or c) say that they don't approve of murderous villains or killing the Flash/cops. So to some extent, I think it's open to personal interpretation, just because it does conflict. Or you could look at it that sometimes they're trying to kill him (perhaps when really angry or having mental health issues), but other times are pretty laissez-faire about it and treating it as a game.

I should note though that modern retcons have muddied the waters somewhat -- Geoff Johns explicitly added murders into some of the Silver Age Rogues' backstories/histories. I'm not happy about that, frankly.

[strawberispring]

He should have just left the Flash in jail.

Seriously. Save everyone headache. He'd get out eventually anyway but still.

[belphegor1982]

Well, we all know just how efficient the Central City prisons are in retaining everybody ;o)

[strawberispring]

Yep. Even the super-hxc Iron Heights has yet to do anything about all of the reflective surfaces.

[liabrown]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure he could easily take down the gangsters himself if he could do all that other stuff.

[belphegor1982]

That's great! Piper is quite badass there, by Silver Age-y standards :o) Is that his first appearance (in Part one, I mean)?

Thanks for posting this :o]

[liabrown]

No, by the time of this story he'd been well established. This issue was #164, and his first appearance was #106.

BTW, did you see my response to your question about the Snarts on Tumblr the other day? Replying to a person's post (rather than reblogging) doesn't send an email notification, it only appears on your Dashboard...and it occurred to me later that I don't know if you check your Dashboard regularly.

[belphegor1982]

No, I didn't see the response - browsed through pages of my dashboard to find it, and I did find the scan, but not the response. I'm really not a regular checker, although I love to see the scans and read the comments :o]

So, what was your answer?

[liabrown]

Nuts, I'll just reblog next time :>

We don't know what that "incident" with their dad was, as Johns introduced it in that story but never went back to explain it. So it's as of now still unknown.

[defying3reason]

oh love. excellent scans <3

[liabrown]

Glad you like!