Dr. Dementia scowled, delivering another crippling blow to his array of action figures. Or so he thought. The action figure must have been made of some rigid polymer, because it wasn’t crumbling in his fingers and he’d had enough. With a mighty drawback, he launched Action Man across the room, where it landed pathetically against the wall, still intact.

The “evil genius” pouted. Why did things never go his way? Every single time he tried to make a doomsday device, it always went pear shaped. Just last week he’d tried to blow up the city’s tallest skyscraper, when all his pitiable device had done was emit a puff of smoke and a hissing noise that sounded like someone using the toilet.

He was clever, that was certain, he just never seemed to be able to get things right. He was trying hard enough, harder than Venom and The Joker and everyone else put together, but the sad reminder was that people still didn’t quake in their metaphorical boots when they heard his name. They just laughed.

They always laughed.