in Llanview 2008

Marcie was pleased with herself for landing a substitute teaching gig at the high school. Standing in front of the English class, she scanned the sea of 11th-grade faces. A few friendly ones stood out. There was Starr Manning and Markko Rivera and Langston Wild.

"Class," she began, "Most of you know me. I'm Mrs. McBain. Your regular teacher is out sick so we are going to spend the next 50 minutes together. And I have a special project in store for all you budding writers . . ."

A paper airplane sailed by and clipped Marcie's shoulder. She didn't blink. "Ahem. I said, for all you budding writers, like myself. You're all going to write a travel narrative."

"What's that?" a boy in the third row asked.

"It's like a diary passage telling about a trip you took. Say you went someplace and forgot your camera or your cell phone. . . "

"Lame!" someone shouted.

Marcie didn't know who said it. She continued, louder now. "Without a camera, you're forced to write a description about how pretty the beaches were on your trip to Puerto Rico. You write all about the sights and sounds and points of interest so that others will want to travel to the place you write about."

Markko sighed heavily. "C'mon, Mrs. McBain. It's last period. Forget Puerto Rico and let us out early. Tomorrow's Halloween. We need to go home and work on our costumes."

With most of the class cheering at Markko's suggestion, Marcie looked up at the clock on the wall and realized she had already lost their attention at a mere four minutes in.

"Hey, who's that little kid in the back of our class?" asked Andrea, a Britney wannabe.

"That's Shane," Marcie told her. "I'm babysitting him today, but never you mind. Shane," Marcie called out, "you work on your comic book."

Never the wallflower, Starr Manning piped up with a bold commentary. "How come he gets to make a comic book? Why can't we do that?"

Marcie put her plan book down, surrendering to the will of her 11th graders. "Okay," she told the class. "Why not?" she rationalized. "I mean, you need English skills to do that, right? You need storytelling skills."

Starr and Langston opened the closet and passed out colored pencils and newsprint pads to all. Markko inched his chair closer to Cole Thornhart. "Let's work on this together, Cole. I write, you illustrate." Cole nodded.

This comic book assignment allowed Marcie to relax so she settled into Ms. Holloway's chair, propped her feet up on the desk, and watched the flurry of activity. The first 40 minutes just flew by. It was almost time to wrap it up.

"All right, people. We have to stop shortly. Who'd like to volunteer to present his or her comic book--or narrative--to the class?" Marcie looked around for an "A" student. "Langston, how 'bout you?"

The tall, fair, student with the purple hair obliged. Langston slid out from her seat and walked to the front of the classroom. "I did a Disney theme. It's Huey, Duey and Luey. I like groups of three. You know, three characters up to something. Having fun and fighting problems." Langston pointed to a colorful panel of ducks dressed in T-shirts and ball caps.

"So Huey, Duey and Luey are just going about their business having a wonderful time, when Uncle Scrooge McDuck comes by. He's hatched a plan to take the ducklings to Columbia, that college in New York City. He has a job there teaching economics. But Huey, Duey and Luey don't want to go! I mean, Duey wants to go to Princeton, Huey wants to go to Harvard, and Luey doesn't even think the Ivies will take him. He wants to study Daytime Television Programming," her voice dripped with sarcasm.

So the nephews knock their uncle down, grab his cane and beat him to death with it. But that's okay cuz they bury him in the back yard." Langston pointed to a panel showing a shovel and a mound of dirt. "The end."

Marcie shook her head. "Not too much violence. Thank you, Langston. So, this narrartive reminds me. Anyone needing help with their college application essays, please see me after class."

The bell rang and the kids vacated, rolling up their comic books into long tubes, a few even blowing into them to make moose calls.

Later that evening, Shane was back home with his mother in the carriage house. He laid his comic book out on the floor. “This guy’s a really cool superhero,” Shane explained to his mother as he ran his index finger along the panels. He’s Captain Crimefighter. His powers are so awesome, he can basically fix any problem on the planet.”

“Come on, get upstairs to bed,” Gigi ordered.

Shane ignored her. “And of course Evelyn Evil is back. She’s so nasty. She pulls the citizens in with her evil tentacles. Then they just do whatever evil thing she commands.”

“That’s a neat trick. This is your mother, Shane Morasco, and I’m commanding you to get to bed.”

Shane closed the cover to his comic book and left it on the floor. He marched upstairs.

In the morning, Todd Manning turned on the lights as he entered his publisher’s office at The Sun and sat down at the desk with a copy of the October 31st edition. He flipped over to the comics. His eyes popped out of his head when he saw several blank panels with callout captions intact, yet only chalk outlines where the characters belonged. “Hey!” he yelled. “Where’s Ziggy? Somebody’s gonna get fired!”

After a breakfast of Cocoa Pebbles, Shane went out to the living room to stuff his comic book into his backpack for school. Shane looked at the drawings and eyed the empty panels. “Oh, no! Evelyn Evil! She’s been pulled off the pages of my story! What will Captain Crimefighter do without a nemesis? The whole comic falls apart.”

Shane grabbed a red crayon from the backpack and began drawing his villainess in in rough strokes. Shane watched as the crayon markings vanished 20 seconds after he applied them to the paper.

Elsewhere, Detective Antonio Vega fielded complaint calls at the LPD. Rookie Officer Talia Sahid walked in and tried to organize the chaos.

Shane skipped school and went straight to the police station. “Listen, guys, I have to tell you something. Evelyn Evil is missing. . . .”

Antonio cut him off, “Yes, we know. We’ve been getting calls all morning. Lots of hand-drawn intellectual property is gone. You’ll just have to look into civil remedies, young man. It’s not a crime for a comic to go missing.”

“But,” Shane posed a question, “It’s not ALL the cartoon and comic book characters, is it? It’s only certain ones.”

They gave the kid blank stares.

“I mean, Fred and Barney were on my cereal box this morning, right where they belonged.”

“What are you saying?” Det. Vega wanted to know.

“I think I know what’s going on. Evelyn Evil is missing from my comic book. But Captain Crimefighter is still there. It’s bad. It’s really bad. Evelyn Evil is dangerous. She’s nasty—I ought to know, I created her.” Shane sighed and looked down at the floor “I think she’s out there somewhere. Out of context. Without a narrative. You see, in my comic, only Captain Crimefighter is able to defeat her. And he’s not out in our 3-D world.”

“So, said Antonio,” under your theory, only the bad guys are missing?”

“Yeah,” Shane swallowed hard.

“Where did they go?”

Shane stared at something behind Antonio, something that looked like a red cape.

Evelyn Evil, clad in form-fitting red leather and sporting a sleek black pageboy, sashayed around the squad room. “Detective Vega,” she purred, “have you met my friend Ziggy?” she gestured to a large bald guy standing in the doorway.

Det. Vega was thunderstruck. “You look just like my sister, Adriana.”

Evelyn put her hands on her hips and a sinister laugh came out of her. “Well, I guess that’s supposed to be a joke. The boy made me—he’s the only one laughing.”

Shane yelled at her, “I’m not scared of you, Evelyn Evil.”

At that precise moment, Evelyn’s arms turned to tentacles. She threw one slimy appendage around Shane’s waist, lassoing the boy and squeezing him until his eyes fluttered and he passed out cold on the floor.

“Stay back, everybody,” Antonio warned the whole squad room.

One of Bo’s men, a regular uniformed officer, whispered to Antonio, “The kid said something about the characters being out of context—that they have no narrative.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So let’s bring in Marcie McBain. She teaches English and she writes books. Maybe, just maybe, she can fashion a narrative.”

“Good thinking, O’Neil,” Antonio praised the officer.

Talia rang for Marcie while Ms. Evil and Ziggy turned over desks and flipped the vending machines on the sides. All weapons were useless against them so everyone just moved out of the way and stood by helplessly.

By the time Marcie arrived, the comic duo was all hyper, sugared-up from the hall vending machines. Ziggy's thin lips were ringed with chocolate.

Antonio went into a corner to brief Marcie

Marcie nodded. "Okay. I've got it. Here goes." She walked toward the bald one. "Once upon a time there was a man named Ziggy," she said to him loudly. "He picked flowers and said profound things, and just generally spread the same good will and cuteness every day. He was such a great guy. But he couldn't stand up very well. He did better flat against a sturdy panel. Yes, the panel felt good against his back."

Marcie stopped and smiled. "Because let's face it," she continued, "Ziggy was overweight. I mean, I should talk, right? I'm fat too. But Ziggy knew he belonged on paper, just resting on the page, in millions of homes, bringing cheer, with his weight off his wobbly knees. So, *poof* he propolled himself back into his comic strip."

There was a puff of smoke just then and Ziggy vanished. Talia ran into the Commissioner's office and grabbed The Sun. She quickly turned to the funny pages:

Ziggy was back!

Everyone cheered, "Marcie, you did it."

Now what about her? Evelyn Evil was forcing Antonio to take her mug shot.

"That was my bad side!" she whined as she came out of her pose and shot lasers out of her nostrils, the kind that burned a hole in one of the squad room filing cabinets.

Marcie was very worried. "I don't think I can do this," she confessed. I never read Shane's comic book. He talked about it--a lot--but lord knows I wasn't listening."

"If you can't even fake it, what can we do?" asked Antonio.

O'Neil had an idea. "If she won't go back to the comics willingly, I think somebody's got to switch places with her. You know, go into Shane's book."

"Walk into the comic book?" Antonio wanted to know. "Like Gumby?"

"Precisely. Then she'll have just a regular 3-D life--like Adriana. Her evil identity will be taken."

Talia stepped forward. "I'll do it. I'll go into the comic book."

Antonio came over to talk her out of it.

"No," said Talia. "Don't try and stop me. It'll be okay. This makes a good deal of sense. My father is Carlo Hesser, remember? So I come from a long line of cartoon characters."