Coming Up...

There WILL be a bonus update this week, friends and neighbors. We're digging through a clandestine tangle that'd make Jason Bourne's head swim, but there's a light at the end of the tunnel (and we hope it's not a Boom Tube).

There's info on HIGHWAYMEN and a mysterious PROGRAMME in our hands. Cryptographers have cracked the first layer of encryption and are working on what they're calling "the deep levels." Should be something interesting soon.

BPD out.

Wolfe, Lupin and Ormgud - Aftermath Cleaners Incorporated

BREAKING NEWS - BPD has unearthed a troubling conspiracy to conceal the aftermath of superhero battles.

The question was first hinted at by meta-journalist Garth Ennis in his scathing documentary The Boys, an expose of the seamier side of 'herodom' and poser of the question: After a major superhero dust-up, why are there no casualties?

Oh sure, one of the Hulks (he or She-) might lose it and bring down a town. Or there'll be some Crisis or War or criss-Crossover with a high fatality rate, but news of these tragedies always seems a means to an end. Pathos to underscore a larger point. Ennis, however, explored a more personal affect asking what would happen if your girlfriend had a head-on collision with a high-speed superhero whose only focus was saving the day? Roadkill is the kindest answer to that question. And who would clean up the mess? Wolfe Lupin and Ormgud - Aftermath Cleaners Incorporated.

Not to be confused with Damage Control, W.L.O Inc handles the more distasteful clean-up jobs that are an unavoidable result of calling in the big guns. Better yet, they make sure no one remembers a thing.

"You want the truth, do ye? Well, I'll tell ye—carnage," said Riley 'The Wolf' Wolfe. "It's awful but it's a gud days work, y'ken? We write tall tales fer families an' friends, dole out werege- uh, hush monies to survivors an' rewrite memories. Lupin, being a Nightmare, hunts and eats the more resolute memories. After that, it's down t'the zombies, but that be Ormgud's portion."

Morte Ormgud explained how the zombies work "Well, you've got all these pieces, you see, and you must be rid of them. No point leaving them in the deep freeze for authorities to discover, now is there? So the best thing is to feed them to zombies. You got to starve the zombies for a few days... then they'll go through bone like butter—so you must be wary of any Universe who keeps zombies on hand. They'll go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about eight minutes. That means a single zombie can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute. Hence the expression, 'greedy as a zombie'." [citation]

NOTE: Although we have no proof BPD suspects Mr. Ormgud's zombies have been running amok through multiple universes. Indeed, the agency's usage of time-space-dimensional skiffs and the 'misplacing' of hundreds of zombies seems to bear out our theory. [see Walking Dead, Marvel Zombies and Welcome to Tranquility]

The parasomnian Lupin seeks to shatter all illusions. "Yesss, yesss, it's quite reasonable to believe that after a hero slamsss through ssseveral buildings, throwsss a car and collapsesss a bridge that the bystandersss *ahem* will not only be breathing but break into a happy dance. Oh yesss," he intoned, "And after that we'll all sssay 'lookey, parachutesss like from GI Joe'."

Mr Wolfe expressed a concern that heroes would be seen as--well, less heroic. "Don't blame the heroes," he said. "Our orders come from a higher authority an' the heroes, poor buggers, have no idea. We blank 'em." He pulled out a cylindrical apparatus with a flashing light at one end to illustrate his point. "The only one we don't blank is Batman—y'kin guess why...identity crises and such—I hear he struggles with it. Aye, tha' greater good can really be a bitch."