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Fourth Wall Abuse

Sprecan was doing it again.

And I thought my face ugly. This guy looks like a pair of ass cheeks fell in love with a platypus and had a beautiful baby boy.

It was about all The Dominator could do not to reach out and vaporize the little shit as he internal monologued. The only thing stopping The Dominator was a joint agreement between all of the denizens of the megacity, Metro-Topolos. Everyone – good, evil, and in between – had agreed, long ago when the hard truth was first discovered, that the fourth wall – that ephemeral, invisible barrier between their world and the world of the Creator – must never be breached.

“To acknowledge the wall,” the old unspoken saying went, “was to acknowledge inanity.” Which was to say, the population of Metro-Topolos spared themselves the recurrent pain of self-knowledge by simply continuing to pretend they were not characters drawn from the imaginations of greater beings.

This was all well and good, for a time. But then, in a cruel stroke, the Creator sent Sprecan. Goddamned, foul-mouthed, Sprecan – speaker of truths. From the very moment of Sprecan’s arrival, page 2 of Sprecan #1, as Sprecan fought the She-Wolf Lycanthra, it was clear to everyone how difficult life with Sprecan would be. In the middle of a battle, Sprecan paused time, freezing everything, himself included, turned to face an apparently random spot on the ground, and insulted Lycanthra’s skimpy war bikini.

In the middle of a battle! Word spread like wild fire – here was a anti-hero, already pushing definitional boundaries, who flagrantly broke the fourth wall! Sprecan didn’t just ignore the pact, he actively trampled on it.

Still, for a time the superheroes and supervillains held firm in the face of Sprecan’s wanton disregard for the stability of their shared reality. During a battle with the super hero team, Z-Squad, Sprecan expounded on the Z-squad’s dangerous resemblance to another set of famous, copyrighted superheroes.

I’m no lawyer, but I feel like the dude with unbreakable metal spikes coming out of his knuckles chomping on a cigar might go beyond the meaning of “fair use.”

Later, in a battle with the evil villain The Finisher, Sprecan remarked hurtfully on the epic killer’s infamously poorly drawn hands.

I mean, look at those fingers – they look like Spam stuffed into water balloons – who the hell is drawing this shit?

Soon enough, it seemed that every major and minor player in Metro-Topolos had had some encounter with Sprecan and left feeling not only badly about themselves, but about the nature of existence in general.

Only The Dominator had so far avoided Sprecan’s barbed asides, a feat he’d managed only because he had technically been “dead” for the last six years and was only just resurrected in The Dominator #500, released on the anniversary of his first appearance a decade earlier.

Now The Dominator faced off against Sprecan in the Cave of Frightful Will. Before the fight, The Dominator had been warned that Sprecan would totally disregard all normal rules of etiquette. He was told to expect that Sprecan would not only acknowledge the fourth wall, but pierce it regularly. Nonetheless, they said, The Dominator had to be strong and uphold the pact at all costs, lest the framework of society collapse.

The Dominator was having a tough time at it.

With a mighty swing of his electro-axe, the Dominator cleaved a six foot thick pillar of bedrock in twain, missing Sprecan by mere inches. The small man in the bright purple full body jump suit did a spinning leap over the glowing blade of The Dominator’s axe and landed in a crouch. As the Dominator swung the axe up and around to deliver a crushing overhead blow, Sprecan paused time yet again. The Dominator obliged him, stopping the axe mid strike, only a few feet away from Sprecan’s face.

Sprecan turned to his right and began,

I think I’ll have enchiladas later. I haven’t had enchiladas in months. Or maybe burritos

Time sped back to life and the axehead smashed into the ground where Sprecan had been only moments earlier. Sprecan leapt up on to the handle of the giant blade and ran up its length. As The Dominator lifted the axe into the air, Sprecan leapt off the tree trunk thick wood and pulled two pistols from his back holsters. He aimed them right at The Dominator’s gaping left eye and began to pull the trigger.

The Dominator could not believe he had been bested so easily. In a split second he prepared himself for yet another untimely and painful death.

Except the death never came. Instead, time froze yet again, and Sprecan, paused in mid air, guns poised, turned to the left.

…ohhh, or maybe gyro. God I love gyros – you ever get lamb gyro from those street carts? It gives me the shits everytime but I always go back . . .

As Sprecan droned on and on with his non-sequitor humor, The Dominator grew enraged. It was one thing to use this power to insult and demean, but quite another to treat even an enemy’s feelings with such abject disregard. Who was this small, unfeeling imbecile to torture The Dominator so? And for whom, really, was the Dominator unwilling to act? After all, he knew well enough the truth, as did everyone else. It was only their mutual inability to live with that truth that kept them silent in the face of Sprecan.

Well, The Dominator was done with silence.

Mid inner monologue, as Sprecan remained paused in the air, the Dominator threw caution to wind and quickly swatted Sprecan between the palms of two giant hands, as one might crush an errant mosquito. With a sickening crunch, Sprecan was instantly compressed into a thick, Sprecan colored paste, which The Dominator let drip off his hands and onto the floor.

Shaking his head and wiping Sprecan’s remnants off onto the leaves of a tall tree, The Dominator looked off the page and mumbled to the reader in a bright red text box:

Seriously, fuck that guy.

Then he picked up his axe and walked off page.

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