The costume is my signature. The Mark I chose to let the Batmans enemies know why this was being done. Why these men were dying. You have to die so I can live Frederick Stone
One of the (many) problems with travelling around the world and learning from expert survivalists, toxicologists, criminals and martial artists is that at least a couple of them are bound to be absolutely bat-sh!t crazy. Frederick Stone, the demolitions expert, certainly fits this description. After he found out that Batman had used a Triple Insert Manoeuvre something known only to Stone and the one young man he taught it to (Bruce Wayne with a false name/disguise), Stone deduced, logically enough, that he had unwittingly helped to train The Batman. Of course, he then became terrified that, if he could figure out his role in The Batmans birth, then so could The Joker, Two-Face, Poison Ivy, or any other deranged member of Batmans rogues gallery. To this end, Stone decided to fake his own death and then hunt down and murder every other man responsible for Batmans creation. He found inventive ways to dress his victims as Batman before he killed them and then left the corpses for the police to find. It was an insane plan, no doubt about it, but, before he was brought to justice, he was able to murder more than a few of Batmans mentors, including a bodybuilder named LaSalle, a gymnast named Peter Allison, Olympic crossbow champion Raphael DiGiorda Austrian Toxicologist Aurelius Boch, as well as stock car racer Mark Jenner and a chemist named Kingsley. By the time Batman identified and tracked down the killer, Stone had changed his name to Jerry Sawyer and was planning to marry a woman and settle down with her. His zeal to keep her safe from the imagined threats posed by Batmans many enemies was what had driven him to murder. He was working as a florist in his new identity, which is how Batman eventually caught him (there were traces of a rare flower on his shirt). Frederick Stone first appeared in the John Byrne/Jim Aparo story The Many Deaths of The Batman (May July 1989). It is another wonderfully weird and inventive tale (including a silent issue i.e. no captions or thought bubbles and only one line of dialogue, delivered by a distraught Commissioner Gordon) that deserves to be read at least once...
I am a professional author and lifelong comic books/pro wrestling fan. I also work as a journalist as well as writing comic books (I also draw), screenplays, stage plays, songs and prose fiction.
I don't generally read or reply to comments here on What Culture (too many trolls!), but if you follow my Twitter (@heyquicksilver), I'll talk to you all day long!
If you are interested in reading more of my stuff, you can find it on http://quicksilverstories.weebly.com/ (my personal site, which has other wrestling/comics/pop culture stuff on it).
I also write for FLiCK http://www.flickonline.co.uk/flicktion, which is the best place to read my fiction work.
Oh yeah - I'm about to become a Dad for the first time, so if my stuff seems more sentimental than usual - blame it on that!
Finally, I sincerely appreciate every single read I get. So if you're reading this, thank you, you've made me feel like Shakespeare for a day! (see what I mean?)
Latcho Drom,
- CQ
