"Blackout" - Last part, by Lance Falk and Eric Clark

From: Chance <chance_at_unix.infoserve.net>
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 06:22:25 -0700 (PDT)

ACT THREE

     T-Bone awakes to find himself in Blackout's massive and complex
control center. In true movie cereal (sic) tradition, Blackout gloats
and taunts his captive audience. A few key phrases give Chance enough
clues to uncover the secret identity of "Blackout"...none other than
Elliot Kliban! Kliban unmasks and brags about the effectiveness of his
dual identity. Government drone during the day (using his position in
the Enforcers to misdirect them) and meglomaniacal arch-villian at
night! "As Kliban, I warned you to stay away, now that you know my
secret, you must DIE!" raves Elliot.

     Meanwhile, Razor has reached the Turbokat. Activating it's VTOL
hover mode, he sets off in search of his pal. (Periodically we cut to
him blasting his way through the caverns, fighting robot defence drones
all the while).

     With minutes to go before "Blackout" uses his gravity beam to steal
a third and final generator, T-Bone asks the Enforcer scientist "how did
a weenie like you ever build this amazing complex with it's array of
advanced and evil technology?" (*author's note* don't worry guys, my real
dialogue will be a lot more natural than THIS!)

     "found it!" laughs Kliban. (in flashback) he tells of stumbling
upon this complex during a routine enforcer investigation, months ago.
"It had been abandoned for decades, but everything still worked
perfectly!" An evil scientist made it his 'nine lives work' constructing
the complex and it's diabolical devices in order to blackmail the city
government (a very young Manx, enjoying his first term) out of fifteen
million dollars. "The funny thing is, on the eve of implementing his
scheme, the ORIGINAL Blackout won THIRTY million in the city lottery!"

     "He just covered everyting in covers, left the keys and instruction
manual on the floor, and split to retire on some tropical island. He
also left a note wishing good luck to whoever finds this joint so his
life's work won't be for nothing!" (It should be noted that Kliban bases
his whole 'villian persona' on old movies he watched as a kid!)

     Kliban finishes-up his narrative to throw the switch, when the
Turbokat explodes through a wall into the command chamber! An entire
SQUADRON of robot sentries are on his heels! Razor blasts the main
control panel into slag. Elliot panics. Now he has NO WAY to control
the sentries! (OR open up an exit from the place!)

     A well placed shot frees T-Bone, who grabs the scrawny wanna be
world-beater and stuffs him into the jet. When all three cats are
sealed-up in the Turbokat, Razor gets a crazy idea to save them all. The
x-ray beamer reveals that the ocean is on the other side of the far stone
wall of the control center.

     The daredevil weapons officer blasts a jet-sized hole in the wall,
causing the sea to rush in the chamber, with metal-tearing force! T-Bone
puts the 'pedal to the Metal' and powers the jet against the tide and out
into open ocean. The flood of water causes the entire subterranean
complex to explode in a spectacular display of underwater pyrotechnics!
Amazingly, the Turbokat bursts from teh ocean into open sky and begins
it's long flight home.

*author's note again*

     I KNOW the physics arre kind of ridiculous, but it is dramatic and
     this IS a cartoon!

     Weeks later, the Swatkats receive a (forwarded) letter from a remote
tropical island paradise, it reads:

Dear Swatkats,

     "Thanks for shutting down that Kliban guy, it's weenies like him
that gives us mad scientists a bad name!

                                respectfully yours,

                                        The REAL Blackout.


THE END

***MY NOTES***

     The comic impertinence of naming the villian "Elliot Kliban" is
typical of Lance's sense of humour (remember, "Mutilor" was the name of a
pal's pet Goldfish!). For those of us who don't already know, there was
a character that was quite popular in the mid-80's called "Kliban's Cat",
which for a while was right up there in popularity with "Garfield" and
had a number of books published. "Kliban's Cat" usually appeared as a
one panel daily/weekly along the lines of "The Far Side" (if I recall).

 _____________________________________________________________________________
 "Using my amazing powers of intellect, I've concluded that life was more fun
  when I was stupid...at least there were more TV shows to watch..."
                     "Monty" from the daily strip "Robotman"
 _____________________________________________________________________________
Received on Mon Aug 28 1995 - 09:09:49 PDT