Podcasts/Episode 237

The Letters Page: Episode 237
Writers' Room: Justice Comics #638

Original Source

• Libsyn Audio

Primary Topic

Busybody

Intro

We're finally gonna talk about this lady!

Show Notes:

Run Time: 1:29:59

Baring any bear-related incidents, we're finally covering Busybody! Listen to the episode, and let us know if it was worth the wait! We think it was... but we also thought we told you about this months ago. So, you know, that's on us.

To make up for our goof, we talk about a LOT of different issues of Sentinel Comics, so there's that? Hope that helps? Can you find it in your hearts to forgive us?

Join us next week for Episode #238, a Writers’ Room episode about a hostile takeover of Montgomery Industries! Get your questions in now!

Characters Mentioned

• Darkstrife
• Painstake
• Æternus
• Lusithar
• Amber Cunningham
• Wipeout
• Bunker Busters
• Crisis Man
• Death-Con
• F.I.L.T.E.R.
• The Original Death-Con
• Scholar
• Count Barzakh

Summary

Overview

• Enough fooling around. We’re finally getting told about Busybody, first mentioned on the air in passing during the Darkstrife and Painstake Foes episode as a “well, there’s Busybody, but you already know about her” throw-away line, which they didn’t realize was inaccurate since they’d developed her during an off-the-air video call about something else, not a prior Letters Page recording.
• There is still some stuff to hammer out regarding her, so they will still get to do some “on the air” creation for her. Her first appearance is Justice Comics #637 (June 2008) which is probably the cover for today’s episode, but they could also see doing one of the following 2 issues as well. That three-issue arc is the first Busybody story. There is a person they still need to name - the woman who becomes Busybody. She first shows up in the early ’90s and is retconned to be the person who becomes Busybody [in looking through possible issues they mention an “Æternal Torment” story]. They put her in the Pain and Strife limited series in ’93 [we also get a name drop of the heroes’ friend named Amber Cunningham]. Issue #2 is where they put her because issue #1 is still in Japan - at the end of #1 they leave Japan, then in #2 they arrive in San Alonso and run into demon stuff.
• Christopher suggests Kayla as a name, which was a popular name in the ’90s, but does it read as “too young”? She’s an administrative assistant type (she later finds out that the people she’s an assistant for are demons and develops a harsh edge to her) and they imagine her in her 20s here (and late 20s, maybe early 30s when she shows up as Busybody). What’s her last name? Maretti? Adam likes that more than he likes Kayla to go with it - Kayla seems too “nice”. Christopher points out that she was nice in this original appearance. They spitball a few more surnames and land on Kayla Russo.
• So, the story is that pain and strife follow the “twins” wherever they go as they bounce from town to town trying to outrun trouble. They eventually perform a desperate ritual to hide themselves from Æternus before fleeing once again. That was issue #1. The second issue seem them wind up in San Alonso where Zane works at a video rental store and Akari works as a waitress in a diner. They share a small apartment and try to keep their heads down. Unfortunately, Æternus has already had a sizable presence in San Alonso [the movie industry attracts demonic interests? you don’t say?] and the pair begin seeing signs of its presence. At first they think that Æternus has found them, but it’s unrelated. As long as they can wipe out any Æternal influences they come across before they are able to report their presence, they’re still hidden. At the end of the issue, a blind woman (with the white cane and everything) turns to look at them. This turns out to be Amber Cunningham, mentioned in passing above. Y’know - they’re going to move Kayla’s first appearance to #3 instead. Issue #2 is establishing Zane and Akari’s place in this new city and we need more demon-point-of-view stuff to introduce Kayla.
• Getting into that, we start #3 with the blind lady showing up at both of their places of work asking questions. When discussing their days later they figure something is off about her and decide to track her down. After deciding to do so, they open their door to leave the apartment and she’s right there mid-knock. Amber Cunningham was born blind, but can “see” things related to Æternus. Our heroes show up as beacons, but they also look different from the usual demon stuff she can see. Up until now she knows that she can see all of this bad stuff but hasn’t been able to do anything about it.
• Also in this issue, we get demon stuff. Well, it’s not all “demon stuff” in terms of what that phrase brings to mind. Some of it is high-rise, media mogul, “yeah, I’m a demon, but I still have to actually run this media company” stuff. Sure, most of the company is demons, but they have some mortal employees too - an example of which is their administrative assistant Kayla Russo. It’s not presented as this important thing, just showcasing what the situation is from a perspective that the heroes aren’t privy to and in the process introducing this minor character of Kayla who isn’t seen again for 15 years.
• Issue #4 (the last issue of this limited series) is the big showdown between the twins and the demon who appears to be in charge of this media company (Lusithar - mentioned in the Darkstrife and Painstake Foes episode as another character they’d already come up with before that episode). They think he’s been around before this limited series - possibly even pre-dating the twins. Having him run a media company is a new plot for him, though. They don’t so much “defeat” him as they just manage to banish him back to Æternus along with all of the demons working in the company.
• They told us that story so that they could tell us this one. In 2008 somebody has the idea for a Darkstrife and Painstake story and the new villain Busybody who was once Kayla Russo. We start with this company. Many readers might not remember the original media company, but there is an editorial note pointing to this old limited series from a decade and a half prior if you really care to track it down. You don’t need to know the previous story. What you need to know is that Kayla Russo was an industrious assistant for this major media company. She was putting in the time and climbing the ladder. Said ladder was kicked out from under her when it was revealed that most of the company’s employees were demons and then they all got banished, leaving the company in tatters. In the chaos that ensued, she just kind of… assumed control. Nobody else knows what’s going on, so she may as well be the one to take the reins. She doesn’t have enough resources on hand to just keep things going as they were, though, so she takes the various pieces she has to work with and makes it into something she can manage with what she has.
• What she does with it is become an information broker. A “demonic media company” had a lot of energy devoted to finding people who could be targeted/manipulated (because they’re all about gaining power and influence while hurting people in the process), so that’s the kinds of information that she originally had on hand. Here in the 2008 story, we’re told that she knew that the company was up to some shady stuff and eventually realized that there was actual demon stuff going on, and was okay with it. It was the best job she’d ever had - interesting, engaging, coworkers who worked hard and played hard. She liked these demon people.
• Anyway, she sees the way forward and using the resources left to her she starts putting together this information brokerage. She needs to hire more employees since the vast majority of her old coworkers vanished. That’s where she discovers the problem: the demons were just better workers than these humans. Humans have to sleep and tend to have this pesky “morality” thing that gets in the way of this work. Everybody she hires lets her down as just not being as good as demons. You know who was as good as the demons? Kayla Russo - she had made it in that company despite being a human. She can either turn to otherworldly sources to find acceptable workers or she can just do it herself.
• She opts for the latter. Rather than hiring more “people”, she just gets busy. She adds more screens to her computers and eventually starts implanting more cybernetics into herself to give her additional limbs and sensory apparatus. Why hire people to look at screens and push buttons when you can just implant machinery into your body so that you can watch more screens and push more buttons yourself? She becomes Busybody, named such because not only is she getting up into everyone’s business, but her body is literally very busy now doing all of the things.
• We probably get all of that in bits and pieces related to the reader over the course of JC #637. We start it with the stuff “in the past” where she’s picking up the pieces in the fallout of the demons disappearing. Then somewhere in the middle we get her hiring help and a bit later she fires them because they’re “garbage”. We end with her augmenting herself and becoming Busybody.
• Interspersed with that we have Darkstrife and Painstake doing stuff in San Alonso. Throughout the issue we get those flashbacks in slightly desaturated colors or something (visual shorthand of some sort showing that they’re flashbacks), but the “present” with the heroes has them dealing with the fact that their identities have been blown. Someone is “selling them out” to demonic contacts or other otherworldly entities that wind up attacking them or otherwise impeding their “normal” lives (as in, it’s the same kinds of things they usually deal with as heroes, but they’re showing up “at the twins’ door” instead). That’s a through-line for this three-issue arc. In #639 we have a thing where she projects Darkstrife’s face on all of the various screens and signage at a busy intersection in San Alonso along with a “this guy is a demon and his name is Zane” or similar. Her angle isn’t to fight them, but to ruin their lives. They have to leave town after that.
• She’s somehow determined that the twins are “hidden” from Æternal forces directly, but that doesn’t prevent her from pointing things in their direction and just blow their cover by making them very public. She’s doing Æternal work via science and technology since she lacks any direct arcane knowledge or skill. That’s fine; she’ll just do things the hard way. Issue #637 is the flashbacks with Kayla alternating with vignettes of how she’s making the heroes’ lives difficult. Then at the end of the issue the flashbacks “catch up” with the present which is where we see her as Busybody orchestrating all of it.
• That means that the physical confrontation between them is in #638. The result of that, as shown in the next issue, is the realization that “punching her didn’t solve our problem.” We know they fight her multiple times after this as well. In this issue the twins, with the aid of Amber, follow the problems to their source and determine that Busybody is behind it. They drive her off, but that doesn’t resolve the problem since she still has information on them. Maybe they even have her dead-to-rights at the end of the fight, which is when she reveals that she’s set up a dead-man’s-switch situation where if they defeat her all of their information will go out anyway. They let her go, but then in #639 she goes ahead and releases all of it anyway.
• So, this three-issue arc in Justice Comics is from June-August 2008 and ends with them leaving San Alonso. We next catch up to them in the Soulseekers limited series that starts in March 2009 (which starts with their soul being corrupted by Æternus or something and they have to deal with that).
• They kind of think that #638 is the cover issue for this week since it’s the one where you’d have Busybody on the cover. She’s got all of these assorted cybernetic limbs - they’re modular/transforming so they can be all kinds of things. They can joint together to do a bigger thing, or split into lots of spindly little ones. She’s creepy - think “techno-demon”.

Questions

• The Darkstrife and Painstake Foes episode got me thinking: we actually have a fair number of story lines for these two already and I wonder what book were they in, which issues, what did they entail, when did they come out?
  • Æternal Torment: That story is in 1998 and was its own limited series Æternal Torment. It’s a 6-issue series beginning in May and ends in October.
  • Pain and Strife: The June-September 1993 Limited series discussed in the Overview.
  • Soulseekers: A 6-issue Limited series from March-August 2009. They’ve talked about this a little above, but a Writers’ Room would be better in terms of getting more info.
• As we all know, the famous Busybody story took place in San Alonso and that, for a time at least, Darkstrife and Painstake were living there; why did they move there? How long did they live there? Were they still in the general area when OblivAeon happened? As mentioned above, in the Pain and Strife series they were moving around a lot and incidentally ruining people’s lives everywhere they stopped and so realized that they needed to do something drastic. That took the form of the ritual to hide them, and a big move from Japan to the US. Now, they wound up running into demon stuff there too, but it wasn’t there because of them and so they started fighting the demons. They’re in Japan from their introduction in ’88 through this story in ’93. Then they’re in San Alonso from then until the Busybody story in 2008. From that point through the end of the Multiverse era they’re on the run, moving from town to town again. At least this time they’ve still got the ritual hiding them from demonic attention, but their identities are public and so they have to deal with that whole thing. So, no, they were not living there when OblivAeon happened, but they liked the town and so were probably sad about its destruction. They probably return to San Lazarus. It seems like it would be a good place for them.
• We also know that Wipeout lived there, but after she stopped making regular appearances in Mystery Comics did she pop up in other books when stories happened in San Alonso? Did she ever team up with Darkstrife and Painstake in a tonally-confused mashup story? Can we expect her to show up again in the RPG? She doesn’t never show up, but her appearances are very rare. She was not a terribly popular character and was mostly forgotten. She has a little “flash in the pan” popularity, but then is largely eclipsed by Unity in terms of filling a niche and Unity has a sizable fan base, which Wipeout never had. They don’t think that she ever meets the twins; the best they can think of is that one of her rare appearances is in a back-up story in a book and happens to be simultaneous with a Darkstrife and Painstake story so we see another perspective on a demon thing in San Alonso. It does the revisionist history thing saying that while the twins were doing their thing there were more demons over here that she handles. For the RPG: hope springs eternal. It’s important to hold onto hope.
• Are there any other heroes hanging out in San Alonso? It’s a place that people go, but is not a major “home”. Darkstrife and Painstake are there for 15 years and that’s a pretty long stint, but other than that it’s mostly “Oh, we’ll have Guise be there for a little while” kinds of stuff. Lots of heroes have “San Alonso residency” for brief periods. They could see doing a San Alonso Creative Process to flesh it out a bit more. It’s probably a good idea just generally to talk through it more before we come back around to it for DE. Even so, it will likely mainly be the Champion Studios back lot again. At the very least we’ll have San Lazarus in the Urban Settings RPG book which will likely at least give some background details on the prior city.
• [A compliment on how evocative “Busybody” is prompted a discussion about how proud they were on that one: they didn’t come up with the name first and then build a character for it (and they do have a pile of names they’ve come up with ahead of time that they might pick from after making a character that’s a good fit). They invented this character and then came up with Busybody as the perfect name for her in that it works for both the “information broker” angle and the body-that’s-very-busy one.]
• The name brings to mind various possibilities: somebody who is literally too busy for her own body (split personality/possessed/body-swapped), somebody with powers based on her being overworked/stressed out, or maybe (based on the usual definition of the word) somebody involved with secrets and getting up into people’s business or maybe mind reading - how did I do? Pretty good! You touched on a bunch of angles they went with her individually.
• What are some of your favorite names you’ve come up with? Will you ever surpass Lionel Manning? They’ll probably never beat Lionel Manning becoming Lion Man. They’re very proud of Tachyon - it’s a very good name for a physicist with super speed. Legacy’s really good too - it’s not as good in isolation, but in conjunction with the character(s) behind it, it’s perfect. Parse is one that works on several levels. One that hits less well because of when it was made, but that they still appreciate is K.N.Y.F.E. The ones that are just “eh” are ones like the Ennead - it’s fine, but it’s just what it says on the tin. Captain Cosmic is a perfect hero name given the era he’s from and the fact that it was a reused Golden Age character name, but it’s not “clever” in the way that the really good ones are. Bunker’s not bad, but it doesn’t do anything on its own. It’s better with the history that it used to be the name of a tank that broke down every issue. Fanatic is good as a name that she didn’t give herself. Biomancer is a classic. Guise is fun as there’s a lot of wordplay options. Hippo is fine but Hippocalypse is amazing. Radioactivist is great. Miss Information is too. They think that they’re slightly better at hero names since we spend more time with the characters. Blood Countess Bathory is a great name, but they can’t exactly take credit for that one (thanks, history). Akash'Bhuta is a fun one they made up from whole cloth out of some Sanskrit words. Ambuscade is good once you know everything that goes with it.
• Given the unsurprising revelation that Bunker’s fought a bunch of knock-offs over the years, has a writer ever had a “legion of evil Bunkers” story where they team up, or a “Super Bunker” built from parts from all of the defeated suits? They don’t think the latter happened. Having a fight that’s “a bunch of evil knock-offs team up against him” is a fun idea for a later story since the Bunker suit’s gotten more powerful over the years. The team can be called the Bunker Busters. They don’t even necessarily all have to be “evil Bunkers”, just returning foes he’s fought in the past. Fright Train isn’t one of them. Neither is Crisis Man. They argue a bit about when to put that story (Christopher thought late, like the early 2010s to have the most time to accumulate these jerks, but Adam suggests the ’80s as a prime time for this sort of thing). They land on a 2 issue story - April and May of ’89 in Justice Comics (#407-8).
• How about a mastermind (probably a Soviet engineer) who’s actually behind the various C-listers in knock-off Bunker suits? Like, this guy is obsessed with building something that can defeat Bunker (mirroring Tyler Vance’s own tendency to tinker with/improve his suit), but he just happens to supply them to other random guys rather than piloting them himself - maybe he could be used as a means of critiquing the Military-Industrial Complex like you wanted to? Crisis Man fills that narrative role via throwing increasingly-upgraded cyborgs at him which is met by his increasingly-upgraded suit. It also has Tyler Vance in the “I’m taking the risk by piloting this thing” role vs. the REMF status of Crisis Man.
• Were the conflicts in the Bunker comics mostly “in the field” or did they examine the military/civilian or military/government interactions (stuff like “allowing women in combat roles” or defense contractors, etc.)? The early stories are much more tied into the military directly (the tank stuff is almost entirely in the field rather than even interacting with “the brass”). Once he’s in the Bunker suit there’s still military stuff, but also the constraints of Bunker being a “super soldier” (even if Tyler Vance isn’t) where maybe he tries to go take care of a problem that the brass doesn’t want him to, but that turns out to be a problem for reasons he wasn’t aware of, etc. As public opinion of the military changes over time (and especially through the Vietnam era) we get a bunch of different takes on all of that. Bunker/Freedom Five stories are rarely about any of the military stuff at all. Mostly those are things like a b-plot in a book where the military wants him to do something, but the rest of the team has to do something else.
• What exactly is the relationship between Crisis Man, the Death-Con program, and F.I.L.T.E.R.? Where did the program start? Did Crisis Man ever work for F.I.L.T.E.R.? The Death-Con program is from Crisis Man and was in conjunction with F.I.L.T.E.R. early on, but by the time they started getting involved in space/time/multiverse stuff, Crisis Man wasn’t part of that but he still had some contacts there. Crisis Man and F.I.L.T.E.R. are only tangentially related, but Crisis Man and Death-Con are basically synonymous. They’re his thing.
• Is the unnamed enemy on DE Bunker’s Recharge Mode a Death-Con robot or Crisis Man himself (or something else)? What’s the “plan” that Bunker mentions that he’ll need more power for in the card’s quote? That is a Death-Con from the first set that Bunker fights - in fact, it’s the first one that Bunker encounters as that issue is the first appearance of the Death-Con cyborgs other than the original that appeared in earlier Tempest stories. The plan is that since that cyborg’s energy whip drains power from Bunker’s suit whenever it hits him, he’ll drop into recharge mode and get so much power on hand such that the next time he’s hit it will (hopefully) overload the cyborg.
• Will that sympathetic not-a-villain that you started to invent for the Bunker Foes episode show up in the RPG? Who can say, time will tell. They don’t have definitive plans for that character right now. They’d like to do something with him at some point, but he’s just one of the general pile of “things they’d like to do at some point.” It was as an example on the air of their process where they go down a rabbit hole a bit before shelving the idea for later instead.
• Does the comic where Scholar “cuts loose” spend any time talking about why he doesn’t usually do so? Is he too powerful/concerned about collateral damage? Is he worried about the person he becomes when he wields power like that? Is he simply efficient - refusing to shove when a nudge will suffice? All of the above. They’re all angles that are explored with him. Scholar is all “measured responses” - that’s who he is. The least common of them is him being worried about they type of person he becomes. In so many ways, Scholar is an opposite type of person to K.N.Y.F.E.
• Why would Count Barzakh’s activities cause Scholar to have the response he does here? If it was the “preying on innocents” angle, why doesn’t he have some choice words with any number of corporations around the world? Was this a calculated response? This was a knee-jerk response to seeing just how terrible things were - seeing these people having their lives separated from their bodies hit a bit too closely to what happened to him when he became the Scholar and being “removed” from history - to the point where he lost his family. It was deeply personal to him in that moment.
• How did he justify it? Did anyone confront him regarding it later? Were there any consequences for “breaking a/his code”? Was this a one-time incident or did it represent a change in his approach for a time? The justification was in the moment and he didn’t “compromise” anything and didn’t have anybody to “answer to” later. What we get out of it is seeing Count Barzakh scared. It’s not an ongoing “and now the Scholar is more reckless” change for any length of time.
• He seems like the kind of guy who understands that sometimes you lose a fight, but does he ever feel regret at the idea that he could do more to help people if he were to let loose more often? Was this incident a reason for him to team up with Guise - some kind of atonement? You’re reading into things a bit there with the Guise thing. His relationship with Guise really is just kind of a mentorship and is about trying to rein in a hero who has trouble not letting loose with whatever occurs to him. He definitely knows that you will lose some fights, but he’s going to do everything he can to protect innocents. If that means he dies, so be it, but knowing that you lose sometimes doesn’t mean that he’ll do anything less than his best/everything he’s got to save people. “Letting loose” in this context isn’t specifically “using all of his power” - he does that a bunch without “letting loose”. What they mean here is more “losing his cool” and how that changes how he goes about things.
• So, in the context of this story “letting loose” entailed: tearing the roof off of the facility, turning Count Barzakh into glass, and throwing him through the rift in reality - is that outside of the usual approach for Scholar? Yeah.
• How far? Considerably.
• Is “transmuting his enemies” out of the ordinary? Yes.
• Does he usually have a “no killing” code and/or is chucking a transmuted-into-something-fragile enemy through a dimensional rift an example of what “letting loose” looks like? This whole thing was what letting loose looks like. His approach is usually much more subtle. His transmutation effects are generally himself or objects in his vicinity. Transmuting another person into a mostly inert substance is pretty sketchy. They don’t think he has a no-killing code - few of the heroes have something as specific as that. Now, most heroes don’t kill, but that’s more a function of it being something “heroes don’t do” rather than a specific decision they’ve made for themselves. Like, it’s something they’ll do if there’s no other option (but there’s always another option).
• [Response to a bit last week where they were unsure what the various parts of ammunition are called: The whole thing that you put into your gun so that it will go “bang!” is a “cartridge”. The lead doohickey at the front of the cartridge is the “bullet”. Sometimes the bullet has a coating of a harder metal like copper which is called the “jacket”. The brass part at the back that holds the propellant is the “case” or “casing”. The back end of the case has a round “primer” which is what ignites the propellant when struck by the weapon’s hammer. There are a few terms that apply only to shotguns: instead of a cartridge, shotguns use “shells” (the reasons for this are largely historical). The red paper/plastic part of a shell is the “hull” and it contains either small lead balls called “shot” or a single large bullet called a “slug”. Behind that is some paper “wadding” which helps push all of the shot evenly when the weapon is fired. Behind the wadding is the usual propellant and primer. Note the use of “propellant” instead of “gunpowder” because if we’re being technical the latter refers to a specific set of chemicals that aren’t in wide use anymore.] They did know most of that once you spell it out, but they note that “bullet” is used colloquially all the time to refer to the whole unit, not just the lead projectile.
• How do different Sentinel Comics characters sit on a couch?
  • Fanatic: doesn’t sit down. If somebody asked her to sit down (say, Haka asking her to so he could tell her something important) she would still likely just squat down rather than sit on the couch. The wings make it awkward. If the couch was necessary and the couch wasn’t up against the wall she could sit very stiff and primly (almost awkwardly so) in the middle with her wings behind her over the back of the couch if the back is low enough.
  • Ansel G. Moreau: lounges; taking up the whole thing (think pin-up art).
  • The Southwest Sentinels: Mainstay, Idealist, and Dr. Medico on the couch together. Writhe over in the corner being weird. Mainstay sits on a couch with one arm on an armrest and the other draped along the back of the couch - kicks one foot up on the coffee table. Dr. Medico sits “very normal style”. Idealist sits on it cross-legged. Writhe is weird, as noted.
  • Wager Master: turns himself into a couch.
  • Expatriette: sits on it very hunched forward. She’s not comfortable. Leaning forward, feet planted on the ground, forearms on knees. She’s in a position where she can be on her feet instantly.
  • Setback: trips over the couch somehow.
  • Sky-Scraper: Stuck in between the cushions if she’s small enough. She’s self-conscious at normal sizes that her bone spikes tear up the upholstery.
  • Tempest: “Normal”.
  • Argent Adept: Sits near the armrest with one leg flung over the armrest. Alternately, sitting on the armrest with one foot supported on the couch seat.
  • Biomancer: Has a couch made of flesh and when he sits on it, it engulfs him and puts him in a cocoon. A “womb” if you will.
  • Absolute Zero: Lays flat on it or just sits. Whatever.
  • Tachyon: Doesn’t sit. If she must, she’s got that thing where one leg is bouncing up and down rapidly.
  • Ermine: Sits on the back with her feet on the seat. Alternately, middle of the couch with both arms on the back to either side of her, legs crossed.
  • Spite: He probably sleeps on a couch when he sleeps at all. Some stained, broken couch that he lays on with his feet sticking out over the armrest.
  • Haka: Very carefully.
  • Chairman: Won’t let anything touch him that’s not Corinthian Leather. He sits upright with one leg crossed over the other (ankle of one on the knee of the other).
  • Baron Blade: Sits like a vulture. Expatriette is ready to get up instantly, but Blade is only sitting there contemplatively. He’s mulling something over.
  • Unity: Flops down and starts pulling stuff out of her messenger bag, quickly taking up all available space (including between/under the cushions as small parts fall down in there). If you’ve spent an hour with Unity you’ll find that there’s little pieces of metal detritus left everywhere.
  • Guise: Whatever the funniest way to sit is at the time. Frequently that’s on the back (possibly facing the wrong direction).
  • Tyler Vance: A more normal lounge - “I’m gonna watch some TV” rather than for how he looks.
  • Tantrum: She attempts to have adult body language despite being stuck in a child’s body. This frequently looks like she’s a kid pretending to be a grown-up. Despite that, they think she’d have a hard time not pulling her knees up in front of her with her arms around her legs. She just finds herself doing it because it’s comfortable if you’re small enough for it to be practical. Her legs aren’t long enough for sitting back on the couch normally to work for her.

Cover Discussion

• Issue #638 is the obvious choice since it’s the one that you can put Busybody on. Just “attack form” for her and call it a day? It’s a showcase where we see gun arms and stabby arms, etc. Just make her look cool/inhuman.