[2012] Dr. A-Beam and Zet

Throwback Thursday #34

Welcome, one and all, to another edition of Throwback Thursdays!

Dr. A-Beam is actually among the first villains I came up with. In 2005-ish, I started a comic story. In 2006, I was like "Oh wait! I completely forgot about that!" and finished it. Then, in 2007, I coloured it. The villain? Dr. A-Beam, whose ambition was to blow up the world with a huge bomb with no regard for his own survival. Did I mention I was 8 when I wrote this? He had three robots as his minions. The third (and least) of them was Zet, a tiny little thing that ran around meekly obeying A-Beam's every command and calling him Sir. A-Beam himself is very short, so Zet is even smaller than you might guess from the picture above.

In 2011, in the Red Book period, I brought Zet back as his own thing, in The Return of Zet. He had his own robot minion (which was ludicrously huge; possibly 50 feet tall), and now he was in charge, he'd gained his own personality. He wanted to use his gradually built-up arsenal of... uh... gadgets? to take over the world. His plan wasn't really explained, but his motives were. Whoops. Brownie and co. followed him into another dimension which was a crude copy of our own. Zet made himself ginormous with a growth ray, but he stomped on it in pursuit of Brownie and co. and it zapped him down to about 30 feet. Then its energy field got inside his damaged casing, blablabla, explosion, blablabla, lost arm, blablabla, legs melted, blablabla, left there to think about his life choices, blablabla.

Over the next few books, there were a few single-page events that set up his escape and return to our own dimension, which led to the story The Red Planet (2012). This was covered in the ill-fated Brownie webcomic. In an underwater base, Zet plotted his revenge. Then he found Dr. A-Beam in an insane asylum and they both hatched a plot to dispose of Brownie once and for all: lure him to Mars and suck all the air out of the room. Why Mars? I HAVE NO IDEA! Anyway, their plan failed when the mysterious crystal absorbed them.

This drawing was some kind of poster tied into the webcomic.

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