Guess who? – Chap. 3, Act 4, Strip 33

I’m terribly sorry, but there’s another obligatory part of this discussion we have to slog through. Since Captain Emo wears a mask, our heroes are legally required to deliver a bag of assorted random speculation regarding the guy’s identity. No, they’re not going to come to a conclusion – that would make the whole exercise of having a masked character futile – but they’re required to throw a few names out there, ideally of persons the audience is already suspecting. The real name can, but needn’t, be included, but no matter whether it is, the heroes will not settle on it or any of the other options.

In B-movies, a mask always hides a character’s identity completely until the staged revelation. Despite the fact that a mask only hides a person’s face, and not their size, build, hair, skintone and -type, voice and mannerisms, even the masked characters siblings or parents are never able to figure it out. This is the case because B-movie masks come standard with ‘super-hypnosis’ lenses – these give the person wearing the mask the same capability to make people overlook the obvious Superman uses to prevent people from finding out he’s Clark Kent.

As far as the specific suggestions of our four heroes are concerned, I think we can readily dismiss the Professor’s and Zorba’s guesses. The Professor is the “over-thinking intellectual” and Zorba is currently “blinded by greed”, so the scriptwriter would never assign a correct choice to either of them. Mopey’s and Biff’s ideas are still in the running, though, since Mopey is currently an “outsider going against the others’ oppinion” and Biff is “innocent and simple-minded”. Either one would be considered sufficient legitimisation to be right, although it’s not absolutely compelling in either case.

We can thus conclude: Captain Emo is either Father John Captain McKenzie, Big Bird or somebody else, however definitely not Dolph Lundgren/He-Man or C3PO. I’m glad we’ve cleared that up.

More on Thursday.

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