THE WATCHMEN FILES
Score: 7.4 / 10 
11: The Secret Origin of Lord Smartypants
Who??? If you don't know who any of these people are, you clearly need a scorecard.
So as Splotchface and Captain Pudgey approach Lord Smartypants' Antarctic hideout, Lord Smartypants watches them on his giant TV screens. They're still far too far away to worry about so he switches over to 'Married With Children'.
Splotchey and Pudgey continue to try and work out just what, exactly, they should do when they arrive at Smartypants HQ.
"... I vote we break his fingers and call him 'effete'."
"I think we should make him tell us the details of his nefarious plan," suggests Captain Pudgey, with his usual tedium.
"Hurm," says Splotchey. "I vote we break his fingers and call him 'effete'."
As these two squabble, Lord Smartypants invites his loyal manservants into his Room o'Plants to hear him regale them all with his secret origin.
"Sigh," sighs Manservant One.
"Every week he tells us about his secret origin," complains Manservant Two.
"If only he could come up with a fresh twist on it," wishes a hopeful Manservant Three.
But it's a futile wish, for Lord Smartypants sits them down and explains to them yet again how he came to be so very, very smart that he can sit in a Room o'Plants while being in the middle of the South Pole.
It turns out that Lord Smartypants was born to a normal, everyday couple, but was blessed with hyper-intelligence. He therefore very hyper-intelligently gave away all his inheritance when his parents died and went backpacking through Turkey.
Oh, Lord Smartypants, who else could behave as intelligently as you? Apart from countless hordes of twenty year old backpackers, obviously.
Cut back to New York and the News Vendor and the Pirate Comic Reading Kid continue to do their thing (ie vending news and reading pirate comics respectively). There's also inexplicable squabbling between lesbians. New York. Madhouse.
Back to Lord Smartypants and he decides that as the climax of his backpacking tour of Turkey that he will get extremely high on hashish. Oh, Lord Smartypants, that is so very smart.
While high on the giggle weed, Lord Smartypants decides to become a superhero. Amazingly, when he straightens up he still thinks it's a good idea, so that's what he does.
"So tedious has this tale been that all three manservants have died."
And that's the end of the first part of his secret origin story. So tedious has this tale been that all three manservants have died.
"That's a shame," says Lord Smartypants, and lets down the windows of his Room o'Plants in grief, allowing snow to come in and ruin everything. For somebody so smart, Lord Smartypants sure can be careless.
Meanwhile, back in New York, more supporting characters show up, including Dr Sensible (Splotchey's prison shrink from issue 6) and his wife, Mrs Sensible. News Vendor points them over to the corner where the Supporting Characters Convention will soon be beginning.
Back to the South Pole and Splotchey and Pudgey have broken into Lord Smartypants' Headquarters. They rather rudely interrupt his dinner and try to kill him, so he beats the snot out of the pair of them. Perfectly understandable.
He then ups the cruelty level by telling them the second half of his origin story.
It turns out that Lord Smartypants' doobie-induced foray into superherodom met with instant success. He beat up common criminals and then got into a fight with The Dead Comedian all within the first week of coming down.
But he found it all mysteriously unsatisfying until The Dead Comedian pointed out that within thirty years, a nuclear conflagration would inevitably destroy everybody.
The hilarity of this joke had inspired Lord Smartypants to think more carefully about how one might best use superheroic hyper-intelligence.
"Oh shut up!!" says Splotchey. "We've all heard your origin story over and over and over again!!"
"No we haven't, Splotch," says Pudgey. "This is a new bit."
"I don't care," shrieks Splotchface. "It's soooooooooo boring."
"Well, how rude," says Lord Smartypants and punches Splotchey in the head to emphasise the point.
Back in New York, Detective FarTooSharp and Detective BleedinObvious have both shown up, which seems to be just about everybody, so let's head back to the South Pole and see what's going to happen to them all.
"Thank you," says Lord Smartypants and then goes on to explain how he's built a giant psychic space monster on the island (hence all the foreshadowing in earlier issues) and how The Dead Comedian found the island, which was why Lord Smartypants had to kill him, and how he then faked his own assassination attempt for the hell of it and then how he intended to teleport the giant psychic space monster into the middle of New York and kill all the supporting characters.
"Hahaha!!" says Captain Pudgey. "That's a fantastic joke. No wonder The Dead Comedian was jealous. Hahaha."
"Hurm," says Splotchey.
"But seriously," says Pudgey. "What are you really up to? When were you going to pull this funny, funny joke?"
"'Going to'?" says Lord Smartypants. "I did it half an hour ago."
"Oh," says Pudgey.
And back in New York, we see all the supporting characters get wiped out.
And that is that. Another excellent issue, with excellent exposition from the very excellent Lord Smartypants. Total Score: Excellent.
Next Issue: The Grand Finale
Begone,
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