Punchline

Alignment: Villain

Faction: Shadow Axis, Syndicate 7

Dave Zorbavic was better-known locally as Zorbo the Magnificent, a clown entertainer at kids’ parties. Zorbo’s bright persona and painted-on smile hid the truth of Dave’s existence – his life was falling apart. He had recently learned that his wife was having an affair. Work was drying up, so he was defaulting on his mortgage and he could barely afford to keep his car moving. Dave could not see a way out.

On his drive home from his first party clown job in weeks, Dave took a shortcut through a bad part of town – he knew he shouldn’t, but he had run out of gas money a week earlier. Suddenly Dave was caught in the middle of a super slug-fest. As earth-shaking blows were traded between Iron Armstrong and The Brute, the street cracked apart and the ground caved in beneath Dave’s car. When the plummeting vehicle finally crashed to a halt, Dave thanked every deity he could name that his beat-up old jalopy had protected him in the fall and had not exploded into flame – maybe there was even less gas in the tank than he had thought.

Climbing out of his wrecked car, Dave could hear the din of super-battle above, and assumed the supers had not noticed what had happened to him. Looking around, Dave found himself what he could only think of as an abandoned super-lair, and in front of him, something caught what little light penetrated from the street above. Approaching tentatively, he found two gleaming golden power gloves fallen from a smashed glass case. At last Dave thought that maybe his luck had turned. He found the power shift and the flared into life. In that moment Punchline was born, and he would make the world pay.

These days Punchline is a heavy-hitting Villain threat, regularly on the night-time news following his latest solo caper or job with the Shadow Axis or Syndicate 7. No matter how many times he gets captured it seems he always manages to escape before too long and every time he does he is able to somehow reclaim his golden power gloves.

“You’re the joke and here’s the Punchline!”

Punchline – Legends of The Cowl #19.