Earth 10 Rogues Gallery 6: the Question

The final rogues’ gallery is, much like Zatava’s, not really a rogues’ gallery at all. Instead they are the outcroppings of the 6-7 issue conspiracy arcs that the Question has uncovered in his travels.

The initial story arc has to do with Hub City, and how the city’s political structure is corrupted on a purely human level. He manages through the course of the first film noir arc to deal with one aspect of that, installing a new police chief in Isadore ‘Izzy’ O’tool, restoring some sense of justice to the city, but the city itself is still monstrously corrupt. The only real supernatural element in this arc is a voodoo priest, just called Hogan, who appears across two issues.

The second story arc is such a radical departure that you might be wondering if you’re reading the same book – the Question goes to New England where he is investigating the disappearance of one of his old contacts. This kicks off a bizarre conspiracy concerning Cotton Mather’s stolen notebooks of supernatural events, the new appearance of a truly evil witch cult and a hidden city in rural New England made up of clockwork puritans whose outcast members reveal that some of the blue blood of the Brahmans is in fact gear lubricant.

The third story arc is back to hub city, where the Question starts tracking down the Mikado, a serial killer hunting the evil men of the city and killing them in ironically or philosophically appropriate ways. While Vic Sage might agree with the list of targets, the Mikado’s hilariously horrific means can’t justify the ends.

The fourth story arc has the Question in Machu Pichu, unravelling a decades old conspiracy of silence around the city’s discovery and what was really under the ground there. The long term ramifications of this will turn into the Calendar Man arc in the Justice Alliance, which will be the first the faceless occultist works with the world’s premier super-team. (But that’s a couple of years in the future).

The fifth story arc is back to Hub City, where the ghosts of the Mikado’s murders have to be put down using Orgone generators, Hindi magic and bare knuckled courage.

The sixth story arc is another assault on the conspiracy that runs the city, as the Question is now armed with knowledge ripped from the ghosts of the Mikado’s villains using tellurically powered Ouija board interrogation. This further reveals the corruption of the city and actually opens the door for possible improvements with the appearance of a federal task force. This arc also guest stars a well-known federal agent in Adam MacTaggart.