Not as stupid as their uniforms would suggest, the FEAR high council must insist upon evidence of the hero's demise before they'll fork over their game show winnings. Prepared for this kind of a "shrewd" business gambit, X fires back with the promise of the goofy looking crest Birdy wears on the forehead of his cowl as proof of the winged warrior's execution. Personally I'd require something more substantial, like videotape of the whole affair or Birdman's dismembered parts in a Hefty™ bag, but if they'll settle for some gawdy piece of mens' head jewelry, Vaevictis Asmadi... no, wait, that's a card in Magic: the Gathering... what am I thinking of? You know, the latin phrase for "buyer beware"?... oh yeah, "cavaet emptor". Hey, FEAR members? Cavaet emptor, okay? Okay.

With that the agreement is made and X is already writing out the checks for his past due rent, child support and gambling debts. Meanwhile, in the bird cage... or bird's nest... or bird's den... errr, whatever h e wants to call it, our hero receives word from Falcon 7 that the recent destruction of a rocket (or "robot cargo van" as these guys insist on calling it to make it sound more important) was the work of radio jamming waves from the remote island base of the man known simply as 'X'. So, instead of letting the proper authorities handle the problem, they call in Birdman to do the work for them since he works for free.

This all falls into X's plan perfectly (as such things always do in these situations) and his laser cannons hum in wait to unleash a little power charged whoop-ass on the helmed avian hero. Underestimating the good guy's powers though, X's defenses are made quick work of, blown to smithereens in a display of H-B stock explosion footage. When he finds himself face to face with the masked merc though, Birdy gets trapped in a stasis beam, completely paralyzed as X swipes the insignia from the the flying crusader's head. Common sense starts screaming at the back of my head and kicking me in the groin as I watch though, for two simple (yet extremely obvious) reasons.

Firstly, Birdman just stands and watches as X walks across the room they're standing in and slowly throws the switch to activate the stasis beam. WHY DOES HE DO THIS?! If a guy's looking to kill me (made obvious by the lasers he was shooting at my head 3 seconds prior) and if I can knock him flat and immobilize him, I'm going to do it as quickly as possible, allowing for the interrogations later! Apparently Hanna-Barbera's superheroes are as vacant as their backstories. Secondly, if X has the hero completely frozen in the grips of his stasis beam, why in the holy fuck of your Lord and Savior is he wasting his perfect opportunity to put a bullet in the mook's head?! He intends to (eventually) kill the guy anyway, dropping him into a dark room where the lack of solar energy will make him too weak to hold off the enclosing walls, leading to his famous impression of a pancake. That said, what's it matter if he just kills him in a more direct manner?! Obviously H-B supervillains are just as clueless as the guys and gals opposing them...

Whether X just doesn't have the stomach for getting his hands dirty (making him the most pathetic hired killer in the business) or he just never "graduated" from his "special" classes in school, the fact of the matter is that Birdy calls Avenger with some kind of high range audio transmitter stashed in the chest of his spandex suit. The overgrown canary pulls his master from the darkness of the room with a handy bird rescue rope, allowing the good guy to recharge his superhero solar batteries and pursue the bad guy. After a game of Mid-Air Opossum and surviving a volley of "four destructo-missiles", Birdy blows up X's getaway craft and leaves him stranded in the ocean for pick-up by the Coast Guard... who just happen to be patrolling in that particular area of the ocean's vast reaches at the time of the struggle. Avenger salvages Birdy's head broach from X and the two fly off happily together to some victorious jazz music to check in on their legal practice... oh wait, that wouldn't be for another 30 years or so...

Kudos to X the Eliminator for being one of the first supervillains to come out of the closet. Long before "Queer Eye" was making gay people respectable, X the Eliminator was putting on his pink and purple tights and hood, decked out like the gay older brother of Cobra Commander and striking the terror of homoerotic mercenary power into the hearts of spandex soldiers all over the world... well, into Birdman's heart anyway... then again, Birdy didn't exactly seem too terrified of the living incarnation of the 24th letter of the alphabet, so maybe it's time Mr. X remade his image. First of all, drop the 'X' part and just call yourself "The Eliminator", as this helps avoid the numerous 'X' related wisecracks that heroes like Spider-Man will no doubt assault you with while doing the same with their fists. Shit, since I've already made the blatant gay remarks, allow me to go all "Queer Eye" on this chump's ass... not literally of course... there's really no way of getting out of this 20ft deep chasm I've just manifested for myself, is there?

I didn't think so...

Okay, aside from the name change, the obvious next step is for El Eliminator to either (A) get a new outfit or (B) change the palette of his existing one. The hood and gloves would definitely fit the bad guy role better if they were black and red, not pink and red. But, with all the potential for folly that comes with something like a hood, let's just drop it entirely. Not sure what he looks like under there, but we need to cut his hair short, dye it jet black and spike it like there's no tomorrow. If he's all bald and shit under there? Well, let's Nair™ (or Nads™ may be more appropriate for less-than-subtle humor related reasons...) that coconut. cut a nice deep scar into it to make our man look less Vulture and more Colin Farrell ala Daredevil. Give him some ridiculous $800 pair of sunglasses and a chin bush and we're set! Of course, if his teeth aren't of the better quality (like, say, he's missing half of them because he can't afford toothpaste because he's such a crappy mercenary that he can't make any money), we can always "bling out" his mouth with a set of stainless steel choppers. Half the price of platinum teeth and ten times the usefulness in combat! Industrial strength dentures aside, by getting rid of the hood Eliminator will not only be showing off his new "killer" visage, but by not hiding his face the new look will also double as a showing of massive balls on our villain's part! What's more badass than saying, "Hey! I'm not afraid of the authorities! I don't need to hide my identity! Look at this face and despair you monkeys!"?! I'll tell ya what is: heavy armaments and a kung-fuck-you-up hand-to-hand offense.

Screw the crappy stasis "vice beam" and forget those big, clunky laser cannons. What the new and improved Eliminator needs is small arms he can easily conceal and carry in large numbers, along with deadly throwing knives, maybe an exploding bolo weapon and an extensive training in every form of martial arts training known to man. Granted, all this will cost The Artist Of Death Formerly Known As 'X' a pretty penny, but if he plans on bringing home those million dollar supervillain contracts, this is what it's gonna take. Trust me, as a God of Death and fanboy XXXL, I know how to get results and this is what it'll take for the new and improved Eliminator to go from homosexual bad guy punchline to slayer of Hanna-Barbarian super boobs.

As for this story itself, I like the idea of FEAR hiring outside killers to take out Birdman, but there's so much logistically wrong here that "suspending belief" just isn't gonna cut it for me this time. Birdman should've stopped X from strolling over to the control lever for the "vice beam" and X should've just put a metal slug through the back of Birdy's skull while he had him completely paralyzed, end of story. A true nitpicker will no doubt notice a hundred other things to foam at the mouth about (I can think of two more off the top of my head right now), so consider my prior statement a merciful one at that. If story content were fat, this story would be one of those undead bulimia cases from an episode of "Montel Williams": all skin and bones and far too gross for anyone to look at, let alone ever find appealing in any sense of the word... unless you're a high school biology teacher for whom the school budgeting committee refuses to pony up the dough to buy a new model skeleton for your classroom.

Kids today are accused of suffering from barely-there attention spans, yet the superhero toons of the days of our parents (provided they fall into that "40-60" range of which my own definitely do) were no more than 10 minutes in length and consisted of little more than "Hello hero! I am this week's villain, and I shall destroy you! Wait, what are doing with your arms there? I insist you don't lift your arms! Stop that! What's that light your hands are emitting?! BWARGH!!!*". Back then ADD was still a thorn in the collective sides of the teachers of America, they just didn't have a name for it yet...