Chaotic Evil: Foolkiller

Following in the footsteps of a costumed assassin called Foolkiller (Man-Thing #3-4), a self-appointed successor adopted the Foolkiller persona and granted himself poetic license to murder anyone he deemed a fool. For his first target, the new Foolkiller assassinated the supervillain Blockbuster (Omega the Unknown #9).

Foolkiller next arrived at Nighthawk's ranch intent on murdering the serial killer Lunatik (Defenders #73), only to attack the Defenders for looking foolish in a recent televised documentary. Foolkiller escaped from the heroes but not without setting fire to their headquarters (#74-75). Foolkiller's idiosyncratic criteria for dispensing violence would fit with an interpretation of Chaotic Evil using the alignment system from Dungeons & Dragons.

Lawful Good	Neutral Good	Chaotic Good
Lawful Neutral	True Neutral	Chaotic Neutral
Lawful Evil	Neutral Evil	Chaotic Evil

Listening to the Lunatik

Of all the opponents the Defenders faced, Lunatik was the most insufferable. As if being a serial killer wasn't bad enough, Lunatik persistently littered his speech with popular song lyrics and catch-phrases of the 1970s.

Growing up in that era, I got some satisfaction in recognizing when Lunatik was quoting the cuckoo bird from Cocoa Puffs or Mick Jagger from the Rolling Stones. But identifying the Lunatik's source material was no guarantee that he was making much sense. The Defenders, in fact, tried their hardest to tune him out.

Lunatik turned out to be not one man but several—each a splintered version of an extra-dimensional tyrant named Arisen Tyrk. The truth came out after drama professor Harrison Turk revealed that he too was one of the fragmented selves.

Reading between the lines, I now see the distracting use of quoted material in the Lunatik stories as an indirect indictment against popular culture.

The above image comes from Defenders #70, the issue when Professor Turk revealed he had a connection to Lunatik.