Abelard Snazz

Background

Advertisement

Powers & Abilities

Abelard Snazz possesses multiple brains, which makes him truly genius. No physics, mathematics or engineering problem is too big, and no project insurmountable.

Using scientific principles only he understands, he can create anything from time and dimension-travelling machines to neural disruptors and giant robots. This is done seemingly from only spare parts or common electronics.

Snazz also possesses the gift of gab. Thus, he can enthusiastically talk people into starting up various insane, flawed projects. Despite his extreme genius his enthusiasm makes him miss some obvious plan in his designs with catastrophic consequences.

History

In the beginning Snazz used to have his think-tank company headquarters on the planet Twopp. To solve its rampant crime problem, as contracted by the leaders of the planet, he designed big police robots. These, however, went too far in their literal interpretation of the law. After having arrested all criminals, they soon started harassing the citizenry for minor crimes.

Snazz tried to rectify the situation by building criminal robots. This resulted in a planetary robotic war where the citizenry were caught in the middle. And so Snazz designed innocent robot bystanders to take their place.

Very soon the planet was populated almost entirely by robots caught in an insane war. The human colonists eventually all left the planet in space ships. The leadership at this point was so tired of Snazz and his insane antics that they ejected him out the air-shuttle into free space [AD2000 #189-190 – Final solution].

Advertisement

He’s a genius

This was not to be the end, however. A space cruiser owned by a Hoolio Moolabar happened to pass by. Hoolio had lost all his money in gambling and was in deep trouble. Snazz, of course, offered to help. He came up with a time machine which he created out of space emergency rations and radio spares.

Snazz, Edwin and Hoolio then went to the planet Beteldryve to gamble. When Snazz lost he went back in time to instead gamble on the winning number. He repeated this time and again, until they were very rich. Snazz ordered a door guard to get them a space cruiser, but the man refused. So Snazz proposed that they gamble about it using a coin toss.

The guard, however, cheated using an Acme Probability scrambler, and beat the odds every time until Snazz always betting on the normally favorable odds was ruined. Meanwhile his servant Edwin had gone and broken the time circuitry. Snazz suggested that he repair and then do it all over again.

Hoolio had had enough, refusing to get any more debts. He thus used the repaired time machine to send Snazz and Edwin back in time to when they had been freely floating in space. This time Hoolio’s space cruiser did not rescue them. Therefore, the problems of suffocation started all over again [AD2000 #209 – The Return of the Two-storey Brain].

He’s a frozen genius

Unusually lucky at that point, a tiny meteor struck his suit’s thermostat, smashing it. This dropped his body temperature from 98.6 degrees to absolute zero in a matter of seconds. Frozen solid, Snazz went into suspended animation… for two thousand years. This is when a tribe of space-farers, the Farbians, happened to pass by.

Catching him, they thawed him up. Upon seeing his double set of eyes the Farbians immediately mistook him for one of their gods, Toglub of the Two-Fold Gaze.

The robot servant had been reduced to a pile of junk over that long time. So Abelard tossed him into space through an air-lock.

The Farbians were a people with a history of problems of celestial magnitude. They first had had to leave their world of origin when a giant alien eradicated their culture and made the planet inhabitable. The survivors fled to a lush paradise planet. But that turned out to be in the way of the unstoppable Platinum Horde of Karbong on their endless rampage.

The next planet got eaten by space-termites. The one after that was invaded by Gawk tourists. Their final destination, Farbus, was a tiny, barely habitable mudball of a planet. Again, they had trouble because their prophesized end in the form of three catastrophes was approaching.

He’s a problem-solving genius

• First, inedible Farbian crottle threatened to overgrow the planet, which destroyed their economy.
• Second, they had an energy crisis.
• Third, a massive black hole was approaching their planet from space.

And so they turned to the genius of Snazz for help ! Their customs also dictated that should this “god” fail to solve their problem he would be killed, which gave Snazz some added incentive to solve the case.

While studying the crottle, Snazz found Farbian crottle-worms all around. These being were apparently the most saintly and good-natured beings in the known universe. To Snazz, this appeared to be the solution to the whole mess. He designed a Virtue-Converter, a machine capable of transforming good thoughts into an unlimited supply of energy. This took care of the energy crisis.

The machine could also be sold to other civilizations that would thus need Farbian crottle and their worms to power it. This solved the Farbian economic crisis.

The black hole needed another solution. Snazz realized that it should be possible to stitch it up using a stream of cohesive neutrinos, which would be aimed by a faster-than-light space-ship powered by Farbian crottleworms.

In time, the first and second crises were solved, and then came the turn for finishing the black hole. However, while they were stitching up the black hole Snazz refused to share credit with anyone, least of all the little worms who were powering the machine. He insulted the worms straight to their faces and they didn’t take the matter lightly.

The worms got upset, which resulted in the ship loosing its power before the task was completed. Thus, the ship was sucked into the black hole, and that was that. [AD2000 #237-238 – The Double-Decker Dome strikes back].

He’s a far-reaching genius

Except it wasn’t. The black hole led to another dimension where Snazz landed in a large civilization. People from all over the universe where trying to get home from there again. Snazz reported to the authorities to this effect also (behind him was standing Amelia Earhart, heh !).

Hearing about his previous occupation as the god of the Farbians, they sent Snazz to the Bide-a-wee Twilight Dimension for Disinherited Deities.

There Snazz met up with Thoth and Odin. They explained to him that they now we were old gods go when people stop worshipping them. Realizing their predicament as being eternally trapped there, he came up with the solution that they should be reinvented and reintroduced to advanced civilizations as gods for the new ages.

As such the gods teleported out of there using their last vestiges of power and were presented anew to the universe outside.

Ares became the god of arcade war machines. Demeter became the goddess of health food. Apollo became the god of disco. Neptune started a water ski-ing cult. Eros became the god of romantic fiction, and so on. It was a huge success, but people soon began to take the new religions too far, and started sacrificing people to them.

Realizing his mistake, Snazz tried to stop it all and told the gods to stop it all. Naturally, this failed completely. Snazz was instead sentenced to a rock for all eternity for his trouble-making.

Desperate, Snazz suggested that they do something more modern in line with their more modern images, and the gods agreed. Thus, Snazz was sentenced to a place of bleak desolation from which he would not be delivered until he had solved a (Rubik’s) cube of Zeus’s design.

Happy with his sentence, because there isn’t a cube in the universe that Snazz couldn’t solve in 30 seconds tops, Snazz soon appeared on a flat world. But he could find no cube [AD2000 #245 – Halfway to Paradise].

He’s a creative genius

Snazz soon realized that he was standing on top of a huge cube, which no man could turn. It then took him 12;000 years to mine enough metal to build a huge crane, and another 30,000 to actually build it. Solving the cube was tricky and took almost another six million years. Now, he was finally on the way to solving the cube when two hippie-like visitors arrived.

The two were from Amnesty Intergalactic. They had come to liberate Snazz from his toil. Being dragged away from there just as he was about to do his final finishing move, Snazz had to be drugged. He woke up much later on Earth.

The Earth was a very peaceful and mellow place after California had won World War 26. Having little to do in a technological paradise, Snazz soon sought new creative avenues to put his mind to, or he would go crazy. He came up with giant robot tennis players. So people could enjoy the sport completely mellowed out in a colossal stadium as a real communal sharing experience.

Snazz programmed the robot players with the personalities and skills of old, great 20^th century tennis players. His mistake was that he had chosen John McEnroe and a few others, who were all famous for being a little highly strung. Eventually, the giant robots got really upset about the match judging and started to tear down the stadium.

Upset about the catastrophe, the citizenry opted to involve Snazz to a physical confrontation scenario and threw him into the city’s giant jacuzzi [AD2000 #254 – The Multi-storey Mind Mellows Out].

He’s a responsible genius

Just as Snazz was about to hit the water and drown he was teleported away. He soon found himself in front of the Manager of the Universe, and had to stand trial for all his actions.

While having his crimes read to him he quickly rebuilt his wrist-watch into a neuron-whisk, and thus made his escape. Freedom was short as he soon entered the B-type sun manufacturing chambers, was knocked out, and soon found himself in the trial room again.

It had been no trial, however, but merely an identity check. Snazz had been brought there for the celebrations of his six millionth birthday, an unusually high age for any Earthman. His present was nothing as grand as he would have wanted, but his old robot servant Edwin, now rebuilt and repaired.

Unhappy with his lot in life, Snazz soon started to dismantle Edwin ! [AD2000 #299 – Genius in Pain].

Description

Snazz is a mutant possessing a longer than usual head. he also has a double tier of eyes, the vision of which seems to provoke a mild but annoying headache in viewers after even limited exposure. While irritating, his energy and brilliant insights will evoke feelings of either disgust or wonder in his public.

Physically he is rather weak and unassuming. He sometimes wears reading glasses, but only when really needed because he’s afraid of being called eight-eyes like at school.

Personality

He’s Abelard Snazz, mutant mastermind, president of Think Inc., the Idea Man… he’s a genius ! His one-man company works with creating solutions to any problem his clients may have, and given his extreme reputation of intelligence such clients tend to be very influential people capable of very, very large projects.

Snazz likes to sip on a Think-Drink, which is a Sirian sentient milk-shake. This aids his concentration when solving a problem.

Snazz has a huge ego, or so it would appear. He always introduces himself to everyone as being a genius. Or perhaps he has really bad self-confidence, and overcompensates for that. For example, when he was once mistaken for an elder god he nearly believed it himself, and accepted praise as his natural due.

He had actually been waiting for the day when everybody realized how terrific he is.

Other traits

When stressed out he tends to get double headaches.

He has no real friends except for his worshipping robot servant.

Whatever the case, he has enthusiasm in spades (yes, he’s snazzy), and people and even gods tend to stop and listen to his rants and grand plans.

Snazz is a man of truly great visions. In many ways, he personifies irresponsible science run amok. However, his ideas, while fantastic, never work out quite like they should. Given the scale of his projects, they always, despite his good intentions, result in the downfall of entire civilizations ! Undeniably, Snazz is misguided upon an often apocalyptic scale.

The most misguided of them all, however, are the ones who are irredeemably stupid enough to listen to his over the top ideas.

So in short: Snazz is fundamentally ridiculous and full of seemingly good ideas that lead inevitably to catastrophe (at the end of an adventure he tends to get the Mistrust or Hunted drawback in that particular area or time !).

Quotes

“Er, actually, the name is Snazz. Abelard Snazz. I’m a genius !”

“Wait ! I have it ! I see… a time machine ! I see a tiny time machine ! A tiny time machine capable of sending us back in time the moment we lose a game so that we can play again, already knowing the outcome ! It’s brilliant ! Brilliant !”

“Of course I’m right” I’m always right ! That’s why I’m a god and they’re just a tangle of mindless invertebrates !”

“Yes ! I begin to see it all ! I see gods ! I see mod gods ! It’s brilliant ! Brilliant !”

Snazz: (floating in empty space) “I see… empty air cylinders ! I see… oxygen starvation ! I see a slow and painful death ! What do you think, Edwin?”
Edwin: “You’re a genius, master !”

Snazz: (pondering a problem) “I see robots ! I see big robots” I see big police robots ! Big police robots… fast, efficient, and armed to the teeth ! Programmed to make unlimited arrests ! To end crime on this planet once and for all ! Lemme see… a diode here… a veeblefetzer there… yes, that should do it… there ! What do you think?”
The clients: “You’re a genius, master !  It… it’s brilliant ! Stupendous !”

DC Universe History

Abelard Snazz is a walking catastrophe. Snazz first arrived on Earth after he was rescued in outer space from suffocation by none other than Manga Khan (Edwin got left behind). Khan soon tired of his antics and left him on a backwater planet that they were passing by, namely Earth.

Accidentally, due to Snazz’s intervention, L-Ron got left behind, who now serves as his poor robot servant as Snazz sets up shop to fix any problems that he can find. Which eventually will lead to a Crisis-like event by accident. Thus moving on to the next Earth, he will soon have a reputation as a scourge of the DC multi-verse.

Given his dimension hopping tendencies, he is bound to return to the original DC Universe Earth sooner or later to everyone’s chagrin. Is he perhaps a mutant relative of the Brainiac lineage as his arrogance, Coluan-like name and intellect suggests? You’d ask Brainiac 5, but he would bluntly deny any such relationship of course !

By Dr. Peter S Piispanen.

Source of Character: 2000AD #189, 190, 209, 237, 238, 245, 254 & 299 & notes in the Twisted Times graphic novel, by Alan Moore.

Helper(s): Frank Murdock.

Writeup completed on the 19^th of May, 2012.