Character Assassin (comic story)

Summary
The Master arrives at a mansion, serving as a social club for all the villains and horrors of Victorian-era fiction, wanting to join the club and meet the elusive Chairman.

Forced by the unseen Chairman to stand before an arena of these bizarre creatures, he loses a vote to join their club (being "white balled") after calling out their fiction identities. The Master quickly dispatches three of the villains who try to eliminate him, easily killing the pirate Jas and a great tiger, and then he rips away the "curtain" of reality to find the Chairman - and creator of these beings - is no more than Professor Moriarty!

Moriarty's self-belief was strong enough to allow him to find the controlling headband used to control the Land, and decide to surround himself with peers. But the Master casually talks the headband from him, dismissing Moriarty as the least of these characters, merely a plot device created to get rid of Sherlock Holmes (and failing at that!). He sends the villain back to his written death at the Reichenbach Falls.

An impressed vampire Count speaks for all the villains in offering the Master the role of Chairman, but the Master must decline. However, as they've amused him, he leaves them with a gift - a glimpse at the fiction of the 20th Century, in the form of Martian tripods bringing about their destruction!

The Master knows the headband's technology will prove useful in the real world, but is briefly tempted to remain in the Land and use the headband's power to rule as a god. He dismisses this thought: he'd never be satisfied with a life of mere fiction...

Characters

 * The Master

Original Print Details (Publication with page count and closing captions)

 * 1) DWM Issue 331 (7)

Reprints

 * None

Continuity

 * While eventually drawn as an "iconic" image of the Master, it's meant to be the Roger Delgado incarnation.
 * This version of the Master would presumably put this story before Conundrum, in terms of the Land of Fiction.