While Kandi Luthor, née Kent, was breathlessly commiserating with Sweet Pea on how each of them would fulfil his wifely duties with his new husband, Kandi's lover from a different life was getting into a tight spot of her own...

Lois Lane struggled in the hands of the A.I.M. operatives. "Let me go, you beekeper freaks!" They dragged her into a vast chamber filled with arcane machinery, serving some unknown, fiendish design. She glanced around, awed at the sights.

"What have you brought to me?" a voice buzzed from above. Lois looked up and saw a shape descending. It looked like a head with atrophied limbs dangling from it. As it drew closer, Lois could see that its arms and legs were human sized, but its head was massive, with a cybernetic shell to hold it to its hover-rig. "Ahhh, so this is the reporter that has been snooping around. I am MODOK. You are as beautiful as I had anticipated, my dear Lois. Not yet as beautiful as I shall make you, however."

Lois recoiled from MODOK's touch. "Don't touch me, freak!" she spat.

"Mmm, you will soon crave my touch," MODOK said with a grin. "Begin the conversion process!"

"What?" Lois shouted as a tube descended and sealed her inside. Strange devices descended from the ceiling and began to bombard her with energy. Others used microlasers to cut her clothes away.

"What... are... you... doing?" Lois groaned, transfixed. She could feel her mind expanding, intensifying, accelerating... It felt like knowledge was being poured into her head like water into a bucket. Her clothes fell away, as did her hair! Her smooth cranium swelled as her brain grew larger and larger. A new body-hugging metal suit was fitted to her, like flexible armor that covered her from the neck down.

Lois tried to resist, but the rush of intellect was intoxicating. She could feel her sense of morality diminishing, withering away, like a vestigal limb, to make room for a new sense of purpose: world conquest. The mutagenic rays had awakened her. The tube retracted.

"I understand now," she said, steam wisping away from her oblong, egg-shaped head. "I denounce my old life! Lois Lane is dead!" she spoke, smiling at MODOK. "We are of a kind now, MODOK. Henceforth, I shall be LOIS: the Logical Organism Intent on Subjugation!"

The two of them began to laugh.

***

Starfox, also known to others as Eros of Titan, was lounging on a chair on some far-distant pleasure planet, sipping a fizzy beverage and soaking up the rays of the binary star the world orbited. A shadow passed over him and he felt a familiar, terrifying presence.

"Hello, brother," Thanos, the Mad Titan rumbled, picking up Eros one handed, his fist around the red-haired Avenger's throat. "Don't speak. I wouldn't want you to ply on my emotions the way you've done so on thousands of other worlds. I know my brother's handiwork when I see it. 'Tis  all across the galaxy, like a signature."

Eros tried to choke out an answer, shaking his head at Thanos's accusation, his eyes bulging. He had no idea what Thanos was talking about!

"Oh, do not deny it," Thanos grinned, his eyes gleaming like polished obsidian. "I am not angry, far from it. In fact, I mean to thank you. Death has rejected me far too often, so I went searching for a new love, and found her, on Earth, of all places. She is, like I, an alien to that backwater world, but she has such potential for power that our attraction was inevitable. She even gave herself a grandiose title to draw the adoration of those she would deign to protect, and adopted a human name to hide among the ignorant masses. She called herself 'Karen Starr,' or 'Power Girl.' Can you imagine?"

Thanos chuckled, and Eros felt a pang of fear. It was a ghastly sound. Another shadow drifted down to alight beside Thanos with preternatural grace. "Ah, here she is now. I took the liberty of activating her own Deviant genes, so to better match my own temperament. Is she not beautiful?"

***

She-Hulk looked over the dossier on her opponent. She flipped through the criminal history, reading a litany of gruesome charges: "Murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, arson, assault with a deadly weapon, grand larceny... hey, how come these charges never stick?"

The jade giantess stood up and smoothed out her suit. She put the file in her briefcase. "Well, he won't be copping an insanity plea on this one. The police have him at the scene, there's fibers of that purple suit of his on the murder victim, and the gun was still in his hand."

At the couthouse, the gallery was packed as Jen glanced over her notes one last time from the prosecutor's desk. She heard murmurs through the crowd as her opponent was led down the the aisle. Her mouth curled up into a smile as she read the information. This clown was representing himself! No wonder: any lawyer who took his case would probably end up dead if he lost or a pariah if he won. The bailiffs sat him down at the defense and She-Hulk looked over at him.

She was instantly smitten.

Her heart pounded as she looked at him. Somewhere in her mind she knew he was ugly, with that twisted smile and chalk-white skin. His hair was a swirl of green and his curled lips were red as blood. But there was something about him: the cocky way he sat, tapping out a tune with his cuffed hands, the mad glint in his eye, his wiry frame, like a human scarecrow... Jen Walters suppressed a moan. She was in love! More than that, her body was aching for his touch. The very idea was absurd, and she couldn't help but giggle.

The Joker caught the sound and looked her way, but She-Hulk glanced back down at her papers, trying to collect herself. "Get it together, Jen," She muttered. "You're putting this lunatic on trial, remember?"

The judge tapped his gavel. "This court will come to order. We will now hear opening statements."