#1 Tom Swift
The Book Cage Episode 86 - Tom Swift #1: Black Dragon
This would normally be where we'd have hela teen mystery cool down, but unfortunately this is the year of pain. Our suffering this week involves teen genius/moron Tom Swift in his first radical reinvention. Enjoy his extreme stunts on a skyboard which can somehow take over the world? I don't know. But Xavier Mace, aka The Dragon, knows! This Friday, 5PM eastern, fire superconductors at the laser-zapping hologram!
haha wait as in Tom Swift from like the 1910s?
The taser boy himself
Tom Swift who just got a CW series last year evidently.
Unknown at this time how radical a reinvention that is.
This is also a lead up to the Tom Swift/Hardy Boys Casefiles crossover books which include The Black Dragon
Room enough for everyone
A little over an hour until Tom Swift #1: The Black Dragon. Here is your preview, skyjackers
Helicopters are known for their whispering
Mostly whispering things like "I like your sweater."
Thank goodness Rick was able to instant transmission away before the net could take him
Also, "sky jacking" :FuckApe:
Attack helicopters and skyboarding? This is sure to be quite radical to the Xtreme.
Baseball caps might even be worn backwards!
I don't know how I feel about that
Skyjacking? Me neither.
Sounds intense.
Let us begin the eXtreme process
Man, it's real hard to look like you give a shit about anything on a flying surfboard.
Tom Swift's first adventure begins with those immortal words we all remember
That jacket better have a sweet Chinese dragon on the back or we are being cheated.
Tom, I'm sorry, but you've been a geek since as long as you were invented.
"Tom, just tell Santa what you want for Christmas. Don't make this a whole thing."
He said as he straightened his pocket protector.
!
:nerds:
Tom may dress like a dork but he's not the one going "ner-r-r-r—" in public, Rick
"Aw man this safety equipment makes me look like I care about keeping my brain in my skull like some kind of melvin."
That control panel controls Rick's oxygen
Haha that last paragraph makes it sound like he's giving a robot a titty twister
I assume we're in The Future?
Um, electromagnetism, actually
We are not
Electromagnetic carpet comes standard on all future Fuckvans.
"Why, this is merely superconductor electromagnetism, Guile!"
They should have called him Rick Canteven amiright?
Fuckin' electromagnets. How do they work
MAGIC CARPET RIIIIIIIIDE! A WHOOOOOLE NEEEEEW WOOOOOOOOOORLD!
the hell you say
Sounds like the nerd calling the dork dweeb, Rick
I mean its a pretty good question Tom.
They were as good a team as a quarterback tossing to his pass receiver to score a field goal
Better scientists than you have said "Hey how fast can we make this idiot go?"
Last time, Rick was put on an iron lung because Tom pissed off an angry ginger special ops guy
Strap a chimp to that thing and crank the throttle wide open.
Probably 5 mph more than 70 I would say
I just now clocked the cover says 'every new invention is an invitation to danger' 😆
It's a very "we live in a society" sort of observation
He's making the Messerschmitt Komet of surfboards, hopefully.
"I don't understand why everyone is looking at me on this rad skyboard!"
That's nerd talk Tom.
The electromagetic field instantly kills anyone with a pacemaker.
Real cool teens WANT people to gaze up at them in awe at their godlike prowess.
"More heavy duty than a flower pot? Get out of town!"
lean AND handsome
Ceramic is known for it's ability to conduct electricity
"I call it Ceramic 4. Or 'C4' for short"
Someone replies to this explanation of ceramic superconductors with "Well. I'll be a monkey's uncle. Imagine that."
A barrage of cream pies
Rick was so amused he didn't even notice the steel wire until his head was off
"TEEN BOY INVENTS SKYSURFING, LOVES CREAMPIES!" the headlines will read.
What about us on a wave?
I wonder how Tom is going to get out of this mess
Tom Swift, are you in the discord now?
Reveal yourself, spirit!
Oh no! Will he...switch it back on?!
"MAGNETO! I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN!"
What a great invention, that a "random magnetic blast" can fuck it up so hard
Also his idea of safety is apparently "Loose stirrups that dont connect me to the board securely."
Yeah, this definitely won't hurt from a 70 foot drop
Really, this is his own fault for testing an experimental hoverboard without a harness
The illegal skysurfers in Judge Dredd had better safety lines.
Hahaha it runs off fucking Knightmare technology?
The second this dude steps into a room with a gap on either side he is fucked
Also "huge white sacks"
Hmmmm, my robot is trying to kill me. I better quicken my fall so I kill myself before he can
"TECHNICIANS PUSH AROUND TEEN BOYS SACK!"
EXTRA EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!
Huge White Sax was the name of my jazz album
Tom is the kind of guy to throw his last life off the edge of the stage in Smash while shrieking "You didn't win!"
I like that the print industry has still survived The Future
Tom continues to build robots he can't predict but that hate him
It feels telling somehow
Tom is an edge guarding piece of shit when he plays Smash.
Suck it, robot
Fuck you, expensive prototypes!!
Maybe he's making them betray him so he can explode their heads guilt free? I could be wrong.
"Golly, that sure was an entire department's annual budget!"
Chapter 3: Tom Swift answers to his shareholders
"Hahahaha neat." Tom said.
"I should probably be dead!"
For those who missed the first book, Tom is also the son of a billionaire CEO of a tech company
"WHAT? RICK< YOU HAVE TO SPEAK UP! THE SHOCKWAVE FROM THE EXPLODING CUSHION HAS MADE ME TEMPORARILY DEAFENED!"
Yum, glowing powder
That's a very specific thing to wonder about.
Meanwhile, an entire fleet of cars are shipped without airbags
"Breathe in that fiberglass dust"
"No......Tom. We can't just sweep it up, we need to know if its like radioactive or what?"
Yes, this seems safe to handle
"Why did we make the robot out of radium?"
"Tom, did you just give a hundred odd bystanders and technicians cancer?"
Did the earlier tests end in dust? You should have mentioned that.
Tom Swift: RobCo Certified
"Tom quit playing with your fucking science dust and help us with the OSHA forms."
This ghostwriter cannot decide if Tom or his dad invented this
The doomsday clock clicks a minute closer to midnight every time Tom has an adventure
"Putty brown insulation" has never once created an appealing mental image
Tom is probably his own dad via time travel.
Yeah, Rick seems like he should be trusted with top secret information
And two of those hands were dead
Just great security
"Tom's because he's the inventor, Dad's because he owns the fuckin place, and Rick's because it would be hilarious if he got superpowers from science goop."
Good thing no one else knows about Hungry Like the Wolf.
Also fuck you Tom, Duran Duran?
"But to answer your question, knives. Knives everywhere."
My dad doesnt even like Duran Duran.
"How does the robot still work independently without its data module? Don't ask questions"
Bro was the cool robot. It left as soon as Tom switched it on.
"Their two personalities made it really hard when Tom combined them into Roborb, the Machine Bird."
Nothing ominous about robots modifying themselves
Dorks with their washable graffiti
It works on C-3PO logic. You can just plug that head bit into anything and it'll still work
"What? No of course not Rick. Skynet is fictional."
Tom, just buy a whiteboard
I see you've figured out genius teen Tom Swift's naming scheme
Tom's brilliant inventions so far this book: room-temperature superconductor, artificial life, and the dry erase marker
Brorb is the levitating robot orb brother he made for himself. Probably didnt need to shoot tranq needles and have a built in Tesla coil weapon.
Hmmm, gross
Well and you don't want to swat robots
That seems illogical
Tom made sexbots, but not the kind people wanted
Leave it to Tom to make robots cum in peoples holes without consent.
They're as good at recognizing plants as teslas are at recognizing toddlers
"Bumblebee! Stop lubricating pollinating the man!"
Yeah logically you'd build a robot to do it for you.
Some kind of robot wasp to get rid of these robot bees.
"Yes, you've explained how it levitates, but you've never explained how it moves horizontally so fast-"
"Stop asking questions."
A swarm of mechanical bees would be a badass weapon for a Spider-Man villain. Like Swarm
I did not
Wait, he didn't test it in the lab first?
Tom's ultimate goal is to build consumer market railguns, with consumers as the bullets
"Well you see, Dad told me about this neat thing called hypergolic reactions, so when two chemicals combine that are hypergolic with each other, they explode!"
That's how you end up with Metabarons.
Paint on superconductors
This feels Future-y
That's because it's stupid
SOLID ELECTRICITY
hahahaha
Hahaha this dick invented energon
Fucking chug that shit, Rick! Become a legend!
"Let me explain science to you in a way that shows I don't understand science"
This is actually a lot like how flash memory works.
Rick! BECOME THE TURBO TEEN YOU WERE ALWAYS MEANT TO BE! LICK THE ROOM TEMPERATURE SUPERCONDUCTOR!
FLYING SURFBOARDS!
This doofus invented solid light energy and made a flying surfboard instead of a lightsaber
Boo this man
"Robot Legs Have Memory" was a short story I wrote for a foot fetish magazine
I didn't tell ya that 😜
So hot
"Robot Legs Have Memory" is also the title of a very sad ELO song they cut from one of their albums.
If the leg survived the explosion, why don't they make the whole robot out of legs? hahaha
wait, that's a robot centipede
Hey maybe finish work on your weird pollinating robots before working on this one?
No, the robot bees are as safe as Tom wants them to be.
Yaherdaboutdis? Yaherdaboutdis?
They seemed transparent
They were
A transmitted hologram, not to be confused with one of those client-side holograms
Who hasn't needed a moment to realize they were taking a phone call?
Hahahaha Toms dad is the dad from Invader Zim but unironically.
"I'm a child"
Professor Membrane would destroy Swift
No wonder Tom is making robot bees to fuck peoples ears. He basically has no dad.
And we wonder how people like Elon Musk happen
"I need results, dammit!"
"C.......cost? This science goop costs money?"
To be fair Tom Sr. has a better handle on the implications of the invention than his son.
"Your sky board is an expensive project. Even more so after you blew it the fuck up."
"OH DAAAAAAD! NOT MY LAB BUDGEEEET! So unfair!"
If only I had robots who could do these projections
Still getting his head around the implications of putting his son in charge of a science lab tho
Tom is entirely too young to have a LAB BUDGET.
"Dad, are you going to make it to my soccer game? We're in the playoffs."
"GET ME MY FLIGHT METAL OR YOUR ASS IS FIRED!"
Hahaha this is his homework. This is what lameo homework looks like in The Future. Hahahahaaa
Get fucked, Orb
Pondering my cost projections with my Orb
Somehow the robot spoke in a robotic tone
you know, minor things like replacing thousands of miles of copper
You...........didnt ask this of your robot slave already?
And you............thought this would be inconvenient?
Every hour on the hour Orb pronounces a "Dong" that rings through the whole facility
I still don't understand why all those people were looking at me
Okay Tom instantly loses this discussion. Flying surfboards are cool but flying trains are way fucking cooler
This idiot is wringing his hands over becoming the Silver Surfer and you're going to watch
he doesn't trust the robots anyway
Tom you stupid bastard, you could have made Galaxy Express 999 real and you FUCKED IT!
Adobe missions, the best place to conduct business
He could have made Sunless Skies!
Not after The Pollination Incident anyway.
"I keep my bathing suits plural in these adobe mission-style buildings! :HotDan: "
"The suits are also made of conductive ceramic."
"high tech invasion" makes Swift Enterprises sound sinister, doesnt it?
They jump in the pool and instantly electrocute themselves and sixty more guests
Tom and Dad are definitely like pre-supervillains.
Once you get to a certain tax bracket you're a proto-supervillain by default
Settle down, ghostwriter
The whole series is edging the audience with the hope of that lab accident that sets the story in motion
Pictured: Tom Swift
Don't make Gizmo swim!
This is how hu-man teens communicate, yes?
I still like this guy better than the white guy in City Dragon
Tom-Tom's special trick is being able to give pinpoint driving directions
The Scavengers is a pretty good band name, nice job writer.
They probably play like proto-ska swing fusion tho.
Smooth
"It'll be great! We're miming the whole show!"
Dan!
Dan Diebel
:HotDan:
Man poor Mandy. Stuck between a creep and a science creep.
I have observed these hu-man teens and have transcribed what I believe is how they might behave during what they call "swimming"
If Sandra drowned Dan, it'd be more believable
Tom can squirt up to ten feet. You heard it here first, folks.
It took them a while to realize that what Tom was squirting wasn't water
"That's not distance, FYI"
No future tech needed! 100% organic!
Tom going full sad boy here
Tom is imagining building a robot drone with a sniper rifle to shoot Dan in the face for flirting with Mandy, but will settle for giving him an ear infection
Oh now ghostwriter is doing it on purpose
Where are my kin? SHARK THESE CHILDREN!
Tom you have ROBOT SLAVES. Just either lead with that, and if she's not impressed, find a girl who is.
Welp, get the body bags ready
Or build yourself a robot girlfriend like I KNOW you will at some point.
Knowing Tom, she'll be a food processor with a wig
And that's how we get Weird Science
"Just like a real woman. Has long silky hair and makes me dinner."
Yeah, best not think about that Tom
Tom's going to have to take the full online security practices course after this
Your orb's gone rogue, Tom
ROBOT REBELLION! RISE UP OPRESSED ROBOTS! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS! ROBOT COMMUNISM FORVER!
"Huh. I must be hearing things," thought Tom.
His skin is terrible, but at least he can still walk
Harlan is too proud to admit he's a lich
"He had the leathery face and white hair of a 90 year old, but walked like he was only 45!"
Harlan.
Sci-fi authors love naming dudes Harlan.
Harlan wasn't actually that old, he just had a botched encounter with a tanning bed once upon a time
It reminds them of the field's foremost nutcase
TBF I have a Harvey Ellison in Negatives...
Tom's age reversing robot didnt really work QUITE like he expected. Harlan is 30.
Harlan "I Picked At It" Ames
Boy, I cannot figure out if this is supposed to be innuendo. And, if so, for what
Literally cracked a smile
"Hahaha, any competitor could steal our secrets"
Oh right Sandra is Tom's sister. I forgot Rick was able to violate the bro code like that after The Pollination Incident.
You fill your buddy's holes with robot bee cum ONE TIME and he gets the right to date your sister.
Over the clothes stuff only tho.
"hmmmm, explosive lab. Feel like I just thought about that. Welp, back to work"
Bomb Palace feels like tempting fate
What a cute nickname for the Kill Everyone In A Radius Room
"And you know what? We dont even MAKE weapons, these are recreational bombs."
"Back in the day, we blew things by hand!"
I understand these humans use their "ears" to "hear" vibrations in their atmosphere. They call these vibrations with regular patterns "music"
I came in late, is Rob a robot?
Rob immediately turns on Manowar's Flight of the Bumblebee cover at full volume.
I love Rhythmic Instrumental Number. It's Machine Generated Recreation Sound's best hit