The Question

[Black Canary22]

Hello everyone, it is I, BC22.

I was wondering if anyone had any decent quotes from the hero, The Question? Please and thanks. I would appreciate it.

 

[Mee]

Check out the Comic Quotes thread, there's some in there. If you search that thread for Question it should save you the trouble of sifting through the pages.

 

[The Question]

The Question (who is about to be burned alive by a hitman): The gasoline fumes sting my eyes, make me gag. I try to move, to react, but I can't. One of the bastards must have connected with a nerve cluster in the base of my spine when they were stomping me a few moments ago. Nothing's broken, but the nerves are traumatized. I can do no more than twitch, and that's not going to be enough. The tornado is very near. I can hear the wind shrieking outside, and slaps or rain againts the house. But the loudest sound in the world is the scrape of a match head on a dirty thumb nail. Then, my personal demon, that old devil curiosity, nudges me, and I wonder what it will feel like to burn alive. I wonder if it can possibly be as horrible as I imagine, and I fing myself anxious to know. And everything I am, everything I have been and could have been, is congealed in a wavering point of flame.

The Question (after being betrayed by a hitman who's life he was trying to save during a tornado): Once upon a time, a scorpion and a beaver were on the bank of a river. The scorpion asked if the beaver would carry him across the water. The beaver said no. He was afraid the scorpion would sting him half way to the other side. The scorpion said that was absurd. After all, if he was stung, they would both drown. So the beaver began to swim with the scorpion on his back. And sure enough, half way the scorpion stung the beaver. As they were sinking beneath the waves, drowning, the beaver asked the scorpion why he had done such a foolish thing. It's my nature, the scorpion said. I've always wondered how the beaver could talk with a mouthful of river, and at a time like that, why he gave a damn.

The Question (after being caught in a tornado): Then I'm flying. I don't feel a bit like Superman. Or Dorothy. And this sure as hell isn't Oz.

 

[Mee]

One of my favorites:

Question is in a dark warehouse. He opens a barrell to find a pink substance. "32 flavors, just as I suspected!"


-From JLU

 

[The Leaguer]

"I have no clue what's going on. I'm gonna go play video games, call me when you figure it out."

- The Question

 

[Spike_x1]

The Question (after being caught in a tornado): Then I'm flying. I don't feel a bit like Superman. Or Dorothy. And this sure as hell isn't Oz.

I always loved that one.

 

[The Question]

Me too. Even in life or death situations, Vic's a smartass.

 

[The Question]

Also, one of my favorites:

Renee Montoya: You know, this is a lesbian bar.

The Question: So, no men's room?

 

[Nightwing 52]

One of my favorites:

Question is in a dark warehouse. He opens a barrell to find a pink substance. "32 flavors, just as I suspected!"


-From JLU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT_i7mAIGsg

Also, one of my favorites:

Renee Montoya: You know, this is a lesbian bar.

The Question: So, no men's room?

Also:

Renee Montoya: Bite me.

The Question: Can't. No mouth.

 

[Nightwing 52]

Issue #17, is the one where Vic Sage is seen reading Watchmen. Then later decides to try to solve crime like Rorschach. He goes out, and eventually is beaten royally, and his final line is "Rorschach sucks!"

 

[Red]

Also, one of my favorites:

Renee Montoya: You know, this is a lesbian bar.

The Question: So, no men's room?

lol. loved that one

 

[Black Canary22]

Soooooo......I'm guessing The Question didn't have that many one-liners then?

 

[Mee]

Soooooo......I'm guessing The Question didn't have that many one-liners then?

The Question's just not in alot of comics. He seems to be getting more attention since JLU though, which is great. He's a big part of 52.

 

[The Question]

He had a solo series that lasted 36 issues plus a few anulals and quarterlies.

 

[Mee]

I'd like to see him get a solo again. Or maybe he'll get picked for the new JLA.

 

[The Question]

I wouldn't want him on the League, really. Maybe as an ally of the League, but bright and flashy and beating up giant monsters isn't his style. He's a plainclothes detective in a mask. He'd fit much better on the Outsiders, really.

 

[Harlekin]

Well, the new Outsiders that is. The old Outsiders (as in, Batman and the Outsiders) fought big flashy monsters all the time as well. I think a covert squad like the new Outsiders would fit Q perfectly though.

 

[Nightwing 52]

Soooooo......I'm guessing The Question didn't have that many one-liners then?

The O'Neil Question saved the witticisms for the other characters. I think it was the first time we saw Shiva say her line about breaking an arm in a way that would make it never heal.

The big trademark for The Question was how he survived in impossible ways that weren't his doing. Like at the end of the first issue he gets taken down by Lady Shiva, beaten by the thugs she's working with, shot, point blank, in the side of the head with an assassin's air pistol and dumped into a harbor. He lives only because his mask partially deflected the shot and the pellet travelled along the line of the skull instead of penetrating.

Another time, he's been pushed out of an airplane over the city and is falling to his death. A terminally ill cancer patient goes to the roof of the Hospital, looks up with his arms wide open, embracing the sky, and Question ends up landing on him, killing the patient but he is able to walk away.

It was a very philisophical book and for the time very violent. Probably the grimmest of the Grim and Gritty books, especially pre-Vertigo. For example one of the one shot villains was called The Mikado. He went around murdering people in fitting ways - like the abusive, overweight Bubba who would starve his family to keep them in line. Mikado paralyzes him in the front seat of the Bubba's truck, draws a scalpel and then asks, "Are you familiar with the term flense?"

Denny O'Neil loved the Shiva character - it is not an accident that the stories where she trained Batman and Tim Drake happened while he was the editor in charge of the Bat office.

 

[Mee]

I wouldn't want him on the League, really. Maybe as an ally of the League, but bright and flashy and beating up giant monsters isn't his style. He's a plainclothes detective in a mask. He'd fit much better on the Outsiders, really.

Well, yeah. If he is in the League he should be used like in JLU.

 

[The Question]

Well, the new Outsiders that is. The old Outsiders (as in, Batman and the Outsiders) fought big flashy monsters all the time as well. I think a covert squad like the new Outsiders would fit Q perfectly though.

Very true.

The O'Neil Question saved the witticisms for the other characters. I think it was the first time we saw Shiva say her line about breaking an arm in a way that would make it never heal.

Q was, under O'Neil at least, quite the smartass. Always making snide comments and the like. And it was Q's interior monologues that were more interesting than the funny one liners.

The big trademark for The Question was how he survived in impossible ways that weren't his doing. Like at the end of the first issue he gets taken down by Lady Shiva, beaten by the thugs she's working with, shot, point blank, in the side of the head with an assassin's air pistol and dumped into a harbor. He lives only because his mask partially deflected the shot and the pellet travelled along the line of the skull instead of penetrating.

Another time, he's been pushed out of an airplane over the city and is falling to his death. A terminally ill cancer patient goes to the roof of the Hospital, looks up with his arms wide open, embracing the sky, and Question ends up landing on him, killing the patient but he is able to walk away.

It was a very philisophical book and for the time very violent. Probably the grimmest of the Grim and Gritty books, especially pre-Vertigo. For example one of the one shot villains was called The Mikado. He went around murdering people in fitting ways - like the abusive, overweight Bubba who would starve his family to keep them in line. Mikado paralyzes him in the front seat of the Bubba's truck, draws a scalpel and then asks, "Are you familiar with the term flense?"

Denny O'Neil loved the Shiva character - it is not an accident that the stories where she trained Batman and Tim Drake happened while he was the editor in charge of the Bat office.

I absolutely loved Mikado. Great villain. And yes, if the book had been written when Virtigo was really in full swing, it would have been a Virtigo title. They even had a "suggested for mature readers" laber after five issues or so.

 

[MaskedManJRK]

"The world spins MAD.

The PEOPLE are so INTOXICATED by LUXURY that have FORGOTTEN everything that makes us more than HOUSE PETS.

REASON.
TRUTH.
JUSTICE.

FREEDOM.

The HUMAN SPIRIT is a shattered pane of GLASS--wrapped in soft VELVET and soaked in sugary POISON. EVIL has SEDUCED mankind. And MANKIND has shown all the CHASTITY of a three-dollar ****E.

Yet I will not YIELD. I WILL not BEND. I will not ACCEPT the corrupt new WAY of things.

Nor will I be MARTYRED.

I will gather EVIDENCE--DOCUMENT every foul LIE. I will FORGE my MANIFESTO. My CHALLENGE to any FREE MIND that may find it. Like a NOTE in a BOTTLE. Cast into the OCEAN.

It will be TYPED. It MUST be TYPED. COMPUTERS can't be TRUSTED. They're all TIED IN now, connected to the POWERS. To the TYRANTS. Once your THOUGHTS are committed to DISK, the tyrants have them.

The Abyss stares back.

The mind of man must be RECLAIMED--if not by THIS generation or by the NEXT, then SOME day. Some DECADE.

It is not in MY power to EFFECT the change. I haven't the MIGHT.

I am not the ANSWER.

I am only the QUESTION."

 

[The Question]

The Question: Go and catch a falling star, get with child a mandrake root. Tell me where all past years are, or who cleft the devil's foot. Now, those are riddles. Those seventeenth century metaphysicians, they could riddle the hair off your head. But the stuff you've been putting out, garbage. Puerile puns. Cheap word play. School yard smart mouth. At best the intersction of rudimentary biassociative feilds.

Sphinx: What's he sayin'?

The Riddler: Shhhhh!

The Question: Why not hit us with the little poser the origional sphinx stumped 'em with on the road to Thebes? You remember..."What goes on four legs at dawn, two legs at midday, three legs at sunset, at is weakest when it has the most support?"

The Riddler: The answer...is man.

The Question: Sure. But that was easy. Even old Oedipus got that one, and he wasn't the brightest candle in ancient Greece.

Sphinx: What's he talkin' about?

The Question: Try a really knotty one. Like, if the universe is benevolent, why is their evil? Or if the universe is evil, how can men be good? Do men have souls, or we merely a bundle of biochemical reactions? Is there a God? And if there isn't, why has the idea of God been apart of every known culture? Is religion merely mythology? Is mythology religion? Is there any essential difference between the two? If we know through our senses, and our senses are imperfect, how can we know anything?

The Riddler: Slow down. What are you saying?

Sphinx: I'm gonna shoot him.

The Riddler: We haven't asked him a riddle....

The Question: But if we don't know through our senses, how do we know? And if we do know through our senses, how can we know abstractions like truth, justice, or even the American way? Too tough? Here's one that's closer to home. Who were my mother and father? Who am I? Who are you? Or the ones inscrutable Asians like...."What was your face before your parents were born?"

The Riddler: Wait. Is that a trick question? I'm confused. Where is your nose?

The Question: Give up? Well, the answer....

*He swats the gun out of Sphinx's hand and punches The Riddler in the face*

The Question: ....might be this: You let me get too close.

 

[MaskedManJRK]

The Question: Go and catch a falling star, get with child a mandrake root. Tell me where all past years are, or who cleft the devil's foot. Now, those are riddles. Those seventeenth century metaphysicians, they could riddle the hair off your head. But the stuff you've been putting out, garbage. Puerile puns. Cheap word play. School yard smart mouth. At best the intersction of rudimentary biassociative feilds.

Sphinx: What's he sayin'?

The Riddler: Shhhhh!

The Question: Why not hit us with the little poser the origional sphinx stumped 'em with on the road to Thebes? You remember..."What goes on four legs at dawn, two legs at midday, three legs at sunset, at is weakest when it has the most support?"

The Riddler: The answer...is man.

The Question: Sure. But that was easy. Even old Oedipus got that one, and he wasn't the brightest candle in ancient Greece.

Sphinx: What's he talkin' about?

The Question: Try a really knotty one. Like, if the universe is benevolent, why is their evil? Or if the universe is evil, how can men be good? Do men have souls, or we merely a bundle of biochemical reactions? Is there a God? And if there isn't, why has the idea of God been apart of every known culture? Is religion merely mythology? Is mythology religion? Is there any essential difference between the two? If we know through our senses, and our senses are imperfect, how can we know anything?

The Riddler: Slow down. What are you saying?

Sphinx: I'm gonna shoot him.

The Riddler: We haven't asked him a riddle....

The Question: But if we don't know through our senses, how do we know? And if we do know through our senses, how can we know abstractions like truth, justice, or even the American way? Too tough? Here's one that's closer to home. Who were my mother and father? Who am I? Who are you? Or the ones inscrutable Asians like...."What was your face before your parents were born?"

The Riddler: Wait. Is that a trick question? I'm confused. Where is your nose?

The Question: Give up? Well, the answer....

*He swats the gun out of Sphinx's hand and punches The Riddler in the face*

The Question: ....might be this: You let me get too close.

Awesome--is it kinda sad that a lot of the best moments Riddler's had involves him getting beaten?

 

[CBG]

The difference between JLU Question and O'Neil's Question is that JLU Question is a conspiracy buff, while O'Neil's Question is more philosophically driven akin to Zen.

I prefer O'Neil's Question than the 52, Ditko, or JLU Questions. There are quite a few good philosophical issues raised through the Question series.

That said, I'm a big Question fan.