Nightmare Fuel / Paperinik New Adventures

His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Evron 11th to the 5th

• The Coolflames in general: you are a normal dude, and one day the Evronians come and EAT your emotions and intelligence, leaving you as an empty shell who has no choice but to obey them and be used as cannon fodder. And they are probably doing the same to the rest of your race.
  • What they do with the emotions they don't eat: fuel their technology. And to make things worse, the Evronians need to invade new planets - and find alternate power sources before they harvest the entire universe
  • In Pikappa the Evronians have "Planetary Coolflamizers", practically an emotion-absorbing equivalent of the Death Star: they just need to set some relay points and an entire planet can be subjugated with a single shot.
  • In the summer special issue Zero Slash One, a knocked-out PK has a brief nightmare about some of his closest relatives (his nephews, Daisy, and Fethry) being turned into Coolflames. While the nephews and Daisy are drawn with just a blue flame on their head, Fethry's transformation is more detailed and, therefore, creepier.◊
  • At one point in the original series the Evronians find out Earthlings are so full of emotions that more often than not a single Evrongun shot fails to drain them completely and in time they can recover. To them, this means Earth is a neverending banquet and an inexaustible power source.
    • In Pikappa, the Guardians of the Galaxy find a way to reverse Coolflamization, though differently from the Xerbian method in the main series this doesn't make them immune to it. Gorthan's reaction: a policy to overrun worlds, drain most of the population, leave, let the Guardians restore everyone, and then invade again.
• A few from "Xadhoom":
  • Zotnam, leader of the Evronian invasion force. He casually fries his generals when they give him stupid suggestions on how to deal with Paperinik. That he doesn't really consider a threat, more a nuisance that may grow into a threat and should be dealt now - the usual way. Three shuttles full of commandos with orders to find and kill this weirdo that may galvanize the resistance, as it happened in the past on worlds the Evronians have already conquered.
  • Paperinik knows there's Evronian drones in town, and follows one in a back alley to try and capture it... And is promptly surrounded by five Evronians who were waiting for him. And he's forgotten the new weapons at the Ducklair Tower. Thankfully, Xadhoom shows up, kills three Evronians and scares the survivors away... And then mistakes Paperinik for another Evronian or an ally. Paperinik barely survives the encounter.
  • One of the drones films Donald at his home with his nephews, and the operator recognizes him. Thankfully, the Evronian commander doesn't and even berates the warrior for mistaking a lookalike for Paperinik...
  • The Nephews are busy with the Junior Woodchucks, having just returned from the Arctic and now being about to leave again. This isn't scary... Until one remembers that "Xadhoom" came out at the same time "Threat from the Infinite" was being published and they're mentioning the early events of that miniseries, with the enemies being some unknown aliens that are looking for something dangerous and devastating the environment in the process, without anyone but the Junior Woodchucks noticing them (and even that was by accident).
    • The other aliens' identity and goals are eventually revealed in "Threat from the Infinite": they're the last living Tz'oook, the first sapient species born from Earth. They barely escaped the Great Dying, that they caused by accident, on a relativistic cityship that allowed them to survive the entire time... And now they want their planet back, no matter how many they have to kill. And their stealth technology is so good neither the Evronians nor Ducklairtech scanners can detect their cityship, let alone their shuttles.
  • Later Paperinik finds Xadhoom, and, wishing to talk with someone who clearly shares an enemy with him, hits her with a containment field. Before they can talk, however, an Evronian patrol arrives, Paperinik beats them up... And then Xadhoom casually disrupts the containment field. She could have escaped any time, she just wanted to see him talk with his supposed allies. Thankfully she nows knows Paperinik is an enemy of Evron and doesn't want to kill him anymore...
  • Paperinik and Xadhoom have tracked the Evronians to their hideout, in the new power plant... And are promptly trapped in a containment field that can hold against Xadhoom. The Evronians can't kill them either... So their commander decided to let them starve.
    • Xadhoom reveals she has in fact a way to breach it, but Paperinik notices the Evronians are using the power plant to keep it active and thus One can shut it down. She later tells him how she was going to get them out: by going nova. Paperinik doesn't understand, so One later explains it... And adds that not only Duckburg would have been wiped off the map, there was a good chance she'd have turned in a black hole and destroyed the planet.
  • Xadhoom's tale of the Evronian invasion of Xerba and her people's genocide, on her watch - and then declaring she's going to do the same to the Evronians.
• Trauma: a superstrong, Nigh-Invulnerable giant who can make you live your worst fear and then transform you into a Coolflame.
  • Could be worse. At least the Evronians didn't mass-produce Super Soldiers with his same mutation. Oh, wait, in "Might and Power" Grrodon did just that that!
• The fight between the Evronians and the Russian Army in 1908: the narration does not help.
  "We had the woods to defend ourself! The soldiers not even that! EEEE-vrrran, shouted the ones from the skies! And the cries of the soldiers went silent in that choir!"
• "Day of the Cold Sun" is the first issue that shows just how far the Time Police is willing to go to preserve their timeline. The Cold Sun experiment in the original timeline went catastrophically wrong, destroying all of Duckburg. Millions of lives dead. What's worse, when the Raider and PK prevent it, the cops show up to cause the explosion themselves.
• When Zoster reaches godhood by stealing Xadhoom's powers.
  "On your knees, worlds! KNEEL NOW! Or I'll erase you with a mere gesture!"
  • The situation gets better soon after, but not before a Family-Unfriendly Death: nothing graphic, but Zoster is disintegrated to particles on-panel, with his face horribly distorted.
  • From the same issue we have the Last Haga, a Giant Spider that is impossible to detect (it was hidden in the Ducklair Tower and One, the Genius Loci of that place couldn't find it), reproduces extremely quickly and his offspring are as hungry as it. It is also stated it could consume entire planets with enough time.
• Raghor was pretty scary: not only was he a half-Evronian, half-animal hybrid with Super-Strength and Super-Senses, he was also a Social Darwinist that planned to eliminate the other Evronians since he considered them unworthy. And that face...
  • And that in turn makes the regular Evronians much scarier, after they schooled him.
  • The regular Evronian warriors are no slouches themselves: take away the beak and add a tail, and you'll get this guy◊. An army of them. Armed to the teeth and with fleets of starships, feeding on your emotions.
  • During "The Longest Christmas", a military force is scrambled from Dept. 51 to meet the Evronian raid... And then one of the soldiers asks his best friend: "Do you think they'll let us win, this time?". Cue scenes of the carnage from various other skirmishes between the US Army and the Evronians.
• Emperor Evron◊ - at least how he's depicted in issue #36. By which I mean he looks◊ positively◊ Satan-esque◊.
• "Davy Jones", from issue #42. Belgravian scientists tinkered with syntethic organisms found on a crashed Evronian spaceship-laboratory, trying to get a super-powerful shark they could've controlled as a weapon. They got the first part: he's big enough to almost swallow the PKar, strong enough to rip holes in it with a single bite, reaches speeds of 70 km/h (over 40 miles/h), cannot be detected by radars or sonars (even One's instruments can only detect that he's near, but not where he is), and He Can Think. Oh, and he has two other mutant sharks he's the boss of.
• The fate of the supersoldiers created from Angus in the What If? issue that don't get nourishment: their skin shreds away, leaving their muscles and internal tissues completely exposed.
  • Oh no, it's worse than that: they wilt away, being reduced to practically skin and bones. That smoke you saw? It was their muscle mass evaporating.
• The 1998 Special, set before issues #0 and #0/2, recounts one of the first encounters between Paperinik, still inexperienced with the new enemies, and a few Coolflames. As he's on the verge of being defeated, he has a hallucination of Daisy and Fethry turned into Coolflames.
• The cover of PKNA #12, "Second Writing".
• Mekkano from PKNA #20 is almost "cute" at first, but as it continues to assimilate stuff, the danger he poses becomes increasingly evident, reaching its apex at the end of the issue: he assimilates Gorthan.
  Gorthan: Let me out, you bunch of incompetents!
• Lyla's second checkup in "Fragments of Autumn": first off, all her synthetic skin has been removed (except her face, which makes it even creepier). Secondly, she has cables all over her, including one right in the center of the neck. And lastly, since she is in the droids' equivalent of sleep, she has a vacant, almost zombie-like stare on her face.
• In PK2 #11, Paperinik falls victim of Korinna's mental powers and has a hallucination where he is handcuffed in front of the cameras, and Angus can unmask him... "Ha! I knew he was a nobody!", and as the mask is pulled off Paperinik finds himself with no face.
  • What about the first time he's affected by her hallucinations? "Profunda" takes off the hood to reveal Everett, who in this series has made a Face–Heel Turn. Then One shows up... a reprogrammed One.
  One: We can reprogram you as well.
• PK2 #17: Korinna's machine causes terrifying fires everywhere. One moment it's all normal, the next one you find a wall of high flames in front of yourself.
  • To make that scarier, it may not the only one: it's actually a device to catalyze reactions and making them happen at lower temperatures for cheaper and quicker industrial production (and may be how Everett's ship is powered by cold fusion), with Ducklair Enterprises being about to start selling it.
• In #12 of the reboot, after Vendor causes Lyo's death, PK goes on a rampage to kill him. It's way more terrifying than you think. And he's smiling the whole time.
  Pk:"No more tricks! No more jokes! Just revenge!".
  • Though readers can rest assured later on in the story, when it becomes apparent that it was all just an act set up by both Lyla and Pk so they could scare Vendor into doing what they need him for. Or maybe not, he didn't know and Lyla arrived just in time with the information...
• The 2014 relaunch story "Might and Power" has the Evronian conquest of Earth. Both in the results and in how it happened: a single Evronian shape-shifting spy was left on Earth, and, with the help of a mad scientist, a visionary billionaire, a number of Evronian caches and an unknown number of Evronian spores (not adult individuals, embryos), put together an army that conquered Earth in one month, of course after assassinating PK.
  • And there's more. In the future, Earth has been turned into a new planet Evron, by building monstrous engines that destroyed a good third of the surface upon activation. In the present, the Evronians are at their most menacing: PK must fight them without any of the old allies and gadgets, while the Evronians have a new breed of Super-Soldier and a genetic scanner. This means the hero cannot hide (he tries at the beginning of the story but the quickly spot him), or be safe as Donald Duck either; in fact, in the Bad Future the Evronians killed him in his civilian persona. On that matter, the death of Donald is not shown but the moment before: the 313 car wrecked and him, on the ground, helpless, with several laser pointers on him, a true execution.
  • The newly arisen Evronians don't stop there: it's eventually revealed that they have a further breed of Super-Soldier based on Trauma. They appear less powerful than the original but are still huge, strong and with fear-inducing powers. The new costume shields Paperinik from them, but the thought of a small army of them is not reassuring.
• The 2015 relaunch story The Banks of Time have what is possibly the scariest Reveal in the whole series, all versions of it. Time has gone crazy, with all futures true at once, and what caused it? A faulty Artificial Gravity generator created by a character who once nearly blew up Duckburg trying to realize cold fusion. And the idiot who did it is still around determined to try again...
• A particular moment from issue 40, "Agdy Days". We learn this comic version of The Tunguska Event (a meteor made up of a special kind of metal who stores energy from the impact and is able to use it to "grow" when under pressure). However, we also learn that the Evronians went after the MacGuffin and had a run in with the Russian Army. Aliens invaders versus 1908 army:try to think of what happened to the humans...
• The Black Ray shows an unsettling ability of new villain Moldrock. Not only he's made the Evronians trapped in the prison dimensions his minions, by marking them with the Black Ray symbol (that apparently gives constant pain) and causing them to mutate; furious at Sekhtron both for his earlier attempt at escape and how he's led PK to him with a fake Heel–Face Turn he finds dishonorable, Moldrock turns him into dark matter, absorbs him into himself, and is soon after seen in pain; he retires to his private chamber, where he's seen talking to other people apparently sealed inside him, appearing like he's crazy and talking to himself to an external viewer.
  • What they did on Corona to the people who were too weak for work or war: they were send into a desert, and their only hope was to survive a week long trip to find a village founded by those who were shunned before. Moldrock himself, as a kid, suffered this: if he hadn't found the Black Beam, he would have died.
• Chronicle of a Return starts funny with a force of officer-less Evronians trying to be the usual planet-conquering army but only resulting amusing, but then goes straight into some of the worst nightmare fuel of the series so far.
  • Those Evronians above seem responsible for the world going into a new ice age by doing something to the Sun, and came in the solar system on a Planet Spaceship.
    • It gets better: it's revealed that, when the population of the Evronian Planet Spaceship grows too high, the Evronians breed a new Emperor, who will move to another Worldship with the excess population and then part ways. Meaning that Zotnam technically was the first Emperor we've seen... And, as Paperinik says when he finds out, there's multiple Evronian Empires out there, and we don't know how many Xadhoom destroyed before declaring "Closed accounts!".
  • The En'tomek. That is, PKNA's answer to the Borg. And there's a small army of them on the Evronian spaceship.
  • In the middle of the battle between the Evronians and the En'tomek we get the appearance of the Rectifiers. Three (as far as we know) beings that offer anyone they meet the chance of joining them into spreading the Universal Norm or die... And have enough power to take on both an Evronian Planet Spaceship with fleet and an En'tomek force capable of matching them and win. And that's why those Evronians are led only by a sergeant and there are En'tomek on the ship: the Rectifiers killed their Emperor and all officers before going out and wiping out the fleets, and the surviving Evronians on the planetoid ran away with the group of En'tomek that had boarded them.
  • The En'tomek on the planetoid have seized the main labs, that is where an unconscious and regenerating Xadhoom is. Help...
  • What the En'tomek do to any sun they stumble upon: they suck it away to keep themselves working until it collapses... And anyone who lives on the orbiting world is left to die. That's why Earth in the story is cooling down, and why Xadhoom is back: the En'tomek on the planetoid did the job on the first sun they stumbled upon, that happened to be Xadhoom. As you can guess, she's not happy to find out...
• In The Mark of Moldrock, Trauma returns and his powers are as dreadful as ever: he's a physical match for Moldrock's Horde, but he doesn't need to lift a finger as his fear-amplifying power quickly reduces those hulking, ferocious warriors into nervous wrecks. To think he's fighting on PK's side this time!
  • Then Moldrock ups the ante by resisting his powers, followed by punching him out. Considering that Trauma was the last chance to stop him (at least until Everett talked him into standing down)...
• PKNE #6 Event Horizon shows that all the worst fears about what may have become of Corona have realized: under Juniper as queen and Korinna as science officer, the once peaceful utopian society has turned into a militaristic dystopia, worse than it was under Moldrock. Korinna has taken up many researches that Everett never completed because he knew the dangers of going through with them and, through the many progresses achieved, she's preparing Corona to conquer the universe... and then other universes. She's also managed to imprison Moldrock. Even if the new Coronian army was really no match, imagine how much destruction would be brought if it clashed with Xadhoom, the En'tomeks, the Evronians and the still mysterious Rectifiers. Luckily this is all defused by the end of the storyline, and we can hope that technology will be rather put to good use in the future.
  • What defeats the armies of Corona: Moldrock-by himself. Weakened by having his powers drained and having been tortured for months, he still mops the floor with Corona's armies while holding back. After all, he didn't want to kill his future subjects unless he really needed to, and as they couldn't harm him...
• Later in the same storyline, the revelation that the Custodian aka Hicks has been The Mole the whole time. Due to Corinna and Juniper tampering with his programming shortly before the events that led to Everett bringing them back to Corona, he's bound to serve them, so while his growing appreciation of Paperinik over time has been sincere, he ultimately cannot escape his masters's orders. What makes the scene creepy is the way he states all of that matter-of-factly while trying to kill PK, expressing some regret for having to do it but with an indifferent expression..
• At the end of PKNE #6 Korinna and the Custodian are stuck in another universe. Who they stumble into? The Evronians of that universe. And Moldrock is there now, too.
• The time travel saga starting with "A New Hero" is full of these:
  • "A New Hero" starts with Paperinik stopping a crippled starship from falling on Duckburg... But the weird time-manipulating device that crippled it teleports him on Shikaar, a planet isolated by a quantum bubble, where he's enslaved by a fly-like alien named Derrick and forced to mine the element Karium.
    • The guy who hired Derrick: Tuiroon, a rogue Evronian Super-Soldier with two heads. And he's using the Karium to create other super soldiers, the Decimators.
    • The device itself: called a Galaxy Gate, it allows for a small number of time jumps... And can isolate entire planets from the space time. And Tuiroon has many more.
  • "Danger Dome" reveals something about Tuiroon: he was exiled for being too evil for the Evronians.
    • Tuiroon's army of Decimators. That, and him declaring himself and his plan "Inevitable".
    • After Tuiroon is defeated, he grabs a Galaxy Gate and escapes. Paperinik jumps him as he does that and ends up in Shikaar's distant past, where he's confronted by a Barbarian Hero whose words scares even him:
    "If you're a Spore Warrior, you'll taste the blade of Ur-Evron"
  • In "Ur-Evron" Paperinik discovers ancient Shikaar is what was once known as planet Evron. He's ended there before the emergence of the Evronians... But at the same time, Ur-Evron's tribe is one of the last bastions of resistance against the "Spore Warriors", the predecessors of the Evronians.
    • Shikaar is a devastated world of wastelands... But ancient Evron is a lush world. Whatever the Evronians did before turning one of the moons in a Planet Spaceship caused a lot of damage.
    • What happens to those who fall to the Spore Warriors: they're brought to the volcano Kulflam, where the lava drains all their emotions in a similar way to the Coolflames... Only, they look as if they were made of sand.
    • Paperinik during the battle, going berserk at the drop of a hat before calming down.
    • The Alpha Spore, the originator of the Spore Warriors: a veritable Eldritch Abomination... That also created the Galaxy Gates.
    • During the final battle, Ur-Evron, having learned the Spore Warriors destroyed his tribe while he was attacking the Alpha Spore's citadel, launches himself on the Alpha Spore and jumps with it in the volcano's lava... And makes things worse, as what emerges from the lava is Evron itself, born out of the Alpha Spore taking Ur-Evron as a host.
    "Finally I have the might of two forms! And this will allow me to create an Empire!"
    • Having witnessed the birth of Evron, Paperinik uses a Galaxy Gate to go back in time and save both Ur-Evron and his village, successfully capturing the Alpha Spore. Before he can leave, however, the Alpha Spore reveals that the Galaxy Gates' power corrupts... And that he's working with a time traveler.
    • The moment Paperinik prevents the birth of Evron, One and Lyla disappear from present-day Shikaar, and the allies he made there forget him or why they were going to Earth.
    • Knowing he prevented the birth of the Evronians and entrusting Ur-Evron to destroy the Galaxy Gates, Paperinik uses the last one to go back to modern day Duckburg... And finds the Evronian Decimators have overran Earth, with Tuiroon now a full-fledged Evronian Emperor.
  • "The Days of Evron" explains part of what happened: Tuiroon somehow managed to take advantage of Paperinik dabbling with the Galaxy Gates to drive Evronian history in such a way the Evronians became stronger but failed to stop him from becoming an Emperor and creating his army, and attacked Earth after Everett Ducklair arrived but before he thought of building One. And Tuiroon remembers the other timeline as well.
    • The various glimpses of the invasion we see: Everett warning the authorities of the coming invasion but being disbelieved, 00 Channel's panicked broadcast of the Invasion Hives landing, Evronians overrunning Donald's neighbourhood, and that timeline's Paperinik being shot down.
    • The Raider is in this Duckburg attacking the Evronians using Pk's name... And ruthlessly devastating their patrols. And he's working for someone.
    • Paperinik slowly becoming angrier and angrier due the effect of using the Galaxy Gate, even considering joining the Evronians.
    • As the mess was caused by time travel, the Time Police is trying to restore things... But they don't know how, as the events happened on another world and their archives only cover Earth's history, and they're desperate enough to hire the Raider to track down Paperinik (who they figured out was involved), with this timeline's Lyla as his handler.
  • "Obsidian" completes the explanation of what happened: before Ur-Evron could get around destroying the Galaxy Gates, the Alpha Spore was able to talk his equally strong but far less honorable son Gohr into allowing the fusion, creating Evronians that were more powerful... And ruthless enough to let themselves influenced by the time-travelling Tuiroon until he was able to take over and create his army of Decimators.
    • Tuiroon's backstory: initially he was just a run-of-the-mill Evronian spy that happened to have two heads like the Emperors... And so the other Evronian spies tormented him until he became far more evil, and desperate enough to seek out the Galaxy Gates. With them he isolated Shiikar and created the first iteration of his army of Decimators and prepared to invade Earth, only for them to be driven into insanity by a Galaxy Gate he was using to hide them from the other Evronians, at which point Tuiroon abandoned the ship... That moved straight to Duckburg, starting the entire mess.
    • The traps on the Obsidian, a safehold planet used to keep Tuiroon's last working Galaxy Gate safe. The only good thing is that fighting them allows Paperinik to overcome The Corruption from the Galaxy Gates...
  • In "The Days of Pikappa", Paperinik finds the solution to the whole mess: go where Tuiroon first found the Galaxy Gates... And take control of them all. Thankfully it works, as their corruptive effect came from Tuiroon's influence...
    • Tuiroon arrives... And immediately grabs a Galaxy Gate and tries to zap Pk into nothingness. Good thing they don't work anymore without Pk's permission...
    • What follows Tuiroon there: Zoster with a cruiser. Who has Tuiroon killed immediately without much collateral damage... Then Zoster has the cruiser initiate an Orbital Bombardment with all its weapons. Than include enough missiles to disintegrate the planet.
• The PKNE story "Too Close" is silly just as it's nightmarish:
  • It starts when a rogue planet just appears in the Solar System... And has to be driven away somehow before it comes close enough to mess with the planets' orbits and cause the death of everything on Earth when it gets either too close or too far from the Sun.
  • It's then discovered it's not yet actually in the Solar System, just at the edge of a wormhole. A clearly artificial one.
  • After crossing the wormhole Paperinik meets Neopard, and learns from him the wormhole was generated by a node in a Portal Network, node that was seized by a group of would be Galactic Conquerors... That are too incompetent to properly use this technology and are causing a gigantic mess. Hence Neopard being hired to retake it now before they destroy a few systems.
  • As part of the operation, Neopard covered the Dama Elhentari with a larger relic to make her look more impressive. As he goes around the ship, Paperinik finds two things: a mystery kitten and a squadron of deactivated En'tomek.
  • The enemy manages to board the Dama, and they're overwhelming Neopard, Pk, and Neopard war droids... Then the En'tomek activate and subjugate the invaders. That they then drag back to their ships and free because they wouldn't benefit their collective.
  • Knowing what he's dealing with, Paperinik tells Neopard they're going to have their Last Stand... And the En'tomek instead say they have reclassified Paperinik and allies as non-hostile per orders of one of their masters, who witnessed his kindness to a defenseless being.
  • The master in question: the kitten. Turns out there's an entire race of space kitten that created the En'tomek as servants and defenders... And will forcefully assimilate any hostile. Hence their attack on the Evronians in the flashback in "Chronicle of a Return", the Evronians are indeed always hostile (and had shown up with a full battlefleet).
• If you've read the early stories, the whole series. Paperinik didn't call himself Devilish Avenger for nothing, as it was Donald Duck getting fed up with the absolute lack of respect he got from everyone and taking revenge in a sadistically amusing way that terrified the whole Duckburg, and now the same guy, while softened up, has access to technology way more advanced than anything he had. Were he to snap and return to his origins, the above-mentioned scene in the reboot where he nearly killed Vendor would be his standard modus operandi, and while that time it may have been a scam this time he'd be serious. But he wouldn't kill... That would be merciful.

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