Awesome / The Question

How awesome is the question? Just ask his eccentric charm.

• In the original Charlton comics, one issue has him face off against a murderous diver, who eventually tries to pay him off. The Question stands there for a moment...and bursts out laughing.
• Also in the Charlton run: The famous Establishing Character Moment of The Question kicking two villains into the sewer flow, and then leaving them to the cops instead of pulling them out.
  Villains: Help! Do something! We're caught in the current! Can't hold on much longer!
  The Question: So why tell me your problems?
  • Keep in mind that this happened in The Silver Age of Comic Books!
  • Earlier in that issue, when the villain reveals himself as a man who Vic Sage had ruined through exposing his corruption...Vic pulls a nice heroic version of But for Me, It Was Tuesday.
• When Dennis O'Neil began to write the Question monthly series he had the title character defeated by Lady Shiva, beaten afterwards by a gang of thugs, shot in the head and then Left for Dead in a frozen river. The Big Bad, Reverend Hatch, explains that "if he arises singing Danny Boy, I shall give him anything he wants." When the Question makes his return after training with Richard Dragon...
  O Danny boy, the pipes the pipes are calling...
  • "I want you to pray."
  • When The Question decides to let Rev. Hatch live in the fourth O'Neill issue, Myra (who has suffered blackmail, manipulation, and threats to her own daughter at the "reverend's" hands) takes a knife and cries out, "I WON'T!"—stabbing the villain. The Question lets her, concluding, "Better you than me."
• A later O'Neill issue has Hub City being hit by a huge crime wave, even by its standards. One encounter that the Question has here involves an innocent bystander being held over the edge of a skyscraper by a gang of thugs. Question: "If you drop him, you follow him." The poor bystander is dropped. The Question then proceeds to kerbstomp all but the actual one who did the dropping, and knocks him over the edge, leaving him hanging by his fingertips..."I told you what would happen if you dropped him, didn't I?...Bye." He then actually starts walking away...only to abruptly return and save the thug. But then: "One thing." *WHAM* "Don't thank me." *SMASH* "Don't EVER thank me." *MEGA-KERBSTOMP*. He then walks away from the thoroughly whipped gang leader musing to himself, "I'll never be played by Chuck Norris. Or Charles Bronson."
• In Issue 8, Vic tracks down a Serial Killer doctor who launches into a Motive Rant (Vic has been incapacitated by a tranq dart). What follows is this exchange while the doctor is preparing a needle to inject into Vic's arm:
  Dr Spaulding: I'm sorry that an innocent bystander has to die-
  The Question: Not innocent.
  Dr Spaulding: What?
  The Question: Not innocent. When I was eighteen, I hit a girlfriend, broke her nose. When I was twenty, I I beat up a professor... little man, sixty years old, had asthma. Later, got into fights. I was strong, though, knew I'd win.
  Dr Spaulding: You're making a point?
  The Question: I'm trying to change. I'm ashamed of those things. I don't do them anymore. Last January, I threw a bomb out of a school bus, saved twenty five kids. Then I kept an old woman from being mugged. Then I stopped a couple of thugs from shooting a cop! Do I deserve to die? I'm not innocent.
  Spaulding moves away from The Question, takes a shot of alcohol
  Dr Spaulding: Your argument is compelling.
  The Question: Not an argument. A question.
  Dr Spaulding: One without an easy answer.
  Spaulding takes the needle to himself, committing suicide
• Frank Miller, being Frank Miller, gives The Question a Badass Creed as the hero's introduction in The Dark Knight Strikes Again, essentially summing up everything that makes him so appealing. It's sampled for The Question's page quote, but the complete speech runs thus:
  The world spins mad. The people are so intoxicated by luxury they 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 whore.

  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 every free mind that may find it. Like a note in the 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 power of the tyrants. Once your thoughts are committed to disk, the tyrants have them. The Abyss stared 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.
• During the Blackest Night, a black ring chose Vic as its host, and the Black Lantern attacked a lighthouse where Lady Shiva and Renee Montoya were fighting, with old ally Aristotle Rodor nearby. Shiva proceeded to deduce, from clues the Black Lantern had dropped, what it was what it wanted (their emotion-filled hearts) and proceeded to shut down her emotions to the point she became invisible and undetectable to the monster. Rodor and Montoya, pained as they were by Vic's resurrection as a Black Lantern, followed suit, maddening the superpowered zombie. It was one of the first instances of a Black Lantern successfully routed if not defeated.

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