Wednesday, October 21, 2009

How Spanner Got Her Handle

Sometime in the late 1990s, I changed the name of the comic I've been working on since 1991 to Spanner, with my character Shira starring in her role as "angel of chaos". But I never gave the origin of the handle "Spanner" any thought. But then came a series of pranks that became #1 trends on Twitter. And suddenly it came to me. Here's the scene in which the handle's origin is revealed:

Shira is in a police interrogation room. It may be on a "guild violation" as she is violating the Police Guild's monopoly on disarming bombs, like those created by the fiendish "mad bomber" known as the Toymaker, which Shira routinely deconstructs. The interrogator is her archnemesis Diana Shockley, police agent of the United Corporations (and a member of the villainous Becket clan, owners of the ruling Dictel Corporation).
Diana: How did you become "Spanner"?

Shira: You wanna know how I got that handle? I'll tell you. You see, I own the Toymaker. I own him big time. I own him over and over and over. I used to jam wrenches into his cruder early jobs. So the trolls and punkers at 4chan/b/ declared me the "Spanner Queen of the Universe". That quickly became "Spanner, Queen of the Universe". The rest, of course, is history.
So now you know. And so do I.

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