Crazy Gang
The Crazy Gang is a team of professional criminals who resemble children's storybook characters and who originated in another dimension. The group has five members: the Executioner, a hooded humanoid robot wielding a scythe; the Jester, who is an accomplished swordsman; the Knave, who possesses superhuman strength; the Red Queen, best known for her continual cries of "Off with its head!"; and Tweedledope, an idiot savant who is capable of devising extraordinarily advanced machinery, and who has a strange affinity for rats. Tweedledope, in fact, apparently invented the robotic entity known as Widget.
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The Crazy Gang is the creation of an otherdimensional counterpart of the Englishman Sir James Jaspers who lived on an alternate Earth that has been designated, as Earth-238. This was the native world of Linda McQuillan, alias Captain UK, who served the same heroic role that Brian Braddock, alias Captain Britain, does on his own Earth. The Jaspers of Earth-238 was a superhuman mutant with vast psionic powers who succeeded in taking control of his world.
The Crazy Gang was later transported to the Earth of Captain Britain. Proving totally incompetent at committing crimes on their own, the Crazy Gang placed an advertisement in a newspaper in order to find themselves a leader. As a result they entered the employ Of Captain Britain's foe, Slaymaster, who masterminded a series of spectacular crimes that the Crazy Gang committed for him, including robberies of the Royal Mint, the British Museum, and Britain's National Gallery. As Slaymaster had hoped, these robberies aroused the interest of Captain Britain, who hunted down the perpetrators. Slaymaster and the Crazy Gang then captured Captain Britain. Having no more use for the Crazy Gang, Slaymaster dismissed them from his service. Subsequently, Captain Britain defeated Slaymaster and in an encounter months later, killed him.
Eventually the Crazy Gang found a new employer, the master assassin, Arcade. Arcade sent the Crazy Gang to abduct Courtney Ross, the former girlfriend of Captain Britain.Ross succeeded in escaping from her inept would-be captors, but was nonetheless taken prisoner by Arcade himself. Subsequently, the Crazy Gang clashed with Captain Britain and his teammates in Excalibur, including Meggan, Nightcrawler, Phoenix, and Shadowcat. Tweedledope used a device he had apparently invented to exchange his mind with that of Captain Britain, Nightcrawler's with the Jester's, and Megan's with the Knave, Phoenix demolished the Executioner's robotic body, but the Executioner's consciousness took possession of her. Eventually, the mind exchanges were reversed, Phoenix broke free from her possession, and Arcade and the Crazy Gang were defeated. The Crazy Gang is currently in the custody of the British legal authorities.
At some point, the Crazy Gang escaped or were freed from prison, but continued to lie low in this scary world. Soon, Tweedledope came across the wandering Joyboy, who had, with the rest of his teammates of the Technet, helped Excalibur on a mission.
Tweedledope kidnapped Joyboy, bringing him back to the Crazy Gang. Joyboy tried to use his reality-twisting powers against the Red Queen, to put her fantasies into reality and twist them, but, as Captain Britian put it, since "the Red Queen's insanity distorts the fairytale imagery of Alice in Wonderland into a snake pit of dark fantasies, Joyboy reverses the distortion." The two negatives cancelled each other out, and the two ended up recreating the world around them into a peaceful, happy wonderland. The Crazy Gang then invited the townspeople around them to share in this paradise, and they disappeared for a long time. Excalibur investigated this disappearance and Captain Britain breifly clashed with the Gang. The Crazy Gang wanted to simply stay and play with the people around them, and so Excalibur left them in peace.
- Base of Operations: Mobile, formerly Gretton, United Kingdom
- Affiliation:
- Founder(s): Sir James Jaspers
- Status: Active
- First appearance as Lewis Carroll–themed criminals opposing Captain Britain (Captain Britain #8, 1976)
- Reformed under the leadership of Mad Jim Jaspers, serving as enforcers within his warped reality regime (Daredevils #1–11, 1983)
- Operated as destabilizing agents during Jaspers’ reality manipulation crisis in Britain (Mighty World of Marvel #7–13, 1983)
- Engaged Captain Britain and allied heroes during the Jaspers’ Warp crisis (Captain Britain #1–14, 1985–1986)
- Resurfaced as recurring antagonists within British superhuman conflicts (Excalibur #3–5, 1988)
- Continued intermittent criminal activity as reality-distorting operatives aligned with British rogue elements (Excalibur #4–5, 1988)
