You can just watch this one for yourself, why not? It isn’t even five minutes long.

What we have here is Beekeeper Rage in action, right before our very eyes. Reginald, portrayed by John Cleese, is being interviewed by an interviewer, played by Rowan Atkinson, and it all goes downhill from there. As you can see for yourself, Reginald Prawnbaum is a very renowned beekeeper. So much so that he gets to appear on television! Television! If that’s not a measure of success, I don’t know what is. Reginald starts out very composed and together but less than five minutes later and he’s lost the constant struggle that rages in the heart of every beekeeper.

We learn quite a bit about poor Reginald in that time. He’s been a beekeeper for “over forty years” and whose love of bees began as a child. He kept notes about what kinds of flowers the bees visited even then. As a child! This is a man with so many experience points devoted to his beekeeping stats that I assume when he is among his swarms he is like unto a demigod. He’s not got much experience dealing with idiotic interviewers, though.

I mean, the interviewer is an idiot. I think there might even be some malice behind it. Are his tics real? I can’t actually be sure that this was a calculated attempt to discredit a beekeeper live on television, but the possibility exists.

But does the possibility that the interviewer is actively goading Reginald, or even the certainty that he’s extremely annoying, justify the wrath that Reginald brings down on him? Well, making him run around until he falls off the stage, that’s not so bad. Shooting him? That’s a touch more than necessary.

How good a beekeeper is Reginald? Well, we don’t see him do any beekeeping. I can (and do) assume he’s got all kinds of supernatural powers and fighting ability. But it isn’t just his stated beekeeping experience that make me suspect it. It’s the gun. Where does Reginald get the gun? Why does he have it at this interview? If you say he has it because it is funny, you’re missing the point of overthinking fictional beekeepers. If you’re PDR you realize there are two possibilities: Either he just carries around a gun because he’s the type who needs a gun on a regular basis because he’s fighting mobsters or something, or he just straight up summoned a gun from the ether (maybe he had his bees bring it to him instantly during the moment of darkness?). Either scenario means one thing: Reginald Prawnbaum is a badass beekeeper.

Three Honeycombs out of Five. I’m certain this guy is extremely powerful, but he unfortunately loses points for the Rage.

The Simpsons was a pretty great show. Season Six of the Simpsons was smack in the middle of its best years. Lisa’s Rival was a good episode. Homer getting a pile of sugar was an excellent subplot. That’s when the Simpsons got Beekeepers.

Homer gives a rousing speech about why it his right and his duty to protect and sell his pile of sugar when suddenly a swarm of bees descends upon it. He tries to fight them, but can’t win (“Ow! They’re defending themselves somehow!”). Soon the local beekeepers notice that their apiary is oddly quiet (“No noise… suggests no bees”). Seeing one lone bee, so they follow it in their “beemobile”, which is actually a Chevy, and track the bee to Homer and his pile. They assume that Homer has taken their bees on purpose and are prepared to pay him to get back their swarm, but then it starts to rain, the pile melts, and the bees head home. Homer gets nothing for all his hard work.

These two are pretty great. The taller one (voiced by Hank Azaria) is very much based on Adam West’s Batman. The shorter one (Harry Shearer) is the perfect compliment to the other. It astounds me that, on a show like the Simpsons, these guys never came back. I admit, there’s a decade and a half of Simpsons that I haven’t seen, but from what I can tell from the Internet these guys have never so much as appeared in a crowd scene or anything. They don’t even have a page on the Simpsons Wikia site. What the chunks?

I can only assume the beekeepers themselves didn’t want to be seen. They don’t really display any special powers, except perhaps being able to follow a single bee while they’re in a car, so maybe the power they did have was keeping hidden. They have no preternatural control over their bees at all. Still, being given a Batman-reference for a voice is an indication of badassness if nothing else is. They do seem fairly safe from Beekeeper Rage, though. Even as think Homer is a criminal genius they don’t get very angry at him. They almost seem to respect his cunning.

Incidentally, the name of their company, Goldsboro Honey, is a reference to a song called “Honey” by a guy called Bobby Goldsboro that there is, apparently. I learned that thanks to the Internet.

Two Honeycombs out of Five.

While writing this I learned that there’s an episode in the twentieth season that deals with beekeeping, but these guys aren’t even in there. I’ll have to deal with that one someday way, way down the line.

The Wine Taster

Suppose you’re at a party, or any kind of social gathering for that matter, and you see one person among the crowd wearing a strange mask, sipping from a glass of wine, and seemingly focused very intently on you. Maybe you turn to someone you know and ask what the deal is, but when you turn to look back, they’re gone. You’ve just been a victim of the Wine Taster.

The Wine Taster is an Unsettling Oddity, a being who exist solely to cause confusion, create insecurity, and make people ill at ease. These sorts of emotions cause the psychic plane to roil and bubble, generating the energy on which the Oddities feed. While more predictable entities might try to create outright fear in their victims, the Oddities look down on those as lacking in subtlety. They’re the snobs of the mystical entity set.

As with last week’s entries, I’m exploring characters who would exist in the world of the Secret Government Robots comic, in which the Oddities are one of SecGov’s fellow weird governments.

The Sword-Snout

In the forests of Upper Canada a most strange and monstrous creature has been reported. Hunters have spotted a large rodentlike beast, the size of a wolf, but with a blade protruding from its face. It has been seen running through other animals, such as deer, rabbits, or even birds. It has been seen feasting on their remains. But no hunter has reported being attacked. Or at least, none that has ever been attacked has managed to report it.

This one was at least partially inspired by a recent few hours I spent reading about Fearsome Critters. I like that sort of thing. After I’d done the sketch, I figured it would be a good opponent for Horribloid.

Dial H was an iteration of DC Comics’ Dial H for Hero franchise. The basic concept is that the protagonist(s) have a dial that, when activated, turns them into a superhero. This Beekeeper was one such transformation, so the panel above is actually someone else using the identity of this hero. But Dial H, at least, used the notion that the heroic identities made by the dial were actually the heroes of other universes, so somewhere out there this Beekeeper is probably fighting all types of crime.

That single panel is, as far as I know, the only appearance of this Beekeeper (I’m assuming they’re named “the Beekeeper” because of the B and K on the costume). Still, that single panel tells us an awful lot. This Beekeeper can sic bees on their enemies, which is a great, if standard, beekeeper ability. This Beekeeper also make good use of their smoker, also fairly standard, but depicted less frequently. But then: This Beekeeper Rides A Flying Hive! That’s new. It appears that the hive is actually carried by the swarm, and it must be assumed that the Beekeeper uses this hive as their primary mode of transportation, like the Green Goblin’s glider. It’s a pretty great visual. And on top of it all, sweet cape.

We don’t, sadly, know anything of this Beekeeper’s personality. The Dial would not have summoned this identity if they weren’t a good guy, but beyond that we know nothing. Did they swear revenge on crime after their Beekeeper parents were killed by mobsters? Was this Beekeeper chosen by bees to do good in the world because they were such a noble soul? Was radioactive bee-stinging involved? We don’t know. As such, it’s really hard to rate this Beekeeper with any real authority. But if anyone can do it, I can:

Three Honeycombs out of Five. Cool powers, cool visual. We don’t know enough to go higher, but also we don’t know enough to go lower.