The "handi-capable" new girl in town, Jeanne Stonehart, teaches The Treehouse Warriors some very valuable lessons about how to treat friends who happen to have disabilities--with love, patience, and dignity. Jeanne's legs may be weak, but her mind is powerful. A buried memory from childhood could, in the wrong hands, bring about the end of the world as we know it...and Hiss Hole's hands are about as wrong as it gets.
Issue #: 9
Release Date: Dec 31, 2005
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Title: "A Girl and Her Chair"
Story (out of 24 pages): 24 p.
Writers: J.M. Sweet & Jack Staten Monahew
Penciller: J. M. Sweet
Letterer: J. M. Sweet
Colorist: Jack Staten Monahew
Summary:
Principal Stonehart interrupts zoology to introduce his niece Jeanne to the class. She is in a wheelchair, which immediately makes her the brunt of Tony Moneran's verbal abuse. Jon and Josh are asked to show Jeanne around her new school and help her get to know the neighborhood, and they are more than happy to oblige. However, Monty continues his unprovoked verbal attack on Jeanne until she begins to cry. Since she became "handi-capable", she says, this sort of abuse is commonplace. The Warriors tell Jeanne that she needn't worry, as she has a friend for life with the Treehouse Warriors, and they won't talk down to her or pity her like other people do.
However, there is a greater threat out there to show the Warriors' new alliance will not come easy. As he views the proceedings on an immense video screen, Hiss Hole tells his mutants the story of the Stoneharts. As a child Jeanne spent all her spare hours with her father, biogeneticist Edward Stonehart, in his lab. One day Stonehart was killed in an explosion. Jeanne was hurled hard against a wall; the impact severed her spinal cord.
After she healed Jeanne's mother sent her to live with her uncle in Jigaboo Juction. She felt since Jeanne had been so close to her dad, it might be best for her to be taken care of by Eustace and his wife Martha, while she got her own life and feelings in order and began doing some healing herself. Eustace agreed and decided it would be a good idea to enroll her in his school, to give her a fresh start.
Before his death, according to Hiss Hole, Dr. Stonehart had synthesized a very powerful mutagen. The good doctor took that horrible secret to his grave. However, he believes that the formula is buried in Jeanne's subconcious and wants this knowledge at any cost. The wily serpent sends his goons--Slobber Face, Gorilla Man, and Prof. Fruitcake--to kidnap Jeanne. After their first attempt fails, Hiss Hole quickly realizes as long as she's within the protected walls of the treehouse, it's virtually impossible to get at her. He decides to wait until she's no longer under the watchful eye of her new playmates to try anything.
As Jeanne is heading home, alone, a mysterious long black car eases up to the curb rolling its window down. A puff of knockout gas flies in her face, the grab is made, and the car drives away. However, Jason, the Warriors' spy gibbon, is on hand, and he makes a full report to Jon, complete with surveilance video. The gang heads to the area seen on the tape. Jon finds the empty wheelchair in the street, which starkly drives home the fact that Jeanne's been taken, and begins to go ballistic. The others realize Jon may have some romantic feelings for Jeanne.
Meanwhile, Jeanne wakes to find herself inside a large, dimly-lit room. A misshapen monster steps out of the shadows. The monster--Hiss Hole--claims to be her father. He says he survived the explosion, but had been horribly mutated. He was forced to hide himself away and make the world, and her, believe he had died, so he might peacefully try to synthesize a cure for himself. But now he has come back into her life to ask a favor: please help him remember the formula to become a man--and her father--again.
Jon, who has followed the trail to an old warehouse on the bad side of town, arrives with his team to find that it's too late: Jeanne has already told her captor the formula. Hiss Hole is well-prepared--not only is his missile set up and ready to seed the clouds with his Muta-6 formula when launched, but there's enough left over to set up a cunning trap for his young enemy. With our heroes helplessly dangling over a vat of boiling chemicals, the timer running down, and Jeanne struggling to sort out the supposed revelation about her father, all looks bleak....
Notes
Many frames with characters superimposed over photorealistic backgrounds are used throughout the story. This technique has been used in several previous BDC stories:
"Hiss Hole Comes to Town",
"A Fair Fight",
"Small Medium at Large",
"Driving Miss Crazy",
"Soup to Mutts",
"Un-Civil Warriors",
"Canine Calamity".
The sepia tone effect in the flashback (p. 4-5), where we see how Jeanne came to be paralyzed, was first seen in
"The Raving".
The exterior of the Treehouse Warrior headquarters--a treehouse, of course--is seen for the first time. The interior looks just as it did in BDC#1, with walls and floors composed of boards of many different colors.
The treehouse security computer has a floating windows screen saver (p. 6).
Hiss Hole's origin--a human scientist poisoned by a combination of cobra venom and an untested snakebite drug--is revealed. Jon addresses Hiss Hole by his real name, Jim Allen, for the first time in the series.
The "6" in Muta-6, in an early unpublished story, indicated the number of hours before full cellular saturation and the mutation becoming permanent. Up until the six-hour limit the effects can be reversed. This version is a more powerful and faster-acting variation--using Stonehart's research--on the drug that transformed Dr. Allen himself. It is presumed that years after his own mutation Allen/Snakeman/Hiss Hole synthesized an antidote to Muta-6, but of course it was too late to save him. It's implied the drug may have also affected his mind slowly over the years and partly contributed to his madness.
Hiss Hole demonstrates he can use hypnotism, as snakes are reputed to do with birds (p. 12)...and, like an actual cobra, he produces venom. His saliva is observed to be poisonous, or at least highly caustic (p. 19).
Goofs Throughout the story, Jeanne's wheelchair is mistakenly animated without a platform for her feet or any front castors.
Some of the dialogue (p. 8, 9, 12) was redone by a computer and doesn't match up with the rest of the lettering around it.
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The "handi-capable" new girl in town, Jeanne Stonehart, teaches The Treehouse Warriors some very valuable lessons about how to treat friends who happen to have disabilities--with love, patience, and dignity. Jeanne's legs may be weak, but her mind is powerful. A buried memory from childhood could, in the wrong hands, bring about the end of the world as we know it...and Hiss Hole's hands are about as wrong as it gets. 
Many frames with characters superimposed over photorealistic backgrounds are used throughout the story. This technique has been used in several previous BDC stories:
"
Throughout the story, Jeanne's wheelchair is mistakenly animated without a platform for her feet or any front castors.
