Marvel wiki adventures: Arcade (Comedy Open Mic Round #21)

Ok, got a real treat this time, meet Arcade! http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Arcade_(Earth-616)

He's like the Riddler combined with...being bad at his job? Uh...well ok he's basically the Riddler.

Nope asked for bad at his job. Is he...is...he's holding a baby? Ok, that actually kinda works.

Remember that episode of the Batman animated series where Riddler has a maze based on his computer game with the Minotaur and the flying hand? Basically that.

Except, for Riddler that was a revenge thing. For Arcade it's a job. He spends what has to be an insane amount of money to build "Murderworlds" fully enclosed theme parks dedicated to killing ONE PERSON. Well sometimes teams too I guess.

That's right, people hire this dude to trap other people in giant mazes. To kill them.

Close, but fewer crotch accentuating crystal balls.

We know they have to pay a lot because, well, it specifically calls out one million dollars as his asking price in 1978, which adjusted for inflation is about $268 million now. So not chump change.

In that story he tries to kill Spider-Man and Captain Britain (hoo boy, we'll come back to him some other time). To do this he digs out a massive space beneath an amusement park in Manhattan.

Now, Manhattan is one of the most expensive places in the world to build anything at all. Per this site https://ny.curbed.com/2015/6/2/9954250/tracking-new-york-rents-and-asking-prices-over-a-century there was a big jump between the 70's and 80's in price per square foot in Manhattan, but let's give Arcade the best chance and go with the 70's $45 per square foot.

The place is generally huge and it's hard to say exactly how big, but we can get a general idea of one part of it at least. Spidey gets trapped in a giant pinball game at one point. The pinball he's stuck in appears to be in scale with a normal ball in a normal sized table. Seeing as Spidey is 5' 10" canonically, if we use just the length and width of a standard table per https://www.bmigaming.com/pinballfaq.htm we get a rough figure of about 105k square feet to house the game.

Right there that's about $4.7 million dollars, assuming that was the ONLY area in the place, that it was blank space, and that it didn't require excavation to even use in the first place.

Then you have to consider all the traps, the robots, the carnival rides themselves, the hush money to contractors to get them to build such a thing without telling anyone. Then factor in that he killed his assistant (for loving her too much, I think) then built a bunch of perfectly lifelike humanoid robot versions of her. All told you are looking at some serious overhead.

...money. Money pit.

The dude has built TONS of these too. He's already established as a high value assassin when we first see him so clearly he's done this before. Post his introduction he's failed every time, having only ever killed other villains and only achieving that much outside the confines of his mazes.

So, in conclusion, if you're ever in the Marvel world, get a job as a contractor with Arcade. He's clearly go no idea how much things cost and just as clearly has insane amounts of money. Plus you don't have to feel bad about working for an assassin either, since he only ever fails.

Oh, but don't sleep with him. I mean he looks like carrot top cosplaying as the 11th doctor so it shouldn't be tough to resist.

I nominate @dollarsandsense and @dustinseth to participate in the comedy thingy.