2:00 A.M. THE LABS OF W.Y.V.E.R.N.
The lights are down. The scientists went home hours ago. Every other experiment in the building has gone quiet.
Every one except Gearhead. Gearhead never sleeps. His first-generation bio-battery does not allow it, which is exactly why they made him the lab's gatekeeper.
Somewhere down the corridor, metal shifts against metal.
Click.
A hinged lid lifts. A trap door swings open. Something small and silver catches the light.
Gearhead's jaw creaks. Somebody in this building is hiding something.
He is right. In the world of Monkey Wrench, almost everybody is.
BUT THAT CLICK IS OLDER THAN W.Y.V.E.R.N. MUCH OLDER. LET'S REWIND.
Chapter One: The Poison Ring Legends
FLASHBACK: THE ANCIENT WORLD
Secret compartment rings are usually traced to ancient India and the Far East before they made their way to Europe. The design has barely changed since: a tiny chamber hidden under a hinged cover on top of the ring.
And the stories that grew up around them were dark. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder tells of an official who escaped torture by biting into his ring, which held poison inside a thin shell. The teenage emperor Heliogabalus is said to have worn one too, but his enemies got to him before he could use it.
FLASHBACK: RENAISSANCE ITALY
Then comes the most famous villain of them all. Lucrezia Borgia, noblewoman, was rumored to be a poison ring expert who quietly removed her rivals over dinner. It is a perfect origin story. It is also more legend than record. Getting a dose that was both deadly and tasteless into a chamber that small was hard, so the real body count was probably far lower than the legend.
Chapter Two: The Twist
Here is the part the legends leave out. Most compartment rings were never murder weapons. They were vaults for things people could not bear to lose.
- Relics. In the Middle Ages, rings carried a saint's hair, bone or tooth, worn as protection.
- Keepsakes. Renaissance aristocrats tucked away locks of hair and tiny portraits of the people they loved.
- Scent. Some held perfume or cologne.
Poison or perfume, the idea never died. A ring with a secret inside is still a small private story you carry around. And it is still the first thing everyone asks to see.
Chapter Three: The Ones That Open
BACK TO THE PRESENT. BACK TO THE LAB.
Every piece Ron Lodholz designs steps straight out of the Monkey Wrench comic, and some of these characters carry secrets of their own. Three of our rings open.
Fangface. Nobody is sure exactly what went into him. It is suspected that W.Y.V.E.R.N. used alien DNA, and possibly alien technology too. What we know for certain is that nobody has ever survived a bite from those fangs. His hinged top lifts to reveal a working compartment underneath, a direct descendant of the classic poison ring. The fangs, ridged brow and eye sockets are carved, not stamped.
Torque. A biomechanical juggernaut powered by an old-school internal combustion engine that produces bone-crushing force. Spark plugs, pistons, dual exhaust. Once he locks onto something, he does not stop. Pop the gas cap on the back and you find a secret compartment, with a tiny monkey wrench waiting inside.
Gearhead. Our night watchman. One of W.Y.V.E.R.N.'s first successful biomechanical experiments, he survived where the others did not. His jaw is articulated and really moves, and a trap door opens to reveal a hidden monkey wrench. Both mechanisms are built into the sculpt, not bolted on afterwards.
The secrets do not stop at rings. Dragonfly, a jet-powered aerial hunter, and Butterfly, a skeleton on clockwork wings, both wear jet packs that open. There is a monkey wrench hidden inside each one.
Epilogue: Your Turn to Keep a Secret
Each of these rings is cast in solid sterling silver, not plated and not filled, then finished by hand with a patina that sinks into every undercut. They come in full and half sizes from 6.5 to 13.5.
Nothing waits on a shelf. Your ring is cast, finished and inspected after you order, which usually takes two to six weeks. It arrives in a keepsake box with a collector card and Issue #1 of the comic it came from.
The compartments are small. If you have something specific in mind to hide, ask us before you order and we will tell you honestly whether it fits.
NEXT ISSUE: Why has the skull been grinning at us for five hundred years? What does a skull ring mean?