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#67 - Fiddler
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And we come to the one and only time I actually cried a bit during this campaign so far.

In his early years, Isaac Bowin was a petty thief working the streets of India. While Bowin was attempting to rob a local merchant, local authorities found and apprehended him, whereupon he was taken to prison. During his incarceration, Bowin met an old Hindu fakir who used the power of music to hypnotize and control the actions of a deadly cobra. Bowin pressured the fakir into teaching him the mystical powers of the East, and the Hindu finally relented. Bowin proved an apt student, and before long, his knowledge surpassed that of his teacher. Using random materials found in his cell, Isaac fashioned a crude fiddle and used his new knowledge to escape from prison. He no longer required the services of the old fakir, so he used the power of his fiddle to murder him. Afterwards, he tracked down the merchant he attempted to rob earlier and executed him as well. Calling himself the Fiddler, Bowin returned to the United States to begin a new life of crime.

For years, Bowin would menace generations of the Flash, always in an effort to prove his competency and earn a distinctive reputation among his peers, villain and musician alike. However, in the end, the Fiddler would find himself disrespected by the Society, never offered membership among its numbers - some would claim this was due to Bowins extensive age and the thought that he was all but washed-up at this advanced point in his life. Thus, he joined the Secret Six, battling against the Society for just a shred of dignity. He would earn it, ultimately, but from the most unlikely of sources - Checkmate agents, for whom he would buy precious moments in an escape from the House of Secrets when Cheshire betrayed the Six to attack. The Fiddler died, his swan song a heroic one.

God, I don't know how it got to me so quickly - I knew it was a potential inevitability, of course, and yet I was unprepared to let go of the Fiddler in the House of Secrets. The music, of course, played a significant part of that moment. Perfectly aligned with the scene from start to finish, the Fiddler's swan song was a sacrifice that really moved me. In its way, it was indicative of how unflinchingly unsentimental the Society operated. Cheshire broke the souls of the Secret Six in her betrayal, but instead of allowing that to wipe out his allies of convenience, the Fiddler, who had espoused prior to that point a desire for legacy and remembrance, finds just that. Again, in the effort to buy precious seconds, the Fiddler is added to that mental monument of giants, unforgettable giants who gave it all. And, sadly, he will never see if his effort bore fruit. I'd like to think that the Thinker will have a real legacy in this campaign, but it's too easy to forget absent friends, and that sort of bittersweet realism only adds to the pain of what ended up being a personal favorite scene for me in its quiet suffering.

One of you drafted #66, but not who I expected...