WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Catwoman #24, by Blake Northcott, Sean Murphy, Cian Tormey and FCO Plascencia, on sale now.
In her solo series, Catwoman is spending time in South America, where she's trying to steal a highly sought-after list from a drug cartel run by the villain Snowflame. While there, she runs into a mythical panther, resistance fighters, and the infamous villain himself. Although Snowflame might not be the best-known villai, he has one of DC's most infamous power sets. Introduced by Steve Englehart and Cary Bates in 1988's New Guardians #2, Snowflame gains superpowers by taking drugs.
Although Snowflame died in his first appearance, he resurfaced in Catwoman #23. And in Issue 24, the villain whips out a weapon that's almost as infamous as he is: the Codpiece Cannon.
The original bearer of the weapon is a Doom Patrol supervillain Codpiece. Created by Rachel Pollack and Scot Eaton, Codpiece made his first and only appearance in 1993's Doom Patrol #70. Although he didn't have any powers to speak of, Codpiece had an inferiority complex that stems from a misconstrued insult from a classmate about his height.
Codpiece created a suit with a weapon system that was strapped over his crotch. The codpiece is a weapon with a wide range of functions. In addition to serving as a cannon, it can fire missiles, emit sonic blasts, contains retractible boxing gloves and has a Swiss Knife-like tool that has utilities like drills and scissors in it. After donning the cannon, Codpiece focused mainly on robbing banks. However, he was ultimately defeated by Doom Patrol member Coagula, who dissolves the cannon and renders it useless.
At some point, the cannon was apparently reconstructed, and it found it's way into the possession of Snowflame alongside other odd artifacts like the Talisman of Arok. Although there were several noteworthy items like those available at the auction, Selina was there to steal a list from Snowflame's computer. The file contained a list of villains that included all their known aliases, known associates and their last locations. As Catwoman makes her way to Snowflame's compound, Snowflame puts on the wearable weapon in a failed attempt to get his guests to stay for the remainder of the auction.
Unfortunately, Snowflame never discharges the codpiece cannon, and it disappears as quickly as it appeared. Much like Snowflame himself, the canon occupies a distinctly odd corner of the DC Universe. While neither one exists as more than a particularly odd footnote, the reappearance of both ideas in this Catwoman story proves that some ideas are simply too weird to be forgotten.
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