"A catastrophe. C-A-T-A-S-T-R-O-P-H-E. Like an apostrophe, but worse."

-Grammar Nazi, in a quote to the Daily Daily.

In /Co/ City, to err is human, but to err gramatically is quite possibly fatal. For coming down upon the inflictors of such crimes against language is the Capitalizational Crusader and his Correctional Corps- the Grammar Nazi.

How It All Began

Wilhelm Gurtreit was a test pilot for Nazi Germany back in 1945, and as the Soviet armies closed in on the Reich he was ordered to test out a new weapon- a plane capable of flying higher than any bomber had yet managed to go. From a position in low earth orbit he would then drop a test version of Germany's atomic bomb on the front in Poland, hopefully shocking the Soviets enough to give Germany time to recover from the pounding she was taking.

The test went horribly wrong. Gurtreit's plane reached its test altitude, but the elevators refused to shift, and Germany's star test pilot just kept going up, and up, and up. As he rocketed out into space, and the plane approached the speed of light (No-one is quite sure how it held together; scientists have suggested fairies as the only credible reaon), Gurtreit forstalled the feeling of doom by taking out his only book- a pocket dictionary- and beginning to read from the very start. Due to the pradox of time moving slower as you get faster, he had made it through 83% of the book by the time the plane hit a pocket of radon gas and did a runner from his universe to ours, with the side affect of giving Gurtreit incredible charisma and super-strength.

By the time the plane came down from lightspeed, Gurtreit had memorized the little book, and all the grammatical rules included therein- and so it proved the worst luck possible that he crashed into /Co/ City in the middle of a battle between the RAGE and the Penguin of DOOM. His newfound love for grammar being instantly assailed by the limited vocabulary of the RAGE and the randomness of the PoD, Gurtreit, as one bystander said, "went just a little crazy". He punched the RAGE hard enough to give him a bruise- something that has never been duplicated- and gave the Penguin of DOOM such a thrashing that it took a week of emo Livejournal updates to get her back to normal, before stomping off down the street.

The Anal-Retentive Reich

News of the arrival spread like wildfire, and though the Justice /Co/mrades made a diligent attempt to track down the depraved pilot, he was found first by the worst group imaginable- the /Co/ City Club for Grammatical and Punctuational Correctness (better known as "those assholes"). They flocked to him like flies to a dead hooker, and in less time than it takes to talk about it Gurtreit had an army. He vanished into the depths of the city, taking his soldiers with him, and began arming for a long and drawn-out war. No longer would he be a mere test pilot, forced to subject to the whims and quirks of others who happened to come along. Now the quirks were HIS, and he could exact his revenge on the rest of the city- as the Grammar Nazi!

Why This Is Bad

Gurtreit is an enigma to the traditional black-and-white style of thinking in /Co/ City. Rather than siding with either the /Co/mrades or the Society, Grammar Nazi uses his forces to simply beat on whoever is offending him the most with their incorrectness. Possibly the most common target of this is the Penguin of DOOM (and were it not for a slew of other targets, mostly on the surface, she might well be his only target), but he'll pound anyone who fucks up- the RAGE, Jetpack Viking, the INTERNET HATE MACHINE- he even went after Manny Quinn for a time. Despite his superstrength, his attacks are rarely more than an annoyance, but the problem is that they keep coming- Gurtreit knows the city better than some of the people who built it, and he can be in and out of any building in seconds. His army is even worse- while they can't flee or hit with the same force as Gurtreit, they have numbers on their side, and are extremely hard to get rid of.

Justice /Co/nquerers

Be thankful for SCIENCE- in the /Co/nquerers arc, Doctor Science has managed to repair some of Gurtreit's shattered brain, and the Grammar Nazi now fights in the Resistance. Gurtreit is similar by and large to his normal self, except that he now focusses his attacks almost solely on the Daily Daily, now the mouthpiece of the Regime. Infuriated by the Daily's assaults on both the truth and the English Language, Gurtreit is everywhere they don't want him to be- sabotaging equipment, crippling informants, and using his Army to beat up every newsboy they see trumpeting the latest Daily headline.