I have had several contentious discussions with an old friend and fellow comic book aficionado about the representation of blacks in superhero comics. I’m not talking about blacks as in African-Americans, but blacks as in the color black, specifically as it relates to the color blue.
Due to the vagaries of the four-color printing process and the traditionally primitive techniques of making color separations, objects and materials that are meant to be black often appear bluish-black, dark blue, or just plain blue in comic book illustrations. The reason for this is that black and gray, like gold and silver, were not colors that could be readily reproduced by the processes used in the comics industry for most of its history. This had led to a good deal of confusion in many minds, particularly in regards to characters’ costumes.
Solid blacks could only be applied to the page by the inker, and these artists often left areas “open for color” to serve as highlights and to define the character’s shapes, rather than having them look like a silhouette. This left the colorist to figure out a way to represent the “light black” areas with their limited palette. Grays could only be approximated using a series of muted purples, with only two or three basic shades available, and so, since there was a consensus that primary colors suited comic book characters best, solid blue was settled on as the best solution.
The best example of this can be seen in Superman’s hair. Obviously, Superman does not have blue hair, although it sometimes looks like it. His hair is black, but the highlights are usually colored solid blue. Likewise, Lois Lane has black hair with blue highlights, but this is not meant to suggest that she has blue highlights added to her hair at the hairdresser. It is simply a convention of comics coloring.
Similarly, in Marvel comics, both the Black Panther and Black Bolt wear costumes that usually appear to be blue but are in fact black. This would seem to be obvious, given their names. If the Black Panther’s all-concealing costume was inked solid black every time, he would not be very interesting visually. Plus, it would often be difficult to tell what he was doing, since he would just be an amorphous black blob. John Byrne once tried to underscore that the Panther’s costume was not blue by covering his highlighted areas with gray tone – small black dots on clear acetate laid down over the inked image. See Fantastic Four # 241 to judge whether this experiment was successful. Black Bolt’s costume often appears to be blue with some light-blue accents, but is actually black and silver, two colors beyond the capabilities of the old-fashioned printing process. If his costume were actually blue, wouldn’t he be called Blue Bolt?
Surprisingly, Spider-Man was originally depicted in a costume of red and black, rather than the now-familiar red and blue version. This is unmistakable in his first appearance in Amazing Fantasy # 15, penciled and inked by Steve Ditko. Spidey’s costume is still pretty clearly meant to be red and black in the first six issues of Amazing Spider-Man, with Ditko leaving those areas un-inked more and more. After this point, Spidey seems to suddenly have a new costume of red and blue, though it may have been only because Ditko was trying to save time and India ink. The only exception is the back-up story in Amazing Spider-Man #8, where Ditko inked Jack Kirby’s pencils. Spidey’s costume is again unmistakably red and black here. In more recent years, some artists have tried to evoke the original version by making the usually blue areas of the costume solid black again.
If you don’t want to take my word for it, how about “Jazzy” John Romita’s? In Tales to Astonish: Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and the American Comic Book Revolution by Ronin Ro, the long-running Spider-Man artist and Marvel art director relates a conversation he had with Stan Lee, when television executives were demanding changes in Spidey’s costume for the 1977 live-action TV show. Fearing the blue areas of the costume would interfere with the blue-screen special effects shots, they wanted it changed to red and black, which upset Stan Lee for some reason.
“‘You know, there’s nothing wrong with Spider-Man being black,’ Romita told [Stan Lee]. He was actually supposed to be red and black in the comics. The blue appeared on his costume as highlights because artists didn’t want him to resemble a cardboard cutout. But over the years, artists started leaving him ‘open for color,’ which led to zealous colorists filling these empty spaces with lots of blue. ‘So it evolved into a blue-and-red costume, but he was supposed to be black and red originally,’ Romita explained.” (p.192)
The same thing happened with the X-Men. In their very first issue, penciled by Jack Kirby and inked by Paul Reinman, it is obvious their costumes are yellow and black. However, by the second issue, Reinman was leaving more and more of these black areas “open for color,” probably out of sheer laziness. When Chic Stone took over the inking duties a few issues later, he was no better in this regard, and it soon came to be believed that their costumes were just yellow and blue. By the time of the first fully post-Kirby issue, by Werner Roth and Dick Ayers, the uniforms didn’t look black at all, or even particularly dark. The twelfth issue is an exception -- with layouts by Kirby, pencils by Alex Toth, and inks by Vince Colletta – for their costumes look yellow and black most of the time. Later on, Cyclops kept this black-and-yellow color scheme when the team adopted individual costumes, a look he kept for decades. His teammate, the Beast, adopted a red-and-black costume, and the Angel eventually settled on a black-and-white suit. However, many people, including some of Marvel’s writers, erroneously believe these costumes to have been dark blue. They weren’t.
The Fantastic Four’s traditional costumes were blue, though their gloves and boots were black, as were their collars and belts. However, the gloves and boots often appeared blue or dark blue, since they were supposed to be sort of leathery and had a lot of highlights. However, this can be seen depicted more realistically by Alex Ross in his Marvels series with writer Kurt Busiek. When John Byrne revamped the costumes in 1985, they became black with white gloves, boots, belts, and collars. They were not dark blue, although they were often depicted that way, especially in licensed merchandise. Again, the true color scheme is made clear in the first couple of issues after the change was made, and became obfuscated over time.
The Wasp’s original costume was red and black, and was normally inked in a way that made this clear, and there is little contention on this point. Likewise, Nightcrawler was usually shown in red and solid black, plus white gloves and boots. Havok was always done as a solid black silhouette, and no one would argue what his costume looked like. But Hawkeye was introduced in a purple and black costume, which would look much more dynamic than the purple and dark blue combination he was later usually shown wearing, and I would argue that his costume was always supposed to be purple and black.
To clarify my stance on this issue, here is a list of Marvel’s other major characters whose costumes were primarily black and not blue, in my estimation:
Aurora & Northstar (original costumes, black & white)
Black Cat (black & white)
Black Knight (black w/ red & gold accents, silver chain mail, blue cape)
Black Mamba (all black)
Black Queen (black leather)
Black Widow (black leather)
Blacklash (black & gray w/ purple cape)
Blackout (black & yellow)
Bullseye (black & white)
Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell of the Kree, black & red)
Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau, silver & black)
Constrictor (black & orange)
Corsair (black & red)
Darkstar (black & yellow)
Deadly Nightshade (black leather)
Enforcer (black & white)
Foolkiller (mostly black)
Grim Reaper (second version, black w/ purple cape)
Gypsy Moth (black & orange)
Hellcat (gold & black – NOT yellow & blue)
Mister Sinister (black w/ red accents)
Mockingbird (black & white)
Morbius, the Living Vampire (black & red)
Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers, black w/ red & gold accents)
Nighthawk (black & yellow w/ red wings)
Nomad (Steve Rogers, black & gold)
Paladin (purple & black)
Power Man (Luke Cage, black leather pants, yellow shirt & boots)
Psylocke (ninja version)
Puck (black & orange)
Punisher (black & white)
Nova (Richard Ryder, black & gold)
Shadowcat (black w/ light-blue leggings)
S.H.I.E.L.D. uniforms (black jumpsuits w/ color-coded accessories)
Shroud (black w/ midnight-blue cape)
Storm (original costume, black leather w/ gold accents)
Sub-Mariner (fancy version, shiny black w/ gold accents)
Tarantula (red & black)
Terrax (black & red w/ gold accents)
Thunderbird (black & red w/ gold accents)
Tigra (black bikini)
Valkyrie (black & silver w/ blue cape)
Yellowjacket (both characters, black & yellow)
The following is a list of those characters who wear costumes that actually are blue or dark blue, in my estimation. A slightly less distinguished company, I might add.
Captain America (obviously)
Archangel
Blitzkrieg
Blue Streak
Bucky
Cobalt Man
Controller
Cyclone
Dazzler (post-disco version)
Galactus
Goliath (Henry Pym)
Graviton
Ikaris (of the Eternals)
Jack of Hearts
Ms. Marvel (Sharon Ventura)
Nomad (Jack Monroe)
Patriot (Jeffrey Mace)
Sabra
Shooting Star
Speedball
Spirit of ’76 (William Nasland)
Super Sabre
Texas Twister
Torpedo
Union Jack
Vanguard (Soviet Super-Soldiers)
Finally, two characters I was just never sure about:
Moon Knight
Apocalypse
Although modern computer-coloring techniques and improved printing processes make it easier to depict black costumes more realistically, old habits die hard, and decades of having a particular convention ingrained into the thinking of comics readers and creators perpetuates the confusion over what’s black and what’s blue.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query black and blue. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query black and blue. Sort by date Show all posts
Thursday
Friday
Doctor Who Notes 10
Season ten of Doctor Who kicks off with the first anniversary special, in which the first two Doctors return to join the third in an adventure that reveals much about Time Lord history. Following this story, the Doctor’s exile is rescinded, and he is free to roam time and space once more. Then, the Master and the Daleks team up to menace the Doctor, in what would turn out to be Roger Delgado’s final appearance in the series.
From “The Three Doctors”
The Doctor is brought evidence of a superluminal energy beam directed at Earth, along which has traveled a strange matter / antimatter goo. When several monsters attack UNIT headquarters to get the Doctor, he and Jo Grant take refuge in the disabled TARDIS, forcing the Doctor to contact the Time Lords for help. Meanwhile, the Time Lords have discovered the energy beam originates from within a black hole that is quickly draining away all power from the Time Lords, disabling them.
Chancellor: Are you telling me we’re up against an adversary -- a force equal to our own?
President: Equal and opposite to our own!
Chancellor: A force which inhabits a universe where by definition even we cannot exist?
President: Yes, a force in the universe of antimatter!
Chancellor: But that’s too terrible to contemplate! Someone must go and help the Doctor!
President: I agree, but no one can be spared, Your Excellency. Everyone is needed to combat the energy drain.
Chancellor: Are you saying we can’t help him?
President: Yes, I am. But perhaps he can help himself. Show me the Doctor’s time stream, the section for his earlier self, before he changed his form.
Chancellor: You cannot allow him to cross his own time-stream! Apart from the enormous energy it would need, the First Law of Time expressly forbids him to meet his other selves!
President: I am aware of that, Your Excellency. But this is an emergency.
Chancellor: But you can’t!
President: Your Excellency, I have to!
Chancellor: Be it on your own head!
In the TARDIS, a recorder suddenly appears on the main console, which the Doctor says looks strangely familiar. Suddenly, his previous incarnation materializes, explaining that the Time Lords were able to lift him from his present and deposit him into his own future. The two Doctors begin squabbling immediately, so the Time Lords summon up his first incarnation to keep them in line, but he becomes trapped in a time eddy and can only appear on the TARDIS viewscreen. The goo transports the third Doctor and Jo to a planet within a singularity in the antimatter universe. As the second Doctor tries to fill in the incredulous Brigadier Lethhridge-Stewart, the goo becomes agitated again, causing them to retreat back into the TARDIS. It is the first time inside for both the Brigadier and Sergeant Benton. The second Doctor offers them some jellybabies. Meanwhile, the third Doctor learns the identity of his kidnapper -- Omega, the legendary Time Lord the Doctor thought dead.
Omega: Without me, there would be no time travel. You and our fellow Time Lords would still be locked in your own time, as puny as those creatures you now so graciously protect.
The Doctor: You knew your mission was dangerous.
Omega: Dangerous, yes. But I completed it! And I did not expect to be abandoned! Many thousands of years ago when I left our planet, all this was then a star, until I arranged its detonation!
The Doctor: You were the solar engineer. It was your duty.
Omega: It was an honour, or so I thought then. I was to be the one to find and create the power source that would give us mastery over time itself!
The Doctor: Well, you succeeded. And are revered for it.
Omega: Revered? Here? I was abandoned!
The Doctor: Histories say you were lost in the super-nova.
Omega: I was sacrificed to that super-nova! I generated those forces, and for what? To be blown out of existence into this black hole of antimatter? My brothers became Time Lords, but I was abandoned and forgotten!
The Doctor: No, not forgotten. All my life I’ve known of you and honoured you as our greatest hero!
Omega: A hero? I should have been a god!
Omega demonstrates that in the singularity, he can manipulate reality with his mind, which allowed him to survive and create the matter / antimatter goo that enables the Doctor, Jo, and the others to exist in the antimatter universe.
The Doctor: How do I fit into this picture?
Omega: There are some things that even I cannot do, not alone. And at this point in my plans, I need the help of a brother Time Lord.
The Doctor: Oh, I see.
Omega: And it pleases me to use you against them.
The goo then transports the whole of UNIT headquarters through the black hole, and the second Doctor is also brought before Omega, who deduces that they are both the same person. Omega intends for the Doctors to take over maintaining the energy beam so that he can escape, but the Doctors discover that Omega’s physical form has dissolved completely, and that he can now exist only within the singularity. The second Doctor finds his recorder had slipped into the TARDIS force-field generator, and is therefore still composed of matter. When Omega disrupts the field, the atoms annihilate each other, destroying the singularity and sending all the matter back to its point of origin. The black hole collapses and Omega is once again lost. The first two Doctors are returned to their respective points in the time stream, and the third Doctor receives a gift from the Time Lords.
The Doctor: The Time Lords -- they’ve sent me a new dematerialisation circuit! And my knowledge of time travel law and all the dematerialisation codes, they’ve all come back! They’ve forgiven me … they’ve given me back my freedom!
From “Carnival of Monsters”
Attempting to take Jo on a trip to Metebelis III, the Doctor finds the TARDIS has materialized instead on Inter Minor, within a device that contains miniaturized alien environments.
The Doctor: As a matter of fact, I had a great deal to do with the banning of these miniscopes.
Jo: You did?
The Doctor: Yes, I did. I managed to persuade the High Council of the Time Lords that they were an offence against the dignity of sentient life forms.
Jo: But I thought the Time Lords never interfered.
The Doctor: Well, they don’t as a rule. But frankly, I made such a nuisance of myself -- well, they banned the things.
Jo: But if these scope things were banned, how come we’re inside one?
The Doctor: I don’t know. Officially, they were all called in and destroyed.
From “Frontier in Space”
After leaving Inter Minor, the TARDIS nearly has a hyperspace collision with a 26th century space freighter, but manages to materialize on board just in time. The Doctor and Jo find themselves in the middle of a plot by the Master to start a war between the Earth and Draconian space empires. The Master is employing the Ogrons as his henchmen and turns out to be in league with the Daleks, who plan to invade the Milky Way galaxy in the aftermath of the war. Although he asked for only the Earth, the Master intended to double-cross the Daleks and seize total power for himself. The Doctor and Jo escape the Master’s clutches in the TARDIS, but not before the Doctor is wounded by the Master’s ray gun. The Doctor sends a telepathic message to the Time Lords, asking them to send the TARDIS after the Dalek task force. His scheme collapsing, the Master also escapes, not to encounter the Doctor again until their disastrous homecoming.
From “Planet of the Daleks”
The Doctor collapses and falls into a deep coma as a result of his injuries. When the TARDIS finally materializes, Jo goes out to look for help. The Doctor then comes round, only to find the TARDIS doors jammed and the oxygen supply depleted. He is rescued by a group of Thals from Skaro, on an interstellar expedition to the planet Spiridon. The Thals mention their ancient legend of the Doctor and his three companions who once helped them escape the Daleks. Now, a Dalek army has come to Spiridon to learn the secret of invisibility, having subjugated the natives by using germ warfare, and are marshaling their forces for the invasion of the Milky Way galaxy. However, the Doctor buries the Dalek army in an ice floe.
From “The Green Death”
At UNIT headquarters, Jo is having a quick breakfast while the Doctor tinkers with components from the TARDIS.
Jo: Is that the dematerialisation circuit?
The Doctor: No, no. No more trouble there, thank goodness. I can now take the TARDIS wherever and whenever I like. I’ve got absolute control over her.
Jo: Now the Time Lords have forgiven you.
The Doctor: Yes, exactly.
Jo: Well, what is it then?
The Doctor: What, this? This is the space-time co-ordinate programmer. The wretched thing’s nearly worn out. That’s the trouble with the TARDIS, she’s getting on a bit, you know, Jo.
Jo: Momummennememmergobbumebbumebbusbee!
The Doctor: Look, must you?
Jo: I’m sorry, it’s my breakfast. I said no wonder we never got to Metebelis III.
The Doctor: There’s precious little protein in an apple, you know. Protein’s the thing for breakfast, Jo.
Jo: Eggs and bacon? Yuck!
The Doctor: That’s where we’re going to next.
Jo: Where are we going?
The Doctor: Metebelis III. The TARDIS can’t miss this time. I’ll actually wire the coordinates into the programmer.
News of a mysterious death at Global Chemicals in Wales leads the Brigadier to ask the Doctor and Jo to assist the investigation. Jo intends to help a group led by Professor Clifford Jones, which opposes Global Chemicals. The Doctor, however, insists on going to Metebelis III, and the three of them go their separate ways. Metebelis III turns out to be a nightmarish experience, but the Doctor manages to pocket a blue crystal. He then joins the Brigadier in Wales, where they find a mine infested with giant maggots. As the UNIT troops arrive in force, the Doctor realizes that Jo is falling in love with Professor Jones. He also discovers that Global Chemicals is run by a sentient computer that has enslaved the human employees, and that the blue crystal can overcome the mental conditioning. The computer thus destroyed, Professor Jones and Jo announce their plans to be married and go on an expedition to the Amazon Jungle. The Doctor gives Jo the crystal from Metebelis III as a wedding gift.
Next Season
From “The Three Doctors”
The Doctor is brought evidence of a superluminal energy beam directed at Earth, along which has traveled a strange matter / antimatter goo. When several monsters attack UNIT headquarters to get the Doctor, he and Jo Grant take refuge in the disabled TARDIS, forcing the Doctor to contact the Time Lords for help. Meanwhile, the Time Lords have discovered the energy beam originates from within a black hole that is quickly draining away all power from the Time Lords, disabling them.
Chancellor: Are you telling me we’re up against an adversary -- a force equal to our own?
President: Equal and opposite to our own!
Chancellor: A force which inhabits a universe where by definition even we cannot exist?
President: Yes, a force in the universe of antimatter!
Chancellor: But that’s too terrible to contemplate! Someone must go and help the Doctor!
President: I agree, but no one can be spared, Your Excellency. Everyone is needed to combat the energy drain.
Chancellor: Are you saying we can’t help him?
President: Yes, I am. But perhaps he can help himself. Show me the Doctor’s time stream, the section for his earlier self, before he changed his form.
Chancellor: You cannot allow him to cross his own time-stream! Apart from the enormous energy it would need, the First Law of Time expressly forbids him to meet his other selves!
President: I am aware of that, Your Excellency. But this is an emergency.
Chancellor: But you can’t!
President: Your Excellency, I have to!
Chancellor: Be it on your own head!
In the TARDIS, a recorder suddenly appears on the main console, which the Doctor says looks strangely familiar. Suddenly, his previous incarnation materializes, explaining that the Time Lords were able to lift him from his present and deposit him into his own future. The two Doctors begin squabbling immediately, so the Time Lords summon up his first incarnation to keep them in line, but he becomes trapped in a time eddy and can only appear on the TARDIS viewscreen. The goo transports the third Doctor and Jo to a planet within a singularity in the antimatter universe. As the second Doctor tries to fill in the incredulous Brigadier Lethhridge-Stewart, the goo becomes agitated again, causing them to retreat back into the TARDIS. It is the first time inside for both the Brigadier and Sergeant Benton. The second Doctor offers them some jellybabies. Meanwhile, the third Doctor learns the identity of his kidnapper -- Omega, the legendary Time Lord the Doctor thought dead.
Omega: Without me, there would be no time travel. You and our fellow Time Lords would still be locked in your own time, as puny as those creatures you now so graciously protect.
The Doctor: You knew your mission was dangerous.
Omega: Dangerous, yes. But I completed it! And I did not expect to be abandoned! Many thousands of years ago when I left our planet, all this was then a star, until I arranged its detonation!
The Doctor: You were the solar engineer. It was your duty.
Omega: It was an honour, or so I thought then. I was to be the one to find and create the power source that would give us mastery over time itself!
The Doctor: Well, you succeeded. And are revered for it.
Omega: Revered? Here? I was abandoned!
The Doctor: Histories say you were lost in the super-nova.
Omega: I was sacrificed to that super-nova! I generated those forces, and for what? To be blown out of existence into this black hole of antimatter? My brothers became Time Lords, but I was abandoned and forgotten!
The Doctor: No, not forgotten. All my life I’ve known of you and honoured you as our greatest hero!
Omega: A hero? I should have been a god!
Omega demonstrates that in the singularity, he can manipulate reality with his mind, which allowed him to survive and create the matter / antimatter goo that enables the Doctor, Jo, and the others to exist in the antimatter universe.
The Doctor: How do I fit into this picture?
Omega: There are some things that even I cannot do, not alone. And at this point in my plans, I need the help of a brother Time Lord.
The Doctor: Oh, I see.
Omega: And it pleases me to use you against them.
The goo then transports the whole of UNIT headquarters through the black hole, and the second Doctor is also brought before Omega, who deduces that they are both the same person. Omega intends for the Doctors to take over maintaining the energy beam so that he can escape, but the Doctors discover that Omega’s physical form has dissolved completely, and that he can now exist only within the singularity. The second Doctor finds his recorder had slipped into the TARDIS force-field generator, and is therefore still composed of matter. When Omega disrupts the field, the atoms annihilate each other, destroying the singularity and sending all the matter back to its point of origin. The black hole collapses and Omega is once again lost. The first two Doctors are returned to their respective points in the time stream, and the third Doctor receives a gift from the Time Lords.
The Doctor: The Time Lords -- they’ve sent me a new dematerialisation circuit! And my knowledge of time travel law and all the dematerialisation codes, they’ve all come back! They’ve forgiven me … they’ve given me back my freedom!
From “Carnival of Monsters”
Attempting to take Jo on a trip to Metebelis III, the Doctor finds the TARDIS has materialized instead on Inter Minor, within a device that contains miniaturized alien environments.
The Doctor: As a matter of fact, I had a great deal to do with the banning of these miniscopes.
Jo: You did?
The Doctor: Yes, I did. I managed to persuade the High Council of the Time Lords that they were an offence against the dignity of sentient life forms.
Jo: But I thought the Time Lords never interfered.
The Doctor: Well, they don’t as a rule. But frankly, I made such a nuisance of myself -- well, they banned the things.
Jo: But if these scope things were banned, how come we’re inside one?
The Doctor: I don’t know. Officially, they were all called in and destroyed.
From “Frontier in Space”
After leaving Inter Minor, the TARDIS nearly has a hyperspace collision with a 26th century space freighter, but manages to materialize on board just in time. The Doctor and Jo find themselves in the middle of a plot by the Master to start a war between the Earth and Draconian space empires. The Master is employing the Ogrons as his henchmen and turns out to be in league with the Daleks, who plan to invade the Milky Way galaxy in the aftermath of the war. Although he asked for only the Earth, the Master intended to double-cross the Daleks and seize total power for himself. The Doctor and Jo escape the Master’s clutches in the TARDIS, but not before the Doctor is wounded by the Master’s ray gun. The Doctor sends a telepathic message to the Time Lords, asking them to send the TARDIS after the Dalek task force. His scheme collapsing, the Master also escapes, not to encounter the Doctor again until their disastrous homecoming.
From “Planet of the Daleks”
The Doctor collapses and falls into a deep coma as a result of his injuries. When the TARDIS finally materializes, Jo goes out to look for help. The Doctor then comes round, only to find the TARDIS doors jammed and the oxygen supply depleted. He is rescued by a group of Thals from Skaro, on an interstellar expedition to the planet Spiridon. The Thals mention their ancient legend of the Doctor and his three companions who once helped them escape the Daleks. Now, a Dalek army has come to Spiridon to learn the secret of invisibility, having subjugated the natives by using germ warfare, and are marshaling their forces for the invasion of the Milky Way galaxy. However, the Doctor buries the Dalek army in an ice floe.
From “The Green Death”
At UNIT headquarters, Jo is having a quick breakfast while the Doctor tinkers with components from the TARDIS.
Jo: Is that the dematerialisation circuit?
The Doctor: No, no. No more trouble there, thank goodness. I can now take the TARDIS wherever and whenever I like. I’ve got absolute control over her.
Jo: Now the Time Lords have forgiven you.
The Doctor: Yes, exactly.
Jo: Well, what is it then?
The Doctor: What, this? This is the space-time co-ordinate programmer. The wretched thing’s nearly worn out. That’s the trouble with the TARDIS, she’s getting on a bit, you know, Jo.
Jo: Momummennememmergobbumebbumebbusbee!
The Doctor: Look, must you?
Jo: I’m sorry, it’s my breakfast. I said no wonder we never got to Metebelis III.
The Doctor: There’s precious little protein in an apple, you know. Protein’s the thing for breakfast, Jo.
Jo: Eggs and bacon? Yuck!
The Doctor: That’s where we’re going to next.
Jo: Where are we going?
The Doctor: Metebelis III. The TARDIS can’t miss this time. I’ll actually wire the coordinates into the programmer.
News of a mysterious death at Global Chemicals in Wales leads the Brigadier to ask the Doctor and Jo to assist the investigation. Jo intends to help a group led by Professor Clifford Jones, which opposes Global Chemicals. The Doctor, however, insists on going to Metebelis III, and the three of them go their separate ways. Metebelis III turns out to be a nightmarish experience, but the Doctor manages to pocket a blue crystal. He then joins the Brigadier in Wales, where they find a mine infested with giant maggots. As the UNIT troops arrive in force, the Doctor realizes that Jo is falling in love with Professor Jones. He also discovers that Global Chemicals is run by a sentient computer that has enslaved the human employees, and that the blue crystal can overcome the mental conditioning. The computer thus destroyed, Professor Jones and Jo announce their plans to be married and go on an expedition to the Amazon Jungle. The Doctor gives Jo the crystal from Metebelis III as a wedding gift.
Next Season
Monday
It Happened in Rutland
Following The Crossover That Wasn’t, the characters from the Marvel Universe and their fellow superheroes from the DC Universe came one step closer to meeting in an unofficial crossover event that found them in the same place at the same time, though they never actually crossed paths with each other. The time was Halloween and the place was Rutland, Vermont, which is known for its annual parade in honor of All-Hallows Eve.
Rutland and its Halloween Parade had already been featured in stories by both companies in previous years, but this time it was clear that a single story wove through issues of Justice League of America, Thor, and Amazing Adventures. The common thread is a sub-plot featuring four real-life comic book creators, writers Steve Englehart, Gerry Conway, and Len Wein and colorist Glynis Wein, who travel to Rutland for the parade and get caught up in the paranormal events that ensue.
However, when studying the overall flow of time in the Marvel Universe, continuity-pioneer George Olshevsky realized that the Rutland Halloween story with the Defenders in Marvel Feature #2 must have happened simultaneously as well, adding yet another layer to the already complex storyline. Fortunately, all the overlapping stories can be blended seamlessly, which I have endeavored to do here.
Though unstated, the semi-crossover was made possible by a dimensional convergence -- in effect, the Rutland in the Marvel Universe fused with the Rutland in the DC Universe for a little over 24 hours. Direct dimensional counterparts -- such as the two sets of Steve, Gerry, Len, and Glynis, as well as Roy Thomas and his wife Jeanie and parade organizer Tom Fagan -- merged upon entering the zone of convergence. They would have shared memories of both the Avengers and the Justice League, and it would have seemed perfectly normal, for as long as the convergence lasted. When the convergence finally collapsed, reality righted itself and the people involved were none the wiser.
Here, then, is the full and complete story of the craziest Rutland, Vermont Halloween Parade ever held:
On the evening of October 27th, on the outskirts of Rutland, Vermont, two boys are fishing in Otter Creek when they witness a large meteorite crash into the earth with a tremendous explosion. Curious, the boys approach the site of the impact and discover what appear to be large chunks of amber. However, when the shadowy figure of a man emerges from the smoldering rocks, the boys flee in a panic. The man is Loki, the Asgardian trickster, and he immediately sets into motion his latest scheme of revenge against his half-brother Thor.
Loki fires a bolt of eldritch energy from his hands into the sky. It arcs across the North American continent all the way to the west coast, where it revives the Absorbing Man, who has been trapped for about a year following a battle with the Hulk. Once free, the Absorbing Man is driven by voices in his head to make his way to New York City.
Loki, meanwhile, comes upon the remote home of the reclusive Tom Fagan, where he poses as a poor, lost traveler to take advantage of Tom’s good nature. Since Tom has stocked up on food and drinks for his coming Halloween party, he offers Loki a meal. Once inside the house, though, Loki ensorcells Tom and makes him his unwitting servant.
The Absorbing Man reaches New York by the evening of October 29th, where he challenges Thor to a fight. But, after knocking each other around the city streets for a little while, the Absorbing Man abandons the battle and is magically transported to Rutland, where the voices in his head drive him toward Tom Fagan’s house. There he meets Loki and learns of his plans to finally destroy Thor.
All day on October 30th, the Absorbing Man hides out in Tom Fagan’s barn while Loki outlines his plans. Then, when Tom’s out-of-town guests begin to arrive, Loki assumes the guise of the “lost traveler” once more. That evening, an eerie red glow is seen atop Bald Mountain, just northeast of town. Loki realizes the glow is the result of a ritual of black magic being performed on the mountain to open a portal to the dimension of the dread Dormammu, and factors it into his plans.
Meanwhile, on Bald Mountain, Dormammu’s cultists succeed in opening a portal through which they can communicate with the demonic entity and tell their dark lord that their plans are proceeding. Members of the cult are already in New York City to kidnap Dormammu’s enemy, Doctor Stephen Strange, for the ritual tomorrow that will enable Dormammu to conquer the earth.
However, the cult’s spells have an unintended side-effect due to the dimensional instability that occurs there every Halloween: the walls between this reality and a parallel world collapse, causing two different Rutlands to merge into one. The area of dimensional convergence covers a ten-mile radius around Bald Mountain.
In the Greenwich Village Sanctum Sanctorum of Doctor Strange, the Master of the Mystic Arts sees a vision of Dormammu in the Orb of Agamotto and considers summoning his sometime allies, Prince Namor of Atlantis, a.k.a. the Sub-Mariner, and the incredible Hulk. However, the sorcerer is tricked by a false image of his mentor, the Ancient One, into sending his astral form high into the sky above the city. When he returns, he finds a spell has blocked access to his physical form, which is being kidnapped by several hooded figures. When his manservant Wong tries to intervene, he receives a savage beating. Strange’s body is loaded into a station wagon and driven north out of New York.
Luckily, Wong had been on the phone with his master’s estranged lover, Clea, when the attack occurred and she became worried when he did not come back on the line. Arriving at the Sanctum Sanctorum, Clea revives Wong and learns what has happened. Using the Orb of Agamotto, Clea manages to send a psychic summons to both Namor and the Hulk.
Back in Rutland, a couple from New York, Roy and Jeanie Thomas, arrives at Tom Fagan’s house to help him finish the float for tomorrow’s Halloween Parade. Roy mentions that they heard talk on the radio driving up about mysterious red lights atop Bald Mountain. Tom tells them some of the local legends about the mountain, which has long been a site of paranormal phenomena. Still subtly affected by Loki’s spell, Tom’s manner is unusually creepy.
About a half-hour before midnight, Tom invites Roy and Jeanie to another Halloween ritual that goes back many years, gathering at a particular crossroads on the edge of town to hear “Old Mistress Sarah” chant the names of those who are to die within 24 hours. Arriving at the site, they join the crowd in time to see the elderly woman appear as she does every year. As the nearby church bells toll midnight, Old Mistress Sarah surprises the crowd when she reads off the names of Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and Hawkman, all members of the Justice League of America.
Around the same time, the Sub-Mariner and the Hulk arrive in Greenwich Village, where they are met by Clea and Wong, and they both agree to assist in the rescue of Doctor Strange. Clea hypnotizes the Hulk so that he will change back into Bruce Banner. They return to the Sanctum Sanctorum to try to determine where Strange has been taken.
Just before dawn on October 31st, Roy and Jeanie get their first look at Bald Mountain from Tom Fagan’s yard. Some of the other party-goers are already up and getting into their costumes. They then work together to put the finishing touches on the parade float.
An hour or so later, the station wagon bearing Doctor Strange’s body arrives in Rutland after driving all night. It pulls up to a ramshackle cabin at the foot of Bald Mountain, where they plan to wait until dusk before carrying the body up to the site of the ritual. After surrounding the body with black candles to keep the shielding spell potent, the cultists discuss their plans to enable Dormammu to possess the body of Doctor Strange so he can enter and conquer earth’s dimension. With devilish glee, they predict that Dormammu will cause Bald Mountain to erupt and bury Rutland in a lava flow. Having surreptitiously observed these events, Doctor Strange’s astral form then flashes back to New York and slips inside Wong’s body to better survive the prolonged separation from his physical form.
Later that morning, in the parallel universe, Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and Hawkman assemble for a meeting aboard the Justice League’s orbiting satellite. They are startled to learn they were actually summoned by the enigmatic Phantom Stranger. Having encountered the Phantom Stranger previously, Batman vouches for him, and the rest of the team agrees to hear him out. He explains that the evil sorcerer Felix Faust plans to take advantage of the annual dimensional instabilities to unleash a horde of demons in Rutland, Vermont that very night. The team agrees to investigate.
Not long after, Felix Faust arrives in Rutland, and is drawn to Tom Fagan’s house when he senses Loki’s magical energies. He sequesters himself in a small room on the house’s top floor and begins preparing himself for the incantations he will perform once the sun goes down. Loki also senses Faust’s presence, and realizes he can take advantage of whatever chaos this interloper may cause.
During the afternoon, four friends from New York City -- Steve Englehart, Gerry Conway, Len Wein, and his wife Glynis Wein -- lose their muffler while driving Steve’s dilapidated car to Rutland for the parade. Gerry mentions having had problems in Rutland the year before as well.
Meanwhile, Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and Hawkman spend the entire afternoon searching the area of Rutland for anything out of the ordinary, but have no success since the forces of evil are all laying low until nightfall.
At dusk, Hank McCoy, the former member of the X-Men known as the Beast, and his ex-girlfriend Vera Cantor find themselves stranded several miles west of town. Hank has recently mutated further into a somewhat ape-like form with blue-black fur, but has managed to disguise himself in order to appear human. Vera has enlisted his aid for a looming crisis in Canada, though she has yet to reveal any details, and they were en route to Quebec when Vera’s car broke down. After failing to flag down any passing vehicles, Hank resorts to desperate measures. Out of sight of Vera, he sheds his disguise and lopes across the road as the next car approaches, making sure he is seen. The car happens to be the one bringing Steve, Gerry, Len, and Glynis to Rutland. Steve slams on the brakes, and, freaked out by the strange apparition, they get out to have a look. Hank quickly puts his disguise back on, gets Vera, and flags down the four New Yorkers before they can get underway again. The quartet agrees to give the hapless couple a ride into town.
As they drive off, a dimensional portal opens, depositing the Juggernaut onto the road. However, before he can go anywhere, he is sucked back into the Crimson Cosmos, where he has been trapped for a year and a half. Unknown to the Juggernaut, the phenomenon is caused by the incantations of the cult of Dormammu, who are beginning their long ritual high up on Bald Mountain. Their spells further weaken the boundaries between dimensions, allowing the Juggernaut to materialize briefly in the vicinity of his hated enemy, Hank McCoy.
Soon, the four New Yorkers, along with Hank and Vera, arrive at their motel in Rutland. Hank and Vera thank them for their kindness, then go into town to find a restaurant. Steve, Gerry, Len, and Glynis check into the motel and stow their luggage in their rooms. After getting cleaned up, Glynis puts on her Supergirl costume, but Len’s costume rips when he’s putting it on, so the guys elect to keep wearing their regular clothes instead. The four friends walk up to the start of the parade route to check out the preparations and enjoy the carnival atmosphere. After a little while, they decide to head out to Tom Fagan’s place, as he is expecting them.
Twenty minutes later, Steve’s noisy car rumbles up to Tom’s house, and their host greets them at the door in his Batman costume. The four friends also detect the subtle change in Tom’s demeanor caused by Loki’s spell. He tells them that everyone is just getting ready to leave for the parade. Just then, the real Batman appears, leading the rest of the JLA to Tom’s house. Knowing from the previous Halloween Parade that Tom is one of the event’s organizers, Batman decides to let Tom know about their ongoing investigation. Tom is thrilled to have actual superheroes attending the parade, and asks them to ride on his float. Not seeing any harm in it, the Justice League agrees to participate. The heroes then head into town, but before Tom leaves his house, Loki checks in with his thrall to make sure that everything proceeds apace. Sensing that Thor is approaching, Loki sends the Absorbing Man out into the woods to ambush the thunder god when he arrives.
Tom rides into town with Steve, Gerry, Len, and Glynis. On the way, they ask if Hank and Vera can come to the party later, and Tom is happy to extend them an invitation. At that moment, Hank and Vera are having dinner at a restaurant on Main Street, unaware that the Juggernaut briefly rematerializes in the alley behind the building. The Juggernaut sees the parade getting ready to start, but before he can leave the alley, he is drawn back into the Crimson Cosmos.
As the Halloween Parade begins, Clea, Wong, Namor, and Bruce Banner arrive in Rutland, having made the journey by bus. They immediately notice the eerie red glow bathing the mountaintop and head out of town to investigate. Meanwhile, back at Tom’s house, Felix Faust begins his own sorcerous ritual, drawing demonic energies into the woods surrounding the town.
Just then, Thor arrives in the area, having used his enchanted hammer, Mjolnir, to track the Absorbing Man’s “mystic trail.” With the thunder god are his Asgardian companions Sif and Hildegarde. Thor immediately senses the evil forces that have been unleashed by Felix Faust and Dormammu’s minions. Suddenly, the Absorbing Man attacks and Thor battles him.
In town, Steve, Gerry, Len, and Glynis run into Hank and Vera again and tell them they are invited to Tom’s party later. However, their discussion is interrupted by the sudden materialization of the Juggernaut atop one of the parade floats. He smashes the float but then is just as suddenly drawn back into the Crimson Cosmos. However, in the confusion, Glynis has disappeared and Len, Gerry, and Steve begin a desperate search. Hank sends Vera back to the motel to get a room for them, then ducks into an alley and strips off his disguise. Knowing people will mistake his blue and furry form for a Halloween costume, the Beast sets off in search of the Juggernaut.
Glynis and Tom, along with several other parade-goers, have been mystically mesmerized by Loki and are compelled to walk through the woods to where Thor is fighting the Absorbing Man. The thunder god defeats his opponent by knocking him into Otter Creek in mid-transformation, causing the villain to absorb the properties of the water and be washed away with the current. Thor scarcely has time to catch his breath before Loki reveals himself, claiming he will use the dimensional chaos to supercharge his magic and thereby destroy Thor once and for all.
Loki first sics Tom’s dogs on Thor, having magically transformed them into slavering monsters. When Thor summons a vortex of wind to carry the canines away, Loki turns to his human victims, draining their life-forces to power the fearsome Fire-Sword. Thor is outraged and attacks his brother, but the duel does not go well for the thunder god. Watching from nearby, Sif and Hildegarde know they are honor-bound not to interfere in Thor’s fight.
Meanwhile, in the woods on the opposite side of town, the Beast encounters the Juggernaut when he rematerializes. The Juggernaut recognizes his old foe despite his mutated appearance, and their battle leads them up to Chittenden Reservoir, where the Juggernaut smashes a power station. However, the Beast soon loses his enemy when the Juggernaut’s massive frame keeps slipping on the loose dirt and rocks of the forest. The former X-Man then heads back towards town.
As Sif and Hildegarde watch Loki gaining the upper hand in the battle, they are suddenly visited by the Norn Queen Karnilla, who offers to use her magic to save Thor’s life if Sif will agree to help her track down her lost love Balder the Brave. Sif initially refuses the deal, but then Loki manages to separate Thor from his enchanted hammer, gloating that he need only hold Thor off for 60 seconds to then be able to kill him in his mortal guise as Dr. Donald Blake. Panic-stricken, Sif agrees to Karnilla’s terms, and so the sorceress immediately conjures up a fierce thunderstorm with driving rain that distracts Loki, allowing Thor to retrieve his hammer in the nick of time. Instantly, Thor calls down lightning to strike Loki, destroying the Fire-Sword and releasing those in Loki’s thrall. Loki himself has suddenly been struck blind, and stumbles off into the woods, losing Thor in the darkness. Giving up the search, Thor meets up with Hildegarde, who tells him Sif has gone off with Karnilla. Angered by this turn of events, the two Asgardians return to New York.
Glynis, Tom, and Loki’s other victims wander back into town with no memory of what has happened to them. Glynis soon meets up with Len, Gerry, and Steve again, to their great relief. Then the four friends decide to find a place to get something to eat.
Clea, Wong, Namor, and Bruce Banner climb Bald Mountain to find the black rite is underway. A dimensional portal has already been opened and Clea is horrified to see Dormammu lurking within. Unfortunately, they are discovered by the cult members, of whom there are at least fifty, and while some continue the ritual, others attack the intruders. Banner quickly turns into the Hulk and he and the Sub-Mariner batter the horde of cultists. Before Dormammu can commandeer his host body, though, Doctor Strange’s astral form emerges from Wong and re-enters his own physical form. Strange then battles Dormammu in the dimensional gateway, and the mystic forces they unleash against each other shake the mountain to its very foundations. The people on the streets of Rutland fear the mountain is erupting like a volcano.
There is a sudden landslide that wipes out the cult. The Hulk and the Sub-Mariner manage to protect Clea and Wong until Doctor Strange emerges from the collapsing portal. His power dampened by his exposure to the earth’s environment, Dormammu has decided to retreat, thus freeing Strange to carry Clea and Wong aloft with his Cloak of Levitation. The Hulk and Namor are caught in the final avalanche, but they manage to survive and dig themselves out. Grateful for his friends, Doctor Strange takes Clea and Wong back to the Sanctum Sanctorum in New York while the Sub-Mariner and the Hulk go their separate ways.
Steve, Gerry, Len, and Glynis are hanging out at a restaurant in town, where they have been for over an hour waiting for repairs to be completed on the floats wrecked by the Juggernaut. Glynis, still wearing her Supergirl costume, goes to the bathroom, but when she has not returned 20 minutes later, the guys become concerned. They ask a waitress to check the ladies’ room for them, only to discover that Glynis has vanished once again. Len is worried, but Gerry promises they will find her.
Glynis has been ensorcelled a second time, now by Felix Faust to serve as one of the host bodies for his demon horde. His spells also cause the Justice League, who are standing on one of the floats going down Main Street, to see all the other floats vanish into thin air, with the throng of spectators standing in a glassy-eyed trance. Baffled, the superheroes decide to pair off and canvas the area for the missing floats.
In the woods outside of town, Flash and Hawkman encounter a trio of costumed parade-goers who have been possessed by Faust’s demons. The possession has endowed the victims with superhuman powers to match their costumes. Joined by “Adam Strange” and “Captain America,” Glynis uses the powers of Supergirl to defeat the heroes. Flash and Hawkman collapse to the ground, feeling their life-force ebbing. Glynis and the two men are then teleported away to another part of the woods, where the demons plan to open a portal to their own dimension so they can invade the earth in their true forms. However, the Phantom Stranger appears and removes bits from the costumes of the fallen heroes, in preparation for performing some magic of his own.
Elsewhere in the woods, Batman and Green Lantern are likewise defeated by “Robin,” “Spider-Man,” and “Thor,” while Superman and Green Arrow are overcome by “Captain Marvel” and the 1940s “Flash.” From his hideout, Felix Faust exults over his easy victory, but the Phantom Stranger visits each of the dying heroes in turn to collect his token.
Meanwhile, Len, Gerry, and Steve search frantically for Glynis around town, then decide to go back to Tom Fagan’s house to look for her there. They are unaware that the Beast is very nearby, collecting his disguise from the alley where he left it, and is himself planning to make his way to Tom’s place, hoping to meet up with Vera there. Loki, having stumbled blindly through the woods, also draws near Tom’s house, following the mystic emanations from Felix Faust’s spellcasting. They all arrive at Tom’s house just minutes before midnight.
Hank McCoy enters first to find the party is already in full-swing. He passes Roy and Jeanie Thomas while looking for Vera. Suddenly, though, the Juggernaut smashes through the wall to continue his relentless pursuit of the Beast. Hank runs upstairs to lead him away from the other guests. He goes all the way up to the attic with the Juggernaut following close behind. In a desperate gamble, Hank removes his human-looking mask and huddles up on the floor, hoping to take the Juggernaut by surprise. When the villain enters the dimly-lit room, the Beast suddenly spins around and snarls. The Juggernaut draws back, startled, only for an instant, but it is enough for the Beast to leap on him and tear off his magic helmet. The Juggernaut falls backwards down the stairs to the second-floor landing, feeling his superhuman strength suddenly diminishing. At that moment, the clock strikes midnight.
Simultaneously, the Phantom Stranger has assembled the dying members of the Justice League at the same intersection where Old Mistress Sarah made her predictions 24 hours earlier. As the church bells toll midnight once again, the Phantom Stranger reads off the names of the heroes while tossing the items he had collected from each of their costumes. He thus breaks the spell of imminent death, allowing the Justice League to revive.
The spell broken, Faust’s demons are driven out of their host bodies, which had gathered not far from Tom Fagan’s house. Felix Faust curses his failure and, hearing the commotion in the hall, decides to make good his escape before he is discovered. Just as Len, Gerry, and Steve come upstairs to look for Glynis, they pass the Juggernaut on the landing, with the Beast in hot pursuit. Making it outside, the Juggernaut tries to steal Steve’s car, but it won’t start. The Beast leaps at him, knocking him out of the passenger-side door. They tumble into Tom’s yard and continue their brawl.
Len, Gerry, and Steve enter the room where Felix Faust has been hiding, seeing the wizard about to jump out the window. They initially assume he is trying to commit suicide, but then Faust levitates down and steals Steve’s car, making the engine start with the last of his fading sorcerous might. As the car roars away, the portal to the Crimson Cosmos opens above the weakened Juggernaut and he is drawn back into his extradimensional prison.
Meanwhile, Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and Hawkman have rushed to the scene to battle Faust’s demons before they can assume new host bodies. Glynis and the others awaken from their trance, though dazed, and catch glimpses of the battle as they head for the lights of Tom Fagan’s house. The Justice League makes short work of the demons and manages to drive them back through the doorway to their home dimension before it collapses.
As the Beast stands brooding in the darkness, Glynis wanders up to meet the three guys, who are watching helplessly as Faust drives off in their car. Len asks her where she was, but her memories are too scrambled to give a clear answer, though she thinks she saw some kind of battle raging in the woods. Gerry is mad, but Glynis puts him down for making such a big deal out of everything. Suddenly, Loki comes running out of the trees toward the fleeing car, trying desperately to reach this alien sorcerer before he disappears. To the horror of the four New Yorkers, Loki misses the car and runs right off a cliff. However, before Loki can hit the ground at the bottom of the gorge, he is teleported away by Dormammu, who has just conceived of a new plan of conquest. Assuming Loki to have been one of Tom’s costumed guests, the four friends immediately have their host call the Rutland police.
Not far down the road, Felix Faust is pulled over by the police for his missing muffler. Since he is wanted for breaking out of jail, the officers take him into custody.
With nothing left to sustain it, the dimensional convergence collapses about ten minutes after midnight and the two parallel Rutlands naturally disentangle themselves. In one world, the Beast slowly makes his way back to the motel to meet up with Vera, and in the morning they buy a car from a local farmer to continue their journey north into Canada. In the other world, the Justice League extends an offer of membership to the Phantom Stranger, but he elects to merely disappear. The teammates then return to their orbiting satellite headquarters to file their reports on the mission.
In both worlds, the Rutland police comb the gorge by Tom Fagan’s house in the morning for any sign of a body, and when none is found, the baffled Steve, Gerry, Len, and Glynis are let off with a warning for filing a false report. Steve then has the lost muffler replaced and the quartet drives back to New York City. After hearing the shocking news that 50 members of their community were killed in a landslide on Bald Mountain last night, Tom Fagan makes arrangements to have the gaping hole in the side of his house repaired before winter sets in. He also begins making plans for next year’s Rutland, Vermont Halloween Parade.
Rutland and its Halloween Parade had already been featured in stories by both companies in previous years, but this time it was clear that a single story wove through issues of Justice League of America, Thor, and Amazing Adventures. The common thread is a sub-plot featuring four real-life comic book creators, writers Steve Englehart, Gerry Conway, and Len Wein and colorist Glynis Wein, who travel to Rutland for the parade and get caught up in the paranormal events that ensue.
However, when studying the overall flow of time in the Marvel Universe, continuity-pioneer George Olshevsky realized that the Rutland Halloween story with the Defenders in Marvel Feature #2 must have happened simultaneously as well, adding yet another layer to the already complex storyline. Fortunately, all the overlapping stories can be blended seamlessly, which I have endeavored to do here.
Though unstated, the semi-crossover was made possible by a dimensional convergence -- in effect, the Rutland in the Marvel Universe fused with the Rutland in the DC Universe for a little over 24 hours. Direct dimensional counterparts -- such as the two sets of Steve, Gerry, Len, and Glynis, as well as Roy Thomas and his wife Jeanie and parade organizer Tom Fagan -- merged upon entering the zone of convergence. They would have shared memories of both the Avengers and the Justice League, and it would have seemed perfectly normal, for as long as the convergence lasted. When the convergence finally collapsed, reality righted itself and the people involved were none the wiser.
Here, then, is the full and complete story of the craziest Rutland, Vermont Halloween Parade ever held:
On the evening of October 27th, on the outskirts of Rutland, Vermont, two boys are fishing in Otter Creek when they witness a large meteorite crash into the earth with a tremendous explosion. Curious, the boys approach the site of the impact and discover what appear to be large chunks of amber. However, when the shadowy figure of a man emerges from the smoldering rocks, the boys flee in a panic. The man is Loki, the Asgardian trickster, and he immediately sets into motion his latest scheme of revenge against his half-brother Thor.
Loki fires a bolt of eldritch energy from his hands into the sky. It arcs across the North American continent all the way to the west coast, where it revives the Absorbing Man, who has been trapped for about a year following a battle with the Hulk. Once free, the Absorbing Man is driven by voices in his head to make his way to New York City.
Loki, meanwhile, comes upon the remote home of the reclusive Tom Fagan, where he poses as a poor, lost traveler to take advantage of Tom’s good nature. Since Tom has stocked up on food and drinks for his coming Halloween party, he offers Loki a meal. Once inside the house, though, Loki ensorcells Tom and makes him his unwitting servant.
The Absorbing Man reaches New York by the evening of October 29th, where he challenges Thor to a fight. But, after knocking each other around the city streets for a little while, the Absorbing Man abandons the battle and is magically transported to Rutland, where the voices in his head drive him toward Tom Fagan’s house. There he meets Loki and learns of his plans to finally destroy Thor.
All day on October 30th, the Absorbing Man hides out in Tom Fagan’s barn while Loki outlines his plans. Then, when Tom’s out-of-town guests begin to arrive, Loki assumes the guise of the “lost traveler” once more. That evening, an eerie red glow is seen atop Bald Mountain, just northeast of town. Loki realizes the glow is the result of a ritual of black magic being performed on the mountain to open a portal to the dimension of the dread Dormammu, and factors it into his plans.
Meanwhile, on Bald Mountain, Dormammu’s cultists succeed in opening a portal through which they can communicate with the demonic entity and tell their dark lord that their plans are proceeding. Members of the cult are already in New York City to kidnap Dormammu’s enemy, Doctor Stephen Strange, for the ritual tomorrow that will enable Dormammu to conquer the earth.
However, the cult’s spells have an unintended side-effect due to the dimensional instability that occurs there every Halloween: the walls between this reality and a parallel world collapse, causing two different Rutlands to merge into one. The area of dimensional convergence covers a ten-mile radius around Bald Mountain.
In the Greenwich Village Sanctum Sanctorum of Doctor Strange, the Master of the Mystic Arts sees a vision of Dormammu in the Orb of Agamotto and considers summoning his sometime allies, Prince Namor of Atlantis, a.k.a. the Sub-Mariner, and the incredible Hulk. However, the sorcerer is tricked by a false image of his mentor, the Ancient One, into sending his astral form high into the sky above the city. When he returns, he finds a spell has blocked access to his physical form, which is being kidnapped by several hooded figures. When his manservant Wong tries to intervene, he receives a savage beating. Strange’s body is loaded into a station wagon and driven north out of New York.
Luckily, Wong had been on the phone with his master’s estranged lover, Clea, when the attack occurred and she became worried when he did not come back on the line. Arriving at the Sanctum Sanctorum, Clea revives Wong and learns what has happened. Using the Orb of Agamotto, Clea manages to send a psychic summons to both Namor and the Hulk.
Back in Rutland, a couple from New York, Roy and Jeanie Thomas, arrives at Tom Fagan’s house to help him finish the float for tomorrow’s Halloween Parade. Roy mentions that they heard talk on the radio driving up about mysterious red lights atop Bald Mountain. Tom tells them some of the local legends about the mountain, which has long been a site of paranormal phenomena. Still subtly affected by Loki’s spell, Tom’s manner is unusually creepy.
About a half-hour before midnight, Tom invites Roy and Jeanie to another Halloween ritual that goes back many years, gathering at a particular crossroads on the edge of town to hear “Old Mistress Sarah” chant the names of those who are to die within 24 hours. Arriving at the site, they join the crowd in time to see the elderly woman appear as she does every year. As the nearby church bells toll midnight, Old Mistress Sarah surprises the crowd when she reads off the names of Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and Hawkman, all members of the Justice League of America.
Around the same time, the Sub-Mariner and the Hulk arrive in Greenwich Village, where they are met by Clea and Wong, and they both agree to assist in the rescue of Doctor Strange. Clea hypnotizes the Hulk so that he will change back into Bruce Banner. They return to the Sanctum Sanctorum to try to determine where Strange has been taken.
Just before dawn on October 31st, Roy and Jeanie get their first look at Bald Mountain from Tom Fagan’s yard. Some of the other party-goers are already up and getting into their costumes. They then work together to put the finishing touches on the parade float.
An hour or so later, the station wagon bearing Doctor Strange’s body arrives in Rutland after driving all night. It pulls up to a ramshackle cabin at the foot of Bald Mountain, where they plan to wait until dusk before carrying the body up to the site of the ritual. After surrounding the body with black candles to keep the shielding spell potent, the cultists discuss their plans to enable Dormammu to possess the body of Doctor Strange so he can enter and conquer earth’s dimension. With devilish glee, they predict that Dormammu will cause Bald Mountain to erupt and bury Rutland in a lava flow. Having surreptitiously observed these events, Doctor Strange’s astral form then flashes back to New York and slips inside Wong’s body to better survive the prolonged separation from his physical form.
Later that morning, in the parallel universe, Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and Hawkman assemble for a meeting aboard the Justice League’s orbiting satellite. They are startled to learn they were actually summoned by the enigmatic Phantom Stranger. Having encountered the Phantom Stranger previously, Batman vouches for him, and the rest of the team agrees to hear him out. He explains that the evil sorcerer Felix Faust plans to take advantage of the annual dimensional instabilities to unleash a horde of demons in Rutland, Vermont that very night. The team agrees to investigate.
Not long after, Felix Faust arrives in Rutland, and is drawn to Tom Fagan’s house when he senses Loki’s magical energies. He sequesters himself in a small room on the house’s top floor and begins preparing himself for the incantations he will perform once the sun goes down. Loki also senses Faust’s presence, and realizes he can take advantage of whatever chaos this interloper may cause.
During the afternoon, four friends from New York City -- Steve Englehart, Gerry Conway, Len Wein, and his wife Glynis Wein -- lose their muffler while driving Steve’s dilapidated car to Rutland for the parade. Gerry mentions having had problems in Rutland the year before as well.
Meanwhile, Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and Hawkman spend the entire afternoon searching the area of Rutland for anything out of the ordinary, but have no success since the forces of evil are all laying low until nightfall.
At dusk, Hank McCoy, the former member of the X-Men known as the Beast, and his ex-girlfriend Vera Cantor find themselves stranded several miles west of town. Hank has recently mutated further into a somewhat ape-like form with blue-black fur, but has managed to disguise himself in order to appear human. Vera has enlisted his aid for a looming crisis in Canada, though she has yet to reveal any details, and they were en route to Quebec when Vera’s car broke down. After failing to flag down any passing vehicles, Hank resorts to desperate measures. Out of sight of Vera, he sheds his disguise and lopes across the road as the next car approaches, making sure he is seen. The car happens to be the one bringing Steve, Gerry, Len, and Glynis to Rutland. Steve slams on the brakes, and, freaked out by the strange apparition, they get out to have a look. Hank quickly puts his disguise back on, gets Vera, and flags down the four New Yorkers before they can get underway again. The quartet agrees to give the hapless couple a ride into town.
As they drive off, a dimensional portal opens, depositing the Juggernaut onto the road. However, before he can go anywhere, he is sucked back into the Crimson Cosmos, where he has been trapped for a year and a half. Unknown to the Juggernaut, the phenomenon is caused by the incantations of the cult of Dormammu, who are beginning their long ritual high up on Bald Mountain. Their spells further weaken the boundaries between dimensions, allowing the Juggernaut to materialize briefly in the vicinity of his hated enemy, Hank McCoy.
Soon, the four New Yorkers, along with Hank and Vera, arrive at their motel in Rutland. Hank and Vera thank them for their kindness, then go into town to find a restaurant. Steve, Gerry, Len, and Glynis check into the motel and stow their luggage in their rooms. After getting cleaned up, Glynis puts on her Supergirl costume, but Len’s costume rips when he’s putting it on, so the guys elect to keep wearing their regular clothes instead. The four friends walk up to the start of the parade route to check out the preparations and enjoy the carnival atmosphere. After a little while, they decide to head out to Tom Fagan’s place, as he is expecting them.
Twenty minutes later, Steve’s noisy car rumbles up to Tom’s house, and their host greets them at the door in his Batman costume. The four friends also detect the subtle change in Tom’s demeanor caused by Loki’s spell. He tells them that everyone is just getting ready to leave for the parade. Just then, the real Batman appears, leading the rest of the JLA to Tom’s house. Knowing from the previous Halloween Parade that Tom is one of the event’s organizers, Batman decides to let Tom know about their ongoing investigation. Tom is thrilled to have actual superheroes attending the parade, and asks them to ride on his float. Not seeing any harm in it, the Justice League agrees to participate. The heroes then head into town, but before Tom leaves his house, Loki checks in with his thrall to make sure that everything proceeds apace. Sensing that Thor is approaching, Loki sends the Absorbing Man out into the woods to ambush the thunder god when he arrives.
Tom rides into town with Steve, Gerry, Len, and Glynis. On the way, they ask if Hank and Vera can come to the party later, and Tom is happy to extend them an invitation. At that moment, Hank and Vera are having dinner at a restaurant on Main Street, unaware that the Juggernaut briefly rematerializes in the alley behind the building. The Juggernaut sees the parade getting ready to start, but before he can leave the alley, he is drawn back into the Crimson Cosmos.
As the Halloween Parade begins, Clea, Wong, Namor, and Bruce Banner arrive in Rutland, having made the journey by bus. They immediately notice the eerie red glow bathing the mountaintop and head out of town to investigate. Meanwhile, back at Tom’s house, Felix Faust begins his own sorcerous ritual, drawing demonic energies into the woods surrounding the town.
Just then, Thor arrives in the area, having used his enchanted hammer, Mjolnir, to track the Absorbing Man’s “mystic trail.” With the thunder god are his Asgardian companions Sif and Hildegarde. Thor immediately senses the evil forces that have been unleashed by Felix Faust and Dormammu’s minions. Suddenly, the Absorbing Man attacks and Thor battles him.
In town, Steve, Gerry, Len, and Glynis run into Hank and Vera again and tell them they are invited to Tom’s party later. However, their discussion is interrupted by the sudden materialization of the Juggernaut atop one of the parade floats. He smashes the float but then is just as suddenly drawn back into the Crimson Cosmos. However, in the confusion, Glynis has disappeared and Len, Gerry, and Steve begin a desperate search. Hank sends Vera back to the motel to get a room for them, then ducks into an alley and strips off his disguise. Knowing people will mistake his blue and furry form for a Halloween costume, the Beast sets off in search of the Juggernaut.
Glynis and Tom, along with several other parade-goers, have been mystically mesmerized by Loki and are compelled to walk through the woods to where Thor is fighting the Absorbing Man. The thunder god defeats his opponent by knocking him into Otter Creek in mid-transformation, causing the villain to absorb the properties of the water and be washed away with the current. Thor scarcely has time to catch his breath before Loki reveals himself, claiming he will use the dimensional chaos to supercharge his magic and thereby destroy Thor once and for all.
Loki first sics Tom’s dogs on Thor, having magically transformed them into slavering monsters. When Thor summons a vortex of wind to carry the canines away, Loki turns to his human victims, draining their life-forces to power the fearsome Fire-Sword. Thor is outraged and attacks his brother, but the duel does not go well for the thunder god. Watching from nearby, Sif and Hildegarde know they are honor-bound not to interfere in Thor’s fight.
Meanwhile, in the woods on the opposite side of town, the Beast encounters the Juggernaut when he rematerializes. The Juggernaut recognizes his old foe despite his mutated appearance, and their battle leads them up to Chittenden Reservoir, where the Juggernaut smashes a power station. However, the Beast soon loses his enemy when the Juggernaut’s massive frame keeps slipping on the loose dirt and rocks of the forest. The former X-Man then heads back towards town.
As Sif and Hildegarde watch Loki gaining the upper hand in the battle, they are suddenly visited by the Norn Queen Karnilla, who offers to use her magic to save Thor’s life if Sif will agree to help her track down her lost love Balder the Brave. Sif initially refuses the deal, but then Loki manages to separate Thor from his enchanted hammer, gloating that he need only hold Thor off for 60 seconds to then be able to kill him in his mortal guise as Dr. Donald Blake. Panic-stricken, Sif agrees to Karnilla’s terms, and so the sorceress immediately conjures up a fierce thunderstorm with driving rain that distracts Loki, allowing Thor to retrieve his hammer in the nick of time. Instantly, Thor calls down lightning to strike Loki, destroying the Fire-Sword and releasing those in Loki’s thrall. Loki himself has suddenly been struck blind, and stumbles off into the woods, losing Thor in the darkness. Giving up the search, Thor meets up with Hildegarde, who tells him Sif has gone off with Karnilla. Angered by this turn of events, the two Asgardians return to New York.
Glynis, Tom, and Loki’s other victims wander back into town with no memory of what has happened to them. Glynis soon meets up with Len, Gerry, and Steve again, to their great relief. Then the four friends decide to find a place to get something to eat.
Clea, Wong, Namor, and Bruce Banner climb Bald Mountain to find the black rite is underway. A dimensional portal has already been opened and Clea is horrified to see Dormammu lurking within. Unfortunately, they are discovered by the cult members, of whom there are at least fifty, and while some continue the ritual, others attack the intruders. Banner quickly turns into the Hulk and he and the Sub-Mariner batter the horde of cultists. Before Dormammu can commandeer his host body, though, Doctor Strange’s astral form emerges from Wong and re-enters his own physical form. Strange then battles Dormammu in the dimensional gateway, and the mystic forces they unleash against each other shake the mountain to its very foundations. The people on the streets of Rutland fear the mountain is erupting like a volcano.
There is a sudden landslide that wipes out the cult. The Hulk and the Sub-Mariner manage to protect Clea and Wong until Doctor Strange emerges from the collapsing portal. His power dampened by his exposure to the earth’s environment, Dormammu has decided to retreat, thus freeing Strange to carry Clea and Wong aloft with his Cloak of Levitation. The Hulk and Namor are caught in the final avalanche, but they manage to survive and dig themselves out. Grateful for his friends, Doctor Strange takes Clea and Wong back to the Sanctum Sanctorum in New York while the Sub-Mariner and the Hulk go their separate ways.
Steve, Gerry, Len, and Glynis are hanging out at a restaurant in town, where they have been for over an hour waiting for repairs to be completed on the floats wrecked by the Juggernaut. Glynis, still wearing her Supergirl costume, goes to the bathroom, but when she has not returned 20 minutes later, the guys become concerned. They ask a waitress to check the ladies’ room for them, only to discover that Glynis has vanished once again. Len is worried, but Gerry promises they will find her.
Glynis has been ensorcelled a second time, now by Felix Faust to serve as one of the host bodies for his demon horde. His spells also cause the Justice League, who are standing on one of the floats going down Main Street, to see all the other floats vanish into thin air, with the throng of spectators standing in a glassy-eyed trance. Baffled, the superheroes decide to pair off and canvas the area for the missing floats.
In the woods outside of town, Flash and Hawkman encounter a trio of costumed parade-goers who have been possessed by Faust’s demons. The possession has endowed the victims with superhuman powers to match their costumes. Joined by “Adam Strange” and “Captain America,” Glynis uses the powers of Supergirl to defeat the heroes. Flash and Hawkman collapse to the ground, feeling their life-force ebbing. Glynis and the two men are then teleported away to another part of the woods, where the demons plan to open a portal to their own dimension so they can invade the earth in their true forms. However, the Phantom Stranger appears and removes bits from the costumes of the fallen heroes, in preparation for performing some magic of his own.
Elsewhere in the woods, Batman and Green Lantern are likewise defeated by “Robin,” “Spider-Man,” and “Thor,” while Superman and Green Arrow are overcome by “Captain Marvel” and the 1940s “Flash.” From his hideout, Felix Faust exults over his easy victory, but the Phantom Stranger visits each of the dying heroes in turn to collect his token.
Meanwhile, Len, Gerry, and Steve search frantically for Glynis around town, then decide to go back to Tom Fagan’s house to look for her there. They are unaware that the Beast is very nearby, collecting his disguise from the alley where he left it, and is himself planning to make his way to Tom’s place, hoping to meet up with Vera there. Loki, having stumbled blindly through the woods, also draws near Tom’s house, following the mystic emanations from Felix Faust’s spellcasting. They all arrive at Tom’s house just minutes before midnight.
Hank McCoy enters first to find the party is already in full-swing. He passes Roy and Jeanie Thomas while looking for Vera. Suddenly, though, the Juggernaut smashes through the wall to continue his relentless pursuit of the Beast. Hank runs upstairs to lead him away from the other guests. He goes all the way up to the attic with the Juggernaut following close behind. In a desperate gamble, Hank removes his human-looking mask and huddles up on the floor, hoping to take the Juggernaut by surprise. When the villain enters the dimly-lit room, the Beast suddenly spins around and snarls. The Juggernaut draws back, startled, only for an instant, but it is enough for the Beast to leap on him and tear off his magic helmet. The Juggernaut falls backwards down the stairs to the second-floor landing, feeling his superhuman strength suddenly diminishing. At that moment, the clock strikes midnight.
Simultaneously, the Phantom Stranger has assembled the dying members of the Justice League at the same intersection where Old Mistress Sarah made her predictions 24 hours earlier. As the church bells toll midnight once again, the Phantom Stranger reads off the names of the heroes while tossing the items he had collected from each of their costumes. He thus breaks the spell of imminent death, allowing the Justice League to revive.
The spell broken, Faust’s demons are driven out of their host bodies, which had gathered not far from Tom Fagan’s house. Felix Faust curses his failure and, hearing the commotion in the hall, decides to make good his escape before he is discovered. Just as Len, Gerry, and Steve come upstairs to look for Glynis, they pass the Juggernaut on the landing, with the Beast in hot pursuit. Making it outside, the Juggernaut tries to steal Steve’s car, but it won’t start. The Beast leaps at him, knocking him out of the passenger-side door. They tumble into Tom’s yard and continue their brawl.
Len, Gerry, and Steve enter the room where Felix Faust has been hiding, seeing the wizard about to jump out the window. They initially assume he is trying to commit suicide, but then Faust levitates down and steals Steve’s car, making the engine start with the last of his fading sorcerous might. As the car roars away, the portal to the Crimson Cosmos opens above the weakened Juggernaut and he is drawn back into his extradimensional prison.
Meanwhile, Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and Hawkman have rushed to the scene to battle Faust’s demons before they can assume new host bodies. Glynis and the others awaken from their trance, though dazed, and catch glimpses of the battle as they head for the lights of Tom Fagan’s house. The Justice League makes short work of the demons and manages to drive them back through the doorway to their home dimension before it collapses.
As the Beast stands brooding in the darkness, Glynis wanders up to meet the three guys, who are watching helplessly as Faust drives off in their car. Len asks her where she was, but her memories are too scrambled to give a clear answer, though she thinks she saw some kind of battle raging in the woods. Gerry is mad, but Glynis puts him down for making such a big deal out of everything. Suddenly, Loki comes running out of the trees toward the fleeing car, trying desperately to reach this alien sorcerer before he disappears. To the horror of the four New Yorkers, Loki misses the car and runs right off a cliff. However, before Loki can hit the ground at the bottom of the gorge, he is teleported away by Dormammu, who has just conceived of a new plan of conquest. Assuming Loki to have been one of Tom’s costumed guests, the four friends immediately have their host call the Rutland police.
Not far down the road, Felix Faust is pulled over by the police for his missing muffler. Since he is wanted for breaking out of jail, the officers take him into custody.
With nothing left to sustain it, the dimensional convergence collapses about ten minutes after midnight and the two parallel Rutlands naturally disentangle themselves. In one world, the Beast slowly makes his way back to the motel to meet up with Vera, and in the morning they buy a car from a local farmer to continue their journey north into Canada. In the other world, the Justice League extends an offer of membership to the Phantom Stranger, but he elects to merely disappear. The teammates then return to their orbiting satellite headquarters to file their reports on the mission.
In both worlds, the Rutland police comb the gorge by Tom Fagan’s house in the morning for any sign of a body, and when none is found, the baffled Steve, Gerry, Len, and Glynis are let off with a warning for filing a false report. Steve then has the lost muffler replaced and the quartet drives back to New York City. After hearing the shocking news that 50 members of their community were killed in a landslide on Bald Mountain last night, Tom Fagan makes arrangements to have the gaping hole in the side of his house repaired before winter sets in. He also begins making plans for next year’s Rutland, Vermont Halloween Parade.
Tuesday
Bang! Bang! A 'Movie' Comic Book
Bang! Bang! A ‘Movie’ Comic Book
An Editorial
An Editorial
I’ve noticed that a number of recent comic books have been so-called “westerns,” drawing their inspiration from the world of movies, and I think this is a rather unfortunate fad. Why is it necessary to debase this fine literary form by drawing material from a children’s entertainment medium?
We all remember going to the movies when we were kids and thrilling to the adventures of Cowboys & Indians, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with cherishing those halcyon days of yore. But when we got older, most of us put away our toys and moved on to more adult pastimes, such as curling up with a good comic book. As we matured, we realized that reality was more complex than the simple-minded good-vs.-evil world of Cowboys & Indians. We sought out more sophisticated stories and more sophisticated media.
However, as we all know, there are some pathetic losers who continue to watch movies even into their 40s. What’s wrong with these people? Are they so mentally deficient that they can’t imagine the action between the panels—it must be acted out for them? Are they so illiterate that they can’t read word balloons and captions, but must have the words spoken to them out loud? Such people may claim their continued interest in movies is a function of nostalgia, but this does not address the core issue of quality.
By their crude, primitive nature, movies were (until recently) confined to stories that could be acted out in front of a camera, greatly limiting the potential of the medium for telling worthwhile stories. Furthermore, the many years of using monochromatic film meant the stories had to be further simplified to a black-and-white mentality. This mindset has persisted to the present day. Comic books, on the other hand, have been limited only by the imaginations and talent of the authors and artists who craft each page ex nihilo, using only the simplest tools—the hallmark of any fine art. The styles and approaches—as well as the subject matters explored—are as varied and individualistic as the creators themselves.
Now, of course, it’s undeniable that movies have made a significant impact on our culture. They have provided us many of the great heroes of juvenile fiction, such as the Lone Ranger. Some argue that they represent a “modern-day mythology.” However, this assertion falls flat when you compare the brainless stereotype of Tonto to the more nuanced portrayals of Native Americans in such comic books as Red Wolf and Tomahawk, to name but two.
It is this inherent lack of quality, coupled with the utter passivity of the viewer, that makes movies extremely problematic when they attempt to move beyond the generic conventions of Wild West shoot-‘em-ups to explore more adult themes. Many movies lately, such as Brokeback Mountain, deal frankly with homosexual themes, but is this really appropriate for children?
Movie fans may pout and whine that such a movie is not meant for children. But I mean, let’s be honest here. You have to actually pick up a comic book, open the cover, and read it, whereas a movie is projected on a wall for anyone to see, its obnoxious soundtrack filling the air with inescapable noise. And if a five-year-old happened to see such a movie, who knows what irreparable harm might be done to an impressionable mind? Likewise, suppose a youngster viewed schlock such as Unforgiven, expecting his usual harmless fantasies of Cowboys & Indians? It would be, if nothing else, a rude shock and a blow to the innocence of childhood that all kids are entitled to.
For decades, psychologists have published studies on the rampant and unchecked violent and sexual imagery in movies and its deleterious effects on children, but what has been done about it? Fearing government censorship, the movie industry has adopted a ratings system, but it is too uninformative, too generalized, and basically impossible to enforce. But precisely because of their appeal to the prurient interest, movies have remained a popular entertainment for juveniles of all ages, and so, looking for a quick buck, a certain segment of the comic book industry has decided to try and cash in. This is a slippery slope indeed.
Movie fans, especially the socially-maladjusted older variety, will argue until they’re blue in the face that their guilty pleasure is as deserving of recognition as any other storytelling medium. However, consider the situation in the world of academia. Many prestigious universities have a Department of Comic Book Studies, whereas the idea of studying movies remains laughable. Imagine the humiliation of the movie fan as he tries to justify his infantile obsession as a proper subject for serious scholarly examination. Imagine also the guffaws of the editors of academic journals as he peddles his theoretical analysis of Cowboys & Indians. The very idea is ludicrous. However, academics thrive on discussing papers such as “De-Centering Iconic Sexualities: The Politics of Representation in Rawhide Kid.” Clearly, movies simply lack something that more respected forms of entertainment possess, and this is, in a word, maturity.
So please, let’s leave movies to the kiddies, where they belong, and not try to bring comic books down to their level.
Wednesday
A DC Universe Chronology
When I decided to do a quick chronology of the DC Comics universe, I opted to take the opposite approach as my OMU project. Whereas with the Original Marvel Universe, I disregard publishing dates to “defragment” the timeline, I here used the publishing dates as a starting point to catalog the events of the DC universe, creating an entirely new history in the process.
For example, I placed Batman’s debut in Spring 1939, as that was the date of the character’s first appearance. I then extrapolated from that a date for Bruce Wayne’s birth, then plotted out a reasonable lifespan and worked into it the major events of his life. Other men replaced him as the generations passed. Other characters were dealt with in the same manner, causing them all to intersect in very interesting ways.
The result was something akin to the “Earth-Two” alternate reality, or the tales of “Batman II and Robin II” that appeared occasionally in Silver-Age Batman titles, or John Byrne’s Generations series. I was inspired primarily by the 1995 graphic novel The Golden Age by James Robinson & Paul Smith.
In this version of the DC world, the characters age, reproduce, and die like real-life people. I find it opens up all manner of story possibilities, and it’s fun to ponder what it might have been like had the DC Universe evolved in this manner. The timeline is limited pretty much to the 20th century, and is by no means complete.
Here, then, is a (not “the”) Chronology of the DC Universe!
James Gordon is born in Gotham City.
Rex Tyler is born.
Lois Lane is born to Sam and Ella Lane.
Oliver Queen is born.
Johnny Thunder is born.
Archaeologist Sven Nelson is killed in Mesopotamia after accidentally awakening the ancient entity called Nabu the Wise. Nabu trains young Kent Nelson in the arts of magic.
Ted Grant is born.
Libby Lawrence is born.
Sylvester Pemberton is born.
Roy Harper is born.
Daniel Dunbar is born.
Ray Palmer is born.
Will Magnus is born.
Wealthy socialite Tex Thompson decides to become an amateur crimebuster.
Giovanni Zatara begins using his magical abilities to fight crime as Zatara, Master Magician.
Publisher Lee Travis takes on the underworld as the shadowy Crimson Avenger, assisted by his Chinese manservant Wing.
Batman battles his first major villain, the evil Doctor Death.
Darrell Dane becomes the size-changing hero Doll Man.
Also, Carter Hall begins his career as Hawkman, and meets Sheira Sanders, whom he believes to be the reincarnation of his wife from a previous life in ancient Egypt.
Policeman Jim Corrigan is murdered, but returns as the mysterious crime-fighter the Spectre.
After taking his newly-developed Miraclo pill, chemist Rex “Tick-Tock” Tyler becomes the super hero known as Hourman.
Johnny Thunder develops uncontrollable magical powers courtesy of his “pet lightning bolt.”
Billy Batson first says the magic word SHAZAM and becomes earth’s mightiest mortal, Captain Marvel.
Batman first encounters the sadistic genius Dr. Hugo Strange. Also, after shooting many a criminal, Batman renounces the use of guns in his crimefighting crusade.
Superman first encounters villainous tycoon Lex Luthor.
Batman and Robin first battle the Clown Prince of Crime, the Joker. Soon after, they clash with seductive jewel thief Selena Kyle, better known as the Cat. Batman also unveils the original Batplane.
Kent Nelson begins his career battling supernatural villains as Doctor Fate and meets the lovely Inza Cramer.
The Metropolis newspaper The Daily Star changes its name to The Daily Planet.
Lanford “Happy” Terrill gains energy-manipulating abilities and becomes the superhero known as the Ray.
Selena Kyle adopts the new nom de crime Catwoman.
Batman and Robin fight Basil Karlo, the first Clay Face.
Carter Hall marries Sheira Sanders.
The Ultra-Humanite has his brain transplanted into the body of movie starlet Delores Winters, and perishes in a volcano soon afterwards.
Catwoman dons her first super-villainess costume.
Inspired by the recent appearances of costumed crimefighters, middle-aged housewife Abigail Mathilda Hunkle dons a makeshift costume and calls herself the Red Tornado as she battles neighborhood menaces.
While battling Batman, Dr. Hugo Strange is killed.
Alan Scott takes a job as a radio engineer at the Apex Broadcasting Company.
Perry White is made editor of the Metropolis paper The Daily Planet.
Tex Thompson fights the good fight as the mystery man called Mr. America.
Paul Kirk becomes the masked crimebuster Manhunter.
After the final defeat of Clay Face, Batman unveils the first customized Batmobile.
Small-time hood Eel O’Brien becomes the super-elastic Plastic Man.
The military squad called the Blackhawks is formed to combat the Nazis. They are led by Janos Prohaska.
Joan Dale becomes the costumed crimefighter called Miss America.
Sandra Knight becomes the Phantom Lady.
Chemist Roy Lincoln transforms himself into the Human Bomb.
Superman’s nemesis Lex Luthor loses his hair in a freak accident.
Green Lantern first meets his streetwise sidekick Doiby Dickles.
Newsreel photographer Johnny Chambers becomes the lighting-fast hero Johnny Quick.
Sylvester Pemberton and Patrick Dugan join the war effort as the Star-Spangled Kid and his adult sidekick Stripesy.
Mystery writer John Law becomes the mystery man called the Tarantula.
An Arthurian knight called Sir Justin emerges from suspended animation to battle evil as the Shining Knight.
Batman and Robin must defeat Jonathan Crane, the eerie criminal called the Scarecrow.
Starman first battles the villain known as the Mist.
Aquaman first leaves Atlantis for the surface world.
The Sandman trades in his gas-mask for a superhero costume and picks up a young sidekick, Sanderson Hawkins, also called Sandy, the Golden Boy.
Greg Saunders becomes the gun-slinging mystery man called the Vigilante.
Bob Daley assumes the identity of Fatman and serves as Mr. America’s sidekick.
Japan bombs Pearl Harbor, thereby drawing the United States into the war.
When American Army aviator Steve Trevor crashes on Paradise Island, Amazon princess Diana is selected to accompany him back to the world of men, where she comes to be called Wonder Woman.
In Gotham City, Oswald Cobblepot begins a life of crime as the umbrella-wielding Penguin.
Boxer Ted Grant becomes the masked adventurer called Wildcat.
Dr. Mid-Nite and Starman join the JSA.
Hourman perfects his powerful Miracle Ray machine.
Doiby Dickles learns Green Lantern’s secret identity as Alan Scott.
Green Arrow, Speedy, the Star-Spangled Kid, Stripesy, the Shining Knight, the Vigilante, and the Crimson Avenger band together as the Seven Soldiers of Victory.
While on a mission as Manhunter, Paul Kirk vanishes without a trace.
The JSA offers an associate membership to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.
Chemistry teacher Thomas N. Thomas and his student Dan Dunbar also fight the Axis powers as TNT and the Dyna-Mite.
When district attorney Harvey Dent is disfigured by acid, he becomes the criminal mastermind Two-Face.
Superman first battles Oswald Loomis, better known as the villainous Prankster.
Dr. Robert Crane’s brain is installed in a mechanical body, and he soon comes to be called Robotman.
After a return to Paradise Island where she wins her magic lasso, Wonder Woman joins the JSA.
Tim Drake is born.
Bob Daley parts ways with the Americommando and retires as Fatman.
John Law gives up his costumed identity as the Tarantula.
Wonder Woman first faces the wrath of Priscilla Rich, a.k.a. the Cheetah.
Green Lantern encounters the ageless conspirator known as Vandal Savage.
“Snapper” Carr is born.
The second Speedy, later Arsenal, is born.
Starting a new trend, the Joker and the Penguin join forces against Batman and Robin.
Ma Hunkel dons her Red Tornado guise for the last time.
The Justice Society first battles the Psycho-Pirate when he kidnaps Hawkgirl.
Kent Nelson retires from adventuring as Doctor Fate to practice magic and medicine privately.
The Seven Soldiers of Victory disband and Lee Travis retires his Crimson Avenger identity.
Wildcat is made a member of the JSA.
Ted Knight hangs up his cape as Starman.
Zatanna Zatara is born to Giovanni and Sindella Zatara.
The menace of Solomon Grundy is finally ended by the Justice Society of America.
Garth is born in Atlantis.
The JSA first battles the time-traveling villain Per Degaton.
“Crusher” Crock adopts the identity of the Sportsmaster to again battle Green Lantern.
Molly Mayne is hired as Alan Scott’s secretary at WXYZ. To attract the attention of the dashing Green Lantern, she decides to become the costumed criminal called the Harlequin.
Barbara Gordon is born to James and Sarah Gordon in Gotham City.
Dick Grayson assumes the identity of Nightwing. Jason Todd is recruited to be the new Robin.
The Atom begins to manifest super-strength.
A new Injustice Society replaces the first: the Wizard, the Fiddler, Huntress, the Icicle, Sportsmaster, and Harlequin, who betrays her criminal comrades to free the JSA from their clutches.
Green Lantern learns the Harlequin is now an undercover agent for the FBI.
Al Pratt retires as the Atom to wed Mary James.
Alan Scott relinquishes the role of Green Lantern when he is made vice-president and general manager of the Gotham Broadcasting Company.
Charles McNider gives up being Dr. Mid-Nite.
Zatara mysteriously disappears.
The Justice Society of America disbands after battling a villain known as the Key, who makes good his escape.
Sir Justin ceases to battle as the Shining Knight.
Dinah Drake retires as the Black Canary and marries her boyfriend, detective Larry Lance.
Superman and Batman finally learn each other’s secret identities.
Greg Saunders retires as the Vigilante.
Captain Comet’s brief career also comes to a close.
Alan Scott gets Rose Canton pregnant, but their relationship ends.
Katherine Kane adopts the crimefighting identity of Batwoman.
Jessie Chambers is born to Johnny Chambers and Libby Lawrence.
Stephanie Brown is born.
Scientist Rip Hunter invents a time machine, which he uses to explore earth’s past and future.
Garth first joins Aquaman on his patrols of the seas as Aqualad.
Kathy Kane’s niece Betty Kane begins her occasional outings as the original Bat-Girl.
Ralph Dibny marries his sweetheart Sue Dearborn.
Batman unveils a new state-of-the-art Batmobile.
Barry Allen gets engaged to Iris West.
Rita Farr marries Steve Dayton, but remains in the Doom Patrol.
Zatanna first casts her spell over the world’s evildoers.
Dinah Drake Lance has an extramarital affair with Ted Knight.
Teenager Robby Reed discovers a mysterious dial that transforms him temporarily into a wide variety of super-heroes.
After years of searching, Zatanna is reunited with her missing father, Zatara.
In Africa, Mike Maxwell becomes the super-hero B’wana Beast.
The android crimefighter called the Red Tornado makes his debut.
Roy Harper retires and Connor Hawke becomes the new, goateed Green Arrow.
Larry Lance is killed.
Ray Terrill is born.
The second Speedy, now clean and sober, becomes Arsenal.
Alan Scott loses his job when the Gotham Broadcasting Company goes bankrupt.
Jay Garrick gives Alan Scott a job at his company, Keystone Labs. Soon after, Jay reveals to the world that he was the original Flash in an interview in We magazine.
High school student Ronnie Raymond and physicist Martin Stein are fused into a single being known as Firestorm, the Nuclear Man.
Lee Travis dies.
Lois Lane dies of lung cancer.
Selena Kyle dies of a sexually-transmitted disease.
Johnny Thunder contracts Alzheimer’s disease.
Charles McNider dies.
Al Pratt dies.
Johnny Chambers dies.
Wesley Dodds and Dian Belmont die within weeks of each other.
While a new generation of super-heroes moves into the 21st century, it is interesting to note that Superman and Wonder Woman are functionally immortal and are still going strong at the end of this chronology.
For example, I placed Batman’s debut in Spring 1939, as that was the date of the character’s first appearance. I then extrapolated from that a date for Bruce Wayne’s birth, then plotted out a reasonable lifespan and worked into it the major events of his life. Other men replaced him as the generations passed. Other characters were dealt with in the same manner, causing them all to intersect in very interesting ways.
The result was something akin to the “Earth-Two” alternate reality, or the tales of “Batman II and Robin II” that appeared occasionally in Silver-Age Batman titles, or John Byrne’s Generations series. I was inspired primarily by the 1995 graphic novel The Golden Age by James Robinson & Paul Smith.
In this version of the DC world, the characters age, reproduce, and die like real-life people. I find it opens up all manner of story possibilities, and it’s fun to ponder what it might have been like had the DC Universe evolved in this manner. The timeline is limited pretty much to the 20th century, and is by no means complete.
Here, then, is a (not “the”) Chronology of the DC Universe!
1894
Cyrus Gold is murdered in Slaughter Swamp outside Gotham City. His corpse will later be reanimated as the failed elemental Solomon Grundy.
1899
Richard Occult is born, and is soon after rescued from devil worshippers by the Mystic Order of the Seven, along with a baby girl who will be raised as his sister and called Rose Psychic.
1900
James Corrigan is born.James Gordon is born in Gotham City.
1908
Kent Nelson is born to Sven and Celestine Nelson.
1912
Janos Prohaska is born in Krakow, Poland.
1913
Wesley Dodds is born to Edward and Marina Dodds.Rex Tyler is born.
1915
Bruce Wayne is born to Thomas and Martha Wayne in Gotham City.
1916
Carter Hall is born.Lois Lane is born to Sam and Ella Lane.
1917
Alan Scott is born.Oliver Queen is born.
Johnny Thunder is born.
1918
Jay Garrick is born.
1920
Kryptonian infant Kal-El crash lands outside Smallville, Kansas and is found by Jonathan and Martha Kent, who rename him Clark Kent.Archaeologist Sven Nelson is killed in Mesopotamia after accidentally awakening the ancient entity called Nabu the Wise. Nabu trains young Kent Nelson in the arts of magic.
1921
Selena Kyle is born.
1922
Sheira Sanders is born.Ted Grant is born.
Libby Lawrence is born.
1924
Thomas and Martha Wayne are shot dead in front of their terrified son Bruce.
1926
Billy Batson is born.Sylvester Pemberton is born.
1927
Dinah Drake is born.
1928
Dick Grayson is born.Roy Harper is born.
Daniel Dunbar is born.
1929
Barry Allen is born.
1931
Katherine Kane is born.
1933
Jason Todd is born.
1935
Richard Occult becomes the mystical detective known as Dr. Occult.Ray Palmer is born.
Will Magnus is born.
1936
Hal Jordan is born.
1937
Selena Kyle first becomes a prostitute.
Summer 1938
Clark Kent moves to Metropolis and adopts the identity of Superman. He meets ace reporter Lois Lane at the newspaper where they both work, The Daily Star.Wealthy socialite Tex Thompson decides to become an amateur crimebuster.
Giovanni Zatara begins using his magical abilities to fight crime as Zatara, Master Magician.
Late 1938
Superman meets his first great nemesis, the wheelchair-bound mad scientist called the Ultra-Humanite. He also first meets cub reporter Jimmy Olsen.Publisher Lee Travis takes on the underworld as the shadowy Crimson Avenger, assisted by his Chinese manservant Wing.
Spring 1939
Bruce Wayne begins his crusade against crime as the fearsome Batman. He presents something of a problem to new Gotham City Police Commissioner James Gordon.
Summer 1939
Wesley Dodds becomes the gas-mask-wearing hero called the Sandman. He meets the lovely Dian Belmont.Batman battles his first major villain, the evil Doctor Death.
Fall 1939
Batman perfects the helicopter-like vehicle called the Batgyro. As Bruce Wayne, he meets the lovely Julie Madison.
Late 1939
Selena Kyle changes professions, becoming a jewel thief.Darrell Dane becomes the size-changing hero Doll Man.
Early 1940
Jay Garrick leaves Midwestern University to become the super-fast crime-fighter known as the Flash.Also, Carter Hall begins his career as Hawkman, and meets Sheira Sanders, whom he believes to be the reincarnation of his wife from a previous life in ancient Egypt.
Policeman Jim Corrigan is murdered, but returns as the mysterious crime-fighter the Spectre.
After taking his newly-developed Miraclo pill, chemist Rex “Tick-Tock” Tyler becomes the super hero known as Hourman.
Johnny Thunder develops uncontrollable magical powers courtesy of his “pet lightning bolt.”
Billy Batson first says the magic word SHAZAM and becomes earth’s mightiest mortal, Captain Marvel.
Batman first encounters the sadistic genius Dr. Hugo Strange. Also, after shooting many a criminal, Batman renounces the use of guns in his crimefighting crusade.
Spring 1940
Orphaned Dick Grayson joins Batman’s crusade as Robin, the Boy Wonder.Superman first encounters villainous tycoon Lex Luthor.
Batman and Robin first battle the Clown Prince of Crime, the Joker. Soon after, they clash with seductive jewel thief Selena Kyle, better known as the Cat. Batman also unveils the original Batplane.
Kent Nelson begins his career battling supernatural villains as Doctor Fate and meets the lovely Inza Cramer.
The Metropolis newspaper The Daily Star changes its name to The Daily Planet.
Summer 1940
Gotham City resident Alan Scott discovers a mysterious artifact and becomes the costumed adventurer Green Lantern.Lanford “Happy” Terrill gains energy-manipulating abilities and becomes the superhero known as the Ray.
Selena Kyle adopts the new nom de crime Catwoman.
Batman and Robin fight Basil Karlo, the first Clay Face.
Fall 1940
Al Pratt becomes the diminutive hero called the Atom.Carter Hall marries Sheira Sanders.
The Ultra-Humanite has his brain transplanted into the body of movie starlet Delores Winters, and perishes in a volcano soon afterwards.
Catwoman dons her first super-villainess costume.
Late 1940
Flash, Hawkman, Green Lantern, the Atom, Doctor Fate, the Spectre, Hourman, and the Sandman band together to form the loose-knit Justice Society of America, and put up with irritating hanger-on Johnny Thunder.Inspired by the recent appearances of costumed crimefighters, middle-aged housewife Abigail Mathilda Hunkle dons a makeshift costume and calls herself the Red Tornado as she battles neighborhood menaces.
While battling Batman, Dr. Hugo Strange is killed.
Alan Scott takes a job as a radio engineer at the Apex Broadcasting Company.
Perry White is made editor of the Metropolis paper The Daily Planet.
Early 1941
Scientist Ted Knight becomes the caped hero Starman.Tex Thompson fights the good fight as the mystery man called Mr. America.
Paul Kirk becomes the masked crimebuster Manhunter.
After the final defeat of Clay Face, Batman unveils the first customized Batmobile.
Spring 1941
Charles McNider swings into action as Doctor Mid-Nite.
Summer 1941
Sheira Hall becomes Hawkgirl.Small-time hood Eel O’Brien becomes the super-elastic Plastic Man.
The military squad called the Blackhawks is formed to combat the Nazis. They are led by Janos Prohaska.
Joan Dale becomes the costumed crimefighter called Miss America.
Sandra Knight becomes the Phantom Lady.
Chemist Roy Lincoln transforms himself into the Human Bomb.
Superman’s nemesis Lex Luthor loses his hair in a freak accident.
Green Lantern first meets his streetwise sidekick Doiby Dickles.
Fall 1941
Superman and Batman meet for the first time.Newsreel photographer Johnny Chambers becomes the lighting-fast hero Johnny Quick.
Sylvester Pemberton and Patrick Dugan join the war effort as the Star-Spangled Kid and his adult sidekick Stripesy.
Mystery writer John Law becomes the mystery man called the Tarantula.
An Arthurian knight called Sir Justin emerges from suspended animation to battle evil as the Shining Knight.
Batman and Robin must defeat Jonathan Crane, the eerie criminal called the Scarecrow.
Starman first battles the villain known as the Mist.
Late 1941
Oliver Queen debuts as crime-fighting archer Green Arrow, along with his teenaged sidekick Roy Harper, a.k.a. Speedy.Aquaman first leaves Atlantis for the surface world.
The Sandman trades in his gas-mask for a superhero costume and picks up a young sidekick, Sanderson Hawkins, also called Sandy, the Golden Boy.
Greg Saunders becomes the gun-slinging mystery man called the Vigilante.
Bob Daley assumes the identity of Fatman and serves as Mr. America’s sidekick.
Japan bombs Pearl Harbor, thereby drawing the United States into the war.
When American Army aviator Steve Trevor crashes on Paradise Island, Amazon princess Diana is selected to accompany him back to the world of men, where she comes to be called Wonder Woman.
In Gotham City, Oswald Cobblepot begins a life of crime as the umbrella-wielding Penguin.
Early 1942
Terry Sloane begins his career as Mr. Terrific, Man of a Thousand Talents.Boxer Ted Grant becomes the masked adventurer called Wildcat.
Dr. Mid-Nite and Starman join the JSA.
Hourman perfects his powerful Miracle Ray machine.
Doiby Dickles learns Green Lantern’s secret identity as Alan Scott.
Green Arrow, Speedy, the Star-Spangled Kid, Stripesy, the Shining Knight, the Vigilante, and the Crimson Avenger band together as the Seven Soldiers of Victory.
While on a mission as Manhunter, Paul Kirk vanishes without a trace.
The JSA offers an associate membership to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.
Spring 1942
Four slum orphans and Metropolis policeman Jim Harper join the war effort as the Newsboy Legion and the Guardian.Chemistry teacher Thomas N. Thomas and his student Dan Dunbar also fight the Axis powers as TNT and the Dyna-Mite.
Summer 1942
Captain Rip Carter leads the international quartet of teenagers called the Boy Commandos.When district attorney Harvey Dent is disfigured by acid, he becomes the criminal mastermind Two-Face.
Superman first battles Oswald Loomis, better known as the villainous Prankster.
Dr. Robert Crane’s brain is installed in a mechanical body, and he soon comes to be called Robotman.
After a return to Paradise Island where she wins her magic lasso, Wonder Woman joins the JSA.
Fall 1942
Tex Thompson joins the war effort, now calling himself the Americommando.
Late 1942
Kent Nelson enrolls in medical school, using his magical abilities to assist him with his studies.Tim Drake is born.
Early 1943
Rex Tyler is forced to stop taking the Miraclo pill and retire as Hourman.Bob Daley parts ways with the Americommando and retires as Fatman.
Spring 1943
When her father is killed by the Nazis, Libby Lawrence becomes a costumed adventuress called Liberty Belle.John Law gives up his costumed identity as the Tarantula.
Summer 1943
When TNT is killed in action, his sidekick the Dyna-Mite returns to civilian life as Daniel Dunbar.
Fall 1943
Superman first battles the villainous Toyman.Wonder Woman first faces the wrath of Priscilla Rich, a.k.a. the Cheetah.
Green Lantern encounters the ageless conspirator known as Vandal Savage.
1944
Wally West is born.“Snapper” Carr is born.
The second Speedy, later Arsenal, is born.
Summer 1944
Tex Thompson’s heroic career comes to a sudden halt.
Fall 1944
Superman first encounters the mysterious extradimensional imp known as Mr. Mxyztplk.Starting a new trend, the Joker and the Penguin join forces against Batman and Robin.
Ma Hunkel dons her Red Tornado guise for the last time.
Late 1944
The undead strongman Solomon Grundy first menaces the world.The Justice Society first battles the Psycho-Pirate when he kidnaps Hawkgirl.
Early 1945
The Spectre leaves earth for an extended period.Kent Nelson retires from adventuring as Doctor Fate to practice magic and medicine privately.
Spring 1945
The war in Europe ends with the defeat of the Axis Powers.The Seven Soldiers of Victory disband and Lee Travis retires his Crimson Avenger identity.
Summer 1945
The war in the Pacific ends with the nuclear bombing of Japan.
Late 1945
Libby Lawrence calls off her quest for vengeance as Liberty Belle.Wildcat is made a member of the JSA.
Early 1946
Wesley Dodds retires as the Sandman.Ted Knight hangs up his cape as Starman.
Spring 1946
Connor Hawke is born to Oliver Queen and his girlfriend Sandra Hawke.Zatanna Zatara is born to Giovanni and Sindella Zatara.
Summer 1946
Alan Scott becomes manager of radio station WXYZ in Gotham.
Late 1946
Kent Nelson marries Inza Cramer.
Early 1947
Terry Sloane abandons his identity as Mr. Terrific.The menace of Solomon Grundy is finally ended by the Justice Society of America.
Spring 1947
Green Lantern first battles small-time hood “Crusher” Crock.Garth is born in Atlantis.
Summer 1947
Dinah Drake begins her stint as the crimebuster called the Black Canary.The JSA first battles the time-traveling villain Per Degaton.
“Crusher” Crock adopts the identity of the Sportsmaster to again battle Green Lantern.
Fall 1947
The Injustice Society of the World forms to counter the invincible JSA. Its founding members are the Wizard, Brain Wave, the Gambler, Per Degaton, the Thinker, and Vandal Savage.Molly Mayne is hired as Alan Scott’s secretary at WXYZ. To attract the attention of the dashing Green Lantern, she decides to become the costumed criminal called the Harlequin.
Late 1947
Flash meets Rose Canton, the split-personality villainess called Thorn.
Early 1948
Black Canary joins the JSA, and first meets private detective Larry Lance.Barbara Gordon is born to James and Sarah Gordon in Gotham City.
Spring 1948
Batman first meets Vicki Vale.
Summer 1948
Batman finally discovers the identity of the man who shot his parents, a minor thug by the name of Joe Chill.Dick Grayson assumes the identity of Nightwing. Jason Todd is recruited to be the new Robin.
The Atom begins to manifest super-strength.
A new Injustice Society replaces the first: the Wizard, the Fiddler, Huntress, the Icicle, Sportsmaster, and Harlequin, who betrays her criminal comrades to free the JSA from their clutches.
Fall 1948
Batman and Robin first encounter Eddie Nashton alias Edward Nygma alias the Riddler.Green Lantern learns the Harlequin is now an undercover agent for the FBI.
Late 1948
Sylvester Pemberton and Pat Dugan end their partnership as the Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy.
Early 1949
Flash learns the Thorn’s true identity, and he, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman help her find treatment for her condition.Al Pratt retires as the Atom to wed Mary James.
Spring 1949
Ted Grant gives up his career as Wildcat.
Late 1949
Superman first encounters the deadly mineral called kryptonite, and discovers he is not from Earth at all, but is the last son of the planet Krypton.
Early 1950
When the original Batmobile is destroyed, Batman and Robin build a new, more advanced model.
Late 1950
When the original Batplane is stolen, Batman and Robin build a new, more advanced model.
Early 1951
Jay Garrick retires the Flash in order to settle down and marry long-time girlfriend Joan Williams.Alan Scott relinquishes the role of Green Lantern when he is made vice-president and general manager of the Gotham Broadcasting Company.
Charles McNider gives up being Dr. Mid-Nite.
Zatara mysteriously disappears.
Spring 1951
Carter and Shiera Hall are killed in action as Hawkman and Hawkgirl.The Justice Society of America disbands after battling a villain known as the Key, who makes good his escape.
Summer 1951
Captain Comet goes into action.Sir Justin ceases to battle as the Shining Knight.
Dinah Drake retires as the Black Canary and marries her boyfriend, detective Larry Lance.
Spring 1952
Dinah Lance is born to Larry and Dinah Drake Lance.
Summer 1952
The mysterious Phantom Stranger makes his first appearance.Superman and Batman finally learn each other’s secret identities.
Fall 1952
Jason Todd is killed by the Joker.
Late 1953
Billy Batson ceases to transform into Captain Marvel.
Summer 1954
Superman and Batman begin occasionally working as a team.
Late 1954
Johnny Chambers finally gives up being Johnny Quick once and for all.Greg Saunders retires as the Vigilante.
Captain Comet’s brief career also comes to a close.
Late 1955
J’onn J’onzz arrives on Earth and assumes the identity of John Jones, but soon becomes known as the Martian Manhunter.
Early 1956
Bruce Wayne retires and Dick Grayson succeeds him as the new Batman. Tim Drake is recruited as the new Robin.Alan Scott gets Rose Canton pregnant, but their relationship ends.
Summer 1956
Plastic Man retires from crime-fighting.Katherine Kane adopts the crimefighting identity of Batwoman.
Fall 1956
Barry Allen develops super-speed and begins calling himself the Flash.
Late 1956
Rose Canton gives birth to twins and puts them up for adoption. The girl becomes Jennifer-Lynn Hayden (adopted by Julian and Myrna Hayden) and the boy becomes Todd James Rice (adopted by Jim and Shirley Rice).
Early 1957
Four non-super-powered men form the Challengers of the Unknown in order to seek out adventure.Jessie Chambers is born to Johnny Chambers and Libby Lawrence.
Spring 1957
Oliver Queen is killed in action and Roy Harper becomes the new Green Arrow. The second Speedy joins him.Stephanie Brown is born.
Fall 1957
Selena Kyle retires as Catwoman and opens her own escort service.
Late 1957
Charles McNider begins working for the FBI keeping tabs on metahumans.
Summer 1958
Superman first battles the villainous Brainiac.
Late 1958
Adam Strange is first transported to the planet Rann in the Alpha Centauri system.
Spring 1959
Batman and Robin first tangle with the sinister Mister Freeze.Scientist Rip Hunter invents a time machine, which he uses to explore earth’s past and future.
Fall 1959
Test pilot Hal Jordan receives his power ring and becomes the new Green Lantern.
Late 1959
Wally West becomes the Flash’s sidekick, Kid Flash.
Early 1960
Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, Flash, and Green Lantern band together to form the Justice League of America, and they acquire a teen-aged associate called “Snapper” Carr.Garth first joins Aquaman on his patrols of the seas as Aqualad.
Spring 1960
Ralph Dibny becomes the Elongated Man.
Early 1961
Two aliens from the planet Thanagar assume the identities of Carter and Shiera Hall, as well as Hawkman and Hawkgirl, to study earthly crime-fighting.
Spring 1961
Green Arrow joins the Justice League.
Summer 1961
Green Lantern first crosses swords with the evil Sinestro.Kathy Kane’s niece Betty Kane begins her occasional outings as the original Bat-Girl.
Ralph Dibny marries his sweetheart Sue Dearborn.
Fall 1961
Ray Palmer becomes the size-changing hero called the Atom.
Late 1961
Batman and Robin must battle Matt Hagen, the second Clayface.
Early 1962
J’onn J’onzz makes his first return to Mars after being marooned on Earth six years earlier.
Spring 1962
Dr. Will Magnus unveils his team of shape-shifting robot crimefighters, the Metal Men.
Fall 1962
Atom joins the Justice League.
Early 1963
Rex Tyler marries actress Wendi Harris.
Summer 1963
Dr. Niles Caulder recruits Cliff Steele (the new Robotman), Rita Farr (Elasti-Girl), and Larry Trainor (Negative Man) to become the Doom Patrol.
Summer 1964
Robin, Kid Flash, and Aqualad join together as the Teen Titans.Batman unveils a new state-of-the-art Batmobile.
Barry Allen gets engaged to Iris West.
Fall 1964
Kathy Kane retires as Batwoman.
Late 1964
Hawkman joins the Justice League.Rita Farr marries Steve Dayton, but remains in the Doom Patrol.
Zatanna first casts her spell over the world’s evildoers.
Early 1965
While in Egypt, Rex Mason is transformed into Metamorpho, the Element Man.
Spring 1965
Garfield Logan becomes a junior member of the Doom Patrol known as Beast Boy.
Summer 1965
Donna Troy becomes Wonder Girl, and she and Speedy join the Teen Titans.Dinah Drake Lance has an extramarital affair with Ted Knight.
Fall 1965
Buddy Baker becomes the super-hero Animal Man.
Late 1965
Barry Allen and Iris West are married.
Early 1966
Batman and Robin first meet the deadly villainess Poison Ivy.Teenager Robby Reed discovers a mysterious dial that transforms him temporarily into a wide variety of super-heroes.
Spring 1966
Rick Tyler is born to Rex and Wendi Tyler.
Summer 1966
Barbara Gordon becomes the motorcycle-riding heroine Batgirl.
Fall 1966
The Flash’s wife, Iris Allen, dies.
Late 1966
Ted Kord becomes the super-hero Blue Beetle.
Early 1967
The Spectre returns to earth after more than 20 years.After years of searching, Zatanna is reunited with her missing father, Zatara.
In Africa, Mike Maxwell becomes the super-hero B’wana Beast.
Summer 1967
Barry Allen is killed in action, and Wally West becomes the new Flash.
Fall 1967
After circus aerialist “Boston” Brand is randomly murdered, he begins a posthumous crime-fighting crusade as Deadman.
Summer 1968
TV reporter Jack Ryder begins his nocturnal adventures as the Creeper.The android crimefighter called the Red Tornado makes his debut.
Fall 1968
The Doom Patrol are killed while on a mission to a remote island, although Beast Boy is not among them.
Early 1969
After Wonder Woman temporarily loses her powers, Steve Trevor is killed.
Spring 1969
Dinah Lance becomes the new Black Canary.
Summer 1969
Dick Grayson retires and Tim Drake succeeds him as the new Batman, joined by Stephanie Brown as the fourth Robin.Roy Harper retires and Connor Hawke becomes the new, goateed Green Arrow.
Larry Lance is killed.
Fall 1969
The new Black Canary joins the JLA.
Early 1970
Ted Grant retires from boxing as the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world.
Spring 1970
Green Lantern and Green Arrow take to the road in search of America.
Summer 1970
Batman meets the terrifying creature called the Man-Bat.
Early 1971
The second Speedy becomes a heroin addict.
Summer 1971
Batman first matches wits with the devilish Ra’s Al Ghul.
Fall 1971
Murdered scientist Alec Holland seemingly rises from the dead as the Swamp Thing.
Spring 1972
Jenny-Lynn Hayden becomes the super-heroine Jade and her twin brother Todd Rice becomes the super-hero Obsidian. They are reunited via an empathic connection after their powers begin to manifest themselves.
Early 1973
Jessie Chambers becomes the superfast heroine Jessie Quick.
Summer 1973
A mysterious crimefighter calling herself the Black Orchid makes her debut.Ray Terrill is born.
Early 1976
Another refugee from Krypton, Kara Zor-L, arrives on Earth and becomes the super-heroine Power Girl.
Spring 1976
Barbara Gordon is crippled by the Joker, forcing her to give up being Batgirl.
Late 1976
Tim Drake’s back is broken by Bane and he must retire as Batman.
Early 1977
High school principal Jefferson Pierce becomes the super-hero Black Lightning.The second Speedy, now clean and sober, becomes Arsenal.
Alan Scott loses his job when the Gotham Broadcasting Company goes bankrupt.
Early 1978
Superman kills off his Clark Kent identity, rather than explain why he has not aged in 40 years.Jay Garrick gives Alan Scott a job at his company, Keystone Labs. Soon after, Jay reveals to the world that he was the original Flash in an interview in We magazine.
High school student Ronnie Raymond and physicist Martin Stein are fused into a single being known as Firestorm, the Nuclear Man.
Summer 1978
Bruce Wayne briefly returns as Batman and kills the Joker.
Spring 1979
Guy Gardner first becomes a member of the Green Lantern Corps.
Summer 1979
Katherine Kane is murdered.
Fall 1979
Terry Sloane, the former Mr. Terrific, is murdered.
Fall 1980
Recovered from his injuries, Tim Drake returns as Batman.
Late 1980
The new Teen Titans form. Members include Cyborg, Raven, and Starfire.
Early 1981
Teenagers Chris King and Vicki Grant discover Hero Dials that transform them temporarily into a wide variety of super-heroes and super-heroines.
Summer 1981
Wonder Woman reveals her true identity to the world.Lee Travis dies.
Late 1982
Connor Hawke retires and settles down with Dinah Lance to start a family.
Late 1984
John Stewart takes over as the new Green Lantern.
Summer 1985
The Spectre leaves Earth once again.
Early 1986
Michael Jon Carter arrives from the future and becomes the super-hero Booster Gold.Lois Lane dies of lung cancer.
Selena Kyle dies of a sexually-transmitted disease.
Summer 1986
Having slowly gone insane, Hal Jordan dies while trying to destroy the universe.
Fall 1987
Kent and Inza Nelson both die.
Late 1987
Superman first battles Siobhan McDougal, a.k.a. the Silver Banshee.
Summer 1988
Sylvester Pemberton dies.
Spring 1989
Bruce Wayne dies. Tim Drake retires as Batman.
Summer 1989
Mary Elizabeth Kane becomes the superheroine Flamebird.
Summer 1990
Dinah Drake Lance dies of cancer.
Fall 1990
Jessie Chambers retires from her career as Jessie Quick.
Early 1992
Ray Terrill becomes the second superhero known as the Ray.
Early 1994
Kyle Rayner becomes the new Green Lantern.
Summer 1994
Bart Allen becomes the super-hero Impulse.Johnny Thunder contracts Alzheimer’s disease.
Fall 1994
Rex Tyler dies.Charles McNider dies.
Al Pratt dies.
Early 1996
Cassie Sandsmark becomes the new Wonder Girl.Johnny Chambers dies.
Summer 1997
Cissie King-Jones becomes the super-heroine Arrowette.
Summer 1998
The super-hero team Young Justice is formed.
Summer 1999
Courtney Whitmore becomes the new Star-Spangled Kid.Wesley Dodds and Dian Belmont die within weeks of each other.
Late 1999
Hal Jordan rises from the dead as the Spectre.
Late 2000
Ted Knight dies.While a new generation of super-heroes moves into the 21st century, it is interesting to note that Superman and Wonder Woman are functionally immortal and are still going strong at the end of this chronology.
Friday
Reboot the Marvel Universe!
With DC Comics hyping the upcoming relaunch of their entire line of superhero titles, perhaps this would be the ideal time to reboot the Marvel Universe as well. After 50 years, Marvel continuity is a big mess, and rather than just piling on more events, more revelations, and more retcons, I think they should just take the opportunity to chuck it all out and start over again. Marvel actually considered taking such drastic action around the time of their 25th anniversary, but decided against it. Curiously, DC did do a major continuity reboot at that time, spearheaded in their mega-crossover series Crisis on Infinite Earths. Well, I think the day has finally come for Marvel to follow suit. In 2011, the stars have aligned and historical patterns have overlapped, making now the perfect moment to forge a brand-new Marvel Universe.
Rather than start with a completely blank slate, however, I would advise building the new Marvel Universe on a solid foundation based on the Original Marvel Universe, and structuring it to forego the infamous “sliding time-scale” to proceed instead in “real-time.” Forget “the Illusion of Change” and let the characters grow and evolve so they remain fresh and interesting as the years go by. If it was good enough for Stan Lee in the 1960s, it should be good enough for Marvel in the 21st century.
In order to be as helpful as possible, I present a handy “Who’s Who” guide to the new versions of the characters, where we would find them today, and some of the backstory that the new continuity can germinate from.
It would not be necessary to force the new Marvel Universe to develop strictly along the lines chosen by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (and all those who followed in their footsteps). Instead, take the information below and let your imagination run wild!
Aarkus was a green-skinned alien from another dimension who was drawn to earth in 1940 by Dr. Enoch Mason, a scientist. Dubbed “The Vision” by the press, Aarkus fought crime until becoming disgusted with the human race. In 1943, he returned to his home dimension and has not been seen since.
St. John Allerdyce is an Australian journalist with a couple of novels to his credit. He is also secretly a mutant with the ability to control and manipulate fire.
David Angar is a radical social activist in San Francisco, California.
Amara Aquilla is the 5-year-old daughter of Senator Lucius Antonius Aquilla in Nova Roma, a lost colony of the Roman Empire hidden deep within the Amazon rainforest. Amara is a mutant with as-yet latent geothermal powers.
Todd Arliss is a 19-year-old Olympic swimmer from Pasadena, California. His older sister Diane thinks he is selfish and spoiled.
Bruce Banner is a 31-year-old nuclear scientist from Dayton, Ohio, who currently works for the United States Defense Department at an Air Force Base in New Mexico designing a new weapon powered by gamma radiation. In 1986, his mother was murdered by his father, who was subsequently committed to a mental institution, leaving Bruce severely traumatized. He was taken in by his aunt, and in 1998 Banner enrolled in Pennsylvania State University’s pre-med program, where he befriended a Canadian student named Walter Langkowski. After a year, however, Banner transferred to New Mexico State University to major in nuclear physics. There, he became roommates with Peter Corbeau, another science major. In 2003, Banner started graduate school at Cal-Tech. He took his job with the Defense Department in 2008 and then met the base commander, General Thaddeus E. “Thunderbolt” Ross, a veteran of the Iraq War, and the general’s introverted daughter Betty, who is now 22. Banner finds Betty attractive, but is too withdrawn – and too intimidated by her father – to pursue the relationship.
Betty Barstow was the secretary to a private detective named Dan Hurley. In 1941, she became a costumed crimefighter known as “The Silver Scorpion,” relying on her martial-arts skills. The following year, however, the mob discovered her secret identity and murdered her and Hurley.
Clint Barton is a 20-year-old archery expert who performs at a circus under the name “Hawkeye the Marksman.” He and his older brother Barney were orphaned in 1999, and after five years in foster care in Iowa, they ran away with a traveling carnival. While Clint worked with circus performers Jacques Duquesne and Buck Chisholm to develop his skills with a bow & arrow, Barney drifted into a life of petty larceny. In 2009, Clint became very disillusioned when he discovered Duquesne stealing from the circus to pay off a gambling debt. Duquesne tried to kill him and then fled the country, but Clint survived thanks to Barney’s intervention. After recovering from his injuries, Clint returned to work and soon replaced Duquesne as the star attraction.
Georges Batroc is a French mercenary and a master of savate, a form of kickboxing.
Jeanne-Marie Beaubier is a 16-year-old student at Madame DuPont’s School for Girls in LaVelle, Quebec. She was separated from her twin brother Jean-Paul after their parents were killed when he was adopted by their mother’s cousin, RCMP officer Louis Martin. The Martins could not afford to keep Jeanne-Marie as well, so they placed her in an orphanage run by nuns. After Martin was transferred to northern Quebec, the family lost contact with Jeanne-Marie and she grew up unaware of her brother’s existence. In 2009, the harsh conditions at the school led Jeanne-Marie to attempt suicide by jumping off the roof. However, her mutant powers of supersonic flight emerged and saved her life. Believing it to be a sign of divine intervention, Jeanne-Marie told the nuns what had happened, only to be punished for blasphemy. This caused Jeanne-Marie to suffer a psychotic break, entering a fugue state in which an uninhibited alternate personality took over for several days. The further punishment she received as a result caused Jeanne-Marie to repress this second personality, and she has become more withdrawn than before.
Quentin Beck is a disaffected special-effects designer and stunt man working in Hollywood.
Jerome Beechman is a 17-year-old mutant who began to resemble a mandrill when his powers manifested at puberty. However, he also gives off powerful pheromones that allow him to control women. A runaway, he lives life on the streets with his partner, a mutant “goth chick” named Nekra Sinclair.
Tania Belinskya is a 27-year-old medical doctor in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Black Widow was a psychic who called herself “Claire Voyant” until the demon Mephisto manipulated her into becoming an immortal killer who made evil men her victims. She disappeared during World War II and has not been seen since.
Alison Blaire is a 10-year-old girl from Long Island with latent mutant abilities, who dreams of becoming a pop singer and achieving international fame and fortune.
Johnny Blaze is a 17-year-old orphan from Waukegan, Illinois, who lives with his father’s old Army buddy and business partner, Craig “Crash” Simpson. Blaze’s father and Simpson started a motorcycle stunt show in 2002, but Barton Blaze was killed attempting a spectacular leap. It took two years for Johnny to overcome his fear of motorcycles and begin learning stunt-riding techniques alongside his foster sister, Roxanne Simpson. However, in 2009, Johnny Blaze crashed his bike while trying a dangerous pyrotechnic stunt, and his foster mother was fatally injured when the bike’s gas tank exploded. On her deathbed, she made Blaze promise to never ride in the stunt show, and he has tried to honor that promise ever since, though “Crash” and Roxanne both think he is just a coward.
Emil Blonsky is a soldier and intelligence operative in the Croatian Army.
Tandy Bowen is a 7-year-old girl living with her divorced mother in Shaker Heights, Ohio, who dreams of being a dancer when she grows up.
Brian Braddock and Elizabeth Braddock are 15-year-old twins going to school in the English county of Essex. Their older brother Jamie is a famous racecar driver, and their father, James Braddock, is a noted scientist. The children are unaware that their father is from the dimension of Otherworld and is an associate of the wizard Merlyn.
Boris Bullski is an officer in the Ukrainian army, known for his harsh and belligerent manner.
Carl Burgess was a brilliant young District Attorney in New York City who, in 1940, became a costumed crimefighter known as “The Falcon.” However, after only a few weeks, he was beaten to death by a gang of hoods.
William Burnside discovered the formula for Abraham Erskine’s super-soldier serum during the Korean War, and offered it to the U.S. government in exchange for the chance to be the new Captain America. Burnside underwent plastic surgery and legally changed his name to Steve Rogers in preparation for his role. However, the war ended before the project could be completed, so the government cancelled the deal. Rogers, as he was now called, became a history teacher and met another Captain America fan, Jack Monroe, among his students. When a new Red Skull threatened the United Nations building in 1955, Rogers and Monroe injected themselves with his super-soldier serum and became the new Captain America and Bucky to fight him. They continued going after communist spies and other criminals until flaws in the formula caused them to suffer psychotic breakdowns in 1956. The pair began targeting anyone they considered not “pure-blooded” Americans, and were subsequently arrested by the FBI and exposed as frauds. After serving his sentence, Burnside/Rogers was institutionalized and died in a fire in 1979.
Cable is a cyborg from the distant future marooned in the present day. He makes his living as a soldier-of-fortune and keeps his true identity a secret.
Davy Cannon is a minor crook who uses his mutant ability to spin at high speeds to help him commit his robberies and elude capture.
Jerry Carstairs was a ham radio operator who tried to become a costumed crimefighter called “The Thunderer” in 1941. That winter, though, he slipped off an icy roof and fell to his death.
Sharon Carter is a 23-year-old from Richmond, Virginia who just started her career at the Central Intelligence Agency. She is inspired by the World War II exploits of her grandmother, Peggy Carter.
Sean Cassidy is a 31-year-old detective in the New York Police Department. Born and raised in Ireland, he started his career with Interpol but resigned in 2008 after his wife Maeve died while he on an undercover assignment. Wanting to distance himself from painful memories, he immigrated to the United States. Since reaching puberty in 1994, he has possessed the mutant ability to create powerful sonic waves with his voice, but not wanting to be thought a “freak,” he keeps this power a secret. Cassidy is unaware that he has a 4-year-old daughter called Theresa Rourke being raised by his cousin Tom, a known criminal.
Frank Castle is a 24-year-old soldier in the United States Marine Corps serving in Afghanistan. His wife and child live in New York City.
Issac Christians is a 59-year-old student of the occult who serves as mayor of his hometown of Christiansboro, Virginia. After fighting in the Vietnam War, he refused to return to the United States for many years, wandering Southeast Asia and India to study with mystics and sorcerers. Eventually, his family responsibilities drew him home, but he has never gotten over his youthful resentments.
Maximilian Q. Coleridge is a 22-year-old college student who has majored in law and criminology, having dedicated his life to fighting crime after his parents were gunned down by crooks in 1999. After graduation, he plans to travel to Nepal to study the martial and mystic arts.
Rusty Collins is a 5-year-old boy with latent mutant abilities living in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The Commandos were four costumed superhuman adventurers who teamed up in 1993 to handle missions too dangerous for conventional law-enforcement or intelligence operatives. The Crimson Commando, Stonewall, Super Sabre, and the Yankee Clipper meted out their own harsh brand of justice until the Yankee Clipper was killed in action a year later. Her death led her partners to develop deep feelings of bitterness toward the world. They offered their services to the government following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 as special agents against terrorism. Knowing the trio were loose cannons, the government declined the offer and persuaded them to retire from crime-fighting. The disgruntled adventurers retreated to a private estate in New England, and have not been seen since.
Curt Connors is a herpetologist who lost his right arm to a grenade while fighting in the Iraq War. In his Florida laboratory he is attempting to develop a serum to rejuvenate his lost limb, as many lizards do.
Peter Corbeau is a 32-year-old Nobel-Prize-winning scientist known for his work studying the sun. In 1999 he met Bruce Banner when they became roommates at New Mexico State University. His research on solar radiation has recently led him to correspond with Charles Xavier, an expert on mutations.
Roberto da Costa is a 4-year-old boy with latent mutant abilities living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Carl “Crusher” Creel is a hardened criminal doing time in the New York State Penitentiary.
Lorna Dane is a 12-year-old girl in San Francisco who was adopted by her aunt and uncle after her parents were killed in an accident. She possesses latent mutant powers of manipulating magnetic fields. Though her hair is naturally green, her parents have been dying it brown since she was a small child.
Drew Daniels is a 20-year-old cattle hand from Amarillo, Texas.
Carol Danvers is a 26-year-old intelligence operative for the United States Air Force who grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. She has been working with her partner, Colonel Michael Rossi, since he began training her in 2003. In the last year she has started working occasionally with Nick Fury of the CIA and a Canadian intelligence agent known only as Logan.
Raven Darkholme is a mutant with the ability to alter her appearance. Her natural form features indigo skin, yellow eyes, and blood-red hair. She uses her abilities to earn a living as a covert operative.
Wilbur Day is an inventor and engineer from New York City, who is getting tired of being pushed around.
Esteban Diablo is an alchemist who has been artificially extending his life since the mid-9th century. Though born in Spain, he had long been ruling a small province of Transylvania until 1926, when his subjects revolted and sealed him inside a massive crypt. He waited several years for his lover, Lillian von Loont, to free him, but she never did. His elixir of immortality has kept him alive ever since, though he remains hopelessly trapped.
Bruce Dickson was a scientist exploring the Himalayas in 1940 when he stumbled upon the lost civilization of Kalahia. The denizens of this realm used their mysterious technology to grant Dickson the ability to make his body paper-thin. He returned to America and became the costumed crimefighter known as “The Thin Man.” In 1942, he was a founding member of the Liberty Legion, which formed in order to rescue the Invaders from the Red Skull. He remained with the group until they disbanded after the war. He returned to Kalahia, only to find it had been destroyed by an old enemy, Agent Axis. Abandoning his heroic identity, Dickson spent the next forty years trying to track down Agent Axis and get revenge. He finally accomplished his goal in 1989, smothering his elderly foe to death. Dickson was charged with murder, but died before being sentenced to prison.
Max Dillon is a lineman for the New York Power Authority.
Victor von Doom is the 39-year-old dictator of the nation of Latveria, located in the Balkans. Known to his subjects as “Doctor Doom,” he rules through fear and the power granted him by his highly sophisticated suit of armor. The rest of the world, however, is unaware of Doom’s coup d’état and thinks Latveria is still a constitutional monarchy ruled by a prime minister. After growing up in Europe, Doom enrolled at the State University of New York in 1995, where he became rivals with another science major, Reed Richards. Doom was convinced he could develop a technology to contact his mother’s spirit in hell. Two years later, Doom was expelled after an unauthorized experiment he was conducting exploded. Seeking a mystical means to contact his dead mother, Doom traveled to Tibet, where a group of reclusive monks provided him with his first suit of armor. The mask was still red hot when Doom put it on, thus destroying his already scarred face. Some years later, Doom returned to America and engaged in a secret collaboration with Nathaniel Richards, Reed’s father, to build a time machine. Doom believed he could use the time machine to cross the dimensional barrier and reach his mother. In 2005, Richards succeeded in making the device operational, but was lost in an alternate universe. Within two years, Doom had built a copy of the device for himself and used it to acquire knowledge, wealth, and technology from the past and the future. Finally, in 2009, he seized the throne of his native country to establish a power base for his nefarious schemes.
Lemuel Dorcas is a marine biologist based in Florida, interested in the potential of generic engineering.
Heather Douglas is a 17-year-old native of Los Angeles being trained in the martial arts by a group of Eternals living on Saturn’s moon Titan. The Eternals are also helping Douglas develop her latent psionic powers, which has enabled her to convince herself that she is a goddess. She was taken in by the Eternals in 1998 after a renegade member of their society, Thanos, killed her parents while on a reconnaissance mission to Earth. Unknown to Heather, the Eternals changed her dead father, Arthur Douglas, into a tremendously powerful being called Drax the Destroyer, who has been battling Thanos ever since.
Bobby Drake is a 13-year-old boy with latent mutant powers living with his parents in Fort Washington, New York.
Jessica Drew was born in 1978, but due to radiation poisoning, she was placed in suspended animation in 1981 by her scientist father, Jonathan Drew, and his colleague Herbert Wyndham at their Citadel of Science on Wundagore Mountain in the tiny Balkan nation of Transia. Though she was meant to be in stasis for only a few months while an experimental treatment based on spider venom took effect, events have conspired to keep her there up to the present day. Since being placed in her stasis tube, Drew has aged at an extremely slow rate.
Anthony Druid is a 38-year-old researcher of the occult and a master hypnotist.
Jericho Drumm is a 31-year-old psychiatrist who was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He left the island in 1997 to attend college in the United States and has not returned. His twin brother, Daniel Drumm, has become the Houngan Supreme of the island of Haiti, and is known there by the title Brother Voodoo.
Zelda DuBois is a snake charmer from Darlington, South Carolina, who recently hooked up with Maynard Tiboldt’s crooked circus.
Fred J. Dukes is a mutant from Lubbock, Texas, who works at a traveling carnival, performing a routine based on his enormous girth, invulnerability, and ability to make himself immovable. Unaware of the scientific explanation for his strange appearance and abilities, Dukes considers himself a freak of nature.
Paul Duval is a chemist from Fontainebleau, France.
Sybil Dvorak is a 14-year-old girl from Focşani, Romania, whose mutant powers of telekinesis have recently manifested. Living with a Romani tribe, Dvorak is training herself in using her powers to manipulate fabrics and other “soft” materials.
Norbert Ebersol is an unscrupulous engineer and mechanic from Dayton, Ohio, who works odd jobs while peddling his inventions to the criminal underworld.
Electro was a famous robot built in 1940 by Professor Philo Zog, who used it as the main weapon of the crimebusting operation he organized and financed. A year later, Zog and most of his agents were killed when Nazi spies attempted to steal Electro for use by the Third Reich. The robot was destroyed and Zog’s laboratory exploded, burning up all his blueprints and research notes.
The Enclave is a group of four world-renowned scientists who began faking their own deaths in 1993 in order to withdraw from the world to pursue their shared goal of ruling the Earth. Maris Morlak, Carlo Zota, Wladyslav Shinski, and Jerome Hamilton have established a research installation on an island in the North Atlantic, completed in 2003, which they call the Beehive. Since then they have labored to discover a process by which to create artificial life in order to engineer a slave race to fight their wars of conquest for them.
Jacqueline Falsworth-Crichton is an 86-year-old English aristocrat who fought with the Invaders during World War II as the super-speedster known as “Spitfire.” Her father, Montgomery Falsworth, was the costumed commando called Union Jack during the First World War, an identity her brother Brian inherited in the war against Hitler. She gave up her costumed identity at the war’s end in 1945, and by the end of the decade her powers had completely faded away. In 1951 she married the British nobleman Lord Crichton, and their son, Kenneth Crichton, is now 59 years old. As far as anyone knows, Lady Crichton is the last surviving superhero from World War II.
Montgomery Falsworth became the first superhero of the 20th century when in 1914 the British government asked him to become a costumed commando called “Union Jack.” Later in World War I, he joined with other masked men to form Freedom’s Five, including the Phantom Eagle, Sir Steel & Silver Squire, and La Chevalier Cramoisi. Their greatest foe was Falsworth’s own brother, a vampire who called himself Baron Blood. When the war ended in 1918, Falsworth retired his costumed identity and settled down to raise a family, having two children, Brian and Jacqueline. In 1939, Falsworth and his son had many bitter arguments about Nazi Germany, which led Brian to go to Germany with his friend Roger Aubrey. When war was declared in September, the young men were arrested and sent to prison camps. In 1942, Falsworth and his daughter befriended the Invaders, which led Falsworth to don his Union Jack costume for a final showdown with Baron Blood. However, Falsworth’s legs were crushed during the battle, leaving him confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Jacqueline then joined the Invaders as Spitfire, and they soon learned that Brian had been fighting the Nazis inside Germany as the Mighty Destroyer. Brian then joined the Invaders as the new Union Jack, and Aubrey assumed the role of the Destroyer. In 1945, Baron Blood was at last destroyed, and his remains were entombed in the Tower of London. Falsworth and his family retired to their country estate, and in 1952 Jacqueline gave him a grandson, Kenneth Crichton. Sadly, a year later, Brian was killed in an automobile accident. Montgomery Falsworth died in 1981 while fighting a resurrected Baron Blood. He was 90 years old.
Wilson Fisk is a New York City crime boss with numerous investments in legitimate businesses as well. He passes himself off as an importer of spices to cover his criminal activities. In 1992 he married a beautiful and sophisticated woman named Vanessa and they have an 18-year-old son Richard. Though already wealthy and very successful, Fisk still has plans to bring all of New York’s criminal rackets under his control.
Flexo the Rubber Man was a robot created in 1940 by scientist brothers Joel and Josh Williams. Though intended to help the brothers with their research, Flexo ended up being used to prevent various acts of sabotage by enemy agents. Ultimately, the Nazis tried to steal Flexo for their own use, murdering the Williams brothers in the process. Unable to make Flexo obey them, the Nazis destroyed the robot and burned down the Williams’ laboratory. All their research was lost.
Marvin Flumm is a shoe salesman in Watford City, North Dakota, and a mutant with low-level telepathic ability.
Dominic Fortune is a 54-year-old retired costumed adventurer who was active between 1983 and 1996 and currently lives in New York. In 1984 he prevented the East German spy Wolfgang von Strucker from assassinating a United States senator, and he encountered Strucker again in 1991 while helping Logan and the Russian soldier Ivan Petrovitch Bezukhov rescue Natasha Romanova from a group of ninja assassins. Fortune enjoyed his celebrity and was the closest thing America had to a superhero during that period.
Bill Foster is a 22-year-old college student from Los Angeles, California, studying to be a biochemist.
Bob Frank became a costumed superhero called “The Whizzer” in 1940 after gaining super-speed in a bizarre incident involving his scientist father, Dr. Emil Frank. In 1942 he was a founding member of the Liberty Legion, where he met the superheroine Miss America. The two soon fell in love, and later in the year they both joined the Invaders. After the war ended, they served in the All-Winners Squad to fight domestic crime, but retired in 1948 when Miss America got pregnant. They got married and took jobs at a nuclear power plant in New York, but his wife was exposed to high levels of radiation when the plant was sabotaged by an old enemy. As a result, their son was born a dangerously radioactive mutant. The government took custody of Robert Frank, Jr., and encouraged the grief-stricken parents to take an extended vacation. Unfortunately, Frank’s wife soon got pregnant again and died in childbirth. Unable to cope with so much tragedy, Frank became a drunken derelict and a drifter. He finally died in 1982 at the age of 63.
Emma Frost is a 20-year-old mutant telepath from Boston, Massachusetts.
Nick Fury is a 46-year-old agent of the CIA who is renowned for having led the Army’s “Howling Commandos” during the Gulf War in 1991. His father, Jack Fury, was a fighter pilot in the Vietnam War who was killed during the Tet Offensive. Nick and his brother Jake then grew up on the mean streets of Manhattan, often brawling with members of the notorious Yancy Street Gang. Nick joined the Army in 1990 and soon rose to a leadership position. While serving with the Howling Commandos, Sgt. Fury fell in love with a nurse named Pamela Hawley, but she was killed during an attack. He also received an injury to his left eye, which has been slowly failing ever since. After the war, the Howling Commandos were sent to apprehend the freelance mercenary Wolfgang von Strucker. Though their quarry escaped, Fury and his men were able to wipe out Strucker’s infrastructure and seize his assets. Strucker tried to get revenge on Fury in 1993 by kidnapping and torturing him after Fury was involved in a helicopter crash in Somalia. Fury escaped and, after recovering from his injuries, returned to active duty with the Howlers. The squad disbanded after a few years, but the surviving original members regrouped following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. A year later, now-Colonel Fury retired from the Army and took a position with the CIA, having been recruited after assisting the agency in Afghanistan. In 2010 he began working occasionally with Carol Danvers and Michael Rossi of Air Force Intelligence and the Canadian secret agent known only as Logan.
MacDonald Gargan is a hard-boiled private investigator in New York City.
Nathan Garrett is a scientist from London, England, who conducts research into genetic engineering at his family’s ancestral castle. In his spare time, he tinkers with electronic weapons based on the medieval implements found throughout the castle. His financial situation is growing increasingly desperate.
Dirk Garthwaite is a construction worker in New York City with serious antisocial tendencies. He’s been known to threaten people with a crowbar.
Alexander Gentry is a scientist and engineer who has been unsuccessful in finding a buyer for the bulky battlesuit he has designed.
Greer Grant is an 18-year-old native of Chicago, Illinois. She is looking forward to starting as a science major at the University of Chicago in the fall.
Louise Grant was a secretary from Hoboken, New Jersey, who worked for the Mark Mason Detective Agency in Manhattan. In 1946 she developed the glamorous masked identity of “The Blonde Phantom” to assist her boss with his cases. Within three years, she retired from costumed crimefighting to marry Mark Mason. They soon had a daughter Wanda. Louise died in 1995.
Robert Grayson was the son of German astrophysicist Horace M. Grabsheid, who changed his name after immigrating to the United States in 1984, when Robert was an infant. Seeing nuclear war as inevitable, Dr. Grayson planned to build his own spaceship so he and his son could remain safely in orbit during the conflagration. However, after making radio contact with the colony of Eternals living on Uranus, Grayson built a more advanced ship with their help. In 1988, Grayson and young Robert flew their ship to Uranus and joined the Eternals, believing their society to be a Utopia. Robert was then educated amongst the Eternals’ advanced technology and philosophy. In 2000, Robert was given a pair of energy-manipulating wristbands and sent back to Earth to spread the Uranian way of peace and justice. Called “The Millennium Boy,” Robert soon became the preeminent superhero of the day. In 2001, Millennium Boy learned that his father had fallen ill and the Eternals lacked the knowledge of sickness and infirmity needed to treat him. Unable to get a bank loan to purchase medical supplies, Millennium Boy faced a significant delay while he raised the funds he needed. By the time he made it back to Uranus, he found the Eternals’ colony has been destroyed and everyone there was dead. Driven insane with grief, Millennium Boy set a course back to Earth, intent on taking vengeance on everyone who had delayed his departure. However, while en route, a malfunction in the ship caused him to enter a state of suspended animation, and the ship slowed to the point that it will take 15 years to reach Earth.
Jean Grey is a 14-year-old mutant with telekinetic powers who lives with her parents and older sister in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Her telepathic powers first manifested in 2007 when her best friend, Annie Richardson, was hit by a car and died in Grey’s arms. After withdrawing into herself, Grey was eventually referred to Charles Xavier, who had had success in the past with similar cases. Xavier used his own telepathic powers to suppress Grey’s until she is old enough to handle them. He then began training her to control her remaining telekinetic abilities, encouraging her to keep these powers a secret. Grey has made several visits to Xavier’s mansion in Westchester County to assist him with his research into human mutation, and has met his colleague from Scotland, Dr. Moira MacTaggart. Recently, Xavier revealed to Grey and MacTaggart the prototype for a mutant-detecting machine called CEREBRO.
Ben Grimm is a 36-year-old test pilot from New York City who recently resigned from the Air Force to take a job at Richards Laboratories in California, at the urging of his college roommate Reed Richards. Grimm had once promised to pilot Richards’ spaceship should he ever manage to actually build it, and the project is rapidly nearing completion. Though trying to maintain a long-distance relationship with a woman he met at his last Air Force base, Dr. Linda McGill, Grimm has developed something of a crush on Richards’ gorgeous young girlfriend Sue. Her little brother Johnny, though, is just an annoying pest. Grimm grew up on the streets of Manhattan, and in 1992 had become the leader of the notorious Yancy Street Gang, but left the gang a year later to join the Air Force. He enjoyed his time in the military and in 1994 he was involved in missions with Captain Simon Savage’s Leatherneck Raiders and Sgt. Nick Fury’s Howling Commandos. He then went to college on the G.I. Bill at the State University of New York, where he met Reed Richards and Victor von Doom. Upon graduation in 1999, Grimm returned to the Air Force to become a test pilot. He nearly died in a crash in 2008, but was saved by his friend Desmond Pitt. Nevertheless, the two began to lose touch after Pitt took a position at NASA. Earlier this year, Grimm was surprised to hear from Richards, who was finally ready to take him up on the offer Grimm had sort of meant as a joke.
Sam Guthrie is a 7-year-old boy with latent mutant powers who lives with his parents and siblings in Cumberland, Kentucky.
Henry Peter Gyrich is a government agent with the National Security Administration.
Frank Hall is a 48-year-old physicist from Banff, Alberta, Canada, who is investigating the properties of gravity at a research installation in the Rockies.
Thomas Halloway was a costumed adventurer called “The Angel,” who made his debut in 1939 and inspired a host of imitators. After a very successful career, he was killed while fighting crime at the end of 1946.
Felicia Hardy is a 14-year-old girl in New York City whose father is a notorious cat burglar.
Quincy Harker is a 66-year-old vampire hunter from London, England, who dedicated his life to destroying all vampires after Dracula killed his parents in 1961. After successfully staking Dracula’s daughter Lilith in 1995, Harker was crippled by Dracula as an act of revenge. Undeterred, Harker built a special wheelchair containing an anti-vampire arsenal and continues to seek the final destruction of Dracula himself.
Daimon Hellstrom is a 20-year-old college student majoring in Religious Studies and already an expert demonologist. He is the son of a demon called Marduk Kurios who disguised himself as a human in the early ‘90s to sire half-breed children. His mother, Victoria Wingate Hellstrom, committed suicide in 1998 after discovering her husband’s true nature. Marduk Kurios then left Daimon in foster care and took his three-year-old daughter Satana with him to his infernal realm. Hellstrom is determined to prevent his father from carrying out any more sinister schemes on earth.
Bruno Horgan is an industrialist from New York City who is not above ripping off his customers for his own profit.
James MacDonald Hudson is the 29-year-old head scientist for Department H, a top-secret research and development agency within the Canadian Ministry of Defense, formed in 2008, which is concerned with developing high-tech weapons for the government. Hudson’s 20-year-old wife Heather serves as his secretary. On their honeymoon in 2009, the Hudsons discovered Logan, reduced to a feral state, in Wood Buffalo National Park and brought him to Department H to study his mutant healing factor and adamantium skeleton and claws. Though Logan has since been recruited into Canadian military intelligence, the Hudsons continue to feel protective of his physical and emotional well-being. James MacDonald Hudson is currently searching for inspiration for a positive new direction for Department H to take.
The Human Torch was an android created in 1939 by Professor Phineas T. Horton that could burst into flame, fly, and control and project fire. The Torch initially worked with the NYPD to bring down racketeers and other dangerous criminals and created a civilian identity for himself under the name Jim Hammond. In 1940, he met a 12-year-old mutant boy named Thomas “Toro” Raymond who possessed similar abilities. They became a successful crimefighting duo, and a year later were founding members of the Invaders. The Human Torch and Toro served with the team throughout the war, and nearly apprehended Adolf Hitler in his bunker in 1945. To stop Hitler from blowing up the bunker and killing everyone inside, including Toro, the Torch was forced to incinerate him. After the war, the Torch and Toro fought crime with the All-Winners Squad and partnered briefly with the mysterious Sun Girl. Then, in 1949, a gang of mobsters used an experimental solution to neutralize the powers of the Human Torch and Toro, but the chemical caused the Torch’s artificial body to shut down. He was awakened four years later by a nuclear bomb test, discovering that the criminals had buried him in the desert. He tracked down Toro and found he had been brainwashed to serve the Communists and was currently blowing up ammo dumps in Korea. After rescuing Toro, the two resumed their crimefighting crusade. In 1955, however, the Human Torch realized the radiation that freed him from his grave was causing him to lose control of his powers. Rather than be a threat to mankind, the Torch said goodbye to Toro and flew out to the Nevada desert. There he tried to destroy himself by going nova, but merely deactivated himself again. His body fell to the ground and was soon covered by the desert’s drifting sands, where it remains to the present day.
The Inhumans are a race genetically engineered by the alien Kree in prehistoric times, whose society has evolved along Kree lines separately from mainstream humanity. Since 2005, the Inhumans have been ruled by the usurper Maximus, brother to the rightful king, Black Bolt. Maximus masterminded a civil war in their hidden city of Attilan, which is located in a remote area of the Himalayas, by turning three of their worker drones (called Alpha Primitives) into super-intelligent energy beings known collectively as the Trikon. The 29-year-old Black Bolt was driven into exile, and is currently hiding out in New York. His consort, Medusa (age 27), was lost in the Himalayas during the battle and, suffering from amnesia, has made her way to the south coast of France. Their cousins Triton, Gorgon, and Karnak (all in their mid-twenties) have been forced to serve Maximus. The youngest member of the royal family, Medusa’s sister Crystal, is 19. The outside world remains unaware of the Inhumans’ existence.
Jack Frost was discovered in the Arctic by a scientific expedition and brought to the United States in 1941. Researchers dubbed this “ice elemental” Jack Frost, but he soon escaped from their facility and became an outlaw and killer vigilante. His reputation was rehabilitated somewhat when he joined the Liberty Legion in 1942 and served as a spy-buster and crimefighter throughout the war. Following the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, he returned to the Arctic, disgusted by humanity, and has not been seen since.
J. Jonah Jameson is the 47-year-old publisher of the New York City newspaper the Daily Bugle. He started at the Bugle as a copy boy in 1979, became a full-time reporter in 1984, and steadily worked his way up to the top. His son John Jameson, born in 1986, is an Air Force test pilot training to be an astronaut.
Abner Jenkins is a mechanic from Baltimore, Maryland, who works a low-paying job at a factory making airplane parts.
Tyrone Johnson is an 8-year-old boy with a bad stutter, who lives in a ghetto neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts.
Angelica Jones is a 3-year-old girl with latent mutant powers.
Rick Jones is a 16-year-old orphan from Scarsdale, Arizona. He has been moved around a variety of state institutions due to disciplinary problems, and has just taken up residence with his aunt in a small rural town in New Mexico near an Air Force base. Rather than getting a job, Jones hangs out with other local teens, taking often risky dares to prove himself.
Erik Josten is a mercenary from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who was dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Army after being caught working as a smuggler. He is currently in the employ of Helmut Zemo and based in Brazil.
Madeline Joyce acted as the costumed superheroine “Miss America” from 1941 until 1948, serving in the Liberty Legion, the Invaders, and the All-Winners Squad. She became romantically involved with her teammate Bob Frank, the Whizzer, and they both retired from their costumed identities when she accidentally became pregnant. To make ends meet after getting married, they both took jobs at a nuclear power plant in New York. Unfortunately, Joyce was exposed to high levels of radiation when the plant was sabotaged by an old enemy, and their son was born a dangerously radioactive mutant. The government took custody of Robert Frank, Jr., and encouraged the grief-stricken parents to take an extended vacation. Unfortunately, Joyce soon got pregnant again and died in childbirth in 1950, at the age of 30. Her second baby was stillborn.
Bonita Juarez is an 18-year-old student in Taos, New Mexico, who is looking forward to starting college. She plans to major in social work.
Eugene Judd is a 47-year-old soldier-of-fortune from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, who is considering retirement. Formerly a very tall man, Judd encountered an ancient Persian sorcerer in the Middle East in 1989, whose spells left him only about one meter tall. Furthermore, Judd has realized that he has not aged appreciably since that fateful encounter. Judd has had run-ins with his fellow Canadian Logan on several occasions, both before and after his transformation, and though they sometimes work for opposing sides, they have developed a mutual respect.
Jennifer Kale is an 11-year-old girl from Citrusville, Florida, who lives with her younger brother Andy at the Kale family farm near a swamp that contains a mystic portal called the Nexus of All Realities. Since the death of their parents, Jennifer and Andy have been raised by their grandfather, Joshua Kale, who is the head of a group of minor sorcerers called the Cult of Zhered-Na. Jennifer is very curious about her grandfather’s books of spells and other magical artifacts.
Karl Kaufman served the Allies in World War I as the mysterious flying ace known as “The Phantom Eagle.” He kept his true identity a secret to protect his parents, who were still living in Germany. He soon joined the other mystery men Union Jack, Sir Steel & Silver Squire, and La Chevalier Cramoisi in a special commando squad known as Freedom’s Five. Near the end of the war, Kaufman attempted to get his parents out of Germany, but was discovered by the German pilot Hermann von Reitberger, who machine-gunned the Kaufman family to death. The Phantom Eagle was 26 years old.
Spencer Keen was a superhero known as “The Blue Blaze,” active for several months in 1940. After lying in suspended animation for nearly 90 years following a freak accident in a college science lab, Keen awoke to find himself super-strong and basically invulnerable. However, while Keen was battling a villain called Dr. Vortex, the two men tumbled into a flooded limestone quarry and drowned.
Zebediah Killgrave is a former spy born in Rijeka, Yugoslavia. While conducting industrial espionage, Killgrave was exposed to an experimental chemical that gave him the ability to control other people. However, the chemical also changed his skin color to purple, and so he is often referred to as “the Purple Man.” Killgrave mainly uses his powers to force others to support his life of indulgence and leisure. He currently lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with a beautiful woman he mind-controlled into marrying him and their infant daughter Kara.
Hannibal King is a novice private detective from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Ulysses Klaw is a scientist and international criminal from Vlaardingen, the Netherlands. In 2003, he led a band of mercenaries into the African kingdom of Wakanda to steal the ultra-rare mineral vibranium. After killing King T’Chaka, Klaw and his mercenaries were driven off in defeat when the king’s son T’Challa attacked them with their own sonic disruptor weapon. Klaw continues to covet vibranium and is currently scheming to make another attempt at invading Wakanda.
Misty Knight is a 21-year-old college student in New York City who plans to enter the police academy.
Ivan Kragoff is a 56-year-old scientist who was born in Leningrad, U.S.S.R. He currently studies cosmic rays for the Russian Federal Space Agency.
Sergei Kravinoff is a big-game hunter and mercenary from Russia, known professionally as Kraven the Hunter.
Valentina Allegra de La Fontaine is a 33-year-old Italian countess. In 1993, her parents were murdered by the Maggia and Val spent many years waging a vigilante war against organized crime. She was then recruited as an intelligence operative for the Italian government, but became disillusioned after a few years and resigned. She has since used her private fortune to live the life of a transcontinental party girl, but secretly harbors an ambition to once more serve the cause of international justice.
Scott Lang is a 20-year-old college student from Coral Gables, Florida, who is majoring in electrical engineering.
Walter Langkowski is a 30-year-old scientist from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in nuclear physics. In 1999, he entered Pennsylvania State University on a football scholarship and there met Bruce Banner, who inspired Langkowski with his passion for science. Though Banner soon transferred to another university, Langkowski decided to follow in his footsteps and major in nuclear physics. Upon graduation in 2003, Langkowski was drafted to play professional football for the Green Bay Packers. After three years, Langkowski retired from sports and used the fortune he had earned to pursue his true goal of becoming a nuclear physicist.
Ebenezer Laughton is a contortionist and entertainer from Rhinebeck, New York, who bills himself as “Umberto the Uncanny.”
Jubilation Lee is a 1-year-old girl with latent mutant powers who lives with her parents in Beverly Hills, California.
Rachel Leighton is a sales clerk at a boutique in Austin, Texas.
Logan is a Canadian mutant of indeterminate age who knows no other name for himself. After growing up in the wilderness of northwestern Canada, Logan became a merchant marine in 1976 and sailed around the world. Reaching China the following year, he had several adventures with a beautiful Chinese girl named Rose. By 1980 he had moved on to Japan, where he began studying the martial arts under a ninja master named Ogun. In the process, he became an enemy of a cult of assassins known as the Hand. In 1986, Logan broke with his sensei and left Japan severely disillusioned. He wandered the world for several years, until settling on the island of Madripoor. There, in 1991, Logan helped a Russian soldier named Ivan Petrovitch Bezukhov and the American adventurer Dominic Fortune rescue a young girl, Natasha Romanova, from the Hand. Logan soon left Madripoor and made his way back to Canada, where he enlisted in the Army and received commando training. Four years later, he became a field agent for Canadian Intelligence, and in 2000 was recruited into a black-ops unit, where he met Victor Creed, Silver Fox, and a handful of other agents. After making many enemies in the CIA during missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, Logan and his team were soon targeted as potential test-subjects for the clandestine Weapon X program. In 2008, the CIA arranged an accident that got Logan cashiered out of the intelligence service, then promptly kidnapped him. He was taken to a facility in Windsor, Ontario where, along with his team, he was subjected to a mental reprogramming procedure. Then he was transported to a secret research installation in Canada’s north woods, where the Weapon X scientists fused the unbreakable metal adamantium to his skeleton and implanted six bionic adamantium claws in his forearms. However, Logan managed to escape from the complex during his subsequent training regimen, though his mind had been shattered, leaving him little more than a savage animal. Logan was discovered by James and Heather Hudson in 2009 when the couple was honeymooning in Wood Buffalo National Park. They took him to Department H and nursed him back to health, though he had no memory of his life before meeting them. After receiving psychiatric treatment, Logan was then recruited back into Canadian intelligence and retrained as a secret agent. He has recently begun working occasionally with Nick Fury of the CIA and Carol Danvers of Air Force intelligence.
Lillian von Loont met the alchemist Esteban Diablo in 1923, after her husband was killed in a car crash. Lillian was also badly injured, but Diablo used his arts to restore her to health, and they soon fell in love. She studied the secrets of alchemy until 1926, when Diablo’s subjects, fed up with his tyrannical rule, imprisoned him within a massive crypt. Von Loont killed Diablo’s treacherous servants and fled back to England, where she continued her studies. In 1936, she finally discovered the means to transform other elements into gold, and returned to Transylvania to take revenge on the peasants who imprisoned her lover. Subsequently, she traveled the world until she had tracked down every one of her targets and transformed them into golden statues. Eventually, old age caught up with her, but Von Loont used her arcane arts to preserve her life within an artificial body, fashioning a beautiful golden mask to hide her now ghastly features. Taking up residence in a mansion on Tamarind Island near Vancouver, Canada, she became known to the curious locals as “Gilded Lily.”
Chen Lu is a scientist from Lanzhou, China, who specializes in working with highly radioactive materials.
Carl Lucas is a 24-year-old inmate at Seagate Prison, a maximum-security facility on an island off the coast of Georgia. Growing up in Harlem, Lucas and his friend Willis Stryker had become small-time crooks. Eventually they both fell for the same girl, Reva Connors. Having made money as a racketeer, Stryker was initially the more successful suitor, until his savage beating at the hands of Maggia goons scared Connors off. She began dating Lucas, who was trying to go straight, but Stryker saw it as a betrayal and framed Lucas by planting uncut heroin in his apartment. Shortly after Lucas was sentenced to 20 years in prison, Connors began seeing Stryker again, only to be killed in a drive-by shooting by more of Stryker’s enemies. Lucas vowed to avenge Connors’ death, and his constant escape attempts have landed him at Seagate, where he is constantly mistreated by the racist guard Albert “Billy Bob” Rackham.
Cornelius van Lunt is a financier with a vast personal fortune who lives in New York City.
Dan Lyons began his career as the superhero called “The Black Marvel” in 1941 after being enhanced to nearly superhuman levels of fighting skill by a secret Native American ritual. Within a year, he became the chief nemesis of a gang of mobsters called the Order of the Hood, which eventually managed to capture Lyons and torture him to death.
Jeff Mace was a reporter for the Daily Bugle who, inspired by Captain America, became the costumed crimefighter called “The Patriot” in 1941. After America entered World War II, Mace became a founding member of the Liberty Legion, and served with them until the Axis powers were defeated. In 1946, he became the third Captain America when the second was killed while fighting the android Adam-II. Mace immediately joined the All-Winners Squad as his replacement. When the second Bucky was shot in 1949, Mace recruited Betsy Ross to become his new partner, as the Golden Girl. The following year, they retired their costumed identities and got married. Mace resumed his career as a newspaper reporter in Boston, Massachusetts. He died of cancer in 1983 at the age of 64.
Jamie Madrox is a 12-year-old boy living on a farm in Kansas, with the mutant power to create duplicates of himself. His father, a scientist, has created a special skin-tight suit to dampen his powers, although the suit itself makes Jamie feel “different.”
Magnus is the alias of a 32-year-old man from Yugoslavia whose Croatian family was wiped out by Serbian forces engaged in “ethnic cleansing” in 1990. The terror of this incident prematurely activated his mutant power to manipulate magnetic fields and he survived by deflecting the bullets away from himself. Five years later, he met his wife, a Romani called Magda, as they were fleeing from Serbian soldiers. Together they escaped into the Carpathian Mountains and eventually made their way to Vinnitsa, Ukraine, where their daughter Anya was born. In 1999, Magnus ran afoul of some local gangsters, who prevented him from saving his daughter from a burning inn. The trauma of her death caused Magnus’ mutant powers to manifest again and he killed everyone at the scene. Witnessing the event, Magda fled into the night, thinking her husband had become a monster. Magnus went into hiding to escape from the police and was unable to follow her. By 2006, he had wandered to Israel, where he was volunteering at a psychiatric hospital. Here he met Charles Xavier, whom Magnus soon began to suspect was a mutant like himself. They teamed up to rescue one of Xavier’s patients, Gabrielle Haller, from the terrorist Wolfgang von Strucker and his HYDRA organization. With Xavier’s help, Magnus defeated Strucker, but then stole the fortune in Nazi gold Strucker had been after, to use for his own campaign to ensure that mutants become the new rulers of the earth.
The Mandarin is a former businessman in China who lost his fortune in 1999. Refusing to do manual labor to earn a living, he set off in search of a way to restore his former power and status. Wandering China, he eventually came upon the fabled Valley of Spirits, where he discovered a crashed spaceship. Using the alien technology he found inside, particularly ten weaponized rings, he has recently set himself up as a warlord amidst the rugged terrain of western China. His nickname “the Mandarin,” which was originally used to mock his arrogance, is now spoken in fear by the people he has subjugated.
Xi’an Coy Manh is a 9-year-old girl with latent mutant powers living with her parents and siblings in Vietnam. Her twin brother Tran shares the same latent powers. Her uncle, Nguyen Ngoc Coy, is a local crime lord.
Mantis is the nickname of a 15-year-old girl in Vietnam who is being trained in the martial arts at the temple of the Priests of Pama, a group of monks descended from the alien Kree. Her uncle is a local crime lord known as Monsieur Khrull, whose intense racism led him to murder her mother for marrying a German man. Gustav Brandt, a mercenary, escaped from Khrull’s men by fleeing into the jungle with his baby daughter, though he soon went blind from his injuries. The Priests of Pama took them in, suspecting that the girl was in fact the Celestial Madonna. After Brandt learned to compensate for his blindness, he departed, leaving Mantis with the priests, who have educated her in their own unique philosophy.
Flint Marko is the alias of a professional criminal in New York City, who was born in Queens as William Baker. He adopted his nom du crime in 1999 to protect his mother, who had taken up residence in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
Jean-Paul Martin is a 16-year-old mutant with the power of super-fast flight who lives in Quebec, Canada. He is unaware that he has a twin sister, Jeanne-Marie Beaubier, living in an orphanage near Montreal, who has developed identical mutant powers. When their parents were killed in 1995, Jean-Paul was adopted by his mother’s cousin, RCMP officer Louis Martin. Unable to afford to raise Jeanne-Marie as well, the Martins placed her in a Catholic girl’s home. They intended to stay in touch with her, but soon after the family was relocated to northern Quebec. Then, in 2001, the Martins were killed in an accident and Jean-Paul was placed in foster care. When his mutant powers began to emerge in 2009, Jean-Paul realized he had the potential to be a world-champion downhill skier, and is currently working toward his goal of competing in the next Winter Olympics.
Milos Masaryk is a soldier born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, who is currently doing intelligence work for the Armed Forces of the Slovak Republic.
Philip Masters is a 57-year-old scientist who was born in Dragorin, Transia, though he has been living in the United States since 1960. On a research trip to the country of his birth in 1979, Masters discovered a radioactive clay on Wundagore Mountain, and took several samples home with him to study. He soon learned the substance had almost magical properties and stockpiled as much of it as he could get his hands on. By 2000, Masters had fallen in love with the wife of his research partner, Jacob Reiss, and arranged an accident to get Reiss out of the way. Masters soon married Reiss’s widow, Marcia, and adopted his daughter, legally changing her name to Alicia Masters. Alicia had been blinded in the accident that killed Reiss, and out of guilt Masters has striven to be a good father to her ever since. Following his wife’s recent death, Masters has become unhinged and has started experimenting with the radioactive clay’s more dangerous properties.
Wanda Maximoff and Pietro Maximoff are 11-year-old fraternal twins with latent mutant powers living with their adoptive parents, Django and Marya Maximoff, among a Romani tribe in the Balkans. They are unaware that their biological parents are Magnus and Magda. Their mother was pregnant when she fled from her husband after he slew the people who prevented him from rescuing their daughter Anya from a burning inn in Vinnitsa, Ukraine. Magda made her way back to the Balkans, and her pregnancy had nearly come to term when she reached Wundagore Mountain. She was taken in by the High Evolutionary’s servant Bova, an artificially-evolved cow-woman, who served as Magda’s midwife and delivered her twins. Magda named them Wanda and Pietro, but, as soon as she was able, she left her babies behind and fled into the night, terrified that her husband might be following her. Bova took the infants to her master, and, realizing they needed a human family to nurture them, the High Evolutionary took them to a nearby Romani camp. The Maximoffs had recently lost their own twin children and agreed to raise Wanda and Pietro as their own. Wanda’s mutant power to alter probabilities has only just begun to manifest, and she is considered a jinx by the other members of her tribe.
Hank McCoy is an 18-year-old student from Dunfee, Illinois, whose mutant powers give him a somewhat ape-like physiognomy and gymnastic ability. Brilliant at science, he is starting college in the fall on a football scholarship.
Alejandro Montoya is a 16-year-old student in Madrid, Spain, with the mutant ability to generate electrostatic charges within his body. His fascination with swashbuckling heroes has led him to study swordfighting and hand-to-hand combat techniques.
Danielle Moonstar is a 7-year-old girl from Boulder, Colorado with the latent mutant ability to generate psychic projections. Her father, William Lonestar, saved Charles Xavier’s life during the Iraq War, and Xavier was present for Danielle’s christening a little over a year later. Her grandfather is a shaman called Black Eagle.
Michael Morbius is a 37-year-old scientist from Greece, who has just been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Elton Morrow served in the Liberty Legion during World War II as the superhero known as “The Blue Diamond.” He discovered a giant azure diamond during an expedition to Antarctica in 1941. The diamond exploded, embedding minute particles in Morrow’s skin, when his ship was attacked by a Nazi submarine. Morrow suddenly found himself to be invulnerable to injury, and when he returned to America, he created a costumed identity for himself. When the war ended in 1945, the Liberty Legion disbanded and Morrow retired from his role as the Blue Diamond to return to his career as a research scientist. He disappeared in 1981.
Barbara Morse is a 26-year-old graduate student from San Diego, California, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in biology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is working with Dr. Wilma Calvin, who is attempting to recreate the legendary super-soldier formula from World War II.
Ororo Munro is a 12-year-old girl with emerging mutant abilities to control the weather. After being orphaned in Cairo, Egypt in 2004, she lived on the streets as a pickpocket and petty thief. She recently left Cairo and is walking south towards Kenya. She has just saved Prince T’Challa, heir to the throne of Wakanda, from a gang of kidnappers, and he has decided to accompany her on her trek until he must return to his own country.
Matt Murdock is a 24-year-old student at Columbia Law School, pursuing his Juris Doctor degree. In 2002, Murdock was blinded in a traffic accident when he was exposed to strange radioactive chemicals. However, he soon discovered that his remaining senses had been heightened to superhuman levels. For a few years Murdock studied with a blind martial-arts master called Stick, who helped him develop a “radar sense” that allows him to navigate through the world better than a sighted person. In 2005, Murdock enrolled in Columbia University and met his roommate Franklin “Foggy” Nelson. He also fell in love with fellow student Elektra Natchios, but during their sophomore year, her father, a Greek ambassador, was murdered, so Elektra dropped out of school and left the United States. Murdock had tried to save her father using his superhuman abilities but failed, and is heartbroken at having lost Elektra as well. Matt’s father, “Battling” Jack Murdock, is a washed-up prizefighter who is getting mixed up with a crooked manager.
Namor is the 41-year-old heir to the throne of the undersea kingdom of Atlantis, known on the surface world as the Sub-Mariner. In the year 2000, he disappeared from the public eye and has been living as an amnesiac vagrant in New York City ever since. Namor’s father, ship captain Leonard McKenzie, and his mother, Princess Fen of Atlantis, met in 1969 when McKenzie’s ship, the Oracle, was conducting research off the coast of Antarctica, directly above the submerged kingdom. Depth charges from the ship had threatened the Atlanteans, and Fen took it upon herself to investigate. When she learned that McKenzie’s actions were not meant to be hostile, she decided to get to know him better. She soon became pregnant, but the lovers were separated when Thakorr, Emperor of Atlantis, assumed Fen was being held against her will and sent a strike force to rescue her. McKenzie, unaware that Fen was pregnant, recovered from his injuries and returned to the United States. Nine months later, Fen gave birth to Namor, a mutant hybrid of Homo sapiens and Homo mermanus. As he grew up, Namor was popular with most Atlanteans, but a few hated him for his “fishbelly” pink skin and the “freakish” wings that sprouted from his ankles when he hit puberty. Thus, in 1989, two of his childhood friends conspired to get rid of Namor. Meranno and Byrrah hired a mercenary army to attack Atlantis in the name of the surface world, causing extensive damage to the kingdom. Emperor Thakorr was injured in the attack and was left comatose. As acting emperor, Namor decided to attack the surface world in retaliation. His destructive rampages through coastal cities terrified the surface-dwellers, who dubbed him “The Sub-Mariner.” In the early ‘90s, Namor had several battles with the flaming hero of World War II, Toro, who came out of retirement to try to defeat him. Eventually, Namor learned of the treachery of Meranno and Byrrah, and that not all surface-dwellers were his enemies. He made efforts to understand the ways of the surface people and to protect Atlantis’s interests, though his volatile personality made him unpredictable. Finally, in 2000, Namor lost a battle with the telepath Paul Destine, who used the mystic artifact known as the Serpent Crown to destroy Atlantis, killing Thakorr and Fen, and then erased Namor’s memory and left him in an alley in a New York ghetto. The Atlanteans were left a disorganized band of refugees, wandering the ocean’s depths.
William Nasland fought for the Allies during World War II as the costumed superhero “The Spirit of ’76,” beginning in 1942. After the original Captain America disappeared in the winter of 1945, Nasland was asked to take over as the new Captain America, and he was honored to do so. Joined by Fred Davis as the new Bucky, Nasland fought alongside the Invaders until the end of the war. Subsequently, he became a founding member of the All-Winners Squad to fight domestic crime. However, in 1946, Nasland was killed in action while trying to stop the evil android Adam-II from assassinating a young politician named John F. Kennedy. He was 28 years old.
Luchino Nefaria is a 48-year-old crime boss from Rome, Italy, who is currently the head of the international crime syndicate known as the Maggia. His wife Renata died in childbirth in 1986, and Nefaria secretly arranged for the baby to be raised as the daughter of wealthy New York financier Byron Frost, who launders money for the Maggia. The girl, Whitney, now 25, still has no knowledge of her true parentage.
Peter Noble fought in World War II as the costumed adventurer called “The Fin.” Originally a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, Noble’s ship sank during a training exercise in 1941, but he discovered that he could breathe underwater and survive the crushing pressure at the bottom of the ocean. Fearing he was some kind of freak, Noble did not return to the surface world, but wandered the ocean’s depths until coming across the small subsea kingdom of Neptunia. When Neptunia became a target of Nazi submarines, Noble’s heroic efforts earned him the Neptunians’ loyalty and they crowned him their new king. Neptunia then declared war on Germany, and Noble made many daring attacks against the Nazis on both land and sea using an enchanted cutlass he had discovered in an ancient shipwreck. Due to his distinctive headgear, he was dubbed “The Fin” by the American press and considered a sea-faring super-hero. At the end of the year, he joined Captain America and the Human Torch in forming the Invaders and fought as a member of that team throughout the rest of the war. In 1946, Noble helped form the team’s post-war counterpart, the All-Winners Squad. That team disbanded in 1949, but Noble continued to fight evildoers at home and abroad until his death in 1958.
Otto Octavius is a research scientist from Schenectady, New York, who is developing a new technology to safely handle hazardous materials.
Shanna O’Hara is a 28-year-old veterinarian at the Bronx Zoo in New York. Born in Zaire to American parents, O’Hara was traumatized in 1989 when her father accidentally killed her mother while trying to shoot a leopard. Since taking her job at the zoo last year, she has demonstrated a specially affinity for big cats.
Norman Osborn is a research scientist and business executive in New York City. He came to prominence in 2004 after stealing the research of his partner, Mendel Stromm, and then arranging for Stromm to be sent to prison for 10 years. Osborn’s son Harry is 16 years old.
Leland Owlsley is a financier in New York, nicknamed “The Owl” for his uncanny financial wisdom. However, his success is largely due to illegal manipulations and other shady dealings.
Peter Parker is a 16-year-old high school student from Forest Hills, Queens, New York. Since 1998, Parker has been living with his Uncle Ben and Aunt May, after his parents were killed while on assignment for the CIA. He is unaware of the nature of his parents’ work and the exact circumstances of their deaths. He is a gifted science student but shy and withdrawn.
Arthur Parks is a college student from New Brunswick, New Jersey, who is studying lasers.
Peter Petruski is a petty criminal from Gary, Indiana, who is fascinated with pastes and glues.
Kevin Plunder is the 21-year-old son of an English lord, and has been marooned since 1999 in the Savage Land, a hidden jungle filled with otherwise extinct flora and fauna, including dinosaurs, located on the continent of Antarctica. His father was killed shortly after their arrival in the artificially-maintained rainforest, and his only companion since that time has been a sabertooth tiger he calls Zabu. Having reached manhood, Plunder is in the process of hunting down the primitive “man-apes” who killed his father. Only vaguely remembering his childhood in England, Plunder has adopted the name given to him by the man-apes, “Ka-Zar,” which means “Son of the Tiger.” He is unaware that his younger brother Parnival, left behind in England, has turned to a life of crime to support himself.
Alex Power is a 1-year-old boy living with his parents in Richmond, Virginia.
Jonathan Powers is an actor from Hoboken, New Jersey, who has failed to make it big in either New York or Hollywood, and had turned to petty crime to support his extravagant lifestyle.
John Proudstar is a 14-year-old boy from Camp Verde, Arizona, with emerging mutant powers that give him heightened senses and reflexes. Though he feels ashamed of his freakish abilities, John knows his 7-year-old brother James looks up to him. He looks forward to the day he can leave the reservation and join the Army.
Kitty Pryde is a 6-year-old girl from Deerfield, Illinois, with the latent mutant power to phase through solid objects. Her grand ambition now is to be a dancer.
Henry Pym is a 25-year-old genius-level research scientist from Elmsford, New York, who has already finished his education and begun his career. In 2010 he met Maria Trovaya, the daughter of a brilliant geneticist from Chechnya, who had fled from the violence in that region following the breakup of the Soviet Union. They quickly fell head-over-heels in love and decided to get married. Maria convinced Pym to take her back to her hometown of Grozny for their honeymoon. Believing the fighting had ceased, Pym agreed. However, shortly after their arrival, Maria was killed in a terrorist attack. Pym became distraught and, returning to the U.S., retreated from his grief into ever-more bizarre research projects. Though his new theories have been ridiculed and he has been ostracized by the scientific community, Pym has recently discovered a subatomic particle that he believes has the power to cause objects to change their physical size.
Abdul Qamar is a 16-year-old student living in Saudi Arabia.
Doug Ramsey is a 6-year-old boy with the latent mutant ability to decipher any language.
Danny Rand is a 13-year-old boy from New York City who is currently studying the martial arts in the extradimensional city of K’un-Lun, where he has been since 2007. His father, a native of K’un-Lun, had brought the family to the Himalayas in search of the dimensional portal, which was opening at that time, describing K’un-Lun only as a mystical realm. However, his father’s business partner, Harold Meachum, betrayed them, leading to the death of both of Danny’s parents. Danny alone made it to K’un-Lun, where the inhabitants agreed to raise him and train him until the portal reopens in 2017.
Calvin Rankin is a 15-year-old high-school student from Passaic, New Jersey, with an abrasive attitude.
Peter Rasputin is a 10-year-old farmboy in Siberia with the latent mutant power to turn his flesh into organic steel.
Red Raven fought for the Allies during World War II as a member of the Liberty Legion. As a baby, he was the sole survivor of a plane that crashed into the floating island of Aerie, concealed in a cloudbank, that was the home of a population of avian Inhumans. In 1940, he decided to leave the Aerie to explore the world of his birth parents, using the artificial wings the “Bird-People” provided him. He soon became a costumed crime-fighter, and in 1942 was a founding member of the Liberty Legion. However, in 1944, he learned of a plot by the rulers of the Aerie to take advantage of the turmoil caused by the war to conquer the human race. Fearing the Bird-People would be wiped out in such a battle, a desperate Red Raven released a gas that put everyone on the island into suspended animation. After securing the comatose population, Red Raven hid the island on the bottom of the ocean and then placed himself in suspended animation as well. They have remained so ever since.
Thomas Raymond was a mutant with the ability to burst into flame, fly through the air, and project fire from his body in various forms. In his youth, he acted as sidekick to the Human Torch, an android possessed of the same abilities. Known by his nickname, Toro, Raymond met the Human Torch in 1940, when he was only 11 years old. After Toro’s parents were killed by a criminal known as “the Asbestos Lady,” the Torch became his legal guardian. At the end of 1941, they became founding members of the Invaders, and fought against the Axis powers throughout World War II. In 1945, the Torch and Toro cornered Adolf Hitler in his underground bunker, meaning to bring him to justice. However, the Torch was forced to incinerate the Nazi leader to prevent him from blowing up the bunker and killing everyone inside, including Toro. With the war over, Toro joined the Torch in forming the All-Winners Squad to battle domestic crime. However, in 1949, a gang of mobsters used an experimental solution they had obtained from Soviet agents, which allowed them to neutralize Toro’s flame powers and deactivate the Torch. Toro was taken behind the Iron Curtain and brainwashed into becoming a secret weapon for the communists. He was finally rescued in 1953 after the Torch had been revived by a nuclear bomb test. Back in America, Toro’s mental conditioning was broken, and he and the Torch resumed their crimefighting crusade as equal partners. Unfortunately, the radiation that had revived the Torch slowly caused him to lose control of his powers, and in 1955 he said goodbye to Toro and disappeared into the desert. Disheartened, Toro retired from crimefighting and stopped using his powers. He eventually met and married a woman named Anne and lived a relatively normal life for many years. In 1990, Toro came out of retirement to battle the Sub-Mariner, who had recently begun staging attacks on cities along the Atlantic coast, and eventually persuaded Namor that not all surface-men were his enemies. Sadly, these adventures proved too strenuous for Toro and he soon suffered a fatal heart attack. He died in 1992 at the age of 63.
Owen Reece is a janitor at a scientific research installation in New York City.
James Rhodes is a 20-year-old airman in the United States Air Force.
Reed Richards is a 39-year-old beyond-genius research scientist from Central City, California, and head of the California-based Richards Laboratories, which he inherited from his father. Richards began taking college-level courses at Cal Tech in 1986. He was recruited by U.S. Army intelligence in 1991 as an encryption expert and served during the Gulf War. After his tour of duty, he resumed his education at SUNY, where he became roommates with football star Ben Grimm. Richards spoke often of his ambition to build a spaceship, and Grimm half-jokingly promised to pilot it should he ever succeed. Richards had a rival of sorts in Victor von Doom, also a brilliant scientist, who was expelled after one of his experiments went badly awry. In 2003, Richards enrolled in Columbia University to pursue yet another advanced degree. It was here that he met Susan Storm, the niece of his landlady. Though she was much younger, they stayed in touch after Richards graduated in 2005 and returned to California to work for his father. Two years later, after working obsessively on a secret project, Richards’ father vanished without a trace. However, he had made arrangements for his son to take over the family business. Richards immediately devoted all the company’s resources to his starship project. In early 2011, as the project was nearing completion, Richards contacted Grimm to take him up on the offer he made in college. Grimm resigned from the Air Force and took a position at Richards Laboratories to train for the mission to space. In the spring, Susan Storm, now working as a model in New York, flew out to spend the summer with Richards and they quickly fell in love. Recently, however, Richards encountered an alien monster that was intent on wiping out the human race. Using his scientific knowledge and ingenuity, Richards defeated the alien by dispersing its molecules over a wide area. Convinced that advanced extraterrestrial races pose a clear and present danger to the planet Earth, Richards now sees his starship project as vital to the survival of the human race.
Kyle Richmond is a 21-year-old reluctant business executive in New York City. Following his mother’s death in 1999, Richmond was sent to boarding school, since his father was constantly away on business. He soon developed a reputation as a troublemaker. Despite his poor academic record, Richmond was accepted to the exclusive Grayburn University in 2008 due to his father’s wealth and influence. However, Richmond was expelled the next year after a drunk-driving accident which he believes to have killed his girlfriend Mindy. His father died in a plane crash soon after that, and, rejected from military service due to a heart murmur, Richmond agreed to take over the family business. Leaving the actual running of the company to others, Richmond now lives the life of a playboy, while searching for a means to cure his heart condition.
Richard Rider is a 9-year-old boy living with his family in Queens, New York.
Steve Rogers served the Allies during World War II as the symbolic super-soldier Captain America. Born in New York City in 1921 and orphaned at the height of the Great Depression, Rogers was a frail and sickly youth. When he tried to enlist in the U.S. Army in late 1940, Rogers was classified 4F and rejected. However, he was immediately recruited by General Chester Phillips for his super-soldier program, Operation: Rebirth. Rogers was flown to Washington D.C., where he met the mastermind behind the project, Dr. Abraham Erskine. Within a few weeks, Rogers was injected with Erskine’s super-soldier serum and subjected to high-energy vita-rays, emerging from the process as physically perfect as a human being could be. Unfortunately, a Nazi spy had infiltrated the proceedings and shot and killed Dr. Erskine. Unable to duplicate Erskine’s success, the government decided to make Rogers into a patriotic symbol and a special-missions commando, similar to Britain’s Union Jack of World War I. Given a red, white, and blue costume and a bulletproof shield, Rogers became the masked hero Captain America. A few months later, Rogers acquired a teen-aged sidekick, Bucky, and the pair quickly became a media sensation. After America entered the war, Rogers fought alongside other super-heroes in the Invaders, as well as conducting numerous solo missions. In 1944, Bucky reached his 18th birthday and gave up his costumed identity to join the Army as a regular soldier. Soon after, while in France, Rogers fell in love with an American girl fighting in the French Resistance, although he knew her only by her code-name, “Mademoiselle.” She disappeared during the liberation of Paris, and Rogers was unable to find her. Then, in the winter of 1945, Rogers had his final battle with his arch-nemesis, the Red Skull, who was buried under tons of rubble in a collapsing bunker in Berlin. Returning to England, Rogers was assigned to stop the theft of an experimental drone plane from a base on the North Sea, where he was reunited with Bucky. His old enemy, Baron Heinrich Zemo, launched the plane towards Germany, but when Rogers and Bucky leaped aboard to stop it, they discovered it was booby-trapped. The plane exploded, killing Bucky and throwing Rogers down into the icy waters below. The super-soldier serum in his blood caused Rogers to go into suspended animation, and he was carried by the current into the Arctic, where he remains, entombed in ice, to the present day.
The girl who will be known as Rogue is currently a 7-year-old with latent mutant powers living with her family in Mississippi.
Natasha Romanova is a 27-year-old spy born in Stalingrad, U.S.S.R. (now St. Petersburg, Russia). Orphaned as a young girl, she was discovered living on the streets of Madripoor in 1991 by Russian soldier Ivan Petrovitch Bezukhov. Realizing the girl was descended from the Russian royal family, Bezukhov vowed to raise her as his own daughter. However, she was soon kidnapped by the terrorist Wolfgang von Strucker, who was working with the group of ninja assassins known as the Hand. With some help from Logan and Dominic Fortune, Bezukhov rescued Romanova and took her back to Russia. He enrolled her in the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet in St. Petersburg and got himself a job in electronics. Bezukhov married in 1997 and soon had a son, Yuri. In 2003, Romanova graduated and became a professional ballerina in the famous Kirov ballet company, which put a tremendous strain on her relationship with her boyfriend, a brilliant college student named Andrei Rostov. A year later they broke up and Romanova took the hotshot jet pilot Alexi Shostakov as her lover. They married in 2005 and became something of a celebrity couple. However, two years after that, members of the Russian intelligence community decided that the Shostakovs would make excellent covert operatives. Incidents were arranged to convince each one that the other had died and then they were recruited separately. Shostakov was taken to Siberia for training while Romanova was assigned to the KGB’s former Moscow training facility, the infamous Red Room. There she was trained by a former KGB agent named Alexi Bruskin and proved highly adept at spycraft. In 2008 Romanova was sent on her first mission outside Russia, to assist an operative called Danny French in stealing an experimental device from the Project Four installation in Nevada. Since she was successful, she was sent to New York to infiltrate Stark International under the alias “Natalie Rushman.” She has been passing the secrets of Stark’s technology to the Russians ever since.
Jack Russell is a 14-year-old student living in the suburbs of Los Angeles with his mother, step-father, and sister Lissa. He is unaware that his biological father, Gregory Russoff, was a werewolf and that he will inherit his father’s ancestral curse on his 18th birthday. He is equally unaware that he was born Jacob Russoff in Transylvania and that his step-father Philip is really his father’s brother. Nor does he know that his grandfather, Baron Gregor Russoff of Transylvania (also a werewolf), obtained the Darkhold, the ultimate book of black magic, in 1971 from the sorcerer Taboo. In 1999, Gregory was killed by a hunting party while in his werewolf form, and a year later Gregor died while battling the demon Chthon on Wundagore Mountain. Jack and his mother fled Transylvania for California, where she married Philip shortly after Lissa was born, changing their names from Russoff to Russell. The Darkhold is currently in a California warehouse along with the rest of the contents of Castle Russoff.
Ted Sallis is a 34-year-old chemist from Omaha, Nebraska. In 2007, he initiated a research project at Empire State University that the United States military soon classified top-secret and codenamed Operation: Sulfur. Its aim was to alter human biochemistry to enable people to survive even the most toxic industrial pollution. By 2010, however, Sallis determined that his serum would mutate people into horribly disfigured pollution-breathing monsters. He convinced a review panel to condemn the project and the government had no choice but to shut it down. Sallis has recently received overtures from Dr. Wilma Calvin to join her project to recreate Abraham Erskine’s super-soldier formula, and he is considering it.
Leonard Samson is a psychiatrist from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who currently practices in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Basil Sandhurst is a research scientist from Kittery Point, Maine, who is developing mind-control technologies.
Mark Scarlotti is a college student from Cleveland, Ohio, studying electrical engineering. He has been awarded a summer internship at Stark International in New York.
Larry Scott was a masked vigilante known as “Father Time” in 1941-1942. His father was executed in the electric chair after being convicted of murder, though Scott maintained he was innocent. Unhinged by the experience, Scott took up a scythe and began killing criminals. Eventually someone overpowered him and killed him with his own weapon.
Shang-Chi is a 14-year-old student of the martial arts at a retreat in Honan, China. He is the son of an international criminal mastermind and his American-born wife, though Shang-Chi is unaware of his father’s illegal activities.
Gregor Shapanka is a research scientist from Szombathely, Hungary, who works in the cryonics division at Stark International in New York.
Sebastian Shaw is a 33-year-old multi-millionaire industrialist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the CEO of Shaw Industries, and a mutant with the power to absorb kinetic energy. Shaw keeps a love-slave named Tessa, who is also a mutant.
Nekra Sinclair is a 17-year-old mutant from Los Alamos, New Mexico, with the power to convert negative emotions into strength and invulnerability. A “goth chick” runaway, she lives on the streets with her partner, Jerome Beechman, a mutant with ape-like features and powerful pheromones.
Rahne Sinclair is a 4-year-old orphan girl in Scotland with the latent mutant ability to shapeshift into a wolf.
Marrina Smallwood is an 8-year-old girl, hatched from an alien Plodex egg mapped with human DNA, living in a small fishing community in Newfoundland, Canada. Despite her strange appearance, Smallwood has been accepted by the locals since they find her amphibious abilities useful.
Tabitha Smith is a 2-year-old girl in Roanoke, Virginia, with the latent mutant ability to generate explosive energy spheres.
Samuel Smithers is a gardener and groundskeeper. Born in London, England, he is currently employed by the wealthy Evans family of Long Island.
Karla Sofen is a 25-year-old graduate student from Van Nuys, California. She is studying to become a psychiatrist, but is financing her education by dallying with various gangsters.
Marc Spector is a 21-year-old heavyweight boxer from Chicago, Illinois. Feeling his career is winding down, he is considering joining the U.S. Marine Corps.
Gwen Stacy is a 16-year-old high-school student in New York City. Her father, George Stacy, is a captain in the NYPD.
Tony Stark is a 25-year-old genius-level inventor and head of Stark International, a company he inherited in 2007 after his parents were killed in a car crash. Stark is currently constructing the massive flying fortress called the Helicarrier for the nascent international security agency S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division), among other weapons and hardware.
Elihas Starr is a research scientist from Queens, New York. Though brilliant, he is bad-tempered and his co-workers mock him with the nickname “Egghead.”
Samuel Sterns is a manual laborer from Boise, Idaho, who works at a nuclear research facility.
Johnny Storm is a 17-year-old high school student from Glenville, New York, on Long Island. He lost his mother in 2005, and his father was convicted of manslaughter and sent to jail in 2007. Since then, Storm has been raised by his sister Susan, with help from an aunt who lives nearby. In the summer of 2011, Storm has gone to California to hang out with Sue and her boyfriend Reed Richards. Thanks to his interest in fast cars, Storm has quickly made a number of new friends.
Susan Storm is a 22-year-old model from Glenville, New York, on Long Island. After the death of her mother in 2005, her father went into a downward spiral and was finally convicted of manslaughter and sent to prison in 2007. Storm has been raising her younger brother Johnny ever since, though she has help from an aunt who runs a boarding house near Columbia University. It was at her aunt’s boarding house that Storm met Reed Richards, a much older college student, in 2003. She fell in love with Richards and has kept in touch with him since then. In the spring of 2011, Richards invited Storm to spend the summer with him in California, and she happily accepted. After a few weeks together, they decided to get engaged. After school let out, Johnny came out to California to join her. Storm recently assisted Richards in destroying an alien menace that had come to wipe out the human race, and understands why he works so obsessively on his project to build an interstellar spaceship.
Stephen Strange is a 49-year-old sorcerer who lives in a mansion in Greenwich Village, which he calls his Sanctum Sanctorum. Strange went to medical school in the 1980s at the University of Pennsylvania and studied to be a neurosurgeon. He went into private practice in 1995, by which time both his parents had died. Earlier in the ‘90s, he had been engaged to a woman named Madeleine Revell, but she ended their relationship when she realized he was becoming too arrogant and cold-hearted. In 1997, Strange crashed his sports car and sustained nerve damage that ended his surgical career. Too proud to work as a consultant, Strange then squandered his fortune seeking a cure for his condition, alienating his few friends in the process. By 1999, Strange was desperate enough to travel to Tibet in search of a miracle-worker known only as “The Ancient One.” Within a year, Strange found his way to the Ancient One’s remote retreat in the mountains, where the weird old man refused to help him. However, a sudden blizzard prevented Strange from leaving. While there, the former doctor discovered that the Ancient One’s pupil, a Transylvanian called Baron Mordo, was trying to kill his master. Mordo used his spells to prevent Strange from revealing the plot, so Strange asked the Ancient One to teach him magic. Seeing the good in Strange, the Ancient One agreed and released Strange from Mordo’s spells, of which he was already aware. Strange experienced an epiphany and dedicated himself to the study of the mystic arts. Strange soon got to know the Ancient One’s devoted manservant, Hamir the Hermit, and his son Wong. Months later, Mordo tried to kill Strange, but the novice sorcerer defeated him. The Ancient One then banished Mordo from the temple, and he returned to Transylvania, vowing revenge. Strange studied with the Ancient One until 2008, when he was ready to return to the world as a Master of the Mystic Arts. Accompanied by Wong, Strange moved to Greenwich Village and established his reputation as an expert on the occult. Doctor Strange currently uses his magic powers to aid people who seek him out, though he occasionally assists the police with particularly mysterious cases.
Wolfgang von Strucker is a 61-year-old mercenary and terrorist and leader of the international criminal organization HYDRA. He was recruited by the East German intelligence services in 1984, but went rogue soon after when a mission to assassinate a United States senator was thwarted by Dominic Fortune. Strucker retreated to the western Pacific and made a name for himself there as a freelance mercenary. In 1991, on the island of Madripoor, he agreed to assist the clan of ninja assassins known as the Hand in kidnapping a young Natasha Romanova, whom the Hand wanted for a mystical ceremony. However, his plans were again ruined by Dominic Fortune, along with a mysterious Canadian called Logan and a Russian soldier named Ivan Petrovitch Bezukhov. In 1992, Strucker suffered a major setback when Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos wiped out his infrastructure and seized his assets. Left nearly destitute, Strucker learned that an associate of his knew the location of a cache of Nazi gold, hidden during the closing days of World War II. Unfortunately, the man was fatally wounded by his enemies, so he tried to use an experimental hypnosis technique to implant the information in the mind of an Israeli prostitute named Gabrielle Haller, but the process left her catatonic. Foiled again, Strucker hid out in Japan, where he infiltrated and took over a secret society bent on world domination. After assassinating the group’s leader, Strucker renamed it HYDRA and established a new headquarters on a lonely island in the Pacific Ocean. In 1993, this base, called Hydra Island, was destroyed by Captain Simon Savage and his squad of Navy SEALs, “The Leatherneck Raiders.” Strucker was on the run again, and caught up with Nick Fury in Somalia. Knowing the Howling Commandos thought Fury had been killed in a helicopter crash, Strucker tortured his foe until Fury managed to escape. Strucker then returned to Europe and organized a secret group of scientists to create high-tech weapons for HYDRA, setting up a dummy corporation called Advanced Idea Mechanics as a front. In 1994, while in Bosnia, Strucker discovered a group of extraterrestrials hiding out while repairing their spaceship. Strucker killed the aliens, as well as everyone else in the village, and seized their otherworldly technology for use by HYDRA. Five years later, one of Strucker’s lovers gave birth to twins. Strucker was proud of his offspring and named them Andrea and Andreas von Strucker, unaware that they were mutants with latent powers. In 2006, Strucker learned that Gabrielle Haller had finally been brought out of her catatonic state by an American therapist named Charles Xavier. Strucker and a squad of HYDRA mercenaries attacked the psychiatric hospital in Israel to capture her. They took her to Kenya and forced her to reveal where the Nazi gold was hidden. However, they were attacked by Xavier, a telepath, and another mutant called Magnus, who possessed impressive magnetic powers, who had come to rescue Haller. Strucker was no match for their mutant powers, and Magnus took all the Nazi gold for himself. Nevertheless, Strucker got away, and has been at large ever since, slowly building up HYDRA’s power base, until they are ready to take over the world.
Leopold Stryke is a manager at the New York Aquarium on Coney Island. His brother Jordan is an advertising executive on Madison Avenue. Both have criminal tendencies and are suckers for a get-rich-quick scheme.
Scott Summers is a 15-year-old orphan living in a state-run institution in Omaha, Nebraska. His younger brother Alex is living in a foster home not far away. Although he doesn’t remember the event, Summers’ parents were kidnapped by aliens from the Shi’ar galaxy in 2004. Both Summers boys are mutants with emerging powers. Scott had been experiencing severe headaches and eye-strain until discovering that ruby-quartz crystals alleviated his symptoms. An optometrist agreed to make a pair of goggles out of the substance, which Summers wears all the time, day and night. When he needs to remove them, he keeps his eyes tightly closed for fear the headaches will return. His caretakers believe Summers was brain-damaged when his parents were killed. Deeply unhappy, he is planning to run away to New York City.
Sun Girl was a mysterious super-heroine who appeared one day in 1948, became a media sensation, then disappeared just as abruptly in 1949. She worked briefly with the Human Torch while his regular partner, Toro, was on a leave of absence. Many theories surround Sun Girl, but the truth was never discovered.
Kevin Sydney is a mutant shapeshifter able to mimic the appearance of other people.
Will Talltrees is a 22-year-old soldier in the U.S. Marine Corps from Wolf Point, Montana.
George Tarleton is a technician for the subversive organization Advanced Idea Mechanics.
T’Challa is the 24-year-old heir to the throne of Wakanda, a remote African kingdom. In 2003, the unscrupulous Dutch scientist Ulysses Klaw invaded Wakanda with a heavily-armed band of mercenaries, intent on capturing the source of the ultra-rare mineral vibranium. They killed the king, T’Chaka, but the teenaged prince T’Challa attacked them with their own sonic disruptor weapon and drove them off. T’Challa was then sent abroad to complete his education at the finest universities of Europe and America, accompanied by his friend B’Tumba. In his absence, Wakanda has been ruled by B’Tumba’s father, N’Baza, as regent. Having just graduated, T’Challa was touring eastern Africa on his way back to Wakanda when an attempt was made to kidnap him. He defeated the kidnappers with the help of a 12-year-old girl called Ororo, a mutant with limited control over the weather. Fascinated by her, T’Challa has decided to accompany her on her trek through Kenya before returning to his native land.
Thor is the mythological god of thunder worshipped by the Vikings a thousand years ago. Since 1999, he has been banished from his extradimensional realm of Asgard and has been living on Earth with no memory of his true identity. Odin, king of the Asgardians, took possession of Thor’s enchanted hammer, Mjolnir, and forced Thor to assume the mortal guise of Donald Blake, a medical student with a bad leg. Blake trained to be a neurosurgeon and far surpassed the skill level of his peers. In the summer of 2011, he went into private practice in New York City and hired Nurse Jane Foster to work at his office.
Maynard Tiboldt is the ringmaster of a traveling circus, which is really just a cover for a gang of thieves. They mainly target small towns along rural highways.
Mark Todd, a former newspaper reporter, fought the Japanese Army as the costumed commando known as “The Blazing Skull,” beginning in 1939. He was killed in action in 1942.
Adrian Toomes is a 59-year-old mechanic and inventor from New York City, who has nearly perfected a rig to allow a person to fly like a bird.
Topaz is a 12-year-old girl from India who serves as the familiar for a sorcerer called Taboo. In 2005, Taboo found Topaz in a refugee camp and learned how to harness her empathic powers to serve his own selfish ends.
Mortimer Toynbee is a 19-year-old mutant from York, England, with superhuman agility and a fawning, obsequious manner.
Michael Twoyoungmen is a 46-year-old former surgeon from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. In 2003, his wife died from a terminal illness, and Twoyoungmen blamed himself for failing to save her with his medical skill. Their young daughter Elizabeth blamed him also, and Twoyoungmen sank into a profound depression. Leaving Elizabeth with his neighbors, the large McNeil family, Twoyoungmen retreated to a remote cabin in the wilderness to be alone with his grief.
Angelo Unuscione is a 23-year-old professional wrestler and a mutant with the ability to generate a force-field around his body. He bills himself as “Unus the Untouchable.”
Janet Van Dyne is a 20-year-old socialite in New York City, the daughter of the wealthy scientist Vernon Van Dyne. Her father has been one of America’s most noted scientists since the 1980s.
Rachel Van Helsing is a 29-year-old vampire hunter.
Wendell Vaughn is a 16-year-old high-school student in Wisconsin.
Seth Voelker is an economic analyst from Kenosha, Wisconsin. He has recently begun working for the Roxxon Oil Company.
Klaus Voorhees is a research assistant from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who works for the internationally renowned herpetologist Ezekiel Shecktor.
Kurt Wagner is a 13-year-old circus acrobat in Germany with a number of bizarre mutations that have been present since birth, including dark-blue fuzz all over his body, yellow eyes, a prehensile tail, and six fingers and toes. He has only recently developed the ability to teleport short distances, disappearing and reappearing in a puff of smoke. Abandoned at birth, Wagner has been raised at the circus by Margali Szardos, a sorceress posing as a gypsy fortune-teller, alongside her own children Jimaine and Stefan. The circus folk accept Wagner despite his strange appearance, and audiences assume he is just wearing an outlandish costume.
Patsy Walker is a 19-year-old former reality-TV star from Centerville, California. She has a strained relationship with her mother, Dorothy Walker, the ultimate “stage mom,” and is dating her former co-star, Buzz Baxter.
Jennifer Walters is a 24-year-old student at the UCLA School of Law pursuing her Juris Doctor degree. As a child she was close to her cousin, Bruce Banner, but they have since drifted apart.
Miles Warren is a biology professor at Empire State University in New York City, interested in cloning.
John Watkins was a British Army lieutenant who was believed killed by the Nazis in 1940. He survived and adopted the masked identity “Citizen V” to wage a one-man guerilla war against the Axis powers across Europe. He left the “V” symbol at the site of his victories to inspire the local resistance movements. He was killed for real during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.
Dane Whitman is a 23-year-old graduate student in physics from Gloucester, Massachusetts. He was inspired to pursue a career in the sciences by his uncle, Nathan Garrett.
Simon Williams is a 24-year-old business executive from Paterson, New Jersey. He has recently inherited the family business, Williams Innovations, a technology firm. He and his brother Eric are frustrated that the company is unable to compete with the much larger Stark International.
Jim Wilson is a 12-year-old boy living with his family in a Los Angeles ghetto. He is unaware that his uncle, Sam Wilson, has recently moved to the city and joined a criminal gang.
Sam Wilson is a 19-year-old from Harlem, New York, who has moved to Los Angeles in the wake of his parents’ murders. Angry with the world, Wilson has renounced his former devotion to community service to join a street gang, going by the nickname “Snap.” Though his older brother Gideon lives in the city with his wife and son, Wilson avoids them out of shame.
Colleen Wing is a 17-year-old girl being raised by her grandfather in the mountains of northern Japan, where she is learning the martial arts. Her father teaches Asian history at Columbia University in New York City.
Wyatt Wingfoot is a 17-year-old high-school student living on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma. His father is a famous athlete, and though talented at sports, Wingfoot worries about living up to everyone’s expectations.
Bentley Wittman is a “celebrity genius” who makes frequent television appearances, often showing off his bizarre inventions along with his knowledge of arcane trivia. Though his cable-TV show Wizard! has been quite successful, he has grown increasingly bored and searches for new ways to challenge his vast intellect.
Jimmy Woo is a 36-year-old FBI agent who, since 2006, has been trying to apprehend the international criminal mastermind known as the Yellow Claw.
Warren Worthington III is a 15-year-old student at a private boarding school on Long Island, who goes to great lengths to conceal the feathery white wings that have been growing out of his back since puberty. He fears that they will soon be too large to hide beneath his clothes.
Wundarr is an alien from the planet Dakkam, who was an infant when his ship crashed in the Florida Everglades in 1997. Though he has been growing physically at a normal rate within the ship’s womb-like interior, his cognitive development has been severely retarded.
Herbert Edgar Wyndham is a research scientist from Manchester, England, who works at his private research facility on Wundagore Mountain in the tiny Balkan nation of Transia. In 1978, Wyndham attended a genetics conference in Geneva, Switzerland, at which he met Jonathan Drew, Wladyslav Shinski, and Arnim Zola. Shortly afterward, a mysterious visitor presented Wyndham with a document detailing the advanced genetic science of the Inhumans. This allowed him to take his experiments to a new level, and Wyndham soon succeeded in artificially evolving a dog into humanoid form. However, the dog-man escaped from Wyndham’s laboratory and terrorized Manchester until the police hunted it down and killed it. Wyndham realized he would need to conduct his future experiments in a remote area, and in 1980 he partnered with Jonathan Drew to build a research facility on land Drew had acquired in Transia. They hired Horace M. Grabsheid to design the installation for them, and funded the project by mining the uranium from Wundagore Mountain. The following year, the facility was plagued by a werewolf, who killed Drew’s wife. Drew became further distraught when his daughter Jessica succumbed to radiation poisoning. He administered an experimental treatment derived from spider venom, then placed her in suspended animation. Leaving her in Wyndham’s care, Drew abandoned his research and returned home. A month later, Wyndham succeeded in capturing the werewolf, learning that his name was Gregor Russoff. Struck by the similarities between Russoff’s werewolf form and the dog-man he had once created, Wyndham made a deal with Russoff—Wyndham would prevent his murderous rampages if Russoff would agree to be a research subject. By 1998, Wyndham had perfected his genetic accelerator and created a race of “New Men” by evolving various animals into sentient humanoids. Drew finally returned and helped harness the creatures’ animalistic instincts by training them in medieval chivalry as the Knights of Wundagore. In 2000, the Knights of Wundagore battled the demon Chthon, who had been imprisoned within Wundagore Mountain in the days of Camelot. During the battle, Gregor Russoff was killed. However, at the same time, the cow-woman Bova was acting as midwife to Magda, who had made her way to Transia after fleeing from her husband’s terrifying magnetic powers. Magda gave birth to mutant twins, naming them Wanda and Pietro. Sensing potential in the baby girl, Chthon imbued Wanda with some of his magic before being driven out of Earth’s dimension, planning to use her in the future to escape his imprisonment. Magda abandoned her babies, so Wyndham found them a foster family among the Romani living at the foot of the mountain. Drew left shortly afterwards to take a job at the British Museum, and Wyndham continued his experiments. Having slowly become something of a “mad scientist,” Wyndham now insists on being referred to as “The High Evolutionary.”
Jason Wyngarde is a middle-aged mutant in England with the ability to generate convincing illusions. He makes his living as a stage magician and supplements his income with the occasional petty larceny. He also uses his powers to trick beautiful young women into sleeping with him.
Charles Xavier is a 35-year-old researcher of genetic mutation in humans, who works primarily at his home, a large estate in Westchester County, north of New York City. He is also a mutant with highly developed telepathic powers. Both he and his stepbrother Cain Marko were orphaned in the early ‘90s. Arrangements were made for Xavier to attend a private boarding school, where he pursued an accelerated course of study. He attended Bard College and received a degree in Biology in 1997, then enrolled in Oxford University for graduate study. There he met Moira MacTaggart, an unhappily married student of genetics, and they had a passionate affair. When the Iraq War broke out in 2003, Xavier decided to enlist in the U.S. Army to serve his country. He found himself serving alongside his stepbrother Cain Marko, though Marko soon disappeared in a cave-in while they were patrolling an ancient archaeological site. Not long after, Xavier was badly wounded in combat, but his friend William Lonestar saved his life. While in the hospital, Xavier received a letter from MacTaggart ending their relationship. Depressed, Xavier retreated to the Greek island of Kirinos to recover from his injuries after receiving a medical discharge. Trying to lose himself by traveling the world, Xavier would find himself in Colorado in 2004 to attend the christening of William Lonestar’s daughter Danielle; in Cairo, Egypt in 2005 where he battled another mutant telepath named Amahl Farouk; and in Haifa, Israel in 2006 doing consulting work at a psychiatric hospital. There he met the man called Magnus, who proved to be another mutant, possessing impressive magnetic powers. Xavier succeeded in using his telepathy to bring a young woman, Gabrielle Haller, out of a catatonic state. However, she was immediately kidnapped by Wolfgang von Strucker and his HYDRA mercenaries and taken to Kenya to help them find a cache of Nazi gold hidden during World War II. Xavier and Magnus teamed up to rescue her, though Magnus took the gold for himself and left. Xavier returned Haller to Israel and she became his lover for a time, but within a few months, he left her to continue his travels, unaware that she was pregnant. While exploring Tibet in 2007, Xavier encountered an alien being who tried to kill him. Xavier survived, but his legs were crushed and he was confined to a wheelchair. Utterly defeated, Xavier finally returned home to Westchester and devoted himself to studying genetics, becoming something of a recluse. In 2008, Xavier’s success in treating Gabrielle Haller led to him being asked to meet with a traumatized local girl named Jean Grey. Xavier discovered Grey was also a mutant telepath, and helped her deal with her emerging powers. In 2009, Xavier took a position at Columbia University, where he met a medical researcher named Karl Lykos. They collaborated briefly when Xavier believed Lykos to be a mutant, but when he discovered he was wrong, Xavier distanced himself from Lykos. He renewed his association with Moira MacTaggart, who had founded her Mutant Research Centre on Muir Island, off the coast of Scotland, in 2006. They continued to work with Jean Grey while Xavier perfected his mutant-detecting CEREBRO machine. He recently demonstrated the prototype for MacTaggart and Grey, though there are still bugs to be worked out.
The Yellow Claw is an international criminal mastermind from China who is over 120 years old. He uses arcane chemicals to unnaturally extend his lifespan, which have given his skin and eyes a sickly yellow hue. Since 2006 he has been plagued by the FBI agent Jimmy Woo, who has disrupted most of the Claw’s schemes in America. His grand-niece Suwan, inspired by her love for Woo, has also interfered with his plans, but the Yellow Claw is unwilling to kill his only living relative. For the last couple of years, the Yellow Claw has been keeping a low profile.
Shiro Yoshida is a 14-year-old student in Agarashima, Japan, with emerging mutant powers to generate blasts of flame from his body. His father is an ambassador to the United Nations.
Calvin Zabo is an unscrupulous medical assistant from Trenton, New Jersey, with a checkered employment history.
Helmut Zemo is the 25-year-old leader of a mercenary army based in the Amazon Rainforest of Brazil, where he was born. His father, Baron Heinrich Zemo, fled from Europe at the end of World War II, and his mother was one of Heinrich’s many Brazilian concubines. Already quite elderly, Heinrich Zemo died when Helmut was still a boy, but he did pass on his intense hatred of America to his son.
Arnim Zola is a 66-year-old geneticist who conducts his experiments at his ancestral castle on Weisshorn Mountain in Switzerland. In 1978 he attended a genetics conference in Geneva along with Wladyslav Shinski, Herbert Edgar Wyndham, and Jonathan Drew. However, he made little significant progress with his theories until 1987, when he discovered a cache of scientific papers left by the ancient race known as the Deviants. He began a radical new line of research into the creation of artificial life. Zola’s project was developed further in 1991 when a mysterious visitor presented him with a document detailing the advanced genetic science of the Inhumans. Aware of his own mortality, Zola is currently working on engineering a new body for himself, hoping to thus prolong his life indefinitely.
The possibilities are endless! Another 50 years of exciting comic book stories could easily be mined just from the information presented above, let alone with all the new ideas that would be added to the mix by today’s most talented writers and artists. Hit the kill switch, Marvel. It’s time to reboot!
How I Would Do It
Rather than start with a completely blank slate, however, I would advise building the new Marvel Universe on a solid foundation based on the Original Marvel Universe, and structuring it to forego the infamous “sliding time-scale” to proceed instead in “real-time.” Forget “the Illusion of Change” and let the characters grow and evolve so they remain fresh and interesting as the years go by. If it was good enough for Stan Lee in the 1960s, it should be good enough for Marvel in the 21st century.
In order to be as helpful as possible, I present a handy “Who’s Who” guide to the new versions of the characters, where we would find them today, and some of the backstory that the new continuity can germinate from.
It would not be necessary to force the new Marvel Universe to develop strictly along the lines chosen by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (and all those who followed in their footsteps). Instead, take the information below and let your imagination run wild!
The New Marvel Universe—2011
Aarkus was a green-skinned alien from another dimension who was drawn to earth in 1940 by Dr. Enoch Mason, a scientist. Dubbed “The Vision” by the press, Aarkus fought crime until becoming disgusted with the human race. In 1943, he returned to his home dimension and has not been seen since.
St. John Allerdyce is an Australian journalist with a couple of novels to his credit. He is also secretly a mutant with the ability to control and manipulate fire.
David Angar is a radical social activist in San Francisco, California.
Amara Aquilla is the 5-year-old daughter of Senator Lucius Antonius Aquilla in Nova Roma, a lost colony of the Roman Empire hidden deep within the Amazon rainforest. Amara is a mutant with as-yet latent geothermal powers.
Todd Arliss is a 19-year-old Olympic swimmer from Pasadena, California. His older sister Diane thinks he is selfish and spoiled.
Bruce Banner is a 31-year-old nuclear scientist from Dayton, Ohio, who currently works for the United States Defense Department at an Air Force Base in New Mexico designing a new weapon powered by gamma radiation. In 1986, his mother was murdered by his father, who was subsequently committed to a mental institution, leaving Bruce severely traumatized. He was taken in by his aunt, and in 1998 Banner enrolled in Pennsylvania State University’s pre-med program, where he befriended a Canadian student named Walter Langkowski. After a year, however, Banner transferred to New Mexico State University to major in nuclear physics. There, he became roommates with Peter Corbeau, another science major. In 2003, Banner started graduate school at Cal-Tech. He took his job with the Defense Department in 2008 and then met the base commander, General Thaddeus E. “Thunderbolt” Ross, a veteran of the Iraq War, and the general’s introverted daughter Betty, who is now 22. Banner finds Betty attractive, but is too withdrawn – and too intimidated by her father – to pursue the relationship.
Betty Barstow was the secretary to a private detective named Dan Hurley. In 1941, she became a costumed crimefighter known as “The Silver Scorpion,” relying on her martial-arts skills. The following year, however, the mob discovered her secret identity and murdered her and Hurley.
Clint Barton is a 20-year-old archery expert who performs at a circus under the name “Hawkeye the Marksman.” He and his older brother Barney were orphaned in 1999, and after five years in foster care in Iowa, they ran away with a traveling carnival. While Clint worked with circus performers Jacques Duquesne and Buck Chisholm to develop his skills with a bow & arrow, Barney drifted into a life of petty larceny. In 2009, Clint became very disillusioned when he discovered Duquesne stealing from the circus to pay off a gambling debt. Duquesne tried to kill him and then fled the country, but Clint survived thanks to Barney’s intervention. After recovering from his injuries, Clint returned to work and soon replaced Duquesne as the star attraction.
Georges Batroc is a French mercenary and a master of savate, a form of kickboxing.
Jeanne-Marie Beaubier is a 16-year-old student at Madame DuPont’s School for Girls in LaVelle, Quebec. She was separated from her twin brother Jean-Paul after their parents were killed when he was adopted by their mother’s cousin, RCMP officer Louis Martin. The Martins could not afford to keep Jeanne-Marie as well, so they placed her in an orphanage run by nuns. After Martin was transferred to northern Quebec, the family lost contact with Jeanne-Marie and she grew up unaware of her brother’s existence. In 2009, the harsh conditions at the school led Jeanne-Marie to attempt suicide by jumping off the roof. However, her mutant powers of supersonic flight emerged and saved her life. Believing it to be a sign of divine intervention, Jeanne-Marie told the nuns what had happened, only to be punished for blasphemy. This caused Jeanne-Marie to suffer a psychotic break, entering a fugue state in which an uninhibited alternate personality took over for several days. The further punishment she received as a result caused Jeanne-Marie to repress this second personality, and she has become more withdrawn than before.
Quentin Beck is a disaffected special-effects designer and stunt man working in Hollywood.
Jerome Beechman is a 17-year-old mutant who began to resemble a mandrill when his powers manifested at puberty. However, he also gives off powerful pheromones that allow him to control women. A runaway, he lives life on the streets with his partner, a mutant “goth chick” named Nekra Sinclair.
Tania Belinskya is a 27-year-old medical doctor in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Black Widow was a psychic who called herself “Claire Voyant” until the demon Mephisto manipulated her into becoming an immortal killer who made evil men her victims. She disappeared during World War II and has not been seen since.
Alison Blaire is a 10-year-old girl from Long Island with latent mutant abilities, who dreams of becoming a pop singer and achieving international fame and fortune.
Johnny Blaze is a 17-year-old orphan from Waukegan, Illinois, who lives with his father’s old Army buddy and business partner, Craig “Crash” Simpson. Blaze’s father and Simpson started a motorcycle stunt show in 2002, but Barton Blaze was killed attempting a spectacular leap. It took two years for Johnny to overcome his fear of motorcycles and begin learning stunt-riding techniques alongside his foster sister, Roxanne Simpson. However, in 2009, Johnny Blaze crashed his bike while trying a dangerous pyrotechnic stunt, and his foster mother was fatally injured when the bike’s gas tank exploded. On her deathbed, she made Blaze promise to never ride in the stunt show, and he has tried to honor that promise ever since, though “Crash” and Roxanne both think he is just a coward.
Emil Blonsky is a soldier and intelligence operative in the Croatian Army.
Tandy Bowen is a 7-year-old girl living with her divorced mother in Shaker Heights, Ohio, who dreams of being a dancer when she grows up.
Brian Braddock and Elizabeth Braddock are 15-year-old twins going to school in the English county of Essex. Their older brother Jamie is a famous racecar driver, and their father, James Braddock, is a noted scientist. The children are unaware that their father is from the dimension of Otherworld and is an associate of the wizard Merlyn.
Boris Bullski is an officer in the Ukrainian army, known for his harsh and belligerent manner.
Carl Burgess was a brilliant young District Attorney in New York City who, in 1940, became a costumed crimefighter known as “The Falcon.” However, after only a few weeks, he was beaten to death by a gang of hoods.
William Burnside discovered the formula for Abraham Erskine’s super-soldier serum during the Korean War, and offered it to the U.S. government in exchange for the chance to be the new Captain America. Burnside underwent plastic surgery and legally changed his name to Steve Rogers in preparation for his role. However, the war ended before the project could be completed, so the government cancelled the deal. Rogers, as he was now called, became a history teacher and met another Captain America fan, Jack Monroe, among his students. When a new Red Skull threatened the United Nations building in 1955, Rogers and Monroe injected themselves with his super-soldier serum and became the new Captain America and Bucky to fight him. They continued going after communist spies and other criminals until flaws in the formula caused them to suffer psychotic breakdowns in 1956. The pair began targeting anyone they considered not “pure-blooded” Americans, and were subsequently arrested by the FBI and exposed as frauds. After serving his sentence, Burnside/Rogers was institutionalized and died in a fire in 1979.
Cable is a cyborg from the distant future marooned in the present day. He makes his living as a soldier-of-fortune and keeps his true identity a secret.
Davy Cannon is a minor crook who uses his mutant ability to spin at high speeds to help him commit his robberies and elude capture.
Jerry Carstairs was a ham radio operator who tried to become a costumed crimefighter called “The Thunderer” in 1941. That winter, though, he slipped off an icy roof and fell to his death.
Sharon Carter is a 23-year-old from Richmond, Virginia who just started her career at the Central Intelligence Agency. She is inspired by the World War II exploits of her grandmother, Peggy Carter.
Sean Cassidy is a 31-year-old detective in the New York Police Department. Born and raised in Ireland, he started his career with Interpol but resigned in 2008 after his wife Maeve died while he on an undercover assignment. Wanting to distance himself from painful memories, he immigrated to the United States. Since reaching puberty in 1994, he has possessed the mutant ability to create powerful sonic waves with his voice, but not wanting to be thought a “freak,” he keeps this power a secret. Cassidy is unaware that he has a 4-year-old daughter called Theresa Rourke being raised by his cousin Tom, a known criminal.
Frank Castle is a 24-year-old soldier in the United States Marine Corps serving in Afghanistan. His wife and child live in New York City.
Issac Christians is a 59-year-old student of the occult who serves as mayor of his hometown of Christiansboro, Virginia. After fighting in the Vietnam War, he refused to return to the United States for many years, wandering Southeast Asia and India to study with mystics and sorcerers. Eventually, his family responsibilities drew him home, but he has never gotten over his youthful resentments.
Maximilian Q. Coleridge is a 22-year-old college student who has majored in law and criminology, having dedicated his life to fighting crime after his parents were gunned down by crooks in 1999. After graduation, he plans to travel to Nepal to study the martial and mystic arts.
Rusty Collins is a 5-year-old boy with latent mutant abilities living in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The Commandos were four costumed superhuman adventurers who teamed up in 1993 to handle missions too dangerous for conventional law-enforcement or intelligence operatives. The Crimson Commando, Stonewall, Super Sabre, and the Yankee Clipper meted out their own harsh brand of justice until the Yankee Clipper was killed in action a year later. Her death led her partners to develop deep feelings of bitterness toward the world. They offered their services to the government following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 as special agents against terrorism. Knowing the trio were loose cannons, the government declined the offer and persuaded them to retire from crime-fighting. The disgruntled adventurers retreated to a private estate in New England, and have not been seen since.
Curt Connors is a herpetologist who lost his right arm to a grenade while fighting in the Iraq War. In his Florida laboratory he is attempting to develop a serum to rejuvenate his lost limb, as many lizards do.
Peter Corbeau is a 32-year-old Nobel-Prize-winning scientist known for his work studying the sun. In 1999 he met Bruce Banner when they became roommates at New Mexico State University. His research on solar radiation has recently led him to correspond with Charles Xavier, an expert on mutations.
Roberto da Costa is a 4-year-old boy with latent mutant abilities living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Carl “Crusher” Creel is a hardened criminal doing time in the New York State Penitentiary.
Lorna Dane is a 12-year-old girl in San Francisco who was adopted by her aunt and uncle after her parents were killed in an accident. She possesses latent mutant powers of manipulating magnetic fields. Though her hair is naturally green, her parents have been dying it brown since she was a small child.
Drew Daniels is a 20-year-old cattle hand from Amarillo, Texas.
Carol Danvers is a 26-year-old intelligence operative for the United States Air Force who grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. She has been working with her partner, Colonel Michael Rossi, since he began training her in 2003. In the last year she has started working occasionally with Nick Fury of the CIA and a Canadian intelligence agent known only as Logan.
Raven Darkholme is a mutant with the ability to alter her appearance. Her natural form features indigo skin, yellow eyes, and blood-red hair. She uses her abilities to earn a living as a covert operative.
Wilbur Day is an inventor and engineer from New York City, who is getting tired of being pushed around.
Esteban Diablo is an alchemist who has been artificially extending his life since the mid-9th century. Though born in Spain, he had long been ruling a small province of Transylvania until 1926, when his subjects revolted and sealed him inside a massive crypt. He waited several years for his lover, Lillian von Loont, to free him, but she never did. His elixir of immortality has kept him alive ever since, though he remains hopelessly trapped.
Bruce Dickson was a scientist exploring the Himalayas in 1940 when he stumbled upon the lost civilization of Kalahia. The denizens of this realm used their mysterious technology to grant Dickson the ability to make his body paper-thin. He returned to America and became the costumed crimefighter known as “The Thin Man.” In 1942, he was a founding member of the Liberty Legion, which formed in order to rescue the Invaders from the Red Skull. He remained with the group until they disbanded after the war. He returned to Kalahia, only to find it had been destroyed by an old enemy, Agent Axis. Abandoning his heroic identity, Dickson spent the next forty years trying to track down Agent Axis and get revenge. He finally accomplished his goal in 1989, smothering his elderly foe to death. Dickson was charged with murder, but died before being sentenced to prison.
Max Dillon is a lineman for the New York Power Authority.
Victor von Doom is the 39-year-old dictator of the nation of Latveria, located in the Balkans. Known to his subjects as “Doctor Doom,” he rules through fear and the power granted him by his highly sophisticated suit of armor. The rest of the world, however, is unaware of Doom’s coup d’état and thinks Latveria is still a constitutional monarchy ruled by a prime minister. After growing up in Europe, Doom enrolled at the State University of New York in 1995, where he became rivals with another science major, Reed Richards. Doom was convinced he could develop a technology to contact his mother’s spirit in hell. Two years later, Doom was expelled after an unauthorized experiment he was conducting exploded. Seeking a mystical means to contact his dead mother, Doom traveled to Tibet, where a group of reclusive monks provided him with his first suit of armor. The mask was still red hot when Doom put it on, thus destroying his already scarred face. Some years later, Doom returned to America and engaged in a secret collaboration with Nathaniel Richards, Reed’s father, to build a time machine. Doom believed he could use the time machine to cross the dimensional barrier and reach his mother. In 2005, Richards succeeded in making the device operational, but was lost in an alternate universe. Within two years, Doom had built a copy of the device for himself and used it to acquire knowledge, wealth, and technology from the past and the future. Finally, in 2009, he seized the throne of his native country to establish a power base for his nefarious schemes.
Lemuel Dorcas is a marine biologist based in Florida, interested in the potential of generic engineering.
Heather Douglas is a 17-year-old native of Los Angeles being trained in the martial arts by a group of Eternals living on Saturn’s moon Titan. The Eternals are also helping Douglas develop her latent psionic powers, which has enabled her to convince herself that she is a goddess. She was taken in by the Eternals in 1998 after a renegade member of their society, Thanos, killed her parents while on a reconnaissance mission to Earth. Unknown to Heather, the Eternals changed her dead father, Arthur Douglas, into a tremendously powerful being called Drax the Destroyer, who has been battling Thanos ever since.
Bobby Drake is a 13-year-old boy with latent mutant powers living with his parents in Fort Washington, New York.
Jessica Drew was born in 1978, but due to radiation poisoning, she was placed in suspended animation in 1981 by her scientist father, Jonathan Drew, and his colleague Herbert Wyndham at their Citadel of Science on Wundagore Mountain in the tiny Balkan nation of Transia. Though she was meant to be in stasis for only a few months while an experimental treatment based on spider venom took effect, events have conspired to keep her there up to the present day. Since being placed in her stasis tube, Drew has aged at an extremely slow rate.
Anthony Druid is a 38-year-old researcher of the occult and a master hypnotist.
Jericho Drumm is a 31-year-old psychiatrist who was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He left the island in 1997 to attend college in the United States and has not returned. His twin brother, Daniel Drumm, has become the Houngan Supreme of the island of Haiti, and is known there by the title Brother Voodoo.
Zelda DuBois is a snake charmer from Darlington, South Carolina, who recently hooked up with Maynard Tiboldt’s crooked circus.
Fred J. Dukes is a mutant from Lubbock, Texas, who works at a traveling carnival, performing a routine based on his enormous girth, invulnerability, and ability to make himself immovable. Unaware of the scientific explanation for his strange appearance and abilities, Dukes considers himself a freak of nature.
Paul Duval is a chemist from Fontainebleau, France.
Sybil Dvorak is a 14-year-old girl from Focşani, Romania, whose mutant powers of telekinesis have recently manifested. Living with a Romani tribe, Dvorak is training herself in using her powers to manipulate fabrics and other “soft” materials.
Norbert Ebersol is an unscrupulous engineer and mechanic from Dayton, Ohio, who works odd jobs while peddling his inventions to the criminal underworld.
Electro was a famous robot built in 1940 by Professor Philo Zog, who used it as the main weapon of the crimebusting operation he organized and financed. A year later, Zog and most of his agents were killed when Nazi spies attempted to steal Electro for use by the Third Reich. The robot was destroyed and Zog’s laboratory exploded, burning up all his blueprints and research notes.
The Enclave is a group of four world-renowned scientists who began faking their own deaths in 1993 in order to withdraw from the world to pursue their shared goal of ruling the Earth. Maris Morlak, Carlo Zota, Wladyslav Shinski, and Jerome Hamilton have established a research installation on an island in the North Atlantic, completed in 2003, which they call the Beehive. Since then they have labored to discover a process by which to create artificial life in order to engineer a slave race to fight their wars of conquest for them.
Jacqueline Falsworth-Crichton is an 86-year-old English aristocrat who fought with the Invaders during World War II as the super-speedster known as “Spitfire.” Her father, Montgomery Falsworth, was the costumed commando called Union Jack during the First World War, an identity her brother Brian inherited in the war against Hitler. She gave up her costumed identity at the war’s end in 1945, and by the end of the decade her powers had completely faded away. In 1951 she married the British nobleman Lord Crichton, and their son, Kenneth Crichton, is now 59 years old. As far as anyone knows, Lady Crichton is the last surviving superhero from World War II.
Montgomery Falsworth became the first superhero of the 20th century when in 1914 the British government asked him to become a costumed commando called “Union Jack.” Later in World War I, he joined with other masked men to form Freedom’s Five, including the Phantom Eagle, Sir Steel & Silver Squire, and La Chevalier Cramoisi. Their greatest foe was Falsworth’s own brother, a vampire who called himself Baron Blood. When the war ended in 1918, Falsworth retired his costumed identity and settled down to raise a family, having two children, Brian and Jacqueline. In 1939, Falsworth and his son had many bitter arguments about Nazi Germany, which led Brian to go to Germany with his friend Roger Aubrey. When war was declared in September, the young men were arrested and sent to prison camps. In 1942, Falsworth and his daughter befriended the Invaders, which led Falsworth to don his Union Jack costume for a final showdown with Baron Blood. However, Falsworth’s legs were crushed during the battle, leaving him confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Jacqueline then joined the Invaders as Spitfire, and they soon learned that Brian had been fighting the Nazis inside Germany as the Mighty Destroyer. Brian then joined the Invaders as the new Union Jack, and Aubrey assumed the role of the Destroyer. In 1945, Baron Blood was at last destroyed, and his remains were entombed in the Tower of London. Falsworth and his family retired to their country estate, and in 1952 Jacqueline gave him a grandson, Kenneth Crichton. Sadly, a year later, Brian was killed in an automobile accident. Montgomery Falsworth died in 1981 while fighting a resurrected Baron Blood. He was 90 years old.
Wilson Fisk is a New York City crime boss with numerous investments in legitimate businesses as well. He passes himself off as an importer of spices to cover his criminal activities. In 1992 he married a beautiful and sophisticated woman named Vanessa and they have an 18-year-old son Richard. Though already wealthy and very successful, Fisk still has plans to bring all of New York’s criminal rackets under his control.
Flexo the Rubber Man was a robot created in 1940 by scientist brothers Joel and Josh Williams. Though intended to help the brothers with their research, Flexo ended up being used to prevent various acts of sabotage by enemy agents. Ultimately, the Nazis tried to steal Flexo for their own use, murdering the Williams brothers in the process. Unable to make Flexo obey them, the Nazis destroyed the robot and burned down the Williams’ laboratory. All their research was lost.
Marvin Flumm is a shoe salesman in Watford City, North Dakota, and a mutant with low-level telepathic ability.
Dominic Fortune is a 54-year-old retired costumed adventurer who was active between 1983 and 1996 and currently lives in New York. In 1984 he prevented the East German spy Wolfgang von Strucker from assassinating a United States senator, and he encountered Strucker again in 1991 while helping Logan and the Russian soldier Ivan Petrovitch Bezukhov rescue Natasha Romanova from a group of ninja assassins. Fortune enjoyed his celebrity and was the closest thing America had to a superhero during that period.
Bill Foster is a 22-year-old college student from Los Angeles, California, studying to be a biochemist.
Bob Frank became a costumed superhero called “The Whizzer” in 1940 after gaining super-speed in a bizarre incident involving his scientist father, Dr. Emil Frank. In 1942 he was a founding member of the Liberty Legion, where he met the superheroine Miss America. The two soon fell in love, and later in the year they both joined the Invaders. After the war ended, they served in the All-Winners Squad to fight domestic crime, but retired in 1948 when Miss America got pregnant. They got married and took jobs at a nuclear power plant in New York, but his wife was exposed to high levels of radiation when the plant was sabotaged by an old enemy. As a result, their son was born a dangerously radioactive mutant. The government took custody of Robert Frank, Jr., and encouraged the grief-stricken parents to take an extended vacation. Unfortunately, Frank’s wife soon got pregnant again and died in childbirth. Unable to cope with so much tragedy, Frank became a drunken derelict and a drifter. He finally died in 1982 at the age of 63.
Emma Frost is a 20-year-old mutant telepath from Boston, Massachusetts.
Nick Fury is a 46-year-old agent of the CIA who is renowned for having led the Army’s “Howling Commandos” during the Gulf War in 1991. His father, Jack Fury, was a fighter pilot in the Vietnam War who was killed during the Tet Offensive. Nick and his brother Jake then grew up on the mean streets of Manhattan, often brawling with members of the notorious Yancy Street Gang. Nick joined the Army in 1990 and soon rose to a leadership position. While serving with the Howling Commandos, Sgt. Fury fell in love with a nurse named Pamela Hawley, but she was killed during an attack. He also received an injury to his left eye, which has been slowly failing ever since. After the war, the Howling Commandos were sent to apprehend the freelance mercenary Wolfgang von Strucker. Though their quarry escaped, Fury and his men were able to wipe out Strucker’s infrastructure and seize his assets. Strucker tried to get revenge on Fury in 1993 by kidnapping and torturing him after Fury was involved in a helicopter crash in Somalia. Fury escaped and, after recovering from his injuries, returned to active duty with the Howlers. The squad disbanded after a few years, but the surviving original members regrouped following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. A year later, now-Colonel Fury retired from the Army and took a position with the CIA, having been recruited after assisting the agency in Afghanistan. In 2010 he began working occasionally with Carol Danvers and Michael Rossi of Air Force Intelligence and the Canadian secret agent known only as Logan.
MacDonald Gargan is a hard-boiled private investigator in New York City.
Nathan Garrett is a scientist from London, England, who conducts research into genetic engineering at his family’s ancestral castle. In his spare time, he tinkers with electronic weapons based on the medieval implements found throughout the castle. His financial situation is growing increasingly desperate.
Dirk Garthwaite is a construction worker in New York City with serious antisocial tendencies. He’s been known to threaten people with a crowbar.
Alexander Gentry is a scientist and engineer who has been unsuccessful in finding a buyer for the bulky battlesuit he has designed.
Greer Grant is an 18-year-old native of Chicago, Illinois. She is looking forward to starting as a science major at the University of Chicago in the fall.
Louise Grant was a secretary from Hoboken, New Jersey, who worked for the Mark Mason Detective Agency in Manhattan. In 1946 she developed the glamorous masked identity of “The Blonde Phantom” to assist her boss with his cases. Within three years, she retired from costumed crimefighting to marry Mark Mason. They soon had a daughter Wanda. Louise died in 1995.
Robert Grayson was the son of German astrophysicist Horace M. Grabsheid, who changed his name after immigrating to the United States in 1984, when Robert was an infant. Seeing nuclear war as inevitable, Dr. Grayson planned to build his own spaceship so he and his son could remain safely in orbit during the conflagration. However, after making radio contact with the colony of Eternals living on Uranus, Grayson built a more advanced ship with their help. In 1988, Grayson and young Robert flew their ship to Uranus and joined the Eternals, believing their society to be a Utopia. Robert was then educated amongst the Eternals’ advanced technology and philosophy. In 2000, Robert was given a pair of energy-manipulating wristbands and sent back to Earth to spread the Uranian way of peace and justice. Called “The Millennium Boy,” Robert soon became the preeminent superhero of the day. In 2001, Millennium Boy learned that his father had fallen ill and the Eternals lacked the knowledge of sickness and infirmity needed to treat him. Unable to get a bank loan to purchase medical supplies, Millennium Boy faced a significant delay while he raised the funds he needed. By the time he made it back to Uranus, he found the Eternals’ colony has been destroyed and everyone there was dead. Driven insane with grief, Millennium Boy set a course back to Earth, intent on taking vengeance on everyone who had delayed his departure. However, while en route, a malfunction in the ship caused him to enter a state of suspended animation, and the ship slowed to the point that it will take 15 years to reach Earth.
Jean Grey is a 14-year-old mutant with telekinetic powers who lives with her parents and older sister in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Her telepathic powers first manifested in 2007 when her best friend, Annie Richardson, was hit by a car and died in Grey’s arms. After withdrawing into herself, Grey was eventually referred to Charles Xavier, who had had success in the past with similar cases. Xavier used his own telepathic powers to suppress Grey’s until she is old enough to handle them. He then began training her to control her remaining telekinetic abilities, encouraging her to keep these powers a secret. Grey has made several visits to Xavier’s mansion in Westchester County to assist him with his research into human mutation, and has met his colleague from Scotland, Dr. Moira MacTaggart. Recently, Xavier revealed to Grey and MacTaggart the prototype for a mutant-detecting machine called CEREBRO.
Ben Grimm is a 36-year-old test pilot from New York City who recently resigned from the Air Force to take a job at Richards Laboratories in California, at the urging of his college roommate Reed Richards. Grimm had once promised to pilot Richards’ spaceship should he ever manage to actually build it, and the project is rapidly nearing completion. Though trying to maintain a long-distance relationship with a woman he met at his last Air Force base, Dr. Linda McGill, Grimm has developed something of a crush on Richards’ gorgeous young girlfriend Sue. Her little brother Johnny, though, is just an annoying pest. Grimm grew up on the streets of Manhattan, and in 1992 had become the leader of the notorious Yancy Street Gang, but left the gang a year later to join the Air Force. He enjoyed his time in the military and in 1994 he was involved in missions with Captain Simon Savage’s Leatherneck Raiders and Sgt. Nick Fury’s Howling Commandos. He then went to college on the G.I. Bill at the State University of New York, where he met Reed Richards and Victor von Doom. Upon graduation in 1999, Grimm returned to the Air Force to become a test pilot. He nearly died in a crash in 2008, but was saved by his friend Desmond Pitt. Nevertheless, the two began to lose touch after Pitt took a position at NASA. Earlier this year, Grimm was surprised to hear from Richards, who was finally ready to take him up on the offer Grimm had sort of meant as a joke.
Sam Guthrie is a 7-year-old boy with latent mutant powers who lives with his parents and siblings in Cumberland, Kentucky.
Henry Peter Gyrich is a government agent with the National Security Administration.
Frank Hall is a 48-year-old physicist from Banff, Alberta, Canada, who is investigating the properties of gravity at a research installation in the Rockies.
Thomas Halloway was a costumed adventurer called “The Angel,” who made his debut in 1939 and inspired a host of imitators. After a very successful career, he was killed while fighting crime at the end of 1946.
Felicia Hardy is a 14-year-old girl in New York City whose father is a notorious cat burglar.
Quincy Harker is a 66-year-old vampire hunter from London, England, who dedicated his life to destroying all vampires after Dracula killed his parents in 1961. After successfully staking Dracula’s daughter Lilith in 1995, Harker was crippled by Dracula as an act of revenge. Undeterred, Harker built a special wheelchair containing an anti-vampire arsenal and continues to seek the final destruction of Dracula himself.
Daimon Hellstrom is a 20-year-old college student majoring in Religious Studies and already an expert demonologist. He is the son of a demon called Marduk Kurios who disguised himself as a human in the early ‘90s to sire half-breed children. His mother, Victoria Wingate Hellstrom, committed suicide in 1998 after discovering her husband’s true nature. Marduk Kurios then left Daimon in foster care and took his three-year-old daughter Satana with him to his infernal realm. Hellstrom is determined to prevent his father from carrying out any more sinister schemes on earth.
Bruno Horgan is an industrialist from New York City who is not above ripping off his customers for his own profit.
James MacDonald Hudson is the 29-year-old head scientist for Department H, a top-secret research and development agency within the Canadian Ministry of Defense, formed in 2008, which is concerned with developing high-tech weapons for the government. Hudson’s 20-year-old wife Heather serves as his secretary. On their honeymoon in 2009, the Hudsons discovered Logan, reduced to a feral state, in Wood Buffalo National Park and brought him to Department H to study his mutant healing factor and adamantium skeleton and claws. Though Logan has since been recruited into Canadian military intelligence, the Hudsons continue to feel protective of his physical and emotional well-being. James MacDonald Hudson is currently searching for inspiration for a positive new direction for Department H to take.
The Human Torch was an android created in 1939 by Professor Phineas T. Horton that could burst into flame, fly, and control and project fire. The Torch initially worked with the NYPD to bring down racketeers and other dangerous criminals and created a civilian identity for himself under the name Jim Hammond. In 1940, he met a 12-year-old mutant boy named Thomas “Toro” Raymond who possessed similar abilities. They became a successful crimefighting duo, and a year later were founding members of the Invaders. The Human Torch and Toro served with the team throughout the war, and nearly apprehended Adolf Hitler in his bunker in 1945. To stop Hitler from blowing up the bunker and killing everyone inside, including Toro, the Torch was forced to incinerate him. After the war, the Torch and Toro fought crime with the All-Winners Squad and partnered briefly with the mysterious Sun Girl. Then, in 1949, a gang of mobsters used an experimental solution to neutralize the powers of the Human Torch and Toro, but the chemical caused the Torch’s artificial body to shut down. He was awakened four years later by a nuclear bomb test, discovering that the criminals had buried him in the desert. He tracked down Toro and found he had been brainwashed to serve the Communists and was currently blowing up ammo dumps in Korea. After rescuing Toro, the two resumed their crimefighting crusade. In 1955, however, the Human Torch realized the radiation that freed him from his grave was causing him to lose control of his powers. Rather than be a threat to mankind, the Torch said goodbye to Toro and flew out to the Nevada desert. There he tried to destroy himself by going nova, but merely deactivated himself again. His body fell to the ground and was soon covered by the desert’s drifting sands, where it remains to the present day.
The Inhumans are a race genetically engineered by the alien Kree in prehistoric times, whose society has evolved along Kree lines separately from mainstream humanity. Since 2005, the Inhumans have been ruled by the usurper Maximus, brother to the rightful king, Black Bolt. Maximus masterminded a civil war in their hidden city of Attilan, which is located in a remote area of the Himalayas, by turning three of their worker drones (called Alpha Primitives) into super-intelligent energy beings known collectively as the Trikon. The 29-year-old Black Bolt was driven into exile, and is currently hiding out in New York. His consort, Medusa (age 27), was lost in the Himalayas during the battle and, suffering from amnesia, has made her way to the south coast of France. Their cousins Triton, Gorgon, and Karnak (all in their mid-twenties) have been forced to serve Maximus. The youngest member of the royal family, Medusa’s sister Crystal, is 19. The outside world remains unaware of the Inhumans’ existence.
Jack Frost was discovered in the Arctic by a scientific expedition and brought to the United States in 1941. Researchers dubbed this “ice elemental” Jack Frost, but he soon escaped from their facility and became an outlaw and killer vigilante. His reputation was rehabilitated somewhat when he joined the Liberty Legion in 1942 and served as a spy-buster and crimefighter throughout the war. Following the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, he returned to the Arctic, disgusted by humanity, and has not been seen since.
J. Jonah Jameson is the 47-year-old publisher of the New York City newspaper the Daily Bugle. He started at the Bugle as a copy boy in 1979, became a full-time reporter in 1984, and steadily worked his way up to the top. His son John Jameson, born in 1986, is an Air Force test pilot training to be an astronaut.
Abner Jenkins is a mechanic from Baltimore, Maryland, who works a low-paying job at a factory making airplane parts.
Tyrone Johnson is an 8-year-old boy with a bad stutter, who lives in a ghetto neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts.
Angelica Jones is a 3-year-old girl with latent mutant powers.
Rick Jones is a 16-year-old orphan from Scarsdale, Arizona. He has been moved around a variety of state institutions due to disciplinary problems, and has just taken up residence with his aunt in a small rural town in New Mexico near an Air Force base. Rather than getting a job, Jones hangs out with other local teens, taking often risky dares to prove himself.
Erik Josten is a mercenary from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who was dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Army after being caught working as a smuggler. He is currently in the employ of Helmut Zemo and based in Brazil.
Madeline Joyce acted as the costumed superheroine “Miss America” from 1941 until 1948, serving in the Liberty Legion, the Invaders, and the All-Winners Squad. She became romantically involved with her teammate Bob Frank, the Whizzer, and they both retired from their costumed identities when she accidentally became pregnant. To make ends meet after getting married, they both took jobs at a nuclear power plant in New York. Unfortunately, Joyce was exposed to high levels of radiation when the plant was sabotaged by an old enemy, and their son was born a dangerously radioactive mutant. The government took custody of Robert Frank, Jr., and encouraged the grief-stricken parents to take an extended vacation. Unfortunately, Joyce soon got pregnant again and died in childbirth in 1950, at the age of 30. Her second baby was stillborn.
Bonita Juarez is an 18-year-old student in Taos, New Mexico, who is looking forward to starting college. She plans to major in social work.
Eugene Judd is a 47-year-old soldier-of-fortune from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, who is considering retirement. Formerly a very tall man, Judd encountered an ancient Persian sorcerer in the Middle East in 1989, whose spells left him only about one meter tall. Furthermore, Judd has realized that he has not aged appreciably since that fateful encounter. Judd has had run-ins with his fellow Canadian Logan on several occasions, both before and after his transformation, and though they sometimes work for opposing sides, they have developed a mutual respect.
Jennifer Kale is an 11-year-old girl from Citrusville, Florida, who lives with her younger brother Andy at the Kale family farm near a swamp that contains a mystic portal called the Nexus of All Realities. Since the death of their parents, Jennifer and Andy have been raised by their grandfather, Joshua Kale, who is the head of a group of minor sorcerers called the Cult of Zhered-Na. Jennifer is very curious about her grandfather’s books of spells and other magical artifacts.
Karl Kaufman served the Allies in World War I as the mysterious flying ace known as “The Phantom Eagle.” He kept his true identity a secret to protect his parents, who were still living in Germany. He soon joined the other mystery men Union Jack, Sir Steel & Silver Squire, and La Chevalier Cramoisi in a special commando squad known as Freedom’s Five. Near the end of the war, Kaufman attempted to get his parents out of Germany, but was discovered by the German pilot Hermann von Reitberger, who machine-gunned the Kaufman family to death. The Phantom Eagle was 26 years old.
Spencer Keen was a superhero known as “The Blue Blaze,” active for several months in 1940. After lying in suspended animation for nearly 90 years following a freak accident in a college science lab, Keen awoke to find himself super-strong and basically invulnerable. However, while Keen was battling a villain called Dr. Vortex, the two men tumbled into a flooded limestone quarry and drowned.
Zebediah Killgrave is a former spy born in Rijeka, Yugoslavia. While conducting industrial espionage, Killgrave was exposed to an experimental chemical that gave him the ability to control other people. However, the chemical also changed his skin color to purple, and so he is often referred to as “the Purple Man.” Killgrave mainly uses his powers to force others to support his life of indulgence and leisure. He currently lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with a beautiful woman he mind-controlled into marrying him and their infant daughter Kara.
Hannibal King is a novice private detective from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Ulysses Klaw is a scientist and international criminal from Vlaardingen, the Netherlands. In 2003, he led a band of mercenaries into the African kingdom of Wakanda to steal the ultra-rare mineral vibranium. After killing King T’Chaka, Klaw and his mercenaries were driven off in defeat when the king’s son T’Challa attacked them with their own sonic disruptor weapon. Klaw continues to covet vibranium and is currently scheming to make another attempt at invading Wakanda.
Misty Knight is a 21-year-old college student in New York City who plans to enter the police academy.
Ivan Kragoff is a 56-year-old scientist who was born in Leningrad, U.S.S.R. He currently studies cosmic rays for the Russian Federal Space Agency.
Sergei Kravinoff is a big-game hunter and mercenary from Russia, known professionally as Kraven the Hunter.
Valentina Allegra de La Fontaine is a 33-year-old Italian countess. In 1993, her parents were murdered by the Maggia and Val spent many years waging a vigilante war against organized crime. She was then recruited as an intelligence operative for the Italian government, but became disillusioned after a few years and resigned. She has since used her private fortune to live the life of a transcontinental party girl, but secretly harbors an ambition to once more serve the cause of international justice.
Scott Lang is a 20-year-old college student from Coral Gables, Florida, who is majoring in electrical engineering.
Walter Langkowski is a 30-year-old scientist from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in nuclear physics. In 1999, he entered Pennsylvania State University on a football scholarship and there met Bruce Banner, who inspired Langkowski with his passion for science. Though Banner soon transferred to another university, Langkowski decided to follow in his footsteps and major in nuclear physics. Upon graduation in 2003, Langkowski was drafted to play professional football for the Green Bay Packers. After three years, Langkowski retired from sports and used the fortune he had earned to pursue his true goal of becoming a nuclear physicist.
Ebenezer Laughton is a contortionist and entertainer from Rhinebeck, New York, who bills himself as “Umberto the Uncanny.”
Jubilation Lee is a 1-year-old girl with latent mutant powers who lives with her parents in Beverly Hills, California.
Rachel Leighton is a sales clerk at a boutique in Austin, Texas.
Logan is a Canadian mutant of indeterminate age who knows no other name for himself. After growing up in the wilderness of northwestern Canada, Logan became a merchant marine in 1976 and sailed around the world. Reaching China the following year, he had several adventures with a beautiful Chinese girl named Rose. By 1980 he had moved on to Japan, where he began studying the martial arts under a ninja master named Ogun. In the process, he became an enemy of a cult of assassins known as the Hand. In 1986, Logan broke with his sensei and left Japan severely disillusioned. He wandered the world for several years, until settling on the island of Madripoor. There, in 1991, Logan helped a Russian soldier named Ivan Petrovitch Bezukhov and the American adventurer Dominic Fortune rescue a young girl, Natasha Romanova, from the Hand. Logan soon left Madripoor and made his way back to Canada, where he enlisted in the Army and received commando training. Four years later, he became a field agent for Canadian Intelligence, and in 2000 was recruited into a black-ops unit, where he met Victor Creed, Silver Fox, and a handful of other agents. After making many enemies in the CIA during missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, Logan and his team were soon targeted as potential test-subjects for the clandestine Weapon X program. In 2008, the CIA arranged an accident that got Logan cashiered out of the intelligence service, then promptly kidnapped him. He was taken to a facility in Windsor, Ontario where, along with his team, he was subjected to a mental reprogramming procedure. Then he was transported to a secret research installation in Canada’s north woods, where the Weapon X scientists fused the unbreakable metal adamantium to his skeleton and implanted six bionic adamantium claws in his forearms. However, Logan managed to escape from the complex during his subsequent training regimen, though his mind had been shattered, leaving him little more than a savage animal. Logan was discovered by James and Heather Hudson in 2009 when the couple was honeymooning in Wood Buffalo National Park. They took him to Department H and nursed him back to health, though he had no memory of his life before meeting them. After receiving psychiatric treatment, Logan was then recruited back into Canadian intelligence and retrained as a secret agent. He has recently begun working occasionally with Nick Fury of the CIA and Carol Danvers of Air Force intelligence.
Lillian von Loont met the alchemist Esteban Diablo in 1923, after her husband was killed in a car crash. Lillian was also badly injured, but Diablo used his arts to restore her to health, and they soon fell in love. She studied the secrets of alchemy until 1926, when Diablo’s subjects, fed up with his tyrannical rule, imprisoned him within a massive crypt. Von Loont killed Diablo’s treacherous servants and fled back to England, where she continued her studies. In 1936, she finally discovered the means to transform other elements into gold, and returned to Transylvania to take revenge on the peasants who imprisoned her lover. Subsequently, she traveled the world until she had tracked down every one of her targets and transformed them into golden statues. Eventually, old age caught up with her, but Von Loont used her arcane arts to preserve her life within an artificial body, fashioning a beautiful golden mask to hide her now ghastly features. Taking up residence in a mansion on Tamarind Island near Vancouver, Canada, she became known to the curious locals as “Gilded Lily.”
Chen Lu is a scientist from Lanzhou, China, who specializes in working with highly radioactive materials.
Carl Lucas is a 24-year-old inmate at Seagate Prison, a maximum-security facility on an island off the coast of Georgia. Growing up in Harlem, Lucas and his friend Willis Stryker had become small-time crooks. Eventually they both fell for the same girl, Reva Connors. Having made money as a racketeer, Stryker was initially the more successful suitor, until his savage beating at the hands of Maggia goons scared Connors off. She began dating Lucas, who was trying to go straight, but Stryker saw it as a betrayal and framed Lucas by planting uncut heroin in his apartment. Shortly after Lucas was sentenced to 20 years in prison, Connors began seeing Stryker again, only to be killed in a drive-by shooting by more of Stryker’s enemies. Lucas vowed to avenge Connors’ death, and his constant escape attempts have landed him at Seagate, where he is constantly mistreated by the racist guard Albert “Billy Bob” Rackham.
Cornelius van Lunt is a financier with a vast personal fortune who lives in New York City.
Dan Lyons began his career as the superhero called “The Black Marvel” in 1941 after being enhanced to nearly superhuman levels of fighting skill by a secret Native American ritual. Within a year, he became the chief nemesis of a gang of mobsters called the Order of the Hood, which eventually managed to capture Lyons and torture him to death.
Jeff Mace was a reporter for the Daily Bugle who, inspired by Captain America, became the costumed crimefighter called “The Patriot” in 1941. After America entered World War II, Mace became a founding member of the Liberty Legion, and served with them until the Axis powers were defeated. In 1946, he became the third Captain America when the second was killed while fighting the android Adam-II. Mace immediately joined the All-Winners Squad as his replacement. When the second Bucky was shot in 1949, Mace recruited Betsy Ross to become his new partner, as the Golden Girl. The following year, they retired their costumed identities and got married. Mace resumed his career as a newspaper reporter in Boston, Massachusetts. He died of cancer in 1983 at the age of 64.
Jamie Madrox is a 12-year-old boy living on a farm in Kansas, with the mutant power to create duplicates of himself. His father, a scientist, has created a special skin-tight suit to dampen his powers, although the suit itself makes Jamie feel “different.”
Magnus is the alias of a 32-year-old man from Yugoslavia whose Croatian family was wiped out by Serbian forces engaged in “ethnic cleansing” in 1990. The terror of this incident prematurely activated his mutant power to manipulate magnetic fields and he survived by deflecting the bullets away from himself. Five years later, he met his wife, a Romani called Magda, as they were fleeing from Serbian soldiers. Together they escaped into the Carpathian Mountains and eventually made their way to Vinnitsa, Ukraine, where their daughter Anya was born. In 1999, Magnus ran afoul of some local gangsters, who prevented him from saving his daughter from a burning inn. The trauma of her death caused Magnus’ mutant powers to manifest again and he killed everyone at the scene. Witnessing the event, Magda fled into the night, thinking her husband had become a monster. Magnus went into hiding to escape from the police and was unable to follow her. By 2006, he had wandered to Israel, where he was volunteering at a psychiatric hospital. Here he met Charles Xavier, whom Magnus soon began to suspect was a mutant like himself. They teamed up to rescue one of Xavier’s patients, Gabrielle Haller, from the terrorist Wolfgang von Strucker and his HYDRA organization. With Xavier’s help, Magnus defeated Strucker, but then stole the fortune in Nazi gold Strucker had been after, to use for his own campaign to ensure that mutants become the new rulers of the earth.
The Mandarin is a former businessman in China who lost his fortune in 1999. Refusing to do manual labor to earn a living, he set off in search of a way to restore his former power and status. Wandering China, he eventually came upon the fabled Valley of Spirits, where he discovered a crashed spaceship. Using the alien technology he found inside, particularly ten weaponized rings, he has recently set himself up as a warlord amidst the rugged terrain of western China. His nickname “the Mandarin,” which was originally used to mock his arrogance, is now spoken in fear by the people he has subjugated.
Xi’an Coy Manh is a 9-year-old girl with latent mutant powers living with her parents and siblings in Vietnam. Her twin brother Tran shares the same latent powers. Her uncle, Nguyen Ngoc Coy, is a local crime lord.
Mantis is the nickname of a 15-year-old girl in Vietnam who is being trained in the martial arts at the temple of the Priests of Pama, a group of monks descended from the alien Kree. Her uncle is a local crime lord known as Monsieur Khrull, whose intense racism led him to murder her mother for marrying a German man. Gustav Brandt, a mercenary, escaped from Khrull’s men by fleeing into the jungle with his baby daughter, though he soon went blind from his injuries. The Priests of Pama took them in, suspecting that the girl was in fact the Celestial Madonna. After Brandt learned to compensate for his blindness, he departed, leaving Mantis with the priests, who have educated her in their own unique philosophy.
Flint Marko is the alias of a professional criminal in New York City, who was born in Queens as William Baker. He adopted his nom du crime in 1999 to protect his mother, who had taken up residence in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
Jean-Paul Martin is a 16-year-old mutant with the power of super-fast flight who lives in Quebec, Canada. He is unaware that he has a twin sister, Jeanne-Marie Beaubier, living in an orphanage near Montreal, who has developed identical mutant powers. When their parents were killed in 1995, Jean-Paul was adopted by his mother’s cousin, RCMP officer Louis Martin. Unable to afford to raise Jeanne-Marie as well, the Martins placed her in a Catholic girl’s home. They intended to stay in touch with her, but soon after the family was relocated to northern Quebec. Then, in 2001, the Martins were killed in an accident and Jean-Paul was placed in foster care. When his mutant powers began to emerge in 2009, Jean-Paul realized he had the potential to be a world-champion downhill skier, and is currently working toward his goal of competing in the next Winter Olympics.
Milos Masaryk is a soldier born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, who is currently doing intelligence work for the Armed Forces of the Slovak Republic.
Philip Masters is a 57-year-old scientist who was born in Dragorin, Transia, though he has been living in the United States since 1960. On a research trip to the country of his birth in 1979, Masters discovered a radioactive clay on Wundagore Mountain, and took several samples home with him to study. He soon learned the substance had almost magical properties and stockpiled as much of it as he could get his hands on. By 2000, Masters had fallen in love with the wife of his research partner, Jacob Reiss, and arranged an accident to get Reiss out of the way. Masters soon married Reiss’s widow, Marcia, and adopted his daughter, legally changing her name to Alicia Masters. Alicia had been blinded in the accident that killed Reiss, and out of guilt Masters has striven to be a good father to her ever since. Following his wife’s recent death, Masters has become unhinged and has started experimenting with the radioactive clay’s more dangerous properties.
Wanda Maximoff and Pietro Maximoff are 11-year-old fraternal twins with latent mutant powers living with their adoptive parents, Django and Marya Maximoff, among a Romani tribe in the Balkans. They are unaware that their biological parents are Magnus and Magda. Their mother was pregnant when she fled from her husband after he slew the people who prevented him from rescuing their daughter Anya from a burning inn in Vinnitsa, Ukraine. Magda made her way back to the Balkans, and her pregnancy had nearly come to term when she reached Wundagore Mountain. She was taken in by the High Evolutionary’s servant Bova, an artificially-evolved cow-woman, who served as Magda’s midwife and delivered her twins. Magda named them Wanda and Pietro, but, as soon as she was able, she left her babies behind and fled into the night, terrified that her husband might be following her. Bova took the infants to her master, and, realizing they needed a human family to nurture them, the High Evolutionary took them to a nearby Romani camp. The Maximoffs had recently lost their own twin children and agreed to raise Wanda and Pietro as their own. Wanda’s mutant power to alter probabilities has only just begun to manifest, and she is considered a jinx by the other members of her tribe.
Hank McCoy is an 18-year-old student from Dunfee, Illinois, whose mutant powers give him a somewhat ape-like physiognomy and gymnastic ability. Brilliant at science, he is starting college in the fall on a football scholarship.
Alejandro Montoya is a 16-year-old student in Madrid, Spain, with the mutant ability to generate electrostatic charges within his body. His fascination with swashbuckling heroes has led him to study swordfighting and hand-to-hand combat techniques.
Danielle Moonstar is a 7-year-old girl from Boulder, Colorado with the latent mutant ability to generate psychic projections. Her father, William Lonestar, saved Charles Xavier’s life during the Iraq War, and Xavier was present for Danielle’s christening a little over a year later. Her grandfather is a shaman called Black Eagle.
Michael Morbius is a 37-year-old scientist from Greece, who has just been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Elton Morrow served in the Liberty Legion during World War II as the superhero known as “The Blue Diamond.” He discovered a giant azure diamond during an expedition to Antarctica in 1941. The diamond exploded, embedding minute particles in Morrow’s skin, when his ship was attacked by a Nazi submarine. Morrow suddenly found himself to be invulnerable to injury, and when he returned to America, he created a costumed identity for himself. When the war ended in 1945, the Liberty Legion disbanded and Morrow retired from his role as the Blue Diamond to return to his career as a research scientist. He disappeared in 1981.
Barbara Morse is a 26-year-old graduate student from San Diego, California, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in biology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is working with Dr. Wilma Calvin, who is attempting to recreate the legendary super-soldier formula from World War II.
Ororo Munro is a 12-year-old girl with emerging mutant abilities to control the weather. After being orphaned in Cairo, Egypt in 2004, she lived on the streets as a pickpocket and petty thief. She recently left Cairo and is walking south towards Kenya. She has just saved Prince T’Challa, heir to the throne of Wakanda, from a gang of kidnappers, and he has decided to accompany her on her trek until he must return to his own country.
Matt Murdock is a 24-year-old student at Columbia Law School, pursuing his Juris Doctor degree. In 2002, Murdock was blinded in a traffic accident when he was exposed to strange radioactive chemicals. However, he soon discovered that his remaining senses had been heightened to superhuman levels. For a few years Murdock studied with a blind martial-arts master called Stick, who helped him develop a “radar sense” that allows him to navigate through the world better than a sighted person. In 2005, Murdock enrolled in Columbia University and met his roommate Franklin “Foggy” Nelson. He also fell in love with fellow student Elektra Natchios, but during their sophomore year, her father, a Greek ambassador, was murdered, so Elektra dropped out of school and left the United States. Murdock had tried to save her father using his superhuman abilities but failed, and is heartbroken at having lost Elektra as well. Matt’s father, “Battling” Jack Murdock, is a washed-up prizefighter who is getting mixed up with a crooked manager.
Namor is the 41-year-old heir to the throne of the undersea kingdom of Atlantis, known on the surface world as the Sub-Mariner. In the year 2000, he disappeared from the public eye and has been living as an amnesiac vagrant in New York City ever since. Namor’s father, ship captain Leonard McKenzie, and his mother, Princess Fen of Atlantis, met in 1969 when McKenzie’s ship, the Oracle, was conducting research off the coast of Antarctica, directly above the submerged kingdom. Depth charges from the ship had threatened the Atlanteans, and Fen took it upon herself to investigate. When she learned that McKenzie’s actions were not meant to be hostile, she decided to get to know him better. She soon became pregnant, but the lovers were separated when Thakorr, Emperor of Atlantis, assumed Fen was being held against her will and sent a strike force to rescue her. McKenzie, unaware that Fen was pregnant, recovered from his injuries and returned to the United States. Nine months later, Fen gave birth to Namor, a mutant hybrid of Homo sapiens and Homo mermanus. As he grew up, Namor was popular with most Atlanteans, but a few hated him for his “fishbelly” pink skin and the “freakish” wings that sprouted from his ankles when he hit puberty. Thus, in 1989, two of his childhood friends conspired to get rid of Namor. Meranno and Byrrah hired a mercenary army to attack Atlantis in the name of the surface world, causing extensive damage to the kingdom. Emperor Thakorr was injured in the attack and was left comatose. As acting emperor, Namor decided to attack the surface world in retaliation. His destructive rampages through coastal cities terrified the surface-dwellers, who dubbed him “The Sub-Mariner.” In the early ‘90s, Namor had several battles with the flaming hero of World War II, Toro, who came out of retirement to try to defeat him. Eventually, Namor learned of the treachery of Meranno and Byrrah, and that not all surface-dwellers were his enemies. He made efforts to understand the ways of the surface people and to protect Atlantis’s interests, though his volatile personality made him unpredictable. Finally, in 2000, Namor lost a battle with the telepath Paul Destine, who used the mystic artifact known as the Serpent Crown to destroy Atlantis, killing Thakorr and Fen, and then erased Namor’s memory and left him in an alley in a New York ghetto. The Atlanteans were left a disorganized band of refugees, wandering the ocean’s depths.
William Nasland fought for the Allies during World War II as the costumed superhero “The Spirit of ’76,” beginning in 1942. After the original Captain America disappeared in the winter of 1945, Nasland was asked to take over as the new Captain America, and he was honored to do so. Joined by Fred Davis as the new Bucky, Nasland fought alongside the Invaders until the end of the war. Subsequently, he became a founding member of the All-Winners Squad to fight domestic crime. However, in 1946, Nasland was killed in action while trying to stop the evil android Adam-II from assassinating a young politician named John F. Kennedy. He was 28 years old.
Luchino Nefaria is a 48-year-old crime boss from Rome, Italy, who is currently the head of the international crime syndicate known as the Maggia. His wife Renata died in childbirth in 1986, and Nefaria secretly arranged for the baby to be raised as the daughter of wealthy New York financier Byron Frost, who launders money for the Maggia. The girl, Whitney, now 25, still has no knowledge of her true parentage.
Peter Noble fought in World War II as the costumed adventurer called “The Fin.” Originally a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, Noble’s ship sank during a training exercise in 1941, but he discovered that he could breathe underwater and survive the crushing pressure at the bottom of the ocean. Fearing he was some kind of freak, Noble did not return to the surface world, but wandered the ocean’s depths until coming across the small subsea kingdom of Neptunia. When Neptunia became a target of Nazi submarines, Noble’s heroic efforts earned him the Neptunians’ loyalty and they crowned him their new king. Neptunia then declared war on Germany, and Noble made many daring attacks against the Nazis on both land and sea using an enchanted cutlass he had discovered in an ancient shipwreck. Due to his distinctive headgear, he was dubbed “The Fin” by the American press and considered a sea-faring super-hero. At the end of the year, he joined Captain America and the Human Torch in forming the Invaders and fought as a member of that team throughout the rest of the war. In 1946, Noble helped form the team’s post-war counterpart, the All-Winners Squad. That team disbanded in 1949, but Noble continued to fight evildoers at home and abroad until his death in 1958.
Otto Octavius is a research scientist from Schenectady, New York, who is developing a new technology to safely handle hazardous materials.
Shanna O’Hara is a 28-year-old veterinarian at the Bronx Zoo in New York. Born in Zaire to American parents, O’Hara was traumatized in 1989 when her father accidentally killed her mother while trying to shoot a leopard. Since taking her job at the zoo last year, she has demonstrated a specially affinity for big cats.
Norman Osborn is a research scientist and business executive in New York City. He came to prominence in 2004 after stealing the research of his partner, Mendel Stromm, and then arranging for Stromm to be sent to prison for 10 years. Osborn’s son Harry is 16 years old.
Leland Owlsley is a financier in New York, nicknamed “The Owl” for his uncanny financial wisdom. However, his success is largely due to illegal manipulations and other shady dealings.
Peter Parker is a 16-year-old high school student from Forest Hills, Queens, New York. Since 1998, Parker has been living with his Uncle Ben and Aunt May, after his parents were killed while on assignment for the CIA. He is unaware of the nature of his parents’ work and the exact circumstances of their deaths. He is a gifted science student but shy and withdrawn.
Arthur Parks is a college student from New Brunswick, New Jersey, who is studying lasers.
Peter Petruski is a petty criminal from Gary, Indiana, who is fascinated with pastes and glues.
Kevin Plunder is the 21-year-old son of an English lord, and has been marooned since 1999 in the Savage Land, a hidden jungle filled with otherwise extinct flora and fauna, including dinosaurs, located on the continent of Antarctica. His father was killed shortly after their arrival in the artificially-maintained rainforest, and his only companion since that time has been a sabertooth tiger he calls Zabu. Having reached manhood, Plunder is in the process of hunting down the primitive “man-apes” who killed his father. Only vaguely remembering his childhood in England, Plunder has adopted the name given to him by the man-apes, “Ka-Zar,” which means “Son of the Tiger.” He is unaware that his younger brother Parnival, left behind in England, has turned to a life of crime to support himself.
Alex Power is a 1-year-old boy living with his parents in Richmond, Virginia.
Jonathan Powers is an actor from Hoboken, New Jersey, who has failed to make it big in either New York or Hollywood, and had turned to petty crime to support his extravagant lifestyle.
John Proudstar is a 14-year-old boy from Camp Verde, Arizona, with emerging mutant powers that give him heightened senses and reflexes. Though he feels ashamed of his freakish abilities, John knows his 7-year-old brother James looks up to him. He looks forward to the day he can leave the reservation and join the Army.
Kitty Pryde is a 6-year-old girl from Deerfield, Illinois, with the latent mutant power to phase through solid objects. Her grand ambition now is to be a dancer.
Henry Pym is a 25-year-old genius-level research scientist from Elmsford, New York, who has already finished his education and begun his career. In 2010 he met Maria Trovaya, the daughter of a brilliant geneticist from Chechnya, who had fled from the violence in that region following the breakup of the Soviet Union. They quickly fell head-over-heels in love and decided to get married. Maria convinced Pym to take her back to her hometown of Grozny for their honeymoon. Believing the fighting had ceased, Pym agreed. However, shortly after their arrival, Maria was killed in a terrorist attack. Pym became distraught and, returning to the U.S., retreated from his grief into ever-more bizarre research projects. Though his new theories have been ridiculed and he has been ostracized by the scientific community, Pym has recently discovered a subatomic particle that he believes has the power to cause objects to change their physical size.
Abdul Qamar is a 16-year-old student living in Saudi Arabia.
Doug Ramsey is a 6-year-old boy with the latent mutant ability to decipher any language.
Danny Rand is a 13-year-old boy from New York City who is currently studying the martial arts in the extradimensional city of K’un-Lun, where he has been since 2007. His father, a native of K’un-Lun, had brought the family to the Himalayas in search of the dimensional portal, which was opening at that time, describing K’un-Lun only as a mystical realm. However, his father’s business partner, Harold Meachum, betrayed them, leading to the death of both of Danny’s parents. Danny alone made it to K’un-Lun, where the inhabitants agreed to raise him and train him until the portal reopens in 2017.
Calvin Rankin is a 15-year-old high-school student from Passaic, New Jersey, with an abrasive attitude.
Peter Rasputin is a 10-year-old farmboy in Siberia with the latent mutant power to turn his flesh into organic steel.
Red Raven fought for the Allies during World War II as a member of the Liberty Legion. As a baby, he was the sole survivor of a plane that crashed into the floating island of Aerie, concealed in a cloudbank, that was the home of a population of avian Inhumans. In 1940, he decided to leave the Aerie to explore the world of his birth parents, using the artificial wings the “Bird-People” provided him. He soon became a costumed crime-fighter, and in 1942 was a founding member of the Liberty Legion. However, in 1944, he learned of a plot by the rulers of the Aerie to take advantage of the turmoil caused by the war to conquer the human race. Fearing the Bird-People would be wiped out in such a battle, a desperate Red Raven released a gas that put everyone on the island into suspended animation. After securing the comatose population, Red Raven hid the island on the bottom of the ocean and then placed himself in suspended animation as well. They have remained so ever since.
Thomas Raymond was a mutant with the ability to burst into flame, fly through the air, and project fire from his body in various forms. In his youth, he acted as sidekick to the Human Torch, an android possessed of the same abilities. Known by his nickname, Toro, Raymond met the Human Torch in 1940, when he was only 11 years old. After Toro’s parents were killed by a criminal known as “the Asbestos Lady,” the Torch became his legal guardian. At the end of 1941, they became founding members of the Invaders, and fought against the Axis powers throughout World War II. In 1945, the Torch and Toro cornered Adolf Hitler in his underground bunker, meaning to bring him to justice. However, the Torch was forced to incinerate the Nazi leader to prevent him from blowing up the bunker and killing everyone inside, including Toro. With the war over, Toro joined the Torch in forming the All-Winners Squad to battle domestic crime. However, in 1949, a gang of mobsters used an experimental solution they had obtained from Soviet agents, which allowed them to neutralize Toro’s flame powers and deactivate the Torch. Toro was taken behind the Iron Curtain and brainwashed into becoming a secret weapon for the communists. He was finally rescued in 1953 after the Torch had been revived by a nuclear bomb test. Back in America, Toro’s mental conditioning was broken, and he and the Torch resumed their crimefighting crusade as equal partners. Unfortunately, the radiation that had revived the Torch slowly caused him to lose control of his powers, and in 1955 he said goodbye to Toro and disappeared into the desert. Disheartened, Toro retired from crimefighting and stopped using his powers. He eventually met and married a woman named Anne and lived a relatively normal life for many years. In 1990, Toro came out of retirement to battle the Sub-Mariner, who had recently begun staging attacks on cities along the Atlantic coast, and eventually persuaded Namor that not all surface-men were his enemies. Sadly, these adventures proved too strenuous for Toro and he soon suffered a fatal heart attack. He died in 1992 at the age of 63.
Owen Reece is a janitor at a scientific research installation in New York City.
James Rhodes is a 20-year-old airman in the United States Air Force.
Reed Richards is a 39-year-old beyond-genius research scientist from Central City, California, and head of the California-based Richards Laboratories, which he inherited from his father. Richards began taking college-level courses at Cal Tech in 1986. He was recruited by U.S. Army intelligence in 1991 as an encryption expert and served during the Gulf War. After his tour of duty, he resumed his education at SUNY, where he became roommates with football star Ben Grimm. Richards spoke often of his ambition to build a spaceship, and Grimm half-jokingly promised to pilot it should he ever succeed. Richards had a rival of sorts in Victor von Doom, also a brilliant scientist, who was expelled after one of his experiments went badly awry. In 2003, Richards enrolled in Columbia University to pursue yet another advanced degree. It was here that he met Susan Storm, the niece of his landlady. Though she was much younger, they stayed in touch after Richards graduated in 2005 and returned to California to work for his father. Two years later, after working obsessively on a secret project, Richards’ father vanished without a trace. However, he had made arrangements for his son to take over the family business. Richards immediately devoted all the company’s resources to his starship project. In early 2011, as the project was nearing completion, Richards contacted Grimm to take him up on the offer he made in college. Grimm resigned from the Air Force and took a position at Richards Laboratories to train for the mission to space. In the spring, Susan Storm, now working as a model in New York, flew out to spend the summer with Richards and they quickly fell in love. Recently, however, Richards encountered an alien monster that was intent on wiping out the human race. Using his scientific knowledge and ingenuity, Richards defeated the alien by dispersing its molecules over a wide area. Convinced that advanced extraterrestrial races pose a clear and present danger to the planet Earth, Richards now sees his starship project as vital to the survival of the human race.
Kyle Richmond is a 21-year-old reluctant business executive in New York City. Following his mother’s death in 1999, Richmond was sent to boarding school, since his father was constantly away on business. He soon developed a reputation as a troublemaker. Despite his poor academic record, Richmond was accepted to the exclusive Grayburn University in 2008 due to his father’s wealth and influence. However, Richmond was expelled the next year after a drunk-driving accident which he believes to have killed his girlfriend Mindy. His father died in a plane crash soon after that, and, rejected from military service due to a heart murmur, Richmond agreed to take over the family business. Leaving the actual running of the company to others, Richmond now lives the life of a playboy, while searching for a means to cure his heart condition.
Richard Rider is a 9-year-old boy living with his family in Queens, New York.
Steve Rogers served the Allies during World War II as the symbolic super-soldier Captain America. Born in New York City in 1921 and orphaned at the height of the Great Depression, Rogers was a frail and sickly youth. When he tried to enlist in the U.S. Army in late 1940, Rogers was classified 4F and rejected. However, he was immediately recruited by General Chester Phillips for his super-soldier program, Operation: Rebirth. Rogers was flown to Washington D.C., where he met the mastermind behind the project, Dr. Abraham Erskine. Within a few weeks, Rogers was injected with Erskine’s super-soldier serum and subjected to high-energy vita-rays, emerging from the process as physically perfect as a human being could be. Unfortunately, a Nazi spy had infiltrated the proceedings and shot and killed Dr. Erskine. Unable to duplicate Erskine’s success, the government decided to make Rogers into a patriotic symbol and a special-missions commando, similar to Britain’s Union Jack of World War I. Given a red, white, and blue costume and a bulletproof shield, Rogers became the masked hero Captain America. A few months later, Rogers acquired a teen-aged sidekick, Bucky, and the pair quickly became a media sensation. After America entered the war, Rogers fought alongside other super-heroes in the Invaders, as well as conducting numerous solo missions. In 1944, Bucky reached his 18th birthday and gave up his costumed identity to join the Army as a regular soldier. Soon after, while in France, Rogers fell in love with an American girl fighting in the French Resistance, although he knew her only by her code-name, “Mademoiselle.” She disappeared during the liberation of Paris, and Rogers was unable to find her. Then, in the winter of 1945, Rogers had his final battle with his arch-nemesis, the Red Skull, who was buried under tons of rubble in a collapsing bunker in Berlin. Returning to England, Rogers was assigned to stop the theft of an experimental drone plane from a base on the North Sea, where he was reunited with Bucky. His old enemy, Baron Heinrich Zemo, launched the plane towards Germany, but when Rogers and Bucky leaped aboard to stop it, they discovered it was booby-trapped. The plane exploded, killing Bucky and throwing Rogers down into the icy waters below. The super-soldier serum in his blood caused Rogers to go into suspended animation, and he was carried by the current into the Arctic, where he remains, entombed in ice, to the present day.
The girl who will be known as Rogue is currently a 7-year-old with latent mutant powers living with her family in Mississippi.
Natasha Romanova is a 27-year-old spy born in Stalingrad, U.S.S.R. (now St. Petersburg, Russia). Orphaned as a young girl, she was discovered living on the streets of Madripoor in 1991 by Russian soldier Ivan Petrovitch Bezukhov. Realizing the girl was descended from the Russian royal family, Bezukhov vowed to raise her as his own daughter. However, she was soon kidnapped by the terrorist Wolfgang von Strucker, who was working with the group of ninja assassins known as the Hand. With some help from Logan and Dominic Fortune, Bezukhov rescued Romanova and took her back to Russia. He enrolled her in the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet in St. Petersburg and got himself a job in electronics. Bezukhov married in 1997 and soon had a son, Yuri. In 2003, Romanova graduated and became a professional ballerina in the famous Kirov ballet company, which put a tremendous strain on her relationship with her boyfriend, a brilliant college student named Andrei Rostov. A year later they broke up and Romanova took the hotshot jet pilot Alexi Shostakov as her lover. They married in 2005 and became something of a celebrity couple. However, two years after that, members of the Russian intelligence community decided that the Shostakovs would make excellent covert operatives. Incidents were arranged to convince each one that the other had died and then they were recruited separately. Shostakov was taken to Siberia for training while Romanova was assigned to the KGB’s former Moscow training facility, the infamous Red Room. There she was trained by a former KGB agent named Alexi Bruskin and proved highly adept at spycraft. In 2008 Romanova was sent on her first mission outside Russia, to assist an operative called Danny French in stealing an experimental device from the Project Four installation in Nevada. Since she was successful, she was sent to New York to infiltrate Stark International under the alias “Natalie Rushman.” She has been passing the secrets of Stark’s technology to the Russians ever since.
Jack Russell is a 14-year-old student living in the suburbs of Los Angeles with his mother, step-father, and sister Lissa. He is unaware that his biological father, Gregory Russoff, was a werewolf and that he will inherit his father’s ancestral curse on his 18th birthday. He is equally unaware that he was born Jacob Russoff in Transylvania and that his step-father Philip is really his father’s brother. Nor does he know that his grandfather, Baron Gregor Russoff of Transylvania (also a werewolf), obtained the Darkhold, the ultimate book of black magic, in 1971 from the sorcerer Taboo. In 1999, Gregory was killed by a hunting party while in his werewolf form, and a year later Gregor died while battling the demon Chthon on Wundagore Mountain. Jack and his mother fled Transylvania for California, where she married Philip shortly after Lissa was born, changing their names from Russoff to Russell. The Darkhold is currently in a California warehouse along with the rest of the contents of Castle Russoff.
Ted Sallis is a 34-year-old chemist from Omaha, Nebraska. In 2007, he initiated a research project at Empire State University that the United States military soon classified top-secret and codenamed Operation: Sulfur. Its aim was to alter human biochemistry to enable people to survive even the most toxic industrial pollution. By 2010, however, Sallis determined that his serum would mutate people into horribly disfigured pollution-breathing monsters. He convinced a review panel to condemn the project and the government had no choice but to shut it down. Sallis has recently received overtures from Dr. Wilma Calvin to join her project to recreate Abraham Erskine’s super-soldier formula, and he is considering it.
Leonard Samson is a psychiatrist from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who currently practices in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Basil Sandhurst is a research scientist from Kittery Point, Maine, who is developing mind-control technologies.
Mark Scarlotti is a college student from Cleveland, Ohio, studying electrical engineering. He has been awarded a summer internship at Stark International in New York.
Larry Scott was a masked vigilante known as “Father Time” in 1941-1942. His father was executed in the electric chair after being convicted of murder, though Scott maintained he was innocent. Unhinged by the experience, Scott took up a scythe and began killing criminals. Eventually someone overpowered him and killed him with his own weapon.
Shang-Chi is a 14-year-old student of the martial arts at a retreat in Honan, China. He is the son of an international criminal mastermind and his American-born wife, though Shang-Chi is unaware of his father’s illegal activities.
Gregor Shapanka is a research scientist from Szombathely, Hungary, who works in the cryonics division at Stark International in New York.
Sebastian Shaw is a 33-year-old multi-millionaire industrialist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the CEO of Shaw Industries, and a mutant with the power to absorb kinetic energy. Shaw keeps a love-slave named Tessa, who is also a mutant.
Nekra Sinclair is a 17-year-old mutant from Los Alamos, New Mexico, with the power to convert negative emotions into strength and invulnerability. A “goth chick” runaway, she lives on the streets with her partner, Jerome Beechman, a mutant with ape-like features and powerful pheromones.
Rahne Sinclair is a 4-year-old orphan girl in Scotland with the latent mutant ability to shapeshift into a wolf.
Marrina Smallwood is an 8-year-old girl, hatched from an alien Plodex egg mapped with human DNA, living in a small fishing community in Newfoundland, Canada. Despite her strange appearance, Smallwood has been accepted by the locals since they find her amphibious abilities useful.
Tabitha Smith is a 2-year-old girl in Roanoke, Virginia, with the latent mutant ability to generate explosive energy spheres.
Samuel Smithers is a gardener and groundskeeper. Born in London, England, he is currently employed by the wealthy Evans family of Long Island.
Karla Sofen is a 25-year-old graduate student from Van Nuys, California. She is studying to become a psychiatrist, but is financing her education by dallying with various gangsters.
Marc Spector is a 21-year-old heavyweight boxer from Chicago, Illinois. Feeling his career is winding down, he is considering joining the U.S. Marine Corps.
Gwen Stacy is a 16-year-old high-school student in New York City. Her father, George Stacy, is a captain in the NYPD.
Tony Stark is a 25-year-old genius-level inventor and head of Stark International, a company he inherited in 2007 after his parents were killed in a car crash. Stark is currently constructing the massive flying fortress called the Helicarrier for the nascent international security agency S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division), among other weapons and hardware.
Elihas Starr is a research scientist from Queens, New York. Though brilliant, he is bad-tempered and his co-workers mock him with the nickname “Egghead.”
Samuel Sterns is a manual laborer from Boise, Idaho, who works at a nuclear research facility.
Johnny Storm is a 17-year-old high school student from Glenville, New York, on Long Island. He lost his mother in 2005, and his father was convicted of manslaughter and sent to jail in 2007. Since then, Storm has been raised by his sister Susan, with help from an aunt who lives nearby. In the summer of 2011, Storm has gone to California to hang out with Sue and her boyfriend Reed Richards. Thanks to his interest in fast cars, Storm has quickly made a number of new friends.
Susan Storm is a 22-year-old model from Glenville, New York, on Long Island. After the death of her mother in 2005, her father went into a downward spiral and was finally convicted of manslaughter and sent to prison in 2007. Storm has been raising her younger brother Johnny ever since, though she has help from an aunt who runs a boarding house near Columbia University. It was at her aunt’s boarding house that Storm met Reed Richards, a much older college student, in 2003. She fell in love with Richards and has kept in touch with him since then. In the spring of 2011, Richards invited Storm to spend the summer with him in California, and she happily accepted. After a few weeks together, they decided to get engaged. After school let out, Johnny came out to California to join her. Storm recently assisted Richards in destroying an alien menace that had come to wipe out the human race, and understands why he works so obsessively on his project to build an interstellar spaceship.
Stephen Strange is a 49-year-old sorcerer who lives in a mansion in Greenwich Village, which he calls his Sanctum Sanctorum. Strange went to medical school in the 1980s at the University of Pennsylvania and studied to be a neurosurgeon. He went into private practice in 1995, by which time both his parents had died. Earlier in the ‘90s, he had been engaged to a woman named Madeleine Revell, but she ended their relationship when she realized he was becoming too arrogant and cold-hearted. In 1997, Strange crashed his sports car and sustained nerve damage that ended his surgical career. Too proud to work as a consultant, Strange then squandered his fortune seeking a cure for his condition, alienating his few friends in the process. By 1999, Strange was desperate enough to travel to Tibet in search of a miracle-worker known only as “The Ancient One.” Within a year, Strange found his way to the Ancient One’s remote retreat in the mountains, where the weird old man refused to help him. However, a sudden blizzard prevented Strange from leaving. While there, the former doctor discovered that the Ancient One’s pupil, a Transylvanian called Baron Mordo, was trying to kill his master. Mordo used his spells to prevent Strange from revealing the plot, so Strange asked the Ancient One to teach him magic. Seeing the good in Strange, the Ancient One agreed and released Strange from Mordo’s spells, of which he was already aware. Strange experienced an epiphany and dedicated himself to the study of the mystic arts. Strange soon got to know the Ancient One’s devoted manservant, Hamir the Hermit, and his son Wong. Months later, Mordo tried to kill Strange, but the novice sorcerer defeated him. The Ancient One then banished Mordo from the temple, and he returned to Transylvania, vowing revenge. Strange studied with the Ancient One until 2008, when he was ready to return to the world as a Master of the Mystic Arts. Accompanied by Wong, Strange moved to Greenwich Village and established his reputation as an expert on the occult. Doctor Strange currently uses his magic powers to aid people who seek him out, though he occasionally assists the police with particularly mysterious cases.
Wolfgang von Strucker is a 61-year-old mercenary and terrorist and leader of the international criminal organization HYDRA. He was recruited by the East German intelligence services in 1984, but went rogue soon after when a mission to assassinate a United States senator was thwarted by Dominic Fortune. Strucker retreated to the western Pacific and made a name for himself there as a freelance mercenary. In 1991, on the island of Madripoor, he agreed to assist the clan of ninja assassins known as the Hand in kidnapping a young Natasha Romanova, whom the Hand wanted for a mystical ceremony. However, his plans were again ruined by Dominic Fortune, along with a mysterious Canadian called Logan and a Russian soldier named Ivan Petrovitch Bezukhov. In 1992, Strucker suffered a major setback when Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos wiped out his infrastructure and seized his assets. Left nearly destitute, Strucker learned that an associate of his knew the location of a cache of Nazi gold, hidden during the closing days of World War II. Unfortunately, the man was fatally wounded by his enemies, so he tried to use an experimental hypnosis technique to implant the information in the mind of an Israeli prostitute named Gabrielle Haller, but the process left her catatonic. Foiled again, Strucker hid out in Japan, where he infiltrated and took over a secret society bent on world domination. After assassinating the group’s leader, Strucker renamed it HYDRA and established a new headquarters on a lonely island in the Pacific Ocean. In 1993, this base, called Hydra Island, was destroyed by Captain Simon Savage and his squad of Navy SEALs, “The Leatherneck Raiders.” Strucker was on the run again, and caught up with Nick Fury in Somalia. Knowing the Howling Commandos thought Fury had been killed in a helicopter crash, Strucker tortured his foe until Fury managed to escape. Strucker then returned to Europe and organized a secret group of scientists to create high-tech weapons for HYDRA, setting up a dummy corporation called Advanced Idea Mechanics as a front. In 1994, while in Bosnia, Strucker discovered a group of extraterrestrials hiding out while repairing their spaceship. Strucker killed the aliens, as well as everyone else in the village, and seized their otherworldly technology for use by HYDRA. Five years later, one of Strucker’s lovers gave birth to twins. Strucker was proud of his offspring and named them Andrea and Andreas von Strucker, unaware that they were mutants with latent powers. In 2006, Strucker learned that Gabrielle Haller had finally been brought out of her catatonic state by an American therapist named Charles Xavier. Strucker and a squad of HYDRA mercenaries attacked the psychiatric hospital in Israel to capture her. They took her to Kenya and forced her to reveal where the Nazi gold was hidden. However, they were attacked by Xavier, a telepath, and another mutant called Magnus, who possessed impressive magnetic powers, who had come to rescue Haller. Strucker was no match for their mutant powers, and Magnus took all the Nazi gold for himself. Nevertheless, Strucker got away, and has been at large ever since, slowly building up HYDRA’s power base, until they are ready to take over the world.
Leopold Stryke is a manager at the New York Aquarium on Coney Island. His brother Jordan is an advertising executive on Madison Avenue. Both have criminal tendencies and are suckers for a get-rich-quick scheme.
Scott Summers is a 15-year-old orphan living in a state-run institution in Omaha, Nebraska. His younger brother Alex is living in a foster home not far away. Although he doesn’t remember the event, Summers’ parents were kidnapped by aliens from the Shi’ar galaxy in 2004. Both Summers boys are mutants with emerging powers. Scott had been experiencing severe headaches and eye-strain until discovering that ruby-quartz crystals alleviated his symptoms. An optometrist agreed to make a pair of goggles out of the substance, which Summers wears all the time, day and night. When he needs to remove them, he keeps his eyes tightly closed for fear the headaches will return. His caretakers believe Summers was brain-damaged when his parents were killed. Deeply unhappy, he is planning to run away to New York City.
Sun Girl was a mysterious super-heroine who appeared one day in 1948, became a media sensation, then disappeared just as abruptly in 1949. She worked briefly with the Human Torch while his regular partner, Toro, was on a leave of absence. Many theories surround Sun Girl, but the truth was never discovered.
Kevin Sydney is a mutant shapeshifter able to mimic the appearance of other people.
Will Talltrees is a 22-year-old soldier in the U.S. Marine Corps from Wolf Point, Montana.
George Tarleton is a technician for the subversive organization Advanced Idea Mechanics.
T’Challa is the 24-year-old heir to the throne of Wakanda, a remote African kingdom. In 2003, the unscrupulous Dutch scientist Ulysses Klaw invaded Wakanda with a heavily-armed band of mercenaries, intent on capturing the source of the ultra-rare mineral vibranium. They killed the king, T’Chaka, but the teenaged prince T’Challa attacked them with their own sonic disruptor weapon and drove them off. T’Challa was then sent abroad to complete his education at the finest universities of Europe and America, accompanied by his friend B’Tumba. In his absence, Wakanda has been ruled by B’Tumba’s father, N’Baza, as regent. Having just graduated, T’Challa was touring eastern Africa on his way back to Wakanda when an attempt was made to kidnap him. He defeated the kidnappers with the help of a 12-year-old girl called Ororo, a mutant with limited control over the weather. Fascinated by her, T’Challa has decided to accompany her on her trek through Kenya before returning to his native land.
Thor is the mythological god of thunder worshipped by the Vikings a thousand years ago. Since 1999, he has been banished from his extradimensional realm of Asgard and has been living on Earth with no memory of his true identity. Odin, king of the Asgardians, took possession of Thor’s enchanted hammer, Mjolnir, and forced Thor to assume the mortal guise of Donald Blake, a medical student with a bad leg. Blake trained to be a neurosurgeon and far surpassed the skill level of his peers. In the summer of 2011, he went into private practice in New York City and hired Nurse Jane Foster to work at his office.
Maynard Tiboldt is the ringmaster of a traveling circus, which is really just a cover for a gang of thieves. They mainly target small towns along rural highways.
Mark Todd, a former newspaper reporter, fought the Japanese Army as the costumed commando known as “The Blazing Skull,” beginning in 1939. He was killed in action in 1942.
Adrian Toomes is a 59-year-old mechanic and inventor from New York City, who has nearly perfected a rig to allow a person to fly like a bird.
Topaz is a 12-year-old girl from India who serves as the familiar for a sorcerer called Taboo. In 2005, Taboo found Topaz in a refugee camp and learned how to harness her empathic powers to serve his own selfish ends.
Mortimer Toynbee is a 19-year-old mutant from York, England, with superhuman agility and a fawning, obsequious manner.
Michael Twoyoungmen is a 46-year-old former surgeon from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. In 2003, his wife died from a terminal illness, and Twoyoungmen blamed himself for failing to save her with his medical skill. Their young daughter Elizabeth blamed him also, and Twoyoungmen sank into a profound depression. Leaving Elizabeth with his neighbors, the large McNeil family, Twoyoungmen retreated to a remote cabin in the wilderness to be alone with his grief.
Angelo Unuscione is a 23-year-old professional wrestler and a mutant with the ability to generate a force-field around his body. He bills himself as “Unus the Untouchable.”
Janet Van Dyne is a 20-year-old socialite in New York City, the daughter of the wealthy scientist Vernon Van Dyne. Her father has been one of America’s most noted scientists since the 1980s.
Rachel Van Helsing is a 29-year-old vampire hunter.
Wendell Vaughn is a 16-year-old high-school student in Wisconsin.
Seth Voelker is an economic analyst from Kenosha, Wisconsin. He has recently begun working for the Roxxon Oil Company.
Klaus Voorhees is a research assistant from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who works for the internationally renowned herpetologist Ezekiel Shecktor.
Kurt Wagner is a 13-year-old circus acrobat in Germany with a number of bizarre mutations that have been present since birth, including dark-blue fuzz all over his body, yellow eyes, a prehensile tail, and six fingers and toes. He has only recently developed the ability to teleport short distances, disappearing and reappearing in a puff of smoke. Abandoned at birth, Wagner has been raised at the circus by Margali Szardos, a sorceress posing as a gypsy fortune-teller, alongside her own children Jimaine and Stefan. The circus folk accept Wagner despite his strange appearance, and audiences assume he is just wearing an outlandish costume.
Patsy Walker is a 19-year-old former reality-TV star from Centerville, California. She has a strained relationship with her mother, Dorothy Walker, the ultimate “stage mom,” and is dating her former co-star, Buzz Baxter.
Jennifer Walters is a 24-year-old student at the UCLA School of Law pursuing her Juris Doctor degree. As a child she was close to her cousin, Bruce Banner, but they have since drifted apart.
Miles Warren is a biology professor at Empire State University in New York City, interested in cloning.
John Watkins was a British Army lieutenant who was believed killed by the Nazis in 1940. He survived and adopted the masked identity “Citizen V” to wage a one-man guerilla war against the Axis powers across Europe. He left the “V” symbol at the site of his victories to inspire the local resistance movements. He was killed for real during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.
Dane Whitman is a 23-year-old graduate student in physics from Gloucester, Massachusetts. He was inspired to pursue a career in the sciences by his uncle, Nathan Garrett.
Simon Williams is a 24-year-old business executive from Paterson, New Jersey. He has recently inherited the family business, Williams Innovations, a technology firm. He and his brother Eric are frustrated that the company is unable to compete with the much larger Stark International.
Jim Wilson is a 12-year-old boy living with his family in a Los Angeles ghetto. He is unaware that his uncle, Sam Wilson, has recently moved to the city and joined a criminal gang.
Sam Wilson is a 19-year-old from Harlem, New York, who has moved to Los Angeles in the wake of his parents’ murders. Angry with the world, Wilson has renounced his former devotion to community service to join a street gang, going by the nickname “Snap.” Though his older brother Gideon lives in the city with his wife and son, Wilson avoids them out of shame.
Colleen Wing is a 17-year-old girl being raised by her grandfather in the mountains of northern Japan, where she is learning the martial arts. Her father teaches Asian history at Columbia University in New York City.
Wyatt Wingfoot is a 17-year-old high-school student living on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma. His father is a famous athlete, and though talented at sports, Wingfoot worries about living up to everyone’s expectations.
Bentley Wittman is a “celebrity genius” who makes frequent television appearances, often showing off his bizarre inventions along with his knowledge of arcane trivia. Though his cable-TV show Wizard! has been quite successful, he has grown increasingly bored and searches for new ways to challenge his vast intellect.
Jimmy Woo is a 36-year-old FBI agent who, since 2006, has been trying to apprehend the international criminal mastermind known as the Yellow Claw.
Warren Worthington III is a 15-year-old student at a private boarding school on Long Island, who goes to great lengths to conceal the feathery white wings that have been growing out of his back since puberty. He fears that they will soon be too large to hide beneath his clothes.
Wundarr is an alien from the planet Dakkam, who was an infant when his ship crashed in the Florida Everglades in 1997. Though he has been growing physically at a normal rate within the ship’s womb-like interior, his cognitive development has been severely retarded.
Herbert Edgar Wyndham is a research scientist from Manchester, England, who works at his private research facility on Wundagore Mountain in the tiny Balkan nation of Transia. In 1978, Wyndham attended a genetics conference in Geneva, Switzerland, at which he met Jonathan Drew, Wladyslav Shinski, and Arnim Zola. Shortly afterward, a mysterious visitor presented Wyndham with a document detailing the advanced genetic science of the Inhumans. This allowed him to take his experiments to a new level, and Wyndham soon succeeded in artificially evolving a dog into humanoid form. However, the dog-man escaped from Wyndham’s laboratory and terrorized Manchester until the police hunted it down and killed it. Wyndham realized he would need to conduct his future experiments in a remote area, and in 1980 he partnered with Jonathan Drew to build a research facility on land Drew had acquired in Transia. They hired Horace M. Grabsheid to design the installation for them, and funded the project by mining the uranium from Wundagore Mountain. The following year, the facility was plagued by a werewolf, who killed Drew’s wife. Drew became further distraught when his daughter Jessica succumbed to radiation poisoning. He administered an experimental treatment derived from spider venom, then placed her in suspended animation. Leaving her in Wyndham’s care, Drew abandoned his research and returned home. A month later, Wyndham succeeded in capturing the werewolf, learning that his name was Gregor Russoff. Struck by the similarities between Russoff’s werewolf form and the dog-man he had once created, Wyndham made a deal with Russoff—Wyndham would prevent his murderous rampages if Russoff would agree to be a research subject. By 1998, Wyndham had perfected his genetic accelerator and created a race of “New Men” by evolving various animals into sentient humanoids. Drew finally returned and helped harness the creatures’ animalistic instincts by training them in medieval chivalry as the Knights of Wundagore. In 2000, the Knights of Wundagore battled the demon Chthon, who had been imprisoned within Wundagore Mountain in the days of Camelot. During the battle, Gregor Russoff was killed. However, at the same time, the cow-woman Bova was acting as midwife to Magda, who had made her way to Transia after fleeing from her husband’s terrifying magnetic powers. Magda gave birth to mutant twins, naming them Wanda and Pietro. Sensing potential in the baby girl, Chthon imbued Wanda with some of his magic before being driven out of Earth’s dimension, planning to use her in the future to escape his imprisonment. Magda abandoned her babies, so Wyndham found them a foster family among the Romani living at the foot of the mountain. Drew left shortly afterwards to take a job at the British Museum, and Wyndham continued his experiments. Having slowly become something of a “mad scientist,” Wyndham now insists on being referred to as “The High Evolutionary.”
Jason Wyngarde is a middle-aged mutant in England with the ability to generate convincing illusions. He makes his living as a stage magician and supplements his income with the occasional petty larceny. He also uses his powers to trick beautiful young women into sleeping with him.
Charles Xavier is a 35-year-old researcher of genetic mutation in humans, who works primarily at his home, a large estate in Westchester County, north of New York City. He is also a mutant with highly developed telepathic powers. Both he and his stepbrother Cain Marko were orphaned in the early ‘90s. Arrangements were made for Xavier to attend a private boarding school, where he pursued an accelerated course of study. He attended Bard College and received a degree in Biology in 1997, then enrolled in Oxford University for graduate study. There he met Moira MacTaggart, an unhappily married student of genetics, and they had a passionate affair. When the Iraq War broke out in 2003, Xavier decided to enlist in the U.S. Army to serve his country. He found himself serving alongside his stepbrother Cain Marko, though Marko soon disappeared in a cave-in while they were patrolling an ancient archaeological site. Not long after, Xavier was badly wounded in combat, but his friend William Lonestar saved his life. While in the hospital, Xavier received a letter from MacTaggart ending their relationship. Depressed, Xavier retreated to the Greek island of Kirinos to recover from his injuries after receiving a medical discharge. Trying to lose himself by traveling the world, Xavier would find himself in Colorado in 2004 to attend the christening of William Lonestar’s daughter Danielle; in Cairo, Egypt in 2005 where he battled another mutant telepath named Amahl Farouk; and in Haifa, Israel in 2006 doing consulting work at a psychiatric hospital. There he met the man called Magnus, who proved to be another mutant, possessing impressive magnetic powers. Xavier succeeded in using his telepathy to bring a young woman, Gabrielle Haller, out of a catatonic state. However, she was immediately kidnapped by Wolfgang von Strucker and his HYDRA mercenaries and taken to Kenya to help them find a cache of Nazi gold hidden during World War II. Xavier and Magnus teamed up to rescue her, though Magnus took the gold for himself and left. Xavier returned Haller to Israel and she became his lover for a time, but within a few months, he left her to continue his travels, unaware that she was pregnant. While exploring Tibet in 2007, Xavier encountered an alien being who tried to kill him. Xavier survived, but his legs were crushed and he was confined to a wheelchair. Utterly defeated, Xavier finally returned home to Westchester and devoted himself to studying genetics, becoming something of a recluse. In 2008, Xavier’s success in treating Gabrielle Haller led to him being asked to meet with a traumatized local girl named Jean Grey. Xavier discovered Grey was also a mutant telepath, and helped her deal with her emerging powers. In 2009, Xavier took a position at Columbia University, where he met a medical researcher named Karl Lykos. They collaborated briefly when Xavier believed Lykos to be a mutant, but when he discovered he was wrong, Xavier distanced himself from Lykos. He renewed his association with Moira MacTaggart, who had founded her Mutant Research Centre on Muir Island, off the coast of Scotland, in 2006. They continued to work with Jean Grey while Xavier perfected his mutant-detecting CEREBRO machine. He recently demonstrated the prototype for MacTaggart and Grey, though there are still bugs to be worked out.
The Yellow Claw is an international criminal mastermind from China who is over 120 years old. He uses arcane chemicals to unnaturally extend his lifespan, which have given his skin and eyes a sickly yellow hue. Since 2006 he has been plagued by the FBI agent Jimmy Woo, who has disrupted most of the Claw’s schemes in America. His grand-niece Suwan, inspired by her love for Woo, has also interfered with his plans, but the Yellow Claw is unwilling to kill his only living relative. For the last couple of years, the Yellow Claw has been keeping a low profile.
Shiro Yoshida is a 14-year-old student in Agarashima, Japan, with emerging mutant powers to generate blasts of flame from his body. His father is an ambassador to the United Nations.
Calvin Zabo is an unscrupulous medical assistant from Trenton, New Jersey, with a checkered employment history.
Helmut Zemo is the 25-year-old leader of a mercenary army based in the Amazon Rainforest of Brazil, where he was born. His father, Baron Heinrich Zemo, fled from Europe at the end of World War II, and his mother was one of Heinrich’s many Brazilian concubines. Already quite elderly, Heinrich Zemo died when Helmut was still a boy, but he did pass on his intense hatred of America to his son.
Arnim Zola is a 66-year-old geneticist who conducts his experiments at his ancestral castle on Weisshorn Mountain in Switzerland. In 1978 he attended a genetics conference in Geneva along with Wladyslav Shinski, Herbert Edgar Wyndham, and Jonathan Drew. However, he made little significant progress with his theories until 1987, when he discovered a cache of scientific papers left by the ancient race known as the Deviants. He began a radical new line of research into the creation of artificial life. Zola’s project was developed further in 1991 when a mysterious visitor presented him with a document detailing the advanced genetic science of the Inhumans. Aware of his own mortality, Zola is currently working on engineering a new body for himself, hoping to thus prolong his life indefinitely.
The possibilities are endless! Another 50 years of exciting comic book stories could easily be mined just from the information presented above, let alone with all the new ideas that would be added to the mix by today’s most talented writers and artists. Hit the kill switch, Marvel. It’s time to reboot!
How I Would Do It
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)