Capeworld Comics

 Skyman and the Skyman Air Force

 

 

Childhood trauma is sometimes the chief motivating factor of a superhero’s’ career. The memory of absolute powerlessness stays with them all their lives, and when they do get power, they are driven to help the powerless, to give others the help that never came for them.

 

In 1918,  seven year old Allan Turner learned that his parents had perished in a plane crash. They were ARGO explorers who attempted to explore a portal to the jungle universe of Gigipal floating above the north pole. The plane reached the portal, but instead of traveling through it, it was repulsed, and crashed to the ice in a fireball.

 

The child genius (with an IQ of 180) dealt with his parents passing by obsessively studying aviation. He knew what he wanted to be when he grew up. He didn’t want to be a cowboy or a superhero, he wanted to create planes that couldn’t crash. And if his life had no more strangeness, he would have grown up to be a great pilot or a great engineer. But his life was only beginning to become strange.

 

Allan was adopted by his uncle Peter who raised him in Harnell University. Peter Turner was a brilliant scientist, one of the men who worked on the Kokomaht project which created several artificial races at the turn of the century such as the Ganymede, docile servants incapable of violence and the Vajra, telepaths who formed a telepathic nation and culture beneath the notice of basics. The artificial race Peter Turner personally worked on was called the Aesir, flying, superintelligent, superstrong humanoids that withdrew to the moon to prevent competition with basics.

 

Later, he worked on the Athena project which created Gold Star, the ideal man, one of the greatest superheroes of the world.

 

Peter had no desire for his nephew to be the ideal man. He had helped create him and he found him beyond his means to help. The Aesir were frightened of their own power, and Gold Star was a neurotic mess over his own. He had thought incredible power would bring incredible liberation. But fear rested in the heart of all his creations. And how could he, a frail old man with heart problems, relate to their pain? He was as distant from the hearts of his creations as the sun.

 

He did not want the same for the son of his brother.

 

He desired only that his nephew got the education and care to become a good man, not a great man. But Allan learned about his uncle’s work. He read his notes and journal, and what he took from them was the inspiration to become another ideal man. He wanted to, in his own words, be a scientist-policeman who would use gadgetry and wits to overcome crime, which he saw as the ultimate form of the random chaos that took his parents.

 

When teenaged Allan created his first gadget, a gun he dubbed the “stasimatic” which could induce a temporary, harmless paralysis in the target by slowing bodily functions or instant death by stopping the brain, Peter knew his nephew’s path in life was set and did everything he could to encourage him. He knew he could not shake his nephew’s determination, so he resolved to be an aid for him rather than a hinderance. When Peter passed away in 1930, he left a fortune to Allan and a note–”Do what you will.”

 

And Allan did.

 

He started with the one instrument he knew he would have in any situation–himself. He became a highly skilled athlete. Wrestling, track and field, football, gymnastics, he mastered them all. Then he sought out more esoteric skills to acquire. He learned from soldiers, mercenaries, criminals–he learned everything they could teach him. He was taught swordplay by a prince of Mars, marksmanship by a descendent of an outlaw and freedom fighter from Alta California, wilderness survival by the son of the many-named jungle lord of the Mangani, and manhunting by an elderly Mickey Free. 

 

Once he had his skills, he created his lair.

 

High in the Adirondacks, he constructed the skydrome, a massive fortress partly modeled off the stone castle of Masterman. Accessible only through the sky, it was the perfect home for the Skyman.

 

Once he had his lair, he created his tools.

 

His old stasimatic needed only a few adjustments from the original model he made as a teenager. Mostly, it needed a larger power source. He anticipated superhuman opponents with bodies that would take much more force to stun. He created another weapon he called the “atomatic” which destroyed matter by creating a field of variparticles, in case he had to fight a particularly powerful superhuman. And then, to give himself mastery over the skies, he created a fleet of robot planes and a massive aircraft he dubbed the Wing from which to control them. To ensure control over the fleet would never be taken from him, he learned telepathy from the Circled Square. His robot planes didn’t listen to radio, or any form of communication that could be hijacked. They listened to his brainwaves. Such was the strength of his telepathy that he could control his entire fleet and order them to execute complex maneuvers even while he himself was occupied in combat. He also programed an artificial he named Dead Man to serve as a dead man’s switch and installed him on the Wing. Built from a copy of his brainwave patterns, Dead Man would be able to control the fleet if anything happened to Skyman.

 

Skyman claimed the sky and no one, but no one, would take the sky from him.

 

And then, will all his pieces in place–he waited. 

 

Skyman was always a patient, calculating superhero. Most of his energy was spent not in action, but in preparation.

 

He waited and watched the masked mystery men vigilantes of the 1930’s. He learned from their mistakes. He watched Gold Star, who to him was like a distant cousin, as he enforced FDR’s superhuman controls and proudly wore the blue eagle of the NRA on his chest. Gold Star would have been a terrible foe to fight, and Allan weighed his options against possibilities. Would Gold Star continue to work as FDR’s cudgel jailing superhumans? Or would his famously warm heart win out?

 

Allan got his answer in 1936 when Gold Star backed Alf Landon to a landslide presidential victory over FDR.

 

But he still waited a year just to make absolutely sure everything was optimal.

 

In 1937, Allan finally thought the time was right for Skyman to make an appearance.

 

During a cold September night, the Crime King’s forces were ferrying human cargo through the docks of Mainline City. The Crime King was an underworld supervillain whose identity constantly changed. He was powered by his “crown,” a ruby ring rumored to have once belonged to Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan, which granted him the power of all previous Crime Kings plus one. The high rate in overturn for Crime Kings is self explanatory. But regardless of who the present Crime King was, his minions, and his business, was always the same. And that night started out like any other night for the Crime King’s men.

 

Then the sky opened up.

 

There was blinding, electric light. There was the thundering sound of motors.

 

The goons saw a funnily dressed man in a blue cape and red shirt emblazoned with the golden symbol of a propeller. Above him, titanic forms cast gigantic shadows and roared like dragons choking on thunder.

 

They opened fire with cheap hand guns. A light came from above and the bullets fell. Then the light expanded, and the men started to fall one by one. They tried to flee, but other lights opened like the angry eyes of gods and blocked them in.

 

Imprisoned between pillars of light, they looked at the funnily dressed man who didn’t seem so funny anymore.

 

And when he spoke, they listened.

 

The sky was endless. The sky saw all. None could hide from the sky.

 

And the sky belonged to the Skyman.

 

Evil Beware.

 

The federal government instantly wanted Skyman unmasked and his robot fleet reverse engineered, but without Gold Star as their lapdog, they were rather helpless. They gave out the usual  veiled threats and vapid appeals to patriotism. They didn’t work. And their spying attempts invariably ended with Skyman waving at the camera. They couldn’t even find out where his skydrome was. He came from the sky, and he vanished into the sky.

 

Skyman didn’t want to share his technology. Besides being unwilling to trust a government that only recently decided to stop telling superhumans where to work and how to work, he was certain the Axis had spies in the highest reaches of government.

 

The Vril wall blitz of 1940 proved Skyman correct. Axis agents activated energy walls that crisscrossed North America. Skyman also proved judicious in hiding his identity. The ARGO facility in Nevada was wiped out by Axis agents, but not a soul disturbed the hidden skydrome.

 

Amid the panic and chaos that ensued from the Vril blitz, Skyman demonstrated the forethought and planning that would make him a legend among the superhero set. He telepathically activated fleets of robot planes hidden in hangers throughout the United States. The Axis, in an instant, pushed their lines onto American soil. But in another instant, Skyman placed agents behind their lines. His robot planes were crucial in taking back America, and once the continent was secure, the government came hat in hand to Skyman and asked if there was anything they could do to help him in his continued fight against the Axis. Skyman asked for his own air force. He got it. He could have asked for the moon and they would have given it to him, if it wasn’t already the homeland of the Aesir and Vesper.

The Skyman Air Force was, technically speaking, an organization of privateers. Skyman asked to be the undisputed commander of his air force, and he got it. Allied military leadership were allowed to be supervisors and tacticians, but the keyword here is “allowed.” Skyman and his lieutenants maintained veto powers. His lieutenant Airman in particular was known to veto commands. The Skyman Air Force developed a reputation for independence among the superhuman armies of the Allies which earned them respect, but also hatred. Some of their fellow soldiers called them the “Skyman Pirates” and hated how they could get out of cannon fodder assignments while they couldn’t. Skyman’s response was simple, direct, and if a little heartless made up for it in truth–Make your own army. Be the militia, don’t be the regulars. Copy me, reject the government.

 

Soldiers took Skyman’s words to heart. After the war, federal controlled armies of superhumans virtually ceased to exist. They were replaced by superteams, voluntary assemblages of superhumans who negotiated their own terms with the government through the Statesmen. The military became a managerial force, similar to local police officers but at a larger scale.

 

The Skyman Air Force was centered on Skyman and his telepathically controlled fleet of robot planes. These robot planes were his eyes and ears. Through coded lights and tones, they commanded forces miles away while Skyman remained inside the Wing or at the skydrome. Other forces included the Airmen, soldiers in atmosphere-producing power armor created by Drake Stevens, the first Airman, Captain Battle and his experimental force of jetpack troopers, and the Vapomen, unkillable, floating, exploding soldiers created by reverse engineering the accident that transformed Bradford Cole, another victim of the ARGO raid, into the first Vapoman.

 

Unique soldiers included the Strix, a time-displaced Roman centurion blessed by his mother, the goddess Cardea, with the ability to fly like the wind, and his sidekick Ace, a youth drafted into the war due to Congress lowering the age of enlistment specifically to make use of young superhumans. There was also Tom Kenny and Bob Sanders, who went by Tornado Tom and Twister respectively. They both developed supernatural control over the wind after surviving hurricanes. Neon the Unknown, who, as his name suggests, still holds onto an unknown identity to this day, got along well with the Skyman Air Force’s independent structure.

 

The Skyman Air Force was also known for its highly skilled fighter pilots and their unconventional (to say the least) aircraft. There was David Nelson II, who was called “Airboy” because of his youth, who piloted Birdie, a living plane that flew by flapping its wings. There was the Mighty Knight, a man clad in the armor of a knight of Charlemagne who flew on the back of a metal statue animated by the soul of the legendary tarrasque. There was the Gremlin, who rode in a bubble of light. Aces from outside the Skyman Air Force were also known to park their vehicles within the massive Wing for tune-ups. The Skyman Air Force were on great terms with the Blackhawk mercenaries and Spy Smasher had Skyman himself upgrade his transforming spy plane.

 

In 1948, the Axis learned that Skyman was the telepathic glue that held the Skyman Air Force together, and what was more, they learned about Dead Man. 

 

They waited until the Skyman Air Force was deployed and vulnerable at Nazarth before they made use of this information. Like Skyman, Axis leadership was patient. The successful Vril blitz was developed over years.

 

ARGO had recovered fully from the Nevada site raid by 1948 and began weakening the Axis by blocking German Vril adepts from accessing their extradimensional powersource. Vril adepts scrambled to find another thought-reactive power source to supplement their fading powers and believed the dragonwater of Nazarth’s worldwell was the answer.

 

Like Vril, dragonwater was powerful, chaotic, and living. When transformed into living engines of war, Vril was even called “energy dragons.” German Vril adepts could feel dragonwater with their thoughts just as they could Vril. It felt similar, and could similarly be controlled.

 

They tapped the worldwell, and as a consequence, Nazarth began to break down. The sun did not rise, the stars did not shine, and the planets did not move. Earth’s superhumans had to make the universe move. They had to physically move the frozen, cosmic machinery of the universe like the stilled parts of a silent clock. The Skyman Air Force was deployed to coordinate and defend the superhumans as they carried out their mythological labor.

 

As they pulled against the stillness of a universe, the Vril adepts grew stronger, and when they were prepared to strike, they did so decisively.

 

Five covert Vril adepts for the Wing and and Dead Man. Ten for Skyman himself. And when it was done, the great mastermind of the Skyman Air Force and the Nazarth Maintenance Project was no more.

 

Or so they thought.

 

It turned out that Skyman had infiltrated their spy network months ago. He fed them false information–like how there was only one Wing.

He allowed them to destroy a decoy Vapoman disguised as Skyman and the older, outdated Wing.

 

When the Axis tried to press their perceived advantage and take Nazarth, Skyman activated the Wing II which was kept hidden beneath a dessert. It rose, sand falling away like water, and Skyman revealed his masterstroke–he had figured out how to have the superhumans push things in such a way so that Nazarth could continue moving for just a moment like giving a wind-up toy’s key one hard pull. It allowed Nazarth to function for only a moment–but a moment was all they needed to bring down upon the Axis far, far more force than they had anticipated.

 

The Axis were crushed and driven from the worldwell, Nazarth was secured and repaired, and Skyman proved himself as one of the greatest superhero tacticians of all time.

 

The sky was no friend of evil, not even when it was an alien sky.

 

After the war, the Skyman Air Force continued as an independent force devoted to maintaining a neutral, safe airspace for all. In 1952, Skyman along with several other prominent aviators and flying superhumans drafted the Global Laws of Air Travel. The GLAT remains the Bible for flyers to this day. Every student that joins Martin’s Flight Club familiarizes themselves with the GLAT, and serious fliers like Tanya Ableman know it by heart.

 

In 1955, Skyman revealed his identity and origin to the public–not because he was retiring, far from it, but because having a secret identity served no purpose for him anymore. Skyman introduced Allan Turner…and Skyman, and Skyman, and Skyman.

 

Skyman had grown much too large to be one person. He was an ideal. He was safe skies and omnipresent force. He was as endless and undying as the sky itself.

 

Allan continues to work as a Skyman to this day, but good luck finding out which one he is

 

Though he’s sometimes been described as cold and more symbol than man (people naturally find it a little creepy how there’s so many Skymen now), Allan’s heart remains forever devoted to the idea of safe skies for all, and the same can be said of anyone that takes on the name Skyman.