Capeworld Comics

“As of today, the totenkopf is retired. It is the symbol of the Black Terrors. I don’t care if we had it first. I don’t care if the bones being behind the skull makes it a different image. It is their symbol and I am tired of seeing it.”

–Heinrich Himmler, 1942 letter to Sepp Dietrich

Throughout the decades, praise has been heaped upon Dr. Robert Benton’s terror formula. Some have gone so far as to credit it with sparking Allied resistance after the 1940 Vril wall blitzkrieg created a network of impenetrable walls and bubbles around the world. It certainly succeeded in surprising the Axis. The anti-superhuman Axis believed in the erroneous Hubert theory which stated that the early 20th century boom in hyperstasis would either stabilize or increase in quantity but not in average power. They did not anticipate that the global superhuman population would increase both naturally as a response to the psychic stress the war placed on the noosphere and artificially through Allied supersoldier programs. Such programs induced “secondary hyperstasis” through superpower-synthesized chemicals and materials–something the Axis believed was impossible.

The Axis planned for a war against a handful of gods. They did not plan for armies of skull-and-crossbone wearing titans to come leaping at their forces from beyond the horizon. Though the Allies had supersoldier forces more powerful than the Black Terrors like the lamesis-powered Liberators and more specialized like the Hydroman Navy, none could compare to the quantity and efficiency of the Black Terror Division.

And yet, if asked about the tactical success of the Black Terrors, their creator will politely nod his white-haired head and say that his formula was a failure.

It seems odd when reviewing the role the Black Terror Division had in winning the war that Dr. Benton would have such an opinion on his work. The Black Terrors were the workhorses of the US army. They were cheap to produce and cheap to equip. They used the same kinetic projector “ray rifles” and forcefields basic soldiers used and did not require the upkeep or additional equipment of other supersoldier units. They didn’t require the translite skinsuits the Hydromen wore to preserve bodily cohesion nor did they require the Liberators’ constant exposure to lamesis to maintain their powers.

They were cost effective even compared to basic troops. Because their bodies generated their own energy, they ate considerably less than basic men. Hunger was an atavistic trait managed by cheaply manufactured “terror cookies” that coated their stomachs and made them feel “full.”

Black Terrors could function in environments as extreme as the humid jungles of Gigipal and the deep-mantle seas of the Nepots ocean in just their skin. Their strength and speed, though considerably less than other supersoldiers of the Allies, was relatively uniform. Liberators and Hydromen ranged in power according to their temperament and willpower. But each and every Black Terror had about the same physical abilities. This allowed them to coordinate. They knew exactly what number of them took how long to complete a given task and this made them as efficient as clockwork. But it wasn’t just in formations and maneuvers that the Black Terrors were efficient. Every prospective Black Terror was required to pass a rigorous engineering course prior to empowerment. They could apply their strength to weld, forge, and construct with just their bare hands. They were at once a fighting force and a corps of engineers that could not only break down a kriegman while raising a base but break down a kriegman and turn its scrap into a base.

The Axis introduced the world to the concept of blitzkrieg, but the Black Terrors introduced the world to the concept of salvage warfare.

Women played a pivotal role in the Black Terror Division through salvage warfare. Though they were kept from the frontlines, their enhanced strength allowed them to rapidly reinforce battle lines. What the men won, the women secured. Female Black Terrors cleared debris, transported the wounded, set up safeguards against spies and infiltrators, rebuilt civilian structures, and improved on what the men built during combat. Hastily-assembled weaponry and barriers made out of busted warmachines were rebuilt into fortifications strong enough to withstand any counterattack. It was as commander Timothy Roland observed:

“The boys build gunnests on the fly as they fight. They know exactly how to gut kriegsmanner into little huts for our basic soldiers. The girls take their time and in hours if not minutes the entire battlefield is clear of junk and you have bases, field hospitals, perimeters, comms, landing strips, artillery–everything. There’s never been a war where you can win the field and then turn it into a base. We are changing war. We’re turning the Axis into dinosaurs.”

The Black Terrors would continue to change the face of war. From salvage warfare came toolbox warfare. As the war progressed, Axis forces diversified. There was no limit to the variety of threats to come from German Vril adepts, Russian dazrazum thought-sculptors, the monstrously abstract children of Futuro, and Japanese kami. The solution was to be prepared for anything. Black Terror companies were given “portable labs” contained in backpack-like “toolboxes” carried by their sergeants. These massive containers, which were only portable by the standards of a superhuman, contained all the superpower-synthesized materials and specialized tools needed to construct whatever weaponry was needed for a given engagement. They could construct a hologram generator to confuse a platoon of oni and then convert that generator into a hardlight lance to spear a dimensionally fluid child of Futuro.

Toolbox warfare would be gradually adopted by other supersoldier groups, most notably General Jonathan Battle’s Battlers.The Battlers were perhaps the most unique fighting force of the war, but their uniqueness owes a debt to the Black Terrors. Highly individualistic and loosely organized, the Battlers presaged the formation of superteams which would gradually phase out conventional militaries after the war. The Battlers were uniform only in two respects–the first was they were selected from pools of highly skilled veterans by General Battle himself, and the second was that they wore a white star on their chest.

Each Battler fielded a “microlab” harness and backpack combination that miniaturized and personalized the Black Terror toolbox. No two Battlers had the same equipment or skills, and though this made them a nightmare for other Allied units to work with, it made them an even greater nightmare for the Axis to fight. As General Battle himself stated:

“What we did was take what the Black Terrors were already doing and pushed it to an insane degree. With the Black Terrors, the enemy never knew what a unit would bring against them. With us, the enemy never knew what a soldier would bring against them.”

The Black Terrors were not only pioneers as units, they had staying power. The stability of their powers allowed them to be improved throughout the war whereas other supersoldier programs were retired or phased out. Black Terrors had such longevity as viable military units that it wouldn’t be until the mid 1950’s that they were retired as a program in favor of more versatile and powerful Atom Men of the Warp Authority.

The first generation of Black Terrors had what the modern world would call “standard” superstrength. The second added darklight generation and manipulation through ARGO enhancements. This darklight generation allowed second generation Black Terrors to project incredible amounts of force, usually through their eyes, powerful enough to flatten a kriegman in one shot. Because of the quasi-physical nature of darklight, they were able to move and fight across supernal layers of reality. This ability was of tremendous use against all Axis units that walked the paths between worlds like the infamous energy dragons. Darklight generation also gave the Black Terrors flight and shielding which synergized with their equipped forcefields.

Darklight corrected several weaknesses of the first generation. It allowed them to function without an air supply–a vulnerability mercilessly exploited by the Japanese during the battle of Hoshi island. It also corrected the Black Terrors’ “sudden shock” weakness. Because the terror formula altered the nervous system very little compared to the muscular or skeletal system, sudden painful shocks could induce unconsciousness. With first generation Black Terrors, this weakness was managed through fireteams extending their forcefields to jostle an unconscious Black Terror awake. But with the second generation no such maneuvers were necessary.

The third generation used a new terror formula which drastically increased all physical abilities compared to previous generations. But it introduced an unforeseen problem–the third generation was too powerful to synergize with the first two. A first generation Black Terror would work with a second generation Black Terror on disassembling a kriegman and accidentally tear it apart wasting its valuable components. The extra strength was certainly a benefit–but military leaders at the time questioned whether it was worth the cost of slowing down the Black Terror Division’s famous efficiency. Slowly but surely, the three stripes which marked the third generation became a badge of infamy.“Three stripes–they’re out” was a common joke at the time.

Though sometimes overlooked by history books, there was a fourth generation of Black Terrors developed at the very end of the war. Though too late to be a factor in any decisive engagements, these Black Terrors corrected the flaw of the third with incredible muscular control tied to nervous impulses. With but a thought, a fourth generation Black Terror could limit or increase his strength to a certain “tier.” This made the fourth generation the most efficient of all as certain tasks could be assigned to different tiers of force. So useful was this tiering system that it would be adopted by the Black Terrors’ replacements, the Atom Men.

Dr. Benton’s terror formula was a singular asset to the Allied cause. The Black Terrors pioneered new strategies and influenced units contemporary and successive. They remained useful across four generations. The first time their formula was directly changed it resulted in the efficiency disaster that was the third generation. It is not for just one reason that the terror formula is widely considered one of the greatest and most influential inventions of history.

But to this day, Dr. Benton calls his terror formula a failure.

To those that ask him why he belittes his work, Dr. Benton explains himself as such:

He never meant to create his terror formula.

It happened by complete accident.

He was a pharmacist. He wanted to make medicine, a weapon..

He wanted to make a formula that would restore vigor to the elderly and strength to the infirmed. Instead, he created a formula that made strong men stronger. The hyperstatic transformation sparked by his formula was extremely painful and physically taxing. Prospective Black Terrors were subjected to the military’s most demanding physical standards. It was commonly said that they were already supermen before tasting the formula. But even with such standards in place, 2% of all nascent Black Terrors died from the transformation..

Young men in the flower of their youth took his formula and become terrors to the Axis. But that was never Dr. Benton’s goal. He wanted to bridge the gap between the weak and the strong, not widen it.

By the standards of his goal, his formula was a complete and total failure.

“Historians say that the war created a flowering of technology. We came into the war searching for the panacea and dipping our toes into astral travel and we exited the war with old age as a curable disease and the Warp Authority. But this is an inaccurate assessment Ten years of anything will advance technology. War creates demands and technology answers those demands. But peace also has demands. The difference is, the demands of war are destructive while the demands of peace are productive.

“Everything we made during the war we made to tear down Vril walls and kriegsmanner. But my formula back in 1938 wasn’t meant to tear down anything. I developed it to be a panacea for the sick and infirmed. When it proved that it could only make the strong stronger, I went back to the drawing board. Then 1940 rolled around and suddenly there was a great demand for the strong to be made stronger. I returned to my failure of a formula to make it more of a failure. I refined it into a weapon of war–the last thing I ever wanted to create.

“I wasn’t the only scientist that had to be torn from his dreams to work on what war demanded. The peaceful pursuits of our best and brightest were turned toward brute destruction. It was justified, it was necessary, but it was still brute destruction. And we should never forget that. Because imagine a world where 1940 went differently. Imagine a world where the scientists of my generation worked for the demands of peace instead of war. Imagine a world of universal plasma in 1941, cellular freezing in 1943, and neural plague cleansers in 1945. That could have been our world. And I ask you–how many more would be with us today if that was our world?

“What I wish above all to impart to you children is this–war is a failure that taints scientific ventures. Was my terror formula a martial success? Undoubtedly. But war itself is a failure of peace, and advancements in war are but shadows of what they could have been under peace.”

–Dr. Robert Benton, Statesmen Educational Expansion lecture 2020