The United Universe
Table of Contents
The Flash In The Pan
(Based on the comics of United Features)
It is worth noting that a universe’s hyperstatic climacteric is not when superhumans first appear. It is when superhumans cease being “background noise” in the course of human affairs and become decisive. When history becomes determined predominantly by the actions of superhumans, that is the climacteric.
Case in point–the United Universe featured a brief, meteoric surge of superhumans in the 1940’s…and then 30 years in which they were novelties, in which people ho-humed at their existence and then went on about their daily routines. It was only in the 1970’s that that fate of the world rested in superhuman hands, and only because invaders from another world forced the superhumans to be more than they ever were before.
1940 saw the rise of several superhumans throughout the United States. The first was Iron Vic, a man who could leap over buildings, outrun locomotives, and tear apart tanks with his bare hands. He was the product of science and circumstance, of intent and blind chance.
Scientists Carvel and Degnan were brilliant men who had devised what they had hoped would be a super-drug, a panacea that could cure all ills. It seemed to work on animals, but they needed a human subject.
Enter a very, very strange fate, as it does in many stories like this.
One day, they found an amnesiac man, nearly dead by the shoreline.
Only one thing could save this poor man’s life, if it could.
And it did.
The man was named Vic, because that was how the policemen referred to him when they came to ask the scientists about his condition. “How’s the vic? How’s the vic?”
Vic was alright–better than alright, in fact. He was stronger than any man was, than any man could ever be. He could lift cars over his head. He could pull up trees, roots and all.
Vic never did find out who he was. Even to this day he isn’t sure. There was a wound over his head, and his clothes were shabby. He was probably a vagrant who got in a violent altercation with another. His past probably wasn’t anything to get worked up over forgetting–especially not with the future ahead of him looking so bright.
As Vic made a name for himself as “the real-life Superman” and “the modern Hercules,” people came by claiming that they were his long-lost friends and relatives. But he had a trick that helped him defeat the liars–he told the papers that the only thing he remembered was that his name was Vic, so that when the fakers showed up, they always went “Oh, Vic, Vic, I remember you from long ago!”
Dr. Carvel suggested Vic go into engineering. With his strength, he could become a one-man construction crew. Dr. Degnan suggested Vic go into the military. He could be the perfect soldier and take the tip of the spear for his countrymen. But Vic knew exactly what he wanted to be–he wanted to be like Superman, or Captain Marvel. He wanted to be a superhero and fight supervillains.
He called himself Iron Vic, because it rolled off the tongue better than Steel Vic, and he didn’t want to be compared to Superman more than he already was. People kept asking him when he was going to fly and shoot X-rays from his eyes. Then he made himself a costume, but found bright colors looked funnier on real people than they did on cartoons. He settled for a nice suit and cape. He never wore a mask. He hated how masks felt on his face, and besides, everyone knew who he was already.
Armed with a cape and name, Iron Vic went to work as a superhero…or rather, he tried to. He tried to find bad guys to fight, but criminals didn’t exactly stand around waiting for superheroes to come around, and once he was in a city, all the gangsters stayed home until they heard he was in another city. He did manage to do some good, mostly in responding to accidents. He pulled people out from fires and up from floods. He even got to stop a bank robbery, once. But ultimately, he found that walking around looking for criminals in a costume was kind of boring. He realized that what he really was was a kind of one man fire fighter. That wasn’t a bad thing to be, but it sure left him with a lot of time on his hands, which he supposed was a good thing as it meant the world wasn’t as dangerous and violent as the comic books presented.
Dr. Carvel would die of a heart attack a few months after Vic’s empowerment, and left the matter of replicating the formula to Dr. Degnan. Dr. Degnan promised Vic that within a month there would be several Iron Vic’s all over the world. The dawn of the age of the superhuman was coming.
But three months later and there was still no replication.
Carvel had been more critical to the formulation than Degnan had anticipated.
Vic found Degnan sobbing one night in his lab and comforted the old man. He told him that maybe it was God’s decision that there would only be one iron man. Maybe a world full of Iron Vics would have led to a world war or something.
Eventually, Vic grew tired of walking the streets for a random mugger to thump over the head, so he tried his hands at another costumed profession–baseball.
He was instantly the greatest baseball player that ever lived, and he wasn’t even sure on all the rules of the game.
Players and fans at first complained. Iron Vic was completely unfair. He could blowout entire teams by himself–and did so. He was literally a one man team. But people gradually warmed up to the idea of him. He filled stands like no one else. People came from all over the world to see him “play,” to see how far he could hit a ball, to see if he would break his bat, to see if anyone could tag him out of strike him out. He became the sport of baseball–America’s pastime and America’s hero rolled into one.
Iron Vic was more lucrative a name than Walt Disney and Joe Palooka, but he donated all he made to charity. “I’m used to having nothing. I was born with nothing.” he explained. “Twice.”
Omar was a classical violinist. One night, the stars aligned and he found himself in the midst of his best performance of Vivaldi’s storm he had ever given. He would have traded his teeth for an audience then and there.
Then he noticed golden arcs of electricity running from his hands to his bow down through the strings into the wood of his violin. He could hear the wood cracking and popping.
Very shaken by the experience, he had a drink and went to bed. He awoke next morning and found blackened spots on his violin. Curios, he tried willing the electricity to spring to his fingers again–and found that it did.
History remembers Iron Vic and Menta of Triple Terror as the superheroes that were fans of comic book superheroes, but Omar was a fan himself, and in some ways, a greater fan that both of them.
Donning a black costume and mask, he became Spark Man, and set out to fight crime.
He almost became a superhero with staying power. He had the ability to tap into police band radio with his electrical powers. He could sense the presence of people by tapping into their bioelectricity. He could safely disable a suspect just by looking at them.
He could find evil, punish evil, and do it with justice.
He could be a superhero. He was even on good terms with Dallas police, who deputized him even when he refused to reveal his identity.
If what happened to him after the war didn’t happen, he very well could have been his world’s first true superhero.
The third superhuman of 1940 was Dean Adler, the Mirror Man.
Dean Adler was the head of Adler Academy, a school for those that standard schools could not reach. While reading a student’s report on Through the Looking Glass and he thought the symbolism meant, Dr. Adler was deeply moved by the young man’s progress.
When he looked at the mirror in his office, he found his reflection very strange.
In that he didn’t have one.
Then suddenly, a red cloak surrounded him. Dr. Adler screamed for help, but no one heard him.
He was invisible, intangible, and completely silent.
Finding that the cloak didn’t hurt him, Dr. Adler calmed down. He looked at the mirror again and saw his reflection–without the cloak on.
Dr. Adler touched the mirror, and was sent inside it, transported through it, to what we call the Mirror universe, a universe that connects to all mirrors in the multiverse.
He saw images floating against a red void–images of classrooms and bathrooms in his Academy.
Every image had his reflection–but without the cloak.
He went to one, and found himself back at the Academy without the cloak, but now he saw himself in every mirror with the cloak on.
Experimenting further, Dr. Adler found the rules to his new hyperstasis. He could travel through the Mirror universe by touching a mirror. When he returned to his own universe, he was invisible, intangible, and covered in a red cloak he called his “mirror skin.” While wearing his mirror skin, all his reflections lacked the mirror skin, and he could walk through the Mirror universe again to take the mirror skin off and return to normal.
Dean Adler never called himself Mirror Man. That was something the papers did, because Iron Vic and Spark Man called themselves fancy names and set a precedent for superhumans. He never considered himself a superhero. He wasn’t interested in fighting crime and had his hands full chronicling all he saw during his trips through the Mirror universe. He couldn’t take pictures or film with him. His mirror skin wouldn’t allow him to take objects with him–not even the fillings in his teeth, as he painfully learned. He had to remember everything and them transcribed his memories into notes.
Though he never intended to be a crime fighter, Dean Adler was sometimes called upon by the FBI to spy on this suspect or that suspect. As he was displaced through hyperdimensions, he legally was never trespassing, and could go where he pleased. His actions led to the arrest of several prominent gangsters, and Dean got used to testifying in court as as “professional witness.”
The Brandon brothers were childhood prodigies. As children, they were already smarter than most adults. As adults, they were some of the brightest scientists in the world. Richard specialized in electric physics, Barton in chemistry, and Bruce, the youngest, in the soft science of psychology.
Bruce always felt like the black sheep of his family. He was slightly behind his brothers in their IQ tests, which his parents attributed to him being a daydreamer less concerned about his studies than his brothers. When he told his parents he was going to major in psychology, they voiced their disapproval–which made him want to do it all the more.
Only Bruce had an idea what triggered their shared hyperstasis. One night, after feeling depressed over a paper he submitted on the psychological link between Superman and Beowulf, Menta drew himself and his brothers as superheroes, then felt a very strange feeling in his head. He later learned that his brother felt the same feeling. All three went to bed, thinking they had some kind of cold, and when they awoke–they awoke as superhumans.
Truly, it was Bruce’s power. He shared it likely because he couldn’t picture himself being beyond his brothers in any capacity.
They were faster, stronger, and more agile than anyone on Earth–anyone save Iron Vic. But while he was their superior in physical abilities, they each had something he didn’t–mental powers.
Bruce was telepathic. He could talk to minds and listen to minds. He could speak loudly, in which case he caused a person pain, or softly, in which case he lulled them to sleep. Richard could produce and disrupt electricity, though not to the extent of Spark Man. Barton could alter chemical processes–his favorite trick being to alter gunpowder so that guns couldn’t fire.
Bruce insisted with a fervor his brothers had never seen before that the three of them were destined to be superheroes. He gave them names. He was Menta, Barton was Chemix, Richard was Lectra, and together they were Triple Terror–the terror of criminals everywhere!
Barton and Richard humored their younger brother, because they had never seen him so happy before, and had often seen him sad. So they put on the costumes, and walk the streets at night with him, and sometimes they would find a disruptive drunk to escort down to the police station. Menta was happy, and their newfound popularity did bring public interest to their work–which resulted in grant money.
When the Unite States entered the second War, the Union was drafted. Iron Vic went to the army, Spark Man to the navy, the Triple Terror to the airforce as a unit of paratroopers, and Mirror Man to OSS.
They helped the war effort, though if they didn’t exist, it’s likely the war would have gone much the same way. They were gave the Allies advantages, but not decisively advantages.
Iron Vic was a combat machine. Artillery shells winded him, but machine guns did nothing to his body, they hit against him like raindrops. And he was an incredible source of moral. Infantrymen felt they were nearly invincible with him at their side. But someone up the chain of command crunched the numbers and determined that the place Iron Vic would be not at the front lines, but with the core of engineers. It seemed that Carvel and Degnan were both right and wrong.
Vic didn’t like moving back from the action, but after he went through training, he could fabricate structures with his bare hands in minutes which would have taken entire teams hours. He guaranteed that the line would not be pushed back an inch.
How Vic was treated by the military was very different from how they treated Spark Man.
While they knew Spark Man could shield himself from bullets, they weren’t sure about bombs and artillery, nor were they willing to risk Spark Man in finding out. But it couldn’t be denied that he was an incredibly powerful unit. He could flash fry an entire platoon in a blink of an eye, and his electricity arced through metal. Tank teams were not protected by their armor, which cooked them once it was super-heated. But as powerful as he was, it was feared that one good shot could kill Spark Man, so the navy was very, very careful with how he was deployed.
Spark Man was best used in defending islands in the Pacific. An invasion fleet were simply crawfish in a pot to him. He touched the water, and electricity would arc over boiling miles of ocean. PT boats, battleships, carries, anything that got too close would be effected. Men perished simply from the incredible amount of steam Spark Man generated, let alone the currents. So notorious was Spark Man’s reputation against amphibious units that it inspired some of the bloodiest, most desperate combat of the war. Japanese troops knew that if they retreated to the surf they were as good as dead, so they fought tooth and nail to the last man to avoid the wrath of the “raiju.”
Spark Man was also responsible for winning the battle of Midway. Inside a small, one-person submersible powered by his own electricity, he swam under the Japanese fleet and lit them up, causing heavy casualties and forcing the Japanese to make a critical mistake–they spread their forces thin to avoid Spark Man’s attacks, which left them open to be picked off by conventional forces.
Mirror Man, on paper, was the ideal spy. He was invisible, unkillable, and could walk through walls, but as OSS learned, he was far from the perfect spy.
First, he had to be trained, and his training took several months. Dean Adler knew nothing about the geography of Europe or the German language. He also had to be instructed in mnemonic, as his memory would be all he had. He couldn’t so much as take a pen and paper with him. Once he was up to standards, he then had to, more or less, walk to Berlin. This took considerable time, even with his ability to travel through mirrors. It was one thing for him to navigate around the mirrors of New York City. As soon as he got out of a shard of glass, he could check a street sign and know exactly where he was and whether he was closer or further to his destination. But in Europe, when he got out of a piece of glass, he would have no idea what the street signs meant, and he, of course, couldn’t simply ask for directions.
When he was finally deployed, it took him a long time to find where Hitler and his friends were, and then he had to wait, and wait, and wait until they had their meeting, and then he had to listen and try to pick out the important details, and then he had to decide whether or not to risk waiting for more information or to head back home.
He never forgot the look on his immediate superior when he returned to base for the first time. He said nothing, but Dean Adler could tell by his expression what he wanted to say: “That’s it?”
Mirror Man would spy on German high command again, and again, and again, but what he uncovered really was no more useful than what the Allied intelligence network could glean. Here and there he overheard pertinent information, but by the time he returned the information would already be dated. No one cares about battle plans after the battle is fought.
The potential of Mirror Man as an assassin was discussed, but ultimately decided against. Mirror Man could not carry weapons in the folds of his mirror skin, and frankly, no one trusted someone as scrawny as Mirror Man with being able to kill targets with his bare hands.
His best use, no doubt, was in frightening Hitler and stoking his paranoia. Though Mirror Man was given explicit instruction never to drop his intangibility, he couldn’t resist doing to to mess with German high command. He smashed mirrors, made strange noises, moved objects around, and generally acted like a ghost. Hitler, who was already paranoid due to several assassination attempts, came to believe that his closest confidants were plotting to drive him mad so he could be removed from command and purged several high-ranking Nazi officials as a result. But Mirror Man’s actions ultimately acerbated a flaw in Hitler’s character that was already present, though the comedy film made about his exploits a decade later, Heil Reltih, was a classic.
Out of all the Union, Dead Adler felt as if he had fallen shortest from the mark. There so much promise in being an invisible, intangible man, and the military has spent so much time and effort in trying to make him work, and he produced so little.
That he felt useless when he could do so much likely contributed to what he would do after the war.
The Triple Terror were deployed as paratroopers in Europe in a controversial move. Many military analysts felt they would have been of better use back home in laboratories designing new weapons, Lectra and Chemix included. But others felt that a highly mobile team that could hypnotize guards, explode their guns, and short out their radios could be excellent saboteurs–and there were rumors that industrial interests were interested in seeing if Triple Terror, which had churned out so many patents, could make it home from Europe.
Menta, of course, was crazy about the idea of going to Europe. He saw it as a huge adventure. He saw it as his chance to play Captain America. Eventually, he was able to bring them around to his point of view…by subtly pushing them with his mental power, a secret he would carry for the rest of his life, a secret he would deny so fervently that he almost believed he never did it.
For awhile, Triple Terror were effective–highly effective. The guards were all asleep, their guns never worked, and they could never call for help. It really did, for awhile, seem like one of Menta’s comic books. Lectra and Chemix even started to catch their brother’s spirit. They would tie up the guards and leave them painted like clowns. They would leave TT graffiti and killroys on the walls.
Then Lectra developed a bad chest cold that developed to full-on pneumonia. He could barely move.
Superhumans got sick just like humans.
Chemix and Menta had to tote their brother around while doing their best to make it back to Allied territory. They were tired and unfocused, which impacted their powers. When a patrol found them, Chemix was too slow to stop their guns and was wounded.
Menta had to bring his brothers, who were quickly expiring, back home from what he thought would be a fun romp through Europe.
Somehow, he did it.
He himself doesn’t know how. He can’t remember. But the miracle was likely due to the incredible stress of the situation forcing his powers to manifest in strange new ways.
Documents that weren’t unsealed until 2010 revealed that Menta and his brothers were dropped off by a German supply truck, it’s pilot a young infantryman with a mile-long stare.
The German drove up to a US base, parked the car, got out of the vehicle and knelt on the ground. He produced his luger, put it in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.
Triple Terror were found asleep in the back of the truck. They were covered in blood, but the only injuries were the bullet holes in Chemix. There was also traces of blood on the wheels and windshield of the vehicle.
OSS recommended that details of the incident never be revealed to Menta, and they never were. The topic of assassination was raised, but it was deemed too dangerous. Silence was ruled the best option.
World War 3 was ultimately ended by humans, not superhumans.
On May 8th, 1945, VE day was declared, and it was due to the Soviets taking Berlin. VJ day followed on September 2nd, and it was due to atomic weapons.
Bugs Bunny had a cartoon where he helped Spark Man blast the Japs in the Pacific and Popeye one where he helped Iron Vic steamroll Nazis, but the Union knew that the war couldn’t have been won without men and could have been won without cartoons or superhumans.
And…that was that.
The Union dissolved, officially, though it more or less ceased to be as soon as its members were assigned to their posts.
Though the superheroes still had history to make.
After The War
Iron Vic went back to baseball, and then when the novelty of being the world’s best baseball player wore off, be became the world’s best basketball player, then wrestler, then track and field star, and on, and on, and on, until he became “the man who conquered sports.” He was one of the most popular men in the world. He shook the hands of world leaders. He had action figures, and movies, and had more money than he knew what to do with, and more women than he knew what to do with, and he had so many houses, and cars, and people that spoke languages he didn’t even know existed had his name on their lips.
Iron Vic. He was as well-known as Jesus.
But as the decades wore on and he didn’t seem to age a day, he started to worry. Because the world was changing around him, and he was not.
They couldn’t duplicate the formula. They couldn’t even figure out how it worked. They poked and prodded and kept gallons of his bodily fluid frozen in laboratories around the world, but they couldn’t make another Iron Vic.
He realized that he would be 40 years old and not look a day over 25. Then 50, then 60, then 70….
He never thought he would live forever, and now that it seemed that he would, what would he do? More sports? More games? They were games and spectacle. They always had been for him. They were easy, as rewarding to him as a normal man outperforming children.
What was he without the strength? What was Vic without the Iron?
He knew the answer: a nameless body, a wastrel, a useless hobo that would have died face down in his own vomit back there in the surf if not for dumb luck.
That was Vic.
He was a useless man of average intelligence and he realized he was going to be a useless man of average intelligence for a long, long time. Maybe even forever.
Vic retired from the public spotlight and became a recluse, alternating between his many mansions, burning through his savings. He never married. He attended the funerals of a handful of men he knew from the service, and of course, Dr. Degnan.
He figured that something out there could kill him. He seemed to need to breathe. He at least felt like he needed to breathe. Maybe if he jumped into a volcano or had the government test a hydrogen bomb on him, he could die–but he refused to go out that way. He fought down his death urge whenever it welled up within him.
He thought it would be horrible for the most popular, most beloved man on Earth to die that way. What did that say about the human race?
He knew he couldn’t die, but he didn’t know how to live, and so he waited. He waited, entombed by Xanadus-full of priceless, meaningless things he bought just to buy things. He waited for something, but could never put a name to that something.
Omar Kavak stayed in the military where he believed he could do the most good with his powers. Everyone said the war was over, but he knew that with the USSR growing in power and scope every day that the United State’s need for soldiers was just beginning. He was recruited from the navy into the burgeoning CIA in 1947 where he was made a “secret agent.”
The documents he didn’t get to see called him an assassin. They made sure he never saw these.
They were very careful about what Omar saw and didn’t saw. They knew he had never gotten over his desire to be a superhero, to fight for truth, justice, and the American way.
The CIA however, were not concerned with truth, justice, and the American way. They were interested in the grand chessboard, and on this chessboard Omar was a queen but not a king.
He learned how to do all kinds of tricks with his electricity fighting the Japanese. He could send electricity through walls and floors. He could make a man’s heart stop just by looking at him. Electricity would flow down his body to his feet, out through the ground, and snake its way to the target.
And it looked so much like a heart attack when it happened.
The CIA sent Omar where they wanted him to go and gave him the names and faces of those that had to die for the sake of democracy. Omar didn’t question his assignments at first. Military men, spies, traitors, subversives, all were as much fair game as the Japs he fried to a crisp inside their battleships. But little by little, he noticed that his assignments grew in strangeness.
He was killing elected representatives. Sure, they were communists, sure, they were aligning their nation with the Reds, but they were elected. They were what their people wanted. Wasn’t that freedom? Wasn’t that democracy? Then he was killing Americans, on American soil, and that he could not abide.
By the late 50’s, he had enough, and went AWOL, leaving behind a note–Don’t chase me.
The CIA did, of course, and what was more they threatened to “withdraw their protection” from his mother.
Omar responded by frying Allen Dulles until he was a cinder.
He left another message–“When she dies, you all die.”
Ms. Kavak was given the best care from that point forward and the CIA declared the live wire off-limits.
The Triple Terror went back to their respective fields. Barton became a pioneer in the field of plastics. Richard advanced the world’s communications technology so that by the late 50’s most of the world was connected via a “wirenet.” Bruce became a psychologist, but he never achieved the success of his brothers, and lamented that the day of the superhero had come and went. He truly believed that the Union was the way of the future, that brightly costumed demigods would inspire humanity like never before. It was his dream, and now that he was awake, he was miserable in his inadequacy.
Dean Alder lived by far he most colorful life out of all the members of the Union. He explored the worlds beyond the mirror and reported of all that he experienced. He reported of worlds make of diamonds whose people were lights that passed between countries embedded in the facets, of shadows that stretched between stars and sang hymns to nameless gods, of countless things which he described in his books to the best of his ability, and wept because he knew his ability was not nearly enough to capture what he saw.
Though mankind only had his word of what he saw beyond the mirror, they believed him. Why wouldn’t they? He could turn invisible and intangible, the fact he had powers wasn’t in question, the fact that the Mirror Universe was real wasn’t in question. People trusted what the Mirror Man said.
That trust provided a temptation Mirror Man could not resist.
He realized that he could say anything about the Mirror Universe, and people would just have to take his word for it. He could say he met Alice and Dorothy and people would believe him.
He tested what he could get away with. He wrote that he saw a world in the Mirror Universe die before his eyes. Fantastic weapons deployed by two sides in a great war turned an entire planet to dust.
They believed him. They had him stand before crowds and tell the story. They had him stand before the UN and tell his story. Everyone said the story was thawing Cold War tensions. Everyone said it was just the thing people needed to hear.
That emboldened him to try harder, and lie bigger.
He reported that there were monsters behind the mirror.
And there were, just none that he was aware of.
He said that he saw these monsters, these hideous, bulbous, gigantic creatures, creep through other mirrors into other realities and that they brought death with them, horrible death.
Mirror Man expected his story of mirror monsters would usher in a new age of peace as mankind united against the aliens.
Instead, it nearly caused WW3.
People panicked on both sides of the Cold War. Hawkish politicians, kept to the outskirts of both political systems, suddenly gained power. They agreed that the world had to unite. In fact, they believed it was so important for the world to unite and for everyone to get on the same page regarding what to do about the mirror monsters that they pushed for open warfare.
It was better to rip off the band-aid, they thought. Sure, the world would have some recovery to do, but the one-nation Earth that would emerge from the ashes would be ready to meet the alien threat.
Omar explained it best to the Mirror Man:
“The problem with the world today is that we have two sides dividing the world between them. But these two sides communicate, and negotiate, and in the end they share quite a few values in common. To this balance, you added an enemy that can not be communicated with, negotiated with, or even properly understood. How could what you have done cause anything but confusion and chaos?”
Mirror Man had no choice but to go in front of the world and admit that he had lied. To say that he was disgraced and shamed above and beyond any liar in history would be putting it mildly. People wanted him arrested and brought up on charges. People wanted to see him shot.
Hurt and confused, the Mirror Man left to a secret laboratory and spent his days recording all the wonders he saw behind the mirror–wonders that he could never again share, because no one would ever again believe him.
The 1976 Mirror Invasion
In another universe, a universe where superheroes waged war against threats terrestrial and otherworldly, a universe where superheroes did change the world and changed it for the better, a scientist named Spirit Malcolm discovered the Mirror Universe just as Dean Alder did in this world. He was able to draw energy from the Mirror Universe just as Dean was able to with his mirror skin, but his energy was much more concentrated and potent. He called this energy “mistodine rays” and used them to not only turn intangible like Dean, but to turn intangible at will. He didn’t need to walk into and out of the Mirror Universe. he only needed the mistodine emitter on his belt. What was more, he discovered how to interact physically with objects even while incorporeal. He was invincible and invisible all while being able to pick things up.
Calling himself the Spirit Man, for his powers made him like a ghost, he fought crime as a superhero. He wasn’t alone. His world teemed with superheroes. His world was the kind of world Menta dreamed of. Spirit Man fought alongside the Daredevil, Captain Battle, and many others.
But there was a dark side to their colorful world.
With superheroes came supervillains.
One such supervillain was a strange man named Mr. Crime.
He had the devil’s face in all its cartoonish quality. His nose and chin were long. His eyes were pitch black. His ears were pointed. His skin was a ghostly white and his clawed hands protruded from beneath a sheet the exact same color and tone.
He wore a hat that had CRIME written on it.
He seemed like a caricature from a political cartoon brought to life. He was ridiculous. But he was pure evil.
He was simply how evil appeared in this bright, vibrant world. In other worlds, he appeared as as beloved politician, a seemingly honest scientist whose adorable stutter hid a cold heart, a formless monster, an entity inside a suit of armor carved from a starless sky, but here, in this world where peopled called themselves Crime Buster and fought Nazis that proudly displayed their inhumanity for all the world to see, he was Mr. Crime, and he wore a hat with CRIME labeled on it.
And Mr. Crime thought it would be great fun to use Spirit Man’s mistodine rays to create mirror version of Spirit Man and his superhero friends.
After capturing Spirit Man and getting his clawed hands on the mistodine, Mr. Crime created a truly strange group of beings. The superheroes of Dr. Malcolm’s world were always very colorful and eccentric, but Mr. Crime’s fun house mirror distortions were even more bizarre. They sought to do crime for the sake of crime and evil for the sake of evil.
They were The Daring Angel, an Australian Aboriginal raised by American gangsters and armed with circular “halo” chakram, Law Breaker, a college-aged young man who vowed to break all laws from the smallest infraction to the greatest federal offense, Dayster, a man who vowed to share his blindness with all of humanity with the use of light-based powers and weaponry which inflicted irreversible blindness, Tess Traitor, a woman with a compulsive need to uncover the United State’s secrets and sell them to her enemies, The Centipede, a superpowered reporter who delighted in spreading lies on and off the page, War Hawk, who was indeed his namesake in that he dressed like a giant hawk and craved war and battle at any cost, 31, who became more and more supernaturally lucky the more evil he was responsible for, Golden Blur, who committed crimes at the speed of light and was often very bored because of how easy it was for him, Lit-Ning, a Tibetan man raised by American Satanists and trained in the infernal arts, Rustic, an electrically powered backwoodsman with an ironic hatred for modern society, Mr. Morning, a dandy with the power to stop and start time as he pleased and was dedicated to fulfilling his every impulse and desire, Cursed Man, a hollow shell puppeted by a legion of demons, Berlin, a superpowered Nazi who longed to bomb London flat even years after the war, Whiteout, a strange being composed of CO2, Souless Man, Spirit Man’s counterpart who had the power to force others to become intangible and helpless, General Slaughter, a devious supergenius who’s inventions made him far more powerful than he let on, Silver Terror, a monster the Inuit called a tariaksuq, a mankiller who could turn invisible, and the Gremlin, a bloodthirsty spirit that delighted in sabotage.
They called themselves the Crime Club and devoted themselves to the destruction of their inspirations. But evil had a bad track record against good on this world, and they were defeated and imprisoned within a mirror inside of a mirror inside of a mirror and so on and so so on into infinity–and all of these mirrors were inside the Mirror Universe. Not all the demons of the Cursed Man combined with the knowledge of General Slaughter and the replicated mistodine powers of the Souless Man could get them loose.
But when they saw Dean Adler floating nearby, they knew they had found their way out.
The demons of the Cursed Man formed themselves into a screaming mass of innocent humans that begged for Dean to free them, that begged for him to shatter the mirror.
He did so.
And he knew he had made a mistake when the demons too their true forms.
He fled back to his world, but he was followed in secret by Golden Blur. The Crime Club figured that an explorer that fell for such a trick had to be from a gentle, hospitable world full of people–in short, the kind of world they wanted to abuse.
When Mirror Man saw that a small army of strangely dressed beings were about to cross out of the mirror and into his lab, he made himself invisible and hid.
From his invisible, intangible position, the Mirror Man watched the Crime Club mull about his lab, examine his notes, watch his television, and discuss among themselves how puny and defenseless his world was.
He knew that his world was in the hands of sociopaths.
The Crime Club would have conquered the world, no doubt, but their characteristic arrogance forced them to divide their forces. Many of them believed there was no challenge to conquering a world with “no real superheroes.” Others wanted to return to the world of their origin and take their revenge on the heroes that imprisoned them. Lit-Ning and the Souless Man created a worldtunnel and intended to lead the Crime Club in pursuit of more ambitious goals than the conquest of a “powerless world,” but when the topic of whether they would lose again to whatever superheroes they went up against, it led to an argument. Souless Man placed the blame for their past failures on a handful of the weaker members he believed held the rest of them back. The others, at least the ones with substantial powers, agreed.
The Crime Club left their weaklings behind. They told them that if they wanted to remain members of the club, they had better have the planet conquered by the time they returned from their multiverse raids.
The ones left behind were the Centipede, Law Breaker, Tess Traitor, 31, War Hawk, the Rustic, Berlin, and Silver Terror. General Slaughter wasn’t exiled with the rest of them, and in fact, was asked to accompany the others, for they all understood how useful he was, but he decided to stay, wishing to study the world and discover why it had so few superhumans compared to their own. He wondered if whatever dampening effect this world had on the development of superpowers couldn’t be duplicated via a weapon. It would be good if they could take over a world and ensure that it would never give rise to superhumans that could oppose them.
Dean ran to get help from his old allies. He first tried Iron Vic, but the old, fat wastrel didn’t believe him. He figured it was another of his anti-war lies. Aliens from another dimension were invading and now the Union had to reform. The next step would probably be for the world to unite.
Vic told Dean that the plan didn’t work on Outer Limits and wouldn’t work in real life, and an exasperated Dean went to see Omar, who long ago told Dean how to contact him in case of an emergency. Omar didn’t have many friends, but those he had he held onto.
Omar told Dean that he wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth, but that it ultimately didn’t matter. If they truly were supervillains straight out of a comic book, then it didn’t matter. The world was theirs. He would hide, and protect those close to him, and if he could he would make a few of them die. But if they gathered together, they would die together.
Omar told Dean two things–that he was best off turning invisible and never turning back again, and that there probably wouldn’t be much of a change once they took over. The world was already ran by supervillains.
Then he left, leaving behind the faint smell of ozone.
Dean turned to the Triple Terror and found that while Chemix and Lectra didn’t believe him, Menta did–and better still, he wanted to help.
Dean had the impression that Menta would have believed anything he said, just so long as it sounded fantastical.
Together, they made preparations against the Crime Club.
Meanwhile, the Crime Club made their presence known to the Earth by crashing a game at Yankee Stadium. War Hawk insisted on taking center stage, and none of the others dared disagree. He rose like a bloody feather duster above the crowd and announced that, as the strongest being from his world, he wanted to fight the strongest being in this world–Iron Vic. He demanded Iron Vic fight him to the death, and that every hour that went by without him showing his face would be paid for in blood. Then, to show that he was serious, he attacked the crowd. His sharp, metal wing sliced into the stands–24 lost their lives in a single wave of his arm.
It was a long time since Iron Vic had been a superhero. He thought he had forgotten how. But as he saw the people die, it came back to him like a reflex.
He remembered how to live and was no longer afraid to die.
He waddled out into the field, fat and barely fitting his old costume, but he still came to save the day or die trying.
When he saw War Hawk, he was sure he was going to die. He didn’t look real. There was something dreamlike in the way he floated in the air. He had seen lightning dance around Omar. He had seen rocks liquidate in his grip. But he had never seen anything like this.
It was a flying man.
A man was flying.
And this man was insane.
Vic could see the insanity in his eyes. They were seemed to pulse as if his eyelids could barely contain them. There was streak of blood on his face. He had licked his wing.
And then he swooped at him.
By being a copy of the superhero War Eagle, War Hawk had the experience of a lifetime of fighting other superhumans.
Vic had never fought another superhuman in his life.
It was not a fight. It was not even a last stand. It was a slaughter as one sided as a butcher against a hog. War Eagle pounded and sliced Vic until he was a red mess, until his blood splashed the stands in thick ribbons, until he could no longer hear the screams and unconsciousness took him away from the pain that was everywhere.
Vic would have died there if a bolt of lightning didn’t knock War Eagle from his body.
Spark Man had appeared, and he wore his costume too, because he was was sure he was going to die, and he wanted to die as the man he wished he was.
War Eagle smiled as lightning danced between his teeth.
General Slaughter dropped the invisibility screen to show all the other members of the Crime Club.
General Slaughter asked Omar who he was.
Omar replied that he was enough to kill one, maybe two of them.
Then, with a smile, he added that he was Spark Man, the bolt of justice.
And if he died then, he would have died happy.
It was 1 against 9.
But then, it was 100 against 9.
The Mirror Man and Menta had arrived, and that had discovered something which gave the Union a prayer–an illusion casting device which when attached to Mirror Man’s mirror skin projected life-like images of anything he thought.
He thought comic books.
He thought of Blue Beetle, and the Black Terror, and Captain Marvel, and on, and on, and on.
Caught up in the moment, the Crime Club didn’t dare disbelieve the illusions. They knew superheroes were real. They were created in their mirror image. They knew superheroes arrived in the nick of time to defeat their like. It was the way of things. It would have been crazy to disbelieve.
Of course, these were only illusions and could not hurt the Crime Club, but hidden beneath the wave of superheroes, Menta struck, cracking jaws left and right.
And he found himself joined by his brothers.
Triple Threat was back in action, and those their fists couldn’t hurt were harmed by the lightning of Spark Man.
The Crime Club retreated.
The people cheered.
And they cheered even louder when Menta announced that Iron Vic was miraculously alive–or perhaps not so miraculously. As Spark Man observed, the formula that originally empowered him brought him back from the brink of death. Apparently, unless Iron Vic was put firmly on the other side, he wouldn’t stay there.
Iron Vic recovered from his wounds in a week, and the Union, now reformed, took the offensive against the Crime Club.
If the Crime Club had kept together, they might have been able to mount a counterattack. But their idiosyncrasies and complete confidence that any one of them could kill the entire Union now that they knew the multitude of superheroes were only illusory led them to splinter off.
Law Breaker was the Union’s first target. Using psychological profiling, Menta determined that they could turn him. Unlike the others, he seemed to have a moral code–a strange one to be sure based on breaking laws, but a code nonetheless. What was illegal was not just allowable, but mandatory. If they could convinced Lawbreaker that what was good was illegal and what was evil as legal, they wouldn’t have to fight him at all.
They baited Law Breaker by publicly challenging him to break an unbreakable law. The young clone couldn’t resist finding out what this unbreakable law was an accepted, but when he arrived at the meeting place, instead of finding superheroes waiting for him, he found Dr. Bruce Brandon asking him to lie down on a couch.
Menta spent the afternoon conversing with Law Breaker. Their conversation started with the topic of what was a law. The Law Breaker always assumed that good people obeyed laws and evil people disobeyed laws and because he had to break laws it meant he had to be a bad person. Menta explained that good people often broke the law. His friend Omar broke many, many laws, but he was still a good person. America was founded by men that broke the laws of their country.
Menta explained to Law Breaker that if he didn’t have to be bad to break the law. That gave something for Law Breaker to mull over, and he opened up to Menta. He said he was concerned about something none of the other Crime Club members were–that they were all only a few weeks old.
They knew things. They knew how to talk, that water was wet, that good and evil were opposites. Some of them even had memories, thought they couldn’t have been of actual events. Dayster remembered being blinded. But he was always blind. That bothered Law Breaker. They were risking their lives in fighting superheroes. Yet they were doing it when they knew so little, experienced so little.
Menta told Law Breaker it bothered him too and suggested that he withdraw from his allies and the conflict and take the time to learn all he could about the world and his place in it.
Law Breaker agreed, and left to find understanding.
He wouldn’t be seen again until 1990.
The Rustic was next, and he was surprisingly easy. Menta envisioned Lectra and Spark Man working together to drain his electricity in a battle he likened to Thor vs Zeus. But really, it was far more simple than that.
Spark Man revealed something he learned while under the CIA’s thumb–how to use his powers to track bio-electric energy. The Rustic thought himself a woodsman. It was likely he set up some sort of base in one of New York’s state forests. Spark Man scanned the countryside for peculiar bio-electric readings, such as that which would come from an electrically powered superhuman, and located him within Five Streams.
Menta thought they were all going to jump him and have a big battle in the woods. Spark Man laughed when he heard Menta describe the battle he thought was going to happen.
He called in an airstrike five minutes ago.
The military was not playing around with these invaders from behind the mirror.
The Union didn’t have to fight Tess Traitor or Berlin. Tess was busted by the CIA after she tried to sell secrets to the KGB. Wanting nothing to do with a supervillainess from another world, the KGB turned her over to the CIA, who later claimed that she killed herself in her cell. In reality, they recruited her, carefully manipulating who she interacted with to make her think she was working with the Soviets the whole time. She was a moderately effective spy, though her fervor for being a traitor made many contacts uncomfortable. “That’s right comrade! Death to America! Even Judas and Brutus would have to admit that I, Tess Traitor, am the traitor supreme!”
She perished in the mid-east in the 1980’s. No one was sure whether enemy or ally pulled the trigger on her.
Berlin was killed by GSG-9 after he invaded the Bundestag and called for the reinstatement of the Nazi party. Though he was an enhancile, he still had to breath, and a gas bomb followed by a diamond tipped industrial drill to the cranium finished him.
Centipede, fearing that he didn’t have long, tried to parlay with the US federal government. He didn’t offer his powers, but he did offer his services as a very, very skilled liar.
He’s traded between three-letter-agencies as a “psychological consultant” to this day.
Taking advantage of War Hawk’s love for battle, Iron Vic called him out for a rematch at Yankee Stadium, its sands still black with his blood. War Hawk accepted, and looked forward to pounding the doughy strong man again, but he was ambushed by the rest of the Union when he arrived.
It wasn’t his powers that the other members of the Crime Club hated, it was how easy it was to trick him.
Spark Man, boosted by Lectra, sent a mythological amount of electricity through his body, seizing up his muscles, making him falter and stumble. Chemix turned his blood into poison. Menta slowed down his nervous system.
War Hawk was helpless.
But Iron Vic refused to strike him. He could smell his own dried blood. He remembered War Hawk putting him in the hospital. He froze.
But Menta reached out to him, and guided him to move his muscles and tighten his hands around his weapon.
When War Hawk called Iron Vic a coward, he responded “You wanted a war. This is war.”
Then he beat him to death with a tungsten bat.
General Slaughter then arrived with the Silver Terror flashing ominously around him. But the General wasn’t there to fight. He wanted to have a nice, peaceful discussion with the Union and told them to meet him at, of all places, the White House.
As LBJ quivered from a bunker, General Slaughter explained his position to the Union. He wanted to be America’s best ally. He could help them establish everlasting, consolidated power over the Earth. He knew how to manufacture weapons that made the hydrogen bomb look like a sparkler. He knew how to manufacture weapons that could blot out suns. There were differences in the laws of physics between his world and theirs which negatively impacted his manufacturing potential, but he could still make weapons that would grant the US total dominion over the world. He was willing to do this just for a guarantee of safety.
Furthermore, he believed it was in their best interest. 31 had split from his group, and he believed he had been claimed by the KGB who wished to supercharge his luck powers by making him legally responsible for every evil they had committed.
The Union decided, all six of them together, that they would rather die than live in a world where a guy that called himself General Slaughter had any sort of power and authority.
Omar struck the first blow, blasting General Slaughter through the walls of the White House.
As Spark Man and General Slaughter battled on the lawn, Silver Savage went for the others. Invisible hands tore at Lectra, wounding him and putting him out of the fight. Iron Vic swung widely, and by chance clubbed the creature whose roar echoed throughout Washington.
It turned his attention on Vic, who was overwhelmed by its invisible savagery. He kept his arms up, letting them be sliced to ribbons to protect his vulnerable stomach. But Menta reached out and linked Vic’s mind to his own and Chemix’s. Whatever process, natural or supernatural, made the monster invisible also produced a chemical byproduct. Vic could taste it in the air around him. It tasted like rust and old batteries. Chemix detected this chemical cloud. He telepathed the location to Menta, who telepathed it to Vic.
Many things can be said about Iron Vic. Many things can be said about how he was a man dwarfed by his image. In the film adaptations that his world would create about the war between the Union and Crime Club, his gut was smaller, his wounds were slighter, and he was never, ever afraid. But in that battle, he was all his reputation promised he was. He was Beowulf against Grendel, he was Hercules against the hydra. He swung his tungsten club at the air as if it were Excalibur and when he hit and heard the monster scream his heart leapt.
This was how his life was always supposed to be. And he was sorry that it was only for an instant.
With the Silver Sage dead, the Union went to assist Spark Man outside and found him tethered by his lightning to General Slaughter.
With a burst of energy like a rocket taking off, the tether broke, and Spark Man collapsed to the ground.
With a wide, evil smile, General Slaughter explained what had happened. He had used an energy converter to absorb Spark Man’s electricity.
Not all of his wacky sci-fi gadgets worked in this world, but that one did. Electricity seemed to work about the same across the multiverse.
General Slaughter lashed the lightning that was now his own at the Union. Vic threw himself in front of his friends and was brought to his knees. It was clear he was going to die soon, and then after him, the rest of the Union.
That was when Mirror Man tried something he often thought about but never dared try.
He overlapped his intangible form with General Slaughter and then willed himself to turn tangible.
He had no idea what would happen. It was a move born of desperation. He thought, maybe, it would kill them both, fusing their bodies together in a mess of flesh. Maybe it would have caused an explosion as their atoms overlapped.
But what actually happened was that he survived and General Slaughter was displaced over the Mirror Universe–in pieces.
Spark Man and Lectra would make full recoveries. LBJ hailed them as heroes and quietly ordered a full pardon for Spark Man–not that he was going to accept it.
Afterwards, the Union learned what actually happened to 31 through Omar, who beat it out of a few old CIA “friends.”
31 wasn’t picked up by the KGB. He was picked up by the CIA who had him sign a stack of documents making him liable and responsible for every single dirty deed they had done. They believed that this would empower 31 and grant them a tool they could use to defeat the Soviets. What it actually did was make 31 so incredibly lucky that he was spirited away by a freak miracle. A worldtunnel opened up and sucked him out of the universe, depositing him in a world far, far away, a world where he didn’t have to worry about being the last supervillain standing or about the other Crime Club members finding out that he had betrayed them.
The Supervillains Of 1980
Menta was never happier in his life than after the defeat of the Crime Club.
He and his friends were finally superheroes. This wasn’t like the war where evil was defeated by evil. This wasn’t like Japan, who was defeated by firebomb warcrimes and weapons that inspired existential terror in the world. This wasn’t like Germany, who was defeated by the greater evil of the Soviets. This was a true story of good triumphing over evil, of superheroes defeating supervillains.
Menta didn’t know exactly how the world would change after their victory, but he was sure that the world would change.
But it didn’t.
There was still a USSR, and a Cold War, and unchecked government powers, and nuclear weapons.
And Menta’s emotions fell. They plummeted, and the height of his feelings previously added to the pain he felt when they hit the bottom.
Then something very strange happened.
Supervillains began appearing again.
The world held its breath. But these weren’t like the Crime Club. Though just as strange and abnormal in their thinking, they were strangely very easy to deal with. Dr. Thunderbolt turned into a cloud and vanished at the first sign of trouble. The Mirage would give up after a single punch, though it would turn out that it was only a duplicate that was in jail. The Brute was strong, but ran away like a coward as soon as Iron Vic swung at him.
One night, Vic paid Menta an unannounced visit. He had a hunch he knew the reason for the new wave of supervillains. He found Menta at work on the old illusion device he and Mirror Man used to fool the Crime Club back in 1976. Menta said he was hopeful that with a few more adjustments and improvements that it would become useable without Mirror Man’s mirror skin. He planned to give it to someone worthy, someone that could become a sidekick to him. He always wanted a sidekick, like Batman or Captain America. And with all the supervillains coming out of the woodwork, the Union needed another member.
Then Vic found the drawings.
And at first Menta tried to pass them off as drawings of their new “rouges gallery,” which he planned to hang up in their base, as soon as they had a base. But then Vic found drawings of new supervillians, supervillains that hadn’t appeared yet.
Vic figured it out. It wasn’t that Menta was trying to make the illusion device cast illusions without the mirror skin. He had already figured out how to do it, probably months ago.
Vic looked his old friend in the eye and asked him to be honest.
Menta pleaded that it was impossible for the supervillains to be illusions. Vic himself had touched them, he felt them. They were no illusions.
Vic countered by pointing out that touch was a sensation, and sensations were products of the mind.
Menta could have made them feel real.
Realizing he was caught, Menta begged Vic on his knees not to tell anyone about what he was doing. It was fun, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it fun to fight supervillains? Didn’t it make people feel good to see the good guys beat the bad guys? What was wrong with it? What was wrong with a lie that didn’t hurt anyone? The whole world was flooded with lies, lies that actually did hurt people. Why break this lie?
Vic told Menta that he absolutely was going to tell everyone the truth about the supervillains. He had lived too much of his life in frivolity, in playing stupid, meaningless games. He would not go back to doing that. He would not go back to burying his head in the sand and pretending the world as it was didn’t exist. Never again. Not even for his friend Menta.
Menta, his voice choked with tears, asked Vic to talk to him about it all in the morning. He just wanted some time alone to clear his head and have a drink.
The next morning, Vic found Menta dead in his bathroom, dead from a overdose of barbiturates, his supervillain drawings in his hands.
In his will, Mental left his comic books to Vic, and hoped that they would give him some of the happiness they brought him.
A year later, in 1981, Spirit Man discovered their world and introduced them to the multiverse community. Vic wept when he heard the news. Somewhere out there was a world for Menta, and he never got to visit it.
The Present
Iron Vic was the only member of the Union to survive to the present. Though his world has been a member of the local multiverse community since 1981, rejuvenation treatments are of no use to the people of his world. Spark Man was the first to die. He could feel death approaching in 1985 and moved out to the middle of Death Valley in case his death caused some sort of explosion. He asked Vic to check in him every so often and Vic did so dutifully.
In 1986, Vic found Omar dead during one of his routine checks. Electricity arced for miles across the badland. This created a problem. Omar’s corpse was now an endless source of perpetual energy. Every government in the world would want him.
Vic knew Omar wouldn’t have wanted his power in the hands any government, and so took it on himself to utilize Omar’s power. He began to build a city, Kavak City, in the middle of the wastes. He started with a building to house Omar’s body and harness the bleeding energy and expanded from there.
What he did violated several laws. But the government had long learned to stay out of the business of superhumans.
In 1987, Vic opened Kavak City to humanity. To avoid the city being overran, the Triple Terror crunched the numbers and pooled their resources to come up with a list of who should be allowed to immigrate and when they should immigrate. Vic thanked them, for with their guidance, Kavak City became a utopia.
Omar was right–the world was ran by supervillains. Every single city on Earth was ran by supervillains.
But not Kavak City. It was ran by a superhero.
In 1988, the Brandon brothers died, one after the other. They were buried in Kavak City, right next to the power station.
In 1989, the Mirror Man went into the Mirror universe for the last time. What became of him and his mirror skin is unknown.
In 1990, Law Breaker emerged from his long isolation to declare that he had found his purpose in life–defeating Vic and taking over Kavak City. As a creature born of mirrors and magic, he was as ageless as Vic. He was forever the evil clone of a college kid, forever a weird little being. He saw Kavak City, with its superhuman protector, as similar to the cities from his home universe. He desired to always fight Vic and always lose so he could fight Vic again, and so he play-fought with Vic throughout the decades. Vic was happy to oblige. The zero-sum games he played with Law Breaker were entertaining, if nothing else.
Only a handful of superhumans have been born since the Union. Most don’t stay in their universe. There’s an entire multiverse out there to explore, and they learned from the story of Mirror Man that superhumans weren’t trusted and from the story of Spark Man that superhumans would be used and manipulated. Was the multiverse dangerous? Certainly. The Crime Club came from the multiverse. But even the Crime Club wasn’t all bad. Law Breaker came from them. But dangerous or not, at least the multiverse wasn’t a dead-end like their universe. Still, young superhumans look at Kavak City as a kind of comforting, sleepy hometown, and often visit. They hold Vic in high regards as the first of their line.
Of note among the current generation of superhumans is the team 3X3 composed of three descendants of Triple Threat. They are Triad, Delta, and Trinity. Each has all the powers the Triple Threat possessed.
3X3 can often be found hanging around the Hero Club universe, “weird uncle Law Breaker’s” home. They find the resemblance its legendary heroes have to the Crime Club fascinatingly creepy.
(Otto’s Notes)
And to think this started with me wanting to do a nice, short, quick update to the public domain multiverse!
United Features had Iron Vic, Spark Man, and the Triple Terror, and even though there were three of them, let’s be honest, they counted as one. So that’s a grand total of 3 superheroes. United Features’ superheroes were the definition of flashes in the pan. But what struck me about them was how you could see the decay of the superhero genre through the comics. Iron Vic started as a superhero, retired to play baseball, then joined the army not as a superhero but as a regular soldier. Spark Man started as a superhero, then joined the Navy without a supername or supercostume. If the Triple Terror lasted long enough, they probably would have gone down the same path. They probably would have become a commando unit and then retired back to the world of science.
So I expanded on the idea of a superhero universe that fizzled out. Superheroes showed up, found that they really weren’t all that important in the grand scheme of things, and then faded into the background. They become novelty celebrities whose powers invited interest, speculation, adoration, but never fear and never awe.
And that was that, at least at first. The story was supposed to be very short and very somber. But I fell in love with the characters as I developed them and their sad little world and I wanted to something more for them.
I figured I could do something more with Mirror Man because I long had the idea of all the different kinds of mirror-realities and Through the Looking Glass references were all different sections of the same reality, and what better to shake up a sleepy, low-powered Earth than something from the multiverse? I also long had the idea of evil versions of public domain superheroes, because there’s a dearth of public domain supervillains, especially memorable ones. You got the Claw, Iron Jaw, and that’s pretty much it. Expect the Crime Club to show up in other universes simply so I can give their heroes something to fight.
So I was going to have the old members of the Union go up against supervillains from the multiverse, and I decided these were going to be very comicbooky supervillains, so comicbooky they would seem insane and in some ways kind of pitiful. I found the setup very appealing–a bunch of old, tired “men with superpowers” against an army of garish supervillains fully committed to insane comic book reasoning. It was a great underdog story, and it felt weird in a good way, like something that would have come out of the British Invasion of the 80’s/90’s. It felt like something that would have been thought of alongside Zenith and Miracleman. You got the historical, age-in-real-time aspect, the “look how silly superheroes are” aspect, the “oh my god can you even imagine how terrifying superheroes would be if they were real” aspect, and the all important “these heroes turn out to be villains in the last act” aspect.
I didn’t intend for the United Features universe to end up a dark British Invasion universe, but I’m glad it ended up being that way. Not all Earths can be as lighthearted as the Xam universe. It’s about time I had something to fill that dark niche.
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