Legion World Forums LEGION OUTPOST Bits o' Legionnaire Business Klar Ken T5477’s Miscellanous Musings

Origins: A New “Inferior Five"

It seems unreasonable to believe that the Inferior Five, as such, could exist in the current dystopic DCFU. However, perhaps the individual characters themselves do exist, in new forms, with altered histories.

As their parents were extant during the 1940’s, the original Inferior Five would was extant beginning in 1968, this means they all would have been born in between 1945 - 1950, making the Five all in their late sixties by now: old enough to have their own super-heroic (or super-villainous) children (or grandchildren).

Myron Victor (formerly Merryman)
Olympic-class athletes and academic superstars, Byron and Elizabeth (Libby) Victor became an inspiration to the American military forces during World War II as Mister America and Miss Liberty. Traveling with USO shows, they engaged in “black ops” missions against the enemy after the curtain had fallen. In a twist on the heroic secret identity, it was Mister America and Miss Liberty, the entertainers, which were the couples cover and “secret identities”. By night, they donned camouflage or black bodysuits to carry out missions that no one else could accomplish. While many of their exploits were never cataloged even in the military’s own files, it is known that, like several others, they came very close to assassinating Adolph Hitler.
There son, Myron inherited their intellect and access to wealth, but none of their physical prowess or love of adventure. Originally establishing himself as a cartoonist, he used his inheritance to eventually create the multi-media giant Vixar.

Herman Cramer (formerly The Blimp)
Leslie Cramer was a chemist working in a munitions plant in England during World War II. The British equivalent of 4F, and unfit for the military, he did his best to assist in the war effort. When a sample of Captain Nazi’s "flight gas" was captured, Leslie was among those tasked with analyzing and replicating it. While they ultimately failed, exposure to the fumes granted Leslie temporary super-speed and flight powers, and he fought in last months of the War as Captain Speed. He had a very brief career as a crimefighter in Britain before the serum’s effects faded away. His son, Herman, however, was born with anti-gravity abilities, and was able to fly at speeds up to one or two miles per hour. Inspired by his fathers’ limited heroic career, he became a firefighter. Because, while the ability to fly at 100 feet per minute may be unimpressive in a horizontal direction, it is incredibly useful if you are going straight up: with a water hose, or to rescue an endangered civilian.

Athena Tremor (formerly Dumb Bunny)
Her story needs very little alteration, from the retconned version which appeared in the nineties. Daughter of an “underground Amazon” known as “Princess Power”, and Professor Theo O’Day, she is the half-sister Angel O’Day, who runs a detective agency with the Gorilla City super-ape, Sam Simeon. Athena is the muscle of the outfit, while Angel is the brains.
She of all the five has not aged, and still appears to be a young woman in her twenties. By 2015, Angel is in her sixties, and Sam is long gone. (Sam was one identified as the grandson of Grodd, but in this chronology, that does not quite work out.)

Leander Brent (formerly Awkwardman)
Created during the First World War, the Russian agent known only as The Steel Wolf had powers of super-strength and invulnerability. A brief affair with an American nurse, Nelllie Brent, led to the birth of Bob Brent, who inherited all his father’s abilities. Bob fought in Second World War as Mister Might, alongside the Atlantean Mermaid. After the war, the two settled down to a relatively normal home life. Their son, Leander, inherited his father’s super-strength and invulnerability, and his mother’s aquatic powers. While not at his best on land, he was graceful and powerful in the sea, and was admitted into the U.S. Navy as a clandestine special operative. Few knew that clumsy, uncoordinated Leander Brent was secretly the agent known as The Black Seal.

William King (formerly White Feather)
Wilhelm Koenig was the son of a wealthy German Jew. Their property was confiscated by the Third Reich when the family was shipped off to separate concentration camps. Young Wilhelm escaped, using arrows and a crude bow he scavenged from the camp detritus. Making his way slowly across the German countryside, and re-making new bows and arrows as he went, the seldom-seen Wilhelm gained urban-legend status as “The Bowman”, a mysterious saboteur and assassin of Nazis. During his flight across Germany, he did in fact disrupt Nazi operations to a great extent, although his modus operandi was copied by other Nazi resisters, making him appear more successful—and omnipresent—than he actually was. Eventually, he made it to Switzerland, then England, and at last the United States. There, he changed his name to “William King”.
His son William King, Jr., became an attorney who specialized in reclaiming artwork from museums originally confiscated by the Nazis, as well as reparations for real estate and other properties taken from Jewish families. Although trained by his father in his peculiar self-taught brand of archery, William is a reluctant bowman, and his skills diminish in front of an audience.

Nice going, Klar. I like these updated origins for the Inferior Five. Not that anything was wrong with the original team, but this does help make them fit in more with the present state of comics.

CHARACTER OUTLINE

Suarez Harrison III is an obscure subsistence farmer on Winath. Although Winathgov began a program a century ago of consolidating its many small farms into more efficient techn-megafarms, Suarez still tends his little plot of land. Nearly all of its production goes to his own personal needs.

He has fruit trees of various kinds, a small olive grove, and a tiny grape arbor which produces one or two bottle of wine per year. He also grows white eggplant, zebra tomatoes, arcumbers, quite a few onions (he uses about four hundred per year), xucchini, meatmelons, potatoes and yams, and has a field generally planted with either wheat or quadrotriticale. This is only a sample; crops are rotated annually.

About half of his property is dedicated to pasturage for his small flock of rainbow sheep, kept mostly for their milk. He has a basement-full of wool from their annual shearings, as he has not yet figured out what to do with it all. There is only so much clothing he can make for himself.

He also has a garden of exotic flowers which he sells for the cash he needs for miscellaneous personal expenses: soaps, utilities expenses, and so forth.

A long-time bachelor, he married a few years ago just before his sixtieth birthday. His wife was actually quite a young woman, but suffered from Giffen’s Disease (a chronic, wasting, and incurable able illness) and passed away five years later. They did, however, manage to have a son, who was named, unimaginatively, Suarez Harrison IV.

The teen-aged Suarez now assists his elderly father in his daily labors. So for another generation, the farm will remain out of the control of Winathgov. They must wait for a descendant who has no heirs, or one who will accept the standing, and generous, offer for purchase of the property, which will then be sold to the highest bidder.

They have a long time to wait.

Suarez Harrison’s true name is Zeraus: the last son of Zeus and Hera. (or, if you prefer, Jupiter and Juno) Born just shy of a century after his father’s death, (these Olympian gestation periods are always somewhat problematic) his mother joined his father in the Elysian Fields while he was still a very young child. Raised on New Genesis, he was disturbed by the conflicts and squabbles of the Olympians, the Norse pantheon, and the New Gods, which seemed no more significant than the petty disagreements of the mortals the gods so reviled. But while mortals destroyed worlds, the gods decimated entire cosmos with their wars.

Zeraus rejected his heritage, and determined to become the ‘god’ of the quiet, peaceful, and simple life. As such, he lives like a mortal.

Not as a mortal, but like a mortal.

Zeraus has physical strength of Kryptonian or Daxamite class, and durability (including technically, immortality) far beyond that. He is able to sense, as well as manipulates, all the energies of the electromagnetic spectrum, and has other psychic, precognitive, and clairvoyant senses as well. He is able to alter at will the natural laws of physics, at least locally, enabling him to change the very nature of reality.

However, he never uses any of these abilities. He eats and sleeps in imitation of an ordinary mortal. His land is tended with ordinary techniques, although he is very skilled after centuries of experience. As best he can, he does not exert himself beyond what would be normal for a human of his age and physique. He does not, however, get sick very often. He tends to overlook or underestimate the frequency of that aspect of mortality.

Most of all, he does not interfere. While he could have easily cured his wife, he did not. In fact, one of the reasons that he married her was because she had such a short time left to live. In a sense, he gave her a happier life than she might have had otherwise. As her condition was well-known, she had despaired of ever marrying and having a family. Yet she lived the last few years of her life with a husband and child who gave every indication of loving her completely. She never suspected that either of them was anything other than an ordinary mortal.

Suarez Harrison IV, of course, is his father, just as Suarez the elder was his own father and grandfather before him.

It is possible that at sometime in the future, Zeraus will take on a new identity, of some other, alien mortal species. Don’t hold your breath.

(It is also possible that young Zeraus will be allowed to join the Legion of Super-Heroes, not as a member, but as an advisor, as some time when the Legion is faced with a threat of magical, godlike, or other transcendental proportions. The boy will, of course, continue to aid his father on Winath while working with the Legion. Being in three places at once is no more difficult for him than being in two.)

(One other peculiarity of the almost human-seeming Zeraus Hera’s-Son is his lack of interest in socializing, either with gods or men. Zeraus does get a visit occasionally from his niece / nephew Hermaphroditus, and the shade of his uncle Ares, who finds the Afterlife deadly dull. He is also occasionally invited up to visit the mansion of the Anabells, who own most of the property surrounding his little acreage.)

Quotes: “Yes, I could interfere. I could end injustice, eliminate all human suffering and sorrow. I could eliminate Evil. But consider this forest of redwoods which surrounds us. These trees live for thousands of years, and when one falls, there is no mourning or sorrow for its passing. There is no hate, envy, or greed here. There is nor suffering, no toil nor labor. Where is this ‘Evil’ you speak of?”

“And if I do interfere, what then? The other godlings will take notice, and will employ their own wills and powers for their own ends. Inevitably there will be disagreements, and just as inevitably, another god-war will follow, with cosmic destruction in its wake. Leave me at peace. Let the Presence find some other champion to execute Its will.”

Character Outline: Rab Oni, the Green Lantern of Myrna

The inhabitants of Myrna, with their characteristically enlarged craniums, have developed enhanced mental and psychic abilities.

Unlike Titans, these abilities vary from individual to individual. One may be able to read minds, another thought-cast, another possess some form of psychokinesis, another merely have high-level intelligence. Rab Oni was gifted with an extraordinarily powerful will.

As such, she was recruited for the Green Lantern Corps. She distinguished herself valiantly in her first years as a Corps member. She was also able to balance home and career, marrying and bearing two children.

She defeated the Witch of Orando in a climactic confrontation, but Rab Oni was cursed: that she would die a slow, painful death.

One at a time, her internal organs began to fail. There seemed to be no cause, nor cure. Even appeals to healers on the Sorcerer’s World were ultimately unsuccessful. Using her powerful will, she began to replace her internal organs, one at a time, with energy constructs. As long as she kept her ring charged, there was no problem. Rab Oni began to carry per power battery with her continuously. After her internal organs, her bones, then her muscles, then nerves, and finally her skin were replaced with constructs of emerald energy.

At last, there was no more pain.

By this time her children were grown to adulthood. Her husband remained faithfully with his transformed wife. The only obvious change to her appearance was her new day-glo green color. At night, he grew accustomed to sleeping with a living night-light. Even in sleep, her indomitable will sustained her new form. Her thoughts, memories and emotions remained intact, as even her endocrine system had been carefully replicated. More children, however, were naturally impossible.

And she did not age. Her husband grew older, then passed away. She remained the same. Her children grew, aged, and died, then her grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. She outlived them all. She began to spend more and more time away from Myrna, policing the rest of her sector. Slight alterations to her physiology allowed her to attenuate her emotions. Another slight alteration, and she had no need of food or rest. She was a Green Lantern 24/7. Or 39/11, depending on what planet you were on. Centuries passed.

On Myrna, another great hero arose: Braino, who sacrificed his life by absorbing all the evil of the Myrnans into his own body. When Rab Oni returned from patrol, there was no need for a Green Lantern. She flew out into space, and never came back.

She continued to patrol her sector. She began to fondly consider the inhabitants over whom she had been given charge, with their brief, tiny lives. Her chief emotion was one of solicitous affection. Another generation passed, and then another.

Then, as happens occasionally, there was a brief interruption of power. The central Power Battery on Oa had been attacked. It was only a brief flicker of discontinuity, but in that brief moment, the energy-form of Rab Oni ceased to exist.

The ring flew back to Oa.

The DC super-speedsters over the years have displayed a wide variety of powers.

* Super-speed: not only "running fast" but experiencing the world as moving more slowly.

* Running on Water: Actually, in our universe, an average-sized man or woman could run on water if able to maintain a speed of only ninety miles per hour.

* Running up Walls: See running on water. At speeds of one-hundred-twenty miles per hour, you could run up smooth glass walls.

* Friction Immunity: The Flashes have an "aura" which protects him from friction.

* Impact Immunity: Occasionally, a speedster will slam into something which ought to kill him/her at the speed at which he/she is moving, but just knocks him out.

* Super-fast healing: Not always depicted consistently, but still.

* Intangibility: By 'vibrating his molecules', the Flashes could run through walls without damage. In our universe, any object moving at near-light speed would pass harmlessly through any barrier-- harmlessly for the object, that is. Substantial heat energy would be transferred to the wall.

* Invisibility: By 'vibrating his molecules' at the appropriate frequency, Barry could turn invisible.

* Flight: Various methods of flight have been displayed from time to time. Whirling the arms to create tornadoes, whirling the legs similarly, 'running on clouds'. Max Mercury, the Golden Age Johnny Quick, and the Blimp could actually use the Speed Force directly to fly.

* Time Travel: Using the 'Cosmic Treadmill' the Flashes could travel through time. In our universe, merely running at slightly under the speed of light would allow one to travel into the future; running at slightly over the speed of light would allow one to travel into the past.

* Inter-Dimensional Travel: By 'attuning his vibrations' to the natural vibratory state of various other dimensions, Barry could travel to parallel worlds.

* Speed Transfer: Savitar and Wally West could lend or borrow speed energy from other people and objects.

* Infinite Mass Punch: This is where Wally runs past an opponent, continues around the world, and 1/7th of a second later, slams into him at a near-infinite relativistic mass.

* Speed Sense: Max Mercury (originally Quicksilver) and Jay Garrett could detect 'anything that moves' anywhere in the world, especially other super-speedsters.

* Speed Force Duplicates: Bart Allen was able to create multiple selves out of pure 'speed force'. However, if one of these was injured or destroyed, there was considerable physical feedback, so this was used sparingly.

There ought to be some character who has access to all these powers.

And I have just the one.

23-Skiddoo: The 31st-century descendant of S'kidds'kakoth of the extra-dimensional world of Savoth, he is the 23rd "Skidd-Flash" in his family.

STORY CONCEPT

[b]A NEW DARKNESS[\b]

On Prime Earth, it is the first quarter of the 21st century. On the trans-dimensional world of Apokolips, it is… well, Darkseid has access to the 21st century.

A time bubble appears next to the throne.

It contains 75 crystal spheres, each sphere containing the DNA and soul essence of a Legionnaire.

From Earth-1, the Legion membership as composed at the time of the Great Darkness Saga.
From Earth-247, the Legion membership as composed at the time that they fought Darkseid.
From Earth-Prime, the Legion membership as composed shortly after the events and deaths of Legion of Three Worlds.

There is also a hand-written note:

The Servants of Darkness program has failed. Try again.

I suggest you begin with one of the Brainiacs.

But Darkseid does not begin with one of the Brainiacs. Instead, he creates a dark, soul-corrupted version of Blok.

“Ah, my first Servand of Darkness, you could be my son.”

The Blok-thing kneels. “I am honored, Father.”

“So many possibilities,” muses Darkseid. “Where to begin?”

Interesting character outline, Klar.

"Giffen's Disease"--love it! One of the little known symptoms of Giffen's Disease is homicidal tendencies toward anyone who knows super-karate.

SPECULATION ON THE NEW 5-YEAR GAP

The elderly gay couple who run the Citadel of Throon have finally passed away. As the last of their race, they have willed the Citadel (and the rest of the planet) to “The Legion that defeated us”.

The Legion of Super-Heroes has been disbanded by order of UPGov. However, it was not the LSH that defeated the Throonian duo: it was the Legion of Substitute Heroes.

After substantial consultation, UP attorneys have decided that, as Polar Boy and Night Girl were members of the LSH, the entire Citadel should devolve upon Fire Lad, Chlorophyll Kid, and Stone Boy.

Ten times the size of 21st-century New York, the Citadel originally housed a hundred million people. With power systems, maintenance robots, and food synthesizers, it becomes the headquarters of a new Legion Subs (because they can't call themselves the Legion of Super-Heroes), recruiting members from all over the galaxy.

There once were two old men of Throon
Each considered the other a loon
They defeated the Legion
With machines in their region
But were beat by a Sub from Kathoon

My little grandson was looking over my shoulder yesterday, and saw this picture:



He said, "Was that you?"

I said, "Yes, yes, that was me."

Let’s suppose you have every issue the Legion has ever appeared in. Let’s further suppose that you scan each of those issues into .jpg files. Now let’s suppose that you combine all those issues into one, single, huge .jpg file, far larger than any photo editor could ever display. What you have now is essentially one immensely long string of ones and zeros.

Now consider pi. It is an infinitely repeating decimal, and is widely supposed to be “ordinary”—that is, there is no place in pi where a number occurs, and then never occurs again.

Then, contained somewhere within the infinite digits of pi, is your Complete Legion .jpg file. Not only that, but this string of digits is found in infinitely many locations! Not only that, but the October 2013 issue of the Legion, which was never written or published, is also coded as a .jpg file, and appended immediately after infinitely many of your Complete Legion .jpg files! (But not all of them.) In fact, infinitely many versions of this issue exist—with different plots, characters, dialog, some with coloring or continuity errors, some humorous, some dark and gritty, each version translated somewhere into every language on the planet.

Just waiting for you, there, in pi (π).

In my favorite fanfic (I mean, the favorite fanfic which I authored) I rattled off the names of a number of super-villains the “Super-Hero-Club” of Nimbok, Hate Face, Leeta-87, and Mog Yagor face.

One group that stuck in my mind was The Seven Deadly Sinners

Wrath (Ira) is a Red Lantern from Korugar.
Greed (Avaritio) is an avatar of the 31st-century Orange Lantern (who may or may not be one of Larfleeze's avatars / constructs) in the form of a standard Durlan.
Fear (Invidia) is a Sklarian Yellow Lantern.
Pride (Superbia) is a Coluan with a green Power Ring from the Anti-Matter Universe.
Sloth (Akedio) is an immense Citadellian with an Anti-Matter Universe Blue Lantern Ring.
Gluttony (Gula) is an ancient, emotionless (and somewhat broken) Manhunter robot who has aquired an Indio Staff, and has an insatiable lust for power.
Lust (Porneia) is a violet-skinned Zamoran warrior with an insatiable lust, period.

The group was brought together by Chromo, a Blaxian who plans to exploit the group for his own ends.

Character Outline / Origins: The Purple Martian

In my favorite fanfic (I mean, the favorite fanfic which I authored) I rattled off the names of a number of super-villains the “Super-Hero-Club” of Nimbok, Hate Face, Leeta-87, and Mog Yagor face.

One that has stuck in my mind is The Purple Martian. So after many years, here is his origin story:

In the 26thh century, a renegade Amazon and a White Martian met and married. Disguised as ordinary Earth humans, Robert and Chloe White, they joined one of the colonization ships heading out to expand the horizons of the human universe. Secretly exploiting their advanced physical, intellectual, and psychic abilities, they were soon the leaders of the human colony of the world known as Morado.

Their son Martin grew up inheriting both sets of parents’ abilities: Martian strength plus Amazon strength, Martian telepathy plus Amazon intellect, both sets of genetics enhancing the other. His powers were beyond the level of either; beyond even Daxamite levels.

Morado ended up developing into a prosperous mining world, and the Whites the most prosperous of all. But Morado, established as an all-human community, began to develop xenophobic tendencies as the decades progressed. The White’s agelessness aroused suspicions, and through subterfuge and surreptitious investigations, their true nature became known.

The White’s mansion was attacked with flame-cannons. The white Martian succumbed instantly, the Amazon endured somewhat longer. The mansion was burned to the ground, but Martin was entirely unharmed. The enraged half-Martian assumed the natural form of a white Martian, and destroyed the entire community-- that is, all life on the world of Morado. There were no survivors.

Over the past three centuries, Martin has since infiltrated other human and alien colony worlds, always gradually working his way up to high leadership, through political machinations, impostures, and assassinations. Installing trusted cohorts in responsible positions, the half-Martian assumed complete control of these communities, weaving them into a web of secret criminal activity. This many-tentacled criminal organization is known at “The Purple Martian Syndicate”, which has incarnation in Martin himself, when he assumes a lavender-tinted White Martian form, who wreaks vengeance on those who attempt to betray his crime “Family”.

Ron Koll, Ephraim Allison, Alderan Kosmos, T-4 Lem Yat, Zickoss Adcortrum, and Ucyber Kelz are some of the more prominent aliases he has used in the past. Including his one-off, throwaway identities, he has had hundreds.

Yet not even his most trusted associates know more that he has more than one identity, although some may deal with him in several different guises. And none suspect that he is the terrifying, vengeful “Purple Martian”.

Been fooling around with the old HeroMachine.

Descriptions Here



Left to right, up to down:


Gelatinus, StarChart, Handyman, Decal Damsel, Anything Boy, Bizarrelle

The Electrostatic Kid, Lumina, Ant, Butterfly Girl, Brummagem, Atomic Girl

White Elephant, Gerbil Commander, Repulso, Anti-Chlorophyll Kid, Translucent Lad, Schroedinger's Cat

Left to Right, Up to Down

Dingbat; Knight Girl (1); Knight Girl (2); Reparo; Mirror Lass; Arrant (She Came From Planet Claire)

Snail Boy; Sleepyhead; Snow Man; Solomon Grundy Junior; Steak; Tentacle King

Xooxi; Solomon Grundy Junior (Alternate); Aion Capella; Substitute Amazo; Vortexenn; Svapna (formerly Dream-Eater Lad)

These characters make my underdog-sense go crazy, I would love to see some stories with them saving the day as different teams

Substitute Amazo is amazo!!

Good stuff, Klar! Butterfly Girl, White Elephant, Arrant and Steak in particular pique my interest.

Raszolo:

I really don’t have the time to flesh out these ideas further, but I do have a half-baked story idea sort of based on the Magnificent Seven: the New Subs go up against an army of Khunds, invading a small, defenseless planet. The central event would be a kind of coliseum-style battle, one-on-one, between seven Subs and seven Khunds.

(Balrog, Garlick, Karloff, Morlock, Porklock, Queerluck, and Warlock the Khunds)

Many of the New Subs are pretty invulnerable:

Gelatinus is made of indestructible gelatin, so could survive even a tactical nuclear weapon. He really has no antagonistic powers, though.

Solomon Grundy Jr. is nigh-invulnerable, and cannot be rendered unconscious. While he has prodigous Grundy-strength, he does not have the original’s berserker madness, but could still do significant damage if he put his mind to it.

As long as Bizarrelle can keep her wits, she has either invulnerability or intangibility, and cannot be harmed, for the most part. She also has either heat vision or ice vision, flame breath or super-cold breath at any one time. The coup de grace would come when her shrinking-ray vision cycles in.

Repulso is impossible to hit, or even aim a weapon at. His opponents just want to look away. A Khund might just give up, because the humiliation of defeat would be more desirable that having to stay in the ring with him.

Arrant is completely invulnerable, but again has no aggressive capacity.

Substitute Amazo has Night Girl’s super-strength and durability at will (due to his Color Kid powers)

And Dream-Eater Lad (Svapno) is untouchable in his astral form, (as he exists only in a dream) and could project nightmares, or even “eat” his opponents memory that he is even in a fight.

And the Subs need to win only four out of seven. Of course, the Khunds fail to honor the agreement, which is when we see that Butterfly Girl, Atomic Girl, Anything Boy (depending on his form that day) White Elephant, Gerbil Commander, Snail Boy, Sleepyhead, Tentacle King, Xooxi, Aion Capella, and Vortexx can have some really annoying proactive abilities.

Everything is ultimately resolved when the New Subs lure the Khundish army to Rainbow Valley, and are transformed into infants.

Invisible Brainiac:

Butterfly Girl: The Itzpapalotl tribe of StarHaven took a different genetic recombinatory route. Teen-aged Starhavenite Milsde Mariposas has the ability to split her body into thousands of tiny butterfly-girls. Or, alternatively, release a single one for reconnaissance.

White Elephant: Alvin Pakk of Earth came across a mystic amulet which transformed him into a giant white elephant. Somehow, the amulet transformed with him when he placed it around his neck: he has not been able to find a way to take it off, so he is permanently stuck in that form. As he cannot speak, he wears a small telepathic voder.

Steak: Angus Bubalo of Bovus has the strength of an ox—and is almost as intelligent!
When a group of his people were kidnapped and experimented upon by the Dominators, Angus was the only one to survive.
Using Venturan technology, the Dominators gave him the ability to essentially conjure innumerable replicas of himself. The ‘clones’ are easily distinguishable from the original: he does not have the ability to duplicate clothing. As they are molecularly unstable, the copies die off quickly- within a couple of hours, at most. (The ‘clones’ have a half-life of about 20 minutes) They do not vanish, and are not re-absorbed back into Angus’ body. Thus his code-name.
Angus is primarily support staff: he does a lot of heavy lifting around the Citadel, and is pretty good at bulk technology—masonry, metalwork, and so forth.

Arrant: She came from Planet Claire. I know she came from there. She drove a Plymouth Satellite faster than the speed of light. Planet Claire has pink air, and all the trees are red. No one ever dies there, and no one has a head. Some say she’s from Mars, or one of the seven stars that shines after 3:30 in the morning. Well, she isn’t.

Book Concept:

In the 41st century, star freighters no longer ply the spaceways. Personal Time Cubes have replaced them, along with all other forms of transportation. Set a few coordinates, and the Time Cube will instantaneously transport you to any location is spacetime.

Of course, use of the Time Cube is highly regulated. Most people have a few hundred approved settings on their personal Time Cube. Home, the office, approved retail establishments, a vacation spot in the Pleistocene of some obscure world. Certain dignitaries may use their Time Cubes to be in two or three places at once. But there is one group with essentially unlimited access.

The Tempus Knights are a group of thousands of specially-trained individuals from hundreds of worlds. From the Amartan System alone, which consists of the inhabited worlds Winath and Korlon, we have Lightning Man, Lightning Woman, Lightning Lad, Lightning Lass, Lightning Boy, LiveWire, Spark, Light Lass and Gossamer. None of these are the 31st characters we know; they may not even be related.

Ages of the Tempus Knight may range from young teen-agers to elderly, more experienced members.

The Tempus Knights are primarily explorers, but also problem-solvers. They take on the missions that the 41st-century Science Police, I.C.C., Diplomatic Corps and Military cannot handle. Headquartered in a massive building in Metropolis, they are usually called on missions in small groups of two to seven. There are thousands of possible stories waiting to be told, of every genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Romance, Horror, Mystery...

We might follow a small group for a few months as it explores the Universe, or meets Crises. Or, we might see another group team up with a 'hero' from the past or future.

There are also Viewers, who monitor the Time Cubes and the adventures of the others. They also serve who only sit and watch.

Not to mention the vast other support staff, technical and administrative, that assists the Tempus Knights in their mission.

Philosophical question: Can Bizarro lie?

There are just three cookbooks that I would recommend to kids just starting out.

The first is:

The Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook by Ruth Bertolzheimer, published by Grosset & Dunlap. I have a 1964 edition; my mother had a 1942 edition. There are probably more recent editions available. Ten thousand recipes. Also, basic information on nutrition, metric conversions, menu planning, how to tell if a tomato or melon is ripe. This will teach you what do cook, even if you do not know how.

The next two are much smaller:

The Wok, a Chinese cookbook by Gary Lee, published by Nitty Gritty Productions, 1970

and

The Pot and How to Use It, the mystery and romance of the rice cooker, by Roger Ebert, published by McMeel Publishing LLC, 2010

These last two will teach you how to cook.

I created the planet Bovus in response to three observations:

• 1. The fact that there is very little variability in intelligence among the human population. 95% of children tested (by definition) fall between 70 and 130 on the IQ scale. The Supreme Court has ruled that an IQ near or below 70 is so severely handicapped that such persons ought to be exempt from the death penalty. Yet an individual with an IQ of 130 is not really that more capable than an individual with an average IQ of 100. Even those I have met with IQ scores of 160 and above are not really intimidatingly intelligent.
• 2. The fact that it often seems that many of the persons of average or below-average intelligence I have known seem a lot happier in their lives than those of superior intelligence.
• 3. Finally, Nature seems to have several methods that keep people from getting too smart.
o A. There is the well-known “regression to the mean”, in which children of the super-intelligent are less brilliant than their parents, and the following generation even more normal.
o B. There is the equally well-known mocking and bullying of bright kids in school, as parodied by the ‘Big Bang Theory’ TV show. In less enlightened times, I imagine such intellectual ‘freaks’ were stoned to death.
o C. Human beings, no matter how intelligent, seem to develop curiosity long before common sense. Thus, really really bright kids run the danger of electrocuting themselves at a young age, climbing out of third-floor windows they have learned to unlock, finding the well-hidden rat poison or chlorine bleach, or running out into traffic in pursuit of the latest bauble that attracts their interest.
o D. There is also the matter of mental illness. As native intelligence increases, so does the incidence of mental illness, from common neuroses to depression to full-blown schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder. Psychiatrists’ offices are full of bright, intelligent, and very sick people. (Or maybe the more intelligent population simply recognizes more easily how sick the really are.) There is some tendency for mental illness to take people out of the gene pool, although not always.
o E. Relatedly, there is the well-known statistical increase in the incidence of suicidal depression among highly-educated lawyers, doctors, and dentists. Especially dentists. Possibly understandably.

So I asked myself, what if there was a planet where the natural intellectual bar for the dominant species was set somewhat lower? What sorts of other adaptations would be necessary for them to retain position as the dominant species? What would life be like on such a world?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The inhabitants of Bovus physically resemble minotaurs. Physically strong, they are, from a human viewpoint, hopelessly unintelligent. A visitor from Earth would say that the average Bovite has an IQ of less than 7O, and is in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s disease, suffering permanent long-term memory loss.

It is not unusual for Bovites to occasionally, permanently, forget the relationships within households—conflating spouses, children, and in-laws. In fact, there is a Bovish word, usually translated “cousin”, meaning, “someone who you are related to, but not entirely sure how.”

Nor is it unusual for a Bovite to simply disappear, wander off, begin a new life in a new community, and never be seen again. Those left behind will eventually forget that they ever existed, and those in the new community will forget that they ever lived anywhere else. As Bovites are notoriously long-lived, many lead a number of successive lives.

Abandoned farms and homes dot the countryside.

The spoken Bovish language is simple, both in vocabulary and grammatically, and there is no standard alphabetical representation. Bovites use local or personal symbols, sigils, and runes to represent place names and other proper nouns.

Bovites live in what is essentially an anarchic medieval setting. There are no central governments, as Bovites are terrible at following outside direction for more than a few days at a time. Although having poor minds for history, language, mathematics or literature, they are very good at following complex routines daily routines. Bovite craftsmen make fine clothing, homes, furnishings, and utensils. There are, among other artists, miners, jewelers, cartwrights, wheelwrights, coopers, carpenters, stonemasons, glassmakers, cooks and bakers. Formal money is non-existent, and most economic transactions are made on an “I owe you one” basis. These agreements are seldom written down, and often quickly forgotten. Large and important transactions are formalized with witnessed contracts, generally involving tokens engraved with the sigils of the merchant and purchaser. Such tokens are generally honored as a debt by nearly any member of the community with the capacity to repay; as it is often forgotten who originally contracted the debt. Once repaid (in kind) the token is destroyed, perpetuating the no-money, barter-only system.

There are no accountants, bookkeepers, or financial analysts on Bovus.

Certain Bovites suffer from acute, compulsive neatness. These are the Holy Men of the cities, who wander the streets, scrubbing walls and windows, sweeping streets, and collecting trash. Sitting by their home fires at the end of the day, these are the ones sought out by the Junk Men. Bringing gifts of food and drink, they exchange these for the raw materials collected from the streets that will eventually be recycled into new products of value.

As an example of the Bovite capacity for following daily routine, there is a famous potter who leaves his home every day, headed in exactly the wrong direction. It takes him twice as long as anyone else in town to reach his shop, as he follows a winding, circuitous route through town. He is greeted by the same families day after day. He is never late in opening his shop, however, as he always leaves early enough in the morning to take account of his long commute. No one in his village thinks this at all strange.

Bovites are pure vegetarians. In fact, they are ruminants, subsisting primarily on the grain-like grasses which are grown on their vast farms. Tree barks and leaves also make up part of the Bovite diet, which is also supplemented by cruciferous vegetables, and fruit. Bovites have mastered fire, and use it to make flavorful, nutritious dishes. The nut-like seeds of the native vegetation, in particular, need cooking in order to be digestible by the Bovites. Cooking also blends and intensifies flavor, and there are some dishes created by Bovite cooks that are suitable for Earth-humans as well, and much prized by gourmets.

Bovites are exceptionally tough, with skin more similar to keratin or cartilage, and bones of woven carbon nanofibers. Their muscles are about ten times as efficient as an earth human’s, more in line with the muscular efficiency of chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans.

There is no legal profession on Bovus per se; disputes are settled by trial by combat. The ‘combat’ is often only emblematic or suggestive, using the natural horns and bony skull plating of the Bovite’s heads in a stylized routine, almost a dance. Victory is determined by the cheering of the crowds. Some disputes are more personal in nature, and there is a real danger of permanent harm to the combatants. War, on the other hand, is extraordinarily rare. Bovites are so gregarious that by the time enough soldiers have gathered together to form two armies, the whole affair has degenerated into a bacchanalia of carousing and drinking. By the time the opponents wake up, most of them have forgotten what they were fighting about, if they ever knew.

Bovites’ natural fecundity is inversely proportional to the local population density. This is simply the way they have evolved. Malthus’ laws regarding overpopulation therefore do not apply. There are Bovite colonies all over the planet which have had stable populations for millennia. As Bovites are somewhat more long-lived than Terrans, (over a hundred Earth-years is not an uncommon age) less than 1% of the population needs to be replaced every year. The populations of the cities are replenished from the villages, and the villages from the rebellious and dissatisfied teen-agers of the farming communities.

There is an instinctive tendency among Bovites not to over-stress the natural environment. There is a word in Bovish which means “eating from both sides of the tree”, a reference to the fact that if the bark is stripped from a tree in a completed circuit, the tree will die, and no longer be available as a source for food. It is similar to the phrase “eating the seed corn”, but emphasizing socially inappropriate greed as the motivation, rather than desperation.

Like humans, Bovites have entered into symbiotic relationships with other animals. The creatures known a ‘Titi’, or ‘owlbats’ are crepuscular birdlike predators which are kept to keep in check the bipedal, kangaroo-rat-like rodentoid pests that tend to be attracted to grain bins. Many owlbats are kept in the cities as pets. Like domestic Earth cats, they are primarily fed by their owners, but hunt and kill for pleasure.
The primary beast of burden, filling the niche of the Earth horse, ox, camel, and llama, is the ‘Ockung’, a sort of long-legged hornless rhinoceros. Owlbats are fond of Ockung milk, which is indigestible to Bovites.

Large predators avoid Bovish communities, except in desperation, in a manner similar to humans on Earth. Not because Bovite flesh is not flavorful, but because of that nasty aftertaste of “the entire annihilation of your species”. Bovites, like humans, will hunt down and kill every member of an identified predatory species in their area. However, while humans will continue the practice for generation upon generations, eventually resulting in extinction, Bovites will forget about the hunt after a decade or two. Bovite communities are constantly being surprised by the fact that these large flesh-eating ‘monsters’ even exist outside of fairy-tales.

Bovite communities are riparian, located along the many inland rivers on the continents of Bovus. Unlike on Earth, where large communities tend to form near the coastlines, the shore of the continents of Bovus are wild, empty of intelligent life, as Bovites have a natural aversion to salt water. The tides there are also rather larger, and more unpredictable. There are Bovites who ply the waterways, providing trade and transport in ships large and small. It is generally thought of as a strange and romantic life.

There are no historians or librarians in Bovite societies. No one really notices that no one remembers what life was like two decades ago; people just assume that life then was just like it is now. And except for negligible details, they are mostly right.

However, there are Bovite tale-tellers, bards with exceptional memories who keep an oral history of their Herd. Puppet shows, pantomimes, epic poems, and campfire tales are popular forms of entertainment in many and various communities. There are wandering Bards as well, who travel from community to community spreading their tales and songs, often taking up temporary residence in abandoned dwellings. While mentally exceptional by Bovite standards, these bards are entirely non-exceptional by human standards, and much of the time confuse the stories and histories, swapping characters and scenes, or just making stuff up as they go. No one seems to notice.

There is a profession on Bovus which is usually translated ‘Doctor’, although it is more about palliative care and mortuary service than healing. Bovites are, as mentioned, incredibly tough physically, quite long-lived, and have remarkably efficient immune systems as well. On 19th-century Earth, and before, it was not unusual for individuals to be ill for months or even years at a time. On Bovus, only the most extreme illnesses or injuries last longer than a week or two. But these ‘Doctors’ are the keepers of a great secret: Everyone Dies. In a village of ten thousand Bovites, less than a hundred die each year, far fewer than simply wander off and ‘go missing’. With the Bovite’s short memories, death is virtually an unknown quantity, until it happens to a close ‘cousin’. But to the ‘doctor’ of the community, who sees death a couple of times a week, and keeps track of who is ill and who is dying, it is a known fact of life. Funerals are arranged, and the corpses disposed of: the methods vary with decade and location. The bereaved go back to their ordinary routines, and the dead are eventually forgotten.

There is a word in Bovish: u’gah. It means ‘big’, not merely in size, but as a modifier meaning “very”, or “plentiful”, or any number of similar magnifying adjectives. There is another Bovish word: oo’oogah, usually translated as ‘big big’, meaning not just very big, but big beyond all comprehension. Rivers and lakes are big, but the ocean is ‘big big’. The sky, the clouds and the stars are ‘big big’. To the Bovites, the entire world is ‘big big’ containing an abundance, unimaginably large, far beyond their needs, wants, and even comprehension. An abundance not merely of food, shelter, and possessions, but of other people, stories, and experiences. Some wags have translated ‘oo’oogah’ to mean ‘at least ten’.

In their own language, the Bovites call their planet ‘Do’, or ‘D’Oh’, meaning ‘The World’. The sky, including the stars, sun, and moon, is ‘Udo’, or ‘The World Above’. The land is ‘Do’Ar’, meaning ‘The World Below’. The oceans are ‘Dorugahr’, or ‘The Deep World’, although the word for water, river, or bath is ‘dubdub’. Their name for themselves is ‘Ingoong’, or ‘The Horned Ones’. They find it amusing, as to many extraterrestrial species, that Terrans call themselves, ‘Homo Sapiens’, or ‘Thinking Dirt’. (Humus = Human = Homo, all from the same root; Earth & Terra, from different roots, also mean ‘Dirt’)

The world is big-big, or D’oh’oo’oogah.

With their large brains, Earth-humans think that their thousand or so acquaintances represent a significant sample of humanity, and the ten thousand or so square miles they have seen with their own eyes represent a significant sample of the variety of places in the world. Mathematicians, and Bovites, know differently—that each is less than a millionth part of what is really out there, even if only on one single planet.

One of the reasons I created this thread-- aside from being a brain dump-- is to demonstrate that new ideas, new characters, new approaches, are easy.

OK, so I got sometimes got sidetracked with the brain dump thing.

However, I have come to the conclusion that the reason there is so little imaginative creativity at DC/Warner is that TPTB actually actively discourage it.

They would prefer rehash of stuff that was 'successful' before.

* Let's let everybody be Rorshach. (New 52)

* Let's have a months-long, beat-down fest. (Forever Evil)]

* Let's re-launch and re-number everything Issue #1, or better yet, Issue #0 (New 52, one year later, Zero Month, and one year later, Villains Month

* Let's kill The Flash (Barry Allen, Wally West, Eliza Harmon, twice so far in JLA3K)

* For those who don't know (and I'm sure that's nearly everybody here) 5 out of the 12 main characters in Justice League 3000 now have Machine Telepathy, at the same level as Tharok in the last Legion stories. That includes Green Lantern and The Flash.
Of course, I also think that JLA3K is being written as satire, but nobody is getting the joke.

Anyway, I may continue to brain-dump here, but I'm not trying to make any particular point.

There is one massive re-imagining that has been percolating in my head for years. However, I am not sure that if I started it, I would even live long enough to finish it: