The Protective Dominion
Table of Contents
The Protective Dominion
A union of several universes formed for mutual protection against the multiversal threats of the Elemental, Master Man, the Bootes Star Prosperity, and others.
Dates of joining are given by the Protective Dominion calendar, which applies to most universes in the Dominion as most universes are calendar analogs of each other as well as analog universes in general. Most universes had a WW2, for instance.
The Mighty Universe (MLJ Comics)
Joined in 2020.
The Secret Universe (Advertisement Comics)
Joined in 1943.
The United Universe (United Features Comics)
Joined in 1981
The Xam Universe (MF Enterprises Comics)
Joined in 1992.
The Space Patrol Universe (Magazine Enterprises Comics)
Joined in 1980.
The Wheat Field (Peter Wheat Comics)
Technically, not a universe, but a part of a universe.
In this world, which is part of the larger world of Fairy, Queen Wheat’s son Peter Wheat protects the Wheat Field and its inhabitants from various threats, the most common being the Hornet Kingdom under the rule of Dragonet the Hornet Queen, who wishes to reclaim the ancestral Hornet land lost to the expanding Wheat Field.
Technically joined in 1945, when the superhero known as the Sword spirited away his allies to Fairy to escape an N-bomb explosion, officially joined in 1999 alongside the Aces universe.
The Elemental Universe (Eastern Color Publishing Comics)
In this universe, superhumans are called elementals, for they have and will always be composed of something other than flesh and blood such as Hydroman who is composed of water and Music Master who is composed of sound. The heroes of this world have fought the dreaded Dr. Chuda, a man composed of pure thought, down through the generations.
In the 1980’s, Earth’s population of elementals grew to the point major friction emerged between them and the basics of their world. Elementals were immortal, and this allowed them to hoard wealth like never before. A wealth gap grew to compliment the power gap between the “races,” leading to decades of strife.
In the modern age, the chief superteam of the Earth, the Paracelsus Society, are painfully aware of the reality of racial politics in their world and try to balance the team to please everyone. They seek to recruit superhumans from other realities so they can have a “non-elemental” superhuman representing the basics of their Earth.
The irony that they need to recruit what’s essentially an alien from the multiverse to represent humanity is not lost on them.
Joined in 1985
The Eternal Universe (Quality Comics)
Through the power of Kid Eternity, a superpowerful ghost who can summon any being or spirit from out of the Mists of Eternity which permeate the multiverse, modern superheroes are partnered with the ghosts of heroes from long ago to enhance their powers and abilities. These partnerships of the living and the dead are backed-up by the Eternals, a team of superhero immortals who can never taste death, either because they are made out of plastic, magic, or granite, and the Blackhawks, a mercenary team with a legacy stretching back to WW2 who use incredible vehicles and fight by the dictates of their golden hearts. They fight against the forces of Master Man, Kid Eternity’s opposite who can summon evil from throughout time and space.
Joined in 1953
The Aces Universe (Ace Magazines)
Following a world war in which Axis superhumans (called aces in this world) fought against Allied aces, the surviving champions of both sides were spirted away to the mythic land of Fairy by the Sword, the modern bearer of Excalibur. They returned decades later, having only aged a few years in the timespace of Fairy, to find a world recovering from a global nuclear war, a world held together literally and figurately only by the aged sidekick of Magno, Davy, a world in desperate need of the heroes of the past.
Joined in 1999.
The Power Universe (Prize Comics)
Exhausted by the second and third world wars, Earth’s superheroes (called powers in this world) could not protect the planet from invasion by the Bootes Star Prosperity 1982. Those that survived the invasion pooled their resources to fight back, and sent their champion, Power Nelson, into the past to prevent at least one other world from suffering their fate. Power Nelson rallied the heroes of the past to save not only their timeline, but his as well.
Now, with both timelines united, Earth’s superheroes spearhead the Protective Dominion’s efforts to subdue the Star Prosperity across all of time and space.
Joined in 1991.
The New Universe (New World Comics)
When the Green Lama of the Power universe felt the presence of the multiverse in 1982, he journeyed into it to to try and find a world that could help his stand against the Bootes Star Prosperity. The first world he discovered he named the New universe, because it was New to him.
This universe was ruled by its first superhuman, the Atomaster, who attempted to capture and interrogate the Green Lama, who the people of the New universe called “the Green Jet” in reference to how he looked when he flew.
The Green Lama would escape this world and travel to the Spark universe, where he met and befriended Atomaster’s Fox echo Atoman.
Joined in 1991.
The Spark Universe
After fleeing the New universe, the Green Lama discovered the Spark universe, whose superhumans were called sparks.
The Green Lama saw that the superheroes of this universe were not up to to the task of overthrowing the Bootes Star Prosperity, and in fact needed his help handling problems of their own, so the Green Lama joined the sparks and tried his best to forget about his home.
Most, but not all, of the sparks were empowered by golden objects from the Astral. For instance, Golden Lad is empowered by the golden heart of Xibalba.
When the superheroes of the Power universe reclaimed their solar system from the Bootes Star Prosperity, the Green Lama led the sparks back to his homeworld to assist in the final push.
Joined in 1991.
The Daring Universe (Lev Gleason Comics)
This odd universe is protected by the Daring, a superteam led by the boomerang master Daredevil. People from the daring universe have rather interesting psychologies–they don’t do subtlety. They are highly expressive, highly emotive, and very “comic book.” Heroes make big speeches before they fight and boldly claim to stand for all that is good. Conversely, there are some people in this universe who do evil for evil’s sake–case in point, Adolf Hitler, who was driven from the Earth in 1950, but survived to menace the universe as a pawn of the Claw, the name the inhabitants of his world use to refer to the Elemental.
Though Berlin was taken in 1945, WW2 is technically still ongoing with Hitler’s Uberwelt, an artificial moon, roaming the universe seeking inferior races to destroy, and the heroes of old are active today thanks to rejuvenation technology.
In the Daring universe, heroes fought the Axis…and likely will until the end of time. This constant state of war has resulted in a one-world, socialistic government at odds with superheroes who are seen as unpredictable wildcards.
Joined in 1940.
The Terrific Universe (World of “Comics” McCormick’s Comic Book Characters)
Carl “Comics” McCormick was a boy in the Leader Universe who loved comics–comics about heroes that existed in his reality like Cat-Man and comics about heroes that didn’t. He had a vivid imagination and often pretended that he fought evil alongside fictitious characters like Captain Catapult and Waterman.. As he got older, his imagination became more than imagination–he could alter reality with his thoughts. He could blend his natal reality with the reality of his comic book heroes–a reality called the Terrific universe, named in honor of its defenders, the Terrific Team. He could enter the Terrific universe or bring heroes from out of the Terrific universe into his universe to fight for him.
After about a decade, Carl discovered something disturbing about the Terrific universe–something was wrong with its time. Characters forgot portions of history. Every acted like they just became superheroes last month. Sidekicks and love interests vanished. Superheroes day dreamed through similar cases and adventures without realizing how routine their lives had become. Carl learned that this was due to the son of Bingo the Wonder Man and Marvel Maid, The Marvelous Wonder “MW,” using his inherited powers to reprogram reality so that he would never have to deal with lost, growing up, and encountering the unfamiliar.
MW kicked Carl out of the Terrific universe and kept him out for decades. It wouldn’t be until 1985 that a 45 year old Carl was finally able to return to the Terrific universe where the sight of him with grey hair was enough for the heroes to break the spell MW placed over them and finally live in a reality with consequences–the good and the bad, the defeats and the victories, the failures, but also the achievements.
Joined in 1950.
The Skyman Universe (Columbia)
Not every world has an army of superheroes. Caste in point, this world has only had one superhero–Skyman, who has watched over his world since 1940. He has fought Nazis, Communists, mad scientists, but never a true supervillain, not until he encountered the Face, a man who wore a fearsome mask with a strange and sordid history behind it and sought to do nothing else but inspire pain and terror in humanity.
In 1963, the Face attempted to set off a nuclear war by detonating American missiles posted to Turkey by JFK. He was stopped by Skyman in his finest hour, who threw him off a plane, but Skyman was crippled in the fight. He retired, and passed on his name, skills, and gear to a successor, who would in turn pass the Skyman mantle down to another in 1985, who would pass it down in 2010.
Though the Skyman is often underestimated due to the low-power nature of his universe, he has proven a valuable asset in the fight against the Elemental due to his intelligence and cunning. He often investigates other universes for signs of the Elemental, as it turned out that the mask used by the Face was a vector through which the Elemental communicated with the wearer…and its missing, with all scans revealing its no longer in Skyman’s world.
Joined in 1965.
The Hexmaster Universe (Ajax-Farrell)
In this universe, the age of superheroes gave way to the age of the supernatural in the late 50’s when their world was opened to the Astral. Superheroes were found to be gaudy, inefficient solutions to vampires, curses, and ghosts, and were supplanted by the Ajax Organization, who combine superhuman talent with the ageless knowledge of the Hexmaster, a mysterious immortal who has chronicled the supernatural since the dawn of man.
The Hexmaster and his universe have a degree of infamy within the multiverse owning to how their solution to supernatural problems–or even just potential supernatural problems–is to strongly suggest they go to another universe. The Ajax Organization likes for superhumans and the supernatural to interfere with the day-to-day status quo of the world as little as possible.
Joined in 1956.
The Solar Universe (Fox)
In 1945, extradimensional explorer Flip Falcon made contact with the Protective Domain by travelling through the Astral, which he identified as the 4th dimension. Unfortunately, he also made contact the the Demi-Fiends, demonic creatures that ruled Earth before the coming of the gods who exiled them to the 4th dimension. The Demi-Fiends were kin to the Elemental, who plagued several realities on his own. If the Demi-Fiends escaped the 4th dimension, countless universes would suffer their coming.
But Flip Falcon discovered a way to seal the Demi-Fiends within the 4th Dimension forever. He would use his universe as a lock with his own solar system as the keyhole. He used his 4th Dimensional technology to place different points in time where the Demi-Fiends tried to break through into his reality only to be repelled by human champions on different planets in the solar system. The submerged Earth of 10,000 AD was placed on Neptune, the unformed Earth of the Hadean epoch was placed on Pluto, the age of Camelot was placed on Mars, the Earth of 2020 was placed on Mercury, the Jurassic period was placed on Venus, the time of the Gods was placed on Jupiter, the 19th century was placed on Uranus, and to complete the keyhole, the time of the Demi-Fiends was placed on Saturn.
As these superimposed timeline planets orbited the sun, their motion through time and space changed the sun into something like an extradimensional magnet which sealed the Demi-Fiends away in the 4th dimension–save for those on Saturn. Their presence was necessary for the lock to work. Because their time was part of the lock, their stronger, wiser, more numerous kin were kept in exile. But the Saturnian Demi-Fiends know about the lock that imprisons their race and constantly attempt to destroy the sun in order to weaken the lock. They are kept in check by the superhumans of several time periods who work together to protect a sun which has nourished man ever since the dawn of his race.
Joined in 1945.
The 4th Dimension (Fox)
In 1945, scientist Flip Falcon journeyed into the 4th Dimension, a universe of the Astral, on an expedition of discovery, but what he discovered was the stuff of nightmares–an alternate version of Mars containing Demi-fiends which once ruled the Earth in ancient times before being exiled to the 4th Dimension by the gods themselves. They would try several times throughout history to break out of their prison, but would fail every single time. Only the greatest among them, who would come to be known in other realities as the Claw or the Elemental, was able to escape by sacrificing 100 million of his own people in a dark ritual.
Though Flip Falcon’s stellar lock binds the Demi-fiends to the 4th Dimension, it does not prevent him or others from traveling to and from the 4th Dimension, and the Dimension must be guarded, for cultists of the Elemental often seek to make the “Dark Pilgrimage,” a journey to the Demi-fiend homeworld where they can learn all their mystical secrets.
Joined in 1945.
The Marvel Universe (Fawcett)
The home of some of the most famous heroes in the multiverse–Captain Marvel, his partner Billy Batson, the Marvel family, Ibis the Invincible, Bulletman and Bulletgirl, Mr. Scarlet and Pinkie, and Nyoka the Jungle Girl, just to name a few. It is also, unfortunately, the home to some of the most infamous villains in the multiverse–Sabbac, Ibac, Mr. Mind, and perhaps the most notorious of all, Dr. Sivana.
From the Seat of Eternity, a cavern used by the wizard Shazam since ancient times located both below New York City’s subways and at the center of the multiverse through magical extraspatial laws, Captain Marvel and his friends watch over not only their world but all of reality. It was here that the Protective Domain formed in 1940 when Captain Marvel brought heroes from the Daring universe and America’s Best universe together at the Seat of Eternity.
A lot has changed in Captain Marvel’s Earth since 1940. His young partner Billy Batson grew to manhood and inherited WHIZ radio from his friend Mr. Morris. Billy’s sister Mary married his best friend Freddy and together they had two sons named Charles and Clarence, the “sons of thunder,” as they became known. Technology has advanced by leaps and bounds, mostly due to Captain Marvel (the wisdom of Solomon is quite wise indeed) but also due to the reverse engineering of Dr. Sivana’s technology. Rejuvenation treatments make senesce a curable disease, and Captain Marvel’s friends remains as young and fit as they were in 1940. Unfortunately, that also means that Dr. Sivana remains young and fit–though he never seemed to ever be young. It was more like Captain Marvel’s friends remained forever young and Dr. Sivana remained forever old–and mean, and cruel, and angry. The Marvel’s haven’t lost an ounce of their fighting spirit and neither has Sivana. He continues to menace them and their world from time-to-time, but the Marvels have gotten quite used to dealing with him, and the addition of Charles and Clarence into the ranks of the Marvels–as Captain Marvel Blue and Captain Marvel Gold, though the two can never decide who exactly is which–helped reduce Sivana from the ultimate threat to their world to just a threat to their world and gave Captain Marvel time to roam the multiverse and discover other versions of himself. He’s found versions that are very strange–a version that became trapped in solid time in the 1950’s and got free in the 1980’s, a version who isn’t actually Captain Marvel but Billy Batson with the powers of Captain Marvel, and a version without a partner at all, but he accepts them all as versions of himself.
Joined 1940.
The Giant Universe (Pelican Comics + Various Short-term Publishers)
This universe is named after the Green Giant, who, though not his world’s mightiest hero, is by far its most beloved.
This universe is protected by the Master Mystic, a being of phenomenal power, who came to Earth in the 1930’s to do good and punish evil. Seeing humanity as children, he sought to remove weapons from humanity’s crib, and so finger-snapped away all firearms and military hardware, causing the bow to come back in fashion. When Dr. Brentwood invented a belt that turned him into a giant, he became a superhero, truly, his world’s first superhero, but the Master Mystic saw him as a nuisance. He was giving people the wrong idea. If man thought he could be trusted with such power, he would become proud, and in his pride destroy himself. He sought to humiliate the Green Giant into retiring and forsaking his superhero ways. He used his powers to create problems the Green Giant couldn’t solve and criminals he could not beat, but the Giant remained steadfast in his mission. In time, the Master Mystic came to respect the Giant and his perseverance, and massed produced the Giant’s belt with of wave of his hand, admitting to Dr. Brentwood that he had been wrong about him and telling him to create more like himself, for he could see that the Green Giant was of great service to the world. Dr. Brentwood formed an entire colorful giant army with his new belts–there was Red Giant, Blue Giant, Purple Giant, etc.
Giants walked the Earth in those days–and still do now, though alongside stranger things.
In 1940, the Master Mystic encountered a being a great and terrible evil while out in the Astral. He encountered what the Daring universe called the Claw, what the Amazing universe called the Elemental, and what the Solar universe called a major Demi-fiend. He fought the being off, though it strained his powers to do so, and found several realities shattered in the being’s wake. The Master Mystic began the arduous task of repairing those realities, starting with the various Earths. He reached through time and space, shattered though they were by the Elemental, to pull humanity from these Earths moments before their destruction to his own.
Giant ultra-cities reach to space, for man would consume the Earth like locusts if he were to spread out horizontally. The various heroes of these worlds struggle not so much against supervillains as they do geopolitical confusion and overcrowding–things the Master Mystic understands about as well as a fish clouds.
He had no idea why the teeming masses of humanity were unhappy. He had given them an endless supply of food, water, and energy. Why were they complaining who the president was? Why were they complaining about which territory belonged to which nation? Why didn’t they just make another world? He made one physically, they could stand to do it politically.
There were many things the Master Mystic didn’t understand about humanity. Perhaps that is why he encouraged the Green Giant. He understood, though he would never say it, that he needed help in protecting humanity.
Joined 1950.
The Atomic Universe (Charlton)
This universe, named after its greatest hero, Captain Atom, achieved a relatively late hyperstatic climacteric. For most worlds in the Protective Dominion, superheroes rose to prominence in the 1940’s, but for the Atomic Universe, the 1960’s were the dawn of the age of the superhero with Captain Atom leading the charge in 1960.
Captain Atom was a geopolitical game changer. More powerful than any weapon that could possibly be created by mankind, Air force captain Allen Adam gave his country unprecedented hegemony over the globe. But Allen feared that this made people view him as a living weapon. He was often torn between his duty as a soldier and his desire to be seen as human.
In 1966, the federal government paired Captain Atom with a partner, a young lady named Eve Eden with a very interesting history–see the entry on The Land of the Nightshades.
Eve felt very uncomfortable with Captain Atom. Allen was a bright, charming, and completely open about himself. He wasn’t afraid to tell the government to get off his back and stop seeing him as a weapon. She was furtive next to him. She never found the courage to tell her father what really happened to her mother and brother. She never found the courage to tell the CIA that she didn’t think it was right to spy on American citizens, especially when they were the ones offering her the training she hoped would be enough to rescue her world from the Incubus. She acted cold and aloof around Allen, but gradually warmed up to him. It was hard for anyone to be cold around Allen.
She confided in Allen everything, from the truth about her mother to her misgivings concerning the CIA. Allen told her that, when the time did come for her to fight the Incubus, he wanted to be by her side. The government didn’t want him to so much look at the Land of the Nightshades. They were afraid the Incubus could kill him. They were afraid that the Incubus could turn an eye to Earth. But Allen wasn’t some nuke to be stored in a silo. He would not let other worlds rot in the hands of an evil god.
He was a man, and he would take risk and action like a man.
In 1967, Captain Atom was placed in charge of an entire team of superhumans called the Marvels of Science consisting of the mysterious Question, though he often skipped meetings and held open disdain towards the United States government and all governments in general, Tiger, who was the sidekick to a 1940’s superhero known as Judomaster, Nature Boy, who was empowered by the gods to make up for his untimely death, which violated the dictates of fate, and the Blue Beetle, who joined as soon as it could be confirmed he was not responsible for the demise of his predecessor.
In 1968, Allen left the Earth to explore space after learning from the Question and Blue Beetle that the CIA had drafted plans to force Captain Atom to invade the Soviet Union by having a fake Soviet supervillain assassinate as many of them as he could.
Allen was understandably furious.
The CIA swore to Allen up and down that the plans were only “theoretical,” but Allen didn’t believe them. They begged Allen to stay and claimed that his absence would create an imbalance of power that could lead to a nuclear war. Allen replied that it wouldn’t, that it would probably do a lot of good and teach them not to put nukes in Europe, stop trying to assassinate foreign leaders, and waging proxy wars. He said that they clearly weren’t working towards world peace with him, so maybe they would do better without him.
They believed humanity was inherently self-destructive, but Allen believed that they, the powers-that-be, were self-destructive, and if there was a nuclear war before he returned, he knew how to find them in their bunkers–find them and make them pay. And if returned to find any of his friends dead, he would start at the head of the CIA and work his way down. This caused the federal government to disband the Marvels of Science and place the superheroes under house arrest “for their own good,” though they were rather bad at preventing them from sneaking out to do superhero thins anyway. The Blue Beetle notably ran rings around them, flying around in his giant insect-shaped craft picking up his friends to go on adventures
Allen’s absence was taken advantage of by the brilliant and brutal Peacemaker, who claimed to “love peace so much he was willing to fight for it.” The Peacemaker operated from out of neutral Switzerland and utilized weapons of his own invention to “fight for peace, usually by inflicting total destruction on whatever rouge state or super-science cult the KGB or CIA wanted gone. Something would always go wrong that would “accidentally” result in a complete loss of life. A nuke at the heart of the compound would detonate. It couldn’t have been helped. In fact, the Peacemaker tried to save as many as he could.
The CIA and KGB liked that. Peacemaker understood plausible deniability just as they did as well as the virtue of leaving no witnesses.
The Peacemaker was seen as the CIA and KGB as little more than a hatchetman, but in reality, he was easily the smartest person in their world. He knew how to make many, many more things than weapons. He knew about dilusteel, the top-secret wonder-metal that allowed Captain Atom to contain the radiation he naturally emitted, which the CIA thought only they and NASA knew about. He knew something about dilusteel no other physicist on Earth did–that it could be used to set off an atomic reaction that could cascasde into infinity–one atom transmitting a self-destruct signal via quantum intanglement to another atom and on and on and on forever. With dilusteel, one could create a bomb that would blow up the entire universe. The Peacemaker did just that, once Captain Atom was too far away to detect the construction of new dilusteel, and in his own self-important style, called it Pax Ultimus.
He also knew about the Land of the Nightshades and the Incubus. He saw that entire world as another rogue state, another cult of scientists hidden beneath the sea or in the artic. He saw that entire world as something to destroy, completely and utterly.
He constructed a worldtunnel, and once it connected to the Land of the Nightshades, he would send Pax Ultimus through.
But as his worldtunnel started to form, Nightshade sensed something wrong with the shadows. She turned to the Blue Beetle, who was himself an accomplished scientist, for help, and with the help of the other Marvels of Science, they discovered Peacemaker’s base–and hsi bomb.
A battle ensued, and Peacemaker’s agents, most of whom were recruited from the Marvels’ rogues galleries were able to keep the Marvels at bay while he completed his worldtunnel. He sent the bomb through, and Nightshade shoved him through the portal, hoping against hope that Peacemaker wouldn’t be mad enough to kill himself along with the Land of the Nightshades. But she didn’t have to hope for a happy ending–the Beetle gave her one. He had accessed the worldtunnel’s controls during the battle and changed the destination to an adjacent void universe.
The only atoms to explode there Pax Ultimus’ own–and the Peacemaker.
Ironically, Pax Ultimus wouldn’t have done a thing to the Land of the Nightshades. It was an Astral universe not made of atoms.
Captain Atom sensed the worldtunnel opening from across the universe and traveled 80 nontillion light-years in a second to investigate. He had checked in on some aliens while he was out exploring the universe he had met back in 1960 and they taught him how to better control his powers. He was now more powerful than he had ever been.
Captain Atom had hoped that humanity would survive without him–and he was overjoyed to find that he was right.
With Peacemaker’s worldtunnel able to send people to the Land of the Nightshades and Captain Atom being mightier than any god, Allen felt that it was time to finally take care of the Incubus. Eve hesitated, but was brought around. Now was the time for them to seize destiny.
Together, they drove the Incubus from the Land of the Nightshades and Eve was reunited with her brother after so many years. Eve and Allen would rule the Land of the Nightshades as queen and king, and control of the Marvels of Science fell to the Blue Beetle.
Joined 1970.
Land of the Nightshades (Charlton)
Once, the lost homeland of Eve Eden, known to the United States federal government as Nightshade, known to her people as princess Eden, now, it is Eve Eden’s world.
The Land of the Nightshades is part of the larger multi-universe of Fairy under the Unseelie Court. It is a world of pleasant darkness, the darkness that hides furtive prey from its predator, or the darkness of a cool spot of shade in the middle of a blistering Summer. Before Eve was born, the Incubus, a form of the dreaded Elemental which has plagued countless worlds, conquered the Land of the Nightshades and sealed it off from other realities. Only Queen Magda, peerless in her racial ability to travel through shadows, was able to escape. Magda found herself in the Atomic universe and married Senator Warren Eden, giving him two children–Larry and Eve.
She longed to tell her family who she really was and where she came from. One night, she couldn’t take it anymore, and took Larry and Eve to the Land of the Nightshades after telling them that they too were Nightshades like herself and were friends with all shadows and could summon them and travel through them.
Queen Magda walked with them hand-in-hand through the shadows and brought them to her world, to her home, to a secret little grove she used to play in when she was their age.
She was sure that she could get them in and out without raising an alarm. But she thought wrong. The Incubus was waiting for her.
The Incubus killed her and captured Larry, but Eve was able to escape back to Earth.
Young Eve couldn’t explain to her father what happened to her mother and brother. He assumed foreign powers killed them to intimidate him. That wasn’t far from the truth.
She reached out to the CIA, for her father always spoke highly of them, for help. She felt that with training, she could learn how to bring not only herself back to face the Incubus and rescue her brother, but an army, and that she could learn to control shadows to the point that, in the ever-shadowed Land of the Nightshades, she would have enough power to destroy him. The CIA agreed to give her access to meditation instruction, occult texts, martial arts masters, anything she felt she needed to get stronger–but they expected to be compensated for investing resources in Eve. They expected her to serve her adopted country as an agent of the CIA.
Eve held her nose and did as she was told, often using her powers to spy on fellow Americans.
After Eve and Captain Atom liberated the Land of the Nightshades from the Incubus, they re-established Magda’s kingdom as queen and king to prevent Earth’s governments from carving up the Land of the Nightshades. Larry was rescued and returned to Earth where he leads the modern incarnation of the Marvels of Science as the new Nightshade.
The Land of the Nightshades stands today as a beacon of hope for the members of the Protective Dominion–what is lost to the Elemental can be recovered
Joined 1970.
The Peaceful Universe (Charlton)
An endless, infinite expanse of white nothing that the Blue Beetle sent the Peacemaker and his dilusteel bomb into by messing with the controls of his worldtunnel machine.
Though many universes in the Protective Domain have lobbied for the void to be used for a variety of purposes (mostly dumping waste and hazardous material), it remains a neutral universe, a cosmic wildlife preserve, because the quantum signature of this universe is rare in that it prevented the formation of any sort of atomic structures.
The Peacemaker was pollution enough, let alone his dilusteel bomb.
But if anyone ever needs a place to dump mad men and their universe ending bombs, they are more than welcome to use the Peaceful universe.
Joined 1970.
The Flying Saucer Universe (Lightning Comics)
This universe is named for the Flying Saucers, a race of transforming biomechanoids who protect their universe from all evil. The Flying Saucers are able to give other beings the ability to change into Flying Saucers and in this way create champions for different Earths and different cultures without running the risk of their own race becoming the one and only authority in the universe. It was through this empowerment ability that Earthling Van Crawford was granted the ability to turn into a Flying Saucer in 1967.
As you may have guessed, this is a very pleasant universe. The Flying Saucers keep space safe, and Fatman keeps Earth safe. Van is a good superhero–eccentric, to be sure, and a glutton, but when push comes to shove, Fatman pushes back! He even acquired a team of fellow superheroes–Tinman, a high school boy transformed by a magic spell that promised to create a “shining knight” into a man made out of tin, Anti-man, an aquatic humanoid who turned out not to be near as bad as he first appeared to be, and Super Green Beret, who is, as his name suggests a superpowered Green Beret, but is also, as his name doesn’t suggest, a young boy who magically transforms into a grown man.
Since his world is pretty safe, Van often travels the multiverse to find worlds where he can help out…and sample their foodstuffs. He is by far the ultimate gourmand of the multiversal superhero community.
Joined 1970.
America’s Best Universe (Nedor Comics)
America’s Best Universe is named for America’s Best, this world’s principle superteam.
As with many universes, superheroes rose to prominence in America’s Best Universe shortly before the second world war. Many of these superheroes were powered by artificial means, through what our own universe terms “secondary hyperstasis,” to the point that the archetypal superhero is a normal person empowered by a substance. The Black Terror was empowered by a formula accidentally created in a lab, the Liberator was empowered by an ancient formula called Lamesis, Dr. Strone by a formula called Alosun, the American Eagle by a combination of a serum and radiation, and so on and so on.
These empowering formulas were never able to be mass-produced during the war–but afterwards, in the 1950’s, they were. Now, everyone has some degree of superhuman strength. Everyone has eternal youth. But the world still needs heroes. In this world, it’s not enough to be superhuman to be a superhero. Only the best superhumans are superheroes, and America’s Best is notorious for their strict recruitment standards. Washouts are common, and they often slink away to other universes in the hopes of finding a place where they are accepted.
Joined 1940.
The Atomic Thunderbolt Universe (Regor Company)
In 1946, believing that global thermonuclear war was inevitable, Dr. Josiah Rhonne prototyped a treatment that would make men strong enough to survive nuclear blasts and immune from radiation sickness. He only needed a human volunteer, and not many were willing to let him play mad scientist with their bodies, but eventually Dr. Rhonne found a volunteer in William Burns, known as “Willy the Wharfrat” to the dockworkers that threw bottles at him every morning. William was the lone survivor of a patrol boat sunk by a U-boat torpedo. The incident scarred him physically and mentally, and he was not able to readjust to civilian life. He volunteered to be Dr. Rhonne’s Guinea pig simply so he could be of use to people once again, and if he died, at least it would be somewhere warm.
Dr. Rhonne’s treatment was a success. William was transformed into a superhuman who had no physical fear of nuclear annihilation. But there was an accident during the treatment process. Dr. Rhonne had triggered a nuclear explosion.
Dr. Rhonne was vaporized, but William was unharmed. He was, after all, empowered to withstand nuclear explosions.
Standing over the wreckage, William Burns vowed to carry on Dr. Josiah Rhonne’s work and save mankind from itself. Patterning himself off comic book superheroes, he made himself a costume and took to calling himself the Atomic Thunderbolt, because he found his superspeed to be the best part of his powers. He could race the lightning, watch it slowly arc through the air, and feel it tickle on his skin.
William found two scientists named, of all things, Rigor and Mortis, who were interested in seeing if they couldn’t reverse engineer Rhonne’s treatment from William’s body. It was difficult to extract samples, nothing could pierce his skin, but they made due with saliva and tears. Eventually, they were able to replicate and mass-produce Rhonne’s treatment. The Atomic Thunderbolt managed to achieve Dr. Rhonne’s dream. Mankind no longer had to fear nuclear war.
Which is exactly why there was one.
The Korean war escalated to a nuclear war, and that escalated into a global nuclear war, and though humans were protected from the threat of nuclear weapons, the environment was not.
Total ecological collapse occurred before the decade was out.
Mankind now lives on a planet where he stands alone as organism. They survive through the Rhonne treatment which allows them to absorb energy from the sun, like plants.
War has become a thing of the past, as there is nothing to fight over but dust. Mankind is a miserable species who want for nothing and whittle away the hours in opulent hologram domes that display the world as it was, not as it is.
The Atomic Thunderbolt now roams the multiverse looking for something, anything, that can grow in the radioactive wasteland of his homeworld.
He searches to this day.
Joined 1950
The Youthful Universe (Youthful Magazines)
After escaping the 4th Dimension, the Elemental attacked several universes, including the Youthful universe, which got its name for turning back the Elemental’s attack in 1880, back when superheroes were “still young.”
The Elemental is a being of the Astral, and the Astral is beyond space and time. He was able to attack universes across the timeline and did so with the Youthful universe, attacking in 1880 and in 2000. The “science heroes” of the year 2000 were able to fight back the Elemental using their technology, then, detecting a disturbance to the timestream, sent their champions Captain Science and Brant Craig back in time to the year 1880 where they recruited the vigilantes Gunsmoke and Masked Rider to assist them.
After the Elemental was permanently expunged from their worlds, Captain Science and Brant Craig gave Gunsmoke and Masked Rider a choice–they could either stay in their current time period and continue as gunfighters of the old West, or they could come to the future, and help Captain Science and Brant Craig hunt the Elemental across the multiverse.
Gunsmoke chose to stay in the past, his present, but the Masked Rider chose to hunt the Elemental. He would hunt the menace across time and space until he tracked it to the Amazing universe, where he took the name Masked Marvel and rallied mankind’s superhuman population to defeat the Elemental in two time periods as was done in his universe.
Joined 2000.
The Leader Universe (Holyoke)
Generational conflict is the theme of this world protected by a superteam known as the Leaders, because they led the troops from the front. The first generation of Leaders fought in World War 2. They were soldiers, men of violence and respect for the authority. But their sidekicks and children, who became the Leaders of the 50’s and 60’s, saw things differently. They saw superheroes as protective figures, as people that were more akin to firefighters and EMTs than policemen and soldiers. They didn’t like that their parents killed people. To them, the absolute worst thing a superhero could do was to kill someone.
This disagreement in what constituted a superhero led to friction, as you very well may imagine, but the conflict the Leaders of the 50’s and 60’s had with the Leaders of the 70’s and 80’s let to physical conflict. The 3rd generation of Leaders believed that superhumans were an identity, that superhumans were separate and not equal to basic humanity. They believed that superhumans either had to segregate themselves from humans or rule over them. That led to the 1985 superhuman war, where the previous generations fought to free the third from the influence of a charismatic leader, who turned out to be Dr. Macabre, who manipulated the Leaders into attacking the United Nations to demand the release of a colleague wrongly imprisoned.
Joined 1945.
The Hormone Universe (Dell)
In the late 1920’s, doctors Kennedy, Warren, Anson, Terry, and Herman, leading figures in their respective fields, came together with one goal–the creation of humanity 2.0. Over time, disagreements on how to go about creating superhumanity drove the group to split apart.
Anson believed the answer was in the occult and mediation. Superhumans were to be disciplined telepaths, and he left for Tibet to find the wisdom of the ancients. Terry believed the answer was in technological amplification and began prototyping a suit powered by strange band of “blacklight” energy he discovered which would make whoever wore it superhuman. Warren and Kennedy believed that direct, biological empowerment with Terry’s blacklight was the answer.
But it was Dr. Herman who created the empowerment method that would change the world. Dr. Herman invented a very odd pluripotent hormone that could reprogram DNA, in truth more like a virus than hormone.
In the 1940’s, the doctors were able to put their experiments to the test in the second world war. Anson, after achieving the highest degrees of occult knowledge learning under a hermit named Moro, learned how to create an Astral projection that could interact with the physical world which he called Phantasmo. Terry perfected his suit and entrusted it to his son who used it to become the superhero known as the Owl. Warren and Kennedy experimented on their sons and raised them to be superhuman champions empowered by radiation.
Dr. Herman, not wanting to be left out of this very baroque period, called himself Dr. Hormone and began to use his hormones to create immortal supersoldiers for the war effort, some of whom were granted the traits of animals. Scouts were granted the eyes of eagles and cats. Marines were given gills.
The problem came when the Soviets tried to copy Dr. Hormone’s hormones and accidentally leaked them into the environment.
The post-war world was chaotic, to say the least. People around the world spontaneously developed superstrength–and tails, and fur, and claws. Some demanded that these “wild types” be forced to take a neutralizing hormone to. Some believed that only non-hybrid wild types should be forced to take a neutralizing hormone. Discrimination was rampant, especially when wild types proved to vastly superior manual laborers and closed basic humans out of the market.
Dr. Hormone and his old colleagues struggled mightily to maintain order in the 50’s, but ultimately, they kept their world from collapsing, and though tensions persist today between wild types and basics, the tension is nothing like it was in the 1940’s and 50’s.
Joined 1958.
The Aces Universe (Hillman)
In this universe, superhumans are known as “aces,” as many of the first generation of superhumans were simply men and women with enhanced reflexes that made them ace pilots. In fact, nearly all the aces of the early superhuman period of the 1940’s were aerial aces–Bald Eagle, Bomber Burns, the Airmaidens, the Iron Ace, just name a few, but the greatest ace, aerial or otherwise, was young David Nelson, who was called Airboy on account of his age. Airboy prevailed against many threats during the second World War of the 1940’s such as the bizarre lifeform known as the Heap and the evil spirit known as Misery, and his legend persists to this day.
Most superpowers in the Aces universe result from supertechnology rather than innate powers. The most a superhuman typically has in terms of powers is the “enhancile” set–a little enhanced strength, intelligence, speed, and reflexes. Inventions are what truly makes a superhuman, be it Airboy’s fighter plane “Birdie,” the living stone giant of Swisslakia, and the many gadgets utilized by Micro-face and Zippo.
Tiny Swisslakia is a country that has benefited greatly from superpowers. Once a tiny, modest nation in central Europe, it rose to be a world power due to it’s giant guardian, a stone behemoth created by none other than Nostradamus, who, foreseeing that the Nazis would one day invade Swisslakia, constructed the giant and placed it in Swisslakia. The giant, commanded by the nation’s boy king David Andros, evacuated the entire population of Swisslakia and resettled them in New York. later, the giant would physically upturn the earth to create New Swisslakia right off the coast of New York City.
David passed the giant and his crown onto his son, and his son to David’s grandson. But the giant is not the only asset of the tiny nation. It has invested heavily in technology. It’s military is a volunteer organization composed of men and women from throughout the world. They are armed with gadgets based on those used by the American vigilantes Micro-face and Zippo. They pilot planes based on those used by the aces of WW2, but loaded with the bleeding edge of technology, including “Andros gears” based on the inner working of the giant which allow the planes to transform into shapes both human and animal.
New Swisslakia, though still extremely small, is perhaps the most powerful country on its Earth.
It is certainly the strangest.
Strange, powerful, or both, the other nations of the world trust New Swisslakia to speak for the Earth in multiversal affairs, and the planet’s Protective Dominion hub is located on New Swisslakia.
Joined 1950.
The Alizam Universe (Various Funny Animal Comics)
The home of Hoppy the Marvel Bunny, Freddy Fly the Firefly, and Magic Bunny, who is totally not Hoppy in a blue shirt. Alizam is a strange world full of magically powered animals.
That talk.
And wear clothes.
It’s not the strangest world, if you can believe it.
Battles between superhumans tend to be a zero-sum game in this universe. Being living cartoons, the inhabitants of this world are immortal, indestructible, and can selectively obey physics as determined by their sense of humor. It is not wise to pick a fight with a being from Alizam. They aren’t use to fighting beings that once broken, stay broken.
The Alfagon Universe (Various Funny Animal Comics)
Like Alizam, but instead of its super-cartoons being powered by magic, they’re powered by superscience. The home of Atomic Mouse, Atomic Rabbit, and Atom Cat. Guess what they’re powered by.
They have a rivalry with Alizam that is good-natured, more or less. But then again, it’s hard to to come across as overly hostile in a world where dropping an anvil on someone’s head is how you say hello.
The THUNDER Universe (Tower Comics)
In 1965, the subterranean forces of a long-dormant empire that existed well before the founding of Rome and Babylon rose to claim the surface. Led by a telepath known as the Warlord, they stood posed to retake the planet that was once theirs. But the brilliant Dr. Emil Jenning, forewarned of their coming, was able to create several devices which would hopefully give mankind the ability to fight back. He created a belt which increased the wearer’s strength by increasing his density, a cloak which could make the wearer invisible, a suit that could make the wearer run faster than a jet, and a helmet which increased the wearer’s intelligence to the point of granting them telepathic powers.
He was assisted by his friend and colleague Dr. Anthony Dunn, though Dunn was often preoccupied with a project of his own–a way to cheat death.
Dunn, quickly succumbing to age, worked desperately on a device which could convert a person’s bioelectric nervous impulses into electronic signals that could then be stored on computer banks–in short, a way to upload the human brain.
Just as Dr. Jenning completed his devices, agents of the Warlord stormed his laboratory, killing him. They would have stolen the devices, and mankind would have fallen to the Warlord, but agents of The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves arrived, fought off the attackers, and rescued the devices.
Meanwhile, the stress of his friend’s death putting pressure on his frail heart, Dr. Dunn cut it close and nearly failed to upload his brain into a prototype android body in time.
Dunn, along with several agents of THUNDER were given the devices THUNDER collected and became a vanguard against the forces of the Warlord. Dunn was given the invisibility cloak and took the name No-man, for if anything happened to him out in the field, he could electronically project his mind back to his lab and into another android body. US army corporeal Leonard Brown was given the density belt. THUNDER agent John Janus was given the mental helmet and agent Virgil Gilbert was given the superspeed suit.
In 1970, an accident happened which revealed the truth of what happened to Dr. Jenning.
During a relatively routine battle with the forces of the Warlord, Dr. Dunn’s body was destroyed. He transmitted his mind and left the android body behind. But the body suffered a grievous head wound during the transmission.
The signal for retrieval became the signal for “copy,” something Dr. Dunn didn’t think he could do.
There were two No-men after the battle, for the android body survived, though with a chunk of head missing.
THUNDER command panicked. They were afraid Dr. Dunn was about to guess the truth about what he was. He had come close before. He often shared that he didn’t know how much of himself was really Dr. Dunn and how much of himself was No-man. But THUNDER understood psychology. They were the ones behind MK ULTRA. They made Dr. Dunn fearful of being artificial by equating man-made with fake, with falseness, with the upending of his memories, personality, and sense of self. And so, they kept him from uncovering the truth by making the truth something he could not bear to face.
But now, there was someone he could talk to, just as confused about his existence as he was–someone he could confide in, someone he could trust like no one else.
They claimed that the second No-man was a Warlord plot designed to erode No-man’s sense of self and ordered the THUNDER agents to destroy him while keeping No-man in his lab, for his own protection, of course.
But they underestimated Dr. Dunn’s curiosity and creativity. Dr. Dunn tried something that allowed him to escape from his locked lab.
He mentally pictured himself not as a single intelligence stored in a computer bank like a fish in a bowl but as programming code.
He stretched himself, touched all the bodies that were in his lab, and woke them all up at once.
Together, they were able to break through the locks through shear brute force.
Together, they took THUNDER command hostage and demanded answer, and when no answers came, Dr. Dunn tried something else.
He was code. He was numbers.
Numbers could be changed.
Why copy just Dunn? He could copy anyone.
He copied the minds of THUNDER command into android bodies and told those bodies that, as copies of command, they surely undersood that he was now the only one that could protect them. Their originals would destroy them to keep them from being a danger.
Understanding he was right, because they had all the memories of their duplicitous originals, they told the truth.
Dr. Jenning had been on THUNDER’s payroll for a long time, well before the threat of the Warlord was understood. He was, frankly, a weapons dealer, though because he worked on the right side no one called him that. He was a sad, lonely, depressed man. He never showed this side to Dunn, because Dunn was his friend, and he didn’t want Dunn to leave him, but he often showed this side to THUNDER to get them to leave him alone while he worked and stop asking when the next ultra-nuke prototype was ready.
When the Warlord and his subterranean empire was discovered, a fire was lit in his heart. Here was a threat that was simple, that was heroic to fight against. Here was a threat that challenged the entire world. The stakes weren’t world hegemony. The stakes was the preservation of mankind. Dr. Jenning started living up to his file stating that he was the smartest man in the world. He created devices that changed the rules of engineering and physics. Invisibility. Superstrength. Superspeed. Telepathy.
He scared THUNDER. He scared THUNDER even more than the Warlord, because he was just getting started with his inventions, and because he shared with THUNDER his belief that they should all be given to his friend Anthony as soon as he copied his brainwave patterns to an android body. He asked THUNDER to explain to Anthony why his machine copied, but didn’t transfer, his mind. He realized that that was what his machine really did, but was afraid to bring it up to Anthony before he underwent the process, fearing it would cause his premature death, and was afraid to bring it up to Anthony after because he feared hurting Anthony. THUNDER had plenty of people with psychology degrees. Surely one of them could help? And once they did, an army of invisible, telepathic, superstrong, superfast, unkillable Anthony Dunns would make short work of the Warlord.
Dr. Jenning really did trust THUNDER, and that cost him his life.
It disturbed Dr. Dunn how little things he pretended not to notice before suddenly made sense. The Dynamo belt increased strength by increasing density. Why would they use it on a human when his bodies were already extremely dense and therefore would result in a greater level of strength with the belt? The Menthor helmet increased mental power by increasing intelligence and awareness. He was a brilliant scientist, would he not benefit the most from it? The Lightning suit killed its wearer a little every time it was turned on. Wouldn’t it have been best used on a disposable android body?
It also made sense why it was taking so long to mass-produce the devices. THUNDER didn’t want them mass-produced. If they were devious enough to kill Dr. Jenning, they were devious enough to prolong the conflict with the Warlord for the sake of their own power and authority.
Even from the beginning he should have realized something was wrong. Warlord forces would have leveled the lab, reduced it all to rubble. Capturing the Jenning devices meant they could always be stolen back by THUNDER. Destroying them meant they won the war. And wasn’t it very convenient that none of the devices were taken or damage, how they were all found in perfect working order?
Dr. Dunn remembered something that his friend had told him long ago. He said that he was afraid that “No man could defeat the forces of the Warlord.”
Subconsciously, Dr. Dunn probably always knew. It was probably why he took the name.
With the help of the THUNDER command copies, he located Dr. Jenning’s research notes, preserved in case THUNDER ever got serious about mass-producing his devices. In the notes, Dunn found scribbled entries addressed to him apologizing for never telling him the truth. Dr. Jenning thanked Dunn for being his friend, his only friend, and told him not to be afraid of what he was. He told him to be a good scientist and remember biology. A cutting of a plant became another plant, but it was still a plant. A cutting of a good man became another man, but it was still a good man. He asked Anthony to be a good man and save the world.
That was when the other THUNDER agents returned from destroying the other Dunn.
They attacked Dunn, but it was useless. He now understood what he truly was. He was electronic information. He was the noise of electricity. He was thunder. His mental waves hacked the devices. He turned off his friends’ devices, sat them down, and explained to them how they had all been used.
The THUNDER that emerged from the ashes of the old was an independent nation-state born of information. It was the first of its kind–a nation without land or boundaries.
Dunn declared himself ruler of the electronic information network steadily blanketing mankind, what some worlds call cyberspace, other kyberspace. He justified his rule by pointing out that he was the one and only citizen of cyberspace, what he called the thunder network. It was his homeland, it was his soil, and he agreed to let others pass through is territory–in fact, he believed in free and uncensored information. He saw firsthand what harm “intelligence agencies” could do. There was no need for them in this new world, for all information was free and widely available.
THUNDER quickly mopped up the Warlord and placed his subterranean nation under its authority. War was abolished, for no one could make it. There were thousands of Anthony Dunns, each with copies of the Jenning devices. Combined, they were more powerful than the world’s entire nuclear arsenal. And they controlled the thunder network. All launch systems were under their control. All communications systems were under their control. THUNDER became the de factor world power, and still is today.
Joined 1980.
The Bedeviled Universe (Skywald)
In 1970, the extradimensional evil known as the Elemental invaded the noosphere of this universe, establishing telepathic contact with the leaders of various Satanic cults such as the Claw and the Brotherhood of the Crimson Cross, promising power in exchange for submission. Through their willing minds, the Elemental established a foothold into this reality–but he came up against resistance in the form of the Hell-Rider, a Vietnam veteran transformed into a superhuman by an experimental drug called Q-47, a drug that, unbeknownst to the scientists, was a vector for demonic possession. But those with strong wills like the Hell-Rider could resist the mind of a demon while retaining the strength of a demon.
Hell-Rider wiped out the cults of the Elemntal along with the vigilante Butterfly, Lady Satan, another person exposed to Q-47 like the Hell-Rider but still struggled with the demonic influence, and Edward and Mina Sartyros, demons known as “clawites” to the inhabitants of the Daring universe summoned by Elemental cultists but rebelled, as the botched summoning gave them a sense of self separate from the Elemental. But the Hell-Rider still rides to this day, as evil never truly dies, nor the allure of power that Q-47 promises.
Joined 1980.
The Time-Tossed Universe (Fiction House)
This universe is the result of a cosmic game played between the demon Ibid, a being as wicked and powerful as the Elemental, and Stuart Taylor, a scientist who explored all of space and time, for the fate of the universe.
The board–Earth. In the past, present, and future, all combined on a single planet.
The pieces of Dr. Taylor–cowboys, superheroes, spacemen, jungle queens, and heroes of all kinds.
The pieces of Ibid–demons, Nazis, killer robots, and monsters of all shapes and sizes.
The game–war!
The Amazing Universe (Centaur Comics)
This universe, named after the Amazing Men, a team of superheroes led by the Amazing Man, has extensively battled the Elemental, perhaps more so than any other universe.
The Elemental first attempted to invade this universe in 2334 BC through the dreams of the immortal Zardi of Sumer, the Earth’s first superhuman. Zardi was able to use his telepathic might to fight the Elemental off, but he knew the creature would return. To safeguard the Earth from the Elemental’s return, Zardi created the Council, a hidden order dedicated to aiding him. Down through the centuries Zardi would fight the Elemental and try to remember the brave mortals that stood by his side. During the Italian Renaissance, he learned how to impart his immortality onto others by slowing storing excess bioenergy, and the Council became the Council of Seven, Zardi and six other immortals.
In the 1940’s, the Elemental, with the assistance of the Nazi Tule Society, prepared to make its greatest push into local reality yet. But the Council of Seven received helped from an unlikely source–a masked man from another universe who called himself the Masked Marvel.
The 3-D Universe (Harvey)
Similarly to the Leader universe, with which the 3-D universe has crossed over with many, many times, the 3-D universe featured a generation of superheroes in the 1940’s and 50’s who would be supplanted by their young sidekicks in the 60’s and 70’s. But while the Leader universe featured a generational disagreement over what constituted superheroes, this universe did not, likely due to there being greater matters to grapple with at the moment than philosophy.
Once the second world war concluded in 1945, the America was left with two ideologically opposed superhero teams. The Freedom Fighters, led by Captain Freedom, were vigilantes that operated outside the law and were, in fact, distrustful of the federal government after learning how they coerce the Human Dynamo Red Blazer into laying waste to several German and Japanese cities with their powers. The Minutemen, led by the Spirit of ’76, were federal agents. While they worked together during the war, after the war, the Minutemen were ordered to arrest the Freedom Fighters. This led to a long and protracted conflict between the two teams which was halted in 1953 when the Book of D surfaced and brought the superhero community into conflict with the ancient Rakasha race (see the Book of D entry for more information.)
When the Rakasha race was finally subdued in 1960, the conflict between the two teams resumed, now centered on who would control the Book of D. The conflict was finally resolved in 1964 when president Miracle, who was the superhero Dr. Miracle, uncovered evidence that Yankee Doodle Jones, the first member and leader of the Minutemen, was in fact an artificially made from the corpses of several men. This gave him a public mandate to dissolve the Minutemen.
Joined 1965.
The Book of D
50,000 years ago, the race of D controlled a thriving civilization that spread across the face of the Earth. They named themselves after the Book of D, their greatest invention, which led to what they called the 4th dimension, not to be confused with the 4th dimension known to the Solar universe. This 4th dimension was a nurturing wellspring of power. Anything or anyone exposed to it would be consumed by it, reformatted into an image on the infinite pages of the Book of D. They would become immortal, their bodies constantly replenished by endless life-force. The only downside was that 4th dimensional energies became the entirety of the being. They would no longer need food, water, or air, but by the same token, they could not live just on food, water, and air. If removed from the 4th dimension too long, they would fade away into nothingness.
The race of D planned to transfer their entire civilization into the Book of D, but they only had time to store a lone champion as the cat people, the Rakashas, wiped them out from the face of the Earth. The Book of D was entrusted by the race of D to primitive man, and the book was passed down from hand to hand and culture to culture, while the Raskashas were annihilated by a sudden catastrophe to only a handful of survivors that hid in the shadow of mankind’s rapid development. It wouldn’t be known for many years what nearly drove the Rakashas to extinction, and not even the lone survivor of the race of D inside his book knew, but it was the Elemental who attacked the Earth in ancient times and was only driven back by the near extinction of the Rakashas and the annihilation of their civilization.
In 1953, the guardian of the Book of D was slain by agents of Tigra, modern leader of the Rakasha remnants, prompting the survivor of the race of D to be summoned to defend the book. Calling himself Captain 3-D, his conflict with the Rakasha drew in the superhero community and momentarily halted the conflict between the vigilante Freedom Fighters and the government backed Minutemen.
Nowadays, the Book of D is the secret weapon of the superhero community. Every superhero in the 3-D universe binds themselves to the Book of D so that, like Captain 3-D, they can draw power from it. This does mean they have to periodically return to the Book of D to replenish their life-force, but they’ve constructed a very comfortable world inside the book so that resting inside it is no problem at all.
Joined 1965.
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