Capeworld Comics

The Xam Universe

 

The Hero From Xam

 

In this universe, Earth has no native superhero population. Primary hyperstasis simply doesn’t happen for Earthlings. Instead, it is protected by Captain Marvel, a robot from another world, and his Captain Marvel Corps composed of himself replicated across several bodies and assisted by human volunteers equipped with advanced weaponry.

 

Earth’s climacteric took place in 1966 when the Xamian robot, the last intelligent being from that doomed planet, found a planet populated by beings similar to that of the Xamians in whose image he was made. Taking the name Captain Marvel (a fairly common name throughout the multiverse, likely because it sounds really cool), the Xamian robot shared some of the advance knowledge that creators implanted within his mind–medical knowledge he shared freely, which gave Earth rejuvenation treatments and virtual immorality, but he did not share anything in the “weapons” folder, he remembered what happened to Xam. It took a long time before he was comfortable with humans using the very weapons that led to Xam’s doom.

 

The scientists that created Captain Marvel knew their end was coming. It was like Miracle Mile, all systems were locked into doing what they were made to do and no one in power was willing to hit the abort switch. The missiles were coming, it was only a matter of what to do about the waiting. Captain Marvel’s creators took a war robot–it was easy to get one since no one would have a need for robots or weapons in just a little while–and heavily modified it. They were, amusingly, creating the greatest weapon Xam had ever seen. They wanted a survivor, something that could endure whatever dangers were up in the stars, because that was the only place the spirit of Xam could live on. They wanted something to carry on the legacy of Xam, super-survivor built in their image, with their speech, and with everything their race knew uploaded into his brain.

 

When he awoke, they wanted to teach him, to give him context to the information in his mind, but there was no time. The missiles came down, the domes shattered, the ground cracked, and Xam was no more. But Captain Marvel was built to last, and out of the floating debris he flew off to seek another world. He found Earth, a world that was like ancient Xam before the domes and global wars and nega-missiles, a world where the worst weapon was a primitive atomic bomb, and settled on it as its protector.

 

As the greatest weapon of lost Xam, Captain Marvel was fitted with many weapons and defensive measures–laser eyes that could cut through metal, finger-housed sonic guns, the ability to withstand, absorb, generate, and release electricity, the ability to project an impenetrable forcefield around himself, the ability to fly with boot-jets and anti-gravity devices, and his most iconic ability–the ability to split apart into flying pieces when he said SPLIT and recombine when he said XAM. His Xamian designers thought it was a nice touch to associate their name with unity, though their planet ended up doing the opposite of rapidly combining together.

 

He had one flaw: he had to touch a power medal on his chest to periodically recharge himself, otherwise he would fall comatose. Why he was built with this flaw is a matter of discussion. Maybe it was meant to limit the generation of his power, maybe it’s because otherwise electricity would build up in his body until he blew, so his body is constantly shutting down until he completes a circuit with his power medal? Maybe it was to act as a mercy device–the Xamians didn’t know much about the wider universe. Maybe they were the only ones in the universe, and they sent Captain Marvel to fly forever through a lonely void? If he ever felt like ending his loneliness, going to sleep would have been a lot nicer than having to fly himself into a star, and if there was life in the universe, shutting down gave them the chance to find and reactivate him.

 

More Alien Visitors

 

Captain Marvel arrived just in time to be Earth’s protector. Yuri Gagarin and Vostok 1 rang the dinner bell for the cosmos. The cosmic community saw man pass the somewhat-arbitrary milestone marking a planet as “advanced” enough for communication and sent envoys, and with envoys came trouble. Blue-skinned Neptunians caused a crisis when they arrived without warning and got fired upon, it was like  The Day the Earth Stood Still but the aliens were even more insufferably holier-than-thou. Captain Marvel managed to defuse the situation, but not before the Neptunians accidentally released one of their prisoners, a shapeshifting Gronk known throughout the galaxy as a dangerous criminal. The Neptunians, apparently, saw nothing wrong with having a prison wing aboard the same starships they used to visit civilizations. They pointed to cultural differences to explain this. Captain Marvel suggested that they were aiming to start a false-flag operation. They would unleash an unstable Gronk on the planet, then use it as evidence that the Gronk were staging a slow, methodical Invasion of the Body Snatchers type takeover. The Neptunians would ride to the rescue…but because the Gronks were shapeshifters and shapeshifters were hard to weed out, they would have to stay for awhile and make sure they got them all. And because Earth’s governments were probably infiltrated, they would have to be…supervised…but only for a little while, for course.

 

It would be like the Spanish-American war. America would show up to help…and then decide to not leave.

 

The Neptunians quickly declared everything even. Earthlings shot at them, they unleashed an invincible shapeshifter, why not let by-gones be by-gones? They activated their engines, closed the hatches, wished Captain Marvel luck with the Gronk, and never bothered Earth again.

 

The Plastic Man, as the Gronk came to be called, became one of Captain Marvel’s most persistent foes. Not only was he strong enough to deform Captain Marvel’s super-metal body, but he could make himself look like any person on Earth. He stuck to menacing cities as the crowds gave him plenty of opportunities to vanish. The Plastic Man caused Captain Marvel to have one of those predictable-but-foolish fights with Plastic Man of the USA Universe, who he thought was his Plastic Man colored red and wearing goggles. 

 

The Vaporians of Vapora (if you think that’s something, you should know that in several realities humans call Earth Humania) posed another threat to Earth. The Vaporians were living, humanoid clouds of vapor, and though they had a peaceful and stable society, though they prized philosophy and art above war and conquest, they had criminals, and it was Earth’s rotten luck that that a criminal was the first one to reach Earth.

 

People called him the Vapor Man, and he took it as his name because his natural name was unpronounceable by anything that couldn’t form several vibrating chambers out of mist. He was your typical bully. After being exiled from Vaporia for picking on people just as powerful as he was, he decided to try his luck with a race of tiny people that didn’t reform when they got hit. But he didn’t reckon against Captain Marvel, and he ended up trapped in a jar and turned over to Vaporian authorities. Captain Marvel chastised them for punishing their criminals through exile without making contingencies and advised that they either start imprisoning their criminals or at the very least start locking them in suits so they can’t threaten entire planets with their natural powers.

 

Deeply ashamed, the Vaporians vowed to redeem themselves in the eyes of Earth and sent one of their greatest warriors to help Captain Marvel protect the planet. The Vaporian (he’s often called Vapor Man, but he doesn’t like being associated with that criminal) became Captain Marvel’s hardworking sidekick, the only raincloud you’ll be happy to see on a sunny day. He also runs the Vaporian embassy, which serves as his home and headquarters. He’s the official ambassador to Earth, but he detests the job. He doesn’t understand why Earth has to have so many different countries. Can’t they have a monoculture like a sensible planet?

 

The Captain Marvel Corps

 

Gradually, alien threats were supplanted by terrestrial ones. Though Captain Marvel was very careful in what Xamian technology he shared with Earth, he was dismayed to find that what little he shared was weaponized by supercriminals, brilliant but twisted individuals. The Bat, Mr. Brilliant, Dr. Dark (who was Mr. Brilliant with a mustache), Colonel Cold–they all used weapons derived from the advanced medical technology Captain Marvel shared. The Bat used hypnosis devices based on therapeutic alpha wave generators, Colonel Cold used freezing devices based on medical refrigeration and cryotherapy, and Mr. Brilliant weaponized anything and everything as he desperately searched for a gimmick to make him stand out among his felonious peers.

 

In 1971, overwhelmed by all the supercriminals, Captain Marvel created the Captain Marvel Corps composed of himself, and himself, and himself…

 

Captain Marvel found that he could control more than just the components of his body–far more. When he created extra appendages to use as spares, he found that he could control them as comfortably and skillfully as the originals. He could control an extra hand, and an extra leg, and an extra head–an entirely separate body. It caused him no strain to work two bodies at once, he could coordinate them as easily as a human could his two hands. Then he found he could comfortably control three bodies at once…four bodies…five bodies…

 

By 1972, he had twelve bodies. By 1975, two-hundred. By 1980, five-hundred.

 

The planet was protected by Captain Marvel, and Captain Marvelous, and Captain Paragon, and Captain Wonder, and Captain Sensation, and Captain Virtuoso…

 

The world was of mixed feelings concerning the many, many Captains that policed their planet. They were glad that Captain Marvel was finally able to get the supervillain situation under control. By 1980, all the usual suspects were rounded up and jailed. But one person, however good, having so much power bothered them. It wasn’t so much that they feared Captain Marvel turning evil, that only happened to lame superheroes from other universes that had something wrong with them to begin with, but what if the Captain Marvels were somehow disabled? That would leave just the Vaporian to protect the entire planet, and he had a weakness to bottles.

 

Couldn’t Captain Marvel power-up some humans to help him? It would break his “don’t share weapons” rule, but it would help give the planet some peace of mind. Besides, if he couldn’t trust humanity with Xamian weapons, could he at least trust a few individual humans? Didn’t the planet deserve at least that level of trust?

 

Captain Marvel refused. What could possibly happen to take down all five-hundred Marvels? No. It was best that the power of Xam stayed with the Xamian.

 

Of course, something happened.

 

Mr. Brilliant finally found a gimmick that let him stand out from the supervillain crowd–cybernetics. Calling himself Dr. Data, he escaped prison and began hijacking every computer he came across–every Atari, every Colecovision, and every Captain Marvel. His control spread across Captain Marvel’s vast network until all five-hundred bodies fell under his control. The Vaporian did what he could, but Dr. Data had the Marvels place him within a giant circuit board made of glass tubes. 

 

Earth seemed doomed to be ruled by history’s greatest genius with the lowest self-esteem (though he was feeling pretty good after defeating Captain Marvel), but suddenly the Secret Marvels appeared–a team of scientists who were able to partially replicate Xamian technology by carefully observing Captain Marvel. They were able to defeat the Marvel multitude by using forcefield projectors based on Captain Marvel’s own. They put forcefields around every Marvel’s power medal, and unable to touch them, the Marvels eventually shut down and left Dr. Data defenseless.

 

Captain Marvel woke up humbler and wiser. He realized his mistake–in seeking to prevent Earth from going down the same road as Xam, he depowered those that could have helped him. It was only by breaking his rules that the Secret Marvels were able to save him–and the entire planet. And his rules did little to stop criminals like Dr. Data from abusing Xamian technology anyway. 

 

Captain Marvel recruited the Secret Marvels into the Captain Marvel Corps and, the Captain Marvel Corps continues to protect the Earth to this day–a combination of man, machine, and alien working together for the betterment of the planet.