It is axiomatic that we learn from our mistakes. Observing the consequences of our misjudgements, and realizing with hindsight how we could have done better, we become resolved not to make the mistakes in question again. Those who cannot admit that they have made a mistake, however, will continue to make them.
But it is also true that we can learn from one another's mistakes. The discovery of an oversight or other error in a colleague's observations can lead someone to make new discoveries which would have been hidden otherwise. This may seem cold-blooded, and to a degree it is. But just as the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, the price of accuracy and honesty is a certain emotional detachment from the subject which one examines.
In the articles which follow, I will examine certain hypotheses proposed by my colleagues. In many of them, I have found what I consider to be mistakes or misjudgements. The result of this examination is a new set of hypotheses which I find more plausible. My disagreements with my colleagues are not, and should not be interpreted as personal attacks on them. Nor will I interpret their almost certain disagreement with my hypothesis in such a manner.
After all, I have much to learn from my mistakes.
In his survey of the history of space travel, Jean-Marc Lofficier discusses E.E. Smith's "galactic edisonade" The Skylark of Space in the section entitled "The Roaring Twenties". Yet while it was first published in the pages of Amazing Stories in 1928, the novel was written from 1915 to 1920. It is a minor mistake, and in no way does it damage M. Lofficier's contention that the sequels to the original Skylark novel were wholly fictitious. If anything, the great lapse of time between the writing of the original novel and its sequels, which ostensibly describe events taking place within a year or so of the events of the first novel, could indicate that any factual material they contained would likely be hopelessly bowlderized.
M. Lofficier does not discuss the backgrounds of the cast of Skylark in any great detail, aside from speculating that Mark C. DuQuesne, the antagonist, is actually a guise of the individual he identifies as Count Cagliostro, the Counte of Monte Cristo, Arthur Gordon Pym, Captain Nemo and many others. Regardless of what one thinks about this thesis, M. Lofficier does not even put much evidence forward to support this particular identification.
On the other hand, there is very little information available to any researcher concerning DuQuesne's background. There is no evidence that he is foreign to the United States of America, unlike the villains of earlier Edisonades. While his surname is not Anglo-Saxon in origin, he is not given particularly "foreign" characteristics; he does not speak with a distinctive accent, for example.[1] DuQuesne's background is a large question mark, in contrast to the detailed origin given for Richard Seaton, the book's protagonist.
One possibility that should be examined is the likelihood that his name is a coded clue to his true identity. DuQuesne is pronounced "doo-Kane", of course, but despite this -- and despite the obvious polylinguistic pun that his name is "the mark of Kane" -- it does not seem very likely that this is the damned immortal of that name. While Kane's appearance could certainly have been disguised (substituting black hair and black eyes for his distinctive red hair and killer blue eyes) his passionate if brutal personality is vastly removed from the icy logic that informed Mark DuQuesne's actions. It is possible, however, that he is a descendant of Kane, for reasons which I will discuss shortly.
What is definitely known about DuQuesne? That he was a brilliant and utterly ruthless man. That he had an interest in transcending the limitations of physical existence to become pure intellect, and that he had studied various Asian philosophies in pursuit of this end. And that he was somewhat older and more established that Richard Seaton, who was born around 1890. I am tentatively prepared to place his birth in the year 1885.
What else was happening in 1885?
According to Jess Nevins, Adam Morgan (alias Tom Edison, Jr.) was then twenty-three years old, and engaging in a variety of international adventures, many of which would never be chronicled by his biographer, "Philip Reade". In his study of the reality behind the dime novels of the American West, Mr. Nevins portrayed Morgan as a fraud, claiming that he had stolen most of his iventions from the earlier inventor Johnny Brainerd -- who disposed of his own rejected inventions and failed plans by dumping them in a reservoir from which Morgan would later retrieve them. While the quality of Mr. Nevins' research is undeniable, I take issue with his conclusions. He dramatically understates the dificulty involved in reconstructing such devices, many of which would have been badly water-damaged or only half-completed. The fact that Morgan was not adept at repairing his devices "in the field" only means that he was not as talented an engineer as Brainerd, not that he had no talent at all.
In any event, it is not at all impossible that Adam Morgan's world travels might have brought him to Great Britain in 1885, perhaps to show off his inventions to the supposedly more sophisticated inventors of Great Britain and the Old World. If so, he almost certainly had a run-in with "rival inventors" who were trying to steal his secrets. His nemesis, Louis Farley, may even have put in an appearance. However, this particular sequence of events did not turn out as well for Morgan as other, similar ones had in the past; the English police were probably unimpressed that he was the injured party in the dispute, not to mention the "collateral damage" he had caused. Forced to flight, the incensed American resolved that if the police were unwilling to help him, he would seek help from the criminal underworld.
The aforementioned underworld in London was at that time controlled, for the most part, by one Professor James Moriarty. The Napoleon of Crime had long since abandoned his own interest in advanced technology in favor of pure, theoretical science -- and the pursuit of of unlimited wealth and power, of course. Yet was likely as intrigued by Morgan's untutored talent as he was repelled by the young man's uncouth manners. When Morgan made inquiries, he was soon brought to a meeting with Moriarty, who agreed to assist Morgan in eluding prosecution for his actions in exchange for a favor at a later date.
As it happens, Moriarty's daughter (whom Farmer named Urania, but who was more probably named Emily after her late mother) was also twenty-three years old at that time. She had given birth to a son, who would later be known as Dr. Caber, two years earlier, her first son by hre father's occasional employee John Clay (aka Paul Finglemore). It is important to understand that the relationship between Miss Moriarty and Clay was not "romantic" in the way that such things are usually understood. At her father's orders -- and likely on her own initiative as well -- she had sexual relations with several of her father's associates in order to tie them more closely to the organization, and to her. (Miss Moriarty, as later events showed, was as cold-blooded as her father. She almost certainly planned to supplant him one day.) Whether her father instructed her to seduce Adam Morgan in order to keep him preoccupied, or whether she did so on her own to gain a measure of influence over the American, is unknown and ultimately irrelevant.
Morgan had inherited or absorbed his father's attitudes towards women. To be fair, the "virgin/whore" mentality was fairly common among men of that era, and there's no evidence to suggest that Adam Morgan ever physically mistreated any woman. He was perfectly willing to play along with Miss Moriarty, but felt no affection for her, or any feeling other than lust. Since she didn't even feel that -- Morgan is not described as being remarkably handsome -- it can honestly be said that neither of them was using the other more than the other was using them.
In any event, Moriarty was eventually able to influence the police to lose interest in capturing Morgan, and recovered the devices he had lost, with assurances that he would certainly remember the favor he owed, Adam Morgan left England behind. It's unknown whether the favor was ever paid back. Morgan would die in 1891, murdered by the Manchurian science pirate Kiang-Ho of the Golden Belt. Miss Moriarty survived her father's death in that same year, and gradually rebuilt her father's organization, or at least a large part of it. (It's possible that she was responsible for a number of false Moriarties who bedevilled Sherlock Holmes and other investigators.) She would die herself in 1919 after she failed to assassinate Holmes and his new pupil Mary Russell.
Before all that, a son was born to Miss Moriarty in early November, 1885. What name she gave him remains unknown. It is unlikely that she had a great role in his upbringing, entrusting him as she had his elder half-brother (and as she would his younger half-brother) to a series of nannies and later boarding schools. From a young age he displayed a precocious intellect and a talent for the sciences, as well as an amoral nature. When he left for university, he adopted the name he would bear for the rest of his life -- Mark C. DuQuesne. The pun no doubt amused him a great deal, and the middle initial may stand for Caber.
It is not at all clear what became of Mark DuQuesne following his escape from the Skylark 2 when it returned to Earth. Possibly M. Lofficier was incorrect in his statement that the sequels to the original novel were wholly fictional, and he perished while travelling to the homeworld of the militaristic Fenachrone, which Seaton and his allies subsequently annihilated, as described in Skylark Three. Perhaps, as revealed in Skylark of Valeron, he escaped that fate and returned to Earth to engage in further plots of conquest, which Seaton thwarted. Or perhaps, he eventually realized that he was wasting his time and energy in attempts to conquer the Earth, as Smith suggested in Skylark Duquesne, and departed with a small company to create a vaguely proto-Objectivist utopia somewhere out among the stars. The truth is unlikely to be discovered at this late date.[2]
But I must note in passing that during the course of that final book, DuQuesne has a brief, passionless affair with an alien "witch". Assuming that this is a distortion of an actual event, and that it occurred sometime after World War I, then I would be inclined to wonder if DuQuesne was the biological father of the man whom Stan Lee and Jack Kirby called Victor von Doom. However, there is too little evidence to support such wild speculation.
On somewhat firmer ground, I can speculate concerning two individuals who probably were the children of Mark DuQuesne. While I am skeptical with regards to Dennis Power's allegations concerning Paul Finglemore/John Clay and his "identical quadruplet" children, I think it likely that he has uncovered a genuine family connection -- one which would probably shock both persons involved.
In 1911, DuQuesne developed an interest in the study of heredity, specifically a curiousity as to which characteristics could be passed from parent to child and which were the product of the child's environment. In order to conduct an experiment, he chose a woman named Alice Adams as the mother of his children. Accounts vary as to whether she was the younger sister of the Nick Adams about whom Ernest Hemingway wrote a number of stories, or the young woman who inspired the novel Alice Adams by Booth Tarklington. Regardless, she was easily seduced and became pregnant -- at which point DuQuesne unconsciously followed in his paternal grandfather's footsteps and disappeared from her life in order to observe the experiment from a distance. Alice Adams gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, before dying. DuQuesne probably regretted her death, but determined to continue with the experiment. He took the children, both born in early November 1911, to an orphanage, and impressed on its female director what a remarkably poor idea it would be to ever reveal any information about him to anyone.
The boy was adopted only a few months after arriving at the orphanage by Jules and Arlene Luthor, a New York couple who believed (incorrectly, as it turned out) that they could never have children. The girl was given the name Anne (quite possibly after Anne Shirley) by the orphanage's director, and would not be adopted for several years and considerable hardship.[3] But I am of the opinion that she had the easier time of it, as her adoptive father, a munitions merchant whom the First World War made a multi-millionaire, loved her for herself, rather than viewing her as raw material for the creation of a saint, as the parents of Alexander "Lex" Luthor did.
New York City, even in the early years of the twentieth century, was not a city conducive to sainthood. By the time Luthor was twelve, his parents had begun to despair of him as a lost cause. He was intelligent, frighteningly so for his age, and the moral lessons his parents attempted to instill in him didn't take hold, except as warnings to avoid being caught. They were not gentle warnings. Around this same time, Arlene Luthor gave birth to a daughter, who was named Lena. The Luthors decided to pull up stakes and return to agrarian innocence in a small village (really a town) in Ohio.
It was here that Lex Luthor met the boy who would become his best friend, and his worst enemy. It was here that he engaged in scientific experiments that caused him to lose his hair -- though not all at once, as the exaggerated accounts of this time suggest; he began to go bald at the age of sixteen, and was completely hairless before he turned thirty. Shortly after this event, his parents abandoned him completely, moved out of town and changed their family name.[4] They told Lena that her older brother had died in a mountain climbing expedition, and she eventually came to believe it. As far as is known, she never met her step-brother again.
If it is difficult to separate truth from fiction in the accounts of Lex Luthor, then it becomes almost impossible in the case of his sister, Annie Warbucks -- to use the name that the comic strip based on her life gave to her. She probably had many of the adventures that the comic strip ascribed to her in her childhood, but did she really meet a vaguely angelic being called Mr. Am?[5] Who -- aside from Ms. Warbucks herself -- can say? One thing that should perhaps be noted is that her step-father seems to have been killed in China in 1935. At that time, she would have been the twenty-three year old heir to most of his fortune, and a very eligible potential bride. And she did marry, though not until 1937.
Her husband to be, Michael Rosenberg, was a wealthy, nonobservant German Jew. It has been said that before the Shoah, there were two kinds of Jews in Europe -- the pessimists, who fled, and the optimists, who stayed ... and died. Michael Rosenberg was extremely pessimistic; he'd come to America with the bulk of his fortune in 1932. How much of the marriage was a financial alliance and how much a love match is unknown, even to this day, although it did produce one child, Oliver Rosenberg, born 1946. In the 1950s, Michael Rosenberg was dubbed a "premature anti-fascist" by the House Un-American Activities Council, and unhesitatingly named names of various former associates who had ties to Communist organizations. He was always a pragmatist.
Oliver Rosenberg was, as with most of his generation, somewhat alienated from his parents, and became involved in the youth movement of the 1960s. However, he became disenchanted with it as he entered his early twenties, anticipating just how little the movement would accomplish, understanding how power would corrupt. Perhaps the last burst of his idealism came when he gave his daughter, born in 1971, the name Willow Rosenberg.[6]
Annie Warbucks and Lex Luthor were both red-haired, probably resulting from a combination of recessives from both sides (likely from Irish Morcar Moriarty, who may have been descended from Kane, on the father's side.) The combination of those genetic factors in DuQuesne's make up which made him a cool-headed (and cold-hearted) rationalist, and those factors in Alice which made her dreamy and unworldly, made Annie into a born survivor with a sharp mind, who was nonetheless basically hopeful and optimistic. The same combination produced a more scientific intellect in Lex Luthor, but also one which was often dominated by anger and vengeance. That difficulty would also afflict a number of his descendants.
What of Richard Seaton? One is inclined to wonder why he and his friend, millionaire Martin Crane, never made good on their plans to use their discovery to start the space race in the 1920s. The most likely explanation is probably that proposed by M. Lofficier: that their space drive exploited a "loophole" in the laws of nature, which was forcibly closed soon after their first flight.[7] This probably frustrated Seaton a great deal, but eventually came to terms with it and immersed himself in his work as a physical chemist. Perhaps his experiences on the battlefields of World War I left him with little taste for juvenile adventures. He eventually married Dorothy Vaneman, and their son -- Richard Seaton, Jr. -- was born around 1919. In later years, Martin Crane lost most of his fortune in the stock market crash of 1929. His eldest daughter married the Seaton's son, while Martin Crane Jr. (born around 1931) became a police officer. (Both of his sons eventually became psychiatrists.)
During World War II, Richard Seaton Sr. became the chief inspector of a munitions plant, but discovered that there was a conspiracy to send substandard shells into use. While unable to thwart the conspiracy directly, and dismissed from his position, he was able to alert several of his colleagues to what was going on. One of those colleagues was E. E. Smith, who also found himself fired for refusing to pass faulty shells. Smith later wrote about this as one of the chapters of Triplanetary, referring to Seaton under the alias Ralph Kinnison. Whether the conspiracy was just a matter of war profiteering or part of a chain of corruption leading out into the gulfs of space, remains a question.
Returning to Lex Luthor: Al Schroeder has discussed a number of individuals whom he suspects are or were Luthor's offspring. I do not intend to discuss his conclusions here, but instead add two more suspects to the mix.
According to Mr. Schroeder, Luthor's eldest child was none other than Dr. Niles Caulder, the brilliant scientist who led a group of superhuman misfits as the Doom Patrol. He further states that Caulder was born in 1923, but I am inclined to believe that it was actually 1933, with "the Chief" seeming older when he first appeared (in the early 1960s) due to the many stresses he had undergone. I also take issue with Mr. Schroeder's conclusion that the mother was named Mrs. Caulder -- as it is more likely that Caulder was the name of the man whom she married to give her children a father -- and suggest that she was the younger sister of Dr. Benton Quest.
I said children earlier, as the evidence suggests that there were twins -- fraternal twin brothers. The younger (by a few minutes) has never been given an actual name in the accounts of his activities. If, as Mr. Schroeder suggests, Luthor obtained whatever means he used to slow his aging from Niles Caulder, then I submit that it is quite likely that he spent even more time with Dr. Caulder's somewhat estranged younger brother. That can be demonstrated by the similar attitude and rationalization for criminal activities that both men share -- their claim that by opposing beings of superhuman ability with nothing other than native intelligence, they are demonstrating the superiority of so-called "mundane" humanity. (It is, of course, a transparent cover for a desire for adulation and unlimited wealth and power.) In pursuit of this goal, the younger Caulder, known by the alias of "the Wizard", has clashed repeatedly with a number of superhuman champions of law and order, most notably Reed Richards and his associates.
Luthor's youngest known child was born around 1972. In the years preceding that, he had learned that Japan was becoming a locus of unusual events and technologies. For example, there had been the strange sequence of events in 1969 which culminated in a young man briefly siezing control of the nation's entire communications network, and another strange episode in 1971 involving massive explosions at the Tokyo Tower. Luthor investigated, not because he cared what happened in Japan, but because he was always interested in gaining access to new sciences and technologies. His investigations in this particular matter were a failure, and he eventually abandoned the effort -- but not before having an affair with the wife of Fujikawa Hayao, a Japanese corporate magnate.[8] The daughter of the affair, Fujikawa Rumiko, grew to be a free-spirited but tough-minded young woman, one very similar in some ways to Luthor's sister, Annie.
Following a series of financial reversals in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Anthony Stark's company Stark Enterprises was acquired by the Fujikawa financial group. While Stark initially considered fighting the merger, he eventually accepted it and went into business as a consultant. During this same period, he met Fujikawa Rumiko and entered into a relationship with her that eventually ended in marriage, despite disapproval (and threats) from her father. A daughter was born to the couple on November 12, 1995; named Brittany, she shows every sign of possessing genius worth of both sides of her family.
As for the descendants of Richard Seaton: after Richard Seaton Jr. returned home from World War II, he became the father of Martin Seaton. Martin later married Mina Jones, a daughter of Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones.[9] In 1975, they had a daughter whom they named Belinda. Unfortunately, Belinda seems to have avoided inheriting the luck of any branch of her family. At last report, she was married to one Julian Napier, a cruel and abusive man -- and apparently the son of the Wizard! (Julian's mother was Jessica Martin, the daughter of reporter Steven Martin. Predictably, for a descendant of the Morgans, he abandoned her after he got what he wanted from her.) The unhappy Napiers have been delivered of a son, David, born August 11, 1995, but information about him is hard to come by. As a descendant of both Richard Seaton and Mark DuQuesne, however, it is almost certain that his destiny lies up among the stars.
By far the most remarkable allegation made by Al Schroeder is that Hugo Danner, the angst-filled superman of Philip Wylie's novel Gladiator, and Clark Kent -- who surely needs no introduction -- are one and the same man. Mr. Schroeder's research into the lives of both figures is unmatched, but I am forced to reject his thesis.
Mr. Schroeder begins his own rejection of the canonical origin of Hugo Danner by suggesting that it is absurd that a genuinely brilliant scientist, such as Abednego Danner is supposed to have been, would have made elementary mistakes when discussing the biology of insects with his young son. Ergo, he must not have been a brilliant scientist; ergo, he did not create a formula which gave his son superhuman powers; ergo, the explanation for those powers -- an extraterrestrial origin -- proposed by Siegel and Schuster is much more likely.
I am somewhat more inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to Professor Danner. After all, his words are being recounted third-hand, and Wylie may have edited Hugo's recollections to make them more readable. Then too, the evidence suggests that Danner was -- to be blunt -- a mad scientist. Scientific brilliance is no shield against delusion or mental illness, and the cliched observation about the link between genius and madness became a cliche because the two have been observed together so often. Certainly Professor Danner seemed somewhat divorced from reality in his final days.
The other reasonable objection to the idea that Hugo Danner is the son of Abednego and Mathilda Danner is that it is unlikely that Mathilde could have carried a superhumanly powered infant to term. This strikes me as somewhat circular logic: how do we know that a woman cannot survive carrying such a fetus to term if we assume that it has never happened? Perhaps the formative stages of a fetus of the paraspecies in question requires greater quiescence than that demonstrated by a baseline fetus. After all, growing a skeleton, musculature and epidermis significantly tougher than those of a grown man may consume more of the nine months of a normal pregnancy that is taken up by the growth of a normal infant's skeleton, musculature and epidermis, leaving it with little time to engage in punches and kicks that could damage the mother. Or perhaps, just as the blood of this paraspecies can have vitalizing effects when transfused into a baseline human, the exchange of fluids between mother and child grants the mother a temporary measure of invulnerability.
In any event, I believe that Hugo Danner was born as the novel about him describes, and that he grew up in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Of course, he was not recruited by any time-travelling groups of superhumans. The "unnatural progression" from a moody and melancholy child to a sociable and charismatic young man noted by Mr. Schroeder can be easily understood. It wasn't a development in his actual personality, but in the mask that he wore to keep people from seeing his actual personality. A close examination of Hugo's life reveals that even as a grown man, he was moody and melancholy. Still, many moody and melancholy men are able to develop a public face which is neither, although passages in Gladiator suggest that it was at best a fragile mask in Hugo's case.
If Mr. Schroeder's researches are correct, then Hugo Danner's intimat encounters with Anna Blake culminated in their first sexual experience in the summer (June to July) of 1911. I suspect that Anna went away in the middle of July, and that her letter to Hugo was delivered in mid-August ... and that she had married Victor Munro at the very start of the month after a whirlwind courtship. On February 29, 1912, she was delivered of a son, who was probably initially named Arnold Munro[10], but who would be raised as Clark Kent.
Although Hugo knew nothing of this, his father was not so unaware. Professor Danner would ahve been very interested in learning whether or not the enhancements caused by his formula would breed true, and he was canny enough to realize what Anna Blake's sudden marriage might mean. He travelled to covertly examine the situation, telling Victor Munro that he was interested in purchasing some animals for use in his experiments -- which was true as far as it went. While there, he also confronted Anna and determined that his suspicions were correct.
It would be tempting to romanticize Anna Blake's actions. She would seem to have acted to give Hugo the freedom to pursue his own dreams at the expense of marrying for security rather than love. But her decision was not so selfless as all that. She knew Hugo better than anyone, knew of the terrible anger that was hdden behind his affable mask, and she feared what might happen if she were to marry him at their young age, and he then blamed her for thwarting his ambitions. Her decision to trick Victor Munro into marriage was almost entirely motivated by self-interest, rather than the dissipated infatuation she'd felt for Hugo.
Professor Danner, however, was a romantic, and so believed Anna's tale of self-sacrifice. He returned home with a number of surplus animals from the Munro farm, including a pregnant female dog. Injecting the dog with a new version of the original formula, he sat back to anticipate the birth of an entire litter of superdogs. All but one of the puppies, however, were stillborn -- one of them had monopolized the food supply, starving his littermates to death. But that one showed remarkable physiological development. From this, the professor concluded that the formula could only be safely used to produce super-powered members of species in which single births were the norm.
Shortly after the birth of the puppy, Professor Danner was visited by an outraged Victor Munro. (This would have been in April 1912) Young Arnold's abilities had become very obvious even at the tender age of two months.[11] Victor recalled a tall tale he'd heard about Cheyenne Springs, connected it to the professor's visit, and demanded the truth of his wife. Receiving it, he seized the baby and drove to Cheyenne Springs to deposit it with Hugo Danner's parents. As far as is known, Anna Blake never saw her son again.
Now the professor was faced with a genuinely difficult situation. He had managed, barely, to keep his wife from realizing what he was doing in his laboratory, but concealing the existence of a human -- or superhuman -- infant would be extremely problematic. (Not to mention that he had no idea how to feed the child.) For a few weeks, he puzzled about what to do, while the boy and the dog bonded. Then a letter came from one of Mathilda's cousins, who had married an Ohio farmer named Kent, in which she mentioned their sorrow that they had never been blessed with a son like their Hugo, or any child at all.
For the second time in under a year, Professor Danner departed to examine the Kents from a distance. He quickly determined that they were people of good repute and excellent character, eminently suited to the role of the foster parents to a superman. But he need to do something to ensure that they would never wonder who or where were the actual parents of the infant. Then he overheard Eben Kent discussing a story he'd been reading in All-Story Magazine with one of his neighbors -- a story about a man from Earth who had travelled to Mars, where he possessed incredible strength compared to the natives.[12]
While that tale sounded utterly ridiculous, it inspired a plan. While Danner was not himself a rocketry enthusiast, he was familiar with the basic concepts involved, and he was able to fake-up a believable looking crash site in a field near the Kent farm. After the bizarre site drew the Kents' attention and they rescued the infant, Professor Danner blew up the fake rocket so that they would never be able to examine it in greater detail. Satisfied, he returned home to discover that the dog had broken out of its cage and vanished.[13] It's possible that concern about the dog's whereabouts and activities, and the strenuous activity of this brief period, contributed to the illness that eventually claimed Professor Danner's life.
What of Hugo Danner? It is very likely that his career is just as Mr. Schroeder proposes, including his role as the primary source for the spread of superhuman characteristics and his acquaintance with the uncle of Bruce Wayne. It is even possible that, as per Roy Thomas' writings on the subject, he was not killed by the lightning strike described in Gladiator. While I would normally regard the coincidental presence of a large Indian who would conveniently provide the body as extremely implausible, there are many equally implausible turns of events associated with the families discussed in this article. I decline to speculate.
The story of young Clark Kent is too well known to repeat here, although it is unlikely that he wore a colorful costume before reaching his full maturity. He quietly did good deeds as "the Angel of Smallville", although there were probably several people who either knew or suspected his true identity. Despite the help that Clark gave him at various times, Lex Luthor was not one of these people, although he probably figured out that the "Angel" was also the Superman who would cause him so much trouble in his later years.
Clark's abilities were, in many ways, superior to those of his biological father. Anna Blake was a descendant of coachman Arthur Blake, and thus a member of the Wold Newton genetic family. The addition of the Blake genetics to the already mutated inheritance of Hugo Danner produced some unique effects, such as granting Clark an unusual sensory faculty that would later be called "the sense of perception", which allowed him to even "see" inside objects. Unfortunately, Clark came to believe that he was perceiving through the use of x-rays, and as he learned that x-rays could not penetrate lead, he developed a mental block against perceiving through lead. It's not known if he ever overcame this psychological limitation.
He was also vulnerable to certain exotic forms of radiation, specifically that produced by a number of isotopes of an extremely rare mineral. Some caused him to become weakened and vulnerable to more conventional forms of injury, while another common form made him suffer terrible hallucinations. Why this should be so is unclear, but one possibly apocryphal story suggests that so-called "kryptonite" could create temporary superhuman abilities in human subjects, which makes me wonder if "kryptonite" might have been part of the formula created by Professor Danner.
Two notable episodes in Clark's youth do deserve some explication. When he was about fourteen years old, a genuine space craft crashed not far from the site where the Kents found him, carrying an amnesiac humanoid extraterrestrial with abilities very similar to Clark's own. This remarkable coincidence reinforced the Kents belief in Clark's extraterrestrial origins, even though a number of major differences between Clark's physiology and that of Lar Gand soon became apparent.[14] I submit that it is likely that the wreckage of Gand's spacecraft, rather than his own, that Clark showed to rocket scientists such as Professor Hans Zarkov.
Later that same year, Clark was contacted by time-travelling "superheroes" from a remote future era. He would frequently travel to the future to adventure with this Legion, but to protect the integrity of the timestream, a telepathic Legionaire would erase his memories of things which could change the future. It is possible that this memory erasure was the reason that Clark encountered certain things -- such as "kryptonite" -- in his adolescence that he would later encounter as an adult and believe that it was the first time he had done so. (If the reader thinks it unlikely that the Legion's telepath could be so clumsy, then let the reader consider the possibility that it was deliberately done as part of the Legion's own agenda.) From the Legion, Clark also acquired a psychically-controlled anti-gravity generating ring, which he used to fly.
Mr. Schroeder has written extensively on the subject of Clark's career as Superman, and while I don't agree with all the elements of his speculations, they are far too wide-ranging to discuss in this article. Likewise, Kai Jansson's writing concerning Clark Kent and Lois Lane's son, Joel Kent, and his career -- first as an ally of Bruce Wayne, Jr. and later as a private investigator (under the alias Joe Guy) -- is authoritative.
I can add the sad note that Karen Kent, the daughter of Clark and Lois who operated under the alias Power Girl, was killed in action in 1989, in one of her first cases as an operative for the Justice League's European branch. In the fictionalized accounts of this event, she was rescued by surgery enabled by Superman's heat vision -- a power he lacks in reality. She never married, and there were no children.
However, I can also add that Joel Kent has married Hyppolita Trevor, the daughter of Steve Trevor and Princess Diana of Themyscria. After a painful first marriage, Lyta Trevor seems to have found happiness with Joel. They are currently living under the alias Joe and Beth Kinnison, and their first child, Elayne, was born March 13, 1996. She shows every sign of possessing power to equal both of her legendary grandparents.
I am not at liberty to discuss my source for the information presented in this section. That said, I have no doubt as to its accuracy.
In 2008, Anthony Stark launches a bid to take over Stark-Fujikawa. Unfortunately, that sparks the beginning of a very bloody conflict between him and Fujikawa's backers, costing the life of Rumiko Stark. That, and other incidents, traumatizes Brittany Stark; she retreats behind a cruel, domineering facade.
In 2012, Elayne Kinnison has the first of several confrontations with Brittany Stark, due to Brittany's somewhat malevolent interest in one of Elayne's friends. When the first battle is written about in a Japanese-language newspaper, they will be respectively called A-Ko and B-Ko, to protect their identities.
In 2016, Elayne joins Justice Inc. -- a descendant of the Justice Society and the Justice League. Brittany becomes a low-level executive at the megacorporation Genom, after her father disowns her. The conflict between them continues, but it is less physical than before.
In 2019, Elayne meets David Napier, who has rediscovered a way to use copper as a power supply for an anti-gravity device, and is now being pursued by several megacorporations. She becomes his protector, and they eventually fall in love and marry, with David adopting his wife's name out of contempt for his own abusive father.
In 2021, Elayne and David's son, Clark, will be born. He will have the powers, of course, though they are somewhat diminished.
In 2038, David Kinnison's borrowed time will finally run out. Despite her fury, despite her knowledge that they will never be punished, Elayne tracks down her husband's killers and turns them over to the police. Two weeks later, they are found dead in an appartment complex owned by Genom. It is ruled a suicide.
In 2041, still looking like a woman in her early twenties, Elayne begins her pursuit of Brittany Stark, whom she suspects of playing a major role in a terrible disaster. The pursuit leads off Earth, and eventually out of the solar system entirely.
In 2043, Clark Kinnison (and several other latter day superheroes) is exposed to a nanotech weapon based on the so-called "gold" isotope of kryptonite, robbing him of his powers and causing them to become latent in his descendants.
In 2078, Clark Kinnison's son Ted is killed in World War III ... but Ted's son, Roderick, two years old at the time, lives through it, and the long dark years after it.
In the twenty-second century, Roderick Kinnison is the strong right arm of the chief of the Terran Federation's secret service, and one of the first to wear the Lens, badge of an interstellar police force that crosses "national" boundaries.
In the twenty-third century, Roderick's descendant Kimball Kinnison is known as the Gray Lensman. A descendant of more remarkable figures than one can shake a stick at, his children are more remarkable still ...
And the human adventure continues ...
[1] If my own speculations about his origins are correct, DuQuesne had probably learned to suppress his British accent.
[2] I do not even remotely think that the Nietzcheans of the television series Andromeda are connected to this hypothetical first space colony. Really.
[3] I should note that Annie is traditionally said to have been born on or around February 29, 1920. This is one of several distortions that the creator of the Little Orphan Annie comic strip included in his "text". Harold Gray originally planned to write a strip about a completely fictitious male orphan named Otto, but his publisher, Captain Joseph Patterson -- who had been acquainted with both Annie and her "Daddy" -- suggested that basing it on Annie's true-life exploits would lend them greater authenticity. In any event, the real "Daddy" Warbucks was probably also born eight to ten years earlier than the canonical birth date of his comic book counterpart.
[4] Though not, in all likelihood, to an obvious anagram such as Thorul. My research indicates that their new family name was Thorsen.
[5] In many respects, this tall, white-bearded supernatural being (who enjoys the occasional brandy and cigar) is rather reminiscent of the wizard known to many as Gandalf the Gray. I find this identification much more plausible than Mr. Nevins' contention, in his survey of notable figures connected with the Indian subcontinent, that Mr. Am is or was (or will be) the man whom Philip Jose Farmer called John Gribardsun, and also the extraterrestrial called the Douwd encountered by the crew of the starship Enterprise.
[6] The official date of birth given for Willow Rosenberg, in 1981, cannot be correct, as the exploits of her colleague, Buffy Summers, were being chronicled as early as 1991, describing events that took place when she was about fifteen. Subtracting ten years from certain dates given in the Buffy "canon" produces a more likely sequence of events.
[7] Despite M. Lofficer's stated intention to avoid referencing comic books, television and film in his articles, this suggestion of a quarantining of Earth, in conjunction with the mention of Jean-Luc Picard in the title, can only be seen as a reference to the Q, who have stated that his (its? their?) intention is to prevent Terran humanity from spreading out into space until our psychological development has kept pace with our technological development.
[8] Some information, which I have yet to confirm, suggests that Rumiko's mother, Utsume Chisato, is a descendant of Martin Crane's Japanese manservant.
[9] Mina Jones (in full, Wilhelmina Jones) is not Dr. Jones' only daughter; more importantly, she was not the daughter with whom he was living in the early 1990s.
[10] Roy Thomas discovered some of these facts in the later 1980s, and wrote a series of stories about Arn (or "Iron") Munro. Most likely, these are mostly fictional, though some of them -- such as the story of Munro's encounter with his biological father -- may contain a glimmer of truth.
[11] Rick Vietch, following some of the same leads which Roy Thomas did, discovered reports of young Arnold's activities, and exaggerated them as the basis of one chapter of his graphic novel Maximortal. It is possible that the first meeting between Clark Kent and his "creators", Siegel and Schuster, may have inspired another sequence in this novel.
[12] Yes, All-Story Magazine was serializing "Norman Bean's" first novel, A Princess of Mars, at this exact time.
[13] The dog, whose sense of smell had been amplified by the formula as much as Hugo's eyesight had been, spent several years searching for his master. (Other humans frightened him, as they didn't smell right.) He eventually found him shortly before Clark's eleventh birthday, and was named Krypto at that point. Most of the stories about Krypto are probably complete fiction, and the dog's wherabouts today are unknown.
[14] About thirty years later, a cousin of Lar Gand also crashed her spacecraft on Earth (though probably not in Ohio.) She was Laurel Gand, the last survivor of the Klingon attack on the Daxamite space colony where she grew up. (A fictionalized account of this attack refers to the Klingons as Khunds. The Khunds are actually a ethnicity among the Klingons, not unlike the Rumaiy.) She grew up to be known as Supergirl. Her reasons for wanting, more than anything, to be the cousin of Superman will be discussed in a future article.
Barrett, Sean. GURPS Lensman.
Farmer, Philip Jose. Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life.
Jansson, Kai. "Saga of the Super-Son". Privately published.
King, Laurie. The Beekeeper's Apprentice.
Lofficier, Jean-Marc. From Cyrano to Jean-Luc Picard, Part One and Part Two
Nevins, Jess. "Reach for Yuh Genealogical Charts, Stranger: An Extraordinary Famiy of the Wold West".
____________. "The Jewel in the Crown: The Wold Newton Universe and India, Tibet and Nepal".
Power, Dennis. The Lethal Luthors.
Rovin, Jeff. Adventure Heroes and The Encyclopedia of Superheroes.
Schroeder, Al. "Conquest and College Years", "From Gladiator to Superman", "Landing and Early Years", "The Luthor Legacy", "(Man of) Steel Crazy After All These Years", "The Once and Future Superboy", "Peace and an Unpeaceful Soul", "Superman Chronology: The Early Years", "Superman/Gladiator Chronology", "The Thirties: Social Reform and a Reporter's Beginnings", "Weariness and War Years" and "World (War One)'s Finest". All published at Schroeder's Speculations.
Smith, Edward E. Children of the Lens, First Lensman, Galactic Patrol, Gray Lensman, Second-Stage Lensman, Skylark DuQuesne, The Skylark of Space, Skylark of Valeron, Skylark Three and Triplanetary.