Project Utopia = Project Dystopia?

When last we left our noble Squadron, they had decided to heal the world by ridding it of its transgressions. Nighthawk had resigned amidst concerns that this enforced utopia would infringe on the rights of the world’s citizens and send the world back into the same state of disaster that it had suffered at the hands of the Serpent Crown and Overmind.

Many citizens were equally unconvinced, especially because many of them remembered a time of political concentration camps created by Kyle Richmond (but they didn’t know and were unlikely to believe that those camps were brought on by the control of the Overmind). That didn’t stop the Squadron, however, as they began to distribute food and medical supplies in the hopes that it would rebuild a country on its heels.

Internally, the Squadron was not all wine and roses. It began with Albert Gaines, the man called Nuke. His body was emitting radiation at increasingly dangerous levels, and he had unwittingly made his parents sick with cancer-causing radiation poisoning. He extracted a nigh-impossible promise from Tom Thumb to find a cure, and as his parents weakened, Tom Thumb was forced to turn to the worst possible solution—bargaining with the Squadron’s most hated enemy from the future, the Scarlet Centurion. The Centurion offered his Panacea Potion, a cure for each and every disease known to man that could save the lives of billions of people. In return, he asked Tom Thumb to sprinkle a little Argonite into Hyperion’s food—just enough to weaken him so that the Centurion could defeat him. But Tom Thumb chose honor above the cure and rejected the Centurion’s offer, seemingly dooming Nuke’s parents in the process. It also seemingly doomed Tom Thumb, who discovered that he had cancer too. He could have saved himself, but he chose the sanctity of friendship over his own life.

Nuke would be the first casualty of the Squadron during this period. After his parents died, he lost control of his faculties and battled Dr. Spectrum, who was trying to stop him from doing something stupid (like going after and killing Tom Thumb). But Nuke had so much power and was getting so much stronger that Spectrum had to use his power prism to create a containment bubble. As Nuke’s agitation and frenzy increased, Spectrum was forced to make the bubble stronger and stronger. Eventually, Nuke’s power burnt up all of the oxygen in the bubble and he asphyxiated.

Then it was Amphibian’s turn for action. He responded to the machines’ potential misuse and the obvious dangers that they posed with anger; he sabotaged and destroyed several of the machines and quit the Squadron, setting back their plans for some time but unfortunately not stopping them. They rebuilt and modified the devices, which ended up working better than expected—the Squadron began taking super-powered criminals and using the devices on them to strengthen their ranks while keeping with the program of indoctrination. Their new “criminal” recruits were from the Institute of Evil; after a failed attack on the Squadron, Ape X, Dr. Decibel, Foxfire, Lamprey, Quagmire, and Shape were each brainwashed by the Device and then offered a place in the Squadron ranks.

Nighthawk went in the other direction. He entered the 616 Earth to try to gain some allies and stop the Squadron. There (through the help of Wizard Supreme, Professor Imam, who knew they would make allies and not foes for him), he ran into his three longest standing and most hated archenemies—Mink, Remnant, and Pinball. They had been sent to Earth 616 by Master Menace while trying to run away from the Squadron and their Behavior Modification Program. But Captain America helped convince the four of them to work toward a common cause—to put an end to their enmity and work together to end the Squadron’s regime. So, Nighthawk and the three criminals joined forces and asked the Master Menace, another Squadron enemy, to help them as well; taking down the Squadron would serve Menace’s agenda, regardless of whom he allied with. But the Master Menace rejected the plea, forcing Nighthawk to find another way; Nighthawk took the criminals who were turned around by the Behavior Modification Device and realigned their brains to how they originally were. In order to do this, however, he had to plant some new heroes into the ranks of the Squadron to help him from the inside.

The charade ended when Master Menace and Hyperion made it back to Other-Earth and the two Hyperions clashed. The real Hyperion used his heat vision on the duplicate Hyperion’s eyes and burnt them out, but the effect caused the real Hyperion to be blinded. They blindly continued their battle hand-to-hand, but the real Hyperion had the upper hand and took the duplicate down. The duplicate Hyperion died in Power Princess’s arms, confessing his love and the murder of her husband and begging forgiveness.

In the meantime, Nighthawk recruited the Black Archer out of his Squadron expulsion, and he also recruited five new superheroes to his cause—Haywire, Inertia, Moonglow, Redstone, and Thermite. This group of ten called themselves the Redeemers, and the five new heroes infiltrated the Squadron to begin undoing the damage already done. With the help of the Master Menace, who had thought over his previous refusal to assist, they were able to reverse the Behavior Modification Program. With the help of the heroes inside, they were able to kidnap and undo the brainwashing of Foxfire, Lamprey, and Shape, the three who would go on to join the Redeemers.

Meanwhile, Tom Thumb and his former nemesis and now research partner (who was falling for him) Ape X created the Hibernaculum, a device that was able to keep bodies in suspended animation so that they wouldn’t die. Since Tom Thumb was unable to create his own Panacea Potion and was therefore unable to cure his own cancer, this was his last recourse for survival until the cure was discovered. He had kept his illness quiet to all except his computer, an intelligent and almost sentient system called AIDA (Artificial Intelligence Data Analyzer), and he ordered AIDA not to reveal his secret. But, realizing that his demise was rapidly approaching, she overrode the order and told Ape X of his disease. Ape X convinced Tom Thumb to journey into the future and steal some of the Panacea Potion, which he and Lamprey then did. Unfortunately, the Potion turned out to be useless; the Scarlet Centurion was so far into the future of Other-Earth that their immune systems were completely different, and the Potion was ineffective against 20th century citizens. He succumbed to his cancer and was the first recipient of the Hibernaculum treatment.

Ape X would also fall, though she never truly died. When Moonglow snuck into the Squadron’s labs to find, retrieve, and transmit data on the Behavior Modification Devices to her fellow Redeemers, AIDA notified Ape X of the transgression. Because Ape X’s own behavior modification included a clause that she could never turn on or act against a fellow Squadron member, her mind was trapped in the contradiction of the necessity of betraying Moonglow’s actions and the impossibility of her being able to do just that. Her mind shut down and she became a vegetable.

And this loss was on top of the “death” of Quagmire, who fell into a coma after inhaling poison gas while rescuing a few dozen factory workers. As a result, he unconsciously tapped into the Darkforce Dimension and excreted Darkforce muck from his ears . . . and excreted it and excreted it and excreted it, until the entire Squadron hospital was swamped and Doctor Decibel had drowned. Hyperion was forced to pull the plug on Quagmire’s life support, after which Quagmire and his muck disappeared, only to surface later in the pages of Quasar on Earth-616.

About that time, Arcanna went into labor. She had been pregnant for a while, but had hidden it with her magic. Shape helped rescue her from Moonglow (though Arcanna was the one who clocked her) and carried Arcanna to the hospital. Lamprey siphoned Hyperion’s power into himself, then leeched the power from Blue Eagle’s wings, causing him to fall. Blue Eagle was able to glide downward . . . right into Pinball, which took out Pinball and injured the Eagle severely.

 

Hyperion then surrendered the Squadron before more bloodshed and senseless death could occur, but there were casualties aplenty—Nighthawk of heart failure, Foxfire from internal hemorrhaging, Blue Eagle from a broken neck on impact with Pinball, Pinball from a broken spine and a collapsed lung, Black Archer from head trauma caused by Blue Eagle’s mace, Lamprey from the explosion, and Thermite from injuries due to his regulator pack bursting.

 

 

The Death of a Universe

Just as Hyperion surrendered and agreed to dismantle the program, the Squadron was thrust suddenly into the “Death of the Universe” storyline. There, the Nth Man (exiled from the Marvel universe) started to consume the Squadron’s universe. Allied with Professor Imam and Master Menace, who in turn brought the Scarlet Centurion and Overmind into the battle, they battled the Nth Man’s power, but fell short. It was Arcanna’s infant son, Benjamin, who was destined to replace Imam as the Wizard Supreme of the Squadron Universe and who would stop the Nth man by trading powers and positions with him. He then traversed the universe to re-create the other universes that had been destroyed by the previous Nth Man.

But while he was gone, the former Nth man, now Wizard Supreme, banished the Squadron to the Marvel universe, where they were unable to find a means to return. Deciding to wait until Benjamin returned from his mission and could rescue them, they were duped into believing that the Avengers had actually perished during the Onslaught saga and were replaced by imposters. After a battle against the “fake” Avengers, their identities and innocence were proven, and they helped send the Squadron back to Other-Earth.

When they returned, however, the discovered the New World Order that had taken over their home planet. Project Utopia had not been dismantled, but rather increased tenfold by the current government. Behavior modification was now used as a government tool to control the populace, and a brutal police force called the Blue Eagles upheld a twisted law. Realizing that they were the inherent cause of this, they recruited Amphibian, the nearly forgotten Skymax, and Nighthawk’s son (who had taken up the mantle) and took up residence in a new headquarters on Utopia Isle. There, they would fight to take down and dismantle the heinous corruption of what they had created.

Next Week: A card-by-card breakdown of the Squadron and a look at Supreme Power.

Questions? Queries? Comments? Send ’em along and I’ll try to get them answered in the column! Email me at Kergillian (at) hotmail (dot) com

Also known by his screen name Kergillian, Ben Kalman has been involved in the Vs. community since day one. He started the first major online community, the Vs. Listserv, through Yahoo! Groups, and it now boasts well over 1,750 members! For more on the Yahoo! group, go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Marvel_DC_TCG.