Kevin Van der Borght
Nov 9, 2007, 04:45 pm
newuniversal #1
February 2007
<img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/covers/marvel/newuniv01t.jpg" hspace=3 align=top align=left alt="newuniversal #1" border="0"> (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/4images/details.php?image_id=10298)<img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/covers/marvel/newuniv01rt.jpg " hspace=3 align=top align=left alt=" newuniversal #1(2nd print)" border="0"> (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/4images/details.php?image_id=10508)
Story Title: Enter
Writer: Warren Ellis (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=14211&highlight=ellis)
Penciler: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Colorist: Jason Keith (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=38040&highlight=jason+keith)
Letterer: Rus Wooton (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=20683&highlight=wooton)
Cover Artist: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Cover Artist: Essad Ribic (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13678&highlight=Ribic) (2nd printing)
Assistant Editor: Daniel Ketchum (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=40840&highlight=ketchum)
Editor: Axel Alonso (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=11682&highlight=alonso)
Editor-In-Chief: Joe Quesada (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=12902&highlight=quesada)
Publisher: Dan Buckley (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?p=1395065)
First Appearance: Izanami Randall
Death: Thomas Alexander Reid, Madeline Felix
On 2nd March 2006 at 03.31 UTC (Universal Time Coordinated) at the St. Mellion’s Hospital in New York City, Detective John Tensen lies on the operation table after being shot through the skull. And although the bullet hadn’t the force to vibrate the brain to mush, John Tensen is still 98% dead when the surgeons decide to close him up.
On 2nd March 2006 at 04.48 UTC in Optima Down, Oklahoma, Kenneth Connell and Madeline Felix are having a drink at a bar.
On 2nd March 2006 at 05.31 UTC in San Francisco, Izanami Randall is at a party with her friend Louise and her boyfriend. After Louise’s boyfriend utters some racist crap, the Japanese Izanami leaves the party angrily, after she tells Louise to lose her number as long as she is dating her racist boyfriend.
At 06.48 UTC, Kenneth and Madeline are lying on the grass, watching the night sky. Kenneth’s head is spinning after drinking several Chinese Car Bombs, which are drinks made of shots of rice wine, dropped into Tsingtao beer. When Kenneth asks his girlfriend Maddie why she didn’t stop him from drinking too much, she tells him that she didn’t see the point as he was having fun. They quickly change the subject to Maddie’s father. After Kenneth makes a comment that her father is crazy, she warns him of the fact that her father is the sheriff of Optima Down. Kenneth realises this all to well, because every time Kenneth touches Maddie, Kenneth gets the feeling that her father is going to shoot him. When Maddie jokes around that her father doesn’t know where Kenneth touches her, Kenneth starts to laugh, which makes his head spinning again. Continuing on Kenneth’s remark of his spinning head, Maddie starts to talk about how everything in the universe spins. Finding it strange that his girlfriend is talking about the universe, Kenneth asks her what is wrong with her. She confesses that she got a little stoned while he was drinking his Chinese Car Bombs. After Maddie tells Kenneth that she is tired, they decide to sleep in the open air.
At 06.48 UTC, while the Chinese, Russian and the U.S.A. early warning systems go down, Izanami Randall is sound asleep.
At the same time in New York City, the people are kept up-to-date about John Tensen’s critical condition through the news. At the hospital, Tensen’s nurse makes a weird comment on Tensen’s current, ‘living’ state. As the nurse goes to the window to close the blinds, after which he is going to decide what to do about John Tensen, he witnesses how the entire sky colours white, just as it does over San Francisco, Oklahoma, Latvia and the rest of the world. In Latvia the White Event, as it will be called later, coincides with a landslip on the northern coast.
A minute after the White Event, a strange mark appears on Izanami’s face, after which she opens her eyes and gets up while she looks at an orange-red sky. When she looks down, Izanami is surprised when she sees all kinds of faces under a water-like liquid, in which she stands. As she doesn’t understand what is happening, she tells herself that it must be a dream and to her surprise, a voice from behind her confirms this. The voice also tells her that she is awake within the dream. As she turns around, she comes face to face with a gigantic round object, which informs her that there is a paradigm shift occurring and that everything has changed.
At the same time at the hospital, the window of Tensen’s room starts to crack, after which all the electronic equipment blows up. Suddenly, the room is lit in a golden light, in which John Tensen’s body is being levitated. When the light goes away, an awoken John Tensen falls back on his bed, after which a mark, in the form of a thunderbolt, appears on his chest. After John gets out of his bed, he tells his freightened nurse, Thomas Alexander Reid, that he can see him, although John is turned with his back towards Thomas. When John turns around, he informs Thomas that he can also see all the patients that Thomas killed. Thomas replies that they were mercy killings and assisted suicides, and that he did it because he can’t see people suffer. After Thomas confesses that he was going to kill John as well, if he had to, John closes his hand and out of nowhere a knife appears, which John uses to stab the nurse several times. While John writes the word ‘Justice’ on the wall, he explains that he could see Thomas’ crimes, being played as a movie in his head. At 07.12 UTC, the stabbed body of Thomas Alexander Reid is discovered, while John Tensen has gone missing.
In Latvia, north of Ventspils, field director Dr. Leonard Carson and supervisor Dr. Hannah Ballad head for the northern coast, where a landslip happened during the White Event. At a certain point, the two have to leave their car behind and go further on foot. When Hannah brings up the hot topic of the White Event, Leonard isn’t impressed by the event and is more interested by the landslip. After Leonard asks for confirmation that the landslip revealed the whole top of a specific structure, which Hannah does, she brings up the White Event again and how incredible it is that the two of them slept right through it. Suddenly Len asks her if she read ‘Day of the Triffids’, in which people went blind after looking at a big light in the sky. In the end the blind people got eaten by big walking plants.
Because Len brought up the subject of being blind, Hannah criticizes him that he is blind, because he wants to go look for early Bronze Age peak civilizations in Latvia. But her criticism doesn’t sit well with him as he reminds her that she is only there as an agent of the dig’s financier. In response Hannah reminds him that she is also his sexual partner.
During their trip to the dig site, the two end up in a discussion about Sumerian civilization. Dr. Leonard Carson believes that the Sumerian civilization of Uruk, which had his peak after 2030 B.C., came in contact with a European one. When the Sumerians told the unknown, European civilization the story of Gilgamesh, the Europeans told a similar story that was even older than the beginning of Sumerian civilization. The Europeans even showed the Sumerians maps of this, which the Sumerians copied into stone tablets.
Now, the two are there in Latvia, which is known to be settled by Indo-European tribes in 2500 B.C. , to see if it is possible if there could’ve been a city-state civilization, of which they never found anything set in stone or on paper for whatever reason.
Suddenly one of the workers of the dig appears and tells them that the landslip uncovered a tomb. The two have barely arrived, when Len wants to know where the dig leader Jim Braddock is, but the man was there all along, examining the construction of the tomb. He concludes that he has never seen a construction of a tomb like this before and that the people, who built it, have planned it so that it could last centuries. After his observation, Jim starts to order his men around, in order to open up a coffin within the tomb. It doesn’t take long before the lid is removed from the coffin. In the coffin lies a skeleton.
In Oklahoma, it is almost noon when Kenneth awakens. As soon as he looks to his right, he discovers the chalked body of his girlfriend Maddie. Strangely the spot, where Kenneth slept, forms the centre of a mark, that can be seen from up in the sky.
About an hour later, Sheriff Felix arrives at his sheriff’s office, after he found out what happened to his daughter. The enraged father even pushes his colleagues aside as he heads for the cell where Kenneth is held. Just before he enters Kenneth’s cell, he orders his men to draw their weapons. Once inside the cell, the sheriff punches Kenneth in the stomach. When the sheriff talks about Kenneth dying, one of the policemen is afraid for what is about to happen, but the sheriff reminds them that they all knew his daughter Maddie and that Kenneth can’t get away with murder. After this, all the policemen have their weapons ready, after which the sheriff asks Kenneth why he killed his daughter. When Kenneth tells him that he didn’t kill her, the sheriff hits him hard in the face with his shoe, after which he pulls his gun and places it at the back side of Kenneth’s head. At the same moment that the sheriff orders Kenneth to look at him, the same mark, which was seen in the grass, appears in Kenneth’s hand and starts to glow.
Characters:
Hannah Ballad (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45510)
Jim Braddock (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45516)
Leonard Carson (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45507)
Dan Felix (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45511)
Madeline Felix (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45512)
Louise
Nightmask (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45505)
Thomas Alexander Reid (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45515)
Starbrand (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45499)
John Tensen (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45508)
<hr>
newuniversal #2
March 2007
<img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/covers/marvel/newuniv02t.jpg" hspace=3 align=top align=left alt="newuniversal #2" border="0"> (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/4images/details.php?image_id=10299)<img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/covers/marvel/newuniv02rt.jpg " hspace=3 align=top align=left alt="newuniversal #2 (2nd print)" border="0"> (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/4images/details.php?image_id=10741)
Story Title: Trauma
Writer: Warren Ellis (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=14211&highlight=ellis)
Penciler: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Colorist: Jason Keith (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=38040&highlight=jason+keith)
Letterer: Rus Wooton (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=20683&highlight=wooton)
Cover Artist: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Cover Artist: Essad Ribic (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13678&highlight=Ribic) (2nd printing)
Assistant Editor: Daniel Ketchum (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=40840&highlight=ketchum)
Editor: Axel Alonso (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=11682&highlight=alonso)
Editor-In-Chief: Joe Quesada (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=12902&highlight=quesada)
Publisher: Dan Buckley (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?p=1395065)
Death: Dan Felix
On 2nd March 2006, at 06.49 UTC (Universal Time Coordinated), Dr. Jennifer Swann is working on Project Spitfire at the National Security Agency Headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. When the White Event occurs Jennifer is sitting in front of the window with a bottle of gin in her hand. When she asks confirmation that the White Event was pretty to see, she doesn’t receive any response from the robot suit, on which she has been working for the last two years. Because Jennifer is angry that the Human Enhancement eXperimental doesn’t work, she pours some gin on it in the hope that it’ll start dancing, just as she does when she is trashed. Moments later, a drunken Jennifer falls asleep on the ground.
On 2nd March 2006 at 12.53 UTC in Optima Down, Oklahoma, Kenneth Connell is surrounded by the sheriff and his men. Just as Kenneth is about to face the sheriff, who believes that Kenneth killed his daughter, a yellow mark starts to glow on Kenneth’s hand. As the bullet from the sheriff’s gun approaches, a small, yellow thunderbolt comes out of Kenneth’s hand and destroys the bullet. But the thunderbolt isn’t done yet and continues his path and finds the sheriff’s gun, which it also destroys. After the yellow thunderbolt has also ripped half of the sheriff’s right arm, it disappears. Upon the sheriff’s order, the other policemen start to fire at Kenneth, but with his new power Kenneth is able to stop the bullets in midair, after which Kenneth redirects them at the sheriff and hits him with them. Using his power again, Kenneth is able to throw the bars of his prison cell to the other policemen. In a neighbouring room, another policeman is already calling the remaining units back to the sheriff’s office, after which the policeman witnesses how Kenneth melts the steel door. When the man opens fire, he undergoes the same fate as his colleagues. As Kenneth tries to find his way out, he destroys everything he comes across. Once outside, and after killing another policeman who just arrived, Kenneth no longer desires to be there, and to his surprise, he discovers that his feet are already of the ground, after which he flies away.
Meanwhile, Izanami Randall learns from a big, round object that she is in the Superflow for universe 555 and that she is in control, although she doesn’t know what that exactly means. The voice of the thing explains that she can’t only change her appearance but that she can also mutate everything else. As Izanami changes her outfit, she goes with flow and doesn’t care if she is being drugged or that she has gone insane.
Finally she asks the object, what it is. It explains that it is a communications station in the Superflow. Izanami also learns that this hasn’t been the first attempt to join her world to the newuniversal structure. Because they have failed to contact previous Nightmasks, which may have been harmful for Izanami’s civilization, this communications station was sent to make immediate contact.
Izanami has difficulty to understand what the voice is explaining, so she asks what a Nightmask is. The voice explains that Nightmasks are sentients, who can enter into the Superflow at will and do work. Again Izanami needs more information. This time she wants to know what the Superflow is. The Superflow is that place where the sentients go when they dream. It is where ideas come from and through which telepathy operates. Weather exists as well there, from which come concepts, novelty, artistic and political movements.
When Izanami makes the remark that the Superflow feels real, the communications station informs her that it comes from a physical location some million light years from her world. Izanami learns also that the universe hangs in a web of strange matter, which they call newuniversal structure, which consists on itself of strands. Strands are many light-years across and it takes thousands of years to traverse one. In the strands, the laws of physics don’t work perfectly. The last thing Izanami learns is that the web of the newuniversal structure is a machine, which was assembled by a species that lived long before any.
After the explanation of the newuniversal structure, the voice starts to talk what happens when a world enters the web. First of all, the machine alters sentients to become heralds of the new time to come. They receive powers to smoothen the way, because when a paradigm shift occurs, it always goes along with chaos. Examples of those heralds are a Nightmask, a Starbrand, a Justice , a Cipher, etc.
On 2nd March 2006 at 12.55 UTC, John Tensen has fled into one of Manhattan’s alleys, where he is trying to understand what happened to him, by writing it down in a notepad. But it is hard to describe. He seems able to see everything that a person has done in his life. And although he knows that he killed the nurse and that he should surrender himself, something stops him; something that has to do with the crimes people have committed. In the end, John decides to stay hidden until he finds and deals with the people who shot him, after which he will turn himself in.
Suddenly, a policeman notices John and orders John to come out of the alley. When John shows himself, the officer recognizes him immediately and tells him that he has to take John into custody. Because the officer can’t take any chance with John, the officer grabs his gun, which John even understand as John knows that he has changed. When John wants to show the policeman his notepad and what he has written in it about himself, the policeman thinks that John is going for a gun and so the officer shoots. At that moment, John’s mark appears again and creates several blue shields, which deflect the bullet. After the blue shields attack the officer and throw the man back on the pavement, John Tensen uses the opportunity to escape.
At the National Security Agency Headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, Philip L. Voight, Presiding Officer of Project Spitfire, receives a strange phone call. The voice tells Voight to stand by to receive a black folder from domestic sigint. When the phone call is terminated Voight doesn’t believe what he’s been told as he killed ‘the last one’ in 1959. After Voight remembers killing a baby, it looks as though old sores are ripped up.
On 2nd March 2006 at 23.02 UTC, Izanami finally wakes up as well. At first she thinks it was only a dream but when she turns on the TV, she realises that it isn’t a dream and that she has to get to Optima Down.
Back in Fort Meade, Jenny Swann is called to Voight’s office, where she is shown pictures of what occurred in the sheriff’s office of Optima Down. Voight informs Jenny that Project Spitfire has been upgraded from Dormancy to Urgently Active because there is now proof of a superhuman on American soil. Voight also tells Jenny that her funding has been increased and that H.E.X. (the Human Enhancement eXperimental) is now a priority. Because everything has changed, Project Spitfire is a go. At first they will start surveillance now that one super human is known, and if the numbers of super humans increase till three, they’ll have to kill the superhumans, as the super humans are bound to meet each other.
Characters:
Dan Felix (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45511)
Nightmask (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45505)
Starbrand (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45499)
Jennifer Swann (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45504)
John Tensen (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45508)
Philip L. Voight (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45506)
<hr>
newuniversal #3
April 2007
<img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/covers/marvel/newuniv03t.jpg" hspace=3 align=top align=left alt="newuniversal #3" border="0"> (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/4images/details.php?image_id=10509)
Story Title: Mathematics
Writer: Warren Ellis (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=14211&highlight=ellis)
Penciler: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Colorist: Jason Keith (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=38040&highlight=jason+keith)
Letterer: Rus Wooton (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=20683&highlight=wooton)
Cover Artist: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Assistant Editor: Daniel Ketchum (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=40840&highlight=ketchum)
Editor: Axel Alonso (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=11682&highlight=alonso)
Editor-In-Chief: Joe Quesada (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=12902&highlight=quesada)
Publisher: Dan Buckley (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?p=1395065)
Death: Spike, Yard and the rest of their gang
At the National Security Agency Headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, Philip Voigt, presiding of Project Spitfire, shows Dr. Jennifer Swann pictures of what happened in Optima Down. Jennifer Swann questions the authenticity of the photos, but even if the photos were true, she reminds Phil that it is only one superhuman. Phil aknowledges that Project Spitfire can only act if there are three superhumans, but to Phil it doesn’t mean that they can’t keep an eye on things and prepare themselves for what might come.
Regarding superhumans, Phil also firmly believes in Darwin’s theory that an evolutionary advantaged species will always prey on lesser species. When Jennifer brings up the possibility that this superhuman isn’t part of an evolutionary process, Phil brings up the Cosmic Trigger theory. This theory states that any latent superhuman traits can be triggered by an astronomic event. To reinforce his believe in this theory, he brings up similar events from the past. During at least one of those events, they know for a fact that it delivered at least one known superhuman. And because the White Event was a lot bigger than the previous environmental events, Phil expects more than three humans to come out of this one.
But Jennifer isn’t convinced that this is the case this time. The possibility, that this superhuman was created at random, still remains. And although Phil can’t believe that Jennifer, as a scientist, is even suggesting this, she reminds him that this superhuman could be created by some universal mechanism, that they don’t know of yet. Going along with Jennifer’s way of thinking, Phil asks her what this changes. Jennifer explains that, if this superhuman has got nothing to do with an evolutionary process and isn’t competing with another species, that he is something else altogether. But then Phil brings in reality to the discussion and the fact that Kenneth Connel did fight the policemen of Optima Down and that Madeline Felix got killed. But Jennifer knows that the cops were going to beat up Kenneth, as the cameras in the sheriff’s office confirm, and she believes that the girl got incinerated by whatever was aimed at Kenneth.
The more Jennifer tries to explain her view on things, the angrier Phil gets. In the end Phil tells her that they don’t know how the mind of a superhuman works. He also states that, when a superhuman will show up, normal humans will become nothing more than chimps with phones. Just before Jennifer leaves Phil’s office, Phil orders her to get the HEX suits working.
As Jennifer walks through the offices of the National Security Headquarters, she is able to read all the information, regarding the electronic equipment, just by looking at it. As she continues through the complex, a wave-like mark appears at the back of her neck.
At a warehouse, somewhere in New York City, Spike wants their gang to relocate as his mom’s apartment got raided by the police. Spike believes, that the cops think that they killed the nurse, Thomas Alexander Reid. But, Yard doesn’t care if the police think that they can go where ever they want in New York. Eventually, they start to talk about their place as a gang in New York. When Yard suggests that they take out the gang of Two-Shot Bianchi, Spike reminds him that they’ll get in trouble with the Old Italians. But Yard has thought of that, but he realises that their gang will be on good terms with the New Italians, the Calabrian guys and the ‘Ndrangheta.
Just as the gang end their discussion, they hear a voice, which tells them that they shot him in the head and that he hasn’t stopped thinking of justice ever since. Although the gang members look around to find the person, to whom the voice belongs, they aren’t able to find him and demand that he shows himself. When John Tensen appears, Yard opens fire on him, but John’s blue shields protect him, after which one of the shields heads for Yard and injures him badly. At that point, the other gang members start shooting their guns until they are empty. Now that the gunfire has stopped and that they need to reload, John lowers the shields and walks to the injured Yard. As John stands in front of him, a large, bright-white knife appears. He uses it swiftly to make a cross through Yard’s body, after which the body falls to the ground in four pieces. Immediately after, another member comes running towards John and pulls a knife of his own. But even before he can stab John, John cuts of his arm and slices off the part of the head above the nose. While two other members are desperately trying to reload their guns, John walks towards them and kills them. The last member but one wants to surrender but John doesn’t show any mercy and cuts the man’s throat. The man doesn’t die immediately, just as John wants. John wants the man to suffer just like he did during the ten seconds, when the bullet, with which he was shot in the head, burned his brain. When Spike, the last living member of the gang, aims his gun at John, he tells John that he knows that John is dead and that John has come back from the grave. Spike asks John what he’ll do when John runs out of people to kill. John answers that that will never happen. Suddenly Spike doesn’t resist anymore as he knows that John will become the number one threat to life in New York City, if he keeps on killing people. Seconds later, Spike is killed.
In Latvia, Dr. Leonard Carson and Dr. Hannah Ballad are looking at the skeleton, which they found in a tomb at an archaeological dig, north of Ventspils. Leonard is convinced that the skeleton is of a slayer. This slayer became eventually the greatest king of the shining city of Zardath. The slayer was also referred to as Starr the Slayer. When Len tells Hannah that they have found the grave of the hero of the lost city of Zardath, Hannah reminds him that they have only found bones of a man, who got hit in the head with a rock. But Len is sure that it is Starr the Slayer for two reasons. First is the size of the man, which is much bigger than any of the Indo-Europeans from that time. And the second reason is the mark on the skeleton’s head, which has been described in Uruk texts. Both reasons are proof for Len that the skeleton is that of Starr the Slayer, and that they have found the City of Zardath.
But Hannah isn’t that sure and recapitulates what they know, starting with some unknown people that turned up in the city of Uruk. There, they told their tale of their city, somewhere in Europe, that existed even before Uruk, the first known city. After Len studied all the maps about this lost city, he convinced Hannah’s father to finance the dig. During six weeks, Len comes up with nothing. Just after the White Event takes place, they find a tomb, a skeleton, a mark on skeleton’s head, which is the only thing that matches the single distinguishing feature of Starr the Slayer, and a lost city. To Hannah, all of this is way too convenient and therefore she can’t take it to her dad as he will think that Len dynamited the cliff and that Len planted the skeleton there.
At that moment, the dig leader Jim Braddock, who is carrying a stone item, enters the room and asks if Len has salted the dig. After Len assures him that he hasn’t, Len asks Jim what the thing is that he is holding. At that point, Jim asks both Len and Hannah if they really don’t know what the item is, to which Hannah orders him to tell them what is going on. Jim informs the two that the diggers of the site got all excited and insisted to keep on digging, even at night, after they found several of these stone items. When Hannah asks Jim if he has any idea of what they are, Jim answers her that he knows for a fact that the items are electrical lightning. Hannah confirms this as she has seen electrical candles that look similar. When Len asks Jim where the power comes from, Jim shows it to him. After Len recognizes the source, Len realises that he has finally found the proof of the existence of the lost city. In his enthusiasm, Len reminds Hannah that Jim told them that they found dozens of these electrical lightning, and that the city must have been more brightly than anyone would had ever seen in that time of stars, moon and campfires. And in that era, Starr the Slayer and his compatriots defended the shining city of Zardath.
After Jim agrees that it is unbelievable, he reveals that they got a Geiger counter reading off the bottom of the deepest trench.
Characters:
Hannah Ballad (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45510)
Jim Braddock (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45516)
Leonard Carson (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45507)
Gary A. Marka
Nightmask (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45505)
Jennifer Swann (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45504)
John Tensen (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45508)
Philip L. Voight (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45506)
<hr>
newuniversal #4
May 2007
<img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/covers/marvel/newuniv04t.jpg" hspace=3 align=top align=left alt="newuniversal #4" border="0"> (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/4images/details.php?image_id=10742)
Title: Distance
Writer: Warren Ellis (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=14211&highlight=ellis)
Penciler: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Colorist: Jason Keith (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=38040&highlight=jason+keith)
Letterer: Rus Wooton (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=20683&highlight=wooton)
Cover Artist: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Assistant Editor: Daniel Ketchum (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=40840&highlight=ketchum)
Editor: Axel Alonso (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=11682&highlight=alonso)
Editor-In-Chief: Joe Quesada (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=12902&highlight=quesada)
Publisher: Dan Buckley (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?p=1395065)
In San Francisco, Izanami Randall is about to head for Optima Down in search of Kenneth Connell. Because she can’t afford the plane ticket, she wonders if she can use the Superflow. This time, Izanami is able to get there without dreaming. When she asks the Station if there is distance in the Superflow, the Station affirms this. But the Station also warns Izanami that she is too inexperienced to travel via the Superflow. Izanami informs it that she is too poor to pay for a ticket to Oklahoma and that she needs to get there quickly, otherwise Kenneth may have destroyed the whole world by the time she gets there.
In one of the caves of the Wishita mountains, Kenneth Connell is grieving the death of his girlfriend Maddie. Although Kenneth doesn’t know what happened the night she died, he knows that the mark in the palm of his hand is responsible. In order to get rid of it, Ken stabs his hand multiple times with a sharp rock, until it bleeds. Suddenly, an old man appears and tells Kenneth that it won’t work. After Kenneth looks at his healed hand, he asks the stranger who he is. The only thing the man says is that he is a projection and that a timewave will be seen in a few moments. After Ken witnesses some astonishing natural phenomenon, the man appears in the flesh, together with another man and woman.
At the National Security Agency-headquarters, Dr. Jennifer Swann is faced with a dilemma regarding the HEX suits. She either has to fix them or she has to admit that her father’s idea, which she inherited, was never going to work in the first place. After Jennifer states that the suit is too complex, because it has too many competing systems, she looks at it again. Suddenly, she is able to see all the problems with the suit, as if the suit is talking to her. At that point, Jen realises that she is one of the super humans, who will eventually be hunted down by the HEX suit.
Back at the cave, Kenneth is unable to apprehend what is happening, so the woman explains that they are in a paradigm shift. To aid this earth during the changes, the universe sent a Justice, a Nightmask, a Cipher and a Starbrand. The woman shows Ken that they both have the icon of the Starbrand on their hand. When Ken tells them that he still doesn’t understand, the older man loses his patience and punches Ken in the stomach, after which he tells Ken to wake up. After Ken starts to focus, the older man informs Ken that they are all Starbrands and that the three came to him in a planetary rescue, because Ken is losing it. The older man explains that while Ken was drunk asleep, the universe drove the defence power of the Starbrand into him. At that point, Ken asks the man how Maddie got killed. The older man explains that during the Starbrand transfer, a lot of power is involved and sometimes the transfer coincides with an oversplash. It was that oversplash that incinerated Maddie. Having given Ken this information, the old man tells Ken to get a grip and to mourn Maddie’s death later, because trouble is on its way.
At that point, the other man participates in the conversation and states that Ken has options. Although the older man reminds the other man that Ken’s other options will result in killing the old man himself, Ken still wants to know them. The other man explains to Ken that the transition of his world into the newuniversal system has not gone well and that it may result in extinction for his world. The woman continues that they offer him a way out or if he should prefer it, even to end his life.
With the help of the Superflow, Izanami arrives in Optima Down. While she walks through the town, two young men, Brad and his friend, notice her and make a remark on Izanami’s butt. When she turns around to confront them, one of them noticing her Asian facial features and calls her a ‘chink’. After Izanami tells them that she is an American, although her parents are Japanese, she also reveals that she comes from San Francisco. When Brad asks her what she is doing in Optima Down, she tells them that she came to visit Kenneth Connell. What she doesn’t tell them, is how she knows of Ken. Although Brad at first tells Izanami everything that has happened to Maddie and the police station, he suddenly realises how much of a coincidence it is that Izanami showed up at this particular moment. But Izanami is able to change the subject when she asks them about the whereabouts of Ken, which nobody knows. At the end of their conversation, Brad points out the military vehicles of the army, that are stationed a bit further down the street.
Back at the cave, Ken has finally taken a grip on himself and starts to interrogate the strangers, starting with the older man. The man explains that he has come from the future to talk to Ken, because they have come to a crucial point. Ken is about to decide to use the power in the palm of his hand in a way either to destroy things or to build homes. The older man, however, has to admit that it will not be easy for Ken, if he should choose the more difficult option. But if Ken should choose to use the Starbrand to defend people and to build homes, Ken will help bring about a new world. After the old man’s explanation, Ken asks the other two who they are. After they tell him that they come from other earths, the old man notices Ken’s disbelief, so he confirms their statement.
Suddenly, Ken becomes aware of a sound in the air and as he looks up, he notices a plane approaching.
At the Pentagon, the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff, General Ross and his assistant Lt. General Jameson are in contact with the pilot of the plane, who has a visual on Ken and the other Starbrands. As the pilot confirms the presence of the four, assistant Jameson realises that the National Security Agency has its three super humans together, which gives the N.S.A. the authority to respond actively to the thread. Moments later, General Ross gives the pilot the order to launch his missiles. But although the missiles hit their target, the Starbrands survive the attack.
At this point, the other two Starbrands tell Ken his other option. He can leave this earth with them, but with the risk that his earth could cease to exist if he does. Another consequence is that in fifty years time, he won’t be able to convince his younger self to stay. At that moment, Ken realises that the old man is his future self.
Characters:
Brad and friend
Lt. General Jameson
Nightmask (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45505)
Thad Ross (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45514)
Jennifer Swann (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45504)
Starbrand (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45499)
Starbrand (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45499) (from the future)
Starbrands (alternate)
<hr>
newuniversal #5
June 2007
<img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/covers/marvel/newuniv05t.jpg " hspace=3 align=top align=left alt="newuniversal #5" border="0"> (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/4images/details.php?image_id=10827)
Story Title: Mystery
Writer: Warren Ellis (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=14211&highlight=ellis)
Penciler: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Colorist: Jason Keith (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=38040&highlight=jason+keith)
Letterer: Rus Wooton (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=20683&highlight=wooton)
Cover Artist: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Assistant Editor: Daniel Ketchum (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=40840&highlight=ketchum)
Editor: Axel Alonso (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=11682&highlight=alonso)
Editor-In-Chief: Joe Quesada (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=12902&highlight=quesada)
Publisher: Dan Buckley (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?p=1395065)
First Appearance: Emmett Proudhawk, Director Rockall
At the Sicangu Reservation land in South Dakota, Emmett Proudhawk undertakes a vision quest to understand what happened during the White Event. When his vision quest begins, Emmett ends up in a place, where he sits on a large rock, which is surrounded by water. Wakan Tanka or the Great Spirit joins Emmett in the form of a white eagle, who sits on Emmett’s shoulder. Emmett explains to Wakan Tanka that he doesn’t understand why nothing changed after the White Event. Before the Great Spirit explains the wakan condition, which is how they name the White Event, he asks Emmett if he understands wakan. Emmett tells the Spirit that he knows that wakan is mystery, and that wakan is a spiritual power, a working of God. After this, Emmett wants to know where exactly he is. Wakan Tanka explains that he is in the place where mystery lives. It is also the place where people go to dream, where visions come from and where people think. After Emmett Proudhawk understands things better now, Wakan Tanka informs him that he has been touched by the White Event, although he wasn’t the first person. The Great Spirit tells him about the four first persons, who were touched, and what they can do. The Great Spirit makes it clear that, although Emmett wasn’t the first one, that he is necessary because they need a doctor, who understands mystery. In the end, Emmett asks the Spirit what the White Event is exactly. Wakan Tanka tells him that it is an invitation to live with God and to walk in the world with his powers.
After his vision quest, Emmett returns to a village and goes to a man called Bill, who asks Em about his quest. Emmett believes that he has had his destiny vision. He states to Bill his mistrust involving the White Event and the fact that nothing has changed ever since. When Bill asks him what he found out, Em informs him how five people, including him, have been touched by it and that there are more to come. Em also explains that he has some kind of responsibility to them. But when Em states that he has only a responsibility to his tribe and his job, Bill tells him that Em has been born into a new tribe at the age of 41. Talking about his job, Em shows Bill what his job really is, when he uses his phone to gather all kinds of information, regarding the event. When Emmett talks to his phone, he reveals that his has the authorization to ask for the information as a Special Operations Analyst for the C.I.A.
At the National Security Agency Headquarters, President Philip Voight of Project Spitfire receives a visit of Director Rockall. Director Rockall reveals that they unscrambled an encryption of the Army, revealing the whereabouts of Kenneth Connell. Phil finds it logic that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were able to track Kenneth down but what Phil doesn’t understand is how they got to know about Kenneth in the first place. Rockall explains to him that the Army has been listening to the N.S.A by breaking their traffic encryption. Rockall also thinks that the Army is probably trying to bomb Kenneth. At that moment, Rockal gets a call, which confirms his assumption. Because Rockall realises that Phil is the closest thing to an expert on the subject, he asks him what is going to happen. Phil explains that they have declared war on a creature, that has the power of a squadron of modern helicopters and who probably holds no sympathy for human life. Therefore, Phil hopes that the army succeeds in killing Ken.
In Optima Down, Oklahoma, Izanami uses her access to the Superflow once again to get away from the small town. As she enters the Superflow again, the Station informs her that quantum tunnels are in operation. Because Izanami doesn’t understand, the Station explains that that there are tunnels in operation coming from both parallel universes and from this earth’s future. Izanami witnesses from a distant the arrival of the Kenneth’s future self and of the two other Starbrands under the form of a green ray. Moments later the missile attack on Kenneth can be seen when a part of the explosion enters the Superflow. As Izanami hurries to the spot, she asks the Station if the strangers are responsible for the attack on Kenneth, but it doesn’t know. Somehow Izanami knows that the army is behind the attack. While Izanami heads to Kenneth, she is being watched by Emmett Proudhawk, who was at the time almost at the end of his vision quest.
Just after the missile attack, the force field, which protected the four Starbrands, is lowered, after which Kenneth asks his older self what he should do. The older Kenneth tells him that it is his choice. The older Ken knows that everything has changed, but he informs that Ken that he hasn’t got time to try to understand it all or to run away from it. And although the older Ken knows that the universe screwed up, when it chose Ken to become the Starbrand, it still doesn’t change the current situation. After this, the older Ken reminds him that the Starbrand is a planetary defence system and that it would not have been created if it wasn’t necessary.
At that point, the planes, that launched the missiles, fly over again to see what the result of their attack was. At that same moment, the young Kenneth interacts consciously with the Starbrand for the first time, which indicates that Kenneth has made his choice to become this world’s Starbrand. Now that Kenneth has made his choice, the other three can leave again.
At the Pentagon, General Ross receives the information that the missiles didn’t do a thing and that all targets are still there. With this information, General Ross orders the pilot to get ready to use the Black Prince, a tactical nuclear device. After General Ross has given his order, his assistant Lt. General Jameson reminds his superior of the consequences for them if the attack goes wrong.
Just as the planes are approaching for the attack and just as the other Starbrands are about to leave, Izanami appears and grabs Kenneth by the arm, after which she jumps with him back into the Superflow. After Izanami and Kenneth are gone, the older Kenneth recognizes Izanami as a Nightmask but he doesn’t remember her taking him.
After the older Kenneth leaves as well, General Ross is brought up to speed regarding the new developments. After he gets angry for the fact that the targets just vanished, he orders his assistant to arrange a private meeting between the President and himself.
At the N.S.A., director Rockall learns of General Ross’ order to use the Black Prince. Rockall informs Phil of this information but tells him also that the attack was aborted after Kenneth and three other persons vanished. Phil’s attention is specifically drawn by the information about the amount of persons that were there.
Back in the Superflow, Kenneth gets his first good look at Izanami and the Station.
Characters:
Bill
Lt. General Jameson
Nightmask (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45505)
Emmett Proudhawk (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45509)
Director Rockall (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45513)
Thad Ross (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45514)
Starbrand (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45499)
Starbrand (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45499) (from the future)
Starbrands (alternate)
Philip L. Voight (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45506)
Wakan Tanka
<hr>
newuniversal #6
July 2007
<img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/covers/marvel/newuniv06t.jpg" hspace=3 align=top align=left alt="newuniversal #6" border="0"> (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/4images/details.php?image_id=10979)
Story Title:Tumble
Writer: Warren Ellis (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=14211&highlight=ellis)
Penciler: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Colorist: Jason Keith (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=38040&highlight=jason+keith)
Letterer: Rus Wooton (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=20683&highlight=wooton)
Cover Artist: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Assistant Editor: Daniel Ketchum (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=40840&highlight=ketchum)
Editor: Axel Alonso (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=11682&highlight=alonso)
Editor-In-Chief: Joe Quesada (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=12902&highlight=quesada)
Publisher: Dan Buckley (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?p=1395065)
After Izanami Randall brought Kenneth Connell to the Superflow, she used it once again to transport the both of them to her home in San Francisco. As Ken lies on the floor, he still wants someone to explain to him in real simple words what is going on. Izanami wants to give it a shot and tells him that the universe is crisscrossed with things, which could be described as highways, where the known laws of physics don’t apply. With the White Event, their Earth got stuck in one of those highways. At the same time, four machines were sent to make the changeover easier. She reminds Ken, that he got noticed by the army after he used his machine. Izanami herself started to get instructions via the Station from people, who she refers to as their neighbours down the highway. Izanami has to bring the four weapons together, especially now that people want to blow up Ken. Ken, on his turn, reveals that he has met people from other planets and from the future, but he doesn’t know what is real anymore. When Izanami asks Ken what they should do, Ken doesn’t answer because he is crying.
At the National Security Agency, Philip Voight is ordering his team to get him a transcript of what General Ross said exactly when he gave the order to attack Kenneth earlier on. Suddenly, Director Rockall appears again after he was supposed to have left for a meeting with the President. After Phil sends his team away, Rockall tells Phil that he wants Phil to take his place. Rockall explains that all the agencies i.e. the F.B.I., C.I.A., N.S.A. ,etc are being pulled in for a meeting with the President. Rockall suspects that the President does not only want to ask them for advice on how to handle things, but also to find reasons with which she can hang General Ross.
But Phil still doesn’t understand why Rockall wants to send him. Rockall tells Phil that he wants to scare the President with all Phil’s past encounters, regarding the emergence of super humans. And because General Ross wanted to nuke a populated region with no guarantee of success, Rockall believes that that will be enough rope to hang Ross. Rockall also realises that Phil has saved America from super humans before and because of it he got to write the Spitfire Protocols, which received the presidential stamp, which will make Phil the only person with authority in that meeting. Phil reminds Rockall that Ross also falls under the Spitfire Protocols, because of the three other people, who were with Ken. But Rockall isn’t worried about that because those three persons aren’t there anymore and Ken is the only super human that they have seen. When Phil raises the question who these people are and where they are now, Rockall isn’t able to answer because the four all vanished. Therefore, Rockall wants for the N.S.A. to run everything and that is why he wants Phil to go and scare the President.
In New York, John Tensen a.k.a. Justice stands on a rooftop and looks at the passing pedestrians. After he uses one of his powers, he finds out that all of them are guilty of hurting someone innocent. John doesn’t feel sorry for them and uses another of his powers. He throws dozens of bright-white blades at them and at passing cars, killing every single person. After he is done, he uses one of the blades to carve the word justice in the road. To leave the scene, John uses his powers to create dozens of bright-white steps, which he uses to walk over the skyscrapers.
Later on in the Situation Room of the White House, the President makes it clear to General Ross that she is growing less fond of him, after he wanted to use nuclear weapons without discussing it with her. When General Ross tries to reply to her comment, she stops him and informs him that he hasn’t managed to convince her of his reasons to use the weapons. The only thing that is in his favor is that neither the C.I.A., F.B.I. or any of the other agencies have come up with a solution regarding the White Event and the apparent emergence of a new kind of human being.
At that point, Phil Voight asks to address her and asks her if she questions the evidence of super humans in the United States. Before they continue their talk, the President asks Phil who he is exactly. After Phil states his name, he informs her that he came in the place of N.S.A.’s director Rockall, because Phil is the only man in the room that has killed super humans. Phil continues by telling what happened after the celestial event, called the Fireworks. He tells them how they did nothing back then but watch and gather information as the first super humans started to meet each other. It was only after the super humans started to fall in love with each other that they started to realise that they could start to band together and reproduce, posing a serious thread to normal humans.
General Ross uses the opportunity of Phil’s statement to convince the President of his decision to use nuclear weapons. But unfortunately for General Ross, Phil doesn’t agree with him because Phil believes that using major military actions will only cause for the super humans to find each other and band more quickly. When General Ross asks what Phil did during the Fireworks to deal with the super humans, Phil tells him that he shot the first superhuman baby to death. With his confession, Phil underlines that he is very committed to the superhuman problem and that he will not do less than anyone else. After Phil states that General Ross will kill them all with his way of action, Phil informs them that they can only deal with this by killing the super humans quietly, carefully and secretly. Therefore, Voight is convinced that the N.S.A. is the only one that has the expertise to deal with this. At the end of the meeting, the President tells Phil that he will be her interim senior advisor on the White Event situation and that General Ross has to advise her on how to explain to China why the U.S. put nuclear weapons in the field.
Meanwhile, both the missile attack in the Wichita Mountains as the killings in New York are being discussed on TV. Thanks to the word ‘justice’ on the road at the scene of the murders in New York, the link is made with the incident at the hospital, from which John Tensen disappeared.
At the National Security Agency, Jennifer Swann is ready to test the HEX suit, although she hopes that it won’t work. After she is able to connect to the suit, Jennifer still hopes that the suit’s weapons will malfunction, but unfortunately they work, after which Jennifer sheds a tear because she realises that Phil will be able to kill her now.
Characters:
Nightmask (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45505)
President of the United States
Director Rockall (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45513)
Thad Ross (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45514)
Starbrand (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45499)
Jennifer Swann (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45504)
John Tensen (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45508)
Philip L. Voight (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45506)
February 2007
<img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/covers/marvel/newuniv01t.jpg" hspace=3 align=top align=left alt="newuniversal #1" border="0"> (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/4images/details.php?image_id=10298)<img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/covers/marvel/newuniv01rt.jpg " hspace=3 align=top align=left alt=" newuniversal #1(2nd print)" border="0"> (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/4images/details.php?image_id=10508)
Story Title: Enter
Writer: Warren Ellis (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=14211&highlight=ellis)
Penciler: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Colorist: Jason Keith (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=38040&highlight=jason+keith)
Letterer: Rus Wooton (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=20683&highlight=wooton)
Cover Artist: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Cover Artist: Essad Ribic (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13678&highlight=Ribic) (2nd printing)
Assistant Editor: Daniel Ketchum (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=40840&highlight=ketchum)
Editor: Axel Alonso (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=11682&highlight=alonso)
Editor-In-Chief: Joe Quesada (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=12902&highlight=quesada)
Publisher: Dan Buckley (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?p=1395065)
First Appearance: Izanami Randall
Death: Thomas Alexander Reid, Madeline Felix
On 2nd March 2006 at 03.31 UTC (Universal Time Coordinated) at the St. Mellion’s Hospital in New York City, Detective John Tensen lies on the operation table after being shot through the skull. And although the bullet hadn’t the force to vibrate the brain to mush, John Tensen is still 98% dead when the surgeons decide to close him up.
On 2nd March 2006 at 04.48 UTC in Optima Down, Oklahoma, Kenneth Connell and Madeline Felix are having a drink at a bar.
On 2nd March 2006 at 05.31 UTC in San Francisco, Izanami Randall is at a party with her friend Louise and her boyfriend. After Louise’s boyfriend utters some racist crap, the Japanese Izanami leaves the party angrily, after she tells Louise to lose her number as long as she is dating her racist boyfriend.
At 06.48 UTC, Kenneth and Madeline are lying on the grass, watching the night sky. Kenneth’s head is spinning after drinking several Chinese Car Bombs, which are drinks made of shots of rice wine, dropped into Tsingtao beer. When Kenneth asks his girlfriend Maddie why she didn’t stop him from drinking too much, she tells him that she didn’t see the point as he was having fun. They quickly change the subject to Maddie’s father. After Kenneth makes a comment that her father is crazy, she warns him of the fact that her father is the sheriff of Optima Down. Kenneth realises this all to well, because every time Kenneth touches Maddie, Kenneth gets the feeling that her father is going to shoot him. When Maddie jokes around that her father doesn’t know where Kenneth touches her, Kenneth starts to laugh, which makes his head spinning again. Continuing on Kenneth’s remark of his spinning head, Maddie starts to talk about how everything in the universe spins. Finding it strange that his girlfriend is talking about the universe, Kenneth asks her what is wrong with her. She confesses that she got a little stoned while he was drinking his Chinese Car Bombs. After Maddie tells Kenneth that she is tired, they decide to sleep in the open air.
At 06.48 UTC, while the Chinese, Russian and the U.S.A. early warning systems go down, Izanami Randall is sound asleep.
At the same time in New York City, the people are kept up-to-date about John Tensen’s critical condition through the news. At the hospital, Tensen’s nurse makes a weird comment on Tensen’s current, ‘living’ state. As the nurse goes to the window to close the blinds, after which he is going to decide what to do about John Tensen, he witnesses how the entire sky colours white, just as it does over San Francisco, Oklahoma, Latvia and the rest of the world. In Latvia the White Event, as it will be called later, coincides with a landslip on the northern coast.
A minute after the White Event, a strange mark appears on Izanami’s face, after which she opens her eyes and gets up while she looks at an orange-red sky. When she looks down, Izanami is surprised when she sees all kinds of faces under a water-like liquid, in which she stands. As she doesn’t understand what is happening, she tells herself that it must be a dream and to her surprise, a voice from behind her confirms this. The voice also tells her that she is awake within the dream. As she turns around, she comes face to face with a gigantic round object, which informs her that there is a paradigm shift occurring and that everything has changed.
At the same time at the hospital, the window of Tensen’s room starts to crack, after which all the electronic equipment blows up. Suddenly, the room is lit in a golden light, in which John Tensen’s body is being levitated. When the light goes away, an awoken John Tensen falls back on his bed, after which a mark, in the form of a thunderbolt, appears on his chest. After John gets out of his bed, he tells his freightened nurse, Thomas Alexander Reid, that he can see him, although John is turned with his back towards Thomas. When John turns around, he informs Thomas that he can also see all the patients that Thomas killed. Thomas replies that they were mercy killings and assisted suicides, and that he did it because he can’t see people suffer. After Thomas confesses that he was going to kill John as well, if he had to, John closes his hand and out of nowhere a knife appears, which John uses to stab the nurse several times. While John writes the word ‘Justice’ on the wall, he explains that he could see Thomas’ crimes, being played as a movie in his head. At 07.12 UTC, the stabbed body of Thomas Alexander Reid is discovered, while John Tensen has gone missing.
In Latvia, north of Ventspils, field director Dr. Leonard Carson and supervisor Dr. Hannah Ballad head for the northern coast, where a landslip happened during the White Event. At a certain point, the two have to leave their car behind and go further on foot. When Hannah brings up the hot topic of the White Event, Leonard isn’t impressed by the event and is more interested by the landslip. After Leonard asks for confirmation that the landslip revealed the whole top of a specific structure, which Hannah does, she brings up the White Event again and how incredible it is that the two of them slept right through it. Suddenly Len asks her if she read ‘Day of the Triffids’, in which people went blind after looking at a big light in the sky. In the end the blind people got eaten by big walking plants.
Because Len brought up the subject of being blind, Hannah criticizes him that he is blind, because he wants to go look for early Bronze Age peak civilizations in Latvia. But her criticism doesn’t sit well with him as he reminds her that she is only there as an agent of the dig’s financier. In response Hannah reminds him that she is also his sexual partner.
During their trip to the dig site, the two end up in a discussion about Sumerian civilization. Dr. Leonard Carson believes that the Sumerian civilization of Uruk, which had his peak after 2030 B.C., came in contact with a European one. When the Sumerians told the unknown, European civilization the story of Gilgamesh, the Europeans told a similar story that was even older than the beginning of Sumerian civilization. The Europeans even showed the Sumerians maps of this, which the Sumerians copied into stone tablets.
Now, the two are there in Latvia, which is known to be settled by Indo-European tribes in 2500 B.C. , to see if it is possible if there could’ve been a city-state civilization, of which they never found anything set in stone or on paper for whatever reason.
Suddenly one of the workers of the dig appears and tells them that the landslip uncovered a tomb. The two have barely arrived, when Len wants to know where the dig leader Jim Braddock is, but the man was there all along, examining the construction of the tomb. He concludes that he has never seen a construction of a tomb like this before and that the people, who built it, have planned it so that it could last centuries. After his observation, Jim starts to order his men around, in order to open up a coffin within the tomb. It doesn’t take long before the lid is removed from the coffin. In the coffin lies a skeleton.
In Oklahoma, it is almost noon when Kenneth awakens. As soon as he looks to his right, he discovers the chalked body of his girlfriend Maddie. Strangely the spot, where Kenneth slept, forms the centre of a mark, that can be seen from up in the sky.
About an hour later, Sheriff Felix arrives at his sheriff’s office, after he found out what happened to his daughter. The enraged father even pushes his colleagues aside as he heads for the cell where Kenneth is held. Just before he enters Kenneth’s cell, he orders his men to draw their weapons. Once inside the cell, the sheriff punches Kenneth in the stomach. When the sheriff talks about Kenneth dying, one of the policemen is afraid for what is about to happen, but the sheriff reminds them that they all knew his daughter Maddie and that Kenneth can’t get away with murder. After this, all the policemen have their weapons ready, after which the sheriff asks Kenneth why he killed his daughter. When Kenneth tells him that he didn’t kill her, the sheriff hits him hard in the face with his shoe, after which he pulls his gun and places it at the back side of Kenneth’s head. At the same moment that the sheriff orders Kenneth to look at him, the same mark, which was seen in the grass, appears in Kenneth’s hand and starts to glow.
Characters:
Hannah Ballad (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45510)
Jim Braddock (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45516)
Leonard Carson (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45507)
Dan Felix (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45511)
Madeline Felix (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45512)
Louise
Nightmask (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45505)
Thomas Alexander Reid (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45515)
Starbrand (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45499)
John Tensen (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45508)
<hr>
newuniversal #2
March 2007
<img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/covers/marvel/newuniv02t.jpg" hspace=3 align=top align=left alt="newuniversal #2" border="0"> (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/4images/details.php?image_id=10299)<img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/covers/marvel/newuniv02rt.jpg " hspace=3 align=top align=left alt="newuniversal #2 (2nd print)" border="0"> (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/4images/details.php?image_id=10741)
Story Title: Trauma
Writer: Warren Ellis (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=14211&highlight=ellis)
Penciler: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Colorist: Jason Keith (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=38040&highlight=jason+keith)
Letterer: Rus Wooton (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=20683&highlight=wooton)
Cover Artist: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Cover Artist: Essad Ribic (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13678&highlight=Ribic) (2nd printing)
Assistant Editor: Daniel Ketchum (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=40840&highlight=ketchum)
Editor: Axel Alonso (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=11682&highlight=alonso)
Editor-In-Chief: Joe Quesada (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=12902&highlight=quesada)
Publisher: Dan Buckley (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?p=1395065)
Death: Dan Felix
On 2nd March 2006, at 06.49 UTC (Universal Time Coordinated), Dr. Jennifer Swann is working on Project Spitfire at the National Security Agency Headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. When the White Event occurs Jennifer is sitting in front of the window with a bottle of gin in her hand. When she asks confirmation that the White Event was pretty to see, she doesn’t receive any response from the robot suit, on which she has been working for the last two years. Because Jennifer is angry that the Human Enhancement eXperimental doesn’t work, she pours some gin on it in the hope that it’ll start dancing, just as she does when she is trashed. Moments later, a drunken Jennifer falls asleep on the ground.
On 2nd March 2006 at 12.53 UTC in Optima Down, Oklahoma, Kenneth Connell is surrounded by the sheriff and his men. Just as Kenneth is about to face the sheriff, who believes that Kenneth killed his daughter, a yellow mark starts to glow on Kenneth’s hand. As the bullet from the sheriff’s gun approaches, a small, yellow thunderbolt comes out of Kenneth’s hand and destroys the bullet. But the thunderbolt isn’t done yet and continues his path and finds the sheriff’s gun, which it also destroys. After the yellow thunderbolt has also ripped half of the sheriff’s right arm, it disappears. Upon the sheriff’s order, the other policemen start to fire at Kenneth, but with his new power Kenneth is able to stop the bullets in midair, after which Kenneth redirects them at the sheriff and hits him with them. Using his power again, Kenneth is able to throw the bars of his prison cell to the other policemen. In a neighbouring room, another policeman is already calling the remaining units back to the sheriff’s office, after which the policeman witnesses how Kenneth melts the steel door. When the man opens fire, he undergoes the same fate as his colleagues. As Kenneth tries to find his way out, he destroys everything he comes across. Once outside, and after killing another policeman who just arrived, Kenneth no longer desires to be there, and to his surprise, he discovers that his feet are already of the ground, after which he flies away.
Meanwhile, Izanami Randall learns from a big, round object that she is in the Superflow for universe 555 and that she is in control, although she doesn’t know what that exactly means. The voice of the thing explains that she can’t only change her appearance but that she can also mutate everything else. As Izanami changes her outfit, she goes with flow and doesn’t care if she is being drugged or that she has gone insane.
Finally she asks the object, what it is. It explains that it is a communications station in the Superflow. Izanami also learns that this hasn’t been the first attempt to join her world to the newuniversal structure. Because they have failed to contact previous Nightmasks, which may have been harmful for Izanami’s civilization, this communications station was sent to make immediate contact.
Izanami has difficulty to understand what the voice is explaining, so she asks what a Nightmask is. The voice explains that Nightmasks are sentients, who can enter into the Superflow at will and do work. Again Izanami needs more information. This time she wants to know what the Superflow is. The Superflow is that place where the sentients go when they dream. It is where ideas come from and through which telepathy operates. Weather exists as well there, from which come concepts, novelty, artistic and political movements.
When Izanami makes the remark that the Superflow feels real, the communications station informs her that it comes from a physical location some million light years from her world. Izanami learns also that the universe hangs in a web of strange matter, which they call newuniversal structure, which consists on itself of strands. Strands are many light-years across and it takes thousands of years to traverse one. In the strands, the laws of physics don’t work perfectly. The last thing Izanami learns is that the web of the newuniversal structure is a machine, which was assembled by a species that lived long before any.
After the explanation of the newuniversal structure, the voice starts to talk what happens when a world enters the web. First of all, the machine alters sentients to become heralds of the new time to come. They receive powers to smoothen the way, because when a paradigm shift occurs, it always goes along with chaos. Examples of those heralds are a Nightmask, a Starbrand, a Justice , a Cipher, etc.
On 2nd March 2006 at 12.55 UTC, John Tensen has fled into one of Manhattan’s alleys, where he is trying to understand what happened to him, by writing it down in a notepad. But it is hard to describe. He seems able to see everything that a person has done in his life. And although he knows that he killed the nurse and that he should surrender himself, something stops him; something that has to do with the crimes people have committed. In the end, John decides to stay hidden until he finds and deals with the people who shot him, after which he will turn himself in.
Suddenly, a policeman notices John and orders John to come out of the alley. When John shows himself, the officer recognizes him immediately and tells him that he has to take John into custody. Because the officer can’t take any chance with John, the officer grabs his gun, which John even understand as John knows that he has changed. When John wants to show the policeman his notepad and what he has written in it about himself, the policeman thinks that John is going for a gun and so the officer shoots. At that moment, John’s mark appears again and creates several blue shields, which deflect the bullet. After the blue shields attack the officer and throw the man back on the pavement, John Tensen uses the opportunity to escape.
At the National Security Agency Headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, Philip L. Voight, Presiding Officer of Project Spitfire, receives a strange phone call. The voice tells Voight to stand by to receive a black folder from domestic sigint. When the phone call is terminated Voight doesn’t believe what he’s been told as he killed ‘the last one’ in 1959. After Voight remembers killing a baby, it looks as though old sores are ripped up.
On 2nd March 2006 at 23.02 UTC, Izanami finally wakes up as well. At first she thinks it was only a dream but when she turns on the TV, she realises that it isn’t a dream and that she has to get to Optima Down.
Back in Fort Meade, Jenny Swann is called to Voight’s office, where she is shown pictures of what occurred in the sheriff’s office of Optima Down. Voight informs Jenny that Project Spitfire has been upgraded from Dormancy to Urgently Active because there is now proof of a superhuman on American soil. Voight also tells Jenny that her funding has been increased and that H.E.X. (the Human Enhancement eXperimental) is now a priority. Because everything has changed, Project Spitfire is a go. At first they will start surveillance now that one super human is known, and if the numbers of super humans increase till three, they’ll have to kill the superhumans, as the super humans are bound to meet each other.
Characters:
Dan Felix (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45511)
Nightmask (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45505)
Starbrand (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45499)
Jennifer Swann (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45504)
John Tensen (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45508)
Philip L. Voight (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45506)
<hr>
newuniversal #3
April 2007
<img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/covers/marvel/newuniv03t.jpg" hspace=3 align=top align=left alt="newuniversal #3" border="0"> (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/4images/details.php?image_id=10509)
Story Title: Mathematics
Writer: Warren Ellis (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=14211&highlight=ellis)
Penciler: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Colorist: Jason Keith (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=38040&highlight=jason+keith)
Letterer: Rus Wooton (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=20683&highlight=wooton)
Cover Artist: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Assistant Editor: Daniel Ketchum (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=40840&highlight=ketchum)
Editor: Axel Alonso (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=11682&highlight=alonso)
Editor-In-Chief: Joe Quesada (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=12902&highlight=quesada)
Publisher: Dan Buckley (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?p=1395065)
Death: Spike, Yard and the rest of their gang
At the National Security Agency Headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, Philip Voigt, presiding of Project Spitfire, shows Dr. Jennifer Swann pictures of what happened in Optima Down. Jennifer Swann questions the authenticity of the photos, but even if the photos were true, she reminds Phil that it is only one superhuman. Phil aknowledges that Project Spitfire can only act if there are three superhumans, but to Phil it doesn’t mean that they can’t keep an eye on things and prepare themselves for what might come.
Regarding superhumans, Phil also firmly believes in Darwin’s theory that an evolutionary advantaged species will always prey on lesser species. When Jennifer brings up the possibility that this superhuman isn’t part of an evolutionary process, Phil brings up the Cosmic Trigger theory. This theory states that any latent superhuman traits can be triggered by an astronomic event. To reinforce his believe in this theory, he brings up similar events from the past. During at least one of those events, they know for a fact that it delivered at least one known superhuman. And because the White Event was a lot bigger than the previous environmental events, Phil expects more than three humans to come out of this one.
But Jennifer isn’t convinced that this is the case this time. The possibility, that this superhuman was created at random, still remains. And although Phil can’t believe that Jennifer, as a scientist, is even suggesting this, she reminds him that this superhuman could be created by some universal mechanism, that they don’t know of yet. Going along with Jennifer’s way of thinking, Phil asks her what this changes. Jennifer explains that, if this superhuman has got nothing to do with an evolutionary process and isn’t competing with another species, that he is something else altogether. But then Phil brings in reality to the discussion and the fact that Kenneth Connel did fight the policemen of Optima Down and that Madeline Felix got killed. But Jennifer knows that the cops were going to beat up Kenneth, as the cameras in the sheriff’s office confirm, and she believes that the girl got incinerated by whatever was aimed at Kenneth.
The more Jennifer tries to explain her view on things, the angrier Phil gets. In the end Phil tells her that they don’t know how the mind of a superhuman works. He also states that, when a superhuman will show up, normal humans will become nothing more than chimps with phones. Just before Jennifer leaves Phil’s office, Phil orders her to get the HEX suits working.
As Jennifer walks through the offices of the National Security Headquarters, she is able to read all the information, regarding the electronic equipment, just by looking at it. As she continues through the complex, a wave-like mark appears at the back of her neck.
At a warehouse, somewhere in New York City, Spike wants their gang to relocate as his mom’s apartment got raided by the police. Spike believes, that the cops think that they killed the nurse, Thomas Alexander Reid. But, Yard doesn’t care if the police think that they can go where ever they want in New York. Eventually, they start to talk about their place as a gang in New York. When Yard suggests that they take out the gang of Two-Shot Bianchi, Spike reminds him that they’ll get in trouble with the Old Italians. But Yard has thought of that, but he realises that their gang will be on good terms with the New Italians, the Calabrian guys and the ‘Ndrangheta.
Just as the gang end their discussion, they hear a voice, which tells them that they shot him in the head and that he hasn’t stopped thinking of justice ever since. Although the gang members look around to find the person, to whom the voice belongs, they aren’t able to find him and demand that he shows himself. When John Tensen appears, Yard opens fire on him, but John’s blue shields protect him, after which one of the shields heads for Yard and injures him badly. At that point, the other gang members start shooting their guns until they are empty. Now that the gunfire has stopped and that they need to reload, John lowers the shields and walks to the injured Yard. As John stands in front of him, a large, bright-white knife appears. He uses it swiftly to make a cross through Yard’s body, after which the body falls to the ground in four pieces. Immediately after, another member comes running towards John and pulls a knife of his own. But even before he can stab John, John cuts of his arm and slices off the part of the head above the nose. While two other members are desperately trying to reload their guns, John walks towards them and kills them. The last member but one wants to surrender but John doesn’t show any mercy and cuts the man’s throat. The man doesn’t die immediately, just as John wants. John wants the man to suffer just like he did during the ten seconds, when the bullet, with which he was shot in the head, burned his brain. When Spike, the last living member of the gang, aims his gun at John, he tells John that he knows that John is dead and that John has come back from the grave. Spike asks John what he’ll do when John runs out of people to kill. John answers that that will never happen. Suddenly Spike doesn’t resist anymore as he knows that John will become the number one threat to life in New York City, if he keeps on killing people. Seconds later, Spike is killed.
In Latvia, Dr. Leonard Carson and Dr. Hannah Ballad are looking at the skeleton, which they found in a tomb at an archaeological dig, north of Ventspils. Leonard is convinced that the skeleton is of a slayer. This slayer became eventually the greatest king of the shining city of Zardath. The slayer was also referred to as Starr the Slayer. When Len tells Hannah that they have found the grave of the hero of the lost city of Zardath, Hannah reminds him that they have only found bones of a man, who got hit in the head with a rock. But Len is sure that it is Starr the Slayer for two reasons. First is the size of the man, which is much bigger than any of the Indo-Europeans from that time. And the second reason is the mark on the skeleton’s head, which has been described in Uruk texts. Both reasons are proof for Len that the skeleton is that of Starr the Slayer, and that they have found the City of Zardath.
But Hannah isn’t that sure and recapitulates what they know, starting with some unknown people that turned up in the city of Uruk. There, they told their tale of their city, somewhere in Europe, that existed even before Uruk, the first known city. After Len studied all the maps about this lost city, he convinced Hannah’s father to finance the dig. During six weeks, Len comes up with nothing. Just after the White Event takes place, they find a tomb, a skeleton, a mark on skeleton’s head, which is the only thing that matches the single distinguishing feature of Starr the Slayer, and a lost city. To Hannah, all of this is way too convenient and therefore she can’t take it to her dad as he will think that Len dynamited the cliff and that Len planted the skeleton there.
At that moment, the dig leader Jim Braddock, who is carrying a stone item, enters the room and asks if Len has salted the dig. After Len assures him that he hasn’t, Len asks Jim what the thing is that he is holding. At that point, Jim asks both Len and Hannah if they really don’t know what the item is, to which Hannah orders him to tell them what is going on. Jim informs the two that the diggers of the site got all excited and insisted to keep on digging, even at night, after they found several of these stone items. When Hannah asks Jim if he has any idea of what they are, Jim answers her that he knows for a fact that the items are electrical lightning. Hannah confirms this as she has seen electrical candles that look similar. When Len asks Jim where the power comes from, Jim shows it to him. After Len recognizes the source, Len realises that he has finally found the proof of the existence of the lost city. In his enthusiasm, Len reminds Hannah that Jim told them that they found dozens of these electrical lightning, and that the city must have been more brightly than anyone would had ever seen in that time of stars, moon and campfires. And in that era, Starr the Slayer and his compatriots defended the shining city of Zardath.
After Jim agrees that it is unbelievable, he reveals that they got a Geiger counter reading off the bottom of the deepest trench.
Characters:
Hannah Ballad (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45510)
Jim Braddock (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45516)
Leonard Carson (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45507)
Gary A. Marka
Nightmask (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45505)
Jennifer Swann (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45504)
John Tensen (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45508)
Philip L. Voight (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45506)
<hr>
newuniversal #4
May 2007
<img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/covers/marvel/newuniv04t.jpg" hspace=3 align=top align=left alt="newuniversal #4" border="0"> (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/4images/details.php?image_id=10742)
Title: Distance
Writer: Warren Ellis (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=14211&highlight=ellis)
Penciler: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Colorist: Jason Keith (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=38040&highlight=jason+keith)
Letterer: Rus Wooton (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=20683&highlight=wooton)
Cover Artist: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Assistant Editor: Daniel Ketchum (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=40840&highlight=ketchum)
Editor: Axel Alonso (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=11682&highlight=alonso)
Editor-In-Chief: Joe Quesada (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=12902&highlight=quesada)
Publisher: Dan Buckley (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?p=1395065)
In San Francisco, Izanami Randall is about to head for Optima Down in search of Kenneth Connell. Because she can’t afford the plane ticket, she wonders if she can use the Superflow. This time, Izanami is able to get there without dreaming. When she asks the Station if there is distance in the Superflow, the Station affirms this. But the Station also warns Izanami that she is too inexperienced to travel via the Superflow. Izanami informs it that she is too poor to pay for a ticket to Oklahoma and that she needs to get there quickly, otherwise Kenneth may have destroyed the whole world by the time she gets there.
In one of the caves of the Wishita mountains, Kenneth Connell is grieving the death of his girlfriend Maddie. Although Kenneth doesn’t know what happened the night she died, he knows that the mark in the palm of his hand is responsible. In order to get rid of it, Ken stabs his hand multiple times with a sharp rock, until it bleeds. Suddenly, an old man appears and tells Kenneth that it won’t work. After Kenneth looks at his healed hand, he asks the stranger who he is. The only thing the man says is that he is a projection and that a timewave will be seen in a few moments. After Ken witnesses some astonishing natural phenomenon, the man appears in the flesh, together with another man and woman.
At the National Security Agency-headquarters, Dr. Jennifer Swann is faced with a dilemma regarding the HEX suits. She either has to fix them or she has to admit that her father’s idea, which she inherited, was never going to work in the first place. After Jennifer states that the suit is too complex, because it has too many competing systems, she looks at it again. Suddenly, she is able to see all the problems with the suit, as if the suit is talking to her. At that point, Jen realises that she is one of the super humans, who will eventually be hunted down by the HEX suit.
Back at the cave, Kenneth is unable to apprehend what is happening, so the woman explains that they are in a paradigm shift. To aid this earth during the changes, the universe sent a Justice, a Nightmask, a Cipher and a Starbrand. The woman shows Ken that they both have the icon of the Starbrand on their hand. When Ken tells them that he still doesn’t understand, the older man loses his patience and punches Ken in the stomach, after which he tells Ken to wake up. After Ken starts to focus, the older man informs Ken that they are all Starbrands and that the three came to him in a planetary rescue, because Ken is losing it. The older man explains that while Ken was drunk asleep, the universe drove the defence power of the Starbrand into him. At that point, Ken asks the man how Maddie got killed. The older man explains that during the Starbrand transfer, a lot of power is involved and sometimes the transfer coincides with an oversplash. It was that oversplash that incinerated Maddie. Having given Ken this information, the old man tells Ken to get a grip and to mourn Maddie’s death later, because trouble is on its way.
At that point, the other man participates in the conversation and states that Ken has options. Although the older man reminds the other man that Ken’s other options will result in killing the old man himself, Ken still wants to know them. The other man explains to Ken that the transition of his world into the newuniversal system has not gone well and that it may result in extinction for his world. The woman continues that they offer him a way out or if he should prefer it, even to end his life.
With the help of the Superflow, Izanami arrives in Optima Down. While she walks through the town, two young men, Brad and his friend, notice her and make a remark on Izanami’s butt. When she turns around to confront them, one of them noticing her Asian facial features and calls her a ‘chink’. After Izanami tells them that she is an American, although her parents are Japanese, she also reveals that she comes from San Francisco. When Brad asks her what she is doing in Optima Down, she tells them that she came to visit Kenneth Connell. What she doesn’t tell them, is how she knows of Ken. Although Brad at first tells Izanami everything that has happened to Maddie and the police station, he suddenly realises how much of a coincidence it is that Izanami showed up at this particular moment. But Izanami is able to change the subject when she asks them about the whereabouts of Ken, which nobody knows. At the end of their conversation, Brad points out the military vehicles of the army, that are stationed a bit further down the street.
Back at the cave, Ken has finally taken a grip on himself and starts to interrogate the strangers, starting with the older man. The man explains that he has come from the future to talk to Ken, because they have come to a crucial point. Ken is about to decide to use the power in the palm of his hand in a way either to destroy things or to build homes. The older man, however, has to admit that it will not be easy for Ken, if he should choose the more difficult option. But if Ken should choose to use the Starbrand to defend people and to build homes, Ken will help bring about a new world. After the old man’s explanation, Ken asks the other two who they are. After they tell him that they come from other earths, the old man notices Ken’s disbelief, so he confirms their statement.
Suddenly, Ken becomes aware of a sound in the air and as he looks up, he notices a plane approaching.
At the Pentagon, the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff, General Ross and his assistant Lt. General Jameson are in contact with the pilot of the plane, who has a visual on Ken and the other Starbrands. As the pilot confirms the presence of the four, assistant Jameson realises that the National Security Agency has its three super humans together, which gives the N.S.A. the authority to respond actively to the thread. Moments later, General Ross gives the pilot the order to launch his missiles. But although the missiles hit their target, the Starbrands survive the attack.
At this point, the other two Starbrands tell Ken his other option. He can leave this earth with them, but with the risk that his earth could cease to exist if he does. Another consequence is that in fifty years time, he won’t be able to convince his younger self to stay. At that moment, Ken realises that the old man is his future self.
Characters:
Brad and friend
Lt. General Jameson
Nightmask (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45505)
Thad Ross (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45514)
Jennifer Swann (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45504)
Starbrand (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45499)
Starbrand (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45499) (from the future)
Starbrands (alternate)
<hr>
newuniversal #5
June 2007
<img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/covers/marvel/newuniv05t.jpg " hspace=3 align=top align=left alt="newuniversal #5" border="0"> (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/4images/details.php?image_id=10827)
Story Title: Mystery
Writer: Warren Ellis (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=14211&highlight=ellis)
Penciler: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Colorist: Jason Keith (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=38040&highlight=jason+keith)
Letterer: Rus Wooton (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=20683&highlight=wooton)
Cover Artist: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Assistant Editor: Daniel Ketchum (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=40840&highlight=ketchum)
Editor: Axel Alonso (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=11682&highlight=alonso)
Editor-In-Chief: Joe Quesada (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=12902&highlight=quesada)
Publisher: Dan Buckley (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?p=1395065)
First Appearance: Emmett Proudhawk, Director Rockall
At the Sicangu Reservation land in South Dakota, Emmett Proudhawk undertakes a vision quest to understand what happened during the White Event. When his vision quest begins, Emmett ends up in a place, where he sits on a large rock, which is surrounded by water. Wakan Tanka or the Great Spirit joins Emmett in the form of a white eagle, who sits on Emmett’s shoulder. Emmett explains to Wakan Tanka that he doesn’t understand why nothing changed after the White Event. Before the Great Spirit explains the wakan condition, which is how they name the White Event, he asks Emmett if he understands wakan. Emmett tells the Spirit that he knows that wakan is mystery, and that wakan is a spiritual power, a working of God. After this, Emmett wants to know where exactly he is. Wakan Tanka explains that he is in the place where mystery lives. It is also the place where people go to dream, where visions come from and where people think. After Emmett Proudhawk understands things better now, Wakan Tanka informs him that he has been touched by the White Event, although he wasn’t the first person. The Great Spirit tells him about the four first persons, who were touched, and what they can do. The Great Spirit makes it clear that, although Emmett wasn’t the first one, that he is necessary because they need a doctor, who understands mystery. In the end, Emmett asks the Spirit what the White Event is exactly. Wakan Tanka tells him that it is an invitation to live with God and to walk in the world with his powers.
After his vision quest, Emmett returns to a village and goes to a man called Bill, who asks Em about his quest. Emmett believes that he has had his destiny vision. He states to Bill his mistrust involving the White Event and the fact that nothing has changed ever since. When Bill asks him what he found out, Em informs him how five people, including him, have been touched by it and that there are more to come. Em also explains that he has some kind of responsibility to them. But when Em states that he has only a responsibility to his tribe and his job, Bill tells him that Em has been born into a new tribe at the age of 41. Talking about his job, Em shows Bill what his job really is, when he uses his phone to gather all kinds of information, regarding the event. When Emmett talks to his phone, he reveals that his has the authorization to ask for the information as a Special Operations Analyst for the C.I.A.
At the National Security Agency Headquarters, President Philip Voight of Project Spitfire receives a visit of Director Rockall. Director Rockall reveals that they unscrambled an encryption of the Army, revealing the whereabouts of Kenneth Connell. Phil finds it logic that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were able to track Kenneth down but what Phil doesn’t understand is how they got to know about Kenneth in the first place. Rockall explains to him that the Army has been listening to the N.S.A by breaking their traffic encryption. Rockall also thinks that the Army is probably trying to bomb Kenneth. At that moment, Rockal gets a call, which confirms his assumption. Because Rockall realises that Phil is the closest thing to an expert on the subject, he asks him what is going to happen. Phil explains that they have declared war on a creature, that has the power of a squadron of modern helicopters and who probably holds no sympathy for human life. Therefore, Phil hopes that the army succeeds in killing Ken.
In Optima Down, Oklahoma, Izanami uses her access to the Superflow once again to get away from the small town. As she enters the Superflow again, the Station informs her that quantum tunnels are in operation. Because Izanami doesn’t understand, the Station explains that that there are tunnels in operation coming from both parallel universes and from this earth’s future. Izanami witnesses from a distant the arrival of the Kenneth’s future self and of the two other Starbrands under the form of a green ray. Moments later the missile attack on Kenneth can be seen when a part of the explosion enters the Superflow. As Izanami hurries to the spot, she asks the Station if the strangers are responsible for the attack on Kenneth, but it doesn’t know. Somehow Izanami knows that the army is behind the attack. While Izanami heads to Kenneth, she is being watched by Emmett Proudhawk, who was at the time almost at the end of his vision quest.
Just after the missile attack, the force field, which protected the four Starbrands, is lowered, after which Kenneth asks his older self what he should do. The older Kenneth tells him that it is his choice. The older Ken knows that everything has changed, but he informs that Ken that he hasn’t got time to try to understand it all or to run away from it. And although the older Ken knows that the universe screwed up, when it chose Ken to become the Starbrand, it still doesn’t change the current situation. After this, the older Ken reminds him that the Starbrand is a planetary defence system and that it would not have been created if it wasn’t necessary.
At that point, the planes, that launched the missiles, fly over again to see what the result of their attack was. At that same moment, the young Kenneth interacts consciously with the Starbrand for the first time, which indicates that Kenneth has made his choice to become this world’s Starbrand. Now that Kenneth has made his choice, the other three can leave again.
At the Pentagon, General Ross receives the information that the missiles didn’t do a thing and that all targets are still there. With this information, General Ross orders the pilot to get ready to use the Black Prince, a tactical nuclear device. After General Ross has given his order, his assistant Lt. General Jameson reminds his superior of the consequences for them if the attack goes wrong.
Just as the planes are approaching for the attack and just as the other Starbrands are about to leave, Izanami appears and grabs Kenneth by the arm, after which she jumps with him back into the Superflow. After Izanami and Kenneth are gone, the older Kenneth recognizes Izanami as a Nightmask but he doesn’t remember her taking him.
After the older Kenneth leaves as well, General Ross is brought up to speed regarding the new developments. After he gets angry for the fact that the targets just vanished, he orders his assistant to arrange a private meeting between the President and himself.
At the N.S.A., director Rockall learns of General Ross’ order to use the Black Prince. Rockall informs Phil of this information but tells him also that the attack was aborted after Kenneth and three other persons vanished. Phil’s attention is specifically drawn by the information about the amount of persons that were there.
Back in the Superflow, Kenneth gets his first good look at Izanami and the Station.
Characters:
Bill
Lt. General Jameson
Nightmask (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45505)
Emmett Proudhawk (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45509)
Director Rockall (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45513)
Thad Ross (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45514)
Starbrand (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45499)
Starbrand (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45499) (from the future)
Starbrands (alternate)
Philip L. Voight (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45506)
Wakan Tanka
<hr>
newuniversal #6
July 2007
<img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/covers/marvel/newuniv06t.jpg" hspace=3 align=top align=left alt="newuniversal #6" border="0"> (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/4images/details.php?image_id=10979)
Story Title:Tumble
Writer: Warren Ellis (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=14211&highlight=ellis)
Penciler: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Colorist: Jason Keith (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=38040&highlight=jason+keith)
Letterer: Rus Wooton (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=20683&highlight=wooton)
Cover Artist: Salvador Larroca (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=13430&highlight=salvador)
Assistant Editor: Daniel Ketchum (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=40840&highlight=ketchum)
Editor: Axel Alonso (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=11682&highlight=alonso)
Editor-In-Chief: Joe Quesada (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=12902&highlight=quesada)
Publisher: Dan Buckley (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?p=1395065)
After Izanami Randall brought Kenneth Connell to the Superflow, she used it once again to transport the both of them to her home in San Francisco. As Ken lies on the floor, he still wants someone to explain to him in real simple words what is going on. Izanami wants to give it a shot and tells him that the universe is crisscrossed with things, which could be described as highways, where the known laws of physics don’t apply. With the White Event, their Earth got stuck in one of those highways. At the same time, four machines were sent to make the changeover easier. She reminds Ken, that he got noticed by the army after he used his machine. Izanami herself started to get instructions via the Station from people, who she refers to as their neighbours down the highway. Izanami has to bring the four weapons together, especially now that people want to blow up Ken. Ken, on his turn, reveals that he has met people from other planets and from the future, but he doesn’t know what is real anymore. When Izanami asks Ken what they should do, Ken doesn’t answer because he is crying.
At the National Security Agency, Philip Voight is ordering his team to get him a transcript of what General Ross said exactly when he gave the order to attack Kenneth earlier on. Suddenly, Director Rockall appears again after he was supposed to have left for a meeting with the President. After Phil sends his team away, Rockall tells Phil that he wants Phil to take his place. Rockall explains that all the agencies i.e. the F.B.I., C.I.A., N.S.A. ,etc are being pulled in for a meeting with the President. Rockall suspects that the President does not only want to ask them for advice on how to handle things, but also to find reasons with which she can hang General Ross.
But Phil still doesn’t understand why Rockall wants to send him. Rockall tells Phil that he wants to scare the President with all Phil’s past encounters, regarding the emergence of super humans. And because General Ross wanted to nuke a populated region with no guarantee of success, Rockall believes that that will be enough rope to hang Ross. Rockall also realises that Phil has saved America from super humans before and because of it he got to write the Spitfire Protocols, which received the presidential stamp, which will make Phil the only person with authority in that meeting. Phil reminds Rockall that Ross also falls under the Spitfire Protocols, because of the three other people, who were with Ken. But Rockall isn’t worried about that because those three persons aren’t there anymore and Ken is the only super human that they have seen. When Phil raises the question who these people are and where they are now, Rockall isn’t able to answer because the four all vanished. Therefore, Rockall wants for the N.S.A. to run everything and that is why he wants Phil to go and scare the President.
In New York, John Tensen a.k.a. Justice stands on a rooftop and looks at the passing pedestrians. After he uses one of his powers, he finds out that all of them are guilty of hurting someone innocent. John doesn’t feel sorry for them and uses another of his powers. He throws dozens of bright-white blades at them and at passing cars, killing every single person. After he is done, he uses one of the blades to carve the word justice in the road. To leave the scene, John uses his powers to create dozens of bright-white steps, which he uses to walk over the skyscrapers.
Later on in the Situation Room of the White House, the President makes it clear to General Ross that she is growing less fond of him, after he wanted to use nuclear weapons without discussing it with her. When General Ross tries to reply to her comment, she stops him and informs him that he hasn’t managed to convince her of his reasons to use the weapons. The only thing that is in his favor is that neither the C.I.A., F.B.I. or any of the other agencies have come up with a solution regarding the White Event and the apparent emergence of a new kind of human being.
At that point, Phil Voight asks to address her and asks her if she questions the evidence of super humans in the United States. Before they continue their talk, the President asks Phil who he is exactly. After Phil states his name, he informs her that he came in the place of N.S.A.’s director Rockall, because Phil is the only man in the room that has killed super humans. Phil continues by telling what happened after the celestial event, called the Fireworks. He tells them how they did nothing back then but watch and gather information as the first super humans started to meet each other. It was only after the super humans started to fall in love with each other that they started to realise that they could start to band together and reproduce, posing a serious thread to normal humans.
General Ross uses the opportunity of Phil’s statement to convince the President of his decision to use nuclear weapons. But unfortunately for General Ross, Phil doesn’t agree with him because Phil believes that using major military actions will only cause for the super humans to find each other and band more quickly. When General Ross asks what Phil did during the Fireworks to deal with the super humans, Phil tells him that he shot the first superhuman baby to death. With his confession, Phil underlines that he is very committed to the superhuman problem and that he will not do less than anyone else. After Phil states that General Ross will kill them all with his way of action, Phil informs them that they can only deal with this by killing the super humans quietly, carefully and secretly. Therefore, Voight is convinced that the N.S.A. is the only one that has the expertise to deal with this. At the end of the meeting, the President tells Phil that he will be her interim senior advisor on the White Event situation and that General Ross has to advise her on how to explain to China why the U.S. put nuclear weapons in the field.
Meanwhile, both the missile attack in the Wichita Mountains as the killings in New York are being discussed on TV. Thanks to the word ‘justice’ on the road at the scene of the murders in New York, the link is made with the incident at the hospital, from which John Tensen disappeared.
At the National Security Agency, Jennifer Swann is ready to test the HEX suit, although she hopes that it won’t work. After she is able to connect to the suit, Jennifer still hopes that the suit’s weapons will malfunction, but unfortunately they work, after which Jennifer sheds a tear because she realises that Phil will be able to kill her now.
Characters:
Nightmask (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45505)
President of the United States
Director Rockall (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45513)
Thad Ross (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45514)
Starbrand (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45499)
Jennifer Swann (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45504)
John Tensen (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45508)
Philip L. Voight (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=45506)