<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0
transitional//en">The Lethal Luthors:
A Deceptive Brilliance
PART TWO: THE SECRET FOUR
In 1903 Sally Finn Luthor became pregnant, hugely pregnant. Paul Finglemore made certain he was home for this birth and used his medical knowledge to effect a trouble-free birth. Sally Finn gave forth one of the rarest births in history, identical quadruplets. However this incident was never brought to public attention at the insistence of Mr. Paul Luthor, the boys' father, who claimed that it would be dangerous for the boys, for his wife, and for himself should the public be aware of their existence. He told the boys that he and they were true royalty, Princes of the House of Lutha, which had been usurped by the Rubinroths[1]. Their lives would be immediately forfeit should the Usurper discover their existence.
Interestingly enough, rumor of their existence did leak out and some very imaginative writers later attributed the incident to the family of the notorious bank robber John Dillinger[2].
The four
boys were born on
All of the brothers were possessed of a remarkable intellect, which their father encouraged. What extra cash the family could acquire was used to buy books on a wide variety of subjects. He also taught them well the arts of disguise, escape, subterfuge, opportunism, situational ethics, and adaptable morality. It seems that while Paul Finglemore was able to repress his nature successfully enough to carry off the continual charade of being the staid Dr. Wainwright, with the Luthor family he was able to truer to his self. If one wonders why Sally Finn would go along with this, it should be remembered that her grandfather was a bit of a hell raiser before he became respectable. Also her great grandfather was a liar, thief, drunkard, and a gambler.
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Influenced by the works of Darwin, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Spencer, and Gobineau he vowed to make himself into the superior man, the epitome of human evolution. To this end he studied all he could about biology, chemistry, alchemy, and other arcane sciences. By the time he was fourteen he believed he knew all that there was to learn in these subjects.
He
believed that extraterrestrial matter had incited life on earth and that evolution
had been accelerated by constant infusions of extraterrestrial matter. In the
course of his studies he learned about a meteorite that had landed near
Smallville. The main mass of the meteorite had evidently been vaporized on
impact since it was never found; however, strange colored crystals were found
near the impact crater. The leading geologist at
There
were emerald, crimson, sapphire, ivory, and golden-colored crystals in his
sample bag. Upon his return home, Lawrence and his brother Alexander tested the
crystals and ascertained their extra-terrestrial origins.
The elixir probably would have had little effect outside of a belly ache had not his brother Lex as a prank ground up and sprinkled a bit of each of the other crystals into the elixir.[5]
After drinking the elixir the thirteen-year-old boy suffered the tortures of the damned for two days. When the agony finally passed he felt limp as a dishrag. Dragging himself to a pond, which he had the foresight to be near, he drank heavily of the water. In his reflection he noticed that he was completely bald. This was to be expected he reasoned, as humans evolved they would naturally lose all ties to their animal past, so hair would become obsolete.
Then he noticed that he still had eyebrows, and eyelashes, and facial hair. He also now possessed wrinkles.
He had aged. Rather than accelerating his body to the ultimate evolutionary stage of humanity, the elixir had instead accelerated his body's maturation process, giving the thirteen-year-old boy the body of a thirty-three-year-old man. His failure humbled him, made him feel lessened. He returned home to explain to his family what had happened. His father was on a business trip, and his mother, shaken and stunned by the disappearance of her son, disbelieved his story—she thought him a madman and believed that he had something to do with her son's disappearance. Lawrence Luthor realized that he could not prove that he had suddenly aged over twenty years and might very well be charged with Lawrence Luthor's murder, despite, the lack of a corpse.
He fled
the state. He sought his fortune, but despite his enthusiasm and great
intelligence found himself relegated to manual labor jobs. In 1917
Angry,
All would
not end happily for Alice Adams, however. A few months into her engagement she
realized that she was pregnant and not by her fiancée. She pushed for an early
wedding but Arthur's parents insisted on an engagement of at least six months,
hoping that circumstances would drive the two young people apart. They were
correct in this. When
To avoid
detection he rode the rails as a hobo. A fellow train hopper tried to rob, or
had worse plans for, Lawrence Luthor.
In Philadelphia Lawrence Luthor used the name William Dunn and worked as a custodian at a bank/stock exchange soaking up knowledge of the stock market. He also met a young female teller with whom he soon became romantically involved. He married her before the year was out. Using extra cash he soon began to build a portfolio of moderate means. As Bill Dunn was building his modest fortune, his wife bore a son, Joseph.[8] In 1920 Bill Dunn was riding the bubble of the stock market when the bubble burst. The Depression of 1920 wiped out Bill Dunn; he had borrowed heavily and his small family was left destitute. Rather than blaming himself, Dunn blamed Wall Street and the bankers and industrialists.
Unable to
cope with the situation that he had brought upon his family Dunn (Lawrence
Luthor) abandoned his family on the pretext of looking for work. He went to
According to my fellow researcher Kai Jansson in The Reign of Supermen
During the depression of 1920-21, a balding, homeless man in his 30s or early 40s named William (Bill) Dunn stood in a bread line along with so many other homeless and out-of-work men (a common sight during each of America's depressions, especially those which occurred before any kind of "social safety net" was enacted), when a scientist named Professor Ernest Smalley approached him with the offer of a job.
Lawrence
Luthor recognized Professor Ernest Smalley as the geologist at
Smalley had been observing each of the vagrants in the food line for quite a while, in search of the proper man to be a "guinea pig" in his often-dangerous experiments, and Dunn had appeared to be the most desperate out of the entire group.
It may also have been
that Smalley unconsciously recognized Lawrence Luthor without realizing it.
This unknown chemical was more than likely more of the kryptonite from the Smallville impact crater. Smalley had also added some other ingredients to soften the radiation from the mineral. His theory paralleled Lawrence Luthor's earlier theory that periodic meteorite impacts aided in the evolution of species. His theory differed in that he believed that the resulting mutations became creatures which became the dominant species, a ravening predator that hunted so well that it destroyed its own food supply and caused massive eco-sytem failure, leading to the mass extinctions of many species. He did not think that this would be the case with humanity, however, since mankind was the peak of evolution according to the prevalent evolutionary theories of the day. He believed that his concoction would allow humanity to achieve their evolutionary perfection and so end all social problems. But according to Jansson,
The experiment had an unforeseen effect, however, as the now-raving derelict escaped and the chemical began to transform him into an evil, powerful being who called himself "The Superman" (due to his physical and mental -- although not moral -- superiority over all other human beings)
In a sense Dunn (Lawrence Luthor) proved Smalley's theory of the ultimate predator because this is what Dunn had been transformed into. Jansson claims that “this chemical substance also had the adverse effect of causing him to lose all of his hair.” I differ with my fellow researcher on this point; my research leads me to believe Dunn already had lost his hair, as noted above. But we agree that:
Dunn's awesome mental powers grew relatively rapidly, beginning as they did with telepathy, and they expanded into mind-control to the point where he could control the thoughts of anyone he wished. Dunn first used his newfound abilities to cast his powerful mind into space, where he "saw" with his mind a battle between bizarre creatures on the planet Mars.
This vision may have been an ability to see into different planes of reality, so it may have been Barsoom that Dunn was looking at. This may be the origin of Dunn's descendent Cole Sear's ability to see into a plane of existence inhabited by the forms of those dead who have not "gone on." Jansson continues:
William Dunn began to gain great wealth and power for himself, first with theft through the use of his mental powers and then through gambling and the manipulation of the stock market. Professor Smalley by this time realized that he had created a complete monster and attempted to use the chemical treatment on himself, but he was apparently killed by the Superman before Smalley could become his rival.
It was at this time that Dunn recalled well the devastation
of the recent war in
William (Bill) Dunn was originally from
Somewhere along the way he told the story of his time as "The Superman" to a young newspaper vendor in a bar in Cleveland, who dismissed it as pure science fiction and later passed it on to Jerry Siegel, an acquaintance of his who he knew enjoyed those type of stories, the kind found in such periodicals as Hugo Gernsback's Amazing Stories and Wonder Stories.
Unfortunately for William Dunn, the chemical treatments with the unknown element which had once turned him into a mental and physical superman began to wrack his body almost immediately after his great mental powers had worn off. Within a few short years Dunn became crippled and wheelchair-bound even as his mental prowess, intellect, and reasoning powers returned to him, albeit with none of his former telepathic abilities. By the mid-1920s Dunn had once again become one of the world's foremost (albeit secretive) geniuses, but the chemicals which had turned him into an ugly, bald, misshapen cripple and enhanced his brainpower to genius level also drove his existing tendencies to new levels.
I differ with my fellow researcher on this point. I believe that Bill Dunn (Lawrence Luthor) already possessed genius-level intelligence; the thyophite endowed him the psionic power that only lasted a brief time. His brain drew strength and energy from his body, taxing it. Why the brain shriveled the body was not known until a few years later. Lawrence Luthor's brain became an almost self-supporting organism. As such it was able to be taken from its host body and transplanted into various bodies without suffering rejection or exist without a body for a time despite oxygen deprivation. Lawrence Luthor, however, did not know this. He hated all of humanity for this lost youth and lost vigor and yet at the same time believed himself to be the ultimate form of human evolution. Returning to Jansson:
As William Dunn began to build his criminal spiderweb, he would from now on be known only by the name "The Ultra-Humanite." Dunn later revealed his origin by way of a confession, "I am known as 'The Ultra-Humanite.' Why? Because a scientific experiment resulted in my possessing the most agile and learned brain on Earth! Unfortunately for mankind, I prefer to use this great intellect for crime. My goal? Domination of the world!"
The Ultra-Humanite, known also as Ultra, soon became
aware of a new and very different Superman in 1933, a powerful figure of
justice who began to disrupt several of his criminal schemes in the
Lawrence
Luthor abandoned the Dunn identity and embarked on a life of crime, calling
himself the Ultra-Humanite. At first, as my colleague stated, he worked behind
the scenes. He was not as yet totally confined to a wheelchair in the early
Thirties but was beginning to suffer from pains in his knees and legs that made
sitting in a wheelchair more desirable that walking. The wheelchair was at this
early part of his criminal career a devise to make his enemies underestimate
him. Using a cache of money from his gambling ventures, he started a criminal
gang, one of the member of which was his brother Alexander Luthor, whom he
broken out of the Illinois State Penitentiary.[10]
Alexander Luthor had become a grifter like his father before him. He had
taken to calling himself Alexi and used an indeterminate foreign accent to give
the impression that he was a foreign national. Unlike his brothers, Alexi
claimed that he had not started to lose his hair, possessing a full head of
read hair. He claimed that he had devised a chemical treatment that prevented
hair loss. However,
Alexi
was, like his father before him, a master of disguise and had carried out
various con jobs and grifts before getting caught. He had jumped at the chance
to escape from jail, even if it meant working for a crippled old man. Alexi was
shocked to discover that the crippled old man was his brother Lawrence. He
became
Lawrence Luthor the
Ultra-Humanite and Alexi Luthor set up their headquarters in
Unfortunately
Superman stumbled onto on of their most lucrative grafts, a taxi cab protection
racket. Their front man for this operation was ganglord Jackie Reynolds.
Reynolds had organized unscrupulous cab drivers into a union, the Cab
Protective League. Reynolds' union, financed by the Ultra-Humanite, intimidated
other cab drivers through violence and threats of violence against passengers.
Superman began investigating the activities of Jackie Reynolds because a cab
carrying
Investigating
the Cab Protective League Superman discovered that it was run by a racketeer
named Reynolds. Superman smashed Reynolds taxi cabs in order to make Reynolds
confess. Although the comic book has Reynolds tried and convicted and escaping
while being transported to prison, it is more likely he escaped while being
transported to an arraignment since very little time has actually passed.
Reynold’s escape from police custody was gained when he smoked a gas-filled
cigarette that rendered the police insensate. The police were then thrown from
the car.
Lawrence Luthor escaped in an airplane. When Superman escaped the burning cabin he jumped up after the plane and smashed its propellers. After the plane crash however there was no sign of the crippled old man. (Action Comics #13).
From then
on Superman was on the lookout for any sign of the Ultra-Humanite. Once again
found Superman found the Ultra-Humanite’s hidden hand behind a graft ring among
the corrupt police of Cleveland and crooked politicians.[12]
Superman had been investigating graft centered around
the small Cleveland Subway system with crooked and ultimately false plans for
an expansion of the
Tired of
Superman’s interference and blaming the city that had embraced the muscle
headed hero, the Ultra-Humanite decided to punish both Superman and the
citizens of
Because
their operations were constantly being thwarted by Superman, the Luthor brothers
began to think that perhaps
Lawrence
Luthor used forged credentials to establish himself as Dr. Buelow T Madren, an
eminent psychologist.[15] In a short time he gained access to
patients among the upper social strata of
Early in March of 1935, Dr. Madren received a most unusual patient, a man named John Scroggins who suffered from intermittently impaired thought process, was in a highly suggestible state, and lacked any emotional response to most emotional stress tests.
Under
hypnosis Dr. Madred learned that John Scroggins was a revolutionary chemist who
using a combination of heat, pressure, and a chemical mixture of his own
devising was able to create synthetic diamonds.[16] A side
effect of the chemical process used in the creation of these synthetic diamonds
was that the chemical mixture was absorbed through the skin or respiration and
affected the brain chemistry producing the symptoms Scroggins suffered.
Scroggins worked by himself on a small farm and duck pond on
The
Luthor brothers started a few operations. They created synthetic diamonds and
intended to use the chemicals and the synthetic diamonds to devalue and control
the world diamond market. Also by treating cigars, pipe tobacco, and food with
the chemicals, they would be able to influence various key people using
information gathered from Dr. Madren's patients. From one of his patients—Simon
Stevens, the president of World Waterways Shipping Company—Dr. Madren acquired
the property of the
However, Dr. Madren had not counted upon Simon Stevens handing one of the cigars laced with the brain-altering chemicals to his shoe shiner or that Doc Savage was one of the shoe shiner's customers and noticed his odd change of behavior. Nor did Dr. Madren realize the Doc Savage sat on the board of World Waterways and had also noticed the odd behavior of Simon Stevens, which alone was enough to prompt an investigation by the bronze man.
Although Dr. Madren succeeded in dosing almost all of Doc Savage's men, his cousin Pat, and even Doc Savage himself with the mind-controlling chemical, ultimately Savage prevailed. Alexi, in his Quaylan guise, deliberately allowed himself to be captured by Savage, hoping to learn Doc's plans. Unfortunately for the criminal brothers, Doc Savage injected Alexi with a truth serum almost immediately. Alexi injected himself with a chemical to bring about paralysis so that it would appear that he was dead. He then signaled for a henchman to fire through the window. Alexi wore a red wig with a device inside it that exploded cow brains and blood to make it appear as though he had been shot in the head. Of course, this effect would not stand up to a close inspection, but Alexi hoped that Doc and the others would try to capture the shooter. During which time his cohorts would remove Luthor’s body.
Doc and his associates did go after the shooter, but a constable arrived before Alexi's associates could retrieve his body. The constable saw what he believed was a man with his brains shot out and went after Doc Savage. Alexi's cohorts then removed him.
Once Doc Savage entered the picture Lawrence Luthor truly believed he could outsmart and extirpate Doc Savage. He proved to be wrong. Doc Savage not only exposed Dr. Madren as the brains behind the operation but managed to destroy Madren's chemical and diamond making factory, which was on a converted whaler. The ship blew up and Dr. Madren was believed to have gone up with it. However, both the Luthor brothers were past masters at faking their own deaths. The exposure to the cold sea water, though, did not do Lawrence Luthor's weakened body any good. He began to suffer from chronic arthritis and loss of bone density, causing him to spend more and more time in a wheelchair, making the wheelchair less a prop and more of a necessity.[17]
When the
Ultra-Humanite decided to work behind the scenes more, he moved his base of
operations to
One of their international ventures was marred by the presence of Superman.
In 1936 Alexi and Lawrence Luthor backed a deal that was a change for them in that it was semi-legitimate. Former movie producer and showman Carl Denham was surreptitiously gathering resources for a trip back to Kong Island. He had previously made the statement that the island had sunk and all of the animals upon it had been destroyed. He had a plan to take a converted oil tanker back to Skull Island and get two pairs of each of the prehistoric animals. He then planned to open up his own zoo. The Luthor brothers thought that this would be a good legitimate venture, one that could be very lucrative; the animals would also be of interesting scientific value. If nothing else they could be used to terrorize populations into submission.
The Luthors accompanied Denham on his excursion. Denham deliberately traveled on a confusing course to the island. It was perhaps ironic that the Luthor used anesthetic gas formulated by Doc Savage to subdue the prehistoric beasts of the island. Alexi and Lawrence were shown the ruins of the ancient city. Denham's expedition even traveled to a mountain on which the natives said another temple existed. Denham brought back some odd jewelry. Upon seeing the jewels Lawrence insisted upon being taken up the mountain. The prehistoric beasts, however, were becoming exceedingly agitated and the supply of mercy bullets was running low. He saw only the barest glimpse of the ancient city and saw that it had once been enclosed by a crystal dome.
The voyage back to America was uneventful until they were near the pacific coast of the United States. Two events occurred that led to the trip ending in disaster.
As the zoo ship approached the San Francisco Bay, the caged behemoth animals became restless. Several broke out their cages and the crew was hard pressed to round them up. One of the animals that escaped was a pterodactyl. This escape was keenly ill-timed, as will be shown.
About a week prior to the ship’s return to US waters, an entrepreneurial diver discovered that currents that previously had prevented him from exploring certain regions of the San Francisco Bay were now available to him.[18] What he found shocked him.
He immediately went to the newspapers and told them of an ancient city with weird architecture on the bottom of the Bay. To deepen the mystery, the diver disappeared after talking to a man with wide set eyes.
The Daily Star sent Clark Kent and Lois Lane west to uncover the truth of this report and also to write pieces on the massive emigration of farmers to the California area in the wake of the Dust Bowl. Clark Kent and Lois Lane hired a plane to fly them over the spot where the sunken city was located. Their plane was attacked by the pterodactyl, which had escaped from Denham’s floating menagerie.
The plane with Clark Kent and Lois Lane was severely damaged by the pterodactyl. Lane fell overboard, and Kent grabbed her. The pterodactyl grabbed him and flew over the ship. Dropping them on the deck, the pterodactyl flew towards the coast searching for other prey. It was shot down by a zealous Army-Air Corps pilot. Most of the crew of the converted oil tanker was below deck trying to contain the escaping animals.
Clark Kent was attacked by a giant rat, shredding his clothes and leaving him with only his Superman costume. Fortunately Lois remained unconscious. Superman tried to stop the rat without killing it. Their fight carried him to the rear of the tanker. By the time he had rendered the rat unconscious, Lois had disappeared.
Carl
Denham had bought a few of the natives of Skull Island from the chieftain. He
planned to use them as exhibits and also to help with the animals. They were a
combination of Negrito and Polynesian peoples, much like the inhabitants of
Madagascar. Yet they also had a strong strain of something else, some traits
shared by the inhabitants of Innsmouth
Lois Lane had been taken below deck and was being held in the cabin of Lawrence Luthor. Many of the crew had been killed by the animals. Desperate, he asked Superman to help him, using the only method that came to mind, threatening to kill Lois Lane. Superman agreed, although he believed that the Ultra-Humanite planned to use these prehistoric creatures for some nefarious scheme.
The Ultra-Humanite, Lois Lane, and a few of the crew members went below decks with Superman. It is fortunate that they did so. While Superman was fighting a tyrannosaurus rex, the United States Army Air Corps made a preemptive strike against what it believed to be a ship of Deep Ones. They dropped lethal gas on the decks of the ship, instantly killing everything on deck. As the lethal gas began to seep down into the ship, Superman realized that Lois could not survive going through the gas and that most of the animals would perish. There was one chance for freedom. Superman ruptured the side of the tanker, which was even with the water line. He grabbed Lois and swam for shore. Many of the animals and crew also swam for shore. Shortly after Superman had breached the hull, the ship exploded as the Army Air corps made another bombing run over the ship.[20]
Carl Denham survived and sold his special jewels to various museums.
Alexi and Lawrence Luthor survived because they had brought with them a small submersible in case the ship run into trouble.
Most of the animals perished, although some may have survived and made their way into the wilds of America and Mexico. It is known that one of the young Kong apes did survive.[21]
The Ultra-Humanite returned to working behind the scenes as a criminal middleman. He spent time researching methods to either rejuvenate his body back to its youth or to transfer his consciousness into a younger body. It was during these researches that he came into contact with the being known who would be known Brainiac.
The general public knows of Brainiac from his appearances in the comic book and cartoon adventures based on Superman's life. He is depicted as a bald-headed, green-skinned android who bears an uncanny resemblance to Lex Luthor but with a web work of wires on the top of his scalp. Purportedly he came to earth in a time/space ship. This portrayal is actually not too far from the truth.
However he did not originate on Colu, or on Krypton as has been more recently suggested.
The being who would be come known as Brainiac's origins actually lie outside the known universe.
This being was originally what is referred to as a Black Beller, although he never looked like the Black Bellers described in the World of Tiers series by Philip José Farmer. “The Black Bellers were to have been used, partly, as receptacles for memory. The Lords, knowing that even the complex human brain could not hold thousands of years of knowledge, had experimented with the transfer of memory. This could, theoretically, be transferred back to the human brain when needed or otherwise displayed exteriorly.” (Farmer, A Private Cosmos, Berkley, 1968)
However the main purpose of the Bellers was to provide the Thoan Lords with true immortality. The Thoan Lords were human beings who had discovered from ancient technology found in their universe how to create universes of their own, including solar systems and all the planets, and created all flora and fauna tailored to suit their whims. Once this technology had become widespread, the Thoans each commanded universes of their own, becoming gods to the artificially created human beings and animals they populated their creations with. Although the Thoans developed methods to extend their lives for thousands of years and could bio-engineer their bodies to be resistant to injury, they remained all too mortal and could be killed by accident or misadventure. The Thoan scientists created the Bellers during their quest for a true immortality.
“A Beller is bell-shaped, black, of indestructible material. Even if one were attached to a hydrogen bomb, the Beller would survive the fission. Or a Beller could be shot into the heart of a star, and it would go unscathed for a billion years.” (Farmer, A Private Cosmos)
The Bellers were originally constructed to be purely automatic devices that extruded two thin but rigid needles that bored through the skull and into the brain. Through the needles the contents of the human brain would be electronically duplicated. The duplication resulted in stripping the original brain and leaving it blank.
"The Beller was constructed so that the mental contents of the Lord could be stored for a very long time indeed if an emergency demanded this.
"The Bellers were to provide a means whereby the mental contents of a Lord could be transferred to the brain of a host. Thus, the Lord could live on in a new body while the old one died of its wounds.
"The experiment took over fifty years, I believe, before the Bellers were one hundred percent safe and perfectly operational. Most of the research was done on human slaves, who often died or became idiots.
“Lords who became subjects reported an almost unendurable feeling of detachment from reality, agony of separation, while their brains were housed in the Bellers. You see, the brains did have some perception of the world outside if the needle-antennae were extruded. But this perception was very limited. To overcome the isolation and panic, the perceptive powers of the antennae were improved. Sound, odor, and a limited sense of vision were made available through the antennae.” (Farmer, A Private Cosmos, Berkley, 1968)
A failsafe was also written into the Beller process so that an ambitious slave could not assume the identity of a Lord. The failsafe was that the contents of the brain to which the transfer was to be made could either be withdrawn into a black beller device or the original contents could be overwritten by the new information, in essence destroying the original personality that had inhabited the body.
“The scientists accidentally discovered that an unused bell had the potentialities for developing into an entity. That is, an unused bell was a baby Beller. And if it were talked to, played with, taught to speak, to identify, to develop its embryonic personality—well, it became, not a thing, a mechanical device, but a person. A rather alien, peculiar person, but still a person."
"The scientists became fascinated. They made a separate project out of raising Bellers. They found that a Beller could become as complex and as intelligent as an adult Lord. Meanwhile, the original project was abandoned, although undeveloped Bellers were to be used as receptacles for storing excess memories of Lords."
There were ten thousand fully adult Bellers in the project and a number of baby Bellers. Somehow, a Beller managed to get its needle-antennae into the skull of a Lord. It uncoiled and dematricised the Lord's brain and then transferred itself into the host's brain. Thereafter, one by one, the other Lords in the project were taken over."
"Many of the Bellers in the hosts' bodies managed to get out of the home universe and into the private universes. By the time that the truth was discovered, it was impossible to know who had or had not been taken over, there had been so many transfers. Almost ten thousand Lords had been, as it was termed, 'belled.’" (Farmer, A Private Cosmos, Berkley, 1968)
The War of the Black Bellers lasted two hundred years.
By then, most of the scientists and technicians of the Thoans or Lords had been killed. Over half the Thoan laymen population was also dead. The home universe was ravaged. This was the beginning of the end of science and progress and the beginning of the solipsism of the Lords. The survivors had much power and the devices and machines of the Lords in their control, but the understanding of the principles behind the power and the machines was lost.
"Of the ten thousand Bellers, all but fifty were accounted for. The 9,950 were placed inside a universe specially created for them. This was triple-walled so that nobody could ever get in or out." (Farmer, A Private Cosmos, Berkley, 1968)
The Beller who would become known as Brainiac was a prototype model created by the Black Bellers during the final days of the Black Beller War. The prototype was created in an unsuccessful attempt to stave off what the Bellers believed was the coming extinction of the Black Bellers. Although Farmer does not mention this, The Black Bellers entities, that is the artificial intelligences originally formed in the mechanical Black Beller device were routinely exterminated when captured, either while stuck in a host body or if they had taken refuge in the indestructible Beller body they were forcibly extracted into the body of a slave and this slave body was killed. The unfortunate slave’s consciousness was over written by the Beller persona. There were also situations in which the Bellers were too far away from their Bells for their consciousness to be transferred when their host bodies were killed, so they died a true death. The new Beller device was designed specifically to prevent this death from occurring.
Made of an indestructible metal akin to adamantium, the prototype device resembled a skein of wires, having limited mobility, somewhat like a mechanical spider. It was designed to preserve the consciousness of a Black Beller and thereby extend its life. The improved Beller device would attach itself to a prospective host, lull it using subsonics, extract the consciousness of the host body on contact, and input the personality of a Black Beller. The original personality of the body was deleted however information such as the host's memories and language were retained for quick assimilation. The wire skein had remain to on the skull and connected to the brain for the Black Beller to control the body and to experience the physical sensations of the body. Due to a flaw in the skein’s construction the Beller was forced to remain attached to this host body until the host body died; only once the host body had died and brain death had begun would the wire skein’s automatic extraction process remove it from the host’s brain.
When it appeared as though the Black Bellers would lose the war, the improved Beller’s creators placed this proto-type Beller in a small vehicle that could travel through the pocket universes. The vehicle first landed in a pocket universe whose Lord had long abandoned the universe or in a universe which had been created by the Preservers or the Ancients. The humans on this world were identical to Earth humans as was generally the rule in the universes created by the either the Thoans or Preservers. It was in this universe that the device first initiated. Yet over the course of the following millennia The Black Beller's inborn amorality and desire to rule would result in it fleeing from pocket universe to pocket universe as it made itself unwelcome.
The Beller had possessed the body of a powerful politician in a pocket universe similar to Earth circa 1911. In its thirst for world conquest it had, through the charisma of its human host, caused that world to become engulfed in a conflagration that nearly destroyed that world’s entire human population. In the aftermath of the war when the Beller was a hunted fugitive it was discovered that the politician had been possessed by a demon, the Beller device. The remaining governments had banded together and voted to destroy the demon by sending it through the cutting hole, an artifact of great age whose origins had been lost in time. This was actually one of the Thoan’s trap gates. It was a one way gate exiting on Earth, however the gate’s power cut off just as a person entered the gate, causing the person to be partially in both universes when the power shut off, bisecting the body and so killing the person who had attempted to use the gate. The Thoan’s had a nasty sense of humor.[22] The Beller was forced into the gate and was decapitated when the gate power shut off.
The spidery form of the Black Beller left the decapitated head of its host body and attached to the head of a man who sat in drunken stupor outside a motor vehicle. This person was Clifford Devoe. According to David Stepp:
Clifford Devoe had been an ambitious young lawyer who had been district attorney in Keystone City [Philadelphia]. During prohibition in Keystone City, mobster Hunk Norvock had established himself as an untouchable figure in Keystone's underworld. Brought to trial for murder in 1933, Norvock represented a prime opportunity for Devoe to establish a name for himself at a national level. Believing himself to finally have an unbeatable case against the crimelord, Devoe was stunned when the daughter of a powerful political figure took the stand in Norvock's defense. Unable to risk offending the jury with a barrage of questions at the doe-eyed heiress, Devoe withdrew his complaint and Norvock was freed.
Norvock's acquittal left Devoe publicly humiliated. His judgment was called into question, despite the truth of his case: Norvock's alibi had been the victim of extortion.
Devoe turned to the solace of the bottle.[23]
It was at this point that the improved Beller device attached itself to Devoe and displaced the consciousness of the shattered legal eagle. Stepp continues:
and one night, in a drunken stupor, [Devoe] paid a visit to Norvock. After sobering up, the attorney confided in Norvock that he had given up a life of fighting crime. By the crimelord's own example, crime did pay. Devoe offered to be Norvock's "thinker," a planner of crime and a library of alibis and legal defense if Norvock should ever need one. Norvock provided Devoe a cottage on the outskirts of Keystone and a stipend to meet his needs. Devoe moved his legal library home with him and studied the law for loopholes and precedent.”
According to most accounts Devoe remained in isolation for a decade. He performed small tasks for Norvock and other criminals but was never personally visited by Novock.
Although not generally known, Norvock was one of the Ultra-Humanite's minions and he told his master about the former district attorney now serving him. Intrigued by Devoe's sudden reversal, the Ultra-Humanite met with him. Eventually Devoe revealed the cause of his change—the improved Beller device, believing that Luthor's scientific genius could aid him. Devoe had quickly learned to cover the skein of wires on his skull by using a hat or a flesh-colored skull cap. Devoe used his Black Beller knowledge of advanced scientific theory and helped the Ultra-Humanite translate this advanced knowledge into 1930's technology. This is the true story of Devoe's decade of isolation.
They first worked on a method to restore the Ultra-Humanite's body. Despite Devoe's advanced biological knowledge, most cures simply did not work on the Ultra-Humanite's body. Their researches also led them to correspond with various scientists around the world, including one Dr. Peter Drury. [24]
One of the methods they tried involved electricity and the electromagnetic spectrum.
In 1937 Alexi and Lawrence Luthor became aware of a man named Dan McCormick, The Electric Man, through their correspondence with Peter Drury
McCormick’s story, as told in Man Made Monster (1941) is that he survived a crash of an bus that had struck an electrical pole. Everyone else was electrocuted but Dan McCormick, who bolted from the wreckage unscathed and somehow acquired an immunity to electricity. He found work as an electrical man at a carnival. Two scientists, Dr. John Lawrence and Dr. Paul Rigas, investigated McCormick's amazing abilities. They convinced him to participate in a series of experiments for the betterment of mankind. They subjected him to increasingly higher doses of electricity until he could not be harmed by any amount of electrical charge whatsoever. Dr. Rigas wanted to create an army of electrically charged men who would allow him to rule the world. He was opposed by this by Dr. Lawrence. Dr. Rigas controlled McCormick and caused him to kill Dr. Lawrence. He then drained McCormick of electrical energy and informed the authorities of the murder. McCormick was tried and convicted for the crime and sentenced to the electric chair. McCormick survived three attempts to electrocute him. He broke out of prison and returned to the laboratory of Dr. Rigas and killed him before he could turn a young girl into a zombie. Donning a rubber suit to keep in the life-giving electricity, McCormick abducted the girl. A manhunt ensued. He was killed when he became entangled in a barbed wire fence, which tore his rubber suit and shorted him out.
In the film Dr. Lawrence was portrayed as a good man with only good intentions. His assistant Rigas, portrayed as evil, had McCormick kill Dr. Lawrence. These portrayals were cinematic additions to the true story to provide dramatic tension and to appease the Production Code. In fact, neither Dr. Lawrence nor Dr. Rigas was a good man. They wished to learn how McCormick’s electrical field regenerated tissue. They had also learned that the electricity applied near his temples resulted in memory loss and confusion. They developed some manner of device that either used radio waves or microwaves to control McCormick using his enhanced electrical field as a conductor. The remote control device took hold of McCormick's nervous system, allowing the doctors to cause him excruciating pain, seize control of his autonomous functions, and induce him to do almost any task. They envisioned creating an army of electrically powered zombies. Yet experiments with other less willing volunteers were usually fatal to the subject.
Their control over McCormick slipped once, and he attacked one of their laboratory assistants who had subjected him to abuse. McCormick killed the man with an electrical discharge and set their laboratory on fire. This assistant’s death was portrayed in the film Dr. Lawrence’s murder and the film, possibly due to reasons of budget or else the inability to get the rights to tell the entire story, does not include the following events but goes directly to McCormick being tried and convicted for this death and sent to the electric chair. As seen below quite a bit happened between these two events.
With some difficulty the Luthor brothers regained control of Dan McCormick.
The following events were presented in a very altered form in Action Comics 47 (April 1942): "Powerstone"
Needing money for a new laboratory, the Luthor brothers sent McCormick to the home of Brett Calhoun, one of the richest men in the city. McCormick threatened the man's life, and convinced him to announce that he would pay three million dollars to the man who could prove that he was the richest man in the city. The contestants had to present at least $100,000 in cash to enter the contest.
Upon leaving the home of Brett Calhoun, McCormick was ordered to stop a limousine. The engine seized up at a blast of electricity, which also stunned the driver and his two passengers. McCormick stole the money and jewelry of the passengers. Next he was ordered to break into a bank and use his electrical power to gain entry into the vault. Although the comic book depicts him as gaining great strength along with his electrical power, McCormick actually opened the vault using his electricity and over rode the time lock.
Clark Kent heard about the bank robbery on the radio and as Superman went to capture the bank robber. McCormick knocked back Superman with an electrical blast, however this was not a big enough jolt to harm Superman so he shrugged off its effects and punched McCormick, knocking him against a tree. The police arrived and began shooting at Superman, who at this time was still considered a vigilante. In the confusion McCormick recovered and ran away.
Fearing for his life, Brett Calhoun announced the contest for the richest man in the city in the papers. Lois Lane sneaked into the private gathering for an exclusive scoop.
Emerging from his hiding place, McCormick shocked the gathered assembly into unconsciousness. He collected each of the $100,000 entrance fees. As he was doing this, he spotted Lois Lane hiding in the corner of the room.
Superman
crashed through the ceiling to capture McCormick, but the Electric Man held
Lois hostage. He told Superman he needed money to be rid of the curse of
electrical current. He told Superman that he would free Lois if the Man of
Steel would retrieve a bauble from a museum, a gem taken from the
The Ultra-Humanite had decided that this might be a good way to get his hands on that gem, which was otherwise heavily guarded.
Superman returned with the gem, and as per his instructions from Lawrence Luthor McCormick tried to flee with the stone. Superman and McCormick battled inside the house. As they fought McCormick grew weaker as his electrical charge wore down. Once he was powerless Superman captured him. He told McCormick that the gem was a fake.[26]
McCormick was tried and sentenced for the death of Dr. Lawrence. He was supposedly put to death in the electric chair but in fact survived.[27]
The Ultra-Humanite and Alexi Luthor's electrical experiments with McCormick had some measure of success and were an intriguing avenue for research. They learned that science and technology would be the theme of the New York World's Fair of 1939 and an International Scientific Symposium would be held on the fairgrounds before it was opened to the public. One of the scientists presenting was Professor Martin Uppercue, who planned to demonstrate his combination of electrical regeneration of cell tissue coupled with hormonal therapy to rebuild muscle tissue, which he called “The Man of Tomorrow” treatment. Another scientist presenting was Doc Savage, who would demonstrate a new brain surgery technique.
Intrigued by this the Ultra-Humanite and Alexi Luthor believed that this International Scientific Symposium offered them the opportunity to accomplish several things at once, possibly find a cure for the Ultra-Humanite's degenerative condition, humiliate and destroy Doc Savage, and hold the city of New York city for ransom. They were aided in the later by the fact that Professor Uppercue's process needed a great deal of electricity.[28]
They gained access to the World's Fair as it was under construction by getting some of their henchmen hired on as workers. Posing as one of the architects, Alexi Luthor was able to gain control of working crews and alter building plans to meet the specifications of the Ultra-Humanite and the Thinker's plans. Meanwhile the Thinker and Ultra-Humanite contacted Dr. Uppercue and worked with him to build a device to help him get the needed amount of electricity. They did inform him that their atomic accumulator would turn the Perisphere into a giant generator and allow the accumulator to drain New York City of power.
Dr. Uppercue worked with Alexi Luthor who took the guise of a Russian surgeon named Alexis Mandroff, a name possibly designed to tweak Doc Savage with its similarity to Dr. Madren. Alexi dyed his red hair straw-blonde as part of his disguise. Using two kidnapped and sedated men as test subjects, they tried Dr. Uppercue's experiment. The end result was to make the two victims into large hulking brutes without intellect, hardly “men of tomorrow.” Horrified by the experiment, Dr. Uppercue took a key piece of the accumulator so that it could not be used by anyone else. Unknown to anyone else he intended to claim the accumulator as his own invention and use it to not only win scientific acclaim but also secure his fortune.
The Ultra-Humanite sent a couple of henchmen led by a scar-faced man named Lonesome to retrieve the item that Uppercue had taken.
Alexi Luthor as Alexis Mandroff had arranged to assist Doc Savage in the delicate brain operation being held before an audience of prominent surgeons from all over the world. At a crucial point in the operation a signal from Alexi would cause the power to the operating room to be cut off. Doc Savage would then be unable to save his patient and his reputation as a superlative surgeon would be extinguished. This was part of the Luthor brothers’ plan to humiliate Doc Savage before destroying him. Alexi sent the signal and the power to the room was cut off, plunging the room into darkness. Yet Doc Savage once again rose to the challenge. He sterilized a flashlight that he had among his equipment and finished the delicate brain operation despite the limited illumination.
Professor Uppercue was captured by the Luthors’ men but refused to divulge the location of the crucial part of the accumulator he had taken, an aluminum cylinder. Without this piece, the Ultra-Humanite could not turn the Perisphere into a giant generator and death trap or drain New York City dry of power.
Alexi and his henchmen captured several of Doc's men. The Luthors wished to subject Long Tom Roberts to the Man of Tomorrow process, followed by Monk and Ham to see if it would work with genius-level intelligence, however they were still missing the crucial part. Alexi menaced Doc and Uppercue at gunpoint, wearing surgical garb and mask to hide his looks. Since Uppercue had not responded to torture, the masked man wished for Doc Savage to hypnotize Uppercue into revealing location of the crucial part. Doc Savage made a show of hypnotizing Professor Uppercue but he was actually hypnotizing the masked man. Professor Uppercue’s shout of triumph at beholding the hypnotized villain was enough to snap Alexi out of his trance. Doc Savage gassed the masked man with one of his special bulbs of anesthetic gas as he tried to make his escape. The arrival of some of the masked man’s henchmen distracted Doc Savage and Long Tom, long enough for masked man to have escaped through a secret door in the room.
Doc Savage and Long Tom spent a few hours attempting capture the masked man and ascertain his plans. Alexi disguised himself as the World's Fair publicity agent Adam Ash and spent time with Doc and his men to try and discover where the aluminum cylinder was hidden.
Alexi finally learned that the real Adam Ash had been hiding the cylinder and retrieved it. Still disguised as Adam Ash, he confided in Doc Savage about having the accumulator and told Doc Savage that the masked man was going to carry out the experiment without the accumulator, which could end disastrously for New York. He convinced Doc Savage to accompany him to the Perisphere where the experiment would take place and possibly stop the masked man from carrying out his plan.
Once Doc, his companions and the false Adam Ash were at the Perisphere a group of gun wielding hoodlums took Doc and his men hostage. Alexi had wanted Doc Savage taken into custody so that he could not stop the great experiment.
The false Adam Ash exited and disguised as Dr. Mandroff, Alexi joined the captives. One of the hulking brutes that had been created as a result of Uppercues’ experiments that combined electrical regeneration of cell tissue coupled with hormonal therapy to rebuild muscle tissue demonstrated that his intellect was not entirely gone when he revealed where the real Adam Ash had been tied up and hidden. He also showed where the accumulator had been held. Realizing that his role of the mastermind behind the gang of thugs would be exposed, Alexi grabbed the accumulator and fled the room, heading for the Perisphere.
Doc Savage used Mandroff’s (Alexi’s) escape to rally his men and overcome their captors.
Alexi hooked up the accumulator and the Perisphere began to spark and shake as it drew in all of New York City's electrical power. Doc immediately made everyone leave the area near the Perisphere and seek shelter. A blast of powerful electrical current supposedly engulfed Alexis Mandroff and he was burnt to dust.
The aluminum cylinder needed for the accumulator to work properly was actually a specially built insulator containing a monatomic film. Dr. Uppercue had created several false ones so that he alone could have the key to the accumulator. Alexi had inserted one of the false ones into the accumulator; and when no insulation was there to hold that terrific Perisphere charge within the accumulator, the great voltage kicked back and drew the bolt of lightning from the Trylon and at the same time shorted out the Perisphere generator.
The actual cylinder with the monatomic film had been destroyed in a fight between Monk Mayfair and some of Lonesome's men.
Professor Uppercue had previously been frantic to get the accumulator back when Mandroff was fleeing with it. Yet now Professor Uppercue acted as though the device could never be utilized again because the insulator had been destroyed. If the machine had actually been of his creation and his design as replacing the insulator would have been a small task.
"It is just as well," Uppercue said. "I’m afraid the accumulator’s possibilities were too great and also too dangerous. With its unlimited, stored power, it would have always been a treasure sought by men like Mandroff” (Robeson, World’s Fair Goblin Pg. 118)
If Uppercue went public with the accumulator and it went into production, then the danger of thievery would have been reduced because there would have been more than one, but the danger of thievery would still have been there because of the awesome power of the accumulator (just as the danger of the theft of plutonium is great in the real world because of its explosive power). If a power company paid him not to put it into production, then people like Mandroff would still be after it. This statement could be proof that Uppercue did not invent the accumulator, it’s his way of hiding the fact that he couldn’t develop any more because the accumulator was the invention of the Luthor brothers and not Uppercue.
Alexis Mandroff (Alexi Luthor) was of course not disintegrated by the electrical burst. He realized from the way that the Perisphere was acting and the odd way that the accumulator was acting that something was very wrong and fled. The person burned to ash was one of the henchmen who had stayed at Mandroff's request and a bribe of several hundred dollars to operate the accumulator.
Having failed to accomplish any of his goals in this scheme, the Ultra-Humanite vowed to try once again. He began to listen with more interest to The Thinker's long-term solution to the Ultra-Humanite's incapacitated body. This was to make him another body, a perfect body created from the ruins of his old body. A perfect body to be the permanent host of the perfect brain. The body would be grown from cells of the Ultra-Humanite body and aged to maturity. The catch was that forced-growth clones always had flaws in them, so the best method was to allow the body to mature naturally. This would take twenty years. When it was mature enough the body would also be augmented with cybernetic enhancements to replace or improve organs, to enhance the durability of the flesh and the bones, and to make the body as immortal as possible without it becoming too mechanical. They harvested cells and began growing the embryo.
They also hatched a plan to get the money that would allow them to make the bio-mechanical improvements to the growing clone body.
Using their inside access to the New York World's Fair, they planned to hold the city for hostage once again. This time they made certain Doc Savage was abroad and the Shadow and Spider were occupied. This was in the days after the Fair opened.[29]
Metropolis was the sponsor to the World's Fair, part of it at least. Gotham also had a section. The Ultra-Humanite contacted the Mayor of Metropolis and threatened to destroy the World's Fair unless he was paid a million dollars.[30]
The city refused, so the Ultra-Humanite, having replaced the World's Fair’s giant model of a robot with an actual working robot, sent it on a remote controlled rampage of destruction. A woman and her companion fell directly in the path of the robot and the Ultra-Humanite was going to crush them with the metal foot of the robot. Alexi once again protested the killing of innocents and was slapped down. This distraction, however, allowed the two people to escape. Then, the Ultra-Humanite lost control of the robot. The cameras inside the robot showed the distorted figure of Superman smashing the robot into scrap metal.
Superman’s appearance in New York was a shock to the Ultra-Humanite. From his viewpoint it appeared that somehow Superman had tracked the Ultra-Humanite to Metropolis.[31]
Alexi was planning on leaving as soon as he got his cut from the big Metropolis job. His brother had become less humane about the crimes they were committing, even to point of killing innocents. Lex had protested this but had been physically chastised for daring to speak against the Ultra-Humanite. He planned a fitting retirement for his brother and hoped to rid the world of another menace at the same time.
Despite Superman's interference, the Ultra-Humanite and his partners, Alexi Luthor and The Thinker, went ahead with their plan to extort ten million dollars from the city of New York by holding the Fair hostage. Superman, however, was soon joined by another costumed vigilante, the Batman. This was a different Batman than Alexi had encountered in Chicago.
However, reports concerning the events that followed are conflicting so we will be using the version derived from the Omega Files.[32]
Knowing that payment would not be forthcoming and learning that his brother intended to destroy the Fair even if he got the ransom, Alexi had left clues behind that would lead Superman and Batman back to the Ultra-Humanite. However, Lois Lane stumbled onto the scene and was captured by Ultra's men, who wanted to kill her outright. To save her life, Lex took her back to the Ultra-Humanite and prepared her for interrogation, stalling for time until Superman or Batman showed up. Alexi planned to make good his escape, neutralize the Ultra-Humanite's and Devoe's threats, and do so with out any fatalities.
When Superman and Batman appeared on the scene, Alexi freed Lois Lane and pushed her towards them. He and the Ultra-Humanite rode a superfast lift into the interior of the World's Fair Trylon, or so it appeared. Actually at the last second they ducked into another superfast lift that dove down to the city sewers beneath the Fair where the Ultra-Humanite had his secret lair. The Ultra-Humanite had rigged the Trylon into a rocket that would explode shortly after takeoff, although some accounts tell of Superman throwing the Sphere at the rocket, causing it to explode; if he in fact did so it was a fortuitous coincidence.[33]
Once they were in the Ultra-Humanite's lab, Alexi locked his brother’s wheelchair into place. He handcuffed The Thinker and the Ultra-Humanite to each other and left them for Superman and Batman to find. He then made his escape.
However the Ultra-Humanite had rigged the Perisphere to explode, hoping to eliminate both the Superman and Batman in the blast. [34]
The Ultra-Humanite and The Thinker were slower than expected in escaping from the explosion, and the Ultra-Humanite's already weakened body was damaged. Realizing that this body would not last until the clone was mature, they had to find a substitute to house his brain. The body would naturally have to be as close as possible to his original body, such as that of an identical twin brother. Considering Alexi's betrayal of him enough to sign his death warrant, the Ultra-Humanite tried to find Alexi before it was too late.
Alexi stayed hidden.
No exact match could be found in the time necessary. Agents of the Ultra-Humanite were sent to find a person between the ages of twenty and thirty with the Ultra-Humanite’s blood type. The first person that they found was Dolores Winters, an up-and-coming screen actress. The Thinker performed the necessary operation; the Ultra-Humanite had made certain that The Thinker would be killed by having his head sealed in cement and then decapitated, thus imprisoning the neural net in cement, if he botched the operation. Ordinarily a brain would have died using the surgical techniques and equipment that The Thinker used, it was only because of the Ultra-Humanite's mutant brain that he survived the operation and thrived in his new body.
Once in the new body, the Ultra-Humanite set about to recoup his financial losses. Dolores Winters had been invited to a celebrity gala aboard a cruise ship. After the ship had sailed, a group of criminals took the celebrities hostage, demanding five million dollars ransom. They took them off the ship to a hidden location on a small Caribbean island. The hostages were hidden in a cavern, the entrance of which was under water. The ransom was raised from among the studios and friends of the hostages. Superman followed the criminal gang after they picked up the ransom. He tracked the kidnappers to the air-filled grotto. Superman watched from the shadows as "Dolores Winters" counted the money. When the villain declared she would execute the celebrities despite having received the ransom, Superman stopped the henchman, who were about to fire on the celebrities. As Superman disabled his henchmen and then rescued the hostages, the Ultra-Humanite made her escape once again. (Action Comics #20 January 1940.)
Soon after, the Ultra-Humanite read of the discovery of an atomic weapon created by physicist Terry Curtis. Using the comely form of the young actress, the villain seduced and kidnapped the scientist. After extended torture, Curtis agreed to help the Ultra-Humanite build an atomic arsenal of her own. When an airship destroyed a Metropolis building, Superman followed it to the criminal lair inside a volcano. In exchange for Curtis’s release, the Ultra-Humanite sent Supermen to steal some crown jewels, expecting him to be destroyed by the guards. When Superman returns unharmed, the Ultra-Humanite unleashed a series of death traps, each of which failed to destroy Superman. Confronted again with his ultimate foe, the Ultra-Humanite dove through an opening in the side of her lair to her apparent doom in the volcano's crater (Action Comics #21).[35]
The true
events differ a fair bit from the published version. The Ultra-Humanite
heard about one of the atomic theories proposed by a young physicist in
The theory that Prescott had come up with had a rather insidious practical application. It could turn a person into a living bomb.[37] The testing period involved several subjects, all of whom had been kidnapped. One of these unwilling test subjects was a career criminal named Jake Simmons, the other was a former Olympic athlete named Will Everett. They survived the experiment but were considered failures since they did not turn into living bombs but gained odd abilities from the radiation treatment.[38]
The comic-book version of the airship destroying a building in Metropolis is correct, after a fashion. The Ultra-Humanite's airship hovered over a building in New York and dropped a man onto the roof. The man was one of the living bombs, ready to explode. He hurried down into the building seeking help, but exploded. Superman jumped up and grabbed on to the airship, holding on as it flew back to its headquarters. Although the comic book version locates the Ultra-Humanite's lair in a volcano, most of the active volcanoes in the continental United States are at the opposite end of the country from Metropolis in rather remote areas. This location was probably dramatic flair added by Jerry Siegel. The airship probably went to a hideout in the Catskills. The living bomb in Metropolis served two purposes—to test the weapon and to draw Superman to the Ultra-Humanite. The Ultra-Humanite revealed that she had captured Rodney Prescott and gave Superman a task to complete, threatening death for Prescott if Superman refused or failed.
Although Superman probably would have agreed to the task to save anyone, this particular captive had a special association with him.[39] It is unknown if the Ultra-Humanite knew of this connection or if it was one of the wild, albeit strangely common, Wold Newton Universe coincidences. Superman had to steal the Crown Jewels of Lutha, which were on display in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. When Superman returned with the treasure, the Ultra-Humanite let Prescott go as promised. The Ultra-Humanite then made Superman come after her through a maze of death traps. By this time she had made good her escape.
The Ultra-Humanite laid low for two years. It was not known what she was doing until recently. The body of Dolores Winters became pregnant after her seduction of Rodney Prescott. Ordinarily the Ultra-Humanite would have aborted, but she wanted to experience childbirth. She also had plans to use the child against Prescott. According to the account in All Star Squadron 22, the Ultra-Humanite drilled deep into the earth from his headquarters in the extinct volcano using a mole machine similar to Abner Perry's device, and there discovered a race of underground dwellers who worshipped her as a queen since they no longer had females; the truth is a bit more complex.
As stated earlier there was no extinct volcano lair. Although it is not mentioned in All Star Squadron, The Ultra-Humanite deliberately looked for the underground civilization of Murania, believing that as a remnant of lost Lemuria it held the secret behind the power crystals of ancient lore. In 1933, radio star/singing cowboy Gene Autry had saved the earth from the depredations of Murania and their death ray. Gene had saved the Queen but had been ordered to leave Murania.[40] Gene and his companions had returned to the surface and sealed off all the known tunnels leading to Murania. The Murians had suffered from their creation of the death ray, its production created some sort of toxic that made them infertile and produced a high cancer rate among women.
A faction in Murania did hail the Ultra-Humanite, who was pregnant at the time, as their new queen; the fertility rate in Murania had dropped to nearly zero, so a pregnant woman was regarded with respect bordering on awe. Their current Queen, Tika, had thus far failed to produce an heir. Queen Tika retained her throne, but a few loyal men joined the Ultra-Humanite upon her return to the surface.
Suspecting
that there was some connection between Prescott and Superman, the
Ultra-Humanite did some research and discovered that Prescott was recently
divorced. His wife was named Laurel Kent, probably a relative of that pesky
reporter who was a friend of Superman. In 1942 the Ultra-Humanite once again
kidnapped Rodney Prescott and also Prescott's son Joseph. Using young Joseph as
a hostage, the Ultra-Humanite forced Prescott to work for her. She even
threatened to kill the infant daughter Rodney Prescott had fathered upon her.
She had Prescott steal a recently found artifact, which some believed to be the
authentic hammer of Thor. He also had Jake Simmons and Will Everett steal two
other ancient artifacts. Everett was to steal the Helmet of Nabu and
Simmons the Powerstone, recently used by Alexi Luthor against Superman.
Originally the Powerstone had been found on the lost
Rodney Prescott succeeded in getting his object, the so called Hammer of Thor at the cost of accidentally killing a New York City police officer. This Hammer of Thor was made of blue metal and ended in a round mace rather than the sledgehammer or war hammer look of Mjollner. Jake Simmons was also able, along with a few Muranians to break into Superman's new Fortress of Solitude in the Catskills and retrieve the Powerstone. Will Everett failed in his mission to retrieve the Helmet of Nabu.
Even lacking the Helmet of Nabu the Ultra-Humanite was quite powerful with the Hammer of Thor and the Powerstone. The storyline in All-Star Squadron portrayed the Ultra-Humanite as intending to steal the body of Robotman. This was fictional but also a hint by the writers that the Ultra-Humanite planned to one day plant his brain in an artificial body and that they knew about the Ultra-Humanite’s connection to the being that would become known as Brainiac.
The comic-book version has the Ultra-Humanite embedding the powerstone into her forehead, which does not seem to actually have been the case. Although she did place in on her forehead so that it would be close to her pineal gland, she wore a headband with the powerstone attached to it.
Also in the comics version, the Ultra-Humanite was able to contact her future self and learn of the events to come. With the aid of her future self, she was also able to bring the brainwashed descendants of the ALSTR squadron into 1942 and use their abilities to her advantage. She also managed to bring a villain name Vulcan, who had pyrokinetic powers, from the future to the past. However this version of events was almost entirely fabricated and was designed to promote DC Comics up-coming new title Infinity Inc., which starred the descendants of the mysterymen of the forties. The participation of Infinity Inc. and the time traveling depicted in this adventure were fictional, as was the presence of Vulcan.
With her newfound power and his powerful henchmen—Will Everett, Jake Simmons, and the Muranians—the Ultra-Humanite decided to extort the United States federal government. She threatened to destroy the Brooklyn Naval Yard and defense plants in Detroit and Los Angeles.
Because these threats were federal in nature, the government activated the ALSTR Squad to end the threat of the Ultra-Humanite.
The henchmen sent to destroy the Brooklyn Navy Yard included Jake Simmons, who was depicted in the comic book version as remaining with the Ultra-Humanite as a guard. The comic version had Batman, Robin, Phantom Lady, The Guardian, and Commander Steel sent to guard the Navy Yard. This does appear to be an accurate line up, with the exception that every depiction of Commander Steel in this adventure should be shown as the Guardian. By showing the Guardian and Commander Steel at the same place and time the comic book writers may have been confused by conflicting sources.[42]
Alan
Scott the Green Lantern and Will Everett took on the henchmen at the Detroit
munitions plant. Everett had been playing along with the Ultra-Humanite for the
sake of his family but did so reluctantly and intentionally failed to complete
his missions. He had even attempted to inform the federal government of the
plans of the Ultra-Humanite by leaving notes, but these were either disregarded
or never reached the authorities. When the Ultra-Humanite had endangered
In the comics, the defense plant in Los Angeles was depicted as being saved by Batman, Robin, the Green Lantern, the Atom, and Amazing Man, aided by the future son of the Brain Wave. The henchmen were helped by future members of the Injustice Society of America and Vulcan. However even the Green Lantern's ring was not powerful enough to transport all of these people from New York to California in under three hours. Since the story in All Star Squadron #26 is a lead-in to All Star Squadron Annual #2, the comic book version was filled wit