Humans

The planet Earth is home to a race that calls itself “Humans”. They are a bipedal mammalian species with two eyes and front limbs that end in five-fingered appendages. They have spread all over the planet, numbering nearly ten billion, and have built city in every type of climate the planet has available. They’ve developed a decent amount of technology, definitely enough that they could be colonizing other worlds, but a vocal amount of humans consider space exploration a “waste of resources” and so instead they’ve focused more on the technologies that help them kill each other.

Several characters who have shown up on Super Sunday before are humans. This includes Bella Harrison, Dan Hastings, Elsa Geheimnis, Jo Melville, and of course, Epic Bro. But that isn’t all. I’ve actually hidden references to “humans” in my Super Sunday stuff since the very beginning. I bet nobody could find them all.

Kyle Durning is an albino, which is a rare condition that effects some Earth creatures, causing them to be born without pigmentation. While this makes him extra sensitive to sunlight, but this hasn’t been much of a problem, because Kyle has just stuck to working night jobs. Currently, he is a security guard working overnight shifts. Some of his co-workers can be scared of deserted buildings in the darkness, but Kyle has never found the night to be anything but comforting.

The daughter of a prominent news anchor, Elizabeth Oickle has lived a decently well-off life so far. In a country called Canada, she has just recently graduated from university after studying various things that she didn’t actually care about. She is now taking a year off to travel the world and “become wise” before she decides how she actually wants to spend her life. Really, though, she wants to spend her life travelling the world and becoming wise. People, her father included, think that is a cop-out answer that she needs to grow out of, but is it really? Elizabeth doesn’t think so.

Rebecca Shirley is the kind of human who the rest of them are kind of embarrassed about. She has devoted her life to trying to help those less fortunate than her. She has created a business in her home town that lets people make their case as to why she should help them. She almost always take the case. Obviously this is not a highly profitable business model, and so far it is only the charity of those she has helped that keeps her from starving. Still, this is how Rebecca chooses to live her life and she will do so until she has fixed the world or starved to death while trying.

A Fact About Humans: Some humans are Beekeepers. This is a special class of humans who have trained to work with an insect species known as “bees”. The beekeepers protect the bees and the bees work to create things like honey. Clearly this particular subsection of humanity is the most impressive.

Universe: Blue

Here’s the thing: I have really enjoyed making a bunch of aliens. I enjoyed it so much that I have enough left over to do another year of it. So I am. 2017 will also be an Aliens Sunday thing. (I already have them scheduled and everything.)

Nick Carter is a detective who has appeared in all sorts of media since his creation in 1886, starting with novels and going into radio shows and movies and so on. He’s not as successful a detective as the big names in the field, your Sherlocks and Marples and Chans, but he’s done well for himself. But is Nick Carter a Beekeeper? No, Nick Carter is not a Beekeeper. So let’s stop talking about Nick Carter.

In three movies in the 1940s, Carter had an unlikely sidekick. He was Bartholomew the Bee-Man. As far as I can discern, he has only appeared alongside Nick in these movies, which is a damned shame, but it makes it easier for my purposes, given that watching three movies is much easier than tracking a character through a century of miscellaneous stories in multiple mediums. Portrayed by Donald Meek, Bartholomew is the best thing about these films, even without my bias toward Beekeepers.

In the first of the trilogy, “Nick Carter, Master Detective”, we meet Batholomew on his bee farm. It just so happens that Nick Carter moves into an inn next door and Bartholomew, being an avid fan of detectives, recognizes him right away. He takes it as fate that Carter wound up there and insists that they become partners. Nick Carter is annoyed with this funny little man, but there is no shaking the beekeeper. Even when Carter seems to successfully ditch him for the movie’s climax, Bartholomew actually just goes to get help from the authorities. In the following movies, “Sky Murder” and “Phantom Raiders”, Nick softens to the guy, nicknaming him “Beeswax” and, though still finding him odd, is more willing to accept his help as he often proves his worth.

So what are his Beekeeping skills like? Well, he’s quick to leave his business to do detective work. When Carter is trying to get rid of him in the first film, he insists that Bartholomew can’t leave his bees. “Could and would, sir. Can and will,” Bartholomew replies. It seems harsh at first. But we must bear in mind a few facts: He has an assistant. His presence on the honey farm is not required at all times. Also, he is shown to still work on the farm between detective cases in the later films. And finally, Bartholomew lists his priorities as “Carter first, and then the bees, but don’t worry, the choicest ones are here.” And indeed Bartholomew does have bees on his person, in his pockets and under his hat, at all times. In no way is his detective side-job an abandonment of his bees. And for the record, his assistant has a traditional beekeeping costume (Bartholomew doesn’t seem to need one) and he is shown using a smoker and spraying pesticides to stop “little bugs” so the ordinary aspects of the job are not beyond him.

But what of the more supernatural abilities and fighting prowess on which I am really rating these Beekeepers? Well, as I said he carries his favorite bees around and they don’t sting him or anything. In fact, he finds all sorts of uses for them. He can flick them at people so they cause pain, he can put them under locked doors if someone is hiding on the other side, or he can even just use them to signal Carter. It’s not quite the same as actually mentally controlling the bees, but it is sort of impressive. As for his fighting prowess, well, for a character who is, let’s face it, comic relief, he acquits himself well. His hand-to-hand technique may be more of the “ducking out of the way so one enemy accidentally punches the other” variety, but it works. And he has no fear of anyone larger than him or of being outnumbered or, really, of anything (His own words: “The Bartholomew courage never falters”). He’s stealthy when he needs to be, but that’s to gain an advantage, not because he is afraid of getting into a scrap.

Furthermore, as I’ve mentioned before, I consider mystery solving just as “badass” as fighting and Bartholomew is all about it. Introducing himself to Nick he says in the third person, “What is it that sets Bartholomew apart from all the rest? Instinct? No. Intuition? Hardly? An extra little kink in the brain perhaps?” Perhaps! Basically, the thing is, Bartholomew loves brain-work. In the latter movies, Bartholomew is more devoted to the cases than Carter is (especially in “Phantom Raiders” where Nick is really just trying to get laid and Bartholomew periodically has to steer him back to doing his job). Simply put: Bartholomew is a detective because he enjoys catching criminals. And I think that’s cool.

Three out of Four. Bartholomew himself said “I’m a Bee Man, a G-Man, and a he-man” and I think he lives up to all three ideals well.

I’ve spent a lot of Sundays now developing alien races and the year is coming to an end. Is it time for PDR to do something different? Well, if it is, I’m going to ease myself back to those “human” things by looking at a couple that have been interacting with aliens.

Alien Abductees

Dan Hastings is a university student who has a part-time job at a grocery store. If he were asked, he’d probably say he was a pretty ordinary guy. The truth is, though, that Dan has trouble sleeping. For as long as he can remember, he has had dreams of strange beings surrounding him and doing strange things to him while he can not move. At least, he tells himself that they’re dreams, though he believes that they are real. What Dan doesn’t know is that the beings who have been doing this are a Strondovarian science crew that orbits the planet in a secret station and is experimenting on Dan’s mind. The first Strondovarians to discover the planet they are interested in testing the limits of the human mind by giving Dan Hastings mental powers like telepathy to see what he does with them.
Universe: Blue

Unlike Dan, Paula Parker has not returned to Earth after she was abducted. Paula was only seven years old when she went missing during a family picnic. Her family never got any closure to her disappearance, because she had been stolen by an alien who had created a wormhole to reach the Earth, taken the child and left. The abductor, whose purpose Paula never learned, was a large creature with advanced technology but never expected that the child could be a threat. Paula lashed out at her kidnapper, smashing a piece of alien equipment and causing an explosion. The alien died, leaving Paula stranded at the alien’s headquarters on an apparently otherwise empty world. Paula survived, learning what she could of the alien technology. She eventually figured out how to use the wormhole device, but had no idea how to tune it back to Earth. She had adventures on many strange planets and met many strange peoples, none of whom had any idea what humans were or where they came from. The universe is large and finding a single planet in it is near impossible if you don’t know where to start. Paula had to give up on ever seeing her world again, and for over a decade has fought for her survival among the stars.
Universe: Orange

It must be noted, however, that humans aren’t the only ones who are getting stolen by weird forces from beyond their homeworld. Carmohka is a Hivrhin One, the strongest warrior of her city, perhaps of the entire planet. She was participating in a plan to raid a neighboring city’s Queenhouses, if the mission had been successful, her city would have become the dominant power in their hemisphere. But without warning, while en route to the job, a strange flying craft appeared above Carmohka for just a moment, and Carmohka vanished. Her allies never got any explanation, her superiors had to assume she’d become a coward and fled. Even Carmohka doesn’t know the truth, because as soon as she was aboard the strange craft, she was placed in suspended animation by her captors, an alien race intent on capturing the best warriors and preserving them for a threat they predict will arrive in the future.
Universe: White