I think it is long since time I presented another superhero team:

The Crew of the Cosmic are a team of superheroes working for an international space program. In a world filled with supervillains and conquering aliens, a team like this is a necessity. I often encounter an attitude in the real world that space exploration is a useless waste of taxpayer money, so if I were to tell actual stories about this team, in addition to all the usual adventure action, I’d be trying to draw attention to all the very real ways space exploration has helped out everyday lives, and how little funding they actually get compared to programs I like a lot less. But mostly, it would be about adventures.

Moongloves

Sandra Collins’s mysterious moon gloves give her the ability to somewhat control of gravity. Reducing the weight of something, she can lift it over her head with little effort. She can also, at a touch, increase an enemy’s gravity rendering them unable to move. Also, she can punch real hard. The leader of the Crew, Captain Collins is strongly devoted into helping humanity find its place in the universe.

The Interplanetarian

Humberto Noriega is The Interplanetarian. With powers ideally suited to existing in space (he can survive in the vaccuum, fly unaided by technology, and so on), he has joined the Crew for reasons of money and fame. He presents a swashbuckling personality, which can grate on the rest of the team, but keeps him popular with the public. Since space programs are hard up for funding, the public’s love gives him a lot of clout.

Satellito

Satellito (Officially named Satellite-Zero) is the team’s robot, filled with sensors, as well as being their constant connection to Earth. Originally designed by a supervillain, Satellito is also packed with gadgets and weaponry that can help in any situation. What the team doesn’t know, however, is that some of Satellito’s original programming still exists, and it is in a constant struggle to keep from turning against the team.

Hypersquare

Claire Weber wears a suit that allows her to move through space by a kind of teleportation. By breaking herself into a series of two-dimensional squares, Claire can move about and re-form at a new location. It is not as instantaneous as many teleportation processes seen on television or movies, but it is definitely handy in space exploration.

I assume I’ve complained on the site before about how much I dislike the focus on “class participation” in the English courses that I am taking. I do feel that I should clarify that I dislike this not only because I don’t want to participate, but also because I don’t want my fellow students to participate either.

My professors can not, apparently, string together more than a paragraph of class content without asking the class to answer some minor question, or checking if the kids have any questions of comments. The most unfortunate consequence of this is that the kids in these classes seem to be getting it into their head that they actually have things worth saying. They don’t. Oh, how they don’t. Must every class include twenty minutes of teenagers tripping over words, struggling to think of some interesting fact marginally related to the topic at hand? I’ve seen these foolish children sit their with their hands high, eagerly awaiting their turn to speak, only to fall to “Um”s and “Ah”s as soon as their moment arrives. These students are tedious bores and they don’t realize it. And here we are, not only giving them a chance to derail the momentum of a lecture, but actually requiring them to do it to get their full “participation” marks. Professors, listen, you can not underestimate how much more content you could fit into a class if you didn’t wait five minutes at the end of every sentence just to see if the kids might want to finish it for you. (I’m not even going to address the problem with the kids who try to be entertaining when they speak, because I can’t think about them and retain the ability to type sentences.)

Here’s what I want from a class: to go and learn things from the person who is teaching the class. Instead, I find myself in class after class in which even the professor sees the idea of lecturing as a worst case scenario. During the first day of any class a professor is likely to say something along the lines of “Don’t worry, this won’t be a class where I just stand here and lecture” and I am left thinking “Balls.”

Hey, here’s this:

Flying Falchion

On his deathbed, Carl Allen revealed something to his son Dwayne: there is a magic sword which has been passed down in their family for many generations that can transform its wielder into a winged warrior. The catch is, the body they transform into is that of an angelic white man, and the Allen family is black. Carl Allen refused to use the sword, content to live a quiet life uncomplicated by either adventure or controversy, but Dwayne can not do the same. While he has trouble adjusting to existing in a body not his own, Dwayne begins a superhero career, all the while investigating the origin of the sword and its history with his family.

Basically, while I was trying to decide what kind of obsolete weapon I wanted to base a superhero around, I noticed that falchions are a type of sword. I threw some wings on there, which allowed for some alliteration in his name, and I threw in a Shazam-style transformation with a race aspect to allow for story possibilities, and we’re done. Done.

Securer

Nora Quentin, FBI agent, was caught in the explosion of a mad scientist’s drug lab. The strange chemical mix that bombarded Nora’s body gave her superhuman powers. The FBI saw an opportunity to have their own superhero agent and created the identity of “The Securer” for Nora and she is now the Bureau’s first line of defense against superhuman threats.

I fully admit that it is getting hard to come up with new issues that I need to address in superhero form. More than once during this year of superhero creation I have noted that there need to be more lady superheroes whose ladiness is not their defining quality. Thus, once again, I’ve got a woman with a super-generic super name and that is that. Repeatedly fighting against society’s problems with more and more characters would be the most efficient way to make a difference, but it does cause me to have to repeat myself a whole bunch over here… (The chemical explosion origin is also really repetitive, but who is counting?)

Okay, there’s been two days of school so far and I’ve only had a glimpse at three of the four courses I’m taking this year so far, but I’ve got some comments to make:

First, I have so much reading to do! So much! As I have already mentioned, my plan to get ahead on my reading by doing as much as possible over the Summer did not go flawlessly. I lucked out in the sense that the new reading list for my Comics and Cartoons class included several things I’d already read, such as Superman Chronicles Vol. 1, the Dark Knight Returns, and Maus (though, not owning any, I still had to shell out mo’ money), but there was much I still had to do. This weekend I read V for Vendetta, which, honestly, I would have gotten to at some point given my love for Alan Moore’s work, but I still have at least one sizable graphic novel and a collection of Doonesbury strips to get to for that class. The real reading intensive class of this semester is Pulp Fiction, which thankfully includes Frankenstein, as well as excerpts from Gulliver’s Travels, Murders in the Rue Morgue, and Maus (again), all of which I’ve read. Unfortunately it also includes Pride and Prejudice, Much Ado About Nothing, Lonesome Dove, and a romance novel of my choosing, along with various other excerpts and short stories. Honestly, Shakespeare plays don’t usually take me too long to get through and I’m nearly halfway through P&P already, but Lonesome Dove is nearly a thousand pages on its own. As a slow reader, I am currently mildly fretting about all this. I assume that my Creative Writing class will also require reading of some kind, but I haven’t learned about it yet, so I’m keeping that out of my mind for now.

I am more thankful than ever for the whim that saw me taking a Geography class this semester. The English literature classes may be the ones that I care the most about, but a bit of variety is welcome, especially when it comes with less reading for me to do.