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.