I said last time that I have probably developed enough alternate Earths. Standing by that, this year’s Super Sunday theme will be Superior Species Sunday (though I’ll probably just actually call is Alien Sundays, because that’s better). Screw Earth. Let’s see what else my universes have got. Every week I will be fleshing out an alien species. Let us begin:

The Ugder

The species known as the Ugder come from a planet also called Ugder. They are a blue-skinned humanoid people with big heads, conical ears, thick black manes, and three fingered hands. Theirs is a cold and wintry world and, while they live there happily, they got off that world pretty quickly. When the Ugder first achieved space flight technology, there was still a continent on their own world which had not been discovered. For nearly two thousand years now, the Ugder have visited and colonized dozens of planets in the systems closest to their home, and met several species of aliens in the process. In most cases, the Ugder are the first alien species those other aliens have ever met, and these meetings are not always beneficial to both parties (the Ugder were especially cruel to the first aliens they met, the Shlafes). In recent years, however, the Ugder have begun to create more peaceful alliances with the aliens they meet, going so far as to try to organize a system of Space Government with representatives from various worlds.

Some representatives of the Ugder people:

Digmimm is a member of the Ugder Shipping Security Force. The Force trains pilots who fly fighter ships that escort Ugder Shipping Convoys through space to protect them from attack by criminals. Digmimm, however, encountered not criminals on her first mission, but first contact with a hostile alien force. She not only survived, but succeeded in driving off the attack with most of the convoy intact. This made her a hero to the Security Force and to the Udger at large, but what she doesn’t is that she has become infamous among that alien species, with her face being used in hateful propaganda as that group prepares for a war against the Ugder.

The planet Yimmin is home to a colony of anarchists that consider themselves apart from the rest of Ugder society. Yimmin the individual was named after this world by his parents, who were among the early colonizers of that world. Yimmin left the planet he was named after as soon as he could find a means to do so. But being from, and named for, a world that the rest of Ugder society considers a home to criminals, Yimmin had trouble finding a place. Ironically, it was this that caused Yimmin to have to turn to a life of crime. Yimmin is now making a living smuggling contraband between worlds.

Raised on an Ugder transport ship by his businessman father, Mimitimim found his own life when he became a writer of fiction. His first story, a coming of age tale about a young Ugder who was tortured by his schoolmates, was extremely popular and the young author settled down on planet Ugder becoming something of a celebrity. Settling into a life of parties and wallowing in fame, it took years for him to produce a new story. That second novel, about a farmer who lost his family and his mind during the during a space war, was also widely praised. He became the most celebrated author of his generation. He lived in a large home shared with a literal harem (as scandalous in Ugder culture as it would be in ours). Eventually his third story was finished and released. It was deemed unreadable by critics. Tasting failure and humiliation for the first time, Mimitimim did not react well. He covertly snuck off-world and now dwells on the seventh moon of an obscure world, in isolation.

A Fact About the Ugder: Though I said I was fleshing out the universes in which my alternate Earths take place, I am actually not doing that this week. The Ugder live in a universe unrelated to all those I spoke about last week. This is an alternate timeline that differs from so far back that when the stars and galaxies formed differently, so that the galaxies we know such as the Milky Way were never formed and wholly different ones did. This universe has no Earth or humans at all. If that isn’t a blow to anthropocentricism, I don’t know what is. We’ll call this universe “Narsidon” as it should not be a human word.

Okay, so I’m done with the Supernatural Sundays year, and I did a few fill-in things to bring us to the actual end of December. That should make it easier to actually make my annual themes actually last a year. So next week we start the next theme.

This week, I expand on the list of alternate universe begun two years ago. It turns out that four alternate Earths was nowhere near enough to contain me, so I’m going to use the color-scheme names to assign a bunch more for future use.

As previously discussed, this is a world with a bunch of superheroes. So far that’s the main thing about it. I consider it to be a more “fun” superhero setting than others below.

This is a world where the things we consider science fiction have been coming true since the late 1800s, so the technology of the 2000s is so advanced that it is like a space opera setting. There are human colonies all over the galaxy and they are in communication with aliens and stuff.

This is another superhero-packed universe, home especially to all the ones I invented in junior high. There are,if anything, too many superheroes here. I’m rolling with the concept that society has been fundamentally changed by that fact, and there would be much to explore.

This is a dark universe full of cyberpunk dystopias and vampire attacks. It is an Earth on the edge of ruin and still going forward.

This is an absurdly broken universe, home to the Hover Head and Space Army comics on this site. Hopefully I shall be revisiting it soon.

This Earth is the setting for the Secret Government Robots comic and related concepts. This is, for the moment, the Main PDR Universe.

This is a universe where demons and devils are actively working on acquiring human souls all the time. It’s full of horror stories and bad days.

This universe is torn to pieces by a whole bunch of time-travelling assholes. History here is constantly being re-written.

This is the universe where the Space Gods called the Astrolympians hold sway. So far, that is literally the only thing this universe has going on.

This is an Earth where humanity has had access to magic since way back, so the entire layout is vastly different, but they also still have cars and planes and such. As I described it before, it is a “Shotguns and Sorcery” setting.

And I must reiterate that this is not every universe that has come up in Super Sunday either. For example, the Earth ravaged by the Frankensteingularity would be a separate universe. As would the fantasy world from which the Efmon family and the Old Sage originate. I think it is clear that my original estimation that I could “populate at least four Superhero Universes with characters” has been proven. At this point, I wonder if I even need to bother pumping out some characters on a different alternate Earth every week…

Back when I introduced Gus Comet, very early in this whole mass-character-creation experiment, I mentioned several members of his rocketship crew. Let’s give them a moment to shine:

Andrianna

When the robots colonized Saturn, they created a constitutional monarchy headed by a King and Queen. Their daughter, Andrianna, the Princess of the Robots, was the first robot built in that new kingdom. The thing is, though, robots don’t age and die like humans, so the King and Queen are still in power and it doesn’t look like they’re going anywhere any time soon. Andrianna quickly got bored with sitting around the castle knowing she’d never move on to ruling the land, so she left her home to join the Rocket Officer Corps. She is now the second-in-command on Gus Comet’s rocket, a life considerably more interesting than that of idle royalty.

Brains O’Brien

Raising himself on the streets of Brooklyn, Brains had to learn to fight. He had no family to protect him, so he had to provide for himself. One of a gang of similarly-destitute children, Brains was the Smart One. When authorities would occasionally try to force them into school, the others would wonder what use all those facts could possibly be in “real life”, but Brains didn’t see it that way. Any scrap of knowledge he learned was something that could possibly be used to keep him alive one more day, like ammunition, so it was best to stock up. One day, on the run from the law, Brains was separated from his gang and used some of his knowledge to find a hiding spot on board a rocketship. But when the ship took off, Brains became an unintentional stowaway. Luckily, Gus was impressed with the kid’s nerve and his wits, so he gave him a place on board.

Hyram

In the far-flung future that is the twenty-first century, a lot of experimentation has been done on animals. Hyram is a result of that experimentation. An ordinary hyena genetically engineered to have excellent intelligence, and given cyborg limbs, Hyram joined the Rocket Officer Corps as an investigator. There is nothing Hyram enjoys more than gathering scraps of evidence and hunting down a criminal.

Space Plunderer

The Space Plunderer is the meanest, greediest criminal in the galaxy. Commanding a crew of alien criminals from dozens of species, the Plunderer, a Bessaji, travels from world to world to steal resources. Colonies everywhere live in constant fear of the Plunderer, but the Plunderer fears nobody. The Plunderer even laughs as Gus Comet and crew pursue him across the Cosmos. It seems like every day the Plunderer gets stronger and stronger. Can the good guys ever win?

The planet Szunkring is one full of intense class warfare. The rich weigh heavily on the poor, but the superhero Montoroloxi stands for the little guy. But who else is there?

(Montoroloxi was one of the ideas I spat out in Superhero Sunday year that least grabbed me, so I figured maybe if I threw some more details onto it I might find it more interesting. Let’s see if it works.)

Elimpador

Elimpador was born to a low-class family in one of the slum areas of a major Szunkrun city. She tried to do things the honest way, she got a job working as a powertube cleaner, but when a new technology was developed that made that job obsolete, she was fired. Before she could find work elsewhere, she was beaten up by an angry mob who hated her for being a lazy unemployed drain on society. While she was recovering from those wounds, she was unable to pay for her home. And when she found that nobody was willing to hire a homeless wretch, she had to resort to stealing to stay alive. A week later, she was in prison, and considered it a blessing, because at least she was being fed. When Montoroloxi broke her out, she was at first reluctant to go, but she has since found new worth by organizing operations for Montoroloxi’s underground allies.

Lacalafta

Lacalafta was also born to a poor family, but found a way out. Being a naturally tough individual, Lacalafta sold her services as a bodyguard or as a soldier. The well-off Szunkruns have no desire to do their own dirty work, but sometimes they need someone to be beaten up. In such cases, they can hire Lacalafta, who has no qualms about beating up the sick or the needy as long as it makes her own life better. Since Montoroloxi began his crusade of protecting the weak and the poor, however, Lacalafta’s job has gotten much harder.

Mux

The Szunkruns are not the only intelligent species on Szunkring. Mux is a member of a small lizard-like people also native to the world. Mux’s people, though, did not develop currency or technology, or even an interest in it. They are content to dwell in the planet’s jungles with their simple lives foraging for berries and lazing around on hot days. But those jungles are shrinking because of the actions of Szunkruns who crave what resources the jungles can give them. To protect his home, Mux has joined Montoroloxi’s battle against the rich jerks. Mux has all kinds of neat powers like sticking to walls, regenerating limbs, and being able to freeze and thaw out unharmed.

Boyon the Robot

Planet Szunkring is a very high tech sort of place. All over the planet there are intelligent robots designed to make things easier for the Szunkruns (the ones who can afford it anyway). One of those robots is called Boyon the Robot, and it has come to the conclusion that Szunkrun society could be better. Though it continues on with its regular robotic duties, Boyon the Robot has also decided to help Montoroloxi who seems to be working toward the kind of society that Boyon the Robot would prefer. As such, Boyon the Robot is Montoroloxi’s undercover agent, able to get into all of the places no regular Szunkrun could.

In a world where evil is winning, superheroes need to be rougher and meaner if they want to make a difference. That is exactly why Lex Techno, had to create Raid Force Zero, a team of supersoldiers intent on destroying evil once and for all. We’ve already met Captain Fire and Earth-Red’s local Beam, but who else makes up the worlds violent saviors?

With Lex Techno, I tried to make the point that 90s Comics were underrated and that their elements undeservingly shunned. With that premise in mind, I am fleshing out this team with some characters that feel to me like they’d fit into those team books that were so common back then (even though I admit I haven’t read them and my artistic skills are even worse than those maligned artists of that decade). Here goes:

Kalpa

Kalpa is an elite alien soldier who originally came to Earth as an invader. Hundreds of such soldiers, modified by alien science to appear human, were sent to Earth, but when they arrived, they found a world torn asunder by supervillains, vampires, and many other threats much worse than mere alien soldiers. Many of his ilk were killed, and Kalpa learned to hate the violence he had been trained to revel in. So now he plans to bring peace to his new home the only way he knows how: through violence.

There were an awful lot of characters in the 90s who had names that were just single words that didn’t really have anything to do with them. Thanks to the Internet, I found the term from Hindu and Buddhist cosmology Kalpa which means a very long time. It works because his human form is meant to appear Indian. Otherwise, it has nothing to do with him, since his powers are all about guns and forcefields.

Bladestrike

Trained to kill by the deadliest assassins in the world, and possessing vaguely defined energy powers, Bladestrike is a perfect killing machine. She was part of a squad formed by a shadowy government cabal to take out threats from other nations. On one mission, the threat was too much and Bladestrike and her teammates were killed. Bladestrike, though, didn’t stay killed. Revived by her employers, she was told they would patch her up and get her back into the field as the new leader of the squad. But as soon as she was strong enough, Bladestrike went AWOL. During the time when she was declared dead, she had seen something that she had not told her bosses. She realized she had to change her life around, and Raid Force Zero took her in and are giving her the chance to make those changes.

Scantily clad ninja ladies are, perhaps, the most childish way comics tried to prove they were for adults. But as I think I’ve said before, scantily-clad women aren’t a bad thing in themselves, as long as it isn’t a requirement of all women in the stories, and also that there is more to the characters than just their scant claddedness. Hopefully, I could succeed at meeting my own standards here.

Thunder Thrower

When Carlton Curtis gained the power to create sonic explosions, he decided to use them to clean up the crime in his neighborhood. For years it seemed like he was doing well, but as time went on he gathered more and more enemies, supervillains who seemed to exist just to torment him. The job became too difficult for one man, so when the chance to join Raid Force One came along, it seemed like the best option.

I am picturing Thunder Thrower as a more classic superhero who was revamped into the 90s style. He started off as a symbol of hope and wonder, but then became a bitter and violent anti-hero because the former is too hard to maintain in a world like this. His loved ones were probably all killed off by villains to raise the stakes of his adventures. Note that he does not have electrical powers, he has sonic powers. But maybe he can also fly for no adequately explained reason.

The Crunch

The Crunch is actually a sentient magnetic field created by an evil mad scientist, whom the Crunch soon killed. To form a corporeal body, the Crunch gathers up hunks of scrap metal and compacts it into a super-dense form, including when necessary a magnetically-powered railgun. The Crunch considers humanity lesser beings, and was perfectly willing to kill indiscriminately until Lex Techno brought that to and end by beating the Crunch in a fight. Impressed with Lex’s skills, the Crunch is now willing to serve as a member of Raid Force One.

It may have been my imagination, but it seemed like all the terrible 90s hero teams had a Ben Grimm ripoff. Whether or not that’s true, I felt like I should get one. With his powers, he’d be able to get comically larger every time he showed up. He’d also fill the role of the Boisterous Warrior of the team, reveling in showing off and finding new challenges.