DVANDOM _____ ______ _____ _______ NUMBER ZERO [ ]__ [ ] [] [ ]__)) [ ] ` [ ]__ A Summary of Pre-#37 [ ] [ ] [] [ ] \\ [ ] [ ] copyright 1997 Dave Van Domelen [_] [_]__[] [_] \\ [_]___/ [_]____ -------]==+ <*> +==[------- [cover shows Constellation floating in a dimension full of comics, idly pulling an issue of "Crisis of Infinite Clones" out of the background.] "It's all in the archives." That's what I told myself when I set up my Dvandom Force webpage. No need to dig out the old Constellations and even older pre-Constellation stories to put up, if readers really want to go back that far, it's all in the archives. And this was good enough for quite some time. But in October 1997, I decided to start reposting Dvandom Force issues to alt.comics.lnh, as part of the attempt to rescue the group from spammers, and I was asked by several people, "Why not repost Constellation?" Well, the obvious answer was that I didn't have any issues on my account, and it would have been more trouble to fetch them. And besides, I told them, Constellation #1 is no more the beginning of the story than Dvandom Force #37 was. A bad habit of my LNH writing has been that I never really *started* a story, I just jumped in and started writing...I don't even remember half my early work. Thus, a lot of the important background just sort of got added in when it seemed necessary, and there's no one place I can tell new readers to start with. Now, with the completion of Dvandom Force #0, there is. It's not comprehensive, as I'm working from memory and am bound to forget minor details here and there. But it should contain anything I consider of importance in my LNH stories prior to Dvandom Force #37. And so, here we go! I: The Early Stories I started writing back in the summer of 1992, when it was all just a lark and no one took the LNH very seriously, least of all the writers. I jumped into the chaotic add-on story with both feet, first with Sig.Lad (so named by wReam for my propensity for writing a unique signature for every post...which happened because I didn't know how to write a sig.file), then Acton Lord, then a few others before I pulled out Dial "D" for Dvandom, who could dial up heroes and villains at will. Basically, I noodled around and fiddled with plotlines a lot, and I didn't save any of my stories, just writing them in news and posting them. Fortunately for posterity (heh), some people were archiving this stuff even then. I finally started what might be considered a connected storyline with "The Sound Of Clashing Metal," which started when I had Mark "Netlurker" Friedman scan in an early drawing of Sig.Lad and Acton Lord. A side effect was the creation of hundreds of GIF clones of both, and Sig.Lad made a daring attack on wuarchive to try and erase the GIFs, only to get slung back in time and become Acton Lord (a blatant ripoff of Jim Starlin's Warlock and Magus characters). Next, having read all but one of the five parts of the Great Darkness Saga in the Legion of Super-Heroes, I decided to do my own version, with the Kinda Big Darkness Saga. Acton Lord impersonated the evil Flipseid (later revealed to be the lord of the planet Topphorti) and sent first twisted clones of the LNH and then the dimensionally-displaced They Might Be Villains (more on them later) against the Legion of Net.Heroes. One of the more stable Sig.Lad clones managed to get the assistance of Sketch the CowWiz of TIM, and Acton Lord was turned into a toad and smooshed. Over the next few weeks, several versions of Acton Lord started popping up, mainly because he was turning into the Doctor Doom of the LNH and everyone wanted to use him...but not everyone used him correctly. This was fine, however, because there were all these clones of Acton Lord running around, some of them were just flawed. The three main clones were PrimeClone Acton Lord, wReamed Acton Lord, and Golden Age Acton Lord (who lacked the corruption powers of the others but had nifty energy blasts). At some point, PrimeClone Acton Lord kidnapped Sidewinder and replaced him with a disguised Golden Age Acton Lord, who is rumored to have killed Flatulence Lad. Things were building to a head, however. PrimeClone knew he had to deal with his counterparts, especially the erratic wReamed Acton Lord, and he also sought to destroy his former self and archfoe, Sig.Lad. Thus, under the cover of the events surrounding the Electrocutioner's Song, PCAL engineered the destabilization of Sig.Lad's molecular structure while pinning all sorts of crimes on wReamed Acton Lord. The LNH put paid to these cover operations, and Ultimate Ninja tricked the wReamed Acton Lord into destroying himself. But Sig.Lad was not killed. Finding himself in a strange otherworldly place, he was bidden to pull a sword from a stone. The sword changed shape more violently than even the destabilized Sig.Lad could, but he held on and pulled the Sword of .Sig from the stone. Discovering that the Sword had stabilized his molecular structure, Sig.Lad joined the LNH on the moon and faced off against PrimeClone Acton Lord, killing him and ending the crossover. But, of course, Acton Lord had managed to use the confusion to deal with his personal "Crisis of Infinite Clones," and a healthy Acton Lord clone emerged from storage to plot anew. He had little time to plot, however, as Action Lord (another Dial "D" for Dvandom production) came with a dire warning. The time loop which had rewritten Acton Lord's origin, making him an alternate Sig.Lad rather than a product of the Dvandom Dial, was threatening to tear apart what little continuity had been established. Dial "D" for Dvandom had been eliminated from the timeline, leaving a number of characters orphaned, including the X-Chequer, who was necessary to keep rec.arts.comics (no .misc) from reviving and trying to displace the new hierarchy. So they hatched the Bellerophon Gambit, by which Acton Lord and Action Lord found the legendary Pega.SYS and used it to enter the Real World (later revealed to be one dimension removed from Real Life) and find that dimension's version of Dave Van Domelen, possessor of the Dvandom Dial. A mad ride through time later, all of the dialed-up characters had been restored to continuity, and Acton Lord kicked the writer off of the Pega.SYS, making his own dash for the Source Code (the first of several), and failing. In the process, Dial "D" for Dvandom was transformed into the Dvandom Stranger, and given the duty of keeping watch over the Looniverse and poking his nose in where it wasn't wanted. Acton Lord was seriously injured, but recovered with the help of a seriously munchkiny (powermonger) writer- character who appeared around that time. And Sig.Lad, who tagged along for parts of this, really never accomplished anything, but he was at least able to keep an eye on things. II. The Roleplaying Game Link Meanwhile, in another reality (my RPG campaign), the superhero team known as the Raiders (who had fought They Might Be Villains early on in their career) had apparently destroyed Doublecross, a dangerous criminal genius who was also their government liason in his secret ID. Doublecross had attempted to teleport out of his exploding underwater base, but Blitzkrieg of the Raiders had destroyed the transmitter, so Doublecross's pattern was shunted into the Internet. Once there, Doublecross discovered a link into the Looniverse, and imposed his will over the entirety of the Looniverse...but only as reflected through one machine on the net. In time, however, he would certainly spread to control the Looniverse on all levels. Netlurker sent out an emergency message to the Raiders, knowing it was all their fault and getting them to come help. [Available in the TEB section under "Paper Tigers".] The Raiders (at the time, Blitzkrieg, Tymythy Twystyd, Haze and Wanderer) managed to defeat Doublecross and drive him out of the net, but the barriers between the Looniverse and the Raiders' universe, damaged by "Flipseid" some time before, were further weakening. Taking advantage of this, Chesspiece Face of They Might Be Villains concocted a way to break his team out of jail and bodily enter the Looniverse, where their nature as "real people" would give them power over reality. Flood, the least criminal of the lot, doubted the wisdom of this, but he was soon replaced by his Evil Twin and locked in a secure node. [System Corruptors #1-4, "Exotic Blends" TEB] Later, in events not directly chronicled in the archives, the Raiders traveled to the Curseworld, an alternate reality where a powerful Japanese mage had cursed humanity to drown in evil with each successive generation, his revenge for the death of his family (and eventually himself) at Nagasaki in 1945. An immortal Italian mage styling himself as Lord Ebon had taken advantage of this situation to gain great power, but his host body (that of the Curseworld's Wanderer) was destroyed with the help of a circle of mages native to the world. III. Constellation #1-12 - Establishing a Series Trapped for days, if not weeks in a dungeon-like node, Flood was discovered by a disembodied soulspark he named Dot. It was childlike and had no real memories, but seemed to possess the power needed to escape the node. So Flood merged with Dot and together they went "sidewaysout" in an attempt to get back to Flood's home reality. Unfortunately, due to the currents of the astral realm being altered by the Raiders' trip to the Curseworld, Flood ended up there instead, having been sucked in by a summoning spell cast by the circle of mages, who needed help in breaking the Curse on their world. Lord Ebon interrupted them, however, possessing the child of two of the mages and forcing it to adulthood and full power. He drained half of Flood's lifeforce and half of Dot's, forcing them to fully merge to survive. But when this new composite being known as Constellation discovered his ability to create a sword of light, Lord Ebon was temporarily thwarted again. The mages asked him for help in getting the Raiders involved, but Constellation wanted to go back to the Looniverse first and deal with his Evil Twin. He did so, but failed to convince his friends (especially Lucky Ball & Chain, who he was in love with) to come with him and give up the criminal life. Despondent, Constellation went to bring the Raiders back to the Curseworld, where things were complicated by the fact that Lord Ebon had taken over the body of the President of the United States...making him almost untouchable. And as long as Ebon had a power base, he could block ay attempt to lift the Curse. Constellation and the mages went to Nagasaki to break the Curse, while the Raiders took on the job of assassinating the President. Both groups were successful [See Raiders #32 for the RPG side of the crossover], but in the process Constellation was struck by a disintegration bolt hurled by one of Japan's "superheroes," and found himself stranded in Limbo. Meanwhile, Lord Ebon decided to abandon the Curseworld and entered the Looniverse, insinuating himself into control of Chesspiece Face. Some time passed, until Constellation met Sig.Lad at the gates of Limbo, where he discovered he had to have a reason to exist, a story to be told, before he could leave. Together, the two escaped Limbo, landing in the middle of the Three Day Lull, Tsar Chasm's first non-assault visit to the LNHQ. The next several weeks passed without major incident, as Constellation made friends among the LNH, met Particle Man, and commuted back and forth between the Looniverse and his home reality, helping the Raiders with a few cases. During this time he also ended up briefly in the Patrol Universe, to which he would later return. Meanwhile, Lord Ebon strengthened his hold on They Might Be Villains, and created a number of net.elementals to use in an assault on the LNHQ. It was a complete surprise, and the LNH was almost defeated in the initial rush. Ellipses King (pixel elemental) took over the computer system, Mr. Horrible (flame elemental) knocked out most of the LNH and went into a deadlock with the Invisible Incendiary, while L2 (clone of Lagneto) and Kid Killfile (clone of Professor Killfile) blocked off the LNHQ from outside help. Constellation, Sig.Lad and Particle Man managed to break into the LNHQ, and with some help from Netlurker drove off or destroyed all of the net.elementals. Constellation knew who was responsible, and rushed as fast as he could to TMBV's base in northern Wisconsi.net, but he was too late. In a fit of petty revenge, Lord Ebon had killed the other members of They Might Be Villains, simply to hurt Constellation. Constellation went almost mad with grief, violently discorporating Lord Ebon and unleashing a torrent of astral matter which came to be known as They Might Be Villains Mountain. IV. The Machine - Patrol Universe Constellation had briefly visited the Patrol Universe in a story written about the time that universe was launching, but my involvement as a writer got much larger soon afterwards. With my series "The Machine" and a few one-shots, I essentially built the framework of the world launched by Michael Montoure, leaving only when inter-writer politics made the Patrol cease to be fun for me. The basic premise was the one used in the Lensman novels and the early Silver Age Green Lantern: benevolent aliens grant weapon of extreme power to human agents as part of a plan to civilize Earth, but the weapon comes with a code of conduct and some severe limitations. Montoure established the Gauntlet and Recharher combination, where the Patroller would touch his pyramidal Recharger and have his hand clothed in the silvery Gauntlet, which could create energy constructs formed by the user's will and powered by energy transmitted by the Recharger. I later added that the Recharger itself was merely a tap into another dimension, one at a point mere years after a Big Bang, seething with energy for the taking. The Patroller's main weakness was that he could not take a human life, intentionally or accidentally, or his Recharger and Gauntlet would vanish. One of the main characters in The Machine was a Patroller who lost his powers in just such a manner. My other major contribution to the universe was the Enemy, a sentient star hidden from view by a Dyson sphere. It fed on negative emotional energy, hence the drive towards Civilization as a way of fighting it. The first time it came awake, it devastated much of the galaxy before falling into a sated sleep. The Patrol is part of the attempt to stop this from happening again, but in many versions of the future, the Enemy discovers how to drain the energy of the dimension the Rechargers tap, and it destroys the Patrol before falling into slumber again. V. Constellation #13-24 - Downward Spiral Constellation was inconsolable. Everyone he cared about was now dead, and nothing seemed to matter. He was practically a background character in his own story now, as Sig.Lad moved to the fore and the Secret Dvanders formed, composed of Constellation, Sig.Lad, Particle Man, Easily Discovered Man and Lite, plus occasional help from Sidewinder and Kid Anarky. Acton Lord was back, and this time he had control of the Looniversal Office (last seen in the Net.Trenchcoat Brigade). In the crossover known as Bad Forms, he effectively took control of the entire Looniverse and was revealed to be the Looniverse's reincarnation of Modred, with Sig.Lad as Arthur and the Sword of .Sig being Excalibur. In a climactic no-powers fight, Sig.Lad managed to defeat his "brother/son" and sacrificed the Sword of .Sig in order to keep the Office from rousing again. Giving Constellation no real time to cope with matters, Lord Ebon came back as a rival of Master Workload's when the Looniverse was set adrift, taking advantage of the confusion to try and wrest control of reality. This time, when all was done, Lord Ebon had finally been destroyed, as Dot took control of Constellation for the first time (Flood had completely withdrawn emotionally at this point) and forced the mage into a time loop, where he would relive his 500 years of life over and over and over. During this upheaval, Acton Lord took refuge in the alt.toys.transformers fanfic realities, finding new allies in MACE, the Mobile Artificial Consciousness Empire, and bringing two of them back to the Looniverse...along with a stowaway named Kopikat. MACE existed in the year 2163 on an Earth where the first successful machine intelligence escaped its "prison" microseconds after gaining awareness, fleeing to the moon to build a power base from which it could displace humanity as the dominant species. It came to be named Antiochus V, its forces were known as MACE. During Antiochus V's time on the moon, another machine intelligence came into existence, and it led the fight against MACE as Spartacus, leader of the Guardians. As a species, these giant robots run by Mobile Artificial Consciousnesses are known as RoboMACs. Constellation decided that he needed time away from the hectic events of the Looniverse, and left for the Patrol Universe, to get time to think. Meanwhile, Kopikat used her shapeshifting powers to join the LNH as Robot Girl, in an attempt to gain allies who would protect her from both MACE and the Guardians, as she had offended both sides in her long mercenary career. She latched on to Sig.Lad as a protector, since he was one of the more powerful LNHers, yet not so powerful he could see through her imposture. Together, they took on Cig Lad during the Oddball Legion "crisis," danced at the LNH Valentine's Ball, and were training in the mountains when the RACCelestials came to start the observation process which would inevitably lead to the creation of RACC. For his part, Constellation eventually discovered that his presence in the Patrol Universe was damaging its dimensional integrity, causing more and more "accidents" with the Rechargers and Gauntlets used by the Patrol. Despondent, he left another attempt at finding a home, and returned to the Looniverse. Just in time for Acton Lord's "allies" to turn on him and launch a full-scale invasion of the world, in "Robot Invasion." The LNH fought MACE all over the world, but was losing ground steadily despite a few victories. With help again from Netlurker, a small force was sent into the RoboMACs universe to bring back Guardians to help fight MACE, but only a small force could be transported. So it was decided to launch an assault on Andale Atoll, Acton Lord's floating island base and current staging area for MACE. While most of the Guardians would run interference, the Secret Dvanders would try to disable to dimensional gate or otherwise do something. Squid Boy, who had been hanging out with the Dvanders, asked to come along on what would be a suicide mission for someone with his lack of powers. He had discovered he was dying from a disease striking other underused characters, and wanted to go out a hero instead of a victim. On the way to the attack, Spartacus had a discussion with the angst-laden Constellation which would later help him turn his attitude around. Once the central core of Andale Atoll was reached, things went bad in a hurry. Antiochus V arrived earlier than expected and mortally wounded Squid Boy with his massdriver weapon, then started tearing into Spartacus. The tide turned when Constellation realized that the pyramid concealed in Spartacus's chest was a Patrol Recharger (the Patrol existed in the RoboMACs Universe, but this was one of the futures in which the Enemy won, doing so before humanity gained its own Patrollers. A lone Recharger was stationed on the Moon before the destruction, as an observer. A Guardian expedition on the Moon discovered the damaged and depowered Recharger, giving it to Spartacus for the information about alien civilizations it carried). Merging with Sig.Lad and Particle Man into Sig.ma (no relation to the later cosmic being who debuted in Dvandom Force #72), Constellation opened a link between the Recharger and the "power dimension" native to the Patrol Universe he had recently spent time in, allowing Spartacus to end the invasion in one fell swoop, forcing everyone back home. But now Constellation had a choice to make. He was keeping Squid Boy's shattered body in stasis, but nothing normal could save his life. Keeping Spartacus's words in mind, Constellation decided to choose life for Squid Boy, rather than let him die and be free of pain. Squid Boy was reborn as Squidman, the Deepsea Detective, but would it be enough to halt the disease which ate at him? VI. Constellation #25-36 - Revolution and Evolution Squidman gained an origin story and started patrolling the streets of Net.ropolis, fighting crime and generally trying to raise his profile, but it was too little, too late. The virus claimed him, and Squidman was buried at sea in a self-propelled coffin built by Kid Kirby. Dwelling on death, the Secret Dvanders looked into the presumably solved case of Myk-el's betrayal of the LNH, and found it to be an elaborate plot involving a copy of Doublecross left behind in the Looniverse and manipulated by Acton Lord. The bad feelings raised by this investigation, along with Kopikat's continued anti-social behavior, drove a wedge between the Secret Dvanders and the rest of the Legion. At this time, Dot finally revealed to Flood that "she" had regained her memories of life before becoming a free-floating soulspark. And while Flood had always thought of Dot as female, even subconsciously shaped her into his ideal mate, he was shocked to discover Dot was originally a man, a minor supervillain in the Curseworld who had been reduced to a soulspark by Lord Ebon to prevent him from becoming a serious rival. Dot withdrew mentally, and Constellation felt lonelier than ever. Meanwhile, a cyborg Squidman had returned from the dead, with a cover story about being revived by aliens in the Kook Dimension, and he was taken in by the LNH only to go berserk and tear apart a good chunk of the LNHQ. At the same time, Suicide Squid was giving his life so that the real Squidman could live again, and Squidman raced to Net.ropolis in the Squidcycle formed from the coffin (Kid Kirby always leaves an out in case of resurrection) to face his robotic double, eventually trapping him in a killfile at once of Professor Killfile's old bases. Retcon Hour reared its ugly and complicated head at this point, and an alternate past started to assert itself, one in which a hero known as Kid Macro had been a founding member of the Secret Dvanders, only to be wiped from existence by Lord Ebon in the climax of his world's version of Looniverse Adrift. His removal caused the world we all knew to come into being, but the forces of Retcon Hour were threatening to undo this. Sig.Lad and Kopikat were drawn into the dreams of Doug Ellis, the person Kid Macro had become in the Raiders Universe when wiped out of the Looniverse, and managed to bring him back to the Looniverse, where he was a man without a past (something which eventually corrected itself in the wake of the Grand Tour). Over the next several days, new members joined the Secret Dvanders, who became Dvandom Force, defended Net.ropolis against Schwa Khan and worked against the machinations of Baron Umlaut. But in a surprising show of cavalier disregard for the plot, Constellation put paid to Baron Umlaut with an exertion of his power, then left the Looniverse, leaving his teammates to wonder if he was about to Darken. The team at this point was Squidman, Kopikat, Cheeez Arrow (joined to fight Umlaut), Rotanna (stumbled across Schwa Khan's plot and later joined) and Kid Macro, with Sidewinder trying to join but being kept away by his own increased power (the result of experiments Acton Lord performed on him during the Electrocutioner's Song). Particle Man and Easily-Discovered Man had gone their own ways. Constellation now lived in a world he created out of the matter of the astral realm, having given up on trying to fit into any pre-existing world. They either weren't to his liking, or his presence was a danger to them...or both. But his own dark side wouldn't let him be happy, nor could he forget about Dot, and his world came crashing down. He finally accepted both his own darkness and the love of Dot, returning briefly to the Looniverse so that everyone could enjoy a moment of peace and happiness at the "wedding" of the two aspects of Constellation, Flood and Dot, into one truly united being. Constellation then left the Looniverse and as of Dvandom Force #86 has not returned, although he has made appearances outside the Looniverse on a few occasions. To Be Continued in Dvandom Force #37....