Squadron Supreme
| Character Name | Affiliation | Origin |
|---|---|---|
| Amphibian | Squadron Supreme | Marvel Comics |
| Ape-X | Institute of Evil | Marvel Comics |
| Arcanna | Squadron Supreme | Marvel Comics |
| Black Archer | Squadron Supreme | Marvel Comics |
| Blue Eagle | Squadron Supreme | Marvel Comics |
| Doctor Decibel | Institute of Evil | Marvel Comics |
| Doctor Spectrum | Squadron Supreme | Marvel Comics |
| Foxfire | Institute of Evil | Marvel Comics |
| Haywire | The Redeemers | Marvel Comics |
| Hyperion | Squadron Supreme | Marvel Comics |
| Inertia | The Redeemers | Marvel Comics |
| Lady Lark | Squadron Supreme | Marvel Comics |
| Lamprey | Institute of Evil | Marvel Comics |
| Master Menace | Marvel Comics | |
| Moonglow | The Redeemers | Marvel Comics |
| Mink | Marvel Comics | |
| Nighthawk | Squadron Supreme | Marvel Comics |
| Nuke | Squadron Supreme | Marvel Comics |
| Pinball | Marvel Comics | |
| Power Princess | Squadron Supreme | Marvel Comics |
| Professor Imam | Marvel Comics | |
| Quagmire | Institute of Evil | Marvel Comics |
| Redstone | The Redeemers | Marvel Comics |
| Remnant | Marvel Comics | |
| Shape | Institute of Evil | Marvel Comics |
| Skrullian | Squadron Supreme | Marvel Comics |
| Thermite | The Redeemers | Marvel Comics |
| Tom Thumb | Squadron Supreme | Marvel Comics |
| Whizzer | Squadron Supreme | Marvel Comics |
History
The Squadron Supreme is an organization of superhuman champions who have banded together to safeguard their world, which is an extradimensional alternate Earth sometimes referred to as "Other-Earth" or "Earth-S". The Squadron was formed over a decade ago (Marvel time), and throughout its existence, it has been the only known team of superhuman beings assembled to battle the perpetrators of evil on its world. Whenever new costumed crimefighters have debuted and established their reputations, they have been invited to join the Squadron, and no one has ever refused the honor. Thus the membership has increased from its original seven founding members, although there have never been more than fifteen active members at one time. Although the Squadron has been the largest and longest-lived team of champions "Other-Earth" has ever known, it is not the first.
During World War II, the U.S. War Department organized the Golden Agency, a small battallion of superhuman beings who served the Allies in the European and Asian Theaters of War. Power Princess is the only person to serve in both the Agency and the Squadron, although Blue Eagle's father, the American Eagle, was also a Golden Agent.
Like the Golden Agency before it, the Squadron Supreme has always had close ties with the U.S. government. Upon its founding the Squadron sought government sanctions permitting its various peacekeeping operations. The government granted the Squadron various powers and made the superhuman team a special branch of the U.S. military, answerable only to the President and the National Security Council. This close connection with the government proved hazardous to national security twice and the third time proved the Squadron's ultimate downfall.
The Squadron originally met in the mansion of industrialist Kyle Richmond (secretly Squadron member Nighthawk) located in Cosmopolis. Several years later when Richmond took a leave of absence from the team to enter politics, the Squadron moved out of the mansion into a manned fixed orbit satellite called Rocket Central which was designed by Squadron recruit Tom Thumb. The surveillance devices aboard the satellite enabled the Squadron to better keep watch over the Earth. When the Squadron was under the influence of the alien Overmind, the satellite was damaged and accidentally pushed out of orbit by Hyperion. It eventually crashed into the sea. The Squadron set up temporary headquarters in a cave in the state of Moreland, but began construction on Squadron City, a sprawling headquarters and living community with an elaborate airbase, located in the Great American Desert. Squadron City employed almost a thousand technicians, maintenance people, medical specialists, and support personnel. The City was climate-controlled and was camouflaged to look like a part of the desert due to an elaborate illussion-casting spell created by Squadron member Arcanna.
The existence of the Squadron and its alternate Earth first became known to denizens of mainstream (Marvel) Earth when four Avengers (Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Vision, and Goliath II) accidentally materialized on "Other-Earth" while in transit from Polemachus, the dimensional world of Arkon, to their Earth. The Avengers mistook "Other-Earth" for their Earth, Richmond's mansion for Avengers Mansion, and the Squadron Supreme for the Squadron Sinister, a quartet of criminals originating on the Avengers' Earth. Months before the Avengers' visit, the cosmic gamesman known as the Grandmaster had happened upon the Squadron Supreme's world and set up a tournament between himself and the time-traveler called the Scarlet Centurion. The Grandmaster used the Squadron as his pawns; The Centurion organized the Institute of Evil, a team of the Squadron's personal foes. Winning the contest, the Grandmaster resolved to create his own Squadron the next time he needed superhuman pawns. The opportunity to do so came shortly thereafter when the Grandmaster challenged Kang (a distant dimensional counterpart to the Scarlet Centurion) to a similar tournament. The Grandmaster endowed three human beings and an artificial being with the powers of Nighthawk, the Whizzer, Dr. Spectrum, and Hyperion, and pitted them against the Avengers. Hence, the Avengers mistaking the Squadron Supreme for the Squadron Sinister was understandable.
Some time later, the government of the United States of "Other-Earth" came under its first covert assault. A huge industrial complex called the Serpent Cartel was actually the base of operations for the various human agents of the extradimensional serpent-god Set, who manifested itself in the Serpent Crown . The Serpent Cartel invited then President of the United States Nelson Rockefeller to address its executives at a business luncheon, and used the opportunity to put the President under the domination of the Serpent Crown. Having made an in-road into high government, more and more high-ranking politicians and officers were placed under domination by the Crown. At the same time on the Avengers' Earth, Hugh Jones, then president of the vast Roxxon Oil Company was also made a slave to the Crown, and was attempting to mastermind a similar secret government takeover.
The Avengers intervened and Jones asked Rockefeller for superhuman assistance in handling the problem. Rockefeller dispatched several of the Squadron Supreme, who were unaware of the Commander-In-Chief's new loyalties. Engaging in battle with the Squadron, the Avengers were teleported to "Other-Earth" where they managed to seize "Other-Earth's" counterpart to the Serpent Crown and to convince the Squadron that they were being misled by their President. The Squadron forced Rockefeller to resign, and saw to the dismantling of the Serpent Cartel. At the next Presidential election, Kyle Richmond was elected by a landslide vote.
While in office, President Richmond was also the unwilling victim of a sinister extradimensional intelligence. Shortly after being elected to his second term, Richmond was mentally enthralled by the Overmind, a collective alien intelligence working in concert with Null, the Living Darkness, a demonic entity. Unlike Set, the Overmind and Null wanted complete control over the Squadron's minds as well as the President's. Only Hyperion managed to escape the Overmind's mental onslaught, and he fled to the Avengers' Earth for aid, damaging the Squadron's satellite headquarters on the way.
With the Squadron's help, the Overmind took over the mind of every major military, political, and industrial leader in the world, and declared war on every nation in the world who did not accept the United States' supremacy. Since foreign leaders were already under the Overmind's influence, all countries surrendered without major incident. The Overmind then forced the Squadron to build a vast nuclear arsenal on the moon with which he hoped to wage interstellar war on other worlds in the Squadron's dimension.
Fortunately, Hyperion returned with a large battallion of superhuman champions from the Avengers' Earth. These champions, calling themselves the Defenders (Dr. Strange, Silver Surfer, Hulk, Sub-Mariner, Nighthawk, Valkyrie, Gargoyle, Vision, and the Scarlet Witch), managed to free the Squadron and the two teams vanquished the Overmind and Null.
"Other-Earth" had been left in shambles in the aftermath of this alien takeover and the Squadron was forced to cope with a world in the midst of total political, economic, and technological collapse. Although he was blameless for what happened, Kyle Richmond resigned the presidency like Rockefeller before him and returned to his role as Nighthawk full time. The Squadron explained to the people how they were also blameless in what had happened and declared a state of martial law. In an eventful meeting, the Squadron decided to implement the Utopia Program, a plan for social reform designed to turn the United States from the shambles it was in to an ideal free state the like which Earth had never seen.
The Utopia Program was designed to address all of the social problems afflicting societies since civilization began, including poverty, economic instability, war, crime, pollution, and even disease and death. To address these problems the Squadron seized complete authority over the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of the federal government, as well as control over the military and the police.
The Squadron first began a program to air-drop food to America's people, left starving when mass transportation halted. They then began their controversial gun control program disarming both the military and police of their weaponry, then instituting a system to disarm the private citizenry. The police and military were given "pacifier pistols", non-lethal devices capable of subduing perpetrators by overwhelming their pleasure centers. The citizenry were given "personal protection belts" devices generating small force-fields providing protection against all penetration wounds in exchange for their guns. Both of these devices were the work of Squadron member Tom Thumb, the former in conjunction with Ape-X.
The Squadron also embarked on their decriminalization program using Tom Thumb's behavior modification machine, a device which reprograms the human brain to be incapable of whatever actions are specified. Behavior modification convicts had their criminal records eradicated and were provided jobs in the various nation-wide restoration projects.
Tom Thumb then invented the hibernaculum, a suspended animation capsule able to prolong life indefinitely through cryogenics. Citizens would be provided free "life-watches" to monitor their vital signs. Teams of hibermedics, planned to be as common as firemen, would observe the remote monitors and upon detecting a life failure would rush to that person's side and put him or her into an emergency hibernaculum. Eventually the death-arrested persons would be transferred to huge Hibernacles, cathedral-like buildings where hibernacula would be stored. When medical science finally cured the ailment to which the hibernaculum-user succumbed, he or she would be revived. The first person to use the hibernaculum was Tom Thumb himself, who died of cancer shortly after creating the tube. Both the behavior modification machine and hibernaculum were met with active resistance from certain segments of the population.
Nighthawk opposed the Squadron's Utopia Program and resigned from the group when they elected to implement it. He spent the year that the Squadron put the Utopia Program into effect trying to organize a counterforce powerful enough to oppose the Squadron. He managed to recruit three of his one-time personal foes, Pinball, Remnant, and the Mink, one expelled Squadron member, Black Archer (formerly Golden Archer, banished from the Squadron for misusing the behavior modification machine), three of the Squadron's new recruits culled from the ranks of the Institute of Evil, Lamprey, the Shape, and Foxfire, and five superhuman beings who had hitherto gone public with their abilities, Inertia, Thermite, Haywire, Redstone, and Moonglow.
This aggregation of superhuman beings were informally called the Redeemers. Nighthawk was also aided by Professor Imam, Earth's Wizard Supreme, and a former member of the Golden Agency, and Master Menace, Hyperion's greatest foe, as well as one of the few people on "Other-Earth" who could match Tom Thumb's genius. Imam gave Nighthawk the means to locate his Redeemers, while Master Menace provided him with an anti-behavior modification machine, able to counteract Tom Thumb's programming.
On the day that the Squadron announced that they had met the goals they had defined a year ago, Nighthawk's Redeemers entered Squadron City and declared their opposition to all of the things that the Squadron had done. The Squadron were alarmed that their five newest members, Inertia, Haywire, Redstone, Moonglow, and Thermite, were double agents sent by Nighthawk as were Lamprey, Foxfire, and the Shape. Violence erupted, and the vastly outnumbered Squadron were able to hold their own for a time. Casualties in the war were numerous, with Thermite, Blue Eagle, Pinball, Black Archer, Lamprey, Foxfire, and Nighthawk dying in the battle. The war came to an abrupt end when Foxfire, hoping to prove her loyalty to Dr. Spectrum, killed Nighthawk. Hyperion formally surrendered.
Before he died, Nighthawk, had convinced Hyperion that the main problems with the Squadron's Utopia Program was that they had used basically ignoble, human rights-violating means to achieve noble ends, and the only reason why these ignoble means were not abused more than they were was that the Squadron is basically a benevolent group if individuals. The system they had devised, argued Nighthawk, required persons as noble and benevolent as them to oversee it. Since the Squadron is not immortal, they could not ensure that future generations would not be tyrannized by the utopian technologies they created. Hyperion was convinced to assist in the dismantling of the Utopia Program.
In the year 3979, the Scarlet Centurion is trying to discover why the history of late 20th century Earth is unknown in his time. The Scarlet Centurion's time technicians finally pierce the "veil of time" and discover a gigantic hand of unknown energy destroying the sun and then engulfs the Earth. The Scarlet Centurion summizes that this crisis is what has caused the gap in the history of 20th century Earth.
Back in the 20th century, it is now a week since the events of the Utopia Project have ended. Hyperion has brought the President of the United States and his cabinet to Squadron City and informs them that the Squadron Supreme have been disbanded for the betterment of mankind. The President is shocked and claims that the world needs the Squadron Supreme to take care of it. Hyperion states that the world leaders are now in charge of the future of Earth and that all implementations of the Utopia Project will be taken apart. Professor Imam, Earth's wizard supreme, interrupts Hyperion and demands that Hyperion meet with him immediately at his Temple of Contemplation. Hyperion brings Power Princess with him because she was an old friend of Professor Imam during the Great War as a member of the Golden Agency.
Professor Imam explains to Hyperion and Power Princess that an unknown entity has made it's way into their universe and brings destruction to everything in it's path. Imam states that Earth has less than 12 hours to live and that the only way possible to stop the entity is for the Squadron Supreme to bring Imam into space so he can communicate with it. Hyperion and Power Princess agree and bring Imam to Squadron City, where they have gathered the surviving members of the Redeemers and Squadron Supreme.
Not having the genius of Tom Thumb to guide them anymore, Hyperion decides that he will seek out the help of his arch-enemy, Master Menace, in order to create a craft that would be able to bring Imam into contact with the Entity.
Master Menace has learned of the Entity and makes preparation to leave the dimension until he is visited by the Scarlet Centurion. The Scarlet Centurion informs Master Menace that they will need to stop the Entity because once this dimension and universe are destroyed, it will seek out other dimensions. Master Menace agrees. Hyperion arrives and asks for Master Menace's help to create the spacecraft. Master Menace says that he can create the craft and a dimension displacer to rid the universe of the Entity, but he needs the technology of the future to finish his project. The Scarlet Centurion brings Master Menace into the year 3979, where they spend 15 years making the devices that they need.
Upon their return to the 20th century, Master Menace and Scarlet Centurion make the journey into space to confront the Entity with the Squadron Supreme. Moments after blast-off, Redstone begins going into spasms and his body starts shrinking. Doctor Spectrum theorizes that Redstone's powers are Earth-based and that he must return him to Earth in order to save his life. Dr. Spectrum returns Redstone to Earth, but it is too late, Redstone has died.
Master Menace has found the Entity and it is engulfing the sun. Master Menace tells the Squadron that he needs them to surround the Entity in order for his dimension aperture device to work. Hyperion, Dr. Spectrum, Lady Lark, and Whizzer (using a Dr. Spectrum created cosmic treadmill) venture off into space and try to surround the Entity. However, time is too short and the Entity has now engulfed the sun.
Inertia believes that she can slow down the Entity's growth by using her powers to redirect the Entity's expansion backwards. Professor Imam and Moonglow agree to help augment Inertia's power. The strain is too much on Inertia and she explodes.
The Squadron have finally gotten into place around the Entity and activate Master Menace's dimension aperture spheres. However, the Entity has grown too powerful and the spheres fail. There is now no time for the Squadron to return to the spacecraft and retreat. Hyperion decides that if he is going to die, he is going to die as he lived, by saving lives. Hyperion believes that Dr. Spectrum will be able to take care of himself, so he flies off to rescue Lady Lark or the Whizzer. Dr. Spectrum decides that he fly to other populated worlds and warn them of the Entity. Lady Lark realizes that she has nothing to live for, so she flies directly into the path of the Entity. The Whizzer decides to run into destiny and runs full speed at the Entity.
Aboard the Squadron's spacecraft, Master Menace flees in sight of his failure. However, Professor Imam has made contact with the Entity. He discovers that the Entity has a name, Thomas Lightner, and that he comes from another Earth-like dimension where he used a dimension aperture-creating machine on himself, which interacted with certain dark stellar energies latent within him and turned him into a living hole in space. He then began eating all the matter around him and he grew larger. A number of his native world's champions (The Thing, Giant-Man II, Thundra, Quasar, and the Aquarian) opposed him. The Aquarian possessed certain entropic powers and he entered the Entity, shutting down the expansion, causing it to implode. However, the Entity did not die, it was just shunted to another dimension, where it began expanding again and engulfed seven universes.
Due to the strain of communicating with the Entity, Professor Imam died. The Scarlet Centurion thinks that he knows how to defeat the Entity and leaves, vowing to return. Moonglow reveals to the others that she is really Arcanna in disguise. Arcanna was denied permission to go on this trip by Power Princess because she ha just had a newborn baby, who she has brought on the trip. Arcanna and Moonglow changed places because Moonglow could not stand to be in the presence of the Squadron anymore because they had seen her true form at the conclusion of the battle between the Squadron and the Redeemers.
The Scarlet Centurion returns with the Over-Mind, the being who devasted the Earth and caused the Squadron Supreme to implement the Utopia Project. The Centurion thinks that the Over-Mind's mental powers can push back the Entity. He is wrong. During the mental attack, the Over-Mind's head explodes. Realizing that there is no hope in defeating the Entity, Arcanna begs the Scarlet Centurion to take her baby with him to the future that he may live. The Centurion denies her request, gathers the Over-Mind's body, and departs.
The Entity has now reached the Squadron Supreme's retreating spacecraft and the Earth. The world dies in a sea of white energy. Moments later Arcanna is awakened by voice of her baby, however the baby is no longer on the spacecraft, but Thomas Lightner is. The baby explains that when Professor Imam died, the baby inherited the mantle of wizard supreme. After that, Benjamin Thomas Jones was able to make a deal with the Entity after making contact with it, to exchange places. Bored with destroying universes, the Entity agreed. Thomas Lightner became the wizard supreme of Earth-S and Benjamin Thomas Jones became the Entity, but now a benevolent one. Thomas Lightner rescued Hyperion, Dr. Spectrum, Lady Lark, and the Whizzer and brought them back to the spacecraft. The Entity said his good-byes and went off and became the white event that helped a "new universe", with a star brand in his eye.