Morden Man

Maximum Comics: Dawn of Justice | REBRANDING - PLEASE STAY TUNED

| Identity |
James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes, better known as Captain America.

| Origin & Backstory |
James “Bucky” Barnes was the orphaned son of a serviceman killed during a training exercise at Camp Lehigh in Virginia shortly before the start of WW2. Rather than rehouse Bucky the camp adopted him and he soon became accustomed to military life, often dressing up in his father’s uniform and finding himself in alcohol-induced scrapes with other boys around the camp. For his own good as much as the wellbeing of the sailors frequenting the bars around Camp Lehigh, Bucky was sent to England to channel his anger through rigorous training with the SAS. Little did he know that he was being groomed to be none other than Captain America’s sidekick.

For the cameras and the picture books, Bucky would be little more than a teenaged companion for Captain America that would boost morale back at home and support for the war effort. In truth his partnership with Steve Rogers was more practical than the comic books would ever let on. Bucky was capable and willing to do the things that Steve was not. He would sneak behind enemy lines unseen, slit the enemy’s throat, and let Captain America and Nick Fury’s Howling Commandos in before they had the chance to raise the alarm. It wasn’t pretty work, but it was something Bucky took to more naturally than he cared to admit.

Steve wasn’t only his partner, he became Bucky’s closest friend, and their friendship was what got the pair through the hardship they encountered. At every turn they thwarted the Red Skull and Baron Zemo and pushed the Germans back, their presence breathing new hope into soldiers that had long since considered the war lost. Thanks to Captain America, Bucky, and the Howling Commandos the Germans were on their knees and they knew it. They grew more desperate by the minute.

It was their desperation that led Baron Heinrich Zemo to launch that pilotless plane over the North Atlantic carrying enough explosives to level the Northern Hemisphere. Captain America and Bucky climbed aboard, risking their lives to defuse the plane, as it flew across the Artic Ocean, destined to unmake Western civilization as they knew it once it hit. Try as they might there was no defusing the plane and Steve, hard-headed as ever, chose to kick Bucky free from it and force the plane to detonate away from danger the only way he could: manually.

Bucky tumbled towards the icy water and watched as the explosion lit up the sky and his closest friend was engulfed by flames. As he opened his mouth to cry out in anguish he came crashing down into the water and his lungs filled with freezing cold water. The last thing he saw before he slipped out of consciousness was the blast from the explosion above him lighting up the sky like the Fourth of July growing fainter by the second.

[1945-2005: REDACTED]

It has been nearly sixty years since Bucky plunged into that icy water and for the first time since his eyes open to find himself in a hospital bed. A familiar face is sat at the foot of his bed, that of Nicholas J. Fury, but his surroundings are very far from familiar to him. He is hooked into machines that bear no resemblance to those he grew accustomed to in his time and most significantly of all his left arm has been replaced by a metal prosthetic of some sort. He raises a hand to his face to find it changed, older somewhat, and begins to panic. Fury reassures him but breaks the news to him that Bucky had begun to piece together: he’s been out for a long time, seventy years to be exact, and Steve Rogers is dead. The world is different to the one he left behind, much different, but it still needs a Captain America. In fact, it needs a Captain America more now than ever before.

And only Bucky is fit to carry the shield.

| Attributes |
Bucky is an expert at hand to hand combat and is a naturally gifted martial artist, has extensive training with firearms, speaks several languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, and Russian, and his time as an advanced scout in WW2 has left him one of the most dangerous assassins and spies in the world. The metal prosthetic grants Bucky a degree of superhuman strength and enhanced reaction time, coupled with being equipped with an EMP and a holographic function that can render it undistinguishable from a normal arm at will.

| Character Goals |

Hopefully I'll succeed in showing the sense of burden that Bucky feels upon assuming the mantle of Captain America to begin with. It's my intention that by the end of my "run" as Captain America, it'll be clear that Bucky not only considers himself as much Captain America as Steve Rogers ever was but that those around him do too. Of course, there's Bucky's past to contend with and Captain America's sudden re-emergence changes things, though things are far, far less straightforward than they appear to both the public and to Barnes and the repercussions of that will be very far reaching.

| References |

#1 - The Pickett County War - Gus vists Renee Hamilton.
#2 - Maximum Comics - Nathaniel Adam and Clint Barton have a drink.
#3 - DC: Gods Amongst Us - Even in the 21st Century, Booster Gold is still a loser.
#4 - Guardians of Infinity - Quill and Howard the Duck spoil a romantic dinner.

Maximum Comics: Dawn of Justice | REBRANDING - PLEASE STAY TUNED

<Snipped quote by Morden Man>

So should I abandon my Punster sheet then?

@BlackSam3091

Maximum Comics: Dawn of Justice | REBRANDING - PLEASE STAY TUNED

No more puns.

Please no more puns.

Maximum Comics: Dawn of Justice | REBRANDING - PLEASE STAY TUNED

March 20th, 2005
02:39am

Carol Danvers lay asleep in her bed beset by dreams of tumbling through the air over an Iraqi sky and a cockpit filled with smoke. She tossed and turned in her bed, clearly distressed by what she was seeing, until he sheets were soaked through with sweat and her covers lay crumpled at the foot of her bed. Most of Carol’s nights had been like this since she’d come home from Iraq. It wasn’t the dreams that got to her so much as the waking up. Never once had she dreamed of herself without her legs and each time she opened her eyes from some fresh nightmare, she stared down at the stumps where once her legs were and let out a heavy sigh. Tonight would have been no different were it not for the flash of green light that shook Carol’s tiny apartment. A buzzing noise sounded and beside her table a green ring rattled around noisily until Danvers opened her eyes and noticed it. She pulled herself up and slipped the ring over one of her fingers.

There was another flash and a hulking figure appeared as a light construct in Carol’s bedroom. It was Kilowog, Carol’s closest friend in the Green Lantern Corps and the Corps drill instructor, but from the look on his face something was wrong.

Carol reached for her covers, pulling them up to obscure her stumps from sight. “Kilowog? What’s going on?”

“You had better get to Oa, Carol, something’s going on here and I have a feeling we’re going to be needing all our heavy hitters on this one.”

It wasn’t often that Kilowog hailed her privately and even less often that he looked as distressed as he did. People passed by Kilowog in the background, some she noticed and others she didn’t, but they too seemed to be moving with an urgency that was worrying to say the least. Something was definitely going on.

“What’s happened?”

Kilowog let out a guttural, earthy snort. “What always happens? Some poozers need their heads cracking. I’ll explain more once you’re here.”

With that there was another flash of light and Kilowog disappeared. Carol threw the covers away from her stumps and waved her hand, creating two green prosthetic legs out of energy, and stepped atop them as she began to ready herself for the journey that lay ahead. She stared down at the pictures that adorned her bedside table: one of her parents in happier times, one of Carol stood beside a fighter jet, and one of herself in full military uniform with the Purple Heart pinned to her chest. In half an hour she would be further from Earth than any human barring Alan Scott had ever been before but her memories of home would weigh on her even there. There was no place she could run or fly where they wouldn’t follow her.

It had taken her longer than she anticipated getting to Oa but when she did the whole place was bustling with movement. Her arrival turned a few heads, as it always did amongst the recruits, but outside of that the other Lanterns were too concerned with whatever was going to notice. Danvers was the first terran Green Lantern in decades and though she’d only been one for nearing two years was well regarded in the Corps, especially by Ganthet, which had earned her the admiration and disdain of some of her fellow Green Lanterns in equal measure. She spotted Kilowog’s pink skin amongst several Lanterns outside the dining hall and strode up beside him.

He looked round and with faux annoyance barked in her direction. “What took you so long?”

“I’m here now, that’s all that matters. Are you going to explain to me what the hell’s so important I had to haul ass halfway across the galaxy in the early hours?”

“Some newbies have gone missing,” Kilowog grumbled. “The Guardians thought it was nothing to begin with, some technical glitch or something caused by being that far out, until it started happening across a few sectors. They sent Sinestro out there and there wasn’t a trace of the poozers.”

Carol shook her head as she followed after Kilowog, making their way towards the Central Meeting Hall. “That’s not good.”

“Talk about an understatement,” Kilowog said, exhaling through his large nostrils. “Sinestro found some of that negative energy there, thinks someone dragged the newbies off to the Negative Zone, and has been kicking up a stink trying to get Ganthet to let him invade the damn place on his own. You know how Sinestro gets.”

That she did. Sinestro had rode Carol harder than any other Green Lantern from the second she’d arrived there. Kilowog had told her once that he resented her for bearing Mar-Vell’s ring and the way she’d rose up the ranks at the Corp so quickly. Mar-Vell had been the greatest Green Lantern of all time, proven by the fact that he was the only Lantern that Sinestro had ever deferred to. They weren’t friends, they had never been friends, but it was clear from the way that Kilowog spoke of Mar-Vell that Sinestro held a deep respect for his abilities and would had followed him into hell and back. He seemed to have the opposite opinion of Carol and had been intent on making her life difficult at every turn. He succeeded more often than not.

“Yeah, well even Sinestro needs help sometimes.”

Carol and Danvers made their way past the crowds of confused Lanterns assembled outside the Central Meeting Hall and passed through its doors to find Sinestro stood before an assembly of Guardians. He looked exasperated, annoyed even, and was gesticulating angrily as he spoke to them but stopped dead in his tracks when he heard Kilowog and Carol approaching.

A wry smile appeared on Sinestro’s pink face. “Look who it is, Ganthet’s favourite daughter finally decides to grace us with her presence.”

Carol let out a little laugh as she descended the steps with Kilowog and stood beside him. “Behave, Sinestro.”

There was something about Sinestro that Carol couldn’t quite put his finger on. There was no denying that he was charismatic and his will was legendary even amongst Green Lanterns but there was something more than that. Danvers had met someone with as much purpose as Sinestro. Everything he did, every move he made, even the words he used were decisive to the point someone that didn’t know him might believe they were selectively chosen or painfully rehearsed. It was that purpose that gave him his strength, that unwavering self-confidence that made him shine so brightly even amongst thousands of Green Lanterns, and it was what made him so dangerous. Only Sinestro dared lecture the Guardians.

“Four Green Lanterns are missing, Danvers, and I mean to do something about it. Negative Zone or not, Green Lanterns are Green Lanterns wherever they may be and if we allow this insult to stand it will undermine our authority across the entire universe. We must act.”

A voice emanated from amongst the row of blue faces that belonged to the Guardians. “You know we have no jurisdiction in the Negative Zone, Sinestro, and the evidence you have compiled is sketchy at best. We must bide our time, investigate further, before we rush headlong into incurring into enemy territory on some half-cocked hunch.”

Only Ganthet had Carol spoken to privately and only Ganthet showed some semblance of understanding or displaying human emotion. The rest were completely expressionless and still to the point it made Carol uncomfortable. She could see from Sinestro’s face that the last sentence had rankled him.

“A hunch? Whilst you dither our brothers and sisters suffer unimaginable torment.”

Kilowog stepped forward, his footstep so heavy it shook the ground they were on, and pointed in Sinestro’s direction. “You watch your tongue, poozer”.

Sinestro smiled. “You don’t hand the orders out around here, Kilowog.”

The two men stared one another down for a few seconds and Carol watched on, uncertain of what might happen, before she spotted Ganthet gliding from behind the other Guardians to the forefront. He hovered in front of Carol, Sinestro, and Kilowog.

“Enough of this bickering. What say you, Lantern Danvers? What course of action do you advise? Would you follow Sinestro into the Negative Zone or have us bide our time?”

Carol looked from Kilowog to Sinestro and back as she considered her options. Kilowog’s face was sympathetic, understanding the pressure that Danvers had been placed under, but Sinestro’s emblazoned with conviction and he stared at her intensely as if willing her to agree with him. Carol thought of the pain those Lanterns could be suffering in the Negative Zone, the possible consequences of intruding into it without good reason should they not be behind it, and what would happen if they did nothing. She’d done plenty of stealth runs before. She was the best goddamned pilot in the world, even without her legs, she could get in and out of that place without being seen. She was sure of it.

“Send the two of us. Sinestro and I will go into the Negative Zone, find out what happened to those recruits, and get out without causing a scene.”

A broad smile appeared on Sinestro’s face. There was the briefest flicker of doubt on Ganthet’s but he nodded, accepting the judgement of his most prized Green Lantern, before floating back towards the other Guardians. As he did so, three words escaped his lips.

“So be it.”

Maximum Comics: Dawn of Justice | REBRANDING - PLEASE STAY TUNED

| Identity |
Carol Danvers, better known to the universe as Green Lantern of Sector 2814.

| Origin & Backstory |

Carol Danvers was an accident. Seventeen years after Joseph and Marie Danvers had their first child, Joseph Danvers Jr., Marie fell pregnant for the second time and given their traditional background abortion wasn’t an option. Joseph Danvers was a contractor and young “Joe” had followed his father into the trade whilst he prepared for college and a hopefully a future career in architecture. Joe was the apple of his father’s eye. Hard working, generous, funny, and popular with the girls to boot. That’s why it struck Carol’s father so hard when, barely six months into Marie’s pregnancy, Joe was taken from them in an automobile accident. Driving back from a friend’s house one night a drink-driver had crashed into Joe’s car and killed him on impact. In that instance he had stripped the Danvers household of any and all the joy it had once had and set the tone for the as of yet unborn Carol’s life.

Carol’s childhood was loveless and cold. Her father had been an affectionate man by nature before Joe’s death but not even Carol’s first steps or her first word could provide him with more than a superficial happiness. Joseph took to the bottle early and often to dull the pain he felt about his son’s passing and the family contracting business went broke. Despite her father’s spiraling alcoholism his wife stood by him and Carol endeavored endlessly to earn his approval at every turn. She pushed herself academically and physically to prove herself worth of her father’s affections but no matter how hard she tried, no matter what she achieved, in Joseph’s eyes she would always be a distant second to the son he’d buried.

When it came time for Carol to leave for college her parents forbade Carol from leaving. The insurance money from Joe’s death had been all but burned through and her father was in such a state that he couldn’t support himself or pay Carol’s way through college. Reluctantly Carol stayed, convinced it would have been what Joe would have done, and tended bar around Boston to support her parents. Everyone in Boston knew old Joseph Danvers, they knew who he’d been once and what had happened, and they knew what he’d become. A drunk, one that staggered into the bars that Carol worked to demand free alcohol and embarrassed his daughter at every turn. Once the smartest girl at her high school, Carol worried she’d waste her life away toiling after her father’s approval and paying down her parents’ debts.

Then the Towers came down. Suddenly everything that had come before it felt meaningless. Her sense of duty and obligation to her family dissolved was displaced only with a sense of duty towards her country and the freedoms it provided her with. She gave what money she had managed to save to her mother in the hopes it would be enough to tide her parents over and signed up for the Air Force. In doing so she hoped that finally her parents, her father especially, might see she was her brother’s equal, his better even, and treat her with the regard that she deserved.

It didn’t take long for Carol to make a name for herself in the Air Force. She would regularly out pace the men on endurance tests and she was a better pilot than all of them, much to their chagrin. So when she was called up for action in Iraq it came as little surprise to her or the other recruits. She’d been ready the second she had walked through the door and had aced every simulation and test she had been put through. The real deal however would turn out to be something completely different. On only her second run Danvers was shot out of the sky by hostile fire and somehow managed to survive the crash though not without great cost.

Carol’s legs were amputated. Her left beneath the knee and her right slightly above, and she sustained heavy burns to her thighs and some of her torso. She returned to Boston, hailed by most to be a hero, but was met with cold indifference from her father who considered her injuries an inevitable consequence of her misguided foray into the Air Force. A dejected Carol broke contact from her father once and for all and recognized that his approval would never be hers and that she didn’t need it anymore. Carol found her own place in Boston and set about trying to figure out what to do with the rest of her life.

Luckily for her, Abin Sur’s crash landing on Earth took that decision out of her hands.

| Attributes |

Carol is a Green Lantern. Everything that comes with being a Green Lantern: constructs powered by the ring-holder’s willpower, the ability to create force fields, flight. You name it, the ring can probably do it. Where once Carol relied on prosthetic legs to get around she now uses her Green Lantern ring to construct prosthetics that are infinitely more comfortable for her to walk on, though she is careful about her use of them.

Carol is also an incredibly proficient and well-decorated pilot.

| Character Notes |

She works out of Boston. Was friends with James Rhodes and Nathaniel Adams in the Air Force and potentially Hal Jordan should the need ever arise/someone wish to play him. As of the IC thread, Carol will have been a Green Lantern for a short period of time and Sinestro will have assumed mentorship of her, having seen her potential to be a great Green Lantern. I do not intend to get into the different coloured/emotion Corps if only because I'd like to be involved in the game as opposed to being a self-contained corner of it. Also and most importantly Carol's disabilities are tertiary to her character and hopefully I can write her without them or her gender being defining qualities.

| Character Goals |

I definitely have something of an arc in mind for Carol in terms of her progression through the Green Lantern Corps, her relationships with other Green Lanterns, and her personal life. I want to establish the Green Lantern Corps as a thing pretty early on and I'll likely start with a (fairly) lengthy solo arc on that and then try to bleed into the wider universe but hopefully Carol the person and Carol the Green Lantern will clearly be characters in their own right.

| References |

#1 - The Pickett County War - Gus vists Renee Hamilton.
#2 - Maximum Comics - Nathaniel Adam and Clint Barton have a drink.
#3 - DC: Gods Amongst Us - Even in the 21st Century, Booster Gold is still a loser.
#4 - Guardians of Infinity - Quill and Howard the Duck spoil a romantic dinner.

Maximum Comics: Dawn of Justice | REBRANDING - PLEASE STAY TUNED

I ought to be clear about what I have planned for Carol now then because I think it'll make it easier for whoever ends up getting Kyle. My first arc with Carol will involve her and Sinestro going to the Negative Zone whereby after a time they are presumed dead because they cannot be contacted. This could possibly facilitate the entrance of another human-based Green Lantern because ideally up to that point Carol would have been the only one but given she'll have been away it'll make sense for them to move to replace her.

Maximum Comics: Dawn of Justice | REBRANDING - PLEASE STAY TUNED

| Identity |
James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes, better known as Captain America.

| Origin & Backstory |
James “Bucky” Barnes was the orphaned son of a serviceman killed during a training exercise at Camp Lehigh in Virginia shortly before the start of WW2. Rather than rehouse Bucky the camp adopted him and he soon became accustomed to military life, often dressing up in his father’s uniform and finding himself in alcohol-induced scrapes with other boys around the camp. For his own good as much as the wellbeing of the sailors frequenting the bars around Camp Lehigh, Bucky was sent to England to channel his anger through rigorous training with the SAS. Little did he know that he was being groomed to be none other than Captain America’s sidekick.

For the cameras and the picture books, Bucky would be little more than a teenaged companion for Captain America that would boost morale back at home and support for the war effort. In truth his partnership with Steve Rogers was more practical than the comic books would ever let on. Bucky was capable and willing to do the things that Steve was not. He would sneak behind enemy lines unseen, slit the enemy’s throat, and let Captain America and Nick Fury’s Howling Commandos in before they had the chance to raise the alarm. It wasn’t pretty work, but it was something Bucky took to more naturally than he cared to admit.

Steve wasn’t only his partner, he became Bucky’s closest friend, and their friendship was what got the pair through the hardship they encountered. At every turn they thwarted the Red Skull and Baron Zemo and pushed the Germans back, their presence breathing new hope into soldiers that had long since considered the war lost. Thanks to Captain America, Bucky, and the Howling Commandos the Germans were on their knees and they knew it. They grew more desperate by the minute.

It was their desperation that led Baron Heinrich Zemo to launch that pilotless plane over the North Atlantic carrying enough explosives to level the Northern Hemisphere. Captain America and Bucky climbed aboard, risking their lives to defuse the plane, as it flew across the Artic Ocean, destined to unmake Western civilization as they knew it once it hit. Try as they might there was no defusing the plane and Steve, hard-headed as ever, chose to kick Bucky free from it and force the plane to detonate away from danger the only way he could: manually.

Bucky tumbled towards the icy water and watched as the explosion lit up the sky and his closest friend was engulfed by flames. As he opened his mouth to cry out in anguish he came crashing down into the water and his lungs filled with freezing cold water. The last thing he saw before he slipped out of consciousness was the blast from the explosion above him lighting up the sky like the Fourth of July growing fainter by the second.

[1945-2005: REDACTED]

It has been nearly sixty years since Bucky plunged into that icy water and for the first time since his eyes open to find himself in a hospital bed. A familiar face is sat at the foot of his bed, that of Nicholas J. Fury, but his surroundings are very far from familiar to him. He is hooked into machines that bear no resemblance to those he grew accustomed to in his time and most significantly of all his left arm has been replaced by a metal prosthetic of some sort. He raises a hand to his face to find it changed, older somewhat, and begins to panic. Fury reassures him but breaks the news to him that Bucky had begun to piece together: he’s been out for a long time, seventy years to be exact, and Steve Rogers is dead. The world is different to the one he left behind, much different, but it still needs a Captain America. In fact, it needs a Captain America more now than ever before.

And only Bucky is fit to carry the shield.

| Attributes |
Bucky is an expert at hand to hand combat and is a naturally gifted martial artist, has extensive training with firearms, speaks several languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, and Russian, and his time as an advanced scout in WW2 has left him one of the most dangerous assassins and spies in the world. The metal prosthetic grants Bucky a degree of superhuman strength and enhanced reaction time, coupled with being equipped with an EMP and a holographic function that can render it undistinguishable from a normal arm at will.

| Character Goals |

Hopefully I'll succeed in showing the sense of burden that Bucky feels upon assuming the mantle of Captain America to begin with. It's my intention that by the end of my "run" as Captain America, it'll be clear that Bucky not only considers himself as much Captain America as Steve Rogers ever was but that those around him do too. Of course, there's Bucky's past to contend with and Captain America's sudden re-emergence changes things, though things are far, far less straightforward than they appear to both the public and to Barnes and the repercussions of that will be very far reaching.

| References |

#1 - The Pickett County War - Gus vists Renee Hamilton.
#2 - Maximum Comics - Nathaniel Adam and Clint Barton have a drink.
#3 - DC: Gods Amongst Us - Even in the 21st Century, Booster Gold is still a loser.
#4 - Guardians of Infinity - Quill and Howard the Duck spoil a romantic dinner.

Maximum Comics: Dawn of Justice | REBRANDING - PLEASE STAY TUNED

Maximum Comics: Dawn of Justice | REBRANDING - PLEASE STAY TUNED

@HenryJonesJr has been incredibly gracious and stepped aside so I can take a crack at Captain America. I'm eternally grateful, though I'm sure the rest of you are thoroughly disappointed we worked this out without having to dance around the Thunder Dome using baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire. Maybe next time.

Maximum Comics: Dawn of Justice | REBRANDING - PLEASE STAY TUNED