In the last article, I first proposed the bloodlines from which humans derive both the metagene and the x-factor, and an explanation for same. Now I'm going to examine some of the bloodlines more completely. Some of the bloodlines resulted in some totally unexpected powers, not possessed by Superman or any Kryptonian. Others...even the ones you might not think, like those with electrical/magnetic powers...might have resulted from variations on the Kryptonian DNA's original potentialities. The above two panels from a story by Jack Kirby indicates even Superman had some "shocking" electrical/magnetic potential.

1. Henry Allan.
Henry Allen returned to Fallville, Iowa, and married Nora Thompson, half-sister to Harry Garrick's wife, and illegitimate daughter of Alfred Gibberne, the first super-speedster, and who was evidently speedy in other details, also.

The combination of the aftereffects of Gibberne's super-speed "accelerator" formulae on his children, interacting with the Kryptonian blood, caused several of Gibberne's descendents to develop super-speed. (I wonder if the "accelerator" actual gives one partial control over inertia, which would explain many of the super-speeding without dangerous consequences for the bones and body of the speedster.)

Henry and Nora's son, born sometimes between 1930 and 1932, was Barry Allen, the second Flash, and to many of us, the greatest. He was one of the founding members of the Justice League. He married Iris Russell West, who turned out to be a foundling from the far future, sent back a thousand years by her parents to avoid a disaster. Eventually Barry returned to her to her native time, and had two children, Don and Dawn Allen. He returned to our time to help literally save the universe against the extra-dimensional Anti-Monitor.

Don and Dawn died during events in the 30th century, but Dawn's daughter was code-named XS and became a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Don's son, Bart Allen, was sent back to the 20th century and there became the superhero known as Impulse.

Before he returned to Iowa after World War I, he saw a little bit of the world, and had an affair with a Scotswoman named Mary McTaggart. Their son, Joseph McTaggert, became heir to the McTaggert fortune and a politician. He married a young geneticist named Moira, maiden name unknown, and by her had a child....with the ability, as would Franklin Richards, Reed and Sue Richards' child, to alter reality. Unable to face such a child, unable to imagine how he fathered such a child, he turned to other women and Moira seperated from her. (It's worth noting that Barry Allen was described repeatedly as being able to control his own molecules. What he could control internally, the McTaggert child, sometimes called Proteus, could control externally.)

Henry Allen also had an affair with a New York woman before he returned to Iowa, a painfully shy woman named Reece. When she found herself pregnant, she was so mortified and ashamed that she could not bring herself to contact Henry Allen, who was then in medical school back in the midwest. Their insignificant looking child, Owen Reece, suffered an accident while working with atomic reactors, after over a decade of neglect by his employers. The accident activated his latent powers, very like his half-brother's Proteus. He gained control over all nonorganic molecules, and called himself the Molecule Man, before he was stopped by the Fantastic Four.

Owen briefly married, but it was a disaster, to a Jewish woman. She remarried and Owen's child was adopted into the family. Owen's child was Martin Stein, who like his real father was an researcher in atomic energy--- a nuclear physicist who would merge with Ronnie Raymond to become the being known as Firestorm. Like the Molecule Man, he too could rearrange nonorganic matter, and suffered bad side-effects if he tried to affect organic matter. (Later writers said that Firestorm was really Gaia's attempt to create a fire elemental. I hold those stories to be a little more...suspect. Certainly the vast majority of stories by his original author holds Firestorm's origin to be non-mystical.)

2. Frank Baker Sr.

Upon returning home to America, Frank got mixed up with a woman from high society, the sister of Ken Hall (Carter Hall's father) and Brett Hall, Kathryn Hall. They found they were too different and he could never give her the things she had become accustomed to, so they had an amicable divorce after having one daughter, Kathryn Baker-Hall. Kathryn married Warren K. Worthington, a millionaire, and their son was Warren Worthington III, also known as the second Angel, a mutant who had hollow bones and natural wings that developed birdlike in his adolescence. (As we will see, another of Frank's descendents could temporarily take on the properties of animals such as birds. Warren's body permanently adapted to one such condition.)

It is not generally known that Kathryn Baker-Hall had a previous husband. During World War II, she married a Tibetian man while in the Far East helping our Chinese allies as a nurse; but he died in the subsequent fighting. She left the child with her first husband's family, who resented him marrying a Westerner, feeling she had brought bad luck on him. The grandchild of that union was Shen Li-Mun, also known as "Swift", who later joined Stormwatch/the Authority. Like Warren Worthington III, her uncle, she had huge wings...

Frank Baker married again , promptly had at least two sons by his second wife, Bernice Frank, sister of Emil Frank. One was Frank Baker Jr. who married a woman named Phyllis. Their son was Bernard "Buddy" Baker, also known as Animal Man, who gained the power to mimic the abilities of animals who were near him. He married Mary Frazier. Their son Cliff didn't inherit the power, but their small daughter, Maxine, did.

Frank Baker Jr.'s brother, Ted Baker, married a sister of "Eel" O'Brien. He deserted them when their young son, William, was just a few years old. William Baker grew up to become a professional criminal under the alias, "Flint Marko". He was unlucky enough to escape from prison and hid at an atomic device testing center in the early sixties. The combination of the "adaptive" powers of the Bakers and the shape-shifting powers of the O'Briens were activated when he got caught in an atomic test explosion, and his body took on the properties of the sand under his feet, enabling him to shift and change his body like flowing sand. He became known as the Sandman (not to be confused with the Justice Society's Sandman or Dream of the Endless), fighting Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, among others. Later he more or less reformed, but he has since had a change of heart---for the worse.

Frank and Ted had a younger sister, Marie. She married Marc Logan, a medical researcher who took the Schweitzer route and set up a lab in Africa. (There are rumors that Marc Logan had a Candian grandfather with a sinister reputation for berserker rages and quick healing wounds---which makes me wonder if his grandfather was the relatively unaging Logan, also known as Wolverine of the X-Men, one of the few mutants who preceded Kal-El's landing.)

Their son, Garfield, was bitten by an African snake. By a special device he had developed, Marc managed to change his son into a sort of greenish monkey that was resistent to the venom. He changed him back, but he retained the green coloring---and found that he could change at will, into any animal. (However, the comics exagerrated his change-ability---he could assume the form of an elephant, for instance, but not its mass.) Voyaging to the states, after his parents died, he was given a horrible guardian, and later was adopted by Steve Dayton, the world's fifth richest man. He was first known as Beast Boy when he worked with the Doom Patrol, and later as Changeling when he worked with the Teen Titans.

3. William Burns Banner married Francine Xavier, who was the aunt of Brian Xavier. This sinister man perhaps physically abused his own children. His son, Brian Banner, a worker in radioactive materials who was later dismissed, married a Rebecca Vincent, brother of Harry Vincent, the Shadow's agent, and had in turn Bruce Banner, who would become a famous nuclear physicist in his own right. (Bruce was born about 1938. Brian breezed through college and P.H.D. at an early age but was unstable. He later killed his own wife. Out of that rage grew the persona later identified as the Incredible Hulk.)

Brian's sister, Elaine, married a Morris Walters, and their daughter, Jennifer Walters, became a respected Los Angelos attorney...but also became the She-Hulk.

Brian's other sister, Marcia, married a man named Desmond. They had two children, Mark and Roland Desmond. Mark Desmond discovered a serum that he thought could boost his puny physique. Instead it turned him into an overmuscled tremendously strong juggernaut with an intellect of a two year old and almost no ability to speak. He fought Batman, under the name Blockbuster. After Mark died, Roland became the second Blockbuster.

(Please note in all these cases, quite in defiance of the laws of conservation of matter, the person went from a small weight to a large weight in a matter of minutes. That argues for the "nanobot" theory in the Kryptonian blood and DNA, for nanobots could "build" a large body out of the air and surrounding material within seconds. It is hard to imagine any means other than that by which it would be possible.)

4. John Blake, a farmer, met Brian Xavier's sister, Martha Xavier, through their connection in the war. John Blake was a cousin of the weird tales writer, Robert Blake, and claimed to be connected to the famous detective Sexton Blake by blood. John and Martha's child was librarian Adam Blake, the self-styled "Captain Comet" with telepathic and telekinetic powers, as well as a limited invulnerability and some measure of super-strength.

None of his sisters (of which he had three) exhibited psychic powers, but each of their children did. One sister married into an old Boston mercantile family called Frost, and their daughter was Emma Frost, the White Queen, with telepathic powers to rival Professor Xavier's.

Another sister married a Britisher named Wyngarde. Their child was Jason Wyngarde, also known as Mastermind, who could project realistic-appearing illusions into the minds of his victims.

A third sister married twice: she first married a man named Samuel Quest (evidently a cousin of the Benton Quest whom Alex Toth recorded adventures of) and they had one son, Max Quest. His story was told in Ted White's PHEONIX PRIME, and the discovery of his near-omnipotent powers--and his strange other-dimensional exile afterwards. Samuel Quest died young, in a car accident, and she then married a farmer from Peaksville, Ohio named Fremont, while little Max was reared by his Quest grandparents. Their son, Anthony Fremont, was born in 1946. Anthony, one of the most powerful "mutants" ever born, took the entire town of Peaksville and removed it from our reality as a child, and while six years old, managed to terrorize his family and those around him, with his telepathy, telekinesis and mind-over-matter. His story was told in Jerome Bixby's story "It's a Good Life", later made into a memorable Twilight Zone story with Billy Mummy. We don't know whatever happened to Anthony Fremont. Indeed, we don't know how Bixby found out the little he did.

5. Alfred Chambers was the father of Johnny Chambers, also known as Johnny Quick, and the grandfather of Jesse Quick/Chambers. The metagene acted in such a way that a mantra---for instance, Professor Gill's "speed formula"...could stimulate it. He already had a propensity that way, being the illigitimate son of Alfred Gibberne, the first super-speedster. (See the H.G. Wells story, "The New Accelerator".) Alfred's sister married Emil Frank, the explorer. (See later.) That made Alfred the half-brother of both Ira West and Harry Garrick's wives, and of Henry Allen's future wife. Alfred married Joanna Sterling, the sister of Charles Sterling, John "Steel" Sterling's father, having kept up contact with each other after the war. Charles introduced Alfred to Joanna, and then....

However, Alfred Chamber's progeny could not only reach super-speed, but could also channel part of that velocity into flight, unlike the Flashes.

While on leave in Paris, he had an affair with a woman named Paulette Beaubier. She got pregnant and left to have the child with some relatives in Quebec, Canada. Her son was the father of Jean-Paul and Jeanne-Marie Beaubier, known respectively as Northstar and Aurora of the Canadian superteam, Alpha Flight. They were spontaneous mutants who could channel their energy directly into flight, sometimes going as fast as Mach 7. They also find the molecular bonds strengthen in their bodies the faster they go. They also had the additional mutant power of releasing a great light when they linked hands.

Another possible descendent of Alfred Chambers is Sam Guthrie, the X-Man known as Cannonball. Like Johnny Quick and Northstar and Aurora, he can direct his velocity in a single path, flying as he does so, and protected by a force field as he does so. Like Johnny, he has blonde hair and bluish eyes.

Sam's mother, Lucinda, was Johnny Chamber's daughter. Sam was born at 1968 at the latest (his first appearance was in a graphic novel in 1982), which made his mother most likely born in the early forties. A year or two before Johnny married Libby Lawrence, he had an affair with a woman who had a child thereby. The woman never told Johnny, thinking---perhaps rightly---that Johnny was too happy-go-lucky at the time to make a good father. The daughter, Lucinda, was raised by relatives in Kentucky, and there married Thomas Zebulon Guthrie.

One other sibling's of Sam's, his sister Paige, was also a mutant, called Husk. Her powers had nothing in common with the others in the family, and is a good example of the Kryptonian DNA trying out different combinations trying to adapt to earthborn DNA.

6. Jake Everett.

Jake Everett was an African-American man, one of two whom Clark, in defiance of Major Ingalls' orders and indeed, all army protocol of that day, performed a transfusion to. John Blake also helped in that action, and as a result Jake gave "Blake" as a middle name to his son, as well as a tip to one of his favorite poets. He married a Lula May Newton, sister to Josh Newton, after being invalidated home in 1917, and was the father of William Blake Everett, an Olympic athelete in the 1936 Olympics. The Everetts lived the life of black sharecroppers in the south, but when young Will punched out their white money-grubbing landlord, they took off, and Jake got a job, for a while, in the auto plants at Detroit, before being laid off during the Great Depression of 1929. Lula May Everett got a job as a scubwoman, so young Will could keep training for the Olympics...which he won, but it didn't make much of a difference back in America. Will Everett got some mential work back in America, and became embittered, and who under some treatments of Ultra, Superman's enemy (she/he evidently detected some potentialities in him) became Amazing-Man, who could absorb the properties of whatever he touched. (He also later changed his powers for a brief time, getting magnetic/electric powers. Both potentialities are important.)

Will later married and had a son, Will Everett Jr., who died in Vietnam without showing a trace of such powers. His grandson, Will Everett III, briefly joined the Justice League, having inherited his father's "absorbtion" powers, also under the name of Amazing-Man.

Will Everett Jr. had a sister, Ida, who married a Stan Thomas of St. Louis, Missouri. Their son was named after her mother's family, and called Everett Thomas, and he can mimic an object down to its molecular base, like many in this family. He was code-named "Synch" and became part of Generation X.

Will Everett Sr. had two sisters. One, quite against the tenor of the times, married a white man named Jenson. Their son, Maxwell Jenson, grew up quite depressed and reduced to menial jobs, perhaps due to some racism. He opened some radioactive waste from a special process that Superman assisted in, and it changed him into one of Superman's most powerful foes of the sixties---the Parasite, who could also absorb abilities and powers from others---but he "leeched" from them, draining his victims of power.

Maxwell Jenson had a daughter by a Southern woman, before his transformation to the Parasite, who couldn't bear his pessimism and defeatism. She divorced him, after bearing him a daughter---a pretty mutant who would later develop the power to absorb other's traits upon touching them, draining her victims----who called herself Rogue.

Maxwell Jenson's sister, Callie Jenson, married a biochemist named Ronald Rankin. Their sons, Gideon and Calvin Rankin, gained adaptive powers, calling themselves the Mimic. Callie and Ronald divorced, and she remarried.

Maxwell Jenson's sister Callie married for her second husband a Stewart Philip Chang, also known as Bulleteer, a superhuman operative of Team 7. Their son was Percival Edmund Chang, also known as Grunge, who could also take on the properties of substances he touched, just as his great-uncle, Will Everett, Amazing Man, could, and fights with the super team Gen13.

Will Everett's other sister married twice. First she married a man named Clay, and had Joshua Clay, who became a medic in Vietnam, and later, a deserter, after witnessing an atrocity. Energy (perhaps electrical) blasts could be generated from his hands, and he joined the Doom Patrol at one time, calling himself Tempest.

Then, after her husband died in a car crash, she married a man named Pierce. Their son was Jefferson Pierce, who became a teacher...but after one of his students was killed by gangsters, became the vigilante Black Lightning. At first depending on a special belt for electrical powers, he later developed some of his own, evidently taking after his uncle Will's "magnetic/electrical" phase.

Jefferson had an affair with a white woman named Oswald when in college. She went home to Oklahoma after becoming pregnant, and there had a child, Darren Peter Oswald. His lightning powers were invesitaged by Sculley and Mulder of the F.B.I., and dramatized in the TV series X-Files in the episode called "D.P.O." first aired in 6-10-95.

Jefferson's sister Jean married a Robert Hawkins, and their son, Virgil Hawkins, became the superhero known as Static, with extensive electrical-magnetic powers. (His sister Morgan has shown no sign of super-powers, though.)

Jake Everett had a brief affair, during a period of marital unhappiness, with a woman named Monroe. The resulting child, David Monroe, was Will Everett's half-brother. He married a Kenyan Princess named N'Dare. (N'Dare's brother was the grandfather of Flint of Stormwatch.) David showed no sign of power, but their daughter, Ororo Monroe, grew up to become an X-Man who could control the weather, especially the lightning displays, called Storm.

When young, David Monroe had an affair with a white woman named Callahan. Their child, Stephen Callahan, grew up to become a member of Team 7, known as Wraparound, latent psionic powers being stimulated by exposure to the goverment "gen-factor". Stephen in turn had an affair with an Apache named Rebecca Rainmaker, and their daughter, Sarah Rainmaker, had weather-controlling abilities very similar to that of her aunt, Storm, once it was brought out by exposure to the "gen-factor". (Rebecca Rainmaker's mother was a Proudstar, and she was a cousin to X-Men and X-Force's Thunderbird and Warpath, although she was not a descendent of Leonard McKenzie.)

Stephen Callahan had two other legitimate children by a different mother, both who became members of the group DV8 after being exposed to the "Gen-Factor". One, Nicole Callahan could simulate the pain-pleasure receptors of the brain, and became known as "Bliss". The other, Matthew Callahan, inherited his father's mental powers when stimulated by the "gen-factor", and led DV8, after the departure of the Gen13 from the goverment facility that was trying to make superhumans.(The rest of DV8 are probably also descended from Major Ingalls' company, but I've been unable to find the links.)

7. William Fitzpatrick, born Peter William Fitzpatrick Cochrane, took William Fitzpatrick as a pen name. Invalidated home early in the war, he married a woman, Regina Higgins, sister of Tom Higgins--- but the marriage ended unhappily. They had one child, Rex, but there was a divorce a year or two later. His first wife married a man named Tyler, who adopted Rex, and he was raised as Rex Tyler. (William then married a younger sister of William Burns Banner, who was the mother of Mary Fitzpatrick Parker, Peter Parker's mother.)

Rex, like his nephew Peter Parker, was a chemical genuis who was truly mild and meek in real life. Rex discovered an addictive but strengthening chemical he called Miraclo, which really only activated his latent superhuman powers of his metagene. (He and his son would later learn how to call on the metagenetic powers without using the Miraclo pill.) With it, like Spider-Man, he had the strength of a dozen men and had limited leaping abilities, far superior to normal men's.

Rex was one of the charter members of the Justice Society, but was the first to leave, trying to cope with his Miraclo addiction. Like Spider-Man, he never had much luck in groups.

In the sixties, when Rex was in his forties (he was born in late 1917. He was so brillant he breezed through college and graduate school at an early age, but was so shy and self-effacting that he represented himself as older than he was, claiming he was born in 1913, so as not to draw attention to himself.) he married a Wendi Harris. They had one child, Richard Tyler, a would be artist and a second-generation Hourman. Unfortunately, the Miraclo reacted badly to his system and he is currently under treatment for leukhemia. (In fact, the Tylers and the Parkers have such bad luck that one wonders if there is an additional power, a sort of reverse "luck" affecting probabilities around them...)

The reason William's marriage to ended unhappily was because he was drawn into an affair with a woman named Denise Garrett. Their son, Dan Garrett, was proof of his infidelity, and Denise and her son left William's life completely, as did his first wife. He married on the rebound.

Dan Garrett grew up to become a policeman, but also thanks to a shot of a special "vitamin" concoction developed by a local druggist, he also developed "super-energy"---although nothing like Superman's, something on the order of Spider-Man's. Wearing a costume of blue chain mail, he was called the Blue Beetle, the first hero of that name, and fought crime throughout the forties. Unlike Rex Tyler, he seemed to suffer no ill effects from the special drug he took.

Mary Fitzpatrick Parker had a sister, Jacqueline Fitzpatrick. She married a man named Jack Ryder, who became a TV host and later, worked for network security. In one of his security cases, he found a kidnapped Dr. Yatz, who injected him with a serum that gave him increased agility, strength, and leaping prowess, as well as a device that would rearrange the molecules around him and switch clothing. He became the somewhat insane Creeper.

8. Emil Frank.
Jessie Chambers, Alfred Chambers' sister, married the professor named Emil Frank. Emil and Alfred first met during the War, of course. Their son, Robert L. Frank, was in dire need of a transfusion, and the father, temporarily deranged by the injury to his beloved son, tried transfusing mongoose blood into his son. Of course that had no effect--- save to trigger his immune defenses and to activate his latent super-speed. He became a member of the short-lived All-Winners Squad, the peacetime successor to the Invaders, under the name, the Whizzer.

The Whizzer married Madeline Joyce, also known as the super-powered Miss America, and had three children. Two died at birth, another had nuclear powers and had to kept locked up for safety's sake.

Bob Frank had a sister, Lori Frank, who married a man named Gargan. Their son, MacDonald or "Mac" Gargan, became a private investigator, but under the influence of some treatments by a Dr. Stillwell, he took on the properties of a scorpion, just like his uncle, Bob Frank, supposedly took on the speed of a mongoose. Known as the Scorpion, with a mechanical tail built into his costume, he became a feared menace to society, repeatedly stopped by Spider-Man.

Bob Frank's other sister married a man named Connors. Their son, Curtis Connors, became an army medic during the Korean war but lost his right arm. He became instead an expert on the study of reptiles, especially fascinated by their ability to regenerate lost limbs. Experimenting on himself, he was able to regrow his lost arm---but it also mutated him into a lizardlike cruel being called, appropriately enough, the Lizard---until he was also stopped by Spider-Man.

Currently I am investigating the possibility that the super-strong, amnesiac reptile-like Savage Dragon, now working as a super-policemen for the Chicago PD (although much less publicly than the comics portrayed) is actually William Conners, Curt Connors' son, now grown up...

Continued in PART II:

PARTIAL LIST OF SOURCES:

Of course, TARZAN ALIVE and DOC SAVAGE: HIS APOCALYPTIC LIFE by Philip Jose Farmer.

GLADIATOR, Philip Wylie.

"Super-Powers in the Wold Newton Universe Explained: Part II: Stretching Things" by Matthew Baugh.

Those interested with comments, suggestions, things I have forgotten, things I messed up, contact me at...
E-Mail:al.schroeder@nashville.com

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Speculations Copyright © Al Schroeder. Superman is owned by DC Comics, Warner Communications, and the Siegels. All other characters copyrighted by their respective owners.