Continued from PART TWO

Continuing a look at all the superhumans who resulted from the transfusions of Clark's Kryptonian blood (and perhaps the nanobots within) into normal Earthborn humans. If the nanobot theory is correct, it would explain why accidents and changes in the body which would normally kill or maim one instead were preserved and strengthened...an odd happenstance of raw chance, but an understandable one if it were of microscopic robots out to improve and help their host, even through the bodies they found themselves in were seperated by hundreds of thousands of years of seperate breeding from the ones they were made for. (This unfamiliarity with the earthly human body would explain why they would sometimes vary the power from Kryptonian-norm, adapting to the different circumstances.)

It also might explain why superhumans are so hard to kill, both the criminal and the heroic. The nanobots are working to reconstruct them after accidents that any being, superhuman or not, should never have survived...and we see it in case after case, from Metamorpho's first death, to Superman's "revival" after being "killed" by Doomsday.

18. Jack O'Brien.
Golda Parker, a relative of Peter Parker's grandfather, married a minor businessman of Irish descent named Jack O'Brien. They had a son named Alan O'Brien, but they died when he was ten. He tried to work hard, but the pushiness of the rest of the world drove him to crime. He got the nickname "Eel" O'Brien.

One night, during a robbery, he was shot in the shoulder by the police and collided by a vat of powerful acids. The rest of his gang ran on, leaving him behind. The strange, experimental acids entered the wound. (It has been speculated that this was really a shape-changing alien being, by Matthew Baugh.)

Later he would find he could stretch himself like a rubber band, like Reed Richards would do later. He adopted a disguise, and then called himself Plastic Man, and used his criminal alter ego to get tips on what criminals were up to. J. Edgar Hoover made Plastic Man an FBI agent, and he was the wartime All-Star Squardon's FBI contact.

Like Peter Parker, his style of fighting crime was never straightforward and often involved humorous comments and actions.

There is some speculation that the FBI invented another life for Plastic Man, under the pseudonym "Digby", and he in turn fathered two children in that alias. One was completely normal, but the younger one become known as Ralph Digby, the Elongated Man.

There seems little doubt that he also has an affair, before his marriage as "Mr. Digby", with a Hispanic woman named Angela Espinosa. Their son in turn married without showing any remarkable properties, and then was gunned down by a drive-by shooting in Los Angelos. Their son, Angelo Espinosa, who was born with waaaaaaay more skin than he had bones. Able to manipulate his skin in various stretchable ways, he seems to have only partiably inherited his grandfather Plastic Man's abilities. Known as "Skin", he joined the group Generation X.

"Eel" O'Brien had a sister, who married Ted Baker. Their son was William "Flint Marko" Baker, better known as the Sandman.

19. Lucas Porter.
Lucas Porter was the other man in the "colored" unit that Clark did a transfusion to. After the war he joined an archeological expedition to Australia, helping with the heavy labor, and there met and fell in love with an aborigine woman. Their love resulted in a very strange, silent mutant among the aborigines with the power of teleportation, called Gateway.

When he returned to the States, he worked at first as a servant in the house of a US Senator. The Senator was busy with political matters, and his wife (a Wayne, a distant relative of Thomas Wayne's) was attracted to Lucas. The two children she bore were supposedly Sen. Eden's, but were actually Lucas Porter's.

One became a Senator himself, Senator Wayne Eden. Senator Eden married a woman with a mysterious past, who disappeared after bearing him two children, taking her son with her. His daughter, Eve, remained, and later became the goverment agent Nightshade, who could summon dark holes which she could teleport through. She later claimed her mother was an extra-dimensional being from the Land of the Nightshades.

The other one, a daughter grew up to marry a man named Carr from Happy Harbor. Their son, Lucas "Snapper" Carr, became the honorary member/mascot for the Justice League, until he betrayed them. Later, during the "Invasion" chronicled by DC Comics (actually, most actions happened off-planet, and dramatized the Dominion's plans for Earth, rather than what actually happened.) Anyway, the Dominion discovered that Snapper, among others, had hidden powers that could be stimulated to fruition in a crisis. In his case, he was able to teleport.

Unlike Gateway, he wasn't silent. (And considering his "hep" language, that's a pity...)

In the early thirties, Lucas Porter left Sen. Eden's home, and married a sister of Jake Everett's, settling down. He tried to get a good job, but finally got a job as a janitor/handyman of an apartment house, the same one that Janie Jerome would live in. His two children, Bonnie and Beanie, were very like Gateway in that they were almost totally silent, but could teleport. Lucas Porter briefly shows up, and his two children Bonnie and Beanie moreso, in Theodore Sturgeon's MORE THAN HUMAN.

He had one other child, who was born an albino, and could pass for Caucasian, especially if he kept his head shaved. This son, Telford Porter, became a supercriminal known as the Vanisher, who fought the X-Men in their second issue. He was defeated by Professor Charles Xavier. (I'm currently investigating whether Fade or Flashback of Blood Syndicate are descended from Lucas Porter.)

20. Fred Raymond.
Fred Raymond was one of those who enlisted by lying about his age, which was sixteen. He became an expert in the uses of asbestos in industry. He married early in life, only to have his wife die in childbirth after delivering his second child. There were two girls, Hulda and Patricia Raymond.

Hulda married a man named McGee, who was a first cousin of Travis McGee's father. Their son was Andy McGee, born in 1945 who was given a drug in 1965, along with his soon-to-be wife Vicki Tomlinson. Andy gained the ability to command others without question from the drug. Vicki gained some telepathic powers. They fled from the government organization known as the Shop that gave them the drug. Their little girl, Charlie McGee, born in 1972, was a pyrokinetic, able to cause large fires to form spontaneously. Her story---of both her and her superhuman powers--- was told in Stephen King's FIRESTARTER.

Her sister, Patricia Raymond, had a torrid affair during World War II with Richard Dare, a journalist and government agent under the codename Captain X. He left for Europe, and she married Theodore Rockwell, not knowing she was pregnant. Patricia died decades later, unsure about the location of her son, Ed Rockwell, who had been relocated under the FBI's witness protection program. He took the name Ed Raymond after his mother's maiden name, and became a journalist like his father. His son, Ronnie Raymond, became the superhuman Firestorm, who could restructure matter and was distinguished by his flaming head of hair. (That and the fact that Ronnie merged with another person, Professor Martin Stein, to become Firestorm.)

Travelling around the world after the death of his first wife, he had an affair with a highborn Japanese woman around 1922. This woman had two children. One daughter was miles from the Hiroshima blast, at the end of World War II but only lived a few years later. She married diplomat Saburo Yashida, and through him had Shiro Yashida, sometimes known as Sunfire, for his flame and heat-producing powers. The child of the second child was the Silver Sumarai, a mutant who could give his katana a force field which enabled it to slice through almost anything.

They never legalized their affair, recognizing that their lives and cultures were too different, and later they parted amicably. Fred later married Nora Jones, and with her had Thomas "Toro" Raymond, who became the original Human Torch's partner, and like Johnny Storm, could envelop himself in flame and fly without burning and consuming himself.

The original Human Torch disappeared in the late forties, and Toro went searching the world over trying to find him, before he was captured and brainwashed by the North Koreans in the early fifties. He had an affair with a woman whose last name was Lynch in the end of the decade of the forties. Her son, Lynch, had absolutely no powers, but some government investigation indicated he could easily develop, that he had the genetic potentialities to be a superbeing. He and some other top soldiers during the Vietnam war on the Elite Team 7, after being stimulated to superhuman status by activating their "gen-factor". Lynch's code-name was Topkick, and it was unclear what superhuman powers he had...(another reason to think there is a genetic factor being activated, rather than powers imposed on everyone. If the U.S. government had the ability to turn every soldier into a super-being, why didn't they do so during the Vietnam War? The large death toll among other volunteers suggests a genetic predisposition among the survivors...)

Lynch had an affair with a woman named Lane, a descendent of Lois' uncle. Her son was Bobby Lane, also known as "Burnout", whose potential powers were also stimulated by a goverment agent. He works with the superteam Gen13, and has fire and plasma-generating and manipulating power very similar to Toro and the Torch's....

Toro and the Torch fought together again for a few years, and then the Torch disappeared again. Toro had an affair with an attractive Brazilian woman around 1954, and their daughter was Beatriz de la Costa, who became the Brazilian hero the Green Flame, and later, Fire. (She gave a false origin at first, but since Brazilian authorities were looking for her for an operation she botched, that's understandable.) There was another daughter, Nina, who manifested no powers, but who married a distant cousin, Emmanual da Costa (that branch dropped the la). Their son, Roberto De Costa, converted the sunlight and heat from the sun into raw strength and energy. He joined the New Mutants under Charles Xavier's care as Sunspot, as well as the later X-Force.

Another child Toro had by an Australian woman, before he found and married his wife Ann, was St. John Allerdyce. He became a journalist and hack novelist, and later joined the second Brotherhood of Evil Mutants under the name of Pyro. He could not generate fire spontaneously, but he could control or enlarge it over large areas. His sister married a Swedish professor, named Hansen. His son, Karl Hansen who became Sunburst and could absorb, hurl heat, and maintain heat updrafts, joined Stormwatch and married Nautika.

Pyro's son by a British woman, Cecil Lively, was a pyrokinetic serial killer. His story was chronicled in the X-FILES episode "Fire" aired on 12-17-93, where he fought FBI agent Sculley and Mulder.

When Toro was brainwashed and working for the North Koreans during the Korean War, he had an affair with a Red Chinese woman who was an advisor to the North Koreans. She was the mother of Mrs. Lee, Jubilation Lee's mother. Dr. and Mrs. Lee emigrated to America, but were killed. Jubilation Lee grew up to manifest mutant powers in the form of fiery pyrotechnics, and joined the X-Men under the name Jubilee, and later was a pivotal member of Generation X.

Toro's wife Anne, had at least one daughter, Laura, born in the late 50s. She married Peter Pennington young, who in turn had two chldren, Lauren and Tara Penning. Lauren became Fahrenheit, a member of Stormwatch who could create microwave-heated air and blasts.

21. Nathaniel Richards.
Reed was the son of Nathaniel Richards and his wife, Elaine Zharkov. When Elaine died, Nathaniel remarried and had two other children, Nathaniel Jr. and Tara (later, Huntara of the Fantastic Force). Reed fought with the O.S.S. during World War II, and later went on the fateful rocket flight where emissions from the experimental engine worked with cosmic rays to "trigger" his powers, and in that of his fiance, Sue Storm, her brother Johnny, and his best friend, Ben Grimm.

Nathaniel's second marriage was somewhat unhappy, and before he disappeared in 1932, he had a French mistress that he supported also, a habit that some millionaires of the time had. Through her he had two daughters, born just a year or two before he disappeared. One was Mme. Rouge, whose real name was Laura De Mille, who became part of the international Brotherhood of Evil. The Brotherhood's leader, the Brain, examined her blood and saw certain potentialities there, and exposed her to a treatment, that enabled her, like Reed or Plastic Man, to alter her features and elongate her body.

Her sister was a freak and shunned and abandoned by her mother, with reddish hair and bluish skin. She grew up to become the mutant called Mystique, who could alter both her features and coloring to resemble anyone she wanted, able to do naturally (as well as color change) what Reed and Mme. Rouge would have to be stimulated to do---alter the shape of her body. The first of her many aliases was Raven Darkholme.

Assuming another, more normal form, she married a German man named Eric Wagner. Their son was Kurt Wagner, the mutant known as Nightcrawler, the DNA becoming even more mutated with each generation. He did not inherit shape-changing powers (except the ability to blend into shadows) but gained a teleportation ability instead. (For some more relatives of Mr. Wagner, see the "McKenzie" family tree.)

22. Charles Sterling.
The father of John "Steel" Sterling, a policeman, married a Russian immigrant in danger of being deported. The marriage didn't work out, and Illyana Rasputin was deported back to Russia. He married again to the mother of John "Steel" Sterling, before he was shot by gangsters. "Steel" Sterling's mother was Terri Higgins, sister to Tom Higgins. Tom and Charles kept up with each other after the War, and Tom introduced Charles to his sister.

Yet Illyana, though neither of them knew it, was pregnant when she was sent back to Mother Russia. Her son Nicolai Rasputin was a farmer, like other farmers in Russia. Yet her grandson, Piotr (Peter) Rasputin, like Steel Sterling, was a mutation who could become similar to living metal. (Steel, after his father died, supposedly developed a serum that would turn his body into steel-like hardness, and later plunged into a vat of molten steel to finish it. It worked...but can anyone doubt that someone as vastly patriotic as Steel Sterling, who fought Baron Gestapo among others, would have turned such a formula over to the US government for use in World War II, unless he tested it afterwards on test subjects----hopefully just animals---and found only he was so changed? That there was something unique about him? The Shield, Joe Higgins, found the same thing about the S.H.I.E.L.D. formula---that for some reason it "only" worked on him, otherwise he would have donated it to the government. In both cases, all the formula did was stimulate latent superpowers the two of them had.)

Sterling later in his career married a woman named Raxton, who kept her marriage concealed, lest Sterling's enemies find her and take revenge on her. After Sterling disappeared, she married a night club owner named Allan, and became the mother of Liz Allan, Peter Parker's friend. Mark Raxton, the Molten Man, an opponent of Spider-Man's, was Steel Sterling's child, by the way...

Raxton later married a woman named Pearce, but when she found out he wasn't serious about reforming, she left him. Their son, Ray Pierce---she tried to pretend the marriage never took place--- fought in the Gulf War, but later turned into a man of metal after exposure to some self-repairing experimental metal compounds developed by Chamber Industries. (Whether that's connected with Johnny Chambers is not certain.) He fought FBI agents Doggett and Sculley, and the tale was made the object of a TV show called "Salvage" on the X-FILES, that aired Januray 14, 2001.

Sterling's sister married a man named Octovious. Their son, the atomic scientist Otto Octavious, took after his father's family in looks---but after a nuclear accident, the metal arms he wore as a device to work with radioactive compounds became part of him, even able to be summoned from a distance, under his direct mental control. He became the mename known as Dr. Octopus.

23. Lowell Storm.
The senior medic was Dr. Lowell Spencer Storm. He was aided by the young Henry Allen, a would-be doctor. (Henry was really only fifteen, having lied about his age to the recruiter.) Dr. Storm found out about Clark's odd ability to be a "universal donor" rather early in the conflicts, and that plus his "charmed life"---the fact that he was rarely hurt---made Storm want to use him as much as possible. Both Storm and Allen were permitted to do so, on condition that Clark was allowed to "stick" himself---he claimed he had a bad "stick" once, and ever since then, preferred to puncture his skin himself. They thought it eccentric, but Clark's blood, applied to the nearly-dead, seemed to have almost miraculous healing properties....so they didn't question a gift horse too much.

Storm started asking questions that got more and more uncomfortable for Clark, and then Storm himself got injured in an action, and young Henry Allen arranged a transfusion between Clark and Storm. Storm felt immediately much better, but like Garrick and Banner, had to be invalidated home due to some additional injuries. He never got to write the medical article he wanted to on Clark's remarkable universal donor and healing blood.

He did have a brief affair with an Italian nurse named Angela Unuscione. Her grandson, Angelo Unuscione, who emigrated to America and changed his name to Gunther Bain but became a wrestler in the sixties' under the name of Unus the Untouchable. Unus' aunt married a Haitian man named Reyes, and their daughter was Dr. Cecilia Reyes, who like Unus and Susan Storm, could maintain a limited force field.

Lowell Storm had several children, one of which was Dr. Franklin Storm, the father of Susan and Johnny Storm. Lowell Storm's wife was a sister of Reggie Fortune, the famed medical doctor and detective. Another child fathered Axel "Brain" Storm, a superhuman who fought the Justice League.

Franklin Storm was an acclaimed surgeon, but on the way to an award ceremony, there was a car accident, and his wife Mary was badly injured and died on the operating table.

After her death, Franklin went into gambling, and was eventually accosted by a loan shark out to retrieve the money due him by threatening Storm's family---his children, Susan and Johnny. They struggled and the loan shark accidentally shot himself. Still guilt-ridden over the death of his wife, he wouldn't say a word in his defense, and served a long jail term for manslaughter, until his death.

His children, of course, were Sue Storm and Jonathan Spencer Lowell Storm, who became two promiment members of the Fantastic Four....the Invisible Girl/Woman and the second Human Torch.

Franklin Storm's beloved wife was named Mary. Her last name was Griffin. The Invisible Man, Hawley Griffin, had had an older sister who bore a son out of wedlock, but died in childbirth, before he had embarked on his transparent but criminal career. The child was sent to an orphanage in America, and he grew up to have a daughter, Mary. (Mary's mother was Julia Raymond, the sister to Fred Raymond, the father of Toro. Perhaps the Kryptonian DNA seemed to react similarly to the Raymond DNA in both families, giving flame powers to both Toro, Johnny Storm, and Beatriz De la Costa.) So interestingly enough, the Invisible Man was the great-great-uncle to the Invisible Woman, Susan Storm Richards...although there was nothing that she inherited from him that might give her invisibility.

24. Phillip Summers.
Philip Summers started out in the infantry, in Major Ingalls' unit, but later transferred to the Air Service, which became his love. (He was later to run a air shuttle service in Alaska.) It was he who lent a biplane to "Hugo" at the end of the war, the biplane Clark never used, where he was intending to invade Germany and end the war once and for all---when the war ended without his final efforts.

Phillip married twice. He first married a woman named Roberta Dickering, but she died after her second boy was born, leaving Phillip with his two sons, John and Robert. Phillip desired to move to Alaska, and Roberta's brother argued against it, that little John and Robert would be safer in New York, with his family. Phillip, restless and a dreamer, finally agreed that John and Robert would be safer in NYC, and thus allowed them to be adopted into the Dickering family.

Phillip married another woman in Alaska named Deborah, and she was the mother of his third son, Christopher Summers, who became a pilot, before he and his wife, Kathyryn Anne, were taken by aliens from the Shi'ar interstellar Empire. (Why did they pick Christopher? Did their sensors detect that he had advanced potentialities and want to explore them?) Christopher never displayed any advanced powers, nor did his half-brother Robert (who nevertheless became a vigilante called the Hangman) but Christopher's two sons, Scott and Alex Summers did, as did Christopher's other half-brother, John Dickering.

John Dickering, a chemist, supposedly found a substance a thousand times lighter than hydrogen, that enabled him to make immense leaps. The buildup of the substance, though, behind his eyes, made him start to emit destructive rays from his eyes that could only be stopped by special glasses. (The only "gas" lighter than hydrogen would be collections of ions, and if he was injecting that into himself, no wonder the Kryptonian DNA reacted, to keep him from being electrocuted---evidently giving him super-strenth in his leg muscles and activating a warped version of Superman's heat vision.)

He fought crime as the Comet for a while, but died, and his brother became the Hangman to avenge his death. Both were rather merciless in their attitude towards criminals.

Scott Summers, like his uncle the Comet, developed (as part of a spontaneous mutation in his teens) destructive beams that erupted from his eyes, that could only be stopped with special glasses. He may have also modeled his costume's headgear on the Comet's headgear. He later became deputy/field leader of the X-Men under Professor Xavier. His brother, Alex, would later manifest similar powers, only not concentrated in his eyes, but in concentric circles that erupted over his entire body, and called himself Havok.

Scott later married both Madeline Pryor and later, Jean Grey. Madeline was a clone of Jean Grey, but it was Madeline who had the child who became the time-lost Cable, or Nathaniel Dayspring Summers.

Alex, before he was reunited with his brother, had an affair with a fellow teenager named Angela McLane. Alex and Angela's child was Foster McLane, also known as Flashpoint, who like his uncle Cyclops and his great-uncle the Comet, could make concussion blasts come from his eyes. (Unlike the others, he could direct their path in any direction he wanted.) Physically, though, he resembled his father Alex Summers more. Flashpoint was always hot-tempered and resented the other members of Stormwatch, the UN-sponsored superhuman force he joined. He died in action, yet the other Stormwatch members didn't mourn him overmuch.

25. Will Terrill, a reporter, seems to have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren that had energy-related powers. Several of them could convert themselves directly into energy, which argues for the "nanobot" explanation of Superman's blood---there would be so many changes in one's body to allow such a thing that one would think only intelligent design by nanomachines would allow such. Will Terrill had five kids by his wife, Loretta Sterling, sister to Charles Sterling. The oldest son, a reporter called Langford "Happy" Terrill, was in a balloon when an electrical storm happened, giving him the power to generate great amounts of energy, to fly, to possibly convert his body directly into energy.

Will Terrill also had a kid as a result to a visit to Japan before his marriage. His grandson was astronomer Jiro Hoshi, and his great-granddaughter was Kimiyo Hoshi, who became the new Dr. Light around 1984, triggered by an intense burst of starlight from the star Vega. She was part of the European branch of the JLA for a while, and then went off to attend to her scientific career and her kids. (She's divorced.)

Jiro Hoshi's sister married into the influential Misawi clan, marrying Yoshi Misawi, a prominent businessman. Their son, Toshiro Misawi, was born disproportionately big, and became a sumo for a while. When he later was disagnosed as a "seedling"---another word for mutant---Synergy of Stormwatch tried to activate his full potential. He started to turn into a ball of radioactive gas, but a special containment suit was devised. He learned to use an armored containment suit as an exoskeleton, and can control his own density. He fought with Stormwatch, one of the UN-sponsored superhuman agencies, under the name "Fuji".

Langford or "Happy" himself had a son called Raymond C. Terrill by his wife Nadine, born in the early 70's, when "Happy" was in his fifties--- but whose extreme volitility at light was a cause of great concern. He gave the child to his brother, Thomas H. Terrill to raise, who raised Raymond in comparative darkness and had him taught by nuns. Once he got out and discovered his powers, Raymond continued his father's career as the Ray. (He was helped by his third cousin Harry Terrill, descended from a brother of Will Terrill's.) "Happy" seemed also to have another son, Joshua Terrill, by an earlier wife, who also inherited powers and called himself Spitfire. (Unmentioned in those comics, was that Joshua had a brother, Jeff Terrill, who became a FBI agent. He inherited no superpowers, but became the excellent archer with advanced equipment called Shaft who ran Team Youngblood for the U.S. Goverment.)

Happy had three sisters. One married a Salewski, who shortened his name to Solar, and their son became a nuclear physicist who called himself Dr. Solar, who gained energy-manipulating powers very similar to the Ray's. He fought under the name The MAn of the Atom.

Another sister married a man named Adam, and their son, Nathaniel Adam, blew up in a nuclear missile and reconstituted himself, making him (like Dr. Solar) somewhat radioactive but able to control all sorts of energy. He was known as Captain Atom.

Nathaniel's sister married a black man from New Orleans called Rambeau. Their daughter, Monica Rambeau, became one of those who claimed the title of Captain Marvel, but later changed her name to Photon. Like her uncle and great-uncle, she developed energy-conversion and manipulating powers when exposed to the energies of an advanced weapon. Photon became one of the many members of the Avengers. (After her mother died, her father remarried and she got on quite well with her step-mother, calling her "mother".)

The third sister married a Trainor, and their son, Larry Trainer, was a test pilot. He alas suffered a malfunction on an experimental flight and was rendered personally radioactive, as Capt. Adam and Dr. Solar were, but moreso, so he had to clothe his radioactivity in special bandages that stopped the radioactivity for him to exist around others. He gained an energy-based other being, a "Negative Man" made up of mostly radio energy, that could split off from him and perform deeds for up to one minute seperated from his body.

Will Terrill had one more affair, with a Jewish woman named Kurtzenberg, who shortened her name to Curtis. Their son was Dr. Terrill (Terry) Curtis, who Clark met while fighting the Ultra-Humanite. He later became Cyclotron, a henchman of the Ultra-Humanite's, and it was his radioactive powers which triggered the Atom's strength---eventually. Dr. Curtis' daughter, Terri Kurtzenberg, became a NASA engineer and married Phillip Rothstein, who died in Vietnam. Their son, Albert Rothstein, could become immaterial after exposure to thorium radiation. He at first called himself Nucklon, and later, Atom Smasher.

Terri Kurtzenberg's mother was actually a Russian woman named Ivana Kragoff. They had first met when he had been doing some research in Russia during college. They actually had three children---a boy, Ivan Kragoff, who grew up to try to emulate the Fantastic Four's flight and gained powers of immateriality after exposure to cosmic rays. Terry Curtis never knew about him, because he returned to America at that time. Later he came back and they had two other children, whom he knew of and acknowledged as his...one was the aforementioned Terri, whose sickly state, caused by his work with radiation, Ultra took advantage of and blackmailed him with. The other was quite healthy, and her name was Ivana Terri Kurtzenberg, and was raised by Terry Curtis' parents, after Ivana Kragoff died during World War II.

She, like her sister, called herself Terri, to endless confusion during family gatherings. She married Carmen Pryde of another well-to-do Jewish family, and, in 1966, Carmen and Terri Pryde had a daughter, Katherine ("Kitty") Pryde, who also developed the ability to "phase" through objects in an immaterial state. She joined the X-Men under the names Sprite, then Ariel, and finally settled on Shadowcat.

26. Ira West.
Ira West was a Nobel-award-winning physicist, born about 1900. Inbetween was his father, James West II, who settled in Nebraska and married Irene Garrick, the sister of David Garrick, Jay Garrick's grandfather.

Ira married Nadine Gibberne, daughter of Dr. Gibberne. Ira and Nadine had two children and adopted a third. Charlotte and Rudolph were their natural children. The third, Iris, shimmered into their sight in a time-travelling vehicle sent by Iris' real parents, the Russells, who sent her into the past to escape a possible disaster in their present.

Ira analyzed the lingering radiations left on Iris for a few weeks after her time-transit, and consulted with his friend and relative, Nathaniel Richards, another brillant scientist. WIth the hints left from those analyzed radiations, Nathaniel would eventually build a time machine of his own, and disappear soon after Reed graduated circa 1942.

Rudolph, Wally's father, was a bit of a con man. Oh, he lived a rather humdrum life in Blue Valley, Nebraska, having married Mary Rhodes (sister to Elaine Rhodes, Jean Grey's mother). He also secretely joined the "Manhunter" cult, in exchange for added financial support, and when the cult ordered him to try to kill his wife...actually tried to.

Since then, his wife divorced him, and he's been pursuing one con man job after another, even after his apparent heroic "death".

Wally, of course, grew up as head of the local "Flash Fan Club", and suffered an accident startlingly similar to Barry Allen's, gaining the same powers. After Barry died, he became the new Flash.

26. Brian Xavier.
Brian Xavier was a nuclear physicist who worked on the first atomic bomb project. He worked with his first cousin, Bruce Banner's father. He fathered a child, Charles Francis Xavier, and then died in 1945 in an atomic bomb test shortly after World War II...in a chilling echo of what would later happen to Bruce Banner.

Charles Xavier was a mutant, a telepath who could read minds and in turn control them. (Xavier was born about 1933, and fought in the Korean war.) Crippled by an accident, in the sixties he formed "Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters", to train those who are born mutants in the use of their abilities. These became known as the X-Men.

Xavier implied that he got his abilities as a result of his parents' exposure to radiation. That was a half-truth. Though that might have aided the process, the truth is that he was inclined that way...through his mother as well as his father.

The woman Stan Lee called "Sharon Xavier", Professor Xavier's mother, was actually an Englishwoman. Her full name was Anne Sharon Wainwright Xavier, and she was the son of Dr. Thomas Wainwright and Inga, a Swedish woman, and sibling to Tom, an architect, and the very "odd" John Wainwright.

Odd John---whose life was chronicled by Olaf Stapledon---was a mutant who was the next stage in human evolution, with an intellect as far beyond ours as ours is from an ape's, with limited telepathic powers and other abilities. The telepathic ability seemed to have been magnified in his nephew, Professor Xavier, and the brillance was a bit more muted, but still wonderful, in his more normal-appearing nephew.

"Odd John" formed a colony of his kind, free from humans...and the entire colony of superhumans were destroyed by the Great Powers in a bombing raid, in 1928. It may be the memory of his uncle's tragic demise, and the death of practically all those who were the next step in evolution, that caused him to gather all those who were genetically different under his wing, to learn how to coexist with normal humans.

Before he married Anne Sharon Wainwright circa 1930, Brian Xavier had a brief affair with a prostitute called Susan Sterns around 1920. Their child, Stanley Sterns, was Professor X's half-brother. Stanley's son, Samuel Sterns, born around 1938, became an unimaginative manual worker, until he was affected by gamma radiation. His cranium expanded and skin color took an emerald hue, and he became the intellectual equivelent of the Hulk...calling himself the Leader. He also gained some telepathic and telekinetic powers in addition to his advanced intellect.

Brian Xavier married a woman in the early twenties, Angela Grey, the sister of Richard Grey Sr. She died in a fever around 1929, after having three girls. One, Jacqueline Xavier, who grew up and married Maxwell Lord III, who was the father of Maxwell Lord IV, the Justice League sponsor for a time, who discovered he could "push" others into doing what he wanted, in some slight show of telepathic power.

Jackqueline's oldest sister married a man named Halvig, and their son, Jack Halvig, had no intellectual or telepathic powers. However, like Legion (whom I'll mention in a moment) he had time-travelling abilities. His story was told in Poul Anderson's THERE WILL BE TIME. (The book told of other time-travelling mutants, hidden throughout the centuries. I suspect many of them of being descendents of Halvig or David Haller...)

The third daughter seems to have gone to England, and may have been the grandmother of Betsy Braddock, Psylocke. Further research is being done.

Professor Xavier had an illegitimate child by Gabrielle Haller, whom he met in Isreal. The child, David Haller, became somewhat autistic and also developed three split personalities, which like "Crazy Jane" manifested different powers---telepathic, telekinetic, and pyrokinetic---with each power. He was known as Legion. When he integrated his personalities, he found he had reality-warping and time-travelling abilities also. He died after meddling with history and briefly causing an alternate timeline to come into existence.

We know Charles Xavier travelled extensively in the far East in the early fifties. I suspect, though cannot prove, the mind-controlling Vietnamese orphan, Karma, of being a grandson of his, also.

I have not exhausted all the members of Major Ingall's company, nor all the descendents therein---but this will do as a preliminary study.

One can imagine some other, lesser reality, where Clark Kent/Hugo Danner/Superman never existed. If so, doubtless all these members of Major Ingalls' company would have died in the slaughterhouse we call World War I...and all these superhumans would have never been born. Luckily, that was not the case.

Lucky for all of us.

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.