One reason they would make good candidates, besides their humanoid form, is that they were originally blue-skinned (doubtless due to genetic manipulation by the Marvaders) but as they conquered other races and assimilated them, they grew all sorts of variations.

If they are talking about other "races" the way we sometimes discuss races, they might just be talking about other races--subspecies---on their world, like we would talk of Caucasian or Mongoloid or other races on Earth. Yet if they were talking about alien races from them, it's obvious that both of them would have to be derived from the same race, to crossbreed. By Occam's Razor, and their humanoid form, it's easiest to assume that the Kree were human-derived.

Mongo is a very, very strange world. For one thing, it is a "rogue" world, not rooted to any one star. I suspect a "moon", an artificial one that orbits Mongo, is really a fusion generator that acts like a "sun".

I suspect, from the startling variation of humanoid types on this world, that Mongo was originally the Marvaders' center of genetic engineering, and the various hawkmen, lizardmen, etc. are because of variations upon a theme by the Marvader geneticists. When the Marvaders were thrown out, a ruthless monarchy won out, the descendent of which was Ming the Merciless, Flash Gordon's arch enemy.

Thanagar, home of the second Hawkman, is another candidate. It has very humanoid inhabitants...and yet they circle a star which hasn't had time for life to evolve. Polaris is a class F supergiant star, and supergiant stars usually only last millions, not billions, of years. It's a Cepheid variable, which means its light intensity dims and grows brighter over a certain period of time. Thanagar would have had to be settled from outside their solar system.

Thanagar was famous for its "hawk police", aided by their anti-gravity belts and artificial wings, and its Absorbascon, which could absorb information from any world they visited. (According to Jerry Siegel, Krypton had also mastered anti-gravity, having anti-gravity "hotels" hanging in the sky.)

If there is any truth to any of the stories after Gardner Fox left, later writers made the second Hawkman the son of an American Indian mother by his Thanagarian father. If true...it would cement the Thanagarians being one of our lost-lost cosmic "cousins". As it is, all we can say is that it's a possibility, and leave it at that.

One group that the Gallifreyians hid far in both space and time from the Marvaders were hid a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, as the Kree were.

They eventually spread to other worlds in that galaxy, first forming a Republic consisting of many races (yet with the human-descended often at the forefront) and still later, a ruthless Empire.

I'm not sure how George Lucas found out about it, but he made information about that Empire, and a Revolt against it, into four movies, named for the first movie...STAR WARS.

It's worth noting that the totally nonhuman race that included E.T., from the Spielberg movie of the same name, had a representative at the lawmaking body of the Republic, according to the latest STAR WAR movie. E.T.'s race, like the Marvaders, are totally nonhumanoid and of a very alien origin, although similar enough to us to eat similar foodstuffs.

Most alien races are non-humanoid, and of a non-earthly origin. This article, by necessity, is focusing on the humanoid and possibly Earth-derived, but those worlds are doubtless in the minority. (Any gathering of the Green Lantern Corps, a universe-wide organization, only included one or two races, at most, who were similar to humanity...most were very different. We live in a humanoid-ridden "bubble" in a much larger universe.)

Certainly many of the citizens of the Star Wars Republic/Empire, such as Yoda, are of a non-humanoid origin.

Another candidate for inclusion is Zenn-La. Extremely humanoid race (they seem longer-lived than humans, and the males seem to be invariably bald) that seems to have been civilized, or at least have a history, lasting more than a million years (Gallifreyian time travel again, I suspect, planting the originally savage Zenn-Lavians back in time.) Zenn-La, according to later revisionists, circled an A-type star, Deneb. If so, it's extremely unlikely they could have evolved there, given how much shorter an A-type star's lifetime is compared to a G-type star, like our own.

The Zenn-La people's virtual utopia was ruined by the coming of a ravager from space who drains the life force from living worlds. Norrin Radd of Zenn-La volunteered to become his herald, and became the Silver Surfer. Originally chronicled by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and later by John Buscema with Lee.

As many of you know, FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Sculley have become involved in a conspiracy that seems to involve, among many other things, aliens and alien/human hybrids. Dana may have been used in that way. Not all of it has been revealed, and there are certainly some nonhuman aliens involved, such as the shapechanging aliens and the Black Oil. Yet there seem to be three seperate alien races that they have encountered---and any alien that could even attempt to do any sort of hybridization with human beings must be somehow kin to us, genetically. I suspect the aliens who are involved with the conspiracy, in the alien-human hybrids, have grown far enough apart from human beings, by genetic drift, where cross-breeding is at least difficult. Hence the specialized ways they are trying to make such hybrids...

It's possible that the aliens were actually the food source of choice for the Marvaders stationed on Mars, and when the Marvaders left, some of them were left behind. Instead of dying, they shook off their millenia of being subjegated, and they used some of the Marvader technology to return to Earth, at least covertly. Weakened by thousands of years of breeding in Martian gravity, they are puny beings, bred to somewhat resemble their Marvader masters, at least in their largish heads and greyish skins and large eyes. Yet ultimately, they are of human origin....perhaps as different genetically from us as donkeys and horses are from each other.

Is that the origin of the "Grays" that Mulder---and many other UFO hunters---are searching for? Only further time will tell. It was hinted, at least in the movie, that these aliens were originally from Earth, which would agree with my theory. (We can be grateful for the maverick Lone Gunman trio who leaked details of Mulder's struggle to Chris Carter, who fictionalized it somewhat and changed the names...)

Another possibility is an extremely nearby world, Rann, that circles Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to us except for the sun. They possess an extremely humanoid race. It suffered an atomic war a thousand years ago, and is still crawling out of the devastation and aftereffects that brought. They tried to signal any forms of life circling Sol with a Zeta-beam, a type of radiation they had developed, but something in the passage of the four light years altered the radiation which turned it into a teleportation beam, that Adam Strange could use to "ride" to Rann.

There he met and fell with Alanna, daughter of the scientist Sardath of Ranagar. According to later writers after Fox, starting with Alan Moore, Adam Strange had a child by Alanna. If that latter information is true, that makes Rann an even stronger candidate, because they can crossbreed with earthlings.

Another two races that qualify currently share the same world. The Kherubim invaded the world of Khera and made the natives of Khera, the Titanthropes, minor citizens similar to Australia's aborigines or the Native/American Indians were treated by the European settlers. The Titanthropes could expand their size to a certain extent (although I suspect that of being exagerrated) and were extremely strong. The Kherubim had unending lifespans, near-invulnerability, psychic abilities and other abilities. Examples include Zealot, Lord Majeastros (Mr. Majestic), Lord Emp and Savant. The Titanthropes and the Kherubim could crossbreed with humans, and examples include Maul (a human-Titanthrope hybrid) and Voodoo and Warblade (who were human-Kherubim crossbreeds). Thus they were most likely genetically-altered human-descended beings, like Barsoomians and others.

The Kherubim waged a war with a race of shape-changing aliens called Daemonites (who could also possess bodies) and two of their ships crash-landed on Earth circa 1000 AD. They continued their war over the centuries more cladestinely, as revealed in WILDC.A.T.S. from Image/Wildstorm comics.

I am not including such races as the Guardians or the Watchers or the Q Continuum beings, because like the Silver Surfer's galaxy-roaming master, I suspect their appearance is more in the eye of the beholder than their true shape. Their powers are so immense, that I don't think we can be sure of their real shape. (However, if the Guardians do look like that, and they had many colonies, then they too might be a source for humanoid worlds, as Larry Niven and John Byrne stated in the graphic novel GANTHET.)

However, there's another powerful race that I think does qualify. They live on two related worlds.

New Genesis was a green and verdant world, and most of its people, usually gifted with extraordinary powers or weapons, lived in its utopian orbital city. (Actually, it appears to be circling within the atmosphere, so it probably was on an anti-gravity platform.) They call themselves "gods", and there is no doubt they are extremely powerful and extremely long-lived, but I suspect their "godhood" is akin to the Egyptian pharoahs or the Japanese emperors....more in name than in fact.

Their sister world, Apokolips, was always in the shadow of New Genesis, a world of beings with great power but ruled by fear and malice, and powered by huge fire-pits dug into its mantle.

Both New Genesis and Apokolips claimed to be the remnents of another world, one where lived what they called the Old Gods, their forebears, and the two worlds were the remains after the final clash of the warlike Old Gods. New Genesis and Apokolips were originally chronicled by Jack Kirby. Later writers have even placed the Old Gods in a previous cycle of the universe, before the Big Bang. It's not certain if that is true, but again, Gallifreyian time travel might be able to do that. The strength of some of its members, such as Orion, Kalibak, and Darkseid, are at Kryptonian-levels. Others, such as Lightray, are powerful in other ways.

There is no evidence that the inhabitants of New Genesis or Apokolips can crossbreed with humans, however. This is a supposition based merely on their extremely humanoid shape. (Well,for some of them, anyway...like Mongo, Apokolips at least often has some interesting variations, like Darkseid, Heggra, and Kalibak, and doubtless practices advanced genetic manipulation.)

Another possibility is Tamaran, home of golden-skinned humanoids with catlike eyes, that circles the star Vega, just 26 light years away. (In fact, if there is any truth to the alternative future portrayed in KINGDOM COME, some of whose protangonists visited the present, in the future there will be the possibility of a hybrid between a Tamaran native and a earthling, called Nightstar.)

Tamaran natives process solar energy to fly--somehow. I freely confess I don't know how they do that.

Other possible worlds include Colu, home of very intelligent (Vulcan-level) green-skinned humanoids, Talok VII,blue-skinned humanoids and others. But this essay has gone on long enough already. That's doubtless just the tip of the iceberg, and there are probably hundreds of human-descended worlds that we have never, ever, had even fleeting contact with.

I don't think, as I said before, that the majority of aliens out there are human-derived. In fact, there seems to be one or two other type of aliens that are fairly common and may have been spread by the Marvaders. I think they have a common origin...even though they don't look anything alike.

Unless they want to. I call them the Shapeshifters.

The Skrulls dominate an entire galaxywide empire in the Andromeda galaxy, and can change shape at will. (They have fought the Kree but we first learned about them in their first encounter with the Fantastic Four.)

Fox and Sculley encountered a shape-changing alien, the Alien Bounty Hunter, which seemed often at odds with the main aliens they often are trying to prove the existence of. He too seems to be part of the same race...if not necessarily the same homeworld.

Another candidate is Durla, home of the far-future Chameleon Boy, but who had representatives even in this day and age. Each tribe assumed a different shape as a default....

In "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell a being with tentacles, three crimson eyes, and rubbery blue skin is found in the polar ice. As it turns out, it was also a shape-shifter, and a very dangerous one. (That story was the basis of two movies called "The Thing"...)

The Fantastic Four also encountered the "Impossible Man", an inhabitant of the planet Poppup, another shapeshifter.

If the Star Trek stories exist in a real possible future, there was one on the station Deep Space Nine, Odo, who was part of a shapeshifting race. (Interestingly enough, according to one episode, he and some others travelled back in time and seem to have been the aliens found at Roswell...although not dissected, thank goodness...)

J'Onn J'Onzz, the "Martian" Manhunter, Superman's fellow alien in the Justice League, similarly is a shape-shifter, as well as a telepath and a telekinetic. Whether he came from a Mars of long ago, or a pocket-universe variant of Mars, a la Barsoom, has yet to be determined.

All these aliens' shape-shifting ability is so extraordinary I don't think it's much of a stretch to assume that there must be a link between them....perhaps all are descended from colonies of the same homeworld, or were kidnapped, a la humanity, by an older race like the Marvaders.

(It's true that later writers had Johnny Storm have a child by a Skrull woman who had assumed human shape. Yet there is some question of the validity of those later stories, some questions of his paternity voiced in the comics themselves, and even so, who's to say that when she assumed human shape, she did so all the way down to the genetic material, so she virtually was a human being, genetically?)

Still, without seeing an interbreeding link between these shape-changing aliens, their common origin is a matter of theory without any facts to back it up.

There's a third type of alien that seems to be spread over more than one world. I call them the Riders because they permeate and take over other sentients.

Fox and Sculley encountered "The Black Oil", which could seep into a human being and control them. The only outward sign was the way the possessed's eyes change.

Yet, save for the changing of the eyes, that sounds very much like the aliens described in Hal Clement's NEEDLE, and its sequel HUNTER. They are different enough to think we might be talking about two variants of the same race...but close enough to consider them the same race.

Of course there are countless other aliens that exist out there. William Harper Littlejohn/William Dyer encountered the remains of the totally nonhuman Old Ones in the Antarctic.

As mentioned before, there seems to be a link between the Star Wars Republic/Empire and the creature who was found by the boy Elliot in E.T.

There are the antlike Selenites discovered (perhaps in the Blue Area, close to the Watcher) by Professor Cavor and company in H. G. Wells' FIRST MEN ON THE MOON. (The Selenites are obviously colonists from another extrastellar culture, and later left, finding it too inhospitable an environment....and were scared by Professor Cavor's descriptions of the warlike humans. Cavor didn't realize he was in a specialized area of the moon, with a thin atmoshere protected by a force field. Reed Richards and the Fantastic Four would someday find the same area.) The secret of Cavor's anti-gravity Cavorite was stolen by the Si-Fan before it could be published, and later used by Fu Manchu's "flying saucers"....but that's another article.

I just wanted to cover mainly the human-descended races out there...and the other races who might threaten them. I just wanted to reacquaint you with...

....Our Cosmic Cousins.

PARTIAL LIST OF SOURCES:

The Wold Newton Universe -Win Eckert's fabulous site is the mother of all Wold Newton sites, and your search for anything should begin here. You have to check out his links ---the place to be if you're going to research anything on any of these characters. I disagreed with him about the origin of the "Martians" (I loved "Mars: The Home Front", but I don't consider it canonical) but it's still a wonderful site to visit.

I like a man who dreams big. The Secret History of Wold Newton -Dennis Powers explores the influence of aliens on the Wold Newton Universe, and takes a look at the role of the Wold Newton families in taming the Wild West. I don't agree with all of his theories, which are quite far-ranging, as I'm sure he wouldn't with mine, but I love to read them. You will too.

The French Wold Newton Page - Jean-Marc Lofficier's page taught me more about Arsene Lupin than I thought possible, and other characters from French adventure fiction. Highly recommended for the English or American-centric. Especially check out his two-part article about the Exploration of Space...I don't agree with all or even most of the points, but I found it fascinating nevertheless.

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

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", of course, is currently owned by DC Comics/Warner Communications. All other characters copyrighted by their respective owners.