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Post by dans on Mar 2, 2021 23:25:58 GMT
Did anyone ever write the rest of Caroline Dean / Liberty Bell's first story? In E-Man #5 she was introduced, and ended up on Skylab III where she dramatically announced that the space station was about to be attacked by Space Pirates. Do we know what happened in that attack?
It looks like at one time there were some thoughts about creating an Earth 4 FemForce and that organization just faded away (I haven't read those stories yet, just a line or two here or there). Is the idea dead? I have no plans to write an E4 FemForce story, but I want to be sure anything I do write won't intrude on any story plans...
Actually, now that I know that E4's Liberty Belle is not Caroline Dean but her sister Candy, I may write the story of the Space Pirate attack but no stories about Candy...
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Post by dans on Mar 3, 2021 23:54:05 GMT
Funny - in the one and only Charlton Liberty Belle story, we are never told the name of the President. But, we have two big hints:
1) it's 1973
2) the giveaway: "Let me make one thing perfectly clear, Ms Dean! Your country needs you!"
And, the country the spy works for is also never mentioned, but he is referred to as 'Comrade Koslovsky, commie, an enemy of freedom'.
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Post by DocQuantum on Mar 4, 2021 0:16:59 GMT
Femforce is a team that has only been mentioned so far as existing between 1979 and 1984/85, by the time it faded away. It’s loosely based on the AC Comics series and has a similar origin story. Eventually it might be fun to explore the team’s history, and to bring it back as a spin-off of Sentinels of Justice if that team starts getting too large.
Since Caroline Dean is an astronaut, I always thought it would be a fun idea if she was acquainted with both Nathaniel Adam (Captain Atom) and Steve Austin (Six Million Dollar Man).
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Post by dans on Mar 4, 2021 0:45:35 GMT
Femforce is a team that has only been mentioned so far as existing between 1979 and 1984/85, by the time it faded away. It’s loosely based on the AC Comics series and has a similar origin story. Eventually it might be fun to explore the team’s history, and to bring it back as a spin-off of Sentinels of Justice if that team starts getting too large. Since Caroline Dean is an astronaut, I always thought it would be a fun idea if she was acquainted with both Nathaniel Adam (Captain Atom) and Steve Austin (Six Million Dollar Man). The Earth 4 timeline suggests that she trained in the same group with Steve Austin in 1965. Captain Atom was back on Earth at that time so he could have been one of the trainers. |
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Post by dans on Mar 4, 2021 2:27:36 GMT
It just dawned on me that it would be fun to have the Space Pirates flying in the stolen prototype shuttle Enterprise. But it seems like someone stealing a Space Shuttle would be a pretty big event and probably have involved at least Captain Atom looking for it, and so it might be difficult to squeeze into Earth 4 continuity - maybe more fun than it's worth the trouble of doing.
What do you guys think about a passing reference like "Ever since the prototype space shuttle Enterprise was stolen, military intelligence has been anticipating something like this." |
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Post by DocQuantum on Mar 4, 2021 2:49:26 GMT
I've established that Captain Atom was off in space for much of the 1970s, so don't worry about him having to be around.
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Post by dans on Mar 4, 2021 9:25:52 GMT
oh well, that doesn't work. Enterprise built in 1976, Belle's story, 1973. Darn...
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Post by dans on Mar 4, 2021 22:18:51 GMT
Boy, Ditko took some liberties with the Skylab even in a 6 page story! He showed it as maybe 3x as roomy as it really was. I guess sexy Liberty Belle wouldn't have looked quite so hot all squished into the tiny open spaces the station actually had! I would have been very difficult to get in and out with the capsule docked. I wonder what he had in mind for the pirates' plan of action?
So, the Earth 4 Skylab is going to be much bigger than the Earth Real Skylab, and I'm going to add an EVA airlock at the far end. But what they heck, it's a comic book, right?
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Post by johnreiter902 on Mar 4, 2021 22:37:57 GMT
Boy, Ditko took some liberties with the Skylab even in a 6 page story! He showed it as maybe 3x as roomy as it really was. I guess sexy Liberty Belle wouldn't have looked quite so hot all squished into the tiny open spaces the station actually had! I would have been very difficult to get in and out with the capsule docked. I wonder what he had in mind for the pirates' plan of action?
So, the Earth 4 Skylab is going to be much bigger than the Earth Real Skylab, and I'm going to add an EVA airlock at the far end. But what they heck, it's a comic book, right?
Exactly. It's obvious, from all the incredible new inventions and discoveries being made in the Silver Age and the Golden Age of comics, that technology progresses faster in the comic book universes. Really, it's a wonder that the 1980s of Earth-4 parallel our own so much in technology. |
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Post by DocQuantum on Mar 4, 2021 22:40:00 GMT
The Skylab, or a later iteration of it, becomes the Sentinels’ headquarters in 1986. And it’s big enough to hold team meetings. Haven’t read that story in awhile.
But anyway, alien tech exists so I wouldn’t be surprised if space tech is more advanced on a Earth-4 than ours.
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Post by dans on Mar 5, 2021 0:04:26 GMT
Well, Skylab came down in 1979 in our world. So it must be a later iteration. Because no way was our Skylab big enough to hold superhero team meetings. I was going to destroy the E4 Skylab in my story, but maybe instead the Ionic Thrusters will work well enough to keep it in orbit and let NASA make it bigger. Maybe it can grow organically like an old English manor; every new generation builds a new wing or new rooms, or a new extension, and newer stuff grows up around the original building, but it is still there in the center...
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Post by DocQuantum on Mar 5, 2021 1:01:20 GMT
I looked it up. It's just called Project X, and it's a satellite base similar to the International Space Station, but larger. Not as large as the JLA Satellite as far as I know, but anyway it's not based on any existing real-life project, so no need to tie it in with Skylab.
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Post by redsycorax on Mar 5, 2021 2:46:12 GMT
Ah, but remember, these are alternate universes to our own and may differ slightly from ours in some details. For example, say the Vietnam War ended earlier than OTL. Thus, the Earth-4 United States has more to spend on its space programme, which could go several ways- extra Apollo missions, earlier use and development of the space shuttle, an extended life for Skylab? Take your pick. If's not in already established continuity, feel free to be creative!
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Post by dans on Mar 5, 2021 15:56:03 GMT
The problem is, I'm not really familiar with Earth 4 - never read Charlton Comics, or Quality Comics, and making sure a story doesn't involve violating cannon is tedious. I don't want to introduce something in a 1973 story that should have drastically changed the world but didn't!
Of course, one of our 'story starters' here is 'find a continuity flaw and write a story that fixes it', so maybe I'll make Liberty Belle invulnerable and immortal, and then someone else can write the story that explains that the heroine that was murdered in our continuity was just some unlucky civilian going to a costume party, and ever since then, Caroline Dean has been pretending to be her younger sister, Candy Dean, who actually died when she was engulfed by one of the red 'anti-matter' walls that swept over Earth 4 during the Crisis...
 nope, just kidding...
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Post by dans on Mar 6, 2021 0:44:24 GMT
OK, so it turns out that....
Caroline and Candy Dean's grandparents (I think) were experimented on by the US Government during WWII, and Caroline and Candy both inherited powers - apparently super-fast learning powers and photographic reflexes, so maybe their powers are about equivalent to Mr. Terrific on Earth 2. So Caroline became Liberty Belle, and had some adventures prior to her first appearance in E-Man, and then had a robust career as an action heroine, and then retired, and then came out of retirement before the Crisis, so Martin could kill her off.
And then Candy became Liberty Belle, and two of her friends (models Leeza Gibson and Maddy Lopez) became Liberty Belle as well, and on the day when history recorded the death of the second Liberty Belle, a Time Cop switched Candy out of harm's way and one of her friends died in her place. And then Candy stole a time travel belt from the Time Cop and tried to switch places with Caroline just before Caroline was murdered, but that plan failed and Caroline died anyway.
Oh, though Candy joined the Sentinels of Justice, she never told them that Liberty Belle was really 3 women, not just one, because she thought the group would kick her out if they discovered the secret, and Son of Vulcan and Thunderbolt, who both knew, kept her secret as well...
Holy Moley, and I have always thought that maybe my own stories were too complex and convoluted...
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nope, just kidding...