Besides an inconsistent gooey structure that renders him nearly impervious to harm, the Ooze retains the ability of its original life form to transform other life forms into ooze, which it then assimilates into itself, growing in size. However, it has been discovered that electrical phenomenon will counter and reverse this unknown process, meaning it must not be a fully chemical digestion, but a clearly unknown alien form of biologic function. Therefore, if the Ooze has absorbed anyone, an electrical attack will free those prisoners “trapped” in the Ooze. It has been repeatedly observed that the Ooze does not seek out victims, but rather often absorbs them as a form of self defense. Science still is uncertain what happens when the Ooze assimilates pickles, those being its preferred food.

The strangest part of the Ooze’s story perhaps, is that several food companies and advertising agencies are under the misconception that it is a regular superhero, and wish for it to become a paid endorsee for various “gooey” food products, such as candy, dough, and pudding. Over the years, several advertising executives have been accidentally absorbed attempting to get the confused Ooze to sign a lucrative advertising contract.

The Vanishing Sword
aka Vanisher

First known as “Musan Bu” (霧散 武) in his native Japan, Kyou Wanatabe’s superhero name as translated can mean either “Vanishing Man” (with “man” having a military connotation), or his preferred translation, “Vanishing Sword” (again “sword” also has a military connotation). When he immigrated to the United States, though he still calls himself “The Vanishing Sword,” the media quickly shortened this to “Vanisher.”

Kyou Wanatabe grew up the orphaned child of a distinguished Kyoto family murdered in a yakuza killing when he was barely still an infant. His parents estate dictated he be sent to live with a Shinto priest in a small village in Northern Japan. Under his care and with the family wealth, the priest provided him the best education, both ancient and modern, and an extensive training in all forms of Japanese martial arts, including kendo, jujitsu, and judo. When he came of age, he learned from the priest that his family were the true descendants of an authentic Imperial line, and that the current figurehead of the Emperor was but an imposter and political puppet established during the Meiji Restoration. Kyou was a direct descendant and entitled to be Emperor of Japan! According to the priest, several forces were at work to keep him from ascending the throne, among them the yakuza, who had killed his parents for their lineage, seeing a possible ascension to rule as a threat to them and the political power of the aristocracy that often hired them. Also, claimed the priest, mystical yokai demons in the form of Asian dragons had sworn a blood oath to kill any Wanatabe descendants as revenge against an Imperial ancestor who had conquered and permanently scarred their leader, the dragon Mogaro. The Shinto priest, who believed these forces to be working together for the detriment of Japan, began grooming Kyou to conquer Japan itself and reassume the throne as supreme ruler and new Emperor.

While still a young man, Kyou was sent by the priest to the island of Okinawa to further diversify his martial art abilities. It was there that the dragonesque yokai first appeared to him and tried to kill him. Using all his martial arts abilities to survive, Kyou fled into the mountains of Okinawa and there found a cave wherein an Okinawan lion kami appeared to him. The lion, an arch enemy of Mogaro and his family of dragon yokai, conferred mystical powers onto Kyou that included super-strength, and an ability to tap into an alternate dimension. Using these gifts, he was able to rout the dragons, stand against Mogaro, and escape Okinawa victorious.

Now an unstoppable martial artists with strength great enough to lift cars and smash through brick walls, Kyou returned to Japan with the intention of battling the yakuza and claiming through force the throne of Japan as the Shinto priest had taught him. He also began to learn to use his powers that bound him to that alternate dimension, which was identified through his later adventures as ZAR, or as our reality came to later call it, the Zar Dimension. Through the Zar dimension, Kyou could teleport himself and others, render himself invisible, and channel the glowing red energies of that dimension into objects, his favorites being ancestral katana swords, which increased the effectiveness and deadliness of the weapons. The only drawback was that the red energies of the Zar Dimension glowed in his eyes, blocking out his pupils, which required he wear sunglasses constantly in public in his secret identity.

For several years Kyou fought the yakuza as a vigilante ninja, seeking to fight up the power chain until he destroyed the organization completely. As his powers developed, and the public and his enemies became more aware of his abilities, his superhero identity emerged in Japan as Musan Bu or “The Vanishing Sword.” Kyou tailored his appearance based on various American superheroes to match this increasing reputation.

All the while, the Shinto priest who raised him was pushing him to attack the Imperial capital and overthrow the Emperor and the Japanese government and establish a new parliament under his rule. Yet Kyou was reluctant, and even when the priest, while on his deathbed, begged Kyou to begin this coup, Kyou couldn’t speak a vow to him. While studying abroad, he had been drawn to those Western ideals involving freedom of the individual, and had personally come to view the defeat of Imperial Japan and the resulting post-war American occupation as a good thing for his country. Moreover, the ongoing battles with corrupt politicians and underworld thugs led him to shun taking anything unearned by force as his enemies constantly did, and as did the Imperialist Japanese. In time, at the height of his power, he vowed to himself rather to fight for the innocent, and to never try to rule Japan or challenge its laws by force.

It was upon making this vow that the lion kami from Okinawa returned to him through the Zar Dimension, demanding he fulfil his destiny and overthrow Japan. As guardian of the island of Okinawa, the lion deity had given Kyou his powers in part to seek revenge upon the Japanese mainland, which in his view and in the view of many traditionally minded Okinawans, had been an occupier and oppressor of the islanders of Okinawa for centuries. Here again, in his very own supernatural benefactor, Kyou saw the terrible desire to rule against the will of men by force. He defied the lion kami directly, and as punishment until Kyou would do his will, the lion let loose the dragon yokai freely to torment Kyou into obedience.

For a time, Kyou fought against the dragons, but with no real way to kill them, they being supernatural beings, he grew weary and decided to leave Japan, as he knew these yokai could not leave their native land, though they still might hunt him anytime he traveled into the Zar Dimension. He moved to America, and there took up the role of American superhero, working with other friends he found there in exile, namely Figment and Guardsman. And so, Musan Bu, the Vanishing Sword, became known as Vanisher.

Figment

The small island nation of Cervantas may have been barely 40 miles square, but in the Medieval period of Europe, it was a seat of dynastic power that secretly reached with influence throughout the continent and some of northern Africa. Located in the Mediterranean Sea, east of Gibraltar and off the coast of Spain, the island faded into an almost mythic obscurity with the coming of the Industrial age, and has only in the modern era been “rediscovered,” as ambassadors from Cervantas represent the tiny yet elegant and refined country in the United Nations. The cultured descendants of Cervantas may be few, but they are loyal to their island home and possess a national identity that is part of its people to this day.

According to legend, in the Medieval days when Cervantas was an important port on the trade routes of the Mediterranean shipping lanes, a just and noble king of the longtime Fierro dynasty was unjustly challenged in his rule. Whether this insurrection arose due to the ongoing Plague, or whether insidious voices in the midst of the people led them to revolt, history has lost the reason, but those people of Cervantas turned against their honorable king. In an act of desperation, to save his kingdom from the mob which beat against the castle doors, the noble King Fierro consulted his court wizard. The wizard worked his magic and granted special powers to the king. With these powers the king quelled the mob, demonstrated his divine right to rule, and secured the throne for himself and his descendants forever.

The power granted by the magic was this: the king could fly to the heavens, he could tap the energy of both fire and the sun, thus unleashing it upon any who dared attack him, and most magical, the king could change the very substance of his body, becoming thin and inconsistent as a spirit, so he could walk through walls or have a sword pass through him, or he could make himself harder than the hardest diamond, so nothing could break him if it met him with force.

Upon birth of the next firstborn son, not only would that child inherit the kingdom, but also these very powers, so therein he might secure the birthright.

All was peaceful in Cervantas through the ages. A long line of noble Fierro kings ruled. Never did they need to use their powers and in time, many thought these powers of the king a myth, though quietly those powers were always there if needed.

Then, but a generation or so ago from today, fate disrupted this harmony in the small nation. The ruling queen gave birth to twins! Stephen and Edward Fierro were born. Technically the firstborn, Stephen was given the crown. Yet because they had shared their mother’s womb, the powers of the king were split between them! Stephen could make himself “un-solid,” walking through walls and floors, and both people and any weapon would pass through him if he willed it. Edward could make himself denser than iron or granite and thus virtually invulnerable. Stephen could unleash yellow energies of the sun, while Edward controlled the heat of fire. Both could still fly to the skies.

With both brothers empowered, yet Stephen Fierro the legal heir to the kingdom, Edward’s bitterness and jealousy overcame him through the years. He plotted against his brother and when time came that the old king died, Edward started a new insurrection that displaced Stephen as the rightful king. Fleeing for his life, Stephen made his way to America to reside as a political exile.

Obsessed with power, Edward Fierro was no longer content with so small a kingdom. Drawing upon malcontents, criminals, and indentured soldiers from across Europe, the Mid-East, and Africa into an organization he called Vypyr, Edward took the costumed super-villain identity of Fireburst and began an insane plot to conquer the world. Yet he was always carefully and diplomatically ensuring that his alter ego as Edward Fierro and the island of Cervantas would never be implicated in any aggression.

Knowing his twin brother’s schemes but unable to prove his guilt to the international community, Stephen Fierro took up his own costumed identity as Figment, using on his costume the same “F” that was his ancestors’ family crest, just as Fireburst did. He began a war with his brother through the superhero and international espionage community, and remains the U.S. based superhero Figment to this day, still hoping to reclaim his birthright as ruler of Cervantas someday.


Fireburst, aka Edward Fierro, Figment's Evil Brother, Pictured Below

Guardsman

Guardsman’s life is a testament to the hard knocks honest cops sometimes receive. A member of a race of gigantic lizard men from another world, Guardsman (his true name cannot be pronounced in Earth languages), is a high ranking law enforcement officer of his home planet. Very intelligent and educated, Guardsman was an exceptional alien “cop.” Indeed he was perhaps too good, for he began to uncover a corrupt conspiracy in the law enforcement agency of his native homeworld.

As he contemplated the best mode of action according to the very letter of the law, his enemies learned of his suspicions and struck first. Framed for crimes he didn’t commit by his adversaries, Guardsman was sentenced to death, but escaped through his top notch training and police skills. Knowing his home planet held no refuge for him, he fled in a stolen spacecraft. Pursued across the galaxy, he was shot down over Earth and crash landed in the American Midwest.

Presumed dead by his enemies, the wreck of Guardsman's ship was left alone, but he had survived, seriously injured from his bad landing. He was discovered by a widow and her 10 year old son, owners of the farm where his ship had crashed. Despite his "monstrous" appearance, they decided to help him, nursing him to recovery and keeping his existence and spaceship a secret. The father of this family had recently died in a farm accident, and so, once recovered, Guardsman's strong back helped work the farm and keep the family afloat. Eventually, the son latched onto Guardsman emotionally as a "father figure," but the highly adaptive alien, unaccustomed to human relationships, did not understand how to handle or process this growing bond.

Yet Guardsman’s keen skills and high intelligence did help him learn Earth English and to observe his new environment for some time from the shelter of this family's protection. Eventually his true nature got the better of him. Unable to tolerate injustice or any “rule breakers,” he left the farm to become a crimefighter here on Earth. Though mistrusted and feared by mankind at first, he eventually befriended other superheroes who where able to offer him a new home in the big city, and also a chance to satisfy his inherent need to guard the law, even if that law is one belonging a different race and planet of beings. Guardsman is very straight laced and a stickler for the “rule of law.”

An incredibly large and powerful “lizard man” with a huge tail, Guardsman also possesses membranes under his arms that allow him to glide through the air after either jumping from a great height or leaping into the air, much like a flying squirrel. He is adept in a strange alien form of martial arts that showcases the use of his tail, and his weapons of choice are may seem similar to Oriental sai, but they are a traditional weapon from his home planet. His “costume” is his alien policeman’s "uniform,” which he has kept in good repair and also sewn his own duplicates.

If his enemies from his home planet ever knew he was alive, they would likely invade Earth and kill him. Yet still Guardsman plans to someday, somehow, return to his home and prove his innocence and bring the corrupt to justice. It is just that he knows not yet how to accomplish this goal, as he is but a stranded wayfarer on Earth.