"Kids, make sure your bedroom windows are closed!" shouted Visionary as he frantically scurried about the lighthouse. A wicked storm had come about and the leader of the Lair Legion was worried about the rain soaking the carpets. The power had already gone out and the lighthouse was running on emergency generator power.

As Visionary latched the window in the kitchen Hallie shimmered into view. "Vi-h," she tried to say, her holographic form flickering in and out of view. There wasn't enough power coming from the generator to properly run the holographic projectors implanted throughout the house. "--mitter---drawer---"

Visionary spent a few moments trying to decipher what Hallie was trying to say, then figured it out. He opened up one of the drawers in the kitchen and pulled out one of her Holographic Emitter Devices. He clicked on the power and after a minute or so Hallie downloaded herself into the HED.

"Wow, that is one crazy storm out there!" she said as she stretched, adjusting to the confines of the emitter. "Are the kids okay?"

"It takes more than a little storm to frighten my kids," Vizh said proudly. A massive boom of thunder caused the Regular to jump. "Of course I didn't grow up in a magical land where everyone wanted to kill me." Vizh adjusted his yellow jacket then asked, "So what brings you over in this storm?"

Hallie had almost forgotten in all the rush that she had recently told Visionary that they could no longer see each other. She had just beamed herself over like everything was normal. "Oh, um, Al wanted me to warn you about --"

"Dad, the storm's gone!" shouted Griffin as he and Magweed caromed down the stairs into the kitchen.

"Mom!" Maggie shouted in surprise and ran to embrace Hallie. She was surprised when she passed right through her.

"Sorry kiddo, my solid light projectors were knocked out by the storm," Hallie explained. "I'm on a portable right now."

"Dad, the storm is over, look!" Griffin insisted, pulling Visionary over to the window.

"Griff, there's no way a storm that intense would just up and...that's quite the rainbow, isn't it?" said Vizh in shock. The storm had abated and there wasn't a cloud to be seen in the sky.

"I can't feel the Lair Mansion!" cried Hallie in surprise. She tried to transmit herself back to her home mainframe and found nowhere to go. "I'm stuck!"

"But the Mansion is right there," pointed out Maggie. "Maybe we should walk over and see what is wrong."

"Not so fast," cautioned Visionary. "It could be an attack on the Mansion. You three stay here while I check things out."

Visionary strode to the door, confident that even in her HED the children would be safe with Hallie. Before he could open it he heard a knock.

Confused, Visionary opened the door and was surprised to find Dancer on the doorstep.

"Hello neighbor!" she greeted him with a warm smile. He was surprised to see her usual leotard replaced with a knee length skirt and a bow tied neatly in her hair. "I'm Dancer, from the Lair Legion! We saw your lighthouse appear on our island and we thought we should send the welcome wagon! Here, I baked these just for you!"

Dancer pushed a tray of cookies into Visionary's hands. Clearly she didn't recognize him, which was strange considering Visionary was her adopted brother.

Hallie popped up behind Visionary. "Did I mention Al said there was some dimensional instability caused by the storm and he was worried the lighthouse might end up in an unexpected reality?"

To be continued by...

I hate it when I become adrift in reality...

Fun idea! I'll have to see if I can find some time to add to it. I'm starting a new project today, but I haven't been told the deadlines as of yet.

On a fun parallel, we've had a series of severe storms here recently, leaving us without power for a night just last week. I don't *think* my house actually shifted to another dimension, but I suppose I can't be sure. It'd be nice if my bank account suddenly showed I was filthy rich in this universe...

I managed to get my old laptop up and running a week or two ago, and I've been replaying Freedom Force, possibly the greatest superhero game for the PC ever. It has a wonderful Silver Age feel to it, and I thought it'd be fun to play around with the "Silver Age" versions of our characters.




We've had a lot of storms here too; I run the community soccer program as part of my job and I don't think we've been able to play in almost 2 weeks because our fields are so saturated the water just sits on top.

If ever there was a time I wished to be a mutant weather goddess...

~Hat~

If that is in fact a Silver Age dimension shouldn't the Legion be meeting in a cave & not the Mansion?

I don't know... Chiaki strikes me as a very Silver Age concept. If you're from Japan, naturally you know martial arts and carry a sword. And yes, stereotypes are a heavy part of Silver Age storytelling, but it's not like the Golden Age, where they were openly racist. Usually the Silver Age's main fault in that regard was is clueless stereotyping or, conversely, blatent and heavy-handed attempts to be progressive.




No reason there couldn't be a Hallie mainframe... her introduction to the Legion had nothing to do with Visionary, really.




The Silver Age is full of crazy technology... usually as or more advanced than anything likely to show up in the modern age. I'd say the main difference is then writers didn't give a hoot to the science behind it, or one thought to *how* a device would do something. Mass is created out of thin air, unbreakable laws of physics are shredded, incredibly complex machinery is fit into ridiculously convenient sizes, (and conversely things that would be simple and small technology in our time is huge and elaborate.)

Most of the Parodyverse technology is already Silver Age in style, if you strip away the self-aware part of the gag.




Sounds spot on.




Interesting.




I shall go read it!

Three, if you count Flapjack being clean.

Fun to see Chiaki reimagined as a ninja, as well as the statue to the fallen hero.

I was thinking of Silver Age in terms of both the style and the time it originally fell into existence. Anyone who looked or behaved too different from Americans either had to be evil or poked fun at (this lasted well into 1980's cartoons, actually).

And Liu Xi, she's in the same boat except she's also a victim of the cold war. Either she would have to be a defector (and poked fun at) or an evil communist.





I thought she couldn't find the Mansion mainframe to download back to, and was stuck in the HED.








That's the tricky part, is that trends in artificial intelligence were much different in the Silver Age. There were intelligent robots, but generally intentionally designed to be as alien and emotionless as possible. The concept of a highly emotional and complex robot only started around the 1980's or so - but that's not the *real* issue. The real issue is that in Silver Age, nobody would have a reason to create Anna at all, as she is.

But, if I stretched that definition a little and skipped over the origin entirely, Anna wouldn't be designed to be quite as environmentally friendly (that's a very modern concept). She would probably be nuclear powered.

I thought about it for a while, and figured out that the concept of female Ninja in the media outdates the concept of female Samurai by decades (not to say both didn't exist long ago, but I'm thinking in terms of movies/tv/comics). Since Ninja is little more than Samurai with slightly different morality, and Chiaki was always on the edge of that morality anyway, it made sense. Heck, in modern-day Parodyverse, Chiaki is always on the edge of becoming Ninja - all she has to do is abandon her personal code of conduct and kill and maim for hire.

Well, I suppose the Asian characters I was thinking of were technically "Bronze Age", but the 70's saw the introduction of multiple heroes from Japan and China. Admittedly, the were mostly mystical martial artists, but not treated as jokes or evil.





Ah, good point. Still, a mainframe could exist, just not the one she's looking for, or with the connections she needs to return to it.





*cough*Vision*cough*

Seriously, the guy showed up in 1968 indistinguishable from a human, even under medical exam. Hank Pym couldn't answer what he was because he was "every inch a human being" only composed entirely of synthetics. Then Vizh got angry, fought his creator (which was also an overly emotional robot), learned his origin and wept.

His body was based on the original Human Torch, himself an android built in the 30's whom nobody would have ever suspected was anything but human in appearance and personality.

And frankly, the whole point of Silver Age storytelling is that you get to skip over the "reason" things exist. If it was a cool idea, it was thrown into the plot, whether it makes a great deal of logical sense or not.




Now you're on track!




I would think that would only apply on worlds close enough to her own that all the people she knows exist there too. Once you get far enough down the road to the point of the Parodyverse, I wouldn't think it'd be an issue. I don't, for instance, expect Visionary to exist on her world.

I always thought the 70's were the end of the Silver Age, rather than its peak, so even that might be stretching quite a bit. Martial Arts/Kung Fu *were* "in" during the 70's though.

But if you noticed, I did follow that kind of Kung Fu extreme in the short story I posted. Chiaki isn't normally so angry or threatening.





I thought he was a much later creation. At any rate, it's really the motivation for creating Anna that would be difficult to justify, unless I throw that out entirely and ignore it.





That's a good point, and works the other way too - since Lara isn't native to the Parodyverse, she wouldn't exist on any of its alternates unless she imports herself there.

Of course if we're stretching the Silver Age into the 70's I could pick up the whole 4th-wall-breaking trend a few comics used, and that could be how Lara makes it to the Silver Age Universe - conscious of the fact that she's not supposed to be there, perhaps guiding people by telling them where they are. But then I might be putting too many characters into this relatively short round-robin, so we'll see.

My thinking was if there is a mainframe for Hallie in the Lair Mansion, it doesn't have wifi, so she couldn't "find" it. A physical inspection could certainly turn up an alternate Hallie mainframe.

Besides, it's a round robin; if you want to change something, just make it work!




Exactly!

~Hat~

Lee Bookman, The Librarian: He might be dead in the present day PV but with some tweaking could exist in the Silver Age. Most of the time when I think of him & his mythos being more like the 1970's space epics but the Librarians & the Intergalactic Order of Libraries have always had an underlying homage to the the Green Lantern Corps (the IOL is even run by short blue skinned men in robes). So, if the IOL is the GLC then Lee Bookman is Hal Jordan. For Lee to fit into the Silver Age his uniform would have change, he'd to loose the trench coat (comic book character didn't start wearing those until the '80's). The uniform would mostly like bare the symbol of the IOL (whatever that might be).  The basis for the IOL & the Librarians doesn't truly fit the the Hero aesthetic of the age but does have a counterpart in that age & that was slightly intentional. The Librarian's collecting information from planet & storing it on that planet's near by Moon was inspired by how The Watchers' work. Lee also breaks a few laws like Uatu does, Uatu has as code of non-interference which he doesn't always follow where as Lee is not to be active in being part of the information he collects. Plus, He's to not leave his Library but does/did quite frequently.  A Librarian of the Silver Age would mostly be one that would be hard to place but would definitely be do able. 

Chad & Ronnie: They would possible in the Silver Age given that humor based comics were still regularly being done. Most of how the two of them act & go about their lives would not have to changes to fit into the comics of the day. Even their supporting cast wouldn't have to have many changes to them (Catherine would probably be one to change out of the group). Now they wouldn't most likely interacting with the Super Heroes of the day. The closest they would get to the the heroes would mostly be in a parody story here & there of them becoming heroes themselves (something similar to Archie Andrew's Captain Pureheart persona). But, Chad & Ronnie could exist quite nicely in this age.

Ham-Boy: He like Lee has roots in this Age. In my mind I've always thought of HB to be like what if Clark Kent grew up to be Spider-Man. Ham-Boy is from a small mid-western town, started his super hero career during his teenage years & then after high school moved to the big city: That all sounds like a pre-1985 Clark Kent. The Spider-Man aspect comes in when you talk about Ham-Boy's powers: One such power (The Ham-Sense) is directly inspired by one of Spider-Man's very own powers (The Spider-Sense) but HB's is less effective. I've had HB use a sausage link lasso in the past which I've slightly envisioned as been something like Spidey's webbing. With some small tweaks here & there Ham-Boy could become a Hero of the Silver Age.

Semi-Transparent Lad: Also has roots in the Silver Age. The origin of his powers come from a accident which involved radiation. How he went about becoming a super hero also has some ties back to this age. Being part of C-Class as part of the Federal Meta-Human Resource Center could be seen as akin to the X-Men: a group of young men & women with special powers all lead by a man with special powers himself. Again with some tweaks here & there STL could become back of this Silver Aged world.

I've tried to come up with ideas to further what I put forth but I'm not really get anything. Mostly it's because of the "real world" getting in the way. Not the actual real world we live in but the real world of the PV. I've left a few things vague or unrevealed in most of my characters & half of the ideas I've come up for a Silver Age story involve those very things. I don't want to explain/reveal these things in an Alternate reality tale. I know what I could put down doesn't have to be how it actually is in the real PV but in my mind it would feel like that. Some stuff is stupid stuff (like what is the name of the high school is Ham-Boy's hometown) to important stuff (what planet is Lee Bookman from).

I did come up with a kind of funny/interesting Chad & Ronnie idea that if I can come up with a enough stuff I might do. But the idea is basically a riff on the thing I did with Chad & Ronnie in the Moderator saga but why this thing keeps happening to them is sometime I think I might actually address in a story in the future.

I'll most likely post something relating to this just don't know what.

..