Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Parallel world playtime!


OK. We've got the Squadron Supreme, Marvel's alternate world version of the Justice League. They inhabit Earth-712. (Man, and people complained when 52 limited the alternate worlds in the DC Universe to only 52!) Hyperion is the leader of the Squadron and is analogous to Superman.

Meanwhile, on Marvel Earth-616, we have the Imperial Guard. As Wikipedia describes them:
The Imperial Guard has many intentional resemblances to DC Comics' Legion of Super-Heroes. The Guard is headed by Gladiator, who is the team's analogue to the LSH's Superboy and, to a lesser extent Mon-El. Oddly enough Gladiator's real name is Kallark; a combination of Superboy's real names Kal-el and Clark. Most of the other members are direct equivalents in super-powers and have similar details of costume design to specific Legionnaires (such as Oracle matches Saturn Girl, Electron matches Cosmic Boy, Mentor matches Brainiac 5,and Flashfire matches Lightning Lad), but there are a number who differ greatly from their counterparts or who have no counterpart at all. The original Imperial Guard members seen in X-Men #107 were designed by artist Dave Cockrum, who had previously been best known for his work on the Legion of Super-Heroes, and all had direct counterparts among the Legionnaires. (Nightcrawler was intended to be in a Legion spinoff team book, but Cockrum left the book before he could be introduced, so he brought the character over to Marvel.) Later Guardsmen, beginning with the members introduced in X-Men #137, moved away from the Legion pastiche and began introducing characters with no Legionnaire counterparts. New Guardsmen corresponding to the LSH would not be introduced until the 1990s' Avengers crossover "Operation: Galactic Storm". Kree guardsman Commando's real name is M-Nell; a nod to LSH member Mon-El.

My "What If?" question is whether there's an Imperial Guard team on Earth-712. If so, then did Hyperion encounter the Imperial Guard when he was a less experienced adventurer (the Wiki entry describes him as an Eternal, so I'm not sure if he would have had adventures as a young boy)? Or perhaps Earth-712's Gladiator met Hyperion as a young man? Did Hyperion travel to the Shi'ar empire and have adventures there?

There just seems to be lots of room there for play. Much in the way that was done with Sentry in their Age of the Sentry miniseries.

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